At this point, it seems unlikely that Trump is going to prevail in his legal challenges.
It's possible that he will, but what do you think is more likely? If he doesn't prevail,
however, Biden's "win" can actually be a tremendous win for us.
Why? Well, first let's address the question of who "we" are. I hate to sound like Joe Biden,
who seems not to know who he is or where he is or what he's talking about from moment to moment
(get ready for four years of hilarity, folks). But it's useful to remind ourselves of who we
are from time to time. We are White Nationalists.
A White Nationalist is
someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own homelands. So that, as a
White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a Scottish nationalist, a
French nationalist, etc . Or, at least, I support all those nationalisms. To be a white
nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people" are the white
people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus, American White
Nationalism = American nationalism. To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that
more recent, non-white arrivals don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been
here a long time and some of them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites
who contribute almost nothing to the society except grief.
Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in complete
subjection, and since both blacks and browns out-breed us, American nationalists essentially
face two possible courses of action. The first is to remove non-whites from the country, which
seems impossible at this point, or to remove ourselves. This latter course would mean that we
all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't allow, or that we effectively secede from the
USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter
option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work
toward.
So, how does Trump's loss help advance us in that goal? To state the obvious, white
Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of
themselves as White Americans; unless they see themselves as a group with distinct
interests, and the moral right to assert those interests. "Awakening" white people has
always been our goal as White Nationalists -- awakening whites in America, and in
Europe. This awakening is far more important than any political figure, or any short-term
political goals. This awakening is and ought to be our top priority.
When I first got involved in this movement, almost exactly twenty years ago, there were two
questions that were constantly raised in my local "hate group": (1) When are white people going
to wake up? And (2) will it take some kind of societal collapse to get them to wake up? Most of
us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in our lifetimes.
Well, my friends, now it has happened. The collapse has occurred, and Trump's loss has
brought it about.
The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken.
Conservatives, the overwhelming majority of whom are white, have long known that the media are
biased to the Left and that the political establishment does not have their interests at heart.
But they still believed in "the system." They believed that it still might be possible to work
within the system and get somebody elected who would actually be their guy . Somebody
who could bring the jobs home, stop the tide of non-white immigration, clean up the streets (
i.e. , do something about black crime), combat the politically correct madness, and get
us out of the forever wars. The election of Donald Trump seemed to confirm this optimism.
But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been proved
correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being continually
vilified by the Left as a white supremacist! Still, millions of whites not only continued to
support him, they carried on a love affair with the man. Trump was adored by his base like no
other American political figure in memory. Not even Reagan got this much love. The more vicious
and unhinged the attacks on Trump became, the more his base supported him. They knew that his
reelection would be no cakewalk, but they believed it was still possible.
They knew that the media and the Democrats would play dirty -- very dirty. But they trusted
the electoral process. Or, at least, they hoped for the best. For months there was talk about
voter fraud, primarily focused on the issue of mail-in ballots. But conservative whites still
had faith that the system would work for them, as it did in 2016.
Now their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely
significant for us.
The first step toward real secession is psychological secession: seeing that though I
still live in it, this is no longer my country, and there is no longer any hope of making the
system work for me and those like me. This is exactly what the 2020 election has accomplished.
About 57% of white people voted for Trump in this election. And those many millions of whites
are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know, the red pill is the path to
liberation.
Quoth Tyler Durden: "Losing all hope was freedom."
It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election,
benefitting Biden. As I write this, Trump's legal team is preparing to fight it -- but, as I
have already said, I think that they will lose. Ultimately, it does not matter whether or not
there was fraud, or whether the fraud was enough to swing the election to Biden (two separate
issues). What matters is that white Trump voters believe that there was.
Trump voters are now, ironically, in sort of the same position as Democrats in the wake of
2016. No matter how much we would like to, none of us will ever forget the "Russian
interference!" and "Russia collusion!" hysteria that went on for the better part of two and a
half years, until the Mueller report more or less put the thing out of its misery (though not
entirely). The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit. And a significant number of
Democrats knew it. Trump voters actually have very good reasons to think that this election was
stolen.
Regardless of what we eventually learn about whether sharpies can cause ballots to be
misread, or whether a "glitch" flipped Trump votes to Biden votes, there is still ample reason
for the 70 million Trump voters to think that this thing was rigged. In the months preceding
the election, America saw a massive overreach of state and local government power in the form
of COVID lockdowns, the net effect of which was to ruin far more lives than it saved. Is it
paranoia to think that the intention here was to crash the economy and render Trump
unelectable?Consider: Virtually the entire media was not only against Trump, but made it their
personal mission to take him down by any means necessary. No lie, no distortion was too
ridiculous or too scurrilous. Leftists in government, journalism, academia, and the
entertainment industry openly declared that anything and everything was permissible in
order to take down the "existential threat" posed by Orange Man. This was the fertile ground
onto which were sowed the seeds of speculation about election fraud.
The lockdowns coincided with months of coordinated rioting billed as "protests" against
non-existent "racial injustice." The rioters somehow weren't subject to the rules of the
lockdowns, because apparently COVID takes a holiday when it is politically expedient. This
double standard was so obscene and so blatant, it enraged Republican voters (as well as a few
honest rank and file Democrats of my acquaintance).
The Left calculated, correctly, that Trump would do little or nothing to stop the rioting,
out of fear of looking too dictatorial in an election year. Trump's own calculation was that
allowing the riots to happen would give the Left plenty of rope with which to hang itself.
Trump was wrong; his inaction made him seem weak. The basic hope of the Left was that months of
economic and social chaos would fatally wound Trump, and that voters would be too stupid to see
that it was actually the Left that was to blame for it. In the main, it looks like they were
right about this.
But diehard Trump supporters correctly saw that the lockdowns and riots were an election
year strategy hatched by the Left. If they were not wholly designed by the Left to
damage Trump, they were at least manipulated for that purpose. The cherry on the cake came in
the weeks leading up to the election, in the form of big tech's censorship of news damaging to
Biden, including blocking the New York Post 's stories about Biden's involvement in his
son's shady business deals. This classically Orwellian move finally reached an extreme few
would ever have even thought possible, when at last social media began censoring the President
himself.
Given all of this, it would be unreasonable not to think that this election was
stolen. Trump's supporters believe this -- every last one of them. And they will never stop
believing it. Mark my words: this is never, ever going away. Trump voters will go to
their graves believing that the election was stolen, and feeling as passionately about it as
they do right now, less than a week after polls closed. They will go to their graves hating
Leftists (as they rightfully should), and believing that the system is broken beyond
repair.
"But," so your objection will go, "the fact that these white Trump voters will become
disillusioned with the system does not mean that they will become self-aware white
advocates."
My contention, however, is that what begins as disillusionment with the system will, in many
cases (a great many cases, I believe) lead to increasing racial consciousness, or open the door
to it. Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that
one big thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is. And if
you keep going this way, you eventually begin wondering whether wrong is right; whether
everything we've ever been told is false and bad might be true and good.
And the fact is that white Trump voters are already far more racially aware than the
naysayers in the comments section will give them credit for. Trumpism is an implicitly white
phenomenon if ever there was one. And it is implicit only in the sense that its supporters are
too tactful and too fearful to name it for what it is -- not in the sense that they are
unaware of what it is. We all thought that the media and the Leftists had lost their
minds when they damned Trump and his supporters as racists and white supremacists. But they
weren't crazy. They grasped, much more clearly than Republicans, what the vector of the
Trump movement was -- where it might be headed. They correctly saw that a movement that offered
a home to millions of white Americans upset by non-white immigration (euphemistically called
"illegal immigration") might eventually give birth to self-aware white advocacy. When they
called the Trumpites "racists" it was like seeing the oak tree in the acorn.
As perceptive as the Left was on that particular score, they have, as we all know, been
remarkably deaf, dumb, and blind in other ways. Biden's share of the popular vote (if
legitimate) is by no means a landslide. There is no "mandate" for looney Leftism, and no
"repudiation" of Trump (indeed, Trump did expand his base -- though in one crucial area, as I
will shortly discuss, it shrank). But that won't stop Leftists like AOC, and many others, from
imagining that they have a mandate for all their craziness.
Therefore, expect the anti-white rhetoric to pick up steam. And, needless to say, this will
help the process along in a big way: white Trump voters will think for five minutes and realize
that they are at the mercy of a system that is demonstrably rigged against them and
wills their destruction. If they haven't realized it already. That image of the McCloskeys with
their guns facing down the brown hoard is unlikely to fade anytime soon. And what happened to
the McCloskeys has now happened to all white Americans: despised, cornered, and now disarmed.
(The literal disarmament is right around the corner, if the runoff elections in Georgia deliver
the Senate to the Democrats.)
We are nevertheless still at a point where whiteness remains implicit. Whites dare not speak
out in their own defense -- not explicitly as whites, anyway. Populist journalists like Tucker
Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Pat Buchanan, who are privately on our side, still speak in coded
language, avoiding open advocacy for whites. However, the coded language (as the Left also
correctly sees) is becoming easier to decode by the day. As many on our side have said, we will
make no real and substantial progress until we are willing to openly stand up for ourselves --
in person, in broad daylight, and without sock puppets and noms de plume like "Jef
Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is.
What would it take? First, it would take white self-awareness -- and I have argued that this
is already there, emerging from its cocoon. Second, it would take anger . It would take
whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave imprudently
, damning the consequences. If one does it, he will simply be squashed; fired, censored,
canceled, deplatformed. If many do it, that's a different story. They can't fire us all. And if
that anger is great enough, they will fear us. They should. As Don Jr. recently tweeted , "70
million pissed off Republicans and not one city burned to the ground." But this may not last.
The election might just be the proverbial straw. The camel may be about to metamorphose into
the lion.
Already there are signs of uncharacteristic self-assertion on the part of angry Trump
voters. There have been large protests by Republicans in "swing states," including Michigan and Pennsylvania.
There has been violence. Continuing the lockdowns will exacerbate this. Everybody, not just
whites, has reached the breaking point with this COVID bullshit. Of course, now that Biden is
elected, it would not be surprising if COVID suddenly became a non-issue.
Here are some more predictions:
Trump has now moved over to Gab , a
free-speech platform that has embraced thought criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's
supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of them. They will read the other stuff and
become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this one with mathematical certainty.
Gun sales will increase as Trump voters scramble to arm themselves before Biden tries to
disarm them. Gun sales have increased enormously since the BLM riots began, so much so that the
stores cannot keep up with demand. Ammo sales have been so brisk it's now hard to find bullets
for those guns. (Yes, I do believe we
are headed for violent civil war .)
Conspiracy theories are going to be mainstreamed. This process was already underway, due
partly to the influence of "QAnon." I tried reading
the QAnon book , with the intention of writing something about it for this website. I
stopped because the thing was so stupid I couldn't get through it. If this stuff can be
influential among Trump voters, anything can. Alex Jones is all over Gab. The Trumpites who
follow their leader over to that platform will get a big dose of him -- and about 60% of what
he says is actually true. He was talking about Epstein's pedo island years ago.
One thing leads to another -- once, as I have said, a big lie is exposed, one begins to
question everything else. Who really runs the world? Who controls US policy in the Middle East?
What's Bohemian Grove all about? Exactly how long does it take to cremate a single body?
Inquiring minds want to know. Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom! Every one of them helps
us, because every one of them undermines the system and the elites who run it.
White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020. Given his portrayal in
the media, the irony here is rich, as Jim Goad has noted. Had Trump
gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the dead and the
fake voters. As Gregory
Hood has pointed out, "the reason President Trump is in this position is because he
didn't do enough for white working-class voters ." He continues: "White working-class
voters are now the most important voting group in America. They will have decided two
presidential elections in a row. They will decide more."
The Republican establishment cannot be unaware of this. They've seen the same numbers Hood
has. If they did not realize it before, they realize it now. There will be absolutely no going
back to the Republican party of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Those names are hard to pronounce
now without gagging. That they were the Republican nominees in, respectively, 2008 and 2012 now
seems downright surreal. That is how much Trump has changed the party. To save that party,
Republicans will have to offer something to white voters. They will have to keep running the
Trump train, without Trump. (Though Trump is not going away; he will remain a huge part of
public life.)
Everyone thinks 2020 has been a terrible year. It is just the opposite. White nationalism
has taken a giant step forward.
To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that more recent, non-white arrivals
don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been here a long time and some of
them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost
nothing to the society except grief.
The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance
and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.
Not that I am accusing the author of being a racist at all – but in the field of
persuasion, a biased narrative produces polarisation, either confirming or disputing one's
preconceived beliefs.
I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE. Yes, no doubt, the
historical currents and ill-conceived government policies have herded different parcels of
humanity into differing contexts on the basis of their racial backgrounds, but while the
identifying characteristics (and idiotic government-enabled victim industries) may be
numerically associated with skin colour, the actual behavioural differentiations are
determined by the collective CULTURE adopted by each individual within their respective
communities.
Allow me a simplistic example here. By government policy, an Australian is recognised as
Koori (and entitled to all the government benefits, handouts, preferential treatment and
other assistance that Koori status attracts) if he/she can demonstrate that they have at
least 1/16 Koori blood. What a boon to the Australian "Aboriginal Industry", a
government-spawned victim industry par-excellence, whose client-base and professional
employment potential is thereby magically multiplied 10-fold compared a Koori threshold
limited to just full and half-bloods (do the math).
As would be expected, a great many people are all too eager to pile onto this "victim"
gravy train. Never mind that the bulk of them are white.
And the really warped thing about all of this, is that all those whiteys whose great great
grandmother or grandfather may have been a Koori, baited by the siren-song of government
entitlements and victim rights, all too often fall into the trap of government dependency and
economic despondency that afflicts so many of the victim industry's clientelle.
It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE. Egged along by idiotic government
officials and vested interests.
Here in Australia, my view is that you're either Australian, or you're not. All other
considerations are secondary. That applies equally to foreign and domestic policy, and
equally to the native-born and immigrants. Until we come to understand and accept that
proposition, the NATION will be hobbled.
So too with the USA. Mind you, it appears to me that the USA's CULTURAL issues are rather
more entrenched and vulnerable to vested interests than in Australia (so far). If they can't
be resolved, then we may be looking at eventual disintegration into several nations,
irrespective of race.
Really, it's these exciting and dark times when real change happens. The Kali Yuga beckons
us all onwards! I look forward to that future thing which American Nationalism will give
birth to. I just hope it involves dragons, somehow, somewhere. Maybe on a flag.
Your premise of a "white homeland" in North America is problematic at best, since the
territory was already occupied by First Nations of indigenous peoples who clearly were the
first to make such a claim on these lands, which stood until the continent was stolen from
them by white people. A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior
rights here first, and then assessing where in the world it is best to park our itinerant
white asses. But as you say, we've already forfeited our place in our actual white homelands
in Europe and elsewhere in the Old World. So maybe we can negotiate paying rent, on these
lands we occupy, to the poor survivors of the genocide we enacted to claim "our" home.
"Most of us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in
our lifetimes. Well, my friends, now it has happened.'
Reminds me of Mr Twain & his comment that reports of his death have been greatly
exaggerated .
The author's race nationalism is sad, to say the least. As if "white" comes with a label.
(And never mind all the Legal/Property issues that would arise -- imagine sorting out an
Olympic sized pool of cooked spaghetti .)
"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within
North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and
something we must work toward."
But having sorted out the labels "White", citizens can play " India 1947 -- the
Partion" : you know, that wonderful time when millions of Hindus moved south &
millions of Muslims moved north. Death toll somewhere between a couple of hundred thousand to
a couple of million. I wonder who will get the bulk of the Oligarchs ? Where will those
tribal Oligarchs feel more comfortable ?
Mexicans & Asians -- wonder whether they'll be welcome ? Turn away the Asians especially,
will go a long way to guaranteeing failure.
The saddest thing of all ? Assume all the race issues are settled -- & you still have 101
other political issues to deal with .Unless, of course, the author simply wants to transfer
the status quo to his new racial Eden .Wow, what a triumph that would be.
Of course Europeans and people outside of Europe of European descent are waking and
beginning to take our own side This is the inevitable reaction to our ( mostly ) hostile
elite, Politics as usual/ MSM etc are all in decline and no amount of censorship is changing
these trends. Matthew Goodwin and Roger Eatwell in National Populism The revolt against
liberal democracy are amongst many who see this happening. The trend is towards Nationalism
away from the Multiculti cult and its champions on tv etc. The silent majority in all White
nations are less silent with every passing year.
I've long considered myself a political exile. I left the US because I couldn't stand it
any more. The insanity of the laws, the always increasing police state was something I saw
but others apparently didn't.
If states start to secede and Texas is one of them, I'll move back. The Fed Gov is the
main problem and needs to totally disappear. When the USA goes the way of the USSR, then
you'll know there's a chance for freedom.
The history of race relations in the past 60 years or so has been based on your
assumption, that everyone is the same but environments create cultures that make them seem
different. It's a claim that's impossible to disprove, because you can define any traits as
cultural, and is therefore meaningless. Nevertheless, in practical real-life terms all you
have to do is look at how various groups behave in many different locations and even
different times, to see that something is at work besides culture.
And failing to acknowledge biodiversity leads to the absurd victimization industry that
has brought us to the brink of race war.
"warriors of the Powhatan "came unarmed into our houses with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits,
and other provisions to sell us". The Powhatan then grabbed any tools or weapons available
and killed all the English settlers they found, including men, women, and children of all
ages. Chief Opechancanough led the Powhatan Confederacy in a coordinated series of surprise
attacks; they killed a total of 347 people, a quarter of the population of the Virginia
colony."
Oh no those poor natives. Maybe they should have avoided a fight they couldn't win.
There's a reason we call them savages.
"The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit."
But, as the programmer Alberto Brandolini is reputed to have said: "The amount of energy
necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." This is the
unbearable asymmetry of bullshit .
There are so many massive lies out there that are still believed by many of the stupid
masses brainwashed by mass media, the universities, and a variety of other large
institutions.
You can't fix stupid.
So–my crystal ball is very foggy at this point.
(If you think about cultures in the history of the human race, all were based on a bunch
of lies. As Terence McKenna liked to say–nowhere is it written that we apes are
entitled to learn the truth about anything.)
@Etruscan Film Star in parallel with the whole racial profiling paradigm is the same idea
applied to religion, wherein George Dubya whipped up his "civilisational struggle" against
the Muslim world to facilitate American games of Empire. To the extent that any problem
actually exists, religion is a red herring. Here in Australia, Muslim people are amongst the
most genuine and charitable people that one can meet. In my experience, the only tiny
minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are invariably of Arab origin, and more
specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal & chauvinistic culture (and a
key American ally in the Middle East – just sayin').
Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious
society, while incompatible cultures cannot.
For the time being, as long as Jews play the gane of Whites vs Diversity, whites should
play a game of Jews vs Gentiles.
If Jews can lead a multicultural coalition against Whites, then Whites can lead a
multicultural coalition against Jews. This is their worst nightmare, and almost everything
they do is best understood as an attempt to prevent this.
This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't
allow, or that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or
spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only
option, and something we must work toward.
Jez, they say I am a dreamer, and all I want is a free pony and some government
cheese.
I suspect that Australians are several decades behind Americans in discovering that your
perspective, which basically is what we called civic nationalism, is largely false and has
now largely failed. I don't have time to even sketch this, but you can look for critiques of
civic nationalism and for concepts like regression to the mean. I hope you can learn from our
experience.
@Ultrafart the Brave and snotty racist Europeans and Japanese kept the revolutionary
masses down. The opposite is the truth, it were the Europeans who were revolutionary folks
(French revolution/Enlightenment anyone) trying to spread modernism over racist, parochial,
reactionary, tribal darkie populations and the whole thing ended in tears and trumped up
charges against Whitey dreamt up by Jews, marxists and third World Nationalists/ elites. Same
with Japanese Empire which too was driven by the Pan Asian ideology. The Chinese too will be
rejected by the darkie masses in the future, they too will face trumped up charges for
"exploitation" and "oppression" in the future, it has already started right now.
I do not deny that there are differences between the races. However, breeding is not one
of them.
Ever since the end of slavery, American blacks have had moderate numbers of children,
essentially the same whites. Yes, really. Why do you think, after all these centuries,
pre-1965 American blacks are still hardly more than 10% of the population?
Actually the fraction of blacks in the United States is lower than it used to be –
the Grover-Cleveland cheap-labor immigration surge, that drove wages so low and profits so
high, was all from (at the time) white third-world Europe, and increased the white fraction
of the population. Because white europeans at the time bred more than black Americans!
So yes, during the 19th century and up through Mao, the Chinese bred like rabbits and
lived lives of total misery. After Mao, the Chinese fertility rate was allowed to moderate,
and now China is doing very well. Is there anything genetic in the Chinese people for either
high or or low fertility rates? No. This at least, is entirely cultural.
Are there genetic differences between the races? Yes. Is excessive breeding one of them?
No.
@Ultrafart the Brave in Western societies on average than MENA and South Asians, even the
African blacks, who have much more deeper cultures than New World blacks, they all integrate
fast into Western cultures but they tend to ebonyify everything. But they bring with them
some negative traits like tendency towards violence, crime, chip on the shoulder mentality,
melanin power mentality, seeing racism everywhere etc So culturally they integrate faster but
the skin colour difference creates resentments and temperament differences still exist. On
the positive side blacks are not clannish as the darker Eurasian semi Caucasoids and have an
individualistic tendency which does gel well with individualistic Northern Euros.
I was away from Polaris Parkway, just North of Westerville and Worthington, Ohio, for a
couple of months and things have deteriorated quickly.
This also happened to Epstein Best Bud, Les Wexner's pet project Easton Town Center, close to
New Albany Wexner's British Village Fantasyland.
The common factor in deterioration is wait for it
Blacks and Browns, managed by jews.
Philadelphia Block Busting, 60 years later, same demographic players.
@sb understand that the Australian aboriginals were not a uniform race across the
Australian continent. The Tasmanian Aboriginals were quite different to their continental
counterparts, but even the mainlanders were not racially homogenous. The racial makeup of the
native peoples of Papua & New Guinea are completely different again.
A broad analogy can be drawn with the various black races occupying the African continent
– their skin colour doesn't uniquely define their respective races. For an extreme
example, compare the Congo Pygmies of central Africa with the Rwandan Tutsis.
I do take your point, however – rather than qualify the Kooris as Australian for a
potentially global audience, perhaps it is simpler to just refer generically to native
Australians..
One might think so, but apparently not. Instead, in so many ways the Australian culture
seems to be marching in suicidal lockstep with the USA, like the mythical lemmings toward the
proverbial cliff.
An appalling example of this is the insidious slide of the Australian medical system over
the last few decades from a universally free model to a for-profit one infested with middle
men and insurance rackets, presumably on a trajectory towards a full-blown American-style
Big-Pharma business model with the poor folk thrown under the bus.
@Malla rt of thinking aligns somewhat with reports of homecoming head-chopping ISIS
psychos being sent to reeducation camps in Xinjiang, China. The local indigenous population
apparently is doing just fine, but returning extremists trained for genocidal wars in the
Middle East no longer fit in.
Here's a true story which helps to illustrate that the principle of cultural harmony
transcends race, and even species. I was raised on a farm, and on this farm were herds of
sheep and also some turkeys. One particular sheep somehow got it into her head that she was a
turkey. She would follow the turkey flock around all day, and at night, she would roost in a
tree with the turkeys. The turkeys didn't seem to mind, and the sheep seemed quite happy.
Compatible cultures.
The stolen election is like Jewish control of the media. EVERYBODY, even Biden voters know
this SELECTION/ELECTION WAS STOLEN, but like Jewish control of the media, we are demanded to
pretend it doesn't exist or never happened.
No Trump fan here, but I voted for the Orange Man because of the alternative. I still have
hope that Team Trump can turn this around. All the Jew/Israel butt kissing aside and the
broken promises and holding meetings with (c)rappers, Trump did expose the "normies" to the
FAKE MEDIA. Hell, that is more than any other modern day POTUS has done for Whites. Can
someone tell me when was the last time Whites had a true representative in the White House
that actually looked out for White Americans and was concerned about White civil rights? I am
pushing 60 and we haven't had one in my lifetime for sure.
So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a
Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc.
I think if we take it as far as Hitler, we are also Chinese nationalists, and Japanese
nationalists etc – those nations can develop in their spheres – and so much the
better for them. But they may not force themselves on us (or others).
This whole article is based on the Susan Sarandon premise in 2016 when Bernie lost –
that a Trump win would inspire the base to elect a progressive, caring left wing politician.
This didn't turn out – the system got rigged for about as establishment a criminal as
could have been chosen.
Article 10 is not easy to execute. The right may have honour and guns, but the left is
TDSed, and rabies is one strong steroid to help with a fight!
In addition there is no real leader – one who could strategise a secession
effectively. Trump certainly couldn't. He'd be great as the PR guy, but not as the leader.
Until one is born, America is stuck within the belly of the US beast.
Author Costello said:
"Had Trump gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the
dead and the fake voters."
Nope.
Costello misses the point that the curious count stoppage was a pause to enable the left
to manufacture the votes that they then anticipated needing in lieu of the largely pro-Trump
turnout numbrs. And, any unanticipated pro-Trump surge could have easily been overcome by
having a reserve at the ready.
IOW:
Regardless of who had voted for Trump, they simply would have been overcome by the left
creating more fake votes for Biden.
I would add materialist values and urbanization to the blend. All my ancestry emanated
from Scandinavia. After checking out several major cities during the years of my young
manhood, I returned to a rural, homesteading life.
Working with my hands and body is important to my well-being. Seasonally, living on the
northwestern fringe of the Northwoods, winters are long and arduous -- a good time for
artistic and intellectual pursuits. The soul has its needs, as Thomas Moore pointed out in
his book "Growth of the Soul". My needs center on living close to the mother of us all.
Northeast Asians and Northwest Europeans share much in this perspective.
Not too many answers to why and to what purpose but still a brilliant article.
Generals love the war, soldiers not so much.
There is lingering question in my mind! The question is: Who loves more war, Israel , or
seventeen intelligence agencies with General staff.
But for the time being I am very much against any radical solution.
I am with Trump's "Stand down and stand by".
I think Biden also does deserve a chance to come up with solutions.
But if Biden starts a new war than everything will be justified and Final solution will
become inevitable.
@TG k up a feast. The younger children enjoy their own fun and games. The older ones help
their samesex parents. During the evening after supper, the bottles get passed around and
sometimes there is music and perhaps dancing.
The bulk of the Amish -- and the Mennonites -- emerged from an Anabaptist culture in
Switzerland and parts of Germany and during the late 17th Century many of them relocated to
Lanacaster County Pennsylvania, from which they have now colonized westwards wherever there
is the possibility of true country living. Not many of them migrate past the 90th Meridian,
where poor soil and semi-arid conditions are poorly conducive to agriculture and cozy country
living.
@Ultrafart the Brave s have manipulated much in America in the last 50 years and that is
the bigger reason for what are marketed as 'cultural clashes'. Most of them are bogus and
engineered.
Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious
society, while incompatible cultures cannot.
Agree, again, I'd use the term: shared or accepted values.
(Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and
supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a
variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real
world.)
If Brexit ranks NINE on the Collective Self-Harm for No Good Reason scale, proposing a
civil war in the 21st century to create a "whites only" state in North America is so nutty it
breaks the dial.
But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK. That way you can all go back
to growing crops and digging oil (ND) for your subsistence. Every place else is getting too
mixed for you.
Maybe if you're nice the Hawaiians will let you vacation on their islands occasionally to
get a break from long cold winters.
Though a lame and uninsightful article on the whole, the strategy of and desire for
secession is the healthiest conclusion that the author could have been reached. I would just
hope that when whites within the ethnostate inevitably conflict with the ethnogovernment that
he would also want for them to secede.
What a simple morality play for the banking elites (who own both parties through
"lobbying, i.e. bribery" sanctioned by the highest courts) to divide and conquer the
taxcattle.
You are arguing over who you pay Tribute to. This is a golden opportunity for mass civil
disobedience to overwhelm and bury the decrepit, imperial corporatist oligarchy.
The stone-age aboriginals who previously inhabited what is now America failed to defend
their lands from invasion. Sadly, we've learned nothing from their mistakes.
Ronnie Unz needs to weigh in here Give the little cretin credit for posting this of
course.
Ronnie you are about to get your brown invasion that you so crave good and hard. Of all
the things that the globalist elites want in electing this moron demented POS called Biden is
an open border
Here it comes Ronnie Won't you and your bro Cholo loving Reed be soooo very happy
Amnesty is going to be served up as one of the first acts of Shithead Biden's
administration
Rejoice Ronnie . More poverty crossing the border to cut your grass.. And a bigger mass of
people for the welfare state
Of course you think that maids and dry wall hangers are natural conservatives I beg to
differ Where i live in Virginia they are natural clients of our welfare offices. We are
ground zero for the Welfare Dreamers who come from Central America.
I don't have to gaze into my navel and dream up some statistics about this you insipid
moron I can walk down the street to the Socialist Service office and see it for my own
eyes.
Yes Ronnie White Nationalist failed thanks to shitheads like you . Now asshole enjoy
paying California taxes to support open door poverty
Virginia is we are now on par to have California style taxes to support the brown
wave.
Your Buddy Reed had a good plan for escaping that I believe he used to be a Virginian he
moved to where the cholos are leaving!
As to this article right!! Cucked whites are doing shit. They'll be called racists and
shrivel up like a daisy in a wind storm.
@Priss Factor he Jewish agenda. Why don't we have a Herve Ryssen here in the US? Why
don't we have an Alain Soral, publishing prolifically and SELLING books to the deplorable
French yellow vests? Why don't we have a comedian like Dieudonne, poking fun at the organized
community and its endless wailing about its victimhood? We need more strong voices, willing
to point out the fact that there is NO SUCH THING as "Judeo-Christian values"; the very idea
grew out of a poison, Scofield Reference Bible influenced swamp, a hideous swamp monster
feeding on bleating Christian Zionist sheep, baa baa baaing as their wealth and futures are
extracted by the oligarch Jews.
It seems, based on much video, as well as the geographic centers of this fraud, that
negroes played a disproportionate role in the illegal election activities. Now that does seem
counter intuitive, as negroes are overwhelming honest, law abiding citizens.
I can only imagine that it was some small group of Jews that bribed our colored brethren
to engage in this thoroughly out of character misbehavior that may well lead to violent,
bloody national upheaval.
If only we had employed a larger share of our negro population in the various lucrative
advertisement opportunities, thereby sparing them from a life of soul crushing poverty. We
might have saved the nation, had we been kinder to our minority Black population.
"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their
own homelands." – White Americans forfeited this right the moment they began
bringing African slaves here. Advocacy for white nationalism in America is advocacy for
secession or genocide. If you have no stomach for advocating genocide of non-whites in
America you must advocate for carving out white homeland for white nationalists. This
homeland no long will represent America or be America, so you no longer will be American
white nationalist but white 'bantustan' nationalist. If you lucky the rest of America will
let you have casinos in your bantustan.
The karma of the U.S was always screwed from the day the vile white Euro invaders fucked
with the natives and if there should be statues they should be of the likes of Geronimo and
not white imperial scum.
May the spirits of all the slaughtered native North American Indians be smiling from ear
to ear at the potentially very dangerous division in the middle country of North America.
A very good article that raises a lot of valid points. White Supremacy is the ONLY way,
that's what (((they))) call us, so ride with it – wear their labels with pride. Onwards
and upwards!
"The goal of abolishing the white race is, on its face, so desirable that some may find it
hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed WHITE
SUPREMACISTS .Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and
the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as the white race is
destroyed."
– Noel Ignatiev, Jewish Harvard professor and co-founder of 'Race Traitor'
magazine.
What makes you think White Americans brought blacks to America? America didn't even exist
when black slavery commenced and the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not
the American colonies.
A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior rights here first,
A just reckoning also requires a statute of limitations on questions priority and a
recognition of who actually built the country.
Besides, the 'native' tribes were already killing and displacing each other. They were
mutually hostile, not united. Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix
– albeit a tribe whiter and more successful than the rest – make any difference?
Ironically, it takes a 'racist' to claim that it does.
Agree, although Jews have a few advantages that make them much better at it, namely a
couple thousand years experience operating as tiny minorities in others lands and a shameless
hyperethnocentric instinct evidently lacking in white gentiles.
I looked at gab but it didn't seem very user friendly, problem is also everybody needs to
cease using twitter and shift to gab at the same time, critical mass.
And where, amongst these face diapered morons and Covid fearing degenerates, will you find
freedom?
America's problems are far greater than issues of Race, Politics, or Culture. At the core,
the issue is complete Spiritual Collapse, manifested in craven cowardice, cringingly
lickspittle obedience, mindless group think, and resolute belief in imaginary events.
This isn't going to end well for anyone. The spiritual death of America is as permanent as
it is absolute.
This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't
allow .
You haven't been paying attention, sonny. The Europeans are busy trying to catch up with
America's comparitive advantage by importing masses of similar types.
Has anybody else besides myself noticed how fast Jared Taylor and his #1 prize writer,
Gregory Hood – have cucked and caved in and conceded that the DemonRats won the 2020
Presidential election?
And, how each of these guys have now gone into full concession mode and are trying to
persuade and influence their followers to join them in their cuckery and effeminate
willingness to become submissive?
Also, I was listening to a recent Red Ice podcast where they had a slew of allegedly
pro-white community spokesmen and women on to discuss the fraudulent and clearly obvious
attempts by the Demonic leftists to steal the election and they were pushing a meme that I
found more than a little bit disturbing.
It went something like this: Racially healthy Whites need to respond to this travesty by
'opting out' of the 'system'. This means that Whites need to stop participating; i.e., stop
voting completely.
Alex Linder once said, when discussing the suicidal mindset of Whites who were infected
with Christianity – and who we all have repeatedly heard on various talk radio call-in
shows come on the
radio – after another leftist anti-white agenda victory and say: "Well, I will just
continue to pray and leave things up to God" – Linder dubbed that kind of attitude by
Whites as nothing more than pathetic excuse for them to continue to 'do nothing' to help
themselves or their people. I agree.
This meme that 'Whites need to stop voting' is exactly the same kind of attitude. I am
willing to concede the point that voting is senseless as long as the system continues to
allow fraudulent and illegal chicanery to thrive and go unpunished. But, anyone who actively
promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is pushing advice that is
exactly what our mortal enemies want most. It is a complete surrender to being ruled over by
non-whites and jews who hate our guts and who do not want to encounter any opposition to
their agenda to genocide our race of people.
Yes, the election WAS stolen, the democrats having admitted it themselves after four years
of trying to get rid of president Trump, as they said, "BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE"!! So rational
people are now to believe that they have suddenly become honest players in the 2020 election?
As the saying goes, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT THOUGHT /..Dr. Charles Fhandrich.
@Stonewall Jackson sympathizing with some of your sentiments, Stonewall, but your
mean-spirited discourse (directed towards our host, no less) is a textbook example of why
Comments Sections (and some commentators) get edited–and even banned. Why take this
route? It seems self-defeating.
Your disrespectful attitude undermines your appeal. It also diminishes this site.
Why not aim higher? Why not civility?
Ron Unz might be wrong here and there. But he is not a "moron". Making such claims makes
you look like one.
Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting
points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare.
This is probably the most profound and auspicious moment in modern American history. I
would like to see Trump and the Republican party seize this moment by creating a parallel
government. Imagine 71 million Americans standing solid and publicly announcing a resounding
"Fuck you!" to the Jewish commies and all their colored cohorts.
'Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix make a difference?'
Because it was their homeland, unlike the Euro invaders of central North America and just
try asking an elderly Palestinian how that feels.
And the different tribes may have been at war occasionally but this can hardly be compared
to the mass slaughter of the Native North American Indians and their Bison(to try and starve
them).
@Ultrafart the Brave Most importantly, the lies attributing black dysfunction to white
racism must stop immediately, and the government has to stop shoving diversity down our
throats continuously.
Allow freedom of association, enforce the laws, stop making excuses for black dysfunction,
and limit if not eliminate further immigration into the West from the Third World.
Perhaps then there can be some hope for us living together with a modicum of peace and
prosperity.
But I agree with you that nothing is accomplished by referring to an entire group of
people in completely disparaging terms.
That being said, black dysfunction has been and continues to be a serious problem that
will not be resolved by blaming it on white racism.
@Frankie P , who are both honored as Prophets in Islam, but instead, Jews spit on hearing
their names and do the same while passing a Christian of any kind or a Christian Church in
Israel. They have no respect for Christians or any other religion.
It is time the Jewish lobbies and the American Government leaders as well as the evangelical
Christian leaders who mislead the poor American young into joining the military and believing
that they are doing something for God and Christianity by fighting Israel's wars were named,
shamed and arrested and tried for treason.
In a perverse sort of way, israel's favorite "war song" is "Onward Christian Soldiers"
There I've said it
Will the redpilled understand that America has done this to many other countries, with
many more dead, or will their new consciousness be limited to this particular event? Because
the redpilled ones were always enthusiastic about new military adventures.
If the warriors came unarmed, but wound up killing people instead, I'd wonder what took
place in the interval. Something tells me we're only hearing one side and only a small part
of the story.
As for avoiding a fight they couldn't win, what advantage would they have obtained if they
just bent over and took it in the cheeks without a fight?
Maybe the reason "we" call them savages is called projection.
BTW, here's an example of what failing to fight will get ya,
An elephant that had some tests performed on it was going to be culled. However, in the
end, they decided to release it back into the wild (within the reserve).
This elephant took it into it's head that it was an African buffalo!
It hung out with the buffalo herd, and started to emulate the buffaloes behavior.
Initially, of course, the buffaloes were a tad leery of their new, very large friend –
but eventually got used to him.
And the elephant provided plenty of muscle when it came to lions stalking the herd.
It seems like you got the Pocahontas version of history.
All I can say is that if some guys on horses abducted my daughter and then slowly tortured
and scalpted her to death, you can be sure I wouldn't hesitate to genocide each and every one
of those savages down to the last one. But let's not have facts interrupt your narcissistic
moral masturbating. Just don't come here, coz in the end we'll end up laughing at you.
@Majority of One watermelon, they pass around the gin and juice and sit around smoking
the chronic and endo. Guns and ammunition are then passed around and they all discuss that
nights or the next days activities.
The bulk of the Negroes emerged from the African bush, sold by their own and competing
tribes and have colonized all 52 states wherever there is the possibility of free living and
handouts. Not many of them migrate to rural areas where country living and hard work would be
considered racist and discriminatory.
We have to thank our black Bros and Sistas. Without their motto "there can be no
construction without destruction" the USA would never be what it is today.
Ahhh This white man has put in a convincing case for himself and people like him and he
has my total support. He and his people can have Wyoming and half of South Dakota, only half.
Want some cows and mules? Take them. Take some white women also if they agree to go. And you
must take Trump with you, he's white like you. Good luck.
White liberals cry crocodile tears when the jewsmedia reminds them how White settlers
stole land formerly inhabited by American Indians. But, the fact is, every people alive in
the world today stole the land they now live on from a weaker people. It's the history of
mankind. Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land
from another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a
stop to it.
This obsession with restitution and atonement, is replacing religion. Only a race too long
comfortable would consider giving away to the defeated all they have accomplished and hard
fought for.
Churchills jewish henchman, fake aristocrat and architect of the Dresden and associated
slaughters frederick linderman mused that the defining event of the 20th century would be
'the abdication of the white man'.
The seeds of annihilation were sown in the late 19th century, now comes the reaping, aided
ably by the mendacity, sloth and cowardice of our own peoples and leaders.
President Kushner or President Emhoff that is the question. Same old – Jewish
"White" Supremacy. The "white" supremacy game of our "free" Zion press forgets to say which
"whites" are supreme. Our "free" Zion press is right that there is a "white" group that is
supreme but do not go into details which one. Unz site is one of the few sites that notices
this "white" group that is supreme in the US and in the entire west.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will leave his job as a
partner with a high-profile law firm to focus on his role in the new Biden
administration.
A campaign spokeswoman said Tuesday that Emhoff will sever ties with DLA Piper by
Inauguration Day. Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm in August, when Harris was
named Joe Biden's running mate. Biden and Harris will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
Emhoff is working with the transition team to determine the issues he will take on as
the vice presidential spouse. He is the first man to hold that role, as Harris is the
nation's first female vice president.
thanks mr Costelo for showing your thought crystal clear.
I a south american, am not entirely a contradictor to your views. And even share a few of
them.
If you re a white US nationalist I am a Brazilian, no matter-what-color, nationalist.
A nationalist must necessarily abide by the Westphalia Peace and be a faithful son of the
1815 Wien Conference.
The first corolarium of a nationalist like you is , of course, abhorr and abolish globalism.
This concedes a few exceptions (such as worlwide communications) since they are already in
place and cannot be sensibly reverted.
NOTE 1:I do want to wipe out globalism. (though not for every small nation nation of the
world, which would turn not applicable and counterproductive) away from my country for the
next decades at least.
The second corolarium is that any self conscious country should cling and fiercely defend a
strong list of protectionist laws. And entirely renegotiate the rusty, hegemonic leaning WTO
rules. Not to quit it but to found a new WTO. This protection is what the US did all the the
19th century long, from top to bottom.
The third one that springs out as a consequence is that the STATE presence and adhesion to
state owned companies in key sectors is vital to any nationalism.
Now the big criterium to enlight and tell things apart is: the less develoloped a country is
the more
of state ownership and reliance it will requires.
So until my home country does reach a 40.000 dollar/year PER CAPITA income, with an
acceptable
income distribution, I will be a feroucious nationalist just like Costello.
It is taken for granted that small places like Singagore, Uruguay, Andorra, Bosnia or
seychelles can AT WILL make an option to globalize, to intenationalize, to sell themselves
out to neighbor or to the best bidder.
No half words, no subtle or figurative language. And nobody must keep a secret as to what to
do when a big , rich, established country the destroy this legitimate thir party Nationalism,
annex or dominate the so described national entity.
Revolution, no less.
@Random Anonymous ti" future, they needed to introduce the intermediate step of civic
nationalism, whereby anyone could be an American as long as they were willing to assimilate
into the dominant culture. Hence, Israel Zangwill's The Melting-Pot .
Thus, civic-nationalism represented the proverbial camel poking its nose through the tent
before entering it completely. Once Westerners became acclimated to having non-Westerners
living among themselves, the assimilationist approach slowly began to be transformed into the
multicultural framework, one in which the overarching objective of dismantling "white
supremacy" was slowly unfurled. This is where we find ourselves today.
Like sensible people, I think they understand that America is never going to be another
Orania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape
It's possible to get a deeper appreciation of the roots of America's social crisis America by
reading Thomas Sowell who has uniquely, I think, shown that patronizing guilt-ridden whites
(those that were) over the decades bear a particular responsibility.
Well, if you can't see racism in this guy words I'm convincente that you're already a
totally blind racist.
There is NO white land in this continent, son. If you are that German, english, Nordic
white nationalist then you can surely Go back there to European origins and claim your
ancestors' lands. But one thing you can never claim is the right over stolen territory,
neither to define how long one have to occupy robbed land until be able to recognize others
as a "native white"
or INVADERS.
EVERY SANE HUMAN KNOWS WHAT IS BEHIND THIS FACADE OF ARGUMENT.
NO WAY ANY REAL NATIVE CAN CLAIM TO BE WHITE, LET ALONE CALL AFRICAN DESCENDENTS ("OUR
BLACKS" ) PARASITES AND THIA SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT THE SICK PREMISES THIS COLONIALIST
SUPREMACIST IS DEFECATING FROM HIS MOUTH.
Friday rush hour. Euston station [in London]. Who's here? Who isn't. A kaleidoscope of
skin colours. The world in one terminus. Barbara Roche can see it over the rim of her cup of
Americano coffee. "I love the diversity of London," she tells me. "I just feel
comfortable."
White Americans brought them here? All White Americans? Was a black or two parceled out to
each White American? Blacks were brought here before America was a nation. And not by White
Americans.
A huge number of White Americans came to America after White Americans abolished slavery.
Most black slaves weren't even brought to White America but spanish america. White Americans
must pay as a group right?
Congrats on being the lowest IQ writer to ever be published on this site. Glad to see Ron
Unz is doing his part to increase representation of the imbecile community.
"Nation" is a white concept. De-colonialize your brain, bigot! To the redskins, land
belonged to those who could take it, and Europeans honored that tradition in grand style.
Do you really believe the BS you just spewed? "So, things began to slide when welfare became
generous and English wasn't required, etc. All of that has been to the detriment of the black
population and the cause of many problems in that population." Just another excuse for blacks.
Blacks are parasitic criminals, they are going to complain welfare or not. Cut off welfare to
blacks then, they never deserved it anyway. The most undeserved race in the world.
This obsession with Tucker Carlson is as ridiculous as the obsession with Jordan Peterson.
Neither give two shits about anything white nationalist. Tucker was born into this life with a
jewish silver spoon in his mouth. The guy is worth $20+ million. The fact he hasnt left Foxnews
immediately after the networks recent debacle with election reporting shows where his loyalty
lies, like most jews (even though he's adopted) its with $$$$
Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land from
another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a stop to
it.
Of course they put a stop to it. Because they wanted a monopoly on all that. Same reason the
White Euro Christians put a stop to Germany's "lebensraum" ideas. The examples are nearly
endless.
We hyoominz are wunnerful, no? And religions and politicians are here to solve it all.
Uh -huh!
Just came across this interesting video of Enoch Powell debating Jonathan Miller on issues
around UK immigration. They both appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, which aired back in 1971
Not sure if the honourable Enoch Powell had known this trivia about Jonathan, but if he had
he should've put the following query to him:
"You seem to be an ardent proponent of promoting mass immigration into Britain. Are you just
as ardent a proponent of promoting mass immigration into Eretz Israel?"
If Jonathan had been injected with a truth serum, he would have likely responded:
"Don't be silly. Why would HaShem's chosen people wish to mix with the goyim of the world?
Sheesh, what a schmuck!"
While it is true that people of the same culture, race and religion live in more harmony in
their marriages, and probably in their society, there is no way to achieve that objective in
today's world of mass communication and mass transportation. Impossible. To even think about
something like that is a recipe for nothing better than frustration and despair. The Church
recommended that people of the different cultures and races and religions should not marry
because of the risk that it would interfere with the harmony in their marriage as they face
life's other trials. It's solution when the Christians came to the Americas was for them to
convert the nations and it's objective was to promote better like-mindedness and better harmony
that could sustain them as they lived together in the Americas.
This is what the globalists believe they can achieve without Christianity. Well, they can't,
because without Christianity, there is only self-interest, the opposite of Christianity, and
that is what they are affirmatively teaching at the moment, for self-interest is what they need
to promote disunity, for that provides the means for better control of society.
In my opinion, you had better find another way. Maybe you would be better off correcting the
vast majority of hispanics for believing they are something other than Caucasian.
Indians slaughtered each other on the regular, they enslaved each other on the regular, they
were not a peaceful people and quite savage. Indian tribes would often join up with the White
man to fight other Indian tribes.
Hey, are you a member of the same tribe that Lizzy Warren is from or are you a member of the
(((tribe.))) Come on, now, you really don't give two shits about Native Americans, you just
hate Whitey, don't you? Anyone can search my rather lengthy comment history and they will find
they I have a few posts claiming the American Indian is the ONLY nonwhite people who Whitey
owes a damn thing to, not a popular opinion, but it is mine and I will own it.
I have an excellent idea! Go to the south and find some white man, preferably someone who
hunts, and tell him he has to move because he's on "stolen land."
@Tucker aged what got us here in the first place? So certainly, completely disengaging is
what will further accelerate our demise. You have to wonder, maybe these organizations are part
of the gay op to further disenfranchise whites even faster?
This display of white weakness needs to end. If you believe in your right to exist and for
the sake of your children, never let them gain any more power, ever. If that means voting for
someone that also supports Israel, then so what? If you as a WN, ever think there have been
more 'pure and honest' politicians in the past, or are waiting for your perfect WN savior to
support in the future, then you are just stupid, sorry.
@christine drafting place – but not exclusive. I spent over 3 decades with Athabaskan
and eskimos – Inuit, Yupik, and a few Aleuts – since the Aleuts were the last
genocided tribe – during WW II when they moved all of them to the mainland – in
order own all their land – after the War. In the end, this is all planned by the Owners
– Illuminati- Deep State – Zionists etc. It doesn't matter if they genocide the
Nates – the whites, blacks, Browns – until all the tribes unite and take out the
Cancer – the Plan will continue. PS the Russians , when they owned Alaska – never
genocided the Native population – no matter what the media or stupid SE Nates –
say. I homesteaded in Alaska .
According to Wikipedia, Newsmax is co-owned by Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon
Scaife(heir to the Mellon fortune in Pittsburg). Ruddy is the son of a police officer in NYC
and a confidant of Trump. Per Wiki he graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusalem for
undergrad, but his first name suggests he's not Jewish. Is he? He describes himself as a
"libertarian conservative" and Reaganite.
October 28, 2020 Report: Biden Would Kill Upwards Of 159K Jobs In Mich.
According to a recent study, Michigan supports around 159,000 jobs in the oil and gas
industry, all of which would be eliminated under Biden's plan to achieve zero emissions by
2035.
The "redpilled" fully understand that America's foreign wars are a load of BS that profit
the military industrial complex and certain lobbying groups – but not the USA itself.
To you, a Jew is an American nationalist because he is not a recent arrival, unlike, say,
Ilhan Omar. I got your number you're not a nationalist but a paid up harlot masquerading,
sadly, as a White nationalist.
"Like what North America, Australia, Argentina predominantly was before mass non -White
migration"
Argentina? No mass non-White migration here, to speak of. This country since the white
arrival has always been a mestizo society.The same is true of much of Central and more
so South America. During this century in Argentina,there has been a substantial migration of
Bolovins, Peruvians and Paraguyans thanks to the Kirchners (our Clintons) " Patria
Grande " program that allowed them in, but it represents nothing on the scale of what has
been done elsewhere to the north. Here the issue is less a color issue than a class issue.
But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK.
You'll need to get Canada's permission before you give away New Brunswick.
I imagine the "honesty belt" would quickly become a desirable place to live compared to
everywhere else, and the good solid folks in Honestan would again allow their resident shlomos
to open the floodgates.
In order to be taken seriously you need some kind of united front. Take a look at even small
minority groups such as the LGBTQ community, who maybe accounts for 3% of the US population,
but has grown into a unified political force.
There also needs to be a consequence if your group is wronged. We have daily mainstream
television shows that do nothing but make fun of White people and their traditions. The Muslims
behead anyone who dares draw a stick figure of Muhammad, let alone entire programming dedicated
to the denigration of their culture.
In order to defeat a bully, you need to punch them in the mouth. Right now many people are
hopefully waking up to the fact that there is indeed a bully, then identifying exactly who that
is, and finally taking some sort of action against the bully.
@Priss Factor anded by their "G_d" to Rule the World, tikkun olam , " (b)light
unto the nations " and 20 other descriptors for the megalomaniac tyrant known as the Jew,
who lusts to control blacks, whites and everyone else in slavery to itself.
I do agree with the author that we White Nationalists need to lose our fear of defending our
racial identity, but da' blacks ain't da' problem. The Jewish race / ideology that lusts to
destroy us ALL – IS the problem.
Talking about black / white racial tensions as if they were the source of our problems is
like worrying about dandruff on a cancer patient. So PLEASE, let's get to the point, shall
we?
Increased white nationalism leads to increased anti-white-nationalism. Genociding indigenes
makes white supremacists look evil. Trumpism leads to BLMism and Antifa. White wars of
aggression lead to brown refugees going to Europe. God will turn Europe and North America
black, red and yellow if He wants to, and He can do it by taking advantage of white people's
pride and letting them do stupid "white supremacist" things that make them look bad.
The pilpul by Miller is truly astonishing, comparing old British people to
immigrants!
People like Miller serve the purpose of trying to rationalise the decisions of the other
members of his Tribe, usually by gaslighting people into thinking they are crazy and nothing
out of the normal is happening. Hence you see these crazy metaphors and analogies drawn by the
likes of Miller in that clip.
"As many on our side have said, we will make no real and substantial progress until we are
willing to openly stand up for ourselves -- in person, in broad daylight, and without sock
puppets and noms de plume like "Jef Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is."
In that case, let's have your real name practice what you preach!
"the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American colonies"
Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion? I think (but am unsure) it is
incorrect. One thingof which I am certain, however,is that the Spaniards abolished slavery far
earlier than the white Americans. Another is that Spaniards are also "white".
White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020.
Is that true? How does anybody know that? Exit polls?
After all these wildly inaccurate polls for four years, are we suddenly to believe polls
now?
Furthermore, consider this: The one group you can steal votes from if you're the Democrats
are the white males. This is where you would do it. You can't steal any from the column of
black voters -- since they vote 90% for you already there simply aren't enough to steal. You
steal them from the white males, it's a beautiful double-whammy. One, you get your stolen
victory; two, you demoralize the strongest group arrayed against you.
"In my experience, the only tiny minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are
invariably of Arab origin, and more specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal
& chauvinistic culture (and a key American ally in the Middle East – just
sayin')."
Unfortunately, Arabs, in particular Saudis, are a horrible disease that needs to be removed
by all means, including thermo nuclear radiation therapy!
What I don't get, from the likes of sweethearts like Pedro
how does the fact that the Sioux were riding their horses across Colorado before we got
here, make it mean that Mexican half-Aztec / half Spaniards have a right to come and steal it
from *us* ?
If we stole it from the Sioux as he says, the presence of his lardbutt here means he is
accepting stolen goods, which means his sin is as big as -- or bigger than -- ours.
I keep telling blacks about jews and slavery in JUSA – they pretend they don't believe
what I am saying even though I provide evidence (from this website).
I guess they are more opportunistic than I thought and less brave, hoping their jewish masters
will somehow help them get more money from white people, so they don't want to bite the hand
they expect will feed them
To whom the land belongs?
At one time in world history all land did belong to dinosaurs.
So how to do justice about ownership of the land?
Human beings should kill each other until no human being left, and than the land will belong to
its rightful owners again, the animals.
Native Americans were the ones who had this right idea.
They were killing each other and eating each other.
..
Did somebody ask Dahmer if human flesh taste better than chicken?
Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference and invite all
people who have the tiniest shred of dignity left in this chemical plagued population.
The goal of the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third
party option. Agendas to be fleshed out: donor registration, billboard campaigns, multi-state
speeches targeting smaller towns that have been boarded up, setting up a volunteer network of
security operatives to forcibly secure election integrity, etc.
This stuff isn't rocket science and I don't understand why so many people who have money and
claim to be for WHITE NATIONALISM have not pushed their people in this direction. BUT IF YOU
DONT HAVE MONEY and are interested in this let me share with you a secret to start it. Get 10
under-writers who will lend $5,000 for a total of $50k. $50,000 should be enough to get the
ball rolling. I would be willing to help $. If you sell enough tickets you can pay the lenders
back. Secure a venue and promote tickets to the conference across multiple platforms.
Just an idea for saving our people in this midnight hour.
"I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE"
I call BS. You are one of those people who believe that NURTURE is everything and NATURE
accounts for nothing. A very foolish mindset. A deluded mindset. Do some research and come back
after you have learned something from the real world and not from your Marxist professors.
It's not Jews (technically JewISH). It is the multitudes of all races around the world, who
have ignored the word of God, and chosen the JewISH (and Catholic, at the top) agenda, as the
preferred way of life.
This frank article confirms pretty much what I posted in DaLimbraw Library over a year ago
– https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2019/08/white-supremacy-is-it-time-to-face.html?m=0
– a summary of articles on Western Civilization with links provided. Requires some
serious reading!
History shows that WC was built on Christianity, Graeco-Roman law traditions and primarily in
Europe – meaning the White race. That's just fact!
White supremacy – if it ever returns – might just save our Western
Civilization!
I had an excellent exchange with a retarded mexican a while back, as the stupid pos was
blabbing that whitey "stole this land from the indigenous people," (HIS people -- -mexican
cretins.)
I said, "Oh really? Hmmm ..what tribe are you from?"
Empty stare.
"Are you Apache? Comanche? Sioux? The El Chapo tribe?"
@Ultrafart the Brave nd is to what they were mislead to believe I see it here with my
African friends, Swiss, other Europeans etc everyone I know has experienced this
So this kind of betrayal and feeling of being tricked also contributes to whether they
assimilate (and what there really is to assimilate into when the new host country has no
culture whatsoever to offer to anyone, including the natives – apart from shopping and
watching TV).
Plus add to this the feeling that say the 800 000 refugees imported last year understand that
Canadistan actually played a role in destroying their countries and their desire to assimilate
or to respect the new country diminishes even further.
"Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting
points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare."
@Majority of One
How an Amish Gentleman (he is really one) handles a racism issue, how he handles a triggered
lefty, chip on the shoulder, black "British" spoilt snobby urban London girl Sienna on some
bullshit "racist" incident. How wise the Amish are compared the "English" (non Amish White
American folk) around them!!!
One would be surprised (or not so surprised if you do not fall for typical Jew media/ history
stereotypes) that the most snobby arrogant person among the six British youth who went and
lived among the Amish in the USA in this British TV series was the black girl Sienna whose
parents are from Africa.
Check out the comment section, everybody hates Sienna.
So there are approximately 330 million people in America, and the latest vote count shows
that 150 million or thereabouts voted in this election? NO WAY IN HELL. To be honest I don't
think Trump received over 70 million LEGITIMATE VOTES much less Biden. I think they have Biden
at 75 or 77 million right now, can't remember which. LMAO. NO WAY IN HELL JOE BIDEN HAS
RECEIVED 75-77 LEGITIMATE VOTES.
Think about it people. Think of the people too young to vote, the people incarcerated, the
people who don't ever vote, the people so old that they just don't give a damn like the ones in
nursing homes, etc. Just the other day, I was talking to the Orkin man who sprayed my house,
and he stated he didn't even vote. Well, given I was flying a Trump flag maybe the guy was
being diplomatic or lying but who knows? I think another LIE in this STOLEN election is the
total vote count. I guess the people who stole the vote for Biden and manufactured that Biden
accumulated close to 80 million votes had to even up Trump's votes to make this fairy tale seem
somewhat believable.
First of all I don't identify as White nationalist. When I lived in a liberal city I
couldn't stand being around White people. I would much rather live in Mexico than around
liberal Whites. Urban Whites especially can be really annoying regardless of politics. They
want to be morally right and feel intellectually superior without having to do any work or give
any explanation as to why. They want to feel cosmopolitan and view any dissention as a thorn in
the side to their unexplained superiority.
Will White people be red pilled by this election? Nope.
We have the internet and most White people can't seem to be bothered with spending a couple
nights reading about how both Con Inc and liberals lie about race. Intellectual laziness
abounds.
Most of those Trump voting Republicans really believe that we can turn every Black family
into the Huxtables with the right level of minimal government/low taxes/etc. They really
believe this. It's shocking.
There is no silver lining with this election. It's a disaster.
Too many White people choose to live in a false reality where race doesn't exist. Our best
hope is that White egalitarian leftists breed out themselves off by having few or no children.
Then we'll probably have to align with Hispanics to end the welfare system. Don't get mad at me
for pointing that out. Go take it up with the moron conservatives still pushing Alisa Rosenbaum
fantasy over facts.
Two things can happen: that Trump wins (which would be something of justice), and that the
whites go looking for their places in the United States.
In fact, this is what has already happened in California for years: whites are leaving that
state.
God forbid! But IF Beijing Biden slithers his way into the WH the 1619 Project will be the
theme of the US Govt. Which, of course, means that we don't belong here..Well, if we don't
belong here then we can only go back to Europe. Who cares if the anti-white EU countries don't
want us? They've spent the last several years taking in destructive, horny, hostile
opportunistic welfare shopping scum if there's room for them there's room for us. Unless they
want us to stay here and be genocided like the S. Africans.
Concluding paragraphs to Chuck Baldwin's latest column, Almost No One Else Will Say It,
So I Must :
That's why Benjamin Netanyahu already congratulated Joe Biden on an election victory --
even before the election was firmly decided. He is keenly aware of the exponential rise in
Zionist power and influence that accompanies the Harris family rise to the White House.
Amazingly, many evangelicals continue to stupidly believe that Netanyahu (and Zionism
itself) is a friend of the United States and a friend of Christianity. What dupes!
In a real sense, the rise of the Marxist attack against America, personified in Kamala
Harris, can be, at least partially, attributed to the misguided support for Zionism among our
evangelical churches.
As I said, almost no one else will say it, so I must.
To bolster your argument against the Left, instead of identifying first as a "White
Nationalist" you should say, simply, that you are an Ethnic Nationalist. That makes your
argument harder to refute and highlights the logical inconsistency of the Left's argument,
which, at its core, is really just anti-White.
As I point out to people, I'm a Tibetan Nationalist and an Anglo-American Nationalist; a
Black Nationalist but also a White Nationalist. All ethnic groups are entitled to their
sovereignty, lands and control of their borders. Humans are tribal and need common cultural
ties to maintain social capital and build a functioning society. This should be common sense,
but somehow it's instead become taboo.
In other words, Trump made the same arguments Republicans have been making for 50 years.
Coincidentally, he also pursued the same policies Republicans have been pursuing for 50
years.
Longer viewer:
Folks are acting like elections have not been stolen in the past. Get real.
Folks are acting like our government has not been completely corporate-owned since Reagan. Get
real.
Folks are acting like the Talmudic syndicate has played no role whatsoever in this scam. Get
real.
Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference The goal of
the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third party
option.
National Justice Party Statement on the 2020 Presidential Election
Everyone hates White people and yet everyone wants to move to White countries.
Leftists tell us this is because Whites are bad and have colluded against everyone. That is
the reason behind their success.
So build America in Africa without them? Why is this not the plan? Would it not prove that
egalitarians were correct all along? Funny how the plan of the leftist to move the third world
to White countries. There seems to be zero dissention along this line. All leftists agree by
their actions that assimilating White countries for their ideals is more viable than building a
new America without Whites.
Trump is taking on Big Ag. He's taking on the military as best he can; he hasn't started any
new wars.
Trump is taking on the U.S. multinational corporations who took the jobs overseas
(tariffs).
Trump is taking on the fraud in the election system. DNC's top election guru just resigned
(yeah, I bet he did!) Trump is exposing the algorithms in the Dominion Voting System.
Trump got 72 million votes. He owns the Republican Party now! They have been fighting him up
until this point, but they are now realizing that they are nothing without Trump.
If Trump were to start a third party, look out! How's that for leading?
The very first white man who tied to live with the Stone Age Siberian Savages was Etienne
Brule. He was part of Cartier's exploration team in the early 1600's.
When Cartier returned and inquired about Etienne he was informed that the Siberian savages
murdered, scalped and ATE him.
May the spirits of Siberian Savages be suffering the endless tortures they would visit on
their victims.
What makes you think the Chinese or Japanese would have left the Americas alone?
This is some egalitarian fantasy of the Americas remaining scarcely populated with warring
tribes. As if the rest of the world would have left it as a nature preserve.
It was never a country and in fact the tribes would align with warring European countries
against other tribes. That of course probably wasn't mentioned in your White guilt history
class. Numerous tribes used Europeans and their tools as a means of enacting revenge against
their traditional enemies. Read about the Blackfoot for a politically incorrect reality
check.
I like to think that the Indians were just exacting pure revenge against the gun toting euro
invaders and your wrong i am of irish white heritage and don't make me laugh about torture and
despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of bison that were gunned
down by invading euro scum that were attempting to starve the natives.
It doesn't matter who the president is, you know that Hillary Clinton didn't lose and Trump
didn't win, but here's the president, Obama didn't want to do exactly what you're doing now,
and he didn't want to launch an investigation. You are directly pushing America into a civil
war, by a "fraud of choice" that has no evidence. Indeed, you are pushing everyone into the
catastrophe of the Civil War. You know very well that everything Trump claimed was a lie, and
half the world was accused of lies, nowhere is evidence and the UN laughs at him, but you claim
that now Trump claims the truth once in his life, again without a dictatorship.
If Trump loses, the consequences would be dire.
We are interested in Trump winning.
On the other hand, the strength of the whites was their Christian and authentic religion. Not
their race. In the Middle Ages it was the Church that defended Europe from the Muslim
invasion.
Nowadays an infiltrator is seated in Pedro's See, Bergoglio does not think like a Catholic.
Only with that faith can our culture and our lives be saved.
Genocide not. The fake "indigenous people" / little dummies are everywhere and have a
complete free ride with plenty of taxpayers cash ("rent") to stay loaded on, to avoid any
personal responsibility.
And clearly, American Indians were "xenophobic" / "racist" in resisting European migrants.
recommended:
It seems rather odd and highly suspicious that so called NATIONALISTS CONSERVATIVES (whites)
propose cowardice in the face of aggression they all claim to be so outraged so contrived BUT
all of them propose INACTION now this is the main reason YOU/WE are LOSING America we bowed our
heads, weeping sorrowful and thats all The DEMS implemented 4yrs of on the ground campaign of
terror they were called BLMANTIFA a permanent campaign of terror And NOW the CONSERVATIVE
NATIONALISTS suggests stupidity separation, repatriation, secession ALL DUMB STUPID RANTS
UTOPIAS .WE MUST STAND OUR GROUND NOW NOW History, legality, morality, is on OUR SIDE and
people know it .THE MAIN THRUS SHOULD BE MUST BE MASSIVE RED STATES REVOLT 1776mII REDUX .By
the time dictator Biden finish his first year HE would had used his excutive powers, and in
coalition with BLUE/RINOS enacted a NEW CONSTITUTION, REDO THE ELECTORAL FRAMEWORKS so that NO
RED Nationalist will ever be elected again,,,never,,,so called ANTI TRUMP LEGISLATIONS which
really means ANTIWHITE laws an AMERICAN JIM CROW LAWS IN REVERSE dont you see the perils to
come its not about utopias, there is no tomorrow..unless WE FIGHT NOW mass revolts
peacefully???? 1776 II MILITIAS..
the Japanese too cannot live and do well in live in multiracial Ottoman-Byzantine like
societies.
Isn't there a large Japanese diaspora doing well in Brazil and Peru?
The Chinese too will be rejected by the darkie masses in the future,
I have a hard time seeing the Chinese falling for that shuck and jive unless they become a
completely Christian society, all the way to the top of the pyramid.
right now, less than a week after polls closed And, as the Biden camp continues to
vote
I don't know whether or not red-pilling Trump's fans will help, but it should already be
obvious to those with eyes open that too many people believe whatever they see and hear on TV.
It's entirely possible that most of the Trump supporters won't be red-pilled at all.
Even Americans who don't particularly like or trust Trump may be disgusted enough with the
blatant media push to declare Biden the winner, that they decide not to allow it any more. That
may be enough to get some of them to decide that waiting for government to "do something" is a
waste of time.
If the rioters decide to riot in celebration of Biden's win, or in outrage over his win
being revealed as fraud and rejected, some number of Americans could just decide to shut the
rioters down themselves. It wouldn't be that hard for armed Americans who know how to fight,
and there are hundreds of thousands of combat vets with recent experience who just might go
ahead and do it.
One thing's for sure, they won't be giving any warning on social media before they hit
back.
@christine and despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of
bison
They tortured the bison! The horror!
I guess you have never heard about Buffalo Jumps, then?
You may claim to be white, but it's clear you have had your empty head filled by Anti-White
delusional lies. The Siberians were so savage that during the French Indian wars the French
troops finally refused to fight alongside their Indian allies, because they were savage to the
point that the French viewed them as being similar to the THE XENOMORPHS from the movie
Aliens.
excellent. In The last 20 years they have changed deeply. Because only 17 years ago they
were all gung ho about destroying Iraq. Perhaps a bit of depleted uranium shot into Peoria will
cement their views.
@Bill lifetime. The only politicians who really gave a damn about Whites in my lifetime
were Dixiecrats, and probably most of them were good ole boy crooks who just talked a good game
but CAVED eventually. Hell, Strom Thurmond fathered a mixed race daughter IF I am not mistaken.
Tell me what did all the Presidents from JFK to Obama do to make this nation better? And
before you give the standard JFK horseshit, JFK was all for the multiracial plan for America,
and he sure supported integration of schools down South. Okay, let me hear what President in
the last century REALLY LOOKED OUT FOR WHITE INTERESTS OVER JEWISH OR NONWHITE INTERESTS. I got
time and I am all ears.
The point is whites did nothing that any one of those tribes wouldn't have done to all the
others if they had had the power to do it. (If anything, whites treated them much better than
they treated each other.) We might look at that from the vantage point of 21st century morality
and call it awful – just as we might with the Mongol or Islamo-Arab conquests – but
it would remain 'ancient history,' not something to constantly dredge up in order to instill
racial guilt and gain political advantage.
We'll see about the "red pilled" part, but even liberals out here, even ones who voted
Biden, are NOT convinced Biden-Harris won legitimately. And who knows? Maybe the criminal
psycho elites realized perhaps awakening a couple 'o hundred million gun owners was a but
premature and will "allow" Trump to retake the White House I mean, Biden's doing what Biden was
gonna do .make the whole damned thing look illegit. And NOBODY out here has anything but
distrust when it comes to Harris one liberal from Commie-fornia who lived there knows Harris is
evil.
Really it all come down to these–will we let them take our guns, will we let them
force vaccines on us, and will we let them burn this nation to the ground while forcing all
rural folks into stack 'n packs, Agenda 2030 style?
@utu o if there was ever a serious prospect it might happen, they would probably want to
separate as well. And why not? Ultimately, we're all better off living around people more like
ourselves than less like ourselves. (Duh)
And why would anyone be required to call himself a 'bantustan nationalist'? When
Mexicans arrive in America they don't suddenly cease to call themselves Mexican, so why should
Americans stop calling themselves American simply because of an altered political geography?
For an intelligent man, it's astonishing how quickly you transform into a blithering idiot the
moment you begin discussing issues that emotionally disturb you.
Good suggestion. Perhaps some can think of others. Either way, it's good because it's more
cultural than political, at least it sounds that way, and because it puts the focus exactly
where it belongs, on our basic freedoms.
One thing's for certain. Putting ideology and politics before race and culture, ie; Right =
White (and visa versa) will be like shooting yourself in the foot before running a marathon in
difficult terrain. In other words, it'd be a piece of unforgivable stupidity. And irreversible
as well. Since, if this is flubbed, a second chance will not come again.
I guess for some white yanks the truth about the birth of their country is a little too
close to the bone for their liking and a bit too raw and painful but the truth is the truth and
shame on all the euro invaders of all of the Americas in the past.
Try coming out to rural remote far west Texas .Austin isn't all of Texas. And I said rural,
not El Paso!
And, oh yeah, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Amarillo that is, all of Texas except El Paso westward
of the San Antonio-Austin lib-tard areas (including artsy-fartsy Marfa they may like Biden but
the don't like Harris if you know what I mean).
JSI is basically a criminal organization that wants power. Everything they say and do flows
from this. They are The People Of The Lie . The point is, you might be able to obtain
control of a culture or civilization through lies. But you can't run it that way.
And now we're back to the point you raise in your comment and what it directs our attention
to. It directs our attention to what we're witnessing, to what anyone can see as soon as they
stop talking about how powerful they are and how screwed everyone else is. Enough! No. What
we're witnessing is nothing less than The Pyrrhic Victory Of Jewish Supremacy Inc .
@christine I think your heart is in the right place, I and I respect that, but instead of
trying to right things that are ancient history how about focusing on what IS HAPPENING TO YOUR
PEOPLE RIGHT NOW. Whites are being slaughtered in South Africa. Little children being held
hostage while they watch their mother raped right in front of their eyes, entire families of
Whites being butchered by racist Black thugs. I am all for you pointing out how Whites were
guilty of mistreating the Native American, but I would also ask you to point that passion to
something that is going on RIGHT NOW, something that didn't happen long ago and can't be
changed. YOUR OWN PEOPLE are suffering, does that not bother you?
What a bad joke the dissident right wignat faction turned out to be.
Richard Spencer and the bugger accounts aligned with his views are doing nothing but
spamming straight-up system propaganda, a lot of which has migrated onto these pages.
The author Jonathan Van Maren seems to think the American electorate has realigned itself
with social conservatism + economic populism on the GOP side, and progressivism, elitism and
Big tech on DNC side. Based on this, he calls for the GOP to use social conservatism
specifically anti-abortion, anti-assisted suicide, pro medicare, pro social security to appeal
to a coalition of working class America including blacks and Latinos.
The main reason people like me voted for Trump is because of immigration and
non-interventionism which he promised on his campaign trail in 2016. We want to see America
end the endless wars and the endless immigration . I could care less about abortion,
assisted suicide, medicare or social security.
Once again, the social conservatives missed the boat and are now calling for more coalition
with Latinos, which probably means support for more immigration as George W. did, because
Latinos make good conservatives, right? When will these idiots wake up?! Have they been reading
Ron Unz's misleading articles on Hispanic crime? Ann Coulter was so right. The Republican party
is the stupid party, and it's because it's run by tone deaf "conservatives" that run webzines
like TAC and National Review.
Just read at The Duran: "Obama lackey John Pilger resigns from DOJ election crimes job."
Maybe Mr. Pilger knows something too? Maybe he resigned before being fired? Maybe those
Dominion Voting machines have been compromised using algorithms?
This is heating up. I actually believe Trump will win.
@Tucker y the Jews? Has it worked for European man, or, with its strictures to turn the
other cheek, has it made him a second class citizen? That was my thoughts when I saw so many
disgusting, pathetic whites bowing down and kissing the boots of BLM Supremacists this summer.
In any case, unless one is so hopelessly wedded to Christianity that his mind is closed, an
article written by Thomas Dalton, "Christianity: The Great Jewish Hoax," has taken the
Christian myth head on (National Vanguard, 9 Aug 2020). Indeed, as Israel-first Evangelicals
have taken control of Christianity in the US, we should ask if devotion to a Middle Eastern Jew
named Jesus is helping or hurting our cause.
@Richard B r with the foreigners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is
so natural in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in
the species of eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the
small villages they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold
only the girls nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never
forgive when they are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science,
no art improved in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs
(1756) Tome 2, page 83
@Ultrafart the Brave pon its introduction. Since then the government has provided tax
incentives to people paying for private insurance. Basically you pay a reduced medicare levy if
you have private insurance. The Australian medical system has it's faults like long waiting
times for elective surgery etc but it's still pretty good.
On the immigration front though Australia is in worse shape than the US. We have a much
smaller population and it doesn't take as much third world immigration to turn it into a third
world country. Especially since many use New Zealand as a back door into Australia. Australia
is already unrecognisable from even just 20 years ago. In another 20 it's likely to resemble
Brazil.
Trump has now moved over to Gab, a free-speech platform that has embraced thought
criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of
them. They will read the other stuff and become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this
one with mathematical certainty.
Lots of conservatives are now departing Facebook and Twitter for other social media
platforms that are less restrictive. This will further separate the left and right in this
country, as they'll have even that much less in common. It will separate families, with
liberals staying on Facebook, and their conservative family members leaving, decreasing
communication between them, especially now with all the Corona bulls ** t being used to
suppress the association of people in meat-space.
But, anyone who actively promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is
pushing advice that is exactly what our mortal enemies want most.
They are oddly quiet about it. Unlike everything else they want.
White people are going to need to get good at living in diaspora, since that's where we are
at now. We need to adopt tribal methods similar to the way other tribes operate. For example,
spending a little more to buy from our own people. Finding a way to brand white ownership.
Finding a way to associate said white ownership with white activism.
It is no good giving money to a local, vice signalling white traitor. It would be better to
get cheap products from a multinational, at least you get value for money. However, we need to
find ways of rewarding our own financially. We need to ensure that money goes out for things of
value – land, buildings, shares of companies, etc. Money comes in from the fruit of our
labor and intellect.
It isn't going to be easy because Jews have attempted to criminalize many of the things we
would like to do (specifically us, while giving other races/ethnicities a pass), but we can
find ways around that.
It will be easier to live in diaspora than via separatism.
The author is an idiot. To begin with, not all 70 million or so people who voted for Trump
were White. He received, what, 30% of the Hispanic vote. Also, approximately 20% of black males
voted for Trump.
Your guy just lost flatout. He was unpopular.
70 million means what? I call that pathetic compared to what Biden got.
Btw, you guys were able to be racist the last four years. Sit your butt down the next 4 years
because you White nationalists suck ass.
Urban Whites don't like you, period.
Whites invented everything? Even if that was the case, it came from URBAN WHITES. You mother
fuckers, whose ancestors are probably farmboys, only take credit.
What have rural whites achieved? Nothing besides taking credit.
Besides all this, due to immigration, most of the entrepreneurs and inventors are liberal
immigrants.
Bottomline is that liverals invented everything. Rural hillbillies did shit!
@randall r n that over the top cartoon character seriously to being with. He reminded me of
some of those (((actors))) who frequented those '90's talk shows like Donahue or Doprah Pigfrey
portraying "White Supremacists" or foaming at the mouth skinhead so called "neo-Nazis." haha. I
think they found out that half of those characters were Jews who worked for the ADL or at least
some them were. All portrayed the same old stereotype of an evil White racist who shocked the
audience by saying "niggers" or just portraying anyone who is pro-White civil rights as a
maniacal neanderthal. My gaydar always went off every time I watched a video of Spencer
speaking that MANUFACTURED horseshit anyhow.
Only the Christians. The rest can "go" back to Arabia.
Mohammedans are our enemy. Their prophet said so. Racially, Arabs are just poor, stupid
Jews– unless they live above oil, then they're rich, stupid Jews. The problem with your
analysis is that it isn't anti-Semitic enough .
And tell blacks that Jews exploit them for profits.
Tell Mexicans that Jews hog all the wealth.
They already know. They don't care. Just someone different to kiss up to.
@tomo istic culture that is foreign to them and which makes them feel alone and inferior.
So they respond accordingly. The same is true for young Canadians in general.
I agree that immigrants are no longer assimilating, but not because Canada lacks a strong
sense of national identity. The main reasons are demographic and technological. Immigrants now
arrive in such large numbers that they end up interacting only with each other. They can also
watch TV programming in their own language, via the Internet or cable TV, and communicate with
people back home via Skype or social media.
Assimilation takes effort, even in ideal conditions, so more and more immigrants are taking
the easy way out. They learn enough English or French for work, and that's usually enough.
@lavoisier he government has to stop shoving diversity down our throats continuously.
I think this is one area where most objective people can agree.
Idiotic attempts by governments at social engineering and correcting past injustices by
penalising the present population continue to be rolling disasters worldwide.
I would think the German people might eventually rebel against their perpetual financial
tribute to the Holocaust doctrine, if not for the current crop of self-inflicted immigration
problems engulfing Europe.
I also suspect that the "white supremacist" propaganda isn't a benevolent attempt to correct
society's problems. Rather, it looks more like part of a coordinated destructive strategy to
dismantle the existing society. Wielgus , says:
November 12, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
Miller's maternal grandfather had sought to emigrate to the USA from Lithuania and got off
the ship at its destination, which he thought was New York. It was in fact Cork in Ireland. His
daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.
For me its more about recognition of past evils and their karmic effect on a nation and the
color of skin doesn't come into it at all really but i do have a real soft spot for the native
North American Indian cause because i have had shamanic past life recollections of being one
and so i will always side with the Indians over the disgusting European invaders of North
America and i will never ever forget those photos i have seen of absolutely humungous piles of
shot Bison that were killed in an attempted genocide of the Indians and if the Indians scalped
many out of revenge then i hope that the pain was excruciatingly intense.
Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the
other hand, have a victim mentality.
You could see that conservatives had this victim mentality even under Trump.
Also, from my own experience, the conservative types have fucked up lives. Due to their own
issues, they lash out.
Could it not be that the reason you have a bad life is due to your own problems? Instead of
blaming immigrants or blacks and hispanics, consider looking at your own life.
"It came from urban whites". At the time of the greate innovative wave in the US there was
no such thing as "Urban" citizenry, as almost all major towns were located directly within
farming territory, and a cosmopolitan mentality was nowhere to be found, guys like Edison,
Ford,Tesla, held absolutely no connection to any sort of "Liberal" worldview.
Name a few of "Liberal" "Inventions" Come on give a list thereof.
You are a bloody ignoramous and full of shit up to your ears. You have no clue as to what
you are blathering about.
AJM "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.
Logic is certainly not your strong suit. Why would people of any color capable of anything
worth mentioning bow down to a corrupt senile stuffed shirt?
@Questioner nk it would probably be best for you and all those who agree with you to
kill their family and extended family, and then blow their own brains out. Firstly, to atone
for "white guilt" and "white privilege" and secondly as a constructive means of reducing the
white population in these "stolen" Injun lands. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Of course, if you worthless cunts can't summon the nerve to do that, then you should at the
very least, REMOVE YOUR OWN WHITE ITINERANT ASS from this "stolen land".
@Muaddib The average Biden voter = anti-White and yes there are anti-White white people, I
call them WINOs short for White In Name Only or better yet, white traitor trash
I think liberals have went the way of the Dodo Bird. And no, racist Jews, who PRETEND to
love everyone Black, Brown, etc., anyone except Whites are only pretending to love POC to USE
THEM against Whitey. Case in point, in Israel they export African Jews all the time proving
that Judaism isn't a religion but a race. Nope, I doubt Sammy Davis Jr. would have ever truly
been welcomed to move to Israel. And there is no such thing as a nonwhite liberal, nonwhites
are tribal as hell and only out for themselves.
@Authenticjazzman ated? How about, uh, everything, including the internet you are using?
Yes, and immigants and minorities contributed.
If you don't like liberals, maybe you should start by turning off your computer.
But let me guess, you want to breathe the liberal air.
You brag about your Mensa score. And what did you achive with that? Hatred for liberals? So
what good was your Mensa? It was probably a fraud.
Look around you. The world has changed. You are basically an Amish in a sea of modernity.
This is what you get when you don't meet people of all types.
Just old, disgruntled and blaming others because your life wasn't ideal.
Yeah this is why they fill the waiting rooms of shrinks to be pumped full of psycho-drugs,
and resort to "screaming at the sky" when their political party loses an election.
Liberals are the most disturbed, troubled grouping of individuals to be found world-wide.
They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue
so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.
Again you are a hopeless moron and have no clue as to what you are blathering about.
Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the
other hand, have a victim mentality.
Yes, we've seen myriad examples of those happy, well adjusted, tolerant "Liberal" people
over the last four years. When they're not freaking out or breaking down, they're "lashing out"
in the form of assaulting, burning, destroying, looting, and murdering etc
Is the author of this article a coward – he attacks the weak blacks – and
ignores the overpowering Jews.
Blacks are not America's problem – Jews are.
Do blacks own and or control social media, print media, broadcast media, Congress, the
president, schools, Wall Street, and the Fed – or is it Jews. Be honest.
It is the Jews who siphon our wealth and divide us.
Jews control the cities that are devastated by black crime. Get the Jews out of control, and
things will improve. Guaranteed!
Societies need both a political left and a political right – the Jew control of the
left is killing America. (Actually, they control both.)
Jeff Costello needs to put on his big boy pants and attack the true evil in America.
Plenty in the US are pure Europeans. Many Nordic and German families are recent immigrants.
Old Colonials often have slight Native admixture. Bantu Africans, Aztecs, ect. need to return
all stolen territory aswell then.
And not so long ago Trump and Netanyahu were such buddies
That, my friend, was exactly why I posted that. Thank you for emphasizing the
point.
In case Wally doesn't get it, new boss is much the same as the old boss, and Netanyahu was
never a friend to either, not that it should come as a surprise to anyone. Netanyahu won't give
Trump a second thought after the "ingrovelation."
Huh?
Jews this and that. This is the problem with White Nationalists. You believe in conspiracy
theories.
Newsflash: Soros does not control anything. He is old, and about to die. He has money. He is
pretty much a moderate.
Qanon is stupidity. If any Mensa guy here believes in the stupidity known as Qanon, consider
a retest.
Comments like this, "while our blacks have been here a long time and some of them do sing,
dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost nothing to the society
except grief.", are all too common in white nationalist circles and gives the illusion of truth
to the Jewish propaganda about us.
One has to wonder if that is the intention. It basically says white nationalists hate everyone
but themselves which is exactly what Jews are saying about us in the propaganda system
This is not a closed site! Anyone can come in here and read these tacky remarks.
I think some of you need to follow the Jewish example which is hate the goy while you pretend
to help them
In case you didn't know, non-whites are about 50% of the population now and considering all the
fire power is in support of them against us. perhaps we can find another way to advocate our
predicament
I don't know their political views or what passes for a liberal but one thing is certain
WHITES have contributed more than all the other races combined. Henry Ford, Wright Brothers,
Tesla, Thomas Edison, etc., I don't think those guys were Jews or negroes.
My guess is YOU ARE NOT A LIBERAL, you are either an anti-White racist Jew, and or some
other form of anti-White degenerate who HIJACKED the term, "liberal." In your case the correct
tag would be, LIEberal.
I think the Irish band Clannad wrote songs about and in solidarity with the North American
Indians, so you could be right.
This genocide and the photographic images from it that i have seen will never be forgotten
by me and the color of the faces of the Europeans with guns doesn't come into it and if i
mentioned 'white euro scum' it was to differentiate between northern Europeans and those a bit
darker/olive skinned southern Europeans that invaded lands further south than todays U.S.A.
It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE.
Hate to break the news to you, bossman, but "language, race and skin color" as well as
religion have very much to do with CULTURE.
The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance
and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.
I'm afraid any jackass who accepts or gives credence to the enemy's descriptors of those who
naturally honor and favor their own race to others, does not really deserve to be taken
seriously.
Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and
supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a
variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real
world.
You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know. You could read more of
this author's work to discover his ideological evolution and that his views result from life
experience and not the lack of it.
The Indians didn't scalp out of revenge, they scalped because they were primitive
savages.
On or about the year 1,300 AD long before the Siberians saw a single white man, one tribe of
Siberians murdered, scalped, and ate every single one of the 498 women and children of the
losing tribe whose men the victorious Siberians had slaughtered.
And we know this because we found the bones of the women and children at Crow Creek in
1978.
Tell me, when you were a Shaman in your past life how much Man Corn did you eat?
@Peter Frost ly of all ages as well as tourist to hear their opinion – and I have
never met anyone who does not agree or has similar stories. People are very lonely here and
there is too much virtue signaling without any virtue. I spent a few months on a placement in
one of the biggest hospitals in Toronto – and what I have seen there confirms my
experience. Every day there was one or two teenagers (white) trying to kill themselves. That's
only what I have seen while on ER. I spoke to mental 'health' patients too.
There is far too much passive aggressive backstabbing here in Canada – definitely more
than I have seen anywhere (I've lived in London, LA, SF, DC, Serbia , Germany etc)
@Trinity ve equal rights. Immigrants have equal rights. DACA folks who came here due to no
fault of their own need to be given a chance to stay here, etc.
2. Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also healthcare
for all.
When you treat everybody with respect, by nature you are a happy person.
I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you would
still be unhappy. The reason is that you are by nature unhappy.
So think about where your life is. Whose fault is that? Put your ego aside. It was YOUR
decisions.
So why blame anybody else?
Trump did not do much to curb legal immigration especially H1B and international students
until the very end, a couple of months before the election. Now Biden is about to undo
everything and let the MexChindian third world horde wash over us. The dumb millennials who
complained about being unemployed or underemployed with massive student loan debt will have an
even harder time finding a job now. I've often wondered why these idiots still insist on voting
for Biden.
Another regulatory change, now in the proposed rule stage, would eliminate the H-1B visa
lottery in favor of prioritizing applicants earning higher wages.
"It basically will again ice out anyone who's entry-level," said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini,
director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Many
international students use the H-1B visa as a pathway for staying to work in the U.S. after
they graduate.
The least Trump could do on his way out is to finalize this crucial rule as a parting gift
to his base which largely stuck by him. It took him long enough to finally get to this. He
should've cancelled H1b and OPT on Day 1. If he had done that he might have won the
election.
@christine frican children and women, as well as adult males being slaughtered in South
Africa by marauding racist genocidal Blacks?
Hmm, IF you are TRULY concerned about injustice in a demonic world, why aren't you concerned
about Whites?
Do you feel for the Whites who endured the Holodomor? Did you know that Genrikh Yagoda and
Lazar Kaganovich, two chief architects of the systemic starvation of MILLIONS of Ukrainian and
Russian Whites were Jewish?
The FACT THAT YOU DID NOT ADDRESS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SOUTH AFRICA, just shows me that you
are MORE ANTI-WHITE than someone who really cares about humanity, truth or justice. Hell, you
probably are not even (((Irish.)))
That you americans vote for that mafioso, is beyond comprehension.
You are so extremely stupid, and I am sorry to say, you bring it on all of us!
Why do you even vote for Bidén!?
Vote for Trump and after half term, create a more representative party.
The freest country in the world, and you just let it happen.
Anyway, I dont believe the official result.
You americans have not been that stupid.
Take the banner of Christ!
And reject zionism.
And reclaim youre country!
The world is waiting.
Complete drivel. As a German-American of almost two centuries of heritage, I don't identify
with your labels, priorities or prejudices.
If you're concerned about certain colors of people having more children than you, the
solution is simply to be generous with the Creator with your families. Have more children.
We're dealing with serious control freaks here people. I wish people would just realize that
the COMMUNISTS stole the election and are about to go full Bolshevik on us.
YT is already petrified by blacks at work. One slip up, and it's off to the HR gulag
archipelago, then full termination. Anyone who is not a "true believer" in the Revolution, will
be scheduled for termination.
Amazing how history repeats itself. YT has been so programmed to think of everyone as
"nice," that they can't even come close to imagining that Satanic Marxist pedophiles just stole
a national election.
As if anyone could make peace with such Hellspawn.
That's the facts, Jack. Who gives a Fiddler's fuck if it offends your delicate
sensibilities?
White Christian European people, and White Americans in particular, will apologize when
every other race, nation and religion are duly scrutinized and exposed for their "crimes" and
"atrocities".
Which will most likely happen in the reign of Queen Dick lol
We are not now, nor will we EVER be, ashamed of our history or our people, despite the best
efforts of the Jew Globalist Left.
I would not count on the GOP, even with a 52 vote majority, to stop any attempt at
immigration reform by the Dems. There are enough RINOs in there including both of the R from
Utah(Mike Lee, Mitt Romney), Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, Lisa Murkowsky, Joni Ernst, to name
but a few, who could easily go with the Dems on reform.
Mike Lee (R-UT), one of Trump's faves, has been trying to push through the Indian green card
bill S. 386 for at least the last two years. The bill was originally to give employment based
greencards, some 140k per year, to Indian nationals only for the next ten years. After
being blocked 3 times by 3 different senators – Perdue(R-GA), Dick Durban(D-IL), Rick
Scott(R-FL), the bill has morphed into a monster.
With each blockage, the bill keeps getting changed to include more and more beneficiaries.
In its final iteration, it will now 1) up the per country limit for family based greencard from
7% to 15%, 2) completely eliminate the per country cap of 7% for employment based visa, 3)
remove an offset that reduced visas available for Chinese nationals, 4) Reserve a
percentage(didn't say what %) of EB2 and EB3 visas (both for high skills) to nationals from
outside the top two countries (which I am guessing are India and China), with max of no more
than 85% from any single country.
Most importantly, the latest iteration of this bill will treat any Indian who has applied
for a green card as already having one, with all the benefits of a greencard while they wait,
incl. being able to travel, change jobs.
More Americans need to wake up to this type of treasonous bills being pushed by GOP
senators:
There is many Jews here but I see nothing untrue about stating the fact that Blacks
contribute very little. You've stated nothing Blacks contributed and merely whined about Whites
doing what every non-White race does more than Whites. No race has been more of a
"schwartze-lover" than Whites. Whites should be more honest about race and stop believing
Blacks are magical. Whites should not tolerate any bad behavior from Blacks or any non-White
race for that matter.
This is a joke, right? Millions of non-whites are simply going to get up and leave their
homes, jobs, schools, neighborhoods so that Whites can have a little patch of paradise? Has our
dear article author been hitting the crack pipe again?
I got news for you. The world is not flat. Leeches do not suck disease out of humans. The earth
is brown, no longer yellow, red, black, and white. It gets browner every day.
As for a shared culture and a homeland, the whites were the only race dumb enough not to
preserve theirs. Japan is almost 100% Asian. China is Asian. Africa is black. India is Indian.
The USA is a mixture of everything. Europe is a mixture of everything. The whites were the only
race with the inability to preserve a homeland. Hence they are too shortsighted to deserve
one.
Whites need to get increasingly audacious using insulting humor of the Charlie Hebdo, or SNL
kind. It's free speech, right? I feel empowerment growing among Whites during the Voter Fraud
Saga and I think there will be a lot less self-censorship from now on. The hate speech laws
need to be brought to court so that a charge of "racism" has to be substantiated, or otherwise
ruled as a federal hate crime. Who started the whole Racism Industry? Could it have been Jewish
intellectuals in their pursuit of the cultural and economic genocide of Gentiles?
@Felix Krull or more items according to specified parameters.
In common usage, though, "discriminate" is taken to mean the unfair treatment of one party
compared to another. Again, typically regarded as an uncivilised activity. And again, this may
be pertinent within a given context, but is not automatically true.
So, strictly speaking, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "racism".
However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for
example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad"
context.
Regardless, IMO the emphasis on the racial dimension limits the article's perspective. Is
"Trumpism" just a white movement, or is it an American movement, or is it something more (or
less)?
"The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans"
Here's a real "red pill" for murkans [and the rest of the world], stated 3 different ways:
"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure" Robert LeFevere
"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to
differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a
professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and
counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores,
100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of their
innate criminal nature." onebornfree
@anon He's the one the people voted for, not them, and they are just waking up to this now.
It's the same type of diversion the Democrats just tried to pull off with Antifa and BLM.
They got everybody looking at "White Supremacy", racial and identity issues so that you
wouldn't be looking at the money the elites are skimming off the top. I'm sure they could have
cared less about the POC.
The elites are fighting Trump hard; they don't want him changing anything. They knew it
would be mainly "Whites" voting for Trump, so they invented this White Supremacy bullshite.
Yes, the people who voted for Trump ARE interested in immigration, and so is Trump.
stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue so as to present their
deranged worldview for all to see
Yep, that describes it. I understand that a lot of people cannot help being stupid, but I
never understood why people want to aggressively advertise their stupidity. Perverted
exhibitionism, maybe?
Costello seems a strange choice of nom de plume for a white nationalist. I at least identify
the name as Shepardi Jew. The J word never comes up in the article with its problematic issue
of where Jews fit in a white nationalist homeland. Has anyone noticed the only high profile non
retired public figure left with a wasp name and is not black is Homer Simpson? I am of course
exaggerating but the signs are there. With the demise of the white wasps has come the fall of
foundation America. The non wasps don't really share its cultural sentiments. Its sobriety is
lacking except among the best black people who share its names. I am thinking of Ben Carson.
Homer Simpson is a cartoon of a simple slobbish white American. There is no public movement to
remove him of course. So it isn't really surprising America is going the catastrophic way of
her sourthern neighbours.
Q Anon is clearly JFK jr. His crash and recovery was prophesised in the Nostradamus Quatrain
for July of 1999. He carries on the legacy of the Kennedys since grandfather Joe as does his
cousin Robert Kennedy.
Brother Nathanael's latest instalment is a doozy, FAKE NEWS, FAKE ELECTION :
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/LRQK9TfcNJM2/
Hardest-hitting passage:
Cackling Commie Kamal, who humped her way to the top, married Big Tech lawyer Jew, Douglas
Emhoff, a few years back.
The Jew would be "First Man" and you can kiss your First Amendment goodbye.
Big Tech -- (with Emhoff's impending high position and legal conniving) -- will be free to
ban all 'hate speech,' which is 'speech' Jews 'hate' to hear.
And the entire Jew-owned media and their leftist political machine operatives will decide
all elections from henceforth now and forever.
You are about to enter the Twilight Zone -- a Jew-ruled, Jew-ruined, Jew-controlled
America.
@DaveE an mean the need for white unity & power. Or it can mean white power as the
basis for world domination. Nationalism need not be imperialist but often took an imperialist
turn in the past when a nation became very powerful.
In contrast, 'liberation' emphasizes the need for whites to seek emancipation from the current
power that dominates the West and the World which is Jewish Power. (Even 'white national
liberation' sounds better than mere 'white nationalism'.) White Politics that only focuses on
whites and white power is less likely to be appealing than White Politics that seeks freedom
from the actual tyranny that rules the world: Jewish Supremacist Power or JSP.
[MORE]
I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for
politics. I don't see any Republican being able to generate the kind of enthusiasm Trump did.
Tucker Carlson does not have the financial backing or the personality cult. Josh Hawley and Tom
Cotton are two Zionist social conservatives who will revert back to the GOP's standard
abortion, abortion, abortion and say nothing about immigration or non-interventionism to rouse
enough interest from Trump's base.
The only way for white nationalism to stay alive is if Trump stays politically active
through outlets like Newsmax TV and Gab.com ,
and return for another run for office in 2024. However he needs to be very careful. Once he
leaves office he will no longer have the kind of security protection given him as POTUS. There
had been many assassination attempts while he's in office (at least 6 I've heard of), he could
put himself in great danger if he continues to stay in the limelight to position himself for
2024.
As far as a separate whites only nation within the US, look at states that are probably the
whitest – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, all are heavily (D). A fat lot of good that
does. TX will be (D) by 2024, too many Hispanics and CA transplants, like AZ and NV. Whites are
too splintered, thanks in large part to single white women, who voted 62% in favor of Biden,
compared to married white women who went for Trump 55%. White women are marrying and having
children at an ever lower rate due to lack of eligible men. White women graduated from college
at 60% to 40% compared to white men. As most women only want to marry up, college educated
women rarely want to date much less marry non-college educated men. Due to height issues, most
white women would only date white men or occasionally, black men. Asian and Hispanic men are
too short and unromantic. Meanwhile more and more white men are marrying Asian and Hispanic
women. White women are running out of men to date, marry and start a family. More unmarried
white women means more white votes will be going for Biden.
October 25 (November 7 NS): The October Revolution begins when the Bolsheviks take over
Petrograd (also called the November Revolution if following the Gregorian calendar).
@Thomasina two months before this election that he proposed some rule changes to H1b, and
still none of those rules have been finalized and probably never will. He made these tech
plantation owners many times richer through the stock market, while they treated him with
contempt and helped bring him down. What an idiot!
If Trump had cancelled H1b, OPT, L1 and all other work visas and forced our employers to
hire and train US workers on Day 1 as he promised, he might have won by a landslide by now. The
only group that went down in votes for him in 2020 is white men, because too many feel betrayed
by him in immigration. All he cares about is taking care of Jews and blacks, both Jews in
Israel and on Wall Street. He trusted wormtongue too much, and that's his downfall.
Richard Pilger is (was) the top DOJ Official investigating voter fraud who resigned after
Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial allegations" of voter irregularities
before the election outcome is certified. He is a swamp rat, a cretin, one of many who should
have been drained from the swamp long ago.
John Pilger, on the other hand, is a hero, a filmmaker and journalist with a long, excellent
record of shining light on malfeasance and bad behavior of politicians of every stripe.
The culture of the Chosen people does not understand the concept of compassion. This is
why the world has been in a very sad place for the last hundred or so years since
12.23.1913.
@Priss Factor the white race and goyim in general. Just ask the Palestinians about the
nature of Jewish Power.
Spot on here. Don't expect Biden to let up though. The Jew owned media (both msm and
"conservative" media e.g. Zerohedge, Breitbart, National Review, Fox News) will keep up the
pressure. I see a future, perhaps in two decades, where East Asian immigration to the US will
come to a screeching halt, and most likely even go into reverse as more East Asians return to
their homelands because Jews, negroes, homos, trannies, stupid white women, Latino drug gangs,
Muslim terrorists, Sub Saharan African welfare leeches, Indian H1b slaves with their
clannishness, collusion with Jews and caste-ism make the US an increasingly unlivable hellhole.
Oldtradesman ,
says:
November 13, 2020 at 12:28 am GMT • 19.6 hours ago
I won a lottery given by the renters, and was given free transatlantic transport.
Your line's post-African existence and ability to publicly complain like little girls owes
much to the transatlantic slave trade. Thank the niggas who sold your ancestors into slavery,
nigga.
There's plenty of majority-white states you can move to if Pale Skin is so important to you.
Go to West Virginia, for instance.
Majority-white states with conservative governments tend to be dull, economically depressed
and stagnant. The same will characterize the imaginary white secessionist state you
fetishize.
It's amazing to me that someone could speak with such satisfaction about other people being
subjugated simply because of their color. But then again, animals like you have no morals nor
any decency.
That's why the vast majority of whites in this country will say "no thanks" to your ugly
message.
A lot to unpack by the author, who is simply stating things we already have heard
previously.
"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own
homelands."
You do have your own homelands. It's just that in a number of cases, you invaded other
homelands for gimmedats and free stuff.
"So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a
Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc. Or, at least, I support all those
nationalisms."
And what about Eastern and Southern Europeans? Why no example of you being a Polish
nationalist or a Slavic nationalist? Remember, these groups were deemed to be other than
heritage Americans–dirty, filthy papists who should have never entered our shores with
their alien mannerisms.
"To be a white nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people"
are the white people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus,
American White Nationalism = American nationalism."
The reality is that American nationalism is defined by each person and group how they view
it.
"Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in
complete subjection"
Slavery and Jim Crow laws were decidedly anti-American nationalism, and were patently unjust
and immoral.
"white Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of
themselves as White Americans"
We are aware of ourselves as white Americans, just not in the manner you prefer. Do we not
have agency? Must we submit to your definition of what is and what is not a white
nationalist?
"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces)
within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option,
and something we must work toward."
It will take a fight. Will you be front and center, or far away from the hostilities?
"The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken Now
their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely significant for
us And those many millions of whites are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know,
the red pill is the path to liberation."
What you are doing here is ASSUMING. The "us" is not "we". It's only those people who you
know for absolute certain are on your side.
"It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election"
More like accusations that need to meet the burden of proof.
"Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that one big
thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is."
So why would we want to be duped like you?
"It would take whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave
imprudently, damning the consequences."
LOL. I've heard this argument for the past 40 years! It's always a "well, we are upset now,
but just want until we really get mad, then we will put heads on pikes". Either put up or shut
up.
The situation is somewhat better for young whites whose parents were immigrants. Their
family structure is more stable, and they have a possible escape route. I know several who have
"returned" to Europe, even though they were born here. But it's stupid and ignorant to tell
old-stock Canadians they have that option. My ancestors left England in the 19th century, and
the ancestors of French Canadians left France in the 17th and 18th centuries. We're
indigenous.
I agree that "people are very lonely here" but that's relatively recent. The breakdown of
the family began in the 1960s and became "normal" in the 1990s. Again, it has nothing to do
with climate or geography -- other than the fact we're next door to the United States and its
culture.
tomo, I have been thinking a great deal about income inequality lately (especially the
relative income hypothesis (i.e., all of our social problems are caused by differences in
income)). I would love to hear your comments on this question given your wide ranging
experiences around the globe. Would life really be better for us all if we
Scandanavianized?
Brazil (Portugal) was the largest consignee of African slaves in both absolute numbers and
on per capita white colonizer basis. The Anglo North American mainland was far less of a slave
based economy. Brazil was also the last nation in the Americas to outlaw slavery -- and it was
done without 600,000 white men slaughtering each other and burning the defeated side's country
to the ground.
"I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for
politics."
If you are someone who "doesn't want to get your hopes up" or "is afraid to be disappointed"
or "is concerned that it might be a trap" or "seriously hope you're wrong", or sees doom in
every direction, then this is not the place for you. I'm not saying that you're a bad person or
that anyone here wishes you ill. I'm simply stating a simple fact: this is not the place for
you. No one here is interested in your fears, your worries, your psychological vagaries, or
your concerns.
My ancestors didn't own slaves, but it wouldn't matter if they did. The statement remains,
Troof's post-African line owes its very existence and ability to complain like little bitches
to the transatlantic slave trade. Falsify it or fuck off, traitor.
The Dems were quite determined to remove Trump from office by hook and by crook. First by
the fabricated Russiagate fake story When they did not succeed by impeachment. Now today by a
fraudulent election. They, the MIC appear to have succeeded. We are back in the Bush/Obama
era.
Your point about the slaughter in the USA is well taken. Nevertheless, I believe it was
unnecessary and that the war there wasn't truly about slavery. Hell, I lived in an African
nation for three and a half years and saw some slavery first hand; that was 40 years ago, mind,
and the slaves were by and large as happy as clams. WASPy culture is peculiar if you ask me,
which of course you didn't, but even so Who are the "slaves" now in the USA? Hmmm?
Corvie's "moral authority" is equivalent to the Negro chieftain who sold Troof's Negro
ancestor into slavery in exchange for pretty rocks and trinkets, and less than the
"white-debils" who bought him.
@Corvinus those people worried about kissing Black ass are either COWARDS like all those
white traitor trash rich kids or Jews who really use Blacks as pawns. More than likely that
rich leftist self hating white trash is the person who owned slaves or some Jew who blames it
all on Whitey. Either way, Whites have been enslaved themselves by Arabs and are in some ways
slaves today in their own land.
You worried about Blacks, sucka, why does Israel push out Black Jews? Jive talkin', sucka,
keep it a hunnert up in here, turkey. Why did Leo Frank try to blame a Black man for his crime?
lololol. Cue the Bee Gees "Jive Talkin" for all the (((trolls))) up in here. Yo, playa, we gotz
dis.
"Because it was cheaper to have nigger's do it, so your type could purchase it."
I know, it is the inherent nature of Southrons to be lazy. It's in born.
"You are a disgrace, Corvie,"
I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a woman
(snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would have no trouble
killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan". You've sunk to a new low.
@Montefrío he bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American
colonies"
Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion?
All the academic accounts I've read indicate that only about 5% of the African slaves shipped
across the Atlantic were sent to the mainland English colonies that became the United States,
while the rest went to areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, these latter included
Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch colonies, as well as Spanish ones. The reason their need
for slaves was so enormous was that the death rate in the plantations producing sugar and other
lucrative crops was extremely high. Rogue , says:
November 13, 2020 at 2:15 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
Did lactase persistence originate in southern Africa?
Egalitarian response:
Oh but that's the exception along with any other non-cognitive changes we might accept if you
prove they exist. But we won't talk about them and will keep telling children that everyone is
African.
Imagine if other fields of study had to follow this insanity.
American wolves don't exist unless you are talking about DNA changes in American wolves that
separate them from European wolves. But other than those changes that would denote a different
subspecies they don't exist.
"""But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been
proved correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being
continually vilified by the Left as a white supremacist""""
At least the author got that right. Trump was elected to remove the illegal aliens (almost
all of them non-white) and he did practically nothing in 4 years. It would have been easy to
make them self-deport by taking away their jobs and freebies but he didn't do it.
Thank you, sir, particularly for the multi-national breakdown, so to speak.
When all is said and done, it was an ugly business, but long ago was long ago, and imho it
has little to do with the world today. I'm Irish, and "we" weren't well treated long ago
either, but we don't whine or whinge much. I wish that were true of others whose ancestors
suffered hard times.
Me? At 74, life is wonderful! May it be so for all here!
The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans is what the Establishment/Trump hope
actually means The Stolen Election Will Keep 70 Million Americans on the Republicrat
Plantation
Imagine thinking rich white conmen like Trump give a shit about you as a "white nationalist"
or that Trump or GOP are against non-white immigration. Hahahahahahhahaha
Delusional. Trump wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. He and everyone around him have
already made it clear you racist cracka ass niggaz aren't welcome in his circle or the GOP.
Oprah Winfrey, Lil Pump, Lil Wayne and Kanye have more clout with Trump than you clowns. You
should ask yourself why that is.
You, average white guy are no better than a dindu or a beaner in the eyes of rich
capitalists. In fact you're less to them because you demand a living standard and wages that
the beaner doesn't.
Let me know when Trump invites some homeless white veterans or any poor cracka for that
matter to fill his hotels, you know since he cares so much for the white race. Yall should
really take a look around if you believe these rich white guys are your allies. "White
nationalism" is a hoax.
The rich white capitalist will stab you in the back every time, history has proven this over
and over again, you're nothing but wage slaves, tax donkeys and cannon fodder to them,
cracka.
Every election is stolen by the rich capitalists that own all the candidates and all the
media. The CIA and Wall St run the country, not puppet politicians
This is not your country. It is up for sale to the highest bidder, welcome to capitalism.
There are despots in Saudi Arabia that "own" more of this country than you losers. Poor low IQ
right wingers, keep believing those fairy tales your owners like telling you. Hahahahaha
@Anonymous ards possessors of illicit drugs, but no -- Hunter is special!). Biden loves,
loves the bomb, and he supported all 'humanitarian" interventions (mass-slaughters) on behalf
of the war profiteers and zionists. Or perhaps you are fond of the murderous Clinton, and the
Schiff-Schumer-Nadler triumvirate of traitors working diligently to destroy the US Consitution?
Do you really believe in the patriotism of McCabe, Strzhok, Comey, Brennan, and Dm.
Alperovitch? Too much FakeBook can be detrimental to one's cognitive function.
The woke crowd of 'progressives' is too much into the cheap revolutionary rhetoric
skillfully inserted into their brains by Bernays' pupils working for MSM.
The whole premise of the multi-cult Left is that divers racial minority groups,
sanctimonious yankees and perverts join together under the aegis of Jewry to socially
marginalize the rest of society. You cannot listen to these people for more than a minute
without hearing them vent hatred against the NORMAL people. There's a reason the Jews are so
dead-set against the way the white world was not too long ago. It's normal, it's sane, and they
DON'T FIT IN. Their depraved appetites and megalomania don't fit in with Western, Christian
Civilization.
@Corvinus s))) and many of them looked and acted like Corvinus.
Slavery is ANCIENT HISTORY and your kind was very well involved in it, same as a lot of
pompous Yankees who claim they fought to end slavery, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is
that only a tiny percentage of Whites ever owned slaves in the South. Poor Whites weren't
treated much better than Blacks for that matter, maybe YOUR ANCESTORS OWNED SLAVES, Corvie,
just like good ole SJW Anderson Cooper.
Fact is Blacks are not exactly saints when it comes to the African Slave Trade
themselves.
How about we stick to this century, (((Corvie.))) I don't see or hear Whites whining about
being enslaved by Arabs.
The MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google must be demolished, considering their willful
treasonous activities during the American color revolution (Russiagate).
By their vicious attacks on the First Amendment, the MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google have
rivaled the Lobby. Or perhaps they are, in reality, an extension of the Lobby.
It took your self righteous Yankee retards four long bloody years and eight successive
commanders to defeat the "Lazy Southrons". Despite having a GDP five times as large and nearly
twenty times the amount of military age males lol
All the while devastating the homes, towns and cities of the people in the South.
This next time around, you will get a taste of war and hate, Mr Corvinus.
Of course, I doubt a pussy ass bitch like you will stand and fight.
@Muaddib synonymous with abolishing social standards. We see the poisonous fruits of giving
everybody respect rather than on conduct: an inability to use force in the face of rioting and
looting instead focusing on people who call others harsh names, rewarding family breakdown,
government debt, women screaming in the streets through bullhorns demanding that other people
pay for their fornication, an unwillingness to condemn homosexuals for deliberately spreading
AIDS for fear of being homophobic.
I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you
would still be unhappy.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
Its a good place to start
Robert Putnam said in his book Bowling Alone that the more diverse a society, the less trust
there is between people. He also found that in diverse communities, even whites distrust other
whites, which makes them even more alienated, because the immigrants at least form their own
ethnic communities. This is what is happening now in all Western countries. Whites are
increasingly alienated in their own countries and societies due to over immigration, leading to
depravity, depression and suicide. It's why birthrate is so low in Western European countries.
It's also why immigration must stop, not just to bring back homogeneity and kinship, but to
reduce the population so each life means more.
Again, you're asking gimme dat while oblivious to the fundamentals. Social programs aren't
payed for by the government the government doesn't make profits, it spends other peoples money
which it collects at gun point . In order to satisfy you thirst for privileges the
government has to literally rob someone else at gun point. Don't people have the right not to be
robbed? Again, only criminals think the "right" to rob is more important than the right not to
be. Moreover, the "good social programs" now stand at $185 Trillion of debt and other
liabilities. Do you know what that number means? Nothing "good" about it. annamaria , says:
November 13, 2020 at 3:23 am GMT • 16.7 hours ago
@Muaddib MSM? The dimwit wokes who avoid like a plague any discussion on Obama/Clinton's
'humanitarian interventions' in faraway countries, which resulted in a multitude of dead
civilians, many of them children.
Biden is ready to intensify the illegal war against Syria (why his progeny has not joined
the 'moderate terrorists' White Helmets is a mystery, don't you think so?). The old corrupted
opportunist would begin a hot war with Russia without understanding what he is doing.
Sure, the MIC has been terribly unhappy with Trump -- not much of 'humanitarian
interventions' during the last four years.
I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE.
Culture is everything! Culture determines how you treat your neighbor.
Hmm -- the average black in Mississippi has more Euro white Christian culture in him, then
the average white in NY City. Hence NYC's dysfunction.
Anti-Christian Jews are responsible for black disfunction in NYC – period!
@Muaddib -- are you a whiny liberal of lgbtq variety, demanding a special bathroom and
denouncing white privilege a la hypocritical Meghan Markle (and her ridiculous duke 'just
harry'), or you used to be a 'conservative' but it was too boring for you? You know, family
responsibilities, decent education, work ethics
California is the most liberal state in the US. But for some reason, Californias have been
fleeing California like crazy. And you know what, the happy Liberal Californians have been
fleeing to conservative states, without being invited. Last year, "the negative migration was
the 9th year in a row for California."
Ron Unz allows a base, boring, bitter troglodyte like you to post your rude and insulting
garbage on HIS site where he accepts no advertising and runs out of his own pocket so all
viewpoints can be discussed with a light hand and open mind.
I agree with the article but this election isn't actually over outside of the CNN
newsroom.
If the powers that be want to weaken the right they will give Trump his (obvious) win but
only after deluding democrats into thinking that they won the election. I think we are
watching that play out right now.
@Muaddib Some of the 'immigrants' were from the Soviet Union where they received a
fantastic education for nothing. The development of the Internet was conducted under the
watchful eye of intelligence services; the involved have profited handsomely on the enterprise.
Long before the 'immigrants' and their handlers made the killing, there were brilliant people
like Ada Lovelace, Turing, and others who have prepared the ground for modern information
technology.
Today, the woke profiteers ('liberals') at FakeBook and Google religiously follow the diktat
of the CIA/FBI that serve war profiteers and financial Squid. These 'liberals' have been
betraying the interests of human society at large.
@christine what is now North America wanted to stay in the stone age. They live in houses
and drive cars. If whites had never came to what is now North America the people living here
would still be stone age. It took Europeans over 6000 years to go from the iron age to the
industrial age where we were when we founded the USA. There is no way the natives who were
stone age would have been living modern lives.
Colonization was white people going around the world pulling stone age people into the
modern world. Whites are non whites benefactors and only morons cannot see this.
You are not a good thinker. You should be posting on a cooking or sewing site. Politics is
beyond your ken.
@christine your enemy in a hide bag over a roaring fire and letting them roast to death.
The ant trap: coating your enemy in a sticky resin from trees and restraining them over ant
mounds
The head bury: burying your enemy at low tide and allowing the tide to roll in and drown
them.
The horse pull: tying each arm and leg to four separate horses and letting them go four
separate ways.
But our Anglo Western criminal justice system of the 8th Amendment, bonds, free lawyers ,
probation, counselors and medical care in prison is much more savage.
Karma? The crystal ball it's fuzzy but an image is coming in wait .I see a dung beetle in
your future.
I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a
woman (snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would
have no trouble killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan".
Why do you respond to "empty," traitor?
Either the threat was empty or it wasn't.
It certainly wasn't a personal threat.
Looks like a threat against a "type of Irish."
What I see is a cucked, traitorous e-activist misrepresenting a threat to pose as a
chivalrous defender of e-womanhood.
This might not be directly relevant, but let me tell you a story.
The Island of Hispaniola was the site of the only known successful slave revolt in history.
So far, so good. The victors where blacks and whites ('hispanics'). Well, that did not work out
well. The whites ('hispanics') revolted and carved out their own nation, it's called the
Dominican Republic. The blacks were left in their own nation, it's called Haiti. The Dominican
Republic has problems, in particular a very high murder rate, but compared to most of the rest
of the world, is not doing so bad. Haiti is an unspeakable cesspool of poverty and filth.
Of course, the Dominican Republic has a viciously effective border control policy preventing
Haitian blacks from moving in. Why doesn't our corporate press complain about this anti-migrant
xenophobia? Maybe rich Americans like the beaches in the Dominican Republic as they are.
Is that something that could – or should – happen in the Untied States? Probably
not, circumstances are different. But still
Christine: I too have experienced at least one native prior lifetime and my home is almost
exactly halfway between two reservations. Friends. Currently I'm reading a book you would
likely enjoy–perhaps thoroughly: "Listen to the Wind: Speak from the Heart" by Roger
Thunderhands Gilbert, who is Metis and has been very close to both the Apache and Lakota
cultures. Publisher is Divine Arts Media.
Always love the comments here, a great range from bright to not so bright to downright dim.
But no matter who you are I'm sure you'll all agree we went from being Bozos on the bus to
being Dr. Zeke's lab rats.
@James Scott t (which liberals are not) all of the stone age people currently living in
Christendom . ride in cars, use computers and cellphones, travel in jets .have access to the
white man's brilliant technology ..it's like we allowed them to jump into our time machine so
they could fast forward into the future we created.
You could also add that we have the patent on high trust culture based on Christian values
of industriousness, honesty, fairness, and decency ..though much of this is being wrecked by
Jewish multiculturalism.
If not for the subversion of organized Jewry, whites would still have the respect of the
stone age non-whites instead of their hatred and contempt.
However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for
example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad"
context.
Black Americans kill, rape and steal in huge disproportion to their numbers. Why should I
not disdain that?
You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know.
He put himself and his views out there, as any author does, and this is a Comment Board. I
made my comments and observations. Are you new to venues like this? That's how they work
@Muaddib onestly about their failures? They don't support it. In fact they despise free
speech.
Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also
healthcare for all.
Social programs can be good for society. But liberalism is not about finding good programs.
It is about trying to denigrate and demoralize White people in an attempt at creating equality.
Most liberals are White but they see themselves as the "good Whites" and all other Whites must
be taken down. Liberals are nihilistic egalitarians. They will do anything for equality. They
would sacrifice our children just for some fleeting feeling of equality that doesn't exist.
@Muaddib ily life but in your mind all progress is held back by those other Whites .
I saw that all the time. Urban Whites get "celebrate diversity" bumper stickers and then hang
out with Whites 99% of the time.
More inventions came from WW2 than any other period and Whites on both sides during that
time would think that today's urban egalitarian Whites are total morons.
P.S. your women aren't sexually attracted to you if that wasn't obvious by how they boss you
guys around.
I lived around urban Whites for years. What a soulless and pathetic existence the typical
urban White male lives. The homeless Blacks seem happier than you guys.
The father of Jonathan Miller's mother wanted to emigrate to the USA but got off in Ireland
instead, when it was under British rule. Miller gave an account of this during an interview. I
can't recall whether his grandfather got off in Cork by mistake or whether the person who
arranged his ticket cheated him and others by putting them on a boat to Ireland rather than New
York. For Miller this was an amusing anecdote he told on TV.
At any rate the mother of Jonathan Miller was one of the relatively few Jews living in Ireland,
although Miller himself was born in England.
You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka
rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American race
and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like the rest
of us.
You should spend a year driving around their rezess and talking to them. Try to fit in as a
tourist or something. Don't be rude and just inform them you're some kind of social scientist
studying their exotic oppressed abused soon to be genocided tribe. Don't insult them. Be
polite. They are regular people just like the rest of us.
We weren't Americans and America wasn't America when the Africans were brought over. We were
English citizens subjects living in separate English colonies known as Massachusetts
Connecticut Virginia Maryland etc.
If only the vile white northern Euro invading scum had come with pipes of peace instead of
guns and i find it poetic justice how guns and more guns and yet more guns are the scariest
part of modern central North America.
May the spirits of those that suffered genocide and holocaust at the hands of gun wielding
invading Northern Europeans be smiling from ear to ear at todays United Gun States of
America.
They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair
blue so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.
You forgot the utterly worthless dye disfigurement known as tattoos. All this probably has
roots related to the mutilation known as circumcision as well.
@tomo
Talk to them about Louis Farrakhan. He has the Nation of Islam ( https://www.noi.org/ ] eating out of his hand. The videos are out
there.
Louis names the Jew without disaster resulting. Tell them about The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews, a splendid book, available from Amazon – at a price or direct
from the https://www.noi.org/final-call-news/
@Peter Frost e US along with the breakdown of the family, loss of the work ethic, a rampant
sneering at honesty, and almost total lack of basic civility. One of my sisters attributes a
lot of that to the effects of casting infants into daycare where it's "dog eat dog" from the
beginning and which I believe is reinforced by years of exposure to the sinecure and benny
seeking bureaucrats in the baby sitting and brainwashing institutions known as schools.
We have ourselves to blame for our choices both as individuals and as a society and we can
whine all we want about blacks and others, but in the end we're paying for our worship and
pursuit of "cool," or self absorption, or whatever.
No, I agree -- a purely "racial" response should not be tried. It will lead to
failure (which is not to say that things like race, culture, values, beliefs etc are not
important)
I suggest you also do a search on the infamous Jew, Aaron Lopez, and work out why he chose a
Spanish name to hide behind rather than an Anglo-Saxon name.
The large majority of TrumpBoomers are screaming at the sky right now with this fraud cope,
because it is inconceivable that a wave of brown, angry youth and affluent whites like myself
have eclipsed them as a voting bloc. The white working class has been melting down worse than
the 2016 SJW trannies for a week now.
Yes of course i would be polite and come in peace and i would make sure not to point a rifle
or pistol at them and start shooting them and then start raping their women and children and i
wouldn't slaughter any livestock that they may have to try and starve them because what decent
white Northern European would do that in central North America anyway?.
If i came in peace and harmony like this they would naturally be far more likely to respond
in kind and share with me what they may know about nature/god, just like what their wonderful
ancestors learnt about from their use of plant medicines/entheogens/sacraments like the Peyote
cactus for example that was used by the Apache Comanche and Kiowa tribes but if i was pure evil
and slaughtered them then of course i wouldn't get to learn from their wisdom and i would
deserve to remain in complete darkness (spiritually speaking) just like most everyone alive is
in the U.S today.
His daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.
Who is the subject in this sentence? Was it someone's daughter or Miller's father who became
a well-known novelist in Ireland? The structure of your sentence makes it unclear.
As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad"
sense, but the suggestion is implicitly there for anyone who wants to make it.
Maybe the author is being emphatically practical in his analysis. FWIW in the past
Australian experience, cohesive immigrant populations have taken at least a couple of
generations to fully naturalise in Australian society. And there does seem to be a lot of
cultural clashing going on in the USA. So maybe a coarse exclusionary approach to reclaiming
power for the American people is the shortest path to a solution (albeit with potential for
collateral damage).
Or maybe one has to read between the lines to get the full sense of what the author is
trying to say.
@christine igners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is so natural in
their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in the species of
eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the small villages
they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold only the girls
nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never forgive when they
are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science, no art improved
in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 2,
page 83
Was it EVER possible to pronounce Mitt Romney's and John McCain's names without gagging?
News to me
Also I disagree with the main premise that can be expressed in the ironic Russian saying:
"They are fucking us, and yet we are just getting stronger". Unfortunately it doesn't work like
that. Success begets success, failure begets failure. With the machinery of state in the
DemocRATs' hands, will they really allow their enemies to take back the levers of power? Last
time was a fluke because Hurricane Donald had caught them by surprise.
@Rogue ck of critique of their own past, lack of any sort of conciliatory moves towards
past victims, dooms them.
And this when the entire world rejects globohomo (and usury) with disgust. They have all
sorts of potential allies a home and abroad, and do not use them. Having lived in the Detroit
area for decades, for example, I can tell you that local Muslims are ready-made allies. They
are hardly the only ones. Count any working Latino and all people of Asian descent in this
group, as well as all people of Eastern European descent. They even have allies among working
blacks for christ sake. You are in the fight of your lives, and you don't even think about
allies.
I would say productive non-executive suite Whites are the new slaves in the Waspy-Jewy Anglo
world. But Brazil isn't that far behind either with all of its Sherwin-Williams color sample
shade cards being used in its own affirmative action programs.
Unlike the profitable fables of holobiz, the Jewish rabid hatred towards Palestinians and
the destruction of Palestinian lives is true. Thievery, sadism, torture of teenagers in Israeli
prisons, desecration of Palestinian cemeteries, the intentional handicapping of Palestinian
children Are you ready to talk about the Jeiwsh State's crimes against humanity, committed in
the context of international law? (The US and Israel 'are joined at the hip' according to US
Congresspeople). If not, then your 'righteous' diatribes are cheap.
And don't forget to check the amazing results of the Obama/Clinton's color revlution in
Ukraine.
@Truth irst son of a bitch who was foolish enough to bring over the African for cheap labor
( yes, the African did receive a wage in food, shelter and medical care), these fools using
Mexicans for dirt cheap labor are ruining this nation because of greed and the love of money.
That poor beaner busting his ass for 12 bucks an hour? Don't worry about him folks, he's living
large because he's more than likely being paid cash or he's gaming the system and receiving all
kinds of freebies along with a regular paycheck. I drive by a chicken processing plant daily
that employs nothing but our friends from south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks
and other nice looking vehicles.
The white working class has been melting down worse than the 2016 SJW trannies for a week
now.
Is that right? So why were there no massive chimpouts and looting? Why was it not necessary
to board up the stores, as it would have been had not the ZOG stolen the election?
Stupidly, I think Trump tried to win over the corporate elite, Big Tech, Big Ag, etc.. Maybe
bad advice from his son-in-law? Didn't listen to his intuition? Who knows.
If he is reelected, he will not make the same mistake twice. I think they know this too.
@christine ringing a force of about five or six to one against his enemy; kills helpless
women and little children, and massacres th e men in their beds; and then brags about it as
long as he lives, and his son and his grandson and great-grandson after him glorify it among
the "heroic deeds of their ancestors."
If you came in peace, do you think the Stone Age Siberians would have also shared their vast
knowledge about the Wheel? Or metal smelting? Or writing and math?
People like (((Christine))) always bring up atrocities committed against Indians and they
make some valid points, HOWEVER, as we saw, (((Christine))) had nothing to say about Whites
being butchered by racist Black homicidal maniacs in South Africa nor did she address the
Holodomor. This leads me to believe that (((Christine))) the self proclaimed "Irish" lass is
more than likely just a (((troll.)))
And of course, people like (((Christine))) don't talk about so-called Jews stealing the
Palestinians land and brutalizing Palestinians, instead they focus on ANCIENT HISTORY. And
these people will never talk about Black guys executing little white boys or Black guys
snatching a little white boy from his white mother and throwing the kid off a balcony. Or how
about when a black woman kidnapped a white boy in Texas and burned him to death with a
blowtorch. Oh, yeah, lets focus on ancient history, which unless you lived back then no one
really knows what the damn truth was, we know we certainly can't rely on (((historians))) or
mainstream (((history books.))) Unless things change, 100 years from now, people will be
reading about how 3 Black women sent America to the moon.
Obvious LIES that will be told or have been told
6 million Jews were gassed in concentration camps during WWII
Germany started WWII
the official 9-11 narrative
Osama Bin Laden was killed * that dude probably was dead years before he was claimed to have
been killed, the guy was in poor health.
James Earl Ray did not kill MLK * the dude said so on his death bed, why would you still
keep holding on to the same story if you were going to die anyhow?
And when it comes to Presidential elections.
JFK didn't beat Nixon
Dubya didn't beat Gore
And Joe Biden sure as hell didn't beat Trump, hell I would admit that if I hated Trump's guts.
Don't like Gore, voted for that sorry sack of shit, Dubya, but no way in hell, Gore lost.
Some more code words we can start using ((( ))) for are (((SJW))) or (((military industrial
complex.)))
@Ultrafart the Brave people too, patriotic or otherwise. White nationalism is a political
stance, of course it will exclude people who are not white nationalists, duh!
Indeed, one bad thing leads to another. Once the dynamics are set in train, it will take
generations to unravel (if ever).
What "bad thing" lead to blacks people committing heinous amounts of murder, robbery and
rape? Slavery? Colonialism? Affirmative Action? Must be something whites did, right?
As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad"
sense.
You have not explained what's bad about racism. And what are those quotation marks for?
You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka
rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American
race and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like
the rest of us.
Aldey, having lived in the most Indian state in America for the last 17 years, I can assure
you that that is patently ridiculous.
Some things never change. As Mark Twain wrote in his Essay about The Noble Red Man;
He is ignoble–base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent
death can startle him into a spasm of virtue .
With that Twain appears slightly ahead of his time. He could have just as accurately been
describing other "Reds," such as the Bolsheviks and their supporters most of whom could have
taught the Indians a thing or two about terror and torture especially the mass varieties.
I drive by a chicken processing plant daily that employs nothing but our friends from
south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks and other nice looking vehicles.
Whites are storming ballot counting centers instead of looting their own businesses. Whites
routinely chimp out, they just pick different targets. Look at the devastation around Hockey
arenas when teams win the Stanley Cup.
As far as the election being stolen, well, you sound like a crazed conspiracy nutter.
They are ALWAYS hiring, breh. Maybe you can tell some of da homies. But I doubt da homies
could cut the mustard. I worked with tons of Mexicans and El Salvadorans and I can tell you
from experience they really look down on lazy negroes. My gawd, some of the things I heard
these Brown folks say about Black folks had me blushing crimson. I went from Donald Trump
orange to the color of my favorite soda, cherry red. Cue: You Can't Always Get What You Want by
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stoooooooooones.
The Second Guy: Kamala Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish; he will not only be the
"second gentleman" (caveat: No one has settled on a term for the job), he will be the first
Jewish second spouse. Emhoff has been vocal about his Jewish identity, and it will be
interesting to see how that plays out in a role that has been used to advance education
initiatives.
Yet, there do remain groupings of well-rooted people who are able to cope with a clinically
insane "white" culture which surrounds them physically and throughout most electronic mediums.
Their struggle is huge, yet they persist in reconnecting with traditional tribal values, with
powwows, drumming fests and even -- gradually -- re-learning their indigenous languages.
There are still waaaay too many European-descended people in my area who retain an ignorant
, discriminatory and even prejudicial attitude towards these, our neighbors and in some cases,
potential teachers. But those who reach out do tend to reach those who also reach out. So hope
remains.
HATER -- perhaps not without some viable personal reason/s, but nevertheless one incapable
of discriminating between individuals and devolved into rank prejudice.
I spent time on the other side of the wall early seventies, and I will never forget the dead
eyes of the oppressed citizenry and the morgue-like atmosphere of the grey cities, and these
lunatic Democrats are now pushing to create such a scenario in the US
Excellent article and explanation of procedure, Mr. Redmayne-Titley. On Tucker Carlson's
show about six weeks ago, Tucker had on guest Darren Beattie to describe the specific type of
color revolution that the Democrat Party appeared to be planning to proceed ahead with to
usurp this election:
Tucker's show tonight will be as clear as could be as to which Tucker he is going to be
selling to his huge audience: independent journalist or Fox News/DS apparatchik. I will be
watching and hope that he will continue to be the voice of much of the people, though his
letting up on the Hunter Biden story was troubling to say the least.
Even with Pennsylvania and Georgia, the 2 most likely to flip imo, trump would still lose,
unless he miraculously flips Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
The fix was in no doubt and trump won all those states fairly, but its a tall order and
I'm skeptical that trump can pull it off.
Thanks to the Trumpet, the CIA/FBI/NSA, etc., have now been able to clearly identidy the
sections of the populace that feel their pure whiteness is being victimised,
Were you in a coma for a number of years? For 20 years, starting with William Binney
through Edward Snowdon and Dave Montgomery, there have been warnings that the alphabet
agencies have been illegally spying the US citizens. Montgomery pointed out they spied on
Trump before he became a candidate.
The Trumpian corporate party's biggest sin was trying to get in on the Republocrat –
Demican Uni-party corporate party action.
Never gonna happen.
I believe that US are truthful when they talk about "free" elections. Theoretically, the
only way you can get something "free" in life is – if you steal it, or if somebody
gives you something as a gift. This "election" has fulfilled both of these 2 criteria. First
the deep state stole the election from Trump and then they presented it as a gift to Biden.
So it's all good. It was a free election for Biden, Trump got robbed – but hey, you
can't please everybody.
Karma's a biatch. All those color revolutions in Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Hong Kong,
propped up in one way or another by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA continuing into
Secretary of State, is now coming back to haunt Trump. Good job appointing that fat fuck.
If Trump loses, it would be his own doing in some ways. He has failed to roll back legal
immigration esp. H1B/OPT until a month before the election, and spent most of his time
catering to the Zionist filth with all the nauseating sycophantic overt pandering to Israel
and the Wall Street Jews. Wormtongue's pandering to the blacks by letting all the drug
dealers out of jail is backfiring big time too. 92% of blacks still voted for Biden so fuck
you Kushner.
If Trump somehow survives this and actually comes back to win, I hope he learned from his
mistake in the first term. Instead of spending all 4 years pandering to Jews and blacks who
didn't vote for him, spend his time taking care of those who did vote for him, his white
voting base, and we want an end to H1B, OPT, EB5, L1, illegal immigration. No more green
cards for the next 40 years! Begin mass deportation. Most importantly, fire Pompeo and
Javanka!
Many thanks, Mr. Redmayne, for this overview-cum-dissection of the recount scenarios.
That all of these counting-stopping orders took place in swing states defies
credulity.
Surely poll workers were being paid to continue counting throughout the night. Not to go home
and catch 40 winks. Lord knows we have plenty of night-time workers in this 24/7 country.
It is ironic that in the context of the USA's overseas military disasters, the common
advice when the home team is obviously getting pounded has been "Just declare yourself the
winner" and get the hell out.
Seems like the Dems are using this playbook and hoping they can create a new reality by
declaring it so.
The spectacle of Joe Biden calling for "unity" after the shitshow following 2016 is
rich.
I doubt that this richness is going to be lost on the "losers" in this election.
The country is very n eatly divided between blue urban and red countryside. I would not
county on "unity" rearing its head anywhere in redland.
The only people loyal to Trump is the working class. No one else gives a damn whether he
lives or dies, including the vast majority of Republican officials and office holders
concerned only with keeping what they have.
Yes, the disgusting PC CBC reporters display their contempt for Trump at every turn, and
are complicit in obscuring Democrat misdeeds, whether by uncritically parroting the Maddow
ravings on Russiagate or ignoring the influence peddling of Dems from Biden to HRC. CBC
reporters are repeatedly characterizing charges of election fraud as groundless. Clearly they
are unaware of Pelosi's admission of how the public is misinformed, with her description of
'leaking' fabricated allegations to MSM insiders, then using the subsequent MSM reports as
'evidence' of veracity.
@GMC ciders). The not-so-youthful Obamas the Fraud and the badly aged Clintons have been
liberally using revolutionary rhetoric a la Che Gevara, never mind that the Obamas and
Clintons are major war criminals guilty of the mass slaughter of civilian populations
(including the multitude of children) in the brown countries of Syria and Lybia and non-brown
countries of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. They, Obamas and Clintons, are murderers,
cannibals. Yet for the 'progressive' wokes, the history of the US is not known and is not
interesting for knowing. The wokes like the keto diet, mild psychedelics, cool outfit, and a
special set of words, including 'solidarity, social awareness, political correctness,
LGBTQIA' and such to stroke gently their, wokes,' egos. The aroma of rot is in the air.
@The Alarmist ake-sure-trump-supporters-receive-accountability
Emily Abrams can not forgive Trump for being so ineffective in the Middle East. Unlike the
Obama/Clinton administration, Trump has not started a new War for Israel. And for this, Trump
and "anyone who took a paycheck to help Trump" must be punished.
Meanwhile, the reality is hitting up:
After Attorney General Bill Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial
allegations" of irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, the head of the DOJ's
Election Crimes Branch [Richard Pilger] has decided to resign.
Vote fraud is as American as apple pie. Just remember how JFK and George W. Bush manged to
sneak into the White House. America has always bee a banana republic, now it has just become
more evident.
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF
VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other
Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows
MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion
and Other Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows
MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion
and Other Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
So despite the help from the massive software "glitch", Biden fraud machine had to dump
late night dump ballots all for Biden only in a hurry. How bad did he lose? It almost looks
like most of his votes are fabricated. I would not be surprised if he were 20 points behind
in legal votes.
I think the ballot dumping was the side show to keep us from finding out about the vote
switching and deleting. How can this be verified, and how can this be seen on the machines
now?
Badass American of Indian decent (actually was born in India I believe but family came
here legally when a young child). Ran for senate in Massachusetts as a Republican and was/is
a big Trump supporter. Blew the doors off the Covid 19 scam, not that it wasn't real but how
it was being treated and handled by MSM and the Socialist Democratic Party, ie, by those who
hyped the whole thing.
EventBrite just told everyone that "March for Trump" was cancelled. It is NOT
Cancelled.
The Elites / Big-Tech / MSM (including Fox) are TERRIFIED We Will Show Up - doing everything
possible to shut us down.
Don't let them. Break their Narrative.
Get to DC or the nearest contested state-house This Weekend, or we hand Biden the WH.
CORRECTION!! We hand the WH to Kamala, the most leftist (socialist) senator in the Senate!
She falls right in line with Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, Fidel,Stalin and other
(in)famous dictators politically. If you are a veteran, have a CFL, have made a firearms
purchase from a dealer, etc. - your personal information WILL be found and used to confiscate
your arms if these socialists gain enough power. They have already stated that they will
rejoin the 'climate accords,' restart 'fair trade' with China, move our embassy out of
Jerusalem, restart nuclear 'cooperation' with N. Korea, pass 'common sense' gun laws to
protect our citizens (never mind the THOUSANDS of gun laws now on the books that are NOT
ENFORCED,) tear down 'Orange Man Bads' border fence, open up our borders to all comers, and
amnesty all illegals now in the nation - and that's just for a start.
You are so right ....but the Marxists better ask the British what happened when General
Gage sent British regulars to DISARM AMERICANS at CONCORD . THAT is when the Revolutionary
War turned into a REAL SHOOTING WAR .
Avoidance of War is Not Peace. While I am praying for Honest Election Results that = Trump
Victory, the NWO Deep State must be stopped Now.
Marxist democRats and Quisling repubs are Bought and Paid for by their NWO Oligarch
Masters.
Never Submit, Never Surrender.
If they mean to have CW, then let it begin with this Coup if it is accomplished in Jan of
21
He also doesn't believe AIDS is caused by HIV... really?! And that we should expand the
USPS by having them set up and regulate a national email service. Broken clock, twice-a-day,
etc.
H.I.V was found to be nothing more than Biologically Inactive Gunk by Nobel Laureate
Professor and Cancer specialist Doctor Peter Duesberg and his work was backed up by Nobel
Laureate Doctor Carey Mullin. The H.I.V hypothesis proposed by the Fraudulent Doctors Gallo
and Anthony Fao-Chi[ yes! That Fao-chi] never passed the Koch Postulates, so they turned to
the MSM to pressure the Reagan administration into acceptance of their Hypothesis and that is
the most important part of the H.I.V Hypothesis...
Yesterday on hannity's radio show, John Solomon was severely downplaying the software
problems. Never trusted that guy. Does anyone ever say, "hey, you have to check out Just the
News?!". NOPE.
John Solomon was an integral part of uncovering the SpyGate scandal. Just because he says
something you disagree with does NOT make him a partisan hack.. He's one of the last
investigative reporters left in the U.S.
He speaks the truth and the truth is that as of now we have zero evidence of wrongdoing
other than hearsay. "Data passed around" analyzed by some guy does not cut the mustard in
court. Actual proof is needed and as of now we are just spouting BS. I am not delusional as
most of you and understand that as we sit we are losing big time. He does not say everything
I need to hear......WAAAAAAAA.
I don't really trust him after watching him on Lou Dobbs A LOT. He squirms out of tough
questions. I agree about the investigation into obamagate with Sara Carter. Why is he now
putting a liberal (UNTRUE) spin on the software problems?
No spin, Just the truth. The evidence as of now would get thrown out of court as it is
hearsay. Get the data looked at by a real analytics team not some random guy sitting in his
basement.
He ran hard against Pocahontas up here in MA. Brilliant man! Someone had to step up with
indisputable proof and stop this charade now! OT: Watched a bit of Tucker Carlson
tonight...the bosses got to him. He's talking about senile Biden's virus response. No Tucker,
President Trump is in charge.
I agree! Tucker was singing the praises of FNC several nights ago about their truth
telling...what garbage! Tucker can go too with FNC, I'm done with them!
I read an email on the laptop from Tucker to Hunter the day after he said that on his
show. It was just thanking Hunter for writing a letter of recommendation to Georgetown for
someone. Nothing bad, but Tucker would not touch the photos on the laptop of incest with
underage family members.
@shylockcracy Solmeimani, he hasn't started any shooting wars. Sanctions are undeclared
wars, and Trump's sanctions help US corporations, most of which are globalist anyway. Same
shit different pile.
The last US Presidents who were mildly anti-Zionist were turfed out of office and
assassinated. All of the branches of the USG are (((occupied territory))) and have been for
decades, as was noted by George Wallace in the 1960s.
Trump's redeeming qualities are few and far between, but getting out of "free trade" deals
and reduced immigration, whether legal or illegal, are a big finger in the eye of the
globalists. Other than that, it appears as if he is the only one serious about cleaning up
vote fraud. If the Demicans are caught out, they will shut down the Republocrats fixing in
retaliation, until a new scam is figured out.
"... ...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people. And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship. ..."
This is a corporate takeover of the country. Joe Biden's transition advisers include
executives from Uber, Visa, Capital One, Airbnb, Amazon, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation and the
nonprofit run by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Are you surprised? No, you're not.
...According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, at least 40 members of the Biden
transition team announced earlier this week either were or are registered lobbyists. You won't
be shocked to learn that the government of China looks on at all this and is highly pleased. A
weak, divided America obsessed with narcissistic identity politics is good for them and very
different from them.
... Joe Biden has announced that as president he will not deport a single illegal alien from
this country in his first 100 days. It doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what
they've done. It doesn't matter whether they were convicted of crimes such as rape and murder
or not. Literally, they can all stay here.
This is great news if you're Silicon Valley. The tech companies wanted this because they
rely on cheap labor. But for the rest of us, what's the upside exactly? By the way, if you live
anywhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, good luck to you. Also, don't bother locking your doors
or pining for a border wall or thinking that immigration restrictions might improve your
life.
...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send
to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.
And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified
again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship.
TUCKER CARLSON PROVIDES COMPLETE TOTAL PROOF OF WIDESPREAD DEMOCRAT VOTE FRAUD THAT STOLE
THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Paul Craig Roberts
Tucker Carlson is the ONLY honest media figure in the United States. No wonder the
presstitutes want him arrested. I am concerned that the criminal Hillary DNC will have him
assassinated. You are simply not permitted to tell the truth in the United States. To tell the
truth in the American media is a capital offense.
This had to be posted on Parler because Twitter, FaceBook, and YouTube will not permit the
Fox News report on Vote Theft to be posted. What more evidence do you need that there is a
conspiracy to steal the presidential election from Trump? If the treasonous and criminal
Democrats get away with their coup against democracy, the United States is finished as a
country. No Trump voter will ever again think of the US as his/her country.
As a Norwegian I can say with some authority that I know what the word "Quisling" means, and
Stoltenberg is following in that "proud" tradition. He is a puppet and collaborator of the
worst kind.
For those who don't know, Quisling was a member of the Norwegian pre-war government in the
1930's. When the German Nazis arrived in the morning of April 9, 1940 and the government and
King escaped northwards, Quisling performed a Coup d'Etat by going on state radio and
declared himself "Minister President", and collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces.
Everybody knew the meaning of the word "Quisling", even the Germans. The story goes that
during the occupation, in one of the illegal resistance pamphlets there was a cartoon showing
Herr Quisling going to Victoria Terasse (Nazi headquarters in Oslo) to visit Josef Terboven
(German Reichskommissar for Norway):
Quisling arrives at the gate and says to the German guard: "I am Quisling"
The guard replies: "And your name please?"
Apparently disregarding Facebook's public-facing image as a fierce opponent of election
meddling by entities not legitimately involved in the political process, Zuckerberg dived into
the fray during a Thursday company-wide town hall, according to an audio of the meeting first
obtained by
Buzzfeed and later confirmed by
CNBC .
"I believe the outcome of the election is now clear and Joe Biden is going to be our next
president," Zuckerberg reportedly told the assembled crowd. "It's important that people
have confidence that the election was fundamentally fair, and that goes for the tens of
millions of people that voted for Trump."
"... Nunes, the panel's top Republican, repeatedly made that claim on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business program last month, while alleging that the "intelligence services in this country have been corrupted by the Democratic national party and their propaganda arm in the media." ..."
As President Donald Trump
and his allies continue to publicly dispute the outcome of the election, they are also quietly
seeking to discredit the Russia investigation that has cast a dark cloud over the
administration for more than four years.
Those concerns roared back this week in the wake of a flurry of personnel changes at the
National Security Agency -- and the Pentagon -- as Trump installed political loyalists in key
positions where they could help turn the tide in the behind-the-scenes battle over
declassifying documents, which has raged for weeks.
Trump believes the documents in question will undermine the intelligence community's
unanimous finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 race to help him win, by exposing
so-called "deep state" plots against his campaign and transition during the Obama
administration, according to multiple current and former officials.
But CIA and National Security Agency career officials have
strenuously objected to releasing certain information from the Russia interference
assessment, arguing that it would seriously damage sources and methods in a way that the
intelligence community doesn't believe can be easily repaired.
Both agencies have also cited concerns about cherry-picking information to release and the
politicization of their work as they fight against Ratcliffe's recent efforts to satisfy
Trump's promises to declassify thousands of pages of documents.
Multiple sources familiar with the classified materials have downplayed the significance of
these documents, telling CNN the administration won't make political hay by releasing them
despite the President's fixation.
While Ratcliffe and former acting DNI Richard Grenell have sought to declassify documents
related to the Russia probe and Hillary Clinton's emails, CIA Director Gina Haspel and National
Security Agency chief Gen. Paul Nakasone have fought those moves.
Behind the scenes, Haspel has defended the work of career officials who have come under
criticism from Trump and allies over 2016-era intelligence work behind the investigation of
Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Haspel's job in jeopardy while Trump
elevates loyalists
The standoff has led the President to become increasingly frustrated with Haspel, in
particular, who he blames for delaying the release of these documents despite the fact that he
and Ratcliffe have the authority to declassify the additional intelligence at their own
discretion. At the end of the day, if Trump wanted these documents declassified, he could do it
himself.
A senior administration official and three former administration officials with knowledge of
the situation told CNN they expect the President to fire his CIA director, as he did Defense
Secretary Mark Esper .
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a
Kentucky Republican, have attempted to protect Haspel from Trump's wrath in recent days,
providing public displays of support for the CIA director amid speculation of her possible
ouster.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas voiced his support for Haspel in a tweet Tuesday,
saying: "Intelligence should not be partisan. Not about manipulation, it is about preserving
impartial, nonpartisan information necessary to inform policy makers and so the can protect the
US."
The post prompted immediate backlash from the President's son Donald Trump Jr, who called
Haspel a "trained liar."
"Have you or @marcorubio or @senatemajldr actually discussed this with anyone in the Admin.
who actually works with her, like @DNI_Ratcliffe or @MarkMeadows or @robertcobrien, to get
their perspective, or are you just taking a trained liar's word for it on everything?" he
tweeted, tagging McConnell and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who serves as acting
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
While Haspel's immediate future as CIA director remains uncertain, Trump moved several
political allies into new roles at the Pentagon and National Security Agency this week --
placing them in career positions, which come with civil service protections. They could also
have an immediate impact on the release of classified documents.
Michael Ellis,
an official on the National Security Council , shifted over to the National Security Agency
as legal counsel, which puts him in a civil servant role at an agency at the forefront of the
declassification dispute.
Ellis is widely considered to be a partisan Trump loyalist and has little intelligence
experience despite being elevated to the job of the White House's top national security lawyer
under the President.
He was part of several White House controversies, including overruling career officials over
classified information in the book written by former national security adviser John Bolton.
CNN has previously reported that Ellis came under scrutiny for his alleged roundabout role
in providing information to GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California, then-chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, which showed members of Trump's team were included in foreign
surveillance reports collected by US intelligence.
Another former Nunes aide, Kash Patel, will become chief of staff to acting Defense
Secretary Chris Miller, according to an administration official and a US defense official.
The House impeachment inquiry uncovered evidence connecting Patel to the diplomatic back
channel led by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and the efforts to spread conspiracy theories
about Biden and coerce Ukraine into announcing an investigation of the former vice
president.
A third Trump loyalist with ties to Nunes, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was also elevated to a senior
role at the Pentagon this week.
Cohen-Watnick gained notoriety in
March 2017 for his alleged involvement with Ellis in providing intelligence materials to
Nunes, who went on to claim that US intelligence officials improperly surveilled Trump
associates.
In his new post as the Pentagon's acting under secretary for intelligence, Cohen-Watnick
could find himself at odds with Nakasone, a military officer, if he pushes for additional
classified materials to be released.
While it remains to be seen if Trump will ultimately fire Haspel, the elevation of officials
like Ellis and Patel has raised concerns that the President is clearing the way to release
documents despite previous objections from intelligence leaders.
"The motives of his recent moves at DoD and NSA remain unclear and are of course
speculative, although the partisan personnel he put in place certainly suggest that he is
stacking the deck, ultimately to win the fight over further declassification of intel related
to the 2016 Russian investigation," Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw
operations in Europe and Russia before retiring last summer, told CNN.
"If he did the same at CIA, install a new hyper-partisan director who would agree to further
declassification efforts, it would not only expose and compromise highly classified sources and
methods, but also taint the agency in the eyes of our international partners. Simply put, that
puts America at great risk," he added.
House Republicans leading campaign to declassify
secret documents
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have also pushed the narrative that Haspel
is personally preventing certain documents from being released.
Nunes, the panel's top Republican, repeatedly made that claim on Lou Dobbs' Fox Business
program last month, while alleging that the "intelligence services in this country have been
corrupted by the Democratic national party and their propaganda arm in the media."
Some of the additional intelligence Nunes wants released comes from classified documents
based on a report compiled by Republicans on the committee he chaired in 2018, according to a
source familiar with the materials.
The House Republican report on the Russia investigation disputes the intelligence
community's finding that Russia was trying to help Trump in the 2016 campaign, raising issues
about the tradecraft behind the intelligence assessment.
The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, however, confirmed the intelligence
community's assessment in its bipartisan investigation into Russia's 2016 election
interference.
Current and former officials have maintained that if there were something revelatory in the
documents that remain classified, it would have been included in either the unclassified House
or Senate reports and in a way that did not compromise sources and methods.
Yet House Republicans and Trump still believe the information in these secret documents will
help validate their criticism of the CIA and FBI's handling of the probe -- raising more
questions about whether this is just an attempt to cherry-pick intelligence.
Either way, the documents are so sensitive that they remain under lock and key at CIA
headquarters in Langley, according to a source familiar with the matter. House Republicans on
the Intelligence Committee stored the materials in a lockbox, which this source compared to a
gun safe. The lockbox was then placed in a CIA vault -- prompting some officials to
characterize it as a "turducken" or a "safe within a safe." The New York
Times first reported on the "turducken."
Republicans on the House panel have long accused the CIA of blocking access to the documents
and have encouraged Ratcliffe to declassify the materials despite objections by the CIA and the
the National Security Agency, multiple sources told CNN.
In a letter sent to the intelligence community's inspector general last month, Ratcliffe
said he has asked that the documents undergo a formal declassification review at the request of
Nunes but also has asked the watchdog to review whether the 2017 intelligence community
assessment on Russian interference "adhered to proper analytical tradecraft."
At the same time, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee have accused Haspel
of stonewalling their oversight efforts by refusing to produce CIA documents that were
requested as part of the panel's own review of the Russia probe.
There is claimed proof. (Examples below and part of McENanay's statement). OK, these will
now be followed through. So we will see if they are enough to cause any changes in the final
outcome.
In more news, Twitter censored 12 of trumps Tweets today.
The amount of newcomers trying, rather desperately, to decry anything about the voting
fraud that may have happened is a sign that a bit of "hot-under-the-collar-desperation is
setting in.
The "Intelligence" community is openly calling for a "coup" by VP Pence. They are in the
process of really panicking as many of the originators of Russiagate, Pizzagate would face
real prison terms if Trump wins. (Brennans statements to the Press) (I would love to add
"billsgate" but that would be off topic)
Quote:
"We keep hearing the drumbeat of 'where is the evidence?' Right here, Sean, 234 pages
of sworn affidavits, these are real people, real allegations, signed with notaries,"
McEnany said.
"They're alleging - this is one county, Wayne County, Michigan - they are saying that
there was a batch of ballots where 60 percent had the same signature," she told host Sean
Hannity.
"They're saying that 35 ballots had no voter record but they were counted anyway,
that 50 ballots were run multiple times through a tabulation machine."
The Dem/ Main Stream Media Complex is infuriated that President Donald J. Trump will not
concede the 2020 election. This is a Sign of Contradiction that he is
doing the right thing. This does not yet mean that Trump won enough votes in key states, as
Tucker Carlson has noted, but we also can't say with confidence that Trump lost [ Tucker
Carlson Says There's Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results, by Jacob
Jarvis, Newsweek, November 10, 2020]. And here appears to be solid evidence that there
was at least some wrongdoing -- far more so than for the Russia Hoax that paralyzed
Trump's Administration for three years. The same neoconservatives who are demanding Trump
concede would be insisting the U.S, invade another country to "bring democracy" if we saw its
government behaving this way. Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this
country -- American citizens or the Dem/ MSM complex, including Big Tech oligarchs. They
ensured it was not a "free and fair" election, and President Trump should never concede.
Let's consider the almost hysterical fury from the MSM telling us that President Trump has a
duty to admit defeat because Biden "won."
In fact, of course President Trump isn't doing anything illegal. No one has won or lost.
Senate Mitch McConnell may be afraid to defy Trump because he doesn't want to lose the two
Senate seats in
Georgia and thus, his status as Majority Leader. But he's absolutely right when he says
that the Electoral College determines the winner and, until that happens, "anyone who is
running for office can exhaust concerns" [ Mitch McConnell says Electoral College will determine 2020 election, by Lisa
Mascaro, Fox6 Milwaukee, November 10, 2020]. The Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore
that settled the 2000 election didn't come to an end until December 12, 2000.
Media outlets "declaring" the winner have no legal significance, especially when their
projections seem to be based on polls that have proven to be inaccurate [ Professional
pollsters blew it again in 2020. Why?b y Matthew Rozsa, Salon, November
4, 2020].
As of this writing, Arizona, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Georgia are all undecided. North Carolina
was just called for Trump
(and underwhelming Chamber of Commerce GOP senator Thom Tills managed to win a narrow victory
over Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham [ Cal
Cunningham concedes to Thom Tills in North Carolina Senate race, by Evie
Fordham, Fox News, November 10, 2020]). Joe Biden's lead in Arizona is narrow and
shrinking dangerously.
President Trump has a strong legal case in the key state of Pennsylvania, where it appears
that the state Supreme Court simply created a new power to count votes that arrived
after election day. The U.S. Supreme Court (without Amy Coney Barrett) deadlocked over
this, but the Trump campaign will almost certainly take this case to SCOTUS again [ Byron
York's Daily Memo: The election lawsuit Trump should win, by Byron York, Washington
Examiner, November 10, 2020]. As Senator Ted Cruz has said, there has thus far not been a
"comprehensive presentation of evidence" [ Ted Cruz: Trump Election Fraud Allegations Will Be Resolved In Court, Not By Persuading You
Or Me, by Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics, November 10, 2020]. Republican
leaders in Pennsylvania have already called for a recount "in any counties where state law was
broken" [ Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda, Pennsylvania State Senate, November 6,
2020].
However, there are more fundamental issues at stake. Thanks to the Sem/ MSM complex's
campaign of COVID-19 hysteria, the country engaged in a massive experiment with mail-in voting
[ Are We Sure About All Those Mail-in Ballots, by Josh Hammer, The American
Mind, November 10, 2020]. Different state requirements add to the confusion. There have
been specific claims of outright fraud, notably the inclusion of dead people on the voter
rolls, reports that local officials gave voters instructions that would invalidate their
ballots, and open theft of ballots [ On Electoral Fraud in
2020, by Pedro Gonzalez, American Greatness, November 9, 2020].
Critically, in several of the states where President Trump is launching legal challenges, the
common factor is a company called Dominion Voting Systems. In one proven case, a "glitch" in
its system awarded 6,000 votes to Joe Biden rather than President Trump [ Republicans expand probe into Dominion Voting Systems after Michigan counting snafu, by Zachary Halaschak and Emily Larsen, Washington Examiner, November 8, 2020].
One former Deputy Attorney General for Michigan says counters in Detroit outright provided
fraudulent ballots to non-voters [ Ex-Michigan Deputy Attorney General Alleges Detroit Counters Assigned Fraudulent Ballots To
Non-Voters, by Kyle Olson, Breitbart, November 9, 2020].
The truth or falsity of these claims must be shown in court. Of course, anti-Trump groups
are trying to prevent any legal challenges by individually targeting the law firm that
President Trump is using [ Inside the
Lincoln Project's new campaign targeting Trump's law firm, by Greg Sargent,
Washington Post, November 10, 2020]. No one seems to have considered that such a
strategy ensures that most Trump supporters will -- correctly -- consider a Biden
Administration utterly illegitimate.
Twitter and other social networking oligopolists are currently putting their thumb on the
scale by censoring posts or by claiming there are "election integrity" issues with posts they
dislike, even posts by President Trump himself [ Tucker Carlson: Big Tech Took Part in 'One of the Worst Forms of Election Tampering, by Mary Chastain, Legal Insurrection, November 10, 2020].
This control of information both before and after the election renders democracy pointless.
If Tech oligarchs can control what the voters see and hear, we might as well put them in charge
and dispense with Election Day altogether. It would be simpler and less time consuming than
going through a farce where both the exchange of information before an election and tabulating
of votes on Election Day itself are apparently too much for the world's sole superpower.
If this is the way the system works, then, as President Trump has been claiming for years,
it is "rigged" and illegitimate. If this is how it is going to be, whatever the Regime on the
Potomac says in future should be considered as foreign to the Historic American Nation as
governments based out of Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing.
Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether the historic American nation would fare better
under outright foreign occupation than a hostile elite which considers itself our rulers and
treats us with open contempt, if not hatred.
President Trump and outraged Republicans do have a card to play even if all the legal
challenges fail. State legislatures must certify a state's electors before the College can vote
for the next president. If state delegations believe the vote has been corrupted, they can send
their own competing slate of electors [ Donald
Trump's Stealthy Road to Victory, by Graham Allison, National Interest,
November 6, 2020].
President Trump also has powers that he can use to change the political environment,
especially by destroying hostile institutions and declassifying documents that the Deep State
really doesn't want to be made public [ Reflections on the late
election, by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].
If a rigged system is going to take President Trump down, he can take it down with him.
Arguably, if President Trump had the will to do something like that, he would not be in this
mess. He did not bring Big Tech to heel. He did not ensure that the bureaucracy was filled with
people loyal to him. He kept hiring people who were his enemies and then acted surprised when
he was rewarded with treachery. He governed like a conventional Republican while talking like a
nationalist, the worst of both worlds [ The Tragedy of Trump, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, November 16, 2018].
Nonetheless, with his back to the wall, Trump can and should fight. Even now, he has a
popular movement behind him -- all he needs to do is lead them against the System that they
thought they had defeated in 2016.
The reason I want to see Trump win is to see if anyone like Brennan or Comey end up in
jail. If not then it's proof this is all smoke and mirrors on behalf of the usual
suspects.
A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for
exclusion: (1)
Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an
extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000
were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return
date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots,
was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.
Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the
database or the ballots.
Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.
-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?
Why should he concede when he won the elections? In fact, Dem crazy policies and senile
half-dead nominee resulted in them losing votes. Apparently, they believed their own lies,
taking their own psyop "polls" at face value. Massive fraud needed to push their corpse ahead
was so crude and ham-handed because it was perpetrated in a hurry. If the fraud stands, the
US is kaput. If Trump succeeds in insisting on real results, the US would keep sliding down
slowly. Either way, the direction is down, the only difference is the speed.
@Verymuchalive US elections because you back both horses. It doesn't matter about where
the "Jewish" vote goes. It's not about ordinary Jews. It's the Zionist power structure and
the big money: Adelson for the Repubs, Saban for the Dems = both bases covered.
Even a not sufficiently Zionist like Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, is blocked
because he's not subservient enough to be a minion and horror of horrors, supports a few
basic Palestinian human rights and a more balanced policy.
It's easy. They only have to cover 2 bases because there are no viable 3rd parties nor
will there ever be under this system, nor is it a direct vote anyway. There will be no change
as long as this duopoly persists.
I absolutely agree with this author's conclusion, the president should fight.
Absolutely, he won the elections. However, he thinks that the fight is for him, but in
reality it is for the American electoral system in particular and the whole political system
in general. If this obvious fraud is allowed to stand, the Empire is doomed. If true result
is recovered, the slide down would be slow.
If those clever wascally Ds so easily rigged the Prez race for Joey Depends, then why
didn't those same clever wascally Ds also rig a few more Senatorial races and capture the
Congress?
@nsa ad to manufacture hundreds of thousands in each swing state. Apparently, the supply
of the cheaters was insufficient, and dishonest poll workers were available only in several
places (hence the turnout in some places went way above 100%). Sloppy job. Next time they
might prepare better. Say, they had more time manufacturing all those mail-in ballots from
dead people (naturally, all dead people voted for half-corpse). If mail-in voting remains on
the books next time, I expect a lot stronger turnout among the dead.
A single frog is worth more than Joey Depends and Poor Widdle Donnie put together
Now, that is true, but the frog was not on the ballot. It could have won.
The presidential
election was on Tuesday and we still don't know the outcome. If you followed the Florida
recount 20 years ago, you probably assume you've got some idea of how this will play out.
Officials in contested states will carefully count all the available votes, supervised by
bipartisan observers from both campaigns, to reassure all of us it's on the level. If they find
irregularities or they see questions of fraud, we'll all get to learn exactly what those
allegations are and how they were resolved. That's what we did in 2000. Remember hanging chads?
We put them on TV so people could see the ballots for themselves.
In the end, the dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush continued all the way to the
Supreme Court. It took 36 days to resolve and every one of those days, if you remember them,
seemed like a month. That process was excruciating, it required patience and calm, but in the
end, it was well worth it.
For the record, the news organizations in this country covered every moment of it. No one in
any newsroom in America even considered censoring information about what was happening. That
would have been regarded as grotesque and immoral. Then, as now, almost everyone in the media
was a partisan Democrat. But in 2000, they understood that preserving the public's faith in the
system was more important than getting Al Gore or anyone else into the White House. So they
pushed for openness and transparency in the process, and thank God they did.
A lot has changed over two decades. It's entirely possible now that someday soon the news
media will decide to shut this election down. Believe it or not, they effectively have the
power to do that. Let's say officials in Philadelphia produce a large number of newly counted
votes. The Pennsylvania secretary of state hastily ratifies them, puts a seal of approval on
them and then declares Joe Biden the winner.
Winning Pennsylvania would put Joe Biden over the threshold of 270 electoral votes, so Joe
Biden is now the president-elect. But how many of the 69 million Americans who voted for Donald
Trump this week would believe that and accept it at this point? Not very many. Not that anyone
cares, and of course, the fact that no one cares is the reason they voted for Donald Trump in
the first place.
I think Tucker Carlson is wrong. I believe there are enough fraudulent votes to
change the result -- if the recount is done honestly. WI, MI, GA, PA could all flip, even AZ
and NV. The DNC is run by End Justifies Means people who believe everything they do is
justified due to Holocaust, Slavery, yada yada.
MSM is working hard to try to make this a foregone conclusion. Each day we hear about
Biden this Biden that, Biden's Transition Team, Biden's New Cabinet, Biden's Foreign Policy,
Biden's Trade policy Instead of feeling discouraged, I hope this actually gets Trump and his
lawyers fired up to push for recounts. He just filed a new lawsuit in MI. There is no reason
why the recounts have not started in WI, GA and PA. It's total BS. The longer this drags on,
the harder it'll be to overturn the results. They need to press on.
Going forward the GOP needs to push hard for a Voting Integrity Act that mandates all
voter registration must be approved by social security office to verify citizenship status. I
suspect a high number of voters esp. in blue states like CA and WA are non-citizens, from
tens of thousands to millions, since the DMV asks everyone to register to vote and never
check their citizenship status. In WA the ballot used to ask people to confirm they are US
citizens before signing the ballot with indication of fines/jail time for non-citizens who
vote, but they've removed that warning entirely in all ballots since 2016.
The Voting Integrity Act should include a mass audit of the voter registration in every
state, with a national database that detects people who are registered to vote in more than
one state. Even if Trump doesn't prevail due to mass cheating in the recounts, the GOP needs
to put this Voting Integrity Act in place or they will never win another election.
Also, Mayor Giuliani has claimed mamy Cases of Fraud and is Filing Lawsuits as Trump's
Lawyer.
Also, Tucker Carlson has also claimed that his Team have verified a good number of
Reported Incidents.
Statistical Analyses Claimants are coming forward as well.
Those who claim that there were none or not enough - including you, B - need to read
around a bit more and wait before making presumptive assessments when we don't have All the
Claim Cases, related Data, and Votes Affected.
Personally, I've seen enough to believe this Election is Compromised. Dominion are
allegedly vested by the Pelosis (which alone raise a few Red Flags for a RICO
Investigation).
It may be Prudent to Not only Hold Audits; but Redo the Federal Election Seats (WH and
Congress) again with Federal Ballots Monitored by Federal Personnel.
Biden should have been sent to Bethesda/Walter Reed/Hopkins for an Alzheimer's/Dementia
Review Panel (put my Own Mother through the Drill every several years prior to her going to
her Nursing Home); and Hunter should have been Arrested for Crack/Child Molestation while
being further investigated for MoneyLaundering/RICO with Pops.
Giuliani is Confident Here As Well. One thing for Certain, B, is that Giuliani has an
Outstanding Reputation as a Federal Prosecutor; and Does. Not. Bπ££$#!+.
Around. When it comes to Criminal Cases.
I'll rely on Giuliani's Assessments more than anyone else's on this Matter.
Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or
leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in
assets).
A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for
exclusion: (1)
Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an
extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000
were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return
date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots,
was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.
Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the
database or the ballots.
Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.
-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?
In today's episode of America's Next Zionist President, we have an insider giving us all
an accurate description of our beloved US constitutional republic and democracy which we must
fight to protect:
For rational people, the media's outlandish bias and presumptive misinformation will not
end well for their handlers. True, in a fake new soylent green economy, businesses don't need
customers and politicians don't need constituents – you can just manufacture them, and
pay yourself with your own money by decree. But reality has a way of eventually creeping in
(as you gag on your fake beyond meat burger).
The reality here is that we need to take a step back from the media frenzy and recognize
rule of law. Concession cannot even be legally possible for several weeks as it stands today.
And the only excuse for Biden falsely claiming victory is that he is too senile to observe
Constitutional law.
The Don is done. Lindsey and Mitch and their Dem co-conspirators will be thrilled to get
back to business as usual. Motives aside he did change things a bit in between hiring and
firing everyone in sight.
To much of a rocky ride Washington doesn't like that no criminal enterprise does.
Don't cry for Don he'll bounce back this is a man who lost three casinos then went on to
hawking steaks and finally ended up as President. A real life 21st. century Jack Armstrong.
He can write a book play some golf, Melania can go on doing her Eva Gabor impersonation and
Don Jr. and Eric can do whatever it is they do. And as for us we're all on a slow boat to
China most likely to work at one of those Sino-Ivanka Fashion Inc. factories.
Big Brother has spoken. Even Fox News has kicked Trump's ass into the shithole and called
the election for Biden. Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been
instructed to change his tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will
comply. Trump lovers and sympathisers better face up to the bitter reality and take to the
hill to prepare a defense against brutal persecution by their enemies who will come after
them with unimaginable passion right after Jan 20, 2021. They already have THE LIST and names
are being added to it fast and furious. Bread and circus, people!
Come on, get real. American voters were presented with two donkeys and puppets of Israel
as candidates. Millions voted for one or the other of two donkeys both of whom dance to the
beat of Jewish drums. Come to think about it, which American president in recent memory has
not outfawned his predecessor on Israel? Jewish power owns us. End of.
Tucker Carlson said, " At this stage , the fraud that we can confirm does not
seem to be enough to alter the election result." That's a far cry from, "There's not
enough fraud to change the election results." Newsweek's paraphrasing is, therefore, itself
fraudulent and part of the gigantic Democrat gaslighting campaign to convince the nation Joe
Biden is the legitimate winner. It should not be repeated here without the actual quote and a
caveat.
This also goes to the wider issue of trying to be reasonable and fair when dealing with
Democrat cockroaches who are anything but. They will unfailingly distort measured and
diplomatic language. It's best to make no concessions to them.
I don't give a rat's butt about trump or biden. As far as I'm concerned they'll always be
two draft dodger/shirkers and nothing more. Interesting how both of them hid in college in
the 60's and refused to serve as privates in the army but think they should be able to have
the power to send men in harms way.
Actually, the Zionists and the Jewish vote generally were overwhelmingly for Biden. They
were very hostile to Trump. Why would they do this if Trump were a Zionist minion ? Because
he's not.
Trump wants to normalise relations with Russia and pull US troops out of the Middle East,
including Syria. These moves are very much opposed to Zionist aims and the interests of
Israel. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu was very quick to recognise Biden as the winner. That's
because Biden really is a Zionist minion.
@Roacheforque every TDS normie discussed it like it had a real chance of occurring
despite not having thought out how exactly how such a ridiculous event would take place on a
practical level. Added to which the 'homey' comments coming from diaper Bill and Kameltoe
Harris have a overly saccharine flavour to them, more likely scripted with great thought put
in as opposed to spontaneous quotes from some gosh darn nice people who want to heal the
nation such that anyone trying to prevent them from doing so necessarily must be evil.
If the Zerohedge article is accurate, thank you for posting it. If it has weaknesses
perhaps some poster could point them out. It is the most sane thing that I have read on the
topic since the 3rd.
No Surrender! President Trump Should Not Concede -- No Matter What
Sure just like Hillary should not have conceded in 2016, when they had strong evidence of
electronic vote rigging.
Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or
leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in
assets).
The Zio Banking elite wins hands down right now Biden or Trump. At least Biden might keep
some social services like Soc Sec, Medicare, and Obama Care!!!! Yes the public deserves to
get something for paying all these taxes not just the Oligarchial super rich who were openly
looting the Fed budget under Trump. The unthinking and unemployed working/middle class,
especially the Whites amongst them seem to put their crisis of identity ahead of their well
being. Daaah.
What did Trump (led by his handlers Kushner/Ivanka) do for the little guy except fill
their heads with racial antagonisms and anti-government innuendo (some true but most false).
For sure he fulfilled every Zio-Israeli fantasy at the expense of US interests. Yes, no
problem for the unquestioning MAGA types, but where did he lead America to, to the precipice
of a pending national disaster?
So stop tearing down the constitutional republic, preserve what the general public still
has left to protect their individual rights and economic well being. Obviously the elite is
pushing for civil unrest so they can bring on a military and dictatorial regime, where all
sorts of new control straps can be implemented.
Kirkpatrick you are shameful for stoking the embers of civil unrest! Nobody is calling for
unity and statesmen like leadership these days on RU report. Biden is looking much more
leader like than cry baby Trump. Trump as you like to say -- -- -- -- – YOUR
FIRED!!!!!Man-up and get out and move on and get a life.
Only idiots and fools still want to carry Fake and Slimy Politicians on top of their
shoulders. Find some brains and lobby for your own interests, no politician in this system
will work for you unless forced to by their electorate.
[Reflections on the late election, by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].
Because I began my journey to 'red-pilled' awareness thanks to Curtis 'Mencius Moldbug'
Yarvin, I naturally clicked on the link and read his piece. One has travelled far since
reading his 'Unqualified Reservations' blog way back on 2007-08, and I now agree with much of
Andrew Joyce's recent critique of Yarvin ( https://www.unz.com/article/jews-in-the-cathedral-a-response-to-curtis-yarvin/
)
However, I frequently chuckled while reading Yarvin's piece linked by James Kirkpatrick,
and marvelled anew at the quality and brilliance of his insights. In this regard it rather
took me back in time twelve or so years.
A sample or two:
After describing how Trump could legally take full and absolute personal power for the
length of his second term, Yarvin points out that what is required amounts to nothing less
than 'regime change', and states that 'A true regime change must be a revolution in every
sense of the word Of course, since the right is order and the left is chaos, the left-wing
revolution is a butcher and the right-wing revolution is a surgeon. If ours needs to keep its
bandages on for a few days, theirs can barely be sold as hamburger. And even before her
stitches are out, America feels and looks better than ever.'
He goes on:
'One lesson that should be appreciated by all sides in all civic conflicts is that force
is not another word for violence. Force is the opposite of violence. Violence is bad, and
force is good. Violence is chaos, and force is order. Violence is slow and force is fast.
'If you can win by force, what are you waiting for? Do it immediately. If you can't win
without violence, you probably can't win at all, and you probably shouldn't try. Much
bloodshed could be saved if all young persons were educated with these simple and timeless
Machiavellian principles'.
And earlier, he explains the role of elections in a 'democracy' as being to assess the
power of each side's support, and that this power ought to reflect actual physical strength
and or courage, remarking:
'The fundamental purpose of a democratic election is to test the strength of the sides in
a civil conflict, without anyone actually getting hurt. The majority wins because the
strongest side would win. Better to measure that by counting heads, than knocking heads; and
counting heads produces a reasonable guess as to who would win a head-knocking contest. Same
outcome, fewer concussions: a Pareto optimization.
'But this guess is much better if it actually measures humans who are both willing and
able to walk down the street and show up. Anyone who cannot show up at the booth is unlikely
to show up for the civil war. This is one of many reasons that an in-person election is a
more accurate election. (If voters could be qualified by physique, it would be even more
accurate.)
'My sense is that in many urban communities, voting by proxy in some sense is the norm.
The people whose names are on the ballots really exist; and almost all of them actually did
support China Joe. Or at least, preferred him. The extent to which they perform any tangible
political action, including physically going to the booth, is very low; so is their
engagement with the political system. The demand for records of their engagement is very
high, because each such datum cancels out some huge, heavily-armed redneck with a bass
boat.'
Your obsession with Jews is really misplaced here. As soon as anyone starts blaming the
Jews, that person has immediately branded himself unfit for further comment.
Trump had four years to do something about election fraud. Didn't do a thing. Kinda funny
Trump and those Senator Georgians that sucked up to blacks thought blacks would actually vote
for them. Georgia and trump lost! Maybe taught them a lesson! I doubt it. Georgia has been
overrun with Hispanics and absolutely flooded with H-1B Indians for years too . The GOP has
committed suicide and taken the rest of America down with it. But hey, they made a few bucks
doing it! Maybe trump can do another publicity stunt with a rapper to save his campaign.
The problems with the election are just a mirror image of the problems with this country.
Fake money, fake border, fake pandemic, fake scholarship, fake news, fake food, fake votes.
Did I miss anything?
@TheTrumanShow ll decide. and failing that, the congress shall decide.. If a candidate
interferes with that constitutional process, changes or alters it to suit a personal
circumstance, he or she invites the crowd operated guillotine, i fear.
I agree the election process in many states is subject to corruption.. but Trump had four
years to change that process. like most things he did not provide the leadership needed to
get the masses to help him do just that.. Now Trump complains ..to the very people who
expected more from him .. and seeks to circumvent their intentions. I hope not?
I learned long ago: the pilot that does not pay the mechanic, pays the undertaker, when
the engine quits at 15000 feet.
I am an Australian living in an Australian country town. My email address is recognisably
Australian. I have never lived in the US. I have never even been there in fact.
Yet I have been inundated with election propaganda from the Democrats (from the other side
nary a peep).
Recently an organisation that goes under the name "Fight for Reform"invited me, as a "Top
Democrat in your state", to sign a card to congratulate "Joe and Kamala" testyifying that I
too had been crying "tears of joy" about their election.
When I didn't react I was asked, virtually the day after, why I hadn't done so. They were
"running low on support from"registered Democrats" "so please
Well, if you think that Biden and Harris will serve Israel any less than Trump, then you
should be willing to purchase my Jewless estate of 500,000 acres in NY, which comes with 6000
square foot fully restored 19th century house, a 2500 square foot guest house, and a horse
barn. It also comes with both a real pond and a ce- ment pond. I'm asking only
$600,000. It's a steal of a bargain.
In other words, according to you, the Jews as individuals, organizations, or as a people
may never be blamed for anything. Methinks it is YOU wearing the brand that says "unfit for
further comment".
Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this country -- American
citizens or
LOL! I haven't seen the words "sovereignty" and "American people" in the same sentence for
quite some time. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not simply restricted to American people,
as it applies to all peoples of the West.
We must muster the will to shift this balance of power.
Whining about jail time over tax laws is why Trump has to fight? He can tell us
deplorables it is for us. Its not. It will be about preserving his empire. As much as I want
the corrupt PA democrats to finally get theirs in this legal process, I support Trump in his
fight for himself. If you twerps are allowed to destroy someone like a President Trump, just
imagine what you will do to a mere lunch lady for using the wrong pronoun. Please for once in
your miserable life admit your side is not made up of good people but rather a whole bunch of
totalitarian dictatorial wannabes. Scarily you keep moving the goalposts of your endgame
because every victory is never enough to satiate the rumble in your hollow souls.
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website
is here and you can follow her on
Twitter @caitoz
'Trump
derangement syndrome' didn't come from Trump. It came from abusive media trying to spin the
evils of his presidency as somehow worse than any other US president's.
The word "coup" is being thrown about in American liberal media today, not because US
liberals suddenly became uncomfortable with the fact that their nation constantly stages coups
and topples governments around the world as a matter of routine policy, but because they are
all talking about (you guessed it) Donald Trump.
To be clear, none of the high-powered influencers who have been promoting the use of this
word actually believe there is any possibility that Donald Trump will somehow remain in office
after January of next year when he loses his legal appeals against the official results of the
election, which would be the thing that a coup is. There is no means or institutional support
through which the sitting president could accomplish such a thing. This is not a coup, it's a
glorified temper tantrum. Trump will leave office at the appointed time.
The establishment narrative managers are not terrifying their audiences with this word
because they believe there is any danger of a coup actually happening. They are doing it
because it's their last chance to use Trump to psychologically abuse their audiences for
clicks.
... ... ...
It is not Trump himself who's been making people feel terrified of a tyrannical Russian
agent ending democracy in America and ruling with an iron fist, it is years of shrieking,
hysterical coverage about Trump from the mass media.
Without all the deranged and persistent fearmongering, driven by a disdain for Trump's
unrefined narrative management
style and an insatiable hunger for ratings and clicks, it would never have occurred to
Americans that they should be more terrified of this president than of any other sh***y
Reaganite Republican. The Russian collusion narrative which dominated most of Trump's
presidency
turned out tobe essentially
nothing . The concentration camps, millions of deportations and armed militias driving
non-whites out of the country that we were promised never came; he never even
came anywhere close to Obama's deportation numbers and his
support from minorities actually went up. He hasn't been any more warlike than his
predecessors overall, and by some measures arguably less so. Most Americans actually reported that
their lives had improved over Trump's term before the pandemic hit.
If people had just been given raw information about Trump's presidency, they would have seen
a lot of bad things, but things that are bad in the same way all the horrible aspects of the
most destructive government on earth are bad. They wouldn't have known to be horrified and
anxious and have headaches and irritable bowel syndrome. They would have handled themselves in
about the same way they always handled themselves during the administration of a president they
didn't like.
Instead, they were psychologically terrorized. Made frightened, sick and traumatized by mass
media pundits who only care about ratings and clicks, as was made clear when CBS chief Les
Moonves famously
said that Trump is bad for America but great for CBS. Dragged through years of Russia
hysteria and Trump hysteria with any excuse to spin Trump's presidency as a remarkable
departure from norms, when in reality it was anything but. It was a fairly conventional
Republican presidency.
In reality, though most of them probably did not realize it, this is what Americans were
actually voting against when they turned out in record numbers to cast their votes. Not against
Trump, but against this continued psychological abuse they've been suffering both directly and
indirectly from the mass media. Against being bashed in the face by shrieking, hysterical
bull***t that hurts their bodies and makes them feel crazy, and against the unpleasantness of
having to interact with stressed-out compatriots who haven't been putting up well with the
abuse.
It wasn't a "Get him out" vote, it was a "Make it stop" vote.
Meanwhile, another pernicious effect of making Trump seem uniquely horrible has been
retroactively making his predecessors seem nice by comparison, which is why George W Bush now
enjoys majority support among Democrats
after years of unpopularity. Their depravity is hidden behind a media-generated wall labeled
"NOT TRUMP" . And when Biden steps into office, his depravity will be hidden from view in the
same way, neutering all mainstream opposition to his most deadly and dangerous
actions .
The First Rule , 5 hours ago
I certainly hope this isn't True. You should never surrender to Evil.
Too many people succumb to the psychological warfare that has been raging against us for 5
decades. It is very difficult to break free from the indoctrination regardless of
intelligence or education. The backbone of the DemonRat organization is a very strong emotion
that overcomes all logic and reason. It is HATE. Today it is called by the gentle name of
Identity Politics. Nevertheless, it is still a HATE based psychological manipulation. Women
need to HATE men. Blacks need to HATE everyone. Whites need to HATE themselves. Everybody
needs to HATE Trump.
Did anybody vote FOR Biden or Harris?
The DemonRats have the Deep State covering, aiding and abetting their insurrection. As we
have seen, the stupid white people support the peaceful protests and are played like a violin
by the professional agitators likely trained by the CIA & FBI. The BLM aristocracy claims
to be "trained Marxists". Trained by whom? Nobody asks.
The cops are used like trained dogs to attack everyone who opposes the BLM/Antifa
sanctioned riots to the point where citizens are afraid of the cops and the BLM/Antifa people
use the cops for target practice, and the cops just take it. Nobody really respects the FBI
or the cops anymore.
Then there is the constant 24/7 drum beat of propaganda from the MSM and social media
driving people crazy.
Welcome to the world of Kamala Pelosi.
With Trump gone, who will they hate next?
DemonRats: The Party of Lies & HATE
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of
your own choosing.
- Orwell
archon , 2 hours ago
Every time Maddow speaks she reminds me that we're living in clownworld. Lets not forget
this is coming from people who spent the last four years attempting their own coup.
cankles' server , 4 hours ago
I'm not sure if twitter deleted but here's the youtube link
Rubert's media empire was just a stepping stone for gigs like a sitting board of director
with Genie Oil. Even with that Fox News has always been neocon. If most conservative types
weren't enamored with supporting the troops, who will be just like the cops in supporting the
establishment in any civil war, then they would have known Fox News was controlled opposition
for the deep state.
Rupert Murdoch's heirs are #NeverTrump Libtards. They have been systematically
installing SJW Globalists for some time. The day-to-day programming has flipped to Fake
Stream Media propaganda. It is no surprise that they went full TDS for election coverage.
The above link will provide you with a FREE KlowdTV subscription to OAN and eleven other
channels for the remainder of 2020. Easy to do, two quick steps. DUMP FOX! Pass it on.
Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been instructed to change his
tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will comply.
Yes, Carlson's program last night was decidedly more milquetoast than the night before.
His choice of topics was much more mundane. Perhaps he has gotten the word.
Tucker Carlson is toeing the Fox editorial line by claiming not enough fraudulent votes to
change the outcome. The only question is how was he coerced into making this statement -- was
it the carrot or the stick? Both? The stick would be he gets fired from Fox. The carrot would
be he gets major pay raise, promotion, or even getting help set up as front runner for
2024.
TC is no longer to be trusted. I have felt that about him for some time as his website
Daily Caller started toeing the Zionist line with increasing hostility towards China this
past year. He's now just controlled opposition like Stephen Miller, Breitbart.
Note that Carlson did NOT say, as the article falsely states, "Tucker Carlson Says There's
Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results", he said:
At this stage, the fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the
election result . We should be honest and tell you that. Of course, that could change,"
he said, on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight.
I believe Carlson will spotlight the fraud claims on his program tonight.
Third, on the international front, we can expect even more hysterical Russia bashing
(the Dems all hate Russia with a passion, especially since they have brainwashed themselves
for four years that "Putin" had "attacked" the US elections). But there is really nothing
the US can do to Russia, it is way too late for that. So I would expect even more hot air
than from the Trump Administration, and probably not much more action, although that is by
no means certain, since a braindead nominal President like Biden would not have Trump's
intelligence to understand that a war against Russia, China or Iran would end in a
disaster: Dems always start wars to try to convince the public that they are "tough"
(Dukakis in his M-1 tank).
The Dems don't hate Russia it is used as a bogeyman to re direct the populace anget at the
neoliberal social system .
Russia, China, Iran and all the rest of the world probably can't believe their good
fortune the US is destroying itself.
Biden will not be in control of the US, or any part of it he will be in the corner pissing
his pants. The Deep State will be calling the shots.
By C. J. Hopkins , award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His dystopian novel, ' Zone 23 ', is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. His essays and other works can be found at,
and he can be reached via, cjhopkins.com
or consentfactory.org . OK, so,
that was not cool. For one terrifying moment there, it actually looked like GloboCap was going
to let Russian-Asset Hitler win.
Hour after hour on election night, states on the map kept turning red, or pink, or some
distinctly non-blue color. Wisconsin Michigan Georgia Florida. It could not be happening, and
yet it was. What other explanation was there? The Russians were stealing the election
again!
But, of course, GloboCap was just playing with us. They're a bunch of practical jokers,
those GloboCap guys. Naturally, they couldn't resist the chance to wind us up just one more
time.
Seriously, though, while I enjoy a good prank, I still have a number of liberal friends,
many of whom were on the verge of suffering major heart attacks as they breathlessly waited for
the corporate media to confirm that they had successfully voted a literal
dictator out of power. (A few of them suffer from IBS or other gastrointestinal disorders,
so, in light of the current toilet-paper shortage caused by the Return of the Apocalyptic
Plague, toying with them like that was especially cruel.)
But, whatever. That's water under the bridge. The good news is, the nightmare is
over! Literal Hitler and his underground army of Russia-loving white supremacists have been
vanquished! Decency has been restored! Globalization has risen from the
dead!
... ... ..
Meanwhile, the GloboCap propaganda has reached some new post-Orwellian level. After four
long years of "RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION!" now, suddenly, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS
ELECTION FRAUD IN THE USA!"
That's right, once again, millions of liberals, like that scene in ' 1984' where the
Party switches official enemies right in the middle of the Hate-Week speech, have been ordered
to radically reverse their "reality," and hysterically deny the existence of the very
thing they have been hysterically alleging for four solid years and they are actually doing
it!
... ... ///
Marian1637 7 hours ago
I can not comprehend
that democrats do not blame Putin for Biden winning!
Reilly 3 hours ago
Very funny, bravo!
Nothing like a bit of slapstick, with a dose of reality also in the middle of a waking
nightmare about to happen. ;))
DeoGratias 4 hours ago
One correction : it is not GloboCap it is
GloboComs. The objective of communism is to create two classes of a society : rulers and
workers. Thus GloboCaps are GloboComs.
Winter7Mute 5 hours ago
A reliable way to make people
believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished
from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact. I'm not even
sure if most journalists or reporters know what their even talking about, when writing these
articles.
Vidarr Kerr 5 hours ago
There is such a thing as Too Much Sarcasm.
EarthBotV2 Vidarr Kerr 4 hours ago
I disagree. The liberazi "thinks" with the gut -- as in "What does your gut tell you?"...
"... But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems, and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak. ..."
Interesting piece by Beinart about the obvious question that isn't being asked: Why did
Trump lose? After all he had the advantages of incumbency, until February the stock market was
booming, wages were rising, things were going great.
Answer: because he was not nearly radical enough. Because he was a weak leader who was
captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because
he was and is a terrible negotiater. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell,
and, well the rest is history.
Question: will 'super Trump' in 4 or 8 years time manage to follow the Eastern European
template and create a genuine populist party? (economically social democratic, particularly
concentrating on pensioners: extremely hostile to immigration, skeptical of environmental
issues, culturally conservative?). If so the future is the Republicans' but it's a big if.
...he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way
round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiator. He
continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.
All true. But Biden victory in some ways looks like Catch 22 for neoliberal Dems (Will the
Democrats Ever Make Sense of This Week? – New Republic):
In sum, if the results we have hold, Joe Biden will win the election and preside over a
divided Congress. A chastened and anxious Democratic caucus will continue to hold the
House.
A triumphant Senate Republican caucus will obviously destroy his major legislative
agenda. Biden will assuredly turn to policy by executive action, just as Barack Obama did
late in his legislatively stymied administration.
When he does, Republicans will do all they can to send those actions to a 6–3
conservative Supreme Court Biden will be unable to pack or meaningfully reform.
In defeating Trump, Democrats will have avoided their worst-case scenario. Instead, they
will have won the worst possible Biden victory, a political situation that will be a
nightmare all its own.
Trump, with his "national neoliberalism," was an anomaly in its own right. And such things
do not last long. So this is a kind of "return to normal" -- return to power of the
"internationalist" faction of Oligarchy who is linked to globalization (and constitutes the
majority of the US oligarchy), which was unexpectedly defeated in 2016 and since then foght
tooth and nail for the return to power. And such "normalization" is the most logical outcome
of the 2020 elections and is to be expected.
But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems,
and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right
nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like
Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal
Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak.
That may spell troubles for the well-being of the PMC (professional and management class)
to which we all belong.
I would add that the fact that Biden victory legitimized Russia-gate and abuse of their
power by intelligence agencies is also a problem. I suspect that Neo-McCarthyism, in the long
run, might backfire.
Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is "happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal" after
he suggested finding "common ground" with Democrats on immigration.
During a segment Friday night, Carlson called out Graham -- who just won reelection in South Carolina --
for suggesting to the Senate Republican caucus that their agenda next year could include working with Democrats on amnesty for
11 to 22 million illegal aliens. Carlson asked:
Who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who plans to collaborate, particularly who on the right side, the Republican
side, the side that said it was defending you. Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track of just so we know
who we're dealing with here.
I was particularly interested in the comments of Lindsey Graham who just won reelection in the state of South Carolina because
conservatives voted for him the people around Trump put a great deal of pressure on Lindsey Graham to send them money, so after
a day or two, he made a great show of sending them $500,000.
But then on the issues that matter, Lindsey Graham immediately ran away from the ideas that he claimed to support and said
that he would be happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal, like within hours of the election.
You have a deeply flawed party that refuses to protect its own voters and represent their legitimate interests but they are
the only hope that this country doesn't descend into something unrecognizable. It puts 70 million decent people in a tough spot.
Already, America First conservatives and immigration reformers are
pushing back against Graham's comments.
"The new base of the Republican Party is the American working class, of all races. 'Common ground' on immigration reform is code
for amnesty, and amnesty is an insult to the millions who voted GOP in the election," Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities President
Lou Murray told Breitbart News.
Currently, there are about 20 million Americans who are jobless or underemployed, mostly due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis,
but all of whom want full-time jobs.
Economists have found that their
job opportunities and wages can be easily diminished by
high immigration levels.
One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies' Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the
immigrant portion of American workers' occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born
American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent, since
more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.
The high immigration policy is a boon for giant corporations, real estate investors, Wall Street, university systems, and Big
Agriculture that can cash in on an economy that offers low wages to a flooded U.S. labor market.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
To start one's own party is not so easy and outright impossible under the current conditions. If the majority of GOP supports
him then the best course would be to purge and reinvigorate GOP: he should issue a call of action to his supporters and create the
situation when those who use their membership to their own benefits will be forced to step down or cancel the membership. By purging
I don't mean filling it in with 'yes-men': they don't have to be obliged to love Trump; criticism is essential, but these people
have to be able to differentiate between the personal and common when on service. They all have to be loyal to the America First.
If you call yourself 'Republican' then behave like one or choose another party. Such RINOs are materially motivated - they never
couldn't build a career in the Dems Party, especially now, with the Squad; they can't start their own Party - nobody will vote them,
because they'll be the party of traitors and sell-outs. Benny Too Too
deploritarian 2 days ago
No your corrupt corp fraud media did it to him along with hussein osama's weaponized US agencies! Now go back to watching CNN
lying hate media to get even more stupid
With 25 Million Illegal Aliens in our Country the Democrats have an absolute Lock on this and future Elections by enabling them
to Vote. No Voter ID laws, Sanctuary Cities awarding them all Privileges of US Citizens from Drivers Licenses and access to all welfare
state programs. We are not a Sovereign Nation any longer. ANITFA called it in their Protests "No More BORDERS. Democrats support
this Treasonous Group because it gives them perpetual control of Washington.
Elibar deploritarian 2 days ago
Better European papers? LOL! I live in Europe and can tell you they're every bit as lying and partisan as the MSM EVERYWHERE!
Practically every European national broadcaster and newspaper gets s o r o s funding, unless you happen to read Hungarian. For instance,
the long defunct Italian Radical party's radio station was close to collapse due to lack of support. They are now back on air admitting
the Hungarian pos gave them almost 400,000 euro if they supported 'immigration'. Read the Beano, it's far more informative.
The GOP will stand with Trump, and Trump will be legally reelected. The Michigan Legislature
just convened a special session to consider the widespread ballot stuffing, technical
"glitches," and other suspicious activity in their election. Everyone in Michigan knows that
Trump and James won that election in a landslide.
The Democrats all stopped counting in numerous states on election night to give them time to
"create" some extra mail-in Biden votes.
The legislature, controlled by the GOP, will invalidate the election if there is evidence of
fraud. They have the Constitutional right to instruct the electors. America will not let the
Democrats steal an election the way they do in Venezuela. THIS JUST IN: The Wisconsin
legislature, controlled also by the GOP, has been called to investigate voter fraud too!!
Milwaukee had an unprecedented 91% return rate, more than any precinct in history by 20 points.
No fraud? We'll see. TruLogix Dennis
Mastin •
2 days ago
Yeah good luck. The work has been done. The ballots removed are long gone. GOP is to blame
this was obvious and they put nothing in place to stop this knowing it was most likely part of
the plan with all of the dems fighting tooth and nail for mail in. Bullet2354 Avery Bierce •
2 days ago • edited
In places like Michigan, more republicans requested Absentee Ballots than Democrats...
And More republicans returned their Absentee Ballots than Democrats....
The 20% could be mostly Biden... but 80-20%. Dems did pick up votes... but so did Trump!
And while I know you feel some republicans did not like Trump... all polling done this year
shows 89-94% of Republicans were supporting Trump - actually much higher than Dem support for
Biden...
- the Trump 'Voter Enthusiasm was off the charts"..... Biden had historic LOW 'voter enthusiasm
most of the summer.
Also - many Bernie People (about 25% in spring) stated they would never vote Democrat after
what the DNC did to Bernie in 2016 and 2020. Maybe the came back to Biden - but I don't know...
I did not see Bernie people rallying for Joe at all.
I think the "ILLEGAL BALLOT ISSUE" IS NOW WHAT THE FOCUS is moving too...
Voting Laws were abused... Late ballots, fake registrations, 'the dead,' ghost mail in
ballot.... -and intentionally and illegally manipulated ballots - even poll workers admitting
they tossed Trump votes because they hate him so much...
Of course, support for Biden isn't in issue. Exasperation with Trump is clearly the
issue.
Independents don't generally support Trump this year.
I don't think many Bernie people would vote for Trump. That doesn't make much sense.
Yes, clearly Trump wants lawyers to argue about ballots being illegal. I guess he thinks they
might be able to show enough ballots were illegal, and that most of the illegal ballots were
for Biden. Ball is in their court on that, I guess. But in court, Trump won't be able to argue
in the form of tweets that say "we've been hearing about so much fraud." Time to put
up.
Court challenges are coming.... that is for sure...
Supreme Court already has the PA rulings and is looking at that.
I do think overall Election Integrity has been compromised... at almost every level and
every step of the process. Ghost ballots sent out, Mail in ballots sold for cash, 'the dead,'
Fake Ids', out of state voters voting multiple times, dates and signatures altered, ballots
trashed by partisan poll workers, ballots altered, software 'errors' (that seem to favor one
party about 100% of the time) ...
It is too much.... I have seen a few poll workers arrested for trying to slide multiple
votes through a machine - and I though 'well just few votes won't matter' - but now... the
Trust is broken...
If anything good can come of all this - I hope the "Voting Process" is overhauled 100%...
maybe even to the level of BlockChain.... Bullet2354 Mike •
a day ago
My concern is not the actual count... however.
My concern is that Voter Laws were abused... significantly.
illegal votes counted, illegal processes used - a really corrupted vote system..... The Law
was not followed.
2016 MI was bad enough with the failed RECOUNT.... Detroit has always had massive counting
errors, bribery scandals, constant inconsistencies, pay to vote schemes, 'walking around money'
- and the STATE has know this for 60 years! ... yet never moved to fix it. I think it has grown
'out of control' in 2020.
I used to 'give a little' for a few fraudulent votes here or there.... a few Dead people get
a ballot... a few data base errors.
This year - the Fraud has crossed the line.
I don't trust the count. - VOTE INTEGRITY HAS COLLAPSED.
By Graham Hryce , an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been
published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator
and Quadrant. It's only when you compare what is happening in America to the likes of
Australia, which also recently held elections, that you appreciate just how alarming the
situation in the US is. Civil war is a real possibility.
Despite the fact that America and Australia are both liberal democracies sharing a common
cultural heritage, key aspects of the US presidential and congressional elections appear
extraordinary from an Australian perspective.
To paraphrase Tolstoy: all happy democracies may resemble one another, but every unhappy
democracy is apparently unhappy in its own way.
In recent months, elections have taken place in three Australian states and territories. In
each of these contests, the incumbent government has been returned with an increased majority,
while in America, President Donald Trump has been narrowly defeated by Joe Biden.
Leaving aside the disparate results, the following important differences between the
Australian and the American elections are clear: Firstly, the comparative irrelevance of
Covid-19 as an issue in the American election. Secondly, the dominance of a crude populist
pro-capitalist ideology (favouring business interests and profits over lives) in the American
electoral contests. And finally, Trump's predictable and completely unprincipled response to
his defeat.
These differences augur badly for the future of democracy in America – in fact, they
indicate that it may be in its death throes. In Australia, however, recent events have
strengthened democracy, enabling a perspective to emerge which comprehends the disaster that
may be about to engulf the US.
The outcome of the recent elections in Australia turned on the issue of how incumbent
governments had handled the pandemic. Australia is a federal polity, comprising six states and
two territories, with a population of some 25 million. To date, it has recorded 27,000 Covid-19
cases and 900 Covid-19-related deaths – one of the best outcomes of all Western
democracies. America, by way of contrast, has seen 10 million cases and chalked up over 250,000
deaths.
Australia's remarkable result has been achieved by an early federal government closure of
national borders, strict state government lockdowns and the closure of state borders.
Each of the recent Australian elections was fought on the coronavirus. The Queensland result
is the most instructive. The state's Labor government imposed strict lockdowns and closed its
borders very early on in the pandemic. The conservative parties opposed this, and the two
Trump-like populist parties – One Nation and the Palmer Party – spent the election
campaigning for the immediate lifting of all restrictions and opening of the state borders.
Last week, the Queensland Labor government was returned to power with an increased majority,
and the One Nation and Palmer Party populist vote – primarily the vote of an older
demographic – collapsed and crossed over to Labor.
The situation in America could not be more different. Trump refused to adopt a national
policy to deal with Covid-19. He ignored and/or minimised the risk of the spread of the virus,
promoted untested cures and belittled the advice of his own public health experts. He also
consistently opposed all lockdown measures and other efforts by state governments to control
the pandemic, and blatantly lied to voters, telling them that the virus was under control when
it has continued to spread at an alarming rate.
Despite all this, Trump only narrowly lost the presidency, and, more astoundingly, the
Republican Party easily retained control of the Senate. The 'blue wave' in favour of Biden and
the Democrats – predicted by almost all pollsters – did not
materialise.
One explanation for the relative unimportance of the coronavirus in the US elections is the
dominance in America of a crude pro-capitalist ideology that favours the interests of business
and the economy over the health of the American people. This ideology has political adherents
in all Western democracies (including Australia), but only in America could mainstream
politicians fervently embrace it and hope to win office.
And Trump and the Republican Party did this when the Covid-19 second wave was sweeping
through Europe, compelling political leaders there (including conservatives like Boris Johnson
and Emmanuel Macron) to reintroduce strict shutdowns and other measures to deal with it.
Fifty years ago, the historian Louis Hartz, in the Liberal
Tradition in America , portrayed America as a nation trapped in a liberal, pro-capitalist
ideological straitjacket that prevented it from dealing effectively with the social and
economic challenges that confronted it. Hartz's analysis seems even more relevant now than it
did then.
The most extraordinary aspect of the US election, however, has been Trump's – and the
Republican Party's – refusal to accept defeat. It is this that portends, more than
anything else, the demise of American democracy.
Not surprisingly, Trump has reacted to his defeat by alleging that Biden "stole the
election" by means of widespread electoral fraud. Trump maintains that he won the election.
Even before the counting of votes had concluded, he commenced a number of legal actions –
most of which are doomed to failure – challenging the results in various states.
Donald Trump Jr.
urged Republican supporters to "go to total war" to keep his father in office.
Trump's former adviser, Steve Bannon (who is currently facing criminal charges)
called for the beheading of senior public health officer Anthony Fauci and the FBI
director, Christopher A. Wray.
Powerful Republican politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, have vigorously supported
Trump's response to his defeat. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican powerbroker, predicted
that Biden's victory would generate a build-up of rage that would keep Trump in power.
Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has
urged members of the Electoral College – whose votes determine the outcome of the
presidential election – to break with convention and give their votes to Trump, despite
the fact that voters in their states preferred Biden. This unprecedented suggestion, which has
not been disavowed by Trump and his supporters, constitutes a serious attack on the mechanism
at the heart of the US presidential electoral process.
It also offers Trump a way to stay in power – because if the Electoral College does
not conclude its deliberations by mid-December, it falls to the Republican-dominated Congress
to decide who becomes president.
Trump and the Republican Party have plunged America into an extraordinary political crisis
that will not be resolved for some time. Trump will not voluntarily give up office, and it is
uncertain how this impasse will be resolved.
The president's response to his defeat has astounded conservative Australian politicians.
When asked to comment this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison could only say that he was an
observer of and not a participant in the US democratic process. Some of his colleagues,
however, have been severely critical of Trump.
More ominously, the Covid-19 pandemic is intensifying dramatically in America, with 100,00
new cases now being recorded each day, along with 1,100 deaths. This ongoing health crisis can
only exacerbate and intensify the current political crisis.
At the weekend, we saw protests in major American cities. Most disturbingly, armed Trump
supporters massed outside an Arizona voting centre in an attempt to stop the count. Such events
could become more common as the political crisis intensifies. It is inevitable that both sides
of the intractable political and ideological divide in America will become increasingly more
irrational in the coming months.
It is all very well for the Democratic Party elites to criticise Trump and his supporters
for believing in conspiracy theories about the pandemic and mass electoral fraud. But these
elites have themselves been peddling equally irrational views about catastrophic climate
change, critical race theory and identity politics for decades. After all, whose world view is
really more irrational, Trump's or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's?
Joe Biden's
victory speech on the weekend was predictable and bland. It is all very well to announce
"a time to heal" and tell Americans "to remain calm and patient" and that "the
purpose of our politics is not unending warfare." But these are just meaningless platitudes
in the current circumstances.
Whatever happens, Biden will not be sworn in as president until January 20 next year. He
cannot begin to deal with the pandemic until then, when it will be too late, nor can he do
anything about the civil unrest that will engulf America. And even if Biden does take office as
president in January, the Republican-dominated Senate will no doubt block his entire
legislative program – such as it is.
America today is in a very similar position to that which it was in in the 1850s in the
lead-up to the Civil War. It is deeply divided over fundamental issues of principle, which have
calcified to the degree that rational debate is no longer possible. The political system,
previously based on compromise, has become so ideologically divided that compromise is no
longer possible.
In such circumstances, civil war becomes a very real possibility. But any coming war will be
very different from the American Civil War of the 1860s. That war was fought, in effect,
between two nations with regular armies.
The coming civil war in America will be a disorganised bitter social conflict fought in
cities by armed groups of citizens on the barricades, much like the European revolutions of
1830 and 1848 – with one important difference. The insurgents in the European revolutions
were fighting for democracy – whereas the participants in America's coming civil war will
be engaged in a war to destroy it.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
So neoliberal Dems gaslighted everybody with Russiagate for four years, staged Ukrainegate,
and now cry for unity. Funny, is not it
For four years, Democrats branded Donald Trump an illegitimate president and treated him as
such. Then-President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plotted with FBI Director James Comey a
way to oust Trump's pick for national security advisor, Michael Flynn.
Now they face the results of the attempt to depose Trump via color revolution (aka
Russiagate), the result of neo-McCarthyism hysteria and cry uncle. To paraphrase Tolstoy: all
happy democracies may resemble one another, but every unhappy democracy is apparently unhappy in
its own way.
Wayne Dupree has been to the White House to talk to President Trump about race relations
and appeared at election events for him. He was named in Newsmax's top 50 Influential
African-American Republicans in 2017, and, in 2016, served as a board member of the National
Diversity Coalition for Donald Trump. Before entering politics, he served for eight years in
the US Air Force. His website is here: www.waynedupree.com . Follow him on Twitter @WayneDupreeShow
I've participated in eight elections including this one, and I've never before witnessed the
open hostility and vitriol that's been aimed at President Trump.
No president was ever abused like Trump was from day one. The Republicans didn't cooperate
with Barack Obama at all, but any thinking person can see the difference between the way Obama
was treated and the way Trump has been treated. The past four years have set a dangerous
precedent, and you know what they say about karma.
Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer refused to work with President Trump
on anything, but now the socialists want the Republicans to work with them. Interpretation: we
want the Republicans to work with us as long as they believe everything we believe and do
everything to help us, even if, in their eyes, it destroys America. No dissent will be
accepted.
You really have to wonder about this arrogance from the Democrats and their call for unity,
don't you? Joe Biden is calling for unity because he doesn't want to face the constant
scrutiny the Trump administration faced. After all, do you think the hundreds of millions he
received in campaign contributions didn't come with strings attached?
Right now, there's not enough critical thinking for unity to happen; our emotions govern too
many of us. The media have played on that for four years. They convinced millions of
Americans they would have to be insane to consider re-electing Trump, even though most
Americans are sick of the establishment politicians and their big empty promises, sick of their
endless and expensive foreign wars, sick of a sluggish economy, and tired of the outsourcing of
American jobs.
How can unity happen when the rift between liberals and conservatives is larger than ever,
and the two sides envision this country's future in vastly different ways? How will half of
the American population ever again trust their sources of news and information when nearly
every outlet has lost all pretense of objectivity? Every bit of reporting has become an opinion
piece.
In marriage, they call these irreconcilable differences. It may not happen in my lifetime,
but this country would do well to consider a peaceful separation.
Our national media have failed us. And that's all media, including social. They caught us
all hook, line, and sinker. Why? Money. We are such a gullible species. The more people hear an
idea promoted, the more it sounds true. This is why our country is divided. We rely too heavily
on our media for information, true or not. They manipulate us with their words like modern-day
bards. Journalism is indeed dead, and it's been replaced by sensationalism. But it all boils
down to who's really at fault. To find that out, look in the mirror. Yes, we all let this
happen to us.
I wouldn't blame people for believing phony news. Think about it: why do companies spend
literally billions of dollars on commercials? Companies use commercials to change our buying
habits, and they work extremely well on a subliminal level. Likewise, the mainstream and
social media use misinformation, distortions, deceptions, and omissions to change people's
voting behavior on that same subliminal level. The only way to ensure legitimate elections in
the future is to destroy mainstream and social media's hold on our country.
In the past four years, the behavior of the Democrats has been that of junior high school
bullies with no adult supervision. What all men want most is power, and the Democrats will do
anything to get it. We can't take their low road, but should stand against their further
attempts to turn this into a one-party nation. We need a broad spectrum of ideas to keep our
country strong and our citizens cared for.
One party does not have all the answers, nor can they dictate to the other parties how to
worship, think, or even eat. When I was young, I was a Bill Clinton Democrat. I walked away
before the Obama administration and never looked back. I believe more and more people are doing
that, and, by the 2022 midterms – well, watch out, Dems!
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Russia has consistently stressed its willingness to work with either candidate -- late last
month, the Kremlin's press secretary Dmitri Peskov rebuffed suggestions that Moscow prefers the
incumbent: "it would be wrong to say that Trump is more attractive to us."
But Russia's political commentary sphere has proven more polarized. Some cite
Biden's readiness to extend the New START treaty without additional conditions as evidence that
Biden is someone that the Kremlin can do business with; others have expressed concern over the
Democratic candidate's "Russophobic" cabinet picks and predict that, under a Biden presidency,
Washington's policy of rollback will escalate to an unprecedented level. But there is also an
overarching belief that Washington's Russia policy is so deeply embedded across U.S.
institutions that not much is likely to change in U.S.-Russian relations.
As Peskov put it, "there is a fixed place on the altar of US domestic policy for hatred of
Russia and a Russophobic approach to bilateral relations with Moscow." Still other commentators
are interested in the process as much as the outcome, drawing attention to ongoing mass unrest and
allegations of electoral misconduct in order to argue that Washington has forfeited its moral
authority to lecture others on proper democratic procedure and the orderly transition of
power.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, analysts on both the left and right noticed that
President Trump had the potential to grow his base of white working-class voters. Five
Thirty-Eight's
David Wasserman noted that over 44 million non-college-educated white voters who were not
even registered to vote before the 2016 election concentrated heavily in the Midwest, including
2.6 million in Pennsylvania, 2.2 million in Ohio, 900,000 in Wisconsin, and 500,000 in Iowa.
All the Trump campaign needed to do was locate them and register a fraction of them, and it
would be smooth sailing till election day.
Rather than employing a strategy that looked to find the missing white working-class voter,
the Trump campaign devised a plan to drive support from minority voters. They released both the
Platinum Plan for black Americans and the American Dream plan for Hispanic Americans, promising
hundreds of billion dollars to revive their communities and a series of other identity-driven
policies.
This was successful to a point. The Hispanic turnout in Florida and Texas were large enough
to deliver Trump a much larger victory than most people expected and helped keep Arizona and
Nevada competitive even as he shed voters in the suburbs and among Independents as well as
college-educated whites. Among black voters, exit polls showed Trump received 19 percent of the
black voters between 25 and 44 years-old. However, he didn't budge the number of older black
Americas who make up a majority of voters in their racial group.
That plan was always doomed to fail due to the small share of minority voters in the Midwest
that were up for grabs. There weren't enough Hispanic voters or black Americans willing to flip
to the GOP in those states. So they relied on their pool of existing voters and resting their
fate on a ground game.
To the Trump campaign and the Wisconsin Republican Party's credit, they ran a fantastic
operation in the state. The President's campaign increased his support and turnout in 22 of the
23 counties he flipped from President Obama in 2016. Even more astonishing, only two of those
counties had turnout under 90 percent. Some counties like Price, Marquette, and Pepin had close
to 95 percent turnout.
In the county of Kenosha, which saw race riots and acts of violence from Black Lives Matter
supporters and members of Antifa, Trump increased his margin from .3 percent in 2016 to 3.2
percent in 2020, becoming the first Republican to win the county in back-to-back elections
since 1928.
The ground game and high level of support from working-class white counties couldn't make up
because the missing white vote stayed missing. In the 23 Obama-Trump counties, the number of
registered voters declined by nearly 8,000 voters from January 2017 to November 2020 even
though the population increased in these areas.
So Trump's campaign had to work harder with a smaller group of people. Most of the
non-college-educated white Wisconsinites that didn't vote in 2016 remained untapped in 2020.
For over three years, the campaign spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing phantom voters
in deep blue states like New Mexico rather than looking at their natural base sitting
underneath their nose.
Had those funds been redirected to registering and turning out between five and ten percent
of those non-college-educated white voters they missed in 2016, they wouldn't have to worry
about suburbanites defecting to Biden. Fears of voters fraud or illegal vote count wouldn't
have been a concern if they just reached out to their natural constituency.
There's a good chance that the same story could be told in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and
Minnesota. This election wouldn't have been close if they only worked on registering the people
most likely to vote for them, rather than banking on minority voters who just weren't in the
Rust Belt.
As a boomer, I learned very early how evil and corrupt the democrat party can be. Never
voted for a democrat traitor my entire life. Maybe get a little experience under your belt and
you'll learn. Unless you're already a straight up Commie.
As Tucker said it's fact that Detroit and Philadelphia have a history of rigging elections.
doesn't prove they're doing it this time, but people worried about it are as far from crazy as
it gets.
Why are Democrats descending into entitled rages at demands for transparency, or even just
explanations of what they are doing? We told to be patient with the mail-in vote for weeks,
then they are totally impatient and seething outraged hatred with working through our concerns
about fraud. Their protesters are already taking to the streets chanting "count every vote,"
which is where Trump's slogan, "every legal vote" comes from. Did they have the same emotional
outbursts in the past times when we know for a fact they were rigging urban elections?
The white men who failed to vote for Trump in this election are incapable of grasping the
concept of 'Incrementalism'.
How do you think the Frankfurt School's virulently anti-White Cultural Marxists managed to
achieve the success that they have achieved since the 1960s? These subversive termites did
not go full bore and try to shove their anti-White, anti-Western agenda down the throats of
an America that, at the time, was still almost 90% White European. Instead, they began their
steady 'march through the institutions' using stealth tactics – relying on
incrementalism. One tiny step at a time, so as to not alert their target of destruction
– White Americans.
Trump is not the savior of White America – he proved that over the last 4 years.
But, he was a step in the right direction and these White males who were not 100 percent
satisfied by his performance while in office lack the intelligence and patience that is
necessary for TeamWhite during this fight for our very survival.
Our objective is to make sure that the Trumpism – populism, nationalism, rejection
of globalism, rejection of massive third world immigration into the USA, and a cessation of
fighting endless wars for Israel's sole benefit – these concepts must not be dumped by
the GOP. If a Republican politician starts spouting globalism – or supporting amnesty
– or calling for more wars – he or she needs to be thrown OUT of office as soon
as possible and replaced by a Trumpist candidate.
Brad Griffin is an extremely low IQ, dangerously clueless, checkers playing retard who is
too stupid to comprehend the strategy of the anti-White enemy and he thinks he can throw a
hissy fit and somehow boost the amount of respect that other pro-White people have for
him?
It is due to sanctimonious morons like him that the White race is in the existential
crisis situation we now find ourselves in. These 'absolutists' and 'purists' are going to be
the death of our race of people.
By the way, there have already been observations elsewhere on the fact that White men
supported Trump less than before. Not a revelation.
I had no idea if he would lose White men prior to the election, but I thought it a
possibility. I'd see him stand up there at rallies in front of a massive sea of White people
and he'd start bragging about all the shit he'd done for Blacks, Hispanics, and Women, but
nary a mention of White men.
And what's with his hangouts with Kanye West? Saying he's the least racist person in the
room. And the Platinum Plan? Is this shit why we elected you, chief?
I guarantee that no White men were thrilled to hear about blacks being let out of jail.
The more blacks in jail, the better. They need to be kept where less of them can procreate.
If I were POTUS, I find out which crimes black women were good at and increase the penalties
for those, so we could lock up the breeders.
The Amerikastani Empire, no matter who controls it, may have lost the hypersonic missile
war. So what? They're very effectively using the second method to wage war against Russia,
which is strangulating it steadily because of the neoliberal capitalist Putinist regime's
famous "restraint".
Russia is increasingly surrounded by enemies and the more it exercises "restraint" the
worse the situation gets for it. I do not see a "Harris" (it would actually be a Killary
Clinton) regime make any difference to that at all.
"To be sure, it was Russia's intervention in Syria in 2015 that sealed the deal, proving
that the US did not have the omniscient capability to launch attacks anywhere, anytime
without impunity – '
Ad homenims against Martyanov fail to persuade me that Martyanov's views are in error. I
am disappointed to see such tactics, as they imply that his logic and assessments are
valid.
However I believe you have not addressed my central point. That is that a politically weak
unconsented naif "leader" is classically prone to make war for domestic "authority". Wars can
be lost.
Collapse of Empire often is attended by military defeat. Harris would be terribly tempted
to try to prevent defeat by any means.
So, obviously, would the mooted opponents some of which my colleague has named for us as
Russia.
President Putin has explained what happens if Russia is attacked by the US. "No one would
survive".
To repeat. The essential feature of Harris is weakness, that tends to a pattern of war,
which, at every step, is liable to catastrophic failure.
Anatol Lieven
explains how strategic empathy is supposed to work:
This kind of empathy has very valuable consequences for foreign policy. It makes for an
accurate assessment of another state establishment's goals based on its own thoughts, rather
than a picture of those goals generated by one's own fears and hopes; above all, it permits
one to identify the difference between the vital and secondary interests of a rival country
as that country's rulers see them.
A vital interest is one on which a state will not compromise unless faced with
irresistible military or economic pressure. Otherwise, it will resist to the very limit of
its ability, including, if necessary, by war. A statesman who sets out to challenge another
state's vital interests must therefore be sure not only that his or her country possesses
this overwhelming power, but that it is prepared actually to use it.
American policymakers are notoriously bad at understanding how other governments perceive
things and the reasons why they act in the way that they do, and we have seen on many occasions
how this failure to understand the other side's thinking has led us into one crisis after
another. Our leaders often fail to grasp that they are threatening another country's perceived
vital interests, because they frequently deny that the other government has any legitimate
interests at all. Instead of trying to see an issue from the other side, our leaders will often
insist that there is only one acceptable way of seeing it and it is invariably the same as
ours. If the other government responds angrily to this approach, they are then deemed hostile
and "revisionist" rather than a normal state reacting as any other state would. Practicing this
kind of empathy does not mean agreeing that the other government is right, but it does mean
acknowledging what their actual position is rather than projecting one onto them.
H.R. McMaster likes to talk a lot about practicing strategic empathy, but in fact he refuses
to understand how other governments see the world. He prefers instead to imagine that they are
all driven to achieve ideological, expansionist goals just as he is, and then he warns about
the aggressive intentions that he has imputed to them. This is exactly the opposite of what
Lieven is talking about, and it is nothing more than reading his own hawkish inclinations into
everyone else's worldview. If McMaster were willing to see things as the Russian government or
Chinese government did, he would understand that they perceive aggressive U.S. foreign policy
since the end of the Cold War as a threat, and at least some of their conduct over this same
period has been in reaction to American overreaching. But McMaster doesn't understand this at
all. Instead, he insists that the behavior of other states has nothing to do with U.S. actions
whatsoever, because to admit this would be to acknowledge that an interventionist foreign
policy can create more problems than it solves.
Lieven points out how this lack of empathy has particularly poisoned our dealings with
Russia over the last thirty years:
Straightforward Western prejudices (now dignified with the abominable euphemism of
"narratives") are part of the reason for these false perceptions derived from the Cold War.
The collapse of Communism, however, also led to a growth in Western hubris that led Western
policymakers to fail either to listen to their Russian colleagues when they stated Russia's
vital interests, or to study Russia in sufficient depth to understand that they were not
bluffing but really meant what they said. Instead, you had the tragicomic picture of American
officials lecturing Russian officials on the "real" interests of Russia.
This failure to listen and failure to understand account for a lot of the deterioration in
U.S.-Russian relations. While Russia has contributed to this deterioration, the U.S. has
repeatedly taken actions that our government knew would be perceived as provocations and
threats and went ahead with them anyway. Promoting NATO expansion and promising that Ukraine
and Georgia would eventually become members were some of the big provocations, but beyond
specific issues there is the overarching conceit that Russian interests end at their border
while ours are seemingly limitless. If we were in their position, we would have found this
intolerable as well. Eventually, Russia was bound to push back, and that is what it has been
doing for the last twelve years. Predictably, the pushback has been interpreted in the West as
irrational aggression, and this is just more of the same failure to understand why other states
act as they do.
If we would avoid unnecessary crises and clashes with other states, especially nuclear-armed
major powers, our government has to begin paying closer attention to what other states say
their vital interests are. There needs to be an understanding that the U.S. cannot cajole or
sanction them into giving up those interests, and these interests will always matter far more
to them than they do to us. Our leaders need to start understanding that and then adjusting our
policies accordingly.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics
Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The
American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Note that an ICBM is not an easy target. In the "boost phase" in can be launched somewhere
near place where the borders of Russia, China and Kazakhstan meet, thousands of kilometers
from any NATO (or allied) installation. Up there in vacuum, ICBM may be decoyed with aluminum
foil balls or something like that. But when landing their course can be accurately calculated
and intercepted (at least, plausibly so). Note that an ICBM is damn fast, so you need to send
a fast missile.
Here LITERALLY comes a twist. Construct a warhead with ability to zigzag while landing.
Turns at that speed (7km/s?) are a technological challenge, but you do not need to turn a lot
to make the future precision sufficiently unpredictable. So Chinese and Russians work on
that. As a counter, Americans are working on hypersonic weapons that would be better in
destroying opponent missiles on the ground before launch, that is a more difficult goal and
thus they "are behind".
The bottom line is that Americans spend many billions (annually) on futile programs
forcing Russia and China to spend resources on counter measures. Would Americans, at long
last, develop stealthy accurate hypersonics for the first strike, a conceptually simple
counter measure is to build thousands of launching sites, each with a decoy of a strategic
nuclear weapon (but some with the real things). They would need to reduce the cost per a
decoy site, more precisely, the ratio between the cost of "launching site destroyer" and
"launching site decoy". Notably, current treaties do not allow for that, so Americans rely on
limitations of the current treaties while breaking them one after another.
2. Actual developments like Syria, Ukraine etc. Biswapriya is notably reticent in
description what a better Russian conduct would be, so the criticism of "neoliberal
capitalist Putinist regime" is not convincing. What a better regime could do?
1. Hypersonic missiles will only ever be used in an all out war, de facto WW III. Which is
overwhelmingly the least likely kind of war. Short of that no use of them is going to happen
except perhaps China-Taiwan. They will certainly not be employed by Russia. Can anyone
imagine Putin using hypersonic missiles in response to a trade blockade by Amerikastan on a
par with the Amerikastani trade blockade of Iran?
2. I have already said exactly what Russia should have done, repeatedly and in great
detail, but if you missed it you can see some of it here:
A few years ago I wrote an article in which I had compared Putin's "restraint" against
Amerikastani provocations not just failures in and of themselves, but direct encouragement to
more provocations. Back in 2014, I had said, Putin was so single issue focussed on the Sochi
Olympics that what even the Amerikastani imperialists STRATFOR called the "most blatant coup
in history" played out in full public view in Kiev, without Russia lifting a finger. I had
written that Putin could have sent in two battalions of Spetsnaz, overthrown Obama's Ukranazi
coup regime, reinstated Viktor Yanukovych, and withdrawn, with the clear statement that if
there were any more coups Russia would return and this time to stay. I remember that when the
militias of the Donbass were desperately raiding museums to secure WWII weapons to take on
Ukranazi armoured columns, when Russian military blogs were demanding "Putin, dai prikaz!"
(Putin, give the order!), Putin kept silent. When the defenders of Donbass had to withdraw
from Slovyansk and were nearly cut into two, when the Ukranazis were at Donetsk airport, when
defeat was only a matter of hours, it was then that Putin allegedly did something. What that
something was I'm not clear about. It was certainly not the dispatch of Russian forces, or
else Russian tanks would have been rolling down the Kiev streets in two days. It may have
been finally sending weapons, allowing volunteers to go to the front to fight (including more
than a few brave and laudable Americans; not all of them are brain-dead imperialists), and
possibly limited artillery support. At any rate, when the defenders of the republics crushed
the Ukranazis at Debaltsevo and were well on the way to liberating Mariupol on the Black Sea,
Putin again withdrew support to them, leaving them without a port and stuck in a frozen war
interrupted by sniping and shelling.
...
But let's ignore the people of the two Donbass republics for the moment and look at the
result of this "restraint". Today, Amerikastani B52 bombers and RC135 reconnaissance planes
fly freely through Ukranazi airspace right up to the Russian border, compelling Russian air
defence systems to turn on their electronic defences, exposing their signatures for analysis
and jamming by said Amerikastanis. Ukranazistan, not being a NATO member officially, is even
more valuable to Amerikastan than it would have been as a NATO member, since it can be used
for staging actions that could not involve NATO without risk of a world war. How's that for
"restraint", Putinoids?
In fact, with the one shining exception of the war against Georgia in defence of South
Ossetia in 2008, when Medvedev – not Putin – was president, Russian foreign
policy has always been criminally defensive and reactive, never proactive. In 2011 Russia
permitted Libya to be destroyed, turning an ally into a jihadi hellhole where a slave trading
human trafficking regime and a CIA asset fight for control. In 2015 Syria was on the verge of
collapse when Putin belatedly and reluctantly sent just enough planes and troops to save
Damascus and help the legitimate government of Dr Assad liberate Aleppo, but failed to do a
thing to stop the north and east turn into, respectively, an Ottoman colony and a Kurd
Quisling puppet state under Amerikastani protection. In 2020 in Belarus it was only the
personal courage and genuine popularity of President Aleksandr Lukashenko that prevented a
colour revolution that would have turned the country into another NATO stooge. The same 2020
saw the Putin regime allow the racist right wing "liberal" Alexei Navalny to be sent to
Germany, and predictably a fake "Novichok poisoning" was immediately manufactured to wreck
EU-Russian relations, which were just about beginning to mend, beyond repair.
"...how war is actually fought in the 21st century - by information control, economic
strangulation, colour revolution, and armed rebellion by proxy..."
Wars were fought like that in the 20th, 19th century, etc. probably all the way back in
history. The purpose of such tactics is to avoid direct conflict, to weaken your oponent, to
draw them into expending resources on debilitating conflicts.
Quotes from "The Art of War" (Sen Zhui, 5h Century BC):
"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle"
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war
first and then seek to win"
The western war against Russia goes back 100s of years.
The point Walter is making is that the US indirect war against Russia is failing and that
the defeated US may seek to "win" by going to a direct conflict with Russia and that a week
person, Harris, may lack the wisdom to prevent, moderate such desires.
Harris is a weak character and it is believed that she is overly fond (reliant) on
alcohol. It seems obvious that she was originally intended to be the democratic nominee but
despite preplanned set pieces (the evisceration of the "racist" Biden) she messed it up and
disappeared in the polls only to resurrected as Biden's running mate. For some reason it
seems very important to have Harris as the VP.
... so the criticism of "neoliberal capitalist Putinist regime" is not convincing. What
a better regime could do?
I think this is correct.
But it doesn't detract from Biswapriya Purkayast's argument that Russia's advantage in
conventional arms is not indicative of Russia's ability to prevail in conflict with the
Empire which engages in 4th-generational warfare.
My own view is that IMO Russia's "answer" to the Empire's 4-gen warfare has been
demonstrated in Ukraine and Syria and their ability to counter 4th-gen warfare will only
improve via Russia's alliance with economic powerhouse China and the SCO military
alliance.
This is consistent with the consensus view at moa that the Empire has a limited time to
smack-down China and/or break up the Russia-China lovefest.
The old guard wants us to lay down and take it, but this election is far for over. It's time
to fight, and Trump is our man.
Mitt Romney would have conceded by now. John McCain would have conceded Tuesday night.
George Bush would have called it quits, and then invaded Iraq for good measure. Thank God in
heaven for Donald J. Trump.
Speaking late Thursday from the White House, President Trump predicted that, if all legal
votes (and only legal votes) were counted, they would show that he has won the election.
Over the past few days, former Vice President Biden has consistently made similar claims,
without the caveat that votes must be legally cast. As has become the norm when conservatives
voice concerns over a questionable election, the president's observations and forecast were
quickly "fact-checked" by the mainstream media and censored by Big Tech platforms -- while
Biden's went unchecked.
The facts, we are told, show a clear Biden victory. Any suggestion to the contrary, any
attempt to investigate reports of Democratic misconduct, is dismissed as right-wing
conspiracizing, or the petulant protestations of a sorry bunch of sore losers. (Russiagate, it
seems, has been memory-holed.) The decent thing, they say, would be concession -- take the
numbers at face value and call it a day. To his great credit, it looks like Trump will do no
such thing.
This election has essentially come down to six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of these six, only Arizona and Nevada really remain question
marks. Michigan and Wisconsin have already been called for Biden by most sources, and
Pennsylvania and Georgia are expected to follow close behind. Even if Arizona and Nevada both
went for Trump in the end -- the latter seems likely, while the former is a long shot --
victory in the other four would secure Biden a comfortable electoral college win at 289. It can
hardly be ignored that the major blue cities in each of these states -- Atlanta, Detroit,
Philadelphia, and Milwaukee -- are all dominated by strong, old-school, Tammany-style machines.
It can hardly be forgotten that urban Democratic machines are not exactly known for the
integrity of their elections.
This is the question being asked by Trump and other right-wingers: not whether some massive
conspiracy has been orchestrated at the national level, with Biden pulling the strings from a
basement in Delaware, but whether the substantial misconduct that has long defined city
political machines is influencing outcomes in these four key locations. This is not a question
on which we can play it safe and civil. We need a full court press to get answers from people
who have shown themselves unwilling to provide them.
Pay attention to the mainstream argument: Trump's claims have not been conclusively proven,
and so the mere suggestion is considered far beyond the pale. For many, the president's
assertion that 1) misconduct has been observed on a large scale in all of these key locations
and 2) this misconduct will be challenged in court, is the conclusive proof they need that we
are sliding into the dictatorship they predicted four years ago. The concerns are rebuked with
the usual dismissals -- unfounded, unproven, unsubstantiated, "without evidence" -- and the
narrative that Biden is the clear winner tightens its grip with every word out of every
anchor's mouth. But more than enough preliminary evidence has been provided in each of these
places to justify -- no, demand -- investigation.
The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people who
reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them -- and
they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty. Anyone who tries to look into the
evidence is denounced as a kook or (in Trump's case) a caudillo. We can hardly expect an honest
accounting of what's happened in the blue cities when talking about what's happened in the blue
cities has suddenly become the eighth deadly sin.
This is why -- besides his unique perspective and approach drawing together the broadest
coalition a Republican has built in sixty years -- Trump is actually the perfect man for the
moment. The entire media establishment is aligned to declare a Biden victory prematurely, with no
intention of investigating election inconsistencies. Local and state governments in the places
that matter are hardly more reliable -- Michigan Attorney General Jocelyn Benson is an alumna of
the SPLC, and Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro promised four days before the election that Trump
would not win the state. The docile functionaries and milquetoast figureheads of the pre-Trump
GOP could not have handled the fight ahead -- and likely would have run from it.
In fact, we know that they would have, because that's exactly what they're urging Trump to do
now. If you Google "trump+thursday+speech" or any similar query, it's going to take a whole lot
of digging to actually find the speech Trump delivered on Thursday. What you will find instead
are abundant "fact-checks" of the speech that don't actually check any of the facts, and page
upon page of ritual denunciations by the chattering classes.
These denunciations are hardly limited to the left-wingers behind the anchors' desks at every
major network. CNN is proudly touting a clip of Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from PA
and current senior political analyst at that esteemed news source, expressing his shock and
disappointment that the president would call into question certain aspects of the election.
Santorum voiced his hope that "Republicans will stand up at this moment and say what needs to be
said about the integrity of our election." (The irony is apparently lost on him.)
Similarly, Scott Walker, who was one of the first to exit the Republican primary field in 2016
and lost his reelection bid for governor of Wisconsin in 2018 to Democrat Tony Evers, has issued
a number of tweets insisting that a recount -- which the Trump campaign has already called for --
would be pointless. He has observed that, in normal elections, recounts have done very little to
alter tallies. There's no sense to this line: this is not a normal election. Delays in ballot
counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the occasional full stops, after which
huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear. Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter
turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably
high. It would be the farthest thing from a surprise if a more careful inspection really did
shake things up this time around.
The same is true in Michigan, where Biden has made similarly stunning gains in witching-hour
ballot dumps. On top of that, the transposition of a few thousand Trump votes to Biden in Antrim
County has now been chalked up to a glitch in the tabulation software -- software that happens to
be used in 46 other counties. We now know there is a problem with the way the votes are
counted, and even the slightest chance that even the smallest repetition of that glitch has
occurred elsewhere demands the strictest scrutiny be applied to the Michigan vote.
All this and more can be said for Pennsylvania and Georgia, the two states most vital to the
president's reelection. Pennsylvania in particular is playing fast and loose with mail-in
ballots, and dubious rules changes need to be challenged in court. Philadelphia has a reputation
for machine-style corruption that puts Daley-era Chicago to shame. Election workers there have
also repeatedly blocked GOP poll watchers from observing the process they are legally entitled to
oversee. The same thing is happening in Detroit, where cardboard has actually been placed over
the windows to prevent people from seeing inside the central counting location. If you have
nothing to hide, right?
The president has every reason not to take the narrative at face value. This doesn't mean we
throw out the election, and it doesn't mean we're undermining democracy. It means we need to
exhaust every avenue and turn over every stone. Everything that can be brought before a court
needs to be, and every ballot that raises red flags needs to be explained. Put the screws to
every machine operative from Milwaukee to Atlanta, and make sure every word holds up.
Somebody needs to give a very good answer as to why the number of ballots left to count in
Fulton County keeps changing every time we go to sleep -- and changing by margins that boggle the
mind. Force the people who run the machines to speak, and see how long their story lasts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Declan Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a
graduate of John Carroll University. His work has been published at National Review ,
Crisis, and elsewhere.
The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people
who reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them --
and they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty.
This is such a bizarre sentence. Why would government officials, investigators or
journalists or whoever be duty bound to substantiate the existence voter fraud.
They've basically done the opposite actually, and debunked the claims. Nearly every
single case of claimed voter fraud has been shown to be inaccurate, a lie, simply misleading
and/or a misunderstanding.
"Suitcases" of ballots? Actually it's photography equipment of local news broadcasts. Poll
watchers getting "pushed out" of wards? Because PA law says you are legally only allowed a
set amount of pre-certified watchers in each precinct, who must wear face masks. "Dead
voters" appearing in ballot rolls? Could exist, doesn't matter though because votes are
crosschecked with databases, and even if you died on the way home from dropping off your
mail-in ballot , your vote will be deleted, let alone if you're some potential fraud
voter who died 30 years ago.
In fact, here's a good nice long Twitter thread explaining most of the major accusations
flying around social media:
I'm just going to reply to my own very long post with an addendum:
The example of Detroit is given in the article as if papering the windows over was some
heinous thing. The reason why we have to protect the identity of poll workers is intimidation. We
already have a situation in Fulton County, GA where some enterprising conservatives have
doxxed a poll worker and actually sent the poor man into hiding.
His license plate number was posted onto Twitter, and he is now hiding at a friend's
house, because conservative activists falsely accused him of throwing out
ballots.
You are a liar. You obviously have never actually WORKED an election. I have. Several,
in fact.
I have personally witnessed ballot fraud on a large scale, coupled with utter
incompetence. Palm Beach county, 2012.
I oversaw the correction of 60,000 "defective" absentee ballots. Each correction table
was to be staffed with 1 Dem, 1 Repub, who cross-checked each others work. The corrupt
Supervisor of Elections harassed and threatened Republican workers and monitors. Nasty as
hell. Corrupt as hell. AND SHE NEVER FOLLOWED HER OWN INSTRUCTIONS, AND WHEN CHALLENGED
POLITELY, SHE THREATENED TO THROW ALL REPUBLICANS OUT OF THE ELECTIONS SITE.
I PERSONALLY witnessed CORRECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS taken to the back where the voting
TABULATORS were, and watched as each ballot was removed from the box, examined, and some
were thrown in the trash can. And I had seen a lot of ballots with Romney marked for
President, with a straight Dem ticket down-ballot races all Dem. This is a BLUE
county.
I reported this, and nothing was done. Cowardly Republicans do this... Nothing. I
often wonder how many other blue cou ties have threatened Republican poll watchers &
workers.
Your slander of decent people means NOTHING, except that you are a liar of gigantic
proportions. Go over to Daily Kos, where you can fellowship with your vile compatriot
scumbags.
I support the view that it is entirely possible for a county full of good people to
lean hard against the "other side" in a hot disputed election. In 2014 and 2016 the
polling place was a strange church miles away; the workers there had a hand-lettered sign
posted that demanded driver licenses as ID, even though State law did not demand that
form of ID alone. This year I was one of the people who were locked out of the voting
process; the details do not matter, but it happened, and I refused to kowtow to the
system to get my registration card renewed. My county went 80% for Trump, so in fact my
lone vote would not have mattered for much anyway.
No doubt some people were denied the right to vote. Historically, the right to vote is
denied blacks and latinos more often than whites. But to make a blanket claim of a stolen
election, just the President, mind you, is an extraordinary claim that demands
extraordinary proof. Trump does not even claim that any of those down ballot Repubs,
candidates who did just fine for themselves, were denied votes. Just him.
If the democrats rigged the election then why didn't they give themselves the Senate?
Why did they lose seats in the House? And why did they not take back a single statehouse?
Trump lost because the DNC opened their arms to the Bush-era neocons from the Lincoln
Project. They're all republicans that voted for Biden and down ticket republicans and now
Biden will be putting them in his cabinet. If the election was rigged then you can thank
the those republicans for betraying their party, but the DNC is incapable of rigging
anything without help from the other side.
Your mistake is conflating "Republicans" and "republican voters." Not the same thing.
Trump was sent to DC to deal, among other things with the "Republicans."
Why didn't they give themselves the senate? A couple of hundred thousand ballots with
a 100% tally for one side were manufactured to influence one election. Only one really
mattered. Several million Americans were impoverished and terrorized all year long to
ensure this result.
In any case, they don't need the Senate -- the "Republicans" will simply roll
over. They always do. Cocaine Mitch is already signaling his intent to do so.
I saw his spokesperson the other day said any Biden cabinet picks will have to be
approved by him. Doesn't sound like Mitch is rolling over at all. We're going to see the
Lincoln Project repugs (Bush era neocons) in his cabinet and giving the MIC a seat at the
table again.
Just another 4 years of Bush/Obama policies. I think we can agree that both
sides lost this election and that's sadly not new either.
Maybe its time the for
"fringes" to unite against the center.
Speaking as a progressive myself, I dont feel like we united as much as we stayed
home. No one in the 2016 election was representing anything we wanted. The only thing
that united us was our hatred of Hillary. ;) hahaha
We can't unify under either established party. I'm talking about really uniting and
taking both out with a real populist platform (healthcare, ending our wars and getting
money out of politics), all things most Americans are in favor of. What do we have to
lose at this point? There's something horribly broken with our government when every 4
years both sides are left frustrated when the will of the people is never represented in
our supposed representative democracy. We gotta try something different.
Fox News has aired video of certified poll observers in philly being prevented from
entering polling places. but keep running interference- its obvious you wouldn't care if
you KNEW fraud had taken place...
Other Murdoch-owned news companies have done much worse! In England, his reporters
spoofed a call from a dead girl's phone, giving her parents false hope. They bugged and
bribed politicians, pretty ugly stuff. Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Fox News is a subsidiary NewsCorp, peddler of tabloid propaganda , promulgated by an
Australian plutocrat Rupert Murdoch, who is no friend of the USA. He has been ripping us
apart now for decades for his profit, power, and ego. He has made the GOP his b**ch. Note
how recently he has turned on Trump (not that I mind).
Why would government officials, investigators or journalists or whoever be duty bound
to
the existence voter fraud.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Those who claim to "speak truth to power" have as
their function the investigation and reporting of charges of voter fraud.
Instead, they are nothing but rank partisans, licking the government hand that feeds
them, and simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful
to their opponents. Liars and frauds, every last one.
simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful to
their opponents.
Whatever you want to claim about lefties with "TDS" or whatever you want to label
them, this sentence is literally a word-for-word description that applies to Trump
supporters.
Just endless ranks of simpletons who will thrust off every piece of evidence and
correction to their accusations.
Write out a comment to debunk things being misconstrued, twisted or lied about, and
Trumpists will waste your time blathering and ranting on about "rank partisans" without
even a hint or lick of irony and self-reflection about how their entire post is actually
about themselves.
I can just as easily dismiss you the same way, but the idea that FB, Twitter, CNN, and
yes -- even Fox -- aren't nakedly partisan is ridiculous nonsense. The least you could do
is pretend to understand what got Trump elected in the first place.
Wall St and the MIC work hand and hand with our corporate media, an industry that's
dominated by 6 corporations. They're not liberal nor conservative, they are only
motivated by money and power and keeping the population divided so that they dont unite
and come for them all.
One only has to look at the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to see how far down
the US has fallen. Now a corporation is a person? If that is so, can't they get
20-to-life when they kill someone? Can't they get the death penalty? NO, they can't; but
they can get all the good things that come from that ruling, without any of the negatives
at all.
Not every last reporter is a rank partisan, but many of them prefer the easy route to
a paycheck. Look up Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Tom Engelhardt, and others like them.
There are honest historians like Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. There are also
honest whistleblowers who get a bad rep, like Chelsea Manning, Eric Snowden and Julian
Assange. There are still a few journalists of the old school in the world. But they have
to be careful less they find themselves charged with treason under an old law, and spend
the balance of their lives locked down 23 1/2 hours per day in a tiny cell in a US
SuperMax prison.
Excellent article. I am very happy Trump is pushing to open up this election to legal
review, public inspection, recounts, bipartisan review of the ballots, process
violations. We were supposed to be patient and wait for the count, why not the recount.
What is the hurry. If he lost, fine, I want to know that, not just trust anti-Trump,
Democratic activist officials telling me that. There are so many oddities - the Biden
surges coming after down time, always so conveniently. Software turning Republican votes
into Democrat votes. The dead voting. Blocking access to GOP observers. Given the
closeness of the results in the key states that are determining the outcome, it is not
that hard to turn things one way or the other.
The state legislators decide when the mail in ballots are counted. For Florida,
Oregon, Colorado they are counted when they come in and are verified as legal votes. For
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin the legislature decided they could not start
processing the ballots until election day, thus it is impossible get a count of those
ballots before the in person voting was counted.
Barr is asking, "how many people who sent late-arriving mail-in ballots also showed up
to vote on election day?"
It matters because it's the law we all agreed to, and you need to respect the process
to retain the other side's confidence, which your side has not done.
But one thing which may be behind the law is these 100%-Biden ballot dumps that don't
vote for congress. Do you see what's behind Barr's question? Mail-in ballots make ballot
stuffing almost trivial because you can just dump them into the mail. The one problem is
that each envelope has to have a registered voter's name on it, and that name is compared
to who voted in person. To get the mail-in vote counted, and to avoid suspicious
patterns, you need to put a name on there that didn't vote in person. That's much easier
to do after the polls close, and you have collected all the signature books to start
doing the mail-in count.
Maybe they wouldn't have had to skip steps in the process if Trump should have
appointed someone better than DeJoy, and maybe Congress (Republicans in particular)
shouldn't have spent the better part of the last two decades screwing with the USPS.
Delays in ballot counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the
occasional full stops, after which huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear.
Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors
earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably high. It would be the farthest thing from
a surprise if a more careful inspection really did shake things up this time
around.
Yeah, what kind of insane ballot-counting system would allow the poll workers to
sleep ? They should be legally required to mainline stimulants until their work is
done! And the only honest way to deliver counts is to transmit each individual ballot one
by one to the state: sending counts in batches must be evidence of fraud! And how is it
possible that after vocally discouraging his voters from voting by mail, there are
relatively few Trump mail-in votes? Very suspicious! Oh and by the way, turnout in
Wisconsin was quite normal:
jeez, it is amazing how uncurious everyone has become...
Uncurious? The uncurious are the people who take videos shared by Steven Crowder, or
whatever right-wing grifter they like, and believe them as gospel truth without verifying
it.
I have literally spent the better part of my precious Friday evening reading and
watching a trove of claimed voter fraud incidents, and I have yet to find a substantially
supported example.
But...duh? You absolutely do have some ballots thrown out in every
election, because they're improperly marked or otherwise somehow invalid. That's not a
conspiracy, that's literally what poll workers have to do. I don't get it, if we think
there are dead people voting (per the above conspiracy) wouldn't we want the workers to
throw them out? Or do we not want them throwing them out? Can't have it both ways!
It doesn't exactly take a brainiac to realize what's happening in the video. The man
on the right is holding a damaged ballot, and reading off the marked selections to
the woman on the left so that she can transcribe the damaged information to a new,
undamaged ballot. You then mark the serial number for the new ballot onto the original,
damaged ballot to keep them together.
And of course, as an extra bonus, the video is zoomed in purposefully to crop out the
bipartisan poll-watchers that are standing right by this duo to make sure that they're
properly transcribing the votes.
This is literally election 101 stuff, but apparently people don't know how it
works.
Come on, you can literally verify or debunk this on the County website. Yes, one claim
going around is that Wards 273 and 274, which was located at the Spanish Immersion School
reported 200% turnout.
Ward 273 had 671 registered voters, and 612 actual voters; Ward 274 had 702 registered
voters and 611 actual voters.
So congratulations, you bought into another easily disprovable lie. I've also seen
claims that the 272nd, 277th, 269th, 234th and 312nd Wards overrated, but you can check
and see that none of that is true either.
And, all of these claims are leaving out an important detail anyways: Wisconsin has
same-day voter registration. It is possible , albeit perhaps unlikely, to have
higher voter counts than number of pre-registered voters because of that.
Ballot harvesting is real:
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/20... This is but one example in my state, and we're also aware of certain places sending
out unrequested ballots. They all deserve jail time.
Let's say I was. Would that make any of the proof I linked untrue? Or is truth only
something that comes out of a party-flag waving conservatives' mouth?
And no, I'm not. I've pretty openly stated multiple times that I voted ASP in the
Presidential race, and both R/D in various spots down the ballot.
Oh, and just in the interest of fairness, there were some conspiracies going
around on the left too on election night. One that I saw was that 300,000 ballots were
undelivered. While yes, many thousands of ballots were likely undelivered, what was
happening wasn't that they were undelivered,
it was that the USPS was skipping scanning the ballots to expedite delivery. That's
why DeJoy likely won't actually get in trouble, because postal branches were
specifically going out of their way to hand-pick ballots and expedite their delivery.
The reason a recount doesn't change anything is because it's just that--a recount.
They take all the ballots that were counted before, and count them again. They're not
looking at whether any ballots should have been thrown out. Fraudulent ballots that were
counted the first time around are counted again.
A recount won't do anything about what the Democrats pulled in Milwaukee.
I also don't understand it. Hasn't the mail-in envelope with the signature and the
voter's name already been thrown away? How will they remove the votes by dead people?
I have heard they're using some procedure intended for ballots that won't scan to
conceal ballots with missing or invalid signatures by copying them at desks that are
supposed to have bipartisan teams. I guess they throw out the original ballot when they
do that to prevent the recount from checking signatures properly?
I guess they throw out the original ballot when they do that to prevent the recount
from checking signatures properly?
No, they do that to prevent any possibllity of the original being mistakenly counted
twice.
As you yourself pointed out, the copying takes place in front of a bipartisan team of
watchers. So for your fantasy to have any validity, you have to believe that BOTH parties
are conspiring together to rig the vote. In which case, your vote is irrelevant, anyway,
right?
If you really care about this, then instead of believing all of these ridiculous
conspiracy theories, why don't you try to actually become educated about how the process
works, and next time volunteer yourself to become a certified poll watcher? Then you will
KNOW the truth.
Those checks were made before the ballot was accepted and counted. They include
checking that it was a legal ballot sent to a specific person. And that the signature
matched that of the registered voter. Only after those checks is the ballot removed from
its envelop. While there may be a few mistakes there aren't anywhere enough to be
material to the final results. The ballots from in person voting are similarly
dissociated from the voters' information.
A big thank you to Mr. Maheras commenting below. Listen to him. He is our savior.
I am close to 80 years old. Old conspiracy advocates began to make extraordinary
claims about most everything when photographs would appear in newspapers. Rorschach
tests. Then came videos , or movie clips on TV. Think the Kennedy tape. Pretty soon we
had personal video equipment. And now cell phones. All Rorschach tests. But those crazy
conspiracies were the fringe long time ago. True belivers. Ideologues. But not the
Republican party leaders.
About 30 years ago the new world order, illuminati, the Bilderbers, now the Davos all
became the subject of the go to conspiracy advocates. Take your pick. One or all . But
one thing for sure, a cabal is taking over the world. Throw in a few Clinton, or Obama
conspiracies. Catch a sighting of Elvis for good measure.
Now all rolled into the Qanon cabal. Democratic pedophilia scum raping children. What
they all have in common is that they are right wing conspiracy advocates. And they all
are foolish.
This article fits in with those conspiracies. And by right wing
advocates naturally. When Clinton lost , her margin of defeat was similar to Trump's
projected defeat. Clinton and the Democrats never asserted fraud. Nor suggested
conspiracies. The political system worked, Trump won.
Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy theroies to
the ones mentioned above. All without a scintilla of proof. The President of the United
States for months has been setting his base up to claim fraud. And he has. And they have
blindly bought into it.
Long way to tell you that the greatest disappointment of my lifetime is the validation
by conservatives of these kooky ideas. 30 years ago even conservatives would call these
conspiracy peddlers nut jobs.
Now we have a nut job in the white house. The birther in chief. And he just gets
worse. But no one in the Republican party, except for a few tepid critics, will call the
Predident out.
This is the same guy who saw videos of Muslims dancing on 9/11. Or an inaugural crowd
rivaling the largest gathering of human beings ever assembled in the whole history of
mankind. The greatest. The most perfect and strongest
I have never been so disappointed in my President. He has enabled Mr. Leary to peddle
his nonsense. And tragically Leary believes his blather. This is truly heartbreaking. But
it is the world that Leary and his ilk will have to live with.
Me, l'll be gone. Forgetting my own name soon. Someone tell me that what I just read
is a part of my onset dementia.
Lifelong stutterer? What a load of crap. Just watch some old videos of Joe in his
arrogant days on the senate judiciary. He and his good buddy Ted Chappaquidick Kennedy
didn't stutter when they were trashing Clarence Thomas and Judge Bork. Hey it's your
right to vote for a lifer politician who's way past his prime and suffering from a tragic
disease. Climate change - right. More likely God's judgement on a godless nation.
Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy
theroies
As someone who started reading TAC a long time ago when it really WAS a reputable
magazine, I'm afraid that particular ship started sailing several years ago, and is
almost out of the harbor by now. There was a time when you could come here to find
intelligent, educated, and thoughtful conservatives setting out their views and being
unafraid to engage with responses from all across the entire political spectrum. Now,
Larison is the only one left who consistently meets that description, a couple of others
dabble in reality once in a while, and the rest are descending into Breitbart levels of
paranoid lunacy.
I look forward to seeing the evidence of fraud in a court of law rather than just
circulating on twitter where the standards are somewhat less stringent.
And the president said BEFORE the election that any election he lost would necessarily
be rigged/corrupt. So of course that evidence was going to be found if he lost.....
You can put this is the same category as all these white guys who lost a job because
they were white men. Of course the couldn't possibly make these claims in a court where
discovery could happen and their BS would be exposed.
1. He is a victim/martyr to his right-wing constituency, in much the same way that Erdogan
has always portrayed himself as a 'man of the people' and representative of the poor
conservative rural Turks and still an outsider in comparison to the secular urban elites.
This 'otherness' or being separate from the establishment/elite/'swamp' is very good for
Trumps' image. Even though he is a billionaire and has been part of the US elite for
decades.
2. With the economy going to go through problems due to covid and other issues, Trump can
try and attribute blame for the then incumbent Biden/Harris regime and free himself of any
blame and say that he has better answers.
3. He may well go on to forming his 'Trump TV' with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura
Ingraham as is the current chatter amongst some and be seen as the de facto 'leader of the
opposition', a term not really used in the (dis)United States but common in many/most other
countries.
1. The phrase 'Make America Great Again' implicitly acknowledges that America which is
supposedly, 'the greatest country in the world', is not great and hence needs its 'greatness'
restored.
The problem is that the US rose to global hegemony amongst a backdrop of huge industrial
and manufacturing power. Whilst the Europeans were fighting each other on their continent in
WW2, US manufacturing was booming.
Then in the 70s US courts said factories were liable to huge lawsuits for environmental
and medical problems caused by them hence the resultant 'outsourcing' or transfer or labour
to countries with cheaper labour costs such as China, Vietnam, Bangladesh etc.
2. This de-industrialization of the US or at least decimating of its manufacturing leads
to systemic unemployment in the long run. The US is lucky in that it can still flourish with
the reserve dollar, a status it enforces with its global imperial power. However with the
Sino-Russian block seeking to end dollar hegemony the questions are:
- How long will dollar hegemony last for?
- At what pace will it decrease?
-To what point does the US economy experience decline until it substantially impacts the US
itself?
3. The same sort of 'patriots' and right-wingers in the early 2000s who would have cheered
on a US war in the early Bush era and before are now often the most opposed to war. Not on
grounds of altruism but because it doesn't benefit the US, or they themselves see no tangible
benefits whilst the US experiences socio-economic decline.
This trend of economic decline is only going to continue and with it US power.
The US is hardly interested in flexing its - still considerable - muscles in Libya. That
theatre is between the Turks, Arabs and Russians. The US is hardly much of a party in the
tension between Greece and Turkey over their EEZ claims.
This is now replicating itself in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict where the US has little
power and the main external actors are the Turks and Russians and some others.
Expect this sort of trend to continue whereby regional actors and others will decide on
regional 'solutions' (arrangements) free of the US.
4. As for the US internally, it will experience some sort of internal decline and it will
either:
a: Change itself fundamentally.
b: Experience cessation or 'semi-cessation'. The latter meaning that the states will have a
new deal with the centre, whereby the 'US' can still exist but the states can opt out of
things they don't like.
c: Civil war or internal conflict, think post-George Floyd riots X 10 amidst the background
of far greater poverty in the future.
P.S. In terms of right-wing militias, the military if anything has indicated it is
slightly 'anti-Trump' (the hero of the right-wing militias). The military is a
civic-nationalist, racially inclusive organisation whose current head of the air force is a
black man. This is why in some quarters of the internet some US right-wingers who aware of
this are not so confident about default US backing of any right-wing
The United States is a monopoly two-party fascist system. It is a nexus of profiteering
corporate power, and a two-party cabal of American Exceptionalism. The idea the Democrats are
'commies' is laughable and shows how deeply red the Kool Aid runs. The Democrats just told
the Bernie wing of the Party to shut-up or leave. And why not? The Democrats will tally up a
five million vote plurality over Trump by playing to the right. It got them a President
without a Congress. Thank the "Karen" constituency. Mission Accomplished.
Sure, bring on Tucker as the next Trump, or Don Jr or whatever other celebrity fascist you
want. This particular bell of Pavlov's doesn't work on all the dogs. There is a seething
anti-fascist sentiment out there against for-profit healthcare, politics and war. Before a
4th Reich takes hold in the USA, a Civil War will be fought and the left, verified by study
after study, is more intelligent as a group.
The foreign policy of the USA is fully bi-partisan. Did a Democrat make a peep about the
all the weapons-based 'peace deals' Trump made with the Oil Kingdoms? No. Do the Dems
disagree about regime change anywhere the USA contemplates it? No. Do the Dems want to get
rid of anything but bad manners? No.
So please, knock off the existential BS about Dems 'stealing' the election. Stealing what
exactly? The high ground of plausible deniability? Hilarious.
The result of this election can be summarized with one phase "Strange non-death of
neoliberalism."
Joe Biden win is a win the tech companies, the big banks, Beijing, as well a PMC
class.
likbez 11.07.20 at 5:37 pm ( )
It's entirely possible that Biden will be a 1 term President, and this is something that
Democrats should have given some thought to. But they had other, sillier, things on their
mind, and, well, here we are.
They don't care. It is return to business as usual -- classic neoliberalism with the
classic neoliberal globalization on the agenda. And this is all that matter to them.
The people behind Joe Biden are Clinton classic neoliberals. Who ruled the country since
1990th with a well known result.
It is unclear what will happen in 2020 as Biden is a weak politician clearly unable of
dealing with the current crisis the country faces. He is kick the can down the road type of
guy.
And some start speculate that Dems the might get Tucker Carlson in 2024 as the opponent to
Kamala.
(2) From an American perspective, Republican control of the Senate means that the Dems
have limited scope to carry out grandiose economic and social experiments. Which I doubt
Biden is much interested in anyway. (Incidentally, the idea that Biden or Copmala is in any
way a "socialist" is yet another far-fetched MAGA fantasy just ask the folks at Chapo Trap House ). The idea that he came to
power via fraud will not be quite enough to delegitimize the Biden Presidency – it's
not like George W. Bush's narrow and contested victory over Al Gore in Florida remained
much of an issue after a couple of months – but it certainly wouldn't hurt
Republicans to have that as an additional rhetorical tool.
(3) Most consequentially, this substantially discredits American soft power and its
"democracy promotion" efforts.
Who exactly is Joe Biden , the man who may be
our
president come Jan. 20? The truth is, as of right now, we don't really know.
We have no clue what Joe Biden actually thinks, or even if he's capable of thinking. He
hasn't told us and no one's made him tell us for a full year. In fact, it's becoming clear
there is no Joe Biden. The man you may remember from the 1980s is gone.
What remains is a projection of sorts, a hologram designed to mimic the behavior of a
non-threatening political candidate: "Relax, Joe Biden's here. He smiles a lot. Everything's
fine." That's the message from the vapor candidate.
So who's running the projector here? Well, the first thing you should know is that the
people behind Joe Biden aren't liberals. We've often incorrectly called them that. A liberal
believes in the right of all Americans to speak freely, to make a living, to worship their God,
to defend their own families, and to do all of that regardless of what political party they
belong to or what race they happen to be born into or how far from midtown Manhattan they
currently live.
A liberal believes in universal principles, fairly applied. And the funny thing is, all of
that describes most of the 70 million people who just voted for Donald Trump this week. Most of
them don't want to hurt or control anyone. They have no interest in silencing the opposition on
Facebook or anywhere else. They just want to live their lives in the country they were born in,
and it doesn't seem like a lot to ask. So by any traditional definition, they are liberal.
However, our language has become so politicized and so distorted that you would never know
it. What you do know for certain is that the people behind Joe Biden are not like that at all.
They don't believe in dissent. "You think one thing? I think another. That's OK." No, that's
not them at all. They demand obedience to diversity, which is to say, legitimate differences
between people is the last thing they want. These people seek absolute sameness, total
uniformity. You're happy with your corner coffee shop? They want to make you drink Starbucks
every day from now until forever, no matter how it tastes. That's the future.
Now, if these seem like corporate values to you, then you're catching on to what's
happening. The Joe Biden for President campaign is a purely corporate enterprise. It's the
first one in American history to come this close to the presidency. If a multinational
corporation decided to create a presidential candidate, he would be a former credit card shill
from Wilmington, Del., and that's exactly what they got. What's good for Google is good for the
Biden campaign and vice versa. We have never seen a more soulless project. They literally
picked Kamala Harris as Biden's running mate, someone who can't even pronounce her own name.
Not that it matters, because it's purely an advertising gimmick.
We watched all of this come together in real time. We stood slack-jawed in total disbelief
as a man with no discernible constituency of any kind rose to the very top of our political
system, as if by magic. It's possible in the end that Joe Biden himself never convinced a
single voter of anything over the entire duration of the presidential campaign, but he didn't
have to. Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination because he wasn't Bernie Sanders. He came to
where he is today because he isn't Donald Trump. It's the shortest political story ever
written.
Now, whatever you may think of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they did it the
traditional way. Each one of them had the support of actual voters. Living, breathing people
loved them, believed in them, vested their hope in them, and, by the way, agreed with their
ideas, which they articulated clearly.
But corporate America hated them both. They couldn't be controlled, particularly Donald
Trump, whose complete unwillingness to submit made him the greatest possible threat. That's why
they hate Donald Trump, because he won't obey.
It's insulting to say that Joseph R. Biden won this election, if that is what comes to pass.
The tech companies will have won. The big banks will have won. The government of China, the
media establishment, the permanent bureaucracy, the billionaire class -- they will have won,
and not in the way that democracy promises. If a single person equaled a single vote, a
coalition like that could never win anything. There aren't enough of them.
But as a group, they have something that Donald Trump's voters sadly do not have, and that
is power. They have lots of power and they plan to wield that power, whether you like it or
not. It's all starting to look a lot like oligarchy at this point. The people who believe they
should have been in charge all along now may actually be in charge.
So what does that mean for the rest of us? Will corporate America declare victory and back
off? Can we speak freely again? Will they take the boot from our necks? Can we have America
back now that the Great Orange Emergency has passed? Well, the mandatory lying orders finally
be lifted?
Those are the questions we'll be paying attention to, since we plan to stay in this country.
And one other thing while we're at it, who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who
plans to collaborate, particularly of those on the right side, the Republican side, the side
that said it was defending you? Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track
of, just so we know who we're dealing with here. Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of
FOX News Channel's (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network
in 2009 as a contributor.
I think calling it Harris (Biden) administration is a bit childish. Harris will have about as
much effect on policy as Pence had during last 4 four years. Certainly nothing like Cheney.
And she won't be the Dems candidate in four years.
Chris Sweeney, UK reporter, says" Britain died for me, its become a Covid-obsessed police
state."He further writes that the courageous spirit that defines Britain is disappearing. Do
you feel the same about the US. I do. The response to the lockdown and masks etc. sends brave
loggers here in the Catskill into a state of child-like fear . Who said there is a sucker
born every minute.
RSH's warning that Trump could still start a war should be taken very seriously. Trump has
vowed that he will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Will he leave office without
ENSURING that they cannot?
I don't think for a minute think that Zionist Biden will do anything to upset Israel. But
the election of Biden is a convenient excuse for Trump to start a war (probably based on a
false flag of some sort) that Biden (or Kamala-Hillary) will "inherit".
@ pnyx #43 . . .on Biden. Just think of the warmongering role he played for the Iraq war. The Neocons
would have an easier time with Biden than with Tronald
Yes. Biden is a Clintonite, Trump was anti-Clinton.
The US war in Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom - with its death, destruction and displacement
has been rightly called the worst US foreign policy move ever.
The Clintons started it, and then promoted it with Biden's assistance as Chair of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law on October 31, 1998.
On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announces he has ordered air strikes against
Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors.
Trump's foreign policies were remarkably different? How? He assassinated an Iranian
general, which nearly had the US enter into a hot war with Iran, bombed Syria twice, put
additional sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Russia and the DPRK. Trump's State Department has
successfully enacted regime change in Zimbabwe, Sudan, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, Bolivia
(Mike Pompeo congratulating Luis Arce on his win -- very suspicious), and is trying regime
change in Hong Kong, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe again, and as
of late, Nigeria.
You could argue that Trump wants Iran to be somewhat stronger so he can sell more weapons
to his MIC buddies and profit that way, therefore he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and
the weapons import/export sanctions on Iran expired. But that's a different and more brash
method of managing Empire. It's different from Biden's "strategic de-escalation" policy with
Iran via the Iran nuclear deal, but not that one that necessarily yields better results for
Iran in the long term.
Calm down folks, the elected officials in the US have been puppets of the elite for the
entire history of the country.
The problem we're facing is within the elite community and far above any government's
control.
They didn't legalize drone striking "terrorists" any where on the globe by accident.
This means the elite are terrified of the fact that the internet and Trump both have exposed
them for the morally bankrupt, greedy, mass murdering psychopaths they truly are.
The accidental presidency of Trump made them realize that their useful idiots(elected
officials) where more idiots than useful and that they had to use the state sponsored
monopolies in the press as well as their privately controlled publicly funded covert
community to steer the narrative away from actual reality into their alternative commoditized
version of reality.
Trump was never trying to defend America from the elite for the common man. He was trying
to exploit the elite who had rejected him and his father for decades as well as cash in on
their predicament in order to pay off his debts and start his own reality TV network.
I agree Trump was useful and informative but in the end he, like us is just along for the
ride.
Don't do anything rash and don't for one second think a regime change in America is a rare
occurrence. Remember the Kennedy's ?
The only way to win is to not become one of the elite's useful idiots by lashing out
against another citizen. Poor and middle class only get the illusion they help decide
policy.
The policy is decided and auctioned off within the billionaire funded think tanks and sent to
the useful idiots in DC to be rubber stamped in order to trick you into thinking the
legislative branch is legitimate. These people could f*ck up a two car parade and prove it
over and over again.
Stay sane folks, the motives haven't changed in centuries and the elite are far more
scared of us than they are the other elite's because they all know they're all cowards.
In addition, considering Trump was supposedly a Russian puppet, Congress under his admin
passed a bill which allowed the US to arm Ukraine against Russia even more.
Wonderful and thought provoking analysis of current political affairs b. However I would
like to add that Biden and Trump are the products of political trends that have deep roots in
modern US and world political affairs that have been ongoing for some 100 years or more.
Biden and Trump did not occur in a vacuum. Both are products of the two world wars that were
fought in the last century. More recently, the US since 1940 and continuing to the present
day, has been actively preparing or fighting a major war somewhere on this planet. This
development has in turn created a vast military and civilian bureaucracy that constantly
needs to be fed a diet of real or imagined threats in order to survive.
The world recognizes what U.S. elites don't: the utter, total American failure to contain
Covid-19 has damaged U.S. standing and will do so until the virus is controlled. Meanwhile,
regional powers, China and Russia, cooperate and share resources, particularly vaccines. Cuba
provides treatments, but the U.S. turns up its nose at Cuban medicine, even if it means more
American covid patients die – this, though Cuba's pharmacopeia for this plague appears
superior. China sends doctors and medicines across the globe. Russia opts for sane herd
immunity – through vaccination. These countries act like adults. Not a good look for the
U.S.
The Obama regime's deplorable trade and military "pivot to China," along with its sanctions
against high-ranking Russians and Russian energy, financial and defense firms and the Trump
regime's provocations, sanctions and insults aimed at both countries have now born fruit: There
is talk of a military alliance between China and Russia. Both countries deny that such is in
the offing, but the fact that it is even discussed reveals how effectively U.S. foreign policy
has created enemies and united them. Even if they would have drawn closer anyway, China and
Russia cannot ignore the advantage of teaming up in the face of U.S. hostility. A more idiotic
approach than this hostility is scarcely imaginable. Remember, not too long ago the U.S. had
little problem with its chief trading partner, China, and there were even reports some years
back of actual military cooperation in Syria between the U.S. and Russia. All that is gone now,
dissolved in a fog of deliberate ill-will.
So what are some of the absurd U.S. policies that have reaped this potential whirlwind? An
utterly unnecessary trade war with China, with tariffs that were paid, not by China, but by
importers and then passed on to American consumers. There is the Trump regime's assault on
China's technology sector and its attempt to lockout Huawei from the 5G bonanza. Then there are
the attacks on Russian business, like its deal to sell natural gas to Germany, attacks in which
the U.S. insists Germany buy the much more expensive U.S. product to avoid becoming beholden to
Russia. And of course, there are the constant mega-deals involving sales of U.S. weapons to
anyone who might oppose China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.
Aggravating these economic assaults, the U.S. navy aggressively patrols the South China Sea,
the Black Sea and more and more the Arctic Ocean, where Russia has already been since forever.
Russia has a lengthy Siberian coast, making U.S. talk of Russia's so-called aggressive posture
there just plain ludicrous. And now a NATO ally, Turkey, stirs the pot by egging on Azerbaijan
in its war against Armenia, which has a defense treaty with Russia. Azerbaijan is famous for
the oil fields of Baku.
Never has it been clearer that the U.S. deploys its military might to advance its
corporations' interests, international law be damned. As General Smedley Butler wrote of his
military service way back in the early 20 th century, he was "a high-class muscle
man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster
for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in," and on
and on. Nothing has changed since them. It's only gotten worse. Indeed now we're in a position
where it is Russia that abides by international law, while the U.S. flouts it, instead
following something bogus it calls the "rules of the liberal international order."
The biggest and most consequential U.S. foreign policy failure involves nuclear weapons.
Here the Trump regime has outdone all its predecessors. It withdrew the U.S. from the
Intermediate Range Nuclear treaty, which banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles
and certain missile launchers and which it first signed in 1987. It withdrew from the Open
Skies Treaty, inked in 1992. That agreement allowed aircraft to fly over the signatories'
territory to monitor missile installations.
Trump has also made clear he intends to deep-six the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia,
which limits nuclear warheads, nuclear armed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and
missile launchers. The Trump regime has made the ridiculous, treaty-killing demand that China
participate in START talks. Why should it? China has 300 nuclear missiles, on a par with
countries like the U.K. The U. S. and Russian have 6000 apiece. China's response? Sure we'll
join START, as soon as the U.S. cuts its arsenal to 300. Naturally that went over like a lead
balloon in Washington.
And now, lastly, the white house has urged nations that signed the Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons – which just recently received formal UN ratification – to
withdraw their approval. The U.S. spouted doubletalk about the TPNW's dangers, in order to head
off international law banning nuclear weapons, just as it has banned – and thus
stigmatized – chemical weapons, cluster bombs and germ warfare. Doubtless the Trump
regime's panic over the TPNW derives from its desire to "keep all options on the table"
militarily, including the nuclear one.
What is the point here? To make the unthinkable thinkable, to make nuclear war easier to
happen. The Pentagon appears delighted. Periodically military bigwigs are quoted praising new
smaller nuclear missiles, developed not for deterrence, but for use. Indeed, scrapping
deterrence policy – which has, insofar as it posits no first use, arguably been the only
thing keeping humanity alive and the planet habitable since the dangerous dawn of the atomic
era – has long been the dream of Pentagon promoters of "small, smart nuclear weapons" for
"limited" nuclear wars. How these geniuses would control such a move from escalating into a
wider nuclear war and planetary holocaust is never mentioned.
Before he assumed office, Trump reportedly shocked his advisors by asking, if we have
nuclear weapons, why can't we use them? Only someone dangerously ignorant or profoundly lacking
in basic human morality could ask such a question. Only someone eager to ditch the
human-species-saving policy of no-first-strike nuclear deterrence but willing to risk nuclear
extinction could flirt with such madness. Later in his presidency, Trump asserted that he could
end the war in Afghanistan easily if he wanted, hinting that he meant nukes, but that he did
not incline toward murdering 10 million people. Well, thank God for this shred of humanity.
Some assume a Biden presidency would chart a different course, but they may be counting
their chickens before they're hatched. Biden has made very hostile noises about Russia, China
and North Korea and has surrounded himself with neo-con hawks. He has so far made no promise to
return to the nuclear negotiating table for anything other than START. Would he try to
resuscitate the INF and Open Skies treaties? Would he end Trump regime blather aimed at
scotching TPNW? Maybe. Or he may have imbibed so much anti-Russia and anti-China poison that
he, like Trump, sees the absence of treaties as a green light for nuclear aggression.
Biden's official Foreign Policy Plan says that he regards the purpose of nuclear weapons as
deterrence, thus endorsing this at best very flawed compromise for survival. That he,
apparently unlike Trump, abjures a nuclear first strike is a huge relief, but how long will it
last? The Pentagon has been very persuasive over many decades of center-right rule and there is
no reason to assume that it will suddenly adopt a hands-off policy with Biden just because he
favors nuclear deterrence. Some military-industrial-complex sachems regard the no-first-use
principle as a mistake. Also, remember, Obama okayed a trillion-dollar nuclear arms upgrade.
Biden was his vp. What about that? This is no minor, petty concern. Russia is armed to the
teeth with supersonic nuclear weapons and China has concluded from U.S. belligerence that it
better arm up too. We are in dangerous waters here. Let's hope they don't become
radioactive.
It seems to me there were a surprisingly large number who voted against Trump for down
ticket Republicans. Looks like the Democrats didn't tie the Republican party to Trump as much
as they should have done.
IMHO Trump voters are "protest voters" -- they are tied to the protest against
neoliberalism, not so much to Trump personally. So many Trump voters are against both Parties:
Both D and R party establishment are neoliberal in economic outlook.
In reality "Trump voters" are ready to vote for anyone who will hold pharma, big Ag,
monopolies, insurance companies, etc accountable for the financial harm they've caused to the
90% of the people. That means that both parties will work like hell to prevent any candidate
like that from getting to the general election. See Dem establishment vs, Sanders and
Warren.
Democrats ran a status quo neoliberal candidate and expected a radical result. That did not
happen.
Both the social 'conservatism' and economic 'progressivism' on offer tend to be welded to
highly unpopular opposites. If you want immigration control (Which is both a social and
economic issue but only framed in social terms effectively) and an end to insane post-modern
SJW identity politics, you're obliged to also vote for people who will further deregulate the
economy and give tax cuts to the wealthy. If you want social democrat politics you're obliged
to vote for people who will further promote insane anti-social solidarity post-modern SJW
politics and unending mass migration that are counter-productive, perhaps fatality so, to
their social democratic agenda. (See AOC and her wishes for literal open borders and full
Nordic-style social democrat welfare state)
The currency of a system of economic redistribution within a democracy is the willingness
of those with resources to give to those without. The 'progressive' Democrats in the US are
hooked on this ideal of expanding welfare but that doesn't empower the poor because they're
depended on those with resources to support taxes to give them it. Industrial policy and
immigration restriction (Both to decrease job competition and to make the recipients of
resource redistribution more sympathetic to those with resources) to actually shift the real
wealth and power in society is far more important.
A synthesis on at least immigration restriction and progressive economic policies like
banking regulations, trade reform and industrial policy would be highly popular and is
entirely open ground to take. In 2016 Trump became the first person to make that offer in
stark form in 40 years and despite all the ammo the media and intellectual class were able to
throw at him, he beat Hilary Clinton. Bernie and Corbyn both understand this synthesis and
have spoken of it in the past but now are trapped in political apparatuses that make any
mention of immigration and the economic and social interests of the native working class
totally impermissible. Worse, they wed them to an ideal of ever expanding immigration that
will rip apart any social solidarity needed for socialist or social democrat policies since
the new group interests of the native working class will be battling the newcomers for social
and economic space.
A great deal of American 'Libertarians' are actually quite community oriented and are
infact just not in favour of their taxes being redistributed to outgroups whom they don't
have any sense of social solidarity with. Ask them what should be done in their community and
they start sounding like Bernie Sanders. They view the Federal government as an alien thing
that will take from them and give to alien outgroups.People will say they're being 'duped'
but I think those people just don't understand that people are born out of ethnic groups not
class groups, ethnicity is more important and we might expect it to be so given human
evolution.
Kadath: The GOP has been silent on the presidential election. As a whole the GOP did well
this election. The GOP interpretation going forward is a mix of Chamber Commerce's financial
and immigration policies mixed with Neocon's spreading of democracy thru bombs and ballot
harvesting. In other words their world is getting righted by the steal. Absolutely no doubt
in my mind the GOP is in on the whole thing. Deep State wins.
$15.00 minimal wage after most small businesses are teetering on the brink due to
lockdowns won't end well. It will end with bankruptcy and unemployment, a preference for
hiring "illegals", or if possible an investment in automation. Why is that so hard to
understand? Nor are you going to get the "rich" with this scheme.
Liberals and progressives have to face the inconvenient truth: Trump is no accident. The
people who still vote for him or even just voted for him for the first time knew what they
were voting for. They are not a majority but a large minority of about 46% of Americans. This
cannot be explained as people duped by fake populism. Trump had four years to make even the
slightest gesture of populism (*) – the minimum wage, infrastructure spending, closing
tax loopholes, whatever. There was nothing and plenty of the opposite. This is government for
the plutocracy by the plutocracy. No factory jobs came back to the rustbelt.
Yet roughly the same percentage of voters still stand by their man. They may claim
otherwise when asked (oh those reliable polls and surveys) but this vote is in no shape or
form economically motivated. Trump's platform is racism and white supremacy and hatred and
that is what his people voted for.
(*) Let's take this opportunity to call out the ugly habit of many journalists to use
populism as a polite synonym for racism. Populism is economic policy benefiting working
people to the detriment of the rich. Or just any policy that materially benefits the lower
strata of society. Racism isn't populism.
I understood perfectly well, because Nate Silver kept insisting on it, that
statistically there was a non-trivial chance that Trump would win
The most interesting scenario now what will happen if Trump lose and Biden (or whoever is
the political force behind him) faces hostile Senate. And possibly both hostile Senate and
the House in 2022.
Blue wave did not happen. That's a fact. And that fact alone makes Biden victory, if any,
Pyrrhic. Putting Biden administration in a very precarious position, worse then Trump in
2016. With the real possibility of launching "Chinagate" against him, using Russiagate
template. A special prosecutor and such.
Epidemic and connected with it recession are not over. Senate is controlled by
Republicans. Relation with China deteriorates and with Russia became outright hostile.
This is the essence of it. When you actually drill down, the things both Democrat and
Republican voters want much the same things and that is more collectivism. They want more
collectivism on social matters and they want more collectivism on economic matters. They want
society back.
Both the social 'conservatism' and economic 'progressivism' on offer tend to be welded to
highly unpopular opposites. If you want immigration control (Which is both a social and
economic issue but only framed in social terms effectively) and an end to insane post-modern
SJW identity politics, you're obliged to also vote for people who will further deregulate the
economy and give tax cuts to the wealthy. If you want social democrat politics you're obliged
to vote for people who will further promote insane anti-social solidarity post-modern SJW
politics and unending mass migration that are counter-productive, perhaps fatality so, to
their social democratic agenda. (See AOC and her wishes for literal open borders and full
Nordic-style social democrat welfare state)
The currency of a system of economic redistribution within a democracy is the willingness
of those with resources to give to those without. The 'progressive' Democrats in the US are
hooked on this ideal of expanding welfare but that doesn't empower the poor because they're
depended on those with resources to support taxes to give them it. Industrial policy and
immigration restriction (Both to decrease job competition and to make the recipients of
resource redistribution more sympathetic to those with resources) to actually shift the real
wealth and power in society is far more important.
A synthesis on at least immigration restriction and progressive economic policies like
banking regulations, trade reform and industrial policy would be highly popular and is
entirely open ground to take. In 2016 Trump became the first person to make that offer in
stark form in 40 years and despite all the ammo the media and intellectual class were able to
throw at him, he beat Hilary Clinton. Bernie and Corbyn both understand this synthesis and
have spoken of it in the past but now are trapped in political apparatuses that make any
mention of immigration and the economic and social interests of the native working class
totally impermissible. Worse, they wed them to an ideal of ever expanding immigration that
will rip apart any social solidarity needed for socialist or social democrat policies since
the new group interests of the native working class will be battling the newcomers for social
and economic space.
A great deal of American 'Libertarians' are actually quite community oriented and are
infact just not in favour of their taxes being redistributed to outgroups whom they don't
have any sense of social solidarity with. Ask them what should be done in their community and
they start sounding like Bernie Sanders. They view the Federal government as an alien thing
that will take from them and give to alien outgroups.People will say they're being 'duped'
but I think those people just don't understand that people are born out of ethnic groups not
class groups, ethnicity is more important and we might expect it to be so given human
evolution.
"The PNAC gang (Biden/Harris is their front) will now "shirtfront" Russia and "get in their
face".
They will escalate until they succeed at their plans.
Trump's escalations were almost entirely symbolic and meaningless, but the PNACer's
escalations will be kinetic.
When Iran is once again forced to retaliate against the empire and missile-strikes some
US assets, the PNAC people will escalate and respond with ten times the violence"
The Middle East has changed dramatically with missile, antimissile, and drone tech
advances in recent years.
In addition, Iran can now buy missile componentry directly from China (and perhaps
indirectly from North Korea). Or missiles themselves. Russia is in a 'strategic alliance'
with Iran. That must be borne in mind.
And Russia (in particular) has been relentless in insisting that genuine disputes must be
solved diplomatically between the parties involved.
Conditions are right for gradual normalisation of the Gulf area, and restorations of
normal trade and restoration of relations. (Russia has certainly greased this track.) Iran
hinted that they must accept certain unpalatable realities, and then we saw Saudi etc formal
re-establishment of relations.
If we accept that USA armed aggressions (they are not 'wars', as declared by Congress) are
primarily economic, designed to sell weapon systems and create conditions for US business
enterprise (and businesses of the piglet followers of the big sow)then illegal armed
aggressions no longer make sense.
The risk far exceeds any immediate, yet alone long term benefit.
Immediate conditions multiply the unviability - Covid's economic effects, and US business
being temporarily slowed down in China due to Mr. Trumps actions. The cost to US consumers of
US tariffs paid by US importers of goods sourced from China doesn't help the US cost of
living.
The US is printing money as never seen in history - as have many countries. Is this the
'social credit' system? Will it 'work'? The experiment is massive, and there is risk
aplenty.
Risk compounded on risk? Is this what American people want from their government, whoever
it is? The hell it is!
Forget linking 'kinetic' with Russia. Sure, bluff and posturing from USA, as they are
stuck in a echo loop of their own making. And the only decent leader capable of pushing
through the echo chamber was carefully excluded from Presidential contention.
Trump is also capable of the breakthrough, although through high risk strategies.
On the face of it, his day is done, he came close to 'getting on with it', but not close
enough.
And most critically of all, the recent experience of the US Military - whose analyses I
suspect are more sober than most realize - will surely demand advice of caution over rushes
of blood to political heads.
Everything is changing.
Some things incrementally, slowly, others quickly.
The pressure, in general, is to peace and trade. But the pressure is built up due to the
US policy change 'fault line' sticking. Eventually it will release, and there will be an
abrupt move forward.
The current outcome of this election, a stalemate, is perhaps the best possible
outcome for rest of the world, not only is showing the world how corrupt, outdated and
illegitimate the US' electoral college system is, but this near evenly divided election
result will creates a space for the rest of the free and sovereign world to take a breath
from continues US assault on them.
Elections results that are determined by courts and lawyering do not have legitimacy or
mandate for at least half the voters in US and very doubtful to the rest of the world. This
was the best outcome possible, for those In the world seeking to become free from American
claws.
The coming internal political instability uncertainty and infighting will weaken and keep
the beast busy for coming years, which by itself should provide opportunity for the rest of
world to participate in world affairs.
With his laughable attempts at diplomacy and general hawkishness, he's certainly in the
runnings for the honor. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a press conference at the
State Department in Washington, DC, on October 21, 2020. (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/POOL/AFP via
Getty Images) |
12:01 AM
Is Mike Pompeo the worst secretary of state ever? He's been awful, no doubt. However, there
are 69 other contenders for that title.
Among modern secretaries, Colin Powell was misused by George W. Bush, who defrauded the
country in selling the tragically misbegotten invasion of Iraq. Madeleine Albright, her mindset
permanently stuck in Adolf Hitler's world, stands out for her enthusiastic embrace of war for
others to fight. Alexander Haig achieved little beyond claiming to be in charge in the wake of
the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. William Rogers was overshadowed by National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who eventually took the latter's position.
Going back a bit further, Robert Lansing helped maneuver the U.S. into World War I, one of
the dumbest, most counterproductive moves in American history. The earlier one looks, the more
circumstances diverge, making any comparative judgment more difficult.
Still, about the best that can be said of Pompeo is that he has not gotten America into any
new wars, despite his best efforts. Most often he has played the anti-diplomat, determined to
insult, hector, demand, insist, dictate, threaten, harangue, and impose. But never persuade.
The results speak for themselves: the administration's record lacks any notable successes that
benefit the U.S, the supposed purpose of an "America First" foreign policy. There was a bit of
good, a lot of bad, and some real ugly.
A solid good was President Donald Trump's most important diplomatic initiative: his opening
with North Korea. Pompeo took over in March 2018, with the first summit already planned. That
initiative faltered the following year at the second summit in Hanoi, which was Pompeo's
responsibility.
Alas, the secretary lost points by apparently doing nothing to disabuse the president of the
belief that Pyongyang was prepared to turn over its entire arsenal with the hope that
Washington would look favorably upon its future aspirations. That was never going to happen,
especially after the allied double-cross of Libya, which yielded its missiles and nascent
nuclear program, and after Trump dumped the nuclear accord with Iran, demanding that Tehran
abjectly surrender its independent foreign policy. The North can easily imagine similar
mistreatment, by this or a future administration.
Washington has also pursued better relations with India, which is a positive. As elsewhere,
however, concern about human rights violations is almost entirely absent from Pompeo's
portfolio unless it operates as a weapon against an adversary. The secretary cheerfully holds
the coat of allied dictators as they jail, torture, and murder. Such is the case with Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, who has abetted if not aided rising religious persecution.
The Abrahamic accords between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were a tepid
good. Improved relations between Arabs and Israelis are useful, though strengthening two
authoritarian regimes is not. The Bahraini Sunni monarchy sits atop a Shia population with the
backing of the Saudi military, while the Emirates, nicknamed "Little Sparta," by the Pentagon
-- as if that's a compliment -- has used its military to commit murder and mayhem against Yemen
in a war of political aggression and economic exploitation. The related negotiations with Sudan
have been worse, using an unjust terrorist state designation to force recognition of Israel,
which will undermine the democracy that has yet to be fully born after last year's popular
revolution.
Examples of bad are far more common. For example, Pompeo has worked to thwart the
president's evident desire to exit "endless wars." Nineteen years of nation-building in
Afghanistan is enough. The U.S. does not belong in the Syrian civil war. Iraq and its neighbors
are capable of and should deal with whatever remains of the Islamic State.
The secretary has played an equally malign role in Europe, undercutting his boss -- and, not
incidentally, the American people -- by working to spend more on, and place more troops in, the
continent, even as Trump pushed the Europeans to do more on their own defense. This is an inane
strategy: Washington should cut defense welfare to states with the capability to protect
themselves and allow them to decide how to proceed.
Much the same policy has played out with America's relationship to South Korea. Japan has
escaped most of that pressure. Yet consider the defensive capabilities against China for Japan
and the region if Tokyo spent not 1 percent of GDP on its military, but 2 or 3 percent. And why
shouldn't it do so, instead of expecting Americans to do the job for it?
The secretary turned human rights into a political weapon, sacrificing any credibility on
the issue. He tears up while criticizing Iran but kowtows to the Saudi royals, who are far more
brutal killers. He is horrified by the crimes committed by Venezuela's Maduro regime, but
spreads love to Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has punished the slightest criticism, and
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is turning Turkey into an autocracy. Pompeo actually introduced a new
initiative in support of unalienable rights with the support of countries like Saudi
Arabia and other assorted tyrannies.
Then there is the ugly. Using sanctions to try starve the people of Syria and Venezuela in
order to force their governments to yield to America is not just immoral but ineffective. Both
regimes have survived much and are not inclined to surrender.
At least Venezuela is a matter of geographic interest to Washington. Syria has never
mattered to U.S. security and Pompeo should have backed the president's effort to bring home
all American troops. Today, U.S. and Russian troops are clashing there over the
administration's bizarre and illegal seizure of Syrian oilfields. Also inexplicable is
reinforcing six decades of failure by tightening sanctions on Cuba; the private business
community there has suffered badly as a result, reducing what was becoming a sharp challenge to
the political authorities during the waning days of the Obama administration.
The fixation on Iran, which appears to come more from Pompeo than Trump, can best be
explained as turning Mideast policy over to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The result of abandoning
the nuclear accord has been nothing short of catastrophic. The Iranians have refused to
negotiate. Instead they ramped up nuclear reprocessing, interfered with Gulf tanker traffic,
attacked Saudi oil facilities, and attacked U.S. bases and the embassy in Iraq. Far from
reestablishing deterrence, as claimed, the secretary was left to whimper and whine that he
might have to close America's embassy in Baghdad.
Pompeo has taken the lead in the administration's shameful policy toward Saudi Arabia,
aiding it in its war of aggression against impoverished Yemen. That nation has been at war
within and without for most of its existence. Riyadh decided to invade to restore a puppet
regime to power, turning typical internal discord into a sectarian war in which Tehran was able
to bleed the ineffective Saudi armed forces, which were armed and aided by the Pentagon. In
this way, the secretary has made the American population into accomplices to war crimes.
Even more foolish geopolitically, Pompeo has matched Albright's retreat to World War II
clichés with a stroll back into the Cold War. Russia is an unpleasant actor but doesn't
threaten American security. Europe is capable of defending itself. Alas, constantly piling on
sanctions without providing an off-ramp ensures continued Russian hostility and a tilt toward
China in that burgeoning struggle. How does this make any sense for America?
Finally, Pompeo has been his blundering, maladroit, offensive self in seeking to launch an
American-led campaign against the People's Republic of China. Beijing poses a serious
challenge, but not primarily a security issue. No one believes that the PRC plans to launch an
armada across the Pacific to conquer Hawaii. The issue is Washington's willingness to pay the
cost to forever treat Asia-Pacific waters as an American lake.
As for other issues, the U.S. needs work in concert with friendly powers. Pompeo has done
his best to drive away potential partners: for instance, the G-7 refused his demand to call
COVID-19 the Wuhan Virus and even allies such as South Korea have remained far more measured in
their relations with China, determined not to turn their large neighbor into an enemy. In what
promises to be a long and complicated relationship, genuine and serious diplomacy, which
obviously lies beyond Pompeo's limited capabilities, is required.
On the personal side, he appears to have abused his position for both personal and
ideological advantage. For example, so committed to showing his fealty to Riyadh, he declared
an "emergency" to thwart congressional opposition and rush munitions to the Saudi military so
it could kill more Yemeni civilians. He then sought to impede a departmental investigation,
pressuring and firing the inspector general. What prompted his determination to so avidly
assist a ruler who is ostentatiously vile, reckless, and even criminal is one of the greatest
mysteries of his tenure.
Tragically, Pompeo proved to be one of the greatest obstacles to the best of the president's
international agenda. In a speech delivered last year in which he claimed to be implementing
the Founders' foreign policy vision, he denigrated diplomacy and its successful fruits, such as
opening up both Cuba and Iran to potentially corrosive outside influences, which is the most
likely strategy to induce change over the long term. This approach would be more in sync with
Trump's desire to deal with countries such as North Korea and Iran.
Indeed, left to his own devices, Pompeo would likely have America at war with Iran and
perhaps beyond -- Venezuela, China, and/or Russia. His belligerence serves the American people
badly. As does his consistent campaign, conscious or not, to thwart the president's brave but
incompetent attempts to escape largely braindead practices enforced by what Ben Rhodes termed
"the Blob," the foreign policy establishment that dominates the field.
The secretary has forgotten that his job is not to push his personal ideological line.
Rather, it is to advance the interests of the American people, with a special emphasis on
defending their lives, territory, liberties, constitutional system, and prosperity. In this, he
has failed consistently. Maybe he isn't the worst secretary of state in history. But surely he
is one of the worst.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
No matter who "won" the U.S. election, what will not change is the capitalist organization
of the country's economy.
The great majority of enterprises will continue to be owned and operated by a small minority
of Americans. They will continue to use their positions atop the capitalist system to expand
their wealth, "economize their labor costs," and thereby deepen the United States' inequalities
of wealth and income.
The employer class will continue to use its wealth to buy, control, and shape the nation's
politics to prevent the employee class from challenging their ownership and operation of the
economic system. Indeed, for a very long time, they have made sure that (1) only two political
parties dominate the government and (2) both enthusiastically commit to preserving and
supporting the capitalist system. For capitalism, the question of which party wins matters only
to how capitalism will be supported, not whether that support will be a top governmental
priority.
No matter who won, the private sector and the government will continue their shared failure
to overcome capitalism's socially destructive instability. Economic crashes ("downturns,"
"busts," "recessions," and "depressions") will continue to occur on average every four to seven
years, disrupting our economy and society. Already in this young century, we have endured,
across Republicans and Democrats, three crashes (2000, 2008, and 2020) in 20 years: true to the
historic average. Nothing capitalism tried in the past ever stopped or overcame its
instability. Nothing either party now proposes offers the slightest chance of doing that in the
future.
No matter who won, the historic undoing of the New Deal after 1945 will continue. The GOP
and Democrats will both keep reversing the 1930s' reduction of U.S. wealth and income
inequalities (forced from below by the Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO], socialists,
and communists). As usual, the GOP reverses these gains for Americans further and faster than
Democrats, but both parties have condoned and managed the upward redistribution of wealth and
income since 1945.
The GOP will likely celebrate explicitly the wealthy they serve so slavishly. The Democrats
will likely moan occasionally about inequality while serving the wealthy quietly or implicitly.
The GOP will "economize on government costs" by cutting social programs for average people and
the poor. The Democrats will expand those programs while carefully avoiding any questioning,
let alone challenging, of capitalism.
No matter who won, what U.S. politics lacks is real choice. Both major parties function as
cheerleaders for capitalism under all circumstances, even when a killer pandemic coincides with
a major capitalist crash. Real political choice would require a party that criticizes
capitalism and offers a path toward social transition beyond capitalism. Countless polls prove
that millions of U.S. citizens want to consider socialist criticisms of capitalism and
socialist alternatives to it. The mass of voters for Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
and other socialists provided yet more evidence. However, the system allowed and enabled a
near-fascistic right wing to take over the GOP and the presidency. At the same time, it aided
and abetted the Democrats in excluding a socialist from even running for that presidency. Trump
and Biden are long-standing, well-known cheerleaders for capitalism. Sanders was, in contrast,
a critic.
A new political party that offered systemic criticisms of capitalism and advocated for a
transition to a worker-coop based economic system would bring real choice into U.S. politics.
It would place before the electorate a basic question of vital importance: what mix of
capitalist and worker-coop organized enterprises do you wish to work for, buy from, and live
with in the United States? Voters could thereby genuinely participate in deciding the range of
job descriptions from which each of us will become able to choose. Will we mostly have to
accept positions as employees whose jobs are designed exclusively by and for employers? Or will
all job descriptions include at least two basic tasks: a specific function within an
enterprise's division of labor plus an equal share (alongside all other enterprise workers) of
the powers to design and direct the enterprise as a whole?
Any community that wishes to call itself a "democracy" for more than rhetorical,
self-promotional reasons should welcome a one-person, one-vote decision-making process
governing how work is organized.
Most adults spend most of their lives at work. How that work is organized shapes how their
lives are lived and what skills, aptitudes, appetites, and relationships they develop. Their
work influences their other social roles as friends, lovers, spouses, and parents. In
capitalism, the work experience of the vast majority (employees) is shaped and controlled by a
small minority (employers) to secure the latter's profit, wealth accumulation, and reproduction
as the socially dominant minority. In a real democracy, the economy would have to be
democratically reorganized. Workplace decisions would be made on the basis of one person, one
vote inside each enterprise. Parallel, similarly democratic decision-making would govern
residential communities surrounding and interacting with workplaces. Workplace and residential
democracies would have significant influences over one another's decisions. In short, genuine
economic democracy would be the necessary partner to political democracy.
Many "capitalist" societies today include significant sites of enterprises organized as
worker cooperatives. What they need but lack are allied political parties to secure the
legislation, legal precedents, and administrative decisions to protect worker coops and
facilitate their growth. Early capitalist enterprises and enclaves within feudalism likewise
had to find or build political parties for the same reasons. Anti-feudal and pro-capitalist
parties contested with feudal lords and their monarchs first to protect capitalist enterprises'
existence and then to facilitate their growth. Eventually, pro-capitalist parties undertook
revolutions to displace feudalism and monarchies in favor of parliaments in which those
capitalist parties could and did dominate.
Today, pro-capitalist parties publicly deny but privately fear that their political
dominance is threatened. Mass disaffection from capitalism is growing. One reason is the
relocation of capitalism's growth from its old centers (Western Europe, North America, and
Japan) to new centers (China, India, and Brazil). Globalization -- the polite but confused term
for that relocation -- generates economic declines in the old centers that destabilize
communities unable to admit let alone prepare for them. There, vanishing job opportunities,
incomes, and social services provoke increasing questions and challenges confronting
capitalism. These are now leading to broad and growing disaffection from the capitalist system.
Polls and other signs of that disaffection abound. In the United States, on the one hand, the
Republican Party lurched to the right. Trump-type quasi-fascism wants to impose a nationalist
turn to "save" U.S. capitalism. On the other hand, the old, pro-capitalist establishment
running the Democratic Party blocked Bernie Sanders and other socialists from any real power or
voice. Saving capitalism was and also remains that establishment's goal.
Capitalism eventually defeated and displaced feudalism by combining micro-level construction
and expansion of capitalist enterprises with macro-focused political parties finding ways to
protect those enterprises and facilitate their growth. Capitalists' profits funded their
parties' activities.
This article was produced byEconomy for All, a
project of the Independent Media Institute.
And this is also another opportunity of all the other stuff the US could have demanded
their allies should do as well as the USA that they haven't done because it would have caused
extreme autof/kery, sic banning the sale of airliners, engines, electronics etc. Russia could
simply have pulled its titanium supply. Guess who's share prices would tank first and all the
consequences?
As we have pointed out here before, while the US is exhorting u-Rope to 'take on for the
team,' mega-corps (though weakening) like GE has arrange full localization of its turbine
(power/mineral extraction) business with a local Russian partner. Yes. GE, Microsoft and
others told the White House to f/k off. Not in public.
What we see is salami slicing sanctions (SSS) where the west adds small slices here and
there that do add up, the latest being on suppling microelectronics to the Russian aviation
industry. This is to hobble Russia's investment in its current rebuilding of its civil
airliner industry or what's left of it. These sanction are a dick move precisely because they
are easy and get support from both american political parties.
We have also covered on this blog many times before, cutting Russia off from the Joy of
Sex West, they've cut their own markets off (retail/food produce etc.) which Russia
has in turn finally massively self-invested for domestic products and also up market
equivalents. That's cost u-Rope billions not only in lost sales, but in future sales share
that will not return to where it once was.
So, cutting off western microelectronics for aircraft looks even more weak p*ss
considering Russia's state strategic program of Russianizing its aircraft programs despite
the obvious up front cost. Russia was doing this anyway because it was obvious which way the
wind was blowing. Either they get on with it or they will be forced to do it.
The west is running out of any meaningful sanctions they can enact without causing futher
blowback. How stupid is that? It's the product of thirty years of 'Do Something'
policy however dumb or short sighted because the West has to be seen to do something. The
concept of Leave it Alone has never crossed their minds. It really is an ad dick tion!
😉 Just don't expect to finding them in a self-help group admitting to all the nasty
s/t they've done and as part of their step program, reaching out and apologizing for any of
it. Neither them nor their media supporting hamsters.
In Lavrov's interview with Kommersant which was mostly about the conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan, he was asked about the US Election and then about the dire state of
relations with the EU. Lavrov reiterates Russia's position:
"I repeat once again that Russia will respect the choice of the American people, and that
we are ready to establish constructive cooperation with the winner of the race for the White
House, regardless of his party affiliation. However, considering the current circumstances,
we realistically assess the prospects of bilateral cooperation and do not expect too much.
Anyhow, let's wait for the voting results. We don't have long to wait."
Yes, the interview was done prior to the vote counting anarchy. IMO, we can substitute the
Outlaw US Empire for the EU in Lavrov's answer about the current crisis in relations:
"Russia's relations with the European Union are in crisis – and it is not our fault.
The EU bureaucracy and individual member states are using any, even the most absurd, reasons
to enhance something they call 'containment' of Russia.
"New sanctions, illegitimate from the international law perspective, are being imposed.
Considering the number of sanctions imposed on our citizens under far-fetched pretexts, the
EU is second only to the United States. The European media continue a broad anti-Russia
campaign. In trade and economy, the Brussels bureaucracy is stepping up various protectionist
policies, violating WTO rules and introducing its openly politicised rules of the game as
they go.
"At the same time, we are being told that Russia can "earn" the right to have normal
relations with the EU by changing its behaviour. This cynicism is absolutely off the
scale."
Lavrov repeats it's up to the EU to alter its behavior:
"[O]ur European colleagues must clearly understand that any interaction is only possible
on an honest and equal basis and respect for each other's interests. We will not allow any
one-sided games here. There will be no unilateral goodwill gestures on our part. We still
hope that a rational approach and common sense will prevail, both in Brussels and in member
capitals. We are ready to wait for that as well."
On the eve of the election, for example, Politico published a fawning
profile of Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is laying the groundwork to become
speaker of the House in a future Republican majority. An ideological mirror of her father, she
and her cohort long for a restoration of the early 2000s Bushite foreign policy of
globe-trotting regime change and democratic nation building administered by a national security
state in Washington D.C.
Their cause, however, is as infertile as their past efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is
because despite his poor record, Donald Trump has created a permanent and growing disconnect
between the War Party and the GOP.
There is no need to sugarcoat how Donald Trump has squandered four years of opportunity in
foreign policy. His promises to bring the troops home have not materialized and remain
"promises" to be kept at a permanently delayed date. He has intensified U.S. interference in
Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Venezuela. He's overseen the continued deterioration of relations
with Russia, while leaving North Korea at the diplomatic altar. And he's brought the United
States and Iran into a first exchange of direct, open conflict.
A big-picture assessment, however, requires not looking at how Trump failed to bring what
restrainers wanted, but how he succeeded in destroying what they needed gone.
Trump's election caused the departure of the most loathsome of the war peddlers -- including
Bill Kristol, David Frum, Jamie Kirchick, Steve Schmidt, and Max Boot -- from Republican ranks.
United under the banner of "Never Trump," for four years they used every inch of column space,
every CNN interview, and a small fortune to cleave off a portion of the Republican base that
they believed would be happy to return to the world of 2006.
The result? Exit polls show Trump winning 93 percent of the Republican vote, a higher
percentage than he won in 2016. As an election post-mortem summarized,
Never Trump hawks "basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable
news green rooms -- and after tonight's results, we shouldn't have to see them on TV or even
see their tweets ever again."
That the average American has the same respect for the War Party's minions as they have for
a tobacco executive should come as no surprise.
Polling continually shows a supermajority of Americans ready and eager to withdraw from
Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes 77 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of whom want to
decrease military engagement with the rest of the world as well. These voters are a vanguard
that will stop any future Bushite ascendance, whether from Nikki Haley or the spawn of Dick
Cheney.
Slowly, Republican members of Congress are beginning to reflect the wishes of their voters.
One year ago this month, I wrote about the
emerging cadre of antiwar conservatives in the House of Representatives. While most broke
under pressure to support Trump's escalation with Iran, not all did. It's a more active and
vocal Republican contingent than has existed for decades and it's growing fast. Following
Tuesday's results, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming will join Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the U.S.
Senate, while Nancy Mace of South Carolina will lock arms with Representatives Thomas Massie
and Matt Gaetz. Both women are vetted and proven war skeptics who are determined to challenge
Liz Cheney at every turn.
Beyond government, the creative destruction brought by the Trump presidency in conservative
circles has given a new lease on life to restrainers long excluded from the Beltway's
incestuous institutions. That includes the continued ascension of publications like The
American Conservative , which has become a wheelhouse for the
most important foreign policy conversations happening on the right; Tucker Carlson, whose
program has become the highest rated in cable news history, no doubt aided by his antiwar
opening monologues; the Quincy Institute, which is dragging other think tanks kicking and
screaming into dialogues about shifting U.S. positioning overseas; and activist organizations
like BringOurTroopsHome.US , a
collection of right-of-center veterans who are lobbying to end the country's unconstitutional
wars.
The American empire was formed over the course of a century, and currently encompasses over
850 overseas military bases. Hundreds of billions of dollars are exchanged every year through
facets of the military-industrial complex, while thousands of very powerful people make their
cushy salaries off the current imperialistic system (and will fight tooth and nail to keep it
that way).
One election was never going to change that. Donald Trump was never going to be a miracle
worker. But he's kicked in the door and let us in, even if we wish he'd tidied up better before
he left.
We have principled leaders in government. We have the infrastructure. And most importantly,
we have the voters. Liz Cheney and her misbegotten hangers-on may not realize it yet, but their
heyday has long past. It's our party now and we're going to bring America home.
Hunter DeRensis is the communications director of BringOurTroopsHome.US and a regular
contributor to The American Conservative . Follow him on Twitter
@HunterDeRensis.
Stephen Wertheim's Tomorrow, The World examines a shift in elite U.S.
foreign-policy thinking that took place in mid-1940. Why in that moment, a year and a half
before the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Hawaii, and other outposts, did it become
popular in foreign-policy circles to advocate for US military domination of the globe?
In school text book mythology, the United States was full of revoltingly backward
creatures called isolationists at the time of World War I and right up through December 1941,
after which the rational adult internationalists took command (or we'd all be speaking German
and suffering through the rigged elections of fascistic yahoos, unlike this evening).
In fact, the term "isolationist" wasn't cooked up until the mid-1930s and then only as a
misleading insult to be applied to people who wished for the US government to engage with the
world in any number of ways from treaties to trade that didn't include militarism.
Anti-isolationism was and is a means of ridiculously pretending that "doing something" means
waging war, supporting NATO, and promoting the "responsibility to protect," while anything
else means "doing nothing."
There were distinctions in the 1920s between those who favored the League of Nations and
World Court and those who didn't. But neither group favored coating the planet with US
military bases, or extending even the most vicious conception of the Monroe Doctrine to the
other hemisphere, or replacing the League of Nations with an institution that would falsely
appear to establish global governance while actually facilitating US domination. Pre-1940
internationalists were, in fact, imperfect US nationalists. They, as Wertheim writes, "had
the capacity to see the United States as a potential aggressor requiring restraint." Some,
indeed, didn't need the word "potential" there.
What changed? There was the rise of fascism and communism. There was the notion that the
League of Nations had failed. There was the serious failure of disarmament efforts. There was
the belief that whatever came out of WWII would be dramatically different. In September 1939,
the Council on Foreign Relations began making plans to shape the postwar (yet permawar)
world. The Roosevelt White House into 1940 was planning for a postwar world that held a
balance of power with the Nazis. Ideas of disarmament, at least for others, were still very
much a part of the thinking. "Weapons dealer to the world" was not a title that it was ever
suggested that the United States strive for.
Wertheim sees a turning point in the German conquest of France. Change came swiftly in
May-June, 1940. Congress funded the creation of the world's biggest navy and instituted a
draft. Contrary to popular mythology, and propaganda pushed by President Roosevelt, nobody
feared a Nazi invasion of the Americas. Nor was the United States dragged kicking and
screaming into its moral responsibility to wage global permawar by the atrocious domestic
policies of the Nazis or any mission to rescue potential victims from Nazi genocide. Rather,
US foreign policy elites feared the impact on global trade and relations of a world
containing a Nazi power. Roosevelt began talking about a world in which the United States
dominated only one hemisphere as imprisonment.
The United States needed to dominate the globe in order to exist in the sort of global
order it wanted. And the only global order it wanted was one it dominated. Did US planners
become aware of this need as they watched events in Europe? Or did they become aware of its
possibility as they watched the US government build weapons and the US president acquire new
imperial bases? Probably some of each. Wertheim is right to call our attention to the fact
that US officials didn't talk about militarily dominating the whole globe prior to 1940, but
was there ever a time they talked about dominating anything less than what they had the
weapons and troops to handle? Certainly the voices had not all been monolithic, and there was
always an anti-imperialist tradition, but did it ever give much back to those it had
dispossessed until after WWII when airplanes and radios developed a new sort of empire (and
some colonies were made states but others more or less liberated)?
The US government and its advisers didn't just discover that they could rule the world and
that they needed to rule the world, but also that -- in the words of General George V.
Strong, chief of the Army's War Plans Division -- Germany had demonstrated the "tremendous
advantage of the offense over the defense." The proper defensive war was an aggressive war,
and an acceptable goal of that was what Henry Luce called living space and Hitler called
Lebensraum . US elites came to believe that only through war could they engage in
proper trade and relations. One can treat this as a rational observation based on the growth
of fascism, although some of the same people making the observation had fascistic tendencies,
the problem with Germany seems to have existed for them only once it had invaded other
nations that were not Russia, and there is little doubt that had the United States lived
sustainably, locally, egalitarianly, contentedly, and with respect for all humanity, it could
not have observed a need for permawar in the world around it -- much less gone on observing
it for 75 years.
In early 1941, a US political scientist named Harold Vinacke asked, "When the United
States has its thousands of airplanes, its mass army, properly mechanized, and its two-ocean
navy, what are they to be used for?" Officials have been asking the same right up through
Madeline Albright and Donald Trump, with the answer generally being found to be as
self-evident as other patriotic "truths." By summertime 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had
announced the future organization of the world in the Atlantic Charter.
If hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, there remained some virtue in US
society and its conception of foreign policy at the time of WWII, because a major focus of
postwar planners was how to sell global domination to the US public (and incidentally the
world, and perhaps most importantly themselves) as being something other than what it was.
The answer, of course, was the United Nations (along with the World Bank, etc.).
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles described the design of the United Nations thus: "what
we required was a sop for the smaller states: some organization in which they could be
represented and made to feel themselves participants." In Roosevelt's words before the
creation of the U.N., all nations but four, in a future global organization, would merely
"blow off steam."
Roosevelt also proposed that the existence of such a phony organization would allow it to
declare war instead of the US Congress, meaning that a US president would be able to launch
wars at will -- something like what we've seen for the past 75 years with NATO occasionally
having filled in for a malfunctioning United Nations.
Roosevelt believed that the United States signed up for global policeman when it defeated
Hitler. Neither Roosevelt nor Wertheim mentions that the Soviet Union did 80% of defeating
Hitler, after having done about 0% of creating him.
But surely the job of world cop can be resigned, no matter how one got into it. The
question now is how. The financial and bureaucratic and media and campaign-corruption
interests all work against dismantling the permawar military, just as does the ideology of
anti-"isolationism." But it certainly cannot hurt to be aware of the dishonesty in the
ideology and of the fact that it was not always with us.
A vote for Trump is a vote against America's ruling class
On Saturday night, President Trump held a campaign
rally in Butler, Pa. Butler is a town 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, and it's like a lot of
places you'll find in this country once you head inland from the coasts.
Butler is a former industrial town -- they made Pullman rail cars there for many years --
but it's been losing population for decades. There are still a lot of nice people in Butler and
for $60,000 or so, you can buy a decent house there. It's a place you might be happy in.
But our professional class is not impressed by Butler. They don't consider Butler, Pa. or
places like it to be the future. To them, places like Butler are embarrassing relics of a past
best forgotten. The men of Butler may have built this country, and they did, but they mean
nothing to our leaders now. You can be certain of that because when large numbers of people in
Butler started killing themselves with narcotics, no one in Washington or New York or Los
Angeles said a word about it.
Trump supporters hold up four fingers as they chant 'Four More Years' at President Trump's
campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Saturday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
There have now been so many opioid deaths in Butler that a few years ago, residents built an
overdose memorial in the middle of town. MSNBC didn't cover that.
So given all of that, it was interesting how the people around Butler feel about Donald
Trump. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people came out to see him Saturday night, depending on whose
estimate you believe. Pictures of the rally site showed a sea of people obscuring the horizon,
the kind of image you would see of a visit from the pope.
When was the last time a political speech drew that many people? Well, the media didn't ask.
Instead, they attacked the rally as a "superspreader" event. OK, we'll leave the epidemiology
to CNN.
But the questions still hung in the air. Why did all those people come? They must have known
that Donald Trump is the most evil man who hass ever lived. They've heard that every day for
five years. They know that people who support Donald Trump are also evil, they're bigots,
they're morons, they're racist cult members. They know that Americans have been fired from
their jobs for supporting Donald Trump, not to mention kicked off social media, belittled by
their kids' teachers and shunned by decent society. Only losers and freaks support Donald
Trump.
People in Butler knew all of that. But on Saturday, they went to the Donald Trump rally,
anyway. Why exactly did they do that? We should be pondering that question deeply as we watch
Tuesday night's returns and as we live through the aftermath of them.
Millions of Americans sincerely love Donald Trump. They love him in spite of everything
they've heard. They love him, often, in spite of himself. They're not deluded. They know
exactly who Trump is. They love him anyway.
Trump addresses the crowd at his rally in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
They love Donald Trump because no one else loves them. The country they built, the country
their ancestors fought for over hundreds of years, has left them to die in unfashionable little
towns, mocked and despised by the sneering halfwits with finance degrees -- but no actual
skills -- who seem to run everything all of a sudden.
Whatever Donald Trump's faults, he is better than the rest of the people in charge. At least
he doesn't hate them for their weakness. Donald Trump, in other words, is and has always been a
living indictment of the people who run this country. That was true four years ago when he came
out of nowhere to win the presidency. And it's every bit as true right now, maybe even more
true than it's ever been. It will remain true regardless of whether Donald Trump wins
reelection.
Trump rose because they failed. It's as simple as that. If the people in charge had done a
halfway decent job with the country they inherited, if they cared about anything other than
themselves, even for just a moment, Donald Trump would still be hosting "Celebrity Apprentice."
But they didn't. Instead, they were incompetent and narcissistic and cruel and relentlessly
dishonest. They wrecked what they didn't build, and they lied about it. They hurt anyone who
told the truth about what they were doing. That's all true. We all watched.
America is still a great country, the best in the world, but our ruling class is disgusting.
A vote for Trump is a vote against them. That's what's going on in those pictures from Butler.
That's what's going on in this country.
"... One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill. ..."
"... So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread? ..."
Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic
cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them.
Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let
them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no
longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that
infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the
regimes.
While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage,
invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social
cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.
As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then
feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by
their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their
power.
As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as
well.
One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too
little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability
fight the reform movement to a standstill.
As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear ) suddenly
display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in
the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.
So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders
living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of
touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford
bread?
They all lead to the same destination.
richsob , 1 hour ago
I know a lot of history and I think we will go the route of Rome. We will have a slow
slide into total failure from a debased currency, an over extended military, tax revolts,
unmanageable immigration and an internal war among the elites.
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 1 hour ago
My name is an indirect reference to France and the French Revolution.
When Pelosi was photo'd in front of two massive Sub Zero fridges with gourmet ice cream,
that was the equivalent of "let them eat brioche." She is fvucking clueless. A tool that is
barely coherent, much like Joe.
People see through it. The greed of the politicians, and their apparatchiks, the
bureaucrats, is obvious to anyone willing to look. FFS apparatchiks can retire with six
fixure salaries after being a government employee! People are sick to death of their
arrogance, their greed, their out-and-out abuse of the taxpayer!
The other analogy, which I think is valid, is to ancient Rome. I was a philosophy major /
Latin minor so took quite few courses involving the classes, reading the classics, or
translating them. I also spent a semester in Rome, tramping through the Forum and walking
underground and overground. In 1997 Rome was a beautiful city, mostly safe.
Anyhow, ancient Rome ended up debasing their currency, literally. Which the US (and other
central banks) are doing with excessive money printing.
Excessive taxation drove away the tax base of ancient Rome. The first jingle keys event
was there. Why? Taxes were too high. People will work hard if there is a profit incentive and
they are able to earn a good return from their labor. Once that incentive was gone, people
abandoned their farms and property and left. Where did they go? Away. Away from the tax
collectors, which were richly rewarded for any taxes they were able to collect. I suppose at
the end, the collection methods became quite brutal. At that point, when it is your money or
your life, you throw the tax collector your money and flee with your life. You walk away from
land that you love and start over.
Never an easy choice to abandon one's land and home. But that is exactly what
happened.
Central bankers and governments, along with the common citizen, would do well to heed
historical precedents.
MAOUS , 31 minutes ago
I see it more like The Godfather Part I & II. We were betrayed by the stupidest
simpletons of our own family (citizenry) that sold us out for trinkets, false promises of
grandeur and propaganda from Rival Mafia Families who wanted to rub our family out, kill our
leader and take over. "I didn't know until today, it was Barzini all along." Yeah, but Fredo
was the turn coat that made it all possible. Meet the simpletons of our Family known as your
fellow American voter. "A Republic, if you can keep it." We lost it, kiss it goodbye. Say
hello to the new Black Hand on the block.
Omega Point , 1 hour ago
One of the best articles on ZH in a while. The elites are so full of hubris, they behave
as if the state of affairs since the post-WWII era has always been the state of affairs
throughout history and are immutable. They believe that they are cause of America's
dominance, not the individuals who built this country on whose goodwill they are now quickly
draining.
I think we're like Rome. Currency debasement, no border security, massively corrupt
politicians, most of population on welfare, and games and circuses to distract from the
rot.
The elites will soon be surprised how quickly things will decline, just as shocked as the
Romans when the Visigoths came through the city walls and looted the Imperial City in 410
AD.
play_arrow
sbin , 1 hour ago
The USSR was very similar with decrepit old party hacks ruining everything.
Unfortunately American exceptional lunatics will try to destroy the world before excepting
reality.
Never been a group so corrupt and delusional with so much destructive weaponry.
Dr Strangelove is more appropriate.
RKKA , 1 hour ago
In the summer of 1941, the 4th Panzer Division of Heinz Guderian, one of the most talented
German tank generals, broke through to the Belarusian town of Krichev. Parts of the 13th
Soviet Army were retreating. Only one gunner, Nikolai Sirotinin, did not retreat - very
young, short, thin.
On that day, it was necessary to cover the withdrawal of troops. “There will be two
people with a cannon here,” said the battery commander. Nikolai volunteered. The second
was the commander himself.
On the morning of July 17, a column of German tanks appeared on the highway.
Nikolai took up a position on the hill right on the field. The cannon was sinking in the
high rye, but he could clearly see the highway and the bridge over the river. When the lead
tank reached the bridge, Nikolai knocked it out with the first shot. The second shell set
fire to the armored personnel carrier that closed the column.
We must stop here. Because it is still not entirely clear why Nikolai was left alone at
the cannon. But there are versions. He apparently had just the task - to create a "traffic
jam" on the bridge, knocking out the head car of the Nazis. The lieutenant at the bridge and
adjusted the fire, and then, disappeared. It is reliably known that the lieutenant was
wounded and then he left towards the withdrawing positions. There is an assumption that
Nikolai had to move away, having completed the task. But ... he had 60 rounds. And he
stayed!
Two tanks tried to move the lead tank off the bridge, but they were also hit. The armored
vehicle tried to cross the river not across the bridge. But she got stuck in a swampy shore,
where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank ...
Guderian's tanks rested on Nikolai Sirotinin, like the Chinese wall, like the Brest
fortress. Already 11 tanks and 6 armored personnel carriers were on fire! For almost two
hours of this strange battle, the Germans could not understand where the gun was firing from.
And when we reached the position of Nikolai, he had only three shells left. The Germans
offered him to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them with a carbine.
This last battle was short-lived ...
11 tanks and 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers were lost by the Nazis after the
battle, where they were blocked by the Russian soldier Nikolai Sirotinin.
The inscription on the monument: "Here at dawn on July 17, 1941 entered into combat with a
column of fascist tanks and in a two-hour battle repulsed all enemy attacks, senior artillery
sergeant Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence
of our Motherland."
"After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary?" These words were
written down in his diary by Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld: “July
17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. An unknown Russian soldier was buried in the evening. He
alone stood at the cannon, shot a convoy of our tanks and infantry for a long time, and died.
Everyone was amazed at his courage ... Oberst (Colonel) before the grave said that if all the
soldiers of the Fuehrer fought like this Russian soldier, they would have conquered the whole
world! Three times they fired volleys from rifles. After all, he is a Russian soldier, is
such admiration necessary? "
Ordinary people were ready to defend and die for the USSR. And who is Gorbachev, who
destroyed the USSR. A traitor who betrayed everything and everyone. A stupid dilettante who
imagines himself a world-class politician. The main drawback of the USSR was that the power
was too concentrated in the hands of one person, who was trusted without question. But when
people realized where he was leading the country, it was too late.
Max21c , 2 hours ago
It's a mix between Nazi Germany and its criminality and thievery and persecution
machinery, and Bolshevist Russia and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery
and many third world banana republics and their criminality and thievery and political
persecution machinery.
Face it Washingtonians are evil.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour ago
Americuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur
that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had
hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay
and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via
dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were
still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's
small time compared to what the US government is doing.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour ago
Americuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur
that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had
hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay
and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via
dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were
still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's
small time compared to what the US government is doing.
DeeDeeTwo , 2 hours ago
The elites, Big Tech, Media and Deep State threw the kitchen sink at this election and did
not move the needle. Regardless of who is next President, nothing changes. This is a tribute
to the stability of the American system. In fact, the pendulum is swinging against the
subversives who are becoming increasingly reckless and discredited.
TBT or not TBT , 2 hours ago
What did Huxley call the future country depicted in Brave New World?
Western hypocrisy revealed 10 years after the event in today's Independent:
"Tony Blair and Iraq: The damning evidence" . And they go on and on about those wicked,
evil Russians and their tyrannical leader causing death and destruction Syria by their
"support" of the Assad government whilst the West arms the "freedom fighters" there.
300 election don't count comments not one comment about the future of America? All I see
here is who shall be king of the mountain. What is it that our leader (whoever it is, should
do)?
1. Reduce military spending by 50% per year for each of the next four years.
2. Close 50% of the military bases each year, over each of the next four years
3. Standardize national examinations for high school and undergraduate degrees pass the
examination
receive the BS or BA.. degree.. eliminate any all accreditation requirements, people can
study wherever
whenever and how ever they wish. Tutorials not bureaucratic institutions will prepare the
students for
the examinations.
4. eliminate copyright and patent laws so as to reduce the wealth gap and so as to return
America to
from monopolism to capitalism.
5. fix the constitution so the governed have a powerful, meaningful say in not just in how
uses the
government to govern, but also so the governed have a powerful say in what it is those who
are elected
to the government must accomplish why they are in the employee of our elected government.
6. Find a way to get the USA activities subject to human rights courts.
7. Paint all of the white people black in order to eliminate race as condition of
life.
A list of goals and objectives should be put forth on what the elected are supposed to
accomplish in the next four years. In that way, it will not matter who is the President, what
will matter is did he or she accomplish what it was they were elected to do?
There is nothing in China like the military-industrial complex of the United States that
structurally fosters militarism and imperialism with its powerful "lobbies" and think
tanks. The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly
complicates their adaptation to the new world. Its powerful and efficient propaganda
apparatus ("information & entertainment") presents the United States' two-headed,
single-party political regime based on the money aristocracy as a democracy.
That is really well put.
"The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly complicates
their adaptation to the new world"
Nevada will put Joe Biden over for the Presidential win..
Tonight.. Now the question is. How long will Biden last until Harris becomes the Queen of
Spades of Pentagon?
See? Twitter is cool with allowing this posting by David Litt, former Obama speechwriter,
*today* 5:34 pm Nov 4 of a democrat ballot "curing" (post Nov 3 ballot harvesting) assistance
operation in Georgia over the next three days (Wed, Thurs and Fri)
Attention everyone in or near Georgia: We need YOUR help today! This race is not over
and we need every single vote to be counted.
It is all hands on deck and all eyes on Georgia!
Join us today for a virtual training to learn how to knock doors to help voters cure
their ballots. We need you in this fight with us today and tomorrow and Friday. We've come
so far, this is how we bring it home. See you in the virtual training room and out knocking
doors soon!"
"The guy at the source of the whole kerfluffle acknowledges that the 130,000 magical votes
Tweet was based on incorrect data"
-Posted by: _K_C_ | Nov 5 2020 3:50 utc | 306
I'm not so sure about this, _K_C. His explanation for the late night MI Biden vote bump
"kerfluffle" still smells sketchy to me. Given the stakes, could someone have gotten that guy
to "flip" his statement after the fact?
Many nationalists plan to vote for Trump, not due to a positive assessment of his first
term, but for the same reason people line up for terrible movie sequels: warm and fuzzy
nostalgia, sometimes inexplicable. Once upon a time the prospect of electing this man made the
people we all hate but who rule us anyway visibly afraid.
Spite for the "coastal elites" in tortoiseshell glasses will likely save the day.
But don't expect the same flood of libtard tears this time around outside of maybe low level
MSNBC watchers. The real elite, the Jews, now realize that Trump's gun had an orange tip spray
painted black the whole time.
Trump began betraying his voters almost as soon as he was sworn into office. The only
figures in Trump's populist campaign who survived the 2016 election were Steve Bannon, who was
banished after Charlottesville and is now facing federal charges at the hands of Trump's own
Department of Justice, and Jeff Sessions, whose political career was destroyed by Trump's
calculated malice.
A victory in 2016 by any of the generic GOP hacks who lost during the primary would've been
indistinguishable from the last four years of Trump, policy-wise.
Draining the swamp and transforming the Republicans into a worker's party? No. Instead, his
cabinet positions
were staffed by the swamp scum at the Heritage Foundation.
Deportation force and a wall? He trots out Stephen Miller
before any big vote , but nothing was accomplished on this front. Barack Obama removed
50% more
illegal aliens in his first term than Trump has. In his first two years of holding the
Presidency and Congress, Trump made no effort to present legislation to combat illegal
immigration or even increase border security. There are more Asian and Central American illegal
aliens in the United States right now than before he took office.
Punishing "LIBERAL DONORS"? Heritage's appointments have helped enable a corporate crime
wave not seen in recent memory, with laughable cases of naked insider trading like the
"paused" loan to Kodak personally protected by Trump's inner circle. Every multi-national
and NGO has been scamming the PPP system, Trump's promise to crack down on this
will never materialized . White collar crime prosecutions have fallen to a
33-year low during this administration.
Is it any wonder these "donors" have so much money laying around they can use it to fund
Black Lives Matter?
This round of American populism has been defeated by the Swamp conservatives, many who were
originally Trump foes and but now gleefully wear MAGA hats and have shoved aside relatively
independent alt-light con artists and
the organic ethno-nationalist movement. The conservatives we thought we canceled, like the Jews
Ben Shapiro, Mark Levine, and Dennis Prager have come back from the dead thanks to Big Tech's
massive crackdown on independent media.
The problem for Trump is that conservatism is widely hated, especially by his voters.
Trump's tax cut for billionaires is one of his administration's only policy achievements, and
it is the
most unpopular thing he has ever done.
What will carry Trump over the finish line is the understandable desire to trigger the
libs just one last time, in a way that won't get you fired from your job or
antagonized by the FBI . The immense power the Judeo-left has amassed by uniting suburban
liberals, big capitalists, permanent bureaucrats and antifa under Trump has contributed to
white working people becoming atomized, thus demoralized, thus susceptible to Trump's campaign
year presentation as The Last White Man .
Seeing the conservative movement peering out from under the mountains of shit we shoveled on
them to dominate the Trump-era is testament to the flexibility and tenacity -- thanks to Jewish
"philanthropy" -- of the phony right. The time-sink, money-sink non-issues of abortion, the
supposed justification for confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, has re-emerged as
a supposedly important issue. Last year the abortion rate fell to the lowest
levels ever, largely due to low rates of sex between young people and the widespread
adoption of contraceptives.
But the Koch brothers know what we're really getting in ACB. The notorious "Americans for
Prosperity"
spent millions to push her through because she will be the most pro-big business justice on
the court (she sided with big business 85% of the time during her
judgeship), which explains the complete lack of a fight from the Democrats. 15 of the last 19
SCOTUS judges have been appointed by the Republican Party, yet the court has become more
pro-business and socially "liberal" anyway.
As Ted Cruz has recently stated, once the election is over and they're no longer under
pressure from voters, Trump and the GOP will be returning to
business as usual : imposing austerity during an unprecedented unemployment crisis,
ratcheting up military tensions with enemies of Israel, and as the
Heritage Foundation predicts in its conclusion of Trump v. Biden on immigration, a massive
amnesty bill that will introduce a new "merit-based immigration system" -- the H1-B program on
steroids.
While nobody thinks Trump's "platinum plan for black America" will ever come to be, the mere
suggestion will be opening up a debate we should not be having. Explicit
no-whites-need-apply social policies are another cultural artifact of the Trump era bound to
become acceptable in his second term.
For establishment Democrats, their second defeat at the hands of Trump will be enormously
discrediting, but they will profit in the short term from their comfortable position as the
opposition party. By running a candidate like Joe Biden, one can only assume they want to
lose.
But the Clinton-Biden-Obama-Pelosi nexus, who planned to fill "Sleepy Joe's" spayed cabinet
with people like John Kasich, Jeff
Flake , and various in-house neo-liberals, will be pressured by actual communists in their
party to step aside. The Republican Party will never be able to meet this challenge, instead
Trump and Charlie Kirk will be riding a helicopter to Botswana to cut the ribbon on a new
bathhouse and dance to the Village People when the next incident occurs and the nation is once
again on fire.
The New York Times has turned this election into a referendum on Woke + Wall
Street. The majority, even many non-whites, will be rejecting America's new official ideology
today.
From the beginning, one side of me has always thought Trump to be too good to be true. My
first doubts about him came when I learned his daughter was married to a powerful Jew and
she's adopted his religion. Trump has turned out to be the most pro-Zionist president ever
and has even moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem...
Best thing I have read on Trump. Here is my one reservation
"The real elite, the Jews, now realize that Trump's gun had an orange tip spray painted
black the whole time."
Forget "now realize". At least Trump's Jews – the ones anti Jewish Power Trump
supporters never report on – have ALWAYS realized that Trump is shabbos goy to the
bone. I am talking about Jews like:
Lew Eisenberg, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Mel Sembler, Ron Weiser, Steve Wynn, Elliott
Brody, Laurie Perlmutter, and Carl Icahn, not to mention Bernie Marcus. Then we have his many
Jewish personal and professional associates, who include, among others, Avi Berkowitz,
Michael Cohen, Gary Cohn, Reed Cordish, Boris Epshteyn, David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt,
Larry Kudlow, Stephen Miller, Steven Mnuchin, Jay Sekulow, David Shulkin, and Allen
Weisselberg. All those Trump-defenders out there in America should be dismayed at his vast
linkage to the people of Israel(See Thomas Dalton, True Q)
These are the big Business Republican Jews and their apparatchiks as opposed to the new
class professionals, academics, intellectuals, mediaist, journalists, and policy wonks who
comprise the neo liberal – liberal and neocon Jews of the Democrat Party. Unlike the
Democrat Jews who don't know Trump existentially – he's too vulgar and undereducated
– and really do think, or perhaps at least thought, that Trump could be the coming of a
new Hitler, the Business Jews have had long actual existential relations with Trump or know
Jews who have. Trump has been up to his ears in Jews of the Big Business type his whole life
and they know he is firmly in the Semophile bag. As Jews , Trump's Jews want Zionism and have
always known he is good for it. But they also want every break they can get for Big Business
because what could be better for Jews who prosper from neoliberalism right across their
higher class status? As Striker argues , Trump will give Jews another round of business
breaks like those he had already given in his first term. And there will go his populist
image but it will have served its purpose
All this could have been easily predicted if someone in our ethnic realism community had
taken a good look at Trump's Jews. Instead Trump was allowed to pose as "the last white
man"
Actually E Michael Jones sort of tried it but he didn't get any support. Why is that?
Well, I don't know who won yet and I doubt that anyone will ever know since everything is
rigged, but Old Joe has most of the alphabet agencies in his pocket, the MSM in his corner
and a whole lot of Obama, Clinton trotskyites lookin after him. That should mean that he
should win by a landslide, unless he lets the popular vote for Trump – into the
election process – which would be shrewd .. lol As far as America goes – SNAFU d
again.
I've been sitting here watching the election maps all night.
The counting stopped around 8:30 – 9:00 Pacific time. It hasn't moved since.
If you go into the counties on the particular states that have stalled, you can do the
math.
Clearly Trump was winning and if counts allowed, they should be able to call it.
Amazingly, they called Arizona when it was only something like 68% complete.
NV was going red but it shows it is swaying blue now it is the only state that has updated
in last 3 hours besides Arizona.
It looks like they might be trying to pull something (the Democrats/Deep state).
I've never seen this happen. There is no reason for it to have happened.
WI, MI, PA, NC and GA are all pending red, along with the 1 electoral vote in ME.
Go to bed. In morning we'll get up and Biden will be declared winner with most of the
above states declared blue (sometime during the night when most people are sleeping).
Superficial article. The author did write a few good sentences, but seems to have missed
that Trump is at most a potential catalyst for white awakening. If that does not happen, you
can't blame him. You can only blame yourself for a combination of spinelessness, stupidity,
cowardice & naivety.
If the central pillar of America, whites, are so immature or so divided, US cannot last.
No empire which was not a nation-state too, did survive in history. It disintegrated &
collapsed.
Too bad Trump is jewish and fully cooperated with his shitty ethnic group and their
endless treasonous schemes many times. The alt-right/Q/MAGA jewish psyop (the real
Russiagate), HARPA, Barr covering up many crimes of the tribe (Epstein, Trump's crimes, big
tech, fake BLM/ANTIFA protests, ), treasonous cooperation with Israel, the coronavirus flu
scam, close ties to illegal mass surveillance contractors and Chabad Lubavich, shady deals
with banks, handing money over to his fellows in "coronavirus aid packages", engaging in
trade wars that seemed to be stupid, but had the objective of imploding the US economy to
pave way for China (same for the flu scam and 2008 crisis)
Biden isn't that different either.
@Anon out civilization
and barbarism that Hudson quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is, to the
extent that it will be understood, " earth-shattering" in both intent and effect .
The movement that Striker is referring to, has have a moral component, otherwise the agents
of Mammon win again. Our (((friends))) have been winning for centuries, because they have
redefined reality using their ill-gotten gains. Clown world is funded.
But whether we get Trump or Biden, we need to organize our own political movement or we
will be getting it anyway.
The point is that there's not a dimes worth of difference between the Democrats and
Republicans and their candidates and therefore voting is a waste of time.
It looks like they might be trying to pull something (the Democrats/Deep state).
Yes, they're trying to cheat, no doubt. Of course, nobody will care enough to do anything
about it. Had Trump actually done something for White people, the erstwhile alt-right might
have organized Charlottesville-style rallies in support of Trump, but he didn't, so they won't.
That's what he gets for being a cuck and throwing his most committed supporters under the
bus.
Trump is like the abusive alcoholic husband and American conservatives(mostly Whites)are
like the battered wife. Deep down we know the beatings will never stop, but we continue to give
our love and support to him. We know we should leave him, perhaps find a new man to share our
love with and help raise our kids. The problem is we are stuck in a neighborhood of crack heads
and heroine addicts, and the new husband would turn out worse than the last...
The old saw that Obama deported more illegals than did Trump in the first term is a lie
exposed many times over. At the border under Bush II, Mexicans caught coming across were simply
sent back on their own recognizance (ORed) and not counted as a deportation. There were
thousands and thousands treated this way by the Border Patrol and Immigration. To get the
deportation numbers up, Obama ordered that ORs be counted as deportations, so therein is the
lie.
I must agree with this article. Trump has largely betrayed his base, and is no more likely
to do better for the average working class American in his second term than he has in his
first. It's painful, I don't want to admit this either, but as they say, optimism is
cowardice.
I must however object to the notion that the Democrats are in any way "communist." Do
communists throw tens of trillions of dollars at Wall Street while starving the real economy of
investment? Do communists support "surprise medical billing?" Do communists allow all important
financial decisions to be made by private corporations? Oh sure, the Democrats will come up
with all sorts of confiscatory taxes and regulations on the middle class, no doubt, and they
will subsidize illegal immigrants – which is to say, they will subsidize cheap labor for
the elites. And yes they will be for transgender bathrooms. But communists? No way no how, the
Democrats are Neoliberal scum just like the Republicans.
Make a new political movement? It would be nice, but I can't see any way that such a thing
will not be suppressed or co-opted or the leadership bought out etc.etc. Look what happened to
"Golden Dawn" in Greece
Sadly I think the last white man is going to lose. The election has been stolen from him
with mass voting fraud, both in vote counting and mass voting by illegal voters. He has also
shot himself in the foot over the last four years with several major blunders, which did not
help, for e.g.:
1) Calling off the voting fraud investigation and disbanded the investigative team soon
after his inauguration in 2016.
2) Too thin skin and incendiary in his tweets, not very Presidential and made unnecessary
enemies.
3) Didn't do enough to reduce legal immigration incl. H1B and OPTs right from the get go,
which lost him a lot of enthusiasm from college educated voters. He only finally began to do
something about it last month, too little too late. Stephen Miller turned out to be a fake
patriot after all, who kept out true patriots like Kris Kobach from running the DHS.
4) Kept/promoted his enemies like Paul Ryan, John Kelly, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, HR
McMaster, Gina Haspel, Christopher Wray et. al, which came back to haunt him very quickly.
5) Letting wormtongue (Jared Kushner) into the WH and giving him far too much power,
including freeing all the drug dealers.
6) At times it seemed like the only thing he cares about is the stock market, he made lots
of people way richer than they were in 2016, and these are all the people who are now voting
against him, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
7) Too many Jews and Ziocons in his cabinet. Pandered too much to Israel, making his real
slogan more like MIGA than MAGA.
Come to think of it, Trump is not the last white man. He is the last Ziocon Jew to become
president.
Trump did not win by a landslide as so many hoped. There is a reason for the red wave fail,
and it is Trump himself and his policies.
Trump's biggest enemy is himself, he spent the entire administration making threats and
filling his administration with swamp criminals, he is slavishly whored to Netanyahu and
Israel, he even murdered Soleimani. He didn't remove the troops from a single occupied nation.
Trump's failure as a good administrator is glaring obvious and of no surprise because he had no
previous governmental experience. He just winged it based on being the Donald. What a joke. A
nation ruled by one ego that thinks it is god.
He never went on the offensive with 911 truth, which would put the entire swamp under
investigation and in a fight to stay out of prison. With 911 investigation Israel would be put
on a leash, and the Neocons would ALL be indicted, along with the Jewish newspapers and
lobbies. Because Trump REFUSED to investigate the biggest crime in history because of his god
damned loyalty to Jews and Israel, it is Trump who spent his entire presidency in a defensive
mode.
When asked if he condemns white supremacy Trump did not condemn the interviewer or defend
white people. Pathetic. He's cucked to the Jewish media narrative. And why doesn't he take
legal or military action against the Jewish media? Because he is bed with Kushners and the
Adelsons.
As a result of his own actions Trump who could of won by a landslide is now in a stalemate
with creeper senile Biden, one of the most pathetic candidates ever. Trump failures all center
around his loyalties to Jews and Israel.
So this election is looking more and more like a stalemate and I would like to bring to
everyone's attention that there is a "prophecy" of how this ends:
"The presidents of the U.S., a supposedly free country, have been abusing their power to
an increasingly greater extent. During a time of social unrest even more so than the period
of Viet Nam and Watergate, the electoral college will be evenly split over the election of
the new president. The process will stalemate, with many people clamoring for whichever
candidate they voted for, causing enormous tension in the country. Internationally it will be
a sensitive situation.
Because of the split, and the extremely volatile and explosive social unrest, putting
either candidate in office instead of the other could start a civil war or a revolution.
After a long time of impassioned speeches invoking patriotism and the founding fathers, a
compromise solution of holding another election will be taken, and a candidate will be
installed without disaster."
PS I have no dog in the fight and I don't vote, I will never vote for a lesser of two evils,
if the two pedo candidates is the best the nation can do when we have 337 million people to
pick from then maybe the nation needs to fall.
persistence and evolution of the US two/uni party system is interesting.
It is due to the "winner take all" election rules rather than a proportional system. For the
most part, US voters vote straight party anyway, so I don't see why we can't just go to a
proportional system where you vote for a party, and based upon that party's percentage of vote,
they get to fill X seats. Perhaps that would not work with the Presidential or Senate
elections, but would at least work for the House.
It looks like Republicans will be keeping the Senate. They almost did win House also.
So Biden cannot do too much, except to make some wars, regulate the international trade and
give some money to freeloaders residing in the cities.
In the mean time the rate of debt will significantly increase.
I do not think there could be any negotiations with Russians because Biden is unreliable.
Trump began betraying his voters almost as soon as he was sworn into office. The only
figures in Trump's populist campaign who survived the 2016 election were Steve Bannon, who
was banished after Charlottesville and is now facing federal charges at the hands of Trump's
own Department of Justice, and Jeff Sessions, whose political career was destroyed by Trump's
calculated malice.
Remember Kris Kobach and how he was going to investigate widespread election fraud? that's
something that might have been useful. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Just kind of faded
away. No support from Drumpf. Last I heard, Kobach was held in contempt of court for failing to
adequately advise noncitizens of their "right" to vote:
And Steve King -- sure, he was initially a Cruz supporter, but backed Trump enthusiastically
later on. King's mild civic nationalism and strong support for common sense, patriotic
immigration reform are exactly the agenda that Trump claimed to support. But when the
corporate "news" media and the entire Uniparty attacked Steve King as "inadequately anti-White"
-- Trump did <a href+' https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-house-distances-itself-from-king-comments/"was
quick to disavow. King's longstanding
fanatical
Israel Firstism did nothing to save him. It's not enough to support semitic supremacism in
the current year; you have to be actively anti-White as well, goy.
Zemurray's original name was Schmuel Zmurri. He was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russia
(present-day Chişinău, Moldova) to a poor Jewish family that emigrated
to America when he was fourteen years old.
In early 20th century, he went to Honduras to take over the banana crop business. He hired
pe0ple to do a coup for his business interests in 1910.
@Rufus Clyde Too group
has been around for more than a decade. It was very clever to imply they were deeply involved
and have them seem to be the originators of the predator exposures and firings.
Also, think it a coincidence that so many Repubs in Congress either "retired",
decided to do something else or whose campaigns weren't going to be funded by the RNC in 2018?
NO. They were forced out because they were corrupt.
Think Guliani bothered to go spend weeks in Ukraine just for vacation? NO, he went to get
firsthand evidence of the Biden corruption. Etc, etc ..
@Zarathustra "Trump did
for the jew as much as he could."
How does the cliche go? Live by the jew, die by the jew? Parasites are not known for their
loyalty. The tribe squeezed all it could out of their useful idiot, Donnie the Dummy, and then
deftly jumped to a new host, Joey Depends, who will willingly advance the tribe's self-serving
agenda in ways yet undreamed of even by the political cognoscenti. Donnie appears to be a
vindictive old bitch and might just form a populist third party along the lines of Teddy
Roosevelt's moronic Bull Moose now that the tribe has discarded him like a wad of used stained
toilet paper.
@Zarathustra he Jews and
being vetted by them. He was a loose cannon and had to go.
I further believe that war with China is more likely under Biden than Trump. The U.S. dollar
has been the reserve currency since right after WWII. The rise of China threatens that so China
will eventually have to be dealt with militarily. The Jews must maintain the U.S. dollar as
reserve currency else much of their ill gotten gains tend to evaporate over time.
I am positive that local Jews have large investments in China.
That one I have no information on. It could well be true.
Multiculturalism has always been a stopgap, a temporary pause on the way to disintegration
for empires. The elites always put their hopes in it imagining they will satisfy angry
minorities with minor adjustments. It never works. Just look at the Black armed militias. Not
even systematic Black privilege n Supremacism is enough for them. They won't stop even for
Biden until they ethnically cleanse whites completely from large parts of the country dominate
the rest. We are past elections now. The war has begun.
The stage is set for another false flag with everyone distracted and caught up with the
plandemic and/or political unrest, and regardless of which puppet gets selected, the
Ziocorporate regime is certain to be rolling out more AI and tech to manipulate, control and
frame the masses. The "anti-semitic terrorism" angle of Islamism now colluding with neo-Nazi
white supremacism is as hilarious as it is scary, considering the US/EU Ziocorporate terrorist
regimes' recent interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine and the sudden rise in ISlamist
events in NATO/EU countries. This late stage fusion of imperial capitalism with communism in
the West is looking like a complete disaster for mankind.
@Katrinka in droves, but
there is massive fraud going on in GA, NC, NV, AZ, PA, WI and MI, as well as all the blue
states. Not only are votes miscounted, ballots conjured out of thin air for Biden, I suspect
many are also voting illegally since the DMV that registers voters in these states have no
capacity to check their citizenship status. The GOP needs to form an election integrity
committee and conduct a thorough audit of every state to verify their voters' eligibility. It
is a massive undertaking, but it must be done. There is no integrity left in our election
system.
The DNC should rename themselves the EJM, the End Justifies Means party. Democrats are a
bunch of shameless frauds.
It's so simple most don't even see it. American Jews are Trotskyites and Israeli Jews are
Stalinists. That's it Bolshevism 101, come to think of it there is no 102. It seems Mr. Trump
did not choose wisely.
"... Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: [email protected] or on Twitter @ JSCCounterPunch . ..."
+ The outcome is still in play, but if Biden loses, we're going to hear a lot of Malarky
about why and most of it will be bullshit. (When I called it a night, at 2am Left Coast Time,
Biden had come back to claim to a narrow lead in Wisconsin.)
+ I predicted in my column last Friday that the polls were underestimating Trump's support
(or voter indifference to Biden) by 3 percent. It looks more like 5 to 6 percent in many of the
decisive states. In Wisconsin, for example, Biden was favored by 8 percent. At 2Am, he was
leading by 0.3 percent. The elite consultants and pollsters may have fucked up more profoundly
than the Democrats who relied upon their statistical sorcery.
+ In the midst of a killer pandemic and mass unemployment, the Democrats could have offered
the nation a universal health care plan, a moratorium on evictions and a guaranteed basic
income. Instead, they believed that the key to victory over Trump was to meld neoliberal
economics with a neoconservative foreign policy. I don't know where they got this idea.
Probably, the same place Obama got his health insurance plan, the Heritage Foundation.
+ The Democrats' candidate voted for the Iraq war, NAFTA, the destruction of welfare, helped
instigate the war on drugs, wrote federal crime laws that incarcerated two generations of young
black & brown Americans and has preached austerity his entire political career. I'm not
surprised by the inconclusive results of an election which should have been a sure thing.
+ I've long argued that Biden was a weaker candidate than HRC, who was terrible. At least
HRC had a rationale for her campaign. Biden had none. The argument was that Biden wasn't hated
as much as Hillary. Perhaps. But most people just didn't feel anything about him. Which is
fatal for a politician.
+ Look on the bright side. Just think how much money the DNC will raise off of a Biden
loss
+ Trump's 2am speech was worthy of Somoza's infamous declaration, "Yes, you won the
election. But I won the counting."
+ Trump says he will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop ALL vote counting across the
country. "As far as I am concerned, we have already won," Trump says.
+ Trump says a sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise those who voted for him. Sad,
indeed.
+ By contrast, Biden's passive speech sounded like Tsar Alexander's the night before the
battle of Austerlitz, completely unaware of the concussive force that's going to hit him in the
morning .
+ Biden is speaking, but saying nothing. Biden should never speak. Ever.
+ Recall how Biden spent most of the early primary season telling people, most of them young
progressives, to vote for someone else if they didn't like his reactionary policies?
Surprise!
+ Biden, who spent much of the year recruiting war criminals from the Bush administration,
did worse with Republicans than HRC did in 2016.
+ Remember the Zoom election simulation the New Yorker did that got Jeffrey Toobin so
excited? Do you think this was the scenario that triggered him?
+ The Biden campaign preferred to court the exiled neocons who started the Iraq war, than
Hispanics and progressives. They may not lose, but they probably deserve to
+ Back in May, the Biden campaign announced that they didn't consider Latinos a key part of
their " path to
victory. " This kind of arrogance yielded the predictable results.
+ Hispanic voters per early 2020 exit polls:
Florida:
2016: Clinton +27
2020: Biden +8
Georgia:
2016: Clinton +40
2020: Biden +25
Ohio:
2016: Clinton +41
2020: Biden +24
+ The results from Starr County, Texas, the most Latino county in the United States (96%
Latino) and the second poorest in Texas, with a poverty rate of 33%. In 2016, it went for
Clinton by 60 percent. In 2020, Biden won it by only 5 percent, with >98%
reporting.
+ The argument against Bernie was that he'd never win the Cuban exile vote in Florida.
+ I guess that Ana Navarro gambit was a bust
+ Biden kept saying this was a fight for the "soul of the nation". What if the nation never
had a soul and it was actually a fight for health care, jobs, and a livable climate?
+ We were told that this election was all about "saving democracy" and in order to save
democracy, the Democrats had to rig their primaries for Biden.
+ I was never a big fan of Sanders. But he gave people policies to vote for. Biden ran away
from all them and offered nothing of substance on his own. The best he had to offer was Kamala
Harris, a hard-ass former prosecutor who progressives distrusted and the right could race-bait
and caricaturize as the second coming of Angela Davis.
+ Still, it's easy to proclaim that Bernie would have won. It's a proposition that can't be
proven. But he would have been shackled by the same party apparatus that failed to win the
senate and lost ground in the House. Until the Democratic Party itself is reconstituted, it's
electoral fortunes are going to continue to erode.
+ Had the feeling the night might go south for the Democrats when the first crop of exit
polls came out showing that 48% of voters believed the
COVID pandemic was under control .
+ Trump, at 63,085,022 votes, has already amassed more votes than in 2016.
+ According to the early exit polls, Trump did better in 2020 with every race and gender
except . white men!
Change from 2016:
White Men -5
White Women +2
Black Men +4
Black Women +4
Latino Men +3
Latino Women +3
Other +5
+ Clearly, this election would have been a Trump rout without the intervention of COVID.
+ This symbolizes the entire night Republican David Andahl, a North Dakota legislator who
died of COVID-19,
won re-election .
+ Good news for the squad, plus Cori Bush, who also won. Their victories are, of course,
also good news for FoxNews, which can spend the next two years scaremongering
them
+ 26 out of the 30 nationally-endorsed Democratic Socialist candidates won their
elections.
+ Meanwhile, Scott DesJarlais slept with subordinates, prescribed opioids for his young
lover-patients and pressured one to get an abortion, still won in Tennessee, running as a
pro-life, family values Republican
+ Looks like the awful Prop 22 will pass in California, cementing drivers' status as
independent contractors as Uber, Doordash and other gig companies prevail in their $200M bid to
defeat legislation making them employees.
+ Memo to Justice Barrett: "Louisiana has passed Amendment 1, which establishes there is no
constitutional right to an abortion."
+ Georgia is still in play and could go for both Biden and Q, thus spawning a decade's worth
of new conspiracy theories
+ It turns out, the only debate Biden seems to have won was the one that was canceled.
+ The Democrats can't blame the Greens this time (though I'm sure they'll find some reason
to hurl insults at Susan Sarandon), having gotten them kicked off the ballot in key states.
Perhaps they'll blame the Libertarians for not pulling enough votes from Trump.
+ Go figure .Trump did better in counties with high COVID death rates than he did in
2016.
+ Trump stomped Biden in Florida, yet the state overwhelmingly passed a $15 minimum wage
referendum.
+ Florida Polls are the statistician's version of Florida Man
+ Biden had hopes of winning Iowa, but this once Democratic state is slipping further and
further away
2000: Gore by 0.32%
2004: Bush by 0.67%
2008: Obama by 8.5%
2012: Obama by 5.6%
2016: Trump by 9.3%
2020: Trump by 8%
+ It was a good night for drugs. Oregon becomes the first state to decriminalize low-level
drug possession and to legalize the use of magic mushrooms.
+ South Dakota, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey all legalized marijuana at the ballot box
tonight, a policy which isn't supported by either major party.
+ This polling reinforces my view that if Biden loses, it will be because he spent too much
time campaigning and not enough time staying out of sight "Two-thirds of voters say their
choice for president was driven by their opinion of President Trump," according to
AP VoteCast .
+ The EU is keeping Americans on
the no fly list , which is probably prudent given all the celebrities who've vowed to flee
the States in the event of Trump's reelection.
+ All Quiet on the Lincoln Project Front?
+ The Lincoln Project raised $67 million. Republican Voters Against Trump raised another $10
million. 93% of Republicans voted for Trump in 2020, up from 90% in 2016.
"... The financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside. "Wall Street," Politico ..."
"... While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune. ..."
The polls closed with "
no winner yet in cliffhanger presidential election," as of Wednesday evening. Despite a
period of uncertainty, which is typically the nemesis of
Wall Street , the Dow climbed 0.9%, the S&P 500 opened 1.5% higher, and the Nasdaq
Composite jumped 2.6%.
The explanation is that the financial elites know that they win regardless of who occupies
the Oval Office, which is something that some
leftists , who had advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class
alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate, did not firmly grasp.
Trouncing the contender that Noam Chomsky hyperbolically called " worse than Hitler " would be a blow to overt
white supremacy. But bedrock institutional racism, entombed in the US carceral state, will
still endure and the tasks of the left will remain.
Legitimizing neoliberal rule
The left's vote was not needed to ensure a Biden victory. But it was needed to justify
voting for the "lesser evil" based on the false narrative of TINA – "there is no
alternative."
The Revolutionary Communist Party, normally marginalized by the corporate media, received
banner headlines
when it declared for Biden. The "paper of record" for the Democratic wing of the two-party
duopoly, TheNew York Times, opportunistically posted an op-ed by a
self-described socialist because it pleaded , "leftists should
vote for Biden in droves."
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) readily
acknowledged "there is no choice at the top of the ticket that would advance our movement
or constitute a 'victory' for democratic socialism." But that did not deter them from jumping
on the Biden bandwagon. DSA seemed more worried about Biden losing than about Sanders being
excluded by the DNC.
It is not the left's responsibility to strategize how the Democrats could have run this or
future campaigns. Incidentally, a Biden/Harris victory would preclude a liberalish Democrat,
such as a member of the Squad , making a run as
the Democratic standard bearer for next 12 to 16 years.
The contribution of those parttime leftists who campaigned for Biden was not to put him into
the White House – they didn't have the numbers to do that – but to help legitimize
neoliberal rule. Their preemptive political surrender obscured the failure of a political
system incapable of addressing the critical issues of our times.
Politics of fear obscured critical issues
Fear was the operational motivator for
apocalyptic fantasies of a fascist coup, which served to obviate a progressive agenda. A
tanking economy, a still uncontained pandemic, and unprecedented protests against racialized
police brutality were attributed solely to Trump's watch, instead of being understood as also
endemic to the neoliberal order.
Neither presidential candidate advocated comprehensive healthcare in a time of pandemic,
with both in effect opting for
triage of the most vulnerable –
people of color and the
elderly . The two wings of the duopoly mainly differ on this existential health issue over
the advisability of wearing
face masks .
Climate catastrophe remains an existential threat. Biden may throw a few more crumbs than
Trump in the direction of the alternative energy industry. But both candidates contested to see
who was more enthusiastic about fracking
, while they agree that tax cuts and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry will be continued.
Biden's predecessor, whom he served as VP,
boasted "we've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some."
The next four years portends a choice of someone who denies global warming or another who
believes in the science but does not act on it.
The
financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs
understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside.
"Wall Street," Politicoreported ,
grew "giddy about Biden," because Uncle Joe would best help recover their legitimacy while
carrying their water. The financiers also hedged their bets with contributions to Trump. Along
with the DNC, they understood that another four years of the current occupant would be better
than a Bernie Sanders presidency for the owning class.
Game of Thrones
While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the
ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The
elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their
image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune.
It may be too early to tell, but the widely feared Trump coup has yet to be realized. The
Proud Boys, with their mail-order munitions, have yet to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Nervous leftists, apprehensive about a Trump coup, are calling upon labor to wage a
general strike to install a neoliberal into the White House. Joe Hill would find that
ironic at best.
While "President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether he will commit to a peaceful
transfer of power," CNN revealed
, "the secretive process to prepare a would-be Biden administration has been underway for
months with help from top Trump officials (emphasis added)."
Biden may now be less unpalatable than Trump, but Uncle Joe had the advantage of not being
in power for the last four years. He may not look so hot after another term of neoliberal rule,
characterized by increasing austerity for working people, entrenched institutional racism,
oppressive surveillance and security state measures, and an aggressive imperialism abroad.
Substantial differences exist between Trump and Biden, but those differences do not extend to
which class they serve.
Recovering the left alternative
With record turnout ,
never before have so many voted for so little. Now is auspicious for alternatives to the
two-party duopoly.
As reported
by Alan Mcleod, Trump's abysmal approval rating of 42% is barely edged out by Biden's of 46%.
Two-thirds of prospective Democratic voters polled claim they would be voting against Trump
rather than for Biden; only a quarter of the prospective Republicans are voting so much for
Trump as against the Democrats. Biden way squeak through on the appeal of not being Trump, but
that will wear thin quickly.
With both major parties continuing to abandon the interests of working people, the left must
either take the initiative or surrender it to a growing right wing. Rather than this being the
time when never before has there been a greater need to support the lesser-evil Democrats and
give them an
extraordinary mandate to rule , this is a time to leverage the ruling class's loss of
legitimacy to articulate a left alternative.
Taking a left initiative, despite the loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites, is
challenging. With a Republican victory, the left has historically gotten absorbed into a
resistance that devolves into an assistance – the
graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party. With a Democratic victory, the
illusion of hope and that anyone's better than Trump are false excuses to "give Biden a
chance." After campaigning for the Democrat, it will be problematic for these same left forces
to credibly do an about-face and fight him. As for an independent electoral left, more rigorous
party registration rules targeting left alternatives, recently imposed by Democrats , foreshadow fewer left
choices on future ballots.
However, the
majority of working people support a progressive agenda, which has been ignored and
suppressed by the duopoly:
Effectively addressing global warming
COVID safety over economic activity and economic relief
Ending forever wars and sanctions, while de-escalating the threat of nuclear
conflagration
National healthcare program modelled after Medicare
Opposition to the militarization of the police and preservation of civil liberties
Reduction of income inequality, stronger anti-trust laws, and fairly taxing wealth
These were among the critical issues that were lost in the distracting political theatre of
the 2020 campaign and the basis for a renewed left initiative.
If one cares about the stability of the United States then they should have been wishing for
a decisive victory in yesterday's election. A decisive victory for whom you ask? Perhaps in the
long run that could be relevant, but in the short term it really doesn't matter at all, the
main thing is that someone needs to walk away as the undisputed champion for the sake of
America.
Not only has the United States had a very solid track record of stability due to having the
best possible geopolitical location on the planet, but also in part thanks to the wisdom of
those within the two-party system to value said stability over a temporary victory time after
time.
Image: is getting rid of Trump really worth killing the golden goose? For some apparently
it is.
As a teenager any thinking American will quickly wake up to the fact that with " Hanging Chads ", Gerrymandering , and rumors of
the dead and non-citizens voting, that our electoral system is at least highly and deeply
flawed if not completely illegitimate. With all the "irregularities" that happen in November it
seems to young minds that this is simply a massive farce that needs to end.
However, as one gets older we can see the wisdom in both American parties constantly
cheating and yet acknowledging every election as legit, even during the bizarre final moments
of the battle like those between Bush and Gore in Florida . The two-party
system must have gotten the picture that both teams are going to do anything they can to win
and that this is perfectly natural. But in turn, just because both teams cheat there is no
reason to declare the competition to be illegitimate as a whole, lest we repeat the U.S. Civil
War or the early days in the Russian Revolution in which many factions fought till there could
"be only one". Accepting that both sides can and will cheat but they must acknowledge the
winner is critical for American stability and perfectly reasonable to those of us with grey
hair.
Image: The dangerous electoral situation at the time of writing (source: Fox
News)
The issue at hand in 2020 is that this old wisdom of how to play the game in Washington is
dying or dead. Both sides are signaling to the other that they will not acknowledge a peaceful
transfer/retaining of power . And
just a day before voting, suburban soccer mom extremist Nancy Pelosi said that the House is
ready to decide who will become President if the elections are "disputed" i.e. they are
prepared to bureaucratically make Biden become President of the United States. This type of
rhetoric could have big consequences for America as a whole.
With ballots still left to be counted, Trump says, in his usual exaggerated assuredness,
that
'Frankly, (his side) did win this election' and is already making plans to go to the
Supreme Court. This seems to be really jumping the gun, perhaps he knows about things happening
behind the scenes that we do not, or he is simply no better than Pelosi when it comes to
keeping their yap shut.
Image: Nancy Pelosi does not seem concerned about risking American stability for a
presidential party victory.
So far the official threats that we have heard are all focussed on using bureaucratic
procedures against each other, but with BLM, Antifa and other forces already out on the streets
and possibly awaiting orders, certain observing forces could throw gasoline on the fire at any
moment. Violence on a non-organized/revolutionary level has already started (as expected) with
4 Trump
supporters being stabbed .
This is why the results of the election as they stand at this moment are the worst they
could possibly be – as a strong victory for either would almost certainly guarantee the
United States would remain stable for at least another 4 years. The "score" we are seeing right
now is fertile ground for Color Revolution like action.
We should not forget that Color Revolutions happen almost always in connection with hot
election cycles and take place in the nation's capital with full media support on the side of
the rebels. All these check boxes are currently ticked and if cooler heads don't prevail
Americans will get to experience the lifestyle, violence and fear they brought to the former
Soviet Union after it lost the Cold War via the CIA's/State Department's Color Revolutions.
It is imperative for cooler heads on both sides to remind their colleagues that America did
not become a super power due to "exceptionalism" but instead thanks to location, certain
opportunities (WWII), and select wise policies.
Then again if you are an Accelarationist, well, it looks like your moment has finally come.
The Right and Left are playing chicken and it doesn't look like anyone is going to blink.
Not that long ago the United States came close to total dissolution.
The financial system was bankrupt, speculation had run amok, and all infrastructure had
fallen into disarray over the course of 30 years of unbroken free trade. To make matters worse,
the nation was on the verge of a civil war and international financiers in London and Wall
Street gloated over the immanent destruction of the first nation on earth to be established not
upon hereditary institutions, but rather on the consent of the governed and mandated to serve
the general welfare.
Although one might think that I am referring now to today's America, I am in fact referring
to the United States of 1860.
The Trifold Deep State
In my past
two articles in this series, I discussed how a new system of political economy was
established by Benjamin Franklin and his disciples in the wake of the war of independence
driven by protectionism, national banking and internal improvements.
I also demonstrated that the rise of the thing known as today's "deep state" can also be
understood as a three-headed beast which arose in its earliest incarnation under the leadership
of arch traitor Aaron Burr who established Wall Street, killed Alexander Hamilton and devoted
his life to the cause of dissolving the union. After having been caught in the act of sabotage,
Burr escaped arrest in 1807 by running off to England where he live in Jeremy Bentham's mansion
for 5 years, only to return to oversee a new plot to break up the union that eventually boiled
over in 1860.
The three prongs of the operation that Burr led on behalf of British intelligence and which
remains active to this very day, can loosely be described as follows:
The Eastern Establishment families sometimes known as the Essex Junto who took control of
Hamilton's Federalist Party. These were Empire Loyalists who remained within the USA under
the illusion of loyalty to the constitution, but always adherent to a British Imperial world
order and devoted to eventually undermining it from within. These were the circles that
brought the USA into Britain's Opium trade against China as junior partners in crime and who
promoted the dissolution of the union as early as 1800
under the leadership of Aaron Burr.
The "Virginia Junto", slave owning aristocracy which also worked with Aaron Burr in his
1807 secessionist plot and whose alliance with the British Empire was instrumental in its
rise to power from 1828-1860. This was the structure that soon returned to power, after the
civil war, under the guiding hand of such
Mazzini-connected "Young Americans" as KKK founder Albert Pike and the Southern
establishment that later executed nationalist presidents in 1880, 1901 and in 1963.
Some Uncomfortable Questions
The story has been told of Lincoln's murder in tens of thousands of books and yet more often
than not the narrative of a "single lone gunman" is imposed onto the story by researchers who
are either too lazy or too corrupt to look for the evidence of a larger plot.
How many of those popular narratives infused into the western zeitgeist over the decades
even acknowledge the simple fact that John Wilkes Boothe was carrying a $500 bank draft signed
by Ontario Bank of Montreal President Henry Starnes (later to become Montreal Mayor) when he
was shot dead at Garrett Farm on April 26, 1865?
How many people have been exposed to the vast Southern Confederacy secret service operations
active throughout the civil war in Montreal, Toronto and Halifax which was under the firm
control of Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin and his handlers in British
intelligence?
How many people know that Boothe spent at least 5 weeks in the fall of 1864 in Montreal
associating closely with the highest echelons of British and Southern intelligence including
Starnes, and confederate spy leaders Jacob Thompson and George Sanders?
Demonstrating his total ignorance of the process that controlled him, Booth wrote to a
friend on October 28, 1864: "I have been in Montreal for the last 3 or 4 weeks and no one
(not even myself) knew when I would return".
On The Trail of the Assassins
After Lincoln was murdered, a manhunt to track down the intelligence networks behind the
assassination was underway that eventually led to the hanging of four low level co-conspirators
who history has shown were just as much patsies as John Wilkes Boothe.
Days later, President Johnson issued a proclamation saying :
"It appears from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice that the murder of Abraham
Lincoln [was] incited, concerted, and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of
Richmond, Va., and Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, [Nathaniel] Beverly Tucker, George N.
Sanders, William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the government of the United
States harbored in Canada."
Two days before Booth was shot, Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton wrote : "This Department has information that the President's murder was
organized in Canada and approved at Richmond."
Knowledge of Canada's confederate operations was well known to the federal authorities in
those days even though the majority among leading historians today are totally ignorant of this
fact.
George Sanders remains one of the most interesting figures among Booth's handlers in Canada.
As a former Ambassador to England under the presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), Sanders
was a close friend of international anarchist Giuseppe Mazzini – the founder of the Young
Europe movement. Sanders who wrote "Mazzini and Young Europe" in 1852, had the honor of being
a leading member of the
southern branch of the Young America Movement (while Ralph Waldo Emerson was a
self-proclaimed leader of the
northern branch of Young America ). Jacob Thompson, who was named in the Johnson dispatch
above, was a former Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce, handler of Booth and
acted as the top controller of the Confederacy secret service in Montreal.
As the book Montreal City of
Secrets (2017), author Barry Sheehy proves that not only was Canada the core of Confederate
Secret Services, but also coordinated a multi pronged war from the emerging "northern
confederacy" onto Lincoln's defense of the union alongside Wall Street bankers while the
president was fighting militarily to stop the southern secession. Sheehy writes: "By 1863,
the Confederate Secret Service was well entrenched in Canada. Funding came from Richmond via
couriers and was supplemented by profits from blockade running."
The Many Shapes of War from the North
Although not having devolved to direct military engagement, the Anglo-Canadian war on the
Union involved several components:
Financial warfare: The major Canadian banks dominant in the 19 th century were
used not only by the confederacy to pay British operations in the construction of war ships,
but also to receive much needed infusions of cash from British Financiers throughout the war. A
financial war on Lincoln's greenback was waged under the control of Montreal based confederate
bankers John Porterfield and George Payne and also JP Morgan to "short" the greenback.
By 1864, the subversive traitor Salmon Chase had managed to tie the greenback to a (London
controlled) gold standard thus making its value hinge upon gold speculation. During a vital
moment of the war, these financiers coordinated a mass "sell off" of gold to London driving up
the price of gold and collapsing the value of the U.S. dollar crippling Lincoln's ability to
fund the war effort.
Direct Military intervention Thwarted: As early as 1861, the Trent Crisis nearly
induced a hot war with Britain when a union ship intervened onto a British ship in
international waters and arrested two high level confederate agents en route to London. Knowing
that a two-fold war at this early stage was unwinnable, Lincoln pushed back against hot heads
within his own cabinet who argued for a second front saying "one war at a time". Despite this
near miss, London wasted no time deploying over 10 000 soldiers to Canada for the duration of
the war ready to strike down upon the Union at a moment's notice and kept at bay in large
measure due to the bold intervention of the
Russian fleet to both Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the USA . This was a clear message to
both England and to Napoleon III's France (who were stationed across the Mexican border)
to
stay out of America's war.
Despite Russia's intervention, Britain continued to build warships for the Confederacy which
devastated the Union navy during the war and which England had to pay $15.5 million to the USA
in 1872 under
the Alabama Claims.
Terrorism: It is less well known today than it was during the 19 th century that
confederate terror operations onto the north occurred throughout the civil war with raids on
Union POW camps, efforts to burn popular New York hotels, blowing up ships on the Mississippi,
and the infamous St Albans raid of October 1964 on Vermont and attacks on Buffalo, Chicago,
Sandusky, Ohio, Detroit, and Pennsylvania. While the St Albans raiders were momentarily
arrested in Montreal, they were soon released under the logic that they represented a
"sovereign state" at conflict with another "sovereign state" with no connection with Canada
(perhaps a lesson can be learned here for Meng Wanzhou's lawyers?).
Assassination: I already mentioned that a $550 note was found on Boothe's body with the
signature of Ontario Bank president Henry Starnes which the failed actor would have received
during his October 1864 stay in Montreal. What I did not mention is that Booth stayed at the St
Lawrence Hall Hotel which served as primary headquarters for the Confederacy from 1863-65.
Describing the collusion of Northern Copperheads, anti-Lincoln republicans, and Wall Street
agents, Sheehy writes: "All of these powerful northerners were at St. Lawrence Hall rubbing
elbows with the Confederates who used the hotel as an unofficial Headquarters. This was the
universe in which John Wilkes Booth circulated in Canada."
In a 2014 expose , historian Anton Chaitkin, points out that the money used by Boothe came
directly from a $31,507.97 transfer from London arranged by the head of European confederate
secret service chief James D. Bulloch. It is no coincidence that Bulloch happens to also be the
beloved uncle and mentor of the same Teddy Roosevelt who became the president over the dead
body of Lincoln-follower William McKinley (assassinated in 1901).
In his expose, Chaitkin wrote:
"James D. Bulloch was the maternal uncle, model and strategy-teacher to future U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt. He emerged from the shadows of the Civil War when his nephew
Teddy helped him to organize his papers and to publish a sanitized version of events in his
1883 memoir, The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe. Under the protection of
imperial oligarchs such as Lord Salisbury and other Cecil family members, working in tandem
with Britain's military occupation of its then-colony Canada, Bulloch arranged English
construction and crewing for Confederate warships that notoriously preyed upon American
commerce."
The Truth is Buried Under the Sands of History
While four low level members of Booth's cell were hanged on July 7, 1865 after a four month
show trial (1), the actual orchestrators of Lincoln's assassination were never brought to
justice with nearly every leading member of the confederate leadership having escaped to
England in the wake of Lincoln's murder. Even John Surrat (who was among the eight who faced
trial) avoided hanging when his case was dropped, and his $25 000 bail was mysteriously paid by
an anonymous benefactor unknown to this day. After this, Surrat escaped to London where the
U.S. Consuls demands for his arrest were ignored by British authorities.
Confederate spymaster Judah Benjamin escaped arrest and lived out his days as a Barrister in
England, and Confederate President Jefferson Davies speaking to adoring fans in Quebec in June
1867 encouraged the people to reject the spread of republicanism and instead embrace the new
British Confederation scheme that would soon be imposed
weeks later . Davies spoke to the Canadian band performing Dixie at the Royal Theater:
"I hope that you will hold fast to their British principles and that you may ever strive to
cultivate close and affectionate connections with the mother country".
With the loss of Lincoln, and the 1868 death of Thaddeus Stevens, Confederate General
Albert Pike established restoration of the southern oligarchy and sabotage of Lincoln's
restoration with the rise of the KKK, and renewal of Southern Rite Freemasonry. Over the
ensuing years, an all out assault was launched on Lincoln's Greenbacks culminating in the
Specie Resumption Act of 1875 tying the U.S. financial system to British "hard money"
monetarism and paving the way for the later financial coup known as the Federal Reserve Act of
1913 (2).
While the Southern Confederacy plot ultimately failed, Britain's "other confederacy
operation launched in 1864 was successfully consolidated with the British
North America Act of July 1, 1867. The hoped-for extension of trans continental rail lines
through British Columbia and into Alaska and Russia were sabotaged as told in the
Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase of 1867.
Instead of witnessing a new world system of sovereign nation states under a multipolar order
of collaboration driven by international infrastructure projects as Lincoln's followers like
William Seward, Ulysses Grant, William Gilpin and President McKinley envisioned , a new age
of war and empire re-asserted itself throughout the 20 th century.
It was this same trifold Deep State that contended with Franklin Roosevelt and his patriotic
Vice President Henry Wallace for power during the course of WWII, and
it was this same beast that ran the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. As New
Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison demonstrated in his book On the Trail of the Assassins (1991 ),
Kennedy's murder was arranged by a complex assassination network that brought into play
Southern secret intelligence assets in Louisiana, and Texas, Wall Street financiers, and a
strange assassination bureau based in Montreal named Permindex under the leadership of Maj.
Gen. Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was the same intelligence operation that grew out of
MI6's Camp X in Ottawa
during WWII and changed its name but not its functions during the Cold War. This is the
same British Imperial complex that has been attempting to undo the watershed moment of 1776 for
over 240 years.
It is this same tumor in the heart of the USA that has invested everything in a gamble to
put their senile tool Joe Biden into the seat of the Presidency and oust the first genuinely
nationalist American president the world has seen in nearly 60 years.
Exclusive: How The Bidens Made Off With Millions In Chinese Cash
New
documents show that as regulators closed in, Hunter struck a fresh deal with his Chinese partners
World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden speaks at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership
Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for
World Food Program USA)
The Senate's
report
on
Hunter Biden's activities released several months ago, which was
spun
by
the New York Times as having shown "no evidence of wrongdoing," nevertheless had several important gaps in the business
activities of the troubled son of the former vice president.
Draft legal documents and 2017 bank records obtained by The American Conservative show at least $5 million was transferred to
Hunter and Jim Biden from companies associated with the Chinese conglomerate CEFC, with millions coming after the company had
come under legal scrutiny both in the United States and China.
CEFC official Patrick Ho was arrested in November 2017 and charged by the Southern District of New York with corruption, and
was convicted last year. In addition, on or about March 1, 2018, CEFC Chairmen Ye Jianming was arrested in China for economic
crimes and hasn't been seen since. CEFC assets in China were seized by Chinese state agencies. In the U.S., major
beneficiaries were Hunter and Jim Biden.
What the following documents show is that as regulators moved to seize CEFC's assets, Hunter Biden attempted to take control
of the company founded in partnership with it. Instead, after striking a deal with two CEFC employees in the U.S., the funds
were disbursed over the next six months to his and his uncle's companies until it was all gone, in total at least $5 million.
2017 Bank Records
On August 5, 2017, the Bidens and CEFC entered into a 50-50 limited liability company agreement (Hudson West III) between
Owasco, Hunter Biden's company, and Hudson West V (CEFC). The Sep 22, 2020 report from the Senate Judiciary Committee (the
"HGSAC Report") surmised an agreement like this, but a copy can be seen, for the first time
here
.
In early 2017, CEFC was ranked as one of the top 500 corporations in the world.
Hudson West III set up two bank accounts with Cathay Bank, with the first set up on or about August 5.
A
company associated with CEFC deposited $5 million into the account on August 8; no contribution was made by the Bidens.
On
Nov 2, 2017, CEFC Limited deposited a further $1 million into the account. (Subsequently, the Hudson West III account shows a
wire of $1 million back to CEFC Limited on Nov 21, followed a few days later on Nov 27 by a credit memo for $999,938. The
HGSAC Report interpreted the Nov 21 wire transfer as a return of the $1 million, but appear to have omitted consideration of
the credit memo apparently reversing the return).
The
net result is that CEFC and its affiliates deposited almost exactly $6 million into Hudson West III in 2017.
In the 5 months between August 8 and Dec 31, 2017, Hudson West III disbursed almost $1.6 million to Owasco (Hunter Biden) in
wire transfers and credit card binges by the Bidens. The transfers appear to have been structured as $165,000 in monthly
payments, plus two other payments of $400,000 and $220,387.
Collated
screengrabs from Hudson West III bank statements showing payments to Owasco (Wells Fargo Clearing Services LLC)
The HGSAC Report reported on the $99,000 credit card spree by the Bidens in early September 2017, but, in addition to that
spree, there was an additional $77,700 in credit card sprees, making a total of $176,700 for the five month period.
Figure
2. Screengrab from Hudson West III bank statements showing credit card disbursements
Total expenditures by Hudson West III in the five months were $1,947,439, of which $1,522,000 went to the Bidens (via Owasco
and credit cards).
Hudson
West III bank accounts contained more than $4 million in cash at the end of 2017.
March 2018 Deal
Shortly after the arrest of CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming on March 1, 2018, there appears to have been a rolling seizure of CEFC
assets. Even with the profligate spending by the Bidens, Hudson West III would still have had about $3.5 million in cash in
March.
On March 26, a Chinese-American employee who was fiercely loyal to Hunter suggested to him that Hunter and the two CEFC
employees in the U.S. (Mervyn Yan and Kevin Dong) figure out a way to appropriate the Hudson West III cash before it was
frozen by Chinese regulators or receivers:
you guys (You/Mervyn/Kevin)
figure out a way to have the money transferred to the right U.S. account before any restriction levied by Chinese
regulators or appointed new boss in charge of manage the enterprise Ye left behind.
In fact, Hunter had already begun the process of appropriating Hudson West III cash before a receiver could arrive. On March
18, Hunter's lawyer sent a letter to Mervyn Yan proposing that Hudson West V (the proximate CEFC entity) assign its interest
in Hudson West III to Owasco (Hunter), a transaction which would give control of all the cash to Hunter (see
here
,
and
here
).
On or about March 30, 2018, Hunter and the two Chinese appear to have worked out a different arrangement. Among the newly
available documents are redlined versions of an assignment agreement in which Hudson West V assigned its 50% interest in
Hudson West III to Coldharbour Capital Inc., with Kevin Dong the proposed signatory for Hudson West V, Mervyn Yan for
Coldharbour Capital and Hunter signatory for Owasco's consent to the assignment.
The HGSAC Report does not appear to have had access to these documents: they noted that ownership of Hudson West III at some
point was 50% Coldharbour, but does not appear to have been aware of the prior ownership of this interest by Hudson West V or
the assignment to Coldharbour in late March 2018.
During the next six months, the cash was completely drained into the accounts of Owasco and Coldharbour, spent on consulting
fees and expenses. According to the HGSAC Report, total payments from Hudson West III to Owasco amount to an astonishing
$4,790,375 by September 2018, when the Hudson West III accounts were totally depleted. In November 2018, Hudson West III was
dissolved by Owasco and Coldharbour.
From the 2017 bank records, we know that $1,444,000 had been transferred to Owasco in 2017 (excluding direct payment of credit
card sprees); thus, transfers to Owasco in the first eight months of 2018 were approximately $3,345,000.
The assignment of Hudson West V's interest in Hudson West III to Coldharbour and the dissipation of cash to the Hudson West
III managers would probably not have stood up to a determined receiver appointed by the Chinese parent company, but there
doesn't appear to have been any attempt by the parent company to stop or control the dissipation of Hudson West III's cash
reserves.
Lion Hall (Jim Biden)
Invoices
Included in the newly available material are invoices to Owasco and, separately, to Hudson West III from Jim Biden doing
business as Lion Hall Group. The HGSAC Report stated that, between Aug 14, 2017 and Aug 3, 2018, Owasco sent 20 wires totaling
$1,398,999 to Lion Hall Group. The newly available documents show that Jim Biden charged Owasco $82,500 per month as a
"monthly retainer for international business development":
Readers will recall that Hudson West III bank statements showed regular monthly payments of $165,000 for the last 5 months of
2017. The corollary is that Hunter split this regular monthly payment from Hudson West III 50:50 with Jim Biden. The HGSAC
Report notes that the payments to Lion Hall Group had been flagged by Owasco's bank (Wells Fargo) for potential criminal
activity. The new documents contain an inquiry email from Wells Fargo compliance, together with a reply from Hunter which was
unresponsive on the key compliance questions. By the time that Wells Fargo raised its compliance concerns, the Hudson West III
cash had been exhausted and with it, presumably the stream of 50-50 payments to Uncle Jim.
As noted above, in addition to the regular $165,000 monthly payments, Owasco received other large transfers in 2017 and
presumably in 2018. It is not known whether Uncle Jim split these 50-50 as well, or whether this was a side transaction by
Hunter.
Concurrent with this flood of
money from CEFC, Hunter continued to receive a lavish stipend from Burisma. Nonetheless, by the end of 2018, Hunter had
hundreds of thousands in tax liens. In March 2019, despite having received millions from Chinese business interests, Hunter
even had to plead with former partner Jeffrey Cooper to email him $100 for gas so that he wouldn't be stranded on the highway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Bloom is editor of The American Conservative online. He was previously deputy editor of the Daily Caller
and a columnist for the Catholic Herald. He holds masters degrees in urban planning and American studies from
the University of Kansas. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The
Spectator
(UK),
The Guardian, Quillette, The American
Spectator
,
Modern Age, and Tiny Mix Tapes.
email
Not by the Conservative press. But certainly by the Liberal press. I was born in a country
where all the news sources were owned by one of the political parties. Now I live in a
country where we have the
de facto
situation. In
America we are very good at setting the standard as the
de
jure
state of affairs, while ignoring the
de facto
state
of affairs. Every country has its share of hypocrisy. But there are few places, if any, where
it is institutionalized as America. We need to do much better. Despite what the Conservatives
say, the Liberal press used to try to do journalism. But they have given up.
I'm old enough to remember when CNN was a pretty middle of the road news organization.
But Fox came along and proved that naked partisanship, half-truths, innuendo, and
brightening up the hate centers of the brain was a far more profitable way of doing
business. CNN just had to compete.
We do have the Fox "News" Network (Most watched cable news channel, or so the
continually brag, and with TV/cable being where most Americans get their news from that
makes them a pretty big player) and One America "News" Network. Ad in the Sinclair
Broadcasting Network--they have no problem sending out canned od-eds supporting Trump
so they should have no ideological objection to pursuing this story. Perhaps they could
do some investigating and reporting instead of filling their airtime with
unsubstantiated accusations made by others that they take at face value.
Not to mention there are some print sources--The Washington Times, the NY Post, the
Orange County Register, Des Moines Register, etc.
Right? Between Fox News, the Murdoch owned papers, Breitbart, the Daiky
Caller/Wire, and Sinclair, the idea that right isn't represented in the media is
frankly insane. Even Q Anon has a better reach in Facebook than the NYT and they
are a pure distillation of conservatism.
"There is no conservative media" is an idea about as tethered to reality as
conservative media is in general.
This is news. Hunter Biden is most likely a crook. And a well-known watchdog group has just filed a
12-page complaint with DOJ requesting an investigation. Also check out this TV appearance on
Newsmax.
Hunter Biden is most likely a crook. But what a person "most likely is" is not news. I used
to watch Newsmax because it is good to hear about stories that the liberal press doesn't
cover. And it is good to get varying perspectives on news events even if the liberal press
covers them. But I can't take tv news any more. They are all mostly useless for people like
me who detest both political parties. I watch only Newsy. You should try if you are really
interested in news.
"watchdog group" you say? And that is supposed to me make me think that there is a difference
between that and the Republican Party? The liberals pioneered that trick. Now everyone uses
it. That is, name (effectively) an arm of the Democratic Party a "watchdog" and that is
supposed to give it credibility. But the trick is subject to our First Law of Politics.
Whatever tactic one party deploys, as long as it is successful, the other party will deploy
it. No matter how much they denounced it previously. At best, they will rename it. But
usually, they don't bother.
In any case, unless this "watchdog group" is alleging a crime there is no basis for a DOJ
investigation. What is the criminal accusation?
I'm not gonna lie, I didn't even waste my time reading this piece. Arthur seems to have all of a
sudden become interested in corruption (which likely didn't even happen) in a way he expressed no
interest in for the last 4 years. Forgive me if I don't vote him as an honest broker.
It's just so weak. This isn't an October surprise -- this is like a turkey surprise casserole
served two weeks after Thanksgiving. Even if this were a game-changing piece of reporting, it
seems a dubious tactic to release it on the morning of the election on a website that
probably gets less views than some random 16 year old dancing on Tik-Tok.
TAC's pivot over the last couple years into Brietbart territory is embarrassing. A lot of rightwing
media and personalities held out for awhile on Trump, but eventually saw where the wind was blowing
and jumped in the deep end. I hope no one on the principled right or left ever lets them forget it.
No shelter for scoundrels....
Thanks for publishing this. I hope more such pieces appear here in the next few weeks. TAC's regular
readers from the Left don't like it. Good. Rub their noses in it.
I was mentioning Hunter Biden and his Ukraine dealings back in 2014 but I don't have a public forum
outside email and social media and no one thought it of interest till his dad was running for
president against a man who by many accounts has been a crook his entire adult life, and proud of
it.
So Hunter failed to register as a foreign agent. Isn't that what Mike Flynn got busted for
along with some other Trump campaign officials? And hasn't Trump demanded his people all be
forgiven for their transgressions cause it wasn't really a bad thing?
Out of curiosity, among the hundreds if not thousands of websites you could be reading right now,
apart from thousands of decent monographs and works of fiction, why are you spending time this
morning at this "nutjob site," going so far as to login to the comments section to express to the
other presumably "nut job" readers that you're better than them?
This speaks VOLUMES about your worth as a human being. When you wake up around 3 AM over the next
few nights, it'll hit you. Let it sink in. Let it marinate. From such truths character is built.
It's pretty extreme. TAC comment section has become unusable bickering and taunts even after
blocking half the content. I don't know what they are hoping to accomplish other than
confirming our worst guesses about their character.
Exclusive? Of course! No one in their right mind would print it. And the enemy of the state-fake news
outlets are all looking for scoops and looking to win major awards and prizes for breaking a
story-----and for some reason all of these thousands of journalists did not get this "exclusive."
all unproved nonsense.Where is the indictment, when, after all Trump and Barr woprk hand in hand...simply
BS stuff to support Trump. Should Trump lose, watch the legal stuff that he will confront. Now worry
about that
When did this site turn into The Tucker Carlson show ? Please return to the thoughtful conservative
thought that you are know for. Sign of the times I guess and how internet culture can demean us all.
It's the same delusion they engaged in with Trump. They overweight the feelings of their in
group and underweight the population as a whole. Tucker doesn't actually have many viewers in
the scheme of winning a national election. He couldn't appeal to moderates.
Neoconservatives are flocking to the Biden campaign. The DC braintrust that believes in
using US military power to aid Israel in the Middle East has jumped parties before– to
Clinton in '92, and back to Bush in 2000– and now they're hopping aisles to support
Biden, with Bill Kristol leading the way.
Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by "Jewish Americans for Biden", and
moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans
endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump's character posing a danger to democracy. But both
neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and
reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won't
necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support
Israel and believe in American military intervention.
Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic , echoed
the fear that Israel is being politicized. "A lot of Jews made a big mistake by taking
something I was in favor of, moving the embassy to Jerusalem and obsessing about that," he
said. But there was huge political risk in that: if the United States is internally divided,
at war with itself, and "Israel has become a partisan issue, which it should never ever be .
That's not in Israel's longterm security interest."
Biden will reverse that trend by appointing strong supporters of Israel, Cohen said.
"Joe Biden has a long record as a friend of Israel. I think we're both quite familiar
with the kinds of people who will go into a Biden administration and I think we feel very
comfortable that they will have a deep and abiding concern for Israel which is not going to
go away."
Edelman also said that Trump has created many "dangers" in the region by not being
aggressive:
"By withdrawing or threatening to withdraw US forces, by repeatedly not replying or
dealing with Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf or against Saudi oil infrastructure,
he's created a sort of vacuum that is being filled in Libya by Russia and by Turkey "
Biden will work with allies and be ready to use U.S. military in the region– or as
Edelman said, "to play."
"The region is a mess," Edelman said. "And yet the president continually says he wants the
U.S. to withdraw from the region. The reality is that the withdrawal of US power form the
region has helped create this morass of threats."
He cited three war zones in which the U.S. or proxies' bombing is essential to U.S.
security, Libya, Yemen and Syria.
In Syria, "The Trump administration pulled out and said, we don't want to play here,"
Edelman said.
"Other forces are going to fill the vacuum created by the absence of US leadership and
they won't be benign forces," Edelman said. Iran, Russia, or Turkey will come in and create a
"vortex of instability that can potentially come back to haunt us" -- with terrorist attacks
or the disruption of energy markets.
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama's Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish
on Iran.
In other words, Trump has failed the Israel Lobby because he has tried to pull our US forces
from the Middle East and, although he has laid down sanctions against Iran, he has not gone to
war. Of course, these are the people who promoted the ongoing disaster of the Iraq war. They
are probably right that Russia and Turkey would benefit from US pulling out completely
(Libya??), but where are legitimate US interests in all this? Trump ran on ending Middle East
wars and getting out of the region–the original reason the neocons jumped ship (in
addition to fears of a nascent Orange Hitler). Despite being president he has been unable to do
so. He has been strongly
opposed by the foreign policy establishment and the Pentagon -- a testament to the extent
to which the US security establishment is Israel-occupied territory.
Lurking in the background of the attitudes of Cohen and Edelman is the idea that Biden would
tame the forces on the left that have been so critical of Israel in recent years. With Biden
they get it all: Strongly pro-Israel even to the point of initiating a war with Iran, taming
the anti-Israel voices on the left (Kamala Harris with her Jewish husband s not among them),
and perhaps a Senate led by Israel operative Chuck Schumer. Meanwhile the Republican Party
would default to the Chamber of Commerce and the remaining neocons, and the hope of a
nationally competitive GOP, much less a truly populist GOP, would die. Bill Kristol loves the
prospect of a long-term Democrat domination.
And of course, all of these bellicose proposals are cloaked in a veneer of "Jewish values"
-- not so ironic if one assumes, as is certainly the case, that promoting war for specifically
Jewish interests is indeed a Jewish value.
Cohen spoke about Jewish values. He and his family belong to an orthodox synagogue and
have raised four children with a religious education. "I've tried to live my life by Jewish
values. One thing that's very important for Jewish Republicans. Obviously the issue of Israel
is important, it's the only Jewish state, it's important to look after it and for it to
thrive, but what is our approach to politics?" Jews don't believe that you Render unto God
the things that are God and render unto Caesar the thing that are Caesar's and therefore not
take issue with a politician's character "so long as they do what we want them to do." He
said, "That's not the Jewish way." In the Book of Samuel, the king engages "in despicable
behavior," and the prophet storms into his bedroom. "We believe that character matters." And
this election is about character.
Okay, Trump is not a saint. But given that Biden is up to his eyeballs in scandal doesn't
bother Cohen at all -- despite overwhelming documentation. So we are not supposed to care that
the Biden family raked in millions by using Biden's influence to alter US foreign policy or
that China could easily blackmail him into doing their bidding on trade and military issues. So
in the end, it's really about what Cohen, Edelman, Kristol, et al. think is good for Israel
(Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot jumped the GOP ship even before Trump was elected). Again, count
me unsurprised.
And of course, the other thing is that neocons have always been on the left
within the Republican Party. One might say they have attempted to not only make Israel a
bi-partisan issue (their first priority) but also promoting the liberal/left social agenda,
such as replacement-level non-White immigration, as a bipartisan issue -- both values strongly
promoted by the mainstream Jewish community. They jumped ship mainly because Trump was
promising to undo the liberal/left social agenda as well as disengage from foreign wars and US
occupation of the Middle East. During the 2016 campaign, some of the strongest denunciations of
Trump came from neocons ("
Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump: Neocon Angst about a Fascist America" ).
If you haven't seen it, Carlson's interview with Bobulinski is damning, and the documents he
refers to have been thoroughly authenticated.
Trump has been dealing with jews all of his life and knows what they are like. This is a
double-edged sword for jews as he is wise to their dishonest criminality and double-dealing
and is able to work around their machinations and dishonesty.
This s why (some) jews hate him. If he wanted to, he could expose them for what they truly
are
To Trump's credit, he has his own security detail interspersed within his Secret Service
protection team making possible harm or actions against him difficult if not impossible. A
good thing
I truly believe that Jews are the strongest assets Satan has. They are constantly forcing
us super-stupid Gentiles into wars for Israel. We have Gentile-American soldiers (Jews don't
serve) facing off against my white Christian brothers, mainly to be a counter-balance to
Iranian forces in the country who are battling U.S.-backed terrorists. Jews hate Russians
because they are white Christians and they actually hate us white-Christians in America, too.
(For now, we are simply useful idiots for them.) It is time that we Gentiles wake up and kick
every single last Jew out of this country before the Jews get us all killed!
DJT has done a good job of separating the J wheat from the chaff so to speak.
Unfortunately, it's the chaff that seems to have all the power money and influence. For
now.
Who paid for all this peace in the Middle East?
American tax money was used to
De-stabilize Iraq
De-stabilize Libya
De-stabilize Syria
Only Iran is left as a major power in the Middle East.
Let's get the draft going to get our brave boys and girls(and LGBTQ) fighting to maintain
peace in the Middle East.
We ALL need to give until we can give no more.
Maybe draft exemptions for the Ivy League, someone has to tell us what to do.
Jewish promoted Critical Race Theory believes and teaches that systemic racism is the main
reason why blacks commit criminal acts. Therefore the response to the disparity between White
and Black crime is to alter the standards, i.e., change White expections of the Black
community. Because to say to Black Americans that they must alter their behavior to meet the
current standards is racist.
Samuel Krasner, the Jewish DA in Philadelphia, is aboard with this. He decriminalised
shoplifting in his jurisdiction. And we now have shoplifters walking out of stores with
armfuls of stolen goods whilst smiling in the cameras and saying, 'I can't be
prosecuted.'
Then there is this unbelievable piece of BS legislation from Virginia: "Virginia
legislature passes bill preventing cops from stopping cars with no headlights, brake lights,
etc."
When Virginia state legislator who sponsored the bill, Patrick Hope, was asked about this
by a reporter from The Daily Press he responded by saying he didn't know that police were no
longer allowed to stop vehicles for not having their lights illuminated.
Patrick Hope sponsored a bill without actually knowing what was in it! If you think at
this stage that Patrick Hope is a hopeless idiot he gets worse.
When the importance of working brake lights on vehicles was mentioned to Hope he said:
"The brake lights -- I'm not concerned about that as a safety issue -- but I can certainly
see how headlights could be of concern ."
A Virginia state legislator is dumb enough to believe that brake lights have no importance
whatsoever to road safety in his state.
The modern United States? You couldn't f ** king make it up! By the way, who are the
majority people driving defective cars in Virginia? Blacks and other newly arrived
minorities, of course.
Would the local authorities in any part of Israel decriminalise shoplifting for a minority
demographic in their area? Not likely. How about Samuel Krasner, would he recommend that
crime be legalised for minorities in the state of Israel? No, he wouldn't. He's not stupid.
He would not do anything that would destroy his native country.
Would an utter idiot like Hope be allowed to introduce insane life endangering legislation
in Israel? No, his Jew financial backers would not allow that.
But, Trump or no Trump, all this is coming to your local area of America very soon.
It's amazing. It's astounding. A cursory look shows there are Jews behind every act of
destruction against White America and its founding culture.
The Jews are driving the de-educating of American youth, they've staffed 90% of the media
with lying, immoral and shameless journalists and installed unintelligent and easily
corruptible politicians in both US political parties.
As we see with Hope, the Jews have made possible state legislators who are so stupid that
they are probably suffering from mental health issues. What's very sad is that there's hardly
a peep from the great American public against them.
The Jews who first suggested making anti-semitism a crime in the West actually said to
their comtemperies at the time that it was just a "pipe dream." They never actually thought
in their wildest dreams that Western people and politicians would accept the lie that
anti-Jewishness was systemic in the West and needed laws to counteract it.
But, unbelievably for them, they easily got their anti-Semitism legislation enacted. And
then, enboldened, they drove ahead with Holocaust denial and all the other BS.
Now, as we see with the headlights, brake lights and the decriminalising of shoplifting
for Blacks, the Jews have become viciously emboldened. They've learned that European
provenanced Whites will accept any and all Bull S ** t that is thrown at them.
Shame on all Americans for sitting idly by whilst the tiny Jew demographic urines on all
that your forefathers built and fought for.
If your descents are Islamist slaves policed by Blacks in the latter half of this century
(all ruled from on-high by the Jews) they'll deserve it. They'll deserve it because their
fathers and grandfathers were idle and lazy cowards who sat on their butts while the great
inheritance which they were bequeathed was pulled out from under them.
BTW: Who had secured a vantage point in New York in September 2001 from which to watch the
planes fly into the buildings? And who then danced and cheered energetically as the planes
hit the buildings and killed 2,977 people?
Surely, you might think, it was Arabic Islamists, or Pakistanis, or some other race of
Muslims.
You'd be wrong if you thought this.
The correct answer is "five Israelis". Yes, it was five Jews who danced and sang as 2,977
Americans were murdered in cold blood.
@Lot el. Cursed with the loss of thousands of American lives resulting from such actions.
Cursed with the loss of tens of thousand of non-American lives from such actions. All this
for a shitty little country with which America doesn't even have a defence treaty.
Our Steadfast Ally ? The USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard and the Israeli selling of American
defence technology to China immediately spring to mind. There is no defence treaty between
America and Israel. Israel is not America's ally. Rather it is a parasite on the American
body politic. Either Americans rip the parasite off their body, or it will eventually kill
America.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want
to hear."
- George Orwell
The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can
solve the problems that plague us.
Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss
will be the same as the old boss, and we -- the permanent underclass in America -- will
continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and
private.
Indeed, it really doesn't matter what you call them -- the Deep State, the 1%, the elite,
the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance
state, the military industrial complex -- so long as you understand that no matter which party
occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will
continue to do so.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American
police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these
issues persisted -- and in many cases flourished -- under both Republican and Democratic
administrations in recent years.
Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with
churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value
systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be
viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance
of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that
the average
American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to
law professor John Baker, " There is no
one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime
." Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers
who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are
finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their
own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening
state of affairs -- where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most
innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their
own property -- is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.
Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system
operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order
to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private
corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned
into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public
prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to
maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a
scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of
Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for
lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus,
although the number of violent crimes in the country
is down substantially , the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent
crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing .
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been
co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government
officials, America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more
than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour) -- and that's just what the government
spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the
1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S.
constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50% of the world's total
military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations
combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on
health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that
these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with
enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001,
Americans have spent $10.5
million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics,
race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence
becomes the government's calling card. Remember, in a police state, you're either the one
with your hand on the trigger or you're staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least
400 to 500 innocent
people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times
more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist.
Americans are 110 times more likely to die
of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more
likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As
a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.
SWAT team raids will continue. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year
on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have
been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere
community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an
orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average
day in America,
over 100 Americans have their homes raide d by SWAT teams. There has been a
notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal
agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the
Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety
Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.
The government's war on the American people will continue. "We the people" are no longer
shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment -- which gives us a voice -- is being
muzzled, the Fourth Amendment -- which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten,
broken and spied on by government agents -- is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no
longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in
America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class -- that is, the
citizenry -- of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal
class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice
-- be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms,
roadside searches, and so on -- will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to
stop it now.
The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They
see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact,
when you wake up in the morning, what you're watching on television and reading on the
internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in
order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when
and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of
surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric
data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to
detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which
perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving
police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike -- including homes. Coupled with the
nation's growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software,
soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in
technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so
that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm
in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and
frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of
wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police
officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens
and report "suspicious activity," which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic
value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical
beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to "fusion centers," which are a driving
force behind the government's quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on
American citizens.
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The
Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander
in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress),
appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress' blessing), and veto legislation.
In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage
war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest
and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their
own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by
each successive president -- powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler
-- empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond
any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the
government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic
extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a
greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called
dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the
status quo, no matter which party is in power.
The government's manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will
continue. "We the people" have been the subjected to an "emergency state" that justifies all
manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.
Whatever the so-called threat to the nation -- whether it's civil unrest, school shootings,
alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19 -- the
government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation's heightened emotions, confusion and
fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government's answer
to every problem continues to be more government -- at taxpayer expense -- and less
individual liberty.
The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering
of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come
to know it -- corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special
interest groups -- will remain unchanged. And "we the people" -- overtaxed, overpoliced,
overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and
blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us -- will continue to trudge along a
path of misery.
As I point out in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American People , these problems will continue to
plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we're the only ones who
can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of
restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the
politicians but with the people themselves.
After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, "We the people."
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
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There is no government without us -- our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our
physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state -- no tyranny -- no routine
violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion -- without our turning a blind
eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness
diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need
to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
Neocon Eliot Cohen says a Trump reelection would amount to a moral collapse. He clearly
hasn't learned a thing. Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins
University's School of Advanced International Studies, speaks during a discussion hosted by the
Hudson Institute titled "Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump" in Washington, USA on February 21,
2017. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
One of the more troubling features of America's current political culture is its inability
to cashier politicians, policymakers, military leaders, and other establishment figures who
have been proven not only wrong but wildly wrong. Those who led the nation into the unmitigated
disaster that was the Iraq War, for example, should have been quietly ushered off the nation's
public stage and, if not prosecuted, at least stigmatized for the horrors that they inflicted
upon the Iraqi people and our brave American troops. Members of Congress who supported the war
should have been defeated, public policy "intellectuals" who argued for it should have been
whisked off to private life, and generals who promised that victory was "around the corner"
should have been retired. There must be public accountability in the res publica .
But rather than being stigmatized, these establishment figures have been feted by the
establishment institutions that promoted their disastrous policies. Iraq hawk John McCain
assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee years after it was apparent
that the war was a fiasco. Paul Wolfowitz, another Iraq War architect, became president of the
World Bank. Many American military leaders who urged us into Iraq, and then urged us to stay
there for many long years, were given book deals, lobbying contracts, and think tank
appointments. Even today, the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs is providing prime
real
estate to the intellectual godfather of the Iraq War, Eliot A. Cohen.
Cohen not only argued that the invasion of Iraq would be effortless, a mere mopping up after
the "cakewalk" that was the first Gulf War, he also went "all in" on the presence of WMDs and
the Baghdadian origins of the 9/11 attacks. He wrote boldly in the Wall Street Journal
in late 2001 that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would lead to a "far, far better life for the
Iraqi people." In short, he was not only wrong, he was wildly wrong.
Yet here he is again, in October of 2020, with the lead article in Foreign Affairs,
arguing with the same clichés he employed to lead us into Iraq, this time to attack
Trump. If reelected, Cohen says, Trump will destroy America's "moral purpose on the
international stage." With the Trump presidency, he declares, "the shining city on a hill has
grown dim." Trump has made it clear that he has "no intention of engaging in projects to expand
liberty." And of course, the unending string of clichés would not be complete without
multiple references to "isolationism" and a "world akin to the chaotic 1920s and 1930s," i.e.
the Nazis will have a huge renaissance if we reelect Trump.
This is nothing short of astonishing. That these hackneyed banalities, which were used to
launch a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents in the Middle East,
could be resurrected and published by one of the leading journals on American foreign policy
simply boggles the mind.
Yet if one is to critique Cohen, one finds oneself in the unenviable position of defending
Trump. With this Hobson's choice, one can only keep in mind Burke's admonition that
"circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and
discriminating effect." In other words, when critiquing Trump's foreign policy, one is obliged
to ask: compared to what?
Trump's foreign policy is one of profound strategic incoherence yet instinctual political
acumen. What many foreign policy realists and restrainers cannot seem to understand is that
Trump's policy is full of contradictions yet very much aligned with the views of his voters.
Populism is always full of contradictions.
For example, there is clear
evidence that, in 2016, Trump carried key Midwestern states because people in working-class
counties were sick and tired of seeing casualties return home from our endless wars in the
Middle East. Politically, Trump's desire to bring the troops home makes great sense. But to the
chagrin of libertarians, so does his desire to spend big money on the military. We probably
can't afford it, and the military-industrial complex is the primary beneficiary of profligate
military spending -- yet Trump's base loves fighter planes and aircraft carriers, so they are
enthusiastic about robust American power.
Keep going down the list. Are barbs directed at "Euroweenies" who freeload in NATO popular?
You bet they are. Is belligerence toward China, which hollowed out America's Midwestern
industrial base, popular? Check. Is Trump's unwise and unremitting hostility towards the
mullahs in Iran popular? Since those are the guys who took American hostages in 1979, yes, his
base chooses Trump over the mullahs. None of these foreign policy positions are driven by
strategic thought, but they are driven by an uncanny political sense.
If one believes that the U.S. needs to adopt a more restrained and coherent foreign policy,
then Trump's record is certainly a mixed bag. His political reticence to avoid new wars has
been the most attractive feature and his occasional bombastic and militaristic threats has been
the least attractive feature.
But in politics, one can only choose the options that are available, and what one gets with
Eliot Cohen's foreign policy is both politically unpopular and strategically disastrous. We
know, for example, what Cohen means when he says the United States should engage in "projects
to expand liberty." He means we need to act in Syria in 2020 as we did in Iraq in 2003: another
regime change quagmire with boots on the ground. America would become again, in Robespierre's
words, a nation of "armed missionaries."
The most ominous theme of the Cohen essay, however, reflects the sentiment now so common --
and so dangerous -- in the national security establishment: a Trump reelection would be
illegitimate. This would signal, Cohen says, that our American republic is "fundamentally
flawed" and that the United States had "undergone some kind of moral collapse."
Cohen's position reflects the establishment's absolute refusal to come to terms with their
2016 loss. There is no self-reflection, no sense that, with terrible errors such as the Iraq
War and the Wall Street bailouts, our elites may have themselves unleashed this Trumpian
populism. While the Framers of the American Constitution certainly feared populism, the one
thing they may have feared more is an intemperate, arrogant, and unaccountable elite.
William S. Smith is a senior research fellow and managing director of the Center for
the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. His recent book Democracy
and Imperialism is from the University of Michigan Press.
On this edition of Empire Has No Clothes, Matt, Kelley, and Daniel speak to Stephen
Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft. He discusses his new book,
Tomorrow, the World , the rise of American global supremacy, and why that idea is now
breaking down. We also talk about the foreign policy presidential debate that wasn't and the
upcoming election.
Listen to the episode in the player below, or click the links beneath it to subscribe using
your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on
iTunes or Stitcher, which will really help us climb the rankings, allowing more people to find
the show.
It makes me nauseous just thinking about who might be chosen for a Biden
administration.
There will be no hope for reform within the Democratic Party, ever, with a 2020 win.
A win will be the formal announcement of the death of "the left" as the ideology that has
traditionally represented the interests of the people. The credibility of "the left" has been
eroding with each regime change war the U.S. has been initiating and participating in, with
NATO, since the war on Yugoslavia, but particularly in the Middle East and Libya. There has
not been a reckoning. Moral transgressions and cowardice, greed and inertia have in fact been
rewarded, and institutionalised. Eichman's plea a badge of honour and the whistleblower blown
away. The neocons, those influential Jewish, X-Trotskyite political chameleons pushed those
wars, and soft sold them through their many corporate media connections to produce "left
wing" journalism which manipulated concern for cruel dictators, for persecuted ethnic
minorities, refugees, weapons of mass destruction (the latest toxic version is chemical
weapons) and the unavailability of certain kinds of human rights, in nations which were
experiencing wars of "bomb them back to the stone age" aggression and psychopathic proxy
terror arranged by these very same neocons.
"The left" signalled their virtue by believing the war propaganda, and have not sufficiently
grasped the gravity of the sham perpetrated on their minds by this array of war criminals.
The derangement by Donald syndrome has also proven to be a most emphatic signal of virtue
with "the left", a commandment of wokeness. It is also most apparent that the deplorables,
aka the rednecks, can never be included in a census of the left- oh that is just way beyond
the pale! Very hard to imagine a large group of people who are so denigrated, and not just
within the US. Even the bourgeois left has become elitist, and the elitist as in Marxist left
has paradoxically no time for people, let alone the common ones. Vk has left us in no
doubt.
Glen Greenwald is at his peak in his Tucker Carlson interview, talking of infiltration of
"the left" by the agencies. This is compelling journalism because these truths are dangerous.
If there is a deep state, then it is the Dems, they've got it covered and the Atlanticists
are their allies. It fits in with Giraldi's latest prognostications, and what would be a
counterrevolution and not a revolution should "the left" decide to make the push. By left he
means Dems and their corporate sponsored affiliates, partisan elements of the spy agencies
and big tech. (I think of Mark2 and his misspelt slogans straight from the Gene Sharpe
handbook and wonder if earnest Mark2 is a typical lefty cadre, and muse over his enthusiasm
for the gutless Jeremy Corbyn, whom I'm sure is a very nice chap personally, but look at the
Labour Party now. Mark2, have you heard of the two forms of fascism, fascism and anti
fascism?). Jimmy Dore continues to be heroic when faced with unpleasant truths. Keep being
mad Jimmy, and just don't stand for it anymore!
Some of us are grateful for these individuals (and thanks to b for his meta commentary)
because they are publically enacting a kind of meaculpa, and they have premonitions and we
are being warned. There is grace in that. There still are still some good people who can
speak publically.
I used to be left politically, but got disillusioned some time ago. Not knowing what
progressivism is leading to, and not trusting its practitioners, I find conservatism to be
the more reasonable and tolerant position for these times.
What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?worldblee , Oct 31 2020
17:02 utc |
1
Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming
foreign policy team would be the return of the
blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration:
Taking a cue from [the Transition Integrity Project], let's game a Dem return to the White
House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later.
That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.
President Trump calls it "the swamp". Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben
Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier "Blob", applied to the
incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the
Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs
magazine.
A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold
War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror),
renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.
The Democratic White House team Escobar describes (Clinton, Blinken, Rice, Flournoy) would
be an assembly of well known war mongers who all argue for hawkish policies. The main
'enemies', Russia and China, would be the same as under Trump. Syria, Venezuela, Iran and
others would stay on the U.S. target list. U.S. foreign policy would thereby hardly change
from Trump's version but would probably be handled with more deadly competence.
But Escobar sees two potential positive developments:
In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the
JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and
re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of
Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record,
that Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.
I believe that Harris (Biden) will disappoint on both of those issues. The
neoconservatives have already infested the Harris (Biden) camp. They will make sure that
JCPOA
does not come back :
Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by "Jewish Americans for Biden", and
moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans
endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump's character posing a danger to democracy. But
both neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East
and reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won't
necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support
Israel and believe in American military intervention.
Eric Edelman, a former diplomat and adviser to Dick Cheney, said Trump's peace plan has
fostered an open political divide in the U.S. over Israel, ...
Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic, echoed the fear that Israel is being politicized.
...
...
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama's Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish
on Iran.
...
"There will be voices" in the Biden administration that seek a return to the Iran deal, but
the clock has been running for four years, and we're in a different place, he said. And "it
will be hard [for Biden] not to use the leverage that the sanctions provide in part because
Iran is not abiding by a lot of the limits of the nuclear agreement They're about three,
maybe four months away from having enough fissile material to actually develop a nuclear
weapon."
For lifting the sanctions against Iran the Harris (Biden) administration will demand much
more than Iran's return to the limits of the JCPOA. Iran will reject all new demands, be they
about restricting its missile force or limiting its support for Syria. The conflict will
thereby continue to fester.
The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's
offer to unconditionally
prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from
Russia than that country is willing to give. Currently it is Russia that has the upper hand
in strategic weapons with already deployed hypersonic missiles and other new platforms. The
U.S. will want to fill the new 'missile gap' and the military-industrial complex stands ready
to profit from that. The New-START prolongation will eventually run out and I do not see the
U.S. agreeing to new terms while Russia has a technological superiority.
Domestic policies under a democratic president will likewise see no substantial
difference. As Krystal Ball remarked,
here summarized from a Rolling Stone podcast:
But even with a Biden win, Ball doesn't think it will mean much for policy.
"My prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens," says Ball.
"Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well.
They're very good for coming up with reasons why, 'oh those mean Republicans, like we want
to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he's so
wiley, we can't get it done.'"
'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real
change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light.
I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece :
In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance.
Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges.
Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember "soft coup" Brazil.
Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
Posted by b at
16:45 UTC |
Comments (183) I have been trying to set the expectations for my deluded Democratic,
pro-tech industry, pro-security state friends and colleagues who think they are
forward-thinking progressives but actually just hate Trump as emblematic of non-college
educated blue collar types they prefer not to associate with. Biden himself said it, "Nothing
will change," and Obama deported many more people in his first term than Trump has to pick
but one issue. There will be no M4A, little change in foreign policy, no major stimulus for
workers, etc. But since the face in the White House will have changed, they will convince
themselves that America has changed and it was all thanks to them...
One major change I expect to see is that BLM protests will fade into the background if
Harris/Biden is elected. Without the need to pressure an administration the elites want to
get rid of, there won't be the funding and energy to sustain it. But America will continue on
the same downward trajectory and the same divisions will still exist with no remediation in
sight.
Really, so what? You have a choice between chaotic anarchic corruption, and organised
professional corruption. Is it not better to have the calm, predictable, version - at least
you know what you're getting. In any case I am not sure Biden would be able to go back to
launching new wars so easily. The US gives the impression of being over-stretched as it is.
It seems clear that Biden will win. This means that the possibility of a serious military
confrontation with Russia is more likely than it would be with a Trump win. In any Biden
cabinet Michelle Flournoy will have a major voice. She would have likely become Hillary's
Secretary of Defense. In August of 2016 Flournoy wrote a major foreign policy article
advocating a 'no fly' zone over Syria. That would have meant that the US military would have
been obliged to prevent the Russia airforce from operating in Syrian skies (even though, the
Syrian government had invited the Russians to be there). No one really knows if Flournoy
would have been given authority to carry out such insanity had Hillary won, but the
consequences of such insane policy are easy to imagine.
But without much doubt, a Biden administration will have Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy
in very high policy positions. Given that Biden is rapidly descending into dementia and
Kamala Harris seems utterly clueless, US government foreign policy will very likely be led by
a Rice/Flournoy collaboration in the coming years. Of course, China has become a much bigger
player in the last four years. Maybe those fools around Biden will be distracted by China and
they avoid war with with Russia. In either case it looks like very dangerous times
ahead.
Trump was always for me about controlled demolition of the empire.
Putin will not tolerate another ramping up of hostilities in the MENA.
I believe, just as in 2016, open military confrontation with Russia hangs in the
balance.
It is believed here and elsewhere that Russia and China are working hand in hand and
lockstep to thwart the empire.
They may be trade allies but they are not bed fellows.
Russia will always do what is in its own interest and will be beyond reproach from China
come a last-minute attempt for it to talk down hostilities btw Ru and U.S.A.
I hope those peddling the narrative that all is theater and a mere globalist game to keep
the peons entertained are correct.
But I fear the stupidity and egoism of man far more than I do their love of money and life
of luxury.
The JCPOA's "snap back" provisions etc. prove that Obama never intended JCPOA as a long term
agreement in the first place. The issue was always how long it would suit, not how long it
would take for the US to. Nor is the US going to forego it's support for a colonial assault
on the Middle East, aka Israel, any more than England will give up Gibraltar.
That said, there really is a policy debate between attacking Russia first or attacking
China first or simultaneously attacking both. The thing is, the conflict will continue after
any election. Since the Democratic Party isn't a programmatic party but a franchise operation
of Outs, there will be zero unanimity within the Democratic Party and not even a clean sweep
of the national government will resolve the dispute, which will be waged with exactly the
same panic-mongering, paranoid cries of treason, barely subdued hysteria at the prospect of
the lower races overtaking the God-given rights of the US government to exercise imperium
(right to punish, particularly with death, originally) over humanity, and so on. The same
ignorant vicious halfwits who were convinced Clinton Foundation was worse than the Comintern
infiltrating innocent America made assholes of themselves. They'll just do it again over
Biden, but with different made up excuses.
Domestically, there will be real differences, albeit some will still consider them
entirely minor. There will be less emphasis on military officers masquerading as civilian
officials; more emphasis on actually having competent officials who are even confirmed by the
Senate; somewhat larger infrastructure investment; somewhat less deliberate destruction of
government capacity to deliver services; slightly greater emphasis on keeping money valuable
by limiting government spending, with smaller increases in military spending, slightly
greater taxes, and only limited support to state governments going bankrupt, bankrupt
unemployment and pension funds; a few restrictions on mass evictions; no separation of
families in ICE prisons; open appeals to racism will cease. There will not however be any
Medicare expansion, nor will there be a radically progressive federal income tax, not even a
new bankruptcy law, nor will there be even political reforms like direct popular election of
the president or even reform of the judiciary. There may be a minimum wage increase to $15
per hour.
One note: The idea that any president will honor any deal to step down or that a president
can be forced down is refuted by history thus far. All theories that Biden is scheduled to be
terminated are silly. Or worse, attempts to race bait Harris (note the ones who like to call
her by her first name.) The influence exercised by Obama in getting Biden the nomination
shows that if Biden is in any sense a puppet, he's Obama's puppet. Fixating on Harris instead
is foolish even as some sort of amateur conspiracy mongering. No matter what Obama thinks,
the inauguration will sever all puppet strings.
Can't say I'm convinced by all these threats of wars. They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in
Syria when they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to
do, and required too vast a military investment. Situation remains true today. You'll find
most of Biden's prospective wars fall in the same category.
The US self-declared "progressives" are horribly dumb people, no matter their degrees and
"intellectual" professions. Stupidity is the illness (weakness) of the societal immunity
system. The Blob of the parasitic class is the pestilence that thrives on the immune weakness
of the US society. Not happy with mine, then find a better metaphor.
I repeat myself from before, US presidents change, US policy (Mayhem Inc.) does not.
Nether on Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela ..., nor on China. If Trump loses, I will miss only
the potential duel at the OK Corral between Trump and the Blob/Swamp. If Trmp wins, I am
buying popcorn.
@Laguerre #7
I would argue the failure of a "no-fly" zone in Syria was more due to united UN (Russia and
China) opposition plus the Russia airbase in Tartus rather than any policy changes in the US.
It's everywhere. And matched by Democratic Party ineptitude, fake "resistance", and
generally lax attitude (spurred by a false sense of security due to polling numbers that
can't be relied upon).
That's why I'm predicting a Trump landslide - including winning the popular vote.
The Deep State wants a 'Glorious Leader' type that can lead the country against Russia and
China.
KB has it right the demodogs will have better PR but nothing will change. The only thing I
hope they do is fully throw the u.s. govt behind stopping the virus and even that will be
hard do to many stupid people.
Trumpster and the swamp all he did was change the cruel animals in it and biden will
change it back to the other cruel animals that were there before.
It is hard to tell what will change if the Democrats win because they have flip flopped on
policies so many times that you don't know what they really stand for.
Are they going to ban fracking or not?
Are they going to end the oil industry or not?
Are they going to pack the Supreme Court or not ?
Are they going to implement the Green New Deal or not ?
Are they going to encourage immigration or not ?
Are they going to tear down the Wall?
Are they going to defund the police or not?
Other than #OrangeManBad what do they actually stand for ?
Jonathan Pie lays it out quite nicely https://youtu.be/IdnHfYbr1cQ
The one issue that is critical is that it is clear than Biden will not make it full term.
His mental faculties are deteriorating rapidly. He might just make it over the goal post line
but just barely.
Therefore the real question is what will Kamala Harris do?
Russia has a lead in strategic weapons that the US will not be able to catch up with.
Hence the US emphasis on nuclear weapons to bridge the gap. Russia has successfully thwarted
the empire on several occasions. How will the empire struck back ? (So as not to lose
credibility with allies and vassals alike)
They are going to reduce government subsidies for fracking
And encourage the oil industry's ongoing retooling to other energies
They are going to expand the SCOTUS to 13 seats in keeping with the number of Circuit
Courts
They are going to implement environmental legislation and policies
They will hopefully try to adopt a comprehensive policy on immigration and naturalization
They will abandon The Wall project as pointless
They will review the role of the police in dealing with situations where a social worker or a
psychologist (with police escort) might better be able to handle the situation
Kamala Harris will keep an active and high profile as she is being groomed to run in
2024
I agree that trajectory in foreign policy will be the same. I think a Trump administration
would tend to entrench into the bureaucracy the xenophobic nationalists. This is in contrast
to the neoliberal nationalists that make up the Democrat side of the foreign policy clique.
In practice the latter ends up carrying water for the neocons, so the difference from the
global perspective, the perspective of those on whom the bombs fall, is academic.
Domestically, however, I don't think we can say there's no significant difference. At some
point far down the road, there will be a more meaningful internal political struggle in the
US. Talking about when the $$ printing power runs out, so several presidential cycles from
now at the very earliest, maybe many decades away.
The out-groups targeted by xenophobic nationalism will shift by then - either black or
hispanic people will necessarily be included into the Republican party, and the divide may be
more a matter of religion or nationality than race, but the overall idea will be the
same.
No matter the details, it would be better to go into that conflict without giving the
right-wingers a big head start. I think we should admit that Trump does accelerate the
process. Maybe readers outside the US take some pleasure in the chaos produced by this, but
for anyone actually planning to live within the US, who also objects to unrestrained
nationalism, there actually is a pretty high price to pay for peeling off the mask of phony
benevolence off of the de-facto imperialist foreign policy.
'b' half the truth isn't the truth, no doubt you'l get round to the other half. It's
conspicuous !
In these times focusing on what might happen if we get Biden, is biased.
What in your view might happen if we get trump ?
Given his track record.
Much more relevant I feel.
@Malchik #16
Well, kid, I will guarantee that 2/3rds of what you say will happen with a Biden win, won't
happen.
I am particularly struck by your assertion that "super predator" Biden and "Lock 'em up"
Harris will do anything to rein in police misbehavior. That is pure fantasy.
As for fracking: the subsidies were primarily by banksters in the form of loans and have long
since ended. Nobody believes fracking is going to be a profitable business for at least a
decade.
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint
is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly
going to lose the popular vote. Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority
of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the
interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016
election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white
supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
In my opinion, it's time for the non far-right of the USA to start thinking seriously
(specially if you're one of the twelve socialists in the country) in Third Party vote. Yes,
you won't pick up the fruits immediately, but at least you're build up a legacy for the
generations to come to try to change the landscape.
Now, of course, very little will change with Biden-Harris. But this has a good side, too:
it shows the American Empire has clearly reached an exhaustion point, where the POTUS is
impotent to the obstacle posed by China-Russia. Putin has already publicly stated he doesn't
care who's next POTUS; China has already stated what the USA does or decides won't mean shit.
Maybe the rising irrelevance of the POTUS is good in the greater scheme of things - or, at
least, it gives us new, very precious, information about the core of the Empire.
Is b really suggesting Trump is more peaceful than Biden?
The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is
specious. They are all on Team Deep State, which serves the monied class.
And the pretense that the Deep State is divided or partisan is equally laughable.
Strange that so many smart people fall for the shell game behind the 'Illusion of
Democracy'. Is it so difficult to see the reshuffling of deck chairs and entertaining
diversions that pass for "US politics"?
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.
But seriously, things have been changing very rapidly all of my life, and accelerating as
we go. I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing
that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either. They
remain focussed on their depraved personal ambitions and demented interpersonal disputes. So
no change in the midst of lots of change is what I expect, time to keep an eye out and
consider ones options.
By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small
redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in
the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks
undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Jesus but that is an ignorant comment. Michael Moore explained 4 years ago why Trump will win
the election (2016) https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4
div> @vk #21
You said:
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right
viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is
certainly going to lose the popular vote.
The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding
Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by
Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all
this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the
minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more
minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By
supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck
aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust
Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly
support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right"
and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely
this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint
is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly
going to lose the popular vote.
The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding
Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by
Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all
this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the
minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more
minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By
supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small
redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in
the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks
undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right" and
"proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this
view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.
The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is
specious.
That's not actually true.
Biden has 47 years of track record to rely on.
HRC, ditto.
Bush is umpteenth generation Bush in government (100 years plus).
Obama was groomed through Harvard, community organization and Senate position as a servant of
the oligarchy.
Trump is a billionaire and 2nd generation wealthy, but he neither shares the views of the
oligarch classes - his historical behavior is clear proof of that - nor is he predictable as
the other 4 are.
If presented with a neocon view - all 4 of the above would 100% agree.
Trump? 85%.
That is a difference albeit absolutely not world changing.
Pure BS.
Giving health care to 20 million poor Americans ain't nothing to sneeze at. Adding pre
existing conditions save millions of lives. That's why the right despises Obama so much. How
dare he give money to those free loaders!
lets show what the republicans have done for poor Americans besides taking more needex
money from them and giving it to their rich buddies.
and No, Democrats cannot do anything if they don't control the Congress. They should have
done it 2 years ago but since all they were doing was scream RUSSIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! at
the top of their lungs,the people turned their backs on them.
Bullshit article.
The Democrats are not going to end fracking. It is doomed to collapse without their help. A
Wall Street Journal study revealed a remarkable fact that few Americans know; From 2000-2017
fracking companies spent $280 billion more to extract fracked oil and gas than they received
in revenue. Fracking is nothing more than a massive Ponzi scheme predicated on the constant
issuing of debt and stock. Fracking wells deplete quickly. There is a constant need for more
expensive drilling. The remaining areas that will be fracked have less productive wells. Much
of the debt fracking companies have issued is back loaded while the well's production is
front loaded. There simply isn't going to be enough revenue generated to meet debt
obligations. What made the scheme possible was the artificially low interest rates created by
the Federal Reserve. There was a demand for yield that drove investment into debt of dubious
quality. A crash is inevitable.
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.
I am curious why you think so.
Biden is nothing, if not a creature of habit (of obedience to his corporate masters).
Biden likely NSC: Tony Blinken. Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy NSC under Obama.
Susan "Bomber" Rice?
John Kerry?
Sally Yates? The one who signed the FISA warrants based on the Steele Dossier (based on 2
drunkard Russians in Malta mad at being fired)
Michael Bloomberg?
Jamie Dimon?
The only "fresh blood" in this group is the teenage blood they inject to try and remain
young.
Elizabeth Warren, were Biden to appoint her as Treasury Secretary, *would* constitute fresh
blood.
The likelihood of the Senator from MBNA appointing her to that position is zero.
I would love to be wrong in that instance, but it ain't gonna happen.
What is trumps legacy so far ?
Let's call that -- - 'The Crimes Of Donald Trump'
Well he has legitimised cold blooded murder.
Ditto racism.
Run roughshod over national laws and conventions. -- Invading an embassy. Assange, koshogie
murder, white helmit chlorine attack false flag. Funding and arming by US of Isis.
Corporate mansloughter by virus.
Interference in numerous country's internal politics.
Allowing Israel to interfer take over US politics.
The above are a few that comes to mind.
Have we done away with law and order ?
Feel free to add to my 'Crimes of Donald Trump' list.
In a word normalisation.
I hope you are right that the US will avoid war in Syria because they would lose. I was,
on the other hand, very impressed that Flournoy was advocating that no fly zone in August of
2016. It was on the basis of her article at that time I fled the US Democratic Party. I knew
it was bad before, but it suddenly became clear how Hillary would lead us int WWIII.
We've talked at moa about how policy doesn't change much between Democrat and Republican
Administrations. And we've talked about the Illusion of Democracy.
That each President has a different personality as well as different priorities and
challenges during their time in office doesn't indicate any fundamental difference in how we
are governed.
And Hillary Clinton wants to be Secretary of Defense in a Biden administration. Not only
would the world be in trouble I could see her using the DOD internal hit teams to go after
her domestic enemies. They will make 8 years of Bush junior look like a Disneyland vacation.
It will be similar to the many unsolved murders of Weimar Germany.
That was sarcasm, I knew it was going to cause trouble, sarcasm never works on the web
unless you add a /sarc tag or something, I guess I feel a bit perverse today.
But to be serious, any attempt to predict what comes next here must rely on the idea that
the future will be like the past, we extrapolate in other words, from various trends that we
pick out. We can expect Biden to remain who he has been in the past, politicfally he's a
hack, what we know of Harris does not suggest any principles to speak of either, so I feel
more like I want to pay attention to what's coming than trying to predict what they is going
to do or not do. That likely depends on "contingencies" just as in the past.
#23 - "I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing
that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either."
This is a highly relevant observation. For some time the character and intellectual scope
of the political/managerial sectors in the West have been noticeably mediocre, and will
likely continue as such for the foreseeable future. The necessary reforms of capitalism were
vetoed decades ago, ensuring that productive energies would gradually dissipate. For the last
decade all the West has had to offer the rest of humanity is neoliberal austerity, colour
revolutions, and armament contracts. This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out
self-imposed isolation, a process the political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging
and supporting without realizing it at all.
Interesting to see how the kayfabe vocabulary of Dim propaganda infects everyone's thought
and speech. Including b's:
"'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies."
Republican my eye. Democrat policies, period. A party founded, maintained and run to
implement the ruling class empire and war agenda, just like the Repucrats.
As if Obama was some kind of exception. Ditch this language.
usa is the major unknown;
China and Russia don't need to physically war - they are winning at PR around the globe.
Even tiny Cuba has greatly better creds!
usa needs to be a people who truly and consistently respect their allies.
Which comes back to usa being the major unknown.
'Cept for warmongering.
"All of us who spent careers in the military were raised on the notion that you lead by
example, and President Trump has been the antithesis of that in dealing with this
pandemic," said Charles "Steve" Abbot, former commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and deputy
Homeland Security Adviser. "Instead of taking steps that I would call 'Crisis Management
101,' President Trump shirked his duty to the nation by failing to provide the central
leadership necessary to get our arms around the problem, and he continues to mislead the
entire nation about this terrible threat. The result of that failure of leadership was that
his administration committed an unrelenting string of missteps, and the American public has
lost trust in what the president tells them."
The sixth Fleet is Europe, so "this terrible threat" must be Russia, which is the natural
enemy of the DNC/AtlanticCouncil/NATO unlike Trump the 'Putin-lover.'
And more on anti-Russia, from the article:
President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said earlier this year that
Trump had repeatedly raised the issue of withdrawing the United States from NATO, and
warned of "a very real risk" that Trump would actually follow through in a second term.
Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the number three official at the
State Department, put it this way: "Every modern president since Harry Truman has viewed
our commitment to democratic allies around the world as sacrosanct, because for half a
century those alliances have been a key source of American power." He noted that a
dissolution of NATO is at the top of Russian President Vladimir Putin's wish list. "Under
President Trump we have walked away from that global leadership, and, as a result, trust in
the United States has plummeted even among our closest friends. That's done enormous
damage."
This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out self-imposed isolation, a process the
political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging and supporting without realizing it at
all.
Posted by: jayc | Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 37
I've been sort of fascinated by that for some time, back when I was young we were still
smart enough to know we had to compete with the USSR, and that we therefore had to develop
our human capital. And we did pretty well for a couple decades, but then after VietNam they
stopped doing that and choose the present "system" instead. Thus abandoning their long-term
ability to compete, the source of their power in the first place. Banana republics do not
compete well. Decadent.
But you have to give credit to the Russians and the Chinese too, their achievements are
impressive by any standard. Our enemies, the ones who have survived, have all proved their
mettle.
Can be, can be, no expectations in Biden / Harris. Nevertheless, Tronald is definitely not
the lesser evil. His foreign policy is also heading for a clash with China, and things are
not going well with Russia either. The warmongering anti-Iran axis has his support, the war
in Yemen continues, he won't leave Syria alone, his extremely Israel-friendly attitude
increases the danger of war. Everything that is suspected of being left-wing in South America
is strangled.
In addition, he has an encouraging effect on all the fascists of the world, his disastrous
ecological policy, his negative influence on the treatment of the Corona crisis, his general
dislike of multilateral organizations and treaties on which the weaker states of the world
are compulsorily dependent. Overall, he exerts an extremely negative influence on the entire
globe. He should be disposed of.
He will lose the elections, but what happens then is open.
The claim that support for minority rule isn't purely partisan BS is yet another lie. The
moral principle in countermajoritarianism like the Founders' is that democracy cannot be
allowed to threaten property. Except of course property before democracy, before liberty,
before humanity is a vile and disgusting tenet that shames everyone so lost to common
decency. The defense that a piece of parchment, a law, makes things moral and righteous and
that even opposition is somehow wrong is an offense against common sense. By that standard,
the Thirteen, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were the end of freedom in America!
It's one thing to have a mind deranged by rabid hate of your perceived social superiors,
but to openly uphold vulgarity is merely snobbery inverted. It is a mean and small minded
vice, always, and never a virtue. The Access: Hollywood tape was proof of vulgarity but to
defend it as not being proof of a crime but as a positive good is vicious. Vicious is not a
synonym for "bad ass." Or if it news, then "bad ass" is a horrible insult.
And, speaking of deranged minds, Wilson was felled by a stroke and Reagan was felled by
Alzheimer's, yet they did not fall from power. Quite aside from the question of how anyone
could decide who is battier, Trump or Biden, Biden will never be replaced by Harris for
incapacity short of a coma.
A very cogent analysis by b. But I believe the return of the Blob may not be as ominous as
feared.
The dangerous component of the Blob's collective fantasy is the confrontation against
China and Russia. As late as 4, 5 years ago the prevailing sentiment among Americans, the
masses and the elites alike, was one in which The Empire's might was still considered
unquestionably dominant and unchallenged. There was penchant for dressing down both China and
Russia, and the clumsy maneuvers of the Blob's operators (Obama/Clinton/Bolton/Rice et al)
were wholeheartedly supported even if contemptuously regarded for their clumsiness. That
sentiment has evaporated, especially after Chinese and Russian military parades as well as
American's numerous own infrastructure project failures along with abject performances of
Boeing jets and Zumwalt class destroyers. The COVID19 pandemic adds salt to injury.
There is an issue with self confidence now, up and down the hierarchy within the American
society, perhaps with the lone exception of Trump's rednecks.
So, the Blob may return with a vengeance but their political capital may be rather meager.
They will be all mouth and little substance, as would Trump's prospective second term.
I do not always agree with the opinion of the Saker, but in this matter I tend to support him
and can only quote from one of his recent articles :
And, in truth, the biggest difference between Obama and Trump, is that Trump did not start
any real wars. Yes, he did threaten a lot of countries with military attacks (itself a
crime under international law), but he never actually gave the go ahead to meaningfully
attack (he only tried some highly symbolic and totally ineffective strikes in Syria). I
repeat – the man was one of the very few US Presidents who did not commit the crime
of aggression, the highest possible crime under international law, above crimes against
humanity or even genocide, because the crime of aggression "contains within itself the
accumulated evil", to use the words of the chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg and Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Robert H. Jackson. I submit that just
for this reason alone any decent person should choose him over Biden (who himself is
just a front for "President" Harris and a puppet of the Clinton gang). Either that, or
don't vote at all if your conscience does not allow you to vote for Trump. But voting
Biden is unthinkable for any honest person , at least in my humble opinion.
I am surprised by people who are of the opinion that half-dead Biden, suffering from
obvious dementia, is better. If only not Trump.
In 2016, Hilary, in fact, openly stated that she was going to use the so-called 'nuclear
blackmail' against the Russian Federation. And there was no guarantee that this crazy old
witch, having become president, would not have pressed the very button that launched nuclear
missiles at Russia. Four years ago, the choice was between an insane sadistic misanthropist
who could actually start a nuclear war, and a "dark horse" businessman with the illusory
prospect of some improvement in relations between the two strongest nuclear powers. I do not
want to drag in religion and the intervention of higher powers here, but it may not be at all
accidental that Trump snatched victory from the witch. Maybe we avoided a nuclear war.
Yes, now both options are bad. But of the two evils, it is better to choose the lesser,
which, of course, Trump is.
two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran
nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting
nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia,
not a new all-out Cold War , even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that
Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.
What? Funny. I thought it was Obama (read Democrats) who started this new Cold War. Just
to remind - It was Obama who made the decision to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania,
which are a direct threat to Russia. It is Obama & Co who are responsible for the
Ukrainian coup, which, in fact, became a trigger for the total deterioration of relations
between Russia and the West. It was Obama who began the unprecedented expropriation of
Russian diplomatic property in the U.S. and the expulsion of russian diplomats. It was under
Obama that "the doping scandal" was organized against Russia. And so on and so on...
Trump just continued what Obama had started. It is strange that Pepe Escobar does not
understand this.
If Iran and/or Venezuela get their oil back on the market, that will cause an oil price crash
that would "end fracking." It can't survive oil much under $50/barrel over a long term.
An oil price crash would also effect the larger energy market, making solar and wind less
competitive, even though their direct competition is really coal rather than oil.
Huge and powerful constituencies don't care about Iran or Venezuela, but care very much
about oil prices staying high. They make common cause now, and will under Biden too.
Well, having given deep consideration to the question and the current advanced state of
malady in the USA - I will leave it to Vic as he has summarised the position with minimum
fuss - here.
Enjoy this sharp witted, all encompassing 4 minute rant from inside the asylum. I would
shout the bar for all with this one.
Biden is an old man. He is a tired man, if not now, then in six months. He has already told
wealthy donors that nothing will change. He has no record of leadership. He has no record of
achievement, unless you count floating to the top. He will be the establishment's model
'status quo, do-nothing Democrat.
Biden will preside as a figurehead legitimizing the shenanigans of the blob, Wall Street,
and the US Chamber of Commerce, and Big Oil. Heck, I doubt that he will even override many of
Trump's executive orders, except for the token bone thrown to his delusional supporters.
Harris will be as much a figurehead as Biden. She is utterly unprepared. While she is
likable enough, she lacks gravitas and "credibility," which, she will be convinced, can be
established only by bombing a few wogs back to the Stone Age.
Both will serve as placeholders until Trump 2.0 arrives in 2024. Elites will sufficiently
sabotage the economy until then to assure that Trump 2.0 with neocon values is elected in
2024.
the usa is an approaching train wreck and no amount of persuading one side or the other is
going to change any of this... the world is moving on and rightfully so... no one wants to
get down into this... the swamp and fake news is permanent at this point...until the whole
system implodes - this is what we have in store.. vote for trump or biden - it matters not...
one is a slower motion move then the other - but the end result is the same... there is no
way out... sorry... on the other hand it is beautiful and sunny here where i live... life
goes on outside this political circus called the usa presidential election..
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26
I do not agree with you on 99.8% of wordly affairs BUT this comment you wrote is pure
gold!!
Even on the other side of the Atlantic ocean @ the western edge of Europe us reading types
know the difference.
And it annoys me just as much as it seems to annoy you how few people know that the US of
terror is a republic and NOT a democracy😂🥴
By the way, people who are truly interested in seeing the Democratic Party removed as an
obstacle to a true people's party (no one else here wants a workers' party) the very best way
to split the national party would be a clean sweep of House, Senate and Presidency followed
by enough treasonous shenanigans by Trump to arouse mass resistance. (Genuinely treasonous as
in subverting the republic by force, fraud and violence, not in the half witted definition of
dealings with foreigners so popular around here.) Biden et al. would split the Democrats
rather than enact a popular program---which would be left because the when the masses begin
to move they always march left.
Also by the way, Bloomberg is continuing his bid for a hostile takeover of the Democratic
Party, aping the media version of Trump's hostile takeover of the Republic (NOT A DEMOCRACY!)
Party.
"Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change
never came."
I was calling Obama "Bush Lite" during his first campaign. Anyone who read his foreign
policy platform would have to agree. And the *only* reason he negotiated the JCPOA was
because he needed at least one foreign policy win for his eight years - and he knew it would
be torn up by whoever came after him, either Clinton or Trump. But he needed it for his own
narcissistic view of his "legacy".
People forget that Obama wrote the leaders of Brazil and Turkey in 2010 prior to their
negotiation with Iran for a deal, listing the points of a deal he would accept. Clinton
pooh-poohed the idea that those leaders could get a deal. After a marathon negotiation
session, they got it. The US then dismissed the deal 24 hours later, prompting Brazil's
leader to release the Obama letter to establish that Obama was a liar.
"Change You Can Believe In" - "Make America Great" - only morons believe in campaign
slogans - or the people who utter them.
"The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's
offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want
more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give."
Russia has made it abundantly and repetitively clear that they are not doing INCREMENTAL
DEFEAT any more - there are no concessions to make - they no longer do supine acceptance of
UKUSAi rights to dominate, subvert or belligerently mass arms at their advancing borders.
Why would any country concede to the incessant belligerence of the west? They must have
lead in their drinking water to be that dumb!
The concession must come from the aggressor, the colour revolution fomenter, the incessant
smearer and hate propagandist - the west.
A Harris/Biden Presidency lacks those attributes (perhaps lacks any attributes of
goodwill) and a Trump Presidency is no different.
The narcissistic personality disorders run the USA - the asylum inmates are in charge, not
the elected leaders. And the elected leaders are morons or wholly captive klutzes.
Posted by: Laguerre | Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7 They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in Syria when
they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to do
Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC
Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya -
vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August, 2013. He
only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him by getting
Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking no-fly zone yet
again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria. Then sometime in
2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama was having a meeting
on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or Wednesday, the Russia
Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian military assets would be
shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there wouldn't be a no-fly
zone.
So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times*
trying to start a war with Syria.
"Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch."
YES. thank you for the clarifying statement, as that is exactly what I expect too. Harris
/Biden blood spattered globe again. Or a Trump spattered equivalent. No socialism for the
USA.
We went from snarling Cheney Wars to shiny happy Obama wars to snarling Trump wars now back
to shiny happy Biden wars to... Forever War is obviously bi-partisan.
But perhaps with Great Depression 2.0 coming this Dark Winter in order to stave off civil
war and/or revolution they'll throw resources to much needed infrastructure projects,
diminish to a slight degree the supremacy of the for-profit healthcare industry through a
laughable but better than nothing 'public option' and make some baby steps toward avoiding
climate catastrophic.
The change is marginal. And probably meaningless. Hope is just another word for nothing
left to lose.
Those 77,000 - purely because of location - overcame 3 million+ votes. That's the
equivalent of giving those 77 thousands the right to vote 40 times each.
Are you in favor of censitary vote?
--//--
@ Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26
Yes, but at the end of the day, Hilary Clinton got 3.6 million votes more than Donald
Trump.
You're telling everybody you're in favor of censitary vote in opposition to one person,
one vote, just because you don't want an ideological enemy of yours to win. This is still
liberal - but you would have to dig to the early liberal thinkers (Locke, Tocqueville etc.)
to find such reactionary and elitist opinion.
Even by liberal standards today censitary vote is already considered outdated/reactionary.
Concretely, you're defending the interests of a blue collar elite of the north-midwest, who
number on the dozens of thousands, in detriment to more than half the voting population. It
is what it is: you can't fight against mathematics.
--//--
@ Posted by: Down South | Oct 31 2020 18:47 utc | 25
So what? Fuck Michael Moore. If Michael Moore told you to jump off a cliff, would you do
it? He's not the guardian of the absolute truth, he's just a random guy with an opinion.
Michael Moore can defend a mythical blue collar America how much he wants to - it doesn't
change the fact this America doesn't exist anymore. America is, nowadays, the land of the
petit-bourgeois, the land of the small-medium business-owners (a.k.a. zombie business-owners)
, of the New York financial assets owning middle class "coastal elites", of the influencers,
of Kim and Chloe Kardashian, of Starbucks, Amazon and Apple, of the billionaire tied to Wall
Street. That's the true America, want it.
America will never be blue collar again. The insistence of turning America blue collar
again will destroy the American Empire. They will be the Gorbachevs of the USA.
Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC
Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya
- vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August,
2013. He only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him
by getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking
no-fly zone yet again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria.
Then sometime in 2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama
was having a meeting on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or
Wednesday, the Russia Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian
military assets would be shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there
wouldn't be a no-fly zone.
So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times*
trying to start a war with Syria.
Thank you, it seems that your succinct statement should be included as an auto response
macro to every laguerre post. They never stop their blathering those AI CPU's. My take is
that they are a retro definition of the term interrupt .
I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor but atm you have a serious case of
TDS. Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the
mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a
race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would
they do if they wanted him removed?
Now I know I have been very very harsh on trump and his supporters of late. Please forgive me
! It's what we call 'tough love' I do have a heart, dispite all of America's crimes against
the rest of the world. I did hope that the US at the last moment would come to it's senses
and turn it's back on trump. Alas ! I fear not. Really sad, I'm sorry.
But for the rest of the world including myself, we can only watch with fascination and relief
as America destroys itself from within. My heart goes out to the inocent.
I fear trump supporters are in for a -- --
Pyrrhic victory (spelt correctly) I recommend googling the word.
Adolph Hitler rose to power with similar glory and power unbridled. Just as trump now !!
Then what ?
Dresden!!
Think on.
Why is it so hard to believe? The media needs a heel and they actually prefer Trump to
remain in office. Maybe on the ground level you have a lot of regular old liberals, but the
upper echelons of the media (and holding companies) are all about keeping the ratings bonanza
going. Another Trump term but with Democrat control of Congress would be like manna from
heaven to them. Matt Taibbi is one writer who has chronicled the phenomenon since before
Trump ever got elected. Here's a more recent piece. Let me know if it's paywalled and I can
copy/paste. CNN
chief has an ethical problem.
On JCPOA, The Nation had a quote from one of Biden's foreign policy advisers to a group of
Jewish campaing donors saying all sanctions on Iran will remain intact unless they return to
full compliance. I agree that it will not be as simple as that given political reality, but
Biden was closely involved in its negotiation and likely has some ownership of it.
I expect there to be a false flag attack by "Iran" to throw sand in the gears if
re-implementation looks likely, or perhaps an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Best plausible
outcome is Iran keeps its current level of cooperation, and a Biden admin looks the other way
on sanctions violationsw.
Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth
about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race
war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? What the hell would they do if
they wanted him removed?
_____________________________________________
Of course it was all phony and designed to not ring true, which benefits Trump by giving him
credibility with the voters.
The whole idea behind trump is the same as with Reagan he is portrayed as the outsider doing
battle against the corrupt and powerful Washington swamp. Trump is Reagan on steroids. But it
is all phony both Reagan and Trump are one of the powerful elites and their opposition by the
left wing media is designed to give them credibility with voters.
Remember that half of the corporate controlled media loves Trump and sings his praises
daily. It is only half the corporate media that is attacking Trump the other half is showing
its viewers blacks that strongly support Trump and solid evidence that Russiagate is pure
bullshit.
As for what the media would do if they really wanted to bring Trump down. They would
attack him on real issues instead of phony ones that actually strengthen trump's
credibility.
"What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?"
The same thing it always changes, absolutely nothing except who accepts the bribes from
the elite.
As long as the American people stay asleep they will continue with the "American DREAM"
until they suddenly wake up inside their newly constructed corporate industrial zone. The
prison industrial complex is the model society if you're an elite.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone, don't get so caught up in this sham (s)election that
you ruin what little freedom you have left.
Berlin's Madame Tussauds has put Donald Trump's wax figure into a
dumpster . Is this normal behavior by a museum? Is this not "an interference in the
democratic processes of the United States"? Or is it okay because the Germans are doing it?
(But God forbid if a Russian or an Iranian criticizes a U.S. presidential candidate publicly
ahead of the election.) Have similar performances been staged against Bush, under whom the
U.S. intelligence agencies manufactured claims of Saddam Hussein preparing to use weapons of
mass destruction, which the U.S. "free" media printed almost in unison without any criticism,
leading to an invasion that killed 650,000
Iraqis ? When a visitor beheaded Adolf Hitler's figure in 2008, the same museum
had this to say :
Madame Tussauds is non-political and makes no comment or value-judgement either on the
persons who are exhibited in the Museum or on what they have done during their lifetime.
I guess starting a war that resulted in deaths of 26,000,000 million Soviets -- most of
them Russians -- is not nearly as bad as being a rude person who has once recommended in
private grabbing women by their genitals.
You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other
side. Remember the saying "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the
American people". Whoever wins the election is going to be faced with major unrest, the worms
are clearly not going back in the can. There are easier ways to get someone re-elected.
Trump is clearly at least as toxic as any of them wrt foreign policy, however he is not a
globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.
@ Maureen O # 45 In 2009, Biden tried very hard to convince Obama not to surge 30,000 more troops into
Afghanistan.
Perhaps he was successful? . . . Obama actually surged 70,000 troops into Afghanistan,
raising Bush's 30K to 100K+. That got Mr Hope & Change the Nobel Peace Prize.
We should remember there were 6 UNSC against Iran, and one of them under Chapter 7 ( the
most dangerous), before JCPOA. We should keep in mind there are gang of 5 + 1( 5 in UNSC +
Germany) coalition behind 6 resolutions.
From Iran's eye, Imperialism was, combination of these 5 in the club, and their collateral
and vassals ( Germany, Japan, etc). The master of JCPOA, caught the opportunity to put a
wedge into the body of the club, and it worked perfectly. America is mad cutting her own
arteries, out side the club. Trump or Biden are not different in this regard, America needs
some one to understand the depth of the wound and retreat immediately, before too much
hemorrhage. And such person ( or group ) is not in horizon. Let it die by her own
wounding.
Thank you for that Philip Giraldi report. The descent into madness from the raucus sounds
of the echo chamber. Where does a revolution start?
First they need to dismantle their media concentration across the spectrum of "news"
including all media forms.
Second they need to send their journalists through the same cultural revolution cycle as
was done in the China and other countries where people go to different work supporting the
growth of their communities for a five to ten year separation from the craft of journalism.
Listen to the people and sweat alongside them in their labour to survive.
Sure there is much more but the echo chamber must surely be demolished at
commencement.
I believe back in August 2013 after a CW attack in East Ghouta, east of Damascus, wrongly
blamed on the Syrian govt that Obama was preparing to enforce his no-fly zone threat. Then
the UK parliament voted not to support such a threat, Obama hesitated and then Putin saw his
opportunity and posted an opinion in the New York Times. That ultimately stopped the US from
going ahead with the attack.
I'm sure British MPs have since been forced to "come to their senses".
I linked to and commented upon Pepe's article when it was published by Asia Times a
few days ago, and I don't see any reason to add to it as b echoes much of my sentiment. What
I will do is link to a brief item by Chinese scholar Zhang Weiwei, professor of International
Relations at Fudan University, "How
China elects their political leaders" , which seems very appropriate at this moment in
time:
"China has established a system of meritocracy or what can be described as 'selection plus
election'. Competent leaders are selected on the basis of performance and broad support,
through a vigorous process of screening, opinion surveys, internal evaluations and various
types of elections. This is much in line with the Confucian tradition of meritocracy. After
all, China is the first country that invented civil service examination system or the 'Keju'
system....
"Indeed, the Chinese system of meritocracy today, makes it inconceivable that anyone as
weak as George W. Bush or Donald Trump could ever come close to the position of the top
leadership. It's not far-fetched to claim that the China model is more about leadership
rather than the showmanship as it is in the West. China's meritocratic governance challenges
the stereotypical dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy. From Chinese point of view, the
nature of the state including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its substance, that is,
good governance, competent leadership and success in meeting the people's needs."
Zhang Weiwei is the author of a very important book some may have heard about and even
read, The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State , of which an open preview can be
read here . Also, the professor gave a talk at the German Schiller Institute related to
the above book and the BRI project, which can be read
here .
I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the
Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly
that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to
say about China.
I'm all for sending the entire Australian news media into a cave for 5 - 10 years. Maybe
in 10,000 years archaeologists investigating the cave will be wondering whether fossil
remains there denote a species of human more primitive than those found in Liang Bua cave on
Flores Island in Indonesia. :-)
Can you elaborate on this funding you referred to for BLM protests? What is your evidence
that it was actually funding street protests? Are you referring to the national corporate
BLM? If so, what does that have to do with leaderless protests in the streets?
From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45),
Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing
was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a
major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not
suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an
unknown number of civilians -- estimated between 22,700 to 25,000–were dead.
Dresden and other cities held magnificent collections of human posterity. Cities of
science - of intellectual excellence and endeavour within europe. Cities of humans associated
with brilliant minds doing the work of human understanding and progress.
Sure Hitler's imbecile adventures ably funded by global private finance capitalism and a
hatred of communism led to war that ultimately led to the vengeful destruction of great
cities and great store houses and museums of this earth of mankind.
Hitler did not bomb Dresden.
Germans were proud of their science and their knowledge and storehouses and museums.
Europe shared in that pride in excellence as did many throughout the world.
Those first shells falling on Berlin TWO months after the demolition of cities of science
and archeology and human history. NOT cities of military significance.
I think of Vietnam
I think of Iraq
I think of Korea
I think of China
I think of Japan
Bombed by UKUSA. So lets not obsess with a dead nazi comrade, lets open our eyes to the
live nazis.
I think Biden will win this presidency, and win it fairly easily. It will become apparent
early on that the Biden Administration intends not only to turn the heat up on Russia, but
will continue Trump's aggression towards China. There may be a feint towards renewing JCPOA,
but it will not be fulfilled, and aggression towards Iran will not abate either.
The Mighty Wurlitzer of pro-war propaganda is again spinning up in anticipation. The
Atlantic and the Economist have been busy comparing Chinese Policy towards it's Muslim
citizens with the Holocaust...Russia, Russia, Russia!!! which never went away is again being
amped up.
But, this isn't 2016. Four years has given China and Russia time to further modernize
their militaries. Iran has developed its missile and drone programs to the point that a
conflict with Israel will result in mutual destruction. In 2016 USA/NATO had the military
advantage, but that is now gone, and the balance shifts further by the day. I almost feel
sorry for Biden, as he will be the one taking the blame when the economy collapses and
America gets their asses handed to them. Hopefully it doesn't go nuclear, but I am not very
optimistic.
With the NeoCon infestation capturing the Democratic Party, the media, and a big chunk of
the Republican, it is only a matter of time before they get their way. Short-sided parasites
as they are, this time they will kill their host. If humanity survives, a new multi-polar era
may emerge.
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is just
fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the German
public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect
Naw, you're not reading me right. Did you check out the Taibbi piece? He has numerous
others over the past 4 years. Also see Les Moonves and other corporate media executives'
statements on Trump during that same time period. I acknowledged that the rank and file among
the media class is largely woke, liberal and pro-Biden (and very anti-Trump), but they don't
call the shots and you're not looking at the situation with enough attention to details. It's
the little things that give it away.
Ever heard the saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity"? A brand like Trump's has
been clearly demonstrated to benefit immensely from the negative coverage. The media are
hated by Trump's followers and the people who watch the media hate Trump. So what does that
tell you? Compare CNN and MSNBC ratings during Trump's term to Obama's. They know that hate
sells and they never call Trump out for his ACTUAL bad behaviors (other than COVID and ACB, I
guess) while they focus on meaningless nonsense, thus distracting the public from the
bi-partisan corporate dominated graft going on and the Empire's ongoing wars and sanctions
programs abroad. Very rarely if ever will you read or hear about the hundreds of thousands of
people who have died due to American sanctions on Iran or Venezuela. Why is that? Because top
brass at the corporate media outlets support it. They cheered when he launched the missiles
at Syria.
Someone did a study or analysis on the amount of air time given to Trump versus the
Democrat primary and it wasn't even close. He plays them and his supporters like a fiddle,
too. SNL had him on NBC when he was running against Hillary. Some argue that this might have
been due to the same mindset that Hillary's team was alleged to have had. Namely, that Trump
would be the EASIEST candidate for her to beat and he had no chance, so he was harmless as a
threat. I don't think it's that complicated. They know what gets ratings.
Yeah, occasionally they'll make a peep about the environment or jobs, but like the
Democrats in Congress and "Intelligence" Community's Russia and Ukraine witch
hunts/impeachment they intentionally ignore the types of actions that DO justify
investigations and impeachments. Do you honestly think that the Democrats thought Trump would
be removed from office for the bogus "whistle blower" charges they ginned up? Of course not -
the Senate was never going to go along with it and it wasn't exactly secret, even over here
across the pond it was obvious.
As far as him not being a globalist - he's not exactly anti-globalist when it comes to
policy, but why would that matter to the corporate media? Again, it's the corporate big wigs
and majority shareholders who make the calls and the reporters, editors and personalities on
TV know how to toe the line without being told explicitly. Now, if you want to talk Silicon
Valley and the social media giants, I'm with you - they are actively trying to help Joe
Biden. But take another example - the Hunter Biden laptop story. Social media giants censored
it, but it isn't like it's not being talked about non-stop by the MSM and newspapers. They
just don't talk about what was IN the emails or photos, leaving some of their viewers/readers
curious to go find out for themselves.
I didn't read jinn's comment in detail, but I'm definitely not trying to make points that
justify voting for Biden; but I stand by my points - I'm just pointing out what's REALLY
going on with all of the "negative" coverage of Donald Trump in the corporate mainstream
media. At the end of the day, the corporate MSM upper brass doesn't really care who gets
elected, but they also understand that having a "heel" (from the pro wrestling world) and
"bad guy" to always go after on crap that's ultimately meaningless, makes it easier to sell
the hate and drive ratings and subscriptions.
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is
just fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the
German public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect
Respect and apology in return Mark2. I jumped the gun.
Yes, the sense of infallibility infuses the bloodlust of the UKUSAi.
With any luck humanity will be spared their obscene and lunatic 'reprisal mania' that has
rotted their minds. I somehow doubt that.
And I share your fear.
That said though - I am ever the optimist. There are many warrior clans of past decades
that have made delightful blunders and ended up on the block instead of on the grog in the
opponents bars. Time will tell.
I believe it is time for the great people of South America to shake off these barnacles on
the arse of humanity once and for all.
Sorry I got a little long winded in my last reply. I think this response will make my
position easier to interpret.
You asked: " What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?"
The answer to that question is the same as the answer would be if you asked what the
Democrats in Congress would (have) do(ne) if they really wanted to remove him from office.
They would actually investigate and attempt to prosecute a litany of possible crimes rather
than silly, simplistic accusations from a "whistleblower" that anyone with a IQ over 100
could see was not going to work.
Maybe you're right and I'm wrong, and Americans really are that stupid. It wouldn't
necessarily conflict with what I've seen and heard from Democrat supporting relatives and
social media contacts. A lot, if not most of them STILL believe that there was collusion
between Trump and Russia. It was like my conservative friends and relatives for about a
decade after the Iraq war - they were CONVINCED that we DID find WMDs and that the US media
had somehow hidden it.
@vk #65
It is striking how you still refuse to acknowledge the reality of the law.
The United States is not a majoritarian democracy.
In fact, there is not one single country in the entire world that is a majoritarian
democracy.
If the law were changed via the methods already written, tried and true, then I guarantee
that there would be a lot more voters in the minorities of both red and blue states.
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they
have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.
If ultimately the existing laws of the land are merely an impediments to anyone doing
whatever they have the power to do, then there is no law.
Uncle @ 90
Thanks for that. I feel we are in full agreement !
To perhaps clarify to those less astute than you.
My comment @ 68 points out the law of unintended consequence. The majority of Americans don't
want war, riots, poverty and distruction. They want to keep there families safe.
The comparison being the same can be said for Germans prior to the war, they weren't evil as
portrayed in history they simply made the same mistake the US is about to make. With the
consequence of there country devistated. A dreadful mistake voting for the wrong man, whipped
up by a false sense of superiority !
Don't do it.
Half of America won't tolerate it.
Free quarters of the rest of the world won't. By voting trump you vote for your own
distruction.
I would rather vote for a donkey, never mind Biden.
You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other
side.
__________________________________________
What other side???
I'm guessing you are accusing me of supporting trump but who knows maybe you think I'm
supporting Biden. Either way it is stupid of you to project your "side" based logic onto
others. Do you really think it is impossible to analyze without first taking a side?
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they
have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.
Thank you, I liked that retort to vk. Can I distort your point that while the Demonazis
delude themselves in more popular votes - the Repugnents have more of the un-popular votes.
The deeply corrosive nonsense being shouted into the demonazi echo chamber is truly dangerous
to the point that they will generate a standing wave resonance and collapse the entire
building. Trouble is we will then have to endure an 11/11 to compete with their absurd 9/11
and - we'll never hear the end of it. :))
James
I share one bottle of wine a month. I don't do drugs, but thanks for asking.
I note you don't ask the 'right wing' to step a way'
But if the truth is hurting you. Perhaps you ought ?
Have a peaceful night.
I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor ...
Thanks!
= ... but atm you have a serious case of TDS.
No. I'm neither for nor against Trump. I see him as a symptom of the system who has joined
(possibly long ago) Team Deep State (the managers of the Empire). If it wasn't Trump, it
would be some other media-savvy guy that can con the people.
= Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the
mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a
race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected?
IMO Trump's economic nationalism and zenophobia were very much planned. As was the failure
of the Democrats to mount any effective resistance. They pretend to hate Trump so so
much but shoot themselves in the foot all the time.
Russiagate was nothing more than a new McCarthyism. That works well for the Deep State
both internationally and domestically. Any dissenter is called a "knowing or unknowing"
Russian asset.
Background: I've written that Trump was meant to beat Hillary. The 2016 election was a
farce. Sanders and Trump were friendly with the Clintons for a very long time. Sanders was a
sheepdog (not a real candidate) and Hillary threw the race to Trump. Trump is much more
capable at what he does than Hillary would've been.
I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would they do if they wanted him
removed?
If the Deep State wanted him removed (but they don't) they would find a reason to invoke
the 25th Amendment. They have positioned people to do this, if necessary. For example: VP
Pence was a friend of McCain (who was a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er); Atty General Barr is close to the
Bushes and Mueller ('NEVER TRUMP'-ers); CIA Dir. Gina Haspel is an acolyte of John Brennan
(you guessed it, a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er).
=
MarkU @Oct31 23:18 #76
...he is not a globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.
He's not anti-globalist as you seem to suggest. He's even bragged about his business
dealings with Chinese, Arabs, Russians - pretty much any group with money.
Trump and the Deep State - the true Deep State, not the pretended partisan off-shoot
- are EMPIRE-FIRST (and have been for decades). You can see this in what Trump has done
globally. USA just wants a bigger cut of the action because they have to do the 'heavy
lifting' of taking on China and Russia.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
I know that my cynical perspective must generate a lot of cognitive dissonance in many
readers. But I don't see any other way to rationally explain Deep State actions and the
history that has brought us to where are today.
The numbers are there for everybody to see: Trump won with 3 million + votes below Hilary
Clinton. That is not democracy in any sense of the word unless you go back to the more
traditional forms of liberalism of the 16th-19th centuries. Those are the numbers, not my
opinion.
Besides, I think you're not getting the irony of your position: the situation in the USA
has gotten so degenerated that you're hanging by a thread - a thread you put on a golden
pedestal and claim is the salvation of the Empire (the electoral college). Where did I see
this? Oh, yes - the War of Secession of 1861-1865, when the slave states were already
outnumbered 6 to 1 by the northern states. They kept their parity artificially for decades,
until the whole thing suddenly burst up in the war (a war where they were crushed; no chance
of victory at all).
So, the problem isn't in the system per se, but the pressure the ossification of the
system is building up. When they seceded, the confederates genuinely thought they were the
true inheritors of the liberal thought, the slave states being the most perfect manifestation
of freedom; the same situation is building up today, albeit, obviously, on a much milder
scale (there's no California gold this time, just the good ol' race to the bottom).
--//--
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 1 2020 2:25 utc | 95
I agree with you: the end of the electoral college (with it, any form of district vote)
will give a chance for the conservatives (Republicans) to win back, for example, California
(which has 40-46% of the popular vote). But it will also give the Democrats Texas (Dallas +
Houston regions already make almost 50% of the population of the state and are Democratic
bastions). It will also open the gates for third parties to flourish (avoiding a situation
like Bernie Sanders, who had to affiliate to the Democrats).
Either way, it will give the American people and government a more honest, precise picture
of the state of the nation. Or are you willing to live a perpetual illusion of "coastal
elites vs heartland deplorables" forever (which, by the way, only fuels up secession as the
only solution)?
The myth of HIQ whitemen....
--------------------------------------
Caitlin[for prez]johnston
Russia gate morphes seamlessly into China gate without missing a beat.
One hiq white man opines, oh so innocently
IN Russia gate, they were quoting only anon, nameless witness.
This time its different, we've real witness testifying on teevee , in Tucker
[fuck China] Carlson show, no less !
The poor dear was referring to an 'ex CIA' [see, an insider, wink wink ] telling
Tucker [fuck CHINA] Carlson ....
Psssst, many dem were CCP trojans !
ROFLAMO
oR that HUnter BIden buddy whatshisname again, who told Tucker [fuck China] Carlson oh so
solemnly,
'Yes , I think the BIdens were compromised by the chicoms'
OMFG ! BIden is CCP'S man !
What happen if Biden get into the WH and immediately bomb Shanghai.?
Well half of gringos , the Trumpsters, would scream,
'Why isnt BIden bombing Beijing already, well BCOS we all know he's Xi's man in Washington'
!
The dems, eager to clear their potus name, would implore earnestly,
'Hey BIden, you should invade Beijing RIGHT now, show them repuc we are just as tough, no,
even better in showing the chicoms who's the boss around here.
What a devious brilliant way to get a bi partisan support for more
wars.
BI partisan ?
That practically cover 99% of HIQ gringos. hehehhehehhe
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me hundreds of times.........
I agree with all you points PO, rather those complaining about Russia are throwing a bunch
of contradictory self-serving and ultimately emotional accusations and complaints that
very much echo western foreign policy after the Cold War of Do Something, regardless
of how dumb, damaging and even making the situation much worse for those who they supposedly
are claiming to help. DO SOMETHING! My response is 'WTF don't YOU do something
youselves ? Put your body, blood and mind on the line if you really care so much
rather than typing on a keyboard thousands of miles away in great comfort. Keyboard warrior
wankers!
Those actually running the west aren't much different which is why they go for the easy
option of flying above 20,000ft and dropping bombs rather than sending very large numbers of
troops to hold ground and have a quick result. Why? Because they are afraid of bodybags and
how they might look. That is the crux. They're more afraid being turned against by the
electorate so 'easy solutions' that look good but don't deliver are the order of the day.
They just can't stand the real cost or be courageous enough to spell it out to the public
that their words if taken at face value means quite a lot of death. It doesn't sell.
I don't understand the current situation in full context but it seems that Armenian
leadership has whored themselves to Western interest. And the whore-wanabe's pictured above
are eager to sell their souls as well.
Russia's take may be to let Armenia face consequences of that decision to align with the
Western empire. And, it will be up to the Armenian population to remove the leadership that
chose Western allegiance if they so chose.
Russian leadership (showing great wisdom in my opinion) shuns imposition of
the-right-thing-to-do on a population that is too lazy or too fearful or too accommodating of
a whoring leadership. Russia has learned its lesson about helping other nations at great
expense to itself and then expecting gratitude or loyalty. As noted by others, the only
nation to do such has been Serbia.
The above Russian strategy is likely predicated on the belief that the Western empire is
wobbly and nearing the tipping point. Russian leadership appears to have concluded that it
now time to disconnect Russia from the Western economic system to escape the coming
calamity.
MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. Moscow will provide all necessary assistance to Yerevan in
accordance with the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the two
countries, if hostilities spill over to Armenia's territory, the Russian Foreign Ministry
said in a statement on Friday.
I am sure word will soon arrive here from Finland about this matter, namely about what
Russia should do but, as a result of its inherent weakness, most certainly will not do.
You may find things different by mid-November, as Armenia has – allegedly –
formally asked for Russian help. Here's a particularly pithy and realistic quote;
"In the modern world, you must either have your own heavily armed army combined with a
strong economy that can support it, or you must be friends with those who have it (here's a
hint, either Russia or China, because we see the results of Pashinyan and Lukashenko's
friendship with Europe and the US online today). The usual liberal mantras of
"Russia-Armenia-Belarus have no enemies" are good exactly as long as you are not attacked in
reality, and not on the Internet or in the media. And no assurances of American and European
friendship will save you. You'll be lucky if they don't take you apart themselves."
Remember when Pashinyan was elected, and the protests which swept him to power? Remind you
of anybody? Poroshenko, maybe? Not to suggest Pashinyan is a powerful oligarch – to all
appearances he is not. But he came to power by the same mechanisms – playing public
naivety like a violin, quoting hopeful citizens who really believe a different face is the
magic bullet which will blow away corruption, and receiving the benevolent blessing of the
west that the election was just as fair as fair could be. It always is, so long as the
western-preferred candidate gets 'elected'.
"Historically, Armenia's elections have been marred by fraud and vote-buying.
However, international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe said the elections had respected fundamental freedoms and were characterised by
genuine competition."
You'd think that kind of boilerplate would have lost its power to make me laugh, but by
God, it still tickles me; "characterised by genuine competition" – oh, 'pon my word,
yes! You, like others, may have noticed by now that all it takes in certain countries to
eliminate any possibility of 'genuine competition' is advance polls which indicate the
western-disliked incumbent will win easily. That's how the people plan to vote, but that
counts for nothing – it's only 'genuine competition' if there is a realistic
possibility the west's man (or woman) will get in, and the more likely that looks to happen,
damned if the competition does not get more genuine. Nobody seems to notice that the
'competition' reaches the very zenith of 'genuineness' just about the time nobody has a
chance of holding off a landslide win by the preferred candidate.
I think by now everybody who reads here knows how I feel about it; you can't really blame
the west and its media outlets for behaving the way they do. The western countries are mostly
run by wealthy venture capitalists, and what wealthy venture capitalists like best is
acquiring and controlling more wealth. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Even when
western venture capitalists are dead altruistic and benevolent, what they want is for more
wealth and capital to be acquired and controlled by the country to whom they feel the most
sentimental attachment, so that a few of their countrymen might do all right out of their
maneuvering as well – these are the people who come to be regarded as
'philanthropists', like George Soros. But generally they are mostly in it for themselves.
No, what I find the most objectionable is the veneer of holier-than-though goodness which
always covers western exploitation ops. They always have to pretend like a smash-and-grab
crime is some kind of fucking religious moment just because it is they who are doing it, as
if they bring rectitude to even the most blatant self-interest. When the truth of the matter
is that what the powerful do not give even the tiniest trace of a fuck about – Locard
himself could not detect it – is what life is going to be like afterward for the
average citizen in the country targeted for exploitation by changing its leadership. You
know, the ones jumping up and down in Independence Square (there's always an Independence
Square), or walking around with big dumb grins on their faces as if they have just felt the
planet shift under their feet.
It's worth mentioning here that the period during which the west – led, of course,
by the United States and its government/venture-capital institutions – was the most
optimistic about Russia was the moment when it looked like a class of wealthy venture
capitalists was going to take over the running of what was left of the Soviet Union; the
Khodorkovskys and the Berzovskys and the Abramovitches. The wealthy Boyars who, albeit they
spoke a different language, really spoke the same language to the letter as their western
counterparts.
And the official western perspective on Russia made an abrupt turn to the South, and grew
progressively grimmer, the more evident it became that that was not going to happen.
"Venture capitalists" may not be the most accurate terminology for those who run the West.
There are a lot of old power blocks including the Vatican, the British royals, Zionists and
other groups who get along well enough not to openly attack each other but will protect their
particular areas of dominance. Their glue are narcissistic/messianic beliefs of their right
to rule humanity. There may be deeper and murkier layers in the ruling hierarchy. I say
"ruling" but their rule is only to the degree that we do not care enough to resist.
The interesting thing is that these demonic forces are nearly entirely of a Western
origin. Is there a genetic factor that has become concentrated in the ruling elites? Some
other self-propagating driver of their beliefs?
I do believe that Russia and China are sorting and identifying the real actors in the
Western ruling elites.
A very interesting and thought-provoking reply. I think we must be careful to not just
'study it, judiciously as you will', while 'history's actors' reshape reality around us.
It seems to me that whatever the behavior of Armenia, Russia is still expected to
protect/save christians in the region regardless of all the s/t that is thrown at them and
particularly knowing the blood thirsty history of Az/turcoman/whatever behavior against
Armenians.
There is a point here as Russia presents itself as the leader of the Orthodox Christian
world it is its actual duty to rise above (pthe etty nasty s/t) and protect christendom in
the hood regardless
But, and as we all know, the having the cake and eat it crowd has only but expanded, most
notably those who are pro-west. They are owed it and thus they demand it as they are
considered and have been told that they are a cut above the rest. It's the same western
'benefit of the doubt' that allows its intellectuals to support successive foreign policy
adventures that have ended in catastrophic failure but even worse left those that they
pledged to help in a much worse position.
I also think that in this case most people really do not know that Armenia is run by a
pro-western government. It's not exactly hot news. And its still not widely reported let
alone. After all, the western media is not exorciating Washington, Berlin, Paris and London
for doing f/k all to help Armenia. They've been mostly silent. No need to point out yet again
that the west picks and choses which countries/territories to carve up in contravention of
long standing international law, and which others it strictly abides by, in this case
Nagorno-Karabakh.
This may well be in part of being stung by the highly successful and bloodless return of
the Crimea to Russia which was done in line with international law regardless of western
protestations. It really put their carving off Kosovo by extreme violence in an very bad
light by comparison and cannot be denied any longer as 'not a precedent' if they claim Russia
took over Crimea illegally. The West has really tied itself in to a gordian knot at the
international and state level despite doing its best to ignore it at home. The rest of the UN
members don't buy it in the least.
So back to the beginning, who to blame? Russia is the easiest target. Surely not the west
who is also selling weapons to Azerbaidjan, buys its gas and give the dictatorship a free
pass. And even less so i-Sreal selling weapons, another people that has suffered the fate of
genocide. No. Russia has to do something!
And, or, is it also their argument that despite 'Russia not respecting international law'
that in this case it is an 'exception' (but not a 'precedent' (!)) and their failure to do so
is inexcusable? It really is the most gigantic load of bollocks.
Just a few points – Russia's defense of Christendom may be limited to Orthodoxy as
the rest are spinoffs or spinoffs of spinoffs. Christian religious values in the west hardly
resemble core Christian values so why should Russia give a damn about protecting such
Christians? If the Armenia Orthodox church is comfortable with, if not endorsing, LGBT? life
styles, then they would likely be considered as non-Christian. I do not know if the forgoing
is the case; just discussing implications.
Russia will fulfill its obligations to defend Armenia from armed attack. However, once
Azerbaijan has gotten what it wants, there will be no incentive for an attack on Armenia and
especially so considering the dire consequences of a Russian military response.
I remember when my wife asked an old priest here after our youngest's christening into the
ROC if we could get wed in said church. He told her we couldn't because I wasn't a
Christian.
She begged to differ, but he insisted that I was a heretic and would have to baptized
according to ROC rights and after having had ROC catechism lessons.
He was right too and twofold: (i) all "Christian" faiths are heresies, aberrations of the
true, correct liturgy as passed on from the apostles and (ii) I am a heretic of a pagan
nature.
I have a soft spot for pagan beliefs as well. There are nonphysical entities that we
interact, mostly without awareness, on a daily basis. No big deal, we just need to be mindful
of such realities to better understand why things happen the way they do. The Woke folks
could not possibly understand such, being isolated in their hall-of-mirrors tight little
self-contained world of self-importance with the firm conviction that they are the be-all and
end-all. A peasant toiling in the fields or a kid in the slums understand reality better the
the Wokest of the Woke. Am I serious? I don't know.
There's a report the other day that China's massive planting of trees is estimated to soak
up to 35% of the carbon dioxide it produces industrially. The data comes from ground level
station, satellite and other sources.
Which leads me to this question. If farmers (in u-Rope) are now being paid not to grow
food, then wtf not just plant forests of trees that can also be farmed and managed? Is it
because it is too easy and there's not much profit in it?
Trees are central to Germanic paganism. How can one not respect a tree such as the mighty
oak that is at least 500 years old when mature and may live for 1,000 years and more? Such
living things interact with us -- of course, they do, if "only" in the maintainance of an
ecological balance of the gas that is necessary for our existence.
That bastard Charles "the Great" of the Franks waged relentless war for over 30 years
against the Saxons (not the "Anglo-Saxons, but my kinfolk in what is now Lower saxony in
Germany) because of their refusal to accept Christianity.
Too right they didn't, for they knew full that if they had, the would have fallen under
the thrall of the person who styled himself as emperor of the Western Roman Empire that had
fallen into dissolution some 300 years earlier, which reborn "Roman Empire" had as its state
religion Christianity -- Roman Christianity that is, and its emperor, much later styled as
the "Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation", was guess who? That's right, Charles the
Great/Carolus Magnus/ Karl der Grosse/Charlemagne.
One of Charles' favourite tricks in subduing the Saxons was making public spectacles of
hacking down their "holy" trees or " Irminsul . After one victory against rebellious
Saxon pagans whose lands the Franks had invaded, Charles had them all baptised -- then had
them beheaded, all 4,500 of them!
Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, said on the closing of the conflict:
The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to the
terms offered by the King; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and
the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and
union with the Franks to form one people.
So the Saxons started eating small pieces of bread that they were to believe was god,
which is far more reasonable than believing that trees and rivers and forests and storms were
worthy of their respect.
Right! I'm off to my holy grove in order to pay my respects to Woden.
Okay, you've baited me (love to spend more time here but I do appreciate the occasional
glance and many great comments and discussions)
"But veneration is inherent in the human breast. Presently mankind, emerging from
intellectual infancy, began to detect absurdity in creation without a Creator, in effects
without causes. As yet, however, they did not dare to throw upon a Single Being the whole
onus of the world of matter, creation, preservation, and destruction. Man, instinctively
impressed by a sense of his own unworthiness, would hopelessly have attempted to conceive the
idea of a purely Spiritual Being, omnipotent and omnipresent.
Awestruck by the admirable phenomena and the stupendous powers of Nature, filled with a
sentiment of individual weakness, he abandoned himself to a flood of superstitious fears, and
prostrated himself before natural objects, inanimate as well as animate. Thus comforted by
the sun and fire, benefited by wind and rain, improved by hero and sage, destroyed by wild
beasts, dispersed by convulsions of Nature, he fell into a rude, degrading, and *cowardly
Fetissism*, the *faith of fear*, and *the transition state from utter savagery to
barbarism*."
• "The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam" by Richard Francis Burton
The Blob will dominate the USA foreign policy, no matter who wins.
Notable quotes:
"... I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to say about China. ..."
"... The executives and majority shareholders of the CIA/NSA infiltrated corporate news media don't care whether Trump wins, and in fact often prefer it. ..."
"... Those guys are just part of the polarization narrative tearing the country apart. The hatred is real but there is acting involved, especially with Olbermann. These commentators feel that this polarization narrative is giving the country what it wants and it drives ratings. Schiff is just a first class liar ... ..."
"... Obama was just put in the pipeline as one of their possible future candidates for president. They have a stable of these people being mentored. Clinton was one as well. I bet Harris is one as well. ..."
"... I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable. Possibly the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse shit. ..."
"... Election of president = false flag iperation. The purpose is to fund the private media with advertising revenue paid for by consumer taxpayers. ..."
"... The rest of the world knows that the US is not agreement capable, it does not matter for Iran one bit what happens on November 3rd. ..."
"... I understand the rationale behind Trump's policies. But my conclusion is exactly the opposite: his attempt to stop the disintegration of the American Empire is accelerating the disintegration of the American Empire, not averting it. ..."
"... The key here is to understand that that's not how the American Empire should work. The USA continues to deindustrialize at an accelerated pace under Trump; Wall Street was never stronger than under Donald Trump; American debt was never higher. And now, unemployment is as high as during the 1929 era. ..."
"... The American Empire is the American Empire precisely because it doesn't need to produce anything it needs except defense. It prints money in order to siphon wealth from the rest of the world, enriching its economy while impoverishing the rest. That's the only way the Empire can function - any other way will result in its destruction. ..."
"... Obama ran on Hopey-Changey and on his projected charm, actually glib con-man gab. Worked wonderfully, imagine getting the Nobel Prize because you had a dead-beat Dad who was from Kenya and you scored B+ for public speaking? Argh. (The real reason: killing will continue, the status quo is preserved..) ..."
"... That Trump would win in 2016 was obvious as soon as he became a candidate. He was the cartoon contrast of Obomber - white, fat, orange, tall, R vs. D, outspoken, strident, clumsy (vs. the smooth-talking con), opinionated, stupid, and outrageous in a way. Click bait and viewer bait for the MSM - but not for no reason. ..."
"... To pretend that Trump is some special Peacemaker, trying oh so hard to overcome deep state resistance to rolling back empire, is Trumpism. Escobar is always there. Trump must be understood as a leading creature of the swamp himself. Trying so hard just as Obama was trying so hard. ..."
"... The relative scores settled terribly are more a matter of opportunity than ruthless efficiency. Though it is true that "success" requires dialing it back a bit, and having the likes of Bolton around is a way of ensuring either that nothing gets done, or we all end up ashes. Trump managed to axe Bolton on time, that time. ..."
I do agree with you both that the anti-Trump hysteria has probably worked for him to
some extent but I really don't believe that is a four year long plan, it is too much of a
stretch to believe that the likes of Olbermannn and Schiff are consciously working for him.
American politics really is that toxic, remember the stuff about Obama's birth
certificate.
I also agree that Trump might actually have the support needed for a landslide win, not
so much because of the vilification but because of the arson and looting imo. A lot of
Trump supporters are keeping their heads down atm (and who can blame them) However, now it
is my turn to make a prediction. I predict mass unrest on polling day. it is well accepted
that the majority of the Democrat voters (fraudulent or not) are going to vote by post.
Conversely most Trump supporters are likely to vote in person on the day (or try to at
least)
I expect a concerted attempt to disrupt the polls by people who know that it will
disproportionately affect the Trump vote. I expect violent clashes (with both sides trading
blame) and a result that will please nobody. The worms are not going back into the can.
if I am wrong then I will be big enough to say so on the first appropriate thread on
this site, fair enough?
Zhang Weiwei is the author of a very important book some may have heard about and
even read, The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State, of which an open preview can
be read here. Also, the professor gave a talk at the German Schiller Institute related to
the above book and the BRI project, which can be read here.
I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far
superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success
suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what
any Western source has to say about China.
I just paused by their tavern to see what elixirs of despair or mirth they have on offer
today. Pour a strong drink comrades and scroll through the cellar. Always worth a
visit.
If Biden is not much different from Trump then why does "the blob" portray Trump as
the Beelzebub? Posted by: m | Nov 1 2020 6:01 utc | 112
Because he's the heel and none of the negative coverage they give him sticks, most often
on purpose. Don't mistake their serious tones and somber pronouncements for genuineness.
It's not. The executives and majority shareholders of the CIA/NSA infiltrated corporate
news media don't care whether Trump wins, and in fact often prefer it.
I am aware of the fact that corruption is rife in both parties. I saw the link to the
Biden bus incident, deplorable yes but hardly on the same scale as the massive rioting,
looting and intimidation of the BLM movement, they didn't actually burn down half the
neighborhood did they. Organized voting obstruction will largely be confined to swing
states for obvious reasons. I made my predictions, we will see.
Just to be clear, I don't even live in the US, I am British. If I did live in the US I
wouldn't vote for either party, I'm not a 'lesser of two evils' kind of guy. To be frank I
am viewing events in the US with considerable trepidation, I regard what happens in the US
as a window into the likely future of the UK and the rest of Europe. I fear that a nuclear
war may well occur sometime in the near future, quite possibly by accident owing to the
continual cutting of warning times, mainly by the US. A very powerful nuclear armed country
convulsed by civil unrest is a very dangerous entity, I fear the worst and so should we all
imo.
Anyway thank you for being polite and civilised and for including actual information
with your replies.
OT..I just read this translation from a Russian link...most agreeable as a counterpoise to
Exceptional Nation nuttiness:
"Construction of the industrial complex, where high-speed trains will be produced,
began in the Urals. In five years, Russia will have a domestic rolling stock for the VSM
- high-speed highways. Moreover, the level of localization of production is stated at
80%, which means additional orders for the Russian industry."
I do agree with you both that the anti-Trump hysteria has probably worked for him
to some extent but I really don't believe that is a four year long plan, it is too much
of a stretch to believe that the likes of Olbermannn and Schiff are consciously working
for him. American politics really is that toxic, remember the stuff about Obama's birth
certificate.
Those guys are just part of the polarization narrative tearing the country apart.
The hatred is real but there is acting involved, especially with Olbermann. These
commentators feel that this polarization narrative is giving the country what it wants and
it drives ratings. Schiff is just a first class liar ...
As far as Obama's birth certificate, since his mom was a CIA officer using the Ford
Foundation as cover during the murder of millions of leftists in Indonesia, I am sure she
took time out to make sure he was born on US soil. All that stuff about him growing up on
embassy row in Indonesia while the left was being slaughtered is carefully taken out of the
story. Not his fault but it was quite a slaughter of humans and we know her employer was
deeply involved. Going into the Indonesian villages to do studies. Really, studies and
observations. They used to call it SOG groups.
Obama was just put in the pipeline as one of their possible future candidates for
president. They have a stable of these people being mentored. Clinton was one as well. I
bet Harris is one as well.
I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable.
Possibly the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse
shit.
I think they hate the Trumper so much because he he was in some else's stable. Possibly
the controllers from campus in Tel Aviv. Different stable, same horse shit.
Because the FBI's evidence cleaner/tamperer division's mandate will be greatly expanded,
as will the powers of the Silicone Valley Tekkies to more comprehensively throttle public
free speech on electronic media, that the deep state's Invisible Hand disapproves of.
Trump is about controlled demolition of the empire NemesisCalling @ 5.
B summarized the style differences very well. But failed to mention the greater problem.
3 votes at polls every four years is not democracy<= no American is in charge of any
thing the USA does.
the layers in the global power stack (each nation state the same):
layer 1: global franchisor sets rules of play; establishes goals <=local nation
state franchisees must obtain to remain in power.
Layer 2: oligarch <= national (wall street beneficiaries who use their wealth to
conform national outcome consistent with global powers).
Layer 3: copyright y patent monopoly power constitute 90% of corporate Assets.
Layer 4: think tank and other private orgs
public<= layer 5: 527 elected government <= a tool to regulate members of
public
Layer 6: Intergov Bureaucracies limit and direct elected power to global goals.
public<= layer 7: the 340,000,000 members of the media regulated public
layer 8: stop and go economic system control
layer 9: media controls info environment & public narrative (many
techniques)
all layers but 5 and 7 are contained within an envelop of privately owned control
freaks.
Election of president = false flag iperation. The purpose is to fund the private
media with advertising revenue paid for by consumer taxpayers.
Article II and amendment 12 clearly deny American people any say in who is to be the P
and VP of the USA.
Agree with Nemesiscalling, since 1947, standing orders from Layer 1<= demo the
American excellence; deny superior economic power to average Americans . standing orders
<=homogenize the world and standardize its governance.
American lifestyle and quality of life is indifferent to who the media puts into the
white house.
by c1ue @ 26 said it best "Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to
pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the
vote against HRC in 2016." the method used by the public layers is reflected here, it is
called divide and conquer.
B reviewed the elements and factors that maintain the division of the masses..
On the absence of a real left in the US ( is all right and more right..)and of a real
program which could include real changes that could make any difference in people´s
lives, on that what matters is political technology and communication based on demonizing
the other candidate which translates in deep polarizing of societies with unexpected
unknown consequences..
" If Trump were re-elected for another four years, it would be a real calamity and
armed conflicts could even break out by the most radical groups, so that the country
could be paralyzed "
"The ideological profile and policy of the United States is that of the president and,
each one, even if they are from the same party, has maintained quite different political
lines throughout history", says Rafael García, professor of International
Relations at the USC. For this reason, he affirms that, in North America, "there is no
strong party structure, but rather that the party acts as an electoral structure and it
is on the candidates of each moment that certain policies are formed."
DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICANS. So much so that, as the professor explains, "the
ideological configuration of the parties in the 20th century changed radically". On the
one hand, he alludes to the fact that the Democrat, "in historical terms, was the party
of the southern states, when they faced each other in the Civil War; racist states, which
lasted until the 1920s ". Precisely, the political scientist indicates that "it was
shortly before when the change took place, with the Roosevelt presidency, that he decided
to change the configuration of the Democratic party as a result of the crisis of 29".
On the other hand, the Republican party, he points out, "was that of the union, that
of the northern states, championed by Lincoln; the abolitionist party and that of the
blacks ". So how did these changes come about until today? Rafael García
points to "a consequence of the political strategies that the presidents embodied at
all times, not because there was an ideological line behind each party ."
TRY TO ASSIMILATE THE AMERICAN MODEL TO THE EUROPEAN. For Rafael García, the
Spaniards, when speaking of US politics, "make a mistake in translating our political
structures" to those there. In other words, "in Europe the duality between left and
right is widely assumed and we unconsciously transfer it to US policy." "That is a
complete error" , sentence.
And it is that there " there is neither right nor left, there is right and more
right ", affirms the professor. Which means that there does not exist and did not
exist a historical labor-union party as such. In fact, the transmutation that is usually
made from the democratic party to 'social democratic' is not correct . For
García, Biden embodies "a more moderate man than the crazy Trump, but that does
not mean that he has some kind of relationship with a left-wing thought ."
RIGHT AND RIGHT. "A multimillionaire gentleman, absolute representative of the
establishment" (referring to Biden), and "a traditional gentleman, more conservative"
(referring to Trump) ". "Although Biden is a Democrat, who perhaps holds stronger
principles and is hopeful, identifying him with the left is still a long way from
reality," he says. Therefore, it is denied that the Democrats are the American left
and the Republicans the right .
THE CAMPAIGN LACKS PROGRAMMATIC INTEREST. For the USC political scientist, the US
electoral campaign lacks interest: "It is absurd, it seems like a disqualification
competition in which a political or government program is not exposed ." And every
time Spain is also getting closer to that model of disputes.
"We are Americanized, in the sense that the weight of the parties is also
being diluted in Spain in favor of the candidatesThese advisers are responsible
for the growing division that is taking place in Western society ," he says.
THE GOVERNMENT IN THE HANDS OF POLITICAL ADVISORS. In Rafael García's opinion,
the decision margin "is shrinking", that is, "the autonomy capacity of governments to
make decisions is smaller, and they are conditioned ". So, what is the difference, in
practice, in management, between PP and PSOE? "Little thing, in the end, little thing,"
he asserts.
That is why " that little thing can not be said to the voter, but must be mobilized
with a degree of identification, unconditional adherence, so that it can be recognized in
a brand ." And what is this transformation of Spanish politics due to? The professor
is clear about it: " It is a translation of commercial marketing techniques to
politics." Thus, a marketing advisor must "build customer loyalty" and a political
advisor should build voter loyalty .
Now, if there are no significant differences between the two options, how to
achieve it? "Through a demonization of the opposite and the creation of a hostility that
is dangerous, because the divisions to which society is returning are irreconcilable
." In this way, García believes that " it is the work of political advisers
who, apart from the difficulties that exist in societies, which are many, polarize them
when it comes to building and mobilizing a faithful electorate, to the point that they
make no difference what the party says or what the leader says ".
In the United States, as evidenced by this expert, "it does not matter if Trump
does the atrocities he does, or if he said in the previous campaign that he could murder
a person on Fifth Avenue in New York without anything happening to him ." This,
transferred to the Spanish sphere, "assumes that the party can do any outrage: fraud,
embezzlement, illegal financing ...". "That is something we are seeing, whatever party it
is, but for the faithful voter it does not matter, because their party will continue to
be so and will continue to listen to the channel and read the newspaper that supports
it," he says.
THE ELECTORAL RESULT WILL BE EXTENDED OVER TIME. "I have no idea nor do I want to make
forecasts, but I consider that Trump is a calamity and that if he were there for four
more years it would be an absolute calamity ", says Professor García. However,
" there is a state of opinion that fears that the result of these elections will be
complicated and that there will be challenges, so that the end result will be a
diabolical process of recount, county-by-county challenges, repetitions in certain
districts. .. a real madness that can last several months ", he warns, something
that," with this polarization trail, it is not known how it could end. "
" I am referring to the outbreak of armed conflicts; These people have weapons,
radical groups, some of them crazy and who can shoot themselves in a demonstration, doing
outrages as part of the institutional paralysis in which the country can be plunged
", he asserts.
This is how people, like those at SST, who lied about the real difference amongst
Democrats and Republicans in real effective changes of policy, shouting to the four winds
that "the Communists are coming", when they are not, and this way spread hatred and
division amongst the US society as if there was no tomorrow so that to conserve their "tax
cut", could end witnessing the total destruction of the US, not only as "Empire" ( a
process already in march before Corona-fear and 2020 electoral process, a construct of
decades of lying the electorate for the greed of a minority...), but also as a nation
state. All these people who, holding privileged insider knowledege of the funtioning of the
state as former insiders, should be held accountable for their willing and conscious
participation in the build up of the social and economic disastaer to come....
Forecast at the end of the article posted and quoted above:
The future: Institutional paralysis
··· An institutional paralysis like the one that can come
after 3-N "could already occur in 2000, in the elections between George Bush Jr. and Al
Gore, but the latter accepted the results even though they were open to challenge, and
that it avoided institutional collapse".
··· However, "now it does not seem that either of the two
candidates is going to have a gesture of these characteristics, with which, if doubts
already appear, it will not only be in the State, but the final collapse may be extremely
long and with unimaginable consequences ", indicates Professor García. "It seems
to me that the United States has a terrible situation ahead ", he sentenced.
A scene of Game of Thrones which could summarize 2020 US election campaign, that it
was based on throwing dirty to each other....But who has the real "power", not the
"government"?:
@ Posted by: Down South | Nov 1 2020 7:04 utc | 122
I understand the rationale behind Trump's policies. But my conclusion is exactly the
opposite: his attempt to stop the disintegration of the American Empire is accelerating the
disintegration of the American Empire, not averting it.
The key here is to understand that that's not how the American Empire should work.
The USA continues to deindustrialize at an accelerated pace under Trump; Wall Street was
never stronger than under Donald Trump; American debt was never higher. And now,
unemployment is as high as during the 1929 era.
The American Empire is the American Empire precisely because it doesn't need to
produce anything it needs except defense. It prints money in order to siphon wealth from
the rest of the world, enriching its economy while impoverishing the rest. That's the only
way the Empire can function - any other way will result in its destruction.
Trump's ideology will destroy the American Empire. It will collapse under a wave of
hyperinflation, skyrocketing unemployment, shortage of goods and collapsing economic
output.
The manufacturing sector saw 17,000 jobs added after four months of flat activity. This
followed a strong run of an average of 22,000 manufacturing jobs added every month in
2018 and 15,800 per month in 2017. Those gains followed two weak years that saw 7,000
manufacturing jobs lost in 2016 and only 5,800 per month added in 2015.
In the last 30 months of President Obama's term, manufacturing employment grew by
185,000 or 1.5%. In President Trump's first 30 months, manufacturers added 499,000 jobs,
expanding by 4.0%. In the same 30-month time span during the mature, post-recovery phase
of the business cycle, some 314,000 more manufacturing jobs were added under Trump than
under Obama, a 170% advantage
As Trump is going to win (provided the usual conditions pertain, fraud is not over the
normal levels, and the whole sh*t-story doesn't end up in the courts or fought out on the
streets, whereupon no reasoned predictions can be made), speculation about Biden as Prez.
is a waste of time.
The last part of the Pepe piece in b's post, which gives reasons to not vote Biden, my
take.:
Obama ran on Hopey-Changey and on his projected charm, actually glib con-man gab.
Worked wonderfully, imagine getting the Nobel Prize because you had a dead-beat Dad who was
from Kenya and you scored B+ for public speaking? Argh. (The real reason: killing will
continue, the status quo is preserved..)
Anyway, the ACA was a damp squib, it didn't solve anything, and depending on pov was in
effect a gift to Mega Insurance or was just 'lame' or as often, 'favored some over others'
etc.
Then the Financial Crisis hit. The Obama admin. didn't prevent it (one might argue they
couldn't not sure) and it didn't 'repair' as far as the ppl were concerned. Banks and Some
Big Cos were bailed out - millions of homeowners were tossed to the curb by Banks. Child
poverty, hunger, increased; wages weren't upped, health stats got worse No need to go on -
this provoked tremendous anger. The 2010 elections saw big R gains, 2014 they took the
Senate, iirc.
(Who cared about foreign parts like Ukraine, Syria? is what I'm saying.)
That Trump would win in 2016 was obvious as soon as he became a candidate. He was
the cartoon contrast of Obomber - white, fat, orange, tall, R vs. D, outspoken, strident,
clumsy (vs. the smooth-talking con), opinionated, stupid, and outrageous in a way. Click
bait and viewer bait for the MSM - but not for no reason.
DT's electoral promises were both opportunistic and more profound: like fire-brand
preachers of old, Build The Wall - MAGA - i.e. pledging a return to the past (see, again
the opposite of Barry, who hoped for the future) -- Stop the wars, undo past mistakes (Dems
don't run on anti-war..!), and, most important:
Drain the Swamp. The Deplorables are not ordinary ppl, but criminals in positions
of power. By putting this forward, Trump became a mirror of the ppl, part of them.
Imho, Trump's record (null or abysmal or whatever depending on pov) is not enough for
rejecting him in favor of loathed "failed" policies of the past - Clinton gang, Biden a
part of it, Obama, etc. (By US voters I mean.)
but see Kiza 8, gottlieb 63, dave 72, Jack, others, >> no difference.
...Bringing the supply chain back to the US and re-industrialising the US isn't going to
happen overnight or even in a couple of quarters. Just like the process to de-industrialise
didn't happen overnight. But that the process has started, it is undeniable, and will only
pick up pace when he wins a second term.
4 new Trafalgar polls came out for 10/29: Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Michigan. Trump
expanded his lead on Biden in Florida and Michigan vs. Trafalgar's earlier October
polls:
FL from +2.3% Trump to +2.7%
MI from +0.6% Trump to +2.5%
Trump did worse in Nevada and AZ: AZ from +4% Trump to +2.5%.
Nevada polled +2.3% Biden
Once again: the question is if Trump outperforms vs. MSM polls. If he repeats anywhere
near his 2016 - he will win.
Trump can only win again if the establishment/deep state is once again exceptionally
overconfident and asleep in the control room. They have numerous ways of swinging the
election at the last hour, from pre-hacked Diebold paperless voting machines to hanging
chads to simply having their operatives scattered around the nation throw ballots away and
fabricate the tallies. Oddly enough this extreme carelessness is still possible. The
establishment/deep state have not yet come to terms with what caused their plans to blow up
in 2016 and really do seriously believe that Russia had something to do with it, even
though they have no idea what Russia might have actually done to wreck their expected
electoral blowout by Clinton. They also think that part of the problem was that Trump
wasn't vilified harshly enough (they wanted the election to at least appear competitive),
and they think they have that covered this time around. It could be that the over-the-top
hysteria from the TDS victims has them overestimating the anti-Trump sentiment, though.
Still, the establishment/deep state screwing up exactly the same way twice in a row
doesn't seem likely. Even so, their profound incompetence continues to astonish, so maybe
we will once again get treated to the delightful spectacle of crowds of middle class faux
left dilettante snowflakes melting down.
It not hard to see why big pharma despises Trump. They stand to lose a lot of
money. My health stock investment has almost doubled during Trump's tenure.
vk @158 - Not acreage - but based (until Andrew Jackson, hardly any principled person's
prez) on PROPERTY VALUE. JUST as in the good ol' UK. Yep - despite NPR folks believing
otherwise (clealry never visited a history book) - the aristo controlled (in what way
really different?) Britain was actually a "democracy":, and was so from Magna Carta on...
Of course it was a, how to say, constrained, constricted "democracy," but then so was the
original one in Athens. Those who count as THE Demos - always been a matter for property
holder concern... So in GB - male, 21 and over and owning a property of a taxable (always
this, huh) value of a certain sum. Ensured that the hoi polloi males over 21 couldn't vote
- and for the exact same reasons, I do not doubt, as the intentions behind the Electoral
College construct by those less than admirable FFs. Gotta prevent the vast masses of the
population - the great unwashed, "the bewildered herd" in Hamilton's verbiage I do believe
- from having the ability to grab (well, they knew all about blood-letting theft of land,
after all, didn't they?) that sacred "property." (Sacred, surely 'cos owned by the
equivalent of the Murican aristos.)
@Down South #159
It shouldn't be surprising. Actual doctors and nurses are, by and large, really great
people. They don't want to turn away anyone.
The poorest in America can't afford health care - even the middle class can't really as
testified to by the millions of bankruptcies caused by medical expenses. Hospitals thus
were losing large sums of profit treating people who simply could not pay.
Obamacare threw many (not all) of those people onto health insurance company plans by
having the government pay the health insurance premium and then having the existing health
insurance customers pay via increased premiums - all this on top of the ongoing health care
profiteering. That's why Obamacare should really have been called "No Health Insurance
Company or Hospital Left Behind".
The existence of Obamacare also distracts people from the real problem: actual
affordable health care - which every other nation in the world except the US has, entirely
due to national health care.
I've posted this before - I will post it again.
In 2006, I left the semiconductor software industry on my own because I disagreed with
management decisions to outsource all jobs to India rather than change their fundamentally
flawed business model. Semiconductor software companies are the only part of the design
chain that charges by software license rather than per part made - this was great in the
early days of semiconductors but is a disaster when the industry consolidates to 5 large
multinational but US based companies.
In 2007, I experienced a retinal detachment right after my COBRA ended. I paid $35,000
in cash to get that fixed - including a 5 hour total elapsed journey through a hospital
which included a 1 hour surgical room occupancy and 1 hour of recovery time. In the door at
6:30 am and waiting for a taxi at 12:30 pm. The UCSF doctor that attended to me (and did a
great job to be clear) said his fee out of all that was $1200.
The following year, some cells stirred loose by the corrective surgery landed on my
now-attached retina and started reproducing. Instead of coughing up another $35K (or more),
I chose to fly to Australia, consult with the best eye doctor recommended by the Royal
Opthalmological Society of Australia and New Zealand.
That doctor's office was literally a light year more advanced than UCSF - supposedly one of
the premier teaching hospitals in the US. I pay him AU$5000 - US$4000 at the time, plus
another AU$800 for the hospital visit. The Sydney Eye Hospital gave me the choice of
staying a 2nd night (I stayed 1 night because I was at the end of the queue for the day, as
a foreigner), for free, including meals and medications administered on site.
I paid literally 1/7th the price in AU vs. the US - an Australia is not a 3rd world
country. The doctor got paid 3.5x in absolute terms. The service I received was immensely
better. Even including travel costs: flight plus 2 weeks in AU (which I was vacationing),
the overall cost was still 1/5th of my US experience.
That opened my eyes (literally) to just how fucked up the US system is.
@Don Bacon #165
Stock price doesn't bear any short term correlation with profits.
Just look at Tesla, Uber and what not.
Health care sector profits have increased disproportionately since Obamacare:
CFR report on health insurance company profits
Since ACA implementation on January 1, 2014, health insurance stocks outperformed the
S&P 500 by 106 percent.
You're right. The early liberals - specially from the American South - loved to compare
themselves with the Athenian Republic. The rationale is that the existence of slaves
enabled them to enjoy unparalleled freedom. Black slaves were frequently compared with
helots when the problem of slave revolts appeared (with the pro-abolitionists evoking the
figure of Spartacus). The South considered itself freer than the North in the USA - it was
only after their destruction in 1865 that the tide turned and the North became,
retrospectively, the paragon of liberal freedom.
In Europe, England was considered the ultimate free nation. Even American liberals
(including Benjamin Franklin) built up their legitimacy on being of English stock
(Anglo-Saxon race). With time, liberals begun to legitimize their hegemony with a worldwide
racial hierarchy - hence the definition of American democracy as Herrenvolk Democracy
("Master race democracy").
And yes, the original liberals considered the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as their birth
date - not the French Revolution of 1789 (which they condemned as illiberal, or "radical").
The founders of neoliberalism (Hayek, Mises, etc. etc.) put 1870 as the apex of liberalism,
which they tried to revive.
Escobar writes: "In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of
the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy
achievement"
Anyone who actually thinks this is either ignorant or moronic. Biden will absolutely
require Iran to limit their ballistic missiles before "rejoining" that then-altered deal.
Iran will never let this happen. Thus the deal is essentially dead [as far as US
involvement goes, which the other parties should ignore]. MOA notes this as well.
I don't know why though MOA refers to Escobar at all here though. The ignorance
demonstrated in the above quote should be enough to disqualify such a person from any
discussion about Biden, Iran, etc. and to also ignore anything else such a person claims.
You might as well quote a schizophrenic you meet down by the river for his take on Iran and
the JCPOA. Might as well learn sign language and ask the chimps at your local zoo what they
think about it.
You are not the only American who is doing it. They have even developed a term for it -
medical tourism:
With rising healthcare costs in the US and the rise of health tourism destinations that
offer quality and affordable healthcare perked up by a beautiful travel experience,
Americans are scampering to book appointments with healthcare providers far away from
home. Yearly, millions of patients travel from countries lacking healthcare
infrastructure or less advanced in a particular area of medical care to countries that
provide highly-specialized medical care.
Noirette @161: " Drain the Swamp. The Deplorables are not ordinary ppl, but
criminals in positions of power. By putting this forward, Trump became a mirror of the ppl,
part of them."
True enough, and as even the bunny claims, this was part of the act. But those who think
Trump's upset victory in 2016 was part of the plan need to offer up a better explanation
for why those criminals in positions of power would want to kneecap themselves with public
exposure. The rationale has to be extraordinarily critical and of huge value to the elites
because that price of exposure has been monumentally damaging to them.
Keep in mind that one of the most important (if not the most important) aspects
of US presidential elections is the "electoral mandate" . Far more important than
specific campaign promises is the general tone of the campaign. If a winning candidate had
campaigned on ending wars, bringing jobs back from abroad, and fighting corruption in
government, this isn't just an indication that the public wants something done about these
issues. First and foremost it forces an acknowledgement that these are indeed major issues
that the public wants to be part of the national discourse that the capitalist mass media
tries to control. Allowing these issues to become part of the national discourse is
diametrically opposed to the interests of the power elites. They do not want these issues
to even be discussed, much less addressed by the state.
So why would they intentionally force these issues into the forefront of national
discourse? That is, after all, what Trump's victory did, despite the establishment's best
efforts to distract with "Russia! Russia! Russia!" and "Racism, sexism and
pussy-grabbing, oh my!" . These issues were already smoldering below the surface due to
Sanders' campaign, so why would the elites want them fanned into flames?
Answer: They didn't. As much as the issues that the winner campaigns on getting elevated
in priority by the "electoral mandate" , the loser's issues get diminished. Trump
was supposed to lose, and lose bigly, and in the process the things he campaigned on were
supposed to be crushed down to objects of ridicule by the corporate mass media. Trump's
resounding defeat was supposed to signal that Americans rejected Trump's "conspiracy
theories" about some fictitious "deep state" that only existed in Trump's
imagination, burying the suspicions that the election fraud committed against Sanders
aroused. Trump being ignominiously trounced was supposed to allow the mass media to say
that Americans unequivocally voiced their opposition to ending war and their support for
intervention in Syria, clearing the way for Clinton's "no fly zone" . Trump being
utterly humiliated in the polls was supposed to decisively demoralize the
"deplorables" , convincing them with finality that there will never again be
good-paying blue collar jobs and that they are just disposable relics, while at the same
time crippling their resistance to the social engineering of "identity politics" ;
social engineering that I should point out is even more ill-conceived and incompetently
executed than the 737MAX MCAS system.
Trump was supposed to lose and take those issues with him to the dustbin of history.
It is important to understand this point because it clarifies who our enemies really are
and helps us to understand how they view the world.
Ancient Athens excluded from power slaves and resident foreigners (metics). Also women in
the families of male citizens, although one could argue that they had virtual
representation through the male citizens in their families. So also for the children in
citizens' families, although they would have full rights once they reached adulthood. The
adult male citizens who had full political rights were about 20 percent of the population
of Attica.
And even the poorest citizens had much more political power than average citizens of
today's so-called democracies have today. They could attend and vote in the Assembly, they
could be chosen by lot to serve in such bodies as the Council and juries, and to serve in
most offices. And for doing all these things there was pay, so that poor citizens had
particular motivation to participate, which they did. Just read Aristophanes. No wonder
most rich Athenians hated the system.
Again, you are mistaken. I am getting tired of correcting you.FoxNews drug their heels
when it came to supporting DJT in 2015 until it was clear that the majority of
conservatives actually wanted DJT as their candidate.
It was at that point that business-smartz kicked in and they had to acknowledge that
they must throw their weight behind the Trump ticket lest they prove themselves the
faux-conservative Rinos they actually were/are.
Business 101, my friend. You wanna keep the advert. revenue coming in, you produce
content your audience actually agrees with.
TBH and AFAIK Tucker Carlson is still the only truly sane conservative on FOx news. The
rest, including Hannity, don't neccessarily mind the endless wars so long as the public
endorses them. They are chameleons without an ethical lodestar guiding their
commentary.
Trump being utterly humiliated in the polls was supposed to decisively demoralize the
"deplorables", convincing them with finality that there will never again be good-paying
blue collar jobs and that they are just disposable relics,
_____________________________________________
The problem is you think the oligarchs are every bit as stupid as you are. It would be
nice if they were, but unfortunately they're not.
First of all lets examine who are these deplorables who you imagine were set up by the
oligarchs to be crushed and demoralized by running Trump as their candidate.
The deplorables are:
-The Americans that own the guns
-The Bible thumping American jihadist
-The Americans that sign up for the police and military and in those rolls operate the
states weaponry
-The Americans who believe the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of
tyrants
I could go on but all you have to do is tune into the corporate mass media that caters
to the deplorables to find out who they are and what they are being sold.
But Mr Gruff is just too stupid to figure out why in the world the oligarchs might want
to not antagonize that segment of the population.
The oligarchs would have to have lost their frikken minds to hire trump for the purpose
of giving the deplorables a big "fuck you" as you imagine. The oligarchs are well aware
that they already gave a big fat finger to the deplorables when they engineered the
election of Obama (not to mention the 40 preceding years of marginalizing that segment of
the population) and just maybe it was time to pacify that segment of the population that
was growing larger and a bit restless.
But those who think Trump's upset victory in 2016 was part of the plan need to offer up a
better explanation for why those criminals in positions of power would want to kneecap
themselves with public exposure. The rationale has to be extraordinarily critical and of
huge value to the elites because that price of exposure has been monumentally damaging to
them.
Amen!!! I don't think that people who forward that narrative fully understand
how damaging this exposure has been to them.
By being exposed they have been shown to exist . This is super critical! No more
is talk of the deep state relegated to the lunatic fringe where they can be easily derided
as "conspiracy theorists"
Whether Trump can drain the swamp or not is to be seen but what is not in dispute is
that they exist.
Posted by: Down South | Nov 1 2020 18:31 utc |
181 How can the blob "return" when they never really left?
To pretend that Trump is some special Peacemaker, trying oh so hard to overcome deep
state resistance to rolling back empire, is Trumpism. Escobar is always there. Trump must
be understood as a leading creature of the swamp himself. Trying so hard just as Obama was
trying so hard.
The relative scores settled terribly are more a matter of opportunity than ruthless
efficiency. Though it is true that "success" requires dialing it back a bit, and having the
likes of Bolton around is a way of ensuring either that nothing gets done, or we all end up
ashes. Trump managed to axe Bolton on time, that time.
It's avoidance of those lower probability mega catastrophes that is the principle reason
of voting trump out with regards to foreign policy. And there are other reasons.
The globalist "Great Reset" wants to overcome the diverse rising obstacles to globalism's
perpetuation, especially the intensifying centrifugal political and economic forces which
directly oppose it or which hinder it. The global elites see politics as such, and any mode
of economy other than that which is strictly regimented and controlled by the US government,
the oligopoly MNCs and a handful of globalization entities, as antiquated obstructions to its
power and profit. From the point of view of the Earth and especially humanity it's essential
to obstruct the globalist-technocratic elite as much as possible.
So it follows that anything which sustains and multiplies the number of obstacles any
globalist actor has to traverse is a good thing, while anything that streamlines, unifies,
renders more "efficient" is bad. This includes the character of US foreign policy. Although
it will remain aggressively imperialist for as long as this government exists, it makes a
significant difference how disciplined and superficially "kinder and gentler" the facade is,
as opposed to how wayward, openly brutish and gratuitously insulting to everyone in the
world. Real anti-globalists always have known this, and the need never has been more critical
than now. From this point of view Trump is vastly preferable. The across-the-board hatred of
the elites for him is the best recommendation.
Trump's election was a monkey-wrench in the works, and although the elites were able to
make lemonade by turning anti-Trumpism into an organizing principle among the bewildered
masses, they certainly want to return to having a reliable, fully pliant figurehead in the
White House. With Biden/Harris they'd get the best of both worlds - they either get the
obedient Biden or the even more aggressively obedient Harris who would be all the more
controllable since she has no political support of her own and wouldn't have been elected
even if Biden became president and then had to be retired.
So it follows that gratuitous US imperial belligerence is in fact being "creatively
destructive", to use one of capitalism's own religious terms, in spite of the US empire's own
long-run goals and interests. The worst thing would be for US foreign policy to become less
Kaiser and more Bismarck. The more chaos the better. It may seem more painful in the short
run than running home to hide under adult mama's skirts the way almost all former
anti-imperialists, anti-globalists, "radicals", "leftists" have done, since they all were
frauds all along who can't take the slightest pain or hardship and would rather die than do
any movement-building work, but for the long run good of the Earth including humanity there's
no other option.
Obama actually surged 70,000 troops into Afghanistan, raising Bush's 30K to 100K+. That
got Mr Hope & Change the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama got the Nobel Prize in 2009, the year he became president. The deadline for nominations
to the Nobel Committee is January 31 the same year. So either he did something
extraordinarily good between his inauguration January ~20 and January 31, or the prize was
awarded preemptively.
The Nobel Peace price committee resides in Oslo and consists of politically appointed
members, that is from parties of the Norwegian parliament (Stortinget). The chairman at the
time was Thorbjørn Jagland from the same Labour party as now chief NATO puppet Jens
Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg and Jagland were supposed rivals to become Prime Minister in 1996
after Gro Harlem "We have other methods" Brundtland who became WHO director (Hmmm...?).
Jagland is famous for being an imbecile foreign minister. He was once interviewed and
stated that Norway is a very important country in the world. His reasoning was that when
flying around and meeting people, he always saw a large number of Norwegian flags. I kid you
not.
Jagland is also famous for winning the battle against Jens Stoltenberg to become Prime
Minister in 1996. He then resigned one year later after winning the election in 1997,
because he had promised to resign if the labour party got fewer votes than 4 years earlier,
i.e. 36.9%. So he is forever the idiot Thorbjørn "36.9" Jagland, who gave away the
government position to the opposition after winning an election.
So this person was obviously qualified to become the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace
Prize Committee, he had shown that he could be made to do anything, including awarding the
Peace Prize preemptively to Obama and get his picture with Obama. Even Obama was
embarrassed.
"Obama got the Nobel Prize in 2009" This was part of the propaganda to normalize
permanent wars of imperial aggression as the new baseline for "peace". Just part of the
totalitarian "New Normal" the globalists led by the US government have been working
toward.
The ban against domestic propaganda that had been in place since shortly after WW2 was
repealed in 2013. It was known as the Smith-Mundt Act. As part of the repeal, NDAA authorized
a huge grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside
government who are engaged in "counter-propaganda" related work. Sounds like doublespeak for
censorship and support for "fake news." I hope Glenn will investigate and connect the dots
some day.
omg. I read the whole article...and I'm not really that smart.
Best line: " ...but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly
start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been
presented."
Four years ago I was railing against Hillary Clinton on Facebook without any
censoring.
Tonight I watched an interview Tucker Carlson did with Glenn Greenwald regarding the
Hunter Biden/Joe Biden scandal and Tucker showed a poll revealing that 51% of those polled
believe this scandal is "Russian Disinformation" with ZERO evidence.
Why do those being polled believe this? Because the bulk of the MSM they watch have told
them so and the major tech platforms have ALL censored the pertinent information so there is
NO debate amongst the electorate. All of this less than one week from our national
election.
With Facebook and Twitter and Google's and the bulk of the MSM's heavy fingers on the
scales of public information there are only two words to describe this:
ELECTION INTERFERENCE.
And this with over 70 million voters already having cast their ballots!
Regardless of the outcome next Tuesday, these tech/media corporations should ALL be
brought down at least to the point where they can never be allowed to interfere in another
American election again, regardless of the higher-ups personal political preferences.
And this is the system the war-mongering DNC wants to "spread around the world" with their
"regime change wars"?!
Stephanie, why do you want Trump gone? Trump is bait. His presence is resulting in many,
many bad actors revealing themselves to be nefarious. Just look at Twitter/Facebook censoring
this blockbuster news (along with the rest of the media). We, The People, are finally seeing
first had the level of tyranny that's upon us. None of it has anything to do with Trump. But
it's Trump's existence in the White House that is bringing it to light. Without him, we would
have never seen it for what it is. Think about that.
I may disagree with your take on CIA involvement, but the above paragraph couldn't be more
accurate. Trump's election was like throwing a brick through a rotten, wasp-infested
beehive.
I'll second that. Though perhaps to be fair to the original sentiment, perhaps the brick has
only knicked the beehive, and then smashed a window or two along it's way. He is arguably
inevitable, even desirable from some perspective, but the degree of nuisance is not erased, so
much as outweighed, by the necessity. We would be living in a better world, by definition, if
someone like him had never been required to improve it.
Agreed. I have been telling Democrats all they need do is run better candidates - and
virtually every time, I get people trying to claim there was never anything wrong with Hillary
or Joe and also Trump is Literally Hitler Incarnate.
I grew up watching psychos in the Extreme Right talk that way about whoever THEY didn't like
politically. Arguing that Bill Clinton was going to send Janet Reno to take their guns and cart
them off to FEMA camps like a scene out of "Red Dawn" or something. But this isn't the fringes
talking anymore. It's the mainstream, and it's on the Left.
Glen, I just paid for a subscription so that I can say this one FACT. The PODESTA EMAILS
WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.
Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by
HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction.
Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's
impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device
(thumbdrive most likely).
The FISA Abuse, the spying on Trump, The plan to implicate collusion, the Flynn frameup,
the Impeachment, The Mueller investigation were not the base crimes, those were all part of a
cover up. By you insinuating that the DNC server got hacked (which there is zero evidence
for), you are wittingly or unwittingly complicit in perpetuating the lie that it was. You're
missing a much, much bigger story here. The biden laptop isn't even the tip of the icebeg
here.
Ask yourself this; "Why would dozens of high level DOJ, FBI, CIA and Whitehouse officials
in the Obama Administration put their careers on the line and commit literally hundreds of
felonies all in an effort to obstruct/neutralize Trump?" That is first question any true
journo should be asking right now.
You mention in this article that the media is basically over-compensating for helping Trump
win in 2016. That is extremely naive on your part. The media/twitter/facebook/CNN/MSNBC, etc.
is too well orchestrated, too well coordinated to be operating even vaguely independently. This
is project Mockingbird happening on a scale almost unimaginable. Maybe even the Intercept was
intercepted. Why would the publication that you founded not allow you to publish this? If you
look back at 2016, the entire media industrial complex was just as coordinated as it is now,
they just got sloppy because they were certain Trump wasn't going to win. Who's being naive now
Kay?
I also get frustrated with what I see as a naive interpretation, by figures like Dan
Bongino, Tim Pool, etc. I wonder if there is a fear by some to point behind the curtain, that
they will be attacked and cancelled for "conspiracy theories."
Neither Tim or Dan are really journalists and besides, this story is so massive and so
incomprehensibly large in scope/scale/magnitude that we shouldn't get too frustrated.
The main point to remember here is that none of this has anything to do with Trump. Look at
the timeline in its entirety, the best we are able to do and then plot a graph of the Media
Industrial Complex's behavior. They were out to derail Trump from the moment he came down the
escalator and it's not because he's a womanizer or that he's a game show host. They couldn't
afford to have an non-establishment player come in and wreck their plans. The question is, what
the f#$% were their plans? Why did they risk so much to keep him out of the WH?
My view is that the constant sturm und drang about the corruption of the elections (voter
suppression, mail fraud, ballot harvesting, etc, etc) is a ploy to distract from the fact that
the real corruption already happened long before the election.
The real corruption is even mentioned by Glenn in his draft: the SELECTION process.
The media do what they're told, and what they are doing is keeping up the drumbeat of
election corruption. In other words, they've been told to distract all attention from the real
story.
The real story is that, to the people who control candidate selection, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO
WINS.
That is the whole point of controlling the selection process. Oh yes, I know the media hates
Trump and so do the establishment. Really? The same establishment that just benefitted from the
greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history, during a pandemic panic, under Trump?
Bezos has gained over 70 billion in net worth this year, under Trump. You think he hates Trump?
Really?
You think Biden will do less? Or perhaps you think he would do more than the greatest upward
transfer of wealth in human history?
Republicans versus Democrats is a con game. It's a kabuki theatre of manipulation of
parochial tribalism, a Punch n Judy Show for the rubes.
As was once mentioned in the UT threads at Salon, isn't it time for a second political
party, Mr Greenwald?
It's not about their plans. It's just a non-violent (so far) class war. Trump is a vessel
for the working classes to carry their dissatisfaction of elite leadership. It's easier to
communicate directly to the people now due to social media, so the traditional media can't tell
the people how to vote (can't declare a candidate to be beyond the pale any more, squashing
their chances, and they used to have that power). The media are part of the elite leadership,
they don't like the working classes not listening to them, and they don't like the loss of
power. That's their agenda.
They have taken to "any means necessary" to keep that power, even though now it's basically
lying and obfuscation. They are trading off their legacy trustworthiness for short term
benefit, but they are destroying that foundation of trust as well. That happens slowly but
surely as more people see through them. Takes too long in the experience of everyone who is
reading this, because we're well ahead of the curve. The average mid level elite is a working
professional with kids too busy and not interested enough to dig to the next level and has been
taking their word - but they too see the truth every time they really look and over time that
is going to go as we all hope it will. It's just going to take a while.
"The guy who co-founded one of the current-day major online journalism outlets isn't really
a journalist" - Someone Posting to the Comments on an Article by a Guy Who Co-Founded One of
the Current-Day Major Online Journalism Outlets
There is good cause to question the Snowden story. He was CIA. Once a CIA agent, always a
CIA agent. It's plausible that he was inserted into booz allen hamilton in an attempt to harm
the NSA (on behalf of the CIA). Tell me this Glen, how did Snowden evade the largest
dragnet/manhunt ever on the planet to evade the authorities and make it to Moscow? Am I the
only one who finds this a little fishy? As someone who has been in software for 40 years, when
I heard him on Joe Rogan podcast about a year ago, I didn't find his backstory credible at all.
He sounds intelligent, but when you get beyond that and listen to him from a technological
perspective, his story doesn't add up. I find it hard to believe.
Why would a "patriot" doing work on behalf of the CIA be thrown to the wolves? Why wouldn't
they cover for him after it was released? I haven't been in software for 40 years, but I
believe that the Snowden story is extremely credible.
Snowden was a libertarian high school dropout hacker
The Deep State hired 800,000 employees/contractors around the Beltway after 9/11 on a war
footing, so anyone that was seen as clean and patriotic may not have needed a lot of standard
credentials by the usual bureaucratic managerial idiot types working for the Feds
I've been told that military field grade IT is all from the 1990s, dunno about national
security agencies, but unless you have actually worked with national security IT stuff I'm not
sure why your views should hold much weight
Senior people I know in the military and national security apparatus have told me that
corruption, waste and inefficiency are rampant (80-90%?)
Sorry, but I've heard that "anything CIA is automatically X" way too many times in my life.
Often from people trying to sell books about how we never landed on the Moon (you'd be amazed
how many ex-[alphabet agency] agents "back up" these claims with the worst sort of
pseudo-authoritative malarkey).
Hah! They "helped" Trump by running two billion dollars' worth of 95% negative coverage. It
made Trump look like the victim of a massive smear campaign by partisan hacks. What have they
been doing to "over-compensate", exactly? Make it 99%?
Whether or not they helped Trump, Greenwald's article claimst that journalists feel
responsible for Trump being elected last time so they are trying not to make the same
'mistake'. At least that's what Glenn is asserting here.
They're not wrong. They helped elect him with their sheer negativity. I've seen these people
argue the point, and they always point the finger at other journalists somehow NOT being
negative enough. It's never themselves.
So there's no collective soul-searching going on, no self-awareness, only a drive to be
angrier and finger-wagging with less concern for the actual facts of any given matter. They
don't realize how transparent it's become for those not already personally invested in the
extant narratives.
This, I think, is why we are seeing many more people defect to Trump rather than away from
him; when one is personally and deeply invested in a narrative, it's an article of faith.
Imagine you walk into church one day and the pastor says "this just in: the Archangel Gabriel
was a child molestor who felt up Baby Jesus". Next week, they accuse the Virgin Mary of the
same. Would a member of the faithful just roll with that, or consider moving to another church
altogether just to avoid the emotional whiplash?
More to the point, the head of Crowdstrike, the company run by a known Russia-hater the
Democrats sent their server to instead of the FBI, and who never provided that server to the
FBI, admitted in a Senate hearing that there was, in fact, no evidence of hacking. He was under
oath that time. Russiagate remains one of the most successful propaganda campaign in
history.
Just before or just after Trump's 2016 election I was in a Manhattan restaurant with my
domestic partner talking with strangers from DC. It turned out that they worked in the State
Dept. and they told us that since Trump questioned the veracity of some things the intelligence
establishment had said, they would absolutely bring him down. We were shocked but have
remembered this throughout the FISA debacle,the Mueller mess,the impeachment and this election
cycle.
Right. Thank you. I wrote to Matt T. about this same issue in his article. I'm hoping they
will do the investigation required for them to amend their articles. It really is a fundamental
mistake to perpetuate this propaganda.
It's literally in the Mueller report that the DNC server was hacked, without a shred of
evidence. As Fox Mulder said "Trust No One". Matt & Glen really need to get to the point
where they chuck everything they think they know and start over. Everything has been a lie. Why
would anyone believe ANYTHING the FBI or DOJ of Obama WH put out at this point? The MSM has no
credibility, FBI/DOJ/CIA? This cancer has metasticized to the point where the patient is on
life support.
We need to understand that Trump is Chemo. It takes an outsider to come in, someone who
didn't need this job, someone who couldn't be bought, to come in and kill that cancer.
Just to offer some confirmation for that, Here is a CNN article from the time: "A phishing
email sent to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have been so sophisticated
that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers, who at one point advised him it was a legitimate
warning to change his password."
However, they also report that the link was from " [email protected] ." I searched
for whether that email address had been reported as malicious on the day that the story broke.
Far from being "sophisticated", it was just a phishing link that was going around randomly, and
had already been reported to this spam reporting site:
So, despite (much of) the media converging on a "sophisticated spear phishing" narrative,
this looks to be a link that was sent to a large number of people over a long period, and just
a case of random spam phishing that got lucky.
re: "so sophisticated that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers"
I'm not a google mail user, but in general it is pretty rare for a phishing email to NOT
have extended headers (server route log) that reveal a bogus or weird looking origin.
"Alleging" would be more accurate. They've been acting quite more brazenly as a
misinfo/disinfo arm of the DNC. Whether or not the DNC has deep enough connections with the CIA
to provide a useful and reliable data/policy bridge is another question, but both DNC and GOP
likely have enough connections to establish semi-functional "lamprey" networks just due to
their longevity and resulting personal/professional contacts therein.
Hi Frank. " The PODESTA EMAILS WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.
Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by
HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction.
Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's
impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device
(thumbdrive most likely)."
Based on the forensics that was my conclusion but beware of these rabbit holes. It has never
been discussed that those details can also be faked (the meta data.) Certainly Gucifer which
seemed like damage control. I am unsure of the claims about his being backtracked tho.
So it's possible that the evidence is faked having accepted the conclusions of VIPS
analysts.
Could be. It would also mean that it was the first time Wikileaks published something that
wasn't authentic. Assange knows where the emails came from and he asserted that they didn't
come from Russia.
Note to all: You must use actual (historical) ISP speeds as of the specific months in
question. They increased a good deal in the months that followed in that area.
I agree that there was a massive fake Russia story created by GPS Fusion, the Clinton
campaign, Clinton allies, with the help of US intelligence, often willing and sometimes just
incompetent.
But there is definitely some evidence of a DNC hack. Among other things, the Dutch
intelligence services seem to have observed evidence in their spying on the Internet Research
Agency - reported by mutliple sources including Dutch media. What the nature of the hack was
and how it gibes with the evidence that there must have been a person on the ground to transfer
the data files that fast is of course fair to discuss.
There is also evidence, both purposely forgotten in media coverage after Jan 2017, of an
attempted RNC hack and the overt public hack and release of Colin Powell's email to embarass
and hurt Trump. There is plenty of other evidence of Internet Research Agency activity that was
pro-BLM and anti-Trump, making their more likely overall goal the sowing of chaos than only
supporting Trump. Thus the need for GPS/Clintonistas/Intelligence/Mueller's team to spin a
narrative.
I became a fan of yours when I was in law school at UC Hastings in 2003. Your the best, for
sure. But fuck...
I got to be honest...I'm glad the press is ignoring this story. There's just too much at
stake. Biden might be losing his edge, his family might be trading in his name, but who gives a
shit? The alternative is worse by light years.
And yeah, I don't trust the "people" out there to get it right. The "people" are rubes.
Those idiots voted for this piece of shit once before, they'll do it again, in a heartbeat.
More importantly, you really want to do Rudy Giuliani's work for him? I don't know, I don't
get it...why so eager to make the campaign's case for them? It's not a rhetorical question. I
just don't get it.
Alex: you are saying that we should not have independent press, that the media ought to be
agents of propaganda, consciously decieving the public for the greater good.
Maybe Biden is the lesser evil in this election. But without actual journalists like Glenn
we could never know.
I get the frustrations over Trump. He is a disaster. But the answer to that disaster does
not concist in advocating for more lies and propaganda.
I have yet to hear a reasonable case for Trump being either the greater evil or a disaster.
Many of the allegations against Trump have remained that - allegations - but in Biden's case
some of the same accusations (particular about racism) is in his Senate record. He was a
terrible candidate to position against Trump, and he picked as his veep the only person in the
entire primary season to get blown out by a single phrase from Tulsi Gabbard - who the rest of
the party's establishment absolutely despised because Hillary said so.
With Trump? Roaring economy brought to a halt not even by coronavirus, but massive economic
lockdowns that break the economy down to virtually Blue-State (down) / Red-State (up)
comparisons. Democrats were accusing Trump of "meddling" when he was still a candidate and
nonetheless pressured a Detroit factory into staying in the US. The man understands economic
leverage, and to ignore or deny that is like denying the Sun heats the Earth.
Three Middle East peace deals leading to an equal number of Nobel nominations. He is roasted
for de-escalating international tensions, lauded only when he fires missiles at nations
Democrats think need shooting at, and then castigated for killing a terrorist leader in the
same nation they were cheering him for firing missiles at.
I see very little criticism of Trump that isn't associated with bald-faced party-based
opposition, from establishment Republicans who hated his cockblocking of JEB BUSH FOR GODSAKE
to Democrats who still think Hillary's shit job as Secretary of State (ruining more nations
than Trump has cut peace deals for) is beyond reproach.
Speaking as a lifetime independent, please: the naked, incessant and baseless fury
demonstrated by Democrats and the Radical Left since 2016 has NOT been a selling point for
us.
Biden has been credibly accused of actually pinning a staffer against the wall and stuffing
his fingers up her vagina. The media didn't attack her story, but her college credentials, and
dumped the story after.
Biden has actually authored racist legislation and in recent years spoke of "being able to
work across the aisle" - with racist segregationists.
Trump's been merely ACCUSED of a shit-ton of things. But I don't join lynch-mobs. Same
reason the lynching of Justice Kavanaugh (seriously, you guys went after him over "I like beer"
and school calendars you had to try and reinterpret as codebooks?) made me see the Democratic
Party as a progressively more lunatic outfit. Reducing impeachment to "who needs criminal
charges? we really just hate the guy" wasn't a winner with us independents either, not just
speaking for myself there.
A pox on both your damned parties, and thank Trump for being that pox.
Gee Alex, elitist much? You don't like Trump so the people making an informed choice is not
a worthy goal? Anyone who disagrees with your world view is a rube who is not smart enough to
see the light - as defined by you? And you wonder why Trump won last time. The left is
populated by arrogant asses who think because they came out of college with a degree in some
worthless major, they are smarter than everyone else. Well, I went to college to but got a
degree in engineering vice sociology but I guess I'm just an educated rube.
Your law school tuition dollars were clearly wasted. Most of the people/rubes/idiots I know
and love learned the difference between "your" and "you're" in high school - and acquired
critical thinking skills at the same time. Too bad you missed out.
Yeah, we the people (rubes) are fn sick of the fn lawyers (especially from UC Hastings)
being in political control of our country and want a non-political person to clean up. What's
so hard for you to understand?
How's your guy doing you fucking rube? Great choice! Job well done!! If you ever wonder why
nobody gives a shit about your opinion, the fact that you chose a fucking reality star who ran
every business he ever owned into the ground, and fancies a bizarre hairdo, that's why no one
cares what you say. You're fucking stupid.
bahahahahaha...go crawl back into your fucking prol shit hole dwelling and latch onto
Tucker's teat. You're a fucking joke and always will be, no matter how special your dear leader
makes you feel.
Our local sanitation workers are much more thoughtful and respectful actually. I am voting
for Biden but I find this lawyer's response detestable. We need to grow up and stop with ad
hominem attacks that do nothing to advance the discussion.
Morals and ethics obviously mean nothing to a lawyer. If this was Don Jr, you would be out
for blood. As an independent voter, I want to know that I'm not voting for a piece of shit that
has been compromised by the Russians and Chinese! People like you, the FAKE NEWS media, and
antifa, etc are a major reason why I won't ever give my vote to Biden!
Elitists like Alex G. made the election of Donald Trump as president both inevitable and
necessary. The more he disses the "people" aka "rubes," the more President Trump's re-election
becomes equally inevitable and necessary. To borrow from Sen. Ted Cruz's exchange with Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey, "Who the hell made Alex G. the final authority on how and what people should
think, say and do?"
One thing we know for sure is Alex G. never learned any humility or manners growing up. To
substantiate this, he stands condemned out of his own mouth. Last thing this country needs is
to have an authoritarian demagogue like him anywhere near the levers of power.
Please go back and fact check the old stories that made us hate Trump in the first place.
They've proven to be lies. He isn't perfect, but Biden will destroy this country. He's beyond
corrupt. Go look at the source materials.
Arrogant, smug D party loyalist goons and assholes like you are a very large part of why
people voted for Trump in 2016 and will vote for him in this election. T-R-0-L-L
I believe in the democratic system. The people may make mistakes, but so can anyone else. An
average of all the people is more accurate than randomly picking subsets of people to make
decisions. You say that you and your friends are not a random subset, you are better than
average. Your opponents say the same thing. We have a system for resolving these disputes.
Maybe you can invent a better one, but "I'm right and my opponents are wrong" is not a new
approach.
In answer to your "Why" question, perhaps Mr. Greenwald believes the same thing.
Glenn - new subscriber today (saw you with Tucker Carlson). As a conservative voter, I
support your new venture, not because your story is critical or suspicious of Biden, but
because we need more talented journalists willing to just investigate possible corruption and
inform the public. I also support Matt Taibbi for the same reason. The last line of your
article sums it up best for me.
"The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from
information than whether it's true."
Good luck, I hope you find this new path rewarding professionally and financially.
Agreed, I also like reading Quillette for it's equal publication of articles (they printed
that big article from the Environmentalist who demonized Environmentalism after he was banned
from his original publisher), and I also like reading Sharyl Attkisson as well.
I find it interesting how Glenn sees all the propoganda from these agencies in the media,
but fails to see the full extent of it in social media and therefore is unable to report on it
adequately. The DNC server hack is more of the same.
I paid for a subscription precisely because I believe that, despite what you may or may not
personally believe, you don't allow it to influence your pursuit of the truth. I want the truth
- nothing less and nothing more.
I just signed up, too, for that very reason. When those in positions of power put on a mask
and practice deception, they must be exposed. Sunlight is the cure for the disease of
corruption.
Personally, having read your work going back to Cato Institute and Volokh, I'm happy you're
independent and I can directly fund you. I'm willing to throw even more money at your projects.
Consider crowdfunding video documentary teams and other large projects. Your following after
all of this is going to be as large as ever.
I've supported him here as well because I think he is an important voice right now. There
are few journos out there right now who have Glenn's credibility who are willing to take on
media groupthink. But it is a tough environment. With NYT offering their digital for 4$ a month
that gives access to all of their writers/content, it is very difficult for writers like Glenn
to compete.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed Wednesday the
information exposed by former Hunter
Biden business associate
Tony Bobulinski that connects the former Vice President to companies and ventures in China.
But you wouldn't know it by following the main stream press.
Bobulinski's bombshell interview with Fox News host
Tucker Carlson Tuesday, along with Carlson's follow up exclusive on Wednesday, revealed
that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was aware of his son's business questionable overseas
business dealings. It should be a huge story. After all, Joe Biden has publicly denied knowing
about his son's business ventures in China, Ukraine and other parts of the world.
So why isn't this story on the front page of every newspaper and covered by every cable
network?
How is it possible that the majority of main stream media outlets, newspapers and cable
networks had no problem running unsubstantiated stories about President Donald Trump, his
family and his businesses only to find out later – without corrections- that the
information they published was bogus.
Here, there is an eye witness to the Biden family operations: Bobulinski. He has come
forward and shown his credibility. He has verified documents, photos, receipts from Hunter
Biden's hard drive that the FBI had obtained, along with President Trump's friend and personal
lawyer former New York City Mayor Rudy
Giuliani.
Why hasn't the FBI done anything with this before the election? The bureau has had it for
almost a year. Giuliani then did the only thing he could do – he turned over the
documents to The New York Post. Those documents obtained from Hunter Biden's laptop are the
massive breadcrumbs to a real political scandal.
These documents raise serious questions as to whether or not our possible future president
really is compromised by foreign adversaries, or whether or not he was using his position in
government to profit his family.
Still, it's only crickets from the main stream media. At the same time, big tech giants like
Twitter, Google and Facebook are also working diligently to squash the story and keep the truth
from the American people.
Tucker Carlson had the highest ratings – historic ratings – at Fox News Tuesday
night with more than 7 million viewers tuning in for the Bobulinski story. Yet, the Bobulinski
interview wasn't trending on Twitter, and in fact, it appeared that his story was non-existent
on the other networks.
Not even the Senators, who held a hearing on Wednesday, could get a straight answer from
Twitter's CEO
Jack Dorsey on why his platform banned The New York Post stories.
Sen. Ted Cruz said on Twitter "What @Jack told the Senate, under oath, is false."
"I just tried to tweet the @nypost story alleging
Biden's CCP corruption. Still Blocked."
Censorship in full force. However, this is not like the old
Soviet censorship – this is a bizarre new self-censorship by elitist leftists who
believe they know what's best for the American people.
Think about this – what if this story was about information these news agencies
discovered on Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump. How would they treat it?
Let's start with the most widely discussed and central to the issue of alleged corruption
was Hunter Biden's paid position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings.
Despite the fact Hunter Biden had no background in energy he was being paid more than $50,000 a
month and in some instances as much as $83,000 a month.
What about the most concerning connection for the Biden's with China's CEFC, an energy giant
that is compared to Goldman Sachs. It is directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party and
according to Bobulinski, as well as senior lawmakers investigating, possible used as leverage
against the Bidens by the communist government.
"Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised" said Bobulinski in Tuesday night's hour
long interview with Carlson. He said he turned over evidence to the FBI and openly spoke about
his alleged meetings with then Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is referred to by his son Hunter
Biden in emails obtained by the FBI and first published by The New York Post as the 'Big Guy'
and or 'the Chairman.'
Bobulinski revealed that he "held a top-secret clearance from the NSA and the DOE. I served
this country for four years in one of the most elite environments in the world, the Naval
Nuclear Power Training Command, and to have a congressmen out there speaking about Russian
disinformation or Joe Biden at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation when he knows
he sat face-to-face with me, I traveled around the world with his son and his brother. To say
that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me ."
Joe Biden, however, has publicly denied having any financial gain from his son's, Hunter,
business ventures. He said at the second Presidential debate, "I have not taken a penny from
any foreign source ever in my life." However, Biden has refused to answer any questions
regarding the allegations or address some of the accusations against him or his son.
The American public has the right to know if their next president has been compromised by
their families business dealings with the communist Chinese. Moreover, many of the business
ventures his son was connected with were during his tenure as Vice President.
Our nation has been divided but not by President Trump. It's been divided by an army of
bureaucrats, liberal elites, the New Democratic socialists, special interests and more
importantly a biased partisan media.
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For now, Americans will be left in the dark. On Wednesday committee Chairman Sen. Ron
Johnson, R- WI, told The Daily Caller, that Bobulinski will not be called to testify before the
Nov. 3 elections. He said the committee is working to review all the information that has been
provided to the committee by Bobulinski.
The information has to be verified, as it is subject to the same false information to
Congress laws that verbal or written testimony does.
However, a Johnson spokesperson told the Caller that all the material provided by Bobulinski
to the committee is legitimate and verified .
The committee has "also" not come across any "signs" or evidence to suggest the content
Hunter Biden and Bobulinksi content is false , the spokesperson added.
It's tragic to think that if by chance – a small remote chance – that Biden
actually wins the election justice will never be served and our nation will fundamentally
change.
America will be at a crossroads on November 3. The main stream media is doing its part to
ensure that the American people are not informed, so it is up to you to vote your conscience
and seek out the truth.
Col. Leghorn CSA , 9 hours ago
I suggest enabling RICO charges against any media that conspires to hide the truth.
UPS has found
documents that went missing in transit to Tucker Carlson, putting to rest questions about the
whereabouts of a trove that the Fox News host had called "damning" of presidential candidate
Joe Biden's family.
"After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging
for its return," a UPS spokesman told the
Daily Beast on Thursday. "UPS will always focus first on our customers and will never
stop working to solve issues and make things right."
While the successful search resolved the issue of the documents' whereabouts, questions
remain about how they disappeared from a package sent to Carlson in California from a producer
in New York -- and who, if anyone, was behind it. Without naming the company involved or
specifically saying the papers were purposely targeted and stolen, Carlson suggested on his
show on Wednesday night that the disappearance wasn't coincidental.
"As of tonight, the [shipping] company has no idea and no working theory even about what
happened to this trove of material – documents that are directly relevant to the
presidential campaign just six days from now," Carlson said. The company's executives
"seemed baffled and deeply bothered by this, and so are we."
Carlson described the package as containing confidential documents about the Biden family
and said they were "authentic, real and damning." He said he asked a Fox producer in New
York to send the documents to him in Los Angeles, where he had traveled to interview former
Biden business associated
Tony Bobulinski on Tuesday. The package didn't show up on Tuesday morning, prompting UPS to
begin an exhaustive search.
Mainstream media critics mocked Carlson for saying the documents had disappeared, including
some who suggested that they never existed. HuffPost said Carlson "concocted yet another
conspiracy
theory " to explain the disappearance of documents related to what they called his
"conspiracy theory" about Biden's son, Hunter.
Carlson devoted his entire show on Tuesday night to the Bobulinski interview, which provided
more specific allegations about the Biden family's business dealings in China following an Oct.
14
New York Post report on the ventures. Although Bobulinski provided legal documents, text
messages and recordings to back up his claims, the interview was largely ignored by other
mainstream media outlets.
Whether or not this is Donald Trump's last year as president, the near-certainty of new
episodes of reckless overreach by American foreign policymakers means that this is not the last
the country has seen of his America First policy.
Tuesday night, we heard at length and on camera from one of the Biden family's former
business partners. His name is Tony Bobulinski. He's a very successful businessman and a Navy
veteran.
Bobulinski spoke to "Tucker Carlson Tonight" for a full hour. He told us he met two
separate times with Joe Biden himself. Not just with Joe
Biden's son or his brother, but with Joe Biden -- the former vice president and the man now
running for president -- to discuss business deals with the communist government of China .
That's a very serious claim, and whatever your political views, it's hard to dismiss it when
Tony Bobulinski makes it because Bobulinsky is an unusually credible witness. He's not a
partisan, he's not seeking money, he's not seeking publicity. He did not want to come on our
show.
But when Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the Biden campaign accused Tony Bobulinski of
participating in a Russian disinformation effort, he felt he had no choice. That was a slander
against him and against his family. So Bobulinski came to us. He arrived with heaps of evidence
to bolster the story he was telling. He brought contemporaneous audio recordings, text
messages, e-mails, many financial documents.
By the end of the hour, it was very clear to us that Tony Bobulinski was telling the truth
and that Joe Biden was lying. We believe that any honest person who watched the entire hour
would come to the same conclusion.
Well, on Wednesday, a
Senate committee confirmed it . The Senate Homeland Security Committee reported that all of
Tony Bobulinski's documents are, in fact, real. They are authentic. They are not forgeries.
This is not Russian disinformation. It is real.
Bobulinski told a remarkable story. Joe Biden -- who, once again, could be president of the
United States next week, was planning business deals with America's most formidable global
opponent. And when he was caught doing it, Joe Biden lied. And then he went further. He
slandered an innocent man as a traitor to his own country. It is clear that Joe Biden did that.
That's not a partisan talking point uttered in bad faith on behalf of another presidential
campaign. It's true.
So the question is, what is Joe Biden's excuse for doing that? What is his version of this
story? Everyone has a version and we'd like to hear it, but we don't know what Joe Biden's
version of the story is, because no one in America's vast media landscape has pressed Joe Biden
to answer the question. Instead, reporters at all levels and their editors and their publishers
have openly collaborated with Joe Biden's political campaign. That is unprecedented. It has
never happened in American history.
Wednesday morning, the big papers completely ignored what Tony Bobulinski had to say. So did
the other television networks. Not a single word about Bobulinski appeared on CNN or anywhere
else. Newsweek decided to cover it, but came to the conclusion that the real story was about
QAnon somehow. This is Soviet-style suppression of information about a legitimate news story.
Days before an election, the ramifications of it are impossible to imagine. But we do know the
media cannot continue in the way that it has.
No one believes the media anymore and no one should. You should be offended by this, not
because the media are liberal, but because this is an attack on our democracy. You've heard
that phrase again and again, but this is what it looks like. In a self-governing country,
voters have a right -- an obligation -- to know who they're voting for. In this case, they have
the right to know the Democratic nominee for president was a willing partner in his family's
lucrative influence-peddling operation, an operation that went on for decades and stretched
from China and Ukraine all the way to Oman, Romania, Luxembourg and many other countries. This
is not speculation once again, and it's not a partisan attack. It's true, and Tony bobulinski
confirmed it.
Bobulinski met with Joe Biden at a hotel bar in Los Angeles in early May of 2017, and when
he did, Joe Biden's son introduced Bobulinski this way: "Dad. Here's the individual I told you
about that's helping us with the business that we're working on and the Chinese."
Now, written documents confirmed this is real. At one point, Joe Biden's son texted Tony
Bobulinski to say that Joe Biden, his father, was making key decisions about their business
deals with China.
CARLSON: When Hunter Biden said his chairman, he was talking about his dad.
BOBULINSKI: Correct, and what Hunter is referencing there is, he spoke with his father
and his father is giving an emphatic 'no' to the ask that I had, which was putting proper
governance in place around Oneida Holdings.
CARLSON: So, Joe Biden is vetoing your plan for putting stricter governance in the
company. I mean, and it's it's right here in the email.
BOBULINSKI: Yes, Tucker, I want to be very careful in front of the American people. That
is not me writing that. That is not me claiming that. That is Hunter Biden writing on his own
phone. Typing in that 'I spoke with my chairman,' referencing his father.
All this is spelled out in the clearest possible language in documents that Bobulinski
provided us, documents that subsequently federal authorities have authenticated as real.
On May 13, 2017, for example, Hunter Biden got an email explaining how his family would be
paid for their deal with the Chinese energy company. His father, Joe Biden, was getting
10%.
BOBULINSKI: In that email, there's a statement where they go through the equity, Jim Biden's
referenced as, you know, 10%. It doesn't say Biden, it says Jim. And then it has 10% for the
big guy held by H. I 1,000% sit here and know that the big guy is referencing Joe Biden. It's,
that's crystal clear to me because I lived it. I met with the former vice president in person
multiple times.
That was three years ago, and we still don't know where all that money went, because the
media haven't forced Joe Biden to tell us. But Tony, Bobulinski did add a telling detail. Joe
Biden's brother, Jim, saw his stake in the deal double from 10% to 20%. Was Jim Biden getting
his brother's share again? It might be worth finding out.
We also know that according to an email from a top Chinese official, this one written on
July 26, 2017, the Chinese proposed a $5 million dollar interest-free loan to the Biden family,
"based on their trust on [sic] BD [Biden] family." The e-mail continued, "Should this Chinese
company, CEFC, keep lending more to the family?" And indeed, CEFC was supposed to send another
$5 million dollars to the Bidens' business ventures. Apparently, that money never made it to
the business. Where did it go? A recent Senate report suggests it went to Hunter Biden
directly. And from there, who knows? Again, no one's asked.
Tony Bobulinski also told us he learned Hunter Biden became the personal attorney to the
chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, just as they were tendering 14% of a Russian state-owned energy
company. That was a deal valued at $9 billion dollars. It's pretty sleazy. It's pretty amazing,
actually, that this happened and no one noticed.
We're not going to spend the next six months leading you through a maze of complex financial
transactions. This isn't that complicated: Millions of dollars linked directly to the Communist
Party of China went to Joe Biden's family, and not because they're capable businessmen. Jim
Biden's one business success appears to have been running a nightclub in Delaware that
ultimately went under.
No, the Bidens were cut in on the world's most lucrative business deals, massive
infrastructure deals in countries around the world for one reason: Because Joe Biden was a
powerful government official willing to leverage his power on behalf of his family.
Now, if that's not a crime, it's very close to a crime and it's certainly something every
person voting should know about. The Bidens didn't do this once. They did it for decades. So
the question is, how did they get away with it for so long? Tony Bobulinski asked Jim Biden
that question directly. To his credit Jim Biden answered that question honestly.
BOBULINSKI: And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, 'How are you guys getting
away with this?' Like, 'Aren't you concerned?' And he looked at me and he laughed a little bit
and said, 'Plausible deniability.'
CARLSON: He said that out loud.
BOBULINSKI: Yes, he said it directly to me. One on one, in a cabana at the Peninsula
Hotel.
"Plausible deniability." In other words, "we lie." We get away with selling access to the
U.S. government, which we do not own, because we lie about what we're doing. And as we lie, we
try to make those lies plausible. That's why we call it "plausible deniability." That is the
answer that Joe Biden's brother gave when asked directly.
So the question is, what is Joe Biden's answer to that question? We wish we
knew.
ForFoxSake!!! 1 hour ago Everything that is happening right now is because Trump was
right about the swamp, the media, and the ruling class families who have been selling out
America for decades. ohhappyday657 1 hour ago Tucker is doing this country a great service. The
FBI doesn't seem to want to engage. Mr. Bobulinski is a patriot and we are lucky he came
forward. The Bidens need to be called out for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Joe should be
impeached for his time as VP. Thank you Tucker. resipsaloquitor ohhappyday657 29 minutes ago
You can smell the desperation on the Trump supporters. The lies, the distortions and the
grasping, pathetic search for the proverbial Hail Mary to salvage the quickly sinking ship. If
Mr. Bobulinski is the best you have the Democrats will 'trump' you with: 227,000 dead
Americans, close to 9 million more infected and an economy in tatters. The day of reckoning is
approaching and a dozen Bobulinskis won't change that. Trump and his unseemly administration
are doomed.
On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson did something he'd never done before: he dedicated his
entire show to a single interview. The person he interviewed was Tony Bobulinski, an
experienced international businessman who found himself working with Hunter Biden, James Biden,
and others on a deal between the Biden group and CEFC, a Chinese energy company with ties to
the communist government and the military. Bobulinski powerfully confirms that Joe Biden was
deeply involved in the transaction, which had its beginnings when Joe was still vice
president.
Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However,
the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.
Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski
interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story,
downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is,
naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath.
Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a
Democrat, to go public with his story.
If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:
Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance
level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's
nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.
After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to
Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed
to get their partnership up and running.
The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both
Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and,
with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level
of American government.
Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman
working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been
negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold
"10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."
At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of
the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got
Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being
smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.
Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went
public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every
email, and every text.
That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said
that
Hunter and James Biden brought nothing to the deal other than the Biden family name.
What China wanted was the Biden family name.
Joe Biden was involved in the business deal, so much so that he had veto power over
negotiations.
In 2017, Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice when the Biden side of SinoHawk was courting him
to step in and act as CEO.
Bobulinski also spoke at length with James Biden, Joe's brother.
When Bobulinski asked James how they could get away with this kind of deal, which seemed
to be falling into dangerous territory, given that Joe could run again for president, James
announced, "Plausible deniability."
The Biden group stiffed Bobulinski, leaving him out of pocket for all his expenses while
channeling CEFC's money into another entity that did not involve Bobulinski.
If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the
top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that
he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government,
starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen
shot from Memeorandum shows that
none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:
(As an aside, and separate from the Bobulinski interview, a former CIA operations office
believes it's entirely possible that Biden
was already doing China's bidding in 2012, when the Obama administration gave China free
rein in the South China Sea.)
In case the embedded videos do not play, you can find them here ,
here ,
here ,
and here
.
We've always known that Joe Biden is an odd bird. Just think of the lies, the egotistical
boasting, the offers to fight people, the skinny-dipping, and the way he fondles and sniffs
little girls. He is a genuinely creepy man.
It speaks volumes about Washington, D.C. and the Democrat party that Joe spent 47 years in
the swamp and rose to the second highest office in the land. What we've learned now, though,
irrefutably and without any Russian hokum, is that Joe Biden is also a profoundly corrupt man
who willingly sold out America and her allies to enrich himself and his sleazy, incompetent
family.
Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However,
the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.
Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski
interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story,
downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is,
naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath.
Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a
Democrat, to go public with his story.
If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:
Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance
level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's
nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.
After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to
Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed
to get their partnership up and running.
The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both
Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and,
with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level
of American government.
Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman
working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been
negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold
"10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."
At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of
the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got
Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being
smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.
Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went
public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every
email, and every text.
That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said
that
Hunter and James Biden brought nothing to the deal other than the Biden family name.
What China wanted was the Biden family name.
Joe Biden was involved in the business deal, so much so that he had veto power over
negotiations.
In 2017, Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice when the Biden side of SinoHawk was courting him
to step in and act as CEO.
Bobulinski also spoke at length with James Biden, Joe's brother.
When Bobulinski asked James how they could get away with this kind of deal, which seemed
to be falling into dangerous territory, given that Joe could run again for president, James
announced, "Plausible deniability."
The Biden group stiffed Bobulinski, leaving him out of pocket for all his expenses while
channeling CEFC's money into another entity that did not involve Bobulinski.
If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the
top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that
he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government,
starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen
shot from Memeorandum shows that
none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:
"... I hope you don't mind me opining that the story as written is most likely to be a complete fiction, designed to hide the real source of the fantasy story book that is the Steele dossier. The main mission here being to admit that the dossier was indeed a pack of lies but with the important corollary that J Steele did indeed do some sort of research to dig up the dirt on Trump. Heaven forbid that it ever was discovered that himself, Pablo Miller and Sergei Skripal made the whole thing up over a meal of Zizzi's garlic bread and risotto, washed down with white wine and a bottle of Vodka over at the Mill. ..."
After more than four years of Russiagate we finally learn (paywalled
original ) where the Steele dossier allegations about nefarious relations between Trump and Russia came from:
A Wall Street Journal investigation provides an answer: a 40-year-old Russian public-relations executive named Olga Galkina
fed notes to a friend and former schoolmate who worked for Mr. Steele. The Journal relied on interviews, law-enforcement records,
declassified documents and the identification of Ms. Galkina by a former top U.S. national security official.
In 2016, Ms. Galkina was working in Cyprus at an affiliate of XBT Holding SA, a web-services company best known for its
Webzilla internet hosting unit. XBT is owned by Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.
That summer, she received a request from an employee of Mr. Steele to help unearth potentially compromising information
on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump 's links to Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Galkina was
friends with the employee, Igor Danchenko, since their school days in Perm, a Russian provincial city near the Ural mountains.
Ms. Galkina often came drunk to work and eventually got fired by her company. She took revenge by alleging that the company
and its owner Gubarev were involved in the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee. A bunch of other false allegations
in the dossier were equally based on Ms. Galkina's fantasies.
So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian
alcoholics from Perm. "Gogolesque" does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites.
The tales in the dossier were real disinformation from Russians but not '
Russian disinformation ' of the
American Newspeak variant.
The FBI, and others involved, knew very early on that the Steele dossier was a bunch of lies. But the issue was kept in the
public eyes by continues leaks of additional nonsense. All this was to press Trump to take more and more anti-Russian measures
which he did with
unprecedented generosity . The accusations about a Trump-Russia connection were the 'Russia bad' narrative that pressed and
allowed Trump to continue the anti-Russian policies of the Obama/Biden administration.
A similar string of continuous policies from the Obama/Biden administration's 'Pivot to Asia' and throughout the four years
of Trump is the anti-China campaign.
We now hear a lot about Hunter and Joe Biden's
corrupt deals with Chinese entities. These accusations come with more evidence and are far more plausible than the stupid
Steele dossier claims. Their importance is again twofold. They will be used to press a potential President Joe Biden to act against
China but they will primarily be used to intensify a public anti-China narrative that creates public support for such policies.
I don't know how or at what level, but we are being played. A narrative is being aggressively rammed down our throats about
China in
exactly the same way it was being aggressively rammed down our throats about Russia four years ago;
two unabsorbed
nations
the US government has long had
plans to attack and undermine .
Russiagate was never really about Trump. It was never about his campaign staff meeting with Russians, it was never about a
pee tape, it was never about an investigation into any kind of hidden loyalties to the Kremlin. Russiagate was about
narrative managing the United States into a new cold war with Russia with
the ultimate target being its far more powerful ally China, and ensuring that Trump played along with that agenda.
...
If Biden gets in we can expect the same thing: a president who advances escalations against both Russia and China
while being accused of the other party of being soft on China. Both parties will have their foot on the gas toward brinkmanship
with a nuclear-armed nation, with no one's foot anywhere near the brakes.
""Gogolesque" does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites."
Not at all. The "elites" know what's going on; it's being done for their benefit, after all. It's the "normals" who are being
sheared of the little wool left on our backs. Just one more true grand larceny before the whole thing falls apart. And for this
we need a real enemy. From the great Antiwar.com:
It's like living in a "B" movie. Probably many of the same sorts of people behind it too. The lack of imagination and knowledge
in these propaganda narratives tells you a lot about the mediocrities behind them. In considering these US foreign policy excesses,
real and imagined, I keep thinking at some point reality is going to raise its ugly head and Washington will collapse in a puddle
of spite. I expect the next adminstration to be overwhelmed by its domestic problems, along with quite a few other countries.
I look at what is going on in Western societies today and I think of the movie Brazil.
I think this stuff will matter more if Trump wins than if Biden wins. (I'm thinking 3:2 odds in favor of Biden, by the way).
If Biden wins, Republicans will make a lot of noise, but that's about it. Without a huge majority of Congress, they can't do
even what little token effects Democrats had to "stop Trump". Then, whenever Harris takes over, she can just distance herself
from the whole thing.
If Trump wins, however, the flag humpers in the administration will have the ammunition they need in the fight over Russiagate.
Not to shut it down, but to take control of it for their own political ends, and perhaps take down someone famous in the media
and intimidate the rest - in a replay of the post-9/11 Bush era (not that it ever stopped). So you can thank Democrats for handing
them the setup to do all that, not to mention for nominating Biden, if that is the path we take.
More realistically, Trump still loses, but Dems might fail to get an effective majority in the Senate (something like a 51-49
majority might not be enough in practice, because the most conservative Democrats in the Senate vote Republican half the time.).
Again it makes no difference for foreign policy, but it could really change how the country responds to economic hardship, now
baked in due to the virus.
The MIC needs a Cold War to boost military expenditure. The bigger the boogeyman the more money will be spent the more profits
will be generated.
They don't want a hot war as all those profits are meaningless if you are reduced to ashes.
The last thing the MIC can afford is for peace and goodwill amongst nations to break out. There is absolutely no profit in
that.
Eisenhower warned against the rise of the MIC for this very reason. If war is profitable then to keep generating more profits
you need to keep on generating more wars.
Trump proposed to ally with Russia against China. MAGA clearly implies the US was, is weakening, one way out (classical) is
to ally (perhaps only lightly) with one of the other two strong powers. This was total anathema to part of the PTB, mostly represented
(officially) by Dems. An all-out attack on Trump thus took place (before he was elected, because all was known) as a stooge for
Russia, etc. Russia 3x, Russiagate, all of it clumsily made-up rubbish.
Surely now with Hunter's lap-top and the exposé of Biden-China ties (pay to play at the highest level, potentially billions,
not minor corruption chicken-sh*t..) it is possible to grasp that one faction of what some call the Deep State is more pro-China
i.e. the aspirations towards that type of society (I leave that aspect aside ..) and the opportunities for money extraction /
deals - see tech etc. / also sales (MIC, etc.) favor China. The noise about Chinese incursions (Tibet, sea.. etc.), Chinese human-rights
violations (Uighurs, etc.), and the OBOR initiative have always been somewhat glancing more pro-forma than anything else..
It was the 'Dem' faction of the duopoly, Obiman + Biden who 'did' Ukraine, an anti-Russian move (on the face of it. Perhaps
it was just an extraction scheme, Mafia style. Of course they had the keen involvement of Germany and support from France.)
I have boiled down complex issues to just one "narrative arc", a simplification if you will, I am aware there is much more
to it all
Question. There is a well-know board on which sit, amongst many others:
Mary T. Barra (CEO Gen. Mot.)
Carlos Ghosn (Renault etc.)
H. Kruger (BMW)
Elon Musk
Henry Paulson
Lloyd Blankfein
Laurence Fink (Blackrock)
M. L. Corbat (Citigroup)
Tim Cook
Michael Dell (Dell co.)
S. Nadella (Microsoft)
IMO, the current Imperial policy goals of the Outlaw US Empire will continue regardless who wins. IMO, the ultimate question is
if the Empire has enough power to continue on its current track. As most know, I see a drowning empire trying to disrupt the rapid
rise of two strategically bound nations and those allied with them. China just finished planning and publishing its 14th 5-year
plan. This Global Times editorial is supremely
confidant for good reason:
"The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee is leading the country forward. China has the capital and ability
to do so. In this turbulent world, the meeting has provided a practical and significant guide for our direction, goal and tactics.
Despite the many problems, China's political philosophy can constantly generate positive energy to solve the problems, instead
of letting the problems crush positive energy.
"At the moment, China is facing the most problems and challenges. However, the country is also the most confident now. Other
countries have posed many difficulties, but they provide reference and proof that we are doing better . As the world suffers
from shrinking demand and negative growth, we are demanding real and comprehensive growth to realize new achievements in six areas.
The country is self-driven ." [My Emphasis]
It's been announced that "The 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will hold a press conference Friday
to introduce the guiding principles of its fifth plenary session."
As for Russia's direction, that was very clearly mapped out by Putin and Lavrov's recent Valdai Club speeches and Q & A sessions
and other interviews over the past ten days or so. Compared to the drowning Outlaw US Empire, China and Russia combine to offer
the world two not so different examples that are clearly superior to Neoliberal Parasitism. And the longstanding Imperial edict
of the Outlaw US Empire saying no threat of a better example can be allowed to exist forms the basis for the confrontation. However,
it's no longer just China and Russia that provide such threats as a majority of the world's nations want to join Win-Win and scupper
Zero-sum. So the already joined contest between two differing ideological blocs will escalate until the drowning Outlaw US Empire
finds it no longer possess the power to dominate outside its borders, but will still have its domestic populace to exploit until
they too revolt.
The similarities are there, except that Trump's investigation had not one document of compromat even after 3 years, whilst Biden's
already has many from day 1.
Yes, the deepstate attacks Russia from the left, and China from the right, but this does not imply that members of the body
politic are not subservient to either side, ever.
Only that Trump was never a Russian stooge, nor did they ever hold compromising documents over him, whilst Biden seems the
Cleon of the modern age, that his business partners say he is. Is this compromat? Maybe, but at the very least this is graft.
And that should be enough to send him into the gutter.
This is a good report as is usually the case here at MoA. Yet, there is nothing really new in this at all other than the details
of how the Western empire goes about enforcing its will on the world.
Sense August 6, 1945 the Imperial policy has been "Global full spectrum domination." and to that end it was determined that Russia
and China were to be considered one enemy and must be attacked simultaneously.
In the 75 years sense that date when the Western empire declared the world belonged to it and it alone to rule the Western empire
has slaughtered innocent people across the globe tens of millions of them, additionally in the last 20 years alone the Western
empire has displaced over 37 million people, kicked them out of their homes destroyed their towns and communities. For 75 years
non stop slaughter of innocent people.
Western Liberal Democracy and indeed Western civilization itself is an utter and contemptible failure irredeemable in any form
which we might recognize as "democracy'
Why do media corporations put out remake after remake of popular movies? Is it because they lack imagination, or is it that
audiences prefer the familiar.
They use the same war propaganda time after time because the audience falls for it more easily if they've heard it before.
I agree with Michael, however, that we are in dire planetary straits at this point.
Apparently, our ruling overlords are putting in a Hail Mary plan to slow down the destruction of the ecosystem. I don't believe
that it is the virus that made them screech the brakes on the global economy back in March. They have a plan to reset and scale
back consumption.
We all knew it couldn't last forever, anyway, right?
I'm not so sure about the overall conclusions, instead I'm sidetracked by the attempt to whitewash Russiagate. I guess they
finally figured out they had to come up with some kind of lame excuse to brush it off.
"It wasn't me! It was some crazy drunk Russian woman from Perm! She was angry!"
Well that explains everything. They must have been so scared :D
Because that's what people do when they get fired isn't it? Instead of getting a new job (or drinking a bit more, or sliding
down the slippery slope of society) they make up and tell stories about politicians in other countries. Not to blackmail anyone,
oh no, only to try to tarnish the reputation of the old boss to get revenge. Stuff like this is why watching soap operas (including
"Friends") is bad for you :)
"We need a scapegoat but we don't have any good ones available right now, however someone we know has an aunt in Perm who
will do anything for money"
It still doesn't make sense but now instead of a problem that doesn't make sense they have a solution that doesn't make sense.
They probably threw a party to celebrate how smart they were.
"A narrative is being aggressively rammed down our throats about China": I usually respect Caitlin's work a lot but how does
this jive with the MSM and Techno-platforms desperate attempts to block all circulation of anything to do with the Biden corruption
scandals? Digging deeper into these issues is toxic not just for Biden, but for a significant segment of the neoliberal elite.
The economic elites need time to decouple their profits from China before any real head-to-head battle commences, Biden (or
Kamala) will bark a lot but bite much less given the probable wealth-vaporization of increased hostilities with China.
P.S. the number of COVID cases in Sweden is exploding, so to quote one of my favourite movie reviewers (The Critical Drinker)
can the Sweden trolls please "just go away now".
I don't argue popularity, but strength. Trump is a weakling, both as a person and as a president IMO.
US presidential system won't allow true leaders but puppets (or easily manipulated persons), it is all I'm saying. Do we need
more than last 4 years of Trump's reign as a proof?
Because the U.S. public is close to brain dead We can't detect obvious lies no matter how brazen.
Let's suppose I told you something was absolutely true and I literally started out by saying, 'Once upon a time there was an
evil stepmother ...'. Or I told you about about a villainous neighbor while literally playing a sad song on a violin.
I do not consider myself a genius, in fact I was a neocon but good God, I could just tell I was being lied to just by the pattern
of the stories. I didn't know what the truth was but I knew they were lying.
A doozy with FOX promoting genocide against Iran
FOX news does a story about the terrorist attack in France and in the very next segment without any commercial breaks they
interview a Congressman about Iran. Now they did not say Iran was responsible but clearly this was a puppet show to make just
that association. In addition to the standard blood libel, the Congressman talked about a tweet the Ayatollah made in 2014, so
it was not as if there even was any newsworthy item to discuss about Iran. It was just to frame them for something they did not
do.
On top of the 2001 Sino-Russian Friendship Treaty, both nations also signed an agreement in 2008 officially ending all territorial
disputes between the two countries. With no exceptions, the border between Russia and China is fixed.
In addition northeast China (or that area historically known as Manchuria) is now
a rustbelt area and is deindustrialising.
People especially young people are moving away from this part of the country and into the cities farther south to find more job
opportunities. According to
this Mercatornet.com
article , fertility rates in this part of Northeast Asia across all ethnic groups are the lowest in the world and this part
of China is heading for demographic collapse.
Probably the only people in China and Russia who still have fantasies about seizing one another's territories in Northeast
China and the Russian Far East are gameboys who spend too much time playing computer games or nattering with one another on their
blogsites and who would suffer cardiac arrest the moment they step away from the screen (or who would suffer cardiac arrest anyway
from playing games two or three days straight).
US economy and US life in general is wholly dependent on China. Face masks or pharmaceuticals, car parts or building materials,
it comes from China. No, we cannot resume making these things in US, we do not know how. When 3M was told to get busy and make
masks under Defence Procurement authority all they could do was refer to Chinese subsidiary. Clear enough it is the "subsidiary"
that has the whip hand. What do we have for them? Treasury bonds? Or we can start handing over real estate. Maybe if we give them
the West Coast they will supply us for a time.
One of the big stalls with the Foxconn-Racine plant has been there are no American engineers to hire. Just none. All Chinese
staff would be easier. Or Chinese lords supervising American coolies.
US basically does not trade with Russia. They have unloaded US paper securities. All we get from them is service as a bogeyman.
If we needed another bogey we could get that easy, make up some shit as always.
Mostly true but it's not because the US cant make these products it's because the shareholder class decided long ago
their portfolios would be better enhanced by cheaper labor costs outside the US.
And just as important, the US consumer prefers a "bargain price" and wants cheap goods more than a living wage, especially
those consumers who own some stocks (52% of Amerikkkans own at least some shares, usually in a 401k plan) and believe they too
are participating in the global wealth machine.
BTW, nearly as much stuff is made in Mexico and exported into the US as is made in China and products from both countries are
made by multinational corporations whose ownership consists largely Amerikkkan/western elites.
The problem isn't national-based, it is class based and international .
They are only trying to trick us into believing the problem is we are lazier than the Chinese.
The Chinese authorities have been prosecuting corrupt officials for many years. The prospect of certain USAi officials like
the Biden family carpetbaggers and their Chinese associates being prosecuted in public courts in China with no plea bargaining
and all those other niceties would be a delight for eyes and ears.
Be careful with those threats USAi, it could come back to haunt you.
I hope you don't mind me opining that the story as written is most likely to be a complete fiction, designed to hide the
real source of the fantasy story book that is the Steele dossier. The main mission here being to admit that the dossier was
indeed a pack of lies but with the important corollary that J Steele did indeed do some sort of research to dig up the dirt
on Trump. Heaven forbid that it ever was discovered that himself, Pablo Miller and Sergei Skripal made the whole thing up over
a meal of Zizzi's garlic bread and risotto, washed down with white wine and a bottle of Vodka over at the Mill.
I am with you Corkie. That is about the strength of it. The WSJ is BS from front page to last.
People who claim Trump is undermine the republic are wrong. The last nail in the coffin of
the republic was put by George Bush, We are now living in the empire.
The replacement of the republic with the "national security state" started with Truman,
reached local max in 1963 when a faction within CIA killed JFK and irrevocably became an
empire in 1991 with the disappearance of the USSR. And the global neoliberal empire ruled
from Washington that the USA tries to maintain as a world hegemon is a death sentence to
republic and democracy. So it is fair to say that formally republic (and democracy) in the
USA seized to exist after dissolution of the USSR, when the USA ruling elite became drunk
with the feeling of the only world superpower and neocons start to determine the USA foreign
policy. People just became hostages, forced to support and die in imperial wars, while
standard of living of lower 80% of population start gradually sliding, like always happens
with empires, and manufacturing (and jobs) stared to move oversees, mainly in China. The
decline started actually under Carter.
Truman initiated the transition of the republic into national security state by creating
CIA, NSA and FBI. Herbert Hoover was probably the first who noted that now "tail is wagging
the dog ": intelligence agencies were able to the control of Congress and executive branch
via dirt of politicians and other standard for the "deep state" tricks. To say nothing about
Allan Dulles, CIA and JFK assassination.
And later Obama managed to paraphrase Mr. Orwell 1984, "We always have to be at war with
Eastasia." Just 30 years later. Now you need to add to this pervasive wiretapping of all
communications due to the treat of terrorism.
The look how easily the deep state derailed Sanders candidacy. Nobody even managed to
scream, until it was too late. As Professor Sheldon Wolin put it we live under "inverted
totalitarianism ":
"One cannot point to any national institution[s] that can accurately be described as
democratic surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested
Congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of
all, the media."
Wolin showed us all the realities of and limits of the US form of government. It is still
a livable space and if you do not try to undermine the neoliberal social order they will
leave you alone. There not much forceful indoctrination that was a hallmark of the USSR. It's
still a better country, I can attest.
Also the USA "nomenklatura" is more agile, less fossilized in comparison with Brezhnev's
nomenkatura.
But "we are an empire now" as Karl rove told us. Even formally it is no longer republic as
elected President is more or less ceremonial figure, who does not control non-elected
bureaucrats of the executive branch. they (aka "deep state") control him.
Even in a sense of oligarchic republic ( the democracy for the top 1% or less ) the
democracy is under assault. The "Deep state" is effectively strangulated even this, very
limited form, that existed before 1991 (the year of dissolution of the USSR). As we can see
from Sanders case, or Supreme Court role in Bush II case. And Sanders was definitely a member
of the elite, not some random guy from nowhere. The same was true for Al Gore. But they stole
the election from him, plain and simple.
Wendy Brown moved Wolin ideas further suggesting that neoliberalism is the novel fusion of
economic with political power (one dollar one vote; voters turned into consumers; neoliberal
rationality) and that alone completely "poison democracy at its root" It think I already
wrote about those topics. My judgment here is highly suspect -- I never lived in Washington
and never studied history or political science professionally.
Let's hope for the best. Our great advantage is that we are old and are probably the only
generation that managed to live without the major war. Let's hope that we will be able to die
before WWIII
Still, I think Trump entered (not without influence of Russiagate; and those sleazy
intelligence crooks like Comey, Brennan and Mueller and their clan of "national security
parasites" be those scoundrels internally damned) a very dangerous path -- the path advocated
by neocons and MIC.
"Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with Russia. We should
definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars. I am also
concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the fundamental
principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to start
indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly
unconstitutional."
IMHO the current neo-McCarthysim campaign that was deployed to solve some internal
problems within the Democratic Party (rejection by electorate and subsequent political fiasco
of Hillary Clinton) is a very dangerous tool. You can't blame Trump victory on Russia. That's
simply stupid or disingenuous. Trump election is a sign of systemic crisis of neoliberalism
in the USA, somewhat similar to the crisis of Marxism the the USSR experienced before
dissolution. Rust Belt voters rejected Hillary as the establishment candidate who symbolized
the status quo (which they hate) and that was it.
In such crisis the elite is de-legitimized and often resort to dirty tricks to regain the
lost legitimacy. A war is one such trick. Neo-McCarthyism campaign is another. Of course,
Russia in far from being a saint and bear a part of responsibility for unleashing the civil
war in Donbass (and generally destabilizing Ukraine -- it is a curse to be a neighbor our of
such a large and powerful country; Canadians and Mexicans probably think the same
,
But what currently we see in major MSM looks to me like a classic witch hunt with the
implicit goal to whitewash humiliating for neoliberal Democrats (Clinton wing of the party)
defeat and blame it on the external force (Putin looks really like "Deus Ex Machina" for
democrats . <
While Trump run brilliant election campaign based on opposition to neoliberal status quo,
his elections slogans were completely fake. He completely folded three month after the
elections and now symbolizes "empty governance" as if somebody changed the man. During
election the New York billionaire structured his campaign around three topics which propelled
him to victory.
First, he seemed to comprehend America's status quo crisis -- the
disintegration of neoliberalism that had defined the country since Reagan. Large numbers of
voters understood immediately what he was saying, particularly since the crisis of working
class was largely ignored by the other candidates.
Second, he positioned himself as an "anti-neoliberal status quo" candidate. While two
neoliberal parties instinctively clung to time-tested positions and neoliberal groupthink,
shunning any changes. Trump sidestepped this rigid political thinking of both parties and
crafted a new mix of issues cutting across partisan lines. He embraced traditional GOP
positions such as reduced taxes, school choice, increased defense spending, and rejection of
the idea of human-induced climate change. But he also took positions contrary to Republican
orthodoxy -- Social security and Medicare protection, attacks on neoliberal globalization and
"free trade" regime, rejection of austerity economics . And he manifested contempt for an
important part of neoliberal ideology embraced by both parties -- neoliberal view of
immigration
Third, Trump's disdain for political niceties suggested to voters what he declared
political war on the country's neoliberal elite -- all those despicable neocon think tanks,
university professors, the neoliberal MSM, the managerial class, "national security
parasites", Hollywood, and Wall Street financial titans.
Like Don
Quixote he was alone warrior against neoliberalism and all-powerful adversaries. And
he wouldn't buckle when they fought back to protect their cherished neoliberal globalization
and privileged standing of multinationals as the real power behind the throne
What emerged from the campaign was a growing recognition that the country stands at a
fundamental crossroads -- whether to follow the elite vision of neoliberal globalism and
"anti-nationalism", with money, people, ideas, and cultures moving freely across increasingly
indistinct borders (Biden administration path); or to retreat to traditional nationalism
including fealty to Western cultural heritage and reject multiculturalism.
In other words the main battle lines in 2020 are really ideological.
But there a lot of problems with painting Trump as a fighter against
Clinton/Bush/Obama-style of neoliberal globalization. After inauguration we saw quite
different Trump. He's abandoned all of his "anti-neoliberal" election promises, particularly
in foreign policy and dealing with Wall Street titans, that helped propel him into office.
And he started openly flirting with prospects of a war with Iran. Probably to please his
Zionist sponsors, but also may be out of his complete and utter incompetence.
That means that now he is unable conduct a meaningful conversation with his voters.
Outside fanatics who will support him in any case, he definitely betrayed them. In this sense
he might have difficulties to preserve his base in 2020. Due to his foreign policy blunder
and Pompeo brass style of gangsterism in foreign policy some of his political capital among
independents shrunk. That same is true with his tax cut. This was a clear betrayal. Add to
this that he was pinned down by Mueller investigation until December 2017, when Strzok-gate
scandal broke and only in 2019 Mueller (and Rosenstein) lost credibility and became a joke.
Mueller investigation actually was a shroud gambit against him based on his own blunders.
But BLM and, especially, riots gave his a short in the arm. So everything is possible
now.
Also one clear achievement of Trump is that clearly and convincingly demonstrated how
corrupt and crooked are neoliberal MSM. As the result I even started watching some Fox news
(Tucker) recently ;-). If somebody predicted that a couple of years ago I would laugh in
his/her face.
A very good (IMHO) overview of the current situation can be found in London review of
books. See
Whether or not this is Donald Trump's last year as president, the near-certainty of new
episodes of reckless overreach by American foreign policymakers means that this is not the last
the country has seen of his America First policy.
October 28, 2020 Tucker Carlson's interview with Tony Bobulinski is must-see TV By
Andrea
Widburg
On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson did something he'd never done before: he dedicated his
entire show to a single interview. The person he interviewed was Tony Bobulinski, an
experienced international businessman who found himself working with Hunter Biden, James Biden,
and others on a deal between the Biden group and CEFC, a Chinese energy company with ties to
the communist government and the military. Bobulinski powerfully confirms that Joe Biden was
deeply involved in the transaction, which had its beginnings when Joe was still vice
president.
Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However,
the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.
Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski
interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story,
downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is,
naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath.
Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a
Democrat, to go public with his story.
If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:
Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance
level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's
nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.
After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to
Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed
to get their partnership up and running.
The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both
Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and,
with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level
of American government.
Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman
working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been
negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold
"10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."
At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of
the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got
Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being
smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.
Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went
public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every
email, and every text.
That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said
that
Hunter and James Biden brought nothing to the deal other than the Biden family name.
What China wanted was the Biden family name.
Joe Biden was involved in the business deal, so much so that he had veto power over
negotiations.
In 2017, Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice when the Biden side of SinoHawk was courting him
to step in and act as CEO.
Bobulinski also spoke at length with James Biden, Joe's brother.
When Bobulinski asked James how they could get away with this kind of deal, which seemed
to be falling into dangerous territory, given that Joe could run again for president, James
announced, "Plausible deniability."
The Biden group stiffed Bobulinski, leaving him out of pocket for all his expenses while
channeling CEFC's money into another entity that did not involve Bobulinski.
If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the
top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that
he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government,
starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen
shot from Memeorandum shows that
none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:
(As an aside, and separate from the Bobulinski interview, a former CIA operations office
believes it's entirely possible that Biden
was already doing China's bidding in 2012, when the Obama administration gave China free
rein in the South China Sea.)
In case the embedded videos do not play, you can find them here ,
here ,
here ,
and here
.
We've always known that Joe Biden is an odd bird. Just think of the lies, the egotistical
boasting, the offers to fight people, the skinny-dipping, and the way he fondles and sniffs
little girls. He is a genuinely creepy man.
It speaks volumes about Washington, D.C. and the Democrat party that Joe spent 47 years in
the swamp and rose to the second highest office in the land. What we've learned now, though,
irrefutably and without any Russian hokum, is that Joe Biden is also a profoundly corrupt man
who willingly sold out America and her allies to enrich himself and his sleazy, incompetent
family.
Fox News has not yet uploaded (and may never upload) the interview in its entirety. However,
the four videos below bring together almost everything from the interview.
Tucker opened by making the point that he was dedicating his show to the Bobulinski
interview because the rest of the American media are assiduously ignoring the story,
downplaying it, or claiming it's a Russian smear. The leader of the Russian smear approach is,
naturally, Rep. Adam Schiff, a man who has all the hallmarks of a conscienceless psychopath.
Ironically, it was Schiff's smear about Hunter Biden's hard drive that led Bobulinski, a
Democrat, to go public with his story.
If you can't watch the interview, here's a brief overview:
Bobulinksi is a former naval officer with a Q clearance. That's an extremely high clearance
level for people working in the Department of Energy -- and Bobulinski worked in the Navy's
nuclear program. He comes from a military family and is very proud of that legacy.
After leaving the Navy, Bobulinski became an international businessman. His expertise led to
Hunter Biden and his people wooing Bobulinski to give them the business expertise they needed
to get their partnership up and running.
The partnership, SinoHawk, was intended to bring together CEFC and the Biden family. Both
Hunter and James Biden, after all, brought nothing to the table other than their last name and,
with it, the promise that China would have access to political influence at the highest level
of American government.
Bobulinski's name recently became public knowledge when James Gilliar, another businessman
working on SinoHawk, sent an email to Tony Bobulinski, setting out the terms Gilliar had been
negotiating with CEFC. What caught everyone's interest was the statement that Hunter would hold
"10[%] for the Big Guy." Bobulinski confirmed that Joe Biden was the "Big Guy."
At this point, Schiff, the media, and Joe Biden, none of whom ever denied the legitimacy of
the email, claimed that the whole thing was a Russian smear. This unfounded accusation got
Bobulinski's dander up. As a naval officer from a military family and a true patriot, being
smeared as a Russian agent was beyond the pale.
Bobulinski demanded that Schiff retract the insult, and when Schiff failed to do so, he went
public and did a full document dump. Bobulinski had saved everything -- every document, every
email, and every text.
That's the quick background to the interview with Carlson, during which Bobulinski said
that
Hunter and James Biden brought nothing to the deal other than the Biden family name.
What China wanted was the Biden family name.
Joe Biden was involved in the business deal, so much so that he had veto power over
negotiations.
In 2017, Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice when the Biden side of SinoHawk was courting him
to step in and act as CEO.
Bobulinski also spoke at length with James Biden, Joe's brother.
When Bobulinski asked James how they could get away with this kind of deal, which seemed
to be falling into dangerous territory, given that Joe could run again for president, James
announced, "Plausible deniability."
The Biden group stiffed Bobulinski, leaving him out of pocket for all his expenses while
channeling CEFC's money into another entity that did not involve Bobulinski.
If we had a decent media establishment, this story would be on every front page and at the
top of every news hour. Instead, Bobulinski is trying desperately to get Americans to know that
he is not a Russian agent and that Joe Biden was in bed with the communist Chinese government,
starting when he was vice president and continuing after he left the White House. This screen
shot from Memeorandum shows that
none of the legacy media outlets is touching the story:
A collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family mysteriously vanished
from an envelope sent to Fox News host Tucker Carlson , the host said on
Wednesday night.
Carlson's team allegedly received the documents from a source on Monday. At the time,
Carlson was on the West Coast filming an interview with Tony Bobulinski, the former business
partner of Hunter Biden and James Biden. Carlson requested the documents to be sent to the West
Coast.
According to Carlson, the producer shipped the documents overnight to California using a
large national package carrier. He didn't name the company, saying only that it's a "brand name
company."
"The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from our
shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing," Carlson said.
"The documents had disappeared."
The company took the incident seriously and immediately began a search, Carlson said. The
company traced the package from when it was dropped off in New York to the moment when an
employee at a sorting facility reported that the package was opened and empty.
" The company's security team interviewed every employee who touched the envelope we sent.
They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it. They went through the office in New
York where our producers dropped the package off. They combed the entire cavernous sorting
facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look
for," Carlson said.
"They far and beyond, but they found nothing."
"Those documents have vanished," he added.
"As of tonight, the company has no idea and no working theory even about what happened to
this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign
just six days from now."
Executives at the shipping company were "baffled" and "deeply bothered" by the incident,
Carlson said.
Carlson's interview with Bobulinski aired on Tuesday night. In the interview, Bobulinski
opined that Joe Biden
and the Biden family are compromised by China due to the business dealings of Hunter Biden and
James Biden. Joe Biden has not publicly responded to Bobulinski's allegations, but during a
presidential debate on Oct. 22 said he had "not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in
my life."
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Bobulinski provided more than 1,700 pages of emails and more than 600 screenshots of text
messages to Senate investigators and handed over to the FBI the smartphones he used during his
business dealings with the Bidens. The documents detailed a failed joint venture between a
billionaire tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a company owned by Hunter Biden,
James Biden, Bobulinski and two other partners.
While the corporate documents don't mention Biden by name, emails sent between the partners
suggest that either James Biden or Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake for the former vice
president. In the email, the stake is assigned to "the big guy," who Bobulinski says is Joe
Biden.
_arrow NoDebt , 3 minutes ago
I heard Tucker talk about this earlier tonight and realized we are FULLY controlled now.
Whatever the **** is going on, whether this is true or not doesn't matter. We are just
unwitting participants in some kind of TV reality show now. Everything is meaningless.
lwilland1012 , 5 minutes ago
Please tell me he was smart enough to make copies...
CatInTheHat , 1 minute ago
Ok.
What was IN the documents and from whom?
This is an inside job. Probably a never Trumper at Fox. There are a few.
quanttech , 3 minutes ago
If Trump loses, Fox will go full Dem. Trump will start TrumpTV, and Tucker will need a
job....
btw, Tucker should get the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping us out of Iran for the last 3.5
years.
Nona Yobiznes , 4 minutes ago
This story doesn't make sense. You sent confidential, highly sensitive documents via post?
Because Tucker was on the west coast? You couldn't scan them in? Were they originals, and are
there copies? This doesn't smell right.
icolbowca , 6 minutes ago
Takes a special kind of moron to send something like that via mail...
"... Biden's campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails, suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden. ..."
Delivery giant UPS
confirmed Thursday it found a lost trove of documents that Fox News' Tucker Carlson said would
provide revelations in the ever-growing scandal involving Joe Biden 's son Hunter and his overseas
business dealings.
UPS Senior Public Relations Manager Matthew O'Connor told Business Insider on Thursday
afternoon that the documents are located and are being sent to Carlson.
"After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging
for its return," he said in a statement.
"UPS will always focus first on our customers, and will never stop working to solve issues
and make things right. We work hard to ensure every package is delivered, including essential
goods, precious family belongings and critical healthcare."
It came after Glenn Zaccara, UPS's corporate media relations director, confirmed Carlson
used the company to ship the materials before they were lost.
"The package was reported with missing contents as it moved within our network," Zaccara
said before they were located. "UPS is conducting an urgent investigation."
During his Wednesday night broadcast, Carlson said that a UPS employee notified them that
their package "was open and empty apparently, it had been opened."
"The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from
our shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing," Carlson
also remarked. "The documents had disappeared."
On Tuesday night, Carlson interviewed former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who
claimed that the former Democratic vice president could be compromised by the Chinese Communist
Party due to Hunter and brother James Biden's business dealings in the country.
Joe Biden has not responded to Bobulinski's allegations. Last week during his debate with
President Donald Trump, he said he had "not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my
life."
Biden's campaign earlier this month said Biden never had a meeting with an executive at a
shady Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was the vice president and his son sat
on the board of the firm. A report from the New York Post, citing alleged Hunter Biden emails,
suggested Hunter Biden had arranged a meeting between him, the executive, and Joe Biden.
It's now possible that a special counsel will investigate Joe Biden should he win the
presidency.
"You know, I am not a big fan of special counsels, but if Joe Biden wins the presidency, I
don't see how you avoid one," Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.)
said . "Otherwise, this is going to be, you know, tucked away, and we will never know
what happened. All this evidence is going to be buried."
UPS did not provide further details about the apparent mishap.
"... Hunter Biden is the modern equivalent of the pre-Reformation papacy selling indulgences. Cash in exchange for unfettered passage into the promised land ..."
"Former Biden insider Tony Bobulinski allegedly has a recording of Biden family operatives
begging him to stay quiet , or he will "bury" the reputations of everyone involved in Hunter's
overseas dealings.
According to The Federalist 's Sean Davis, Bobulinski will play the tape on Fox News'
"Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Tuesday , when Carlson will devote his show 'entirely' to an
interview with the Biden whistleblower."
"According to a source familiar with the planning, Bobulinski will play recordings of Biden
family operatives begging him to stay quiet and claiming Bobulinski's revelations will "bury"
the reputations of everyone involved in Hunter's overseas deals."
As The Federalist notes:
The Federalist confirmed with sources familiar with the plans that Bobulinski, a retired
Navy lieutenant and Biden associate, will be airing tapes of Biden operatives begging
Bobulinski to remain quiet as former Vice President Joe Biden nears the finish line to the
White House next week.
Bobulinski
flipped on the Bidens following a Senate report which revealed that they received a $5
million interest-free loan from a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company .
According to the former Biden insider, he was introduced to Joe Biden by Hunter, and they
had an hour-long meeting where they discussed the Biden's business plans with the Chinese, with
which he says Joe was "plainly familiar at least at a high level." " Zerohedge
--------------
First of all, Bobulinski is NOT a "retired Navy lieutenant." He is a former Navy
Lieutenant.
Well, folks, it's up to you to watch TC's show tonight if you want to learn about this.
Tucker's show is the most watched news show in the history of cable television, so the pain
should not be too great, pl
I don't watch cable TV so I'll have to depend on the objectivity of observers. I'll be
curious who / what is a "family operative"? are they traceable like a military
chain-of-command?
in related news, we can get a fix on the play between private / public behaviors & the
pace of Justice winding.
Tucker Carlson's show is my favorite news/commentary show. I try not to miss it. Because
of the fact that he seems to try hard to verify his sources--and the people he interviews, I
trust him. He also tries to provide guests from the left in an attempt to be fair.
He's definitely not a Hannity, who is the one who turns many off of FOX (though Hannity
comes right after Tucker).
Hunter Biden is the modern equivalent of the pre-Reformation papacy selling
indulgences. Cash in exchange for unfettered passage into the promised land .
Thank goodness the Federal Judge has allowed the lawsuit by the private citizen and
writer, based on the 1990s allegation, to procede without government interference. I'm sure
nobody will do that to democrats in the future. Meanwhile in the Flynn case the DOJ confirms
that the govenment documents and discovery exhibits are ture and correct. I'm sure Judge
Sullivan will procede expeditiously with granting the unopposed motion to dismiss that
case.
This story interests me because I believe he is the first to leave the sinking ship but
not the last.
There would be no reason for this if he thought Joe would win and the investigation would be
snuffed out.
If Trump wins there will most likely be a new version of "Let's Make A Deal" being aired on
the nightly news.
I am down to one package of popcorn. I need to restock.
Actually, indulgences were more akin to BitCoins. Especially after 1567, when His Holiness
the Pope finally officially banned them... but they had been still produced and sold in large
quantities. In France only Richeliue put a stop to this con.
Serve me my plate a Crow. Maybe.
He is saying now that he is 2nd generation military and that they pissed him off claiming he
was a Russian asset.
That is plausible.
Maybe it is both?
Regardless it seems he has a great deal of proof.
I was convinced during the interview. Bobulinsky seemed pretty convincing in his concern
for his own reputation, having been associated with the Biden "Mafia" in the first place.
It was clear during the interview that he had provided Tucker verification for his
claims.
I am more concerned that this revelation comes too late and that many, many people have
voted early. He referenced some hearings that will be held in Congress. I doubt that will
affect the election, given the slow pace of anything getting done in Congress. I voted early,
but I am not personally concerned because I did NOT vote for Biden; however, I am concerned
that those who voted early for Biden could not now change their votes.
SO, if I understand the situation correctly, Bobulinski was essentially sought after, used
and then screwed by the Bidens, which seems risky on the part of the clan. But I guess if Joe
wins the election, they will have gotten away with it as I can't imagine, in spite of any
damning evidence, the Bidens will suffer the same punishing rectal examination-like scrutiny
and vilification the Trump family's been subjected to.
Col Lang,
Hoping you write about your assessment of B and what he had to say.
I found him to be generally credible. All of his motives for singing largely make sense to
me. I think he's a patriot. Some good supporting evidence. He's sharp. I liked him. He's the
kind of guy I'd enjoy working with.
I don't know anything about the realm of international deal making and finance. I'm
wondering how a Navy O3 works his way to enjoying yachts in Monaco while making $millions. Is
he an Annapolis guy? Tight with the right classmates? Not a lot to be found on him via
Google.
He was no longer in the navy when he was messing around with the Biden familia. He was
probably in the Navy three or four years. He ought to lay off on that. I'll think it over
tonight.
Once Wray's FBI gets done with the Rusty Wallace Noose Case they'll have time to deep dive
the laptop he's had for almost a year.
Col.,
Bobulinski seemed awful polished during that interview. Almost too good to be true. Hunter
being a druggy and Burisma payments being real certainly lend an air to credibility.
Turns out Patrick Ho Hunters partner in CEFC had a FISA warrant on him when he was nabbed
in New York awhile back. His first call was to Hunter to seek legal advice and Hunter
represented him. So them scumbags in the FBI have been sitting on this for awhile and will
use it on Joe (if elected) when needed. Must be modus operandi at the FBI in gathering dirt
on all politicians via FISA's, Hoover is still there.
As with all of us Bobulinski is not lily white but is making an effort to clean his act and
those around him. Lily White always comes in degrees. Not much in the NY Times, Wash Post or
WSJ this morning but the WSJ deserves a little credit with McBurn's editorial.
Bobulinski obviously comes from a military family thus his harping on his Navy creds. Guess
when your in that much sunshine you fall back strongly on anything available.
I don't doubt his credibility and it's good that he at least got on Tucker Carlson to
provide some much needed answers, but he's not a known quantity and I have hard time
imagining his revelations will change minds.
I think the FBI sandbagging the whole affair is what holds back this story getting the
attention it deserves from the public. The president I'm sorry to say has been badly served
by Wray, Haspel, and company. I think he should have replaced them months ago and waiting
until reelection to do it may have been a mistake.
Tuesday night, we heard at length and on camera from one of the Biden family's former
business partners. His name is Tony Bobulinski. He's a very successful businessman and a Navy
veteran.
Bobulinski spoke to "Tucker Carlson Tonight" for a full hour. He told us he met two separate
times with Joe
Biden himself. Not just with Joe Biden's son or his brother, but with Joe Biden -- the
former vice president and the man now running for president -- to discuss business deals with
the communist government of China .
That's a very serious claim, and whatever your political views, it's hard to dismiss it when
Tony Bobulinski makes it because Bobulinsky is an unusually credible witness. He's not a
partisan, he's not seeking money, he's not seeking publicity. He did not want to come on our
show.
But when Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the Biden campaign accused Tony Bobulinski of
participating in a Russian disinformation effort, he felt he had no choice. That was a slander
against him and against his family. So Bobulinski came to us. He arrived with heaps of evidence
to bolster the story he was telling. He brought contemporaneous audio recordings, text
messages, e-mails, many financial documents.
By the end of the hour, it was very clear to us that Tony Bobulinski was telling the truth
and that Joe Biden was lying. We believe that any honest person who watched the entire hour
would come to the same conclusion.
Well, on Wednesday, a
Senate committee confirmed it . The Senate Homeland Security Committee reported that all of
Tony Bobulinski's documents are, in fact, real. They are authentic. They are not forgeries.
This is not Russian disinformation. It is real.
Bobulinski told a remarkable story. Joe Biden -- who, once again, could be president of the
United States next week, was planning business deals with America's most formidable global
opponent. And when he was caught doing it, Joe Biden lied. And then he went further. He
slandered an innocent man as a traitor to his own country. It is clear that Joe Biden did that.
That's not a partisan talking point uttered in bad faith on behalf of another presidential
campaign. It's true.
So the question is, what is Joe Biden's excuse for doing that? What is his version of this
story? Everyone has a version and we'd like to hear it, but we don't know what Joe Biden's
version of the story is, because no one in America's vast media landscape has pressed Joe Biden
to answer the question. Instead, reporters at all levels and their editors and their publishers
have openly collaborated with Joe Biden's political campaign. That is unprecedented. It has
never happened in American history.
Wednesday morning, the big papers completely ignored what Tony Bobulinski had to say. So did
the other television networks. Not a single word about Bobulinski appeared on CNN or anywhere
else. Newsweek decided to cover it, but came to the conclusion that the real story was about
QAnon somehow. This is Soviet-style suppression of information about a legitimate news story.
Days before an election, the ramifications of it are impossible to imagine. But we do know the
media cannot continue in the way that it has.
No one believes the media anymore and no one should. You should be offended by this, not
because the media are liberal, but because this is an attack on our democracy. You've heard
that phrase again and again, but this is what it looks like. In a self-governing country,
voters have a right -- an obligation -- to know who they're voting for. In this case, they have
the right to know the Democratic nominee for president was a willing partner in his family's
lucrative influence-peddling operation, an operation that went on for decades and stretched
from China and Ukraine all the way to Oman, Romania, Luxembourg and many other countries. This
is not speculation once again, and it's not a partisan attack. It's true, and Tony bobulinski
confirmed it.
Bobulinski met with Joe Biden at a hotel bar in Los Angeles in early May of 2017, and when
he did, Joe Biden's son introduced Bobulinski this way: "Dad. Here's the individual I told you
about that's helping us with the business that we're working on and the Chinese."
Now, written documents confirmed this is real. At one point, Joe Biden's son texted Tony
Bobulinski to say that Joe Biden, his father, was making key decisions about their business
deals with China.
CARLSON: When Hunter Biden said his chairman, he was talking about his dad.
BOBULINSKI: Correct, and what Hunter is referencing there is, he spoke with his father
and his father is giving an emphatic 'no' to the ask that I had, which was putting proper
governance in place around Oneida Holdings.
CARLSON: So, Joe Biden is vetoing your plan for putting stricter governance in the
company. I mean, and it's it's right here in the email.
BOBULINSKI: Yes, Tucker, I want to be very careful in front of the American people. That
is not me writing that. That is not me claiming that. That is Hunter Biden writing on his own
phone. Typing in that 'I spoke with my chairman,' referencing his father.
All this is spelled out in the clearest possible language in documents that Bobulinski
provided us, documents that subsequently federal authorities have authenticated as real.
On May 13, 2017, for example, Hunter Biden got an email explaining how his family would be
paid for their deal with the Chinese energy company. His father, Joe Biden, was getting
10%.
BOBULINSKI: In that email, there's a statement where they go through the equity, Jim Biden's
referenced as, you know, 10%. It doesn't say Biden, it says Jim. And then it has 10% for the
big guy held by H. I 1,000% sit here and know that the big guy is referencing Joe Biden. It's,
that's crystal clear to me because I lived it. I met with the former vice president in person
multiple times.
That was three years ago, and we still don't know where all that money went, because the
media haven't forced Joe Biden to tell us. But Tony, Bobulinski did add a telling detail. Joe
Biden's brother, Jim, saw his stake in the deal double from 10% to 20%. Was Jim Biden getting
his brother's share again? It might be worth finding out.
We also know that according to an email from a top Chinese official, this one written on
July 26, 2017, the Chinese proposed a $5 million dollar interest-free loan to the Biden family,
"based on their trust on [sic] BD [Biden] family." The e-mail continued, "Should this Chinese
company, CEFC, keep lending more to the family?" And indeed, CEFC was supposed to send another
$5 million dollars to the Bidens' business ventures. Apparently, that money never made it to
the business. Where did it go? A recent Senate report suggests it went to Hunter Biden
directly. And from there, who knows? Again, no one's asked.
Tony Bobulinski also told us he learned Hunter Biden became the personal attorney to the
chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, just as they were tendering 14% of a Russian state-owned energy
company. That was a deal valued at $9 billion dollars. It's pretty sleazy. It's pretty amazing,
actually, that this happened and no one noticed.
We're not going to spend the next six months leading you through a maze of complex financial
transactions. This isn't that complicated: Millions of dollars linked directly to the Communist
Party of China went to Joe Biden's family, and not because they're capable businessmen. Jim
Biden's one business success appears to have been running a nightclub in Delaware that
ultimately went under.
No, the Bidens were cut in on the world's most lucrative business deals, massive
infrastructure deals in countries around the world for one reason: Because Joe Biden was a
powerful government official willing to leverage his power on behalf of his family.
Now, if that's not a crime, it's very close to a crime and it's certainly something every
person voting should know about. The Bidens didn't do this once. They did it for decades. So
the question is, how did they get away with it for so long? Tony Bobulinski asked Jim Biden
that question directly. To his credit Jim Biden answered that question honestly.
BOBULINSKI: And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, 'How are you guys getting
away with this?' Like, 'Aren't you concerned?' And he looked at me and he laughed a little bit
and said, 'Plausible deniability.'
CARLSON: He said that out loud.
BOBULINSKI: Yes, he said it directly to me. One on one, in a cabana at the Peninsula
Hotel.
"Plausible deniability." In other words, "we lie." We get away with selling access to the
U.S. government, which we do not own, because we lie about what we're doing. And as we lie, we
try to make those lies plausible. That's why we call it "plausible deniability." That is the
answer that Joe Biden's brother gave when asked directly.
So the question is, what is Joe Biden's answer to that question? We wish we
knew.
ForFoxSake!!! 1 hour ago Everything that is happening right now is because Trump was
right about the swamp, the media, and the ruling class families who have been selling out
America for decades. ohhappyday657 1 hour ago Tucker is doing this country a great service. The
FBI doesn't seem to want to engage. Mr. Bobulinski is a patriot and we are lucky he came
forward. The Bidens need to be called out for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Joe should be
impeached for his time as VP. Thank you Tucker. resipsaloquitor ohhappyday657 29 minutes ago
You can smell the desperation on the Trump supporters. The lies, the distortions and the
grasping, pathetic search for the proverbial Hail Mary to salvage the quickly sinking ship. If
Mr. Bobulinski is the best you have the Democrats will 'trump' you with: 227,000 dead
Americans, close to 9 million more infected and an economy in tatters. The day of reckoning is
approaching and a dozen Bobulinskis won't change that. Trump and his unseemly administration
are doomed.
" ... the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he said was the partnership between the
CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and the two Biden family members.
"I remember saying, 'How are you guys getting away with this?' 'Aren't you concerned?'" he
told Carlson.
He claims that Jim Biden chuckled.
"'Plausible Deniability,' he said it directly to me in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel," he
said.
In the interview, he outlines how an alleged meeting with Joe Biden took place on May 2,
2017.
Fox News first reported text messages that indicated such a meeting. Bobulinski said that
it was the Bidens, not him, who had pushed the meeting.
"They were sort of wining and dining me and presenting the strength of the Biden family to
get me engaged and to take on the CEO role to develop SinoHawk in the U.S. and around the world
in partnership with CEFC," he said.
He went at length into how Joe Biden arrived for a Milken conference, partly held at the
Beverly Hilton Hotel, and how he was introduced by Jim and Hunter Biden to the former vice
president.
"I didn't request to meet with Joe" Biden, he said. "They requested that I meet with Joe
[Biden ]. They were putting their entire family legacy on the line. They knew exactly what they
were doing."" FN
-----------
Bobulinski is a successful international business hustler. I know the type well. The Biden
familia wanted him in this China deal for the purpose of having him hold the reins of this
enterprise even as they looted it for the purpose of quickly enriching the fam.
A TV commentator remarked last night after watching the interview that this defection from
the Biden camp is reflective of an old business truth which can be stated as "don't screw your
partner if he has enough material to sink you."
I am unimpressed with selfless patriotism as Bobu's most basic motivation in sticking it to
Joe, Jimmy and Hunter Biden. A sense of betrayal in a business deal wrecked by the Bidens'
overwhelming greed and their desire to consolidate family riches as fast as they could is a
more plausible. motivation.
This does not mean that Bobu is not telling the truth. His collection of e-mails addressed
to him and incriminating memoranda is most impressive.
IMO, what has been revealed is a truth with regard to the Biden crime family. They are
nouveau riche grifters who will have a much grander stage for their efforts if Joe is elected
as a presidential figurehead. pl
Did Hunter Biden's young business partners bring anything of value to the table, or were
they just name brand ride-alongs too. Archer, Conley, Heinz, etc. Biden was running a very
leaky ship, with such a large but relatively unsophisticated and compromised entourage.
I am, and I'm sure this is not an original observation, because it's as the Col notes,
singularly unimpressed with the entire lot of them. Bobo, Jim B, Hunter B, Duncan Hunter, Joe
B, Bulger's nephew, I've seen more gravitas among bookies, juicemen, and fences, that I grew
up with in NYC. And I mean that. Not a throw away line. And THESE guys will run the show? And
Harris I find singularity creep, artificial, and somehow just down right inappropriate. I
would not select any of them to run a post office.
I got a little tired of the man making so much of his "service to his country." Not that
it isn't worth quite a lot and I respect him for it, but four years... I served six years,
and what I dwell on is how much I loved serving in submarines and the enormous degree that it
contributed to building my character. The degree to which my service benefited my country was
trivial. It benefited me enormously.
Like you, I think he is telling the truth in that interview.
After 4 plus years of the intelligence agencies and MSM looking under every conceivable
rock, you think that there is anything left to find about Trump? You are delusional and
headed for a massive case of buyer's remorse if swiss-cheese-for-brains gets in.
Thank you for asking that question. I was about to ask it myself. My understanding is that
Trump's children are working for him as he is President for little pay. They may be still
handling Trump business accounts; but it seems they work for his White House office and its
many functions--and for his campaign.
I still believe in the American middle class, the people who make American run. These are
the people at his rallies, wearing MAGA hats, and showing up in overflow numbers.
They are not people who are easily swayed by "false prophets."
Trump keeps pointing out how well our economy was doing UNTIL China sent the virus (and, I
DO believe they sent it). He promises the return of that economy.
That is why Biden now is totally into frightening people about COVID and pushing masks and
social distancing. He is afraid that Trump will indeed be able to bring back a good economy.
He doesn't know how to do that, as is clear by this desperate attempt to cover up his shady
dealings with first Ukraine and now China.
Where I live, a large percentage of our population are clearly very tired and bored with
the COVID scare. We still do as our DEMOCRAT Governor, who hails from the People's Republic
of Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Colorado, where Socialist, Marxist, and Ultra
Feminists rule in the Arts and Humanities. We call Boulder "forty square miles surrounded by
reality." Unfortunately, the Boulder/Denver triangle contains the largest voting block. We
used to be able to count on Colorado Springs, but the universities in that area and into
Pueblo have also been taken over by the leftists.
What is also clear is that Biden's real hope was to build his own family dynasty by using
the Presidency as nothing but a cash cow for him and his inept and useless son.
I don't care really what Bobulinski's motives were for coming forward with his documents
and emails, I'm just thankful that he did. I hope it wasn't too late. And I'm thankful he
chose Tucker Carlson's show as the place to do it.
Joe Biden doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb for someone with a JD. To wit: why didn't
he just offer that he's given his son some fatherly advice about business now and then?
Instead, he's repeatedly and categorically denied discussing ANYTHING with his son about his
business dealings, which we now know is provably false. I'm no lawyer but I'd think Joe's
repeated lying infers a tacit admission of guilt. Deniability doesn't seem plausible in this
case.
I'd even go so far as to infer that Joe's gotten away with business dealings of this
sordid sort for SO long that he's become sloppy (e.g., the braggadocio ON VIDEO of
withholding US aid to Ukraine until its solicitor investigating Burisma, which was paying his
son $50-80 thousand per month, was fired.) He obviously has the [justifiable] expectation of
never being held accountable.
Did anyone else clock his comment that he wasn't being paid, not even expenses, for all
these trips. He said he was funding them himself, presumably until the $5M arrived.
Then it didn't but the Bidens got their $5M. The Bidens arrogance just piles onto their
stupidity. Did they really think that kind of operator would take it lying down?
With one foot in Colorado Springs, I'd like to suggest that you may be overstating the
weight of the local colleges in ColSpr's growing Democrat numbers. El Paso county election
results have remained fairly reliably Republican, if not by as sure a margin as once.
Population growth may be more significant mover, the high rate of in-migration to
Colorado, esp Denver. The seven county Greater Denver-Boulder area, with a population of 3.3
million, grew 1.1% last year, and has grown as fast or faster in the previous ten years. In
number, the Denver population has grown faster than anywhere else in the state. In the past
ten years the population of Denver Co alone increased 21%.
Colorado Springs/ El Paso Co. has grown quickly in the same period, but not as much as
Denver. The current population of 720,000 increased 16% from ten years ago. A good part of
this growth has been driven by Denver's growth and skyrocketing housing prices. A house costs
much less in El Paso County.
Too many Denverites are choosing to commute an hour+ from ColSpr to Denver, as seen by the
explosion of new housing at the north end of El Paso County and the now-daily traffic crawl
at rush hour on I-25 between ColSpr and Denver. Just try to get up to the speed limit on that
stretch. The state is adding extra lanes as fast as it can. It appears that Denver attitudes
move in with many of these commuters. Is ColSpr fated to become a bedroom community?
Finally, Colorado appears to be one of the places attracting migrants from the blighted,
overbuilt, overdetermined coasts. Again, newcomers arrive with attitudes from the places they
left.
I am hoping that the open skies and spaces, the particular self-reliance of rural
Colorado, and the more democratic openness to citizen initiatives via the ballot will mellow
their views.
This level of population growth and shifting politics, lacking a concommitant growth in
productivity of local biz and industry, is not viewed with equanimity by older inhabitants of
ColSpr. IMO It would be best if Colorado remained independent, with reasonable political
compromise and collaboration between parties, as before it has been.
Is a comparable dynamic underway north of Denver in your direction?
In reference to Trump's reputation as a grifter, I offer the following sample:
- He paid $2 million in fines and had to close down the Trump Foundation for using it as a
personal piggy bank.
- The Eric Trump Foundation was forced to close for similar grift. It was funneling money
into Trump family businesses and accounts. It's wasn't like the family directly stole money
from kids with cancer, but it ended up doing just that.
- His friend Bannon's recent grift with his Build the Wall Foundation, along with Manafort's
tax and bank fraud convictions, and Cohen's conviction for paying hush money for Trump's
sexual escapades.
- The sham Trump University was forced to close with a $25 million settlement to two class
action lawsuits and a NY civil lawsuit.
None of this sunk Trump. What it did do was inure the American public to the increasing
shittyness of our politician's behavior. Hunter's antics would have caused Joe to withdraw
from public life ten years ago, but today it's just par for the course.
-
TTG
My friend, as I have told you before, you have no real knowledge of practice in the business
world. Nobody says Trump has sold the US for his family's profit.
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street,
especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations. But Democrats have
entangled themselves so deeply in the web of Wall Street, that the industry is now leaning to
the left, according to a new report from
Reuters .
The Center for Responsive Politics took a look at how the industry, and its employees, break
down for the 2020 election cycle.
It has been obvious that Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been outpacing President Trump
when it comes to fundraising, and this is also true of "winning cash from the banking
industry," Reuters notes.
Biden's campaign has been the beneficiary of $3 million from commercial banks, compared to
the $1.4 million Trump has raised. This is a far skew from 2012, where Mitt Romney was able to
raise $5.5 million from commercial banks, while Barack Obama only raised $2 million. In 2012,
Wall Street banks were among the top five contributors to Romney' campaign.
In 2020, campaign contributions to congressional races from Wall Street banks are about
even. Republicans have raised $14 million while Democrats have brought in $13.6 million. About
four years ago, Republicans pulled in $18.9 million, which was about twice as much as the
Democrats raised. In 2012, Republicans raised about 61% of total bank donations.
Interestingly enough, when Biden and Trump are removed from the equation, the highest
recipient from Wall Street is none other than Bernie Sanders, who has raised $831,096. Sanders
often tops contributions in many industries due to his grassroots following.
When you remove the employees from the equation and only look at how the bank's political
arms donate, the picture turns more Republican-friendly.
House of Representatives lawmaker Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, one of the senior
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, which is key for the banking industry,
tops the list, hauling in $226,000. Next up is Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top
Republican on that panel, with $185,500 in cash from bank political committees.
The top 20 recipients of bank political funds comprise 14 Republicans and six Democrats.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, a senior member of the House banking panel,
received the most among Democrats, with $140,000.
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The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value of
Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives.
ay_arrow
tonye , 3 hours ago
It's obvious. Wall Street is part of the Deep State...
Le SoJ16 , 3 hours ago
How can you hate capitalism and work for a Wall Street bank?
tonye , 3 hours ago
Because Wall Street is no longer capitalist.
Main Street is capitalist, they create the GNP.
Wall Street is a casino owned by globalists and bankers. They don't create much
anymore.
Macho Latte , 2 hours ago
It has nothing to do with ideology. The Biden is FOR SALE!
Any questions?
Lord Raglan , 2 hours ago
It is because the majority of Wall Street are Jewish and **** overwhelmingly support
Democrats.
David Horowitz has said that 80% of the donations to the Democrat Party come from
****.
KashNCarry , 2 hours ago
What a bunch of ****. Wall St. elites are in it up to their necks casting their lot with
the globalists who want total control NOW. Trump is the only thing in their way....
artvandalai , 3 hours ago
Wall street people don't know much about the real economy. They also know little, nor do
they care about, the real problems faced by business people who have to work everyday to
overcome the policies put in place by liberals.
They do understand finance however. But all that requires is the ability to push paper
around all day.
But let them vote for the Libotards and have them watch Elizabeth Warren take charge of
the US Senate Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Committee. They'll be jumping
out of windows.
FauxReal , 3 hours ago
Wall Street favors free money?
sun tzu , 1 hour ago
Wall Street wants bailouts. 0bozo gave them a yuge bailout
American2 , 2 hours ago
Based on the massively coordinated MSM suppression of the Biden corruption scandal, now I
know why these folks back Biden.
CosmoJoe , 2 hours ago
Democrats as the party of the big banks,
bgundr , 2 hours ago
Of course banksters favor policies that make the average person a slave with less
agency
Homie , 2 hours ago
Especially if you like the endless bailouts, give-aways, and freedom from those pesky
rules limiting the Squid's diet
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street,
especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations.
mtl4 , 2 hours ago
The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the
value of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives.
The banks are big on corruption and that's one poll the Dems are definitely leading by a
longshot.......thick as thieves.
tunetopper , 2 hours ago
Wall St youngsters dont realize their job is to whore themselves out as much as possible
to the few remaining classes of folk they dont already have accounts with. The few
Millennials and Gen Xers that have enough capital saved up are their target market. Ever
since the take-down of Bear Stearns and Lehman, and the exit of many others from their
Private Client Groups- the Whorewolves of Wall St are very busy pretending to be Progs and
Libs.
And like this post says: " who really cares, they all live in NY, NJ and CT which are
guaranteed Dem states anyway"
So in essence- they have nothing to lose while pretending to be a Prog/Lib. in order to ge
the clients money.
radar99 , 36 minutes ago
I arrived to wall st in 2010. My female boss at a large investment bank hated me from the
moment I criticized Obama. I was and still am absolutely amazed you can work on wall st and
be a democrat
moneybots , 59 minutes ago
"The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value
of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives."
So 50 Cent alone went Trump after finding out NYC's top tax rate would be 62% under
Biden?
Flynt2142ahh , 1 hour ago
also known as MBNA Joe Biden friends, you mean the privatize profits but liberalize losses
crowd that always looks for gubment money to bail out failures - Shocking !
invention13 , 1 hour ago
Wall St. just knows Biden is someone you can do business with.
Loser Face , 1 hour ago
Wall Street leans towards anyone who passes laws that benefit Wall Street.
Obamaroid Ointment , 1 hour ago
The Wally Street crowd has always been a bunch Globalist Mercedes Marxists and Limousine
Liberals, this article is ancient history.
Sound of the Suburbs , 2 hours ago
US politicians haven't got a clue what's really going on and got duped by the banker's
shell game.
When you don't know what real wealth creation is, or how banks work, you fall for the
banker's shell game.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy towards a financial
crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as
much money as they did before 2008 was in the 1920s.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
Money and debt come into existence together and disappear together like matter and
anti-matter.
The money flows into the economy making it boom.
The debt builds up in the financial system leading to a financial crisis.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity
of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can
borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
Caliphate Connie and the Headbangers , 2 hours ago
The banks and corporations of America have been welfare queens since 2008. Regardless of
who wins, they will be the beneficiaries of moar US-style corporate welfare socialism.
Victory_Rossi , 3 hours ago
Wall Street loves globalism and hates the entire ethos of "America First". They're people
with dodgy loyalties and grand self-interests.
FreemonSandlewould , 3 hours ago
What a surprise. The Banking Cartel faction of the Jish Control Grid sent Trotsky and
company to Russia to implement the Bolshevik revolution. Should I be surprised they lean
left?
Well I guess not. But they are at base amoral - that is to say with out moral philosophy.
Their real motto is "Whatever gets the job done".
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving
Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by
the FBI .
In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell did not push Biden to simply
confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter's associates
(despite his prior denials). Instead O'Donnell asked: "Do you believe the recent leak of
material allegedly from Hunter's computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?"
Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times:
"From what I've read and know the intelligence community warned the president that
Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is
trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the
combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it's just what it is.
It's a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on?
What is he running on?"
It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter's
laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store.
Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid wrote
said the quiet part out loud by telling the media:
"We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation --
even if they probably aren't."
Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian
disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though
American intelligence has repeatedly r ebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the
computer has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden
confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies
to investigators.
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It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat
it as real information.
Bastiat , 3 hours ago
I should have lost the capacity for shock in reaction to this Mockingbird crap but the
sheer naked audacity of it still gets me.
Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago
I don't know what is worse. The concept that hiding crimes is no longer that important or
the lack of response to the crimes by so many.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
I don't know what's worse. The fact that our supposed news networks do this, or the fact
that in spite of the vast majority of Americans saying they distrust them, they still let
them get away with it. They still watch, and read, and listen. TBH, I don't think the lack of
MSM coverage is an issue with this particular story. I think the average Democrats and RINOs
are just covering their eyes and ears with this one. They want Trump to lose so bad, they
don't care if day one of the Biden administration is him handing suitcases of military
hardware blueprints to the Chinese. Anyone with a (D), never Trump, keep the swamp churning.
That's all they care about.
Four chan , 25 minutes ago
the laptop and its contents are 100% verified with clean chain of control.
UndergroundPost , 3 hours ago
It's now clear the Democrat Party under the Biden / Clinton Dynasties is nothing more than
a fully compromised, corrupt and criminal extension of the Communist Party of China
SDShack , 3 hours ago
Absolutely! The timelines of everything line up perfect. These laptops were dropped off at
the computer shop in early 2019. Work was done, but not paid for. The owner tried to get paid
and have the laptops picked up for 3 months. No go, so abandoned property now belongs to the
computer shop. All perfectly legal. It's now fall 2019 and the Impeachment Sham related to
Ukraine is starting. Computer shop realizes that laptops belonged to Demorat VP son being
caught up in the entire Impeachment Sham. Computer shop guy realizes he is holding dynamite
with lit fuse so he contacts FBI. FBI does nothing, then gets involved, then sits on the
story. This is all end of 2019.
Meanwhile, demorat primaries are starting and Bernie is the leader. DNC can't have Bernie
win, so they try to game the system to stop him just like 2016. But no one early on can do
it. Senile Joe fails first. Then Kamalho, who was the favorite, flames out. Then all the
others. It's now early 2020 and the DNC is hemorrhaging money and in disarray. Then look what
happens, the DNC miraculously unities around Senile Joe to stop the Angry Berd, with Kamalho
being the fallback position as VP. It is clear that the CCP ordered the DNC to do this
because they had the goods on Corrupt Joe, and the DNC needs the Chicom money. They all
figured they had it all covered up. They never figured on the crazy cokehead son blowing it
all up. The timelines all line up, and explain why Senile Joe rose from the dead in the
primaries to be the anointed one, along with Kamalho. The CCP got the candidates they bought
and paid for.
GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago
100% true but the republican government refuses to prosecute their buddies. The US has 1
party and we ain't invited.
Robert De Zero , 3 hours ago
It isn't real, we hope it isn't real, you can't prove it's real, 50 experts said it isn't
real, Russia planted it, Russian disinformation, Rudy is compromised, Rudy might be a Russian
agent, Rudy almost banged a 24 YO and he can't be trusted, It's not about Joe we don't care,
Hunter isn't running, Bobulinski has a funny name so he can't be trusted...NOT ONCE ASKING IF
THIS IS a MAJOR PHUCKING PROBLEM.
The problem isn't RUSSIA, it's you bastards in the Big Lies Media!
GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago
Why hasn't the patriotic republicans arrested the evil democrats? Whats the hold up?
tonye , 3 hours ago
At some point we are going to have to break up the corporate media conglomerates.
All of them.
And start racketeering prosecutions.
Salsa Verde , 3 hours ago
Facts mean nothing in a country where emotional outbursts are now considered gospel.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
I think we need to bring back the death penalty in every state and not keep housing these
criminals for lifetimes.
Zorch , 2 hours ago
Wait! What does Gretta say?
VisceralFat1 , 3 hours ago
so... the hunter laptop is fake
and global warming is real
got it
jin187 , 3 hours ago
You just summed up the only thing 90% of students actually learn from 12 years of public
school.
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
correct on both points
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
duh...
the Feds have plenty of laptops that have incriminating evidence of our elected leaders
(Wasserman Schultz, Iman Brothers, Weiner, DNC Servers, etc...), Dems and Repubs
at issue is if we REALLY knew the depths of treason from said leaders, we'd run out of
rope and tall trees...
so...anyone who votes Democrat, is complicit in my eyes (and they don't need to vote
Republican) and deserve the heat of the truth, strong enough to melt all the
snowflake-SJW's
Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago
ban laptops...it's so simple...no laptops and bad things stop happening
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
/sarc
banned public schools first...they're indoctrination centers of controlled deception
NO critical thinking...NO innovative strategies
ONLY State sponsors 'information' filtered by the snowflakes anti-social media platforms
and e-encyclopedia (Schmoogle)
11b40 , 3 hours ago
Ban email & instant messages. Life would be immediately better.
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
Dorsey looks like a fvcking homeless person. What a clown. I'd love to rip that ring right
out of his nose.
sunhu , 2 hours ago
losers anger is always fun to watch
chubbar , 3 hours ago
The media is acting against the best interests of the USA. Think about it, "IF" the
allegations are true, we need to find out BEFORE we elect someone who is selling out our
country for personal gain, not after. WHY would the media think differently unless they don't
care whether the allegations are true or not? Are they working for China? Is the DNC? These
are appropriate lines of inquiry given the wholesale censoring the media has levied on the
Biden corruption story. The FBI sat on this for months and it has Child ****, which means
children remain at risk until the FBI goes in and stops it. WTF is wrong with Wray that he
allows this to go on?
somewhere_north , 3 hours ago
Dude, if it was for real Hunter Biden would have been arrested by now. You can't seriously
believe they're just holding back their damning evidence. The obvious conclusion is they
don't have it.
Mr. Universe , 2 hours ago
...except those pictures of a naked Hunter with his niece and the emails of the family
trying to keep a lid on Mom's protestations.
You see lots of pics of Hunter Biden with a blacked out bitch. No way of knowing who he's
actually with.
hugin-o-munin , 2 hours ago
Yeah like duh really man, I mean come on man. Stop thinking so much man, hang ten and
chill bruh.
8-(
Im4truth4all , 2 hours ago
Has Comey, Clapper, Strozk and the list goes on ad infinitum, been arrested? No.
ebear , 1 hour ago
"The obvious conclusion is they don't have it."
An inference, by itself, is not a conclusion.
Soloamber , 2 hours ago
Wray inherited a completely screwed up Comey FBI .
He is not a culture changer .
glasshour , 3 hours ago
Stop calling these people mainstream. There is nothing mainstream about them because
nobody watches their crap.
Joe Rogan's show last night got more views than all of them combined.
WhatDoYouFightFor , 3 hours ago
Hunter is still walking around free, system is F'd. Nothing will right the United States
at this point.
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
it's the Hillary conundrum, right?
IF they get Hunter, it's 'election interference'...
deceitful godless individuals...
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
But but but Her Emails
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
he will always be free on these items as the evidence was all acquired illegally and
likely doctored to all hell.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
This is why I said the day Trump got elected that these people just need to disappear to a
blacksite in Yemen. The best way to drain the swamp is waterboarding all the ones we know to
find the ones we don't know.
Ghost of Porky , 3 hours ago
If Trump rescued 30 drowning children with his helicopter the CNN headline would read
"Trump Increases Carbon Footprint to Risk Superspreader Event.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
Exactly - so tired of MSM and their opinionated lies
pstpetrov , 3 hours ago
Yes Liberals are all about disinformation and Trump has the moral high ground.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Best joke I've heard in October. Well played, sir!
otschelnik , 3 hours ago
How would the MSM react if Don Jr. flew into China on AF1 with his father, met with
Chinese central committee members and intelligence officials, formed a Joint Venture with
them and then got a 5 million dollar no interest loan from the head of a private oil company,
who's chairman used to work in intelligence?
Imagine that. How would ABC MSNBC CNN NPR WaPo NYT PBS broadcast that?
glasshour , 3 hours ago
Better question, who cares. Nobody watches that junk anymore.
fanbeav , 3 hours ago
Liberal sheeple still do.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Let's get the case in a court of law so allegations and wild claims can be proven or
disproven. But wait, this was timed so court isn't an option. So all we are left with is the
sniff test. Smells like baby diaper needs changed.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
How did they react when it was Kushner doing the traveling and getting the money for his
business?
Iconoclast422 , 3 hours ago
the computer has seized the computer as evidence
Why does every article have these little tidbits that make me think every writer has
stroked out in 2020?
11b40 , 3 hours ago
You see that, too? Something is wrong in the editing process. Sloppy, I guess, or
foreign.
Santiago de Mago , 3 hours ago
I noticed that in several articles today... almost like they are being written by AI
bots.
"My Macaroni And Cheese Is A Lesbian Also She Is My Lawyer"
balz , 3 hours ago
Every time you see someone saying they are a "journalist" at a MSM, don't forget to tell
them they are wrong and their job-title is "propagandist".
Shut. It. Down. , 2 hours ago
Some of the emails have already been verified by the outside recipient or sender.
Next you'll tell me all the sex videos were photoshopped by Putin.
KayaCreate , 1 hour ago
I lost 5 mins of my life watching Hunters **** getting kicked around by a probable minor
while smoking crack. You could tell it was him as his fake teeth glowed in the dark.
Cephisus , 3 hours ago
The media are scum.
Bill of Rights , 3 hours ago
Funny isn't it, every time the Globalist are exposed its " Disinformation " ..Hows that
Russian Collusion evidence coming along? its only been four years.....
American2 , 2 hours ago
The only question remaining to ask is simply this: Who is more enfeebled, Joe Biden; or
the networks and ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Times, WaPo, LA Times?
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
I have been out of f*cks to give when it comes to the MSM for a decade now. What is so
comical is that when the MSM so overtly covers for candidates, it backfires horribly. You
can't hyperventilate over an anonymously sourced Trump tax return story and yet ignore the
Biden laptop. People see right through that.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Trump's taxes were made public. Nobody knows where Biden's (or whoever's) laptop came
from. Giuliani is already very late with the promised salacious details. How many people do
you think are really changing their vote to the Domestic Terrorist in the WH?
IndicaTive , 3 hours ago
I know of one person
Invert This MM , 3 hours ago
You are a freaking Share Blue Clown. Nobody buys your monkey dung
IndicaTive , 3 hours ago
You know me so well, after 3 months of trolling here.
Invert This MM , 2 hours ago
You really are one stupid fuuk. You just outed one of your sockpuppets and I was purged in
the Google crack down. I have been posting here for 12 years. You monkeys are really
stupid.
Invert This MM , 2 hours ago
Hey Monkey, I was purged during the Google shake dawn. Been here 14 years. Like a complete
moron, you just outed one of your sockpuppets. Dumbass
replaceme , 3 hours ago
No serious Dem thinks the laptop isn't Hunter's - your supposed to ignore it, or pretend
it has nothing to do with Joe. The Russians, booga boogah
invention13 , 3 hours ago
No, his taxes weren't made public. Claims about his taxes were made public - there is a
difference which you seem happy to elide.
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
Trump's taxes as reported by the NY Times were NOT made public, what gives you that idea.
The info was leaked to the Times.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
This is what I want to know. How is it that the NYP is still banned from Twitter based on
them obtaining information "illegally or illicitly", when we know for a fact now that they
didn't? At the same time, I'm pretty sure that the NYT and their followers are still happily
linking and chatting away about the story on how they illegally obtained Trump's tax
returns.
wearef_ckedwithnohope , 3 hours ago
Matt Taibbi has written a series of articles bemoaning the current state of
journalism.
replaceme , 3 hours ago
What's journalism?
invention13 , 3 hours ago
I'm beginning to think it is something that never really existed - just an ideal in some
people's minds.
Shillelagh Pog , 2 hours ago
Journalism is putting down on paper your, or someone you like, or is paying you for,
feelings, duh.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
He has the same issues with his journalism.
starcraft22 , 1 hour ago
The laptop is real. The media is the foreign disinformation.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
Just shocking how MSM is so quick to dismiss this shocking evidence. We know it's not part
of their brainwashing echo chamber of lies for their low IQ and low informed voters but had
this been one of Trump's sons laptops - this would be MAJOR HEADLINES for the next 12
months.
Remember the 4 year Russiangate investigation, 40 million to Robert Mueller all based on a
bought and paid dossier paid for by the DNC/Clinton foundation, corrupt FBI, FISA warrants
all to spy and setup Trump to incriminate him for the VERY same crimes they were in FACT
committing.
Ar15ak47rpg7 , 2 hours ago
Note to all Zero HEDGERS....there seems to be no difference between the scrubbing of
comments on Twitter and Facebook and ZH. The free flow of ideas on ZH no longer exist. Just
like the Drudge Report the Deep Stater's have gotten to the Tylers. Beware
One of these is not like the others.. , 2 hours ago
I concur, the more thoughtful the post, the more likely it seems to vanish.
ebear , 1 hour ago
I must be an idiot then. As much as I'd like to add that badge to my collection, my stuff
never seems to get scrubbed. Damn!
Urfa Man , 3 minutes ago
Gulag and the shrews that run it are putting big financial pressure on ZH to censor us.
This month I've twice tried to post a URL for the news article that details the censorship
here, but go figure, those posts get scrubbed.
It's all because of you and me. The Bolsheviks at Gulag say this comment section hurts
feelings and therefore must be dominated and controlled with an iron fist.
Gulag Bans ZeroHedge From Ad Platform
If you replace "Gulag" with the name of a major search engine and conduct a search using
the words in italics above - via a search engine like duckduckgo - the results will probably
point you to the news article that gives the details of this ZH censorship and why your
comments disappear.
lacortenews com is the domain that carries the news report
Good luck. There's not much left of free speech or the original freedom of the
internet.
unionbroker , 3 hours ago
A business associate of mine told me with a straight face that he didn't trust Bobulinski
because he had a Russian sounding name. He is on Twitter a lot so maybe that explains it.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
I don't trust him either. He has already changed his story. he requested to meet Joe Biden
and then later he didn't request it. . And he met him, but he didn't have a meeting with him.
He confirmed that on Fox last night.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
I trust him 100% #imwithhim
remember Dr Christine Ford and her fake as story against Kavanaugh - this is much more
realistic than her fake as
Republicans can play dirty too
jin187 , 2 hours ago
Yeah, this is what it's come to, so **** it. I hope Rudy is out there right now handing
out suitcases of cash to anyone willing to come forward with any lies about Biden, Pelosi,
Schumer, just like our side's Gloria Steinem.
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
bring him in under oath and actually investigate...
BUT that would be 'election interference' (you know, the whole Hillary conundrum,
right?)
rule of law is now changed to morality of feelings...if it makes me feel insignificant, it
CAN'T be TRUE!!
WAAAHHHHHH
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
he will testify under oath watch - and he won't be like pencil neck Schiff and those other
cowards and plea the 5th
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
???
you could watch the Tucker Carlson show interview instead of your imagined one.
Uh... did watch it. And yes, the story he tells there about meeting Biden is not the same
as the one he told before. Riddle me this: if this is real, why would they hopelessly
compromise their chain of evidence by dribbling it to the public like this?
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
because no one in the MSM would dummy - they are all in DEEP ****
somewhere_north , 3 hours ago
They don't have to use the MSM, or any media. They simply arrest Hunter Biden, then drop
all the info at once instead of tantalizingly holding the smoking guns out of our view. All
they are doing here, if they actually have anything, is risking the lives of their witnesses
and giving the perps a lot of warning. That's to say nothing about compromising the evidence
to the point of inadmissability. It's running a risk for no gain whatsoever.
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
stuff is only out of your view if your eyes are closed
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
"not the same" ?
missed your weblink (not that you could be making stuff up, cough, cough.)
also, how that would have any significant bearing on the whole matter,
including most MSM news censorship and Russia nonsense ?
RedNeckMother , 3 hours ago
Who told you that bulls hit?
calculator , 2 hours ago
It's entirely possible he is military intelligence and was sent undercover to infiltrate
the Bidens and discover their treachery. The CIA and FBI sure as hell don't appear to be
doing it. Since we may very well be in a shooting war with the CCP at some point in the near
future, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the military is actually doing their jobs to ensure
we are not compromised.
SDShack , 3 hours ago
We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation --
even if they probably aren't."
Cmon Turley, parse these words> Why does the WaPo say 'WE MUST' treat these leaks this
way? This implies that the WaPo is BEING ORDERED to treat these leaks this way! So WHO has
power over the WaPo? Is that power direct, or financial, or BOTH? Also the assumption the
WaPo is trying to propagate is that the Foreign Intelligence Operation is...THE
RUSSIANS...but could it not actually be the CCP that is pulling the WaPo strings? Doesn't the
CCP revelation go to the central heart of the entire Corrupt Joe matter, as well as the
financial angle for the Bezo's Amazon WaPo? Even in their lies, the nuggets of hidden truth
are exposed.
Amel , 3 hours ago
Asking yourself why the CIA control of the MSM favors a Manchurian candidate over Trump ?
Because the CIA's own survival is valued above national security.
invention13 , 3 hours ago
For they same reason they had to treat the Russian collusion allegations as though they
were real.
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago
Same reason there was no outrage at the Obama child cages at the Mexico border. Or outrage
at all of the wars Obama started. Or outrage at all of the drone killing under Obama.
Most Blue Team members are satisfied getting their news from MSM, leaving MSM able to
shape the narrative almost completely. There are a handful of guys like Jimmy Dore on the
left who call out the rest of the left on this. Pretty scary, actually.
factorypreset , 3 hours ago
It sure seems like the press is helping to squash this whole thing by asking any questions
in such a way that Joe doesn't perjure himself.
mtl4 , 3 hours ago
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal
involving Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of
that claim by the FBI.
All makes perfect sense in a time when you chose your gender in the morning while getting
dressed, you only need to be accused of anything to completely ruin your reputation (unless
your a politician in which case there are no laws). So why would anyone deal with reality at
a time when we've gotten so good at simply ignoring it.
Belarus - Opposition Call For 'Crippling General Strike' Fails To Reach Workers
On April 30 2019 some Random Guyaidó in Venezuela got
snookered into a
coup attempt which turned him into a laughingstock when the troops he had expected to
support him failed to show up:
The whole coup attempt was run within a 500 x 200 meter corridor with nothing of
significance happening outside of it. A dangerous propaganda stunt but so far nothing more
than that.
This slight modification of the Guaidó/López picture above seems
appropriate. These dudes are mere comic figures, wannabe fantasy heroes.
One would have thought that such a comical failure would have put an end to similar schemes
of 'western' supported regime change attempts.
Unfortunately it didn't.
In June 2020 it
became obvious that a U.S. directed color revolution was planned to unseat the President
Lukashenko of Belarus. It happened
as usual after the election results were put into doubt. But just a few days later it became
obvious that the
attempt had failed :
While President Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won 80% of the votes during last
Sunday's election, the 'western' candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya claimed that she had won.
(While the 80% is certainly too high it is most likely that Lukashenko was the real winner.)
Protests and riots ensued. On Tuesday Tikhanovskaya was told in no uncertain terms to leave
the country. She ended up in Lithuania.
Lukashenko then proceeded to make a deal with Russia which promised him protection in
exchange for progress in the creation of a Russian-Belarus Union State.
Even the NATO lobby-shop Atlantic Council
admitted that the coup attempt had failed:
The author rightly concludes:
[T]he resistance of the Lukashenka regime is strengthening by the day. With Russia now
seemingly standing firmly behind Lukashenka, photogenic rallies and patchy strike action
will not be enough to bring about historic change.
It is over. The 'patchy strikes' were never real industrial actions. A few journalist of
the Belarus state TV went on a strike. They were unceremoniously fired and replaced with
Russian journalists. A few hundred workers at the MTZ Minsk Tractor Works did a walk out. But
MTZ has 17,000 employees and the 16,500+ who did not walk out know very well why they still
have their jobs. Should Lukashenko fall it is highly likely that their state owned company
will be sold off for pennies and immediately 'right sized' meaning that most of them would be
out of work. During the last 30 years they have seen that happen in every country around
Belarus. There have no urge to experience that themselves.
On Monday the leader of the earlier MTZ walk out, one Sergei Dylevsky,
was arrested while he agitated for more strikes. Dylevsky is a member of the
self-proclaimed Coordination Council of the opposition which demands negotiations over the
presidency. Other members of the council have been called in for questioning by state
investigators over a criminal case against the council.
Meanwhile the rather hapless opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who falsely
claimed to have won the election, is in Lithuania. She is supposed to be an English teacher
but has difficulties reading the English text begging (vid) for 'western' support. She
has already met various 'western' politicians including the General Secretary of the German
Christian Democratic Union party of chancellor Angela Merkel, Peter Zeimiag, and the U.S.
Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun. Neither will be able to help her.
Despite her obvious lack of popular support Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, like Juan
Guaidó in Venezuela, was urged to make another attempt. Two weeks ago she had the
chutzpah of giving Lukashenko
an ultimatum to resign :
Belarus's exiled opposition leader on Tuesday gave strongman President Alexander Lukashenko a
deadline of two weeks to resign, halt violence and release political prisoners, warning he
would otherwise face a crippling general strike.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who maintains she was the true winner of an August 9 election,
issued what she said was a "people's ultimatum", demanding Lukashenko quit power by October
25 and halt the "state terror" unleashed by authorities against peaceful protesters.
"If our demands are not met by October 25, the whole country will peacefully take to the
streets," she said in a statement released in Lithuania, where she is currently based in
exile after leaving Belarus following the election.
"And on October 26 a nationwide strike will begin at all enterprises, all roads will be
blocked, and sales at state stores will collapse ," she said. "You have 13 days."
On October 25 there was indeed another medium sized protest in Minsk. But those who
participated were again the upper middle class and better off people, not the industry workers
and farmers who make up the majority of the Belarusian people.
"Today, the people's strike begins – the next step for Belarusians towards freedom, an
end to violence and new elections," Tikhanovskaya said on Monday. "Belarusians know that the
main task on 26 October is to show that nobody will work for the regime."
However, despite the sight of large columns of protesters in the streets again – and
the sense that the protest has regained some of the momentum it has lost in recent weeks
– there was no sign of significant numbers of workers at state-controlled plants
joining the strike for any sustained length of time.
...
At the Minsk tractor factory, one of the big plants that are the pride of Lukashenko's
neo-Soviet economy, most workers appeared to be clocking on as normal for the Monday morning
shift. The leader of an earlier strike at the factory in August was forced to flee the
country under pressure from authorities, and many workers fear reprisals for striking. At
most, some workers briefly expressed support for the protest before or after their shifts,
but did not actually refuse to work.
A few hundred students at some university skipped their classes and walked in the streets.
But the workers kept working. No roads were blocked. The shop traffic was normal.
The workers in the state owned industries know very well that most of them will become
jobless and poor should the 'western' supported neo-liberal opposition gain power in Belarus.
Everything would be privatized for pennies and 'right-sized' by mass layoffs. They have seen
that happen again and again in each of their neighboring countries.
Juan Guaido declared a coup without having made sure that the soldiers he expected would
show up. The soldiers knew that it was not in their interest to follow him.
Svetlana Guaidoskaya declared a general strike without understanding that the workers she
called on are nor interested in her neo-liberal schemes. That she, or her handlers, even
attempted to urge for a strike shows how little they understand the real concerns the workers
have.
Belarus, like Venezuela, has a government and system that is supported by the majority of
its people. Neither country can be regime changed without a military intervention from abroad.
That will not be coming anytime soon.
Posted by b on October 27, 2020 at 14:32 UTC |
Permalink
They can't spare some changes to entice the workers like they did in Hong Kong ?
div> All Belorussians have to do is look over their shoulders at the
nazi-infested bandit state and economic basket case that Ukraine has become. I doubt even the
starry-eyed, pro-American Belorus middle classes are that stupid.
All Belorussians have to do is look over their shoulders at the nazi-infested bandit state
and economic basket case that Ukraine has become. I doubt even the starry-eyed, pro-American
Belorus middle classes are that stupid.
Well, well, that might all be true, but what progress is the Russian-Belarusian union state
making? How does Lukashenko plan to deal with the economic problems of Belarus? Is Russia
going to deliver oil and gas with a heavy discount again?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier for the corporate titans to just right a check for whatever
resource they want? So what if they must pay some taxes or abide by a few rules. Isn't Bill
Brwoder's cheapness and Mikhail Khodorkovsky's rule breaking the reason we are wasting all
our resources on Eastern Europe so as to surround Russia? Guess looking at the kick back Joe
Biden got thru Hunter Biden, I'm being naive. Since Lukashenko gave some of the best Covid
advice about getting outside (Vitamin D), here's rooting for him.
The Venezuelan super hero of your picture spent over a year in the Spanish embassy in
Caracas, diplomatic asylum is and old tradition that the British stepped and spit upon with
Assange, for years in small quarters, nothing like a tropical embassy with swimming pool and
all the comforts plus Mediterranean larder and cellar. The coup inspirer is out of Venezuela
as if the proud owner of a flying carpet, Arabian nights style. I was so indignant, Assange
is someone who gave the world an incredible gift, true free information, treated like a
pariah, and an upper crust imperial satrap risking the lives of many and causing a lot more
just for power and empire is free to come and go. No MSM comments on that analogy.
The best and more concise name for the Belarus regime changer was coined by Lukashenko,
Guaidikha, multiple meanings in a short word, compared with Tikhanovkaya.
A re post of what i wrote today on the open thread:
This a.m. (Oct 27) on NPR's broadcasting of the BBC World Service, there was a brief news
report on matters Belarusian. The London based program person spoke with a female "reporter"
in Minsk. The short discussion concerned the Strikes called for by Tikhanovskaya.
The protests not having produced the goods (removal of Lukashenko and the installation of
the female NATO-western puppet Tikhanovskaya) so onto strikes especially of the state owned
industries plus small businesses...This reporter said - without prodding - that the strikers
will be paid - from the "Solidarity Fund." Hmmm. Interesting and fully in keeping with
skeptical thinking about this whole situation. Then, to top it off and underscore one's need
for the deepest skepticism about the veracity of and indigenous roots of the effort at
removing Lukashenko, the London end closed with the "credentials" of the Minsk based
"reporter": not only a "reporter" but a worker in the Atlantic Council....
Of course, this being a color revolution target country, any and all violent means used by
the police etc to stop the protests/strikes is blared abroad on NPR/BBC. And continuing calls
for Lukashenko to remove himself from the presidency - accompanied by "look at how he and his
"regime" treat the population."
Now one might ask WHERE was similar outrage across the MSM and EU/UK/USA (accompanied by
western calls for the removal of Macron) throughout 2019 and the extreme brutality the French
Riot Police meted out on the Gilets Jaunes protestors (who weren't asking for Macron to go,
just some taxes and similar social spending efforts). Those protests were by and large
peaceful (there were black dressed, masked infiltrators who did damage and who gave the
Gilets jaunes some bad press). The Police were anything but - numerous protestors lost eyes,
hands and had serious damage to their jaws because of the stun grenades used.
Of course the aim is to scoop up the last stretch of Russia's western borderlands into
NATO hands. Meanwhile some similar efforts continue along Russia's more southerly borders.
Why can't we just let other countries alone? Mind our own business and take care of our own
societies, peoples? (Not a serious question 'cos I know that it is all about US global
dominance and $$$$$ for the western corporate-capitalist-imperialist ruling
This is so offensive to working class people. Do these middle class slimeballs in the US
State Department think all they have to do is shout from a high enough soapbox and workers
will obey? That's not how labor organization and strikes work! Some dilettante who has never
even been in a factory before cannot bypass all of the hard work of organizing and proving
herself to the workforce to command workers as if they are her personal army! The workers are
not just extras in some Hollywood creation that the few in the capitalist mass media
spotlight are starring in. They don't show up for your casting calls just because you want
them to.
The level of ignorant delusion in these people is staggering, and the utter contempt they
have for workers is infuriating.
A very appropriate article by B and very timely too.
As for Belarus as a projected terror territory -- be it a subject or an object:
In the 2013 atteck Friday evening blast on the Central government (Prime ministers office,
Ministries of Justice, Finance and Oil) and the following massacre (probably by several
gunmen) on the Summer club gathering of hundreds of members of the Lapour Party's youth
('Jugentstaffel der Arbeiter'/Arbeidernes ungdomsfylking), the official story contained a
claim that ABB (Anders Behring Breivik) had honed his gunman skills at a pay-for boot camp in
Bielarus. The prosecution offered photoes of his passport pages containing stamps of entries
from and exits from Poland as proof.
Now, in Poland, the central camp for training North American mercanEries lies very close ti
Poland's border with Bielorus. More likely he was trained, conditioned, duped and set up
there, I would surmise.
Do any of Y'all in the community of followers of B's writings on this blog have any
additional snippets of information about any "lóne wolves" stemming from those
forested marshes?
RSVP!
Sorry I forgot:
The Summer of 2013 two attacks on Labour Party Prime Minister's office and the "Fasces di
junessi lavorati" happened in NORWAY whilst the current leader of low-life secretaries of
NATO in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg, was prime minister of Norway. He immediately declared
(two days later" that "I personally assume responsibility for all things that went wrong two
days ago".
Of course he had to relocate to Brussels.
His father, one Thorvald Stoltenberg, had been Foreign minister of Norway some years before
Jens assumed the premiership. He was a snitch who during the fifties provided the US with
lists of who among the members of his soscialist students' movement and amongst youths and
adults in his Labour Party might have commie sumpathies and thus should not be allowed into
The United States of (North) America.
Jens followed up by becoming a false hippie whilst in High School and reporting who amongst
his fellow hippies dealt in and smoked hashis. Also, as leader of the Youth movement was
opposed to Norwegian membership in NATO and the EU and for prohibition of nuclear weapons:
"Plus ca changes, plus ce reste la meme chose" amongst the priviledged families of the labour
aristocrazies.
Kyrgyzstan was also omitted. The Neoliberals will try again in Moldova; their disruptive
activities in Azerbaijan and Armenia are getting a lot of people killed but won't change
either government's political-economy. Moon still seems secure in RoK. Thailand is having a
struggle few have mentioned, but Malaysia seems to have overcome its attempted
destabilization. So, it appears the Eurasian Bloc has repelled the latest concerted attempt
at further destabilization by the Outlaw US Empire, but we know it will double-down since it
has no other policy choices regardless the POTUS.
I was in the capital of Moldova about 18 months ago and there were a large number of very
sinister billboards standing beside many of the roads saying "FREE, EXPERT ADVICE. CONTACT
THE U.S.EMBASSY." I kid not.
Now the intel agencies and their plutocrat bosses are attempting a color revolution in the
U.S.
div> let's not celebrate prematurely. The West/USA/NATO can wait a long
time. Lukashenko will eventually have to go, same as Maduro and Putin. Assad too. That's what
the West is counting on; in the meantime, they can groom a candidate, give them money, create
him out of nothing and eventually via their influence get him into power. That is what The West
for example is trying to do in Syria, they want to get a defacto leader in Eastern Syria can
will eventually challenge Assad in general elections. Look what happened in Chile under
Pinochet; the West had NO problem whatsoever with Pinochet being a dictator. Same as Franco in
Spain. For all their blabbering about "democracy" and "freedom" the West doesnt care if THEIR
people are in power without democracy and freedom. Remember what Reagan said: yeah, he is SOB
but he is OUR SOB.
The ONLY way to endure fakers will not be allowed in is for a general revolution, the way Cuba
did.
let's not celebrate prematurely. The West/USA/NATO can wait a long time. Lukashenko will
eventually have to go, same as Maduro and Putin. Assad too. That's what the West is counting
on; in the meantime, they can groom a candidate, give them money, create him out of nothing
and eventually via their influence get him into power. That is what The West for example is
trying to do in Syria, they want to get a defacto leader in Eastern Syria can will eventually
challenge Assad in general elections. Look what happened in Chile under Pinochet; the West
had NO problem whatsoever with Pinochet being a dictator. Same as Franco in Spain. For all
their blabbering about "democracy" and "freedom" the West doesnt care if THEIR people are in
power without democracy and freedom. Remember what Reagan said: yeah, he is SOB but he is OUR
SOB.
The ONLY way to endure fakers will not be allowed in is for a general revolution, the way
Cuba did.
NATO's stooges in Minsk could have taken the time to find a flag that wasn't used by Nazi
collaborators, too. I guess the success they had with Libya and Ukraine, they probably felt
confident about showing their hand.
Thanks so much for covering this B.The only other source I have is the Atlantic Council
aligned Democracy Now, which has been an R2P shill outlet since 2011.
@Oū Sī/區司/Tŭ Lèi'fū | Oct 27 2020 16:59 utc | 9
You have the year wrong. It was 22. July 2011
Stoltenberg immediately promised "more democracy". I interpreted it as "more of the same",
and I wasn't wrong. What happened that day was not what it seemed.
b, that picture sure is nice humor on comical clowns such as Guiado/Lopez. You also said:
One would have thought that such a comical failure would have put an end to similar
schemes of 'western' supported regime change attempts.
Unfortunately it didn't.
It didn't, because it needn't! Shenanigans through the use of props such as
Guaido/Poroshanko cost the Evil Empire practically nothing--just a few bucks into the hands
of stupid puppets who happen to be effective mouthpieces in the target nations with rather
low IQ and brainwashed over the years of the Empire's soft power. If they succeed,
hallelujah; if they don't, how would it hurt?
This is one of the remaining advantage that the 'West' still holds due to their previous
70 years of accumulative dominance over the rest of the world. The average person in the
world is, well, average and easily fooled. Easily fooled at least once or twice, that is.
This advantage of the 'West' is slowly being consumed, depleted, and losing efficacy. In a
year or two, after this pandemic passes and the scores on pandemic performances added up,
we'll see this kind of western hat trick gone with the wind.
@Posted by: Oū Sī/區司/Tŭ Lèi'fū | Oct 27 2020 17:25
utc | 10
Well, he seems what here is known as un chivato , the lowest rank of a human
kind...being a revolutionary the higuest, which awards being graduated as man/woman (
parphrasing Che )...
I did not know this dishonourable, and low amongst the possible lowest, past, of
denouncing own ( alleged ) comrades, and ruining in passing the lifes of so young people, but
any time I have seen this guy at G7/G-Whatever meetings he shows that expression of scared
servile lap dog...
Lacking any other merits, he probably could not find other means to keep the privileges of
his dinasty.
His case as a proof that anybody holding such high offices in Brusels have a complete
wardrobe of corpses hided anywhere...
Those who tried to go the opposite way, and be really labor, and even human, or a bit
fair, are died...prematurely...Palme, Hamarskjold, Moro, come to mind...
"What happened that day was not what it seemed.
Elaborate, please. What do you mean?"
Posted by: H.Schmatz | Oct 27 2020 19:38 utc | 18
I would venture a guess and say he meant that what really happened in Oslo and
Utøya is still untold.
To many coincidences and a narrative that is not allowed to be doubted.
Why did the early messages say several shooters?
Why have NO mobile videos from Utøya been released? (NO, not privacy)
I can go on like that for ages but you get my drift i hope.
My impression of Hong Kong is that it was students protesting, not workers.
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 27 2020 19:01 utc | 15
Your impression is correct but hardly the truth. Because students are able to produce
English signs, jockey the social media and most importantly, being photogenic for western
media consumption; they are just the most visible part of the campaign. You know, save the
children and all that psyops bs.
An obscene amount of money were handed out to participants, be it cash or supermarket
vouchers, amounts varies from 80usd a day for old folks just to show up to more than 1500usd
for taking point on violence against police.
lysias@13 wrote "Now the intel agencies and their plutocrat bosses are attempting a color
revolution in the U.S."
One of the cardinal strategies in petty bourgeois democratic upheavals/Gene Sharp style
regime change is denying the legitimacy of the election, then using the superior social
resources (and/or foreign financing) to make the streets ungovernable, staying in the streets
because the core support doesn't have to go to work. A swell of outrage over police violence
is more or less like catching a bus, one will come along sooner or later.
The number one person talking up fraud is Donald Trump. And the hard core of his
supporters are people with higher incomes. Even his militia types are property owners or have
a high enough income to buy expensive weapons to play with. True popular upsurges are always
hampered by the lack of arms. And of course the big media advertisers who invest in the right
wing media like Fox etc. aren't the barefoot masses either.
Thus if there is a color revolution being engineered in the US, it is Trump's. Except of
course cranks* who believe in the Deep State pretend black is white and it's the mythical foe
of the Deep State, Trump, who is the victim, instead of the perpetrator. Calling black,
white...You don't get more Trumpery than that.
*Deep State theory is fake left ideology created by people whose deep grained
anticommunism drives them to forego a rational analysis of the state and class and the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie aka constintutional democracy, aka a republic not a
democracy, aka limited government with a free market, aka too many stupid phrases to
remember. Reality is Marxist, so denying Marxism is the True Derangement Syndrome.
thanks also @6 paco for the comments.... and @ 7 anne.. your example of the yellow vests
and how that was processed is very good.. there are a lot of double standards at work, but no
where is it more clearly seen then how that was processed... the msm turned a complete blind
eye to it, but we are supposed to believe all these other demonstrations are all so
legitimate.. it is laughable, but it is ongoing as others note... when it ends - i have no
idea... it seems like we are headed towards a world of more confusion and mayhem... that is
what it looks like to me at this point...
@H.Schmatz | Oct 27 2020 19:38 utc | 18
I don't want to hijack this thread, so I am going to post only these lines and leave it. I
know the two areas (In particular, I knew someone who worked in the government building and I
visited the exact site of the explosion many times before it happened). The government wanted
to demolish and rebuild, but wasn't allowed to. There is no actual proof that Breivik was
near the government buildings that day, only an extremely distorted image of someone in a
police uniform and with a full helmet on.
I personally heard the explosion from 30km away. There are videos of strange people
vacating the government area in Oslo just after the explosion, and also a person changing
clothes right after the explosion, only 15m from the explosion site (see bottom link).
Some of the victims look like actors with pieces of wood sticking out of their heads.
At the Utøya camp the labour party youth had banners advocating boycott of Israel
the days before. There were several reports of multiple shooters, but these reports
disappeared and somehow a single person killed 69 individuals, after single handedly
demolishing several government buildings and driving for 45 minutes to Utøya. The
photo of the alleged shooter taken by the police on the day does not look much like Breivik
later. There was a police exercise on the day with very similar scenario to what actually
happened, but the police made a spectacular mess of the actual event.
Stoltenberg was Prime Minister and declared July 24 2011 "Vårt svar er mer
demokrati, mer åpenhet og mer humanitet" ("Our answer is more democracy, more openness
and more humanity"). Still, the event was used by the media to close down public debates, the
main paper Aftenposten closed the main debate forum in the country the very same day.
Stoltenberg and the labour party won the election only 6 weeks later. He became head puppet
of NATO 1. October 2014.
Posted by: H.Schmatz | Oct 27 2020 19:52 utc | 20: "Those who tried to go the opposite way,
and be really labor, and even human, or a bit fair, are died...prematurely...Palme,
Hamarskjold, Moro, come to mind..."
Posted by: DougDiggler | Oct 27 2020 19:13 utc | 16
I would think a lot of Belarussians are familiar with this movie. I can't see how the
majority of Belarussians wanting anything to do with protests that display this rag. Only the
descendants of those who supported the Nazi's would. Almost 2 million Belarussians died
during the war, or about 20% of the population. Belarussians know their history. The idiots
in the west don't and can't help themselves using neo-nazis in their quest to overthrow
governments not just in eastern Europe, but around the world. The west didn't defeat Nazism,
they became it.
Thus if there is a color revolution being engineered in the US, it is Trump's.
by: steven t johnson @ 24 Trumpy does nothing without Netanyohu.. and Netanyohu does nothing
without London.. bankers and wall street thumpers ..
Tarrant had contacts with far-right groups in eastern Europe. If you know something about
the history of far-right extremist groups in eastern Europe going back to World War II, and
the adventures of Stepan Bandera after the war, you probably can put two and two together on
what and who Tarrant got up to in his own odyssey and get five as your answer.
The driving distance between the two mosques (one is in Riccarton suburb, the other in
Linwood suburb) is roughly about 12 - 16 minutes.
Most of his passengers figured out who he was straight away and censored themselves. So
much for trying to travel around Oslo incognito at the last minute when you think you might
not have public support. You have to wonder what Stoltenberg had been drinking at the time to
come up with such a hare-brained idea. Did he not have enough to do just before the
elections?
Color revolutions are so passe with the US failing in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Belarus.
Perhaps the US should consider returning to diplomacy in its foreign policy; if the state
department remembers how!
Thanks to the Norwegian comrades? fro the info, another path for reserach...
@Jen,
Always be suspicious of familiar sagas, by stadistic rules, It is no possible that, out of
fair competition and equal opportunities, a father being minister is succeded by a son in a
similar or even higuest office...Think of the Bushes...and attention to the Trumps...by
reading the other day about the Trump dinasty it seems that Donald jr., is the new darling of
the Republican Party...He just has hook with the masses with whom he mimetized better that
The Donald, father... Watching images of this guy, with such a troubled background in harsh
competition with the Biden jr, I got to worry that may be another will come who will make The
Donald father good...His expression and eyes show great reserves of resentment, always in
competition and feeling diminished by Ivanka...
Beware that this moron do not become the next Hitler even surpassing his father in rage and
fury...
Stoltenberg is just a model...you could put a robot instead of him and nobody will
notice..well, may be not so farfetched..and we could witness a next NATO Gen.Sec.who is a
cyborg...The Great Reset will bring in many surprises...as that old commenter used to say,
seatbelts may prove innefective...
"NATO's stooges in Minsk could have taken the time to find a flag that wasn't used by Nazi
collaborators, too." DougDiggler@16
The descendants of Nazi collaborators, often expatriates brought up in North America
within communities dominated by Hitler loyalists, form the core community for these colour
'revolutions.' They did so in Ukraine, they did in Yugoslavia and they do in Poland and
Hungary. They did in Vietnam too, where the collaborators were armed to fight the communists,
and in Korea where the collaborators were organised by the US to resist the national
revolution. It was not the British Empire but that of the Axis powers that the US took over
and turned into its agents.
In every country in western Europe the collaborators carried on-fighting communists for
capitalism.
@Lucci #1
My impression of Hong Kong is that it was students protesting, not workers.
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 27 2020 19:01 utc | 15
Yes those are jobless students or part timers but they do get paid perhaps more than what
they made in day to day basis. It's the reason why many of them can afford to protest for
months (some with throwaway clothes and mask even). Workers don't make much in day wage and
the younger one wouldn't feel the need to preserve for their retirement (if they even have
them) if they do in fact make more money protesting than they do in working chances are they
would be out protesting. Of course there's also the difference in their judicial system and
law enforcement which made more fear factor in comparison to HK.
Still i think they don't spend their resources just as much as they did in HK or even
Venezuela on this one.
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 27 2020 19:01 utc | 15 -- "My impression of Hong Kong is that it was
students protesting, not workers."
Wrong impression, friend.
Doesn't matter if they were students or workers. They were mainly paid rioters, not
"protestors".
Still, many believe the West's MSM when they breathlessly shout "students
protesting..."
Ask the other millions and millions of Hong Kong people who did not protest nor riot, and
they will tell you those black-clad youth in skinny pants were plainly and simply paid
cockroaches. Just like the "antifa" in the USofA.
We are talking about in the main here, so please save your time, and do not split hairs
with me.
Actually most if not all of the real students aren't paid. They were too blind, clueless
and easily led into amy movement with democracy on the box.
They were bombarded by teachers projecting their personal political views in "discussion
sessions" where they were shown subjective documentaries and then pseudo close-ended anti
govt questions and views were asked and "discussed", in a peer pressure echo chamber called a
classroom.
This happened in classes as young as P4 or year 4, these are 10 years old children we're
talking about.
For a culture that the wisdom and benevolence of a teacher is generally revered and
unquestioned. This is just pure child abuse. They were grooming child soldiers.
Guido, Tikhanovskaya, Joshua Wong.... these sad idiots -- people with more ambition than they
have brains for -- find that once they enter, they can never leave the grasp of Western
colour-revolution "experts".
If the colour revolution succeeds, they will be used and abused until they are no more
useful, whereupon, they will be arkancided, and the blame pinned on some enemy of the West
(making best use of invested resources, silencing a potential whistleblower).
If the colour revolution fails, the West waits for another better time (they regime change
some other nation), or they arkancide the sad idiots to restart another colour revolution
(costs them nothing to shoot an useless idiot).
Meanwhile, if the sad idiots show a change of heart, they will still be arkancided (for
knowing too much by then), and the blame pinned on some enemy of the West (same idiot, same
ends).
Like making a deal with Satan, they can enter, but can never leave.
Also like to add your other points are right on and this whole saga would not have
happened if it wasn't for the pressitutes "confirming" and reprinting the highly inflated
protest numbers and thereby indirectly supporting the colour revolution early in the piece.
One can still do an aerial analysis of the pictures and can easily see the 2m protest was
total horse manure.
This fact or lesson learnt is not lost on Belarus and Thailand. They are much better in
controlling bs and much more effort is now paid to show and push images of how much smaller
the protests are than claimed by the opposition.
With how things are going in Bolivia and Chile vs. things going in Belarus, HK and Thailand,
we can almost see that one new order is rising, and it's not the US.
Just had a look at the Tikhanovskaya video you link to. It's had 3300 views. I assume 1000
are the US congressmen and senators who are going to vote her into power, and the other two
thirds are readers of this blog.
Posted by: geoff chambers | Oct 28 2020 9:53 utc | 49
No, Geoff, not me.
The other 1/3rd are "reliably reported" to be from the 17 US agencies who are looking for
lame excuses to make up more "intelligence" to start colour revolutions.
The last third are "highly likely" to be Western MSM who need to pretend to know the bare
minimum on what is going down so they they can make up more "news".
Finally, US congressmen and senators do not need facts to vote, just cash, preferably of
the Basement Biden "plausibly deniable" sort, but martha's vineyard mansions might do
too.
I wonder about 3 things: First, could Biden win but be delegitimized by a scandal involving
China - similar to the Trump-Russia narrative?
Second, Venezuela may patch together some sort of election. Do US/vassals keep Guiado as
President with no real position?
Third, Yes the West can wait for Russia/Belarus etc to fall - while their nations decay.
Lithuania is a horrific example of Russophobia over everything else. They will be nursing
homes surrounded by forest. And looking at US history, no amount of riots will stop foreign
aggression (as with Vietnam). Even the Confederacy dreamed of conquering Cuba and South
America !!
Anne
@7 ,That the strikers will be paid - from the "Solidarity Fund."
That is quite the admission. How does US/NATO launder money and get it into Belarus?
Drying up that well would do wonders to stop color revolutions. Perhaps banning foreign NGO's
helps do this and why Russia did this almost a decade ago.
-Yes, one election coming, foreign observers called in, plenty excuses for their not coming,
then MSM presstitute claims of fraud and rapid street rioting - all with signs of long
prepared
planning - supported by US media.
I am confident that now the Chilean new constituents in 2021 will legally block the way for
this trickery and especially for any lawfare manipulations in the future.
Eighthman @51: "I wonder about 3 things: First, could Biden win but be delegitimized by a
scandal involving China - similar to the Trump-Russia narrative?"
That would defeat the purpose of getting Biden elected in the first place. The empire
desperately needs to reestablish its legitimacy, so the "Mighty Wurlitzer" absolutely
will not go on a rampage against Biden like they did with Trump. The empire needs the global
community to go back to solemnly nodding in agreement whenever the US establishment claims
that America must bomb another country for its own good.
"Second, Venezuela may patch together some sort of election. Do US/vassals keep Guiado as
President with no real position?"
Venezuela's electoral process is one of the very cleanest and most transparent on Earth.
No "patching together" required. That said, the empire will keep Guaido around only so
long as they think there is some value left in him, even if that value is only for CIA goons
to murder him and crank up the "Mighty Wurlitzer" to say
it was Maduro who did the deed. Of course, the word of the empire and its mass media needs to
count for something again in order for that to work, and that requires Biden as president and
a uniform chorus from the mass media painting him as honorable.
"Third, Yes the West can wait for Russia/Belarus etc to fall - while their nations
decay..."
Well, that is why many of the western elites are desperately embracing the ridiculous
fantasy of the "Great Reset" without any idea of how to make such a thing happen.
Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 28 2020 13:41 utc | 55
DNC or the left can sabotage Trump and his administration because they already well
entrenched not because deep state favored them. Now that Trump and Republicans seems to be
successful in installing their own pick at the high offices i do think Biden presidency being
sabotaged back is possible.
If Republicans see an opportunity to delegitimise Biden, I think they will take it. Of
course, the Big Media will ignore corruption - until they can't. Kamala has already said
Coney isn't legit. Partisanship above all else.
The funniest thing about a Biden victory will be social justice "comedians" falling over a
cliff - not having a simple Trump punching bag to riff off of. What will Colbert, Samantha B.
and Amber Ruffin have to bore us about? It's going to be dull, dull, dull...
The Dims and Repugs are both on the same team. The only reason they all freaked out over
Trump's win in 2016 is because Trump was clearly deliberately selected to play the foil
against Clinton and make her look good in comparison. Everyone, including Republicans, and
even Trump himself, expected Trump to lose. Trump's upset victory cracked the establishment's
confidence in their ability to control election outcomes. It also shook their confidence in
their understanding of what was going on in the heads of the American people. They couldn't
accept that a political toddler could beat seasoned professionals at their own game, and they
still cannot accept that the American people might have minds of their own and hate being
manipulated, so much so that they will intentionally vote for a candidate that they know they
are not supposed to vote for.
Biden's election will return things to predictability for the establishment, so they won't
attack him.
Yes, wasn't it? And believe me, didn't hear another word either from that "reporter" or
that she was linked into the Atlantic Council nor anything more about that "Solidarity Fund"
(essentially buying off those workers willing to "strike"). The Beeb probably realized they'd
let a little too much out of the bag...
@karlof1:
Kyrgyzstan was not omitted as Pepe Escobar explains in his latest article, the very effective
Russian counter coup immediately neutralized US's plans and NGO:s and US even admitted
defeat. The western hipster revolution in Belarus will run out of steam and even Pashniyans
velvet revolution in Armenia will eventually be rolled back since Armenians discovered that
the only reason they still exist and are not yet fully exterminated by a Turkish final
solution, is Russia, not the Kardashians and not their American puppet masters who hasn't
lifted a finger for them.
"... Same principle with speaking engagements. Nobody in the corporate world seriously believed that listening to a speech from Hillary Clinton was worth $200,000 - especially when she sometimes kept getting these gigs at the same company every few months: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/every-hillary-and-bill-clinton-speech-2013-fees ..."
"... Furthermore, the book sales conduit adds an extra degree of separation between the ultimate source of the money and the recipient of the money. Somebody who wants to buy a politician could for example donate money to an NGO that does "political education" and buys political books to distribute to people, and that NGO buys the copies of the corrupt politician's book in bulk. ..."
Learned here on SST that a lot of the huge book contracts given to swampies are a form of
money laundering. I have long tried to figure out how the publishing companies could afford to
pay yuudge advances for ghost written books in a country where so few people read much of
anything any longer. Simple answer! Big money people order yuudge numbers of books in advance
so that the publisher is assured a profit.
I think it was the previous mayor of Baltimore who got a multi-million dollar windfall
from her best-selling children's book. I wonder how many kids actually read it.
Lots of trucks out with their flags here, people are becoming optimistic here in South
Florida, feels almost normal here.
Trump taking New York would be the ultimate, lets hope. I'm looking forward to watching
CNN's Wolf Blitzer on election night, it's been 4 years for me and CNN. I just want to see
him squirm.
it looks a lot less like corruption when a politician receives money because he wrote an
"inspiring book" that seemingly sells lots of copies than when he receives money outright for
political favors.
Furthermore, the book sales conduit adds an extra degree of separation between the
ultimate source of the money and the recipient of the money. Somebody who wants to buy a
politician could for example donate money to an NGO that does "political education" and buys
political books to distribute to people, and that NGO buys the copies of the corrupt
politician's book in bulk.
Interesting question about book deals. Certainly it could be a channel to hide the names
of donors, which would seem the only rational reason to do so. I would guess the lecture
circuit a more appropriate way to do that. If I'm going to part with that much I'd at least
want a song for their dinner out of it.
The 10 biggest book deals have a mixture of celebrities, I can't imagine anyone wanting to
slip Bruce Springsteen $10 million under the table so it appears the publishers do make money
on these deals, counter-intuitive though it be.
Book writing can be far more lucrative than I ever thought possible. James Patterson got
150 million for a 17 book series. I would say he earned it although I've never read any of
his stuff. Michelle Obama's first book sold over 10 million copies and netted her at least 65
million in a deal for both her and Barrack's memoirs.
Ken Follett got 50 million for his trilogy.
Bill Clinton got 15 million for his book while George W. Bush only got 7 million for
his.
Hillary got 14 million for hers. Springsteen got 10 million for his autobiography.
Even Pope Jan Pavel II made a cool 8.5 million for his memoirs back in 1994. There are an
awful lot of 7 figure book advances out there.
Another phenomenon in the book world is the mass purchase of books by organizations. For
example the RNC bought $100K worth of Don Trump Jr's book and more than $400K worth of Sean
Hannity's latest. I'm sure the RNC is not alone in this practice.
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her
website is here and you can follow
her on Twitter @caitoz The
US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that absorbs nations and turns them into
imperial client states. Once absorbed, it is rare for a country to escape and rejoin other
genuinely sovereign nations.
The new president-elect of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has
told the Spanish international news agency EFE that he intends to restore the nation's
relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. This reverses the policies of the US-backed coup
regime which immediately began
closing embassies ,
kicking out doctors and severing relations with those nations after illegally seizing power
last year.
Arce also spoke of warm relations with Russia and China.
"We are going to re-establish all relations," he told EFE. "This government has
acted very ideologically, depriving the Bolivian people of access to Cuban medicine, to Russian
medicine, to advances in China. For a purely ideological issue, it has exposed the population
in a way that is unnecessary and harmful."
Arce expressed a willingness to "open the door to all countries, the only requirement is
that they respect us and respect our sovereignty, nothing more. All countries, no matter the
size, who want a relationship with Bolivia, the only requirement is that we respect each other
as equals. If that is so, we have no problem."
If you know anything about US imperialism and global politics, you will recognize that last
bit as brazen heresy against imperial doctrine.
The unofficial doctrine of the empire-like cluster of international allies that is loosely
centralized around the United States does not recognize the sovereignty of other nations, much
less respect them as equals. This empire takes it as a given that it has every right to
determine what every nation in the world does, who their leaders will be, where their resources
will go, and what their military posture on the world stage will be. If a government refuses to
accept the empire's right to determine these things, it is targeted, sabotaged, attacked, and
eventually replaced with a puppet regime.
The US-centralized empire functions like a giant blob that slowly works to absorb nations
which have not yet been converted into imperial client states. It is rare that a nation is able
to escape from that blob and rejoin the unabsorbed nations like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela
and Cuba in their fight for self-sovereignty, and it is encouraging that it was able to do
so.
We saw the dynamics of the imperial blob explained quite vividly last year by American
political analyst John Mearsheimer at a debate hosted by the Australian think tank Center for
Independent Studies. Mearsheimer told his audience that the US is going to do everything it can
to halt China's rise and prevent it from becoming the regional hegemon in the eastern
hemisphere, and that Australia should align with the US in that battle or else it would face
the wrath of Washington.
"The question that's on the table is what should Australia's foreign policy be in light
of the rise of China," Mearsheimer said .
"I'll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian."
Mearsheimer said China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert that
economic power into military power to dominate Asia "the way the US dominates the western
hemisphere," and explained why he think the US and its allies have every ability to prevent
that from happening.
"Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?" Mearsheimer said.
"Well, you're in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way
you're not the only country in East Asia that's in this quandary. You trade a lot with China,
and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise,
you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that
security is more important than prosperity, because if you don't survive, you're not gonna
prosper.
"Now some people say there's an alternative: you can go with China," said
Mearsheimer. "Right, you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States.
There's two things I'll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand
you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because
again, we're talking about an intense security competition.
"You're either with us or against us," he continued. "And if you're trading
extensively with China, and you're friendly with China, you're undermining the United States in
this security competition. You're feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not
going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we
can be. Just ask Fidel Castro."
Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer's more
incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate
Castro.
If you've ever wondered how the the US is so successful in getting other nations around the
world to align with its interests, this is how. It's not that the US is a good actor on the
world stage or a kind friend to its allies, it's that it will destroy you if you disobey
it.
Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with
the US to protect itself from the US. As a Twitter follower recently observed , the US doesn't have
allies, only hostages.
As the recently released Palace Letters
illustrated, the CIA staged a coup to oust
Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam because he was prioritizing the nation's
self-sovereignty. Journalist John Pilger
wrote in 2014 after Whitlam's death:
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An
American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs
so totally without going through a domestic revolution." Whitlam ended his nation's colonial
servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement,
supported "zones of peace" and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
The primary difference between the coup in Australia and the one in Bolivia was that the
Bolivians refused to
roll over and take it while we shrugged and said 'No worries mate.' We had every option to
become a real nation and insist on our own self-sovereignty, but we, unlike the Bolivians, were
too thoroughly propagandized and placid. Some hostages escape, some don't.
The US empire got rid of Whitlam, and then when we elected in 2007 a prime minister who was
considered too friendly with China they did it again; in order to facilitate the Obama
administration's "pivot" against Beijing the pro-China Kevin Rudd was replaced by the compliant Julia Gillard.
World Socialist Websitereports :
Secret US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in December 2010 revealed that
"protected sources" of the US embassy were pivotal figures in Gillard's elevation. For months,
key coup plotters, including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union
(AWU) chief Paul Howes, secretly provided the US embassy with
regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership
Rudd had proposed an Asia-Pacific Community, attempting to mediate the escalating
strategic rivalry between the US and China, and opposed the formation of a quadrilateral
military alliance between the US, India, Japan and Australia, aimed against China.
Gillard, who had cultivated her pro-US credentials through Australia-US and
Australia-Israel leadership forums, was literally selected by the US embassy as a reliable
replacement to Rudd. In her first public appearance after knifing Rudd, she demonstrated her
devotion to Washington by posing for a photo op with the US ambassador, flanked by US and
Australian flags. She soon had a phone call with Obama, who had previously twice postponed a
planned visit to Australia under Rudd.
The centrality of Australia to the US preparations for war against China became apparent
in November 2011, when Obama announced his "pivot to Asia" in the Australian parliament, rather
than the White House. During the visit, Gillard and Obama signed an agreement to station
American Marines in Darwin and allow greater US access to other military bases, placing the
Australian population on the front line of any conflict with China.
Gillard's government also sanctioned the expansion of the major US spying and
weapons-targeting base at Pine Gap, agreed to the US military's increased use of Australian
ports and airbases, and stepped up Australia's role in the US-led top-level "Five Eyes" global
surveillance network, which monitors the communications and online activities of millions of
people worldwide.
Rudd's removal marked a turning point. US imperialism, via the Obama administration, sent
a blunt message: There was no longer any room for equivocation by the Australian ruling elite.
Regardless of which party was in office, it had to line up unconditionally behind the US
conflict with China, no matter what the consequences for the loss of its massive export markets
in China.
This is what we're seeing all around the world now: a slow
motion third world war being
waged by the US power alliance against the remaining nations which have resisted being
absorbed into it. As the most powerful of the unabsorbed nations by far, China
is the ultimate target of this war. If the empire succeeds in its ultimate goal of stopping
China, it will have attained a de facto planetary government which no population will be able
to oppose or dissent from.
I don't know about you, but I never consented to a world where powerful nuclear-armed forces
wave Armageddon weapons at each other while fighting for planetary domination and subverting
less powerful nations if they don't play along with their Cold War games. Detente and peace
must be sought and obtained, and we must all work to live together on this planet in
collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem.
This omnicidal, ecocidal way of living that the oligarchic empire has laid out for us does
not suit our species, and it will drive us to extinction along with God knows how many other
species if we do not find a way to end it. Rulers historically do not cede their power
willingly, so we ordinary human beings as a collective are going to have to find a way to
destroy their
propaganda engine, force an end to imperialism, and build a healthy world.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
It's me 14 hours ago The USA is just an
extension of that country we are not to criticize, which has been expanding their land base as
soon as they moved in. The USA is the strong arm that goes around to force other countries to
accept the terms and conditions of the country we are not allowed to criticize. Reply 31 Show 2
previous replies HakunaMatata It's me 5 hours ago True, and that's how Gillard got the tap,
however, the US has become extremely polarized and a house divided within itself cannot stand.
The illusion of democracy in Israel is also showing signs and symptoms of collapse. We should
also remember that Harold Holt was Australia's first political assassination. HH was Treasurer
at the time The Currency Act 1965 was passed which was a clear violation of the Australian
Constitution. As was the War Powers Act 1942. Chapter V, Clause 115: "A State shall not coin
money, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debt." People
want to play politics and ignore the Law that governs every well organized society. Reply 3
neeon9 It's me 9 hours ago You mean Jews, the pestilence, the virus, the murderers of nurses
and children, the invaders of Palestine? I will criticize them! And the horse they rode in on,
the USA. The Jew the Englishman and the American. The axis of evil. Reply 14 Show 1 more
replies Crapiola 12 hours ago The US started out as a corporation of elite businessmen who
simply wanted King George's tariff and tax revenue as their own. I point to the Whiskey
Rebellion and Shay's rebellion as early proof of my assertion. Only the elite could vote, only
the elite could hold office. Nothing has changed much. Reply 11 Rocky_Fjord Crapiola 10 hours
ago Yep, Shay's Rebellion and James Madison's Constitution filtering out democracy of the
common man, defined the state. King George wanted no more expansion across the Appalachian
mountains, but the founders were land grabbers and Amerind killers at heart, and so the myth
and Monroe's Manifest Destiny began. Reply 9 Cabonnet 57 15 hours ago Things changed in
Australia after Thatcher came to power. Her friend and ally was Ronald Reagan . The USA started
showing of their warships in Sydney harbor. Were these friendly visit or was the USA telling
Australia they have new owners ? Reply 18 Zogg Cabonnet 57 13 hours ago It happened earlier
when in 1975 MI6 and CIA have made a coup d'etat in Australia and otherthrown the PM who
started to realize a plan to get independent from the US. Reply 17 1 Show 3 more replies
westernman Cabonnet 57 14 hours ago Yes the people cheered those idiots on, they were both very
stupid. They were both competing to show subservience to elites and corporate money and power.
They were both against well being of their respective societies and ordinary poor, middle class
and the workers. They sat the stage for what we're living today, a proto-fascist US and Britain
robbing their respective taxpayers on continuous basis. This a dare predict will be the
catalyst to their rapid downfall, there is no quiet way out for the global masses. Capitalism
must end before it ends all life on earth! Reply 19 Show 2 more replies Rocky_Fjord 10 hours
ago Examples of US reducing sovereign nations to vassal states -- and the filthy tactics used
-- are endless. Bill Blum wrote books about it. Yugoslavia is a prime example, and the story is
told in documentary film, The Weight of Chains, a version in English on YT. All nations are
subject to US hegemony in a strategy to encircle Russia and China, and one can see it in
present time. The CIA sends in the NGO's like NED [National Endowment for Democracy], they do
their dirty work organizing local operatives to protest and challenge elections and so on. If
that doesn't do the trick, then military force is used as in Yugoslavia, and against civilians
and infrastructure, leaving a wake of cancer and genetic mutation, birth defects . ... See more
Reply 13 straydog2 15 hours ago "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only
interests" -- Henry Kissinger. Though, to be fair, this applies to the vast majority of
countries. Reply 16 1 Cabonnet 57 straydog2 12 hours ago The USSR was a ally . Reply 2 Show 1
more replies Memo1 straydog2 14 hours ago "Friends" ??? You make me laugh. When does
imperialist and imperial powers have friends? Its the conquered and foes. Allies and friends
are just politically correct terms. In reality, it the conquered and remaining foes. Reply 6 1
Show 1 more replies westernman 14 hours ago "This omnicidal, ecocidal way of living that the
oligarchic empire has laid out for us does not suit our species". That statement is most
paramount to our planetary survival. Our planet is burning down and the US is worried about war
and military/economic domination. We the human kind cannot allow this mad US hegemony to
continue unopposed. We have to rid humanity of weapons of mass murder, think collectively in a
shared world with all humans and ecosystem coexisting in peace and harmony or parish in misery.
Reply 8 Pedro 15 hours ago Oh how poetically correct. The ilusion is the eye the brain the
perception. The germans are going to feel it big when merkle disagrees with the usa, n does not
delver gas, russia had not stopped the gas supply into ukraine, despite the 20 plus year of
unpaid gas bills pilling up, the bill is 1 million, they would only pay a third. Its bern like
that all the time. Twenty years of part payments do add up. Reply 9 zoombeenie 12 hours ago
Security concerns are a direct result of aggression and invasion. The US needs all the security
its war machine can provide. The answer to their problems and Australia's is not to create
enemies Reply 7 neeon9 zoombeenie 9 hours ago Without enemies the US will crumble even faster.
It is the M.I.C. that keeps the fiscal wheels turning. Without the constant dealing out of
death to all who dare to turn their backs on them, the US is over. They are without doubt the
most dangerous terrorist nation on the planet, I for one will not morn their passing. Reply 4
TheFishh 5 hours ago US wants to stop China? US still buys more from China than China buys from
the US. And China doesn't see those simply doing business with the US as enemies. US will not
succeed in stopping China. That time has passed, and in this global economy, countries can't
afford to turn their backs on trade and revenue. Besides, US doesn't have anything to offer
anymore other than fake promises of security and loans with a million strings attached. Reply 3
roby007 13 hours ago "America has no allies, only hostages" - so true.
Did some googling and I find it fascinating how much support the US State Department and
associated fake NGOs talk up this "Ecodefense" organization in Russia while ignoring,
dismissing, or criticizing activist environmental organizations that impact the empire's
profits.
Meanwhile record numbers of environmental activists have been murdered across Latin
America and the Philippines. Funny how the US State Department only complains about the CIA's
drug dealers getting snuffed in the Philippines!
This difference in response to persecution of activists in different places leads me to
strongly suspect that, like the drug dealers in the Philippines that the empire cries over,
certain environmental "NGOs" in Russia are tools of the empire.
Governments should closely watch all "NGOs" operating in their countries and
immediately arrest anyone from those organizations who are awarded a financial "literary
prize" or other laundered payment by obscure groups that are linked through any number of
intermediaries to the US State Department's fake "NGOs" . These groups that hand out
the payment from the empire are usually hazy publishing companies that have never published
anything, or at most create a quarterly newsletter with a distribution list of around five
people. Somehow these dubious "publishers" hand out quarter million dollar
"literary prizes" to pro-empire individuals whose writing sucks. A quarter $million
every couple years is more than enough to grow local fake "NGOs" to be used in future
"regime change operations" .
Furthermore, if the US State Department talks up an organization then that organization
is almost certainly an evil tool of empire.
"... Political collapse: obviously there wasn't really a functional government at all for a period of time in the nineties. Lots of American consultants running around and privatizing things in a fashion that created a lot of incredibly corrupt, super-rich oligarchs who then fled with their money, a lot of them. ..."
Welcome back to Turning Hard Times into Good Times. I'm your host Jay Taylor. I'm really
pleased to have with me once again Dmitry Orlov.
Dmitry was born and grew up in Leningrad, but has lived in the United States. He moved
here in the mid-seventies. He has since gone back to Russia, where he is living now.
But Dmitry was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse over several extended visits to his
Russian homeland between the eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer who has contributed
to fields as diverse as high-energy Physics and Internet Security, as well as a leading Peak
Oil theorist. He is the author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American
Prospects (2008) and The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit (2013).
Welcome, Dmitry, and thank you so much for joining us again.
A: Great to be on your program again, Jay.
Q: It's really good to hear your voice. I know we had you on [the program] back in 2014.
It's been a long time -- way too long, as far as I'm concerned. In that discussion we talked
about the five stages of collapse that you observed in the fall of the USSR. Could you review
them really quickly, and compare them to what you are seeing, what you have witnessed and
observed in the United States as you lived here, and of course in your post now in
Russia.
A: Yes. The five stages of collapse as I defined them were financial, commercial,
political, social and cultural. I observed that the first three, in Russia. The finance
collapsed because the Soviet Union basically ran out of money. Commercial collapse because
industry, Soviet industry, fell apart because it was distributed among fifteen Soviet
socialist republics, and when the Soviet Union fell apart all of the supply chains broke
down.
Political collapse: obviously there wasn't really a functional government at all for a
period of time in the nineties. Lots of American consultants running around and privatizing
things in a fashion that created a lot of incredibly corrupt, super-rich oligarchs who then
fled with their money, a lot of them.
Surprisingly, social and cultural collapse didn't really get very far until Russia started
regaining its health. Some of the other Soviet socialist republics are in the throes of
full-on social and cultural collapse, but Russia avoided this fate.....
The goal of this movement is ending nation states to end their influence, laws and
regulations, and thus try to dynamite, through sowing divide ( and in this they are helped by
alleged opponent Soros and his network of franchises mastering regime change, color
revolutions
Blunt coups d´etat and lately "peaceful transitions of power", being both, Soros and
the NRx, connected to the CIA...)countries with which make what they call "The Mosaic" of
regions resulting, at the head of which there will be a corporation CEO and their stakeholders
in a hierarchical autocratic order. These people think that Democracy simply does not work and
thus must be finished, and that there are people ( white, of course ) who have developed a
higher IQ ( at this poin
t I guess some of you have noticed this creed sound very familiar to you, from our neighbors
here by the side at SST, where "james" and Pat lately love each other so much...) and must rule
over the rest.
To achieve their goals, these people, as geeks from Silicon Valley, are willing to cross the
human frontier to transhumanism so as to enhance their human capabilities to submit the
rest...
Wondering why this topic have never been treated at MoA...nor at the Valdai Discussion
Club...
The Alt-Right and the Europe of the Regions. According to Wikipedia, Steve Bannon is inspired
by the theorist Curtis Yarvin ( https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilustration_oscura),
who states that countries should be divided into feudal areas in the hands of corporations
(Patchwork).
"... When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises, including the recent ones, like in 2008. ..."
"... So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine the level of the state's involvement in the economy. ..."
"... In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system, the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies. ..."
"... i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. ..."
"... Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western "leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. ..."
Most of the commentators on yesterday's
post were right. It was the Russian President Vladimir Putin
who said this :
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were children and remember what the main character said:
"It's a question of discipline. When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very tedious
work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our common home for future generations. We must
tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global agenda. But I would address it more broadly
to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in
favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when the use of natural resources is growing
to a global dimension. However, humanity is not safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a response to this interference. This
is why it is so important to develop harmonious relations between Man and Nature.
I found the excerpt remarkable because it included this, on might say, anti-capitalistic statement:
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious
and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
That 'green' statement will rile those people who argue for free markets and a right to sell bullshit in ever more flavors. In
their view the fight against such 'communists' thinking must be renewed.
As the full English transcript of Putin's speech and the two and a half hour Q&A
is now available I can also quote another interesting
passage where Putin talks about capitalism and the role of the state. His standpoint seems very pragmatic to me:
Question : Mr President, there has been much talk and debate, in the context of the global economic upheavals, about the
fact that the liberal market economy has ceased to be a reliable tool for the survival of states, their preservation, and for
their people.
Pope Francis said recently that capitalism has run its course. Russia has been living under capitalism for 30 years. Is it time
to search for an alternative? Is there an alternative? Could it be the revival of the left-wing idea or something radically new?
Putin: Lenin spoke about the birthmarks of capitalism, and so on. It cannot be said that we have lived these past 30
years in a full-fledged market economy. In fact, we are only gradually building it, and its institutions. [..]
You know, capitalism, the way you have described it, existed in a more or less pure form at the beginning of the previous century.
But everything changed after what happened in the global economy and in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, after World
War I. We have already discussed this on a number of occasions. I do not remember if I have mentioned this at Valdai Club meetings,
but experts who know this subject better than I do and with whom I regularly communicate, they are saying obvious and well-known
things.
When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption
is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market
economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement
of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises,
including the recent ones, like in 2008.
I remember very well how the key shareholders of Russia's largest corporations that are also major European and global players
came to me proposing that the state buy their assets for one dollar or one ruble. They were afraid of assuming responsibility
for their employees, pressured by margin calls, and the like. This time, our businesses have acted differently. No one is seeking
to evade responsibility. On the contrary, they are even using their own funds, and are quite generous in doing so. The responses
may differ, but overall, businesses have been really committed to social responsibility, for which I am grateful to these people,
and I want them to know this.
Therefore, at present, we cannot really find a fully planned economy, can we? Take China. Is it a purely planned economy? No.
And there is not a single purely market economy either. Nevertheless, the government's regulatory functions are certainly important.
[..]
We just need to determine for ourselves the reasonable level of the state's involvement in the economy; how quickly that involvement
needs to be reduced, if at all, and where exactly. I often hear that Russia's economy is overregulated. But during crises like
this current pandemic, when we are forced to restrict business activity, and cargo traffic shrinks, and not only cargo traffic,
but passenger traffic as well, we have to ask ourselves – what do we do with aviation now that passengers avoid flying or fly
rarely, what do we do? Well, the state is a necessary fixture, there is no way they could do without state support.
So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine
the level of the state's involvement in the economy. What do we use as a baseline for this decision? Expediency. We need
to avoid using any templates, and so far, we have successfully avoided that.
Then comes a paragraph that shows where Russia differs from the current 'western' economic policies of negative interest rates
and deflation:
Of course, the Central Bank and the Government are among the most important state institutions. Therefore, it was in fact through
the joint efforts of the Central Bank and the Government that inflation was reduced to 4 percent, because the Government invests
substantial resources through its social programmes and national projects and has an impact on our monetary policy. It went down
to 3.9 percent, and the Governor of the Central Bank has told me that we will most likely keep it around the estimated target
of around 4 percent. This is the regulating function of the state; there is no way around it. However, stifling development through
an excessive presence of the state in the economy or through excessive regulation would be fatal as well. You know, this is a
form of art, which the Government has been applying skilfully, at least for now.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
Russia is well on its way to overtake Germany as the fifth biggest economy. Putin's pragmatic positions towards the role of the
state in the economy and his relative generous policies of social programs and large national projects have contributed to that.
The many questions and answers on foreign policy in the Valdai talk show a similar pragmatism on other issues. For those interested
in those here is again the link to the transcript
.
Posted by b on October 24, 2020 at 18:00 UTC |
Permalink
Putin was (is) an important figure in rescuing Russia from the collapse, and western carpetbagging, of the nineties but in no
way has he moved Russia towards communism or prepared the path (structurally) for a future communist state. Despite everything
that Putin has achieved, in no way has he created a system that is separate from that of the west. The external impostion of sanctions
(by the west) has had much more effect than anything Putin has done (in terms of separting from western dogma).
This talk of "overconsumption" is totally irrelevant to Russia (Russians are still largely poor and "under"-consume) as well
as much of the rest of the world. And Russia is a huge producer of the resources (oil, gas, coal), and a huge consumer of these
same resources, that we are told are destroying the world. So Putin is not really addressing Russians or the majority of the world,
and western governments are used to hearing this kind of guff (because they say the same, frequently).
So, Putin is not referring to a Communist (economic) state; he is referring to a mixed economy just like every other western
state (yes you could also say "just like every other state in the world" but what I am demonstrating is that, at best, Putin desires
to adhere to conventional western economic dogma).
Putin is 68 and the average life expectancy on Russia is 72 (only 65 for males). Putin will be gone soon enough and what he
has built is a proud independent nation that is integrated into the world economy and is well able to defend itself. But he has
not changed the fundamental economic relations that were established in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
So, this "remarkable...anti-capitalistic statement" is either meaningless or a signal of compliance to western/world capitalist
elites who, perhaps, wish to bring the free-market to an end and entrench their position as a permanent elite - and that would
not be communism, rather it would be feudalism.
With the advent of the industrial revolution, capitalism, mass education, democracy and then the proto-communist states it
was thought impossible (and undesireable) that social structures could regress. But, has the (within technical capacities) ability
to capture data on everyone all of the time (and analyze and interpret that data in real time) and deep understandings of behavoiuralism,
human psychology and sophisticated, convincing and all pervasive propaganda resulted in a fundamental change? In short, that it
is no longer held that all humans are free, can make their own choices, and are capable of organising society for and by themselves
(even as some kind of future objective) - and that this has been replaced by a belief that humanity is best run by a "benevolent"
elite.
I'm not sure that the concept of neo-liberalism is really applicable to Russia. What happened under Yeltsin was a simple pillage
of the state, as anyone would do if they can, as he was too drunk to notice. The same thing is happening today in UK.
Putin has spent his time trying to recover from that situation to more control, as a conservative nationalist, but its not
so easy.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the
strength of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
Yes! 'People are the source of power' is the definition of democracy.
In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has
transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee
the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system,
the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies.
Russia is rapidly developing; the U.S. is rapidly failing. No need to wonder why!
Depending upon who you ask
, somewhere between 33% and 70% of Russia's economy is still state controlled. You can never say "we" when talking about
directing a capitalist market economy because "The Market" will always be boss. Though Russia suffered a catastrophic capitalist
counterrevolution, it is this large share of the economy that is not entirely subservient to market forces that gives Putin the
luxury of talking in terms of "we" , despite his submissive attitude towards capitalism.
The fact is that capitalism ( "The Market" ) cannot develop Russia. This has been the case for more than a hundred years,
which is why they had a revolution in the first place and why the privatizations have been halted and are now (grudgingly) being
reversed.
Putin's strength lies not in his ideology because his strength of conviction to that ideology is that of an overcooked noodle.
This happens to work out OK though because his ideology is neoliberal capitalism. Clinging to that ideology isn't serving any
leader in the world right now, as we can see in Europe and the US. Rather, Putin's strength is in his patriotic pragmatism. He
doesn't want to build "Socialism with Russian Characteristics" , but pragmatics forces him in that direction.
Russia will be moving to a progressive income tax regime from 2021 onwards. The current personal income tax regime is a flat
13%. From next year, individuals earning 5 million rubles or more annually will be subject to a 15% tax rate. Sounds like little
but these sorts of reforms have to take time and have to be done in small increments.
It's my understanding that the bulk of Russia's tax receipts currently come from the energy sector. I'm sure way back in 1998
Putin wrote a PhD dissertation on the use of natural resources as the basis of economic development and growth, and taxation of
energy companies would be one method of using land resources to achieve this growth.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
That's a great idea, except both government and household debt in Russia are among the lowest in the world (probably the lowest
of any industrialized country). Both Putin and the foreigners who fawn over him, including myself not very long ago, are the first
to tout this fact. This way inflation in the Russian economy means consumers get to enjoy rising costs of living, and the state
and companies rising costs of raw materials, energy etc. while there's virtually no debt on the other side of the equation for
inflation to devalue. There's still a lot of corporate sector debt in Russia, but the bulk of it is still, incredibly, denominated
in dollars, euros, Swiss franc, and so on. Ruble inflation and falling exchange rates don't make this debt to cheaper to service,
but of course the opposite.
It's a great thing that the rate of home ownership (without associated mortgage debt) is so high in Russia, and it's probably
the only result of the privatization drive that was actually a good outcome. There's no reason that Russians should now be loaded
up with huge debts in order to own a house or an apartment. Access to personal credit for things like a car is difficult and expensive
in Russia, which obviously means a lot of people can't afford a car, but on the other further helps to ensure the indebtedness
of households is kept low. At the same time, like Putin (and b) does here, many in Russia apparently want to pretend that their
economy is like a Western economy, and that accordingly its households are partially relieved financially by inflation when they
actually only suffer from increased prices. It's absolutely bizarre.
The reality is that Russia's leadership has an unparalleled commitment toward, and talent for, getting the worst of all worlds
economically. Thanks to them Russia is probably the only major economy in the world with high inflation but microscopic domestic
currency debt (and correspondingly low investment in the domestic economy). This way Russia has gotten to enjoy, historically,
very high inflation but much lower growth rates than other developing economies. (The high growth rates in the 2000's came from
high raw materials prices, resulting merely in accumulation of foreign exchange reserves which the Russian government itself then
said could not be efficiently converted into rubles and invested in the Russian economy. Growth in industrial and agricultural
production, or in fixed assets like infrastructure, was accordingly much smaller, if even existent.)
There's also the continuing Wild West capitalism where oligarchs have gotten to keep their stolen assets in potash, gold mining,
coal mining etc., even in strategic industrial sectors like steelmaking, power engineering or the automotive industry, while at
the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian state
intervention. In other words, stability for the oligarchs who openly tried to destroy the Russian state and turn it into a Hong
Kong-style neo-feudal hellhole, and who today just as before continue to asset strip the last residues of Soviet-era manufacturing,
but a Great Wall against the Asians who want to come in and develop petrochemicals plants, e-commerce, timber industry or whatever.
Through the entire 2000-2012 era, the Russian government came down like a hawk on ruble-denominated debt, while corporations
(both private and state-owned) could take out basically unlimited loans in foreign currency. State-owned companies like Rosneft
actually led the foreign currency indebtedness, helping enormously to ensure that Russia's only real advantage and asset in the
post-Soviet era, the trade surplus resulting from its oil and gas exports, is sent out of the country as interest payments to
American and European banks, rather than (as China has done) paying for the imports of Western machinery and technologies to help
develop domestic manufacturing.
Certainly, Russian companies are now much more restricted in the amounts of foreign currency credit they can accept, but access
to ruble credit is highly limited as well. The result is of course austerity in the economy, with anemic growth and falling living
standards.
Another important "benefit" was that the West had an easy way to put pressure on the ruble. They simply forbade Russian companies
from rolling over their debt, forcing them to come up with huge sums of foreign currency in short order. That crashed the rouble,
thereby dramatically forcing up prices (and equivalently, inflation) in the, by its own design, almost completely import-dependent
Russian economy. The crash in oil prices (again, simply limiting Russia's income in dollar terms, much of which they needed simply
to pay back Western creditors anyway) was just icing on the cake.
One could keep going like this forever. If China and South Korea had political and corporate elites with this mentality, and
with this level of commitment to neo-liberalism and globalization, but (critically!) only to its worst aspects and outcomes, these
countries would have been very lucky to be at the level of development of Thailand today. That's the reality and attacking people
who raise these criticisms as enemies of Russia, as many did to me in the last thread about thread on these topics, does nothing
to help matters. In fact, with "friends" like you, maybe Russia does not need enemies.
I've been having fun listening and reading the reactions and selected excerpts in the media to the long, very long Putin conference,
three hours with the question and answer segment, the most substantial and interesting, but five hours total considering that
he appeared two hours late, no doubt preparing until the last minute and over the speech as could be seen in the notes that he
held and that somehow the sound technicians did not filter out completely, which was a bit annoying.
Checking out the chaotic notes that I took, there is one little detail that most surely won't get any attention, his recourse
to widely used popular expressions like when he asks himself rhetorically:
what is a strong state? What are its strengths?
The Russian word for strength could be translated as power too, and any an every Russian recalls the great hero of the dark
90's, the late Serguey Bodrov in the film "The Brother 2", partly filmed in Chicago, Bodrov asks a panicked businessman: Tell
me American, where is the power? is the power in money? I think the power is in truth . a phrase that everybody knows and
feels proud of in Russia.
Vlad not only plays complex accords for foreign consumption, he plays for the home team first, just in case .
Putin, like all politicians, is more about what he says and less about what he does.
Fair enough, i challenge anyone in his position to do better... I actually admire the man, but let's not delude ourselves.
Russia stands to benefit from global warming more than any other country in spite of all the damage it will still cause it. On
the overall balance, it will average out ahead of everyone else, in relative terms, so don't look to them for answers.
As for "the State"... so what if it's his mates who benefit instead of oligarchs, what is the difference when most of the people
in Russia are broke and have no realistic prospects or chances of progressing beyond their predetermined fates? The cynic in me
ultimately thinks he just wants the oligarchs to pay their taxes to make his job easier, keep the people happy, so he can get
reelected more easily.
@ Eric | Oct 24 2020 21:10 utc | 18.. eric, i was intrigued by your ideas in the previous thread and i am again here... how do
you come by this particular vantage point?? do you have a particular background in finances, or is it just a special interest
that you have cultivated to come by the position you share in your post here? i am genuinely curious! i don't have enough knowledge
to comment and wish someone like Michael Hudson could comment on this specific topic that you seem to excel at holding a very
specific and fairly negative outlook on with regard Russia... thanks for your comments either way.. it is above my pay grade to
respond with any authority..
i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. it seems hard to see thru the maze a way out of
this... your suggestion that russia is also caught in this maze would not surprise me... what is the way out, if i might be so
bold??
I think your post points to a fundamental worrisome feature of Russia. It's very unclear who actually has a stake in the prosperity,
power or even existence of the Russian state in 50 or 100 years' time. People can pretend that the Russian Orthodox Church plays
this role but there's very little to suggest it really does. India, I think, unfortunately struggles with the same problem, but
the destruction of India at the hands of British goes a long way to explain it in my view. In China or Iran, with all the issues
of their own that those two countries have, there's however very little ambiguity in this regard.
I'm not even sure I would place the blame on Western-style representative democracy in Russia, as the same basic problem seems
to have been there both before the October Revolution and at the very least during the post-Stalin era of the Soviet Union. The
question is if Russia, despite everything, as a Christian civilization isn't ultimately a participant in the Western world's anomie
and decline.
Yes! Absolutely capitalism is rapidly destroying the planet. Of this there is no question. Nothing can be left alone: 'undeveloped'
land must be 'developed', i.e. forests cut down and replaced by subdivisions, parking lots, McDonald's, office buildings, etc.
Capitalism is truly insidious: look at how the once mighty Amazon rainforest has been utterly wiped out by greedy cattle farmers
looking for a quick buck with the blessing of Bolsonaro. Where there were once massive old growth forests across N. America, there
are now only 'tree museums', i.e. national parks which save less than 1% of what there once was before Europeans came and destroyed
everything–in the name of profit. Capitalism not only destroys natural resources, it destroys people: slavery has been replaced
by wage slavery: and the wage slave's earnings from his 'mcjob' invariably go to his landlord, or other parasites. Your employer
is your master in capitalism: he is your god and you serve him. Any excess profit you make all goes to him, not you. If you look
at him wrong, or have a bad attitude you are replaced–and NO good reference for you! What a miserable shit system craptialism
is.
I have been strongly influenced by Michael Hudson's writings over several years now. Basically everything in that post is either
a point he already made about Russia or a direct application of his overall thinking on Russia's economy. For this reason I was
very surprised by the hostility of certain commenters, in particular karlof1, who also could be called followers of Michael Hudson.
karlof1 even suggested I should spend a couple of years researching Russian economic development, even though I've quite obviously
already done that (which doesn't mean everyone has to agree with my conclusions). I have to wonder if he and Martyanov either
never came across Hudson's criticisms of Russian economic policy (one of the actually less harsh examples
here - if you search
his site michael-hudson.com you can find others) or consider him also an ignorant anti-Russian commentator but are able to appreciate
him in spite of that.
I wrote about this part of Putin's speech back on the 22nd when he made this appraisal:
" only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis ."
I bolded the text then and I've done so again because that's one of the most important points he raised, IMO, particularly
in relation to the clearly unviable Outlaw US Empire and EU. I even turned my commentary into a short article at my VK space that
will be expanded once I digest all the Q & A.
I recently made an observation about Russia's banking and finance systems in that they're controlled by the public via the
state, not by some private entities separate from the state doing all they can to avoid any type of regulation and oversight,
which was based on this item I linked here at the
time. I later made the observation that the moral/ethical grounding of who/what's in charge of those systems matters greatly when
it comes to making an equitable society--and it will matter even more as we get into the having steady-state economies as resource
depletion mounts into the crisis it will eventually become. Putin showed that he knows and understands all that, which is well
beyond the capacity of the vast majority of those known as politicians--especially those in Neoliberal nations. Putin used the
term "balance" 7 times, imbalance once, in his speech. I suggest readers use the CTRL-F function to search the text for that term
to see what it's in reference to so they can learn a bit more about the man and his mind and the importance of seeking balance
in attaining equitability.
At the tail end of the Q & A, Putin is asked: "what you can advise and offer to Russian youth?" Putin's answer conforms completely
with his policy toward the promotion of families and urging young people to strive for their aspirations -- unlike many Western
politicos, he backs his admonitions with robust policies to make them possible, something I've long admired about him. Here's
most of Putin's reply:
"But what can we offer? We believe we will give young people more opportunities for professional growth and create more
social lifts for them. We are building up these instruments and creating conditions for people to receive a good education,
make a career, start a family and receive enough income for a young family.
"We are drafting an increasing number of measures to support young families. Let me emphasise that even during the pandemic,
most of our support measures were designed for families with children. What are these families? They are young people for the
most part.
"We will continue doing this in the hope that young people will use their best traits – their daring striving to move
ahead without looking back at formalities that probably make older generations more reserved – for positive, creative endeavours.
Eventually, the younger generation will take the baton from the older generation and continue this relay race, and make Russia
stronger."
The difference in that regard between Putin's vision and his actions when compared to the Outlaw US Empire and other Neoliberal
nations is beyond stark--it's as if they inhabit two different solar systems.
The reason Putin's hated by the West is he took an unviable Russia and made it more than viable again. IMO, he's the unequaled
Dean of what few Statesmen exist in today's world, which makes him an asset for humanity.
There used to be a regular commenter at Mark Chapman's Kremlin Stooge / The New Kremlin Stooge - I forget his KS name but he
was a physicist (and not a very good-tempered one at that, he had regular shouting matches with one other commenter Yalensis there)
-- but he was of the opinion that interest rates set by the Central Bank of Russia have been too high and have discouraged small
business investment in Russia. The head of the CBR may still be Elvira Nabiullina -- I haven't checked lately. She and others
in the government who help set monetary policies in Russia are suspected of being neoliberal and Atlanticist in their outlook.
As President, Putin is not responsible for setting domestic policies - that's Prime Minister Mishustin's job.
Putin spoke all that in a very specific environment (in a room full of rabid liberals/pro-capitalists), so we should be care about
its content.
There are some incongruousness in his speech we must correct here:
1) It is a myth the State, during the golden age of liberalism (16th-19th Centuries) was "minimal". On the contrary: there
was a ton of State intervention in the people's daily life - including the right of the State to separate whole families and use
their children in servile labor. The difference here is that the gross of that intervention was directed to the dispossessed,
i.e. the working classes. There was also a ton of regulations over slave ownership. The age of classical liberalism is considered
one of minimum State because the freedom of the powerful slave owners and industrialists was almost zero; it's the History told
from the point of view of the capitalists. That's why Putin clearly said "[capitalism] the way you have described it [...]"
2) The mixed system between what he calls "State intervention" (welfare of the people, command or planned economy) and "free
market" is the scientific definition of socialism. Marx wasn't an idealist: he was a materialist. He knew a direct transition
to communism was impossible, therefore he imagined a system of transition, where communism and capitalism would exist together.
This transition system was called socialism. That's why China, still governed by a Marxist-Leninist Party, considers itself socialist
and not capitalist, or even "mixed" for that matter;
Another observation: the Western countries didn't enter deflation/low inflation because of ZIRP/NIRP. They were already suffering
from it before those policies. The opposite is the true: precisely because they were having a too low inflation, they resorted
to ZIRP/NIRP.
Yep re my comment @ 29: Nabiullina is still CBR head according to her Wikipedia entry. Since becoming CBR head back in 2012 or
2013, she has consistently followed a policy of tackling inflation first to the extent of keeping interest rates higher than they
perhaps should be. This probably helps explain some of the issues Eric @ 18 raises about Russians' access to personal credit.
Interestingly Nabiullina's Wikipedia entry shows she worked with Alexei Kudrin in the past. Kudrin has a reputation for preferring
neoliberal economic policies. Currently he is Inspector General in the Russian govt's audit office where he can mouth off all
he likes about how he'd reform Russian economic policies if he got the chance but not actually do much damage: a case of Putin
keeping potential enemies somewhere where they can be watched.
Eric does raise the issue about how Russian oligarchs were allowed to keep their gains and not be forced to pay back taxes
they owed way back in the early 2000s, but this was on condition that they not meddle in Russian federal politics and buy influence,
and pay all their future taxes and other obligations, like paying their employees, promptly and in accordance with Russian laws.
Those who refused ended up in prison (Khodorkovsky) or fled overseas (Berezovsky). Roman Abramovich paid an unusual penalty: he
was made Governor of Chukotka in far eastern Siberia near the Bering Sea for a couple of years at least. He paid for all that
territory's infrastructure improvements. Of course the people there must love him!
So why are not all barflies writing and thinking about the role of the state in the economy within the context of current private
control of finance in the West?
What is blinding you all to not state the obvious role issue of those that own global private finance not being any "state"
of transparency?
We are in a civilization war about the fact that a current state in our world, China, has a public finance core of government
which is opposed to the Western cult of global private finance. Wake up.
Reading the entrails of the Russian economy that has been ravaged for decades by the cult of private finance and its followers
in Russia does us no service to b's question of what role the state should have in the national and world economy. Because Russia
is still having to operate with the shit show called empire they are limited in their response. I was taught 50 years ago that
a 2% inflation rate was optimal but because Russia is trying to build its population, it is spending more money supporting that
segment of the overall population and saying the inflation rate is worth the investment.
The role of the state in the economy
History has shown positive results from what are called mixed economies. The US is a mixed economy with the state, at various
levels, supporting energy, transportation, USPS, water, sewage treatment, police and fire protection, education, SSI, regulations,
etc. There are and have been attempts to privatize all those things under the canard that the service can be provided "better"
with profit as the motive other than service to others.
There is no magic mixed economy formula for any one state and it will change over time like Russia is choosing to do. But the
state has limited control of the economy if the tools of finance are privately held and not integrated into state functionality....and
it is my understanding that the Central Bank in Russia for example is not entirely a sovereign entity...what sayest our most recent
barfly, Eric?
Please join in a more reasoned contextual discussion of our world. I am tired of reading about "ism"s. More reality please.
Thank you b for continuing this conversation. The speech and Q&A were most interesting. They were consistent with what Putin has
said before, but done so this time with more confidence as even the oppression of the covid situation was dealt with in honorable
fashion - if one can honor a virus, that is. It is always, with Putin, that the people come first, and he made that statement
at the beginning.
Countries, all countries, have that obligation in their governance that it be for the people's welfare. So, to him, whatever
system a country has is only important in that respect and each country, drawing on its own history and its assets, decides for
itself what that style of governance will be.
This is different from any outside system being touted as the ideal. There isn't an ideal. It all depends on how the people
wish to be governed, based on what they feel is important to them. That is democracy in its loosest terms. He said several times
that any philosophy of government imposed by outsiders will never work.
At the same time, his support for the UN system on a world wide basis is as unconditional as his first premise.
I meant to add that casting my mind back to the last debate, the one thing being said about the people was Biden intensely eyeing
us and telling us about the empty chair at the kitchen table - nice!
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of
judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We need to land somewhere between North Korea and the US on consumption. John Judge used to talk about how 30 houses on a street
need 30 lawnmowers. Why not buy one lawnmower, share it and maintain it? I ditched my lawns long ago as that is also over consumption
but I use it as an example of what type of society we have built.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the strength
of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
It is not just confidence it is having an educated competent citizenry. Our top education institutions, especially the ivy
league, are cranking out students trained to protect the status quo hence things will not changed easily.
Moon is going to end up on the Russian disinformation agitators list.
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 25 2020 0:05 utc | 32
This "mixed economies won the Cold War" is an old story already. Eric Hobsbawn left a letter claiming just before he died,
in 2012.
The problem with the Scandinavian economies is this: who's gonna do the dirty jobs? You cannot simply make a nation of designers
and white collar workers. The social-democracies of the post-war solved this problem with the Third World countries, but now those
countries are not accepting this role anymore.
Besides, there's the objective fact even the Scandinavian economies are declining, with inequality skyrocketing since the end
of the 1990s. They, too, are susceptible to the laws of capitalism.
"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to say to those who are still
waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your
funeral", Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
That's an interesting question. How are the underclass workers (construction, janitors, street sweepers) wage and social benefits
in the Nordic countries in comparison with China, S. Korea and Japan?
Those are important points. It seems to be a common pattern in neoliberal economics. The answer to "why" that I pieced together
is this: It is all about the oligarchs in combination with their immediate overseas business partners. Typically they own a considerable
portion of the foreign-jurisdiction bonds lent to their own nations. It is a straightforward money laundering arrangement.
The Russian government cannot simply remove the domestic oligarchs**, no more than a US or EU government could do the same
against equivalent local business powers. Rather, they come to a livable equilibrium. Preventing investment from China, EU etc,
is, in addition to defending national sovereignty, also a case of the government defending the domestic oligarchs from foreign
rivals -- rivals who would have greater financial resources with the backing of their own larger home regions.
However, the big difference in the case of Russia, compared to most countries victimized by the neoliberal pattern, is that
the government is powerful enough to quite reliably protect the local oligarchs from their foreign rivals, including pretty much
anything that the foreign rival's home governments can possibly throw at them (i.e. the various regime change toolbox). This protection
is a massively valuable service. For this reason, the Russian government can, if it is halfway decent and perhaps above-average
in managing the difficult internal politics, negotiate a better (i.e. more long-term sustainable) arrangement with the local oligarchs,
in terms of how the citizens are affected.
[** but with all the sanctions etc, this balance of power actually shifts]
You do realize that the Russians have three (3) vaccines, and the Chinese one (1) in late stage 3 trials, with Sputnik V due to
complete theirs next month and to go into serial production shortly. Putin's strategy is to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.
Mishustin is busy holding trade fairs promoting the Russian arctic. Business residency for $$RUB$$$. Ski resorts on the Kola peninsula...
While his enemies implode under the second COVID-19 wave....
Thank you Alicia for putting up that interview. I like very much the articles Orlov writes, and many of them I find translated
in French. He has humour, unlike more well known geopolitics analysts. Try this one:
That Valdai speech / Q&A was a master class in governance.
While Putin thinks and talks like a sane man, Western leaders reveal daily that they are now not sanity-capable, not logic-capable,
not sanity-capable, not shame-capable.
Putin shows a commanding grasp of his nation's people, economy, culture, history, environment, geo-strategic needs, impressively
rattling off numbers, statistics, reason, rationale, logic and pragmatic good sense. In all that, he reminds me of that other
great world-class leader, Lee Kuan Yew, whom Kissinger once called the Wise Man of Asia. Russia is fortunate to be governed by a world-class leader and his team today, but good luck to the Great Toilet Bowl Stirrers
in the West.
Putin: "But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited
consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also
think about tomorrow..... After all, it is within our power to stop being egoistical, greedy, mindless and wasteful consumers....
We just need to open our eyes, look around us and see that the land, air and water are our common inheritance from above, and
we must learn to cherish them, just as we must cherish every human life, which is precious. This is the only way forward in this
complicated and beautiful world. I do not want to see the mistakes of the past repeated."
Was Putin talking about Russians? or about Americans? Who are those exceptional 4% of the global population who demands to consume 40% of global resources?
Putin: "So, we want the voice of our citizens to be decisive and to see constructive proposals and requests from different social
forces get implemented.... what you call your political system is immaterial...."
It doesn't matter if it is a 'democratic' or 'socialist', but governments that primarily serve the people's needs (not the
elite's greed) will listen to, and DO, the people's will. Out of that, the people give their CONSENT to be governed.
Today, ALL governments use a mix of democratic and socialist tools, eg. China, Russia, UK, USA. But, unlike the West, who boast
that their system is more perfect, China and Russia serve their people primarily.
As Deng said, it does not matter if the cat is black or white.
How much of America's policy's are run out of pure jealousy of Russia and China ?
Rather than being a supper power, they have regressed into immature petulant juvenile tantrums.
Self-distruction and self-harm.
Putin is a "statesman". A few squalid pretenders in the political class here may aspire to that title, but It is not a badge you
pin on yourself, it is awarded by general acclaim. Putin has stepped into the vacuum of world leadership left by the US Idiocracy
when Trump took over with the help of his free market, anti-government cohort, the Koch's, Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, and etc.
Putin is the champion of arms control, multilateralism & cooperation, and following this address certainly, environmentalism.
All attempts to demonize Putin on the part of the neoliberal US oligarchy collapse when the diminutive Russian Mongol begins to
speak. I join in the applause. It is so refreshing to listen to a leader talking sense for a change! I don't care if he is a benevolent
authoritarian anti-democrat, I am so grateful for his intelligent leadership that I salute! And I thank b for bringing this Valdai
event to our attention. The poverty and ideological blindness of our media conglomerates is just outrageous!
"Overconsumption" , in and of itself, isn't the problem. The problem is the distortion of value that capitalist empire
introduces. If the effort required to acquire some thing accurately reflected the effort to produce that thing then consumption
would be naturally self-limiting. After all, who could every day consume products containing two days worth of effort if they
had to work two days for every day worth of their consuming? "Overconsumption" can only occur because the empire expropriates
massive amounts of produced value from its vassals and uses that robbed value to buy off its domestic population. Likewise, capitalism
over-rewards certain portions of the domestic population (typically no-skill "professionals" such as journalists and middle
managers) who act as "insulation" for the elites from the working class.
Note that you don't see "overconsumption" among factory workers in Bangladesh or Malaysia. Child slave laborers working
on African cocoa plantations for your Hershey bars could never be accused of "overconsumption" . It would even be unjust
to accuse Chinese workers, as much as their standards of living have exploded over the last couple decades, of indulging in
"overconsumption" .
When China is successful in replacing the US$ with a scientifically managed "currency basket" for international trade
and currency reserve then the problem of "overconsumption" will correct itself and the Global North will go on a diet.
I am not sure that will be possible though without some "kinetic" events between now and then.
On the role of the state on the economy...and on everything else...things not discussed at Valdai, nor at MoA for that matter,
and which contribute to promote the disintegration of states so wished by the neorreactionaires due the lose of confidence of
citizens in the state-
Making the broth to fascism, on the verge of coming "curfews" to be stablished in Spain ,and other European countries...One
wonders why the hell Thiel & associated, those owners of hedge funds and managers of our personal data on behalf of already fascist
givernment like that in the US, need to follow trying to implant their so wished feudal state where the masses are submitted into
slavery, when all that is this already here...and without complaints from our part...
(...)A recent article by Carlota García Encina, an analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, described the coronavirus pandemic
as "an opportunity for NATO." Specifically, it stated that "the universality of the coronavirus means that NATO must defend
the 30 as if they were one, going from" one for all and all for one "to" all for all ".
In 2003, and anticipating events like the cheating poker player who anticipates his results, NATO released - it was not
secret - the Urban Operations in the Year 2020 report, a socio-economic analysis of the situation in Europe where it anticipated
a crisis unprecedented in the history of capitalism, where urban poverty "could grow significantly in the future, leading to
possible uprisings, civil unrest and threats to security that will require the intervention of local authorities".
The analysis was only a preview of the crisis that the capitalist system was forging. The United Nations evaluated in 2019,
and counting on the data as of December 31, 2018 (that is, less than a year and a half after the "coronavirus crisis"), that
26.1% of the population in Spain, and 29.5% of those under 18 years of age were in a situation of poverty. That more than 55%
had difficulties to make ends meet, and that 5.4% had severe deficiencies (access to electricity, drinking water, heating,
etc.). Official unemployment was 13.78%, more than double the EU average, and youth unemployment was 30.51% among those under
25 years of age. We insist, before the State of Alarm decreed on March 14, 2020.(...)
(...)Any investigation of an event ("coronavirus crisis") has to start from the circumstances that surround it to obtain accurate
conclusions, and not the other way around. The origin of this crisis that is impoverishing millions of people cannot be limited
to March 14, 2020, because as we have seen, the problem came from long before.
If we add to this that many of the decisions that are transforming society towards a privatist model (locked up at home)
and individualistic (normalizing the suppression of rights) were made based on the criteria of a "committee of experts" that
has not existed, we can never set off an alarm that this is not just a "fucking virus."
But the second question that we need to verify is the deterrent effect of the exercise of those rights which imply these
decisions, because even the left is accepting the official account of the events with astonishing passivity.(...)
(...)Paul Von Hindenburg, who came to power thanks to his family fortune, and with credentials manufactured by that fortune,
ended the German Weimar Constitution of 1919 by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree and ushering in something that at the time
of being approved no one called fascism. In the current context, the succession of regulations of this "new exceptionality"
grants an extraordinary delegation of functions to the police or civil guard officers.
With this empowered power, there is no place to turn back. The curfew that will be established in the next few hours may
one day be eliminated from the BOE, but the meaning of this measure is that mass psychology incorporates a disciplined attitude
towards the reality that surrounds us into its behavior.
And what surrounds us is what we already know. Faced with the question of whether or not we should comply with the restrictions
imposed by the State (confinement, isolation, no meetings, no leisure), we must ask ourselves (as we should have done before
March 14) if we are willing to accept or not that poverty and repression are part of our lives .
The stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loan debacle, the tech bubble, the Asian tigers meltdown, the world "recession"
of 2008 and today's global slump (which preceded the pandemic, a point neglected by the apologists for capitalism,) show that
capitalism doesn't work as advertised, even on its own limited terrain. All claims about how "I" (whether it's Putin, Trump, Boris
Johnson, Macron, a miscellaneous German, whoever) am smart enough to solve the minor details of finance responsible have been
proven by history to be lies. Whether born of sincerely felt megalomania or calculated perfidy doesn't matter, instability and
inequality (which is a bad thing, not a good one, no matter what secret feelings may be harbored,) *are* the normal operations
of market economies.
When you add to that the way the global capitalist system is creating a global environmental crisis, the shamelessness of the
capitalist apologists is staggering. Putin is a fool.
The fraud Proyect seems to think Xi is actively commanding the Chinese economy in such a fashion as to be personally responsible
for, well, everything, conveniently omits that Xi is to be condemned precisely for *not* taking charge the way needed, for advancing
the power of the Chinese bourgeoisie even at the expense of the future of China. But then, Proyect is anticommunist/pro imperialist,
a champion of barbarism using pious phrases.
Lastly, the notion that "overconsumption" is the problem, is basically an attack on the masses of the people. The problem is
the accumulation of capital, of money, which is not consumed, but "invested" for yet more money. There's a fake left website called
Crooked Timer where the oh-so-refined-sensibilities of a clot of academics is offended by the rabble eating meat...but they're
not offended by billionaires having more money than they can spend! This is the same thing. The pursuit of money, profit, is not
overconsumption, but that, not overconsumption, distorts the economy. Starting with vague notions like overconsumption reflects
a deep ideological disorientation...or a commitment to capitalism, imperialism and ultimately barbarism.
Things not discussed at Valdai...on the "eco-scam", how the Spanish IBEX35 giants, private great corporations on energy, transports
and clothing, claim thousands of millions from European Funds ( which come from tax payers money, not from the private bank accounts
of European officials, do not forget...) on the alibi of "energetic transition" and "sustainability"....This is the new scam after
that of rescuing big banks in 2008, for the bailing out and profit of those of always while the population impoverishes at galloping
pace and without any prospect of recovery, austerity seems to be our only prospect...
On the "pipelines war", also discussed at Valdai, of which it is part the alleged "Navalny poisoning" also briefly discussed without
naming that unimportant, at Russian and world level, person, how to explain that Germany must cut off Nord Stream 2 pipeline
development on the grounds of not linking its energetic sovereignty to Russia, and then Europe must link its energetic sovereignty
to Israel, when the EU has been an historical defender of Palestinian people´s rights and with this link Europe will be submitted
to blackmail on the part of Israel anytime it dares criticize Israel´s apartheid measures against Palestinians?
After diplomatically recognizing Israel, the UAE signed a contract through the MRLB with the Israeli company EAPC (which manages
the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline) to transport crude oil to Europe without having to cross the Suez Canal
Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western
"leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. That's why you will never read the slightest alinea by Putin in der
Spiegel,le Monde ,or le Figaro.The vile venal journo's can't afford to print it and keep up their unmerited credibility at the
same time.Same for Lavrov,Assad,Xi and Khadafi.
American grocery stores - 80 pct of the items are not necessary and are likely harmful to some degree. Junk food outlets, it's
been known for decades that this stuff leads to obesity, diabetes, and who knows what else. The authorities could mandate changes
to low fat, sugar and salt contents that would apply to all of them with no real harm to their business, but it doesn't get done
because the right people get paid off.
Putin stands out like a shining light amongst what are called world leaders.
Some are just bosses of crime syndicates, follow my eyes (USA). Others are just hopeless idiot figure-heads, like Trudeau.
(I am biased, particularly dislike him. Macron is in the same bin.)
Putin's statements about the 'economy' are calculatedly 'judicious' and unassailable. Note, he only says one has to question
the role of the State in the 'economy' in the sense of control of it, with the State as a mega-regulator + law-maker wielding
authority from the top - not as negotiator, as far as I have understood Putin.
That 'State control' should be different in different conditions -- regions, epochs, etc., is a truism. Putin projects the
feel of 'reasonable control' and 'piloting' (encouraging xyz.. or the opposite..) which rejects both despotic, authoritarian stances,
often 'arbitrary' (or experienced as such), as well as, on the other side, anarchy and unbridled profiteering -> racketeering,
monopolies, cartels, fraud, violence, coercion, etc. Some call that capitalism, others gangsterism.
Russia, land + ressource rich, with a 'low' population density, with well-educated ppl (as compared to many others), its 'economy'
at least not plunging or even stagnant (GDP per capita or some such), is well positioned to put forward such 'reasonable' thoughts.
Humanity's dilemma or rather looming disaster sink-hole - see: ressource extraction, trashing the environment, irreversible
tipping points, 'peak oil' (gone out of fashion with fracking in the US), and other over-consumption (sand for ex.), destruction
(soils.. rivers.. ocean.. global warming..), over-population, global warming.. will not be reversed or in any way solved, by reasoned
Putin-type discourse. (see pnyzx at 4, vk 30, psychohistorian 32 and others..)
For sure, Putin's job is not to solve the world's problems but to protect and nurture Russia and its people and he does that
very well.
"while at the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian
state intervention."
I wonder if they are becoming more open to western investors. Nordstream 2's financing is ~50% European, and this from Oilprice.com:
". . . .No wonder, then, that a number of banks have pledged a total of $9.5 billion in funding for Novatek's second LNG project,
the Arctic LNG 2. According to a Reuters report, the China Development Bank and German Euler Hermes are among the lenders that
have made pledges, and French Pbifrance is yet to decide on the funding. The China Development Bank is, unsurprisingly, the most
generous backer of the $21-billion Arctic LNG 2 project, with $5 billion.
Arctic LNG 2 will have a liquefaction capacity of $19.8 [sic] million tons of LNG annually divided among three liquefaction
trains."
PS - Good to see you posting after you were virtually assaulted last week.
Den lille Abe,
I nowadays start to read comments from the "bottom up" - in order not to fall into the traps of some trolls, some of those I know
by name, and this prevents me to read their comments. In other words, if you continue reading from top down, you don't know who's
comment you read...
Interesting transcript. Simple, no-frills English.
Judging from the English subtitles in Oliver Stone's 4-part series The Putin Interviews, Putin is no stranger to refreshingly
frank, clear and unambiguous communication, No wonder Russians love him.
Huge contrast with the mendacity of pseudo-Christian ratbags masquerading as Western Leaders on the world stage. Evidence of
the Scum Mo Government's laughably opaque and unaccountable corruption is seeping out of every crack in the facade of what passes
for 'democracy' in Oz.
Russia is done with the European Union. At last week's Valdai Discussion Forum Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this quite clear with this statement.
Those people in the West who are responsible for foreign policy and do not understand the
necessity of mutually respectable conversation–well, we must simply stop for a while
communicate with them. Especially since Ursula von der Leyen states that geopolitical
partnership with current Russia's leadership is impossible. If this is the way they want it,
so be it. (H/T Andrei Martyanov)
Lavrov's statements echo a number of statements made in recent months by Russian leadership
that there is no opportunity for diplomacy possible with the United States.
We can now add the European Union to that list. Pepe
Escobar's latest piece goes over Lavrov's comments about the European Union and they are
devastating, as devastating as when he and Putin described the U.S. as " Not
Agreement Capable " a few years ago.
Lavrov reiterated this with the following comments at Valdai last week.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zV_W3b_4G50
But as badly as the U.S. has acted in recent years in international relations, unilaterally
abrogating treaty after treaty, nominally with the goal of remaking them to be more inclusive,
Lavrov's upbraiding of the current leadership of the European Union is far worse.
Because they have gone along with, if not openly assisted, every U.S.-backed provocation
against Russia for their own advantage. From Ukraine to MH-17, to Skripal to now Belarus and
the ridiculous Navalny poisoning, the EU has proved to be worse than the U.S.
Because there can be no doubt the U.S. views Russia as an antagonist. We're quite clear
about this. But Europe plays off U.S. aggression, hiding in the U.S.'s skirts while telling
Russia, usually through German Chancellor Angela Merkel, "Be patient, we are reluctantly going
along with this." But really they're happy about it.
You do not negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not
abused, but you don't negotiate with them, same as you don't negotiate with toddlers. They
want to have their Navalny as their toy–let them. I call on Russia to start wrapping
economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia's hydrocarbons and hi-tech,
fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and necessity of the
Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore.
And the truth is that Russia is dealing with monkeys in the U.S. and toddlers in the EU. And
Martanyov's right that it's time Putin et.al. simply turn their backs on the West and move
forward.
Lavrov's statements at Valdai were momentous. They sent a clear signal that if Europe wants
a future relationship with Russia they will have to change how they do business.
The problem is however, that the EU is suffused with arrogance on the eve of the U.S.
election, mistakenly thinking Joe Biden will beat Trump.
Merkel has betrayed Putin at every turn since 2013. And Germany's appalling behavior over
the Alexei Navalny poisoning was the last straw.
That what was another sabotage effort to stop the Nordstream 2 pipeline and add grist to
Trump's re-election mill was given even a cursory glance by the highest levels of the German
government was insulting enough.
That Merkel allowed her Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to run his mouth on the subject, and
then throw the decision to sanction Russia (again) over this to the EU parliament and give it
any kind of political play was truly treacherous.
Germany has taken the lead in advancing "European integration" and therefore prioritizes
Eastern European member states that push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia.
Economic connectivity with Russia is no longer an instrument for building trust and
cooperation in the pan-European space, rather it was intended to strengthen Germany's
position as the center of the EU. Moscow should work with Berlin to construct Nord Stream 2,
but not forget why Nord Stream 1 was built while South Stream was blocked.
This is a point I've been making for years. Nordstream 2 is a political tool for Germany to
reroute gas coming in from Russia which Merkel can use as a political lever over Poland and the
Visegrads.
And it is the Poles who have consistently shot themselves in the foot by not reconciling
their relationship with Russia, banding together with its Eastern European brothers and
securing an independent source of Russian gas. Putin and Gazprom would happily provide it to
them, if they would but ask.
But they don't and instead turn to the U.S. to be their protectors from both Russia and
Germany, rather than conduct themselves as a sovereign nation.
That said, I think Mr. Diesen misses the larger point here. It is true Germany under Merkel
is looking to expand its control over the EU and set itself up as a superpower for the next
century. Putin himself acknowledged
that possibility at Valdai. That may be more to dig at the U.S. and warn Europe rather than
him actually believing it.
Because under Merkel and the EU Germany is losing its dynamism. And it may even lose control
over the EU if it isn't careful. If you look at the current situation from a German perspective
you realize that Germany's mighty export business is surrounded by hostile foreign powers.
Russia -- Merkel cut off the country from Russian markets. Even though some of the trade
with Russia has returned since sanctions over Crimea went into place in 2014 she hasn't
fought the U.S.'s hyper-aggressive use of sanctions to improve Germany's position.
The U.K. -- French President Emmanuel Macron looks like he's engineered a No-Deal Brexit
with Boris Johnson which will put up major export barriers for Germany into the U.K. cutting
them off from that market.
The U.S. – Trump has all but declared Germany an enemy and when he wins a second
term will tighten the screws on Merkel even tighter.
China – They know that the incoming Great Reset, which will have its Jahr Null
event in Europe likely next year, is all about consolidating power into Europe and sucking it
away from the U.S., a process Trump is dead-set against.
However, don't think for a second that the Commies that run the EU and the World Economic
Forum are teaming up with the Commies in China. Oh no, they have bigger plans than that.
And what's been pretty clear to me is Europe's delusions that it can subjugate the world
under its rubric, forcing its rules and standards on the rest of us, including China, again
allowing the U.S. to act as its proxy while it tries to maintain its standing.
I know what you're thinking. That sounds completely ludicrous.
And you're right, it is ludicrous.
But that doesn't mean it isn't true. This is clearly the mindset we're dealing with in The
Davos Crowd. They engineered a mostly-fake pandemic to accelerate their plans to remake the
world economy by burning it down.
The multi-polar world will see the fading U.S. and U.K. band together while Russia and China
continue to stitch together Asia into a coherent economic sphere. Trump is right to pull the
U.S. out of Central Asia and has gotten nothing but grief from the U.S. establishment while
Europe, through NATO, continues trying to expand to the Russian border, now with openly backing
the attempted coup in Belarus.
This was the dominant theme at Valdai and the focus of Putin's opening remarks.
"... Overspending on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program does not make America any safer. The president's military spending increase is based on the false premise that more spending equals more security. More spending may even make America less safe by spending us into bankruptcy. ..."
"... One big problem with this massive spending on one defense program is that it gives interventionist politicians the tools of war that they desire. ..."
"... While some support this flawed program no matter how much it costs and actually advocate spending more taxpayer cash on it, Americans want that $1.7 trillion spent at home and not on a transnational defense spending program to defend other nations. ..."
"... The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is not worthy of a massive investment by the taxpayer when it does not make America safer while also being a poorly negotiated government contract that has stuck the taxpayer with a massive bill. ..."
Overspending on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program does not make America any safer. The
president's military spending increase is based on the false premise that more spending equals
more security. More spending may even make America less safe by spending us into
bankruptcy.
The F-35 program is expected to cost well over
$1 trillion when it is fully operational and deployed. That massive investment will serve
to enrich government contractors while giving interventionist politicians an offensive weapon
of war. This program was created as a "too big to fail" scheme where once the government starts
the process of making these fighter jets, they will have spent so much money that they can't
back away. The F-35 program is a bad deal for the taxpayer while promoting a policy that will
make these same taxpayers less safe.
It appears that the massive amount put into the program has purchased a lemon of a jet. The
program has been troubled from day one and is currently experiencing some padding of the
contract. On September 11, 2020,
Bloomberg reported, "the Pentagon's five-year budget plan for the F-35 falls short by as
much as $10 billion, the military's independent cost analysis unit has concluded, a new
indication that the complex fighter jet may be too costly to operate and maintain." The plan
for the F-35 for the next five years was an estimated "$78 billion for research and
development, jet procurement, operations and maintenance and military construction dedicated to
the F-35 built by Lockheed Martin Corp." This $10 billion mistake is going to fall on the
shoulders of an already overtaxed taxpayer.
One big problem with this massive spending on one defense program is that it gives
interventionist politicians the tools of war that they desire. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
program contains a number of versions of a stealth fighter jet that can engage other aircraft
and conduct military strikes. The goal is to use these aircraft as the primary fighter jets for
the air force, navy, and marines. These can be used as offensive weapons in the hands of
politicians who desire to engage in the endless war policies that have left the United States
vulnerable to attack. This is a very expensive program that will not provide $1 trillion in
security for American citizens.
Typical with government defense contracting, there have been numerous problems that have
shifted significant increased cost onto the Pentagon.
Defense News reported recently that the contractor was trying to stick the taxpayer with
the cost of spare parts for the F-35. According to
Bloomberg , the taxpayer received more bad news: "the F-35's total 'life cycle' cost is
estimated at $1.727 trillion in current dollars." That is an insane amount of taxpayer cash and
"$1.266 trillion is for operations and support of the advanced plane that's a flying
supercomputer." When pressed by
Bloomberg , a Pentagon spokesman bragged that a Pentagon "cost analysis office projects
that the average procurement cost for an F-35, including its engines, is dropping from a
planned $109 million to $101.3 million in 2012 dollars." Only in Washington would a bureaucrat
brag about ripping off American citizens by just under $8 million less as a deal for the
taxpayer.
While some support this flawed program no matter how much it costs and actually advocate
spending more taxpayer cash on it, Americans want that $1.7 trillion spent at home and not on a
transnational defense spending program to defend other nations.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is not worthy of a massive investment by the taxpayer
when it does not make America safer while also being a poorly negotiated government contract
that has stuck the taxpayer with a massive bill.
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were
children and remember what the main character said: "It's a question of discipline. When
you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very
tedious work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our
common home for future generations. We must tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global
agenda. But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of
abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption
– in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for
today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when
the use of natural resources is growing to a global dimension. However, humanity is not
safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a
response to this interference. This is why it is so important to develop harmonious
relations between Man and Nature.
No cheating please. Guess. Who said the above?
Please let us know your first guess in the comments.
Wow! What a mind blunder! Of course, it was VVP. Too much reading! Ha!! Pepe's article
has its own merits. Even more important is
this revealing editorial , "How Russophobia Wrought Death of the United States:"
"The surprise election in 2016 of Donald Trump to the White House so disturbed the
political class that it was compelled to delegitimize his presidency by alleging that it
was due to Russian interference. The relentless and irrational Russophobia to undermine
Trump by his domestic political enemies has only transpired to fatally weaken American
global power. The political squabbling and infighting has wreaked havoc on the moral
authority and legitimacy of American institutions of governance. The legislative
government, the presidency, the judiciary, the intelligence apparatus, the legacy media,
and so on. Every supposed pillar of American democracy has been eroded over the past four
years with alarming speed.
"A big part of this precipitous demise is due to Russophobia: the relentless sowing of
doubt and confusion in American institutions, primarily the presidency, with insinuations
of Russian interference. In their attempts to delegitimize Trump, his domestic enemies
among the U.S. establishment have ended up delegitimizing public esteem of American
democracy. How paradoxical! America's own worst enemy turns out to be itself ." [My
Emphasis]
I've long maintained that the enemies of the USA and its people are ALL Domestic
and have been from the outset. Lots of truth fit into that short essay!
The tone sounds like Vladimir Putin in English translation and the timing of B's post
suggests he said it during his closing speech at this year's Valdai Club meetings. Putin
has always been keen on conservation issues and often spends what free time he has in short
camping adventures. The Siberian tiger conservation program is a pet project of his.
The other possibility might be Chinese President Xi Jinping as the ideas of modest
consumption or consumption that fulfills a person's needs and of humans living in harmony
with nature appear in the speech, and these ideas have been incorporated into recent
Chinese government policies. The drive to eradicate poverty not only achieves one goal
(fulfilling people's needs) but also helps achieve the other, as impoverished communities
are often driven by forces beyond their control into marginal areas where they end up
upsetting the ecology and destroying in order to survive. Among other things his also
brings exotic pathogens in contact with humans through the disturbance of plant and animal
life (insects in particular) and the consumption of bushmeat and its trade.
Significantly in recent years much of the Earth's land surface as measured by satellites
that has become greener has been in China and India as a result of large-scale conservation
and tree-planting schemes and better use of land. This has sometimes involved relocating
entire rural communities in parts of China to areas where they can access services that
help to improve their lives. An example might be a community I read about recently that
lived on top of a small mountain or plateau where the only access to schools and markets
was through a winding series of narrow staircases cut into the mountain's sides. One child
did not start going to school until she was 11 years old because her mother was afraid that
she'd fall while using the stairs. The local authority later built a bridge connecting the
mountain to lower areas, cutting travel time from 3 hours to 1 hour. Recently the entire
community agreed to relocate and its old village on top of the mountain is to be preserved
and developed as a tourist attraction.
Note that not all the questions and answers after the speech have been transcribed
yet.
This is another of Mr.Putins masterpieces of common sense and analysis, courteously and
clearly telling truth as no global 'leader' even could let alone would.
It is an exceptionally important and wide-ranging analysis of the nature of humans, the
planet, and governance.
They Got Out of Their
Tractors
Why the so-called common people are increasingly joining the ranks of the so-called fifth column
Gazeta.ru
August 29, 2016
A
fifth column of tractors? Photo courtesy of @melnichenko_va/Twitter
The arrest of the people involved in the tractor convoy
, as well as new protest rallies in Togliatti after Nikolai
Merkushin, governor of Samara Region announced wage arrears would
"never"
be
paid off, are vivid examples of the top brass's new style of communicating with people. After flirting only four or five years
ago with the common people, as opposed to the
creacles
from
the so-called fifth column, the authorities have, in the midst of a crisis, been less and less likely to pretend they
care about the needs of rank-and-file Russians. Moreover, any reminders of problems at the bottom provokes irritation and an
increasingly repressive reaction at the top.
Previously, top officials, especially in the run-up to elections, preferred
to mollify discontent at the local level by promising people something, and from year to year, the president would even
personally solve people's specific problems, both during his televised town hall meetings (during which, for example, he dealt
with problems ranging from the water supply in a Stavropol village to the payment of wages to workers at a fish factory on
Shikotan
) and
during personal visits, as was the case in
Pikalyovo
,
where chemical plant workers also blocked a federal highway. Nowadays, on the contrary, the authorities have seemingly stopped
pretending that helping the common people is a priority for them.
The people have made no political demands in these cases. Moreover, the
main players in these stories almost certainly belong to the hypothetical loyal majority.
The people who took part in the tractor convoy against forcible land
seizures even adopted the name Polite Farmers, apparently by analogy with the patriotic meme
"polite
people,"
which gained popularity in Russia after the annexation of Crimea.
In 20112012, the authorities used approximately the same people to
intimidate street protesters sporting political slogans. That was when the whole country heard of
Uralvagonzavod
,
a tank manufacturer whose workers promised to travel to Moscow to teach the creacles a lesson. Subsequently, the company's
head engineer, Igor Kholmanskih, was unexpectedly
appointed
presidential
envoy to the Urals Federal Distrtict.
Back then, the cultivation of a political standoff between working people
from the provinces and slackers, "State Department agents," and self-indulgent intellectuals from the capitals seemed pivotal,
but in the aftermath of Crimea and a protracted crisis, it has almost been nullified.
The people are still important for generating good ratings [
via
wildly dubious opinion polls
--
TRR
], but it would seem that even
rhetorically they have ceased to be an object of unconditional concern on the part of the government.
Nowadays, the authorities regard the requests and especially the demands of
the so-called common people nearly as harshly as they once treated the
Bolotnaya
Square
protests.
The government does not have the money to placate the common people, so
people have to be forced to love the leadership unselfishly, in the name of stability and the supreme interests of the state.
Since politics has finally defeated the economy in Russia, instead of getting down to brass tacks and solving problems with
employment and wage arrears, the regime generously feeds people stories about war with the West. During a war, it quite
unpatriotic to demand payment of back wages or ask for pension increase. Only internal enemies would behave this way.
"We are not slaves!" Coal Miners on Hunger Strike in Gukovo
. Published on August 25, 2016,
by
Novaya
Gazeta
. Miners in Gukovo have refused a "handout" from the governor of Rostov Region and continued their hunger strike
over unpaid wages. Video by Elena Kostyuchenko. Edited by Gleb Limansky.
So the
coal
miners in Rostov
, who have continued their hunger strike under the slogan "We are not slaves," have suddenly proven to be
enemies, along with the farmers of Krasnodar, who wanted to tell the president about forcible land seizures, and the activists
defending
Torfyanka
Park
in Moscow, who were
detained
in the early hours of Monday morning for, allegedly, attempting to break Orthodox crosses
, and the people defending the
capital's
Dubki
Park
, slated for redevelopment despite the opinion of local residents, and the people who protested against the
extortionate Plato system for calculating the mileage tolls paid by
truckers
,
and just about anyone who is unhappy with something and plans to make the authorities aware of their dissatisfaction.
Grassroots initiatives, especially if they involve protests against the
actions or inaction of the authorities, are not only unwelcome now, but are regarded as downright dangerous, almost as actions
against the state. This hypothesis is borne out by the silence of the parliamentary opposition parties. In the midst of an
election campaign, they have not even attempted to channel popular discontent in certain regions and make it work to their
advantage at the ballot box.
The distinction between the so-called fifth column and the other four has
blurred.
Nowadays, the fifth column can be a woman who asks a governor about back
wages. Someone who defends a city park. Farmers. Coal miners. Even the workers of
Uralvagonzavod
,
which in recent years has been on the verge of bankruptcy. The contracts the state had been throwing the company's way have
not helped, apparently.
If the authorities, especially local authorities simply afraid to show
federal authorities they are incapable of coping with problems, continue to operate only through a policy of intimidation,
they might soon be the fifth column themselves, if only because, sooner or later, they will find themselves in the minority.
Translated by the
Russian Reader.
Thanks
to
Sean
Guillory
f
or the heads-up
"... We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country, interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign policy in their own interests. Of course not. ..."
Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be "imported." I have said so many times. They
cannot be a product of the activities of foreign "well-wishers," even if they "want the best
for us." In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing
and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are
nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of sovereignty.
People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never asked for their
opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the overlord decides
everything for the vassal. To reiterate, only the citizens of a particular country can
determine their public interest.
We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the
main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of
them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country,
interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign
policy in their own interests. Of course not.
There were sincere enthusiasts among independent civic organisations (they do exist), to
whom we are undoubtedly grateful. But even so, they mostly remained strangers and ultimately
reflected the views and interests of their foreign trustees rather than the Russian citizens.
In a word, they were a tool with all the ensuing consequences.
A strong, free and independent civil society is nationally oriented and sovereign by
definition. It grows from the depth of people's lives and can take different forms and
directions. But it is a cultural phenomenon, a tradition of a particular country, not the
product of some abstract "transnational mind" with other people's interests behind it.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the General Services Administration (GSA)
undermined the Trump transition team by violating a memorandum of understanding between the
Trump transition team and the GSA - when they complied with requests from the FBI and special
counsel Robert Mueller's office to provide private records on members of Trump's team ,
according to a Senate report released on Friday.
The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and
Mueller's office " secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J.
Trump's presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc. "
"They did so," the report continues, "despite the terms of a memorandum of understanding
between the Trump transition team and the General Services Administration.. . -- the
executive agency responsible for providing services to both candidates' transition teams --
that those records were the transition team's private property that would not be retained at
the conclusion of the transition."
According to the report, the GSA - without notifying the White House - reached out
to the FBI following Michael Flynn's resignation as national security adviser and offered to
retain records from the Trump transition team in early 2017. The records compiled eventually
made their way into Mueller's office, according to the report.
"At bottom," continues the report, " the GSA and the FBI undermined the transition process
by preserving Trump transition team records contrary to the terms of the memorandum of
understanding, hiding that fact from the Trump transition team, and refusing to provide the
team with copies of its own records."
" These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and
those doubts have consequences ," the report reads. "Future presidential transition teams must
have confidence that their use of government resources and facilities for internal
communications and deliberations -- including key decisions such as nominations, staffing, and
significant policy changes -- will not expose them to exploitation by third parties, including
political opponents ."
1 play_arrow
911bodysnatchers322 , 4 hours ago
1) Was this illegal surveillance?
2) Was this spying before a FISA warrant was given?
3) Did this occur before the special council was incepted (ie before may 2017)?
4) Which attorneys on his team requested this information?
5) Which US employees at GSA approved the FBI's request?
6) Why did the GSA approve the request, despite the MOU from TTT?
7) Will the employees cry out for mommy or for God when they are executed for treason
(participants in seditious conspiracy against a lawful president)?
8) If they aren't executed, will president trump please give any us citizen a pre-pardon
for carrying out justice against these employees after they are fired, and the sum total of
their assets seized and divested to the us taxpayer base and they are homeless?
Thank you congressmen. Reclaiming our time
3O4jF"> Macho Latte play_arrow Mzhen , 5 hours ago
November 29, 2019 – The history of Flynn prosecutor Brandon Van Grack – from
the Special Counsel's Office to the prosecution of Flynn
It can't be repeated enough...the Weissman "investigation" and Clinton campaign were doing
exactly what President Trump was falsely accused of...using disinformation obtained from
RUSSIAN sources (the Steele Dossier) to influence an election and undermine the peaceful
transfer of power.
booboo , 4 hours ago
more specifically they knew the charge would not stick because you can't charge someone
for obstruction for calling out your prosecutor.
4whatitsworth , 3 hours ago
Mr Muller please confirm that the name of the firm that produced the Christopher Steele
dossier was Fusion GPS.. Muller hmmm Fusion GPS "I'm not familiar with that," - what a lying
peice of ****!
Metastatic Debt , 3 hours ago
Feds only solve crimes they manufacture or entrap for political gain, gain internally for
promos or externally for glory.
That agency was founded by a black mailing, cross dressing weirdo.
No wonder it's corrupt. That was Its core makeup.
UserLevel9000 , 4 hours ago
He was a frontman. He didn't even read the report. Didn't you see the interview?
Short of killing him, our government exhausted all resources in order to remove Trump.
What's the term? Ah yes, a ******* coup.
Im 44yo but I hope I live long enough for the historians to connect the dots and write the
story. Much like JFK, all involved will be dead and will never pay for their crimes against
this country and attack on one of the most important protections we have as a Republic- a
peaceful transfer of power.
Mzhen , 4 hours ago
Who, specifically, has his name on the Mueller team letter to the GSA. Brandon Van Grack.
The same prosecutor who spent years persecuting General Flynn, before being forced to
withdraw from the case. The same Brandon Van Grack who was part of a failed sting operation
against George Papadopoulos.
Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago
The ENTIRE bureaucracy was against Trump and made EVERY EFFORT to sabotage, obstruct and
deny President Trump's full authority over the Executive Branch.
High Vigilante , 4 hours ago
Another scandal by globalists and Demsheviks every single day. Each worse than
Watergate.
Contagion Deleverage , 4 hours ago
The implications of Mueller having access to SECRET information pertaining to Donal Trump
is remarkable and powerful. I believe that this is the source for leaking important and
damaging information on Trump, his closest advisors, and critically, their plans and
capabilities!
Reaper , 4 hours ago
The prosecutor was the criminal.
Secret Weapon , 5 hours ago
The trash in DC really hates the average American. I guess they meant it when they called
us "deplorable".
chubbar , 3 hours ago
When you say "GSA did this" or "FBI did that", you are being lazy in your reporting. There
are actual PEOPLE who made those decisions, not some nameless entity. What has to happen is
that these actual people need to be found, charged and tried for these crimes. Otherwise,
let's just call everything legal if no laws are to be enforced and quit bringing up the
details of their treachery.
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
Ever read a gov't document? "It was decided....", "It seemed best....", etc. NEVER "I
decided" or "Joe and Maxine decided". Ten thousand coverups and misdirections per
department.
getsometoo , 4 hours ago
How do these bureautards get off thinking they're going dispose a duly elected President?
Seriously, don't they understand the people would never allow it. What would it take for the
people to utterly wipe out the FBI? To execute every damn one of them for treason? There's
only around 35-40,000 of them. We could hang every damn one of them in a weekend.
Sonofabitches. These people must absolutely lose their jobs. Then the guilty leadership must
hang.
Sigh. , 4 hours ago
So. GSA is Deep State. Never would've figured that.
Barrock , 4 hours ago
Even the GSA is part of the swamp! Who would've figured? The USA needs to cut the annual
budget hugely. The government needs a complete rehaul.
Walking Turtle , 3 minutes ago
Seems Mr. Trump is positioned now to do pretty much that.
His recent creation per EO of GSA "Schedule F" employment lays waste to the "non-fireable"
Senior Executive Service's stranglehold on Executive Branch administrative process. Sched F
appointees are strictly at-will, serving at the sole pleasure of the President. Failure to
serve as directed carries severe consequences, including jail time.
Moreover, a Sched F appointee can reportedly be placed above the SES wonk at the head of a
recalcitrant agency. (Currently that means ALL of them - 80+ iirc.) Puts the BRIT-LOYAL
Senior Executive Service under actual Constitution-loyal Executive Branch supervision.
Betsy and Thomas d of American Intelligence Media (.mp3 podcast @link) have plenty good
reason LOVE this, as does YT. The SES Policy Wonk Armee, otoh,
does not .
Panic in DC. Long time coming; HERE NOW. DC-region dentists are gonna' clean right UP with
all the gnashing of teeth and consequent self-inflicted damage to the dentition of those
Swamp Rats imvho. And that is all. 0{;-)o[
Bigboot , 36 minutes ago
What happened to all the expos\'es of the Hunter Laptop we were told were coming out?
Isn't it amazing, stultifying and incredibly nightmarish that we are heading into the
election and NOT ONE of the Democrat criminals has been indicted? My God, there's
something
really rotten in the state of America (cf Shakespeare, I know America is not a state).
Total corruption at all levels. God save us from the Government and all its rotten
agencies.
gcjohns1971 , 40 minutes ago
Government does not believe in Democracy or in the Republic.
They work for other masters. And they assert exclusive right to choose which ones.
Good questions to ask include:
Which ones?
On what basis is their choosing?
What is in it for the rest of us?
Why should we continue to enable a "government" on such a self-serving basis?
Leguran , 44 minutes ago
These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and
those doubts have consequences?????
No ****! Who the hell is supposed to trust government when those in top positions feel
free to do exactly what they please. That MOU was an agreement, the government's word.
Republicans in the Senate, you are all dirt bags with no values. At least the Democrats do
not claim to have values.
That court order directed him to stop claiming the "Russian troll" company, Comcord (
their ads were typical clickbait , not 'meddling') was connected to the Russian
government - because he had produced no evidence at all to substantiate that.
He also would have had access to information that casted serious doubt on the alleged
hacking.. nevermind 'collusion' - they NEVER had any evidence of a hack.
How do we know, apart from the lack of any credible evidence ever actually produced?
Well, for one, the testimony of the president of CrowdStrike which Adam Schiff
deliberately suppressed during impeachment.
@Menes
losphere that came the closest to ruling the whole world. And China knows that Russia is a
part of European civilization, that will switch sides as soon as geopolitics and geoeconomics
change.
Au contraire , the fact that NATO exists is why Russia has to partner with China, to
ensure its own national survival. If anything, it's NATO that has no feasible future because
the USA is not even a European country, masquerading as the "protector" of Europe, against
Russia! The Chinese saying "one mountain cannot contain two tigers" applies to the USA because
it has no business being the dominant power in NATO to keep Russia out of Europe.
Russia is too weak to disengage with EU. Technologial superiority is still on the side of EU
and the USA (EU mostly acts as a vassal of the USA.) They need to suffer this humiliation, and
try to gain strength.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, is the world's foremost diplomat. The son of an
Armenian father and a Russian mother, he's just on another level altogether. Here, once again,
we may be able to see why.
Let's start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club , Russia's premier think tank. Here we
may follow the
must-watch presentation of the Valdai annual report on "The Utopia of a Diverse World",
featuring, among others, Lavrov, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Dominic Lieven
of the University of Cambridge and Yuri Slezkine of UCLA/Berkeley.
It's a rarity to be able to share what amounts to a Himalayan peak in terms of serious
political debate. We have, for instance, Lieven – who, half in jest, defined the Valdai
report as "Tolstoyian, a little anarchical" – focusing on the current top two, great
interlocking challenges: climate change and the fact that "350 years of Western and 250 years
of Anglo-American predominance are coming to an end."
As we see the "present world order fading in front of our eyes", Lieven notes a sort of
"revenge of the Third World". But then, alas, Western prejudice sets in all over again, as he
defines China reductively as a "challenge".
Mearsheimer neatly remembers we have lived, successively, under a bipolar, unipolar and now
multipolar world: with China, Russia and the US, "Great Power Politics is back on the
table."
He correctly assesses that after the dire experience of the "century of humiliation, the
Chinese will make sure they are really powerful." And that will set the stage for the US to
deploy a "highly-aggressive containment policy", just like it did against the USSR, that "may
well end up in a shooting match".
"I trust Arnold more than the EU"
Lavrov, in his introductory remarks, had
explained that in realpolitik terms, the world "cannot be run from one center alone." He
took time to stress the "meticulous, lengthy and sometimes ungrateful" work of diplomacy.
It was later, in one of his interventions, that he unleashed the
real bombshell (starting at 1:15:55; in Russian, overdubbed in English): "When the European
Union is speaking as a superior, Russia wants to know, can we do any business with Europe?"
He mischievously quotes Schwarzenegger, "who in his movies always said 'Trust me'. So I
trust Arnold more than the European Union".
And that leads to the definitive punch line: "The people who are responsible for foreign
policy in the West do not understand the necessity of mutual respect in dialogue. And then
probably for some time we have to stop talking to them." After all, European Commission
president Ursula von der Leyen had stated, on the record, that for the EU, "there is no
geopolitical partnership with modern Russia".
Lavrov went even further in a stunning, wide-ranging
interview with Russian radio stations whose translation deserves to be carefully read in
full.
Here is just one of the most crucial snippets:
Lavrov: "No matter what we do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us, and undermine
our efforts in the economy, politics, and technology. These are all elements of one
approach."
Question: "Their national security strategy states that they will do so."
Lavrov: "Of course it does, but it is articulated in a way that decent people can still
let go unnoticed, but it is being implemented in a manner that is nothing short of
outrageous."
Question: You, too, can articulate things in a way that is different from what you would
really like to say, correct?"
Lavrov: "It's the other way round. I can use the language I'm not usually using to get the
point across. However, they clearly want to throw us off balance, and not only by direct
attacks on Russia in all possible and conceivable spheres by way of unscrupulous competition,
illegitimate sanctions and the like, but also by unbalancing the situation near our borders,
thus preventing us from focusing on creative activities. Nevertheless, regardless of the
human instincts and the temptations to respond in the same vein, I'm convinced that we must
abide by international law."
Moscow stands unconditionally by international law – in contrast with the proverbial
"rules of the liberal international order" jargon parroted by NATO and its minions such as the
Atlantic Council.
And here it is all
over again , a report extolling NATO to "Ramp Up on Russia", blasting Moscow's "aggressive
disinformation and propaganda campaigns against the West, and unchecked adventurism in the
Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan."
The Atlantic Council insists on how those pesky Russians have once again defied "the
international community by using an illegal chemical weapon to poison opposition leader Alexei
Navalny. NATO's failure to halt Russia's aggressive behavior puts the future of the liberal
international order at risk."
Only fools falling for the blind leading the blind syndrome don't know that these liberal
order "rules" are set by the Hegemon alone, and can be changed in a flash according to the
Hegemon's whims.
So it's no wonder a running joke in Moscow is "if you don't listen to Lavrov, you will
listen to Shoigu." Sergey Shoigu is Russia's Minister of Defense, supervising all those
hypersonic weapons the US industrial-military complex can only dream about.
The crucial point is even with so much NATO-engendered hysteria, Moscow could not give a
damn because of its de facto military supremacy. And that freaks Washington and Brussels out
even more.
What's left is Hybrid War eruptions following the RAND corporation-prescribed
non-stop harassment and "unbalancing" of Russia, in Belarus, the southern Caucasus and
Kyrgyzstan – complete with sanctions on Lukashenko and on Kremlin officials for the
Navalny "poisoning".
"You do not negotiate with monkeys"
What Lavrov just made it quite explicit was a long time in the making. "Modern Russia" and
the EU were born almost at the same time. On a personal note, I experienced it in an
extraordinary fashion. "Modern Russia" was born in December 1991 – when I was on the road
in India, then Nepal and China. When I arrived in Moscow via the Trans-Siberian in February
1992, the USSR was no more. And then, flying back to Paris, I arrived at a European Union born
in that same February.
One of Valdai's leaders
correctly argues that the daring concept of a "Europe stretching from Lisbon to
Vladivostok" coined by Gorbachev in 1989, right before the collapse of the USSR, unfortunately
"had no document or agreement to back it up."
And yes, "Putin searched diligently for an opportunity to implement the partnership with the
EU and to further rapprochement. This continued from 2001 until as late as 2006."
We all remember when Putin, in 2010, proposed exactly the same concept, a common house
from Lisbon to Vladivostok , and was flatly rebuffed by the EU. It's very important to
remember this was four years before the Chinese would finalize their own concept of the New
Silk Roads.
Afterwards, the only way was down. The final Russia-EU summit took place in Brussels in
January 2014 – an eternity in politics.
The fabulous intellectual firepower gathered at the Valdai is very much aware that the Iron
Curtain 2.0 between Russia and the EU simply won't disappear.
And all this while the IMF, The Economist and even that
Thucydides fallacy proponent admit that China is already, in fact, the world's top
economy.
Russia and China share an enormously long border. They are engaged in a complex,
multi-vector "comprehensive strategic partnership". That did not develop because the
estrangement between Russia and the EU/NATO forced Moscow to pivot East, but mostly because the
alliance between the world's neighboring top economy and top military power makes total
Eurasian sense – geopolitically and geoeconomically.
And that totally corroborates Lieven's diagnosis of the end of "250 years of Anglo-American
predominance."
It was up to inestimable military analyst Andrey Martyanov, whose latest book I reviewed as
a must
read , to come up with the utmost deliciously
devastating assessment of Lavrov's "We had enough" moment:
"Any professional discussion between Lavrov and former gynecologist [actually
epidemiologist] such as von der Leyen, including Germany's Foreign Minister Maas, who is a
lawyer and a party worm of German politics is a waste of time. Western "elites" and
"intellectuals" are simply on a different, much lower level, than said Lavrov. You do not
negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not abused, but
you don't negotiate with them, same as you don't negotiate with toddlers.
They want to have their Navalny as their toy – let them. I call on Russia to start
wrapping economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia's hydrocarbons and
hi-tech, fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and
necessity of the Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore."
As much as Washington is not "agreement-capable", in the words of President Putin, so is the
EU, says Lavrov: "We should stop to orient ourselves toward European partners and care about
their assessments."
Not only Russia knows it: the overwhelming majority of the Global South also knows it.
Russia is a European Country with a European Culture they should leave the door open.
Politics change, and it would be a terrible shame if the West lost Russia and vice versa.
Russia is a European Country with a European Culture they should leave the door open.
Politics change, and it would be a terrible shame if the West lost Russia and vice
versa.
Most of the Europeans I know (and I know quite a few because I live in Europe) do not
consider Russians to be European. It's not the Russians who have closed the door they are
merely ensuring it doesn't hit them in the nose. That is indeed a shame, because, as Escobar
suggests, the EU is setting itself to be colonised by the global south, as is the U.K. and
the Hegemon. 1992 and beyond was indeed a great squandering of opportunity.
Look at the EU's persistent irrationality trying to negotiate with the UK. How long have
Brexit talks been blocked by EU Elite intransigence?
They cannot even cope internally. The Dark Heart of Europe keeps trying to kill
freedom & individual rights. In response, the Christian Populist members of the EU have
positioned themselves to veto Merkel's fascist budget trap. (1)
While all 27 EU heads of state and government approved the budget and recovery package
at a summit in July, national parliaments must still ratify the budget and a so-called Own
Resources Decision, which provides the EU with legal guarantees from its member countries
regarding budget revenues.
Council President Charles Michel declared triumphantly that he had succeeded in ensuring
there would be strong rule-of-law protections as part of the package. But Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also claimed
victory, saying the wording had been softened enough to give them the ability to veto any
proposed regulation.
Everyone should abandon attempts to do business with the EU. The only solution is to end
the flailing unworkable mess in an peaceful and orderly manner.
Of course, the SJW Sharia Globalist MegaCorporations hate that idea. It would derail their
goal of undercutting infidel (Christian & Jewish) workers via faux-refugee migration.
Culturally, the old Communist East that is within the EU, has more in common with Russia
than with the Western Europeans
Tho it is taking time for the old anti-Russian instincts to fade away
And even within the West, there are regions and countries – the
perhaps-soon-independent Flanders, and much of Italy as things proceed – for whom this
also is in part true
Russia is NOT Europe. Anyone who considers this either has no clue of history and has
never been there, or both, or has just been to Moscow for a while and has the wrong
impression.
Contemporary Russia is a military descendand of the Golden Horde, (Altun Orda), absorbing
the tartar, nogai and kalmyk nobility by resettling them to Moscow upon conquest. Their
medieval rulers had tartar titles such as beylerbeg, used tartar outfits and arabic script on
their coins. Russian state organised its existence based on military districts similar to
those of the mongols (hence Belarus for example – white russia – white is the
mongolian west wing of the army district in the mongol system, before that belarus was call
Zhmutia).
Russia is also spiritual descendant of the Byzantine and Bulgarian states (bulgarians such
as Saint Cyprian and Grigori Tsamblak actually delivered byzantine ortodoxy rites to russia
due to similarity of languages, not greeks). Old church slavonic is actually old bulgarian,
and this greek-slavonic culture has its peculiarities – in the eastern rites, the
person closest to god is not the richest , but the one who has more faith. This in
consequence makes those societies look for "saints" as rulers, and be never content with the
people they rule them. Stability is achieved only with mild tyranny or the presence of
extraordinary rulers, hence the economy is always behind the collective west. Anyway, the
topic is too damn long, the short story is – don't ever beleive Russia is part of
europe such as austria for example.
Russia is not part of Europe. It is something else – just like Malta, that speak
semitic and the locals look like north africans, but some people say it is Europe.
The westernization of the muscovite tsardom only started in the 17-th century, and the
process has been stopped several times (napoleon, one of the alexander kings, bolsheviks, now
putin). the westerners still beleive Russia can be subdued because the slavs are savages and
lack economy.
Eastern ortodoxy brings a peculiar mindset, that is hard to grasp by western politicians, and
it is not materialistic – it brings things like being content with your position in the
world without wanting more stuff, and the same time each one has to reach god by himself and
no other authority is valid. Pepe doens't grasp this aspect – the overwhelming
non-commercial, truth seeking part of the russians that westerners cannot see because of
savage and poor looks and blunt directness. It will play us all a bad joke in the next
war.
Mearsheimer did nice work popping the pus out of the Israel lobby so we could all go, Ew,
so it's sad to see him fixate on discredited CIA realist doctrine when the civilized world
has moved on:
De Zayas should have been at Valdai instead of Mearsheimer because this is what the G-192
thinks, that is, what everybody thinks. If the SCO has to enforce this consensus at gunpoint,
they're fine with that. We should be too. It's everybody in the world including us against
the CIA regime, hostis humani generis.
Great Pepe Escobar. Excellent article. See '75 years after 'Stunde Null,' collapse in
Russian-German relations is driven by Berlin's renewed desire to dominate Europe' by Glenn
Diesen explaining Germany role on that.
Some stupid (that is to say all of them) loud mouthed low browed EU bigwig only needs to
get a bit too fresh and uppity with Turkey's Erdogan, (you know the kind of thing, some third
rate tosser starts sounding off about 'human rights' to make himself look big and pompous),
and therefore tick Erdogan off a bit too much, for Erdogan to retaliate by unleashing 3
million plus 'refugees' into the EU. Knowing the absolutely appalling lack of caliber and
intelligence of EU bigwigs, this will inevitably happen in the near future. Just watch this
space.
That day will certainly head the eventual and inevitable dissolution of the EU.
It's just all so fucking clear and obvious to anyone who's got a brain.
The trouble with this 'analysis' is very very simple:
Namely, that the brainless *SHIT* which runs the EU – who, by, the way are real deal
undemocratic unelected unaccountable tyrants and dictators – *absolutely* could not
give a fuck about *real* ethnic genetic Europeans.
All they care about are third worlders, of whom they wish to stuff as many into the EU as
possible. Remember Merkel?
Most intelligent Europeans know this.
The Russian high command knows this.
The Chinese know this.
Culturally, the old Communist East that is within the EU, has more in common with Russia
than with the Western Europeans
From another point of view the old West has now more in common with communist-like
totalitarian zeitgeist and rule of propaganda then old communist East, only colours changed
from red to anti-white globo homo.
Not happy with that having experienced 17 years of vanishing red rule, now seeing it
rebranded on the rise again in one of the EU bound countries affected (Czechia). Just
saying.
@Steven80
hat is the stuff that can be found in prayers ahead of meals yap, redneck and conservative
assholes and meaning of them has nothing to do with availability of Mac Donald's or home
deliveries.
For us death, hunger, desperation and bestial violence are fresh memories. They are in each
and every family. We know where suffering came from and because of which of earthly reasons.
("Why" is a much deeper question and the answer is in reflection inside Orthodox Christian
teachings.)
So, long story short. That's why S. Lavrov, since nobody there cares about warnings, now
even more politely says: "F ** k off, you lawless hypocrites."
We in the West therefore live under the unyielding yoke of Modernism, whereby we have
become so used to its shallow, arid materialism, that has been carefully and artfully crafted
for us over the past 150 years; its wall-to-wall advertising and huckstering; its population
of zombified careerists and status-seekers, that we are now like the proverbial goldfish in
its bowl, blissfully unaware that there is a wider, more varied and fulfilling world outside
the narrow confines it inhabits.
One thinks of Hamlet: "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite
space, were it not that I have bad dreams".
I know many Europeans too, and many Russians. Contrary to what you say, the Europeans I
know consider Russians to be Europeans. The fact that nearly all Russians in Europe have
white skin, blue eyes, blonde to light brown hair, come from the same Continent, and share
European values, helps a lot!
Eastern ortodoxy brings a peculiar mindset, that is hard to grasp by western
politicians, and it is not materialistic – it brings things like being content with
your position in the world without wanting more stuff, and the same time each one has to
reach god by himself and no other authority is valid.
Bollocks. I know many Russians personally. They are indistinguishable from western
Europeans, to me they are just like Finns and Swedes, even the accent.
Every time the Russians leave the door open, it ends up with a Western attempt on Russia.
The West represents roughly 10% of the world population, is declining rapidly and brings
nothing to the table except promises of nuisance. If I were Russian, I would ditch relations
with the globohomo West and seek partnerships among the 90%.
If you speak of the capacity to project her troops on any point on Earth, you're right.
The thing is, they don't need it and probably regard it as vanity of fools. If on the other
hand you consider their capacity to incinerate you before you incinerate them, well, dream
on.
@MLK
this was a gift to Russia and Germany, but it's much worse than that. Why isn't anyone else
curious as to who got what in return?
The blockage of Nordstream 2 is about The Dark Heart of Europe not Russia. Christian
Europe is terrified of Mutti Mullah Merkel's highly authoritarian regime. Why would any of the
V4 nations accept energy dependency on flows via Germany?
This is one of Putin's few serious errors. He would be much better off pushing gas projects
that flowed through Christian European nations thus allowing them leverage against German
anti-Christian SJW aggression.
Current US is a colossus with the feet of clay. Dems in their mad attempts to undermine
Trump succeeded in undermining America. Just wait for November 3.
Putin's and Xi's policy towards the US follows the saying "when you see your enemy
committing suicide, do not interfere". The same applies to the EU, as well as Brexited UK.
Times are a-changing. The West is destroying itself and behaving as if it's it is still hale
and healthy. It was said that when God wishes to punish someone, He takes away that person's
mind. This applies to countries, particularly to the Empires.
That's a deranged dream of neocons, and it won't come true. The policies of Russia and China
are sane and pragmatic, whereas the policies of the Empire and its sidekicks are suicidal.
As far as civilizational divide goes, Russia is neither Europe nor Asia, it is a separate
civilization. When the US and Europe succeed in destroying themselves, many Russians would miss
them due to cultural ties with their predecessors, but that won't drive Russian policies. Not
just Putin's (in fact, he appears to have a soft spot for Europe, characteristic of his
generation), but policies of whoever runs Russia after him. There would be no gorbys or
yeltsins any more.
Europe is a glove on the US hand and is easily led around by its nose by the CIA and MI6
that infest the MSM and run one false flag after another.
Politicians in the EU are mediocre creatures that crave the dollars stuffed into their
pockets by the US. They are enjoying the ride while it lasts until they go down with the
US.
@Steven80
es who make up modern Sweden–the Scanians, the Goths and the Svear. Both Kiev and
Novgorod were founded by them and the original, etymological basis for Russia is "Rus". The
royal line, beginning with Rurik and the nobility of the Rus , were of a Scandinavian-Slavic
blend.
Though Muscovy may have later become dominated by the descendants of the Mongols and their
allies, the northern, forested part of Russia features a native set of peoples who only rarely
evince the features of their fully conquered brethren in the steppe lands of the south. In all
truth, Putin, whom I believe was born in Tver, could easily pass for one of my Nordic cousins
And that is the blue-eyed truth.
I'm a British Brexit voter – primarily because the EU is run by arseholes with an
absolutely loathing for any sort of democratic accountability.
So Russia's impression of the EU is totally realistic.
For four years I have had to watch the spectacle of the UK trying to form a fair deal, when
the EU's explicit goal has been to punish the UK for leaving pour encourager les autres.
What a waste of time. The EU only understands blunt force and blunt actions.
Indonesia Refuses To Host American Spy Planes Amid Sino-US Cold War
The US and China are smack dab in the middle of a new Cold War. The observation in itself
should not be startling to readers - as President Trump's trade war metamorphosed into a
technology war over the Chinese tech companies' global dominance. Rapidly deteriorating
relations between both superpowers, especially since the virus pandemic, has resulted in
increased military action in East Asia.
In the last couple of years, we've pointed out the US has constructed a Lockheed Martin
F-35 stealth jet "friends circle" around China. More recently, there's been a significant
uptick in US spy planes changing their transponder codes to disguise themselves during
operations near China.
In the attempt to increase spy plane presence in East Asia, US officials made multiple
"high-level" attempts in July and August to Indonesia's top defense and government
officials to clear the way to allow Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance planes to
land and refuel on the Southeast Asia country.
Four senior Indonesian officials familiar with the matter told Reuters that defense
officials rejected the US proposal because Indonesia has a well-established policy of
foreign policy neutrality - and does not permit foreign militaries to operate across its
archipelago.
Reuters notes the P-8 "plays a central role in keeping an eye on China's military
activity in the South China Sea, most of which Beijing claims as its territory."
Indonesia rejected the US spy plane presence because it has developed increased economic
and investment ties with China over the years.
"It does not want to take sides in the conflict and is alarmed by growing tensions
between the two superpowers, and by the militarization of the South China Sea," Indonesia's
Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told Reuters.
"We don't want to get trapped by this rivalry," Retno said in an interview in early
September. "Indonesia wants to show all that we are ready to be your partner."
Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the US, said the "very aggressive
anti-China policy" projected by the US has become troubling for Indonesia.
"It's seen as out-of-place," Djalal told Reuters. "We don't want to be duped into an
anti-China campaign. Of course, we maintain our independence, but there is deeper economic
engagement, and China is now the most impactful country in the world for Indonesia."
Greg Poling, a Southeast Asia analyst from the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said Washington's attempt to pressure Indonesia into giving up
land rights so US spy planes can fly in and out of the country is an example of "clumsy
overreach."
"It's an indication of how little folks in the US government understand Indonesia,"
Poling told Reuters. "There's a clear ceiling to what you can do, and when it comes to
Indonesia, that ceiling is putting boots on the ground."
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Both China and the US have recently ramped up military exercises in the South China Sea.
The US has increased naval freedom of navigation operations, submarine deployments, and spy
plane flights, while China has increased naval missions in the region.
To sum up, the new cold war has pressured Southeast Asian countries to take sides; they
must choose between the US and or China. As for Indonesia, they quickly decided to be
neutral with a lean towards China. Does this mean China's gravity in terms of its size and
its influence is overwhelming the US?
"From the onset of the pandemic in Russia, we have focused on preserving lives and
ensuring safety of our people as our key values. This was an informed choice dictated by
our culture and spiritual traditions, and our complex, sometimes dramatic, history. If we
think back to the great demographic losses we suffered in the 20th century, we had no other
choice but to fight for every person and the future of every Russian family.
"So, we did our best to preserve the health and the lives of our people, to help parents
and children, as well as senior citizens and those who lost their jobs, to maintain
employment as much as possible, to minimise damage to the economy, to support millions of
entrepreneurs who run small or family businesses.
"Perhaps, like everyone else, you are closely following daily updates on the pandemic
around the world. Unfortunately, the coronavirus has not retreated and still poses a major
threat. Probably, this unsettling background intensifies the sense, like many people feel,
that a whole new era is about to begin and that we are not just on the verge of dramatic
changes, but an era of tectonic shifts in all areas of life.
"We see the rapidly, exponential development of the processes that we have repeatedly
discussed at the Valdai Club before. Thus, six years ago, in 2014, we spoke about this
issue when we discussed the theme The World Order: New Rules or a Game Without Rules. So,
what is happening now? Regrettably, the game without rules is becoming increasingly
horrifying and sometimes seems to be a fait accompli."
This is the 17th session of the Valdai Club, and I ask: Where is there an equivalent in
the so-called democracies of the West which are allegedly the guardians of free speech and
debate, where there supposedly exists a "marketplace of ideas"?
The Q & A portion of Putin's Valdai Club Speech transcript
have been posted, and they run longer than his speech. In his first query, I completely agree
with Putin that too many people have yet to learn the fundamental lesson the pandemic ought
to have taught:
"However, the pandemic is playing into our hands when it comes to raising our awareness of
the importance of joining forces against severe global crises. Unfortunately, it has not yet
taught humanity to come together completely, as we must do in such situations."
But his answer wasn't directed at ignorant citizens. Putin's ire was directed at the
Outlaw US Empire:
"I am not referring now to all these sanctions against Russia; forget about that, we will
get over it. But many other countries that have suffered and are still suffering from the
coronavirus do not even need any help that may come from outside, they just need the
restrictions lifted, at least in the humanitarian sphere, I repeat, concerning the supply of
medicines, equipment, credit resources, and the exchange of technologies. These are
humanitarian things in their purest form. But no, they have not abolished any
restrictions, citing some considerations that have nothing to do with the humanitarian
component – but at the same time, everyone is talking about humanism .
"I would say we need to be more honest with each other and abandon double standards. I am
sure that if people hear me now on the media, they are probably finding it difficult to
disagree with what I have just said, difficult to deny it. Deep down in their hearts, in
their minds, everyone is probably thinking, 'Yes, right, of course.' However, for
political reasons, publicly, they will still say, 'No, we must keep restrictions on Iran,
Venezuela, against Assad .' What does Assad even have to do with this when it is ordinary
people who suffer? At least, give them medicines, give them technology, at least a small,
targeted loan for medicine. No." [My Emphasis]
If I could speak to Putin, I'd tell him that they have no hearts, they are soulless,
completely bereft of any sense of morality, and cannot be reasoned with whatsoever. They are
ghouls, incapable of being shamed or made to feel guilt. You look at them and see a human,
but they're not human at all; they are parasites cloaked in human form. They differ little
from the Nazis of 75+ years ago and need to be eliminated once and for all. The pandemic has
fully exposed them for what they are.
@134 Has anybody seen a comment yet from the Honorable Chrystia Freeland or the Lima Group
regarding the election result in Bolivia? Maybe they are too busy strangling Venezuela.
Re: "...Thus, six years ago, in 2014, we spoke about this issue when we discussed the
theme The World Order: New Rules or a Game Without Rules. So, what is happening now?
Regrettably, the game without rules is becoming increasingly horrifying and sometimes
seems to be a fait accompli."
Putin said this virtually in the same breath directly after his previous paragraph you
excerpted where he speaks of the serious ongoing challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
What that says to me is that he is hinting with his trademark subtlety that he thinks the
CV pandemic may not be a naturally arising event. In other words, a plandemic.
Yes, that's the ongoing rhetorical battle between the Collectivist nations who uphold the
sanctity of International Law and the Neoliberal Nations controlled by Financial Parasites
that can't survive under a functional International Law System. That distinction is
constantly becoming clearer particularly to those residing within the Neoliberal nations as
they watch their lives being destroyed. IMO, we're on the cusp of entering the most critical
decade of this century which will determine humanity's condition when 2101 is reached.
"... The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy goals. ..."
Last month, national security prosecutors at the Justice Department were told to look at any
ongoing investigations involving Iran or Iranian nationals with an eye toward making them
public.
The push to announce Iran-related cases has caused internal alarm, these people said, with
some law enforcement officials fearing that senior Justice Department officials want to
reveal the cases because the Trump administration would like Congress to impose new sanctions
on Iran.
U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but
menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be
used to endanger the upcoming election.
The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called
news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been
accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence -- just four
years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.
The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which came into view on Tuesday as
Democrats in several states reported receiving emails demanding they vote for President
Trump, was leveled without specific evidence .
...
Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia,
Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.
The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who
was behind them.
...
... the evidence remains inconclusive.
The claims that Iran is behind this are as stupid as the people who believe them.
I for one trust (not) those 50 former intelligence officials who say that all emails are
Russian disinformation. They are intended to 'sow discord' which is something the U.S. has
otherwise never ever had throughout its history.
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their
belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian
information operation."
...
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security
experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant
role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand
at work.
"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in
this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
No, this doesn't make any sense. It is not supposed to do that.
Posted by b on October 22, 2020 at 7:21 UTC | Permalink
The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of
comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just
happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy
goals.
We know that these yarns align in syncopation with
what the amerikan empire most wants to promulgate, yet bereft of even a a cunt hair's worth
of evidence, the only truth which can be inferred from this foggy bottom tosh is the obvious
one - that is that the empire is becoming so desperate they will happily toss their
credibility with the many to the winds if they can, please sir, just convince a few of the
few.
Stuff like this is a suitable test of how the media are supposed to represent our interests
and help us in not getting fooled. You report, and afterwards you test what your readers
believe.
Independently of questionable bias issues serious newspapers will defend news like this
with formal justifications of journalistic code
- neutrality and objectivity: we just report but don't judge.
- null hypothesis of trustworthiness: official sources are to be trusted unless proven
otherwise. At least, proven otherwise by someone we consider trustworthy.
The propaganda is already embedded in the lofty ethics codes journalists will proudly adhere
to.
"Other documents that have emerged include FBI paper work that reveals the bureau's
interactions with the shop's owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who reported the laptop's contents
to authorities. The document shows that Isaac received a subpoena to testify before the U.S.
District Court in Delaware on Dec. 9, 2019 . One page appears to show the serial
number for a MacBook Pro laptop and a hard drive that were seized by the agency."
https://www.ibtimes.sg/signed-receipt-hunter-bidens-name-delaware-laptop-repair-store-surfaces-52672
So the FBI kept Hunter Biden's bomb shell HDDs under wraps for almost a year. Enough time
to figure out they where not filled with Russian kompromat.
If you needed a leaked email to understand why it was corrupt for Hunter Biden to be getting
50k a month to be on the board of a Ukranian energy company, then you are likely already so
propagandized that you will vote for Joe Biden no matter what gets printed.
Really this propaganda is a brilliant move for those who control what is in print. They
have a clear circle of blame in Russia, Iran, or China, who are to blame for everything, and
this allows the media to limit the scope of discussion greatly by suppressing real criticisms
towards actual problems (the Bidens being corrupt across multiple generations) and deflecting
that energy into hating Russia, China, and Iran, which are the main targets for imperialism.
It is also a crude and vague lie to use anonymous sources to blame foreign entities for these
types of things, which actually makes it an elegant argument for a simpleton as it is
difficult if not impossible to disprove.
Because the media is really owned and operated by so few people who all have a hive-mind
about money and power, the messages are consistent, even though ridiculous, and they resonate
with many of the readers who really ought to know better, but have become inured to the
damaging effects of the lies they have consumed for decades. Stories like these will keep
working for a long time. If one of the sources in the article reported 'Up is Down, Left is
Right!', there would be a wave of car accidents until they issued a retraction.
The Russians ( Putin / Lavrov) say ever so politely that the US is not agreement-capable.
I add that the US ( politicians, Wall Streeters, MSM, think tanks ) are:
-- not truth-capable;
-- not ethics-capable;
-- not shame-capable;
-- not honour-capable.
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?
He turns into a ghoul without a soul, says I, a devil without human-ness!
How dare they call us deplorables when they are the despicables?
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining
their belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a
Russian information operation."
Do American journalists actually believe it's still in Russia interest to re-elect Trump?
Washington-Kremlin relations have deteriorated rapidly under Trump.
Posted by: Et Tu | Oct 22 2020 9:35 utc | 9 -- "In America, Truth is a Foreign Agent and
World Peace is a threat to National Security."
Nice one... Meet Mr Truth, un-registered foreign agent !!! and Mr World Peace, national
security threat !!!
American leadership would not be so despicable IF they do not pretend to be "spreading
freedom / democracy" when they wreak their global malice.
They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care
for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the
Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to
care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.
Here's a part of a comment I posted back in February 2020 that none of you took
seriously.
Posted by: Circe | Feb 28 2020 20:29 utc | 124:
The planet of extremely bad karma SATURN is moving into Bloomberg's sign, Aquarius, right
after mid-March and forming a square to Biden's sign, Scorpio. This is a very malefic
aspect.
People under these two signs, Aquarius and Scorpio ie Bloomberg and Biden will
experience obstacles, setbacks and challenges, create hidden enemies , and aging
will be accelerated and serious health issues could emerge.
So I was criticized for injecting astrology into that election thread, mostly by
AntiSpin.
Turns out as usual I hit the mark.
Bloomberg lost close to a BILLION dollars and failed badly in the primaries. That's what I
call a major setback. However, as of December after a 6-month retrograde into Capricorn,
Saturn is returning to Aquarius, so it ain't over for Bloomberg and things will get
complicated for Biden , for the U.S. and the rest of the world.
I also stated back then that nominating Joe Biden would be a greater risk for Dems than
nominating Bernie Sanders because Joe Biden was heading for serious astrological head winds
relating to something unseen at the time involving a serious family issue.
While I was certain that whatever the issue was would come to light and could affect him
in the Presidential campaign, I couldn't figure out the family aspect at the time, since he
appears to have a solid marriage and tragedy is in the rear view now.
Last night however it all suddenly became clear and I've come to the realization that I
was 100% right when I wrote that comment back in February 2020. Tonight I realized that the
family issue...is Hunter Biden!
I was sounding the alarm that something bad would come to light because Saturn was headed
into Aquarius, Biden's Home and Family sector squaring Biden's sign.
However, to make matters worse, it turns out that Hunter Biden is an Aquarian and Saturn
the karmic taskmaster is headed on a collision course to upend his life.
At the time I wrote the comment I obviously couldn't predict exactly what would unfold,
how or the precise timing, only that it would be bad and that's why I warned back then that
Democrats should have chosen Bernie. I believed Bernie could beat Trump and I was right,
because Trump is in total mental meltdown and self-destructing with his handling of the
pandemic.
Now even if Saturn will square Biden's Scorpio that's not to say that Biden won't still
win, but we are approaching a very bad full moon on October 31st. There is massive tension
building, subterfuge lurking and the situation is going to get ugly. A battle royal is
brewing. This is a powder keg moment.
Trump will not behave at the debate today. Must see t.v. With Obama's scorching speech
yesterday seething in Trump's brain, and his Iran stunt unravelling and ineffective at
distracting from the spotlight from Obama and the laptop bone clenched between his teeth;
he's a rabid dog fit to be tied. Give him a padded cell, already.
As for the U.S. and the world: The pandemic started with Saturn crossing Pluto's path in
Capricorn and entering full force into Aquarius in March when the world shut down.
So what will happen when karmic Saturn crosses Pluto again on it's way out of Capricorn
and enters Aquarius for the next 3 years?
Fasten your seat belts everyone...we're heading into major turbulence. There's so much
karmic tension gathering steam; it's very scary.
How much does it cost to get a trip to the moon?
I'll get back to sleazy Giuliani and his Pandora's box. There's too much to unpack there
than meets the eye. Just know that when circumstances appear too convenient-it's because they
are.
Trump's dirty play is a day late and a dollar short plus he's not playing with a full
deck. Must be one of those Covid long-term effects.
It's time...to get these scum-sucking, misery mongers out of the damn White House
already!
You know the US government is suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease when it claims that
Iran (of all nations) sent threatening emails to Democrat voters demanding that they vote for
a President who authorised the murder of a popular Iranian military general back in early
January this year.
Brian Kilmeade and morning crew run the fake Iranian emails story by former CIA station
Chief Daniel Hoffman.
Kabuki Actor Hoffman:
'[Uses opportunity to say Iranian Mantra] Iran has been attacking us for years, they have
attacked our shipping in the Gulf (???, that's a new one) blah-blah-blah.
'Iran and Russia are attacking our democracy because that is what they fear most about
America. Democracy would be the end of both regimes (Iran has no other motive to dislike the
U.S. such as us killing their top General, the Stuxnet virus, murderous sanctions, ...)'
So they hate us because of our freedoms, a classic.
Kabuki Actor Kilmeade:
'Can't we do something about this?' [note, the U.S. is the perpetual victim, never the
bully]
'Can't we pushback?' [The aggrieved victim, the U.S. is defending itself]
'Iran is doing this, Russia is sending bombers, can't we blow up an oil well?'
Kabuki Actor Kilmeade represents the entire degenerate U.S. public, unable to process
information that views another country as having rational motives or our Intel agencies of
being deceptive.
God, if you exist, You must hate this more than I do. How long?
All that rubbish is distraction. Discussing it is just playing to Borg's music.
They come up with so outlandish and jaw dropping crap that half he people thinks "it is so
outlandish it gotta be true, who would lie so much?" and other half that knows better is in
such a shock and disbelief that it needs some time to come to its senses and start tearing
apart the lie piece by piece BUT.... Time is lost, distraction worked and MSM/Borg come up
with next outrageous lie for next round. Russia, China, Navalny etc. etc.
And while marry go round Borg is doing it's deeds in dark while people is obsessing with
Trump's knickers.
Barack oblamblam held off until as long as he possibly could, a move most likely connected to
two realities, (1) not wanting to contradict what he, oblamblam said back in march "do not
underestimate Joe's ability to screw anything up" and (2) Oblamblam's desire not to be
found to be associated with sleepy joe's blatant corruption. Mud sticks n all that. Oblamblam
was much more subtle in lining up wedges to be trousered. eg. Try as people might they have
yet to uncover how a community worker turned prez found the dough to purchase a 45 acre
Martha's vineyard estate off a notorious billionaire and Oblambam is reluctant to do anything
which could prompt those questions,
Hence it wasn't until the 2020 election was mostly over that some DNC extortionists
managed to convince oblam to say a few words, or else, to the Philadelphia african american
males who chose to stay home on election day 2016.
Barack can claim 'he paid his dues' whilst keeping as much space as he can organise
between himself and crooked joe, who has already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute
with the shameless & ugly ukraine rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted.
There we mentioned the philly speech oh rabid, irrationally superstitious dembot.
Here's my prediction
Trump re-elected I fortell will mean more racist murdering thugs on the street. an guess what
they'l be In uniform and directly or indirectly trained by Israel.
And then there's the military presence on your streets -- you ain't seen nothing yet.
Wake the f up your gunna be massively oppressed by a fascist govenment ya skin couloir won't
matter, nore who you voted for. You already live in a one party dictatorship.
ie the elite. Face it your redundant as a human being replaced by a micro-chip.
Revolt I tell you revolt !!
The greater American public are about to become the next oppressed Palistinians ! oppressed
devalued and slowly distroyed. Like a frog in a heated pan.
You won't notice till it's to late will you ?
No really, will you ?
Journalism love's that high minded nonsense.
They write what they are paid to write.
Looking at the guardian wrt Assange
these clowns are beneath contempt.
Don't know if you are familiar with the box populi blog.
There a very good set of chapters from a book about journalist ethics.
i'm just surprised they haven't brought in venezuela and bolivia yet. that's supposed to be
sarcasm, but reality keeps outstripping sarcasm. i am actually worried they are ramping up
for a war in biden's first 100 days, either against iran or some serious provocation of
russia like provoking some incident in azerbaijan and blaming armenia. they're f/n batshit.
mark2 i think you're correct about more jackbooted government thugs on the street, but that's
gonna happen under either trump or crime bill joe/copmala. you're right about the israeli
training too, they trained cops in that kneeling on the throat technique. field tested on
palestinians.
Idiotic.
The united States was once a nest of excellence in nearly everything. Now it s a hub of naked
idiocy.
The Russians have nothing to fear from the US or Nato, except in the economy but they can fix
it. The Iranians have enough of what it takes to keep the Zio anglos away and at bay:
thousands of missiles to target Israel, Saudiland, a 25 year economic alliance program with
Beijing.
And clearly the time and opportunity where it was possible to still erase in a single coup
the Iranian military might is over.
"Breaking WaPo: The U.S. government has concluded that Iran is behind a series of threatening
emails arriving this week in the inboxes of Democratic voters, according to two U.S.
officials. https://washingtonpost.com/technology/202"
Posted by: librul | Oct 22 2020 12:52 utc | 22 When you hear, "Russians", just substitute in
your mind "witches", the weight of evidence is the same.
Absolutely correct. You win the thread.
Neither Iran nor Russia nor China give a rat's ass about the US election. There may be
literally thousands of private enterprise hackers who want to breach US election servers
precisely to get the Personal Identifying Information which is coin of the realm on the Dark
Web, but they couldn't care less about the election itself. It's physically impossible for
any country outside of the US to significantly influence the election in a country of 300
million people - and every country knows that. The only country that *doesn't* know that is
the US, which is why it spends scores and hundreds of millions of dollars - up to five
billion in Ukraine, allegedly - to influence foreign elections. That's the level of effort
needed to influence a foreign election more than the influence of the actual inhabitants of
that nation. But every time some private group in Russia launches an ad campaign for a couple
hundred thousand bucks tops, with zero effect on the US election, Putin gets blamed for some
plan to mastermind the overthrow of "democracy."
I rather liked Obama's speech If for no other reason than the tone was completely
different from the two candidates.
1. I'm tired of Trump's narcissism .
2. Can't stand Biden's fake 'I'm one of you'. He is corrupt, feels guilty about it, and
has to reassure us that he's Lunch Box Joe .
I've noticed this about Biden for a while, he conjures up these fake memories ...
'You know what I'm talking about because I've been on that park bench at noon when you only
have 20 minutes to eat your lunch because that whistle going to blow and you have to run
back to your Tuna canning station or lose your job and with that your health insurance,
car, and home.'
Okay this is not a literal quotation but it is a pattern and you know what I'm talking
about :-)
Pretzelatack @ 26
Yes to all you say their.
Re-reading my above comments they sound pretty harsh !
I am sorry, and do apologise !
It was part desperation and part morbid humour in the spirit of b's post.
Comparing Americans to a frog in pan may be a bit much !
I am in the U.K. we had a gen election one year ago !
I WAS THAT FROG IN A PAN.
Now I live in a pox ridden bankrupt banana republic run by a bunch of Israel bootlickers.
I don't go down well at party's.
And it's not superstition when the facts start to align with planetary motion.
How do you explain the Moon's effect on nature?
You think it's the only celestial body in the Solar System that influences life on Earth?
That cosmic order is inescapable. Astrology is thousands of years old dating back to the
Babylonians and has evolved through centuries of study and cannot, should not be dismissed as
mere superstition.
I'm not an expert at all, but I recognize order and higher authority when I see it and
believe me those planets are there for a reason and they rule everything. They're like
carrots and sticks (IMHO mostly sticks). Now who put them there and to what ultimate purpose
besides order and evolution is another matter.
I don't often bring it into a discussion, especially not to throw a discussion off topic,
except when I intuitively feel fate present in important events both personally and on a
universal scale.
This is a time of fated/karmic events, the pandemic being the most important (lesson) of
these.
I think a more appropriate title would be "Fascist Season" . . . Fascism has come of age here
in the land of the fee. The "intelligence agencies" create disinformation campaigns to
overthrow the elected President while the "justice department" et al withhold evidence and
fail to prosecute all the oligarchs and crooks who are busy censoring
information and preparing to rig and disrupt the
impending presidential election.
But technology and the "progressive" (pun intended) destruction of the US Constitution has
led the dumbed-down US masses (don't forget Canada and Australia lol) into a whole new world
of Orwellian lock-downs and wholesale economic destruction aimed at finishing off what was
left of the US middle class. Soon we will have our cash taken away and replaced with a
digital currency that can
always be taken away or tailored for limited use, subject to negative interest rates that it
cannot escape, etc. And all this is ushered in via
hyperinflation leading to a collapse of the bond and equities markets, and finally the
collapse of the US dollar (and all other Western fiat currencies).
The USA is so naive. They have been interfering in so many elections using money,
blackmail,CIA operations. There was no way for other countries with less means to do the same
to the USA. Now with social media they can, and they are absolutely right to take their
revenge for all the troubles they got into with the USA plotting to promote a pro-US
leader.
Now the battle is equal and the USA does not have the monopoly of interfering in other
countries election!
Tit for tat...
All these stories are risible. Note the struggle to clarify who these 'malign'
Régimes are attacking the US, and why.
Russia-R-R for Trump, but Iran-Ir-Ir for Trump doesn't quite hit the spot so now Iran is
trying to damage Pres. Trump (from one of the articles..) .. is Iran trying to promote the
election of Kamala Harris? What? Russia is for Trump and Iran against ?
The fall-back is a blanket, these evil leaders are trying to 'undermine democracy',
influence 'US voters', meddle in 'our freedom-loving' politics, etc.
The attempt to stir up the spectre of threatening enemies far off is a hackneyed ploy. In
the case of the USA, it is now melded with the promotion and control of planned internal
strife, with internal enemies being natives (not islamist terrorists who sneak in and are
under cover before erupting in murderous madness..) - Color Revolution Style.
-- BLM + Antifa haven't been active recently (or not in MSM top stories) as the election
is approaching. Such would be upping the Trump vote for "law-and-order."
(imho from far off..) Many in the US don't take any of this seriously, it is just
game-playing, false alarm, pretend concern.
"Oh wow, Iran is targetting Trump, did you know, real serious, did you hear, tell me is
Zoe-chick divorcing that creep Edmond, I want to know, did you have that interview with Gov.
X for the job? Is she hot? How much "
The credentialised class and the movers and shakers just roll their eyeballs, and the poor
are in any case stuck in a desperado cycle of struggle against misery, what is going on with
Putin / Iran / Xi is off the radar.
Vilification of China (hate hate hate); claimed by the media and the pundits and our
"Fearless Covid Conquering Leader" and all the good little parrots, to be the source of evil
itself... Scapegoat extraordinaire... Hacking and Cheating and Aggressing and exercising
Brutality towards its own citizens... The worst of the worst per our "intelligence" apparatus
(and blind ideologues). Existential threat numero uno.
But wait!
The US is being attacked! Attacked they say; by all of the "bad" guys simultaneously.
The forces of evil out there are broad and out to get us. They hate our (imagined)
freedoms.
Evidence (not):
Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases
U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats
U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say
Invariably in all cases, The Voice of "Intelligence" (not bloody likely from ANY of this
crew) deeply intoned to impart the "certainty", neatly encapsulated in the words "highly
likely", delivered without a scrap of proof but loud, prominent, regular, mind numbing
pontification.
Trust me! We lie, We cheat, We steal; and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The US, all on its own, engenders distrust within the population because the US and all
its political and Executive, and Legislative and Judicial and "intelligence" bureaucracies
are corrupt to the core... Worse, they make no bones about it if you pay attention. And
Partisanship is nothing but distraction because they are ALL corrupt and morally bankrupt;
without empathy, remorse, sense of guilt or shame.
It was the US itself that thought it could subjugate the world through its faux
"democratic" business practices and its claim of natural superiority... Its self declared
Rules of Order instead of adhering to and supporting consensus established International
LAW... Hegemon pompously declaring it has a RIGHT to Full Spectrum Dominance and slavish
obedience.
Not the Iranians, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the CCP, not the North Koreans,
not the Venezuelans; none of them are disrupting, threatening or meddling in the US
elections.
If you believe what the morons are smearing across the public consciousness through every
communication medium possible you are a sucker... Totally disconnected any critical thinking
faculties that may have been present. The very definition of sheeple... baaaa! (the sound
drowns out reason and thought).
The rest of the World beyond NATO and Five Eyes isn't attacking the US or its
institutions. They have all been attacked every which way from Sunday BY the US and its
Satraps (targets of, victims of, and willing accomplices to our sophisticated excessively
funded and supported global protection racquet).
The US, our Government, always blames our designated and non-compliant, non-obeisant
existential threats for all the things we do to them.
And all this cacophony of alleged evil "attacks" from outside right now?
Look!!! Look!!! Over here!
Don't pay any attention to who and what decided to put us in the position we find
ourselves in and what we have done to vast swaths of the world's populations "over
there".
Now go vote for one of two degenerate teams, both of which are headed by supremely
unqualified psychopaths.
The CIA really needs a new playbook. The Russia/Iran thing is laughable to the rest of the
world, and to many 'Americans' as well. Unfortunately Partisans run the country, and those
folks are addicted to the Kool Aid of MAGA – just different versions.
This October is like an Advent Calendar of October Surprises with plenty of time still on
the clock for some great Golden Shower or Democratic child orgy deep fakes. Who the hell
knows at this point – the acceleration of events this year makes Future Shock look like
an Ambien commercial.
Trump is toast and good riddance. And sure Biden et al are war criminals and corrupt
creatures of the Swamp. The Establishment is a much easier target to resist vis a vis policy
than a crazy cretin without any policy but his own self-aggrandizement.
"Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true,
and do not remember those that turn out false. Astrology has not demonstrated its
effectiveness in controlled studies and has no scientific validity.[6]:85;[11] The study,
published in Nature in 1985, found that predictions based on natal astrology were no better
than chance, and that the testing "...clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis."[10] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology
As for getting voter US state voter databases, most states allow people to purchase part of a
voter's information. Other parts like birth dates remain private. But the publicly available
list is probably enough as it identifies party affiliation, voting history as when dates they
voted (not how they voted). All the other private information is more useful to identity
thieves and Indian scam centers. And as one poster noted, those databases like gold on dark
web.
As for email addresses that implies those must be acquired through party officials and
candidates off donor lists. Off hand I do not know that an email address is required to
register to vote--I seriously doubt it. I know that Bernie famously refused to give his donor
database to Hillary. The emails imply some sort of inside job or some false flag.
Just read the story on Truthout of voters in Alaska & Florida, and possibly Pennsylvania
and Arizona receiving threatening messages if they should vote against Trump. "We know you're
a Democrat and we have access to your voting records..." Metadata indicates servers located
in the kingdoms of Israel's new friends...
Well, I just went to the Board of Elections website for my county here in Ohio and I can,
with a few clicks, generate a report from their site of a county listing of voters filtered
in over a half-dozen ways - i.e. by Party affiliation and including addresses. Comes under
the heading of "Voter and Candidate Tools."
So some concoct a tale which blames Iran, Russia, etc. for information freely available
from your State's BOE? This information has always been available, but not exploited before
in this way by US neo Nazis.
So, even though your ballot is secret, intimidation is easy to engage in based solely on
Party affiliation of record. If Trump loses, should some people expect bricks through their
windows, or perhaps fire-bombings? Trump and his supporters are certainly ratcheting up the
apocalyptic messaging, working themselves into a frenzy - that is obvious and not even
debatable.
I never read Dante; which circle of hell are we entering now?
Everyone here knows I was 100% behind Bernie Sanders for the Presidency because I felt he was
the right person for these times, but the mass is dumb and blind. I agree with the comment I
read on the previous thread I think by someone called Horseman that portrays Bernie's goal as
moving the Dem Party to the Left and not sheepdogging, but recognizing the stakes involved
superceded Left purity.
At the same time I was totally against Biden because he is much more Zionist than Bernie,
therefore more corrupt, as Zionism is counter-evolutionary being inherently supremacist,
entitled, and undemocratic.
However, Trump is exponentially worse! He is a fascist Zionist and totally depraved. There
is a choice here of monumental significance. Short term loss for greater future gain.
Biden is very flawed, but I'm inclined to view a man who suffered multiple life-altering
tragedies to reach this point and who is grappling with embracing a son, Hunter, who probably
was destroying his life, than a narcissistic less than evolved baby-man pig with a god
complex who squandered life and daddy's money on material and artificial pursuit and has no
notion of humanity, as the only sane choice.
Yes, Joe Biden should face his flaws and answer for whatever corruption exists in him, but
that laptop issue should not be a reason to stop people from getting Trump, the most corrupt
President in my lifetime next to Bush OUT. That goal is paramount. This is 2nd to the
pandemic in fated events. If people do not make the right choices and learn something from
these events then let this planet devolve into hell because that will be what is deserved!
The stakes right now are astronomical and super-fated!
Don't blow a singular opportunity to get rid of that Fascist pig Trump over a laptop
that's really a Pandora's box being used by Shmeagol Gollum Giuliani as a trap to unleash
misery for years to come.
This is clearly the Deep State and imperial establishment spouting obvious nonsense in order
to discredit themselves and therefore to help in Trump's reelection bid! Henry Kissinger told
me so! What incredibly subtle and intricate plans they have!
Or... maybe it is just a bunch of incompetent baboons in the Deep State control room
randomly flipping switches and pulling levers in the desperate hopes that something,
anything, works.
Nah! This is all part of the Great Plan! It just seems like abject stupidity because we
cannot grasp its intricate complexities.
All these new threads are defaulting to election threads. Sorry, b.
But I'll bite.
In the case of a Biden victory, which do you think will happen first?:
1) Renewed hostilities w/ Assad in Syria leading to his violent ousting and thrusting the
west into violent confrontation w/ Russia...
Or...
2) Forcible entry into the Armenian/Azerbaijan conflict and establishing a no-fly
zone...
Or...
3) a combination of both and would throw us into a direct confrontation with either Russia
or Iran or both?
It looks like the demonizing of Iran is ramping up with the mail-threats telling dims to
vote Trump or else. Dims don't like hostile, foreign powers helping the Don and swaying
elections. It's a nice tip-off as to what Biden and the dim establishment might consent to
once Obama-era sycophants and technocrats move back in to the White House.
Seems to be the year of anniversaries; another's being celebrated today but not by the Outlaw
US Empire. China
& North Korea Celebrate 70th Anniversary of China's intervention in Outlaw US Empire's
invasion of Korea , which is how it's being portrayed, "China, N. Korea stand together
'for self-protection against US hegemony' like 70 years ago" reads the headline at the link.
To mark the anniversary, China has published an official
history , explaining its decision "To resist US aggression and aid Korea, China had no
choice but to fight a war;" the 3-volume work is The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid
Korea . From China's perspective, it defeated Outlaw US Empire forces; so, it's not
"forgotten" at all. Xi's using the occasion to give a major speech, the subject of which
hasn't been disclosed.
Just 12 days to go until the refusals to abide by the outcome day arrives. If one wants to
look, there's lots of illegal foreign influence happening but from sources that go
unmentioned: Corporations that have foreign owners, which most do, who provided campaign
contributions in any form to any entity associated with the election.
HeHeHe!!! The first bits of Putin's appearance at the Valdai Club today
are being published . In a jab back at those accusing Russia of interfering in elections
and such Putin said:
"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other
countries, I want to say to those who are still waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in
this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your
funeral."
There's more, although a transcript has yet to be published.
There's a thread right before this one on International Events. Why don't you go spew your
poisonous Trump Kool-Aid there instead of polluting with Trumpian-laced propaganda here?
I know-I know, Election threads raise the common sense factor further and that leads to
Trump's demise, so you can't help but rush in to correct that dangerous shift. Why
don't you do something equally meaningless like pounding sand down a rat hole?
After the Russiagate fiasco I thought the Americans had learned their lesson, but it seems I
was wrong.
Honestly, this may be the beginning of an irreversible process of ideological polarization
of the American Empire.
The thing is it's one thing to wage propaganda warfare against a foreign enemy to your
domestic audience: the foreign enemy will be destroyed either way, so they will never be able
to tell their version of the story, plus the domestic audience can give itself the luxury of
living the lie indefinitely as it doesn't affect their daily lives. Plus they'll directly
benefit from the conquest of a foreign enemy, e.g. cheaper gas to your car after the
destruction and conquest of Iraq; the abundance in the shelves of Walmarts after the
subjugation of China, and so on.
It's a completely different story when you wage propaganda warfare against yourself: the
Trump voter knows he/she didn't vote for Trump because of Russian influence, while the Hilary
Clinton/Joe Biden voter knows he/she didn't vote in either of them because of Chinese
influence. But each part will believe the half of the lie that benefits them against the
other, creating a vicious cycle of mistrust between the two halves.
Meanwhile, the American economy (capitalism) continues to decline. Time is running up:
It was a shock-and-awe moment when lawmakers gave the package a thumbs up. Yet in the
months since, the planned punch has not materialized.
The Treasury has allocated $195 billion to back Fed lending programs, less than half of
the allotted sum. The programs supported by that insurance have made just $20 billion in
loans, far less than the suggested trillions.
The programs have partly fallen victim to their own success: Markets calmed as the Fed
vowed to intervene, making the facilities less necessary as credit began to flow again.
So, the very announcement of the Fed it would lend indefinitely and unconditionally made
such loans unnecessary!
I didn't like it at the beginning, but the term "Late Capitalism" is growing on me.
MSM pushing the the Iran angle shows that they are more anti-Iran than anti-Trump.
What effect would Iran intend by sending fake threatening emails from right-wing guns nuts
to Democrats? I doubt it would discourage those Democrats from voting (for Biden), and I
doubt Iran would think it would. The only effect it would have is to increase the fear,
distrust, and disgust Democrats already have for those groups - which is "sowing discord",
not "meddling with elections".
The Trump regime pushes this because it makes Trump look good & makes Iran look bad
(at least the way it's been framed). MSM generally doesn't like Trump, but prints this
because hyping fear & loathing toward Iran matters more to them than dumping Trump.
Great that they are working on it, I was taking notes but kind of lousy its not easy to
listen and write at the same time. Started kind of nervous, but right now it is Putin at his
most relaxed and eloquent.
It is interesting to see how Putin is way more at ease when answering journalist's
questions than when exposing his part of the event. Right now they asked him about his image,
punk, criminal etc etc. Answer: my function is the main thing, and I do not take it
personally, now the chinese will ask.
In case the truth gets lost in your purposely misleading translation. This hare-brained
scheme was cooked up by Trump and his newly-appointed right-hand bootlicker RATcliffe, at DNI
and delivered to the American people by the latter as a desperate distraction minutes after
Obama smacked down Trump on every air wave.
It immediately gave off an offensive odor, as I stated previously, of Trump turd floating
in golden toilet.
And that's why Chris Wray looked so awkward and uneasy behind that RAT.
Three hours of serious talking about any and all world problems. I wonder how long Lunch Box
Joe could hold on his own. The orange man probably could do it, but just talking about
himself. The US need someone like VVP.
I ought to listen while also reading the Russian close-captioning so I can rebuild my
Russian language facility and catch the body language messages, but I still need to read/hear
it all in English. As for his response to questions, IMO Putin knows what to expect from
media reporters but not from other experts in the audience whose questions are usually more
complex. Then there's the need to remain tactful, although there are times when he does need
to get indignant, as with the issue of illegal sanctions that harm nations's abilities to
deal with the pandemic--the utter immorality and inhumanity of the Outlaw US Empire that
never gets the attention it deserves.
What would Iran gain by scaring lower end of the spectrum Democrats into voting for Trump,
is that desirable for Iran?
Ah ... but it was a pump fake, Iran thought that people would think that the emails were
genuine, arrest a few of the Proud Boys and this would hurt Trump by associating him with a
domestic terror group. Not only is this scenario convoluted but it is extremely risky because
it might scare a handful of impressionable Democrats into voting for Trump and any
investigation would uncover hacking of some kind.
Most likely suspect, Israel. They have the means to hack and the contacts in the U.S. to
suggest Iranian origin.
As Putin said, Russia was able to find "balance" in its reaction to COVID; and as with China
but unlike the Outlaw US Empire, it put the safety of the Russian people first and foremost.
The Empire is experiencing yet another big outbreak nationwide and has yet to put the
interests of its citizenry first.
Is Circe deranged?
I don't know but I doubt if she spends trillions of dollars each year on murdering inocent
men women and children.
Mmmmm
Perhaps to people living in a ''loony bin'' (America) people outside must seem quite strange
!
I live near Glastonbury finest bunch of people you'd ever meet. Not known for genocidel
tendency's.
Any ways Iran, Russia interfering in America's elections -- -- - pure paranoid delusion
(weaponised)
The Mighty Wurlitzer has
begun to sound more like the New York Philharmonic tuning up while riding the Empire State Express
as it crashes endlessly into Grand Central Station.
Dear Circe, each language is a world view, I wish I had the resources available today when
I was younger, I would speak as many as possible, I consider that with the means available
today speaking half a dozen would be no problem at all. You have the blessing and the curse
of speaking english, so no need for anything else, but that is your problem, you are so
relaxed about it that you're not able to spell correctly the name of one of your best known
cities, San Francisco, with a c before the s.
Again, come up with something else, the bot label is as primitive as your knowledge of your
own language and geography.
kiwiklown@14: They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care
for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the
Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to
care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.
Well said, although rather sad! The last pretension reveals exactly the mentality that was
behind the genocide upon the Native American centuries ago, resorting to tactics such as
passing out smallpox infected blankets, dispensation of whisky, as well as outright
slaughters of course.
Gruffy @ 68
Maybe but she martches to a different drum beat. Not the trump drum beat of war that you
follow, and will lead you all over the cliff.
Don't get me wrong ! You'd have to squeeze my nuts pretty dam hard (tears in my eyes) before
I'd vote for Biden.
But you must know two things -- -
A. Trump is bat shit crazy and has his finger on the button whilst the Dems are money mad and
there is know profit in Armageddon.
And
B. I'm antifa my hobby is smashing the filthy fascists !!
Who's streets ? Our streets !!
Without mentioning its name, Putin in his speech pinned the tail on
the donkey regarding TrumpCo's pandemic failure:
"The values of mutual assistance, service and self-sacrifice proved to be most important.
This also applies to the responsibility, composure and honesty of the authorities, their
readiness to meet the demand of society and at the same time provide a clear-cut and
well-substantiated explanation of the logic and consistency of the adopted measures so as not
to allow fear to subdue and divide society but, on the contrary, to imbue it with confidence
that together we will overcome all trials no matter how difficult they may be.
"The struggle against the coronavirus threat has shown that only a viable state can act
effectively in a crisis ..." [My Emphasis]
Yes, it didn't begin with Trump, but he sure did accelerate the process of making the
domestic part of the Outlaw US Empire dysfunctional, which for me makes this "silly season"
even worse than usual.
I view this as shit-against-the-wall policy. You throw it up there. Sometimes it sticks,
sometimes it doesn't.
This is how lowly vermin do foreign policy nowadays.
Remember the story -- first reported as Russians, then Iranians -- paying bounty to the
Talibs to kill (as if they needed motivation) American soldiers?
Well, in that case, I guess neither story really stuck, but you see where I'm going with
this. It's all shite
And silly season continues with self-proclaimed anti-fascists who don't know what fascists
are.
Fascism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race or religion. Is there any racial
difference between Ukropians and Russians? Fascism is simply a tool that capitalists use to
smash class consciousness. Literally any differences can be used by the capitalists to direct
the violent mobs at their victims, even differences that are completely imaginary and don't
really exist except in the group mind of the mob.
Now I wonder... who is it that will attack someone for saying "But ALL lives
matter!" ? Who is smashing class consciousness?
And this is why the USA is turning into a failed state and Russia isn't:
"Nevertheless, I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the
confidence its citizens have in it . That is the strength of a state. People are the
source of power , we all know that. And this recipe doesn't just involve going to the
polling station and voting, it implies people's willingness to delegate broad authority to
their elected government, to see the state, its bodies, civil servants, as their
representatives – those who are entrusted to make decisions, but who also bear full
responsibility for the performance of their duties .
"This kind of state can be set up any way you like. When I say 'any way,' I mean that what
you call your political system is immaterial. Each country has its own political culture,
traditions, and its own vision of their development. Trying to blindly imitate someone else's
agenda is pointless and harmful. The main thing is for the state and society to be in
harmony .
"And of course, confidence is the most solid foundation for the creative work of the
state and society. Only together will they be able to find an optimal balance of freedom and
security guarantees ." [My Emphasis]
What a brilliant collection of words emphasizing the absolute requirement for the state to
do its utmost to support and develop its human capital--its citizens--while also saying
citizens have their own duty to ensure the quality of the state, which means installing
representatives that will work for them and promote their interests first and foremost since
they are the backbone of the state. Don't feed and care for the citizenry as in the USA and
you'll have a corrupt, feeble state when it comes to keeping itself strong. And IMO the
primary difference that's making Russia stronger while the USA atrophies is that Russia
listens to its people and genuinely cares for and acts in their interests while in the USA
the demands of the citizenry have fallen on deaf ears for decades, regardless the political
party running the government.
Gruffy is trying to conflate perpetrator as opposed to the victim/ victems !
Classic -- -
US geo-politics.
Blame shifting fascist tactic.
Learned far right tactic.
Or
Psychopathic projection.
Example -- --
US attacks Iran &Russia but blames them for attacking The US.
Also Gruffy I note how you side step a point well made by
Asking a deliberately distracting question. Yawn
"Blame shifting" absolutely is part of smashing class consciousness. Shift the blame
for people's difficulties from capitalism to various parts of the working class. Those who
participate violently in this process are fascists and perpetrators. Of course, they are also
victims because they are destroying their own class consciousness. Class consciousness is
necessary if they are ever to be able to address the real issues causing them hardship.
When the question and answers segment comes online it is worth reading his opinion about
the Karabakh conflict and how it is a very difficult situation for Russia since both
countries involved, Armenia and Azerbaijan are part of a common family. The question implied
that Russia would unequivocally side with Armenia based on religion, to which Putin answered
that 15% of Russia population professes the islamic faith and that he considers Azerbaijan a
country as close to Russia as Armenia, with over two million nationals from each of the
warring countries living in Russia and as part of a very influential and productive
community.
Interesting too his take on Turkey, admitting that there are a lot of disagreements Putin
had good words for Erdogan admitting that he is independent and that he is someone able to
uphold his word, the Turk Stream project, it was agreed upon and completed, compared to the
europeans to whom he did not spare in his almost contemptuous words insinuating their lack of
sovereignty.
Gruffy error !!
In this context the 'mob'
Is trump followers.
The thugs in uniform.
The proud boys.
The US forces abroad and at home.
Gruffy 'you' ARE the mob.
I feel you watched to many cowboy films portraying native Americans as the bad guys! It
shows.
I won't be replying more. as I see your very shabby diversionary tactic. Nice try though. We
see you !! What you are and what you do.
Thanks for your reply! Even before the Q&A Putin skewers both the Empire and EU in
this paragraph:
"Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be imported.' I have said so many times. They
cannot be a product of the activities of foreign 'well-wishers,' even if they 'want the best
for us.' In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing
and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are
nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of
sovereignty. People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never
asked for their opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the
overlord decides everything for the vassal . To reiterate, only the citizens of a
particular country can determine their public interest." [My Emphasis]
And that "particular country" is one where both the citizens and the government share
"confidence" in each other such that they work in "harmony." Thus the #1 goal of the Outlaw
US Empire to sow chaos within nations so such confidence and harmony can't be established;
and if they are, then destroyed.
No one has ever lied to American people more than the American regime and her terrorizing
intelligence community organization, Snowden is the living proof of this . Anyone still alive
and living on this planet if it ever believed a word on anything coming out of the USG not
only is a fool and a total idiot but his/her head must be seriously checked. Regardless of
their party affiliations they have no shame of lying cheating steeling those United
oligarchy' Secretary of State is the proof that.
This poster is on neither "side" . More like Putin looking in pain over Azerbaijan and
Armenia killing each other at the prompting of some third party that doesn't care about
either of them. This poster is neither faux left nor right wing; however, this poster's
grandmother was Cherokee. There is no anger directed your way for your failure to understand,
though.
If Americans had any backbone they would be on the streets protesting about this sham
election prior to the election, of false choice no choice.
You earn your democracy or you loose your democracy.
Iran, Russia bashing ! Just how low have you people sunk.
No hind sight, no insight and no foresight !
No hope. Spineless.
Totally weird! You all, please get behind re-electing Trump. He is doing such a good job of
destroying the US empire and its pretensions. If you are really a leftist, this is a GOO:-D
thing!
The alternative is to vote Independent or Green but they don't have a chance right
now.
Walking only 3 miles on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles , going west I have counted 47 homeless
(male,females,wht,black,Asian)asking for handouts. These lost soles are the ones who have
paid the price for the for ever wars to secure the Israel' realm,
The propose of yesterday's security show at FBI was to convince the public that all negative
comments and cretics coming their way by internet blogs, email , media etc. is not really
from disfranchised Americans public, but rather foreign countries operation that they do not
like our democracy and way of life, It was solely meant to make people not to subscribe and
believe what negativity they hear or read on US( non existing)democracy ,
This is a cheap standard operation by totalitarian regimes.
53
That money went to the ESF,what else do you think is levitating stocks and bonds ?
You assumed wrongly, but Kudlow let slip they(ESF) were broke and actually stated the money
was going to them in a presser.
I dunno why I'm bothering to do this because astrology is such a lame easily disproven
superstition that gets by because there are just so many con artists making predictions that
occasionally some must be correct - the stopped clock effect, but here goes.
The moon's effect on our planet's oceans is proven to be caused by a known phenomenon,
gravity. These stars whose positions we are told influence our human lives (just another
anthrocentric load of bulldust what about beings on other planets?) are thousands of light
years away from earth, meaning when the con-artists draw up their star charts or WTF they
call 'em, they are looking at formations that happened thousands of years ago - all different
depending on a particular star's distance from earth.
Claiming to be able to predict anything rational from such a mish mash of incorrect data is
risible, sad really and goes much to explain the house dembot's mania.
As for oblammer in Miami? I guess the dnc know where quite a few oblammer bodies are
buried.
My view is changing, Biden is so crooked that even though if he wins, the corporate media
will try hard to leave him alone, but he's just too clumsy, so that some dems are going to
side with the rethugs to impeach him and fast, however that may be what the oligarchy is
counting on, as that brings bad karmala harris to the fore, a women so unpopular with dem
rank and file she withdrew from the primary before any votes were cast, how's that for
'democracy'.
This is the real issue, both dem & rethug prez candidates are crooks through and
through, if the dems win, then the spotlight the corporate media shone on orangeutan will be
turned off. At least some of trump's worst rorts were stopped by a fear of being found out,
but if the dems win dopey joe will have no such constraint - until he does something so over
the top eg kick off nuclear war, that the media finally wakes up. too late but at least now
they're awake.
Posted by: vinnieoh | Oct 22 2020 16:04 utc | 45 If Trump loses, should some people expect
bricks through their windows, or perhaps fire-bombings?
That is the threat. If either side loses, there will be massive civil unrest - at least
it's very likely that is (part of) "the plan" - whatever the plan actually is. In any event,
plan or not, it's predictable. Most of the preppers I follow on Youtube are urging everyone
to stock up on food and water because there's a good chance that everyone will be back on
movement restrictions of some sort, if not full-on martial law, within the next couple
months. As I said before, this country is going to start looking like Turkey or Italy in the
70's when the Grey Wolves and the Red Brigades were terrorizing those countries. It may not
be "civil war", but it's likely to be uglier than what happened this summer.
There will be cries of joy in the streets and maybe some celebratory looting, all from the
urban left.
Trump's supporters might assemble peacefully in a very sparse manner, but I would bet most
would simply take the newly alotted time from the Biden-victory to prep and ready a little
more before the real fireworks begin. Violence would only erupt from the urban left attacking
those demonstrations.
Real men are lying in wait. The city is not their playground any longer.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Oct 22 2020 11:21 utc | 19 -- "Barack can claim 'he paid his dues'
whilst keeping as much space as he can organise between himself and crooked joe, who has
already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute with the shameless & ugly ukraine
rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted."
Thanks for your astute observations. Am learning much.
A compromised man never escapes blackmail: he is but a tool in the hands of his owners. It
is not IF, but WHEN he will be used / abused. Over and over again, like a banker's boot
stomping on his arrogant face.
But then, who is to say that Obanger Obummer was unaware of his VP, that Basement-Biding
Bidet Biden's 'arrangements' for wealth accretion? And more (there is always more), who is to
say that Obanging Ohumming gets NO share therefrom at some 'convenient' time?
Evil thinks himself clever to hide in the dark, yet lives in daily fear of the light.
Thusly Obanging Ohummer's calculations that you noted above, and his dark demeanour these
days. He knows he is walking on a knife edge, with a sword hanging over his head, and a
safety net (those 17 intelligence agencies?) that can turn into a fowler's snare (sorry,
mixed metaphors!)
Yet, looking at the happier demeanour (she used to scowl all through 2017/2018) on that
shallow face called Michelle Ohummer, we can guess that she thinks they have escaped clean
with their 'rewards of office'.
Christian J. Chuba @17 asked, "How long?" I ask, how does an immoral leadership ever going
to turn moral? When does America get the leadership that she deserves?
@71 karlof1 - "only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis" - Putin
What a brilliant equation from Putin. Even more penetrating and useful than the formerly
existing observation that socialist-style societies have performed best in response to the
virus. Putin's criterion cuts exactly to the essence of the thing.
What the US has demonstrated from the virus response is that it is not a viable state. The
benchmark now exists. Thanks for bringing it over.
I have a friend of Cherokee ancestry. She told me how once she was speaking with an elder
woman of the tribe, and described herself as "one-eighth Cherokee".
The old woman shook her head and said, "The Cherokee spirit cannot be diluted."
Should any here be interested, Wikipedia has aa extensive listing of governmental scandals
for the 20th and 21st century administrations. Note the number of executive, legislative and
judicial scandals for each administration. Note also the volume of scandals as
administrations go from Franklin D. Roosevelt through to D.J. Trump for both executive and
legislative branches. The political parties of the malfeasant are of interest as well -
trending can be discerned, maybe, for the observant.
I'd have more hope for Russia if the Russian ruling class weren't so obsessed with the
West and didn't send their children to Western (woke) schools, etc.
theallseeinggod , 7 hours ago
They're not doing that well, but they're not repeating many of the west's mistakes.
Normal , 5 hours ago
Now the West has rules only for poor people.
Helg Saracen , 6 hours ago
Advice to Americans (for the sake of experiment): prohibit lobbying in US and the right of
citizens with dual citizenship to hold public office in US. I assure - you will be surprised
how quickly Russians go from non-kosher to kosher for Americans and how American politicians,
the media will convince Americans of this at every intersection. :) Ha ha ha
Nayel , 5 hours ago
If the [Vichy] Left in America weren't so determined to project their own Bolshevik
leanings on to a possible great ally that their ideology now fears, Russia would be just
that: a great ally that could help America shake the Bolsheviks that have infiltrated the
American government and plan the same program their Soviet forefathers once held over
Russia...
Arising 2.0 , 1 hour ago
Western zionist controlled propaganda reminds me of Mohamed Ali- he used to talk up the
******** so much before a fight that when the time came to fight the opponent was usually
traumatised or confused. Until Ali met with Joe Frazier (Russia) who didn't fall for all the
pre-fight BS.
ThePinkHole , 39 minutes ago
Time for a pop quiz! Name the two countries below:
Country A - competency, attention to first principles, planning based on reality,
consistency of purpose, and unity of execution.
Country B - incompetency, interfering in everything everywhere, planning based on hubris
and sloppy assumptions, confusion, and disunity.
(Source: Adapted from Patrick Armstrong)
foxenburg , 3 hours ago
This one is always good for a laugh....the Daily Telegraph's Con Coughlin explaining in
2015 how Putin will fail in Syria...
We have all this talk of the 'Ruskies' when in fact it is not the ordinary Russian people
but rather a geopolitical power struggle. The ordinary US citizen or European just wants to
maintain their liberty and be able to profit from their endeavours. The rich and powerful
globalists who hide behind their military are the ones that play these games. I am no friend
of Putin but equally I am no friend of our own political establishment that have been
captured by Wall Street. I care about Main Street and as the US dollar loses its privilege
there will be real pain to share amongst our economies. The last thing we need is for the
elites of the Western alliance to profit with cold/hot wars on the backs of ourselves.
Having been behind the iron curtain as a young Merchant Navy Officer I found ordinary
citizens fine and even organized football matches with the local communist parties. People
have the same desires and aspirations and whether rich or poor we should respect each others
cultures and territories. http://www.money-liberty.com/gallery/Predictions-2021.pdf
..they have always been the reason for the industrial-military complex....but now, who
needs them.....we got china to point the finger at. so having 2 useful idiot countries...will
keep the weapons boys going for quite some time....
Snaffew , 7 hours ago
...he boogeyman has never been Russia, it resides right here in the US under the guise of
government, military, mainstream media, propaganda and sanctions, sanctions, sanctions
against anyone that rightfully takes our slice of entitled pie because they built a far
better and far cheaper mousetrap.
Oh the horrors of claiming to be a democracy and a capitalist nation when you just can't
seem to play by the rules. **** America---we have let the elites take us down the road to
ruins. We are as much at fault as they are for believing their nonsensical bs the whole while
all the evidence was smoking right in front of our face. Who's more stupid...them or us? I'd
tell everyone to take a good long look in the mirror if you are looking for an answer to that
question---
The Russians ( Putin / Lavrov) say ever so politely that the US is not
agreement-capable.
I add that the US ( politicians, Wall Streeters, MSM, think tanks ) are:
not truth-capable;
not ethics-capable;
not shame-capable;
not honour-capable.
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? He turns into a
ghoul without a soul, says I, a devil without human-ness! How dare they call us deplorables
when they are the despicables?
Tramp was essentially the President from military industrial complex and Israel lobby. So he was not played. That's naive. He
followed the instructions.
On March 20, 2018, President
Donald Trump
sat beside Saudi crown prince Muhammed bin Salman at the White House and lifted a giant map that said
Saudi weapons purchases would support jobs in "key" states -- including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Ohio, all
of which were crucial to Trump's
2016 election victory
.
"Saudi Arabia has been a very great friend and a big purchaser of
equipment but if you look, in terms of dollars, $3 billion, $533 million, $525 million -- that's peanuts for you. You
should have increased it," Trump
said
to the prince, who was (and still is) overseeing a military campaign in Yemen that has deployed U.S. weaponry to commit
scores
of alleged war crimes.
Trump has used his job as commander-in-chief to be America's arms-dealer-in-chief
in a way no other president has since Dwight Eisenhower, as he prepared to leave the presidency, warned in early 1961
of the military-industrial complex's political influence. Trump's posture makes sense personally ― this is a man who
regularly
fantasizes
about violence, usually toward foreigners ― and he and his advisers see it as politically useful, too. The president
has repeatedly appeared at weapons production facilities in swing states,
promoted
the head of Lockheed Martin using White House resources, appointed defense industry employees to top government jobs
in an unprecedented way and expanded the Pentagon's budget to near-historic highs ― a guarantee of future income for
companies like Lockheed and Boeing.
Trump is "on steroids in terms of promoting arms sales for his own
political benefit," said William Hartung, a scholar at the Center for International Policy who has tracked the defense
industry for decades. "It's a targeted strategy to get benefits from workers in key states."
In courting the billion-dollar industry, Trump has trampled on moral
considerations about how buyers like the Saudis misuse American weapons, ethical concerns about conflicts of interest
and even part of his own political message, the deceptive
claim
that he is a peace candidate. He justifies his policy by citing job growth, but data from
Hartung
,
a prominent analyst, shows he exaggerates the impact. And Trump has made clear that a major motivation for his defense
strategy is the possible electoral benefit it could have.
Next month's election
will show if the bargain was worth it. As of now, it looks like Trump's bet didn't pay off
― for him, at least. Campaign contribution records, analysts in swing states and polls suggest arms dealers have given
the president no significant political boost. The defense contractors, meanwhile, are expected to
continue
getting richer, as they have in a dramatic
way
under Trump.
Playing Corporate Favorites
Trump has thrice chosen the person who decides how the Defense Department
spends its gigantic budget. Each time, he has tapped someone from a business that wants those Pentagon dollars. Mark
Esper, the current defense secretary, worked for Raytheon; his predecessor, Pat Shanahan, for Boeing; and Trump's first
appointee, Jim Mattis, for General Dynamics, which reappointed him to its board soon after he left the administration.
Of the senior officials serving under Esper, almost half have connections
to military contractors,
per
the Project on Government Oversight. The administration is now rapidly trying to fill more Pentagon jobs under the guidance
of a former Trump campaign worker, Foreign Policy magazine recently
revealed
― prioritizing political reasons and loyalty to Trump in choosing people who could help craft policy even under a
Joe Biden
presidency.
Such personnel choices are hugely important for defense companies'
profit margins and risk creating corruption or the impression of it. Watchdog groups argue Trump's handling of the hiring
process is more evidence that lawmakers and future presidents must institute rules to limit the reach of military contractors
and other special interests.
"Given the hundreds of conflicts of interest flouting the rule of
law in the
Trump administration
, certainly these issues have gotten that much more attention and are that much more salient
now than they were four years ago," said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, a nonpartisan
good-government group.
The theoretical dangers of Trump's approach became a reality last
year, when a former employee for the weapons producer Raytheon used his job at the State Department to advocate for a
rare emergency declaration allowing the Saudis and their partner the United Arab Emirates to buy $8 billion in arms ―
including $2 billion in Raytheon products ― despite congressional objections. As other department employees warned that
Saudi Arabia was defying U.S. pressure to behave less brutally in Yemen, former lobbyist Charles Faulkner led a unit
that urged Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo
to give the kingdom more weapons. Pompeo
pushed
out Faulkner soon afterward, and earlier this year, the State Department's inspector general
criticized
the process behind the emergency declaration for the arms.
MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI / REUTERS
Red
Crescent medics walk next to bags containing the bodies of victims of Saudi-linked airstrikes on a Houthi detention center
in Yemen on Sept. 1, 2019. The Saudis military campaign in Yemen has relied on U.S. weaponry to commit scores of alleged
war crimes.
Even Trump administration officials not clearly connected to the
defense industry have shown an interest in moves that benefit it. In 2017, White House economic advisor Peter Navarro
pressured
Republican lawmakers to permit exports to Saudi Arabia and Jared
Kushner, the president's counselor and son-in-law, personally
spoke
with Lockheed Martin's chief to iron out a sale to the kingdom, The New York Times found.
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From Washington to the campaign trail, get the latest politics news.
When Congress gave the Pentagon $1 billion to develop medical supplies
as part of this year's
coronavirus
relief package, most of the money went to defense contractors for projects like jet engine parts instead,
a Washington Post investigation
showed
.
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"It's a very close relationship and there's no kind of sense that
they're supposed to be regulating these people," Hartung said. "It's more like they're allies, standing shoulder to shoulder."
Seeking Payback
In June 2019, Lockheed Martin announced that it would close a facility
that manufactures helicopters in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and employs more than 450 people. Days later, Trump tweeted
that he had asked the company's then-chief executive, Marillyn Hewson, to keep the plant open. And by July 10, Lockheed
said
it would do so ― attributing the decision to Trump.
The president has frequently claimed credit for jobs in the defense
industry, highlighting the impact on manufacturing in swing states rather than employees like Washington lobbyists, whose
numbers have also
grown
as he has expanded the Pentagon's budget. Lockheed has helped him in his messaging: In one instance in Wisconsin, Hewson
announced
she was adding at least 45 new positions at a plant directly after Trump spoke there, saying his tax cuts for corporations
made that possible.
Trump is pursuing a strategy that the arms industry uses to insulate
itself from political criticism. "They've reached their tentacles into every state and many congressional districts,"
Scherb of Common Cause said. That makes it hard for elected officials to question their operations or Pentagon spending
generally without looking like they are harming their local economy.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat who represents Coatesville,
welcomed
Lockheed's change of course, though she warned, "This decision is a temporary reprieve. I am concerned that Lockheed
Martin and [its subsidiary] Sikorsky are playing politics with the livelihoods of people in my community."
The political benefit for Trump, though, remains in question, given
that as president he has a broad set of responsibilities and is judged in different ways.
"Do I think it's important to keep jobs? Absolutely," said Marcel
Groen, a former Pennsylvania Democratic party chair. "And I think we need to thank the congresswoman and thank the president
for it. But it doesn't change my views and I don't think it changes most people's in terms of the state of the nation."
With polls showing that Trump's disastrous response to the
health pandemic
dominates voters' thoughts and Biden sustaining a lead
in surveys of most swing states
, his argument on defense industry jobs seems like a minor factor in this election.
Hartung of the Center for International Policy drew a parallel to
President George H.W. Bush, who during his 1992 reelection campaign promoted plans for Taiwan and Saudi Arabia to purchase
fighter jets produced in Missouri and Texas. Bush
announced
the
decisions
at events at the General Dynamics facility in Fort Worth, Texas, and the McDonnell Douglas plant in St. Louis that made
the planes. That November, as Bill Clinton defeated him, he lost Missouri by the highest
margin
of any Republican in almost 30 years and won Texas by a slimmer
margin
than had become the norm for a GOP presidential candidate.
MANDEL NGAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
President
Donald Trump greets then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson at the Derco Aerospace Inc. plant in Milwaukee on July 12,
2019. Trump does not appear to be winning his political bet that increased defense spending would help his political
fortunes.
Checking The Receipts
The defense industry can't control whether voters buy Trump's arguments
about his relationship with it. But it could, if it wanted to, try to help him politically in a more direct way: by donating
to his reelection campaign and allied efforts.
Yet arms manufacturers aren't reciprocating Trump's affection. A
HuffPost review of Federal Election Commission records showed that top figures and groups at major industry organizations
like the National Defense Industrial Association and the Aerospace Industries Association and at Lockheed, Trump's favorite
defense firm, are donating this cycle much as they normally do: giving to both sides of the political aisle, with a slight
preference to the party currently wielding the most power, which for now is Republicans. (The few notable exceptions
include the chairman of the NDIA's board, Arnold Punaro, who has given more than $58,000 to Trump and others in the GOP.)
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics
shows
that's the case for contributions from the next three biggest groups of defense industry donors after Lockheed's employees.
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One smaller defense company, AshBritt Environmental, did
donate
$500,000 to a political action committee supporting Trump ― prompting a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, which
noted that businesses that take federal dollars are not allowed to make campaign contributions. Its founder
told
ProPublica he meant to make a personal donation.
For weapons producers, backing both parties makes sense. The military
budget will have increased 29% under Trump by the end of the current fiscal year,
per
the White House Office of Management and Budget. Biden has
said
he doesn't see cuts as "inevitable" if he is elected, and his circle of advisers includes many from the national security
world who have worked closely with ― and in many cases worked for ― the defense industry.
And arms manufacturers are "busy pursuing their own interests" in
other ways, like trying to get a piece of additional government stimulus legislation, Hartung said ― an effort that's
underway as the Pentagon's inspector general
investigates
how defense contractors got so much of the first coronavirus relief package.
Meanwhile, defense contractors continue to have an outsize effect
on the way policies are designed in Washington through less political means. A recent report from the Center for International
Policy found that such companies have given at least $1 billion to the nation's most influential think tanks since 2014
― potentially spending taxpayer money to influence public opinion. They have also found less obvious ways to maintain
support from powerful people, like running the databases that many congressional offices use to connect with constituents,
Scherb of Common Cause said.
"This goes into a much bigger systemic issue about big money in politics
and the role of corporations versus the role of Americans," Scherb said.
Given its reach, the defense industry has little reason to appear
overtly partisan. Instead, it's projecting confidence despite the generally dreary state of the global economy: Boeing
CEO Dave Calhoun
has said
he expects similar approaches from either winner of the election,
arguing even greater Democratic control and the rise of less conventional lawmakers isn't a huge concern.
In short, whoever is in the White House, arms dealers tend to do
just fine.
Is this 50 former Intel officials or 50 former national security parasites? Real Intel
officials should keep quite after retirement. National security parasites go to politics and
lobbying. One telling sign that a particular parson is a "national security parasite" is his
desire to play "Russian card"
From comments: "Did the 50 former intelligence officials find the Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction yet?"
Hours before Politico
reported the existence of a letter signed by '50 former senior intelligence officials' who say
the Hunter Biden laptop scandal "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information
operation" - providing "no new evidence," while they remain "deeply suspicious that the Russian
government played a significant role in this case," Tucker Carlson obliterated their (literal)
conspiracy theory .
According to the Fox News host, he's seen 'nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's
laptop ,' adding " No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information ."
" This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating ."
TUCKER: "This afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's
laptop. No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information. This is not a
Russian hoax. We are not speculating." pic.twitter.com/cl2ktdmdVc
Meanwhile, the Delaware computer repair shop owner who believes Hunter dropped off three
MacBook Pros for data recovery has a signed work order bearing Hunter's signature . When
compared to the signature on a document in his paternity suit, while one looks more formal than
the other, they are a match.
Going back to the '50 former senior intelligence officials' and their latest Russia
fixation, one has to wonder - do they think Putin was able to compromise Biden's
former business associate , Bevan Cooney, who gave investigative journalist Peter Schweizer
his gmail password - revealing that Hunter and his partners were engaged in an
influence-peddling operation for rich Chinese who wanted access to the Obama
administration?
Did Putin further hack Joe Biden in 2011 to make him take a meeting with a Chinese
delegation with ties to the CCP - arranged by Hunter's group, two years they secured a massive
investment of Chinese money?
The implications boggle the mind.
Here's the clarifying sentences from the '50 former senior intelligence officials' that
exposes the utter farce of it all:
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence , they said their national
security experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a
significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the
Kremlin's hand at work.
"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in
this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
And then there's the fact that no one from the Biden campaign has yet to deny any of the
'facts' in the emails. lay_arrow jin187 , 2 hours ago
Totally ridiculous. This ******** beating around the bush for both sides pisses me off.
Dump all the laptop contents on Wikileaks if it's real. Let the people sort it out. If you
say it's not real, prove it. If Biden wants me to believe it's not real, then stand behind a
podium, and say clear as day into a pile of cameras that's it's all a forgery, and that
you've done nothing wrong.
Instead we have Giuliani swearing he has a smoking gun, but as far as I can tell he's just
pointing his finger underneath his shirt. Biden on the other hand, keep using weasel words to
imply it's fake, but never denies it outright. It's almost like he's trying to hedge his bet
that no one will manage to prove it's real before he gets into office, and makes it
disappear.
Roacheforque , 7 hours ago
To play the "Russian Card" yet again should be beyond embarrassing. An insult to the
intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80. And so it's harmful to the left wingnut
derangeables. Like Assad's chemical weapons and Saddam's WMDs, it is now code for pure
********. Not even code, just more like a signal.
A signal that say's "guilty as charged - we got nothin' but lies and BS over here".
East Indian , 4 hours ago
An insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80.
They know their supporters wont find this insulting.
Kayman , 4 hours ago
@vulvishka.
538 ? North Korea has better propaganda.
Don't forget to go all in, like you did with Hillary.
Antedeluvian , 2 hours ago
Unfortunately, some very bright people are sucked into the conspiracy theory. I know one.
Very bright lawyer. She says, "I still think there is substantive evidence of Russian
collusion." I can point to a sky criss-crossed with chemtrails (when you see these
"contrails" crossing at the same altitude, this is one sure clue these are not from regular
passenger jet traffic) and she refuses to look up. She KNOWS I am an idiot (a PhD scientist
idiot at that) because I get news and analysis on the web from sites that just want to sell
me tee shirts and coffee mugs (well, she is partly right there!) whereas she gets her news
from MSNBC, a venerable and trustworthy news source.
4DegreesOfSeparation , 6 hours ago
More Than 50 Former Intel Officials Say Hunter Biden Smear Smells Like Russia
"If we are right," the group wrote in a letter, "this is Russia trying to influence how
Americans vote."
DescendantofthePatriots , 7 hours ago
That ****, James Clapper, signed his name at the top of this list.
Known liar, saboteur, and sneak.
The cognitive dissonance in our country is astounding. The fact that they would take these
people's opinion over hard fact is astounding.
No wonder why we're sliding down the steep, slippery slope.
strych10 , 8 hours ago
So... let me get this straight.
50, that's 10 times five, fifty former intelligence officials are going with a convoluted
narrative about a ludicrously complicated Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign
involving planted laptops and at least half a dozen patsies when the two words "crack
cocaine" explain the entire thing?
I'm not sure what's more terrifying; That these people think everyone else is dumb enough
to believe this or that they're actually retired intelligence officials
.
Who the actual **** is running this ****show? The bastard child of Barney Fife and
Inspector Clouseau?
Seriously, "Pink Panther Disinformation Operation" is more believable at this point.
Someone Else , 9 hours ago
This needs to get out, because a FAVORITE method of the Deep State, Democrats and the
media (but I repeat myself) is to parade some sort of a stupid letter with a bunch of
signature hoping to look impressive but that really don't mean a damn thing.
Notre Dame graduates against the Supreme Court nominee, Intelligence agents alleging
collusion, former State Department operatives against Trump. Its grandstanding that has been
overdone.
moneybots , 8 hours ago
The letter by 50 former intelligence officials is itself, disinformation.
otschelnik , 8 hours ago
Remember when Weiner's attorney turned over Huma's home laptop to SDNY/FBI with all of
Shillary's emails, and the FBI sat on it for a month and then Comey deep sixed them without
even looking at them?
So now the FBI subpeona'd Hunter's laptop and burried it? Deja vu all over again.
enough of this , 8 hours ago
The FBI and DOJ constantly hide behind self-serving excuses to refuse the release of
documents and, when forced to do so, they release heavily redacted files. They offer up the
usual pretexts to fend off public disclosure such as: the information you seek cannot be
disclosed because it involves an ongoing investigation, or the information you seek involves
national security, or our methods and sources will be jeopardized if the information you seek
is divulged to the public. But it seems the ones who would be most harmed by public
disclosure are the corrupt FBI and DOJ officials themselves
Cobra Commander , 7 hours ago
A short 4 years ago the FBI and CIA were all concerned about "Kompromat" the Ruskies might
have on Candidate Trump; concerned enough to spy on his campaign and open a
counter-intelligence operation.
There are troves of Kompromat material, actual emails and video, on Joe, Hunter, and the
whole Biden family; not made-up DNC-funded dossiers claiming a Russian consulate in
Miami.
Now when it's Candidate Biden, everyone be all like, "Meh."
Cobra!
The Fonz...before shark jump , 5 hours ago
we gotta listen to the 50 former intelligence agents...you know the ones that had lone
superpower status in the early 90s and then pissed it all away with 9/11 and infinity wars in
middle east hahahahah ok buddy lol... histories D students....
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 7 hours ago
Signed by James Clapper and John Brennan;
You mean, the 2 Bozos who under the threat of perjury said there was NO evidence of
Russian Collusion and the Trump campaign................. and 2 hours later called Trump
'Putin's puppet' on CNN.............
"... When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years. ..."
"... From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later. ..."
"... These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people. ..."
"... Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here ), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence. ..."
"... In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this. ..."
"... "The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added] ..."
"... On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens. ..."
"... Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate. ..."
"... In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request. ..."
"... Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK , in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List. ..."
"... According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation. ..."
"... Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ] ..."
"... On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation . ..."
"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it
treason." – Sir John Harrington.
As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,"
like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to
bottom.
This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King
Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by
reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are
ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a
couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with
him.
Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the
persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of
affairs truly originate from?
The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but
rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character
fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their
ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their
antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is
intertwined with the other.
This is a reflection of a failing system.
A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very
survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real
solutions to the problems it faces.
The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will
decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and
intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped
in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.
When the Matter of "Truth" Becomes a Threat to "National Security"
When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a
country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the
public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that
goes back more than 60 years.
How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth
behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in
the name of the "free" world?
From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate
scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing
this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the
heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still
waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.
If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz,
now is the time.
These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they
are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller
investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive
evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected
government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American
people.
Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence
(refer here
and here ),
Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no
surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who
oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from
Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the
Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence.
In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal
invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with
cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt
that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British
intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.
Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the
so-called "mistaken" intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are
held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own
country.
When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to "National Security"
The Family Jewels
report , which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself, was spurred
by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA's unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This
investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30
years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with
the following introduction:
"The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of
illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led
to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since
its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just
the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best
to "reform" its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The
New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted
by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving
assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments,
which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by
intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US
citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was
approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim
report titled "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders", which investigated
alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael
Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile
and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but
failed and reluctantly issued Executive
Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18,
1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence
Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political
assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who
issued Executive
Order 12333 , which extended the powers and responsibilities of US intelligence agencies
and directed leaders of the US federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the
original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more
information on this refer to my papers
here and
here ).
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but
only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in
Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of
Operation SHAMROCK ,
in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to
the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch
List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was
overseeing the committee, was among the prominent
names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this
operation, against the objections of President Ford's administration (refer here and
here for more information).
The Church Committee's reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence
activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over
50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
Collection Act of 1992.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his
assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the
president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.
On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw
with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others.
After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.
David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would
have provided the "smoking gun" evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on
Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison's investigation broke in the
media.
According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was
involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified
material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an
investigation.
Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense
amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to
classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court
prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and
Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ]
To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of
President Kennedy.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all
assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives
and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report
released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.
The
ARRB wrote , "One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been
the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that
has surrounded the records that do exist." [emphasis added]
Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy
went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague
about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that 'after the autopsy I also
wrote notes' and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician,
James J. Humes.
It has long been known that Humes destroyed some original autopsy papers in a fireplace at
his home on Nov. 24, 1963. He told the Warren Commission that what he burned was an original
draft of his autopsy report. Under persistent questioning at a February 1996 deposition by
the Review Board, Humes said he destroyed the draft and his 'original notes.'
Shown official autopsy photographs of Kennedy from the National Archives, [Saundra K.]
Spencer [who worked in 'the White House lab'] said they were not the ones she helped process
and were printed on different paper. She said 'there was no blood or opening cavities' and
the wounds were much smaller in the pictures [than what she had] worked on
John T. Stringer, who said he was the only one to take photos during the autopsy itself,
said some of those were missing as well. He said that pictures he took of Kennedy's brain at
a 'supplementary autopsy' were different from the official set that was shown to him.
[emphasis added]
This not only shows that evidence tampering did indeed occur, as even the Warren
Commission acknowledges, but this puts into question the reliability of the entire
assassination record of John F. Kennedy and to what degree evidence tampering and forgery have
occurred in these records.
We would also do well to remember the numerous crimes that the FBI and CIA have been guilty
of committing upon the American people such as during the period of McCarthyism. That the FBI's
COINTELPRO has been implicated in covert operations against members of the civil rights
movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. That FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
made no secret of his hostility towards Dr. King and his ludicrous belief that King was
influenced by communists, despite having no evidence to that effect.
King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 and the civil rights movement took a major
blow.
In November 1975, as the Church Committee was completing its investigation, the Department
of Justice formed a Task Force to examine the FBI's program of harassment directed at Dr. King,
including the FBI's security investigations of him, his assassination and the FBI conducted
criminal investigation that followed. One aspect of the Task force study was to determine
"whether any action taken in relation to Dr. King by the FBI before the assassination had, or
might have had, an effect, direct or indirect, on that event."
In its report
, the Task Force criticized the FBI not for the opening, but for the protracted continuation
of, its security investigation of Dr. King:
"We think the security investigation which included both physical and technical
surveillance, should have been terminated in 1963. That it was intensified and augmented by a
COINTELPRO type campaign against Dr. King was unwarranted; the COINTELPRO type campaign,
moreover, was ultra vires and very probably felonious."
In 1999, King Family
v. Jowers civil suit in Memphis, Tennessee occurred, the full transcript of the trial can
be found here
. The jury found that Lloyd Jowers and unnamed others, including those in high ranking
positions within government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
During the four week trial, it was pointed out that the rifle allegedly used to assassinate
King did not have a scope that was sighted, which meant you could not have hit the broad side
of a barn with that rifle, thus it could not have been the murder weapon.
This was only remarked on over 30 years after King was murdered and showed the level of
incompetence, or more likely, evidence tampering that was committed from previous
investigations conducted by the FBI.
The case of JFK and MLK are among the highest profile assassination cases in American
history, and it has been shown in both cases that evidence tampering has indeed occurred,
despite being in the center of the public eye. What are we then to expect as the standard of
investigation for all the other cases of malfeasance? What expectation can we have that justice
is ever upheld?
With a history of such blatant misconduct, it is clear that the present demand to declassify
the Russiagate papers now, and not 50 years later, needs to occur if we are to address the
level of criminality that is going on behind the scenes and which will determine the fate of
the country.
The American People Deserve to Know
Today we see the continuation of the over seven decades' long ruse, the targeting of
individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political
arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so
that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it
is a threat to those who have committed treason against their country.
On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe
documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton
emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign
by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies.
The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released some of these documents
recently, including former CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes for a meeting with former
President Obama, the notes revealing that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to "vilify Donald
Trump by stirring up scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."
Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 –
Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that
he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence
Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that
he has never seen these documents.
And yet, both the FBI and CIA were aware and had access to these documents and sat on them
for four years, withholding their release from several government-led investigations that were
looking into the Russiagate scandal and who were requesting relevant material that was in the
possession of both intelligence bureaus. Do these intelligence bureaus sound like they are
working for the "national security" of the American people?
The truth must finally be brought to light, or the country will rot from its head to
tail.
Crucially, China is not the Soviet Union: China has no messianic ideology to export; China
is not engaged in regime change operations to create an ideological sphere of influence;
China's relationships with foreign nations are transactional rather than sentimental; China's
economy dwarfs that of the USSR; China already possesses one-fourth of the world's scientific,
technological, engineering, and mathematics workforce; China's "Belt and Road Initiative" is an
order-setting geoeconomic strategy with no Soviet parallel; China spends two percent or less of
it GDP on its military vs. the estimated 9 to 15 percent of the USSR -- and China has not built
a nuclear arsenal to match that of either the United States or Russia.
Equally important, the United States of the 2020s is not the America of the early Cold War.
As the Cold War began, the United States produced one-half or more of the world's manufactures.
It now makes about one-sixth. During the Cold War, the United States was the uncontested leader
of a bloc of dependent nations that it called "the free world." That bloc is now in an advanced
state of decay. Further, legacy U.S. alliances formed to contain the USSR have little relevance
to American contention with China: US-European alliances like NATO are withering and no Asian
security partner of the United States wants to choose between America and China.
Since 1950, the Taiwan issue has been a casus belli between the United States and
China. But U.S. allies see it as a fight among Chinese to be managed rather than joined. If the
U.S. mismanages the Taiwan issue, as it now appears to be doing, it will have no overt allies
in the resulting war. No claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the
U.S. in naval conflict with China. In short, this time is different. Sino-American relations
have a history and dynamic that do not conform to those of the US-Soviet contest. And the
United States is not equipped to inspire and lead opposition to China. The US-China contention
is far broader than that of the Cold War, in part because China, unlike the determinedly
autarkic USSR, is part of the same global society as the United States. The battlefields
include global governance, geoeconomics, trade, investment, finance, currency usage, supply
chain management, technology standards and systems, and scientific collaboration, in addition
to the geopolitical and military domains in which the Cold War played out.
The United States is isolated on a widening list of issues. It has withdrawn or excluded
itself from a growing number of multilateral instruments of global and regional governance and
is no longer able to lead the international community. Americans have repeatedly declined to
recapitalize or cooperate in reforming international financial institutions to meet new global
and regional investment requirements. This has led China, India, and other rising powers to
create supplementary lenders like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New
Development Bank.
Four years ago, the U.S. unilaterally decided that geopolitics are inherently driven by
great power military rivalry that precludes cooperation. The newly pugnacious U.S. stance
legitimizes xenophobia and justifies bilateral approaches to foreign relations that ignore
issues like global terrorism, pandemic diseases, climate change, migration, nuclear
proliferation, or regional tensions, and cripple the global governance and international
coordination needed to tackle them. The United States is going out of its way to demonstrate
its indifference to the interests and sensibilities of its past and potential partners. It is
withdrawing from international organizations it can no longer dominate. These actions amount to
unilateral diplomatic disarmament and the creation of politico-economic vacuums for others --
not just China -- to fill.
Future historians will puzzle over why Americans have chosen to dismantle and discard the
connections and capacities that long enabled the United States to direct the trend of events in
most global and regional arenas. When they unravel this mystery, they will also need to explain
the simultaneous collapse of the separation of powers structure on which the American republic
was founded and on which its liberties were built. Fortunately for post-Constitutional America,
China's political system, despite the stability and prosperity it has fostered, has even less
appeal beyond China's borders. Both China and the United States are now repelling other nations
rather than attracting them. If the U.S.-China contest were military and didn't go nuclear, the
United States, with its battle-hardened and uniquely lethal military, would enjoy insuperable
advantages. But armed conflict is not the central element in the Sino-American
confrontation.
After World War II, the United States made the rules. American statesmen crafted a world
order that expressed American ideals and served American interests. In the post-Cold War period
Washington began to disengage from the global institutions and norms it had sponsored. The
United States has failed to ratify international compacts that regulate a widening range of
arenas of importance to it. These include conventions on the law of the sea, nuclear testing,
the arms trade, human rights, and crimes against humanity. Washington has withdrawn from or
suspended compliance with conventions on the laws of war and agreements on arms control,
combating climate change, and trade and investment. It has ceased to participate in or sought
to sabotage a growing list of United Nations specialized agencies and related institutions.
Notwithstanding the current global pandemic, these include the World Health Organization.
America's withdrawal from its traditional role in global rule-setting and enforcement
deprives it of the dominant influence it long exercised through the institutions it created.
Other great powers remain wedded to the American-led order expressed in the United Nations
Charter, but America's exemption of itself from the comity of nations and its spontaneous
metamorphosis from world leader to global dropout have left it unable to aggregate the power of
other nations to its own. Washington's resort to abusive language, threats and coercive
measures has grown as its capacity to apply its power non-coercively has declined, further
reducing the numbers of foreign allies, partners, and friends willing to bandwagon with
America.
The decline in U.S. clout is made even more consequential by the fact that China has
resources, including money, to offer its partners. The United States does not. The United
States' budget is in chronic deficit. Even routine government operations must now be funded
with debt. America has spent trillions of borrowed dollars on wars in the Islamic world that it
can neither win nor end. Its "forever wars" siphoned off the funds needed to keep its human and
physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic
powers. They also crippled U.S. statecraft by defunding non-military means to advance American
interests abroad and curtailing U.S. contributions to the international institutions charged
with assuring global peace and development.
Coercive approaches to statecraft are inherently alienating. Claims to superiority that are
not empirically substantiable are unpersuasive. Asking countries to choose between China and
the United States, when China is clearly rising and America is simultaneously stagnating and
declining, guarantees the progressive eclipse of American prestige and power. Advocating
democracy abroad while deviating from it at home destroys rather than enhances American
credibility. America's addiction to debt risks eventual financial collapse even as it limits
immediate policy options both at home and abroad.
Unless the United States cures its fiscal feebleness, rebuilds the capacities and competence
of its government, upgrades its human and physical infrastructure, and reopens itself to trade,
investment, and immigration, America's roles in global governance, trade, investment, finance,
supply chain management, technology standards and systems, and scientific collaboration will
continue to contract as those of China and others expand. The United States' capacity to
innovate will decline, as will American well-being and self-confidence. This diminishment of
the United States is not the consequence of Chinese predation but of American hubris, political
ineptitude, and diplomatic decrepitude .
The essence of any s trategy is the efficient linkage of resources and capabilities to
feasible objectives. Current U.S. China policy is strategy-free. With neither resources nor
institutional capabilities to back it, it amounts to puerile fantasy. U.S. China policy at
present is a classic example of demonizing a foreign foe to rally support at home and divert
attention from festering political, economic, and social problems. This approach is highly
unlikely to result in a Cold War-style victory for the United States or the Enlightenment
values that gave birth to it. Quite the opposite. Written by Chas
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China wins, India loses in Trump's gamble on crushing Iran by Fatemeh Aman
"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've
seen in all of my time covering politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson
Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at the other people change
underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the
Kremlin are behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence
to support it."
We all like to have our worldview affirmed by a corroborating voice, even if that, too, is
an opinion. This, for me, was like lying back in a hot bath.
I have said as far back as I can remember, during Pompeo's tenure as Giant Blasphemous
Cream Puff of State, that the damage he was doing to the relationship between America and her
allies was significant and perhaps irreparable. The article, if accurate, reveals a China
which is quite a bit like Russia in its official treatment of minorities – subordinate
ethnicities are recognized as distinct societies if their population meets a reasonable
threshold, and where an ethnic population is regionally dominant, an autonomous government is
established to facilitate local governance by people of the same ethnic background.
I was not aware that during the term of China's one-child policy – a dreadful time
which led to the abortion or other more-horrible disposals of unwanted baby girls –
mothers among ethnic minorities were permitted two or even three children.
The article is obviously written in defense of China, but the authors seem to have
substantiated their claims satisfactorily where such material is offered. Unsubstantiated
opinion is often a close match with those offered by commenters on this forum.
George Koo linked to a Youtube video of Mike Pompeous and the Croatian Prime Minister
Andrej Plenkovic at a press conference in Dubrovnik. Watch how Plenkovic deals with
Pompeosity!
I swear I saw the Pompous One deflate considerably after Plenkovic's speech about China's
BRI initiative. Good thing the wind was up and active otherwise the smell would have been
horrific and everyone would have been knocked unconscious.
"... Meanwhile, back on ABC, Joe Biden skated on answering any questions of substance about his son or Antifa or BLM. On NBC, Guthrie pushed Donald Trump to condemn QAnon and White supremacy, and he did it dutifully. But it wasn't enough. The point of demanding performative disavowals isn't to get the disavowal, it's to smear the person you're asking to disavow the group by association with the group. ..."
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: If you flipped the channel during our show Thursday night, you may
have seen the president and his challenger making their respective cases to voters. But
President Trump and Joe Biden weren't debating each other. That would have been too risky.
There's a massive public health crisis underway, you may have heard.
So to avoid what doomsday hobbyists on Twitter like to call a "superspreader event," Trump
and Biden held separate indoor town halls surrounded by people. They talked to partisan
moderators instead of each other. That might seem like a loss to the country three weeks before
a presidential election. But unfortunately, the science on this question is clear: Nothing
could be more dangerous to America than a televised in-person debate between Joe Biden and
Donald Trump.
So the so-called debate commission made certain a debate couldn't happen. Who benefitted
from that decision? Well, not voters. America has held regularly scheduled presidential debates
for decades and we have them for a reason. The more information voters can get directly from
the candidates rather than the media, the better our democracy functions, not that anyone's
interested in democracy anymore.
Joe Biden doesn't care either way. He just didn't want to talk about Burisma. That's the
scandal that vividly illustrates how, as vice president, Biden subverted this country's foreign
policy in order to enrich his own family. The good news for Biden Thursday night was that he
didn't have to talk about it. No one from ABC News asked him about that scandal for the entire
90 minutes.
As we've been telling you this week, the New York Post and a few other news outlets,
including "Tucker Carlson Tonight," have published e-mails taken from Hunter Biden's personal
laptop. They show that Hunter Biden was paid by foreign actors to change American foreign
policy using access to his father, then the vice president. This is a big story. It is also a
real story.
Friday afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves conclusively this was indeed
Hunter Biden's laptop. There are materials on the hard drive of that computer that no one but
Hunter Biden could have known about or have replicated. This is not a Russian hoax. Again,
we're saying this definitively. We're not speculating. The laptop in question is real. It
belonged to Hunter Biden. So there is no excuse for not asking about it.
But they didn't ask about it. It was a cover-up in real time. No matter what happens in the
election next month, the American media will never be the same after this. It cannot continue
this way. It is too dishonest.
Nevertheless, we did learn a few things Thursday night. (It's hard not to learn when you
watch Joe Biden try to speak for 90 minutes.) At one point, an activist told Joe Biden that she
has an eight-year-old transgender daughter. She asked Joe Biden what he thought about that.
Here's how he responded:
BIDEN: The idea that an eight-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides, 'You know,
I've decided I want to be transgender. That's what I think. I'd like to be a -- make my life a
lot easier.' There should be zero discrimination. What's happening is too many transgender
women of color are being murdered. They're being murdered. I mean, I think it's up to now 17,
don't hold me to that number.
So if an eight-year-old biological boy decides one day that he's really a girl, that's final
and you'd have to be a bigot to pause and say, "Wait a minute, you're eight years old, you're a
small child. Maybe let's think about this for a minute." That's what a normal person who has
kids would say. People with kids know that children grow and change. They change their minds
about a lot of things, including themselves. That's the reality of it.
But if you're a crazed ideologue, you don't care about reality. So you would tell the rest
of us that an eight-year-old is entitled to hormone therapy on demand and permanent,
life-altering surgery. That's what Biden is telling us.
It doesn't matter how fashionable talk like this is right now, and it is very fashionable,
it is crazy and it's destructive and it's having a profound effect. No one wants to say it, but
it's true. We know that between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for biological
females in this country quadrupled. We also know that many people who get those surgeries
regret them later, deeply regret them. We'd have a lot more data on that, but universities are
actively punishing researchers who follow that line of inquiry. So much for science.
In the end, mania like this will end. The left is at war with nature. Inevitably, they will
lose that war, because nature always prevails. But in the meantime, many children are being
hurt irreparably. Biden doesn't care. It's the new thing, and so he's for it. In fact, Biden is
now busy rewriting his entire life story to pretend that he has been woke for 60 years.
Thursday night, he told us he became a gay rights supporter during the Kennedy administration,
sometime around 1962, when he and his father saw two gay men kissing.
When asked about police brutality, the former vice president speculated that maybe people
like George Floyd would be alive today if the police had just shot him in the leg a few
times.
BIDEN: There's a lot of things we've learned and it takes time. But we can do this. You
can ban chokeholds ... But beyond that, you have to teach people how to deescalate
circumstances, deescalate. So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do shoot
to kill, shoot him in the leg.
How much would you have to know about firearms or human biology to wonder if maybe there
could be some unintended consequences there? People do have arteries in their legs, after all,
and sometimes bullets do miss their targets. So why did no one point out how demented Biden's
answer was?
Well, we have some clarity on the question of why no one pointed it out. It turns out George
Stephanopoulos, the moderator of last night's ABC town hall, was not the only political
operative in the room. One supposedly uncommitted voter was, in fact, a former Obama
administration speechwriter called Nathan Osburn. Osburn repeated Biden campaign talking points
to the letter, at one point referring to court-packing as a safeguard "that'll help ensure more
long-term balance and stability" on the Supreme Court.
BIDEN: I have not been a fan of court-packing because I think it just generates, what
will happen ... Whoever wins, it just keeps moving in a way that is inconsistent with what is
going to be manageable.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're still not a fan?
BIDEN: Well, I'm not a fan ... It depends on how this turns out, not how he wins, but how
it's handled, how it's handled. But there's a number of things that are going to be coming up
and there's going to be a lot of discussion about other alternatives as well.
So we did learn something new last night: Joe Biden isn't a fan of court-packing.
Court-packing has had a few off years, and Joe Biden started to lose his faith in it, even sold
his "Court-Packing" jersey. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden is still open to court-packing
and can get back on the court-packing bandwagon depending on how things are "handled." Got
it?
Biden was allowed to answer non-questions like this because he was surrounded by sycophants
and former employees of his party. Over at NBC, by contrast, the sitting president didn't have
that luxury, to put it mildly. (By the way, it's not good for you to be sucked up to too much.
It's good to get smacked around a little bit. It makes you sharper.)
During the president's one-hour event, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked him dozens more
questions than the voters in the room got to ask. And when Trump began speaking, Guthrie
interrupted him over and over again. Joe Biden wasn't there, so the moderator played stand-in
for Joe Biden.
The good news about all of this is it's so bad and so transparent that it can't continue.
All their stupid little morning shows and their dumb Sunday shows and their even dumber cable
shows -- all of that's going away when the smoke clears from this election. There will be a
massive realignment in the media no matter who wins, because they've showed who they are and
it's so unappealing, so far from journalism, that it can't continue.
Meanwhile, back on ABC, Joe Biden skated on answering any questions of substance about his
son or Antifa or BLM. On NBC, Guthrie pushed Donald Trump to condemn QAnon and White supremacy,
and he did it dutifully. But it wasn't enough. The point of demanding performative disavowals
isn't to get the disavowal, it's to smear the person you're asking to disavow the group by
association with the group.
GUTHRIE: You were asked point-blank to denounce White supremacy [at the first debate]. In
the moment, you didn't ... A couple of days later on a different show, you denounce White
supremacy --
TRUMP: You always do this. You've done this line -- I denounce White supremacy,
OK?
GUTHRIE: You did two days later.
TRUMP: I've denounced White supremacy for years. But you always do, you always start off
with the question. You didn't ask Joe Biden whether or not he denounces Antifa ... Are you
listening? I denounce White supremacy. What's your next question?
NBC was under a lot of pressure from Democrats to make Thursday night's town hall look like
this, and just like Facebook and Twitter delivered earlier this week, NBC delivered,
too.
whatmeworry? 1 day ago The only difference between the "news" media today, and, say a
decade ago, is that they no longer try to conceal their bias. They've dropped the cloak of
objectivity and come out as democrat activists. It's sort of refreshing. We no longer have to
waste time and energy arguing about the fairness of the media. Scotty2Hotty 1 1 day ago
Liberals are more an enemy of the free press than Donald Trump is--we know that for sure after
the NY Post incident. For all the times Trump has trashed the press, he has never shut them
down (he can't), but the liberals at Facebook and Twitter did just that to the New York Post,
because they didn't like a story of theirs. The story should never have been banned anywhere.
In a free society, bogus stories are debunked by other free speech outlets and press agencies.
They are not banned. Trump is not a friend of the press, but liberals are a worse enemy than he
is, to press freedom. Leftists have a strong totalitarian streak, and they continually work to
create environments where only one viewpoint is permitted, whether in academia, television, the
press or elsewhere. Liberals believe more in shutting down dissent than in discrediting it,
through argument. Gadsden_1968 2.0 1 day ago 90% of the media is now formally known as the
Democratic Party propaganda ministry. Arm yourselves, it appears the majority of people are
100% controlled by the Democratic Party's propaganda ministry. If Biden wins, his propaganda
ministry will make Pravda look like a high school news paper. Architech 1 day ago Why is the
crackhead Hunter Biden a taboo subject? Nobody mentions that Hunter is The Train Wreck of the
Century. Even on right wing news they don't tell you what a drop dead irresponsible loser low
life that Hunter is. He sleeps with his dying brothers wife while he is still alive. Red flag.
Plenty of other girls, but no, your sister in law. But that is nothing. Nada. Kicked out of the
Navy for drug use. Banged 1000 strippers in Wash DC, knocked one up, denied the child, was
proven he was the dad, denied child support and was forced to pay. Nice. Dead beat dad deluxe.
There are about 100 things like that. Too long to list. And nobody mentions is. They act like
Hunter is just another guy.... Calling out the Loser of the Century is not off limits in my
book. Calling out stupidity, no self control, no personal responsibility, corruption, unethical
behavior, outright crimes....not off limits. It's actually illegal to be a crack addict did you
know that?
"... "The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and all those intelligence communities." ..."
"... "What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in misconduct?" Greenwald asked. ..."
Glenn Greenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson's FOX News show Monday night to criticize
the media for its lack of response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Greenwald also criticized
intel community activity in domestic elections and posed the question that even if Russians are
behind the story it just requires journalistic investigation in case Biden is compromised.
"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering
politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at
the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are
behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."
"And what makes it so much worse is that the reason that the Bidens aren't answering basic
questions about the story," Greenwald said. "Basic questions like did Hunter Biden drop that
laptop off of the repair shop? Are the emails authentic? Do you know denied that they are. Do
you claim that any have been altered or are any of them fabricated? Did you in fact meet with
Barisma executives? The reason they don't answer the questions is because the media has
signaled that they don't have to. That journalists will be attacked and vilified simply for
asking."
Victor Davis Hanson: Will Our Next Revolution Be French, Russian, Maoist, Or
American?
Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American
People
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"The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that
whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never
supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and
all those intelligence communities."
"What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement
in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If
you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more
dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for
the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore
you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of
journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in
misconduct?" Greenwald asked.
"The much bigger point is the way that the information is being disseminated," he said. "It
is a union of journalists who have decided that their only goal is to defend Joe Biden and
election him president of the United States working with the FBI, CIA, NSA not to manipulate
our adversaries or foreign governments, but to manipulate the American people for their own
ends. It's been going on for four straight years now and there's no sign of it stopping anytime
soon." Related Videos
It seems in our complicated world many murky relationships develop that come across as
inappropriate. Over the years, growing crony capitalism has become the bane of modern society
and added greatly to inequality. This is why, when we look at Hunter Biden and how he benefited
from his father's role as Vice President an investigation is in order. Even before we get to
what happened in Ukraine, the ties between China and the Biden family are too many and too
large to ignore. President Trump has received a lot of criticism related to how he gained his
wealth, however, almost all of what Trump has done he did as an outsider and not as part of the
ruling political class.
Before going deeper into this subject it is very important to look at how the "Biden
revelations" are being handled by the media. The way media has handled these allegations reveal
a flaw or bias in both mainstream media and social media to the point where even censorship is
being deployed. A good example of the spin being put on this red flag of corruption can be seen
in an article that appeared under trending stories on my city's main news outlet. Here in the
conservation heartland of America, the media published a piece titled; "Biden email episode
illustrates risk to Trump from Giuliani"
The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani
portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and
influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account
about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red flags." Then
claims that during Giuliani's travels abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens he developed
relationships with some rather questionable figures. These include a Ukrainian lawmaker who
U.S. officials have described as a Russian agent and part of a broader Russian effort to
denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee.
The piece then moves on to the area of how the FBI seems more interested in the emails as
part of a foreign influence operation than wrongdoing by Hunter or his father. The people
reading this article are informed how this is just another latest episode involving Giuliani
that "underscores the risk he poses to the White House" which has spent years dealing with a
federal investigation into whether Trump associates had coordinated with Russia.
The part of the article that got my goat was when it referred to how " The Washington Post
reported Thursday that intelligence agencies had warned the White House last year that Giuliani
was the target of a Russian influence operation." Sighting the Washington Post as an authority
and bastion of truth is a common tactic used by journalists to add validity to their bias and
lazy reporting. Tucker forgot to mention The Washington Post is the propaganda mouthpiece of
Amazon and owned by its CEO Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world which has had several
run-ins with the President.
The effort to denigrate Giuliani rather than focus on Biden wrongdoings cites both "former
officials' and statements made by a person "who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing
investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity to AP," and of course, the exact scope of
what was being investigated was not clear. Claiming that many people in the West Wing have been
concerned about Giuliani's actions or saying the president has expressed private dismay at
Giuliani's scattershot style does not make it true.
Thinking a case can be made that Hunter enriched himself by selling access to his father but
claiming Giuliani's lack of credibility will cause the allegations to implode is a bit of a
reach. This fact much of what appears to be bribe-taking at the highest levels of government
has been overlooked for so long is in its self is a problem. The appointment of an unqualified
Hunter Biden to the board of a Ukrainian energy company with a reported compensation package
worth some $50,000 per month led the Wall Street Journal, to publish a scathing article, on May
13, 2014. bringing the issue before the public.
At criminal.findlaw.com, FindLaw's team of legal writers and editors detail what constitutes
bribery. It is offering or accepting anything of value in exchange to influence a
government/public official or employee. Bribes can take many forms of gifts or payments of
money in exchange for favorable treatment, such as awards of government contracts. Other forms
of bribes may include property, various goods, privileges, services, and favors. Bribes are
always intended to influence or alter the action of various individuals and are linked to both
political and public corruption. In most situations, both the person offering the bribe and the
person accepting can be charged.
Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications.
Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections
with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category.
One thing is clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of money,
foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family members of politicians a few
eyebrows should get raised. With this in mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but
also into how other family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as his
brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.
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The issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China surfaced during
the first Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited by
authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times acknowledged the Treasury
Department records confirm Hunter Biden received a wire transfer for $3.5 million from the
Mayor of Moscow's wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem and the
fact the United States suspects the woman sending him this money built much of her wealth
through corruption does little to improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the
so-called public servants that seem to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above
the law this is a big red flag.
If the veil of secrecy surrounding Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find
Hunter's dad did share in the spoils bestowed upon not only his son but others in the Biden
family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy relationship with corruption is why former President Obama
did not rush to endorse Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking
about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more. For us cynics, we see this as
what may be only the tip of the spear when it comes to public officials throwing the American
people under the bus for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about
Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major issue.
Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours ago
The [neoliberal] political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got
caught.
Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours ago
The political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got caught.
RedDog1 , 4 hours ago
Highly recommend reading Peter Schweitzer's book Secret Empires. It's business as usual to
launder bribes through family members and associates.
philipat , 2 hours ago
Yes agreed, the problem here is actually that the entire US political (and economic)
system is completely corrupt and broken. Why has no action been taken against those
responsible for a proven attempted coup? Or against a MSM and SillyCon Valley that is
censoring everything the average American (rightlly or wrongly) actually reads and which is
stifling the very democracy and free speech upon which the country was founded?
The answer? Follow the money.
I do disagree with the author about the specific Biden situation because "The Biden Crime
Family" would be a better description. They are ALL responsible. It is obvious from the
Hunter laptop that payments were being made to "The Big Man" and other family members also,
so this is NOT a Hunter-specific problem. The game was for Hunter to serve as a proxy for
"The Big Man" and receive the "commissions" (better described as influence peddling payments
and extortion - something the Dems are very good at; The Clinton Foundation Model!!) for
onward distribution to the family, visibly or invisibly. In this way, "The Big Man" would not
have anything to report and could appear to be "clean". Pretty obvious to anyone who can fog
a mirror?
And yet still they vote for him. Does that mean a public acceptance of the sleaze and
corruption which is the US today? I certainly hope not.
Rural Hermit , 2 hours ago
Why do you think Obama picked Biden to be his VP? He knows how to shakedown everyone.
Obama's tutor. I do think that the student has surpassed the teacher though. When the rest of
this shakes out, the Kenyan will be in chains.
gregga777 , 3 hours ago
If the truth ever comes out, it will probably show that, among other things, Hunter Biden
was / is probably connected to human trafficking networks, and most likely Eastern European,
most likely involving The Russian Mafia. It's not a stretch to speculate that it also
included children.
If the United States of America had a functioning [sic] Intelligence Community and [Ha,
ha, ha] national law enforcement the Silicon Valley tech giants and others like Amazon
wouldn't be heavily infiltrated by People's Republic of China Ministry of State Security
operatives. Consequently, the massive extent of political corruption would be common
knowledge, especially specifics regarding names, dates, places and amounts. Right Paul Ryan
and Willard Romney?
Rusty Shorts , 3 hours ago
The hits just keep coming.
"Pelosi's Son Now Involved In Ukraine Scandal, Democrat Party In Shambles"
Seriously, does anyone think a Democrat controlled Congress will investigate Biden and all
his cronies, to include Obama? The whole DC swamp is set up to allow selling out of the
American people. DC is not just a threat to national security it is steeped in Treason.
No sense ranting as it does nothing. The only consolation is that stupid people who vote
Biden/Harris will get the crime and corruption they voted into office.
Stackers , 4 hours ago
In Roman times when someone was caught bribing a public official they would cut off his
nose, sew him in a bag with a wild animal, and throw that bag in the river
The problem with all this is that it is extremely well documented going back a number of
years of Hunter Jnr's shopping trips with his father and nothing has been done about it all.
Just search on Biden and China, Romania or Ukraine and then you see the "deals" that Hunter
gets every time.
Every f\/cking place that Biden turned up, Hunter was right behind with his hand out, like
some sort of mob shakedown. Did Biden senior tell Hunter what to do and who to meet because
junior doesn't seem that clever enough to come up with this on his own? That way, the money
also flows to junior who then funnels it to dad later on (which the laptop seems to
show).
Washington insiders know the f\/cking truth and are desperate to keep the gravy train
going. That is why they hate Trump. That is why Barr and co have no interest in getting to
the truth because they are all implicated. The swamp is very deep.
Merica101 , 4 hours ago
Human nature is swampy - that's why the Founding Fathers tried to design a system that
limited the "swampiness'. Unfortunately, they couldn't even begin to imagine the depravity
and games that are now being played. Pray.
Fuster-cluck , 3 hours ago
I have worked for a number of large multi-national corporations. In each, employees must
take an annual ethics course. The only approved amount you can spend on a client is $0. I
mean, no golf, no lunches, no tee shirts, no hunting weekends, zippo, nothing. If anyone in
your family is connected to government, it is automatically assumed to be a conflict of
interest, and you must remove yourself from any part of the dealings. These policies have
been implemented because of the intense fear of the unlimited penalties that may be applied
by goverment sponsored prosecutorial abuse.
So tell me, have those same standards been applied here? Ha. Ha. Ha.
Smilygladhands , 3 hours ago
i think we must implement a no fraternization rule between DC politicians and staff and
the media. too many personal relationships going on up there
TahoeBilly2012 , 3 hours ago
Tards have finally been caught out, no way back.
Look man, I never would have voted for HILLARY OR JEB, no f'ing way! I am a Ron Paul
Libertarian and I rolled the dice with Trump.
You Tards are all a gang of freaks. The fact you even halfway support Biden (or Hillary)
is pathetic. The only way you get change is sticking to your guns or having a Trump come
along and hope he is for the people and not a Satanic criminal, like the Biden's, the Bush's
and the Clinton's. What exactly is it that you freaks don't get and while Bernie may have
been somewhat more "authentic" than the rest, he's a friggin Bolshevik Commy, in his own way,
worse than them all, likely not as corrupt.
There's nothing left to the Dem Party, zero, zilch, it's a stinking rotting corpse relying
on Corporate Media lie after lie to try to compete with Trump. Hell, every Neocon has left
Trump and joined up with y'all. Geez, the stench!
Pathetic, disgusting, sick.
Lucius Septimius Pertinax , 3 hours ago
What bothers me about all this is the reaction of Democrats in general. They don't seem to
care what the Biden's have done, as long as they defeat Donald Trump. We seen this on a
smaller scale with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, it's all about sex manta. But in this
case we have what appears to be at least for now, almost a watertight case against Joe Biden.
And still no moral outrage at what Biden's family is up to? Guess I should not have been
amazed, but still hope their are a few thinkers left on the left that can still see the truth
when it bites them.
I expected the CNN's of the left to react this way. Further when their "the Russians"
excuse for everything, is exhausted, they will need someone else to blame, cause they know
Biden and son are as pure as the driven snow. Or at least the owners of all these so called
media news companies decide that Joe cannot win and flush the comode on him.
sirnzee , 3 hours ago
The media has done a terrific job of brainwashing half of America. So sad to be a part of
this. Who is to blame? The media, or the people who allowed their minds to be controlled the
way they are?
Fugly
Merica101 , 3 hours ago
Most of the MSM have their own agenda - a globalist agenda where the US is not their
priority.
12Doberman , 4 hours ago
Some deny the Biden's got the money which is absurd since the Senate report details the
wire transfers. Denial of facts seems to be a democrat trait.
chiquita , 3 hours ago
This is the Democrat philosophy--one of the best movie scenes ever.
Biden has used his family as bag men for graft since he was shaking down banks that
incorporated in Delaware for tax purposes.
He was MBNA Joe long before he became dementia Joe.
Totally vile corrupt dullard on his best day.
That is why the DNC wants him.
CogitoMan , 3 hours ago
Any person who has knowledge of Biden family crimes and still votes for him is beyond
deplorable.
Even demonrats that hate Trump IF they have at least minimum token of decency should
abstain from voting.
But alas, most of dumbocrats will vote for Biden even if he raped their daughters and shot
their wives.
This country with such moral attitude has no chance of survival, especially when tough
times come.
Sad, very sad.
12Doberman , 3 hours ago
Trump learned quickly that without powerful allies in powerful positions in the executive
agencies, within congress, and in the courts he's essentially powerless against this
corruption. Pelosi is involved in Ukraine...McConnell is up to his eyeballs in Chinese
graft.
Md4 , 4 hours ago
"Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad"
Pops has been demonstrably crooked for years.
But... Hunter is not a child.
He's a grown man... with a law degree.
His problems are now...his own.
He can begin to recover...when he accepts responsibility for them...
Hotspice2020 , 4 hours ago
Stop treating mainstream media as "independent, objective, unbiased" they are "captured
media", and vassal servants to a hidden hand ruling elite ... as are the Bidens and K.
Harris. The Clintons were vassals before as was slamma Obama. The media will say whatever
their master tell them to say. Thus, when a Hard Drive with pedo, crack, bribery is found,
the masters say...blame it on the Russians. When Trump wants to bring Hunters double dealing
to light...the masters say.. Impeach Trump. What is needed is for a bright light to shine on
the owners of the media...e.g., Bezos Rag (Wash. Post) and Laurene Powell Jobs (mistress to
Steve) owns the Atlantic. Once you keep focusing on the fact that the media has owners that
make every story fit their narrative and you shine a light on them, then you can solve the
problem.
tyberious , 5 hours ago
Term limits
Full income disclosures while in office
No benefit for any legislation co-authored after leaving office
zerozerosevenhedgeBow1 , 4 hours ago
No honor, integrity or honesty in politics anymore. Why would there be any, when apart for
a little public shaming, corruption pays and pays big. The Clinton foundation raked in
hundreds of millions, altered policy and maybe even caused death of the impoverished, i.e.,
Haiti and other places. Sold out national and global security with Uranium One and other
controversies. The end result?... They got to keep all the money. When that happens, everyone
in and running for office gets the message and sees dollar signs.
You need serious recourse like some sort of treason charges when you put money over
country. Audit all family members and colleagues. Then do not let lobbying jobs before or
after office.
moneybots , 3 hours ago
"The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani
portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and
influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account
about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red
flags.""
Yes, it raises Red Flags about the integrity of the Associated Press, considering the
story is a propaganda piece.
Merica101 , 4 hours ago
Joe and Hunter Biden (and the Biden family) aren't the ONLY ONES....there are many
others.
toady , 4 hours ago
The questions that simply are not being asked/answered....
I have not heard that any Biden has been asked about any of this... apparently they
thought they could just have CNN and the other talking heads say it was all "debunked" and
the brain dead general population would nod and say "okay".
And they were right, the demonrats are all just doing the Alfred E Numan "who, me,
worry?"
It's simple. The "17 intelligence agencies" need to be all over this, starting 15 years
ago.
But they aren't. And they won't. And the US will not recover.
TheLastMan , 3 hours ago
perspective:
1. you work 50 hours a week
2. .gov takes 22% for income tax
3. joe biden (and the rest) take your tax $$$ and provides $$$ foreign aid to country
X
4. hunter biden makes business connection to country x
5. country x takes your foreign aid tax dollars (edit) and pays hunter biden $$ for his
services
6. hunter biden pays joe biden $$ for (his service to your country) edit - servicing your
country
7. repeat step 1
Smilygladhands , 3 hours ago
the biggest problem that must be addressed is our dishonest, biased DNC propaganda arm
also known as main stream media.
they've allowed biden to get away with not answering the SCOTUS packing question and now
actively running cover for him. we cannot allow this to continue
Md4 , 4 hours ago
" Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal
ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in
government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential
treatment falls into this category."
When it involves a mortal adversary... we call it something else...
HailAtlantis , 4 hours ago
Always lots of fun this time of year taking Anti-Money Laundering etc continuing education
courses and reading about high level scandals in finance and governments in current news
(it's just gotten progressively more insidious every year).. Scrutinizing little 'guys' while
making billions at the top.
johnny two shoes , 2 hours ago
Can't forget old Swiftboat Kerry...
At the time, Hunter Biden, now 49, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of
State John Kerry, co-owned Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm.
Heinz's college roommate, Devon Archer, was managing partner in the firm. In the spring of
2014, Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that was
at the center of a U.K. money laundering probe. Over the next year, Burisma reportedly paid
Biden and Archer's companies over $3 million.
Electing a President is electing someone in formal command of enough power to kill most of
the people on the planet - perhaps three times over. Including you and me. This is not the
mayor of Minneapolis we're talking about.
vasilievich , 4 hours ago
To use biologists' terminology the species may not be adaptive. To be clever at graft does
*not* assure survival in the long run. It may assure extinction.
12Doberman , 4 hours ago
Biden wasn't clever. Hillary was a bit clever using a Foundation and a 'charity' to
launder her graft. Cost her 15% or so but she had the facade of the charity. Biden put his
crackhead son in charge of laundering the graft...needless to say it was careless in the
extreme...and the DNC knew all about this before they selected Biden. Stunning level of
arrogance.
chiquita , 4 hours ago
Nobody ever said Biden was a smart guy. He knew how to plagerize as in words (speeches),
but he didn't know how to copy as in ideas (charitable foundations)
SurfingUSA , 4 hours ago
Per someone on this forum who has met Biden, he is stupid not just by politician standards
but by everyday people standards.
coelacanth10 , 3 hours ago
Bill gets credit for using the Foundation, base on a undergraduate course at Georgetown on
non-profits and foundations.
chiquita , 4 hours ago
Obama had to know what was going on, if not a party to it. There was a clear distance
between the two of them--Obama did not show a great love for Biden and you have to wonder
what that was all about. He tried to tell Joe "he didn't have to do it" relative to running,
which leaves a lot open to interpretation. Trump keeps saying that Biden was not a bright guy
and that's pretty obvious in a lot of Biden's stories and his overall history. Obama knew
Biden wasn't the smartest guy too. Was Obama trying to tell Joe to leave well enough alone
and not run for the presidency, which would surely expose all this stuff? There was a good
chance Biden wasn't going to get this far, but now see what has happened. You have to wonder
what is at play with this--why didn't they shut Biden down before it got this far?
Fight it all you want, but there's nothing you can do. "The emails are Russian" is going to
be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there's nothing you
can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.
Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian
bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that
simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically convenient for the
Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that the New York Post
publication of Hunter Biden's emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and
hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus. This will happen regardless of
facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden's emails were not
published as a result of a Russian operation.
This is happening. It's following the same formula all the other fact-free Russia hysteria
narratives have followed. The same media tour by pundits and political operatives saying with
no evidence but very assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence and
we should all be very upset about it.
"To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work," Russiagate founder
and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN's audience .
"Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading
what is very likely Russian propaganda," begins and eight-part thread by Democratic Senator
Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are "Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda."
"It's not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind of
head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same hack-leak-smear op in
2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what's happening this time," tweets MSNBC's Chris
Hayes.
"How are you all circling the wagons instead of being embarrassed for peddling Russian ops
18 days before the election. It's not enough that you all haven't learned from your atrocious
handling of 2016 -- you are doubling down," Democratic Party think tanker Neera Tanden
tweeted in admonishment of
journalists who dare to report on or ask questions about the emails.
Virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party-aligned political/media class has streamlined
this narrative of Russian influence into the American consciousness with very little inertia,
despite the fact that neither Joe nor Hunter Biden has disputed the authenticity of the emails
and despite a complete absence of evidence for Russian involvement in their publication.
This is surely the first time, at least in recent memory, that we have ever seen such a
broad consensus within the mass media that it is the civic duty of news reporters to try and
influence the outcome of a presidential general election by withholding negative news coverage
for one candidate. There was a lot of fascinated hatred for Trump in 2016, but people still
reported on Hillary Clinton's various scandals and didn't attack one another for doing so. In
2020 that has changed, and mainstream news reporters have now largely coalesced along the
doctrine that they must avoid any reporting which might be detrimental to the Biden
campaign.
"Dem Party hacks (and many of their media allies) genuinely believe it's immoral to report
on or even discuss stories that reflect poorly on Biden. In reality, it's the responsibility of
journalists to ignore their vapid whining and ask about newsworthy stories, even about Biden,"
tweeted The Intercept 's Glenn
Greenwald recently.
"You don't even have to think the Hunter Biden materials constitute some kind of
earth-shattering story to be absolutely repulsed at the authoritarian propaganda offensive
being waged to discredit them -- primarily by journalists who behave like compliant little
trained robots ," tweeted journalist Michael
Tracey.
Last month The Spectator 's Stephen L Miller described how the consensus
formed among the mainstream press since Clinton's 2016 loss that it is their moral duty to
be uncritical of Trump's opponent.
"For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over
what I will call the 'but her emails' dilemma," Miller writes. "Those who reported dutifully on
the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server and spillage of
classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids'
table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off
by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump
in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have
been highlighting Trump's foibles. It's an error no journalist wants to repeat."
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience,
partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue
escalating against Russia as part of its
slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and you've
got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it. This
means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an established
fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream
press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very
little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the energy
that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the White
House.
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If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on, everyone
would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made, Russiagate would
never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful forces are pushing us
into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed nations, and Trump would be
grilled about
Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The mainstream
news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon which they
have built their kingdoms. That's why it's
so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information with
each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
* * *
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"... The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies. ..."
"... One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home. ..."
The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic
repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and
British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical
thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies.
One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually
impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony
at home.
After several color revolutions succeeded, the Russiagate/Spygate op was carried out in
the US, with British assistance. This op has been largely successful, though there has been
limited resistance against its whole fake edifice as well as with the logic of Cold War2.0.
Nevertheless, Spygate has shocked many tens of millions of Dems into a stupor, while millions
more are dazed and manipulated by the Chinese bogeyman being manufactured by Trump.
The most dangerous result of the martial law lite mentality caused by Spygate and its MSM
purveyors is the growing support for censorship of free speech coming mostly from the Dems,
such as Schiff and Warner. The danger inherent in this trend became very clear when FaceBook
and Twitter engaged in massive and unprecedented arbitrary censorship of the New York Post
and of various Trump-related accounts.
This is the kind of thing you do during Stage 1 of a coup. Surely it was at least in part
an experiment to see how various power points in the US would respond. Even though Twitter
ended the censorship later, it was probably a successful experiment designed to gauge
reactions and areas of resistance.
In November, there could be further, more serious experiments/ops. If so, the current
expansionist movements being made and planned by the US and NATO may well be integral parts
of a new non-democratic model of "American-style democracy" -- not constitution-based but
"rules-based."
Esper's speech demonstrates a confluence of policies, ideas, and funds that permeate
through the system, and are by no means unique to a single service, think tank, or
contractor.
First, Esper consistently situated his future expansion plans in a need to adapt to "an
era of great power competition." CNAS is one of the think tanks leading the charge in
highlighting the threat from Beijing.
They also received at least $8,946,000 from 2014-2019 from the U.S. government and
defense contractors, including over $7 million from defense contractors like Northrop
Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls, General Dynamics, and Boeing who would stand
to make billions if the 500-ship fleet were enacted.
It's all about the money. Foreign and domestic policy is always all about the money,
either directly or indirectly. Of course, the ultimate goal is power - or more precisely, the
ultimate goal is relief of the fear of death, which drives every single human's every action,
and only power can do that, and in this world only money can give you power (or so the
chimpanzees believe.)
Debunking 'fattest lie in modern political history' (Full show) 14 Oct, 2020 23:31 16
Follow RT on
Newly declassified documents continue to demolish "Russiagate," the discredited conspiracy
theory that US President Trump "colluded" with Russia to win the 2016 election. The documents
show how circular reporting, unverified gossip and conflicts of interest all worked to create
the years-long "Russiagate" frenzy. RT America's Alex Mihailovich has the details. Then former
UK MP George Galloway joins Rick Sanchez to share his analysis.
US Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett faces her final day of questions before US
senators on Wednesday. RT America's Faran Fronczak has the details. Twitter has unveiled a new
set of policies to try to stem misinformation from spreading on its platform during the 2020 US
presidential election. RT America's John Huddy has the details. The legal and media analyst
Lionel of Lionel Media and conservative commentator Steve Malzberg weigh in. Plus, RT America's
Natasha Sweatte reports on NASA's search for "super-habitable" planets outside the Solar
System.
It appears the "Russia, Russia, Russia" cries from Adam Schiff and his dutiful media peons
is dead (we can only hope) as Director of National Intel John Ratcliffe just confirmed to Foxx
Business' Maria Bartiromo that:
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
As Politico's Quint Forgey details
(@QuintForgey) , DNI Ratcliffe is asked directly whether accusations leveled against the
Bidens in recent days are part of a Russian disinformation effort.
He says no:
"Let me be clear. The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there is no
intelligence that supports that."
" We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that
Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It's simply not true.
"
"And this is exactly what I said would I stop when I became the director of national
intelligence, and that's people using the intelligence community to leverage some political
narrative."
"And in this case, apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred
political candidate to be deemed as not real and as using the intelligence community or
attempting to use the intelligence community to say there's nothing to see here."
"Don't drag the intelligence community into this. Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of
some Russian disinformation campaign. And I think it's clear that the American people know
that."
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience,
partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue
escalating against Russia as part of its
slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and
you've got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it.
This means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an
established fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream
press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very
little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the
energy that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the
White House.
If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on,
everyone would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made,
Russiagate would never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful
forces are pushing us into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed
nations, and Trump would be grilled about
Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The
mainstream news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon
which they have built their kingdoms. That's why it's
so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information
with each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
As we detailed previously, as the Hunter Biden laptop scandal threatens to throw the 2020
election into chaos with what appears to be solid, undisputed evidence of high-level corruption
by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the same crowd which peddled the
Trump-Russia hoax is now suggesting that Russia is behind it all .
To wit, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who swore on National television
that he had evidence Trump was colluding with Russia - now says that President Trump is handing
the Kremlin a "propaganda coup from Vladimir Putin."
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has gone full tin-foil , suggesting that Giuliani was a 'key
target' of 'Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.'
2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull
virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that
they'll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.
Yet, if one looks at the actual facts of the case - in particular, that Hunter Biden appears
to have dropped his own laptops off at a computer repair shop, signed a service ticket , and
the shop owner approached the FBI first and Rudy Giuliani last after Biden failed to pick them
up, the left's latest Russia conspiracy theory is quickly debunked .
This is the story of an American patriot, an honorable man, John Paul Mac Issac, who tried
to do the right thing and is now being unfairly and maliciously slandered as an agent of
foreign intelligence, specifically Russia. He is not an agent or spy for anyone. He is his own
man. How do I know? I have known his dad for more than 20 years. I've known John Paul's dad as
Mac. Mac is a decorated Vietnam Veteran, who flew gunships in Vietnam. And he continued his
military service with an impeccable record until he retired as an Air Force Colonel. The crews
of those gunships have an annual reunion and Mac usually takes John Paul along, who volunteers
his computer and video skills to record and compile the stories of those brave men who served
their country in a difficult war.
This story is very simple – Hunter Biden dropped off three computers with liquid
damage at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Mac Issac,
examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was okay and the data on
the harddrive of the third could be recovered. Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul
Mac Issac repaired the hard drive and down loaded the data . During this process he saw some
disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine, Burisma, China and other
issues . With the work completed, Mr. Mac Issac prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden
and notified him that the computer was ready to be retrieved. H unter did not respond . In the
ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Issac made repeated efforts to
contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed
John Paul Mac Issac–i.e., he did not pay the bill.
When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John Paul realized he was
sitting on radioactive material that might be relevant to the investigation. After conferring
with his father, Mac and John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI
office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office and spoke with an
agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the material he had, but was rebuffed by the
FBI. He was told basically, get lost . This was mid-September 2019.
Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI
agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John
Paul's business . He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached.
Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device .
Two weeks later, the intrepid agents called and asked to come and image the hard drive. John
Paul agreed but, instead of taking the hard drive or imaging the drive, they gave him a
subpoena. It was part of a grand jury proceeding but neither agent said anything about the
purpose of the grand jury. John Paul complied with the subpoena and turned over the hard drive
and the computer.
In the ensuing months, starting with the impeachment trial of President Trump, he heard
nothing from the FBI and knew that none of the evidence from the hard drive had been shared
with President Trump's defense team.
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The lack of action and communication with the FBI led John Paul to make the fateful decision
to contact Rudy Giuliani's office and offer a copy of the drive to the former mayor. We now
know that Rudy accepted John Paul's offer and that Rudy's team shared the information with the
New York Post.
John Paul Mac Issac is not responsible for the emails, images and videos recovered from
Hunter Biden's computer. He was hired to do a job, he did the job and submitted an invoice for
the work. Hunter Biden, for some unexplained reason, never responded and never asked for the
computer. But that changed last Tuesday, October 13, 2020. A person claiming to be Hunter
Biden's lawyer called John Paul Mac Issac and asked for the computer to be returned. Too late.
That horse had left the barn and was with the FBI.
John Paul, acting under Delaware law, understood that Hunter's computer became the property
of his business 90 days after it had been abandoned.
At no time did John Paul approach any media outlet or tabloid offering to sell salacious
material . A person of lesser character might have tried to profit. But that is not the essence
of John Paul Mac Issac. He had information in his possession that he learned, thanks to events
subsequent to receiving the computer for a repair job, was relevant to the security of our
nation. He did what any clear thinking American would do–he, through his father,
contacted the FBI. When the FBI finally responded to his call for help, John cooperated fully
and turned over all material requested .
The failure here is not John Paul's . He did his job. The FBI dropped the ball and, by
extension, the Department of Justice. Sadly, this is becoming a disturbing, repeating
theme–the FBI through incompetence or malfeasance is not doing its job.
Any news outlet that is publishing the damnable lie that John Paul is part of some
subversive effort to interfere in the United States Presidential election is on notice. That is
slander and defamation. Fortunately, the evidence from Hunter Biden's computer is in the hands
of the FBI and Rudy Giuliani and, I suspect, the U.S. Senate. Those with the power to do
something must act. John Paul Mac Issac's honor is intact. We cannot say the same for those
government officials who have a duty to deal with this information.
This is not leftist coup. This is intelligence agencies coup. Big difference. And Obama who
is the most probably mastermind and coordinator is as far from leftist as one can get, he is a
typical neoliberal with neocon inclinations, servant of the USA empire with probably some
delusions of American exeptionalism.
The statement " On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a treaty that
would have decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political opponents in the Soviet
leadership arrested the father of perestroika at his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the
Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency was in charge." is naive and is not supported by
the facts. Gorbachov probably organized this coup to give himself a chance to get back control of
the country that was spinning out of his control. He failed and that was the end of his political
career of a sleazy second rate politician.
Our country seems headed for a political crisis, with the enemies of Deplorable America
making noises suggesting they are
planning a post-election "
Color Revolution "-type coup against Trump. As a long-time Russia-watcher,
I suggest that the failed Soviet coup of 1991, and the collapse
that it spurred on, is instructive.
The Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency,
August, 1991
The key point that year came when Soviet military and security units refused to move against
Boris Yeltsin and his defenders. Could something like that happen here, with Trump playing the
Yeltsin role?
Meanwhile, the Democrats, with help from rabid Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and
David Frum, have been " wargaming
" scenarios for preventing Trump from taking office should he win, developing a
plan for what Trump has correctly described as "an insurrection." [ The
Billionaire Backers of the 'Insurrection' , by Julie Kelly, AmGreatness.com, Sep 14, 2020]
The plan is to claim that Trump has stolen, or attempted to steal, the election. "As far as our
enemies are concerned," as I wrote here last month, "they are on the right side of history, and
neither election law nor the Constitution or any antiquated notions about fair play will stop
them." [
Revolution and Resistance: How can elections continue? , American Remnant, September 4,
2020]
The mail-in balloting plan plays into the Blob's wargaming. If the Democrats can't swing the
election their way by hook or crook, then the lengthy
process of
accounting for all the mail-in ballots could be used as a means to sow confusion and chaos,
giving them room to maneuver in the aftermath of Election Day.
The Blob's minions have been signaling their intention to drag out the vote count. Michigan
Governor
Gretchen Whitmer , for example, declared on Face the Nation that her state would not be
held to any "artificial deadlines" for reporting election results. [
MI Gov. Whitmer: No 'Artificial Deadlines' for Announcing Election Results , by Jeff
Poor, Breitbart, October 11, 2020] In an example of the psychological projection characteristic
of Democrats, Whitmer further claimed that those who might want to expedite the vote count had
"political agendas."
Meanwhile, the Blob's militant wing has been circulating a plan for post-election
disruption. [
READ: Left-wing Radicals Post Online Guide to 'Disrupting' the Country if Election is Close
, by Joel Pollak, Breitbart, October 12, 2020] A Leftist group calling itself ShutDownDC [ Tweet them ] plans to prevent a Trump "coup" -- more
projection
there -- by shutting down the country and forcing Trump out if the vote is too close to call.
The
plan calls for "sustained disruptive movements all over the country." The militants also
state that they intend to demand that "no winner be announced until every vote is counted."
ShutDownDC further proclaims that it has no intention of allowing the country to return to
normal. The goal is to "dismantle" what it calls "interlocking systems of oppression."
In the chaos that appears increasingly likely after Election Day, we may not even have a
clear idea of what happened–-and, indeed, that may be part of the Blob's design.
In a recent segment on "Critical Race Theory" gaining traction at the Pentagon, Tucker
Carlson wondered just why the Left was so intent on capturing the military.
My answer: the Blob was contemplating the possibility of using the military as part of an
attempt to block a second Trump term.
It's quite clear that the top military brass has been subject to "the Great Awokening"
and Trump Derangement Syndrome as much as the rest of the federal bureaucracy. The military
Establishment has steadfastly resisted Trump's inclination to disengage from foreign
interventions. Moreover, the Pentagon has also resisted Trump's order to stop
indoctrinating its personnel in "Critical Race Theory." [
Trump's Anti-Critical Race Theory Order is Necessary But Insufficient , By Timon Cline,
AmGreatness.com, October 5, 2020]
In his book Rage , Bob Woodward
reports that former Defense Secretary and retired Marine General James Mattis once
commented to then Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that "There may come a time when
we have to take collective action" against Trump, since Mattis deemed the president "dangerous"
and "unfit." [
Mattis told Coats Trump is 'dangerous,' 'unfit': Woodward book , by Tal Axelrod, The Hill,
September 9, 2020]
It's likely that General Mattis's view of Trump is widely shared among top level military
officers.
So how might the military figure into the Blob's wargaming plans? Peter van Buren has
contemplated a post-election scenario in which a "temporary" military government might be
pitched as the only way to break an electoral deadlock and end post-election disorder. [
What
if Trump Won't Leave The White House? The fearmongers are at it again, this time with their
mantle-holder Biden, warning of the coming dictatorship. , American Conservative, June 30,
2020] Van Buren reminded us that Trump's opponents have never accepted his legitimacy, that
"RussiaGate" was good practice for them -- good practice for a coup, that is -- and that they
are gearing up for an all-out effort to dislodge him from the White House.
Obama, Comey And
Eric Holder In The White House
Van Buren further noted that Joe Biden, who has claimed that it is Trump who "is going to
try and steal this election," has also stated quite plainly that if Trump refuses to leave the
White House, he is "absolutely convinced" that the military would "escort him from the White
House with great dispatch." [
Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From the White House if He Refuses to Leave, by Julie
Ross, Daily Beast, June 11, 2020]
It's worth mentioning that van Buren is not a Trump supporter, was a career foreign service
officer, and is an honest man, an Iraq war whistleblower who wrote an excellent book,
We Meant Well: How I
Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , on his
experiences in that country. I reviewed it here ). He
does not believe that a Pentagon-backed coup is merely "paperback thriller material." It's a
plausible scenario.
Nevertheless, an attempt to use the military to block Trump's re-election could result in
the coup plotters stepping into a trap of their own making.
This is what happened in the failed 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union.
On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a treaty that would have
decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political opponents in the Soviet leadership
arrested the father of perestroika at his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the Soviet
State Committee on the State of Emergency was in charge.
The conspiracy against Gorbachev had been organized by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov,
Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov and six other top level political and security officials. They
were alarmed by Gorbachev's reforms, which had already loosed centrifugal forces in the USSR
that threatened the power of the Communist party and the Soviet apparatus.
But within three days, the coup attempt collapsed.
Boris Yeltsin at the Russian White
House, August 19, 1991.
The coup collapsed because of resistance by then-Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin
and his supporters, and the refusal of elite military and security units to move against
them.
On August 19, Muscovites gathered at the Russian "White House," the seat of Russia's
parliament in central Moscow, and erected barriers around it. Boris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank
to address the crowd. Yeltsin condemned the State Emergency Committee as an unlawful gang of
coup plotters and called for military and security forces not to support the "Gang Of
Eight."
Major Sergey Yevdokimov, a battalion commander in the Tamanskaya Division, had already
declared his loyalty to Yeltsin (hence the tank on which Yeltsin made his historic stand).
Yevdokimov later said that early on he had decided that he would not fire on any
Russian citizens. As his battalion approached the "White House," one of Yeltsin's supporters
climbed on Yevdokimov's tank and asked him to come over to their side. The major made his
historically-significant choice, setting in motion events that would help thwart the coup.
KGB special forces units never appeared at the scene. When the planned assault on the
Russian "White House" ("Operation Thunder") failed to materialize after a brief skirmish, it
was clear that the coup was over. This was quickly followed by the collapse of the Communist
party and the Soviet administrative apparatus; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
That was an
enormous surprise to the majority of Western Kremlinologists at the time.
Of course, the situation in the U.S. today is not exactly analogous. For starters, Trump is
operating in a hostile environment ("the Swamp") dominated and controlled by his enemies. The
generals are not on his side. It seems unlikely that a large group of citizens from the DC area
would quickly materialize to support Trump against some sort of military-backed coup.
It's possible, however, that Trump may not even be in Washington when a coup is set in
motion. This would leave him an opportunity to do what he does best -- hold mass rallies to
fire up his support base in "Deplorable" areas of the country.
If general disorder and a deadlock over the elections acts as a cover to deploy military
units, it raises the same question Soviet officers and men were faced with in August 1991:
Would the "boots on the ground" obey orders?
Trump may be disliked by top-level officers. But my sense is that he is popular with the
rank-and-file. What if a significant number of them refused to obey a clearly illegal order? It
may take only one Major Yevdokimov refusing unlawful orders for the whole plot to unravel.
The Deplorables have good reason to think the Blob will rig or otherwise reverse the
election results. The past four years have already taught them that. And the Blob's Main Stream
Media arm has been hard at it selling the Narrative of Trump stealing the election. The
Democrats' base appears to be ready and willing to accept drastic measures against Trump
and the Middle Americans they loathe.
The potential for a seismic political crisis is clear.
What we are witnessing is what I've called " the end of politics ." [
Chronicles , May 2019] American elections are becoming more like the zero-sum games they
are in the undeveloped world -- and were to some extent in
pre-modern Britain . A post-election crisis, especially a force majeure situation
precipitated by military intervention, would accelerate the centrifugal forces already at work
in the United States.
The failure of a coup attempt could do to the Democrats' "Coalition of the Fringes" what the
failure of the August coup did to the Communists in the USSR -- opening up
room to maneuver for what I call the American Remnant and VDARE.com calls the Historic
American Nation.
Given the circumstances, with the demographic ring closing in, that may be a providential
outcome.
I'm not as optimistic as Allensworth. Only one escort of the elites moved against
Gorbachev in 1991. Most of the rest held back. That allowed elite sector 2 to help Yeltsin
resist. Plus, the Jew Wolves of Wall Street swarmed in. So there's that.
The military the rank and file is heavily black, especially the career sergeants petty
officers who really carry out the officers orders. I think the Hispanic and White tank and
file will stay loyal. But follow orders from the anti White officer corps and black
sergeants
Consider the French Revolution. It didn't start till most of the officer corps were
revolutionary masons. The National Guards were revolutionary and so were the judges and
lawyers.
Every elite sector from the clergy through academia media professions and occupations
education both unions and employers Chamber of Commerce Association of manufacturers nurses
teachers Drs. Engineers construction probably big Agricultural which is all that matters any
more. Every organized group is against Trump
All Trump has is us individuals maybe half the adult population but just unorganized
individuals The Republican Party is organized but just as anti Trump and anti White as the
most hysterical liberals and Democrats.
Vindemann Jew immigrant colonel inserted into a position where he could get General Flynn
charged wit crime and the elected president impeached. There's Millions of Vindemanns in
tactical and strategic positions all over the country in every sector. The anti Trump anti
White revolutionaries already own media and communications
I hope I'm wrong. But what's been happening in America for the last 56 years and the
acceleration since 2016 fits the pattern of every successful revolution in the last 500
years.
"As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
I ask myself this question seemingly every day. Could U.S bureaucrats be so short sighted
where they cannot see the culture they are creating? Any sane follower of international
relations understands that poking a nuclear power with a stick is the work of fools. My
nightmare, that I have feared since I was a child, is a nuclear confrontation that would
result in the end of the human race.
Does rationality and common sense ever win out in Washington? I fear that our "endgame"
will result in a mushroom cloud....
This in reply to your #131 yesterday re JP Morgan, oligarch power and method used to create
Federal Reserve:
There is more. Banking has an odd and opaque history of global control of money/finance.
It was clear by ca. 1900 that the global keystone was control of USA banking...but how?,
because any USA legislation had to be signed-off by a President...the ONLY exception being
overriding a pres. veto. It could not be done in USA by pres. decree.
So the riddle is how could this rip-off be done in a freak nation that was an open society
of free public discourse full of very active politician? Even if Congress could be bribed and
otherwise cajoled to pass such legislation, how could any President be "arranged" to sign
it?
CLUE -- W. Wilson -- headmaster of Princeton University suddenly rose to Governor of New
Jersey , then suddenly ran for Pres of US. A most weird election resulted in WW becoming Pres
and in his first year signed the Fed Res Act. Boom! Done!
CLUE -- How did the bankers, Warburg et al, manage to put WW under their control? How did
they select WW and get hooks so deeply into headmaster WW and get him elected Pres.? What was
their secret?...and that could be kept secret? and never in writing.
The ANSWER might well be known only to surviving members of families of those involved in
WW's mysterious medical maladies. Though WW's doctors never disclosed publicly all his
medical data, related family members of consulted medical experts would likely have it as a
family secret...that WW had an "unspeakable" malady whose diagnosis was quietly handed down
to successive generations.
"As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
The endpoint is to weaken Russia and sabotaging its economy. Less income through oil and
gas exports means less money for weapons, which affects Russia's operations beyond its
borders, less money for hospitals, education, welfare etc. increasing domestic instability
etc.
Diplomatically Russia is also weakened by having its reputation tarnished, regardless of
whether it deserves it or not.
In order to get to the King, the pieces standing in front of it must be either taken out
or moved out of the way. Sanctions, informational and economic warfare are the only available
pieces on the chess board, short of direct military confrontation.
Not sure who this Andrei Martyanov is, but underlying all the comments is the proposition
that Putin-managed capitalism works great, will work great forever, will not have a crisis
ever and will make Russia totally independent in all ways. Stated so forthrightly, no doubt
it sounds too stupid to admit to. Nonetheless this is the claim. I say capitalist restoration
did not improve the Russian economy in the way implied by Martyanov. Putin is still a
Yeltsinite, even if he is sober enough to pass for competent.
I take the opposite view: Looking from today, Russia is lucky that the USSR collapsed in
1991. It shed its debt, its currency passed through hyperinflation, and their economy
collapsed and rebuilt. The US and most Western countries still have that coming for them, and
soon.
Plus beyond that the strict Communist/Marxist atheism over 70+ years lead to a rebirth of
Christian values in Russia, their biggest advantage in this cultural war. And they practice
science, not scientism.
Note: Russia and China are more capitalist than the US, for quite some time now. (12+
years)
@110 Abe as far as I understand it, the economic argument goes like this: take the number of
rubles generated/spent/whatever in Russian economic activity, then use the current conversion
rate to convert that into an "equivalent" amount of US dollars.
Then see what you can buy with that many US dollars.
If you went shopping in the USA, the answer would be that this many US dollars doesn't buy
you much, ergo, Russian economic activity is pathetically low.
An example: the Russian government might budget xxx (fill in the figure) rubles to buy new
T-90 tanks. In Washington they would convert that into US dollars, and then declare that this
is chicken-feed. Hardly enough to buy less than 10 Abrams tanks.
Only the Russians aren't buying Abrams tanks from the USA, and are not spending dollars.
They are buying T-90 tanks, and for the amount of rubles spent they'll get 50 tanks.
Every metric the US analyst are using tells them that the USA is vastly, vastly
outspending the Russians on military equipment, to the point where it is obvious that the
Russian military must be destitute and decrepit.
But if they every took the time to look they'll see 50 brand-spanking new T-90 main battle
tanks. Weapons that their assumptions say that the Russians can't afford, and would wonder
"Huh? Where'd they come from?"
@ Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 18 2020 4:11 utc | 96
I agree that comparing Russia's economy with the likes of Italy and Spain is ridiculous,
but it's not that simple. Capitalism is not what is appears to be.
If a (capitalist) nation wants to get something from another (capitalist) nation, it needs
to export something. There's no free lunch in international trade: if you want to import, you
have to export or issue sovereign debt bonds (treasury bonds).
In this scenario, either Russia produces everything it needs in its own territory or it
will have to export in order to import the technology it needs to do whatever it needs to do.
Remember: the Russian Federation is a capitalist nation-state, it has to follow the laws of
motion of capitalism, which take precedence over whatever Putin wants. To ignore that
economic laws exist is to deny any kind of theory of collapse; nation-states would then be
eternal, natural entities with no entropy.
Even if Russia produces everything it needs in its own territory, it is still capitalist.
It would need, in order to "substitute imports", to super-exploit its own labor force
(working class) in order to extract surpluses for its industrialization efforts. That's what
the USSR did during Stalin.
If Russia is doing the imports substitution in the classical way (the way Latin America
did during the liberal dictatorships of the 1950s-1980s), then it is trying to sell
commodities to industrialized countries in order to import technology and machinery necessary
to industrialize its own territory. That is probably the case here.
Assuming this more probable case, then I'm sorry to tell you it won't work. It may work in
the short or even medium term, but it will ultimately fail in the long term. The thing is
that, in a system of capitalist exchange between an agrarian and an industrial nation-state,
the industrial nation-state will always have the advantage (i.e. have a trade surplus).
That's because of Marx's labor theory of value: industrialized commodities ("manufactured
goods") have more intrinsic value than agrarian/raw material commodities - just think about
how many kilos of bananas Brazil would have to export to the USA in order to import one
single unit of an iPhone 12, to use an contemporary example. As a social result,
industrialized countries have a higher organic composition of capital (OCC) than agrarian
countries, as they need more value to just keep themselves afloat (as a metaphor: it's more
expensive to keep a big mansion than a little flat in a stationary state). Value (wealth)
then tends to flow from lower OCC to the higher OCC, this is the material base that divides
the First and Third World countries until today.
To make things even worse, raw materials/agricultural products have an inelastic demand,
which means their prices fall when production rises, and their prices rise when production
falls, relative to overall demand. You will pay whatever the water company will charge you
for the cubic meter of water - but you won't consume more or less water because of its price,
hence the term "inelastic": demand tends to be more or less constant on a macroeconomic
level. The same problem suffers the commodity exporter nations: there will come a stage where
their exports' overall value will collapse vis-a-vis the machinery and technology they need
to import.
As a result, the commodity exporter nations will have to get more debt overseas, by
issuing more T-bonds, just to keep the trade balance afloat. What was the quest for progress
becomes a vicious battle for mere survival. A debt crisis is brewed.
And that's exactly what happened to the Latin American countries in the 1980s-1990s: their
debt exploded and they were put to their knees by the USA (the country that issues the
universal fiat currency). The USA then charged their debt, which triggered a wave of
privatizations of everything those countries had built over decades. This is what will happen
to Russia if it falls for the lure of imports substitution.
That's why I urge the Russians to review their concepts and try to get back to the Soviet
times. It doesn't need to be exactly how it was before: you can make the due reforms and
adopt a more or less Chinese model of socialism. That's the only way out, if the Russian
people doesn't want to be enslaved by the liberals (capitalists).
@vk from what i'm reading (stephen cohen: soviet fates and lost alternatives) the chinese
adopted something like bukharin's nep policies, which stalin did his best to wipe out in the
ussr. i've got some problems with cohen's last book, "war with russia?" but he has a lot of
good information on the history of the ussr.
@ Posted by: pretzelattack | Oct 18 2020 15:14 utc | 118
On the surface, yes: the comparison between Reform and Opening Up and NEP are
irresistible. But it is not precise: the only merit it has is in the fact that it is fairer
than simply classifying Deng Xiaoping's reforms as neoliberalism (Trotskysts, Austrian
School) or capitalism (liberals).
The key here is the difference of the nature of the Chinese peasant class and the Russian
peasant class. The Chinese peasant class, besides suffering a lot (millions of dead by
famine) in the hands of a liberal government for decades (Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist
Government) (while the Russian equivalent - the "February Revolution" - only lasted a few
months, engulfed by their insistence on continuing with the meat-grinder of WWI), had a
different historical subtract.
Chinese late feudalism was much more developed, much more manufactured-centered than
Russian late feudalism. As a result, the Chinese peasant was much more proletarian-minded
than the feudal Russian peasant. Also, the Chinese didn't have the kulak problem (peasant
petite-bourgeoisie) - instead, they had regional warlords who self-destructed during the
chaotic republican period (1911-1949). When the warlords were gone, what was left was a much
more proletarian-minded, egalitarian-minded, small peasantry. This peasantry didn't bother to
migrate to the cities to work in the industry or to start their own factories in the
countryside itself. That's why Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up was successful - not
because of his genius, but because he was backed up by a capable people.
The Chinese peasantry, for example, didn't hoard or directed their grain surplus to
exports in order to starve the proletariat to death in the cities - they sold it to the
Chinese market. The Chinese peasantry also trusted their central government (CCP) and saw
itself as part of the project - in complete opposition to the feudal-minded Russian kulak,
who saw his piece of land as essentially an independent and self-sufficient
cell/ecosystem.
That's why the Reform and Opening Up was successful (it survives until the present times)
and the NEP soon failed - following the good harvest of 1924, came the awful harvest of 1926,
which triggered a shit show where the peasantry hoarded the grain and almost starved the USSR
to extinction, and which led to Stalin's ascension and the dekulakization process (forced
collectivization).
i should add that i know little about the actual history of communism, but capitalism is
revealing itself as a monstrous failure, and not all the propaganda in the world is
succeeding at covering that up.
I know how economic reasoning comes to that conclusion, but IRL comparing such different
countries only by GDP metric is insane and beyond stupid.
Eg. Russia has GDP similar to California!
Yes, in US centric GDP metrics that favors and cheats US itself (surprise!).
But. One of those countries sent man in space, produces everything, has vast resources and
is self sufficient nuclear superpower.
Other one cant even feed and provider water to its population without outside help.
GDP means nothing when sh*t hits the fan. What will "richer" country do if it goes to war
with "poorer"? Throw money at them while they launch nukes at it?
@ Posted by: pretzelattack | Oct 18 2020 16:11 utc | 122
There certainly are similarities between the NEP and the Reform and Opening Up. It's very
possible Deng Xiaoping took Lenin as inspiration.
Forgot to mention the Scissors Crisis, which erupted in 1923, and triggered the NEP. That
crisis is one more evidence that shows manufactured products are inherently more valuable
than raw materials/agrarian products.
Again, for products of Western "education" basic logic and ability for a basic
extrapolation seem beyond the grasp: there are no issues for Russia to produce anything,
other than time and some money. Country which produces best hi-tech weapons in the world,
dominates world's nuclear energy market (this is not your iPhone "hi tech") and has a full
enclosed cycle for aerospace industry, among many other things, will have little trouble in
substituting pretty much anything. I remember a bunch of morons, who pass for "analysts",
from either WSJ or WaPo declaring 6 years ago that sanctions will deny Russia access to
Western extraction technologies. Sure, for a country whose space program alone will crush
whole economies of UK or Germany should they ever try to recreate it, will have "problems"
producing compressor or drill equipment with the level of Russia's metallurgy and material
science. Generally speaking, West's present pathetic state is a direct result of utter
incompetence across the board in a number of key fields of human activity and your post, most
likely based on some BS by Western media, is a good demonstration of this state of the
affairs.
Per immigration policy, you can easily find a a truck load of resources, especially on the
web-sites of Russian diplomatic missions (Embassies, Consulates etc.), easily available. Per
cats--Russian love for cats is boundless and intense. You may say that Russia is a
cat-obsessed country;)
vk@120 posits a mystical cultural difference in Russian and Chinese peasants, which
unfortunately has pretty much the same content as the hypothesis of a racial difference. That
the morally superior race is supposed to be Chinese doesn't really help. As often, some
strange assertions of facts that aren't so accompany such bizarre thinking. The rich peasants
in China (what would be kulaks in Russian history,) were notorious for moneylending. As ever,
the inevitable arrears ended in the moneylender's family taking the land. Collectivization
came early in China, well along the way by 1956. And a key aspect of it was the struggle
against the Chinese equivalent of the kulak class. As for the insistence that private farming
is superior, the growth of inequality in land drove millions, a hundred million or more, into
the cities. Without residence permits this floating proletariat was effectively
superexploited by the new capitalist elements, as Deng meant them to do. Nor did the warlords
discredit themselves, not as a group. If anything the young warlord who forced Chiang to
reject active war against the Communists, in order to fight the Japanese invaders, was the
one who kept the GMD (KMT in Wade-Giles,) from discrediting itself. [Xian incident] And what
warlords had to do with the Chinese rich peasantry *after* the Revolution is a complete
mystery.
Socially, the deliberate uneven development promoted by Deng and his successors, is
eroding the social fabric of the larger countryside. This, in addition to the neocolonial
concessions, the growing links to the Chinese bourgeoisie of the diaspora suggest that as
Dengists may go even back/forward to a new form of warlordism. The thing about comparing
Bukharism/NEP to Dengism/the "Opening" is that Bukharin's program failed spectacularly. But
modern China is not next door to Nazi Germany. Even more to the point, Stalin's victory over
Hitler has provided a kind of moral shield for China, even under Deng, inspiring fear of
losing a general war. If Bukharin had beaten Stalin, we can be as sure as any hypothetical
can be, the USSR would have been defeated, not victorious. In modern China, the Bukharin won.
There is an excellent chance the national government of today's China will be defeated.
That article describes a 110 MW turbine that has now finally been put into production
(while Siemens, General Electric etc. produce utility-class gas turbines up to about 600 MW,
with far higher efficiency and most likely reliability). The article further describes 40 GW
of thermal electrical production to be "modernized" until 2031 (11 years from now), and
apparently a microscopic 2 GW of new capacity from "domestic and localized" 65 MW turbines to
be commissioned 2026-2028. (I don't understand Russian so I had to rely on Yandex's machine
translation.) That's admittedly some kind of progress, but is simply not going to cut it.
Nowhere close.
Imagine if China set the ambition to build its own semiconductors and its own turbofans
for its stealth fighters sometime around 2040. Imagine if China was still producing a third
of the amount of electricity of the United States instead of about double, etc., and
considered this to be adequate. It would be akin to abandoning its ambitions for
technological and industrial independence from the West, and that is exactly what Russia is
doing in the realm of gas turbines. There is apparently no capability and no seriousness
going into translating Russia's world-class research and science into actual large-scale,
modern industrial production, and everything points to this continuing, while you can blather
on all you want about people with "Western education" simply not getting anything.
That's admittedly some kind of progress, but is simply not going to cut it. Nowhere close.
That's admittedly you switching on "I am dense" mode and trying to up the ante with 600
MW, which are a unique product, while you somehow miss the point that 110 MWt MGT-110 of
fully Russian production has completed a full cycle of industrial tests and operations (an
equivalent of military IOC--Initial Operational Capability) and is in a serial production.
But instead of studying the issue (even if through Yandex translate) with Siemens which when
learning about MGT-110 offered Russia 100% localization with technology transfer, Russians
declined, you go into generalizations without having even minimal set of facts and
situational awareness. In fact 110 MWt turbines are most in demand product for a variety of
applications. Get acquainted with this.
I am not going to waste my time explaining to you (you will play dense again) what IOC
means and how it relates to serial production, I am sure you will find a bunch of unrealted
"argumentation".
Imagine if China
I don't need to imagine anything, as well as draw irrelevant parallels with China.
There is apparently no capability and no seriousness going into translating Russia's
world-class research and science into actual large-scale, modern industrial production, and
everything points to this continuing, while you can blather on all you want about people
with "Western education" simply not getting anything.
This is exactly what I am talking about. Hollow declarations by people who can not even
develop basic factual base.
It's great to see you here with your excellent facts and perspectives on Russia. I'm sorry
you have to deal with people whose minds are too small to grasp the immense scale of Russia -
scale in physical size, civilizational depth and importance to the balance of power in the
world.
Russia alone stopped the creeping gray hegemony from the west that had looked like it
would just ooze over the whole world and suffocate it in bullshit and tribute payments. And
then China joined in the fun. The world has a future now, when a decade ago this didn't seem
possible, at least from my view in the US. Geopolitically, Russia gave us this future, and
China has come to show us how much fun it's going to be.
@ Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 18 2020 20:05 utc | 127
There's no mysticism here because we know how the kulaks emerged in Russia: they were the
result of the catastrophic capitalist reforms of the 1860s, which completely warped the old
feudal relations of the Russian Empire.
The reforms of the 1860s were catastrophic for two reasons:
1) it freed the peasants slowly. The State serfs - the last who gained their freedom -
were left with no land. A complex partition system of the land, based on each administrative
region, created a distorted division of land, where very few peasants got huge chunks of land
(the future kulaks) and most received almost nothing (as Lenin demonstrated, see his first
book of his Complete Works, below the rate of subsistence);
2) it tried to preserve the old feudal privileges and powers of the absolutist
monarchy.
As a result, the Russian Empire had a bizarre economic system, a mixed economy with the
worst of the two words: the inequality and absolute misery of capitalism and the backwardness
and lack of social mobility of feudalism.
But yes, you're right when you state Mao's era was not an economic failure. His early era
really saw an attempt by the CCP to make an alliance with the "national bourgeoisie", and
this alliance was indeed a failure. This certainly led to a more radical approach by the CCP,
still in the Mao era (collectivization). Life quality in China greatly increased after 1949,
until the recession of the Great Leap Forward (which was not a famine, but threw back some
socioeconomic indicators temporarily back to the WWII era). When the Great Leap Forward was
abandoned, China continued to improve afterwards.
All of this doesn't change the fact that China's "NEP" was a success, while the original
NEP wasn't. Of course, there are many factors that explain this, but it is wrong to call late
Qing China as even similar to the late Romanov Russia.
I'm not saying Stalin's reform were a failure. Without them, they wouldn't be able to
quickly import the Fordist (Taylorist) method they needed to industrialize. The USSR became a
superpower in just 19 years - a world record. The first Five-Year Plan was a huge morale
boost and success for the Soviet people - specially because it happened at the same time as
the capitalist meltdown of 1929.
--//--
@ Posted by: Eric | Oct 18 2020 20:53 utc | 128
The thing with semiconductors (and other very advanced technologies) is that it is an
industry that only makes sense for a given nation to dominate if they're going to mass
produce it. That usually means said production must be export oriented, which means competing
against already well-established competitors.
China doesn't want to drain the State's coffers to fund an industry that won't at least
pay for itself. It has to change the wheels with the car moving. That's why it is still
negotiating the Huawei contracts in the West first, why it still is trying to keep the
Taiwanese product flowing first, only to then gradually start the heavy investment needed to
dominate the semiconductor technology and production process.
They learned with the Soviets in this sense. When computers became a thing in the West,
the USSR immediately poured resources to build them. They were able to dominate the main
frame technology, and they were successfully implemented in their economy. Then came the
personal computers, and, this time, the Soviets weren't able to make it integrate in their
economy. The problem wasn't that the Soviets didn't know how to build a personal computer
(they did), but that every new technology is born for a reason, and only makes sense in a
given social context. You can't just blindly copy your enemy's technology and hope for the
best.
The world has a future now, when a decade ago this didn't seem possible, at least from my
view in the US. Geopolitically, Russia gave us this future, and China has come to show us
how much fun it's going to be. Many thanks to you and your people.
Thank you for your kind words. As my personal experience (my third book is coming out
soon)shows--explaining economic reality to people who have been "educated" (that is confused,
ripped off for huge tuition and given worthless piece of paper with MBA or some "economics"
Bachelor of "Science" on it) in Western pseudo-economic "theory" that this "global"
"rules-based order" is over, is pretty much an exercise in futility. And if a catastrophe of
Boeing is any indication (I will omit here NATO's military-industrial complex)--dividends,
stocks and "capitalization" is a figment of imagination of people who never left their office
and infantile state of development and swallowed BS economic narrative hook, line and sinker
without even trying to look out of the window. They still buy this BS of US having "largest
GDP in the world" (in reality it is much smaller than that of China), the
de-industrialization of the United States is catastrophic (they never bothered to look at
2018 Inter-agency Report to POTUS specifically about that)and its industrial base is
shrinking with a lighting speed, same goes to Germany which for now retains some residual
industrial capability and competences but:
This is before COVID-19, after it Germany's economy shrank worst among Western nations,
worse even than the US. It is a long story, but as Michael Hudson stated not for once in his
books and interviews, what is "taught" as economics in the West is basically a
pseudo-science. Well, it is. Or, as same Hudson stated earlier this year:"The gunboats don't
appear in your economics textbooks. I bet your price theory didn't have gun boats in them, or
the crime sector. And probably they didn't have debt in it either." And then they wonder in
Germany (or EU)how come that EU structures are filled with pedophiles, "Green" fanatics and
multiculturalists. Well, because Germany (and EU) are occupied territories who made their
choice. And this is just the start. What many do not understand here is that overwhelming
majority of Russians do not want to deal with Europe and calls for new Iron Curtain are
louder and louder and the process has started. Of course, there is a lot of both contempt and
schadenfreude on Russian part. As Napoleon stated, the nation which doesn't want to feed own
army, will feed someone else's. Very true. Modern West worked hard for it, let it "enjoy"
now.
It's good to see you commenting here as barflies seem more inclined to listen to you than
me. Did you watch Russian documentary on
The Wall , which I learned about from Lavrov's meeting with those doing business
within Russia on 5 Oct? I asked The Saker if his translation team would take on the task of
providing English subtitles or a voice over but never got a reply one way or the other. IMO,
for Russia to avoid the West's fate it must change its banking and financial system from the
private to the public realm as Hudson advocates most recently in this podcast . As for Mr.
Lavrov, he surprised the radio station interviewers by citing Semyon Slepakov's song "America
Doesn't Like Us," of which barfly Paco thankfully provided a translation of the
lyrics.С наилучшими
пожеланиями
крепкого
здоровья и
долгих лет
жизни!
I think you an Grieved misunderstand somewhat where I am coming from here. Michael Hudson
would be (and has been) the first to describe how Russia's elites (and to a large extent it
seems also the people) bought into a bogus neoliberal ideology teaching that somehow Russia
needs to earn the money it needs to build its own economy in the form of foreign currency
through export revenues. Apparently these economists and politicians in Russia never bothered
to look how Western economies actually operate (as opposed to what they preach to countries
they want to destroy), or for that matter how China has developed its economy (in all of
these countries, the necessary credit is created on a keyboard.) The export revenues that
Russia earns in the form of dollars and euros are sold to the central bank for the roubles
that Russia's government needs to function. Bizarrely, this creates just as much inflation as
it would if the central bank had just created the roubles without "backing" foreign currency.
In fact, there is more inflation created, because in times of high oil prices, corresponding
amounts of roubles are suddenly thrown into a domestic market that is underdeveloped, for
example in its infrastructure and its food processing. There are reasons why China can expand
its money supply by much greater proportions each year and still suffer far less inflation
than Russia.
Unlike China, Russia had already attained much of the technological expertise for the
equipment that it later decided it was unable to produce inside the country. A good example
of this are the turboexpanders whose design was perfected (though the basic idea was a bit
older) by Pyotr Kapisa in the 1930's in the USSR. This same technology went into the
turbopumps of the rocket engines in the Energia boosters. These engines are still to this
day, 30 years after the Soviet collapse, imported by the United States. As these rocket
engines including the turbopumps are still produced in Russia, the know-how to manufacture
was obviously not lost.
I read just the other day that as part of its import substitution program, Russia is
considering to produce the turboexpanders for processing natural gas (separating methane from
ethane) inside the country. Russia, with the world's largest natural gas reserves and
production, and as I described already possessing the expertise to produce the turboexpanders
needed for cryogenic separation, chose to hand over possibly billions of dollars to the West
to import this machinery over the years, only to be helpless when the West introduced
technological sanctions against its oil and gas sector. Very likely, in a couple of years we
will receive the announcement that the drive to produce them domestically has been abandoned,
after it was realized that their production will require new factories and new machinery,
which do not fall out of the sky in Russia as they apparently do in the West and in China.
Putin will announce that great business awaits whichever Western investor ready to provide
the funds. (Spoiler: They won't! The West is not very interested in investing into building
up Russia's industrial capabilities, preferring instead to loot its natural resources and to
suck out its skilled worked and scientists.)
While Russia sits and waits for higher oil prices or foreign dollar credit on the one
hand, and with unemployed skilled labor and rotting industrial infrastructure on the other
hand, China spends the equivalent of trillions of dollars (in yuan, obviously) into fixed
capital (not least infrastructure) each year. The funds for this are all created by
keystrokes by the PBOC and provide employment for the domestic workforce. You don't have to
ponder long on which model has been hugely successful, and which has been an unmitigated
disaster.
I can't find the exact figures right now, but Russia produces something like 300,000 STEM
graduates every year, more than the United States. (I may very well have read this originally
on your blog, by the way.) Many of them will still be forced to emigrate to find gainful
employment, even 20 years after the 1990's ended and Putin became President. These graduates
remain even in post-Soviet times of a very high quality, and undergraduate students in Russia
are trained at a higher level in mathematics and physics than in particular Americans are
even as post-graduates. By refusing to invest in its own scientific infrastructure and
industry the way China has done and does, Russia gives away all the education and training
that were provided to these students, especially to the same Western countries that are
seeking to destroy Russia. This is completely unforgivable.
I should add that I myself study physics in Germany. I have great appreciation for the
Russian methods of teaching mathematics and physics, as many do here. I have learned,
preferentially, mathematical analysis from Zorich, mechanics, electrodynamics etc. from
Landau-Lifschitz, much about Fourier series from Tolstov, and so on, and have very often been
awestruck and inspired in a mystical fashion by these works. I am not somehow unaware of the
unparalleled quality (in particular after the destruction of Germany in WWII) of the USSR's
and Russia's math/physics education or unfamiliar with the achievements of the USSR in
science and engineering. It's precisely because I am familar with them that it
frustrates me immensely how Russia's potential is needlessly wasted.
What many do not understand here is that overwhelming majority of Russians do not want to
deal with Europe and calls for new Iron Curtain are louder and louder and the process has
started. Of course, there is a lot of both contempt and schadenfreude on Russian part.
Andrei (132), do you have a link to an opinion poll that supports this? Thanks
in advance.
@ Digby | Oct 19 2020 0:28 utc | 136.. if you haven't already listened to the lavrov
interview that b linked to in his main post - it is a question and answer thing - you would
benefit from doing so and it would help answer you question some too.. see b's post at this
spot -"In a wide ranging interview with Russian radio stations" and hit that link
@ james (137)
Well, I looked into the interview. While it is informative in its own right (at some point it
briefly touches on Russo-Japanese relations), and some of the interviewers do show some
concerns, I'm still not sure how it helps answer my question (maybe I missed something?). My
initial impression was that Mr. Martyanov was referring to Russian civilians - not just radio
interviewers.
Thanks anyway for the heads up.
@ 138 digby... my impression was the radio interviewers questions were a reflection of the
general sentiment of the public.. i could be wrong, but it seems to me they have completely
given up on the west based on what they ask and say in their questions to lavrov...
on another note, you might enjoy engaging andrei more directly on his website which i will
share here...
The moment the New York Post reported on some of the sleazy, corrupt details contained on
Hunter Biden's hard drive, Twitter and Facebook, the social media giants most closely connected
to the way Americans exchange political information, went into overdrive to suppress the
information and protect Joe Biden. In the case of Facebook, though, perhaps one of those
protectors was, in fact, protecting herself.
The person currently in charge of Facebook's election integrity program is Anna Makanju .
That name probably doesn't mean a lot to you, but it should mean a lot – and in a
comforting way -- to Joe Biden.
Before ending up at Facebook, Makanju was a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic
Council. The Atlantic Council is an ostensibly non-partisan think tank that deals with
international affairs. In fact, it's a decidedly partisan organization.
In 2009, James L. Jones, the Atlantic Council's chairman left the organization to be
President Obama's National Security Advisor. Susan Rice, Richard Holbrooke, Eric Shinseki,
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chuck Hagel, and Brent Scowcroft also were all affiliated with the Atlantic Council
before they ended up in the Obama administration.
The Atlantic Council has received massive amounts of foreign funding over the years. Here's
one that should interest everyone: Burisma Holdings donated $300,000
dollars to the Atlantic Council, over the course of three consecutive years, beginning in
2016. The information below may explain why it began paying that money to the Council.
Not only was the Atlantic Council sending people into the Obama-Biden administration, but it
was also serving as an outside advisor. And that gets us back to Anna Makanju, the person
heading Facebook's misleadingly titled "election integrity program."
Makanju also worked at the Atlantic Council. The following is the relevant part of Makanju's
professional bio from her page at the Atlantic Council
(emphasis mine):
Anna Makanju is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative.
She is a public policy and legal expert working at Facebook, where she leads efforts to
ensure election integrity on the platform. Previously, she was the special policy adviser for
Europe and Eurasia to former US Vice President Joe Biden , senior policy adviser to
Ambassador Samantha Power at the United States Mission to the United Nations, director for
Russia at the National Security Council, and the chief of staff for European and NATO Policy
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has also taught at the Woodrow Wilson School
at Princeton University and worked as a consultant to a leading company focused on space
technologies.
Makanju was a player in the faux Ukraine impeachment. Early in December 2019, when the
Democrats were gearing up for the impeachment, Glenn Kessler
mentioned her in an article assuring Washington Post readers that, contrary to the Trump
administration's claims, there was nothing corrupt about Biden's dealings with Ukraine. He made
the point then that Biden now raises as a defense: Biden didn't pressure Ukraine to fire
prosecutor Viktor Shokin to protect Burisma; he did it because Shokin wasn't doing his job when
it came to investigating corruption.
Kessler writes that, on the same day in February 2016 that then-Ukrainian President
Poroshenko announced that Shokin had offered his resignation, Biden spoke to both Poroshenko
and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The White House version is that Biden gave both men pep
talks about reforming the government and fighting corruption. And that's where Makanju comes
in:
Anna Makanju, Biden's senior policy adviser for Ukraine at the time, also listened to the
calls and said release of the transcripts would only strengthen Biden's case that he acted
properly. She helped Biden prepare for the conversations and said they operated at a high
level, with Biden using language such as Poroshenko's government being "nation builders for a
transformation of Ukraine."
A reference to a private company such as Burisma would be "too fine a level of
granularity" for a call between Biden and the president of another country, Makanju told The
Fact Checker. Instead, she said, the conversation focused on reforms demanded by the
International Monetary Fund, methods to tackle corruption and military assistance. An
investigation of "Burisma was just not significant enough" to mention, she said.
Let me remind you, in case you forgot, that Burisma started paying the Atlantic Council a
lot of money in 2016, right when Makanju was advising Biden regarding getting rid of
Shokin.
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
That's right folks, the Facebook executive currently blocking all of the negative evidence
of Hunter and Joe Biden's corrupt activity in Ukraine is the same person who was coordinating
the corrupt activity between the Biden family payoffs and Ukraine.
You just cannot make this stuff up folks.
The incestuous networking between Democrats in the White House, Congress, the Deep State,
the media, and Big Tech never ends. That's why the American people wanted and still want Trump,
the true outsider, to head the government. They know that Democrats have turned American
politics into one giant Augean Stable and that Trump is
the Hercules who (we hope) can clean it out.
"... Russia is militarily secure and the 'west' knows that. It is one reason for the anti-Russian frenzy. Russia does not need to bother with the unprecedented hostility coming from Brussels and Washington. It can ignore it while taking care of its interests. ..."
"... As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint? ..."
"... The nightmare scenario for the Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game over! ..."
"... They don't want an actual war. They just ratchet up the tensions to keep Europe subdued and obedient and Russia off balance and thereby prevent any rapprochement between the two. ..."
"... The strong hatred and hostility coming from the US and the EU are due to the understanding that they don't have much time, and they must act now, or tomorrow it will be too late. ..."
"... Years ago Barack Obama gave speech to West Point graduates, proclaiming US moral and racial superiority (because they mix'n's*it) over whole world, Goebbels would be proud. Germany has long history of hating all those Slavs, and Israel... Lets not go there with how they threat those inferior brown people. ..."
"... Of course that end-point is money for military contractors and power for the FP elite in government and think-tanks which also means money. Yes, there are true-believers who see a mighty struggle between "good" (the USA) an "evil" (Russia/China) but they are incompetent. As for the American people they will believe whatever the NY Times says since they are militantly ignorant of history, geography, foreign affairs in general, and, above all, political science. ..."
"... The USA is lucky the USSR collapsed in 1991. If it managed to somehow survive for mere 17 years more, it would catch the 2008 capitalist meltdown ..."
"... It looks like the USA imported the Irish and imported their luck, too. ..."
"... This loathing was made blatantly manifest during WWII, of course, but it didn't die out because that generation and more likely their children remain with us. Ditto the generational Anglo-American hatred of Russians (yes, for the UK, and their haute bourgeoisie, it has deeper historical roots than the 20thC) and the USSR even more... ..."
"... "Maas added that Germany takes decisions related to its energy policy and energy supply 'here in Europe', saying that Berlin accepts ' the fact that the US had more than doubled its oil imports from Russia last year and is now the world's second largest importer of Russian heavy oil .'" [My Emphasis] ..."
"... The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies. ..."
"... One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home. ..."
"... At the time, I thought it was just Trump and his followers freaking out, now I think it's the NatSec people, who have finally seen the truth of their situation. As one can see in the Atlantic Council piece B posted, they are still trying to keep the old narrative patched together too. ..."
"... As I've said numerous times -- Fuck the US Empire and it's minion bitches. Jesse Ventura commented this past week that EVERY US Incumbent politician should be voted out of office this election. 99% of them are scum. ..."
"... That was the whole point of the first Cold War. It is the whole point of creating a Cold War 2.0. Absolutely nothing has changed. ..."
"... If the Russian Federation really has an ongoing imports substitution program, then this explains everything. Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the Russian economy in the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with cheap commodities to feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil. ..."
"... A Russia that also exports high-value commodities (manufactured commodities) is a direct threat to Germany, as it competes with it directly in the international market. That's the reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe, as Merkel once said: Europe must not become China's peninsula. China is Germany's main competitor, as it is also a big manufacturing exporter. ..."
"... Perhaps the US only has one script in the playbook: to balkanise, disrupt and foster 5th columns until their opponent becomes a dysfunctional or failed state. ..."
"... The US and EU attempts to break Russia's independent foreign policy are just stepping stones to the eventual goal of a breakup Russia itself, never forget Albright's comments in the 90s about how Siberia shouldn't belong to Russia alone. ..."
"... We may yet see a Cuban missile crisis scenario but it looks more likely to be caused by arms sales to Taiwan than conflict in the Caucasus. ..."
"... I also think its naive to see these as "fires burning at Russia's borders" instead of as deliberately set bear traps . Azerbaijan is in a strategic location between Russia and Iran and the conflict with Armenia comes just before Russia is about to sell advanced weapons to Iran. ..."
Over the last years the U.S. and its EU puppies have ratcheted up their pressure on Russia.
They seem to believe that they can compel Russia to follow their diktat. They can't. But the
illusion that Russia will finally snap, if only a few more sanctions ar applied or a few more
houses in Russia's neighborhood are set on fire, never goes away.
The fires burning at Russia's borders in the Caucasus are an add-on to the disorder and
conflict on its Western border in neighboring Belarus, where fuel is poured on daily by
pyromaniacs at the head of the European Union acting surely in concert with Washington.
Yesterday we learned of the decision of the European Council to impose sanctions on
President Lukashenko, a nearly unprecedented action when directed against the head of state
of a sovereign nation.
...
It is easy enough to see that the real intent of the sanctions is to put pressure on the
Kremlin, which is Lukashenko's guarantor in power, to compound the several other measures
being implemented simultaneously in the hope that Putin and his entourage will finally crack
and submit to American global hegemony as Europe did long ago.
...
The anti-Russia full tilt ahead policy outlined above is going on against a background of the
U.S. presidential electoral campaigns. The Democrats continue to try to depict Donald Trump
as "Putin's puppy," as if the President has been kindly to his fellow autocrat while in
office. Of course, under the dictates of the Democrat-controlled House and with the
complicity of the anti-Russian staff in the State Department, in the Pentagon, American
policy towards Russia over the entire period of Trump's presidency has been one of never
ending ratcheting up of military, informational, economic and other pressures in the hope
that Vladimir Putin or his entourage would crack. Were it not for the nerves of steel of Mr.
Putin and his close advisers , the irresponsible pressure policies outlined above could
result in aggressive behavior and risk taking by Russia that would make the Cuban missile
crisis look like child's play.
The U.S. arms industry lobby, in form of the Atlantic Council, confirms
the 'western' strategy Doctorow describes. It calls for 'ramping up on Russia' with even more
sanctions:
Key to raising the costs to Russia is a more proactive transatlantic strategy for sanctions
against the Russian economy and Putin's power base, together with other steps to reduce
Russian energy leverage and export revenue. A new NATO Russia policy should be pursued in
tandem with the European Union (EU), which sets European sanctions policy and faces the same
threats from Russian cyberattacks and disinformation. At a minimum, EU sanctions resulting
from hostilities in Ukraine should be extended, like the Crimea sanctions, for one year
rather than every six months. Better yet, allies and EU members should tighten sanctions
further and extend them on an indefinite basis until Russia ends its aggression and takes
concrete steps toward de-escalation.
It also wants Europe to pay for weapons in the Ukraine and Georgia:
A more dynamic NATO strategy for Russia should go hand in hand with a more proactive policy
toward Ukraine and Georgia in the framework of an enhanced Black Sea strategy. The goal
should be to boost both partners' deterrence capacity and reduce Moscow's ability to
undermine their sovereignty even as NATO membership remains on the back burner for the time
being.
As part of this expanded effort, European allies should do more to bolster Ukraine and
Georgia's ground, air, and naval capabilities, complementing the United States' and Canada's
efforts that began in 2014.
The purpose of the whole campaign against Russia, explains the Atlantic Council author, is
to subordinate it to U.S. demands:
Relations between the West and Moscow had begun to deteriorate even before Russia's watershed
invasion of Ukraine, driven principally by Moscow's fear of the encroachment of Western
values and their potential to undermine the Putin regime. With the possibility of a further
sixteen years of Putin's rule, most experts believe relations are likely to remain
confrontational for years to come. They argue that the best the United States and its allies
can do is manage this competition and discourage aggressive actions from Moscow. However, by
pushing back against Russia more forcefully in the near and medium term, allies are more
likely to eventually convince Moscow to return to compliance with the rules of the liberal
international order and to mutually beneficial cooperation as envisaged under the 1997
NATO-Russia Founding Act.
The 'rules of the liberal international order' are of course whatever the U.S. claims they
are. They may change at any moment and without notice to whatever new rules are the most
convenient for U.S. foreign policy.
But as Doctorow said above, Putin and his advisors stay calm and ignore such trash despite
all the hostility expressed against them.
One of Putin's close advisors is of course Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In a
wide
ranging interview with Russian radio stations he recently touched on many of the issues
Doctorow also mentions. With regards to U.S. strategy towards Russia Lavrov diagnoses
:
Sergey Lavrov : [...] You mentioned in one of your previous questions that no matter what we
do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us, and undermine our efforts in the economy,
politics, and technology. These are all elements of one approach.
Question : Their national security strategy states that they will do so.
Sergey Lavrov : Of course it does, but it is articulated in a way that decent people can
still let go unnoticed, but it is being implemented in a manner that is nothing short of
outrageous.
Question : You, too, can articulate things in a way that is different from what you would
really like to say, correct?
Sergey Lavrov : It's the other way round. I can use the language I'm not usually using to
get the point across. However, they clearly want to throw us off balance , and not only by
direct attacks on Russia in all possible and conceivable spheres by way of unscrupulous
competition, illegitimate sanctions and the like, but also by unbalancing the situation near
our borders, thus preventing us from focusing on creative activities. Nevertheless,
regardless of the human instincts and the temptations to respond in the same vein, I'm
convinced that we must abide by international law.
Russia does not accept the fidgety 'rules of the liberal international order'. Russia
sticks to the law which is, in my view, a much stronger position. Yes, international law often
gets broken. But as Lavrov
said elsewhere , one does not abandon traffic rules only because of road accidents.
Russia stays calm, no matter what outrageous nonsense the U.S. and EU come up with. It can
do that because it knows that it not only has moral superiority by sticking to the law but it
also has the capability to win a fight. At one point the interviewer even jokes
about that :
Question : As we say, if you don't listen to Lavrov, you will listen to [Defense Minister]
Shoigu.
Sergey Lavrov : I did see a T-shirt with that on it. Yes, it's about that.
Yes, it's about that. Russia is militarily secure and the 'west' knows that. It is one
reason for the anti-Russian frenzy. Russia does not need to bother with the unprecedented
hostility coming from Brussels and Washington. It can ignore it while taking care of its
interests.
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
Posted by b on October 17, 2020 at 16:31 UTC | Permalink
thanks b.... that lavrov interview that karlof1 linked to previously is
worth its weight in gold...
it gives a clear understanding of how russia sees what is
happening here on the world stage... as you note cheap talk from the atlantic council 'rules
of the liberal international order' is no substitute for 'international law' which is what
russia stands on.... as for the usa campaign to tar russia and claim trump is putins puppet..
apparently this stupidity really sells in the usa.. in fact, i have a close friend here in
canada from the usa with family in the usa has bought this hook, line and sinker as well..
and he is ordinarily a bright guy!
as for the endpoint - the usa and the people of the usa don't mind themselves about
endpoints... it is all about being in the moment, living a hollywood fantasy off the ongoing
party of wall st... the thought this circus will end, is not something many of them
contemplate.. that is what it looks like to me.. maga, lol...
Belarus - this is happenstance, not long term planning. Like Venezuela - indeed neither
original Presidential candidate nor his wife had a Wikipedia entry a week or so before being
announced as candidate (much like Guaido 2 weeks before Trump "made" him President.
Yes the Western media make the most of it, and yes there are many in place in and besides the
media whose job it is to maximise any noise. But little is happening in Belarus. Sanctioning
is all anyone can do now. (Sanctions = punishment therefore proof of guilt without trial or
evidence).
US pressure is based on the Dem vs Rep "I am tougher on Russia than you" game spurred on
by the MIC.
European pressure is based on the Euro Defence force concept and a low key but real desire to
rid itself of Nato. So again we have Nato saying "without US/us Europe would be soft on
Russia" and Europe saying we are tough on Russia whatever.
What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
It is about driving a wedge between Europe and Russia. The nightmare scenario for the
Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game
over!
They don't want an actual war. They just ratchet up the tensions to keep Europe subdued
and obedient and Russia off balance and thereby prevent any rapprochement between the
two.
Putin has repeatedly stated he wants a Lisbon to Vladivostok free trade area.
The Anglo-Americans will never permit that. That Europe is committed to a course that is
against their own best interest shows just how subservient they are to the
Anglo-Americans.
I think it was the first head of NATO that said the purpose of the organization is to
"keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the US in"
There is no endpoint. Those who argue for it, the Western think-tank industry and security
and intelligence industry, are recipients of huge sums of money. It is bread and butter for
large numbers of people. And the acceptance of the conclusions and advice of the immense
stacks of papers thus produced mean money towards the defense industry and the cyber warfare
industry. In the end, all this is driven by elites' fear of their own populations. Sowing FUD
(Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) makes these populations docile. Rinse and repeat.
>>As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is.
The reason was probably the new Russian Constitution, which is basically a declaration of
independence from the West. This has caused serious triggerings in western elites, although
their reaction took some time to crystalise due to the Covid Pandemic.
>>What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
The endpoint is - EU and NATO move into Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Georgia, Belarus,
Armenia.
A puppet government of someone like Navalny is installed Russia. That government further
gives up Crimea, Kaliningrad and Northen Caucasus. In the long run, a soft partition of Russia into 3 parts follows (as per the Grand
Chessboard 1997).
The possibility for that happening is overall negative, as the West is on a long term
decline, that is, it will be weaker in 2030, and even weaker in 2040 or 2050.
OECD economies were 66 % of the world economy in 2010 but that share is estimated to drop
to 38 % of the world economy in 2050 (with further drops after that).
The strong hatred and hostility coming from the US and the EU are due to the understanding
that they don't have much time, and they must act now, or tomorrow it will be too
late.
Well, the hostility in "western" "elite" (rulers) towards Russia is on much more primal level
than money and power IMO. It is pure racial hatred combined with Übermensch God complex.
Main controllers in modern "west" are US, Israel and Germany.
Years ago Barack Obama gave speech to West Point graduates, proclaiming US moral and
racial superiority (because they mix'n's*it) over whole world, Goebbels would be proud.
Germany has long history of hating all those Slavs, and Israel... Lets not go there with how
they threat those inferior brown people.
"What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
Of course that end-point is money for military contractors and power for the FP elite in
government and think-tanks which also means money. Yes, there are true-believers who see a
mighty struggle between "good" (the USA) an "evil" (Russia/China) but they are incompetent.
As for the American people they will believe whatever the NY Times says since they are
militantly ignorant of history, geography, foreign affairs in general, and, above all,
political science.
The problem as I see it is Europe generally, and Germany in particular. Why do they follow
Washington diktats?
Well let's see, the USA is $30 trillion in debt and counting, faces an upcoming economic
depression to rival the 'great' one, with a citizenry on the brink of civil war and a
political system that makes a 'banana republic' look like ancient Greece. Desperate is as
desperate does.
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
For a very simple reason: there's no other option. Capitalism can only work in one way. There's a limit to how much capitalism can reform
within itself without self-destructing.
The West is also suffering from the "Whale in a Swimming Pool" dilemma: it has grown so
hegemonic, so big and so gloated that its strategic options have narrowed sharply. It has not
much more room for maneuver left, its bluffs become less and less effective. As a result, its
strategies have become increasingly linear, extremely predictable. The "whale in a pool
dilemma" is not a problem when your inner workings (domestic economy) is flourishing; but it
becomes one when the economy begins to stagnate and, ultimately, decline (albeit slowly).
On a side note, it's incredible how History is non-linear, full of surprises. The Russian
Federation is inferior to the Soviet Union in every aspect imaginable. Except for one factor:
it now has an ascendant China on its side in a time where the West is declining. (Historical)
context is everything.
The USA is lucky the USSR collapsed in 1991. If it managed to somehow survive for mere 17
years more, it would catch the 2008 capitalist meltdown and have an opportunity to gain the
upper hand over capitalism (plus have a strong China on its side). Socialism/communism
wouldn't have been demoralized the way it was in the 1990s, opening a huge flank for
revolutions in the Western Hemisphere (specially Latin America). NATO would be much weaker.
Since the USSR was closed to capitalism, the USA wouldn't be able to enforce as crippling
economic sanctions on China and the USSR. The USSR would be able to "reform and open up" in a
much safer environment (by copying China, instead of Yeltsin's neoliberalism), thus gaining
the opportunity to make a Perestroika that could actually work.
But it didn't happen. Well, what can I say? It looks like the USA imported the Irish and imported their luck,
too.
Abe @7 - I would agree and have raised somewhere (old age?) that part of what we are seeing
in this latest western-NATO cooked up charade re Navalny is, in part at least, a deep
historical supremacist loathing of the Slavs an in general and the Russians in particular by
the haute bourgeois Germans. This loathing was made blatantly manifest during WWII, of
course, but it didn't die out because that generation and more likely their children remain
with us. Ditto the generational Anglo-American hatred of Russians (yes, for the UK, and their
haute bourgeoisie, it has deeper historical roots than the 20thC) and the USSR even more...
The pressure on Russia is enormous and I would enlarge on the economic sanctions aspect
(siege warfare): Belarus, Armenia-Azerbaijan (Erdogan once again playing his role for the
US/NATO - in this business, Iran is also a target), Kyrgyzstan - all on or very close to
Russia's borders and thus dividing and draining (intention) Russia's focus and $$$$ (the
Brzezinski game) in order to open it up to the western corporate-capitalist bloodsuckers. And
I suspect that as the US (and UK) economies drain away, so these border country "revolts,"
"protests" etc. will grow...
Russia really needs to join with China in full comity. Bugger the west - they do not
respect the rights of either country to their own culture, societal structures, mores,
perspectives...nor apparently even those countries' rights to their own coastal waters, air
space...
One wonders how the USA would react to Chinese and/or Russian warships in the Gulf or
traversing (lengthwise) the Atlantic or Pacific????
"Maas added that Germany takes decisions related to its energy policy and energy supply 'here in Europe', saying
that Berlin accepts ' the fact that the US had more than doubled its oil imports from Russia last year and is now the
world's second largest importer of Russian heavy oil .'" [My Emphasis]
Now isn't that the interesting bit of news!! The greatest fracking nation on the planet needs to import heavy oil (likely
Iranian, unlikely Venezuelan) from its #1 adversary. As for the end game, I've written many times what I see as the goal and
don't see any need to add more.
"The Russians are coming' is a long standing fear built the American psyche almost from the
very start.
Russian colonization of the California Territory outnumbered the US population.
The Monroe Doctrine was all about that,not S.America at all. The Brits ruled S.America by
mercantile means until
WWI cut the sea lanes, then and only then did it fall into the sphere of Yankee control.
Then there is Alaska. The Sewards Folly documents are almost certainly fakes, the verified
Russian copy says a 100year LEASE,not a sale. The National Archives refuses examination by any
but its own experts. Unless they are forgeries and they know it there can be no real reason for
their stance.
There is much more background to the antipathy than many are aware.
@bjd (4) You nailed it, my friend. Cold wars are immensely profitable for certain sectors of
the economy and the parasites who run them. The supreme imperative is always to have
enemies--really big, bad, dangerous enemies--whether real or imagined. I will be voting for
Biden, but I don't have much hope for positive change in American foreign policy. Russia,
China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. will continue to be vilified as nations to be feared and hated.
The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic
repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and
British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical
thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies.
One of the best ways to
lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name
of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home.
After several color
revolutions succeeded, the Russiagate/Spygate op was carried out in the US, with British
assistance. This op has been largely successful, though there has been limited resistance
against its whole fake edifice as well as with the logic of Cold War2.0. Nevertheless,
Spygate has shocked many tens of millions of Dems into a stupor, while millions more are
dazed and manipulated by the Chinese bogeyman being manufactured by Trump. The most dangerous
result of the martial law lite mentality caused by Spygate and its MSM purveyors is the
growing support for censorship of free speech coming mostly from the Dems, such as Schiff and
Warner. The danger inherent in this trend became very clear when FaceBook and Twitter engaged
in massive and unprecedented arbitrary censorship of the New York Post and of various
Trump-related accounts. This is the kind of thing you do during Stage 1 of a coup. Surely it
was at least in part an experiment to see how various power points in the US would respond.
Even though Twitter ended the censorship later, it was probably a successful experiment
designed to gauge reactions and areas of resistance. In November, there could be further,
more serious experiments/ops. If so, the current expansionist movements being made and
planned by the US and NATO may well be integral parts of a new non-democratic model of
"American-style democracy" -- not constitution-based but "rules-based."
"As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
I think the answer is clear. The US economy is collapsing and likewise those wedded to the US
dollar system. The USA spent 90% more than it received last year.
They are desperate to have access to Russia's largely untapped resources and it doesn't want
any competition for its position as world hegemon. Thus Russia and China are in the
crosshairs.
Fortunately the corruption in the USA has resulted in a weaker military capability over time
and they are reduced to behaving in clandestine and terroristic ways to try and achieve this.
The turmoil enveloping the USA is scape goated on Trump and Covid19 but is ultimately due to
their faltering economy and a big helping of financial corruption. Talk about your chickens
coming home to roost
Sounds like thunder, all those chickens. I appeared to me that whomever is in charge here, they started pulling all the levers they
could lay a hand on a couple weeks back in terms of stirring up trouble. Throwing sand in the
eyes of ones enemy.
At the time, I thought it was just Trump and his followers freaking out, now I think it's
the NatSec people, who have finally seen the truth of their situation. As one can see in the
Atlantic Council piece B posted, they are still trying to keep the old narrative patched
together too.
Politfiction, or what could have happened if is an entertaining but futile exercise.
Everybody agrees, there was no need for the USSR to dissolve, it was like a big jackpot for
an amazed rival that rushed to declare himself the winner. The price has been high, on both
sides of the fence but of course with a lot more victims and destruction on the other side of
the fallen wall. Gorbachov a tragic figure and Yelstyn a sinister one, in spite of his being
a clown, a tragic one at that, bombing his parliament and laughing at the world together with
the degenerate Clinton, the 90's were somber indeed. The west paid its price, a self declared
victory that did not bring any benefit, the peace dividend never was, to the contrary,
military budgets never stopped growing year after year. The end of history was proclaimed, no
need to match or better the rival ideology, there is none, so proles you better stop
complaining, or else and that's where we are.
Just to repeat the obvious, for the US actually to go to war is out of the question these
days -- the US public would not tolerate the casualties. Therefore other methods have to be
found to achieve the same objectives -- the maintenance of an eternal enemy in 1984 style, to
keep up military budgets and world hegemony, neither of which are the elite ready to abandon.
Economic sanctions have been the weapon of choice in the age of Trump, but there isn't really
any other. Sometimes they are better aimed and sometimes not.
In any case I am not sure I agree that the EU is really submissive to the US in this
respect. They don't want to offend the US, and some leaders have genuinely swallowed the
Kool-Aid, but others haven't, and the continuation of Nordstream 2 is where they haven't.
Doctorow wrote "Of course, under the dictates of the Democrat-controlled House and with the
complicity of the anti-Russian staff in the State Department, in the Pentagon, American
policy towards Russia over the entire period of Trump's presidency..."
The Senate is more
important for foreign affairs and has been Republican for Trump's entire term. The House was
also Republican for half of Trump's term. Lastly the "staff" is not really able to run things
in the presence of a minimally competent administrator, at the head of the State Department,
acting under leadership of a competent, energetic president. There is no sign Doctorow is
particularly intelligent or insightful.
I have long ago lost track of where the bar's consensus on Turkey is, whether the failing
US means Erdogan must become the follower of the skilled, brave and indefatigable Putin...or
whether his sultanship is suicidally persisting in thinking Russia cannot actually deliver
anything his sultanship really needs and wants. At any rate it is entirely unclear what
"international law" Lavrov thinks supports Russia.
As to the China Russia "alliance," the difficulty is that Putin has so very little to
offer.
I can hazard a guess to answer your final question. I think corruption is probably the main
reason. Those involved in this are mostly interested in self-enrichment through the
gullibility of their societies. I don't think the stenographers and the hot-heads neo liberals
pushing for a show-down with Russia are intent on committing suicide by igniting a hot war
with Russia, but they hope that Moscow could be intimidated and surrender eventually. As you
rightly said, it is a pipe dream of course, but they get paid heavily for the hot air they
emit.
'As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?'
The endpoint is quite clear: 'Global Governance, by Global Institutions under control of
the 'Globalists' (i.e. the Davos crowd).' For this, the 'Globalists' must subdue Russia.
Russia is not only blocking the 'Globalist's' plans in its own right, but, since 2013, it
has been protecting other nations from falling prey to 'Globalist' colonization (Syria,
Eastern Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Belarus, etc.). And Russia is the lynch-pin to
enable the 'Globalists' to corner China.
In addition, together with China, Russia is offering the world an alternative to
'Globalism', a 'Multi-Polar World Order' that is much more attractive than becoming a
'Globalist' vassal.
For the 'Globalists' time has become critical. They are facing revolts in their home
countries (Trump, Brexit, Gilets-Jaunes, etc.). The main source of their geo-political power,
(since they can no longer challenge Russia and China militarily) the U.S. dollar, is on the
verge of collapse as the World's reserve currency. And the economic growth of China means
that China has become the most important trading partner for most of the World's nations.
The window of opportunity for the 'Globalists' to create their 'Global Governance' system
may have already closed. But, as usual, the losers of any war are usually the last to know.
The desperation with which the 'Globalists' are fighting their last battles, against Trump,
against Russia, against Brexit, is testimony to the fact that for the 'Globalists' losing
this war means their extinction as a ruling elite.
c'mon steve.... what is the usa offering
turkey here?? they could give a rats ass about turkey, or any other country in the middle
east, excluding their 24/7 darling israel... the usa presence on the world stage is meant to
sabotage any and all who don't bow down to the exceptional nations philosophy of 'might makes
right'... the obvious benefits of russia-china synergy are apparent to both countries and
they continue to capitalize on this, in spite of what you read in the usa msm.. russia as a
lot to offer china... the fact that the nation apparently masquerading as a gas station has
so much to offer is also the reason that all the pillage of the 90's hasn't turned out the
way the harvard boys had envisioned... that you can't see the vast wealth and value of russia
has nothing to do with the reality on the ground... keep the blinders on, lol...
The EU's attitude to the US is much like its attitude to Britain and Brexit. They don't want
to split with the US, because, after all, there might be war, and NATO would be needed, but
it's becoming increasingly less likely. In the same way, they would have preferred to stay in
good relations with Britain, until Britain insisted on a hostile Brexit. Basic interests come
first, and that will also be the case in the future with the US.
Russia and China are already de-facto alliance. Militarily they cooperate at every level
and will soon extend shared anti ballistic shield over China too. It is clear to any outside
enemy (except for most retarded ones) that nuclear attack on one will be treated as attack on
both of them. Not having formal alliance is somewhat an advantage (eg. limited attack on one
of them by enemy that can be easily handled will not complicate situation) as it controls
escalation. Lack of escalation control led to WW1 so...
Apart for military, Russia is one of rare fully self sufficient countries in the world.
Having vast natural resources and territory, knowledge and industrial capacity to built
EVERYTHING they need, they can afford to be sanctioned by whole world and close borders
completely if needed. Having 100% secure land borders with China and already huge (and
increasing) trade, including oil & gas, only make Russia's self sufficiency even more
stable. It also strategically benefits China, as its main weakness is lack of those same
resources Russia has in abundance and is willing to share.
So, if sh*t hits the fan, and Russia and China say f*ck it and close borders to rest of
the world (even though China trade profits wouldn't be happy), both countries form self
sufficient symbiosis that can carry on for centuries.
Which brings me to all those little fires US is starting in Russia's neighborhood. They
don't matter. Unlike USSR, Russia's mission is self preservation only, not changing whole
world into communist utopia (even though @VK here repeatedly fails to acknowledge it). And
survive it will. All it needs is to wait few generations.
Unlike Russia, collective west is going down the drain. Soon enough, all those Slav hating
in Bundestag, UK parlament and elsewhere will have more urgent problem of Islamic head
choppers that became majority in their countries, while US will have problem to recruit
enough men,women and "others" from pool of rainbow colored too-fat and unfit, godless faggot
from broken family snowflakes.
As China has been mentioned, I think it is worth saying that although I have full confidence
that Putin will maintain his usual good sense in international conflicts, I have more doubts
about the Chinese regime. I don't really understand their policy, which is becoming more
nationalistic and edgy. I don't see why. They have great economic success; they should be
more relaxed, but they aren't. The first signs came with their attitude towards the Muslims
in China. One, the concentration camps in Xinjiang - in that case the Uyghur jihadists in Syria
must have provoked anxiety in Beijing. But also increasing pressure on the Hui Muslims in
central China (who are native Han) to become more "national". Some years ago they weren't
bothered. Now they are.
This suggests that the question of Taiwan could blow up, apart from HongKong. They are
less tolerant in Beijing.
It is about driving a wedge between Europe and Russia. The nightmare scenario for the
Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game
over!
It is a tired and false concept. There cannot be a "triangle" which includes Germany, due
to Germany's increasingly diminishing status. Moreover, Russians do not view Europe as a
viable part of Russia's future--the cultural gap is gigantic and continues to grow--the only
place of Europe in general, and Germany in particular, in Russian plans is that of a market
for Russia's hydrocarbons and other exports. A rather successful program of
export-substitution in Russia in the last 6 years dropped technological importance of Germany
for Russia dramatically. In some fields, such as high-power turbines made Germany irrelevant,
as Siemens learned the hard way recently.
"U.S. and its EU puppies have ratcheted up their pressure...
The 'rules of the liberal international order' are of course whatever the U.S. claims they
are. They may change at any moment and without notice to whatever new rules are the most
convenient for U.S. foreign policy."
Outstanding assessment and thank you for addressing it.
As I've said numerous times -- Fuck the US Empire and it's minion bitches. Jesse Ventura
commented this past week that EVERY US Incumbent politician should be voted out of office
this election. 99% of them are scum.
Every politician, corporate CEO Banker and Media whore, Judge, CIA filth should have a
pitchfork held to their throat and be tried for treason and war crimes. MIC/Pentagon should
be destroyed. Majority of Americans are propagandized dumbfucks. Sounds a bit like an
American Cultural Revolution is exactly the medicine.
There will come a day for reckoning and true justice, hopefully it is sooner than later.
There should be no mercy. For those committing their treasonous crimes, they know better but
have chosen poorly, they should be broken.
Russia, Putin and Lavrov have remained the adults in the room while the Empire Brats
tantrum themselves.
Anyone else notice that the Anti-Russia rhetoric increased after Snowden was trapped in
Russia?
I agree with Ike and others who think the US money situation is the problem. But I also
think that the underlying endpoint is hyperinflation, not just the loss of the dollars'
"reserve status." Hyperinflation is when so much "money" has been produced that it no longer
has any value and the Central Bank cannot control what comes next.
There is a point at which people want to get rid of dollars and panic buy or "invest" in
assets, or anything solid or simply anything (Gold, land etc. bread) At which time the money
they want to get rid of looses value continuously, as others don't want it either. A Rush for
the exits happens.
Who has the MOST money - the Rich and the sovereign Nations? (Althought the latter may
also be in the same situation as the US.) Russia has more or less got rid of all it's US
holdings. The Chinese must be alarmed by the thought of the Fed issuing ONLY new-digicoins,
and then the US simply refusing to pay debts to the Chinese at some future point. They might
want out now. Not so much dumping everything but a steady reduction of US denominated
"assets" or reserves.
Most of this becomes self-sustaining panic, as happened in the Weimar Rep. What can be
considered "assets" to grab? ie Russia, minerals and it's Gold, China and its Gold. Then the
choice might be to invest in the US military and use it while there is a residue of belief in
the Dollar.
The only thing about a panic exit is that it happens very quickly. About a month or two
between when the first bright sparks try to get out and when everyone else tries to grab part
of a rapidly restricted choice of things to buy with an unending pile of "empty" dollars.
Germany should've been conquered by the Soviet Union entirely as it was won with Soviet,
largely Russian, blood. Germany is increasingly irrelevant to Russia's needs now as Martyanov
points out above. Germany's existence today should be that of a Russian oblast, same with
Eastern Ukraine from Kharkiv to Mariupol and Belarus.
Ask yourself what Germany produces that Russia can't produce for itself with import
substitution schemes or similar schemes within a 10 year period. Russia's GDP by PPP is the
size of Germany's already and depending on how it deals with the impact of COVID, may
continue an upward year-on-year growth trend (People's Republic of China is the only major
economy forecast to expand in fiscal quarter this year). The fact of the matter is that
Russia's population is much larger, its industrial base, at least in heavy industry, is
nearly self sufficient (not much light industry to speak of) and Germany depends on Russian
oil and gas to keep its lights on. Russia can carry on without Germany just fine. There may
be a noticeable impact now if Russia were cornered into doing that, but it's nothing that
can't be overcome in short order.
Thank you, b, and before reading comments, I will give my take on your last question:
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
The whole 'rules based order' became very clear when the Trans Pacific Partnership, TPP,
was being debated,and what happened then is what many have noted, the 'rules' were all to
advantage the US. So, you might say that was the beginning of the end for the oligarchy. And
the partnership reformed after it had taken out that problem, to be fair to all participants.
All the oligarchy can do is keep on keeping on until it can't. This is really about survival
for that class of individuals who intend to keep on being in charge here in the US and
wherever its tentacles have reached. The only endpoint they see is their continuance. And I
suppose their fear is that it is simply not possible for that to be the case.
Hopefully there will just come a point where, as in Plato's Republic, the dialogue simply
moves on. There, it begins in the home of the ancient one, Cephalus, with a polite
discussion, and the old man says his piece, to which Socrates responds:
"What you say is very fine indeed, Cephalus...but as to this very thing, justice, shall
we so simply assert that it is the truth and giving back what a man has taken from another,
or is to do these very things sometimes just and sometimes unjust? Take this case as an
example of what I mean: everyone would surely say that if a man takes weapons from a friend
when the latter is of sound mind, and the friend demands them back when he is mad, one
shouldn't give back such things, and the man who gives them back would not be just, and
moreover, one should not be willing to tell someone in this state the whole truth."
"What you say is right," he said.
[Allan Bloom translation]
In the dialogue, the old man leaves to 'look after the sacrifices', handing down the
argument to his heir, Polymarchus. To me, Socrates has adroitly caused this to come about in
much the fashion that Lavrov answers his press questioners in the link b provides. That is,
he has done so with diplomacy, and a lesson to his younger companions which perhaps Cephalus
is no longer able to understand. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Yet in your disparaging comments of Europe and Germany in particular you proceed to show
how successful the Anglo-Americans have been in creating a wedge between Europe and Russia
actually validating my original point.
"Keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the US in"
That was the whole point of the first Cold War. It is the whole point of creating a Cold War 2.0. Absolutely nothing has changed.
By whom exactly? US & several euro puppets? Typical racist thinking that Europe and
its former colonies are somehow "the world" or "the international community".
Meanwhile opinion of Russia is positive in India (1,3 billion people, more than the whole
West combined) and China (1,4 billion, more than the whole West combined).
Those who don't spend for their own weapons, spend for their master's weapons (like
europuppets).
Btw your master (US) spends on weapons too. What are you going to do about it?
As was rightly pointed out in that discussion, British foreign policy towards Europe was
to ensure that no single power was to be allowed to achieve hegemony over Europe. The famous
"balance of power"
@ Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 17 2020 19:41 utc | 36
If the Russian Federation really has an ongoing imports substitution program, then this
explains everything. Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the Russian economy in
the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with cheap commodities to
feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil.
A Russia that also exports high-value commodities (manufactured commodities) is a direct
threat to Germany, as it competes with it directly in the international market. That's the
reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe, as Merkel once said: Europe must not
become China's peninsula. China is Germany's main competitor, as it is also a big
manufacturing exporter.
Unlike China, Russia lacks the weight of population and reliance on the globalist capitalist
system to throw around, China will not shut itself up for Russia when it can trade with EU
& Turkey instead.
Russia is increasingly put into weak position, where Russian troops are sent to do the
dying, while the Chinese business whoop in afterwards to get all the juicy business deals. In
other words, Russia does the dying while China enriches itself.
Russia only hope is that it becomes friendly with the EU, otherwise, it is going to be
crushed between two superpowers, the EU and China.
I think the point of the sanctions and all the pressure on Russia is an appeal to Russian
elite, Just a reminder that they are isolated from the rest of the elite and hope that it
would help them throw Russian nationalists from power. I think this might succeed as Putin
did no really take on the new Russian capitalist class, and that will probably be his
undoing.
@vk 36 That's the reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe
BRI in Europe - 16 countries:
Austria*, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine
* shaky
SCMP - Aug 17, 2020:
China's rail shipments to Europe set records as demand surges for Chinese goods amid
coronavirus
> July saw 1,232 cargo trains travel from Chinese cities to European destinations –
the most ever in a single month > Once regarded as merely ornamental, freight service along belt and road trade routes has
become increasingly important as exporters turn to railway transport. . .
here
Lavrov, Shoigu and Putin are calm, but the domestic economic situation is not.
While I have noted before that Russia is better positioned to survive low oil prices than
Saudi Arabia - it doesn't mean this is fun.
Couple that with COVID-19 economic losses, and stresses on the domestic Russian economy are
enormous.
Among other signs: after bouncing around in the 60s for some time, the ruble just hit 80 to
the USD. Anecdotally, I am hearing a lot of direct personal accounts of businesses not being
able to pay their people because their own customers aren't paying.
Russia has done relatively little extra to assist with COVID-19 related economic harms, so
this isn't great either.
@ laguerre -- The interview with Pepe Escobar deals with the whole range of issues in the
hybrid war against China, but the information you're looking for Regarding the suppression
and re-education of Muslim terrorists starts just past the 1-hour point.
the Chinese regime. I don't really understand their policy, which is becoming more
nationalistic and edgy.
No, it's become more multi-national and sensible. Take the BRI: Launched in 2013, it was
initially planned to revive ancient Silk Road trade routes between Eurasia and China, but the
scope of the BRI (Belt & Road Initiative) has since extended to cover 138 countries,
including 38 in sub-Saharan Africa and 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
they should be more relaxed
China has been an open target for the US, which doesn't even mention China any more (Pompeo)
but dumps on the "CCP" (Chinese Communist Party). China (like Russia) has not responded in
kind.
their attitude towards the Muslims in China
The US State Dept slash CIA has been fomenting terrorism in Xinjiang for years and China has
had to contend with it.
the question of Taiwan could blow up
Taiwan like some other places in the world, including Hong Kong, has been another place where
the US has fomented instability. This has increased recently with Taiwan "president" Tsai
declaring that Taiwan (January this year, BBC interview) is a separate country, which it
isn't. China is being pushed to do his Abe Lincoln thing and save the union.
They are less tolerant in Beijing
Chinese by nature are tolerant, and Beijing has been tolerant in the face of US naval fleets
and bomber visits in their near seas, plus political attacks, sanctions and tariffs.
66 watch what they do and have done and not what they.
Construction started four years ago on enlarging and modernization of the railway marshaling
yards in Duisburg.
The volume of Chinese freight trains arriving daily is already quite amazing and planned to
increase to one every hour next month 24/7.They are not returning empty. The oil and gas
pipeline corridors also had ten plus railway tracks built alongside .Germany is already at the
center of the BRI expansion into Germany and it started four years ago.
@ Posted by: H.Schmatz | Oct 17 2020 21:40 utc | 60
That's why Germany is not full anti-China.
--//--
@ Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 17 2020 22:12 utc | 66
Just because Germany doesn't want it, it doesn't mean it's not getting.
--//--
@ Posted by: c1ue | Oct 17 2020 22:18 utc | 67
I agree. Capitalism is a dead end for Russia. It's all about when Putin dies. After he dies, it will be a coin flip for Russia: it could
continue its course or it could get another Yeltsin.
Germany being against BRI is news to me. Any proof? And it is very unlikely that China will be able to fool the europeans lile the
american. The EU has regulations and aren't purely about profit.
Perhaps the US only has one script in the playbook: to balkanise, disrupt and foster 5th
columns until their opponent becomes a dysfunctional or failed state. Then send in the
acronyms (IMF etc), establish a provisional administration under trusted local elites but
commandeer resource-rich areas under direct provincial command. That's US imperialism and it
won't stop until they encounter opposition effective enough to resist it. That's why they'll
never forgive Putin for Syria. In the end they want to finish doing to Russia (by other
means...) what the Germans began in '41; and not just Russia, but anywhere their markets are
prevented from calling the shots.
thank you, @72. the chinese learned much from their century of humiliation & clearly one
of the important lessons was trade both ways, rather than take their silver, sell them tea,
silks & porcelain & need nothing they offered.
That's an excellent observation, and a concept I had not encountered before. Thank you.
How consciously China holds that narrative, if at all, I couldn't say.
But it's a great dynamic - kind of like keeping your enemies close. And if the German
increase in reciprocal railroad trade with China is as it was stated up-thread, it would seem
to be working.
@78, thank you, grieved...i've long admired you. in times such as these it can be a challenge
to keep sight of the positive but as china prospers & wishes her trading partners to as
well, & so long as russia continues to strive toward the high road rather than descend to
the barroom floor perhaps we can also learn to rise...i'm reminded of a sufi saying: 'rise in
love do not fall'. may we all.
Do they even think about an endpoint? Is it really on their radar?
Or is this all being done because they are spoilt, and are throwing a tantrum because they
aren't getting their way?
I assume that there are sober heads in the Pentagon that wargame possible "endpoints". If
not sober at the beginning then sober when the results play out to their bitter end.
Or... maybe not. Post-retirement board seats are at stake, dammit! Full steam ahead and
damn the torpedoes!
I'm truly astonished that you don't know the truth of Xinjaing - in sum, that the
concentration camps are a huge lie that can be revealed as such by any satellite, and that
China has developed a progressive and worthy solution to the foreign-provoked terrorism
within its border.
Fortunately, Qiao Collective, a great expert source on China, has recently compiled a
treasure trove of links to know the truth:
Based on a handful of think tank reports and witness testimonies, Western governments
have levied false allegations of genocide and slavery in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
A closer look makes clear that the politicization of China's anti-terrorism policies in
Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China.
This resource compilation provides a starting point for critical inquiry into the
historical context and international response to China's policies in Xinjiang, providing a
counter-perspective to misinformation that abounds in mainstream coverage of the autonomous
region.
Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 17 2020 19:41 utc | 36
Andrei
A good justification on Russian German transitional relation, and we hope Russia is not
fooled again, by hopes. Those of us who hope for containing and reducing western dominance
over the world affairs, politics and economy, hope that Russians have learned from their
experience of the 90's joining G7, seat at NATO, joining western sanctions on smaller powers,
etc. all those efforts were the carrots thrown at Russia to tame the bear, one would think up
to Georgian war, it worked, that war perhaps woke the bear. Russians felt they are part of
Europe,part of western community of privileged nations (first world) but all that was a decoy
to move the NATO to Russian borders. I hope Russians once for all have learned, as long as
they have a big modern military and plenty of energy resources that is not under the western
(you read US) control they will never be accepted as a "western" country, Ironically, Russia
is the largest European country.
As a strategist you know better than most to circumvent western power and to bring back
the rule of international law, it would be impossible without having the Russian defensive
political and military power (as in Syria) on the side of resistance. We just hope you are
right Russia, will not be bought out again. IMO as you say, is just impossible for Germany,
or even France to decouple from the US grip on europe.
Seems to me its been terribly effective.
Russian economy pretty weak heavily reliant on raw materials, fracturing at the periphery.
China and Russia seem less than alies.
Seems US has Germany, France by the short hairs.
US had to bail them out in 2009.
Europe is having some problems with solvency and cohesion - whats a bureaucrat to do?
Its not really about the sovereigns, that's only for appearances.
@ 77
The Century of Humiliation from 1842 to 1949 and the contemporary discourse around it are a
driving narrative of contemporary Chinese history, foreign policy, and militarization of its
surrounding regions like the South China Sea. The expansion of the Chinese navy in numbers,
mission, and aggression is directly fueled by China's previous weakness and exploitation at
the hands of western nations. . . .
here
The US economy is definitely in trouble, but the US has spent roughly $2 trillion this year
to help its economy = a bit under 10% of 2019 GDP.
The difference is structural. The US economy is a service one - and lockdowns are literally
the best way to damage it.
The Russian economy is still heavily dependent on natural gas and oil sales. Despite the
initial devaluation, ongoing low oil prices plus increasing competition in natural gas (for
example, Azerbaijan is now selling natural gas to Italy) is hurting its economy.
Nor has Russia spent much to compensate for COVID-19 losses beyond its existing health and
social safety nets - the Russian plan was $73B / 5 trillion rubles = 4.3% of 2019 GDP.
I am anti-war and I am an anti-war crimes liberal (examples of war crimes: ethnic cleansing,
proof of genocide, torture, collective punishment via deprivation and occupation of
dispossessed land). Yet, I am also a non-interventionist except in extreme circumstances but
I am against regime change for the sake of neutralizing competing powers or converting them
religiously or politically.
All this implies exercising the highest integrity and blocking out all external influence
and pressure if one is a true liberal, and relying solely on conscience and wisdom.
Therefore, I don't like the term liberal sullied and usurped by fake liberals,
neoliberals and Zionist liberals, and I also take offense to the way liberal as a
general term is denigrated in this article.
Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the
Russian economy in the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with
cheap commodities to feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil.
True, it was about 10 years ago. Economic reality, of course, is such that Germany already
beat the record by consecutive 20 months of real economy shrinkage. In general, Germany's
energy policy is suicidal and Russia is increasingly independent from imports.
A lot to be
done in the future yet, of course, but as the whole comedy with high-power turbines and
Siemens demonstrated, Russia can do it on her own, plus General Electric is always there,
sanctions or no sanctions. It is a complicated matter, but it is Germany which increasingly
becomes irrelevant for Russia as an old image of technologically-advanced Germans getting
their hands on Russia's resources and ruling the world--this image is utterly obsolete,
completely false and doesn't correspond to the reality "on the ground".
It is really a simple
thing which many Westerners cannot wrap their brains around, that the country which has a
space program which operates ISS and second fully operational global satellite navigation
constellation, or which produces hypersonic weapons and whose shipbuilding dwarfs that of
Germany will have relatively little troubles in developing other crucial industries and
removing Western interests from those. Simple as that.
@90 Very true. Every time I read someone proclaiming that the Russian economy is no bigger
than Italy's, or Spain's, or ..... (fill in the blanks) I simply think to myself: "This word,
I do not think it means what you think it means".
Because it should be obvious to everyone that Italy can not produce all the things that
Russia produces.
Equally, Spain can not produce all the things that Russia produces.
So if someone has measured "economy" in such a way that the numbers for Russia are the
same as the number for Italy - or Spain - is simply admitting that their economic models are
flawed.
The US and EU attempts to break Russia's independent foreign policy are just stepping stones
to the eventual goal of a breakup Russia itself, never forget Albright's comments in the 90s
about how Siberia shouldn't belong to Russia alone.
Ultimately, though the US and EU nation
states are nothing more than tools of the globalist elite whose dream of a fully economically
integrated world where the power of labour is completely crushed by the power of capital to
move instantly across the planet is already falling apart. The economic elite have already
pillaged all of the minor nations in the world and the two grand prizes, Russia and China are
too powerful to attack directly now. unable to control their unbridled greed they've begone
the process of auto-self cannibalism, destroying their own states (or killing their hosts as
Michael Huddson would say) in order to completely centralize all capital within the 0.1%.
This will make them very rich, however hundreds of millions of Americans, Australians,
Canadians, Japanese and Europeans will be impoverished in order to do this. When this is
eventually realized by the majority of the people in these states, the economic elite will be
lucky if they "just" lose everything but their lives in mass nationalization campaigns. I see
very little evidence that the Russian or Chinese states would be willing to offer safe harbour for the criminal oligarchs of the West, like London has offered to criminal Oligarchs
fleeing justice in Russia
Before posting here monetarist propaganda BS form Western "economic" sources learn to
distinguish monetary expression of product and actual product in terms of quantity and
quality.
Just to demonstrate to you: for $100,000 in a desirable place in the US you will be
able to buy a roach-infested shack in a community known for meth-labs and high crime, for
exactly the same money in Russia you will buy a superb brand-new house in a desirable
location.
To demonstrate even more, for a price of a single Columbia-class SSBN ($8 billion+)
which does not exist other than on paper yet, Russia financed and produced her 8-hulls state
of the strategic missile submarines.
UK economy is dwarfed by Russia even in accordance by
IMF and World Bank, in fact, it is, once one excludes still relevant RR and few other
manufacturers, is down right third world economy. I am not going to post here all data from
IMF, but even this can explain why you posted a BS. Anyone "counting" real economic sector in
USD and Nominal GDP has to have head examined and is probably dumbed down through "economics"
programs in Western madrasas, aka universities.
In related news, learn what Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) is and check
energy consumption and production of Germany and Russia, just for shits and giggles.
And of course, Martyanov @96 is absolutely correct - the relative values of currencies are
proved to be nothing more than the entries of bookkeepers and bankers, all "sound and fury,
signifying nothing." What matters is what the home unit of currency will buy at home.
A better question is as Andrei suggests, what does it cost for Russia to produce something
that works, as opposed to what it costs the US to produce something that doesn't work because
of theft and cost inflation in the delivery chain?
The ultimate - MAD - question that the US should ask itself is this: How much does it
cost Russia to destroy the US, compared with the cost involved for the US to destroy
Russia?
~~
The cost of living is higher in the US. The cost of doing anything is higher. But none of
that means the quality of the result is greater - I certainly don't hear anyone lately saying
the living is good, compared to what people pay for it.
Were it not for the nerves of steel of Mr. Putin and his close advisers, the
irresponsible pressure policies outlined above could result in aggressive behavior and risk
taking by Russia that would make the Cuban missile crisis look like child's play.
We may yet see a Cuban missile crisis scenario but it looks more likely to be caused by arms
sales to Taiwan than conflict in the Caucasus.
I also think its naive to see these as "fires burning at Russia's borders" instead of as
deliberately set bear traps . Azerbaijan is in a strategic location between Russia and
Iran and the conflict with Armenia comes just before Russia is about to sell advanced weapons
to Iran.
Jacques Chirac President of France told Jr Bush if the United States finds WMDs in Iraq
you put them there. The CIA and MI6 knew Iraq had no WMDs because Tariq Aziz Saddam's long
time number 2 was a CIA asset. Back in the 1980s Aziz was a regular on the Washington
cocktail party circuit and a frequent guest on CNNs Crossfire with Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak
vs Tom Braden and Michael Kinsley. Finally Dick Armey Republican and House Majority leader
was going to vote against authorizing the war in the fall of 2002. Cheney goes up to Capitol
Hill pulls Armey into the Vice Presidents office in the Capitol and tells him that Iraq is
close to having suitcase nukes and has very close ties to Osama bin Laden. Both lies of
course.
On one occasion when Jr Bush was talking to Chirac he told him that the war on terror is
Biblical prophecy. Needless to say Chirac was stunned. Yes the Republican establishment lied
the country into one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in our history. Almost as bad as
Woodrow Wilson taking us into World war 1 which led to the rise Bolshevik revolution and Nazi
Germany
Vietnam was bad for sure and had a much larger death count, but the region or the domino
theory never materialized. The Middle East has been in chaos ever since our invasion and
occupation of Iraq
Jacques Chirac President of France told Jr Bush if the United States finds WMDs in Iraq you
put them there. The CIA and MI6 knew Iraq had no WMDs because Tariq Aziz Saddam's long time
number 2 was a CIA asset. Back in the 1980s Aziz was a regular on the Washington cocktail party
circuit and a frequent guest on CNNs Crossfire with Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak vs Tom Braden
and Michael Kinsley. Finally Dick Armey Republican and House Majority leader was going to vote
against authorizing the war in the fall of 2002. Cheney goes up to Capitol Hill pulls Armey
into the Vice Presidents office in the Capitol and tells him that Iraq is close to having
suitcase nukes and has very close ties to Osama bin Laden. Both lies of course.
On one occasion when Jr Bush was talking to Chirac he told him that the war on terror is
Biblical prophecy. Needless to say Chirac was stunned. Yes the Republican establishment lied
the country into one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in our history. Almost as bad as
Woodrow Wilson taking us into World war 1 which led to the rise Bolshevik revolution and Nazi
Germany
Vietnam was bad for sure and had a much larger death count, but the region or the
domino theory never materialized. The Middle East has been in chaos ever since our
invasion and occupation of Iraq
Britain created Saudi Arabia? They supported the westernized Hashemites rivals of the
Saud to the hilt. Just one of the many factual errors in a muddle-headed article that seems
to draw its inspiration from the reflexive anti-Americanism of the European loony left.
The Caucasus, like the former Yugoslavia, or India before partition, is made up of many
populations coexisting. When ethno- or religious nationalism rears its ugly head, violence
and ethnic cleansing inevitably ensue. The Armenians prevailed militarily due to
Azerbaijani incompetence, not because of any intrinsic moral righteousness, but the thing
about military gains is they can be reversed when the other side gets its act together,
specially if it enjoys an overwhelming advantage in population and resources.
Foreign powers like Russia, Turkey, Iran, France or Israel are pouring oil on the fires
of revanchism for political or mercantile reasons, instead of pushing both sides to
meaningful negotiations (let's not forget the Armenians are perfectly happy with the status
quo and have not exactly been eager to negotiate it away). The last thing the US should be
doing is taking sides, and since this is Russia's backyard there is not much we can do
other than pressuring Turkey to stop making things worse, but we all know how little real
sway we have with Erdögan.
The article seems to me to be disjointed and I have feeling the damage was done during
editing. There's no egregious mistake is saying the Brits created "Saudi" Arabia. That is a
historical fact and which family/tribe they supported is irrelevant in historical terms.
Your charge of "reflexive anti-Americanism of the European loony left." because of a few
inaccuracies in the article is way off the wall. The article is badly written but it is
informative.
Regarding your claim, "Foreign powers like Russia, Turkey, Iran, France or Israel are
pouring oil on the fires...", I agree with you with the exception of Iran's role in this
mess. The very first official announcement by the IRI, which I posted to another article on
the site, warned Turkey is pouring fuel to the file. There's no disagreement there. Iran
has no military personnel nor funding going to either country. Azerbaijan has about 700
Kilometers of common border with Iran, and Armenia shares about 32 Kilometers of borders
with Iran. Iran has a substantial, vibrant and patriotic Azari population. Many are in top
IRI leadership including Khamenei. Iran also has a very substantial and vibrant Armenian
population. Iran does recognize the Turk's genocide of its Armenian population. Iran is
connected to Armenia via oil and gas pipelines, as well as power grids. Iran is the most
important of energy supplier for Armenia.
A bit of recent history will shed some light on Iran's behavior and attitude towards
each country. While Armenia remained one of Iran's stalwart neighbors, Azerbaijan took the
path of endearing itself to the US and Israel axis of war mongering and destabilizing
policies. This put Azerbaijan on Iran's list of "unfriendly" governments, I'm not talking
about Azerbaijan's Shia population in this context. There's nothing for Iran in this war.
Therefore Iran's latest announcement is to end the war as soon as possible through
diplomatic means. The shells and missiles have started landing on Iranian soil but no
casualties fortunately.
The British had literally nothing to do with the creation of Saudi Arabia.
Abdulaziz Ibn Saud took back his family fief of Riyadh in 1901 from the rival al-Rashid of
Ha'il, then waged war over the other tribes of Arabia, enlisting a fanatical proto-ISIS
like militia called the Ikhwan to conquer in 1924 the British-supported Hejaz ruled by
Sharif Hussein of the Hashemite dynasty. He did not extend his conquests to Yemen, Oman,
Kuwait or Transjordan and Syria because that would have meant waging direct war on the
British and French empires, and in fact had to quell a rebellion of the Ikhwan who wanted
to do exactly that.
The Saudis draw great pride in being the one nation in the Middle East that was not
colonized by Western powers (mostly because it was worthless until the discovery of oil).
Just because William Shakespear or Gertrude Bell toured the region does not make the
al-Saud British puppets like the Hashemites were, whatever their many faults. While
Abdulaziz bided his time and tactically made treaties with the British like temporarily
accepting a protectorate status or agreeing to fight the al-Rashid (like he would do
otherwise, they being his family's hereditary enemies....), they never provided him with
any significant assistance, and in fact tried ineffectually to contain his rise.
I think if we remove "Saudi" from the discussion and just talk about "Arabia" our
difference of opinion will evaporate. The country is mistakenly, in my opinion, was named
"Saudi Arabia" for the Western colonizers' special interest. The rest of your argument
about who did what to whom in Arabia is inside baseball to me.
By the way, stay tuned. We many start hearing about the al-Rashid as soon as the "king"
passes and mBS tries be big cheese of Arabia.
Of course Iran would just like the conflict to go away; its leaving them with only bad
choices, whether that to be appearing to support Azerbaijan and alienating Armenia, with
whom they have an important relationship, or appearing to support Armenia and alienating
much of its local Azeri population. I think Iran publicly is walking a fine line and trying
to stress diplomacy to solve the conflict as much as possible, though its still hard for
them to extricate themselves from the politics of the situation.
Though, in that regard, its a bit wrong to compare the Azeri population in Iran to the
Armenian population; its completely different in scale and importance. Iran has some
concern that the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, if handled wrongly, would become regional or
spill over into their borders, and they're less concerned about Armenia in that part.
Also wrong to not point out that Israel formed ties with Azerbaijan and Iran formed ties
with Armenia around the same time; these were complementary moves, and its just as possible
to explain Israel's ties with Azerbaijan as being as a result of Iran's ties with Armenia,
rather than just the reverse. Just as well, Israel at the time had friendly relations with
Turkey, which have since deteriorated. Its also true that the relationships are based on
reasons independent of those kind of geopolitical moves, and are largely based on
self-interest on both sides. Azerbaijan is also Israel's top oil supplier. Simply blaming
all this on the US and Israel, and making Iran's stance towards Azerbaijan as a result of
them being the victim of these types of deals, is a bit much.
I doesn't seem Iran can or even thinks about extricate herself from "the situation".
Iran is situated right there and whether things spill over to Iran or not will play a big
role in Iran's perception of the regional security.
No sure where I inferred any comparison between the Azari and the Armenian population of
Iran. They are BOTH Iranians. After the breakup of the USSR, the Azerbaijani dictator
Heydar Aliyev established relation with Israel and later the US, while refusing to join any
of the several post-Soviet economic arrangements. That was accompanied by Azerbaijan making
noises about "unification" of Azerbaijan. That pushed Iran to throw all its support behind
Armenia then. The situation has changed and IRI and Azerbaijan have normal relations.
Iran cannot simple afford to consider the Armenian Iranians less "important" than her
Azeri Iranians, if that's where you are going.
The author may have been a banker, but he clearly was neither an historian or diplomat.
He knows neither the details of what he writes, nor does he have a framework.
The decision to assign Karabakh to Azerbaijan was taken in 1921, not 1923 and was taken
by the Bolshevik Caucasus Bureau, not by Stalin. General clashes between Azerbaijanis and
Armenians took place in 1905, and the fighting for Karabakh proper erupted in 1918 with the
formation of independent Armenian and Azerbaijan republics. Both well before the Bolsheviks
or Stalin could do anything about Karabakh (although the Bolsheviks did join with the
Armenian Dashnaks in March 1918 to seize Baku and butcher Azerbaijanis in the process. Yes,
Azerbaijanis retaliated in September, but the Armenians did start it and got their hands
plenty bloody, outside Baku as well).
The author's contempt for Azerbaijanis comes through in his comment that the
Azerbaijanis have lost every time against the Armenians. He never reflects that the
possible reason might be that the Armenians have been both better organized and more
aggressive than the Azerbaijanis. He deliberately leaves out that Armenian expelled 800,000
Azerbaijanis from the territories surrounding Karabakh. He is stunning in his
disingenuousness and ignorance. As for his framework, he has none. Where does he get the
idea that Kosovo and Karabakh are interlinked and that they can be resolved through
tradeoffs? Does he imagine that Muslims are one people and constitute a single union?
Apparently.
An Arab world moving toward Pan-Arabism and socialism in 1924?!
As to the "Armenian settlement area" – the author might reflect on the Kurds'
claims to 90% of that same area, and the bloody history of Kurdish-Armenian relations. If
turning over old borders what do you do about Abkhazia, Circassia, and multiple places in
the Balkans from where Muslims were expelled. Bring Greeks back into Turkey, too, while we
are it? This article was not analysis, but uninformed blathering laced with ethnic
invective. The Armenians have suffered enough to deserve such shoddy argumentation. AmCon
should be ashamed to have run this.
Turkey regularly threatens Europe with opening the gates with their "refugees" as
leverage in negotiations. Erdogan travels to the heart of Europe to encourage the Turkish
diaspora to perpetuate their grudges on European soil and encourage them to flex their
political muscle to further an Islamist agenda. They slaughtered Armenians, Greeks, and
Syriac Christians- never acknowledging the crime or showing remorse. Now they seek to
finish what they started with the Armenian Genocide- and the world sits on its hands
claiming that both sides are equally responsible.
This is outrageous! Turkey has proved time and time again that it is the aggressor,
using threats to get what it wants, and does not behave as an ally. Turkey has
single-handily destabilized entire countries in its dream of Neo-Ottoman domination over
the region. Time to heavily militarize the Greek- Turkish frontier, kick Turkey out of
NATO, and put it on notice that it's adventurism in Libya, Syria, and Armenia will be met
overwhelming force. Feeble responses made by the West will only encourage the mad-dog
Erdogan.
Explains well why Biden spent the other day criticizing the President for not taking a
more active role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Warmongers gonna warmonger. I assume
that's one of the main attractions for Biden's supporters - more dead women and children in
Asia. They spent eight years driving around with "Support America's Foreign Invasions"
yellow ribbon stickers on their SUVs under the last administration Biden was part of.
With not a new war for nearly four years, I can understand why the establishment and
Democrat voters are pissed. At least the fake "neoconservatives" are back in the party they
belong in.
War mongering is like Herpes. You can suppress it, but it's virus never goes away. Biden
has had it for years. He supported W's war of choice in Iraq, which led to the carnage of
thousands of American 20-somethings, thousands of mental illness sufferers and MILLIONS of
dead Iraqi people of ALL ages. He is an unrepentant old neo-con war criminal.
The liberals are rubbing their hands with glee. They told us it wouldn't last, that it would
never take a hold and that, in the end, everyone would see things
their way . But the idea that right-wing populism is dead is both misguided and premature.
Because the bugbear of Europe's political elite is actually stronger than ever.
Sure, the faces we associate with populism, such as Italy's Matteo Salvini and the UK's
Nigel Farage, may not be plastered all over our newspapers or television screens like they were
just a year or two ago, but the reason for that is the ideas they represented and trumpeted
across the European political stage have taken root.
One issue at the heart of right-wing populism has been immigration and, while the pandemic
has hijacked the national conversation and political debate in most quarters, the policies, the
language and the rhetoric surrounding that very much on-the-menu issue right now are pure
populism.
Twelve months ago, no British Conservative politician who valued their job, however radical,
would have dreamt of airing ideas about processing immigrants on disused ferries in the middle
of the English Channel, or sending
refugees to windswept outposts in the Atlantic until we could figure out what to do with
them.
But these off-the-wall ideas, talk of a points-based visa system, swamping dinghies packed
with illegal immigrants with wave machines and calling in the Royal Navy to stop the flow of
asylum seekers onto Britain's southern beaches, would not have looked out of
place at a Farage-led UKIP conference five years ago.
Back then, this sort of talk was condemned by everyone in the establishment as vile racism
from swivel-eyed
loons and fruitcakes. Nowadays, these go-to solutions from Priti Patel – the hardline
Home Secretary and the daughter of immigrants herself – are deemed blue-sky thinking.
Meanwhile, in France, no one ever talks of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National as some
right-wing, fly-by-night populist set-up, despite her tendency to change policies as often as
her smartly tailored suits, depending on the public mood.
For those looking for an alternative to President Macron and his En Marche party, Le Pen is
the only game in town, and while the electoral system does her no favours in failing to aid her
attempts at reaching the Élysée Palace, were she to get there, she carries a
guaranteed swag of right-wing
votes , which would gift her a central role in deciding who takes the top job.
The Italians have their own populist bad-ass in Matteo Salvini. Although he and his Lega
Nord party were all over the media last year, the catastrophic effect that coronavirus has had
on Italy, particularly in his heartland to the north, has impacted that.
After Italians witnessed, on the television news, military trucks carting piles of
corpses away from mortuaries, it was always going to be difficult for the charismatic
leader to maintain his impetus and keep his key issue, migration, in the spotlight.
But it's not just Covid-19 that has made life difficult for Salvini – there's a new
kid on the block. The genuinely far-right Brothers of Italy are now competing for the same
hearts and minds that once belonged to the Lega Nord, and they're toying with the same issues
and successfully providing an alternative.
As Professor Kai Arzheimer, a political scientist at Mainz University, in Germany, points
out, debunking the entire Financial Times piece dedicated to the purported collapse of populism
in which he's quoted: "The overall support among voters for the right wing has not
diminished. It is just being spread among a larger number of actors. To talk about the end of
populism might be somewhat premature." And those healthy populist movements in Spain,
Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere are proof of that.
The liberal idea that populism thrives only in times when things are going well, and that
people look to the establishment parties when things are tough is an over-simplification. You
could argue that demanding times call for more creative thinking and a recognition that doing
things the old way no longer works, and that exploring fresh ideas is the best way forward.
One thing Covid-19 has shown us is that relying on old orthodoxies in dealing with a global
health crisis does not work. The universal mishandling of the pandemic by those we have put in
power to help us through nightmares such as this has destroyed public trust in the usual way of
doing things. And that's precisely why populism thrives and is unlikely to disappear anytime
soon – despite the wishes of liberals in denial.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The Baron 10 hours ago The damage is already
done to Europe by the mass immigration of (mostly) undesirable elements who are unwilling to
make a honest living there. I think we're at a point where a "right-wing" party entering the
government in some minor form isn't enough any more, there needs to be major political upheaval
- which will most likely only occur if normal citizens organize and stand up against the
current corrupt marxist/globalist/whatever forces that have their claws in the power structure
of the West. Only then can they start rebuilding their countries and cultures. GreekGuy 10
hours ago Crosstalk on Monday, 12 Oct was very good. George Szamuely was on the show and he was
talking about his hypothesis on how the liberal elites are using the corona virus as a means of
strangling populism. A very interesting talk.
Tom Fowdyis a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations
with a primary focus on East Asia.
His Holiness declining to meet the US secretary of state when he visited the Vatican on his
European tour further proves that his misguided America-first chauvinism is alienating more
nations than it's winning as friends.
Pompeo, everyone's favourite Cold Warrior and American chauvinist,
is on a European tour . Visiting Greece, Italy, Croatia, and notably, the Vatican, the
secretary of state is on a roll to win support for American security and energy interests
across the region. But he wasn't welcomed by all. Attending the Holy See today, the US' 'top
diplomat' found himself
snubbed by the Pope as he rolled into town peddling his vitriolic anti-China agenda, and
demanding the Church take on Beijing and refuse to renew a deal that gives it a say in the
appointment of bishops within that country. Pope Francis wasn't too impressed and refused to
meet him accordingly.
The snub is significant, because it reflects more broadly how Pompeo's highly aggressive and
evangelical foreign policy agenda is being received around the world. In short, it's a
shambles. Rather than respectfully and constructively engage with the interests of other
countries, on his watch, the State Department does nothing but pressure other nations. And it
does this while parroting the clichéd talking points of American exceptionalism,
hysterical anti-Communism, and a refusal to take into account the interests and practicalities
faced by its partners. The Vatican has its differences with Beijing, but how would embarking on
a collision course help it or the cause of Catholics in China? It wouldn't.
Pompeo is repeatedly described by major
US newspapers, the Washington Post among them, as "
the worst secretary of state in American history," and it's no surprise why. Diplomacy
requires the skills of understanding, prudence, compromise, calibration, and negotiation. The
current man in charge of America's relations with the rest of the world has none of those in
his armoury – only a one-sided diatribe about how every nation Washington holds a grudge
against is evil and a threat to the world, and the US' own political system is far superior (as
demonstrated by last night's presidential debate, perhaps ?). Pompeo repeatedly positions
himself as
speaking on behalf of other nations' people against their governments, while pushing a
policy that amounts to little more than bullying.
A look at Pompeo and the State Department's Twitter feed shows it to be a unilateral,
repetitive loop of the following topics: 'The Chinese Communist Party is evil and a threat to
the world', 'Iran is an evil terrorist state', American values are the best', 'We stand with
the people of X', and so on, ad nauseam. To describe it as hubris would be generous, and, of
course, it does nothing to support the equally inadequate foreign policy of the United States
in practice. This is further distorted by the unilateralist and anti-global governance politics
of Donald Trump, which place emphasis only on the projection of power to force other countries
into capitulating to American demands.
Against such a backdrop, it's no surprise that a toxic mixture of foreign policymaking has
led to other countries not being willing to take notice of Washington. It's winning neither
hearts nor minds, and it's this that has set the stage for not only the Vatican snub, but the
largely fruitless outcomes of his European adventures. Pompeo's visit to Greece produced no meaningful
agreements or outcomes of note , and he failed to get Athens to publicly commit to any
anti-China measures or even statements. A similar non-result was achieved from his visit to the
Czech Republic a month or so ago – the Czech prime minister even came out and
played down Pompeo's comments , after he engaged in a spree of anti-Beijing vitriol.
So, what's at stake for the Vatican? Undoubtedly, religion is a sensitive topic in mainland
China. The Chinese state sees unfettered religion as a threat to social stability, or as a
potential vehicle for imperialism against the country, and thus has aimed to strongly regulate
it under terms and conditions set by the state.
This has caused tensions with the Roman Catholic Church, which maintains a strict
ecclesiastical hierarchy, answering to the Vatican and not national governments. With China
being the world's most populous country, having among its vast population nine million
Catholics, this means the Church has had to negotiate and compromise with the Beijing
government to maintain its influence and control, and to secure the rights of its members to
worship. This has resulted in a 'deal' whereby the Vatican can have a say in the appointment of
its bishops in China, rather than the Church being completely subordinate to the
government.
But Pompeo doesn't care about these sensitivities – he wants one thing: Cold War. He
wants unbridled, unrestrained, and evangelical condemnation of China and, as noted above, is
utilizing his 'diplomatic visits' to push that demand. However, building a foreign policy on
preaching America First unilateralism, chauvinism, and zero compromise not surprisingly has its
limitations. As a result, Pompeo is finding himself isolated and ignored in more than a few
areas. Thus it was that, rather than completely squandering the Vatican's interests in
diplomacy with China, Pope Francis simply refused to meet him. For someone as fanatically
religious and pious as Pompeo, that's a pretty damning indictment of the incompetence within
the US State Department right now.
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The problem with American imperialism that like tiger it can't change its spots. In this
sense Trump vs Biden is false dilemma. "Bothe aare worse" as Stalin quipped on the other
occasion. Both still profess "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine at the expense of the standard of
living of the USA people (outside of top 10 or 20%)
The problem with Putin statement is that both candidates are marionette of more powerful
forces. Trump is a hostage of Izreal lobby, which in the USA are mostly consist of rabid
Russophobes (look art Schiff, Schumer and other members of this gang). Biden is a classic
neoliberal warmonger, much like Hillary was, who voted for Iraq war, contributed to color
revolution in Ukraine, and was instrumental in the conversion of Dems into the second war party.
So there is zero choice in the coming election unless you want to punish Trump for the betrayal
of his electorate, which probably is the oonly valid reason to vote for Biden in key states;
otherwise you san safely ignore the elections as youn; influence anythng. In a deep sense this is
a simply legitimization procedure for the role of the "Deep State", not so much real elections as
both cadidates were already vetted by neoliberal establishment
The key problem with voting for Bide is that this way you essentially legitimizing Obama
administration RussiaGate false flag operation. But as Putin said, chances for extending the
Start treaty might worse this self-betrayal.
Like much of the American public, the Russian public is no doubt weary of the prior couple
years of non-stop 'Russiagate' headlines and wild accusations out of Western press, which all
are now pretty much in complete agreement came to absolutely nothing. This is also why the
whole issue has been conspicuously dropped by the Biden campaign and as a talking point among
the Democrats, though in some corners there's been meek attempts to revive it, especially
related to claims of "expected" Kremlin interference in the impending presidential
election.
Apparently seeing in this an opportunity for some epic trolling, Russian President Vladimir
Putin in an interview with Rossiya 1 TV days ago said it was actually the Democratic Party and
the Communist Party which have most in common.
Putin was speaking in terms of historic Soviet communism in the recent interview (Wednesday)
detailed in Newsweek. "The Democratic Party is traditionally closer to the so-called liberal
values, closer to social democratic ideas," Putin began. "And it was from the social democratic
environment that the Communist Party evolved."
"After all, I was a member of the Soviet Communist Party for nearly 20 years" Putin added.
"I was a rank-and-file member, but it can be said that I believed in the party's ideas. I
still like many of these left-wing values. Equality and fraternity. What is bad about them?
In fact, they are akin to Christian values."
"Yes, they are difficult to implement, but they are very attractive, nevertheless. In
other words, this can be seen as an ideological basis for developing contacts with the
Democratic representative."
The Russian president also invoked that historically Russian communists in the Soviet era
would have been fully on board the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights related
causes. "So, this is something that can be seen, to a degree, as common values, if not a
unifying agent for us," the Russian president said. "People of my generation remember a time
when huge portraits of Angela Davis, a member of the U.S. Communist Party and an ardent fighter
for the rights of African Americans, were on view around the Soviet Union."
So there it is: Putin is saying his own personal ideological past could be a basis of
"shared values" with a Biden presidency, again, it what appears to be a sophisticated bit of
trolling that he knows Biden won't welcome one bit. Or let's call it a 'Russian endorsement
Putin style'. The Associated Press and others described it as Putin "hedging his bets",
however.
Another interesting part of the interview is where the Russian TV presenter asked Putin the
following question:
"The entire world is watching the final stage of the US presidential race. Much has
happened there, including things we could never imagine happening before but the one constant
in recent years is that your name is mentioned all the time," Zarubin said. "Moreover, during
the latest debates, which have provoked a public outcry, presidential candidate Biden called
candidate Trump 'Putin's puppy.'"
"Since they keep talking about you, I would like to ask a question which you probably will
not want to answer," the interviewer continued. "Nevertheless, here it is: Whose position in
this race, Trump's or Biden's, appeals to you more?"
And here's Putin's response:
"Everything that is happening in the United States is the result of the country's internal
political processes and problems," Putin said. "By the way, when anyone tries to humiliate or
insult the incumbent head of state, in this case in the context you have mentioned, this
actually enhances our prestige, because they are talking about our incredible influence and
power. In a way, it could be said that they are playing into our hands, as the saying
goes."
But on a more serious note Putin pointed out that contrary to the notion some level of
sympathy between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, much less the charge of "collusion",
it remains that US-Russia relations have reached a low-point in recent history under Trump. The
record bears this out.
Putin underscored that "the greatest number of various kinds of restrictions and sanctions
were introduced [against Russia] during the Trump presidency."
"Decisions on imposing new sanctions or expanding previous ones were made 46 times. The
incumbent's administration withdrew from the INF treaty. That was a very drastic step. After
2002, when the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM treaty, that was the second major
step. And I believe it is a big danger to international stability and security," Putin
explained.
"Now the US has announced the beginning of the procedure for withdrawing from the Open
Skies Treaty. We have good reason to be concerned about that, too. A number of our joint
projects, modest, but viable, have not been implemented – the business council project,
expert council, and so on," he concluded.
But then on Biden specifically Putin said that despite "rather sharp anti-Russian rhetoric"
from the Democratic nominee, it remains "Candidate Biden has said openly that he was ready to
extend the New START or to sign a new strategic offensive reductions treaty."
"This is already a very significant element of our potential future cooperation," Putin
added of a potential Biden presidency.
Islamist-Marxist MEK's history, including spying on Iran on behalf of Saddam Hussein when
he invaded Iran, destroying its western cities. After murdering Americans - but the Lobby
always gets what it wants, so MEK is now off the terrorist list and instead being funded by
the U.S., and housed in a training camp in Albania.
The MEK was founded in 1965 by three Islamic leftists with the goal of toppling the
U.S.-supported regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In the 1970s it undertook a campaign of assassinating U.S. advisers and bombing U.S.
corporations in Iran. It supported the 1979 Revolution in Iran, but in 1981 it turned its
guns against the Tehran government and began a campaign of assassinations and terrorist
operations that resulted in the death of thousands of Iranians, including the executions of
its own supporters by government officials, soldiers, police officers, and ordinary
people.
It then moved its headquarters to Iraq, made a pact with the regime of Saddam Hussein,
which was fighting a ferocious war with Iran. The MEK spied on Iranian troops for Iraq,
attacked Iran at the end of Iran-Iraq war with Hussein's support, and helped Hussein put down
the uprisings by the Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south after the Persian
Gulf War of 1990-91.
The MEK is despised by the vast majority of Iranians for what they consider to be
treason committed against their homeland.
So funny. I remember reading Gore Vidal's novel "Creation", which deals with the Persian
Empire, Zoroastrism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Socratic philosophy and morals.
The historical details in the book are relatively well researched, albeit one does get
some literary licence for building up characters and story lines, etc. Now the Persian
Imperial court is presented in the novel as being choke full of Greek Dissidents clamoring to
the King of Kings to attack and subdue Greece/Athens, or what not. Marathon, Salamina,
Thermopylae, Plateia follow... The Iranian "dissidents" should learn from their past...
The Athenian "wooden wall" (their ships) is Iran's missile force...
IF TRUE... a big if... this would be somewhat disturbing. One would hope that news outlets
in their never-ending search for "content" would vet the authors just a tad.
But still... the rationale for going to war (with Iran or anyone else) rises or falls on
its own merits. The arguments raised by these authors are of far more importance than whether
the authors are real or fake. Think of how often we have seen academic credentials or
military service exaggerated by AMERICAN academics and authors to goose their relevance. They
may fall to the wayside as proponents of one thing or another when exposed but their
arguments may still be true or false. Same goes for people who do NOT exaggerate their
credentials.
I would think it would be far more dangerous if Twitter and other outlets were allowing
our ADVERSARIES to create fake personalities promoting PEACE when in fact we need to take
action against them.
If nothing is going to happen to the people that committed these crimes, what exactly is
the purpose of all of these releases? A cruel reminder that our leaders are above the law and
there's nothing we can do about it?
I don't need or want to see another ******* Hillary email, I want to see indictments.
NAV , 3 hours ago
Well, if there's nothing we can do about it, I guess I'll just go back to eating, drinking
and making merry. At least Noah built an ark.
systemsplanet , 1 hour ago
Releases like these give the FBI cover for their false flags.
Who would be surprised to find people organizing to respond? No one.
A major False Flag is coming that will be orchestrated by the FBI and blamed on the
right.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 1 hour ago
what exactly is the purpose of all of these releases?
Running out the clock.
Durham is "writing a report", not drafting indictments. How much clearer could things
be?
gro_dfd , 3 hours ago
The legal system lost credibility when Hillary was not indicted for her clearly illegal
e-mail system, among her many crimes.
insanelysane , 3 hours ago
Yes. She had the server to circumvent FOIA which was illegal. The deep state Dems and
repubs allowed the narrative to become about which emails were classified or not classified.
That didn't really matter as any state department emails not going through the state
department system was illegal.
Hulk , 2 hours ago
As a federal whistleblower myself, this is exactly what I experienced, years ago. And this
is exactly why whistleblowers are few and far between now. WHistle blowing, in a system this
corrupt, only serves to destroy the whistleblowers life.
These people really need to hang as they may have destroyed the country...
Zionism_is_racism , 2 hours ago
The FBI agent who reviewed Weiner's laptop was told by the DOJ at the time, if he blew the
whistle he would be prosecute.
He's one of the ones who is still a live.
He came out in a book written about it.
The book neve made it to J controlled MSM.
It would blow the top off of all of this.
The data on Weiner's laptop documents the most egregeous crimes against children by the
top of the government. It's a list of pedos, money laundering, Epstein Mossad operations
etc.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 3 hours ago
Comey's job was to protect the elite just like Mueller. Two useless bastids.
bobroonie , 3 hours ago
The DOJ ignored 33,000 deleted subpoenaed emails and Barr ignores an on going coup...
jim942 , 2 hours ago
Trump is no angel, but his greatest accomplishment is exposing the deep state for what it
is.
Revolution_starts_now , 3 hours ago
Jim Comey "Ignored"
Is that what they are calling a lucrative book deal pay off?
St. TwinkleToes , 2 hours ago
The Klinton Krime Kartel (KKK) are worse than Mexican drug cartels. At least with the
Mexicans, they paint their cartel logo on the side of their vehicles are aren't afraid to
release photos of their heavily armed masked army and rival cartel victims.
With the Pantsuit Hag, shes got every alphabet agency, big technopolies, the Democrat
communist Media Industrial complex coving up her phat azz.
Geocen Trist , 3 hours ago
Well I guess ... Comey and Hillary are Freemasons.
play_arrow
Surftown , 1 hour ago
The club.
Remember when CIA head Deutch was lax w personal computer? Plead guilty day before Clinton
left office. Clinton pardoned him.
remember when Gen Petraeus gave info to Mossad GF and got Slapped on wrist?
remember when others of lesser rank go to jail for forgetting something?
the club.
MarketTruth , 2 hours ago
"What difference does it make?"
-- H. Clinton
"Wipe the e-mail server... with a cloth?"
-- H. Clinton
chubbar , 2 hours ago
She sold out the US, she's a traitor! We have people serving life sentences for less. WTF
is it going to take to get these people arrested and tried for their crimes? WTF is Barr and
Durham doing???
Most of you probably remember James Comey investigated the Clinton email scandal, the
Clinton Foundation and made the decision to not recommend prosecution by the DOJ.
Well, it turns out that the Clinton Foundation was audited by law firm DLA Piper. One of
the executives of the firm was in charge of the Clinton Foundation audit. His name: Peter
Comey.
( Yep, James Comey's brother. Cozy, isn't it? )
Wait, it gets even cozier.
DLA Piper executive Douglas Emhoff is taking a leave of absence from the firm. Who is
Douglas Emhoff?
He is the husband of Democrat Vice Presidential Candidate... Kamala Harris !!
Pretty cozy, right?
Max21c , 2 hours ago
WTF is Barr and Durham doing???
covering up as much as they can of the serious and real crimes of the intelligence
community and secret police community and sweeping as much of it under the rug as they
possibly can while pretending to investigate a very narrow range of crimes that they are
allowed to look at by the Gestapo higher ups and Washington elites ....
They're not allowed to open Pandoras box of all the crimes and criminal activities carried
out by the intelligence community and secret police community against American citizens and
civilians by the military, military intel, military secret police, NSA, CSS, DIA, special
contractors and other foreign cutouts, FBI & CIA et cetera....
SnottyBubbles , 3 hours ago
The whistleblower was calculated, paranoid, and smart. He knew the TS/SCI nature of his
evidence. He did not take the FBI bait to reveal TS classified evidence outside of a SCIF.
The FBI didn't pursue the classified nature or the specific evidence the whistleblower
offered to provide.
Rest assured that if he had revealed his classified evidence outside of a SCIF, he would
have been disappeared.
To add insult to this hoax investigation, the classified Secret investigation document
could not be discussed outside of a SCIF.
This is a great example of why I could not get out from under my TS/SCI career long
clearances fast enough. Nothing good ever befalls the possessor of the clearance.
Dying-Of-The-Light , 3 hours ago
This reminds me of the London trader who told the CFTC that the bank he worked for kept
rigging the silver spot price. He even told them the exact time the next hit would take place
(and it did), plus he offered to fly to the USA and testify in person. The CFTC first ignored
him completely and then arrogantly dismissed his offer to testify in person.
The CFTC spent 5 years pretending to investigate the constant and obvious bankster
manipulation of the silver paper market. It ended its absurdly long process of so called,
'Examination' by finding there was no evidence of big bank traders rigging the spot price of
paper silver.
This with the Clinton Crime outfit is of course worse because this goes to the heart of
government, but really when government is rotten to the core it is not surprising that
everything connected to it also becomes ridden by corruption. This is why banksters turned
into complete fraudsters, starting with the Fed. This is why big Corp is riddled with
corruption. This is why all so called, 'Regulatory' bodies are nothing more than window
dressing for the sheep; handing out the odd hand slap fine now and then for banking crimes
that should result in prison sentences for senior management. This results in the crime being
endlessy repeated. It is always, 'Business as usual' for those with political and monetary
power. For the rest of us it is always, 'Suck it up peasant'.
steelframe7 , 1 hour ago
Durham has already made a career out of this and documents keep showing up that he hasn't
seen. Now we have thousands of Clinton emails he hasn't seen. DNI just declassified a lot
more documents that he hasn't seen?
Who is going to read all this? how many more investigations will this generate?
Barr and Co. seem to be saying that they can't reveal anything until they can reveal
everything.
Of course its' complicated but these are supposed to be really smart people.
It seems to me that Trump should tell Barr to lay out a progress report for the public,
together with a to do list and yesterday would not be too soon.
Boxed Merlot , 2 hours ago
... the FBI, who clearly was hellbent on protecting Hillary ...
As noted before, this organization's success at infiltrating the highest echelons of
"organized" criminal miscreants was not without price. As part of their indoctrination into
this underbelly of human "achievement" came their desire, ability and decision to employ
those self-same attributes to their own internal structure as evidenced by their current
total disregard for the citizenry's well-being, trust and confidence in what was hitherto
believed to be a uniform "rule of law". Disgusting. jmo.
curtisw , 2 hours ago
" You can call us wrong, but don't call us weasels. We are not weasels."
--- Jimmy "The Weasel" Comey
MoreFreedom , 2 hours ago
This should be handled like Schiff handled his "whistleblower". The Senate should start
holding hearings on it, but McConnell is doing what? Not helping Trump and exposing the
conspirators.
typeatme , 2 hours ago
Pity about you losing your Pension there Jimmy....Comes from having NOT done your
JOB...
And being a Felon...
Boxed Merlot , 2 hours ago
... losing your Pension there Jimmy...
His pension is way down the list of importance. He was set up well ahead of time, not the
least of which was being a VP at GS. He's a groomed and staked individual, well placed for
his ability to author a book exclaiming his beneficence towards humanity while deflecting any
possible attention to his real purpose of employing whatever means necessary to deceive,
manipulate and recruit additional soldiers in his quest to obfuscate equality, success and
hope in the citizenry of the US. jmo.
enjoy
bustersdad , 3 hours ago
It's okay, he's above the law right...
BugMan , 3 hours ago
Mike Pompeo Says He Has Hillary Clinton's Deleted Emails and Will Begin Releasing Them
Before Election Day (VIDEO)
It time to make him accountable at the election box. Not that it matter much as Biden is yet another neocon and Zionist, but
stil...
American people are tied of sliding standard of living, permanent wars and jingoism. Trump might share Hillary fate in 2020,
because any illusion that he is for common fold, who voted for him in 2016 now disappeared. So he is not better then neocon Biden and Biden is new bastard. So why vote for the old bastard if we have new, who might be
slightly better in the long run
This is a very expensive foreign policy, that doesn't benefit the USA. It has potential to
raise the price of oil significantly.
Notable quotes:
"... Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of campaign funds and the lobby provides those. ..."
"... I can also see this green lighting Israeli or joint American-Israeli strikes on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons development sites and other military and petro-state assets. ..."
"... It's disgusting to watch the people of the US/UK/EU go along with this. Western elites are fat, lazy, vicious, and cruel. ..."
"... Paul wrote: "Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump administration." Yes at least as much or more zionist. Nothing about Harris or Biden (or the DNC) says they won't be. ..."
"... I nominate president Eisenhower as slightly less zionist on one occasion: during the Anglo,French, Zionist Suez invasion of 1956 Eisenhower remarked after numerous UN resolutions condemning the bandit state's aggression ' Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?' ..."
"... "The EU is trying to prop up the US Empire in response to its decline, instead of trying to free itself. " ..."
"... Donald Trump talked up his Iran policy in a profanity-laden tirade on Friday, telling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Tehran knows the consequences of undermining the United States. ..."
"... "Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice: if you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before." ..."
The U.S. has imposed
new sanctions on Iran which will make ANY trade with the country very difficult:
[T]he Trump administration has decided to impose yet further sanctions on the country ,
this time targeting the entirety of the Iranian financial sector. These new measures carry
biting secondary sanctions effects that cut off third parties' access to the U.S. financial
sector if they engage with Iran's financial sector.
Since the idea was first floated publicly , many have argued that sanctioning Iran's
financial sector would eviscerate what humanitarian trade has survived the heavy hand of
existing U.S. sanctions.
Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of
campaign funds and the lobby provides those. The move is also designed to preempt any
attempts by a potentially new administration to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran:
This idea appears to have first been introduced into public discourse in an
Aug. 25, 2020, Wall Street Journal article by Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg urging
the Trump administration to "[b]uild an Iranian [s]anctions [w]all" to prevent any future
Biden administration from returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the
nuclear accord between Iran and the world's major powers on which President Donald Trump
reneged in May 2018.
The new sanctions will stop all trade between the 'western' countries and Iran.
The Foreign Minister of Iran responded with defiance:
Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food
& medicine.
Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.
But conspiring to starve a population is a crime against humanity. Culprits & enablers
-- who block our money -- WILL face justice.
In response Iran will continue its turn to the east. Russia, China and probably India will
keep payment channels with Iran open or will make barter deals.
The Europeans, who so far have not dared to counter U.S. sanctions on Iran, are likely to be
again shown as the feckless U.S. ass kissers they have always been. They will thereby lose out
in a market with 85 million people that has the resources to pay for their high value products.
If they stop trade of humanitarian goods with Iran they will also show that their much vaunted
'values' mean nothing.
The European Union claims that it wants to be an independent actor on the world stage. If
that is to be taken seriously this would be the moment to demonstrate it.
Posted by b on October 9, 2020 at 16:37 UTC | Permalink
Unconscionable but what is new with pompass and his ghouls; treasury dept responsible for
cranking up the sanctions program was formerly headed by a dual citizen woman who resigned
suddenly after being exposed as an Israeli citizen-not hard to understand that sentiment in
that dept has not changed.
The other aspect here is the FDD as key supporter of these severe sanctions; very virulent
anti-Iranian vipers nest of ziocons with money bags from zionist oligarch funders.
Ho-hum. As I wrote earlier, just the daily breaking of laws meaning business as usual. As
noted, Russia has really upped the diplomatic heat on EU and France/Germany in particular,
and that heat will be further merited if the response is as b predicts from their past,
deplorable, behavior.
Much talk/writing recently about our current crisis being similar in
many ways to those that led to WW1, but with the Outlaw US Empire taking Britain's role. I
expect Iran's Iraqi proxies to escalate their attacks aimed at driving out the occupiers.
IMO, we ought to contemplate the message within this Strategic Culture editorial when it comes to the hegemonic relationship between
the Outlaw US Empire and the EU/NATO and the aims of both. The EU decided not to continue
fighting against the completion of Nord Stream, but that IMO will be its last friendly act
until it severs its relations with the Outlaw US Empire. With the Wall moved to Russia's
Western borders, the Cold War will resume. That will also affect Iran.
thanks b... it is interesting what a pivotal role israel plays in all of this... and why
would there be concern that biden would be any different then trump in revoking the jcpoa? to
my way of thinking, it is just pouring more cement and sealing the fate of the usa either
way, as an empire in real decline and resorting to more of the same financial sanctions as a
possible precursor to war.. frankly i can't see a war with iran, as the usa would have to
contend with russia and china at this point... russia and china must surely know the game
plan is exactly the same for them here as well.. as for europe, canada, australia and the
other poodles - they are all hopeless on this front as i see it... lets all bow down to the
great zionist plan, lol...
Yeah but at least Trump didn't start any new wars. /s
The Eurotools in Brussels are absolutely disgusting. A weaker bunch of feckless,
milquetoast satraps is difficult to imagine. The EU perfectly embodies the 21st century
liberal ethic: spout virtue signaling nonsense about peace, freedom, human rights and the
"rules based international order" while licking the boots of Uncle Scam and the Ziofascists
and going along with their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Russia and China need to step up their game and boldly circumvent the collective
punishment sanctions that are choking the life out of Iran, Syria and Venezuela. They still
let the rogue states of the west get away with far too much.
The Teheran men will not surrender to the yankee herds and hordes. And less so the
telavivian.
It s easy to see that in the medium run this cruelly extended crime plays in chinese, russian
and shia hands.
And they must start immediately a backlash handing hundreds of special forces and weapons
opver to the Houthi hands.
Of course there is a war on, and it has been gathering force for some time.
Iran is but one more skirmish or battle. However, Xi and Putin are using what I call the
"Papou yes". You must always say "yes" as this way you avoid direct conflict, but then you
go and do exactly what you were going to do in the first place . The person who does the
demanding - having had his/her demands "met" has nothing further to add and will go away. (I
have seen this effective technique in action).
At the moment it appears that the aim of the subversive (military/CIA/NGO) wings of the
Empire are to start as many conflicts as possible. To isolate and overextend Russia, leading
to it's collapse. (As they claim to have done before.)
The "Alternative axis" is just carrying on with it's own plan to overextend and eventually
let the US dissolve into its own morasss. The opposition are trying to follow their own plan
without giving an opening for the US/NATO to use its numerical military advantage, by not
taking the bait.
The ultimate battle is for financial control of the worlds currency, or in the case of the
US, to halt the loss of it's financial power. To avoid that The next step could be the
introduction of a Fed. owned controlled and issued "digi-dollar", When all outstanding
"dollar assets" are re-denominated into virtual misty-money which is created exclusively by
the Fed. Banks become unnecessary as the Fed becomes the only "lender" available, Congress
redundant, debts no longer matter and so on. Who cares about the reserves held by China and
overseas "investors" if their use or even existence can be dictated by the Fed?
They have already published a "trial balloon" about introducing a digi-dollar.
Iran? the US is throwing ALL its cards into what looks like it's final battle to preserve
the dollars supremacy. Why cut ALL the Iranian financial system out of their sphere of
influence? Because it (thinks) it can and by doing so cower the wavering into obeying.
Thanks 'b', very well timed. I was actually heading to the open thread with this article
until I saw your piece. This Asia Times
article focuses on three key points:
- Iran has replaced the dollar with the Yuan as its main foreign currency
"This may become the east wind for the renminbi (yuan) and provide a new oil currency option
for traders in oil-producing countries, including Iran," an editorial on qq.com said. "
- Several large banks in Iran are developing a gold encrypted digital currency called
PayMon and had issued more than 1,000 crypto-currency mining licenses, which could promote
the development of crude oil. Domestic traders use cryptocurrency to import goods and bypass
American banks.
- The Iranian-Swiss Joint Chamber of Commerce
"Switzerland had received a special exemption from US supervisory authorities to allow the
SHTA operations."
It remains to be seen how effective the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Agreement actually is.
Some say it is nothing but a US propaganda stunt. Hopefully, that is not the case.
What does Iran need that they cannot get from China and Russia? The USA has cheap corn, and
the EU has... what, cheese? Other than that I don't see why Iran needs to trade with the
empire and its more servile vassals anyway.
Strange, that ther is a jewish or Israeki ´ animosity agains Iran (or agains tthe
Medtans -- as thy are all named in all Greek records(H, that theer is a jewish animosity
against, that ther is a jewish anikisit agains Iran (or the Medtans -- as thy are old ptt in
all Greek Strenge(Hellemistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reported to have liberatet the
Jews of Babilon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON
CHRISTANO" -- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE
THE YEAR OF 1´2917! Iran (or the Medtans -- as thy are old ptt in all Greek
Strenge(Hellemistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reorted to have liberatet te´he Jews
of Babilon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON CHRISTANO"
-- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE THE YEAR OF
1´2917! ellenistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reorted to have liberatet te´he
Jews of Babylon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON
CHRISTANO" -- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE
THE YEAR OF 2017
Quite impressed with all the theories about Europe and its behavior. The answer is very
simple, Europe is occupied by a foreign power, it is a colony. And all the qualifiers are
quaint.
I disagree. What did the EU did on Iran, compared to Russia and China? It stopped most trade with Iran, including the purchase of iranian oil, and it stopped all
investment projects. INSTEX is a joke. Meanwhile Germany recently banned Hezbollah.
Yes, they did vote for the JCPOA in the UN. I look at actions rather than words though,
and EU has imposed de facto sanctions on Iran.
Moreover, German FM Maas told Israel recently that efforts are underway to keep the Iran
arms embargo. (He is also a big "Russia fan" - sarc off)
In other words, we "support" the JCPOA, but in practice with arms and trade embargoes on
Iran continuing.
Yeah right.
Posted by: powerandpeople | Oct 9 2020 20:15 utc | 24
No, its not so simple, unless you claim that european russophobia started with the US and
did not exist before it. Guy Mettan has a good book on it. It is a thousand years old issue,
involving Catholicism, France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, and others.
Yes, the US wants to divide the EU and Russia. But the EU itself is rotten from
within.
Politics are more important than the economy, German Chancellor Merkel said in relation to
Russia.
"Drang nach Osten" - "Drive to the East".
Germany dreams of capturing Eastern Europe and using is as some sort of colonised labor
pool similar to what Latin America is for the US.
And this is why the EU, without any prodding, eagerly took the lead in the attempt of
colour revolution in Belarus, where it played far bigger role than the US.
Signing and adhearing to the JCPOA turned Europe and Iran from opponents into partners.
This is a great diplomatic achievement. However, no part of the JCPOA made the two allies or
obliged the European side to wage an economic war with the USA on behalf of Iran. On the
contrary, the Iranians would be the first to say they are no friends of Europa. They have
been complaining about "Western meddling" in their region for years. (Note that they don`t
differentiate but always speak collectively of "the West").
So that`s their chance to show the world how much of a sovereign nation they are and that
they can handle their problems without the "meddling" of the "despicable" Europeans. There is
no obligation - neither legal nor moral - for Europe to take the side of Iran in the US-Iran
conflict.
And actually it is both sides - both Iran and the USA - who are unhappy with the current
European neutrality.
Thanks to MoA for being one of the only honest brokers of news on Iran in the English
language. As an American citizen living abroad (in EU) I have a more jaded and at the same
time worried feeling about this.
Along with all the other stuff, including the current threat to close the U.S. embassy in
the Iraqi "Green Zone" and the accompanying military maneuvers, which would spark war in the
region, I see this hardening and expansion of sanctions as yet the next clue that the U.S.
and Donald Trump's regime are looking toward re-election and a hot war with/on Iran. Rattling
the cage ever more and backing Iran into the corner with brutal, all-encompassing sanctions
is already an act of war, usually the first prior to bombs falling. I can also see this green lighting Israeli or joint American-Israeli strikes on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons
development sites and other military and petro-state assets.
I hope I'm wrong but we've all seen this before and it never ends well. If the EU shows a
spine, or more likely Russia and/or China step in directly, perhaps the long desired
neocon/neolib/Zionist hot war against Iran can be avoided.
I think it is very important for the US to kill another 500,000 children via sanctions, in
order to demonstrate the importance of freedom and democracy and observing international law.
While reading this post I was thinking what MoA wrote in the last two paragraphs. And also
that Iran will just continue to turn to China, Russia, and others in the East.
It's disgusting to watch the people of the US/UK/EU go along with this. Western elites are
fat, lazy, vicious, and cruel.
"Europeans can not be helped. Ironically, it is their own rejection of their WW2 past that
causes them to reject the multipolar world and sovereignty as "primitive things from the
past"
plus, as you point out elsewhere, there are longer histories at play: the Crusades against
the Slavs, the Moors and the Turks (and the Arabs, in fact), the invention of "western
civilization" in the 19th century (Arians vs Semites, Europe vs Asia, ecc) ...
plus, there is the persisting aspiration for world domination, partly frustrated by WW1
and the upheavals of the XXth century, which transformed the UK and the whole of Europe (with
Japan, Australia, etc) in a junior partner of the new US Empire
(that's the other lesson learned from WW2: no single european power could dominate the
continent and the world, but they could dominate as junior partners under the new young
leader of the wolf pack, the US)
plus, there are is a class war that can be better fought, by national oligarchies, within
globalist rethoric and rules
plus, there are the US deep state instruments of domination over european national
states
but Europeans (and Usaians) do understand the language of force, and they have - at the
moment - encountered a wall in their attempts at expansion, in Iran, China, Russia,
Venezuela, ecc; an alternative multipolar alliance is taking shape
so they might attempt to win a nuclear war by 20 million deaths to 2 (or 200 to 20, who
cares), but they might also decide to tune down their ambitions and return to reality;
maybe
@m (#35)
EU promised to uphold JCPOA. They can't because of the US and they are doing next to nothing
to change that. EU isn't neutral. They are stooges. Iran is right to complain about it, the
US isn't.
Trump is a man of peace, he hasn't started any new wars - whatever that means, lol.
As far as
I know economic blocade is tantamount to war. If he wins reelection expect renewed kinetic
attacks on venezuela and Iran. He's already lined up his zionist coalition with arabic
satraps to launch his Iran quagmire. Trump is a deal maker, he understands the economy and
will bring back manufacturing jobs to Murikkka, lol. I'm sure Boeing execs in deep trouble
would love to sell plane to the Iranians but Mr. MIGA just made that impossible. Nothing to
worry about, there's always the next socialist bailout for Boeing funded by taxpayers -
suckers as Trump would call them. So much for winning, can't fix deplorable and stupid...
Btw b, Trump's opposition to the Iran deal has nothing to do with money or the zionist
lobby. Stable genius opposed JCPOA in 2015 even before announcing his run for the presidency.
It's not about the mula but all about the mollah's, lol: The Donald in his own words at a tea
party event in 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIDNonMDSo8
Ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979 multiple US regimes in DC have been totally
successful in making majority Iranian people everywhere in the world, understand that the US
is their chronic strategic enemy for decades to come. At same time, these US regimes have
equally been as successful in making American people believe Iran is their enemy.
The difference between this two side's belief is, that, Iranian people by experiencing US
regime' conducts have come to their belief, but the American people' belief was made by their
own regime' propaganda machinery. For this reason, just like the people to people relation
between the US and Russian people, Before and after the fall of USSR the relation between US
and Iran in next few generations will not come to or even develop to anything substantial or
meaningful. One can see this same trajectory in US Chinese relations, or US Cuban. Noticeably
all these countries relation with US become terminally irreparable after their revolutions,
regardless of the maturity or termination of the revolution. As much as US loves color
revolutions, US hates real revolutions. The animosity no longer is just strategic it has
become people to people, and the reason and blame goes to Americans since they never were
ready to accept the revolutions that made nations self-servient to their interests. The
bottom line truth is the US / and her poodles in europe know, ever since the revolution Iran
no longer will be subservient to US interests.
This is leverage to bargain away the oil pipeline to germany. That is what is behind it. You
scratch my back, the US is saying to the EU, in particular, Germany....
It's an
Economy based on Plunder! , so that's why sanctions here, there and everywhere!! But the
real problem is we aren't participating in the Plunder!! Sometimes you gotta use extreme
sarcasm to explain the truth of a situation, and that's what Max and Stacey do in their show
at the link. 13 minutes of honest reporting about the fraudulent world in which we live. As
for Jerome Powell, current Fed Chair, he's complicit in the ongoing criminal activity just as
much as the high ranking politicos. Bastiat laid it out 180 years ago, but we're living what
he described now. And that's all part of what I wrote @40 above. The moral breakdown occurred
long ago but took time to perfect.
I think it is crazy that EU allows US to manage SWIFT to the point they invent new entities
to sidestep SWIFT and US sanctions (which are weak and ineffective, but that is the
trajectory of their weak attempts at independence). Force SWIFT to equally service all legal
transactions according to EU law, and let US cut itself off from all international financial
transfers if it doesn't like using EU's SWIFT. US corps won't allow that to happen, it's just
that EU refuses to call US bluff. Of course they are now praying for Biden presidency, but if
they can't assert themselves it is all ultimately the same thing.
These 'foreign policy experts' think the trade war with China has been a mistake. But they
think Trump is too soft on Russia and he hasn't been tough enough on NK, Iran and Venezuela.
It has become a standard trick for outgoing US administrations to saddle the incoming
administration with set in stone policies and judicial appointments.
"Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of
campaign funds and the lobby provides those. The move is also designed to preempt any
attempts by a potentially new administration to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran."
Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump
administration.
The danger for the world is the Trump administration may go even further than additional
sanctions. So I refer to the previous post, US policy remains the same whatever bunch are the
frontmen.
When that attempt failed they worked on convincing the Sultan of Turkey to give them
someone else's homeland. The Zionist Zealot Mr Kalvariski became the administrator of the
Palestine Jewish Colonization Association with the aim of establishing a jewish suprematist
ghetto. Following that flop the Zionists turned to the hapless British and were rewarded by
Balfour with his notorious British government double cross of the Arabs. Now it's the turn of
the US and assorted captive nations to uphold and support tyranny and Talmudic
violence.
I am SLOWLY coming to the conclusion that DaTrumpster understands DaDeepState better than any
of us armchair pundits. His patient - and yes, perhaps faulty strategy - he's still standing
after ALL DaCrap that's been thrown at him.
All the 'EXPURTS' - including MoA - can only see part of DaPicture at best.
I've been as hard on DaTrumpster as anyone on DaConservative side - but I am SLOWLY coming to
understand WTF just might be going on.
Point - don't be too sure of your immediate inclinations - we ALL see through DaGlass DARKLY!
SWIFT is only a messaging system – SWIFT does not hold any funds or securities, nor
does it manage client accounts. Behind most international money and security transfers is the
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. SWIFT is a vast
messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and
securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions.
Paul wrote:
"Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump
administration." Yes at least as much or more zionist. Nothing about Harris or Biden (or the DNC) says they won't be.
And hasn't it always been that way from one president to the the next? Was there ever one
that was less zionist than the predecessor? (Maybe they're all so close this is an impossible
question to answer, that too could be the case).
The sitting executive branch gives the favors right now and anyone incoming gives the
favors after they win and thus each election becomes a double windfall for the lobby
group?
A zionist double dip . Maybe most US voters could grasp it like that.
I can't back this up (much like my previous comment in this thread) but it's my
impression. It would probably take a lot of work to make sure it's right; one would have to
scrutinize so much over so many decades.
I nominate president Eisenhower as slightly less zionist on one occasion: during the
Anglo,French, Zionist Suez invasion of 1956 Eisenhower remarked after numerous UN resolutions
condemning the bandit state's aggression ' Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign
territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its
withdrawal?'
This could be a useful quote for todays world.
Later, in 1964, Eisenhower approved his hand picked emissary's US $150 million so called
Johnston Plan to steal the waters of the Jordan River and further marginalize the Palestine
Arabs and surrounding Arab states.
Sanctions aren't the story. Once all the players have left the JCPOA, either Israel or the US
can claim Iranians are at the point of producing a nuclear weapon. Without the JCPOA and
inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities it will be impossible to prove or deny the
allegations. Thus giving either the US or Israel justification it wants to conduct military
strikes against Iran. The only things stopping this from happening is if the EU stays in the
JCPOA...
Exactly the aim. I said so in an earlier post. This is all part of the program to create a
false justification to conduct military strikes inside Iran. At this point, I'm really
surprised that the U.S. even tries to construct these narratives after Obama's Syria and
Libya operations didn't even really bother, save for a few probably fake "chemical weapons"
attack they alleged Assad committed. Libya I don't remember hearing anything. The embassy
maybe? After the Soleimani strike and the shootdown of the U.S. drone, not to mention the
alleged Iranian attacks on ARAMCO's oil facilities, I'm really quite surprised something more
serious (not to minimize the awful acts of war which the sanctions definitely are) hasn't
already happened. It will soon, especially if Trump gets re-elected. Wonder what all of his
"no new wars" supporters will say then?
Everybody reading knows what SWIFT is. That's a nice attempt to circumscribe the overall
sanctions regime and paint it as "no big deal."
Crush Limpbro - Checked out your site. You've got a long way to go before you can
criticize MoA. Hope that comment draws a few clicks to keep you going, but I would caution
other barflies to use a proxy; could be a honey trap to collect IP addresses.
This United States imposed and Zionist inspired siege on Iran and its people will only
further strengthen the political and economic bonds with Russia and China. Meanwhile, the US
collapses from its internal social limitations and its abandonment of public healthcare
responses to the Corvid 19 pandemic. Europe it close behind the US in this respect.
What exactly is this 'Justification'.. . 'to conduct military strikes against Iran' that
you refer to hasbara boy? Failure to obey foreign imposed zionist diktats?
Would this 'justification' apply to the bandit state if it refused to abide by the NNPT
for example?
No double standards pass the test here.
Yet another proof that "Western values" and their "rules based international order" mean
exactly nothing.
In the past, the West at least kept up some pretense that it was wrong to target unarmed
civilians (still, they flattened Driesden; Hiroshima; North Korea, Vietnam, Laos). Today,
they do not care to be seen openly, cruelly, brutally, sadistically killing civvies. These
American bastards say, "... it is not killing if the victims drop dead later, like, not right
now. " Or, "... it became necessary to destroy Iran in order to save Iran."
Iran is perfectly correct to call this a crime against humanity for the West to starve a
population of food and medicine. This will boomerang just as the opium-pushing in China will
boomerang on the West.
Meanwhile, just as those drug-pushing English bastards earned themselves lordships and
knighthoods; just as presidential bastards retire to their Martha Vineyard mansions; so the
current crop of bastards in American leadership will retire to yet more mansions, leaving the
next couple generations to meet Persian wrath. The American way is to "win" until they are
tired of winning, no?
But in truth, in objective reality, only those who have lost their human-ness are capable
of crimes against humanity.
The US is cruising for a bruising in the middle east fucking with Iran like this. Not that the US hasn't deserved a good knockout punch the past 19 years since invading and
destroying Afghanistan and Iraq, etc, etc. Regardless of their rhetoric, how the European rogues and rascals (France, Germany and the
UK) can sleep at night is beyond me.
Yes Psychochistorian @ 1, At the nation state level, EU support for blockade terror and
sanction torture (BT&ST), against reluctant nation states and non compliant individuals
within those nation states, logically suggests EU nation states are not independent sovereign
countries <=EU nation states exist in name only? Maybe its just like in the USA, these
private monopoly powered Oligarcks (PMPO), own everything (privately owned copyrights,
patents, and property) made possible by rules nation states turn into law. The citizens of
those privately owned EU nation states are victims <=in condition=exploitable. Maybe PMPOs
use nation states <=as profit support weapons, to be directed against <=any and all
<=competition, whereever and however <=competition appears.
The hidden suspects <=capital market linked crowds through out the world..
Media is 92% owned by six private individuals, of the seven typical nation state layers of
authority and power: 5 are private and two are public. Additionally, few in the international
organizations have allegiance to historic cultures of the nation state governed masses. It is
as if, the named nation states are <=threatened by knee breaking thugs, but maybe its not
threat, its actual PMPO ownership.
If one accepts PMPO <=to be in control of all of USA and all of allied nation state,
one can explain <=current BT&ST events. But private Oligarch scenarios <=raise
obvious questions, why have not the PMPO challenged East eliminated <=Israel, MSM
propaganda repeatedly blames or points to Israel <=to excuse the USA leaders for their
BT&ST policies. Seems the PMPO are <=using the nation states, they own <=to
eliminate non complying competition.
What is holding the East back? Russia and China each have sufficient oil, gas and
technology to keep things functional, so why has not the competition in the East taken Israel
out, if Israel is directing the USA to apply BT&ST against its competitors? Why is the
white House so sure, its BT&ST policies will not end up destroying Israel? Maybe because
Israel has no real interest <=in the BT&ST policy <=Israel is deceptions:fall guy?
The world needs to pin the tail on the party driving USA application of BT&ST because no
visible net gain to Governed Americans seems possible from BT&ST policies?
I think Passer @ 17 has hit the nail on its head. "The EU is trying to prop up the US
Empire in response to its decline, instead of trying to free itself. "
Sanctions aren't the story. Once all the players have left the JCPOA, either Israel or the
US can claim Iranians are at the point of producing a nuclear weapon.
So you put that forward as a justification for attacking Iran militarily, but that means
according to your logic you also have justification for attacking Israel or the US
militarily. The rules are the same for all, right?
Economic warfare is certainly effective. However, time is running out for these weapons as
America's lock on the world economy grows weaker. With a rapidly approaching expiry date, the
word out may be to use em or lose em.
In a zero-sum great game, it makes sense to deploy such weapons now insofar as an
opponent's loss is always a gain for oneself.
Donald Trump talked up his Iran policy in a profanity-laden tirade on Friday, telling
conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Tehran knows the consequences of undermining the
United States.
"Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice: if you fuck around with us, if you do
something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done
before."
What a shit show we are seeing. What is the next phase of this civilization war that is not
a war because there are not enough dead bodies for some I guess?...but it sure looks like
war to me.
Well for the first time in history Iran's symbolic "Red Flag" is still flying above the
popular Jamkaran Mosque Holy dome. Perhaps the USA and its running dogs body count has risen
in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would we know. These things are disguised from the fearless
press in those countries ;)
Perhaps the dead and mangled are many but we do know that the US chief killer in
Afghanistan was reduced to ashes immediately following General Shahid Qassem Suleimanis
murder by the USA whilst on a diplomatic mission in Iraq.
In respect of b's observation above, the illegal occupier of Palestine is more likely
tipping millions into the Harris Presidency as well as the possible Trump Presidency. I doubt
either Harris or the biden bait and switch stooge would restore the JCPOA. Besides they would
not be invited to sit at the table any time soon IMO. They would likely refuse to any
conditions of reversing the sanctions and then carry on about all that 'unreasonable demands
by a terrorist state' stuff etc etc.
No, Iran will be getting on with its future in a multilateral world where the United
Nations has been reduced to pile of chicken dung by the USA while most other nations go along
with global lunacy.
You know what's telling about the bootlickers who hem and haw about U.S. policy with the T
Administration, but never mention Trump as the real source of it even when profuse Zionist
shit spills from his mouth on Limbaugh's show proving he's a Ziofascist pig?
What's telling is that these usual suspects jumped all over ARI @64 for zeroing in on
Trump's precise intentions with Iran but they gave a pass to the real HASBARIST in the room,
Crush Limbraw @60, exposing himself, putting his HARD-ON FOR TRUMP on full display.
@60 we ALL see through DaGlass DARKLY!
Speak for yourself- you Zionist MORON!
Ahhhhhh, you can always count on the DUPLICITY of MOA'S weathervane james and friends. Me,
I ain't here to win a popularity contest like weathervane; I'm here to kick ass when I
witness duplicity in action. My friend here is the truth that I'll defend to the grave.
********
Noooo, dum-dums Putin will not come to Iran's rescue when he's warm in bed with his
Zionist Oligarchs and Russian squatters whom he pays homage to from time to time when he
visits Ziolandia thanking them for choosing the stolen West Bank over Russia.
Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice. That's Trump blowhard
driving the drumbeat.
Just rescue me from my self-destructive self for 4 more years, oh kings of Zion and
Wall Street, and I'll give you WAR!!! all in CAPS with three exclamation points. The GREATEST
war you've ever seen.
When I read the Great Reset article on the World Economic Forum website it seems to me that
the western Globalists, in concert align the US and EU. That accounts for the basic vassal
arrangements that predominate but allow for some nonalignments on certain issues.
That is precisely what the Belarusian authorities announced when Tikhanovskaya left Minsk,
that she was helped in her way out, but we know how the MSM acts, they stick to their own
script, just like a Hollywood movie.
The Belarusians must be watching with great attention what is happening in Kirguizia,
riots and complete chaos, and thinking how lucky they were to avoid the color rev that was in
the menu for them, which the same methods, discredit the oncoming election, claim fraud after
it, use similar symbols like the clenched fist and the heart, new flag, start transliterating
family and geographical names to a mythical and spoken by a very small minority language and
then nobody knows if to spell Tikhanovskaya, Tsikhanouskaya or like the politically incorrect
but street wise Luka called her, Guaidikha. And that is Kirguizia, how about a shooting war
in Armenia and Azerbaijan, all those conflicts were unimaginable when the USSR existed, but
the empire even on his way down is insatiable.
There is over a million jews of Russian origin living in Israel, 20% of the population,
with deep roots in Russia, language, culture and relatives. Do not let partisanship for the
Dems blind you, a true successful leader is someone that defends his country's interests
while at the same time tries to have good relations with everybody else, obviously that
balance is not easy to achieve in a world full of conflicting interests, but so far Putin
seems to be balancing his act while not loosing sight of the main thing, Russia.
Putin will not come to Iran's rescue when he's warm in bed with his Zionist
Oligarchs
If Putin is so close to Zionists, then why does Russia block the Zionist regime-change in
Syria? Why has Russia denied Israel and USA entreaties to allow them to bomb Iran?
Not as strange as a mythological demigoddess that turned sailors into swain and that now
enjoys to plunge into the mud with her creatures. A bot, what an easy label, it has lost any
meaning.
special beings who was born with two extra eyes...in the back of my head.
Alaska yellow fin sole, not bad, from Bristol Bay, but the Melva -a tunafish species with
more oil in its meat- I cooked for lunch, just caught, has a lot more fish oil with its rich
contents of vitamin D, add sunny Mediterranean weather and that is my pill for today, trying
to keep the bug at bay.
Circe, why don't you do what your namesake would have done and whip yourself up some meds to
calm down? You're starting to lapse into excessive use of upper case, italics, exclamation
points, bolding, profanity, and of course, insults.
This may help. It looks like the orange man is in fact going down, so you will soon have
Joe and Kamal empowered to dismantle the evil Putin-Netanyahu-Trump axis, and put the US back
on the path to truth and justice.
The unilateral and illegal-under-JCPOA sanctions mean it's time for EU to either confront the
extraterritorial US policy it has clearly rejected in principle, or (more likely) acknowlege
that it remains in practice just a collection of 'client states'. A sad moment for me, but
useful for clarity.
Hard to understand but you guys are incapable of spelling the name of a once great US
city, San Francisco. I heard it has changed a lot, got to see long time ago, before the
digital craze.
This is a brief but subtle post by b, with quiet but telling headline. Perhaps, just
guessing, a new take on the post he was having difficulty with earlier? The question of the
EU is an interesting one - not to be considered as virulent as the former Soviet Union, but
somehow as tugged at by the components thereof...
Sanctions on Iran? We do know what Iran is capable of; surely we have not forgotten?
Indeed, by pressing these sanctions at this late date, the Trump administration surely has
not forgotten either the effect sanctions had on Russia. They were postive to that country's
independent survival, though the immediate effect was demonstrably harsh. So now, sanctions
on Iran? One doesn't have to be a world leader to suppose similar cause, similar effect.
Ah, Paco has a wonderful meal of a beneficial fish called the Melva! Bravo, Paco; all is
not lost! But you have hooked the sea-serpent as well -- take care! That one - carefully
remove the hook and set it free ;)
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Not very surprising to be honest, some people simply cannot go without regime change
to the point where they have to parade people about who weren't even born in Iran and who
have little to no support in the country as "dissidents" to try to guilt people into
supporting intervention. Of course with that comes slander against those who warn against
that, which unfortunately means TAC.
Trump ignored them??? Hardly. He hired John Bolton as his national security advisor,
and Rudy Giuliani is his personal attorney. Both of those guys are heavily tied to this
organization and advocate its line. And while he did stop short of actually invading
Iran, he was on the brink of doing so recently, talked out of it only at the last minute.
I'll give him credit for not going all the way with them, but he's given them far too
wide a berth and much too much influence in his foreign policy if you ask me.
He did not go all the way with them because he was told by the military and others,
who take their jobs and missions to server the American people seriously, that his
attacks on Iran - invasion was not "the table" at all - would face a humiliating defeat
at the same level of what happened to his efforts to extend the weapons sanctions at the
UNSC. Pompeo was sent home with his tail between his legs.
The idea that Trump would have invaded if allowed doesn't pass the smell test. He
spent much of the 2016 railing against regime change and foreign wars. His recent
instincts on this topic have been largely correct.
Trump did not want more war, and wanted to end the existing wars, that much is clear.
At the same time as he believes the Israeli line about Iran. But he did not want war with
Iran - he knows they would mine the Strait of Hormuz shut, and the U.S. economy would go
into a depression along with the world economy. No president would survive that.
But, he has had to appease top donor *Sheldon Adelson, in order to prevent a GOP
revolt in the Congress. The threat was always that they'd join the Democrats in
impeaching him, that Mike Pence would call for the same, and people would leave his
cabinet. So he caved by sanctioning Iran and destroying the lives of millions of people.
And he had to appease Israel by taking Syria's oil fields via the Marxist Kurd
mercenaries, and let them burn the wheat fields. But he did not start a war, and did not
want a war.
Lets be honest here. It isn't MEK disinformation tactics it is the tactics
of the US wrapped up and packaged as MEK. Just as Falon Gong is backed
by the CIA. MEK is a bunch of backwards ass hats with terrorist
tendencies. They are not some national level intelligence agency. This
is most likely crud made up by the US intelligence agencies sold as MEK
and pushed on the American people to convince them that Iran will be
dropping nuclear weapons on their house any minute now if they can stop
eating babies long enough, so they need to push their government to go
to WAR!!!!! with Iran and kill some Muslims. The gullibility of the
American people is why there will never be a time when they are not at
war.
Possibly, but the MEK does have an online presence and such. But of course, it is all
with Washington's money, and Washington's assistance.
For those who don't know: The MEK is a Marxist-Islamist group that initially supported
the Revolution, but turned against Ayatollah Khomeini as they didn't get to share power.
Because no one liked them. And Marxists were not allowed in revolutionary Iran - the MEK
was chased out along with the Soviet-installed communist party in northern Iran.
The MEK have been killing Iranian police, bureaucrats and local administrators.
This is their "revolution". They kill people mainly with bombs. The present Ayatollah's
left arm is withered after one of their bomb attacks.
The MEK have been killing Iranian physics professors and technicians. They kill
them with car bombs in traffic - a motorbike with two killers drive up to a car by a
traffic stop and attach a bomb with magnets. Of course, you can wonder where they got the
bombs, and money and transport. This is classic Mossad strategy. Likewise, dozens of
technicians and professors in Iraq have been murdered. Israel hopes for a
counter-reaction which the U.S. can exploit.
Rest assured, the political opposition in Iran hates the Marxist-Islamist MEK as much
as the government does. Which Washington and Israel don't acknowledge.
The MEK was housed by Saddam Hussein in an old military base. They had to leave Iraq
eventually after the overthrow of Hussein. The U.S. then shipped them to a brand new
training base in Albania. Crazy as it might seem. Albania's government is of course
as eager to be a paid Washington agent as the Kurds are.
Absurdly, this explicitly terrorist group has been taken off the terror list by
Washington. While Iran is called "terrorist" for helping Hezbollah, who formed to fight
back when Israel invaded Lebanon and massacred Shia villagers in the south with
artillery, because they lived close to the Palestinian refugee camps. And then kept
fighting when Israel occupied part of southern Lebanon, Shia land, as a "buffer zone" for
many years.
The MEK killed thousands of people, including Americans. But the Lobby always gets
what it wants.
The MEK was founded in 1965 by three Islamic leftists with the goal of toppling the
U.S.-supported regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In the 1970s it undertook a campaign of assassinating U.S. advisers and bombing
U.S. corporations in Iran. It supported the 1979 Revolution in Iran, but in 1981 it
turned its guns against the Tehran government and began a campaign of assassinations and
terrorist operations that resulted in the death of thousands of Iranians, including the
executions of its own supporters by government officials, soldiers, police officers, and
ordinary people.
It then moved its headquarters to Iraq, made a pact with the regime of Saddam
Hussein, which was fighting a ferocious war with Iran. The MEK spied on Iranian troops
for Iraq, attacked Iran at the end of Iran-Iraq war with Hussein's support, and helped
Hussein put down the uprisings by the Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south
after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.
The MEK is despised by the vast majority of Iranians for what they consider to be
treason committed against their homeland.
"As a matter of journalistic ethics any organization engaging in systematic dishonesty
like this has provided a very good reason to blacklist them. ...This is not a matter of
foreign policy differences: if you wish to see the U.S. pursue regime change in Iran, the
MEK does not help make that case. Any publishers or think tanks who are aware of this
dishonesty and still treat them like a legitimate opposition group should be considered
part of a campaign not wholly different from the last time we were lied into a Mideast
war."
If MEK does NOT help to make the case for regime change in Iran - & outside
sponsored regime change is not ethical - then it would be unethical not to support them,
in order to help prevent unethical regime change. Although that's probably not what
horrible Hillary had in mind when, as Sec. of State in 2012, she de-listed them from the
U.S. official list of terrorist organizations. But if anyone will lie "us" into a war
with Iran, it will be AIPAC & innumerable other dishonest zionist organizations
working on behalf of the Jewish terror state, & it's new Saudi terror state partner;
both of whom look with favor on MEK as a bit partner in their joint effort to take out
the government of Iran. MEK is pretty small potatoes compared to The Lobby, who are
waging another campaign not wholly different from the last time they pushed us into a
M.E. war to benefit lying israel.
People tell you - You are a conservative, so do I. I support XYZ thus you should also
support them.
Before the 2003 Iraqi War, Many then Bush administration officials and self-anointed
"conservative opinion leaders" went on TV to lie to people to support their war. Today,
we still suffer the consequence but they are preaching to us other wars.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
In no way should the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War be excused, nor
should "conservative opinion leaders" be let off the hook, but the Congress was
complicit, the Senate was complicit, the military was complicit, the intelligence
community was complicit, and the majority of the electorate was complicit. Nobody
cared whether the reason for the war was valid, people just wanted to vent their
frustrations against terrorists on an unrelated Arab country that the US had already used
as a whipping boy. What could happen?
Almost twenty years later and-- surprise! surprise!-- suddenly everyone recognizes the
war for the folly it was. Some people, like Dreher, seem to have genuinely changed their
stance based on what happened subsequently. But we'll all see what happens the next time
the war mongers-- from both sides of the aisle and from all over the country-- start
rattling their sabers.
Then there are the appeasers and anti-war peace-niks that would rather surrender than
fight for liberty or that (if they are willing to fight) will on risk OTHER PEOPLE's
(other American) lives, thus removing the need to ever put themselves at risk of learning
what actually goes in in the countries they are so sympathetic to.
The complete idiocy regarding Vietnam is the anti-war rhetoric surrounding. But has
laid the framework for installing fear into anyone who doesn't tow the ridiculousness of
what is argued by protesters -- which in every way has nearly every argument
backwards.
Since the aggressors in Vietnam were the communists of four countries, it is very safe
to say that those opposed to defending an independent S. Vietnam were in fact appeasing
communist aggression and that is accurate.
The nation of Vietnam has rarely known peace and the lines during the conflict
generally mark the region that separated the country's territorial history. The South
Vietnamese sound reason to seek defend their territorial and political independence and
we had sound reason to defend the same.
It was during that era that the liberal foundations showed their true colors. And if
one doubt it --- just look at the anti-Vietnam advocates -- the managers of the Iraq and
Afghanistan missteps and p[perhaps even worse their willingness to destroy the lives of
anyone who challenged their rational based on the very case they made -- which was
unsupportable.
There are some issues which simply are not really issues,
1. the lives of black people in the country and how they were/are socialized and the
consequence
2.what the civil war was really about
3.Mexican invasion of US territory to retake territory they lost to band of squatters
(lousy immigration enforcement) a war that is now taking place via our failure to enforce
border protection.)
"Since the aggressors in Vietnam were the communists of four countries, it is very
safe to say that those opposed to defending an independent S. Vietnam were in fact
appeasing communist aggression and that is accurate."
It's safe to say that BS like this is not hard to come by in the right wing nutjobs'
circles. No Vietnamese had/has ever attempted to attack, invade, kill and spray Agent
Orange anywhere in the US. So how come they became the aggressors?!
Viet Nam became truly independent AFTER expelling the American military.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee --
that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
You've got to understand the nature of the regime we're dealing with. This is a man who
has delayed, denied, deceived the world." George W. Bush, September 17, 2002
Bless you for writing this but you are spitting into the wind. There are too many
people who want to believe this. The IRaq war analogy is apt. You have govt in exile
types like MEK (remember Chalabi) who have a vested interest in lying to us. You have the
hyper-pro Israel crowd and the newly accepted pro-Saudi crowd w/money to burn. I actually
expect and don't begrudge foreigners for trying to get the U.S. into their fights. I
resent the MSM that is simply in love with U.S. military conflicts who accuse people who
oppose them of being anti-American, conspiracy theorists.
The most laughable example was CNN accepting the notion that Iran has a massive cyber
presence in influencing our elections because our Intel Agencies told them so. Iran is
detested by the U.S. public as we steal civilian cargo from them that would make the
lives of people in other countries better. We sell the stolen goods for our benefit and
call them terrorists for their trouble. To suggest that they have sway over us is
laughable yet this passes for journalism.
Iran will be the next Iraq. If there is a God it will be the rock that breaks us. If
not then a crime of shocking proportions.
I largely agree but I think there's room for optimism, the US military particular the
army is largely a broken instrument, morale is not good except for the contractors,
General maintenance is down in favor of expensive toys that largely do not work. For all
of the bluster of this generation of sociopaths the military in general is a shadow of
itself not to mention we live in times of a rising China and the reemergence Russia,
neither of which would allow in on opposed attack on Iran.
How so? Our government seems to be providing the Saudi's with with as many bombs as
they need, Air Force retirees to fly in the backseatair of Saudi planes, we have slowed
down on the transfer of Thermo nuclear Technology as well as I assume the the delivery
systems for them true but that was likely just a temporary Flash of Conscience it'll
probably never happen again for that individual but if there something I'm missing please
do tell.
Look at it this way. Either the Saudi/UAE themselves have to deal militarily with
Iran, or the US. The US military-industrial complex is for selling weapons to these
client states whole-heartedly for obvious reasons. The Saudi/UAE has always expected and
often demanded the US is the one to "cut the snake's head" as "king" Abdullah of the
"Saudi" Arabia demanded frequently. These states know very well neither the "version" of
the weaponry they buy from the West is capable of performing in a real war with a
powerful enemy like Iran, nor are their personnel capable of operating them effectively.
So what they say to the US is, OK we'll buy your junk, but you need to do the job. In
other words, they want to fight Iran to the last AMERICAN soldier. The Pentagon wants
none of that. But happy to run the cash register. I hope I made my point clear.
MEK have no support in Iran. If a MEK member would walk down the street there the
people would tear them to shreds. When they started killing Iranians and cooperating with
Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war they committed political suicide.
You know, this really doesn't carry much weight. I am not going to dismiss the
complaints of a group because the majority don't support them. That is not a case for
regime change. I don't see a case for that as yet. But I don't buy this nonsense about
Iran land of peace ----
They were instrumental in destabilizing any peace in Iraq and remain so. Their Islamic
revolution has not passed and their ambitions are not as benign as as many including
Iranians like to pretend.
What does that have to do with anything that I said? If you want to come to power you
need the support of the people MEK don't have that so they will never gain power. Also
MEK are responsible for the revolution in the first place, they are the ones that carried
out bombing and assassinations even of Americans in Iran. They are the ones that attacked
the US embassy in Iran and held Americans hostage. There is a reason they were on the US
terror list until 2012. As far as Iran being the land of peace not sure where you got
that from, Iran has never claimed that and infact Iran will conduct foreign policy that
benefits its goals, which is true of any nation. You should try to stay on topic when you
reply to somebody though.
Yes, as you know the Iranians attacked, invaded and looted Iraq's oil and cultural
heritage. Had in not been for the US "rescue mission" Iranian would still be there. You
must be tone deaf.
Thump the conspiracy theories and emphasize the hard-line approach with no idea or
intent to actually go through with anything should he actually win. I see reference to
Q-anon and I immediately think Trumpian conspieracy.
Conservatives are easy to target, they are prepared to believe all sorts of nonsense.
Qanon aside they are prepared to believe that tax cuts pay for themselves and you can
lose weight on a vinegar and ice cream diet.
As opposed to the people who believe that a man can become a "real woman" just by
saying so, and nod approvingly when CNN shows the chyron "Mostly peaceful protests
continue" over footage of burning buildings.
Really, that's pretty damn funny like you retards don't believe in a bunch of
conspiracy nonsense and by the way don't put down Q is good fun to the geriatric
Community on the other hand you clowns are playing footsie with actual Nazis in Ukraine
while you accuse the right of being fascist that's beautiful congratulations it's going
to be great in a couple years when this country has seceded from each other and all of
you non-producers get to sort it out for yourselves, it's going to be magic.
Fake dissident groups. Wow! Not even the Chinese are this duplicitous. And people
whine and complain about Russian and Chinese 'infiltration' and 'meddling' ??
Which fale dissident groups? I missed that. I am not being sarcastic. I see people who
have been named as fake contributors all over the place. But I didn't see a reference to
a fake dissident group.
I'm still looking for the proof one way or the other of who the "good guys" are
here.
Fake this, fake that I can get from Trump every time he opens his mouth about "fake
news".
What I don't get from Trump (or from this article) is any references, documentation,
or solid proof of any kind other than accusations and counter-accusations -- one side I'm
supposed to believe because the author said so.
I'm not buying it without objective proof and trustworthy corroboration -- not just
more sock-puppets.
They are being dissed by many smart conservatives and others, because they have become
a tool of Saudi/Israel. They practically spearheaded killing Americans during the Shah,
and now they are enjoying American political and financial support. In that vein the
adage, my enemy's enemy is my friend, does not apply here. But if you are a money hungry
Giuliani, Kennedy, Bolton or Howard Dean being a gang of killers, Saddam Husein
mercenaries, and Saudi/Israeli agents don't matter.
"We are especially on guard when it comes to unsolicited foreign policy
commentary.""
So one would hope, but foreign meddling is rife. At least the Washington Examiner
makes an effort, whereas the Washington Free Beacon functions almost openly as an Israeli
organ inside the United States.
Ehem...The Israelis have admitted they essentially founded, financed and thoroughly
and continuously infiltrated the Palestinian revolutionary group, HAMAS to counter the
PLO achieve the ongoing ethnic destruction of Palestinian land freedom and society...the
MEK and their front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran are comparable
Israeli emanations whose ultimate goal is the land grab from the Nile to the Euphrates
known as the Greater Israel project. This is Israeli history text book material, it is
not conjecture...Read what former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev,
former Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. had to say the New York
Times in that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a
"counterweight" to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation
Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as
"a creature of Israel.") "The Israeli government gave me a budget," the retired
brigadier
general confessed, "and the military government gives to the mosques." Moreover, "Hamas,
to my great regret, is Israel's creation," said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious
affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades to the Wall Street Journal
in 2009. Deliberately planned, as far back as the mid-1980s, according to Cohen in an
official report to his superiors playing the divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories,
by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists, HAMAS was built up to
become an "existential threat" fake tool of nuclear mighty Israel. In his report Cohen
wrote, "I suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before
this reality jumps in our face," he wrote. That was the point exactly, poor victimized
Israel "endowed with the right to defend itself". With Palestine now Kushnerized into
oblivion, Iran is next ...Go figure...
Hmmm
Means, motive, opportunity and who benefits spells out in no uncertain terms that the
entire create a justification and then go to war with Iran originates in Israel and is
being sold by the Zionists and Israel's literal army of jewish/Zionist/pro-Israel agents
masquerading as "lobbyists", "activists", "think tanks" "academics", the Media,
Hollywood, Congress, most of the White House Staff, etc., etc., here in the US. In other
words, by an Israeli controlled army in America made up of traitors, liars and
criminals.... A group who collectively ALWAYS put Israel Uber Alles.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday dropped a little October surprise said his
department has Hillary Clinton's 'deleted' emails and will release them before the
election.
"We're getting them out," Pompeo told Fox News Dana Perino.
TheGhostOfJamesOtisJr 17 minutes ago (Edited)
Shandong Carter Heavy Industry received all email, including classified material, sent to
Hillary Clinton's private server based on an Intelligence Community Investigator General (ICIG)
report. The ICIG determined all Hillary Clinton email was being forwarded to " [email protected] ",
an address possibly connected to the Chinese equipment manufacturer Shandong Carter Heavy
Industry The ICIG alerted FBI agent Peter Strzok who strangely did not seem alarmed by the
connection despite the fact all but four of the emails sent to Hillary Clinton's private email
server were forwarded to that address, roughly 600,000 in total.(
pdf , p14/105)
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2019-08-14%20Staff%20memo%20to%20CEG%20RHJ%20-%20ICIG%20Interview%20Summary%20RE%20Clinton%20Server.pdf
The following is an excerpt from testimony by Frank Rucker of the ICIG, "Mr. Strzok seemed
to be 'aloof and dismissive.' [Rucker] said it was as if Mr. Strzok felt dismissive of the
relationship between the FBI and ICIG and he was not very warm." - (
pdf p15/105)
The FBI later determined the email address was set up by a Clinton IT staffer named Paul
Combetta. The FBI dismissed the possible China connection because they found no evidence to
contradict Combetta's claim he "had no connection to, and had never heard of, ' Shandong Carter
Heavy Industry Machinery CO., Ltd.'''(
pdf p104/105) That's an odd statement because IT staffers wouldn't normally be expected to
have relationships with Chinese heavy industry. IT workers usually set up email addresses for
others.
Paul Combetta is the IT staffer who used BleachBit to erase emails on Clinton's private
email server.( pdf
p38 ) . Perhaps this is why the FBI didn't consider it necessary to question Combetta in
front of a Grand Jury .( pdf , p127 ) That this didn't demonstrated
criminal intent to the FBI is beyond comprehension. Obviously this goes beyond mere bias and
borders on obstruction of justice. The numerous attempts to debunk this story are almost
comical when combined with other evidence, namely Peter Strzok's leaking to the press:
December 15, 2016 Peter Strzok: " Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned
and worried, and political, they're kicking into overdrive. "
April 10, 2017 Peter Strzok: " I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I
want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go. "
April 22, 2017 Peter Strzok: " Article is out! Well done, Page. "
There is only one important matter at this time. And that is confirming ACB to the SC prior
to the so-called election. All this other stuff can wait. Lose and it's all pointless
anyway.
Yes, it is time for EU countries to show their true colors which will be ass kissers for
empire, most likely.
Folks are saying Nord Stream II is being finished but will it ever go into use?
And of course this is not war because Trump hasn't started any wars, right?
What a shit show we are seeing. What is the next phase of this civilization war that is
not a war because there are not enough dead bodies for some I guess?...but it sure looks like
war to me.
The next phase would appear to be Kyrgyzstan: from Belarus east to Sinkiang and Hong Kong the
subversion and the attempts at regime change are constant.
While Eurasia seeks to unite for peace and prosperity, the United States and its sleazy
satrapy is constantly trying to divide and weaken, to undermine and to intimidate. In doing
so it relies heavily on abusing the tattered lineaments of democracy- electioneering and
propagandising, the relics of a western culture which has become nothing more than a hollow
shell containing an increasingly totalitarian plutocracy.
All this simply moves Iran into closer confederation with Russia and China and strengthens
its resolve to send US middle eastern troops packing. Soon there will be a strong
Russia-China-Iran axis that is immune to all Western sanctions. Those countries who are part
of the BRI will get privileged economic treatment. The advantages will become increasingly
apparent and the economic disadvantages of staying allied with the US will become
increasingly apparent as well, particularly in light of the approaching collapse of the
dollar. As long as we manage to avoid a hot war the civilizational die is cast; the US has
chosen its destiny, in the dustbin of history, at least as a neoliberal oligarchy. When and
how it will reinvent itself is an open question, but it is not unreasonable to think it will
take decades. While Europe will eventually align with Eurasia, it will take another
generation of politicians before that happens.
If Iran isn't self-sufficient now, it will be by the time the US is finished with it. That
isn't a comfortable place to be but with key sector support from the Eastern bloc it's at
least as manageable as Cuba. The question is whether and how fast the Eastern bloc can
consolidate its resources by e.g. petrodollar replacement and better shared infrastructure.
The Eastern bloc isn't ideal, but when the West is apparently encouraging something like a
holocaust of suffering humanity, it's the only other game in town.
High time for both Russia and China and Iran/Cuba/Venezuela to really get together and start
speaking with one voice and show the despicable USA/West/NATO that they will stand together
and defend each other. Otherwise it's all over.
Specific steps to implement:
1. create and begin using an alternative to the SWIFT and invite anyone who is being
sanctioned by USA/West to join them
2. openly and officially declare that their currencies are backed by gold
3. openly and officially begin to speak against USA's actions around the world at the UN and
invite anyone who is being sanctioned by USA/West to join them
4. get together and openly declare to the world they stand as one and to invite
anyone else who is being harassed by USA/West/NATO to join them
5. immediately begin clean up of all the terrorists/CIA Operatives in in Central Asia
otherwise they will be in deep trouble
what are Putin and Xi doing?? Come on guys, wake up!
In March, Germany announced that the first transaction had been completed using Europe's
INSTEX system to skirt sanctions -- more than a year after the scheme had supposedly been put
in place.
I haven't seen anything further about it. Has it enabled any significant level of
trade?
Why would anyone need anything not Made in China? Plus China is the EU's second highest trade
partner (after US) so Iran could have access to some of that if for some reason they needed
an EU product. . . .Meanwhile Iran will be even more self-sufficient, as Russia has become
with EU sanctions. . . .The US has been trying self-imposed "sanctions" (China uncoupling) to
become more self-sufficient but it's not working.
EU continues its self-imposed slide into irrelevance. I suppose a servant's life is an easier
life: you don't have to think for yourself and just need to please master. But it can hardly
be a satisfactory experience, can it? Especially when the collar is held by such as Trump and
Pompass.
The winds of change are coming and they will be interesting. China's economy is already
greater than the US and that will expand many fold over the next few decades. The $ economy
will not survive this, especially not as the US has shown it will use its power corruptly.
The EU batter consider this; do they want to be part of the past or the future?
There is something much more significant happening with Europe, that is more than the Iran
issue.
The EU is trying to prop up the US Empire in response to its decline, instead of trying to
free itself.
The EU has chosen the side of the US against the multipolar world. It will be trying to
prop up the Empire.
It is becoming increasingly hostile to any country that isn't a puppet to the US, like
itself, and is lashing out at those countries. Like a zombie, it wants to infect others with
its infection, and turn every other country into US puppets too. It thinks that this is
normal and it wants to spread that "normality" to the rest of the world too.
Many analysts are already mentioning that the EU is becoming increasingly hostile to
Russia.
Recently, serious statements came from Russian officials:
"Russia will not follow EU and US rules".
"There will be no more business as usual between Russia and France and Germany".
"France and Germany are now leading the anti-russian block within Europe".
"Russia will no longer be dependent on the EU".
"Europeans have delusions of grandeur".
These are all statements by Lavrov and Zacharova.
Recently, we have seen Germany and France banning Huawei, Europe together with US blocking
the OPCW investigation at the UN, and Germany leading the charge at the UN stage against
China. EU also took the lead in the colour revolution in Belarus.
There are two recent statesments by the french foreign minister and by the EU commision
chief:
"Europe needs to unite against Russia and Turkey".
Surveys also show rising levels of anti-chinese hatred in Europe, and not only in the
US.
What has happened is far more serious than the europeans being "feckless U.S. ass
kissers". It is worse than that.
The EU chose the side of the US against the multipolar world. It does not want to free
itself from the US. Actually it thinks that it is normal to be a puppet, that others should
be US puppets too, and that a joint EU-US Empire should be supported, so that some kind of
world wide liberal utopia can be build by it.
Europeans are psychologically damaged by WW2 and this is affecting their geopolitical
behavior, turning them into forever puppets of the US.
They can not free themselves because when they were free once, they "did very bad things".
Therefore they should always follow their "better" and "Big Daddy" US, who "freed them from
themselves" and "put them in the right way".
Europeans can not be helped. Ironically, it is their own rejection of their WW2 past that
causes them to reject the multipolar world and sovereignty as "primitive things from the
past", and thus support a transnational globalist western empire that is here "to bring
Utopia on Earth". For them Russia, China, Iran, India, Turkey etc. are just a bunch of
primitives that are tryng to turn back the clock.
And thus it will increasingly start to lash out at any country that isn't a US puppet as
those countries prevent the coming of Utopia.
The story is now almost complete: the West knew beforehand Tikhanovskaya wasn't viable to
take over Lukashenko. The complete plan was to make her make the claim to the throne and then
be assassinated in a false flag operation, possibly by fanatical Belarusian elements aligned
with the West (liberal terrorists). That assassination attempt was foiled by the Belarusian
secret service, as I've already posted here a long time ago.
When Tikhanovskaya realized she was literally part of the plan, she begged Lukashenko to
help her get out of the country. Lukashenko helped her once again, but she was intercepted by
the Lithuanian secret service, hence she being forced to continue to pose as
government-in-exile of Belarus.
--//--
To keep on topic, here's another piece of information that may help you all understand
Europe's desperation for more Lebensraum:
vk@56 retails a plot. Unfortunately, no version which relies on Tikhanovskaya telling the
truth, not even to Lukashenko, is to be trusted. Tikhanovskaya is a Trump-level liar. The
woman claims to have won the election! The election was rigged before hand by excluding
candidates who might actually have had a chance to win, not by faking the ballots. The
simplest explanation is that Tkihanovskaya, even if she asked Lukashenko for help, reneged on
her agreement as soon as she could.
Jim Comey Ignored State Department Whistleblower on HIllary's Crimes With Classified
Material by Larry C Johnson
One year before Jim Comey was immersed in his plot to overthrow Donald Trump, the duly
elected President of the United States, a brave Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department
of State came forward with firsthand information of Hillary Clinton's rampant abuse of
Classified material. The man, a senior State Department diplomat who had served as the acting
Ambassador (Chargé d'Affaires) in the Asia Pacific
region under President Clinton, also was a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam
War.
The letter from this whistleblower is stunning and I am going to present it in total. It is
dated 10 January 2016. You can read it for yourself here
starting at page 121 . I became aware of this letter thanks to the assiduous research and
writings of Charles Ortel (he wrote about this recently
at the American Thinker ).
The letter explains in great detail how Hillary and her cabal of sychophants used an
unclassified system to disseminate Top Secret and Secret intelligence. But the Senior Diplomat
did not stop there. He explained carefully and specifically who the FBI needed to interview and
the questions they needed to ask. You do not need to take my word for it. You can read the
letter for yourself.
And what did the sanctimonious, smug buffoon heading up the FBI do? Nothing. But this senior
Foreign Service Officer was dogged in making sure the FBI had the information. He called FBI
Headquarters and could not get any confirmation that his letter was accepted. Not satisfied, he
walked into the FBI's Washington Field Office. The results of this meeting were reported to
three FBI Agents working on the Hillary Clinton investigation. Named in the report are Peter
Strzok and Jonathan Moffa (the third name is blacked out).
Here is the report in its entirety. Please note that the State Department official delivered
the information on the 27th of January 2016, but the report was not written up until four weeks
later–22 February 2016. (You can see the original on the
FBI website here starting at page 11.)
I do not know if John Durham has seen these documents. I am posting to make sure that he
does. There is no evidence that Inspector General Horowitz examined these documents or
interviewed the Foreign Service Officer. With Secretary of State Pompeo's promise that Hillary
emails will be forthcoming, I think it is worthwhile to revisit what this brave whistleblower
tried to bring to the attention of the FBI, who clearly was hellbent on protecting Hillary
rather than pursing justice and upholding the law. Shameful.
Unfortunately the formatting on this website cuts off the sides of the letter and makes it
unreadable for me - anyone else having this problem? (MacAirBook- Safari)
Great find and wish I could read it. Thanks, LJ. Share your appreciation of the American
Thinker website.
Sad but I suspect that the shear number of those in Government that have a vested interest
in this will ensure that nothing continues to be the outcome.
Deap: I had the same formatting problem. But you can find the letter by clicking on the
link in the post which states "here starting at p. 121."
When you get to the FBI Vault, click on the PDF on the left side of the page, near the
top, entitled "Hillary Rodham Clinton part 23 of 23.pdf."
When the PDF opens, scroll down to page 121. The letter will be found at pp. 121 to 131.
Page 132 (HRC 10114) may be the postage receipt for the letter when it was originally sent,
but it is illegible.
I haven't tried to find the American Thinker article which is referenced in this post, but
it may provide context.
I found the Ortel article at American Thinker. Google "Charles Ortel American Thinker" and
you can find a page with Ortel's articles and blogs. The article is entitled "James Comey and
Robert Mueller have Massive Clinton Foundation Problems." It appears that Mr. Ortel has a
significant interest in the Clinton Foundation.
Carter Page is interviewed by Sharyl Atkinsson on C-Span 2/ Book TV this weekend.
Chilling, interesting perspective. Page's book is out: Abuse and Power.
Apparently Atkinson, of Sinclair Broadcasting, has had her own troubles with illegal
surveillance.
Often Book tv replays programs, sometimes late, when it can be recorded.
Thanks all for the tips to access this link. Got it. All I can remember is Barry Soetoro
stating ...but Hilary didn't mean any harm running her separate insecure server.
The beginning pages of this link re-capping the strings of false and highly hedged
statements about Benghazi were bone chilling to read too. I guess we should be grateful Biden
did not pick Susan Rice for VP, but then he did much worse, he picked Kamala Harris.
And oh yeah, lock her up!
PS: is there some comfort seeing my spell check still does not recognize the word
"Kamala"? The gods of small favors strikes again.
am so very happy that you have been able to get the documents to prove what became so very
obvious to so many who did not have access to documents but who just had working brains. They
help us to understand what was going on with HRC's computer situation and with Jim Comey's
FBI.
You mention Hillary's "cabal of sychophants." There was no one more eager to become a
card-carrying member of that cabal than Comey himself. I do remember an interview on
television--don't have the date nor can I remember the media outlet that broadcast it--in
which Comey gushed about how wonderful it would be for Hillary to win since his wife and
daughters and even he himself were excited about possibly having the first female POTUS.
It seemed to me at the time that it was not an appropriate statement for the head of the
FBI to make on national television--especially with all the questions about Hillary's emails
and her obliterated computer--not to mention also the tarmac meeting in AZ between Bill and
Loretta Lynch (supposedly to discuss grandchildren). I thought then and still think that the
old Peter Principal was really being played out in the FBI at the time.
I don't remember the timeline of all this. But all I remember is how rotten things seemed
were the District of Columbia.
"Joe Biden's 'war economy' policies are a radical break with the status quo."
Telegraph
"Bidenomics is a heady brew. The Democrats' $7.9 trillion blast of extra spending is a step
beyond Roosevelt's New Deal. It mimics the Keynesian expansion of the Second World War and
consciously aims to run the economy at red-hot speeds of growth.
If enacted in full, it is large enough to lift the US economy out of the zero-rate
deflationary trap of the last decade and entirely reshape the social and financial
landscape.
The stimulus will be corralled inside the closed US economy by Joe Biden's protectionist
"Buy America" policies, his industrial strategy, and his carbon border tax (i.e. disguised
tariffs against China). This limits leakage.
It is a laboratory of sorts for a post-globalisation experiment in what used to be called
"reflation in one country" – before the free flow of goods and capital emasculated
sovereign governments.
"It's quite likely that, just as in World War II, when we push down on the economic
accelerator, we will find that we have been running on one cylinder up until no w," said the
Roosevelt Institute, now advisors to the
Biden campaign .
This is why
Moody's Analytics estimates that Bidenomics accompanied by a Democrat clean sweep of
Congress would lift American GDP by an extra 4.8pc, add an extra seven million jobs, and raise
per capita income by an extra $4,800 over the next four years , compared to a clean sweep by
Donald Trump. Economic growth would rocket to 7.7pc in 2022." Telegraph -------------
Evans-Pritchard, the author of this piece baldly declares that the Trump tax cut failed to
stimulate economic growth and that a clean sweep by the Democrats in November would lead to
massive GDP growth and a reduction in present economic inequalities in American society. I will
be very interested in your comments. pl
That's a fine read Col. Thank goodness that after 47 years as a politician, including 8
years as VP - during which TARP did what? - Biden finally has a plan to Tax and Spend that
beats all the Tax and Spend plans that went before this one.
Just what is this getting spent on - the same things Obama-Biden promised, "green" (the
color of money) energy, solar charging stations and 1.5 million energy efficient homes
(didn't the Housing bubble cause a little economic problem?), 'educaiton'! I wonder if that
includes teaching us all critical race theory? and "infrastructure". And here I thought
broken records were out of style.
Where's the money coming from? According to Oxfordeconomics, which the Guardian links to,
Biden's raising taxes, but it won't lower consumer spending:
".... we estimate an overall multiplier of 0.25 for the individual provisions in Biden's tax
package. So, for every dollar of tax increase, households would reduce their spending by 25
cents. As such, while the proposal would generate a substantial revenue inflow, we
don'tbelieve it would significantly constrain consumer spending."
So what is the decline in corporate spending if you raise corporate taxes? The economists
at Oxfordeconomics conveniently left that out, nor did they eplicitly tell you that a decade
of tax revenue will still leave you with 60 years of tax burden from Joe's spending.
"On the corporate tax front, the most significant revenue raisers are:•A 7ppt
increase in the statutory corporate tax rate to 28%, which would raise $1.3tn over
10years.•An increase in taxes on foreign earnings.•A 15% minimum tax on global book
income.•The elimination of several real estate investment tax preferences." (Oooh look,
Trump's screwed! Yeah! I wonder how all those REITs look with that?)
Another unasked question: Who is going to do all that economy stimulating work if there is
a national lockdown due to Covid?
"LaRouche's comments were prompted by an article published in the Telegraph on May 19 by
British intelligence stringer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose experience in orchestrating U.S.
impeachment drives for the British goes back to his attacks on President Bill Clinton.
Evans-Pritchard, on the eve of Trump's first trip abroad as President, is spreading the black
propaganda line that Trump might already be incapacitated, in much the same way as President
Richard Nixon was incapacitated by then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who "instructed
U.S. military officials to ignore any order from the Oval Office to use nuclear weapons."
Evans-Pritchard asserts that the key to overthrowing Trump is to pull Republican support
away from him, which he admits is still strong. But what happens next? He quotes Sir Jeremy
Greenstock, former British UN ambassador and now chairman at Gatehouse Advisory Partners:
"America can be very powerful if it decides to act hard. Xi Jinping and Putin will probably
wait and see whether Trump self-destructs." Evans-Pritchard then raises the question: How
will Trump behave "when the special prosecutor [Robert Mueller] starts to let rip with a
volley of subpoenas."
I like the idea of a Carbon Border Tax. Or at least the one proposed by the EU, as I have
not seen Biden's proposal. It has never made sense to me that we import from countries with
low environmental standards when our own manufacturers are handicapped.
But unless Biden can carry Democratic Senatorial challengers against GOP incumbents it
ain't gonna happen. It will be stalled in the Senate. There is no way McConnell will even
allow it on the Senate floor.
This thinking has been wrong, repeatedly so, for the last 10 years. The idea that there is
just one more pedal to push down to jumpstart the economy belies the truth that we have
experienced the most accommodative and expansive monetary policy on a global level in modern
times.
Aside from the lack of efficacy, which I may look to discuss at length later on, there is
another striking thing about this plan, and that is how it will be paid for. The reason is
not the traditional "where will the money come from" I know where it will come from, cheap US
debt, but it tells us two key things. The first is that the functional ideas of Modern
Monetary Theory (MMT) that you can basically just issue debt and have your central bank both
monetize it and keep the interest payments low and use that to fund largely unlimited
government spending have for the most part been endorsed by those on the left as a mechanism
to deliver on their grand plans. The second thing that is striking though is what they want
to spend the money on, which is military spending and infrastructure and not healthcare and a
green new deal. This calls into question what alignment there is on the cadres of the left or
the possibility that starting with infrastructure is a way to run cover to expand these
fantasy economics to social projects without reorienting the economy towards their
achievement.
Evans-Pritchard's talents are wasted on economic commentary. He writes well, but in the
breathless tones of a failed thriller writer. His entire worldview is based on the notion
that it is always two minutes to midnight. It's a shame that they put all of his stuff behind
a paywall.
Maybe if Biden's plan is approved we will finally see the inflation that Wall Street and
its media minions have been whining about for the past forty years.
I have no doubt that the collapsing pocket that is Conservative Inc will luxuriate back on
the familiar loser's ground of "fiscal responsibility."
Biden's plan, such as it is, simply marries the essence of Trump's nationalist policies
with Great Society spending levels. Like so much of his platform, it is designed to keep the
progressives on the plantation until Nov 3 and not one minute beyond.
Sure it will. The devil is in the details. When has any Democrat economic plan ever
produced intended results. First they have to confess what went wrong with their trillion
dollar "War on Poverty" that now requires another trillion to pretend to clean up that
grotesquely distorted mess.
Until they confess to their sins of the past, they are doomed to repeat them. How are they
going to remedy their decades of teacher union K1-2 fail turning out entire generations of
dysfunctional illiterates who are somehow going to be absorbed into this dynamite
economy.
They are sitting in the back room smoking dope and spinning tales. What I hear is wealth
confiscation and/or turning on the printing presses. Time for a good recap of Obama's initial
"Green Jobs Revolution" from his first term - who did those promise work out and why are we
having to undo the piles of excrement Biden First Term left behind.
I have a bad case of deja vu When in fact the Trump Tweaking was paying long term
dividends, until the deep state hijacked covid to destroy any possible Trump bragging rights.
Never forget Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump's SOTU address and declaring they were all lies --
and then carrying out her covid porn agenda to make sure she was proven correct.
Remember the three generation rule - all revolutionary and planned economies always fail
by the third generation. Soviet Union, Margaret Thatcher's warning, Cuba, etc ......if all
the wealth in the world was redistributed, it would be back in similar hands three
generations later. Societies always stratify, even since the Sumerians.
America is unique primarily because of the mobility it offers between the strata by its
relatively free market system. Don't mess with it. Democrat's heavy handed planned utopia is
a nightmare.
I am no economist. However, I am not in debt. I am not wealthy, but I have all I need and
want. I've worked very hard during my life and enjoyed my jobs because they were suited to my
training and kislls. My retirement funds keep me comfortable. My two sons are doing well in
our current economy. That's, of course, a self-centered view of the situation.
But, with that in mind, I say this: "beware of Greeks bearing gifts." (I know Biden is not
Greek, but I hope you get my point.)
I am also remembering the Obama administration. I may receive only an Obama phone and an
EBT card.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is generally a very astute writer. However, on economics and
national fiscal policies and central banking he has bought into the Davos sophistry that
defies common sense for over a decade.
An example of this sophistry is this line from the passage in your post - "..lift the US
economy out of the zero-rate deflationary trap of the last decade...". Ask an average
American if they've seen any price deflation in their rents or house prices, their kid's
tuition, their health care premiums, their cost of pharmaceuticals, the cost of tacos at
their neighborhood taqueria, the cost of getting their shirt cleaned, over the past decade
and they'll laugh at you. The cost of living of average Americans have risen and that is the
real living experience. But of course if you're Ben Bernanke or Mario Draghi or Jerome Powell
or Ms. Lagarde then we are in a "deflationary trap" and they should print more and more money
that gets shipped first to their friends on Wall St. The Party of Davos as Jack called
it.
Under the government enforced lockdown, how many trillions has the US federal government
under the Trump administration borrowed from future generations in the first and now the
second stimulus waiting for approval? How many trillions did Jerome Powell print up and send
to his friends at Blackrock and Citadel?
GDP is a useless indicator IMO. Digging trenches and filling them up will raise GDP. A
very important indicator however is productivity growth. That has been lagging for many
years. Another are median household income & wealth, which has also been lagging. What
we've seen in the US is a dramatic increase in wealth inequality between the top 0.1% vs the
bottom 80% over the past 50 years and this curve continues to accelerate - second order
derivative!! The second is the level of systemic debt across all sectors - individuals,
corporate and government at all levels that has continuously risen over 50 years increasing
systemic leverage to a point larger than during the civil war and WW II. This has occurred
under both parties and the Trump presidency has actually increased it despite the rhetoric.
Compare the Balance of Trade relative to the soundbites.
A systematic restructuring of our economy away from financialization, away from bailouts
of the oligarchy, away from unprecedented market concentration, away from untrammeled credit
expansion to back previous credit losses and having a monetary authority with a singular
focus on sound money is what's necessary. But that's not gonna happen under either Trump or
Biden as it will gore the ox of the Party of Davos whose interests is what both sides
primarily cater to. More debt-fueled government spending always ends up as socialism for the
oligarchy which is exactly what we've had for decades. It is an economic truism that as
productivity of debt continually declines, economic productivity also declines. That's the
trap we are in!
Been very happy with my gold investments these past two years and will stick with them
thanks, Biden would supercharge them.
Longer term I am looking to have most of my money in Asia, Russian oil companies also seem
to like drilling for oil, rather than desperately trying to be anything else than producing
oil like BP and the rest. Demographics are dire for most of the West and the US is likely to
continue transitioning in to a Latin American style country. People have been well
conditioned in to not talking about such things but no point talking about the increasing
economic dysfunction without talking about the underlying cause. A massive increase in
immigration will lead to a surge in inequality, anemic economic growth, fiscal deficits and a
decline in gdp per capita.
Time to start think about investments the way a well to do Latin would.
Well, Biden has to get elected first, we'll see. Carbon taxes, hmmm - another way to
destroy the middle-class?
Something to think about is the European Central Bank, they are a meeting late this month
with "experts" to determine if they will go to a digital currency. The ECB might then decide
the "experts" are right and go full digital on Jan 1st, 2021. We might see a whole lot of
Euro money coming into the USA, hope so. However, the Federal Reserve has not been printing
any new bank notes so you'll have trouble finding crisp bills for Christmas gifts.
IMO, based on the debt current and future we are loading on the backs of our children, it
matters not a whit which of the paths are chosen. Both will end in destruction of said debt
by some method - because you can only load so much on horseback and still ride. As we stand
now, we are walking alongside a swaybacked packhorse already. Closing off the country, where
the only growth has been in the services sector for decades, makes sense in what
universe?
Raise taxes? They have only ever increased in my lifetime, my fathers and his. At what
point does the Boston Tea Party repeat? From where I sit, everything either party does is
only adding fuel to a coming conflagration, as nothing is actually paid for - a ledger entry
is aggregated and we march on. The piper will get paid, as he has the children...
1.socialism and keynesian economics as a viable theory dead dead right now....today and
politicians know it
2. central banks are trapped at zero bound interest rates with no way under heretofore main
stream economic theories to stimulate their respective economies
3. politicians are largely dumb as a bag of hammers with not a shred of understanding what to
do other than to listen to think tanks warmed over rehashed ideas that have not worked in the
past and won't now.
4. what biden is proposing is MMT with communist thomas piketty theory disguised as classical
keynesian nonsense being sold to a public almost as dumb as those doing the selling
5. in order to make this works they will have to institute guranteed basic income for the
umpteen millions of people who will NEVER work again under this policy of bullshit
6. and lastly to ensure NO ONE can escape this trap which will evolve into an UGLY neo
feudalism for 99% of the populace this team of genuinely EVIL people will have to CANCEL ALL
paper money FORCING everyone to have a bank account for using digital money THE ONLY money
that can exist if this comes to pass. banks loves this as it gives them a cut of all the
action
7.as a result taxes will be anything they want and YOU have no escape or recourse
whatsoever
8. say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing and your economic life under digital money will
be cancelled placing you into destitution and death
9. this is a recipe for slavery on a gigantic scale ensuring the 1/10 of 1% can rule without
disturbance forever
10 revolution will be the only option at that point and since the police and military will
continue to be paid by the state it will be bloody
On the other hand, if this scheme promises to bring back the Jimmy Carter 14% interest
rates on CD's for us retired folks, I say bring it on. Everyone else will just have to deal
with the economic rubble later on their own.
I just need another good 15 years or so myself. In other words, never believe old people
when it comes to managing the US economy- our goals are selfish and very short term. So like,
what's in this for meeeeeee?
Biden must have listened to AOC for this fiscal policy advice. Bring back chicken coops
and victory gardens, and turn in your scrap metal because we are WAR.
What in God's name is Biden having a Brit pushing his economic plan. We all know they
embellish everything which then falls apart into pieces. Yes, Fred I remember those +14%
interest rates I paid on my mortgage and still kick myself for not taking the 100k down
payment and putting it into a 14% 30 year CD and renting. But then we all have those
memories. Sure would not want my grandchildren paying those rates on a 500k mortgage as it
would kill the real estate business and this country.
Sleepy Joe will be ready for the assisted living center by year two and we would be stuck
with Checkbook Harris, UGH. Vote for the Bullcrapper that gets things done.
Ahem; This has been done before: After Hitler was elected in 1933; He slammed the borders
shut to money transfer, then started building the autobahn. It worked, Germany came out of
the slump. Of course, Hitler then moved on to building planes & tanks. Also, Modern
Monetary theory says you can run the printing presses & print money like mad, as long as
that paper is going into a real, working economy, it gets recycled. That does not describe
the current 'developed world' economy; the FIRE economy (finance, insurance, real estate) has
eaten it's own tail. When all the other assets have jacked up half way to the moon, there
will be another gold rush (same as 1930s) & my shack in northern BC will shake with all
the helicopters flying around to work up new gold mines.
Candidate Donald Trump's 2016 programme was clear. Bring industry back home. Ditto the
troops. Ensure an adequate defence. Drain the swamp.
Looked good. I hadn't realised that his main achievement would be somewhat simpler. Stay
functioning in office in the face of the most dangerous series of attacks on an American
President that can have been seen since the early nineteenth century.
So clearly he's going to need another term in office to get on with all the things he
should have been able to get on with in the first.
Candidate Joe Biden was, I thought at first, stealing part of the Trump 2016 programme. Bring
industry back home. Turns out not - as far as I can see America will remain the most heavily
industrialised country going. But, as in my own country, much of the industry will still be
abroad. With the jobs.
As with my own country Biden's America will be environmentally virtuous. It'll hit some
good targets. It'll not use as much fossil fuel. Yesterday's heavy polluters - the coal mines
and steel mills - won't pollute any more.
Fake. Again as with my own country the dirty industries we still rely on will still be
roaring full steam ahead. Coal will still be mined. Steel will still be produced. But
elsewhere.
So Candidate Joe Biden will not be the man to put that part of the Trump 2016 programme
into action. He'll be the man who continues with the fake environmentalism we've already seen
so much of. Naturally, if the heavy industry is outsourced so is our pollution. Doesn't look
that clever a trick to me, even if it fools the eco-warriors.
In a recent op-ed on RT, I outlined the
puzzling and ironic configuration that is the anti-Trump 'resistance.' But I didn't explore one
important 'interest group' within a 'deep state' intent on destroying Trump's presidency at all
costs -- namely, the neocon
hawks of both major political parties and the
military and
intelligence establishments that defy strict party affiliation.
This contingent includes members of top military brass and intelligence
officers , of course, but also military and intelligence contractors, including those
employed by the permanent bureaucracy to foil Trump's first run for the presidency by
attempting to tie him to "Russian collusion ."
Condemn Trump all you want. It's quite fashionable and facile to do so. The penchant has
long since leaked across the Atlantic via the US and international media establishments. But
critics must be either uninformed or disingenuous to liken Trump
to Hitler . Hitler was, after all, a fascist strong man and supremacist intent on
militarism and world expansionism. And Trump is nothing of the sort.
Quite the contrary, Trump wants no part of expansionism. He has insisted that he deplores
the endless wars in the
Middle East and
Afghanistan . Trump has been removing troops from both
regions since his presidency began. And he's reportedly been foiled in efforts for a
complete withdrawal by his generals . But now he
may be prepared to flout their prerogatives and take matters into his own hands, if
given a second term.
While Trump touts a strengthened
military , the Trump Doctrine
involves a particular brand of populist American
nationalism . This includes a foreign policy stemming from 19th-century Republican
politics . Those who
have subscribed to this political position have been traditionally non-interventionist, while
demanding that a premium be laid on national self-determination, the protection of national
sovereignty via strong borders, and the promotion of national self-interest over international
or global entanglements.
Trump has suggested that the military brass wants to start wars to
enrich military contractors.
The hue and cry coming from the political establishment over Trump's foreign military
policy is a thin scrim to cover for the interests of the military industrial complex. And the
interests of the military industrial complex are for its own expansion and the profits that
derive from it.
Trump's foreign policy on the limited use of military force runs counter to those of the
Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden administrations. Both of these followed the orders of neocon hawks.
Shocking his left-wing base, Obama retained many of
Bush's top cabinet members, including war hawk Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And, of course,
then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) voted in favor of
and championed
the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
The Obama administration not only continued the Bush campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it
extended them with record-breaking bombings in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya. Recall that it was Obama who
murdered, via a drone bomb, sixteen-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Abdulrahman was
the son of alleged al-Qaeda fighter (and American citizen) Anwar Awlaki, who Obama had
bombed two weeks earlier, in Yemen. In fairness it must be noted that a US raid in Yemen resulted
in the
death of Abdulrahman's 8-year-old sister in 2017. But it was Obama who exploded the
conflict in Yemen.
The Obama-Biden international adventurism extended to the invasion
of Libya and the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, an escapade that destabilized
that country and led directly to the arming of
jihadists. Under Obama, the Pentagon and CIA directly armed and trained Syrian "rebels"
fighting Bashar Assad, many of whom then
grew into the ISIS caliphate. A 2016 iconic headline in the Los Angeles Times said it all:
"In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA
." It is interesting to note that it was Trump who ended the
CIA's training of the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels whose intent was the
toppling Assad's government.
Obama was elected in 2008 on his promise to end Bush's war in Iraq, a conflict he said he
opposed from the
outset . Instead, Obama and his war hawks expanded this war and added several others. And
all of this after Obama was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize (for no apparent reason) in 2009.
The military escalation under Obama-Biden surely explains the deep state's preference for
Biden over Trump. But what about the voters? In opposing Trump and favouring Biden, the leftist
'resistance' is
supporting the continuation of dodgy and illegal US invasions and endless wars. An
achievement to be proud of. On the other hand, voters who support non-intervention and troop
withdrawal favour the Republican, Donald Trump.
So, tell me again: who's 'left' and who's 'right' in this US presidential election?
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
How empire is destroying the American republic OCTOBER 5, 2020 Written by William
SmithShare
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Many American hawks fail to grasp one of the most axiomatic rules of history: when a
republic becomes an empire, it is no longer a republic.
For all their concern about spreading democracy abroad, many hawks show a decidedly
noticeable failure to recognize that imperial adventures weaken republican government at home.
The devolution from republic to empire has a number of causes, some practical and some
cultural, with most on display in our current politics.
On a practical level, the massive national security commitment necessary to maintain an
empire tends to overwhelm the republican safeguards against unnecessary wars. In recent
decades, for example, the national security state has gone to war in numerous countries --
Libya and Syria are only two examples -- on the basis of an Authorization for the Use of
Military Force (AUMF) that was enacted by Congress to sanction attacks on the perpetrators of
9/11.
The use of that AUMF to justify wars unrelated to 9/11 made these wars blatantly
unconstitutional. Yet it is apparent that most of Congress is now a mere appendage of the
national security state and no longer protects its constitutional prerogative to sanction war
as this would require difficult votes as well as jeopardize the largesse bestowed by defense
contractors. Madison's famous argument in Federalist #51 that, in a republic with separated
powers, one branch of government would "resist encroachments of the others" becomes obviated in
an empire. Empires tend to ignore republican rules.
The other practical difficulty of maintaining a republic when it aspires to empire is that
the technologies created to fight wars abroad end up undermining republican government at home.
In imperial Rome, the legions themselves became a threat to domestic order; in the present U.S.
the domestic attacks are more subtle.
Numerous media
reports indicate, for example, that an anti-Trump PAC, Defeat Disinfo, is employing retired
Army General Stanley McCrystal to deploy a Defense Department-developed Artificial Intelligence
(AI) tool to counter candidate Trump's social media posts and to create "counter-narratives"
using a network of "paid influencers." The AI technology was developed by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups overseas. The culture of
our present officer corps seems a long way from that of General George Marshall who once
remarked
to Eisenhower, "I may make a thousand mistakes in this war, but none will be the result of
political meddling!"
McCrystal's deployment of anti-terrorism technology to manipulate domestic political opinion
during an election is surely incompatible with republican values. One would have thought that
the McCrystal revelation would have generated more controversy as it comes on the heels of the
astonishing abuse of another anti-terrorism tool, NSA surveillance, by FBI agents who submitted
phony warrants to the FISA court in order to frame Trump campaign operatives.
As observers from both parties have noticed, military technology and tactics have bled into
domestic policing with local police departments deploying armored vehicles and drones. One need
not be a Trump partisan, nor a rabid libertarian, to conclude that the technologies developed
to maintain the American empire are now being used to undermine our republican traditions.
Tufts law professor Michael Glennon has concluded that the national security state has in
fact grown so large that the "Madisonian" branches of government -- the presidency, Congress
and the courts -- are no longer in charge of national security policy. Glennon asserts that we
now have a "double government" in which policy decisions are made by "a largely concealed
managerial directorate, consisting of the several hundred leaders of the military, law
enforcement, and the intelligence departments and agencies of our government" who "operate at
an increasing remove from constitutional limits and restraints, moving the nation slowly toward
autocracy." Despite his clear desire to do so, Trump's inability to extricate us from
Afghanistan is confirmation that the Madisonian branches of government no longer determine
policy.
The rise of a double government was captured perfectly in a Tweet by Michael McFaul, an Obama
national security official, who commented that, "Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He
has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our
Commander in Chief?" To those with an imperial outlook, the President serves at the pleasure of
those who run the empire, not the voters. To Michael McFaul, the unelected members of the
foreign policy establishment determine the legitimacy of elected leaders.
While legal breakdowns and the technologies of American empire are overwhelming our
republican traditions, the much deeper problem is that American leaders have eschewed a
constitutional culture and adopted an imperial culture.
Republican institutions cannot operate unless its leaders embody a certain temperament or
"constitutional personality." They must demonstrate measured and restrained habits even with
political opponents. They will seek common ground and compromise. They would, in Hamilton's
words, "withstand the temporary delusion" of popular pressures and engage in "more cool and
sedate reflection."
In foreign policy, this constitutional temperament would, in Washington's words, "observe
good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all" and "nothing
is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and
passionate attachments for others, should be excluded." In other words, republics have leaders
of a certain quality and type, leaders who demonstrate restraint not only in domestic politics
but on the world stage.
Contrast this constitutional temperament with our current crop of leaders. In domestic
politics, we have fierce, vituperative and irrational partisanship. There is no spirit of
compromise and no willingness to show good faith with political opponents. Our politics, as
Hobbes said of the state of nature, exhibit "a perpetual and restless desire of power after
power, that ceaseth only in death ." In foreign policy, the imperial personality shows itself
in "maximum pressure" campaigns, an "inveterate" antipathy toward Russia, and chest-thumping
assertions of American exceptionalism. The constitutional personality exhibits a certain
humility; the imperial personality exhibits none.
Removing the practical dangers of empire would be hard, but not impossible. Restoring
congressional authority in matters of war and peace and banning the domestic use of military
and intelligence technologies are both achievable goals for those wishing to restore republican
values. However, the imperial culture of our national security elites flows out of a will to
power that is, at root, a character flaw. Changing laws is easy compared with improving
character.
Kyrgyzstan Color Revolution in Central AsiaCrisis Intensifies the US' Hybrid War
Containment of Russia By Andrew Korybko Global Research,
October 06, 2020 Region: Asia , Russia and FSU , USA Theme: US NATO War Agenda
The sudden outbreak of Color Revolution unrest in the historically unstable Central Asian
country of Kyrgyzstan following recent parliamentary elections in this Russian CSTO mutual
defense ally intensifies the US' Hybrid War "containment" of Russia when seen in the context of
the ongoing regime change efforts in fellow ally Belarus as well as CSTO-member Armenia's
dangerous efforts to provoke a Russian military intervention in support of its illegal
occupation of universally recognized Azerbaijani territory.
Color Revolution In Central Asia
The historically unstable Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan [former Soviet Republic] is
once again in the midst of
Color Revolution unrest after this Russian CSTO mutual defense ally's latest parliamentary
elections were exploited as the pretext for members of the non-systemic opposition to
torch their seat of
government and free former President
Atambayev who was arrested last year on charges of corruption. This sudden crisis is
actually the third serious one in the former Soviet space in just as many months following the
ongoing regime change efforts in Belarus since August and Armenia's dangerous efforts since the
end of last month to provoke a Russian military intervention in support of its illegal
occupation of universally recognized Azerbaijani territory. Crucially, all three of the
aforementioned countries are Russia's CSTO allies, and their respective crises (provoked to
varying extents by the US) intensify the American Hybrid
War "containment" of Russia.
The US' Triple Hybrid War "Containment" Of Russia
The author has written extensively about the Belarusian Color
Revolution campaign and Armenia's aggression in
Nagorno-Karabakh , but those who aren't familiar with his analysis of those issues can
refer to the two articles hyperlinked earlier in this sentence for a quick overview. The
present piece aims to inform the audience about the complex dynamics of the Kyrgyz Color
Revolution crisis and the impact that it could have on the US' recent Hybrid War "containment"
offensive along the western, southern, and eastern peripheries of Russia's so-called "sphere of
influence". The
pattern at play is that the US is trying to provoke a Russian military intervention in one,
some, or all three of these Hybrid War battlefronts through the CSTO, but the Kremlin has thus
far avoided the trap of these potential quagmires. Lukashenko tried do this with his ridiculous
claims about a speculated Polish
annexation of Grodno while Pashinyan wants to provoke Azerbaijan into attacking Armenian
cities to trigger a similar intervention scenario, hence Armenia's attack on
its rival's Ganja in order to bring this about.
The Kyrgyz Powder Keg
Kyrgyzstan is an altogether different powder keg, however, since it has a recent history of
close to uncontrollable inter-ethnic and political violence after its last two Color
Revolutions of 2005 and 2010, especially the latter. The author explained all this in detail in
his April 2016
analysis of the US' history of regime change attempts in the region, which comprises one of
the chapters of his 2017 ebook on " The Law Of
Hybrid Warfare: Eastern Hemisphere ". He expanded upon his research in this direction
in August 2019 f ollowing President Jeenbekov's arrest of former President Atambayev, his
former mentor, which almost plunged the country back into a state of de-facto civil war. It was
explained that "Kyrgyzstan must 'cleanse' its 'deep state' (permanent bureaucracy)
simultaneously with cracking down on organized crime (which is sometimes affiliated with some
'deep state' forces)." This is the only way to combat the destabilizing clan-based nature of
the country (worsened by Western NGOs and diplomatic meddling )
that's responsible for its regular unrest.
Will The Crisis From 2010 Repeat Itself?
The present situation is so dangerous though because the last round of Color Revolution
unrest in 2010 sparked accusations of ethnic cleansing against the local Uzbeks that inhabit
Kyrgyzstan's portion of the divided Fergana Valley. That in turn almost provoked an
international conflict between both landlocked states that was thankfully averted at the last
minute by Tashkent's reluctance to worsen the security situation by launching a "humanitarian
intervention" in Russia's CSTO ally (one which could have also been exploited to promote the
concept of "Greater Uzbekistan" over the neighboring lands inhabited by its ethnic kin
considering the country's closer coordination with American strategic goals at the time).
Uzbekistan has since moved closer to Russia after the passing of former President Karimov, but
its basic security interests remain the same, particularly as far as ensuring the safety of its
ethnic kin in neighboring states. Any repeat of the 2010 scenario could therefore return
Central Asia to the brink of war unless a Russian diplomatic intervention averts it.
The Threat To Russian Interests
From the Russian perspective, Kyrgyzstan's capture by Western-backed political forces could
lead to long-term security implications. The state's potential internal collapse could turn it
into a regional exporter of terrorism, especially throughout the volatile Fergana Valley but
also across China's neighboring region of Xinjiang if a new government decides to host Uighur
terrorists. The soft security consequences are that Kyrgyzstan's Color Revolution government
could reduce its commitment to the CSTO and Eurasian Union up to and including the country's
potential withdrawal from these organizations if the new power structure isn't co-opted by
Russian-friendly forces first. It's possible, however, that Moscow might succeed in mitigating
the blow to its geopolitical interests in the scenario of a regime change in Bishkek since it
had previously worked real closely with Atambayev (who's the most likely candidate to seize
power, either directly or by proxy), though only if it can prevent a civil war from breaking
out first. That might necessitate a CSTO intervention, however, which is risky.
Concluding Thoughts
As it stands, the US' Hybrid War "containment" of Russia is making progress along the
western, southern, and eastern periphery of the Eurasian Great Power's "sphere of influence".
Belarus is no longer as stable as it has historically been known for being, Armenia is still
trying to trick Russia into going to war against Azerbaijan (and by extension Turkey), and
Kyrgyzstan is once again on the verge of a collapse that could take down the rest of Central
Asia in the worst-case scenario. Having shrewdly avoided the first two traps, at least for the
time being, Russia is now being challenged with the most serious crisis of the three after the
latest events in Kyrgyzstan. The country's clan-based nature, proliferation of Western NGOs,
and Western meddling in its admittedly imperfect democracy make it extremely unstable, thus
heightening the risks that any well-intended Russian military stabilization intervention via
the CSTO could entail, perhaps explaining why one never happened in 2010 during more dangerous
times. The Kremlin will therefore have to carefully weigh its options in Kyrgyzstan.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on OneWorld .
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the
relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China's One Belt One Road global vision
of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress last Wednesday that he did not
remember much about what was going on when the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) Court into approving four warrants for surveillance of Trump campaign
aide Carter Page.
Few outsiders are aware that those warrants covered not only Page but also anyone Page was
in contact with as well as anyone Page's contacts were in contact with – under the
so-called two-hop surveillance procedure. In other words, the warrants extend coverage two
hops from the target – that is, anyone Page talks to and anyone they, in turn, talk
to.
At the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsay Graham reviewed the facts (most
of them confirmed by the Department of Justice inspector general) showing that none of the
four FISA warrants were warranted.
Graham gave a chronological rundown of the evidence that Comey and his "folks" either
knew, or should have known, that by signing fraudulent FISA warrant applications they were
perpetrating a fraud on the court.
The "evidence" used by Comey and his "folks" to "justify" warrants included Page's
contacts with Russian officials (CIA had already told the FBI those contacts had been
approved) and the phony as a three-dollar bill "Steele dossier" paid for by the
Democrats.
Two Hops to the World
But let's not hop over the implications of two-hop surveillance , which apparently remains
in effect today. Few understand the significance of what is known in the trade as "two-hop"
coverage. According to a former NSA technical director, Bill Binney, when President Barack
Obama approved the current version of "two hops," the NSA was ecstatic – and it is easy
to see why.
Let's say Page was in touch with Donald Trump (as candidate or president); Trump's
communications could then be surveilled, as well. Or, let's say Page was in touch with
Google. That would enable NSA to cover pretty much the entire world. A thorough read of the
transcript of Wednesday's hearing, particularly the Q-and-A, shows that this crucial two-hop
dimension never came up – or that those aware of it, were too afraid to mention it. It
was as if Page were the only one being surveilled.
Here is a sample of The New York Times 's typical coverage
of such a hearing:
"Senate Republicans sought on Wednesday to promote their efforts to rewrite the
narrative of the Trump-Russia investigation before Election Day, using a hearing with the
former F.B.I. director James B. Comey to cast doubt on the entire inquiry by highlighting
problems with a narrower aspect of it.
"Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary
Committee spent hours burrowing into mistakes and omissions made by the FBI when it applied
for court permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and
2017. Republicans drew on that flawed process to renew their claims that Mr. Comey and his
agents had acted with political bias, ignoring an independent review that debunked
the notion of a plot against President Trump."
Flawed process? Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pinpointed no few
than 17 "serious performance failures" related to the four FISA warrant applications on Page.
Left unsaid is the fact that Horowitz's investigation was tightly circumscribed. Basically,
he asked the major players "Were you biased?" And they said "No."
Chutzpah-full Disingenuousness
Does the NYT believe we were all born yesterday? When the Horowitz report was
released in early December 2019, Fox News' Chris Wallace found those serious performance
failures "pretty shocking." He quoted an
earlier remark by Rep. Will Hurd (R,TX) a CIA alumnus:
"Why is it when you have 17 mistakes -- 17 things that are misrepresented or lapses --
and every one of them goes against the president and for investigating him, you have to say,
'Is that a coincidence'? it is either gross incompetence or intentionality."
Throughout the four-hour hearing on Wednesday, Comey was politely smug – a hair
short of condescending.
There was not the slightest sign he thought he would ever be held accountable for what
happened under his watch. You see, four years ago, Comey "knew" Hillary Clinton was a
shoo-in; that explains how he, together with CIA Director John Brennan and National
Intelligence Director James Clapper, felt free to take vast liberties with the Constitution
and the law before the election, and then launched a determined effort to hide their tracks
post election.
Trump had been forewarned. On Jan. 3, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
with an assist from Rachel Maddow, warned Trump not to get crosswise with the "intelligence
community," noting the IC has six ways to Sunday to get back at you.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fotKK5kcMOg
Three days later, Comey told President-elect Trump, in a one-on-one conversation, what the
FBI had on him – namely, the "Steele Dossier." The media already had the dossier, but
were reluctant (for a host of obvious reasons) to publish it. When it leaked that Comey had
briefed Trump on it, they finally had the needed peg.
New Parvenu in Washington
After the tête-à-tête with Comey on Jan. 6, 2017, newcomer Trump didn't
know what hit him. Perhaps no one told him of Schumer's warning; or maybe he dismissed it out
of hand. Is that what Comey was up to on Jan. 6, 2017?
Was the former FBI director protesting too much in his June 2017 testimony to the Senate
Intelligence Committee when he insisted he'd tried to make it clear to Trump that briefing
him on the unverified but scurrilous information in the dossier wasn't intended to be
threatening?
It took Trump several months to figure out what
was being done to him.
Trump to NYT: 'Leverage' (aka Blackmail)
In a long Oval Office interview
with the Times on July 19, 2017, Trump said he thought Comey was trying to hold the
dossier over his head.
" Look what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff. the dossier Now,
that was totally made-up stuff," Trump said. "I went there [to Moscow] for one day for the
Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back. It was so disgraceful. It was so
disgraceful.
"When he [Comey] brought it [the dossier] to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I
didn't think about anything. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal. I said,
this is – honestly, it was so wrong, and they didn't know I was just there for a very
short period of time. It was so wrong, and I was with groups of people. It was so wrong that
I really didn't, I didn't think about motive. I didn't know what to think other than, this is
really phony stuff."
The Steele dossier, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign
and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, includes a tale of Trump cavorting
with prostitutes, who supposedly urinated on each other before the same bed the Obamas had
slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel.
Trump told the Times : "I think [Comey] shared it so that I would think he had it
out there. As leverage."
Still Anemic
Even with that lesson in hand, Trump still proved virtually powerless in dealing with the
National Security State/intelligence community. The president has evidenced neither the skill
nor the guts to even attempt to keep the National Security State in check.
Comey, no doubt doesn't want to be seen as a "dirty cop," With Trump in power and Attorney
General William Barr his enforcer, there was always the latent threat that they would use the
tools at their disposal to expose and even prosecute Comey and his National Security State
colleagues for what the president now knows was done during his candidacy and presidency.
Despite their braggadocio about taking on the Deep State, and the continuing
investigations, it seems doubtful that anything serious is likely to happen before Election
Day, Nov. 3.
On Wednesday, Comey had the air of one who is equally sure, this time around, who will be
the next president. No worries. Comey could afford to be politely vapid for five more weeks,
and then be off the hook for any and all "serious performance failures" – some of them
felonies.
Thus, a significant downside to a Biden victory is that the National Security State will
escape accountability for unconscionable misbehavior, running from misdemeanors to
insurrection. No small thing.
Sen. Graham concluded the hearing with a pious plea: "Somebody needs to be held
accountable." Yet, surely, he has been around long enough to know the odds.
Given his disastrous presidency, either way the prospects are bleak: no accountability for
the National Security State, which is to be expected, or four more years of Trump.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
One morning a couple of years ago I received an urgent email from a moderately prominent
libertarian figure strongly focused on antiwar issues. He warned me that our publication had
been branded a "White Supremacist website" by the Washington Post , and urged me to
immediately respond, perhaps by demanding a formal retraction or even taking legal action lest
we be destroyed by that totally unfair accusation.
When I looked into the matter, my own perspective was rather different. Apparently Max Boot,
one of the more agitated Jewish Neocons, had written
a column fiercely denouncing some recent criticism of pro-Israel policies that Philip
Giraldi had published in our webzine, and the "White Supremacist" slur was merely his crude
means of demonizing the author's views for those of his readers who might be less than
wholeheartedly enthusiastic about Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies.
After pointing this out to my correspondent, I also noted that a good 10% or more of our
writers were probably "White Nationalists," and perhaps a few of them might even arguably be
labeled "White Supremacists." So although Boot's description of our website was certainly
wrong, it was probably less wrong than the vast majority of his other writing, which was
typically focused on American military policy and the Middle East.
Our webzine is quite unusual in its willingness to feature a smattering of writers who
provide a White Nationalist perspective. Such individuals are almost totally excluded from
other online publications, except for those marginalized websites devoted to their ideas, which
often tend to focus on such topics and related issues to the near exclusion of anything else.
However, I believe that maintaining this sort of ideological quarantine or "ghettoization"
greatly diminishes the ability to understand many important aspects of our world.
And I suspect that Azerbaijan will do no harm to the Armenian civilians that stay.
They'll be model liberators. And they'll take time to bring back Azerbaijani civilians
(refugees/IDPs) to their homes, especially in areas that would become mixed as a result of
return."
Agreed, this is rubbish. "Mr. C" – assuming someone like this even exists, is either
terribly misinformed or an outright liar. Basically, if we follow Escobar's logic, Armenian's
are making a mistake by not agreeing to surrender their lives to the peace loving and rather
humanistic dictatorship of Azerbaijan. While he touches on some relevant points, overall,
Escobar has not done his homework and has come up with quite a bit of drivel.
Pepe, you didn't mention the Armenian Genocide, the Greek Genocide, the Assyrian Genocide,
all perpetrated by Turkey.
Why not? Would the Azeris, all Turks, be different? You say the Azeris if they won, Turks,
would treat the Armenian population nicely. Huh?
I remember from Runciman's book on the First Crusade that the Turks had already taken over
much of Anatolia but he seems to mention Armenians at every turn (from memory -- don't have
the book handy).
My impression is that before the Genocide the Armenians were all over Anatolia. There was
a narrow coastal strip at the western end that was historically part of Greece, and many
different peoples of Asia Minor are mentioned in the NT, but they arguably were all
Armenians, making the Armenians the indigenous people of Anatolia.
How is it that Turkey was allowed to keep part of Europe after WWI when they were losers?
And did they keep faith? Is the current St Sophia turmoil the norm of Turkish good faith?
Time for all the Turks to get out of Anatolia, give it back to Armenia, and head for
Azerbigan.
@Yevardian having been disciplined for some years now is, once again, at the throat of
the west. Europe spent millions of lives and huge resources throwing the Moors out last time.
If they don't take a stand and support Armenia they may very well have to do it again. As far
as the mythical Mr C is concerned he comes across, to me, as yet another apologist for the
Religion of Peace. Obviously cucked NATO will not help Armenia, they have neither the
intestinal fortitude nor the will, so it will be left to Russia and the Visigrad nations, in
the mean time Turkey is attempting to take Greek territory, Syrian territory, Libyan
territory and anything else that it can get it's mitts on and the West does absolutely
nothing. This will not end well.
I think few Armenian civilians will take the chance but I very much doubt Azerbaijanis
will be "model liberators". The new Azerbaijani state was born from the Sumgait and Baku
pogroms. I also don't think they will delay in moving Azeris into areas formerly inhabited by
Armenians – their role model Erdoğan has been trying to change facts on the ground
by moving ethnic Turks into Kurdish areas in his own country.
@Ann Nonny Mouse endeavor, even if they were the majority, though most accounts say they
were 40%.
I would strongly urge the Armenians to get off their nationalist high horse and solve the
problem diplomatically and learn to live with their neighbors. Super nationalism is a
dangerous and fake mantra that usually leads to disaster. My understanding was that the
Azeris and Armenians always got along before this debacle. They should try to work out things
and get back to a their original multi-cultural paradigm, that is living side by side instead
of fighting and dying over territory and national flags. Live is short and when we pass to
the other side you dont carry your flag with you.
The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence in 1991: but that was not
recognized by the "international community"
Just to throw in quickly that if Kosovo is "recognized", then bleeding Karabakh should
also long since have been recognized. Especially since the Armenians have an actual holocaust
in their 20th century past.
So, seems like the way to get sympathy to rob territory is to make full use of any
"genocide" one had suffered as excuse . worked very well ( in fact, spectacularly well) so
faR with the Chosen ones .
Well i admittedly dont know enough about the situation to try to critique this piece as
some of the other comments on here But i am skeptical about Armenia and their stated intent.
If it is reallly about protecting an ethnic group – then why not offer them citizenship
to move into your territory??? That would lead me to believe it is more about land and
resources
Yeah i dont know the nitty gritty in this conflict – but i do agree Edrogan seems to
be biting off more than he can chew He has too many pots on the fire it seems. Kurds –
Qatar/Saudis – Libya – Syria – Greece – Cyprus – and now
this..?
Aside from refusing to participate against their Muslim cousins (Afghanistan, Libya),
Turkey is using NATO doctrine quite effectively. It is a useful bullet prove vest for
Erdogan. The Brussels morons will be sorry for not expelling Turkey from their military club
long time ago.
@Ann Nonny Mouse driven to the Syrian desert AFTER some of them had aligned with the
Russians who were about to invade eastern Anatolia in 1915. Similarly, most of Crimean Tatars
were expelled from Crimea AFTER some of them had aligned with the invading Germans in 1941.
As another comparison, American-Japanese living at the Pacific coast were banished to camps
in the interior AFTER the Japanese army had attacked Pearl Harbor and not before.
When a group of people kill or drive out another group it's usually not for the fun of it but
rather due to necessities of survival, whatever evil that might require at that particular
time depending on the particular circumstances.
It would be interesting to read a scholarly exposition on what the USSR and governments in
Eastern Europe proper did or did not do to educate people away from their ancient hatreds,
and why whatever they did do appears not to have been particularly successful. Or was it
mostly successful and the hatreds were much more intense before 1917?
The entire Jewish American lobby and Israel are on Azerbaijan's side and anti-Armenian,
just as when they were working with Turkey to deny the Armenian genocide.
Israel has also sold billions of dollars of weapons to Azerbaijan which the latter is
using against Armenians. Israel gets oil from Azerbaijan
Of course, Azerbaijan and Turkey have imported jihadists from Syria and Libya to fight
Christian Armenians now.
Apparently, Pepe, you and the Jewish lobby, Israel, Turkey, and the jihadists are on the
same side.
Congratulations.
P.S. It would take a hundred pages to list all the factual errors you made. For example,
Armenians were still the clear majority in Artsakh/Karabagh in 1988 and 1991. Armenians there
had been grossly mistreated by Azerbaijan for decades.
The fighting occurred in the late 1980s only because Azerbaijan, backed by the Russian
military, killed and harrassed Armenians. The Azeris also committed massacres of Armenians
who were living in Baku and Sumgait in the late 1980s.
Stalin also placed Nakhichevan, an Armenian territory, inside Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan kicked out every Armenian from Nakhichevan. Azerbaijan was doing that to
Artsakh/Karabagh too.
No wonder Artsakh voted to be independent from Azerbaijan, something you don't want to
understand.
Better luck next time trying to fool readers, Pepe.
The key fact remains that as long as Armenia proper is not attacked by Azerbaijan,
Russia will not apply the CSTO treaty and step in. Erdogan knows this is his red line.
Moscow has all it takes to put him in serious trouble – as in shutting off gas
supplies to Turkey.
Russia isn't going to shut off gas to Turkey. Russia never does that (shutting off gas).
It's a Western canard.
Russia could, however, impose a no-fly-zone over Georgia, effectively blocking resupply
and reinforcements to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is almost completely surrounded by Russian
allies and bases. They rely on Georgia for military transit.
Ignorant post. Armenian nationalist were active in Russia prior to ww1, then supported
Russian entrance into Turkish territory because they shared a religion. They stabbed the
ottomans , of which they were a big part, in the back. The young Turks , who were actually
donmeh jews, had them marched off to Syria and lebanon, etc, causing many deaths! The
Armenian is still causing trouble for the Turks. They sided with the mongols in their battles
against the Muslims, along wit the Georgians, repeatedly. More to a small story
What's going to happen to USA? The poverty and racial intolerance ,both seem to be
undermining the stability and the ideological integrity of the country . I see many states
emerging from the body of America.But the problems will not be resolved . It might just like
like Caucasian territory or Balkan .
1. BTC is described as 'bypassing Iran'. One could easily argue it also bypasses *Russia*
. Perhaps that's what made it necessary for Soros & others to peel Georgia off from
Russian control back in the day? Look how Russia responded by recapturing the Georgian
Military Highway (South Ossetia).
2. Look in general at how Russia is willing to give up huge areas of territory so long as
she keeps key strategic points of control: South Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria, Abkhazia and
Armenia. Smell the coffee.
3. 2. 'Mr. C' is quick to mention Baku/Ankara joint exercises in August, but fails to
mention Kavkas 2020 exercises led by Russia. Uh duh.
4. 'Mr. C' seems to ignore the fact that Armenia couldn't have taken that territory in
first place, or kept it, w/out Russian assistance. And idea 'Russia can do nothing' is
absurd. As is the idea that Russia can't supply Armenia because there's no land connection.
Did the allies have any problem keeping West Berlin supplied by air? Of course not. All
nonsense.
5. The idea that there is a 'Russia/Turkey' strategic partnership is also silly. Where is
this partnership? Turkey buying S-400s? So what? Are they in partnership in Syria? In Libya?
No. So why would they be in N-K?
6. Weird. No mention of China and it's growing relationship with Turkey. This probably
tells you all you need to know about the author. Unless of course the author is just a fool,
which is also possible.
"Yet even before the collapse the Azerbaijani Army and Armenian independentists were
already at war (1988-1994), which yielded a grim balance of 30,000 dead and roughly a million
wounded."
This is a wounded-to-killed ratio of thirty-three to one. Doesn't make sense.
Were Russia to be as devious and underhanded as the puppet regime in the Di$trict of
Corruption, they would arrange for an overthrow of the present NATO/EU/U$ regime in Yerevan.
With those bastards out of the way and Armenia no longer playing double jeopardy, it might be
possible for a new Orthodox oriented Armenian government to come to some sort of arrangement
with Baku.
At the same time, perhaps Syrian spetsnaz units could practice some infiltration tactics
into Turkish semi-occupied "greater" Idlib and Ghurka style, behead a few Turkish officers
running the show there.
"Sultan" Erdogan is playing loose and wild with his shattering economy and massive
military. It is high time he was given a black-eye–one that would cause him to lose
face among his own countrymen.
This is my educated guess, the Anglo-Zionists led by Rothschild and Netanayahu destablize
the oil in the Middle East to keep their prices of oil in USD above 100 $/barrel
They have also blown up oil derricks in the North Sea, shut down Iranian and Iraq and
Syria oil production. The game is clear, low oil prices are being met with wiping out the
competition.
And causing hell in Iran and Venezueala. Back in 1954 Operation Ajax took out Mossadeq and
installed the Shah – puppet of big oil. Before it was BP it was the Persian Gulf Oil
Co. BP is owned mostly by the crown.
Trump's secretary of state was Rex Tillerson CEO Exxon just like GW Bush picked Condoleeza
Rice CEO Chevron to be his national security advisor.
The Israel angle is to get Iran and to goad Russia into war with the USA, the eventually
goal is that USA-Russia-China are reduced while Jews rule the world from Jerusalem.
How much you wanna bet Bibi Satanyahu has a hand in this war? And Evangelical Christians
will support Israel even if this war kills lots of Armenian Christians just like in
Syria.
Since this war in on Russia's doorstep Putin an Lavrov will try negotiations first then
what will they do next. Putin has vowed the war will never come to Russia which means Russia
will enter the theater on the anti-Zionist side.
Have you noticed every state within a few hundred miles of Israel is being torched and the
natives driven out?
Back again to Pepe Escobar's distortions of reality. Nagorno-Karabakh is an
Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territory. In fact, no country in the world recognises it as an
"Independent" as Escobar likes to mislead us. Armenia should do the right thing and withdraw
its forces, including foreign militants from there. Like Israel, Armenia is playing the role
of a victim of a "holocaust".
Considering that the 2nd largest US/NWO Embassy in the World is in Armenia – a
country of 2.9 million people, and that the new President was put in power by the West
– the end game is to continue to surround Russia, screw up the New Silk Road, and be at
Iran's back door too. As said before , the domestic USA can totally look like the USSR in the
90s, but the NWO Foreign policy money is 100% – guaranteed. What do all those thousands
of workers in that huge Embassy compound do ?
Actually, once the Armenians were genocided , the Jewish bankers were the big shots left
in Turkey. H Morgenthau, our Turkish ambassador along with being jewish himself, wrote about
it in his reports. The Game hasn't changed much – it stays the same. Thanks.
About a third of Iran's population is Azeri. Should they develop interest in the conflict,
Iran may become involved. That would align Turkey and Iran vs Russia. That would be
something.
Damn right. We already have experience what happens when Turks get control of Christian
Armenians – systematic gang rapes and death marches are the rule of the day. Turks are
animals and letting them control any portion of Armenia is basically turning that place into
a concentration camp.
Fact: 1979 was the year that "big oil" LEGAL contracts were to expire and the "puppet"
Shah had threatened as early as 1973 (when he was instrumental in making OPEC a powerful
entity) that in 1979 Iran "would sell Iranian Oil to any buyer, at market prices".
Fact: Iran, in 1978 produced 6 million barrels per day. It has never been permitted to
reach those levels again.
Fact: Chinese, Indian, Syrian, Venezuelan, and God knows who else, all projects of the
Global Cabal have been getting Iranian Oil (under their engineered boxing of Iranian nation)
at levels that very likely are equal if not LOWER than the terms the Qajar idiots gave the
insatiablely greedy and slimey English.
And you did not mention that the only quarters of Smyrna/Izmir that were not torched in a
fire in 1922 were the Jewish and Turkish quarters – what a surprise! An antecedent to
9/11. Here is the Jewpedia hiding the real story – as usual.
The Armenian and Greek quarters were destroyed and the Jews got a monopoly on the
commerce. Done deal!
If the "colour revolution" assumptions were in force, there would be a host of
denunciations of Azerbaijan and Turkey (the latter perhaps the real prime mover in this) by
the USA and EU etc. There aren't. The USA and EU may even tacitly support the Azerbaijanis,
perhaps they hope the Russians and Iranians will become entangled in this affair and so
forth.
How about swapping Nagorno-Karabakh for North Cyprus. I am sure the Greeks would be very
happy to live with the Armenians. But the Sultan's dreams of owning the Eastern Mediterranean
would come to naught.
Stalin did nasty things like that to keep the republics feuding with each other rather
than pushing back against Moscow. The mixed-up borders of the 'stans, further east, are
testament to this. Fergana Valley?
Divide and rule. Still costing lives in pointless wars almost 100 years later.
At stake is the very existence of the Armenian people. Turkey is trying to finish what
remains of them after the genocide last century. Both Erdoghan and Aliev have stated, that
they want a "final solution" to the "Armenian problem".
Exactly. The history of Turkey since 1880-s is full of ethnic cleansings and genocides of
the non-muslim people such as Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians.
My thanks to Escobar for taking on a subject rather obviously not susceptible to 2,700
word essays, along with attention worthy links.
His biases are not my own but he's thoughtful and certainly doesn't hide them.
In this and so many other incidents we can see how thoroughly Trump has moved the American
ship of state despite the relentless efforts of foreign and domestic resistance to neutralize
America First and destroy him.
It's really quite something the way Obama's presidency in all its disastrous fullness has
been memory-holed. The defense of it being that it merely extended Bush's world-historical
incompetence and malefactions.
Could you have turned US unipolarity following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Warsaw Pact into a "moment" if you tried? I couldn't.
You will be way ahead of most everyone if you get your mind around that and the
geopolitical sad story that is CCP China winning the post-Cold War quarter-century hands
down.
We inevitably come back to the point that the whole drama can be interpreted from the
perspective of a NATO geopolitical hit against Russia – according to quite a few
analyses circulating at the Duma.
Ukraine is an absolute black hole. There's the Belarus impasse. Covid-19. The Navalny
circus. The "threat" to Nord Stream-2.
To pull Russia back into the Armenia-Azerbaijan drama means turning Moscow's attention
towards the Caucasus . . .
I confess that I get no end of enjoyment over bellyaching on behalf of those powers the
Obama administration was turning the world over to. Nord Stream II was merely the down
payment on Russia's assistance/acquiescence in throwing the electron to Hillary, with the sky
the limit for China, Russia and Iran once Democrats and their foreign allies had neutralized
free and fair elections.
Now all of these powers must deal with a real POTUS who asks "What have you done for the
US lately?"
The USG and Russia have cooperated where geopolitical interests align. More will follow
once Trump takes the oath again. As I've explained previously, despite its high-risk position
in the Resistance matrix, Russia/Putin have (unsurprisingly, to me) acted skillfully and with
circumspection.
The same cannot be said for Iran. Nor China, particularly since the end of last year.
The aggravation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh has raised a number of questions. In
particular, why Moscow is in no hurry to stand up for Armenia and why it does not sharply
criticize
Azerbaijan. The answer is that Moscow and Baku have very close relations, and not only
economic relations. So what is the value and irreplaceability of Azerbaijan for
Russia?
Border and population changes are in order. A quarter of N-K goes back to Azerbaijan and
the rest closer to Armenia proper plus the capital city goes to Armenia with a 50 mile wide
band connecting it with the rest of Armenia. The Azeris get the rest of their lands now
occupied by the Armenians. Will it happen? Probably not, just look at Kosovo..
There is a province between Ngorno Karabakh and Armenia proper of roughly of the same size
belonging to Azerbaijan, so why not just exchange it with each other to avoid further
conflict and bloodshed?
There is no guarantee that Turkey will not try to then eliminate whatever remains of
Armenia.
Remember, Turkey genocided Armenians and wiped out close to 80% of them in 1915 through
1922. Armenian populated areas stretched from what is now Armenia until the shores of Eastern
Mediterranean. The only thing that is left of it is Kessab in modern day Syria.
@Ghali nial borders are fake, false and fraudulent, whether in Asia or Africa. Over time,
justice will prevail and borders will reflect the ethno-national composition of its long-term
inhabitants.
That said, the current regime in Yerevan needs to be overthrown, as it was established in
conjunction with the interests of the Cabal/Nato and their various puppet regimes. Armenia is
the oldest Orthodox Christian nation in the world and was severely genocided by the Donmeh
covert Jewish Masons who called themselves the "Young Turks" who were led by Enver Pasha.
By the way, who are you, Ghali? Do you have a dog in the fight? Are you connected with an
intel agency?
Excellent article, normally I pass over Pepe for the naughty articles on Unz but I might
have to take another look.
My only critique is that the article feels pro-Azeri but that's balanced with an
informative description how this started in July, including an accurate appraisal of Turkish
behavior.
I'm not Azeri or Armenian so I didn't have a dog in this fight until I noticed Israel's
support for Azerbaijan. It's nothing personal, I have only one hate.
Jewish Bankers shifting profits to other Jewish bankers. Funding all sides and profiting
from the mass graves again. 5000 years and nothing has changed.
The Turks are the US Army in this – with their proxy armies sent to help the
Azerbaijanis, just like the US Army /Israelis and their proxies Isis, al Nusra, al Qaeda etc.
in Syria. The US and their 6000 employees at the Embassy, don't have to say anything –
they back both sides – just like the Zionists do – in the US political parties.
Things don't change , Tactics don't change. Thanks.
You are asking him if he has a dog in this fight? What about yourself? You very clearly
have a dog in this fight yourself, haven`t you?
Try to cut down on the hypocrasy, why don`t you, and at the same time maybe moderate your
"holier than thou" attitude.
Obviously the large multinational corporations are not in fact in charge, and will meekly follow the edict of national-security
bureaucrats even as it harms their bottom line.
"... "the EU and Russia find common cause to limit Azerbaijani gains (in large part because Erdogan is no one's favorite guy, not just because of this but because of the Eastern Med, Syria, Libya)." ..."
"... "Iran favors Armenia, which is counter-intuitive at first sight. So the Iranians may help the Russians out (funneling supplies), but on the other hand they have a good relationship with Turkey, especially in the oil and gas smuggling business. And if they get too overt in their support, Trump has a casus belli to get involved and the Europeans may not like to end up on the same side as the Russians and the Iranians. It just looks bad. And the Europeans hate to look bad." ..."
It's important to remember that there was no "Azerbaijan" nation-state until the early
1920s. Historically, Azerbaijan is a territory in northern Iran. Azeris are very well
integrated within the Islamic Republic. So the Republic of Azerbaijan actually borrowed its
name from their Iranian neighbors. In ancient history, the territory of the new 20
th century republic was known as Atropatene, and Aturpakatan before the advent of
Islam.
How the equation changed
Baku's main argument is that Armenia is blocking a contiguous Azerbaijani nation, as a look
in the map shows us that southwest Azerbaijan is de facto split all the way to the Iranian
border.
And that plunges us necessarily into deep background. To clarify matters, there could not be
a more reliable guide than a top Caucasus think tank expert who shared his analysis with me by
email, but is insistent on "no attribution". Let's call him Mr. C.
Mr. C notes that, "for decades, the equation remained the same and the variables in the
equation remained the same, more or less. This was the case notwithstanding the fact that
Armenia is an unstable democracy in transition and Azerbaijan had much more continuity at the
top."
We should all be aware that "Azerbaijan lost territory right at the beginning of the
restoration of its statehood, when it was basically a failed state run by armchair nationalist
amateurs [before Heydar Aliyev, Ilham's father, came to power]. And Armenia was a mess, too but
less so when you take into consideration that it had strong Russian support and Azerbaijan had
no one. Back in the day, Turkey was still a secular state with a military that looked West and
took its NATO membership seriously. Since then, Azerbaijan has built up its economy and
increased its population. So it kept getting stronger. But its military was still
underperforming."
That slowly started to change in 2020: "Basically, in the past few months you've seen
incremental increases in the intensity of near daily ceasefire violations (the near-daily
violations are nothing new: they've been going on for years). So this blew up in July and there
was a shooting war for a few days. Then everyone calmed down again."
All this time, something important was developing in the background: Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in May 2018, and Aliyev started to talk: "The Azerbaijani
side thought this indicated Armenia was ready for compromise (this all started when Armenia had
a sort of revolution, with the new PM coming in with a popular mandate to clean house
domestically). For whatever reason, it ended up not happening."
What happened in fact was the July shooting war.
Don't forget Pipelineistan
Armenian PM Pashinyan could be described as a liberal globalist. The majority of his
political team is pro-NATO. Pashinyan went all guns blazing against former Armenian President
(1998- 2008) Robert Kocharian, who before that happened to be, crucially, the de facto
President of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Kocharian, who spent years in Russia and is close to President Putin, was charged with a
nebulous attempt at "overthrowing the constitutional order". Pashinyan tried to land him in
jail. But even more crucial is the fact that Pashinyan refused to follow a plan elaborated by
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to finally settle the Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh mess.
In the current fog of war, things are even messier. Mr. C stresses two points: "First,
Armenia asked for CSTO protection and got bitch slapped, hard and in public; second, Armenia
threatened to bomb the oil and gas pipelines in Azerbaijan (there are several, they all run
parallel, and they supply not just Georgia and Turkey but now the Balkans and Italy). With
regards to the latter, Azerbaijan basically said: if you do that, we'll bomb your nuclear
reactor."
The Pipelineistan angle is indeed crucial: for years I have followed on Asia Times
these myriad, interlocking oil and gas soap operas, especially the BTC (Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan),
conceived by Zbigniew Brzezinski to bypass Iran. I was even "arrested" by a BP 4X4 when I was
tracking the pipeline on a parallel side road out of the massive Sangachal terminal: that
proved British Petroleum was in practice the real boss, not the Azerbaijani government.
In sum, now we have reached the point where, according to Mr. C,
"Armenia's saber rattling got more aggressive." Reasons, on the Armenian side, seem to be
mostly domestic: terrible handling of Covid-19 (in contrast to Azerbaijan), and the dire state
of the economy. So, says Mr. C, we came to a toxic concourse of circumstances: Armenia
deflected from its problems by being tough on Azerbaijan, while Azerbaijan just had had
enough.
It's always about Turkey
Anyway one looks at the Armenia-Azerbaijan drama, the key destabilizing factor is now
Turkey.
Mr. C notes how, "throughout the summer, the quality of the Turkish-Azerbaijani military
exercises increased (both prior to July events and subsequently). The Azerbaijani military got
a lot better. Also, since the fourth quarter of 2019 the President of Azerbaijan has been
getting rid of the (perceived) pro-Russian elements in positions of power." See, for instance,
here
.
There's no way to confirm it either with Moscow or Ankara, but Mr. C advances what President
Erdogan may have told the Russians: "We'll go into Armenia directly if a) Azerbaijan starts to
lose, b) Russia goes in or accepts CSTO to be invoked or something along those lines, or c)
Armenia goes after the pipelines. All are reasonable red lines for the Turks, especially when
you factor in the fact that they don't like the Armenians very much and that they consider the
Azerbaijanis brothers."
It's crucial to remember that in August, Baku and Ankara held two weeks of joint air and
land military exercises. Baku has bought advanced drones from both Turkey and Israel. There's
no smokin' gun, at least not yet, but Ankara may have hired up
to 4,000 Salafi-jihadis in Syria to fight -- wait for it -- in favor of Shi'ite-majority
Azerbaijan, proving once again that "jihadism" is all about making a quick buck.
The United Armenian Information Center, as well as the Kurdish Afrin Post, have stated that
Ankara opened two recruitment centers -- in Afrin schools -- for mercenaries. Apparently this
has been a quite popular move because Ankara slashed salaries for Syrian mercenaries shipped to
Libya.
There's an extra angle that is deeply worrying not only for Russia but also for Central
Asia. According to the former Foreign Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ambassador Extraordinary
Arman Melikyan, mercenaries using Azeri IDs issued in Baku may be able to infiltrate Dagestan
and Chechnya and, via the Caspian, reach Atyrau in Kazakhstan, from where they can easily reach
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
That's the ultimate nightmare of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) -- shared by
Russia, China and the Central Asian "stans": a jihadi land -- and (Caspian) sea -- bridge from
the Caucasus all the way to Central Asia, and even Xinjiang.
What's the point of this war?
So what happens next? A nearly insurmountable impasse, as Mr. C outlines it:
1. "The peace talks are going nowhere because Armenia is refusing to budge (to withdraw from
occupying Nagorno-Karabakh plus 7 surrounding regions in phases or all at once, with the usual
guarantees for civilians, even settlers -- note that when they went in in the early 1990s they
cleansed those lands of literally all Azerbaijanis, something like between 700,000 and 1
million people)."
2. Aliyev was under the impression that Pashinyan "was willing to compromise and began
preparing his people and then looked like someone with egg on his face when it didn't
happen."
3. "Turkey has made it crystal clear it will support Azerbaijan unconditionally, and has
matched those words with deeds."
4. "In such circumstances, Russia got outplayed -- in the sense that they had been able to
play off Armenia against Azerbaijan and vice versa, quite successfully, helping to mediate
talks that went nowhere, preserving the status quo that effectively favored Armenia."
And that brings us to the crucial question. What's the point of this war?
Mr. C: "It is either to conquer as much as possible before the "international community" [in
this case, the UNSC] calls for / demands a ceasefire or to do so as an impetus for re-starting
talks that actually lead to progress. In either scenario, Azerbaijan will end up with gains and
Armenia with losses. How much and under what circumstances (the status and question of
Nagorno-Karabakh is distinct from the status and question of the Armenian occupied territories
around Nagorno-Karabakh) is unknown: i.e. on the field of battle or the negotiating table or a
combo of both. However this turns out, at a minimum Azerbaijan will get to keep what it
liberated in battle. This will be the new starting point. And I suspect that Azerbaijan will do
no harm to the Armenian civilians that stay. They'll be model liberators. And they'll take time
to bring back Azerbaijani civilians (refugees/IDPs) to their homes, especially in areas that
would become mixed as a result of return."
So what can Moscow do under these circumstances? Not much,
"except to go into Azerbaijan proper, which they won't do (there's no land border between
Russia and Armenia; so although Russia has a military base in Armenia with one or more thousand
troops, they can't just supply Armenia with guns and troops at will, given the geography)."
Crucially, Moscow privileges the strategic partnership with Armenia -- which is a member of
the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) -- while meticulously monitoring each and every NATO-member
Turkey's movement: after all, they are already in opposing sides in both Libya and Syria.
So, to put it mildly, Moscow is walking on a geopolitical razor's edge. Russia needs to
exercise restraint and invest in a carefully calibrated balancing act between Armenia and
Azerbaijan; must preserve the Russia-Turkey strategic partnership; and must be alert to all,
possible US Divide and Rule tactics.
Inside Erdogan's war
So in the end this would be yet another Erdogan war?
The inescapable Follow the Money analysis would tells us, yes. The Turkish economy is an
absolute mess, with high inflation and a depreciating currency. Baku has a wealth of oil-gas
funds that could become readily available -- adding to Ankara's dream of turning Turkey also
into an energy supplier.
Mr. C adds that anchoring Turkey in Azerbaijan would lead to "the creation of full-fledged
Turkish military bases and the inclusion of Azerbaijan in the Turkish orbit of influence (the
"two countries -- one nation" thesis, in which Turkey assumes supremacy) within the framework
of neo-Ottomanism and Turkey's leadership in the Turkic-speaking world."
Add to it the all-important NATO angle. Mr. C essentially sees it as Erdogan, enabled by
Washington, about to make a NATO push to the east while establishing that immensely dangerous
jihadi channel into Russia: "This is no local adventure by Erdogan. I understand that
Azerbaijan is largely Shi'ite Islam and that will complicate things but not render his
adventure impossible."
This totally ties in with a notorious RAND
report that explicitly details how "the United States could try to induce Armenia to break
with Russia" and "encourage Armenia to move fully into the NATO orbit."
It's beyond obvious that Moscow is observing all these variables with extreme care. That is
reflected, for instance, in how irrepressible Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova,
earlier this week, has packaged a very serious diplomatic warning: "The downing of an Armenian
SU-25 by a Turkish F-16, as claimed by the Ministry of Defense in Armenia, seems to complicate
the situation, as Moscow, based on the Tashkent treaty, is obligated to offer military
assistance to Armenia".
It's no wonder both Baku and Yerevan got the message and are firmly denying anything
happened.
The key fact remains that as long as Armenia proper is not attacked by Azerbaijan, Russia
will not apply the CSTO treaty and step in. Erdogan knows this is his red line. Moscow has all
it takes to put him in serious trouble -- as in shutting off gas supplies to Turkey. Moscow,
meanwhile, will keep helping Yerevan with intel and hardware -- flown in from Iran. Diplomacy
rules -- and the ultimate target is yet another ceasefire.
Pulling Russia back in
Mr. C advances the strong possibility -- and I have heard echoes from Brussels -- that
"the EU and Russia find common cause to limit Azerbaijani gains (in large part because
Erdogan is no one's favorite guy, not just because of this but because of the Eastern Med,
Syria, Libya)."
That brings to the forefront the renewed importance of the UNSC in imposing a ceasefire.
Washington's role at the moment is quite intriguing. Of course, Trump has more important things
to do at the moment. Moreover, the Armenian diaspora in the US swings drastically
pro-Democrat.
Then, to round it all up, there's the all-important Iran-Armenia relationship. Here
is a forceful attempt to put it in perspective.
As Mr. C stresses, "Iran favors Armenia, which is counter-intuitive at first sight. So
the Iranians may help the Russians out (funneling supplies), but on the other hand they have
a good relationship with Turkey, especially in the oil and gas smuggling business. And if
they get too overt in their support, Trump has a casus belli to get involved and the
Europeans may not like to end up on the same side as the Russians and the Iranians. It just
looks bad. And the Europeans hate to look bad."
We inevitably come back to the point that the whole drama can be interpreted from the
perspective of a NATO geopolitical hit against Russia -- according to quite a few analyses
circulating at the Duma.
Ukraine is an absolute black hole. There's the Belarus impasse. Covid-19. The Navalny
circus. The "threat" to Nord Stream-2.
To pull Russia back into the Armenia-Azerbaijan drama means turning Moscow's attention
towards the Caucasus so there's more Turkish freedom of action in other theaters -- in the
Eastern Mediterranean versus Greece, in Syria, in Libya. Ankara -- foolishly -- is engaged in
simultaneous wars on several fronts, and with virtually no allies.
What this means is that even more than NATO, monopolizing Russia's attention in the Caucasus
most of all may be profitable for Erdogan himself. As Mr. C stresses, "in this situation, the
Nagorno-Karabakh leverage/'trump card' in the hands of Turkey would be useful for negotiations
with Russia."
And I suspect that Azerbaijan will do no harm to the Armenian civilians that stay.
They’ll be model liberators. And they’ll take time to bring back Azerbaijani
civilians (refugees/IDPs) to their homes, especially in areas that would become mixed as a
result of return.”
Agreed, this is rubbish. “Mr. C” – assuming someone like this even
exists, is either terribly misinformed or an outright liar. Basically, if we follow
Escobar’s logic, Armenian’s are making a mistake by not agreeing to surrender
their lives to the peace loving and rather humanistic dictatorship of Azerbaijan. While he
touches on some relevant points, overall, Escobar has not done his homework and has come up
with quite a bit of drivel.
Pepe, you didn’t mention the Armenian Genocide, the Greek Genocide, the Assyrian
Genocide, all perpetrated by Turkey.
Why not? Would the Azeris, all Turks, be different? You say the Azeris if they won, Turks,
would treat the Armenian population nicely. Huh?
I remember from Runciman’s book on the First Crusade that the Turks had already
taken over much of Anatolia but he seems to mention Armenians at every turn (from
memory—don’t have the book handy).
My impression is that before the Genocide the Armenians were all over Anatolia. There was
a narrow coastal strip at the western end that was historically part of Greece, and many
different peoples of Asia Minor are mentioned in the NT, but they arguably were all
Armenians, making the Armenians the indigenous people of Anatolia.
How is it that Turkey was allowed to keep part of Europe after WWI when they were losers?
And did they keep faith? Is the current St Sophia turmoil the norm of Turkish good faith?
Time for all the Turks to get out of Anatolia, give it back to Armenia, and head for
Azerbigan.
@Yevardian having been disciplined for some years now is, once again, at the throat of
the west. Europe spent millions of lives and huge resources throwing the Moors out last time.
If they don’t take a stand and support Armenia they may very well have to do it again.
As far as the mythical Mr C is concerned he comes across, to me, as yet another apologist for
the Religion of Peace. Obviously cucked NATO will not help Armenia, they have neither the
intestinal fortitude nor the will, so it will be left to Russia and the Visigrad nations, in
the mean time Turkey is attempting to take Greek territory, Syrian territory, Libyan
territory and anything else that it can get it’s mitts on and the West does absolutely
nothing. This will not end well.
I think few Armenian civilians will take the chance but I very much doubt Azerbaijanis
will be “model liberators”. The new Azerbaijani state was born from the Sumgait
and Baku pogroms. I also don’t think they will delay in moving Azeris into areas
formerly inhabited by Armenians – their role model Erdoğan has been trying to
change facts on the ground by moving ethnic Turks into Kurdish areas in his own country.
@Ann Nonny Mouse deavor, even if they were the majority, though most accounts say they
were 40%.
I would strongly urge the Armenians to get off their nationalist high horse and solve the
problem diplomatically and learn to live with their neighbors. Super nationalism is a
dangerous and fake mantra that usually leads to disaster. My understanding was that the
Azeris and Armenians always got along before this debacle. They should try to work out things
and get back to a their original multi-cultural paradigm, that is living side by side instead
of fighting and dying over territory and national flags. Live is short and when we pass to
the other side you dont carry your flag with you.
The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence in 1991: but that was not
recognized by the “international community”
Just to throw in quickly that if Kosovo is “recognized”, then bleeding
Karabakh should also long since have been recognized. Especially since the Armenians have an
actual holocaust in their 20th century past.
So, seems like the way to get sympathy to rob territory is to make full use of any
“genocide” one had suffered as excuse…. worked very well ( in fact,
spectacularly well) so faR with the Chosen ones….
Well i admittedly dont know enough about the situation to try to critique this piece as
some of the other comments on here… But i am skeptical about Armenia and their stated
intent. If it is reallly about protecting an ethnic group – then why not offer them
citizenship to move into your territory??? That would lead me to believe it is more about
land and resources…
Yeah i dont know the nitty gritty in this conflict – but i do agree Edrogan seems to
be biting off more than he can chew… He has too many pots on the fire it seems. Kurds
– Qatar/Saudis – Libya – Syria – Greece – Cyprus – and
now this..?
Aside from refusing to participate against their Muslim cousins (Afghanistan, Libya),
Turkey is using NATO doctrine quite effectively. It is a useful bullet prove vest for
Erdogan. The Brussels morons will be sorry for not expelling Turkey from their military club
long time ago.
@Ann Nonny Mouse iven to the Syrian desert AFTER some of them had aligned with the
Russians who were about to invade eastern Anatolia in 1915. Similarly, most of Crimean Tatars
were expelled from Crimea AFTER some of them had aligned with the invading Germans in 1941.
As another comparison, American-Japanese living at the Pacific coast were banished to camps
in the interior AFTER the Japanese army had attacked Pearl Harbor and not before.
When a group of people kill or drive out another group it’s usually not for the fun of
it but rather due to necessities of survival, whatever evil that might require at that
particular time depending on the particular circumstances.
It would be interesting to read a scholarly exposition on what the USSR and governments in
Eastern Europe proper did or did not do to educate people away from their ancient hatreds,
and why whatever they did do appears not to have been particularly successful. Or was it
mostly successful and the hatreds were much more intense before 1917?
The entire Jewish American lobby and Israel are on Azerbaijan’s side and
anti-Armenian, just as when they were working with Turkey to deny the Armenian genocide.
Israel has also sold billions of dollars of weapons to Azerbaijan which the latter is
using against Armenians. Israel gets oil from Azerbaijan
Of course, Azerbaijan and Turkey have imported jihadists from Syria and Libya to fight
Christian Armenians now.
Apparently, Pepe, you and the Jewish lobby, Israel, Turkey, and the jihadists are on the
same side.
Congratulations.
P.S. It would take a hundred pages to list all the factual errors you made. For example,
Armenians were still the clear majority in Artsakh/Karabagh in 1988 and 1991. Armenians there
had been grossly mistreated by Azerbaijan for decades.
The fighting occurred in the late 1980s only because Azerbaijan, backed by the Russian
military, killed and harrassed Armenians. The Azeris also committed massacres of Armenians
who were living in Baku and Sumgait in the late 1980s.
Stalin also placed Nakhichevan, an Armenian territory, inside Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan kicked out every Armenian from Nakhichevan. Azerbaijan was doing that to
Artsakh/Karabagh too.
No wonder Artsakh voted to be independent from Azerbaijan, something you don’t want
to understand.
Better luck next time trying to fool readers, Pepe.
The key fact remains that as long as Armenia proper is not attacked by Azerbaijan,
Russia will not apply the CSTO treaty and step in. Erdogan knows this is his red line.
Moscow has all it takes to put him in serious trouble – as in shutting off gas
supplies to Turkey.
Russia isn’t going to shut off gas to Turkey. Russia never does that (shutting off
gas). It’s a Western canard.
Russia could, however, impose a no-fly-zone over Georgia, effectively blocking resupply
and reinforcements to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is almost completely surrounded by Russian
allies and bases. They rely on Georgia for military transit.
Ignorant post. Armenian nationalist were active in Russia prior to ww1, then supported
Russian entrance into Turkish territory because they shared a religion. They stabbed the
ottomans , of which they were a big part, in the back. The young Turks , who were actually
donmeh jews, had them marched off to Syria and lebanon, etc, causing many deaths! The
Armenian is still causing trouble for the Turks. They sided with the mongols in their battles
against the Muslims, along wit the Georgians, repeatedly. More to a small story
What’s going to happen to USA? The poverty and racial intolerance ,both seem to be
undermining the stability and the ideological integrity of the country . I see many states
emerging from the body of America.But the problems will not be resolved . It might just like
like Caucasian territory or Balkan .
1. BTC is described as ‘bypassing Iran’. One could easily argue it also
bypasses *Russia* . Perhaps that’s what made it necessary for Soros & others to
peel Georgia off from Russian control back in the day? Look how Russia responded by
recapturing the Georgian Military Highway (South Ossetia).
2. Look in general at how Russia is willing to give up huge areas of territory so long as
she keeps key strategic points of control: South Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria, Abkhazia
and… Armenia. Smell the coffee.
3. 2. ‘Mr. C’ is quick to mention Baku/Ankara joint exercises in August, but
fails to mention Kavkas 2020 exercises led by Russia. Uh duh.
4. ‘Mr. C’ seems to ignore the fact that Armenia couldn’t have taken
that territory in first place, or kept it, w/out Russian assistance. And idea ‘Russia
can do nothing’ is absurd. As is the idea that Russia can’t supply Armenia
because there’s no land connection. Did the allies have any problem keeping West Berlin
supplied by air? Of course not. All nonsense.
5. The idea that there is a ‘Russia/Turkey’ strategic partnership is also
silly. Where is this partnership? Turkey buying S-400s? So what? Are they in partnership in
Syria? In Libya? No. So why would they be in N-K?
6. Weird. No mention of China and it’s growing relationship with Turkey. This
probably tells you all you need to know about the author. Unless of course the author is just
a fool, which is also possible.
“Yet even before the collapse the Azerbaijani Army and Armenian independentists were
already at war (1988-1994), which yielded a grim balance of 30,000 dead and roughly a million
wounded.”
This is a wounded-to-killed ratio of thirty-three to one. Doesn’t make sense.
Were Russia to be as devious and underhanded as the puppet regime in the Di$trict of
Corruption, they would arrange for an overthrow of the present NATO/EU/U$ regime in Yerevan.
With those bastards out of the way and Armenia no longer playing double jeopardy, it might be
possible for a new Orthodox oriented Armenian government to come to some sort of arrangement
with Baku.
At the same time, perhaps Syrian spetsnaz units could practice some infiltration tactics
into Turkish semi-occupied “greater” Idlib and Ghurka style, behead a few Turkish
officers running the show there.
“Sultan” Erdogan is playing loose and wild with his shattering economy and
massive military. It is high time he was given a black-eye–one that would cause him to
lose face among his own countrymen.
This is my educated guess, the Anglo-Zionists led by Rothschild and Netanayahu destablize
the oil in the Middle East to keep their prices of oil in USD above 100 $/barrel
They have also blown up oil derricks in the North Sea, shut down Iranian and Iraq and
Syria oil production. The game is clear, low oil prices are being met with wiping out the
competition.
And causing hell in Iran and Venezueala. Back in 1954 Operation Ajax took out Mossadeq and
installed the Shah – puppet of big oil. Before it was BP it was the Persian Gulf Oil
Co. BP is owned mostly by the crown.
Trump’s secretary of state was Rex Tillerson CEO Exxon just like GW Bush picked
Condoleeza Rice CEO Chevron to be his national security advisor.
The Israel angle is to get Iran and to goad Russia into war with the USA, the eventually
goal is that USA-Russia-China are reduced while Jews rule the world from Jerusalem.
How much you wanna bet Bibi Satanyahu has a hand in this war? And Evangelical Christians
will support Israel even if this war kills lots of Armenian Christians just like in
Syria.
Since this war in on Russia’s doorstep Putin an Lavrov will try negotiations first
then what will they do next. Putin has vowed the war will never come to Russia which means
Russia will enter the theater on the anti-Zionist side.
Have you noticed every state within a few hundred miles of Israel is being torched and the
natives driven out?
Back again to Pepe Escobar’s distortions of reality. Nagorno-Karabakh is an
Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territory. In fact, no country in the world recognises it as an
“Independent” as Escobar likes to mislead us. Armenia should do the right thing
and withdraw its forces, including foreign militants from there. Like Israel, Armenia is
playing the role of a victim of a “holocaust”.
Considering that the 2nd largest US/NWO Embassy in the World is in Armenia – a
country of 2.9 million people, and that the new President was put in power by the West
– the end game is to continue to surround Russia, screw up the New Silk Road, and be at
Iran’s back door too. As said before , the domestic USA can totally look like the USSR
in the 90s, but the NWO Foreign policy money is 100% – guaranteed. What do all those
thousands of workers in that huge Embassy compound do ?
Actually, once the Armenians were genocided , the Jewish bankers were the big shots left
in Turkey. H Morgenthau, our Turkish ambassador along with being jewish himself, wrote about
it in his reports. The Game hasn’t changed much – it stays the same. Thanks.
About a third of Iran’s population is Azeri. Should they develop interest in the
conflict, Iran may become involved. That would align Turkey and Iran vs Russia. That would be
something.
Damn right. We already have experience what happens when Turks get control of Christian
Armenians – systematic gang rapes and death marches are the rule of the day. Turks are
animals and letting them control any portion of Armenia is basically turning that place into
a concentration camp.
Fact: 1979 was the year that “big oil” LEGAL contracts were to expire and the
“puppet” Shah had threatened as early as 1973 (when he was instrumental in making
OPEC a powerful entity) that in 1979 Iran “would sell Iranian Oil to any buyer, at
market prices”.
Fact: Iran, in 1978 produced 6 million barrels per day. It has never been permitted to
reach those levels again.
Fact: Chinese, Indian, Syrian, Venezuelan, and God knows who else, all projects of the
Global Cabal have been getting Iranian Oil (under their engineered boxing of Iranian nation)
at levels that very likely are equal if not LOWER than the terms the Qajar idiots gave the
insatiablely greedy and slimey English.
And you did not mention that the only quarters of Smyrna/Izmir that were not torched in a
fire in 1922 were the Jewish and Turkish quarters – what a surprise! An antecedent to
9/11. Here is the Jewpedia hiding the real story – as usual.
The Armenian and Greek quarters were destroyed and the Jews got a monopoly on the
commerce. Done deal!
If the “colour revolution” assumptions were in force, there would be a host of
denunciations of Azerbaijan and Turkey (the latter perhaps the real prime mover in this) by
the USA and EU etc. There aren’t. The USA and EU may even tacitly support the
Azerbaijanis, perhaps they hope the Russians and Iranians will become entangled in this
affair and so forth.
How about swapping Nagorno-Karabakh for North Cyprus. I am sure the Greeks would be very
happy to live with the Armenians. But the Sultan’s dreams of owning the Eastern
Mediterranean would come to naught.
Stalin did nasty things like that to keep the republics feuding with each other rather
than pushing back against Moscow. The mixed-up borders of the ‘stans, further east, are
testament to this. Fergana Valley?
Divide and rule. Still costing lives in pointless wars almost 100 years later.
At stake is the very existence of the Armenian people. Turkey is trying to finish what
remains of them after the genocide last century. Both Erdoghan and Aliev have stated, that
they want a “final solution” to the “Armenian problem”.
Exactly. The history of Turkey since 1880-s is full of ethnic cleansings and genocides of
the non-muslim people such as Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians.
My thanks to Escobar for taking on a subject rather obviously not susceptible to 2,700
word essays, along with attention worthy links.
His biases are not my own but he’s thoughtful and certainly doesn’t hide
them.
In this and so many other incidents we can see how thoroughly Trump has moved the American
ship of state despite the relentless efforts of foreign and domestic resistance to neutralize
America First and destroy him.
It’s really quite something the way Obama’s presidency in all its disastrous
fullness has been memory-holed. The defense of it being that it merely extended Bush’s
world-historical incompetence and malefactions.
Could you have turned US unipolarity following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Warsaw Pact into a “moment” if you tried? I couldn’t.
You will be way ahead of most everyone if you get your mind around that and the
geopolitical sad story that is CCP China winning the post-Cold War quarter-century hands
down.
We inevitably come back to the point that the whole drama can be interpreted from the
perspective of a NATO geopolitical hit against Russia – according to quite a few
analyses circulating at the Duma.
Ukraine is an absolute black hole. There’s the Belarus impasse. Covid-19. The
Navalny circus. The “threat” to Nord Stream-2.
To pull Russia back into the Armenia-Azerbaijan drama means turning Moscow’s
attention towards the Caucasus . . .
I confess that I get no end of enjoyment over bellyaching on behalf of those powers the
Obama administration was turning the world over to. Nord Stream II was merely the down
payment on Russia’s assistance/acquiescence in throwing the electron to Hillary, with
the sky the limit for China, Russia and Iran once Democrats and their foreign allies had
neutralized free and fair elections.
Now all of these powers must deal with a real POTUS who asks “What have you done for
the US lately?”
The USG and Russia have cooperated where geopolitical interests align. More will follow
once Trump takes the oath again. As I’ve explained previously, despite its high-risk
position in the Resistance matrix, Russia/Putin have (unsurprisingly, to me) acted skillfully
and with circumspection.
The same cannot be said for Iran. Nor China, particularly since the end of last year.
The aggravation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh has raised a number of questions. In
particular, why Moscow is in no hurry to stand up for Armenia and why it does not sharply
criticize
Azerbaijan. The answer is that Moscow and Baku have very close relations, and not only
economic relations. So what is the value and irreplaceability of Azerbaijan for
Russia?
Border and population changes are in order. A quarter of N-K goes back to Azerbaijan and
the rest closer to Armenia proper plus the capital city goes to Armenia with a 50 mile wide
band connecting it with the rest of Armenia. The Azeris get the rest of their lands now
occupied by the Armenians. Will it happen? Probably not, just look at Kosovo..
There is a province between Ngorno Karabakh and Armenia proper of roughly of the same size
belonging to Azerbaijan, so why not just exchange it with each other to avoid further
conflict and bloodshed?
There is no guarantee that Turkey will not try to then eliminate whatever remains of
Armenia.
Remember, Turkey genocided Armenians and wiped out close to 80% of them in 1915 through
1922. Armenian populated areas stretched from what is now Armenia until the shores of Eastern
Mediterranean. The only thing that is left of it is Kessab in modern day Syria.
@Ghali e fake, false and fraudulent, whether in Asia or Africa. Over time, justice will
prevail and borders will reflect the ethno-national composition of its long-term inhabitants.
That said, the current regime in Yerevan needs to be overthrown, as it was established in
conjunction with the interests of the Cabal/Nato and their various puppet regimes. Armenia is
the oldest Orthodox Christian nation in the world and was severely genocided by the Donmeh
covert Jewish Masons who called themselves the “Young Turks” who were led by
Enver Pasha.
By the way, who are you, Ghali? Do you have a dog in the fight? Are you connected with an
intel agency?
Excellent article, normally I pass over Pepe for the naughty articles on Unz but I might
have to take another look.
My only critique is that the article feels pro-Azeri but that’s balanced with an
informative description how this started in July, including an accurate appraisal of Turkish
behavior.
I’m not Azeri or Armenian so I didn’t have a dog in this fight until I noticed
Israel’s support for Azerbaijan. It’s nothing personal, I have only one hate.
Jewish Bankers shifting profits to other Jewish bankers. Funding all sides and profiting
from the mass graves again. 5000 years and nothing has changed.
The Turks are the US Army in this – with their proxy armies sent to help the
Azerbaijanis, just like the US Army /Israelis and their proxies Isis, al Nusra, al Qaeda etc.
in Syria. The US and their 6000 employees at the Embassy, don’t have to say anything
– they back both sides – just like the Zionists do – in the US political
parties. Things don’t change , Tactics don’t change. Thanks.
You are asking him if he has a dog in this fight? What about yourself? You very clearly
have a dog in this fight yourself, haven`t you?
Try to cut down on the hypocrasy, why don`t you, and at the same time maybe moderate your
“holier than thou” attitude.
US regime in this last forty years since the Iranian revolution has been totally
successful making majority Iranian people anywhere in the world understand that the US is
their chronic strategic enemy for decades to come, in mean time, US regime has been equally
as successful in making American people believe Iran is their enemy.
The difference between the two sides belief is, Iranian people by experiencing US regime'
conducts came to their belief, but the American people' belief was made by their own regime'
propaganda machinery. For this reason just like the people to people relation between the US
and Russian people Before and after the fall of USSR the relation between US and Iran in next
few generations will not come or even develop to anything substantial or meaningful. One can
see this same trajectory in US Chinese relations, or US Cuban. Noticeably all these countries
relation with US become terminally irreparable after their revolutions, regardless of
maturity or termination of their revolution.
As much as US loves color revolutions, US hates real revolutions.
The highlands of Nagorno-Karabakh are ethnically Armenian. The light blue districts were
originally Azeri but have been ethically cleansed during the war in the early 1990s.
Turkey is supporting Azerbaijan by supplying it with Turkish drones and with 'moderate Syrian
rebel' mercenaries
from Syrian and Libya . All are flown in through Georgian air space. Other mercenaries seem
to come from
Afghanistan . Additional hardware comes by road also through
Georgia. Another supporter of the attacker is Israel. During the last week Azerbaijani military
transport aircraft have flown at least six times to Israel to then return with additional
Israeli suicide drones on board. These Harop drones have been widely used in attacks on
Armenian positions. An Israeli made LORA short range ballistic missile was used by Azerbaijan
to
attack a bridge that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Allegedly there are also
Turkish flown F-16 fighter planes in Azerbaijan.
Turkey seems to direct the drones and fighter planes in Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh
through AWACS type air control planes that fly circles at the Turkish-Armenian border.
The attack plan Azerbaijan had in mind when it launched the war foresaw to take several
miles deep zones per day. It has not survived the first day of battle. Azerbaijan started the
attack without significant artillery preparation. The ground attack was only supported by drone
strikes on Armenian tanks, artillery and air defense positions. But the defensive lines held by
Armenian infantry were not damaged by the drones. The dug in Armenian infantry could use its
anti-tank and anti-infantry weapons to full extend. Azerbaijani tanks and infantry were
slaughtered when they tried to break into the lines. Both sides had significant casualties but
overall the frontlines did not move.
The war seems already to be at a stalemate. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan can afford to use
air power and ballistic missiles purchased from Russia without Russian consent.
The drone attacks were for a while quite successful. A number of old air defense systems
were
destroyed before the Armenians became wiser with camouflaging them. The Azerbaijani's than
used a trick to unveil hidden air defense positions. Radio controlled Antonov
AN-2 airplanes, propeller driven relicts from the late 1940s, were sent over Armenian
positions. When the air defense then launched a missile against them a loitering suicide drone
was immediately dropped onto the firing position .
That seems to have worked for a day or two but by now such drone attacks have been become
rare. Dozens of drones were shut down before they could hit a target and Azerbaijan seems to be
running out of them. A bizarre music video the
Azerbaijanis posted showed four trucks each
carrying nine drones. It may have had several hundreds of those drones but likely less than one
thousand. Israel is currently under a strict pandemic lockdown. Resupply of drones will be an
issue. Azerbaijan has since brought up more heavy artillery but it seems to primarily use it to
hit towns and cities, not the front lines where it would be more useful.
It is not clear who is commanding the Azerbaijani troops. There days ago the Chief of the
General Staff of Azerbaijan was fired after he
complained about too much Turkish influence on the war. That has not helped. Two larger ground
attacks launched by Azerbaijan earlier today were also unsuccessful. The Armenians are
currently counter attacking.
In our last piece on the war we pointed
to U.S. plans to 'overextend Russia' by creating trouble in the Caucasus just as it is now
happening. Fort Russnotes
:
The current director of the CIA, Gina Haspel , was doing field assignments in Turkey in
the early stages of her career, she reportedly speaks Turkish, and she has history of
serving as a
station chief in Baku, Azerbaijan , in the late 1990s. It is, therefore, presumable that
she still has connections with the local government and business elites.
The current Chief of the MI6, Richard Moore , also has history of working in Turkey -- he
was performing tasks for the British intelligence there in the late 1980s and the early
1990s. Moore is fluent in Turkish and he also
served as the British Ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2017.
The intelligence chiefs of the two most powerful countries in the Anglosphere are
turkologists with connections in Turkey and Azerbaijan. It would be reasonable to assume that
a regional conflict of such magnitude happening now, on their watch, is far from being a mere
coincidence.
Before President Trump stopped the program the CIA had used the Azerbaijani Silk Way
Airlines in more than 350
flights to bring weapons from Bulgaria to Turkey to then hand them to 'Syrian rebels'.
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is not only a CIA station but also a Mossad center for waging
its silent war against Iran.
I have never perceived it that way. While Armenia's current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
tried to get into business with 'western' powers and NATO there was no way he could
fundamentally change Armenia's foreign policy. A hundred years ago Turkey, with the second
biggest NATO army, had genocided Armenians. They have never forgotten that. The relation to
Azerbaijan were also certain to continue to be hostile. That will only change if the two
countries again come under some larger empire. Armenia depends on Russian arms support just as
much as Azerbaijan does. (Azerbaijan has more money and pays more for its Russian weapons which
allows Russia to subsidize the ones it sells to Armenia.)
After Nikol Pashinyan was installed and tried to turn 'west' Russia did the same as it did
in Belarus when President Lukashenko started to make deals with the 'west'. It set back and
waited until the 'west' betrayed its new partners. That has happened in Belarus a few weeks
ago. The U.S. launched a color revolution against Lukashenko and he had nowhere to turn to
but to Russia . Now Armenia is under attack by NATO supported forces and can not hope for
help from anywhere but Russia.
Iran likewise did not fear the new government in Yerevan. It was concerned over Pashinyan's
recent diplomatic exchanges with Israel which were at the initiative of the White House. But
that concern has now been lifted. To protest against Israel's recent sale of weapon to
Azerbaijan Armenia has called back its
ambassador from Israel just two weeks after it opened its embassy there.
Pashinyan will have to apologize in Moscow before Russia will come to his help. As Maxim
Suchkov relays :
This is interesting: Evgeniy "Putin's chef" Prigozhin gives short interview to state his
"personal opinion" on Nagorno-Karabakh. Some takeaways:
- Karabakh is Azerbaijan's territory
- Russia has no legal grounds to conduct military activity in Karabakh
- there are more American NGOs in Armenia than national military units
- PM Pashinyan is to blame
- until 2018 Russia was able to ensure ARM & AZ discuss conflict at the negotiation
table, then US brought Pashinyan to power in Yerevan and he feels he's a king & can't
talk to Aliyev
I wonder if Prigozhin's remarks suggest he'd be reluctant to deploy his Wagner guys to
Armenia, if needed or if he is asked to do so, or he's just indeed stating his own views or
it's a way to delicately allude to Pashinyan that Moscow not happy with him ... ?
Russia's (and Iran's) interest is to refreeze the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. But that
requires compliant people on both sides. It therefore does not mind that Azerbaijan currently
creates some pressure on Pashinyan. But it can not allow Azerbaijan to make a significant
victory. One of its main concern will be to get Turkey out of the game and that will require
support for Armenia. Iran has a quite similar strategy.
The U.S. will probably try to escalate the situation and to make it more complicate for Russia.
It is likely silently telling Turkey to increase its involvement in the war.
Russia will likely only intervene if either side makes some significant territorial gains.
Unless that happens it will likely allow the war to continue in the hope that
it will burn out :
The upcoming winter conditions, coupled with the harsh terrain, will limit large-scale
military operations. Also, the crippled economies of both Azerbaijan and Armenia will not
allow them to maintain a prolonged conventional military confrontation.
Posted by b on October 3, 2020 at 17:28 UTC |
Permalink
thanks b....informative... another proxy war is how this looks to me with all the usual
suspects involved... they couldn't get what they wanted in syria, so now onto this...
The war started the day after negotiations between Russia and Turkey over Syria and maybe
Libya also failed. Now the Azeri military complains about too much Turkish involvement which
can only mean one thing--complaining about taking orders from Turks. So this looks like a
Turkish aggression against Moscow? Meant to make a point about Syria? Libya?
In fact, most of your links are propaganda from both sides. We really have no idea what is
going on on the ground.
In fact, most of your links are propaganda from both sides. We really have no idea what is
going on on the ground.
Azerbaijan's position is justified, given that Armenia illegally occupies Azeri territory.
The failure here is on the OSCE group for not being able or willing to resolve the conflict.
Azerbaijan has a right to regain its territory by force, if necessary.
Russia may very well allow Azerbaijan to retake its territory, if it can, but draw a red
line as to entering Armenia proper. The Current Armenian government is hardly a friend of
Russia.
@ Blue Dotterel | Oct 3 2020 18:17 utc | 4... do you feel the same way about crimea and
ukraine taking it back? curious... you live in turkey if i am not mistaken.. are you
turkish??
In a rare move, the Defense Ministry suspended the export license of an Israeli drone
manufacturer to Azerbaijan in light of claims that the company attempted to bomb the Armenian
military on the Azeris behalf during a demonstration of one of its "suicide" unmanned aerial
vehicles last month.
The two Israelis operating the two Orbiter 1K drones during the test refused to carry out the
attack, Two higher ranking members of the Aeronautics Defense Systems delegation in Baku
then attempted to carry out the Azerbaijani request , but, lacking the necessary
experience, ended up missing their targets.
Last year, Azerbaijan used another Israeli suicide drone, an Israeli Aerospace Industries
Harop-model, in an attack on a bus that killed seven Armenians.
Last year, the country's president, Ilham Aliyev, revealed Azerbaijan had purchased some $5
billion worth of weapons and defense systems from Israel.
My citizenship is the same as yours. No one recognizes Nagorno Karabagh independence, not
even Armenia.
Bulent Ecevit, two time PM of Turkey, leftist and a poet, suggested the logical solution
to the problem years ago. He suggested that Armenia cede land along the Armenian/Iran border
of similar size so that Azerbaijan could unite with its southern territory Nakhchivan, thus
Nagorno Karabagh could be exchanged for this territory. Both sides would be winners one
assumes.
Apparently, no one liked the idea despite its fairness. I assume the Azeris in NK would
have to be exchanged with the Armenians in the corridor in a population exchange for this to
be realized.
"The war started the day after negotiations between Russia and Turkey over Syria and maybe
Libya also failed"
More than a week before start of the war, everyone involved in the region politics knew the
war is imminent. Two days before the start of war Zarif rushed to Moscow.
This bastard of Prigozhin goes where the money flows.
And the money flows from Baku.
Do not give much credit to this thug.
Or perhaps Crimea belongs to Ukraine?
"Bulent Ecevit, two time PM of Turkey, leftist and a poet, suggested the logical
solution to the problem years ago. He suggested that Armenia cede land along the
Armenian/Iran border of similar size so that Azerbaijan could unite with its southern
territory Nakhchivan, thus Nagorno Karabagh could be exchanged for this territory. Both sides
would be winners one assumes.
Apparently, no one liked the idea despite its fairness. I assume the Azeris in NK would
have to be exchanged with the Armenians in the corridor in a population exchange for this to
be realized."
That reads like a reasonable solution. Too bad it wasn't embraced.
b "The highlands of Nagorno-Karabakh are ethnically Armenian."? Nagorno Kharbakh is
internationally recognized Azerbaijan territory
Pashinyan's placement in Armenia was meant to give an advantage to those that 'brung him'
Your claims to the otherwise are some kind of pretzel logic.
Georgia absolutely flat out denied any passage of 'rebels' through their territory. That
claim is utter unsubstantiated rubbish.
"have never perceived it that way. While Armenia's current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
tried to get into business with 'western' powers and NATO there was no way he could
fundamentally change Armenia's foreign policy"
Why because you say he couldn't? The one constant is change.
While it is not a solution as such, I fully agree with b's last point about Russia and Iran
preferring to 'refreeze' the game and remove Turkey from the board.
Since the kick off I have wondered to what extent this is an Azerbaijani initiative and to
what extent a Turkish one.
Either way, as I posted on the open thread, Lavrov and Cavusoglu agreed a couple of days
ago that a ceasefire was necessary and Russia reiterated its strong stance against the
presence of foreign militias in the conflict. Let's hope sober heads prevail. As Rouhani
stated very clearly, the region can not withstand another war.
Sorry, didn't really answer your question. Kosovo, N. Cyprus, Crimea (annexation) and NK
independence are all regarded as illegal accoding to international law, as far as, I know.
None have had a proper UN sponsored referendum.
Although Turkish N. Cyprus did vote to reunite with Greek S. Cyrprus in a UN referendum, but
the Greek Cypriots nixed it, and were immediately admitted to the EU as a prize for their
pigheadedness.
Is it any wonder that Turks don't trust the Christian West or East? Neither the Grek
Cypriots or the Armenians have any incentive nor desire to negotiate in good faith because
the US, Europe and Russia are unwilling to compel them to, but reward them instead with
territorial freezes that benefit them.
The ethnic Muslim Turks in both cases get screwed because of the racist propaganda
directed at them through the ages.
Wow, Blue Dotterel, the hatred for Armenians runs deep in you. Nakhichevan was handed over to
Azerbaijan by the Soviets even before Karabakh/Artsakh was. Then the ethnic cleansing of its
majority Armenian population and destruction of ancient Armenian monuments began so there
would be little trace of its pedigree. Armenia has been chipped away at and betrayed by their
so-called betters generation upon generation. They are not budging nor should they.
You can buy as many weapons as you want, if your soldiers don't know how to fight it's not
going to help. Whether you get 4000 Syrian rebels or 40,000 to Azerbaijan it still won't help
them. If Azerbaijan could take those lands they wound have done it without asking Russia's
permission. Even with advanced weapons they stand no chance. Armenians are using mostly
antiquated and cheap air defense tech to shoot down the most advanced and expensive drones in
the world. Thousands of their troops got slaughtered And hundreds of tanks destroyed so they
could get one village that no one needs ? Wow great results. If they continue with these
results for 2 more weeks they are going to need a brand new army. One thing Azeris have
difficulty understanding is that in real life Might makes Right. Armenians learned this
lesson back in 1914 when they got slaughtered and no one cared, not even the Christian west
or orthodox Russia. Azeris just need to learn to leave with defeat and shame. And Azeris
don't understand how bizarre and funny their army music videos look outside Azerbaijan. Same
thing with Armenian videos. Not sure why both sides think there is a need to glorify war
which creates grief and misery.
What makes you think I hate Armenians? I grew up with many Armenian friends and
acquaintences in my home country. Even in Turkey, I have worked with Armenians (Turkish
citizens, of course) and even had and Armenian (from Armenia) cleaning women for my flat.
I certainly do think Armenians have had poor to incompetent, even racist leaders. Sort of
like the US recently. Indeed, both countries have even had a similar Covid19
mismanagement.
No, I have no problem with Armenians, any more than I do with USAians or any other
peoples.
You state "the ethnic cleansing of its majority Armenian population" with out any context,
but you do realise that Armenians are quite capable of and certainly committted ethnic
cleansing themselves. From the Pepe Escobar article: https://thesaker.is/whats-at-stake-in-the-armenia-azerbaijan-chessboard/
"The peace talks are going nowhere because Armenia is refusing to budge (to withdraw from
occupying Nagorno-Karabakh plus 7 surrounding regions in phases or all at once, with the
usual guarantees for civilians, even settlers – note that when they went in in the
early 1990s they cleansed those lands of literally all Azerbaijanis, something like between
700,000 and 1 million people)."
So, fact, the Armenians ethnically cleansed some 700,000 to 1 million Azeris from the
Azeri lands they now occupy including NK.
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, is commonplace in war time,
and even in peace time.
To make countries eligible to become part of the NATO the west first they would need to be
cleansed going through a western inspired and planed color revolution. Russian resistance
formula to prevent these countries joining NATO is to make these countries an economic,
political and military basket case by making parts of these countries' territory contested,
and out of control of western recognized seating governments. Once countries territorial
integrity becomes challenged and out of control of western inspired governments, it becomes a
challenge to be absorbed by any for any alliances. Such a country is a failed country
dependent on western economic, political and military freebies. Likes of Ukraine, Georgia,
Azerbaijan etc. We shall see when, US/west feel, this will not work and will go nowhere, and
tries to climb down the unipolar peak. Both of these countries are dependent on Iran and
Russia.
Self-determination is considered a major principle of international law. This principle is
included in the UN's Charter (Chapter 1). Even if a group of people goes ahead with declaring
its independence and breaking away from a country it dislikes being part of, as in the case
of Crimea, without consulting with the UN in any way, the UN cannot object to this act. What
Crimea did, did not violate international law.
Had the Crimeans consulted with the UN, they very likely would have been advised to remain
part of Ukraine.
Self-determination does not require any support or sponsorship from the UN.
Good analysis by MOA, and I also hope the war burns out going nowhere.
As to those that say NK is Azeri territory: after the Armenians were genocided on the
street of Baku in the 1990's and Azeri's destroyed 5,000 Armenian monumemts would you just
'walk away' and not protect the people of NK? And after getting out followed by the Azeri's
butchering the Armenians of NG it will be ignored!
Why did the Turks bring all those jihadis to Azerbaijan to fight: they will run the
massacres in NK.
I am not disagreeing with the Crimean's decision, and indeed sympathize with it, but still
question whether it shouldn't be considered illegal. I mean, really, how does it differ from
Kosovo separating from Serbia, or the Turkish Cypriots from the Greeks. The UN does not
consider the Turkish Cypriots independent. Perhaps they need to be absorbed by Albania and
Turkey respectively to be considered "legal", just as Russia absorbed Crimea, although it is
not considered legal, either. So why hasn't Armenia annexed NK? Why hasn't the UN recognized
NK as a separate state?
Anyway, we are not discussing our preferences here. The Greek Cypriots rejected uniting
their country with the Turks under a UN referendum, but the Turks voted for a united country.
Why are the Turkish Cypriots not recognized as a country by the UN or anyone, but Turkey. Why
have they not been rewarded with EU membership as the Greeks were? Is it any surprise that
the Greeks won't negotiate in good faith with the Turks? Why should they? They get the
benefits. the Turks not.
As I noted in the last thread on this topic: the war serves to make the Azeris more dependent
on the West. 'Winning' the war is perhaps not the goal of those behind the conflict.
Posted by: AriusArmenian | Oct 3 2020 20:33 utc | 25
So far the jihadis are hearsay, not fact nay more than the PKK are fact fighting with the
Armenians. It would not be surprizing in either case, but neither has been confirmed as fact,
but merely propaganda.
Again, it is not surprising that some people in the "Christian world attribute all the
massacres and destructions on the Muslims but ignor the massacres and ethnic cleansing
committed by the "Christian" side. This is is a tacit, perhaps subconscious racism that has
existed for hundreds of years. It is so difficult to be objective when you have been brought
up to dislike, perhaps even hate the other, isn't it?
@ Blue Dotterel ... thanks for your comments... you never said, but i take it you are of
turkish descent.. either way, i like the comments you make, even if i don't know enough to
agree or disagree with them.. there are usually 2 sides to every story, but we often don't
hear both sides stories..
"The Greek Cypriots rejected uniting their country"
As I understand it the war in Cyprus started when Greek Cypriots abolished the rules
stipulated by British colonizers meant to subjugate majority Greek population. Those rules
gave Turk Cypriots larger portion of the power then the Greek.
Voting for unification expecting to come back to the same discriminatory laws against Greek
Cypriots is non-option for the Greek Cypriots.
The other thing regarding proposition to Armenians to trade its own historical land for the
other part of its own land and call if fair is very biased by my opinion. It is almost the
same as proposition to Serbia to trade part of its land with current Serbian majority in the
Nato occupied part of the country (Kosovo and Metohia) for the other part of the Serbia
proper where some of the land has Albanian majority.
Proposal to trade a corridor to the Azerbaijans Nakhchivan for the corridor to Armenians
Nagorno Karabagh would be a fair proposal.
So in both cases/proposals (Cyprus and Armenia) on the surface seem fair but if someone
scratch the surface the situation appear to be far from the fair.
And in the both cases the presentation is biased for the Turkish side ... by accident.
Stupid people fighting stupid wars for stupid reasons. The peoples of the Caucasus need to
learn to live in peace with each other or the region will continue to be a backwater
exploited for great power geopolitical games.
Russia and Iran are correct to stay out of this and let the idiots kill each other. If
there was any significant security threat from the mob of unruly idiots running Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia; the Russian and Iranians would roll over them all in 48 hours and
there is not a damn thing anyone outside the Caucasus could do about it.
Agreed, sorry Mr B, no malice intended, but your blog's credibility with unfamiliar
audiences could potentially be undermined with some occasionally 'liberal' use of the English
language.
Respect for using your foreign language skills of course, but perhaps a friendly proof
reader with native English skills could also be an idea..
No, I am of mixed European descent, both east and west. And yes, that is the problem; we
seldom do seek out both sides. When one looks at the Assange case, one sees the the problem
of our age (and many others) where the prosecution is allowed to present its case with all
prejudice, but the defense is repeatedly hampered by the supposedly impartial judge. And the
media, well what to the people get - propaganda, often through ommision in this case.
Similarly, peoples are judged by through the propaganda of a culture or society, usually
to benefit those with power. So people are taught to demonize or denigrate the other assuming
their own to have upstanding moral character or, if defeated in some way, victims needing
redress.
After the bombing of the Turkish consulate in Ottawa in the early 80s by an Armenian
terrorist group, ASALA, I made a point of educating myself on the so called genocide issue,
but had a hard time finding the Turkish point of view in Canada. As fortune would have it, I
found employment in Turkey, and eventually discovered what was difficult to find in Canada:
an alternative point of view concerning the issue and many others. Examining the writers'
treatment of facts and their academic backgrounds was certainly educational in many
cases.
Suffice it to say that on being able to actually see the "defense", I came to different
judgements from those I would be able to come to in my home country.
@ Blue Dotterel | Oct 3 2020 21:23 utc | 36.. thank you for this as well.. i hear what you
are saying.. it is an ongoing battle to get all the information and nuances.. we probably
don't ever get all the information necessary which is why i resort to believing war is not
the answer.. easy for me to say this here on the westcoast of canada...
Ah yes, the "other side's" point of view about Armenian genocide. Did you look for the Nazis'
point of view about the Shoah, too?
Point is, Turkey has been genociding (directly or by proxies) non-Muslim people since the
late 19th century, and keeps trying to do it everywhere it can. In a way, Kurds are lucky to
be Muslim, they're just occupied and suppressed instead of being mass-murdered by the
millions - unlike Cypriots, Greeks, Armenians, Yazidis, Assyrians and others.
The seven surrounding regions should be returned to Azerbaijan, so that 600,000 refugees can
return to their homes. NKAO should be allowed to join Armenia to avoid creating new refugees.
I understand that legally NKAO is part of Azerbaijan, but Armenians have been living in
Artsakh for thousands of years, and it is unrealistic to expect them to give up and leave. On
the other hand, it is morally wrong to preserve the status quo and thus accept the ethnic
cleansing of the 90s. That's why a compromise is needed.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Oct 3 2020 19:55 utc | 22
Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, is commonplace in war time,
and even in peace time.
Yeah, when was that when Bulgarians expelled Turks from Bulgaria, 1989? It was tragic, hard
to watch.
Nationalism is evil. I blame French for that disease.
Somewhat unrelated question: so Karabakh is written in Turkish Karabağ, which is
quite similar (to me) to Montenegro, Karadağ. Is the similarity accidental, or both
words have related meaning / connotation?
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Oct 3 2020 20:54 utc | 29
So far the jihadis are hearsay, not fact nay more than the PKK are fact fighting with the
Armenians. It would not be surprizing in either case, but neither has been confirmed as
fact, but merely propaganda.
Bulent Ecevit, two time PM of Turkey, leftist and a poet, suggested the logical solution to
the problem years ago. He suggested that Armenia cede land along the Armenian/Iran border
of similar size so that Azerbaijan could unite with its southern territory Nakhchivan, thus
Nagorno Karabagh could be exchanged for this territory. Both sides would be winners one
assumes.
I would not be one who so assumes. Armenia would be nuts to give up their border
with the one neighbor supportive of them while creating contiguity between Turkey and
Azerbaijan's main territory.
One of my all-time favorite recordings is Love, Devotion, Surrender
(Santana, McLaughlin). The very first piece on the album, a cover of Coltrane's "A Love
Supreme," has the two guitarists engage in a master-acolyte argument that frantically
escalates, culminating in a crescendo of...agreement?
Yeah, those Syrian "rebels" that Turkey shipped to Azerbaijan are more than hearsay and
rumor. My heart really bleeds for them that when they got there they found they were facing a
well-equipped and trained army, rather than having their pick of defenseless Christian
villages where they could bring to bear their skills in robbing, raping, enslaving, and
beheading.
Even without conquering anything, with a large supply of drones and cheap yet robust comms
(I feel the need to think of point to point IR, but I don't know enough about modern radio),
the attacker can do a lot of damage without losing anything that expensive, i.e. potentially
cheap spotter and relay drones, plus the munitions themselves. Air defense technology made to
counter turn-of-the-century jets/helis/cruise-missiles, is not really appropriate. Handing
out manpads in quantity creates other problems.
This is what I come to MoA for. And it's nice to see b disclose his authorship with his
trademark idiomatic slips ("full extend" for "to their full extent", 'unveil' for 'reveal'
and 'relicts' for 'relics', etc).
"Full extend" was a slight error, but "unveil" seems perfectly fine to me, and "relicts"
was a better choice than "relics" in that context. (Though really the Antonov An-2 isn't
either a relic or relict "from the late 1940s": they were produced in vast numbers for
decades.)
@ Dr Wellington 46: Also 'Visions of the Emerald Beyond' by The Mahavishnu Orchestra is a
fantastic album that I think captures the Fusion era with a sense of refinement and less of
the "slop".
Extend should be extent, I like discover better there than reveal or unveil, and relic has
religious connotations, relict implies "remnant" which might work, derelict suggests
inoperable, hmmm.
Maybe "remnant" or "survivor" would work.
But to be honest B's usage didn't bother me reading over it, the Internets is nothing if
not slovenly about grammar and usage.
Some people here speak of yet more "exchanges" of territory as if it wouldn't involve 100%
replacement of the people living there. and almost certainly by murder. They seem to think
ethnic cleansing can be undone by more ethnic cleansing or at the very least loudly support
one more round of it as a "final solution". They make it easy to understand why Erdogan
references Hitler in positive terms.
The suggestion that Armenia and Artsakh losing their borders to Iran is fair is silly and
anything but fair. It is an invitation to more war and genocide after such a "peace deal".
The "peace plan" is nothing but siege warfare, it is a barely disguised war plan targeting
Armenia and Artsakh.
North Cyprus being presented as some kind of Turkish benevolence belies the fact of the
current ethnic Turkic dominance of the demographics of North Cyprus which did not happen by
natural means, ie. it was/is over forty years of steadfast ethnic cleansing. Almost none of
them were Cypriot when the Turkish invasion happened no matter how much they lie and pretend
they were.
@hopehely how conveniently you forget that Bulgaria was under the Ottoman rule for 500 years
and plenty of Bulgarian got murdered by the Turks during that time. WHEN the Bulgarians
rebelled against the Turks in 1875–78, the Europeans didn't wept for ALL the Bulgarian
women, children and men that were savagely slaughtered by the Turks, but instead sent one guy
who claimed he never saw any atrociousness.
YEah, most of modern peoples' memory goes as far back as WII, everything else is forgotten.
FUCK YOU, the Turks have always been savages.
Before President Trump stopped the program the CIA had used the Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines
in more than 350 flights to bring weapons from Bulgaria to Turkey to then hand them to
'Syrian rebels'. Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is not only a CIA station but also a Mossad
center for waging its silent war against Iran.
This is dubious. Why use an Azeri airline to ferry weapons over the border that separates
Bulgaria from Turkey, with a choice of three highways, an electrified railroad, or even by a
ship (164 nautical miles between the main ports of the two countries).
If Blitzkrieg failed the Azeris will use the attrition war tactic and that is absolutely
certain to succeed. Murad Gazdiev tweeted selfies posted by Jihadi imports in Azeri uniforms
in Azerbaijan here: https://mobile.twitter.com/MuradGazdiev/status/1312372865937932289
Jihadis will therefore be used as canon fodder by Azerbaijan while the Ottomans take over the
air combat, directly or indirectly. Unless Azerbaijan is stupid enough to attack Armenia
directly there is nothing Russia will ever do about it.
At some point approaching rapidly Armenian frontline positions will collapse and then
there will be a panicked refugee flood into Armenia from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding
occupied Azeri areas. At that point Nagorno Karabakh will become impossible to defend.
Whether Azerbaijan permits Erdogan to seed the area with jihadis is an open question, but at
the least Erdo will place Ottoman troops there to "guard against Armenia".
Without Nagorno Karabakh Armenia is actually worth very little to Russia. Even if it could
be "taught a lesson" by Putinist restraint it would be strategically useless and a resource
hole. A NATO Armenia, with or without a NATO Azerbaijan, would be a strategic disaster but
that's the way things seem headed.
Watching the latest South Front videos it is easy to see how drone technology makes it
difficult to move vehicles and set up fixed positions. It looks like a very high technology
affair to counter drones.
Very expensive very costly training would equate to excellent results in second and third
world areas for combat drones. Again the war party wins. It would be cheaper to build stable
societies. What a toxic mess. It must be some weird parallel groups of death cults pushing
this continued chaos.
Maybe is is just plain old human nature with high tech advantages over bronze and iron
weapons. Even the bronze age brought a long period of peace and prosperity for a time.
If Blitzkrieg failed the Azeris will use the attrition war tactic and that is absolutely
certain to succeed. Murad Gazdiev tweeted selfies posted by Jihadi imports in Azeri uniforms
...
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Oct 4 2020 2:18 utc | 58
I beg to differ. This is not Libya, both sides have relatively large armies, Armenians
have weapons, high ground, prepared positions and people who believe that the choice is
between standing the ground and exile (or worse). They will not be demoralized by few hundred
casualties. Azerbaijan has low ground, attack uphill is not easy, and the motivation of
soldiers is not as good. After bringing few hundred or even few thousands of second rate
jihadists the equation will not change (inequality if you will).
Of course, if the war is protracted, both sides will need supplies. Except for Turkey, no
one declared the will to supply either side, but unofficial traffic is bound to happen.
Russia and Iran will surely neutralize any supplies from Turkey and Israel, they need to
maintain the regional balance that so far is in their favor.
Then there is no potential for tipping the balance by direct intervention: it will trigger
direct Russian response. Concerning the coming winter, one should read Wikipedia "Battle of
Sarikamish". On New Year Eve of 1915, Turkish army advised by Germans attacked Russian
positions after crossing high mountains. Because of even bloodier fighting in France, Russia
was attacking in East Prussia to relieve the French and Caucasus Army was at half of full
strength. The result was that 1/3 of Russian troops were lost, a lot of them to frostbite,
and about the Turks there are debates: did 1/10 of them survive, a bit less, or a bit
more.
"... As soon as many generals retire, they become the high-paid consultants and lobbyists for the major weapons manufacturers. There was a time when the Boston Globe and papers wrote about it. I wonder how many will now. It is time to recognize the problem and face up to the destructive influence it is having on our nation and our families in both our foreign and domestic policies. ..."
"... This is another consequence of allowing the people who own the media to own other things. Allowing the people who make bullets and bombs to own media is a sure recipe for perpetual war. ..."
"... It is quite normal for a top General to protect his cabal of corruption. He still has his slush fund money to protect. These military "Heroes" are in the habit of sending men to their deaths, just to advance themselves into top jobs with the Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... They retire into prime Lobbying positions as well. This corruption has produced more broken Veterans than Covid-19 has produced deaths. ..."
"... “ I can assure the American people that the senior leaders would only recommend sending our troops to combat when it is required in national security and in the last resort, ” As invading Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Grenada, Cambodia, Laos.... and many other countries was a last resort to secure the US national security. ..."
"... Trump says those things, and at the same time increases the Pentagon's budget & spending to over $1 Trillion (more than the next 15 Countries combined, and 13 of them are your allies).. ..."
"... Trump is picking up some that vote that supported Tulsi Gabbard, or so I speculate. Though he speaks with a bit of forked tongue -- stealing oil in Syria, won't pull out of Iraq when told by Iraqi government; still in Afghanistan long after the Pentagon lost the war there again another war lost against a fourth world country. ..."
"... An interviewer should test this man's integrity with a simple question, such as.. "When you retire, will promise to live off your generous pension....like Eisenhower in his rocking chair....and not go to work for an arms manufacturer or think tank or any other paid position?" ..."
"... Trump should spin the rest of the beans. Directly and indirectly, the Violence Industry is the biggest employer in the US. It's a gigantic social program. ..."
"... I think Trump is posturing for re election purposes . He is clearly in the hands of the deep state. ..."
"... Trump promised to end America’s “endless wars” . Just look at the people he appointed. They all love war. and trying to expand them. Russia showed the world, convoys of stolen Syrian oil. Than Russia bombed them. Now the US is stealing even more Syrian oil and nobody is bombing it. ..."
"... Biden was thinking about rebuilding contracts for his family and friends before the first bombs ever fell General.. ..."
Army Chief of Staff General James McConville has vehemently rejected Donald Trump's comments
alleging that the military's top commanders wish to entangle the US in as many wars as possible
in order to enrich weapon manufacturers.
" I can assure the American people that the senior leaders would only recommend sending
our troops to combat when it is required in national security and in the last resort, "
McConville, a Trump appointee, said during an online conference on Tuesday. " We take this
very, very seriously in how we make our recommendations. "
The general added that many of the US commanders have sons and daughters that currently
serve in the military and some of them " may be in combat right now. " The general
declined to more directly respond to Trump's allegations, saying the military should remain out
of politics.
The Chief of Staff was referring to the highly publicized comments Trump made on Monday. The
president said that " the top people in the Pentagon " might not be " in love "
with him " because they want to do nothing but fight wars " to provide business for the
US military-industrial complex.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to end America's " endless wars " as he
often calls them. However, the long-time military bureaucrats he appointed to command publicly
opposed Trump's propositions to reduce US military presence in Afghanistan and Syria.
Please. Who is he kidding. Rather than recognize the problem like an Al-Anon, he discredits
himself and his institution even by suggesting there isn't one. As soon as many generals
retire, they become the high-paid consultants and lobbyists for the major weapons
manufacturers. There was a time when the Boston Globe and papers wrote about it. I wonder how
many will now. It is time to recognize the problem and face up to the destructive influence
it is having on our nation and our families in both our foreign and domestic policies.
This is another consequence of allowing the people who own the media to own other things.
Allowing the people who make bullets and bombs to own media is a sure recipe for perpetual
war.
The media needs to be splintered into a thousand pieces with the new owners not allowed
to own anything else. The Sherman anti trust act used to spell this out in law.
LonDubh 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 07:04 PM
It is quite normal for a top General to protect his cabal of corruption. He still has his
slush fund money to protect. These military "Heroes" are in the habit of sending men to their
deaths, just to advance themselves into top jobs with the Military Industrial Complex.
They
retire into prime Lobbying positions as well. This corruption has produced more broken
Veterans than Covid-19 has produced deaths. VFW (Victims of Futile Wars) have seen their
ranks increase and their support mechanism decreased. Another generation of American youth
destined for the scrapheap of "Heros"
IgyBundy LonDubh 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 04:25 AM
Have you noticed what great liars these so called honorable military brass have become?
Better than most politicians..
“ I can assure the American people that the senior leaders would only recommend
sending our troops to combat when it is required in national security and in the last
resort, ” As invading Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Grenada, Cambodia, Laos.... and
many other countries was a last resort to secure the US national security.
Everyone knows that there is collusion between some serving and ex top guns with the MIC.
Resulting in endless wars everywhere and many countries are forced by security tension to buy
more expensive weapons which they can ill afford
It is not the generals but the politicians that started the endless wars. The politicians get
campaign donations to their Super PACs or to an offshore numbered bank account.
Jewel Gyn 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 09:07 PM
What national security threat and last resort when all wars conducted are in foreign soils.
Even if there are threats on the hundreds of military bases deployed around the world, the
question is still 'what the *f are US troops there in the first place'.
Mark La Brooy 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 09:59 PM
Is it any surprise that the US spends $700 billion on defense. Next comes China with only $90
billion or thereabouts. Yes, Trump is right. It is all about the US military industry complex
and continuous war.
Apparently it's been the last resort continually since 1775.
Sinalco 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 07:05 PM
Trump says those things, and at the same time increases the Pentagon's budget & spending
to over $1 Trillion (more than the next 15 Countries combined, and 13 of them are your
allies).. As they say, action speaks louder than words - those are just cheap empty words to
rally his base for the coming election.
Trump not as much of a war monger as the establishment would like. Most Americans oppose war
but that has never slowed the establishment. Probably the biggest reason the establishment
is so opposed to Trump, among the other obvious reasons.
Are you a kindergartener or just plainly naive?!!! Trump knows Americans love to hear this,
so he is giving you the LIP SERVICE FCOL !!! He will pamper the MIC just as he has been doing
in the last 4 years once the election in November is over! Exactly because americans are so
incredibly foolish that Trump or Biden will be your next president, LOL!
donkeyoatee 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 01:52 AM
How was Vietnam or Iraq anything to do with US "national security" or the wars in Yemen or
anywhere in the middle east and around the globe. The US isn't doing "National security" it's
doing interference and domination.
Ekaterina 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 08:00 PM
I would laugh if this whole situation wasn’t so pitiful and sad. Eisenhower was right.
Shelbouy 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 10:34 AM
So many people say that Trump has not started any wars, which makes him ok. He didn't have
to, there were enough already going on. What he did not do is stop any!
Juan_More 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 07:39 PM
When the Generals and Colonels end up with very cushy jobs in the MIC after they retire. It
certainly does look like something is up. After all who authorised the F35, Ford class
aircraft carriers and my favourite winner of the silly name for a boat the USS Zumwalt
The MIC stooges at the Pentagon don't need to say anything, as Trump's remark reflects what
everybody already knows for decades.
Enki14 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 06:42 PM
LOL The facts speak for themselves and if one considers the endless war(s) since 911 were
based on LIES...the towers were brought down by controlled demolition...in charge that day
was dick cheney.
Trump is picking up some that vote that supported Tulsi Gabbard, or so I speculate. Though he
speaks with a bit of forked tongue -- stealing oil in Syria, won't pull out of Iraq when told
by Iraqi government; still in Afghanistan long after the Pentagon lost the war there again
another war lost against a fourth world country. And he's flirted with an invasion of
Venezuela, perhaps to keep the hawks and neolibs like Bolton and Bill Krystal on the edge of
their seats. Sort of like Merkel getting exercised over Navalny to counter all the blather of
war hawks and those who want to scuttle Nordstream 2. Throwing the ideological dog a bone.
It's satisfying to finally hear a US president pick up the theme Eisenhower warned of. Now
let him tell the truth of the filthy soul of the CIA, to take up where JFK left off. Trump
could do far worse than to thank Pence for his... See more
Jim Christian Rocky_Fjord 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 11:43 PM
Nah, Gabbi is a Democrat. But she's a good kid. She, unlike 99% of them, got a taste of ugly
military service and spoke out, only to be crushed. All you need to know of
military/political corruption is to study THAT.
Karl194 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 07:51 AM
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for
the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Dwight Eisenhower (former
USA President)
pykich Karl194 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 08:14 AM
says the man who signed the "Grenada Treaty"...
Jim Christian 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 11:37 PM
How many times has the 'good' general recycled himself between defense contractor jobs and
board positions and then right back into the White House, sometimes to a University posting,
then back to the Pentagon, rinsing and repeating several times after retirement? How do these
Generals and Admirals become multi-millionaires otherwise? And there are hundreds of them.
And they bring us the WORST, most corrupt procurement such as the Ford Class Carriers and the
F-35, to name just TWO examples, albeit big ones Please. It's crooked as a 3-dollar bill.
Look at the Pentagon opposition to Trump's every single overture toward peace in the Middle
East (except Iran, which is a big mistake, our issues were resolved until they weren't under
Trump). Any contest to the premise that the U.S. military is corrupt beyond repair is
patently absurd. And this "General" is just the wrong representative to refute the truth. He
is after all, part of the corruption.
Rocky_Fjord Jim Christian 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 11:46 PM
Two classes of US submarines were made with inferior steel from Australia. The steel was
known by the contractor to be inferior, but the Pentagon did not run its own tests. So tens
of billions wasted for subs that are unsafe at depths and of course in actual combat
conditions. The generals and politicians float above it all like scu*m on a fe*tid pond.
shadowlady 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 09:24 PM
The Pentagon has to justify its enormous budget, they provoke conflict at every turn.
a325 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 09:06 PM
“I can assure the American people that the senior leaders would only recommend sending
our troops to combat when it is required in national security and in the last resort" yada
yada , of course you are going to say that. Admitting the truth would be instant career
suicide
wasn't it Trump and many other presidents who were dishing out money left right and centre to
the american war machine to build bigger and so called better weapons. Goes to show no matter
what when push comes to shove the american government will always blame anyone else but
themselves.
foxenburg 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 01:48 AM
An interviewer should test this man's integrity with a simple question, such as.. "When you
retire, will promise to live off your generous pension....like Eisenhower in his rocking
chair....and not go to work for an arms manufacturer or think tank or any other paid
position?"
Ever since Obama was elected we hear way to much out of these so called Generals. Jumping on
a bandwagon is something active Generals should never do.
lectrodectus 10 September, 2020 10 Sep, 2020 02:06 AM
Frankiln Delanor Roosevelt: (During The Depression Created The WPA Works Progress
Administration) "Instead Of Spending As Some Nations Do Half Their National Income In Piling
Up Armaments And More Armaments For The Purposes Of War, We in America Are Wiser In Using Our
Wealth On Projects Like This Which Will Us More Wealth And Greater Happiness For Our
Children" (Fireside Chats) Similar To Dwight D Eisenhower.
RealWorld1 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 12:26 PM
Trump should spin the rest of the beans. Directly and indirectly, the Violence Industry is
the biggest employer in the US. It's a gigantic social program.
I think Trump is posturing for re election purposes . He is clearly in the hands of the deep
state.
Fred Dozer 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 12:17 AM
Trump promised to end America’s “endless wars” . Just look at the people he
appointed. They all love war. and trying to expand them. Russia showed the world, convoys of
stolen Syrian oil. Than Russia bombed them. Now the US is stealing even more Syrian oil and
nobody is bombing it.
Is Trump really anti-war? Or he is just trying to exert his power over those hawkish generals
in Pentagon to tell the world who is in charge of US? If he is truly against all kinds of
war, that must be the only acceptable thing he has done so far.
The war industry, the prison industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and many others, they all
have their lobbyists and their plans for making more money. And manufacturing more wars, more
prisoners, and more diseases is not beyond them. Freedom and democracy and high cholesterol
are money making cons, and sometimes it takes a con like Trump to recognize it.
PurplePaw 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 02:59 PM
IF TRUMP WANTS TO END WARS ( KILLING) AND RIGHTLY SO THESE SO CALLED GENERALS NEED TO BE
OUSTED FAST. THE MILITARY SHOULD BE IN MY VIEW INCLUDED IN POLITICS AND EXPOSED AS IN ANCIENT
TIMES. A WARRIOR SHOULD BE ABLE TO BECOME CHIEF AS IN THE PAST. A PERSON LIKE ALEXANDER,
JULIUS, BUT THEY MUST ALSO BE THE MOST GALLANT WITH HUMILITY AS IN ARTHUR'S DAYS. NONE OF THE
HIGH MILITARY MEN HIDING BEHIND THE CLOAK IN THE DARK TO DECEIVE WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT. TO
MUCH OF THAT WHERE THEY ARE. TRUMP IS RIGHT ON HERE, STOP ABORTION.
pykich 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 08:10 AM
They should ask him what his plans after retiring are...
Ph7 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 06:06 AM
If he's so worried about national security "his" troops should be on the streets of US not in
the bushes of Afghanistan and Iraq .
off topic, but very important, Sen. Ben Sasse's op-ed regarding repeal of the 17th amendment.
Haven't seen mention of it at RT. Whether you are red or blue, this is massive in returning
power to the people.
DavidG992 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 06:08 PM
He could stage this 'ati-war' show only becasue democrats have ceded opposition to the
military-industrial war machine to a belligerent fraud.
Absolute truth really bothers these folks a lot. And Trump is not afraid to speak it.
Frank Cannon 8 September, 2020 8 Sep, 2020 08:58 PM
They leave the military for high paying indusrty jobs as a form of Briberty / reward for
keeping the endless wrs going & business good..
Mark90168 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 04:24 AM
Every candidate before election become wise due to seeing sword over his heads but after
winning the election they again become hate mongers and wars lovers. The US election
candidates should never be trusted. It reminds me "The game of thrones."
This is easy. Trump has always done exactly as the pentagon wants. this is a stunt for Qanon
votes that's all. Trump is smart he reads. He knows what Qanon thinks and wants to give them
a bone.
General James McConville , even if you tell us that tomorrow the Sun will rise from the East
we will not believe you, until we see it ourselves, general McCorrupt.
Karl194 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 07:55 AM
The DEEP STATE is build by the bosses in the FBI, CIA and the PENTAGON.
Winter7Mute 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 04:41 AM
Violence as a way of gaining power... is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition,
national honor [and] national security. For almost 100yrs now.
Mark90168 9 September, 2020 9 Sep, 2020 05:04 AM
Every candidate before election become wise due to seeing sword over his heads but after
winning the election they again become hate mongers and wars lovers. The US election
candidates should never be trusted. It reminds me the game of thrones.
President Trump has gotten rid just about everyone in this article I found 3 years ago
> The ATLANTIC COUNCIL is funded by BURISMA, GEORGE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION &
others. It was a CENTRIST, MILITARISTIC think tanks,now turned leftist group
> JOE BIDEN extorted Ukraine to FIRE the prosecutor investigating BURISMA, HUNTER's
employer.
> LTC VINDMAN & FIONA HILL met MANY TIMES with DANIEL FRIED of the ATLANTIC
COUNCIL. FIONA HILL is a former CoWorker of CHRISTOPHER STEELE !
> AMBASSADOR YOVANOVITCH is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, is PRAISED in their
documents, gave Ukraine a "do not prosecute" list, was involved in PRESSURING Ukraine to not
prosecute GEORGE SOROS Group.
> BILL TAYLOR has a financial relationship with the ATLANTIC COUNCIL and the US UKRAINE
BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC) which is also funded by BURISMA.
> TAYLOR met with THOMAS EAGER (works for ADAM SCHIFF) in Ukraine on trip PAID FOR by
the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. This just days before TAYLOR first texts about the "FAKE" Quid Pro Quo
!
> TAYLOR participated in USUBC Events with DAVID J. KRAMER (JOHN MCCAIN advisor) who
spread the STEELE DOSSIER to the media and OBAMA officials.
> JOE BIDEN is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he rolled out his foreign policy
vision while VP there, He has given speeches there, his adviser on Ukraine, MICHAEL CARPENTER
(heads the Penn Biden Center) is a FELLOW at the ATLANTIC COUNCIL.
> KURT VOLKER is now Senior Advisor to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he met with burisma
"... Senate hearings in Washington have laid bare the failures of the FBI investigation, showing there was never any evidence of 'collusion', and it was all a campaign to 'get Trump'. ..."
"... Wednesday's hearing focused particularly on court warrants obtained by the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which Committee Chair Lindsey Graham characterized as "a stunning failure of the system." ..."
"... Comey appeared to dodge many of the questions, using a tactic made familiar to the American public during Watergate, responding with a standard "I don't recall." ..."
"... In testimony last week, FBI agent William Barnett, who headed Robert Mueller's investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, revealed that, from his perspective, there was never any evidence to justify an investigation into Flynn's ties to Russia. ..."
"... Barnett claimed that Comey exhibited clear bias in pursuing such alleged ties between Trump and Russia, stating that his superiors in the FBI were simply motivated by a desire to "get Trump." He believed there was nothing there to be found, and the Mueller investigation ultimately did come up with no evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia. ..."
"... Graham accused the Clinton campaign of "basically trying to create a distraction, accusing Trump of being a Russian agent to distract from her email server problems." ..."
"... Graham pointed out to Comey that a primary document used to attain the FISA warrant "was absolutely full of misinformation and complete lies. Did you know there is no Russian consulate in Miami, and the dossier mentions there was one?" ..."
"... "Do you also know that Michael Cohen's adventures in Prague never happened? The dossier asserts that Michael Cohen went to Prague on some venture for Trump and Russia, and it never happened! And they know it never happened!" ..."
"... "The attorney general went on to say, 'The law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president.'" ..."
"... US Senator Ben Sasse eventually got Comey to own up. He prefaced his questioning by saying the many wrongs cataloged in the Horowitz Report were "not just saddening and infuriating," but "also really embarrassing." ..."
"... Comey is doing what criminals who are well-educated attorneys do, and that is to avoid saying anything that could be used in his prosecution and claiming to either be unaware of or to not recall key events and proceedings. ..."
"... Looks like it was compartmentalized so much because it was a scam that the ones who actually didn't know what was going on would've blew the whistle. ..."
Senate hearings in Washington have laid bare the failures of the FBI investigation, showing
there was never any evidence of 'collusion', and it was all a campaign to 'get Trump'.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee questioned former FBI Director James Comey during a
hearing this week over the recent Horowitz report. That report on the FBI's Trump-Russia probe
laid out significant omissions in how the FBI handled its investigation.
Wednesday's hearing focused particularly on court warrants obtained by the FBI under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which
Committee Chair Lindsey Graham characterized as "a stunning failure of the
system."
'They were trying to take down the president'
Graham began the proceedings by noting that the goal of the Senate's investigative hearing
"is to understand how our system got off the rails. ... What kind of system is it that the
FBI director has no clue about the most important investigation maybe in the history of the
FBI?"
"When does it become obvious," Graham asked, "that the people in charge had a
deep-seated bias against Trump?" He took that question further by asserting the appearance
of a deep-state soft coup against the president, noting that the omissions in the FBI's process
"weren't random; they were politically oriented against the president they were trying to
take down!"
And, for the record, Graham noted, "The FBI ignored exculpatory evidence, altered
documents from the CIA, had interviews where the sub-source disavowed the accuracy of the
document, and never submitted any of that information to the court!"
Comey appeared to dodge many of the questions, using a tactic made familiar to the American
public during Watergate, responding with a standard "I don't recall." (During the Nixon
Watergate hearings many witnesses prefaced their vague answers with "to the best of my
recollection" to avoid the possibility of later being convicted of perjury. After all, who
can prove the witnesses' memory wasn't clear? They didn't say something didn't happen, just
that, to the best they could remember, it didn't happen.)
Graham began to lose patience with Comey's persistent vaguery and stated at one point,
"Everybody's responsible, but nobody is responsible. Somebody needs to be responsible for
misleading the court . What astounds me the most is that the director of the FBI, in charge of
this investigation and involving a sitting president, is completely clueless about any of the
information obtained by his agency."
Pounding his fist, Graham noted that the information to the courts that Comey had
characterized as merely "inadequate" was "criminally inadequate!""How could the
system ignore all that?" Graham asked, "How could the director of the FBI not know all
of this?"
Recent declassification of FBI documents related to the Mueller report provided Senate
Republicans with new fuel to light under Comey's feet. Graham used the declassified documents
to point out that Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe summarized the 2016
presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton as using "fabrications" , as Graham put it, to
"link Trump to Russia and the mob."
Comey could only respond, "I can't answer that. I've read Mr. Ratcliffe's letter, which I
have trouble understanding."
In testimony last week, FBI agent William Barnett, who headed Robert Mueller's investigation
into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, revealed that, from his perspective, there
was never any evidence to justify an investigation into Flynn's ties to Russia.
Barnett claimed
that Comey exhibited clear bias in pursuing such alleged ties between Trump and Russia, stating
that his superiors in the FBI were simply motivated by a desire to "get Trump." He
believed there was nothing there to be found, and the Mueller investigation ultimately did come
up with no evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia.
At Wednesday's hearing, Graham summarized the end result of the Mueller investigation,
saying,
"After two-and-a-half years, and $25 million, and 60 FBI agents, that job is done,
and not one person has been charged with colluding with the Russians in the Trump world. Not
one. ... How are we supposed to trust this system without fundamentally changing it?"
Graham accused the Clinton campaign of "basically trying to create a distraction,
accusing Trump of being a Russian agent to distract from her email server problems."
Graham pointed out to Comey that a primary document used to attain the FISA warrant "was
absolutely full of misinformation and complete lies. Did you know there is no Russian consulate
in Miami, and the dossier mentions there was one?"
Graham became more emphatic when asking,
"Do you also know that Michael Cohen's
adventures in Prague never happened? The dossier asserts that Michael Cohen went to Prague on
some venture for Trump and Russia, and it never happened! And they know it never
happened!"
Democrats at the hearing tried to shore up Comey's defense and turn the case against Trump
by claiming he had sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding US intelligence
agencies. They implied that Trump had defamed US intelligence by saying the various agencies'
work was "concerning."
As if to establish this was all demonization of the FBI by the Trump administration,
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin quoted US Attorney General William Barr, the ultimate head of
the FBI, as stating the FBI's Russia investigation was "abhorrent." Durbin noted,
"The attorney general went on to say, 'The law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of
this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion
narrative against the president.'"
(It was AG William Barr who assigned Horowitz the role of investigating and reporting on the
Mueller investigation.)
To that Comey responded, "He says that a lot. I have no idea what on earth he's talking
about."
Exhibiting some apparent mental fog, Comey said, "The notion that the attorney general
believes that was an illegitimate endeavor to investigate -- that mystifies me."
Even CNN summarizedComey
's testimony on Wednesday as a "mea culpa."
US Senator Ben Sasse eventually got Comey to own up. He prefaced his questioning by saying
the many wrongs cataloged in the Horowitz Report were "not just saddening and
infuriating," but "also really embarrassing."
Comey responded,
"I think I share your reaction, Senator Sasse. The collection of
omissions, failures to consider updates It's embarrassing. It's sloppy. I run out of words.
There's no indication that people were doing bad things on purpose, but that doesn't mean it's
not embarrassing."
Sasse next asked Comey, "Doesn't that point at you? ... You were the leader!" to
which Comey responded, "This reflects on me entirely, and it's my responsibility . I'm not
looking to shirk responsibility."
Sasse further pointed out, "Horowitz's report talks about a FISA [warrant application]
process that was riddled with errors. Every single place they looked, it was crap! ... Where
were you?"
At that point, Comey reverted to diffusing personal responsibility by saying the whole
agency was too relaxed about how the process worked, acknowledging that, as a result, Inspector
General Horowitz had "found problems in every FISA application."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
David Haggith is an author published by Putnam and HarperCollins. He is publisher of
The Great Recession Blog and writes for over 50 economic news
websites. His Twitter page of economic humor is @EconomicRecess .
Dachaguy 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:34 AM
Comey's actions speak to an effort to stage a coup. As Lindsey Graham pointed out at Brett
Kavenaugh's confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court appointment a year or so ago, attempts
to remove a sitting President in a time of war can amount to treason and possible death
sentence by a military court. America has been in a state of war since Sept. 14, 2001, 3 days
after 9-11.
FreedomRain Dachaguy 7 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 01:15 PM
"It was all a mistake. Actually, it was a joke. Nobody got hurt..." - Comey
Richard Coleman Dachaguy 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:41 AM
No, Einstein. A "state of war" exists when Congress in joint session votes a Declaration of
War such as happended after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Odinsson 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:40 AM
Jim Comey portrays himself these days to be a cross between Col. Klink and Sgt. Shultz from
Hogan's Heroes - an incompetent leader who knows nothing.
Comey is doing what criminals who
are well-educated attorneys do, and that is to avoid saying anything that could be used in
his prosecution and claiming to either be unaware of or to not recall key events and
proceedings.
By taking this approach Comey makes his guilt readily apparent regardless of the
smirk on his face which reveals his opinion of himself to be mentally superior to those
interviewing him and to have outwitted them.
In order to convict Comey for his crimes it will
be necessary for prosecutors to prove his misdeeds by presentation of communications, working
papers, and the testimony of others involved.
If Joe Biden is elected, then Jim Comey will
get a pass for he would most likely testify against Obama, Biden, and other administration
officials in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Cyaxares_425bc 7 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 01:23 PM
If Trump is NOT re-elected in 2020 these investigations of sedition & Federal election
interference by the FBI will be dropped by the Harris/Biden administration. (Did I say
Harris/Biden? Yes, I did).
Comey, McCabe, Steele, and others will be let off the hook, and
probably lauded by the left wing Democrats. This election is much more than appointments to
the Supreme Court & left wing ANTIFA mobs. Comey & McCabe need to be humiliated &
jailed, with Felony conviction records.
shadow1369 9 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:01 PM
We have known the whole thing was a fraud from day one, evidence that we were right has been
in the public domain for years, and still none of these weasels are in jail. Unbelievable.
Reilly 6 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 02:36 PM
The silent almost four year coup continues unabated by the remnants of the Obama and
Clintonite administration and life long deep state actors in the US government. The only
thing that will stop their prosecution is for the democrats to win the election. All the main
coup actors are democrats or life long deep state actors, only an election loss will scuttle
their long term goals for the USA.
YouLost 9 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 11:32 AM
Just One reason they need Biden to win at any cost or else [some actors of ] the deep state are going down.
UnableSemen 6 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 02:37 PM
Comey was trying to ingratiate himself to Hillary because he thought she would win. I'm sure
the pay code for Attorney General is higher than that for FBI Director.
ddeg 8 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:26 PM
Amazing stuff, Comey, Clinton and Crew, etc. They are all "sure" when they make their
allegations but when it comes they are to answer for their allegations it becomes "I can't
recall". The American people fooled by these people are truly dumb.
RedRaindrop 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:22 AM
What I want to know is... what was Alexander Downers role in it. The FSB could probably tell
me, but I'll wait for the official version from Canberra.
Rabidsmurf01 8 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:14 PM
Looks like it was compartmentalized so much because it was a scam that the ones who actually
didn't know what was going on would've blew the whistle.
"... For societies to evolve and flourish, we all need to accept other people's viewpoints and continue open-minded, civil and respectful dialogue. In science, scientists always question everything; why shouldn't we question everything in life without personalizing and demonizing those you disagree with? It's become impossible to have rational fact-based discussions with these inflexible ideological zealots. ..."
"... The intelligentsia has created a toxic environment of indoctrination where freedom of thought and speech is outlawed. The student "mob" will enforce the process of re-education, utilizing lies, propaganda, peer-pressure and fear of cancellation. No student or adult should be intimidated, bullied or harassed to the point of unwavering compliance. There is something systematically rotten in our educational system, and it needs to be purged of these radical ideologues. These are fascist tactics - USA-style. ..."
The bitter divisions in
America are turning neighbour against neighbour and tearing families apart, amid an atmosphere
of indoctrination where freedom of thought and speech is outlawed. I fear we're on the road to
civil war.
2020 has been one hell of a year. It included getting Brexit done, Covid-19, big-tech
tyranny featuring extreme censorship by Twitter, Google, Facebook and Amazon as well as the
stealth implementation of a social credit framework by Silicon Valley oligarchs as they plunder
the economy under the diversionary power grab by pay-to-play politicians implementing
quasi-permanent unlawful lockdowns. I'm sorry to say that the USA will become a banana
republic.
In addition, the global economy is in the worst economic depression in history - one that
will only deepen as unemployment rates skyrocket as we enter the last few months of
2020.
I bet most folks wish they could put a bullet in the head of 2020 and move straight on into
2021, but there are three months left - 2020 is only 75% done. What else could go wrong?
Well in the USA, we still have to deal with a presidential election and the appointment of
Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States - two things that the left
are fighting tooth and nail to stop.
Since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, US politics have not
only become highly toxic, they have also become radioactive. The swamp's resist-everything
Democratic Party, enabled by FBI bias and animus that was spun like a spider's web by the
feckless fake news media and echoed by Hollywood's hypocritical perverts, made
numerous attempts to stage a coup d'etat (carefully read the declassified letter below) of
the democratically elected president. The CIA referred an investigation to the FBI that the
Hillary Clinton campaign was colluding with Russia to impact the 2016 presidential election.
The FBI lied to the FISA judges to spy on the Trump campaign, and no one was ever
prosecuted.
Why have
FISA judges Collyer, Mosman, Conway and Dearie, who signed off on those warrants, and were
lied to by the FBI to illegally obtain those same warrants to spy on a political opposition
party during a presidential election, done nothing? Why have these Judges remained silent? Is
the entire system a stitch-up?
Now, the narrative has shifted at warp speed. It's no longer about Russian collusion. The
new narratives that matter are virtue signalling, identity politics, critical race theory,
record hypocrisy and a
dual justice system where
murder, looting and arson are justified because those on the right are all Nazis and the
radicalized left's enforcers,
ANTIFA and BLM thugs, are only " peaceful protestors
."
And nothing will interfere with this narrative. For example, the BLM mob influenced the
prosecutors by getting them to charge BLM supporter Larynzo Johnson with "
wanton endangerment " when he ran up to two police officers and shot them while rioting.
Why was this blatant assassination rampage not prosecuted as attempted murder? Is the BLM mob
now dictating charging decisions? Johnson's attempted murder of police officers has quickly
disappeared as it interferes with the media mob's narrative.
The media have drummed these themes into the heads of the public and driven a wedge between
family members, close friends and co-workers that has polarized America to the brink of civil
war. Life has become so bad in the USA that many of my several decades-old friendships recently
ended when they became unable to respect any individual opinion that differed from their own.
That has happened to me. Friends for decades have been consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome
and are cancelling me.
For societies to evolve and flourish, we all need to accept other people's viewpoints and
continue open-minded, civil and respectful dialogue. In science, scientists always question
everything; why shouldn't we question everything in life without personalizing and demonizing
those you disagree with? It's become impossible to have rational fact-based discussions with
these inflexible ideological zealots.
I just had a long conversation with Hudson, my friend's son. He is 18 years old and is a
popular American football playing, honour-list senior attending a private school in California.
Hudson graduates this spring, and he hopes to be accepted and attend a college where he will
play football. There are around 2,000 students in his private high school. From our
conversation, I gleaned that most of Hudson's teachers and the student population are very
liberal and intolerant of anyone who has differing views.
What I found most shocking was how Hudson's teachers "teach". Today's students are not
educated; they are indoctrinated. By that, I mean "teachers" are only telling half-truths or
half of the story, so any "conclusions" the students are allowed to reach on their own are
based on inaccurate data. These teachers incorporate their bias into an indoctrination cocktail
with a dash of critical race theory in order to get the students to conform to the teacher's
world view. Hudson explained how "the loudest students at school are liberal -- I guess it's
over 98%."
Regarding the comments Hudson reads on social media channels from his school friends, he
says all are supportive of Joe Biden becoming the 46th president of the United States; none are
supporting Trump. When I asked why, he responded, "Your life would be ruined, and you would
not get into college."
On 3 November, Hudson will be voting in his first presidential election. He will be voting
for Donald Trump. But he is too fearful to discuss politics at school with his peers.
He is too
afraid to discuss politics with anyone but his parents. Terrorizing students is repugnant
and must be stopped.
The intelligentsia has created a toxic environment of indoctrination where freedom of
thought and speech is outlawed. The student "mob" will enforce the process of re-education,
utilizing lies, propaganda, peer-pressure and fear of cancellation. No student or adult should
be intimidated, bullied or harassed to the point of unwavering compliance. There is something
systematically rotten in our educational system, and it needs to be purged of these radical
ideologues. These are fascist tactics - USA-style.
Was this racism censored by Twitter? No, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, gave Kendi $10
million
That said, don't expect things to improve anytime soon; in fact, COVID-19 will be used as an
excuse to reset the economy. What does that mean? The oligarchs in Wall Street and in Silicon
Valley will manipulate this election result, so Kamala Harris will be the de facto 46th
president of the United States.
... ... ...
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Mitchell Feierstein is the CEO of Glacier Environmental Fund and author of 'Planet Ponzi: How the World Got into This
Mess, What Happens Next, and How to Protect Yourself.' He spends his time between London and Manhattan.
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Deeper down the rabbit hole of US-backed color revolutions.
Believe it or not, the US State Department's mission statement actually says the following:
"Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community
by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of
well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty,
and act responsibly within the international system."
A far and treasonous cry from
the original purpose of the State Department - which was to maintain communications and
formal relations with foreign countries - and a radical departure from historical norms that
have defined foreign ministries throughout the world, it could just as well now be called the
"Department of Imperial Expansion." Because indeed, that is its primary purpose now, the
expansion of Anglo-American corporate hegemony worldwide under the guise of "democracy" and
"human rights."
That a US government department should state its goal as to build a world of "well-governed
states" within the "international system" betrays not only America's sovereignty but the
sovereignty of all nations entangled by this offensive mission statement and its
execution.
Image : While the US State Department's mission statement sounds benign
or even progressive, when the term "international system" or "world order" is used, it is
referring to a concept commonly referred to by the actual policy makers that hand politicians
their talking points, that involves modern day empire. Kagan's quote came from a 1997 policy
paper describing a policy to contain China with.
....
The illegitimacy of the current US State Department fits in well with the overall
Constitution-circumventing empire that the American Republic has degenerated into. The current
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, gives a daily affirmation of this illegitimacy every time
she bellies up to the podium to make a statement.
Recently she issued a
dangerously irresponsible "warning" to Venezuela and Bolivia regarding their stately
relations with Iran. While America has the right to mediate its own associations with foreign
nations, one is confounded trying to understand what gives America the right to dictate such
associations to other sovereign nations. Of course, the self-declared imperial mandate the US
State Department bestowed upon itself brings such "warnings" into perspective with the
realization that the globalists view no nation as sovereign and all nations beholden to their
unipolar "international system."
It's hard to deny the US State Department is not behind the "color revolutions" sweeping
the world when the Secretary of State herself phones in during the youth movement confabs her department
sponsors on a yearly
basis.
If only the US State Department's meddling was confined to hubris-filled
statements given behind podiums attempting to fulfill outlandish mission statements, we could
all rest easier. However, the US State Department actively bolsters its meddling rhetoric with
very real measures. The centerpiece of this meddling is the vast and ever-expanding network
being built to recruit, train, and support various "color revolutions" worldwide. While the
corporate owned media attempts to portray the various revolutions consuming Eastern Europe,
Southeast Asia, and now Northern Africa and the Middle East as indigenous, spontaneous, and
organic, the reality is that these protesters represent what may be considered a "fifth-branch"
of US power projection.
CANVAS :
Freedom House, IRI, Soros funded Serbian color revolution college behind the Orange, Rose,
Tunisian, Burmese, and Egyptian protests and has trained protesters from 50 other
countries.
As with the army and CIA that fulfilled this role before, the US State
Department's "fifth-branch" runs a recruiting and coordinating center known as the Alliance of
Youth Movements (AYM). Hardly a secretive operation, its website, Movements.org proudly lists the details of its
annual summits which began in 2008 and featured astro-turf cannon fodder from Venezuela to
Iran, and even the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt.
The summits, activities, and coordination AYM provides is but a nexus.
As previously
noted , these organizations are now retroactively trying to obfuscate their connections to
the State Department and the Fortune 500 corporations that use them to achieve their goals of
expansion overseas. CANVAS has renamed and moved their list of supporters and partners while
AYM has oafishly changed their "partnerships" to "past partnerships."
Before & After: Oafish attempts to downplay US State Department's extra-legal
meddling and subterfuge in foreign affairs. Other attempts are covered
here .
It should be noted that while George Soros is portrayed as being "left," and the overall
function of these pro-democracy, pro-human rights organizations appears to be "left-leaning," a
vast number of
notorious "Neo-Cons" also constitute the commanding ranks and determine the overall agenda
of this color revolution army.
Then there are legislative acts of Congress that overtly fund the subversive objectives of
the US State Department. In support of regime change in Iran, the Iran Freedom and Support
Act was passed in 2006. More recently in 2011, to see the US-staged color revolution in
Egypt through to the end, money was appropriated to
"support" favored Egyptian opposition groups ahead of national elections.
Then of course there is the State Department's propaganda machines. While organizations like
NED and Freedom House produce volumes of talking points in support for their various on-going
operations, the specific outlets currently used by the State Department fall under the
Broadcasting Board of
Governors (BBG). They include Voice of America , Radio Free
Europe , Radio Free Asia ,
Alhurra , and Radio Sawa . Interestingly enough,
the current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
sits on the board of governors herself, along side a shameful collection of representatives
from the Fortune 500, the corporate owned media, and various agencies within the US
government.
Hillary Clinton: color revolutionary field marshal & propagandist,
two current roles that defy her duties as Secretary of State in any
rational sense or interpretation.
Getting back to Hillary Clinton's illegitimate threat regarding Venezuela's associations
with Iran, no one should be surprised to find out an extensive effort to foment a color
revolution to oust Hugo Chavez has been long underway by AYM, Freedom House, NED, and the rest
of this "fifth-branch" of globalist power projection. In fact, Hugo Chavez had already
weathered an attempted military coup overtly orchestrated by the United States under Bush in
2002.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Id--ZFtjR5c
Upon digging into the characters behind Chavez' ousting in 2002, it
appears that this documentary sorely understates US involvement.
The same forces of corporatism, privatization, and free-trade that led the 2002
coup against Chavez are trying to gain ground once again. Under the leadership of Harvard
trained globalist minion
Leopoldo Lopez , witless youth are taking the place of 2002's generals and tank columns in
an attempt to match globalist minion Mohamed
ElBaradei's success in Egypt .
Unsurprisingly, the US State Department's AYM is pro-Venezuelan opposition, and describes
in great detail their campaign to "educate" the youth and get them politically active.
Dismayed by Chavez' moves to consolidate his power and strangely repulsed by his "rule by
decree," -something that Washington itself has set the standard for- AYM laments
over the difficulties their meddling "civil society" faces.
Chavez' government recognized the US State Department's meddling recently in regards to a
student hunger strike and the US's insistence that the Inter-American Human Rights
Commission be allowed to "inspect" alleged violations under the Chavez government. Venezuelan
Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro even went as far as saying, "It looks like they (U.S.)
want to start a virtual Egypt."
The "Fifth-Branch" Invasion: Click for larger image.
Understanding this "fifth-branch" invasion of astro-turf cannon fodder and the role it is
playing in overturning foreign governments and despoiling nation sovereignty on a global scale
is an essential step in ceasing the Anglo-American imperial machine. And of course, as always,
boycotting and replacing
the corporations behind the creation and expansion of these color-revolutions hinders not only
the spread of their empire overseas, but releases the stranglehold of dominion they possess at
home in the United States. Perhaps then the US State Department can once again go back to
representing the American Republic and its people to the rest of the world as a responsible
nation that respects real human rights and sovereignty both at home and abroad.
Editor's Note: This article has been edited and updated October 26, 2012.
" And I cannot forget that when David Cameron's government was so schoolboyishly
eager to give support to the rebels attacking the tyranny of Syria's President Assad, a
very senior British soldier friend said to me: 'This is the first time in my career that I
think the Russians have a point. They keep waggling their fingers and saying to us "be
careful what you wish for". They believe the anti-Assad jihadis represent a threat to us
all, and they may be right' .
Professor Sir Michael Howard, Britain's most distinguished historian and strategist,
now 92, lamented to me last month the tottering, if not collapse, of every pillar that has
supported international order through his lifetime. By that he means the UN, Nato and a
strong America . "
Actually, I am in perfect sympathy with Michael Howard, bless the old codger. I too lament
the collapse of every pillar of an international order that served us well at least part of
the time over the most recent decades.
The crisis in Ukraine marks the end of even the pretense that international law is
anything other than a tool of the western powers – they made it, they staff it and they
disobey it when they deem it is important enough.
Oh, they will cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes after their victory and say how
sorry they are, blame it on Russia and try to recover and go back to the way things were, but
the day when you could pull that off is gone because of instantaneous reporting around the
world, and it's harder for a prefabricated cover story to hold up.
Most people who are paying attention at all know we now live under the law of the gun,
and might makes right, and the western alliance will wipe its ass on every principle it
espouses if it means that's what it must do to maintain its bankster corporate empire. Those
who are content with the extension of this world order are lulled by the promise of the
national dream.
What we are seeing In the Middle East, courtesy of ISIS or IS is an enacting of the Yinon
Plan, originally published in the early 1980's. This proposed that Israel needed to
'reconfigure' its regional 'architecture' by breaking up neighbouring Arab countries into
smaller statelets predicated upon ethnicity. US neocon thinking coincided with this in 'Clean
Break' and 'Project for the New American Century'.
The destruction of existing states was key – mini ethnic statelets would find it
much harder to defend their resources against predatory outsiders and, Israel, by virtue of
their existence, would no longer be unique as a state predicated on ethnicity but as one such
state amongst a number and, because of its overwhelming military force, would be the numero uno
in the region.
Now we have some new Islamic kids on the block who're achieving exactly what Israel and a
certain strand of US foreign policy has long held as a strategic goal for the Middle East.
Which probably leads most thinking people – and I'd include Hastings here who must know
the history – to realise that the ISIS/IS story is suspect. So I'd say his job is to
direct attention elsewhere – 'we' need to ramp up the army, rally for a 'strong' and
'confident' America etc.
Hannah Arendt books is junk, as elements of totalitarim are present inmst modern sociery,
espcally neoliberal. The USA after 9/11 is one example.
Notable quotes:
"... Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm about the West's dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped. They feel it in their bones. Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth: that these refugees from communism may be right. ..."
"... Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called "a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture." Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex. ..."
"... Heda Margolius Kovály, a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial, reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause: It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant. Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of "understood necessity," for Party discipline, for conformity with the regime, for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland, or for any of the substitutes that are so convincingly offered, you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness. ..."
"... You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. ..."
"... In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, found that over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere. The mainstream media is framing the general public's understanding of news and events according to what was until very recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites. ..."
"... For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself. "He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched," Arendt wrote. Indeed, the files of the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by devout communists who were prepared to die rather than admit that communism was a lie. ..."
"... Similarly, under the guise of antiracism training, U.S. corporations, institutions, and even churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their "privilege." Some do, eagerly. ..."
"... "Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty," wrote Arendt. ..."
"... President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many ways. He once said, "I value loyalty above everything else -- more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy." ..."
"... Trump's exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting. But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics. This is at the root of "cancel culture," in which transgressors, however minor their infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness. ..."
"... Beyond cancel culture, which is reactive, institutions are embedding within their systems ideological tests to weed out dissenters. At universities within the University of California system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to "equity, diversity, and inclusion" -- and to have demonstrated it, even if it has nothing to do with their field. ..."
"... De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America, and have now found their way into STEM faculties and publications, as well as into medical science. ..."
"... A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me -- after I agreed not to use his name -- that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient's health interest. ..."
"... Like the imperial Russians, we Americans may well be living in a fog of self-deception about our own country's stability. It only takes a catalyst like war, economic depression, plague, or some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic order into question. ..."
"... If totalitarianism comes, it will almost certainly not be Stalinism 2.0, with gulags, secret police, and an all-powerful central state. That would not be necessary. The power of surveillance technology, woke capitalism, and fear of losing bourgeois comfort and status will probably be enough to compel conformity by most. ..."
"... At least at first, it will be a soft totalitarianism, more on the Brave New World model than the Nineteen Eighty-Four one -- but totalitarianism all the same. ..."
n 1951, six years after the end of World War II, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt
published The Origins of Totalitarianism , in an attempt to understand how such radical
ideologies of both left and right had seized the minds of so many in the 20th century. Arendt's
book used to be a staple in college history and political theory courses. With the end of the
Cold War 30 years behind us, who today talks about totalitarianism? Almost no one -- and if
they do, it's about Nazism, not communism.
Unsurprisingly, young Americans suffer from profound ignorance of what communism was, and
is. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit educational and research
organization established by the U.S. Congress, carries out an annual survey of Americans to
determine their attitudes toward communism, socialism, and Marxism in general. In 2019, the
survey found that a startling number of Americans of the post-Cold War generations have
favorable views of left-wing radicalism, and only 57 percent of Millennials believe that the
Declaration of Independence offers a better guarantee of "freedom and equality" than The
Communist Manifesto .
Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm
about the West's dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped. They feel it in their
bones. Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and
the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth: that these
refugees from communism may be right.
What does contemporary America have in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia?
Arendt's analysis found a number of social, political, and cultural conditions that tilled the
ground for those nations to welcome poisonous ideas.
Loneliness and Social Atomization
Totalitarian movements, said Arendt, are "mass organizations of atomized, isolated
individuals." She continues:
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact
that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social
conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our
century.
The political theorist wrote those words in the 1950s, a period we look back on as a golden
age of community cohesion. Today, loneliness is widely recognized by scientists as a critical
social and even medical problem. In the year 2000, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam
published Bowling Alone , an acclaimed study documenting the steep decline of civil
society since midcentury and the resulting atomization of America.
Since Putnam's book, we have experienced the rise of social media networks offering a
facsimile of "connection." Yet we grow ever lonelier and more isolated. It is no coincidence
that Millennials and members of Generation Z register much higher rates of loneliness than
older Americans, as well as significantly greater support for socialism. It's as if they aspire
to a politics that can replace the community they wish they had.
Sooner or later, loneliness and isolation are bound to have political effects. The masses
supporting totalitarian movements, says Arendt, grew "out of the fragments of a highly atomized
society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held
in check only through membership in a class."
A polity filled with alienated individuals who share little sense of community and purpose,
and who lack civic trust, are prime targets for totalitarian ideologies and leaders who promise
solidarity and meaning.
Losing Faith in Hierarchies and Institutions
Surveying the political scene in Germany during the 1920s, Arendt noted a "terrifying
negative solidarity" among people from diverse classes, united in their belief that all
political parties were populated by fools. Likewise, in late imperial Russia, Marxist radicals
finally gained traction with the middle class when the Tsarist government failed miserably to
deal with a catastrophic 1891-92 famine.
Are we today really so different? According to Gallup, Americans' confidence in their
institutions -- political, media, religious, legal, medical, corporate -- is at historic lows
across the board. Only the military, the police, and small businesses retain the strong
confidence of over 50 percent. Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized
nations, with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline.
In Europe of the 1920s, says Arendt, the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was
the failure of established parties to attract younger members, and the willingness of the
passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties.
A loss of faith in democratic politics is a sign of a deeper and broader instability. As
radical individualism has become more pervasive in our consumerist-driven culture, people have
ceased to look outside themselves to religion or other traditional sources of authoritative
meaning.
But this imposes a terrible psychological burden on the individual. Many of them may seek
deliverance as the alienated masses of pre-totalitarian Germany and Russia did: in the
certainties and solidarity offered by totalitarian movements.
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy
The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and
celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt for
established hierarchies, institutions, and ways of thinking. Arendt said of some writers who
glorified the will to power, "They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade."
Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual
theories to justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves in what is basest in
human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation. Arendt's judgment of the postwar
elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our
own day who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race neutrality, free speech, and
free association as obstacles to equality. Arendt wrote:
The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of
civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced
their way into it.
One thinks of the university presidents and news media executives of our time who have
abandoned professional standards and old-fashioned liberal values to embrace "antiracism" and
other trendy left-wing causes. Some left-wing politicians and other progressive elites either
cheered for the George Floyd race riots, or, like New York mayor Bill De Blasio, stood idly by
as thuggish mobs looted and burned stores in the name of social justice.
Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual
revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian
James Billington called "a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier
Russian culture." Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of
perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the
laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or
village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.
The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic
literature, a prefiguration of our century's technology-driven pornographic revolution. "The
sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic," Billington writes, detailing how
the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic
willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one's desires and to exercise one's will.
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies
Heda Margolius Kovály, a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial,
reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause: It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant. Once you relinquish your
freedom for the sake of "understood necessity," for Party discipline, for conformity with the
regime, for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland, or for any of the substitutes that are
so convincingly offered, you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life
begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily
condemned yourself to helplessness.
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism. You can
also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. In pre-totalitarian states, Arendt
writes, hating "respectable society" was so narcotic, that elites were willing to accept
"monstrous forgeries in historiography" for the sake of striking back at those who, in their
view, had "excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind."
For example, many who didn't really accept Marx's revisionist take on history -- that it is
a manifestation of class struggle -- were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to
punish those they despised. Consider the lavish praise with which elites have welcomed The
New York Times 's "1619 Project," a vigorously revisionist attempt to make slavery the
central fact of the American founding.
Despite the project's core claim (that the patriots fought the American Revolution to
preserve slavery) having been thoroughly debunked, journalism's elite saw fit to award the
project's director a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution.
Along those lines, propaganda helps change the world by creating a false impression of the
way the world is. Writes Arendt, "The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda lies in its
ability to shut the masses off from the real world."
In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, found that over a
nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing
critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere. The mainstream media is
framing the general public's understanding of news and events according to what was until very
recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites.
A Mania for Ideology
Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies? The desperation alienated people
have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains
it. For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life
itself. "He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if
only his status as a member of the movement is not touched," Arendt wrote. Indeed, the files of
the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by devout communists who were
prepared to die rather than admit that communism was a lie.
Similarly, under the guise of antiracism training, U.S. corporations, institutions, and even
churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other
ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their "privilege." Some do,
eagerly.
One of contemporary progressivism's commonly used phrases -- the personal is political --
captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political
consciousness. Indeed, the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the private realm,
leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a
society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is:
the politicization of everything.
Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled
over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.
"We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess," he said. "We must condemn
once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like the formula 'art for art's
sake.' We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a
Five-Year Plan for chess."
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their
sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the
best guarantee of their loyalty," wrote Arendt.
All politicians prize loyalty, but few would regard it as the most important quality in
government, and even fewer would admit it. But President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many
ways. He once said, "I value loyalty above everything else -- more than brains, more than
drive, and more than energy."
Trump's exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting. But
how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity
politics. This is at the root of "cancel culture," in which transgressors, however minor their
infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness.
Beyond cancel culture, which is reactive, institutions are embedding within their systems
ideological tests to weed out dissenters. At universities within the University of California
system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their
commitment to "equity, diversity, and inclusion" -- and to have demonstrated it, even if it has
nothing to do with their field.
De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America, and have now
found their way into STEM faculties and publications, as well as into medical science.
A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me -- after I agreed not to use his name -- that social
justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment
when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to
advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes
it is not in that particular patient's health interest.
Intellectuals Are the Revolutionary Class
In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by
denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine
its long-term direction.
"[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new
institutions that are created out of those networks," writes sociologist James Davison Hunter.
Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, "it does not gain
traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites" working through their "well-developed
networks and powerful institutions."
This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Arendt
warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful
minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority. In our time, most people
regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention. They
mock them as "snowflakes" and "social justice warriors."
This is a serious mistake. In radicalizing the broader class of elites, social justice
warriors (SJWs) are playing a similar historic role to the Bolsheviks in prerevolutionary
Russia. SJW ranks are full of middle-class, secular, educated young people wracked by guilt and
anxiety over their own privilege, alienated from their own traditions, and desperate to
identify with something, or someone, to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose.
For them, the ideology of social justice -- as defined not by church teaching but by
critical theorists in the academy -- functions as a pseudo-religion. Far from being confined to
campuses and dry intellectual journals, SJW ideals are transforming elite institutions and
networks of power and influence. They are marching through the institutions of bourgeois
society, conquering them, and using them to transform the world. For example, when the LGBT
cause was adopted by corporate America, its ultimate victory was assured.
Futuristic Fatalism
To be sure, none of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable. But they do signify that
the weaknesses in contemporary American society are consonant with a pre-totalitarian state.
Like the imperial Russians, we Americans may well be living in a fog of self-deception about
our own country's stability. It only takes a catalyst like war, economic depression, plague, or
some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the legitimacy of the liberal democratic
order into question.
As Arendt warned more than half a century ago:
There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible by means of
liberal rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with
the voice of common sense. The road to totalitarian domination leads through many
intermediate stages for which we can find numerous analogues and precedents. . . . What
common sense and "normal people" refuse to believe is that everything is possible.
If totalitarianism comes, it will almost certainly not be Stalinism 2.0, with gulags, secret
police, and an all-powerful central state. That would not be necessary. The power of
surveillance technology, woke capitalism, and fear of losing bourgeois comfort and status will
probably be enough to compel conformity by most.
At least at first, it will be a soft
totalitarianism, more on the Brave New World model than the Nineteen Eighty-Four
one -- but totalitarianism all the same.
A Czech immigrant to the U.S. who works in academia told me that this "is not supposed to be
happening here" -- but it is.
"Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances,
I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense," he says. His own young adult children, born
in America and indoctrinated into identity-politics ideology by public schooling, think their
father is an alarmist kook. Can anyone blame a man like this for concluding that Americans are
going to have to learn about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way?
I grew up under a socialist authoritarian state and I recognized it in the US 20 years
ago. In the Patriot Act, to be more precise. It was the very same kind of law that I saw
enacted in the early 70s back home that turned the tide of the regime to full out repression.
You're noticing it just now because authoritarianism became bipartisan, though you have been
quite comfortable since your tribe started it.
The week after 9/11, I wrote President Bush asking him not to let something like the
Patriot Act happen. I never got a reply and wondered ever since if it went astray (it was via
email) or if anyone even read it.
<sigh> There are credible arguments to be made against the drug war, for sure, but
how exactly did the Bill of Rights get "dumped"? OK I'm willing to concede that the Fourth
Amendment got stretched beyond recognition to accommodate no-knock warrants and the like.
Which of the rest of the Bill of Rights got dumped by the drug war?
If only liberals actually understood and believed in the 9th and 10th amendments, OTOH, we
might be able to restore federal governance to something resembling sanity.
Both the 9th and 10th Amendments were finally destroyed due to the drug war. The 2nd is
collateral damage due to the increased use of home invasion raids by law enforcement see the
"firearm enhancements". It can easily be argued that the increased militarization of law
enforcement due to the drug war is a violation of the 3rd Amendment. The long sentences due
given to people for possessing or selling a plant are a violation of the 8th Amendment. The
right to a jury trial has been gutted via voir dire and the refusal of courts to recognize
the natural right of all citizens to nullify unjust laws.
I am a liberal in the sense Patrick Henry was a liberal. We should have stuck with the
Articles of Confederation.
It can't be easily argued that the drug war runs into the 3rd amendment, that is
ridiculous. Nor is the 8th amendment really a great argument, although I do get where you're
coming from.
It's obviously completely contemptuous of the idea of enumerated powers like you said
before though. Why would you not mention the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments, which had to be
gutted for it, or the ways it runs afoul of the 14th, or basically ignores the precedent set
by the 18th and 21st amendments.
I too see where you're coming from, though I think the 9th and 10th amendments were
already in tatters long before the drug war began. For that blame the now 100 year plus build
up of the administrative state (particularly under FDR and LBJ) and the Court's enabling of
it through imaginative readings of the Commerce Clause, delegation of powers, etc. Also blame
Congress's total dereliction of duty per the above.
Add on the scheme by which the Federal govt takes everyone's money, shuffles it around and
then hands it back to the states, but only under the condition that they do what the Federal
govt tells them to do. Thus no state actually gets to build/maintain roads, develop housing
programs, expand educational access or testing, and essentially anything else without
following a million federal edicts.
The very fact that a website like this exists, and we comment on it, suggests that.. No,
we are nit under Totalitarian oppression or even an authoritarian regime. Would Stalin or
even Brezhnev have tolerated a TAC critical of the ruling party? How about Hitler, Mussolini
or Franco?
Excellent point. There are, however, concepts such as "controlled opposition" and "soft
totalitarianism" as outlined recently in Rod Dreher's piece. The latter concerns me more.
As long as Americans believe that they are getting the carrot they will not notice the
slow encroachment of the stick, particulary if it's in the hands of large
mega-corporations.
You, sir, are correct. The totalitarianism rampaging toward us is going to be a
paradoxical mix of Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxism, and Globalist Vampire Capitalism. It
will feature elements that seem to have been predicted in Zamyatin's We , Huxley's
Brave New World , and Orwell's 1984 . It also has been foretold in Robert Hugh
Benson's Lord of the World .
I'm sure you are well aware that Rod is not suggesting such a regime is here or coming. He
has described how censorship will work / is working in painfully repetitive detail (because
obviously people need to hear it over and over again).
Under soft totalitarianism, you will make the wrong response or refuse to affirm or refuse
to attend the required re-education workshop and your job and livelihood will be gone. Don't
pretend you don't understand Rod's argument.
Jonf is for the woke soft totalitarianism, a dangerous element in the church, we Orthodox
Christian's need to be on guard with Catechumens , and their motives for joining the Church,
as well as Cradle liberals who dominate institutions in jurisdictions like GOARCH
It had bipartisan support in Congress. Do you understand how the US legislative system
works? Presidents don't unilaterally introduce and approve legislation.
It wasn't introduced by Bush, but by a nobody Republican in Congress. The act has the paw
marks of Republicans through and through. Just 3 Republican congressmen voted against.
There's no point hiding behind the bipartisan curtain.
There is much yet to be answered for in the Patriot Act origins and how it came to be
passed before anyone voting on it had a chance to read it once much less review it with
propper staffing.
That Act was sitting on a shelf, like a time bomb, waiting for its chance. I suspect it
was part of the preparations for an apocalyptic, dystopian America after a nuclear war.
It was pulled off that shelf because it was what they had on the shelf, it was there so
they used it.
"Can anyone blame a man like this for concluding that Americans are going to have to learn
about the evils of totalitarianism the hard way?"
Americans have never learned anything the easy way. They don't learn the hard way
either.
"Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion,
and all manner of sensuality was common."
Let no future commisar say that I didn't do my part for the revolution! I stand ready to
humbly serve the people in the creation of an appropriate ministry for perversion.
Those who will have less than five sexual partners a year and do not switch gender in over
two years will be chastised for the term of 10 years by legislation.
When you remove God from your life, the inner desire implanted by God to look for the true
meaning in life, & the desire to do good instead of evil remain strong. For most people,
the "obvious" path is to give meaning to one's life is to follow the feel-good "social
justice" road, a form of false humanism (for man & by man alone), ie, social justice
without God that tries to create a paradise on earth (same way that communism tried to create
a utopia without God).
Many young Americans no longer believe in God's relevance & His authority over their
lives. This normally starts with the loss of respect for the authority of parents who
represent God in the home (even Jesus was obedient to his mortal parents). The gradual
destruction of the "domestic church", the family, in American homes is one of the immediate
goals of radical agenda (eg, gender conflicts & confusion, gender id, gender choice,
abortion, contraception, women liberation, etc) that results in increasing number of divorce
& single-parent homes.
The only way to correct the path to a radical secular future is for people, esp the young,
to regain their faith in God. The question is how. Evangelization is one. One can evangelize
by words &or by acts. St Franscis of Assisi is often quoted to have said: When you
evangelize, sometimes you need to use words. I think Rod is doing both through his books.
If God isn't implanted in a child's mind at a young age, it most likely never will.
People, in there 20's, who never went to church are unlikely to ever become Christians. If
you don't believe Heaven and Hell exist, why do you need a Savior? Look at the number of
young families with young children at Church, and consider how many aren't there. That's the
future.
The idea of God doesn't need to be implanted in a child's mind. A child (and every person
for that matter) intuitively knows that there has to be a Creator, an afterlife, and Divine
Justice. As proof, I offer the fact that every civilization that has ever existed has had a
religion with the aforementioned elements. Atheism did not appear until Marxism, and even
then, in the Soviet Union / Russia, it did not succeed in eradicating faith and religion,
which are as innate as love and sex.
Unfortunately for you atheism long predates Marxism. Look to the early Greeks for the
first recorded instances of non-believers. Try
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... for a overview.
>"The only way to correct the path to a radical secular future is for people, esp the
young, to regain their faith in God."
Exactly the thinking powering Daesh. What is wrong with people being able to decide for
themselves what religion if any they want? Why is a secular state a radical idea? The US is a
secular state and it has served the US well.
So Revolution or Civil War?
I keep hearing about one or the other, but only on the Internet.
I am of the opinion that we Americans are far too comfortable and have no stomach for
privation.
We will continue to lurch along as always.
Does it really matter what "Americans" want? The very thesis of the article is that 'we'
will do the bidding of the influential elites, regardless of whether we a) approve of their
objectives, or b) are even aware of them. Like the article says, the vast majority of
Americans mistakenly think that, so long as they have their routine, their job, their kids,
their personal little patch of America complete with white picket fence, then, hey, how can
things go wrong? "We" won't, wouldn't, couldn't, allow such a revolution or civil war to
happen---why, there isn't even enough time to worry about it!
When a riotous mob of crazed BLM/ANTIFA soldiers comes marching up your peaceful street,
you will become part of the 'revolution', like it or not.
Totalitarian Romanov Russia united with secular pluralist France against Germany in the
lead-up to WWI. Similarly in WWII, totalitarian Marxist Russia united with the Western
democracies to defeat Nazi Germany. The pattern is common place in history. Alliances reveal
countries' motivations for war. And all are motivated by power.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
I'll ask again (serious question): for conservatives who think we live in "Weimar
America", isn't one of the major lessons for conservatives from Weimar Germany that when
you're faced with the distasteful option of allying yourselves with liberals and the
center-left, or allying yourselves with fascists and their street militias, it's important
not to make the decision that German Nationalists did in the early 1930s?
We were allied with one of the biggest mass murderers in history during World War 2.
Joseph Stalin. Facts are facts and the facts are fascism is a leftist ideology.
To be fair, you can 'love' someone's ruling style and still go to war with them. Politics
and warfare are about seizing power, not expressing admiration for the qualities of
rivals.
To clarify, I didn't mean "love" in a personal or an emotional sense. In the case of World
War II, democratic nations were opponents of fascist nations.
I don't know what histories you have been reading but Adolph Hitler had no use for FDR as
like many other European politicians of the day, they saw FDR as a relatively ignorant
man.
The Nazis were basically 1848 (leftist) revolutionaries, who supported egalitarianism for
German men and ethnonationalism (which was a very leftist idea when it was new). True
reactionaries, like the King of Prussia in 1848, definitely did not share those values.
Can someone explain to me what the point of these arguments are? I always see people
saying the Nazis were leftists, but even if I agreed with the claim what difference does it
make to massappeal's point?
Most commentators put the Nazis on the far right. They themselves considered Nazism to be
a "third way" between Capitalism and Communism. It's clear that the defining traits of Nazism
are totalitarianism, nationalism, social darwinism, and virulent anti-semitism. Like
communism and other forms of Facism, it is a revolutionary political movement. They also
supported massive government spending and social welfare programs for "aryans", in a kind of
state-dominated capitalism. It is also true that Ernst Rohm and the SA wanted a socialist
revolution to follow the Nazi's national revolution, but they were betrayed and Rohm was
executed for being too radical.
There's the truth. Facts are Facts. So what if they are leftist or rightist? I really
don't understand the value of this argument. Is this a way to link Democrats to Nazis? Seems
as ridiculous as trying to link Republicans to them.
The point is obfuscation of reality from the US right, which has increasingly become
enmeshed in world divorced from reality. Of course no respected historian places the Nazis as
a Left ideology. There is some argument as to whether fascism/Nazism was Right, or neither
left or right. But as an ideology, fascism and Nazism are illiberal, nationalist, and
concerned with "natural hierarchies" which are anathema to "left" thought.
Anyone stating otherwise is either exceedingly stupid or not arguing in good faith. Either
way, there is no point in engaging them or in giving them any platform to spout their
nonsense. Shut them down, block them, mock them, and move on.
And conservatives wonder why they've "unwelcome" in academia...If you want to be taken
seriously, you need to think seriously.
Penetrating insight. Of course, I am sure you are right. I want to give people a chance to
defend themselves though, because I would truly love to be proved wrong and shown something
of which I am ignorant.
I really appreciate the response. I read the synopsis and gather that the argument is
somewhat similar to one which I have heard before, which is that all modern political
movements are borne of the enlightenment, which is something I certainly agree with. There
are certainly underpinnings under every modern party that find their root in the
enlightenment.
The book you provided seems to be not quite that exact theory though, and of course I
haven't read the whole thing...yet. But I honestly will, and I really appreciate the
recommendation! Truth is truth, and it has no ideology. I will read it with an open mind.
The history of right and left, nationalist and internationalist, liberal and conservative
is very complex and confusing. And it is different in America than it is in Europe. America
started out mostly Protestant and Liberal (in the classical sense), so any right wing or
conservative movement in the US would have these foundations. In Europe, conservatives were
Catholic and Monarchist.
But Monarchy gets a bad rap in American public schools and universities, dominated as they
were by Protestant and Liberal thinking at their founding and by Progressive and Socialist
thinking now.
Here is a definition of the Right by EvKL (in the book):
"The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the
sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and
then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it
is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, "ultramodern." Old truths
can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a
time-bound, but a sovereign mind. In case he is a Christian he is, in the words of the
Apostle Peter, the steward of a Basileion Hierateuma, a Royal Priesthood"
And here the difference between Right and Left:
"The right stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking, a readiness to
preserve traditional values (provided they are true values), a balanced view of the nature
of man, seeing in him neither beast nor angel, insisting also on the uniqueness of human
beings who cannot be transformed into or treated as mere numbers or ciphers; but the left
is the advocate of the opposite principles. It is the enemy of diversity and the fanatical
promoter of identity. Uniformity is stressed in all leftist utopias, a paradise in which
everybody should be the "same," where envy is dead, where the "enemy" either no longer
exists, lives outside the gates, or is utterly humiliated. Leftism loathes differences,
deviation, stratifications. Any hierarchy it accepts is only "functional." The term "one"
is the keynote: There should be only one language, one race, one class, one ideology, one
religion, one type of school, one law for everybody, one flag, one coat of arms and one
centralized world state"
"The rightists are "federalists" (in the European sense), "states' righters" since they
believe in local rights and privileges, they stand for the principle of subsidiarity."
Beautiful quotes, my friend, I especially appreciate the latter one. I have not gotten far
in the book, only 60 pages or so but I already find it fascinating, and I have gotten to that
quote exactly, actually.
As a passing note, I will say that I doubt WilliamRD meant what you mean, though I could
be mistaken. And I think defining Nazism as a leftist philosophy requires a semantic
argument, which redefines "right" and "left" into something different than popular American
political discourse defines it. And in fact, under these definitions, the Republican Party is
at least partially leftist.
However, EvKL is clear that this is what he is doing, and you were clear yourself that we
need to break out of these definitions. I couldn't agree more with you on that. Thanks for
sending me the link, you've made me wiser.
You are a rare and beautiful soul! I can't believe you've already read that far into the
book. I will try and learn from your example, the next time someone sends me a link.
And yes, the Republican party has been infiltrated by Leftism. I'm going to give you a
book link on this too, but you don't have to read it right away! Just download it, and put it
away in your files for later. It's a true story that is important to know and it gets to the
heart of the American Conservative / Neoconservative divide.
Fair enough. To me it's analogous to listening to someone try and argue that 1+1=7. I'm
just not sure that someone attempting such a calculation has the rational faculties to
provide anything worth hearing, and I don't like lending legitimacy to every silly position
that a person can take. Life is short, and I prefer to hear from people who demonstrate that
they're playing with a full deck and arguing in good faith. The "Leftists are the Real
Racists" crowd is certainly neither of those.
Edit: And hilariously, there is an actual RW goofball on this article's comment section,
posting Nazi/Fascist sympathies (@Raskolnik) . So, the proof is in the TAC comments I
guess...
The genetic fallacy definition can be found many places. If you read it, you might sound a
little less dumb in public. And the AAIHS is not a racist journal. I know anything with
"African American" in it seems to set off a very fragile segment of aggrieved whites, but I'm
sure you could judge the article based on its content. I'd link to some others, but given
what you've said so far, it seems unlikely you have access to JSTOR or any other legitimate
academic resources. At this point all you're really accomplishing is offering more evidence
that Right Wingers are almost allergic to information that contradicts their indoctrination.
There's a reason your numbers are falling in legitimate academic institutions, and it isn't
due to the secret cabal of communists that seem to haunt your daydreams. It's that your
positions are asinine and you're incapable of arguing effectively and supporting your
positions with evidence.
I'm just applying the same rules to blacks as get applied to whites. Imagine what the ADL
or SPLC would say of an online journal called "White Perspectives" that teaches "white
history."
I have not committed the genetic fallacy. I not only attack the source of Leftism. I
attack it's present manifestation and the false Left / Right paradigm those in its service
have constructed in order to lead us ever leftward.
Leftism's founding principle is equality. Stated synonymously, and with much historical
affirmation, this means uniformity.
The modern Left supposedly prides itself on diversity but this diversity is only skin
deep. It still craves uniformity. It has just learned that it needs brown skin in positions
of power to supplant white nonconformance, it's main opponent. The Left cannot even tolerate
the opinions of those it disagrees with. This is why it labels everyone who disagrees with
it's radical social engineering program a deplorable or a racist or an outright Nazi.
An actual theocratic monarchist reactionary would consider Nazism to be leftist, and ideas
of 'racial superiority' or 'racial guilt' or whatever to be very modern ideas.
Please expurgate your naïve realism - it's all a matter of perspective. To someone
with current mores, the Nazis, a rehash of the ethno-nationalist 1848 Revolutions in Germany,
are unspeakably reactionary. To someone with pre-Enlightenment values, they're beyond far
left. Please read something written by someone who was a 'leftist' in his own day, and it
will almost always be unspeakably reactionary by the contemporary standards of even those
'white supremacists' that you so hate. Here's some anti-immigrant racist Benjamin Franklin
for you:
"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will
shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never
adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.
24. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World
is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America
(exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French,
Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans
also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People
on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I
may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of
our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we
in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by
Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and
Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion
of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. "
This block of text is nothing but another incoherent rambling from a markedly unserious
thinker. You've outed yourself repeatedly as an idiot or an ideologue. Either way, you're not
worth another breath of response.
Yes, if you simply throw out all logic and available evidence, Hitler and Mussolini were
on the political left. And if you simply redefine the entire color spectrum, the sky is green
and the sea is orange.
This is like History 101 people, get with the damn program.
Jack, if there is a nail and a head---you HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!
People do seem to try to put all of this in a left-right mindset which is more "tribal
identity" than reality.
Broadly speaking ...repeat....broadly speaking----Russia and Stalin were an economic
system-philosophy while Hitler carried on the German culture model of Martin Luther, which
was much more GERMAN NATIONALISM -with a well documented anti-Semitism on steroids.
One was economic systems and the other one was nationalism. To put either into a
leftist-rightist camp doesn't work with today's terminology.
The same way that it is not possible to call Trumpicans either conservative or liberal.
The economic policies put in by Trump are reckless and certainly not conservative.
The 'point' is to establish stigma by association. History is only useful in politics when
it can used against one's enemies, either by associating with something valued or associating
stigmatized history with one's enemies. It's also possible for history to be stigmatized due
to its use by political enemies.
The point is to score points for your tribe. I find the terms "left" and "right"
increasingly useless. If they ever had value, that value is largely lost. This is especially
true in the US, where left and right seem determined to degenerate into each's caricature of
the other.
The point is to break out of the Left / Right paradigm as it's been presented to us by
those who mean to rule us. Anybody who seriously opposes the Leftwing's steady march towards
Communism, is labeled a far-right winger, and is put in the company of Nazis. They then
become untouchable by normal people who have not devoted any time into historical or
ideological inquiry.
This game forces normal people into the middle, and in the middle they pose no meaningful
threat to the Leftward march of the establishment, because the middle cannot find the
leverage to arrest its progress. The middle's only hope is to slow it down somewhat.
Fascism has perhaps not been 'on the Left' because, historically it has always arisen to
fight communism, which is the farthest Left you can get (so anything opposed to it seems, by
comparison, Right), but it is fully a child of the radical Left nationalism born of the
French Jacobins. It's certainly not a grandchild of the European monarchies, though
conservatives have at times had to ally with it as the lesser of two evils when confronted by
communism.
In the end it was a catastrophic economic meltdown--in their case taking the form of
metastatic inflation--which sent Germany off the edge of the cliff and into the abyss. So it
will be with the US. Pray we don't have a recurrence of 2007. Or worse!
There was a thing called the Great Depression that started in America but spread to Europe
quickly in 1929. Hitler came to power when millions of German workers lost their jobs and had
no way of supporting themselves and their families.
Yep. And Hitler came to power because German Nationalists (the conservative party) formed
an alliance with him, rather than with the center-left and liberal parties.
Nationalism, German or otherwise, is not particularly conservative. The most intelligent
conservative since Burke was Prince Metternich, who regarded nationalism as his greatest
enemy, especially German nationalism.
Yes, the actual hyperinflation did indeed end around that time but by then the economic
die had already been cast. The cumulative effect upon the German middle and, especially, the
working class, farmers, "petite bourgeoisie" etc.,would devastate the country through the
remainder of the 20s and into the 30s (my father and his parents, who were working class
Social Democrats, had to get out by 1928 and were lucky to gain admittance into the US as the
doors were being closed on immigration at the time). As to 2007 I totally agree that
inflation was not a factor. I was evidently unclear but--that really wasn't my point. The
absence of inflation notwithstanding, we know that the economy went into the soup in 2007--so
much so that, to date, we have not fully recovered. My main point is to express the fear that
if it were to happen again for whatever reason, if you factor in the "Kulturkampf" within
which American society is currently embroiled we are going to have one HELL of a mess on our
hands.
And given that, isn't it all the more important to try to avoid the political mistakes
German conservatives made in the early 1930s when they chose to ally themselves with the
Nazis?
Yes, it is. As we see here, conservatives like Rod think they can control the extremists.
No snark this time, they really believe that.
They couldn't even control Trump.
I think the bigger concern is the alliance of the center left with two marxist movements
especially considering the right cannot ally with nazis as there are no comparable nazi
organizations available
One of the three co-founders of BLM stated in an 2015 interview that she, Patrice Collers,
and one other cofounder, Alizia Garza, are trained marxists. If the leadership claims they
are marxist, then what is the BLM movement?
Anarchists and Marxists simply have different methods of achieving the same goal. For an
example of anarchist goals, see the collectivist actions of the Catalonian anarchists during
the Spanish Civil War.
These are both anti-democratic and dangerous movements which the center left is happy to
work with.
It was the ruinous inflation of 1923 COMBINED with the high unemployment in 1932 that
encouraged millions of ordinary Germans to vote for the Nazis twice in 1932. Some wealthy
Republicans seem to forget this as they lobby for more tax cuts and foreign aid to Israel.
They also appear to forget that the period 1871-1914 was something of a "Golden Age" for
German Jews. Germany's defeat in WWI AND the harsh peace treaty imposed on it by the other
side were more than enough to offset the benefits of a new democratic constitution adopted in
Weimar in 1919.
It is hard to believe that two decades ago, the US budget actually turned positive for a
brief period of time, that the national debt was expected to be paid off in a decade or so
and that some economists were wondering how the Fed would conduct monetary policy if there
were no Treasury securities to buy and sell. They need not have worried. These days, the
national debt is out of control. Instead of worrying about the future, I can take consolation
in the fact that I have outlived (by more than a decade) all of my father's relatives who
were still living in Poland in 1939. For them, the end of the line was an extermination camp
called Belzec.
It wasn't just the 1929 Depression that caused so much hardship in Germany. In 1933 after
Adolph Hitler came to power and Germany was just beginning to crawl out of the shock of their
own depression, the international Jewish Community (Zionists) launched its economic war on
Germany, which native, German Jews pleaded with their western brethren to not do. Ignoring
the German Jews requests, the economic war against Germany persisted, causing massive
economic disruptions as the popularity of this endeavor was picked up around the world...
The first anti-Jewish measure put in place by Nazi Germany started on April 1, 1933 when
Aryan Germans were encouraged by the government to boycott Jewish businesses in Germany. The
boycott was the first of many anti-Jewish measures taken by the Nazis over the next 12 years.
This boycott was followed on April 7, 1933 with the forced retirement of most non-Aryan (i.e.
Jewish) civil servants in the country and a book burning of books by Jewish authors on May
10. There is a whole list of anti-Jewish measures taken by Nazi Germany in the museum catalog
"Jews in German under Prussian Rule". Used copies are available at Amazon.
The economic response by Jews living outside Germany was a failure. It was the Battle of
Stalingrad and the brutal Russian winter of 1942-43 that turned the tide of WWII in
Europe
Bit off topic but not long ago I read that of all the major industrial countries the one
that supposedly suffered the least from the effects of the Depression-- was England!
The conservatives (right-liberals) have done nothing but ally with the left-liberals
against the "fascists" (actual right wing) since 1945. Their entire raison d'etre is to lose
gracefully while preventing the actual right wing from ever coming anywhere near power.
I would call that "overfitting," expecting to find exact matches among the parties
involved. My lessons:
- people can be given scapegoats in lieu of hope. "Yes, we've gutted manufacturing and
flooded the country with low-skill illegal labour, but what's keeping you down is systemic
racism. There is a secret hatred for the colour of the skin inside all white people. They
can't even see it themselves, but it's there. Just look at all these stories from the Jim
Crow era and get angry about them again, and you'll find that if you don't for me you're not
really black."
- nothing's more dangerous than a well-meaning good person convinced they're better than
everyone else, led about by skilled propagandists with total control of news and
entertainment.
- projection and false flag operations are at the top of the propagandist's toolbox. If
you're "fighting racism," you can see race everywhere and treat it as the defining aspect of
every person you meet and the source of all their opinions. If you're "fighting fascism" you
can dress in black and run around starting fires, attacking Senators, and shooting people for
their political beliefs. If you convince everyone "white supremacist terror groups" are the
biggest threat to the country you can unleash rioters on every major city to fight one rather
well-behaved seventeen-year-old in one city. You can unleash a steady stream of hoaxes:
Russiagate, a short clip of the longer George Floyd video that obscures why he died, the
Covington Catholic Smirk of Supremacy, bleach and "This is MAGA country." It doesn't matter.
The bigger the better: people will always believe the big lie.
You should think about your own role in all this. What part of Weimar are you playing?
Thanks for your thoughtful response. To answer your question, I play a
small-to-the-point-of-insignificance role these days, trying to lower the political
temperature in this time of pandemic, and trying to make the case for small 'd' democracy as
the best (and highly imperfect) method for dealing with the challenges we face.
It's in that context that I find hope in the growing number of conservatives (most
recently, former Montana governor and RNC chair Marc Racicot) who are placing "country over
party" and stating their support for Biden, not because they agree with his policies but
despite their disagreement with them.
These folks are not putting "country over party". They are tied into the Uniparty ruled by
the oligarchs doing the bidding of their masters.
Putting "country over party" would require them calling for the arrest of all those who
were involved in the Russian collusion hoax, Spygate, and everything else, from Obama on
down.
Putting "country over party" would require them to put the well-being of the citizens
first and support an end to endless war and to support enforcing immigration law and fixing
trade.
No, these every alleged Republican or conservative supporting Biden is showing that they
are and have always been a fraud who doesn't believe what they preached and would rather
continue in the good graces of the rich and powerful that really rule the country.
Support for country over politics and personal gain. Going back to the "normalcy" of the
pre-Trump political order. Pick one. You don't get both.
Anyone who tells you how important it is for "the good of the nation" to go back to the
long list of careerist politicians, hacks, and establishment elite who have governed it
towards its ruination must first make the case that the "norms" of American political culture
were good and righteous or (even from a strictly amoral view) practically useful. They never
do, though.
It's always asserted as if it is a self-evident fact that we need to go back to the days
of Bushes, Clintons, and Bidens, but nobody can really explain why.
Leftists don't want us as allies, and the 'street militias' are almost entirely leftist.
Institutional elites in Germany supported National Socialism, while in the US today they
support leftists.
Thanks for your response. Sure, there are those on the left who want nothing to do with
centrists and conservatives. (Heck, some of them barely tolerate liberals.) But the
Democratic party chose its most moderate candidate as its standard-bearer in this election,
and Biden has made clear he welcomes the support of centrists and conservatives and
Republicans.
(As for militias, per the FBI (not known as a bastion of liberalism) right-wing militias
are by far the largest domestic terrorism threat.)
Like the Republican party in the Trump era, there is no longer such a thing as the
Democratic party in its traditional sense. As the GOP is an empty vessel now filled with
Trumpism, the Democratic party is an empty vessel being filled with progressivism (an ongoing
process). The traditional Democrats (like old-school moderate African-Americans) who put
Biden over the top in the primary are otherwise powerless in the party.
Biden has made it clear that he will not push back against the far Left in any way - in
his refusal to comment on packing SCOTUS, ending the Senate filibuster, ending the electoral
college (the lack of an answer to these being itself an answer), in his absorption of much of
Bernie's platform into his own, in his silence on urban riots and looting until campaign
people told him it was affecting polling (and his response since has been tepid at best).
He lied gleefully (Trumpily?) during the debate about the prog platform - his own campaign
website lists support for GND and an expanded "reimagining" of the suburbs among many other
progressive goals which Trump is too inarticulate and ignorant to frame sensible arguments
against.
The Democrats are planning to govern on the basis of vengeance and revolution. The mood of
the base could not be more clear.
Thanks for your response. Unlike the Republican party, the Democratic party still has a
party platform that extends beyond (far beyond, 90 pages beyond) fealty to its party leader.
As Biden won a majority of the delegates, the platform those delegates adopted reflects the
views of the factions that chose Biden more than it does any other faction in the party.
Biden has pointedly and repeatedly distanced himself from the policy wishes (e.g.,
Medicare for All, Green New Deal, defund the police) of the left-wing of the Democratic
party.
Vice President Biden knows there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world.
Today, he is outlining a bold plan – a Clean Energy Revolution – to address
this grave threat and lead the world in addressing the climate emergency.
Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate
challenges we face. It powerfully captures two basic truths, which are at the core of his
plan: (1) the United States urgently needs to embrace greater ambition on an epic scale to
meet the scope of this challenge, and (2) our environment and our economy are completely
and totally connected.
Biden will implement the Obama-Biden Administration's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Rule requiring communities receiving certain federal funding to proactively examine housing
patterns and identify and address policies that have a discriminatory effect. The Trump
Administration suspended this rule in 2018.
Giving Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option like Medicare. If your
insurance company isn't doing right by you, you should have another, better choice. Whether
you're covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without
coverage altogether, the Biden Plan will give you the choice to purchase a public health
insurance option like Medicare. As in Medicare, the Biden public option will reduce costs
for patients by negotiating lower prices from hospitals and other health care providers. It
also will better coordinate among all of a patient's doctors to improve the efficacy and
quality of their care, and cover primary care without any co-payments. And it will bring
relief to small businesses struggling to afford coverage for their employees.
I don't deserve your thanks, kind sir. You're vastly overestimating the social importance
of presidential elections, imo. And I don't believe the FBI. Every other institution in
American society is virtue signaling support for the woke left, so why not them? They know
who is going to run the country next year. Do you believe that the rioting and destruction
this summer was caused by right-wingers? I have heard that conspiracy theory before, and I
suppose it's the closest thing we'd ever get from leftists to an admission that the events
were negative.
I think that there is definitely a strong double standard when it comes to media reporting
and institutional acknowledgment of violence based on the demographics and politics of the
perpetrator. There was a huge mass shooting in the city I live in last year, but the shooter
(DeWayne Craddock) was black and had a stereotypically black given name. There was very
little reporting on it as compared with the Texas church shooter that occurred at about the
same time.
No, because we on the Left are always the greater evil.
Always.
The (few) bad tendencies of (some, very few) people on the Right can be contained and
governed by the other conservatives.
/SNARK
In Germany, the national socialists and communists were battling for totalitarian control.
Both of them were on the left. Dictatorship either way.
The real question today in the US is whether old fashioned liberals [belief in free
speech, political discourse without threats or actual violence, natural American patriotism,
etc] will disavow the violence and intimidation from the leftist totalitarianism that is the
democrat party today.
The rioting, the burning, the street violence, the death threats of lining people against the
wall, etc., etc., is pretty much all from the totalitarian left. I could give you hundreds of
examples, the most recent the former CEO of Twitter wanting to shoot political opponents.
This hate-filled rhetoric from the totalitarian left is an attempt to dehumanize people
they disagree with, to hate them. This is simply preparing for the stage that those the
totalitarian left disagrees with should be sent to gulags at a minimum, or killed.
This is all with the approval and help of the "mainstream' democrat party. Denying this
just makes you not credible.
p.s. Biden, at best, is a partial senile figurehead, whose function is to mask what the
totalitarian left really wants to do.
Oh what Jonah Goldberg has wraught with this "NAZI's we're leftists" horseshit. I guess
when you be been absolved of the notion that right wing thought had anything to do with the
rise of fascism in Europe, you can say any horrible thing you'd like about people of another
race, ethnicity, or religion ruining your pretty Lilly white country.
From Wikipedia:
"As the eldest son of Bertha Krupp,
Alfried was destined by family tradition to become the sole heir of the
Krupp concern. An amateur photographer and Olympic sailor, he was an
early supporter of Nazism among German industrialists, joining the SS in
1931, and never disavowing his allegiance to Hitler."
Thanks for your response. In case anyone else still isn't clear, and just for the record,
the Nazis were not "on the left".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
The national socialists were on the left. You may lie about it, I can't stop you.
But what is definitely clear is the national socialists were brutal evil totalitarianists
[new word?]. Just like the communist dictatorships in russia, china, cambodia, cuba, etc.
This is the leftists/wokesters blm antifa [the brownshirts of today] in the US, with the
tacit/explicit approval of democrat leadership.
They would not have been better off aligned with Stalin, which was the other side in their
domestic political extremes. It too was rioting in the streets.
The middle got too narrow to survive. That does not mean the other extreme was an
acceptable choice, much less a better choice.
No. For example, the Nazis and the Communists *combined* only accounted for 40% of the
parliamentary seats after the 1930 election. If the center-right, centrist, and center-left
parties had formed an alliance, they could have governed the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
I'm not really a conservative, but I share many concerns and values with conservatives. I
do agree that it's better to ally with liberals and the center-left than to join right-wing
authoritarians, and for that reason I have, however reluctantly, cast my mail-in vote for Joe
Biden.
That said, I think you misinterpret the choice that ultimately faced German nationalists
in 1932. By that time, the liberals and center-left had shrunk to powerlessness at the
national level, and the republic itself was dead in all but name. The choice as the German
nationalists saw it, and very likely as it actually was, was to join the communist KPD or the
fascist National Socialists, both of whom were determined to kill the republic. Even a
friggin' restoration of the Kaiser would have found more support at that point than the
continuation of a liberal center-left republic which had been thoroughly repudiated by all
the strongest players.
In retrospect, we know that even the KPD might have been less bad than the National
Socialists, because the KPD probably wouldn't have blundered into another world war
like the National Socialists did (Stalin, after all, avoided war with the USA and UK). But
that would have been hard for German nationalists to foresee in 1932. The obvious question
for them in making their choice was "Whose death list am I on?" If you were a business owner,
independent farmer, or churchman, your chance of survival seemed better under the National
Socialists; if you were nonwhite, or gay, or Jewish (always remember many German Jews were
fervently nationalist; some of the men murdered in the camps had won Iron Crosses in World
War I), you would have a better chance of survival under the KPD. If the businessmen, farmers
and churchmen could have foreseen that the National Socialists were going to throw away their
lives in another pointless war, they might have taken their chances with the communists
instead.
Switching now to modern America, it seems as hard to predict now as it was for the Germans
in 1932 which party will get us into a massive bloodbath overseas. Trump talks the
nonintervention talk sometimes, but he never withdraws troops, twice came within a micron of
getting us into a war with Iran, and consistently behaves bellicosely with foreign powers.
Biden's record in supporting the Iraq War and the Libya intervention show that a vote for
Democrats is no sure vote for peace either. In any case, dying in a conventional war is a
very remote risk for most Americans; our forces are too strong and technologically advanced.
Nazi Germany lost seven times more dead just invading Poland than America lost in the whole
Afghanistan war. The true nightmare scenario for America is nuclear war with Russia, and
there's no dispute about which party is more hostile to Russia.
My point is, if we've truly reached 1932 Weimar, it's already too late to ally with
liberals and the center-left. The far right and the far left were their only options, and
both led to disaster.
My fervent hope is that we're still closer to 1929 Weimar than 1932. The republic is sick,
perhaps dying, but not everyone has lost faith in it; below the level of the political and
media elites, confidence in the republic is still strong. The US military still supports the
republic to an extent the Reichswehr never did. Biden is no fire-breathing radical; he's an
establishment man to his bones. He has no idea how to cure the republic, and his policies
helped bring it to this low ebb, but at least he isn't out to murder it. That's why I was
willing to vote for him. But it's merely a stopgap measure. The far left is busily taking
over Biden's party, and far from resisting it, he sees it as a useful ally against the right.
The far right, of course, has long been doing the same to the Republican Party. We may not
have arrived yet at 1932's dreadful choice between cutthroats, but we are speeding down that
road, and it is crazy to imagine that a mere presidential vote for either of these two clowns
is going to change our course.
What will change our course? I have only the haziest idea, and I'm eagerly looking forward
to Rod's book for suggestions.
This is the best answer, but radicals will just look at your "whose death list am I in"
argument and say "yep the bourgeoisie should die, and so should anyone who supports
them".
Agreed that this is a thoughtful response. While I may even more reluctantly cast my
ballot for a despicable lunatic instead, I relate to much of the above.
In the 1928 German elections, 15 political parties won seats in the Reichstag
(parliament), with the Nazi party winning fewer than 3% of the seats. Germany's proportional
system of allocating seats meant that even small parties could end up with a small number
seats. Two years later, 15 parties again won seats in Reichstag elections. The Nazi party
made the biggest gain in seats at the expense of more centrist parties. In both national
elections held in 1932, 14 political parties won seats, with the Nazi party winning the most
seats. The popularity of the Nazi party grew as economic conditions in the country
worsened.
In 2020, the Covid-19 virus may have merely accelerated trends which were already in place
in the US.
That's a stupid false equivalency and a scarecrow argument in one, maybe even a no true
scotsman to go with that. You're aware that there were several conservatives opposing Hitler,
right? Opposition wasn't just carried out by the far-left, some of which were in the
SA/The Nazi party themselves . See: strasserism.
Rod, I agree with you about Arendt and her classic work, the best work in political
history/theory of the 20th Century imo. But there is a reason why no one quotes it today. You
mention only the last chapter of TOoT, but in Part II she goes into great detail about how
capitalism led to imperialism which used racism as a means to that end. The "mob" originates
with those displaced by The Great Transformation (Polyani's term) brought about by capitalism
and the rise of bourgeois society . . . it is this mob that later forms the basis for
totalitarian movements. Arendt's analysis covers a period of about 400 years, not simply the
aftermath of World War I which was a result of the crisis that had already begun, that is the
dissolution of the nation state . . .
But that would be uncomfortable to point out, as it is the rise of right wing economics
that was destroyed the middle class in this country, and lead us to this parlous state.
For a long time, the right has happily embraced the culture wars to hide the destruction
of the libertarian economic policies, that as always are looking for a way to crush labor
power.
An anaylsis of the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe and East Asia that leaves out the
World Wars is like an American history text that leaves out the Civil War. In every single
Eurasian country from Hungary east to North Korea where the Communists came to power WWI
and/or WWII was a key factor. No war, no Communist takeover. (And it regards to the Nazis in
Germany WWI is also a crucial factor on their coming power)
What would play the role of those wars in our future if some manner of totalitarian
government of the Left or Right junked the Constitution and seized power by force?
To be sure, none of this means that totalitarianism is inevitable. But they do signify that
the weaknesses in contemporary American society are consonant with a pre-totalitarian
state. Like the imperial Russians, we Americans may well be living in a fog of
self-deception about our own country's stability. It only takes a catalyst like war,
economic depression, plague, or some other severe and prolonged crisis that brings the
legitimacy of the liberal democratic order into question.
Again, why are you responding to an argument that Rod is not making? He didn't write The
Handmaid's Tale,
What were the catalysts for Cuba or Venezuela? Or the many socialist regimes in Africa,
the Middle East and Latin America during the postwar decades?
Revolutions against outside imposed dictatorships left over from a soft imperialism.
Platt Amendment, Banana Wars, School of the Americas and coups for days set up the
conditions for people to not trust there near neighbor oppose to its distant enemies during
the Cold War and the legacies from it created the social conditions for. We as a state
literally supported death squads in Central America. Leading to the weak states and strong
gangs in the region. The seeds of any empire bear bitter fruits. It is also where the police
state we now see was created and imported home.
As is so often the case, there are various partial truths in what you say but they don't
add up to the simplistic conclusion. BTW Venezuela was a relatively wealthy and successful
country when Chavez took over; the factors you list were long before and not involved. Rather
what happened was existing inequities and problems were utilized to enable a power grab. In
the same way that poor blacks and other minorities are being used to enable the current power
grab, divide and conquer as always - in the end, they will be just as removed from power as
they are now. Like all the woke white chicks, they are just considered useful idiots for the
progressives seeking power.
We as a state literally supported death squads in Central America. Leading to the weak
states and strong gangs in the region. The seeds of any empire bear bitter fruits.
Not that simple. The weak states and strong gangs came first. The weak states and corrupt
governments and deep inequities created the instabilities that motivated insurgencies. Lack
of a rule of law and the inability of the state to protect you forces people to turn to (and
form) gangs for protection. All of this played out against a backdrop of a global conflict
between two empires, two ideologies which further fueled all the conflicts.
There were death squads and all sorts of other abuses on all sides. There are no clean
hands in such a conflict. It was not possible to remain neutral unless you were Swiss.
All of the problems you cite concerning central america are an outgrowth of the
"governments" the US government/business imposed on those countries. The societies of central
and south america were and are highly stratified with "Europeans"--ancestry--occupying the
highest rung and receiving the lions share of the wealth. That's the reason Castro and Chavez
had such an easy time overthrowing the governments and why there is so much resistance to a
return of the previous conditions.
International relations and history are a lot more complicated than you think they are.
The endless desire for Americans to find quick and dirty feel-good good vs bad answers to
everything goes a long ways towards explaining the degrading of this society and its
governance.
I note again that Venezuela was in a rather different state than pre-Castro Cuba. But yes
having a large underclass that feels disconnected and deprived of what the rest of a society
has goes provide fertile fuel for revolution.
MS13 and Barrio 18 were born in the US from refugees fleeing our dirty wars in Central
America. Poor wealth distribution leads to it. So glad you realize wealth focus is bad. Also
oligarchs are bad. We supported those corrupted governments leading to the revolutions
leading to the net result. Ever hear of United Fruit and the banana men? Imperial Companies
support weak government because they can influence it.
Well the catalyst for Cuba was Batista staging a coup, seizing power, and destroying the
democratic process (with full US support) in 1952. Less than 10 years later, a popular
revolution overthrew him. That revolution has proven a much tougher nut to crack. It's almost
as if overthrowing democracy and giving into a strongman's appetite for power has
consequences down the road.
One could also say that trying to jump start / leap frog your way into equality and
"justice" also has consequences down the road. A lesson that humans absolutely refuse to
learn, thus condemning generation after generation into misery.
No one "gives into a strongman's appetite for power". People make choices based on
incentives and possible outcomes. Rod uses the Franco example often. People often have to
choose between two terrible outcomes - in which case they choose the one that has a better
chance of their own survival or the survival of what they care about.
I can't comment about east Asia because I don't now enough about it, but as the great
historian John Lukacs never tired of saying, the only country in Europe where the Bolsheviks
triumphed politically was Russia. The Spartacists and the Bela Kun horror fizzled out. After
the second war the Communists needed the Red Army to set up puppets. There was no
"revolution" in Poland, Czech, Hungary or anywhere because nobody wanted it. Yugoslavia may
be a partial exception, but look what happened to Yugoslavia.
Good point. I guess we could make the argument that the Red Army sweep over Eastern Europe
and absorption of all those countries into the Soviet empire required WW2 to occur, but that
seems like not the argument that Jon is making in response to Rod's thesis.
I was agreeing with him. But "what would play the role of those wars in our future" would
be...a war. Which Biden (or, the Pentagon) has up his sleeve ("America is Back"). Experto
crede. Do you not believe that the Kagan/Rubin/Boot crowd would shy from a shooting war with
Russia? Because I don't.
Thankfully empty-headed blabbers like Rubin and Boot are well removed from actual power
(and even, I would say, influence - in fact it is unclear to me why anyone publishes their
rantings). The people with influence in a Biden administration will be people like Harris,
Warner, AOC, etc. I don't think they're really aching for a war.
But the point is that you don't need a war - the catalyst can be another major event like
economic depression, a global pandemic, etc, etc.
Well, we're asking the who/whom question only one way, it seems to me. Everybody is
rightly convinced that on social and economic issues AOC and Princess Tiger Lily will have
the wheel in a Biden administration. But who's to say that in foreign policy Gersonism won't
prevail? All these never Trumpers are going to be looking for their rewards. Remember,
Hillary destroyed Libya as a resume enhancer. And the Army has gone left. One of the things
Trump mideast deal has done is set up a Sunni/Shia showdown. Why not follow through?
Fair enough. I suppose that's possible, and the young AOC type progs barely know where
anything on the globe is outside the US so they might be happy to let the old "experts" take
back over foreign policy. Not where their interests lie, for sure.
I disagree about the mideast deals, though - a Sunni vs Shia conflict has been baked into
the cake from the beginning (see: Iran Iraq war), and it was Obama's crazy Iran deal that
started everyone back on that path by strengthening Iran and trying to push it into place as
a regional hegemon. That was never going to go down with the Sunni countries.
The apparently not actually so naive Kushner was able to take advantage of new incentives
that Obama's machinations created. I see this as quite positive.
We'll agree to disagree about the mideast, which I really just brought up e.g. The one
they're really lusting for is a shooting war with Putin. Have you read Gerson on that
subject? What's the outcome of Mrs. Sikorsky's bellicosity but that? What else has all this
NATO expansion been for, anyway?
Haven't read Gerson in a while. I see your point, though I don't really think any of these
people are quite reckless enough to lust for a war with a nuclear power.
Partially correct. Czechoslovakia was an exception: Communists came to power as a result
of a free election in 1946. But it was something of an outlier, probably the most left-wing
country in Europe.
It was Bush 43's costly Middle East adventures at a time when he was cutting income taxes
that set the US economy on the terrible path it is on now. Our national debt is out of
control. Many young people will leave college with massive student loan debt, poor job
prospects and, in many areas, very expensive housing. We have paid and will continue to pay a
very high price for trying to be the world's policeman.
Obama, the wild eyed leftist spender, cut the 1.2 trillion dollar deficit that W ran up
with his tax cuts and catastrophic war down to 585 billion. By the end of '19, before any
Covid-19 spending took place, Trump had run it back up to 984 billion. Growth has been a
meager two tenths of one percent higher in the first three years of Trump's presidency than
it was during the last three years of Obama and it has come at a high cost.
"...which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political Consciousness."
Which explains the absurd phenomenon of polically-correct stand-up comics. Guess what?
They're not funny. 'Whimsy' won't get you belly laughs. Trump still gets the belly laughs.
Even from me, and I hate his rotten stinking guts with the white hot fury of a thousand
suns.
A hundred years ago, Newtonian physics got nuked. Goodbye ordered universe, hello entropy
and chaos. And we've been mopping up the fallout ever since. Ironically, years before, The
Enlightenment had already started this dissolution process. So can you blame Picasso and
Joyce for just trying to see things as they really are(?)
Griel Marcus traces this process in his great book Lipstick Traces. From The Brethren of
the Free Spirit to the Cathars to St. Just to the Paris Commune to Duchamp and right up to
The Sex Pistols, we are either fallen, or trying to achieve the colliding energy of a mere
collection of atoms. The Lettrists even took a cue from Finnegans Wake and carved up the damn
language, for Chr--sakes. And they've been doing it ever since.
So can you blame the great Stockard Channing, in Six Degrees of Seperation, 1993, for
meditating on a Kandinsky and then coming to the same conclusion that many of us poor
benighted souls have in these absurd times: 'I am all random.'
Arendt's fine. But I'll go with Carville's "It's the economy stupid".
When a young man who isn't "college material" has no economic future, he's going to find a
way to make one. If it requires totalitarianism, so be it. Indeed, totalitarian ideologies
can only flourish in an environment when bored, penniless young men have the time to read up
on them.
Imagine all of those black guys rioting or white skinheads having to get up early in the
morning for 10 hours of hard-work at the factory or on someone's roof. A couple of beers
after work and your ready for bed, not revolution. Hence the great America of the '50's - the
'80's.
I have no idea what's coming, but we are trying to reduce our exposure by moving out of
the city, as far as we can reasonably go for now until retirement. We are frantically trying
to get our house on the market and hoping that thanks to the magic of "gentrification"
(hopefully prospective buyers won't notice the giant "F*** Gentrifiers" spray painted on a
nearby wall) we can trade our overvalued home into two properties - one in a distant town
past the outer suburbs and another somewhere overseas where we can run to when things get
really bad. That's the dream, at least. But the city we have already left and won't be going
back.
I'm sure the overseas locations will be absolutely overjoyed to have a couple of US
refugees, with no ties to the country or area, who don't speak the language or have any
cultural understanding or background, and expect to instantly be fully integrated into the
economic and social fabric, showing up.
Have you considered that you'll be akin to a Central American family moving into the outer
suburb neighborhood you desire to live in, albeit one with more resources and legal
status?
"Trump's exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting.
But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist
identity politics."
Just when you thought the hypocrisy and the double-standard had reached the limits of what
is humanly possible, Biden takes it up a notch.
After spending the last few months tearing up cities and threatening to burn down the country
if they don't win in November, the Democrats now accuse Trump of putting the Proud Boys on
stand-by???
Even my dog is laughing at this.
[How do these kooky communists even get elected to dog-catcher???]
Just saying both sides are playing this game. One is just doing it with more guns and
state security support. The left has greater cultural focus cause those are the positions
that interest them. This is the creation of capitalism.
If Rod paid more attention to all the data and not just those that feed his hysteria, he'd
learn that there are all kinds of backlash within liberal and far left circles to the
excesses he rightly decries. In fact, I think there is more self-correction and
self-regulation going on within "the left" than on Rod's side of the spectrum
Do you have any examples of this self correction? I've been living in a far left
neighborhood in a permanent liberal Democratic city for decades, and I don't see it (well now
we fled so I can't speak for what happens next).
There are occasionally people who will whisper something in my ear or my wife's ear that
suggests they recognize some lunacy that's going on. But they would never admit that
publicly. And all evidence suggests there are still very few of such people.
The whole point of Rod's thesis is that the vast majority of people will go along with the
tide even if they don't believe it - they will live their lives by lies. Very few people have
the courage to take a stand in such circumstances, as history makes all too clear. The
progressive left, again as has been made clear over and over, now owns all the institutions
that matter in the US - with woke capitalism being the final crown. What Rod says is coming,
is coming.
Without the '65 "immigration reform" act none of this would be happening. This isn't the
result of personal loneliness, it's the inevitable result of becoming, in Eugene McCarthy's
phrase, a colony of the world. The radical turn to the left is a direct result of anti-white
bloc voting by immigrants. (Indeed you have to be willfully blind not to notice the high
percentage of spokesmen for the extreme left who are immigrants or the children of
immigrants.) This is a race war against white America, in which the cultural establishment
and the government they shape are the leading protagonists. Classic racist colonialism, with
the bizarre twist that perhaps a third of the white population supports the annihilation of
their own peoples and cultures. For the others it's simply a Scramble For America, a rush to
get money, territory, and power with the natives footing the bill.
Irrelevant. It's the immigrant vote that puts them over. The vast majority of immigration
is non-white. It's immigration that has California not electing a Republican to statewide
office in 15 years, and nothing else. Don't take my word for it, the left itself has been
telling Republicans for decades that the demographics are against them. It's an
acknowledgement of the reality of identity bloc voting and the reason they support open
borders. In any case, I mentioned you when I wrote about that mentally ill third of whites
that supports self-annihilation.
"""It is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets
violence. Fanatical orthodoxy is in all movements a late development. There is hardly an
example of a mass movement achieving vast proportions and a durable organization solely by
persuasion. It was a temporal sword that made Christianity a world religion. Conquest and
conversion were hand in hand. Reformation made headways only where it gained the backing of
the ruling prince or local government. The missionary zeal seems rather an expression of some
deep misgivings. Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than
to bestow upon the world something we already have. The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his
own faith by converting others.
A true believer is eternally incomplete and eternally insecure.
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. A full
blown mass movement is a ruthless affair, and its management is in the hands of ruthless
fanatics. A Luther who when first defying the established church, spoke feelingly of "the
poor, simple, common folk," proclaimed later when he allied with the German princelings, that
"God would prefer to suffer to government to exist no matter how evil, rather than allow the
rabble to riot, not matter how justified they are in doing so."
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass
movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a
devil."
However, the freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and
self-realization, but the freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence.
They want freedom from the arduous responsibility of realizing their ineffectual selves and
shouldering the blame for the blemished product. They do not want freedom of conscience, but
faith -- blind, authoritarian faith. """"""
Biden of course is scarcely a totalitarian figure--Trump is more suited to that role. But
Biden would fit nicely as a von Hindenburg for the Loony Left.
How in the hell is Trump a totalitarian figure? I hear this calumny hurled at him time and
time again, but without any specifics. Tell me, what specific totalitarian actions has he
actually taken?
Support for violent white supremacist groups. Using the Dept. of Justice to target
political enemies. Adopting a Republican platform that consists solely of fealty to the party
leader.
Over the past 6 months or so, my husband has been listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson
and I have definitely noticed a shift in his thinking. A good one! I, myself, just finished
listening to his book, 12 Rules For Life and am now going through his Podcast episodes. It's
quite fascinating! Rogan has also received a lot of flak for having Peterson on his show
several times.
I went and listened to the episodes with Abigail Shrier and Douglas Murray (at your
suggestion) and now have their books (as well as your's) sitting in my audible library.
Most of what you say is true, save for the usefulness of the "experts", the credentialed
ones who have shown themselves to be absolute morons, incompetents and political hacks.
(Think, Fauci.)
Imagine if one hundred years ago you told the founding stock of this nation that every
American institution would be weaponized against their own history and heritage. Imagine if
you told them our universities, media, churches and immigration system were all being used to
demonize and demographically displace their own posterity. They must be rolling over in their
graves because that is exactly what is happening.
In 1920? Large numbers of them absolutely would have believed it. In fact, millions of
them *did* believe it. The country was being overrun by Italians, Poles, Greeks, Serbs,
Russians. A frightening number of them were Jews and Catholics. They smelled funny, spoke
weird languages, had bizarre beliefs and customs, cooked and ate strange foods. They were
lazy bums who were taking all our jobs. At a rally in Rhode Island, the Grand Imperial Wizard
proclaimed to thousands that the KKK stood for undying opposition to "Koons, Kikes, &
Katholics".
And it's come true! Look, for example, who's on the Supreme Court.
Not to mention that the Jews were over-running colleges. Keeping them out required changes
to admissions practices to make things other than pure academic ability deciding factors.
Hence the emphasis on "the whole person", where a good background, good family, athletic
ability, and being someone you'd want to associate with in your club began to over-ride
performance on the academic tests that had previously been used to determine admissions.
Just soft totalitarianism? That seems incredibly pollyann-ish - delusionally
optimistic.
If Biden wins, the USA, the EU and Red China will move swiftly to exterminate the remnants of
Christian Civilisation - and anybody associated with it.
Bishop Vigano seems to share this view. (
https://www.lifesitenews.co...
[Anyway, we ALREADY have "soft totalitarianism". Need proof? Just go down to your HR
department and tell them that you believe homosexual activity is immoral.]
As much as somebody may dislike Trump's personality, Biden is just not an option.
Biden = ethno-cultural extinction
As adults, we don't get to indulge our own childish sensitivities. We don't get to
participate in this political fantasy-land alt-universe - where monstrous evil is praised as
virtuous, and goodness is labelled as vice.
Just go down to your HR department and tell them that you believe homosexual activity
is immoral.
I imagine you'll get a reaction similar to that if you went down to HR and ranted about
how sex outside of marriage is immoral, or lectured how sodomy is a crime against nature and
its practitioners deserve to burn in Hell.
I used to have a Ukrainian woman on my staff. When my younger staff all started in 2016
expressing support for Sanders she freaked. Then she freaked over Trump.
We are screwed. My decision to vote for Biden is predicated upon the hope that a boring
gaff prone Biden presidency will allow a return to normalcy.
A vote for Biden is a vote for the radical totalitarian left. Packing the supreme court.
Ending the Senate Filibuster and open borders. The country as we know it will be over.
Certain end of the First and Second amendments. I don't find you credible at all
"... The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out. M.I.G.A is in. ..."
"... 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG. ..."
"... please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into the Toiletpaper Option. ..."
"... 2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director ..."
"... 2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer to be named deputy director. ..."
"... Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point.. ..."
"... Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation". ..."
"... Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as bait. ..."
"... proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled. ..."
"... U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen" ..."
"... What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own. ..."
"... Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected bureaucracy is running the country ..."
"... DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before. ..."
"... The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone. ..."
"... McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices. ..."
"... He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent furlough. ..."
"... Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch .P.) and tried to overthrow the government. ..."
"... That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite." ..."
"... After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for internal and external intelligence. ..."
"... Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it. ..."
"... Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA, Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp? Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican website. ..."
"... This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man". ..."
"... No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four damned days. ..."
"... The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them ..."
"Federalist" co-founder Sean Davis reports that CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally
blocking the release of documents that will show "what actually happened" with Russiagate.
" This isn't just a scandal about Democrat projection, this is a scandal about what was a
coup planned against the incoming administration at the highest levels and I can report here
tonight that these declassifications that have come out," Davis told FOX News host Tucker
Carlson on Wednesday. "Those weren't easy to get out and there are far more waiting to get
out."
"Unfortunately those releases and declassifications according to multiple sources I've
talked to are being blocked by CIA director Gina Haspel who herself was the main link between
Washington and London ," Davis said.
"As the London station chief from John Brennan's CIA during the 2016 election. Recall, it
was London where Christopher Steele was doing all this work. And I'm told that it was Gina
Haspel personally who is blocking a continued declassification of these documents that will
show the American people the truth of what actually happened."
Watch:
pier , 1 hour ago
The REASON they won't release them: The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Isra-h-e-l-l. But NO ONE will investigate that. M.A.G.A. is out.
M.I.G.A is in.
Joseph Sullivan , 1 hour ago
No. This is all the UK. And Brit east India/pharma complex I'm serious. Israel is a UK proxy.
tion , 1 hour ago
True. 'Bloody Gina' is Trump's loyalist appointee, following through on what loyalist
Pompeo started to protect Trump Crime Family Corruption, Chabad Mafia, and ZOG.
My last
comment including my sentiments towards Gina got eaten by censorship for reasons obvious to
me, but please allow me to still congratulate Gina on reducing the almighty Third Option into
the Toiletpaper Option.
acetrumchura , 1 hour ago
2018, BREAKING: Trump appoints Haspel as first female CIA director
acetrumchura , 1 hour ago
2017: Breaking: CIA Director Mike Pompeo appoints Haspel as the first female CIA officer
to be named deputy director.
BGen. Jack Ripper , 49 minutes ago
Fathead and Esper were best buds at West Point..
NoWorries77 , 1 hour ago
Evidence destruction was one the main purposes of the Mueller "investigation".
realitybiter , 2 hours ago
Trump Has played like Tom Brady. Without either guard or tackle. Take the CIA and the FBI. They are both still ran by rats. Tree of liberty is VERY thirsty.
eatapeach , 1 hour ago
Please. If you can see what Trump has done, basically bending the US and its taxpayers
over for Israel, you'd realize he's just another in a long line of AIPAC Presidents. Ain't
nobody opposing him. CIA knows what Russia knows about him, and they're just using him as
bait.
GreatUncle , 57 minutes ago
Either they are accountable or they are treasonous. CIA is the globalist intelligence agency now.
MAGAMAN , 2 hours ago
It will happen, the fuse just keeps getting shorter. Nobody even refutes that Obama is a
traitor that spied on Trump's campaign and tried to overthrow the President. The evidence is
overwhelming and continues to snow ball.
ChiangMaiXPat , 1 hour ago
It will never happen as Trump appointed these Clowns. Imagine appointing people working
DIRECTLY against your self interest. Does this sound logical or even remotely plausible? I
don't recall it EVER happening in any other administration.
spqrusa , 2 minutes ago
He cannot do anything without Consent from the Privy Council and the circle of demons.
ThaBigPerm , 2 hours ago
Aaaand Trump can just order declassification over "her" head. Do it.
Lather Rinse Repeat , 1 hour ago
Surfaces the cabal's foot soldiers. CIA Director Haspel was a great leader when appointed. But when process drives Haspel to
block an action, the message is that Haspel is rot and so is Haspel's network. These networks run deep and wide and prosecuting 1 or 10 does nothing - you need them all,
or the problem comes back in 5 years.
Lokiban , 2 hours ago
He won't
proof is in the pudding, Hillary still walks free, none of the corrupt ones are in jail
and won't ever go to jail. Face it, Biff has many fooled.
spam filter , 2 hours ago
The way he's constantly saying, "someone should do something about this" ...Tells my
spidey sense that he has little power in the swamp.
Propaganda Phil , 2 hours ago
Isn't she the same chick who destroyed all the torture tapes? Good luck.
Mr. Bones , 1 hour ago
All power of classification is derived from the office of the executive.
He could do exactly this, unilaterally.
Farmer Tink , 1 hour ago
First, normal people who consume news from the networks, particularly those that get their
news from MSNBC and social media, would never hear this. Second, if they did find out about
this, they'd never believe it. It would cause too much cognitive dissonance for them to
believe.
They wouldn't believe it unless the four legacy broadcast media told them so. They
just live in a land of Orange Man Bad as far as news go. A plot to overthrow the US
government by Obama and the Brits would be unfathomable to them.
Someone Else , 2 hours ago
Trump had an abrasive demeanor during the debate and in general.
How could he not, when truly everybody for four years HAS fought him tooth and nail? Few
would have had the ability to stand up to what he has stood up to.
Quia Possum , 1 hour ago
He had that demeanor before he was president too, so I don't accept that excuse.
desertboy , 27 minutes ago
U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: "One of the Most Severely
Traumatized Individuals I Have Ever Seen"
justyouwait , 2 hours ago
All this crap needs to come out. Any date for the release before the election will have
the Dems and their media lap dogs crying foul. It just doesn't matter. They will NEVER
support the release of any documents that are damming to them. He should release it all right
up to the day of the election. This country needs to know all the criminality that went down.
That goes for the so called Durham report too, of which there have been so many rumors. That
one is likely to be a huge zero though by the time Barr gets done with it and then tells us
there were "improprieties" but nothing really bad. What a joke.
What bothers me more is how deep the Deep State goes in Washington. They totally control
the government and without mass firings it is impossible to even make a dent in it. This
country is gone and just doesn't know it yet. Once Kamala is crowned as queen reality will
come slamming home pdq. By the time the country realizes what has happened to them it will be
way too late, no matter how many guns they have at home. Once they cut off access to your
money, very few people will be independent enough to survive on their own.
John Couger , 2 hours ago
Trump has opened the eyes of more Americans to the simple fact that an unelected
bureaucracy is running the country
Sigh. , 2 hours ago
DJT hired this c8nt, sure, but the pool of candidates equipped to take over the CIA is
very small, and all are career swamp things. If DJT put in a true outsider, the ranks would
close and the "Director" would know nothing, could do nothing, and nothing would change. The
ranks would just wait for another President. Trump is powerless over the CIA. After all, they
could easily have him 'accidentally' killed; they've done it before.
The CIA just needs to be dissolved in acid. The political, psychological and historical
deep-rooted corruption isn't fixable by anyone.
Mclovin , 1 hour ago
McConnell would never confirm a "true outsider". Mitch is the real problem here, he tells
Trump who he will and will not confirm, so Trump has to accept one of Mitch's choices.
gcjohns1971 , 1 hour ago
He could put in Mike Flynn. And any vested employee who "closed ranks" would go on immediate and permanent
furlough.
There are only a couple or three thousand CIA agents and analysts. The rest are
contractors.
To bypass the swamp things you sideline them and put your own people in charge of the
contracts.
otschelnik , 1 hour ago
Here's something we Americans can learn from the Russians. In August 1991 after Gorbachev
left to the Black Sea for a short vacation, the heads of the USSR "power ministries" (KGB
chairman, armed forces chief of staff, Minister of Interior, etc. etc.) formed the "State
Committee for Extrordinary Situation" ( G.K.Ch
.P.) and tried to overthrow the government.
That's what happened in Washington in 2016-2018 - "GKChP Lite."
After the putsch attempt failed, the leaders were arrested and the power ministries
reorganized - the KGB was split into several departments including the FSB and SVR for
internal and external intelligence.
Trump has to do the same thing - break them up.
Occams_Razor_Trader , 1 hour ago
Kennedy wasn't a big fan................. look where it got him......................
Back and to the left.................................
LostinRMH , 2 hours ago
Trump can declassify these personally if he wants, at any time. He could even go live on
air and read portions of it to the public. He has the power, but he refuses to use it.
LostinRMH , 2 hours ago
The only timing Trump is interested in is running out the clock. If he get's a second term, a lot of these current issues will magically vanish, and new
ones will appear. This is just a scripted political show for the sheeple. It's all fake.
Oldwood , 2 hours ago
The swamp owns the government's employment agency. All hires come from within the swamp.
LooseLee , 1 hour ago
Sorry Old Man. Trump could have handled this sooooo much better and differently. I call
BS.
knightowl77 , 50 minutes ago
Here is the "B.S."
80 to 90% of the Federal Government are swamp creatures or friendly to the swamp...90 out
of 100 U.S. Senators are either swamp members or at least friendly to the swamp....Trump can
only get people confirmed to certain agencies who are Not hostile to the swamp...McConnell
and company are blocking the draining....The Dems would be even worse or just impeach
Trump....
No One else has even tried...I doubt anyone else could've survived the swamp as long as
Trump has....So you tell us HOW he could have done it better and differently?????????
AlexTheCat3741 , 1 hour ago
Not one person who has had a prior association with John Brennan should be doing anything
in the Trump Administration. And if that person cannot be fired, then reassign them to
cleaning toilets or picking up trash.
WHERE IS PRESIDENT TRUMP GETTING HIS PERSONNEL CHOICES FROM? We know Chris Cristie was one
who recommended director of the "Fibbers Bureau of Insurrection", Chris Wray and he is an
absolute disaster AND NEARLY AS BAD AS JAMES COMEY WHO MUST BE SUFFERING FROM DEMENTIA TOO AS
HE CANNOT SEEM TO REMEMBER ANYTHING WHILE UNDER OATH BEFORE A SENATE COMMITTEE.
And now we have this Gina Haspel running the CIA? ARE YOU F CKING KIDDING??
The first person to next get the ax in the Trump Administration is whoever it is that is
giving him these personnel choices, e.g., Rex Tillerson, James Matis, John Kelly, Kirsten
Nielson, Mark Esper, Mark Miley..........WHO IS PICKING THIS TRASH WHEN THE PRESIDENT NEEDS
REAL HELP PERFORMING A COLON FLUSH ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GET THE GARBAGE OUT AND TO
UNDO THE DAMAGE DONE BY 8 YEARS OF BARACK O'DINGLEBARRY AND SLOW JOE BIDEN??
Citi The Real , 1 hour ago
Trumps entire cabinet is full of Goldman Sachs, Skull and Bones, CFR, Pentagon, CIA,
Career politicians... at what point do you realize he was never going to drain the swamp?
Both candidates are a joke and so is this website for becoming a Big R Republican
website.
DeeDeeTwo , 1 hour ago
This is all kabuki theater because Trump could have signed an Executive Order releasing
everything back to JFK 3 years ago instead of flapping his yap. Comey has a Hollywood movie
coming out this fall, As Biden said, "Shut up, man".
Alfred , 2 hours ago
The Director of the CIA is a cabinet position. If she doesn't want to take direction from POTUS, she should be fired.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 53 minutes ago
Yeah, there's a reason she's blocking it. If those papers are released, it'll lead to
someone high up the food chain facing a courtroom out of necessity because people will lose
their goddamed ****.
Once that happens, you'll by necessity have to go after six more. Then six more. Then
everyone in D.C., their families, friends, and pet dogs are gonna be locked up.
They protect themselves. "Obeyance of the law is for thee, not for me."
Wild Bill Steamcock , 41 minutes ago
No one is going to prison that deserves to over this. They'll crucify some desk monkey or
intern, pat each other on the back and brag about a job well done. We've seen it the last
four years, some low level schmuck changes the footer on some emails and the DOJ is all over
it like white on rice. Totally ignoring the fact there is a seditionist movement, maybe even
treasonous, happening at a systemic level throughout government. Four years is enough time to
build a case, lord knows any one with half a mind can find all the evidence needed in four
damned days.
The a-holes running the DOJ won't prosecute Comey, or Clinton, or Brennan or any other
name we know. Because they're doing dirty deeds themselves and don't want to set the
precedent in fear those who come after them might in turn prosecute them
radical-extremist , 1 hour ago
Be aware CIA people stick together like glue. They're more loyal to each other than they
are the US or any president. Once you're in the CLUB, you're in the CLUB for life. Trump was
absolutely right about not trusting "our intelligence agencies".
12Doberman , 1 hour ago
I hate the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it
is under civilian oversight is a joke.
Max21c , 1 hour ago
the CIA...and it's been a power unto itself for a very long time. The idea that it is
under civilian oversight is a joke.
Quite true there is no oversight and the secret police community and intelligence
community are presently and have been for a long time above the law, above the Constitution,
above the very framework of government per above Congress & above the President and above
the Courts... and everybody just goes along with the pack of criminals in the security state
and accepts that they have the right to commit crimes, run criminal activities, and abuse
secret police powers... and nobody ever stands up to the Nazis and NeoNazis and these
radicals in the military secret police, military intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, National
Security Council, FBI & CIA and the rest of the criminal underworld network inside and
around the organized criminal enterprises and organized criminal networks of the security
state...
12Doberman , 1 hour ago
That's right and the civilian government is largely just a facade.
ken , 1 hour ago
CIA wasn't W-A-S for preventing 9/11...or were they involved in it? Did the missing
trillions go to Israel, and that other country, as payment for services???
_arrow
protrumpusa , 2 hours ago
Someone asked in previous post - why do democrats hate Trump? Good question.
It can't be his policies - who except illegals don't want secure borders, who doesn't want a
strong private buisiness economy, who doesn't want manufacturing jobs to be brought back from
China.
Our democrat leaders, plus Romney all have a connection to Ukraine's stolen treasury money
and Soros's money too, and Trump doesn't . This I believe is the reason democrats hate
President Trump
protrumpusa , 2 hours ago
The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a
presidential campaign - using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president's
political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse
of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to
believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he'd had any role in
Russian intelligence's suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
[snip]
In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration's
investigative agencies to monitor his party's opponent in the presidential election, on the
pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely
serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration
officials kept Trump's name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they
were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.
LEEPERMAX , 30 minutes ago
Gina Haspel worked directly for the instigator of the Crossfire Hurricane operation
– John Brennan. It would have been impossible for Haspel not to have known about the
British spying from London since it was reported in UK newspaper on a weekly basis.
She certainly was controlling Stefan
Halper , Josef
Mifsud ,
Stephan Roh , Alexander Downer, Andrew Wood, John McCain, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and
the other conspirators.
Kan , 2 hours ago
The FBI and CIA are the enemy of the people. There is little doubt at this point that they
serve nobody but the bankers that formed the organization and themselves.
Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 2 hours ago
How convenient.
CIA operative Trump nominates Haspel to be the CIA director, after CIA Operative Trump
picked CIA chief Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, thereafter
Epstein is Trumpincided on CIA Operatives Barr Pompeo Trump's watch, while running smoke
cover for the CIA's Obama's False Flag National Government.
Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a meeting
at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement conference
room.
The greatest False Flag ever? Brainwashing Americans to think Constitutional Federal
Government exists.
Kefeer , 17 minutes ago
The people who want to know and care to know the truth already know the truth. It is
suspect that Trump appoints people like Christopher Wray and Gina Haspel and I really do not
know what to make of it - is he part of the swamp or making bad decisions? I honestly do not
know, but my biblical lens filter tells me we are in trouble regardless of the outcomes
because so many of the institutions in government and industry are so corrupt.
Maltheus , 29 minutes ago
Trump is absolutely incompetent, when it comes to selecting people. He always has been.
Flynn was one of the few, who was halfway decent, and he got thrown to the wolves. Pretty
much everyone else, he's ever chosen, has knifed him in the back, and most of us saw it
coming a mile away.
Tuffmug , 13 minutes ago
The Swamp is deep and has had twenty + years to grow . Trump had to chose the ones who
stunk least from a slimy pool of corrupted officials and fight against every agency, each
filled with deep state snakes. I'm just surprised he is still breathing.
Kinskian , 29 seconds ago
So his incompetence begins and ends with "selecting people" and that gets no downvotes
from the 'tards. I understand why. You're still blaming other people for Trump's failures in
office instead of placing the blame squarely with HIM. He is incompetent in his role as
President, and that is his responsibility.
LEEPERMAX , 36 minutes ago
Gina Haspel would have known about the coup. If she has not reported all of this to the
President Trump, she is complicit in the overthrow attempt and is guilty of HIGH TREASON.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 49 minutes ago
Spooks run this world. And they certainly like power, and money. But do you want to know
what they like most of all?
Information.
Control of information drives everything else. And anyone who has even sniffed that world
knows to get quality information you can't buy it. Instead you have to trade information of
equal value.
We're not important enough to have the opportunity to know what they know. I don't know
about you, but I'm a little angry about that.
StealthBomber , 30 minutes ago
That is because they are un-accountable.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 30 minutes ago
and untouchable.
Take one out and the whole thing collapses.
insanelysane , 51 minutes ago
Don't think we need declassifications to know what happened. We know what
happened.
as I've stated many times, governments would be completely unstable if the government
legally proved that organizations within the government were involved is sedition. With the
IRS scandal the deflection was that a few rogue employees did some things even though the
entire IRS was involved in harassing far right and far left organizations.
The problem with Russiagate is that none of the rogue employees are willing to to go down
without taking everyone involved down. The IRS rogues got nice payouts and no prison
time.
radical-extremist , 1 hour ago
She doesn't want them released because obviously it implicates her in Strzok's Crossfire
Hurricane scheme. It also puts mud on the face of MI6, which is why Trump might be
hesitant.
October is young.
12Doberman , 1 hour ago
Haspel is also likely a figurehead in many respects. From what I've read about CIA over
the years those at the top have competing agendas and don't trust and share information with
each other. The idea that a president is sworn in ever 4-8 years and is brought up to speed
on everything they are doing is laughable...and likely impossible. No president fully
controls the CIA and it has it's own agenda that runs across and through
administrations...may as well call it the head of the deep state snake.
Felix da Kat , 2 hours ago
Haspel is a Brennan redux.
The deep state is much deeper than anyone dare thought.
If Trump cannot do unwind the DS,then all is lost.
If Biden gets in, he will only serve to further entrench DS operatives.
Looking bleak out there, folks.
1nd1v1s1ble1 , 3 hours ago
*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER
been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought
to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason cult who ritually perform their televised 'skits'
to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a Republic-
newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant sheeple lap
it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan political machine,
there is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these politicians are
simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint gonna save ya, bumbling joe
aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of 'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A
F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would prefer you were dead.
Even the POTUS cannot do anything in DC alone, no matter what he wants to do. He needs
people to cooperate or follow orders. It seems many or most of the people around him are deep
state spies. I think they are scared ****less of what Trump might try to declassify. I think
the CIA would destroy evidence before providing proof of a seditious coup. If you've
committed murder or treason, destroying evidence seems like jaywalking.
Now we know Haspel is personally involved and we probably know exactly why she is blocking
the release of this information.
Jack_Ewing , 17 minutes ago
Trump was supposed to drain the swamp but surrounded himself with the scariest of swamp
creatures, this Medusa-like entity being one of the most terrifying. Pompeo, Mnuchin, Wray,
Miller, Haspel, Kushner, and the chief of the all, the official cover-upper for the Deep
State for the last 40 years, William Barr.
donkey_shot , 45 minutes ago
surprise, surprise: one-time iraqi detainee torturer and current CIA chief gina haspel is
a nasty piece of work: geez, whodathunk?
The only reason I can think of for holding these documents is that the conspiracy is so
vast and intricate, it might destroy 80 plus percent of the government! If that's what it
comes down to, so be it! Blow the whole PHUCKING thing to kingdom come!
Philthy_Stacker , 45 minutes ago
An accurite assumption.
LOL123 , 1 hour ago
Gina Haspel doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
"The most explosive revelation was that the dossier was
bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee , a
fact that the Clinton campaign took pains to hide, that Clinton officials lied about, and
that Fusion GPS refused to reveal on its own. It wasn't an intelligence report at all. It was
a political hit job paid for by Trump's opponent."
Political issues " incorporated" into public stock holding corporations.
"Individual shareholders cannot generally sue over the deprivation of a corporation's
rights; only the board of directors has the standing to assert a corporation's constitutional
rights in court. [7]
-USA
Ever since Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 2010 decision allowing unlimited
corporate and union spending on political issues, Americans have been debating whether, as
Mitt Romney said, "Corporations are people, my friend."
The question came to the Supreme Court in a challenge to regulations implementing
President Obama's landmark health care law. Those regulations require employers with 50 or
more employees to provide those employees with comprehensive health insurance, which must
include certain forms of contraception. The contraception requirement was designed to protect
the rights of women. Studies show that access to
contraception has positive benefits for women's education, income, mental health, and family
stability.
since a political entity ( DNC and Hillary Campaign funded a public corporation which
is a " corporate personhood" and can be sued it is open to discovery in a court of
law.
the chickens have come home to roost....as Mitt Romney says....corporations are the
citizens "best friend".
R.G. , 1 hour ago
Citizens ARE corporaions.
4Y_LURKER , 1 hour ago
Finkel is Einhorn!
Einhorn is Finkel!
Totally_Disillusioned , 1 hour ago
If Sean Davis was able to unearth this, President Trump, Pompeo have known this for some
time and Ratcliffe certainly knows this. the question is "why is she allowed to block
disclosure?". None of the players are currently in service and would not be at risk if their
involvement was disclosed. What possibly is the excuse? Are they using the old excuse of not
revealing sources and methods?
All these people need a stern reminder the govt is owned by the people...they work for us.
So far we are the only people kept in the dark. Breakup the intel 17 agencies and re-engineer
down to two - one domestic and one international.
SirBarksAlot , 1 hour ago
It's always a national security issue when it's your responsibility to release the
documents that would incriminate you.
Gunston_Nutbush_Hall , 3 hours ago
Exactly why CIA Trump hand selected her. Exactly for the same reason CIA Trump hand
selected BARR.
TO PROVIDE CLEAN SMOKE N COVER FOR THEIR CIA NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Barr: CIA operative
It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone
out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.
Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael
Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno
(1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.
Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting
in 1971. Barr's youth career goal was to head the CIA.
CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA
operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of
Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy
(Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA's "legal office"
and Bush's inner circle, and worked alongside Bush's longtime CIA enforcers Theodore "Ted"
Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines, and others, several of whom were likely involved
with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy assassination, and numerous southeast Asian
operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA
abuses.
Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean
opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
Barr joined George H.W. Bush's legal/intelligence team during Bush's vice presidency
(under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief Legal Counsel
to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of
the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also "fixing" the legal end,
ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure or
arrest.
In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to "attack criminal organizations",
drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr would preserve,
protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use Justice
Department power to escape punishment.
Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes,
including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all
crimes of state committed by Bush
Barr provided legal cover for Bush's illegal foreign policy and war crimes
Barr left Washington, and went through the "rotating door" to the corporate world,
where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies. In 2007
and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law firm
Kirkland &
Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John Bolton,
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys.
K&E's clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt Romney's Bain
Capital.
A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the
Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.
...Shortly after taking office in 1999, Jesse Ventura writes he was asked to attend a
meeting at the state Capitol. He says 23 CIA agents were waiting for him in a basement
conference room.
Bobby Farrell Can Dance , 3 hours ago
The Navalny "incident" is the latest pathetic CIA and British MI6 operation and the
Belarus incitement. Sloppy, unoriginal and going to backfire in their stupid faces.
Everybody knows the evil empire wants Nordstream II dead, Navalny is the latest lever and
that woman they recognized as leader of Belarus is as laughable as that Guaido goon they
recognized in Venezuela, but he's actually outside of Venezuela - yeah that's how popular he
is. Western intelligence agenices are hacks, they are past their peak.
John Hansen , 3 hours ago
The real stupid thing is the West will succeed.
Spinifex , 20 minutes ago
Christopher Steele is THE GUY who 'doctored all this up'. Why has he not been bought
before congress and asked questions?
Sergi Scripal worked for Christopher Steele. Sergi Scripal earned tens of thousands of
pounds 'providing information' to Christopher Steele. Why is he 'not being asked questions?
He's not 'dead'. Sergi Scripal is 'alive and well' and 'being hidden' by the U.K. Government
'for his own safty.' The U.K. can provide 'access to Sergi Scripal.
Pablo Miller worked for Christopher Steele. Pablo Miller was Sergi Scripals 'handler' with
MI6. Pablo Miller was also the 'last person to talk to Sergi Scripal' before Sergi Scripal
'surccumed to Novichok poison.' Why is Pablo Miller (aka: Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo -
https://gosint.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/who-is-mi6-officer-pablo-miller/
All three worked for Orbis Business Intelligence the company that wrote the 'Steele
Dossier' that Gina Haspel had access to and 'approved' sending onto the FBI and CIA. All
three, Christopher Steele, Sergi Scripal and Pablo Miller are 'alive and well' and all three
are able to provide information about the Steele Dossier, what was in the Steele Dossier, and
WHERE the information in the Steele Dossier came from. Ask the questions dammit, and you'll
get the answers.
headless blogger , 58 minutes ago
Not a fan of Trump, although I voted for him the first time, but he will be in serious
trouble if Biden gets into office as there are too many vengeful people on that side of the
isle. They attempted a coup d'etat which is the worse treason, where most of these people
would be executed in "normal" times.
So, they HAVE TO win at all costs, in their thinking. They will then turn the tables on
Trump as well as the entire Conservative camp. It looks like an ugly future if they win. If
Trump wins, it will be ugly too.
Sure signs to get the hell out now if you can.
The Technocracy crowd is behind all of this, btw. They are waiting for the full collapse
at which time we will be inundated with Tech Billionaires coming forward to "save us".
BEWARE!!
4 play_arrow 1
1nd1v1s1ble1 , 1 hour ago
*sigh* As if anything is going to come of this...when has any high ranking politician EVER
been taken to task or incarcerated for their crimes? It's the same political theater brought
to you by the MSM/Jesuit/Jooish/Freemason Satanic cult who ritually perform their televised
'skits' to the masses to make it appear as if justice exists or better yet, we have a
Republic- newsflash: it died a long, long time ago. The frightened mask-wearing, compliant
sheeple lap it up every f'n time-when do you awake and realize there is no bi-partisan
political machine? There is no blue versus red, just like their cronies in Hollyweird, these
colluding politicians are simply actors who were too ugly to make it there, orange man aint
gonna save ya, bumbling joe aint gonna save ya, understand Stockholm Syndrome-survivors of
'merica....they DO NOT GIVE A F#*K ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY and would actually prefer you
were dead.
Better/cheaper than sending US military to fight in another useless war.
headless blogger , 1 hour ago
Gina Haspel was selected by Trump!! When you take into consideration Trump's selections of
Haspel, Bolton, and many others, it becomes obvious there is someone in his admin that is
directing him to bring these people on. He brings them on and then they betray him.
5onIt , 1 hour ago
Pence is the dude you are looking for.
Haspel was the CIA Station Chief in London, when this was all going down.
Be sure, she has chit to hide.
LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago
John Brennan led the coup this side of the Atlantic, while Gina Haspel , who was in the
CIA London office at the time, worked the coup from London as the CIA chief in cooperation
with GCHQ and Robert Hannigan. Both are creepy, corrupt traitors of America.
The current head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, oversaw one such site
where torture was carried out. ... Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Seton
Hall University ...
y_arrow
Mister Delicious , 2 hours ago
She was Brennan's London pet.
She should be fired and escorted from the building, and then DOJ NSD should open an
investigation into her contacts with Brennan.
Think there might be a Demstate coup attempt?
Well, don't you imagine any friend of John Brennan's is not a friend of Trump.
I don't care how much you love Orange Jesus - he has picked absolutely terrible people
over and over and over.
Good DNI now but he needs to take charge.
richsob , 3 hours ago
Orange Fat Boy is getting played like a violin. You and I both know it. Does he? Probably
because you can see it on his face but he's just not willing to do what it would take to get
everything out into the open. And if he tries to expose everything after he's lost the
election nobody will listen to him......even you and I. It will be too late then.
We would think that the New York Slimes would know something about losses. After all, they
paid $1.1 Billion in 1993 for The Boston Globe and in 2013, sold it for $70 Million to
businessman John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, and a massive 93%
loss.
But it's worse than that because included in that sale is BostonGlobe.com ; Boston.com ; the direct-mail marketing company Globe Direct; the
company's 49 percent interest in Metro Boston, a free daily paper; Telegram.com and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The Times
bought the Telegram & Gazette for $295 million in 1999.
We should be convinced to pay any attention to Fake News Tabloid, The New York Slimes,
given that kind of Business Acumen? I don't think so.
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
Hope & Change, Drain the swamp, End the wars
Angelic Obama allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Republicans.
Angelic Trump allegedly prevented from saving us by "deep state" Democrats.
Poor us, our chosen leaders and parties are always so blameless in failing us.
protrumpusa , 4 hours ago
President Trump has gotten rid just about everyone in this article I found 3 years ago
> The ATLANTIC COUNCIL is funded by BURISMA, GEORGE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION &
others. It was a CENTRIST, MILITARISTIC think tanks,now turned leftist group
> JOE BIDEN extorted Ukraine to FIRE the prosecutor investigating BURISMA, HUNTER's
employer.
> LTC VINDMAN & FIONA HILL met MANY TIMES with DANIEL FRIED of the ATLANTIC
COUNCIL. FIONA HILL is a former CoWorker of CHRISTOPHER STEELE !
> AMBASSADOR YOVANOVITCH is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, is PRAISED in their
documents, gave Ukraine a "do not prosecute" list, was involved in PRESSURING Ukraine to not
prosecute GEORGE SOROS Group.
> BILL TAYLOR has a financial relationship with the ATLANTIC COUNCIL and the US UKRAINE
BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC) which is also funded by BURISMA.
> TAYLOR met with THOMAS EAGER (works for ADAM SCHIFF) in Ukraine on trip PAID FOR by
the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. This just days before TAYLOR first texts about the "FAKE" Quid Pro Quo
!
> TAYLOR participated in USUBC Events with DAVID J. KRAMER (JOHN MCCAIN advisor) who
spread the STEELE DOSSIER to the media and OBAMA officials.
> JOE BIDEN is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he rolled out his foreign policy
vision while VP there, He has given speeches there, his adviser on Ukraine, MICHAEL CARPENTER
(heads the Penn Biden Center) is a FELLOW at the ATLANTIC COUNCIL.
> KURT VOLKER is now Senior Advisor to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he met with burisma
But at 1000 I dutifully tuned my "record player" (joe reference) to CSPAN-3. Comey claims
that he knew little of "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI run clandestine campaign against Trump
and all his vassals and works. This, in spite of his having been Director of the FBI while it
was carried out. "I knew nussing, nussing" was his basic response to just about every question.
Graham, the chairman of the judiciary committee got lathered up about that and laughed at the
idea, laughed openly. He and Comey used to be pals.
President Trump took to the debate stage tonight shortly after Tucker Carlson aired and it
seemed like he was on the right track with his feisty hits on Joe Biden and plan to help all
Americans by rebuilding the economy. Pedro Gonzalez, a popular guest of top-rated Tucker
Carlson's show spoke to Tucker about why more Hispanics may be supporting President Trump.
Here's a clue, it's not by pandering. It's by showing the American people that he is a strong,
alpha leader.
It's by not treating Hispanics as though they need to be put on some higher playing field
than White Americans to show them they matter. They already know they matter, they just want to
know what President Trump is going to do to make America a safer country for business owners
and law-abiding citizens who don't care to be known by their race, to begin with.
"People who work for a living don't like disorder because they're vulnerable to it". "You're
right," Pedro says. "The GOP is starting to recycle these talking points while denigrating
their white base they patronize Latinos by saying things like, one group of people does the job
that another group doesn't want to do, it's not just untrue, it's morally repugnant," he says.
Gonzales goes on to say that the GOP should stop trying to beat the Democrats at their own
game. He says Trump should play his own game because "he's good at it and it's more popular"
and he goes on to describe his thoughts more below.
Perhaps President Trump should start listening to the organic voices from the right and stop
listening to paid bureaucrats who are out of touch with reality going into the election as he
faces a more challenging demographic voter situation than any Republican presidential candidate
ever.
No one claims to be an isolationist, but foreign policy analysts keep imagining and fearing
a "resurgence" of isolationism around every corner. This fear was on display in a recent
Atlanticarticle
by Charles Kupchan, who tries to rehabilitate the label in order to oppose the substance of a
policy of nonintervention and non-entanglement. Kupchan allows that a policy of avoiding
entangling alliances and staying out of European wars was important for the growth and
prosperity of the United States, but then rehearses the same old and misleading story about the
terrible "isolationist" interwar years that we have heard countless times before. This
misrepresents the history of that period and compromises our ability to rethink our foreign
policy today.
Kupchan's article is not just an exercise in beating a dead horse, since he fears that the
same thing that happened between the world wars is happening again: "If the 19th century was
isolationism's finest hour, the interwar era was surely its darkest and most deluded. The
conditions that led to this misguided run for cover are making a comeback." Kupchan wants to
borrow a little from the people he calls "isolationists" so that the U.S. will remain
thoroughly ensnared in most of its global commitments.
At the same time that he warns that "U.S. statecraft has become divorced from popular will,"
he seems to want to keep it this way by rejecting what he calls the "isolationist temptation."
If "a majority of the country favors either America First or global disengagement," as he says,
the goal seems to be to ignore what the majority wants in favor of making a few tweaks to the
same old strategy of U.S. primacy. Those tweaks aren't going to lessen popular support for a
reduced U.S. role in the world, and they will likely make the public even more disillusioned
with the remaining costs and demands of U.S. "leadership."
The key thing to remember in all this is that the U.S. has never been isolationist in its
foreign relations. The thing that Kupchan calls America's "default setting" is not real.
Isolationism is the pejorative term that expansionists and interventionists have used over the
last century to ridicule and dismiss opposition to unnecessary wars. Isolationism as U.S.
policy in the 1920s and 1930s is a myth , and the myth is
deployed whenever there has been a serious challenge to the status quo in post-1945 U.S.
foreign policy. Bear Braumoeller summed it up very well in his article , "The
Myth of American Isolationism," this way: "the characterization of America as isolationist in
the interwar period is simply wrong." We can't learn from the past if we insist on distorting
it. As William Appleman Williams put it in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy , "It not
only deforms the history of the decade from 1919 to 1930, but it also twists the story of
American entry into World War II and warps the record of the cold war." Williams also remarked
in a note that the use of the term isolationist "has thus crippled American thought about
foreign policy for 50 years." Today we can say that it has done so for a century.
Our government eschewed permanent alliances for most of its history, and it refrained from
taking sides in the European Great Power conflicts of the nineteenth century, but it never
sought to cut itself from the world and could not have done that even if it had wished to do
so. The U.S. was a commercial republic from the start, and it cultivated economic and
diplomatic ties with as many states as possible. You can call the steady expansion of the U.S.
across North America and into the Pacific and Caribbean "isolationism," but that just shows how
misleading and inaccurate the label has always been.
Post-WWI America was a rising power and increasingly involved in the affairs of the world.
Its economic and diplomatic engagement with the world increased during these years. If it
wasn't involved in the way that later internationalists would have liked, that didn't make the
U.S. isolationist. Braumoeller makes this point explicitly: "America was not isolationist in
affairs relating to international security in Europe for the bulk of the period: in fact, it
was perhaps more internationalist than it had ever been." The U.S. was behaving as a great
power, but one that strove to maintain its neutrality. That was neither deluded nor disastrous,
and we need to stop pretending that it was if we are ever going to be able to make the needed
changes to our foreign policy today.
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Kupchan acknowledges that there has to be an "adjustment" after the last several decades of
overreach, but he casts this as a way of preventing more significant retrenchment: "The
paramount question is whether that adjustment takes the form of a judicious pullback or a more
dangerous retreat." No one objects to the desire for a responsible reduction in U.S.
commitments, but one person's "judicious pullback" will often be denounced as a "dangerous
retreat" by others. Just consider how many times we have been warned about a U.S. "retreat"
from the Middle East over the last 11 years. Even now, the U.S. is still taking part in
multiple wars across the region, and the "retreat" we have been told has happened several times
never seems to take place. Warning about the perils of an "isolationist comeback" hardly makes
it more likely that these withdrawals will ever happen.
He recommends that "judicious retrenchment should entail shedding U.S. entanglements in the
periphery, not in the strategic heartlands of Europe and Asia." Certainly, any reduction in
unnecessary U.S. commitments is welcome, but a thorough rethinking of U.S. foreign policy has
to include every region. Kupchan is right to criticize slapdash, incompetent withdrawals, but
one gets the impression that he thinks there shouldn't be any withdrawals except from the
Middle East. He cites "Russian and Chinese threats" as the main reasons not to pull back at all
in Europe or Asia, but this seems like an uncritical endorsement of the status quo.
It is in East Asia where the U.S. might be fighting a war against a major, nuclear-armed
power in the future, and it is also there where the U.S. has some of the wealthiest and most
capable allies. If the U.S. can't reduce its exposure to the risk of a major war where that
risk is the greatest and its allies are strongest, when will it ever be able to do that?
Reducing the U.S. military presence in East Asia will make it easier to manage U.S.-Chinese
tensions, and it will give allies an additional incentive to assume more responsibility for
their own security.
The U.S. has far more security commitments than it can afford and far more than can possibly
be justified by our own security interests. That includes, but is not limited to, our
overcommitment to the Middle East. Our foreign entanglements have been allowed to grow and
spread to such an extent over the last seventy-five years that modest pruning won't be good
enough to put U.S. foreign policy on a sound footing that will have reliable public support.
There needs to be a much more comprehensive review of all U.S. commitments to determine which
ones are truly necessary for our security and which ones are not. Ruling out the bulk of those
commitments as untouchable in advance is a mistake.
There is
broad public support for constructive international engagement, but there is remarkably
little backing for preserving U.S. hegemony in its current form. In order to have a more
sustainable foreign policy, the U.S. needs to scale back its ambitions in most parts of the
world, and it needs to shift more of the security burdens for different regions to the
countries that have the most at stake. That should be done deliberately and carefully, but it
does need to happen if we are to realign our foreign policy with protecting the vital interests
of the United States. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics
Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The
American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Richard Hofsteder is largely responsible for this falsehood, like he is for making
"populist" a by-word, as Thomas Frank points out in his new book.
I prefer the term "non-interventionist" or Washingtonian, myself. I continue to be stuck
by the amazing wisdom of Washington's Farewell Address (largely written by Hamilton). It
really should be our guide to this day.
Try a seance and tell this Augusto Cesar Sandino. Two American brothers who owned a gold
mine in his country had another brother at the State Department. That's how FP was
"successful."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Europe would have been better off if the US had stayed out of WWI and let major
belligerents fight it out until they reached a cease fire on their own. The US entry into the
war, tipped the scales in favor of Britain and France and resulted in a very harsh peace
treaty being imposed on Germany in 1919. Four years later, Germany's currency collapsed,
wiping out the savings of millions of average Germans. The Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 made
economic conditions for people in central Europe very bad and conrtibuted to the rising
popularity of the Nazi party in Germany.
The world is so much smaller today than it was when this country was formed and organized
by the Founding Fathers. (Mothers were not allowed)
The idea of international associations and cooperation is required with today's world.
When some country like China sneezes, the whole world needs a face mask!
The Age of Daniel Boone is dead. America must be fully engaged in world matters. That does
not mean going into every country with our military. America needs to continue to give some
leadership in world affairs. It would be suicidal to close the windows to the rest of the
world.
I agree. The world is interconnected, engagement is a necessity. The problem with the US
FP at this point is to see every issue as an opportunity to throw around our military weight
and call it "engagement". Being fully engaged in the world is a state department issue -
smart and educated diplomats working the lines of communication and cooperation with every
nation to build a reputation for US leadership, to foment peace, and to build prosperity.
Obviously, under Trump and Pompeo this is a waste of breath.
Worth noting, a friend of mine, ex-CIA, has made an absolute fortune off of our military
preoccupations. And even he said (perhaps exaggerating) that you could get rid of 90% of the
traditional military with little or no loss in actual national security. Most of it is, as he
said, corporate welfare and window dressing.
(Of course he then said you should spend what you've saved entirely on cyber-security)
Using the 'I' Word for War and Profit
Column by Tim Hartnett, posted on April 03, 2013
in War and Peace
Column by Tim Hartnett.
Exclusive to STR
For about a century now, Humpty-Dumpty has been the go-to man for fans of elaborate
American foreign adventures. Unwelcome inquiries are put down with a one word incantation
that blesses and immunizes government-funded schemes that are always cash cows for somebody.
"Isolationist" means exactly what its users mean it to mean--no more and no less. Every entry
on the first page of my online search for the word "isolationism" provided the same
definition: "The national policy of abstaining from political or economic relations with
other countries." Nobody on the furthest fringes of the political spectrum who gets ink or
air time comes close calling for a plan fitting that description.
The word remains in healthy circulation despite the total absence of public figures
advocating anything of the kind. Its real linguistic purpose is to obstruct examination of
extra-territorial programs that don't work and often do considerable harm.
Most of us first learned of the dreaded I-beast in grade school study of WWI. Back in that
good old day, the authorities had sense enough to put these naysayers in prisons after
allowing hostile crowds to have at 'em for an hour or so. If the folks at The Weekly
Standard, the Heritage Foundation, AEI, Fox News et al get their way, hoosegow entrepreneurs
will be back in that market before too long. How could anyone oppose US entry into The Great
War, anyway? It's what catapulted us to the top of the economic heap. We are probably only
one good war away from reclaiming that title.
The first people to stoke lynch mobs with the "I" word claimed we were fighting a war "to
make the world safe for democracy." The Irish, Indians, Algerians, Pacific Islanders, Russian
peasants, Filipinos, the Congolese and millions of other Africans were not educated well
enough to accept this as readily as freedom-loving Americans did. Without guys like J.P.
Morgan, J.D. Rockefeller, Charles Schwab and others who hired PR men to keep the country
thinking right thoughts, foreigners are often easily misled. Isolationists are as rare on
Wall Street as atheists are in foxholes.
To understand the perfidious way that isolationism works, try and visualize a typical
slice of American policy from say 1968. Some experts and officers in a room at the Pentagon
decide a spot on the map could use a good bombing, and the order is relayed via satellite to
South Vietnam. At five they leave work to fight rush hour traffic and get home in time for a
smoke with Walter Cronkite. Some Navy fliers get dispatched, and once the napalm is fixed to
the jets, they're airborne. Thirty-five minutes later, the right patch below them, it's bombs
away and a U-turn. An undernourished five year old girl foolishly lives nearby and an eight
ounce blob of gel burning at 1,800 degrees lands on her back. She is immediately screaming
and burns for six minutes until an adult manages to put the incinerating child out.
Meanwhile, the flyboys are on terra firma again with beers, joints, Steppenwolf on the
turntable and much lamenting of St. Louis' undeserved defeat at the hands of Detroit. The
little girl's screaming still pierces the tropical air. The engineers and the chemists who
designed the people-melting device are on the other side of the world asleep in their
suburban beds. And the tiny thing can't stop screaming. The next day at Harvard, William
Kristol is expounding on communism, the domino theory, social responsibility, moral courage
and careful reading. And the 32 lb. waif is still going through an endless agony that no man
of oxen strength should ever have to endure in a lifetime. Isolating on these kinds of
details misses the "big picture," I've been told. Only communists, terrorists and other
abominable -ists focus on this kind of inhumane minutiae.
Forty years later, John McCain was wittily singing the lyrics "bomb Iran" while doubtless
a child was on fire somewhere that US ordnance had exploded. The one certain outcome of such
events is a profit for weapons manufacturers. Isolationists are oddly skeptical of the many
benefits anti-isolationists find in all-purpose bombing campaigns. What's always clear is
that people who speak publicly about their love for humanitarian bombing expect to be paid
for it.
There are a lot of things that "isolationists" just don't know, and it must be for this
ignorance they are so despised by both mainstream media and Wall Street's favorite
politicians. They don't know why we have 50,000 soldiers in Germany or another 30,000 in
Japan. Why we paid to keep an incorrigible thug like Mubarak in business for 30 years. Why we
need missiles in Eastern Europe. Why we helped every bloodthirsty, misanthropic power monger
in Central America. Why we needed to help Turkey get Ocalan. Why South Ossetia's
nationalistic prerogatives are our business. Why foreign governments should be pressured by
our diplomats on Wall Street's behalf. Why our government takes some kind of stand in every
foreign war, election, national event or internal matter of almost any kind. How we can
indict one country for human rights violations while buddying up to worse offenders like
Saudi Arabia regularly. Why our foreign initiatives proceed based on fantastic ideologies in
contempt of facts. These are just a few of the quandaries that afflict the minds of people
who aren't buying the divine right of American altruist aristocracy to fine tune the rest of
the world. They aren't exactly keen on the hyper-interventionist tendencies that keep so many
beltway bandits in the chips, either.
What they also don't know is why the elite media, the experts and elected officials, if
they truly understand these things, can't be called upon to explain any of them to the rest
of us satisfactorily. On March 20, Dana Milbank called Rand Paul an "isolationist" in his
column without any explanation. In the future, he might want to right click on Microsoft Word
and choose the Look up option before deploying the term.
After American involvement in Vietnam ended, many proponents of the action claimed the
death toll there would have been even worse without our presence. Others go so far as to
maintain that fighting in such conflicts protects US citizens' privileges, like freedom of
speech, here at home. They expect us all to believe that "Isolationists," by any definition,
wouldn't get away with spouting their un-American propaganda in public places, or on
television if any were allowed there, but for a policy that napalms little girls.
While people smeared with the I-word persistently point out that they are merely against
policies that are misguided, immoral and often murderous, their detractors insist that what
they really oppose is America. In the "big picture" mindset of the interventionist, you can't
have one without the other.
Beat them over the head with a stick, that might do it.
As for the entanglements in east Asia, none of the countries under direct US vassalage
have major disputes with China and do not need US protection. And it is likely that without
the US Korea would be on a path to reunification. The US is trying to beat everyone in line
to show who's the boss... So it seems, this K guy, like all his ilk are presenting things in
a very Manichean way: either primacy or "isolationism". There is so much in between these
two...
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During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties -- three Republicans and three
Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush's side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with
President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates
of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.
No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is
elected as our 45th president.
Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief.
I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president -- keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only
unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.
I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In
these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her
mind if presented with a compelling argument.
I also saw the secretary's commitment to our nation's security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead
in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country
is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision
of all -- whether to put young American women and men in harm's way.
Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important
colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was
a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.
I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid
by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, "Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner."
In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits
he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.
These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions
based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness
to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.
The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging
our national security.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual
and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting
him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.
Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded
two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American,
interests -- endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light
to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Trump has also undermined security with his call for barring Muslims from entering the country. This position, which so clearly
contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism
is a war between religions.
In fact, many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country, including the man, whom I cannot identify, who ran
the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center for nearly a decade and who I believe is most responsible for keeping America safe since the
Sept. 11 attacks.
My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing
now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.
Michael J. Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013.
"... In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016. ..."
"... The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC. ..."
"... The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all." ..."
"... The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative. ..."
"... I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid. ..."
"... Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? ..."
"... "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly." ..."
"... Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ? ..."
"... This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real. ..."
"... Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria."" ..."
"... The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets! ..."
"... The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest. ..."
"... Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement. ..."
"... A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well. ..."
"... Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China. ..."
Where the allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections made up by
the Clinton campaign?
A letter sent by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe seems
to suggest so :
On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring,
sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence
acquired "insight" into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized
in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack
of the Democratic National Committee.
...
Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this
allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
exaggeration or fabrication."
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on
July 26 2016.
So U.S. intelligence spying on Russian intelligence analysts found that the Russians
believed that Clinton started a 'Trump is supported by the Russian hacking of the DNC'
campaign. The Russian's surely had reason to think that.
Emails from the Democratic National Committee were published by Wikileaks on July 22
2016, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. They proved that during the primaries
the DNC had actively worked against candidate Bernie Sanders.
On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge,
the very first
allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump.
It is likely that the Russian analysts had seen that.
Mook's TV appearance was probably a test balloon raised to see if such claims would
stick.
Two days later Clinton allegedly approved campaign plans to emphasize such claims.
In the infamous Steele
dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that
is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28
2016.
The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak,
later said that his company
never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks . Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed.
They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It
was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in
the FBI and CIA.
Posted by b on September 30, 2020 at 16:04 UTC |
Permalink
Are you trying to tell me b that "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton is suspected of
wrongdoing?/snark
I am all for bringing down the whole house of corrupt cards that fronts for the private
finance cult. The Clintons are just examples of semi-recent to recent corruption. Obama is in
that boat as is Biden and others.
But just remember that Trump was already entirely corrupt before (s)elected into power.
Trump is just another front for global private finance evil that humanity must face.
Another "conspiracy theory" turned into conspiracy fact.
With regards to Killary being "supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of
anti-Trump activists...", well, it's a pay-to-play world and CGI was the
piggybank at that particular time...
thanks b... the timeline certainly fits and is consistent here.... larry johnson at sst has
an article up on the same topic... how much of this is coming out now due the election and
how much of it is coming out now, just because it happens to be coming out now??
It's hard to tell when Trump is ever being truthful, but in last night's debate he clearly
stated:
"There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after
me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day
I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to
our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've
caught 'em all."
Whether that is indicative of an imminent substantial October surprise i guess we will all
have to wait and see.
The murder/robbery of Seth Rich has frequently been described as "botched" , which I
have always felt was a strange way to describe a murder. It is as if the mass media were
trying to exculpate the murderer even though we are supposed to not know who the murderer
actually is.
So nothing was taken from Rich, but perhaps that is because the murderer couldn't find
what he was looking for? The USB thumb drive with the purloined emails, maybe? Of course, by
the time Rich was murdered the emails had already been passed along to Wikileaks, but I
suppose the murderer might not have known that at the time. That would make an effort to
retrieve the emails "botched" , wouldn't it? This suggested to me from the moment that
I heard it that those in the mass media who seeded the story of a robbery being
"botched" in fact were knowingly covering for the effort to control the leak which was
what was "botched" .
The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole
"Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media
both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the
public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative.
With no evidence at all my suspicion is that Rich was killed as a crime of passion committed
by a hotheaded member of his own family, which would explain both the family's reticence and
the somewhat muted investigation.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
That explains why Bernie Sanders suddenly became the "sheep dog". He flat out doesn't want
to be assassinated and doesn't want his family to be also assassinated.
While it would be a boon for the nation, I rather doubt Trump will have Barr indict the
Clintons for their crimes or go after the daily fraud committed at the Fed or on Wall Street.
I doubt Trump has any inkling that in order to truly make America Great Again he must first
destroy the Financial Parasites who caused America's downfall in the first place. Thirty-four
days to go.
Assange repeatedly stated russia didn't leak the emails. i saw no compelling reason to think
he would lie about it. then when the steel dossier came out it was so over the top and reeked
of fabrication. the whole thing was so far fetched and then ratcheted up 1000 fold after she
lost the election as an excuse. she never took any responsibility for her loss.
i think what amazes me most is how the media, and everyone following along, believed this
story that drove the narrative for years. this ridiculous obsession with russia was all part
of a coverup to distract the public from how rotten to the core the dnc is.
The mention of Seth Rich in connection with Russiagate prompted a hazy recollection of an
article over at SST by Larry C Johnson (LCJ), who has been exposing flaws in the Russiagate
fiasco for several years. LCJ deduced from the publicly-available Wikileaks/DNC files that
they couldn't have been hacked over the WWW because the timestamp for each file indicated
that those files came from a portable device, a thumb drive. From that info, and Assange
being very upset about the murder of Seth Rich, LCJ concluded that Rich sent the DNC files to
Wikileaks.
I looked up SST's "Russiagate" files and found the relevant article dated August 28, 2019
from which the following brief extract is the section mentioning file-types which LCJ found
so compelling...
... An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26
August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was
transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.
How can you prove this? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the
Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not
familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under
this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.
Bill examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and found that all 500 files
ended in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there
would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is
not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
...
I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked
it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at
least parts of the intelligence community.
The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which
yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to
prove himself that stupid.
I suspect that Hillary was delighted at the prospect of revenge for all she and Bubba had
gone through in the 1990s...except that she totally blew it...
Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her
Russiagating of her? Here it is, you can see she blames Hillary as the source of the story:
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption,
and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have
finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has
been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate
media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is
between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."
The Ballad of Tulsi and Hillary shows us how much the US and the world lost by the media
supporting Hillary in her plan to Russiagate the world.
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan
on July 26 2016.
I was one of those who thought that the whole Russia conspiracy was dubious from day one,
although I might have been kind of, "Well, maybe " for a day or so.
But that line from your post I quoted above points to one of the earliest and most
convincing pieces of evidence to me that the whole thing was fake. It was reported early on
that Obama had been briefed on the Russian interference and he wanted to go public to the
American people about what was going on, but Senator Mitch McConnell wouldn't agree to
it!
Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your
CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought
and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let
you ?
This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have
been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that
it was real.
Even with all the revelations debunking the whole Russiagate narrative, the Deep State has
been successful in instilling in the news media, Hollywood, political elites of both parties,
and the overwhelming base of the democratic party that Russia somehow "installed" Trump, that
he is a Putin "puppet/puppy" (your choice), and any resistance to establishment democratic
party power is due to Russian manipulation of social media, and in general Russia (etc.) is
fundamental to causing social and political problems. It took America about seven years to
get over McCarthyism. Russiagate will stay in American discourse for a long time.
The dangerous part of Russiagate is that it has reached the level of hysteria that it can
be used by American Deep State to justify direct and dangerous confrontations with Russia up
to and including war. Russiagate pales the propaganda about Saddam and WNDs. Let us remember
that two days into the US invasion of Iraq, the invasion had a 72% approval rating according
to Gallup. Any conflict with Russia will probably have even higher approval levels.
Between Trump and Biden, it is Biden who will be the most likely to start the final
conflagration.
@hoarsewhisperer I trust that the time stamps indicates that a FAT format was used at a
certain stage. What I don't recall is that how this would exclude workflows which involve an
USB stick at any later stage after a hack. I think this technical proof is not as decisive as
it seems and calculating huge statistical odds does not change that. The fact that the NSA
has not come up with proof, now that does mean something. Something Baskervillish.
Found it interesting that in the very mainstream 'Friends' sitcom it was already a joke in
the 90s that "gi joe looks after american foreign oil interests".
Except for a few conflict sitreps there really hasn't been much of note posted here this
year.
Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney has also argued that the data could not have been
hacked because internet speeds at the time were not sufficient for the transfer of the data
when it was extracted. He claims that the speed was consistent with saving to a thumb drive.
The word "botched" could have been invented to explain why nothing was stolen, in order to
put off those who questioned the motive.
No witness came forward but it could be that someone saw the shooting from a distance and
yelled at the perp.
"Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary
decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The
Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.
Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign
Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how
Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta:
"Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting
on Putin re Syria.""
Larry Johnson wrote today in his article "I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped
Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson"
If I remember correctly Obummer signed legislation making it ok for the press to openly lie
to everyone in the us! HR4310, legalized propaganda for US consumption. He gave us fake news!
The constant stream of US, UK, NATO, EU fabrications framing Russia, from MH17, Skripal,
'interfering in elections' garbage, the Navalry poisoning, coupled with endless provocations
like interfering in the Syrian settlement, twisting the OPCW work, attempting to destroy the
Iran nuclear agreement and so much more appear to -finally - running out Russia's strategic
patience with the Trump administration.
1. 24 September Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
"...the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good."
"we have come to realise that in terms of Germany and its EU and NATO allies' conduct, ...it
is impossible to deal with the West until it stops using provocations and fraud and starts
behaving honestly and responsibly."
The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump
and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension,
because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets!
Looks like Russia might be shifting strategy from strictly going through the defined and
agreed processes in relation to problems with the West to perhaps not engaging so
meticulously.
After all, what's the point when the agreed processes are ignored by the other party?
So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?
The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation:
The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the
Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest.
Many other nations
are watching, some already having joined the China-Russia bloc while others get ready as they
watch what little remains of US soft power go down the tubes thanks to Imperial tactics being
deployed onto US streets. Meanwhile, lurking not too far away is the coming escalation of the
financial crisis which Trump's Trade War has exacerbated. Those running this show are myopic
to the max--in order to post an economic recovery, the markets existing in those nations now
being alienated will be essential since the domestic market will be far too weak to fuel a
recovery by itself, even with enlightened leadership.
"On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the
very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald
Trump."
It is not the case that it was the first such allegation. To my knowledge, the first such
allegation that was published was published on 14 June 2016 in the Washington Post,
headlining "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump"
and I provide here an archived link to it instead of that newspaper's link, so that no
paywall will block a reader from seeing that article: https://archive.is/T4C2G
powerandpeople @28: "So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?"
Highly unlikely. The Russians will continue to pursue reason even after the war on Russia
goes hot. If the Russians give up on diplomacy then that means Lavrov is out of a job. The
Russians are capable of walking and chewing gum, or shooting and talking as the case may be,
at the same time.
By the way, I think the same is true for the Chinese, even if they have not done much
shooting lately. When America's war against them goes hot they will keep the door to
diplomacy open throughout the conflict. Neither of these countries wants a war and it is the
US that is pushing for one. They will be happy to stop the killing as soon as the US does.
Personally I think that may be a mistake because when the war goes hot and the US suffers
some military defeats and sues for peace, if America still has the capability to wage war
then the peace will just be temporary. The US will use any cessation of hostilities to rearm
and try to catch its imagined enemies off guard.
Whether or not the US will be able to rearm after significant military defeats in its
current de-industrialized condition is another matter.
How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China? The US cannot function without China's
production. To cite just one example; eighty percent of US pharmaceuticals are produced in
China. The US needs China far more than China needs the US. A war with China is a war the US
cannot win.
Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to
Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false
narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of
the announcement.
We already knew that Hillary had engaged Steele in Spring 2016 as what was termed an
"insurance policy". This "insurance" angle makes no sense: 1) Hillary was the overwhelming
favorite when she engaged Steele and had virtually unlimited resources that she could call
upon. And, 2) the bogus findings in Steele's dossier could easily be debunked by any
competent intelligence agency so it wasn't any sort of "insurance" at all.
<> <> <> <> <>
That Hillary started Russiagate is not surprising. This limited hangout, which is
so titillating to some, is meant to cover for a far greater conspiracy than Hillary's
vindictiveness.
We should first recognize a few things:
the Empire is a bi-partisan affair;
the Presidency is the lynch-pin of the Empire;
it became apparent in 2013-14 that the Empire (aka "World Order") was at grave risk as
Russia's newfound militancy showed that her alliance with China had teeth.
the 2016 race was KNOWN to be rigged via Hillary's collusion with DNC and Sanders'
sheepdogging (Note: After the collusion became know, Hillary gave disgraced Debra
Wasserman-Shultz a high-level position within Hillary's campaign - further angering
progressives). Why does it surprise anyone that the General Election was also rigged?
These facts lead to the following conclusions:
A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that
Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US
establishment very well.
Hillary's 2016 "campaign mistakes" were likely deliberate/calculated to allow Trump to
win. MAGA Nationalist Trump was the Deep State's favorite. This explains why Trump
announced that he would not investigate the Clintons within days of his being elected and
why Trump picked close associates of all his 'Never Trump' Deep State enemies to fill key
posts in his Administration such as: John Brennan's gal Gina Haspel for CIA Director; John
McCain's guy Mike Pence as VP; the Bush's guy William Barr for Attorney General; and the
neocon's John Bolton for NSA.
Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to
counter Russia and China.
David @32: "How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China?"
Sadly, the United States is suffering from delusions of exceptionality. Mass psychosis.
The importance of industrial capacity is radically underestimated by the top economic
theorists (and thus advisors) in the West, and except for some of the deplorable working
people in America and perhaps about five or six Marxists in the country, the rest of the
American population is equally delusional. "Well, if we can't get it from China then we
will just order it from Amazon!
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ' SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during
the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter The US seeks to
pressure Russia by threatening to reactivate nuclear capability mothballed under the New START
treaty if Moscow refuses to renegotiate. All it will accomplish by this is prove it habitually
cheats on arms control.
According
to Politico, "The Trump administration has asked the military to assess how quickly it
could pull nuclear weapons out of storage and load them onto bombers and submarines" when
the New START treaty limiting the size of the US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals expires
in February. Politico sources its story "to three people familiar with the discussions."
According to these sources, the request was made to the US Strategic Command as "part of a
strategy to pressure Moscow into renegotiating the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty before
the US presidential election."
What is curious about this report is that US Strategic Command already knows the answer to
the request. To meet the level of warhead reductions mandated under the treaty, the US has
decreased the number of warheads carried on the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) from three to one, and on its
Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from up to 14 to around 5 or
6.
The deactivated warheads were
reclassified as either active or inactive. Active warheads are kept fully assembled and
subjected to the same level of maintenance and upgrades as their operational counterparts, and
can be reactivated in accordance with guidelines already established by US Strategic Command.
Inactive warheads have been partially disassembled, and their reactivation would take longer
than for their active counterparts, but is similarly regulated by US Strategic Command
directives. Moreover, the US regularly
conducts tests where it reconverts the Minuteman III ICBM to a three-warhead configuration
to practice for the very activities suggested in the Politico article. The timelines associated
with this reconversion are well known to US Strategic Command. It is not publicly known whether
the US Navy conducts similar re-conversion flight tests of its Trident D-5 SLBMs.
One aspect of this request that, if it were implemented, would fall outside the existing
reactivation guidelines set by US Strategic Command is if the US were to reconvert its fleet of
Trident ballistic missile submarines from its current configuration under New START to one
where no restrictions applied. This possibility raises some interesting questions about US
compliance with New START.
According to Section 1 , paragraph 3
in Part Three of the Protocol to the treaty,
"If an ICBM launcher, SLBM launcher, or heavy bomber is converted by rendering it
incapable of employing ICBMs, SLBMs, or nuclear armaments, so that the other Party can confirm
the results of the conversion, such a converted strategic offensive arm shall cease to be
subject to the aggregate numbers provided for in Article II of the Treaty and may be used for
purposes not inconsistent with the Treaty."
To meet its obligations under New START, the US converted four SLBM launchers on each of its
14 Trident ballistic missile submarines – a total of 56 – to remove them from the
permitted number of launchers. This conversion was done by removing the gas generators of the
ejecting mechanism from the launch tube and bolting the tube covers shut.
On February 27, 2018, the Russian Foreign Ministry
protested the American actions, noting that, in regard to the Trident conversions, they
were "converted in such a way that the Russian Federation cannot confirm that these
strategic arms have been rendered incapable of employing SLBMs."
The Russians were concerned that the Trident SLBM conversions were not irreversible, as
required under the terms of the treaty, and that the 56 launchers listed as having been
"rendered incapable of employing SLBMs" should rather have been categorized as
"non-deployed launchers" and not excluded from the total aggregate count. To put it
bluntly, the Russians were accusing the United States of cheating on the New START
Treaty.
If true, the threat made by Marshall Billingslea in his interview with the Russian Kommersant paper on
September 21 to "reconvert our weapons" , if applied to the Trident ballistic missile
submarine launch tubes, would not only confirm the Russian suspicions, but certify the US as an
untrustworthy negotiating partner in any future arms control negotiations, either with Russia
or China.
Washington already has one strike against it in this regard: its contention that the Mk 41
launcher used on the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile system could not be used as a cruise
missile launcher, and, as such, did not constitute a violation of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This was shown to be a lie when, less than a month after the US
withdrew from the INF Treaty, it conducted a flight test of a cruise missile fired from the
same Mk 41
launcher .
If the Politico reporting is accurate, the US military has been ordered to carry out an
exercise that is redundant insofar as the data is already known, and which does nothing to
further US strategic capabilities. Moreover, if the US plans on increasing its SLBM launch
capability by reactivating the 56 SLBM launchers ostensibly rendered inoperable under New
START, Marshall Billingslea would be undermining his own stated objective of trying to pressure
Russia back to the negotiating table before the November 2020 presidential election. After all,
who in their right mind would be willing to negotiate with a proven cheater?
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Clinton approved an advisor's proposal to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal
claiming interference by Russian security services" in July 2016, according to information
declassified on Tuesday by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. The bombshell
revelation was made public in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.
Carolina), in response to a request for information related to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane
(i.e. Russiagate) probe.
By the end of July 2016, US intelligence agencies had picked up chatter that their Russian
counterparts not only knew of the scheme, but that Clinton was behind it – though the
declassified material stresses that the American intelligence community "does not know the
accuracy" of the claim that Clinton had green-lighted such a plan, or whether the Russians
were exaggerating. However, then-CIA director John Brennan apparently followed up that
assessment by briefing then-President Barack Obama on Clinton's Russian smear scheme, according
to his handwritten notes – suggesting the spy agencies were very much aware what was
going on.
The news made a splash among the president's supporters and other Russiagate skeptics, one
of whom observed the timing of the events described in the declassified material dovetailed
seamlessly with the timetable in which Russiagate was unveiled to the public. Clinton staffer
Robby Mook appeared on CNN on July 24, 2016 to claim that "Russian state
actors broke into the [Democratic National Committee]" and "stole" the campaign's
emails "for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump."
Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele filed his report around the same date,
accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with Russian security services to hack the DNC and
dump the emails via Wikileaks. The false information that made up the infamous "peepee
dossier" – collected under contract from opposition research firm Fusion GPS –
was used to justify securing a FISA warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page. That warrant,
and others that followed, have since been declared invalid, as it was discovered the Obama
administration had "violated its duty of candor" on its application for every
warrant.
Just a month before the 2016 election, Obama's intelligence agencies announced that they
believed Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC – allegations it has since emerged
were made without even examining the server on which the emails were stored.
More than a year after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report shocked
Russiagate true believers with the absence of the promised proof of collusion, the colossal
conspiracy theory has all but unraveled.
Over the past three months, the Russian Be-200ES amphibious aircraft flew more than 200
times for suppressing wildland fires in Turkey. Aircraft with Russian crews onboard have been
participating in the firefighting missions at difficult and strategically important places
and locations since June 16. Total flight time exceeded 400 hours .
####
I don't know how I missed this.
So while Russia has been putting out fires in fancy parts of Turkey (Izmir), Turkey has
been continuing its fires in Syria!
Fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the disputed region of
Nagorno-Karabakh intensified, on Monday, with heavy civilian and military casualties reported
amid disputed claims of an Azeri warplane being shot down.
Azerbaijani troops and forces from Nagorno-Karabakh have been trading artillery and rocket
fire, with the population of much of Karabakh told to seek shelter. Meanwhile, Armenia has
declared a general mobilization and barred men between the ages of 18 and 55 from leaving the
country, except with the approval of military authorities.
The most intense attacks took place in the Aras river valley, near the border with Iran, and
the Matagis-Talish front in the northeast of the region, according to Armenian Defense Ministry
spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan. He claimed that the Azeri side has lost 22 tanks and a dozen
other vehicles, along with 370 dead and many wounded.
Artur Sargsyan, deputy commander of the Nagorno-Karabakh military, said their own losses so
far have amounted to 84 dead and more than 200 wounded. Both figures should be understood in
the context of an ongoing information war run by the belligerents.
Vagram Pogosyan, spokesman for the president of the self-declared Artsakh Republic –
the ethnic Armenian de-facto government in the capital Stepanakert – said their forces
shot down an Azeri An-2 airplane outside the town of Martuni on Monday. This is in addition to
some three dozen drones, including ones provided by Turkey, that the Armenian forces claim to
have shot down over the past 48 hours.
Baku has denied the reports, saying only that two civilians were killed on Monday, in
addition to five on Sunday, and 30 were injured. There was no official information on military
casualties. Reports concerning the downed airplane were rejected as "not corresponding to
reality."
Azeri forces have taken several strategically important locations near the village of Talish
in Nagorno-Karabakh, Colonel Anar Eyvazov, spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Baku, said in
a statement. He was also quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Lernik Vardanyan, an
Armenian airborne commander, was killed near Talish. Armenia has denied this and labelled it
"disinformation."
In a video conference on Monday, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told UN General Secretary
Antonio Guterres that the question of Nagorno-Karabakh should be resolved in line with UN
Security Council resolutions guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and called
for the urgent withdrawal of Armenian troops from "occupied territories."
The current Azeri offensive is backed by Turkey, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
called Armenia "the biggest threat" to peace in the region and called for it to end the
"occupation" of Azeri land.
"Recent developments have given all influential regional countries an opportunity to put
in place realistic and fair solutions," he said in Istanbul on Monday.
Unconfirmed reports that Turkish-backed militants from northern Syria have been transported
to Azerbaijan to fight the Armenians have been denied by Baku as "complete nonsense."
They amount to "another provocation from the Armenian side," Khikmet Gadzhiev, an aide
to President Aliyev, told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan vowed his people "won't retreat a
single millimeter from defending our people and our Artsakh." All Armenians "must unite
to defend our history, our homeland, identity, our future and our present, " Pashinyan
tweeted on Sunday from
Yerevan.
Nagorno-Karabakh is one of several border disputes left over from the collapse of the Soviet
Union. An enclave predominantly populated by Armenians, it seceded from Azerbaijan in 1988 and
declared itself the Republic of Artsakh following a bitter war in 1992-94.
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In Karabakh Turkish drones #Bayraktar started systematic destruction of enemy armored
vehicles. Of course they are ruled by the Turks. Azerbaijani operators simply could not learn
how to manage them in such a short time. The Armenian side opposes them with the outdated
Osa-AKM complexes. They cannot cope with this task.
Most likely, the Coral electronic warfire system operate in conjusction with the drones.
They create interference, operators are distracted by false targets, while drones enter the
target and destroy it. If in the near future the Armenian side will not be able to quickly
clear the airspace, then the Azerbaijanis will show many more shots with the destruction of
armored vehicles.
What can be opposed to #Bayraktar ? Do not think that they are invulnerable. "BUKs" and
"Pantsir" systems cope well with them. But we cannot say yet whether they are in the area of
hostilities.
By their actions, the Ottomans make it clear that strike drones will be deployed anywhere in
the world where there are Turkish interests. That's their brand. Similar to the Syrian
mercenaries. Accordingly, their opponents first of all need to think about building an
effective air defense system.
If you have a territorial dispute with Turkey, then it is better not to run to the UN with
another note of protest. And he will directly turn to Russia with a request to urgently sell
several "BUKs". Trust that there will be much more benefit from it. Indeed, while the world
community calls on the parties to sit down at the negotiating table, dozens of your soldiers
are dying on the battlefields. And "BUK" in seconds can prove to a presumptuous guest that he
was not expected in this sky. And neither he nor his brothers should appear here.
Interesting link Evdokimova, 79% Armenians and 84% Azerbaijanis want the USSR back, that
goes to confirm the castotrophe of the USSR dissolution, of course there would be no wars in
that inmense area, in exchange for McDonalds advertised by Gorby we have now conflicts
galore, Moldavia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kirguizia,
Abjazia, Osetia.... and who needs to eat that crap?
An opportunity to hit several skittles with one ball was too much to leave alone for the
Turks, especially if the skittles could be hit down in someone else's backyard and
particularly if that someone else happens to be a client state of Turkey's.
It surely also suits the United States in some way, if that opportunity leads to Russia
and Iran becoming bogged down fighting in the Caucasus, and they are forced to take their
attention (and money, arms and fighters) away from Idlib province in NW Syria.
So presumably if the Azeris could beat the Armenians with imported "Syrian rebels", that
then would encourage home-grown rebel wannabes in Daghestan, Chechnya and other Muslim areas
in the northern Caucasus to "rise up" against Russian rule. At the same time, Azeris in NW
Iran would be inspired (in the wildest dreams of both the American and Turkish governments)
to rise up against Tehran and declare their part of Iran independent.
Unfortunately the Armenians, despite their government's pro-American tendencies, recovered
from what must have been surprise attacks and were able to retaliate quickly and hard. Now
Russia has taken the high road and offered itself as a mediator.
Let's see if the US and the EU can persuade the Armenians with their offers of loans worth
billions (presumably contingent on Armenians deferring to Israel as to whose Holocaust
deserves to be called a "Holocaust" and not a mere genocide - even though Winston Churchill
about 100 years ago or so used the term to describe the Ottoman massacres of Armenians and
other Christian groups in their empire) away from Russian mediation and negotiation. If the
money fails to lure Armenia into the IMF / World Bank debt trap, there goes the opportunity
to scatter all the skittles.
I'm trying to get a better contextual setup to this conflict. I recall the USA directed
coup attempt dubber "Electric Yerevan" when a company from said nation bought the power
company, ran it into the ground and used it as a basis for sparking protests. Next I am
hearing that the current president is a "Random Guido" who answer to the USA. If so how does
this effect Armenias strategic partnership with Russia? From what little I know about the
Armenian spirit they are fiercely devoted to their culture. Many Americans of Armenian would
fly back to the old country in order to take up arms. It seems as though this conflict is
going to escalate if only because the damage done so far. Armenia is fully mobilizing.
In regard to the Donbass situation, I gathered that the Ukrops army was heavily laden with
conscripts many of whom fled to Russia. They succumbed to the cauldron tactic due in part to
be order by "results driven" leaders in the rear. That and they stuck to the roads and were
easily flanked by smaller NAF units operating "in the green" What I found interesting (and
disturbing) about this conflict is that it resembles what could very well happen in the USA,
minus the armor although....
I'm trying to get a better contextual setup to this conflict. I recall the USA directed
coup attempt dubber "Electric Yerevan" when a company from said nation bought the power
company, ran it into the ground and used it as a basis for sparking protests. Next I am
hearing that the current president is a "Random Guido" who answer to the USA. If so how does
this effect Armenias strategic partnership with Russia? From what little I know about the
Armenian spirit they are fiercely devoted to their culture. Many Americans of Armenian would
fly back to the old country in order to take up arms. It seems as though this conflict is
going to escalate if only because the damage done so far. Armenia is fully mobilizing.
In regard to the Donbass situation, I gathered that the Ukrops army was heavily laden with
conscripts many of whom fled to Russia. They succumbed to the cauldron tactic due in part to
be order by "results driven" leaders in the rear. That and they stuck to the roads and were
easily flanked by smaller NAF units operating "in the green" What I found interesting (and
disturbing) about this conflict is that it resembles what could very well happen in the USA,
minus the armor although....
Although it is, clearly I suppose, not my field, from known and new mostly military
analysis sources recently found, I will try form a somehow readable post...( forgive thus
if I do not write the weapons denomination correctly...I make the effort to keep you
informed...and alos take into account, I am figuring out the events without thoroughly
studying the maps, I have passed the day working/making food shopping/taking a nap... )
On the doubts about whether Russia would intervene on behalf of Armenia, that wouldv
happen if Armenia request assistance under CIS agreements, but Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh
( currently Republic of Arsakh, the name of ancient Great Armenia, to eliminate the azeri
denomination Karabakh.. ) is not Armenia, it is a region which apealed self-determination
but not recognized by any nation so far...not even by Armenia, due the ceasfire signed in
1994 ( what implies that the war never ended, but was frozen for a while, to be reignited
from time to time...) Thread ( you translate the Twitts on your own this time...otherwise
would get too long post..)
Both countries are very mountainous terrain, this is Caucasus, what makes advancement
quite difficult, thus, eventhough at first moments success was falling on the side of
Azerbaijan ( which counts with the unestimable help of Turkish swarms of drones and
intelligence from Turkish AWACSm it seems that Armenia, which has its borders mined, has
inflicted heavy loses in armor to Azerbaijan today, destroyed and captured....( warning
disturbing content of people flying in the air space..), also list of fallen in the
Armenian side, most milennials...This is when most fallen could have originated...in
Martakhert, in the North...
#LATEST HOUR #URGENT #Azerbaiyan army claims to have destroyed #Armenia's air defense in
Martakhert (north), with 12 OSA systems destroyed. The #Martakhert garrison would be
surrounded and offered the option to surrender.
#LATEST HOUR First list of fallen in combat by #Armenia. Note that most are kids born in
2000. The Armenian Defense Ministry also claims that during a successful counterattack
they have captured 11 armor including an advanced BMP-3.
It seems that modern warfare through drones is rendering heavy armor a bit obsolete,
well, like seating ducks slowly advancing in mountainous terrain of Caucasus..
The miniature air campaign being carried out by the #Azerbaijan drones against #Armenia
seems to be very successful. Its main protagonist is being the MAM-L micromissiles from
#Turkey.
#Azerbaiyan has already deployed the TOS-1 Buratino thermobaric rocket launchers. The
#Azerbaiyan drone air campaign continues to wreak havoc on the Armenian ranks.
BTW, @flighradar24, where some people use to follow flights path is under attack...guys
are saying this is Turkey/ Azrbaijan so that their drones can not be followed..
Some additional points in this thread by another guy who works for @descifraguerra, with
what is described by him as #cutremapa ( an outline made in the run without much
precision so as to clarify his points.. ):
There are skirmishes throughout practically the entire front but the "serious" fighting
is concentrated in the areas marked A (Murov Peak), B (Agdara - Heyvali axis) and C
(Fuzuli region). Especially in the latter, I refer to the video.
The ultimate goal of the Azeris appears to be a south-north pincer on the capital of
Artsakh, Stepanakert, with all the difficulties that this entails. Taking this into
account, it seems that there are two previous objectives.
The first of these objectives is to cut the M11, the main logistics artery of Artsakh,
for which they have two options: A) Take the peak of Murov and block the road taking
advantage of the heights. But storming up the mountain is always tricky.
B) Take the Heyvali junction. To do so, they must first cross several towns, such as
Aghdara, and it is in this area where it seems that more artillery fire is concentrating
in the last hours.
The second ideal objective would be to cut the M12, the second most important road in
the area and therefore the second most important supply route, but considering its
position this is something very difficult to carry out in most of its tracing.
So it seems that they are opting for a second objective, a priori simpler: to capture
the Fuzali region (remember, zone C on the map) and cut the M12 at the entrance to
Stepanakert itself (just 1.37 km south From the capital).
For now, it seems that the Armenians are holding up well to the south, although it is
the front in which the most intense fighting has taken place so far this day, but they
have less and less anti-aircraft and that allows the Azeri drones to act.
On the growing military drone industry being built by Turkey ( guess where the command
and control of those swarms of drones attacking one day after another Khmeimin and Syrian
positions and warehousesd is placed ), in the hands of his son-in-law, it seems that Syrian
oil smuggling resulted most profitting...
Turkey is laying the foundations of its geopolitics in the massive use of drones in
places of conflict where it has great interests.
To achieve his goals, Erdogan managed to establish his own drone industry. He is
currently in the hands of one of his sons-in-law.
But Erdogan is so blatant in his challenges that it is plain he fancies Turkey to be
Russia's equal on the world stage, and dares to poke it even as he takes actions that result
in greater power and influence for Turkey. He needs a hard kick in the ass to remind him
where his provocative actions are taking him. The west is unhappy with Turkey's cozying-up to
Russsia, but is doubtless delighted when he behaves like this.
Maybe Armenia could call it's new friends in NATO and in the EU
Please read the following it is a quote from an article over a Moon of Alabama.
" .. . Although a long-standing Russian partner, Armenia has also developed ties with the
West: It provides troops to NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and is a member of NATO's
Partnership for Peace, and it also recently agreed to strengthen its political ties with the
EU. The United States might try to encourage Armenia to move fully into the NATO orbit. If
the United States were to succeed in this policy, then Russia might be forced to withdraw
from its army base at Gyumri and an army and air base near Yerevan (currently leased until
2044), and divert even more resources to its Southern Military District. "
Armenia after its colour revolution started to act in an anti -Russian way
Yet Russia is supposed to feel obliged to help Armenia?
What for? they have shown that they are going in another direction
And I think both Azerbaijan and Turkey looked at Armenia's behaviour to Russia and are
taking full advantage of a weakened alliance.
You make some good points. If Armenia has politically distanced itself from Russia and
approached the West and the NATO then it makes no sense for Russia to offer help without
strings attached. But Russia cannot let Turkey/Azerbaijan overrun Armenia either, or let
Azerbaijan grab Nagarno-Karabakh, because it would strengthen Turkish position too much in
the Caucasus region.
Yes, you are plainly having the time of your life and yukking it up again like you do
whenever something difficult happens to put Russia in a bad position – plainly, you are
a real friend of Russia, and only motivated by concern. Keep on laughing and making jokes.
Perhaps Russia should drop a bunker-buster on your house – would that be a martial
enough reaction for you?
They should – they should smack down a Turkish aircraft without warning and at the
first available opportunity. Russia is trying to stabilize the situation and calm things
down, while Turkey is openly backing Azerbaijan's military operation. A hard slap now could
break the cycle, but it seems plain Erdogan will get away with whatever he is allowed to.
It almost doesn't matter whether Turkey shot down the Armenian Su-25, rather that Armenia
has publicly stated it. This is about crossing the Rubicon. For all the chest-beating and rah
rah rah from In'Sultin' Erd O'Grand & Aliyev, both states have denied it happened. Here
we clearly see the gulf between broadcast to self-and actual potential consequences of such
an action.
Add to that Armenia has been open (not necessarily transparent) about its losses. Theres
been nothing from Azerbaidjan except American Vietnam war style 'body counts' of
Armenians.
It looks to me that Armenia are upping the ante to the max. and Azerbaidjan is left
wanting by its response which makes no sense if its claims of victories/whatever are anywhere
near true.
What I really want to know is what if any assistance, apart from words, the US is
providing and comparatively Russia. One or them is clearly in a much better position than the
other. There's really not much to go on as we know Russia does not broadcast and it certainly
would not be in the current 'pro-EU' Armenian administrations interest either. Yet again, we
are only left to ask what hasn't been said & done.
As far as I can see, Armenia is keeping most of its powder dry. The threat of 'other
measures' is currently more useful (and doesn't entail the same risks) than actually enacting
them. Maybe Putin will invite €µ to cover Aliyev's humilition as Sarkozy was for
Sakaashiti's? Now that would be funny, but we must not get ahead of ourselves..
Strategically, each time In'Sultin' Erd O'Grand backs stunts like these, he exposes
himself further to trouble at home. For Russia, not being fully NATO onside is evidently
quite useful however distasteful his behavior is, but he may well be undoing himself and
putting Turkey squarely back in to the western camp overall but retaining its nationalist Big
Boy streak.
Осеннее
военное
обострение в
Нагорном
Карабахе для
многих стало
совершенной
неожиданностью.
Но специалисты,
которые следят
за
военно-политической
обстановкой в
Закавказье,
подобное
развитие
событий давно
предсказывали.
В частности,
эксперты
Центра анализа
стратегий и
технологий
(ЦАСТ) еще два
года назад
спрогнозировали
обострение
ситуации в
Карабахе. В их
книге "В
ожидании бури:
Южный Кавказ"
даны оценки,
которые, судя
по всему,
подтверждаются
сегодня, пишет
Сергей
Вальченко в
материале для
сайта MK.ru
####
More at the link.
This looks like a reasonable analysis. If you are lazy like I am, use and online
translator.
I don't see how Armenia can accept the loss of critical territory even if the Azeri
operations are 'limited.' According to the interview, Azerbiajan is repeating the tactics of
2018 which is a big NO NO according to Tsun Tzu. I would be surprises is Armenia hasn't
already planned for this. The big fly in this ointment is Yerevan which may delay or limit a
response and listen to its 'western partners.' That would cement Azeri successes and damage
the 'Pro-EU' government. One reasonable strategy would be to actually encourage Azeri
'successes' as tehy would be tempted to go further than their limited goals and draw the
forces in to a pre-prepared 'cauldron', aka kiling zone as occured previously in the Donbass
and wrap up the Azeri army and gain ground. There's the risk that it wouldn't work either,
yet again Tsun Tzu do not fight the next war as you fough the last
On Sunday Ilham Aliyev, the longtime dictator of Azerbaijan,
launched a war on the Armenian held Nagorno-Karabakh area. That he dared to do this now, 27
years after a ceasefire ended a war over the area, is a sign that the larger strategic picture
has changed.
When the Soviet Union fell apart the Nagorno-Karabakh area had a mixed population of
Azerbaijani (also called Azeri) Shia Muslims and Armenian Christians. As in other former Soviet
republics ethnic diversity became problematic when the new states evolved. The mixed areas were
fought over and Armenia won the Nagorno-Karabakh area. There have since been several border
skirmishes and small wars between the two opponents but the intensity of the fighting is now
much higher than before.
In 1994 the Armenians won and forced Azerbaijan to a ceasefire. In the meantime
Nagorno-Karabakh organized itself into a sovereign country [called Artsakh] with its own
army, elected officials and parliament. But it still hasn't been recognized by any country
other than Armenia and is still classified as one of the "frozen conflicts" in the region,
along with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.
But this "frozen conflict" may soon heat up, if you believe what Azerbaijan's
playboy/gambling addict/president, Ilham Aliyev, says. Not that Azerbaijanis should get too
excited about another war: If Armenians are still the fighters they were ten years ago, then
statistically, it's the Azeris who'll do most of the dying. While matched evenly in soldiers,
the Azeris had double the amount of heavy artillery, armored vehicles, and tanks than the
Armenians; but when it was over, the Azeri body count was three times higher then that of the
Armenians. Azeri casualties stood at 17,000. The Armenians only lost 6,000. And that's not
even counting the remaining Azeri civilians the Armenians ethnically cleansed.
Since the strategically-important Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline opened up, pumping Caspian Sea
oil to the West via Turkey, the Azeri president has been making open threats about reclaiming
Nagorno-Karabakh by force. The $10 billion in oil revenues he expects to earn per year once
the pipeline is fully operational is going to his head. $10 billion might not seem that much
-- but for Azerbaijan it constitutes a 30% spike in GDP. In every single interview, Aliyev
can't even mention the pipeline project without veering onto the subject of "resolving" the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Aliyev started spending the oil cash even before the oil started flowing and announced an
immediate doubling of military spending. A little later he announced the doubling of all
military salaries. Aliyev's generals aren't squeamish about bragging that by next year their
military budget will be $1.2 billion, or about Armenia's entire federal budget.
Over the next 14 years the war that Yasha Levine foresaw in 2006 did not happen. That it was
launched now points to an important change. In July another border skirmish broke out for still
unknown reasons. Then Turkey
stepped in :
Following the July conflict Turkey's involvement became much deeper than it had previously
been, with unprecedentedly bellicose rhetoric coming from Ankara and repeated high-level
visits between the two sides. Ankara appeared to see the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as yet
another arena in which to exercise its growing foreign policy ambitions, while appealing to a
nationalist, anti-Armenian bloc in Turkey's domestic politics.
Turkey's tighter embrace, in turn, gave Baku the confidence to take a tougher line against
Russia, Armenia's closest ally in the conflict but which maintains close ties with both
countries. Azerbaijan heavily publicized (still unconfirmed) reports about large Russian
weapons shipments to Armenia just following the fighting, and President Ilham Aliyev
personally complained to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
In August, Turkey and Azerbaijan completed two weeks of joint air and land military
exercises, including in the Azerbaijani enclave of Naxcivan. Some observers have questioned
whether Turkey left behind military equipment or even a contingent of troops.
The potential for robust Turkish involvement in the conflict is being watched closely by
Russia, which is already on opposing sides with the NATO member in conflicts in Libya and
Syria.
Russia sells weapons to both Azerbaijan and Armenia, but has a military base in Armenia
and favors that strategic partnership.
Azerbaijan has bought drones from Turkey and Israel and there are rumors that they are flown
by Turkish and Israeli personal. Turkey also hired
2,000 to 4,000 Sunni Jihadis from Syria to fight for the Shia Azerbaijan. A dozen of them
were already
killed on the first day of the war. One wonders how long they will be willing to be used as
cannon fodder by the otherwise hated Shia.
There were additional rumors that there are Turkish fighter jets in Azerbaijan while Turkish
spy planes look
at the air-space over Armenia from its western border.
The immediate Azerbaijani war aim is to take the
two districts Fizuli and Jabrayil in south-eastern corner of the Armenian held land:
While the core of the conflict between the two sides is the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh,
Fuzuli and Jabrayil are two of the seven districts surrounding Karabakh that Armenian forces
occupy as well. Those districts, which were almost entirely populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis
before the war, were home to the large majority of the more than 600,000 Azerbaijanis
displaced in the conflict.
While there has been some modest settlement by Armenians into some of the occupied
territories, Fuzuli and Jabrayil remain nearly entirely unpopulated.
The two districts have good farm land and Armenia, already poor, will want to keep them. It
certainly is putting up a strong fight over them.
The war has not progressed well for Azerbaijan. It has already lost dozens of tanks (vid) and hundreds
of soldiers. Internet access in the country has been completely blocked to hide the losses.
The losses do not hinder Erdogan's scribes to already
write of victory :
Defending Azerbaijan is defending the homeland. This is our political identity and conscious.
Our geopolitical mind and defense strategies are no different. Always remember, "homeland" is
a very broad concept for us!
We are not making a simple exaggeration when we say "History has been reset." We are
expecting a victory from the Caucasus as well!
Well ...
An hour ago the Armenian government
said that Turkey shot down one of its planes:
Armenia says one of its fighter jets was shot down by a Turkish jet, in a major escalation in
the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Armenian foreign ministry said the pilot of the Soviet-made SU-25 died after being hit
by the Turkish F-16 in Armenian air space .
Turkey, which is backing Azerbaijan in the conflict, has denied the claim.
...
Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that its air force does not have F-16 fighter jets. However,
Turkey does.
A Turkish attack within Armenian borders would trigger the Collective Security
Treaty which obligates Russia and others to defend Armenia.
A Russian entry into the war would give Erdogan a serious headache.
But that might not even be his worst problem. The Turkish economy is shrinking, the Central
Bank has only little hard currency left, inflation is hight and the Turkish Lira continues to
fall. Today it hit a new record low .
Azerbaijan has quite a bit of oil money and may be able to help Erdogan. Money may indeed be
a part of Erdogan's motivation to take part in this war.
Russia will certainly not jump head first into the conflict. It will be very careful to not
over-extend itself and to thereby fall into a U.S. laid trap.
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from Western and Russian sources, this report
examines Russia's economic, political, and military vulnerabilities and anxieties. It then
analyzes potential policy options to exploit them -- ideologically, economically,
geopolitically, and militarily (including air and space, maritime, land, and multidomain
options).
As one option the report discussed to over-extend
Russia (pdf) in the Caucasus:
The United States could extend Russia in the Caucasus in two ways. First, the United States
could push for a closer NATO relation-ship with Georgia and Azerbaijan, likely leading Russia
to strengthen its military presence in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, and southern Russia.
Alternatively, the United States could try to induce Armenia to break with Russia.
Although a long-standing Russian partner, Armenia has also developed ties with the West: It
provides troops to NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and is a member of NATO's Partnership
for Peace, and it also recently agreed to strengthen its political ties with the EU. The
United States might try to encourage Armenia to move fully into the NATO orbit. If the United
States were to succeed in this policy, then Russia might be forced to withdraw from its army
base at Gyumri and an army and air base near Yerevan (currently leased until 2044), and
divert even more resources to its Southern Military District.
The RAND report gives those options only a poor chance to succeed. But that does not not
mean that the U.S. would not try to create some additional problems in Russia's southern near
abroad. It may have given its NATO ally Turkey a signal that it would not mind if Erdogan gives
Aliyev a helping hand and jumps into anther war against Russia.
Unless Armenian core land is seriously attacked Russia will likely stay aside. It will help
Armenia with intelligence and equipment flown in through Iran. It will continue to talk with
both sides and will try to arrange a ceasefire.
Pressing Azerbaijan into one will first require some significant Armenian successes against
the invading forces. Thirty years agon the Armenians proved to be far better soldiers than the
Azeris. From what one can gain from social media material that seems to still be the case. It
will be the decisive element for the outcome of this conflict.
Posted by b on September 29, 2020 at 18:04 UTC | Permalink
div> As much as I appreciate b's conflict sitreps, I sure hope this one does not
become a recurring one..
As I reported last week, the Armenians were one of the international participants in recent
military exercises held in the Caucus region, and they frequently train with Russian troops
as CSTO members. Neither the Azeris or Armenians can really afford a conflict, although the
former have the better economic basis and have done a better job dealing with COVID. Because
of their history, Armenians are better and more tenacious in combat. Until Nagorno-Karabakh
is resolved, it will be exploited by the Outlaw US Empire.
The trouble with this kind of intimate geography, is that it is very tempting to operate
longer-range weapons or drones from the 'uncontested' portion of each country's territory,
since each home territory is theoretically out of bounds of the conflict.
The main meaningful response to a long-range or unmanned attack, targeting the source,
could then be used to blame the other side for any escalation. It seems Azerbaijan is more
comfortable with this at the moment. Assuming they end up occupying more of the contested
territory, they will end up on the receiving end of the same pattern, but either way the
result would be the same.
Besides the muddled geopolitics and heartbreaking history, it makes for a relevant study
in the state of modern drone and anti-drone systems, which will only increase in significance
going forward, as guidance systems, software integration,
networked/relay-based-communications and hard-to-detect point-to-point radio or IR comms are
all more accessible now. (for example, what would you do if you had the capacity to make ~10
million of the things a year)
Meanwhile, the radical blue ticks need some way to seem like they are superior to plebs who
might be inclined to take Armenia's side. It's all very complicated, both sides are just as
wrong you see!
"1 No side has a monopoly of justice. Both sides have historical claims to Karabakh. It
was the site of a medieval Armenian kingdom in the 12th century and an Azerbaijani (Persian
Turkic Shia) khanate in the 18th c. Both peoples have lived together here, mostly
peacefully."
But the people never changed, they were Armenian before and after the very brief period of
being a part of that Khanate (75 years, he left this out) against their will. It's all the
more surreal since the guy making the argument that 75 years of being under somebody's rule
300 years ago makes you theirs forever.
It's all the more surreal given the writers own father is from Amsterdam given.
I don't see anyone suggesting Spain has legitimate claims on Flanders and the
Netherlands.
It must be hard for bluechecks because their vaunted 'rules-based international order'
such it might ever have been said to exist with constant violation without consequence by
powerful countries is the source of the problem. Azerbaijan is only still after this
territory based on the thin logic that despite being 85-90% Armenian at it's lowest point in
the last 250 years and 100% Armenian today and being totally separated from Azerbaijan
politically, the UN still considers it's de jure Azerbaijan. The map says it's
Azerbaijan!
It is surprising seeing Erdogan who is a Muslim Brotherhood fanatic supporting a mostly Shia
Muslim country of Azerbaijan.
May be Persia should get involved to get back the land it lost during the Persian-Russo wars
!
B, it is good to see you reporting on matters that are within your area of expertise. Your
reporting on conflicts of this kind is invaluable, and I always follow your reports with
great interest.
I wish I could say the same for your recent post about Covid19, but there are aspects of
that post that are unfortunate. It is clear, for example, that you have not been following
the latest work on cross-reactive immunity--that is, the evidence that people who have not
yet been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 nevertheless have some immunity to it, due to exposure to
other corona-viruses. Nor is your overall analysis of the actual lethality of the disease
convincing--you seem to be unaware of the vast difference between young people and children,
who almost never die of Covid19, versus the elderly, who are much at risk. This has great
implications for what policies are best in dealing with the disease.
Yes NK was historically Arm going back forever. Nevertheless, the geography made defending
it impossible without occupying adjacent areas which as far as I know, were Azeri in modern
times. There are few happy answers to be found here.
As far as biases are concerned, deWaal is giving the interview to Al Jazeera, and the
network is (not surprisingly) somewhat more sympathetic to Turkish and therefore Azeri
statements on the matter, though they typically do a better job keeping a professional facade
than domestic (US) media at least. But that gives a hint.
Excellent couple of articles, 'b'. You are really on form. Thanks.
Think you are spot on regarding money and deflection. What we've seen recently from
Erdogan is vast expenditure in construction - unnecessary pandemic hospitals with
extortionate rental agreements to be met by the local authorities - and in technology - the
latest TechnoFest headed by his other 'damat' advertised significant projects to be funded by
the state, and of course oil and military: In these sectors nepotism and cronyism rule. it is
those companies close to Erdogan that reap very significant benefits. So, any earnings that
can be gleaned from Aliyev are very welcome I am sure.
The other aspect is deflection from a series of foreign policy failures, and several
serious domestic failures, one being the management of Covid currently and its obvious
manipulations and the abject failure of the online education system in which it is estimated
between 35 and 50 percent of pupils are NOT participating. The others being the economy as
'b' alluded to and the failed Greek, Libyan and Syrian situations. Other than that, the
political ground does not favour Erdogan at all and he is terrified of losing his 2023
deadline and therefore desperate to win back more of the electorate.
Turks talks about Turkey and Azerbaijan as One People, Two states - the Azeris do not say
the same. But it is a sign of just how important this is to Turks. As 'b' has mentioned, the
Turkish media is already in faitytale / victory mode - the last dreamt up report I saw
claimed that PKK were moving from Syria to Iraq and into Armenia to fight against Azeris -
and people are buying it, as they always do. Nationalism is very big in Turkey. There's a
reason why criticising a military campaign is considered a crime!
I was tempted to think that this 'conflict' would go the way of every other contrived
foreign policy foray this year, but Aliyev and Erdogan may be out to save each other's
political lives here in which case we need to consider what they're fighting to defend - very
wealthy authoritarian 'mafia states'. I do not think that Turkey would decide to push Russia
too far unless it had NATO or US backing because Turkey's economy and regional influence are
very dependent on Russia. So, I think this will be a limited show-piece that may score some
territory. What is certain is that in both Turkey and Azerbaijan, victory is already
guaranteed by the media! Does that imply a short 'conflict'?
Another aspect to remember is Iran. it has very good and important relations with both
Azerbaijan and Armenia and would no doubt fully back any Russian intervention be it
diplomatic or otherwise. It has also offered to mediate between the two. The Nagorno-Karabakh
area is very important to Iran.
So many fuses, so little time with desperate madmen on the march. As the good professor said,
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought
with sticks and stones." WWIII ain't your grandfather's World War.
R.A.
The swprs has been a constant source of Covid-19 scepticism from the outset. It is not
balanced and is full of cherry picking about its sources and analysis. It is a very serious
error to focus entirely on mortality in Covid 19 and its major effect on older people. It
does mean premature death for many. But even more seriously Covid-19 causes serious morbidity
and together with a high infectious rate leads to very sharp swamping of health systems,
major loss of front line workers because of illness and serious health and economic effects
independent of the mortality. Focussing on mortality of elderly only is a narrow view and
ignores why Covid 19 is such a serious pandemic.
Was lacking some of the details and depth of B's report but it was clear Erdogan is running
point on another Nato led shit sandwich on Russia's doorstep and a blatant 'damned if you do,
damned if you don't' trap laid out for Putin.
What's the bet if Russia supports Armenia the media will paint this as 'Russian
aggression' on poor Azerbaijan and an invasion of their sovereign territory? The region is
technically still part of Azerbaijan. Yet when all the first videos showed Azeri drones
striking Armenian tanks in defensive dugouts, while Armenian footage showed ATGM's striking
Azeri armour maneuvering in open fields, it doesn't take a genius to work out who the
aggressor was... but facts should never get in the way of a good narrative when it comes to
Nato..
Another frozen conflict would be just the ticket to drain more resources from Russia, not
to mention, the potential for instability and refugees right on Iran's doorstep would be too
much for the US not to want to invest in. Combine that with Erdogan's megalomania, and he'll
be happy to add 15% on all munitions charged to Azerbaijan to help plug some of his budget
holes, no doubt.
Luckily I'm no military strategist, but when i hear things like this i can't help wonder
if some good old 'domestic terrorism' or missiles flying into Baku, Washington or Istanbul
are just what is needed for these psychopaths to be brought to the negotiating table nice and
early and avoid a lot of human misery... It is just crazy to think we have leaders who
actually start wars in order to poke Russia in the eye... one wonders, since they know
exactly who is doing what and why, what sort of payback that may bring one day.
There is no doubt that Nagorno-Karabakh is traditionally part of Azerbaijan and only got
claimed by Armenia after a surfeit of Armenians invaded the territory since the end of WW1.
All in all a very similar situation to that which developed in Serbia vis a vis the invasion
of Kosovo by Albanians.
MOA has consistently stood against the internationally illegal Kosovo enclave, so why the
contradiction with Nagorno-Karabakh?
Surely it cannot be because of ideological reasons i.e. Armenia is 'good guys' &
Azerbaijan are bad guys? That is precisely the type of logical inconsistency which causes
wars.
Azerbaijan is in a tough enough situation with Armenia block the creation of a contiguous
nation with Armenia's takeover of the south of Azerbaijan up to the Iranian border. If you
look at the first map provided you will see an unlabelled black blob up against the Iranian
border a part of Azerbaijan which has been deliberately isolated by Armenia from the rest of
Azerbaijan.
This report sounds like something out of the NYT or Guardian next you'll be claiming with
zero evidence that there are Turkey funded terrorists brought in from Idlib just as the
guardian has been claiming.
Another motivation for Ottoman Sultan wannabe Erdogan may be the possibility of extending
Turkish influence (and by implication his and his family's) through Azerbaijan and the
Caspian Sea into Central Asia all the way to and into ... Xinjiang in NW China, with the
potential for Uyghur terrorists, nurtured by Turkish propaganda, money and arms, to get a
free ride through Central Asia and straight into any future conflict zones Turkey might want
to open up in Iranian Azerbaijan and all Iran's northern and eastern border areas with
Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
Of course this will have US, UK, EU (possibly) and Israeli blessing if it means Turkey
will have to do most of the heavy lifting of money transactions.
thanks b.... seeing erdogan involved here makes sense.. at some point, someone is going to
take him out to bring peace back to the area.... until then he is a useful tool..
@ debs....thanks for your comments.. perhaps b will respond to them?? i agree with et tu,
the narrative the msm will spin here will tell us a lot..
@Jen
If I remember rightly, and I'll try to find the reports, it was claimed back in July that
Erdogan had offered to send Syrian militias to help defend Azerbaijan.
What makes you think the claim is unfounded?
The jihadists left in N.Syria are a serious problem for Turkey, so it would nake perfect
sense to try to 'liquidate' them in contrived 'conflicts'.
When did that "invasion of Kosovo by Albanians" did happen? You seem so pretty sure of it
that it makes me wonder if you are the creator of history itself, so you just invented it,
and believe it.
The solution would be to give back the adjacent territories that border Azerbaijan to
Azerbaijan and maybe pay some kind of nominal compensation to the displaced in return for
normalisation. They are to my knowledge much like parts of the buffer zone in Cyprus, full of
abandoned towns and villages. (Some of which you can see tanks using for cover in the
videos)
But the Caucuses are the Caucuses are grudges are grudges. Can't turn back the clock so
it's all or nothing, one side loses and one side wins.
Then you have all the exclaves and enclaves to deal with, which ironically, haven't become
an issue yet at all, probably because it would involve attacks on Armenia proper. Though
there has already been one strike in Armenia proper of a bus that was set to carry Armenian
solders.
1. It is obvious that the current aggravation was not accidental, but prepared in advance.
2. Possible goals for Turkey:
> Anchoring Turkey in Azerbaijan - the creation of full-fledged turkish military
bases.
> Inclusion of Azerbaijan in the Turkish orbit of influence (thesis "two countries -
one nation", in which Turkey assumes supremacy) within the framework of the concept of
neo-Ottomanism and (pseudo-)leadership of Turkey in the Turkic world.
> Economic goals and energy projects (Azerbaijani oil, gas) as part of the Turkish plan
to turn the country into an energy supplier.
> Given the circumstances (Ukrainian black hole, Belarusian problem, coronavirus,
spectacle with Navalny, threat to Nord Stream-2 etc), involve Russia in the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, thereby tying Russia's hands in the Caucasus direction in
order to act more freely and boldly in other theaters (the Mediterranean conflict with
Greece, Syria, Libya...), given the problematic position of Turkey (simultaneous war on
several fronts and the almost complete absence of assistants/allies). In this situation, the
Nagorno-Karabakh leverage/'trump card' in the hands of Turkey would be useful for
negotiations with Russia.
The latter assumption is probably the main one.
@Debsisdead, #16
There is no doubt that Nagorno-Karabakh is traditionally part of Azerbaijan
Funny.
Actually, this territory - Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan - have been
the territory (or "property", if you will) of Russia for the last 200-250 years.
Interesting historic fact. As long as the centre (USSR) held, the facts on the ground held,
much like the other areas of conflicts in Georgia, Ukraine and Transnistria. With the end of
the USSR, everything changed. This is what Putin meant when he called the breakup of the USSR
as disaster. And NATO will continue to poke a stick at these vulnerabilities. Are the people
of Armenia really that stupid that they see anything positive from joining NATO? Like that
will protect them against Turkey. They can see how Greece is treated. Hopefully this conflict
will put to bed any thought of Armenia being pried away from Russia.
Stalin's Legacy: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
Nagorno-Karabakh is a highly contested, landlocked region in the South Caucasus of the
former Soviet Union. The present-day conflict has its roots in the decisions made by Joseph
Stalin when he was the acting Commissar of Nationalities for the Soviet Union during the
early 1920s. In April 1920, Azerbaijan was taken over by the Bolsheviks; Armenia and Georgia
were taken over in 1921. To garner public support, the Bolsheviks promised Karabakh to
Armenia. At the same time, in order to placate Turkey, the Soviet Union agreed to a division
under which Karabakh would be under the control of Azerbaijan. With the Soviet Union firmly
in control of the region, the conflict over the region died down for several decades.
As #12 seems to be implying as well, b is ignoring this region is the backyard of another
regional powerhouse: Iran.
Any involvement from the US in Iran's backguard will be gladly countertargeted so that
automatically means Turkey has very big ambitions to join this battle. This could very well
end up in straight war if the diplomatic channels of mainly Russia are not effective
enough..
I've read somewhere that only English wankers call Iran "Persia". Iran lost those
territories when the Turkic Qajar incompetents were ruling Iran (in a fashion).
It is informative to look into Qajar Iran. They somehow managed to take a Safavid (also
Turkic) Iran from a fairly respectable state to the lowest state that Iran has likely been in
its entire 3000+ year history. It is amazing what the Pahlavis managed to do to resurrect
Iran in the short 50 turbulent years a Persian dynasty finally got to run Iran after
centuries.
As to Sultan of Turkey making noises about Azar (Fire) PaadGaan (Guardians) being the
homeland of the 'multi-faceted' spawn of the displaced Mongols of Turkistan, he can go and
suck the Tsar of All Russians and Minions prick, again.
--
Interesting that "B" claims (without any proof whatsoever) that Russia intends to use Iran
as a channel to transport arms to Armenia. Iran's media already has come out and has denied
reports by "foreign media" to say such things. I guess that includes you, Moon Of
Alabama.
--
Also interesting that the apparently very capable Turkish drone being used is not
discussed here at Moon of Alabama. When did this place turn into the New York Times? What's
next, B, a Pulitzer?
Since the bar keep is not sharing links to vidoes released by Azerbaijan's military
showing multiple distinct drone hits on Armenian armour, then I won't either. But it is just
a few clicks away.
--
Finally, this situation is a touchy one for Iran, aka as "Persia" amongst the wankers and
related sorts. Will the "Muslim" revolutionaries, the children of Ayatollah cum Imam of
"Persians" (lol) yet again choose infidels as waali, if they think this will permit them to
warm the throne of Jamshid and the Hidden Imam and wisely rule and chart the destiny of
"Persians"? The answer to that is answered by noting that no one has ever accused the Mullahs
of "Persia" to be impractical men. Unholy, sure, some. But impractical, estaghforallah!
"..Actually, this territory - Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan - have been
the territory (or "property", if you will) of Russia for the last 200-250 years." alaff@22
A very good point. These countries have never been independent states. In 1918, under
western influence, and led by mensheviks Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan formed the
Trans-Caucasian Republic. My guess is that by the end of the Soviet era secularism dominated
all three societies and religious disputes were largely forgotten.
One historical grudge very much alive is that of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the
Turks, a century ago.
Sorry grump one, I just got back from my wednesday morning doctor's run where I pick up some
locals from around the area & run them to the Drs in town.
I hope that this conflict won't get characterised as a religious conflict, because that
isn't really what it is about.
Armenians fled east during WW1 in direct response to the genocidal attacks on Armenians by
Turks, so that should be easy eh? Blame the Turks, but it isn't that easy because of the
French & Englanders machinations when sequestering all the assets of the Ottoman
empire.
Right the way through WW1 which was at heart a war over assets for empires, even the spark
that lit the fuse was caused by the Austro-Hungarian Empire's lust for grabbing Serbia &
including it in their repressive empire, all the politicians & bureaucrats to empire of
the 'big' nations, spent a lot more time and energy divvying up their hoped for imperial
gains, than they ever spent on concern about the generation of young men being forced through
the meat grinders.
There were 3 big nations on the winning side France, England & Russia, yet
Sykes Picot is a secret agreement between only two of the triumvirate. Many suppose this
is because Russia pulled out of WW1 after the October revolution, that is not correct as this
secret agreement was signed in May 1916, 18 months before the Bolshevik soviet uprising.
England & France were doing the dirty on Russia even while the Tsar was the
bossfella.
Perfidious Albion seems to be the one most responsible as it has always claimed that a
similarly secret deal England made with Russia, unbeknownst to France had been completed. A
deal whereby England would grab the oil rich Mesopotamia & all the rest of Arabian
peninsular in return for Russia getting Constantinople and most of Anatolia.
That seems unlikely since England and France had already spilt the blood of 213,980
French, English Australian, New Zealand & Canadian troops on the Dardanelles in pursuit of an
invasion and eventual takeover of Constantinople which england had begun planning since back
in 1905! Long before WW1. Winston Churchill in particular had been advocating this for more
than a decade because he wanted to deny Russia easy access to the mediterranean.
A lie was told to the fatally foolish Tsar - it was that the anglo-french invasion of
southern Turkey was to be a distraction that would require Turkey & Germany/Austria to
divert troops from the eastern front thereby relieving pressure on Imperial Russia's
armies.
So what? How does that effect Nagorno-Karabakh? Well it does, because after england
screwed up at the Dardanelles, they then encouraged Armenians to take up arms against the
Ottomans, all the while knowing that despite promises to the contrary, if the Armenians came
unstuck against the 'easybeat' Turks, there would be no way of helping the Armenians out.
That is what happened of course. Kemal Attaturk the bloke who had overseen Gallipoli &
england's send off was sent to oversee the fight against Armenian guerillas and the Armenians
got monstered, so fled eastwards some as far as into the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The situation is even more complicated by the fact that after WW1 ended and elites all
over europe were crazed with anxiety about a 'red' takeover of Europe, 'the west' kicked up
even more trouble. By financing a mob oops sorry, army, of so-called white russians to resist
the USSR in the South Western Caucasus, it meant that the USSR was unable to exert full
control of the region for nearly 5 years. This is why as Tom says at #24 it wasn't until 1921
that the Soviet Union could credibly promise Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, a blatant bribe to
encourage the warring parties to talk not shoot, but really it was more like 1923 when the
USSR got total control of the region.
I point out the mess that previous interference has caused because it is vital that
history not repeat itself in that regard. If it does, then all that will result will be a
conflict held in abeyance for a time until it flares up again.
There are two issues people & geography, maybe the boss of Azerbaijan is an arsehole
who is trying to get back onside with Azerbaijanis by cranking up a conflict that is close to
the hearts of most citizens because every time they look at a map they are confronted by the
injustice of their nation cleaved in two. His alleged arseholery does not diminish the
genuine injustice Azerbaijanis feel in their bones.
That is one group of people, the other group are the relatively small number of Armenians
squatting illegally on Azerbaijani land.
The easiest way to fix the geography & people issue is for those Armenians to be
relocated into decent accommodation within Armenia and return Nagorno-Karabakh plus a land
corridor that rejoins Azerbaijan once again.
It will be complex to resolve as there will also be an issue with Armenians who have occupied
the space between the two parts of Azerbaijan, but however much it costs, that is bound to be
less than the cost of airplanes, rockets & artillery shells that will be expended keeping
the conflict bubbling away.
Turkish officials are preparing for the worst case scenario as talks in Ankara made clear
that Moscow doesn't want a new deal
####
This is a Turkey sympathetic piece but may be one reason for current events between
Armenia and Azerbaidjan. As for Syria, Turkey has been claiming to keep the north/Idlib under
control which is has until the last few weeks at it has used the previous time to reinforce
its military presence ('observation posts') – vis Vinyard the Saker – and now
claims it is not reponsible and its not fair that Russia reacts to attacks by its re-dressed
(literally) jihadists. Turkey's preference is of course to do nothing despite the all the
attacks, and that in itself explains a lot. Turkey is now publicly putting out its argument
in advance that it is 'Russia wot broke the agreement' and thus 'we are not responsible for
any of the consequences.' Erd O'Grand is due another significant spanking. Would he call NATO
to his defense as he did before? Certainly. Will it happen? No. Not to mention his current
intreagues around Cyprus and pissing of the French, Greeks and others. Trouble t'mill.
Despite Turkey's efforts to maintain the status quo in Idlib, a Russian-backed Syrian
assault seems increasingly likely.
####
In short, Turkey has not kept up its side of the deal of bringing the rebels under control
and the supposed opening and joint patrols of the M4 & M5 highways has been suspended by
Russia because of the attacks by rebadged jihadis. Turkey has clearly used the agreement to
simply buy time for another 'cunning plan' and as no interest in fulfiling the agreement with
Russia. The latter's patience is almost gone.
Today, the Arctic has increasingly become identified as a domain of great prosperity
and cooperation amongst world civilizations on the one side and a domain of confrontation and
war on the other.
In 2007, the Russian government first voiced its support for the construction of the
Bering Strait rail tunnel connecting the Americas with the Eurasian continent- a policy which
has taken on new life in 2020 as Putin's Great Arctic Development strategy has wedded itself
to the northern extension of the Belt and Road Initiative (dubbed the Polar Silk Road). In
2011, the Russian government re-stated its pledge to build the $64 billion project .
####
On September 26, President Trump announced that a long-overdue project would receive
Federal support which involves connecting Alaska for the first time with Canada and the lower
48 states via a 2570 km railway.
In his Tweet announcing the project, Trump said:
####
I'd never read about the sale of Alaska to America by Russia in any detail before but just
by looking at the map it was clear that it made sense. Indefensible against a rapidly growing
country, so sell early for a good price or lose it and get nothing.
As for Ehret's hypothesis, we know that t-Rump sees things in a deal oriented way and not
simply 'You must be destroyed (TM)' way, though his methods of reaching such deals 'Maximum
Pressure (TM)' are none too bright and result in less than a normally negotiated deal. But,
if we look at the ends rather than the means, improving trade links is surely to America's
(and others) advantage.
One thing that does strike me from the maps of the proposed increased US-Asia links is
that having those function normally is not compatible with the current strategic goal of
trying to contain China. So, what is the point of the US Pacific Fleet? Just Free-Dumb of
Navigation (FONOPS) cruises for pensioners?
Update (1712ET): Online sleuths such as The Last Refuge are already connecting dots between
when the Trump-Russia allegations surfaced and the newly released briefing timeline
.
TheLastRefuge
@TheLastRefuge2 ·
Sep 29, 2020 This is additionally important for a specific reference point. Clinton ally,
and former acting CIA Director Mike Morell first published the Clinton created Russia narrative
(in the New York Times) less than a week after this July 26, 2016, briefing by Brennan.
The Reckoning @sethjlevy This conversation between
@jaketapper and
@RobbyMook happened on July 25th. The Reckoning @sethjlevy On day 1 of the Democrat
Convention as Wikileaks began their DNC releases Mook's interview uses the release to begin
spinning the Trump Russia tale. This was planned, prepared, purposeful and the beginning of one
of the most damaging psy op disinformation campaigns in US history.
https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/963977316547399680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1311019881039618049%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia
Sean Davis @seanmdav ·
Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @seanmdav Today's declassification confirms that from the
beginning, the FBI knew its anti-Trump investigation was based entirely on Russian
disinformation. Brennan and Comey were personally warned. They responded by fabricating
evidence and defrauding the courts. https:// judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/
09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf
BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge https:// twitter.com/benktallmadge/
status/1310676483501768705?s=21 BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge Replying to @BenKTallmadge
Alexander Vindman was working at thé US embassy in Moscow when the wife of former mayor
wired $3.5M to Hunter Biden, right before Russia took Crimea H/t @grabaroot https://
twitter.com/playstrumpcard /status/1310648949393502214?s=21 https:// twitter.com/playstrumpcard
/status/1310648949393502214
Meanwhile, this is being downplayed by intelligence officials as Russian disinformation,
which DNI Ratcliffe has refuted.
Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDC · 3h Intel officials came out
within minutes to claim Russian disinfo in the Ratcliffe letter. We didn't find out for nearly
three years that Russian disinfo might have been in the dossier.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311056956023595009&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px
Jeremy Herb @jeremyherb New statement from Ratcliffe on unverified Russian intel: "To be
clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence
Community. I'll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was
obtained in the coming days."
5:35 PM · Sep 29, 2020
* * *
On September 7, 2016, US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to
former FBI officials James Comey and Peter Strzok concerning allegations that Hillary Clinton
approved a plan to smear then-candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir
Putin and Russian hackers , according to information given to Sen. Lindsey Graham by the
Director of National Intelligence.
According to Fox News' Chad Pergram, "In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained
insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate
Donald Trump," after one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers proposed vilifying Trump "by
stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."
Chad Pergram @ChadPergram ·
Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @ChadPergram 5) DNI info to Grahm: On 07 September 2016, U.S.
intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and
Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding 'U.S. Presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan..
Chad Pergram @ChadPergram 6) DNI info to Graham:...concerning U.S. Presidential candidate
Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the
public from her use of a private mail server.'"
2:51 PM · Sep 29, 2020
In response to your request for Intelligence Community (IC) information related to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, I have declassified
the following:
In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence
analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan
to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and
the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC docs not know the accuracy
of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
exaggeration or fabrication.
According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan
subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the
intelligence, including the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26. 2016 of a proposal
from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal
claiming interference by Russian security services."
On 07 September 2016. U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI
Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok
regarding "U.S. Presidential candidate I lillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of
distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."
As referenced in his 24 September 2020 letter to your Committee, Attorney General Ban has
advised that the disclosure of this information will not interfere with ongoing Department of
Justice investigations. Additional declassification and public disclosure of related
intelligence remains under consideration; however, the IC welcomes the opportunity to provide a
classified briefing with further detail at your convenience.
Respectfully,
i RatcliiTc
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-8&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311021129981734912&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px
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Wikileaks
In 2017, it was claimed that the "blame Russia" plan was hatched "within twenty-four hours"
of Clinton losing the election - while the US intelligence investigation predates that by
several months.
New book by 'Shattered' by Clinton insiders reveals that "blame Russia" plan was hatched
"within twenty-four hours" of election loss.
The authors detail how Clinton went out of her way to pass blame for her stunning loss on
"Comey and Russia."
"She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way," a longtime Clinton
confidant is quoted as saying.
The book further highlights how Clinton's Russia-blame-game was a plan hatched by senior
campaign staffers John Podesta and Robbv Mook. less than "within twenty-fourhours" after she
conceded:
That strategy had been set within twenty -four hours of her concession speech. Mook and
Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case
that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple ofhours, with Shake Shack
containers littering the room, they went over the script theywould pitch to the press and
the public. Already. Russian hacking was the centerpieceof the argument.
The Clinton camp settled on a two-pronged plan -- pushing the press to cover how"Russian
hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by thecontents of stolen
e-mails and Hillary*s own private-server imbroglio.'' while"hammering the media for focusing
so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, whichhad created a cloud over her candidacy
." the authors wrote.
"... The DemoRats have never been a party dedicated to peace; the only ones thinking that are the walking bong-holes who assuage their cognitive dissonance by telling themselves that. Both the demorats and their willing accomplices 'across the aisle' have led us into constant war for nearly eight decades. Lilliputian Big enders and Little enders all. ..."
"... Screw the war mongers and the MIC. ..."
"... If you read the article, it's obvious that [neo]liberals/whores are the apogee of hypocrisy. ..."
"... Perpetual war is about $$$. It knows no party. Never has and never will. ..."
Feral, yes; rabid, absolutely; smart... not so much. Why is anyone surprised?
The DemoRats have never been a party dedicated
to peace; the only ones thinking that are the walking bong-holes who assuage their cognitive dissonance by telling themselves
that. Both the demorats and their willing accomplices 'across the aisle' have led us into constant war for nearly eight decades.
Lilliputian Big enders and Little enders all.
Yup. It's always about the money. As Fitts would say, that screeching you hear is the cash flow drying up for the rentiers.
The murdering of women and children be damned. Hillary's demonic cackle is but the grotesque cherry on top:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
Here's what Matt hopes you don't remember: When the cancel mob came for him, he was the
"upper class Twitter Robespierre" ratting on his colleagues.
Yasha Levine Sep 18
Between the pandemic, the economic collapse, the fires and the toxic fumes, and the
fact that I'm currently fighting an eviction, I know there are much more pressing issues to
get worked up about these days. But as someone who got his start in journalism at The eXile
and who has been on the receiving end of our "cancel culture" so many times I lost count, I
can't let it go.
####
Plenty more at the link.
There's very much 'don't put one's head above the parapet unnecessarily' about all
this so no wonder Levine feels betrayed. Yes, people change and see things differently later
in life and deal with it in their own ways. Maybe we all live too long .
The eXile also reflected closely what I myself saw and heard first hand while I was
studying in Russia in the mid-1990s, that it bore no resemblance to what the western
journalists were reporting. This on the back of all their lies and willful ignorance during
the break up of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil wars. It put me off being a journalist
(which was a good thing)!
There's other interesting stuff including by Anatole Lieven in Prospect Magazine which is
stuff familiar and oft discussed by us already.
HSBC allowed fraudsters to transfer millions of dollars around the world even after it
had learned of their scam, leaked secret files show.
Britain's biggest bank moved the money through its US business to HSBC accounts in Hong
Kong in 2013 and 2014.
Its role in the $80m (£62m) fraud is detailed in a leak of documents –
banks' "suspicious activity reports" – that have been called the FinCEN Files.
HSBC says it has always met its legal duties on reporting such activity.
Why is it that the "Free World" has so many corrupt institutions, especially when it comes
to dealing with loadsa lolly?
The West has so many internal financial traitors, who, essentially, are traitors and
deceivers to whole populations of Western free society, and who make it too easy for enemies
of the "Free World" to use the blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy of Western financial
institutions as a glaring example of Western perfidy.
95% of Russians think that all Western financiers are thieves. Just walk around any hell
hole of a Russian shitsville town out in the sticks and you will find that to be true!
And get this!
Clearly distraught about the enormity of this financial swindle perpetrated by HSBC, the
BBC feels it duty bound to point out a Putin connection with this ginormous financial
scam:
He definitely did it! Past tense: completed in the past -- "laundered"
However, in the first line of the body of the article, enter the modal auxiliary verb
"may" in order to indicate probability, and slight probability at that:
One of Vladimir Putin's closest friends may have used Barclays Bank in London to
launder money and dodge sanctions, leaked documents suggest.
And Deutsche Bank was well in on the money laundering scam as well:
FinCEN Files: Deutsche Bank tops list of suspicious transactions
Leaked documents shed a light on Deutsche Bank's central role in facilitating
financial transactions deemed suspicious. Many of these could have enabled the circumvention
of sanctions on Iran and Russia.
Financial intelligence data about the accounts of Russians in American banks has been
published
08:46 21.09.2020 (updated: 09:04 21.09.2020)
MOSCOW, September 21 – RIA Novosti. Cassandra, an international consortium of
investigative journalists, has released classified data from the US Treasury Department for
Combating Financial Crimes (FinCEN) regarding suspicious banking transactions.
According to media reports, the beneficiaries of some transactions are, amongst others,
Russian politicians and businessmen.
The consortium declined to comment on how it got the secret documents. At the same
time, the investigators themselves noted that suspicious transactions do not always indicate
a violation of the law.
An "international consortium", eh?
No explanation of how the data was acquired, eh?
And in any case, big transfers of dough don't necessarily mean that such transfers are
illegal.
So why make an issue out of it?
I wonder if this International Consortium has ever taken a peek at poroshenko's money
transactions and offshore subterfuges?
Oh look!
The address of "Cassandra":
1710 Rhode Island Ave NW | 11th floor
Washington DC 20036 USA
As regards Putin's pal since childhood who "may have used Barclays Bank in London to
launder money and dodge sanctions", Vedomosti reports this morning:
14 minutes ago Rotenberg has called the media data on transactions through a London bank nonsense
Aha! A denial from a Russian -- and a Russian 4×2 to boot!
That can only mean he is guilty as accused.
The data on suspicious transactions carried out by Russian businessmen Arkady and Boris
Rotenberg through the London bank Barclays is nothing more than nonsense, RBC reports with
reference to a representative of Arkady Rotenberg.
"The data on suspicious transactions that Russian businessmen Arkady and Boris
Rotenberg carried out through the London bank Barclays, published by the international
investigative project Cassandra, is nothing more than delusion", the message says.
Representatives of other members of the Rotenberg family said that they did not settle
through British banks and did not directly or indirectly own Ayrton, which is mentioned in
the Cassandra report, the newspaper reports.
Earlier, experts of the international investigation project "Cassandra" published a
report on the results of a study of the documents of the US financial intelligence (FinCEN)
that came at their disposal. Amongst the financial transactions that the banks reporting to
FinCEN found suspicious, in particular, were those of Ayrton Development Limited. The
company, according to the BBC, was deemed by Barclays to be owned by the sanctioned Arkady
Rotenberg. According to the report, 26 transactions carried out in the interests of the
Rotenbergs were classified as suspicious.
Leningrader Arkady Rotenberg was a sambo pal of Putin. He has clearly enjoyed considerable
enrichment during the Putin tyranny.
In 2000, the Evil One created Rosspirtprom, a state-owned enterprise controlling 30% of
Russia's vodka market, and put Rotenberg in control.
In 2001, Rotenberg and his brother founded the SMP bank, which operates in 40 Russian
cities with over 100 branches, more than half of them in the Moscow area. SMP oversees the
operation of more than 900 ATM-machines. SMP bank also became a leading large-diameter gas
pipe supplier.
In 2007, Gazprom rejected an earlier plan to build a 350-mile pipeline and instead paid
Rotenberg $45 billion to lay a 1,500 mile pipeline to the Arctic Circle.
O'Bummer signed an executive order instructing his government to impose sanctions on the
Rotenberg brothers and other close friends of President Putin because of the Russian
"annexation" of the Crimea.
For all his wealth, though, Arkady Rotenberg is not that smart at everything he does: In
2005, Rotenberg married his second wife Natalia Rotenberg, who is about 30 years his junior.
Their two children, Varvara and Arkady, live in the United Kingdom with Natalia. They
divorced in 2015 in the U.K. While the financial details of the divorce are private, the
agreement includes division of the use of a £35 million Surrey mansion and a £8
million apartment in London. The couple's lawyers obtained a secrecy order preventing media
in the U.K. from reporting on the divorce, but the order was overturned on appeal.
And only then, after having assured everyone and everything that the dose of the
terrible poison Novichok was received precisely at home, Mr. Navalny, a dissenting person,
was for some reason not at all afraid of this "irrefutable fact", and barely having opened
his eyelids from a cloudy "comatose" slumber, was already prepared -- almost in his hospital
robe -- to rush back.
To Moscow.
His home country.
Where allegedly, he was almost wiped off the face of the earth by "insidious poison
murderers".
Washington is considering closing its embassy in Iraq, nine months after the US killing
of an Iranian general on Iraqi soil led to protests over what Baghdad called a "violation" of
its sovereignty, according to reports.
Multiple media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and Sky
News, reported on Sunday that US officials told their Iraqi counterparts that Washington will
shut down its operations unless there is an end to rocket attacks on the embassy, which is
located in the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.
Sounds more like a possible victory for Iraq and its people. I suspect that there is much
more to the story and the US is pre-emptively seeking a face-saving exit excuse if it were to
come to that.
However, it would be extremely unlikely for the US to abandon the embassy given that it
serves as the headquarters for numerous nefarious operations in Iraq and Iran
The claim that I have read is that this is in response to the USA's assassination of
General Solemani in Lebanon. More precisely the i-Ranian strategy is not per se to cause
American casualties but carry out sustained attacks via proxies on American interest in
i-Rack, i.e. psychological pressure, cost etc. the ultimate goal being the USA leaving i-Rack
as a suitable price for the assassination.I
I've also read (Vinyard the Saker?)that the USA has so far closed some of its smaller and
less defensible outposts but concentrated what remains in fewer better defended bases. The
USA does not want to leave i-Rack militarily and will hang on until it is out of options. The
US embassy leaving i-Rack will not be good enough for i-Ran, but maybe this is the beginning
of some kind of behind the scenes bargaining, though this is hard to believe considering the
US is still pushing for a gulf coalition (WAR!) against i-Ran as well as polically
neutralizing any potential spoiler countries. Also the embassay was built at quite a
significant cost $750 billion.* So, you are right PO, this is bluff by the big puff
Plumpeo.
i-Rack has also being trying to get rid of American military presence even though they
have bought F-16IQs from Washington but the latter is using the same figleaf excuse as in
Syria that they are 'fighting terrorists.'
The USA will never abandon its crown jewel in Iraq, and it would make little practical
difference anyway, as it lies entirely within the American 'Green Zone', and they will surely
not abandon that.
"But the location of the compound is well known in Baghdad anyway, where for several
years it has been marked by large construction cranes and all-night work lights easily
visible from the embattled neighborhoods across the river. It is reasonable to assume that
insurgents will soon sit in the privacy of rooms overlooking the site, and use cell phones or
radios to adjust the rocket and mortar fire of their companions. Meanwhile, however, they
seem to have held off, lobbing most of their ordnance elsewhere into the Green Zone, as if
reluctant to slow the completion of such an enticing target."
The Baghdad Embassy is the USA's most-expensive embassy in the world, and it costs far
more to run it each year than the cost of building it, in excess of a Billion dollars a year.
What America might do, and what Iraq does fear, is send its diplomats home for awhile, and
use it as an excuse to open a military operation in Iraq against what it terms Iran-aligned
militias.
Putin proposed, "exchanging guarantees of non-interference in each other's internal
affairs, including electoral processes, including using information and communication
technologies and high-tech methods."..
####
That is some excellently timed next level trolling from Pootie-McPoot-Face.
Of course the USA will never agree to such a proposal, because (a) it does not regard its
meddling as 'interference' but as the bringing of the gift of freedom, (b) it stands on its
absolute right of judgment as to what is a situation that requires more democracy and what is
not, and (c) it probably knows at some level that Russia did not meddle in the US elections,
and that it would therefore in that case be constraining its own behavior in exchange for
nothing.
But then, when refused – I imagine the US will try to extract something from the
offer, such as "A-HA!! So you ADMIT to meddling in our elections!! – Russia can
obviously claim, "Well, we tried."
The Vatican teaches Warsaw how properly to deal with Belarus
Full in the panting heart of Rome,
Beneath th'apostle's crowning dome,
From pilgrims' lips that kiss the ground,
Breathes in all tongues only one sound:
'God bless our Pope, God bless our Pope,
God bless our Pope, the great, the good.
' Following the visit to the Vatican on Friday, September 25, of Polish President Andrzej
Duda and his wife, the Press Department of the Holy See published a short message. It said
that Pope Francis received Duda, after which the President met Secretary of State Cardinal
Pietro Parolin and Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. And
further: "Heartfelt discussions took place in the context of the centenary of the birth of
St. John Paul II and the 40th anniversary of the founding of the independent trade union
"Solidarity". Several topics of mutual interest related to the mission of the Church were
discussed, including the issues of strengthening families and raising young people. Finally,
attention was drawn to some international issues such as the current health emergency,
regional situation and security".
What is meant by "regional situation and security" was later deciphered by Duda
himself. Note that these issues were not the subject of his conversation with the pontiff,
they were raised during negotiations with Cardinal Parolin, who is in charge of the practical
leadership of Vatican diplomacy. According to the Polish president, they talked about the
situation in Belarus. "The cardinal asked how we perceive what is happening, I in turn asked
what is the position of the Holy See", said Duda. "In fact, we came to a common opinion that
it is necessary to support all those who want real democracy, who want freedom, who want to
live in an honest state: these people should have our support. But, of course, Belarus must
make its own decision in free and fair elections. Here we have an unambiguous position that
the international community should demand from the Belarusian authorities: that the policy in
Belarus be carried out in such a way as to hold the elections fairly. And the Belarusian
people should be supported in this. The international community should support the Belarusian
people."
At the same time, the President of Poland did not specify such key issues as when to
hold "fair elections" -- now, after the constitutional reform in Belarus or the end of the
next term of office of the recently inaugurated President Alexander Lukashenko. Nor was it
said who Lukashenka is for Warsaw. After all, the international community has an ambiguous
attitude towards it. Thus, for Vilnius, he is "the former president of Belarus, both
politically and legally". Germany and the EU diplomatic department use the formula of
"missing or insufficient democratic legitimacy necessary for his recognition as the
legitimate president" in relation to Lukashenko. With all its usual demagogy, Washington has
discussed the candidacy of the US Ambassador to Belarus Julie Fischer through the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and is sending her to Minsk, where she will present her
credentials to the President, which means recognition of Lykashenko.
Everything is much more interesting in the case of Warsaw. As the former Polish
diplomat Witold Jurash notes, the Polish Foreign Ministry speaks of the lack of legitimacy of
Lukashenko and the illegality of his government, but, unlike Prime Minister Mateusz
Morawiecki, does not declare that Poland does not recognize Lukashenko as president. "The
prime minister, it seems, in turn, assumes the latter", the expert believes, calling the
difference between the positions of the diplomatic department and the head of government
"principled". As for Duda, on this issue he is closer to the Foreign Ministry and the Vatican
than to the prime minister. It is not yet known what exactly the Secretary of State of the
Holy See replied to the Polish president during the meeting in the Vatican, but his position
can be reconstructed based on indirect data. Recall that on September 16, the cardinal
ordained the new apostolic nuncio in Belarus, Ante Jozic, to the bishopric in Croatia. This
is not an ordinary event, it is obvious that it was important for Parolin to personally meet
with Jozic and explain to him the Vatican's line regarding the republic, the development of
the situation in which the Holy See is closely watching.
A little later, the Nuncio gave a detailed interview to the Croatian Catholic portal
IKA-Zagreb. Answering the question about his mission in Belarus, he highlighted the
following. "First", said Jozic, "one of the main tasks of a nuncio is the appointment of new
bishops: after the retirement of bishops who have reached the age of 75, the nunciature
initiates the procedure for appointing new ones. This is an indication of the head of the
Belarusian Catholics, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, who has been in Poland since the end
of August and who, by order of the Belarusian authorities, is not allowed back to Minsk. In
January 2021, he will just turn 75 years old, and it seems that the Holy See will not
hesitate in satisfying his resignation petition. Secondly", stressed the nuncio, "the
Catholic Church will not interfere in politics", because if "the Church or its leaders choose
this or that person, then there is a division of believers". This is already a response to
Belarusian Catholics, who are carried away by participation in protests against Lukashenko's
administration, and some of them are even unhappy with the fact that the Vatican refuses to
directly support their political demands. .
The Northern Crusade against Baltic pagans and Slav heretics.
Chaucer's Knight:
Seen the elephant he had: been everywhere, done everything:
A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden (no man ferre)
As wel in Cristendom as hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesse.
At Alisaundre he was, whan it was wonne;
Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle notions in Pruce.
In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce,
No Cristen man so ofte of his degree.
In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be
Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye.
At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye,
Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See
At many a noble aryve hadde he be.
At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene,
And foughten for our feith at Tramissene
In listes thryes, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilke worthy knight had been also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye,
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, un-to no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight.
Where hadn't he been?
Pruce -- Prussia: not German then but pagan Baltic tribes.
Lettow -- Lithuania: Baltic pagan tribe.
Ruce -- Russia; heretical Eastern Orthodox.
The rest of the time he seems to have been kicking Muslim arse around the Mediterranean,
but, clearly, Northern European pagans and Eastern European Orthodox Christians were also
considered fair game.
Worthy of sainthood I would say if not already sainted by the Vatican. My understanding is
that most largest Crusades were directed against the Eastern Orthodox just as they are now
but in a different form. Modern folks do not fully appreciate the persistence of history.
If you are affected by Covid, it is certainly not apparent from the quality and quantity
of your posts!
"... Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it. ..."
"Western government-funded intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders,
planted stories in media outlets from BBC to Al Jazeera, and ran a cadre of journalists. A
trove of leaked documents exposes the propaganda network."
"Leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of
propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria's political and armed opposition.
Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western
government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding,
from what they said to where they said it.
The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle,
carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out
a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.
US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels,
from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile . These firms also
organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the
UK's Channel 4.
More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK
government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media
activists.
Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the
leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on
major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient
TV .
These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian
armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a
network of more than 1,600 international journalists and "influencers," and used them to push
pro-opposition talking points.
Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to "re-brand" Syria's
Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by "softening its image ." ARK boasted that it provided
opposition propaganda that "aired almost every day on" major Arabic-language TV networks."
"The Western contractor ARK was a central force in launching the White Helmets operation.
The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense,
known more commonly as the White Helmets.
ARK also facilitated communications between the White Helmets and The Syria
Campaign , a PR firm run out of London and New York that helped popularize the White
Helmets in the United States.
It was apparently "following subsequent discussions with ARK and the teams" that The Syria
Campaign "selected civil defence to front its campaign to keep Syria in the news," the firm
wrote in a report for the UK Foreign Office." thegreyzone
--------------
Using really basic intelligence analytic tools; Occam's Razor, Walks like a duck,
Smileyesque back azimuth's, etc. it has been clear that the UK government has been deeply
involved in sponsoring and influencing the Syrian/ jihadi opposition in that miserable country.
The wide spread British Old Boys network of aspirants to the tradition of imperial manipulation
has been visible just below the surface if you had eyes to look and a brain to think.
A lot of the money for this folly came right out of USAID.
I object to the line in the article that they "played the media like a fiddle" - as it
implies the mainstream media is a victim as opposed to willing accomplice.
The American public very strongly told Obama they didn't want another invasion and war in
the middle east (red lines or not) so rather ineffective propaganda.
Moreover, I suspect that given the US public inattention to overseas events that do not
involve much US blood (in places they can not find on a map). Today's mess would be where
more or less the same if the entire IO had never happened - though maybe with less cynicism
of US/UK gov'ts and media.
OTH, it is curious how well the British Old Boys network (and US) aligns with Israeli
interests (and runs counter to US or British interests). Maybe grayzone will investigate that
(impressive) IO campaign. I think a small country in the middle east played US and UK elites
like a fiddle.
I've only given this article a cursory reading so far and it is clear that the Brits are
going balls to the wall on the PSYOPS/perception management front. This campaign flows
naturally from the strong material support for the Syrian "moderate rebels" provided by the
US, the Brits and probably others for years. We may still be blowing up IS jihadis, but we're
also supporting our own brand of jihadis around Al-Tanf, giving free hand to Erdogan's
jihadis along the Turkish-Syrian border and doing our best to stymie R+6 efforts to crush the
remaining jihadis and unite Syria.
The article focuses on the contractors role in PSYOP. I'm not sure if it mentions the
British government's role in this. The GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group
(JTRIG) probably manages most of those contractors. The British Army also has the 77th
Brigade. This brigade's slogan is: "behavioural change is our unique selling point". Gordon
MacMillan, a reserve officer with the 77th Brigade, is now Twitter's head of editorial
operations for the Middle East.
The 77th was formed in 2015 and subsumed the 15th Psychological Operations Group which was
headed by Steve Tathan, who went on to head the defence division of SCL, the now defunct
parent of Cambridge Analytica. I'm sure the 77th is capable of managing some of those
contractors, as well. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of contractors were also
reservists in the 77th.
I bet we're not letting the Brits have all the fun. The CIA Special Activities Center
(formerly SAD) includes the Political Action Group for PSYOP, economic warfare and
cyberwarfare. That dovetails nicely with what CENTCOM is doing in Syria. I knew some of those
guys a while back. I remember scaring them with some of my own anarchist hacker rantings when
I was penetrating those hackers.
Our Army has fours PSYOP groups brigade-sized), two active and 2 reserve. I would think
they have advanced their methodology since I took the course at Bragg. For a few years, they
were called military information support operations (MISO) groups rather than PSYOP groups.
They have since reverted to their PSYOP name although their activities are referred to as
MISO. I don't know what the difference is.
There is no such small country as you describe in the Near East.
There is an self-disciplined proxy force masquerading as a state which is mostly funded by
the United States to further the religious policies of the WASP Culture Continent.
It is no accident that in this context, the names of US and UK occur often in the same
sentences; one declared a crusade to wrestle control of Plastine from Muslims, and the otber
one carried out that crusade and escalated it.
That is also the reason that US cannot end the war over Palestine or leave Islamdom
(Oil, Geostrategic considerations, arms sales, Realpolitik are just pseudo-rationications
to obscure the real war.)
"WASP Culture" is into golfing, not crusading. Erik Prince and the religious
fundamentalists, maybe, but they don't drive US policy.
Russia and/or Chinese dominion over Eurasia cannot be permitted. Their means to achieve
that would be less ethical, not that the US or UK have been prince among men and salts of the
earth, as noted in the article.
The US has tried in vain to win over hearts and minds. It has been a mostly noble effort
to bring countries like Iraq and Afghanistan into the 21st century, but it was always more of
a losing game. The problem lies too much in Islam and tribal rivalries.
Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called
the 'Fourth Estate'.
They are more correctly described as a Fifth Column , one far more open and sworn to
destroy our country and its foundational citizens – and taxpayers – as any that
ever operated during World War II. You would think this would be of vital interest to people
who loudly declare themselves to be "Nazi-punchers", but who time and again show themselves to
be merely low-level street terrorists informed and inspired by Mao's Red Guard and the
irredeemable thugs of the African National Congress.
One wonders what's preventing them from
mimicking the Red Terror waged by the leftists of Spain, when the battle for "freedom" involved
the disinterment of the graves of Catholic clergy to better pose the corpses in blasphemous
positions. Imagine how depraved those Mostly Peaceful protesters had to have been for even a
leftist-supporting site such as Wikipedia to baldly state
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832
Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military
coup), attacks on the Spanish nobility, industrialists, and conservative politicians, as well
as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches.
Directly in the crosshairs this time are small and medium-sized owner-operated businesses
– the true backbone of American freedom and prosperity – who have largely been
sacrificed in exchange for the knock-kneed offerings of Danegeld from our giant conglomerates,
all of whom have prospered immensely from the suffering and privation brought on by the
Democratic lockdown of society – and the total shutdown of our economy.
Think! – have you read a single article charting how the government war on small
business directly enriched Amazon.com and
world's richest autocrat, Jeff Bezos? . who then funnels his windfall into a newspaper that
blatantly pimps for the Democratic Party, which translates into a vast payday for the DNC, not
least from its newly-approved partnership with the shadowy and many-tentacled Soros-surrogate
group, BLM?
The result is what you'd expect when a fringe group operates with the full cooperation and
partnership of major industry and both political parties (don't confuse Trump with a
standard-issue Republican, please – he may have terrible flaws, but that isn't one of
them) – 10% of the population holding the other 90% in a chokehold with only one set of
rules: no arrest and prosecution for Bolshevik violence and terror ..but the zero-tolerance
heavy hand of corrupt Leviathan coming down hard against any and all citizens who fight back
or, eventually – inevitably – who even struggle against their restraints.
Short of the sudden arrival of celestial horsemen to punish the guilty and reward the
set-upon, it has become clear that the only answer is the one that the Powers That Be claim to
be dead set against: racial separatism. (Particularly when we consider that all that will be
necessary to turn America into Hell on earth will be the adoption of Ibram Kendi's First Law,
sometimes known as equality of outcome :
To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the
U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is
evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.
Could any "amendment" be more terrifyingly totalitarian than this?)
White and black separation would, instead, accomplish two goals, both more important than
Kendi's quick fix: we would learn soon enough about actual equality of outcomes (which
is why no Communist, black or white, wants anything to do with the creation of one more failed
basket-case black state), and much more importantly, white families can sleep secure in their
beds at night, without worrying about Apache raids at midnight, egged on and recorded for
"posterity" by that Fourth Estate/Fifth Column referred to up top. Because the fact of the
matter is that, even should some combination of government and law-enforcement halt the burning
and looting of America – as things stand now, none of the worst malefactors will ever see
the inside of a prison cell .which means any ceasefire will only be temporary, to be violently
ripped asunder the moment they sense white Americans have at last lowered their guard once
more. And living in perpetual paranoid readiness for violent uprisings and mindless destruction
is no way to live at all.
Trump has it half right, a border wall is the answer: only it needs to run
lengthwise , between the Southern and Northern borders. If we don't use the next four
years to plan out such a separation, fretting over our children's children will be a fruitless
exercise – those who aren't murdered will be captured and 'go native' .and in case you
haven't looked at a globe lately, there's no place left to run.
As a recovering journalist, I can point out that even on a rinkydink rag in a small city,
where I got fired for being a real journalist back in the early '70's; he who owns the
presses and distribution networks calls the tune. It's a matter of working-class (no matter
how middle-class your income or social-status) versus the ownership class. The latter wins
every time.
When the "Fox News Sunday" host takes the stage on Tuesday to moderate the first
presidential debate of 2020, he will for 90 minutes be the most important person in the
world.
His questions, his demeanor, his raised eyebrow will signal to millions of voters how they
are to assess the two candidates -- President Donald John Trump and former Vice President
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
If his questions are piercing for both, if his skepticism is applied equally to both the
Republican and Democrat, then all is well in this corner of the world of journalism. But if
instead Wallace accuses Trump and coddles Biden, we will have one more instance of media bias,
which has become so rampant that President Trump had to christen it with a pet name -- Fake
News.
Every day, the supposedly professional press corps cozies up to Biden with softball
questions ("Why aren't you more angry at President Trump?" has to be my favorite!) while
accusing Trump of being a mass murderer, a racist and a Putin puppet. So conservatives are
entirely justified in having low expectations for the debate and for Wallace, who has
exhibited symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome more than once.
Wallace can ask anything he wants of Trump. I am confident the president will acquit himself
admirably, but the litmus test for Wallace playing fair in the debate will be whether or not he
asks any hard-hitting questions of Biden -- especially about the new Senate
report on the corrupt activities of his son Hunter in Ukraine and elsewhere.
If you have heard anything about the Biden report on CNN and MSNBC, or read about it in your
newspapers, chances are you came away thinking that Republicans had made up a series of fake
charges against the Bidens. "Nothing to see here. Move along."
The
Washington Post , as usual, was at the front of the pack for Fake News coverage. The Post
used its headline to focus entirely on Hunter's position on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian
energy company Burisma, and claimed that the report doesn't show that the cozy arrangement
"changed U.S. policy" -- as if that were the only reason you would not want a vice president's
son enriching himself at the trough of foreign oligarchs.
The story then spent most of its 35 paragraphs excusing Hunter's behavior either directly or
through surrogates such as Democrat senators, and most nauseatingly by quoting Hunter Biden's
daughter, Naomi, who "offered a personal tribute to her father" in the form of a series of
tweets, including the following:
"Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is. Here's a thread on my dad,
Hunter Biden -- free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of
power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human
struggles." Oh my, that's convincing evidence of innocence of wrongdoing. I imagine she also
endorses her grandfather for president, for what it's worth.
The three reporters who wrote the Post piece also spin the facts like whirling dervishes.
They say that the report by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley "rehashes" known details of
the matter. They quote Democrats to say without evidence that the report's key findings are
"rooted in a known Russian disinformation effort."
The following passage in particular shows how one-sided the story is:
"Democrats argue that Johnson has 'repeatedly impugned' Biden, and they pointed to his
recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Biden's 'unfitness for office,'
as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to argue that the entire investigation was
orchestrated as a smear campaign to benefit Trump."
Using the "shoe on the other foot" test, can you ever imagine a similar statement being made
in the Washington Post about the Trump impeachment investigation? Let's see. How would that
go?
"Republicans argue that Rep. Adam Schiff has 'repeatedly impugned' Trump, and they pointed
to his recent comments hinting that the report would shed light on Trump's 'unfitness for
office' to argue that the entire investigation was orchestrated as a smear campaign to
benefit Biden."
Oh yeah, sure! The chance of reading that paragraph in the Washington Post news pages would
have been absolutely zero.
Perhaps even more insidious was the decision by the editors to push the most significant
news in the report to the bottom of the Post's story. That is the lucrative relationship that
Hunter Biden established in 2017 with a Chinese oil tycoon named Ye Jianming. Biden was
apparently paid $1 million to represent Ye's assistant while he was facing bribery charges in
the United States.
Even more disturbing, "In August 2017, a subsidiary of Ye's company wired $5 million into
the bank account of a U.S. company called Hudson West III, which over the next 13 months sent
$4.79 million marked as consulting fees to Hunter Biden's firm, the report said. Over the same
period, Hunter Biden's firm wired some $1.4 million to a firm associated with his uncle and
aunt, James and Sara Biden, according to the report."
Then, in late 2017, "Hunter Biden and a financier associated with Ye also opened a line of
credit for Hudson West III that authorized credit cards for Hunter Biden, James Biden and Sara
Biden, according to the report, which says the Bidens used the credit cards to purchase more
than $100,000 worth of items, including airline tickets and purchases at hotels and
restaurants."
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The Post also glossed over payments received by Hunter Biden from Yelena Baturina, who the
story acknowledges "is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and is a member of
Kazakhstan's political elite." What the story doesn't say is that the payments received by
Hunter Biden's companies while Joe Biden was vice president totaled close to $4 million. Does
anyone have even the slightest curiosity why Hunter's companies received these payments from a
Russian oligarch? As Donald Trump Jr. noted, if he had the same record of taking money from
foreign nationals, he "would be in jail right now."
In other words, the headline and the lede of the Washington Post story were entirely
misleading. What readers should have been told is that there is a pattern of corruption and
inexplicable enrichment in the Biden family that has continued for years and that Joe Biden has
turned his back on it.
Seems worthy of the attention of the voters who will determine the nation's leadership for
the next four years. So the most important question at the debate Tuesday night is the
following: Will Chris Wallace take the same cowardly path as the Washington Post, or will he
demand an answer from candidate Biden as to why influence peddling, conflicts of interest and
virtual money laundering are acceptable?
Based on Wallace's track record, I'm not holding my breath that we will get either the
question or the answer, but if we do, I will happily applaud him as the tough-as-nails
journalist he is supposed to be.
play_arrow chubbar , 1 hour ago
Wallace is co-opted, he's a plant. NO way does he ask about corruption or go after
Joe.
CosmoJoe , 1 hour ago
All Trump needs to do is jab Biden every time his brain locks up; toss in phrases like
"Its OK Joe, take your time". Keep doing that until Biden gets angry and its all over. (Well,
its over anyhow, but....)
Karl Malden's Nose , 1 hour ago
He knew how to push Hillary's buttons and even though she's a spaz she's lightyears
smarter than Joe. Biden is going to fume and crap his depends because Trump is about to knock
him flat on his ***. He'll be stammering to answer while Trump has already moved on to the
next gut punch. There's no gotcha's on Trump, only Biden. Trump is plugged in to everything
and sharp as a knife. Biden will be struggling to remember his instructions and I'm sure
they'll have an ear piece on him he won't hear too clearly.
Hoax Fatigue , 25 minutes ago
Nobody is expecting (((Wallace))) to be fair.
High Vigilante , 1 hour ago
Trump should bring it up, as soon as possible.
There is no guarantee Biden won't skip other debates.
Plus it would make Biden angry and negate the effect of drugs he will be loaded with.
True Historian , 1 hour ago
I have watched Wallace and he is a pretentious pile of excrement. FOX with its "Fair and
Balanced" left the station when they were bought out by Disney.
Wallace sample questions:
Trump : When did you stop being a corrupt NAZI/Russian bitch?
Biden : Are you feeling OK today? If not, how can I make you more comfortable.
CosmoJoe , 1 hour ago
Trump had some fairly hostile moderators in the 2016 debates and he held his own. He has
to be just as merciless with Biden as he was with Hillary. The news doesn't want to talk
about Hunter and his wire transfers from Russia. This is Trump's chance to throw that crap
right into the spotlight.
alexcojones , 1 hour ago
Quote : "Every day, the supposedly professional press corps cozies up to Biden with
softball questions... while accusing Trump of being a mass murderer, a racist and a Putin
puppet."
Why? That's because the so-called "Legacy" media is now the Enemy of The American
People.
Soloamber , 1 hour ago
The question is how long can Wallace hide his anti-Trimp bias ?
Mr. Biden ...what is your favorite color ?
President Trump why do you pay no tax ?
Mr. Biden Isn't China our greatest ally ?
President Trump have you heard from Stormy lately ?
Mr . Biden Please provide your wife's first name .
President Trump.... You appear over weight have you had your blood pressure checked ?
Would you agree to do it now ?
Mr . Biden what are some of your greats political achievements in your distinguished
political legacy ?
President Trump why have you caused global warming ?
DeplorableGlobalConflictWatch , 1 hour ago
Chris Wallace is a joke. Make sure he's sick and replaced by Tucker Carlson.
RealEstateArbitrage , 1 hour ago
Wally is a plant by the deep state. He is a liar and a fool.
Migao , 1 hour ago
Wallace, like his dad, pretentious snob. Yeah, Trump's a jerk, but he's a lovable jerk.
Wallace is a pretentious snob.
JUICE E SMALL IT EMPIRE , 2 hours ago
No, Ukraine and China should be front and center. It is an election year. And the Dems
have screwed us royally.
Recruiting for military is much easier if there is no jobs.
Notable quotes:
"... They want to eliminate the EPA, vacate the State Dept and many other Depts, except for a few high-placed cronies, wipe all financial, labour, consumer and environmental regulations off the books; eliminate or reduce to a bare minimum federal health insurance, medicaid, medicare and Social Security, crush public education, privatize everything they can sell, and so on. They are not in power to "govern" but to destroy government. This is all being done with a fairly unified agenda: to free "the market" from any restrictions whatsoever, so that they -- global elites -- can make as much money as possible. It's a cabal of global corporations, militarists, Christian sovereign white supremacists, fossil fuel giants and bankers ..."
I wonder if any of the commentators here have considered that the [neoliberal] cabal now
in power in the US (not elsewhere) are not in power to "take power" except for a temporary
period. They don't want to run the federal government, they want to destroy it, except for
the police state and the military.
They want to eliminate the EPA, vacate the State Dept and many other Depts, except for
a few high-placed cronies, wipe all financial, labour, consumer and environmental regulations
off the books; eliminate or reduce to a bare minimum federal health insurance, medicaid,
medicare and Social Security, crush public education, privatize everything they can sell, and
so on. They are not in power to "govern" but to destroy government. This is all being done
with a fairly unified agenda: to free "the market" from any restrictions whatsoever, so that
they -- global elites -- can make as much money as possible. It's a cabal of global
corporations, militarists, Christian sovereign white supremacists, fossil fuel giants and
bankers , and I think there's a high degree of cooperation for the agenda. The
revolution is the cabal run by Trump/Bannon who are more extreme and ideological than any
previous faction, who have no tolerance for compromise. They have an apocalyptic vision of
grinding it all down to a bare minimum police state.
Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
What America is yet again conniving to do is to discredit any domestic political dissent
against the fraud of "American Democracy" by connecting this dissent to those nations that
are the latest targets of America's Two Minutes of Hate campaign.
This is a standard American tactic that the USA always resorts to when it fears its own
citizens are starting to question the fairy tale of American "Democracy and Freedom." Thus,
during the Cold War, the USA even to discredit some elements of the Civil Rights movement as
being assets of the Soviet Union.
The great Orwellian hypocrisy of America's pants-wetting complaints that other countries
are meddling in America's (fake) democracy is that the United States itself is guilty of
regime changing, balkanizing, and colonizing scores of foreign nations dating back over a
century to the USA's regime change and eventual colonization of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Bottom Line: America needs to drink a big up of Shut the F*ck Up with its pathetic Pity
Party whining about foreigners trying to influence its bogus democracy.
In the United States, a great deal of study and energy goes into promoting respect for
democracy, not just to keep it alive here but also to spread it around the world. It embraces
the will of the majority, whether or not its main beneficiaries have more resources than other
citizens do, as shown by the election of President Obama, who promised hope and change for the
suffering majority, but did not sit long in office before being subjected to an economic vote
of no-confidence.
Those who claim we run a plutocracy (government for the rich by the rich) -- or that we're
victims of a conspiracy contrived by a shadow government -- are right while being wrong.
Our government is beyond the reach of ordinary American citizens in terms of economic power.
However, the creation of a system to keep the majority of the populace at the losing end of a
structure which neither promised nor delivered a state of financial equality was a predictable
extension of the economic system the U.S. government was formed to protect.
... .... ...
Forty years of Cold War and the ultimate realization that abuse of the communist system and
a hierarchy of privilege proved that system to be vulnerable to selfishness -- in common with
the triumphant capitalist countries.
Because any desired outcome can be written into an equation to exclude unwanted facts or
inputs by holding some things constant while applying chosen variables that may not hold true
under every historical circumstance, it's considered "falsifiable" and therefore "scientific."
But only if it appeals to the right people and justifies a given political need will it become
sacrosanct (until the next round of "progress").
.... .... ...
Abusive Self- Interest
In 1764, twenty- five years before the embrace of Madame Guillotine (when heads rolled
literally to put the fear of the mob into politics), contempt for the filth and poverty in
which the French commoners lived while the nobility gorged on luxury goods showed how arrogant
they were, not just in confidence that their offices of entitlement were beyond reproach and
unassailable, but that mockery and insult in the face of deliberate deprivation would be borne
with obedience and humility.
It certainly affected Smith's outlook, since he wrote The Wealth of Nations with a
focus on self- interest rather than moral sentiments. And while this may be purely pragmatic,
based on what
he witnessed, he also wrote about the potential for self- interest to become abusive, both
in collusion with individuals and when combined with the power of government. Business
interests could form cabals (groups of conspirators, plotting public harm) or monopolies
(organizations with exclusive market control) to fix prices at their highest levels. A true
laissez- faire economy would provide every incentive to conspire against consumers and attempt
to influence budgets and legislation.
Smith's assertion that self- interest leads producers to favor domestic industry must also
be understood in the context of the period. While it's true that the Enlightenment was a
movement of rational philosophy radically opposed to secrecy, it's important to understand that
this had to be done respectfully , insofar as all arguments were intended to impress the
monarchy under circumstances where the king believed himself God- appointed and infallible, no
matter his past or present policies, and matters were handled with delicacy. Yet, Smith's
arguments are clear enough (and certainly courageous enough) to be understood in laymen's
terms.
In an era when the very industry he's observing has been fostered by tariffs, monopolies,
labor controls, and materials extracted from colonies, he did his best to balance observation
with what he thought was best for society. It's not his fault we pick and choose our recipes
for what we do and don't believe or where we think Smith might have gone had he been alive
today.
The New Double Standard
The only practical way to resolve the contradiction between the existing beneficiaries of
state favoritism in this period and Smith's aversion to it is to observe that the means to
prevent competition and interference with the transition from one mode of commerce to another
that enhances the strength of the favored or provides a new means to grow their wealth is to
close the door of government intervention behind them and burn any bridges to it.
In psychological terms, the practice of "negative attribution" is to assume that identical
behavior is justifiable for oneself but not another. It may not be inconsistent with a system
of economics founded on self- interest, but it naturally begs a justification as to why it
rules out everyone else's self- interest. The beauty of this system is that it will
always have the same answer.
You may have guessed it.
Progress.
Reallocation of Assets
It was always understood that capitalism produces winners and losers. The art of economizing
is to gain maximum benefit for minimum expenditure, which generally translates to asset
consolidation and does not necessarily mean there is minimum sacrifice. There's an opportunity
cost for everything, whether it's human, financial, environmental, or material. But the most
important tenet of free market capitalism is that asset redistribution requires the U. S.
government to go to DEFCON 1, unless assets are being reallocated for "higher productivity," in
which case the entire universe is saved from the indefensible sin of lost opportunity.
Private property is sacred -- up until an individual decides he can make more productive use
of it and appeals to the courts for seizure under eminent domain or until the government
decides it will increase national growth if owned by some other person or entity. In like
manner, corporations can suffer hostile takeovers, just as deregulation facilitates predatory
market behavior and cutthroat competition promotes an efficiency orientation that means fewer
jobs and lower incomes, which result in private losses.
In the varying range of causes underlying the loss of assets, the common threat is progress
-- the "civilized" justification for depriving some other person or entity of their right to
own property, presumably earned by the sweat of their brow, except their sweat doesn't have the
same champion as someone who can wring more profit from it. The official explanation is that
the government manages the "scarcity" of resources to benefit the world. This is also how we
justify war, aggression, and genocide, though we don't always admit to that unless we mean to
avoid it.
Perfectly Rational Genocide
History cooperates with the definition of Enlightenment if we imagine that thoughtfulness
has something to do with genocide. In the context of American heritage, it has meant that when
someone stands in the way of progress, his or her resources are "reallocated" to serve the
pursuit of maximum profit, with or without consent. The war against Native Americans was one in
which Americans either sought and participated in annihilation efforts or believed this end was
inevitable. In the age of rational thought, meditation on the issue could lead from gratitude
for the help early settlers received from Native Americans to the observation they didn't
enclose their land and had no concept of private property,
to the conviction they were unmotivated by profit and therefore irreconcilable savages. But
it takes more than rational thought to mobilize one society to exterminate another.
The belief in manifest destiny -- that God put the settlers in America for preordained and
glorious purposes which gave them a right to everything -- turned out to be just the ticket for
a free people opposed to persecution and the tyranny of church and state.
Lest the irony elude you, economic freedom requires divorcing the state from religion, but
God can be used to whip up the masses, distribute "It's Them or Us" cards, and send people out
to die on behalf of intellectuals and investors who've rationalized their
chosenness.
CHAPTER TWO: INSTILLING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
Selfishness may be exalted as the root and branch of capitalism, but it doesn't make you
look good to the party on the receiving end or those whose sympathy he earns. For that, you
need a government prepared to do four things, which each have separate dictums based on study,
theorization, and experience.
Coercion:
Force is illegitimate only if you can't sell it.
Persuasion:
How do I market thee? Let me count the ways.
Bargaining:
If you won't scratch my back, then how about a piece of the pie?
Indoctrination:
Because I said so. (And paid for the semantics.)
Predatory capitalism is the control and expropriation of land, labor, and natural resources
by a foreign government via coercion, persuasion, bargaining, and indoctrination.
At the coercive stage, we can expect military and/ or police intervention to repress the
subject populace. The persuasive stage will be marked by clientelism, in which a small
percentage of the populace will be rewarded for loyalty, often serving as the capitalists'
administrators, tax collectors, and enforcers. At the bargaining stage, efforts will be made to
include the populace, or a certain percentage of it, in the country's ruling system, and this
is usually marked by steps toward democratic (or, more often, autocratic) governance.
At the fourth stage, the populace is educated by capitalists, such that they continue to
maintain a relationship of dependency.
The Predatory Debt Link
In many cases, post- colonial states were forced to assume the debts of their colonizers.
And where they did not, they were encouraged to become in debt to the West via loans that were
issued through international institutions to ensure they did not fall prey to communism or
pursue other economic policies that were inimical to the West. Debt is the tie that binds
nation states to the geostrategic and economic interests of the West.
As such, the Cold War era was a time of easy credit, luring postcolonial states to undertake
the construction of useless monoliths and monuments, and to even expropriate such loans through
corruption and despotism, thereby making these independent rulers as predatory as colonizers.
While some countries were wiser than others and did use the funds for infrastructural
improvements, these were also things that benefited the West and particularly Western
contractors. In his controversial work Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , John Perkins
reveals that he was a consultant for an American firm (MAIN), whose job was to ensure that
states became indebted beyond their means so they would remain loyal to their creditors, buying
them votes within United Nations organizations, among other things.
Predatory capitalists demand export- orientations as the means to generate foreign currency
with which to pay back debt. In the process, the state must privatize and drastically slash or
eliminate any domestic subsidies which are aimed at helping native industry compete in the
marketplace. Domestic consumption and imports must be radically contained, as shown by the
exchange rate policies recommended by the IMF. The costs of obtaining domestic capital will be
pushed beyond the reach of most native producers, while wages must be depressed to an absolute
bare minimum. In short, the country's land, labor, and natural resources must be sold at
bargain basement prices in order to make these goods competitive, in what one author has called
"a spiraling race to the bottom," as countries producing predominantly the same goods engage in
cutthroat competition whose benefactor is the West.
Under these circumstances, foreign investment is encouraged, but this, too, represents a
loaded situation for countries that open their markets to financial liberalization. Since, in
most cases, the
IMF does not allow restrictions on the conditions of capital inflows, it means that
financial investors can literally dictate their terms. And since no country is invulnerable to
attacks on its currency, which governments must try to keep at a favorable exchange rate, it
means financial marauders can force any country to try to prop up its currency using vital
reserves of foreign exchange which might have been used to pay their debt.
When such is the case, the IMF comes to the rescue with a socalled "bailout fund," that
allows foreign investors to withdraw their funds intact, while the government reels from the
effects of an IMF- imposed austerity plan, often resulting in severe recession the offshoot of
which is bankruptcies by the thousands and plummeting employment.
In countries that experienced IMF bailouts due to attacks on their currencies, the effect
was to reset the market so the only economic survivors were those who remained export- oriented
and were strong enough to withstand the upheaval. This means they remained internationally
competitive, which translates to low earnings of foreign exchange. At the same time that the
country is being bled from the bottom up through mass unemployment, extremely low wages, and
the "spiraling race to the bottom," it is in an even more unfavorable position concerning the
payment of debt. The position is that debt slavery ensues, as much an engine of extraction as
any colonial regime ever managed.
The Role of Indoctrination
The fact that it is sovereign governments overseeing the work of debt repression has much to
do with education, which is the final phase of predatory capitalism, concluding in
indoctrination. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lesson to the world was that
socialism can't work, nor were there any remaining options for countries that pursued "the
third way" other than capitalism. This produced a virulent strain of neoliberalism in which
most people were, and are, being educated. The most high- ranking of civil servants have either
been educated in the West or directly influenced by its thinking. And this status of acceptance
and adherence finally constitutes indoctrination. The system is now self- sustaining, upheld by
domestic agents.
While predatory capitalism can proceed along a smooth continuum from coercion to persuasion
to bargaining to formal indoctrination, the West can regress to any of these steps at any point
in
time, given the perceived need to interfere with varying degrees of force in order to
protect its interests.
Trojan Politics
Democracy is about having the power and flexibility to graft our system of government and
predatory capitalism onto any target country, regardless of relative strength or conflicting
ideologies. An entire productive industry has grown up using the tools of coercion, persuasion,
bargaining, and formal indoctrination to maximize their impact in the arena of U. S. politics.
Its actors know how to jerk the right strings, push the right buttons, and veer from a soft
sell to a hard sell when resistance dictates war, whether it's with planes overhead and tanks
on the ground or with massive capital flight that panics the whole world.
When the U. S. political economy goes into warp overdrive, its job proves far more valuable
than anything ever made in the strict material sense because there's never been more at stake
in terms of what it's trying to gain. It's the American idea machine made up of corporations,
lobbyists, think tanks, foundations, universities, and consultants in every known discipline
devoted to mass consumerism, and what they sell is illusory opportunity dressed in American
principles. They embrace political candidates who'll play by elitist rules to preserve the
fiction of choice, and, in this way, they maintain legitimacy, no matter what kind of
"reallocation" is on the economic agenda.
The issue is not whether we'll question it, but who we'll applaud for administering it.
In the Information Age, perception management is king.
We can both be right. Russia cockblocking Israel's ability to just roll over Assad's
Syria, their relationship with Iran, etc. are big factors. It's been pretty funny to watch
American Progressives rant and rave about Russia like warmonger rednecks in the 80's who just
watched Rocky IV.
NATO seems to be trying to frighten Russia with maneuvers in Poland and B-52 flights over
the Ukraine and the Black Sea ( see here for a full analysis). As for the
Poles and Ukronazis, they apparently believe that the Russian bear covered himself in poop and
ran away at full speed.
What I am going to say next is not a secret, every military person who looked into this
issue knows and understands this: NATO, and I mean the combined power of all NATO member
states, simply does not have the hardware needed to wage a war against Russia in Europe. What
NATO does have is only sufficient to trigger a serious incident which might result in a
shooting war. But once this war starts, the chances of victory for NATO are exactly zero.
Why?
Well, for one thing, while coalitions of countries might give a thin veneer of political
legitimacy to a military action (in reality, only a UNSC resolution would), in purely military
terms you are much better off having a single national military. Not only that, but coalitions
are nothing but the expression of an often held delusion: the delusion that the little guy can
hide behind the back of the big guy. Poland's entire history can be summarized in this simple
principle: strike the weak and bootlick (or
even worse !) the powerful. In contrast, real military powers don't count on some other guy
doing the heavy lifting for them. They simply fight until they win.
Yes, the Europeans, being the cowards that they are, do believe that there is safety in
numbers. But each time these midgets gang up on Russia and start barking (or, to use Putin's
expression, start oinking ) all together, the Russians clearly
see that the Europeans are afraid. Otherwise, they would not constantly seek somebody to
protect them (even against a non-existing threat).
As a direct result of this delusion, NATO simply does not have the equivalent of the
First
Guard Tank Army in spite of the fact that NATO has a bigger population and much bigger
budgets than Russia. Such a tank Army is what it would take to fight a real war in Europe,
Russia has such an Army. NATO does not.
The other thing NATO does not have is a real integrated multi-layered air defense system.
Russia does.
Lastly, NATO has no hypersonic weapons. Russia does.
(According to President Trump, the US does have super-dooper " hydrosonic " weapons, but nobody really knows what that is
supposed to mean).
I would even argue that the comparatively smaller Belarusian military could make hamburger
meat of the roughly three times larger Polish armed forces in a very short time (unlike the
Poles, the Belarusian are excellent soldiers and they know that they are surrounded by hostile
countries on three sides).
As for the "armed forces" of the Baltic statelets, they are just a sad joke.
One more example: the Empire is now sending ships into the Black Sea as some kind of "show
of force". Yet, every military analyst out there knows that the Black Sea is a "Russian lake"
and that no matter how many ships the US or NATO sends into the Black Sea, their life
expectancy in case of a conflict would be measured in minutes.
There is a popular expression in Russia which, I submit, beautifully sums up the current
US/NATO doctrine: пугать ежа
голой
задницей , which can be translated as "
trying to scare a hedgehog with your naked bottom ".
The truth is that NATO military forces currently are all in very bad shape – all of
them, including the US – and that their only advantage over Russia is in numbers. But as
soon as you factor in training, command and control, the ability to operate with severely
degraded C3I capabilities, the average age of military hardware or morale – the Russian
armed forces are far ahead of the West.
Does anybody sincerely believe that a few B-52s and a few thousand soldiers from different
countries playing war in Poland will really scare the Russian generals?
But if not – why the threats?
My explanation is simple: the rulers of the Empire simply hope that the people in the West
will never find out how bad their current military posture really is, and they also know that
Russia will never attack first – so they simply pretend like they are still big, mighty
and relevant. This is made even easier by the fact that the Russians always downplay their real
capabilities (in sharp contrast to the West which always brags about "the best XYZ in the
world"). That, and the fact that nobody in the Western ruling classes wants to admit that the
game is over and that the Empire has collapsed.
... the Empire still refuses to deal with Russia in any other way except insults, bullying,
threats, accusations, sanctions, and constant sabre-rattling. This has never, and I mean never,
worked in the past, and it won't work in the future. But, apparently, NATO generals simply
cannot comprehend that insanity can be defined as " doing the same thing over and over
again, while hoping to achieve different results ".
Finally, I will conclude with a short mention of US politicians.
First, Trump. He now declares that the Russians stole the secret of hypersonic weapons from
Obama. This reminds me of how the Brits declared that Russia stole their vaccine against the
sars-cov-2 virus. But, if the Russians stole all that, why is it that ONLY Russia has deployed
hypersonic weapons (not the US) and ONLY Russia has both two vaccines and 2 actual treatments
(and not the UK)? For a good laugh, check out Andrei Martyanov's great column " Russia
Steal Everything ".
And then there is Nancy Pelosi who, apparently, is considering, yes, you guessed it –
yet another impeachment attempt against Trump? The charge this time? Exercising this
Presidential prerogative to nominate a successor to Ruth Ginsburg. Okay, Pelosi might be
senile, but she also is in deep denial if she thinks impeaching Trump is still a viable
project. Frankly? I think that she lost it.
In fact, I think that all the Dems have gone absolutely insane: they are now considering
packing both the Supreme Court and the Senate. The fact that doing so will destroy the US
political system does not seem to bother them in the least.
Conclusion: quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat !
We live in a world where facts or logic have simply become irrelevant and nobody cares about
such clearly outdated categories. We have elevated " doubleplusgoodthinking " into an art form. We
have also done away with the concepts of "proof" or "evidence" which we have replaced with
variations on the "highly likely" theme. We have also, for all practical purpose, jettisoned
the entire corpus of international law and replaced it with " rules-based
international order ". In fact, I can only agree with Chris Hedges who, in his superb book
the " Empire of
illusions " and of the "triumph of spectacle". He is absolutely correct: not only is this a
triumph of appearance over substance, and of ideology over reality, it is even the triumph of
self-destruction over self-preservation.
There is not big "master plan", no complex international conspiracy, no 5D chess. All we
have is yet another empire committing suicide and, like so many before this one, this suicide
is executed by this empire's ruling classes.
According to the updated Russian military doctrine, any missile fired at Russia would be
considered tipped with Nuclear war head. If so, with available Hypersonic weapons, a
significant portions of the Empire, including EU would be potentially turned to Radioactive
ash within 20 minutes. Does this register at the highest levels of the Empire? I surely
hope so.
In the United States, a great deal of study and energy goes into promoting respect for
democracy, not just to keep it alive here but also to spread it around the world. It embraces
the will of the majority, whether or not its main beneficiaries have more resources than other
citizens do, as shown by the election of President Obama, who promised hope and change for the
suffering majority, but did not sit long in office before being subjected to an economic vote
of no-confidence.
Those who claim we run a plutocracy (government for the rich by the rich) -- or that we're
victims of a conspiracy contrived by a shadow government -- are right while being wrong.
Our government is beyond the reach of ordinary American citizens in terms of economic power.
However, the creation of a system to keep the majority of the populace at the losing end of a
structure which neither promised nor delivered a state of financial equality was a predictable
extension of the economic system the U.S. government was formed to protect.
... .... ...
Forty years of Cold War and the ultimate realization that abuse of the communist system and
a hierarchy of privilege proved that system to be vulnerable to selfishness -- in common with
the triumphant capitalist countries.
Because any desired outcome can be written into an equation to exclude unwanted facts or
inputs by holding some things constant while applying chosen variables that may not hold true
under every historical circumstance, it's considered "falsifiable" and therefore "scientific."
But only if it appeals to the right people and justifies a given political need will it become
sacrosanct (until the next round of "progress").
.... .... ...
Abusive Self- Interest
In 1764, twenty- five years before the embrace of Madame Guillotine (when heads rolled
literally to put the fear of the mob into politics), contempt for the filth and poverty in
which the French commoners lived while the nobility gorged on luxury goods showed how arrogant
they were, not just in confidence that their offices of entitlement were beyond reproach and
unassailable, but that mockery and insult in the face of deliberate deprivation would be borne
with obedience and humility.
It certainly affected Smith's outlook, since he wrote The Wealth of Nations with a
focus on self- interest rather than moral sentiments. And while this may be purely pragmatic,
based on what
he witnessed, he also wrote about the potential for self- interest to become abusive, both
in collusion with individuals and when combined with the power of government. Business
interests could form cabals (groups of conspirators, plotting public harm) or monopolies
(organizations with exclusive market control) to fix prices at their highest levels. A true
laissez- faire economy would provide every incentive to conspire against consumers and attempt
to influence budgets and legislation.
Smith's assertion that self- interest leads producers to favor domestic industry must also
be understood in the context of the period. While it's true that the Enlightenment was a
movement of rational philosophy radically opposed to secrecy, it's important to understand that
this had to be done respectfully , insofar as all arguments were intended to impress the
monarchy under circumstances where the king believed himself God- appointed and infallible, no
matter his past or present policies, and matters were handled with delicacy. Yet, Smith's
arguments are clear enough (and certainly courageous enough) to be understood in laymen's
terms.
In an era when the very industry he's observing has been fostered by tariffs, monopolies,
labor controls, and materials extracted from colonies, he did his best to balance observation
with what he thought was best for society. It's not his fault we pick and choose our recipes
for what we do and don't believe or where we think Smith might have gone had he been alive
today.
The New Double Standard
The only practical way to resolve the contradiction between the existing beneficiaries of
state favoritism in this period and Smith's aversion to it is to observe that the means to
prevent competition and interference with the transition from one mode of commerce to another
that enhances the strength of the favored or provides a new means to grow their wealth is to
close the door of government intervention behind them and burn any bridges to it.
In psychological terms, the practice of "negative attribution" is to assume that identical
behavior is justifiable for oneself but not another. It may not be inconsistent with a system
of economics founded on self- interest, but it naturally begs a justification as to why it
rules out everyone else's self- interest. The beauty of this system is that it will
always have the same answer.
You may have guessed it.
Progress.
Reallocation of Assets
It was always understood that capitalism produces winners and losers. The art of economizing
is to gain maximum benefit for minimum expenditure, which generally translates to asset
consolidation and does not necessarily mean there is minimum sacrifice. There's an opportunity
cost for everything, whether it's human, financial, environmental, or material. But the most
important tenet of free market capitalism is that asset redistribution requires the U. S.
government to go to DEFCON 1, unless assets are being reallocated for "higher productivity," in
which case the entire universe is saved from the indefensible sin of lost opportunity.
Private property is sacred -- up until an individual decides he can make more productive use
of it and appeals to the courts for seizure under eminent domain or until the government
decides it will increase national growth if owned by some other person or entity. In like
manner, corporations can suffer hostile takeovers, just as deregulation facilitates predatory
market behavior and cutthroat competition promotes an efficiency orientation that means fewer
jobs and lower incomes, which result in private losses.
In the varying range of causes underlying the loss of assets, the common threat is progress
-- the "civilized" justification for depriving some other person or entity of their right to
own property, presumably earned by the sweat of their brow, except their sweat doesn't have the
same champion as someone who can wring more profit from it. The official explanation is that
the government manages the "scarcity" of resources to benefit the world. This is also how we
justify war, aggression, and genocide, though we don't always admit to that unless we mean to
avoid it.
Perfectly Rational Genocide
History cooperates with the definition of Enlightenment if we imagine that thoughtfulness
has something to do with genocide. In the context of American heritage, it has meant that when
someone stands in the way of progress, his or her resources are "reallocated" to serve the
pursuit of maximum profit, with or without consent. The war against Native Americans was one in
which Americans either sought and participated in annihilation efforts or believed this end was
inevitable. In the age of rational thought, meditation on the issue could lead from gratitude
for the help early settlers received from Native Americans to the observation they didn't
enclose their land and had no concept of private property,
to the conviction they were unmotivated by profit and therefore irreconcilable savages. But
it takes more than rational thought to mobilize one society to exterminate another.
The belief in manifest destiny -- that God put the settlers in America for preordained and
glorious purposes which gave them a right to everything -- turned out to be just the ticket for
a free people opposed to persecution and the tyranny of church and state.
Lest the irony elude you, economic freedom requires divorcing the state from religion, but
God can be used to whip up the masses, distribute "It's Them or Us" cards, and send people out
to die on behalf of intellectuals and investors who've rationalized their
chosenness.
CHAPTER TWO: INSTILLING THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE
Selfishness may be exalted as the root and branch of capitalism, but it doesn't make you
look good to the party on the receiving end or those whose sympathy he earns. For that, you
need a government prepared to do four things, which each have separate dictums based on study,
theorization, and experience.
Coercion:
Force is illegitimate only if you can't sell it.
Persuasion:
How do I market thee? Let me count the ways.
Bargaining:
If you won't scratch my back, then how about a piece of the pie?
Indoctrination:
Because I said so. (And paid for the semantics.)
Predatory capitalism is the control and expropriation of land, labor, and natural resources
by a foreign government via coercion, persuasion, bargaining, and indoctrination.
At the coercive stage, we can expect military and/ or police intervention to repress the
subject populace. The persuasive stage will be marked by clientelism, in which a small
percentage of the populace will be rewarded for loyalty, often serving as the capitalists'
administrators, tax collectors, and enforcers. At the bargaining stage, efforts will be made to
include the populace, or a certain percentage of it, in the country's ruling system, and this
is usually marked by steps toward democratic (or, more often, autocratic) governance.
At the fourth stage, the populace is educated by capitalists, such that they continue to
maintain a relationship of dependency.
The Predatory Debt Link
In many cases, post- colonial states were forced to assume the debts of their colonizers.
And where they did not, they were encouraged to become in debt to the West via loans that were
issued through international institutions to ensure they did not fall prey to communism or
pursue other economic policies that were inimical to the West. Debt is the tie that binds
nation states to the geostrategic and economic interests of the West.
As such, the Cold War era was a time of easy credit, luring postcolonial states to undertake
the construction of useless monoliths and monuments, and to even expropriate such loans through
corruption and despotism, thereby making these independent rulers as predatory as colonizers.
While some countries were wiser than others and did use the funds for infrastructural
improvements, these were also things that benefited the West and particularly Western
contractors. In his controversial work Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , John Perkins
reveals that he was a consultant for an American firm (MAIN), whose job was to ensure that
states became indebted beyond their means so they would remain loyal to their creditors, buying
them votes within United Nations organizations, among other things.
Predatory capitalists demand export- orientations as the means to generate foreign currency
with which to pay back debt. In the process, the state must privatize and drastically slash or
eliminate any domestic subsidies which are aimed at helping native industry compete in the
marketplace. Domestic consumption and imports must be radically contained, as shown by the
exchange rate policies recommended by the IMF. The costs of obtaining domestic capital will be
pushed beyond the reach of most native producers, while wages must be depressed to an absolute
bare minimum. In short, the country's land, labor, and natural resources must be sold at
bargain basement prices in order to make these goods competitive, in what one author has called
"a spiraling race to the bottom," as countries producing predominantly the same goods engage in
cutthroat competition whose benefactor is the West.
Under these circumstances, foreign investment is encouraged, but this, too, represents a
loaded situation for countries that open their markets to financial liberalization. Since, in
most cases, the
IMF does not allow restrictions on the conditions of capital inflows, it means that
financial investors can literally dictate their terms. And since no country is invulnerable to
attacks on its currency, which governments must try to keep at a favorable exchange rate, it
means financial marauders can force any country to try to prop up its currency using vital
reserves of foreign exchange which might have been used to pay their debt.
When such is the case, the IMF comes to the rescue with a socalled "bailout fund," that
allows foreign investors to withdraw their funds intact, while the government reels from the
effects of an IMF- imposed austerity plan, often resulting in severe recession the offshoot of
which is bankruptcies by the thousands and plummeting employment.
In countries that experienced IMF bailouts due to attacks on their currencies, the effect
was to reset the market so the only economic survivors were those who remained export- oriented
and were strong enough to withstand the upheaval. This means they remained internationally
competitive, which translates to low earnings of foreign exchange. At the same time that the
country is being bled from the bottom up through mass unemployment, extremely low wages, and
the "spiraling race to the bottom," it is in an even more unfavorable position concerning the
payment of debt. The position is that debt slavery ensues, as much an engine of extraction as
any colonial regime ever managed.
The Role of Indoctrination
The fact that it is sovereign governments overseeing the work of debt repression has much to
do with education, which is the final phase of predatory capitalism, concluding in
indoctrination. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lesson to the world was that
socialism can't work, nor were there any remaining options for countries that pursued "the
third way" other than capitalism. This produced a virulent strain of neoliberalism in which
most people were, and are, being educated. The most high- ranking of civil servants have either
been educated in the West or directly influenced by its thinking. And this status of acceptance
and adherence finally constitutes indoctrination. The system is now self- sustaining, upheld by
domestic agents.
While predatory capitalism can proceed along a smooth continuum from coercion to persuasion
to bargaining to formal indoctrination, the West can regress to any of these steps at any point
in
time, given the perceived need to interfere with varying degrees of force in order to
protect its interests.
Trojan Politics
Democracy is about having the power and flexibility to graft our system of government and
predatory capitalism onto any target country, regardless of relative strength or conflicting
ideologies. An entire productive industry has grown up using the tools of coercion, persuasion,
bargaining, and formal indoctrination to maximize their impact in the arena of U. S. politics.
Its actors know how to jerk the right strings, push the right buttons, and veer from a soft
sell to a hard sell when resistance dictates war, whether it's with planes overhead and tanks
on the ground or with massive capital flight that panics the whole world.
When the U. S. political economy goes into warp overdrive, its job proves far more valuable
than anything ever made in the strict material sense because there's never been more at stake
in terms of what it's trying to gain. It's the American idea machine made up of corporations,
lobbyists, think tanks, foundations, universities, and consultants in every known discipline
devoted to mass consumerism, and what they sell is illusory opportunity dressed in American
principles. They embrace political candidates who'll play by elitist rules to preserve the
fiction of choice, and, in this way, they maintain legitimacy, no matter what kind of
"reallocation" is on the economic agenda.
The issue is not whether we'll question it, but who we'll applaud for administering it.
In the Information Age, perception management is king.
During the last weeks there was news that Turkey was hiring some
2,000 'Syrian rebels' to fight in
Azerbaijan against Armenian forces which since 1993 occupy Nagorno- Karabakh . Earlier today the
Azerbaijan forces and the mercenaries launched
their attack on Armenian lines. It was a massacre. Two Azerbaijani helicopters were shot
down. Some 10 tanks and armored troop transporters went up in flames . Azerbaijani
artillery hit some civilian structures in Stepankert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkish(?) drones hit Armenia front positions .
The Azerbaijani tactic seems to be to bunch up a lot of their tanks in the open field and to
wait for the Armenian artillery to destroy them. Russian troops are stationed in Armenia and
additional heavy support from Russia was flown in today . But Russia is
friendly with both countries and is already urging for an armistice. Armenia has mobilized its
forces and reinforcements are moving towards the front.
This is now, after Syrian and Libya, the third country in which the wannabe Sultan of Turkey
is trying to fight Russian supported forces. It ain't gonna work. But Erdogan has to keep on
doing that as a domestic diversion because the Turkish economy has screeched to a halt. The
recent central bank
rate hike is unlikely to stop the loss of the Lira but will deepen the recession.
The situation might well escalated from here on. There will be a lot of disinformation
coming from both sides.
Posted by b on September 27, 2020 at 12:55 UTC |
Permalink
Azerbaijan can't lift a finger without Ottoman backing. Armenia is traditionally a Russian
ally, and even though the current regime is wooing Amerikastan, it can't survive without
Russian protection. In any regular war Armenia will smash Azerbaijan flat but the Ottomans
are guaranteed to get involved. Now Russia and the Ottomans are on different sides in Libya
of course, Russia would back Greece in any conflict with Ankara, and increasingly Russia is
getting fed up with Ottoman attempts to annex North Syria. I can only surmise that this is an
Ottoman warning to Russia.
The claim the Azeri tanks were just sitting in a field waiting to be smashed by Russian
artillery etc. actually sounds like the Russians attacking first. The aggressor usually has
the initiative and thus usually has operational success in the opening round. It's
theoretically possible that a Russian artillery offensive was on high alert, waiting to
launch after a suitable "incident" which could be represented as an Azeri assault. Whatever
the value of mercenaries from a losing war, a few weeks is very unlikely to permit meaningful
incorporation into an actual fighting force. Therefore it is highly unlikely that their
reinforcement was the enabling cause of an Azeri assault.
It is a strange and marvelous world, where wonders delightful and horrible abound. So it
is barely possible the Azeris are terminally stupid, the underlying theory of the post. I
would still say that it's *not* because non-Christians are stupid. More likely it's because
the Azeris are getting their military advice from their friends the Russians.
IMO this reigniting of an old conflict comes as response to recent Kavkas 2020 maneuvers
organized by Russia which are taking place right now, with the participation of Armenia, and
also as response of last meeting between Zarif and Lavrov, in whose presser Lavrov was quite
explicit, at least more than before...
This comes, in the first place, as a new hot front ( apart from Belarus ) in the
post-Soviet space to implicate Russia and make her choose amongst two neighbors she gets
along with quite well, and at the same time, the transport of Syrian jihadi mercenary forces
in a charter flight by Turkey imply that a new abcess the size and type of Idlib is planned
to be inserted in the viccinity of both Russia and Iran, which will act as destablization
force for future incursions after US elections...
As we talk Azerbaijan is announcing advances in the Southern front and the take over of
some localities along Iranian border ...Why? What that has to do with Armenia? To implant
there the jihadis for the coming "proxy war" on Iran, the same way they were implanted in
Syria/Turkey northern East and West border and Syria/Lebanon Southern border...
Turkey here acting as US proxy PMC to position US managed and funded jihadi forces, as it has
done in Syria and Lybia...
Also the conflict comes to shoot two, or three, birds with the same shot by starting
another military conflict or destabilization process in the Silk & Road path...
This is the US MIC reasuring their rate of profit for the coming US presidency by
extending the perpetual war...
Although may well be that they will not even wait for the elections results...
On the importance of this new conflict and its obvious connection with Iran...See map in
thread linked above...Some more sources...Probable objective of past "color revolution" in
Armenia...on the grounds of "alleged" US chaotic state...chaos in the US acts as veil for its
own population ( so as thvey can not think of continuously started wars while they cop with
the immeidate miserable oticome of the pandemic...) and for opponents... who may think of
relaxing...Fortunately, Gerasimov, and IRGC, are always attentive...
THE SECOND WAR OF THE NAGORNO-KARABAJ HAS BREAKED In red the disputed region, in the center
of which is Stefankert, the capital. In blue the areas supposedly conquered by #Azerbaiyan.
Everything indicates that the Azeri offensive began by surprise in the early hours of
today, and has maintained a reasonable pace of advance
On the visible hand of Turkey in this reginition...no way Turkey is moving without NATO
consent...and even support...recall "international coalition of the willing to fight ISIS in
Syria"...which then turned into ISIS proxy war onto Syrian state and population...
I have
been checking and Azerbaijan announced in June that they were interested in buying TB2 from
Turkey. In no way have they been able to buy, receive and put the drones into operation in
such a short time. It starts to get cloudy.
Twitter turco está diciendo abiertamente que son sus drones. Mientras Clash Report,
que ya se ha comentado muchas veces que podría estar ligada a la inteligencia truca
(por el acceso que tienen a cierto material informativo) habla de que los drones son
Bayraktar TB2.
Shooting is common in Upper Karabakh...but not in Down Karabakh...this conflict as part of
war on Russian gas supply to Europe...
Although shooting is common in Upper Karabakh, a disputed area between Armenia and
Azerbaijan, this is the fastest escalation in recent times. Just hours after the last
incident, Armenia has declared martial law and total mobilization.
Let's not think that this is simply a local conflict between two countries: Azerbaijan
is backed by Turkey, while Armenia is backed by Russia. And to this we can add the natural
gas that comes to Europe from the Caspian.
In case someone wants to follow, Youtube channel of Armenian TV which sometimes biradcast
in Englisgh language...
In case anyone is interested in following him from the origin, YouTube channel with a live
signal from an Armenian television (at times they speak in English)
Well, sorry, posting too fast, as I must go now, and without time to check two
times...
It seems that tweets by #DragonLadyU2 got middle trnaslated...Repost correctly and with
blockquote, as it is not, as it could seem by the size of letter, info of mine, but of this
account who is following the issue of Azerbaijani drones purchase...
I was introducing it as:
On the visible hand of Turkey in this reginition...no way Turkey is moving without NATO
consent...and even support...recall "international coalition of the willing to fight ISIS in
Syria"...which then turned into ISIS proxy war onto Syrian state and population...
I have been checking and Azerbaijan announced in June that they were interested in buying
TB2 from Turkey. In no way have they been able to buy, receive and put the drones into
operation in such a short time. It starts to get cloudy.
Turkish Twitter is openly saying that it is their drones. While Clash Report, which has
already been commented many times that it could be linked to Turkish intelligence (due to
the access they have to certain informative material), talks about the drones being
Bayraktar TB2.
On preparations for this conflict, and who provoked whom...also reflected some intends of
transforming this inot religious conflict...which then would reginite the whole Caucasus and
Caspian region, and thus would end implying Iran and Russia...and probably palcing them in
different sides...which could be one of the objectives, to put a breach into very good
Russian/Iranian relations...Beware...
I'm reminded Israeli bizjet associated w secret flights was in Baku, Azerbaijan 3 days ago.
Landed back in Israel along w Azeri ministry of defense cargo
I have not been able to verify the arrival of Syrian fighters from the Turkish-backed
factions (SNA) in Azerbaijan as of now. I can confirm that dozens of fighters from NW Syria
(outside of regime control) left Syria via Turkey in an unknown direction about a week ago.
Families lost touch with these men since their departure. Rumored destinations include
Azerbaijan, Qatar, Turkey and Libya. I am in touch with families & friends of men who
left and will report once they manage to get in touch with their loved-ones.
About a month ago, rumors spread on WhatsApp among SNA fighters that they can register
to go to Azerbaijan. Many registered over WhatsApp, others apparently thru offices in the
Turkish-controlled areas.
The fighters registered due to the enticing rumored salaries of $2K-$2.5K
The SNA mercenaries who've gone to fight in Libya against Haftar were recruited with
direct involvement by Turkish officers who met with commanders of the SNA factions to
pressure them to send fighters. With the alleged Azerbaijan recruitment, there haven't been
such meetings.
It seems likely that the recruitment is being carried out by a Turkish private security
company that is also involved in shipping Syrians to fight in Libya. There is no need to
apply pressure on Syrians to leave anymore. The number of men wanting to go far exceeds
demand.
With time, the idea of being deployed oversees as a mercenary is becoming more socially
acceptable in Syria, in both communities residing outside of regime control (men in Idlib
have registered to go to Azerbaijan too) and in regime areas (where men are going to fight
for Haftar)
Syrian lives are regarded as expendable, with Syria serving as an arena to settle
geostrategic scores at Syrians' expense. Syrians resisted & still resist this logic,
but the collapse of the economy is prompting many Syrians to be willing to sell themselves
to the highest bidder.
div> I think that Jihadists have no nationality, therefore it is wrong to
label them as "Syrian"!
(1) re: tanks bunched up - the linked Armenian MOD twitter-video with the cheesy music and
2 tank hits ( this one ) suggests it is not
artillery? Recently dug cover beind them, but tanks mostly facing toward camera. Bulldozer
still there. Direct hits. You can see from the reaction of the tanks what they think is the
direction from which they were attacked. After the first hit, the next tank to be hit
attempted (unsuccessfully) to hide behind the remains of the tank already destroyed. The
others which were not already facing that way, turn their turrets toward the camera, which is
the direction from which they think they were attacked. They start making smokescreen as the
clip ends.
(2) We really don't need to see a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
(3) I don't really get the geopolitics of this. For Turkish strategic motivations, the
relevant oil/gas pipeline does not pass thru the contested territory although is quite close.
Not sure what to make of that. Map
here , with Nagorno-Karabakh colored in under Azerbaijan. Turkey is in danger of being
bypassed by Greece-Cyprus-Israel pipeline, how does this this help them in any way?
(4) For US-Iran conflict, just seems like general chaos. Perhaps there is a land route
from Russia-Georgia-Iran, but it can't be as good as the caspian sea route.
(5) for Greece-Cyprus pipeline, there may be a commercial benefit, if the reliability of
the Azerbaijan-Turkey route comes into question due to war or instability.
Looks like Turkey has gone rogue. Since the 2016 assassination attempt, Erdogan doesn't
trust NATO anymore.
As for (3), it's very straightforward: Turkey probably wants some symmetrical leverage
against Russia against the FUBARed situation in Idlib (which is draining Turkish coffers and
soldiers). They are probably very desperate, and are looking for something on these lines:
"look, Russia, you give us Idlib and we let Nagorno-Karabakh alone the next day. Deal?".
The Azeris making advances is to be expected if they had the aggressor's initiative. The post
implies the Armenians are winning handily, which is not to be expected when a prepared Azeri
offensive kicks off.
Armenia has long been on the US Regime Change hitlist - June/July 2015, July 2017, April 2018
when the Random Guy Pashinyan was imposed as leader. He has the tricky task of balancing the
demands of his owners versus the reality of Armenian interests.
p>
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One of the most vibrantly alive people I met, André Vltchek, just died . Though he barely
made it past his mid-fifties he got in a lot more living than a hundred average Americans who
live to collect their pensions. Allah yarhamhu.
In honor of this great Truth Jihadi we're replaying this 2018 interview:
The West claims to be the "free world" -- the global leader in human rights,
humanitarianism, and free expression. Globetrotting independent journalist André Vltchek , who joins us from Borneo,
isn't buying it. His latest
essay begins:
Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.
By now it is clear that the West is the least free society on Earth. In North America and
Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, observed, their
personal information is being continually extracted, and the surveillance cameras are used
indiscriminately.
Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.
One can sleep with whomever he or she wishes (as long as it is done within the 'allowed
protocol'). Homosexuality and bisexuality are allowed. But that is about all; that is how far
'freedom' usually stretches.
Rebellion is not only discouraged, it is fought against, brutally. For the tiniest
misdemeanors or errors, people end up behind bars. As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per
capita than any other country on Earth, except the Seychelles.
Andre taunted rightwing elites and illness – with a passion. I guess one of them
caught up.
Living hard seems like a death-wish, maybe it was. Staring at darkness messes people up
and he traveled again and again into the hearts of darkness across the planet because he
wanted to be a modern Wilfred Burchett. He was one of the greats. My condolences to his
family and friends.
Peace to Stephen Cohen too. You both will be missed.
André Vltchek was not an intellectual heavyweight. What is fascinating about his
life-story is how and who financed. That should be easy for insiders to fish out, and
insiders there be.
As to my humble opinion, Chomsky was neither. From all angles, his pre-fabricated
prestige, his in-group attitudes, his encrusted prestance, pettiness, pedantry, always within
convention, his factoid approach, the channels of communication, the lack of any systemic
approach, his "good guys bad guys" copper´ approach, did not warrant the few hours
listening in on his tune and omni-presence. His numb personality, contrary to the combative
Vltchek is noted as a minor.
Some "intellectuals" have half a page of original content in them over the course of a
life-time (not the same as career (n´est ce pas Pinker?)), most have none. "History
repeat itself", through the bull-horns of public intellectuals. They both practiced a sort of
journalism that is superficial (accent on the superficial) agenda driven.
Ex-CIA John Kiriakou stated that the CIA was attempting to recruit just about anyone that
they were able to starting in the sixties ranging from Hollywood actors/actresses, musicians,
writers, journalists, artists, business people, just about anyone. Operation Mockingbird is
still widely used even if it is no longer regerred to it as Operation Mockingbird.
André Vltchek (1962-2020) was the son of a Czech nuclear physicist father, and a
Russian-Chinese artist-architect mother, born in Soviet-era St Petersburg (then Leningrad).
He spent part of his childhood as well in the famous Czech beer city of Pilsen.
Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and
punishment.
What culture is not? Every single population on Earth wants to survive, Westerners want
non-Aryans to survive, but the mechanism is always the same. The Stasi, the Gestapo, the CIA,
the KGB – they all breathed air, and they all tortured dissenters. Turkey was almost
overthrown in 2016. The Shah of Iran was, as were Hosni Mubarak and Gaddafi in Egypt and
Libya. Bashar is facing quite a lot of criticism for being free – that critique comes
in the form of bombs and jihadi freedom fighters. The Saudi Prince is wise for strangling and
beheading Khashoggi. The USSR disintegrated after they had shut down the GULAG.
As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per capita than any other country on Earth,
except the Seychelles.
In 2012, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in [the DPR of Korea] estimated 150,000 to
200,000 are incarcerated, based on testimonies of defectors from the state police bureau,
which roughly equals 600–800 people incarcerated per 100,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
The World Prison Brief puts the United States' incarceration rate at 655 per 100,000.
Okay. If the West is the least free society on the planet, why the heck do all these
third-world people keep trying to move there? It is plain that Vltchek's thinking flunks the
real-world reality test.
The reality is, the rest of the world is worse off than the West, or people wouldn't keep
trying to leave the third world for the West.
@Anon ey want to have freedom of their stupid religious beliefs, not freedom from
religion. They still don't know that freedom of religion is not worth anything if it also
doesn't guarantee freedom from religion.
Thomas Jefferson tried very hard to explain this to them, but Yankee morons have never
learned what Jefferson tried to teach them. (With some notable exceptions, though, who,
however, have absolutely no political power.)
Vltchek is/was right: American/Western civilization [sic] (siphilization, rather) is
bankrupt and inhuman. It can only offer an abundance of material goods and military weapons
as if the only goals of human life were material things and warfare.
Sunday saw huge clashes erupt between the armies of Armenia and Azerbaijan along the already
militarized and disputed Nagorno-Karabakh border region. An official state of war in the region
has been declared by Yerevan.
"Early in the morning, around 7 a.m. the Azerbaijani forces launched a large-scale
aggression, including missile attacks..." Armenia's Defense Ministry stated Sunday. Armenia has
since reportedly declared martial law and a "total military mobilization" in what looks to be
the most serious escalation between the two countries in years.
Air and artillery attacks from both sides ramped up, with each side blaming the other for
the start of hostilities, while international powers urge calm. Crucially, civilians have
already been killed on either side by indiscriminate shelling . At least a dozen soldiers on
either side have also been reported killed.
Armenia's high command has ordered all troops throughout the country to muster and report to
their bases : "I invite the soldiers appointed in the forces to appear before their military
commissions in the regions," a statement said.
Armenia's military has released footage of significant tank warfare in progress. The below
is said to be Armenian army forces destroying Azerbaijani tanks:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/-mJffVrtPLk
And here's more from Sunday's fighting:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/D2jd1bw0AXQ?start=9
The recent conflict hearkens back to 2016, but before that to post-Soviet times. Christian
Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan fought a war at that time in which at least 200 people were
killed over Armenian ethnic breakaway Nagorno Karabakh, which declared independence in 1991,
despite being internationally recognized as within Azerbaijan territory .
Dozens of civilians have already been injured Sunday in the major flare-up of fighting, as
CNN reports :
While Armenia said it was responding to missile attacks launched by its neighbor Sunday,
Azerbaijan blamed Armenia for the clashes.
In response to the alleged firing of projectiles by Azerbaijan, Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan tweeted that his country had "shot down 2 helicopters & 3 UAVs, destroyed
3 tanks."
Multiple dramatic battlefield videos are circulating on social media confirming the
large-scale deployment of tanks, artillery units, and airpower . Multiple Azerbaijani soldiers
have been
reported killed, but it's as yet unclear what casualty numbers could be.
Turkey's role in new fighting is attracting scrutiny. Its foreign ministry blamed Armenia
and called for it to halt military operations, however, it hardly appears to be a mere outside
or 'neutral' observer, given
new widespread reports Turkey has transferred 'Syrian rebel' units to join the fighting on
Azerbaijan's side .
These reports of Turkish supplied Syrian mercenaries began days ago, in what regional
analysts predicted would be a huge escalation in hostilities in the Caucuses.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
late in the day slammed Turkey's meddling in the conflict . Ankara had called Armenia "an
obstacle" to peace after the fresh hostilities broke out. Yerevan has now formally confirmed
Turkey is supplying fighters .
Given the number of vital oil and gas infrastructure facilities and pipelines in the region
, impact on global markets could be seen as early as Monday.
"At least 16 military and several civilians were killed on Sunday in the heaviest clashes
between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 2016, reigniting concern about stability in the South
Caucasus, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets," Reuters reports.
Azerbaijan has also declared an official state of martial law while clashes between the
armies are unfolding.
Meanwhile footage has emerged showing Armenia's nationwide mustering of its national and
reserve forces :
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"Pipelines shipping Caspian oil and natural gas from Azerbaijan to the world pass close to
Nagorno-Karabakh,"
Reuters reports. "Armenia also warned about security risks in the South Caucasus in July
after Azerbaijan threatened to attack Armenia's nuclear power plant as possible retaliation
."
The fighting is expected to grow fiercer along front lines in the disputed region into the
night as the prospect of a full 'state of war' is looming between the historic rivals.
Next, I absolutely have to mention the absolutely insane situation around Belarus .
To make a long story short, the EU wants to sanction Russia for intervening in Belarus while
that self-same EU is intervening in every possible imaginable manner: from the Poles who treat
Tikhanovskaia as a modern False Dmitri the Fifth (see here for a summary of Polish-run False
Dmitris), to the promise of a special "Marshall Plan for Belarus", to the coordination of all
the protests from Poland. The EU refuses to recognize Lukashenko as the winner (in spite of the
fact that there is exactly zero evidence suggesting that Lukashenko lost) and refers to
Tikhanovskaia as the "Leader of Belarus" (whatever that means).
As for our US American friends, having learned exactly nothing from the abject failure of
their Guaido coup in Venezuela, they now want to repeat exactly the same with Tikhanovskaia in
Belarus. As a result, Tikhanovskaia has been re-christened "Juanita Guaido"
But the worst are still the Europeans. Not only are they prostituting themselves to the
leaders of the Empire, the following countries were the first to declare that they will not
recognize Lukashenko as the leader of Belarus: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (which is no
surprise, they all compete for the title of most pro-US colony on the planet), but also
putatively mentally sane countries such as Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Denmark. The case of
Germany is particularly amazing, because Germany will now be placed under immense pressure to
cancel North Stream 2, something which the entire German industry opposes. Eventually, the US,
Canada, the Ukraine, the UK and the entire EU joined in and also refused to recognize
Lukashenko as the leader of Belarus.
What is especially amazing to me is that these EU imbeciles apparently don't care that
without North Stream 2 they will have to purchase US gas, at much higher prices, which will
make the EU economy less effective than the US one. And I thought that prostitutes are always
acutely aware of the money they can make: not the European ones, apparently.
Still, I think that the "top honor" in this category goes to Poland which, while condemning
some undefined Russian intervention in Belarus, runs the NEXTA Telegram channel which runs
videos like this one: (in Russian – no, not in Belarusian, they know that 99.9999%
Belarussians speak Russian):
The tragedy of this situation the most of people who constitute fifth column will be
royally fleeced if this color revolution succeeds. As Ukrainian experience had shown the
immediate result will be the drop (2-3 times) of national currency against the dollar, mass
sellout of assets to the West at bargain process (for pennies on the dollar) as well as
continuation of the destruction of Soviet infrastructure. Western powers want 90% of
Byelorussian people to live on the level slightly above starvation and they have numerous
methods of achieving this goal directly and indirectly.
In two to three year Belorussia will be a regular debt slave of the West.
27 Sep, 2020 Around 200 have been detained as the Belarusian capital, Minsk and other cities
host rallies, during which the opposition plans to hold a "people's inauguration" of former
presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
The action was called in response to the secret inauguration staged by long-time President
Alexander Lukashenko for himself earlier this week. Tikhanovskaya won't be attending the
protest, as she fled Belarus for Lithuania after the August 9 election, which the opposition
insists was rigged.
Thousands marched along Independence Avenue in Minsk, despite security forces thoroughly
preparing for the unsanctioned event and urging people to stay at home. Mobile internet speed
has been reduced in the capital. A local mobile operator said it has been ordered to do so by
the government. It may have been done to complicate communication among demonstrators.
The city's largest squares were blocked off, with seven subway stations in the center also
shut down. A convoy of armored vehicles has also been spotted outside Lukashenko's heavily
guarded residence.
Music was played from loudspeakers along the route of the march to drown out the chants of
the demonstrators, calling for Lukashenko's immediate resignation and a new, fair
election.
Police say that almost 200 people have been arrested in Minsk and other cities where
protests took place on Sunday.
The protests in Belarus have been marred by mass arrests from the very start, with
thousands of anti-government demonstrators detained in the weeks since the election. Police
have also been accused of using excessive force against demonstrators and mistreating
detainees. Three protesters have been killed during the unrest, according to official data,
with hundreds, including many officers, wounded.
Selfishness may be exalted as the root and branch of capitalism, but it doesn't make you
look good to the party on the receiving end or those whose sympathy he earns. For that, you
need a government prepared to do four things, which each have separate dictums based on study,
theorization, and experience. Coercion: Force is illegitimate only if you can't sell it.
Persuasion: How do I market thee? Let me count the ways. Bargaining: If you won't scratch my
back, then how about a piece of the pie? Indoctrination: Because I said so. (And paid for the
semantics.)
Predatory capitalism is the control and expropriation of land, labor, and natural resources
by a foreign government via coercion, persuasion, bargaining, and indoctrination.
At the coercive stage, we can expect military and/or police intervention to repress the
subject populace. The persuasive stage will be marked by clientelism, in which a small
percentage of the populace will be rewarded for loyalty, often serving as the capitalists'
administrators, tax collectors, and enforcers. At the bargaining stage, efforts will be made to
include the populace, or a certain percentage of it, in the country's ruling system, and this
is usually marked by steps toward democratic (or, more often, autocratic) governance.
At the fourth stage, the populace is educated by capitalists, such that they continue to
maintain a relationship of dependency.
The Predatory Debt Link
In many cases, post-colonial states were forced to assume the debts of their colonizers. And
where they did not, they were encouraged to become in debt to the West via loans that were
issued through international institutions to ensure they did not fall prey to communism or
pursue other economic policies that were inimical to the West. Debt is the tie that binds
nation states to the geostrategic and economic interests of the West.
As such, the Cold War era was a time of easy credit, luring postcolonial states to undertake
the construction of useless monoliths and monuments, and to even expropriate such loans through
corruption and despotism, thereby making these independent rulers as predatory as colonizers.
While some countries were wiser than others and did use the funds for infrastructural
improvements, these were also things that benefited the West and particularly Western
contractors. In his controversial work Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins reveals
that he was a consultant for an American firm (MAIN), whose job was to ensure that states
became indebted beyond their means so they would remain loyal to their creditors, buying them
votes within United Nations organizations, among other things.
Predatory capitalists demand export-orientations as the means to generate foreign currency
with which to pay back debt. In the process, the state must privatize and drastically slash or
eliminate any domestic subsidies which are aimed at helping native industry compete in the
marketplace. Domestic consumption and imports must be radically contained, as shown by the
exchange rate policies recommended by the IMF. The costs of obtaining domestic capital will be
pushed beyond the reach of most native producers, while wages must be depressed to an absolute
bare minimum. In short, the country's land, labor, and natural resources must be sold at
bargain basement prices in order to make these goods competitive, in what one author has called
"a spiraling race to the bottom," as countries producing predominantly the same goods engage in
cutthroat competition whose benefactor is the West.
Under these circumstances, foreign investment is encouraged, but this, too, represents a
loaded situation for countries that open their markets to financial liberalization.
If we allow the Black Lives Matter movement to become America's Bolshevik Revolution, we
will lose our liberty, and many of us will likely lose our lives, as well, for daring to
question them. This was never about racism. It has been about power anBlack Lives
Matter is a Modern Totalitarian Revolution
Classic totalitarian regimes share a number of common characteristics. The
rise of these regimes began with a cultural revolution, aimed at angering the citizens against
the current system. During that period domestic enemies are designated, and the people in the
radical movement aiming at overthrowing the old system rally together against those common
enemies, calling it a common struggle, as they adopt a new official ideology that stands
significantly apart from the old one. They seek to control every aspect of the lives of their
people, enlisting everyone they can to participate in the struggle. Even persons who may belong
to enemy classes or groups join up, hoping to receive mercy when the new regime gains control.
In Stalin's Russia and Mao's China the enemies were anyone who reminded them of the old system,
and anyone who could challenge them if left with enough power. The state enemies were the
capitalists, landlords, richer peasants and foreign agents of all kinds. Nazi Germany included
those outside the national community, which included socialists (even though Nazism was a form
of socialism) and communists, Jews, Christians, and any ethnic minorities that did not fit into
the German model of a loyal elite specimen.
The goal of each of the totalitarian regimes of the past were to eliminate the old system,
eradicate any history or remnant of the old regimes, and create a dominant single party that
stood as a rebellious alternative of the traditional State. Then, once in power, the perceived
enemies were murdered or imprisoned, as were many of their allies for the crime of knowing too
much. The younger generation was used as a controlling mechanism, taught to tattle on their
older counterparts for not being one hundred percent in favor of the new party in charge. The
youngsters were uniformed and organized into militias to turn their energies towards advancing
the party line, and improving upon the power of the new political elite.
In each case anything that even resembled the free market was eliminated, and the new
government controlled the economy. They took over the means of production either by taking
control of it and nationalizing it, or through heavy regulations (as we saw in Italy and
Germany). The immigration structure was altered, they orchestrated a break-down of morality and
what were considered moral norms in their culture, they worked on the destruction of the
nuclear family, they forcibly reallocated farmland, they formed a socialist economy that was
designed to redistribute the wealth away from the designated domestic enemies into the hands of
those revolutionaries who deserved some kind of reparations for what was allegedly lost at the
hands of the domestic enemies, and early on looting and rioting was encouraged and championed.
Interestingly, the list I just gave you was not just something the NAZIs and communists did,
but is also a list of demands currently being voiced by Black Lives Matter.
Public expression was also controlled by past dictatorial regimes so that no dissent could
emerge. If dissent was spotted, the party members acted as a mob, actively mobilized to quell
the dissent in the name of the "people's struggle" against a constant list of enemies. Again,
Black Lives Matter fits the bill on this one, too.
These regimes exaggerated real problems, and real aspects of human nature, and created an
on-going revolution against their enemies. It was a common struggle to liberate the people from
whomever the leadership designated as an enemy. To not pull the party line was to be socially
asleep, or an agent of the enemy, which then would place the person under great scrutiny, and
if they remained uncorrected, they would be ridiculed, shamed, and eventually jailed, or
murdered.
The fuel was passion, and anger, and a common demand for answers.
Sound familiar?
Black Lives Matter is an embodiment of everything that the 20th Century dictatorships
were
Eventually, Black Lives Matter will lose its appeal, and the players will grow weary of the
struggle. The regime will weaken, and when they try to invigorate their revolutionaries for a
new fight in order to strengthen the resolve of the regime and its followers, they will find
that all of their enemies are dead or in exile, and the problem can no longer be blamed on
others. However, it could take half a century, or more, before that happens, and in a Black
Lives Matter America the damage will already have been done. The death of liberty and the
annihilation of the free market will have left a long path of sorrow and misery following it.
By then, the enemy will only be themselves, and as all regimes in history, the struggle will
turn inward, and the murders will be against their own. Through the paranoia imaginary enemies
will be concocted, where nobody is safe from the suspicions of one's neighbors or children.
People begin to vanish, and the party begins to struggle to hold on to control.
Black Lives Matter, like all past dictatorial regimes, has successfully unleashed the
passions of many members of the public. The campaigns of terror are in full swing, in the name
of protesting, in the name of social justice, and in the name of standing against racism. They
claim that science and reason are in their corner, when, like Stalin and Mao of the Soviet
Union and Communist China, it is all a great big lie. They claim whites have unfair privilege
and must be forced to kneel to their true overlords, as Hitler did with the Jews when he
believed it would allow him to create a better Germany. In the end, as with all violent
totalitarian regimes, violence will bring them down just as violence brought them into
power.
Tucker on the incredible popularity of Black Lives Matter
Islamic totalitarianism solidifies in the Middle East, and works to spread across the
nations of Europe
As Islamic totalitarianism solidifies in the Middle East, and works to spread across the
nations of Europe, Black Lives Matter totalitarianism is working its way through its birthing
canal in the United States. Both bear all of the markers of totalitarianism. They work to
control the lives, speech, and actions of those below them. They terrorize and murder,
committing themselves to endless struggles against a long list of designated enemies. They pose
as more than an ideological challenge. They are poised to bring down Western Civilization,
which has prospered due to America's Liberty, and free market capitalistic system.
Should we fall, to where may one escape? There is no other place to go. Black Lives Matter
is a real threat, an enemy who desires to overthrow America and control this country. There is
no criticizing Black Lives Matter. The mobs threaten anyone who holds dissent. It is already
happening. People are losing their jobs for criticizing Black Lives Matter, and they are still
only a political movement. Black Lives Matter is enjoying complete immunity from criticism
while they are not in power. Imagine what will happen if they ever gain a hold on the reins of
our system.
It has gone beyond a demand for equality. Equality is no longer acceptable. If one were to
say "All Lives Matter," for example, that is now unacceptable, and racist. Only "Black Lives
Matter" we are told. White lives don't matter because of what your ancestors allegedly did a
couple hundred years ago. Christianity and the American System is based on the idea of equality
in the eyes of God, and equality in opportunity (or at least the attempt to create a system
that accomplishes such), but now if you say that out loud, you are called a racist, and your
very life could be at risk. Dissent is hate speech. You could be fired from your job, or in
some cases, fined and jailed for daring to speak out against the rising totalitarian regime
known as Black Lives Matter because such murmurings could be considered "hate speech".
The latest demand by Black Lives Matter is ridiculous, yet it is happening. It began with a
chant, "defund the police," and now has advanced to cries to abolish the police. The City of
Minneapolis is in the process of doing exactly that. When asked on CNN who, then, if the police
were gone, should we call in the middle of the night while our house is being burglarized,
a member of the Minneapolis city council said that the question "comes from a place of
privilege." In other words, if some feel like law enforcement is not on their side,
everyone should feel that way, otherwise, you have an unfair privilege, and you are racist.
Black Lives Matter is enjoying a rise to power largely because of the liberal media
Black Lives Matter is enjoying a rise to power largely because of the liberal media. Any
counter-arguments against their claims are going unheard. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the alphabet
networks, and any of the other liberal outlets aren't going to report any criticism of Black
Lives Matter. And as Hitler's team explained, if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the
truth. In this case, if you tell one side of the story, and the other side is never heard, it
becomes true.
Unchallenged claims must be true, therefore, Black Lives Matter must be on to something. The
polls say so.
Black Lives Matter is achieving their power in the same way past revolutionaries did.
Through force. They break things, they burn things, and they hurt anyone who gets in the way.
They believe they deserve whatever they want, and if you don't give it to them, they will take
it. Then, on the way out, they will set your business on fire. They occupy, they terrorize, and
nobody is willing to stop them, because if you do, you are a racist. They know this. They know
you are paralyzed by your fear of them, and fear of being considered racist. They have a
message. Step out of line and we will hurt you, your family, or your business. That is the
strategy of Black Lives Matter, and it is becoming the strategy of the Democrat Party. If you
are afraid to defy the mob, the mob rules.
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution created this system to protect us from the mob. That is
why they created a constitutional republic, not a democracy (as some people like to say).
Democracy is historically a transitional type of government. When the mobs of democracy begin
to take control, which usually accompanies a continuous vote for benefits from the treasury,
liberty breaks down and dictators begin to take control.
If we allow the Black Lives Matter movement to become America's Bolshevik Revolution, we
will lose our liberty, and many of us will likely lose our lives, as well, for daring to
question them. This was never about racism. It has been about power and control since the very
beginning. Black Lives Matter seeks to overthrow the U.S. Constitution, and replace our system
with a Marxist-based government that destroys liberty and the free market, and places their
radical leaders in control of the country. If we don't stop it, and recognize the revolutionary
nature of what is going on, America will disappear forever. And, if there is no America,
Liberty dies worldwide.
Douglas V. Gibbs of Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary,
has been featured on "Hannity" and "Fox and Friends" on Fox News Channel, and other television
shows and networks. Doug is a Radio Host on KMET 1490-AM on Saturdays with his Constitution
Radio program, as well as a longtime podcaster, conservative political activist, writ
Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How
the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in
the cold war:
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of
history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn
up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central
message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites
would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush
declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to
the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided
into two armed camps now recognises one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of
America."
But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008
financial crisis and now again in the pandemic.
"For our part, we more than once described a balanced and mutually acceptable framework
for future agreements in this sphere during our contacts with the American negotiators. Aware
of the difficulties on the path forward in light of how widely different our approaches are,
we proposed extending the New START as it was originally signed.
"We do not want any unilateral advantages, but we will not make any unilateral concessions
either. A deal may be possible if the United States is ready to coordinate a new document on
the basis of the balance of interests, parity and without expecting Russia to make unilateral
concessions. But this will take time. We can have time to do this if the treaty is
extended."
As predicted, the Outlaw US Empire makes an offer it knows will be refused so it can then
blame Russia for being an unreliable negotiating partner--a trick we've all seen before.
If all the energy wasted on peddling Russiagate had instead been used to push real
political alternatives to Trump's programs the Democrats and their voters would likely be in
a better position.
The Ds defeated that possibility when they conspired to derail Sanders and promote
Clinton. As a result, Obama's legacy is Trump. But there was a Deep State faction pulling
Obama's strings that's likely supporting the attempt to foment a domestic Color Revolution,
yet for the life of me I can't see why as all the grifters are getting billions--unless--it's
perceived that Trump's stalled their imperialist projects or stopped what they hoped to
accomplish via JCPOA. In other words, we need a better motive for Russiagate than the mere
disruption of Trump's administration.
The Nexus is Ukraine, where the DNC, Obama and others were heavily involved with corruption,
money into their pockets and money laundered for campaign uses, illegally brought back into
the US.
It was never Russia or Russians. It was always the Podesta-Clinton-Obama operatives and
their true believers in FBI and DOJ, working with the Russophobes in NGOs and the State
Dept.
The desperation as Trump became a real possible President and then an actual elected
President was to cover their crimes in Ukraine and the illegal actions to spy on Trump and
set up Trump campaign associates.
The difficult call now is how high up do the present investigators have cover to save the
institutions of the FBI and DOJ? A real take down would go to Obama, Biden, Clapper, Comey,
Brennan, Podesta, Clinton and all their lieutenants. It would collapse the CIA, State, FBI,
DOJ, and all the lying experts on Russia who perjured to Congress.
Red Ryder gets it -- Ukraine is the specific catalyst, linked to the New Cold War against
Russia and the corruption of the Democrats involved in that conflict.
There is also Flynn and his dirt on Obama's Syria/ISIS policy -- remember his Al Jazeera
interview about Obama's "wilful decision" to ignore DIA reports on ISIS. Flynn knows the US
and its allies had some kind of links to ISIS and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) in Syria.
And there is also the more general concern, raised by Karlof1, about the Presidency and
the empire.
I found this barb delivered by Lavrov during his presser with Zarif I linked to on the open
thread to be very curious when thought about in the context of Russiagate:
"The fact that the United States has threatened to impose sanctions on those who defy the
American interpretation of the current situation serves as further proof of Washington's
desire to move like a bull in a china shop, putting ultimatums to everyone and punishing
everyone indiscriminately because, in my view, the incumbent US administration has lost
its diplomatic skills almost for good ." [My Emphasis]
Red Ryder @8 & profk @10 connect Ukraine and the outing of the Empire's role in the
creation of Daesh. Yes, it seems much is related to Russia's Phoenix-like rise and outwitting
the Empire's buffoons beginning in 2013 that's generated the above behavior noted by Lavrov.
If TrumpCo does get a second term, unless the entire foreign policy team is dumped and
replaced, its agenda will go nowhere other than further into the hole they've dug for
themselves over the past 20 years--almost every nation is now against Bush's USA as many now
know who the terrorists really are and where they live.
What if the goal of 2016 election was to set up the 2020 American color revolution? If so
Trump needed to win. Obama and the FBI did the groundwork here at home. There is some debate
if the first Trump dossier was actually the second one to cover for the Cody Shearer one that
was given to Strobe Talbot to give to Christopher Steele. Still it had the same goal as to
foster doubt about the legitimacy of 2016 that is currently culminating with the gun toting,
fire bombing hissy fit of the children of liberal privilege. Now if those blasted supreme
righties would just show up, and the whole thing can go really hot like it did in Ukraine,
Libya, Egypt, almost Syria, and any country I might be forgetting. Notice the Trump
administration is parroting the left's white supremacist conspiracy. Its all really bad
theater, but does anyone really care the crumbing infrastructure and the looming economic
collapse when you can instead root for your team. Yes, I am guilty of the later too. Added
bonus we already have a twofer of enemies (Russian and China) for yet another elitist war.
I very doubt that it was "Russiagate" who make it difficult for Trump to pursue the policies
he had been advocating during his election campaign...In fact, "Russiagate" has long ago been
debunked and we have not seen Trump worrying a bit about the average American Joe, most
flagrant during this pandemic...I doubt he would had behaved different were the "Russiagate"
to have never existed..
Simply, electoral "promises" almost never are fullfilled in the already dating decades
neoliberal order, both from the right or the "alleged" liberal left...
On the same grounds, we could affirm then that conspiracy theories about Obama´s
birth place made it difficult for Obama to pursue the policies he had been advocating during
his election campaign....
That Trump has ties to Russian oligarchs is, to my view, out of doubt for anyone following
a bit some writers who use to deeply research their analyses out there like John Helmer....
That these oligarchas had anything to do, in this respect, with the Kremlin, it is doubtful,
but highly likely related to business shenanigans amongst them and Trump & Co...related
to illegal bribes and money laundering...
What have been largely proved is that Trump and his administration have been using big
data management corporations and social networks engineering to manipulate elections and give
coups eveywhere ( as the thorough research I posted at the Week in Review leaves in evidence
it happened in several countries in Latin America , which leads us to suspect that they would
not resist the desire to use the same methods in the US...before...and after the 2016
elections...having Bannon ad chief of campaign and then as chief of staff in 2016 so as that
does not add for tranquility, with what legal methods is respected for achieving whatever
goal..as the last events have clearly showed...
It was during Trump´s mandate that the war on Yemen continued towards total
erradication of Yemenis, especially of Shia belief, by indiscriminate bombing and blockade of
essential goods...that Qasem Soleimani was murdered without any justified reason...that NATO
started a cheeky build up in Russian borders who remained still free of it...that the US
withdrew from most international agreements leaving US/Russia, US/Iran, US/LatinAmerican
relations at its lowest levels, by underminig any remaining trust...Trump reinstated and made
even harsher sanctions against everybody who was not already a "puppet regime", including
Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Russia, Iran, China, and, even looping the loop, against puppet
governments in the EU...
I very doubt it was Russiagate which kept him from releasing his tax records as requested
by governance transparecny, returning the ammounts of money defrauded in the "University
Loans" affair, clarifying his ties to Epstein network, stopping sowing hatred and divide
amongst US population, build the most world wide network of far-right extremists since post
WWII around the world but especially in Europe to undermine what of "democracy" remains left,
labeled and declared as "terrorists" any political party abroad who does not go along and
oppose his puppet government´s corrupt policies anywhere, lit the Middle East on fire
by continuously provoking Iran, Lebanon, Syria, sent his regime envoys to the EU to twist arm
so that the European countries dedicate more budget to buy provedly ineffective arms from the
US when the money is most needed for socio-economic and health issues in the middle of a
pandemic, not to mention the requisition of health supplies´ cargos in the very Chinese
tarmac which had been previously ordered and bought by European countries which needed them
urgently, criminalized, and tried to label them as second cathegory citizens, a great part of
US population of non-white foreign descent through whose hard work and shameful labor
conditions US thrived along all these decades, well, you name it, the list would be almost
for a book...or two...
To blame all this mess on "Russiagate" is, well, in the best case, underestimating the
readership here...
Oh please, b: "legal jeopardy", don't make me laugh. It's been four years . The whole
political part of Trump's career he's been under the tutelage of mafia consigliere Roy Cohn.
Even better known, he's flown on the Lolita Express, and the FBI has a trove of videos etc
from Epstein's safe (hmm, what else does the latter have in common with Roy Cohn besides the
Trump connection). Bottom line, he's a deeply compromised individual who's concluded long
ago, and correctly, that he's in over his head and better off just playing along. He's had no
reservations appointing professional Russophobes like Fiona Hill; in fact, which of his
appointees has not been a Cold Warrior besides perhaps T-Rex, who was a mere Venezuela
hawk because of some old Exxon bad blood, and who was quickly ditched anyway. Even now, his
own FBI director spouts RussiaGate red meat, and the Donald is doing squat about it.
What does it all matter to Trump? He doesn't have a good name to clear. He didn't run for
president expecting to win, let alone to carry out this or that specific program. This
Vale Tudo carnival atmosphere clearly suits him: if his opponents can make baseless
accusations, so can he. If they can expect to skate beyond some meaningless fall guys, so can
he. To actually uphold the law--it's just not how he rolls.
Had he mostly contented himself with playing president on TV and enjoying the perks of the
office, and understood you can't just let a pandemic kill off your own voters, all would've
been dandy. But, predictably, his ego got the better of him, and he just had to be the
statesman who was finally going to bring China to heel. Again, merely tweeting about it
could've been ignored, but by appointing an array of rabid ideologues who went to work on
"decoupling", he's sided with a Deep State which will hate him regardless, against
Corporate America which went into China to, you know, make money. In this way, he's made
himself enemies a Republican can ill afford; combine this with his personal style (or lack of
it), and just about nobody has his back any more. So the machine goes about purging this
alien body from its system.
when do the American people get to investigate Truman, Ike, John McCain, JFK, Johnson, Bush,
Obama, FBI, Trump, 9/11, CIA, invasion of Iraq, wall street, the US Treasury, the military,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the like..?
,==He did it==> he did not do it, <=someone else did it, ==>avoids the basic
problem:
America has a government that
a.) conducts wars to protect the economic interest of its favored few.
b.) uses law , to grant feudal lords wealth creating by extracting bits of wealth from
Americans.
c.) conducts nearly all its affairs in classified secret..
d.) is un accountable for the money it spends.
e.) is un accountable for the genocides it conducts in foreign lands.
f.) has two crime families which divide and conquer the citizens to control all election
outcomes
g.) has given to private bankers, its power to print money, control the economy, and tax the
people.
h.) has not adhered to the Bill of Rights or the un amended constitution.
i.) refuses to require private media to speak only the truth.
j.) Refuses to comply with and orto enforce the 1st and 4th amendment<=papers and effects
t/b secure
expand this list as you like
and
Americans have
a.) no access to the USA. <= 3 votes, insolation of state or voting district,
out 527 positions don't get it & none for the President
b.) must pay to the USA taxes and have no input as to how such taxes are collected or
used,
c.) must register their presence to the USA with id numbers
d.) must obey USA laws which Americans had no say in writing, or passing.
e.) must endure foreign wars and domestic programs that serve no legitimate domestic
interest.
expand this list as you like.
You are onto something there...I do not recall whose US think tank analyse I read about US
youth tending ideologically to the left...the same could be said of any youth around the
world after they have been left without future prospect and past opportunities to rise
through the social ladder by rampant savage neoliberal capitalism...
I said at the time that the Ukrainian experiment of 2014 was a general dressed rehearsal
for a future planned authoritarian fascist rule in most of the world, especially the West,
once the prospects, already known by the elites, of collapsing capitalism are obvious for the
general public and cause the consequent uprising..It is in this context that the pandemic and
its sudden impoverishing outcome fits, along with the "orchestrated" violent riots at various
locations, to justify martial law...
Notice that "rewritting of history of WWII" in favor of fascism is a feature of any US
administration since the fall of the USSR...
Past days I read that Roger Stone, former Trump advisor, if i am not wrong also implied in
a corruption case, advised Trump to declare martial law after winning in Novemeber...It is in
that context that all the noise we have been hearing all these past months about the riots,
militias, coups, and so on fit...What we have not heard about is about hundreds of thousands
of evictions, inacabable line ups for food banks, and the total socio-economic disaster more
than anything willingly built by TPTB...
Recal that they "built their own reality, and when you are catching up with that reality,
they build another one"...
It is difficult to teach old chickenhawk a new tricks. Looks like she is a real "national
security parasite" and will stay is this role till the bitter end.
"America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and
alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit." took hit because of the crisis of neoliberalism
not so much because of Russia resistance to the USA neoliberal domination and unwillingness to became a vassal state a la EU
states, Japan and GB.
Her hostile remark confirms grave mistake of allowing immigrants to occupy high position in the US foreign policy hierarchy.
They bring with themselves "ancient hatred"
Only a blind (or a highly indoctrinated/brainwashed) person is unable to see where all these neocon policies are leading...
Notable quotes:
"... America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit ..."
"... "They lost the entire US political class ..."
Fiona Hill, the National Security Council's senior director for European and Russian affairs
till 2019, says divisions are rising inside the Kremlin over the knowledge of persevering with
a "dirty tricks" marketing campaign that's had combined outcomes and will now face diminishing
returns.
On the one hand, Russia's 2016 affect operations succeeded past the Kremlin's wildest goals.
The US-dominated, unipolar world that Putin has lengthy railed in opposition to is now not.
America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and
alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit. "On that ledger, wow, yes,
basically over-fulfilled the plan," mentioned Hill.
At the identical time, getting caught in the act of making an attempt to sabotage US
democracy has proved pricey. "They lost the entire US political class and politicized ties so that the whole future of
US-Russia relations now depends on who wins in November," she mentioned.
Probably counting on the desperate vanity and ego of Trump with the looming election to not
shorten the length of the leash on Pompass. Pompass must also have noticed that Trump is
willing to shove the homeland into civil war in order to claim victory, so maybe Pompass
finally has the latitude to slake his bloodthirstiness.
Since I'm wondering down the path of speculation, a bit further into the murk. If there is
one thing that characterizes the US today from the highest to the low, it is corruption. I
submit that this corruption finds its zenith in the military, and especially the procurement
train: any engagement with a near-peer (or the coalition/bloc we're talking about here,) and
the rot and corruption will collapse this empire in upon itself. I've had this suspicion for
some time, and believe if the going got rough the collapse would come rather quickly and
completely.
Following a long line of very arrogant american imperial "negotiators", mr oblivion
billingslea used standard "negotiating" techniques like
(a) accusing the other side of crimes Americans have committed first and forever, eg,
extreme lying, bad faith argumentation, military aggression, foreign government security
breaching, assassination and poisoning [as in american presidents and independent thinkers],
and of course, electoral cheating;
(b) putting the opponent in the "negotiation process" on the defensive or back foot by
stating false news allegations amplified by the media controlled by the american empire;
(c) offering nothing useful or commitable to be done by the empire, and yet
"magnanimously" demanding the moon as opponents' concessions, eg, russian, iranian and
chinese nuclear weapons limits, but not for nato's development and deployment, and; (d) after
making impossible demands, the imperials accuse the opponents of hostility and unwillingness
to "negotiate".
The russians can skillfully agree by stating that they only require the americans to
reduce their nukes to 320 pieces like china, and in less than five years.
This is why it is very important for sovereign nations to read the guidebook, called the
"idiot's guide on running the american empire", and developing deep and lasting
solutions.
As for the other american imperial military "advantages", eg, constellation of
"aggression" satellites, andrei forgot to mention that these can be shot or burned down in
minutes easily by russia, china and even iran, as these stations cannot hide or run away in
earth orbits.
Replenishment of weapons and military supplies after 3 months is rather doomed as the
cheap, mass production and manufacturing facilities do not exist. Which must be re-created
somehow but now
American lands are the targets. Much, Much Different Than WW2 !!
And of course, russia can always nuke down the USA and its vassal countries, and thus
permanently ruin their economies for a decade or more, they don't know how to run defense --
this was always the fatal weakness of all bullies - if they'll have enough time to "learn
it"... let's see... I doubt this.
Let's see americans try to start and conduct a nuclear war after too many spy, internet
and gps satellites are shot down. Russia can even do this today using conventional
explosives, and the world will be shocked how helpless the american military and economy can
be made even without using russian nukes.
There are countries still immune to the numerous american imperial diseases that are
already documented daily in zerohedge postings. The better countries still have lots of
parents telling their kids to study and work hard so they can have better lives than their
ancestors.
In oregon and california, they teach unemployable kids to burn something or somebody
sometime before dinner.
CdVision • 11 hours ago
I was about to say that what now comes out of the US & Trump's mouth in particular, is
Orwellian. But that credits it with too much gravitas. The true comparison is Alice in
Wonderland:
"Words mean whatever I want them to mean".
Reminiscence of the Future.. ( http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2020/09/russia-steals-everything.html)
Russia "Steals Everything" !! (Not just China, oops... ???!!!!)
And Jesus Christ was an American and was born in Kalamazoo, MI. It is a well-known fact. So
Donald Trump, evidently briefed by his "utterly competent and crushingly precise aids", knows
now that too! !!! LOL
> US President Donald Trump claims that Russia developed hypersonic weapons after
allegedly stealing information from the United States.
> According to him, "Russia received this information from the Obama administration,"
Moscow "stole this information." Trump said that "Russia received this information and then
created" the rocket, reports TASS.
> "We have such advanced weapons that President Xi, Putin and everyone else will envy
us. They do not know what we have, but they know that it is something that no one has ever
heard of. "
->We are the foremost and always number one. Everything is invented only by us, the
rest can only either steal, or be gifted with our developments for good behavior. This
situation is eternal, unchanging, everyone lags behind American Tikhalogii at least 50 years
(the time frame was chosen so that even a 20-year-old would lose heart, "what's the point of
trying to catch up, it won't work anyway, in my lifetime"). It was, is, and will be, this is
the natural course of events.
All this is delivered in the format of the classic Sunday sermon of the American
provincial Protestant church, coding the parishioners for further deeds and actions. And it
worked effectively, creating in some basalt confidence "we are better because we are better",
in others - "I don't mind anything for joining this radiant success, I'm ready for anything,
I'll go for any hardships and crimes, if only There".
Only now it worked. In a situation where the frequency of pronouncing such mantras is more
and more, emotions are invested in them too, but in fact everyone understands that this is
what autohypnosis does not work.
The poor have stolen from the United States, if you look at it, literally everything. And
5G and the superweapon of the gods. Moreover, a pearl with a characteristic handwriting is
not copy / paste, but move / paste, you bastards. Therefore, the United States does not even
have any traces of developments left - the guys just sit in an empty room, shrug their hands,
"here we have a farm of mechanical killer dolls, with the faces of Mickey Mouse overexposed,
and now look - traces of bast shoes and candy wrappers from "Korkunov" only, ah-ah-ah, well,
something like that, ah. "
At the same time, there are no cases of sabotage, espionage - whole projects were simply
developed, developed, brought to a working product, and then the hob - and that's it, and
disappeared. And this became noticeable only after years. And all the persons involved are
like "wow, wow."
Psychiatric crazy fool of the head, no less.
But due to the fact that all of the above theses are driven very tightly into the template
for the perception of the world, both those who voiced these theses and the listeners are
satisfied.
Because the post-American post-hegemonic world is not terrible because in some ratings
another country will be higher there, and Detroit will never be rebuilt "as it was". It is
scary because it is not clear how to live for people who had no support in the form of global
goals, faith, philosophy of life, and all this was replaced by narcissism on the basis of
"successful success is my second self".
This means that the moment when this issue has to be resolved must be delayed to the last.
Leaving the whole topic on the plane "we were offended, we are offended, we were dishonest,
which means we have the right to any action" is not a bad move.
It's a pity that it doesn't really affect the essence of what is happening.
"... Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby ..."
"... In the early 2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." ..."
"... Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that now opposes its dictates. He concludes ..."
"... Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council. ..."
"... The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF et all. ..."
"... Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military. ..."
"... 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world order. ..."
"... Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on it). ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and crazier and there will be full blown hysteria. ..."
"... In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed. ..."
"... But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and greed for other people's resources. ..."
"... Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your stuff! And this is how it will forever be!" ..."
"... As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. ..."
"... Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. ..."
"... Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks ..."
"... Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'. ..."
"... Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled economies. It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of proxy conflicts. ..."
"... The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence. ..."
"... Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and social development. ..."
"... Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words, such as novichok. ..."
"... Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis] ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. ..."
"... The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them despite threats and intimidation from the Empire. ..."
"... The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine, subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own territories/population via intimidation and propaganda. ..."
"... On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. ..."
"... My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim "our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ? ..."
"... There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression, infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters. ..."
"... America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World). ..."
"... The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. ..."
"... The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss was not so stupidly naive. ..."
"... quite right. 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US et al) version of a welfare state. ..."
"... China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange reserves (on net) in 2014 leaving the US in a sort of limbo. ..."
"... "Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism, is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during the Cold War. ..."
"... The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No difference. ..."
"... It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials. ..."
The 'western' countries, i.e. the United States and its 'allies', love to speak of a 'rules based international order'
which they say everyone should follow. That 'rules based order' is a way more vague concept
than the actual rule of law:
The G7 is united by its shared values and commitment to a rules based international order.
That order is being challenged by authoritarianism, serious violations of human rights,
exclusion and discrimination, humanitarian and security crises, and the defiance of
international law and standards.
As members of the G7, we are convinced that our societies and the world have reaped
remarkable benefits from a global order based on rules and underscore that this system must
have at its heart the notions of inclusion, democracy and respect for human rights,
fundamental freedoms, diversity, and the rule of law.
That the 'rules based international order' is supposed to include vague concepts of
'democracy', 'human rights', 'fundamental freedoms', 'diversity' and more makes it easy to
claim that this or that violation of the 'rules based international order' has occurred. Such
violations can then be used to impose punishment in the form of sanctions or war.
That the above definition was given by a minority of a few rich nations makes it already
clear that it can not be a global concept for a multilateral world. That would require a set of
rules that everyone has agreed to. We already had and have such a system. It is called
international law. But at the end of the cold war the 'west' began to ignore the actual
international law and to replace it with its own rules which others were then supposed to
follow. That hubris has come back to bite the 'west'.
Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How
the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in
the cold war:
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of
history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn
up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central
message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites
would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush
declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to
the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided
into two armed camps now recognizes one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of
America."
But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008
financial crisis and now again in the pandemic. It also created new competition to its role due
to its own behavior:
On the one hand, American moves to extend Nato to the Baltics and then (abortively) on to
Ukraine and Georgia, and to abolish Russian influence and destroy Russian allies in the
Middle East, inevitably produced a fierce and largely successful Russian nationalist
reaction. ...
On the other hand, the benign and neglectful way in which Washington regarded
the rise of China in the generation after the Cold War (for example, the blithe decision to
allow China to join the World Trade Organisation) was also rooted in ideological arrogance.
Western triumphalism meant that most of the US elites were convinced that as a result of
economic growth, the Chinese Communist state would either democratise or be overthrown; and
that China would eventually have to adopt the western version of economics or fail
economically. This was coupled with the belief that good relations with China could be
predicated on China accepting a so-called "rules-based" international order in which the US
set the rules while also being free to break them whenever it wished; something that nobody
with the slightest knowledge of Chinese history should have believed.
The retired Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar touches on the same points in an excellent
series about the new Chinese-Russian alliance:
Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that
now opposes its dictates. He concludes:
Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in
the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a
universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign
states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a
number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of
state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the
centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council.
While the U.S. wants a vague 'rules based international order' China and Russia emphasize an
international order that is based on the rule of law. Two recent comments by leaders from China
and Russia underline this.
China firmly supports the United Nations' central role in global affairs and opposes any
country acting like boss of the world, President Xi Jinping said on Monday.
...
"No country has the right to dominate global affairs, control the destiny of others or keep
advantages in development all to itself," Xi said.
Noting that the UN must stand firm for justice, Xi said that mutual respect and equality
among all countries, big or small, is the foremost principle of the UN Charter.
No country should be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon or bully, Xi said.
"Unilateralism is a dead end," he said.
...
International laws should not be distorted or used as a pretext to undermine other countries'
legitimate rights and interests or world peace and stability, he added.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went even further by outright rejecting the 'western rules' that the 'rules
based international order' implies:
Ideas that Russia and China will play by sets of Western rules under any circumstances are
deeply flawed , Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with New
York-based international Russian-language RTVI channel.
"I was reading our political scientists who are well known in the West. The following idea
is becoming louder and more pronounced: it is time to stop applying Western metrics to our
actions and stop trying to be liked by the West at any cost . These are very reputable people
and a rather serious statement. It is clear to me that the West is wittingly or unwittingly
pushing us towards this analysis. It is likely to be done unwittingly," Lavrov noted.
"However, it is a big mistake to think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case,
just like thinking this in terms of China."
As an alliance China and Russia have all the raw materials, energy, engineering and
industrial capabilities, agriculture and populations needed to be completely independent from
the 'west'. They have no need nor any desire to follow dubious rules dictated by other powers.
There is no way to make them do so. As M.K. Bhadrakumar concludes
:
The US cannot overwhelm that alliance unless it defeats both China and Russia together,
simultaneously. The alliance, meanwhile, also happens to be on the right side of history.
Time works in its favour, as the decline of the US in relative comprehensive national power
and global influence keeps advancing and the world gets used to the "post-American century."
---
P.S.
On a lighter note: RT , Russia's state sponsored international TV station, has recently
hired Donald Trump
(vid). He will soon host his own reality show on RT . The working title is reportedly:
"Putin's Apprentice". The apprenticeship might give him a chance to learn how a nation that has
failed can be resurrected to its former glory.
Posted by b on September 22, 2020 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink
The Liberal International Order or Pax Americana are synonyms for The
Rules Based Order. The plan that was followed for years was the outline given by Zbigniew
Brzezinski and the Trilateral Commission in The Grand Chessboard to "contain" the ambition of
Russia, China, and Iran over their interest to expand into Central Asia and the Middle East.
Brzezinski changed
in 2016, so did Kissinger, Brzezinski wrote that it was time to make peace and to integrate
with Russia, China and Iran. But the elites had changed by then, newer people had taken
over and no longer followed Brzezinski.
The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World
Bank, the IMF et all. We will own you and you will do what we say and those are the rules.
Any challenge to our authority will lead to war, economic ruin or both.
Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military.
'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another.
The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism
because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was
rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world
order.
Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document
is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on
it).
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the
world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and
crazier and there will be full blown hysteria.
In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and
animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild
animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed.
All the liberalism is just self-congratulation about how exceptionalist it is. It is born
out of narcisism and self-obsession during the "good times" of the West.
But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and
greed for other people's resources.
The real face of it is hateful and snarling. And it will be fully exposed during the next
10 years, as the West goes crazy and it becomes a hungry wild animal that desperately needs
to feed.
Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your
stuff! And this is how it will forever be!"
Countries need to stay out from the wild animal and carry a big stick just in case, until
it succumbs from its internal hatreds and contradictions.
As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. As b. outlines. the US elites no
longer follow the rule of law. This is even true within the US. The US inherited the role
formerly played by the British Empire after WW2.
The national security apparatus of both the
US and the Soviet Union kept the Cold War going. Notice how soon after JFK was assassinated
Khrushchev was deposed. Gorbachev rightly stopped the Soviets superpower regime. As Dmitri Orlov points out - Empire hollowed out the Soviet Union and he sees it doing the same to the
US.
Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major
nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. The life
expectancy of Russians fell 7 years in a decade until rescued by Putin.
It can now be seen
that the Nixon-Kissinger opening up to China was not to gain access to its large market
potential but to gain access to hundreds of millions of cheap, disciplined, and educated
workers. The elites starting in the 70s became greedier. Jet travel,electronic communication,
and computers allowed the outsourcing of manufacture.
The spread of air conditioning allowed
even the too hot south to be a location. First in the US as the factories began their march
through the non union southern states onto Mexico. Management from the north could now live
in air conditioned houses, drive air conditioned cars and work in air conditioned offices.
The 70s oil inflation led to stagnation as the unionized labor were powerful enough to get
cost of living raises. With the globalization of labor union power in the US has been
destroyed. As Eric X Li points out China's one party rule actually changes policies easier
than the Western democracies.
So China's government hasn't joined in with the West in just
creating wealth for the top 1% and debt for the real economy.
As b. pointed out, the Anglo
Zionist policies created the mutual benefit partnership of Russia and China. The Chinese belt
and road initiative appears to be intent on creating a large trading zone that could benefit
those involved. The US is just using sanctions and the military to turn sovereign functioning
countries that don't go along with it into failed states and their infrastructure turned to
rubble
Now, the US is forced into puppeteering the UN in order to maintain the illusion of the
'rules based order,' even as it slides further and further away from any meaningful
international cooperation:
Fortunately for the world, the United States took responsible action to stop this from
happening. In accordance with our rights under UNSCR 2231, we initiated the snapback process
to restore virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions, including the arms embargo. The
world will be safer as a result.
The United States expects all UN Member States to fully comply with their obligations
to implement these measures. In addition to the arms embargo, this includes restrictions
such as the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the
prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development by Iran, and sanctions on the
transfer of nuclear- and missile-related technologies to Iran, among others. If UN Member
States fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is
prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure
that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.
Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US
administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they
do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.
Pompeo talks more or less continually about "China's bullying behaviour". To me it is
wonderful that he can say this with a straight face. (Perhaps it is a result of his lessons
in the CIA on "how to lie better".)All the countries that have engaged with China have
benefitted from it, whether as salesmen or as recipients of aid or loans at advantageous
rates. The countries that have engaged with America have mostly (All?) lost. (The fifty+
countries invaded and wrecked since WW2 or the NATO "allies" or the countries attacked with
sanctions.) Either their economies were destroyed or billions upon billions of dollars were
paid to the US MIC. The NATO member countries have got what from their membership? Formerly,
they had "Protection" from an imaginary Soviet threat, more recently "Protection" from an
equally imaginary Russian threat! Some bargain, that!
Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the
U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran
indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'.
U.S, 'we have the right to seize cargo between any two countries transported in
international waters based on U.S. federal appeals court decision even though the transaction
in no way involves the U.S. We call this Freedom of Navigation and why we need to have
aircraft carriers in the South China Sea and Arabian Gulf'
Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled
economies.
It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international
finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of
proxy conflicts.
Thanks for the posting b as it gets to the core myths around the global private finance
jackboot on the neck of countries in the West.
The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key
ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation
of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline
include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and
hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in
suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most
Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence.
Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states
in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels
of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and
social development.
Capitalism might enrich a few, but it is the primary cause of America's relative and
absolute decline.
US and allied military analysts have been talking over the last year or so of the need to
enter a single focus and total "wartime" posture throughout our societies, with all financial
and industrial output directed to the "war". This has influenced the information/ propaganda
efforts, but also the uptick in military manoeuvres around Taiwan and renewed NATO pressure
directed at Russia (including the recent provocative B52 flights). Don't think Russia/China
can be tricked into over-reacting, but some kind of loss-of-life military confrontation may
be what the rules-based side is looking for as the population at large will probably not
accept a "wartime sacrifice" regimen without such.
Whilst Russia and China are creating a truly new, unique and creative alliance and a
market of everything, in Australia the "authorities" are sicking their police dogs on poor
grannies sitting on park benches. This image of five brainless armed state goons in a show of
force over two quiet little grannies really puts things into perspective. It must be that New
World Order that Soros and puppets always talked about.
Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words,
such as novichok.
The post scriptum stopped the clock for me. Has our host slipped into our drink there a
profound prophecy, disguised as jesting?
Many agree something big will happen (break?) soon, possibly with the elections. The other
thing is the Americans' ability to change course, drop all baggage, and run off in a new,
even the opposite direction with unfettered enthusiasm (and ferocity). No people has a
greater capacity for almost instant renewal, once it chooses to.
I also notice that the spoof takes good aim at The Donald's peculiarities, though in a
fair and human way. The proverbial Russian warmth, or a humorous invitation?
Meanwhile, I enjoy my newfound optimism in these dark times. Thanks b!
Thanks b and on Anatol Lieven in the Prospect story (fairy story?)...
Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited
role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of
influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual
we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of
arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which
western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the
competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis]
Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that colonialism just might
be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no competition? Does Lieven
watch too much football?
What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex? This verbose Lieven
tosh is littered with fancy sentences trawled from here and there but always presented to us
from a narrow dimensional mind with limited analysis and seemingly zero interrogation.
again:- "then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world"...
So Lieven thinks the current behaviour of the US hegemon and its collaborator the UK is
innocuous? These were the two nations that blithely squandered the "peace dividend" from the
end of cold war as he describes and have led us to this time of perpetual war. A perpetual
war that he does not mention, does not allude to, does not treat as an important driver
behind the current global mistrust and disengagement from the USUK drive for global
dominance.
Lieven is putting lipstick on his pig and screaming about losing the competition to the
imagined wolf outside his prison.
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over
the world.
I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually
prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them
despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.
_________________________________
Passer by @Sep22 20:15 #14
Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.
Yes. We still see the narratives like of Trump as Putin-lover despite the debunking of
Russiagate and the clear evidence of Cold War tensions. The incessant propaganda reeks of
desperation.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Some seem to think that the Empire is cornered.
Aha! We've got you now, you scoundrels!
LOL.
The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to
be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine,
subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own
territories/population via intimidation and propaganda.
On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate
Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its
red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. It would be satisfying to see the
collective wisdom of the Parliament to exceed that of the BND. But then that is a low bar.
"For our part, we more than once described a balanced and mutually acceptable framework
for future agreements in this sphere during our contacts with the American negotiators. Aware
of the difficulties on the path forward in light of how widely different our approaches are,
we proposed extending the New START as it was originally signed.
"We do not want any unilateral advantages, but we will not make any unilateral concessions
either. A deal may be possible if the United States is ready to coordinate a new document on
the basis of the balance of interests, parity and without expecting Russia to make unilateral
concessions. But this will take time. We can have time to do this if the treaty is
extended."
As predicted, the Outlaw US Empire makes an offer it knows will be refused so it can then
blame Russia for being an unreliable negotiating partner--a trick we've all seen before.
I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot.
What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually
prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them
despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.
Yes, the big question remaining is to predict what will happen and when. This is what the
real deal is. And I'm sure they are working on that in the Intel agencies. It can certainly be predicted that the US and the EU will be significantly weaker in 2030
that today. Will this be enough is the question.
We now have some new information about US long term health as published by CBO. Very
interesting numbers.
They predict lower population growth and lower GDP growth for the US than previously
estimated, as well as higher debt rates. US federal debt is to reach 195 % of GDP by 2050 under best case scenario.
Analysts also seem to agree that the Covid 19 crisis further weakened the US vis a vis
China, as the Chinese economy significantly outperformed almost everyone else this year, more
than expected before the crisis.
I will also mention two important recent numbers. This year:
1. China, for the first time, became the biggest trading partner for the EU, beating the
US.
2. China's retail market overtook the one of the US.
Posted by: vk | Sep 22 2020 19:05 utc | 4 -- "....Eurasia is where most of human civilization
lives, it's the "World Island" - the world island not in the military sense, but in the
economic sense. Every path to human prosperity passes through Eurasia - that's why the USA
can't "let it alone" in the first place, while the reverse is not true, that is, Eurasia can
give to the luxury of letting the Americas alone."
Excellent observation, VK.
Even if the World Island (thanks for your formulation) trades with itself, within itself,
there is sufficient mass to last a century, during which the arrogantly exceptional West
might just wake up from their Century of Humiliation.
Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted
"civilisation" was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from
the Middle Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out
above, because all wealth passes through that region).
Yes there are rules which are observed more by their breach than their observance: The Geneva
Conventions. Just ask Julian Assange.
I find it incredible that the Anglo-Zionist captive nations can sign, ratify, incorporate
into domestic law and then sign the additional protocol, making themselves high contracting
parties, which requires them to report all and any breaches to Geneva, then ignore all the
above commitments. One of these commitments includes educating their citizens on the basic
provisions of the conventions. Again they haven't bothered, that could expose their hypocrisy
to the public.
Even the bandit statelet signed but I am yet to see just one example of its application in
the seventy plus years of its barbaric and bloodthirsty occupation of Palestine.
Interestingly, the conventions prohibit the occupied from signing away one iota of their
territory to the occupier. So much for what Claude Pictet's Commentary to the Fourth Geneva
Convention calls "alleged annexations." This book is available from the ICRC.
My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities
now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim
"our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are
unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ?
It seems the New World Order has some familiar and unsurprising antecedents:
Anatol Lieven comes from an educated and cultured family in Britain's upper middle class
layer. His older siblings - he is the youngest of five children - include a High Court judge
(Dame Natalie Lieven), a Cambridge University professor / historian (Dominic Lieven) and a
psychologist / linguistics researcher (Elena Lieven). They haven't done badly for a family from the old Baltic German
aristocratic elite that used to serve the Russian empire as administrators for the
Livonia governorate.
The British Lievens might see themselves as gatekeepers and interpreters of what the
ruling classes desire (or appear to desire) and communicate that down to us. Hence their
positions in intellectual and academic occupations - no engineers, technicians or academics
in the physical or biological sciences among their number.
Anatol Lieven is right though about "competition", in the sense I believe he is using it:
it is "competition" for supposed global leadership and influence as only the British and
Americans understand it. Life as British and American elites understand it is the annual
football competition writ large; there can only be one winner and the worst position to be in
is second place and every other place below it. Never mind that what Russia and China have in
mind is a vision of the world with multiple and overlapping leadership roles dispersed among
nations according to various criteria: this ideal is simply too much for the Anglosphere
elites to understand, let alone digest and accept.
Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places.
Family influence and reputation must only go so far.
if you aren't at least a little prepared for a
disruption in critical supplies, and choose instead to waste time commenting on online
forums, it won't matter how up to date you are on "rules based international order" vs.
"international law". at that point the reality will be something like this: if you aren't
holding it, you don't have it, and if you can't defend it, you won't be keeping it for long.
Got that absolutely right.
There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative
power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear
war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is
collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression,
infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime
between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters.
This month is National Preparedness Month. I recommend watching the following videos from
well-known "preppers" who have been warning about this stuff for years.
And this one from The Urban Prepper, an IT guy who is exceptionally well organized and
logical in his videos. I recommend subscribing to his channel. He avoids most of the
excessive "doom and gloom" hype that afflicts a lot of prepper channels and is oriented more
about urban survival than "backwoods bushcraft" since most people live in cities. Prepping 101: Prepping
Architecture Diagram for Gear Organization
And if you don't watch anything else, watch this one from Canadian Prepper - he's
absolutely right in this one and it specifically applies to the barflies here: What is Really Going
On? Its WORSE Than You Think
Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted "civilisation"
was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from the Middle
Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out above,
because all wealth passes through that region).
Posted by: kiwiklown | Sep 22 2020 23:41 utc | 39
Oh, and this one from Canadian Prepper in which he muses about whether and why we actually
*want* the SHTF situation to occur. This one would resonate with a lot of the commentary here
about the social malaise and the psychological reasons for it. Maybe nothing really new for
some, but definitely relevant.
Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places.
Family influence and reputation must only go so far.
Thank you that backgrounder explains a lot. Perhaps like Englanders before him he finds
Qatar, safe and rewarding PLUS mounds of finest hashish and titillating company. From my
understanding it is a grotesque abuser of human rights and everyone has a price.
America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based
Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World).
The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression
against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its
decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and
maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. These crimes against humanity have
been justified by Orwellian American lies about "Weapons of Mass Destruction," "fighting
terrorism," or the curious events of Sept. 11th.
This America "Rules-Based" order is one drenched in the blood of millions of people--even
as it sanctimoniously disguises itself behind endless propaganda about defending liberal
democracy or the rule of law.
Truly, America and its allies can take their malignant Rules-Based Disorder back to Hell,
where they all belong.
"Thus your "side note" has no "relevance" whatsoever."
You sound like some podunk UN official from a podunk country trying to impress a waitress
in a NYC bar. The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the
Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss
was not so stupidly naive.
Thank you - YES that is the answer and always has been PLUS there will be no pipeline from
Iran through Afghanistan to Pakistan and on to China. There will be NO overland pipeline or
rail route to sound the death knell to the maritime mafia.
Please vote for trump 2020. no president destroy America from inside like what trump did. The goal is to accelerate American empire destruction and grip in this world.
What better way to put such clown along his circus in white house. he will make a mess of everything and will definitely bring
America down
i hope he win 2020 and America explode into civil war and chaos. With America destroyed internally , they wont have time to invade
Venezuela or Iran
Remember , if Biden win 2020 , American foreign policy will revert into normalcy that means
seeking alliance with EU and 5 eyes in a more meaningful way , aka giving them preferential
treatment on trade..
all that to box in china and russia , reenable TPP , initiate the delayed venezuela overt
invasion other than covert
this is dangerous for the whole world , not that it will save US in the long run but it
will increase real shooting conflict with china and russia.. So focus on trump victory in 2020 , the more controversial the win the better , lets push america into chaos
I appreciate the time and thought that goes into a post like this; all without a popup ad
trying to sell me ANOTHER item I just bought via Amazon, in spite of the fact that I am among
the least likely to want another right now. Voice of reason crying in the wilderness and all
that.
The rule The Capitalist Ogres promote as the heart of Civilization is simply the age-old
Golden Rule. Those with the gold, make the rules.
@ptb quite right.
'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US
et al)
version of a welfare state.
as US et al can no longer fund their own unaffordable welfare promises made to their own
electorates, they have to call on the rest of the world to do so (China has been effectively
funding the US budget deficit since they entered the WTO.
and the EU (mainly Germany) was doing the same before China's entry into WTO)
China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange
reserves (on net) in 2014
leaving the US in a sort of limbo.
Well, you're sorta correct; it was all those nations including China that bought Outlaw US
Empire debt. China certainly knows better now and for almost a decade now it's purchases--and
those of the rest of the world -- of said debt have declined to the point where a huge crisis
related to the debt pyramid threatens all those aside from the 1% living within the Outlaw US
Empire. The Judo involved was very instructive.
"Trump's UN
address censured" headlines Global Times article that reviews yesterday's UNGA.
Domestic BigLie Media didn't like what it heard from Trump:
"Commenting on the US' performance, many Western media tended to view US as being
'isolated,' and its unilateral efforts 'widely derided....'
"Some US media outlets cannot stand Trump's accusations. A WSJ report said many Democrats
blamed Trump for "isolating the US and diluting American influence in the WHO or other
bodies."
It went on to say Trump's threat of withdrawal is often used as leverage to "influence
partner countries, or get allies to pay more for shared defense."
"Some US media linked Trump's address to his widely blamed effort to re-impose sanctions
on Iran, saying his address came as 'UN members push back against Washington,' AP
reported.
"Wednesday's Washington Post article reported that the Trump administration walked on a
'lonely path' at the UN where the US attacked WHO, and embarked on the 'widely derided'
effort to snap back Iran sanctions.
"A week before the UN General Assembly, US media NPR predicted that the US 'appeared to be
isolated' at this year's General Assembly, saying that Trump's 'America First' agenda left
him out of sync with America's traditional allies as it has a long record of pulling out of
international agreements, including one meant to tackle the world's climate crisis."
So, Trump's attack on China's environmental record was beyond hypocritical and ought to be
termed psychopathic prevarication. The best comment from the article well describes the
Trumptroll @53:
"'Trump's smears and attacks against China were apparently aimed at campaigning for his
reelection. Only his die-hard fans - those who do not care about truth but support him -
will buy his words ,' Ding Yifan, a researcher at the Institute of World Development of
the Development Research Center of the State Council, told the Global Times." [My
Emphasis]
And isn't that really the basic issue--the truth? 75 years of lies by the Outlaw US Empire
to cover it's continuous illegalities and subversion of its own fundamental law while killing
and displacing tens of millions of people. Guardian of the Free World my ass! More like
Guardian of the Gates of Hell.
Yes, I'm biased, but anyone seeking truth and invoking the Rule of Law would find themselves
at odds with the Outlaw US Empire. Today's Global Times Editorial makes
the following key observations:
"Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism,
is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation
among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all
parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and
confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side
at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during
the Cold War.
"The impulse to promote a cold war is the ultimate version of unilateralism, and shows
dangerous and mistaken arrogance that the US is almighty. Everyone knows that the US is
declining in its competitiveness under the rules-based international system the US itself
initiated and created. It wants to build a new system more beneficial to itself, and allow
the US to maintain its advantage without making any effort. This is simply impossible."
My research is pointing me to conclude the First Cold War was contrived so the Outlaw US
Empire could impose privately owned finance and corporations and the political-economies
connected to them upon the world lest the collective forces that were the ones to actually
defeat Fascism gain control of their national governments and shape their political-economies
into the public/collectively owned realm where the benefits would flow to all people instead
of just the already powerful. That's also the intent of imposing a Second Cold War. Some seem
to think there's no ideological divide at play, but as I've ceaselessly explained there most
certainly is, thus the intense demonization of both Russia and China--the Strategic
Competition also is occurring in the realm of Ideas. And the only tools available for the
Outlaw US Empire to use are lies, since the truths involved would encourage any neutral
nation to join the Win-Win vision of China and Russia, not the Zero-sum bankruptcy pushed by
the Parasites controlling the Empire.
@ karlof1 | Sep 23 2020 15:56 utc | 84 and forward with the links and quotes...thanks
I do like the confirmation Pepe quote, thanks
It is sad to understand that much of the US population does not have the mental clarity to
see that Trump is no different than Biden when it comes to fealty to the God of Mammon. Way
too many Americans think that replacing Trump with Biden will make things all better.
The end of the rules based international order/global private finance cannot end soon
enough, IMO
Thanks for your reply! As I discussed with the Missus last night, IMO only the people
regaining control over the federal government can rescue themselves from the multiple
dilemmas they face--the most pressing being the Debt Bomb and control of the monetary and
fiscal systems by private entities as exemplified by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street,
both of which employ the Financial Parasites preying on the nation's body-politic. Undoing
all the past wrongs requires both Congress and the Executive be captured by The People who
can then write the laws to end the wrongs while arresting and prosecuting those responsible
for the last 20+ years of massive fraud. The biggest components would be ending the Federal
Reserve, Nationalizing all the fraudster banks, writing down the vast majority of debt, and
disbanding NATO thus ending the overseas empire. Those are the most fundamental steps
required for the USA to avoid the coming calamity brought about by the Neoliberals. I also
have finally developed my thesis on where, why and how that philosophy was developed and put
into motion.
The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had
no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no
threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that
Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No
difference.
The key issues for the US were:
1. it needed western european capitalist states to buy US manufactured exports. Those
states had to remain capitalist and subordinate to the US, i.e. to avoid what Acheson called
'neutralism' in world politics.
2. the US wanted gradual decolonization of the British and French empires so that US firms
could access markets and resources in those same territories. but the US feared revolutionary
nationalism in the colonies and the potential loss of market access by the former colonial
powers, which would need resources from the post-colonial world to rebuild after WW2.
The key event which cemented the 'Cold War' in Europe was the division of Germany, which
Carolyn Eisenberg shows was entirely an American decision, in her important book, Drawing the
Line.
The driving force of all this, though, was the economic imperatives of US capitalism. The
US needed to restore and save capitalism in Western Europe and Japan, and the Cold War was
the ideological framework for doing so. The Cold War ideology also allowed the US to frame
its meddling in Korea, Guatemala, Iran, etc.
The late historian Gabriel Kolko wrote the best analyses of these issues. His work is much
better than the New Left 'revisionist' US historians.
I agree with your recap and second your appraisal of Gabriel Kolko. Eisenberg's work
somehow escaped my view but will no longer thanks to your suggestion.
But I see more to it all as the First Cold War had to occur to promote the
financialization of the USA's industrial Capitalism which began within the USA in 1913 and
was abruptly interrupted by the various market crashes, the failure of the international
payments system and subsequent massive deflation and Great Depression. A similar plan to
outsource manufactures to its colonies and commonwealth and financialize its economy was
began in the UK sometime after the end of the US Civil War. At the time in England, the
school of Classical Political-Economists and their political allies (CPE) were attempting to
rid the UK and the rest of Europe of the last vestiges of Feudalism that resided in the
Rentier and Banking Classes, the former being mostly populated by Royalty and its
retainers. Land Rent was the primary source of their income while it was the stated intent of
the CPE to change the tax burden from individuals and businesses to that of Land Rent and
other forms of Unearned Income. That movement came swiftly on the heels of the abolition of
the Slave Trade which was a vast source of Royal income. Recognizing this threat to the basis
of their wellbeing, the Royals needed to turn the tables but in such a manner where their
manipulation was secret because of the vast popularity of the CPE's agenda. Thus began the
movement to discredit the CPE and remove their ideas from discourse and later completely from
the history of political-economy. And there was another problem--German Banks and their
philosophy inspired by Bismarck to be totally supportive of German industry, which provided
the impetus for its own colonial pursuits primarily in Africa.
Within that paragraph is my thesis for the rise of Neoliberalism, much of which Dr. Hudson
documents but hasn't yet gotten to/revealed the root cause of the counter revolution against
the CPE. IMO, that reactionary movement underlies far more, particularly the growing
animosity between the UK and Germany from 1875 to 1914. As Eisenberg's research proves,
there's much more past to be revealed that helps to resolve how we arrived at the times we
now face.
Indeed, as Hudson and Max Keiser ask: Why pay taxes at all since the Fed can create all
the credit required. I've written about the pros and cons of Secession here before which are
quite similar to those existing in 1861. In Washington for example, how to deal with all the
Federal property located there. Just as Ft. Sumter didn't belong to South Carolina, the many
military bases there don't belong to Washington. Trying to seize it as the South Carolinians
attempted in 1861 merely creates the casus belli sought by Trump. Now if you could get the
vast majority of the military stationed in Washington to support your cause, your odds of
resisting would greatly improve.
IMO, trying to regain public control over the Federal government would be much easier.
Thank you brother karlof1, YES, the minotaur indeed but where is Theseus and Ariadne when
we need them? Please don't tell me that Biden and Harris are the 'chosen ones' - that would mock the
legend and prove that the gods are truly crazy :))
It seems to me that a review is required, that we need to turn back the clock to an earlier
analysis whose veracity has only been boosted by subsequent events. So here from
2011: "On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK's program, 'Building a
Powerful Movement in the United States' in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in." Here's a
brief excerpt to remind people what this is all about:
"Once people realize that they're being screwed, that's a pre-revolutionary situation.
It's a situation where they can get a lot of sympathy and support, precisely by not doing
what The New York Times and the other papers say they should do: come up with some neat
solutions. They don't have to propose a solution because right now there isn't one –
without changing the system with many, many changes. So many that it's like a new
Constitution. Politics as well as the economy need to be restructured. What's developing now
is how to think about the economic and political problems that are bothering people. It is
not radical to realize that the economy isn't working. That is the first stage to realizing
that a real alternative is needed. We've been under a radical right-wing attack – and
need to respond in kind. The next half-year probably will be spent trying to spell out what
the best structure would be."
It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon
warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before
the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the
connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary
Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials.
Like many others, I
have been slowly won over to the position that the attacks of 9-11, and especially the
totally unprecedented collapses of the three WTC towers, could only have been caused by the
precisely timed explosion of previously installed demolition materials containing nanothermite. But if one accepts that position the immediately subsequent question is "Who
planned and carried out the attacks?" Many people have claimed it was the Mossad, others that
it was the Mossad in concert with the US neocons etc., -- many of whom were Israeli/US dual
citizens -- but even now, so many years after the horrific events, I can find no coherent
account of how such conspirators, or any others for that matter, might actually have carried
out WTC building demotions. Do any of you know of sources on the matter that have made good
progress on connecting the dots and explaining what precisely happened -- the easier part --
and how exactly it was carried out, by whom, and how they have managed to get away with it
for all this time?
Lieven: If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with
Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality,
bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the
Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world.[my emphasis]
Uncle Tungsten: Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that
colonialism just might be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no
competition? Does Lieven watch too much football?
What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex?
-------
It is clear to me that Tungsten does not understand Lieven because Lieven does not cross all
t's and dot all i's. There can be two reasons for Lieven style: (1) a British style, leaving
some conclusions to the reader, it is not elegant to belabor the obvious (2) Lieven works in
a pro-Western feudal state and that particular piece appeared in a neo-liberal outfit where
it is already a clear outlier toward (what I see as) common sense. Neo-liberals view
themselves as liberals, "tolerating a wide spectrum of opinion", but with clear limits about
the frequency and content for the outliers of their tolerance.
Back to "endangering the world", how "loosing competition to China" can result in huge
mayhem? I guess that Tungsten is a little dense here. The sunset of Anglo-Saxon domination
can seem like the end of the world for the "members" of that domination. But a longer
historical perspective can offer a much darker vision of the future. First, there is a clash
of two blocks, one with superior industrial production, domination of markets of assorted
goods -- both as importer and exporter, etc, the other with still superior military
technology and combative spirit.
Recall (or check) the situation in east Asia ca. 1240 AD. One of the major power was Song
China, after a calamitous defeat roughly 300 years later, diminished Song China succeeded in
developing all kinds of practical and beautiful goods and vibrant commerce while having quite
inept military. The second major power was the Mongols. You can look up the rest.
USA stresses the military types of pressures, and seeing its position slipping too far,
they may resort to a series of gigantic "provocations" -- from confiscation of property by
fiat, like they did to Venezuela, to piracy on open seas, no cargoes can move without their
approval and tribute, from there things can escalate toward nuclear war.
More generally, western decline leads to decrease of wealth affecting the lower classes
first but gradually reaching higher, enmity toward competitors, then hatred, such processes
can have dire consequences.
Importantly, these are speculations, so stopping short of spelling them out is reasonable.
However, give some credit to Lieven for "the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed,
criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period
after the Cold War".
On the rule-based world order. Scattered thoughts.
The article by Lieven was good in one aspect: it at least mentioned the crazy economic
template aka imho 'religion' that lead to a part of this mess. For the rest, hmm. The 'rules based international order' was always pretty much a phoney scaffold, used for
presentation to hide, cover up, legitimised many goings on (after WW2 I mean.)
Like a power-point extolling xyz product, with invented or 'massaged' charts and all.,
with tick boxes for what it positive or followed. (Fairness, Democracy, etc. etc. as
'Natural' 'Organic' etc. Total BS.)
In these kinds of discussions I am always reminded of the 'rights of the child' which in
CH are taught in grade 3-5, with a boiled down text, logo type pix, etc. It is very tough on
teachers, and they often only pretend to push the content. There are many immigrant children
in CH and the natives know that the 'rights' are not respected and not just in 'jungles'
(anarchist / animalistic hot spots) as they say. The kids go nuts - as they still more or
less believe that they 'have a voice' as it called -- the parents follow the kids, lotsa
troubles. OK, these are aspirations - but 'democracy' (purposely used as a calling card
following advice from a well-know ad agency..) is so as well. And presenting aspirations that
can't possibly be achieved in any way, when not a smiley joke about meeting God or flying to
Mars, and is socially important, is not well received.
Anyway, since the invasion of Iraq (totally illegal according to any standards) leading to
the biggest demos in the world ever, a loud indignant cry, which invasion the UN condoned,
ppl (in my experience, in CH, F, It) no longer have a shred of belief in 'international
rules'. Which of course makes them more 'nationalist' in the sense of acting in the
community, close at hand, as the Intl order is a shit-scene.
Tucker: This parading of Ginsburg death wish "is ridiculous and insulting"
Two neoliberal faction of the US elite ("hard neolibs" and "soft neolibs") struggle for power
really entered a new phase. BTW control of Supreme Court was always a part of struggle for power.
And this "royal wish" think is just one episode of this entertaining
fight. Great spectacle, but friends will unite when the time comes to approve the military
budget.
Why are people so upset about this "final wish" thing? Like it just seems convenient to me
and made up; and even if wasn't made up, who gives her the right to dictate how the
constitution works. It's obvious the Dems are using this to try and keep the GOP from getting
an extra seat on the Supreme Court, and I don't really blame them, GOP would have probably
done the same thing, they're both hypocrites.
The fact that large part of population consider Democratic leadership criminal and anther
part Trump administration criminal is a new factor in 2020 elections. Look like neoliberal Dems
made another blunder in unleashing American Maidan in those circumstances.
Thanks to Judge Emmet Sullivan refusing the DOJ's request to drop the Michael Flynn case, a
cache of explosive documents has now been released to the public revealing that at least one
FBI agent on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team thought the case was a politically motivated
"dead end," and others bought professional liability insurance as their bosses were continuing
the investigation based on " conspiracy theories. "
In one case, FBI agent William J. Barnett said
during a Sept. 17 interview that he believed Mueller's prosecution of Flynn was part of an
attitude to "get Trump," and that he didn't want to pursue the Trump-Russia collusion
investigation because it was "not there" and a "dead end," according to
Fox News .
Barnett, during his interview, detailed his work at the FBI, and his assignment to the
bureau's original cases against Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Barnett said the Flynn investigation was assigned the code name "Crossfire Razor," which was
part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation -- the bureau's code name for the original
Trump-Russia probe.
Barnett told investigators that he thought the FBI's Trump-Russia probe was "opaque" and
"with little detail concerning specific evidence of criminal events."
" Barnett thought the case theory was 'supposition on supposition,'" the 302 stated, and
added that the "predication" of the Flynn investigation was "not great, " and that it "was
not clear" what the "persons opening the case wanted to 'look for or at.'"
After six weeks of investigating, Barnett said he was "still unsure of the basis of the
investigation concerning Russia and the Trump campaign working together , without a specific
criminal allegation." -
Fox News
When Barnett approached agents about what they thought the 'end game' was with Flynn -
suggesting they interview the former National Security Adviser "and the case be closed unless
derogatory information was obtained," he was cautioned not to conduct an interview, as it may
tip Flynn off that he was under investigation.
"Barnett still did not see any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the
Russian government," the 302 states. "Barnett was willing to follow any instructions being
given by the deputy director as long as it was not a violation of the law."
Insurance over "conspiracy theories"?
Another revelation from documents in the Flynn case comes in the form of text messages
released on Thursday in which agents bought liability insurance, fearing they would be sued
over an investigation into Flynn based on "conspiracy theories."
"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10,
2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to
Just The News .
"Holy crap," responded a colleague. "All of the analysts too?"
"Yep," replied the first analyst. "All the folks at the Agency as well."
"Can I ask who are the most likely litigators?" responded a colleague. "As far as
potentially suing y'all."
"Haha, who knows .I think the concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ
and the NYT among others was going to do a piece," the first analyst texted back.
NEVER
MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
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The explosive messages were attached to a new filing by Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell,
who argued to the court that is considering dismissing her client's guilty plea that the
emails show "stunning government misconduct" and "wrongful prosecution."
A hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.
" There was no case against General Flynn ," Powell wrote in the new motion. " There was
no crime. The FBI and the prosecutors knew that. This American hero and his entire family
have suffered for four years from public abuse, slander, libel, and all means of defamation
at the hands of the very government he pledged his life to defend." -
Just The News
Thanks to Judge Sullivan's hatred of Flynn, the world now knows how much more corrupt the
Mueller investigation was.
ay_arrow
novictim , 1 minute ago
"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on
Jan. 10, 2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to
Just The News .
Ok.
BUT NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE PROTECTORS OF THE CONSTITUTION BLEW THE WHISTLE.
None of these FBI agents seeing egregious abuse of power by the FBI leveled at a
decorated Lt. Gen. had the moral fortitude to stand up and say "NO!". They all hated Trump
so much that they simply bought protection insurance for themselves.
FIRE ALL OF THEM.
play_arrow
J J Pettigrew , 2 minutes ago
A soft coup attempt...
does this qualify as "swaying an election"? Like the 2018 election that gave the House
to the Dems and Pelosi her power?
Or is this an attempt to flip an election from 2016?
They always accuse others of that which they themselves are guilty...ALWAYS. At least
they let us know what they are up to. Like who is in bed with Russian oligarchs.....Hunter
gets the 3.5 million
play_arrow
Everybodys All American , 6 minutes ago
Judge Sullivan has no choice. If he does not drop this case now then he is in serious
violation of the law in a big time way. Anything is possible from this idiot but he will be
impeached and removed if he does not dismiss this case for sure now.
lay_arrow
whackedinflorida , 8 minutes ago
It has been fairly obvious that if Sullivan refused to dismiss the case and insists on
having a hearing, a large amount of government misconduct would ultimately be disclosed.
Leftists are willing to believe anything if it fits their narrative, and ignore second
order effects of what they do. By the end of this, the charges against Flynn will be
dismissed (or he will be pardoned), and the prosecutors will be the ones facing the justice
system. Its almost as if Sullivan is doing Trump's bidding.
Show More Replies
otschelnik , 10 minutes ago
To start going up the food chain as to how this ****show got started we need to know a
couple of pieces of information which the deep state is jealously hiding from us:
1) WHO WERE THE CONTRACTORS ACCESSING THE NSA DATABASE? This will draw a straight line
back to the Democrat party.
2) WHO WERE THE FBI AGENTS TAKING LIABILITY INSURANCE? These are the same as USSR NKVD
henchmen shooting kulaks and political prisoners in the back of the head.
ay_arrow
Fabelhaft , 8 minutes ago
Flynn's courage reduces Mueller's battlefield manner to the shell-shocked infirmaries of
WW1.
lay_arrow 1
Aubiekong , 16 minutes ago
If we lived in a country of law and order. The democratic leadership would all be in
prison along with all those involved in the "investigation".
gaaasp , 32 minutes ago
When can Flynn speak freely?
turbojarhead , 26 minutes ago
I think you nailed it-Flynn cannot interview due to his legal case-the man who knows
where ALL the bodies are buried, SPECIFICALLY in the Iran deal. It ALMOST seems like
Sullivan-maybe at the behest of others-has been desperate to keep Flynn from being able to
speak up for 4 years...
Maxter , 1 minute ago
It doesn't make much sense that Flynn knows where all the bodies are buried but never
told the Trump team before all this mess.
The dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, paid through the firm Fusion GPS by
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, was used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to spy on
Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, prior to the presidential election. The
warrant was renewed after Donald Trump got elected president and finally expired sometime in
late 2017.
In a redacted,
two-page memo made public on Thursday by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), the US
Department of Justice reveals that Steele's "primary sub-source" (PSS) had been under
FBI investigation in 2009 as a possible Russian agent. The FBI team going after Trump
("Crossfire Hurricane") became aware of this in December 2016 and interviewed the PSS in
January 2017 – then renewed the Page FISA warrant three more times anyway.
"In December 2016, the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team identified the Primary Sub-source used by
Christopher Steele and, at that time, became familiar with the 2009 investigation. The
CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team interviewed the Primary Sub-source over the course of three sequential
days in January 2017. At that time, the 2009 investigation remained closed. The 2009
investigation remains closed to this day," says the DOJ memo.
The reason the FBI had closed the investigation, as the memo reveals, was that the PSS had
left the US in September 2010. The FBI said "consideration would be given to re-opening the
investigation in the event" the person returned to the US. For whatever reason, though the
PSS did return at some point, the investigation was never reopened.
While the DOJ memo does not name the PSS, some enterprising internet sleuths fingered him in
July as one Igor Danchenko. His attorney Mark E. Schamel confirmed the identification to the
New York
Times a day after RT reported on it. Danchenko had worked as a researcher for the Brookings
Institution until 2010. This lines up with the memo saying he was working at a think tank in
Washington, DC when some coworkers suspected him of being a "Russian spy."
The FBI's investigation came up with nothing much beyond a September 2006 "contact with a
known Russian intelligence officer," and him being "very familiar" with a
"Washington, DC–based Russian officer."
Flimsy as that seems now, it was a lot more than they ever had on Carter Page. It didn't
help that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith had altered evidence to make Page look like a foreign
agent, when he in fact was not. In August, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of
making a false statement.
When he sent over the memo to Graham, Attorney General Bill Barr wrote that additional
classified information that "bears upon the FBI's knowledge concerning the reliability" of the
Steele dossier may be declassified by the Director of National Intelligence soon, as it won't
interfere with the criminal investigation conducted by US Attorney John Durham.
The Steele Dossier has been the keystone of 'Russiagate' – the manufactured scandal
accusing Trump of having ties or "colluding" with Russia during the 2016 election – from
the very beginning. It had already emerged that the "Crossfire Hurricane" team had interviewed
Danchenko in January 2017 and established that the Dossier was fabricated, but proceeded to use
it to spy on Trump, framing Carter Page as a Russian agent anyway. At the time, they
already knew that Danchenko had been under FBI investigation as a suspected Russian agent
– but it didn't seem to bother them in the least.
Simply put, this means Crossfire Hurricane team members – such as former agent
Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page, as well as FBI director James Comey and his deputy
deputy Andrew McCabe, ought to have some explaining to do.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
S
o first neoliberal plunder the
country dry and then they offer hope of "Eurointergation" as a carrot and organize a color revolution to overthouth the government.
Is not this brilliant?
A
nd as people want ot live "as in
Europe" (often without understanding realities and seeing only tourist facade of the countries) this desire can become a door opener
of the color revolution.
Another factor is that neoliberalism lifts the standard of living of top 10% or 5 % of the population and create powerful fifth
column of compradors oriented on the West (a part of programmers and IT workers, large part of other well-paid professionals (such
as corporate lawyers, medical professionals, etc), naive or crooked students, employees of joint ventures, etc) who can be relied on
during the protest. Social network also simplify organization of frustrated underachievers and net hamsters for the protests.
Notable quotes:
"... From Ukraine's Euromaidan in 2014, we know that hope can be rather deceptive and elusive. It hovers within touching distance during protests and is an additional incentive, but it never becomes a reality. Disillusionment and frustration do not set in until it is already too late, by which time power has fallen into the hands of those who immediately tighten the screws and have no intention of discussing anything with the people. ..."
Colour revolutions and other forms of outside interference in state affairs are changing. This is both logical and natural, since
government bodies adapt to change, find ways to counter threats, and retain the right to use legitimate force, which, according
to Max Weber, is one of the features of the modern state. But no sooner do the world's leading centres for interference and
destabilisation start feeling for new vulnerabilities in state systems than there is yet another attempted coup or an attack on a
state system. This kind of instability is not desirable for any country, since it could gradually weaken the immunity of
sovereignty. As a consequence, the transformation of protest movements should be of particular interest since, by understanding
their development, it will be possible to predict protesters' and rioters' course of action. The protests in Belarus show that
this is not what happened there, and the authorities were forced to respond quickly to the situation.
For an adequate understanding of anti-government strategies, it is necessary to turn, first of all, to the methods used by those
organising the protests and coups.
In his article "
Protests
and Principles
", Srđa Popović, a well-known activist, organiser of colour revolutions and executive director of CANVAS,
writes that the ideological and geopolitical factors focussed on by the media are insufficient to fully understand what's going
on and evaluate the protests. He suggests paying attention to the structural conditions that differ in different countries, as
well as the outcomes of movements. Popović concludes that the protests in recent years have shown a certain trend "the
traditional and institutional ways of creating change elections, legal systems and dialogue with the elites are
insufficiently effective. So protesters have decided to utilize another form of power to force constructive change."
Executive
director of CANVAS Srđa Popović
Further on, he asks: "If geography and ideology don't determine success, what does?" He outlines four key principles. One a
clear vision of the future. Two a united opposition that should have a good understanding of who its allies are and who is
neutral. Three key pillars, which could be the media, business sectors, social institutions and government agencies
(particularly security agencies that could be enticed over to the opposition). Four attraction, which is a common element in
many protest movements, since they position themselves as fighters of injustice.
At the same time, Popović admits that anger (and therefore also violence) is an effective tool for mobilisation, but it should be
combined with hope, otherwise it will play a destructive role.
It
is with a regretful sigh that Popović writes about the failed "revolutions" in Hong Kong and Venezuela, for which he partially
blames the opposition. The problem with the former was the violence used against the police, and with the latter it was that Juan
Guaid put all his efforts into winning over the military and overthrowing Maduro with a coup.
In summary, Srđa Popović argues that initial conditions and context matter, but strategic skills matter even more. And it is
difficult to disagree. After all, an initial flash of protest can be suppressed, activist cells can be liquidated, and crowds can
be dispersed. And if there is no definite plan of action for how to act in a given situation, then any protest, whether peaceful
or violent, will come to nothing.
Needless to say, the information in Popović's article is for naive readers and written with the utmost care so as to rule out any
possible accusations of anti-state activities. All the advice is given from the standpoint of protecting democratic values.
Therefore, one needs to be able to read between the lines and draw conclusions from past coups.
From Ukraine's Euromaidan in 2014, we know that hope can be rather deceptive and elusive. It hovers within touching distance
during protests and is an additional incentive, but it never becomes a reality. Disillusionment and frustration do not set in
until it is already too late, by which time power has fallen into the hands of those who immediately tighten the screws and have
no intention of discussing anything with the people.
CANVAS, however, is an organisation that develops strategic action plans for particular countries. Judging by its
recent
online summer academy
, CANVAS was actively involved in the overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales, supported protests in
Sudan, Zimbabwe and Brazil, and has close ties with opposition groups in Malaysia, the Philippines and Georgia.
Peter
Ackerman
Popović's views on the strategic planning of coups is shared by
Peter
Ackerman
, former chair of the board of trustees of Freedom House, and board member of the Council on Foreign Relations and
the NATO Atlantic Council. Ackerman believes that "
the
talented execution of even the simplest nonviolent tactics can alter the psychology of a population and the behavior of a regime
."
He also believes that the consolidated efforts of hundreds of small organisations can have a cumulative effect and make it look
like there is a unity of opinion and effort. This explains why, in Ukraine, the West actively supported both the radical
nationalists and the liberals, which is basically like crossing a grass snake with a viper, given that these two groups have
radically different ideologies. A similar situation can be seen in Belarus, where the muscle was provided by home-grown
nationalists (symbolism associated with Nazi collaborators during the war was openly used at protests), while representatives of
sexual minorities were included on various opposition councils.
The
International
Center on Nonviolent Conflict
, which was founded by Ackerman and whose headquarters are in Washington, does similar work to
CANVAS. In partnership with Rutgers University (New Jersey), the centre has been running online courses for activists since 2012.
These not only cover the theory of protest movements and provide specific examples, but also adapt new techniques. It is
noticeable that the course developers are seeking out new frontiers in resistance movements how to exploit culture and
religion, or how to target corporations (since corporations can be state-owned, by focusing on a problem related to the company's
activities, attention can then be turned to the government itself).
George
Soros's son Alexander Soros with Hashim Thachi
The activities of another institution, the United States Institute of Peace,
cover
52 states
, and, in a number of countries (such as China and Iran), they are carried out indirectly, using local agents and
manipulating facts to its advantage. Thus, a recent report on Russia's interest in conflict zones states that "
Russia's
activities in conflict zones usually directly or indirectly run counter to Western interests
." The truth, however, is that it
is the West's activities that run counter to the interests of Russia, which then has to respond in some way. Russia has no
military bases in the Americas, whereas there are NATO bases and US troops on Russia's borders. Russian troops are in Syria
legitimately, whereas US troops in the country are effectively occupiers.
The
Tavistock
Institute
in London is doing some fairly serious work in the field of social engineering and manipulation. Its main
activities are carried out under the ruse of supporting self-organisation and human relationships. Thus, the Tavistock Institute
began developing the sociotechnical systems theory in the 1950s, started putting it into practice in the 1980s, and is still
using it now. The proliferation of perverts around the world under the smokescreen of tolerance is largely due to this
organisation (an agenda being carried out under the politically neutral guise of "
Group
Relations
").
It can be seen from these examples that the locale for protest headquarters and for the systematic destruction of the foundations
of national identity is the same the West, chiefly America.
Along with attempts to maintain tactical flexibility during protests, one can often see adjustments being made in response to the
circumstances. Thus, the slogan "Flowers are better than bullets" on the placards of Belarusian opposition groups is just a
reworking of the slogan "Food not Bombs" used in the decentralised anti-war campaign that originated in the US in the 1980s
before spreading to Europe. A branch of this movement appeared in Belarus in 2005 with the help of local anarchists. A feature of
the movement is the distribution of vegetarian food to the poor and the homeless. Depending on who is behind the campaign, local
political nuances are superimposed in a number of countries.
Bernard-Henri
Levy with former Belarus' presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya
Many protest movements rely on creativity. So, on 14 April 2020, Polish feminists
blocked
the traffic
on one of Warsaw's main streets. Although the police issued large fines (upwards of 6,000) to many of the
activists, no one is going to pay them, and the blocking of traffic was explained by the guidelines of the authorities themselves
to observe social distancing of two metres due to the pandemic. In the end, and with the help of lawyers, the draft bills were
passed to parliament, and a special commission has been appointed to review them. Thus, the feminists killed two birds with one
stone: they managed to troll the government's quarantine measures and also hold a protest that drew more attention to their
activities (which are directed against conservatives, including for the legalisation of abortion and the support of sexual
minorities).
One should also not forget the activities of individuals aimed at the destabilisation of various governments. Usually, they do it
out of ideological beliefs, often using their own money and working with international contacts. One such individual is the
French neoliberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lvy, who actively supported coups in Yugoslavia and Ukraine, terrorists in Libya and
Syria, and is currently helping Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who lost in the country's recent presidential
election.
George
Soros and his son Alexander Soros
George Soros's son,
Alexander
Soros
, is diligently carrying on his father's work by serving as deputy chair of the Open Society Foundations. Recently, he
has been making frequent visits to the Balkans, where he has been seen in the company of many senior politicians. In addition to
Europe, Alexander Soros often visits Myanmar and is involved in projects in several African countries.
The activities of these people and organisations represent a multi-level international network with multiple dimensions of
communication and hidden strategies prepared with an eye to the future.
Therefore, to establish an adequate response mechanism to current and future challenges, the activities of these groups,
individuals and institutions must be monitored at the systemic level constantly, thoroughly and comprehensively.
Reposts are welcomed with the reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW.
Geopolitical analyst, Chief editor of Geopolitica.ru, founder and chief editor of Journal of Eurasian Affairs; head of the
administration of International Eurasian Movement.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them
imaginary"
- H.L. Mencken
As the global pandemic grips world attention, completely unnoticed by mainstream media was
the release of a final report of
an academic study pertaining to another previously calamitous event of international
significance.
On March 25th, the conclusion of a four year investigation by researchers at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks was published which determined that the collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7 on September 11th, 2001 was not caused by fire. The peer-reviewed inquiry was funded
by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization composed of more than
3,000 building architects and engineers who are a signatory to the group's formal appeal
calling for a new investigation into the three -- not two -- WTC skyscrapers destroyed
on 9/11. The researchers infer that the collapse of Building 7 was actually the result of a
controlled demolition:
"The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on
9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our
study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous
failure of every column in the building."
With or without a pandemic, it is likely corporate media would have ignored the study
anyway, just as they have anything that contradicts the official story of 9/11. However, it is
notable that many have drawn parallels between the COVID-19 outbreak and the 9/11 attacks based
on the widespread changes to daily life as a result of the crisis going forward. Already there
is talk of nationwide lockdowns as a "new normal" with many rightly expressing concerns over
civil liberties, press freedoms, the surveillance state, and other issues just as there were
following 9/11. By the same measure, a false dichotomy is being established by political
gatekeepers in order to silence those who dare challenge the official account as to how the
coronavirus began. It is a stigmatization that is all too familiar to those who have never
believed the conventional narrative that 19 Arab hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden armed only
with box-cutters were solely responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on that fateful day.
There is a common misconception that to believe in so-called "conspiracy theories" is to
somehow lose sight of the bigger picture or systemic problems. Behind this phenomenon is a
mistakenly presumed conflict between understanding the broader, overarching system versus the
sinister motives of those in power who administer it -- when they are
inextricably linked. Political scientist Michael Parenti, who drew the ire of many of his
fellow left-wing colleagues for his work on the Kennedy assassination
, refers to it in his
lecture "Understanding Deep Politics" as a perceived incompatibility between " the
structural and the functional ." The anti-conspiracists wrongly assume that the more
impersonal or wider the lens, the more profound an analysis. By this logic, the elite are
absolved of conscious intent and deliberate pursuit of nefarious self-interest, as if
everything is done by incidental chance or out of incompetence. Not to say efficacy applies
without exception, but it has become a required gesture to disassociate oneself from
"conspiracies" to maintain credibility -- ironically even by those who are often
the target of such smears themselves.
This applies not only to mainstream media and academics, but even leading progressive
figures who have a mechanical, unthinking resistance to assigning intent or recognizing the
existence of hidden agendas. As a result, it disappears the class interests of the ruling elite
and ultimately assists them in providing cover for their crimes. With the exception of the
Kennedy assassination -- coincidentally the
subject of a new epic chart-topping song by Bob Dylan -- nowhere has there been more
hostility to 'conspiracism' than regarding the events of 9/11. Just as they assailed Parenti,
David Talbot and others for challenging the Warren Commission's 'lone gunman' theory, leading
figures on the left such as Noam Chomsky and
the late Alexander Cockburn railed against the 9/11 Truth movement and today it is often
wrongly equated with right-wing politics, an unlikely trajectory given it occurred under an
arch-conservative administration but an inevitable result of the pseudo-left's aversion to
"conspiracies." If polls are
any indication, the average American certainly disagrees with such elitist misleaders as to the
believability of the sham 9/11 Commission findings, yet another example of how out-of-touch the
faux-left is with ordinary people.
A more recent example was an article
by left-wing journalist Ben Norton proclaiming that to call 9/11 a false flag or an "inside
job" is " fundamentally a right-wing conspiracy ", in complete disregard of the many
dedicated truther activists on the left since its inception. Norton insists the 9/11 attacks
were simply "blowback", or an unintended consequence of previous U.S. foreign policy support
for the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets during the 1980s which later gave birth
to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Norton argues " Al-Qaeda's unofficial strategic alliance with
the US eventually broke down " resulting in 9/11 as retaliation, completely overlooking
that Washington was still supporting jihadist factions during the 1990s in Bosnia (two of which
would be alleged 9/11 hijackers) and Kosovo in the Yugoslav wars against Serbia, even while the
U.S. was ostensibly pursuing bin Laden for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998
and the USS Cole in 2000.
A 1997 Congressional document by the Republican Policy
Committee (RPC) throws light on how Washington never discontinued its practice in Afghanistan
of using jihadist proxies to achieve its foreign policy goals in the Balkans. Although it was a
partisan GOP attack meant to discredit then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, nevertheless the memo
accurately presents how the U.S. had " turned Bosnia into a Militant Islamic Base ":
"In short, the Clinton administration's policy of facilitating the delivery of arms to the
Bosnian Muslims made it the de facto partner of an international network of governments and
organizations pursuing their own agenda in Bosnia: the promotion of Islamic revolution in
Europe. That network not only involves Iran but Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan (a key ally of Iran), and Turkey, together with front groups supposedly pursuing
humanitarian and cultural activities. For example, one such group about which details have
come to light is the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian
organization which has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. TWRA is believed to
be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the
convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden , a
wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups "
It was also in Bosnia where a raid was conducted in 2002 by local police at the Sarajevo
branch of a Saudi-based purported charitable organization, Benevolence International
Foundation, which was discovered to be a front for Al-Qaeda. Seized on the premises was a
document, dubbed the "Golden Chain" , which listed the major
financial sponsors of the terrorist organization to be numerous Saudi business and government
figures, including some of Osama bin Laden's own brothers. By the 9/11 Commission Report 's own
admission, this same fake Islamic charity " supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict
with Serbia " at the same time as the CIA.
It cannot go without mentioning that the common link between Al-Qaeda and subsequent
extremist groups like ISIS/Daesh and Boko Haram is the doctrine of Wahhabism, the puritanical
sect of Sunni Islam practiced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and founded in the 18th century by
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the religious leader who formed an alliance with the founder of the
first Saudi state, Muhammad bin Saud, whose descendants make up the House of Saud royal family.
The ultra-orthodox teachings of Wahhabism were initially rejected in the Middle East but
reestablished by British colonialism which aligned with the Saud family in order to use their
intolerant strain of Islam to undermine the Ottoman empire in a divide-and-conquer strategy. In
a speech to the House of Commons in 1921, Winston Churchill admitted the Saudis to be "
intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty ."
This did not stop the British from supporting the House of Saud so long as it was in the
interest of Western imperialism, an unholy alliance which continues to this day. However,
U.S.-Saudi relations did come under scrutiny when the infamous 28 redacted pages of
the December 2002 report of the "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before
and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001" conducted by the Senate and House Select
Committees on Intelligence were finally disclosed in 2016. The section revealed not only the
numerous U.S. intelligence failures in the lead-up to the attacks but the long suspected
culpability of Saudi Arabia, whose nationals were not the focus of counterterrorism because of
Riyadh's status as a U.S. ally. The declassified pages show that some of the hijackers, 15 of
them Saudi citizens, received financial and logistical support from individuals linked to the
Saudi government, which FBI sources believed at least two of which to be Saudi intelligence
officers. One of those Saudi agents received large payments from Princess Haifa, the wife of
Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a stipend from the latter's bank account which inevitably went
from the go-betweens to the sleeper cell.
President George W. Bush and Prince Bandar bin Sultan at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas
in 2002
A key member of the House of Saud and then-Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar has
such a long and close relationship to the Bush family he was given the nickname "Bandar Bush."
For obvious reasons, when the congressional joint inquiry report was first published in 2003,
the 28-page portion on the Saudi ties to the attacks was completely censored at the insistence
of the Bush administration. Yet the Bush family's connection to the Gulf state kingdom is not
limited to the ruling monarchy but includes one of the petrodollar theocracy's other wealthiest
families -- the bin Laden family itself. While Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit
9/11 mostly whitewashed the real conspiracy of 9/11 , it did reveal that numerous
unquestioned members of the bin Laden family were given special treatment and suspiciously
evacuated on secret flights out of the U.S. shortly after the attacks in coordination with the
Saudi government.
The Bush-bin Laden connection goes all the way back to the beginning of George W. Bush's
business career prior to his political involvement in 1976 with the founding of an oil drilling
company, Arbusto Energy, whose earliest investors included a Texas businessman and fellow
reservist in the Texas Air National Guard, James R. Bath, who oddly enough was the American
liaison for Salem bin Laden, Osama's half brother. To put it differently, the bin Laden family
and its construction fortune helped finance Bush's start in the oil industry, a relationship
that would continue through the 1990s with Harken Energy, later the recipient of an offshore
oil contract in Iraq's reconstruction alongside Dick Cheney's Halliburton. The Bush dynasty's
financial ties to both the Saudi royals and bin Laden family went on as co-investors in the
Carlyle Group private equity firm where the elder Bush's previous government service contacts
were exploited for financial gain. In fact, on the morning of 9/11, Bush Sr. just happened to
be attending a Carlyle business conference where another bin Laden sibling was the guest of
honor in what we are supposed to believe is another astounding coincidence. Just days later,
Shafiq bin Laden would be spirited off on a chartered flight back to Saudi Arabia in an exodus
overseen by Prince Bandar himself.
Osama bin Laden himself also got an evacuation of sorts when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in
2001. It was legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh who first reported that
bin Laden and thousands of other Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were suspiciously allowed to
escape to Pakistan in an evacuation dubbed the 'airlift of evil.' This was corroborated in a
leaked 2009 Hillary Clinton State Department email published by WikiLeaks regarding
a Senate report on the Battle of Tora Bora and bin Laden's escape where Clinton advisor Sidney
Blumenthal is shown discussing the controversial airlift as having been requested by Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice
President Dick Cheney -- but don't dare call it a conspiracy:
"Gary Berntsen, the head of the CIA armed operation in eastern Afghanistan, is a major
source for the report. I am in contact with him and have heard his entire story at length,
key parts of which are not in his book, Jawbreaker, or in the Senate report. In particular ,
the story of the Kunduz airlift of the bulk of key AQ and Taliban leaders, at the request of
Musharaff and per order Cheney/Rumsfeld , is absent."
Could it have anything to do with just a few years earlier the Taliban visiting Texas when Bush was
Governor to discuss with the Unocal Corporation the construction of a gas pipeline through
Afghanistan into Pakistan? It is also well known that the Pakistani government and its
Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) had supported the Taliban for decades and during the
1980s had been the CIA's main conduit for supplying arms to the Afghan mujahideen, including
bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri's Maktab al-Khidamat, the organizational precursor to Al-Qaeda.
As shown in the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth , little in their relations changed in
the years between the Afghan-Soviet war and 9/11, as ISI director Mahmud Ahmed was reportedly
busted
wiring $100,000 to alleged hijacker ringleader Mohamed Atta not long before the WTC
attacks. Throughout 2001 both before and after 9/11, General Ahmed had repeatedly visited the
U.S. and met with top Pentagon and Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George
Tenet, making Prince Bandar not the only figure to have been caught financing the operation and
where a direct line can be drawn between the White House and the hijackers.
While Bandar has thus far eluded justice, one year after the release of the 28 pages
a
lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families of the victims against the government of Saudi
Arabia which presented new evidence that two years prior to the attacks in 1999, the Saudi
Embassy paid for the flights of two Saudi agents living undercover in the U.S. to fly from
Phoenix to Washington " in a dry run for the 9/11 attacks " where they attempted to
breach the cockpit and test flight security. This means the Saudi government was likely
involved in planning the attacks from the very beginning, in addition to providing the
subsidies and patsy hijacker personnel for the smokescreen of blaming Al-Qaeda and making bin
Laden the fall guy, whose links to 9/11 are tenuous at best. After all, the "confession" from
supposed planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was extracted only after his being water-boarded 183
times while bin Laden himself initially denied any role in the attacks before questionable
videos were released of his admittance.
The Saudi nationals who participated in the hijacking rehearsal were posing as students.
However, the Sunni dictatorship was not the only country conducting a mass espionage operation
in the U.S. prior to 9/11 under such a front. In the first half of 2001, several U.S. federal
law enforcement agencies documented more than 130 different instances of young Israelis impersonating "art
students" while aggressively trying to penetrate the security of various government and
military facilities as part of a Mossad spy ring. Several of the Israelis were found to be
living in locations within the near vicinity of the hijackers as if they were eavesdropping on
them. The discovery of the Israeli operation raised many questions, namely whether Mossad had
advanced knowledge or involvement in 9/11. Ironically, Fox News of all places was one of
the few outlets to cover the story in a
four-part series which never re-aired and was eventually scrubbed from the network
website.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GnWSNI7rKf0
The Israeli "art student" mystery never gained traction in the rest of the media, much like
another suspicious case in the "
Dancing Israelis ", a smaller group of Mossad spies posing as furnishing movers who were
arrested in New Jersey on the morning of 9/11 taking celebratory pictures with the twin towers
burning in the background of the Manhattan skyline. The five men were not only physically
present at the waterfront prior to the first plane impact but found with thousands of dollars
in cash, box-cutters, fake passports, and Arab clothing after they were reported for suspicious
behavior and intercepted at the Lincoln tunnel heading into Manhattan. Initially misreported as
Arabs by the media, the men were connected to Mossad by an FBI database and held for five
months before their deportation to Israel while the owner of the front moving company fled to
Jerusalem before further questioning. It should be noted that if Israel were to have
participated in a 'false flag' attack on the U.S., it would not have been the first time.
During the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israeli Air Force and Navy launched an
unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty , a U.S. Navy spy ship that was surveilling the
Arab-Israeli conflict from international waters in the Mediterranean, an "accidental" assault
which killed 34 Americans in an attempt to blame Egypt and provoke U.S. intervention.
If Israel turned out to be co-conspirators with the Saudis, it too is not as unlikely a
scenario as it may seem. Wrongly assumed to be sworn enemies, it is an open secret that the two
British-created states have maintained a historical covert alliance since the end of World War I when
the first monarch of the modern Saudi state, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, defeated his rival the
Sharif of Mecca who opposed the Balfour Declaration. Authored by British Foreign Secretary Lord
Balfour and presented to Zionist leader Baron Rothschild, the 1917 letter guaranteed a Jewish
homeland in Palestine by colonization with European Jews. Once Sharif was out the way, the
Zionist movement had the green light to move forward with its colonial project. Although Ibn
Saud publicly opposed Zionism, behind the scenes he negotiated with them through an
intermediary in his advisor, British agent St. John Philby, who proposed a £20 million
compensation to the Saudi king for delivering Palestine to the Jews.
Ibn Saud communicated his willingness to compromise in a 1940 letter from
Philby to Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization and later the first
Israeli president. However, Philby himself was an anti-Zionist and sabotaged the plan by
leaking it to other Arab leaders who voiced their vehement opposition and it was only after
this exposure that the Saudi king claimed to have turned down the bribe, something the Zionists
would only solicit if they thought he would accept. Ever since, the ideologies of Saudi
Wahhabism and Israeli Zionism have been center to the West's destabilization of the Middle East
which contrary to misperceptions was not uniquely plagued by conflict
historically more than the Occident until the West nurtured Salafism and Zionism. Predictably,
discussing either the Saudi or Israeli role in 9/11 has been strictly forbidden in corporate
media, since both are among Washington's geo-strategic allies and each hold immense lobbying
power over large media institutions.
Less than five months after 9/11, Bush notoriously declared the nations of Iran, Iraq and
North Korea as comprising an "axis of evil" in his 2002 state of the union address. In reality,
the phrase is better suited to describe the tripartite of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S.
government itself who are likely the real trio of conspirators behind 9/11. The infamous choice
of words were attributed to neoconservative pundit and Bush speechwriter, David Frum, who
claimed to have taken inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt's " a date that will live
infamy " speech given the day after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It was a
continuation of a theme present in the manifesto of the neoconservative cabal authored one year
prior to 9/11 -- "
Rebuilding America's Defenses " by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) think
tank, whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush. The
strategic military blueprint called for a massive increase in U.S. defense spending in order to
" fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" before ominously
predicting:
"The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be
a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- likea new Pearl
Harbor."
Ten members of PNAC would be subsequently appointed to positions in the Bush White House
where their vision of a "new Pearl Harbor" conveniently materialized. Then again, there is
plenty of
evidence that Pearl Harbor itself was a 'false flag', or that U.S. intelligence and
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had
foreknowledge of an impending Japanese attack on the naval base in Oahu, Hawaii, on
December 7th, 1941. As pointed out by the film Loose Change, it is probable that
Roosevelt allowed it to happen on purpose in order to win public support for a U.S. entry into
the European theatre of World War II, a move opposed by a majority of Americans prior to the
'surprise' Japanese attack. Given what is known about Pearl Harbor and the abandoned
Operation Northwoods , which proposed both fabricating and committing terrorist attacks on
civilian aircraft to be pinned on Fidel Castro in order to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba in
1962, there are no grounds to assume that such false flag operations were ever phased out of
military procedure before 9/11 or since.
Loose Change also made a useful historical analogy between 9/11 and the Reichstag
fire, the 1933 arson attack on the German parliament building that occurred a month after Adolf
Hitler was inaugurated as Chancellor and pinned on a 24-year old half-blind Dutch communist
named Marinus van der Lubbe. While there is no denying the incident was used a pretext by the
Nazi regime to consolidate power and suspend law and order, there is still a heated debate
between historians as to whether van der Lubbe was the real culprit. However, it was
coincidentally in 2001 when a group of historians
uncovered evidence that a Nazi stormtrooper who died under mysterious circumstances in 1933
had previously confessed to prosecutors that members of Hitler's Storm Detachment had set fire
to the edifice under orders from paramilitary leader Karl Ernst, lending credence to the widely
held suspicion that it was a Nazi-engineered 'false flag' all along.
Most Americans are unaware that a similar coup d'etat nearly took place during the same year
in the United States in an attempt to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install an
authoritarian government modeled on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as part of a scheme hatched
by an inner circle of right-wing bankers otherwise known as the the 'Business Plot.' It was a
conspiracy that only became public after it was heroically thwarted by a whistleblower in
decorated Marine Corps veteran turned anti-imperialist, Major General Smedley Butler, after he
was recruited to form the junta. Incredibly, one of the prominent business figures implicated
in the putsch was none other than future Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush , George H.W.
Bush's father and George W. Bush's grandfather, who at the time was the director and
shareholder of a bank owned by German industrialist and prominent Nazi financier
Fritz Thyssen seized by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
After his transformation, in 1935 Smedley Butler famously penned War is a Racket and
there is perhaps no better phrase that would sum up the so-called 'War on Terror' today. Not
only did the American Reichstag fire of 9/11 trigger a domestic police state transformation
that overrode the U.S. constitution in an American equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Act and the
Heimatschutz( "homeland protection" ) defense forces with the passing
of the USA-Patriot Act and founding of the Department of Homeland Security, but it fulfilled
the prophecy of political scientist Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations in a
face-off between Islam and Christianity abroad. The prediction that religion and culture would
be the primary source of geopolitical conflict in the post-Cold War world was an apocalyptic
paradigm envisioned by right-wing orientalist philosophers like Huntington and Bernard Lewis
which the PNAC neocon ideologues put into practice. Today, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis appears
likely to have similar broad and long-term political, social and economic consequences and
those who have doubts about the official explanation for the pandemic can hardly be blamed for
their distrust given this history unless the lessons of 9/11 have gone unlearned.
It's hard to have much sympathy for the American people at this point. They have looked
the other way regarding all of this as long as they have their brand of liar in the White
House.
Whether they can be duped into killing more peasants elsewhere or are left to their hunger
games here at home, this country is finished.
+1. Sadly, your comment is remarkably accurate. I don't know whether America is FINISHED
just yet, though, because there's still plenty remaining to pillage from the American
SHEEPLE.
Oh wait, what is the so-called "National Debt" now? (Answer: $22-23 TRILLION).
Of course, despite the fact that the so-called "National Debt" is MATHEMATICALLY NEVER
RE-PAYABLE, the more important fact, is that We, the People, DO NOT OWE the G.D. Central
Bankers ONE RED PENNY.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous
to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary"
- H.L. Mencken
From the "Jew" Henry Kissinger:
"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order;
tomorrow they with be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an
outside threat from beyond whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence.
It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from
this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario,
individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being
granted to them by their world government."
- Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg meeting at Evian, France, May 21,
1992.
Thos intelligence nets are becoming more and more sophisticated. They essentially represent a
hidden political force that influences the elections.
From comments: "This is so convoluted and Byzantine and no one is offering documentation,
just allegations."
Notable quotes:
"... Rarely in the news, however, is the role played by Israeli cybersecurity startups in the creation of the Russiagate narrative itself. Incubated within the Israeli military apparatus and benefiting from an uninterrupted stream of billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars, these "private Mossads" have been present behind the scenes throughout the numerous Russia-related scandals fomented by the mainstream press to sow partisan discord among the American electorate and line the pockets of network executives. ..."
"... The Senate's inquiries uncovered a consistent thread of IDF-linked cybersecurity firms and intelligence assets coordinating and facilitating meetings between the coterie of Russian characters that make up the Russiagate universe and the Trump campaign, including protagonists like Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who released Hilary Clinton's infamous emails to Wikileaks via a cell phone registered in Israel. ..."
"... "These guys came out of the military intelligence army unit, and it's like coming out with a triple Ph.D. from MIT. The amount of knowledge these guys have in terms of cybersecurity, cyber-intelligence [is] just so beyond what you could get [with] a normal education that it's just unique there are hundreds and hundreds of Israeli start-up companies that the founders are guys who came out of this unit." ..."
"... Michael Flynn, who was himself also working in an advisory capacity with the "consortium of cyber-spy companies run by former Israeli intelligence officers" known as the NSO Group, that is comprised of several of the Israeli startups summoned before the committee for voluntary, closed-door testimony. ..."
"... One of the NSO companies questioned by the Senate committee in relation to Russian interference, Psy-Group, is currently under investigation in California, where it was caught red-handed actually trying to rig a local election for a paying customer. ..."
"... Butina's former lover, Paul Erickson joked about being a CIA asset and had built a phony reputation as a man of staunch moral Christian values. Erickson worked for several Republican campaigns dating back to the late '80s, including a stint as national policy director for Pat Buchanan's '92 White House run. He first achieved international notoriety as Mobutu Sese Seko's lawyer, reportedly accepting a $30,000 lobbying contract to obtain a U.S. visa for the African despot, which was ultimately denied. ..."
"... It was Erickson's long-standing ties to the NRA and the organization's former president David Keene, which set the stage for the Maria Butina story as a Russian infiltrator looking for " access to U.S. political organizations ." Erickson had worked with Keene as a registered foreign agent since the 1990s and formed part of the NRA's efforts to forge closer ties to Israel since at least 2011. ..."
"... A con-artist by most accounts, Erickson is described by a Republican legislator as "the single biggest phony I've ever met in South Dakota politics." South Dakota was where Yale-educated Erickson came up in the political arena and where he's left a long trail of burned business associates and friends. In 2019, Erickson pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering , admitting he had bilked 78 people of $2.3 Million over 22 years and was sentenced this past July to seven years in federal prison. ..."
A Senate investigation reveals that a consortium of Israeli hacking and surveillance firms
coordinated and facilitated meetings between Trump campaign operatives and Russia during the
2016 campaign, but they don't really want to talk about it.
Alleged Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election is headline news, once again,
as a Ukrainian lawmaker is charged by the Trump administration "in a sweeping plot to sow
distrust in the American political process," reports the Associated Press.
Microsoft also made claims that it detected "hacking attempts targeting U.S. political
campaigns, parties and consultants" by agents from Russia, China, and Iran. In a September 10
blog
post , Microsoft's Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President of Customer Security & Trust,
listed three groups from each region that Microsoft "observed" carrying out their cyber
operations.
Rarely in the news, however, is the role played by Israeli cybersecurity startups in the
creation of the Russiagate narrative itself. Incubated within the Israeli military apparatus
and benefiting from an uninterrupted stream of billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars, these
"private Mossads" have been present behind the scenes throughout the numerous Russia-related
scandals fomented by the mainstream press to sow partisan discord among the American electorate
and line the pockets of network executives.
Evidence of their activities has been exposed -- though not pursued -- in the latest volume
of a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election, which shows how then-candidate Donald Trump personally embarked on a
parallel campaign on behalf of Israel to block a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Originally
submitted by Egypt, UNSCR 2334 strips Israeli settlements
beyond the 1967 borders of any "
legal validity " in the eyes of the international community and brands them a "flagrant
violation under international law." Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, had
refused all of the advances made by Trump's operatives to use its veto power against the
measure, and Trump himself would
prevail upon Egyptian President al-Sisi -- whom Trump calls his "
favorite dictator " -- to
withdraw the declaration . Together with Israeli pressure, UNSCR 2334 seemed destined to
languish in obscurity as Egypt
acquiesced and delayed the vote to "permit them to conduct an additional meeting of the
Arab League's foreign ministers to work on the resolution's wording."
The Senate's inquiries uncovered a consistent thread of IDF-linked cybersecurity firms
and intelligence assets coordinating and facilitating meetings between the coterie of Russian
characters that make up the Russiagate universe and the Trump campaign, including protagonists
like Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who
released Hilary Clinton's infamous emails to Wikileaks via a cell phone registered in
Israel.
George Birnbaum, a former chief of staff to Benjamin Netanyahu and GOP operative, told the
committee how Trump aide Rick Gates had inquired about using "Israeli technology" to collect
dirt on opponent Hillary Clinton at a March 2016 meeting, explaining to the senators what would
be so attractive about Israeli companies, specifically:
"These guys came out of the military intelligence army unit, and it's like coming out
with a triple Ph.D. from MIT. The amount of knowledge these guys have in terms of
cybersecurity, cyber-intelligence [is] just so beyond what you could get [with] a normal
education that it's just unique there are hundreds and hundreds of Israeli start-up companies
that the founders are guys who came out of this unit."
The unit Birnbaum is referring to is the IDF's Unit 8200, where these "hundreds and
hundreds" of tech startups are born right in the bowels of the Israeli national security state
and propagate throughout the world and the United States, in particular.
Described as " private Mossads "
for hire, many of the Israeli hacking and surveillance firms that moved behind the scenes,
brokering meetings between Trump's people and Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska during the
height of the so-called Russian "collusion," were working through a "key middle man" with close
ties to then-Trump National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, who was himself also working
in an advisory capacity with the "consortium of cyber-spy companies run by former Israeli
intelligence officers" known as the NSO Group, that is comprised of several of the Israeli
startups summoned before the committee for voluntary, closed-door testimony.
While the American public was fed one Russophobic scandal after another, and Robert Mueller
held court in the press for two years straight, no one -- especially Mueller -- was paying
attention to this perverse network of Israeli surveillance companies who operated the virtual
scaffold upon which the Russiagate narrative was being constructed and whose fellow Unit 8200
graduates in other subsectors of the cybersecurity industry are deeply ensconced in highly
questionable activities surrounding the coming 2020 election.
THE NSO GROUP
The NSO
Group gained notoriety when it was identified as the developer of Pegasus, the iPhone
spyware that
was found installed on slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's phone in the days leading
up to his gruesome death. NSO's cell phone tracking technology has been associated with other
ghastly events, such as the scandal involving Pegasus in Mexico, where a team of international
investigators looking into the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa was targeted by the
spyware, as well as Mexican
journalists and their families.
One of the NSO companies questioned by the Senate committee in relation to Russian
interference, Psy-Group, is currently under investigation in California, where it was
caught red-handed
actually trying to rig a local election for a paying customer. Another, Circles, was
founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer and is "known for covertly intercepting phone
calls, text messages, and tracking locations of unaware citizens," according to a report by
Forensic News .
In 2018, Haaretz published
an expose on the company disclosing the extent to which Circles and the Israeli espionage
industry is helping "world dictators hunt dissidents and gays," among other nefarious
opportunities available in the "global commerce" of surveillance technologies.
An NSO rep peddles software services at annual European Police Congress in Berlin, April 28,
2020. Hannibal Hanschke | Reuters
The middle man the Senate investigation identified is Walter Soriano; singled out for his
association with several Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and Dmitry Rybolovlev, who
bought
Trump's West Palm Beach mansion in 2008. The Senate report accuses Soriano and Israeli
cybersecurity companies of coordinating "between the Trump Campaign and Russia," but fails to
pursue the matter beyond that.
The UN resolution denouncing Israeli settlements would pass on December 23, 2016, after four
temporary Security Council members, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, and Venezuela reportedly
took matters into their own hands and moved the vote forward. UNSCR 2334 became official as
a result of a historic breach of established pro-Israel policy by the United States, which
abstained from the vote. Widely reported as Obama's "
parting shot " to Netanyahu and the incoming administration, the passing of the resolution
went against Obama's own record of using U.S.' veto power to banish similar
proposals .
President-elect Donald Trump would take office in a matter of weeks and the Mueller
investigation kicked off the barrage of Russophobic content peddled over the digital airwaves
night after night. Stories like
Maria Butina's were plastered all over the media to buttress the Russiagate
narrative.
THE LEGEND OF MARIA BUTINA
Butina's former lover, Paul Erickson joked
about being a CIA asset and had built a phony reputation as a man of staunch moral
Christian values. Erickson worked for several Republican campaigns dating back to the late
'80s, including a stint as
national policy director for Pat Buchanan's '92 White House run. He first achieved
international notoriety as Mobutu Sese Seko's lawyer, reportedly accepting a $30,000 lobbying
contract to obtain a U.S. visa for the African despot, which was ultimately denied.
It was Erickson's long-standing ties to the NRA and the organization's former president
David Keene, which set the stage for the Maria Butina story as a Russian infiltrator looking
for "
access to U.S. political organizations ." Erickson had
worked with Keene as a registered foreign agent since the 1990s and formed part of the
NRA's efforts to forge
closer ties to Israel since at least 2011.
Prosecutors would paint Butina as a seductress, ensnaring Erickson in a "duplicitous
relationship," but it was the cunning GOP operative who first spotted Butina during a 2013
trip to Moscow with Keene. Butina and Erickson would meet again in Israel one year later
where they would begin their 'love affair' during which he would become "integral to Butina's
activities," assisting the Russian gun enthusiast "in developing relationships with individuals
and organizations involved in U.S. politics," according to the Senate Intelligence
Committee.
Maria Butina poses for a photo at a shooting range in Moscow, April 22, 2012. Pavel Ptitsin
| AP
A con-artist
by most accounts, Erickson is
described by a Republican legislator as "the single biggest phony I've ever met in South
Dakota politics." South Dakota was where Yale-educated Erickson came up in the political arena
and where he's left a long trail of burned business associates and friends. In 2019, Erickson
pled guilty to
wire fraud and money laundering , admitting he had bilked 78 people of $2.3 Million over 22
years and was sentenced this past July to
seven years in federal prison.
The NRA has been forging ties to the Israeli security state for years now. In 2013, Trump's
former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, joined a delegation of 30 in Jerusalem for a
10-day tour of Israel's police institutions. The honorary NRA member stated on that
occasion, that Israel could "serve as a model for American security." The legend of Maria
Butina, itself, was seeded in Israel that same year when an "obscure" Israeli gun-rights group
posted on
Facebook that she had announced to have signed a cooperation agreement with the NRA
and "neighboring countries" to promote gun rights at a meeting with its members.
Butina would meet with Erickson and Keene two weeks later in Moscow, along with Alexander
Torshin, former deputy governor of Russia's central bank and lifetime NRA member. Torshin, who
has been targeted by U.S. sanctions, traveled with Butina to the United States to "discuss
U.S.-Russian economic relations" in April 2015. The pair met with several senior American
officials, like Federal Reserve vice chairman and former Israel central bank chief, Stanley
Fischer; the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets and others in a
meeting "
moderated " by AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. The details of the high-level meeting, two
months before Donald Trump made his announcement to run for president, have never been made
public.
Feature photo | Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee
business meeting to consider authorization for subpoenas relating to the Crossfire Hurricane
investigation, the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the FBI in
2016 and 2017 into links between Trump and Russian officials, June 11, 2020. Carolyn Kaster |
AP
Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher,
writer and documentary filmmaker.
I always said it was Israeli influence not Russian. How obvious can it get. But we have
Trump constantly kissing the Israeli ass while being kicked in the teeth and Congress bending
over backwards pedaling lies about Russia for Israeli benefit.
Is there anyone on our side in DC?
Ok, so we have the israelis, synonymous with deep state, responsible for wtc '93, wtc
9/11, the arab spring, the afghan conflict, the iraq conflict, problems with Iran, training
antifa/blm, equipping and training the messican cartels, the farc, and tupac amaru. Being the
worlds controlling supplier of MDMA. As well as giving U.S. technology to the chinese, and
direct involvement with the release of covid 19. And hiring osama bin laden to build a
highway in the sudan, then embezzling $800 million from bin ladens project, and blaming it on
the U.S. It's time for the world to put their collective heads back into where the sun does
shine.
"... Each of these two camps wields rhetoric that masks its true practice. Democrats and Republicans pose as heralds of the "free world" in the face of "dictatorships", as defenders of racial, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and as champions of the fight against "global warming". The Jacksonians, for their part, take turns denouncing the corruption, perversity and ultimately hypocrisy of their predecessors while calling to fight for their nation and not for the empire. ..."
"... The two camps have in common only the same cult of force; whether it is at the service of the empire (Democrats and Republicans) or the nation (Jacksonians). ..."
The U.S. 2020 presidential campaign pits two radically different visions of the United States: empire or nation?
On the one hand, Washington's claim to dominate the world by "containment" a strategy articulated by George Kennan in 1946 and
followed by all presidents until 2016 and on the other hand, the rejection of imperialism and the desire to facilitate the fortunes
of Americans in general a strategy articulated by President Andrew Jackson (1829-37) and taken up only by President Donald Trump
(2017-20).
Each of these two camps wields rhetoric that masks its true practice. Democrats and Republicans pose as heralds of the "free
world" in the face of "dictatorships", as defenders of racial, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and as champions of
the fight against "global warming". The Jacksonians, for their part, take turns denouncing the corruption, perversity and ultimately
hypocrisy of their predecessors while calling to fight for their nation and not for the empire.
The two camps have in common only the same cult of force; whether it is at the service of the empire (Democrats and Republicans)
or the nation (Jacksonians).
The fact that the Jacksonians unexpectedly became a majority in the country and took control of the Republican Party adds to the
confusion, but should not confuse Trumpism with what the Republican ideology has been since World War II.
In reality, Democrats and Republicans tend to be well-to-do people or professionals in new technologies, while Jacksonians like
the "yellow vests" in France are rather poor and professionally tied to the land from which they cannot escape.
... ... ...
The Jacksonian agenda
As soon as he took office, Donald Trump questioned the Rumsfeld/Cebrowsky strategy of annihilating the state structures of all the
countries of the "Broader Middle East" without exception and announced his wish to bring home the troops lost in the "war without
end". This goal remains at the top of his priorities in 2020 ("Stop Endless Wars and Bring Our Troops Home").
As a result, he excluded the Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from regular meetings of the National
Security Council. In so doing, he deprived the supporters of imperialism of their main tool of conquest.
There followed a battle for the presidency of this council with the indictment of General Michael T. Flynn, then his replacement
by General H. R. McMaster, the exceptionalist John R. Bolton, and finally Robert C. O'Brien.
In May 2017, Donald Trump called on U.S. allies to immediately cease their support for jihadists charged with implementing the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski
strategy. This was the Riyadh speech to the Sunni heads of state and then to NATO heads of state and government. President Trump
had declared NATO obsolete before changing his mind. However, he obtained not the abandonment of Russia's policy of containment,
but the halving of the credits used for this purpose and the allocation of the funds thus preserved to the fight against jihadism.
In doing so, it partially stopped making NATO an instrument of imperialism and turned it into a defensive alliance. It has therefore
demanded that its members contribute to its budget. Support for jihadism, however, was pursued by the supporters of imperialism with
private means, notably the KKR Fund.
Hence his watchwords: "Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans" and "Get Allies to Pay their Fair Share.
Like the Democrats and Republicans, the Jacksonian Donald Trump is committed to restoring the capabilities of his armies ("Maintain
and Expand America's Unrivaled Military Strength"). Unlike his predecessors, he did not seek to transform the Pentagon's delusional
management by privatizing one department at a time, but rather developed a plan to recruit researchers to compete technologically
once again with the Russian and Chinese armies.
Only Donald Trump's desire to regain primacy in missile matters is supported by Democrats and Republicans, although they do not agree
on how to achieve it ("Build a Great Cybersecurity Defense System and Missile Defense System") : the tenant of the White House wants
the USA to equip itself alone with these weapons that it can eventually deploy on the territory of its allies, while its opponents
want to involve the allies in order to maintain their hold on them. From the point of view of the Democrats and Republicans, the
problem is obviously not withdrawing from the Cold War disarmament treaties to build a new arsenal, but the loss of means of diplomatic
pressure on Russia.
A professional politician, Joe Biden hopes to restore the imperial status of the former First World Power.
The program of Democrats and non-party Republicans
Joe Biden proposes to focus on three objectives: (1) reinvigorate democracy (2) train the middle class to cope with globalization
(3) regain global leadership.
Reinvigorate democracy
: in his words, this means basing public
action on the "informed consent" of Americans. In doing so, he used Walter Lipmann's 1922 terminology, according to which democracy
presupposes "manufacturing consent". This theory was discussed at length by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988. It obviously
has nothing to do with the definition formulated by President Abraham Lincoln: "Democracy is government of the people, by the people,
for the people".
Joe Biden believes he is achieving his goal by restoring the morality of public action through the practice of "political correctness".
For example, he condemns "the horrible practice [of President Trump] of separating families and placing the children of immigrants
in private prisons," without saying that President Trump was merely applying a democratic law to show its futility. Or he announces
that he wants to reaffirm the condemnation of torture that President Trump justified, without saying that the latter, like President
Obama, has already banned the practice while maintaining life imprisonment without trial in Guantnamo.
He announced his intention to convene a Summit for Democracy to fight against corruption, to defend the "Free World" against authoritarian
regimes, and to advance human rights. In view of his definition of democracy, it is a question of uniting allied states by denouncing
scapegoats for what is wrong (the "corrupt") and promoting human rights in the Anglo-Saxon sense and especially not in the French
sense. That is to say, to stop police violence and not to help citizens to participate in decision-making. This summit will launch
an appeal to the private sector so that new technologies cannot be used by authoritarian states to monitor their citizens (but the
USA and its NSA can always use them in the interest of the "Free World").
Finally, Joe Biden concludes this chapter by highlighting his role in the Transatlantic Commission for Electoral Integrity alongside
his friends, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who overthrew the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Michael Chertoff,
former US Secretary of Homeland Security, who put all US citizens under surveillance. Not forgetting John Negroponte who organized
the Contras in Nicaragua and Daesh in Iraq.
Educating the middle class to cope with globalization
. Joe Biden
believes that the politics that have been pursued since the dissolution of the USSR have led to the rapid disappearance of the middle
class, and that training the remaining middle class in the use of new technologies will prevent the relocation of their jobs.
Renewing U.S. leadership
. In the name of democracy, this means
stopping the rise of "populists, nationalists and demagogues. This formulation helps us understand that democracy, according to Joe
Biden, is not only the fabrication of consent, but also the eradication of the popular will. If demagogues pervert democratic institutions,
populists serve the popular will and nationalists serve the community.
The
Oval Office of the White House is looking for a tenant.
Joe Biden then specifies that he will stop wars "forever"; a formulation that seems to support the same goal as the Jacksonians,
but differs in terminology. It is in fact a question of validating the current adaptation of the system to the limits imposed by
President Trump: why make US soldiers die abroad when one can pursue the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy with jihadists at a lower cost?
All the more so since when he was only an opposition senator, Joe Biden gave his name to the plan to partition Iraq that the Pentagon
was trying to impose.
A verse follows on the enlargement of NATO to include Latin American, African and Pacific allies. Far from being obsolete, the Alliance
will once again become the heart of U.S. imperialism.
Finally, Joe Biden pleads for the renewal of the 5+1 agreement with Iran and disarmament treaties with Russia. The agreement with
President Hassan Rohani aims to classically divide Muslim countries into Sunni and Shia, while the disarmament treaties aim to confirm
that the Biden administration would not envisage a global confrontation, but the continued containment of its competitor.
The program of the Democratic Party candidate and non-party Republicans concludes with the assurance of joining the Paris Accord
and taking leadership in the fight against global warming. Joe Biden specifies that he will not give gifts to China, which is relocating
its most polluting industries along the Silk Road. On the other hand, he omits to say that his friend, Barack Obama, before entering
politics, was the drafter of the statutes of the Chicago Carbon Emissions Trading Exchange. The fight against global warming is not
so much an ecological issue as a matter for bankers.
Conclusion
It must be said that everything is opposed to a clarification. Four years of upheavals by President Trump have only succeeded in
replacing the "endless wars" with a low-intensity private war. There are certainly far fewer deaths, but it is still war.
The elites who enjoy imperialism are not ready to give up their privileges.
So it is to be feared that the U.S. will be forced to go through an internal conflict, a civil war, and break up like the Soviet
Union once did.
The president is not an evangelical Christian; he's not Catholic. Unlike the previous
national Republican standard-bearer, he is not a Latter Day Saint. And despite unassailable
status as a Vladimir Putin puppet, he's interestingly not joined the Orthodox Church, which the
Russian strongman has in some ways empowered. When Donald Trump speaks about his
Presbyterianism, he speaks about it as I do: awkwardly, as an exoticism from America's mainline
past.
"I'm a Protestant, I'm a Presbyterian," Trump said in June 2015, the day after descending
the escalator in Manhattan. There are entertaining reads of Trump as a sort of lunatic
optimist, owing to a childhood association with the Americana positive thinker Norman Vincent
Peale -- that he is a devotee of something akin to the "The Secret," (released back when
the future president was hawking Trump Vodka). But one look at the commander-in-chief's acerbic
Twitter feed tells us if he is an insistent positive thinker, he's a hidden one.
The status of America's Christians as obvious rubes has been a familiar refrain of the Trump
presidency. It is as it was then, if with a different flavor, during the last Republican White
House. But now they're being outright had, so goes the thinking. Unlike with the born-again,
younger Bush, the Religious Right's embrace of Trump -- a divorcee egoist who shares beds with
adult film stars -- should tell you all you need to know. In many cases, goes the argument, it
tells you a story of an immoral minority, if the
debacle at Liberty University this summer is any indication, and as traditional
Christianity is ever more sidelined from culture. This is the death rattle.
So you'll have to forgive convinced Christians their jubilation on Saturday as Trump
nominates his third Supreme Court justice in three-and-a-half years. It's already more than
George W. Bush did in two terms, ditto his father, and if the White House and Republicans are
successful in the Senate -- as looks likely -- Trump will instantly surpass both Bill Clinton
and Barack Obama in his impact on the Court. You'll have to pardon the country's dumb set for
thinking to themselves maybe, just maybe they made the right bet four years ago.
My sources in the capital are unanimous: President Donald Trump is likely to name Amy Coney
Barrett, 48, to the Supreme Court on Saturday. She is from Louisiana; she went to Notre Dame
Law; she is a favorite of American Catholics; she is the mother of seven children. She's poised
to succeed the woman she replaces,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg , in icon status, just for the other side.
I like how everyone who writes about Trump feels the urge to proclaim they're morally
superior to him. To idiots like Mills, adultery is a bigger moral sin than killing thousands
of people in wars that are based on lies, which is why the "born again Christian" George
Dubya Bush is morally superior to Trump in their eyes despite Bush's obvious war crimes.
"The status of America's Christians as obvious rubes has been a familiar refrain of the
Trump presidency."
"so you'll have to forgive convinced Christians their jubilation"
No matter how many times ya'll claim it, "Christian" is not synonymous with "Trump
Supporter". Many, many Christians are against Trump. The existence of the Black church alone
should be enough to disabuse even the most unobservant pundit of the idea that to be a
Christian is to be a Republican. We are Christians too, which is why we are not Trump
supporters.
I tend to think conservative Christians will once again be disappointed with the Court.
Ms. Barrett has said repeatedly that her religious beliefs have no influence on her
interpretation and understanding of the law and the Supreme Court's role in it. Overturning
Roe v Wade, an almost 50 year old decision at this point, is extremely unlikely regardless of
who is on the Court.
While I would like to see it overturned myself and returned to state jurisdictions, I just
don't see how that can happen at this point.
"" President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to
stop funding to federal government contractors who hold critical race theory training
sessions."
YES!! "Silence is complicity" as leftarded sheep often bleat, and silence in the face of
this ultra-racist bullsh!t has gone on far too long. Never should've been allowed to begin
with.
When Vladimir Putin got charge of Russia, there was no sign that he would do better than the
drunk he had replaced. An ex KGB officer seemed like a choice more driven by nostalgia rather
than ideology, but Putin had many more assets going for him than first met the eyes:
patriotism, humanism, a sense of justice, cunning ruse, a genius economist friend named Sergey
Glazyev whom openly despised the New World Order, but above all, he embodied the reincarnation
of the long lost Russian ideology of total political and economical independence. After a few
years spent at draining the Russian swamp from the oligarchs and mafiosis that his stumbling
predecessor had left in his trail of empty bottles, Vlad rolled his sleeves and got to
work.
Because his opponents had been looting the planet for 250 years through colonization insured
by a military dominance, Vlad knew that he had to start by building an invincible military
machine. And he did. He came up with different types of hypersonic missiles that can't be
stopped, the best defensive systems on the planet, the best electronic jamming systems, and the
best planes. Then to make sure that a nuclear war wouldn't be an option, he came up with stuff
which nightmares are made of, such as the Sarmat, the Poseidon and the Avangard, all
unstoppable and able to destroy any country in a matter of a few hours.
Putin said that Russia is the only country in the world that has hypersonic weapons even
though its military spending is a fraction of the U.S. military budget. Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, and Chief of General Staff of Russia Valery Gerasimov, right,
attend the meeting.
With a new and unmatched arsenal, he could proceed to defeat any NATO force or any of its
proxies, as he did starting in September 2015 in Syria. He proved to every country that
independence from the NWO banking system was now a matter of choice. Putin not only won the
Syrian war, but he won the support of many New World Order countries that suddenly switched
sides upon realizing how invincible Russia had become. On a diplomatic level, it also got
mighty China by its side, and then managed to protect independent oil producers such as
Venezuela and Iran, while leaders like Erdogan of Turkey and Muhammad Ben Salman of Saudi
Arabia decided to side with Russia, who isn't holding the best poker hand, but the whole deck
of cards.
Ending in the conclusion that Putin now controls the all-mighty oil market, the unavoidable
energy resource that lubricates economies and armies, while the banksters' NATO can only watch,
without any means to get it back. With the unbelievable results that Putin has been getting in
the last five years, the New World Order suddenly looks like a house of cards about to crumble.
The Empire of Banks has been terminally ill for five years, but it's now on morphine, barely
realizing what's going on.
Tragedy and hope
Since there is no hope in starting WW3 which is lost in advance, the last banzai came out of
the bushes in the shape of a virus and the ensuing media creation of a fake pandemic. The main
focus was to avoid a catastrophic hyperinflation of the humongous mass of US dollar that no one
wants anymore, to have time to implement their virtual world crypto-currency, as if the
chronically failing bankers still have any legitimacy to keep controlling our money supplies.
It seemed at first that the plan could work. That's when Vlad took out his revolver to start
the Russian roulette game and bankers blew their brains out upon the pressure on the
trigger.
He called a meeting with OPEC and killed the price of oil by refusing to lower Russia's
production, taking the barrel to under 30 dollars. Without any afterthought and certainly even
less remorse, Vlad killed the costly Western oil production. All the dollars that had been
taken out of the market had to be re-injected by the Fed and other central banks to avoid a
downslide and the final disaster. By now, our dear bankers are out of solutions.
... ... ..
The New World Order is facing the two most powerful countries on the planet, and this fake
pandemic changed everything. It showed how desperate the banksters are, and if we don't want to
end up with nuclear warheads flying in both directions, Putin and Trump have to stop them
now.
Terminate the BIS, the World Bank, the IMF, the European Central bank, the EU, NATO, now.
Our world won't be perfect, but it might get much better soon.
Easter resurrection is coming. This might get biblical.
By now, readers are no doubt familiar with the sight of angry mobs smashing windows, looting
stores, and harassing pedestrians and street diners around the country , supposedly in the name
of advocating for the rights of black Americans. Around the country, these mobs are diverse and
have diverse motives, ranging from simply wanting to loot and get free stuff to being driven by
deeply held ideological beliefs. However, one can't help but notice that in many places a
significant number of those causing disturbances are not the subjects of the state oppression
in question, but are often white and sometimes even affluent, and as a result are almost
completely isolated from the consequences of their destructive sprees.
Portland, site of over a hundred straight days of protests and often violent rioting, seems
like the poster child for this phenomenon. Portland is, in fact, the whitest big city in the US.
In New York City, the Daily Mail
reported on the recent arrest of seven members of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, a
revolutionary Maoist group, after a rioting spree that caused at least $100,000 in damages.
Every one of them appears to be white from their mugshots , and among them are an art director
who has done work for Pepsi and Samsung, a model and actress, and the son of famous comic book
writers. The New York Post profiled one
rioter, twenty-year-old Clara Kraebber, and discovered that her mother runs her own
architecture firm and her father is a psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia University. The
family paid $1.8 million in 2016 for their New York City apartment and also own a home in
Connecticut with four fireplaces.
Or consider Vicky Osterweil, the white author of the much-discussed book In Defense of
Looting , who is also the daughter of a college professor. As Matt Taibbi reports in his review of the
book, "there's little evidence the author of In Defense of Looting has ever been outside" and
"she confesses to a 'personal aversion to violence,' lamenting a 'refusal to attack property'
that 'does not lessen the degree to which I benefit from systems of domination.'" In Taibbi's
words "this is a 288-page book written by a Very Online Person in support of the idea that
other people should loot, riot, and burn things in the real world."
Rioting by the affluent is not limited to white people either. Consider the
case of the two nonwhite attorneys, one of whom received his law degree at Princeton, whose
arrest for throwing a molotov cocktail at a riot in New York City made the headlines precisely
because of their high-status, well-paying jobs.
What all of these examples have in common is that the rioting and destruction, or advocacy
for the same, is being perpetrated by people who have no skin in the game and will not be
exposed to the long-term consequences for the people and communities that they are ostensibly
trying to help. Neighborhoods that suffer through riots often
end up economically depressed for decades to come, but people like Clara Kraebber will not
have to worry about such things.
In the last century, there has been a great deal of scholarship attempting to discover the
roots of these kinds of widespread revolutionary movements. In Liberalism , Mises discusses the
idea of a Fourier complex, where antiliberal revolutionary ideas are adopted by people as a
means of dealing with their own inadequacy in the face of reality. Political theorist Eric
Voegelin (who attended Mises's Vienna seminars) also posits a similar, though more complex,
explanation with his theory of gnosticism.
The classically liberal sociologist Helmut Schoeck also makes a similar argument in his book
Envy . Envy, Schoeck
argues, stems from an individual's reaction to a personal inadequacy and a desire to find a way
to shift the blame to anyone or anything other than himself. Like Mises and Voegelin, Schoeck
explores the ways in which this attitude is detrimental to society, but he also explores why
some people engaged in revolutionary movements are themselves well off and not members of the
toiling masses they seek to "liberate."
In these cases Schoeck argues that such people are not afflicted with envy, but rather with
a fear of envy or the guilt of being unequal. He argues that "the guilt-tinged fear of being
thought unequal is very deeply ingrained in the human psyche," and that it can be observed
everywhere from offices to schools in the way in which people who excel at something will
consciously or unconsciously lower their performance. This phenomenon is unfortunate enough
when it comes to the workplace, but when it comes to politics the consequences can be much more
serious.
Schoeck argues that such guilt may lead a person to forgo their old life in order to serve
the less fortunate but that many times such a person does not seek to extirpate their guilt by
leaving their own comfortable station, but rather by insisting that the entire world must join
them in eradicating inequality. In his words "I have no doubt that one of the most important
motives for joining an egalitarian political movement is this anxious sense of guilt: 'Let us
set up a society where no one is envious.'"
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No doubt even Schoeck would be impressed by the degree to which our current upheavals are
driven by those wracked with the guilt of being unequal rather than those filled with envy
itself. To be sure, there is no shortage of such envious people running around these days, but
there can be no doubt about which group is the driving force.
Hopefully, as social life slowly returns to normal and as the weather gets colder, the
guilt-ridden rich kids will tire out from playacting as revolutionaries and return home. But
until then, it seems that the rest of us will be forced to suffer as they work out their
psychological problems through some window-smashing therapy.
DEDA CVETKO , 2 hours ago
Just a friendly reminder to the author of the article:
Some of the most vicious and violent revolutionaries throughout human history were the
scions of aristocracy or descendants of extremely rich and affluent families: Jean-Paul
Marat, Girolamo Savonarola, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro, Sun Yat-Sen,
Che Guevara, Louis Auguste Blanqui, Oliver Cromwell, Friedrich Engels, etc, etc....all
either came from the very rich family background or descended from the blue-bloods and
nobility. Mao Zedong's father was one of the richest farmers in all of China, just as
Trotsky's dad was one of the richest farmers in Russian Ukraine. Mohandas Gandhi was a
brahmin. Count Mirabeau was a, well...count. Ataturk's father was one of the richest people
in Salonica, Greece. Louis Philippe II - who sided with Robespierre - was of the royal
blood, the first cousin of Louis XVI whose trial and execution he personally endorsed and
supported. And, oh....lest I forget...Nelson Mandela was no slouch in the class pedigree
department, either.
I could go on forever and ever.
In fact, impoverished and pauperized revolutionaries were always but a tiny subset of
the revolutionary class. People like Stalin, Gramsci or Tito were always an aberrant group,
an exception to the general rule.
One can probably write a very thick tome about the rich and aristocratic abandoning
their social stratus in order to side with the dispossessed and disenfranchised. This is
far from being a new and heretofore unknown phenomenon.
I am leaving it to the historians and political psychologists to explain why this is so.
Personally, I think that the inherent cynicism and hypocrisy of their own families is a
perfectly good reason to switch sides. Another possible reason is that the poor and hungry
people are typically too busy surviving and feeding themselves to be organizing violent
overthrow of the ruling class.
truth hound , 1 hour ago
They are knowingly in on the psyop. By DECEPTION, though shalt do war.
DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago
Possibly some but definitely not all. It would require a much more detailed
psychological profile to figure out what went on in these people's heads. I myself am just
visiting this cluster**** of galaxies, what the fvck do I know about how and why the humans
behave?
Blue_Rock , 1 hour ago
A very good post. I will add anger and rebellion by the youths. The realization that
they somehow don't measure up and that they might not be able to use that gender studies
lesbian basket weaving diploma to get ahead. I have personally seen more than one inherited
fortune lost and business run into the ground by spoiled entitled heirs.
DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago
I have personally seen more than one inherited fortune lost and business run into the
ground by spoiled entitled heirs.
This is the Law of Entropy on display: each subsequent iteration is only a paler and
paler version of the preceding one. This is why the caste and class-based societies can't
endure forever: the forces and ideas that guide them simply aren't genetically suited to
perpetuate themselves in their original, integral form. Sooner or later, the integrity of
the founding father(s) dissipates into degeneration and devolution.
algol_dog , 2 hours ago
An interesting note to history. The initiators of these movements are the first to go
once the new regime takes over. Once the new leaders get in charge they realize the danger
of having them around and quickly dispense with them. Examples being the Stalin purges and
Hitler's breaking of the SA.
Utopia Planitia , 2 hours ago
"What's With The Rich-Kid Revolutionaries?"
Safe spaces, exclusively female teachers, participation trophies, no siblings (nobody to
kick you in the face growing up when you are being an asswipe), never a harsh word, no
discipline, constantly being told you are "special", etc. etc. That's just a start.
not dead yet , 1 hour ago
Long before there were the things you mentioned there were rich kids doing rioting and
looting. Back in the sixties it was rich kids made to feel guilty about being rich by their
commie professors. Came from good families with a decent upbringing gone bad by propaganda.
Same kids would go home during breaks and argue with their families how they made their
money off the backs of the workers. Typical commie stuff. Unlike today back then they made
bombs and blew stuff up killing people with many of the bomb makers rich kids. Robberies
for the cause. The parents of the slimy San Francisco DA are serving life for killing a
guard while robbing an armored car. Idiot was then raised by Bill Ayers after his parents
were arrested.
motley331 , 3 hours ago
ALL of these people are useful idiots for the likes of Soros...
truthseeker47 , 1 hour ago
Leader of the violent Weather Underground and self-described communist revolutionary
Bill Ayers came from a very upper class suburban Chicago family.
Ignant Bastad , 1 hour ago
neglected and unloved as a child, so he spends his life "getting back at" his parents?
just a guess.
PGR88 , 2 hours ago
More importantly, those rich white kids out there burning 7-11s downtown are displaying
yet more entitlement. They've never faced consequences their whole life. Imagine if some
counter-protestor swung a bat at them, or small businessman defending his property shot
them? It would be an quick education in consequences.
play_arrow
Arctic_Fox , 1 hour ago
When they don't get shot, it's another manifestation of their white-assed privilege.
Plus, Progressive mayors tell the cops not to play hardball with the rioters, and even
if a few get busted the Soros-backed DA drops charges. Then if it does go to court, some
faculty lounge kook is on the bench as judge, and there are OJ juries to nullify the
prosecution... so they walk.
Privilege from start to finish...
Kind of makes you wonder why we even bother with this government-thing.
hoffstetter , 2 hours ago
People learn from their friends. I know tech millionaires that don't have a clue about
what's going on outside their own circle jerk echo chamber of "friends" that repeat leftist
talking points as if they were Catholics reciting the rosary. Occasionally, I get one to
admit that the stuff they're spouting is completely unsupported after tossing them a few
videos or transcripts that contradict what they thought was reality, but they just find
something else to which they can redirect that is completely unsupported and irrefutable as
it's nonexistent. These aren't kids. They've been around for decades but never left their
cubicles or their monitors and were extremely competent in their jobs, so now they think
they know everything because they knew one thing. It's extremely common.
hmmmm , 2 hours ago
Maslow's hierarchy of needs explains why a disproportionate amount of shallow thinking
rich kids are involved in such causes. Regular folks are not focused on self
actualization.
charlie_don't_surf , 2 hours ago
They are unaccomplished jealous little a-holes that can only tear down others to pretend
to elevate themselves.
Why123 , 2 hours ago
Alexis De Tocqueville analyzed the United States in the early 19th century, before
Germany was a country under the Kaisers. He predicted that the United States and Russia
would be the world's superpowers in the 20th century. With respect to the United States, he
predicted that we would be a preeminent superpower because 1) we didn't have permanent
concentrations of wealth (for example, if a rich guy had six kids, his plantation would be
evenly distributed in at least two generations) and 2) we focused exclusively on practical
education, not the theoretical ******** that dominated European academia, and which could
only benefit the aristocracy and absurdly intelligent proles (think Euclid or Gauss). With
respect to both Russia and the United States, he saw that both populations had the capacity
to sacrifice and overcome adversity (although different types of adversity). Those
advantages have been eviscerated. We don't focus on practical education. We have permanent,
feudal levels, of wealth, and the population has no will to sacrifice. The university
system and institutionalization of the United States was fundamental towards achieving
those aims.
It comes down to the needs of every human being, rich or poor, to feel achievement and
the specific needs of the rich. These kids have real money because they own assets that
replicate more money, without work. I won't get into tax, trade and immigration policies
that take an already advantageous position enjoyed by these pricks to the next level of
oligarchy. But that isn't enough. You have to impose your value system and "skills" as the
objective value system. You see, these kids want the advantage of the wealth, but they want
to demolish the path to achieving wealth by others. The university system has to be the
ONLY functioning economic path. What would happen if kids knew from a young age that the
name of the game is to save and acquire asserts, and all other pursuits are meaningless? Do
you think we would have a student loan problem? Do you think we would have an inequality
problem? The answer is a resounding "no." The education system is designed to destroy. It
blinds you to this indisputable truth. There are people who see through the BS though (more
on this later). As long as there is some freedom, these problem will rise up the dominance
hierarchy. These rich kids don't like that. These rich kids and their academic professors
deeply resent that. This is why they have to tear down the system. Their privilege will be
preserved, but the rest of the population will be enslaved. If they have their way, every
single young person in the United Stares will have the "benefit" of attending university
and having a "fulfilling career." Well have people in school until their thirties, learning
useless crap, and in permanent debt bondage. This cements the rich kids' status,
Anecdotally, I was speaking to friends from high school. Most of us are professionals.
Some work in law enforcement, some work as engineers, some as lawyers, a few unionized
tradespeople and one doctor. The unionized trades people blow all of us out of the water,
but that's not the startling thing. One of our friends went straight to work at 16. He's
not even a real "tradesman." His father, mother, three sister and himself worked three jobs
and saved aggressively. They bought a first multifamily in 2005. They now have 70
buildings. The first building, as my one friend put it, "caused a snowballs effect." That's
the American way. That's the American dream. The American dream is not going to school
until you are in your fu**** late twenties or mid thirties to go churn and burn on a W-2.
For the prick with an inheritance, that may be useful because he or she has wealth, and he
or she can, especially in light of Boomer cultural norms, pretend that the source of wealth
is the education, but deep inside they know the truth, and they resent the system because
it still allows it and a small number of people manage to rise as a result. These people
are at the top of the food chain. This offends these rich university assholes.
I chuckled when my friend who works for Homeland Security (Democrat) and my friend who
works as an engineer for the Defense Industry (Republican) both stated "why didn't they
teach us that in school?" Rofl. The point of the schools is that so you don't know the
source of success. The point of school is to cement the rich kids advantage and destroy
you. This causes a dual resentment: the poor kids feel resentment because they see they
were sold a bag of goods and the rich kid feels resentment because he or she can't pretend
the success is self induced.
I'll leave everyone with this: Donald Trump was called a racist, rapist, crook, liar,
etc by Clinton in the 2016 campaign. That didn't bother him. The only thing that got him
angry, ever, was when Clinton said he inherited money, which was the only thing that was
true.
Dying-Of-The-Light , 2 hours ago
Kind of ironic that you have the thick-as-shxt, criminal end of blacks who want lots of
bling without working for it, marching with middle class whites who have all the toys these
blacks want. A real match made in hell. The sooner these black and white retards are given
long prison sentences the better.
createnewaccount , 2 hours ago
Ironic? Maybe for the moment but watch this space, I expect the old Minsky quote also
applies to the body politic.
" stability breeds instability "
-Hyman Minsky
Eastern Whale , 2 hours ago
The US government especially Trump, Pompeo and Nancy Pelosi seem to like the "peaceful"
violence in Hong Kong. Nancy Pelosi even coined it a ""a beautiful sight to behold".
What goes around comes around, beware of what you are promoting overseas. Violence and
War all in the name of WMD, Democracy and National Security.
Herodotus , 3 hours ago
Same thing was going on in 1968.
Also, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were rich kid revolutionaries.
fackbankz , 3 hours ago
George Washington was not from a particularly rich family. Jefferson was though.
Jack's Raging Bile Duct , 1 hour ago
It's pretty simple. Rich kids are idle, don't understand the value of anything, and
commonly lazy. This is fertile ground for half-baked ideologies that run h
awesomepic4u , 3 hours ago
Revolutionary leftism is
contemporary Western society's operating definition of nobility and heroism. Social elites
have always justified themselves as being the people who fully live up to the ideal, and
their young men in particular are supposed to earn their aristocratic honors by being the
ones who run towards both good and evil rather than shrinking from them. Violence gets
justified as being the ultimate test of personal commitment to an ideal, and it's a short
road from there to arguing that violence must therefore be virtuous in itself.
If these kids feel guilty of anything, they feel guilty of sitting in classrooms and
offices rather than exercising their powers to the fullest. A moral crusade with lots of
opportunities for adrenaline-soaked adventure is an irresistible temptation.
Cheap Chinese Crap , 1 hour ago
I forget the exact context but I remember the story about an American couple who
wondered if they should send their kids to an American or British university.
"That depends," their British friend replied,"on whether you want them back as radicals
or homosexuals."
Now you get both.
sbin , 2 hours ago
Would be fun to move those BLM white tards to the real black neighborhoods.
Would produce a lot of racists.
My black friends do not want to live in a black majority neighborhood.
y_arrow
stinkypinky , 3 hours ago
Abused and angry children, lashing out at "the system" around them, being used by true
revolutionaries (Marxists). The abuse angle is key - they want all vestiges of "the power
structure" around them to be torn down, to get back at it all. Racism doesn't matter,
sexism doesn't matter, none of these causes are actually cared about one iota. They would
riot because it's Tuesday and 60 degrees outside as long as someone had a bullhorn, an
umbrella and a brick. It certainly helps that racism is a thought crime you can accuse
ANYONE OF, and it's been so loaded with meaning that it's a devastating attack of character
which can't be defended against.
Bottom line: to understand why these rich kids are rioting look to how they've been
abused.
4Y_LURKER , 2 hours ago
Yeah they are in reality human shields for the corporate apparently communist coup which
is ongoing.
1Y4NixfGQ4MbMO4f , 3 hours ago
I think they are called "Useful idiots" or more descriptive would be "Disposable
Idiots"
GRDguy , 29 seconds ago
Another generation of sociopaths, born to and indoctrined by sociopathic parents.
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime," and a great number of victims.
smacker , 9 minutes ago
I believe there's a long history of rich kids being involved in revolutionary
conduct.
They are invariably brought up in the shadow of dominating strict rich white parents and
get to
an age where they want to cut out their own slice of life to establish themselves as
independent
individuals, not clones. Adopting political extremes and crime is an easy way to do
that.
Angular Momentum , 48 minutes ago
The industrial revolution has made life safe bland and comfortable for the middle class.
It's easy to be moral when life is easy. In rough dangerous times and places living a life
of integrity was a challenge and those who did it earned respect. But how can you be a hero
in Suburbia? By heroically challenging common sense. The stupider the cause the harder it
is to accept its ideas and thus the more heroic.
fcd443 , 58 minutes ago
Because these dipsh!ts didn't create their own wealth and they feel bad for all of their
parents/generational wealth. They don't know the first thing when it comes to creating
something and coming from nothing.
They want to feel as relevant as their priors so they do what they know best, throw a
tantrum. In this case, it's called a peaceful protest aka black lives matter.
LeftandRightareWrong , 1 hour ago
Many people just want to be relevant. Why do sites like Facebook work?
Psychological, psychiatric pandemic in full force.
darkstar7646 , 2 hours ago
Couple of ideas:
They know the game is over and that they will "fail" to live up to the legacy of
their parents, costing their families everything in the process (which see the scam
college-admissions scandals).
They are trying to provoke a reaction among the White Right Militias ( agent
provocateurs ).
They feel they can get away with anything and are actually acti
Linda Hand , 3 hours ago
The education system is infested with communists.
DancingDragon , 3 hours ago
You mean the democrat party and their MSM sycophants
The
Russian President Vladimir Putin disclosed in a
TV
interview
on August 27 that the Americans, amongst others, had fuelled the unrest in Belarus. He explained that the
controversial presence of 33 Russian nationals (with military background) in Minsk in the run-up to the presidential election
in Belarus on August 8, which briefly
created
misunderstanding
between Minsk and with Moscow, was itself was a joint operation by Ukrainian and US intelligence
agencies.
The
Russian nationals were apparently given job offers and were "simply lured there (Minsk), dragged across the border de facto
they were brought in on fake documents." Evidently, Russia is in possession of hard intelligence.
Putin spoke up even as US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun wrapped up talks with top Russian officials in Moscow
Wednesday. According to a
VOA
report
, Biegun's consultations "marked an intensifying U.S. effort to find a peaceful solution in Belarus." The report
took note that en route to Moscow, Biegun had "signalled that Washington was not eager to accept efforts by [Belarus President
Alexander] Lukashenko to cast the election standoff as an East versus West showdown that might trigger direct Russian
involvement."
Simply put, Biegun was on a "damage control" mission. This can be taken as admission of defeat in the US-backed regime change
project in Belarus. Conceivably, Russian officials shared with Biegun their intelligence regarding the CIA involvement. Later,
crisply anodyne
identical
readouts
were released by the Russian and American sides without divulging any details.
The
CIA would roll back its Belarus operation -- for the time being, at least. A commentary titled
What's
Next for the Peaceful Uprising in Belarus?
by the United States Institute of Peace sees "potential to bring change" in
Belarus, but concludes saying, "While there are no guarantees of success, there is cause for hope. At a minimum, Belarusians
have gained a new-found sense of dignity and belief in the power of nonviolent collective action."
Women
protestors in Minsk, Belarus, lionised by Western media
This appears to have been a well-planned operation. Under the garb of journalists, western intelligence deployed dozens of
special agents in Belarus. Lukashenko has ordered their expulsion. Associated Press, Radio Liberty and BBC "reporters" have
had their accreditation cancelled.
A Swedish "photo
journalist", presumably an intelligence operative, was detained and was released at the personal intervention of the
Swedish
ambassador to Belarus and flown out of Minsk.
From the pro forma reaction by the European Union so far, Brussels has a fair idea of what really happened -- that there
has been a US operation with active participation of Poland and Lithuania (both EU countries) and Ukraine. Unsurprisingly,
NATO
statements
have been rather combative.
The NATO also
began air exercises in Poland and Lithuania coinciding with the unrest in Belarus.
However, major European powers -- Germany, France, Italy -- didn't want to get entangled. Their top leaders telephoned Putin
to ease the tensions. The EU initially proposed OSCE as mediator, but Moscow sensed that it might lead to backdoor entry by
the US intelligence. The OSCE is manned by NATO powers and is under American thumb.
The
clincher has been the stern warning by the Kremlin that if the western operation continued, Russia will be left with no option
but to intervene. The warning came at Putin's level, making it very clear that Russia will not countenance a regime change in
Minsk to hijack Belarus into the American camp. Moscow has asserted its special interests in Belarus under international law.
In his TV interview on Thursday, Putin emphatically stated:
Who
are the protestors in Belarus who make the anti-police violent provocations?
"Indeed, the Union Treaty and the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) include articles saying that all member states of these
organisations, including the Union State, which consists of two states only Russia and Belarus, are obliged to help each
other protect their sovereignty, external borders and stability In this connection, we have certain obligations towards
Belarus, and this is how Mr Lukashenko has formulated his question. He said that he would like us to provide assistance to him
if this should become necessary. I replied that Russia would honour all its obligations.
"Mr
Lukashenko has asked me to create a reserve group of law enforcement personnel, and I have done this. But we have also agreed
that this group would not be used unless the situation becomes uncontrollable we came to the conclusion that now it is not
necessary, and I hope that it will never be necessary to use this reserve, which is why we are not using it." Putin made it
abundantly clear that Moscow stands by Lukashenko."
"Nonviolent
protestors" in Belarus
The events in Belarus constitute a watershed moment. Russia will not allow another Ukraine-type colour revolution in the
"near abroad", aimed at encircling it with hostile governments. But Moscow's intervention, if at all, will conform to
international law and stem out of invitation by the country concerned.
That is to say, Russia regards it to be the prerogative of the CSTO countries to handle their internal affairs without outside
unlawful interference. Having said that, Moscow has invoked the CSTO's collective security doctrine. This sets a precedent.
The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. A CIA-sponsored regime change project in
any of these countries can run into the CSTO's crosshairs. Considering that the CSTO is de facto led from Moscow, any more
regime change project in Central Asia or Caucasus will trigger Russian countermeasures.
Most important, Moscow will not be prescriptive. Putin has supported Lukashenka's proposal to draft a new constitution and
hold fresh presidential and parliamentary elections, but transition should be lawful and orderly. This Russian approach has
been already evident in Kyrgyzstan (2005) Turkmenistan (2006), and Uzbekistan (2016). Even in the case of Georgia (2003) and
Ukraine (2004 and 2014), Russia didn't oppose
transitions
but the West turned them into geopolitical contestations to instal anti-Russian regimes.
However, a caveat must be added. Putin also underscored that Belarus is a very special case. He said, in a clear reference
to the US, "some forces would like to see something different happening there (Belarus). They would like to influence these
processes and to bring about the solutions that would suit their political interests." Russia cannot afford to see such
nefarious designs succeed in Belarus.
In Putin's words, "This nation is very close to us (Russian Federation) and perhaps is the closest, both in terms
of ethnic proximity, the language, the culture, the spiritual as well as other aspects. We have dozens or probably hundreds
of thousands, if not millions, of direct family ties with Belarus." Not only that, Russia sources from Belarus almost 90
percent of its imports of agricultural products.
"... The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given topic. ..."
"... I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers," to use the parlance of spooks. ..."
"... Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality". ..."
"... In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try ..."
snake , Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control
the narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality"
- that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated
narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to
cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say*
they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief
systems. So again, waste of time to try.
Well....as always, and especially if it involves anything even remotely relating to 'Russia', or Iran, or whatever adversarial
operational target of the day might be -- one can reliably count on our very own "Izvestia on the Hudson" to faithfully execute
their officially sanctioned nation security state propaganda mission by dutifully steno-graphing as much dis/mis-information as
their NSA/CIA/Pentagon handlers request (require) from them.
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper's movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic
was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called
"the narrative." We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with
editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the
mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting
National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: "My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?"
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper's daily Page One meeting:
"We set the agenda for the country in that room.
The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative
managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given
topic.
I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers,"
to use the parlance of spooks.
In fact, it would be apt to described venerable institution of journalism itself as an intelligence operation.
@snake | Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control the
narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus
reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one
coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power,
due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate
may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own
internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try.
It would be interesting if Durham prove result revealed in October, not matter how
whitewashed they are.
From comments below it is lear that for this particular subset neoliberal elite lost all
legitimacy
Notable quotes:
"... Told to Erase Laptop Containing Investigation of Anthony Weiner Laptop ..."
"... Robertson alleges that the FBI did nothing for a month after discovering Clinton's emails on the Anthony Weiner laptop. It was only after he spoke with the U.S. Attorney's office overseeing the case, he claims, that the agency took action. ..."
"... Robertson's assertions match up with a Wall Street Journal report from 2018 . In that report, text messages between agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, lawyer Lisa Page, indicated the former had been called to discuss the newly discovered emails on September 28th. Those emails wouldn't be revealed until former Director James Comey notified Congress about them on October 28th. ..."
"... A book written by James B . Stewart in 2019 asserts that FBI agents had referred to the discovery of Hillary Clinton's emails as an "oh s***" moment." One agent admitted there were "ten times" as many emails as Comey admitted to publicly. ..."
"... These allegations make it difficult to say Comey did not lie to the public – if not Congress . ..."
"... Recently released documents from the DOJ show multiple FBI officials had "accidentally wiped" their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them . ..."
"... Erasing evidence is a consistent theme for the Obama-era FBI. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen subpoenas and depositions of some of these officials, including Comey. ..."
"... The difficulty is not just that Comey and his underlings were obstructing justice to benefit Clinton, and made a total **** show of it. It is that Sessions was, "to protect the DOJ"... and Barr, also, clearly, as long he continues to run interference for Comey, Clinton, et al, is also obstructing justice. Barr has crafted a veneer, it seems... in the Durham probe... to provide himself plausible deniability. That veneer can remain plausible only as long as Durham does nothing, and fails to make the files public. ..."
"... It was the NYPD. And, that cadre of NYPD officers recognized what was likely to happen when they did turn it over to the FBI. So they made copies. And, the copies got distributed to the cloud. ..."
"... The emails are in the stellarwind database , according to William Binney. So are all the texts that the Mueller crew "erased." IntercoursetheEU is correct - every email and text ever sent is archived in that database. ..."
"... Where is that slimy, former CIA Director who wouldn't shut-up on national TV from late 2016 to early 2020? Hhmm, not a freaking peep nor have I seen any recent images. How about the dirtball, prior FBI Dir? His Twitter acct has only had "quotes" posted for about a month now. ..."
"... Clapper? Another Trump trasher on constant TV the last few years.....where is he? NOT A PEEP. Why wouldn't he keep trashing to diminish DJT's election chances? ..."
"... Brennan was on an MSNBC panel last week pale, sweating, moving around in his seat at the mere mention of John Durham. Not his usual cocky self that's for sure. ..."
FBI agent John Robertson, the man who found Hillary Clinton's emails on the laptop of
Anthony Weiner, claims he was advised by bosses to
erase his own computer.
Former FBI Director James Comey, you may recall, announced days before the 2016 presidential
election that he had "learned of the existence" of the emails on Weiner's laptop .
Weiner is the disgraced husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Robertson alleges that the manner in which his higher-ups in the FBI handled the case was
"not ethically or morally right."
His startling claims are made in a book titled, "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save
Itself and Crashed an Election," an excerpt of which has been published by the
Washington Post .
Told to Erase Laptop Containing Investigation of Anthony Weiner Laptop
Robertson alleges that the FBI did nothing for a month after discovering Clinton's emails on
the Anthony Weiner laptop. It was only after he spoke with the U.S. Attorney's office overseeing the case, he claims,
that the agency took action.
"He had told his bosses about the Clinton emails weeks ago," the book contends . "Nothing
had happened."
"Or rather, the only thing that had happened was his boss had instructed Robertson to
erase his computer work station."
This, according to the Post report, was to "ensure there was no classified material on it,"
but also would eliminate any trail of his actions taken during the investigation.
FBI Did Nothing About Hillary Clinton's Emails For Months?
Robertson's assertions match up with a Wall Street Journal
report from 2018 . In that report, text messages between agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, lawyer Lisa
Page, indicated the former had been called to discuss the newly discovered emails on September
28th. Those emails wouldn't be revealed until former Director James Comey notified Congress about
them on October 28th.
A book written by James B . Stewart in 2019 asserts that FBI agents had referred to the
discovery of Hillary Clinton's emails as an "oh s***" moment." One agent admitted there were "ten times" as many emails as Comey admitted to publicly.
These allegations make it difficult to say Comey did not lie to the public – if not
Congress .
Robertson's story is being revealed as U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the FBI's
role in the origins of the Russia probe into President Trump's campaign.
Recently released documents from the DOJ show multiple FBI officials had "accidentally
wiped" their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them .
Erasing evidence is a consistent theme for the Obama-era FBI. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen
subpoenas and depositions of some of these officials, including Comey.
Democrats seem skittish about what Durham is uncovering .
Four House committee chairs last week
asked for an "emergency" review of Attorney General William Barr's handling of Durham's
probe.
"We are concerned by indications that Attorney General Barr might depart from longstanding
DOJ principles," a letter to the IG reads .
They contend Barr may "take public action related to U.S. Attorney Durham's investigation
that could impact the presidential election." Top Democrats have also been threatening to impeach Barr over the investigation.
Kevin Clinesmith, one of the FBI officials involved in gathering evidence in the Russia
investigation, pled
guilty last month to making a false statement. He was accused by the Inspector General of altering an email about former Trump campaign
adviser Carter Page.
President Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said in July that he expects further
indictments and jail time to come out of Durham's probe. Democrats, Comey, and others at the FBI might be a little nervous.
DaiRR , 12 hours ago
DemoRat operatives still pervade the DOJ and to a lesser extent the FBI. Treasonous F's
all of them. Andrew Weissmann is an evil a Rat as any of them and he should be tried,
disbarred and punished for all his lying and despicable crimes while at the DOJ. Of course
MSNBC now loves paying him to be their "legal analyst".
MissCellany , 13 hours ago
What, like with a cloth or something?
RoadKill4Supper , 12 hours ago
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
FBGnome , 3 hours ago
The current election would be at stake.
Unknown User , 14 hours ago
Unless the Swamp does it. Not just a post or a website disappear, people disappear.
Sense , 13 hours ago
The difficulty is not just that Comey and his underlings were obstructing justice to
benefit Clinton, and made a total **** show of it. It is that Sessions was, "to protect the
DOJ"... and Barr, also, clearly, as long he continues to run interference for Comey,
Clinton, et al, is also obstructing justice. Barr has crafted a veneer, it seems... in the
Durham probe... to provide himself plausible deniability. That veneer can remain plausible
only as long as Durham does nothing, and fails to make the files public.
Only if Durham proceeds to use the files, and/or makes the files public, will we find
out if we get prosecutions, or if we get more obstruction under Barr's watch. So, Barr is
carrying a pretty big hammer. It isn't at all clear what he intends to do with that hammer,
or how he intends to use it if he does.
A wild card, perhaps, in the potential for an Senate or House investigation including
Barr's forced participation... in response to which he might be compelled to answer the
unasked question ? Makes it kind of hard to see how "investigating Barr"... poses a threat
to Barr, or Trump... rather than a threat to those investigating him ? The fact they're
even twittering about it suggests more than awareness about the content of that
information... and thus maybe complicity in the effort to cover it up ?
That would explain most of the events of the last four years.
And, as a note, it wasn't "the FBI" that "found the e-mails" (and other files) on the
Weiner laptop.
It was the NYPD. And, that cadre of NYPD officers recognized what was likely to happen
when they did turn it over to the FBI. So they made copies. And, the copies got distributed to the cloud.
It is not possible, I'd think, that Julian Assange didn't get a copy... in case you
wonder why Barr's DOJ is still prosecuting journalism. I doubt they're doing that because
of past publication... rather than in an effort to prevent future publication. Because Assange... in all likelihood... might be the only journalist left in the
world... who will not be coerced into withholding publication.
ElmerTwitch , 12 hours ago
The emails are in the stellarwind database , according to William Binney. So are all the texts that the Mueller crew "erased." IntercoursetheEU is correct - every email and text ever sent is archived in that
database.
The DOJ is indeed protecting Obama, Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper et al.
by claiming "the emails are gone! The texts are gone, too!"
sparky139 , 12 hours ago
What is the stellarwind database
TheReplacement's Replacement , 1 hour ago
Look up NSA.
takeaction , 15 hours ago
As all of us here on ZH understand. NOTHING WILL EVER HAPPEN... And Trump Team....if you are reading this... THIS IS THE BIGGEST LET DOWN OF YOUR ENTIRE PRESIDENCY...
No_Pretzel_Logic , 14 hours ago
takeaction - I disagree. I think things are happening right now....out of the
country.
TRIALS.....
Where is that slimy, former CIA Director who wouldn't shut-up on national TV from late
2016 to early 2020? Hhmm, not a freaking peep nor have I seen any recent images. How about
the dirtball, prior FBI Dir? His Twitter acct has only had "quotes" posted for about a
month now.
Clapper? Another Trump trasher on constant TV the last few years.....where is he? NOT A
PEEP. Why wouldn't he keep trashing to diminish DJT's election chances?
I'm telling ya, I think they are on a certain Caribbean Island. And my wager is that
Trump is going to toss a wild curveball into this election about the 3rd week of Oct.
Treason convictions announced, is my bet.
maggie2now , 13 hours ago
Brennan was on an MSNBC panel last week pale, sweating, moving around in his seat at the
mere mention of John Durham. Not his usual cocky self that's for sure. HRC was online
flapping her yap with Jennifer Palmieri not too long ago trying to convince the Biden
campaign not to concede the 2020 election under any circumstances. As for Clapper, I don't
know - maybe hiding in a remote location ****ting himself?
MoreFreedom , 12 hours ago
They've shut up because their actions betray them. Publicly they say Trump is a Russian
spy or puppet, while under oath, in a closed room, representing their former government
position and top secret clearance, they've no information to support it. That shows an
anti-Trump political motivation, regarding their prior actions in government. It's also
defrauding the public and government.
YouJustCouldnt , 2 hours ago
Couldn't agree more. How many times have we been here before!
20 years on from 9/11 - From the thousands of experts on the Architects and Engineers
for 9/11 Truth , the latest news is that The National Institute of Standards and Technology
( NIST ) is now more than a week late in issuing its "initial decision" on the pending
"request for correction" to its 2008 report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building
7. Big Whoop - and just another nothing burger.
Ms No , 15 hours ago
Uhhhh.....yeah.
We have seen this type of thing since JFK. If you hadn't long ago figured this out then
you are either an amateur or a paid internet herd-moving troll/anti-human.
Some of us aren't part of the herd.
(((Anthony Weiner))), just like (((Mossad Epstein honeypot))) and (((lucky Larry
Silverstein))), countless other examples that blow statistical likelihood way beyond
coincidence.
Not rocket science. Its a mob and these are their puppets and fronts. They dont just own
the FBI. They own all branches of your government and all the alphabets.
Enjoying the covid hysteria and run-up to WWIII?
Unknown User , 14 hours ago
If by (((they))) you mean the British who created the OSA and then the CIA. They also
created all the think-tanks, like the CFR. They own the Fed and run the worldwide banking
cartel. The British Crown owns all the countries of the Commonwealth. And they started the
COVID-19 delusion. Yes. Make no mistake. It is (((THEY))).
VWAndy , 15 hours ago
An he didnt go public with it either.
occams razor. they are all corrupt.
Stackers , 15 hours ago
Anyone who thinks that anybody beyond this low level flunky, Kliensmith, is going to get
any kind of prosecution is dreaming. None of these people will face any consequences to
their outright sedition and they know it. Disgusting.
radical-extremist , 15 hours ago
She created a private personal server to purposely circumvent the FOIA system and any
other prying eyes. Her staff was warned not to do it, but they refused to confront her
about it. They were so technically inept that they didn't understand emails are copied on
to servers everywhere...including the pentagon and the state department. And Huma's laptop
that her perv husband used to sext girls.
She maintained and exchanged Top Secret information on a personal/private/unsecured
server in her house. That is a crime punishable with prison time...and yet she skates.
High Vigilante , 15 hours ago
This guy should avoid walking out in dark.
His name was Seth!
Bay of Pigs , 13 hours ago
We have to face reality. If Durham doesn't indict some of these people before the
election, nothing is going to happen. It's the end of the line. Time has run out.
"We bullsh#tted some folks...."
dogfish , 13 hours ago
Trump is a charlatan and a fraud. The only winners with Trump are the Zionist they are
Trumps top priority.
play_arrow
OCnStiggs , 13 hours ago
Good thing NYPD copied the HD on that laptop for just this occurrence. There reportedly
at least two copies in safes in NYC. Criminality of the highest order that eclipses by
100,000,000 whatever happened in Watergate. These FBI people need to hang.
Sparehead , 13 hours ago
Safe in NYC? Like all the evidence of criminal banking activity that was lost in World
Trade Center 7?
4Y_LURKER , 12 hours ago
Oh look! We found passports even though steel and gold was vaporized by jet
fuel!!
As the media frenzy around 9/11 reminds us today to "never forget" there is some crucial
information that the establishment absolutely wants all Americans to forget -- the overwhelming
abundance of evidence that pokes serious holes in the official narrative of what happened that
fateful day.
On September 11, 2001, at 5:20 p.m., World Trade Center Building 7 suddenly collapsed into
its own footprint, falling at free fall speed for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second complete
destruction. WTC 7 was not hit by a plane. After it collapsed, Americans were told that office
fires caused a unique -- never before seen -- complete architectural failure leading to the
building collapsing into its own footprint at the rate of gravity.
Despite calls for the evidence to be preserved, New York City officials had the building's
debris removed and destroyed in the ensuing weeks and months, preventing a proper forensic
investigation from ever taking place. Seven years later, federal investigators concluded that
WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of
normal office fires.
Naturally, skeptics have been questioning the official story for some time and after moving
from the realm of conspiracy theory into the realm of science, this extensive university study
has found that the official story of fire causing the collapse is simply not true.
As TFTP reported in April,
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth announced the completed partnership with the
University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in their final report of an in depth four-year study on what
they say actually brought down WTC 7. According to the press release, contrary to the
conclusions of NIST, the UAF research team finds that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was not
caused by fires but instead was caused by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the
building.
"Our study found that the fires in WTC 7 could not have caused the observed collapse," said
Professor Leroy Hulsey, the study's principal investigator. "The only way it could have fallen
in the observed manner is by the near-simultaneous failure of every column."
The extensive four-year study was was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
(AE911Truth), a nonprofit organization representing more than 3,000 architects and engineers
who have signed the organization's petition calling for new investigation into the destruction
of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
"We are proud to have supported the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Professor Leroy
Hulsey in conducting a genuinely scientific study into the reasons for this building's
collapse," said Richard Gage, president and founder of AE911Truth. "It is now incumbent upon
the building community, the media, and government officials to reckon with the implications of
these findings and launch a new full-scale investigation."
According to the study's authors:
The UAF research team utilized three approaches for examining the structural response of
WTC 7 to the conditions that may have occurred on September 11, 2001.
First, we simulated the local structural response to fire loading that may have occurred
below Floor 13, where most of the fires in WTC 7 are reported to have occurred.
Second, we supplemented our own simulation by examining the collapse initiation hypothesis
developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Third, we simulated a number of scenarios within the overall structural system in order to
determine what types of local failures and their locations may have caused the total collapse
to occur as observed.
After conducting comprehensive modeling and studying countless scenarios, the study's
authors, J. Leroy Hulsey, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., UAF, Zhili Quan, Ph.D., Bridge Engineer South
Carolina Department of Transportation, and Feng Xiao, Ph.D., Associate Professor Nanjing
University of Science and Technology Department of Civil Engineering, concluded the
following:
Fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and
private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is
that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of
every column in the building.
The results of this study cannot be dismissed. It completely destroys the narrative that has
been shoved down the throats of Americans for nearly two decades. What's more, this study backs
up thousands of other researchers, scientists, and engineers who have been pointing this out
for years.
As TFTP reported last July, history was made in regard to 9/11 as New York area fire
commissioners called for a new investigation into the tragic events that unfolded that day. The
resolution called for a new investigation due to the "overwhelming evidence" that "pre-planted
explosives . . . caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings."
On July 24, 2019, the Franklin
Square and Munson Fire District , which oversees a volunteer fire department serving a
hamlet of 30,000 residents just outside of Queens, New York, became the first legislative body
in the country to officially support a new investigation into the events of 9/11, according to
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
The resolution calling for a new investigation was drafted by Commissioner Christopher Gioia
and it was immediately and unanimously approved by the five commissioners.
"We're a tight-knit community and we never forget our fallen brothers and sisters. You
better believe that when the entire fire service of New York State is on board, we will be an
unstoppable force," said Commissioner Christopher Gioia, adding, "We were the first fire
district to pass this resolution. We won't be the last."
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence
operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the
world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent
journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.
Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter , Steemit , and now on Minds.
19 YEARS LATER, QUESTIONS STILL HANG OVER THE 9/11 ATTACKS Published: September 13,
2020
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DERRICK BROZE, THE LAST AMERICAN VAGABONDAFTER NEARLY TWO DECADES, IT SHOULD BE
PERFECTLY CLEAR TO AMERICANS THAT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS NO INTEREST IN GETTING TO THE BOTTOM
OF THE 9/11 FALSE FLAG. WHATEVER POTENTIAL REMAINS FOR THE TRUTH TO BE SET FREE WILL LARGELY BE
DETERMINED BY THE ACTIVISTS, JOURNALISTS, AND RESEARCHERS WHO MAKE UP THE 9/11 TRUTH
MOVEMENT.
When historians look back upon 2020, they will focus their efforts on understanding the
innumerable ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has affected the world. There will be books,
documentaries, dissertations, and news specials interviewing the politicians and government
officials who played major roles in the events currently unfolding before our eyes. Perhaps, in
time, the questions surrounding the limitations of the PCR test, the variables with the numbers
of COVID-19 cases, and concerns about foreknowledge will be explored in a logical and
fact-based manner. Or, as is the case with the attacks of September 11, 2001, the questions
will be ignored by the masses and the media, while a steadily increasing portion of the
population continues to search for the answers which are needed to fully grasp the scope and
cost of the false flag.
As people from all over the world participate in ceremonies and events to mark the
anniversary of 9/11, the many remaining questions surrounding the attacks loom large. Our
collective minds may be focused on the fears and ramifications related to COVID-19, but
understanding the truth about 9/11 – the last major global event to affect billions of
people – is still an extremely vital part of unraveling the control narrative spun by the
Predator Class.
JUSTICE RISING
On the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks the 9/11 Truth movement is continuing their
nearly two decades battle for the unvarnished facts. The 9/11 Truth movement includes victims,
their families, and experts in a range of fields who are skeptical of the government's official
line on 9/11. Some of the groups include Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth , Firefighters for 9/11 Truth & Unity, Pilots for 9/11
Truth , 9/11 Families United for
Justice Against Terrorism, Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice , and other local activist
groups and individuals from around the globe. It's a loose-knit movement without an official
position, and the opinions, theories and ideas espoused by members often conflict with one
another. However, the movement is united by the belief that the official narrative promoted by
the U.S. government is full of holes.
The non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth has been a vital component of the
movement since the mid-2000's, organizing a number of conferences, protests, outreach events,
and documentary screenings. For the 19th anniversary, AE for 9/11 Truth is organizing an online
conference called "Justice
Rising," from Friday, September 11, to Sunday, September 13. The event will examine "the
continuing struggle for 9/11 justice and the destructive trajectory of the post-9/11 world."
The conference will go for three hours each day and will be open to all free of charge.
On Friday evening the conference will feature Mick Harrison of the Lawyers' Committee for
9/11 Inquiry to discuss the latest on the "request for correction " to the National Institute of
Standards and Technology's (NIST) 2008 report on World Trade Center 7. Many 9/11 Truth
researchers focus on the mysterious collapse of WTC7 as the smoking gun evidence that Americans
were lied to about the attacks. WTC7 was not hit by a plane, yet it collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on
Sept. 11, 2001. According to the NIST, the collapse was caused by office fires leading to
thermal expansion of the building's supportive columns and girders.
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth submitted the "request for correction" to NIST on
April 15, 2020, demanding the agency revise their position on the collapse of WTC7. AE 9/11
Truth says they provided a detailed eight point report showing that office fires could not have
caused the collapse of the building. However, on August 28, NIST issued its initial decision
denying the request for correction that ten 9/11 family members and 88 architects and
structural engineers submitted.
"Our
request described in meticulous detail eight items of information in NIST's Building 7
report that violated the federal Data Quality Act and NIST's Information Quality
Standards," AE 9/11 Truth writes. "Our goal was to compel NIST to rectify these
violations and in so doing reverse its unsupported conclusion that fire was the cause of
Building 7's collapse."
AE also noted that NIST failed to meet their obligation by providing a "point-by-point
response to all relevant arguments contained in the request," as required by the Data Quality
Act. The non-profit made up of more than 3,000 architects and engineers stated that NIST's
response was a "blatant avoidance of the arguments and facts contained in the request"
designed with the intention of "misleading the uninformed reader." AE 9/11 Truth plans
to appeal the decision by September 27, 2020.
The 19th anniversary Justice Rising conference will also feature three "pioneers" of the
9/11 Truth movement, including David Ray Griffin, Niels Harrit, and Steven Jones. All three men
have been instrumental in providing clarity on the many questions surrounding the 9/11 attacks.
Griffin is an emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont School of
Theology and Claremont Graduate University. He has published fourteen books which deal
specifically with 9/11, including The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush
Administration and 9/11 , published in 2004.
Niels Harrit served as associate professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen from
1971 to 2009, and is the author of more than 60 published peer-reviewed papers. Since 2007 he
has been actively involved in the global movement for 9/11 truth and is the lead author of a
scientific paper, published in April 2009, describing the findings of active thermitic material
in the dust from the collapses of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7. It is this presence
of thermitic dust which has lead researchers to conclude that explosive charges were placed
throughout the buildings to assist in their controlled demolition
Steven Jones is a former professor of physics at Brigham Young University. Jones was the
initiator of research for the peer-reviewed paper, "Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust
from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," published in the Open Chemical Physics
Journal . Steven is also the author of the influential 2005 paper, "Why Indeed Did the WTC
Buildings Collapse?"
One of the most profound aspects of the Justice Rising conference will be a discussion with
Dr. Leroy Hulsey, former professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who led a multi-year
engineering study evaluating whether fire caused the collapse of WTC7 on September 11, 2001.
Hulsey's study is the subject of an upcoming documentary called SEVEN , directed by Dylan Avery, the director behind the
infamous 9/11 documentary, Loose Change .
Dr. Hulsey's conclusions that fire could not have caused the collapse of World Trade Center
7 should have sent shockwaves through the American political scene, but a lack of reporting on
the topic ensured that only those in the 9/11 Truth movement understood the implications.
Hulsey has previously given presentations detailing how his team eliminated fire as the cause
of the collapse of the 47-story building. Hulsey explained that NIST's report on the collapse
found fires on floors 7 through 9, 11 through 14, 19, 22, 29, and 30. However, there is no
evidence of fire below floor 7, Hulsey said.
The 9/11 Truth community has long pointed to the unique nature of the collapse of the WTC
towers. Never before have fires alone brought down steel skyscrapers. For many in the movement,
Dr. Hulsey's studies are welcomed but also met with skepticism. This is because immediately
following 9/11, activists and researchers have been pointing out the numerous reports and
descriptions of explosions taking place at the base of the Twin Towers. Now, some 9/11 Truthers
wonder if Hulsey's study will make a difference when the public has largely been indoctrinated
to accept the U.S. government's version of events.
Fourteen years ago, AE 9/11 Truth produced the article,
118 Witnesses: The Firefighters' Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers, a review of
interviews conducted with 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the weeks and
months after 9/11. The review revealed that 118 firefighters described witnessing what they
interpreted to be explosions.
More recently, AE has released a report which examined more than 70 hours of 9/11 news
coverage. The report,
How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers' Explosive Demolition on 9/11 , sheds light
on how the destruction of the Twin Towers was initially being reported. According to AE 9/11
Truth, the review of the news coverage " reveals that the hypothesis of explosions bringing
down the Twin Towers was not only prevalent among reporters covering the events in New York
City on 9/11 but was, in fact, the dominant hypothesis."
While AE 9/11 Truth remains committed to exposing the flaws in NIST's fire/ thermal
expansion theory, other family members and journalists are dedicated to uncovering the truth
about the funding of the attacks and the many data that remain classified.
For several years, family members were fighting to secure the release of the
now-declassified 28-pages of the "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before
and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." Although
the final report amounts to over 800 pages, the 28 pages were classified by former
President George W. Bush shortly after the report was released in 2002. The papers detail the
story of Saudi nationals suspected of being Saudi intelligence agents involved in the terror
attacks. In July 2016, after nearly 15 years of secrecy and resistance from the Bush and Obama
administrations, the report was released to the public and the family members of the victims of
the 9/11 terror attacks.
The release of the 28 pages in conjunction with the passage of the Justice Against Sponsors
of Terrorisms Act (JASTA) ensured the 9/11 victims will have a day in court. As Dan Christensen
of the Florida Bulldog
recently noted , "the last, best chance to obtain actual answers in our lifetime is
likely the immense lawsuit brought by thousands of 9/11 victims and families that's now inching
through U.S. District Court in New York City."
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has become the focus of the 9/11 victims families lawsuit "for
knowingly providing material support and resources to the al Qaeda terrorist organization and
facilitating the September 11 th attacks" in 2001. The Obama administration fought
the passing of the bill, eventually vetoing the legislation before Congress voted to override
the former President. While Donald Trump paid lip service to finding out what was in the
"secret papers," he has since become one of the most vocal supporters of the Saudi Kingdom,
including supporting an
unprecedented weapons deal which fuel the human rights violations
in Yemen .
The Trump Administration – through the Department of Justice and FBI – has
continued the requirements for secrecy in the courtroom. "The government continues to resist
producing thousands of more detailed records, claiming that such material concerning apparent
Saudi involvement prior to 9/11 is a state secret," the Bulldog reports. "In April,
Attorney General William Barr and then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell
swore public declarations that their personal assertions of the "state secrets privilege"
were necessary to "protect the national security interests of the United States.""
The 9/11 families have attempted to push back on the government's state secrets claims, but
have faced difficulty due to the already secretive nature of the court room proceedings. For
example, the government's reasoning for state secrets arguments are not even available to the
attorneys representing the families. Christensen notes that only last week the U.S. government
filed a classified declaration from Michael H. Glasheen, acting deputy director, operations
branch, counterterrorism division of the FBI. However, the declaration is only able to be seen
by the judge, with the plaintiffs and the public left in the dark completely.
Interestingly, Christensen notes that the secret assertions are often classified pursuant to
Presidential Executive Order
13526 , signed by former President Obama on Dec. 29, 2009. The order essentially states
that the U.S. government believes that national security is more important than "the free flow
of information."
After nearly two decades, it should be perfectly clear to Americans – and those around
the world affected by American foreign policy – that the U.S. government has no interest
in getting to the bottom of the 9/11 false flag. Whatever potential remains for the truth to be
set free will largely be determined by the activists, journalists, and researchers who make up
the 9/11 Truth movement.
Will the truth die on the vine, like so many other efforts to awaken the masses? Or will
the people of the world finally wake up to the lies that surround the official version of the
attacks of September 11, 2001?
Just ahead of the 19th anniversary commemorating the tragic events of September 11, 2001
when America came under attack, the anti-interventionist thinktank The Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft has featured a study detailing the millions of people displaced
across the globe by US foreign combat operations in the wake of 9/11 .
"The wars the U.S. government has fought since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have forced 37
million people -- and perhaps as many as 59 million -- from their homes , according to a newly
released report from American University and
Brown University's Costs of War Project ," the report
introduces .
It's being called "the first calculation of its kind" given neither the Pentagon, nor State
Department or any other federal agency has kept track of the mass displacements.
The study identifies that out of this 39 million total, eight of the most violent wars and
'counter-insurgency campaigns' are responsible for the vast majority of displacements. They are
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
These wars were executed or overseen either by the Bush, Obama, or spanning into the Trump
administration.
To drive home the magnitude, The Quincy Institute underscores that "Displacing 37 million
people is equivalent
to removing nearly all the residents of the state of California or all the people in Texas and
Virginia combined."
And further, "The figure is almost as large as the population of Canada ."
Wesley Clark's famous 2007 'Foreign Policy Coup' speech: "We're going to take out seven
countries in five years" after 9/11:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/TY2DKzastu8
American military bases have also rapidly expanded across the globe in the wake of 9/11,
mostly in Africa and the Middle East, as the following map produced by the Investigative
Reporting Workshop (IRW) demonstrates.
"Until now, no one has known how many people the wars have displaced," the report
emphasizes. "Indeed, most Americans are likely unaware that U.S. combat operations have taken
place not only in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but also in 21 other nations since President
George W. Bush announced a global war on terror ."
* * *
Here are the breakdown of post 9/11 mass displacements by country according to the
Public
Anthropology Clinic :
5.3 million Afghans (representing 26% of the pre-war population) since the start of the
U.S. war in Afghanistan in 2001;
3.7 million Pakistanis (3% of the pre-war population) since the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 quickly became a single war crossing the border into northwest
Pakistan;
1.7 million Filipinos (2%) since the U.S. military joined the Philippine government in
its decades-old war with Abu Sayyaf and other insurgent groups
in 2002;
4.2 million Somalis (46%) since U.S. forces began supporting a UN-recognized Somali
government fighting the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in 2002 and, after 2006, the ICU's breakaway militia wing
Al Shabaab ;
4.4 million Yemenis (24%) since the U.S. government began drone assassinations of alleged
terrorists in 2002 and backed a Saudi Arabia-led war against the Houthi movement since
2015;
9.2 million Iraqis (37%) since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and occupation and the
post-2014 war against the Islamic State group;
1.2 million Libyans (19%) since the U.S. and European governments intervened in the 2011
uprising against Moammar Gadhafi fueling an ongoing civil war;
7.1 million Syrians (37%) since the U.S. government began waging war against the Islamic
State in 2014.
" And now, America had elected a black man to the highest office in the land."
Obama is not the first black president. He is black on the outside, but a white liberal on
the inside. The same is true of Kamala Harris. The first black president would be someone
like Tim Scott or Al Sharpton. Someone who grew up in African American culture.
As Americans pause to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001 which saw almost 3,000 innocents killed in the worst terror
attack in United States history, it might also be worth contemplating the
horrific wars and foreign quagmires unleashed during the subsequent 'war on terror'.
Bush's so-called Global War on Terror targeted 'rogue states' like Saddam's Iraq, but also consistently had a focus on uprooting
and destroying al-Qaeda and other armed Islamist terror organizations (this led to the falsehood that Baathist Saddam and AQ were
in cahoots). But the idea that Washington from the start saw al-Qaeda and its affiliates as some kind of eternal enemy is largely
a myth.
Recall that the US covertly supported the Afghan mujahideen and other international jihadists throughout the 1980's Afghan-Soviet
War, the very campaign in which hardened al-Qaeda terrorists got their start. In 1999 The Guardian in a rare moment of honest
mainstream journalism warned of the Frankenstein
the CIA created -- among their ranks a terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden .
But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the very fighters the CIA previously
trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its allies. The 'secret' document was declassified in 2009, but has remained
largely obscure in mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.
"support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan mujahidin" in the war against the Soviets,
"is now contributing experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups worldwide."
The concluding section contains the most revelatory statements, again remembering these words were written nearly
a decade before the 9/11 attacks :
US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US interests from attack.
...Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims' wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered throughout the world, could
surprise the US with violence in unexpected locales.
There it is in black and white print: the United States government knew and bluntly acknowledged that the very militants
it armed and trained to the tune of hundreds
of millions of dollars would eventually turn that very training and those very weapons back on the American people .
And this was not at all a "small" or insignificant group, instead as The Guardian wrote a mere
two years before 9/11 :
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla
warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up .
But don't think for a moment that there was ever a "lesson learned" by Washington.
Instead the CIA and other US agencies repeated the 1980s policy of arming jihadists to overthrow US enemy regimes in places like
Libya and Syria even long after the "lesson" of 9/11. As War on The Rocks recounted :
Despite the passage of time, the issues Ms. Bennett raised in her
1993 work continue to be relevant today.
This fact is a sign of the persistence of the problem of Sunni jihadism and the "wandering mujahidin." Today, of course, the problem
isn't Afghanistan but Syria. While the war there is far from over, there is already widespread nervousness, particularly in Europe,
about what will happen when the
foreign fighters return from that conflict.
There's nothing spontaneous about weeks of public demonstrations in Belarus, largely in the
capital Minsk.
What's going on was made in the USA, planned long before the August 9 Belarusian
presidential election, handily won by incumbent Alexander Lukashenko.
Claims otherwise by US dark forces and establishment media otherwise don't pass the smell
test.
Washington's plot is all about wanting Belarus to go the way of Ukraine -- violently
transformed into a US vassal state after CIA-orchestrated late 2013/early 2014 street protests
in Kiev.
Democratic Ukraine became a fascist police state, a nation unsafe and unfit to live in.
According to former Deputy Prosecutor-General (2010 – 2013), current MP in Ukraine's
parliament Renat Kuzmin:
"There is a large group of people who are dissatisfied with the incumbent president
(Vladimir Zelensky) and are ready to join the coup d'etat in government agencies, law
enforcement agencies, security agencies, including the army" to oust him.
Are US dark forces involved? Kuzmin claims former president Poroshenko is part of the
plot.
Is something similar underway in the US in the run-up to November 3 presidential and
congressional elections -- a scheme by anti-Trump dark forces to deny him a second term, a coup
plot to install Biden as president?
Preventing Belarus from going the way of Ukraine is vital for Russia.
On Monday, Putin and Lukashenko are meeting in Sochi, Russia.
According to the Kremlin's press service, they "plan to discuss the prospects of promoting
integration processes within the Union State and implementing joint energy projects,"
adding:
"During the talks, they plan to discuss key issues of further development of
Russian-Belarusian relations of strategic partnership and alliance."
"A special focus will be placed on the implementation of major joint projects in the
trade-economic, energy and cultural-humanitarian spheres, as well as the prospects for
promoting integration processes within the Union State."
On Sunday, orchestrated anti-Lukashenko demonstrations continued in Minsk, hundreds detained
by security forces, according to a Belarusian Interior Ministry press release.
Joint Russian/Belarusian military exercises are being held in Belarus from September 13
– 25, a statement by Russia's Defense Ministry saying the following:
"In accordance with the schedule of international events for 2020, the planned joint
Belarusian-Russian tactical exercise Slavic Fraternity, which has been held annually since
2015, will be held from 14 to 25 September at the Brestsky training ground in Belarus."
They come at a time when Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin warned about "NATO at
the gates" encroachment, adding:
"The movement of NATO troops is taking place in territory adjacent to us, within the
framework of the Enhanced Forward Presence and Atlantic Resolve operations."
"In particular, the 2nd Battalion of the 69th Armor Regiment is being deployed to the
Pabrade training ground (in Lithuania) 15 kilometers from our border."
"The fact that about 500 people, 29 tanks, and 43 Bradley Fighting Vehicles will be in such
close proximity to our border cannot do anything but worry us."
According to an Estonian Defense Forces press release:
"US Army multipurpose UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters will arrive at the Amari airbase on
Sunday (September 13)."
"Next week, the helicopters will conduct missions around the airbase, central training
ground and the Tapa army base."
"Their task will be to cooperate with the Estonian Defense Forces" -- despite neither
country threatened by any others.
The made in the USA plot to oust Lukashenko shows no signs of ebbing.
A 1999 Russia/Belarus treaty calls for economic integration and mutual cooperation to defend
both nations from foreign threats -- with the intent of Belarus integrating with Russia to
again become one of its republics.
Will Lukashenko and Putin agree that this is the best way forward?
Will Belarus' leader hold a national referendum for the country's citizens to vote up or
down on the issue?
Earlier I stressed that this is what democracy is all about.
If majority Belarusians wish to rejoin Russia, integrating both countries makes most
sense.
It's also a key way to defeat Washington's coup plot.
Protests would likely continue for a while in diminished size and energy, then fade away and
end.
Trailer for COUP 53, a new documentary on the joint CIA-MI6 operation to overthrow the
democratically elected government of Iran.
The coup that toppled a democratically elected government in Iran in August 1953 and
replaced it with a tyrannical monarchy that lasted 25 years was an intelligence operations
whose effects are still felt to this day.
A new documentary recounts the crime with special attention to the often-overlooked role (at
least in the United States) of the British.
(If you live in the United States, you can stream COUP 53 here. If you live in the United Kingdom, you can
stream here. As with all
quality journalism, it will cost you something.)
Britain's Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – took part in the 1953 kidnapping
of the chief of police of Tehran, Iran, according to a recently recovered interview of an
ex-MI6 operative that is featured in a new documentary film, COUP 53. The full interview
transcript has been posted for the first time by the National Security Archive.
The MI6 operative was a named Norman Darbyshire, described as:
elusive figure who was a key contributor to Britain's clandestine approach toward Iran in
the early 1950s and whose final words on the coup, provided for the Granada Television series
End of Empire , were never aired.
In the interview, Darbyshire said that the Americans took too much credit for ousting Prime
Ministers Mohammed Mossadegh, and replacing him with a general. Mossadegh was described as a
communist sympathizer because he was calling for the British petroleum company to pay the same
royalty fee that American oil companies paid to the Saudis.
What helps make this item noteworthy is the near-total lack of publicly available official
records on Britain's role during the oil nationalization crisis starting in 1951. Closing in
on 70 years after the fact, authorities continue to withhold archival records about the coup.
(The Americans in 2017 published what will probably be the last significant official release
of their records, although more are known to still be classified.)
"... Passenger logs for Epstein's four helicopters and three planes have been subpoenaed by Virgin Islands AG Denise George, who recently sued the disgraced financier's estate for 22 counts including human trafficking, child abuse, neglect, prostitution, aggravated rape, and forced labor, according to a Sunday report by the UK Mirror. ..."
"... Epstein pilot David Rodgers previously provided a passenger log in 2009 tying dozens of politicians, actors, and other celebrities to the infamous sex offender – including former US President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and model Naomi Campbell. ..."
"... George has also subpoenaed more than 10 banks – including JPMorgan, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank – in her quest to get to the bottom of the financial edifice Epstein built up before he died. The financial institutions have been ordered to submit documents related to some 30 corporations, trusts, and nonprofit entities tied to the predatory playboy. ..."
The US Virgin Islands Attorney General has subpoenaed 21 years' worth of deceased pedophile
Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs, reportedly striking fear in the hearts of high-profile
passengers not yet exposed as Lolita Express riders.
Passenger logs for Epstein's four helicopters and three planes have been subpoenaed by
Virgin Islands AG Denise George, who recently sued the disgraced financier's estate for 22
counts including human trafficking, child abuse, neglect, prostitution, aggravated rape, and
forced labor, according to a Sunday report by the UK Mirror.
In addition to the passenger lists, George has requisitioned " complaints or reports of
potentially suspicious conduct " and any " personal notes " the pilots made while
flying Epstein's alleged harem of underage girls around the world. She also wants the names and
contact information of anyone who worked for the pilots – or who " integrated with or
observed " Epstein and his passengers.
Epstein pilot David Rodgers previously provided a passenger log in 2009 tying dozens of
politicians, actors, and other celebrities to the infamous sex offender – including
former US President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and model Naomi Campbell.
However,
lawyers for Epstein's alleged victims have argued that list did not include flights by
Epstein's chief pilot, Larry Visoski, who allegedly worked for him for over 25 years.
" The records that have been subpoenaed will make the ones Rodgers provided look like a
Post-It note ," a source told the Mirror over the weekend, claiming that George's subpoena
had triggered a " panic among many of the rich and famous. "
Epstein's private plane, nicknamed the Lolita Express, counted among its passengers such
luminaries as the UK's Prince Andrew, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, actor Chris Tucker,
Harvard economist Larry Summers, Hyatt hotel mogul Tom Pritzker, and model agency manager
Jean-Luc Brunel along with Campbell, Spacey, and Clinton (who the logs show flew with Epstein
over two dozen times). However, the passengers who enjoyed his other aircraft have not been
made public – yet.
George has also subpoenaed more than 10 banks – including JPMorgan, Citibank, and
Deutsche Bank – in her quest to get to the bottom of the financial edifice Epstein built
up before he died. The financial institutions have been ordered to submit documents related to
some 30 corporations, trusts, and nonprofit entities tied to the predatory playboy.
Epstein supposedly committed suicide last year in a Manhattan jail facility, while his
accused madam Ghislaine Maxwell remains imprisoned in a Brooklyn detention center awaiting
trial on charges related to child trafficking and perjury after her arrest earlier this year.
Maxwell's lawyers have struggled to keep documents introduced as part of a recent defamation
suit by one of Epstein's alleged victims under seal, insisting the information would deny her a
fair trial.
US diplomacy is turning into the not-so-subtle art of making demands and ultimatums, Sergey
Lavrov has lamented, as the Americans go it alone in restoring anti-Iran sanctions under a 2015
deal that no longer legally applies.
Washington's reasoning behind bringing back the UN sanctions against Iran looks
"funny," as the majority of UN Security Council members – 13 out of 15 – do
not support activating the 'snapback' mechanism, the Russian Foreign Minister said, in an
exclusive interview with the Al Arabiya news channel.
The council "clearly stated that there is no legal position or moral reasons for anything
close to the snapback and all the statements to the contrary are null and void," he
reminded his audience. The 'snapback' issue leaves Washington at loggerheads with even its
closest allies.
Earlier on Sunday, the three European signatories to the Iran deal – Germany, France
and the UK – stated the return of the sanctions will have no legal effect whatsoever.
However, the Trump administration continues to insist Washington now has the authority to
target any country breaching the "re-imposed" sanctions. For Lavrov, this is telling, in
terms of understanding the quality of US diplomacy.
The Americans lost any talent in diplomacy, unfortunately; they used to have excellent
experts, [but] now what they're doing in foreign policy is to put a demand on the table,
whether they're discussing Iran or anything else.
If their counterpart disagrees and refuses to toe the line, "they put an ultimatum, they
give a deadline and then they impose sanctions, then they make the sanctions
extra-territorial." Regrettably, the European Union also "is engaging in the same tricks
more and more," Lavrov noted.
On Saturday, Washington moved to bring back sweeping UN sanctions against Tehran, insisting
it was acting within its own right to do so as an original party to the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 pact Iran sealed with major world powers. The US left the deal
in 2018 following a decision by President Donald Trump.
"I can only remind them that they should respect the hierarchy of the American
administration, because their boss, President Trump, has personally signed an official decree
withdrawing the United States from the JCPOA," Lavrov added sarcastically.
Sanctions aside, Washington is also busy trying to prevent the lifting of the UN arms
embargo on Iran, set to expire on October 18. This endeavor doesn't make much sense either, the
Russian minister commented. "There is no such thing as an arms embargo against Iran," he
clarified. The UN Security Council reiterated the embargo will end on that date, and "there
would be no limitations whatsoever after the expiration of this timeframe."
Unfortunately in his brilliant analysis of USA-Russia relations Stephen Cohen never pointed out that the USA policy toward
Russia is dictated by the interests of maintaining global neoliberal empire and the concept of "Full Spectrum Dominance" which was
adopted by the USA neoliberal elite after the collapse of the USSR.
Like British empire the USA neoliberal empire is now overextended, metropolia is in secular stagnation with deterioration
standard of living of the bottom 80% of population, so the USA under Trump became more aggressive and dangerous on the international
arena. Trump administration behaves behaves like a cornered rat on international arena.
Notable quotes:
"... On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the "dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC Radio. ..."
"... from the start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem attacks. ..."
"... the opposition to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective, not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of Eurasia. ..."
"... Almost no one outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and military confrontation with Russia and China. ..."
"... My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. ..."
"... It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker. ..."
"... In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this day. ..."
On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the
"dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with
the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who
enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC
Radio.
A year ago, I reviewed his latest book, War With Russia? which drew upon the
material of those programs and took this scholar turned journalist into a new and highly
accessible genre of oral readings in print. The narrative style may have been more relaxed,
with simplified syntax, but the reasoning remained razor sharp. I urge those who are today
paying tribute to Steve, to buy and read the book, which is his best legacy.
From start to finish, Stephen F. Cohen was among America's best historians of his
generation, putting aside the specific subject matter that he treated: Nikolai Bukharin, his
dissertation topic and the material of his first and best known book; or, to put it more
broadly, the history of Russia (USSR) in the 20 th century. He was one of the very
rare cases of an historian deeply attentive to historiography, to causality and to logic. I
understood this when I read a book of his from the mid-1980s in which he explained why Russian
(Soviet) history was no longer attracting young students of quality: because there were no
unanswered questions, because we smugly assumed that we knew about that country all that there
was to know. That was when our expert community told us with one voice that the USSR was
entrapped in totalitarianism without any prospect for the overthrow of its oppressive
regime.
But my recollections of Steve also have a personal dimension going back six years or so when
a casual email correspondence between us flowered into a joint project that became the launch
of the American Committee for East West Accord (ACEWA). This was a revival of a
pro-détente association of academics and business people that existed from the mid-1970s
to the early 1990s, when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of the
Communist Party from power, the future of Russia in the family of nations we call the
'international community' seemed assured and there appeared to be no further need for such an
association as ACEWA.
I hasten to add that in the original ACEWA Steve and I were two ships that passed in the
night. With his base in Princeton, he was a protégé of the dean of diplomats then
in residence there, George Kennan, who was the leading light on the academic side of the ACEWA.
I was on the business side of the association, which was led by Don Kendall, chairman of
Pepsico and also for much of the 1970s chairman of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council of
which I was also a member. I published pro-détente articles in their newsletter and
published a lengthy piece on cooperation with the Soviet Union in agricultural and food
processing domains, my specialty at that time, in their collection of essays by leaders in the
U.S. business community entitled Common Sense in U.S.-Soviet Trade .
The academic contingent had, as one might assume, a 'progressive' coloration, while the
business contingent had a Nixon Republican coloration. Indeed, in the mid-1980s these two sides
split in their approach to the growing peace movement in the U.S. that was fed by opposition in
the 'thinking community' on university campuses to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars agenda. Kendall
shut the door at ACEWA to rabble rousing and the association did not rise to the occasion, so
that its disbanding in the early '90s went unnoticed.
In the re-incorporated American Committee, I helped out by assuming the formal obligations
of Treasurer and Secretary, and also became the group's European Coordinator from my base in
Brussels. At this point my communications with Steve were almost daily and emotionally quite
intense. This was a time when America's expert community on Russian affairs once again felt
certain that it knew everything there was to know about the country, and most particularly
about the nefarious "Putin regime." But whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, polite debate about the
USSR/Russia was entirely possible both behind closed doors and in public space, from the
start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following
Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the
official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a
welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly
found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem
attacks.
From my correspondence and several meetings with Steve at this time both in his New York
apartment and here in Brussels, when he and Katrina van der Heuvel came to participate in a
Round Table dedicated to relations with Russia at the Brussels Press Club that I arranged, I
knew that Steve was deeply hurt by these vitriolic attacks. He was at the time waging a
difficult campaign to establish a fellowship in support of graduate studies in Russian affairs.
It was touch and go, because of vicious opposition from some stalwarts of the profession to any
fellowship that bore Steve's name. Allow me to put the 'i' on this dispute: the opposition
to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the
profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective,
not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of
Eurasia. In the end, Steve and Katrina prevailed. The fellowships exist and, hopefully,
will provide sustenance to future studies when American attitudes towards Russia become less
politicized.
At all times and on all occasions, Steve Cohen was a voice of reason above all. The problem
of our age is that we are now not only living in a post-factual world, but in a post-logic
world. The public reads day after day the most outrageous and illogical assertions about
alleged Russian misdeeds posted by our most respected mainstream media including The New
York Times and The Washington Post . Almost no one dares to raise a hand and
suggest that this reporting is propaganda and that the public is being brainwashed. Steve did
exactly that in War With Russia? in a brilliant and restrained text.
Regrettably today we have no peace movement to speak of. Youth and our 'progressive' elites
are totally concerned over the fate of humanity in 30 or 40 years' time as a consequence of
Global Warming and rising seas. That is the essence of the Green Movement. Almost no one
outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two
years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and
military confrontation with Russia and China.
I fear it will take only some force majeure development such as we had in 1962 during the
Cuban Missile Crisis to awaken the broad public to the risks to our very survival that we are
incurring by ignoring the issues that Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Princeton and New
York University was bringing to the airwaves week after week on his radio program.
Postscript
In terms of action, the new ACEWA was even less effective than its predecessor, which had
avoided linking up with the peace movement of the 1980s and sought to exert influence on policy
through armchair talks with Senators and other statesmen in Washington behind closed doors of
(essentially) men's clubs.
However, the importance of the new ACEWA, and the national importance of Stephen Cohen lay
elsewhere.
This question of appraising Stephen Cohen's national importance is all the more timely given
that on the day of his death, 18 September, the nation also lost Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg,
about whose national importance no Americans, whether her fans or her opponents, had any
doubt.
My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became
one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. It
was not a role that he sought. It was thrust upon him by the expert community of international
affairs, including the Council on Foreign Relations, from which he reluctantly resigned over
this matter.
It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media
who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on
the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his
right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of
his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker.
In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of
hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to
recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most
revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral
counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this
day.
[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection
of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in
November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes
& noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the "View Inside" tab
on the book's webpages to browse.]
What I liked most about this article was the highlighting of impossible-to-counter
narratives, the hypocrisy of Western democracy promotion (even as Western governments fellate
domestic and foreign economic elites), and the denigration of nationalism from 1990-2016.
Sadly, the author does a disservice in suggesting that such manipulations are past. Instead,
the Western power-elite has done what it does best: co-opt a 'winning' narrative
(nationalism) and double-down.
Other deficiencies:
Ignores the fact that the US Deep State, caretakers of the Empire, hasn't accepted
defeat. Since 2014 they have been actively trying to reverse what they see as a major
set-back (not defeat).
Via economic sanctions, trade wars, propaganda, and military tensions the Empire is
waging a hybrid war against what it calls the "revisionist" efforts of Russia and
China.
Plays into the propaganda narrative of Trump as populist.
Fails to see the 1990's 'economic shock therapy' as a deliberate attempt to push
Russia into total capitulation. This, darker view, was confirmed obliquely by Kissinger in
his interview with ft in which he stated that no one could foresee the ability of Russia to
absorb pain.
A very good article. A better title would be "How neoliberalism collapsed" Any religious doctrine sonner or later collased
under the weight of corruption of its prisets and unrealistic assumptions about the society. Neoliberalism in no expection as in
heart it is secular religion based on deification of markets.
He does not discuss the role of Harvard Mafiosi in destruction of Russian (and other xUSSR republics) economy in 1990th, mass
looting, empowerment of people (with pensioners experiencing WWII level of starvation) and creation of mafia capitalism on post
Soviet state. But the point he made about the process are right. Yeltsin mafia, like Yeltsin himself, were the product of USA and
GB machinations
Notable quotes:
"... If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. ..."
"... One of the most malign effects of western victory in 1989-91 was to drown out or marginalise criticism of what was already a deeply flawed western social and economic model. In the competition with the USSR, it was above all the visible superiority of the western model that eventually destroyed Soviet communism from within. ..."
"... These beliefs interacted to produce a dominant atmosphere of "there is no alternative," which made it impossible and often in effect forbidden to conduct a proper public debate on the merits of the big western presumptions, policies or plans of the era ..."
"... This was a sentiment I encountered again and again (if not often so frankly expressed) in western establishment institutions in that era: in economic journals if it was suggested that rapid privatisation in the former USSR would lead to massive corruption, social resentment and political reaction; in security circles, if anyone dared to question the logic of Nato expansion ..."
"... Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media ..."
"... By claiming for the US the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world and denying other major powers a greater role in their regions, this strategy essentially extended the Monroe Doctrine (which effectively defined the "western hemisphere" as the US sphere of influence) to the entire planet: an ambition greater than that of any previous power. The British Empire at its height knew that it could never intervene unilaterally on the continent of Europe or in Central America. The most megalomaniac of European rulers understood that other great powers with influence in their own areas of the world would always exist. ..."
"... "A stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values" ..."
"... Many liberals gave the impression of complete indifference to the resulting immiseration of the Russian population in these years. At a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington that I attended later, former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar boasted to an applauding US audience of how he had destroyed the Russian military industrial complex. The fact that this also destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of Russians and Ukrainians was not mentioned. ..."
"... This attitude was fed by contempt on the part of the educated classes of Moscow and St Petersburg for ordinary Russians, who were dubbed Homo Sovieticus and treated as an inferior species whose loathsome culture was preventing the liberal elites from taking their rightful place among the "civilised" nations of the west. This frame of mind was reminiscent of the traditional attitude of white elites in Latin America towards the Indio and Mestizo majorities in their countries. ..."
"... I vividly remember one Russian liberal journalist state his desire to fire machine guns into crowds of elderly Russians who joined Communist demonstrations to protest about the collapse of their pensions. The response of the western journalists present was that this was perhaps a little bit excessive, but to be excused since the basic sentiment was correct. ..."
"... If the post-Cold War world order was a form of US imperialism, it now looks like an empire in which rot in the over-extended periphery has spread to the core. The economic and social patterns of 1990s Russia and Ukraine have come back to haunt the west, though so far thank God in milder form. The massive looting of Russian state property and the systematic evasion of taxes by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs was only possible with the help of western banks, which transferred the proceeds to the west and the Caribbean. This crime was euphemised in the western discourse (naturally including the Economist ) as "capital flight." ..."
"... The indifference of Russian elites to the suffering of the Russian population has found a milder echo in the neglect of former industrial regions across Britain, Western Europe and the US that did so much to produce the votes for Brexit, for Trump and for populist nationalist parties in Europe. The catastrophic plunge in Russian male life expectancy in the 1990s has found its echo in the unprecedented decline in white working-class male life expectancy in the US. ..."
"... Perhaps the greatest lesson of the period after the last Cold War is that in the end, a stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values. ..."
"... Those analysing the connection between Russia and Trump's administration have looked in the wrong place. The explanation of Trump's success is not that Putin somehow mesmerised American voters in 2016. It is that populations abandoned by their elites are liable to extreme political responses; and that societies whose economic elites have turned ethics into a joke should not be surprised if their political leaders too become scoundrels. ..."
A s the US prepares to plunge into a new cold war with China in which its chances do not
look good, it's an appropriate time to examine how we went so badly wrong after "victory" in
the last Cold War. Looking back 30 years from the grim perspective of 2020, it is a challenge
even for those who were adults at the time to remember just how triumphant the west appeared in
the wake of the collapse of Soviet communism and the break-up of the USSR itself.
Today, of the rich fruits promised by that great victory, only wretched fragments remain.
The much-vaunted "peace dividend," savings from military spending, was squandered. The
opportunity to use the resources freed up to spread prosperity and deal with urgent social
problems was wasted, and -- even worse -- the US military budget is today higher than ever.
Attempts to mitigate the apocalyptic threat of climate change have fallen far short of what the
scientific consensus deems to be urgently necessary. The chance to solve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stabilise the Middle East was thrown away even before 9/11 and
the disastrous US response. The lauded "new world order" of international harmony and
co-operation -- heralded by the elder George Bush after the first Gulf War -- is a tragic joke.
Britain's European dream has been destroyed, and geopolitical stability on the European
continent has been lost due chiefly to new and mostly unnecessary tension with Moscow. The one
previously solid-seeming achievement, the democratisation of Eastern Europe, is looking
questionable, as Poland and Hungary (see Samira Shackle, p20) sink into semi-authoritarian
nationalism.
Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited
role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of
influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we
tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of
arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which
western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and
endangering the world.
One of the most malign effects of western victory in 1989-91 was to drown out or marginalise
criticism of what was already a deeply flawed western social and economic model. In the
competition with the USSR, it was above all the visible superiority of the western model that
eventually destroyed Soviet communism from within. Today, the superiority of the western model
to the Chinese model is not nearly so evident to most of the world's population; and it is on
successful western domestic reform that victory in the competition with China will depend.
Hubris
Western triumph and western failure were deeply intertwined. The very completeness of the
western victory both obscured its nature and legitimised all the western policies of the day,
including ones that had nothing to do with the victory over the USSR, and some that proved
utterly disastrous.
As Alexander Zevin has written of the house journal of Anglo-American elites, the
revolutions in Eastern Europe "turbocharged the neoliberal dynamic at the Economist ,
and seemed to stamp it with an almost providential seal." In retrospect, the magazine's 1990s
covers have a tragicomic appearance, reflecting a degree of faith in the rightness and
righteousness of neoliberal capitalism more appropriate to a religious cult.
These beliefs interacted to produce a dominant atmosphere of "there is no alternative,"
which made it impossible and often in effect forbidden to conduct a proper public debate on the
merits of the big western presumptions, policies or plans of the era. As a German official told
me when I expressed some doubt about the wisdom of rapid EU enlargement, "In my ministry we are
not even allowed to think about that."
This was a sentiment I encountered again and again (if not often so frankly expressed) in
western establishment institutions in that era: in economic journals if it was suggested that
rapid privatisation in the former USSR would lead to massive corruption, social resentment and
political reaction; in security circles, if anyone dared to question the logic of Nato
expansion; and almost anywhere if it was pointed out that the looting of former Soviet
republics was being assiduously encouraged and profited from by western banks, and regarded
with benign indifference by western governments.
The atmosphere of the time is (nowadays notoriously) summed up in Francis Fukuyama's The
End of History , which essentially predicted that western liberal capitalist democracy
would now be the only valid and successful economic and political model for all time. In fact,
what victory in the Cold War ended was not history but the study of history by western
elites.
"The US claiming the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world was an
ambition greater than that of any previous power"
A curious feature of 1990s capitalist utopian thought was that it misunderstood the
essential nature of capitalism, as revealed by its real (as opposed to faith-based) history.
One is tempted to say that Fukuyama should have paid more attention to Karl Marx and a famous
passage in The Communist Manifesto :
"The bourgeoisie [ie capitalism] cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole
relations of society All fixed, fast-frozen relations with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify the bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market drawn from under the
feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old established national industries
have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed "
Then again, Marx himself made exactly the same mistake in his portrayal of a permanent
socialist utopia after the overthrow of capitalism. The point is that utopias, being perfect,
are unchanging, whereas continuous and radical change, driven by technological development, is
at the heart of capitalism -- and, according to Marx, of the whole course of human history. Of
course, those who believed in a permanently successful US "Goldilocks economy" -- not too hot,
and not too cold -- also managed to forget 300 years of periodic capitalist economic
crises.
Though much mocked at the time, Fukuyama's vision came to dominate western thinking. This
was summed up in the universally employed but absurd phrases "Getting to Denmark" (as if Russia
and China were ever going to resemble Denmark) and "The path to democracy and the free
market" (my italics), which became the mantra of the new and lucrative academic-bureaucratic
field of "transitionology." Absurd, because the merest glance at modern history reveals
multiple different "paths" to -- and away from -- democracy and capitalism, not to mention
myriad routes that have veered towards one at the same time as swerving away from the
other.
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history.
This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in
April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central message was:
"The US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds
the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or
pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests We must maintain the
mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global
role "
By claiming for the US the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world and
denying other major powers a greater role in their regions, this strategy essentially extended
the Monroe Doctrine (which effectively defined the "western hemisphere" as the US sphere of
influence) to the entire planet: an ambition greater than that of any previous power. The
British Empire at its height knew that it could never intervene unilaterally on the continent
of Europe or in Central America. The most megalomaniac of European rulers understood that other
great powers with influence in their own areas of the world would always exist.
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would
couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush declared in
his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to the invasion of
Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided into two armed camps
now recognises one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America."
Nemesis
Triumphalism led US policymakers, and their transatlantic followers, to forget one cardinal
truth about geopolitical and military power: that in the end it is not global and absolute, but
local and relative. It is the amount of force or influence a state wants to bring to bear in a
particular place and on a -particular issue, relative to the power that a rival state is
willing and able to bring to bear. The truth of this has been shown repeatedly over the past
generation. For all America's overwhelming superiority on paper, it has turned out that many
countries have greater strength than the US in particular places: Russia in Georgia and
Ukraine, Russia and Iran in Syria, China in the South China Sea, and even Pakistan in southern
Afghanistan.
American over-confidence, accepted by many Europeans and many Britons especially, left the
US in a severely weakened condition to conduct what should have been clear as far back as the
1990s to be the great competition of the future -- that between Washington and Beijing.
On the one hand, American moves to extend Nato to the Baltics and then (abortively) on to
Ukraine and Georgia, and to abolish Russian influence and destroy Russian allies in the Middle
East, inevitably produced a fierce and largely successful Russian nationalist reaction. Within
Russia, the US threat to its national interests helped to consolidate and legitimise Putin's
control. Internationally, it ensured that Russia would swallow its deep-seated fears of China
and become a valuable partner of Beijing.
On the other hand, the benign and neglectful way in which Washington regarded the rise of
China in the generation after the Cold War (for example, the blithe decision to allow China to
join the World Trade Organisation) was also rooted in ideological arrogance. Western
triumphalism meant that most of the US elites were convinced that as a result of economic
growth, the Chinese Communist state would either democratise or be overthrown; and that China
would eventually have to adopt the western version of economics or fail economically. This was
coupled with the belief that good relations with China could be predicated on China accepting a
so-called "rules-based" international order in which the US set the rules while also being free
to break them whenever it wished; something that nobody with the slightest knowledge of Chinese
history should
have believed.
Throughout, the US establishment discourse (Democrat as much as Republican) has sought to
legitimise American global hegemony by invoking the promotion of liberal democracy. At the same
time, the supposedly intrinsic connection between economic change, democracy and peace was
rationalised by cheerleaders such as the New York Times 's indefatigable Thomas
Friedman, who advanced the (always absurd, and now flatly and repeatedly falsified) "Golden
Arches theory of Conflict
Prevention." This vulgarised version of Democratic Peace Theory pointed out that two countries
with McDonald's franchises had never been to war. The humble and greasy American burger was
turned into a world-historical symbol of the buoyant modern middle classes with too much to
lose to countenance war.
Various equally hollow theories postulated cast-iron connections between free markets and
guaranteed property rights on the one hand, and universal political rights and freedoms on the
other, despite the fact that even within the west, much of political history can be
characterised as the fraught and complex brokering of accommodations between these two sets of
things.
And indeed, since the 1990s democracy has not advanced in the world as a whole, and belief
in the US promotion of democracy has been discredited by US patronage of the authoritarian and
semi-authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and elsewhere. Of the predominantly
Middle Eastern and South Asian students whom I teach at Georgetown University in Qatar, not one
-- even among the liberals -- believes that the US is sincerely committed to spreading
democracy; and, given their own regions' recent history, there is absolutely no reason why they
should believe this.
The one great triumph of democratisation coupled with free market reform was -- or appeared
to be -- in the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, and this success was
endlessly cited as the model for political and economic reform across
the globe.
But the portrayal of East European reform in the west failed to recognise the central role
of local nationalism. Once again, to talk of this at the time was to find oneself in effect
excluded from polite society, because to do so called into question the self-evident
superiority and universal appeal of liberal reform. The overwhelming belief of western
establishments was that nationalism was a superstition that was fast losing its hold on people
who, given the choice, could everywhere be relied on to act like rational consumers, rather
than citizens rooted in one particular land.
The more excitable technocrats imagined that nation state itself (except the US of course)
was destined to wither away. This was also the picture reflected back to western observers and
analysts by liberal reformers across the region, who whether or not they were genuinely
convinced of this, knew what their western sponsors wanted to hear. Western economic and
cultural hegemony produced a sort of mirror game, a copulation of illusions in which local
informants provided false images to the west, which then reflected them back to the east, and
so on.
Always the nation
Yet one did not have to travel far outside the centres of Eastern European cities to find
large parts of populations outraged by the moral and cultural changes ordained by the EU, the
collapse of social services, and the (western-indulged) seizure of public property by former
communist elites. So why did Eastern Europeans swallow the whole western liberal package of the
time? They did so precisely because of their nationalism, which persuaded them that if they did
not pay the cultural and economic price of entry into the EU and Nato, they would sooner or
later fall back under the dreaded hegemony of Moscow. For them, unwanted reform was the price
that the nation had to pay for US protection. Not surprisingly, once membership of these
institutions was secured, a powerful populist and nationalist backlash set in.
Western blindness to the power of nationalism has had several bad consequences for western
policy, and the cohesion of "the west." In Eastern Europe, it would in time lead to the
politically almost insane decision of the EU to try to order the local peoples, with their
deeply-rooted ethnic nationalism and bitter memories of outside dictation, to accept large
numbers of Muslim refugees. The backlash then became conjoined with the populist reactions in
Western Europe, which led to Brexit and the sharp decline of centrist parties across the
EU.
More widely, this blindness to the power of nationalism led the US grossly to underestimate
the power of nationalist sentiment in Russia, China and Iran, and contributed to the US attempt
to use "democratisation" as a means to overthrow their regimes. All that this has succeeded in
doing is to help the regimes concerned turn nationalist sentiment against local liberals, by
accusing them of being US stooges.
"A stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on
some minimal moral values"
Russian liberals in the 1990s were mostly not really US agents as such, but the collapse of
Communism led some to a blind adulation of everything western and to identify unconditionally
with US policies. In terms of public image, this made them look like western lackeys; in terms
of policy, it led to the adoption of the economic "shock therapy" policies advocated by the
west. Combined with monstrous corruption and the horribly disruptive collapse of the Soviet
single market, this had a shattering effect on Russian industry and the living standards of
ordinary Russians.
Many liberals gave the impression of complete indifference to the resulting immiseration of
the Russian population in these years. At a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington
that I attended later, former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar boasted to an applauding US audience
of how he had destroyed the Russian military industrial complex. The fact that this also
destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of Russians and Ukrainians was not mentioned.
This attitude was fed by contempt on the part of the educated classes of Moscow and St
Petersburg for ordinary Russians, who were dubbed Homo Sovieticus and treated as an
inferior species whose loathsome culture was preventing the liberal elites from taking their
rightful place among the "civilised" nations of the west. This frame of mind was reminiscent of
the traditional attitude of white elites in Latin America towards the Indio and Mestizo
majorities in their countries.
I vividly remember one Russian liberal journalist state his desire to fire machine guns into
crowds of elderly Russians who joined Communist demonstrations to protest about the collapse of
their pensions. The response of the western journalists present was that this was perhaps a
little bit excessive, but to be excused since the basic sentiment was correct.
The Russian liberals of the 1990s were crazy to reveal this contempt to the people whose
votes they needed to win. So too was Hillary Clinton, with her disdain for the "basket of
deplorables" in the 2016 election, much of the Remain camp in the years leading up to Brexit,
and indeed the European elites in the way they rammed through the Maastricht Treaty and the
euro in the 1990s.
If the post-Cold War world order was a form of US imperialism, it now looks like an empire
in which rot in the over-extended periphery has spread to the core. The economic and social
patterns of 1990s Russia and Ukraine have come back to haunt the west, though so far thank God
in milder form. The massive looting of Russian state property and the systematic evasion of
taxes by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs was only possible with the help of western banks,
which transferred the proceeds to the west and the Caribbean. This crime was euphemised in the
western discourse (naturally including the Economist ) as "capital flight."
Peter Mandelson qualified his famous remark that the Blair government was "intensely relaxed
about people becoming filthy rich" with the words "as long as they pay their taxes." The whole
point, however, about the filthy Russian, Ukrainian, Nigerian, Pakistani and other money that
flowed to and through London was not just that so much of it was stolen, but that it was
escaping taxation, thereby harming the populations at home twice over. The infamous euphemism
"light-touch regulation" was in effect a charter
for this.
In a bitter form of poetic justice, however, "light-touch regulation" paved the way for the
2008 economic crisis in the west itself, and western economic elites too (especially in the US)
would also seize this opportunity to move their money into tax havens. This has done serious
damage to state revenues, and to the fundamental faith of ordinary people in the west that the
rich are truly subject to the same laws as them.
The indifference of Russian elites to the suffering of the Russian population has found a
milder echo in the neglect of former industrial regions across Britain, Western Europe and the
US that did so much to produce the votes for Brexit, for Trump and for populist nationalist
parties in Europe. The catastrophic plunge in Russian male life expectancy in the 1990s has
found its echo in the unprecedented decline in white working-class male life expectancy in the
US.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of the period after the last Cold War is that in the end, a
stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values. To say this
to western economists, businessmen and financial journalists in the 1990s was to receive the
kindly contempt usually accorded to religious cranks. The only value recognised was shareholder
value, a currency in which the crimes of the Russian oligarchs could be excused because their
stolen companies had "added value." Any concern about duty to the Russian people as a whole, or
the fact that tolerance of these crimes would make it grotesque to demand honesty of policemen
or civil servants, were dismissed as irrelevant sentimentality.
Bringing it all back home
We in the west are living with the consequences of a generation of such attitudes. Western
financial elites have mostly not engaged in outright illegality; but then again, they usually
haven't needed to, since governments have made it easy for them to abide by the letter of the
law while tearing its spirit to pieces. We are belatedly recognising that, as Franklin Foer
wrote in the Atlantic last year: "New York, Los Angeles and Miami have joined London as
the world's most desired destinations for laundered money. This boom has enriched the American
elites who have enabled it -- and it has degraded the nation's political and social mores in
the process. While everyone else was heralding an emergent globalist world that would take on
the best values of America, [Richard] Palmer [a former CIA station chief in Moscow] had
glimpsed the dire risk of the opposite: that the values of the kleptocrats would become
America's own. This grim vision is now nearing fruition."
Those analysing the connection between Russia and Trump's administration have looked in the
wrong place. The explanation of Trump's success is not that Putin somehow mesmerised American
voters in 2016. It is that populations abandoned by their elites are liable to extreme
political responses; and that societies whose economic elites have turned ethics into a joke
should not be surprised if their political leaders too become scoundrels.
"... There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive) while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time! ..."
Speaking as an Independent, I say that our country, the USA, has engineered past confilcts and wars in order to feed the military
industrial complex. Not so much that it results in a nuke-shooting war, but in a regular non-nuke shooting war. The solution?
Send the sons and daughters of the politicians into direct combat, every time they approve another war. That should keep things
a bit more peaceful.
Professor Cohen is this nation's most objective and therefore most valuable thinker on Russia! The charge that his views are
"not patriotic" is a compliment rather than the insult they intended. A scholar's views are only valuable to the public and, more
importantly, policy makers, if they are OBJECTIVE!!! Which is to say that he follows the FACTS wherever they lead!
Any "discussion" with no mention of the supranational central bank cartel is intentional deceptive omission. The "brass ring"
is forced use of petro-dollars. The central bank stock holders and bankers loaning all dollars into existence as national debt,
do not care who owns land. They care who pays off national debts and interest on debt. Civil war is their racket. There are no
sovereign nations. No genuine nations that create their medium of exchange publicly. No national people. Just participants in
an extortion or its victims. The "Elite" collect on money they created as loans in their central banking accounts. All others
are only human numbers assigned billing addresses.
Welcome to the New World Order ....where Multinational corporations rule & their profits are what are most important..... NOT
nation states it's the 99.9% against the .01% and they use MSM propaganda & fear to control the DUMB masses thinking
I just discovered John Batchelor Show on which Cohen has a guest spot- I just was drawn to this man's thinking, probably because
I had made up my mind about Russia during the Ukraine crises. Seeing the US has ruin every country we have gone into- I'm on Russia's
side, especially where Russia and Ukraine has a history, on that side of the world.
38:49 - Apologies for the somewhat Utopian
question here. I agree with everything Cohen has said, but regarding cause of jihadist terrorism ( ie implosion of the economies
in the region), does it make sense to discuss primarily this game of terrorist whack a mole (bombing, invading and crushing Jihadist
insurgencies)? Is there any point in talking about a pro active policy of recreating sustainable, stable economies in the region?
What would that even look like?
Not very many average Americans would be able to easily access and watch this. Average Americans still consume mainly mainstream
media. Too bad, because this lecture would have opened their eyes and have blown up their brain-contaminated minds by the CNN,
the New York Times and alike.
I agree wholeheartedly Loane. Have always been extremely impressed with and appreciative of Cohen's carefully & thoughtfully
considered contribution. We in the US have gone a bit off the deep end when it comes to this deeply embedded belief in exceptionalism
and superiority, and have been extremely rude to much of the rest of the world in the process. It amazes me how patient Russia
has been with us, waiting for us to come around to a more sober understanding of the world we live in today. I have to conclude
that what we are experiencing here in the US is a perennial phenomenon that comes with the end of all empires throughout history,
the mission creep of over-extending resources and the big one, seemingly blind hubris.
There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift
will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive)
while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine
interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least
I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time!
NATO'S reason to exist ended when the Warsaw Pact was demolished. It was created to confront the socialist Warsaw Pact but
today ALL of the members of the pact are part of NATO, except Russia. So why is it still operating? Who are they confronting?
They are a bunch of bureaucrats looking for a reason to stay employed in an organization that lost its excuse to be. However,
their behavior has gone from increasing security to actually becoming a menace to trigger a nuclear war to destroy life on earth.
It will take a Republican President to turn our relationships with hostile nations around. For some irrational reasoning, the
current administration refuses negotiation with it's enemies. Somehow this is going to create understanding. and a less dangerous
world. I don't see a continuation of this Administrations policy anything but reckless . I am assuming this policy has been one
determined through Clinton, and will remain so. Clinton has said on a number of occasions, it is the Obama Administration's policies
that will be hers as well. As an ex cold warrior, who has spent a lot of time chasing Soviet boomers in the North Atlantic, I
am not willing to gamble my children and grand children's lives . It is a dangerous and ego driven pissing match. Let us start
talking , This administration and families can climb into their luxury nuclear bomb proof bunkers...... My family and most Americans
don't have that luxury.
Dr. Cohen, so Putin gave the Northern Alliance to the USA after 911 to bludgeon Afghanistan for hiding Bin Laden? Paul Craig
Robert, David Ray Griffin and a growing list of Americans believe 911 was a total bamboozle. If that is true which it looks increasingly
like it was, does that mean Putin was playing along with the our Reichstag fire? What does that make Putin? NATO should have been
totally remade after 1986, but it wasn't and we simply missed a huge opportunity not for worldwide U.S. hegemony, but for a new
umbrella of security by super powers in alliance. Obviously, the proliferation of ethno-religious groups was in Putin's mind when
he welcomed us into Afghanistan, but damn it man, tell people EXACTLY why we and the Russians want to be in the Golden Crescent
besides the extraction of minerals.
Julia Ioffe is a joke -- she is essentially a typical "national security parasite" and of the level that surprisingly, is
lower that Max Boor, although previously I thought this is impossible. Julia Ioffe is very typical of the anti-Russian thinking
in the West.
This incessant Russophobia constantly being trumpeted by the Washington militarist imperialists must stop. It's putting the
world on the brink of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen's a godsend along with a handful of the other intellectuals out there speaking and writing the truth that penetrates
the miasma of disinformation, half-truths and exaggerations emanating from the state-corporate nexus in the American mass media.
Cohen, along with John Pilger, James Petras, Robert Parry, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, Eva Bartlett, Diana Johnstone and
Paul Craig Roberts must be read widely in order for folks to get a grasp of where the Washington imperialist ruling class is driving
the world.
at 25:40 he just destroys her totally. what
a point he made, amazing!! "thank you professor" the guy on the left wants to end Cohen's carnage of the so called experts. Cohen
made minced meat out of em. Fact after fact...stonewalled em both. Listen to her, ISIS doesn't have nuke's, she obviously doesn't
have a clue.
Cohen is always cogent and convincing. One area I wish some historian would look into is how "Russia-gate" is not echoing Cold
War themes, but echoing themes from the German Nazis in particular their belief about a great Jewish conspiracy against Europe.
Even Putin recently remarked on all these accusations: "It reminds me of anti-Semitism, A dumb man who can't do anything would
blame the Jews for everything." Look at how Putin is drawn and pictured on major outlets. The NYTimes blamed resistance to TPP
on Putin.
The Russians like the Jews are behind every social problem. Popular culture shows and speaks of Russia in the same way Nazi
propagandists wrote about Russia.
Undermining Western liberal democracies, Jews were compared to spiders catching people in the webs. Same with Putin. Pick up
Hitler's speech after the invasion of the Soviet Union justifying it., Echos? Accidental rhetoric of conspiracies ?
"to look past a long list of transgressions and abuses..." this is what I absolutely hate about America, they are all so stupid
and ignorant to their own countries misdeeds it is unbelievable, infuriating beyond belief. The US is currently fighting 7 wars
simultaneously, which it all started itself under false pretences and hid the real reason beneath a thick layer of BS propaganda
and misinformation.
The secession of Crimea is the least egregious event of the entire conflicts history. The EU and US have pumped billions of
dollars into the coup which took place weeks before the Crimean referendum, on the 20th of February 2014, 2 weeks prior to that,
an intercepted phone conversation between Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State of the United States to Europe) and Geoffrey
Pyatt (US Ambassador to the Ukraine) was leaked on February 4th, 2014. In this phone conversation, they describe key positions
within the Ukrainian government being filled by Klitshko and Yatz... fast forward a few weeks, who do we see? Klitsh and Yatz!
It was the most obvious sponsored coup in history.
Putin snatched the Crimean peninsula from NATO, who wanted to seize Russias military harbour in Sevastopol (which the Russians
have used to supply Syria, this was one and a half years before they entered the conflict directly, apart from being a very important
strategic harbour in general), by suggesting a referendum to the local government and they accepted.
Why? Because they were ethnic Russians and knew who gained power in Kiev, the neo-Nazi, Bandera-worshipping OUN, which the
US has nourished, supported and developed for the last 100 years within the Ukrainian territory. These Nazis hate Russians, they
have a deep seeded hatred of all things Russian which has been indoctrinated and drilled into them by the CIA for decades, the
first thing they did after seizing power was to demote the Russian language from the official list of languages of the Ukraine.
They have since honoured Ukrainian Nazi-collaborators from WWII by erecting statues, renaming streets, creating new holidays
etc. This is just one example of US misinformation and propaganda, nothing they say accurately describes the truth, nothing, not
one thing has it's bases in reality. Be it about Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and what have you, it's all lies and propaganda
to mask their intentions.
North Korea is another example. North Korea is a hornets nest they kick once in a while to scare the Japanese and South Koreans
into tolerating US occupation longer. Everything North Korea does is a direct response to threats and intimidations by the US.
They staged a drill off the coast of North Korea which they called "Decapitation" for F's sake.
They have ratcheted up the tension again these past few months to sneak in their THAAD weapons stations, before the new President
was chosen. And these THAAD systems have absolutely nothing to do with North Korea, it's against China and Russia, North Korea
is a pretext.
The still active war, which has merely been under a seize fire for decades, against North Korea, could have been ended before
there was colour television, but the US needs North Korea to exist in order to justify their occupation of S.Korea and Japan.
And by the way, the CrowdStrike guy testified in 2017 that there was ZERO PROOF that the Russians hacked the DNC, but Schiff
hid that for 2 years until John Ratcliff threatened to declassify it, then Schiff's sorry ass released the interviews. So, this
man was 100 percent right, there is ZERO PROOF the Russians or anyone hacked the DNC. Its a damned lie, and it was always a lie.
As usual, the journalists and leftist have nothing to offer- no facts, no forensic evidence, no truth. Only speculation hyperbole
and hysteria. I don't believe Russia are the good guys but give me a break in all this crap!
why did cohen tell everyone even potential 'terrorists' that there is too much of exactly what 'terrorists' wish to get their
hands on in the former soviet states?!!? if he is 'so afraid' of 'terrorism...' WHY did he say THAT?!!? not very bright... or
perhaps he is FOS. idk?! wth?! SMH. maybe e is trying to inform people who r not 'terrorists,' so that people know n can figure
out how to address the issues...?
Yet, for any terrorists who wanted to know how to get materials he spoke of, now they may know a region where they could potentially
go to attain the materials... maybe in 'terrorists' circles they all know this already? it just seems concerning, is all...
Beth Lemmon, 2 years ago (edited)
Love Stephen Cohen, he is spot on and right about most if not all points, he's fair, wicked smart and sober minded. However
he isn't right about POTUS Trump. If anyone has been watching this type of discourse about world geopolitics it looks like the
NWO wants wars to depopulate the earth, set up a OWG and a utopia. It's so blatantly obvious to those who are honest and not ideologically
possessed.
They recruit their stupid Antifa army and zombie possessed minions to do their dirty work in the streets. They want send our
amazing military to do the fighting wars that are just to feed the MIC, and does nothing for America's good.
Nice take on imbecilization of important and complex topics by the US MSM and politicians.
Money quote about neoliberal Dems like Obama and Biden "
But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept.
Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They
see human suffering as a means to increase their power."
Another money quote: "in the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's everywhere and
it's deadly."
Notable quotes:
"... But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering as a means to increase their power. ..."
"... Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden. ..."
"... One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management. ..."
"... Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles." ..."
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Massive wildfires continue to sweep across huge portions of the Pacific Northwest.
In Oregon, half a million residents have been forced to evacuate -- one out of every ten people in the state.
Dozens are dead tonight, including small children. But the fires still aren't close to contained. Watch this report from Fox's
Jeff Paul:
Video report
And it continues as we speak, walls of flame consuming everything in their path: homes, animals, human beings. Tragedy on a
massive scale.
When something this awful happens, decent people pause. They put aside their own interests for a moment. They consider how they
can help. We've seen that kind of selflessness before.
This is, remember, the anniversary of 9-11.
But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all
they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering
as a means to increase their power.
These are the people who turn funerals into political rallies and feel no shame for doing it.
As Americans burned to death, people like this swung into action immediately. They went on television with a partisan talking
point: Climate change caused these fires, they said. They didn't explain how that happened. They just kept saying it.
In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: you can't see it, but it's everywhere,
and it's deadly. And, like systemic racism, it's your fault: The American middle class did it. They ate too many hamburgers,
drove too many SUVs, had too many children.
A lot of them wear T-shirts to work and didn't finish college. That causes climate change too. And, worst of all, some of them
may vote for Donald Trump in November.
If there's anything that absolutely, definitively causes climate change -- and literally over a hundred percent of scientists
agree with this established fact -- it's voting for Donald Trump. You might as well start a tire fire. You're destroying the ozone
layer.
Joe Biden has checked the science, and he agrees. Yesterday, the people on Biden's staff who understand the internet tweeted out
an image of the wildfires, along with the message, "Climate change is already here -- and we're witnessing its devastating effects
every single day. We have to get President Trump out of the White House."
Again, by voting for Donald Trump, you've made hundreds of thousands of Oregonians homeless tonight. You've killed people.
Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message
with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden.
At a time when sea levels are rising and we're about to see killer whales in the Rockies? Honestly, it doesn't seem like Obama is
overly concerned about climate change? And by the way, didn't he go to law school? When he did become a climate expert?
Those seem like good questions. But lawyers pretending to be scientists are now everywhere in the Democratic Party.
Here's the governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, a proud graduate of Willamette University law school, explaining that he's already
figured out the "cause" of the fires. Watch:
INSLEE: Fires are proof we need a stronger liberal agenda Sept 8 TRT: 18 Inslee: And these are conditions that are exacerbated
by the changing climate that we are suffering. And I do not believe that we should surrender these subdivisions or these houses
to climate change-exacerbated fires. We should fight the cause of these fires.
This is a crock. In fact, there is not a single scientist on earth who knows whether, or by how much, these fires may have been
"exacerbated" by warmer temperatures caused by "climate change," whatever that means anymore.
All we have is conjecture from a handful of scientists, none of whom have reached any definitive conclusions.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, for example, has admitted that it's, quote, "hard to determine whether climate change
played a role in sparking the fires."
Meanwhile, investigators have determined that the massive El Dorado fire in California, which has torched nearly 14,000 acres,
was caused by morons setting off some kind of fireworks. And then on Wednesday, police announced that a criminal investigation is
underway into the massive Almeda fire in Ashland, Oregon.
The sheriff there said it's too early to say what caused the fire, but he's said human remains were found at the suspected origin
point. Nothing is being ruled out, including arson.
The more you know, the more complicated it is, like everything. Serious people are just beginning to gather evidence to determine
what happened to cause this disaster.
But at the same time, unserious people are now everywhere on the media right now, drowning out nuance. Don't worry about the
facts, they say. Just trust us -- the sky orange is orange over San Francisco because households making $40,000 a year made the
mistake of voting for a Republican.
Therefore you must hand us total control of the nation's economy. Watch amateur arson detective Nancy Pelosi explain:
PELOSI: Mother Earth is angry. She's telling us, whether she's telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the
west, whatever it is, the climate crisis is real and has an impact.
Mother Nature is angry. Please. When was the last time Nancy Pelosi went outside? No one asked her. All we know is what she said:
climate change caused this. Of course.
No matter the natural disaster -- hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever -- climate change did it. Keep in mind, Nancy Pelosi owns two
sub-zero freezers. They cost $10,000 apiece.
We know because she showed them off on national television. Those use a lot of energy. Like Barack Obama, she constantly flies
private between her multi-million dollar estates all over the country.
Obviously, she doesn't care about climate change. And neither do her supporters -- otherwise, they'd be trying to destroy the
mansions she owns, not the hair salons that expose her hypocrisy.
For the left, this is really about blaming and ritually humiliating the middle-class for the election of Donald Trump. Joe Biden
knows that the Pennsylvanians who would be financially ruined by his
fracking
ban
are the same Pennsylvanians who flipped the state red in 2016 for the first time in a generation.
That's the whole point. One of the reasons Joe Biden is barely allowed outside is that he has no problem showing his contempt for
the middle-class he supposedly cares so much about.
In 2019, he openly
mocked
coal miners
and suggested they just get programming jobs once they're all fired. Watch:
BIDEN: I come from a family, an area where's coal mining in Scranton. Anybody, that can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine,
sure as hell can learn how to program as well.
Learn to code! Hilarious. Joe Biden should try it. But there isn't time. The world is ending. Last summer, Sandy Cortez [AOC] did
the math and calculated we only have
12
years left to live
.
If that sounds bad, consider this -- Just four months after that warning, Sandy Cortez tweeted that we only have 10 years to "cut
carbon emissions in half."
Think about the math here. We lost two years in just four months. At that rate, we could literally all die unless Joe Biden wins
in November. Which is of course what they're saying.
On Tuesday, California Gavin Newsom pretty much said it Newsom abandoned science long ago. Science is too stringent, too western,
too patriarchal.
Newsom is a man of faith now. He's decided
climate
change caused all of this
, and that's final. He's not listening to any other arguments. Watch:
NEWSOM: I have no patience. And I say this lovingly, not as an ideologue, but as someone who prides himself on being open to
argument, interested in evidence. But I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers. It simply follows completely
inconsistent, that point of view, with the reality on the ground.
People like Gavin Newsom don't want to listen to any "climate change deniers." What's a "climate change denier?" Anyone who
thinks our ruling class has no idea how to run their states or protect their citizens.
Are we "climate change deniers" if we point out that California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation measures that
would have dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires?
In 2018, a state oversight agency in California found that years of poor or nonexistent
forest
management policies
in the Sierra Nevada forests had contributed to wildfires.
One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on
using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management.
Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's
unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles."
Presumably, you're also a climate-change denier if you point out that six of the Oregon National Guard's wildfire-fighting
helicopters are currently in Afghanistan.
Instead of dropping water to suppress blazes, the Chinook aircraft are busy supplying a war effort that's been going on for
nearly 20 years. That seems significant. Has anyone asked Gavin Newsom or Jay Inslee about that? Do any of the Democrats who
control these states even care?
The answer, of course, is probably not. It was just last week that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti admitted on-the-record that
his city has become completely third-world.
Of course, Garcetti didn't blame himself for this turn of events. He blamed you. Quote: "It's almost 3 p.m," Garcetti tweeted.
"Time to turn off major appliances, set the thermostat to 78 degrees (or use a fan instead, turn off excess lights and unplug any
appliances you're not using. We need every Californian to help conserve energy. Please do your part."
"Please do your part." Garcetti wants his constituents to suffer to try to solve a problem that Democrats in his state created.
Even now, as residents in Northern California are facing sweeping power outages in addition to wildfires.
In the meantime, Gavin Newsom has vowed that 50 percent of California's energy grid will be based on quote "renewable" energy
sources within a decade.
That means sources like wind and solar power -- which can't be dialed up to meet periods of extreme demand, like California is
seeing right now during its heatwave.
Newsom was asked last month whether he would consider revising this stance given the blackouts that have left millions of
Californians without power.
Newsom responded, quote, "We are going to radically change the way we produce and consume energy." In other words, The blackouts
will continue until morale improves. So will the wildfires. Get used to it.
Fox News
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In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's
everywhere and it's deadly.
#FoxNews
#Tucker
This is a direct result of Gavin Newsom eliminating forestation controls. Jerry Brown kept them in place, the only thing he
did correctly. Democrats are to blame for all of this.
When environmentalists pushed through their "leave forests alone, allow nature to be undisturbed" bs, California and other
states stopped clearing underbrush, also known as fire fuel and now we see a perfect example of cause and effect.
Don't get me wrong I am a conservatist , but with common sense , we can't conserve unless we protect and nurture nature to
thrive. In fact extremism in environmentalism destroys as we see. People dead, animals dead, homes destroyed, forest destroyed
because of extremism.
The narrative to leave forests alone happened long before Trump, believing otherwise makes you a useful idiot.
Congratulations.
You could Google this old narrative but will you find it, well it's Google, you have to find the people who heard and lived
the so called natural environmental push narrative, we remember and we remember the warnings. Congratulations, your ignorance
has caused harm.
"If at any time the United States believes Iran has failed to meet its commitments, no
other state can block our ability to snap back those multilateral sanctions," Pompeo
declared in a statement posted on his official Twitter account on Sunday evening.
The top US diplomat was referring to the avalanche of sanctions Washington has been hellbent
on slapping on Tehran after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) overwhelmingly rejected
the US resolution to extend a 13-year arms embargo against the Islamic Republic past October
earlier this week.
The humiliating defeat , which saw only one member
of the 15-nation body (the Dominican Republic) siding with the US, while China and Russia
opposed the resolution, and all other nations, including France and the UK, abstained, did not
discourage Washington, which doubled down on its threat to hit Iran with biting sanctions.
... ... ...
"Of course other states can block America's ability to impose multilateral sanctions. The
US can impose sanctions by itself, but can't force others to do it," Nicholas Grossman,
teaching assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Illinois,
tweeted.
"That's what 'multilateral' means. Is our SecState really this dumb?" Grossman asked.
Daniel Larison, senior editor at the American Conservative, suggested that Pompeo might
be having a hard time grasping the meaning of the word 'multilateral'.
Some argued that Pompeo could not be unaware of the contradictory nature of his statement.
Dan Murphy, former Middle East and South Asia correspondent for the Christian Science
Monitor, called it "one of the most diplomatically illiterate sentences of all time."
"I guess the end game here is [to] alienate the rest of the world even further to feed his
persecution complex?" Murphy wrote.
John Twomey, 16 August, 2020
Explanation. What Pompeo understands and what many others can't grasp is that the US
decides if their sanctions are "multilateral" because the USA speaks for all other countries
whether they like it or not.
My Opinion, 17 August, 2020
Reminiscing of his shady past as a new CIA recruit he said. "We lied, we cheated and we stole". Apparently, Mikey didn't
do all too well in his literature classes, either and that's why the most suitable candidate from zionists perspective.
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For Americans living under coronavirus restrictions, it's a question too rarely asked. In fact it's actively discouraged.
"... We are witnessing a political game of chess where the only pieces being moved are the pawns, while the king and queen sit safely on a different board. ..."
@
6:29
""There needs to be unrest in the streets as there is unrest in our lives"" When the elite oligarchy ignore peaceful
protests, you get aggressive uprisings. It's human nature and good ol' fashioned patriotism.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
"... In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a
blow to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding. ..."
Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian
relations, has died of lung cancer at the
age of 81.
As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject
of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet,
this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen's expert analysis many times in my own work, and
his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what's really going on with
the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions
against Moscow.
In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a blow
to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding.
I don't know how long Cohen had cancer. I don't know how long he was aware that he might not
have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final
years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war,
which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.
The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019's
War
with Russia? , detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016
cold
war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in
some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.
"You know it's easy to joke about this, except that we're at maybe the most dangerous moment
in US-Russian relations in my lifetime, and maybe ever," Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. "And the reason is that we're
in a new cold war, by whatever name. We have three cold war fronts that are fraught with the
possibility of hot war, in the Baltic region where NATO is carrying out an unprecedented
military buildup on Russia's border, in Ukraine where there is a civil and proxy war between
Russia and the west, and of course in Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are
flying in the same territory. Anything could happen."
Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is
planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where "anything could happen" in the
chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as
nearly
happened many times during the last cold war.
"I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the
Cuban missile crisis," Cohen told Democracy
Now in 2017. "And arguably, it's more dangerous, because it's more complex. Therefore, we
-- and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these -- and, in my judgment, factless
accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in
American-Russian relations, we have an American president who's being politically crippled by
the worst imaginable -- it's unprecedented. Let's stop and think. No American president has
ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we're talking about here, or that his
associates have committed treason."
"Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen added. "Imagine
if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been
crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn't was to have launched a war against
the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war."
"A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War
is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived," Cohen wrote
last year . "Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to
understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political
space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements,
often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today's American Cold
Warriors blame only Russia, specifically 'Putin's Russia,' leaving no room or incentive for
rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991."
"Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold
War," Cohen added. "This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War
is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente
were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and
universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the
White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere."
"A major factor is, of course, 'Russiagate'," Cohen continued. "As evidenced in the sources
I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless
response to President Trump's pledge to find ways to 'cooperate with Russia' and to the
still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an
opposition party in regard to the new Cold War."
"Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy
pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world," Cohen
wrote in another
essay last year. "No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan
support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in
Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US
Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement
Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before
midnight."
And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The
Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war
escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party
has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of
the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly
predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth,
even while his own life was nearing its end.
And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even
more complex with the
addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been
plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping
up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions
to continue to increase.
We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand
a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for
détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this
world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet
may well depend on our doing so.
Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us
all.
People are just now starting to realize that possible alternate path. But the Demoncrats
in the USA must first be put down, politically euthanized, along with their neocon
never-Trump Republican partners. And that cleaning up is on the way. Trump's second term will
be the advancement of the USA-Russia initiative that is so long overdue.
PerilouseTimes , 48 minutes ago
Putin won't let western billionaires rape Russia's enormous natural resources and on top
of that Putin is against child molesters, that is what this Russia bashing is all about.
awesomepic4u , 1 hour ago
Sad to hear this.
What a good man. It is a real shame that we dont have others to stand up to this crazy pr
that is going on right now. Making peace with the world at this point is important. We dont need or
want another war and i am sure that both Europe and Russia dont want it on their turf but it
seems we keep sticking our finger in their eye. If there is another war it will be the last
war. As Einstein said, after the 3rd World War we will be using sticks and stones to fight
it.
Clint Liquor , 44 minutes ago
Cohen truly was an island of reason in a sea of insanity. Ironic that those panicked over
climate change are unconcerned about the increasing threat of Nuclear War.
thunderchief , 41 minutes ago
One of the very few level headed people on Russia.
All thats left are anti Russia-phobic nut jobs.
Send in the clowns.
Stephen Cohen isn't around to call them what they are anymore.
Eastern Whale , 55 minutes ago
cooperate with Russia
Has the US ever cooperated with anyone?
fucking truth , 3 minutes ago
That is the crux. All or nothing.
Mustafa Kemal , 49 minutes ago
Ive read several of his books. They are essential, imo, if you want to understand modern
russian history.
Normal , 1 hour ago
The bankers created the new CCP cold war.
evoila , 19 minutes ago
Max Boot is an effing idiot. Tucker wiped him clean too. It was an insult to Stephen to
even put them on the same panel.
RIP Stephen.
Gary Sick is the equivalent to Stephen, except for Iran. He too is of an era of competence
which is and will be missed as their voices are drowned out by neocon warmongers
thebigunit , 17 minutes ago
I heard Stephen Cohen a number of time in John Bachelor's podcasts.
He seemed very lucid and made a lot of sense.
He made it very clear that he thought the Democrat's "Trump - Russia collusion schtick"
was a bunch of crap.
He didn't sound like a leftie, but I'm sure he never told me the stuff he discussed with
his wife who was editor of the left wing "The Nation" magazine.
Boogity , 9 minutes ago
Cohen was a traditional old school anti-war Liberal. They're essentially extinct now with
the exception of a few such as Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich who have both been
ostracized from the Democrat Party and the political system.
So, it appears the War on Populism is building
toward an exciting climax. All the proper pieces are in place for a Class-A GloboCap color
revolution , and maybe even civil war. You got your unauthorized Putin-Nazi president, your
imaginary apocalyptic pandemic, your violent identitarian civil unrest, your heavily-armed
politically-polarized populace, your ominous rumblings from military quarters you couldn't
really ask for much more.
OK, the plot is pretty obvious by now (as it is in all big-budget action spectacles, which
is essentially what color revolutions are), but that won't spoil our viewing experience. The
fun isn't in guessing what is going to happen. Everybody knows what's going to happen. The fun
is in watching Bruce, or Sigourney, or "the moderate rebels," or the GloboCap "Resistance,"
take down the monster, or the terrorists, or Hitler, and save the world, or democracy, or
whatever.
Trump represent new "national neoliberalism" platform and the large part of the US neoliberal elite (Clinton gang and large part
of republicans) support the return to "classic neoliberalism" at all costs.
Highly recommended!
The essence of color revolution is the combination of engineered contested election and mass organized protest and civil disobedience
via creation in neoliberal fifth column out of "professionals", especially students as well as mobilizing and put on payroll some useful
disgruntled groups which can be used as a foot soldiers, such as football hooligans. Large and systematic injection of dollars into
protest movement. All with the air cover via domination in a part or all nation's MSM.
He served as US ambassador in Chich Republic from 2011 to 2014. Based on his experience wrote that book
Democracy's Defenders published by The Brookings Institution, a neoliberal think tank, about the role of US embassy in neoliberal
revolution in Czechoslovakia (aka Velvet Revolution of 1989) which led to the dissolution of the country into two. BTW demonstrations
against police brutality were an essential part of the Velvet Revolution
Notable quotes:
"... Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West." ..."
This is, without ANY question, one of Tucker's most important segments that he has ever done. IT IS EXTREMELY-RARE THAT
"""they""" ARE EXPOSED, BY-NAME, SO OPENLY AND DIRECTLY, BUT, IT HAPPENED, TONIGHT.
Please bring back Dr. Darren Beattie back. More info. on the color revolutions, Mr. Eisen, crew, and their relationship
to mail in voting fraud and their impact on the 2020 election is needed. If Mr. Eisens methods are to be used in the 2020 election
mass awareness is needed.
This is not about Trump. The endgame of the deep state is to enslave people through social division. The election is a wrestling
match for entertainment.
Sheesh, he looks scared. I hope he's being well protected now. Darren is a very brave man who is trying to tell the citizens
of the US that there is malice aforethought towards the President and this election. It is now not a choice between Republicans
or Democrats, it is a fight between good and evil. I'm sure Trump and his team are aware of the playbook and will do everything
they can to sort this, with God's help. It may get hairy, but trust the plan.
I have a feeling dems will "rig for red" to frame republicans for voter fraud, overlooking the overwhelming amount of voter
fraud in favor of Biden Harris. Causing outrage and calls to remove the President from office and saying Biden actually won.
When he really did not. Be prepared. Stay strong.
Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries
in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people
who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West."
american people still don't know and can't understand what's happening and what their government is doing, even right now
it's happening in Belarus, it happened in Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong and etc. and now it's happening in your own country,
wake up people and don't forget who's behind all this - a NGO founded by CIA called NED (National endowment for democracy),
Soros and his NGOs and the deep state.
"... Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. ..."
"... the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values ..."
Worldwide media use the term Colour Revolution (sometimes Coloured Revolution
) to describe various
related movements that developed in several countries of the former Soviet Union , in the People's Republic of
China and in the Balkans during the early-21st century. The term has
also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East and in the
Asia-Pacific region,
dating from the 1980s to the 2010s. Some observers (such as Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind ) have called the events a
revolutionary
wave , the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known
as the "Yellow Revolution") in the Philippines .
Participants in colour revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance , also called
civil resistance .
Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have aimed to
protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian and to advocate democracy , and they have built up
strong pressure for change.
Colour-revolution movements generally became associated with a specific colour or flower as
their symbol. The colour revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organising creative
non-violent resistance .
Such movements have had a measure of success as for example in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia 's Bulldozer
Revolution (2000), in Georgia 's Rose Revolution (2003) and in Ukraine 's Orange Revolution (2004). In most but not
all cases, massive street-protests followed disputed elections or requests for fair elections
and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders regarded by their opponents as authoritarian . Some events have been called "colour revolutions", but differ from the
above cases in certain basic characteristics. Examples include Lebanon's Cedar Revolution (2005) and
Kuwait 's Blue Revolution
(2005).
Russia and China share nearly identical views that colour revolutions are the product of
machinations by the United States and other Western powers and pose a vital threat to their
public and national security.
The 1986 People Power Revolution (also
called the " EDSA " or the "Yellow"
Revolution) in the Philippines was the first successful non-violent uprising in the
contemporary period. It was the culmination of peaceful demonstrations against the
rule of
then-President Ferdinand Marcos – all of which
increased after the 1983 assassination of
opposition Senator Benigno S. Aquino,
Jr. A contested snap election on 7 February 1986 and a
call by the powerful Filipino Catholic
Church sparked mass protests across Metro Manila from 22–25 February.
The Revolution's iconic L-shaped Laban sign comes from the Filipino term for
People Power, " Lakás ng Bayan ", whose acronym is " LABAN " ("fight").
The yellow-clad protesters, later joined by the Armed Forces , ousted
Marcos and installed Aquino's widow Corazón as the country's eleventh
President, ushering in the present Fifth
Republic .
Long-standing secessionist sentiment in Bougainville eventually led to conflict with
Papua New Guinea. The inhabitants of Bougainville Island formed the Bougainville
Revolutionary Army and fought against government troops. On 20 April 1998, Papua New
Guinea ended the civil war. In 2005, Papua New Guinea gave autonomy to Bougainville.
in 1989, a peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by
the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in
Czechoslovakia.
The 'Bulldozer Revolution' in 2000, which led to the overthrow of
Slobodan Milošević . These demonstrations are usually considered to be the
first example of the peaceful revolutions which followed. However, the Serbians adopted an
approach that had already been used in parliamentary elections in Bulgaria (1997) ,
Slovakia (1998) and
Croatia (2000) ,
characterised by civic mobilisation through get-out-the-vote campaigns and unification of
the political opposition. The nationwide protesters did not adopt a colour or a specific
symbol; however, the slogan " Gotov je " (Serbian Cyrillic:
Готов је , English: He is finished
) did become an aftermath symbol celebrating the completion of the task. Despite the
commonalities, many others refer to Georgia as the most definite beginning of the series of
"colour revolutions". The demonstrations were supported by the youth movement Otpor! , some of whose members
were involved in the later revolutions in other countries.
Following the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the
Adjara
crisis (sometimes called "Second Rose Revolution" or Mini-Rose
Revolution ) led to the
exit of Chairman of the Government Aslan Abashidze from office.
Purple
Revolution was a name first used by some hopeful commentators and later picked up by
United States President George W. Bush to describe the coming of
democracy to Iraq following the 2005 Iraqi
legislative election and was intentionally used to draw the parallel with the Orange
and Rose revolutions. However, the name "purple revolution" has not achieved widespread use
in Iraq, the United States or elsewhere. The name comes from the colour that voters' index
fingers were stained to prevent fraudulent multiple voting. The term first appeared shortly
after the January 2005 election in various weblogs and editorials of individuals supportive
of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The term
received its widest usage during a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush on 24 February 2005 to
Bratislava , Slovak
Republic, for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Bush stated: "In recent
times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty: A Rose Revolution in
Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and now, a Purple Revolution in Iraq."
The Tulip
Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Pink Revolution") was more violent
than its predecessors and followed the disputed 2005 Kyrgyz
parliamentary election . At the same time, it was more fragmented than previous
"colour" revolutions. The protesters in different areas adopted the colours pink and yellow
for their protests. This revolution was supported by youth resistance movement KelKel .
The Cedar
Revolution in Lebanon between February and April 2005 followed not a disputed election,
but rather the assassination of opposition leader Rafik Hariri in 2005. Also, instead of the
annulment of an election, the people demanded an end to the Syrian occupation of
Lebanon . Nonetheless, some of its elements and some of the methods used in the
protests have been similar enough that it is often considered and treated by the press and
commentators as one of the series of "colour revolutions". The Cedar of Lebanon is the symbol of the
country, and the revolution was named after it. The peaceful demonstrators used the colours
white and red, which are found in the Lebanese flag. The protests led to the pullout of
Syrian troops
in April 2005, ending their nearly 30-year presence there, although Syria retains some
influence in Lebanon.
Blue Revolution was a term used by some Kuwaitis to refer to
demonstrations in Kuwait in support of women's suffrage
beginning in March 2005; it was named after the colour of the signs the protesters used. In
May of that year the Kuwaiti government acceded to their demands, granting women the right
to vote beginning in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Since there was
no call for regime change, the so-called "blue revolution" cannot be categorised as a true
colour revolution.
In Belarus, there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with
participation from student group Zubr . One round of
protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the
Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely
suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .
A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006,
soon after the presidential
election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters
claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed
by many foreign governments.
Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for
the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar
Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.
The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the
movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during
the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During
the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim
Revolution",
blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into
ribbons and hung them in public places. It is
claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.
Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or
even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is
ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue '
revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On
19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these coloured revolutions are pure and simple
banditry."
In Myanmar (unofficially called Burma), a series of anti-government protests were
referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution
after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally
wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led
revolution, the 8888
Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was
violently repressed.
The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution,
similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan
parliamentary elections , while the Christian
Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the
events of Ukraine.
A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance
of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the
governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a
fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the
political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived
pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer
in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where
similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned
them.
Green Movement is a term widely used to describe the 2009–2010
Iranian election protests . The protests began in 2009, several years after the main
wave of colour revolutions, although like them it began due to a disputed election, the
2009 Iranian
presidential election . Protesters adopted the colour green as their symbol because it
had been the campaign colour of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi , whom many
protesters thought had won the elections .
However Mousavi and his wife went under house arrest without any trial issued by a
court.
The Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010 in
Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Melon Revolution") led to the
exit of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office. The
total number of deaths should be 2,000.
Jasmine Revolution was a widely used term for the
Tunisian
Revolution . The Jasmine Revolution led to the exit of President Ben Ali from office and
the beginning of the Arab Spring .
Lotus Revolution was a term used by various western news sources to describe the
Egyptian Revolution of 2011
that forced President Mubarak to step down in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring , which followed the Jasmine
Revolution of Tunisia. Lotus is known as the flower representing resurrection, life and the
sun of ancient Egypt. It is uncertain who gave the name, while columnist of Arabic press,
Asharq Alawsat, and prominent Egyptian opposition leader Saad Eddin Ibrahim claimed to name
it the Lotus Revolution. Lotus Revolution later became common on western news source such
as CNN. Other names,
such as White Revolution and Nile Revolution, are used but are minor terms compare to Lotus
Revolution. The term Lotus Revolution is rarely, if ever, used in the Arab world.
In February 2011, Bahrain was also affected by protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Bahrain
has long been famous for its pearls and Bahrain's speciality. And there was the Pearl
Square in Manama, where the demonstrations began. The people of Bahrain were also
protesting around the square. At first, the government of Bahrain promised to reform the
people. But when their promises were not followed, the people resisted again. And in the
process, bloodshed took place (18 March 2011). After that, a small demonstration is taking
place in Bahrain.
An anti-government protest started in Yemen in 2011. The Yemeni people sought to resign
Ali Abdullah Saleh as the ruler. On 24 November, Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to transfer the
regime. In 2012, Ali Abdullah Saleh finally fled to the United States(27 February).
A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States
for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social
networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a
heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central
Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather
there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area.
Boxun experienced a denial of service attack
during this period and was inaccessible.
Protests started on 4 December 2011 in the capital, Moscow against the results of the parliamentary
elections, which led to the arrests of over 500 people. On 10 December, protests erupted in
tens of cities across the country; a few months later, they spread to hundreds both inside
the country and abroad. The name of the Snow Revolution derives from December - the month
when the revolution had started - and from the white ribbons the protesters wore.
Many analysts and participants of the protests against President of Macedonia Gjorge
Ivanov and the Macedonian
government refer to them as a "colourful Revolution", due to the demonstrators throwing
paint balls of different colours at government buildings in Skopje , the capital.
In 2018, a peaceful revolution was led by
member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan in opposition to the
nomination of Serzh
Sargsyan as Prime Minister of Armenia ,
who had previously served as both President of Armenia and prime
minister, eliminating term limits which would have otherwise
prevented his 2018 nomination. Concerned that Sargsyan's third consecutive term as the most
powerful politician in the government of Armenia gave him too much political influence,
protests occurred throughout the country, particularly in Yerevan , but demonstrations in solidarity with
the protesters also occurred in other countries where Armenian diaspora live.
During the
protests, Pashinyan was arrested and detained on 22 April, but he was released the
following day. Sargsyan stepped down from the position of Prime Minister, and his
Republican Party decided to
not put forward a candidate. An interim
Prime Minister was selected from Sargsyan's party until elections were held, and protests
continued for over one month. Crowd sizes in Yerevan consisted of 115,000 to 250,000 people
at a time throughout the revolution, and hundreds of protesters were arrested. Pashinyan
referred to the event as a Velvet Revolution. A vote was
held in parliament, and Pashinyan became the Prime Minister of Armenia.
Many have cited the influence of the series of revolutions which
occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the
Velvet Revolution
in Czechoslovakia in 1989. A
peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the
police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in
Czechoslovakia. Yet the roots of the pacifist floral imagery may go even further back to the
non-violent Carnation Revolution of Portugal in
April 1974, which is associated with the colour carnation because carnations were worn, and the 1986 Yellow Revolution in
the Philippines where demonstrators offered peace flowers to military personnel manning
armoured tanks.
Student movements
The first of these was Otpor! ("Resistance!") in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, which was founded at Belgrade University in October 1998 and
began protesting against Miloševic' during the Kosovo War . Most of them were already veterans
of anti-Milošević demonstrations such as the 1996–97 protests
and the 9 March
1991 protest . Many of its members were arrested or beaten by the police. Despite this,
during the presidential campaign in September 2000, Otpor launched its " Gotov je " (He's finished) campaign that
galvanised Serbian discontent with Miloševic' and resulted in his defeat.
Members of Otpor have inspired and trained members of related student movements including
Kmara in Georgia, Pora in
Ukraine, Zubr in Belarus and
MJAFT! in Albania. These
groups have been explicit and scrupulous in their practice of non-violent resistance as advocated
and explained in Gene
Sharp 's writings. The massive
protests that they have organised, which were essential to the successes in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, have been notable for their colourfulness and use
of ridiculing humor in opposing authoritarian leaders.
Critical analysis
The analysis of international geopolitics scholars Paul J. Bolt and Sharyl N. Cross is that
"Moscow and Beijing share almost indistinguishable views on the potential domestic and
international security threats posed by colored revolutions, and both nations view these
revolutionary movements as being orchestrated by the United States and its Western democratic
partners to advance geopolitical ambitions."
Russian
assessment
According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies , Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and
European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states
as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties."
Government figures in Russia , such as Defence Minister
Sergei Shoigu (in
office from 2012) and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (in office from 2004), have
characterised colour revolutions as externally-fuelled acts with a clear goal to influence the
internal affairs that destabilise the economy, conflict with the law and represent a new form of warfare. Russian President
Vladimir Putin has
stated that Russia must prevent colour revolutions: "We see what tragic consequences the wave
of so-called colour revolutions led to. For us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do
everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia".
The 2015 presidential decree The Russian Federation's National Security Strategy (
О Стратегии
Национальной
Безопасности
Российской
Федерации ) cites "foreign sponsored
regime change" among "main threats to public and national security," including
the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious
extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial
and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and
social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying
traditional Russian religious and moral values
Chinese view
Articles published by the Global Times , a state-run nationalist tabloid, indicate that Chinese
leaders also anticipate the Western powers, such as the United States, using "color revolutions" as a means to undermine the one-party state. An article published on 8 May 2016 claims: "A
variation of containment seeks to press China on human rights and democracy with the hope of
creating a 'color revolution.'" A 13 August 2019
article declared that the 2019 Hong Kong extradition
bill protests were a colour revolution that "aim[ed] to ruin HK 's future."
The 2015 policy white paper "China's Military Strategy" by the State Council
Information Office said that "anti-China forces have never given up their attempt to
instigate a 'color revolution' in this country."
Azerbaijan
A number of movements were created in Azerbaijan in mid-2005, inspired by the examples
of both Georgia and Ukraine. A youth group, calling itself Yox! (which means No!), declared its opposition to
governmental corruption. The leader of Yox! said that unlike Pora or Kmara , he wants to change not just the leadership,
but the entire system of governance in Azerbaijan. The Yox movement chose green as its colour.
The spearhead of Azerbaijan's attempted colour revolution was Yeni Fikir ("New Idea"), a
youth group closely aligned with the Azadlig (Freedom) Bloc of opposition political parties.
Along with groups such as Magam ("It's Time") and Dalga ("Wave"), Yeni Fikir deliberately
adopted many of the tactics of the Georgian and Ukrainian colour revolution groups, even
borrowing the colour orange from the Ukrainian revolution.
In November 2005 protesters took to the streets, waving orange flags and banners, to protest
what they considered government fraud in recent parliamentary elections. The Azerbaijani colour revolution finally fizzled out with the police riot on 26
November, during which dozens of protesters were injured and perhaps hundreds teargassed and
sprayed with water cannons.
On 5 February 2013, protests began in Shahbag and later spread to other parts of
Bangladesh following
demands for capital punishment for Abdul Quader Mollah , who had been
sentenced to life imprisonment, and for others convicted of war crimes by the International
Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh . On that
day, the International Crimes
Tribunal had sentenced Mollah to life in prison after he was convicted on five of six
counts of war crimes . Later
demands included banning the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party
from politics including election and a boycott of institutions supporting (or affiliated with)
the party.
Protesters considered Mollah's sentence too lenient, given his crimes. Bloggers and online activists called for additional protests at Shahbag.
Tens of thousands of people joined the demonstration, which gave rise to protests across the
country.
The movement demanding trial of war criminals is a protest movement in Bangladesh, from 1972
to present.
Belarus
In Belarus , there have
been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with
participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests
culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan
revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it,
arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .
A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon
after the presidential election
. Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results
were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign
governments.
Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the
resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič ,
and new, fair elections.
The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had
significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution
some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called
it the " Jeans
Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue
jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung
them in public places. It is
claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.
Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even
banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for
some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue'
revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19
April 2005, he further commented: "All these colored revolutions are pure and simple
banditry."
In Burma (officially called Myanmar), a series of anti-government protests were referred to
in the press as the Saffron Revolution after
Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear
the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the
8888 Uprising on 8
August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently
repressed.
A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for
a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking
sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police
presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13
designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations
were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area.
Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during
this period and was inaccessible.
In the 2000s, Fiji suffered numerous coups. But at the same time, many Fiji citizens
resisted the military. In Fiji, there have been many human rights abuses by the military.
Anti-government protesters in Fiji have fled to Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Fijians
conducted anti Fijian government protests in Australia. On 17 September
2014, the first democratic general election was held in Fiji.
In 2015, Otto
Pérez Molina , President of Guatemala, was suspected of corruption. In Guatemala City,
a large number of protests rallied. Demonstrations took place from April to September 2015.
Otto Pérez
Molina was eventually arrested on 3 September. The people of Guatemala called this event
"Guatemalan Spring".
Moldova
The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution,
similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan
parliamentary elections , while the Christian
Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events
of Ukraine.
A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of
vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the
governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a
fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the
political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and
anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election
monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions
occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.
On 25 March 2005, activists wearing yellow scarves held protests in the capital city of
Ulaanbaatar , disputing
the results of the 2004 Mongolian
parliamentary elections and calling for fresh elections. One of the chants heard in that
protest was "Let's congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers for their revolutionary spirit. Let's free
Mongolia of corruption."
An uprising commenced in Ulaanbaatar on 1 July 2008, with a peaceful meeting in protest of
the election of 29 June. The results of these elections were (it was claimed by opposition
political parties) corrupted by the Mongolian People's Party (MPRP).
Approximately 30,000 people took part in the meeting. Afterwards, some of the protesters left
the central square and moved to the HQ of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party –
which they attacked and then burned down. A police station was also attacked. By the night
rioters vandalised and then set fire to the Cultural Palace (which contained a theatre, museum
and National art gallery). Cars torching, bank
robberies and looting were reported. The
organisations in the burning buildings were vandalised and looted. Police used tear gas, rubber
bullets and water cannon against stone-throwing protesters. A 4-day
state of emergency was installed, the capital has been placed under a 2200 to 0800 curfew, and
alcohol sales banned, rioting not
resumed. 5 people
were shot dead by the police ,
dozens of teenagers were wounded from the police firearms and disabled and
800 people, including the leaders of the civil movements J. Batzandan, O. Magnai and B.
Jargalsakhan, were arrested. International
observers said 1 July general election was free and fair.
In 2007, the Lawyers' Movement started in Pakistan with the aim of restoration
of deposed judges. However, within a month the movement took a turn and started working towards
the goal of removing Pervez Musharraf from power.
The liberal opposition in Russia is represented by several parties and
movements.
An active part of the opposition is the Oborona youth movement. Oborona
claims that its aim is to provide free and honest elections and to establish in Russia a system
with democratic political competition. This movement under the leadership of Oleg
Kozlovsky was one of the most active and radical ones and is represented in a number of
Russian cities. During the elections of 8 September 2013, the movement contributed to the
success of Navalny in Moscow and other opposition candidates in various regions and towns
throughout Russia. The "oboronkis" also took part with other oppositional groups in protests
against fraud in the Moscow mayoral elections.
Since the 2012 protests, Aleksei Navalny mobilised with support of
the various and fractured opposition parties and masses of young people against the alleged
repression and fraud of the Kremlin apparatus. After a strong
campaign for the 8 September elections in Moscow and the regions, the opposition won remarkable
successes. Navalny reached a second place in Moscow with surprising 27% behind Kremlin-backed
Sergei Sobyanin
finishing with 51% of the votes. In other regions, opposition candidates received remarkable
successes. In the big industrial town of Yekaterinburg, opposition candidate Yevgeny Roizman received the majority
of votes and became the mayor of that town. The slow but gradual sequence of opposition
successes reached by mass protests, election campaigns and other peaceful strategies has been
recently called by observers and analysts as of Radio Free Europe "Tortoise Revolution"
in contrast to the radical "rose" or "orange" ones the Kremlin tried to prevent.
The opposition in the Republic of Bashkortostan has held protests demanding
that the federal authorities intervene to dismiss Murtaza Rakhimov from his position as
president of the republic, accusing him of leading an "arbitrary, corrupt, and violent" regime.
Airat
Dilmukhametov , one of the opposition leaders, and leader of the
Bashkir National Front , has said that the opposition movement has been inspired from the
mass protests of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Another
opposition leader, Marat
Khaiyirulin , has said that if an Orange Revolution were to happen in Russia, it would
begin in Bashkortostan.
From 2016 to 2017, the candlelight protest was going on in South Korea with the aim to force the ousting
of President Park
Geun-hye . Park was impeached and removed from office, and new presidential
elections were held.
In Uzbekistan , there
has been longstanding opposition to President Islam Karimov , from liberals and Islamists.
Following protests in 2005, security forces in Uzbekistan carried out the Andijan massacre that successfully
halted country-wide demonstrations. These protests otherwise could have turned into colour
revolution, according to many analysts.
The revolution in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan began in the largely ethnic Uzbek south, and
received early support in the city of Osh . Nigora
Hidoyatova , leader of the Free
Peasants opposition party, has referred to the idea of a peasant revolt or 'Cotton
Revolution'. She also said that her party is collaborating with the youth organisation
Shiddat , and that she
hopes it can evolve to an organisation similar to Kmara or Pora. Other nascent
youth organisations in and for Uzbekistan include Bolga
and the freeuzbek
group.
When groups of young people protested the closure of Venezuela's RCTV television station in June 2007, president
Hugo Chávez
said that he believed the protests were organised by the West in an attempt to promote a "soft
coup" like the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Similarly,
Chinese authorities claimed repeatedly in the state-run media that both the 2014 Hong Kong protests
– known as the Umbrella Revolution – as well as
the 2019–20 Hong Kong
protests , were organised and controlled by the United States.
In July 2007, Iranian state television released footage of two Iranian-American prisoners,
both of whom work for western NGOs, as part of a documentary called "In the Name of Democracy."
The documentary purportedly discusses the colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and accuses
the United States of attempting to foment a similar ouster in Iran.
Other
examples and political movements around the world
The imagery of a colour revolution has been adopted by various non-revolutionary electoral
campaigns. The 'Purple Revolution' social media campaign of Naheed Nenshi catapulted his platform from 8%
to become Calgary's 36th Mayor. The platform advocated city sustainability and to inspire the
high voter turn out of 56%, particularly among young voters.
In 2015, the NDP of Alberta earned a majority
mandate and ended the 44-year-old dynasty of the Progressive
Conservatives . During the campaign Rachel Notley 's popularity gained momentum,
and the news and NDP supporters referred to this phenomenon as the "Orange Crush" per the
party's colour. NDP parodies of Orange flavoured Crush soda logo became a popular meme on
social media.
"... One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out against Trump explicitly ..."
"... Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct. ..."
In our report on Never
Trump State Department official George Kent , Revolver News first drew attention
to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government
employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats,
NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.
Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros
linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games"
exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos
should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election"
scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework
sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series.
This third installment of Revolver News ' series exposing the Color Revolution
against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the
Transition Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of
Norm Eisen.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for
suing the President into paralysis and his
allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted
10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever
called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as special counsel
litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world
leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic
election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against
President Trump.
Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to
delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the
United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color revolution
playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same regime
change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to
undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very same
playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply,
what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same
people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets
overseas -- same people same playbook.
In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal
turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual,
and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."
Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar ( yes, Norm Eisen
was Obama's ethics Czar ), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently
partook in war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a
detailed playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm
Eisen only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned
chaos unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election
in our nation's recent history.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
"I'd Rather Have This Book Than The Atomic Bomb"
Before we can fully appreciate the significance of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual "The
Playbook," we must contextualize this important book in relation to its place in Color
Revolution literature.
As a bit of a refresher to the reader, it is important to emphasize that when we use the
term "Color Revolution" we do not mean any general type of revolution -- indeed, one of the
chief advantages of the Color Revolution framework we advance is that it offers a specific and
concrete heuristic by which to understand the operations against Trump beyond the accurate but
more vague term "coup." Unlike the overt, blunt, method of full scale military invasion as was
the case in Iraq War, a Color Revolution employs the following strategies and tactics:
A "Color Revolution" in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that
the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly
in Eastern Europe deemed to be "authoritarian" and hostile to American interests. Rather than
using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions
attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and
acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to
their agenda in the Western press.
[Revolver]
This combination of tactics used in so-called Color Revolutions did not come from nowhere.
Before Norm Eisen came Gene Sharp -- originator and Godfather of the Color Revolution model
that has been a staple of US Government operations externally (and now internally) for decades.
Before Norm Eisen's "Playbook" there was Gene Sharp's classic "From Dictatorship to Democracy,"
which might be justly described as the Bible of the Color Revolution. Such is the power of the
strategies laid out by Sharp that a Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp's preceding
book (upon which Dictatorship to Democracy builds) that "I would
rather have this book than the nuclear bomb."
Gene Sharp
It would be impossible to do full justice to Gene Sharp within the scope of this specific
article. Here are some choice excerpts about Sharp and his biography to give readers a taste of
his significance and relevance to this discussion.
Gene Sharp, the "Machiavelli of nonviolence," has been fairly described as "the most
influential American political figure you've never heard of."
1 Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet "mysterious" intellectual
giant of nonviolent protest movements , the "father of the whole field of the study of
strategic nonviolent action."
2 Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social
movements. His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to
Democracy , has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest
movements around the world . In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist
training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major
protest movement in the last forty years .
3 For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard
Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi,
and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left .
4
Gene Sharp's influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been
significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense
intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly
inherent violence of the "centralized State," and a quiet but vital counselor to
anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.
In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited
29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard , bastion of the
high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called "CIA
at Harvard" were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future
CIA chief Robert Bowie. Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department
of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare
capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the
common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots. From his post at the
CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against
the Soviet Union. [Nonsite]
We invite the reader to reflect on the passages in bold, particularly their potential
relevance to the current domestic situation in the United States. Sharp's book and strategy for
"non violent revolution" AKA "peaceful protests" has been used to undermine or overthrow target
governments all over the world, particularly in Eastern Europe.
Gene's color revolution playbook was of course especially effective in Eastern Bloc
countries in Eastern Europe:
Finally, there is no shortage of analysis as to the applicability of Sharp's methods
domestically within the USA in order to advance various left wing causes. This passage
specifically mentions the applicability of Sharp's methods to counter act Trump.
Ominous stuff indeed. For readers who wish to read further, please consult
the full Politico piece from which we have excerpted the above highlighted passages. There
is also a fascinating documentary on Sharp instructively titled "
How to Start a Revolution ."
This is all interesting and disturbing, to say the least. In its own right it would suggest
a compelling nexus point between the operations run against Trump and the Color Revolution
playbook. But what does this have to do with our subject Norm Eisen? It just so happens that
Eisen explicitly places himself in the tradition of Gene Sharp, acknowledging his book "The
Playbook" as a kind of update to Sharp's seminal "Dictatorship to Democracy."
And there we have it, folks -- Norm Eisen, former Obama Ethics Czar, Ambassador to
Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," key counsel in impeachment effort against Trump,
and participant in the ostensibly bi-partisan election war games predicting a contested
election scenario unfavorable to Trump -- just happens to be a Color Revolution expert who
literally wrote the modern "Playbook" in the explicitly acknowledged tradition of Color
Revolution Godfather Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy."
Before we turn to the contents of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual, full title "The
Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," it will be useful to make
a brief point regarding the term "democracy" itself, which happens to appear in the title of
Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" as well.
Just like the term "peaceful protestor," which, as we pointed out in our George Kent essay
is used as a term of craft in the Color Revolution context, so is the term "democracy" itself.
The US Government launches Color Revolutions against foreign targets irrespective of whether
they actually enjoy the support of the people or were elected democratically. In the case of
Trump, whatever one says about him, he is perhaps the most "democratically" elected President
in America's history. Indeed, in 2016 Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of the
establishments of both parties, the military industrial complex, the corporate media,
Hollywood, and really every single powerful institution in the country. He won, however,
because he was able to garner sufficient support of the people -- his true and decisive power
base as a "populist." Precisely because of the ultra democratic "populist" character of Trump's
victory, the operatives attempting to undermine him have focused specifically on attacking the
democratic legitimacy of his victory.
In this vein we ought to note that the term "democratic backsliding," as seen in the
subtitle of Norm Eisen's book, and its opposite "democratic breakthrough" are also terms of art
in the Color Revolution lexicon. We leave the full exploration of how the term "democratic" is
used deceptively in the Color Revolution context (and in names of decidedly
anti-democratic/populist institutions) as an exercise to the interested reader. Michael McFaul,
another Color Revolution expert and key anti-Trump operative somewhat gives the game away in
the following tweet in which the term "democratic breakthrough" makes an appearance as a better
sounding alternative to "Color Revolution:"
Most likely as a response to Revolver News' first Color Revolution article on State
Department official George Kent, former Ambassador McFaul issued the following tweet as a
matter of damage control:
Being a rather simple man from a simple background, McFaul perhaps gave too much of this
answer away in the following explanation (now deleted).
Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to
serve as our Commander in Chief ?
With this now-deleted tweet we get a clearer picture of the power bases that must be
satisfied for a "democratic breakthrough" to occur -- and conveniently enough, not one of them
is subject to direct democratic control. McFaul, Like Eisen, George Kent, and so many others,
perfectly embodies Revolver's thesis regarding the Color Revolution being the same
people running the same playbook. Indeed, like most of the star never-Trump impeachment
witnesses, McFaul has been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. He has supported
operations against Trump, including impeachment. And, like Norm Eisen, he has actually
written
a book on Color Revolutions (more on that later).
Norm Eisen's The Democracy Playbook: A Brief Overview:
A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé.
It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to
underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen
simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when
foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via
extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.
First, consider the following passage from Eisen's Playbook:
If you study this passage closely, you will find direct confirmation of our earlier point
that "democracy" in the Color Revolution context is a term of art -- it refers to anything they
like that keeps the national security bureaucrats in power. Anything they don't like, even if
elected democratically, is considered "anti-democratic," or, put another way, "democratic
backsliding." Eisen even acknowledges that this scourge of populism he's so worried about
actually was ushered in with "popular support," under "relatively democratic and electoral
processes." The problem is precisely that the people have had enough of the corrupt ruling
class ignoring their needs. Accordingly, the people voted first for Brexit and then for Donald
Trump -- terrifying expressions of populism which the broader Western power structure did
everything in its capacity to prevent. Once they failed, they viewed these twin populist
victories as a kind of political 9/11 to be prevented by any means necessary from recurring.
Make no mistake, the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense
and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power
to meddle in their own elections again.
The passage above can be insightfully compared to the passage in Gene Sharp's book noting
ripe applications to the domestic situation.
It is instructive to compare the passage in Eisen's Color Revolution book to the passage in
Michael McFaul's Color Revolution book
First off, it is absolutely imperative to look at every single one of the conditions for a
Color Revolution that McFaul identifies. It is simply impossible not to be overcome with the
ominous parallels to our current situation. Specifically, however, note condition 1 which
refers to having a target leader who is not fully authoritarian, but semi-autocratic. This
coincides perfectly well with Eisen's concession that the populist leaders he's so concerned
about might be "illiberal" but enjoy "popular support" and have come to power via "relatively
democratic electoral processes."
Consulting the above passage from McFaul's book, we note that McFaul has been perhaps the
most explicit about the conditions which facilitate a Color Revolution. We invite the reader to
supply the contemporary analogue to each point as a kind of exercise.
A semi-autocratic regime rather than fully autocratic
An unpopular incumbent (note blanket negative coverage of Trump, fake polls)
A united and organized opposition (media, intel community, Hollywood, community groups,
etc)
Enough independent media to inform citizens of falsified vote (see full court press in
media pushing contested election narrative, social media censorship)
A political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators to
protest electoral fraud ( SEE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND ANTIFA )
On point number four, which is especially relevant to our present situation, Eisen has an
interesting thing to say about the role of a contested election scenario in the Orange
Revolution, arguably the most important Color Revolution of them all.
Finally, let's look at one last passage from Norm Eisen's Color Revolution "Democracy
Playbook" and cross-reference it with McFaul's conditions for a Color Revolution as well as the
situation playing out right now before our very eyes:
A few things immediately jump out at us. First, the ominous instruction: "prepare to use
electoral abuse evidence as the basis for reform advocacy." Secondly, we note the passage
suggesting that opposition to a target leader might avail itself of "extreme institutional
measures" including impeachment processes, votes of no confidence, and, of course, the good
old-fashioned "protests, strikes, and boycotts" (all more or less peaceful no doubt).
By now the Color Revolution agenda against Trump should be as plain as day. Regime change
professionals like McFaul, Eisen, George Kent, and others, who have refined their craft
conducting color revolutions overseas, have taken it upon themselves to use the same tools, the
same tactics -- quite literally, the same playbook -- to overthrow President Trump. Yet again,
same people, same playbook.
We conclude this study of key Color Revolution figure Norm Eisen by exploring his
particularly proactive -- indeed central role -- in effecting one of the Color Revolution's
components mentioned in the Eisen Playbook -- impeachment.
-- -- -- –
The Ghost of Democracy's Future
We mentioned at the outset of this piece that Norm Eisen is many things -- a former Obama
Ethics Czar (but of course), Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, participant in the now notorious
Transition Integrity Project, et cetera. But he earned his title as "legal hatchet man" of the
Color Revolution for his tireless efforts in promoting the impeachment of President Trump.
The litany of Norm Eisen's legal activity cited at the beginning of this piece bears
repeating.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint
for suing the President into paralysis and his
allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted
10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever
called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as DNC co-counsel for
litigating the Ukraine impeachment
If that resume doesn't warrant the title "legal hatchet man" we wonder what does? We
encourage interested readers or journalists to explore those links for themselves. By way of
conclusion, it simply suffices to note that much of Eisen's impeachment activity he conducted
before there was any discussion or knowledge of President Trump's call to the Ukrainian
President in 2018 -- indeed before the call even happened. Impeachment was very clearly a
foregone conclusion -- a quite literal part of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution playbook -- and it
was up to people like Eisen to find the pretext, any pretext.
Despite their constant invocation of "democracy" we ought to note that transferring the
question of electoral outcomes to adversarial legal processes is in fact anti-Democratic -- in
keeping with our observation that the Color Revolution playbook uses "democracy" as a term of
art, often meaning the precise opposite of the usual meaning suggesting popular support.
Perhaps the most important entry in Eisen's entry is the first, that is, Eisen's
participation in the infamous David Brock blueprint on how to undermine and overthrow the Trump
presidency.
The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's
private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, "
Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action ," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to
attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) , and Shareblue.
This leaked memo was written before President Trump took office, further suggesting that all
of the efforts to undermine Trump have not been good faith responses to his behavior, but a
pre-ordained attack strategy designed to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary. The
Color Revolution expert who suggests impeachment as a tactic in his Color Revolution "playbook"
was already in charge of impeachment before Trump even took office -- -Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is run by none other than Norm Eisen.
But the attempt to overturn the 2016 election using Color Revolution tactics failed. And so
now the plan is to overthrow Trump in 2020, hence Norm Eisen's noted participation in the
Transition Integrity Project. Looking around us, one is forced to ask the deeply uncomfortable
question, "transition into what?"
To conclude, we would like to call back to a point we raised in the first piece in our color
revolution series. In this piece, we noted that star Never Trump impeachment witness George
Kent just happens to be running the Belarus desk at the State Department. Belarus, we argued,
with its mass demonstrations egged on by US Government backed NGOS, its supposed "peaceful
protests" and of course its contested election results all fit the Color Revolution mold
curiously enough.
One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough
to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out
against Trump explicitly. In response to a remark by a twitter user that the TDWG's remarks
about Belarus suggested parallels to the United States, the TDWG ominously replied:
Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy
Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct.
Stay tuned for more in Revolver.news' groundbreaking coverage of the Color
Revolution against Trump. Be sure to check out the previous installments in this series.
"... these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series. ..."
"... the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump. ..."
"... Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States ..."
"... In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook." ..."
In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent, Revolver News first
drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United
States government employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of
government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.
Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George
Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games"
exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos
should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing
so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color
Revolution series.
This third installment of Revolver News' series exposing the Color Revolution against
Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition
Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of Norm
Eisen.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into
paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax,
who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump
ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel
litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world
leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic
election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots
against President Trump.
Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to
delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of
the United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color
revolution playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same
regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order
to undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very
same playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put
it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but
the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity
against targets overseas -- same people same playbook.
In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly
literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change
manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."
Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar (yes, Norm Eisen was
Obama's ethics Czar), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently partook in
war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a detailed
playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm Eisen
only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned chaos
unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election in
our nation's recent history.
... ... ...
A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé.
It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to
underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as
Eisen simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless
times when foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via
extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such. ... ... ...
Ominous stuff indeed. For readers who wish to read further, please consult
the full Politico piece from which we have excerpted the above highlighted passages. There
is also a fascinating documentary on Sharp instructively titled "
How to Start a Revolution ."
This is all interesting and disturbing, to say the least. In its own right it would suggest
a compelling nexus point between the operations run against Trump and the Color Revolution
playbook. But what does this have to do with our subject Norm Eisen? It just so happens that
Eisen explicitly places himself in the tradition of Gene Sharp, acknowledging his book "The
Playbook" as a kind of update to Sharp's seminal "Dictatorship to Democracy."
And there we have it, folks -- Norm Eisen, former Obama Ethics Czar, Ambassador to
Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," key counsel in impeachment effort against Trump,
and participant in the ostensibly bi-partisan election war games predicting a contested
election scenario unfavorable to Trump -- just happens to be a Color Revolution expert who
literally wrote the modern "Playbook" in the explicitly acknowledged tradition of Color
Revolution Godfather Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy."
Before we turn to the contents of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual, full title "The
Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," it will be useful to make
a brief point regarding the term "democracy" itself, which happens to appear in the title of
Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" as well.
Just like the term "peaceful protestor," which, as we pointed out in our George Kent essay
is used as a term of craft in the Color Revolution context, so is the term "democracy" itself.
The US Government launches Color Revolutions against foreign targets irrespective of whether
they actually enjoy the support of the people or were elected democratically. In the case of
Trump, whatever one says about him, he is perhaps the most "democratically" elected President
in America's history. Indeed, in 2016 Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of the
establishments of both parties, the military industrial complex, the corporate media,
Hollywood, and really every single powerful institution in the country. He won, however,
because he was able to garner sufficient support of the people -- his true and decisive power
base as a "populist." Precisely because of the ultra democratic "populist" character of Trump's
victory, the operatives attempting to undermine him have focused specifically on attacking the
democratic legitimacy of his victory.
In this vein we ought to note that the term "democratic backsliding," as seen in the
subtitle of Norm Eisen's book, and its opposite "democratic breakthrough" are also terms of art
in the Color Revolution lexicon. We leave the full exploration of how the term "democratic" is
used deceptively in the Color Revolution context (and in names of decidedly
anti-democratic/populist institutions) as an exercise to the interested reader. Michael McFaul,
another Color Revolution expert and key anti-Trump operative somewhat gives the game away in
the following tweet in which the term "democratic breakthrough" makes an appearance as a better
sounding alternative to "Color Revolution:"
Most likely as a response to Revolver News' first Color Revolution article on State
Department official George Kent, former Ambassador McFaul issued the following tweet as a
matter of damage control:
With this now-deleted tweet we get a clearer picture of the power bases that must be
satisfied for a "democratic breakthrough" to occur -- and conveniently enough, not one of them
is subject to direct democratic control. McFaul, Like Eisen, George Kent, and so many others,
perfectly embodies Revolver's thesis regarding the Color Revolution being the same
people running the same playbook. Indeed, like most of the star never-Trump impeachment
witnesses, McFaul is or has been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. He has supported
operations against Trump, including impeachment. And, like Norm Eisen, he has actually
written
a book on Color Revolutions (more on that later).
Norm Eisen's The Democracy Playbook: A Brief Overview:
A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé.
It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to
underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen
simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when
foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via
extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.
First, consider the following passage from Eisen's Playbook:
If you study this passage closely, you will find direct confirmation of our earlier point
that "democracy" in the Color Revolution context is a term of art -- it refers to anything they
like that keeps the national security bureaucrats in power. Anything they don't like, even if
elected democratically, is considered "anti-democratic," or, put another way, "democratic
backsliding." Eisen even acknowledges that this scourge of populism he's so worried about
actually was ushered in with "popular support," under "relatively democratic and electoral
processes." The problem is precisely that the people have had enough of the corrupt ruling
class ignoring their needs. Accordingly, the people voted first for Brexit and then for Donald
Trump -- terrifying expressions of populism which the broader Western power structure did
everything in its capacity to prevent. Once they failed, they viewed these twin populist
victories as a kind of political 9/11 to be prevented by any means necessary from recurring.
Make no mistake, the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense
and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power
to meddle in their own elections again.
The passage above can be insightfully compared to the passage in Gene Sharp's book noting
ripe applications to the domestic situation.
It is instructive to compare the passage in Eisen's Color Revolution book to the passage in
Michael McFaul's Color Revolution book:
First off, it is absolutely imperative to look at every single one of the conditions for a
Color Revolution that McFaul identifies. It is simply impossible not to be overcome with the
ominous parallels to our current situation. Specifically, however, note condition 1 which
refers to having a target leader who is not fully authoritarian, but semi-autocratic. This
coincides perfectly well with Eisen's concession that the populist leaders he's so concerned
about might be "illiberal" but enjoy "popular support" and have come to power via "relatively
democratic electoral processes."
Consulting the above passage from McFaul's book, we note that McFaul has been perhaps the
most explicit about the conditions which facilitate a Color Revolution. We invite the reader to
supply the contemporary analogue to each point as a kind of exercise.
A semi-autocratic regime rather than fully autocratic
An unpopular incumbent (note blanket negative coverage of Trump, fake polls)
A united and organized opposition (media, intel community, Hollywood, community
groups, etc)
Enough independent media to inform citizens of falsified vote (see full court press
in media pushing contested election narrative, social media censorship)
A political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators
to protest electoral fraud ( SEE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND ANTIFA )
On point number four , which is especially relevant to our present situation, Eisen has an
interesting thing to say about the role of a contested election scenario in the Orange
Revolution, arguably the most important Color Revolution of them all.
Finally, let's look at one last passage from Norm Eisen's Color Revolution "Democracy
Playbook" and cross-reference it with McFaul's conditions for a Color Revolution as well as the
situation playing out right now before our very eyes:
A few things immediately jump out at us. First, the ominous instruction: "prepare to use
electoral abuse evidence as the basis for reform advocacy." Secondly, we note the passage
suggesting that opposition to a target leader might avail itself of "extreme institutional
measures" including impeachment processes, votes of no confidence, and, of course, the good
old-fashioned "protests, strikes, and boycotts" (all more or less peaceful no doubt).
By now the Color Revolution agenda against Trump should be as plain as day. Regime change
professionals like McFaul, Eisen, George Kent, and others, who have refined their craft
conducting color revolutions overseas, have taken it upon themselves to use the same tools, the
same tactics -- quite literally, the same playbook -- to overthrow President Trump. Yet again,
same people, same playbook.
We conclude this study of key Color Revolution figure Norm Eisen by exploring his
particularly proactive -- indeed central role -- in effecting one of the Color Revolution's
components mentioned in the Eisen Playbook -- impeachment.
__________
The Ghost of Democracy's Future
We mentioned at the outset of this piece that Norm Eisen is many things -- a former Obama
Ethics Czar (but of course), Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, participant in the now notorious
Transition Integrity Project, et cetera. But he earned his title as "legal hatchet man" of the
Color Revolution for his tireless efforts in promoting the impeachment of President Trump.
The litany of Norm Eisen's legal activity cited at the beginning of this piece bears
repeating.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint
for suing the President into paralysis and his
allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted
10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever
called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as DNC co-counsel for
litigating the Ukraine impeachment
If that resume doesn't warrant the title "legal hatchet man" we wonder what does? We
encourage interested readers or journalists to explore those links for themselves. By way of
conclusion, it simply suffices to note that much of Eisen's impeachment activity he conducted
before there was any discussion or knowledge of President Trump's call to the Ukrainian
President in 2018 -- indeed before the call even happened. Impeachment was very clearly a
foregone conclusion -- a quite literal part of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution playbook -- and it
was up to people like Eisen to find the pretext, any pretext.
Despite their constant invocation of "democracy" we ought to note that transferring the
question of electoral outcomes to adversarial legal processes is in fact anti-Democratic -- in
keeping with our observation that the Color Revolution playbook uses "democracy" as a term of
art, often meaning the precise opposite of the usual meaning suggesting popular support.
Perhaps the most important entry in Eisen's entry is the first, that is, Eisen's
participation in the infamous David Brock blueprint on how to undermine and overthrow the Trump
presidency.
The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's private
and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, "
Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action ," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to
attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) , and Shareblue.
This leaked memo was written before President Trump took office, further suggesting that all
of the efforts to undermine Trump have not been good faith responses to his behavior, but a
pre-ordained attack strategy designed to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary. The
Color Revolution expert who suggests impeachment as a tactic in his Color Revolution "playbook"
was already in charge of impeachment before Trump even took office -- -Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is run by none other than Norm Eisen.
But the attempt to overturn the 2016 election using Color Revolution tactics failed. And so
now the plan is to overthrow Trump in 2020, hence Norm Eisen's noted participation in the
Transition Integrity Project. Looking around us, one is forced to ask the deeply uncomfortable
question, "transition into what?"
To conclude, we would like to call back to a point we raised in the first piece in our color
revolution series. In this piece, we noted that star Never Trump impeachment witness George
Kent just happens to be running the Belarus desk at the State Department. Belarus, we argued,
with its mass demonstrations egged on by US Government backed NGOS, its supposed "peaceful
protests" and of course its contested election results all fit the Color Revolution mold
curiously enough.
One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough
to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out
against Trump explicitly. In response to a remark by a twitter user that the TDWG's remarks
about Belarus suggested parallels to the United States, the TDWG ominously replied:
Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy
Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct.
Stay tuned for more in Revolver.news' groundbreaking coverage of the Color Revolution
against Trump. Be sure to check out the previous installments in this series:
The QT has referenced "the playbook" (uncapitalized) several times. Don't know if they are
pointing to Eisen's book, or the "Nazi" playbook. Whichever one it is, probably both, the
legitimate question can be asked:
* Note what word is being defined in the dictionary link.
If interested in seeing what QT is referencing in regards to "the playbook" you can click
this link , type " playbook " into the
'Search' and all mentions of 'playbook' in the drops will come up.
The Democracy Playbook sets forth strategies and actions that supporters of liberal
democracy can implement to halt and reverse democratic backsliding and make democratic
institutions work more effectively for citizens. The strategies are deeply rooted in the
evidence: what the scholarship and practice of democracy teach us about what does and does not
work. We hope that diverse groups and individuals will find the syntheses herein useful as they
design catered, context-specific strategies for contesting and resisting the illiberal toolkit.
This playbook is organized into two principal sections: one dealing with actions that domestic
actors can take within democracies, including retrenching ones, and the second section
addressing the role of international actors in supporting and empowering pro-democracy actors
on the ground. [ Note: contains copyrighted material ].
Counter disinformation network can't revive the dead chicken of neoliberal ideology.
Neoliberal elite lost legitimacy and as such has difficulties controlling the narrative.
That's why all this frantic efforts were launched to rectify the situation.
Anti-Russian angle of Atlantic council revealed here quite clearly
The paper's biggest single recommendation was that the United States and EU establish a
Counter-Disinformation Coalition, a public/private group bringing together, on a regular basis,
government and non-government stakeholders, including social media companies, traditional
media, Internet service providers (ISPs), and civil society groups. The Counter-Disinformation
Coalition would develop best practices for confronting disinformation from nondemocratic
countries, consistent with democratic norms. It also recommended that this coalition start with
a voluntary code of conduct outlining principles and agreed procedures for dealing with
disinformation, drawing from the recommendations as summarized above.
In drawing up these recommendations, we were aware that disinformation most often comes from
domestic, not foreign, sources. 8 While Russian and other disinformation players are
known to work in coordination with domestic purveyors of disinformation, both overtly and
covertly, the recommendations are limited to foreign disinformation, which falls within the
scope of "political warfare." Nevertheless, it may be that these policy recommendations,
particularly those focused on transparency and social resilience, may be applicable to
combatting other forms of disinformation.
That's naive take. Wary knows quite a bit about Antifa. Most probably the key people are
iether FBI agents or informants. The problem is that he find Antifa activities politically
useful. That's why he does not want to shut it down. This again put FBI in the role of kingmaker,
like under Comey.
Also don't forget that Brennan faction of CIA is still in power and that means the "deep
state" still is in control like was the case during Mueller investigation.
In May of 2017, President Trump did the right thing and fired FBI Director James Comey, the
individual at the center of the attempt to overturn the 2016 election results. Comey
orchestrated the spying efforts on President Trump and his campaign, which included the FBI
improperly applying for four separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to
eavesdrop on campaign aide Carter Page. He also authorized a politically motivated
investigation into Lt. General Michael Flynn and encouraged the entrapment of Flynn by his FBI
agents in an infamous White House interview.
Clearly, Comey was a disastrous FBI Director; however, the President made a terrible choice
when he replaced him with Christopher Wray, a bureaucrat who has not reformed the agency in any
meaningful way. He also seems to be incapable of identifying the real threats that are facing
the country.
In testimony on Thursday before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray made a series of
remarkable claims. He stated that Antifa is not a group but is more of "an ideology or maybe a
movement." He also refused to identify Chinese efforts to interrupt the 2020 election and again
focused attention on activities from Russia.
With these remarks, Wray is doing the bidding of the Democrats and following their talking
points. Regarding Antifa violence, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY),
claimed it was a "myth."
Nadler has been in his congressional cocoon for too long. Antifa has been active for several
years, but since the death of George Floyd on May 25, it has intensified its activities around
the country. Millions of Americans have seen the frequent and disturbing video footage of
rioting and looting throughout the country. According to U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX),
"there have been more than 550 declared riots, many stoked by extremists, Antifa and the BLM
(Black Lives Matter) organization."
In his comments to Wray at the committee meeting, Crenshaw also noted the rioters have done
an extensive amount of damage. He stated that "between one and two billion dollars of insurance
claims will be paid out. That doesn't come close to measuring the actual and true damage to
people's lives, not even close."
Crenshaw is right as many of our urban areas, such as New York, Washington D.C.,
Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland among others have been devastated by a series of violent
protests. In the past few months, scores of monuments have been destroyed, and significant
damage has been done to businesses and public buildings. The group has also attacked innocent
civilians and targeted police officers. As Crenshaw asserted in this rebuttal to Wray, Antifa
matches the definition of a domestic terrorist organization.
Who wants to overthrow President Lukashenko? by Thierry Meyssan
The Western press highlights Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as the winner of the Belarusian
presidential election and accuses outgoing President Alexander Lukashenko of violence, nepotism
and election rigging. However, an analysis of this country shows that the policies of its
president correspond to the wishes of its citizens. Behind this fabricated quarrel lies the
spectre of Ukrainian Euromaidan and a provoked rupture with Russia. VOLTAIRE NETWORK |
PARIS (FRANCE) | 1 SEPTEMBER 2020 عربي DEUTSCH
ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ ESPAÑOLFRANÇAIS ITALIANO NEDERLANDS
POLSKIPORTUGUÊS
РУССКИЙ TÜRKÇE
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya managed to gather both thousands of liberals and neo-Nazis against
President Lukashenko.
One of the objectives of the Euromaidan coup (Ukraine, 2013-14) was to cut the Silk Road in
Europe. China reacted by changing its route and passing it through Belarus. From then on, Minsk
tried to protect itself from the same destabilization by pursuing a more balanced policy
towards the West, participating in military manoeuvres with Moscow and agreeing to supply arms
to Daesh, which Moscow was fighting in Syria.
However, despite Minsk's prevarication, the CIA intervened on the occasion of the
presidential election of 2020. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya defied the outgoing president, Alexander
Lukashenko, who was running for a sixth term. She obtained only 10 per cent of the vote, cried
fraud and fled to Lithuania, where Frenchman Bernard-Henri Lévy rushed to welcome her.
Unanimously, the Western press denounced the "dictator" and hinted that Madame Tikhanovskaya
had been victorious in the election.
The reality is much more complex.
First of all, while it is quite possible that the elections were rigged in favour of the
incumbent president, it is highly unlikely that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya came close to the
majority, as what she represents is foreign to the vast majority of Belarusians. For the past
30 years or so, a debate has been going on in the country about its European identity. Is it
culturally close to pro-US Western Europe or does it belong to Slavic, pro-Russian Europe?
Without a doubt, the answer is that Belarusians are culturally Russian, even if some of them do
not speak exactly the same language. Admittedly, two small minorities profess divergent
opinions: the first calls itself "nationalist" in reference to the short-lived Belarusian
People's Republic (1918-19) whose organs in exile collaborated with the Nazis during the Second
World War, then with the Stay-Behind networks of NATO; the second says it is in favour of the
liberal model and the European Union.
Unlike Ukraine, which is divided into two culturally distinct zones (the pro-German West and
the pro-Russian East), Belarus fundamentally thinks of itself as Russian, although politically
independent of Moscow.
Secondly, if there was any doubt about the role of the US secret services in this
affair, the emergence of Bernard-Henri Lévy should remove it. The rich heir of a
precious wood import company made a career writing anti-Soviet essays. Sold by his
publisher as a "New Philosopher", he still passes for a "philosopher" today. He supported
the "freedom fighters", i.e. the Arab mercenaries of the Muslim Brotherhood in Afghanistan
against the Soviets, including their leader Osama Bin Laden. He sided with the Contras in
Nicaragua, i.e. the South American mercenaries of John Negroponte armed by Hashem
Rafsanjani's Iran. He boasts of having been press advisor to the Bosnian President Alija
Izetbegović when the former pro-Nazi had the American neoconservative Richard Perle as
political advisor and the aforementioned Osama Bin Laden as military advisor. I remember
how afterwards he impressed me by explaining to me that it was necessary to bomb Belgrade
to bring down the "dictator" Slobodan Milošević. I did not understand very well
why the pro-Nazi Izetbegović was a "democrat" while the communist
Milošević was a "dictator". Anyway, going back in time, Bernard-Henri Levy, now
nicknamed "BHL," gave his noisy support to the Chechen Muslim Brotherhood, which formed the
Islamic Emirate of Itchkeria on Russian territory. According to a report from the
Jamahiriya's foreign services, he participated in the meeting organized by Republican
Senator John McCain in Cairo in February 2011 to settle the details of the overthrow of the
"Gaddafi regime" which was then cited as an example by the United States. The French were
surprised to see him announce in the courtyard of the Elysée Palace, in the place of
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, his country's commitment against the "dictator" (all the
men to be shot - and they alone - are "dictators"). Of course, he was on Kiev's Maidan
Square during the "color revolution" led there by authentic Nazis.
Born fatherless on a collective farm, Alexander Lukashenko became the most skilful
head of state in Europe.
That being said, Belarusians may have grievances against President Lukashenko, but not
against his policies. All the connoisseurs of the country, whether they are among his
supporters or among his opponents, admit that his policy is in line with the concerns of
the Belarusians. All those who approached Alexander Lukashenko were astonished by his
intelligence, charisma and incorruptibility. Those who accused him of advocating attachment
to Russia out of political calculation and not out of conviction admitted that they were
mistaken when he maintained his position despite Moscow's rebuffs and the incredible gas
war between the two countries. All were surprised by his extraordinary abilities which made
him threaten the power of President Boris Yeltsin when he proposed union with Russia.
The main reproach that one could level at President Lukashenko is that he made several
opposition leaders disappear; an accusation that he vigorously denies, accusing these
personalities of links with criminal organizations that would have turned to their
disadvantage.
For years, his opponents accused him of enriching himself on the backs of the nation
without ever providing the slightest proof. Yet all international operators know that when
Belarus signs a contract, the retro-commissions never exceed 5%, compared to 10% for the
USA, 50% for Yeltsin's Russia (this figure fell to 10% under Putin's administration) and
60% for Iran. It is clear that the man is not motivated by money. In the absence of
corruption, Western propaganda began to accuse him preventively of nepotism for the benefit
of his young son, Nikolai, known as "Kolia".
The only reproach that can be made against him is that he regularly makes anti-Semitic
and homophobic remarks - never having supported anti-Semitic or homophobic acts. In doing
so, he is unfortunately in line with the leaders of his country.
Since the beginning of the crisis, President Lukashenko has been claiming that the
opposition of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her allies is a West-East geopolitical problem and
not a national political quarrel. While this opposition claims not to be at the service of
any foreign power.
Apart from the irruption of Bernard-Henri Lévy, several elements suggest that
Alexander Lukashenko is telling the truth. The Psychological Action Group of the Polish Special Forces seems
to have been extremely active since the beginning of the crisis in the service of Madame
Tikhanovskaya. Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias are also involved. Finally, the Lithuanian government, which is also hosting Svetlana
Tikhanovskaya, is also involved.
However there is no trace of the European Union, unlike the Ukrainian Euromaïdan.
So the most likely is that Washington is orchestrating regional actors (Poland, Ukraine,
Lithuania) against the Slavic world.
In any case, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has just set up a reserve force,
capable of intervening in Belarus to support the institutions and President Lukashenko;
this at a time when the two men have maintained relations that are sometimes very
conflicted. Thierry Meyssan
Yes, the EU is tentatively exploring a Guaido operation of its own, and 'recognizing'
Tikohonovskaya as the real leader of Belarus. They may have been panicked into it by the very
real possibility of a unification deal between Russia and Belarus – that way, they
could claim any such agreement had no legal weight, as the 'real president' did not sign it.
Lithuania was excited to be the first.
The Balts are always happy to lead with their chins when they believe their big brothers
have their backs. But I don't think it will gain broad acceptance – that is, unless the
EU is completely tone-deaf, because it is so manifestly like Operation Mister Smiley in
Venezuela that the equivalency is inescapable, and that has turned into a major embarrassment
for Washington. That, and signing on en masse to such a ditzy jape would more than likely
only harden resolve on the part of Lukashenko. He's already had nearly every regime-change
template run on him, and has flummoxed them all, so when they can't win 'fairly' (at least
according to their definition of fairness) they're just going to drop all pretenses and
declare their preferred candidate the winner, after refusing to observe the election so they
could later say it was rigged. All of which looks suspiciously like putting your hands over
your eyes and imagining you are invisible. But childishness is often mistaken for courage in
Europe.
However, all this has the effect of imposing further divisions between Europe and Russia,
which makes Washington a winner. Unless there is a broad European revolt by the European
business community – which should realize that dividing Russia and Europe is only
making Europe safe for American trade, while having little practical effect on Russia –
then Washington just needs to keep its mouth shut, and clean up.
Photograph Source: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P098967 – CC BY-SA 3.0 de
It is time for the United States to debate the downsizing, if not the dissolution, of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). U.S. national security would be strengthened by the
demise of NATO because Washington would no longer have to guarantee the security of 14 Central
and East European nations, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
European defense coordination and integration would be more manageable without the
participation of authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary. Key West European nations
presumably would favor getting out from under the use of U.S. military power in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, which has made them feel as if they were "tins of shoe
polish for American boots."
Russia would obviously be a geopolitical winner in any weakening -- let alone the demise --
of NATO, but the fears of Russian military intervention outside of the Slavic community are
exaggerated. The East European and Baltic states would protest any weakening of NATO, but it
would be an incentive for them to increase their own security cooperation.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created seven decades ago as a political
and military alliance to "keep the United States in Europe; the Soviet Union out of Europe; and
Germany down in Europe." The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989; the Warsaw Pact and the East
European communist governments in 1990; and the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the high water mark
for the alliance.
For the past three decades, however, the United States has weakened NATO by forcing a
hurried and awkward expansion on the alliance. Most recently in 2020, North Macedonia was
admitted as its 30th member, further weakening the integrity of the alliance. Did President
Donald Trump actually believe that the presence of North Macedonia as well as 13 other Central
European states would strengthen U.S. security?
The enlargement of NATO demonstrated the strategic mishandling of Russia, which now finds
the United States and Russia in a rivalry reminiscent of the Cold War. President Bill Clinton
was responsible for bringing former members of the Warsaw Pact into NATO, starting in the
late-1990s; President George W. Bush introduced former republics of the Soviet Union in his
first term. German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for dissuading Bush from seeking
membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
The United States justified the expansion of NATO as a way to create more liberal,
democratic members, but this has not been the case for the East European members. Russia,
moreover, views the expansion as a return to containment and a threat to its national security.
Russia was angered by the expansion from the outset, particularly since President George H.W.
Bush and Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that the United States wouldn't "leap frog" over Germany if the
Soviets pulled their 380,000 troops out of East Germany.
NATO's success from 1949 to 1991 was marked by a common perception of the Soviet threat,
which is the key to solidarity in any alliance framework. In 2020, however, the 30 members of
NATO no longer share a common perception of the Russian threat in Europe. The United States has
one view of Russia; the key nations of West Europe have a more benign view; and the East
Europeans perceive a dire threat that the others do not share. The United States has always
expressed some dissatisfaction with the asymmetric burden sharing and risk sharing within the
alliance, and the Trump administration has threatened to withdraw from NATO over the burden
sharing issue.
Turkey has rapidly become the outlier within NATO, and there have been a series of
confrontations in the eastern Mediterranean that threaten the integrity of the alliance. Greek
and Turkish warships collided in August, creating the first such confrontation between the two
navies since 1996, when the Clinton administration mediated the problem. The United States no
longer acts in such diplomatic capacities, so French President Emmanuel Macron has stepped into
the breach by sending jet aircraft to the Greek island of Crete as well as warships to exercise
with the antiquated Greek navy. Greece and Turkey, which joined NATO together in 1952, are
rivals over economic zones in the Mediterranean where there are important deposits of oil and
natural gas. Greece and Turkey have squabbled since 1974 over the divided island of Cyprus.
Turkey and France have additional differences over Turkey's violations of the UN arms
embargo on Libya. The two NATO allies had a confrontation in the Mediterranean when a French
warship tried to inspect a Turkish vessel. Last week, France joined military exercises with
Greece and Italy in the eastern Mediterranean following a Turkish maritime violation of
contested waters. Paris backs Athens in the conflicting claims with Ankara over rights to
potential hydrocarbon resources on the continental shelf in the Mediterranean.
President Macron took a particularly tough line in stating that he was setting "red lines"
in the Mediterranean because the "Turks only consider and respect a red-line policy," adding
that he "did it in Syria" as well. Macron's tough stance is somewhat surprising in view of the
concern of France and other European NATO countries regarding Turkey's ability to turn on the
refugee spigot, which would cause economic problems in southern Europe. Turkey has been using
the refugee issue as leverage since 2015, when huge numbers of refugees in West Europe led to a
rightward shift in European politics.
There is also the problem of Turkey's purchase of the most sophisticated Russian air defense
system, the S-400, which was developed to counter the world's most sophisticated jet fighter,
the U.S. F-35. As a result of the purchase of the S-400 system, the United States reneged on
the sale of eight F-35s to Turkey at a loss of $862 million, creating additional problems
between Trump and Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35s
over the next several years, and had begun pilot training in the United States.
Trump's constant harangues about burden sharing have created more friction within NATO.
Trump falsely takes credit for increased European defense spending, but it was the Obama
administration that successfully arranged greater Canadian and European defense spending in
2014 in the wake of Russia's seizure of Crimea. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg panders
regularly to Trump on the issue of increased defense spending, ignoring Trump's false claims
that NATO spending will increase by $400 billion annually. The $400 billion is in fact the
increased spending over an eight-year period.
With Trump's drift toward isolationism and unilateralism ("America First"), there is
incentive for the European Community to take control of its own "autonomous" defense policy.
The Europeans have reason to believe that a second presidential term for Trump could lead to a
sudden U.S. withdrawal from NATO. The unilateralist character of U.S. foreign and defense
policy strengthens the case for building European defense cooperation along side of an
undetermined transatlantic relationship with the United States.
18 September 2020 07:55 The Russian Embassy has demanded clarification from the United States about an NBC
report
The Russian Embassy in Washington has demanded an explanation from the US authorities
about an NBC TV report, which mentions US support for "Ukrainian units" in the
Crimea.
This has been reported in social networks on the official page of the diplomatic
mission.
In American journalists' material, it was said that the United States was arming
certain groups that were acting against Russian forces in the Crimea.
The point that the embassy is emphasizing is that Washington is supporting the
activities of terrorists in Russia. Diplomats admit that the channel may be wrong, but demand
that the United States clarify whether they are involved in organizing terrorist attacks
against the residents of Crimea.
Ukrainian units fighting Russian occupying forces in the Crimea?
For the liberation of Crimeans living under the yoke of post-Soviet Russian
imperialism?
"... As soon as Novichok was mentioned, I knew it was geopolitics and not internal Russian politics. ..."
"... NOVICHOK is a highly toxic and contagious substance. The reason why "it didn't kill the Skripals" is because it was never used on the Skripals just as it has not been used on Navalny. In both cases there would have been dozens of collateral victims. From the moment Navalny started to reel with pain during the domestic commercial flight to 4 days later when amid treatment in Berlin it is reasonable to estimate that 300 to 400 people had been in his proximity. Not one of them has shown or known to have contaged symptons. Let us list the narrative. ..."
"... I think my estimate of a total 300 to 400 people within the first 3 to 4 days having been within close proximity to Navalny is quite reasonable. If he was really was infected with an horrific chemical warfare agent, why would he even be allowed into Germany ? ..."
"... In political terms he is a cult leader of an SPB/Moscow elitist metropolitan cult that does not give a damn about most of Russia. ..."
"... Who benefits? For certain not the Joe Publics of UK, Russia and Germany but maybe the likes of Exxon, chevron, bp etc might. ..."
"... I suspected Navalny may be connected to our 'trusted friend' Browder. Now I know for sure. ..."
"... At some point, as background noise, there was some news read out on the radio. After the segment about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, NordStream 2 and possible EU sanctions the taxi driver shook his head and said thoughtfully: "Yeah, mommy is stuck " ..."
"... "What mommy?" asked the taxi driver. "That same one, Angela Merkel. You know why Navalny was surrendered to Germany? Let me explain." And then, for a quarter of an hour, the taxi driver presented a coherent theory of what happened, worthy of study at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which answered all the questions that had been bothering me. ..."
"... Operatives at the German Ministry of International Affairs, who sympathized with Schröder's SPD, got in touch with Yulia Navalny (his wife) and offered to hospitalize him in a clinic in Germany. Yulia agreed, and appealed to Putin. ..."
"... The next day Berlin announced that analysis results showed poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor. This was its last warning shot. Then there was another phone call, to warn that the next time "Novichok" will be found. Moscow refused, and promised Minsk a billion dollars on that very day. ..."
"... There followed an attempt by Fritz Merz, Angela Merkel's deputy in the DCU, to lean on Merkel to shut down NordStream 2, but he swiftly got his ears boxed by the business lobby of German companies that invested in this pipeline and, whining and whimpering, crawled back into his hole. ..."
"... Then Lukashenko, being a tough nut to crack, presented an intentionally amateurish intercept of secret diplomatic communications between Poland and Germany in which they discussed their plans for poisoning Navalny. Now they are sitting in Warsaw and Berlin and have no idea how to respond to this movie -- to deny or to pretend that they didn't notice it. What a dilemma! ..."
"... If Merkel announces that it is the crime of the century in which a great Russian opposition figure has been fiendishly poisoned with "Novichok," then she would be obligated to sever all relations with the bloody regime and present evidence. But there won't be any evidence to present. And nobody will allow her to freeze the completion of the pipeline. Otherwise German companies, which invested in NordStream 2 will take the Reichstag even ahead of the irate German citizens. In either case, DCU/CSU will face a defeat. ..."
"... But what about Russia's friend Gehrhard Schröder? Being the chairman of the board of the NordStream 2 company and head of the SPD, he looks into the future with confidence and optimism. In any case, CDU/CSU will be deflated and SPD will reinforce its position in the Bundestag and either independently or in coalition with other parties will install its own leader as Bundeskanzler. NordStream 2, which has been in political limbo for a few years, will be completed and enter into service at full rated capacity very quickly. ..."
A 33-year-old young woman who recently flew in from London. On August 15 she celebrated her birthday and then went with Navalny
on the working trip. When the plane urgently landed in Omsk for Navalny's hospitalization, the woman also remained on the ground
in the 'Ibis Siberia Omsk' hotel, waiting for Alexei to recover. She left from Russia to Britain on August 22.
Maria Konstantinovna Pevchikh (Мария Константиновна Певчих) born in 1987, russian. In 2010 she graduated from the sociological
faculty of Moscow Lomonosov State University.
Lives in London. Fond of sports, trains under the program of "Navy Seals", an elite US military unit, owns bookstores in the
UK and Australia.
Have close ties with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Joined Navalny's activity in 2009. At that time, she was
22-year-old and worked as an assistant to one of the British parliamentarians.
It is alleged that the family and relatives do not know this woman.
The investigation previously published a chronology of events here https://ria.ru/20200821/khronologiya-1576110899.html
They discovered that in Tomsk the blogger's company has booked seven rooms for four people, Navalny himself spent the night in
a different room that was recorded in his name.
"WTF are you talking about? The USA is perfectly willing to fight Russia to the last European NATO member.."
Peter. An Ex-CIA man, of whom I've long forgotten his name used to say the same thing about Saudi Arabia, that the Saudis were
willing to fight Iran down to the last American soldier.
Myth, the US state blames the pusillanimity of the public for its tactics of ultraviolence. The Russians would be drowning
in their own blood were it not for Russian military power and the Chinese alliance.
"Recall that Alexei Navalny has two suspended sentences and is involved in several criminal cases at once.
"In December last year, he was sentenced in the case of embezzlement of money from the Yves Rocher company to a three and a
half years suspended sentence. His brother Oleg was sentenced to a real three and a half years in prison.
In 2013, Navalny, who in 2009 worked as an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, was found guilty of embezzling property
of the state-owned company Kirovles and sentenced to five years in a general regime colony. He was taken into custody in the courtroom
and placed in a pre-trial detention center, but the very next day the Kirov regional court changed the measure of restraint to
a recognizance not to leave. As a result, the sentence was changed to a suspended one.
In addition, the Investigative Committee is investigating the case of the theft of 100 million rubles from the SPS party against
Alexei Navalny since the end of December 2012.
Activists of Navalny's team – deputy of the Zyuzino metropolitan area Konstantin Yankauskas, as well as entrepreneurs Nikolai
Lyaskin and Vladimir Ashurkov – are suspected of fraud related to violation of the procedure for financing the campaign in the
election of the mayor of Moscow.
Navalny has repeatedly found himself in the role of a defendant in claims for the protection of honor and dignity – for throwing
slanderous publications into the Internet. So, recently, the Lublin Court of Moscow satisfied such a claim by the chairman of
the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship Igor Rudensky."
I have the same feeling as you. Russophobia simply indicates the bastards are working together against us the steeple. Chinaphobia
maybe indicates the Chinese leadership and US leadership jointly want to cull the older generation with bio warfare.
Since none of UK , US. Russia nor China are democracies, their only task is to manage the narrative they tell the people. If
I was to go out and buy a product made in China, half the cost would be for transport or profit to the dealer. That is a shared
enterprise. One party for example manufactures a diesel generator, while the Western parties sit on their bums and take profit.
You are really missing the point. NOVICHOK which you should know was developed (though not originally invented) in a lab in
Soviet Uzbekistan, which following post Soviet independence, was dismantled by the CIA who took the samples back home to the USA.
So it is the Americans not the Russians who have the original well-spring.
NOVICHOK is a highly toxic and contagious substance. The reason why "it didn't kill the Skripals" is because it was never
used on the Skripals just as it has not been used on Navalny. In both cases there would have been dozens of collateral victims.
From the moment Navalny started to reel with pain during the domestic commercial flight to 4 days later when amid treatment in
Berlin it is reasonable to estimate that 300 to 400 people had been in his proximity. Not one of them has shown or known to have
contaged symptons. Let us list the narrative.
Original domestic commercial flight, passengers, crew & colleagues travelling with him
Ambulance to Russian hospital in Omsk ambulance crew
Doctors, nurses, officials, press and Navalny family at hospital in Omsk
German doctors arrived the next day, working along side Russian doctors whom they praised and credited with saving Navalny's
life.
Russian doctors agree to release Navalny for medivac transport against their own medical advice, respecting Navalny family
wishes.
Ambulance crew once again takes Navalny in the reverse direction back to the airport where the private jet was waiting.
Introducing the patient with the "military grade nerve agent" oozing out of his skin to a new flight crew.
Plane lands in Berlin and a German ambulance crew now handles the human chemical warfare torpedo. Note the German ambulance
crew members had short sleeves. If the German Gov believed there was a possibility of a Novichok type substance at play why
was the official greeting party not all dressed up like those Mi5 Salisbury central casting extras in Hazmat suits?
The convoy arrives at the hospital in Berlin handing Navalny over to the German team no doubt comprised of endless staff
members.
I think my estimate of a total 300 to 400 people within the first 3 to 4 days having been within close proximity to Navalny
is quite reasonable. If he was really was infected with an horrific chemical warfare agent, why would he even be allowed into
Germany ?
As for Navalny and the Russian administration and the Russian public, they both view him as useful but not likeable. The Putin
administration has made good use of reports by Navalny's anti-corruption group to expose both people in government and in business.
The Russian public watches the Youtube videos of Navalny's reports to the tune of millions of hits & clicks. However as a person
Alexei Navalny is not like and for good reason. This is reflected in his 2% poll rated that due to all the current focus has moved
up to 4% for Navalny as a potential "politician" (he is actually already a failed one) 4% is his high water mark.
The likes of The Guardian and The Independent have portrayed Navalny over the years as some kind of Russian Nelson Mandela
when in fact Navalny is a better educated more sophisticated Tommy Robinson. Only Navalny is even more racist than so-called "Tommy
Robinson" as I don't even recall him ever saying "All Muslims are cockroaches" as Navalny was once quoted to have said.
In political terms he is a cult leader of an SPB/Moscow elitist metropolitan cult that does not give a damn about most
of Russia. He and his political cohorts such as Ms Sobol offer not one single policy for the people of the Russian Heartland.
Who are far better cared for and better represented by Valdimir Putin, whom the Heartland people lovingly address as Vladimirovich,
President Putin's middle name. Navalny is even more Neo-Liberal and far less small "l" liberal in general values and mindset than
President Putin.
The description is very accurate, and the definition of "elite metropolitan cult" hit the bull's eye. Young people think that
being an oppositionist is being active, fashionable, trendy (also at protests you can post photos on Instagram!) Unfortunately,
if they are asked specific questions, they cannot answer. They are there for self-expression.
--
People follow ideas, Navalny's idea is not clear, where is the plan, where is the perspective? Looking at Navalny's activity,
I feel they are trying to sell me something.
E.g. his website promotes the Smart Voting system https://navalny.com/p/6418/
the title is "Do you want it like in Belarus? Here is a list of candidates, find yours"
the first paragraph point is "to support the rebellious people in word, action and money is very right, but you may do even
more right thing "
the second "it is impossible to use your vote wisely without our smart voting system", a call to action "register"
the third "a few brave Spartans (sic!) broke through Putin's evil cordons and you can support them here is how:
1. Check out the list of candidates. Transfer money to someone you like
Well, actually I sell something myself and I wright similar marketing texts. Compare:
"Are you in search of Boho, Ethnic or Tribal fashion? You're in the right place Our unique *** is the way to express your style!
Does your daughter think of cutting off her gorgeous long hair? Get a pair of our *** for her to show your love and care Here
is how: visit our shop *** Choose the one you like and let us work on the perfect *** crafted especially for you "
When people create an online store of political candidates, it is not credible. Our electoral system means collecting signatures,
real signatures of living people, not collecting money.
Thank you for your courage to speak the truth Mr. Murray. I am trying to do it sometimes too here in the Netherlands, but I
am an engineer, not a politician or journalist, so my means and persuasive talents are limited. However – to stay on the topic
of poison – it feels good to see that the anti-Russian propaganda has not poisoned all minds in West Europe yet.
It's only today that I've realised who is Prigozhin. He is the owner of Concord group, they were those russian with whom Trump
conspired to win elections!
Prigozhin sent 1 million roubles to Charite for Navalny.
He demands 88 millions, I wrote about it previously. It is a demand due to court's decision. I don't think it was издевательство,
it looks more like Prigozhin is afraid of being accused of poisoning 🙂
Russophobes these days, which is an enormous section of the population, will believe anything dastardly about that country
and its leadership. The narrative here, that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny as Murray shows, is that the Russians
are bumbling villains that couldn't kill a wet paper bag.
Another narrative is that they didn't kill Navalny on purpose. It's just "a warning", etc.. A villain is a villain.
One BS story is as good as another. Of course, there should be a delay between one fiction and the next one. However, the old
saying still applies: throw enough sh*t and something is bound to stick.
At the interpersonal level, it's sometimes simpler to simply exaggerate the exaggeration: e.g., Putin is a villain and look
at what he did to dirty my underwear; there's a Putin under your bed; yeah, and what about the bad weather we've been having?
Putin, of course.
And it's not like any of this is new, e.g., US President Reagan: "Russia has been outlawed forever. Bombing begins in 5 minutes."
It so happened that yesterday I was coming home in a taxi. The taxi driver, who looked like Bill Murray, turned out to be very
talkative: during the trip, as often happens, we touched on all subjects, from the weather to blondes behind the wheel.
At some point, as background noise, there was some news read out on the radio. After the segment about the poisoning of
Alexei Navalny, NordStream 2 and possible EU sanctions the taxi driver shook his head and said thoughtfully: "Yeah, mommy is stuck
"
"What mommy?" I inquired.
"What mommy?" asked the taxi driver. "That same one, Angela Merkel. You know why Navalny was surrendered to Germany? Let
me explain." And then, for a quarter of an hour, the taxi driver presented a coherent theory of what happened, worthy of study
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which answered all the questions that had been bothering me.
This is how it all came down.
At the beginning of August everybody was preparing for the elections in Belarus -- Belarus itself, as well as Russia and countries
in the EU. It was an exciting game in which everybody placed bets on their own candidate. But I must immediately warn you that
what we were observing was just the visible part of the iceberg, while the underwater currents were known only to a few.
Moscow and Minsk were demonstratively smashing dishes, shouting at each other and pulling each other by the hair, creating
the illusion of a complete break in relations. This was as intended!
Europe, content and relaxed, was rubbing its hands and already seeing how it will very soon kick out "Europe's last dictator"
and install a Belorussian Juan Guaido clone in Minsk, grabbing this delectable piece for itself.
The elections were held. Everybody froze. Not bothering to wait for the election results to come in, on orders from the Polish
provocateur [Telegraph channel] Nexta the Belorussian white-red-white [Nazi occupation flag] opposition marched into battle.
At first everything was going to plan. Excited white-red-white crowds flooded the streets and started threatening the police,
officials and journalists, starting skirmishes and strikes. Slovak and Spanish ambassadors in Belarus spoke out in support of
the protesters and "came over to the side of the people." This was also as intended. It looked like just a bit more of this and
["Europe's last dictator"] Lukashenko would fall.
But then Moscow entered into the game. It recognized the outcome of the elections [which Lukashenko won] and started to support
him organizationally, informationally and financially. Europe had to ramp up pressure. But how?
Nexta was crapping bricks and exhorting the white-red-white activists to get more active, but they just couldn't get any traction
in their attempts to seize power. They turned out to be too weak compared to their own people.
And then, luckily, Navalny was poisoned. In any case, that's what some people imagined.
Operatives at the German Ministry of International Affairs, who sympathized with Schröder's SPD, got in touch with Yulia
Navalny (his wife) and offered to hospitalize him in a clinic in Germany. Yulia agreed, and appealed to Putin.
Then the German minister of foreign affairs walked into Bundeskanzlerin's office and laid his joker on the table: "We
can take away Navalny for treatment. If Moscow tries to prevent this, we will cause a loud scandal. We'll get his body and then
decide how to play this." Merkel found this proposal attractive and, not thinking too long, agreed. Moscow did not object to Navalny's
transfer.
After Navalny was brought to Germany and delivered to the Charité clinic in a cortège consisting of 12 cars, mommy Angela called
Moscow and demanded: Russia must stop supporting Lukashenko, otherwise we will announce that Navalny had been poisoned with "Novichok."
Moscow refused and increased support of Lukashenko, declaring that it has created a reserve of special forces to be sent into
Belarus and take control -- just in case anyone makes a sudden move.
The next day Berlin announced that analysis results showed poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor. This was its last
warning shot. Then there was another phone call, to warn that the next time "Novichok" will be found. Moscow refused, and promised
Minsk a billion dollars on that very day.
At that point, Berlin's patience ran out. Navalny was immediately transferred to a military hospital, where it was immediately
"discovered" that he had been poisoned with "Novichok." It was not possible to find "Novichok" while he was at Charité because
journalists and officials could demand to see the test results, while at a military hospital such requests would be denied: the
information is secret. But not even "Novichok" could force Moscow to stop supporting Minsk. Russia's prime minister Mikhail Mishustin
was dispatched to Minsk with a briefcase bulging with papers to sign.
There followed an attempt by Fritz Merz, Angela Merkel's deputy in the DCU, to lean on Merkel to shut down NordStream 2,
but he swiftly got his ears boxed by the business lobby of German companies that invested in this pipeline and, whining and whimpering,
crawled back into his hole.
Then Lukashenko, being a tough nut to crack, presented an intentionally amateurish intercept of secret diplomatic communications
between Poland and Germany in which they discussed their plans for poisoning Navalny. Now they are sitting in Warsaw and Berlin
and have no idea how to respond to this movie -- to deny or to pretend that they didn't notice it. What a dilemma!
The interim result is thus as follows: Navalny is alive and well, sitting quietly in a German military hospital and inquiring
periodically when he will be allowed to go home. But he won't be allowed to go home any time soon.
Now, a year ahead of elections, parliamentary electoral campaign is starting in Germany. Merkel's DCU/CSU coalition doesn't
have a lot of popular support as it is. Some people are even now ready to take the Reichstag with their bare hands and put their
own flag on top of it. And then we have this toxic story with "Novichok"!
If Merkel announces that it is the crime of the century in which a great Russian opposition figure has been fiendishly
poisoned with "Novichok," then she would be obligated to sever all relations with the bloody regime and present evidence. But
there won't be any evidence to present. And nobody will allow her to freeze the completion of the pipeline. Otherwise German companies,
which invested in NordStream 2 will take the Reichstag even ahead of the irate German citizens. In either case, DCU/CSU will face
a defeat.
But if she slams the transmission into reverse, apologizes and returns Navalny to Russia, claiming that what happened was an
unfortunate series of errors, and punishes everybody who had put her in this situation to the full extent of German law, this
won't save the situation either. German voter's won't forgive Merkel over the loss of Germany's international authority, loss
of influence in Europe and total incompetence in handling foreign affairs, and will still punish her at the polls.
Therefore, her only choice is to bide her time, sitting with one buttock on each of two chairs -- blaming Russia for deploying
"Novichok" and simultaneously supporting the completion of NordStream 2. But we are about to see a flood of eyewitness reports,
photographs and documents from the various hospitals where the VIP patient has been treated, knocking out one of the two chairs.
And so the possibility that Merkel's retirement will occur before her term is up should not be dismissed. In that case, she will
have been unable to beat Helmut's Kohl's 16-year record as Bundeskanzler.
But what about Russia's friend Gehrhard Schröder? Being the chairman of the board of the NordStream 2 company and head
of the SPD, he looks into the future with confidence and optimism. In any case, CDU/CSU will be deflated and SPD will reinforce
its position in the Bundestag and either independently or in coalition with other parties will install its own leader as Bundeskanzler.
NordStream 2, which has been in political limbo for a few years, will be completed and enter into service at full rated capacity
very quickly.
When we rolled up to my house, the taxi driver asked: "Do you play chess?"
"Sometimes," I nodded.
In chess, there is a variation called "poisoned pawn." Your opponent, trying to gain material advantage, takes this pawn, ends
up trapped and inevitably loses.
As I was getting out of the taxi, somewhat perplexed, I asked the taxi driver where he got all this information. He smiled
a sad Bill Murray smile and answered: "From my brother. He lives in Germany and also works as a taxi driver." It was at this moment
that I realized that taxi drivers know everything.
This article is dedicated to the memory of an activist, inspiration, and recent friend:
Kevin Zeese. Its scope, sweep, and ambition are meant to match that of Kevin's outsized
influence. At that, it must inevitably fail – and its shortfalls are mine alone. That
said, the piece's attempt at a holistic critique of 19 years worth of war and cultural
militarization would, I hope, earn an approving nod from Kevin – if only at the
attempt. He will be missed by so many; I count myself lucky to have gotten to know him.
– Danny Sjursen
The rubble was still smoldering at Ground Zero when the U.S. House of Representatives
voted to
essentially transform itself into the Israeli
Knesset , or parliament. It was 19 years ago, 11:17pm Washington D.C. time on September
14, 2001 when the People's Chamber approved House Joint Resolution 64, the Authorization for
the Use of Military Force (AUMF) "against those responsible for the recent attacks."
Naturally, that was before the precise identities, and full scope, of "those responsible"
were yet known – so the resolution's rubber-stamp was obscenely open-ended by
necessity, but also by design.
The Senate had passed their own version by roll call vote about 12
hours earlier. The combined congressional tally was 518 to one. Only Representative Barbara
Lee of California
cast a dissenting vote , and even delivered a brief, prescient speech on the House floor.
It's almost hard to watch and listen all these years later as her voice cracks with emotion
amidst all that truth-telling
:
I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international
terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter
However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country
is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let's step back for a moment and think
through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of
control
Now I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with opposing this resolution
during the very painful, yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so
eloquently said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."
For her lone stance – itself courageous, even had she not since been
vindicated – Rep. Lee suffered
insults and death threats so intense that she needed around-the-clock bodyguards for a
time. It's hard to be right in a room full of the wrong – especially angry, scared, and
jingoistic ones. Yet the tragedy is America has become many of the things we purport to
deplore: the US now boasts a one-trick-pony foreign policy and a militarized society to
boot.
Endless imperial interventions and perennial policing at home and abroad,
counterproductive military adventurism, governance by permanent "emergency" fiat, and an ever
more martial-society? We've seen this movie before; in fact it's still playing – in
Israel. Without implying that Israel, as an entity, is somehow "evil," theirs was simply not
a path the US need or ought to have gone down.
"A Republic, If You Can Keep It"
In the nearly two decades since its passing, the AUMF has been cited at least
41 times in some 17 countries and on the high seas . The
specified nations-states included Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Turkey,
Niger, Cameroon, and the broader African "Sahel Region" – which presumably also covers
the unnamed, but real, US troop presence in
Nigeria, Chad and Mali. That's a lot of unnecessary digressions – missions that
haven't, and couldn't, have been won. All of that aggression abroad predictably boomeranged
back home , in the
guise of freedoms constrained, privacy surveilled, plus cops and culture militarized.
Inevitably, just a few days ago, every publication, big and small, carried obligatory and
ubiquitous 9/11 commemoration pieces. Far fewer will even note the AUMF anniversary. Yet it
was the US government's response – not the attacks themselves – which most
altered American strategy and society. For in dutifully deciding on immediate military
retaliation, a "global war," even, on a tactic ("terror") and a concept ("evil") at that,
this republic fell prey to the Founders' great
obsession . Unable to agree on much else, they shared fears that the nascent American
experiment would suffer Rome's " ancestral curse " of ambition
– and its subsequent path to empire. Hence, Benjamin Franklin's supposed
retort to a crowd question upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, on
just what they'd just framed: "A republic, if you can keep it!"
Yet perhaps a modern allegory is the more appropriate one: by signing on to an endless
cycle of tit-for-tat terror retaliation on 9/14, We the People's representatives chose the
Israeli path. Here was a state forged
by the sword that it's consequently lived by ever since,
and may well die by – though the cause of death, no doubt, would likely be
self-inflicted. The first statutory step towards Washington transforming into Tel Aviv was
that AUMF sanction 19 years ago tonight.
No doubt, some militarist fantasies came far closer on the heels of the September 11th
suicide strikes: According to notes taken by aides,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld waited a whole five hours after Flight 77 impacted his
Pentagon to instruct subordinates to gather the "best info fast. Judge whether good enough to
hit [Saddam Hussein] at same time Not only [Osama Bin Laden]." As for the responsive strike
plans, "Go massive," the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and
not."
Nonetheless, it was Congress' dutiful AUMF-acquiescence that made America's
Israeli-metamorphosis official. The endgame that ain't even ended yet has been dreadful. It's
almost impossible to fathom, in retrospect, but remember that as of September 14, 2001,
7,052 American troops and,
very conservatively, at least 800,000 foreigners (335,000 of them
civilians) hadn't yet – and need not have – died in the ensuing AUMF-sanctioned
worldwide wars.
Now, US forces didn't directly kill all of them, but that's about 112 September
11ths-worth of dead civilians by the very lowest estimates – perishing in wars of
(American) choice. That's worth reckoning with; and needn't imply a dismissive attitude to
our 9/11 fallen. I, for one, certainly take that date rather seriously.
My 9/11s
There are more than a dozen t-shirts hanging in my closet right now that are each
emblazoned with the phrase "Annual Marty Egan 5K Memorial Run/Walk." This event is
held back in the old neighborhood, honoring a very close family friend – a New York
City fire captain killed
in the towers' collapse. As my Uncle Steve's best bud, he was in and out of my grandparents'
seemingly communal Midland Beach, Staten Island bungalow – before Hurricane Sandy
washed many of them away – throughout my childhood. When I was a teenager, just
before leaving for West Point, Marty would tease me for being "too skinny for a soldier" in
the local YMCA weight-room and broke-balls about my vague fear of heights as I shakily
climbed a ladder in Steve's backyard just weeks before I left for cadet basic training.
Always delivered with a smile, of course.
Marty was doing some in-service training on September 11th, and didn't have to head
towards the flames, but he hopped on a passing truck and rode to his death anyway. I doubt
anyone who knew him would've expected anything less. Mercifully, Marty's body was one of the
first – and at the time, only – recovered , just two days after Congress chose war in
his, and 2,976 others' name. He was found wearing borrowed gear from engine company he'd
jumped in with.
I was a freshman cadet at West Point when I heard all of this news – left feeling so
very distant from home, family, neighborhood, though I was just a 90 minute drive north.
Frankly, I couldn't wait to get in the fights that followed. It's no excuse, really: but I
was at that moment exactly 18 years and 41 days old. And indeed, I'd spend the next 18
training, prepping, and fighting the wars I then wanted – and, ( Apocalypse
Now-style )
"for my sins" – "they gave me."
Anyway, Marty's family – and more so his memory – along with the general 9/11
fallout back home, have swirled in and out of my life ever since. In the immediate term,
after the attacks my mother turned into a sort of wake&funeral-hopper, attending
literally dozens over that first year. As soon as Marty had a headstone in Moravian Cemetery
– where my Uncle Steve once dug graves – I draped a pair of my new dog tags over
it on a weekend trip home. It was probably a silly and indulgent gesture, but it felt
profound at the time. Then, soon enough, the local street signs started
changing to honor fallen first responders – including the intersection outside my
church, renamed "Martin J. Egan Jr. Corner." (Marty used to joke , after all, that he'd graduated
from UCLA – that is, the University, corner of Lincoln Avenue, in the
neighborhood.)
Five years later, while I was fighting a war in a country (Iraq) that had nothing to do
with the 9/11 attacks, Marty's mother Pat still worked at the post office from which my own
mom shipped me countless care packages. They'd chat; have a few nostalgic laughs; then Pat
would wish me well and pass on her regards. When some of my soldiers started getting killed,
I remember my mother telling me it was sometimes hard to look Pat in the eye on the post
office trips – perhaps she feared an impending kinship of lost sons. But it didn't go
that way.
So, suffice it to say, I don't take the 9/11 attacks, or the victims, lightly. That
doesn't mean the US responses, and their results, were felicitous or forgivable. They might
even dishonor the dead. I don't pretend to precisely know, or speak for, the Egan family's
feelings. Still, my own sense is that few among the lost or their loved ones left behind
would've imagined or desired their deaths be used to justify all of the madness, futility,
and liberties-suppression blowback that's ensued.
Nevertheless, my nineteen Septembers 11th have been experienced in oft-discomfiting ways,
and my assessment of the annual commemorations, rather quickly began to change. By the tenth
anniversary, a Reuters reporter spent a couple of days on the base I commanded in
Afghanistan. At the time the outpost sported a flag gifted by my uncle, which had previously
flown above a New York Fire Department house. I suppose headquarters sent the journalist my
way because I was the only combat officer from New York City – but the brass got more
than they'd bargained for. By then, amidst my second futile war "surge," and three more of
the lives and several more of the limbs of my soldiers lost on this deployment, I
wasn't feeling particularly sentimental. Besides, I'd already turned – ethically and
intellectually – against what seemed to me demonstrably hopeless and counterproductive
military exercises.
Much to the chagrin of my career-climbing lieutenant colonel, I
waxed a bit (un)poetic on the war I was then fighting – "against farm boys with
guns," I not-so-subtly styled it – and my hometown's late suffering that ostensibly
justified it. "When I see this place, I don't see the towers," I said, sitting inside my
sandbagged operations center near the Taliban's very birthplace in Kandahar province. Then
added: "My family sees it more than I do. They see it dead-on, direct. I'm a professional
soldier. It's not about writing the firehouse number on the bullet. I'm not one for
gimmicks." It was coarse and a bit petulant, sure, but what I meant – what I
felt – was that these wars, even this " good " Afghan
one (per President Obama), no longer, and may never have, had much to do with 9/11, Marty, or
all the other dead.
The global war on terrorism (GWOT, as it was once fashionable to say) was but a reflex for
a sick society pre-disposed to violence, symptomatic of a militarist system led by a
government absent other ideas or inclinations. Still, I flew that FDNY flag – even
skeptical soldiers can be a paradoxical lot.
Origin Myths: Big Lies and Long Cons
Although the final approved AUMF
declared that "such acts [as terrorism] continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat
to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," that wasn't then, and
isn't now, even true . The toppled towers, pummeled Pentagon, and flying suicide
machines of 9/11 were no doubt an absolute horror; and such visions understandably clouded
collective judgment. Still, more sober
statistics demonstrate, and sensible strategy demands, the prudence of perspective.
From 1995 to 2016, a total of 3,277 Americans have been killed in terrorist acts on US
soil. If we subtract the 9/11 anomaly, that's just 300 domestic deaths – or 14 per
year. Which raises the impolite question: why don't policymakers talk about terrorism the
same way they do shark attacks or lightning strikes? The latter, incidentally, kill an average of 49
Americans annually. Odd, then, that the US hasn't
expended $6.4 trillion, or more than 15,000 soldier and contractor lives ,
responding to bolts from the blue. Nor has it kicked off or catalyzed global wars that have
directly killed – by that conservative estimate – 335,000 civilians.
See, that's the thing: for Americans, like the Israelis, some
lives matter more than others. We can just about calculate the macabre life-value ratios
in each society. Take Israel's 2014 onslaught on the Gaza Strip. In its fifty-day onslaught
of Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
killed 2,131 Palestinians – of whom 1,473 were identified as civilians, including
501 children. As for the wildly inaccurate and desperate Hamas rocket strikes that the IDF
"edge" ostensibly "protected" against: those killed a whopping four civilians. To review:
apparently one Israeli non-combatant is worth 368 Palestinian versions. Now, seeing as
everything – including death-dealing is "bigger in Texas" – consider the macro
American application. To wit, 3,277 US civilians versus 335,000 foreign innocents equals a
cool 102-to-1 quotient of the macabre.
Such formulas become banal realities when one believes the big lies undergirding the
entire enterprise. Here, Israel and America share origin myths that frame the long con of
forever wars. That is, that acts of terror with stateless origins are best responded to with
reflexive and aggressive military force. In my first ever published article
– timed for Independence Day 2014 – I argued that America's post-9/11 "original
sin" was framing its response as a war in the first place. As a result, I – then a
serving US Army captain – concluded, "In place of sound strategy, we've been handed our
own set of martyrs: more than 6,500 dead soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines." More than
500 American troopers have died since, along with who knows how many foreign civilians. It's
staggering how rare such discussions remain in mainstream discourse.
Within that mainstream, often the conjoined Israeli-American twins even share the same
cruelty cheerleaders. Take the man that author Belen Fernandez not inaccurately
dubs "Harvard Law School's resident psychopath:" Alan Dershowitz. During Israel's brutal
2006 assault on Lebanon, this armchair-murderer took to the pages of the Wall Street
Journal with a column titled " Arithmetic of Pain ."
Dershowitz argued for a collective "reassessment of the laws of war" in light of
increasingly blurred distinctions between combatants and civilians. Thus, offering official
"scholarly" sanction for the which-lives-matter calculus, he unveiled the concept of a
"continuum of 'civilianality." Consider some of his cold and callous language:
Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents – babies,
hostages at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide
material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the
terrorists politically, or spiritually.
Got that? Leaving aside Dershowitz's absurd assumption that there are loads of
Palestinians just itching to volunteer as "human shields," it's clear that when conflicts are
thus framed – all manner of cruelties become permissible.
In Israel, it begins with stated policies of internationally- prohibited
collective punishment. For example, during the 2006 Lebanon War that killed exponentially
more innocent Lebanese than Israelis, the IDF chief of staff's announced
intent was to deliver "a clear message to both greater Beirut and Lebanon that they've
swallowed a cancer [Hezbollah] and have to vomit it up, because if they don't their country
will pay a very high price." It ends with Tel Aviv's imposition of an abusive
calorie-calculus on Palestinians.
In 2008, Israeli authorities actually
drew up a document computing the minimum caloric intake necessary for Gaza's residents to
suffer (until they yield), but avoid outright starvation. Two years earlier, that wonderful
wordsmith Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained that
Israeli policy was designed "to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of
hunger."
Lest that sound beyond the pale for we Americans, recall that it was the first female
secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who ten years earlier said of 500,000 Iraqi
children's deaths under crippling U.S. sanctions: "we think, the price is worth it."
Furthermore, it's unclear how the Trump administration's current sanctions-
clampdown on Syrians unlucky enough to live in President Bashar al Assad-controlled
territory is altogether different from the "Palestinian diet."
After all, even one of the Middle East Institute's resident regime-change-enthusiasts,
Charles Lister, recently admitted
that America's criminally-euphemized "Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act" may induce a
"famine." In other words, according to two humanitarian experts
writing on the national security website War on the Rocks , "hurting the very
civilians it aims to protect while largely failing to affect the Syrian government
itself."
It is, and has long been, thus: Israeli prime ministers and American presidents, Bibi and
The Donald, Tel Aviv and Washington – are peas in a punishing pod.
Emergencies as Existences
In both Israel and America, frightened populations finagled by their uber-hawkish
governments acquiesce to militarized states of "emergencies" as a way of life. In seemingly
no time at all, the latest U.S. threshold got so low that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
matter-of-factly
declared one to override a congressional-freeze and permit the $8.1 billion sale of
munitions to Gulf Arab militaries. When some frustrated lawmakers asked the State
Department's inspector general to investigate, the resultant report
found that the agency failed to limit [Yemeni] civilian deaths from the sales –
most bombed by the Saudi's subsequent arsenal of largesse. (As for the inspector general
himself? He was "
bullied ," then fired, by Machiavelli Mike).
Per the standard, Israel is the more surface-overt partner. As the IDF-veteran author Haim
Bresheeth-Zabner writes in his new book , An Army Like
No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation , Israel is the "only country in
which Emergency Regulations have been in force for every minute of its existence."
Perhaps more worryingly, such emergency existences boomerang back to militarized
Minneapolis and Jerusalem streets alike. It's worth nothing that just five days after the
killing of George Floyd, an Israeli police officer
gunned down an unarmed, autistic, Palestinian man on his way to a school for the
disabled. Even the 19-year-old killer's 21-year-old commander (instructive, that)
admitted the cornered victim wasn't a threat. But here's the rub: when the scared and
confused Palestinian man ran from approaching police at 6 a.m. , initial officers
instinctually reported a potential "terrorist" on the loose.
Talk about global terror coming home to roost on local streets. And why not here in the
States? It wasn't but two months back that President Trump labeled peaceful
demonstrators in D.C., and nationwide protesters
tearing down Confederate statues, as "terrorists." That's more than a tad troubling,
since, as noted, almost anything is permissible against terrorists, thus tagged.
In other words, the Israeli-American, post-9/11 (or -9/14) militarized connections go
beyond the cosmetic and past sloganeering. Then again, the latter can be instructive. In the
wake of the latest Jerusalem police shooting, protesters in Israel's Occupied Territories
held up placards declaring solidarity with Black Lives Matter (BLM). One read:
"Palestinians support the black intifada." Yet the roots of shared systemic injustices run
far deeper.
Though it remains impolitic to say so here in the US,
both "BLM and the Palestinian rights movement are [by their own accounts] fighting
settler-colonial states and structures of domination and supremacy that value, respectively,
white and Jewish lives over black and Palestinian ones." They're hardly wrong.
All-but-official apartheid reigns in
Occupied Palestine, and a de-facto two-tier system
favoring Jewish citizens, prevails within Israel itself. Similarly, the US grapples with
chattel slavery's legacy, lingering effects institutional Jim Crow-apartheid, and its
persistent system of gross, if unofficial, socio-economic racial disparity.
Though there are hopeful rumblings in post-Floyd America, neither society has much
grappled with the immediacy and intransigency of their established and routine devaluation of
(internal and external) Arab and African lives. Instead, in another gross similarity,
Israelis and Americans prefer to laud any ruling elites who even pretend towards mildly
reformist rhetoric (rather than action) as brave peacemakers.
In fact, two have won the Nobel Peace Prize. In America, there was the untested Obama: he
the
king of drones and free-press-suppression – whose main qualification for the award
was not being named George W. Bush. In Israel, the prize went to late Prime Minister Shimon
Peres. According to Bresheeth-Zabner, Peres was the "mind behind the military-industrial
complex" in Israel, and also architect of the infamous
1996 massacre of 106 people sheltering at a United Nations compound in South Lebanon. In
such societies as ours and Israel's, and amidst interminable wars, too often politeness
passes for principle.
Military Mirrors
Predictably, social and cultural rot – and strategic delusions – first
manifest in a nation's military. Neither Israel's nor America's has a particularly impressive
record of late. The IDF won a few important wars in its first 25 years of existence, then
came back from a near catastrophic defeat to prevail in the 1973 Yom Kippur War; but since
then, it's at best muddled through near-permanent lower-intensity conflicts after invading
Southern Lebanon in 1978. In fact, its 22-year continuous counter-guerilla campaign there
– against Palestinian resistance groups and then Lebanese Hezbollah – slowly bled
the IDF dry in a quagmire often called " Israel's
Vietnam ." It was, in fact, proportionally more deadly
for its troops than America's Southeast Asian debacle – and ended (in 2000) with an
embarrassing unilateral withdrawal.
Additionally, Tel Aviv's perma-military-occupation of the Palestinian territories of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip hasn't just flagrantly violated
International law and several UN resolutions – but blown up in the IDF's face. Ever
since vast numbers of exasperated and largely abandoned (by Arab armies) Palestinians rose up
in the 1987 Intifada
– initially peaceful protests – and largely due to the IDF's counterproductively
vicious suppression, Israel has been trapped in endless imperial policing and
low-to-mid-level counterinsurgency.
None of its major named military operations in the West Bank and/or Gaza Strip –
Operations Defensive Shield (2002), Days of Penitence (2004), Summer Rains (2006), Cast Lead
(2008-09), Pillar of Defense (2012), Protective Edge (2014), among others – has
defeated or removed Hamas, nor have they halted the launch of inaccurate but persistent
Katyusha rockets.
In fact, the wildly disproportionate toll on Palestinian civilians in each and every
operation, and the intransigence of Israel's ironclad occupation has only earned Tel Aviv
increased international condemnation and fresh generations of resistors to combat. The IDF
counts minor tactical successes and suffers broader strategic failure. As even a fairly
sympathetic Rand report on the Gaza operations
noted, "Israel's grand strategy became 'mowing the grass' – accepting its inability to
permanently solve the problem and instead repeatedly targeting leadership of Palestinian
militant organizations to keep violence manageable."
The American experience has grown increasingly similar over the last three-quarters of a
century. Unless one counts modern trumped-up Banana
Wars like those in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), or the lopsided 100-hour First
Persian Gulf ground campaign (1991), the US military, too, hasn't won a meaningful victory
since 1945. Korea (1950-53) was a grinding and costly draw; Vietnam (1965-72) a quixotic
quagmire; Lebanon (1982-84) an unnecessary and muddled
mess ; Somalia (1992-94) a mission-creeping fiasco;
Bosnia/Kosovo (1992-) an over-hyped and unsatisfying diversion. Yet matters deteriorated
considerably, and the Israeli-parallels grew considerably, after Congress chose
endless war on September 14, 2001.
America's longest ever war, in Afghanistan, started as a seeming slam dunk but has turned
out to be an intractable operational defeat. That lost cause has been a
dead war walking for over a decade. Operations Iraqi Freedom (2003-11) and Inherent
Resolve (2014-) may prove, respectively, America's most counterproductive and aimless
missions ever. Operation Odyssey Dawn, the 2011 air campaign in pursuit of Libyan regime
change, was a debacle – the entire region still grapples with its
detritus of jihadi profusion, refugee dispersion, and ongoing proxy war.
US support for the Saudi-led terror war on Yemen hasn't made an iota of strategic sense,
but has left America criminally
complicit in immense civilian-suffering. Despite the hype, the relatively young US Africa
Command (AFRICOM) was never really "about Africans," and its dozen years worth of far-flung
campaigns have only further militarized a long-suffering continent and
generated more terrorists. Like Israel's post-1973 operations, America's post-2001 combat
missions have simply been needless, hopeless, and counterproductive.
Consider a few other regrettable U.S.-Israeli military connections over these last two
decades:
Both have set their loudly proclaimed principles aside and made devil's bargains
with the venal Saudis (many of whom really do hate our values), as well as with
the cynical military coup-artists in Egypt.
Both have increasingly engaged in " wars of choice
" and grown reliant on the snake oil of "magical" air power to [not] win them. In fact,
during the 2006 war there, the IDF's first-ever air force officer to serve as chief of
staff declared
his intent to use such sky power to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years." How's
that for the head of a force that still styles
itself "the most moral army in the world." It's hard to see much moral difference
between that and America's ever-secretive drone program (perhaps 14,000 total strikes) and
the US government's constant and purposeful underreporting of the thousands of civilians
they've killed.
Both vaunted militaries broke their supposedly unbreakable backs in ill-advised
invasions built on false pretenses. The Israeli historian Martin van Creveld has famously
called
Israel's 1982 Lebanon War – and the quagmire that resulted – his country's
"greatest folly." The mainstream US national security analyst Tom Ricks – hardly a
dove himself – went a step further: the 2003 "American military adventure in Iraq"
was nothing short of a Fiasco
.
Both armies have seen their conventional war competence and ethical standards
measurably deteriorate amidst lengthy militarized-policing campaigns. As van Creveld said
of the IDF during the 1982 Lebanon invasion (after it enabled
the vicious massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian militiamen: it was reduced from
the superb fighting force of a "small but brave people" into a "high-tech, but soft,
bloated, strife-ridden, responsibility-shy and dishonest army."
The wear and tear from the South Lebanon occupation and from decades of beating up on
downtrodden and trapped Palestinians damaged Israel's vaunted military. According to an
after-action review, these operations"weakened the IDF's operational capabilities." Thus,
when Israel's nose was more than a bit bloodied in the 2006 war with Hezbollah, IDF analysts
and retired officers were quick – and not exactly incorrect – to blame the
decaying effect of endless low-intensity warfare.
At the time, two general staff members, Major Generals Yishai Bar and Yiftach Ron-Tal,
"warned that as a result of the preoccupation with missions in the territories, the IDF had
lost its maneuverability and capability to fight in mountainous terrain." Van Creveld added
that: "Among the commanders, the great majority can barely remember when they trained for and
engaged in anything more dangerous than police-type operations."
Similar voices have sounded the
alarm about the post-9/11 American military. Perhaps the loudest has been my fellow West
Point History faculty alum, retired Colonel Gian Gentile. This former tank battalion
commander and Iraq War vet described "America's deadly embrace of counterinsurgency" as a
Wrong
Turn . Specifically, he's
argued that "counterinsurgency has perverted [the way of] American war," pushed the
"defense establishment into fanciful thinking," and thus "atrophying [its] core fighting
competencies."
Instructively, Gentile
cited "The Israeli Defense Forces' recent [2006] experience in Lebanon There were many
reasons for its failure, but one of them, is that its army had done almost nothing but
[counterinsurgency] in the Palestinian territories, and its ability to fight against a
strident enemy had atrophied." Maybe more salient was Gentile's other
rejoinder that, historically, "nation-building operations conducted at gunpoint don't
turn out well" and tend to be as (or more) bloody and brutal as other wars.
Finally, and related to Gentile's last point, both militaries fell prey to the
brutality and cruelty so common in prolonged counterinsurgency and counter-guerilla combat.
Consider the resurrected utility of that infamous adage of
absurdity mouthed by a US Army major in Vietnam: "it became necessary to destroy the
town to save it." He supposedly meant the February 1968 decision to bomb and shell the city
of Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta, regardless of the risk to civilians therein.
Fast forward a decade, and B?n Tre's ghost was born again in the matter-of-fact admission
of the IDF's then chief of staff, General Mordecai Gur. Asked if, during its 1978 invasion of
South Lebanon, Israel had bombed civilians "without discrimination," he
fired back : "Since when has the population of South Lebanon been so sacred? They know
very well what the terrorists were doing. . . . I had four villages in South Lebanon
bombarded without discrimination." When pressed to confirm that he believed "the civilian
population should be punished," Gur's retort was "And how!" Should it surprise us then, that
33 years later the concept was
rebooted to flatten presumably (though this has been contested) booby-trapped villages in
my old stomping grounds of Kandahar, Afghanistan?
In sum, Israel and America are senseless strategy-simpatico. It's a demonstrably
disastrous two-way relationship. Our main exports have been guns – $142.3 billion
worth since 1949 (significantly more than any other recipient) – and twin umbrellas
of air defense and
bottomless diplomatic top-cover for Israel's abuses. As to the top-cover export, it's not for
nothing that after the U.S. House rubber-stamped – by a vote of 410-8 – a 2006
resolution (written by the Israel Lobby) justifying IDF attacks on Lebanese civilians, the
"maverick" Republican Patrick Buchanan labeled the legislative body as " our
Knesset ."
Naturally, Tel Aviv responds in kind by shipping America a how-to-guide for societal
militarization, a built-in foreign policy script to their benefit, and the unending ire of
most people in the Greater Middle East. It's a timeless and treasured trade – but it
benefits neither party in the long run.
"Armies With Countries"
It was once
said that Frederick the Great's 18th century Prussia, was "not a country with an army,
but an army with a country." Israel has long been thus. It's probably still truer of them
than us. The Israelis do, after all, have an immersive system of military conscription
– whereas Americans leave the
fighting, killing, and dying to a microscopic and
unrepresentative Praetorian Guard of professionals. Nevertheless, since 9/11 – or,
more accurately, 9/14/2001 – US politics, society, and culture have wildly militarized.
To say the least, the outcomes have been unsatisfying: American troops haven't "won" a
significant war 75 years. Now, the US has set appearances aside once and for all and "
jumped the shark "
towards the gimmick of full-throated imperialism.
There are, of course, real differences in scale and substance between America and Israel.
The latter is the size
of Massachusetts, with the population of New
York City. Its "Defense Force" requires most of its of-age population to wage its offensive
wars and perennial policing of illegally occupied Palestinians. Israeli society is more
plainly "
prussianized ." Yet in broader and bigger – if less blatant – ways, so is the
post-AUMF United States. America-the-exceptional leads the world in legalized
gunrunning and overseas military
basing . Rather than the globe's self-styled "
Arsenal of Democracy ," the US has become little more than the arsenal of arsenals. So,
given the sway of the behemoth military-industrial-complex and recent Israelification of its
political culture, perhaps it's more accurate to say America is a defense industry with a
country – and not the other way around.
As for 17 year-old me, I didn't think I'd signed up for the Israeli Defense Force on that
sunny West Point morning of July 2, 2001. And, for the first two months and 12 days of my
military career – maybe I hadn't. I sure did serve in its farcical facsimile, though:
fighting its wars for an ensuing 17 more years.
Yet everyone who entered the US military after September 14, 2001 signed up for just that.
Which is a true tragedy.
Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and contributing editor atAntiwar.comHis work has appeared in
the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Popular Resistance, and
Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units
in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the
author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His forthcoming book,
Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War is now available forpre-order. Sjursen was recently selected as a 2019-20 Lannan FoundationCultural Freedom Fellow. Follow him on Twitter@SkepticalVet. Visit his
professionalwebsitefor contact info, to schedule speeches or media appearances, and access to his past
work.
"... He thinks the Palestinians will accept permanent helot status? Maybe so... But is that something we should relish? ..."
"... And what of Syria? What of Syria? Evidently Trump considered murdering President Assad two years ago. Is he going to abandon regime change now? is he going to abandon the policy of Pompeo and Jeffries? ..."
"... My guess is that the acceptability for Helot status of Palestinians will depend on how much worse it is compared to the status of Palestinian equivalents elsewhere. Syria and Lebanon certainly look far less attractive. ..."
"... Also, from my admittedly limited experience, Palestinians aren't exactly homogenous, Gaza =! West Bank. ..."
"... If the Israelis are smart (and I think they are), they will continue to exploit Palestinian disunity by not having one helot status but several, with privileges to repress and boss around the lesser helots (perhaps even some less desirable Israelis) awarded to the higher helots. ..."
"... The neocons have been firmly ensconced in ME policy since Reagan. At least Trump made a little bit of lemonade. Nothing earth shattering IMO but moved the ball forward 10 yds and away from own goals under the so-called experts & strategists of the past decades. ..."
"... Support for Israel and its maximalist dreams has always been bipartisan. ..."
"... The colonel has a much more realistic take on this: the intention is to co-opt the Arab states into forcing the Palestinians to accept permanent helot status. Not quite slaves but closes to it. ..."
"... There would be many ways to describe that, but I suspect "peace plan" would rank amongst the less accurate ones. ..."
"... I also remember when the Trump admin killed the Gen. Suleimani late last year the same people also touted it a national security success. This is shameful pattern. ..."
"... Just because Jared Kushner, Berkowitz (Kushner's mini-me), David Friedman and the Zionist anti-American paid shills of Christians United For Israel et.al put Israel's interest first does not make it a success for American interests abroad. Trump does not know two things about the ME. He just obeys orders from this outside 'advisors' when it comes to ME policy. ..."
"... When I read that " If you look at relatively successful integration/assimilations in history, jointly overcoming something that was threatening to both typically ranked pretty highly as a cause." I think that The Islamic Republic of Iran is what is being offered or used as that cause. ..."
"... But if the present and future Israelis believe this means that the total advantage is totally theirs to press, then present and future Palestinians will continue searching for ways to make their unhappiness felt. But that outcome would not be Trump's fault. That outcome would be the majority-likudnic Israelis' choice. ..."
"... the problem with "outside in" strategy is that implies that if conditions are bad enough for the Palestinians, they will agree to any deal Trump can force down their throats. Instead, Palestinians have been offered terrible deals since 2000 (ie., a state that is never going to be a real state with permanent Israeli control over its borders, air space, and water tables ..."
"... The smarter plan is to acknowledge that the Zionists killed the Two-State Solution, and Palestinians might as well push this into an anti-Apartheid struggle. ..."
It is clear that the heat has gone away in the fabled "Arab Street" over the issue of
Israel. If that were not so, the rulers would not have dared to do this. That being so ... It
will be very interesting to see how many people from these two countries go to Israel to
visit holy sites like the al-Aqsa Mosque. There have not been many religious tourists from
Egypt and Jordan. This is what the Israelis call pilgrims. Trump thinks that he can bring
Saudi Arabia into such a deal? Good! Let's see it. He thinks that Iran can be brought into
such a deal? Wonderful! Let's see it.
He thinks the Palestinians will accept permanent helot status? Maybe so... But is that
something we should relish?
And what of Syria? What of Syria? Evidently Trump considered murdering President Assad
two years ago. Is he going to abandon regime change now? is he going to abandon the policy of
Pompeo and Jeffries?
I suggest that security should be very tight on airline flights from Bahrein and the
UAE.
I suspect this has less to do with peace and more to do with lining up a coalition against
Iran. He's signing peace deals at the white house the same day he not only threatens Iran for
a make believe assassination plot against our South African Ambassador, but admits he wanted
to assassinate Assad.
He's making a big mistake though if he thinks Iranians will behave and respond similarly
to the Arabs, and they are certainly not North Koreans.
He's being frog marched into a war with Iran while his ego is being stroked under the
guise of a Nobel peace prize.
What say about Alastair Crooke's "Maintaining Pretence Over Reality: 'Simply Put, the
Iranians Outfoxed the U.S. Defence Systems'" at Strategic Culture Foundation?
My guess is that the acceptability for Helot status of Palestinians will depend on how
much worse it is compared to the status of Palestinian equivalents elsewhere. Syria and
Lebanon certainly look far less attractive. The other issue is the degree with which Arab
elites can "reroute" Anti Israeli into Anti Iranian sentiments on the Arab street.
Also, from my admittedly limited experience, Palestinians aren't exactly homogenous, Gaza
=! West Bank.
If the Israelis are smart (and I think they are), they will continue to exploit
Palestinian disunity by not having one helot status but several, with privileges to repress
and boss around the lesser helots (perhaps even some less desirable Israelis) awarded to the
higher helots.
I think this will be fairly hard though. Various Historical, religion and cultural issues
specific to the situation make it quite hard for Arabs to actually assimilate into Israeli
society. There is also a lack of a unifying foe to unite against. If you look at relatively
successful integration/assimilations in history, jointly overcoming something that was
threatening to both typically ranked pretty highly as a cause.
The neocons have been firmly ensconced in ME policy since Reagan. At least Trump made a
little bit of lemonade. Nothing earth shattering IMO but moved the ball forward 10 yds and
away from own goals under the so-called experts & strategists of the past decades.
The TDS afflicted media couldn't bear that some lemonade was made. Wolf Blitzer
interviewing Jared Kushner was all about pandemic nothing about the implications or process
to having couple gulf sheikhs recognize Israel. The fact is that these gulf sheikhs only paid
lip service to the plight of the Palestinians in any case. This formalizes what was reality.
The "Arab Street" have always been a manifestation of whatever were powerful manipulations.
The manipulators have been coopted in the current lemonade making. In any case Bibi must be
very pleased. He didn't have to give up anything in his difficult domestic political
predicament.
The arabs simply do not care anymore, from Morocco to Oman. Their spirit totally broken by
the "Arab spring", youth disillusioned and jobless. The only dream left for most is to ape
the western lifestyle. The others are fighting in wars.
I can see one of two futures, a Clean Break: Securing the Realm-style one in which all of the arabs live life as helots under the
thumb of a Greater Israel. This would bring relative economic prosperity to most of the
helots.
I think I see the flaw in this article: ..."If that turns out to be the case and this
maneuver succeeds in ultimately bringing about a two state solution for Israel and the
Palestinians,"...
Surely you don't believe that these maneuvers are intended to bring about a Palestinian
state?
The colonel has a much more realistic take on this: the intention is to co-opt the Arab
states into forcing the Palestinians to accept permanent helot status. Not quite slaves but
closes to it.
There would be many ways to describe that, but I suspect "peace plan" would rank amongst
the less accurate ones.
One running theme that I have been seeing from the former so-called neocon critics and ME
wars opponents (Michael Scheuer comes to mind) is their uncontrollable exhilaration for any
terrible so-called F.P. 'success' that the Trump admin achieves in the ME.
I also remember
when the Trump admin killed the Gen. Suleimani late last year the same people also touted it
a national security success. This is shameful pattern.
Just because Jared Kushner, Berkowitz
(Kushner's mini-me), David Friedman and the Zionist anti-American paid shills of Christians
United For Israel et.al put Israel's interest first does not make it a success for American
interests abroad. Trump does not know two things about the ME. He just obeys orders from this
outside 'advisors' when it comes to ME policy.
It it exactly what it is. Israel normalized relations with the most notorious
dictatorships and wants to implement Pegasus spying program and wide-scale surveillance
(among other nefarious things) in UAE and Bahrain. How is that a success for America? America
should stay out of these Israeli-first trouble making schemes and stay neutral or out of
there.
Let me tell you what a F.P. success is, OK? It would have been a huge success if America
was able to lure Iran into its orbit to fend of the Chinese communists out of the region and
out of our lives and have a stronger alliance with regards to its upcoming Cold War with
China.
It would have been successful for America to balance China out with Iran, India,
Turkey and Afghanistan, and not let China to invest billions in Haifa port (close to U.S.
military forces there) a major hub of its Belt and Road initiative and a huge blow to U.S.
new Cold war effort against China.
Think about it.
Allow me to raise a few points: first of all , every single one of these brutal backward
Arab dictatorships has had low key but crucial relations with Israel since the Cold War and
they just made it open, Big deal! Second, this joyfulness for a hostile anti-american country
is quite sad for two reasons:
1. that Larry touts it as a success for America, which is
anything but a success for America. It is a success for Bibi and Trump's evangelical/zionist
sugar daddies to cough up some Benjamins for Trump's campaign and his GOP/Likudniks. I guess
nowadays our judgement is so clouded and inverted that MAGA and MIGA are considered
inseparable.
2. The delusion that dems are bitterly angry and anti-Israel (because they are
anti-Trump) and therefore it automatically becomes an issue of partisan support for Trump and
whatever he does. This idea is so absurd that I won't get into it. Dems were the first to
congratulate Israel.
I would like Larry to tell me what he thinks of H.R. 1697 Israel Anti-Boycot Act which
punishes American citizens for practicing their god-given 2nd Amendment rights. or the 3.8
billion of aid, or the the gifting of Golan heights to Bibi? Are these big foreign policy
success too?
What the Arab-Israeli normalization means:
*The U.S. wants out of the ME to focus on China, a wet dream that Israel favors especially
post Cold War. It does not want secular, (semi) democratic sovereign states around it, and if
anyone pays attention close enough they do whatever they can to prevent any kind of political
reform and change of government to occur among Arab nations. Israelis are staunch supporters
of Saudi, Bahraini, UAE, Jordanian, and Egyptian dictatorships in the MENA region.
Israel
will now be better positioned to roll-back any kind of grassroots reform in the ME with the
help of their now openly pro-Israeli Arab rulers by directing policies to these backward
rulers to divest from human development and political reform and instead invest more in
security, tech, surveillance.
This trend also explains Israeli constant opposition to the
Iran Deal, which would have had further ramifications for political reform and accelerated
weakening of Hardliners in Tehran and a better position for America to pivot to China with
the help of a moderated Iran. Israel does not want a powerful democratic nation near its
borders, and especially not in Iran. Just take a look at Israel's neighbors and tell me how
many of them are democratic and friendly with Israel and how does Israel behave when there
are secular Arab democratic states around it?
There is a developing coalition of powerful states as a reaction to the Arab-Israeli
normalization that observers call "the rejectionists". They are, Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan
(impending), Malaysia (impending), Iran, and EU (impending).
It is true that Iran has now a target on its back and if it were smart, it would try its
best to develop some kind of alliance with the secular democratic humanists in EU to try to
remove itself from isolation, save what is left of the Iran Deal, and try to isolate and
condemn Israelis, Arab dictators and their cohorts internationally and through diplomacy back
portraying them as illiberal and anti-democratic or similar things. Although I am not too
hopeful that Iran is be able to do this for a number of obvious reasons.
This Arab-Israeli normalization is a MIGA (Make Israel Great Again) vision of very
tightly controlled development for the MENA region and extremely' special' attention has been
given to the cyber tech development (call it surveillance) to control the 'Arab Street' from
social revolt and the prevention of next rounds of Arab Springs, which again goes back to
Israel's long-standing regional doctrine of propping pro-U.S. and now pro-Israeli Arab
dictatorships in the region.
In the end, it's all just tribal superstition. Logically a spiritual absolute would be the
essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we
fell.
The fact we are aware, than the myriad details of which we are aware.
One of the reasons we can't have a live and let live world is because everyone thinks their
own vision should be universal, rather than unique. So the fundamentalists rule.
The reason nature is so diverse and dense is because it isn't a monoculture.
Irrespective of our technology, we are still fairly primitive, in the grand scheme of
things.
When I read that " If you look at relatively successful integration/assimilations in
history, jointly overcoming something that was threatening to both typically ranked pretty
highly as a cause." I think that The Islamic Republic of Iran is what is being offered or
used as that cause.
If this all ends up in the longest run leading to today's and tomorrow's Israelis
accepting the lesser Israel that Rabin ended up deciding would be necessary for a
lesser-but-still-real Palestine to emerge as a real country resigned with both resigned
enough to that outcome that they would tolerate eachother's separate independence over the
long term, then this will go somewhere good.
But if the present and future Israelis believe this means that the total advantage is
totally theirs to press, then present and future Palestinians will continue searching for
ways to make their unhappiness felt. But that outcome would not be Trump's fault. That
outcome would be the majority-likudnic Israelis' choice.
To have a two state solution Israel will have to leave enough of Palestine without Jewish
settlement for there to be room for another state. Their actions show that they have no
intention of doing that.
Larry: the problem with "outside in" strategy is that implies that if conditions are bad
enough for the Palestinians, they will agree to any deal Trump can force down their throats.
Instead, Palestinians have been offered terrible deals since 2000 (ie., a state that is never
going to be a real state with permanent Israeli control over its borders, air space, and
water tables)
The smarter plan is to acknowledge that the Zionists killed the Two-State Solution, and Palestinians might as well push
this into an anti-Apartheid struggle. The gerontocracy that rules the PA will soon pass away. The younger generation of
Palestinians are much more sophisticated.
As a trial lawyer, I see this type of behavior all the time. If you offer someone
essentially nothing, they lose nothing by rejecting it. The Arab dictators will not be around forever. And before Camp David, the Palestinians
have suffered far worse than they are suffering now.
In short: "We Jews know that Arabs (Palestinians) will never, ever voluntarily give up
hope of resisting Jewish demands, and Jews will never stop with Jewish demands: that all of
Palestine become Jewish.
Since 'voluntary' will not work, only force -- an Iron Wall -- will suffice.
Jabotinsky defines "Iron Wall" as the enforcement capacity of an outside power:
"we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their
voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the
natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say "no" and depart from Zionism.
Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in
defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue
and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population
– an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto,
our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.
Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour
Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power
committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be
deterred from interfering with our efforts."
Be aware that Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion, was Jabotinsky's administrative
assistant, then replacement, in New York; that Bibi is very much heir to the ideological
fervor of Jabotinsky & of Benzion; and that Benzion and Benjamin laid out the blueprint
for the GWOT at the Jerusalem Conference July 4, 1979 https://www.amazon.com/International-Terrorism-Challenge-Benjamin-Netanyahu/dp/0878558942
Trump plays only a walk-on role in this carefully scripted 150 year old zionist drama.
"there isn't a lot of difference between KSA and these fiefdoms of uae and bahrain.." A
total crock. you obviously have never been to either of these places.
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her
website is here and you can follow
her on Twitter @caitoz
...Amid all the pedantic squabbling over when it is and is not legal under US law for a
journalist to expose evidence of US war crimes, we must never lose sight of the fact that (A)
it should always be legal to expose war crimes, (B) it should always be illegal for governments
to hide evidence of their war crimes, (C) war crimes should always be punished, (D) people who
start criminal wars should always be punished, (E) governments should not be permitted to have
a level of secrecy that allows them to start criminal wars, and (F) power and secrecy should
always have an inverse relationship to one another.
The Assange case needs to be fought tooth and claw, but we must keep in mind that it is so
very, very many clicks back from where we need to be as a civilization. In an ideal situation,
governments should be too afraid of the public to keep secrets from them; instead, here we are
begging the most powerful government in the world to please not imprison a journalist because
he arguably did not break the rules that that government made for itself.
Do you see how far that point is from where we need to be?
It's important to remember this. It's important to remember that the amount of evil deeds
power structures will commit is directly proportional to the amount of information they are
permitted to hide from the public. We will not have a healthy world until power and secrecy
have an inverse relationship to each other: privacy for rank-and-file individuals, and
transparency for governments and their officials.
"But what about military secrets?" one might object. Yes, what about military
secrets? What about the fact that virtually all military violence perpetrated by the world's
largest power structures is initiated based on lies ? What about the utterly indisputable fact that the
more secrecy we allow the war machine, the more wars it deceives the public into allowing it to
initiate?
In a healthy world, the most powerful government on Earth wouldn't be trying to squint at
its own laws in such a way that permits the prosecution of a journalist for telling the
truth.
In a healthy world, the most powerful government on Earth wouldn't prosecute anyone for
telling the truth at all.
In a healthy world, governments would prosecute their own war crimes, instead of those who
expose them.
In a healthy world, governments wouldn't commit war crimes at all.
In a healthy world, governments wouldn't start wars at all.
In a healthy world, governments would see truth as something to be desired and actively
sought, not something to be repressed and punished.
In a healthy world, governments wouldn't keep secrets from the public, and wouldn't have any
cause to want to.
In a healthy world, if governments existed at all, they would exist solely as tools for the
people to serve themselves, with full transparency and accountability to those people.
We are obviously a very, very far cry from the kind of healthy world we would all like to
one day find ourselves in. But we should always keep in mind what a healthy world will look
like, and hold it as our true north for the direction that we are pushing in.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her
website is here and you can follow
her on Twitter @caitoz
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Reality007 3 hours ago 18 Sep, 2020 10:07 AM
Unfortunately, no criminals that have committed or covered up war crimes, decades ago to
present, will ever be indicted. They are all above the law while all innocents that revealed
the truths must pay highly. We can only pray and hope for the best for Julian Assange.
Fred Dozer Reality007 1 hour ago 18 Sep, 2020 12:16 PM
I see nothing wrong with robbing banks in criminal controlled countries. These governments,
murder, cheat, lie, & steal.
T. Agee Kaye 2 hours ago 18 Sep, 2020 11:10 AM
The right of a people to know what their government is doing, and the potential consequences
of those actions on the people, nation, and society, is inalienable. The exposure of war
crimes and any corruption is not illegal and cannot be made illegal. The trial of Assange is
not about the legality of Assange's actions. It is a display of the influence that criminal
interests have over the government and judiciary. It is an attempt to create legitimacy by
creating precedent. Murder has plenty of precedent. It will never be legitimate.
Jewel Gyn 3 hours ago 18 Sep, 2020 10:21 AM
Agreed but having said that, we are not living in a perfect world. Bully with big fists exist
and the lesser countries just stood by frustrated and sucking their thumbs, silent lest they
be targeted for voicing out. And you can see clearly why US is walking away from any form of
organised voice eg UN.
Odinsson 2 hours ago 18 Sep, 2020 10:51 AM
What we need in the case of Julian Assange is factual reporting. While the motivation to
prosecute Assange is most likely political, there would be no ability to prosecute him were
it not for his active support of PFC Manning's hacking of a DOD information system. It is not
unlawful to publish classified information which was provided to you, so long as you are not
involved in the criminal acts leading to the exfiltration of the data. Had Assange not aided
PFC Manning by looking up hash codes in spreadsheets of known password to hash code
translations then the grand jury would not have indicted him. FWIW, it is my opinion that the
statute of limitations expired long ago and this should be grounds for dismissal of all
charges against him.
jholf 1 hour ago 18 Sep, 2020 12:04 PM
These world leaders, claim to be Christians, ... their God 'commands', "Thou shalt not kill."
Yet, for more than 6 decades, that is exactly what each of these Christian Commanders in
Chief, have done for no reason, other than to fill the pockets of the elite. A man is known
by his deeds, Assange gave us truth, while these world leaders gave us war and destructi
Before he was a journalist and a novelist, before he was a globe-trotting war correspondent and a historian with an eye for ordinary
people that led extraordinary lives, Scott Anderson was a child of the Cold War. His father worked for the State Department, which
took the Anderson family to South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. All three countries were located on the new fault lines of the geopolitical
struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, anti-communism and communism, the "Yanks" and the "Reds." [ Before he was
a journalist and a novelist, before he was a globe-trotting war correspondent and a historian with an eye for ordinary people that
led extraordinary lives, Scott Anderson was a child of the Cold War. His father worked for the State Department, which took the Anderson
family to South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. All three countries were located on the new fault lines of the geopolitical struggle
between the United States and the Soviet Union, anti-communism and communism, the "Yanks" and the "Reds." [ [ [
Find the Book ]
At the time, the Reagan administration was backing the right-wing Salvadoran government in its war against leftist rebels,
yet another front in the anti-communism campaign. The incident planted a simple question in Anderson's mind: How had it come to this?
As a kid, Anderson watched his father grow disillusioned with his country's crusade against communism and the folly of the Vietnam
War.
But Anderson himself didn't fully grasp the contradictions, hubris, and stupidity of the American empire's obsession with anti-communism
until the spring of 1984, when he watched a young woman's body dumped and retrieved with grim efficiency by a group of soldiers on
a side street in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. At the time, the Reagan administration was backing the right-wing Salvadoran
government in its war against leftist rebels, yet another front in the anti-communism campaign. The incident planted a simple question
in Anderson's mind: How had it come to this?
In his absorbing new book The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War -- A Tragedy in Three Acts
, Anderson answers that question by zeroing in on a critical juncture in time, the dawn of the Cold War from 1944 to 1956, and
on four spooks who not just witnessed but shaped history during that period of time. It would be too on the nose to say Anderson's
book reads like Graham Greene's classic The Quiet American , but Anderson masterfully weaves together the lives of Frank Wisner,
a genteel Southerner who climbs the ranks of the CIA only to fall into despair and take his own life after the U.S.'s betrayal of
revolutionaries in eastern Europe; Ed Lansdale, a CIA legend who has been called
"the American James Bond" and the "T.E. Lawrence of Asia"; Peter Sichel, a German Jewish refugee who traded currency on the black
market to fund covert U.S. operations across Europe; and Michael Burke, a black-ops specialist who directed commando operations behind
the Iron Curtain. Each man would meet a different fate, but taken together they capture in vivid detail the early days of the CIA
and the origins of the Cold War.
But The Quiet Americans book is more than a real-life le Carr tale. By focusing on the post-World War II period and the
critical early days of the Cold War, Anderson's story raises questions about the rise of American empire and how the trajectory of
the 20th and 21st century could have looked so much differently. "If FDR had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern
Europe would have looked quite a bit different," Anderson tells Rolling Stone , referring to the upheaval on the European
continent after World War II. "I think that Stalin would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if?"
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Rolling Stone: I've read so many end-of-the-Cold-War stories and end-of-World-War-Two stories. But with this time period from
1944 to 1956, I found myself absorbing the history as much as the characters and their stories. How did you come to zero in on this
period in not just American history but world history?
Scott Anderson: As I say at the beginning of the book, I'm very much a product of the Cold War. It was something I spent a lot of
time thinking about growing up. And then seeing the residue of it in war reporting in the '80s and '90s. When did it all start to
go south? When did all this get locked into place where there was this stalemate that went on forever and that I think is currently
damaging to an American standing around the world?
I was reading some books about FDR while World War II was going and this idea that this was going to be the end of the age of
empires, the dismantling of the British and the French empires, and that America was going to be this this kind of beacon of freedom
and the spreader of democracy around the world. And then by the early '50s, with the CIA knocking over the regimes in Guatemala and
in Iran, there was an incredible turnaround in this 12-year period.
Did you have any of these globe-trotting larger than life characters in mind when you picked this time period?
I always want to write history that focuses on people who are at the front lines or the players in the field rather than the generals
or diplomats. When you're talking about the Cold War, the people on the front lines were spies, which kind of works out. I'd rather
write about spies than accountants. I'd heard of Wisner and I'd heard of Ed Lansdale. If you read much at all about Vietnam stuff,
Lansdale is pretty prominent. But the other two [Sichel and Burke] I'd never heard of. I looked at, I don't know, 20, 25 different
CIA agents through this period. And invariably there were a lot of guys who did cool stuff for a while, but then went to the State
Department or were sitting in the embassy somewhere. Or I couldn't find any paper trail for them. And I really needed that.
And so out of all these people I looked at, I ended up with exactly these four. With Peter Sichel, he's kind of like finding the
proverbial chest of letters in the attic sort of thing. He's still alive, still incredibly sharp, the last surviving member of this
generation of the early CIA guys. And had been very prominent. In fact, I probably did eight or nine interviews with him. So he was
a real find. It was kind of a treasure hunt.
What I found so fascinating about Frank Wisner is his evolution over the course of the book, from a true believer and early CIA
booster to, in the case of Eisenhower and the "new look" policy, a cautionary voice or a skeptic. The guy asked, "Is this right policy?
What are we getting ourselves into?"
I don't think you could put Wisner in a novel. He starts out as this gung ho guy, the Mighty Wurlitzer he creates, and he just wants
to start fires everywhere. He's this deeply emotional guy and he really takes this stuff personally. And I think he just sees coming
over his desk the endless list of disasters and agents disappearing and being executed, he really did change.
The incredible irony with the Hungarian Revolution is here, finally, is the thing that he's been fighting for the last 10 years.
And just the irony that he's in Europe when it happens, he goes down to the border. He sees all the refugees pouring across the border.
And has a complete emotional collapse that he never really recovers from.
Along with Lansdale, he is probably the best known because he was so prominent in the early CIA. And most people think of him
as just like I said earlier, this is rabid right wing anti-communist, but the Eisenhower people scared him. And by then he had seen
all these operations just fail. And I think he started thinking we have to approach this in a different way. And, of course, he wasn't
listened to.
You bring an interesting background and experience to in this case a work of history, being a journalist, foreign correspondent,
war correspondent who has written extensively from the places that you also write about decades, generations earlier in this book
and obviously in your book Lawrence in Arabia . How do those things interplay?
I suspect that even more than the war reporting the fact I grew up overseas and I didn't spend any time in the States until I was
a teenager, in a funny way, gave me not an outsider's perspective but a semi-outsider's perspective on this country.
In thinking of war, I can think back to the very first war I went to, which was in 1983 in Beirut, and it was just before the
Marine barracks there got blown up. I was there about a month before that. The American troops on the ground were getting shot at
already. A few had been killed. And I remember standing out in front of the American embassy in Beirut that had been destroyed a
few months earlier with a massive truck bomb. There was a 19 year old soldier -- about my age -- sitting on top of a tank in front
of the American embassy. We just got talking and he said, "Can I ask you a question? Why are we here?"
He had no clue why they were there or what in fact their mission was. Not to take anything away from him but I doubt he could
have found Beirut on a map. He was just some kid out of Kansas or something. And I've seen that again and again with American troops
around the world that they really don't understand why they're where they are or what they're supposed to be doing. Again, it goes
back to this notion that we're coming in to liberate people. And I think these poor bastards in the field are constantly surprised
why the locals are putting IEDs on them or shooting at them. That's not true with the British and the French and former imperialists.
They seem to have a much better sense of well, we're here, if the French go in to Indonesia to knock some heads because of an insurgency
or a guerrilla war going on, they kind of know they're doing it for their own self-interest or their country's self-interest and
they have this kind of imperial mandate to do it. And I think British likewise. But Americans, they just don't think that way. The
rest of the world thinks of them that way. But they don't.
You write about the Red Scare and the very profound effect it had on U.S. foreign policy and on the institutions and people in
The Quiet Americans . We all know who Roy Cohn is, Joe McCarthy, the black lists in Hollywood. But how did the Red Scare seep
into America's actions abroad?
Out of the four people I write about, two of them were direct victims of the Red Scare. Frank Wisner and Peter Sichel were both at
different times investigated for their possible leftist connections. And in Frank Wisner's case, because of a relationship he'd had
with this Romanian woman during the war and who then maybe had gone on to pass information to the Soviets afterwards. J. Edgar Hoover
hated Frank Wisner. At one point, right when Eisenhower was coming to the presidency, it looked like Wisner was probably going to
be chosen to be the next CIA director like clockwork right after the election, Hoover reopened investigation into Wisner, something
that had been going on now for seven years. Until Wisner died in '65, it was always hanging over his head.
McCarthy gets all the
credit because they named the era after him, but he was by and large J. Edgar Hoover's front man.
So what you saw was the Red Scare play out on an international level or the level of foreign policy in two really significant
ways. One was obvious: When you are in the height of the Red Scare, there's no downside to if you in the CIA to launch an operation
that was going to fail or that or that would overthrow a democratic regime. You can only run into trouble if it looks like you're
obstructing the American advance against the communists.
The great irony of the CIA's covert operations around the world in the '40s and '50s was that the most successful aspects of it
were the soft power ones -- Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. This kind of battle for hearts and minds started in Europe as this
kind of intellectual counter movement against the communists overseas. There was a program where we'd sent hundreds of thousands
of books overseas and had these open libraries. They were sponsoring Langston Hughes and putting on Porgy and Bess in Berlin.
It actually had a huge cultural effect. And all that disappeared during the Red Scare.
When I finished the book, I feel like there are many ways to describe it, but on one sort of more abstract level, I almost came
away feeling like it was sort of counterintuitive in the history of American empire or at least a sort of American interventionism
and meddling overseas. And that there was a moment, a sort of a crossroads, where the U.S. didn't go down this path that it did.
Did you set out to do that?
I felt it kind of came about pretty organically. To my mind, there are two great turning points or potential turning points that
where things could have gone the other way. One being FDR dying like three weeks before the end of the war. I do think that if FDR
had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern Europe would have looked quite a bit different. I think that Stalin
would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if? I think he would have been more equipped to deal with what was happening
in Eastern Europe. Where I think Truman was just like a deer in headlights. So for about two years, he still seemed to labor under
this idea that Oh, maybe we can deal with the Soviets. Maybe our wartime alliance can still be repaired until finally in 1947, he
comes out with the Truman Doctrine, he starts the CIA, but at that point it's too late. All of Eastern Europe is essentially sewn
up at that point.
I think the other great turning point is around the time of Stalin's death and the Hungarian Revolution. There are probably three
or four times, culminating in the Hungarian Revolution, when the Kremlin was sending out peace feelers to the West. They were the
ones who started talking about peaceful coexistence. And every time, the Eisenhower administration, led by John Foster Dulles, spurned
them. And so I think that's the second great turning point to me, and you really see it in the Hungarian Revolution where, on one
day, Khrushchev decides, We have to let Hungary go. We can't fight back. We're going to liberalize all of Eastern Europe .
Basically, he was talking about what Gorbachev did 33 years later. And then in one day, he flips around and thinks to himself, "Well,
if the Americans were going to do anything about Hungary, they would have done it by now." Then from that time, you see Khrushchev
changing and he becomes more and more hard line. And so the Cold War goes on for another 33 years.
Another key turning point in the future course of Middle Eastern history is the overthrow of Mosadegh in Iran, which you write
about. I always come back to the what if with Iran. If we had not done that, what would Iran look like today?
The astonishing thing to me is I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East is, you know, you look at old pictures of Iran or Egypt
or, you know, anywhere in the Middle East, Iraq from the 1950s and they're very westernized. America had huge influence in the 1950s
in that region, as it did in a lot of other regions around the world.
All of that was squandered by the overthrow of Mosadegh, and the fact that for a number of years after the coup there the CIA
bragged about their role. You know, this is a great triumph. And it was really probably not until like the mid-'70s when they said
Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn't be bragging about this so much. And then, of course, the shah is overthrown, you have a Islamic
fundamentalist regime come in, and now, throughout that part of the world, though this is complicated by Israel, of course, you've
seen this incredible swing back to this Islamic fundamentalism everywhere. Even in American satellites like Egypt, you would never
have seen a woman in a burqa in Cairo 15, 20 years ago. You see it all the time now.
These things tend to have a second life and it's a bad life from the standpoint of American power and prestige. History is weird,
how a certain event comes along and how, only in hindsight, you can see what a crucial turning point it probably was.
Question: I'll start with the hottest topic, Belarus. President of the Republic of Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko visited Bocharov Ruchei. Both sides have officially recognised that change
within the Union State is underway. This begs the question: What is this about? A common
currency, common army and common market? What will it be like?
Sergey Lavrov: It will be the way our countries decide. Work is underway. It relies on the
1999 Union Treaty. We understand that over 20 years have passed since then. That is why, a
couple of years ago, upon the decision of the two presidents, the governments of the Russian
Federation and the Republic of Belarus began to work on identifying the agreed-upon steps that
would make our integration fit current circumstances. Recently, at a meeting with Russian
journalists, President Lukashenko said that the situation had, of course, changed and we must
agree on ways to deepen integration from today's perspective.
The presidential election has taken place in Belarus. The situation there is tense, because
the opposition, backed by some of our Western colleagues, is trying to challenge the election
outcome, but I'm convinced that the situation will soon get back to normal, and the work to
promote integration processes will resume.
Everything that is written in the Union Treaty is now being analysed. Both sides have to
come to a common opinion about whether a particular provision of the Union Treaty is still
relevant, or needs to be revised. There are 31 roadmaps, and each one focuses on a specific
section of the Union Treaty. So, there's clearly a commitment to continue the reform, a fact
that was confirmed by the presidents during a recent telephone conversation. This is further
corroborated by the presidents' meeting in Sochi.
I would not want that country's neighbours, and our neighbours for that matter, including
Lithuania, for example, to try to impose their will on the Belarusian people and, in fact, to
manage the processes in which the opposition is unwittingly doing what's expected of it. I have
talked several times about Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's situation. Clearly, someone is putting
words in her mouth. She is now in the capital of Lithuania, which, like our Polish colleagues,
is strongly demanding a change of power in Belarus. You are aware that Lithuania declared Ms
Tikhanovskaya the leader of the Republic of Belarus, and Alexander Lukashenko was declared an
illegitimate president.
Ms Tikhanovskaya has made statements that give rise to many questions. She said she was
concerned that Russia and Belarus have close relations. The other day, she called on the
security and law-enforcement forces to side with the law. In her mind, this is a direct
invitation to breach the oath of office and, by and large, to commit high treason. This is
probably a criminal offense. So, those who provide her with a framework for her activities and
tell her what to say and what issues to raise should, of course, realise that they may be held
accountable for that.
Question: Commenting on the upcoming meeting of the presidents of Russia and Belarus in
Sochi, Tikhanovskaya said: "Whatever they agree on, these agreements will be illegitimate,
because the new state and the new leader will revise them." How can one work under such
circumstances?
Sergey Lavrov: She was also saying something like that when Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin
went to Belarus to meet with President Lukashenko and Prime Minister Golovchenko. She was
saying it then. Back then, the opposition was concerned about any more or less close ties
between our countries. This is despite the fact that early on during the crisis they claimed
that they in no way engaged in anti-Russia activities and wanted to be friends with the Russian
people. However, everyone could have seen the policy paper posted on Tikhanovskaya's website
during the few hours it was there. The opposition leaders removed it after realising they had
made a mistake sharing their goals and objectives with the public. These goals and objectives
included withdrawal from the CSTO, the EAEU and other integration associations that include
Russia, and drifting towards the EU and NATO, as well as the consistent banning of the Russian
language and the Belarusianisation of all aspects of life.
We are not against the Belarusian language, but when they take a cue from Ukraine, and when
the state language is used to ban a language spoken by the overwhelming majority of the
population, this already constitutes a hostile act and, in the case of Ukraine, an act that
violates its constitution. If a similar proposal is introduced into the Belarusian legal field,
it will violate the Constitution of Belarus, not to mention numerous conventions on the rights
of ethnic and language minorities, and much more.
I would like those who are rabidly turning the Belarusian opposition against Russia to
realise their share of responsibility, and the opposition themselves, including Svetlana
Tikhanovskaya and others – to find the courage to resist such rude and blatant
manipulation.
Question: If we are talking about manipulation, we certainly understand that it has many
faces and reflects on the international attitude towards Russia. Internationally, what are the
risks for us of supporting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko? Don't you think 26 years
is enough? Maybe he has really served for too long?
Sergey Lavrov: The President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, did say it
might have been "too long." I believe he has proposed a very productive idea –
constitutional reform. He talked about this even before the election, and has reiterated the
proposal more than once since then. President of Russia Vladimir Putin supports this attitude.
As the Belarusian leader said, after constitutional reform, he will be ready to announce early
parliamentary and presidential elections. This proposal provides a framework where a national
dialogue will be entirely possible. But it is important that representatives of all groups of
Belarusian society to be involved in a constitutional reform process. This would ensure that
any reform is completely legitimate and understandable for all citizens. Now a few specific
proposals are needed concerning when, where and in what form this process can begin. I hope
that this will be done, because President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly reaffirmed
carrying out this initiative.
Question: Since we started talking about the international attitude towards Russia, let's go
over to our other partner – the United States. The elections in the US will take place
very soon. We are actively discussing this in Russia. When asked whether Russia was getting
ready for the elections in the US at the Paris forum last year, you replied: "Don't worry,
we'll resolve this problem." Now that the US elections are around the corner, I would like to
ask you whether you've resolved it.
Sergey Lavrov: Speaking seriously, of course we, like any other normal country that is
concerned about its interests and international security, are closely following the progress of
the election campaign in the US. There are many surprising things in it. Naturally, we see how
important the Russian issue is in this electoral process. The Democrats are doing all they can
to prove that Russia will exploit its hacker potential and play up to Donald Trump. We are
already being accused of promoting the idea that the Democrats will abuse the mail-in voting
option thereby prejudicing the unbiased nature of voting. I would like to note at this point
that mail-in voting has become a target of consistent attacks on behalf of President Trump
himself. Russia has nothing to do with this at all.
A week-long mail-in voting is an interesting subject in comparing election systems in
different countries. We have introduced three-day voting for governors and legislative assembly
deputies in some regions. You can see the strong criticism it is subjected to, inside Russia as
well. When the early voting in the US lasts for weeks, if not months, it is considered a model
of democracy. I don't see any criticism in this respect. In principle, we have long proposed
analysing election systems in the OSCE with a view to comparing best practices and reviewing
obviously obsolete arrangements. There have been instances in the US when, due to its
cumbersome and discriminatory election system, a nominee who received the majority of votes
could lose because in a national presidential election the voting is done through the Electoral
College process rather than directly by the people. There have been quite a few cases like
that. I once told former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in reply to her grievances
about our electoral system: "But look at your problem. Maybe you should try to correct this
discriminatory voting system?" She replied that it is discriminatory but they are used to it
and this is their problem, so I shouldn't bother.
When the United States accuses us of interference in some area of its public, political or
government life, we suggest discussing it to establish who is actually doing what. Since they
don't present any facts, we simply recite their Congressional acts. In 2014, they adopted an
act on supporting Ukraine, which directly instructed the Department of State to spend $20
million a year on support for Russian NGOs. We asked whether this didn't amount to
interference. We were told by the US National Security Council that in reality they support
democracy because we are wreaking chaos and pursuing authoritative and dictatorial trends
abroad when we interfere in domestic affairs whereas they bring democracy and prosperity. This
idea is deeply rooted in American mentality. The American elite has always considered its
country and nation exceptional and has not been shy to admit it.
I won't comment on the US election. This is US law and the US election system. Any comments
I make will be again interpreted as an attempt to interfere in their domestic affairs. I will
only say one thing that President Vladimir Putin has expressed many times, notably, that we
will respect any outcome of these elections and the will of the American people.
We realise that there will be no major changes in our relations either with the Democrats or
with the Republicans, as representatives of both parties loudly declare. However, there is hope
that common sense will prevail and no matter who becomes President, the new US Government and
administration will realise the need to cooperate with us in resolving very serious global
problems on which the international situation depends.
Question: You mentioned an example where voters can choose one president and the Electoral
College process, another. I even have that cover of Time magazine with Hillary Clinton and
congratulations, released during the election. It is a fairly well-known story, when they ran
this edition and then had to cancel it.
Sergey Lavrov: Even the President of France sent a telegramme, but then they immediately
recalled it.
And these people are now claiming that Alexander Lukashenko is an illegitimate
president.
Question: You mentioned NGOs. These people believe that NGOs in the Russian Federation
support democratic institutions, although it is no secret to anyone who has at least a basic
understanding of foreign and domestic policy that those NGOs act exclusively as institutions
that destabilise the situation in the country.
Sergey Lavrov: Not all of them.
Question: Can you tell us more about this?
Sergey Lavrov: We have adopted a series of laws – on public associations, on
non-profit organisations, on measures to protect people from human rights violations. There is
a set of laws that regulate the activities of non-government organisations on our territory,
both Russian and foreign ones.
Concepts have been introduced like "foreign agent," a practice we borrowed from "the world's
most successful democracy" – the United States. They argue that we borrowed a practice
from 1938 when the United States introduced the foreign agent concept to prevent Nazi ideology
from infiltrating from Germany. But whatever the reason they had to create the concept –
"foreign agent" – the Americans are still effectively using it, including in relation to
our organisations and citizens, to Chinese citizens, to the media.
In our law, foreign agent status, whatever they say about it, does not prevent an
organisation from operating on the territory of the Russian Federation. It just needs to
disclose its funding sources and be transparent about the resources it receives. And even that,
only if it is engaged in political activities. Initially, we introduced a requirement for these
organisations that receive funding from abroad and are involved in political projects to
initiate the disclosure process. But most of them didn't want to comply with the law, so it was
modified. Now this is done by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Question: Do you think that NGOs are still soft power?
Sergey Lavrov: Of course. In Russia we have about 220,000 NGOs, out of which 180 have the
status of a foreign agent. It's a drop in the ocean. These are probably the organisations,
funded from abroad, that are more active than others in promoting in our public space ideas
that far from always correspond to Russian legislation.
There is also the notion of undesirable organisations. They are banned from working in the
Russian Federation. But there are only about 30 of them, no more.
Question: Speaking about our soft power, what is our concept? What do we offer the world?
What do you think the world should love us for? What is Russia's soft power policy all
about?
Sergey Lavrov: We want everything that has been created by nations and civilisations to be
respected. We believe nobody should impose any orders on anyone, so that nothing like what has
now happened in Hollywood takes place on a global scale. We think nobody should encroach on the
right of each nation to have its historical traditions and moral roots. And we see attempts to
encroach upon them.
If soft power is supposed to promote one's own culture, language and traditions, in exchange
for knowledge about the life of other nations and civilisations, then this is the approach that
the Russian Federation supports in every way.
The Americans define the term "soft power" as an attempt to influence the hearts and minds
of others politically. Their goal is not to promote their culture and language, but to change
the mood of the political class with a view to subsequent regime change. They are doing this on
a daily basis and don't even conceal it. They say everywhere that their mission is to bring
peace and democracy to all other countries.
Question: Almost any TV series out there shows the US president sitting in the Oval Office
saying he's the leader of the free world.
Sergey Lavrov: Not just TV series. Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that America is an
exceptional nation and should be seen as an example by the rest of the world. My colleague Mike
Pompeo recently said in the Czech Republic that they shouldn't let the Russians into the
nuclear power industry and should take the Russians off the list of companies that bid for
these projects. It was about the same in Hungary. He then went to Africa and was quite vocal
when he told the African countries not to do business with the Russians or the Chinese, because
they are trading with the African countries for selfish reasons, whereas the US is establishing
economic cooperation with them so they can prosper. This is a quote. It is articulated in a
very straightforward manner, much the same way they run their propaganda on television in an
unsophisticated broken language that the man in the street can relate to. So, brainwashing is
what America's soft power is known for.
Question: Not a single former Soviet republic has so far benefited from American soft
power.
Sergey Lavrov: Not only former Soviet republics. Take a look at any other region where the
Americans have effected a regime change.
Question: Libya, Syria. We stood for Syria.
Sergey Lavrov: Iraq, Libya. They tried in Syria, but failed. I hope things will be different
there. There's not a single country where the Americans changed the regime and declared victory
for democracy, like George W. Bush did on the deck of an aircraft carrier in Iraq in May 2003,
which is prosperous now. He said democracy had won in Iraq. It would be interesting to know
what the former US President thinks about the situation in Iraq today. But no one will,
probably, go back to this, because the days when presidents honestly admitted their mistakes
are gone.
Question: Here I am listening to you and wondering how many people care about this? Why is
it that no one understands this? Is this politics that is too far away from ordinary people who
are nevertheless behind it? Take Georgia or Ukraine. People are worse off now than before, and
despite this, this policy continues.
Will the Minsk agreements ever be implemented? Will the situation in southeastern Ukraine
ever be settled?
Returning to what we talked about. How independent is Ukraine in its foreign policy?
Sergey Lavrov: I don't think that under the current Ukrainian government, just like under
the previous president, we will see any progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements,
if only because President Zelensky himself is saying so publicly, as does Deputy Prime Minister
Reznikov who is in charge of the Ukrainian settlement in the Contact Group. Foreign Minister of
Ukraine Kuleba is also saying this. They say there's a need for the Minsk agreements and they
cannot be broken, because these agreements (and accusing Russia of non-compliance) are the
foundation of the EU and the US policy in seeking to maintain the sanctions on Russia.
Nevertheless, such a distorted interpretation of the essence of the Minsk agreements, or rather
an attempt to blame everything on Russia, although Russia is never mentioned there, has stuck
in the minds of our European colleagues, including France and Germany, who, being co-sponsors
of the Minsk agreements along with us, the Ukrainians and Donbass, cannot but realise that the
Ukrainians are simply distorting their responsibilities, trying to distance themselves from
them and impose a different interpretation of the Minsk agreements. But even in this scenario,
the above individuals and former Ukrainian President Kravchuk, who now heads the Ukrainian
delegation to the Contact Group as part of the Minsk process, claim that the Minsk agreements
in their present form are impracticable and must be revised, turned upside down. Also, Donbass
must submit to the Ukrainian government and army before even thinking about conducting reforms
in this part of Ukraine.
This fully contradicts the sequence of events outlined in the Minsk agreements whereby
restoring Ukrainian armed forces' control on the border with Russia is possible only after an
amnesty, agreeing on the special status of these territories, making this status part of the
Ukrainian Constitution and holding elections there. Now they propose giving back the part of
Donbass that "rebelled" against the anti-constitutional coup to those who declared these people
terrorists and launched an "anti-terrorist operation" against them, which they later renamed a
Joint Forces Operation (but this does not change the idea behind it), and whom they still
consider terrorists. Although everyone remembers perfectly well that in 2014 no one from
Donbass or other parts of Ukraine that rejected the anti-constitutional coup attacked the
putschists and the areas that immediately fell under the control of the politicians behind the
coup. On the contrary, Alexander Turchinov, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others like them attacked
these areas. The guilt of the people living there was solely in them saying, "You committed a
crime against the state, we do not want to follow your rules, let us figure out our own future
and see what you will do next." There's not a single example that would corroborate the fact
that they engaged in terrorism. It was the Ukrainian state that engaged in terrorism on their
territory, in particular, when they killed [Head of the Donetsk People's Republic] Alexander
Zakharchenko and a number of field commanders in Donbass. So, I am not optimistic about
this.
Question: So, we are looking at a dead end?
Sergey Lavrov: You know, we still have an undeniable argument which is the text of the Minsk
Agreements approved by the UN Security Council.
Question: But they tried to revise it?
Sergey Lavrov: No, they are just making statements to that effect. When they gather for a
Contact Group meeting in Minsk, they do their best to look constructive. The most recent
meeting ran into the Ukrainian delegation's attempts to pretend that nothing had happened. They
recently passed a law on local elections which will be held in a couple of months. It says that
elections in what are now called the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics will be held only
after the Ukrainian army takes control of the entire border and those who "committed criminal
offenses" are arrested and brought to justice even though the Minsk agreements provide for
amnesty without exemptions.
Question: When I'm asked about Crimea I recall the referendum. I was there at a closed
meeting in Davos that was attended by fairly well respected analysts from the US. They claimed
with absolute confidence that Crimea was being occupied. I reminded them about the referendum.
I was under the impression that these people either didn't want to see or didn't know how
people lived there, that they have made their choice. Returning to the previous question, I
think that nobody is interested in the opinion of the people.
Sergey Lavrov: No, honest politicians still exist. Many politicians, including European
ones, were in Crimea during the referendum. They were there not under the umbrella of some
international organisation but on their own because the OSCE and other international agencies
were controlled by our Western colleagues. Even if we had addressed them, the procedure for
coordinating the monitoring would have never ended.
Question: Just as in Belarus. As I see it, they were also invited but nobody came.
Sergey Lavrov: The OSCE refused to send representatives there. Now that the OSCE is offering
its services as a mediator, I completely understand Mr Lukashenko who says the OSCE lost its
chance. It could have sent observers and gained a first-hand impression of what was happening
there, and how the election was held. They arrogantly disregarded the invitation. We know that
the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is practically wholly
controlled by NATO. We have repeatedly proposed that our nominees work there but they have not
been approved. This contradicts the principles of the OSCE. We will continue to seek a fairer
approach to the admission of members to the organisation, but I don't have much hope for this.
Former OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger made an effort with this for the past three
years but not everything depended on him – there is a large bloc of EU and NATO countries
that enjoy a mathematical majority and try to dictate their own rules. But this is a separate
issue.
Returning to Crimea, I have read a lot about this; let me give you two examples. One
concerns my relations with former US Secretary of State John Kerry. In April 2014, we met in
Geneva: me, John Kerry, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and then Acting Foreign
Minister of Ukraine Andrey Deshchitsa. We compiled a one page document that was approved
unanimously. It read that we, the representatives of Russia, the US and the EU welcomed the
commitments of the Ukrainian authorities to carry out decentralisation of the country with the
participation of all the regions of Ukraine. This took place after the Crimean referendum.
Later, the Americans, the EU and of course Ukraine "forgot" about this document. John Kerry
told me at this meeting that everyone understood that Crimea was Russian, that the people
wanted to return, but that we held the referendum so quickly that it didn't fit into the
accepted standards of such events. He asked me to talk to President Vladimir Putin, organise
one more referendum, announce it in advance and invite international observers. He said he
would support their visit there, that the result would be the same but that we would be keeping
up appearances. I asked him why put on such shows if they understand that this was the
expression of the will of the people.
The second example concerns the recent statements by the EU and the European Parliament to
the effect that "the occupation" of Crimea is a crude violation of the world arrangement
established after the victory in World War II. But if this criterion is used to determine where
Crimea belongs, when the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic joined the UN after WWII in 1945,
Crimea did not belong to it. Crimea was part of the USSR. Later, Nikita Khrushchev took an
illegal action, which contradicted Soviet law, and this led to them having it. But we all
understood that this was a domestic political game as regards a Soviet republic that was the
home to Khrushchev and many of his associates.
Question: You have been Foreign Minister for 16 years now. This century's major foreign
policy challenges fell on your term in office. We faced sanctions, and we adapted to them and
coped with them. Germany said it obtained Alexey Navalny's test results. France and Sweden have
confirmed the presence of Novichok in them. Reportedly, we are now in for more sanctions. Do
you think the Navalny case can trigger new sanctions against Russia?
Sergey Lavrov: I agree with our political analysts who are convinced that if it were not for
Navalny, they would have come up with something else in order to impose more sanctions.
With regard to this situation, I think our Western partners have simply gone beyond decency
and reason. In essence, they are now demanding that we "confess." They are asking us: Don't you
believe what the German specialists from the Bundeswehr are saying? How is that possible? Their
findings have been confirmed by the French and the Swedes. You don't believe them, either?
It's a puzzling situation given that our Prosecutor General's Office filed an inquiry about
legal assistance on August 27 and hasn't received an answer yet. Nobody knows where the inquiry
has been for more than a week now. We were told it was at the German Foreign Ministry. The
German Foreign Ministry did not forward the request to the Ministry of Justice, which was our
Prosecutor General Office's ultimate addressee. Then, they said that it had been transferred to
the Berlin Prosecutor's Office, but they would not tell us anything without the consent of the
family. They are urging us to launch a criminal investigation.
We have our own laws, and we cannot take someone's word for it to open a criminal case.
Certain procedures must be followed. A pre-investigation probe initiated immediately after this
incident to consider the circumstances of the case is part of this procedure.
Some of our Western colleagues wrote that, as the German doctors discovered, it was "a sheer
miracle" that Mr Navalny survived. Allegedly, it was the notorious Novichok, but he survived
thanks to "lucky circumstances." What kind of lucky circumstances are we talking about? First,
the pilot immediately landed the plane; second, an ambulance was already waiting on the
airfield; and third, the doctors immediately started to provide help. This absolutely
impeccable behaviour of the pilots, doctors and ambulance crew is presented as "lucky
circumstances." That is, they even deny the possibility that we are acting as we should. This
sits deep in the minds of those who make up such stories.
Returning to the pre-investigation probe, everyone is fixated on a criminal case. If we had
opened a criminal case right away (we do not have legal grounds to do so yet, and that is why
the Prosecutor General's Office requested legal assistance from Germany on August 27), what
would have been done when it happened? They would have interviewed the pilot, the passengers
and the doctors. They would have found out what the doctors discovered when Navalny was taken
to the Omsk hospital, and what medications were used. They would have interviewed the people
who communicated with him. All of that was done. They interviewed the five individuals who
accompanied him and participated in the events preceding Navalny boarding the plane; they
interviewed the passengers who were waiting for a flight to Moscow in Tomsk and sat at the same
bar; they found out what they ordered and what he drank. The sixth person, a woman who
accompanied him, has fled, as you know. They say she was the one who gave the bottle to the
German lab. All this has been done. Even if all of that was referred to as a "criminal case,"
we couldn't have done more.
Our Western partners are looking down on us as if we have no right to question what they are
saying or their professionalism. If this is the case, it means that they dare to question the
professionalism of our doctors and investigators. Unfortunately, this position is reminiscent
of other times. Arrogance and a sense of infallibility have already been observed in Europe,
and that led to very regrettable consequences.
Question: How would you describe this policy of confrontation? When did it start (I mean
during your term of office)? It's simply so stable at the moment that there seems no chance
that something might change in the future.
Sergey Lavrov: President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken on this topic. I
think that the onset of this policy, this era of constant pressure on Russia began with the end
of a period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, a time when the West believed it
had Russia there in its pocket – it ended, full stop. Unfortunately, the West does not
seem to be able to wrap its head around this, to accept that there is no alternative to
Russia's independent actions, both domestically and on the international arena. This is why,
unfortunately, this agony continues by inertia.
Having bad ties with any country have never given us any pleasure. We do not like making
such statements in which we sharply criticise the position of the West. We always try to find
compromises, but there are situations where it is hard not to come face to face with one
another directly or to avoid frank assessments of what our Western friends are up to.
I have read what our respected political scientists write who are well known in the West.
And I can say this idea is starting to surface ever stronger and more often – it is time
we stop measuring our actions with the yardsticks that the West offers us and to stop trying to
please the West at all costs. These are very serious people and they are making a serious
point. The fact that the West is prodding us to this way of thinking, willingly or unwillingly,
is obvious to me. Most likely, this is being done involuntarily. But it is a big mistake to
think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case – as big a mistake as like
approaching China with the same yardstick.
Question: Then I really have to ask you. We are going through digitalisation. I think when
you started your diplomatic career, you could not even have imagined that some post on Twitter
could affect the political situation in a country. Yet – I can see your smile – we
are living in a completely different world. Film stars can become presidents; Twitter,
Instagram, or Facebook can become drivers of political campaigns – that happened more
than once – and those campaigns can be successful. We are going through digitalisation,
and because of this, many unexpected people appear in international politics – unexpected
for you, at least. How do you think Russia's foreign policy will change in this context? Are we
ready for social media to be impacting our internal affairs? Is the Chinese scenario possible
in Russia, with most Western social media blocked to avoid their influence on the internal
affairs in that country?
Sergey Lavrov: Social media are already exerting great influence on our affairs. This is the
reality in the entire post-Soviet space and developing countries. The West, primarily the
United States, is vigorously using social media to promote their preferred agenda in just about
any state. This necessitates a new approach to ensuring the national security. We have been
doing this for a long time already.
As for regulating social media, everyone does it. You know that the digital giants in the
United States have been repeatedly caught introducing censorship, primarily against us, China
or other countries they dislike, shutting off information that comes from these places.
The internet is regulated by companies based in the United States, everyone knows that. In
fact, this situation has long made the overwhelming majority of countries want to do something
about it, considering the global nature of the internet and social media, to make sure that the
management processes are approved at a global level, become transparent and understandable. The
International Telecommunication Union, a specialised UN agency, has been out there for years.
Russia and a group of other co-sponsoring countries are promoting the need to regulate the
internet in such a way that everyone understands how it works and what principles govern it, in
this International Union. Now we can see how Mark Zuckerberg and other heads of large IT
companies are invited to the Congress and lectured there and asked to explain what they are
going to do. We can see this. But a situation where it will be understandable for everyone else
and, most importantly, where everyone is happy with it, still seems far away.
For many years, we have been promoting at the UN General Assembly an initiative to agree on
the rules of responsible behaviour of states in the sphere of international information
security. This initiative has already led to set up several working groups, which have
completed their mandate with reports. The last such report was reviewed last year and another
resolution was adopted. This time, it was not a narrow group of government experts, but a group
that includes all UN member states. It was planning to meet, but things slowed down due to the
coronavirus. The rules for responsible conduct in cyberspace are pending review by this group.
These rules were approved by the SCO, meaning they already reflect a fairly large part of the
world's population.
Our other initiative is not about the use of cyberspace for undermining someone's security;
it is about fighting crimes (pedophilia, pornography, theft) in cyberspace. This topic is being
considered by another UNGA committee. We are preparing a draft convention that will oblige all
states to suppress criminal activities in cyberspace.
Question: Do you think that the Foreign Ministry is active on this front? Would you like to
be more proactive in the digital dialogue? After all, we are still bound by ethics, and have
yet to understand whether we can cross the line or not. Elon Musk feels free to make any
statements no matter how ironic and makes headlines around the world, even though anything he
says has a direct bearing on his market cap. This is a shift in the ethics of behaviour. Do you
think that this is normal? Is this how it should be? Or maybe people still need to behave
professionally?
Sergey Lavrov: A diplomat can always use irony and a healthy dose of cynicism. In this
sense, there is no contradiction here. However, this does not mean that while making ironic
remarks on the surrounding developments or comments every once in a while (witty or not so
witty), you do not have to work on resolving legal matters related to internet governance. This
is what we are doing.
The Foreign Ministry has been at the source of these processes. We have been closely
coordinating our efforts on this front with the Security Council Office, and the Ministry of
Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media and other organisations. Russian delegations
taking part in talks include representatives from various agencies. Apart from multilateral
platforms such as the International Telecommunication Union, the UN General Assembly and the
OSCE, we are working on this subject in bilateral relations with our key partners.
We are most interested in working with our Western partners, since we have an understanding
on these issues with countries that share similar views. The Americans and Europeans evade
these talks under various pretexts. There seemed to be an opening in 2012 and 2013, but after
the government coup in Ukraine, they used it as a pretext to freeze this process. Today, there
are some signs that the United States and France are beginning to revive these contacts, but
our partners have been insufficiently active. What we want is professional dialogue so that
they can raise all their concerns and accusations and back them with specific facts. We stand
ready to answer all the concerns our partners may have, and will not fail to voice the concerns
we have. We have many of them.
During the recent visit by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to Russia, I handed him a list
containing dozens of incidents we have identified: attacks against our resources, with 70
percent of them targeting state resources of the Russian Federation, and originating on German
territory. He promised to provide an answer, but more than a month after our meeting we have
not seen it so far.
Question: Let me ask you about another important initiative by the Foreign Ministry. You
decided to amend regulations enabling people to be repatriated from abroad for free, and you
proposed subjecting the repatriation guarantee to the reimbursement of its cost to the budget.
Could you tell us, please, is this so expensive for the state to foot this bill?
Sergey Lavrov: Of course, these a substantial expenses. The resolution that provided for
offering free assistance was adopted back in 2010, and was intended for citizens who find
themselves in situations when their life is at risk. Imagine a Russian ambassador. Most of the
people ask for help because they have lost money, their passport and so on. There are very few
cases when an ambassador can actually say that a person is in a life-threatening situation and
his or her life is in danger. How can an ambassador take a decision of this kind? As long as I
remember, these cases can be counted on the fingers of my two hands since 2010, when an
ambassador had to take responsibility and there were grounds for offering this assistance. We
wanted to ensure that people can get help not only when facing an imminent danger (a dozen
cases in ten years do not cost all that much). There were many more cases when our nationals
found themselves in a difficult situation after losing money or passports. We decided to follow
the practices used abroad. Specifically, this means that we provide fee-based assistance. In
most cases, people travelling abroad can afford to reimburse the cost of a return ticket.
This practice is designed to prevent fraud, which remains an issue. We had cases when people
bought one-way tickets knowing that they will have to be repatriated.
Question: And with no return ticket, they go to the embassy?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, after that they come to the embassy. For this reason, I believe that the
system we developed is much more convenient and comprehensive for dealing with the situations
Russians get into when travelling abroad, and when we have to step in to help them through our
foreign missions.
Question: Mr Lavrov, thank you for your time. As a Georgian, I really have to ask this.
Isn't it time to simplify the visa regime with Georgia? A second generation of Georgians has
now grown up that has never seen Russia. What do you think?
Sergey Lavrov: Georgians can travel to Russia – they just need to apply for a visa.
The list of grounds for obtaining a visa has been expanded. There are practically no
restrictions on visiting Russia, after obtaining a visa in the Interests Section for the
Russian Federation in Tbilisi or another Russian overseas agency.
As for visa-free travel, as you know, we were ready for this a year ago. We were actually a
few steps away from being ready to announce it when that incident happened with the Russian
Federal Assembly delegation to the International Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy,
where they were invited in the first place, seated in their chairs, and then violence was
almost used against them.
I am confident that our relations with Georgia will recover and improve. We can see new
Georgian politicians who are interested in this. For now, there are just small parties in the
ruling elites. But I believe our traditional historical closeness, and the mutual affinity
between our peoples will ultimately triumph. Provocateurs who are trying to prevent Georgia
from resuming normal relations with Russia will be put to shame.
They are trying to use Georgia the same way as Ukraine. In Ukraine, the IMF plays a huge
role. And the IMF recently decided that each tranche allocated to Ukraine would be
short-term.
Question: Microcredits.
Sergey Lavrov: Microcredits and a short leash that can always be pulled a little.
They are trying to use Georgia the same way. We have no interest in seeing this situation
continue. We did not start it and have never acted against the Georgian people. Everyone
remembers the 2008 events, how American instructors arrived there and trained the Georgian
army. The Americans were well aware of Mikheil Saakashvili's lack of restraint. He trampled on
all agreements and issued a criminal order.
We are talking about taking their word for it. There were many cases when we took their word
for it, but then it all boiled down to zilch. In 2003, Colin Powell, a test tube – that
was an academic version. An attack on Iraq followed. Many years later, Tony Blair admitted that
there had been no nuclear weapons in Iraq. There were many such stories. In 1999, the
aggression against Yugoslavia was triggered by the OSCE representative in the Balkans, US
diplomat William Walker, who visited the village of Racak, where they found thirty corpses, and
declared it genocide of the Albanian population. A special investigation by the International
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found they were military dressed in civilian clothes. But Mr
Walker loudly declared it was genocide. Washington immediately seized on the idea, and so did
London and other capitals. NATO launched an aggression against Yugoslavia.
After the end of the five-day military operation to enforce peace, the European Union
ordered a special report from a group of invited experts, including Swiss diplomat Heidi
Tagliavini. She was later involved in the Minsk process, and then she was asked to lead a group
of experts who investigated the outbreak of the military conflict in August 2008. The
conclusion was unambiguous. All this happened on the orders of Mikheil Saakashvili, and as for
his excuses that someone had provoked him, or someone had been waiting for him on the other
side of the tunnel, this was just raving.
Georgians are a wise nation. They love life, perhaps the same way and the same facets that
the peoples in the Russian Federation do. We will overcome the current abnormal situation and
restore normal relations between our states and people.
In addition, if you follow the Minister, follow up on this interview with Sputnik
Exclusive: Sergei Lavrov Talks About West's Historical Revisionism, US Election and Navalny
Case
That's according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who pointed out that US broadcaster
RFE/RL, which is openly state-run, and British outlet BBC are also financed from public
funds.
Two of Russia's broadcasters are facing open discrimination across their countries of
accreditation, Lavrov told Sputnik.
RT has been forced to register with the US Justice Department under the 1938 Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA). Its correspondents have also been barred from attending events hosted
by the French president; likewise, RT and Sputnik have faced enormous difficulties while
reporting from Baltic nations.
"We are being presented with the argument that there is state funding [for RT and
Sputnik]," Lavrov commented. Nevertheless, there are is media in the West – the BBC
and Radio Liberty being prime examples – that also receive government donations and
"are considered beacons of democracy."
They also rely on state funding, but for some reason no restrictive measures are being
taken against them, including through the internet, where censorship is now openly
introduced.
This comes as audiences of both broadcasters are growing and their popularity is on the
rise. "I saw the statistics; I can only assume that this is another sign of the fear of
competition on the side of those who dominated the global information market until
recently," the foreign minister said.
The pressure Western nations pile on Russian media is one reason to wonder if they actually
practice what they preach. Lavrov recalled that the West demanded Russia "open up to the
world" during the period of perestroika – including by allowing full access "to
any kind of information, whether it was based on domestic sources or came from abroad."
Thirty years later, the West is "already even embarrassed" to stick to the same
principles when Russia asks "that access to information be respected, including in France
with respect to Sputnik and RT," Lavrov stated. France has its own state-funded outlets,
such as AFP, Radio France International and France 24.
Double standards, hypocrisy – unfortunately, these are the words to describe
their position.
Russia will take these matters to the upcoming ministerial summit of the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) this December. "These questions will not
disappear anywhere from the agenda, our Western colleagues will have a lot to answer,"
Lavrov vowed.
Speaking about the pressure put on Russia in general – and often initiated by the
media and not among political circles – Lavrov described the current times as "the age
of social media, disinformation and fake news." It is fairly easy "to throw any
invention into the media domain" and get away with it, he said, adding, "and then no one
will read the rebuttal."
"... This fully contradicts the sequence of events outlined in the Minsk agreements whereby restoring Ukrainian armed forces' control on the border with Russia is possible only after an amnesty, agreeing on the special status of these territories, making this status part of the Ukrainian Constitution and holding elections there. Now they propose giving back the part of Donbass that "rebelled" against the anti-constitutional coup to those who declared these people terrorists and launched an "anti-terrorist operation" against them, ..."
"... On the contrary, Alexander Turchinov, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others like them attacked these areas. The guilt of the people living there was solely in them saying, "You committed a crime against the state, we do not want to follow your rules, let us figure out our own future and see what you will do next." There's not a single example that would corroborate the fact that they engaged in terrorism. It was the Ukrainian state that engaged in terrorism on their territory, in particular, when they killed [Head of the Donetsk People's Republic] Alexander Zakharchenko and a number of field commanders in Donbass. So, I am not optimistic about this. ..."
Question: Here I am listening to you and wondering how many people care about this? Why is
it that no one understands this? Is this politics that is too far away from ordinary people who
are nevertheless behind it? Take Georgia or Ukraine. People are worse off now than before, and
despite this, this policy continues.
Will the Minsk agreements ever be implemented? Will the situation in southeastern Ukraine
ever be settled?
Returning to what we talked about. How independent is Ukraine in its foreign policy?
Sergey Lavrov: I don't think that under the current Ukrainian government, just like under
the previous president, we will see any progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements,
if only because President Zelensky himself is saying so publicly, as does Deputy Prime Minister
Reznikov who is in charge of the Ukrainian settlement in the Contact Group. Foreign Minister of
Ukraine Kuleba is also saying this. They say there's a need for the Minsk agreements and they
cannot be broken, because these agreements (and accusing Russia of non-compliance) are the
foundation of the EU and the US policy in seeking to maintain the sanctions on Russia.
Nevertheless, such a distorted interpretation of the essence of the Minsk agreements, or rather
an attempt to blame everything on Russia, although Russia is never mentioned there, has stuck
in the minds of our European colleagues, including France and Germany, who, being co-sponsors
of the Minsk agreements along with us, the Ukrainians and Donbass, cannot but realise that the
Ukrainians are simply distorting their responsibilities, trying to distance themselves from
them and impose a different interpretation of the Minsk agreements. But even in this scenario,
the above individuals and former Ukrainian President Kravchuk, who now heads the Ukrainian
delegation to the Contact Group as part of the Minsk process, claim that the Minsk agreements
in their present form are impracticable and must be revised, turned upside down. Also, Donbass
must submit to the Ukrainian government and army before even thinking about conducting reforms
in this part of Ukraine.
This fully contradicts the sequence of events outlined in the Minsk agreements whereby
restoring Ukrainian armed forces' control on the border with Russia is possible only after an
amnesty, agreeing on the special status of these territories, making this status part of the
Ukrainian Constitution and holding elections there. Now they propose giving back the part of
Donbass that "rebelled" against the anti-constitutional coup to those who declared these people
terrorists and launched an "anti-terrorist operation" against them, which they later
renamed a Joint Forces Operation (but this does not change the idea behind it), and whom they
still consider terrorists. Although everyone remembers perfectly well that in 2014 no one from
Donbass or other parts of Ukraine that rejected the anti-constitutional coup attacked the
putschists and the areas that immediately fell under the control of the politicians behind the
coup. On the contrary, Alexander Turchinov, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others like them attacked
these areas. The guilt of the people living there was solely in them saying, "You committed a
crime against the state, we do not want to follow your rules, let us figure out our own future
and see what you will do next." There's not a single example that would corroborate the fact
that they engaged in terrorism. It was the Ukrainian state that engaged in terrorism on their
territory, in particular, when they killed [Head of the Donetsk People's Republic] Alexander
Zakharchenko and a number of field commanders in Donbass. So, I am not optimistic about
this.
Question: So, we are looking at a dead end?
Sergey Lavrov: You know, we still have an undeniable argument which is the text of the Minsk
Agreements approved by the UN Security Council.
Question: But they tried to revise it?
Sergey Lavrov: No, they are just making statements to that effect. When they gather for a
Contact Group meeting in Minsk, they do their best to look constructive. The most recent
meeting ran into the Ukrainian delegation's attempts to pretend that nothing had happened. They
recently passed a law on local elections which will be held in a couple of months. It says that
elections in what are now called the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics will be held only
after the Ukrainian army takes control of the entire border and those who "committed criminal
offenses" are arrested and brought to justice even though the Minsk agreements provide for
amnesty without exemptions.
Question: When I'm asked about Crimea I recall the referendum. I was there at a closed
meeting in Davos that was attended by fairly well respected analysts from the US. They claimed
with absolute confidence that Crimea was being occupied. I reminded them about the referendum.
I was under the impression that these people either didn't want to see or didn't know how
people lived there, that they have made their choice. Returning to the previous question, I
think that nobody is interested in the opinion of the people.
Sergey Lavrov: No, honest politicians still exist. Many politicians, including European
ones, were in Crimea during the referendum. They were there not under the umbrella of some
international organisation but on their own because the OSCE and other international agencies
were controlled by our Western colleagues. Even if we had addressed them, the procedure for
coordinating the monitoring would have never ended.
Crisis of neoliberal undermines the USA supremacy and the US elite hangs by the stras to the Full Specturm Domionanc edoctrine,
whih it now can't enforce and which is financially unsustainable for the USA.
Collapse of neoliberalism means the end of the USA supremacy and the whole political existence on the USA was banked on this
single card.
Notable quotes:
"... In America, this unfortunate status quo in support of primacy persists even in the Trumpian Age and within debates around the eccentric and unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, despite all the talk of political polarization in the United States, it appears that when it comes to naming new threats and enemies to "contain," "deter," and deem "existential," bipartisan consensus is found swiftly and quite readily. ..."
"... In a recent speech delivered in Europe, the U.S. defense secretary and former corporate lobbyist for Raytheon, Mark Esper, unified these two faces of the Janus that embodies the North Atlantic foreign policy establishment. Esper referred to both China and Russia as disruptive forces working to unravel the international order, which "we have created together," and called on the international community to preserve that order by countering both powers. As it stands, we are on the path to a series of cold wars throughout this century, if not a hot conflict between rival great powers that could spiral into World War III. Despite increased calls for realism and restraint in foreign policy, primacy is alive and well. ..."
"... There is, however, a more significant psychosociological reason for the blob's remarkable persistence. When it comes to foreign policy, Western policymakers today suffer from a Manichean worldview, a caustic mindset crystalized during a decades-running Cold War with the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Frozen in this Cold War mindset, the Atlanticist blob has internalized the bipolar moment that followed the Second World War, treating it as a permanent fixture and the normal state of the international system. In fact, the bipolar and unipolar periods we have undergone over the past 75 years are nothing but aberrations and historical anomalies. In truth, the reality of the international system tends toward multi-polarity -- and at long last it appears that the system is self-correcting. The North Atlantic establishment came of age during that time of exception, forming its (liberal) identity through the process of "alterity" and in a nemetic opposition to communism. ..."
"... Not surprisingly then, the North Atlantic elites continue to seek adversaries to demonize and "monsters to destroy" in order to justify their moral universalism and presumed ideological superiority, doing so under the garb of a totalizing and absolutist idea of exceptionalism. ..."
The international order is no longer bipolar, despite the elites' insistence otherwise.
Fortunately there is hope for change.
Despite its many failings and high human, social, and economic costs, American foreign
policy since the end of the Second World War has shown a remarkable degree of continuity and
inflexibility. This rather curious phenomenon is not limited to America alone. The North
Atlantic foreign policy establishment from Washington D.C. to London, which some have aptly
dubbed the "blob," has doggedly championed the grand strategic framework of "primacy" and armed
hegemony, often coated with more docile language such as "global leadership," "American
indispensability," and "strengthening the Western alliance."
In America, this unfortunate status quo in support of primacy persists even in the Trumpian
Age and within debates around the eccentric and unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. In
fact, despite all the talk of political polarization in the United States, it appears that when
it comes to naming new threats and enemies to "contain," "deter," and deem "existential,"
bipartisan consensus is found swiftly and quite readily.
On the Left, and in the wake of
President Trump's election, the Democratic establishment began fixating its wrath on
Russia–adopting a confrontational stance toward Moscow and fueling fears of a renewed
Cold War. On the Right, the realigning GOP has increasingly, if at times inconsistently,
singled out China as the greatest threat to U.S. national security, a hostile attitude further
exacerbated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alarmingly, Joe Biden, the Democratic
presidential nominee, has recently joined the hawkish bandwagon toward China, even attempting
to outflank Trump on this issue and attacking the president's China policy as too weak and
accommodating of China's rise.
In a recent speech delivered in Europe, the U.S. defense secretary and former corporate
lobbyist for Raytheon, Mark Esper, unified these two faces of the Janus that embodies the North
Atlantic foreign policy establishment. Esper referred to both China and Russia as disruptive
forces working to unravel the international order, which "we have created together," and called
on the international community to preserve that order by countering both powers. As it stands,
we are on the path to a series of cold wars throughout this century, if not a hot conflict
between rival great powers that could spiral into World War III. Despite increased calls for
realism and restraint in foreign policy, primacy is alive and well.
Indeed, the dominant tendency among many foreign policy observers is to overprivilege the
threat of rising superpowers and to insist on strong containment measures to limit the spheres
of influence of the so-called revisionist powers. Such an approach, coupled with the prospect
of ascendant powers actively resisting and confronting the United States as the ruling global
hegemon, has one eminent International Relations scholar warning of the Thucydides Trap.
There are others, however, who insist that the structural shifts undermining the liberal
international order mark the end of U.S. hegemony and its "unipolar moment." In realist terms,
what Secretary Esper really means to protect, they would argue, is a conception of
"rules-based" global order that was a structural by-product of the Second World War and the
ensuing Cold War and whose very rules and institutions were underwritten by U.S. hegemony. This
would be an exercise in folly -- not corresponding to the reality of systemic change and the
return of great power competition and civilizational contestation.
What's more, the sanctimony of this "liberal" hegemonic order and the logic of democratic
peace were both presumably vindicated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its totalitarian
system, a black swan event that for many had heralded the "end of history" and promised the
advent of the American century. A great deal of lives, capital, resources, and goodwill were
sacrificed by America and her allies toward that crusade for liberty and universality, which
was only the most recent iteration of a radically utopian element in American political thought
going back to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Alas, as it had eluded earlier generations of
idealists, that century never truly arrived, and neither did the empire of liberty and
prosperity that it loftily aimed to establish.
Today, the emerging reality of a multipolar world and alternate worldviews championed by the
different cultural blocs led by China and Russia appears to have finally burst the bubble of
American Triumphalism, proving that the ideas behind it are "not simply obsolete but absurd."
This failure should have been expected since the very project the idealists had espoused was
built on a pathological "savior complex" and a false truism that reflected the West's own
absolutist and distorted sense of ideological and moral superiority. Samuel Huntington might
have been right all along to cast doubt on the long-term salience of using ideology and
doctrinal universalism as the dividing principle for international relations. His call to
focus, instead, on civilizational distinction, the permanent power of culture on human action,
and the need to find common ground rings especially true today. Indeed, fostering a spirit of
coexistence and open dialogue among the world's great civilizational complexes is a fundamental
tenet of a cultural realism.
And yet, despite such permanent shifts in the global order away from universalist
dichotomies and global hegemony and toward culturalism and multi-polarity, there exists a
profound disjunction between the structural realities of the international system and the often
business-as-usual attitude of the North Atlantic foreign policy elites. How could one explain
the astonishing levels of rigidity and continuity on the part of the "blob" and the
military-industrial-congressional complex regularly pushing for more adventurism and
interventionism abroad? Why would the bipartisan primacist establishment, which their allies in
the mainstream media endeavor still to mask, justify such illiberal acts of aggression and
attempts at empire by weaponizing the moralistic language of human rights, individual liberty,
and democracy in a world increasingly awakened to arbitrary ideological framing?
There are, of course, systemic reasons behind the power and perpetuation of the blob and the
endurance of primacy. The vast economic incentives of war and its instruments, institutional
routinization and intransigence, stupefaction and groupthink of government bureaucracy, and the
significant influence of lobbying efforts by foreign governments and other vested interest
groups could each partly explain the remarkable continuity of the North Atlantic foreign policy
establishment. The endless stream of funding from the defense industry, neoliberal and
neoconservative foundations, as well as the government itself keeps the "blob" alive, while the
general penchant for bipartisanship around preserving the status quo allows it to thrive. What
is more, elite schools produce highly analytic yet narrowly focused and conventional minds that
are tamed to be agreeable so as to not undermine elite consensus. This conveyor belt feeds the
"blob," supplying it with the army of specialists, experts, and wonks it requires to function
as a mind melding hive, while in practice safeguarding employment for the career bureaucrats
for decades to come.
There is, however, a more significant psychosociological reason for the blob's remarkable
persistence. When it comes to foreign policy, Western policymakers today suffer from a
Manichean worldview, a caustic mindset crystalized during a decades-running Cold War with the
Soviet Union. The world might have changed fundamentally with the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989, the bipolar structure of the international system might have ended irreversibly, but the
personnel -- the Baby Boomer Generation elites conducting foreign policy in the North Atlantic
-- did not leave office or retire with the collapse of the USSR. They largely remain in power
to this day.
Every generation is forged through a formative crisis, its experiences seen through the
prism that all-encompassing ordeal. For the incumbent elites, that generational crisis was the
Cold War and the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation. The dualistic paradigm of the
international system during the U.S.-Soviet rivalry bred an entire generation to see the world
through a black-and-white binary. It should come as no surprise that this era elevated the
idealist strain of thought and the crusading, neo-Jacobin impulse of U.S. foreign policy
(personified by Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson) to new, ever-expanding heights. Idealism
prizes a nemesis and thus revels in a bipolar order.
Frozen in this Cold War mindset, the Atlanticist blob has internalized the bipolar moment
that followed the Second World War, treating it as a permanent fixture and the normal state of
the international system. In fact, the bipolar and unipolar periods we have undergone over the
past 75 years are nothing but aberrations and historical anomalies. In truth, the reality of
the international system tends toward multi-polarity -- and at long last it appears that the
system is self-correcting. The North Atlantic establishment came of age during that time of
exception, forming its (liberal) identity through the process of "alterity" and in a nemetic
opposition to communism.
Not surprisingly then, the North Atlantic elites continue to seek adversaries to demonize
and "monsters to destroy" in order to justify their moral universalism and presumed ideological
superiority, doing so under the garb of a totalizing and absolutist idea of exceptionalism.
After all, a nemetic zeitgeist during which ideology reigned supreme and realism was routinely
discounted was tailor-made for dogmatic absolutism and moral universalism. In such a zero-sum
strategic environment, it was only natural to demand totality and frame the ongoing
geopolitical struggle in terms of an existential opposition over Good and Evil that would quite
literally split the world in two.
Today, that same kind of Manichean thinking continues to handicap paradigmatic change in
foreign policy. A false consciousness, it underpins and promotes belief in the double myths of
indispensability and absolute exceptionality, suggesting that the North Atlantic bloc holds a
certain monopoly on all that is good and true. It is not by chance that such pathological
renderings of "exceptionalism" and "leadership" have been wielded as convenient rationale and
intellectual placeholders for the ideology of empire across the North Atlantic. This sense of
ingrained moral self-righteousness, coupled with an attitude that celebrates activism,
utopianism, and interventionism in foreign policy, has created and reinforced a culture of
strategic overextension and imperial overreach.
It is this very culture -- personified and dominated by the Baby Boomers and the blob they
birthed -- that has made hawkishness ubiquitous, avoids any real reckoning as to the limits of
power, and habitually belittles calls for restraint and moderation as isolationism. In truth,
however, what has been the exceptional part in the delusion of absolute exceptionalism is Pax
Americana, liberal hegemony, and the hubris that animates them having gone uncontested and
unchecked for so long. That confrontation could begin in earnest by directly challenging the
Boomer blob itself -- and by propagating a counter-elite offering a starkly different
worldview.
Achieving such a genuine paradigm shift demands a generational sea-change, to retire the old
blob and make a better one in its place. It is about time for the old establishment to forgo
its reign, allowing a new younger cohort from among the Millennial and post-Millennial
generations to advance into leadership roles. The Millennials, especially, are now the largest
generation of eligible voters (overtaking the Baby Boomers) as well as the first generation not
habituated by the Cold War; in fact, many of them grew up during the "unipolar moment" of
American hegemony. Hence, their generational identity is not built around a dualistic alterity.
Free from obsessive fixation on ideological supremacy, most among them reject total global
dominance as both unattainable and undesirable.
Instead, their worldview is shaped by an entirely different set of experiences and
disappointments. Their generational crisis was brought on by a series of catastrophic
interventions and endless wars around the world -- chief among them the debacles in Afghanistan
and Iraq and the toppling of Libya's Gaddafi -- punctuated by repeated onslaughts of financial
recessions and domestic strife. The atmosphere of uncertainty, instability, and general chaos
has bred discontent, turning many Millennials into pragmatic realists who are disenchanted with
the system, critical of the pontificating establishment, and naturally skeptical of lofty
ideals and utopian doctrines.
In short, this is not an absolutist and complacent generation of idealists, but one steeped
in realism and a certain perspectivism that has internalized the inherent relativity of both
power and truth. Most witnessed the dangers of overreach, hubris, and a moralized foreign
policy, so they are actively self-reflective, circumspect, and restrained. As a generation,
they appear to be less the moralist and the global activist and more prudent, level-headed, and
temperamentally conservative -- developing a keen appreciation for realpolitik, sovereignty,
and national interest. Their preference for a non-ideological approach in foreign policy
suggests that once in power, they will be less antagonistic and more tolerant of rival powers
and accepting of pluralism in the international system. That openness to civilizational
distinction and global cultural pluralism also implies that future Millennial statesmen will
subscribe to a more humble, less grandiose, and narrower definition of interest that focuses on
securing core objectives -- i.e., preserving national security and recognizing spheres of
influence.
Reforming and rehabilitating the U.S. foreign policy establishment will require more than
policy prescriptions and comprehensive reports: it needs generational change. To transform and
finally "rein in" North Atlantic foreign policy, our task today must be to facilitate and
expedite this shift. Once that occurs, the incoming Millennials should be better positioned to
discard the deep-seated and routinized ideology of empire, supplanting it with a greater
emphasis on partnership that is driven by mutual interests and a general commitment to sharing
the globe with the world's other great cultures.
This new approach calls for America to lead by the power of its example, exhibiting the
benefits of liberty and a constitutional republic at home, without forcibly imposing those
values abroad. Such an outlook means abandoning the coercive regime change agendas and the
corrosive projects of nation-building and democracy promotion. In this new multipolar world,
America would be an able, dynamic, and equal participant in ensuring sustainable peace
side-by-side the world's other great powers, acting as "a normal country in a normal time."
Reflecting the spirit of republican governance authentically is far more pertinent now and
salutary for the future of the North Atlantic peoples than is promulgating the utopian image of
a shining city on a hill.
Arta Moeini is research director at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and a postdoc
fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship. Dr. Moeini's latest project advances a
theory of cultural realism as a cornerstone to a new understanding of foreign policy.
The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy will be co-sponsoring "The Future of Grand Strategy
in the Post-COVID World," with TAC, tonight at 6 p.m. ET. Register for free here
.
While I agree with the statement, I can, with a degree of certainty, say nothing was
intercepted, and this is all face saving. As this article elucidates, no such iron dome,
exists, or cannot be overcome.
All empire's bases remain exposed in the region. This is why the empire is high tailing it out
of SW Asia. Zarif said so, himself.
Dr Rubin, the founder and first director of the Israel Missile Defence Organization, which
developed the state's first national missile defence shield, wrote in the wake of the 14
September attack on Abqaiq, (the Saudi Armco oil facility) that it was: "A brilliant feat of
arms. It was precise, carefully-calibrated, devastating yet bloodless -- a model of a
surgical operation the incoming threats [were not] detected by the U.S. air control systems
deployed in the area, nor by U.S. satellites
This had nothing to do with flaws in the air and missile defence systems; but with the
fact that they were not designed to deal with ground-hugging threats. Simply put, the
Iranians outfoxed the defense systems".
Katyusha rockets are normally fired in salvos of dozens. Two of them being launched against
the American fortress in Baghdad is just gentle prodding.
Another interesting point is that Katyusha rockets (BM-21 Grad) are dirt cheap. Whatever
was used to intercept them was several orders of magnitude more expensive. I'm sure the Iraqi
militias can keep lobbing Katyushas at the Green Zone for much longer than America can afford
to try to shoot them down.
Another interesting point is that Katyusha rockets (BM-21 Grad) are dirt cheap. Whatever was
used to intercept them was several orders of magnitude more expensive. I'm sure the Iraqi
militias can keep lobbing Katyushas at the Green Zone for much longer than America can afford
to try to shoot them down.
Those clever and evil Russians are at the top of their game
again. For less then 20 millions dollars they dispose Hillary in 2016
and now intend to dispose Creepy Joe. Wait, is that this a valuable service to the
nation?
The collapse of neoliberalism forces the US neoliberal elite to deploy desperate measures to preserve the unity of the nation
and the US-controlled world neoliberal empire. Neo-McCarthyism in one of those dirty tricks. The pioneer in this dirty game was
Hillary, but now it is shared by both parties.
According to FBI director Christopher Wray you need to be Russian to
understand that Biden as a Presidential Candidate is DOA. And that decision of DNC to prop him
instead of Sanders or Warren was pretty idiotic, and was based on the power the neoliberal wing
(aka Clinton mafia) still holds within the Party. You have to be pretty delusional to believe
Biden has all his marbles.
And by "interference" he means reporting in the news and expressing
own opinion. Like in 2016 looks like FBI again crossed the line and had become the third
political party, which intends to be the kingmaker of the Presidential elections. So here's a
suggestion: call in UN observers to the elections.
Russian media influence is actually very easy to prove -- just ask yourself, do you trust
RT more than CNN? But if a person laugh every time Joe Biden talks and it has nothing to do
with Russia.
And if this nonsense again comes from the FBI Director, the legitimate question is "What
next?" The claim that Putin ordered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?
Look at all those hapless intelligence agencies, helplessly watching Russian hackers
stealing election. But, wait a minute, we are talking about arguably the largest, best
equipped, best financed and most devious intelligence agencies on the Earth. So it is natural
to assume that people who want to steal the election are those who cry most loudly about the
Russian influence.
Actually If Russia really wanted to "sink" Biden all that it would need to do is noisily
support him openly. The rabid Russophobia would do the rest: Unfortunately most of of Americans
are spoon fed neoliberal propaganda and don't care much about if it's real or not. That reminds
me the USSR where the life of people was difficult enough not to pay attention to Communist
Party slogans and propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the FBI director, the Russians' primary goal seems to be not only to " sow divisiveness and discord ," but to trash Democratic nominee Joe Biden – along with " what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment " – through social media, " use of proxies ," state-run media, and " online journals ." ..."
"... Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats even suggested Congress create another election integrity body to supervise the vote in November, apparently concerned the existing authorities – all 54 of them, one for each state plus four federal entities tasked with keeping meddlers, foreign and domestic, shut out – weren't enough. ..."
"... "Crowd pleasing claims" is spot on the money. Sounds like the FBI has been tasked to lay some groundwork for the "after party". He knows what he is doing. ..."
"... Nothing new from the man who was Comey's assistant AG when Comey was Deputy Attorney General. ..."
Russia is reprising its still-unproven 2016 election meddling efforts, this time targeting
Democratic challenger Joe Biden, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who gave no
evidence to support his crowd-pleasing claims.
Wray told the House of Representatives that Russia is taking a " very active " role
in the 2020 US election, claiming Moscow " continues to try to influence our elections,
primarily through what we call malign foreign influence " during a Thursday hearing on
national security threats.
According to the FBI director, the Russians' primary goal seems to be not only to " sow
divisiveness and discord ," but to trash Democratic nominee Joe Biden – along with
" what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment " – through
social media, " use of proxies ," state-run media, and " online journals ."
Wray contrasted 2020's alleged meddling with that of 2016, which he claimed involved "
an effort to target election infrastructure ," presenting no evidence to back up
either current or past claims – other than that the FBI or other intelligence agencies
had made the same claims in the past. There is no actual evidence that Russia interfered with
election infrastructure in 2016.
While four years of similarly flavored conspiracy theories blaming Russia for Donald
Trump's 2016 win have come up empty-handed, the paucity of real-world evidence for 'Russian
meddling' has not stopped Wray and other US intel officials from hyping it up as a major
threat to the integrity of the democratic process.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center suggested last month that, while
Russia would interfere in the election in favor of Trump, China and Iran would meddle on
behalf of Biden – implying Americans couldn't vote at all without doing the bidding of
a foreign nation.
Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats even suggested Congress create another
election integrity body to supervise the vote in November, apparently concerned the existing
authorities – all 54 of them, one for each state plus four federal entities tasked with
keeping meddlers, foreign and domestic, shut out – weren't enough.
TWOhand 5 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 03:49 PM
"Crowd pleasing claims" is spot on the money. Sounds like the FBI has been tasked to lay
some groundwork for the "after party". He knows what he is doing.
danko79 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:22 PM
Can't feel anything but sympathy for those that are so easily influenced. If/when Biden
loses, perhaps blaming his lack of ability to string a few words together might be more
relevant than any kind of imaginary foreign interference.
Terry Ross 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:43 PM
Nothing new from the man who was Comey's assistant AG when Comey was Deputy Attorney General. Wray made it clear
when sworn in for position of FBI head that he believed Russia had interfered to help Trump win 2016 election. The only
question that remains is why Trump picked him for the job.
"... The CIA was founded by the same fascists who tried to enlist Smedley Butler to overthrow FDR. During the post-war period, they smuggled their ideological brethren out of Germany with operation Paperclip. Their founding fathers included Prescott Bush, a Nazi, whose son and grandson went on to become US Presidents. ..."
The CIA was founded by the same fascists who tried to enlist Smedley Butler to overthrow FDR.
During the post-war period, they smuggled their ideological brethren out of Germany with
operation Paperclip. Their founding fathers included Prescott Bush, a Nazi, whose son and
grandson went on to become US Presidents.
They have never stopped hating Russia, nor have
they ever stopped lying to the American Public.
"... One additional indication that the election in Belarus would be used for nefarious purposes was the willful absence of OSCE election monitors. ..."
"... The willful absence of OSCE election observers later allowed 'western' media and politicians to claim that the election, which Belarus' President Lukashenko won, had been unfair. ..."
"... In an August 18 interview Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out that the OSCE argument was wrong: ..."
"... There are international legal frameworks that must serve as guidance when it comes to determining one's attitude towards events in a specific country. [...] [T]he Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). One of its responsibilities is to monitor national elections in the OSCE member states. This responsibility is part of the obligations signed by all members of this highly respected organisation, without exception. We are being told that the violations during the election campaign were obvious and documented by voluntary observers, on social media, on camera, etc. The ODIHR itself, which was supposed to monitor the elections, claims that its representatives did not go to Belarus because the invitation was sent too late. This is not true, to put it mildly, because, like any other OSCE member state, Belarus's only commitment is "to invite international observers to national elections." ..."
"... The scheme to not send election observers when an unwanted candidate is likely to win now sees a repeat with regards to Venezuela. On September 2 the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro invited the European Union to send election monitors to watch over the congressional election that will take place on December 6: ..."
International election observer missions are supposed to watch that the individual legal
voting rules of a country are followed. They are expected to report any irregularities they
detect. Unfortunately there are now attempts to pervert their purpose. The active withholding
of observer missions is now used to delegitimize elections even when those are fair and follow
all the relevant rules. Recent examples are the presidential election in Belarus and the
upcoming congressional election in Venezuela.
Back in June we
detected a planned color revolution in Belarus by connecting various media reports that
hyped the weak opposition forces.
One additional indication that the election in Belarus would be used for nefarious purposes
was the willful absence of OSCE election monitors.
Belarus had, as usual, expected the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR) to send election observers for the August 9 election. But the OSCE preemptively
announced that it
would not do so because an invitation was allegedly too late:
"The lack of a timely invitation more than two months after the announcement of the election
has prevented ODIHR from observing key aspects of the electoral process," ODIHR Director
Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir said. "These include areas we
have noted in recent observation reports as requiring improvement in Belarus, such as the
formation of election commissions and registration of candidates. It is clear from the
outcomes of these processes that the authorities have not taken any steps to improve their
inclusiveness."
The government of Belarus was
surprised by the one-sided step:
"Indeed, to be honest, ODIHR's decision was disappointing and unexpected. We really hope that
this decision will be revised. After all, today, a day after the registration of presidential
candidates, in line with earlier public statements, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent
invitations to the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Commonwealth
of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These are our traditional
partners in election observation. We remain strongly committed to our promises and
obligations, including within the framework of the OSCE," Anatoly Glaz said.
He emphasized that Belarus has never held elections without observation. "This time we
were also determined to invite OSCE/ODIHR observers after the candidate registration. It was
announced publicly on numerous occasions, we informed our western partners, senior officials
of the Office and personally Ingibjorg Gisladottir about it. We are absolutely transparent in
this context and this can be double-checked," the spokesman said.
The willful absence of OSCE election observers later allowed 'western' media and politicians
to claim that the election, which Belarus' President Lukashenko won, had been unfair.
In an August 18 interview
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out that the OSCE argument was wrong:
There are international legal frameworks that must serve as guidance when it comes to
determining one's attitude towards events in a specific country. [...] [T]he Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has an Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights (ODIHR). One of its responsibilities is to monitor national elections in the
OSCE member states. This responsibility is part of the obligations signed by all members of
this highly respected organisation, without exception. We are being told that the violations
during the election campaign were obvious and documented by voluntary observers, on social
media, on camera, etc. The ODIHR itself, which was supposed to monitor the elections, claims
that its representatives did not go to Belarus because the invitation was sent too late. This
is not true, to put it mildly, because, like any other OSCE member state, Belarus's only
commitment is "to invite international observers to national elections."
There is no timeline for inviting OSCE election observers. The OSCE should have prepared for
the mission before the official invitation took place.
The scheme to not send election observers when an unwanted candidate is likely to win now
sees a repeat with regards to Venezuela. On September 2 the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro
invited the European Union to send election monitors to watch over the congressional
election that will take place on December 6:
Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Twitter that a letter had been sent to UN chief
Antonio Guterres and EU top diplomat Josep Borrell, outlining "the broad electoral guarantees
agreed for the upcoming parliamentary elections," and inviting them to send observers.
The move came a day after Maduro pardoned more than 100 lawmakers and associates of
opposition leader Juan Guaido "in the interests of promoting national reconciliation" ahead
of the polls.
A week later the EU claimed that the three month preparation time was too short for it
to send monitors:
The European Union has received an invitation to observe parliamentary elections in Venezuela
in December, but President Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian government so far has not met
"minimum conditions" to allow it to do so, an EU spokeswoman said on Friday.
The spokeswoman, in a statement to Reuters, said "time is already too short" to deploy a
full EU Electoral Observation Mission if Maduro's administration does not delay the vote
beyond the current date of Dec 6.
The "time is too short" argument is obviously nonsense. The UN and the EU were already
invited in January and had plenty
of time to prepare themselves:
MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. /TASS/. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has invited obsevers
from the United Nations, European Union and several Latin American countries to the
parliamentary elections that will be held in the Bolivarian Republic later this year, the
press service of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
What the EU really wants though is to prevent the elections from taking place in an
orderly manner :
Venezuela's opposition has split on whether to participate in the elections, which will see
voters elect delegates in the National Assembly. The current assembly head, Juan Guaido, is
recognized by the EU as Venezuela's legitimate head-of-state, though Maduro retains control
of the government and military.
Guaido's coalition of parties has vowed to boycott the election to avoid legitimizing an
electoral process they deride as rigged. But in recent weeks another opposition bloc has
emerged, under two-time former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, which says Guaido's
stance risks making the opposition irrelevant and a strategy based on persuading foreign
nations to impose sanctions on Maduro's government has failed.
On Thursday, Stalin Gonzalez, an opposition lawmaker backing Capriles, told Bloomberg that
Capriles' faction would also boycott the election unless international observers agree to
attend.
The opposition rejects participation in the election unless European monitors are deployed.
The EU then refuses to send monitors. It thereby sabotages an election that has an outcome the
EU may not like.
Should the election take place and should Maduro's party, for lack of opposition
participation, win a solid majority the EU will claim that the election was unfair even when
every vote will have been counted correctly.
This scheme of not sending election observers is not furthering democracy and legitimate
elections. It is a willful sabotage of elections where the most likely outcome is contrary to
the preferences of those observer organizations. It discredits their original purpose.
Posted by b on September 13, 2020 at 10:48 UTC |
Permalink
I guess there's no arguing that the elite are eliminating the old world order of sovereign
countries and replacing that system with corporate industrial zones ran by corporate boards.
Corporate fascism and it's elitist cult members are reorganizing the world into a cashless
and morally bankrupt system where only they have privacy and security while the rest of us
live in a permanent underclass where upward mobility depends upon your service to the
neofeudal lords that have been hand picked by the covert agency useful idiots.
Hold on to your arses folks, things are going to get really different really quickly going
forward.
Stay safe and remember not to let other people choose your enemies for you.
" We have been careful in our way of proceeding because we see imperialism as the main
enemy of the Venezuelan people, and that is why we supported Maduro's 2018 presidential bid.
But the truth is that, beyond the capitalist crisis, the exhaustion of the Venezuelan
dependent rentier model [of economic development], and the impact of the imperialist siege,
there is plenty of evidence pointing to a real political shift in the project of the
governing forces [in Venezuela]. " Interview with Oscar Figuera is the general
secretary of the Venezuelan Communist Party [PCV].
Byelarus is a participating country of the OSCE so it seems strange but very convenient that
observers be withheld.
What about regional elections?
Will observers be present at Russia's regional elections today?
Ever since the Nicaraguan elections in the 80s, when the ex-Somozista fascists, now rebranded
as democratic forces, were given instructions by Washington not to participate in order to
invalidate the expected victory of the Sandinistas, this practice is followed whenever
convenient. Of course, one might credibly question the sincerity of the US & Vassals to
democratic institutions when they have been consistently supporting dictators and fascistic
thugs for so long (such as Somoza in Nicaragua), but torrents of propaganda can produce the
desired effects.
The question is when the targeted countries will finally start to invalidate the
"guardians of democracy and freedom", a.k.a., the defenders of corporate fascism and
neoliberalism. At some point it must be obvious that the OSCE, the EU organs and other
similar entities must be openly declared unfit and disregarded. In the distant possibility
that some people are genuinely committed (even for selfishinterests) to see remotely
objective institutions to address such international issues, there must be a message that the
current ones won't do for a number of countries in the world due to political interference or
downright servitude to the Anglo-American empire and its vassals.
"... There is no timeline for inviting OSCE election observers. The OSCE should have
prepared for the mission before the official invitation took place ..."
Dear B,
You're assuming that OSCE is competent enough to be able to prepare for a major core
mission of overseeing elections and ensuring they are carried out properly with full
transparency and accountability.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is facing an unprecedented
leadership crisis, after failing to agree an extension of its four most senior posts,
leaving many in Europe worried about how it will continue to work until successors are
chosen in December.
The 57 member states failed to reach a consensus on extending the mandates of four of
the OSCE's top officials last week, as of Saturday (18 July), the body has been de facto
leaderless.
Swiss diplomat Thomas Greminger was appointed OSCE Secretary General in 2017, for a
three-year term, with the four posts being a political package deal struck under the
Austrian OSCE chairmanship, thus ending a leadership vacuum in the OSCE. All four are now
vacant.
Besides Greminger's, the three other positions that have been vacated include the
director of the organization's election monitoring and pro-democracy work (ODIHR, Ingibjorg
Solrun Gisladottir) ; OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (Harlem Desir), and
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.
The OSCE's consensus-based structure means even a single veto at the ministerial meeting
in December can sink any reappointment ...
Perhaps the ODIHR's failure to send observers to the Presidential elections in Belarus
wasn't just willful ... it was also a sign of its disorganisation and lack of competent
leadership.
Posted by: dave | Sep 13 2020 11:07 utc | 1 Stay safe and remember not to let other people
choose your enemies for you.
Trust me to perform on both counts.
Posted by: Constantine | Sep 13 2020 12:09 utc | 4 At some point it must be obvious that
the OSCE, the EU organs and other similar entities must be openly declared unfit and
disregarded.
Precisely. Virtually every "international" organization is under the thumb of the US
either directly, or via funding, or via indirect influence, to the point where there is
literally *no* such thing as "international order" any more (if there ever was.)
Right-wingers who worry about "One World Government" already have that - it's the US (except
for countries like Iran, China and Russia.)
Bottom line: The only way to "free the world" is to get rid of the US government - by any
means necessary. Notice I don't say "overthrow it" or "destroy it" - that would be illegal
under 18 U.S. Code
§ 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government. So I don't actually use those
words... You are free to believe that I mean doing so by legal voting (if you're really
stupid.)
As I've been trying to say here, this is part of a bigger, overall process happening in
the European Peninsula since the post-war period, marked by an unbroken streak of decline in
every possible facet.
This process, however, is multifaceted and is an amalgamation of many variables,
historical and economic:
1) most important of all, Europe went from imperial to colonial status in a big bang event
(WWII);
2) Cold War cut it off from the rest of Eurasia;
3) this status as USA-oriented (American colony) ossified beyond the Cold War, in the form
of the ideology of Atlanticism and social-democracy ("socialism" in American
terminology);
4) collapse of social-democracy and rise of neoliberalism as a manifestation of a
transition from socialization of wealth (post-war miracle) to socialization of misery
(tendency of the profit rate to fall, long depression in European capitalism);
5) degeneration of social-democracy into a demented form of "humanitarian
imperialism";
6) cannibalization of Europe by Germany with the creation of the EU and, more importantly,
the EZ;
7) the institutionalization of the Atlanticist ideology in Germany with the creation and
codification of the EU (a dialectic reverse of point 6);
8) a desperate German attempt to expand eastwards (the "3% deficit rule", the destruction
of the Ukraine, the attempt to destroy Belarus), in the vacuum of NATO expansion to the same
direction, i.e. the EU as the "institutional/governmental" branch of NATO. This one also has
a dialectical pair, which is the exhaustion of the American Empire.
"Western democracies" used to be admired and their certification of a "free and fair"
election was the gold standard.
But oligarch capitalism and Empire has changed all that.
I expect that an alternative body will soon fill the void for observing/certifying
elections. How soon before Western publics demand that their elections are certified by the
new body?
This is the kind of development that some would call "incompetence" on the part of Deep
State/Empire asshats who doggedly pursue their own interests via faux populist
huckster leaders that apply lipstick to swine.
I would challenge B as logical and fair minded person to attempt the other side of this
arguement which is also not without merit I believe.
This place is becoming what the beloved Caitlin has described as Echo Chamber for prop and
self reinforcement.
Just because US kind of sucks and is getting worse rapidly does not imply that other
countries are good or even better. US is becoming police state so what is China or Russia or
Belarus
B "This scheme of not sending election observers is not furthering democracy and legitimate
elections. It is a willful sabotage of elections where the most likely outcome is contrary to
the preferences of those observer organizations. It discredits their original purpose."
True B - I would only add that while refusing to send observers is wilful, intended to
allow western governments, agencies and MSM, together with the westernized/westernizing
younger, city (often bourgeois) people of the targeted country, to delegitimize elections in
those countries they want for their own purposes (in the case of Belarus both to rape and
plunder its economy while gobbling up the last stretch of Russia's western borderlands for
NATO).
And @6 Richard S Hack - So bloody true. The few parts of the UN (usually individuals like
the Special Rapporteurs on Poverty etc) that remain objective, trustworthy, are sidelined,
ignored. Meanwhile those UN bodies, offshoots like the OPCW, OSCE continue to be used by,
attended to, hailed by the west, its MSM and politicos.
This is a fallacy and I've seen this argument being used by American far-rightists very
often these years.
Besides the fact that the numbers themselves tell a completely different picture (that is:
the USA indeed has worse human rights records than Russia, China, Venezuela etc. etc.),
there's also a failure by design of the narrative.
The question isn't about abstract legal concepts (trilateralism, bilateralism,
multilateralism, multipolarity, unipolarity, accords etc. etc.) or of institutions
(nation-State vs. nation-State; UN vs. nation-State; EU vs. nation-State etc.), but the
dialectical progress of History: which nation-State - in the world of nation-State - has the
means and will to promote the progress of humankind?
The answer is clear as day: it's China and only China.
That's why China should be favored in all Eurasian and South China Sea affairs -
irrelevant being if its through diplomatic or military ways, bilateral or multilateral
deals.
If we degenerate to a simplistic, institutionalistic view of the world/History, we will
equal China to the West. This is a false equivalence, and incurs the danger of humanity
delving deep into another Dark Age - this time, maybe forever, as we have nukes.
There are studies which regulary report compasons of countries on measures of security,
quality of life, freedom and most of them are b/s. But even so if there were an assessment
made by people with first hand knowledge I suspect on 0-10 Belarus would be around -5 and
China around -8 and US around -2 and most of Europe around 0.
Great places to visit (actually US, not so much). Many of those places would be very good as
long as you dont cross the wrong person
Ukraine showed that the OSCE is worthless, however the strategy of continuing to confront the
OSCE with its own original aims and standards is still the correct choice because it doesn't
take much effort.
It is similar to a holding action and meanwhile the new
structures and alternatives are created and already in use although I don't remember the name
they had; they observed and vouched for the Belorussian election.
Like in everything else the US & Europe has already lost but they're too dumb to
realize, they'll be gone before they get that far.
This is an important article, a pointer to a perfidious tactic that completely destroys
elections as an instrument for expressing the political will of a population, already limited
in the setting of the bourgeois state, but still somewhat functional. Naturally, used only
when the victory of 'undesirable' parties can be expected.
The same tactic, by the way, is pursued by Tronald, who tries everything to avert the threat
of defeat by preemptively delegitimizing the election.
Excelent summary, I saw earlier today Lavrov speaking, as usual that is diplomacy, a
really prepared, well spoken and to the point diplomat and not the approach of the buy our
protection or else gang led by the lier, cheater and stealer representative of what looks
like a highway robbers group. Germany blew it again, they tried twice with cannons and
failed, they did it with the €uro and miserably failed again.
I really have nothing to add to what vk has already said, other than saying this is a good
article followed by a good discussion - a rarity in the western world.
thanks b... excellent overview, and would benefit from adding jens comment @5- also very
relevant... the OSCE is becoming like the OPCW - manipulated by the west.. how undemocractic,
but in keeping with the trend....
@ jackrabbit... yes - incompetent because ultimately it is not going to work...
It's not like the elections weren't going to be declared illegitimate no matter what. The US
demanded as the ruler of the world to over see the Syrian elections. The US couldn't prove
any thing untoward happened and said they were legitimate elections. Then less than a year
later changed it's story to help fan sectarian violence.
These narrative control efforts by empire are part of their ongoing strategy to maintain what
they have of unilateral control/power. And these are conscious but misguided efforts that
have been going on for decades, guided by the global private finance elite and their God of
Mammon acolytes.
The aggressive push back against alternative forms of social organization
(multilateralism) by the West is being called out and this will hopefully lead to death by a
thousand cuts which the world wishes to happen sooner rather than later.
A clearer, more open case of managing public opinion could hardly be found. Just as in Julian
Assange's extradition trial, the outcome has been predetermined. In essence, the OSCE will
claim that the election was unfair, because they knew it would be.
Some thoughts and comparisons with past models on peace between Israel and Persian Gulf Arab
States, and US designs to implement a new security architecture for western Asia.
In early 70s when Americans were waist high in Vietnam quagmire and Watergate, Brits knew
they had enough, no longer could afford policing the Persian Gulf and maintain their bases in
the area. As of the result, the rearrangement of political and security architecture for
Persian Gulf region became essential and necessary. In short years most disputes between the
Arab states and Iran was resolved, Bahrain and UAE became independent states friendly to
Iran, Iran reclaimed her sovereignty to several PG islands, Iraq and Iran' dispute on Shatt
al Arab water way was resolved, same with Kurdish insurgencies against the governments, Iran
and Egypt restarted their relation, etc.. This (fake, unsubstantiated) political changes were
arranged (mostly by British and Americans) to calm the political atmosphere in the region,
making possible for Iran to become the" Police of Persian Gulf" to protect the new and old
Arab fake but Rich states around the Gulf while the western powers no longer could afford
doing so.
To make a new security arrangement to secure the western investments and interests by Iran
in the region. Iran was to become capable to purchase massive amount of new and modern
armament and training from the west with little money she was earning from her oil
production. While Iran, and most of the oil producing gulf states were suffering from lack of
any meaningful infrastructure. The solution to make these countries purchasing power capable
of affording massive increase in purchasing western armament and infrastructure, came with a
substantial increase in their only source of income, the oil price. What is called the
"Petrol Dollar" recycling was created to recycle their earning from oil with Arms and Good
from the west, a win, win solution. Meaning US will print unbacked fiat currency which
everyone will need to have to purchase oil from the Persian Gulf oil producing states and oil
producing states will purchase military goods and other services from (western) oil
purchasing states.
By now we all know how long this fake security arrangements worked, yes less than 5 years,
with Iranian revolution in 79 the west had to return to the region to protect its Arab client
states. The Shah with full political, economic and military support of west could not protect
himself from internal revolute, nevertheless the Arab statelets. The fact is, after Iranian
revolution of 79 the west never was able, to arrange a meaningful lasting security
architecture, in western Asia, to secure its Arab and Israeli clients and interests.
Amazingly, while during all this past forty years since the Iranian revolution, besides its
Arab client states all major regional Sunni Muslim states of Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan were in
full cooperation with the US to restructure and maintain a new security architecture for
western Asia outside of Iranian influence. It Never worked it never will, historically is
impossible to make such an arrangement without Iran.
The reason I brought this up is, I see a similar even more clumsy and desperate new
arrangement is forming up by the west to secure this small, low density high value Persian
Gulf statelets. Apparently, this new arrangement is through utilizing Israel as the securing
umbrella state, the so called Israel peace with Arabs states in the Gulf, this while unlike
the Shah' time at least on surface Turkey and Pakistan are officially not supporting this
efforts.
It is not too difficult to understand peace with Israel, may bring some comfort and
approval for Arab sheikhs and monarch while out of their choice they know US like Brits are
leaving. But these Arab rulers know peace with Israel will not be accepted in their own Arab
streets specially among rebellious Arabs youth. The fact is that these client Arab states
more than external security that Israel supposedly can provide, need internal security from
their own ever growing rebellious Arab youth. In fact, the recognition of Israel by these
rich Arab monarchs makes them to be more insecure internally. Egypt and Jordan after peace
deals and recognition of Israel, internally became less secure and more of police states, so
was the Shah of Iran.
Looks like all signs are pointing to the direction of western states moving and making new
arrangements to leave western Asia, Arab western clients should know they wouldn't last,
Historically and naturally Turkey's influence will grow in eastern Mediterranean, and Iran'
in central Asia, Persian Gulf region.
Once my father ( a historian) told me, one can rewrite history book as one wish, but you
one can't recreate the geography. Geography of the Persian Gulf is the bitch for US.
Russia also asked independent observers for the Crimea vote to leave Ukraine and join Russia.
of course it was refused, because US-NATO will never recognize election results for countries
don't bend the knee.
Excellent reporting b!! Time for the G-20, SCO, or the NAM to create their own election
monitoring organizations to do what the dying Outlaw US Empire and its decrepit vassals
refuse to do, and truthfully can't be trusted to honestly report results even when they do
observe. Not being agreement capable has crept into other areas related to diplomatic
relations. Essentially, the West has Navalnied itself with its easily discerned lies and
distortions.
Just because US kind of sucks and is getting worse rapidly does not imply that other
countries are good or even better.
Posted by: jared | Sep 13 2020 13:33 utc | 9
Not sure about your definition of "good". Neither China nor Russia have transformed in the
last decades entire regions of the world into post-apocalyptic hellholes while posing as
God's gift on humanity. None of them has unleashed conventional or unconventional attacks on
the US or other countries in complete disregard of international laws, while using racist,
ethno-supremacist rhetoric to justify criminal policies.
And considering the utterly brazen effort of the US/EU to subvert Belarus and transform it
into a neoliberal corporate colony and a fascist bastion of Russophobia, you really have some
nerve mentioning this country on par with Mordor-on-the-Potomac.
div> One has to wonder how many international organizations the US has by
the short and curlies.
Whilst we're pondering fake US-invented UN organisations, it's probably time to mention the
IAEA and its insanely myopic focus on Iran, and only Iran.
How "international" is that?
The solution to this issue is obvious, so obvious I'm really surprised that it hasn't been
put in place yet.
These election inspection and validation teams are primarily comprised of former politicians,
politicians who for whatever reason have a reputation for honesty (yeah right 99% of 'em are
neolibs so that's obviously untrue) and who have a bit of an international profile.
There are far more of these types than there are cushy little gigs for them.
Many have made a play at a big UN gig and either done their time or in the case of women, hit
the 'glass ceiling'. Mary Robinson former president of Ireland who went on to become boss of
UN Human Rights division is a classic example. That job was the highest she could get try as
she might there is no way the UN is going to select a woman to be UN Secretary General. So
after her term at UNHRC finished no more gigs for Robinson, consequently
she got burned last year when she tried to sell the world a crock about, Sheikha Latifa,
the daughter of the evil prick in charge of Dubai/UAE.
There are literally hundreds of these former politicians around and many of them have been
cast on the slag heap of the oligarchy simply because there are not enough gigs to go
around.
They know that other retired pols owed bigger favours by the oligarchy will always get the
high paying gigs ahead of them so many have nothing to lose if they are merely required to
tell the truth without putting any spin on it. That is how the Euro election monitoring mob
first started out, and there no reason why some foundation cannot do exactly the same, set up
a monitoring team to observe what goes down in the Venezuela election and tell the truth
about it afterwards.
Of course the borg will eventually wake up to this and try to heavy/bribe/extort a team
member to lie. But not initially, if Iran, Russia, China set up a London based 'foundation'
recruit some ex-pols with nothing to lose to do an honest job and report about it honestly
there will be many takers as long as the pay is good.
A handful of 'honest' pols could blow the wannabe Venezuela coup out of the water.
The stakeholders have enough data on well known pols from everywhere to know who is under the
empire's thumb and who is free of it to choose widely.
"Daniel Kovalik teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh Law
School. His most recent book is "The Plot to Attack Iran."
I just returned from observing my fourth election in Venezuela in less than a year. Jimmy
Carter has called Venezuela's electoral system "the best in the world," and what I witnessed
was an inspiring process that guarantees one person, one vote, and includes multiple auditing
procedures to ensure a free and fair election.
I then came home to the United States to see the inevitable "news" coverage referring to
Venezuela as a "dictatorship" and as a country in need of saving.
Nice elaboration of the situation with NGOs. For many of those people, those are the best
jobs available to them, so of course they can be coerced.
---
In PR it is called the "independent third-party testimonial technique" and it is
ubiquitous. Marketing is basically the study of how to gull your fellow humans effectively,
everybody ought to learn about it in school. study it, just a prophylaxis.
But it has been over-employed of late, so they are having to invent new "independent
third-parties" all the time now, and the Chumps are wising up.
Propaganda is most effective when little used. We are getting regular full-tilt propaganda
offensives almost continuously these days, wall-to-wall bullshit. You cannot get away from
it.
This will not last long.
The other thing besides NGOs etc., is the Mighty Wurlitzer, where you already have
alternate news sources RT, Sputnik, Xinhua, etc. available.
There *were* independent observers in Venezuela (2018). Quite a lot of them if I remember
correctly. They ALL declared the elections as both fair and honest.
Neocons et Al did not give a single shit. As far as the US is concerned you can have as
many independent unbiased observers as you want. It doesn't matter. The US won't recognise
them and the media will play pretend they don't exist because it's not about maintaining the
integrity of democratic elections. It never was. It's about forcing a decision the US
hegemony wants.
I imagine that there have been identified a protocol and quantifiable measures of a
legitemate election and agencies qualified to access. These agencies would be credible and
widely respected by all sides - they would not be agents of vested interests. Who would have
such credibilty to assess and underwrite such a plan - clearly it could not be a long list of
discredited actors. Only maybe Cuba comes to mind.
@SO #30 Do you even know what happened in Venezuela it seems you do not.
If I remember correctly the argument with the elections for National Assembly was never about
the result because the opposition won, it was about the alternative methods used by Maduro
the president to ensure his policies continued. The president is elected separately and has a
considerable amount of legislative, judicial and executive power. These powers are the same
as the ones that fascist presidents before Chavez had used without complaint by either
amerika or other Latin American states.
The entire basis of some guy's 'prezdency' is that he had been selected by a majority in the
Assembly, that is unconstitutional. Now it is certain that Maduro's PSUV will gain a majority
in the Assembly this time some guy and amerika are pretending it will be rigged, when they
know it won't be. PSUV victory will mean that some guy no longer has any basis for his claim
legal or moral and amerika will have to stop diverting Venezuela's income to him. If
independent monitors do go down and observe, then give the ballot a big tick it will do much
to spike amerika's paper cannons.
@ jared | Sep 14 2020 22:14 utc | 31... jared, you are either braindead, or really naive....
did you follow the OPCW actions with regard to the supposed chemical weapon attack in syria
the past year or two??? take a look at that and get back to us on how it hasn't been
corrupted... same deal here with OSCE and ODIHR.. they are tools of the empire at this
point...
arby@28 is outraged that Venezuela is defined in the US as a dictatorship. Some, maybe most
of the people who hate Venezuelan dictatorship, are perfectly sincere. The thing is, they
regard majority rule as dictatorship. The purpose of government is to protect rights. Many
people think political and civil rights, while those who own property think property rights
(first or only, a lot of them.) But majority rule that can change the socioeconomic system is
tyranny, the illegitimate use of the majority to violate rights. The whole point of
"democracy" is to make sure the majority can't oppress the minority, that mere majority votes
don't change fundamental policy. The vision of freedom in this is the freedom to buy what you
can afford and to do with your property whatever you want. That's the free market and thus
democracy is about maintaining the free market. That's how the freedom of slave owners to
carry their chattels anywhere in the US without losing their property rights in them simply
*was* the struggle for freedom and why the election of a Republican president who would
oppose this was a tyrannical attack on their freedom compelling and justifying war for
independence.
The notion of democracy as majority rule is more of a socialist/communist idea, pretended
to in verbiage on occasion to spread confusion. Democracy as majority rule, or government
operating in the general interest rather than property, is the kind of democracy socialists
and communists, consistent principled ones at any rate, want. If one accepts that labor is
the general interest, a break with the old meaning of democracy, the kind compatible with
slavery and empire and Jim Crow and endless wars to punish whole nations, is complete. Most
people will not break with the old meaning, shamefacedly refusing to answer the question,
democracy for who?
Further to my quip @ #26 about fake NGOs, here's Pat Lang's commendably brutal assessment of
the fakery behind the UN...
14 September 2020 The UN is not a government.
Some points regarding the UN:
1. It has no effective power to enforce anything.
a. It has no money of its own. The members make voluntary donations.
b. It has no army. Members volunteer troops for "peace keeping" duty. Blue Helmets are just
spectators everywhere they are placed. The only exception is in Korea which is an accident of
history. But, Blue Helmet duty is VERY popular with soldiers everywhere because the UN
supplementary pay is JUST WONDERFUL. (as is UN civilian pay).
2. The UN pretends that its "Resolutions" are something like laws. They are not. These
multitudinous documents are useful to the major powers (US, Russia, China, India maybe) when
they want to justify some action they wish to take. The various "Resolutions" on Iraq that
the US managed to wheedle out of the Security Council come to mind. And, the "Resolutions"
are oh, so useful as rhetorical devices with which to denounce your long-standing enemies.
The Muslim/Arab states and the Israelis are particularly good at this.
3. The real value of the UN lies in its role as a coordinating body for its subordinate
specialized agencies; IAEA, UNHCR, ICAO, etc. But, in fact, some of them are of no real
value, and exist largely to line the pockets of their staff.
4. The international courts and investigations run by the UN are a joke. They have no
power whatever against the aforementioned major powers. War crimes trials? Yes, the losers
get tried after denunciation by the winners. Once again, the lawyers, investigators etc.,
live well in the process. The farcical UN investigation into the murder of Rafiq Hariri is a
wonderful example. It went on forever and guess what! Hizballah done it! (probably with a
wink and a nod from the Assad) Who woulda thought? An effort was made in the midst of the
investigation to get me to participate. The pitch was made by a sometimes famous ex-CIA
pundit guy who said that my intimate knowledge of the low personalities among the Lebanese
Shia and Hizballah would be the key to making the case for their guilt. Then, the next day
the chief UN investigator called to make the same appeal with a lot of money attached to it.
But, alas, I slithered away without taking the bait.
Perhaps we should bring back the League of Nations. They also were useless and they
have all those empty marble palaces in Geneva. Maybe with Bill De Blasio in charge the UN
might wish to leave New York City. pl
Posted at 11:36 AM in government, Israel | Permalink | Comments (6)
He is correct on the UN to an extent. It is now as useless in most regards as the league
of nations. It is however a US construct based on US culture and beliefs. Most of its addons
are based on US propaganda of the day - unhcr, opcw ect.
US has long since held itself unaccountable to the UN - since the Nicaragua case. To the
extent US is now sanctioning a UN investigator that dared to investigate gods own country on
war crimes in Afghanistan.
Precisely. Virtually every "international" organization is under the thumb of the US
either directly, or via funding, or via indirect influence, to the point where there is
literally *no* such thing as "international order" any more (if there ever was.)
That is not true. In 2017, inside the United Nations General Assembly, the US lost 9-128
on the question of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The US is free to build its
Israeli embassy wherever it wants, but the country can no longer force the rest of the world
to follow. The international order is still very strong.
Right-wingers who worry about "One World Government" already have that - it's the US
(except for countries like Iran, China and Russia.)
Cyril
un general assembly has always been as useful as tits on a bull or alternativly a us tool.
usnc is what counts but that also is only voluntary and set up with us groupy pissants having
veto power.
"Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 15 2020 0:38 utc | 34"
Not sure what you are getting at but I see that the mighty empire has so far failed to win
over the Venezuelan people or the army.
It tells me that by far the majority of Venezuelans are onside with their government despite
the insane and intense outside pressure.
Just because US kind of sucks and is getting worse rapidly does not imply that other
countries are good or even better. US is becoming police state so what is China or Russia or
Belarus
Many countries are undoubtedly better, not only because the US sucks, but also
because they have objectively behaved much better.
(1) In trustworthiness. They don't dump contracts and treaties, such as the Iran nuclear
deal or the ABM/INF treaties (and probably START soon), when it suits them.
(2) In external behavior. They obey the international rules. The invasion of Iraq and the
sanctions on Russia and Iran (without Security Council approval) are all violations of the UN
Charter, which the US has already ratified. The US therefore promised to obey the Charter,
and has broken that promise -- repeatedly.
(3) And even in most human rights. Murders by cop in 2019: about 3 in China; over 1000 in
the Land of the Free.
Many people who are uncomfortable with the monster that the US has become, like yourself,
Jared, attempt to excuse the Empire's detestable actions by saying that other countries are
just as bad. They are not, not even close.
By way of comparison here are figures (per 100,000 people) from some other countries,
using above sources.
Australia: 170
Canada: 107
England and Wales: 139
France: 104
Indonesia: 100
Italy: 102
South Africa: 259
Taiwan: 258
So it turns out that the US far outstrips China, Russia and Belarus in incarcerating more
people in prison per 100,000 head of population, and moreover some other nations in the
Anglosphere counted as "democratic" and respecting the rule of law also have more people in
prison per 100,000 persons than China does.
@ Jen | Sep 16 2020 0:10 utc | 42 with the incarceration numbers...thanks.
Being the money guy I also think about the associated "for profit" prison system. Having a
for profit prison system is a travesty in itself but reflective of the double-standard
exceptionalism prevalent in the West.....if we were to put the criminals from Wall Street in
those prisons, the public view/attitude about them would magically change.....sigh
Wouldn't it be nice to design a social system that had a more humanistic distribution of
socialistic versus for profit sectors....and of course, to be on topic, get private money
like we see now out of politics/elections.
Jen @ #42 I took a look at the rates of imprisonment for
Oceania and as I suspected Aotearoa is quite bad, really bad in fact at 182 per 100,000
in keeping with my hypothesis that the highest rates of imprisonment are usually those
countries subjected to colonial style imperialism where the indigenous population is
oppressed. I realise that the situation in amerika is sort of different as the 'settlers'
nearly wiped out the indigenous population but as the native americans were replaced by
African slaves who are still oppressed as are the remnants of indigenous people the amerikan
figure is high.
The indigenous population of Formosa/Taiwan are also doing it tough since Chiang kai-shek's
kuomintang invasion has led to a typical han chinese takeover their imprisonment rate is 258
per 100,000. The indigenous population of Taiwan have been subjected to land theft &
denial of their language & culture for 70 years and nothing I have ever heard on this
from beijing causes me to hope that this would change when Taiwan is reintegrated into the
mainland. The best solution would be to kick the invaders back to the mainland then
create the republic of Formosa or whatever the original people choose their country to be
named.
The really big shock is Palau which has had a very mixed up colonialism since spain first
invaded back in the 16th Century. Since then Germany 1899 to 1918, then Japan 1918 to 1945ish
(big battle on Palau between Japan & amerika during ww2) and amerika since then -
although Palau is complicated as they tried to get free from amerika back in the 1980's and
got lumbered with something far worse in 1994 under a Clintonista Compact of Free Association
with amerika which gives them all the bad aspects of amerika but with less say in amerika's
decision-making than Puerto Rico, which is really saying something. Check out how many lies
the borg can get in
an article about a nation with an amerikan puppet government. The imprisonment rate on
what should be a pacific paradise if it wasn't chocka with amerikan bases is a whopping 522
prisoners per 100,000 of population.
Too often a nation's citizens just accept statistics such as these without actually
considering how & why there is such a huge variation on rates of imprisonment.
In Aotearoa very few Tangata Whenua still get locked up for petty crimes (eg there was a bit
of a scandal when some tory pig leaked the fact that former minister of Maori Affairs Dover
Samuels had served six weeks in prison as an adolescent for the alleged 'crime' of theft of a
pillow. The scandal wasn't about what it should have been; that a 16 year old had been tossed
in the slammer on a petty charge brought on the verbal evidence a pakeha woman in a fit of
jealousy or how Mr Samuels' word was less credible than hers. No the fuss was about a cabinet
minister having been a 'former convict') but far too many impoverished citizens do end up in
the slammer & since tangata whenua & Pacifica people are overrepresented in the
poverty stats they are also overrepresented in crime stats.
For me the incarceration of indigenous people has always been one of my motives for
spending a big chunk of my life resisting imperialism. It is bad enough that just about
everything is stolen from indigenous populations & their cultures are destroyed, they are
also harshly punished for not adhering to a colonising culture which they have no idea
of.
@ Jen | Sep 16 2020 0:10 utc | 42.. thanks for that quick overview... the usa prison system
is a for profit system - more prisoners, more profit... it is a sick system...
i agree with @44 debs last paragraph.... that i think is very true...
p>
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Karlof 1 @ 32 attacks vk @4-- Your attempt to credit Karl Popper with the concept of public
opinion is just as false as the stories b wrote about. Click here for a history of that
concept. by: karlof1 | Sep 15 2020 17:04 utc | 32
What I like about what vk@ 4 said is that he has given this list a beginning to not only
understand our plight as members of the governed classes, but also to analyze our experience
with this stuff and to develop a set of rules that can allow us to defend our minds against
being controlled by invisible hands of mind control.
can we on this list develop a defensive strategy and use it to teach the governed
masses?
Around the globe and throughout history it can be observed that the oligarchs invent a
collection of values and stuff them into structures they call nation states, culture,
institutions and journalist are all designed to, and rewarded for supporting the values,
while media is charged to keep the propaganda circulating.
The H&C propaganda model pulls together from across the political communications
literature the variety of factors which essentially constrain journalist and means that they
don't actually play the independent autonomous and watchdog role that we expect them to in a
democracy ae Herman Chromsky talk about the importance oe size concentration ownership oe
mainstream media the way in w/e ownership of most oe media outlets w/people go to for their
information is essentially associated w/very large conglomerates w/h overlapping interests
and overlapping interests with government and this produces a large structural constraint oe
way the media operates.
The Interface between Propaganda and War: Prof.
The Propaganda Model: The filters (Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, the political
economy of the mass media).
The only other broad avenue for the people to get unbiased information is from a few news
shows that don't toe the liberal line -- most notably "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News.
Since the riots began at the end of May, Carlson has taken it upon himself to expose the
corruption of not just the media but the liberal elected establishment that has implicitly
endorsed violence, racism, and disorder in the name of what is perversely called social
justice. I've called Carlson a
modern-day Cassandra because his clear-eyed assessment of the danger America faces has been
met with scorn, denial and derision. But name-calling, advertising boycotts, and continued
threats of violence against him and his family have not deterred Carlson from his declared
mission to be "the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink."
In that regard, Carlson has long used his show to ferret out information hidden in the
bowels of government and get it to the people -- bypassing the media guards who increasingly
see it as their sworn role to restrict the free exchange of ideas. On Carlson's Sept. 1 show,
author Chris Rufo discussed his research into how critical race theory has infiltrated the
federal government. I was shocked by just how bad the situation is, something we would never
learn from CNN or MSNBC.
"It's absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in
the federal government," Rufo told Carlson.
"What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default
ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American
people."
He gave three examples of what he called "cult indoctrination." For instance, he told of a
trainer who "told Treasury [Department] employees essentially that America was a fundamentally
white supremacist country and 'virtually all white people uphold the system of racism and white
superiority.'"
When Rufo explicitly urged Trump "to immediately issue an executive order abolishing
critical-race-theory training from the federal government," I thought to myself how that was a
smart move. It just might work. It's no secret that Trump watches Fox News. So why not make a
direct appeal to the president while you are on one of those shows? It's the only way most
guests would ever have a chance to get the president's attention. And in this case it
worked.
Just three quick days later, Trump did exactly what Rufo proposed -- he
issued an executive order through the director of the Office of Management and Budget to
"cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund [the] divisive, un-American propaganda
training sessions" where federal employees are told that "virtually all White people contribute
to racism."
When Trump reacted to Rufo's revelations the same way that I and millions of people watching
Tucker Carlson's show reacted - with outrage - I realized just how dangerous Carlson is to the
hegemony of the far left. His show is metaphorically the tunnel under the Berlin Wall that
allows direct communication between the pro-liberty, pro-American middle class and the freedom
fighters in the White House , bypassing both the bureaucracy and the stunningly dishonest media
that control the flow of information in and out of the Trump administration.
In order to keep our metaphor geographically, if not politically, correct, we should think
of the mainstream media as the Stasi, the East German secret police who were notoriously brutal
-- and effective -- in suppressing free thought and dissent from the party line. They were not
just the "enemy of the people," as Trump has labeled the worst of the modern media; they were
the "enemy of the truth."
That role has never been clearer than it was last week when Bob Woodward, the legacy
commander of the media's Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, issued his report on what he
found when he infiltrated the White House. Or at least what he purported to find.
According to Woodward, Trump perfidiously misled the American public about the scope and
danger of the China virus because he called the virus "deadly stuff" in February before any
Americans had died. Also because Trump knew "it goes through the air." I mean you have to be
notoriously stupid, or just plain incurious, not to have figured out by February that COVID-19
was a deadly peril. Does Woodward think that Trump shut down air travel from China at the end
of January just because he wanted to hurt the tourist industry?
Of course the new virus was deadly, but as Trump patiently explained to the thick-headed
Woodward then, and still has to explain to the rest of the White House press corps virtually
every day, there is no purpose served by terrifying the public. The president told Woodward
that the virus was "more deadly than even your strenuous flus." That turned out to be true, but
flus are also kept under control by widespread vaccination and therapeutics. Does Woodward need
to be reminded that the much more deadly pandemic of 1918 was caused by the Spanish flu ?
Of course he does, because it's not helpful to the media's narrative that Donald Trump is a
dangerous buffoon who must not be reelected. How could the country survive another four years
with a president who insists on doing things his own way, who won't be cowed by the Stasi
media, who considers it his duty to improve on conventional wisdom instead of surrendering to
it.
Which brings us back to Chris Rufo and his pipeline -- or should I say tunnel access -- to
the president. The obstinacy of Tucker Carlson, his unwillingness to take a knee to orthodoxy,
has made him the most dangerous person in America (after Trump) to the far-left overlords. And
when Trump acted on Rufo's entreaty regarding critical race theory, it led to near hysteria as
the Stasi media realized that its Berlin Wall had been breached.
As Carlson himself reported on Tuesday, Sept. 8, "To the news media, all of this was a
disaster. They claim to be journalists, but they despise actual reporting like Chris Rufo's.
His coverage showed that they are complicit in an anti-American lie that is deeply unpopular
with actual Americans, and they didn't take it well."
Among the many critics of Carlson for providing the president with accurate information
about what is being done in his name in the federal bureaucracy, perhaps the loudest was CNN's
Brian Stelter, the virtual communications director for the Stasi media.
Sen. Chris Murphy said this the other day: "I have a real belief that democracy is
unnatural. We don't run anything important in our lives by democratic vote other than our
government. Democracy is so unnatural that it's illogical to think it would be permanent. It
will fall apart at some point, and maybe that point isn't now, but maybe it is."
Karl Marx said that " Philosophers have hitherto only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it ." I doubt very much that
you will know which changes you need to make if you don't have a very good idea about your
starting point. In his book Factfulness and in his many excellent online presentations, the
late Swedish Professor of International Health Hans Rosling identifies a lot of the ways things
have gotten better , especially for the world's poorest.
Suppose, for example, that you encounter the name " Milton Friedman ,"
perhaps in connection with lamented "neoliberalism" and maybe in connection with human rights
abuses perpetrated by the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Friedman has been denounced
as the "father of global misery," and his reputation has taken another beating in the wake of
the fiftieth anniversary of his 1970 New York Times Magazine essay " The Social Responsibility of Business is to
Increase its Profits ," which I suspect most people haven't read past its title. But what
happened during "The Age of Milton Friedman," as the economist Andrei Shleifer asked in
a 2009
article ? Shleifer points out that "Between 1980 and 2005, as the world embraced free
market policies, living standards rose sharply, while life expectancy, educational attainment,
and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined."
Things have never been so good, and they are getting better , especially for the world's
poor.
In 2008, there was a bit of controversy over the establishment of the Milton Friedman
Institute at the University of Chicago, which operates today as the Becker Friedman Institute (it is also named for Friedman's
fellow Chicago economist Gary Becker ). In a
blistering
reply to a protest letter signed by a
group of faculty members at the University of Chicago, the economist John Cochrane wrote, "If
you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and
the opening of China and India are 'negative for much of the world's population,' you just
don't have any business being a social scientist. You don't stand a chance of contributing
something serious to the problems that we actually do face." Nor, might I add, do you stand
much of a chance of concocting a revolutionary program that will actually help the people
you're trying to lead.
2. What makes me so sure I won't replace the existing regime with
something far worse?
I might hesitate to push the aforementioned button because while the world we actually
inhabit is far from perfect, it's not at all clear that deleting the state overnight wouldn't
mean civilization's wholesale and maybe even perpetual collapse. At the very least, I would
want to think long and hard about it. The explicit mention of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara in
the course description suggest that students will be approaching revolutionary ideas from the
left. They should look at the results of populist revolutions in 20th century Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. The blood of many millions starved and slaughtered in efforts to "forge a
better society" cries out against socialism and communism, and
macroeconomic populism in Latin America has been disastrous . As people have pointed out
when told that "democratic socialists" aren't trying to turn their countries into Venezuela,
Venezuelans weren't trying to turn their country into Venezuela when they embraced Hugo Chavez.
I wonder why we should expect WLU's aspiring revolutionaries to succeed where so many others
have failed.
3. Is my revolutionary program just a bunch of platitudes with which no
decent person would disagree?
In 2019, Kristian Niemietz of London's Institute of Economic Affairs published a useful
volume titled Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies , which you can
download for $0 from IEA . He notes a tendency for socialists and neo-socialists to pitch
their programs almost exclusively in terms of their hoped-for results rather than in terms of
the operation of concrete social processes they hope to set in motion (on this I paraphrase
my intellectual hero Thomas Sowell ).
Apply a test proposed a long time ago by the economist William Easterly: can you imagine
anyone seriously objecting to what you're saying? If not, then you probably aren't saying
anything substantive. Can you imagine someone saying "I hate the idea of the world's poor
having better food, clothing, shelter, and medical care" or "It would be a very bad thing if
more people were literate?" If not, then it's likely that your revolutionary program is a
tissue of platitudes and empty promises. That's not to say it won't work politically–God
knows, nothing sells better on election day than platitudes and empty promises–but you
shouldn't think you're saying anything profound if all you're saying is something obvious like
"It would be nice if more people had access to clean, drinkable water."
... ... ...
7. How has it worked the other times it has been tried?
Years before the Russian Revolution, Eugene Richter predicted with eerie prescience what
would happen in a socialist society in his short book Pictures of the Socialistic Future (
which you can
download for $0 here ). Bryan Caplan, who wrote the foreword for that edition of Pictures
and who put together the online " Museum of Communism ," points out
the distressing regularity with which communists go from "bleeding heart" to "mailed fist." It
doesn't take long for communist regimes to go from establishing a workers' paradise to shooting
people who try to leave. Consider whether or not the brutality and mass murder of communist
regimes is a feature of the system rather than a bug. Hugo Chavez and Che
Guevara both expressed bleeding hearts with their words but used a mailed fist in practice
(I've written before that "irony" is denouncing Milton Friedman for the crimes of Augusto
Pinochet while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Pinochet was a murderous thug. Guevara was, too).
Caplan points to
pages 105 and 106 of Four Men: Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba
. On page 105, Lazaro Benedi Rodriguez's heart is bleeding for the illiterate. On page 106,
he's "advis(ing) Fidel to have an incinerator dug about 40 or 50 meters deep, and every time
one of these obstinate cases came up, to drop the culprit in the incinerator, douse him with
gasoline, and set him on fire."
... ... ...
9. What will I do with people who aren't willing to go along with my
revolution?
Walter Williams once said that he doesn't mind if communists want to be communists. He minds
that they want him to be a communist, too. Would you allow people to try capitalist experiments
in your socialist paradise? Or socialist experiments in your capitalist paradise (Families,
incidentally, are socialist enterprises that run by the principle "from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs.")? Am I willing to allow dissenters to advocate my
overthrow, or do I need to crush dissent and control the minds of the masses in order for my
revolution to work? Am I willing to allow people to leave, or will I need to build a wall to
keep people in?
10. Am I letting myself off the hook for questions 1-9 and giving myself
too much credit for passion and sincerity?
The philosopher David Schmidtz has said that if your best argument is that your heart is in
the right place, then your heart is most definitely not in the right place. Consider this quote
from Edmund Burke and ask whether or not it leads you to revise your revolutionary plans:
"A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He would feel some
apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play, without
any sort of knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance, that it is
directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save
itself from injustice and oppression is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But
I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which, in the depths of its wisdom, tolerates
all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgusting, than an impotent helpless
creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, without a consciousness of any other
qualification for power but his servility to it, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling
for battles which he is not to fight, contending for a violent dominion which he can never
exercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, in order to render others
contemptible and wretched." (Emphasis added).
Just when the fear starts to subside, and growing public skepticism seems to push governors
into opening, something predictable happens . The entire apparatus of mass media hops on some
new, super-scary headline designed to instill more Coronaphobia and extend the lockdowns yet
again.
It's a cycle that never stops. It comes back again and again.
A great example occurred this weekend. A poll appeared on Friday from the Kaiser Family
Foundation. It showed
that confidence in Anthony Fauci is evaporating along with support for lockdowns and mandatory
Covid vaccines.
The news barely made the headlines, and very quickly this was overshadowed by a scary new
claim: restaurants will give you Covid!
It's tailor-made for the mainstream press. The study is from the
CDC, which means: credible. And the thesis is easily digestible: those who test positive
for Covid are twice as likely as those who tested negative to have eaten at a restaurant.
"Eating and drinking on-site at locations that offer such options might be important risk
factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection," the study says.
Very scary!
Thus the implied conclusion: don't allow indoor dining! Otherwise Covid will spread like
wildfire!
After six months of this Corona Kabuki dance, driven by alarmist media and imposed by wacko,
power-abusing governors and mayors, I've become rather cynical about the whole enterprise, so I
mostly ignore the latest nonsense.
In this case, however, I decided to take a closer look simply because so many millions of
owners, workers, and customers have been treated so brutally in the "War on Restaurants."
It turns out, of course, that this is not what the study said. What's more interesting is to
consider exactly what's going on here. The study was based on interviews with 314 people who
had been tested of their own volition. It included 154 patients with positive test results and
160 control participants with negative test results.
The interviews took place two weeks following the tests, and they concerned life activities
two weeks prior to getting the test.
Before we go on here, remember that what alarmed people about Covid was the prospect of
dying. The study says nothing about this subject, nor about hospitalization. It's a fair
assumption that the positive cases being interviewed here got it (presumably, if the tests are
accurate, which they are not )
and got over it.
This alone is interesting simply because it reveals how much the whole subject has been
changed: the pandemic has become a casedemic.
Now, to the question of life activities. In the study, based on answers to a survey, the
following were not correlated in any significant degree with positive cases of Covid:
Wearing a mask or not wearing a mask
Going to church
Riding on public transportation
Attending large house parties
Going to the gym
Going to the office
Going to the hair salon
Going shopping
Now one might suppose, if you think the study has any merit, that this would be the
headline.
The massive power of the state has been deployed all over the United States and the world to
force the closure of churches, gyms, offices, salons, and malls. This all happened and is still
happening. Also mask mandates became the new normal. The public has been invited by health
authorities to jeer at, denounce, and turn in anyone who doesn't have a cloth strapped to his
or her face.
All of this happened in complete contradiction to every commercial right, property right, or
normal human freedoms. We threw it all away in the name of virus control. Our lives have been
completely upended and our assumptions about our rights and liberties have been overturned.
And yet here is a study that is unable to document any correlation between these life
activities and catching the disease.
That's an amazing conclusion that could have generated headlines like:
Salons Won't Get You Sick, CDC Reports
You Won't Catch Covid at the Gym, CDC Shows
No, Your Hairstylist Doesn't Spread the Coronavirus
Scared to Go Shopping? Don't Be, Says the CDC
Your Mask Is Pointless, New Study Says
Church Goers Shouldn't Fear Sickness, Scientists Reveal
Study: Your House Party Didn't Spread the Virus
And so on. But none of this was to be. Not one single story in the mainstream press said
anything like this, even though this was all implied by the CDC study.
The one place that the study revealed a positive correlation between positive cases and life
activities was going to restaurants.
So that's what got the alarmist headlines. Yes, these are all real.
And so on for thousands of times in every mainstream venue. They are all competing for
clicks in the great agenda of extending lockdowns and feeding public fear as much as possible.
So the worst-possible spin on this slightly sketchy study gets all the headlines.
Thus is it burned into many people's minds that restaurants are really disease-spreading
venues. Go out to eat and you might die!
And here is what makes this even stranger. The interviewers never asked the people in the
survey whether they were eating indoors or outdoors, as incredible as that seems. The authors
admit this:
"Of note, the question assessing dining at a restaurant did not distinguish between indoor
and outdoor options."
Why not? Did they just forget to ask? What's going on here?
Which is to say that even if the results are meaningful – and there's so much about
this study that is murky and error prone – they are practically useless for knowing what
to do about it. If there is no distinction between indoor and outdoor, all speculation about
ventilation or crowds or the presence of food and so on, is utterly pointless.
Without knowing that, we are at a loss to figure out any answer to the question of why and
what to do. Instead, the message comes down to: don't go out to eat.
Here is how bad the science has become. In the discussion, the authors write the
following:
"Direction, ventilation, and intensity of airflow might affect virus transmission, even if
social distancing measures and mask use are implemented according to current guidance. Masks
cannot be effectively worn while eating and drinking, whereas shopping and numerous other
indoor activities do not preclude mask use."
Here is what is weird: the study itself supports none of that paragraph.
The survey never asked about ventilation because the people who made the survey somehow
forgot to make a query concerning indoor vs. outdoor dining . As for masks, the study did in
fact ask respondents about mask wearing and the results showed no correlation between the
sickness and whether and to what extent people were wearing masks!
In other words, that paragraph in the discussion is contradicted in two places by the
authors' own study.
In addition, the authors themselves point to an intriguing issue: the people in the survey
might have biased their answers based on their personal knowledge of the test results.
Think about it this way. The people who had a positive Covid test are more likely to ask
themselves the great question: how did I get this? Going to restaurants is such a rare activity
these days that it stands out in one's mind. When the survey asked people if they had gone out
to eat, it is possible that the memory of the Covid positive person might be more likely to
blame the restaurant, whereas the Covid negative person might be more likely to have forgotten
the locale of every meal in the last 30 days.
In other words, the real result of the study might be: Covid patients are more likely to
scapegoat restaurants than gyms, churches, and salons.
Alas, none of these interesting considerations appear in the media-rendered version of this
study: panic and keep the lockdowns in place!
Lockdowns have become a conclusion in a desperate search for evidence. Imagine if you
undertook a study of C-positive vs. C-negative cases and asked the people if they mostly wear
lace-up or slip-on shoes. If you come up with some positive correlation, the CDC will publish
you and a media panic will ensue.
This is precisely where we've been for six solid months now. The media has become the
handmaiden of lockdown tyranny, blasting out simplistic versions of sketchy studies to keep the
panic going as long as possible. And the public, which is far too trusting of the media and its
capacity for rational and accurate reporting, eats it up.
For now. Once the dust settles on all of this, it seems highly likely that media science
reporting will lose credibility for a generation. It certainly deserves that fate.
"Cloth masks that are used to slow the spread of COVID-19 offer little protection
against wildfire smoke. They do not catch small particles found in wildfire smoke that
can harm your health."
Just checking if that's the same CDC.
LA_Goldbug , 3 hours ago
Wow !!!!!
Nice find :-)
honest injun , 3 hours ago
At what point does the man on the street realize that he has been had? It took me about
2 weeks, 6 months ago to realize what Fauci and his cronies were saying was nonsense. Smart
people that I know, took months to reach the same conclusion but many people are still
buying the disinfo.
"... On the strength of Adrian Vermeule's review last month (" Liturgy of Liberalism ," January 2017), I picked up Ryszard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies . Legutko sees many parallels between the communism that dominated the Poland of his youth and the political-social outlook now treated as obligatory by Eurocrats and dominant in America, which he calls "[neo]liberal democracy." ..."
"... One parallel struck me as especially important: "Communism and [neo]liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history." We're aware of the totalitarian dimension of communism. But liberalism? Isn't it supposed to be neutral with respect to substantive outlooks, endorsing only the constitutional and legal frameworks for free and fair political debate? Actually, no. Liberals always assert that liberalism is the view of politics, society, and morality "most adequate of and for modern times." ..."
"... [Neo]Liberalism, Legutko points out, is committed to dualism, not pluralism. He gives the example of Isaiah Berlin, who made a great deal out of the importance of the pluralism of the liberal spirit. Yet "Berlin himself, a superbly educated man, knew very well and admitted quite frankly that the most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were monistic in nature." This means that liberalism, as Berlin defines it, must classify nearly the entire history of Western thought (and that of other cultures as well) as "nonliberal." Thus, "the effect of this supposed liberal pluralism" is not a welcoming, open society in which a wide range of substantive thought flourishes, but "a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing an inevitable degradation of the human mind." ..."
"... The purge mentality has a political dimension. Since 1989, European politics has shifted away from a left vs. right framework toward "mainstream" vs. "extremist." This is a telling feature of [neo]liberal democracy as an ideology. "The tricky side of 'mainstream' politics is that it does not tolerate any political 'tributaries' and denies that they should have any legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be either mavericks and as such not deserving to be treated seriously, or fascists who should be politically eliminated." ..."
"... Lumpenproletariat ..."
"... Legutko speaks of "lumpenintellectuals." These are the professors and journalists who buttress the status quo by rehearsing ideological catechisms and exposing heretics. We certainly have a lumpenintelligentsia ..."
"... I regularly read two lumpenintellectuals in order to understand the orthodoxies of our political mainstream: Tom Friedman over at the New York Times and Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal . The former is a cheerleader for today's globalist orthodoxies, complete with ritual expressions of misgivings. The latter eagerly plays the role of Leninist enforcer of those orthodoxies ..."
♦ Boys and girls are different. There, I've said it, a heresy of our time. We're not
supposed to suggest that a woman shouldn't fight in combat, or that an athletic girl doesn't
have a right to play on the boys' football team -- or that a young woman doesn't run a greater
risk than a young man when binge drinking. We are not supposed to reject the conceit that the
sexes are interchangeable, and therefore a man can become a "woman" and use the ladies'
bathroom.
Male and female God created us. I commend this heresy to readers. Remind people that boys in
girls' bathrooms put girls at risk, and that Obergefell is a grotesque distortion of
the Constitution. True -- and don't miss the opportunity to say, in public, that men and women
are different. This is the deepest reason why gender ideology is perverse. As Peter Hitchens
observes in this issue (" The Fantasy of
Addiction "), there's a great liberation that comes when, against the spirit of the age,
one blurts out what one knows to be true.
♦ Great Britain
recently announced regulatory approval for scientists to introduce third-party DNA into the
reproductive process. The technological innovation that allows for interventions into the most
fundamental dimensions of reproduction and human identity is sure to accelerate. Which is a
good reason for incoming President Trump to revive the President's Council on Bioethics. (It
existed under President Obama, but was told to do and say nothing.) We need sober reflection on
the coming revolution in reproductive technology. Trump should appoint Princeton professor
Robert P. George to head the Bioethics Commission. He has the expertise in legal and moral
philosophy, and he knows what's at stake. (See " Gnostic Liberalism ,"
December 2016.)
♦ On the strength of Adrian Vermeule's review last month (" Liturgy of
Liberalism ," January 2017), I picked up Ryszard Legutko's
The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies . Legutko sees many
parallels between the communism that dominated the Poland of his youth and the political-social
outlook now treated as obligatory by Eurocrats and dominant in America, which he calls
"[neo]liberal democracy."
One parallel struck me as especially important: "Communism and [neo]liberal democracy
are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role
of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history."
We're aware of the totalitarian dimension of communism. But liberalism? Isn't it supposed to be
neutral with respect to substantive outlooks, endorsing only the constitutional and legal
frameworks for free and fair political debate? Actually, no. Liberals always assert that
liberalism is the view of politics, society, and morality "most adequate of and for modern
times."
This gives [neo]liberalism a partisan spirit all the more powerful because it is denied.
Although such words as "dialogue" and "pluralism" appear among its favorite motifs, as do
"tolerance" and other similarly hospitable notions, this overtly generous rhetorical
orchestration covers up something entirely different. In its essence, liberalism is
unabashedly aggressive because it is determined to hunt down all nonliberal agents and ideas,
which it treats as a threat to itself and to humanity.
[Neo]Liberalism, Legutko points out, is committed to dualism, not pluralism. He gives the example
of Isaiah Berlin, who made a great deal out of the importance of the pluralism of the liberal
spirit. Yet "Berlin himself, a superbly educated man, knew very well and admitted quite frankly
that the most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were monistic in
nature." This means that liberalism, as Berlin defines it, must classify nearly the entire
history of Western thought (and that of other cultures as well) as "nonliberal." Thus, "the
effect of this supposed liberal pluralism" is not a welcoming, open society in which a wide
range of substantive thought flourishes, but "a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing
an inevitable degradation of the human mind."
♦ The purge mentality has a political dimension. Since 1989, European politics has
shifted away from a left vs. right framework toward "mainstream" vs. "extremist." This is a
telling feature of [neo]liberal democracy as an ideology. "The tricky side of 'mainstream' politics
is that it does not tolerate any political 'tributaries' and denies that they should have any
legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be either mavericks and as
such not deserving to be treated seriously, or fascists who should be politically
eliminated."
♦ Karl Marx coined the term Lumpenproletariat . Lumpen means "rag"
in German, and its colloquial meanings include someone who is down-and-out. According to Marx,
this underclass has counter-revolutionary tendencies. These people can be riled up by
demagogues and deployed in street gangs to stymie the efforts of the true proletariat to topple
the dominant class.
Legutko speaks of "lumpenintellectuals." These are the professors and journalists who
buttress the status quo by rehearsing ideological catechisms and exposing heretics. We
certainly have a lumpenintelligentsia , left and right: tenured professors,
columnists, think tank apparatchiks, and human resources directors.
♦ I regularly read two lumpenintellectuals in order to understand the orthodoxies of
our political mainstream: Tom Friedman over at the New York
Times and Bret
Stephens at the Wall Street Journal . The former is a cheerleader for today's
globalist orthodoxies, complete with ritual expressions of misgivings. The latter eagerly plays
the role of Leninist enforcer of those orthodoxies.
♦ Bill Kristol recently stepped down
as day-to-day editor at the Weekly Standard . .... As he put it with characteristic humor, "Here at The Weekly Standard , we've
always been for regime change."...
The day after the elections , Russians
got together to rally against election fraud. Even though the United Russia party, according to
preliminary results, is to lose some 77 seats compared to the previous Duma, most of the
protesters considered the election to be neither fair, nor free (see our previous reports on
the web crackdown
and massive
violation reports).
After the polls closed on Dec. 4, Solidarnost movement invited protesters to
Chistye Prudy metro station in Moscow, while the Communists, also unhappy with the election
results, organized their rally at Pushkinskaya square. Solidarnost movement represenatives,
most of whom have no political arena except street actions and the blogosphere, managed to
bring thousands of people together (while crowd estimates vary significantly, the most balanced
assessment seems to be from 8,000 to 10,000 people).
Chistye Prudy
People began gathering for the Solidarnost event at around 19:00 MSK. Georgiy Alburov
posted a picture of the
line to the site of the rally:
Line to the Chistye Prudy rally. Photo by Georgiy Alburov
Thousands out in cold/rain baying for free elections, Putin to be sent to prison. Never
seen anything on this scale. Definite change of mood
The overall coverage was chaotic as the mobile Internet stopped working in the area and
people couldn't upload videos and pictures. LiveJournal kept the chronology of the events
here [ru].
Only later in the evening people were able to upload videos [ru] from the rally and particularly
the speech [ru] by
Alexey Navalny, who was among the most popular politicians of the event. His speech probably
best describes the essence of the current events:
And then: "They can call us microbloggers or net hamsters. I am a net hamster! And I'll bite
[these bastards' heads off.] We'll all do it together! Because we do exist! [ ] We will not
forget, we will not forgive"
The reference to 'net hamsters' (a pejorative term for politically-engaged Internet
commenters) and their political will to change the country has destroyed the myth of the
slacktivist nature of political engagement online. Navalny has specifically emphasized
'forgetting/forgiving' to show that netizens do not necessarily have a short attention span
often ascribed to them.
On to Lubyanka
After several speeches made by the opposition politicians, the crowd moved on towards
Lubyanka Square, where the head office of the Federal Security Service is located. The
video [ru] uploaded by
user bigvane depicts Muscovites moving to Lubyanka and chanting "Free elections":
Most of the activists, however, were soon stopped on their way. Ilya Barabanov tweeted a
picture of the blocked road:
Blocked road. Photo by Ilya Barabanov
Twenty minutes after the aforementioned photo was made, Alexey Navalny was detained by the
police. Ilya Barabanov was detained three minutes after Navalny. (See this great photo report
made by ridus.ru correspondents here [ru].)
But even the detention didn't break the rebellious and quite positive spirit of the
protesters. Navalny, while sitting in a police bus together with other activists, shared an
instagram photo of the cheerful detained protesters:
'I'm sitting in a police bus with all the guys. They all say hi.' Photo by Alexey
Navalny
Another video , also shot
inside a police bus, showed protesters discussing the salaries of police officers, laughing a
lot.
The Hamster Revolution
The most interesting part of the post-election rebellion is not its peaceful manner (also an
important feature compared to violent nationalist riots), but its new demographics. Tvrain.ru
field reporter said that the crowd consisted mainly of the "intelligentsia, hipsters, and young
people." "It is a fashionable rally," said the reporter. Later, these observations were added:
the age of the protesters was between 16 and 33 and for many of those who were detained this
was the first street action experience. As Vera Kichanova tweeted :
Lyosha Nikitin writes that he is the only one of the 16 people in the police bus who had been
detained before. Others were taking part in a rally for the first time!
***
Meanwhile, levada.ru, the site of Levada Center polling and sociological
research organization, has been DDoSed [ru] and the contents
of epic-hero.ru were removed [ru] by the hosting provider.
It is September 2020. Americans are focused on an election between an Orange Fascist
criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war criminal. Where Donald Trump projects
chaos and disorder, Biden projects stability, order, and a return to normalcy. If Trump is
the virus, then surely Biden is the cure"
so this *** clown spends 5000 words on the criminal operation in Libya under
Obama/Biden/Clinton which leave the country in utter chaos and this is his money shot? Orange
man bad fascist, old school democrat War Criminal normal.
what a load of tripe
Ace006 , 5 hours ago
A+. He provides much needed clarity and perspective on the Libyan tragedy and then crashes
into the usual delusional, leftist landfill of fascism, murder of black youth, BLM (all
hail), and Biden as, so help me, some kind of a cure for anything.
The scorching desert sun streams through narrow slats in the tiny window. A mouse scurries
across the cracked concrete floor, the scuttling of its tiny feet drowned out by the sound of
distant voices speaking in Arabic. Their chatter is in a western Libyan dialect distinctive
from the eastern dialect favored in Benghazi. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the
shimmering desert horizon, is Tripoli, the jewel of Africa now reduced to perpetual war.
But here, in this cell in a dank old warehouse in Bani Walid, there are no smugglers, no
rapists, no thieves or murderers. There are simply Africans captured by traffickers as they
made their way from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, or other disparate parts of the continent
seeking a life free of war and poverty, the rotten fruit of Anglo-American and European
colonialism. The cattle brands on their faces tell a story more tragic than anything produced
by Hollywood.
These are slaves: human beings bought and sold for their labor. Some are bound for
construction sites while others for the fields. All face the certainty of forced servitude, a
waking nightmare that has become their daily reality.
This is Libya, the real Libya. The Libya that has been constructed from the ashes of the
US-NATO war that deposed Muammar Gaddafi and the government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The
Libya now fractured into warring factions, each backed by a variety of international actors
whose interest in the country is anything but humanitarian.
But this Libya was built not by Donald Trump and his gang of degenerate fascist ghouls. No,
it was the great humanitarian Barack Obama, along with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Susan Rice,
Samantha Power and their harmonious peace circle of liberal interventionists who wrought this
devastation. With bright-eyed speeches about freedom and self-determination, the First Black
President, along with his NATO comrades in France and Britain, unleashed the dogs of war on an
African nation seen by much of the world as a paragon of economic and social development.
But this is no mere journalistic exercise to document just one of the innumerable crimes
carried out in the name of the American people. No, this is us, the antiwar left in the United
States, peering through the cracks in the imperial artifice – crumbling as it is from
internal rot and political decay – to shine a light through the gloom named Trump and
directly into the heart of darkness.
There are truths that must be made plain lest they be buried like so many bodies in the
desert sand.
To understand the depth of criminality involved in the US-NATO war on Libya, we must unravel
a complex story involving actors from both the US and Europe who quite literally conspired to
bring about this war, while simultaneously exposing the unconstitutional, imperial presidency
as embodied by Mr. Hope and Change himself.
In doing so, a picture emerges that is strikingly at odds with the dominant narrative about
good intentions and bad dictators. For although Gaddafi was presented as the villain par
excellence in this story told by the Empire's scribes in corporate media, it is in fact Barack
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, French
philosopher-cum-neocolonial adventurist Bernard Henri-Levy, and former UK Prime Minister David
Cameron, who are the real malevolent forces. It was they, not Gaddafi, who waged a blatantly
illegal war on false pretenses and for their own aggrandizement. It was they, not Gaddafi, who
conspired to plunge Libya into chaos and civil war from which it is yet to emerge. It was they
who beat the war drums while proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men.
The US-NATO war on Libya represents perhaps one of the most egregious examples of US
military aggression and lawlessness in recent memory. Of course, the US didn't act alone as a
wide cast of characters played a role as the French and British were keen to involve themselves
in the reassertion of control over a once lucrative African asset torn from European control by
the evil Gaddafi. And this, only a few years after former UK Prime Minister and Iraq war
criminal Tony Blair met with Gaddafi to usher in
a new era of openness and partnership.
The story begins with Bernard Henri-Lévy, the French philosopher, journalist, and
amateur foreign service officer who fancied himself an international spy. Having failed to
arrive in Egypt in time to buttress his ego by capitalizing on the uprising against former
dictator Hosni Mubarak, he quickly shifted his attention to Libya, where an uprising in the
anti-Gaddafi hotbed of Benghazi was underway. As Le Figaro
chronicled , Henri-Levy managed to talk his way into a meeting with then head of the
National Transition Council (TNC) Mustapha Abdeljalil, a former Gaddafi official who became
head of the anti-Gaddafi TNC. But Henri-Levy wasn't there just for an interview to be published
in his French paper, he was there to help overthrow Gaddafi and, in so doing, make himself into
an international star.
Henri-Levy quickly pressed his contacts and got on the phone with French President Nicholas
Sarkozy to ask him, rather bluntly, if he'd agree to meet with Abdeljalil and the leadership of
the TNC. Just a few days later, Henri-Levy and his colleagues arrived at the
Élysée Palace with TNC leadership at their side. To the utter shock of the
Libyans present, Sarkozy tells them that he plans to recognize the TNC as the legitimate
government of Libya. Henri-Levy and Sarkozy have now, at least in theory, deposed the Gaddafi
government.
But the little problem of Gaddafi's military victories and the very real possibility that he
might emerge victorious from the conflict complicated matters as the French public had become
aware of the scheme and was rightly lambasting Sarkozy. Henri-Levy, ever the opportunist,
stoked the patriotic fervor by announcing that without French intervention, the tricolor flag
flying over five-star hotels in Benghazi would be stained with blood. The PR campaign worked as
Sarkozy quickly came around to the idea of military intervention.
However, Henri-Levy had a still more critical role to play: bringing the US military
juggernaut into the plot. Henri-Levy organized the first of what would be several high-level
talks between US officials from the Obama Administration and the Libyans of the TNC. Most
importantly, Henri-Levy set up the meeting between Abdeljalil and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. While Clinton was skeptical at the time of the meeting, it would be a matter of months
before she and Joe Biden, along with the likes of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and others would
be planning the political, diplomatic, and military route to regime change in Libya.
The
Americans Enter the Fray
There would have been no war in Libya were it not for the US political, diplomatic, and
military machine. In this sense, despite the relatively meager US military involvement, the war
in Libya was an American war. That is to say, it was a war that could not have happened were it
not for the active collaboration of the Obama Administration with its French and British
counterparts.
As Jo Becker of the NY Times explained
in 2016, Hillary Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, a prominent Libyan politician who would go on
to become the new Prime Minister of post-Gaddafi Libya, and his associates, in order to assess
the faction now garnering US support . Clinton's job, according to Becker, was "to take measure
of the rebels we supported" – a fancy way of saying that Clinton attended the meeting to
determine whether this group of politicians speaking on behalf of a diverse group of
anti-Gaddafi voices (ranging from pro-democracy activists to outright terrorists affiliated
with global terror networks) should be supported with US money and covert arms.
The answer, ultimately, was a resounding yes.
But of course, as with all America's warmongering misadventures, there was no consensus on
military intervention. As Becker reported, some in the Obama Administration were skeptical of
the easy victory and post-conflict political calculus. One prominent voice of dissent, at least
according to Becker, was former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Himself no dove, Gates was
concerned that Clinton and Biden's hawkish attitude toward Libya would ultimately lead to an
Iraq-style political nightmare that would undoubtedly end with the US having created and then
abandoned a failed state – exactly what happened.
It is important to note that Clinton and Biden were two of the principal voices for
aggression and war. Both were supportive of the No-Fly Zone from early on, and both advocated
for military intervention. Indeed, the two have been simpatico in nearly every war crime
committed by the US in the last 30 years, including perhaps most egregiously in support of
Bush's crime against humanity that we call the second Iraq War.
As former Clinton lackey (Deputy Director of Secretary of State Clinton's Policy Planning
staff) Derek Chollet explained, "[Libya] seemed like an easy case." Chollet, a principal
participant in the American conspiracy to make war on Libya who later went on to serve directly
under Obama and at the National Security Council, inadvertently illustrates in stark relief the
imperial arrogance of the Obama-Clinton-Biden liberal interventionist camp. In calling Libya an
"easy case" he of course means that Libya was a perfect candidate for a regime change operation
whose primary benefit would be to boost politically those who supported it.
Chollet, like many strategic planners at the time, saw Libya as a slam dunk opportunity to
turn the demonstrations and uprisings of 2010-2011, which quickly became known as the Arab
Spring, into political capital from the Democratic camp of the US ruling class. This rapidly
became Clinton's position. And soon, the consensus of the entire Obama
Administration.
Obama's War Off the Books
One of the more pernicious myths of the US war on Libya was the notion – propagated
dutifully by the defense lobbyists-cum-journalists at major corporate media outlets –
that the war was a cheap little war that cost the US almost nothing. There were no American
lives lost in the war itself (Benghazi is another mythology to be unraveled later), and very
little cost in terms of "treasure", to use that despicable imperialist phrase.
But while the total cost of the war paled in comparison to the monumental-scale crimes in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the means by which it was funded has cost the US far more than dollars;
the war on Libya was a criminal and unconstitutional endeavor that has further laid the
groundwork for the imperial presidency and unconstrained executive power. As the Washington
Post
reported at the time:
Noting that Obama had said the mission could be paid for with money already appropriated to
the Pentagon, [former House Speaker] Boehner pressed the president on whether supplemental
funding would be requested from Congress.
Unforeseen military operations that require expenditures such as those being made for the
Libyan effort normally require supplemental appropriations since they are outside the core
Pentagon budget. That is why funds for Afghanistan and Iraq are separate from the regular
Defense Department budget. The added costs for some of the operations in Libya are minimal But
the expenditures for weapons, fuel and lost equipment are something else.
Because the Obama Administration did not seek congressional appropriations to fund the war,
there is very little in the way of paper trail to do a proper accounting of the costs of the
war. As the cost of each bomb, fighter jet, and logistical support vehicle disappeared into the
abyss of Pentagon accounting oblivion, so too did any semblance of constitutional legality. In
essence, Obama helped establish a lawless presidency that not only has little respect for
constitutionally mandated checks and balances, but completely ignores the rule of law. Indeed,
some of the crimes that Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr are guilty of have their direct
corollary in the Obama Administration's prosecution of the Libya war.
So where did the money come from and where did it go? It's anybody's guess really, unless
you're one of those rubes who likes taking the Pentagon's word for it. As a Pentagon
spokesperson told CNN in 2011,
"The price tag for U.S. Defense Department operations in Libya as of September 30 [was] $1.1
billion. This included daily military operations, munitions, the drawdown of supplies and
humanitarian assistance." However, to illustrate the downright Orwellian impossibility of
discerning the truth, Vice President Joe Biden doubled that number when speaking on CNN,
suggesting that "NATO alliance worked like it was designed to do, burden-sharing. In total, it
cost us $2 billion, no American lives lost."
As is painfully evident, there is no clear way to know how much was spent other than to take
the word of those who prosecuted the war. With no congressional oversight, and no clear
documentary record, the war on Libya disappears down the memory hole, and with it the idea that
there is a separation of powers, Congressional authority to make war, or a functioning
Constitution.
America's Dirty War in Libya
While the enduring memory of Libya for most Americans is the political theater that resulted
from the attack on the US facility in Benghazi that killed several Americans, including US
Ambassador Stevens, it is not nearly the most consequential. Rather, America's use of terrorist
groups (and the insurgents who emerged from them) as military proxies may perhaps be the real
legacy from a strategic perspective. For while the corporate media presented the narrative of
spontaneous protests and uprisings to overthrow Gaddafi, it was in fact a loose network of
terror groups that did the dirty work.
While much of this recent history has been buried by bad reporting, establishment
mythmaking, and conspiracist muddying of the truth, it was surprisingly well reported at the
time. For example, as the New York Times wrote of one of the
primary US-backed forces on the ground during the war in 2011:
"The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was formed in 1995 with the goal of ousting Colonel
Qaddafi. Driven into the mountains or exile by Libyan security forces, the group's members
were among the first to join the fight against Qaddafi security forces Officially the
fighting group does not exist any longer, but the former members are fighting largely under
the leadership of Abu Abdullah Sadik [aka Abdelhakim Belhadj]."
Even at the time, there was considerable unease among Washington's strategic planners that
the Obama Adminstration's embrace of a terror group with known links to al-Qaeda could prove to
be a major blunder. "American, European and Arab intelligence services acknowledge that they
are worried about the influence that the former group's members might exert over Libya after
Colonel Qaddafi is gone, and they are trying to assess their influence and any lingering links
to Al Qaeda," the Times noted.
Of course, those in the know at the various US intelligence agencies already had a pretty
good sense of who they were backing, or at least the elements likely to be involved in any US
operation. Specifically, the US knew that the areas from which it was drawing anti-Gaddafi
opposition forces was a hotbed of criminal and terrorist activity.
"Almost 19 percent of the fighters in the Sinjar Records came from Libya alone.
Furthermore, Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the
Sinjar Records, including Saudi Arabia The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to
Iraq may be linked with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group's (LIFG) increasingly cooperative
relationship with al-Qa'ida which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qa'ida on
November 3, 2007 The most common cities that the fighters called home were Darnah [Derna],
Libya and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with 52 and 51 fighters respectively. Darnah [Derna] with a
population just over 80,000 compared to Riyadh's 4.3 million, has far and away the largest
per capita number of fighters in the Sinjar records."
It was known at the time that the majority of the anti-Gaddafi forces hailed from the region
including Derna, Benghazi, and Tobruk – the "Eastern Libya" so often referred to as
anti-Gaddafi – and that the likelihood that al-Qaeda and other terror groups were among
the ranks of the US recruits was very high. Nevertheless, they persisted.
Take the case of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, charged by the US with guarding the CIA
facility in Benghazi at which Ambassador Stevens was murdered. As the Los Angeles Times
reported in 2012:
"Over the last year, while assigned by their militia to help protect the U.S. mission in
Benghazi, the pair had been drilled by American security personnel in using their weapons,
securing entrances, climbing walls and waging hand-to-hand combat The militiamen flatly deny
supporting the assailants but acknowledge that their large, government-allied force, known as
the Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade, could include anti-American elements The Feb. 17 brigade is
regarded as one of the more capable militias in eastern Libya."
But it wasn't just LIFG and al-Qaeda affiliated criminal groups entering the fray thanks to
Washington rolling out the blood-stained red carpet.
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A longtime asset of the US, General Khalifa Hifter and his so-called Libyan National Army
have been on the ground in Libya since 2011, and have emerged as one of the primary forces
vying for power in post-war Libya. Hifter has a long and sordid history working for the CIA in
its attempts to overthrow Gaddafi in the 1980s before being resettled conveniently near
Langley, Virginia. As the
New York Times reported in 1991:
The secret paramilitary operation, set in motion in the final months of the Reagan
Administration, provided military aid and training to about 600 Libyan soldiers who were
among those captured during border fighting between Libya and Chad in 1988 They were trained
by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills, officials said, at
a base near Ndjamena, the Chadian capital. The plan to use the exiles fit neatly into the
Reagan Administration's eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi.
Hifter, leader of these failed efforts, became known as the CIA's "Libya point man,"
having taken part in numerous regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to
overthrow Gaddafi in 1996. So, his arrival in 2011 at the height of the uprising signaled an
escalation of the conflict from an armed uprising to an international operation. Whether
Hifter was directly working with US intelligence or simply complimenting US efforts by
continuing his decades-long personal war against Gaddafi is somewhat irrelevant. What matters
is that Hifter and the Libyan National Army, like LIFG and other groups, became part of the
broader destabilization effort which successfully toppled Gaddafi and created the chaotic
hellscape that is modern Libya.
Such is the legacy of the US dirty war on Libya.
The Past is Prologue
It is September 2020. Americans are focused on an election between an Orange Fascist
criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war criminal. Where Donald Trump projects chaos
and disorder, Biden projects stability, order, and a return to normalcy. If Trump is the virus,
then surely Biden is the cure.
It is September 2020. Libya prepares to enter its eighth year of civil war. Slave markets
like the one in Bani Walid are as common as youth literacy centers were in Gaddafi's Libya.
Armed gangs and militias wield power even in areas nominally under government control. A
warlord regroups in the East as he looks to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab
Emirates for support.
It is September 2020 and the US-NATO war on Libya has faded to a distant memory as other
issues like Black Lives Matter and police murder of Black youth have captured the public
imagination and discourse.
But these issues are, in fact, united by the bond of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. The
Libya once known as the "Jewel of Africa," a country that provided refuge for many sub-Saharan
African migrant workers while maintaining independence from the US and the former colonial
powers of Europe, is no more. In its place is a failed state that now reflects the kind of
vicious anti-Black racism forcefully suppressed by the Gaddafi government.
Libya as the global exemplar of the exploitation and disposability of the black body.
Squint a little and you can see President Joe Biden getting the old band back together.
Hillary Clinton welcomed into the Oval Office as an influential voice, someone to give words to
the demented thoughts of the living corpse serving as Commander-in-Chief. Derek Chollet and Ben
Rhodes laughing together as they buy another round at their favorite DC hangout, toasting to
the re-establishment of order in Washington. Barack Obama as the éminence grise behind
the political resurgence of the liberal-conservative dominant structure.
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
AVmaster , 13 hours ago
Number of wars the boy king and his minions started: 6, that we know of: Ukraine, Syria,
Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
(Not withstanding the proxy wars during the "muslim spring" like in egypt)
Number of wars Trump has started: 0
This is NOT including the ongoing wars that trump inherited but has dialed back
somewhat, like reduced troop presence in iraq/afghan.
fucking truth , 12 hours ago
Trump hasn't started any but he still feeds the beast, hopefully his next four will see
a correction to this behaviour,one can only hope.
ay_arrow 2
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Has no choice.
The economic reality is the MIC is a big part of the US domestic economy.
Shut that down and you would go into a full blown depression.
If you build bullets, missile, bombs, F35's etc. they have to be used or you have to
start scrapping them.
The issue though is not the MIC as such but the lack of any moral integrity and
disregard for human life by those mentioned in the article. Once the country was put into
this position by them it is much more difficult to extract.
Now I think those in the article should be prosecuted for not going to Congress to
declare a war and fund it correctly as this is supposed to be the check and balance of a
rogue president.
play_arrow
Bollixed , 2 hours ago
Regarding the MIC, many of those companies consist of manufacturing entities comprised
of engineers, factory infrastructure and logistics infrastructure funded by government
spending that could realistically be 'retooled' to produce things that could benefit
society instead of piss money away on the tools of destruction. America is in need of a
massive infrastructure overhaul from our electric grid to our transportation modes to name
just two. Nothing is preventing those MIC giants from refocusing their efforts toward a
better America versus the current focus they are paid to undertake. It's a matter of
priorities and right now I find their priorities misplaced and vulgar.
The money is available at their current funding rates, the manpower and brain power is
there, what is lacking is the will to turn the ship around and start putting humans before
profits. There is no need to go into a full blown depression as with the shut down of that
capacity if those entities are given a mandate to redirect their output for the good of
society and create things of lasting value. In other words, take the retooling mindset that
turned refrigerator factories into weapons factories like they did in WW2 and take the
weapons factories and turn them into entities for the betterment of society. And then wean
them off of the government teat.
DeepStateThrombosis , 3 hours ago
Unused funds from the Pentagon can be redirected to the Wall and other Defense
protections not known to the public at this time.
ay_arrow
DaiRR , 1 hour ago
DemoRats and NeoCons will try every way possible to keep the wars going.
The USA is incredibly blessed to have Donald J. Trump in the White House.
play_arrow
1
muggeridge , 11 hours ago
To think Americans demonstrated in the millions to stop the Vietnam war exposed as a
fraud by Daniel Ellsberg in the PENTAGON PAPERS. Obama did admit that the removal of
Ghadaffy was his biggest foreign policy mistake. Clinton also in trouble over Tunisia while
Secretary of State with US ambassador killed in 2012. She took responsibility but was found
not to have acted improperly by US Congress. However her part in this tragedy remains an
open question. Today the only Middle Eastern country still standing IRAN supported by
China. Syria supported by Russia. Cold Wars never go away?
play_arrow 2
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Cold war is an inevitable consequence of a MIC that must continually produce and expend
munitions to keep its part of the economy going.
2 play_arrow
scaleindependent , 10 hours ago
Final Jeopardy, genius!
What is Syria and Iran?
HIS acts against those countries ARE acts of war.
lay_arrow
muggeridge , 10 hours ago
Regime Change as our modus operandi to serve the cause of military superiority as if
pre-set by computer.
How everything became war and the military became everything by Rosa Brooks Tales of the
Pentagon.
Something funny happened on the way to the forum; Broadway musical. Hail
Caesar?
play_arrow
CheapBastard , 7 hours ago
Hey, military contractors have to put food on the table also, even if it means murdering
millions of innocent people in Yugoslavia (like Clinton did) or in the middle east (like
Bush and Obama did).
play_arrow
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Yep some people don't get it.
With all the military contractors now moved into peaceful protests maybe we actually
need more war to keep them gainfully employed.
Get the picture?
2 play_arrow
SoilMyselfRotten , 3 hours ago
HIS acts against those countries ARE acts of war
Don't forget also blockading Venezuela
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
No Libya story is complete without mentioning David Shayler- the MI6 agent turned
whistleblower who was tasked with blowing up Gaddafi in his car - but refused to do so when
he was accompanied by his wife and children. (under the Tony Blair govt). -yep.
Shayler later went into a bizarre series of personas -which is understood by many as self
preservation tactic - (testimony of mentally unstable is not recognised in court - so no
threat).
Then there's the covert ratlines of gathering the ex-Libyan army weapons & shipping
them to ISIS Syria via Turkey and White Helmets (see James Corbett) organised by HRC via
Benghazi -so no rescue for US Ambassador & team (RIP) HRC prefer'd keep op covert.
Carrier 50 miles off coast -HRC killed US Diplomats & support team. -Biden knew.
Also check out the courageous Dilyana Gaytandzhieva who runs armswatch .com and some SM
in her name. for laypersons overview of extent of games-within-games &
wheels-within-wheels in arms trade/ chem weapons "research". She's currently researching
the Beirut bombings - which will be another revelation when it hits.
sauldaddy , 11 hours ago
That awkward moment when you find out the first Black President brought slavery BACK to
Africa .....Q- That awkward moment when you find out the first Black President brought
slavery BACK to Africa
_arrow
. . . _ _ _ . . . , 13 hours ago
Qaddafi kept African migrants out of the Mediterranean and away from Europe's
shores.
Sarkozy couldn't allow that knowing what was in store for Europe.
He predicted what would happen to Europe were he to be deposed. He was right. Macron's (and
Merkel's) policies are proof.
That and the gold dinar was his undoing.
.
P.S. Don't tell the leftists, but Libya was the only case of a successful socialist state.
On second thought, it might be funny to see them publicly defending Qaddafi.
Ms No , 13 hours ago
That may work for a while when you pull black gold out of the ground, for a while. Oil
declines and free **** armies breed faster. Then you are Saudi Arabia and we are about to
see how that ends up.
play_arrow
not dead yet , 12 hours ago
Libyan youth unemployment was over 30% because these spoiled kids with their families
getting oil checks in the mail every month refused to do menial jobs. Qaddafi kept the
black Africans out of the boats by letting them do the work the kids and other Libyans
thought was beneath them. A lot of the money the Africans made they sent home which was
spent in the local economies which increased jobs there. Libya also invested heavily in
Africa which created lots of jobs. These actions kept the number of Africans headed to
Europe a trickle. Once Qaddafi was gone so were all the jobs in Libya and the money that
flowed into Africa dried up and jobs were lost. A lot of businesses the Libyans created in
Africa were confiscated by the local governments and no doubt given to cronies who ran them
into the ground.
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
Gaddafi thought wrongly that job description would save him. Also suggested trading oil
for €uro's over dollar$, which blew the lid on powder keg. In the end they say it was
the oil, though my thinking was DC think tanks didn't want a monied "Mexico" on south coast
of Euroland - could make Europe too financially powerful & too difficult to
control.
play_arrow
. . . _ _ _ . . . , 6 hours ago
I had heard about selling oil for Euros in relation to Saddam, but not to Qaddafi.
Qaddafi was about the gold Dinar.
??
No1uNo , 6 hours ago
Yep, it's what can happen if I'm not careful when I post and try to watch a documentary
at the same time.
Thanks for your vigilance.
Find the Libyan gold that dissapeard.... and one likely finds the source of the
overthrow....
quanttech , 13 hours ago
try the french treasury...
Bill300 , 12 hours ago
Look no further than Hillary's brother. General Gage, a former Special Forces Colonel,
had been hired by Hillary, et al, to assemble a merc army to secure Qaddafi's gold amidst
the fog of war and transport it to Haiti to be laundered thru Hugh Rodham's little gold
mine. Does anyone really think Obama sold enough books to buy a $12M seaside mansion in
Massachusetts and the Washington DC home?
These people are so evil.
Justapleb , 12 hours ago
That's certainly titillating. Do you have a source that puts these things together?
I tried some Google searches, but I already know those searches are censored so it is
not an easy thing to find
dark pools of soros , 4 hours ago
you gotta get your hands dirty if you want to know whats in the soil
DaCrustyDad , 13 hours ago
Imagine if some country invaded us and slaughtered about 23.5 million (apples for apples
based on the 500k civilians killed out of 7,000,000)? Obama and the Clinton's should be
playing basketball at Pelican Bay the rest of their lives at best.
quanttech , 12 hours ago
It's mind boggling.
Trump dropped 7400 bombs on Afghanistan in 2019. That would be like 60,000 bombs
dropping on the US one year.
Arch_Stanton , 9 hours ago
Libya was a modern, secular Arab state. A model for the rest of Islam. Who the f@@k
decided it was appropriate to reduce Libya to a 19th century sh1thole?
Shifter_X , 9 hours ago
Hillary ******* Clinton
Constitution101 , 6 hours ago
on instruction from the cabalist banksters who never permit a rival currency system.
Qaddafi's gold-backed dinar throughout Nth Africa would have exposed and displace their
petrodollar scam in which they infinitely print their cronies untold trillion$.
end the fed, and all central banks.
Best Satan in Town , 6 hours ago
That's the story in a nutsh-ell
desertboy , 10 hours ago
The petrodollar centrality gets monotonously overplayed. For anyone who cares to look,
the geopolitics of the West/NATO are the geopolitics of all its central bank owners as an
interlinked group, who are keeping all their options open.
Destroying Libya went beyond the petrodollar to the fight for influence in Africa's
future, where France's history in Africa has made it the designated hitter. Note the new
CFR-type buzz on a "resurgent France" due to this role.
No1uNo , 8 hours ago
I maintained elsewhere on this thread, was advice of DC think tanks he was taken out.
Because a well funded, well educated, low cost, labor factory resource state on south coast
of eurozone makes europe too competitive to DC tank's interests. (and open Africa's growing
economy to cheap - outside eurozone - euro profiting business interests).
Gaddafi was never a threat to Europe, but europe buying his oil and building his
economy......different story.
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
B-I-N-G-O !
get your case of beer for that one!
not dead yet , 11 hours ago
Qaddafi would have not met with death if he only wanted to sell oil in the Gold Dinar.
Instead he wanted the Gold Dinar as the currency for all of Africa. The system was being
set up along with 4 central banks to manage African economic and monetary affairs when
Libya was attacked. Libya also invested heavily in Africa creating lots of jobs and
enhancing communications. Unlike the IMF and World Bank with their draconian edicts
attached to their loans, like no loans for fossil fueled power plants and other eco
garbage, almost guaranteeing default the Libyan Development Fund attached no such garbage
to their loans making success possible. Europe was charging Africa $500 million a year for
use of their satellites. Qaddafi ponied up $300 million of the $400 million needed to put
up Africa's first satellite screwing Europe out of $500 million a year. Qaddafi was also
the driving force for Africa for Africans and which kept US African command and it's troops
out of Africa. Now the US has troops all over Africa. Qaddafi really was bad. Bad for
Western exploitation of Africa.
At the time of Qaddafi's demise the Libyan Development Fund had $32 billion in banks
around the world. Western governments and media tried to claim it was money stolen by
Qaddafi. Last I knew the Libyan's, the rightful owners of that money, haven't seen a
penny.
Constitution101 , 6 hours ago
great info.
got a good concise source?
dark pools of soros , 4 hours ago
you have to dig deep to get little nuggets of truth about Libya since so many sides want
to tarnish and twist to push their agenda and greed on its riches
SmokeyBlonde , 12 hours ago
America, as a country, deserves whatever happens just for electing and re-electing
Obama.
Far too many grifters, Bolsheviks, pedocrats, and sub-moron IQ feral ghetto rats
oh-so-pleased with themselves for being so enlightened and bringing chaos to the whole F'n
world.
ReflectoMatic , 11 hours ago
The Democrats are working with the globalist at the United Nations & World Economic
Forum. The program being run is the destruction of the United States and elimination of
humans, per instructions from "The Cult of Rasur", which is located in the jungle at Mount
Rasur in Costa Rica but now renamed as the United Nations University For Peace. The
university teaches occult and meditation and only graduates 20 students per year, those
students then take positions of influence within the UN. The cult was founded by Maurice
Strong & Dr Muller, Strong also created the Agenda 21 & World Economic Forum, plus
in 1982, the more exclusive secret group of 300 called just "World Forum" which met in Vail
Colorado near his hippie commune at the Baca Grande in the San Luis Valley.
The GAIA Theory which was converted into GAIA Religion at the Maurice Strong Hippie
Commune in Colorado. David Perkins was there, apparently one of the first hippies to arrive
at the commune around 1978. In this podcast we get a rare look into the mindset of the
globalist and the creation of Agenda 21.
It's not clear if David Perkins & his partner, Chris O'Brian, are aware of Maurice
Strong & Klaus Schwab conducting the special and secret World Forum of 300 at Vail in
1982. At that 1982 event the concepts David Perkins describes, combined with concepts
gotten by paranormal activities at Mount Rasur in Costa Rica, were passed down to the 300
and thus began the creation that has brought the world to a standstill.
Chris O'Brian has an interesting podcast also, describing the Maurice Strong hippie
commune, in this he describes meeting Lawrence Rockefeller at the commune.
And finally, who the heck is this guy, the one in the middle? MJ-12 captured this photo
of him in Hollywood in 1972, he was then usually seen in company of Curtis LeMay, grandson
of the General who founded JPL NASA MJ-12, then in 1982 he was at that World Forum in Vail
and in charge of covertly poisoning them all with LSD. He was born in Berkley or Alameda in
1951 while his mother was at theater watching "Day The Earth Stood Still". Seems there is a
message which needs to be understood.
David Champaign, night manager at the Christie Lodge in Avon Colorado, can give further
description and verification that the ultra-secret World Forum did occur.
If you listened to that podcast, there was mention of the "group of psychics" at the
Baca hippie commune. The guy in the photo, the link just above, the photo was taken in the
presence of Allen J Funk MJ-12, Funk's only friend took the photo, Bob Custer. Bob shared
hotel rooms with the Stones & Monkeys while on concert tour as official photographer.
The guy in the photo and Bob were taken one night, in Allen's white Cadillac convertible,
to a house in the hills east of JPL Pasadena. There he met Bob's ex, Val, and Val's work
associates, the work Val and associates did was some secret psychic project in Central
America and perhaps in Colorado, usually Val just came over to Bob's house to visit when
Val was not off at those remote locations. Secret about it they were.
Shifter_X , 8 hours ago
These are self-loathing humans. Imagine wanting to destroy the human race.
SMH
bobroonie , 13 hours ago
Obama bombed Libya in defense of Islamic terrorists he sold weapons to. 600 requests for
more security from Ambassador Stevens unanswered.. But when defense contractor Osprey
Global's Sidney Blumenthal called Clinton gave him special treatment. Lots of money to be
made for a defense contractor and the Secretary of State that starts the war.
not dead yet , 12 hours ago
At the time Stevens died, he was not murdered he died of smoke inhalation as the
invaders set the place on fire and the safe room wasn't air tight, Benghazi was the most
dangerous place on earth for diplomats. Attempted murders and kidnappings of diplomats were
so rife that most governments closed their missions and evacuated their people. Stevens was
well aware of this and he went to Benghazi, the US Embassy is in Tripoli, anyway with his
last meeting running guns with the Turks. By doing so he signed his death warrant.
According to many at the time Stevens was begging for more security shortly before he left
for Benghazi he was offered a military security detachment that was already in Tripoli and
Stevens refused. Seems Stevens and Hillary didn't want the military to know what they were
up to.
quanttech , 12 hours ago
the ambassador got what was coming to him. he was a terrorist, plain and simple.
the rest of the Americans were rescued ... by Qadaffi loyalists. the Americans are shy
to admit this.
David2923 , 5 hours ago
Facts you probably do not know about Libya under Muammar Gaddafi:
• There are no electricity bills in Libya; electricity is free for all its
citizens.
• There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to
all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
• If a Libyan is unable to find employment after graduation, the state pays the
average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.
• Should Libyans want to take up a farming career, they receive farm land, a house,
equipment, seed and livestock to kick start their farms – all for free.
• Gaddafi carried out the world's largest irrigation project, known as the Great
Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
• A home considered a human right in Libya. (In Qaddafi's Green Book it states:
"The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not
be owned by others.")
• All newlyweds in Libya receive 60,000 Dinar (US$ 50,000 ) by the government to
buy their first apartment so to help start a family.
• A portion of Libyan oil sales is credited directly to the bank accounts of all
Libyan citizens.
• A mother who gives birth to a child receives US $5,000.
• When a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50% of the price.
• The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
• For $ 0.15, a Libyan local can purchase 40 loaves of bread.
• Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Libya can boast one of the
finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to
doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of charge.
• If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya,
the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US
$2,300/month accommodation and car allowance.
• 25% of Libyans have a university degree. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans were
literate. Today the figure is 87%.
• Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – though
much of this is now frozen globally.
You have explained why Libya was perfectly ripe for looting by the US Evil Empire and
its slave states.
dark pools of soros , 5 hours ago
Yes I've been shining a light on this for years. The true history of Libya should red
pill EVERYONE that can still think for themselves.
We are destroying George Washington statues while worshiping a black african american
president who destroyed the one rare prosperous socialist African nation.. which now has
slave trading!!!! all because it didn't share it's water to french/italian bottlers. And of
course the Gold Dinar becoming the African currency.
Lokiban , 11 hours ago
Gadhaffi's two mistakes leading to this war.
Threaten to sell his sweet oil in gold dinars
Threaten French president Sarkozy to pull out all of his money out of France and reveal
to the public the donations he made to the French presidential campaign of Sarkozy, which
we know is illegal because foreigners can't donate money.
That sealed his fate. America needed to stop this gold for oil scheme just like it did
in Iraq and French president Sarkozy's presidency was ont he line.
NuYawkFrankie , 12 hours ago
Slick Willy --> War Criminal
Chimp --> War Criminal
Obongo --> War Criminal
Hillarity --> War Criminal
Groper Joe --> War Criminal
Etc... etc... etc...
Are you at least BEGINNING to see a pattern here???
If not, you soon will do as 'the chickens come home to roost' and ZOG focusses it's
attention on YOUR a$$!
Apeon , 11 hours ago
Apparently you are not old enough to remember Johnson
NuYawkFrankie , 8 hours ago
I'm holding "Johnson" as we speak... and the most I can accuse him of is being a naughty
- sometimes a VERY naughty- boy. Looks like he's due for another spanking!
NAV , 2 hours ago
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
Obama left this country and Libya in rags, what else is there to say.
Yet Obama lives, while Gaddafi is dead, a man who had the good of his people in mind and
already was using primary water from which eventually all of Africa could be watered and
developed into a paradise for his people, a people who live on a continent rich with more
natural resources than any other.
But this could not be allowed by the Devil's Globalists who want to own all the world's
resources in order to make beggars of all mankind. Obama was their man. He not only
betrayed Africa but all men for a $40,000,000 pot of silver proffered by the world enemy of
liberty - the DEEPSTATE.
NAV , 2 hours ago
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
Obama left this country and Libya in rags, what else is there to say.
Yet Obama lives, while Gaddafi is dead, a man who had the good of his people in mind and
already was using primary water from which eventually all of Africa could be watered and
developed into a paradise for his people, a people who live on a continent rich with more
natural resources than any other.
But this could not be allowed by the Devil's Globalists who want to own all the world's
resources in order to make beggars of all mankind. Obama was their man. He not only
betrayed Africa but all men for a $40,000,000 pot of silver proffered by the world enemy of
liberty - the DEEPSTATE.
you know it makes sense , 5 hours ago
Who writes this crap and who believes a word of it ?.
No mention that Gaddafi planned to set up a new gold backed African money to sell his
oil rather than the euro or the dollar. 143+ tons of gold and 140 tons of silver went
missing.
It was because of this lie and NATO's involvement in the destruction of Libya that both
Russia and China vowed never again to allow this to happen to another country
taglady , 7 hours ago
Trump: "lock her up" became "she's been through enough." What has she been through
exactly? "Make America great again" became we need to bail out Boeing and the rest because
of an "invisible enemy." It's invisible alright, because it doesn't exist. The only
invisible enemy are the parasites shoveling our money into their own very deep pockets in
every conceivable way. Like Biden and his entire family and the Clintons and the Obamas and
many others have been doing for many years. Like Bush and Cheney made out so well after
911. That's how Gates and the pharmaceutical industry became so bloated while real
Americans have struggled to make ends meet.
taglady , 7 hours ago
Interesting coalition between finance, government and media. Like when Bush announced
the necessary, unconstitutional war and changes to our society after 911. We didn't get to
vote on these changes. No referendum ever happened. Just an announcement in the media and
media spin on public opinion, then preplanned actions by corrupt officials. This alliance
was never more obvious than during the cv response. We are censored and silenced while
liars and thieves are given the bully pulpit to beat us over the head with their idiocracy
to enrich very few parasites, again. Then the public is blamed for the rogue actions of
government/ business/media. America is bad. We just keep voting for these dummies. Except
our voting system is run by the same corrupt dummies who keep getting re-elected. Hmmm.
Just like they did to Kadafi and many others. Suddenly Libya is poor. What happened to all
of Kadafi's gold? Probably the same thing that happened to the Pentagon trillions and SS
"surplus" and public pensions across America. Taxation without representation leaves us
broke, without a voice and broken. What are we going to do about it?
Iconoclast27 , 1 hour ago
The problem is you believe imperialism and colonialism has ended in the African
continent when that clearly isn't the case, this Libyan regime change op being the latest
example of interference you are claiming no longer exists.
John C Durham , 1 hour ago
Actually the end of colonialism that FDR ("Winston, Colonialism is the Cause of this
War. This war is going to end all Colonialism".) wished for is hardly over. We got
Democratic Party's Truman, not the great Henry Wallace, remember?
Libya only proves this true.
LEEPERMAX , 5 hours ago
America's "BOTCHED CIA OPERATION OF THE CENTURY" as they funneled GADDAFI WEAPONS from
the PORT OF BENGHAZI into SYRIA as OBAMA & CO. completed their agenda to DESTABILIZE
THE MIDDLE EAST and eventually ALL OF EUROPE.
NO MORE . . . NO LESS
QABubba , 5 hours ago
This is the very reason I sat out the 2016 election. They say citizens don't vote
foreign policy but I did. The "We came, we saw, he died" statement illustrated that our
leaders didn't have a clue as to the geopolitical damage we had done. The US supported a
"no fly zone" in the UN Security Council. Russia supported it. Gaddafi declared his own,
stating that none of his air force would fly. The US and their allies quickly "redefined"
it to mean they could destroy his air force on the ground, and once destroyed, any of his
antiaircraft guns, and once destroyed, any of his tanks and artillery (which don't fly),
and his troop convoys.
Gaddafi's, Russia's, perhaps North Korea's big mistake was believing the US would stand
by their agreement in the UN Security Council. This and the Eastward creep of Nato may very
well be the deciding factor's in Putin's view that he has no responsible actors in the West
to deal with. North Korea was watching. Any dream of getting a denuclearized North Korea
just receded by about 50 years.
And of course, our presstitute media had a starring role as always. The average American
thinks this was a just war, and knows nothing of the slave markets, and nothing about the
flood of African immigrants, who are majority muslim, and have no plans whatsoever to
assimilate, into Europe. The leaders of France and supposedly Great Britain have stabbed
their citizens in the back, as they will now have to watch European culture destroyed.
Vivekwhu , 6 hours ago
Many thanks are due to Draitser for this excellent report on the vile activities of the
US Evil Empire in Libya. The power motives have been laid bare, but the massive greed of
the US/EU imperial elites have not been detailed. The greed for Libyan oil by France and
Italy is well known but the US also looted Libyan gold, just as they looted Ukrainian gold
after the 2014 Maidan coup.
By removing Gaddaffi (and who can forget Clinton's evil words "We came, we saw, he
died") and looting the gold they scuppered the plans to create a gold-backed dinar for all
of Africa, that would have challenged the use of USD, French-controlled "Franc" and other
fiat currencies.
That would have been shocking for the US/EU imperial elite that regards Africa as their
private fiefdom to loot at will.
Combined with a lust for power, the US/EU imperial elites have an insatiable greed.
After all, what use is an empire if the elites can't gorge themselves at will?
lastugro , 10 hours ago
... and Medvedev led Russia abstained (did not veto the vote) at the UNSC session where
the intervention was approved. Russia bears a tacit responsibility.
Michael Norton , 11 hours ago
Obama supplied ISIS with leftover weapons from the Libya operation to take out Bashar
Assad in Syria. That didn't work out for him too well, did it? Got an ambassador and some
CIA spooks killed in Benghazi.
dogfish , 9 hours ago
And Trump steals the oil, the oil that is desperately needed by the suffering Syrians.
Trump is a real humanitarian.
Maghreb2 , 5 hours ago
Obama believed every word he was fed about the R2P Right to Protect fantasy concocted at
the U.N. At the same time if you knew how dangerous the man was with his Green Revolution
and Desert sorcery you would have had him killed.
The first step of his plan was the Libyan African Gold Dinar which would have been a
commodity backed gold cuerrency. This would have broken Rothschild and most of the colonial
banking systems. On its own it was a just move but not even the Chinese could have an
African Bloc form that fast with that much growth. Imploding the CFA system would have
destroyed France as we know it and made it poorer than Poland.
Second factor was his ruthless plans to deal with his Islamic Nationalist and Monarchist
"Brothers". Gaddafis Green revolution could have spread across the desert wastes and easily
overthrown the Al Sauds and trapped Arab natioanlists in their citites. Not a powerful
fighter but understood desert warfare. It was the cost of Soviet equipment and the French
adapted technicals that made him weaker. The Wars of the Sahara desert like those of
Polisario Front and Libyan Chad War were decided by mobility.
Finally there were reports amongst the occultists that the man was obsessed with the
Occult and the Djinn. Giving a warlord his own banking system and access to African black
Magic was enough even for the Jesuits to view the man as a threat to global peace. Rumours
the djinns warned him of advance of air strikes and gave strength to his soldiers in the
deserts made him a force to be reckoned with in his borders. The association with Abu Nidal
is rumoured to have revealed things about the nature of these desert beings. If he had the
innate gift for it his tribe probably would have joined us at some point. Reports he had
fallen out with the real Green a man a sage and advisor to the Islamic leaders point to a
major rupture with the Islamic creed.
Only God can really judge whether his plan to emancipate Africa was his own power grab
to free the continent or another mad man trying to join the global elite by enslaving
them.
It would appear, at this point in time, that regardless of motive of his plan, the
US-backed alternative has turned out far worse. The only positive result is more money in
the pockets of the MIC and the opportunity to play war games in the desert.
Maghreb2 , 2 hours ago
Like I said he was a dangerous man. It takes one to rock the boat like he did. End of
the day the system could have been put in place for the African Gold Standard to start to
expand into areas that were tired of the Central African Franc system but it would have
destroyed Rothschild and led to hundreds of million of Black Muslims having resources to
throw at Israel.
Making Chad, Senegal and Mali into something like Yugoslavia with Chinese and Russian
Weaponry was beyond the imaginings of Africom. Would have lowered the birth rates with the
development and solved the migration and economic crisis. Having these countries like
Sweden would have also created living space for white liberals who were highly educated.
Instead all the money vanished with the Kleptokrats. Its only insane Facists who want dead
Africans on their doorsteps in Berlin and on the television that agree with this
madness.
Euafrica, Eurabia could be avoided by making sure the Africans slow their birth rates
through development and saving wealth rather than following it to Europe when the big men
run with gold and dollars.
At the same time he was known as a devil to the Arabs and the dissidents. Sort of like
Rockefeller with the company towns and corporate face. You ask the bastards to resign and
why all these people has vanished and gives you statistics on how many electrical
appliances have been handed out and says he was never in charge and you don't know how the
system works.
Hard to say but he played the game. Robbed Bunker Hunt which was enough for us. Bunker
C%nt as we called him when he tried to bring down the Morgue in Texas. Stuff like that is
why the Illuminati are feared. Its hard for anyone to gauge what is going on and what the
domino effects are. He was trained by the Americans and British and supplied with Socialist
apparatus. Gianni Agnelli the suavest yid since Joseph kept NATO off his back. He had ties
to the U.S deep State as well but that goes back to Wheelus.
Like we said about the Occult everyone has a backer but that man had demons watching
over him. According to some. Thin line between a Djinn and Shaytan when politics and murder
get involved.
Failed nation states make a perfect platform for a profitable global criminal
enterprise.
voting machine , 6 hours ago
Allen Dulles couldn't have scripted this operation any better.
This is right out of the CIA hand book. Regime change 101
Jackprong , 7 hours ago
As is painfully evident, there is no clear way to know how much was spent other than to
take the word of those who prosecuted the war. With no congressional oversight, and no
clear documentary record, the war on Libya disappears down the memory hole, and with it the
idea that there is a separation of powers, Congressional authority to make war, or a
functioning Constitution.
Got an answer for this: CUTBACKS!
bshirley1968 , 3 hours ago
" The story begins with Bernard Henri-Lévy, the French philosopher, journalist,
and amateur foreign service officer who fancied himself an international spy. "
The real reason is the threat against the `dollar`.
JeanTrejean , 6 hours ago
It's the Frenchmen Sarkozy and B.H. Levy who are responsible for this agression.
The USA and NATO (outside Europe) were just "dumb followers".
Vivekwhu , 6 hours ago
Nothing dumb about Obomber: why did he loot and murder in Libya (or Yemen, Ukraine,
Syria etc)? Because he CAN!!!
Joiningupthedots , 21 minutes ago
Everything The West touches turns to rat ****.
Mercifully Russia recognised its mistake with Libya and stepped in to save Syria from
the same fate.
Every country, its military bandits politicians involved in the unprovoked attack and
subsequent destruction of Libya can be considered........WAR CRIMINALS.
Hopefully one day they will be stupid enough to attack Russia or China and be completely
destroyed for their stupidity.
OTBorder@CA , 1 hour ago
First of all, Gadhafi gave an unconditional surrender that was brokered by international
diplomatic channels over a month before our invasion. Obama & his minions ignored it.
We knew many pilots that flew "missions" over Libya during this war & were involved in
a massive bombing campaign. Don't forget the Wikileaks where France signed onto the war on
the condition they got a % of Libya's gold. My wish is that someday history will tell the
truth about the bastard Obama. Read the Lost Arab Spring by, Walid Phares to see all of the
other Countries Obama tried to overthrow & have radical Islamic Terrorists replace the
peaceful governments.
csc61 , 1 hour ago
The author gives these idiots far too much credit. People must come to the understanding
that presidents and politicians (on all sides) simply do as they're told. It is the hidden
hand, the international financiers, who are ruining the world. Politicians are mere pawns
... minions willing to sell their souls for a few short years of presumed power, only to
scurry off afterward to play the role of elder statesmen. Politicians are nothing more than
privileged degenerates who proved early in their political lives they could be easily
corrupted and compromised. It is not them who do the damage directly - these things would
happen no matter who's in charge. No, they're simply the ones pushed out front to sign
documents and take blame for the world's ruination ... a small price they are willing to
pay to feed their narcissistic appetites.
Mentaliusanything , 7 hours ago
I would caption that image as "Who is going first to the platform and rope... Biden
thinks he has won a Prize and is excited , The Kenyan says you first Bro (loser) and the
white Privileged woman is laughing as she says , You have nothing on Me... Bitches, I bury
mine deep and dead, I do not swing
Scipio Africanuz , 8 hours ago
Fair enough..
Now that we've completed stage 1 of the harvest, perhaps we ought boost the Republic of
Liberty, and hopefully, temper the anxious wrath of folks..
Libya was a catastrophic mistake, borne of hubris, vanity, intellectual rigidity,
vainglory, and confusion. Hubris on the part of some, Sarkozy comes to mind, vanity on the
part of some, Hillary Clinton comes to mind, confusion on the part of some, Obama comes to
mind, and Ideological rigidity on the part of some, Biden comes to mind, and vainglorious
pride on the part of some, the security establishment and their directors come to
mind..
Having cleared that, it's no use crying over spilt milk, what's necessary, if the
humility to acknowledge errors is available, is contributing rationally, and pernitently,
to fixing the errors, and not by the same thinking that led to the errors, but fresh
thinking that ought now understand that..
What's sown, is what's reaped, but MERCY it is, mitigates the harvests of depravity, via
the provision of energy to restitute, and make amends..
The caveat however, is that mercy is NEVER deployed without REPENTANCE and
RECALIBRATION,
which are the foundational pillars that make MERCY provide the energy to effect
RESTITUTION..
Having clarified that, it's pertinent to inform, that Providence is NOT interested, in
any way, shape, or form, in the damnation of anyone and why?
Well, which loving father is interested in the damnation of his children, no matter how
depraved?
Still, patience ought not be mistaken for coddling and why?
With one, patience, the intent is to provide time for change..
With the other, coddling, the gambit is the turning of blind eyes to depravity..
But seeing as God, the Almighty Father is CONSISTENTLY Just, we can conclude then, that
patience is the prerequisite for either Mercy or Damnation and how so?
Because if patience is deployed, and the depraved utilize it to change, then their
salvation is self directed..
And if not, utilized that is, then their damnation as well, is self obtained..
And thus is the Justice and Honor of Divine Providence satisfied..
It's that simple..
And on that note VP Biden, we'll no longer refer to you as that, but as Joseph..
That ought awaken in you the grave responsibility on your shoulders, like that of the
Biblical Joseph, whose father made for him, a "Coat of MANY colors.."
And if you be perceptive Joseph, you're now about to wear E Pluribus Unum (Coat of many
colors..), created as a singular garment (ONE NATION..), for a reason (the glorification of
Provident Divinity..
)
And the glorification?
That E Pluribus Unum (coat of many colors created as a singular garment..), ought
demonstrate to all who see it worn, the goodness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and
LOVE of the Provider of the Coat..
And considering Joseph, that in service of the Republic, you've not withheld the fruit
of your loins, it's appropriate then, that you ought now demonstrate that love for the
Republic, by putting it first, just as you'd put the fruits of your loins first, except
above Divine Providence, known to you, as God Almighty..
So then Joseph, as we begin the next stage of the harvest, remember your oath that "you
keep your promises..", you'll be judged by that oath..
And Joseph, "a promise is a debt..", it MUST be paid..
And to boost you energetically, here's Parton the Sweet Voiced Nightingale..
In the days, weeks, and months immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Arab-Americans,
South Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, and Sikh-Americans were the targets of widespread
hate violence. Many of the perpetrators of these acts of hate violence claimed they were
acting patriotically by retaliating against those responsible for 9/11.
...
Just after September 11, numerous Arabs, Muslims, and individuals perceived to be Arab or
Muslim were assaulted, and some killed, by individuals who believed they were responsible
for or connected to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The first backlash
killing occurred four days after September 11.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot to death on September 15 as he was planting flowers outside
his Chevron gas station. The man who shot Sodhi, Frank Roque, had told an employee of an
Applebee's restaurant that he was "going to go out and shoot some towel heads." Roque
mistakenly thought Sodhi was Arab because Sodhi, an immigrant from India, had a beard and
wore a turban as part of his Sikh faith. After shooting Sodhi, Roque drove to a Mobil gas
station a few miles away and shot at a Lebanese-American clerk. He then drove to a home he
once owned and shot and almost hit an Afghani man who was coming out the front door. When
he was arrested two hours later, Roque shouted, "I stand for America all the way."
The next two killings were committed by a man named Mark Stroman. On September 15, 2001,
Stroman shot and killed Waquar Hassan, an immigrant from Pakistan, at Hassan's grocery
store in Dallas, Texas. On October 4, 2001, Stroman shot and killed Vasudev Patel, an
immigrant from India and a naturalized U.S. citizen, while Patel was working at his Shell
station convenience store. A store video camera recorded the killing, helping police to
identify Stroman as the killer. Stroman later told a Dallas television station that he shot
Hassan and Patel because, "We're at war. I did what I had to do. I did it to retaliate
against those who retaliated against us."
Beyond these killings, there were more than a thousand other anti-Muslim or anti-Arab
acts of hate which took the form of physical assaults, verbal harassment and intimidation,
arson, attacks on mosques, vandalism, and other property damage.
Instead of "calming prejudice" the GB Bush administration institutionalized hate
crimes:
First, in the weeks immediately following the September 11 attacks, the government began
secretly arresting and detaining Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men. Within the first two
months after the attacks, the government had detained at least 1,200 men.
...
Second, in November 2001, the Department of Justice began efforts to "interview"
approximately 5,000 men between the ages of 18 and 33 from Middle Eastern or Muslim nations
who had arrived in the United States within the previous two years on a temporary student,
tourist, or business visa and were lawful residents of the United States. Four months
later, the government announced it would seek to interview an additional 3,000 men from
countries with an Al Qaeda presence.
...
Third, in September 2002, the government implemented a "Special Registration" program also
known as NSEERS (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System), requiring immigrant men
from 26 mostly Muslim countries to register their name, address, telephone number, place of
birth, date of arrival in the United States, height, weight, hair and eye color, financial
information and the addresses, birth dates and phone numbers of parents and any foreign
friends with the government.
Besides all that a rather useless security theater was installed at U.S. airports which
has costs many billions in lost time and productivity ever since. The Patriot Act was
introduced which allowed for unlimited spying on private citizens. Wars were launched that
were claimed to be justified by 9/11. These were "mass outbreaks of anti-Muslim sentiment and
violence. Many were killed and maimed in them. People were tortured and vanished. All of this
happened largely to applause of a majority of the U.S. people which were glued to 24 and dreamed of being "terrorist
hunters".
Anyone with a functional memory knows that the U.S. reaction to 9/11 was anything but
"pretty calm". It is ridiculous that Krugman is claiming that.
I find it a bit humorous b that you are critical of Krugman for his 911 dementia when for
years many of us finance types have railed about how morally corrupt the logic and thinking
of Paul Krugman is.
Paul Krugman is to economics what Bernie Sanders has become for the purported "left" side
of the "right wing" uni-party....a sheep dog for the easily led.
Paul Krugman is an acolyte for the God of Mammon/global private finance elite.
While spreading anger and hate toward Arab people, The Bush Administration rescued the
many members of the Kingdom's family from all around the US and escorted their flights out of
the US to safety in Saudi Arabia.
Distracting the public big time was Dick Cheney, VP, who insisted from the very next day
that the plot to hit the Twin Towers was Saddam's plot.
So, the historical record and US response was skewed from the getgo. AQ and Bin Laden
didn't concern the neocons. They wanted the US to go to Iraq again, and this time start a
wide war that would spread to Syria and Lebanon and Iran.
It was easy times to spread fear and hate, and Cheney and the war mongers of CENTCOM were
riding high. Americans were scared of all Arabs, all Sunnis, all Shiites, from anywhere. They
were all the same in the public's mind. Enemies.
It was perfect and has led to 19 years of endless wars. Add ISIS and al Nusra and the
Taliban and you have an endless soup of enemies.
krugman is a terrible shill for the neo-cons and liberal-interventionists of the 21st
century
at my age, I shouldn't really be surprised any more by what american "intellectuals" and
"nobel prize winners" say about anything..... but I am.
He's neo-liberal interventionist moron of the first rank, and saying what he did actually
normalizes the war mania and war-mongering which has become so staple in mainstream thought
and the "think tanks" and is now practically part of the american DNA and "culture".
shame on krugman
...
It appears the Deep State has attacked the USA's people twice in two decades--on 911 and with
the decision to let as many die as possible by deliberately not doing anything to mitigate
the impact of COVID-19 and allowing the real economy to atrophy so even more will die in the
long run.
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 11 2020 19:40 utc | 34
Talking about tilting at windmills - I'll never forget Robert Fisk angrily pointing out
that the Yankees knew where to find Al CIA-duh because they extended the cave complex at Tora
Bora to help Al CIA-duh, equipped with 10,000 US Stinger Missiles, kick the Russians out of
Afghanistan in the 1980s!!!
(The Yankees had to wait for 10+ years to invade Afghanistan because it takes that long
for Stingers to pass their Use By date)
@michaelj72. "krugman is a terrible shill for the neo-cons and liberal-interventionists of
the 21st century"
Actually, Paul Krugman was a strong and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War since early
2003 and possibly earlier. He was amongst the few mainstream liberal commentators to take
that stand.
If MoA readers and commenters were to read the entire series of Krugman's tweets, six in
all, they will see mention of how the Bush govt began exploiting the events of 11 September
2001 almost immediately. Though the example Krugman actually uses would make most people
cringe at what it suggests about the bubble he lives in and how far removed it is from most
people's lives and experiences, and his reference to a "horrible war" does not mention either
Afghanistan or Iraq.
It has to be said that Twitter is not designed very well for the kind of informal
conversational commentary that people often use it for. But then you would think Krugman
would use something other than Twitter to discuss and compare 9/11 with the impact of
COVID-19.
The real issue I have with Krugman's Tweet is that he is revising history and bending over
backwards to apologise for Dubya in a way to criticise Donald Trump's performance as
President.
b " Anyone with a functional memory knows that the U.S. reaction to 9/11 was anything but
"pretty calm". It is ridiculous that Krugman is claiming that. "
Careful with that axe b, you are talking about Biden's chief economic adviser and likely
appointee as Chair of the Fed. How does this look?
Volker
Greenspan
Bernanke
Yellen
Powell
Krugman
Reading Krugman's columns in 2016, I had a strong to overwhelming sense that this was a
person revving up for a spot in Hillary's White House or cabinet. For some reason it isn't
hitting me as strongly this time around – he may not have as close connections in
Biden's circle – but it certainly would not be a surprise to see him take a turn
through the media/government revolving door if Trump loses (though, fwiw, I don't think it
will be a job at the Fed).
Yep. Pretty staggering how a few disgruntled ex-CIA contractors managed to, deliberately
or not, help the US Gov't launch the biggest world war operation right under the noses of the
brainwashed masses.
99% of Westerners still are clueless as to explaining the last 20 years in a broader
geopolitical context.
#28: "The antiwar protests in the US were small and insignificant."
No they were not. Millions of people demonstrated against the planned war, in the US,
in the UK, and around the world...
We mustn't forget how the vast majority of those who allegedly were anti-war suddenly went
totally pro-war silent upon Obama coming in.
But that pales compared to the vile spectacle of all the self-alleged
"anti-authoritarians", "anti-propagandists" "dissidents", who suddenly regard the government
media as the literal voice of God, where their alleged God speaks of Covid.
His book, End this Depression Now, is pretty weak. He has no theory of why the crash
occurred. He critiques the austerity agenda but doesn't understand that government spending
CAN create tax liabilities for capital down the road and eat into profits, thus blocking
expanded investments and growth. Moronic libertarians hate Krugman just because they are
right wing assholes who think, like fairies, that a free market without the state will work
fine and self correct. Marx debunked this fairy tale thoroughly in Capital Volume 1, showing
that, even if we start with the mythical free market of libertarian morons, capitalism will
still operate according to the general law by which concentration and centralization lead to
class polarization. In any case, in volume 3 of Capital, Marx develops his laws of crisis,
showing that the cycles of expansion and depression under capitalism follow the movements of
the rate of profit, which itself is determined by the ratio of the value of sunk capital in
production technologies to the rate of exploitation (profits/wages). If the former rises more
than the latter, the rate of profit sinks, along with investment, output and employment.
Financial crises then set in.
The empirical evidence in the data bears out Marx's theory, not Krugman's dumb notion of
aggregate demand, or the stupid libertarian focus on interest rates.
We could discuss here all day about the sociological subject of the American people's true
positioning in the aftermath of 9/11. It would be, sincerely, a waste of time.
The important thing to grasp over this episode - from the point of view of History - is
this: it was a strategic victory for al-Qaeda . The USA took the bait (all scripted?)
and went into a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a few years, the surplus the USA had
accumulated with the sacking and absorption of the Soviet space during Bill Clinton
evaporated and became a huge deficit in the Empire's accounts. Not long after, the 2008
financial meltdown happened, burying Bushism in a spectacular way.
There's a debate about the size of the hole the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan cost the
American Empire. Some put it into the dozens of billions of USDs; others put it into the
trillions of USDs range. We will never know. What we know is that the hole was big enough to
both erase the American surplus and to not avoid the financial meltdown of 2008.
Either the expansion through the Middle East wasn't fast and provided riches enough to
keep up with the Empire's voracious appetite or the invasion itself already represented a
last, desperate attempt by the Empire to avoid its imminent collapse. We know, however, that
POTUS Bush had a list of countries he wanted to invade beyond Iraq (the "Axis of Evil") which
contained a secret country (Venezuela). He was conscious Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't be
enough. Whatever the case, he didn't have the time, and the financial meltdown happened in
his last year in the White House.
They knew who the perps of 9/11 were: their "own" Saudi irregulars in the CIA's US main
land training camps, who started practicing on the "wrong"- domestic American- targets. These
guys were officially entered without any background checks.
The Bush and Bin Laden families go way back in money making. That is why George had to ponder
so long in that Florida kindergarten after hearing about the attacks: he had a suspicion. The
Saudi only fly out after 9/11 confirms that.
Paul Krugman Is a pro. Completely owned by Deep State. His purpose is to deflect
discussion and prevent questioning the official version of 9/11 , and get people chasing
something completely irrelevant. Well done Paul, most have taken the bait.
As Americans pause to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001 which saw almost
3,000 innocents killed in the worst terror attack in United States history, it might also be
worth contemplating the
horrific wars and foreign quagmires unleashed during the subsequent 'war on terror'.
Bush's so-called Global War on Terror targeted 'rogue states' like Saddam's Iraq, but also
consistently had a focus on uprooting and destroying al-Qaeda and other armed Islamist terror
organizations (this led to the falsehood that Baathist Saddam and AQ were in cahoots). But the
idea that Washington from the start saw al-Qaeda and its affiliates as some kind of eternal
enemy is largely a myth.
Recall that the US covertly supported the Afghan mujahideen and other international
jihadists throughout the 1980's Afghan-Soviet War, the very campaign in which hardened al-Qaeda
terrorists got their start. In 1999 The Guardian in a rare moment of honest mainstream
journalism warned of the Frankenstein the CIA created --
among their ranks a terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden .
But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the
very fighters the CIA previously trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its
allies. The 'secret' document was declassified in 2009, but has remained largely obscure in
mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.
"support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan
mujahidin" in the war against the Soviets, "is now contributing experienced fighters to
militant Islamic groups worldwide."
During the war in Afghanistan, eager Arab
youths volunteered en masse to fight a historic "jihad"
against the Soviet •'infidel." The support network
that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to sup-
plement the Afghan mujahidin is now contributing
experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups world-
wide. Veterans of the Afghan jihad are being inte-
... ... ...
dump hundreds more devout fighters into the net-
work. exacerbating the problems of governments that
are accepting the wandering mujahidin.
* * *
When the Boys Come Home
The concluding section contains the most revelatory statements, again remembering these
words were written nearly a decade before the 9/11
attacks :
US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US
interests from attack.
...Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims' wrath. Afghan war veterans,
scattered throughout the world, could surprise the US with violence in unexpected
locales.
ue until wc throw India out," apparently is well armed
and operating about 80 miles southeast of Srinagar.
Mujahidin in Every Corner
Beyond the Middle East and South Asia, small
numbers of Afghan war veterans are taking up causes
from Somalia to the Philippines. Mujahidin connections
to the larger network heighten the chances that even
an ad hoc group could carry out destructive insurgent
attacks. Veterans joining small opposition groups can
contribute significantly to their capabilities; therefore,
some militant groups are actively recruiting returning
veterans, as in the Philippines where the radical Mus-
lim Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) reportedly is using muja-
hidin members' connections to the network to bolster
funding and broker arms deals. The ASG is believed
to have carried out the May bombings of Manila's
light rail system.
Focus on the United States
The alleged involvement of veterans of the Af-
ghan war in the World Trade Center bombing and the
plots against New York targets arc a bold example of
what tactics some fop^r mujahidin are willing in use
in their ongoing jihad (see box, p. 3). US support of
the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not neces-
sarily protect US interests from attack.
The growing perception by Muslims that the US
follows a double standard with regard to Islamic issues --
particularly in Iraq, Bosnia, Algeria, and the Isracli-
occupicd territories -- heightens the possibility that
Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims'
wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered throughout the
world, could surprise the US with violence in unex-
pected locales.
(Gina BennoB. INfVTNA)
There it is in black and white print: the United States government knew and bluntly
acknowledged that the very militants it armed and trained to the tune of
hundreds of millions of dollars would eventually turn that very training and those very
weapons back on the American people .
And this was not at all a "small" or insignificant group, instead as The Guardian wrote a
mere two
years before 9/11 :
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in
bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up
.
But don't think for a moment that there was ever a "lesson learned" by Washington.
So he found a different theatre for his holy war and achieved a different sort
of martyrdom. Three years ago, he was convicted of planning a series of
massive explosions in Manhattan and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Hampton-el was described by prosecutors as a skilled bomb-maker. It was
hardly surprising. In Afghanistan he fought with the Hezb-i-Islami group of
mujahideen, whose training and weaponry were mainly supplied by the CIA.
He was not alone. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992,12,500
foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla
warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.
Instead the CIA and other US agencies repeated the 1980s policy of arming jihadists to
overthrow US enemy regimes in places like Libya and Syria even long after the "lesson" of 9/11.
As War on The Rocks recounted :
Despite the passage of time, the issues Ms. Bennett raised in her 1993 work continue to be
relevant today. This fact is a sign of the persistence of the problem of Sunni jihadism and
the "wandering mujahidin." Today, of course, the problem isn't Afghanistan but Syria. While
the war there is far from over, there is already widespread nervousness, particularly in
Europe, about what will happen when the
foreign fighters return from that conflict.
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The U.S. State Dept.'s own numbers at the height of the war in Syria: access the full
report at
STATE.GOV
19 June 2015, From US Department of
State, Country Report on Terrorism 2014:
"The rate of foreign terrorist fighter travel to Syria
[during 2014]- totaling more than 16,000 foreign
terrorist ficjhters from more than 90 countries as
of late December - exceeded the rate of foreign
terrorist fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia at any point in
the last 20 years"
Dannehy's email contained no information about the investigation, her work for Durham, or
political pressure, according to the Courant.
Durham, the US attorney for the district of Connecticut since 2017, was tasked in May 2019
to investigate the way the FBI and the DOJ handled the so-called Russiagate probe of Trump's
campaign and administration, from mid-2016 to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special
counsel in May 2017.
Though copious evidence that the investigation wasn't on the level has since emerged –
from the text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to memos about
"entrapment" of General Michael Flynn and a damning inspector-general report, Durham's
probe has resulted in only one prosecution so far.
Last month, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to making a false statement,
admitting that he altered evidence in the case of Carter Page. By claiming Page was a 'Russian
agent,' the FBI was able to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, both before and
after the 2016 presidential election.
Evidence has emerged that the principal basis of the FISA warrants was the discredited
'Trump-Russia dossier,' compiled by British spy Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary
Clinton's campaign through the Democratic Party.
bjd050 11 Sep, 2020 07:14 PM
"Improper political influence". That's rich, coming from a coup plotters' apologist.
When I talk to people about that lack of closure for the victims of 911, I merely get a moment of silence and then I notice
the deer in the headlights look. A few have said I'm crazy for questioning the official story, others say that nothing will ever
change and the rest don't care enough to even think about it. Smh! Thanks to the minority who still want justice!
"... This 9/11 I think the most important think is to recognise the continuum between that 'catalyzing event' and the one we are currently living through. Just as with Sep 11 2001, the covid19 "pandemic" is being used to initiate a massive paradigm shift in the public consciousness and to render 'normal' that which was unthinkable before this began. ..."
"... The problem is some of those who opposed the perpetual 'war on terror' paradigm ushered in by 9/11 are endorsing or accepting the 'new normal' paradigm, because they believe it is benign, essential and may even result in a better world of peace, love and happiness. ..."
"... I think they are horribly mistaken. I think if they want to know the type of world we are being prepped for they should read Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD. It's pretty much a blueprint – as has been all but spelled out for us by numerous authorities and opinion makers. ..."
This 9/11 I think the most important think is to recognise the continuum between that
'catalyzing event' and the one we are currently living through. Just as with Sep 11 2001, the covid19 "pandemic" is being used to initiate a massive
paradigm shift in the public consciousness and to render 'normal' that which was unthinkable
before this began.
The problem is some of those who opposed the perpetual 'war on terror' paradigm ushered in
by 9/11 are endorsing or accepting the 'new normal' paradigm, because they believe it is
benign, essential and may even result in a better world of peace, love and happiness.
I think they are horribly mistaken. I think if they want to know the type of world we are
being prepped for they should read Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD. It's pretty much a blueprint
– as has been all but spelled out for us by numerous authorities and opinion makers.
Peace? Maybe, though it's debatable. But it will be the 'peace' of enforced conformity.
Love? Ask the people of Melbourne about that one.
Happiness? Well, maybe if you take enough Soma (benzos, Ritalin, or whatever other substance
you're prescribed to enhance your level of obedience unless they just
add it to the water supply ).
And no, the masks and lockdowns will not go away because you accept them. You have been told
that clearly by the govt you are believing and obeying.
You need to start listening to what they are actually saying.
And so with that we declare OffG's commemoration of the 19th anniversary of the "New Pearl
Harbor" officially open
.
Venezuela scenario at play? Lithuania recognizes exiled opposition figurehead Tikhanovskaya as 'elected leader' of Belarus
11 Sep, 2020 04:59
/ Updated 8 hours ago
Get short URL
Protesters in Vilnius in front of Belarus Embassy express
their support to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya Global Look Press / Valdas Kopustas
37
Follow RT on
Lithuanian MPs have unanimously voted for a resolution to recognize former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana
Tikhanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania after the disputed election, as the elected leader of her country.
In the resolution, titled
"On the Illegitimate Union Imposed by Russia on Belarus" and adopted on Thursday, the Lithuanian parliament threw its weight
behind the presidential election's official runner-up, deeming her and the Belarusian opposition's Coordination Council
"the
only legitimate representatives of the Belarusian people."
The resolution
refers
to
Tikhanovskaya as the
"elected leader"
of the country, while Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko is called
"an illegitimate leader."
The document takes aim at
relations between Minsk and Moscow in particular, preemptively labeling all future integration agreements between the two
neighbors as
"null and void"
and a
"de facto
annexation"
so long as Lukashenko signs them.
The MPs also proposed slapping sanctions on Russian officials and Lukashenko if they attempt to ink such agreements, which the
deputies argued
"are made to limit the sovereignty of the country by illegal means
against the will of the Belarusian people."
The move comes amid
speculation in Western media that an upcoming meeting between Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin may pave the way
for the unification of the two countries. Those claims were
dismissed
by
the Kremlin earlier this week. Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, called the rumor
"absolute
nonsense,"
saying that
"no mergers"
or
"acquisitions"
would
take place during the visit.
Although the EU refused to
accept the outcome of the Belarusian election, which the opposition argued was rigged in favor of the long-standing incumbent,
Lithuania is the first country to officially recognize Tikhanovskaya as an
"elected
leader,"
immediately prompting comparisons to the US decision to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as
the country's interim president in January 2019.
Washington's lead was soon
followed by its allies in the region, with more than 50 countries ultimately joining the US in recognizing Guaido as
Venezuela's
"acting president."
But despite unequivocal support from the US and its
allies in Latin America, Guaido has lost much of his initial momentum since a failed military coup in April of last year.
It's unclear, however, if Lithuania's gambit will spark a chain of similar events. So far, the European Union, although
threatening sanctions on high-profile Belarusian officials, seems to be leaving the door open for Lukashenko to remain in
office.
Germany's Die Welt
newspaper
reported
last
week that Berlin, as well as Paris and Rome, have opposed blacklisting Lukashenko and have united to overrule proposals by the
Baltic states and Warsaw to sanction the Belarusian leader.
Mass protests that swept
across Belarus in the wake of the presidential election last month continue to grip the country. In an interview with Russian
media on Tuesday, it appeared that Lukashenko hinted he might leave office after changes are made to the constitution, while
ruling
out
the possibility he would vacate the post under pressure from
"the streets."
Think your friends would be
interested? Share this story!
37
Dachaguy
10 hours ago
Why don't we just do away with "elections" all together everywhere and ask America who they will permit to lead a country.
This is just a sample of what life under the NWO will be like, where citizens have no choice. Countries recognizing
unelected people as heads of state have no right to use the word democracy.
tohsakasocial
7 hours ago
Lithuania is committing its own political suicide. First it broke all boundaries of ethics in international relations, and
now it's breaking all boundaries of stu pidity. I knew the LT government is ret arded, but I never thought it's THIS ret
arded. What happens now to LT if Tikhanovskaya turns into Guaido, and Lukashenko remains in power? Lithuania is basically
at war with Belarus, as it is no longer able to communicate with a government which it had just now officially recognized
as illegitimate.
Carbonero
tohsakasocial
1 hour ago
Lithuania is trying to carve a spot in the big ((chosen)) buttlicking league. She's up for strong competition the likes of
Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, UK, Spain, etc.
Pro_RussiaPole
tohsakasocial
2 hours ago
Notice how scared they are of Belarus of Russian union state. They know that if that happens, their sick dreams of some 3
seas initiative nonsense will be over. They want to drag Belarus into EU and NATO and turn it into am anti-Russian colony.
This cannot be allowed to happen.
JOHNCHUCKMAN
8 hours ago
"Lithuania recognizes opposition figurehead Tikhanovskaya as 'elected leader' of Belarus " Just ridiculous They
have no data on the votes '
Reply
21
Show 1 previous reply
orood
JOHNCHUCKMAN
1 hour ago
Lithuania
1.
n
. the tail that wags the dog
2.
n.
the dog that follows orders
Pro_RussiaPole
JOHNCHUCKMAN
2 hours ago
They don't care about data. They are creating a Guiado with br easts.
Ishyrion Av
7 hours ago
Since when a third country can recognize anyone it wants as an elected leader of another country?
Reply
9
Pro_RussiaPole
Ishyrion Av
2 hours ago
If you're a US lackey you can.
Pro_RussiaPole
2 hours ago
Lithuania has zero say over cross-border trade and relations between Belarus and Russia. And as far as being forced into a
union, and limiting sovereignty, Lithuania did just that to itself by joining the EU and NATO, regardless what anyone may
think.
Yufo
8 hours ago
Well she was elected... by Lithuanian MPs
RockAndRoll63
8 hours ago
%(%&(!" it, thoose east europen RUSSIPHOBE countries, that is part of Nato, as Norway is, is dragging us into conflict with
Russia, im getting a bit sick of all thoose east EU states, sick peaples they are.
tohsakasocial
RockAndRoll63
7 hours ago
Poland is the sickest of them all. It's trying to restore its dominance over the East European region, and it's using
NATO/EU as leverage to achieve that. Lithuania is part of the plan, as it was part of Poland's Rzeczpospolita.
I was mildly amused by Paul Sperry's recent tweet announcing as "breaking news" that Obama's
CIA Director, John Brennan, set up a Task Force to target Donald Trump. This should not be
considered something "new." I reported on this almost one year ago (October 2019 to be
precise). You can check out the original pieces here
and here
. The following provides an updated, consolidated piece.
While chatting in late October 2019 with a retired CIA colleague, he dropped a
bombshell–he had learned that John Brennan set up a Trump Task Force at CIA in early
2016. One of my retired buddy's friends, who was still on duty with the CIA in 2016, recounted
how he was approached discreetly and invited to work on a Task Force focused on then
Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Task Force members were handpicked instead of
following the normal procedure of posting the job. Instead of opening the job to all eligible
CIA personnel, only a select group of people were invited specifically to join up. Not everyone
accepted the invitation, and that could be a problem for John Brennan
A "Task Force" normally is a short term creation comprised of operations officers (i.e.,
guys and gals who carry out espionage activities overseas) and intelligence analysts. The
purpose of such a group is to ensure all relevant intelligence capabilities are brought to bear
on the problem at hand. I am not talking about an informal group of disgruntled Democrats
working at the CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash
real estate guy from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy
Donald Trump.
A "Task Force" is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case
officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project. But it
also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA.
Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here's a recently
declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958. The
author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an
Operational unit "in the field", i.e. deployed around the world.
While a "Task Force" can be a useful tool for tackling issues of terrorism or drug
trafficking, it is not appropriate or lawful for collecting on a U.S. candidate for the
Presidency. But Brennan did it with the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence, Jim
Clapper.
A Task Force operates independent of the CIA " Mission Centers
" (that's the jargon for the current CIA organization chart).
So what did John Brennan do? My friends said that a Trump Task Force was running in early
2016 and may have started as early as the summer of 2015. Recruitment to Task Force included
case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and admin
personnel were recruited. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did.
But this was not a CIA only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task
Force. We have some clues that Christopher Steele's FBi handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been
detailed to the Trump Task Force ( see here
).
So what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign
intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on
identifying intelligence collection priorities. Task Force members could task NSA to do
targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in covert action, such as
targeting George Papadopoulos. Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who
met with him, briefed on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange
monitored meetings. Was the honey pot (i.e., the attractive woman) named Azra Turk, who met
with George Papadopoulos, part of the CIA Trump Task Force?
The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A
nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some
informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force.
In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there
should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at
minimum, reporting to them.
When I described this development last November to one friend, a retired CIA Chief of
Station, his first response was, "My God, that's illegal." We then reminisced about another
illegal operation carried out under the auspices of the CIA Central American Task Force back in
the 1980s. That became known to Americans as the Iran Contra scandal.
We know one thing for certain about he work of this Task Force–it failed to produce
any intelligence to corroborate the specious claim that Donald Trump was colluding with the
Russians. Even though the despicable Brennan has continued to insist that Trump was/is under
the thumb of Putin, he failed to provide any substantive information in the January 2017
Intelligence Community Assessment that supported the claim.
The curious "leaks" of Michael Cohen tapes on both Cuomo and Zucker, broadcast by Tucker
Carlson, makes me think Cohen also has some Trump tapes.
Cohen of course would be be more than willing to drop any Trump tapes into Tucker
Carlson's lap too - or at least work a tease dropping these bit player tapes on others first
to weasel a Trump pardon for Cohen at the 11th hour, in return for not dumping his Trump tapes
pre-election on Carlson's lap too.
Do you think these "leaked" Cohen tapes are just coincidentally coming out now - or was
Micheal Cohen a fifth column all along, and even in direct cahoots with Brennan too? Other
Trump business partners were IC assets, why not Cohen who would do anything for a buck and
publicity.
The night before the Mueller report came out pundit Brennan on prime time TV (whomever he
was working for CNN, MSNBC?) claimed Trump would be facing multiple indictments.
The next day when his distinguished punditry proved 100% false, Brennan then claimed on
prime time TV his source (sources?) were obviously wrong. And they moved quickly on to the
next topic.
Brennan was obviously operating off of some form of inside intelligence (or just making
things up for effect and a paycheck?) .
Just a few lines were uttered on both nights, but now in retrospect, Brennan did admit
some sort of intelligence gathering group was passing on this critical information to him -
bogus or not. He claimed was in some sort of insider loop.
It would be good to review both those pre-and post Mueller report statements now. Who was
he hoodwinking and should he have been paid for his "insights"?
Cohen is a know nothing "would be if they could be". I have described this type before. He
had no access to Trump, the person, as opposed to a tenuous business relationship with Trump
the company.
"But Brennan did it with the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence, Jim
Clapper. " Obama isn't mentioned at all? I wonder who was actually running the show.
I'm sure he was. He's being very careful about all the current actions on the left too.
He'll be running what's left of the democratic party, if they don't succeed in bringing down
the constitutional republic this election.
For a community organizer Obama is pretty crafty. He found favor with the Chicago big
money who backed him for the Illinois legislature and then the Senate. And then directly to
the presidency. Now he's best friends with David Geffen and Richard Branson and hangs out
with the billionaire class.
He is the "puppeteer" of the Democratic Party, IMO. I'm convinced that if Biden fails,
Michelle will run and likely beat an establishment Republican in 2024.
Who do you think was the ringleader in this operation: Brennan, Comey or Clapper?
To me, it seems most likely that it was Brennan (with Obama's reluctant approval). Comey and
Clapper don't strike me as the kind of guys who would risk everything on an operation that
could backfire.
What I'd really like to know is whether Director Brennan communicated with elites outside
the agency who might have encouraged the spying to begin with. Can you clarify this point?
Does the CIA take orders or instructions from powerful-connected elites outside of the
agency??
It seems we know that NSA identified unreasonable queries of their comms database in 2016,
leading Adm Rodgers to shut off access. Immediately after, we see FBI getting involved and
setting up Crossfire Hurricane. After the election, we see FBI working with DoJ NSD to move
the op into a special counsel organization which then runs the op. It appears the Senate
Select Committee (Burr/Warner) was complicit in the op, not to mention Schiff.
I'm not sure Obama wants to run the Democratic party. It's likelier he wants to secure his
legacy and play a supportive role within the party rather than lead it.
Obama's community organizing skills are null. It was only a title; never an actual
product. He will remain the token figure head of the party; but hot heads under the radar are
now its life and blood of the Democrat party today. With no small dose of our tax
dollars.
Democrats produce nothing; they only consume. There is a brewing turf war within the
Democrat party between their historic connection to the government unions and the new
socialists - two very different forces with two very different goals. Ironically, the
Democrat government unions created the new wave of Democrat socialists.
Watch how this play out - Biden is clueless about what is now seething under his titular
party head. Didn't Biden promise he would put Alexandra Cortez in a key administrative
position?
I remember the eye-opening essay about the CIA Trump task force, especially in light of
Brennan's self-assured posture that only briefly slumped (along with all of his brethren on
the Left) when the Mueller report finally came out and dashed such great expectations. We can
only hope that the Durham probe will expose and at the very least somehow strongly
condemn and spell out WITH EVIDENCE in no uncertain terms any seditious activity. After
hearing that Trey Gowdy doubts any more prosecutions will come of the probe, I'm not going to
hold my breath for perp walks.
Laughably, the Left's still beating that same old Russian Dead Horse though. Just as with
the DNC's lackluster national convention, I'm surprised, almost shocked actually, that in
spite of the overwhelming support of the "creative class", Democrats can't come up with a
better hoax. On the other hand I can't remember the last time I was dying to see a new film,
buy a new book or recording, or tune into a new TV drama, so while it could just be me, I
suspect the "creative class" ain't quite what it used to be...
Re: Michael Cohen comments: I have to agree with walrus and take exception to the MSM
characterization of Cohen as "Trump's personal attorney". My husband and I have a
small real estate company but even so, we've simultaneously employed several attorneys for
various personal and business needs and our holdings are minuscule compared to Trump's. SO I
seriously doubt that the MSM's inference about Cohen's role and insight into Trump's private
and business dealings - that he knows all - is greatly exaggerated.
Cohen does not need to "know all", if he was recording Trump. He just has to dole out a
few juicy sound bites prior to Nov, with our without context when they did contact each other
pre-2016.
Cohen's chance to make Trump squirm since Cohen just demonstrated he was willing to do
this to Cuomo and Zucker - so will he or won't he IF he has Trump tapes too - just crude talk
at this point would not be welcome as Trump tries to take the edge off his usual "gruff"
personality.
No magic carpet to the White House for anyone. I also think people don't like giving any
race like this away too early in the game - all the prior elections have swung back and forth
almost daily, until they finally broke on election day.
Even John McCain and Romney were still nip and tuck until the final hours if one watched
certain indicators. Ironically, the only race called conclusively before election day was
Clinton-Trump 2016, and we know how that finally worked out. So more cat (Trump) and mouse
(Biden) on a seesaw for a few more months.
All of which begs to say, where the heck is the Durham Report and when will we start
seeing accountability for Democrat/Obama high crimes and misdemeanors?
There is a deep cynicism even in California that "no one gets punished" for anything any
more, unless you are unlucky enough to be a law abiding, responsible person. Everyone else
gets a free ride and a double standard of justice - and it is causing a lot of anger out
here. "Law and order" is a building hunger our west.
Where is the Durham Report? Hahaha. We've had the Durham Report. One small fish indicted.
That's it. Were you really expecting more?
I said when the "investigation" was first made public that it was a red herring, a tool to
keep us from making noise because we would be pinning our hopes on this "report" that would
make everything wonderful. I said then that it would never be anything but a pacifier
dangling in front of our noses, like a carrot keeping a donkey dragging the cart along.
This article came out in May 2020 - essentially why did Obama want to frame Flynn?
It was Iran-gate; not Russia-Gate that drove the Obama spying and the Russia-gate
cover-up, according to this author.. Was this the motivation for the Trump Task Force in your
post- to spy on Team Trump to learn if they were going to undo Obama's Iran "legacy",
particularly since Flynn was advising them? https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russiagate-obama-iran
The Flynn Spygate unraveling is far more credible as Iran-gate, and ties up many of the
very loose ends, much better than the Russia-gate nonsense. If this is the more credible
explanation of Obama's Spygate, what happened after this article was published several months
ago in May, during the height of the "pandemic". Has this theory been debunked?
And is its current article re-circulation right now tying Obama to Iran-gate spying the
reason Adam Schiff, out of no where, is back to screaming Russia-gate yet again?
And everyone else on the left is back to screaming high crimes, misdemeanors and
impeachment ......yet again. Gheesh - long and complicates article but it did gel for me.
Including explaining the always mysterious role played by Samatha Powers, the Queen of US
Unmaskers.
Still waiting to hear more about Obama's Ambassador to that tiny Italian enclave San
Marino, that got in his licks unmasking Flynn too. Who was he fronting at the time. And why
San Marino?
Connecting the dots - Obama's San Marino Ambassador unmasks Micheal Flynn
The Atlantic Media Company, parent company of the Atlantic Magazine the wife of Obama's
former US Ambassador to Italy - Linda Douglass -, who himself had been curiously caught up
among the many 11th hour unmaskings of Gen Flynn. For as yet undisclosed reasons.
Atlantic Magazine, part of the Atlantic Media Group, now partly owned by Steve Job's very
wealthy widow Laurane Jobs and rabid anti-Trumper, is taking great delight dropping bogus
bombs against Trump, that can't even last for a 24 hour credibility cycle. With the promise
of many more to come.
Will Linda Douglass be delving into her husband and San Marino Ambassador's great treasure
trove of Obama era unmaskings to provide these daily TDS hit pieces? A classified no-no. Or
just continue to make stuff up.
Or does this recent leftist media hit piece frenzy mean Russia-gate, Iran-gate and/or
Obama Spy-gate is finally going to be broken open?
Such a small, small world. Why was Obama's Ambassador to San Marino unmasking Micheal
Flynn? And his wife just happens to now work for the Atlantic Magazine.
Deap,
Iran-Gate might be the motivating, proximate cause for Obama to approve the overall
"counterintelligence" mission. With Russia-Gate the legal cover / excuse. For Brennan / Comey
/ et al, however, it does not seem like the personal reason for their involvement. The Trump
anti-Borg inclinations is probably what motivated the Borg to go after him.
Deap, my initial reaction to your mention of an Italian connection was to point to Michael
Ledeen, Flynn's co-author and, apparently, consultant - colleague.
Ledeen is known for his Italian connections -- he is thought to have been responsible for
the yellow-cake fabrication that pushed along Iraq war.
But the SanMarino connection appears to be on the other side of the ledger that Ledeen
inhabits -- tho one should put nothing past that crafty warmonger.
"Iran has long been Ledeen's bête noir, arguing that .the country has been heavily
involved in supporting attacks against U.S. forces in hotspots across the globe.[9] "No
matter how well we do, no matter how many high-level targets we eliminate, no matter how
many cities, towns, and villages we secure, unless we defeat Iran we will always be
designing yet another counterinsurgency strategy in yet another place. We are in a big war,
and Iran is at the heart of the enemy army." '
If Flynn's anti-Iran sentiments are as unhinged as Ledeen's, then I have little sympathy
for his troubles, even though it appears that Ledeen's view prevailed in the Trump
administration. Flynn: twice back-stabbed.
I followed John Kerry's and Wendy Sherman's negotiations carefully; I listened to hours
and hours of the Congressional debates over the deal -- not a treaty, the debates seemed a
sop to Congress; I listened as Iranian representatives (Mousavian, iirc) explained that the
Deal was not good for Iran and most Iranians understood that, but that Iranians would go
along to show good faith; because they were backed into a corner; and because of the belief
that an Iran that was engaged in robust trade with Europeans & others would "come in from
the terror cold." I was at American University when Obama announced that the JCPOA was
affirmed.
From an "America First" perspective I endorse(d) Obama's vision, as the Forward article
explained it:
"[JCPOA} was his instrument to secure an even more ambitious objective -- to reorder the
strategic architecture of the Middle East.
Obama did not hide his larger goal. He told a biographer, New Yorker editor David
Remnick, that he was establishing a geopolitical equilibrium "between Sunni, or
predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran." According to The Washington Post's David
Ignatius, another writer Obama used as a public messaging instrument, realignment was a
"great strategic opportunity" for a "a new regional framework that accommodates the
security needs of Iranians, Saudis, Israelis, Russians and Americans."
The catch to Obama's newly inclusive "balancing" framework was that upgrading relations
with Iran would necessarily come at the expense of traditional partners targeted by Iran --
like Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, Israel. Obama never said that part out loud, but
the logic isn't hard to follow: Elevating your enemy to the same level as your ally means
that your enemy is no longer your enemy, and your ally is no longer your ally."
From my America First pov, "rebalancing" USA relations such that Israel -- not a formal
ally and never a trustworthy informal ally (ask survivors of USS Liberty), and other
states in MidEast all held positions on a more level playing field in the eyes of American
foreign policy, is appealing.
The Forward article failed to mention Ledeen, but it was, unsurprisingly, unapologetically
pro-Israel and from a decidedly Jewish perspective.
The Forward's tone and underlying assumptions were and are offensive to me.
Regarding the statement
"The Task Force members were handpicked instead of following the normal procedure of posting
the job.
Instead of opening the job to all eligible CIA personnel, only a select group of people were
invited specifically to join up."
Two questions naturally arise:
Who was doing the selection, and
was the politics of the candidates a factor, perhaps a very big factor, in the selection
process?
"Right" to whom, and by what criteria?
Did the FBI director not know this was an important matter, which required the best
investigators?
In any case, we can see who was put on it, such Trump-haters as Strzok, Page, and
Clinesmith.
Just Trump's bad luck, or something more deliberate?
There was not really an "Italian" connection in the Iran-gate piece bur rather the
curiosity why Obama's Italian ambassdor had interests in unmasking Michael Flynn, since his
name showed up on the odd list of Obama persons who did unmask Flynn.
His name being there - Ambassador Phillips - may have been there due to his other Obama
connections, or his wife Linda Douglass' Obama connections. Or his wife's current connection
to the tabloid Atlantic Magazine.
Not really anything Italian per se, or even wee San Marino. Other than perhaps a mutual
veneration for things Machiavellian-as this unfolding story twists and turns..
MSM's attempts to spin Trump's attacks on senseless wars as disrespect for military at large are a dismal distortion of reality
11 Sep, 2020 12:06
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Getty Images / David Dee Delgado
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By
Tony
Cox
, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
The New York Times and CNN are desperate to paint Donald Trump as an enemy of the military, due to his desire not to get
involved in pointless wars. But this is simply not true, and Trump has the backing of many soldiers.
Someone should tell the
New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets that soldiers don't actually like getting killed or maimed for no good
reason. Nor do they like generals and presidents who spill their blood in vain.
Alas, ignorance of these
obvious truths probably isn't the issue. This is likely just another case of the biggest names in news pretending to not get
the point so they can take the rest of us along for a ride in their confidence game of alternative reality.
The latest example is the
New York Times spinning President Donald Trump's critique this week of Pentagon leadership and the military industrial complex
as disrespect for the military at large.
"Trump has lost the right and authority to be
commander in chief,"
the
Times quoted
retired US Marines General Anthony Zinni as saying. Zinni cited Trump's alleged
"despicable
comments"
about the nation's war dead reported last week by
The
Atlantic
, citing anonymous sources as one of the reasons Trump "must go."
Never mind that Trump and all on-the-record administration sources denied The Atlantic's report. The Times couldn't resist
when the pieces seemed to fit so well together for the military's latest propaganda campaign against Trump. First the
president disses the troops, calling them "losers" and "suckers," then he has the
temerity
to say
Pentagon leaders want to fight wars to keep defense contractors happy.
Except the pieces don't
fit. The many people who occupy so-called boots on the ground don't have the same interests as the few people who send them to
war. In fact, combat troops are given reason to hate the generals who send them to die when there's not a legitimate national
security reason for the war they're fighting. And the US has fought a long line of wars that didn't serve the nation's
national security interests. Even when a war is justified, the interests of top brass and front-line soldiers often clash.
Remember that great 1967
war movie, '
The
Dirty Dozen'
? A group of 12 soldiers who were condemned to long prison sentences or execution in military prison for their
crimes were sent on a 1944 suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a heavily defended chateau far behind enemy
lines. After succeeding in the mission and escaping the Germans, the lone surviving convict, played by tough-guy actor Charles
Bronson, told the mission leader,
"Killing generals could get to be a habit with me."
So no, New York Times, speaking out against ill-advised wars does not equal bashing the military. And sorry, General Zinni,
but generals, defense contractors and their media mouthpieces don't get to decide who has the
"right
and authority"
to be commander in chief. The voters decided that already, and they expressed clearly that they don't want
senseless and endless wars and foreign interventions.
The Times cited General
James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, as saying Pentagon leaders would only recommend sending troops to combat
"when
it's required for national security and a last resort."
And no, it wasn't a comedy skit. What's the last US war or combat
intervention that measured up to that standard? Let's just say the late Bronson, who died in 2003 at the age of 81, was a
young man the last time that happened.
CNN tried a similar ploy
on Sunday, while trying to sell the "losers" and "suckers" story in an interview with US Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert
Wilkie. Host Dana Bash said the allegations fit a
"pattern of public statements
" by
the president because Trump called US Senator John McCain a "loser" in 2015 and said McCain shouldn't be considered a hero for
being captured in the Vietnam War. She repeatedly suggested to Wilkie, who didn't take the bait, that Trump's attacks on
McCain, who died in 2018, showed disrespect for the troops.
Apparently, this follows
the same line of propagandist thought which told us that saying there are rapists among the illegal aliens entering the US
from Mexico which is undeniably true
equals
saying
all Mexicans are rapists. In CNN land, a bad word about McCain is a bad word about all soldiers.
McCain was
a
warmonger
who didn't mind getting US troops killed or backing terrorist groups in Syria. If
he
had his way
, many more GIs would be dead or disabled, because the intervention in Syria would have been escalated and the
US might be at war with Iran. Soldiers wouldn't want their lives wasted in such conflicts.
All wars are hard on the
people who have to fight them, but senseless wars are spirit-crushing. An average of about 17 veterans commit suicide each day
in the US, according to Veterans Administration
data
.
Veterans account for 11 percent of the US adult population but more than 18 percent of suicides.
The media's deceiving
technique of trying to pretend that ruling-class chieftains and front-line grunts are in the same boat reflects a broader
campaign of top-down revolution against populism. The
military
is
just one of several pro-Trump segments of the population that must be turned against the president. Other pro-Trump segments,
such as
police
,
are demonized and attacked.
Trump has managed to keep
the US out of new wars and has drawn down deployments to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan despite Pentagon opposition. His rival,
Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, can be expected to rev up the war machine if he takes charge. His foreign policy
adviser, Antony Blinken, lamented in a May
interview
with CBS News
that Trump had given up US "leverage" in Syria.
Trump also has turned
around the VA hospital system, ending
decades
of neglect
that left many veterans to die on waiting lists.
Like past campaigns to
oust Trump, the notion that he's not sufficiently devoted to the troops might be a tough sell. No matter how good their words
may sound, the people who promote endless wars without clear objectives aren't true supporters of the rank and file.
More than 1,000 Chinese students have had their visas revoked by the United States since
June, after being accused of espionage for the Chinese military. azn_okay 1 hour ago There
really hasn't been a time when the US wasn't sinophobic to some degree. It's one of those
things that is normalised because China is supposedly the enemy and because of this, the
Chinese are dehumanised. The fact that Trump has seen little backlash speaks volumes of the
anti-China sentiment in the US. Enriquecost 8 minutes ago Every year more than 200,000 Chinese
students go to the US. That is too much
Beijing has introduced reciprocal restrictions on American diplomats and other staff at the
US embassy and consulates in China, including Hong Kong, the Chinese Foreign Ministry
announced.
A diplomatic note announcing tit-for-tat restrictions had been recently sent to Washington,
the ministry said on its website.
These measures are China's legitimate and necessary response to the erroneous US
moves.
The limitations on the actions of "senior diplomats and all other personnel" were
introduced to persuade Washington to lift restrictions it earlier placed on Chinese diplomats
in America which "disrupted China-US relations," it added.
Last week, the Trump administration said that Chinese diplomats would from now on have to
get approval from the US State Department before visiting American university campuses or
staging cultural events with more than 50 people attending outside embassy
grounds.
The announcement followed the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston in July, which the
US has accused of spying. Earlier, Chinese diplomats were also ordered to inform US authorities
of any meetings with state and local officials as well as communications with educational and
research institutions.
Washington and Beijing have been trading jabs for months now as tensions keep mounting
between the two countries over a whole range of issues.
They include a US crackdown on Chinese telecom giant Huawei and popular video sharing app
TikTok over spying claims, as well as the backing of independence movements in Hong Kong and
Taiwan by the White House.
Mini Teaser: Radicals of the democracy-promotion movement embody the very thing they are
fighting against -- a closed-minded conviction that they represent the one true path for all
societies and thus possess a monopoly on social, ethical and political truth.
This is surely the last thing the American people want to hear, but it does confirm
President Trump's
recent statements saying that top Pentagon brass essentially seeks out constant wars to
keep defense contractors "happy": the Department of Defense plans to cut major military
contractors a $10 billion to $20 billion COVID bailout check .
Defense One
reports : "With lawmakers and the White House unable to come to an agreement on a new
coronavirus stimulus package, it's unlikely that money requested to reimburse defense
contractors for pandemic-related expenses will reach these companies until at least the second
quarter of 2021, according to the Pentagon's top weapons buyer."
Defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, Ellen Lord, in recent statements has
indicated the private defense firm stimulus would cover the period from March 15 to Sept. 15
and is estimated at "between $10 and $20 billion."
"Then we want to look at all of the proposals at once," Lord said at a press briefing
Wednesday. "It isn't going to be a first in, first out, and we have to rationalize using the
rules we've put in place what would be reimbursable and what's not."
And strongly suggesting that it won't be the last of such stimulus for defense firms who
have already profited immensely off post 9/11 'wars of choice' launched under Bush and Obama,
Lord
said , "I would contend that most of the effects of COVID haven't yet been seen."
"I'm not saying the military's in love with me," Trump added , as he advocated for
the removal of U.S. troops from "endless wars" and lambasted NATO allies that he says rip off
the U.S. "The soldiers are."
"The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight
wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make
everything else stay happy," he added.
"Some people don't like to come home, some people like to continue to spend money," the
president said. "One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another, that's what it was."
The "outrage" that followed included reporters claiming that Trump's words were
"unprecedented".
But that's far from the truth, as Glen Greenwald reminded his fellow journalists:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1303109722468429824&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fafter-trump-lambasted-endless-wars-enriching-defense-firms-dod-confirms-10-20-billion&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px
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Well over a half-century ago, Eisenhower warned, "In the councils of government, we must
guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex . The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist."
And further: "We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry
can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Will the alleged Alexey Navalny poisoning sink the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? It might, but it shouldn't 11 Sep, 2020 17:39
/ Updated 4 hours ago Get short URL
REUTERS/Stine Jacobsen/File Photo; AFP/Vasily MAXIMOV 11 Follow RT on
By Dr. Karin Kneissl , who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs
from 2017-2019. In June, she published her book on diplomacy 'Diplomatie Macht Geschichte' in Germany through Olms, and in early
September her book 'Die Mobilittswende', or 'Mobility in Transition', was released in Vienna by Braumller. The cacophony of
noise generated in the wake of the attack on the Russian opposition figure is drowning out the reality. As Angela Merkel has always
maintained, the German-Russian gas deal is purely a commercial project.
Nord Stream has always had the ingredients to drive sober-minded Germans emotional. I remember energy conferences in Germany back
in 2006 when already the idea of such a gas pipeline as a direct connection from Russia to Germany provoked deep political rows,
not just in Berlin but across the EU.
Conservatives disliked it for the simple reason that it was a "Schrder thing," the legacy of social democrat Chancellor Gerhard
Schrder, who lost the election of September 2005 to Angela Merkel. Schrder had negotiated the project with his good friend, President
Vladimir Putin, and then chaired the company in charge of implementing it.
Around that time, I was invited to an energy conference in Munich by the conservative think tank, the Hanns Seidel Foundation,
managed by the Bavarian party CSU, the traditional junior partner of the ruling CDU in the government. The bottom-line of the debate
on Nord Stream was negative, with the consensus being that the German-Russian pipeline would lead to the implosion of a European
common foreign policy and damage the EU's energy ambitions.
I attended many other such events across Germany, from parliament to universities, and listened carefully to all the arguments.
The feelings towards Nord Stream were much more benign at meetings held under the auspices of the SPD.
But over the years, the rift between different political parties evaporated, and a consensus emerged which supported enhanced
energy cooperation between Berlin and Moscow. Politicians of all shades defended the first pipeline, Nord Stream 1, after it went
operational in 2011, bringing Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
They also enthusiastically supported the creation of the second, Nord Stream 2, better known by its acronym NS2. This $11bn (8.4bn)
1,200km pipeline is almost finished and was due to go online next year.
But now, in the very final stage of construction, everything has been thrown in limbo thanks to the alleged poisoning of Russian
opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
NS2 has always been controversial. Critics, such as the US and Poland, have argued that it makes Germany too reliant on energy
from a politically unreliable partner. President Trump last year signed a law imposing sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's
state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish it. The White House fears NS2 will tighten Russia's grip over Europe's energy supply and
reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
These sanctions have caused delays to the project. A special ship owned by a Swiss company menaced with sanctions had to be replaced.
And prior to that, various legal provisions were brought up by the European Commission that had to be fulfilled by the companies
in retrospect.
Now the case of Navalny, currently being treated at a Berlin clinic after being awoken from a medically induced coma, has thrown
everything up in the air again. It has triggered a political cacophony that threatens relations between Germany, the EU, Russia,
and Washington. And at the center is the pipeline.
Various German sources, among them laboratories of the armed forces, have alleged that Navalny had been poisoned with the nerve
agent Novichok. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD)
stated in an interview published on Sunday by Bild: " I hope the Russians don't force us to change our stance on Nord Stream
2 we have high expectations of the Russian government that it will solve this serious crime ." He claimed to have seen "
a lot of evidence " that the Russian state was behind the attack. " The deadly chemical weapon with which Navalny was poisoned
was in the past in the possession of Russian authorities ," he insisted.
He conceded that stopping the almost-completed pipeline would harm German and broader European business interests, pointing out
that the gas pipeline's construction involves "over 100 companies from 12 European countries, and about half of them come from Germany."
Maas also threatened the Kremlin with broader EU sanctions if it did not help clarify what happened "in the coming days." Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by labeling the accusations "groundless" and Moscow has staunchly denied any involvement
in the affair.
The whole matter is complicated by domestic political considerations in Germany. CDU politician Norbert Rttgen, who heads up
foreign affairs within the ruling party and has demanded that the pipeline should be stopped, is among those conservatives vying
to lead the CDU in the run-up to Chancellor Angela Merkel's retirement next year. Meanwhile, Merkel is still trying to strike a balance
between the country's legal commitments, her well-known mantra that NS2 is a " purely commercial project, " and what is now
a major foreign policy crisis.
The chancellor had always focused on the business dimension. But most large energy projects also have a geopolitical dimension,
and that certainly holds true with Nord Stream.
When I was Austria's foreign minister, I saw first-hand the recurring and very harsh criticism of the project by US politicians
and officials. I remember the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in a speech at the margins of the UN General Assembly in September
2018 that focused solely on NS2. I replied by pointing out to him that pipelines are not built to annoy others, but because there
is demand. One thing was certain the US opposition to Nord Stream would not wane and now the Navalny case has given it new impetus.
What we are witnessing is a tremendous politicization of the pipeline with a wide range of people all shouting very loudly.
So here we are, in a very poisoned atmosphere where it might be difficult to revise positions without losing face. The social
democrat Maas, just like the conservative Rttgen and many others, have taken to the media for different reasons. In my observation,
it might have to do with their respective desires to take a strong position in order to also mark their upcoming emancipation from
the political giant Merkel (she is due to step down next year).
Due to her professional and empathetic handling of the pandemic, she is today much more popular than before the crisis. That makes
it difficult for a junior partner, represented by Foreign Minister Maas, and for all those who wish to challenge her inside the party.
What is needed is to get the topic out of the media and out of the to-and-fro of daily petty politics. Noisy statements might
serve some, but not the overall interests involved. And there are many at stake. It is not only about energy security in times of
transition, namely moving away from nuclear, but much wider matters.
As a legal scholar, I deem the loss of trust in contracts. Vertragstreue, as we call it in German loyalty to the contract
will be the biggest collateral damage if the pipeline is abandoned for political reasons. This fundamental principle of every civilization
was coined as pacta sunt servanda by the Romans agreements must be kept. Our legal system is based on this. Who would still conclude
contracts of such volumes with German companies if politics can change the terms of trade overnight?
In June 2014, construction sites on the coasts of the Black sea, both in Russia and Bulgaria, were ready for starting the gas
pipeline South Stream. After pressure from the European Commission, the work never started. The political reason was the dispute
on Ukraine in particular, the annexation of the Crimea. However, the legal argument was that the tenders for the contracts were
in contradiction with EU regulations on competition. Tens of thousands of work permits, which had been issued from Bulgaria to Serbia
etc., were withdrawn. The economic consequence was the rise of China's influence in the region. South Stream was redirected to Turkey.
So here we are in the midst of a diplomatic standoff. It is a genuine dilemma, but it could also turn into a watershed. Will contracts
be respected or will we move into a further cycle of uncertainty on all levels? Germany is built on contracts, norms (probably much
too many) and not on arbitrariness.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
silvermoon 5 hours ago
All these weeks have passed and Germany has still not shown shared actual evidence of their Navalny tests
with Russia though. That is the same as saying we found the gun with your finger prints on it but never showing it.
Count_Cash
silvermoon 3 hours ago
Correct, Germany has only since 10th September (if confirmed) shared any 'evidence'. That is sufficient intervening
time to concoct any test result and associated materials that they want - another Diesel scandal. Indeed people will ask why when
you had the patient on 22nd of august, it took you so long to send samples to the OPCW, despite almost immediately yelling Poison!
gainwmn silvermoon 5 hours ago
U stupid sheep: Germany did show it to the OPCW, i.e. the organization RF is the member of,
and therefore the latter gets the full access to all the data provided by Germany, as well as any other of 192 members. Kremlin lies
and demands in this regard is more than ridiculous, they completely destroy any shred of trust left to all RF governmental structures
and regime itself.
Teodor Nitu gainwmn 3 hours ago
Riiight!...Those Russians...not only their chemical
weapons are no longer working, but they are no longer capable to choose the proper time to use them, or so the story goes. Think
about it; they 'used' novichok to kill the Skripals and they are still alive and well (supposedly), now they (Russians) 'used' novichok
again to kill Navalny and he is alive and getting better.
Besides, they chose the absolutely wrong time to do it. With Skripals it
was just before the opening of the World Cup in Russia and now, just before the finishing of the North Stream 2 pipeline.
It sounds
that they are sabotaging their own interests, aren't they? Are they (Russians) that stup!d? Some 'smart' posters here seem to believe
it. But lets get real, one has to be able to see beyond the length of his nose, in order to understand what is really going on.
silvermoon Teodor Nitu 2 hours ago
Russia had all their chemical weapons legally destroyed. Along with hundreds of countries. The
US, UK and Israel never did. Navalny the innocent anti Putin. Can't win one way try another.
Pro_RussiaPole gainwmn 2 hours ago
So why is Russia still asking for it? Clearly, something is being withheld. As for
the OPCW, their credibility has been shot for years with all their fake Syrian chem weapon attack reports.
seawolf 6 hours ago
Even if there was not Navalny's story, they could invent another to stop the project.
Abraxas79 seawolf 4 hours ago
Exactly.
I hope Russia is the one that abandons it. Let Germany be the one that decides to cancel it and go along with it. Concentrate on
supplying China and other Asian nations and internal consumption. Forget about Europe. You don't have to turn off the current supply,
just charge more for it when the market allows. Looks like the next German leader according to this article is quite the Russophobe,
which means relations will only get worse.
Pro_RussiaPole Abraxas79 2 hours ago
If this navalny farce does end up cancelling the NS2 project, Russia should stop all gas transit to western Europe through
Poland and Ukraine by spring of next year. Tell those countries that will be cut off that Russia can either sell them LNG, or
that they will have to connect to other sources of gas. Because if certain countries are so against Russian gas, then why are
they not doing anything against Russian gas going through Poland and Ukraine, and why isn't Trump threatening sanctions on
these countries for doing so?
Blue8ball713 RTjackanory 3 hours ago
Its a far longer list
and it have the fingerprints of GB secret services all over it.
Reply Gabriel Delpino seawolf 46 seconds ago It is not in the interest
of Germany to stop de project. Reply
magicmirror 6 hours ago
Europe should have nothing to do with the USA ....... proved time and
time again they cannot be trusted. All they want is markets, resources and consumers. They lie, they cheat, they steal...... (quoting mr Pompeo, I think). A big opportunity to win Europe's independence.
SmellLaRata
5 hours ago
All due respect for Mr. Navalny but since when does an individual fate of one person dictates the fate for millions ?
And c' mon Germany. Your hypocrisy is so utterly laughable. You ignore the Assange and Snowden cases, the slaughter of Kashoggi,
the brutal beating of yellow vests, the brutal actions against the Catalans ... but Navalni. Not even a hint of a proof of government
involvemen. But it fits the agenda, does it? The agenda which is dictated by the deep state agitators who so much flourished under
Obama.
gainwmn SmellLaRata
4 hours ago
Even being not a fan (to say the least) of the US foreign and some of the domestic policy, I have to point out that tried
by U analogy is largely out of balance: first, the issue in Navalny (as well as in Scripals' and others cases acted on with poisons)
case is not so much the assassination attempt on a person's life, as the banned use of chemical weapons, the ban RF's signature has
been under since 1993. And that conclusion (Russia's guilt) has not been made by the UK or Germany or any other country alone, but
the OPCW - the organization not only RF is the member of, but also 191(!) other countries, out of which not a single country (except
RF) rejected that conclusion!; second, the US did not made attempt on either Snowden's or Assange's life, with any kind of weapon,
not already mentioning the weapons banned by the international agreements American government(s) signed. This is a large - I would
say - decisive difference! As far as Kashoggi's case or other cases sited by U, RF did not react with sanctions against the respective
perpetrators either, thus demonstrating the same disregard for the law and order as the US did... therefore making all lies about
innocent RF and evil US, foolish, at the least.
Pro_RussiaPole gainwmn 2 hours ago
The US and its lackeys are killing Assange. They are doing it slowly. And many voices going along with a lie does not make
the lie true. Because these poisoning allegations are lies. The accused were never allowed to see the evidence or challenge
it. And there is the whole issue of politicized reports coming out of the OPCW that contradicted evidence and reality.
Nathi Sibbs 4 hours ago
After completing the pipe and
it start running Russia must turn off all Ukraine pipes. No more gas for free from Russia, Ukraine must start importing LNG from thier reliable partner USA. I think imports from USA will be good for Ukrainian Nazi people
Abraxas79 Nathi Sibbs 4 hours
ago
How are they going to pay for it? Ukraine's only exports these days are its women to various brothels across Europe and North
America.
Hilarous 5 hours ago
The German leaders know very well that the case of Navalny will never be resolved and exists
for no other reason than to seize a pretext to demonize Russia and to end Nord Stream 2 in exchange for US freedom gas
magicmirror
Hilarous 4 hours ago
freedom gas and handsome presents .....
SandythePole 3 hours ago
This is an excellent account by Dr Karin Kneissl. It is a genuine dilemma for 'occupied'
Europe. Its occupying master does NOT want NS2 and will do anything to stop it. Russia suffers sanctions upon sanctions, but still
gallantly tries to maintain friendly and honourable business relations with its implacable neighbours. For how much longer is this
to continue? Surely there must be some limit to the endless provocations of occupied Europe and its Western master. Perhaps it is
time to shut off the oil and gas and leave Germany to sail under its own wind.
dunkie56 3 hours ago
Perhaps Russia should disengage
with Germany/EU totally and forge ahead in partnership with China and India and whoever wants to do business. let the EU tie it's
ship to the sinking US ship and drown along with it's protection racket partner! Then Russia should build a new iron curtain between
itself and all countries who want to align with the EU..in the long run Russia has tried to forge a partnership with the West but
it just has not born any fruit and even as pragmatic as Russia is they must be coming to the conclusion they are flogging a dead
horse!
Blue8ball713 dunkie56 2 hours ago With 146 million citizen Russia is too small to be a real partner to anyone like
China or India. Best fit is the EU, but the EU is controlled or better said occupied by the USA. Its part of their hegemonial system.
So Russia is left out in the rain..
micktaketo 5 hours ago
I am not sure if it is the right thing to do but I think Russia
should sue the German authorities if this deal is withdrawn and if it is have nothing to do with Germany again along with other corrupt
countries that cannot prove or at the least bring forth their evidence to be seen, to be transparent to all even Russia the first,
because Russia is the one being accused. These countries must think we the people are all completely stupid and Russia more so. This
corruption stinks to high heaven and is obvious to all sane people who love fairness. You cannot trust an entity that believes in
getting what they want by hook or by crook. Russia learn your lesson ! So you countries that love whats good for you and your people
do not cheat them for they voted for you to help them. Germany do not kick yourself, it will hurt your people. Saying, There is more
than one way to skin a cat, they say.
Mutlu Ozer 3 hours ago
There is a simple concept to investigate a crime to find the criminals: Just look at whose benefit the crime is? EU
politicians are certainly smart people to know this basic concept of criminal investigation. However, now they are playing a
new strategy about how to domesticate(!) not only Russia China as well... Germans are the main actors in the stage of the WW-I
and WW-II. I surely claim that Germans would be the main architect of the last war, WW-III.
9/11 was the foundation stone of the new millennium – ever as much indecipherable as
the Mysteries of Eleusis. A year ago, on Asia Times, once again I raised a number of questions that
still find no answer.
A lightning speed breakdown of the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune trespassing
these two decades will certainly include the following. The end of history. The short unipolar
moment. The Pentagon's Long War. Homeland Security. The Patriot Act. Shock and Awe. The
tragedy/debacle in Iraq. The 2008 financial crisis. The Arab Spring. Color revolutions.
"Leading from behind". Humanitarian imperialism. Syria as the ultimate proxy war. The
ISIS/Daesh farce. The JCPOA. Maidan. The Age of Psyops. The Age of the Algorithm. The Age of
the 0.0001%.
Once again, we're deep in Yeats territory: "the best lack all conviction/ while the worst
are full of passionate intensity."
All along, the "War on Terror" – the actual decantation of the Long War –
proceeded unabated, killing Muslim multitudes and
displacing at least 37 million people.
WWII-derived geopolitics is over. Cold War 2.0 is in effect. It started as US against
Russia, morphed into US against China and now, fully spelled out in the US National Security
Strategy, and with bipartisan support, it's the US against both. The ultimate
Mackinder-Brzezinski nightmare is at hand: the much dread "peer competitor" in Eurasia slouched
towards the Beltway to be born in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Something's gotta give. And then, out of the blue, it did.
A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoconomic diktats was first
conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of "sustainable development" – already
in 2015 at the UN (
here it is , in detail).
Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally
being codified, packaged and "sold" since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda
campaign.
Watch your mindspace
The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague
proportions has been consistently debunked, for instance here and here
, drawing from the highly respected, original
Cambridge source.
The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate
and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed
businesses.
And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of
voluntary servitude.
None of it is accidental. As an example, over then years ago, even before setting up a
– privatized – Behavioral Insights Team, the British government was very much
interested in "influencing" behavior, in collaboration with the London School of Economics and
Imperial College.
The end result was the MINDSPACE report. That was all about
behavioral science influencing policymaking and most of all, imposing neo-Orwellian population
control.
MINDSPACE, crucially, featured close collaboration between Imperial College and the Santa
Monica-based RAND corporation. Translation: the authors of the absurdly flawed computer models
that fed the Planet Lockdown paranoia working in conjunction with the top Pentagon-linked think
tank.
In MINDSPACE, we find that, "behavioral approaches embody a line of thinking that moves from
the idea of an autonomous individual, making rational decisions, to a 'situated'
decision-maker, much of whose behavior is automatic and influenced by their 'choice
environment'".
So the key question is who decides what is the "choice environment'. As it stands, our whole
environment is conditioned by Covid-19. Let's call it "the disease". And that is more than
enough to beautifully set up "the cure": The Great Reset .
The beating heart
The Great Reset was officially launched in early June by the World Economic Forum (WEF)
– the natural habitat of Davos Man. Its conceptual base is something the WEF describes as
Strategic Intelligence Platform
: "a dynamic system of contextual intelligence that enables users to trace relationships and
interdependencies between issues, supporting more informed decision-making".
It's this platform that promotes the complex crossover and interpenetration of Covid-19 and
the Fourth
Industrial Revolution – conceptualized back in December 2015 and the WEF's choice
futuristic scenario. One cannot exist without the other. That is meant to imprint in the
collective unconscious – at least in the West – that only the WEF-sanctioned
"stakeholder" approach is capable of solving the Covid-19 challenge.
The Great Reset is
immensely ambitious , spanning over 50 fields of knowledge and practice. It interconnects
everything from economy recovery recommendations to "sustainable business models", from
restoration of the environment to the redesign of social contracts.
The beating heart of this matrix is – what else – the Strategic Intelligence
Platform, encompassing, literally, everything: "sustainable development", "global governance",
capital markets, climate change, biodiversity, human rights, gender parity, LGBTI, systemic
racism, international trade and investment, the – wobbly – future of the travel and
tourism industries, food, air pollution, digital identity, blockchain, 5G, robotics, artificial
intelligence (AI).
In the end, only an all-in-one Plan A applies for making these systems interact seamlessly:
the Great Reset – shorthand for a New World Order that has always been glowingly evoked,
but never implemented. There is no Plan B.
The Covid-19 "legacy"
The two main actors behind the Great Reset are Klaus Schwab, the WEF's founder and executive
chairman, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Georgieva is adamant that "the
digital economy is the big winner of this crisis". She believes the Great Reset must
imperatively start in 2021.
The House of Windsor and the UN are prime executive co-producers. Top sponsors include BP,
Mastercard and Microsoft. It goes without saying that everyone who knows how complex
geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions are taken is aware that these two main actors are just
reciting a script. Call the authors "the globalist elite". Or, in praise of Tom Wolfe, the
Masters of the Universe.
Schwab, predictably, wrote the Great Reset's mini-manifesto.
Over a month later, he expanded on the absolutely key connection: the "legacy"
of Covid-19.
All this has been fully fleshed in a book , co-written with Thierry Malleret, who directs
the WEF's Global Risk Network. Covid-19 is described as having "created a great disruptive
reset of our global, social, economic and political systems". Schwab spins Covid-19 not only as
a fabulous "opportunity", but actually as the creator (italics mine) of the – now
inevitable – Reset.
All that happens to dovetail beautifully with Schwab's own baby: Covid-19 "accelerated our
transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution". The revolution has been
extensively discussed at Davos since 2016.
The book's central thesis is that our most pressing challenges concern the environment
– considered only in terms of climate change – and technological developments,
which will allow the expansion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
In a nutshell, the WEF is stating that corporate globalization, the hegemonic modus operandi
since the 1990s, is dead. Now it's time for "sustainable development" – with
"sustainable" defined by a select group of "stakeholders", ideally integrated into a "community
of common interest, purpose and action."
Sharp Global South observers will not fail to compare the WEF's rhetoric of "community of
common interest" with the Chinese "community of shared interests" as applied to the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), which is a de facto continental trade/development project.
The Great Reset presupposes that all stakeholders – as in the whole planet –
must toe the line. Otherwise, as Schwab stresses, we will have "more polarization, nationalism,
racism, increased social unrest and conflicts".
So this is – once again – a "you're with us or against us" ultimatum, eerily
reminiscent of our old 9/11 world. Either the Great Reset is peacefully established, with whole
nations dutifully obeying the new guidelines designed by a bunch of self-appointed neo-Platonic
Republic sages, or it's chaos.
Whether Covid-19's ultimate "window of opportunity" presented itself as a mere coincidence
or by design, will always remain a very juicy question.
Digital Neo-Feudalism
The actual, face-to-face Davos meeting next year has been postponed to the summer of 2021.
But virtual Davos will proceed in January, focused on the Great Reset.
Already three months ago, Schwab's book hinted that the more everyone is mired in the global
paralysis, the more it's clear that things will never be allowed (italics mine) to
return to what we considered normal.
Five years ago, the UN's Agenda 2030 – the Godfather of the Great Reset – was
already insisting on vaccines for all, under the patronage of the WHO and CEPI – co-founded in 2016 by India, Norway and the Bill and
Belinda Gates foundation.
Timing could not be more convenient for the notorious Event 201 "pandemic exercise" in
October last year in New York, with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security partnering
with – who else – the WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No in-depth
criticism of Gates's
motives is allowed by media gatekeepers because, after all, he finances them.
What has been imposed as an ironclad consensus is that without a Covid-19 vaccine there's no
possibility of anything resembling normality.
And yet a recent, astonishing paper published in Virology Journal – which also
publishes Dr. Fauci's musings – unmistakably
demonstrates that "chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and
spread". This is a "relatively safe, effective and cheap drug" whose "significant inhibitory
antiviral effect when the susceptible cells were treated either prior to or after infection
suggests a possible prophylactic and therapeutic use."
Even Schwab's book admits that Covid-19 is "one of the least deadly pandemics in the last
2000 years" and its consequences "will be mild compared to previous pandemics".
It doesn't matter. What matters above all is the "window of opportunity" offered by
Covid-19, boosting, among other issues, the expansion of what I previously described as
Digital Neo-Feudalism –
or Algorithm gobbling up Politics. No wonder politico-economic institutions from the WTO to
the EU as well as the Trilateral Commission are already investing in "rejuvenation" processes,
code for even more concentration of power.
Survey the imponderables
Very few thinkers, such as German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, see our current plight as a rare
opportunity to
"decelerate" life under turbo-capitalism.
As it stands, the point is not that we're facing an "attack of the
civilization-state" . The point is assertive civilization-states – such as China,
Russia, Iran – not submitted to the Hegemon, are bent on charting a quite different
course.
The Great Reset, for all its universalist ambitions, remains an insular, Western-centric
model benefitting the proverbial 1%. Ancient Greece did not see itself as "Western". The Great
Reset is essentially an Enlightenment-derived
project.
Surveying the road ahead, it will certainly be crammed with imponderables. From the Fed
wiring digital money directly into smartphone financial apps in the US to China advancing
an Eurasia-wide trade/economic system side-by side with the implementation of the digital
yuan.
The Global South will be paying a lot of attention to the sharp contrast between the
proposed wholesale deconstruction of the industrial economic order and the BRI project –
which focuses on a new financing system outside of Western monopoly and emphasizes
agro-industrial growth and long-term sustainable development.
The Great Reset would point to losers, in terms of nations, aggregating all the ones that
benefit from production and processing of energy and agriculture, from Russia, China and Canada
to Brazil, Indonesia and large swathes of Africa.
As it stands, there's only one thing we do know: the establishment at the core of the
Hegemon and the drooling orcs of Empire will only adopt a Great Reset if that helps to postpone
a decline accelerated on a fateful morning 19 years ago.
Over two dozen phones belonging to members of Robert Mueller's special counsel team were
wiped clean before they were handed over to the Inspector General, according to information
contained in
87 pages of DOJ records released on Thursday.
Some of the phones were wiped using the Apple operating system's 'wrong-password' failsafe,
where the wrong password must be entered ten times - after which the system wipes the
drive.
Those who couldn't seem to remember their password 10 times in a row include 'attack dog'
lawyer Andrew Weissman , who urged DOJ attorneys to go rogue and 'not' help US Attorney John
Durham investigate FBI and DOJ conduct during the Trump investigation.
A phone belong to assistant special counsel James Quarles "wiped itself without
intervention from him," the DOJ's records state.
Andrew Weismann, a top prosecutor on Mueller's team, "accidentally wiped" his cell phone,
causing the data to be lost. Other members of the team also accidentally wiped their phones,
the DOJ said.
Phones issued to at least three other Mueller prosecutors, Kyle Freeny, Rush Atkinson, and
senior prosecutor Greg Andres were also wiped of data.
Additionally, t he cell phone of FBI lawyer Lisa Page was misplaced by the special
counsel's office . While it was eventually obtained by the DOJ inspector general, by that
point the phone had been restored to its factory settings, wiping it of all dat a. The phone
of FBI agent Peter Strzok was also obtained by the inspector general's office, which found
"no substantive texts, notes or reminders" on it.
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In short black people are used as pawns in the political struggle between two neoliberal
clans fighting for power, using students without perspectives of gaining meaningful employment as
a ram. We saw this picture before in a different country. And riots do reverse gains achieved in
civil right struggle since 1960th, so they are also net losers. Racial tensions in the USA
definitely increased dramatically.
Notable quotes:
"... Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO allies. ..."
"... This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated. ..."
"... The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes in fear ..."
"... There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it alone. ..."
"... Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the leaders ..."
Here's your BLM Pop Quiz for the day: What do "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project",
and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning tell us about what's going on in America
today?
They point to deeply-embedded racism that shapes the behavior of white people They
suggest that systemic racism cannot be overcome by merely changing attitudes and laws They
alert us to the fact that unresolved issues are pushing the country towards a destructive race
war They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting
racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016
and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into
a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?
If you chose Number 4, you are right. We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive
outbreak of racial violence and mayhem. We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned,
insurgency-type operation that involves myriad logistical components including vast, nationwide
riots, looting and arson, as well as an extremely impressive ideological campaign. "Critical
Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning are as
much a part of the Oligarchic war on America as are the burning of our cities and the toppling
of our statues. All three, fall under the heading of "ideology", and all three are being used
to shape public attitudes on matters related to our collective identity as "Americans".
The plan is to overwhelm the population with a deluge of disinformation about their history,
their founders, and the threats they face, so they will submissively accept a New Order imposed
by technocrats and their political lackeys. This psychological war is perhaps more important
than Operation BLM which merely provides the muscle for implementing the transformative "Reset"
that elites want to impose on the country. The real challenge is to change the hearts and minds
of a population that is unwaveringly patriotic and violently resistant to any subversive
element that threatens to do harm to their country. So, while we can expect this propaganda
saturation campaign to continue for the foreseeable future, we don't expect the strategy will
ultimately succeed. At the end of the day, America will still be America, unbroken, unflagging
and unapologetic.
Let's look more carefully at what is going on.
On September 4, the Department of Homeland Security issued a draft report stating that
"White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States". According to an
article in Politico:
" all three draft (versions of the document) describe the threat from white
supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S. , listed above the
immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups . John Cohen, who oversaw DHS's
counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts' conclusion isn't
surprising.
"This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS,
the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related
threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white
supremac y and other far-right ideological causes," he said .
"Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social,
ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United
States," the draft reads. "Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists
will pose the most persistent and lethal threat."..(" DHS
draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat " Politico)
This is nonsense. White supremacists do not pose the greatest danger to the country, that
designation goes to the left-wing groups that have rampaged through more than 2,000 US cities
for the last 100 days. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-generated riots have decimated hundreds of
small businesses, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of merchants and their
employees, and left entire cities in a shambles. The destruction in Kenosha alone far exceeds
the damage attributable to the activities of all the white supremacist groups combined.
So why has Homeland Security made this ridiculous and unsupportable claim? Why have they
chosen to prioritize white supremacists as "the most persistent and lethal threat" when it is
clearly not true?
There's only one answer: Politics.
The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the
oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use
them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding. In this case, the honchos are
invoking the race card ("white supremacists") to divert attention from their sinister
destabilization program, their looting of the US Treasury (for their crooked Wall Street
friends), their demonizing of the mostly-white working class "America First" nationalists who
handed Trump the 2016 election, and their scurrilous scheme to establish one-party rule by
installing their addlepated meat-puppet candidate (Biden) as president so he can carry out
their directives from the comfort of the Oval Office. That's what's really going on.
DHS's announcement makes it possible for state agents to target legally-armed Americans who
gather with other gun owners in groups that are protected under the second amendment. Now the
white supremacist label will be applied more haphazardly to these same conservatives who pose
no danger to public safety. The draft document should be seen as a warning to anyone whose
beliefs do not jibe with the New Liberal Orthodoxy that white people are inherently racists who
must ask forgiveness for a system they had no hand in creating (slavery) and which was
abolished more than 150 years ago.
The 1619 Project" is another part of the ideological war that is being waged against the
American people. The objective of the "Project" is to convince readers that America was founded
by heinous white men who subjugated blacks to increase their wealth and power. According to the
World Socialist Web Site:
"The essays featured in the magazine are organized around the central premise that all of
American history is rooted in race hatred -- specifically, the uncontrollable hatred of
"black people" by "white people." Hannah-Jones writes in the series' introduction:
"Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country. "
This is a false and dangerous conception. DNA is a chemical molecule that contains the
genetic code of living organisms and determines their physical characteristics and
development . Hannah-Jones's reference to DNA is part of a growing tendency to derive
racial antagonisms from innate biological processes .where does this racism come from? It
is embedded, claims Hannah-Jones, in the historical DNA of American "white people." Thus, it
must persist independently of any change in political or economic conditions .
. No doubt, the authors of The Project 1619 essays would deny that they are predicting
race war, let alone justifying fascism. But ideas have a logic; and authors bear
responsibility for the political conclusions and consequences of their false and misguided
arguments." ("The New York Times's 1619
Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history", World Socialist Web
Site)
Clearly, Hannah-Jones was enlisted by big money patrons who needed an ideological foundation
to justify the massive BLM riots they had already planned as part of their US color revolution.
The author –perhaps unwittingly– provided the required text for vindicating
widespread destruction and chaos carried out in the name of "social justice."
As Hannah-Jones says, "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country", which is to
say that it cannot be mitigated or reformed, only eradicated by destroying the symbols of white
patriarchy (Our icons, our customs, our traditions and our history.), toppling the existing
government, and imposing a new system that better reflects the values of the burgeoning
non-Caucasian majority. Simply put, The Project 1619 creates the rationale for sustained civil
unrest, deepening political polarization and violent revolution.
All of these goals conveniently coincide with the aims of the NWO Oligarchs who seek to
replace America's Constitutional government with a corporate Superstate ruled by voracious
Monopolists and their globalist allies. So, while Hannah-Jones treatise does nothing to improve
conditions for black people in America, it does move the country closer to the dystopian dream
of the parasite class; Corporate Valhalla.
Then there is "Critical Race Theory" which provides the ideological icing on the cake. The
theory is part of the broader canon of anti-white dogma which is being used to indoctrinate
workers. White employees are being subjected to "reeducation" programs that require their
participation as a precondition for further employment . The first rebellion against critical
race theory, took place at Sandia Labs which is a federally-funded research agency that designs
America's nuclear weapons. According to journalist Christopher F. Rufo:
"Senator @HawleyMO and
@SecBrouillette have
launched an inspector general investigation, but Sandia executives have only accelerated
their purge against conservatives."
Sandia executives have made it clear: they want to force critical race theory,
race-segregated trainings, and white male reeducation camps on their employees -- and all
dissent will be severely punished. Progressive employees will be rewarded; conservative
employees will be purged." (" There is a civil war erupting
at @SandiaLabs ." Christopher F Rufo)
It all sounds so Bolshevik. Here's more info on how this toxic indoctrination program
works:
"Treasury Department
The Treasury Department held a training session telling employees that "virtually all
White people contribute to racism" and demanding that white staff members "struggle to own
their racism" and accept their "unconscious bias, White privilege, and White
fragility."
The National Credit Union Administration
The NCUA held a session for 8,900 employees arguing that America was "founded on
racism" and "built on the blacks of people who were enslaved. " Twitter thread here and
original source documents
here .
Sandia National Laboratories
Last year, Sandia National Labs -- which produces our nuclear arsenal -- held a
three-day reeducation camp for white males, teaching them how to deconstruct their
"white male culture" and forcing them to write letters of apology to women and people of
color . Whistleblowers from inside the labs tell me that critical race theory is now
endangering our national security. Twitter thread here and original source
documents
here .
Argonne National Laboratories
Argonne National Labs hosts trainings calling on white lab employees to admit that they
"benefit from racism" and atone for the "pain and anguish inflicted upon Black people. "
Twitter thread here .
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security hosted a Training on "microaggressions,
microinequities, and microassaults" where white employees were told that they had been
"socialized into oppressor roles. " Twitter thread here and original source
documents here
." (" Summary of
Critical Race Theory Investigations" , Christopher F Rufo)
On September 4, Donald Trump announced his administration "would prohibit federal
agencies from subjecting government employees to "critical race theory" or "white privilege"
seminar. ..
"It has come to the President's attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent
millions of taxpayer dollars to date 'training' government workers to believe divisive,
anti-American propaganda ," read a Friday memo
from the Office of Budget and Management Director Russ Vought. "These types of 'trainings'
not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its
inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce The
President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using
taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions."
The next day, September 5, Trump announced that the Department of Education was going to see
whether the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project was being used in school curricula
and– if it was– then those schools would be ineligible for federal funding.
Conservative pundits applauded Trump's action as a step forward in the "culture wars", but it's
really much more than that. Trump is actually foiling an effort by the domestic saboteurs who
continue look for ways to undermine democracy, reduce the masses of working-class people to
grinding poverty and hopelessness, and turn the country into a despotic military outpost ruled
by bloodsucking tycoons, mercenary autocrats and duplicitous elites. Alot of thought and effort
went into this malign ideological project. Trump derailed it with a wave of the hand. That's no
small achievement.
Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White
Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is
based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the
country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work
together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals
the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that
was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working
class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform
the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO
allies.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look
beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer
that must be eradicated.
A good article, but no mention of who exactly these oligarchs are. Or why so many of them
are Jewish.
Or why so many Zionist organisations support BLM and other such groups.
Mike, not mentioning these things will not save you. You will still be cancelled by
Progressive Inc.
This seems like a good explanation of what is happening. I wonder whether too many people
will fall for the propaganda, though. It is the classic effort to get the turkeys to support
thanksgiving.
The deserved progress and concessions achieved by the civil rights struggles for the Black
community is in danger of deteriorating because Black leadership will not stand up and
vehemently condemn the rioting and destruction and killing, and declare that the BLM movement
does not represent the majority of the Black American culture and that the overexaggerated
accusations of "racism" do not necessitate the eradication and revision of history, nor does
it require European Americans to feel guilt or shame. There is no need for a cultural
revolution. The ideology and actions of BLM are offensive and inconsistent with American
values, and Black leaders should be saying this every day, and should be admonishing about
the consequences. They should also use foresight to see how this is going to end, because the
BLM and their supporters are being used to fight a war that they can never win. And when it's
over, what perception will the rest of America have of Black people?
@sonofman g to TPTB. Better to have an amorphous slogan to donate money to than an actual
organization with humans, goals and ideas which can be held up to the light and critically
examined.
The whole sudden race thing is a fraud to eliminate the electoral support Trump had
amassed among blacks before Corona and Fentanyl Floyd. In line with what Whitney says, the
globalists need to take down Trump. And the race card has always been the first tool in the
DNC's toolkit. When all else fails, go nuclear with undefined claims of racism.
Almost every big magazine has a black person on the cover this month. Probably will in
October too. Coincidence? Sure it is.
They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
I'm shocked that they're trying to sell this Q-tier bullshit about Trump fighting the deep
state.
The reality about Trump is that he is the release valve, the red herring designed to keep
whitey pacified while massive repossessions and foreclosures take place, permanently
impoverishing a large part of the white population, and shutting down the Talmudic
service-based economy, which is all that is really left. It is Trump's DHS that declared a
large part of his white trashionalist base to be terrorists.
The populist majority never had anyone to vote for. This system will never give them one.
They aren't bright enough to make it happen.
Agree. Barack Obama in particular will go down in history a real disgrace to the legacy of
the US presidency. He is violating the sacred trust that the people of the United States
invested in him. What a fraud!
Good post Mr. Whitney especially about "white supremacy" garbage .which has only been
going on since the 90s! You know, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elohim City and Okie City, militias,
"patriot groups," etc. This really is nothing new. And, since so many remember the "white
supremacy" crapola was crapola back in the 90s, I'd say everyone pretty much regardless of
race over the age of 40 knows there is, as it says in Ecclesiastes in the Bible, "there is
nothing new under the sun." And, if you home schooled your kids back then, then you kids know
it as well. Fact is this: the DHS as with every other govt. agency is forced to blame "white
supremacy" for every problem in this country because who the heck else can they blame? Jews?
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahh when pigs fly After all, Noahide just might be around the
corner ..
Sheriffs have a lot of legal power. Ultimately, the battle is privatized money power
vs Joe Citizen/Sheriffs.
This sheriff is working a Constitutional angle that says: Local Posse (meaning you.. Joe
citizen) working with the Sheriff department to protect your local community. Richard Mack is
teaching other Sheriffs and (some Police) what their Constitutional power is, and that power
doesn't include doing bidding of Oligarchs.
Sheriffs are elected, and their revenue stream is outside of Oligarchy:
So Donald Trump suddenly discovers that racial Bolshevism is the official policy of
his own executive branch – a mere 3 years and 8 months after assuming the
position
... Looks like the same old flim-flam they pull every four years. No matter who wins, the
Davos folks continue to run the circus and fleece the suckers dry.
Because it is. Substitute "the ethnic Russian middle class are class enemies" for
"Anglo-American are all racists" and there you have it. Permission for a small organized
minority to eliminate a whole class on ideological grounds...
I live in a former communist country in Eastern Europe with corrupt politicians, oligarchs
and organized crime.
America was a country with a minor corruption and in which the oligarchs, although
influential, were not united in a small group with decisive force. Now America is slowly
slipping into the situation of a second-hand shit-hole country.
Is that I can see the situation more clearly than an American citizen who still has the
American perception of his contry the way it was 30 years ago.
Essential thing:
1) The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and
the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes
in fear .
2) There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and
a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a
larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it
alone.
3) Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the
leaders
4) BLM are exactly the brown shirts of the new Hitler.
Soon we will se the new Hitler/Stalin/ in plain light.
Thirty black children murdered recently; zero by police / BLM & 'the media' say
nothing: https://www.outkick.com/blm-101-volume-7-the-lives-of-innocent-black-kids-do-not-matter/
BTW:
– Last year, the nationwide total for all US police forces was 47 killings of unarmed
criminals by police during arrest procedures.
– 8 were black, 19 were white.
Though blacks, relative to their numbers, committed a vastly higher number of crimes, hence
their immensely greater arrest rate.
@Justvisiting urally, it is nonsense -- nasty, power-hungry, censorious nonsense.
It is the opposite of scientific or empirical thought -- science can not accept theories
which are not capable of falsification. (Take astrology -- actually, don't ! -- what ever
conclusion it comes to can never be wrong : Dick or Jane didn't find love ? Well, one
of Saturn's moons was retrograde & Mercury declensed Venus (I don't know what it means
either) . or Dick went on a bender & Jane had a whole bad hair week.
Frankly, to play these pre-modern tricks on us is just grotesquely insulting. That some are
falling for it is grotesquely depressing.
Another ringer from Mike Whitney! Keep 'em comin', brother.
We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive outbreak of racial violence and mayhem.
We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned, insurgency-type operation that involves myriad
logistical components including vast, nationwide riots, looting and arson, as well as an
extremely impressive ideological campaign.
Yup. TPTB have been grooming BLM/Antifa for this moment for at least 3-4 years now, if not
longer. Here's a former BLMer who quit speaking out three years ago about the organization's
role in the present 'race war':
It is very clever politics and (war) propaganda. You break down and demoralise your
enemies at the same time as assuring your own side of it's own righteous use of violence.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look
beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows.
Nailing it.
4. They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?
If you chose Number 4, you are right.
If we believe this – we need to act like it. These are "enemies, foreign and
domestic ". This isn't ordinary politics, it arguably transcends politics.
What hope is there without organization?
And whatever is done – don't give them ammunition. The resistance must not be an
ethno-resistance.
But he is either naive or a bad manager, as his hires are deadly to his aims. And the
management criticism is big, because as a leader that is mostly what he does.
That he gets information to affect US policy for good, from outside of his circle of
trusted personnel, is a sad state of affairs.
@Robert Dolan ds that it would have ended on day one were it not officially sanctioned
and the rioters protected from prosecution. Why hasn't the Janet Rosenberg/Thousand
Currents/Tides Foundation connection with the BLM/DNC/MSM cabal, as well as with Antifa and
social media, been the major investigation on Fox News? Why haven't Zuckerberg, Zucker, et al
been arrested for incitement to commit federal crimes, including capital treason to overthrow
the duly elected president? (Just a few rhetorical questions for the hell of it.) What's so
galling is that the cops and federal agents are being used as just so many patsies who are
deployed, not to protect, but deployed to look like fools and be held up for mockery as
pathetic exemplars of white disempowerment.
The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the
oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use
them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding.
Agree, but where is President Trump? He was supposed to appoint undersecretaries and
assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries and Schedule C whippersnappers on whose
desks such outrages are supposed to die.
I've thought from the beginning that this lack of attention to "personnel as policy" --
with Trump overestimating the ability of the ostensible CEO to overcome such intransigence --
was one of his major failures. I am sympathetic, as there are not many people he could trust
to be loyal to his agenda, much less to him, but this is a disaster in every agency
Few years ago I watch a clip secretly recorded in Ukrainian synagogue where Rabi said
"first we have to fight Catholics and with Muslims it will be an easy job" ...
Thanks to Mr Whitney for being able to cut through the fog and see what's going on behind
it. The term "white supremacist" wasn't much in public use at all until the day Trump was
elected then suddenly it was all over the place. It's like one of those massive ad campaigns
whose jingle is everywhere as if some group decided on it as a theme to be pushed. They're
really afraid that the white working class population will wake up and see how the country is
being sold out from underneath their feet hence the need to keep it divided and intimidated.
Like all the other color revolutions everywhere else they strike at the weak links within the
country to create conflict, in the US case it's so-called diversity. There's billions
available to be spent in this project so plenty of traitors can be found, unwitting or
otherwise, to carry out their assignments. The billionaire class own most of the media and
much else and see the US as their farm. They have no loyalty whatsoever and outsource
everything to China or anywhere else they can squeeze everything out of the workers. They
want a global dictatorship and admire the Chinese government for the way it can order its
citizens around.
You are exactly right. Trump is doing his part (knowingly or unknowingly, but probably
knowingly) to accomplish the NWO objectives. He was not elected in 2016 in spite of NWO
desires, as most Trump supporters think, but rather precisely BECAUSE of NWO desires.
The NWO probably also wants him to win again this year, and if so then he will win. The
reason the NWO wanted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to
neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19
scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.
@Trinity While I tend to agree with you that it looks like a race war, the question is
why is it happening now? If it were just a race war promoted by radicals in BLM and Antifa,
it does not explain the nationwide coordination (let's face it the faces of BLM and Antifa
are not that smart or connected), the support and censorship of the violence by the MSM and
the support of Marxist BLM by corporations to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is a color revolution in the making and may come to a peak after Nov. 3rd. Whitney is on
to something, there is much more going on behind the "smoke and mirrors" and AG Barr (if he's
not part of it) should be investigating it.
They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
I keep reading such nonsense in the comments above. the so-called populist majority does
not get it, Trump is not placed here to stop the Globalist agenda, that is an electioneering
stunt. Look at what he has actually and really done.
How has he stopped the Globalist move forward?? By the Covid plandemic being
allowed to circle the globe and shut down the US economy and social norm? By moving our high
tech companies to Israel? Giving Israel and their Wall Street allies what is left of US
credit wealth? Draining the swamp with even more Zio-Neocon Swamp creatures in the govt than
ever? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem and all requests per Netanyahu's wish list? A real
anti-Globalist stand? Looting the Federal Reserve for the Wall Street high fliers, who
garnered more wealth during the crash test run of March-April and are sure to make out with
even more for the coming big crash?
Phoney stunts of stopping immigration or bashing China. Really? China is still rising
propelled by Wall Street and Banker funds. I have not seen any jobs coming home, lost more
than ever in US history this year. Only lost homes for the working and middle classes.
How is Populist America standing up for their constitutional rights which is being
shredded a little more each day? Standing up for their Real Interests, which are eroded and
stolen on an almost daily basis by Trump's NY Mafia and Wall Street Oligarchs. Jobs gone for
good and government assistance to the needy disappearing, as that is against the phoney
Republic individualism, that you must make it on your own. Right just like the big goverment
assistance always going to the big money players and banks, remember as they are too big
to let fail!
Dreaming that Trump is going to save White America from the Gobalists is just
bull corn . From whom BLM? Proven street theatre that will disappear on command. I
actually have come to learn that some Black leaders are speaking out intelligently for street
calm and distancing themselves from BLM.
Problem with the USA is the general population is so very dumbed down by 60 years of MSM
– TV s and Hollywood mind control programming that the public prefers professional
actors like Reagan and Trump over real politicians, and surely never chose a Statesman or
real Patriotic leader. the public political narrative is still set by Fox , CNN and
MSNBC .
The deep state is so infiltrated and overwhelmed with Zio and Globalist agents, that it is
now almost hopeless to fix. Sorry to point out but Trump is best described as the Dummy
sitting on his Ventriloquist's lap (Jared Kushner).
Situation is near hopeless as even here on Ron Unz Review the comments are so
disappointing, almost 80% are focused on the Race as the prime issue and supportive of Trump
fakery (not that I support Biden and Zio slut Kamil Harris either).
In sum, beyond putting their MAGA hats on, White America is more focused more on
playing Cowboy with their toy guns, AR's and all than really getting involved politically to
sort things out to get American onto a better track. Of course, this is not taken seriously
as it might call for reaching out to other American communities that are even more
disenfranchised: African- Americans and Latinos.
@David Erickson nted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to
neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19
scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.
Covid and BLM/ANTIFA are just window dressing for the financial turmoil. "Look over here
whitey, there's a pandemic" and "look over here whitey, there's a riot" is much preferred to
whitey shooting the sheriff who comes to take his stuff.
Wave the flag and bible while spreading love for the cops, and the repossessions and
evictions should go off without a hitch. Yes, Trump is a knowing participant.
"My impression is that BLM, Antifa and other protestors are well aware of this"
Like all good Maoists the cult white kids of antifa rigidly adhere to the mission statement
and stick the inconvenient truth in the back of their mushy minds. BLM ... is a mercenary.
Can you imagine any other groups rioting and destroying American cities for over 3 months?
Imagine if the Hells Angels or some other White biker gang was doing what Antifa and BLM are
doing? Hell, imagine if it were a bunch of Hare Krishnas pulling this shit off? Hell, I think
the local mayors, police, and other law enforcement employees wouldn't even take this much shit
even if the rioters were Girl Scouts. We are talking 3-4 months of lawlessness, assaults,
rapes, murders ( cold blooded premeditated murders at that) and still the people in charge let
this shit go on night and day. IF the POTUS doesn't have the authority or the power to stop
shit like this from going on then what the hell do we even vote for anyhow? Granted, I see the
reason for not being ruled by a dictatorship, but who in the hell can justify letting these
riots go on? One can only assume that both the republicants and the demsheviks are fine with
these riots because no one seems in a hurry to shut them down or arrest the hombres funding
these riots. Who is housing and feeding the rioters? Who is paying their travel expenses? I'm
sure most everyone in Washington knows who the people are behind these riots but don't expect
any action anytime soon.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond
the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that
must be eradicated.
That's true to a large degree, but
It is indeed an attempt to liquidate the working and lower middle class. Most of the
American working and lower middle class, obviously not all, is White. So predictably we have
these calls for White Genocide. Agreed and good to see the tie-in with the Coronavirus Hoax
lock downs, too, which also spread the devastation into minority communities under the guise of
public safety.
The one question that remains unanswered is why the major cities were targeted for
destruction. Obviously these are the playgrounds of the oligarchs and have been decimated. We
will learn soon enough.
The Reverend William Barber is the only genuine black leader I am aware of.
And he makes a pointn of not speaking only for blacks, but for all disadvantaged communities,
including poor whites. IMO he is the real deal, and I very much hope he takes the lead in
articulating genuine community values of respect and equality for all, including basics such as
decent health care and food access.
The pressure exerted on someone like Barber by the BLM forces in the media and other
institutions is enormous.
I wish Ron Unz would invite him to write something for the UR.
"Crazy" was the term the FBI agent used to describe the behavior of Christopher Steele,
author of the now-debunked Trump-Russia dossier. "I've seen crazy source-related stuff in 20
years in New York and this was one of the craziest," the veteran agent testified to the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Christopher Steele: "I'm very upset about – we're very upset – about the actions
of your agency," Steele said, according to Gaeta. Using the first person plural, Steele likely
meant himself and his client, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Victoria Jones/PA via AP
Nevertheless, the FBI continued to rely on Steele's allegations – that Donald Trump
and his team were conspiring with Russians who possessed compromising information – to
justify its surveillance of the Trump campaign. Without evidence to verify Steele's claims, the
FBI fell back on its assertion that the former British intelligence agent was reliable.
The previously unreported testimony of FBI agent Michael Gaeta is found on page 900 of the
fifth and final volume of the Senate committee's probe of Russian interference in the 2016
election. It raises new questions about the basis of the FBI's investigation of the Trump
campaign, Crossfire Hurricane, and the declarations it made to the FISA court in four separate
applications submitted to spy on American citizens.
Gaeta had a long history with the London-based Steele, who had started his own firm, Orbis
Business Intelligence, after leaving the British spy service MI6 in 2009. Between 2013 and
2016, the bureau had paid Steele $95,000 to pass along tidbits on Eurasian organized crime;
Gaeta was his contact at the bureau . It was Gaeta whom Steele approached in July 2016 with
wild and depraved stories of collusion and kompromat. Gaeta became the "handling agent" for
Steele's participation in Crossfire Hurricane. Among his tasks was to get Steele paid (a
process that came along slowly) and to see to it that Steele didn't violate the FBI's rules on
confidentiality.
This requirement for discretion created a conflict of interest for Steele, who was also
being paid for the same information by the Washington-based firm Fusion GPS. Fusion, in turn
was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign for
opposition research on Trump. The Democrats wanted Steele's information spread far and wide.
They also wanted to be able to claim that the FBI was investigating the allegations. Paid FBI
informants, however, are not allowed to tell anyone of their work for the FBI or of the
bureau's investigations.
Gaeta was astonished, then, when shortly before the 2016 election an article appeared in
Mother Jones titled
"A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald
Trump." The sub-headline asked, "Has the bureau investigated this material?" Gaeta was
convinced Steele was the source for the article and confronted him about it. Steele readily
admitted he was behind the Mother Jones story.
The conversation that followed and its aftermath have been described before, but in
bloodless ways that fail to capture the importance of that confrontation in determining
Steele's reliability and credibility. For example, a Justice Department inspector general
report says "Handling Agent 1 advised Steele that he must cease collecting information for the
FBI, and it was unlikely that the FBI would continue a relationship with him."
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
"Listen, Is It About the Money?"
Here's how Gaeta recounted that conversation to the Senate: "Listen, is it about the money?"
Gaeta asked Steele. "Because we have the money now. Is it about the money?" The FBI had
promised, but had yet to deliver to Steele, $15,000 for one meeting with Crossfire Hurricane
agents. The bureau had further promised Steele he would be paid "significantly" for his
Trump-Russia research.
Gaeta assumed at first a delay in payment had made Steele go rogue.
"Yes, I'm owed the money, but that's secondary," Steele told Gaeta. "I'm very upset about
– we're very upset – about the actions of your agency." By the "we" in "we're
very upset" one can reasonably infer that Steele was speaking about himself and his client,
Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson (whose client, not counting cutouts, was Hillary Clinton's
campaign).
The handling agent was shocked: "I had no idea what he was talking about." Before Gaeta
could inquire further, Steele started railing about ''your Director" and his "reopening of the
investigation." This was an apparent reference to former FBI Director James Comey's decision to
reopen the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server after 340,000 copies of State
Department emails between Clinton and her close personal aide, Huma Abedin, were discovered on
a laptop used by Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner. He was a disgraced congressman under
investigation by the bureau's New York office for sending sexually explicit messages and photos
to an underage girl.
At which point it all became clear to the handling agent:
"I'm now understanding that he did this because he was upset that the Director's reopening
of the investigation was going to negatively affect the election for Hillary Clinton."
The handling agent described his reaction to Steele's behavior as "surprise and disbelief."
Gaeta told the Senate that Steele's actions and attitude weren't just "crazy source-related
stuff," but "one of the craziest" the veteran agent had seen in two decades of handling
sources. The words are significant: Steele's behavior with the FBI has been characterized as a
sort of professional disagreement, uncomfortable perhaps but not unreasonable. Gaeta's blunt
assessment casts things in a much harsher light and undercuts subsequent efforts by the FBI's
top officials to rehabilitate Steele in order to justify using his "reporting."
Although it has been downplayed until now, Steele's acting out – and his overtly
declared partisan motivations -- constituted a crisis for the bureau, so much so that the
handling agent describes it in violent terms:
"After that point – after everybody digests what happened," Gaeta told the Senate
committee, "[p]hones were ringing at that point; people's ears were bleeding."
Bill Priestap, left, with Michael Horowitz, DoJ inspector general. Priestap vouched for
Steele's reliability, and that misrepresentation is important because it was Priestap who was
responsible for the official launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in the first
place. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Whose ears would those have been? Gaeta's first call likely would have gone to Bill
Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.
He had just been made Gaeta's point of contact at FBI headquarters.
"Management said we were going to close him," Gaeta told the Senate.
"At that point it's just obvious. That's all you could do." The "management" was Priestap,
according to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. "Priestap decided that Steele had to be
closed immediately." Gaeta drew up the paperwork and Steele was removed from the list of
official bureau sources on Nov. 17, 2016.
In the wake of Donald Trump's election, President Obama ordered a multi-agency "Intelligence
Community Assessment" of Russian interference in the presidential campaign. James Comey, the
director whose actions had prompted Steele to go outside the bureau in the first place, now
pushed for Steele's "reporting" to be included in the document, even though none of it had been
corroborated. Comey called Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"I informed the DNI that we would be contributing the [Steele] reporting (although I
didn't use that name) to the IC [Intelligence Community] effort," Comey reported in an email
to his top deputies the next day.
"I told him the source of the material, which included salacious material about the
President-Elect, was a former [REDACTED] who appears to be a credible person."
First in the list of recipients of Comey's email was Priestap.
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Priestap would have known from Gaeta that Steele's behavior was among the "craziest" the
handling agent had run into in two decades of source work. He would have known also that, by
his own admission, Steele's motivations were to promote Hillary Clinton's campaign apparently
by sabotaging Trump's. Yet Priestap went along with Comey's presentation of Steele as a
credible source. More than that, Priestap promoted the idea of including Steele's allegations
in the intelligence assessment, himself writing to the CIA and describing the former British
spy as "reliable."
Finally, Priestap vouched for Steele's reliability even though he later admitted to the
Justice Department inspector general that he "understood that the information [from Steele]
could have been provided by the Russians as part of a disinformation campaign."
Steele
Cast as 'Person of Integrity'
But that's not how Steele's materials were presented to the secret FISA court. Shortly after
the election, Priestap went with FBI agent Peter Strzok to London to see if they could
rehabilitate Steele's credibility by gathering the opinions of "persons who previously had
professional contacts with Steele." They found some who described Steele as "smart" and a
"person of integrity" But several lamented Steele's "poor judgment" or "lack of judgment" and
his habit of "pursuing people [with] political risk but no intel value." But because Priestap
and Strzok did not find any former colleagues to say Steele made things up out of whole cloth,
the Crossfire Hurricane team declared him to be credible for the purpose of justifying
surveillance warrants.
The willingness of the assistant director for counterintelligence to misrepresent essential
information is important because it was Priestap who was responsible for the official launch of
the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in the first place.
Gaeta explained to senators just how serious and irrevocable a break it was to "close" a
source: ''Once he's closed, nobody is allowed – we can't talk to him."
In this case, that practice was not followed. Priestap's apparent rationale was that the
decision to close Steele as a source was not made because he offered unfounded claims but
because he had violated confidentiality agreements by sharing them with the press. And so, the
FBI continued to gather new "reporting" by Steele. One of channels was David Corn, the Mother
Jones reporter who had written the article about Steele's accusations. Corn was a longtime
friend of then-FBI General Counsel James Baker. Their children had gone to the same school
years before and carpooled. Corn gave Steele memos to Baker and then Baker passed them on to
Priestap. Thus the strange situation in which an assistant director of the FBI forbade agents
from talking to Steele because of the source's indiscretion with Mother Jones and then
proceeded to gather Steele materials through a back-channel relationship with Mother Jones.
Strange, yes, perhaps even crazy.
fxrxexexdxoxmx2 , 1 hour ago
They will never give up reshaping this story.
Here is the truth
Barack Hussein Obama used the DOJ,FBI, CIA, State Department to spy on his campaign
rival.
Those loyal to him then used the same agencies in an COUP attempt to remove a duly
elected President.
End of story, no spin.
JimmyJones , 1 hour ago
Oh I love President Trump for completely exposing the Deep State and their partners in
Crime at the MSM...
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 58 minutes ago
"completely exposing the Deep State"??
This is but a small corner of a huge termite infestation.
Blondefire , 1 hour ago
The only thing crazier than the Steele dossier are the deaths of Seth Rich and Epstein,
or HRC maintaining a private email server which was literally a superhighway for highly
classified information to be funneled directly to China for which no one ever suffered even
trivial consequences, or HRC and WJC supporting the Uranium One deal along with Sleepy Joe
and selling materials vital to our national defense to our sworn enemies, or Obummer being
elected to any office higher than dog catcher, or the entire set of circumstances
surrounding the death of Justice Scalia and the complete lack of curiosity on the part of
the "impartial press", or the deaths of innocent patriots in Benghazi during an arms deal
gone wrong, or the complete lack of curiosity on the part of the "impartial press" on the
Las Vegas massacre and resultant civilian deaths during an arms deal gone wrong, or the
current situation across the nation with civilian police forces being slandered and
defunded, with officers being arrested or encouraged to resign en masse, presumably to
create a vacuum which can only be filled by a national police force of some sort and
probably overseen by the DHS, or almost any of the other headlines from the past 10
years.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 59 minutes ago
I am only 70 and I wouldn't piss on any of the members of the FBI/CIA/Congress if they
were on fire. They are all useless to the common good of this country. The entire
government workforce in DC needs to be fired starting this afternoon. The most useless
MFers on the planet work in city/count/state/federal government. It takes 7 of them to do
the job of one good associate.
Bay of Pigs , 1 hour ago
Huma Abedin. Oh yeah, I remember her.
Anyone know what happened to her husband's laptop?
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 1 hour ago
Lindsey Graham isn't going to do **** about anything going forward because he like his
useless butt boy John McCain are knee deep in this coup.
MrBoompi , 1 hour ago
Steele is a criminal along with a long list of others, starting off with Obama and
Brennan.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 56 minutes ago
Barr has 2 more weeks before The Donald has to stand and use the Pulpit....it's ugly now
with the dems coming everyday with a new scheme for Trump to have to counter. The good news
is the MSM is Chicken Little at this point. Only a F fool believe anything they say since
95% of everything they say about Trump is already negative.
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I love your wife , 1 hour ago
How come the fact that Steele is a foreigner never comes in to play?
mikka , 1 hour ago
He is an "allied" foreigner.
BetterOffDead , 27 minutes ago
Are we sure he is retired from MI-6? Sounds like foreign interference in our election,
sponsored by a candidate for president. Good thing she didn't win, she would have been
impeached for this! /sarc
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Ditch , 1 hour ago
There are no good actors in any of these stories. And don't tell me to just wait for
Sessions, Horrorwitz,Dumbham ...
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Joebloinvestor , 51 minutes ago
The FBI acts with impunity and no integrity.
Slammofandango , 15 minutes ago
Just to be clear, Steele was paid by the FBI, with our tax dollars, to meet with the FBI
so as to lend legitimacy to fiction created by a company paid to smear Hillary Clinton's
political opposition, with itself being paid with other funds that came by way of a law
firm hired by Hillary Clinton.
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Freespeaker , 26 minutes ago
Rod Rosenstein is complicit. He should lose his pension and other gov benefits. He
should be seriously considered for prosecution.
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RickyLaFleur , 14 minutes ago
Shadowgate explains why these outsourced contractors are the root of the problem. We
have been advised.
Freespeaker , 9 minutes ago
They are part of the problem. But really it is just another way to cover things up.
sborovay07 , 21 minutes ago
The treasonists behind the coup, other than 1, still remain free. Strzok, instead of
making license plates, has his 2nd book coming out. Meanwhile, the individual who could
have exposed the hoax, Julian Assange, is withering away in prison. It has been so obvious
for a number of years that the Deep State operatives on both sides of the political
spectrum still control the system. Most Americans are not aware of this as the
MSM/Socialist/Marxist/Globalist/DeepState cabal will never admit their crimes. Assange, as
in my book,
Dad, Why Are You Still Talking About Saul Alinsky, He's Been Dead Since 1972? Socialism and
the Deep States War on Our Constitution, tells a tale to Congress that the Deep State
and Obama treasonists never want you to hear. They need to pay!!!
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LOL123 , 22 minutes ago
Priestap may have been the first on list from comey but that's not the first source of
dossier.
"
Rahm Emmanuel, who became President Obama's chief of staff, wouldn't allow him (sidney
blumenthal) near the Obama White House. Hillary kept him, however, at a $10,000 a month
sinecure at the Clinton Foundation where he went on to be instrumental in creating the
bengaziscandal from his "Libyan sources."
Trey Gowdy said that the FBI used information from Hillary Clinton hatchet man Sidney
Blumenthal to corroborate the Steele dossier.
"I have seen each factual assertion listed in that dossier, and then I've seen the FBI's
justification. And when you're citing newspaper articles as corroboration for a factual
assertion that you have made, you don't need an FBI agent to go do a Google search," said
Gowdy, a former South Carolina congressman and member of the House Intelligence Committee,
in a Fox News interview.
"And when the name Sidney Blumenthal is included as part of your corroboration, and
you're the world's leading law enforcement agency, you have a problem," Gowdy said.In 2018,
Gowdy hinted that Blumenthal was responsible for the creation of the dossier.
"When you hear who the source or one of the sources of that information is, you're going
to think, 'Oh my gosh, I've heard that name somewhere before. Where could it possibly have
been?'" Gowdy
said in February 2018
Blumenthal, you recall , was an assistant senior
advisor to President Clinton from 1997 to 2001, the prime Clinton scandal years, following
a career as a writer for the New Yorker. He was a prime witness in the grand jury
testimonies over the Monica Lewinsky scandal and famous for leaking creepy stories about
the Ken Starr special prosecutor investigation to the press, and came to be known as a man
who would do anything for the Clintons. He got a reputation so slimey that even Rahm
Emmanuel, who became President Obama's chief of staff, wouldn't allow him near the Obama
White House. Hillary kept him, however, at a $10,000 a month sinecure at the Clinton
Foundation where he went on to be instrumental in creating the Benghazi scandal from his
"Libyan sources." These days, he's affiliated with David Brock's Media Matters, the slime
machine featured by Sharyl Attkisson in her bestseller,
The Smear: How Shady Politcal Operatives Control What You See, What You Think and How You
Vote .
Since then, he's got Clinton in this Steele dossier mess. You'd think Hillary would not
want to have anything to do with him after Benghazi, but they're birds of a feather.
Blumenthal is to Clinton as Ben Rhodes is to Obama.
Blumenthal was on Hillarys retainer and he is really good at making **** up and getting
FBI/CIA involved so much so that he was NOT ALLOWED IN OBAMAS WHITE HOUSE.
To try and pin this on Priestap is a joke.
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Freespeaker , 1 hour ago
Halper, Steele and Mifsud should testify publicly.
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Shifter_X , 23 minutes ago
No one talks about the true origins of the "pee" story anymore
"... The idea, therefore, that Paul Manafort was an agent of influence for the Russian government flies against everything we know about what he actually did. As for Kilimnik, maybe he is a Russian intelligence agent – I'm not in a position to say. But if he is, he's a very weird one, who spent years actively pushing the Ukrainian government to pursue a policy which directly contradicted Russian interests. ..."
"... None of this, needless to say, appears in the US Senate report. Instead, the report chooses to focus on the apparently shocking revelation that Manafort shared Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, as if this sharing of private information was in some ways a massive threat to national security and proof that Manafort was working for the Russians. The fact that both Manafort and Kilimnik spent years doing their damnedest to undermine Russia is simply ignored. Go figure! ..."
Despite the secondary roles played some bit part actors in the Russiagate drama, the central
figure in allegations that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to be elected as
president of the United States has always been Trumps' onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The recent US Senate report on Russian 'interference' in the 2016 presidential election thus
started off its analysis with a long exposé of Manafort's comings and goings.
Simply put, the thesis is as follows: while working in Ukraine as an advisor to
'pro-Russian' Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Manafort was in effect working on behalf
of the Russian state via 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian oligarchs as well as Russian billionaire Oleg
Deripaska (a man with 'close ties' to the Kremlin). Also suspicious was Manafort's close
relationship with one Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the US Senate claims is a Russia intelligence
agent. All these connections meant that while in Ukraine, Manafort was helping the Russian
Federation spread its malign influence. On returning to the USA and joining the Trump campaign,
he then continued to fulfill the same role.
The fundamental flaw in this thesis has always been the well-known fact that while advising
Yanukovich, Manafort took anything but a 'pro-Russian' position, but instead pressed him to
sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU). Since gaining independence, Ukraine
had avoided being sucked either into the Western or the Russian camp. But the rise of two
competing geopolitical projects – the EU and the Russia-backed Eurasian Union – was
making this stance increasingly impossible, and Ukraine was being put in a position where it
would be forced to choose. This was because the two Unions are incompatible – one can't
be in two customs unions simultaneously, when they levy different tariffs and have different
rules. Association with the EU meant an end to the prospect of Ukraine joining the Eurasian
Union. It was therefore a goal which was entirely incompatible with Russian interests, which
required that Ukraine turn instead towards Eurasia.
Manafort's position on this matter therefore worked against Russia. Even The
Guardian journalist Luke Harding had to concede this in his book Collusion ,
citing a former Ukrainian official Oleg Voloshin that, 'Manafort was an advocate for US
interests. So much so that the joke inside [Yanunkovich's] Party of Regions was that he
actually worked for the USA.'
If anyone had any doubts about this, they can now put them aside. On Monday, the news agency
BNE Intellinews
announced that it had received a leak of hundreds of Kilimnik's emails detailing his
relationship with Manafort and Yanukovich. The story they tell is not at all what the US Senate
and other proponents of the Trump-Russia collusion fantasy would have you believe. As
BNE reports:
Today the Yanukovych narrative is that he was a stool pigeon for Russian President
Vladimir Putin from the start, but after winning the presidency he actually worked very hard
to take Ukraine into the European family. As bne IntelliNews has already reported,
Manafort's flight records also show how he crisscrossed Europe in an effort to build support
in Brussels for Yanukovych in the run up to the EU Vilnius summit.
On March 1, his first foreign trip as newly minted president was to the EU capital of
Brussels. The leaked emails show that Manafort influenced Yanukovych's decision to visit
Brussels as first stop, working in concert with his assistant Konstantin Kilimnik In a
memorandum entitled 'Purpose of President Yanukovych Trip to Brussels,' Manafort argued that
the decision to visit Brussels first would underscore Yanukovych's mission to "bring European
values to Ukraine," and kick start negotiations on the Association Agreement.
The memorandum on the Brussels visit was the first of many from Manafort and Kilimnik to
Yanukovych, in which they pushed Yanukovych to signal a clear pro-EU line and to carry out
reforms to back this up.
To handle Yanukovych's off-message antics, Manafort and Kilimnik created a back channel to
Yanukovych for Western politicians – in particular those known to appreciate Ukraine's
geopolitical significance vis-à-vis Russia. In Europe, these were Sweden's then
foreign minister Carl Bildt, Poland's then foreign minister Radosław Sikorski and
European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule, and in the US, Vice President Joe
Biden.
"We need to launch a 'Friends of Ukraine' programme to help us use informal channels in
talks on the free trade zone and modernisation of the gas transport system," Manafort and
Kilimnik wrote to Yanukovych in September 2010. "Carl Bildt is the foundation of this
informal group and has sufficient weight with his colleagues in questions connected to
Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership. ( ) but he needs to be able to say that he has a direct
channel to the President, and he knows that President Yanukovych remains committed to
European integration."
Beyond this, the emails show that Manafort and Kilimnik also tried hard to arrange a meeting
between Yanukovich and US President Barack Obama, and urged Yanukovich to show leniency to
former Prime Minister Yuliia Timoshenko (who was imprisoned for fraud).
It is noticeable that the members of the 'back channel' Manafort and Kilimnik created to
lobby on behalf of Ukraine in the EU included some of the most notably Russophobic European
politicians of the time, such as Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski. Moreover, nowhere in any of
what they did can you find anything that could remotely be described as 'pro-Russian'. Indeed,
the opposite is true. As previously noted, Ukraine's bid for an EU agreement directly
challenged a key Russian interest – the expansion of the Eurasian Union to include
Ukraine. Manafort and Kilimnik were therefore very much working against Russia, not
for it.
The idea, therefore, that Paul Manafort was an agent of influence for the Russian
government flies against everything we know about what he actually did. As for Kilimnik, maybe
he is a Russian intelligence agent – I'm not in a position to say. But if he is, he's a
very weird one, who spent years actively pushing the Ukrainian government to pursue a policy
which directly contradicted Russian interests.
None of this, needless to say, appears in the US Senate report. Instead, the report
chooses to focus on the apparently shocking revelation that Manafort shared Trump campaign
polling data with Kilimnik, as if this sharing of private information was in some ways a
massive threat to national security and proof that Manafort was working for the Russians. The
fact that both Manafort and Kilimnik spent years doing their damnedest to undermine Russia is
simply ignored. Go figure!
BLM is all about anti-white activism, black supremacy and the forcible transfer of white
wealth to blacks but Tucker Carlson keeps insisting that BLM is a smokescreen for class
struggle.
The way that BLM are acting now they could almost be called pro-White activists. They
certainly don't make diversity look like a strength or something that would be in any way
shape or form desirable.
Oh, look, no masks! And you thought that got covered up by the investigation done by the
Mueller team? Let's go over this one more time:
The document declassified by DNI Grenell shows that there were 14 unique days when the NSA
received requests to "unmask"--the first was on 30 November 2016 by UN Ambassador Samantha
Power and the last came on 12 January from Joe Biden. There were two separate requests on the
14th of December by Samantha Power, which indicates two separate NSA reports. Samantha Power
would not have to submit two requests for the same document.
With "first after the post" election rules no third party can succeed.
Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "major new corporate-free political party in America." ..."
"... "There is only one choice in this election, and that is the consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump, or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden," ..."
"... "The oligarchs with Trump or Biden will win again, and we will lose." ..."
"... Only one thing matters to the oligarchs, it is not democracy, it is not truth, it is not the consent of the governed, it is not income inequality, it is not the surveillance state, it is not endless war it is the primacy of corporate power, which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class and the working poor in misery. ..."
"... We have reverted to aristocracy; it is now a corporate aristocracy. ..."
"... "It is health insurance companies, it is big pharmaceutical companies, it is big oil, it is food companies and of course, it is the military industrial complex," ..."
"... "we are in a fight for our lives and for future generations," ..."
"... "We don't believe in the lies and the bribes and the contentment in a lousy peace," ..."
"... "How can we have peace in moments like this, when over 90 million of our sisters and brothers are either uninsured or underinsured?" ..."
"... "How can we have peace when on the streets of America right now, black lives have been reaching out, calling out the racism and the white supremacy and the bigotry of a system that was created for black lives to languish." ..."
"... How can we have peace when you got a Congress that goes on recess while millions of people are facing evictions from their homes? ..."
"... "We need a third or fourth entity to step in. The lesser of two evils is still evil," ..."
"... "We are living in a moment of massive imperial meltdown, spiritual breakdown, and we need prophetic fight-back," ..."
Fed up with decades of two-party rule, hundreds of thousands of Americans tuned in for the People's Convention, where they
voted to form a new political alternative unbeholden to corporate power or the military-industrial complex.
The event drew
more
than 400,000 viewers
to its livestream on Sunday, organizers said. It continued to trend on Twitter through more than 5
hours of speeches that culminated in a vote to create a "major new corporate-free
political party in America."
Among the speakers at the
convention were several disgruntled Democrats, from Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 national co-chair Nina Turner to a candidate in
this year's primaries, Marianne Williamson. The roster of speakers also included former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura,
comedian Jimmy Dore, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who summed up the spirit of the convention in a fiery
address.
"There is only one choice in this election, and that is the consolidation of oligarchic
power under Donald Trump, or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden,"
said Hedges, who also hosts RT's '
On
Contact
.'
"The oligarchs with Trump or Biden will win again, and we will lose."
Only one thing matters to the oligarchs, it is not democracy, it is not truth, it is
not the consent of the governed, it is not income inequality, it is not the surveillance state, it is not endless war it
is the primacy of corporate power, which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class and the working
poor in misery.
The People's Convention
was held on the heels of the Republican and Democratic national conventions earlier this month, which event organizers said
"erased
the needs of poor and working people in a time of mounting national crisis."
It ended with a vote to create the People's
Party in 2021, in which some 99 percent of its 400,000 viewers took part.
Williamson, who made an
unsuccessful bid for Democratic nominee in the 2020 race, slammed an economic system that for decades has stranded
"millions
of people without even a life vest,"
concentrating massive amounts of wealth upward and leaving the American middle
class
"completely devastated."
We have reverted to aristocracy; it is now a corporate aristocracy.
"It is health insurance companies, it is big pharmaceutical companies, it is big oil, it
is food companies and of course, it is the military industrial complex,"
she said.
A former Ohio state
senator and a senior figure in the Sanders campaign, Turner told the convention that
"we
are in a fight for our lives and for future generations,"
adding
"We don't believe
in the lies and the bribes and the contentment in a lousy peace,"
quoting from a 1938 poem by Langston Hughs.
"How can we have peace in moments like this, when over 90 million of our sisters and
brothers are either uninsured or underinsured?"
Turner asked.
"How can we have
peace when on the streets of America right now, black lives have been reaching out, calling out the racism and the white
supremacy and the bigotry of a system that was created for black lives to languish."
How can we have peace when you got a Congress that goes on recess while millions of
people are facing evictions from their homes?
"We need a third or fourth entity to step in. The lesser of two evils is still evil,"
said
Ventura, who was elected Minnesota governor on a third-party ticket in 1998 and has since been involved with the Libertarian
and Green parties. Ventura has also hosted RT's '
Off
the Grid
' (ending in 2015) and '
The
World According to Jesse
.'
Harvard professor and
social critic Dr. Cornel West also addressed the event, calling to
"transform the
American empire into a more democratic space,"
while dubbing the two major parties the
"neo-fascist"
and
"neo-liberal"
wings
of the
"ruling class."
"We are living in a moment of massive imperial meltdown, spiritual breakdown, and we
need prophetic fight-back,"
West said, arguing the new party would provide just that.
The Movement for a
People's Party, the organization behind the project, now says it is working to establish local branches around the US, which
will
"form the building blocks of state parties"
and work through the long and
often arduous process of securing ballot access. The group has set a lofty goal for the new anti-corporate outfit, hoping it
will be
"poised to sweep Congress and the White House"
by the next election cycle
in 2024.
Think your friends would be
interested? Share this story!
Sinalco
16 hours ago
Sadly, it's the same all over the world - the corporations have bought all politicians... Governments & Politicians no
longer work for us; they work for the highest bidder...
ratfink222 Sinalco
3 hours ago
In the USA it is even worse, CEOs give themselves multimillion dollars raises and bonuses for screwing up and screwing
Americans. Their pay is at least 10,000 times higher than employees. They act like they are laying golden bricks but
they are robbing everybody.
GottaBeMe
venze chern
5 hours ago
This one will be a grassroots organization and has pledged to never accept corporate donations. They are planning to get
online funding from individuals as did Bernie Sanders. It can be done. When they have enough momentum, they will work to
eliminate corporate money from politics. You should watch their convention. I saw all but the first 45 minutes. It was
inspiring.
Juan_More
15 hours ago
There are already other parties running in the election it is just that these also ran parties can't get any traction
against the two main parties. Part of the reason that RT got trouble last time is that they gave airtime to these also
ran parties. Ross Perot made a good try at it but he failed. These also ran parties have to start winning elections at
lower levels and building momentum. The other would be to get a high profile candidate with name recognition like Jesse
Ventura or Oprah
GottaBeMe
Juan_More
5 hours ago
Certainly the game is rigged against alternative parties.
They are not allowed to participate in debates, the media
tries to ignore them, election rules are designed to make it nearly impossible to get on a state ballot. (This is why I
vote 3rd party in the absence of a decent D or R candidate: a threshold of votes can provide a bit of financial relief
and if enough, could mandate ballot access.) I truly hope the People's Party succeeds. I intend to support it as much as
I can.
Alan Ditmore
Juan_More
5 hours ago
No. ONLY ONE viable strategy and that is to get 1000 MAYORS before running any higher, for which you need a municipal
platform.
houses
13 hours ago
Workers' parties are the only alternative to corporate parties.
The British Labour Party was just that, but it was infiltrated by tory fifth columnists and turned into
tory lite, thus depriving the electrorate of any meaningfull choice.
Corbyn is real Labour, and was voted
leader by a landslide of the national membership, but the Blairites in the PLP simply undermined
everything he did, contradicted everything he said, supported tory fake news and lies, and even
campaigned openly against him at the general election. The fact is the corporate fascists will not ALLOW
any opposition to their kleptocratic establishment.
Sullivan will sustain the motion after some kind of hearing is what I would expect
now.
Likbez , September 2, 2020 10:41 am
He should suffer a little bit first.
I agree. I am not fan of Flynn and I will be the first to observe that for the former
chief of DIA he proved to be amazingly inept. Add to this his lunatic views on Iran. Flynn
has long been obsessed with finding a causus belli to justify an attack on Tehran. In this
sense keeping him in check was essential and firing him from the position of national
security advisor weakened Iran hawks in Trump administration. Aalthough Mattis was even
worse) . As Mark Perry observed:
"Mattis' 33-Year Grudge Against Iran is so intense" that it led President Obama to
dismiss him as Centcom commander. "Mattis' Iran antagonism also concerns many of the
Pentagon's most senior officers, who disagree with his assessment and openly worry
whether his Iran views are based on a sober analysis or whether he's simply reflecting a
30-plus-year-old hatred of the Islamic Republic that is unique to his service"
If such weaklings like Strzok can deceive and entrap him, what about real hard core
professionals? How such a person could raise to the the top in DIA? Do we need such a
gullible person as a national security advisor?
But, at the same time, the key event here is different, and in this sense his talks with
the Russian ambassador does not matter much (both sides understood that they are
recorded)
What FBI did to him is abhorrable, and puts a long dark shadow on Obama administration:
this is really not about Flynn but about the politicization of FBI in the manner that
remind me NKVD practices (which was famous for eliminating Stalin political opponents by
declaring them to be British spies and torturing out the confessions), no matter what is
our position on the political spectrum.
"... There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative. ..."
"... Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that 11,900 troops would leave that country. ..."
"... Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian Su-27 jet fighter intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching the Russian coast. Yet another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still others have taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation. ..."
"... The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military presence along Russia's border, especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. ..."
"... I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring countries) aren't the best idea after all? ..."
"... they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please. ..."
"... the US leadership wants ether country to take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether country. ..."
"... The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When you stop they will stop. ..."
"... if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia. ..."
"... Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and aggression against Russia? ..."
"... The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all over the globe. ..."
"... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation - exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities). ..."
"... I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic, political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up. The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture them at scale quickly. ..."
"... Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed. ..."
"... Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties, accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners, etc, etc. ..."
"... I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too uncertain. ..."
"... We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself. ..."
"... Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy. ..."
"... The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael McFaul. ..."
Tensions are becoming dangerous in Syria and on Russia's back doorstep. US soldiers stand
near US and Russian military vehicles in the northeastern Syrian town of al-Malikiyah (Derik)
at the border with Turkey, on June 3, 2020. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A dangerous vehicle collision between U.S and Russian soldiers in Northeastern Syria on Aug.
24 highlights the fragility of the relationship and the broader test of wills between the two
major powers.
According to White House
reports and a Russian video that went viral this week, it appeared that as the two sides
were racing down a highway in armored vehicles, the Russians sideswiped the Americans, leaving
four U.S. soldiers injured. It is but the latest clash as both sides continue their patrols in
the volatile area. But it speaks of bigger problems with U.S. provocations on Russia's backdoor
in Eastern Europe.
A sober examination of U.S. policy toward Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet
Union leads to two possible conclusions. One is that U.S. leaders, in both Republican and
Democratic administrations, have been utterly tone-deaf to how Washington's actions are
perceived in Moscow. The other possibility is that those leaders adopted a policy of maximum
jingoistic swagger intended to intimidate Russia, even if it meant obliterating a constructive
bilateral relationship and eventually risking a dangerous showdown. Washington's latest
military moves, especially in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, are stoking alarming
tensions.
There has been a
long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and
the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to
Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within
NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the
Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from
Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's
western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces
to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in
all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W.
Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy
about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be
unnecessarily provocative.
As if such steps were not antagonistic enough, both Bush and Obama sought to bring Georgia
and Ukraine into NATO. The latter country is not only within what Russia regards as its
legitimate sphere of influence, but within its core security zone. Even key European members of
NATO, especially France and Germany, believed that such a move was unwise and blocked
Washington's ambitions. That resistance, however, did not inhibit a Western effort to meddle in Ukraine's
internal affairs to help
demonstrators unseat Ukraine's elected, pro-Russia president and install a new, pro-NATO
government in 2014.
Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and
NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration
touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense
Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that
11,900 troops would leave that country.
However, Esper
made it clear that only 6,400 would return to the United States; the other nearly 5,600
would be redeployed to other NATO members in Europe. Indeed, of the 6,400 coming back to the
United States, "many of these or similar units will begin conducting rotational deployments
back to Europe." Worse, of the 5,600 staying in Europe, it turns out that at least 1,000 are going
to Poland's eastern border with Russia.
Another result of the redeployment will be to boost U.S. military power in the Black Sea.
Esper confirmed that various units would "begin continuous rotations farther east in the Black
Sea region, giving us a more enduring presence to enhance deterrence and reassure allies along
NATO's southeastern flank." Moscow is certain to regard that measure as another on a growing
list of Black Sea provocations by the United States.
Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between
U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes
flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian
Su-27 jet fighter
intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the
fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching
the Russian coast. Yet
another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still
others have
taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless
practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation.
The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military
presence along Russia's border,
especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of
miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would
react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico,
operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
The undeniable reality is that the United States and its NATO allies are crowding Russia;
Russia is not crowding the United States. Washington's bumptious policies already have wrecked
a once-promising bilateral relationship and created a needless new cold war with Moscow. If
more prudent U.S. policies are not adopted soon, that cold war might well turn hot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more
than 850 articles on international affairs. His latest book is NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur
(2019).
I mean, I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change
anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending
support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can
get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring
countries) aren't the best idea after all?
This is a very anti American article! Patriots know that where the U.S. gives political
or economic ground Russia and other adversaries will fill the vacum with policies intended
to destroy American peoeple. So no, it is not a bad idea to be involved in Syria and
Ukraine in fact it is a very good idea.
The entire framing of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood as "pro American"
and those who oppose them as "anti American" is delusional.
Russia is a weak state trying to maintain its natural spheres of influence along the Curzon
line. Why has the State Department/ Pentagon decided to try and roll this back? How the F
to they expect Russia to react. How would America react if a foreign power tried to turn
Mexico into a strategic asset. So why is it ok to make Ukraine into a Nato member? It's
reckless and ultimately it is pointless. Weakening Russia further serves little strategic
purpose and potentially threatens to destabilize the Balkans and mid east with Turkish
adventurism. What will America do if the Turks seize Rhodes under some pretext?
Syria is another case of State Department midwits not understanding the results of their
regime change. What purpose does it serve to put a Sunni extremist government in Damascus.
How hateful do you have to be to subject Syria's minorities to genocide at the hands of an
ISIS sympathetic government? How do you delude yourself that such a regime will serve
America's interests in the long run? So you can own Iran before the election? You are
trading victory today for permanent loss tomorrow. It's insane.
Just like you, they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please.
Also, since Turkey is a NATO member and as such an ally to the U.S. shouldn't you be cheering in good faith for Turkey
and against Russia?
You got that one. Because Turkey is a thorn in NATO side. It has massive economic
interests in Russia, China and the rest of Asia. The "adventure" in Syria is coordinated
with Russia to the last detail, while playacting tensions. US problem in Syria is not
Russia or Turkey, but Russia AND Turkey.
As US is frowning at Egypt Al-Sisi , or Saudi MBS -- it is because they frown at Egypt
AND Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia AND Russia.
Basically, countries nominally counted in OUR camp are frowned upon when collaborating with
the ENEMY countries.
Our foreign policy is stuck in Middle East -- and cannot get unstuck. Cannot be better
illustrated then Pompeo addressing Republican convention from Jerusalem.
The only way Russia can challenge encirclement is by challenging US in its home away
from home -- Middle East. And creating new realities in the ground by collaborating with
the countries in the region -- undermining monopoly.
And as the entire world is hurting from epidemic related economic setbacks, Russia and
China are economies that are moving forward. And nobody in the Middle East can afford to
ignore it.
I agree with you with the exception of Russia being weak. One day the US which has never
seen any thing in advance will push Russia one time to many and find the Russian Army in
Poland and Romania. That is if China doesn't take out some thing precious to the US in the
mean time like a U2, aircraft carrier etc.
There are two things at play here. The first is the US leadership wants ether country to
take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on
earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether
country.
The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going
to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't
want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When
you stop they will stop.
I agree with your assessment except Russia will not put troops into any country without
the express request from the legitimate government.
They are not going into Poland and especially not Romania (Transnistria maybe) why would
they? The countries do not have any resources that Russia wants.
The only reason to put troops into Belarus is to maintain a distance between Poland and the
borders.
Russia needs nothing from the rest of the world except trade. Un-coerced, free trade. This
drives the US corporations crazy as no one will trade with the US anymore without
coercion.
PS the same goes for China with the proviso that Taiwan is part of China and needs to be
reabsorbed into the mainstream. It will take +20 years but China just keeps the pressure on
until there will be no viable alternative.
It has never meant to serve American interests. Ever. Once you put it in perspective, it
makes sense.
But if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve
adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia.
The problem for never satiated Zealots is the following -- regional powers in the Middle
East are hitching their wagons to Eurasian economic engine. That is definitely true of
Turkey, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia.
The tales of Moslem Brotherhood are here to interpret something today from the iconography
from the past. And to explain today what an entirely different set of leaders did -- be
that few years ago or one hundred years ago. Same goes for iconography of Al-Qaeda, ISIS,
Communism, Socialism, authoritarianism, and other ISMS.
Those icons serve the same purpose as icons in religion or in cyber-space. You look at
them, or you click -- and the story and explanation is ready made for your consumption. Time to watch actions -- not media iconography to tell us what is going on.
If we're being purely ideological here those with an overtly internationalist
disposition (barring leftists) are those who want to be involved overseas, hardly ones to
go on about national interest or pride. Its been a common stance associated with American
Nationalism and Paleoconservatives to be anti-intervention, these people (of which I
consider myself a part) can hardly be bashed for holding unpatriotic views.)
Russia has a declining population, and an economy smaller than that of Spain. Its hardly
a threat and our involvement in Eastern Europe was relatively limited pre-2014 and even so
the overall international balance of power hasn't shifted after Russian annexation of
Crimea, and the Ukrainians proved quite capable of defending their nation (though not so
capable as to end retake separatist strongholds.
Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is
spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and
aggression against Russia? What ideological foundations does Russia have after 1991? Isn't
Russia's actions a guerrilla war on the communications of the self-proclaimed "Empire of
Good", which is pursuing a tough offensive policy? And is it not because the Russians
support a significant part of Putin's initiatives (despite a number of Putin's obvious
shortcomings) precisely because they have experience of cooperation with the "Empire of
Good" in the 90s: give loans, corrupt officials and deputies, put Russian firms under
control big American companies, and then just give orders from the White House.
PS. I beg your pardon my google english
Another Zealot in Patriot garb. The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to
fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all
over the globe.
It would be interesting to read the minds of the US pilots engaged in these activities.
My guess is that the cognitive dissonance energy in those heads is equivalent to the
biggest nuclear bomb ever exploded...
Hmmm... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation -
exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US
resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities).
In a major crisis this could lead to a breaking point. What if some US adversary decides to
double down and attack (directly or by proxy) US troops and the US will not be able to
respond? A humiliating defeat combined with an exhausted public decidedly set against
military adventures abroad could cause a rapid retrenchment and global withdrawal.
I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic,
political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require
highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up.
The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture
them at scale quickly.
The DOD today is only about personal political position, and grubbing tax-payer dollars
for self-aggrandizement. In any real war with a real adversary, we wouldn't stand a
chance.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic regarding US military capabilities and I'm neither a US
citizen or a fan of US global hegemony.
The US armed forces are made up of professionals. There are some universal advantages
and disadvantages of such forces. A professional army is good at fighting wars but bad at
controlling territory because of its limited size and higher costs-per-soldier. In order to
control territory you need "boots on the ground" in great numbers, standing at checkpoints
and patrolling the countryside. They didn't have to be trained to the level of Navy SEALS,
for them it is enough if they can shoot straight and won't be scared from some fireworks
and the US lacks such forces.
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the Draft?
Provide a pathway for US citizenship for any foreigner that joins, establishing a US
Foreign Legion?
And then, how you'll have enough boots on the ground to pacify Russia or China. It took
more than a month to establish and secure the beach heads in Bretagne in France in 1944.
How do you think you can even get those boots to land in Russia or China, when you know
that the ICBMs are going to start flying towards the continental US if something like this
will ever happen?
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the
Draft?
It is no longer possible to introduce the draft in the US - even mentioning it would
lead to social unrests.
Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically
brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed.
In addition, those gold-plated weapon systems often do not work as advertised. Look how
the multi-billion IADS of the Saudis couldn't protect their refinery complex from a cruise
missile attack from Yemen. Look at the embarrassing failures of the LCS and Zumwalt ship
classes, and the endless problems with the Ford CVN. The F35 is proving a ginormous
boondoggle that will massively enrich LM shareholders but will do squat for US military
capabilities.
He already did and the Military ignored him.
He backtracked with endless excuses and conditionals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/new...
**
Bill Clinton once reportedly told senior White House reporter Sarah McClendon, "Sarah,
there's a government inside the government, and I don't control it."
**
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of
the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid
of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their
breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
**
Do you really think that the adults with so much to lose would allow an idiot like Trump
(or Clinton or Obama or Bush) to actually run things?
Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights
along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the
continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global
sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties,
accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners,
etc, etc.
I'll repeat: Focus on what Trump does, not what he says, and then total up the
pro-Russia and anti-Russia actions of this administration and see what that reveals.
A danger with this "new Cold War" is the assumption it will end like the first one
– peacefully. If this is the thinking among policy-makers we are in a very perilous
situation. History shows that fatal miscalculations contributed to the First World War, and
as a consequence the second. Today there is no room for miscalculation, which will set off
unstoppable escalation into a third.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Russians deliberately repeatedly ram an American vehicle, but I'm sure it's all our fault. Shouldn't have worn that skirt
I guess.
Before y'all armchair Putin experts say all your loving things: you have nothing to contribute unless you speak fluent
Russian. I watched the video taken and published by the Russians and it was pretty clear what they were doing.
Something critical is being missed entirely. The United States has invaded Syria without
a mandate from the UN. Its' president has explicitly stated that it is the intention of the
US to take Syria's oil. Both are violations of international law. Any hostile action taken
against the illegal US presence in Syria is justifiable as self defense. While the US
presence in Syria is illegal, Russia's presence is not. Russia was invited into Syria by
the UN recognized Syrian government to assist it in defending against the US regime change
by Al Qaeda proxy operation..
establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of
bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
What would happen if China or Russia established bases in the Caribbean and Latin
America? Trump joked about selling Puerto Rico, what if the Chinese bought it?
If the Israeli's have a problem with Russia being in Syria then Israel should deal with
it. Its not our problem and Russia is not our enemy. Infact India is bringing closer
relations between Russia and Japan. Which do you want? Russian antagonism because Israel
doesn't want Russians in Syria or Russian partnership with India, Japan, Australia and the
US dealing with China? Remember....you could spend 1000 years in the middle east and not
make a dent in the animosities between peoples there...so one is a futile endeaver...while
the other has great benefit.
Note that Russian soldiers are in Syria at the request of its government to help fend
off foreign invaders. The American troops are there illegally, with no UN or even
Congressional authorization.
Also note the USA risks another Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing from the INF treaty
after illegally building missile launch complexes in Romania and Poland that can hit Russia
with nuclear cruise missiles.
The USA did much more than "meddle" in Ukraine. The Obama/Biden team openly organized a
coup to overthrow its elected President because he didn't want to join NATO and the EU.
Is that guy in the middle of the left seated Vlad Klitschko? I great boxer no doubt, but
also known for his stunning stupidity. Is he part of the new Ukrainian political elite?
Poor Ukraine.
A Russian vehicle sideswipes an American vehicle, injuring two US soldiers, and that's
an American provocation? An American spy plane claims to be in international waters, and
you tack in a "supposedly" in that sentence? "Violating" a tacit promise, really?
Russia aggression against Georgia and Crimea is OK because Sphere of Influence? This
article is loaded with Blame America First crap usually associated with the Left
(much to this liberal's disgust). Never expected to find it here.
Yes, the expansion of NATO east must have looked to Russia like something coming at
their borders entirely too fast. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, and wrote it
off to the wheels of a fifty-year-old bureaucracy not knowing how to slow down. Your
eye-straining gaze at the tea-leaves for Deeper State motives is unpersuasive, even without
your odious prejudices.
Maybe some play of Rashomon would be in order here. That is your perspective.
Now your honor, what I have seen is that Georgia attacked first and hoped to occupy a
certain area that Russian Federation was protecting, As a side comment, I have to point to
an Orwellian use of the word "aggressive" and "attack". It seems that anything that the US
cannot wantonly control or bomb is inherently aggressive and attacking either directly or
indirectly the "rules based order".
Crimea had Russian assets that became endangered. Crimea was part of Russia until 1954,
when was donated in an unsanctioned manner to Ukraine. The majority Russian population in
Crimea has been persecuted by the Ukrainian state since at least 1994. The Euromaidan would
have exacerbated that. A referendum was carried on and just considering ethnic lines,
Russians won in their desire to re-unite with the Russian Federation. There aren't many
legal arguments against that referendum and that process, if one looks for them...
So the above perspectives have nothing to do with just "sphere of influence" but with
direct core interests of the Russian state and its core security...
The deep state is a tool that is trying to fulfill one objective: integration of Russian
economy under the control of US and its Oligarchy. Otherwise it will always be a threat. A
Nationalist, democratic (but not oligarchic) and sovereign Russia will always be considered
an enemy of the world hegemon...
And the provocation is the actual presence in Syria of US troops. Ramming the US
military vehicle is not a provocation from Russians, it is a simple eviction notification.
End of story!
Isn't it just amazing how this writer gets to turn an incident of provocation by Russian
soldiers into a story of persistent provocation by America. That is remarkable dexterity
even for this paper. I am used to them suggesting that we should leave the people of
Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of the whims and wishes of a dictator in Moscow -
because they are in his backyard. But to be able to switch from that incident to their
regular theme is an achievement one can recognize, though not respect. The people of those
countries should have a choice about who they associate, and they certainly have a right
not to align with people they fear. Calling us for not respecting he rights of other people
to decide their fates is right and proper. I enthusiastically support this paper when they
do. But when they turn right around and castigate us for not respecting Russia's right to
do it - I am flabbergasted.
This piece spends too much time re-hashing everything Russia-US since 1990 and fails to
focus on the key current issues.
The vehicle incidents in Syria are distinct from the European issue -- see below in this
post -- that is generating some of the other tensions the author lists. Syria is really part
of the larger Middle East issue.
His brief summary of the latest Syria mishap is inadequate to convey what actually
happened.
If you actually look at the video, it does NOT appear to be the case that a Russian
vehicle simply "sideswiped" a US vehicle. It appears that the US was maintaining a
checkpoint on a road that in effect blocked Russian passage. Given the terrain, the
Russians could of course bypass such a checkpoint, which is what they appear to have done.
Then, however, other US vehicles left the checkpoint and attempted to block and turn back
the Russian bypass movement, and this led to the collision. So the incident is part of a
larger US policy to impede Russian operations in NE Syria.
Almost two years ago, Trump ordered US forces out of Syria, and Russia, in agreement
with that plan, sent patrols to the NE to ensure that provisions of an stability agreement
with Turkey and the Kurds were maintained. But then Trump was almost immediately
convinced--by whom is not clear, but ultimately Israel in all probability--to do a 180 and
keep US forces in NE Syria, the superficial rationale being to take control of oil, the
kind of pirate operation that Trump likes. In fact, the goal of those who influence Trump
is to keep Syria weak and unable to rebuild with the expectation that Assad can still be
overthrown at some future point. This is the desire of Israel and its operatives in the
US.
Trump's zag after the zig of planned withdrawal left the US-Russian understanding in
chaos. Now both the US AND the Russians were operating in NE Syria. And over time the US
has become more and more aggressive about impeding Russian operations. The Russians
claim--credibly--that we are demanding that they, in moving their patrols up to the area of
the Syria-Turkey border area not use the M4 highway, the main and direct route and instead
follow a secondary route that circuitously follows the border. The Russians don't accept
that demand. And the vehicle incidents that we are seeing are the outcome of that
disagreement. The Russians are driving up Highway 4 and when they get to the US checkpoint
are bypassing and then continuing up the highway. We are aggressively trying to deter them
from that route choice.
Not sure why this article does not go into detail on this issue in order to clarify
it.
Much of the other stuff the author is talking about here--intrusive air ops in the Black
Sea, etc--is really a separate, European issue. The US is highly concerned about the
economic interactions between Russia and Europe--especially the big economies of Western
Europe and most especially Germany. We are worried that over time Russian-European economic
integration will erode our strategic control and dominance over Europe in general.
Hence, we are making common cause with the anti-Russian elements in "the New Europe,"
i.e., Eastern Europe to try, in essence, to place a barrier between Russia and Western
Europe, playing off Poland, the Baltics and Romania, among others, against Russia, Germany,
France et al. Moving more US forces into Poland and the so-called "Black Sea Region";
impeding Nord Stream 2 and other Russian pipeline initiatives; indulging in recurrent
anti-German propaganda for not maintaining a more robust anti-Russian military posture;
fomenting (behind the scenes) the recent disturbances in Belarus; and promotion of the
so-called "Three Seas Initiative" intended to weld Eastern and Central Europe together into
a reliable tool of US policy are all part of this plan to retain US strategic control of
Europe over the long term.
That's what the heightened tensions in Europe are about.
As I said, the Syria issue, part of the larger Middle East struggle, is separate from
the parallel struggle for mastery in Europe.
It's all an important topic, but this article doesn't really capture the salient
points.
And you're playing word games. Syria's oil is effectively under US control. Yes, we are
deriving strategic benefit from it in that we are denying it to the Syrian government in
order to further destabilize it. It's not a good policy, but the policy does benefit from
denying Syria its oil.
The problem is that most of the oil is on Arab land, not Kurdish land, and the Arabs of
the Northeast are now realigning themselves with Assad, so holding on to the oil is likely
to get more difficult in the future.
I have no idea what you mean by "slander." Guess that means truths you find
inconvenient. Sorry--not in the business of coddling the faint of heart. Trump likes the
idea of taking resources which he imagines to be payment for services we have
rendered--like leaving the country in a state of ruin. He talked about Iraqi oil that way
too, but taking that would be much harder.
Time for you to stop dismissing every reality you don't like as unpatriotic.
The "Assad regime" is the UN recognized government of Syria. That is the only entity
entitled to the country's resources. How is it "the property of the Syrian nation" if the
Syrian government and its people no longer have access to it? To whom is the oil being
sold? Who is receiving the proceeds of the oil sales?
Here are some of Trump's own words with respect to Syria's oil. "I like oil. We are
keeping the oil." 4/11/2019. "The US is in Syria solely for the oil." "We are keeping the
oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for oil." "The US
military is in Syria only for oil." What part of Trump's public assertion that "We are
keeping the oil" are you having difficulty in understanding? How can you say the US "did
not take possession of the oil" when Trump could not have been more explicit in saying
precisely the opposite? Do you not comprehend that the US presence in Syria has no mandate
either from the UN or from the US Congress. Do you not understand that the US presence in
Syria is illegal under international law? Do you not understand that "Keeping the oil" is a
violation of international law? Your post is one of the most ridiculous I have even
read.
1. It's quite clear from the video that the US had set up a checkpoint on the road at
left in the video. (Indeed, we are open about the fact that we are doing so in general in
NE Syria.) And it's equally clear that Russian vehicles are seen bypassing those
checkpoints. The encounter between US and Russian vehicles takes place off the road. There
is only one logical interpretation of what happened. What is your alternative
explanation?
2. "No one reading this can believe that Eastern Europeans have genuine cause to fear
Russia, or that these countries continually request more military and political involvement
than we are willing to provide or that we are not inducing them to do anything or
manipulating them."
First of all, there are no current indications of any Russian intent to do anything in
regard to Eastern Europe. Yes, one can understand the history, which is why there is
anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe, but aside perhaps from the Baltic states in their
unique geographic position, there is no country that has any basis in reality to worry
about Russian aggression in the present.
Of course, this does not stop the Poles from doing exactly that. And perhaps the
Romanians to a much lesser extent. So yes, there is fear in a few key countries based on
past history, Poland being the keystone of the whole thing, and yes, we are indeed
manipulating that fear in an attempt to block/undermine any economic integration between
Germany and Russia. We are also trying to use the "Three Seas Initiative" to block Chinese
commercial and tech penetration of Eastern Europe--5G and their plan to rebuild the port of
Trieste to service Central and NE Europe.
Do you actually believe Russia, which has lately been cutting its defense budget, is
actually going to invade Europe? That really is a fantasy. The only military operations
they will take are to prevent further expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Belarus. The real
game today is commercial and tech competition. Putin knows it would be disastrous for
Russia to start a war with NATO. Not sure why that's hard for you to see.
Your notion of the Russian threat--as it exists today--is wildly exaggerated.
Once President Putin remarked that there are forces in the United States trying to use
Russia for internal political struggle. He added that we will nevertheless try not to be
drawn into these confrontations.
A scene from a Hollywood action movie rises before my eyes, when two heroes of the film are
fighting and a circular saw is spinning nearby, and each of the heroes is trying to shove a
part of the enemy's body under this saw.
The relationship between Russian and American servicemen, I would compare with two hockey
teams, when the tough behavior of the players on the ice does not mean that the players of
one team would be happy with the death of the entire opposing team, say in some kind of
plane crash, since the presence of a strong opponent is a necessary condition for getting a
good salary.
Still, I would not completely deny the possibility of a "hot war".
Since the times of the Roman Empire, the West of Europe has been trying to take control of
the territory of Europe, Eurasia, and Eurasia, in turn, dreams of mastering the
technologies of the West.
The defeat of the 3rd Reich provided the Soviet Union with a breakthrough in the nuclear
industry and space...
It's hard to imagine that Russia is capable of defeating NATO, but I can imagine that in
the current situation, President Putin can offer China to build military bases in western
Russia for a million Chinese servicemen, for 100 thousand on the Chukchi Peninsula, for 500
thousand on Sakhalin...
The extra money for renting military bases in a coronavirus crisis will not hurt
anyone.
Of all the things about Hillary Clinton to despise, her selfish attempt to explain her
loss, and to attack the President (to whom she never conceded the election!) by blaming
Russia, is at the top of the list. To generate a completely unnecessary conflict with a
nuclear super-power that could burn this country to ashes in minutes, out of personal
vindictiveness, ... is lower than it can get.
I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given
how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no
reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic
arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too
uncertain.
We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to
wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the
strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the
scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself.
We thought we were dealing with the main threats to our global hegemony
sequentially--Russia "defeated" in the Cold War, and then on to a defeat of "militant
Islam" in the Greater Middle East and finally to a showdown with China. But now, the
sequencing has fallen apart, and we're trying to prosecute all three simultaneously.
You have inverted the facts. The video evidence shows the Americans side-swiped the
Russian vehicle and claimed "American soldiers had 'concussions'". A concussion requires
loss of consciousness or significant changes in mental function. In football, you have your
"Bell rung". You can't add 2+2 correctly. There is no evidence to support that.
Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war
based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy.
Along with Dems, I also blame Putin; he bribed Hillary millions for uranium -- that
doesn't lend to good relations.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
Notable quotes:
"... Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic senator who never met a war he didn't like. ..."
"... It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989 at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings. ..."
"... To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group. ..."
"... She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship with fraudsters. ..."
"... On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen. ..."
"... Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died. ..."
"... How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal ..."
"... Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act. ..."
"... Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose the lifting of Jackson-Vanik." ..."
"... The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate. ..."
"... It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of the law to see how it is based on the fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.) ..."
As the Democratic Convention is in progress, it is fitting to look at how Democrats in Congress and the White House, with Republican
collaboration, were responsible for the
Magnitsky Act , the law that protects tax fraudster William Browder and his henchman Mikhail Khodorkovsky by erecting a wall
against their having to face justice for their financial crimes. And ramps up hostility against Russia.
The fraudster William Browder .
This is a half-hour interview about this I did today on this subject
for Fault Lines . And a 15-minute
interview for The Critical
Hour . Here is an expanded version of what I said.
William Browder in the mid-1990s became manager of the Hermitage Fund, set up with $25 million from Lebanese-Brazilian banker
Edmond Safra and Israeli mining investor Beny Steinmez to buy shares in Russian companies.
He says he started the fund, but that is a lie. He was brought in to manage other people's money. But after some years, when the
two investors either died or confronted major financial problems, Browder gained control.
Browder doesn't like paying taxes.
Browder was an American who traded his citizenship for a UK passport in 1998 so he could avoid paying U.S. taxes on his stock
profits. ( CBS called
him a tax expatriate.)
He didn't like paying Russian taxes either. In an early rip-off, he and his partners billionaire Kenneth Dart of Dart cups and
New York investor Francis Baker bought a majority of Avisma, a titanium company, that produces material used in airplanes.
They cheated
minority investors and the Russian tax collector of profits by using transfer pricing.
You sell your production to a fake company at a low price, then your fake company sells it at the world price. You book lower
dividends to cheat minority shareholders, report lower taxes to cheat the Russian people.
Browder and partners bought Avisma from infamous oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the basis of continuing his transfer
pricing scam. It was revealed by documents in a lawsuit when Browder and partners sued another infamous guy, Peter Bond, the Isle
of man crook handling the rake-offs for not passing on the full amount of the skim. (No honor among thieves!) The legal documents
where Browder admits to the scam are linked in this
story
.
Browder cheats bigtime on Russia taxes
Browder's next corruption was to
cheat the Russians of taxes from his stock buys in Russia, to the tune of about $100million. That included claiming as deductions
disabled workers who didn't work for him, local investments he never made, profits from stock buys of Gazprom the Russian energy
conglomerate that non-Russians were not allowed to buy in Russia.
Investigations started in the early 2000s for $40 mil in evaded takes and led to legal judgments in 2004. When he refused to pay,
in November 2005 he was denied a Russian visa and in 2006 he moved all his assets out of Russia. But the Russian tax evasion investigations
continued.
Browder's accountant Sergei Magnitsky was arrested for investigation of the tax evasion in 2008, and the European Commission on
Human Rights
ruled last year that was correct because of the evidence and because he was a flight risk. Browder's fake narrative was that
Magnitsky, who he lied was his lawyer , had been arrested because he blew the whistle on a scheme by Russian officials to
embezzle money from the Russian Treasury. In his own U.S. federal
court deposition
, Browder admits Magnitsky didn't go to law school or have a law license. See his brief
video on
that.
Browder gives speeches that he didn't know how Magnitsky died
Then Magnitsky died of heart failure exacerbated by stomach disease which forensic reports say was not properly treated. Browder
first said (in talks at the British foreign policy association
Chatham House , London, a month after he died, and San Diego Law School
-- video at minute 6:20 -- a year later) he didn't know how Magnitsky died, but after a few years he invented a story that he
had been beaten to death.
Jonathan Winer, who helped Browder with his scam.
That story was developed by Jonathan Winer, a former assistant to Senator John Kerry and then a State Department official. Winer
was working for APCO, an international public relations company one of whose major clients was the same Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They
correctly assumed the western media would do no research. Or at least would not be allowed to report it. And the mainstream media
never did, except much later
Der Spiegel in Germany, which the rest of the western press ignored.
The plan was to get a U.S. law that would in effect block the Russians from going after certain Americans who had cheated on taxes.
They would be Browder and Khodorkovsky, who is actually named in the law.
Khodorkovsky would spend several hundred thousand dollars to buy Congressional support for the Magnitsky Act, clearly money
well spent. He duly reported it as lobbying expenses.
Here is how the Democrats and Republicans colluded in the Browder Magnitsky hoax. Much of this comes from Browder's own writings
in his mostly fake book "Red Notice." Note the corruption of both parties.
Magnitsky died in November 2009. Only four months later in March 2010, Browder was plotting his Magnitsky hoax, attacking Russians
he would claim were responsible for Magnitsky's death. But the bizarre part of the story is that he continued throughout 2010 to
say he didn't know how Magnitsky died, including in a videoed Dec 2010
San Diego law school talk. He obviously assumed U.S. media and politicians would not notice or care about the contradictions.
Ben Cardin, senator who signed on to Browder hoax.
Browder got Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin to send a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March 2010 urging
her to ban visas for 60 people Browder had listed (without evidence) as complicit in Magnitsky's death. (Remember 9 months later
in a videoed talk at San Diego Law School Browder says he didn't know how Magnitsky died.)
The letter to Hillary Clinton, written (Browder says in his book) by Browder acolyte Kyle Parker, a staffer at the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said, I "urge you to immediately cancel and permanently withdraw the U.S. visa privileges of all those involved
in this crime, along with their dependents and family members." Immediately? No due process, not even for children and grandparents?
Cousins?
Attached to the letter was the list of the sixty officials Browder accused, without evidence, of involvement in Magnitsky's death
and a tax fraud against the Treasury.
Browder's fake tax refund fraud
The tax refund fraud was a scheme in which shell companies were set up to sue Browder's Hermitage companies claiming contract
violations and damages of $1billion. The Hermitage companies immediately agreed to pay (no evidence of actual bank transfers), then
demanded the Treasury pay a tax refund of $230million because they now had zero profits.
Viktor Markelov, tried and jailed for the scam,
said he worked with a Sergei Leonidovich, which is Magnitsky's name and patronymic. Other evidence, including an inexplicable
delay of months between Browder learning about the his companies being re-registered in other names and him reporting that as
"theft," indicates he was part of the scam too.
Note this: Hermitage trustee HSBC filed a financial document in July 2007 saying it was putting aside $7 million for legal
costs that might be required to get back the companies. This was five months before the tax refund fraud occurred. Albert
Dabbah, chief financial controller for HSBC, confirmed the
document's authenticity in U.S.
federal court. But Browder and Magnitsky (in his
testimony
) said they didn't learn about the "theft" till October 2007.
Theft of his companies? The best defense is a good offense. Accuse others of the crime you committed.
Senator Cardin was requesting that all sixty of Browder's accused have their U.S. travel privileges permanently revoked.
But Hillary didn't buy it. Then House staffer Parker arranged for Browder to
testify about the Magnitsky case May 6 th at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, not an official House body but
a pressure group set up in the name of a Russophobic former congressman from Hungary.
Congressman Jim McGovern would not send the evidence he promised, because he couldn't. There wasn't any.
The commission chairman was Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jim McGovern, who runs liberal but is a Russophobe who pretends
to be a human rights advocate.
Now what is really interesting is that seven months after this May 6 testimony, on December 6, 2010, Browder was telling the
San Diego law school (video 6:20 in) that "they put him in a straight
jacket, put him in an isolation room and waited outside the door until he died." Nothing about torture or killing. Had Browder forgotten
his dramatic beating story?
McGovern at the Lantos Commission hearing asked for no evidence. He said he would introduce legislation, put the 60 names Browder
cited in it, move it to the committee and make a formal recommendation from Congress, then pass it on the floor.
McGovern lies about sending evidence
Kimberly Stanton, who runs a propaganda operation and refused to provide evidence.
In July 2019, almost a decade later, I saw McGovern when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. I asked if he would send
me evidence backing the claim that Magnitsky was tortured and killed. He agreed and introduced me to an aide. The aide referred me
to Kimberly Stanton, director of the Lantos Commission, who refused in an
email
to provide any information. And said evidence against targeted people is not required!
I also wrote McGovern's press secretary Matt Bonaccorsi and legislative director Cindy Buhl. They ignored repeated requests, never
sent me anything. I conclude that Jim McGovern, who pretends to be a liberal civil rights promoter, is a fake and a fraud.
McGovern introduces a Magnitsky bill in the House.
John McCain, he loved fraudsters and wars.
Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic
senator who never met a war he didn't like.
It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened
in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989
at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings.
Keating was the target of a regulatory investigation. With powerful senators like McCain advocating his cause, the regulator
backed off taking action against Lincoln. Though Keating went to jail. McCain was cited only for exercising "poor judgment." Helping
a crook doesn't get you thrown out of the Senate.
To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary
and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington
office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group.
Juleanna Glover, former aide to Dick Cheney. She can buy you a bill .
She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship
with fraudsters.
On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat
of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or
the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen.
Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego
law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died.
Now here is how the law got passed. The Jackson-Vanick amendment put in place in the mid-1970s imposed trade sanctions on the
Soviet Union to punish it for not allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Well, nobody could emigrate. Eventually 1.5 million Jews were
allowed to leave the country.
How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal
Thirty-seven years later the Soviet Union no longer existed, and everybody could emigrate, but Jackson-Vanik was still on the
books. It blocked American corporations from enjoying the same trade benefits with Russia as the world's other WTO members.
So, the U.S. business community said Jackson-Vanik had to go, and the Obama administration agreed. So did John Kerry, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They needed an act of Congress.
Meanwhile, Kerry opposed the Magnitsky Act which he considered untoward interference in Russia (is that like saying meddling?)
and had been delaying bringing it to vote in committee.
Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the
administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act.
Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose
the lifting of Jackson-Vanik."
John Kerry had good instincts, forced to make bad compromise.
So, Kerry stopped his opposition to the Magnitsky Act.
The two bills were combined. First the bill would be brought up at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass Magnitsky, then
it would go before the Finance Committee to repeal Jackson-Vanik, and then, it would go before the full Senate for a vote.
Kerry called for a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 2012, with the purpose of approving the Magnitsky
Act.
At the hearing, Kerry said that America was not a perfect country, and that the people in that room should be "very mindful of
the need for the United States not to always be pointing fingers and lecturing and to be somewhat introspective as we think about
these things." (Such nuance would obviously not be allowed today.)
He was "worried about the unintended consequences of requiring that kind of detailed reporting that implicates a broader range
of intelligence." He didn't have to worry. Reporting? Intelligence? Actual evidence would never be required! The U.S. was
setting up a kangaroo court and calling it a human rights tribunal!
The bill passed the House 365 to 43 on November 16, 2012. Voting "No" were 37 Democrats and 6 Republicans. Among them Maxine
Waters and Ron Paul. And surprisingly New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler who since then became a Russophobe. Tulsi Gabbard had not
yet been elected.
Kyle Parker told Browder, "There are a number of senators who are insisting on keeping Magnitsky global instead of Russia-only."
One was Cardin, but also Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan a political giant who spent many years fighting, holding hearings, about
offshore tax evasion and must have known very well how Browder was a poster child for offshore tax-evading crooks. Also Jon Kyl,
Republican from Arizona. Of course, Browder wanted "Russia only," because the purpose of the law was to attack Russia, not to promote
global human rights. Cardin withdrew his objection, and the bill was "Russia only."
The Senate vote
The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon
Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate.
It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of
the law to see how it is based on the
fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last
day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.)
It was the first pillar of Russiagate, where Cold Warrior Democrats joined forces with Cold Warrior Republicans. The result would
be to build a wall against Russia bringing Browder to justice, including getting Interpol to refuse to issue a red notice that would
require other countries to arrest him. He would name his book Red Notice as a jab at the Russians.
And the crooks Browder and Khodorkovsky, protected from the rule of law, laughed all the way to their offshore banks. Here's the
link to Browder's Mossack Fonseca (on Panama Papers fame) bank.
(Speaking of the rule of law, it doesn't apply to offshore banks, with secret owners of companies and accounts. They are largely
run by western banks that make big profits from laundering the money of the world's crooks. Note on any SEC filing where banks have
their subsidiaries: Caymans, Isle of Man, Guernsey, BVI, etc. No local clients, just financial fakery: letterbox companies, tax evasion.
It's okay. When there's corruption, only the little people go to jail. In the offshore system, the corrupt financial oligarchy rules.)
A full-bench US federal appeals court has reversed an earlier decision to dismiss the
'Russiagate' case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, returning it to the
judge who refused to let the charges be dropped.
In a 8-2 ruling on Monday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Judge Emmet Sullivan,
and sent the case back to him for review. Sullivan had been ordered by a three-judge panel in
June to drop the case against Flynn immediately, but hired an attorney and asked for an en
banc hearing instead.
Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell said the split was "as expected" based on the tone of
the oral arguments, pointing to a partisan divide on the bench, and added it was a
"disturbing blow to the rule of law."
The former top lawyer for the Barack Obama administration, Neal Katyal, hailed the decision as
"an important step in defending the rule of law" and argued the case should not be
dismissed because Flynn had pleaded guilty.
Flynn had indeed pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to the FBI, but Powell moved to
dismiss the charges due to the failure of his previous attorneys – a law firm with ties
to the Democrats – and the government to disclose evidence that could set him free. After
producing documents revealing that the FBI set out to entrap Flynn, had no valid cause to
interview him in the first place, and the prosecutors improperly extorted him into a plea by
threatening to charge his son, the Justice Department moved to drop all charges.
Sullivan had other ideas, however. In a highly unusual move, he appointed a retired judge
– who had just written a diatribe about the case in the Washington Post – to be
amicus curiae and argue the case should not be dropped. It was at this point that Powell took
the case to the appeals court, citing Fokker, a recent Supreme Court precedent that Sullivan
was violating.
Ignoring the fact that Sullivan had appointed the amicus and sought to prolong the case
after the DOJ and the appeals court both told him to drop it, the en banc panel argued the
proper procedure means he needs to make the decision before it can be appealed.
One of the judges, Thomas Griffith, actually argued in a concurring opinion that it would be
"highly unusual" for Sullivan not to dismiss the charges, given the executive branch's
constitutional prerogatives and his "limited discretion" when it came to the relevant
federal procedure, but said that an order to drop the case is not "appropriate in this case
at this time" because it's up to Sullivan to make the call first.
The court likewise rejected Powell's motion to reassign a case to a different judge.
Conservatives frustrated by the neverending legal saga have blasted the appeals court's
decision as disgraceful. "The Mike Flynn case is an embarrassing stain on this country and
its 'judges',"tweeted TV commentator Dan
Bongino. "We don't have judges anymore, only corrupted politicians in black robes."
While Flynn was not the first Trump adviser to be charged by special counsel Robert
Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe, he was the first White House official pressured to resign over
it, less than two weeks into the job.
With Mueller failing to find any evidence of "collusion" between President Donald
Trump's campaign and Russia, Democrats have latched onto Flynn's case as proof of their
'Russiagate' conspiracy theory. The latest argument is that the effort to drop the charges
against Flynn is politically motivated and proof of Attorney General Bill Barr's
"corruption."
Barr is currently overseeing a probe by US attorney John Durham into the FBI's handling of
the investigation against Trump during and after the 2016 election, with the evidence disclosed
during the Flynn proceedings strongly implicating not just the senior FBI leadership but senior
Obama administration figures as well.
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Home / New Urbs / Trump, Populism,
And The Suburbs Trump, Populism, And The Suburbs
Trump's housing rhetoric awkwardly marries upper-class NIMBYism with the tired tropes of
market fundamentalism. Credit:
By Darko Zeljkovic /Shutterstock
Since at least the inauguration, a central question of this presidency has been whether
Trump could cease campaigning and learn to govern. Now, with less than 70 days until the
general election, a contrary question is equally pressing: will Trump stop governing like a
Republican and start campaigning again as a populist?
Gone from Trump 2020 are the effective -- if crass -- messages to truckers, miners, and
bikers that carried Trump 2016 to victory. The overt appeals now go to "beautiful boaters"
and "suburban
housewives." The emphasis on protecting entitlements and building infrastructure has given
way to a payroll tax deferral and a capital gains tax cut.
The recent foray into housing policy induces particular whiplash. Republicans have long
criticized President Obama's "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH) policy, under which
the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could require local governments receiving
federal funding to analyze the demographic makeup of their communities and pursue policies to
redress racial segregation.
However laudable the goal, the policy was overly ponderous and
essentially toothless , conditioning HUD funding to state and local governments on drafting
lengthy reports, not reforming actual policy. Trump and his HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, had
attempted to
improve upon AFFH policy by tying federal funds to local policies that would reduce
regulatory barriers and
increase housing supply .
Deregulation on behalf of families seeking affordable housing would seem to lie at the
intersection of conservative and populist priorities. But last week they executed a
campaign-season reversal.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal , Trump and Carson essentially
renounced their own AFFH policy and instead pledged to "protect America's
suburbs," advancing a new policy that allows states and localities to fulfill fair housing
requirements by doing anything that
"rationally relates" to AFFH objectives. Whereas just months ago the federal government
sought affirmatively to expand housing supply, now Trump and Carson claim such efforts offer a
"path to tyranny" and a "dystopian vision of building low-income housing units next to your
suburban house." Federal incentives themselves represent a "radical social-engineering project"
and an attempt "to put the federal government in charge of local decisions."
This new argument awkwardly marries upper-class NIMBYism with the tired tropes of market
fundamentalism. In Trump and Carson's telling, our suburbs – like our nation – were
"founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination and control." This
is, of course, nonsense. Suburbia
-- from its design to its demography -- is the result not of spontaneous order, but of an
ambitious federal policy agenda to create a durable American middle class. Meanwhile, the
entire ethos of NIMBYism is predicated on using government regulation and litigation to stall
investors and entrepreneurs seeking to meet market demand. "Get your regulations off my
single-family zoning laws" is simply the prep-school graduate's version of "keep your
government out of my Medicare."
Trump's pivot is unfortunate not only for its incoherence, but because it represents yet
another missed opportunity for a Republican Party struggling to escape a demographic trap of
its own making. Many working families would benefit from a greater supply of affordable,
suburban housing. But instead of adopting a policy with appeal to a pan-ethnic, working-class
coalition, the White House is now pursuing a revanchist campaign for the suburban vote,
embracing a do-nothing housing policy that benefits the upper-middle-class denizens of
aggressively zoned, blue districts.
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This has been a signature dynamic of the Trump presidency, which seemed poised to reshuffle
the American political deck but has instead contented itself with replaying the Republican
Party's losing hand. If the re-election campaign has a clear message, it's to expect more of
the same.
Wells King is the research director for American Compass. This article is adapted from
apiece which originally
ran at American Compass. This New Urbanism series is supported by the Richard H.
Driehaus Foundation.
The upper middle class is not a lot of people. Fewer than the wealthy but still small
compared to the rest of the population. No, I think this dog whistle is directed at the lower
and middle end of the spectrum. They are far less secure and more worried about their
positions, plus less able to twist zoning laws to their direct benefit, thus more likely
susceptible to fear tactics.
Obama's policies were racist and experiments in social engineering. Some people prefer an
ethnic neighborhood. Jews prefer to live in a predominantly jewish neighborhood and orthodox
jews must live within a certain boundary. Thats fine. Amish also prefer to live in Amish
communities separate from the outside world. Thats fine. Some people prefer racial, ethnic or
religious neighborhoods. Other people prefer diverse communities with peoples of all races,
religions, ethnicities, etc. Thats fine too. Still other people prefer to live with people of
a similar income. People segregate and self sort themselves more on preference than on
prejudice. In other words people choose where to live more because of what they like than
what they dislike. The government has no right to tell people they cant choose or have no
right to choose or to limit federal funding unless people make choices that conform to
government social engineering. Now NIMBYISM which is more about what can and cannot be built
is another matter and it has alot to do with immigration and population which of course the
liberals and lefties will never admit or discuss but they are the first one to show up at a
town meeting and say we dont want more people in our town, we dont want more density, we dont
want midrises and high rises. So Liberals and Lefties simply zone out any opportunity for
population growth and force population growth elsewhere making it someone elses problem at
the same time they vote for more immigration. If you can make sense of the hypocrisy of the
left then please enlighten us...because it sounds like liberals and lefties are saying Im a
virtuous person and I care about people but I want what I want first...let them go somewhere
else and be someone elses problem. Wow! Can you be more virtuous?
Cynical, but effective - think about it a minute. Think about your neighbor to the
right, then to the left, then the 3 across the street and the 3 behind you. What are the odds
that at least one of them is your least-preferred neighbor ? Rather high I suspect. It
matters not that your annoying neighbor(s) are the dreaded Blacks, or feared Muslims, or
rumored herd of MS-13 gang squatters. You would love to see a law passed to eliminate them.
Vote for Trump!
Of course, neither Trump nor Biden can fix our least-preferred neighbor . People
will only recall that Trump is with them in hating that neighbor and wanting to put an end to
it! As I said; cynical but effective.
I was in Leesburg, VA today -- a purplish kind of suburb. Signs of BLM and "We Are All
Leesburg" -- next to signs that this house has applied to paint itself and is awaiting
"appropriateness" Council approval, that business is mounting new signage and also awaiting
"appropriateness" checkoff. The social justice equivalent of cheap grace, all the while
erecting an economic wall by zoning that is quite effective at segregation. Just like my
"woke" neighbors in Falls Church -- BLM (as long as they can afford an $800K house).
The upper middle class is not a lot of people. Fewer than the wealthy but still small
compared to the rest of the population. No, I think this dog whistle is directed at the lower
and middle end of the spectrum. They are far less secure and more worried about their
positions, plus less able to twist zoning laws to their direct benefit, thus more likely
susceptible to fear tactics.
Obama's policies were racist and experiments in social engineering. Some people prefer an
ethnic neighborhood. Jews prefer to live in a predominantly jewish neighborhood and orthodox
jews must live within a certain boundary. Thats fine. Amish also prefer to live in Amish
communities separate from the outside world. Thats fine. Some people prefer racial, ethnic or
religious neighborhoods. Other people prefer diverse communities with peoples of all races,
religions, ethnicities, etc. Thats fine too. Still other people prefer to live with people of
a similar income. People segregate and self sort themselves more on preference than on
prejudice. In other words people choose where to live more because of what they like than
what they dislike. The government has no right to tell people they cant choose or have no
right to choose or to limit federal funding unless people make choices that conform to
government social engineering. Now NIMBYISM which is more about what can and cannot be built
is another matter and it has alot to do with immigration and population which of course the
liberals and lefties will never admit or discuss but they are the first one to show up at a
town meeting and say we dont want more people in our town, we dont want more density, we dont
want midrises and high rises. So Liberals and Lefties simply zone out any opportunity for
population growth and force population growth elsewhere making it someone elses problem at
the same time they vote for more immigration. If you can make sense of the hypocrisy of the
left then please enlighten us...because it sounds like liberals and lefties are saying Im a
virtuous person and I care about people but I want what I want first...let them go somewhere
else and be someone elses problem. Wow! Can you be more virtuous?
Cynical, but effective - think about it a minute. Think about your neighbor to the
right, then to the left, then the 3 across the street and the 3 behind you. What are the odds
that at least one of them is your least-preferred neighbor ? Rather high I suspect. It
matters not that your annoying neighbor(s) are the dreaded Blacks, or feared Muslims, or
rumored herd of MS-13 gang squatters. You would love to see a law passed to eliminate them.
Vote for Trump!
Of course, neither Trump nor Biden can fix our least-preferred neighbor . People
will only recall that Trump is with them in hating that neighbor and wanting to put an end to
it! As I said; cynical but effective.
I was in Leesburg, VA today -- a purplish kind of suburb. Signs of BLM and "We Are All
Leesburg" -- next to signs that this house has applied to paint itself and is awaiting
"appropriateness" Council approval, that business is mounting new signage and also awaiting
"appropriateness" checkoff. The social justice equivalent of cheap grace, all the while
erecting an economic wall by zoning that is quite effective at segregation. Just like my
"woke" neighbors in Falls Church -- BLM (as long as they can afford an $800K house).
"... The "humanitarian intervention" in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi) in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of "containment." ..."
US foreign policy elite wants Biden & detests Trump because President failed to launch new NATO missions to justify its existence
One reason for the extraordinary hostility of the foreign policy insiders' brigade toward President Trump is that he has not wasted
his time conjuring up new missions to justify NATO's continued existence.
Instead, he has promised to withdraw 12,000 US troops from Germany and, to add insult to injury, he has demanded that NATO member
states increase their financial contributions toward the upkeep of the military alliance ostensibly there to "protect"
them.
This is sacrilege to a foreign policy elite that have spent the last 70 years worshipping at the altar of NATO.
"US troops aren't stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers -- they're restraining the expansionary
aims of the world's worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia," Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., fumed.
Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice
expressed alarm about the
"continued erosion of confidence in our leadership within NATO, and more efforts that call into question our commitment, and
more signals to the authoritarians within NATO and Russia itself that this whole institution is vulnerable."
Trump,
according to Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to NATO and current adviser to Joe Biden, has cast America's military allies
primarily as a drain on the US Treasury, and he has aggressively criticized Washington's true friends in Europe -- democratic leaders
such as France's President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel -- even as he treats Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping,
Kim Jong Un, and other 'authoritarians' around the world with unusual tact.
Seventy former Republican national security officials recently issued a statement accusing Trump of having "disgraced America's
global reputation and undermined our nation's moral and diplomatic influence." And -- horror of horrors! -- Trump "has called
NATO 'obsolete.' "
Not only has Trump failed to spell out a new mission for NATO, the one mission of sorts he has come up with -- extraction of more
funds from NATO member-states -- is calculated to cause mutual recriminations within the alliance. Trump regularly boasts that he
has cajoled NATO to cough up an additional $130 billion a year "and it's going to be $400 billion," he recently warned.
To the denizens of Washington's foreign policy think-tanks, pressuring NATO member states to come up with more money is a dangerous
business. It could have the undesirable effect of forcing them to wonder whether devoting scarce resources to NATO -- particularly
now following the Covid economic downturn -- is a sound investment.
It is no secret that ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has been desperately
searching for a reason to justify its existence. The alliance has expanded its membership from 16 to 30 in 20 years, while failing
to put forward a convincing reason, other than inertia, for staying in business.
To be sure, there were and are threats -- cybersecurity, mass migration, human trafficking, narcotics, nuclear proliferation,
international terrorism -- but it was never clear how a narrowly-focused military alliance would be able to address them unilaterally.
NATO has thus been forced to engage in some vigorous head-scratching.
During the 1990s, we had the "humanitarian intervention" craze. This led to the NATO bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina in
1994 and 1995 and, more horrifically, to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Neither operation achieved anything that could not have
been achieved years earlier -- and without the use of force.
In 2001, NATO got in on the Global War on Terror. After 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of the
North Atlantic Treaty, declaring that the terrorist attack on the US was an attack against every NATO member.
When the United States retaliated by invading Afghanistan in October 2001, NATO was on hand to assist. In December, it established
something called the International Security Assistance Force, the nebulous mission of which was to "assist the Afghan Government
in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance."
Next came Iraq. Despite the vocal opposition of France and Germany to the 2003 invasion, NATO, in no time got involved. In 2004,
it established NATO Training Mission-Iraq, the aim of which was supposedly to "assist in the development of Iraqi security forces
training structures and institutions so that Iraq can build an effective and sustainable capability that addresses the needs of the
nation." One of its tasks was to train the Iraqi police. However, as WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs
disclosure revealed, Iraq's
finely-trained police conducted horrific torture on detainees. Neither NATO's Afghanistan nor its Iraqi mission covered itself in
glory.
With the Democrats returning to power in Washington in 2009, NATO was back in the "humanitarian intervention"
business.
Its bombing of Libya in 2011 destroyed government, law and public order, institutions that before the intervention had ensured that
the people of Libya were able to go about their daily lives free from the fear of death, not to mention the spectacle of slave markets.
The "humanitarian intervention" in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi)
in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of "containment."
Following the February 21, 2014, coup in Kiev and the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, NATO's new mission was very much
like its old. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen promised that: "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on
the water, and more readiness on the land. For example, air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied
ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere."
Six years on, it's clear that there simply aren't enough armed conflicts in the world to justify the continued existence, not
to mention huge expense, of such a gargantuan military organization. NATO has therefore resorted to seizing on the latest fashionable
social and cultural issues to prove how up-to-date it is.
For example, NATO has added "climate change" to its repertoire. NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept
declared that "Key environmental
and resource constraints, including health risks, climate change, water scarcity and increasing energy needs will further shape the
future security environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the potential to significantly affect NATO planning and operations."
One would have thought that the most effective way NATO could contribute to minimizing global warming would be to cut back on
armaments, military exercises and naval and air patrols. But no, apparently the solution to "climate change" is more NATO,
not less.
Then came the issue gender equality. "Achieving gender equality is our collective task. And NATO is doing its part,"
said Mari Skre, the NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, in 2013. In March 2016, on International
Women's Day, NATO held a so-called "Barbershop Conference" on gender equality. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg took the
opportunity to declare that gender equality was a frightfully important issue for the alliance because "NATO is a values-based
organization and none of its fundamental values -- individual liberties, democracy, human rights and the rule of law -- work without
equality .We learned in Afghanistan and in the Balkans that by integrating gender within our operations, we make a tangible difference
to the lives of women and children".
Definitely a "tangible difference to the lives of women and children" : As a result of NATO's bombing campaigns in Yugoslavia
and Libya, thousands of women and children lost their lives. In Libya, for example, NATO helped deliver perhaps thousands of women
into the hands of ISIS.
This is how Human Rights Watch in 2017 described the record of ISIS rule in Libya:
"In the first half of 2016, fighters loyal to ISIS controlled the central coastal town of Sirte and subjected residents to
a rigid interpretation of Sharia law that included public floggings, amputation of limbs, and public lynchings, often leaving the
victims' corpses on display."
Trump's failure to articulate a new mission for NATO, combined with his desire to extract more and more funds from the 29 member
nations, puts the military alliance in a very vulnerable position. With no new mission and no obvious threats to Europe on the horizon
-- or at least none that NATO seems capable of addressing -- its member states, sooner or later, are bound to question the value
of belonging to an organization, with such high membership fees and so few benefits. No wonder the foreign-policy cognoscenti are
fulminating and praying for a Biden presidency.
One of the reasons the foreign policy crowd detests Trump is that he hasn't wasted his time trying to invent some "new mission"
for NATO. Where Trump differs from his predecessors is that he hasn't bothered trying to invent some new reason for NATO's continued
existence: Clinton had Yugoslavia, Bush Afghanistan & Iraq, Obama Libya. Trump hasn't identified any "new mission"
for NATO.
Maybe because there isn't one.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! Michael Chan 3 hours ago Presidentials elections in the US
are a joke. The voters are given two choices: either Trump or Biden. Both are bad. They can only choose between who they think is
less bad, knowing full well that they will regret their choice the minute they leave the voting booth. So, half of the voters will
choose not to vote. And it seems that one of the two candidates will be happy if more than 90% of the voters choose not to vote.
Reply 2 CHEVI789 Michael Chan 2 hours ago You are lead to believe you have a choice, the fact is they are the same evil that both
are controlled by the same group. Reply T. Agee Kaye 4 hours ago Good article. If true, NATO will want a doozy of a conflict to make
up for lost time / earnings. Reply 2 MarkG1964 4 hours ago The problem is that the Trump administration has failed everywhere. Talks
with North Korea have stalled, and even President Moon in South Korea is losing patience with US policy. Sanctions and tariffs against
China have failed miserably, as it's left a record number of US farmers facing bankruptcy, has not helped to reduce the US trade
deficit with China, or persuaded US manufacturers to relocate back to the US. In Venezuela, every attempt to replace President Maduro
with Gaido has fallen short. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria continue unabated, with no end in sight. Whether it's Biden
or Trump, the US can't afford another four years of the same. Reply Jeff_P 5 hours ago The purpose of NATOs existence is to provide
the US with cannon fodder for its hegemonic designs. Nothing else. Reply 1 Bob 3 hours ago the USA should let Europe defend itself.
Save us taxpayers billions of dollars Reply Krieger 3 hours ago NATO = Neocon America's Terrorist Organization Reply 1 CHEVI789 2
hours ago Now tell me if america is not the tyrant and dictator of the world. I really feel sorry for the good americans who's name
is tainted by the evil running their country, being the you know who. Reply shadowlady 1 hour ago Clearly the old farts in Washington
DC are still stuck in the Cold War era, the US taxpayers can't continue to police the world with US military.
George Szamuely is a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London) and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO's
Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Follow him on Twitter
@GeorgeSzamuely
"... The neo-liberal ideology, like many of its predecessor bodies of ideas and alibis for theft, teaches people that poverty is a mark of personal failure and moral turpitude. It also teaches that crime pays and that it is a constant temptation for the poor who, left unregulated, would help themselves to the wealth that members of the ruling class worked so hard for, from the very earliest age, by choosing the right fallopian tubes to crawl into. ..."
"... If such a reaction takes place it will lead to the formation of self defence militias where they are needed on the communities of the poor. And the failure of Biden /Harris would be a positive development in the discrediting of the corrupt "misleadership" class exemplified in the campaign to defeat Sanders and nominate Biden, which was based on the sense, in the Black community, that the Democrats- headed by the author of incarceration laws and one of the most evil prosecutors California has seen in the modern era-are their only protection. ..."
"...the terrible training and general ineptitude of the police is at the core of the
problem."
You are missing the point: the Police are very well trained, and indoctrinated. There is
nothing accidental in their behaviour. And the police culture is pretty well
internationalised. It is very similar in Canada and the UK for example. And, as we have seen
during the past year in France too.
It is a fascistic culture in which racism is an inherited and central but by no means
essential part. The Police are an crucial part of the neo-liberal system. And part of the
reward they get for doing as they are told, busting strikes, kettling demonstrators,
terrorising poor neighbourhoods and protecting private property, is a loose rein: they can do
more or less anything that they want. No Judge will do more than slap their wrists, the
Juries will thank them for their service. For certain personalities, in which US culture is
richly endowed, the right to run wild as part of the biggest biker gang in the world, is a
marvellous reward.
They are not only heavily armed but recruited, in large measure from the imperial armed
forces; there is nothing like a tour of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq to demonstrate impunity
in action.
The cops are the iron fist in the class system, defended by the judiciary, the
legislatures and the broad ideological apparatus, from the media to the educational system.
And backed up by armed and civilian militias, in most of which off duty cops and 'veterans'
of imperial adventures play leading roles. The police stations are gang headquarters in which
violence and contempt for democracy and legality are celebrated. And bullying is the secret
to success and advancement.
To put the matter in perspective- cops shoot about 1000 US civilians a year, about 25 a
week. And most of them are poor people, a constituency in which Black people are over
represented after centuries of discrimination and exploitation regimes enforced by
violence.
The neo-liberal ideology, like many of its predecessor bodies of ideas and alibis for
theft, teaches people that poverty is a mark of personal failure and moral turpitude. It also
teaches that crime pays and that it is a constant temptation for the poor who, left
unregulated, would help themselves to the wealth that members of the ruling class worked so
hard for, from the very earliest age, by choosing the right fallopian tubes to crawl
into.
It may be that b is right in his analysis. But it is also possible that-given the stark
nature of the facts surrounding these cases- public opinion will recognise that the one
constant in all these problems is the police system and the Gulags for private profit which
not only dwarf anything the Soviet Union ever developed, in terms of numbers, but in terms of
licence, unregulated violence and disregard for natural law hark back to the worst days of
the plantation culture.
If such a reaction takes place it will lead to the formation of self defence militias
where they are needed on the communities of the poor. And the failure of Biden /Harris would
be a positive development in the discrediting of the corrupt "misleadership" class
exemplified in the campaign to defeat Sanders and nominate Biden, which was based on the
sense, in the Black community, that the Democrats- headed by the author of incarceration laws
and one of the most evil prosecutors California has seen in the modern era-are their only
protection.
I agree with whoever wrote that it come down to culture.
The culture in the US and the West are the the result of the social contract that has
finance be a private owned and controlled element. It created the top/bottom class structure
which has been glossed over with left/right brainwashing.
The elite have manufactured the ignorance underpinning the misdirected protesting we are
seeing and all the "undesirables" who have been created by the system of inequality of
opportunity. The manufacturing of ignorance is called agnotology and came out of the study of
the decades long propaganda by the nicotine industry about cancer......are we sure, we are
sure, we are sure, we are sure that smoking causes cancer?
There are a few of us out here saying that private banking causes the culture you are
seeing in America and China is showing the way with purely sovereign central banking and
finance. We see the rest of you as victims of agnotology.
Belarus - NATO Lobby Acknowledges That Its Color Revolution Failedvk , Aug 26 2020 18:05 utc |
3
On August 15 we explained why the color revolution in Belarus
would fail . Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko had offered President Vladimir Putin
of Russia to finally implement the long delayed Union State that will unite Belarus with
Russia. In exchange he wanted full Russian backing for shutting down the U.S. led color
revolution against him. Putin accepted the deal. In consequence:
Lukashenko, and his police, will not hang from a pole. Russia will take care of the problem
and the Union State will finally be established.
That does not mean that the color revolution attempt is over. The U.S. and its lackey
Poland will not just pack up and leave. But with the full backing from Russia assured,
Lukashenko can take the necessary steps to end the riots.
And that is what he did. Lukashenko continued to allow demonstrations but when on Sunday
the demonstrators were directed to storm the presidential palace they saw a theatrical but
strong
response :
[T]he Polish-run Nexta Telagram channel (which is the main medium used by the Empire to
overthrow Lukashenko) initially called for a peaceful protest, but at the end of the day a
call was made to try to take over the main Presidential building. When the rioters (at this
point we are dealing with an illegal, violent, attempt to overthrow the state – so I
don't call these people demonstrators) got to the building they were faced with a real
"wall" of riot cops in full gear: this (really scary) sight was enough to stop the rioters
who stood for a while, and then had to leave.
Second, Lukashenko did something rather weird, but which makes perfectly good sense in
the Belarusian context: he dressed himself in full combat gear, grabbed an AKSU-74 assault
rife, dressed his (15 year old!) son also in full combat gear (helmet included) and flew in
his helicopter over Minsk and then landed in the Presidential building. They then walked to
the riot cops, where Lukashenko warmly thanked them and which resulted in the full police
force giving him a standing ovation. To most of us this behavior might look rather
outlandish if not outright silly. But in the context of the Belarusian crisis, which is a
crisis primarily fought in the informational realm, it makes perfectly good sense.
The protesters, which police had earlier
identified as "rich city kids, the children of rich parents who are fed up with the
well-fed life", did not have the stomach to attack a well armed and motivated police
force.
The NATO lobby shop Atlantic Council has also recognized that fact and
bemoans it :
The protesters are generally very sweet, polite, and peaceful. Many are young, middle class
Belarusians who work in the country's booming IT industry and come to rallies dressed in
form-fitting hipster ensembles. Unlike events in Kyiv in 2013-14, there is no militant edge
to the demonstrations. Indeed, this revolution is so velvet that at times it feels
positively sleepy. For better or worse, there is a marked absence of the rough and stalwart
young men capable of making liberals uncomfortable or leading the resistance if and when
the authoritarian state decides to deploy force.
Without Nazi stormtroopers like the U.S. used during the 2014 Maidan riots in Ukraine
there is no chance to overthrow Lukashenko. With such troops the fight would end in a
massacre and Lukashenko would still be the winner. The author rightly concludes:
According to the American unconventional warfare manual, a color revolution can only be
successful if the target government (TG) is divided, i.e. there's at lest one powerful elite
faction awaiting to do the coup at the same time the protests are on the streets, and when
there's the military component to "give it a spine".
A color revolution is, therefore, a military coup with a popular protest façade.
But it is never the protesters per se who topple the government, but those two
behind-the-scenes elements. That's why color revolutions are not revolutions, but regime
change operations or, if you will, coup d'États.
The Belarus "shoe revolution" failed because, although they had the protesting element
(the "colored" element) it lacked the other two ends of the process: a powerful militia and a
faction of the Belarusian elite willing to topple Lukashenko. Instead, they had to improvise
with a housewife who had (with all the NGO machine) 10% of the valid votes.
And we can argue the military element is the most important. In Venezuela, for example,
the USA had the elite (including Capriles, who had 49% of the votes against Maduro, losing by
a hair) and some of the colored element (the middle class from the Maracaibo Lake/Caracas
area). Maduro held them out almost exclusively because he had the FANB united on his side and
the vast majority of the people, many of them organized in militias (one fisherman dominating
and arresting a Jack Ryan the other day).
On the other side, the Brazilian color revolution was a monumental success because:
1) The Brazilian Armed Forces already were in American hands (they are since 1957);
2) The entire Brazilian elite already is pro-American (including most of the Legislative and
all of the Judiciary);
3) Most of the Brazilian people indeed is ideologically pro-capitalist (i.e. liberal,
pro-USA).
In fact, the Workers' Party situation since taking the Presidential Office in 2003 was so
frail that one can argue it wasn't even a color revolution, but a pro-USA society expelling a
alien element.
--//--
Second, Lukashenko did something rather weird, but which makes perfectly good sense in the
Belarusian context: he dressed himself in full combat gear, grabbed an AKSU-74 assault
rife, dressed his (15 year old!) son also in full combat gear (helmet included) and flew in
his helicopter over Minsk and then landed in the Presidential building. They then walked to
the riot cops, where Lukashenko warmly thanked them and which resulted in the full police
force giving him a standing ovation. To most of us this behavior might look rather
outlandish if not outright silly. But in the context of the Belarusian crisis, which is a
crisis primarily fought in the informational realm, it makes perfectly good sense.
It harks back to the Bolshevik tradition, which demands that a communist leader must
always lead by example and, in case of hot war, in the front lines. That's why it wasn't
weird in the Belarusian context.
The Bolsheviks themselves lost most of their leadership in the Civil War merely because
they led in the front. Trotsky himself led in the front a charge in a desperate attack to
defend Petrograd from falling to the Whites. Fidel Castro led his army in the front line
during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Stalin lost his son (I think he was a lieutenant) in a Nazi
concentration camp. Not to mention all the leaders of the first generation of the CCP, who
were all war-forged (yes, even Deng Xiaoping).
Tsikhanouskaya haser BHL photo op as the zenith of her "revolution". Of course, it took
place in a foreign country haven, which makes it doubly comical.
The entire Belarusian Color Revolution is fodder for, and seemingly product of, the Onion
and John Cleese.
If a movie is done, Cleese can interject Guido, a truly comic character.
This fail in Minsk sadly lacks the personal handiwork of Eliot Abrams, but contains all
his masterly failings. Must be a protege in the State Dept. and henchmen in the CIA who
crafted this debacle for "democracy".
Succor for the bozos who ran this show for the US is the Navalny medical emergency. They
will ride that donkey for all its worth. And hope everyone will forget Belarus 2020.
When I opened the posting from the Saker cited
above, my attention was caught by the picture of Lukushenko carrying an assault rifle, and I
immediately thought of the famous picture of Salvador Allende carrying an AK-47 on the day he
died.
Then I read the caption below the picture:
"Last week Lukashenko said that no other elections, nevermind a coup, will happen as long
as he is alive. This time Lukashenko decided to show, symbolically, that he is in charge and
that he will die fighting along his son if needed. The message here is clear: "I am no
Ianukovich and, if needed, I will die just like Allende died ".
Tom Luongo massively stubbed his big toe on Belarus in
his latest assessment of Outlaw US Empire policy. But just because he got Belarus so
wrong, should we dismiss the other content? Luongo puts forth the hypothesis that Trump has
unleashed his own version of a Color Revolution on his own State Department:
"Trump has a bigger problem on his hands, however. The chaos he's unleashed in his quest
to remake European and U.S. relations is something his State Dept. under Pompeo can't control
either. And he won't be in any position to do anything more than what he's doing now, win
short-term victories and lose the long-term war while global capital abandons the U.S. and
moves [E]ast."
IMO, Luongo should've kept to that thesis and its accompanying idea that Trump is
attempting to undermine the UN, or perhaps get the Empire to quit the UN.
Step 1. Destroy a country economically to depopulate it and create a sub-population of
Orcs
Step 2. Hire snipers.
Step 3. THEN you declare your sock puppet the winner of an election in the Color revolution,
make them a member of NATO of your now vacant country, install missile bases, drones and
Chechen terrorists.
Covid must be taking a toll on the A-Team of Neocons.
A few journalist of the Belarus state TV went on a strike. They were unceremoniously fired
and replaced with Russian journalists.
Hmm, I've heard otherwise. There is information that, on the contrary, Lukashenko
forgives(!) those Belarusian journalists who rebelled against him, and takes them back to
work (it is difficult to imagine a more stupid step).
The odious Minister Makei, like other pro-Westerners (who in fact organized the Maidan
attempt in Belarus), retained their posts. Lukashenko did not purge personnel and did not
identify traitors. Consequently, they will continue their subversive activities and will
interfere with the implementation of the Union State.
Western (primarily Polish) NGOs and mass media have not been liquidated (or at least
limited).
So far, there are no signs that Lukashenko is going to change his favorite (and so fatal
both for him and for Belarus) "multi-vector policy". I do not think that we will see real
shifts towards the implementation of the Union State. Rather the opposite.
This is what Russia and Belarus are using at the moment along with other agreements. It
was signed back in the late nineties so perhaps they will make a few changes to it.
https://tass.com/world/1192339
"Union State Parliamentary Assembly denounces meddling in Belarus's internal affairs
It underscores that Alexander Lukashenko is the president-elect and that the vote took place
in compliance with the country's Constitution"
Here's the Union State Portal whose
Russian version is current while the English version lags about 3 weeks behind. It's
difficult to get English language info on this topic that isn't massaged by the CIA or MI6,
thus the need to read both Russian and Belarus sources. One Union model is the USA which is a
federal, not unitary, construct, with states having a small amount of independence but don't
have overall control of federal policies--security, monetary, fiscal, foreign, etc. I
understand this version between Russia and Belarus to be similar--as I wrote earlier, Belarus
would return to the SSR status it had within the USSR, although it was awarded a spot in the
UN after WW2. The potential exists for other states to join. For example, the Donbass could
become integrated, which makes sense to me.
Everyone agrees Lukashenko's regime is reaching its end. The question is what happens
next.
The West doesn't seem to have the power to impose a colour revolution as happened in
Ukraine. Belarus are Russians in most views. Will it end with integration, or a new
"independent" state. I have no idea.
Belarus has been turned into a focal point of geopolitics, the outcome of this latest U.S.
mis-adventure I'm sure will have profound ramifications. Thanks b for your sharp and
insightful analysis, on par with your most excellent Syria, Skripal and other reporting that
won me over to MoA as a regular.
It would be interesting to know if the failing Outlaw Empire (thanks karlof1 for that
term) had reasons to hope for a different outcome of that gamble. On the face of it it looks
either desperate or ignorant - to think that Russia which has foiled coups in places as far
and surrounded by US stooges such as Venezuela and Syria (and possibly more), would not
intervene successfully next door in a Russian-speaking country.
Further indications that indeed western colour revolution plans have fizzled. Note the
tonal change absent the threats and belligerence in this Canadian communique:
Aug 26, 2020: Joint Statement by European Union High Representative/VP Josep Borrell and
the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, Francois-Philippe Champagne
The Cavalry comes to the rescue of poor defenseless Belarus. The 'Human Rights (for some)
Foundation' has formed the 'Belarus Solidarity Fund' - with either $106,957 (38 donors) or
1,397,340 EUR raised depending on who tells the tale:
The Belarus color revolution was an after thought, not a plan. It can't really have been
said to have failed.
Venezuela again not Ukraine.
Madam Guaido's wikipedia entry was created after she stood for President. Even Random Guaido
in Venezuela had a wikipedia entry 2 weeks before Trump named him president (though he still
hasn't stood for it).
@VK, Compare those socialists leading from the front to Trump, the great saviour of
western civilization, according to the dupes at the RNC. You gotta be special kind of
brainwashed to believe an anthropologically inferior personality type like Trump would do
anything but continue destruction of material conditions for everyday americans. The notion
of Trump's paradise lost, a fantastic Never-Never land of economic prosperity and good health
- that never was neither on land or sea. Trump's globalist tax scam kept the Wall Street
bubble going for two years with record ballooning deficits and no public benefit for masses
of deplorables. The repo crisis of September 2019 already signaled collapsing of his bubble,
but (after over ultimatums and pressure from Trump) fed countered with $1 Trillion per week
in overnight loans for his financial parasite friends. The United States was in freefall even
before pandemic began. A Dorian Gray individual like Trump is not saving anything or waging
war on the front to save american republic against deep state actors. Trump is their best
double agent, openly negociating access to chinese financial markets for globalist firms (see
article). To top it off, his administration just socialized 3 to 4 trillions dollars to Wall
Street with no oversight in latest pandemic bailout. He's basically destroying your country
and children future economic position by giving a free endowment to financial parasites who
will reengineer the whole of society at expense of hoi polloi. How that worked out for Weimar
Germany ? We know what followed. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't see how destroying
pre-requisite material conditions of freedom, make him suitable to lead anything ? Is this
how one saves middle class deplorables, by paying it forward and scheming with his
''friends'' to steal pension funds from working class americans ? Nowadays conservatives have
shown their true colours, sadly they don't believe in anything...Hating niggers, hispanics
and antifa won't make them more competitive vis a vis marxist China and collectivist Russia.
Can't fix cultish and stupid, derp.
"She has already met various 'western' politicians including the General Secretary of the
German Christian Democratic Union party of chancellor Angela Merkel, Peter Zeimiag, and the
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun. Neither will be able to help her."
Biegun is currently Deputy State Secretary, but he met with Russian Foreign Minister when
he 'came' to Moscow on 25 August.
Biegun made the claim, as reported by Lavrov "We heard the US confirm its position that it
is not interested in creating an artificial crisis around the situation in Belarus."
He drew Biegun's attention to "...initiative of President of Belarus Alexander
Lukashenko...of implementing Constitutional reform as a foundation for consolidating society
and the holding of subsequent elections for president, parliament and local government
authority. I believe a hand has been extended to all those who are interested in a stable and
united Belarus. Of course, this should be considered by the opposition, and our Western
partners, that are leading the opposition now."
Lavrov structured the last sentence so it could be read two ways, deliberately, I suspect,
to allow the interpretation that Western 'partners' should pay attention to Lukasheko's
concessions.
These concessions include constitutional reform, and we can be sure such changes will be
modelled on the Russian constitutional changes, incorporating the US system or requiring
foreign NGOs to report extensively on their holdings,financing, property etc. Those
attempting to interfere in Govt are thrown out, quite rightly (altho in USA Saudi Arabia and
Israel are functionally exempt, it appears).
His final remarks were the most important:
"We appealed to these countries, primarily the US and the EU, to pay attention to those
circles, such as in Poland and Lithuania, that are emphatically expressing their discontent
with normalisation in Belarus and are trying to provoke violent actions in order to cause a
respective response from law enforcement.
We consider such actions dangerous, and I think Mr Biegun heard our serious
warnings ."
This last recalls Pres. Putins comment on unveiling hypersonic missiles in response to USA
seeking nuclear 'first strike' ability against Russia by deploying anti missile systems to
block any Russian retaliatory resonse. He said along the lines 'they didn't listen to us
then. Maybe they will listen now'.
So Lavrov is NOT saying USA is 'taking on board' Russias warnings. He is saying that USA
HAS BEEN TOLD very clearly there will be a geopolitical blocking response that will not suits
USA ambitions to surround Russia's land borders with an extreme close proximity ring of
nuclear weapons.
@ Posted by: steven t johnson | Aug 26 2020 23:00 utc | 42
That's why the Union State is not a reality yet. That's why Lukashenko risked everything
by opening up to the West. It can only be because of the voracity of the Russian
oligarchs.
But there's a tiny ray of hope: China. If Russia can settle on a Chinese model of
socialism, then Belarus can open up (albeit gradually, very slowly). It's different when you
have the system ready, as a palpable reality, where you just need to copy - you don't need to
be like Lenin, trying desperately to educate and convince millions of illiterate peasants in
the 1910s. It's much easier when the formula is ready and in the showcase, for everybody to
see.
"b and the regulars here are ALL aware that AmeriKKKa is in terminal decline.
How come you only noticed today?"
Decline: the top layer of power is collapsing, but Am is a multi-layered federation.
Illinois' (Chicago etc)
bonds are rated "junk", but the SF Bay Area is a power house. the terms of federation are the
next issue.
track the state level, and Paul Jay and Larry Wilkerson. foreign policy is a wreck, so is the
culture.
I tend to agree with your parsing of Lavrov. It's been several months now that the Outlaw
US Empire's been read the riot act by both China and Russia, who are now both engaging in
pushback. Note the change in attitude in Syria where the Outlaw US Empire is in violation of
the law--of course, it's an Outlaw--and Outlaw troops are now being pushed around by all, not
just Russians. China's launch of two carrier killer missiles in response to continual
provocations is also new. Clearly, the two Strategic Partners are acting in concert. And
their message is directed to those behind Trump, who are also those behind Biden: Things are
going to change and you're going to be the one doing the changing is the message.
"Increase local and regional civic engagement","expand an online depository of
publications not readily accessible in the country, including works on politics, civil
society, history, human rights, and independent culture","To defend and support independent
journalists and media","To foster youth civic engagement","training democratic parties and
movements in effective advocacy campaigns"
b: "Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who falsely claimed to have won the election, is in Lithuania.
She is supposed to be an English teacher but has difficulties to read the English text during
her begging (vid) for 'western' support."
S.T. has some trouble making speeches in Russian too, with unnatural pauses etc. If her
English is similar, then slow speaking with numerous pauses and avoiding complicated terms
may be OK in teaching foreign language with weird grammar and difficult phonetics. I recall
my increasingly dispirited English teacher in high school: Teacher: "think", girl: "sink",
teacher: "think", girl "tink", and that repeated like 10 times.
-----
steven t johnson: "The enforcement of the Union Treaty means the dismantling of the state
property left in Balarus; the maximum feasible termination of the social wage left; the
absorption of any or all state assets into Moscow's central government; ..." I would need a
credible link for that. EU has anti-subsidy rules etc., but state owned manufacturing
companies exist in Russia, say, Rosatom (nuclear reactor and related products), United
Aircraft Corporation, Gazprom, and quite a few other. Moreover, I seriously doubt if Union
Treaty is anywhere as prescriptive as EU rules imposed on members and non-members like
Ukraine. Putin is near fanatical about fiscal discipline, and lax about minimal wage (like
Germany, if I recall, convenient if many workers are foreign), and was eliminating subsidies
for Belarus. If anything, with Belarus more formally following Russia, the fiscal pressure
from Moscow would relax. For example, Crimea does not pay for its infrastructure projects
like the bridge, railroad and new highways.
On the other hand, economic and social consequences of incorporating Belarus to EU and
NATO would be very severe.
The failure of the Color Revolution in Belarus demonstrates that such actions can never be
done on the cheap.
Color Revolutions require at least US$5 billion or whatever the current equivalent would
be in today's money after being adjusted for inflation and other effects of incessant
money-printing by the US Treasury. Plus you probably need someone of the calibre and menace
of Victoria Nuland to carry it out properly, actually going to the place where the Color
Revolution is occurring with loads of cookies and pastries to hand out to people and yakking
to the US Ambassador in Minsk on the phone about who's going to be Prime Minister and who's
going to be Foreign Minister, and so on and so forth.
As VK @3 says, it would have helped also if the US had cultivated a bunch of oligarchs
like Khodorkovsky in Russia, Timoshenko in Ukraine and Leopoldo López Mendoza in
Venezuela to meddle in national politics and pose as Belarus' legitimate political
opposition. Instead the US and the EU thought they could woo Alexander Lukashenko to their
side. As long as he appeared to be making all the right moves, they got lazy and neglected to
nurture potential faux opposition candidates and groups until too late.
The result is that Lukashenko can point to nearly 30 years of political, economic and
social stability as his record as President of Belarus, and that is a record that will be
very hard for any political opposition to overcome.
At the linke that Chico @ 48 posted (thanks, Chico!), I found this:
Increasing Party Capacity In Citizen Outreach And Issue Advocacy
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)
$300,000
To enable a broad, diverse group of political activists representing democratic
political parties and movements to conduct effective and systematic citizen outreach. The
institute will assist political leaders in utilizing important pre- and post-election periods
to carry out constructive citizen outreach by training democratic parties and movements in
effective advocacy campaigns.
$300,000 is the largest single donation made by the NED in Belarus in 2019. Does anyone
else think this is actually quite a small amount to spend on what presumably should be a
medium-large group of political activists (say at least 15 individuals)? Some if not most of
that grant money must represent their salaries and living expenses, not to mention also rent
money and money for office equipment if they need a place to gather and work
together.
Democracy is a universal human value. I don't think you value democracy very highly, b.
Disappointing.
Posted by: jadan | Aug 27 2020 1:48 utc | 54
For starters, it is good to read "Ochlocracy" in Wikipedia, and ponder a bit about
ochlocracy today. If you are lazy, it means "rule of mob", where changes of the government
are violent and often lead to regression. Wikipedia is under many pressures, so the
historical examples end in 19-th century, but there is a wealth of examples in 21-st
century.
It is also worth to note that it used to be a "common wisdom" that democracy as a system
cannot work in most of countries. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a professor and a diplomat, earned her
diplomatic position (ambassador to UN?) writing "Dictatorships and Double Standards",
published in Commentary in November 1979.
In that piece, Kirkpatrick mentioned what she saw as a difference between authoritarian
regimes and the totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union; sometimes, it was necessary to
work with authoritarian regimes if it suited American purposes: "No idea holds greater sway
in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize
governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances ... Decades, if not centuries, are
normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the
road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse ...
Many guiding ideas for "color revolutions" come from that background. There is Goodness
("we") and Badness ("evil they"), and to transition from Goodness to Badness, a few centuries
of autocracy may be exactly what is needed. One can view it as democracy with a few necessary
correction. In the context of east-central Europe, the correction include:
waves of purges under "de-Communization", and "removing Russian influence"
elimination of people who speak Russian from public life (Baltics, Ukraine, proposed for
Belorus)
censorship of everything which smacks Communism, sympathy to Russia, advocacy of the right to
education in Russian etc.
innovative uses of law enforcement (allow some people to be killed or beaten up to various
degree by ardent "democrats", allow some parties to collect black money while unleashing huge
search for the most picayune transgression for opposition parties
somewhat novel re-definition of "social activism", a combination of fascism and pro-NATO
workshops paid by oligarchs and bureaucrats of the West
Not a full list, but it seems to be to be the less advertised part of Belarussian
"democratic program".
@Peter AU1
I agree that Putin is not the type who is carried away by his emotions. However, the
assessment that the Russia-Belarus Union will lead to the ouster of Lukashenko is well
founded.
Putin has mase clear what he wants, already in 1999: The union of Russia and Belarus.
Read: Belarus becoming an autonomous part of Russia and remaining an independent state in
name only.
Lukashenko has also made clear what he wants: He has build his whole presidency on Belarus
remaining an independent country. Independent both from the West and from Russia.
I don´t see how it is possible to reconcile the two positions.
NEXTA and the Belarus games has me somewhat intrigued especially as it appears from an
earlier thread that it was hacked and the demonstrators sent on wild goose chase after wild
goose chase.
Was that when the western meddlers finally realised they were stymied? Has Telegram been
hacked by the Belarus security?
Some interesting details emerge and the extent of the network of spies and informants
claimed by Potasetich would, if he were in the UK, land him in Belmarsh as a prisoner under
the UK Official Secrets Act. Or if he were USA perhaps Gitmo, in Australia probably Manus
Island rotting alongside refugees and waiting for malaria to finish him off.
Some extracts from the interview:-
Potasetich: Our channel is called "Nexta," which means "somebody" in Belarusian. That's our
specialty. Telegram is an anonymous platform, it's a place for the secure transmission of
information, and "Nexta" is a network of thousands of Belarusians who are sharing
information, who send it to us and thus share the information with the whole country.
We have people in each sphere, verified sources with whom we have been communicating for
a long time. These are the people who provide information that is always 100% accurate.
These are the people who send us internal documents from various agencies, including the
security service.
In terms of mass protests, first of all, we observe the situation because we receive
hundreds, sometimes thousands, of messages per hour. We are able to see the bigger picture
and we immediately see when something corresponds to reality, and where there is an obvious
provocation, exaggeration, or disinformation -- including by the special services, which
also throws us information quite regularly.
We have a lot of exclusive information, we have many government insiders, a lot of
documents from some small government agencies or enterprises. We also have a lot of
documents and classified information from high-ranking officials, including the president's
administration, as well as law enforcement agencies. People know that they can read what
will never be said anywhere else, simply because if ordinary, independent mass media in
Belarus wrote it, they would be subject to controls immediately, pressure from special
services would start, warnings would be issued and the publication could be closed
down.
And then this interesting comment that indicates Telegram was safe and handy for the Belarus
security establishment:
Euronews: Were you ready for the fact that the internet would be cut off across the whole
country? How did you work under these conditions?
Potasetich: The good thing about Telegram is that it's the only platform that worked
somehow. Even when no media downloads, at least it worked a bit. Most people in Belarus saw
only a text version of messages, but at least this way they got information about what was
going on.
A large number of subscribers from abroad also came to us and everything worked
perfectly well. This news really spread all over the world. I think it's great, because
even most government sites in Belarus still aren't working. At the moment, it's even
impossible to enter the site of the Belarusian CEC (Central Election Commission of
Belarus), because the internet has been blocked to such an extent.
This is the beauty of this new media format -- when there's no centralised site, when
it's impossible to block or ban in any way, because everyone has access to it and this
access is unconditional.
Did you advise your readers on how to get around the block?
Yes, we actively advised our subscribers to use proxies, VPN, Tor, and other ways to
bypass the total blockage of the internet, which continues in Belarus for a second day. But
the proxy-servers were so in demand that the addresses we gave immediately went down.
Ah yes - Tor - safe as a bank of course. Given the run around the demonstrators got it
appears that someone outside of the core operators had admin rights to the NEXTA channel.
Which likely gave them peek-a-boo rights to every subscriber.
I can imagine the Maxwell Smart cone of silence descending on the channel for a while. Can
any barflies expand on this at all?
Telegram, the supposedly secure messaging app, has over 100 million users. You might even
be one of them. If you are, you should probably stop using it right now . Here's the
unfortunate truth about Telegram: it's not as secure as the company's marketing campaigns
might lead you to believe.
According to interviews with leading encryption and security experts, Telegram has a
wide range of security issues and doesn't live up to its proclamations as a safe and secure
messaging application.
Take note Belarus activists, NEXTA has just set you all up for a big fall. That is how
much they 'care for your revolution'.
It took ten years to flip Ukraine to western side. I think it will take less to flip
Belarus but this won't happen after one round of demonstrations and nobody sane believed it
will. The pressure will be increased and at some point it will become unbearable.
I acknowledge Lukashenko skill, he managed to lead his country for 25 year without major
bumps.
If Lukashenko wanted to make union with Russia he already had enough time to do it. IMHO it
is more likely there will be an agreement with the west to hand over government while keeping
wealth and some influence, similar to scenario played in Poland around 1989, where communist
elites prepared to hand over for several years, quite possibly since 1985 and where they
stayed a part of the political system for at least next 20 years. They are still around today
but their significance is next to zero. Similar scenarios were played in Czechoslovakia and
Hungary. Ceausescu did not play along so he got bloody treatment.
I expect Lukashenko to swap sides and align with west within 3 to 5 years from now.
Don't hope for the fall of the west. It's just with technical progress, people there
became less useful so some of them can be disposed of, be it violent or non-violent way. It's
up to you if you allow to be disposed of.
The West is ruled by the dictatorship of global private finance. All other claims to
representative government are subservient to the "rule-based-order" of the cult behind global
private finance.
And many are too ignorant to understand this perspective and keep spewing this and that
"ism" myth they think is reality as brainwashed tools for the elite.
Putin interview today, about corona, a second vaccine. Concerning Belarus, a reserve force
made after Lukashenko's request, to be deployed only if the situation goes out of control,
the request is legally based on the United State Agreement between Russia and Belarus and the
CSTO treaty.
In russian:
Peter AU1 @32
Thanks for the link, Article 2 of the agreement calls for a common agreed upon foreign and
defense policy.
I took some notes of the agreement, but I think whoever is interested in its contents can
read it with a mechanical translation.
One more detail in the interview, the operation to trap the supposedly Wagner mercenaries was
designed by Kiev together with the USA, no surprises there, but now publicly announced.
@ Posted by: donkeytale | Aug 27 2020 16:01 utc | 97
And what does it have to do with Belarus?
By the way, there's absolutely no evidence the results of this Belarusian presidential
election aren't precise. Many Russian journalists and "experts" took the bait an immediately
accepted Lukashenko doesn't have 80% of support, instead having "three thirds" (i.e.
66,66%).
The problem is the only material basis for this is the results in Minsk, where Lukashenko
got "only" 64% of the votes. But even then you're assuming the official results are true.
Tikhanovskaya stated, citing her own particular sources, that it was actually she, and not
Lukashenko, who received 80% of the vote. She equally stated Lukashenko actually got not more
than 7% of the vote (!!). Either way, Lukashenko put her theory to test and proved her
wrong.
Minsk is not Belarus. It is perfectly possible for a man to have received two thirds of
the vote in the city which hates him the most to have received 90-99% in the interior. 80% of
the vote is perfectly possible, and I think they are near the truth (but not exactly, as you
have to take into account the people who voted "none" or didn't vote).
The fact that the pro-Lukashenko rallies flopped is not surprising. One of the main
problems with late Soviet-style democracy is the profound castration of the masses in terms
of political mobilization and organization. They grow up and expect the issue to be solved by
the corresponding organ of the central party/State, so they don't bother to go out to the
streets and do propaganda warfare. In fact, Lukashenko's call for his supporters to hit the
streets must've sound very strange for them: he should simply deploy the police and, if it
isn't enough, the army and get over it as quickly as possible.
"Sergei Brilyov: We have seen numerous reports on your telephone conversations with
European leaders. But these reports are usually just scanty press releases from the Kremlin
Press Service. In fact, you have not yet publicly shared your view of the situation in
detail. What do you think of the developments in Belarus?
"Vladimir Putin: You know, I think that we have shown much more restraint and neutrality
with respect to the events in Belarus than many other countries, both European and American
ones, such as the United States.
"In my opinion, we have indeed been covering the developments in Belarus quite
objectively, from every angle, showing both sides. We believe that it is up to the Belarusian
society and people themselves to deal with this. Although, certainly, we care about what is
happening there.
"This nation is very close to us and perhaps is the closest, both in terms of ethnic
proximity, the language, the culture, the spiritual as well as other aspects. We have dozens
or probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of direct family ties with Belarus and
close industrial cooperation. Suffice it to say that, for example, Belarusian products
account for more than 90 percent of the total agricultural imports on the Russian
market."
On the situation with the Russian Mercs:
"Vladimir Putin: This was an operation of Ukrainian secret services in cooperation with
their US colleagues. Now this is known for sure. Some participants in this event or
observers, well-informed people do not even conceal this now."
One point of difference between Ukraine and Belarus:
Putin: "By the way, the President of Belarus said that he is willing to consider
conducting a constitutional reform, adopting a new Constitution, holding new parliamentary
and presidential elections based on the new Constitution. But the effective Constitution must
not be breached. Did you note that the Constitutional Court of Belarus issued a ruling,
according to which it is absolutely unacceptable to establish supra-constitutional bodies
which are not envisaged by the country's basic law and which are trying to take over
power . It is hard to disagree with this ruling." [My Emphasis]
On the Union Treaty and actions based upon it:
"Vladimir Putin: There is no need to hush up anything.
"Indeed, the Union Treaty, that is, the Treaty on the Union State, and the Collective
Security Treaty (CSTO) include articles saying that all member states of these organisations,
including the Union State, which consists of two states only – Russia and Belarus, are
obliged to help each other protect their sovereignty, external borders and stability. This is
exactly what it says.
"In this connection, we have certain obligations towards Belarus, and this is how Mr
Lukashenko has formulated his question. He said that he would like us to provide assistance
to him if this should become necessary. I replied that Russia would honour all its
obligations.
"Mr Lukashenko has asked me to create a reserve group of law enforcement personnel, and I
have done this. But we have also agreed that this group would not be used unless the
situation becomes uncontrollable, when extremist elements – I would like to say this
once again – when the extremist elements, using political slogans as a cover, overstep
the mark and start plundering the country, burning vehicles, houses, banks, trying to seize
administration buildings, and so on.
"During our conversation with Mr Lukashenko, we came to the conclusion that now it is not
necessary, and I hope that it will never be necessary to use this reserve, which is why we
are not using it.
"I would like to say once again that we proceed from the belief that all the current
problems in Belarus will be settled peacefully, and if any violations are permitted by either
side – the state authorities and the law enforcement personnel, or the protesters
– if they exceed the framework of the law, the law will respond to this accordingly.
The law must be equal for everyone. But speaking objectively, I believe that the Belarusian
law enforcement agencies are exercising commendable self-control despite everything. Just
take a look at what is happening in some other countries ." [My Emphasis]
Brilyov takes the bolded bait and Putin delivers the coup de grace:
"Sergei Brilyov: Yes, but the first two days were awful for many people.
"Vladimir Putin: You know what I think about this. Was it not awful when people died in
some European countries nearly every day?
"Sergei Brilyov: This is why Lukashenko rejected Macron's mediation, offering instead to
help him deal with the yellow vest protests.
"Vladimir Putin: Is it not awful when a defenceless person is shot in the back and there
are his three children in his car?
"Sergei Brilyov: Yes, it is awful.
"Vladimir Putin: Have those who are putting the blame on Belarus and the Belarusian
authorities, President Lukashenko, have these people condemned these acts? I have not heard
anything about this. Why such discrimination?
"This makes me think that the issue is not the current events in Belarus, but that some
forces would like to see something different happening there. They would like to influence
these processes and to bring about the solutions that would suit their political
interests.
"Therefore, I would like to say once again that the general situation [in Belarus] is
improving, by and large. And I hope that all the problems – and there are indeed
problems, because otherwise the people would not have taken to the streets – that all
these problems will be settled peacefully within the framework of the Constitution and the
law."
The distinction Putin made between Russian/Belarusan behavior versus that of
self-righteous Outlaw nations will leave viewers nodding their heads in agreement and they'll
thank their lucky stars they live in a civilized nation as they ought. Add today's sanctions
against the company that made the vaccine--a huge crime against humanity--and Putin's closing
remarks will be further reinforced. Neither Putin or Lavrov will use my words, but in their
minds I'm sure they note the USA has moved from an Outlaw nation to being a Renegade nation
against which more force needs to be applied via its Eurasian Strategic Partnerships in order
to make it modify its behavior before it truly does something MAD.
I am seeing that, absent any alternative narrative, you here, some, regulars and trolls,
reinforce each other in spreading, in the end, Empire´s narrative...fro the most
rethorical rodeos you may use...
Yes, there are anti-Belomaidan rallies....only they are not being reported neither the
MSM, nor by the "alt-media"...being as they are both media almost a monopoly of the
Empire...
Rallies across Belarus, resisting the color "revolution". Share these videos, counter the
imperialist propaganda/lie that all Belarusians are for the color "revolution".
As you know online propaganda is essential for color revolutions.
#DONBASS/#DPR -- The opening ceremony after installation of a bronze bust monument to the
legendary commander of #Somali Battalion of DPR People's Militia, Mikhail #Givi Tolstykh,
on the Alley of Glory, #Donetsk, August 25, 2020.
#DONBASS -- #Ceasefire between #Ukraine|ian punitive forces and the #DPR People's Militia,
summer of 2020. Voenkor Kotenok Telegram channel. https://t.me/voenkorKotenok
In reading certain commentators here and their views on democracy versus authoritanarism,
some of them seem to lack any comprehension of the cultural aspects.
Belarus was part of Russia, for one thousand years, although I am open to correction if
wrong, the peoples of Russia have always supported and adored a strong leader.
This has been completely diluted in the west. Belarus is basically Russia. Drawing a few
lines on a map after yen centuries will not change the ethos of a people who have existed as
a society for five times longer that that of the latest empire.
As the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink '.
The ignorance of the western ' elites'. ALWAYS ceases to amaze me...
Ukraine 2004 "Orange" but see subsequent Maidan, Our man Yats.
Kyrgistan "Tulip" 2005 then 2010
"Cedar" 2005 Lebanon
"Jeans or Denim 2005 - 2006" Belarus
Moldova several .. ex. "Grape" 2009
Iran "Green" 2010
Bahrain, Pearl, 2014
and many more
...............
-- Ok moot, what is a color revol. and what is not? A flexible definition (taking into
account host culture) would be required to make a tally and conclude vaguely.
Color revolutions are extremely cheap. Paying some stooges, protestors, democracy
promoters, feeble on-the-take pols, new figures who crave a stage, media that supports,
internet posters, laptops, bribes, whatever, a shoe-string budget suffices. So investing in
color revs. is not expected (by now) to have much success, as in immediate success, it is
more or a crap-shoot, or just a habit. Win a few, loose a lot, no matter. Cheap. Plus 'noble'
on the face supporting the 'young', 'democracy', 'development', the economy, etc. etc.
against some 'ugly dictator' or 'sclerotic authoritarain regime' etc.
The result is that repeated failure (note how the MSM cover that up) is nevertheless
noticed by ppl on the ground, making ppl wary and the ersatz revolutionaries who might
actually throw their lot in with the US (non-agreement capable, remember) not so keen. The
merely short term profiteers abound it has all become pretty much performance art and a bit
of joke, so increasingly the 'color revols' just fizzle out. Demos, get a bit of cash,
etc.
Poland summoned Belarusian ambassador on complaints for Belarus authorities claimming the
illegal protests are called out from Poland, something by and large already exposed through
tne myriad of data on NEXTA...plus...complaints on nmot allowing "humanitarian aid" entering
Belarus...in the same way the Cúcuta event in Venezuela...
Ukrainian media: Belarus allegedly does not allow the so called "humanitarian aid" from
Poland for "the victims who suffered during protests" to enter the country. What exactly is
sending Poland? There is enough food in the shops. Bandages? Unlikely.
Apart from people without any scruples keen on easy money, we have the run of the mill
nazi offspring organizing the Belomaidan..who other people would sell their ocuntry into
slavery?
Stepan Putilo, who is behind the pro-'colour revolution' Telegram channel "Nexta", is the
great-grandson of A.G. Putilo; head of office in Asipovichy for the Nazi occupation of
Belarus.
@ uncle tungsten | Aug 27 2020 8:29 utc | 71 "The working class and poor in the USA have some access to the democratic election process
and can organise to change their fate.
Not so Libyans, Vietnamese, Chileans, Syrians, Venezuelans, Koreans, Iraqis, Cubans,
Afghanis, Bolivians, Iranians, St Georgians, etc, etc,."
That is wrong in so many ways, in so many countries. Let's take your most egregious
example, Venezuela. That country's Constituent Assembly process alone, makes Venezuela far
more democratic than the US ever has been or ever will be. Then there are the municipal-level
"Collectivos" that decide local matters by popular vote.
Here are the three relevant clauses of the Venezuelan Constitution re the Constituent
Assembly process:
Article 347 of the Venezuelan constitution says:
"The original constituent power rests with the people of Venezuela. This power may be
exercised by calling a National Constituent Assembly for the purpose of transforming the
State, creating a new juridical order and drawing up a new Constitution."
Article 348 of the constitution spells out the various ways that a National Constituent
Assembly may be called:
"The initiative for calling a National Constituent Assembly may emanate from the President of
the Republic sitting with the Cabinet of Ministers; from the National Assembly by a
two-thirds vote of its members; from the Municipal Councils in open session, by a two-thirds
vote of their members; and from 15% of the voters registered with the Civil and Electoral
Registry."
Article 349 says:
"The President of the Republic shall not have the power to object to the new Constitution.
The existing constituted authorities shall not be permitted to obstruct the Constituent
Assembly in any way. For purposes of the promulgation of the new Constitution, the same shall
be published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Venezuela or in the Gazette of the
Constituent Assembly."
In other words, political power in Venezuela is very much in the hands of the people, to a
much greater extent than it is here in the US -- it is much more democratic than the US.
To a lesser extent, democracy is also very much alive in several of those countries you
just slandered.
The intention of my words is to criticise the USA for attacking other nations that have no
access to the USA democratic process .
I am sure all the countries I referenced as being attacked and sanctioned and impoverished
by the USA have their own constitutions and political processes and democratic foundations.
That was not my criticism - they are being punished regardless of their constitutions and
they are unable to vote in the land of the attacker. Is that clearer?
The USA has systematically waged war on Libyans, Vietnamese, Chileans, Syrians,
Venezuelans, Koreans, Iraqis, Cubans, Afghanis, Bolivians, Iranians, St Georgians, etc, etc,.
It intimidates other nations into joining it or being sanctioned as well.
Those countries and many others are victims to aggression both military and financial by
the USA and its captive nation collaborators at the IMF.
The USA is a belligerent state actor that threatens and intimidates people who are
different or have resources the USA would like to steal.
and you set out the case nicely by referencing the Venezuelan constitution as to why Juan
Guaido is in no way the President of Venezuela. The USA criminal leadership keeps distorting
the Venezuelan constitution to promote this dog on their leash. The Venezuelan people have
never given this yankee puppet any more than single digit votes for any role.
At least the Venezuelan people have a solid constitution to rely on and a President Maduro
to defend it and them from USA aggression. The people in the USA can't even muster a
candidate that respects their constitution or people.
Our Finlandian friend surely must be disappointed as Belarus may fall into the
outstretched hand of Putin like a ripe apple without a nuclear strike. Putin probably did not
even break a sweat. Per MOA:
It is over. The 'patchy strikes' were never real industrial actions. A few journalist
of the Belarus state TV went on a strike. They were unceremoniously fired and replaced with
Russian journalists. A few hundred workers at the MTZ Minsk Tractor Works did a walk out. But
MTZ has 17,000 employees and the 16,500+ who did not walk out know very well why they still
have their jobs. Should Lukashenko fall it is highly likely that their state owned company
will be sold off for pennies and immediately 'right sized' meaning that most of them would be
out of work.
On Monday the leader of the earlier MTZ walk out, one Sergei Dylevsky, was arrested
while he agitated for more strikes. Dylevsky is a member of the self-proclaimed Coordination
Council of the opposition which demands negotiations over the presidency. Other members of
the council have been called in for questioning by state investigators over a criminal case
against the council.
With Russia's backing the military, political and economic stability of Belarus is for
now guaranteed. Lukashenko will at some point be ousted but that will be at a time and in a
way that is convenient for Russia and not because some hapless NED financed IT hipsters try
to stage a revolution.
If developments continue in the current direction, Russia will end up stronger than if the
West had done nothing at all. For our Finlandian friend, it is called "shooting oneself in
the foot."
The Awan Brothers aided former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz in making threatening voice modulated phone calls to
attorneys suing the DNC for election fraud.
Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer told
Fox
News
that Schultz ordered the Awan Brothers to scare off the lawyers due to the threat they pose in exposing widespread
election fraud committed by the Democratic Party in 2016.
Disobedientmedia.com
reports: If substantiated, the claims may have significance for the DNC fraud lawsuit proceedings,
and add to the growing controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Imran Awan on bank fraud charges.
Jared Beck, and attorney litigating the DNC Fraud Lawsuit noted
on Twitter
:
Among the most notable highlights at last night's Republican National Convention, Senator
Rand Paul delivered a blistering take down of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's
foreign policy, which Paul linked to multiple wars under Democrat administrations spanning
decades (going back to Clinton's bombing of Serbia).
"I fear Biden will choose war again," Paul
asserted . "He supported war in Serbia, Syria, Libya. Joe Biden will continue to spill our
blood and treasure. President Trump will bring our heroes home."
"If you hate war like I hate war, if you want us to quit sending $50 billion every year to
Afghanistan to build their roads and bridges instead of building them here at home , you need
to support President Trump for another term," said Paul, who has long been a fierce critic of
former President Obama's foreign policy, including overt intervention in Libya, and covert
action toward destabilizing Syria.
He slammed Biden as a hawk who has "consistently called for more war" and with no signs
anything would be different.
Interestingly, Sen. Paul has also in the recent past led foreign policy push back against
President Trump - especially over the two times Trump has bombed Syria following alleged Assad
chemical attacks, which Paul along with other anti-interventionists across the aisle like Tulsi
Gabbard questioned to begin with.
But it appears Paul is firmly supportive of Trump's newly
released 50-point agenda for his second term outlining the Commander-in-Chief will "stop
endless war" and ultimately bring US troops "home." The plan still emphasized, however, the
administration will "maintain" US military strength abroad while 'wiping' out global
terrorism.
"President Trump is the first president in a generation to seek to end war rather than start
one. He intends to end the war in Afghanistan. He is bringing our men and women home. Compare
President Trump with the disastrous record of Joe Biden, who has consistently called for more
war ," Paul
said further.
Back during the primaries in 2016, Paul and Trump sparred intensely over national security
questions:
He also highlighted Biden's unrepentant yes vote to go to war in Iraq .
"I'm supporting President Trump because he believes as I do that a strong America cannot
fight endless wars. We must not continue to leave our blood and treasure in Middle East
quagmires," Paul concluded.
Elsewhere in the approximately four-minute speech, Paul said Trump will fight "socialists
poisoning our schools and burning our cities."
Cluster_Frak , 7 hours ago
Obama was a warmonger and so is Biden. They love war and doing everything possible for the
next war to be on the home ground.
Davidduke2000 , 7 hours ago
Obama had skeletons in his closet, he did what the neocons want, Trump gave them the
embassy and other shenanigans.
Izzy Dunne , 2 hours ago
And so is Trump. They are all warmongers, because war is what the US does...
Weihan , 7 hours ago
Paul is right.
Biden knows who butters his bread. At least candidate Trump - in principle - stood for
opposition to the deep state's monstrous agenda.
Biden, Clinton, Bush, Obama are despicable warmongers. Their administrations were
responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and the list
would have gone on and on had it not been for Trump.
Remember Biden's 1992 Wall Street Journal article titled:
"How I Learned to Love the New World Order."
JUICE E SMALL IT EMPIRE , 7 hours ago
Rand was the only guy I watched last night and he was on point. I did not disagree with
anything he said.
kulkarniravi , 8/26/2020, 2:33:07 PM
You can diss Obama all you want, but he signed a peace accord with Iran and Trump reneged
on it. Iran is not the villain, at least not when compared to the likes of Saudi Arabia. And
what's the deal with Cuba?
d_7878 , 6 hours ago
Rand on Trump:
"Are we going to fix the country through bombast and empty blather?
"Unless someone points out the emperor has no clothes, they will continue to strut about,
and then we'll end up with a reality TV star as our nominee."
"Donald Trump is a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag"
"Have you ever had a speck of dirt fly into your eye?""[It is] annoying, irritating and
might even make you cry.
"If the dirt doesn't go away, it will keep scratching your cornea until eventually it
blinds you with all its filth. A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president."
Trump is a "fake conservative."
mike_1010 , 7 hours ago
Trump might be talking peace, but he has increased US military spending significantly more
than previous presidents. He also tore up the US peace agreement with Iran and nearly
triggered a US war with Iran by assassinating one of their top generals.
If any president is going to start a war with Iran, then it's Trump. And such a war would
dwarf any recent wars USA has fought. Because Iran is three times bigger than Iraq in terms
of their population, and they've been preparing for a possible US attack for decades.
Perhaps Biden might start a small war here or there. But Trump goes big on anything he
does. If he starts a war, then it's going to be either with China or Iran.
So, neither Biden nor Trump is to be trusted, when it comes to war. But I'd say that Trump
is the bigger danger compared to Biden. Because if Trump starts a war, then it might end up
being a nuclear war.
Airstrip1 , 6 hours ago
Rand Paul needs to ask himself if the pot is blacker than the kettle.
How can he expect people to believe this disingenuous claptrap ?
The USA is an Empire-building Crime Cartel.
Dims or Reps are just frontmen managers for the Mob.
chopsuey , 7 hours ago
Ron and Rand. The dog and pony show. The alternative. They say what you want to hear.
I say
Phuck OFF Ron and Rand. You had many many years to do something (anything) about the
endless "wars" and in reality, they are not really wars. They are ruthless invasions of
vulnerable countries whereupon natural resources are contained, the culture and its symbolic
treasures are destroyed/stolen and thousands to millions are killed in the name of USA. These
unwarranted invasions are justified with lies and fraud and deceit.
Washington DC is the military capital of the world doing the dirty work of the elite. And
its soldier are your kids and grandkids.
Wake the Phuck UP people. It will not end until they have achieved their objectives. You
are fodder for their cannon.
Dragonlord , 7 hours ago
Biden voted for war in Iraq and supported Obama aggression in Libya, Syria, etc and he is
disappointed that Trump did not help Kurd to wage war against Turks for their
independence.
ConanTheContrarian1 , 7 hours ago
Not sure. Trump has to play ball with established Deep State interests while he tries (I
hope) to set things right. So, yes, questions will abound for some time.
takefive , 7 hours ago
whatever the reason, he is now part of the swamp. and that's why he's in a tough
re-election battle with a stiff.
Ex-Oligarch , 3 hours ago
You have it exactly wrong. If Trump were really part of the swamp, they wouldn't be
fighting so desperately to prevent his re-election. They wouldn't have spent three years on
the Russiagate failed coup, they wouldn't have gone through the ridiculous partisan
impeachment exercise, they wouldn't have torpedoed the economy over coronavirus, and we
wouldn't have organized race riots in all the democrat strongholds.
LaugherNYC , 3 hours ago
Rand Paul is just about the only grown-up in American politics.
How much bettter off would the USA be with a Paul/Gabbard ticket?
But ANYTHING is better than Joe Biden. Literally ANYTHING.
Well...assuming Hillary were dead or incapacitated,
DaVinciCode , 7 hours ago
It's happening. Yugoslavian girl give dire warning to Americans.
This all happened in her country the same way.
PLEASE LISTEN - it is coming to the USA and the West
I agree with the Yugoslav girl's premise that the powers that be have been deceptively
employing a divide-and-conquer strategy to get the American people to fight among themselves
rather than confront their own corrupt government, but I do not buy into the conclusion drawn
that the solution lies in trusting the head of the government (in this case Trump) to do
right by the people.
As George Carlin famously said, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it!" The American
people are not going to be able to fix the problems now confronting them by voting for one
uniparty politician over another any more than the Yugoslav people were
wick7 , 7 hours ago
The Democrats will get their regime change war no matter what. If Biden is elected they'll
continue the Syrian war that has cost 800,000 innocent lives so far. If Trump is elected
they'll try to have one here to take him down.
yojimbo , 7 hours ago
Afghani GDP - $20bn. US military spending - $50bn.
They must have the best services in the world!
yesnomaybe , 7 hours ago
That video clip from the 2016 GOP debate is classic... as Paul questions Trump attacking
personal appearances, Trump flat out denies it, and then proceeds to do just that in his next
breath.
In all seriousness, Rand is a stand up guy and would make a great president.
Maghreb2 , 7 hours ago
Ru Paul has as much chance of stopping this war as Rand Paul. If he was a threat to the
people starting it he would be getting the **** bashed out of him or shot dead by a mad man.
Don't see many people talking about auditing the Fed outside of Texas anymore.
He's got a point. Biden's son is in Ukraine milking it high on crack cocaine like a
senators son should in the new Roman Emperor. Ukrainian color revolution and CIA long war
strategy means he has set up shop there permanently like a little princeling. Same as
princess Kushners wonderful tour of the Middle Eastern courts to meet his boyfriends. Old
days they would both have be poisoned to death or strangled as children for disrespecting the
senate.
Real rules of Eastern European politics are Nationalist winding up dead in dust bins
behind the American Embassy and Russians threatening to switch of the gas and freeze everyone
to death every winter. Footage of hard man dictator Lukashenko showing up at opposition
protests with an assault rifle is broadcast to school children. I'd like to see Hunter Biden
and Jared Kushner show up to something like that.
Truth is Trump is a ******* liar. the Moment they started to shut down Rammenstein airbase
they moved forces close to the Belarus border to pull another color revolution right in front
of Putin. Trump and the Republicans are just stooges for the Zionist mafia. They are playing
war scare but its too piss take for anyone now. Polish and Baltic States are NATO and have
their own prerogative. They just push people closer to war.
Rand Paul should worry about the Civil War that should come after the election.
Aint no senators sons for that game....
DEDA CVETKO , 5 hours ago
Thank you, Rand, for remembering the little Serbia -- twice (in both World Wars) America's
fiercest and most loyal ally, and now a roadkill of the Clinton Foundation and Madeleine
Albright,
the new owner of Kosovo.
The nations that sadistically massacre and dismember their friends and allies do not have
a future, nor the right to claim any.
Scipio Africanuz , 5 hours ago
Again Senator Paul, we don't do self deception..
In almost four years, how many legions have been repatriated home, or how many of the
existing wars have been ended?
All we've observed, is an escalation of hybrid wars, reducing in some, kinetism, and
increasing death tolls via other means, and in some, increased covert kinetism..
Your candidate brazenly murdered a top general of a nation not at war with the US..
Imagine Senator Paul, if Iran had murdered Petraeus, would the US not have declared
war?
That the Iranians didn't significantly escalate, was NOT due to fear, but back channel
advocacy and energetic remonstrations by adult folks..
If you believe Biden is worse than your candidate who's done worse, in terms of brazen law
abrogation, then why aren't you a candidate, or is it that you'd prefer partisanship to
patriotism?
Look within your party for corollary and accomplice warmongers, and leave Biden alone
after all, you do have a rabid warmongering Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton as party
colleagues, no?
Senator Paul, there's principle, character, and integrity and then there's opportunism,
partisanship, and betrayal..
Of nobility..
Anyhow, you're sovereign and thus, fully entitled to your choices, we simply point out
inconsistencies between what you espouse, and what you support..
Character, Senator Paul, is destiny..
Cheers...
Anthraxed , 4 hours ago
Trump has dropped more bombs than Obama at the same time in his term.
You're in complete denial if you think Trump has stopped any of the wars. And yes, he is
expanding the wars to a much larger country.
Trump's first veto was a bill that would have stopped the Yemen war.
Reality is like Cryptonite for Trumptards.
quanttech , 4 hours ago
lol, 10 minutes ago I was being accused of being Antifa, and now I'm a Trumptard.
Definitely doing something right.
Yes, Trump is a war criminal extraordinaire. He dropped a MOAB. He removed controls on
civilian casualties. He dropped 7400+ bombs on Afghanistan in 2019.... 60% of the casualties
were civilians, mostly children.
He also stupidly listened to his generals when they told him to kill Sulemani. BUT... when
the Iranians retaliated (and they DID retaliate, injuring dozens of US soldiers) Trump
de-escalated. Similarly, when the Iranians downed a drone, the generals wanted to retaliate -
Trump asked how many Iranians would die. The generals said 150. Trump said it didn't make
sense to kill 150 people for downing a drone.
Trump is a moron who is completely out of it most of the time. But when he pays attention
for a moment, he's against a a war with Iran.
Now, if I'm a Trumptard, then you're a Hillaryhead. My question to you is... where would
we be if Hillary was president? Answer: at war with Iran. Another question: where will we be
if Biden is president?
Dull Care , 3 hours ago
How much authority do you think Trump has over the foreign policy? Not a rhetorical
question but I have yet to see an American president run for office advocating a more
interventionist foreign policy yet it doesn't change greatly no matter who is in office.
Trump often carries a big stick but he's nowhere near as reckless as his predecessors.
The one thing we know is Trump is hostile to the Chinese government and hasn't turned
around relations with Russia.
quanttech , 1 hour ago
"... I have this feeling that whoever's elected president when you win, you go into this
smoky room with the twelve industrialists capitalists scum-***** who got you in there. And a
big guy with a cigar goes: 'Roll the film.' And it's a shot of the Kennedy Assassination from
an angle you've never seen before - It looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll. Then the
screen comes up, and they go to the new president: 'Any questions?'"
- Bill Hicks, Rant in E-Minor (1993)
Observer 2020 , 5 hours ago
The spiritual, moral, ethical, philosophical, intellectual and cultural bankruptcy of
Biden and his fellow death cult reprobates is depthless. One need know nothing more about
them that they have become so detached from reality as to regard abortion, partial birth
abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, generational genocide, genocide, of the white race,
unremitting sociocultural warfare and the balkanization of this nation as being virtues.
Anyone who would even begin to contemplate supporting Biden or any of his fellow Fifth
Columnists should be regarded as being too demented or otherwise Bidenesque to be competent
to vote.
12Doberman , 5 hours ago
Biden has a record showing him to be a Neocon...and that's why we see the neverTrumpers
supporting him.
Musum , 5 hours ago
And Pompeous is 10X worse than Biden. And he serves as Trump's Sec. of State.
Of course, he's just a viceroy serving on behalf of the kosher people.
ted41776 , 8 hours ago
it's not what the president chooses
it's what chooses the president
conraddobler , 8 hours ago
This has lost all it's entertainment value.
Hollywood and the Postman was a more realistic view, in that movie I believe the warlord
was a former copier either salesman or technician, can't remember but it's more likely a guy
like that would have leadership capabilities than these clowns would.
invention13 , 1 hour ago
It saddens me that people can just go about their business in this country without giving
a thought about the men and women who are getting injured and coming home stressed out and
addicted to painkillers. Also that the real motive for continued military involvement in the
ME is that some people are making tons of money off it. We need our own version of Smedley
Butler these days.
It is all decadent beyond belief.
mrjinx007 , 1 hour ago
That MF no good SOB war mongering no good neocon SOB Shawn did everything he could to get
RP to agree with him that we need to continue with the policy of regime change.
Rand just basically told him to shut the f up and stop blowing the Neo-cons' erections. It
was precious. You know how people like this ******* Hannity get their funding from. Deep
state, MIC, and all the f'king Rino's like Tommy Cotton.
gm_general , 2 hours ago
Thanks to Hillary and Obama, Libya is a complete mess and black people are being sold as
slaves there. Let that sink in.
RussiaGate is about MIC, Intelligence agencies and Dem leadership need to have an enemy to
milt taxpayers and retain power and military budget. Nothing personal, strictly business.
I met Strobe Talbott in 1968 when he and I were graduate students at Magdalen College,
Oxford. I liked him and respected him, and after we lost touch as friends, I followed his
career at Time , the State Department, and the Brookings Institution with admiration.
In recent years, however, I've become disillusioned with the foreign policy he advocated with
regard to Russia and was disturbed to learn of his involvement in the genesis of the
Russiagate narrative.
August 3, 2020
Dear Strobe,
It has been a long time – a very long time – since we've been in touch, but I
assume you remember me from 1968, when we met at Magdalen College, Oxford. Having just
graduated from Yale, you were there on a Rhodes Scholarship; I was on a Reynold Scholarship
granted by my alma mater, Dartmouth. Despite your three-barreled WASP name (Nelson Strobridge
Talbott) and your distinguished pedigree (son of a Yale football captain, Hotchkiss alum,
etc.) you were unpretentious, and we made friends quickly.
Despite assurances from my draft board that I would not be drafted that year, I got an
induction notice on Nixon's inauguration day. You were the first person I consulted. Safe
from the draft, like most Rhodes Scholars, you listened sympathetically. We were together in
our opposition to the War if not in our vulnerability to the draft.
You and I played the occasional game of squash. And when my Dartmouth fraternity brother
and Rhodes Scholar John Isaacson injured your eye with his racket, I visited you in the
Radcliffe Infirmary during your convalescence. I was reading Tristram Shandy as part
of my program, and one day I read some bits to you. You seemed to share my amusement; I can
still see you smiling in your hospital bed with a big patch on one eye. When your father came
from Ohio to visit you, he invited me, along with your Yale classmate Rob Johnson out to
dinner at the Bear.
You had majored in Russian at Yale and were writing a thesis on some topic in Russian
literature, Mayakovsky, perhaps? At any rate, you seemed committed to Russian studies.
(Little did I know.) When I chose to take a student tour behind the Iron Curtain during the
spring vac, you gave me some reading suggestions and advised me to dress warmly. Having
packed for England's relatively mild climate, I lacked a warm enough coat; you generously
loaned me your insulated car coat, which served me well in Russia's raw spring cold.
You likely debriefed me after my travels; I must have passed on to you my sense of the
Soviet Union as a very drab place with a demoralized, often drunk, population, and a general
sense of repression. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy my trip – just that I was
struck by the stark differences at the time between the West and the East. How lucky I was to
have been born in the "free world."
The tour returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg via Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. In
Prague, just after the brutal suppression of Prague Spring, we were acutely aware of how
hated the Russians were. This just reinforced my distaste for what Ronald Reagan later termed
the Evil empire – perhaps the only thing he said I ever agreed with. So, like you, I
was staunchly anti-Communist at the time.
The next year, you got a gig polishing the text of Nikita Krushchev's memoirs, which had
been smuggled out of Russia. The publisher put you up in an "undisclosed location," which you
let on was the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts; we met for coffee in Harvard
Square with friends of yours, possibly including Brooke Shearer whom you later married, and
one of her brothers, Cody or Derek. It may have been then that I drove you to the school
where I was teaching on a deferment, Kimball Union Academy in central New Hampshire; you
stayed overnight before returning to civilization.
Your second year, you moved into a house with Bill Clinton and two other Rhodes
Scholars.
During the next few years – the early 70s – you and I exchanged occasional
letters. After that, the rest is history: your illustrious career – as a journalist at
Time , then as a Russia hand and Deputy Secretary of State Department in the Clinton
administration, and then as president of the Brookings Institution – was easy to follow
in the media.
Eventually our paths diverged, I lost touch with you, with one exception.
In the mid-1990s, while you were serving at State, a close friend asked me to ask you to
do her a favor. I hate asking for favors, even for myself, and resent those who use
connections to advance themselves. But all my friend needed was for a senior State official
to sign off on a job application of some sort. I phoned your office from mine. I got a frosty
reception from your administrative assistant, who was justifiably protective of your time,
but she put me through. You recognized my voice, sounded glad to be in touch, and granted the
favor. It never came to anything, but I remember how pleased I was even to have such a brief
task-oriented phone encounter with you after a lapse of two decades.
In any case, over the next several decades I followed your career with interest and was
pleased with your success.
As I was by that of another member of the Oxford cohort, Bob Reich, another fraternity
brother of mine. We were not close, and I saw him less often in Oxford than I saw you. But
you and he both wound up in the Clinton administration – the Oxford troika, I like to
call you. You and Bob were doing what Rhodes Scholars were supposed to do: go into
professions, network, and perform public service. The Rhodes to success. Never a whiff of
scandal about either of you. You, Strobe, were very much what we Dartmouth men referred to as
a straight arrow.
So why am I writing you now, after all these years? And why a public letter?
In part, because I have become progressively more critical of the foreign policy that you
have advocated. Early on you were advocating disarmament. Good. And closer relations with the
Soviet Union. Also good. Indeed, you were regarded as something of a Russophile (never a
compliment). But while you initially resisted the expansion of NATO, you eventually went
along with it. Like George Kennan, I consider that decision to be a serious mistake (and a
breach of a promise not to expand NATO "one inch" to the east after Germany was
reunited).
When the Cold War ended, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. NATO did not; instead, it expanded
eastward to include former Warsaw Pact members and SSRs until today it borders Russia. Russia
resistance to this is inevitably denounced in the West as "Russian aggression." Hence the
tension in Ukraine today. You're not personally responsible for all of this of course. But
you are deeply implicated in what seems to me a gratuitously provocative, indeed
imperialistic, foreign policy.
Two old friends could amicably agree disagree on that, as I disagree with virtually all my
liberal friends.
But your loyalty to the Clintons has apparently extended to involvement in generating the
Russiagate narrative, which has exacerbated tensions between Russia and the USA and spread
paranoia in the Democratic establishment and mainstream media. I am always disturbed by the
hypocrisy of Americans who complain about foreign meddling in our elections, when the USA is
the undisputed champ in that event. Indeed, we go beyond meddling (Yeltsin's reelection in
1996) to actual coups, not to mention regime-change wars.
My concern about this has come to a head with the
recent revelation of your complicity in the dissemination of the Steele dossier, whose
subsource, Igor Danchenko, was a Russian national employed by Brookings.
I don't know which is worse: that you and your colleagues at Brookings believed the
dossier's unfounded claims, or that you didn't but found it politically useful in the attempt
to subvert the Trump campaign and delegitimize his election. I suspect the latter. But
doesn't this implicate you in the creation of a powerful Russophobic narrative in
contemporary American politics that has demonized Putin and needlessly ramped up tension
between two nuclear powers?
A lifelong Democrat who voted for Bill twice and Hillary once, I am no fan of Trump or of
Putin. But Russiagate has served as a distraction from Hillary's responsibility for her
catastrophic defeat and from the real weaknesses of the neoliberal Democratic Party, with its
welfare "reform," crime bill, and abandonment of its traditional working-class base.
Moreover, in and of itself, the Russiagate story represents what Matt Taibbi has called
this generation's WMD media scandal. The narrative, challenged from the beginning by a few
intrepid independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Maté,
and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, is now being further undermined by the
declassification of documents by the Senate. If, as I have recently read, you were active in
disseminating the Steele dossier, you have contributed to
the mainstream media's gas-lighting of the American public – liberals, at least
(like most of my friends). Ironically, then, you have given credence to Trump's often, but
not always, false charge: "Fake News." Once described as a Russophile, you now seem complicit
in the creation of a nation-wide paranoid and hysterical Russophobia and neo-McCarthyism.
This is what, the third EU country to expel at least one Russian diplomat in less than one
month?
The official reason for the expulsion (espionage) excludes the possibility they are part
of the "Belarusian sanctions". Since the sanctions are already announced, there would be no
reason to hide them under another pretext.
Looks like it really was a "double-header": there was a plan to take out Belarus and
weaken Russia more or less at the same time (domino effect) by the EU.
Questions remain, though:
1) was this part of the plan all along or was this a contingency plan/consolation prize
after Belarus didn't go exactly as expected? Since the Netherlands expelled their Russian
diplomat earlier, I'm inclined to think it was part of the plan;
2) is the goal to take Belarus and destabilize Russia (prepare the terrain) or was it to
take both at the same time?
3) or, alternatively: had the operation much more modest goals from the beginning, i.e.
the goal was always just to shake both countries' societal foundations (everything else being
a bonus)? In other words: was the goal just to brew Russophobia in the European
Peninsula?
"Welcome to America, the Land of Freedom" , read the signs at Washington, DC's
international airport as you line up to have your fingerprints taken and your body cavities
searched for mini nuclear devices.
I could have titled this article "Setting the Cat among the Pigeons". In an attempt to
forestall the expected avalanche of disagreement, I confirm my awareness of statistics produced
by a wide range of individuals and institutions of widely-varying intent and ideology, and
which can "prove" almost anything one cares to prove, GINI coefficients being one easy example.
The statistics on which this article is based were not selected carelessly and are not
invalidated by a reader's disaffection.
The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst
The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations [1] [2] ,
surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well. From this, it has the lowest
social mobility of most nations [3] , meaning that
improving one's station in life is becoming increasingly impossible. If your parents are not
educated and wealthy, you will never be either, and the American Dream is dead . The US
today has the smallest middle class and the largest lower class of all major
nations, the middle class having been mostly eviscerated in 2008, that process completing
itself today, and will probably never now recover. Americans carry the largest amount of
personal debt among all nations [4] , including
credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans , and the US now
leads the world in personal bankruptcies[5] . Since 2008,
according to the US government's own statistics, the US has the lowest percentage of home
ownership at 57% [6] , ranked 43rd in
the world, far below China at 90% [7] , and America now
has a virtual epidemic of homelessness compared to most other nations, with untabulated
millions of homeless families with children.
The poverty rate in the US is extraordinary, with official statistics placing this
number at 13% but in reality with more than 25% of the population living below the poverty
line, in most cases far below [8] . It also has the
highest percentage of children living in poverty , and with almost a third of all US
citizens dependent on food stamps and other government aid to survive [9] .
Unemployment is also extraordinary. According to the government's own statistics, fully
40% of working-age Americans have no job [10] [11] , with many
of the rest under-employed , working only part-time. It is only American cities or those
in the most impoverished of nations that contain such vast areas of urban decay and
desperate slums like those of Detroit and Chicago, where half of the areas are violent
crime-ridden wastelands where no one goes.
The US has the highest educational costs , and yet the poorest overall quality of
education in the developed world and parts of the rest. Read this article [12] .
It will open your eyes. A few good schools or universities in an entire nation do not make it a
world leader, the proof residing in the highest level of functional illiteracy of all
major nations (25%) and a truly legendary level of ignorance[13] . The US is the
only country in the world where, in repeated polls for the past 60 years, a full 75% of the
adult and student populations cannot find their own country on a map of the world [14]
. Compared to other nations, the US has the highest health care costs by a factor of two
to ten, and yet has a surprisingly poor overall quality as well as the highest
percentage of a population without health care [15] . The US has the
highest infant mortality rate and the shortest life expectancy at birth of all
major nations and far below many others [16] [17] , ranking
around 50 in a list of countries. The US has the highest obesity rate of all nations,
with nearly half of the population being overweight [18] , one of the
highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases[19] , of
anti-depressant drug use that increased by 65% in only 15 years [20] , a national
crisis in opioid drug use[21] and of
depression . It has the highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates of all
developed nations [22] , and one of the
highest divorce rates [23] [24] . Note that
in many international studies US statistics aren't collected because, as observers noted "The
authors left out the US because the country is "an extreme outlier." The US also has the
largest number of one-person households (about 30%) [25] [26] , and the
largest percentage of fatherless children (about 25%) [27] .
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random
and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval.
Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined, and
more guns than all the world's police and military. They carry their guns everywhere, and
use them everywhere, the US having the highest rates of gun shootings and murders of any
nation, with more than 20 small children and more than 200 adults being sent each day to either
the hospital or the cemetery. Many small American cities, like the nation's capital of
Washington DC with only half a million people, or places like Detroit or Chicago, have more
murders each year (by an order of magnitude) than does Shanghai with 25 million people. The
overall homicide rate for China is 0.6 and for Shanghai 0.2; that for the US is 4.0. The
gun death rate for children in the US is 40 times higher than for any other nation in the world
[28] [29] . The US
also has the highest number of crimes committed with firearms each year, a staggering
total of a minimum confirmed of 500,000 and an estimated 3 million [30] [31] , and the
highest number of violent raids on private homes, with more than 80,000 instances per
year of SWAT teams kicking in someone's front door in the middle of the night, always
terrorising and sometimes killing the occupants, usually without identifying themselves and
often attacking the wrong house. [32] [33]
The US has the highest rate of cocaine and meth usage of any nation [34] ,
thanks in large part to the CIA's very successful war on drugs which permits that agency to
import cocaine duty-free. The US has the highest rate of gender inequality[35]
among industrialised nations, far exceeding egalitarian nations like China (and formerly Iraq
and Libya). The US has the highest number of lawyers and lawsuits in the world, by
orders of magnitude, a reflection of both natural belligerence and inborn greed, Americans
spending twice as much on lawsuits each year as on new cars [36] . Japan has
14,000 lawyers, China 160,000, the US 1.35 million (11 per 100,000 for Japan and China compared
to 300 per 100,000 for the US). Americans surpass the entire world in their amount of
useless consumption , having long passed the point where it can be deemed pathological.
As one measure, that of shopping mall space per capita, Germany has 2.7 sq ft per person, Japan
has 3.9 and the UK has 5. For every American shopper there are 24 sq ft of mall. The US has by
far the highest level of carbon emissions on a per-capita basis, thanks in no small part
to General Motors who has repeatedly committed genocide on electric automobiles.
Wars and violence are defining adjectives of America. The US as a nation is now, and
has always been, intensely militaristic, inherently provocative, combative and violent.
The US is by far the largest merchant of death in the world, being responsible for about 70% of
total world arms sales . For comparison, Russia is second at 17%, while China is at 3%.
If we include everything, the US spends about twice as much on its military each year as
the entire rest of the world combined, already well-documented by many authors at well in
excess of $1 trillion. It also has the world's largest network of foreign military bases
, with more than 1,000 such installations, including many that appear on no map, and the
world's largest number of bio-weapons labs , with more than 400 outside the US. America
has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world and has been at
war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation , all those wars unprovoked and unjustified, and
none of which were either wars of 'liberation' or 'to make the world safe for democracy', but
for colonisation and plunder. The US is also outstanding in that it has assassinated more
foreign world leaders and other officials (about 150) [37] than even Israel
has done, and also operates the largest network of torture prisons that has ever existed
in the history of the world. The US also wins first prize for having some of the most
bloodthirsty homicidal mass murderers and pathological killers in the history of the
world, far exceeding our former heroes Stalin and Hitler. Kissinger, Albright and Curtis
LeMay come immediately to mind, but there are more.
The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25%
of the world's prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a
criminal record . Alarmingly, the US has by far the highest number of internment
camps – prison camps – in the world, all 800 fully-staffed but empty, waiting
for Americans to dare launch another Occupy Wall Street or similar protest. The US has the most
militarised police forces of any nation, with frighteningly heavy-duty military hardware
like MRAPs, APCs, drone aircraft and automatic weapons. The police motto "To protect and serve"
that was once plastered on every police car, has been amended. It now reads "To occupy and
kill". The US has by far the highest number of civilians killed each year by police
(well over 1,000) of any nation in the world, even including rogue states and axis of evil
members. Americans have far more to fear from their local police than from terrorists.
Police brutality in America is now legendary, so common as to be one of the nation's
defining adjectives, with beatings, shootings, harassment, false criminal charges reaching
epidemic proportions and increasing.
America is the world's only nation with a website named "Killed by Police.org" to document
the epidemic of civilians killed by police, and the only nation where local newspapers have
sections devoted to listing the number of daily killings in each neighborhood of the major
cities to assist citizens in house purchases. Violent crime rates in the US are at least
an order of magnitude above those of China or Japan (and many other nations).
The US also has one of the most corrupt police and judicial systems in the world. No
Western country is particularly free of this charge, but America excels. As one example, the US
has by far the largest number in the world of citizens falsely convicted by fraudulent
testimony , some 40,000 convictions caused by one fraudulent forensics lab alone. And of
course, the US has the world's largest espionage network by orders of magnitude, with an
ambition to steal every secret and to record and save every communication by every human on the
planet.
It is no longer a secret that American-style democracy has a few flaws , with extreme
dysfunction and rampant corruption among the more visible, though looting the public trough
would run a close second. The US also has the government most totally over-run with
puppet-masters and controlled by parasitic aliens, having entirely lost control to its various
lobbies and with all its elected officials having sworn allegiance to the Jews and Israel
rather than to America. The US has the highest number and percentage of Presidents,
Secretaries of State and Defense Secretaries who were certifiable as criminally insane
and who should have been given lobotomies and committed to institutions for life. Too many
names to list here. America is the one nation that has more or less institutionalised
government corruption at virtually every level, extending deeply into the judiciary, the
regulatory bodies and Congress, as well as local and state governments. The US is well-known
for compiling the most fraudulent economic statistics of all developed and undeveloped
nations, including the hugely fictitious 'average income' of $45,000, and is one of the most
indebted of all countries in the world today. I strongly suggest everyone read this short
article on US economic statistics [38] and cease the
rubbish about how China's numbers can't be trusted.
Not to be outdone, the US media are in a class by themselves in terms of dishonesty,
bias, censorship, and petty opinion-based journalism. American journalists are mostly
cut from the same cloth, displaying more or less the same malignancies.
The US has the most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime , prosecuting only
its person-companies but never the persons. Americans boast of their transparent and
corruption-free financial system, and the US media enjoys trashing China for what appears to be
an occasional corporate fraud. But in the long list of the world's largest corporate
bankruptcies due to fraud and corruption , all but one occurred in the US. Ron Unz prepared
a list that included Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, MF Global, Lehman, Bear
Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia. The US has also been home to the
world's largest Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, that resulted in
almost $100 billion in public losses. It is the US, not China, that is the home to corporate
fraud and deceit, while all but two of the largest corporate frauds in China in recent
decades were committed by American firms, not Chinese.
To end our list of areas in which American Exceptionalism truly shines, the US has for years
been deservedly voted the world's most hated nation , is widely reviled as the
world's greatest bully , and judged by all peoples – including Americans – as
the greatest threat to world peace .
Lest anyone think the above list is unfair or exaggerated, you can do a simple test by
applying the items to other countries. Germany, for example, or China or Canada. Certainly
every nation has some deaths, crime, divorces, military spending and so on, but none of the
items in this list can be applied to Germany, China or Canada, nor to any other nation. The US
does have the greatest debt, highest military spending, racism, killings, guns, incarceration,
torture prisons, initiated wars, and all the rest. The records for inequality, obesity,
consumption, personal debt, poverty, cocaine use, murders, all belong to America, with no other
nation even in the running. The claim is as demonstrably true for ignorance and hypocrisy as it
is for police brutality. As an accusation or an indictment, the list is 100% accurate, a
factual description of America as it is today, seen without the propaganda and rose-colored
glasses.
A complete list of areas of American Exceptionalism must include one other item:The most
traitors . This unfortunate category exists on several levels, the first being the
President and White House staff and the US Congress who, as we already know, have
pledged allegiance to Israel rather than America. The second is the foreign-owned US FED
, criminally pursuing its own agenda while systematically destroying the economic fabric of
America. The cadre of elite owners of most large US banks and multinationals fall into
this category as well, pursuing their own private advantage while consciously gutting the
economy of their own nation.
But there is a third, more pervasive level, a large cadre of educated Americans who are
essentially compradors, traitors to most of their values and to their people , embedded in
the system and dependent on it, participating fully in the destruction of their own country by
acting as lieutenants for the officials of the secret government. These individuals are vital
for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist state, with the elites dependent
upon them to execute their policies, yet they also profit from their positions in terms of
attractive salaries and protection from much of the law. These are the people who best know of
all the crimes and social injustices, being in fact a willing part of their execution process,
but least likely to blow the whistle for fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level
of educated executives, lawyers, accountants and managers in government, criminal
corporations, Foundations, think tanks, the media , and so many others, who are directly
responsible for knowingly inflicting the vast damage on their own people and nation. Like the
CEOs of the banks and multinationals, these compradors seek only their own advantage,
discarding their human values and blinding themselves to the harm they do.
The following bulleted list is for your ease in reading.
Look at the comments. These bozos don't care about inequality. They don't care if the rich
are eating their lunch. They don't care about the poverty rate, and think that blacks make up
all the poor, when their are actually more poor whites than poor blacks. They think the
majority of homeless are black when the majority of homeless are white. (The cross-eyed
retards.) They don't care about the wars. NIMBY is the farthest they can see. Horizons are
foreshortened for them. They actually think that, say, Nigeria or North Korea is more corrupt
than the US....
What makes US truly exceptional are its elites. Obviously this exceptionalism doesn't
extend all the way down to more than half of the population – the so called deplorables
– who are thankfully replaceable, which is currently under way – just to show
them who are really the exceptional ones.
Luckily, no one is even planning to do any replacement of the exceptionals – which
would be treason of course, and probably dealt with accordingly, but not to worry, once the
3rd world deplorables fully replace the domestic deplorables, the replacement of the
exceptionals WILL occur, despite the beliefs of the degenerates that they possess some unique
qualities that are universally admired – especially by their 3rd world
protégés.
You see, the 3rd world deplorables tend to be emotional that way, they don't care about
the "unique" qualities of the exceptionals and eventually will come to see the different hue
of the skin of the exceptionals, exceptionally offensive to their sensibilities and will do
away with the degenerates who see themselves as untouchables – but that's probably few
decades down the road and the degenerates definitely don't possess such fair-sightedness to
see what's coming to them.
@Ultrafart the
Brave g in the US have you observed the architecture of the public buildings –
Federal and State? Even the Congress and seat of the legislative branch of the federal
government, is called The Capitol, after Rome. Coincidence?
So when we see a world body, something like the UN Security Council for instance, expanded
to include 5 more countries e.g., Germany, India, Brazil, Japan and another(?) that would
give us our 10 "crowns" on one of the 7 heads I've designated above (which one of them is the
7th, IOW has primacy, is open to debate).
It's all there hiding in plain sight , for our eyes to see.
Okay, okay. When I hit a sentence like this "even the random and unprovoked killing of
non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval," I realize I'm dealing
with a chucklehead who swallows everything he hears in the news media. The news media go out
of their way to highlight all white-on-black crime while they ignore the reverse. On
Americans' general ignorance, though, I think he's unfortunately right.
This is trolling but sadly, it is also based on the truth.
Nowadays, all the young people outside America no longer want to go to America to work or
study, and the older people, who used to admire or look up to America now look at at it with
pity or disgust.
It's very sad what America has now become, esp under the relentless idiocy of the corrupt
and incompetent Trump regime.
America has now sadly become like the "shit-hole" countries Trump told those 4 young
minority congresswomen to go back home to.
Every empire in history has believed in its own exceptionalism: and history has always,
ultimately, proven it wrong. This delusion is, to quote the last of the author's bullet
points – the "greatest threat to world peace". https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Mr.. Romanoff: "America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even
the random and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets
with approval."
I stopped reading here. Mr. Romanoff isn't as informed or experienced as I'd thought, but
this is outright deception, ignorance or both. He hasn't apologized yet, so I'll guess
both.
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random and
unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with
approval.
Enough of your fucking shit!
Blacks in America are the luckiest blacks on the planet.
Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined,
and more guns than all the world's police and military.
That is patently false it is amazing how full of shit you are.
Another fact goes unmentioned: the US has the largest number of unindicted war criminals
in the post-WW II world, a fact that allows for an escalation of war crimes committed. For
those here who refuse to accept the racist nature of our country, they need only look at the
ethnic makeup of the millions of victims of our unprovoked foreign wars of aggression.
@Larry Romanoff
i Restoration was a Jew operation. Japan, like America, are both 100% ZOG.
Emperor Hirohito was only 5 feet 4 inches tall, but they told him he was 10 feet tall and
Japan was (((exceptional))).
Hence the exceptional cruelty with which the Master Race Japs dispensed with their enemies
during WW2. They groomed him well for that kosher mass slaughter.
What Mr.Romanoff has written is obviously true, despite its troll-some flavor.
One point that may have been neglected is how the USA is the greatest money launderer in
the world.
It does this by printing money out of the thin air(ie: quantitative easing), and thus
creating new money to pay for all that stuff that China makes for the US consumer.
This has allowed the USA to live well beyond its means, and have a bloated and overrated
military that is used to attack other small countries that cannot effectively defend
themselves and thus create great profits for the military-industrial complex, at the expense
of millions of foreign lives and only some thousands of US soldiers.
This sort of regime change operation is actually no more than a stock market pump and dump
operation, first you demonize some little country with false accusations, sanction them and
provoke them into doing some hostile acts, or pretend that they have made some human rights
violation like using poison gas or are committing genocide or incarceration of a minority,
then bomb the shit out of them, and then rack in all that weapons used and resupply bucks.
Maybe after that, install a puppet govt and steal their resources.
Oh Yeah, Big Daddy Warbucks! Go USA!
Also, by having the US dollar as the reserve currency(past cleverness no longer present),
all other countries have to keep a supply of dollars for trading and thus the demand for this
imaginary currency and also demand for US Treasuries. Thus countries buy US debt, further
funding the USA's bloated military and overspending.
Everybody knows the USA will never pay back that debt, and also the debt will never go
down. It will just go up and up until nobody wants to use the US dollar or hold US debt and
then the US dollar will crash.
This is the way that the shit-faced USA rapes the world financially, and everybody knows
this.
The USA was founded on the genocide of the Red Indians and the stealing of their land. The
USA made 200 treaties with the Red Indians and broke every one.
After that, the USA grew fat on the slave labor of innocent Africans, raping their women
and "going black" in reverse.
But Trump is even better, with his family descending from primitive savages in the black
forest of Germany. Sometimes they caught the wild boars there and reamed them good, sometimes
the wild boars caught THEM and reamed them good.
In any case, Trump's grand-daddy fled conscription and came to the USA as a lice-ridden
and filthy immigrant, but made good selling liquor and supplying prostitutes to the miners. A
pimp.
And Trump's daddy was a KKK member, arrested at a KKK rally after being too slow to run
away from the police, and then became a front-man for Nazi business interests in the USA
before WW2.
From Drumpf to Trump, but in the end, no change to the clown-like shit-show called the
Trump drama series.
Wow. a very precise shot at America's most underlying problem:
These individuals are vital for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist
state, with the elites dependent upon them to execute their policies, yet they also
profit from their positions in terms of attractive salaries and protection from much of the
law . These are the people who best know of all the crimes and social injustices, being
in fact a willing part of their execution process, but least likely to blow the whistle for
fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level of educated executives, lawyers,
accountants and managers in government, criminal corporations, Foundations, think tanks,
the media, and so many others, who are directly responsible for knowingly inflicting the
vast damage on their own people and nation
A very illuminating description of modern day America, no punches pulled by Larry
Romanoff.
Larry is a classic white uncle type. The Japanese rightwing have their own "white guy who
is on our side" who spouts their beliefs in english about how the Rape of Nanking never
happened, Japan didn't start the war, Tojo dindu nuffin and they love him for it. Larry is
the Chinese version. Larry's worldview = China never did anything wrong in its entire
history. Tienamen was a myth, Great Leap Foward famine was a myth, forced abortions due to
One Child Policy is a myth, China's neighbours hating China's guts is a myth, America bad,
America bad, America bad.
Can you name even one negative thing about China's government?
@Tom Welsh
"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to
every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong".
You will have to explain why America prior to 1965 immigration act, was a scientific and
intellectual powerhouse, without peer in the world.
Whites were 89% of the population of the U.S. in 1965, and the amount of northeast asians,
and sub-continent Asians was statistically insignificant (1 percent or less). This white
co-hort of 89% had the additional drag of a black population that is not known for its
engineering and technical prowess.
This is a fast but excellent piece in placing a mirror on America in the 21st Century. I for
one dont understand why there are so many negative replies to LR's conclusions. There are
obviously many so called White Nationalists or Patriots (both real and fake)
venting rage here, that still believe they are "Exceptional" above the rest of the non-Anglo
Saxon world, but as LR says the exceptionalism might be more on the negative side these days.
The critics need to grow up and take responsibility for the mess the US is now in, in order to
fix things, if that is their real goal.
I find his bullet list of conclusions to be basically in line, but of course there surely
exists a similar bullet list of positive achievements to the US experiment as well, but that
was obviously not the thrust of this article. As should be well understood, self aggrandizement
does not fix anything.
What all Americans should agree on is the US national experiment is being sunk maybe even
per plan, from certain elements of the controlling leadership, but not necessarily by us
"bottom feeders" as the moneyed elite like to call the rest of us these days.
The cries of outrage and venom being spewed at LR would be better placed into how to fix
things in the USA and how the population can come together to put America back on a sane and
positive coarse that serves the entire populace, not those who just consider them Chosen of
some sort. What we have had the last 40 years, is surely a divide and conquer mission by the
two parties.
For me the LR bullet list is a fairly accurate of national examples that demonstrate a
societal and governance destruction. My exceptions are :
The most strident nationalism of all nations
Highest level of racism and race-related violence
Other countries can be exemplified here of potentially taking the lead, one being our Most
Favored
State, which is a large part of our national problem, suckering our leadership at every turn,
and plundering our wealth and ethos.
This should be the title and subtitle of this article:
The Destruction of American Exceptionalism
The consequences of the decisions and policies of selfish, corrupt, traitorous and
dishonorable politicians who are the puppets of the international corporate and finance
elite
Probably a lot here is true, but let me play Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot
with a very simple question: if America is the worst, then why do we have so much
immigration?
The USA is the best of the worst, and has maybe the worst handle on influx of the
miserables.
Compared to Japan, the US cities are almost universally shitholes, or on the way there, where
immigrants seem to be draw, though the US plantations can always use their labor.
It's always been a neoliberal project to open borders to destroy the citizen worker who had
some rights.
Wherever there is benefit from lies, States lie. UK re Hitler, OZ re Taz, or even China re
Japan, US re China today, etc.
My appreciation of Mao was enhanced from facts, while a lot is mythology. Humans aren't
perfect, and act under circumstance for the best.
My emperor should offer a post-humous medal to Sun Yatsen, his supporters, and Mao and his
collaborators.
Then we should figure out outstanding issues on a non-western idea of territoriality.
@HarvardSqEddy pinion, because of all the wars and belligerence plus the undeniable fact
that DOD and HUD have stolen $21 Trillion ( https://missingmoney.solari.com/ ) in recent decades
and there's no recognition of this fact on the evening news and there are no congressional
hearings to find out where that currency went. That tells me the figureheads in the visible
gov't are just actors and they aren't interested because they were told to ignore it.
What comes out the other end, according to what they want, is a much lower standard of
living for the masses, a much reduced population and much more corporate/fascist control.
Think North Korea.
"... The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going on. ..."
"... The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any answer? ..."
"... Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls. ..."
"... Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there. ..."
"... is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message. ..."
"... The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks. ..."
"... The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious. ..."
"... None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public" the Times itself reported , and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned. ..."
"... On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate. ..."
"... the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee 's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive ..."
"... And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans. ..."
"... That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed. ..."
"... "Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ." ..."
The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed
effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump...
The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired
years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going
on.
The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any
answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine
in journalism, is a thing of the past.
Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards
as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there
are no referees to call the fouls.
The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided
the occasion to "catapult the propaganda," as President George W. Bush once put it.
As the the Times 's Mark Mazzetti put it in his
article Wednesday:
"Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention
on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated."
Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce : regarding that interference four years ago, and the "continued-unabated" part, you
just have to trust us and our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if, nevertheless, you persist in asking
for actual evidence, you are clearly in Putin's pocket.
Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's
magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there.
Iron Pills
Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with Mueller's anemic findings in spring 2019. His report
claimed that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" via a social
media campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and by "hacking" Democratic emails. But the evidence behind those charges
could not bear close scrutiny.
You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted
it could not prove that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Mueller's ipse dixit did not suffice, as we
explained a year ago
in "Sic Transit Gloria Mueller."
The Best Defense
is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda
fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning,
as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message.
Durham
One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and
other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he
expects "developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer."
FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant
from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that
Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running
the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying
on the president.
The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former
FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper,
for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be
the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without
taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.
The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly
with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith.
The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling
to all concerned is to say the obvious.
So, the stakes are high -- for the Democrats, as well -- and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative
not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition
(as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale ("enhanced" or not).
Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM
-- and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch "Mueller Report (Enhanced)" and catapult the truth now with propaganda,
before it is too late.
No Evidence of Hacking
The "hacking of the DNC" charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the
DNC-hired cyber-security firm CrowdStrike,
admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked -- by Russia or anyone else.
(YouTube)
Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017,
but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.
Here's a brief taste of how Henry's testimony went: Asked by Schiff for "the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data",
Henry replied, "We just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
You did not know that? You may be forgiven -- up until now -- if your information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The
New York Times still publishes "all the news that's fit to print." I am taking bets on how much longer the NYT will be able to keep
Henry's testimony hidden; Schiff's record of 29 months will be hard to beat.
Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian 'Tampering'
Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Mueller's findings last year enabled Trump to shout "No Collusion" with
Russia. What seems clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of the truth is to apply lipstick to Mueller's
findings.
After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most
LSM-suffused Americans remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Mazzetti have been commissioned
to keep it that way.
In Wednesday's
article , for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:
"Like the special counsel the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with
the Russian government -- a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was 'no collusion'."
How could they!
Mazzetti is playing with words. "Collusion," however one defines it, is not a crime; conspiracy is.
'Breathtaking' Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)
Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)
Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report "showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied
to the Kremlin," and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committee's vice chairman,
said the committee report details "a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives
that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections."
None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel
about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public"
the Times itself
reported
, and the paper had to correct
a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working
to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned.
Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI lawyer to "justify" eavesdropping on Trump associate
Carter Page show the Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBI's decision to investigate Page. The committee
may wish to revisit that endorsement -- at least.
On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele,
labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News
explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to
push Russiagate.
Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that
revealed that Steele's "Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed
up as formal intelligence memos."
Smearing WikiLeaks
The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly
debunked
myths about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview Julian Assange before launching its smears.
Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta emails, described the report's
treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter thread
:
2. the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities
by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee
's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation
campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive
3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the #SenateIntelligenceCommittee's Report completely rely
on #US intelligence community+ #MikePompeo's characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even any pretense of an independent
approach
4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
– "[WikiLeaks'] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual Americans and foreign allies" (p.200)
– "WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries" (p.201)
5. it's completely false that "#WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value" (p.200)
and any longtime media partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this characterisation [is].
Titillating
Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the two top right columns of Wednesday's Times with the
blaring headline: "Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trump's Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee Echoes Mueller's Findings on Election
Tampering."
Those who make it to the end of Mazzetti's piece will learn that the Senate committee report "did not establish" that the Russian
government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such materials [that they didn't have] as leverage
against him." However, Mazzetti adds,
"According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate
told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they 'might have had a brief romantic relationship.'
"The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him
the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow."
This is journalism?
Another Pulitzer in Store?
The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald
Trump's advisers and their connections to Russia.
And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word
feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully
swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.
That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the
fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed
in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to
mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.
In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter
commented :
"The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia's threat to
U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the
heart of the Times' coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change."
Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory
The late Robert Parry.
"It's too much; it's just too much, too much", a sedated, semi-conscious Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in
late January 2018 a couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News .
It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what
he titled "An Apology
& Explanation" for "spotty production in recent days." A stroke on Christmas Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able
to summon enough strength to write an Apologia -- his vision for honest journalism and his dismay at what had happened to his profession
before he died on Jan. 27, 2018. The dichotomy was "just too much".
Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the "unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington. Facts and logic
no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent this loss of objective standards
reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media."
What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian bear. "The U.S. media's approach to Russia," he wrote,
"is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times ' or The Washington Post 's coverage
of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts? Western journalists now apparently see
it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia."
Parry, who was no conservative, continued:
"Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency
produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ."
Bob noted that the 'hand-picked' authors "evinced no evidence and even admitted that they weren't asserting any of this as fact."
It was just too much.
Robert Parry's Last Article
Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)
Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok
and Lisa Page were made public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would altogether
miss the
importance of the text-exchanges.)
Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a "sanity check." Dec. 12, 2017 was an exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts;
we agreed they were explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff investigating alleged Russian
interference, until Mueller removed him.
Strzok reportedly was a "hand-picked" FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017 evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered "intelligence
community" assessment that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had helped lead the investigation into Hillary
Clinton's misuse of her computer servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's right-hand lawyer.
His Dec. 13, 2017 piece
would be his fourth related article in less than two weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article. All three of the earlier
ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased, perceptive journalism. Here
are the links .
Bob began his article
on the Strzok-Page bombshell:
"The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key
roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling "scandal" into its own scandal, by providing
evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump's presidency.?
"As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American 'deep state' exists and that it has maneuvered to
remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer
Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government's intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting
the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump."
Not a fragment of Bob's or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As
a matter of fact, eight months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled "Russia-gate: Can You Handle the Truth?", only three
out of a very progressive audience of some 150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.
Lest I am accused of being "in Putin's pocket," let me add the explanatory note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity included in our
most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on "Russian hacking."
Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that
agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say
and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former
intelligence colleagues.
We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians
and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly
politicized times.
somecallmetimmah , 1 hour ago
Only brain-washed losers read the new york times. Garbage propaganda for garbage people.
AtATrESICI , 43 minutes ago
"developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer." What summer? The summer of 2099.
Mouldy , 1 hour ago
So in a nutshell.. They just called half the USA too stupid to make an informed decision for themselves.
ominous , 1 hour ago
the disagreement is over which half is the stupid half
homeskillet , 25 minutes ago
The MIC's bogey man. What a crock of **** this whole country has become. Pravda puts out more truth than our MSM. I trust
Putin more than the Dem leaders at this point.
Demeter55 , 1 hour ago
The Globalist/New World Order/Deep State/Elitists (or whatever other arrogant subsection of the psychopaths among us you
wish to consider) have one great failing which will defeat them utterly in the end:
They do not know when to cut their losses.
As a result of that irrational stubbornness, born of a "Manifest Destiny" assumption of an eternal lock on the situation,
they will go too far.
Having more wealth than anyone is temporary.
Having more power than anyone is temporary.
Life is temporary.
And we outnumber them by several billion.
Even if they systematically try to destroy us, they will not have the ability unless we are complicit in our own destruction.
While there are many who have "taken the knee" to these tyrants in training, there are more who have no intention of doing
so.
Most nations are not so buffaloed as to fall for this propaganda, but the United States especially was created with the
notion that all men are created equal, and this is ingrained in the national character. We don't buy it.
And our numbers are growing daily, as people wake up and realize they have to take a side for themselves, their families,
their communities.
The global covid-panic was a masterful attack, but it will fail. Indeed, it has failed already. The building counter-attack
will take out those who chose to declare war on humanity. There really is no alternative for us, the humans. Live Free or Die,
as they say in New Hampshire.
And despite the full support of the MSM and the DNC, the Would-Be Masters of the Universe will not succeed.
sborovay07 , 1 hour ago
Sad Assange wasn't granted immunity to testify and was silenced just prior to the release of the Mueller report. Little
has been heard since except his health is horrific. Now, all the Deep State figures on both sides are just throwing as much
mud against Trump as possible to hide the truth. If Durnham does not indict the Deep State figures who participated in the
Obama led coup, all is for not. Only the foot soldiers marching in lock step will be charged.
wn , 1 hour ago
To sum it up.
Conclusion of the Democrats.
Americans need Russian brains to decide their leader in order to move forward.
nokilli , 25 minutes ago
Once the MO for "Russian hacking" is published to the international intelligence community, any (((party))) can pose as
a "Russian hacker."
This is the way computers work. Sybil is eponymous.
KuriousKat , 35 minutes ago
Mazzeti looks like the typical Gopher boy for the CIA Station Chiefs around the world..they retire or become contributors
to NewsWeek Wapo or NYT. ..not Any major network w/o one...Doing **** like this is mandatory..not elective.
"... "Corbyn was thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader, with a strong mandate." ..."
"... "chose not to" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
Western celebs & politicians are falling over themselves to condemn racism, yet, Russophobia & Sinophobia remain acceptable
Tomasz Pierscionek
is a medical doctor and social commentator on medicine, science, and technology. He was previously on the board of the
charity Medact and is editor of the London Progressive Journal.
23 Aug, 2020 06:51
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Counter protesters wave signs during a far-right rally on
August 15, 2020 near the downtown of Stone Mountain, Georgia
Getty
Images / Lynsey Weatherspoon
162
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Censorship is democracy, fake news is truth, submission is freedom. Western propaganda requires acceptance of contradictory
dogmas alongside an impressive array of mental gymnastics to reconcile logical fallacies.
George Orwell's novel
'1984' depicts life within Oceania, a totalitarian society strictly controlled by an omnipresent Party whose three simple yet
contradictory slogans are: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Citizens of Oceania were forced to accept
that two plus two may equal five if the Party deemed it so.
Akin to the Snake
game
found
on old Nokia mobile phones, woke movements become increasingly illogical and harder to control before eventually tying
themselves in knots or crashing into the walls of logic, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Modern feminist movements
are having the wind taken out of their sails by other woke factions who argue that children should be taught boys can have
periods
,
so as not to distress transgender students, or that
terms
like
mother and father should be replaced with parent 1 and parent 2. Even the main UK doctors' union sent an internal memo
advising its staff to use the term 'pregnant people' rather than 'expectant
mothers'
to
avoid causing offense.
One could argue that
campaigns designed to remove the concept of male and female is a threat to women and their historical struggles. By
eliminating the 'existence' of women, it not only airbrushes out women's vast contribution to history but also removes the
whole notion of feminism if womanhood does not exist, then the whole idea of misogyny becomes irrelevant. Perhaps one day
someone will decide that race is simply a construct and can be changed at will, thus making all debates about racism and
oppression irrelevant. Thus future woke cultists might argue themselves into a corner in which racism and thus 'white
privilege' does not exist.
In the West you are free
to choose any gender or sexuality, transition between these at whim, or perhaps create your own, but you are not supposed to
question the foundations of capitalism or liberalism. Likewise, the much lauded concept of human rights and democracy one of
the key pillars on which Western 'cultural superiority' rests and from which it sneers at 'undemocratic' and 'uncivilised'
countries is used to justify the destruction, occupation and economic enslavement of other peoples.
Whether it is Libya, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen or Palestine we see that non-white lives do not matter when there are no political points to score.
Indeed, condemning the slaughter of Palestinians could be enough to get you labeled an anti-Semite by those who remain
suspiciously silent when real anti-Semitism rears its ugly head.
For example, far right and
neo-nazi militias in Ukraine,
some
of
whom take their symbols and ideology from the 1930-1940s
,
have
operated with relative impunity and perpetuated human rights abuses upon the people of the Donbass region. These groups were
part of the Maidan movement, visited by Western politicians and praised by liberals, that violently overthrew elected
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Some of the leaders of this movement included far right elements who had no qualms
being amidst white power logos and neo-nazi flags, or had in the past claimed that a
"Moscow-Jewish
mafia"
controls
Ukraine.
Neither
Western nor Israeli politicians seemed too interested in such developments, despite Israeli newspaper
Haaretz
reporting
that weapons sent by Israel to Ukraine were ending up in the hands of far right militias, such as the Azov battalion.
Paradoxically, copious effort and resources were allocated to make people believe that the UK Labour Party, led by left wing
leader Jeremy Corbyn, had a serious problem with anti-Semitism.
As soon as a party leader
like Jeremy Corbyn began to offer something outside the narrowly defined political bandwidth and stood up for the rights of
Palestinians, he was demonized by politicians as well as their media allies and big business handlers. A study conducted by
the London School of Economics and Political Science examined UK newspaper coverage of Corbyn in the months following his
election as Labour Party leader and found evidence of media
bias
such
that
"Corbyn was thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became
a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader, with a strong mandate."
It is welcome that recent
events in the US have highlighted racism faced by African Americans. Yet frequent murders of African Americans by a
militarized police force did not suddenly appear when Trump came to power. Many Democratic Party politicians who nowadays make
sure everyone knows they unquestioningly support the Black Lives Matter movement had few issues with the status quo before the
killing of George Floyd, and will probably regain their apathy if Biden wins the election.
Furthermore, little is
said about the role the Obama administration played only a few years ago in the destruction of Libya, formerly one of Africa's
richest and most stable nations, and its relinquishment to warlords and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Some of these groups were
quick to imprison and murder
citizens
from
sub-Saharan Africa who had migrated to Libya in search of a better life.
Slave
markets
selling sub-Saharan Africans now exist in the new post-Gaddafi Libya.
The UK Conservative Party, traditionally not fans of refugees or migrants, were responsible for the
Windrush
scandal
which saw Caribbean immigrants who had arrived in the UK decades earlier being threatened with deportation despite
having lived, worked, and paid taxes in this country for many years. The same party is now thinking of allowing nearly three
million Hong Kong citizens the opportunity to reside in the UK and later apply for
citizenship
.
When it comes to sticking two fingers up to China, we hear no talk about how the NHS and welfare system cannot afford to
absorb refugees and migrants.
These days many people,
especially celebrities, politicians and media figures, are falling over themselves to condemn racism and make sure everyone is
aware of their anti-racist credentials. The only remaining forms of racism deemed acceptable in the West include Russophobia
and Sinophobia. The media devotes endless hours hyping up the threat from Russia and China and in doing so surreptitiously
promotes animosity toward these nations and their peoples. The shadowy hand of the Russian government is deemed to be behind
every calamity or undesired election result. We are frequently reminded that a vague and poorly defined threat from Russia and
China looms large, though hard evidence is often sketchy, open to interpretation or questionable. At the same time NATO troops
encroach upon Russia's borders, yet the latter is deemed the aggressor, whilst the US sails warships through contested seas
near China's
borders
.
Whereas the UK seeks to provoke Russia for no logical reason, the US is determined to pick a fight with China and claims it
"chose
not to"
stop coronavirus from spreading beyond its borders.
The waning US empire and
its allies within the disintegrating EU prefer to attack their rivals Russia and China to deflect their own populations'
attention away from domestic problems with some good old-fashioned xenophobia. The UK, in particular, would do well to try and
improve its relationships with Russia and China as it is on track to have a lonely time post Brexit.
Think your friends would be
interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
It is really funny when Biden talks about torture... It is difficult to teach an old neocon
dog new tricks.
Notable quotes:
"... "The brave citizens of Belarus are showing their voices will not be silenced by terror or torture," ..."
"... "The U.S. should support Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's call for fair elections. Russia must be told not to interfere -- this is not about geopolitics but the right to choose one's leaders." ..."
Joe Biden may be an uncertain election away from becoming president, but he's already
tweeting like one. Following an entirely predictable script, Biden demanded that Russia "be
told not to interfere" in Belarus' affairs.
"The brave citizens of Belarus are showing their voices will not be silenced by terror
or torture," Biden tweeted on Wednesday. "The U.S. should support Sviatlana
Tsikhanouskaya's call for fair elections. Russia must be told not to interfere -- this is not
about geopolitics but the right to choose one's leaders."
It took balls for Carlson to have Anya Parampil on his show last night. He has had her on
before, so he knows what she is like she tells it like it is. He will get shit for that.
I don't think he agrees with everything she said but agrees with some of it.
I hope that the U.S. will follow through on this. The more it sanctions left and right
for totally irrational reasons the more incentives will other countries have to build
mechanisms that make U.S. sanctions ineffective and useless. Russia has already done that
and China to some extend. The Europeans should have done this long ago but are only now
considering it seriously.
There are also counter measures that could and should be considered. A European tax on
digital products would seriously hurt Google, Facebook, Ebay and other U.S. companies. When
their profits and stocks drop the Trump administration might learn that wreaking balls have
the tendency to swing back.
We are seeing desperate measures taken to keep empire from crashing further and faster.
We may be at the point where things where going slowly and then speed up all of a
sudden.
I agree that Trump tactics have been like those of a wrecking ball and I don't think
he/his handlers care about any coincidental damage.....this game continues to be for
control of all the marbles and empire is losing, hence more delusional bullying.
The facets of the civilization war humanity is in will visit and touch every country.
The bonds of financial slavery will be broken by this war.
It seems to me Trump/Pompass are hoist on their own petard here, in that: had they
stayed in the JCPOA, they would now be in a better position to induce "snapback". Hmmm.
Priceless.
It's almost as if the U.S. state is a mindless, merciless, soulless entity which evil,
selfish people serve for own self-interest. Fortunately it would appear this monstrous
creature is discrediting and destroying itself. Perhaps with help from occasional
provocation. It flails like a blinded cyclops, momentarily very dangerous.
Any group still collaborating with the US deserves no sympathy for what happens.
There are also counter measures that could and should be considered. A European tax on
digital products would seriously hurt Google, Facebook, Ebay and other U.S. companies.
When their profits and stocks drop the Trump administration might learn that wreaking
balls have the tendency to swing back.
I don't think the EU can do that (unless it's just a symbolic tax, "to the delight of
the masses"). At this point in history, those big American companies are probably very well
fused and entrenched with the European government and governments of its members.
Besides, to do that would (that is, even if it could) automatically mean having to go
back to China as an inferior part, and we already know at least Germany and France don't
want that (they want a new European imperialism, as Merkel has already made clear many
times over the years of her endless reign).
The U.S. hopes to pressure Iran until it formally declares the deal dead. That could
then give pretext for launching a larger conflict against the country.
israel/neocons want war with iran before trump leaves office bc while they don't think
biden/harris would necessarily start it they'd have no choice but to continue if war was
already started, hence the (30 day) timeline.
If the sanctions are really imposed, it is likely the poodles (UK, France, Germany) will
chicken out rather than fighting against US. That will give Russian and China companies and
arms sellers a field day - bigger profits, less competitions - won't they?
So, who says Trump is not an agent of Russia / China? /sarc
The world's largest producer and arms trader, sponsor of terror ...
"It is an enormous mistake not to extend this arms embargo. It's nuts!" Pompeo told
reporters at the United Nations.
In the meantime, Iran announced a new ballistic missile with a range of approximately
870 miles and is named after Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. A new cruise missile boasting a
range more than 620 miles was named after Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis.
Interview Pompeo at a friendly CNBC broadcast today.
What the useless morons leading Europe should realize is that the only way forward is to
isolate the US and work with everyone else, China and Russia to begin with, to fully
blockade the country economically. Basically do to them what they'll end up doing sooner or
later to any other country. That EU countries can't see that they'll share Iran or Russia
fate in the future is painful - one wonders how world leaders can be so dumb.
all those European "allies" have simply been bought with money. Money talks and BS
walks, right? But they are finally understanding that US will trample them over as much as
it would trample Iran. the North Stream 2 project gave them a big clue.
The US has been stomping on the Euro for decades now, in fear it will become more powerful
than US dollar.
It just takes time. 50 million jobless in USA, dollar's purchasing power collapsing, while
the Americans argue over Antifa and BLM and the rights of transgenders as their country is
imploding all around them. Soon very soon indeed. The only problem is US might start a war
to divert the attention of the average American moron. War is always the final card they
use.
Below is a quote from the latest Reuters posting
"
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States was further isolated on Friday over its bid to
reimpose international sanctions on Iran with 13 countries on the 15-member U.N. Security
Council expressing their opposition, arguing that Washington's move is void given it is
using a process agreed under a nuclear deal that it quit two years ago.
"
Something is puzzling to me. What countries will be intimidated by the "snapback"
sanctions of weapon trade with Iran? It is quite possible that Chinese and Russian have
some shipments ready or getting ready for the Fall delivery. But Iran is not about to
engage in some huge shopping spree.
IT sector as Trojan Horse of any color revolution is post-Soviet space: the solid base of compradors.
Notable quotes:
"... But it also spared Belarus the economic shock therapy and mass privatization that saw Soviet industrial assets taken over by political insiders and organized criminals in neighboring Russia and Ukraine. Today, Belarus has a lower unemployment rate than the eurozone average and remains one of the least unequal societies in the world. ..."
"... During the past quarter-century, Belarus also recorded a 24 percent increase in the Human Development Index, the measure of long-term progress in longevity, access to education, and living standards compiled by the United Nations Development Programme. This is a significantly bigger improvement than in neighboring Poland (18 percent), Russia (17 percent), or Ukraine (11 percent). ..."
"... And while it has long been the butt of jokes for its old-school reliance on potash mining and heavy industry, Belarus's economy has produced some unexpected success stories. Aside from tractors and heavy-duty vehicles used in mining, the country has also developed a significant regional expertise in IT through Hi-Tech Park ..."
"... Nor does Belarus share the rampant corruption that plagues other post-Soviet states. According to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index , which measures self-reported incidents of bribery and other corruption, Belarus ranks better than not only Russia and Ukraine but also EU members Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. ..."
"... So far, none of the opposition leaders have demonstrated a vocal commitment to preserving Belarus's key asset: its social and economic equality. Worryingly, two key opposition leaders, Tsepkalo and Viktor Babariko, a career banker, are known for their staunchly pro-business views and vocal support for privatization. ..."
"... For the Princeton anthropologist and professor Serguei Oushakine, an expert on post-communist transitions who is writing a book about Belarus, the vocal influence on the protests of the younger, more outward-looking tech sector can obscure the fact that "the current system of state capitalism continues to maintain a relatively broad base of support." ..."
"... The country's IT workers "live in a kind of economic bubble," he told me. The sector is foreign-oriented and contributes little to the country's tax base, which remains sustained by heavy-machine building and potash mining. And for the bulk of the country's labor market, any economic changes may bring serious risks. "Deindustrialisation has been a feature of most political transitions in Eastern Europe," said Oushakine. "Those who are striking, what will they do later once their factories close? Yet this fear has not prevented them from standing up for their personal dignity." ..."
Is the political crisis in Belarus smolders on, one thing is clear: Responsibility for the
breakdown rests entirely with President Alexander Lukashenko, who has held on to power since
1994. It was he who presided over the evident falsification of the August 9 election, condemned
as fraudulent by the West and which even Russia's foreign minister called "not ideal."
Lukashenko also ultimately commands the security services that have brutalized thousands of
peaceful demonstrators over the past fortnight. But recognition of these facts, and of
Lukashenko's record of authoritarianism and cruelty, should not mask concerns about the
potentially disastrous consequences of any poorly managed regime change.
The inspiring scenes of people power in Minsk vividly recall the pro-democracy rallies that
foiled an attempted coup by Soviet hard-liners to depose then–Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev exactly 29 years ago, in August 1991. Yet neither those demonstrations nor any other
major mass uprisings since have resulted in the creation of stable, democratic governments in
the former Soviet Union.
With the exception of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which never fully accepted that they
were part of the Soviet Union, the chaotic fall of the USSR created a dozen more or less
dysfunctional states. Three decades on, none has been able to liberate itself of corruption,
authoritarianism, or Russian meddling. Sizable numbers of citizens of all these countries -- a
third of Ukrainians, more than half of Belarusians, nearly 70 percent of Russians, and up to 80
percent of Armenians, according to
a 2017 Pew Research Center poll -- have come to lament the passing of the old order, the
benefits of which became fully apparent only with hindsight amid social and economic
upheaval.
Like their Soviet forebears, Belarusians have a lot more to lose from a poorly managed
transition than it may at first appear. Lukashenko's pathological phobia of reform helped
create the current impasse.
But it also spared Belarus the economic shock therapy and mass
privatization that saw Soviet industrial assets taken over by political insiders and organized
criminals in neighboring Russia and Ukraine. Today, Belarus has a lower unemployment rate than
the eurozone average and remains one of the least unequal societies in the world.
For all the palpable sense of stagnation, since 1995 Belarusians have seen a threefold rise
in their per capita GDP. While the country's GDP remains much lower than that of Poland or the
Baltics -- established EU members that even at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union
had much more developed economies -- it remains double that of nearby former Soviet republics
Ukraine and Moldova. During the past quarter-century, Belarus also recorded a 24 percent
increase in the Human Development Index, the measure of long-term progress in longevity, access
to education, and living standards compiled by the United Nations Development Programme. This
is a significantly bigger improvement than in neighboring Poland (18 percent), Russia (17
percent), or Ukraine (11 percent).
And while it has long been the butt of jokes for its old-school reliance on potash mining
and heavy industry, Belarus's economy has produced some unexpected success stories. Aside from
tractors and heavy-duty vehicles used in mining, the country has also developed a significant
regional expertise in IT through Hi-Tech Park, a low-tax business incubator founded by Valery Tsepkalo, a former diplomat who later became one of the leaders of the opposition and was
forced to flee Belarus earlier this month. His wife, Veronika, is one of three women --
including presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Maria Kolesnikova, the campaign
manager of Viktor Babariko, a former banker who was barred from running -- who have helmed the
opposition movement.
Nor does Belarus share the rampant corruption that plagues other post-Soviet states.
According to Transparency
International's Corruption Perceptions Index , which measures self-reported incidents of
bribery and other corruption, Belarus ranks better than not only Russia and Ukraine but also EU
members Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania.
These statistics do not exonerate Lukashenko's rule, which through its contempt for
democracy has earned the resentment of the thousands of people now risking violence to gather
across the country. Rather, they demonstrate the hard-won gains that any democratic successor
must defend even as they attempt to pass necessary reforms. Voters must be told clearly how a
legitimately elected government would protect Belarus's highly regulated economy from the mass
layoffs, asset stripping, and crony privatizations that plagued the so-called democratic
transitions of its neighbors.
So far, none of the opposition leaders have demonstrated a vocal commitment to preserving
Belarus's key asset: its social and economic equality. Worryingly, two key opposition leaders,
Tsepkalo and Viktor Babariko, a career banker, are known for their staunchly pro-business views
and vocal support for privatization.
On August 14, presidential candidate Tikhanovskaya announced the formation of the
Coordination Council, a group tasked with transferring power away from Lukashenko and forming a
transitional government. Of its 33 initially announced members, six were IT business leaders
from a sector that accounted for just 5.5 percent of GDP in 2018. Only one, Sergey Dylevsky, a
worker at the Minsk Tractor Works, is a voice for the blue-collar workers that form the
backbone of the country's economy. In recent days, the council has moved to rebalance,
appointing Gleb Sandras from the Belaruskali Potash Plant and creating seven additional posts
to be filled by worker representatives from the major industrial companies.
For the Princeton anthropologist and professor Serguei Oushakine, an expert on
post-communist transitions who is writing a book about Belarus, the vocal influence on the
protests of the younger, more outward-looking tech sector can obscure the fact that "the
current system of state capitalism continues to maintain a relatively broad base of support."
The country's IT workers "live in a kind of economic bubble," he told me. The sector is
foreign-oriented and contributes little to the country's tax base, which remains sustained by
heavy-machine building and potash mining. And for the bulk of the country's labor market, any
economic changes may bring serious risks. "Deindustrialisation has been a feature of most
political transitions in Eastern Europe," said Oushakine. "Those who are striking, what will
they do later once their factories close? Yet this fear has not prevented them from standing up
for their personal dignity."
"... Current developments in Belarus bear a troubling resemblance to the turbulence in Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 that led to the overthrow of the country's pro-Russian president, Victor Yanukovych. During that episode, the United States and key European Union members meddled shamelessly to support anti-government demonstrators, even though (unlike Lukashenko) Yanukovych had been chosen in an election that EU and other international observers conceded was reasonably free and fair. Despite that stamp of legitimacy, Barack Obama's administration praised the demonstrators for ousting Yanukovych nearly two years before the expiration of his term. Worse, Washington aided that effort and even helped choose key personnel for Kiev's pro-NATO successor government. ..."
"... Washington's conduct in Ukraine was recklessly provocative, and the Trump administration needs to adopt a far better policy regarding Belarus. Even from a political and diplomatic standpoint, it would be unwise for Washington to identify too closely with the demonstrators there. It is possible that most of them are Western-style democrats dedicated to ousting a corrupt autocrat and establishing a genuine democracy. Many of the demonstrators in Ukraine were legitimate democrats, but there also were highly unsavory ultranationalist and outright neo-Nazi elements. And some of them continued to play important roles in the post-revolutionary government. We know little about the political orientation of and possible factionalism in the anti-Lukashenko forces. ..."
"... Russian leaders have reason to regard Ukraine and Belarus as being within Moscow's rightful sphere of influence. Indeed, those two nations are within Russia's core security zone, and the Kremlin will likely go to great lengths to prevent an even bigger NATO military presence on its borders than the one that exists now. A prudent U.S. foreign policy would tread very carefully regarding either Ukraine or Belarus. ..."
"... NATO shouldn't even exist anymore (seriously, can someone send a memo to Stoltenberg, that the USSR has ceased to exist? He talks about it all the time). NATO is putting Europe in danger , with its absolutely reckless behaviour, which is even contrary to 1997 NATO-Russia founding treaty. They all promised to cooperate with Russia for shared security, and they said they would have avoided to expand in sensitive areas on the Eastern flank, yet they're doing the opposite (the Bush administration started it, Obama gave it the biggest push and Trump is not relenting). And the recent Polish-US deal is not helping Europe, and neither is the withdrawal from OST and (the very likely) upcoming collapse of NewSTART. ..."
"... NATO has done enough damage to European security architecture. Let's not have them escalate even more than they already have. ..."
"... NATO already has moved a large military force to within 15km of the Belarus border under the guise of a training mission. Way to much of what is going on here reminds of a Western planned color revolution. Those same Western backed color revolution brain fart brought 20+ years of occupation in Afghanistan. Slave trading and war to Libya. Genocide to Yemen and on and on and on. So what's to go wrong with staging one on Russia border? Any more clear thinking like this and you will have Russian tanks in Poland and Romania in the blink of an eye. ..."
Numerous, increasingly angry street demonstrations have erupted in Belarus against the
continued rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has held power since 1994.
Belarus, like most of the countries that emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, is a
nominal democracy, but one in which opposition political forces are severely restricted and
unmercifully harassed. Lukashenko has an outsized ego that makes him resist being a puppet of
Vladimir Putin, but he is a close ally and de facto client of Russia's president. In return,
Moscow provides crucial financial aid to keep the government in Minsk afloat.
Popular anger has been building for years against the corrupt and economically inept
Lukashenko regime, but it exploded this month when Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in
the country's latest rigged election. Street protests have grown steadily in both size and
assertiveness, with one on August 16 becoming the largest in the country's history. Lukashenko
now has asked to Moscow to intervene to help him stay in office, blaming a plot by foreign
powers for the growing disorder. In a statement, the Kremlin confirmed that it stood ready to
provide help in accordance with a mutual security pact. Putin also
explicitly warned
Western governments not to interfere in Belarus.
Putin may have an added incentive to support his client in Belarus. Lukashenko is not the
only leader confronting worrisome mass demonstrations. For several weeks, thousands of people
in Russia's Far East have taken to the streets for protests against Putin's government. He has
ample reason to worry that the events in Belarus and in his own country could become mutually
reinforcing and pose a menace to both regimes. In the most recent demonstrations, protesters
were chanting "long live Belarus" to express solidarity with the opposition in that country --
a development likely to make the Kremlin very nervous. From Putin's standpoint, helping
Lukashenko suppress the growing threat to his rule would send an unsubtle message to anti-Putin
factions in Russia that their campaign will not be tolerated either.
It's crucial that the United States and its European allies act with great caution and
restraint in addressing the volatile situation in Belarus. Although NATO denies Belarus's claim
of a military buildup on its western border, a NATO spokesperson did emphasize that the
alliance was monitoring the situation closely.
Current developments in Belarus bear a troubling resemblance to the turbulence in
Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 that led to the overthrow of the country's pro-Russian
president, Victor Yanukovych. During that episode, the United States and key European Union
members meddled shamelessly to support anti-government demonstrators, even though (unlike
Lukashenko) Yanukovych had been chosen in an election that EU and other international observers
conceded was reasonably free and fair. Despite that stamp of legitimacy, Barack Obama's
administration praised the demonstrators for ousting Yanukovych nearly two years before the
expiration of his term. Worse, Washington aided that effort and even helped choose key
personnel for Kiev's pro-NATO successor government.
The West's interference infuriated the Kremlin, and Russia responded by annexing Ukraine's
Crimea Peninsula, home to Moscow's strategically vital Black Sea fleet. That move, in turn, led
to U.S. and European economic sanctions against Moscow and intensified an already emerging cold
war.
Washington's conduct in Ukraine was recklessly provocative, and the Trump administration
needs to adopt a far better policy regarding Belarus. Even from a political and diplomatic
standpoint, it would be unwise for Washington to identify too closely with the demonstrators
there. It is possible that most of them are Western-style democrats dedicated to ousting a
corrupt autocrat and establishing a genuine democracy. Many of the demonstrators in Ukraine
were legitimate democrats, but there also were highly unsavory ultranationalist and outright
neo-Nazi elements. And some of them continued to play important roles in the post-revolutionary
government. We know little about the political orientation of and possible factionalism in the
anti-Lukashenko forces.
Even more important, caution is warranted because of important geostrategic considerations.
U.S. officials have repeatedly claimed that the concept of spheres of influence has no
legitimate place in international affairs, with both Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry explicitly
making that assertion. It's a shockingly naïve view that ignores both history and logic.
Great powers understandably view developments in their neighborhood as more important than
events in distant locales, and they seek to protect their interests.
Russian leaders have reason to regard Ukraine and Belarus as being within Moscow's rightful
sphere of influence. Indeed, those two nations are within Russia's core security zone, and the
Kremlin will likely go to great lengths to prevent an even bigger NATO military presence on its
borders than the one that exists now. A prudent U.S. foreign policy would tread very carefully
regarding either Ukraine or Belarus.
NATO has confirmed that it is monitoring the evolving situation in Belarus, but it is
imperative that the Alliance's posture not go beyond that task. The last thing U.S. leaders
should do is provoke yet another crisis with Russia as they did in Ukraine. When it comes to
the internal turmoil in Belarus, America does not have a dog in that fight.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at
The American Conservative
, is the author of 12 books and more
than 850 articles on international affairs.
I almost forgot about the regime change operation in Ukraine. Belarus seems a perfect
model for a repeat of that disaster. How's that War in the Donbass coming along again?
A total disaster. Ukraine and any meager state run enterprises that can be plundered
there are meager recompense for an action that poisoned the well for Russian relations for
a long time and even continues to do so as long as that thing smolders.
Likewise Putin probably felt that his kicking Hillary was deserved payback for her
meddling to undermine him but by wading into the US election and favoring Trump of all
people, even if not nearly to the extent that the American security apparatus projected, he
too has poisoned the well in American domestic politics.
American-Russian relations have worsened steadily over the past 30 years entirely on
hubris - mostly, American belief that it can actually project power sustainably into the
Soviet space, and to a lesser extent the Russian belief that it could actually piece that
space back together. The hostility is entirely based on fantasies.
Belarus should hold fair elections, or at least a managed one that gives the opposition
at least something more like the power their electoral support merits. For the West's part,
explicitly reject any attempt to manipulate the outcome like in Ukraine. Belarus isn't
theirs to run, and it's up to Belarus to define its relationship with Russia, and its
internal politics.
Poor batka, he made a lot of mistakes. He should have at least incorporated some
pressure release valves into his regime. Even if he retains his power he will be a shadow
of himself. But if he falls chaos and anarchy will follow. Belarus will become a plaything
for foreign powers, its people gastarbeiter and serfs for the West, its agricultural land
the property of oligarchs and foreigners and the EU and western NGO's will force their sick
LGBTIQ+ agenda on the last tractor drivers of Europe...
Perhaps the best option would be for Russia to re-incorporate Byelorussia into greater
Russia in order to ward off those western NGOs, Wall Street sharks and vulture capitalists,
EU & NATO encroachment, the GAFA Woke Capitalist LBGTQblahlblah++ agenda, etc.
Perhaps the best option would be for Russia to re-incorporate Byelorussia into
greater Russia in order to ward off those western NGOs
They basically bankrolled Belarus through cheap oil and gas which it then sold for
market prices to the West. This was and still is the lifeline of batka's regime. Putin
tried to squeeze him a bit, because he "misbehaved" in the last couple of years. Putin
doesn't like him, but he will support him if he sees western meddling.
That was the plan (Union State) but Lukashenko liked running 'his' own country, and
played Russia off against the West for decades ... that game had to come to an end, and it
has. Unfortunately it will be harder to incorporate Belarus into Russia now, although that
is their only reasonable path. I suppose Russia still wants them, but that seems less
clear.
I am flabbergasted at how people think they can "topple Putin"by militarily intervening in
Russia's neighbourhood, or how anyone has the right to even try to "topple Putin". The man
just won the Constitutional referendum with large margin, and we know it was a fully
legitimate voting process as the day after the election, Western media claimed that Putin
won because
"the Russians didn't understand what they were voting for"
- poor little
matryoshkas, they might have had difficulties with the Cyrillic alphabet or something?
(/s)
And if you think Putin's game is about "opposing the US", you're mistaken, with the
cards he's been dealt, he's got definitely other plans (see EEC, BRICS, CSTO, etc)
Indeed. US politicians and pundits who want to count "mail-in ballots" that arrive after
election day and without a postmark have no business lecturing Russia or anyone else about
how to properly conduct fair elections.
Russia doesn't have elections, just Putin parades. Their Supreme Leader has decided that
the average Russian is unfit to have a say in their own life. I used to think the Russians
were tougher, but I guess several hundred years of serfdom affect the spirit.
Apparently you have difficulties with analogies. You repetition of stale anti-Russia,
anti-Putin tropes in your previous post was Maddow-esque in style, that's all.
I don't watch TV. I read Putin poisoned another Russian citizen today, for the crime of
speaking out against Dear Leader. Another victory for glorious Russia and God!
Who cares?
If Putin drops dead tomorrow, my life doesn't change.
If Putin gets a cyborg body, and lives forever, my life doesn't change.
Give me one good reason to care about this.
Why flirt with WWIII when there's not a single real-world benefit?
But the implication in the second that US policy should be aimed at what will best
help"topple Putin" is utterly wrongheaded, and why he has a "will to oppose US" in the
first place. Is it any wonder, given that US policy since Clinton has been to aggressively
expand NATO and antagonize Russia at every turn, especially by inventing the "Russia stole
the election for Trump" hoax, etc.?
The Left and their fellow traveling neo-cons on the faux-right have envisioned more
Russian bogeymen running around controlling everything since the fall of the USSR, and
engage in more anti-Russia hysteria, than the most ardent anti-Communists or McCarthyites
ever did during the Cold War.
Spheres of influence are as relevant today as in any period of history -- and as
dangerous. And their reality has to be acknowledged. Ultimately they are to protect
interests, why nations go to war. That is what happens when spheres collide. All the
parties in Belarus need to act with "caution and restraint". Otherwise they may not hear
the warning cries of history, that a hundred years ago plunged mankind into its first world
war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
100% correct. The way the Obama administration helped foment a coup in the Ukraine in
2014 (through scum like Victoria Nuland, and with the backing of McCain and other
neo-conmen), was a disgrace, and we have no business interfering in the internal affairs of
yet another country in Russia's backyard.
The US, NATO, and EU should keep out. Both Byelorussia and the Ukraine are within
Russia's rightful sphere of influence, and have deep cultural and historical ties (one
could make a legitimate case for them being part of greater Russia and not separate nations
that should have their own sovereign states anyway; at the very least Russia was right to
re-take the Crimean peninsula, which only ended up in the Ukraine after 1991 because of
Khrushchev-era internal USSR administrative border manipulations).
NATO has confirmed that it is monitoring the evolving situation in Belarus, but it is
imperative that the Alliance's posture not go beyond that task.
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!!!
NATO shouldn't even exist anymore (seriously, can someone send a memo to Stoltenberg,
that the USSR has ceased to exist? He talks about it all the time).
NATO is putting
Europe in danger
, with its absolutely reckless behaviour, which is even contrary to
1997 NATO-Russia founding treaty. They all promised to cooperate with Russia for shared
security, and they said they would have avoided to expand in sensitive areas on the Eastern
flank, yet they're doing the opposite (the Bush administration started it, Obama gave it
the biggest push and Trump is not relenting). And the recent Polish-US deal is
not
helping Europe, and neither is the withdrawal from OST and (the very likely) upcoming
collapse of NewSTART.
NATO has done enough damage to European security architecture.
Let's not have
them escalate even more than they already have.
We should stand by our Christian brothers, which Chinese and Turks are not. It's a
shameful stain on European history that they never banded together with Russia and other
Orthodox to oust the Turks from Constantinople after 1453, but instead often sided with
Turks and sowed intra-Christian division instead.
There is no Guantanamo for Russian prisoners. There are elections that are more
democratic than those of the USA. There's greater freedom of speech too. I admit only 50%
of Democrats and 30% of Republicans support their political opponents losing their
employment. Trump is correct that Yanks are too afraid to really have free speech.
Navalny isn't an important political figure like Tulsi Gabbard; he only has 4% support
for his idea that Russia should accept US rule and that support will decline every year
(How many idiots in the USA support Russia or China ruling the USA?). He appears to be ill
but there isn't the slightest evidence he's been poisoned. He doesn't even claim it. He
just says "maybe". Don't forget he's in a desperate political position and will say or do
anything to try to get to 5%.
The pro-US politicians in Russia were kneecapped by Russia adopting the US legislation
requiring foreign agents to register as foreign agents. If they continued to receive their
pay but didn't register, they committed an offence. There went their funding.
If you really supported democracy, you wouldn't support the USA more than
half-heartedly. Admittedly, the USA has much to teach the world about the genital
mutilation of children and the Democrat's beloved censorship by billionaires. I don't
include failure at epidemic control because all NATO countries are about as good. You could
teach greater failure to Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba but so could any NATO
country.
California is burning because they enslaved their prison population to fight fires, who
can't get up because they all have COVID. Kamalamalala kept the nonviolent prisoners in
these conditions because they couldn't give up their slaves.
Please, keep using Russia as a punching bag for all of your insecurities.
I agree with the essence of this article. It ls up to the people of Belarus to decide
their fate. The idea that we should topple Putin is just plain madness.
Russia is not trying to re-emerge as a Russian Empire. There are 5 (I think) major entry
routes to invade Russia and Russia is just trying to secure them. Russia, Eastern Europe,
Central Europe, Western Europe are all rapidly depopulating.
No one can afford a 10,000+
dead. There is significant distrust which needs to be dealt with but Russia doesn't not
believe the US or NATO or Europe want to invade Russia (nor do we believe they want to
invade us).
If they did then the US & Russia would have had many more nuclear
confrontations and a far more militarized border than exists. Its the distrust that must be
resolved.
If trust is to be built then it needs to be build at the local level between the
former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. Its the eastern European former Warsaw pact countries that need to be talking with Belarus and Russia.
Mutual reassurances of security. Mutual agreements to increase trade and partnerships
(perhaps even an eastern European Free Trade Zone). The author is 100% correct that the US
has no business getting involved.
NATO already has moved a large military force to within 15km of the Belarus border under
the guise of a training mission. Way to much of what is going on here reminds of a Western
planned color revolution. Those same Western backed color revolution brain fart brought
20+ years of occupation in Afghanistan. Slave trading and war to Libya. Genocide to Yemen
and on and on and on. So what's to go wrong with staging one on Russia border? Any more
clear thinking like this and you will have Russian tanks in Poland and Romania in the blink
of an eye.
The Ukraine (Malorussia) and Belarus (Byelorussia) are not just in the "sphere of
influence" of Moscow i.e. Great Russia. Little Russia and White Russia are ethnically,
culturally, historically East Slavic Russians. Russian Federation is a massive diverse
country containing populations far more alien to East Slavic Velikaya Rus than their
brethren in what are now Belarus and Ukraine which were part of Russia for centuries,
Russian Tsars were Tsar of All the Russias, not just the big one... (although Imperial
Russia Tsars preferred the technical term "autocrat" from the Byzantine Græco-Romans
which did not have negative connotations, the equivalent of Latin Roman "imperator"). Only
when Russia was at its weakest moment in centuries amid the collapse of CCCP in 1990s could
the idea of separating the Ukraine and Byelorussia into new separate countries have been
serious contemplated, much less implemented...and to add insult to injury for decades later
NATO expands even into those ethnic Russian states to install anti-Moscow,
pro-Brussels/Washington regimes..
Tales of the American Empire
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The end of the Cold war brought peace to Europe and armies began to demobilize. The American empire exploited this
trust and ignored promises made to the Russians to expand NATO and absorb former Warsaw Pact nations and even
former Soviet Republics. Efforts then focused on conquering the large former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The
Russians had found Ukraine unproductive, corrupt, and troublesome so granted it independence in 1991. The American
empire plotted to absorb Ukraine into NATO and sent military units to Ukraine to bolster the Ukrainian army with
plans for building American military bases. An American instigated coup in Ukraine led to bloody fighting and major
economic disruptions. ______________________________________
“The Independent Ukraine's Painful Journey Through the Five Stages of Grief”; explains Ukraine’s current status;
The Saker; Unz.com;
https://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-indepe...
The US Army’s huge effort to secure Ukraine can be seen in the 349 articles posted at its website just over the
past five years:
https://search.usa.gov/search/news?af...
The United States provided Ukraine with $1.5 billion in military aid since 2014, to include $250 million in 2019.
The purpose of these weapons is to kill Russians.
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Rele...
TAGS: Poland history Ukraine history Crimea history Ukraine coup Non-Governmental Organizations National Endowment
for Democracy Yanukovych Victoria Nuland John Kerry Ukraine Obama Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk Geoffrey Pyatt NATO
expansion NATO Crimea John McCain Ukraine US Army Ukraine Donbass war Russia history Soros Ukraine NGO Ukraine
American main stream media is not informing and reporting but is actually Goebbels-like
propaganda for the Democrats. Fox is only retaliating with opposing views. Imagine Walter
Cronkite being advocate for one party – that would be scandalous. However the present
insects on CNN, MSNBC, NYT or WP and other dishonest outlets have no guts to stand up against
their owners disloyalty to this country.
Insightful overview. Giraldi explores the most important topic in American life. And one
of the most neglected: MSM distortions, omissions, sanctimony, propaganda, deception and
gaslighting. Stomach-turning drek –all of it.
Americans are in a half-Zombie state because of what they see on TV, and cannot discuss on
social media.
Hollywood, elite media, and Big Tech are the gatekeepers [ of the neoliberal power].
The shysters at WPO and NYT think that once they have misdirected the voters for their
goal into voting for Joe Biden, it can pick up things where they left off and fix it without
any problems but what they don't realize is that the train has left the station and now it's
barreling down the dark abyss from where there is no return to safety.
It took balls for Carlson to have Anya Parampil on his show last night. He has had her on
before, so he knows what she is like she tells it like it is. He will get shit for that.
I don't think he agrees with everything she said but agrees with some of it.
@Tommy Thompson he military is responsible for or how Israel is treated, how corporations
are handed free billions upon billions, etc, and its largely business as usual. All the noise
about Trump the disruptor is just that, noise. He hasn't disrupted anything of note.
As long as the two political parties exist, voting is for people who want to believe a
lie. Deep down they know, absolutely know, that the system is rigged but they can't let
themselves fully believe that because that would mean there is no hope. They would realize
that they live in a sophisticated soft military dictatorship that has stolen $21 Trillion
dollars and is the actual gov't of the country. That realization is unpalatable and
hence rejected.
However the present insects on CNN, MSNBC, NYT or WP and other dishonest outlets have no
guts to stand up against their owners disloyalty to this country.
It's not a simple as that. All the media people know that it's a rotten system, but if
they step out of line – they lose their jobs – and make themselves unemployable
anywhere else.
IMO it's not a question of standing up – which is pointless – but using
organized subversion. After all, this is what Jewry have been doing for decades in targeting
Anglo run organizations and it works. It's your friend and collaborator who is really your
enemy.
The editor-in-chief of a major Chinese tabloid slammed Mike Pompeo for
comparing his country to Nazi Germany, likening his words to those of Hitler's propaganda chief
and reminding the secretary of state of America's endless wars.
Hu Xijin took to Twitter on Sunday venting his anger about Mike Pompeo's remarks.
"You are inciting radical hostility and ripping the world apart. You aren't like a top
diplomat, instead, you talk like Goebbels of Nazi Germany. I'm worried that world peace will
eventually be destroyed by extreme politicians like you," he wrote.
Former Congressman Ron Paul and his colleague Dan McAdams recently conducted a fascinating interview with
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which focused in part on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,
who was Kennedy Jr.'s uncle. The interview took place on their program the Ron Paul Liberty
Report.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_kJdOtnBUcw
Owing to the many federal records that have been released over the years relating to the
Kennedy assassination, especially through the efforts of the Assassination Records Review Board
in the 1990s, many Americans are now aware of the war that was being waged between President
Kennedy and the CIA throughout his presidency . The details of this war are set forth in FFF's
book
JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas
Horne.
In the interview, Robert Kennedy Jr. revealed a fascinating aspect of this war with which I
was unfamiliar. He stated that the deep animosity that the CIA had for the Kennedy family
actually stretched back to something the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, did in the 1950s
that incurred the wrath of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA.
Kennedy Jr. stated that his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, had served on a commission that
was charged with examining and analyzing CIA covert activities, or "dirty tricks" as Kennedy
Jr. put them. As part of that commission, Kennedy Jr stated, Joseph Kennedy (John Kennedy and
Bobby Kennedy's father) had determined that the CIA had done bad things with its regime-change
operations that were destroying democracies, such as in Iran and Guatemala.
Consequently, Joseph Kennedy recommended that the CIA's power to engage in covert activities
be terminated and that the CIA be strictly limited to collecting intelligence and empowered to
do nothing else.
According to Kennedy Jr.,
"Allen Dulles never forgave him -- never forgave my family -- for that."
I assumed that the war between President Kennedy and the CIA had begun with the CIA's
invasion at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The additional information added by Kennedy Jr. places
things in a much more fascinating and revealing context.
Upon doing a bit of research on the Internet, I found that the commission that Kennedy Jr.
must have been referring to was the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence
Activities, which President Eisenhower had established in 1956 through
Executive Order 10656 . Eisenhower appointed Joseph Kennedy to serve on that
commission.
That year was three years after the CIA's 1953 regime change operation in Iran which
destroyed that country's democratic system. It was two years after the CIA's regime-change
operation in Guatemala that destroyed that country's democratic system.
Keep in mind that the ostensible reason that the CIA engaged in these regime-change
operations was to protect "national security," which over time has become the most important
term in the American political lexicon. Although no one has ever come up with an objective
definition for the term, the CIA's power to address threats to "national security," including
through coups and assassinations, became omnipotent.
Yet, here was Joseph P. Kennedy declaring that the CIA's power to exercise such powers
should be terminated and recommending that the CIA's power be strictly limited to intelligence
gathering.
It is not difficult to imagine how livid CIA Director Dulles and his cohorts must have been
at Kennedy. No bureaucrat likes to have his power limited. More important, for Dulles and his
cohorts, it would have been clear that if Kennedy got his way, "national security" would be
gravely threatened given the Cold War that the United States was engaged in with the Soviet
Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and other communist nations.
Now consider what happened with the Bay of Pigs. The CIA's plan for a regime-change invasion
of Cuba, was conceived under President Eisenhower. Believing that Vice President Nixon would be
elected president in 1960, the CIA was quite surprised that Kennedy was elected instead. To
ensure that the invasion would go forth anyway, the CIA assured Kennedy that the invasion would
succeed without U.S. air support. It was a lie. The CIA assumed that once the invasion was
going to go down in defeat at the hands of the communists, Kennedy would have to provide the
air support in order to "save face."
But Kennedy refused to be played by the CIA. When the CIA's army of Cuban exiles was going
down in defeat, the CIA requested the air support, convinced that their plan to manipulate the
new president would work. It didn't. Kennedy refused to provide the air support and the CIA's
invasion went down in defeat.
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Now consider what happened after the Bay of Pigs: Knowing that the CIA had played him and
double-crossed him, John Kennedy fired Allen Dulles as CIA director, along with his chief
deputy, Charles Cabell. He then put his younger brother Bobby Kennedy in charge of monitoring
the CIA, which infuriated the CIA.
Now jump ahead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Kennedy resolved by promising that the
United States would not invade Cuba for a regime-change operation. That necessarily would leave
a permanent communist regime in Cuba, something that the CIA steadfastly maintained was a grave
threat to "national security" -- a much bigger threat, in fact, than the threats supposedly
posed by the regimes in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.
And then Kennedy did the unforgivable, at least insofar as the CIA was concerned . In his
famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, he declared an end to the entire Cold
War and announced that the United States was going to establish friendly and peaceful relations
with the communist world.
Kennedy had thrown the gauntlet down in front of the CIA. It was either going to be his way
or the CIA's way. There was no room for compromise, and both sides knew it.
In the minds of former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the people still at the CIA, what
Kennedy was doing was anathema and, even worse, the gravest threat to "national security" the
United States had ever faced, a much bigger threat than even that posed by the democratic
regimes in Iran and Guatemala. At that point, the CIA's animosity toward President Kennedy far
exceeded the animosity it had borne toward his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, several years
before.
Joe A , 2 hours ago
And Allen Dulles, the CIA director that Kennedy fired, was on the Warren Commission that
concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin who was a poor marksman using a crappy
rifle.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
The Warren Commission exhibits show that the Carcano after the scope was shimmed to make
it usable, shot about 10 inches to the right and high at 25 yards with terrible accuracy.
Presumably this was one of the carbines whose barrel was cut down from rifle length taking
much of the progressive rifling with it. The cartridges placed on the 6th floor were
clearly reloads not the supposed new Western cartridges of circa 1953. As reloads then the
question arises where were .267 bullets to be obtained since only .264 were manufactured at
the time which would make accuracy suffer.
Joe A , 1 hour ago
Yes, but these bullets were magic bullets according to the Warren Commission. There was
one bullet that entered Kennedy's throat and left it, then traversed through air, changing
course, hanged suspended in mid air for about a second or so and then continued to hit the
governor that was sitting in front to the left of Kennedy. That bullet traversed 15 layers
of clothing, seven layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of muscle tissue, struck a
necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone and was found virtually
intact. Some bullet!
USGrant , 1 hour ago
And the found bullet changed from a spitzer according to the first hospital worker who
was alerted to it, to a round nose.
WingedMessenger , 19 minutes ago
You have missed several TV episodes that have successfully recreated the magic bullet
scenario, including Myth Busters. The bullet is not magic, the actual seating geometry and
sight line of the shooter all contribute to the bullet path being actually very straight.
The 6.5mm 150-160 grain bullets have a very high sectional density that gives them a lot of
penetration. In one test the spent bullet was found resting on the leg of the second ("John
Connally") dummy just like it did in real life.
They used the same Cacarno rifle for the tests. The shot is not difficult. The car is
moving directly away from the shooter at the time of this shot, so no real lead is
required. The range is less than a 100 yards so you just aim dead on and shoot. Hunters do
it all the time.
ThirteenthFloor , 1 hour ago
When Allen Dulles passed away, the CIA sent someone to Dulles' Georgetown home to get
'missing' and incriminating JFK autopsy photos from his safe and destroy them. That person
was James Jesus Angleton, who admitted late in his life. Read last chapter in "Devils
Chessboard" - David Talbot.
USGrant , 1 hour ago
If I recall, he was the one found searching in her studio for Mary Pinchot Meyer's diary
after she was killed . (Cord Meyer's ex-wife)
cornflakesdisease , 10 minutes ago
He also had a huge hand in the political beginings of the UN.
Bay of Pigs , 2 hours ago
Allen Dulles, LBJ and the CIA murdered JFK. It's that fu#king simple.
MontCar , 1 hour ago
LBJ likely abetted the cover up. Placing Allen Dulles, recently fired from the CIA
directorship by JFK, on the since disgraced Warren Commission. Mossad may have partnered
with CIA in the assassination. JFK evidently opposed Israel's nuclear weapons acquisition
efforts - an existential issue for Israel. Clear motive.
USGrant , 1 hour ago
Allan Dulles then danced on JFK's grave.
Angular Momentum , 1 hour ago
Kennedy also supported the right of return for the Palestinians refugees who left Israel
for Jordan. Also an existential issue for Israel. I think in Ben Gurian's mind either
Kennedy lived or Israel survived as a Jewish state. It was one or the other. I have no
doubt the CIA covered for Israel because they had their own beef with Kennedy.
Yen Cross , 1 hour ago
It wasn't some flunkie Soviet reject from the bell tower.
There's no way Oswald could bounce a high velocity round of lead off a light post, in
front of the Limousine, still carrying enough muzzle velocity to cave in the back side of
POTUS cranium.
There were other players, at the very least.
WingedMessenger , 5 minutes ago
I have been to the 6th floor museum in Dallas several times and reviewed the various
theories on where other shooters might have been located. All of the them are worse than
the 6th floor of the Book Depository. Some are down right stupid, like the one supposed in
the sewer by the curb. It would be impossible to shoot a rifle in there at the angle needed
to hit above the wheel well of the limo, much less be able to see the limo before it was
right on you. You could not even see Kennedy from there, You would have to shoot through
the bottom of a door or the floor boards just to hit him in the leg or foot.
The 6th floor is the only location that allows the shooter to see the limos coming
before they arrive in the target zone and allow him to prepare to shoot. All the other
locations give only a tiny window to ID the target and loose off a round before the limo
disappears out of view. A competent assassin would have chosen the 6th floor window. If
Oswald was not the best shot, there is always the possibility that he just got lucky on
some easy shots, or maybe someone else was in the 6th floor window. We don't have any
evidence for either case.
NewDarwin , 3 hours ago
The CIA has it in for anyone who tries to dismantle the deep state...
sj warrior , 2 hours ago
jfk tried to stop izzy from getting nuclear bombs
rfk tried to force the forerunner to aipac to register as foreign agent, thus subject to
gov monitoring
both of these stances failed after the assassinations
Pandelis , 26 minutes ago
plus the Secret Societies speech ... that was a biggie showing he was into them (cia was
just one of octopus arms)....
and the executive order issued by Kennedy on using silver as currency ... that was
really going after the owners ... in all fairness, not sure he knew what he was up against
... his son was killed without giving him a chance to shine yet ...
desertboy , 2 hours ago
The CIA is the direct product of, and works directly for, the same parties that own the
Fed (the primary shareholders of its shareholders).
The CIA is even typically headed by bankers.
This is simply the history.
eatapeach , 2 hours ago
Nope, Trump is an insider. Should be pretty obvious given his behavior toward Syria,
Iran, and Israel. He's no different than all those in the long line since after
Kennedy.
Dzerzhhinsky , 2 hours ago
The CIA Versus The Kennedys
We all know who won that fight. Not a single American President has dared to disobey the
CIA since.
revjimbeam , 2 hours ago
Nixon ended Viet nam and opened China- liddy(FBI) and hunt(CIA) set the administration
up by breaking into the watergate then finished him of with anonymous leaks to the
Washington post by felt (deepthroat) the no.2 at fbi....sound familar?
Impeachment doesn't leave agency fingerprints and is less messy than Dallas Memphis and
LA
Gospel According To Me , 2 hours ago
Interesting theory and very plausible.
That is why to this day the Deep State poses such a grave danger to our democracy. They
want Trump out of their way, period. If Trump pardons Snowden he better head for his WH
bomb shelter. They will really go after him with everything they have. And they still have
plenty of sick like-minded people in place in every agency. They spy on Trump and work to
sabotage every good idea he has to Make America Great Again. Pray he prevails and the USA
survives.
eatapeach , 2 hours ago
Please. Snowden is a feeble US analog of Baryshnikov et al and Russia knows it.
Moreover, the contrived Trump v. Deep State narrative reads like a Hardy Boys novel, soft
and weak. If 'deep state' wants someone gone, they don't dilly dally. What are you, 13
years old?
2hangmen , 2 hours ago
Well, that explains the CIA involvement with the Deep State in trying to take down
candidate Trump, then President Trump. Whether someone can bring them into line will
determine if we keep our nation as founded.
ComradePuff , 22 minutes ago
Kennedy didn't even make one full term, let alone stand for re-election. In the
meantime, the CIA has only gotten stronger and spun off into a dozen other agencies. You're
deluding yourself.
FlKeysFisherman , 2 hours ago
WTF, I like a Kennedy now!!!
Earth Ling , 2 hours ago
Then you'll love this!
RFK JR's org Children's Health Defense is suing Zuckerberg and Facebook:
I fear for RFK Jr, to be perfectly honest. It's amazing he can even walk with balls that
big.
Eastern Whale , 2 hours ago
shows that politicians are all rotten to the core even in a "democratically" elected
government
communism in 20th century is a joke, Oligarch from Russia is buying soccer teams in UK,
Chinese is lined up at Chanel and LV in every city. communism is just a concept and name
now.
anyhow, all politicians should be at the bottom of the ocean
presterjohn1198 , 2 hours ago
The cia has always been the shadow government of the USSA. Those clever Ivy League boys
think that they always knew better about screwing up world affairs than our elected
government. Pretty much the same kind of club as the legacy media, whom the cia frequently
collaborates with.
Fools!
Arising , 1 hour ago
... the CIA's 1953 regime change operation in Iran which destroyed that country's
democratic system.
There's one for all the Republican fan boys that hate Iran because their leaders tell
them to.
buckboy , 1 hour ago
Pres. Trump are well aware of these facts. Main reason why he has his own private
security. Amazing he is getting this far. This man knows how to win than anyone else.
He made Brennan, Clapper, Comey Clintons like real clowns instead.
Call it conspiracy, the terrorism, blm antifa racism and non sense chaos are supported
by the cia. CIA is the main and most dangerous enemy of the world. To control is the main
objective.
Like the JFK family and now Trump, if you are against them, they'll discredit you
through the history.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
Listen to Douglas Horne's interview of Dino Brugioni and how the Zupruder film was
doctored to make it seem that the head shot came from the back. No surprise with the head
movement-it came from the front.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
Those frames were cut out which not only exaggerated the head movement but it made it
impossible for 3 shots to come from the crappy Carcano in the shortened time as gauged from
the film. So there is only one frame of the head shot but Dino remembered several as he was
the one charged with making the briefing board on Saturday night prior to the film being
altered on Sunday at the Kodak Hawkeye Works.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
Richard
Dolan has a nice set of interviews with Phillip Lavelle (a walking JFK encyclopedia) on
the topic at his youtube channel. ...
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
And Tracey too, being that smart and good looking is almost unfair
fucking truth , 1 hour ago
And yet trump promised and reneged on releasing all the Kennedy docs, it's a big swamp
and i think Trump's in it, ribbit.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
It's like trying to drain an ocean. Eventually you fall in
mcmich , 1 hour ago
The people in power now is the people behind JFK's murder..
Soloamber , 38 minutes ago
So does everyone else . Jackie Kennedy knew too . She said they finally got him . Johnson told his mistress the same day .
DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago
The only worthwhile human beings in the entire Kennedy clan were JFK and Jr.
(notwithstanding Jackie, whom I count as Onassis). The rest - particularly Bobby Kennedy -
were scum of the earth and sycophants of the Matrix, the lowliest kind of elitist
wire-carrying police informants and apron-wearers. To this day I don't understand how
anyone in the right mind could venerate Bobby Kennedy. The man was three tiers below even
his fuhrer-sucking daddy.
Would United States have been better off had Kennedy survived? Probably, but not by much
and only in the short term. We might have avoided Vietnam (highly questionable - JFK had
already sent our troops there and the whole thing was already on the verge of dangerous
escalation). But as soon as his second term ended, the Deep State would have installed a
more desirable and obedient puppet (most likely Nixon, possibly LBJ) in the White House and
we would have continued where LBJ left off in January 1969.
hough it was quickly overshadowed by the big-ticket appearances of Barack Obama and Kamala
Harris, Elizabeth Warren's Tuesday address to the Democratic National Convention deserves some
consideration.
A probable VP nominee before the events of the summer made race the deciding factor, Warren
is an able representative of what might be called the "non-socialist populist" branch of the
Democratic Party. Her economic populism -- though it does have an unmistakably left-wing flavor
-- has caught the eye of Tucker Carlson, who offered glowing praise of her 2003 book The
Two-Income Trap ; her call for "economic nationalism" during the primary campaign earned
mockery from some corners of the Left and a bit of hesitant sympathy from the Right. A few days
ago in Crisis , Michael Warren Davis referred to her (tongue at least somewhat in cheek)
as " reactionary senator Elizabeth
Warren ."
There is some good reason for all of this.
As I watched the first half of Warren's speech (before she descended into the week's
secondary theme of blaming the virus on Donald Trump) I couldn't help but think that it
belonged at the Republican National Convention. Or, rather, that a GOP convention that
drove home the themes addressed by Senator Warren on Tuesday would be immensely more effective
than the
circus I'm expecting to see next week.
Amid a weeklong hurricane of identity politics sure to drive off a good number of moderates
and independents, Warren offered her party an electoral lifeline: a policy-heavy pitch
gift-wrapped as the solution to a multitude of troubles facing average Americans, especially
families.
It was rhetorically effective in a way that few other moments in the convention have been.
Part of this is due to the format: a teleconferenced convention left most speakers looking
either like bargain-bin
Orwell bogeymen or like
Pat Sajak presenting a tropical vacation as a prize on Wheel of Fortune. But Warren, for
one reason or another, looks entirely at home in a pre-school classroom.
The content, however, is crucial too. Warren grounded her comments in experiences that have
been widely shared by millions of Americans these last few months: the loss of work, the loss
of vital services like childcare, the stress and anxiety that dominate pandemic-era life. She
makes a straightforward case for Biden: his policies will make everyday life better for the
vast majority of American families. She focuses on the example of childcare, which Biden
promises to make freely available to Americans who need it. This, she claims, will give
families a better go of things and make struggling parents' lives a whole lot easier.
It's hard not to be taken in. It's certainly a more compelling sales pitch than, "You're all
racist. Make up for it by voting for this old white guy." It's the kind of thing that a smart
campaign would spend the next three months broadcasting and repeating every chance they get.
(The jury is still out as to whether Biden's campaign is a smart one.) This -- convincing
common people that you're going to do right by them -- is the kind of thing that wins
elections.
But there's more than a little mistruth in the pitch. Warren shares a touching story from
her own experience as a young parent, half a century ago:
When I had babies and was juggling my first big teaching job down in Texas, it was hard.
But I could do hard. The thing that almost sank me? Child care.
One night my Aunt Bee called to check in. I thought I was fine, but then I just broke down
and started to cry. I had tried holding it all together, but without reliable childcare,
working was nearly impossible. And when I told Aunt Bee I was going to quit my job, I thought
my heart would break.
Then she said the words that changed my life: "I can't get there tomorrow, but I'll come
on Thursday." She arrived with seven suitcases and a Pekingese named Buddy and stayed for 16
years. I get to be here tonight because of my Aunt Bee.
I learned a fundamental truth: nobody makes it on their own. And yet, two generations of
working parents later, if you have a baby and don't have an Aunt Bee, you're on your own.
Are we not supposed to ask about the fundamental difference between Elizabeth Warren's
experience decades ago and the experience of struggling parents now? Hint: she had a strong
extended family to support her, and her kids had a broad family network to help raise them. Not
too long ago, any number of people would have been involved in the raising of a single child.
("It takes a village," but not in the looney Clinton way.) Now, an American kid is lucky to
have just two people helping him along the way. As we've all been reminded a hundred
times, the chances that he'll be raised by only one increase astronomically in poor or black
communities.
Shouldn't we be talking about that? Shouldn't we be talking about the policies that
contributed to the shift? It's a complex crisis, and we can't pin it down to any one cause. But
a slew of left-wing programs are certainly caught up in it. An enormous and fairly lax welfare
state has reduced the necessity of family ties in day-to-day life to almost nil. Diverse
economic pressures have made stay-at-home parents a near-extinct breed, and left even
two-income households struggling to make ends meet. (Warren literally wrote the book on
it.) Not to mention that the Democrats remain the party more forcefully supportive of abortion
and more ferociously opposed to the institution of marriage (though more than a few Republicans
are trying real hard to catch up).
Progressive social engineering has ravaged the American family for decades, and this
proposal only offers more of the same. It's trying to outsource childcare to
government-bankrolled professionals without asking the important question: Whatever happened to
Aunt Bee?
Republicans need an answer. We need to be carefully considering what government has done to
accelerate the decline of the family -- and what it can do to reverse it. Some of the reformers
and realigners in the party have already begun this project in earnest. But it needs to be
taken more seriously. It needs to be a central effort of the party's mainstream, and a constant
element of the party's message. Grand, nationalistic narratives about Making America Great
Again mean nothing if that revival isn't actually felt by people in their lives and in their
homes.
If we're confident in our family policy -- and while it needs a good deal of work, it's
certainly better than the Democrats' -- we shouldn't be afraid to take the fight to them. We
should be pointing out, for instance, that Warren's claim that Biden will afford greater
bankruptcy protections to common people is hardly borne out by the facts: Biden spent a great
deal of time and effort in his legislative career doing exactly the opposite. We should be
pointing out that dozens of Democratic policies have been hurting American families for
decades, and will continue to do so if we let them. We should sell ourselves as the better
choice for American families -- and be able to mean it when we say it.
If we let the Democrats keep branding themselves as the pro-family party -- a marketing ploy
that has virtually no grounding in reality -- we're going to lose in November. And we're going
to keep losing for a long, long time.
"... The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. ..."
"... "The US-centralized empire is held together by endless violence, and the plutocrats who run it have built their kingdoms upon the status quo of that empire." That statement is a synopsis of the past 500+ years of European expansion/ imperialism ..."
Yesterday the US
ordered an airstrike on Syrian forces, killing one, when they refused to let the illegal
occupying force past a checkpoint in northern Syria.
In both cases an arm of the US-centralized empire used wildly disproportionate force
against people who stood against a hostile occupation of their own country. In both cases the
more powerful and violent occupiers claimed they were acting in "self-defense". In both cases
dropping explosives from the sky upon human beings barely made the news.
Bombs should not exist. Explosives designed to blow fire and shrapnel through human bodies
should not be a thing. In a sane world, there wouldn't be bombs, and if some mentally
unbalanced person ever made and used one it would be a major international news story.
Instead, bombs are cranked out like iPhones at
enormous profit , and nearly all bombings are ignored. Many bombs
are being dropped per day by the US and its allies, with a massive
civilian death toll , and almost none of those bombings receive any international
attention. The only time they do is generally when a bombing occurs that was not authorized
by the US-centralized empire.
This is one of those absolutely freakish things about our society that has become
normalized through careful narrative management, and we really shouldn't allow it to be.
The fact that explosives designed to rip apart human anatomy are dropped from the sky many
times per day for no other reason than to exert control over foreign countries should horrify
us all.
An interesting social experiment when you talk to someone might be to tell them solemnly,
"There's been a bombing." Then when they say "What?? Where??", tell them "The Middle East
mostly. Our government and its allies drop many bombs there per day in order to keep a
resource-rich geostrategic region balkanized and controllable."
Then watch their reaction.
You will probably notice a marked change in demeanor as the person learns that what you
meant is different from what they thought you meant. They will likely act as though you'd
tricked them in some way. But you didn't. You just called a thing the thing that it is, and
let their assumptions do the rest.
When someone gravely tells you "There's been a bombing," what they almost always mean is
that there has been a suspected terrorist attack in a western, majority-white nation. They
don't mean the kind of bombing that kills exponentially more people and does exponentially
more damage than terrorism in western nations. They don't mean the kind of terrorism that our
government enacts and approves of.
There's a lot of pushback nowadays against the racism and prejudices that are woven
throughout the fabric of our society, and rightly so .
But what doesn't get nearly enough attention in this discourse is the fact that while some
manifestations of bigotry may have been successfully scaled back somewhat in our own
countries, it was in a sense merely exported overseas.
The violence that is being inflicted overseas in our name by the US-centralized empire is
more horrific than any manifestation of racism we're ever likely to encounter at home. It is
more horrific than the pre-integration American South. It is more horrific than even slavery
itself. Yet even the more conscious among us fail to give this relentless onslaught of
violence a proportionate degree of recognition and condemnation, even while the consent for
it is largely born of the unexamined
bigoted notion that violence against people in developing and non-western countries does
not matter.
Like many other forms of bigotry, this one has been engineered and promulgated by powerful
people who benefit from it. If the mainstream news media were what it purports to be, namely
an institution dedicated to creating an informed populace about what's truthfully going on in
the world, we would see the bombings in foreign nations given the same type of coverage that
a bombing in Paris or London receives.
This would immediately bring consciousness to the unconscious bigotry that those in the
US-centralized empire hold against people in low and middle income countries, which is
exactly why the plutocrat-owned media do not report on it in this way. The US-centralized
empire is held together by endless violence, and the plutocrats who run it have built their
kingdoms upon the status quo of that empire.
When people set out to learn what's really going on in their world they often start
cramming their heads with history and geopolitics facts and figures, which is of course fine
and good. But a bigger part of getting a clear image of what's happening in the world is
simply turning your gaze upon things you already kind of knew were happening, but couldn't
quite bring yourself to look at.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
From the Ramparts, 17 hours ago
"The US-centralized empire is held together by endless violence, and the plutocrats who run it have built their
kingdoms upon the status quo of that empire." That statement is a synopsis of the past 500+ years of European expansion/
imperialism.
The AmeriKKKan Empire is the reigning heir to that legacy of Western thuggery, plunder and pillage.
Saker continently forgot that during and after WWII there were nationalist resistance in Bieroruss, similar to nationalist
resistance in Ukraine.
Constitution of any half-decent country should have terms limits for the President. Belorussia does not have that and
now will pay consequences.
Notable quotes:
"... This mechanism (the hijacking of a truly popular and legitimate opposition by western controlled agents of influence) is exactly what happened in the Ukraine, in Syria and in many other places (I would eve argue that this is what is happening to the US right now). Some Belarusian ambassadors (Slovakia, Switzerland, Sweden) have now sided with the opposition just like what happened with Venezuela, Syria and other countries ..."
"... Putin and Xi have both recognized the outcome of the elections. Frankly, I don't know of any halfway serious source which would dispute the fact that Lukashenko beat Tikhanovskaia by a wide margin. Yes, I also seriously doubt the frankly silly 80% vs 10% figures, but I doubt those who say that Lukashenko lost even more. ..."
"... " The Russian side reaffirmed its readiness to render the necessary assistance to resolve the challenges facing Belarus based on the principles of the Treaty on the Creation of a Union State , as well as through the Collective Security Treaty Organization , if necessary ". ..."
"... In other words, Putin is laying down the legal framework under which Russia might intervene in some manner, especially if such an intervention is officially requested by Minsk. ..."
"... Lukashenko was so sure of himself, that he never bothered to really campaign, to talk and plead with his own people. He entered this election cocky sure of himself, only to find out that what is immediate entourage of yes-man (they stand when they report to him) either was lying or was clueless. ..."
"... Now lets look at the core of the "Russian problem in Belarus": it is simple, really: Belarusians are Russians, even more so than the Ukrainians. Not only that, but judging from the footage from Belarus (on all changes and from all sources), while the (supposed) "leaders" of the so-called "opposition" are all rabid russophobes, the vast majority of those who protested against Lukashenko are not. ..."
The situation in Belarus is evolving very rapidly, and not for the better, to say the least.
A lot has been going on, but here is a summary of what are the most crucial developments in my
opinion:
Last Sunday was a major success for the Belarusian opposition: huge crowds took to the
streets of several Belarusian cities and, in most cases, the demonstrations were peaceful.
Belarus now has its own "Juan Guaido" in the person of Svetlana Tikhanovskaia – whose
only "qualification" to lead the opposition is that is that her husband is in jail.
Tikhanovskaia has already declared herself the "national leader" of Belarus. The Belarusian
opposition formed a coordinating committee which is staffed by
well-known and long-time rabid russophobes . The program of the opposition (they call
it "Reanimation package of reforms for Belarus") is simple: new "fair" elections followed by
the following goals: Belarus must withdrawn from all the collective agreements she has with
Russia (including the union state, the SCO, etc.). Instead, the national goal ought to be,
what else, to join NATO and the EU. All the Russian military forces in Belarus must be
expelled. The Belarusian language must be reimposed, Ukie-style, on the Belarusian society
(including, apparently, the military – good luck with that!). Russian organizations
will be banned in Belarus, and Russian TV channels forbidden. The border with Russia must be
closed.
Next, a new, independent "Belarusian Orthodox Church" must be created. Finally, the
Belarusian economy will "reformed" – meaning that whatever can be sold will be sold,
then the country will be deindustrialized (like the Ukraine or the Baltic states). At this
point, it is pretty clear that the Western-controlled "opposition" has successfully taken
over the control of the events from the very REAL local popular opposition.
This mechanism
(the hijacking of a truly popular and legitimate opposition by western controlled agents of
influence) is exactly what happened in the Ukraine, in Syria and in many other places (I
would eve argue that this is what is happening to the US right now). Some Belarusian
ambassadors (Slovakia, Switzerland, Sweden) have now sided with the opposition just like what
happened with Venezuela, Syria and other countries.
To be honest, there are more similarities between the recent events in Venezuela and what is
now taking place in Belarus, it's not just Tikhanovskaia as the Belarusian Guaido. For example,
Lukashenko made at least as many, if not more, crucial mistakes than Maduro and now there is
hell to pay for it.
Let's look at Lukashenko's actions:
Now Lukashenko is fuming against the West again, to the degree that he actually moved the
most capable Belarusian military unit (the 103rd Special Mobile Guards Airborne Brigade from
Vitebsk) to the western border, and the rest of the military forces have been put on high
alert. Lukashenko explained that by saying that there is a real risk of western military
intervention (which is utter nonsense, NATO does not have what it takes to attack Russia,
which is present in Belarus, and survive). Lukashenko and at least two of his ministers did
go out to talk to the protesters, which is a courageous act which should not be overlooked
(as in: Lukashenko, for all his very real faults, is no Ianukovich, and neither are many of
his ministers). The meetings did not go well, especially for the two ministers who both
clearly lack the undeniable personal charisma of Lukashenko. Lukashenko has also publicly
admitted that he has to engage Belarusian special forces against some demonstrations. He gave
no further details, but that admission is interesting as it shows two things: a) since
special forces had to be used, it means that other police forces were either unable or
unwilling to control the situation and b) elite Belarusian forces are still backing
Lukashenko Lukashenko has also called Putin several times and he is now declaring that the
current threat is not only a threat to Belarus, but also a threat to Russia. Clearly,
Lukashenko is begging for Russian help. Lukashenko has publicly declared "unless you remove
me there will be no other elections" adding that the opposition would have to kill him before
it will get to destroy Belarus (again – the dude is no Ianukovich).
Now let's also note what Lukashenko has NOT done:
He has not fired his ministers of foreign affairs and the head of the Belarusian KGB
(according to a pro opposition Telegram channel the Minister of Foreign Affairs did resign,
but Lukashenko has rejected his resignation; this is one of the many rumors about Belarus
inundating Telegram right now) He has NOT declared that his so-called "multi-vector policy"
(i.e. courting the West) was a mistake or that it has now been changed or abandoned. Clearly,
and in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Lukashenko still hopes that he can
somehow sit between the two chairs of submission to the Empire or reunification with Russia.
He has not apologized to Putin and/or Russia for all the false accusations he was hurling at
them just a few days ago. Paradoxically, following the numerous cases of wanton violence
which the Belarusian cops used initially, now the streets are almost entirely free from any
police forces. On one hand this is good, the violence used initially did A LOT of damage to
the government and it got people very angry. Furthermore, the amount of violence by the
opposition did dramatically decrease too, which is also good. But the problem is that there
are now very clearly special organized groups, not necessarily formed by locals, who are now
trying to seize power illegally and by violence. It is vital that the Belarusian KGB now
locate and arrest these people. My fear is that the Belarusian KGB has been infiltrated by
pro-western elements who will be hard to neutralize.
Now let's look at what the "collective West" has done:
The West has clearly taken a consolidated, common, position towards this crisis. The West
does not recognize the outcome of the elections and the West has now thrown its full weight
behind the so-called "opposition". Western leaders have called Putin, apparently to demand
that Russia not intervene in Belarus. Putin apparently told them that what is taking place is
Belarus is none of their business, thank you. It is now clear that the West will accept
nothing short of what we could call a "Ukronazi outcome" and that the Empire will use all its
resources short of military action to try to seize control of Belarus.
Next, let's look at what Belarus' neighbors are doing:
Very predictably, the Poles are clearly thinking that they will restore something which is
know by the evocative (to some..) concept of " Rzeczpospolita " in Polish and which
roughly translates as "Polish Commonwealth" (see here for a quick primer). In this
context, it is very important to understand that modern Poland is an ideological heir to the
infamous Józef Piłsudski ( here for details). This
means that Poland's ultimate goal is to break up Russia, restore the Polish Commonwealth, and
become a willing prostitute to the western power, especially the US (it is just as easy for
the current Polish pseudo-patriots to prostitute their nation to the US as it was for
Piłsudski to prostitute himself before Hitler). If some of you bump into the concepts of
" Prometheism
" or " Intermarium " then click on these words
for more details. It is hardly surprising that the nation Winston Churchill called the "the
hyena of Europe" would pounce on Belarus: the Poles always, always, attack when either they
think that a) there is some big guy behind them and b) that their victim is weak. I fully
expect the Pope to publicly "pray for peace in Belarus" and express his "distress" at the
violence. Truly – this has been the same gang for almost 1000 years (see here
and
here ) and they are still at it. There is really nothing new under the sun The
clueless Balts also want to join the Rzeczpospolita for a very simple reasons: they
are terrified that the West will eventually dump them and they know that by themselves they
will never achieve anything. So as much as the Poles like to hide behind the US, the Balts
like to hide behind Poland. Finally, these countries probably realize that even Belarus alone
could prevail militarily over them, nevermind Russia, so they figure that united and
protected by Uncle Shmuel they will seize Russia like they seized the Ukraine and finally (!)
become the (collective?) "Prometheus" they think they are, but which history never allowed
them to become. As for the EU gerontocrats, they are just doing what they know how to do: try
to impersonate some kind of (moral?) "authority" which gets to decide which elections are
fair, which are not, which regimes get to beat up demonstrators (Macron anybody?) and which
ones must immediately yield to the demands of a carefully controlled "opposition". It is
especially touching to see Merkel who clearly does not realize the utter contempt the
Russians feel for her and for what she stands for.
Lastly, let's look at what Putin and other Russians are saying:
Putin and Xi have both recognized the outcome of the elections. Frankly, I don't know of any
halfway serious source which would dispute the fact that Lukashenko beat Tikhanovskaia by a
wide margin. Yes, I also seriously doubt the frankly silly 80% vs 10% figures, but I doubt
those who say that Lukashenko lost even more.
Neither Putin nor Xi will "unrecongnize" these
elections. Which means that neither Putin nor Xi will ever accept the western narrative about
what happened or what is happening now. Putin's reaction to Lukashenko's phone calls appears
to be a special kind of "restrained goodwill" or "polite benevolence". Clearly, nobody in
Russia has forgotten what just happened and I notice a very clear trend on Russian talkshows,
news reports and articles: while most Russians sincerely see Belarusians as fellow Russian
brothers, the level of frustration and even disgust with Lukashenko is hard not to notice,
and it is only growing.
Even very pro-Kremlin commentators are losing their cool with what
Lukashenko is doing (they are no less angry at what Lukashenko is not doing), I think of Igor Korotchenko, the head of the Public Council under the Ministry of defense of the Russian
Federation, a typical Kremlin-insider, who has now declared that the Belarusian Foreign
Minister is a "foreign agent of influence" (which I don't doubt) and that Russia ought to
demand that he be fired. I can only agree with him.
Crucially, in the official summary
transcript of the telephone conversation between Lukashenko and Putin the latter repeated
that the integration between Russia and Belarus must continue. Here is how the Kremlin put it :
" The Russian side reaffirmed its readiness to render the necessary assistance to resolve
the challenges facing Belarus based on the principles of the Treaty on the Creation of a
Union State , as well as through the Collective Security Treaty Organization , if
necessary ".
In other words, Putin is laying down the legal framework under which Russia
might intervene in some manner, especially if such an intervention is officially requested by
Minsk.
Now let's summarize what is really taking place, I will also do that in the form of a
bullet-point list:
There is no doubt that many Belarusians are fed up with Lukashenko There is no doubt that
many Belarusians still support Lukashenko (if only as a guarantor against a Ukraine-like
collapse). There is no doubt that the legitimate Belarusian opposition was quickly and
effortlessly co-opted by western and, let's call them "Promethean", special services.
Lukashenko was so sure of himself, that he never bothered to really campaign, to talk and
plead with his own people. He entered this election cocky sure of himself, only to find out
that what is immediate entourage of yes-man (they stand when they report to him) either was
lying or was clueless.
Next, it is also clear that Lukashenko was sure that between his KGB
and the Belarusian riot police, he could easily clear the streets. And while this seemed to
work for 24 hours, the last couple of days are proof that the regime has lost control of the
streets and/or is clueless as to what to do next.
Furthermore, while you can use riot police
to disperse demonstrators, you cannot use this riot police to force anybody to work: there
are many consistent reports of strikes in major Belarusian plans and corporation. How will
Lukashenko force these people to work? He cannot. In fact, he specifically said so when he
declared that strikes will destroy Belarus.
There are now even reports that the company
Belaruskalii , one of the most
profitable companies in Belarus (it produces potassium fertilizer) has now stopped working.
In extremis , Lukashenko began calling Putin and he even said " we, Russians "
during a public meeting. Right now I know of no respectable analyst in Russia who would
believe that Putin owes Lukashenko anything.
The blame for what just happened cannot be
placed solely on Lukashenko's infinite arrogance, the infiltration of the Belarusian KGB or
on Ukronazi provocations: it is possible that the SVR and GRU dropped the ball in this
instance, in spite of the fact that what happened was easy to predict (and many did predict
this).
Had it not been for the superb work of the FSB, it is quite possible that by now some
Russian citizens would be sitting in Ukronazi jails. The Russian Foreign Ministry also
appears to have been caught off guard.
I don't necessarily feel that "heads should roll" at
the SVR/GRU, but at the very least there ought to be a full internal investigation on why
this crisis apparently caught the Kremlin off-guard and some "organizational conclusions"
ought to be drawn. By the way, there is also the possibility that the SVR/GRU and Ministry of
Foreign Affairs did provide timely and substantive (actionable) warnings. In this case, the
problem is with the heads of these services, the Russian government and the President.
It is
sometimes said that the process of intelligence involves three phases referred to as the
"three As": acquisition (data collection), analysis (data management and interpretation) and
acceptance (convincing the political decision makers). I do, obviously, not know at what
level this failure happened, but I see it as a clear sign of a major problem.
Now lets look at the core of the "Russian problem in Belarus": it is simple, really:
Belarusians are Russians, even more so than the Ukrainians. Not only that, but judging from the
footage from Belarus (on all changes and from all sources), while the (supposed) "leaders" of
the so-called "opposition" are all rabid russophobes, the vast majority of those who protested
against Lukashenko are not.
The problem here is that it is impossible to get truly reliable numbers. Official Belarusian
polls are a joke, but "opposition" polls, or western run polls, are probably even MORE
unreliable. Then there is the fact that Minsk is somewhat of a special case amongst Belarusian
cities. Furthermore, there is a difference between urban and rural Belarus. And, finally, the
opposition itself is not monolithic at all, and when somebody is asked whether he supports
Lukashenko or not, there are many possible reasons why somebody might reply "no" (heck, many
Russians in Russia do not support Lukashenko either). So we have to accept that until some kind
of normalcy return to Belarus and truly free elections are held, nobody will know for sure what
percentage of Belarusian think about this crisis or Lukashenko.
Then there is the fact that, just as in Syria or the Ukraine, the initial protest were
legitimate, both in terms of having many valid reasons to protest and in terms of being truly
local, not controlled from aboard. But then, just as in Syria and in the Ukraine, these
protests were infiltrated and co-opted by foreign agents. Ideally, Russia would want to support
the original/real demonstrators as much as possible within reason and counter-act the
infiltrated subversives. But how can the Russian separate them unless they themselves make it
happen?
One idea circulated here and there is that Russia should intervene very openly, in the
context of the Union State between Russia and Belarus and, even more so, under the auspices of
the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Putin did mention this organization already, so
this is definitely an option for Russia. But would that be a good option?
To be honest, I am not even sure that there are ANY good options left for Russia. I
mentioned several times that I personally came to conclusion that the only possibly way for the
Belarusian people to remain free is to join Russia. I still think that. However, I am not at
all sure that this is even really possible right now, if only because the only interlocutor of
Moscow in Belarus appears to be losing control of his own government and because there is no
easy way to make progress on this issue while Belarus is at the very real risk of complete
collapse.
The root cause of it all?
Corruption. As always.
It is often said that the Ukrainian leaders since 1991 were terrible, and that is true:
every one of them seemed to be acting in some kind of toxic freak show. And yes, in Belarus,
people feared the cops and the KGB a lot more than the did in the Ukraine. But that does not
necessarily mean that Belarus was less corrupt. All this means, is that in Belarus the
government did a great job running a semi-feudal system of protection which only guaranteed
that only officials and their "business partners" got to make good money.
And this is not a Belarus or Ukrainian problem only. The exact same thing took place in
Russia in the 90s. It is not even a personality problem, it is a class problem, in the Marxist
sense of the word.
We need to remember that the CPSU and its Nomenklatura was a fantastically corrupt
organization, not necessarily at the member level, but as a whole. I would summarize the
"integrity" of these people as so:
First they betrayed Stalin and the ideals of Marxism-Leninism (Khrushchev years) Then they
betrayed their own USSR and CPSU (Brezhnev & Gorbachev years) Then they disguised
themselves as patriots (or even nationalists, like that hardcore communist ideologue Kravchuk
did!). Next, they deeply penetrated the West to seek protection, hide their real revenues and
obtain the right to rule. Next, they sucked their countries dry of all their wealth while
their personal worth skyrocketed. Finally, they all volunteered to prostitute themselves and
their people before the West.
These guys have no more morals than an amoeba and they are as ruthless as any psychopath.
They used to prostitute themselves before their Party bosses, and now they do the same to their
AngloZionist ones.
So here is the question: how could Russia remove this ruling class without a) major
bloodshed and b) making it look like what Russia is really doing is trying to save
Lukashenko?
What Russia really needs now is for the West to do something as terminally stupid as when
the US tried to overthrow Erdogan. But that would only be sufficient to bring Lukashenko to
heel and get rid of some of the most dangerous elements in his entourage. The bigger problem is
how could Russia help the Belarusian people?
Just tossing more money at the Belarusian regime makes no sense and does not work. Been
there, done that.
Using military force is possible (I don't expect anybody in the Belarusian military, at
least key commanders and units, to object to this). But that is very tricky and outright
politically dangerous. It might also not be correctly understood by Belarusians and by many
Russians too.
The first conclusion I personally am coming to is that Russia must not do anything which
could be credibly construed as "saving Lukashenko". Lukashenko needs no "saving".
Belarus does.
Second, while in military terms securing Belarus would not be a problem for the Russian
military, in political terms it would be a major crisis as the West would, no doubt, pounce on
that to not only impose more sanctions (that is not really a problem) but also to create a New
Cold War in which mentally sane and patriotic Europeans would be "shouted down" by hysterical
mantras about "the Russians are coming! the Russians are coming!".
I am also concerned about the recent military moves by Belarus. To forward deploy high
readiness forces near the Polish border is a very bad idea: considering the historical record
the Russians should never assume that any Polish leader won't do something fantastically stupid
which will end up as fantastically tragic. I don't believe for one second that NATO has plans
to invade Belarus. If anything, Lukashenko and Russia ought to leave what is called a "tripwire
force" in the West while preparing their strategic defenses in depth. There is NO need to go
and provoke the Poles, the Balts or anybody else in NATO.
If given a choice, Putin would probably want for both Lukashenko and the so-called
'opposition' to go (this reminds me of the Argentinian " que se vayan todos " or the
Lebanese كلهم يعني كلهم
both of which can be roughly translated as "they all have to go"and "all means all" –
including both Tikhanovskaia AND Lukashenko.
At the time of writing this (Aug. 19th) it appears that Lukashenko will now have to chose
between the "civilized West" and "Putin's bloody Mordor". Truly, he really has no option other
than to chose Moscow, but that does not at all mean that Moscow thinks that there is anything
salvageable from Lukashenko's regime. His latest "zag!" back to being a "Russian brother" is
way too little and way too late. And if his foreign minister and his head of KGB are still in
the next government, all this talk will also become irrelevant and meaningless.
Simply put: if Lukashenko wants to remain in power he has only one option – beg for
Putin's mercy, not publicly, of course, be most emphatically and as sincerely as he can pretend
to be. Then he needs to purge his government from every single name Putin (or the Russian
special services) will hand to him. Yes, that means that he has to truly and really relinquish
control. As for Putin, he needs to address both the Russian and the Belarusian people to
explain whatever decision he comes to. This is, yet again, a situation where Putin's biggest
weapon might be his very high popular support (not only in Russia, but also, by all accounts,
in Belarus).
Right now it appears that the West seriously fears a Russian intervention: they probably
(correctly) realize how easy it would be for Russia and how there is absolutely nothing
anybody, including NATO or, even less so, the EU could do about it. Trump personally has much
bigger fish to fry and I doubt if he cares much. But his narcissistic Secretary of State
probably feels like he can turn Belarus into another US-run Banderastan.
So what can happen next?
I think that it is crucial that Russia reach out to the non-US-controlled opposition in
Belarus, publicly, and try to establish some kind of dialog. Russia also has to publicly warn
the people of Belarus that if they allow the current US-controlled "opposition leaders" to come
to power, Belarus will collapse just like the Ukraine did.
This might be the strongest argument Russia could repeat over and over again: as bad as
Lukashenko was, if he is overthrown in some kind of Maidan-like coup, then Belarus will become
the next Banderastan. This will be a major headache for Russia, but Russia can easily survive
this. Belarus cannot.
But simply keeping Lukashenko in power is no solution either: whether he did or did not win
the latest elections is not even the real issue anymore – the real issue is that he did
lose his credibility with pretty much everybody involved. For this reason alone –
Lukashenko has to go. Next, some kind of government of national unity which would include the
main political forces in Belarus except the ones controlled by the West should probably be
formed. Finally, whoever is in power in Minsk needs to set a course on a full reintegration of
Belarus into Russia. That remains the only viable long-term solution for the people of
Belarus.
I have repeatedly challenged the Saker's contention that Russia needs to annex Belarus. In
this article, here is what I have to say:
I fail to see two things:
1. How Russia is supposed to save Belarus. Suppose Lukashenko now signs up for immediate
accession of Belarus to Russia. Then what? Lukashenko, according to everyone I've read on the
subject, no longer holds the authority to credibly do any such thing. If Lukashenko signs an
accession, what will happen?
(a) The American Empire and its EU vassals will immediately blame Russia. This is a given.
But they will also take the opportunity to dump Nordstream and other economic links to
Russia, and all the slow patient work of improving the conditions since 2014 will disappear
in a heartbeat. Is Belarus worth that?
(b) Russia will be faced with an insurgency like in Chechnya (much more easily armed and
infiltrated into Belarus too) and you can be absolutely certain ISIS and Ukranazis at the
very least will be recruited into this insurgency.
(c) Russia will have to find some way of paying for all this; in previous responses I have
asked how exactly that is supposed to be done. Will it sell Belarus off to oligarchs? Tax
Russians? Got will Russians react to that?
(d) Russia will be legitimately asked by Donbass people, if not South Ossetians, Abkhazians,
and Transnistrians, too, why they can't be annexed despite wanting to be but Belarus can.
This is not an easy question to answer.
(e) If Russia continues the socialist Belarus economy with social care as now, Russians will
naturally ask why they can't have the same thing instead of suffering under Putinist regime
neoliberal capitalism.
(f) What if the Belarus armed forces do *not* agree to be annexed? What if the rank and file
revolt? What will Russia do then? Invade?
2. Why, exactly, should Russia save Belarus?
(a) If the idea is that Belarus will give NATO an invasion route across the Russian plain to
Moscow and St Petersburg, that's rubbish. This isn't WWII; any such blitzkrieg offensive,
even if NATO is capable of it, will result in their capitals being reduced to radioactive
ash. The situation is no different from 2014 when Ukranazistan (NATO in all but name)
provided an invasion route from the south west up towards Moscow and east towards
Volgograd.
(b) If Belarus is such a basket case, what does it bring to the table for Russia? Has it
industries, natural resources, technological institutes, anything at all that would make it
worth the problems? Why should Russia take on yet another financial drain?
Face it, the murder of the USSR created new realities, and we are merely seeing the
process dragging to its logical conclusion. Russia must get used to living in a situation
where all its former co Soviet republics are active hostile enemy states. Those that aren't
yet eventually will be. Russia needs to look East and forget about the west. There is no hope
there.
How about new elections, with Russian and Western observers and exit polls.
No candidates jailed. Hold the vote after a cooling off period for a national discussion of
Belarus' future.
The problem with this analysis is that it relegated the people to passive observers,
outside of the violent insurrection part.
Lukaahenko could set a referendum and ask whether the citizenry wants to join Russia, stay
independent, or join the EU. Then he saves face, and the people choose their poison.
Really this is always the best solution for the citizenry, but it would be giving up the
enormous tyrannical powers gained with representative democracy in the 19th century.
Actually, there are very little love to the West in Eastern Europe. The entire West
success story in Eastern Europe is based on Russian irrational love to Lenin and Stalin and
WWII and Red Army.
Russia has 1000 years old rich history. There are noble artists , Pushkin, Dostoevsky.
There are brilliant scientists , Lomonossov, Mendeleev , there are amazing amount of real
heroes in Russian history.
But somehow, the only heroes glorified by Russian in the former Soviet territory are
comrade Stalin and his murderous Red Army. When people see Immortal Regiment or young
Russians in WW II era Red Army uniforms guarding the Soviet War memorials, this enough to
turn normal reasoned people into russophobes.
Until Russia keep pushing the bad Nazis, good Soviet "liberators" myth, the Eastern Europe
will be low hanging fruit to every last Russian enemy. Simple as that.
What is the other Banderastan? I wish there was one. I assume you are referring to
Bandera's country Ukraine, now with its second Jewish president in a row, not to mention the
other government posts Jews hold. The Jews also had Bandera removed from Ukraine's Hall of
Heroes. Some Banderastan. They murder 8 million Ukrainians and then force the Ukrainians to
stop honoring a man that stood up for them. I would like Germany to do that to Israel.
I plan on visiting the statue erected to Bandera in Lviv where he is buried the next time
I visit the city and perhaps lay some flowers there to honor him.
Good article. I do see similarities between X Ukie Prez Yanuk and Lukashenko. They both
invited the West come into their countries, fully knowing about that little Trump fairy tale
– about befriending that poisonous snake, that will eventually bite and kill you
– Pompeo this time. Only stupid, stupid men -think their little country can play
hardball with the NWO and come out of it unscathed. Years ago, when I saw the number of Ukies
running to Belarus, it was easy to see that a Maidan like setup would follow. They took their
time but there was a reason for that – to infiltrate Belarus gov. and the People.
Failed/ Bought off Leaders and their accomplices destroy their own country , only the ones
that stand and fight have a chance, but will pay a heavy heavy price like Syria, Venezuela,
Cuba, Iran, and others. Belarus should close the borders – surround Minsk and throw out
every non citizen in those protests, and tell everyone to go home, if they want to discuss a
solution. That is what Yanukobitch should have done in Kyiv . Use your military or watch the
NWO take over your country. Being nice is for losers or big countries with nukes when it
comes to saving your country from the NWO. Spacibo
Ukronazi Ukronazi Ukronazi. Every time you misname the Bolsheviks as Nazis, you perpetuate
the wet dream of Zion: " we will eradicate the concept of national socialism from the
collective memory of mankind" was it?
Nazism was an economics program that uplifted Germany from abject poverty and serfdom into,
as I believe Churchil said: "..the best place to live in Europe".
I paraphrase, of course, the Bolshies will now attack with quotes from the Times.
But a fairenough assessment, probably, all in all.
"The clueless Balts also want to join the Rzeczpospolita for a very simple reasons: they
are terrified that the West will eventually dump them and they know that by themselves they
will never achieve anything."
According to some rankings Estonia now has the tenth highest standard of living in the
world. This is a great achievement. They are ahead of the USA, which may not be saying much
any more but the Baltic countries are successful and good contributors to the EU, unlike some
southern countries. If Russia was as well run as Estonia it would still be a world power.
If the shit holes of the Balt states can go it alone why does the saker think an
independent Belarus is non viable.
This was an ultra slow moving car crash for Russia they may just have to let them go or
instigate their own Russian coup?
It's a generational thing like being a teenager, they are rebelling against the USSR, in
the future living memory of the USSR will be gone and the Slavs may unite again? Belarus will
take longer because the USSR never went in that country.
But does Russia have a generation or two to allow people to get over it?
Russia has no good options at this point; they need to figure out the least worst option.
They might start, however, by piecing together a plausible case documenting foreign
interference in the election; it will never gain traction in the Western media, but it will
be useful for the show trials of Luka and Tikha.
Why this naive illiterate people in Belarus opposition keep kissing West's asses? Don't
they know that the West is pathologically hating Slavs and made historically target of
invasions. They want your country for military bases to become a buffer zone. The West will
gladly give you 3rd world unskilled immigrants that colonizing countries have accepted over
the years and now want to unload and disperse to the white Eastern Europe population –
sinister scheme of the Schengen zone. Sweden is now beyond repair. Show me the place where
multiculturalism works in harmony is it US or France or Balkans?
A lot of these former Soviet Republics (and large part of Eastern Europe) are between a
rock and a hard place Stuck between the West and Russia. It is impossible to be completely
independent.
But it's no longer the Cold War, with a friendly free West and an evil totalitarian
Russia, even if that's what they are trying to sell. If anything, the anti-white degenerated
West is an worse influence than current Russia to those countries I mean, would it really be
better for Belarus to enter into the West's influence and start importing Africans and
promoting gay marriage?
When will the saker realise that the USSR was a total basket case!
He's to busy making excuses up for failed systems based upon simply deranged ideology,such
as Marxist Lenin nonsense,its always some one else's fault isn't it Mr saker!
The fact is people in Belarus have had enough of their dictatorship and want change,this
will probably be the same for Putin incidentally,there's no colour revolution happening,thats
just silly conspiracy theories to hide behind by people who can't except the processes of
democracy,whih isn't unique as the same unwillingness to except a result can be seen by those
who hate Trump or the Brexit result
But it seems that people need the conspiracy these days to explain everything even when
the facts speak for themselves !
Here is a video of a Ukrainian politician describing perfectly openly what, after the post
Obama inspired coup, the Ukrainian elite believe is reasonable to enact on their
population.
I'm afraid North Ukrea will be a more appropriate name.
The clueless Balts also want to join the Rzeczpospolita
No, not really. Estonians think of themselves as above that (they've been occasionally
trying to distance themselves from the other two as well); Lithuanians are worried about
their crown jewels (er, I mean Vilnius); and in Latvia, Poland has a sort of bad rep down to
the language level – "to buy smth. for Polish money" ( nopirkt par poļu
naudu ) means to steal or otherwise embezzle.
Of course, Poland can buy a couple unscrupulous pols (and has likely already done so) and
achieve some influence behind the scenes; but it would be hard to do anything openly.
All that matters is what happens in Belarus between now and November 3rd, the American
Election Day.
As I've explained previously, the global forces arrayed against Trump since 2016 haven't
changed or given up their objective of getting rid of him and getting back to business as
usual. His destruction continues to be as close to a dues ex machina as any of us have or
will see in our lifetimes.
Thus we've seen an unending series of gambits designed to take him down. Astoundingly,
Trump has so far successfully foiled them all. Such as removing "tripwire" American Special
Forces from the Syria-Turkey border Democrats intended to see liquidated, or the
Democrat-Iranian plot to seize American embassy personnel in Bagdad in a pitch perfect replay
of the Iranian Hostage Crisis that sunk Carter's reelection, to cite just two examples.
No one should be surprised that they're returning to the scene of their original crime,
Russia and its environs. Nor should it be at all difficult to reverse engineer what they have
in mind. While you have to give the devils their due in so many respects, creativity is not
among their strong suits.
Just two headlines from today reveal the contours of this exceedingly reckless effort:
"Russian Opposition Leader In A Coma After Being Poisoned For The 2nd Time In 16
Months"
"Risk of a Russian intervention rising in Belarus"
Don't fall for any aspect of the insult to the intelligence propaganda surrounding
Putin/Russia. He and it are no angels. The Russian government is acting in its national
interest. The Democrats, in league with other foreign powers, have offered Russia a series of
carrots and sticks for furthering their objectives against Trump. The difference between
Russia and other conscripted powers (e.g. U.K.; Ukraine; Italy; Australia; Israel) is one of
degree not kind in this respect. Russia has acted self-protectively while keeping its options
open in terms of undermining Trump if the compensation is sufficient and the risk
contained.
That's the locus of the actual Treason in this saga, former Obama Administration officials
promising to give away the geopolitical store to foreign powers, allies and adversaries
alike, in return for assisting their seizure of power back from Trump.
Have you ever heard of CIA Directors making secret trips to Moscow? Perhaps someone here
can explain what psychopath Brennan was discussing with his Russian handlers in March
2016:
Well if they have to pick up the knuckle dusters and fight it out, then they have sunk
that low. But good to give the population a chance to come to a direct consensus at
least!
The Saker has considerable insights into this crisis, and is much more knowledgeable about
the subject than I am. But all the parties in the Belarus crisis – the Belarussian
people/government, the West and Russia – must focus on what they want to avoid rather
than what they want to achieve. They want to avoid world war. But the history of the last
century shows world war is what we keep getting. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Precisely – Covid – I skimmed the article and comments (just 24 hours in a
day!) – looking for that – then went to Ctrl-F – and yours is the only
appearance of the term in this vast article.
"all about" is likely over-stating the case – but, for sure, Belarus was one of just
a few national dissenters from the plandemic. It had to be a chief motivator and a primary
answer to the question: why now?
@Dumbo
h in the world, 19,943 Int$ in 2019, lower than that of Bulgaria, the poorest EU country
(while Poland was at 34,218, Lithuania 38,214, Estonia 38,811). Nominal GDP per capita is
even worse, 6,603 US$ (between Peru and Colombia). Belarus is way poorer than Russia, as it
lacks the natural resources of the latter. Propping up Belarus is an economic drain on
Russia. It is totally understandable that citizens of Belarus are comparing their living
standards unfavorably to their western neighbors. This was the primary cause of the collapse
of the Soviet bloc too, not "yearning for freedom" and all that bullshit. Only intellectuals
cared about that.
Did Bill slept with Maxwell? You can expect anything from this sex addict...
Notable quotes:
"... During a fueling stop at a small airport in Portugal, Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell urged Davies to give the former president a massage. ..."
As if it weren't awkward enough for the party that bills itself as a defender of women to feature Bill Clinton at its
convention, photos of the ex-president with one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims surfaced on the day of his speech.
The UK's Daily Mail
published exclusive pictures on Tuesday showing Clinton receiving a massage in 2002 from 22-year-old Chauntae Davies, who was
allegedly raped by billionaire Epstein repeatedly over a period of four years. The
massage
occurred
while Clinton, along with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, flew with Epstein on the pedophile's infamous
private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express, on a humanitarian trip to Africa.
According to the
newspaper, Clinton complained of having a stiff neck after falling asleep on the plane. During a fueling stop at a small
airport in Portugal, Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell urged Davies to give the former president a massage. Clinton, who
was 56 at the time, then allegedly said to Davies,
"Would you mind giving it a crack?"
The
photos show Davies massaging Clinton's neck and shoulders as he leans back in his seat at what looks to be a small airport
lounge.
Davies, who worked for
Epstein as a masseuse, said Clinton was a
"perfect gentleman during the trip and I saw
absolutely no foul play involving him."
Nevertheless, the images serve as an untimely reminder of the many sexual misconduct allegations made against Clinton during
his years in politics and of his relationship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who allegedly
killed
himself
last year at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges.
A Clinton spokesman has
said the former president knew nothing about Epstein's crimes and flew on the financier's jet only four times, but
flight
logs
showed that he traveled on the plane dozens of times in 2002 and 2003. Davies and other alleged victims said in a
2020
Netflix
documentary
on Epstein that he had secret surveillance cameras at his properties to gather blackmail-worthy dirt on his
powerful friends.
"The question is, why were they taking pictures of Bill Clinton receiving a massage?"
UK
journalist Paul Joseph Watson said on Tuesday on Twitter.
"And we already know the
answer."
The Daily Mail didn't say
where it obtained the exclusive photos. Maxwell is currently in jail in New York awaiting trial on charges that she
facilitated
Epstein's abuse
of girls as young as 14.
Other Twitter users suggested that far more incriminating pictures are being held back.
"Epstein
took pics and videos of everything, and the FBI has it all,"
one said. Another said:
"If
they took pictures of this, there are most definitely worse things recorded just waiting to come out against people."
Others said Clinton should
be kept away from the Democratic National Convention, including one who tweeted:
"Bruh,
no way they can let this man speak tonight."
Another said:
"And this guy is
headlining the DNC tonight. Can't make this up."
"... Whenever there is a mass protest against a government somewhere in the world, one of the first questions from skeptics will be whether it's a 'color revolution,' a technique of turning legitimate grievances into a coup d'etat. ..."
"... Caitlin Johnstone is looking at the State Department. Foggy Bottom's actions and "imperial narrative management" by official US propaganda outlets have her convinced it is a color revolution. She's not the only one. ..."
"... One distinguishing feature of astroturf campaigns is a visual marketing campaign, such as the stenciled fists of Otpor in Serbia (used elsewhere since), or the 2004 orange scarves and banners in Ukraine. The sudden omnipresence of white-red-white flags in Belarus used briefly in 1918 and again under Nazi occupation seems to fit this pattern. So do the signs like "Belarusian Lives Matter," appealing not to the locals but to the West. ..."
"... Back in the early days of the manufactured coups, when the US was drunk on their success, Western media actually openly admitted Washington's hand in these "spontaneous" uprisings. Stories about "suitcases full of cash" that fueled the revolt in Serbia appeared shortly after the coup in Belgrade. In November 2004, the Guardian wrote approvingly about how the US has created a "slick" operation of "engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience," developing since Belgrade a "template for winning other people's elections." ..."
"... These days, there is no boasting, but the practice continues nonetheless. Most recently, the scenario played itself out in Bolivia (successfully), Venezuela (not) and Hong Kong , where "pro-democracy" protests against an extradition bill lasted long after it was withdrawn. ..."
"... What changed is that the US and its media machine switched to denying involvement and pretending the "color revolutions" were actually genuine expressions of democracy, after some targeted governments managed to defeat these astroturf rebellions. This remained the case even as color revolution tactics came home to the US this summer. ..."
"... Back in June, Franklin Foer of the Atlantic magazine a megaphone of the establishment actually wrote a favorable comparison of the riots across the US, posing as peaceful protests for "racial justice," to the color revolutions in places like Ukraine and Serbia. Note that Foer believes these revolutions were good and genuine things, rather than a hostile takeover tactic that was basically a mockery of democracy. ..."
Whenever there is a mass protest against a government somewhere in the world, one of the first questions from skeptics will be
whether it's a 'color revolution,' a technique of turning legitimate grievances into a coup d'etat.
The recent events in Belarus are a perfect example. It's not a color revolution, but President Alexander Lukashenko "repeating
Soviet mistakes," argues Bradley Blankenship
. While he is looking at the behavior of the protesters on the ground, however,Caitlin Johnstone
is looking at the State Department. Foggy Bottom's actions and "imperial narrative management" by official US propaganda outlets
have her convinced it is a color revolution. She's not the only one.
That's precisely the problem, however: in a world where "color revolutions" have become normalized, it's nearly impossible
to tell if a mass protest is a spontaneous, grassroots event or an astroturfed regime-change operation. To the creators of color
revolutions, this is a feature, not a bug.
The tactic has been around for two decades now, first tested following the September 2000 elections in Serbia. It involves activists
trained by US-backed "NGOs," copious amounts of cash, strategies and tactics outlined in a manual written by the late Gene
Sharp. The key element is narrative management, through which the revolutionaries usurp the initial protests and direct them towards
their own ends.
One distinguishing feature of astroturf campaigns is a visual marketing campaign, such as the stenciled fists of Otpor in Serbia
(used elsewhere since), or the 2004 orange scarves and banners in Ukraine. The sudden omnipresence of white-red-white flags in Belarus
used briefly in 1918 and again under Nazi occupation seems to fit this pattern. So do the signs like "Belarusian Lives Matter,"
appealing not to the locals but to the West.
Back in the early days of the manufactured coups, when the US was drunk on their success, Western media actually openly admitted
Washington's hand in these "spontaneous" uprisings. Stories about "suitcases full of cash" that fueled the revolt in
Serbia appeared shortly after the coup in Belgrade. In November 2004, the Guardian
wrote approvingly about how the US has created
a "slick" operation of "engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience," developing since Belgrade
a "template for winning other people's elections."
These days, there is no boasting, but the practice continues nonetheless. Most recently, the scenario played itself out in
Bolivia (successfully),
Venezuela (not) and
Hong Kong , where "pro-democracy"
protests against an extradition bill lasted long after it was withdrawn.
What changed is that the US and its media machine switched to denying involvement and pretending the "color revolutions"
were actually genuine expressions of democracy, after some targeted governments managed to defeat these astroturf rebellions.
This remained the case even as color revolution tactics came home to the US this summer.
Back in June, Franklin Foer of the Atlantic magazine a megaphone of the establishment actually wrote a favorable comparison
of the riots across the US, posing as peaceful protests for "racial justice," to the color revolutions in places like Ukraine
and Serbia. Note that Foer believes these revolutions were good and genuine things, rather than a hostile takeover tactic that was
basically a mockery of democracy.
Democracy, at its essence, it's a straightforward deal. Citizens vote on an issue or for a candidate, and agree to abide by the
rules whether they win or lose. But what happens when that vote is manipulated through street violence, in this case by outsiders,
and the rulebook gets thrown out the window?
This is what makes color revolutions not just wrong, but evil. They literally destroy democracy, by corroding the very rules it
is founded on. When they fail, things can escalate along the lines of Libya, Syria or Ukraine.
Even when they fail peacefully, like the 2006 "jeans revolution" in Belarus, they poison a country's politics so thoroughly,
that the government sees any street demonstrations going forward as foreign-sponsored coup attempts. Especially when foreign powers
openly express support for it, as has been the case with recent events.
Whatever may be happening in Belarus right now, democracy it is not. The US may not be one for long, either, if things carry on
as they have. Two decades of color revolutions have made sure of that.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Very telling that ZH editors don't consider this newsworthy: key findings of the
Republican led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding Russia's 2016 election
interference.
Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through
encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code
words and shared access to an email account. It's worth pausing on these facts: The chairman
of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing
confidential information with him.
It did not find evidence that the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 election, as
Trump alleged. "The Committee's efforts focused on investigating Russian interference in
the 2016 election. However, during the course of the investigation, the Committee
identified no reliable evidence that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 U.S.
election."
"Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with
individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly
[Konstantin] Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave
counterintelligence threat," the report said.
Kilimnik "almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that
Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election."
Roger Stone was in communications with both WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0
during the election; according to the Mueller report, Guccifer 2.0 was a conduit set up by
Russian military intelligence to anonymously funnel stolen information to WikiLeaks.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation found "significant evidence to suggest
that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government
officials," the report said.
The FBI gave "unjustified credence" to the so-called Steele dossier, an explosive
collections of uncorroborated memos alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian
government officials, the report said. The FBI did not take the "necessary steps to validate
assumptions about Steele's credibility" before relying on the dossier to seek renewals of a
surveillance warrant targeting the former Trump campaign aide, the report said.
Demeter55 , 47 minutes ago
It's the latest in 5 years of "Get Trump!", a sitcom featuring the Roadrunner (Trump) and
the Wiley Coyote (Deep State/Never Trumpers / etc, etc.)
This classic scenario never fails to please those who realize that the roadrunner rules,
and the coyote invariably ends up destroyed.
IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely
imaginary threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government
expenditures for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really?
Isn't the western alliance for all intents & purposes already dead?
It is a shame as it could work together to counter the totalitarian CCP. But Mama Merkel
it seems would rather get a few yuan from the communists and turn a blind eye to CCP
authoritarianism until it becomes obvious that the CCP are ruthless and will be competing
with Germany around the world for machine tools and autos by undercutting them on price and
heavily subsidizing their companies until German industry is destroyed.
I have heard of these elusive creatures called "Europeans", but have yet to meet one, so
am not able to comment on their alleged "smug superiority". How many divisions do they
have?
If anything drives the US and Europe apart, it will be trade, not security. Germany is
clearly chafing under the US bit, which sacrifices European industry to US interests --
sanctions on Nordstream 2, trade with Russia, trade with Iran, and China and Huawei. The US
clearly prioritizes it's own LNG , finance, technology and arms industries over European
prosperity. It amazes me that it has taken Europe so long to wake up.
Biden will do nothing to change that dynamic, since he is beholden to the same interests
as Trump.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? The Baltics and most
likely the Poles do with past history in mind. I would like to see them and the Ukrainians
transition into something like the Finns who acknowledge Russian power but maintain their
independence. Right now they are looking at NATO as their guarantee of independence in the
future. Who can blame them when looking at history.
The Trump admin's (and for that matter, Trump's own instincts) are and have continuously
been quite correct with regards to EU's defense expenditures agenda. The European 'humanists'
take advantage of the American defense umbrella inside their own countries so they can afford
to NOT spend on defense and instead spend more on domestic and economic development. So while
America continues to pay for the EU's defense it cannot afford to invest in its own domestic
programs (infrastructure, etc.) adequately. These Europeans then with the collaboration of
their Atlanticist fellows on the other side of the pond do nation-building and
democratization projects (call it endless wars) abroad, such as in Afghanistan. Just don't
ask them about their track record in this department.
However, the thing is when their immediate interests are in danger they forget about
America in a heartbeat. Examples, Germany's Nordstream pipeline with Russia, 5G
infrastructure and development, trade with China, Paris climate accord, etc.
I tend to believe that EU knows best how to make an existential threat out of Russia.
Anyone still remembers the novichok incident back in 2018? The thing with Russia is that from
the POV of EU, they view their Eastern neighbor as a solid and stable illiberal system that
is not within the ideological orbit of the western liberal democracy and thus they feel
threatened by that ideologically, NOT a scenario in which from Tallinn to Toulouse is invaded
and captured by Putin. In this endeavor they also have found willing partners in
'anti-authoritarian' hawks such as Bob Kagan, Hilary, Sam Power et.al that tow the same line
and advocate for NATO expansion and other similar projects.
The EU in definitely terrified of a scenario in which the U.S. (under a nationalist
conservative administration) starts de-funding NATO or withdraws its troops from Europe. In
this case they need to cut public spending and allocate more on defense which has a clear
impact on the 'democratic spirit' of EU's over-hyped social democracy.
In the past few years we have seen the rise of right-wing populsit nationalist parties in
pretty much every single major EU country. I believe there are strong tendencies in the Trump
admin-if DJT manages to stay in power for another 4 years- to do a little *something
something* about EU's decades-long nefarious free-riding of U.S. defense umbrella and I don't
think the effeminate EU leaders will gonna like it very much.
Barbara Ann - You say "I have heard of these elusive creatures called "Europeans", but
have yet to meet one, so am not able to comment on their alleged "smug superiority". How many
divisions do they have?"
The term "European" has become disputed territory. As an Englishman I regard myself fully
as "European" as any German or Frenchman but for many the term now seems to mean exclusively
"Member of the European Union". Tricky, that one.
Me, I prefer the term "Westerner". It takes in the so-called "Anglosphere" as well and
therefore covers all the ground without going into the fact that some parts have become
considerably less powerful over the last century and others considerably more. Also
accommodates without fuss the fact that the cultural centre of gravity, at some indeterminate
time in that last century, moved across from Paris, Vienna and Berlin to New York and parts
west.
Not always to your advantage, to you as an American that is, because a fair chunk of the
Frankfurt mob moved over your way with it. You caught from Old Europe the destructive and
vacuous tenets of "Progressivism" and are now sharing the disease in its full vigour with
us.
I mention that last because the violent TDS you see across the Atlantic isn't specifically
European. It's merely that it's natural for progressives to detest Trump or rather, not the
man himself but the "populist" forces he is taken to represent. It's garlic to the vampire
for the progressive, the Little House on the Prairie or its various European equivalents, and
the allergic reaction will become stronger yet. That "smug superiority" you will therefore
find in the States as readily as you will find it here. America or here we live on sufferance
in occupied territory, if we are not progressives ourselves, and should not the occupiers
always be superior and smug?
I went hunting for the Telegraph article the Colonel discusses above. I didn't like that
article at all. It gets the "freeloading" part right but in the context of a Russophobia
that's seemingly set in stone. And the Telegraph is not so much a progressive newspaper as
one that, while throwing a few token bones to its mainly Conservative readership, buys the
progressive Weltanschauung just as much as the Guardian or New York Times.
"How many divisions do they have?" A few more than the pope but maybe that's not
the point. I recently tried to follow the twists and turns of Mrs May's negotiations with the
EU as they related to defence. I got the impression that in the matter of defence the supply
of divisions could safely be left to the Americans. It was the allocation of defence
contracts that they were all concerned about.
Residing in Europe in the late 1960's at a US joint NATO military attachment in Northern
Italy, we mused were we there to keep our eye on the Russians, or in fact keep our eyes on
the Germans. One still saw in the back rooms, AXIS memorabilia.
As an aside: the only reason Michelle Obama chose as one of her FLOTUS projects - support
of military families -- was so she could get Uncle Sam to jet her around to all those US
military bases still in Europe for tea with the commander's wife and then on to her real
purpose - shopping and having fun with friends and families she was able to drag along. On
our dime.
My last visit to Europe found there are now more Turks, than former "Europeans; except in
France where they were more Algerians, than native French. And of course UK has long been
little more than the entrenched polyglot of their vast far flung Empire.
Indeed, who is a "European" today. Birth rate demographics from the former colonies, boat
people or import of cheap labor has now taken over anything we used to call "European". Can a
resident Turk really serve up a perfect plate of raclette in Switzerland? One word answer:
no. And that is a sad loss. One must instead shift their tastes to shwarma, if one wants
European food today.
In regard to Europeans--and perhaps some Australians whom I've met--I have often felt that
they in some ways did feel a bit superior to Americans.
Their sense of superiority, however, seemed more rooted in a sense of cultural
superiority. Those on the blog who viewed the comic rendition of the Three Little Pigs that
was recently posted here might think of that and its wonderful ending about the house that
was "American made." it was a wonderful ending for that well-known tale and a great defense
of our culture's current limited and plain vocabulary in some groups.
As an English major and English teacher, so much of the great literature that we taught
did come from England. I took three Comps when I earned my Masters: English literature from
Beowulf (which I read in Old English) to Chaucer's Catterbury Tales (which I read in Middle
English) and then to Virginia Woolf.
For my comp in American literature, I read from Washington Irving to the modern American
writers at the time I was in college.
My third comp was in Modern Linguistic Theory.
Of course we taught Shakespeare and Dickens---English writers--to our junior high and high
school classes. We studied mostly American writers in regard to short stories, as short
stories are considered the American genre. Our teaching of poetry covered both English and
American poets. As far as novels go, we taught both English and American novels.
Russian and German novelists were also on our list of reading for our comps. (We read them
in English translation.)
In summary, American culture was often overshadowed by the many longer centureies of
European culture in much of my college career.
What the Europeans can't deny, though they may want to, is that the tehcology and
innovation in things like automobile production, electricity, telephones, and into space
expoloration ---many things like that--is where we can indeed be quite proud.
They can continue to feel culturally superior to us if it makes them feel better. I defy
them, however, to minimize our importance in World War II.
A European was understood, in Iran, to be a Christian. A Turk in Germany or and Algerian
in France is just that, a Turk, an Algerian, i.e. another Muslim.
There are professional and managerial middle class French Muslims in Paris and elsewhere,
but are they French? I do not know how assimilated they are.
" he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what American interests
demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China."
So if Biden and Trump both want something, that shows that it isn't extreme. How does that
work again?
The drive for confrontation with Russia contradicts Europe's desire to do buisness with her.
Hence the end of the Western Alliance.
"The US faces a rapidly escalating political crisis. The losing party in November will
undoubtedly go to the federal courts to claim that their opponents cheated in the
process."
They all went along with electronic voting and postal ballots. Now they're all going to
complain about the consequences.
Of course NATO should have disappeared together with the Berlin Wall, but it is alive,
kicking and ever looking for trouble, Belarus comes to mind.
The problem with propaganda is that the emitter ends up believing it, Europe does not need
any protection, we have the means to protect ourselves.
The US is an occupation force, and on top of it demands payment for it. Pick up your gear and
go home, and by the way, Europe should worry about countries armed to their teeth by the US,
I'm thinking about Morocco for instance, since I live in Spain. The beautiful line of the
Sierra that I contemplate every morning while stretching has been contaminated with a radar
station of the Aegis system, and that means we in our quite and beautiful Andalusian town are
a target for the biggies. Stop believing your propaganda, pick up your gear and let everybody
take care of themselves, the benefits will be for the US population in the first place, and
the world will rejoice.
The reason German military contribution to the "western alliance" is what it is is very
simple.
It is according to the incentives that threats that German leadership perceives.
First: Objective strategic things:
Essentially, noone is going to invade Germany. This removes one major reason to have a large
army. Secondly, Germany is not going to productively (in terms of return of investment)
invade anyone else. This removes the second major reason to have a large army. There is
something to be said to have a cadre army that can be surged into a real army if conditions
change.
Second: Incentives of German political leaders.
While the degree of German vassal stateness concerning the USA is up to a degree of debate,
that the USA has a lot of influence over Germany is in my view not. Schröder got elite
regime changed over his Iraq war opposition (it was amazing that literally all the newspaper
were against him, had a big impact on me growing up during this time).
Essentially, if you are in Nato, at some point, Uncle Sam will invite you to some adventure.
If you say yes to this adventure you commit your armed forces to some confrontation in the
middle east if you are lucky, or against Russia in Eastern Europe if you are unlucky. Your
population is not going to like this, and you may face losing elections over this. It is also
expensive in terms of life and material (although not very expensive compared to actual wars
against competent enemies).
If you say no, Uncle Sam will be displeased with you and will make this known for example by
sicking the entire "Transatlantic leadership networks" on you, which can also make you lose
the next election.
Essentially, if Uncle Sam comes asking, you lose the next election if you say yes, and you
also lose if you say no. Saying no is on balance cheaper, because you dont incurr the
financial and human costs of joing a random US adventure on top of the risk of losing the
next election.
The winning play is to get your army in such a state that Uncle Sam will not even ask.
Germany basically did create condition that enabled this.
Its a reasonably happy state for Germany to be in.
We are basically doing Brave Soldier Schweijk on the national level.
Solutions from a US pov:
1: Do less military adventures. If you do less adventures, people will fear being
shanghaied along less. This will decrease the drawbacks associated with having a reasonable
military as a Nato state.
2: Dont soft regime change governments that say no to your foreign adventures. Instead,
maybe listen to them. Had the US listend to French and German criticism regarding the wisdom
of going to war with Iraq, the US and also a lot of others would have been much better
off.
3: Make it clear that particpation in foreign adventures is actually voluntary instead of
"voluntary", make also clear that participation in defensive operations is not voluntary and
is what Nato was created for and that you expect a considerable contribution towards this.
Also, do some actual exercises. For example, if Germany claims that its military expenditure
is sufficient, stress test this premise by having a realistic exercise in which a German
divisions goes up against an American one. Yes, do some division size exercizes pretty
please. Heck, after ensuring that this exercize wont be a failfest, have some Indian be the
referee.
Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. My jest about never having met a European
was of course designed to illustrate that "Europe" is a secondary construct. Never has a
person, upon meeting me, introduced themselves as a "European".
Europe is a moveable feast and even territorial definitions are slippery. "Europeans" I
think, must be characterized by short memories, for was it not less than 25 years ago that
European NATO planes bombed their fellow Europeans in Bosnia? It can't have been an accident
either, as I understand the op. was called "Operation Deliberate Force".
If Europe is synonymous with the EU it has precisely zero divisions and though you
yourself may remain "Western", you are as a consequence of Brexit no longer "European". No, I
think you and Polish Janitor are close by identifying "European" as a progressive/liberal,
democratic (read "globalist") value system. An insufficiency of "European-ness" can thus be
used to justify NATO involvement across various geographies - from Bosnia to Afghanistan
(& shortly Belarus?).
But of course the "European" members of NATO are hardly on the same page. It looks not at
all unlikely that two of its members may go to war in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I agree with you re the Telegraph article btw. "European" smugness is well represented in
that organ.
No. They did NOT all go along with "electronic voting and postal ballots." The 50 states
each run federal elections in any way they please. The US Constitution requires that. There
are a wide variety of voting machines in use and only a few states use mailed in ballots. the
Republican Party particularly opposes mail in voting.
You should be complaining to the politicians you elect. They're the ones requesting US
military protection. Prior to Trump, our governments were quite happy to provide that
protection. He's now asking for some cost sharing.
Be careful though, before you know it Spain could become a vassal of the Chinese
communists as many countries in Africa are finding out now. Hopefully you can continue to
extract euros from the Germans and Dutch while battling the separatists in Catalonia. There's
a thin veneer between stability & strife.
Paco, with a huge cost of lives and treasure the US was twice asked to clean up Europe's
self-inflicted messes in the past century. Promise you won't call on us again, and we can
talk. I know, past is not necessarily prologue but do at least meet us half way. It is only
good manners.
Barbara Ann - Lots of Europes of course. "My" Europe may no longer be on the active list.
Traces here and there. Few green shoots that are visible to me. Many rank growths overlaying
it.
Also many "European Unions". They exist all right, in uneasy company.
So many "EU's". A ramshackle Northern European trading empire - I think that's too
unstable to be long for this world but I could be wrong. A nascent superpower, that denied by
many but for some their central aim.
A bureaucratic growth. A handy market place for all. A Holocaust memorial centre; when the
EU politicians find themselves in a tight spot they can always call on Auschwitz and all fall
back in line. I saw Mrs Merkel pull that trick at the last but one Munich Security Conference
and all there, because Mrs Merkel was at that time in a very tight spot, applauded with
relief.
A Progressive Shangri-La, all the more enticing for never being defined. Those adherents
of that "EU" do actually call themselves "EU citizens" and I see the term is becoming more
common usage. Maybe those are the self proclaimed "European citizens" you have not met.
And the producer of reams of lifeless prescription that seek to force all into the same
mould and tough on the poor devils who can't fit the model. And on their families.
Lots of "EU's". I like none of them. While we wait for that edifice of delusion to
collapse I hope the damage it does to "My" Europe is not irreparable.
@ Diana Croissant: "They can continue to feel culturally superior to us if it makes
them feel better. I defy them, however, to minimize our importance in World War II."
Jack, with all due respect, the politician who committed treason and gave away Spanish
territory for a foreign power to install bases died in 1975, nobody voted for him, general
Franco, an ally of Hitler, someone who sent over 50k troops to the siege of Leningrad, one of
the greatest crimes in the history of mankind, a million casualties, mainly civilians, dead
by hunger and disease, that fascist ally of Hitler we had to endure for 40 years, the price
to close your eyes and your nose not to smell the stench were bases, an occupying force
watching one of the strategic straights in Rota, close to Gibraltar, plus other bases inland.
I could go on, and remind you of 4H bombs dropped over Palomares after a broken arrow
incident, one of them broke and plutonium is still poisoning an area that your government is
not willing to clean. So that is what foreign occupation looks like, if something goes wrong,
well, we are protecting you . they say. History should be taught with a bit more detail in
the USA.
I'm afraid you're reading the dynamics of the European/US relationship quite incorrectly.
Bluntly, you have the facts wrong.
This site, and particularly the Colonel's committee of correspondence, is packed with
experts who have lived in this field and know their way around it. So I don't venture a
comprehensive rebuttal myself - my knowledge is partial and I do not have the background to
be sure of getting it dead right. But here -
"Essentially, if you are in Nato, at some point, Uncle Sam will invite you to some
adventure. If you say yes to this adventure you commit your armed forces to some
confrontation in the middle east if you are lucky, or against Russia in Eastern Europe if you
are unlucky."
That is transparent nonsense.
Obama has stated that it was the Europeans, including the UK, who pushed him into some
middle East interventions. I don't think he was shooting a line. The leaked Blumenthal emails
confirm that and we merely have to look at the thrust of French military actions to
understand that the French in particular push continually for intervention in the ME.
They are still doing so, and not for R2P purposes. They would see the ME and parts of
Africa as part of the EU sphere of influence and their initial reaction to Trump's abortive
attempt to withdraw from Syria shows they would be more than prepared to go it alone there if
they could.
A squalid bunch, and here I must include my own country in that verdict. Reliant on US
logistics and military strength they seek to pursue their own interests and could they but do
so they would do so unassisted. Don't pretend that it's the Americans who force them into
these genocidal adventures.
As for the Ukraine, we see from Sakwa's unflattering study of the EU adventure there that
that was building up well before 2014. The dramatic rejection of the EU deal was the prelude
to the coup. The Ashton tape shows an astonishing degree of EU intervention in Ukrainian
internal affairs before that coup. And from the Nuland tape we get a glimpse of the EU regime
change project that shows it was deeply implicated.
Pushed into the Ukrainian adventure by the US? Rubbish. The EU and its constituent members
were attempting to play their own hand and were not merely following the US lead
submissively.
We hear little of European neocon ventures. But what little has surfaced about them shows
that your picture of peace loving Europeans dragged into these conflicts by an overbearing
"Uncle Sam" is dishonest and misleading.
So I tell my German friends and relatives when they push the same line. They look at me
with disbelief and go off and hunt around the internet themselves. And then come back and do
not disagree. I suggest you do the same. The facts are all there, even for those of us
without inside knowledge or who lack the requisite background.
"... Let us not forget that in 1994 Lukashenko was democratically elected to the general surprise, absolutely general, against the candidate of the nomenklatura (Kebitch) and against the pro-Western Social-Democratic candidate (Shushkievich) because the deep country found Luka to prevent privatization, settle their accounts to the mobsters arriving from Russia, restore the Russian language, restore the legitimacy of the RSSB and the USSR, to honor the fighters of the Republic of partisans and post-war reconstruction and to give influence to the technocracy of large public enterprises, which knew well that it had no chance of becoming a bourgeoisie possessing by having the Russian oligarchs on one side and NATO on the other. ..."
I do not think that the so-called opposition is a force that will count too much in the future.
There are the traditional groupuscular and unpopular opposition parties that were forced to act
behind new (and female) personalities out of the hat for these elections, and without known or
clear political past, and now there must be a whole fauna that revolves around them/them in
Vilnius, Vilnius which is not Minsk by the way, not to mention the fact that deep Belarus has
not said its last word too, because Minsk is not Belarus, it is 20% of the country and large
regional centers count (Gomel, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Polotsk, Grodno). In the final analysis, it
will be in the Kremlin that things will seem to be arbitrary, even if the Kremlin will
undoubtedly leave some bones to gnaw at the "moderate "Westerners or the "selected" opposition,
if they give guarantees of respect for Russia's strategic-military interests ....unless
Lukashenko and / or his entourage still have some little-known assets in their purse.
With native farmers, we must never respond too quickly, especially in our troubled times
where everything changes quickly, too quickly, on a global scale. After all in his last speech
on Sunday, he told them "I warned you that these elections would be hectic, that's what
happened. I was right" ...reason to make mistakes ? or reason to plan for further steps ???
Bragging about a "has been" or vision of something coming for the after ?
... Lukashenko 1, Lukashenko 2, Lukashenko 3 (for a single family, already three candidates
for diversified options) or someone else in the administration ? And then, if things calm down
a little with a fairly consensual government, the people of Belarus themselves, is not it ready
to (re)go out into the street if we ever privatized ? Everyone agrees at least on one fact,
Luka, the opponents, Putin, The Westerners : Belarusians are mostly opposed to privatization
and the liberal model (and they all agree there, even when it enrages them).
Luka has been trying to play this card for a few days (apparently it would be even advisers
arrived from the Kremlin who advised her to play this card to recover ... a while !) but this
map, it is much wider than itself.
Any smart politician knows that, in the final analysis, it will be the winning card to play
to get to be popular. The trendy youth bobo of the capital that we are shown does not represent
much proportionally, even in Minsk, a few tens of thousands of people, it is crowded but this
is not the real country. ...
So an anti-oligarchy "populist" candidate has every chance of raffling the bet, even if in
the end he wants to throw this card in the trash. But are Belarusians today on this subject as
naive and inexperienced as the Poles in 1989 or the Russians in 1991 ? And so will they let
themselves be made or will they turn the big factories of which they are rightly proud into
fortresses ? That is the question !!!
Let us not forget that in 1994 Lukashenko was democratically elected to the general
surprise, absolutely general, against the candidate of the nomenklatura (Kebitch) and against
the pro-Western Social-Democratic candidate (Shushkievich) because the deep country found Luka
to prevent privatization, settle their accounts to the mobsters arriving from Russia, restore
the Russian language, restore the legitimacy of the RSSB and the USSR, to honor the fighters of
the Republic of partisans and post-war reconstruction and to give influence to the technocracy
of large public enterprises, which knew well that it had no chance of becoming a bourgeoisie
possessing by having the Russian oligarchs on one side and NATO on the other.
The Belarusian peasant knows how to look things in the face and measure them at their right
measure, this is what has allowed him to last for centuries. Would things have changed so much
? Wait & See ! ... once, in 1994, the candidate of the nomenklatura was eliminated but not
for the benefit of the opposition of the time ...roughly the same as today.
The choice made in 1994 surprised all the chancelleries of the West and the East, without
any exception. So this people has already accustomed us to big surprises, would he fall into
the ranks this time? In the globalized mould ???
The European Union has announced that it will be placing new sanctions on Belarus, following an emergency meeting to discuss the
situation in the country. The move comes after ten days of protests in Minsk and other cities.
Following the video conference, European Council President Charles Michel said that the bloc would impose sanctions on Belarusian
officials accused of being responsible for "shocking and unacceptable" acts perpetrated against anti-government protesters.
The penalties will be imposed on a "substantial number" of individuals. EU leaders also collectively agreed that the results
of Belarus' August 9 elections were "fraudulent."
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said there was unanimous support for the sanctions, and that the economic restrictions
will be implemented without "hurting the people of Belarus." A list of individuals to be included should be adopted "as
soon as possible," she added.
Officials declined to say whether Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko would be targeted directly by the measures.
Von der Leyen said the EU would support a peaceful transition of power in Belarus, and would allocate 53 million euros ($63.3
million) to support civil society and the country's Covid-19 response.
The bloc also said that it wanted to see new elections in Belarus.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition candidate in the disputed election, urged the European Council ahead of its meeting
to not recognize Belarus' the results. She said that a new ballot should be held under international supervision, but stressed that
the EU should respect the choice of the Belarusian people.
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1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that
way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)
2) Being "managed" on behalf of various power centers. This can be liveable or can turn into
strip mining of your "resources".
Sadly, there is no algorithm that allows you to detect whether your are engaged or are
being engaged on behalf of others. That would be easy. But one should start with a minimal
state, hard money and the sons of the upper crust on the front lines and forbidden from
taking office in government.
That being said, this article is a bit meandering. Came for Bellingcat but was
confused.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel
journalist Chris Hedges.
@El Dato "1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily
stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)"
There are no revolutions by means of pitchforks in a democracy, everything is weakened by
compromise, false promises, infiltration, manipulation, etc. You cannot stay angry all the
time too, it is very bad for your health, it needs to be short and intense to be effective,
which is exactly what democracy prevents.
Democracy turns you into a petted animal.
CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party
understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do
things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters
very well.
VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I
don't like the Democratic Party's policies.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize
who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to
serve those voters.
Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who
disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster
for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children.
They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't
necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by
the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years?
I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively,
I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks.
But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots,
the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they
realize who their own voters are.
Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who
their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.
CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a
substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing
in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect
them.
VANCE: Yes.
CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded
wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of
nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."
VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives
in D.C. I know you live in D.C.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work
on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of
everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican
candidates these days.
Oligarchy owns the USA political system and tune it to their needs. Proliferation of NGO is one such trick that favor
oligarchy.
That kind of influence over expert opinion is immense—and it yields results. In April, Gates called for a nationwide total
lockdown for 10 weeks. America didn’t quite sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get absolutely
crushed small businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits. Microsoft stock is at an all-time high.
Notable quotes:
"... Non-profit activity lets super-elites broker political power tax-free, reshaping the world according to their designs. ..."
"... The American tax code makes all of this possible. It greases the skids for the wealthy to use their fortunes to augment their political power. The 501(c)(3) designation makes all donations, of whatever size, to charitable nonprofits immune from taxation. ..."
"... For the super-wealthy, political power comes tax-free. ..."
"... No one ever elected Bill Gates to anything. His wealth, and not the democratic process, is the only reason he has an outsized voice in shaping coronavirus policy. The man who couldn't keep viruses out of Windows now wants to vaccinate the planet. That isn't an unreasonable goal for a man of his wealth, either. Gates's foundation is the second largest donor to the World Health Organization, providing some 10 percent of its funds . That kind of influence over expert opinion is immense -- and it yields results. In April , Gates called for a nationwide total lockdown for 10 weeks. America didn't quite sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get absolutely crushed small businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits. Microsoft stock is at an all-time high . ..."
"... Eliminating the tax exemption for charitable giving would make it simple to heavily tax the capital gains that drive the wealth of America's richest one thousand people. One could also leave the exemption in place for most Americans (those with a net worth under $100 million), while making larger gifts, especially those over a billion dollars, taxable at extremely high rates close to 100%. Bill Gates wants to give a billion dollars to his foundation? Great. But he should pay a steep fee to the American people to purchase that kind of power. ..."
"... There is nothing socialist in these or similar tax proposals. We are not making an abstract commentary on whether having a billion dollars is "moral." These are simply prudential measures to put the people back in charge of their own country. Reining in billionaires and monopolists is a conservative free market strategy. ..."
"... An America governed by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros will be -- arguably, already is -- a disaster for the middle class and everyday Americans. Cracking down on their "selfless" philanthropy, combined with antitrust enforcement and higher progressive tax rates, is a key way for Americans to leverage the power of the ballot box against the power of the banker's vault. ..."
"... The rotting edifice that is the United States is coming down one way or another. Just accept it. ..."
"... I would end tax exempt status for organizations. When everyone pays taxes we all become better stewards of how that money is used. ..."
"... To think both Mr. Dreher and Mr. Van Buren just recently posted about the superwealthy leaving the big cities, citing as the main reasons the Covid thing on the one hand, and "excessively high" income taxes on the other. Most comments that followed were in the line of "that's what happens when you let socialists run things" and "stop giving money to the poor, then they'll work and get rich." And here we have someone proposing more and higher taxes on the wealthy to bust their political nuts. ..."
"... It's an interesting proposal, but it seems that if you're worried about super-elites brokering political power tax-free, you might focus on direct brokering of political power. For example, we could pass a law requiring full disclosure of all sources of funding for any political advertising. ..."
Non-profit activity lets super-elites broker political power tax-free, reshaping the world
according to their designs.
America's super-wealthy have too much power. A republican regime based on the consent of the
governed cannot survive when a few hands control too large a sum of money and too much human
capital. A dominion of monopolists spells ruin for the common man.
The Federal Reserve calculates that, at present, America's total household wealth equals
$104 trillion .
Of that,
$3.4 trillion belongs to America's 600 billionaires alone. Put another way, 3% of the
nation's wealth belongs to 0.0002% of the population. Those 600 names control twice as much
wealth as the least wealthy 170 million Americans combined . This is a problem. Economic
power means political power. In an era of mass media, it has never been easier to manufacture
public opinion and to manipulate the citizenry.
Look no further than the consensus view of
Fortune 500 companies as to the virtues of Black Lives Matter. That movement's incredible
cultural reach is, in large part, a function of its cachet among American elites. In 2016, the
Ford Foundation began a
Black-Led Movement Fund to funnel $100 million into racial and social justice causes.
George Soros' Open Society Foundation immediately poured in $33 million in grants.
Soros and company received a massive return on investment. The shift leftward on issues of
racial and social justice in the last four years has been nothing short of remarkable.
Net public support for BLM , at minus 5 percent in 2018, has surged to plus 28 percent in
2020. The New York Times estimates that some 15 to
26 million Americans participated in recent protests over George Floyd's death.
And the money keeps flowing. In the last three months, hundreds of millions of dollars have
poured into social and racial justice causes.
Sony Music Group , the
NFL ,
Warner Music Group , and
Comcast all have promised gifts in excess of $100 million. MacKenzie Bezos has
promised more than a billion dollars to Historically Black Colleges and Universities as
well as other racial and social justice organizations. Yet, as scholars like Heather
MacDonald have pointed out -- America's justice system is not racist. Disquieting anecdotes
and wrenching videos blasted across cyberspace are not the whole of, or even representative of,
our reality. But well-heeled media and activism campaigns can change the perception. That's
what matters.
The American tax code makes all of this possible. It greases the skids for the wealthy to
use their fortunes to augment their political power. The 501(c)(3) designation makes all
donations, of whatever size, to charitable nonprofits immune from taxation.
A man can only eat so much filet mignon in one lifetime. He can only drive so many
Lamborghinis and vacation in so many French chalets. At a certain point, the longing for
material pleasures gives way to a longing for honor and power. What a super-elite really wants
is to be remembered for "changing the world." The tax code makes the purchasing of such honors
even easier than buying fast cars and luxury homes.
For the super-wealthy, political power comes tax-free.
No one ever elected Bill Gates to anything. His wealth, and not the democratic process, is
the only reason he has an outsized voice in shaping coronavirus policy. The man who couldn't
keep viruses out of Windows now wants to vaccinate the
planet. That isn't an unreasonable goal for a man of his wealth, either. Gates's foundation
is the second largest donor to the World Health Organization,
providing some 10 percent of its funds . That kind of influence over expert opinion is
immense -- and it yields results.
In April , Gates called for a nationwide total lockdown for 10 weeks. America didn't quite
sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get absolutely crushed small
businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits. Microsoft stock is at an
all-time high .
No one ever voted on those lockdowns, either. Like the mask-wearing mandates, they were
instituted by executive fiat. The experts
, many of them funded through donations given by tech billionaires like Gates , campaigned for policies that
radically altered the basic structure of society. Here lies the danger of billionaire power.
Without adequate checks and balances, the super-wealthy can skirt the normal political process,
working behind the scenes to make policies that the people never even have a chance to debate
or vote on.
A republic cannot be governed this way. America needs to bring its current crop of oligarchs
to heel. That starts with constraining their ability to commandeer their massive personal
fortunes to shape policy. Technically, the 501(c)(3) designation prevents political activities
by tax-exempt charities. Those rules apply only to political campaigning and lobbying, however.
They say nothing about funding legal battles or shaping specific policies indirectly through
research and grants. America's universities, think tanks, and advocacy organizations are nearly
universally considered tax-exempt nonprofits. Only a fool would believe they are not
political.
One solution to the nonprofit problem to simply get rid of the charitable exemption all
together. If there is no loophole, it can't be exploited by the mega-wealthy. Most Americans'
charitable giving wouldn't be affected. The average American gives between $2,000 and
$3,000 per year . That is well under the $24,800 standard tax deduction for married
couples. Ninety
percent of taxpayers have no reason to use a line-item deduction. Such a change likely
wouldn't affect wealthy givers either. In
2014 , the average high-income American (defined as making more than $200,000 per year or
having a million dollars in assets) gave an average of $68,000 to charity, and in 2018
93 percent said
their giving had nothing to do with tax breaks.
Eliminating the tax exemption for charitable giving would make it simple to heavily tax the
capital gains that drive the wealth of America's richest one thousand people. One could also
leave the exemption in place for most Americans (those with a net worth under $100 million),
while making larger gifts, especially those over a billion dollars, taxable at extremely high
rates close to 100%. Bill Gates wants to give a billion dollars to his foundation? Great. But
he should pay a steep fee to the American people to purchase that kind of power.
There is nothing socialist in these or similar tax proposals. We are not making an abstract
commentary on whether having a billion dollars is "moral." These are simply prudential measures
to put the people back in charge of their own country. Reining in billionaires and monopolists
is a conservative free market strategy.
Incentives to make more money are generally good. The libertarians are mostly right --
people are usually better judges of how to spend and use their resources than the
government.
But not always. The libertarian account does not adequately recognize man's political
nature. We need law and order. We need a regime where elections matter and the opinions of the
people actually shape policy. Contract law, borders, and taxes are all necessary to human
flourishing, but all impede the total and unrestricted movement of labor and money. At the very
top of the wealth pyramid, concentrated economic power always turns into political power. An
economic policy that doesn't recognize that fact will create an untouchable class that controls
both the market and the regime. There's nothing freeing about that outcome.
An America governed by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and George Soros will be --
arguably, already is -- a disaster for the middle class and everyday Americans. Cracking
down on their "selfless" philanthropy, combined with antitrust enforcement and higher
progressive tax rates, is a key way for Americans to leverage the power of the ballot box
against the power of the banker's vault.
Josiah Lippincott is a former Marine officer and current Master's student at the Van
Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College.
I'd like to thank the author for actually discussing policy proposals that actually
make sense. That's a rarity on TAC. However, he needs to keep a couple of things in
mind:
1. You can't just say something isn't socialist on a conservative website.
Conservatives have been conditioned for decades to believe that anything the GOP
considers to be bad is called by the name "socialism". And taxes are bad. Therefore
socialist. To bring any nuance to that word will be devastating to long-term conservative
ability to argue points.
2. This proposal won't just hurt the ability of left-leaning tech giants, but also
right-leaning oil and defense industry barons. A double-edged sword.
This is an interesting idea that might have had a shot, big maybe, 50 plus years ago.
America is too far gone to fix with political changes, not that you could make any major
changes like this in the current political environment.
The rotting edifice that is the United States is coming down one way or another. Just
accept it.
Certainly! Just so long as the word "organizations" encompasses churches as well, I
think lots of people on all sides of the political spectrum would agree.
Complicated argument. Basically, charitable people will always give charity, even from
taxed income. However, if people give charity from taxed income, the state can no longer
control what the institutions given money do with that money as long as salaries and
surplus are taxed.
Interesting proposal. Removing tax deduction should of course throw IRS out of
monitoring charitable giving. So less power to Lois Lerner and colleagues.
To think both Mr. Dreher and Mr. Van Buren just recently posted about the superwealthy
leaving the big cities, citing as the main reasons the Covid thing on the one hand, and
"excessively high" income taxes on the other. Most comments that followed were in the
line of "that's what happens when you let socialists run things" and "stop giving money
to the poor, then they'll work and get rich." And here we have someone proposing more and
higher taxes on the wealthy to bust their political nuts.
Note that the author carefully left out any mention of conservative megadonors shaping
public policy. Must be the quiet part, to avoid tarring and feathering by his own
side.
Say you like the game of Monopoly so much that you want it to last longer than
the few hours it takes for one player to dominate and beat the others. Well, you could
replace $200 as you pass Go with progessive taxation on income, assets, or a combination
thereof. If you do it right, you can make the game last into perpetuity by ensuring that
the dominance of any one player is only temporary.
It's an interesting proposal, but it seems that if you're worried about super-elites
brokering political power tax-free, you might focus on direct brokering of political
power. For example, we could pass a law requiring full disclosure of all sources of
funding for any political advertising.
If we wanted to be aggressive, we could even pass
a constitutional amendment to specify that corporations are not people. It seems odd to
worry about the political power exercised by institutions with no direct control over
politics, and ignore the institution whose purpose is politics.
Another approach to deal with the direct influence of the super-elite would be to make
lobbying expenses no longer tax deductible. I'm sure you could find support for that.
This is the 5th TAC article since May to take something word-for-word from a Bernie
Sanders-esque Leftist platform and call it something "Conservatives" want. GTFOOH.
Mr. Lippincott: That kind of influence over expert opinion is immense -- and it yields
results. In April, Gates called for a nationwide total lockdown for 10 weeks. America
didn't quite sink to that level of draconian control, but the shutdowns we did get
absolutely crushed small businesses. Massive tech firms, however, made out like bandits.
Microsoft stock is at an all-time high.
So the argument here is that the experts were not going to call for a lockdown, but
Mr. Gates' outsized influence made them do it? The experts weren't going to do it anyway?
Did that outsized influence extend to every other country in the world which imposed
lockdowns? Was there a secret communique between Mr. Gates and the NBA so they suspended
their season in mid-March? In the US, CA, Clark Cty in NV, Illinois, Kansas City, MA, MI,
NY, OR, and WI all began lockdowns in March. Around the world, 80 countries began
lockdowns in March. No matter what Mr. Gates said, lockdowns were deemed to be
appropriate. Plus, Mr. Lippincott admits that Mr. Gates' proposal was not followed. In
terms of "massive tech firms making out like bandits" v small businesses, might that have
anything to do with their value?
I very much agree with this article and I think we need another Teddy Roosevelt
Monopoly (oligarchy) buster but much has changed in the 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt
was President. The first thing that comes to mind is that the aristocracy was mostly
protestant and the business class was mostly domestic with high tariffs keeping foreign
competitors out so we could break up these companies without a foreign country purchasing
them and possibly creating a national security risk.
Today's aristocracy is much more diverse. Its more Jewish and it has much more
minority representation from African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, etc so that creates
the first problem in breaking up a monopoly or an oligarchy which would be the accusation
of targeting minorities for discrimination. The second problem is that many of the
aristocratic class in the US consider themselves global citizens and have dual
citizenship. They can live anywhere anytime they choose so if you target them the way say
Cuomo and DiBlasio and Newsom do then they will leave. Third problem is our global
society particularly the digital / virtual society. If you break that up without
safeguards then you will only be inviting foreign ownership then you will have a national
security issue and even less influence.
The biggest problem is the NGOs, nonprofits that the rich set up to usurp the
government on various issues from immigration to gender identity to politics. These NGO
nonprofits arent your harmless community soup kitchen doing good works. The anarchy,
arson, looting, rioting in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, Baltimore these are paid for
by NGO nonprofits and they have the money to threaten local government, state government
and federal government. Trump was 100% correct when he started to tax college endowments
but he didnt go far enough. The tax laws have to be rewritten with a very strict and
narrow interpretation of what exactly constitutes the public good and is deserving on
non-profit status. If you say education then I will say you are correct but endowments
are an investment vehicle under the umbrella of an educational nonprofit. Thats like a
nonprofit hospital buying a mutual fund company or a mine or a manufacturing plan and
claiming its non-profit. For me its relatively simple unless someone has a some other
way. If you look at the non-profit community good...what are the budgets for say
hospitals, schools, orphanages, retirement homes, etc. Put monetary limits on nonprofits
which can vary depending on industry and the rest is taxed at a high rate. We simply
cannot have NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) using a nonprofit status to bring down a
country's financial system, over-throwing a country, financing civil strife and civil
war, usurping the government on things like immigration, etc.
Triffin's Paradox demands painful trade-offs to issue a reserve currency, and it demands the
issuing central bank serve two competing audiences and markets.
Judging by the headlines and pundit chatter, the U.S. dollar is about to slide directly to
zero. This sense of certitude is interesting, given that no empire prospered by devaluing its
currency. Rather, devaluing the currency is a sure path to dissolution and collapse of the
empire. This dynamic--devaluation leads to decline and collapse--is not exactly a secret.
So what all those proclaiming the death of the USD are saying is the Imperial Project is
consciously choosing suicide, all to boost the U.S. stock market which is now little more than
a signaling mechanism and a means of accelerating wealth inequality, as the billionaire class
and the billionaire wannabe's in the top .01% are the primary winners as stocks reach new
highs.
(Recall that the U.S. economy is best described as anything goes and winners take most
.)
Taking it one step further, those predicting the collapse of the U.S. dollar are predicting
that not only will the Empire choose suicide, so will the billionaires because what will their
fortunes be worth if the USD goes to zero?
The USD-is-dead crowd (and it is a crowd) present the demise as ordained by some mysterious
force, as if the Empire has no will or power to resist the inevitable slide to zero. The
helpless giant can only watch as the Federal Reserve debauches the dollar to boost stocks and
float the mountains of debt required to keep the U.S. economy from imploding.
The USD-is-dead crowd also seems to overlook the inconvenient fact that all the other
issuers of fiat currency are busy debauching their currencies, too by the same mechanisms: the
endless digital printing of new currency, distributed to already-insanely-wealthy financiers
and corporations. (Debt-serfs can "save themselves" by borrowing more, heh.)
We get it: digitally printing trillions in excess of actual productivity eventually destroys
the purchasing power of the over-issued currency. We also get the need to keep interest rates
at near-zero so governments can fund endless trillions in stimulus and other
giveaways--billions to the billionaires and a trickle of bread-and-circuses to the
debt-serfs.
But this isn't the full list of dynamics in play. The demand for currency is based on a
number of factors: yield (the interest rate paid by the issuing central bank) being one, the
amount of global debt denominated in the currency being another and the demands of global trade
being a third.
Ultimately, every currency is a derivative contract on the resilience, adaptability and
innovative capacity of its economy. Every currency is a social construct that reflects the
security of social contracts within the issuing economy, and the perceived security of the
currency in the global marketplace.
The two are related, of course; but they also conflict. This is Triffin's Paradox , which
I've discussed for years. In a nutshell, the paradox is every central bank with a global role
as well as a domestic role serves two competing audiences: the domestic economy and the global
economy.
There is no way to serve both. The domestic exporters want a weaker currency, while foreign
owners want a stronger currency.
The dollar rises for the same reason anything else goes up: scarcity and demand. If the Fed
over-issues USD, scarcity value falls. If non-domestic borrowers take loans denominated in USD,
demand rises as this debt must be serviced and eventually paid off in USD.
The Fed's mandates that are constantly repeated are all about the domestic economy:
maintaining control of inflation (Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold) and domestic
employment (if unemployment skyrockets and wages plummet, the debt-serfs might revolt).
But the Fed's one controlling mandate is to maintain USD global supremacy. Unbelievable as
it is to the unwashed masses and the clueless punditry, the domestic economy (and the stock
market) are sideshows compared to the primacy of the mandate to maintain USD supremacy as the
one and only essential reserve currency.
To maintain global supremacy as the one essential reserve currency, the Fed must balance
scarcity and demand. The pandemic illustrated the Fed's dual role and the conflicting demands
of being America's central bank and the central bank of the global reserve currency.
To keep the domestic economy and stock market from imploding, the Fed digitally printed $3
trillion and unleashed it as flood waters, raising all boats to some degree.
As the global central bank, it opened stupendous lines of credit, repo's and currency swaps
with other central banks to exceed global demand for USD, lest a soaring USD snuff the global
stock market rally, a rally the Fed saw as the one essential signaling mechanism that the
global economy was recovering.
This over-supply of USD was calculated to suppress the dollar's value by eliminating
scarcity--it didn't affect demand which continues unabated.
Now that this one-off emergency response has done its job, the Fed has to switch back to
defending the dollar's value. The clueless punditry is absolutely certain that the Fed is going
to drive bond yields to zero or even below. The reason why this is clueless is the punditry are
only looking at the secondary mandates of the Fed and ignoring its Prime Directive: maintain
USD supremacy.
Pushing rates negative and flooding the global economy with USD is a sure way to reduce
scarcity and demand, so those are not going to happen.
Rather, U.S. yields will start rising--maybe in fits and starts, but they will start moving
up longer term. And the Fed isn't going to over-supply the global economy with dollars; they're
going to start limiting the excess issuance, not publicly but behind closed doors.
Scarcity and demand will both rise, dragging the dollar higher. Don't bother asking why or
how, just watch the yields click higher despite every financial pundit pounding the table for
zero or even negative yields. Yields may dip and weave from month to month, but watch the
trend.
Just as all currency is a social construct , trust in the liquidity and transparency of the
currency's market value is the essential ingredient in a currency's valuation. The only way to
establish a trustworthy measure of liquidity and transparency is to allow the currency to float
freely on the global FX exchange. Issuing nations who want to control the value are
intrinsically untrustworthy as no holder of the currency can be sure the value won't be
manipulated to serve the issuer's political agenda.
You can't control the global value of your currency and have a reserve currency. This is
where the punditry are again clueless. China does not seem particularly keen to relinquish
control of its currency (RMB) to market forces. Thus it maintains a peg to the USD to retain
control of the RMB's value on global exchanges.
The demand for RMB is thus limited. The RMB has about a 2% share of global trade and an
equally minimal role in global debt denominated in RMB. To increase the global role of the RMB,
China will have to end the USD peg and let the RMB and its sovereign bonds float freely and be
priced by the market.
In other words, they'll have to relinquish the direct control they currently have over the
RMB's valuation.
Triffin's Paradox demands painful trade-offs to issue a reserve currency, and it demands the
issuing central bank serve two competing audiences and markets. This is why some economists
believe the U.S. would be better served by giving up the reserve currency and thus be free to
serve only the domestic economy.
This makes very good sense, but it overlooks one little thing: America's global empire. The
Imperial Project requires USD supremacy, period. Nothing less will do, and so that is the Fed's
single Prime Directive.
One of the comments made following Trump's decision to relocate some 12,000 troops from
Germany was made by retired Admiral James ('Zorba') Stavridis, who in 2009-2013 was US Supreme
Allied Commander Europe (the military commander of Nato). He declared
that the action, among other things, "hurts NATO solidarity and is a gift to Putin." This was a
most serious pronouncement, which was echoed
by Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a
rich Republican and
Mormon cleric, who
said the redeployment was a "gift to Russia." These sentiments were well-reported and
endorsed by US media outlets which continue to be relentlessly anti-Russia.
Stavridis is the man who wrote that
the seven-month bombing and rocketing of Libya by the US-Nato military grouping in 2011 "has
rightly been hailed as a model intervention. The alliance responded rapidly to a deteriorating
situation that threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians rebelling against an oppressive
regime. It succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and
space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Gaddafi."
On June 22 Human Rights Watch noted that
"over the past years" in Libya their investigators have "documented systematic and gross human
rights and humanitarian law violations
by armed groups on all sides, including torture and ill-treatment, rape and other acts of
sexual violence, arbitrary arrests and detention, forced displacement, unlawful killings and
enforced disappearances
." Amnesty International's current Report also
details the chaos in the shattered country where Nato conducted its "model intervention."
The Libya catastrophe illustrates the desperation of Nato in its continuing search for
international situations in which it might be able to intervene, to try to provide some sort of
justification for its existence. And the calibre of its leadership can be judged from the
pronouncements of such as Stavridis, who was unsurprisingly
considered a possibility for the post of Secretary of State by Donald Trump.
It is not explained how relocation of US troops from Germany could hurt Nato's "solidarity"
but Defence Secretary Esper was more revealing about the situation as he sees it, when
interviewed by balanced and
objective Fox News on August 9. He
declared "we basically are moving troops further east, closer to Russia's border to deter
them. Most of the allies I've either spoken to, heard from or my staff has spoken to, see this
as a good move. It will accomplish all of those objectives that have been laid out. And
frankly, look, we still have 24,000 plus troops in Germany, so it will still be the largest
recipient of US troops. The bottom line is the border has shifted as the alliance has grown."
(It is intriguing that this important policy statement was not covered by US mainstream media
and cannot be found on the Pentagon's Newsroom website -- the "one-stop shop for Defense
Department news and information.")
No matter the spin from the Pentagon and what is now appearing in the US media, Trump's July
29 decision to move troops from Germany had no basis in strategy. It was not the result of a
reappraisal of the regional or wider international situation. And it was not discussed with any
of Washington's allies, causing Nato Secretary General Stoltenberg
to say plaintively that it was "not yet decided how and when this decision will be
implemented."
The BBC reported that "President Donald Trump
said the move was a response to Germany failing to meet Nato targets on defence spending."
Trump was quoted as telling reporters that "We don't want to be the suckers anymore. We're
reducing the force because they're not paying their bills; it's very simple." It could not have
been made clearer than that. The whole charade is the result of Trumpian petulance and has
nothing to do with military strategy, no matter what is belatedly claimed by the Pentagon's
Esper.
The German government was not consulted before Trump's contemptuous announcement, and
defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
criticised Washington, saying "Nato is not a trade organisation, and security is not a
commodity." But so far as Trump is concerned, security is indeed a commodity that can be traded
as he sees fit, irrespective of relevance to national policy or anything other than his
ego.
In trying to pick up the pieces following Trump's candid explanation of his orders to
"reduce the force" in Germany, the Pentagon has conjured up a jumbled but confrontational plan
intended to convince those who are interested (who do not
include the German public), that it is all part of a grand scheme to extend the power of
the US-Nato alliance. To this end, Esper
announced he is "confident that the alliance will be all the better and stronger for it,"
because the redeployment involves reinforcement of the US military in Poland. He is moving 200
staff of the army's 5 corps to Krakow where, as reported by
Military.com on August 5, "In a ceremony Army Chief of Staff General James McConville
promoted John Kolasheski, the Army's V Corps commander, to the rank of lieutenant general and
officially unfurled the headquarters' flag for the first time on Polish soil."
In addition to Washington's move of the advance HQ of V Corps to Krakow, there is a
agreement that Poland will engage in what the Military Times
reports as "a host of construction projects designed to support more US troops in that
country" and Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Tom Campbell said that the Warsaw government "has
agreed to fund infrastructure and logistical support to US forces," which should please the
White House.
These initiatives are part of the US-Poland Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement
completed on August 3, which Esper
stated "will enhance deterrence against Russia, strengthen NATO, reassure our Allies, and
our forward presence in Poland on NATO's eastern flank will improve our strategic and
operational flexibility." Then on August 15 Secretary of State Pompeo visited Poland to
formally
ink the accord which was warmly welcomed by Polish President Duda who recently visited
Trump in Washington.
Duda's declaration
that "our soldiers are going to stand arm-in-arm" is consistent with the existing situation in
Poland, where the Pentagon has other elements already deployed,
including in Redzikowo, where a base is being built for
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence systems, and the Air Force's 52nd Fighter Wing
detachments at Polish Air Force bases at Lask and Miroslawiec, where there is a unit
operating MQ-9
attack drones.
Defence Secretary Esper has emphasised that "the border has shifted as the alliance has
grown" -- and the border to which he refers is that of US-Nato as it moves more menacingly
eastwards. That's the gift that Trump has given Russia.
Actually, after only a quick review of some of the news reports, it appears that the
Senate Committee placed great importance on the "fact" that Russia was involved in the
"hacking" of emails from the DNC. This suggests that the Committee relied on the same
intelligence sources that fabricated the Russiagate scenario in the first place. I guess that
the Republicans on the Committee have not kept up with revelations that there is no evidence
of any such hacking. Hence, the Committee's conclusions are likely based on the same old
disinformation and can be readily dismissed.
More than anybody, #UAE is committed to making sure
#Ankara
having won the #Tripoli battle in Jun never helps
it win the #Libya war. Idea is to contain
#Turkey
& turn its presence into a quagmire that bleeds it. By promising to help #Greece , the #French navy joins
that endeavor
France to bolster Mediterranean military presence. With Macron determined to assert French
leadership in the the Mediterranean, he will have to team up w RU to take on Turkey. This
means France will work w RU in Lebanon too. At cross purposes w the US. https://
reut.rs/31O3fjY Show this thread
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has voiced his opposition to a proposed Russian rule that
would require labeling of propaganda content, saying it would burden "independent" information
work by outlets such as Voice of America.
"This decree will impose new burdensome requirements that will further inhibit RFE/RL's
and VOA's ability to operate within Russia," Pompeo said
Monday, commenting on the draft rule published by the media regulator Roskomnadzor.
Pompeo called VOA and its sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "vital sources
of independent news and information for the people of Russia" for "more than 70
years."
Far from independent, however, they were both established as US propaganda outlets at the
dawn of the Cold War. They are fully funded by the government, and the charter of their parent
organization – now known as US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – mandates that they
"be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States" and
"provide a surge capacity to support United States foreign policy objectives during crises
abroad."
The 1948 law that established these outlets outright prohibited their content from being
broadcast in the US itself, until the Obama administration amended it in 2013.
The proposed rule would require all content produced by designated "foreign agents"
in the Russian Federation to be clearly labeled. When the draft of it was made public last
month, acting RFE/RL president Daisy Sindelar protested that its purpose was to
"intimidate" her audience and make them "feel like criminals, or believe that they
are in danger when they watch or read our materials."
Yet the Russian regulation is the mirror image of the requirement imposed under the US
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) on RT, Sputnik and China Global Television Network
(CTGN) since 2017, which only a handful of groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ) condemned as
an attack on free speech. The USAGM remained conspicuously silent even as the designated
outlets were denied credentials to access government press conferences.
US-based social media companies have also bowed to political pressure and labeled Russian-
and Chinese-based outlets as "state-affiliated," while refraining from using that
descriptor for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), German outlet Deutsche Welle, the
French AFP, Turkish TRT, or any of the USAGM outlets, once again showcasing the double
standard.
jangosimba 10 August, 2020
He cheats, he lies, he murders, he steals.
Zogg jangosimba 11 August, 2020
That's a small part of CIA job description.
Harbin
William Johnson 1 hour ago
Mike reminds me that character from "Godfather" series, the old , dumb henchman ready to
follow any order...
"... IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely imaginary threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government expenditures for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons. ..."
"... Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really? ..."
"... The kind of symmetrical disinterest described in Timothy's article will encourage the end of Atlanticism ..."
"There are, then, two ways in which a Biden presidency will remove the Europeans' veil of
smug superiority. First, he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what
American interests demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China . And second,
where he does change approach, he will expose European indifference to the Western Alliance as
driven, not by distaste for Trump's policies, but by Europe's own cynicism, short-termism and
willingness to freeload off US military budgets.
In both respects, Biden's election will reveal Europe's dirty secret. It was never Donald
Trump who stopped the Europeans being their better selves, taking responsibility for the
security of their own citizens, and protecting long-term Western interests. It was always
Europe itself." Nick Timothy in The Telegraph.
------------
I was struck earlier today by English Outsider's admonition (on SST) directed to
ConfusedPonderer (archetype of the Teutons) in which EO said that it was vainglorious and
vacuous to bitterly claim that the US "occupies" Germany as it did in 1945 while at the same
time relying on US funding of Germany's defense through the USA's enormous military
expenditures.
IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely imaginary
threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government expenditures
for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really?
The US faces a rapidly escalating political crisis. The losing party in November will
undoubtedly go to the federal courts to claim that their opponents cheated in the process.
These charges will eventually reach SCOTUS. In this environment US interest in European affairs
will decline radically.
The kind of symmetrical disinterest described in Timothy's article will encourage the end of
Atlanticism. pl
Lukashenko is problem. He stayed in power way too long and the problem of his successor is
real. But neoliberalism is probably a bigger problem. 20% of population who think they will be
better off under neoliberalism are more organized and better financed. That's why in Ukraine they
were able to force their will on the population (with the smoke screen of nationalism covering
their interests; look at the policies which Yatsenyuk and Turchinov conducted, not on their
speeches)
Any color revolution is a perfect implementation of divide and conquer strategy
President
Aleksandr Lukashenko has called upon Belarusian citizens to not "go into the streets" and to
avoid protests, blaming foreign agents for stoking the unrest that has gripped the country
after the controversial election.
"Don't go out into the streets now! Understand that you and your children are being used
as cannon fodder," Lukashenko said Friday, during a meeting with the country's National
Security Council.
They've already come here in large numbers from Poland, the Netherlands, Ukraine, from
this 'Open Russia' – [Russian opposition figure Alexey] Navalny and so on and so forth.
The aggression against the country has already begun.
Addressing the handling of the protests by the police, Lukashenko has all but defended the
sweeping police action. At least 6,700 people have been detained over the past few days, while
the authorities have been accused of excessive force and even "torture" of incarcerated
protesters. Lukashenko insisted that, as a "military man," he has no other option than
to deal with the unrest, however.
"Do you want me to sit and wait until the whole of Minsk is upside down? We'll stabilize
the situation later," the president said, promising to "deal with" the foreigners
who allegedly came to Belarus to take part in the unrest.
Lukashenko has offered some wisdom to police officers, who've notably been much more lenient
to protesters since last night, saying they shouldn't be beating prone and defenseless people.
On Thursday, Interior Minister Yuri Karayev publicly apologized to people "accidentally"
caught up in the crackdown and said he'd issued clear orders not to touch members of the press.
This came after days of alleged beatings of both civilians and journalists, both in the streets
and in detention facilities, with grisly details emerging in multiple media
reports.
The Belarusian authorities have freed more than 2,000 of those detained on Friday, but
thousands more are said to remain behind bars, so far without charge.
The unrest unfolded in Belarus after the presidential election, held on August 9, the result
of which Lukashenko's opponents claim was grossly falsified. The country's authorities,
however, maintain that the vote count was fair – according to the final figures, the
long-term leader of Belarus secured a solid re-election, gaining more than 80 percent of votes.
Lukashenko's closest competitor, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya got a mere 10 percent support, yet
claimed to have won the election.
The election, and the turmoil that followed, have met an angry reaction in the West, and in
the European Union, in particular. Late on Friday, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said the bloc
"doesn't accept the election results," and that work on sanctioning those
"responsible for violence, arbitrary arrests, and falsification" has already begun.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
kensonnn 2 days ago
The EU is already asking for sanctions for crimes against human rights. Always the same
script. When SA cracks down protests or chops of heads, no sanctions off course...nor any EU
meddling.
William Binney is the former technical director of the U.S. National Security Agency who
worked at the agency for 30 years. He is a respected independent critic of how American
intelligence services abuse their powers to illegally spy on private communications of U.S.
citizens and around the globe.
Given his expert inside knowledge, it is worth paying attention to what Binney says.
In a media
interview this week, he dismissed the so-called Russiagate scandal as a "fabrication"
orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Many other observers have come to
the same conclusion about allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections with
the objective of helping Donald Trump get elected.
But what is particularly valuable about Binney's judgment is that he cites technical
analysis disproving the Russiagate narrative. That narrative remains dominant among U.S.
intelligence officials, politicians and pundits, especially those affiliated with the
Democrat party, as well as large sections of Western media. The premise of the narrative is
the allegation that a Russian state-backed cyber operation hacked into the database and
emails of the Democrat party back in 2016. The information perceived as damaging to
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was subsequently disseminated to the Wikileaks
whistleblower site and other U.S. media outlets.
A mysterious cyber persona known as "Guccifer 2.0" claimed to be the alleged hacker. U.S.
intelligence and news media have attributed Guccifer as a front for Russian cyber
operations.
Notably, however, the Russian government has always categorically denied any involvement
in alleged hacking or other interference in the 2016 U.S. election, or elections
thereafter.
William Binney and other independent former U.S. intelligence experts say they can prove
the Russiagate narrative is bogus. The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data
released by Guccifer. The analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous
data could not have been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. These
independent experts conclude that the data from the Democrat party could not have been
hacked, as Guccifer and Russiagaters claim. It could only have been obtained by a leak from
inside the party, perhaps by a disgruntled staffer who downloaded the information on to a
disc. That is the only feasible way such a huge amount of data could have been released. That
means the "Russian hacker" claims are baseless.
Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is currently imprisoned in Britain pending an
extradition trial to the U.S. to face espionage charges, has consistently maintained
that their source of files was not a hacker, nor did they collude with Russian intelligence.
As a matter of principle, Wikileaks does not disclose the identity of its sources, but the
organization has indicated it was an insider leak which provided the information on senior
Democrat party corruption.
William Binney says forensic analysis of the files released by Guccifer shows that the
mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression
that the files came from Russian sources. It is known from information later disclosed by
former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the CIA has a secretive program – Vault 7
– which is dedicated to false incrimination of cyber attacks to other actors. It seems
that the purpose of Guccifer was to create the perception of a connection between Wikileaks
and Russian intelligence in order to beef up the Russiagate narrative.
"So that suggested [to] us all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator
[of] Guccifer 2.0. And that Guccifer 2.0 was inside CIA I'm pointing to that group as the
group that was probably the originator of Guccifer 2.0 and also this fabrication of the
entire story of Russiagate," concludes Binney in his interview with Sputnik news
outlet.
This is not the first time that the Russiagate yarn has been debunked . But it is crucially important to make Binney's expert
views more widely appreciated especially as the U.S. presidential election looms on November
3. As that date approaches, U.S. intelligence and media seem to be intensifying claims about
Russian interference and cyber operations. Such wild and unsubstantiated "reports" always
refer to the alleged 2016 "hack" of the Democrat party by "Guccifer 2.0" as if it were
indisputable evidence of Russian interference and the "original sin" of supposed Kremlin
malign activity. The unsubstantiated 2016 "hack" is continually cited as the "precedent" and
"provenance" of more recent "reports" that purport to claim Russian interference.
Given the torrent of Russiagate derivatives expected in this U.S. election cycle, which is
damaging U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and recklessly winding up geopolitical tensions, it
is thus of paramount importance to listen to the conclusions of honorable experts like
William Binney.
The American public are being played by their own intelligence agencies and corporate
media with covert agendas that are deeply anti-democratic.
Well - who set up them up, converted from the OSS? The banksters.
"Wild Bill" Donovan worked for JP Morgan immediately after WWII.
"our" US intelligence agencies were set up by, and serve, the masters of high finance.
Is this in dispute?
meditate_vigorously , 11 hours ago
They have seeded enough misinformation that apparently it is. But, you are correct. It
is the Banksters.
Isisraelquaeda , 2 hours ago
Israel. The CIA was infiltrated by the Mossad long ago.
SurfingUSA , 15 hours ago
JFK was on to that truth, and would have been wise to mini-nuke Langley before his
ill-fated journey to Dallas.
Andrew G , 11 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
vova.2018 , 7 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
The CIA & MOSSAD work hand in hand in all their clandestine operations. There is not
doubt the CIA/MOSSAD are behind the creation, evolution, training, supplying weapons,
logistic-planning & financing of the terrorists & the destruction of the Middle
East. Anybody that believes the contrary has brain problems & need to have his head
examined.
CIA/MOSAD has been running illegal activities in Colombia: drug, arms, organs &
human (child-sex) trafficking. CIA/MOSAD is also giving training, logistic & arms to
Colombia paramilitary for clandestine operation against Venezuela. After Bolsonaro became
president, MOSSAD started running similar operation in Brazil. Israel & Brazil also
recognizes Guaido as the legit president of Venezuela.
CIA/MOSSAD have a long time policy of
assassinating & taking out pep who are a problem to the revisionist-zionist agenda, not
just in the M-East but in the world. The CIA/MOSSAD organizations have many connections in
other countries like the M-East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, et al but also to the UK-MI5.
The Israelis infiltrated the US to the highest levels a long time ago - Proof
Israel has & collects information (a database) of US citizens in coordination
with the CIA & the 5 eyes.
Israel works with the NSA in the liaison-loophole operations
Mossad undercover operations in WDC & all over the world
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC
People with 2 citizenships (US/Israel) in WDC/NYC (the real Power)
From Steve Bannon a christian-zionist: Collusion between the Trump administration and
Israel .
Funny how a number of the right wing conspiracy stories according to the MSM from a
couple years back were true from the get go. 1 indictment over 4 years in the greatest
attempted coup in this country's history. So sad that Binney and Assange were never
listened to. They can try to silence us who know of the truth, but as Winston Churchill
once said, 'Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice
may distort it. But there it is.' KDP still censors my book on their advertising platform
as it
promotes conspiratorial theories (about the Obama led coup) and calls out BLM and Antifa
for what they are (marxists) . Yet the same platform still recommends BLM books stating
there is a pandemic of cops killing innocent blacks. F them!!!! #RIPSeth #FreeJulian
#FreeMillie
smacker , 11 hours ago
Yes, and we all know the name of the DNC leaker who downloaded and provided
WikiLeaks
with evidence of CIA and DNC corruption.
He was assassinated to prevent him from naming who Guccifer 2.0 was and where he is
located.
The Russia-gate farce itself provides solid evidence that the CIA and others are in bed
with DNC
and went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed, they
instigated
a program of x-gates to get him out of office any way they could. This continues to this
day.
This is treason at the highest level.
ACMeCorporations , 12 hours ago
Hacking? What Russian hacking?
In recently released testimony, the CEO of CrowdStrike admitted in congressional
testimony, under oath, that it actually has no direct evidence Russia stole the DNC
emails.
Nelbev , 9 hours ago
"The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data released by Guccifer. The
analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous data could not have
been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. ... a disgruntled
staffer who downloaded the information on to a disc. That is the only feasible way such a
huge amount of data could have been released. ... William Binney says forensic analysis
of the files released by Guccifer shows that the mystery hacker deliberately inserted
digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian
sources. ... "
Any computer file is a bunch of 1s and 0s. Anyone can change anything with a hex editor.
E.g. I had wrong dates on some photographs once, downloaded as opposed to when taken, just
edited the time stamp. You cannot claim any time stamp is original. If true time stamps,
then the DNC files were downloaded to a thumb drive at a computer on location and not to
the internet via a phone line. However anyone can change the time stamps. Stating a
"mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital [Russian] 'fingerprints' " is a joke if
denying the file time stamps were not tampered with. The real thing is where the narrative
came from, political spin doctors, Perkins Coie law firm hired by DNC and Hillary campaign
who hired Crowdstrike [and also hired Fusion GPS before for pissgate dossier propaganda and
FISC warrants to spy on political opponents] and Perkins Coie edited Crowdstrike report
with Russian narrative. FBI never looked at DNC servers. This is like your house was broken
into. You deny police the ability to enter and look at evidence like DNC computers. You
hire a private investigator to say your neighbor you do not like did it and publicise
accusations. Take word of political consultants hired, spin doctor propaganda, Crowdstrike
narrative , no police investigation. Atlantic Council?
Vivekwhu , 8 hours ago
The Atlantic Council is another NATO fart. Nuff said!
The_American , 15 hours ago
God Damn traitor Obama!
Yen Cross , 14 hours ago
TOTUS
For the youngsters.
Teleprompter Of The United States.
Leguran , 6 hours ago
The CIA has gotten away with so much criminal behavior and crimes against the American
public that this is totally believable. Congress just lets this stuff happen and does
nothing. Which is worse - Congress or the CIA?
Congress set up the system. It is mandated to perform oversight. And it just sits on its
thumbs and wallows in it privileges.
This time Congress went further than ever before. It was behind and engaged in an
attempted coup d'état.
Know thy enemy , 10 hours ago
Link to ShadowGate (ShadowNet) documentary - which answers the question, what is the
keystone,,,,,
It's time for Assange and Wikileaks to name the person who they rec'd the info from. By
hiding behind the "we don't name names" Mantra they are helping destroy America by
polarizing its citizens. Name the damn person, get it all out there so the left can see
that they've been played by their leaders. Let's cut this crap.
freedommusic , 7 hours ago
...all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator [of] Guccifer 2.0.
Yep, I knew since day one. I remember seeing Hillary Clinton talking about Guccifer . As
soon as uttered the name, I KNEW she with the CIA were the brainchild of this bogus
decoy.
They copy. They mimic. These are NOT creative individuals.
Perhaps hell is too good a place for them.
on target , 4 hours ago
This is old news but worth bringing up again. The CIA never wanted Trump in, and of
course, they want him out. Their fingerprints were all over Russiagate, The Kavanaugh
hearings, Ukrainegate, and on and on. They are just trying to cover their asses for a
string of illegal "irregularities" in their operations for years. Trump should never have
tried to be a get along type of guy. He should have purged the entire leadership of the CIA
on day one and the FBI on day 2. They can not be trusted with an "America First" agenda.
They are all New World Order types who know whats best for everyone.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Boom, Boom, Boom !
Three Reseachable Tweets thru Facebook, I cut all at once, Unedited !
"#SusanRice has as much trouble with her memory as #HillaryClinton. Rice testified in
writing that she 'does not recall' who gave her key #Benghazi talking points she used on
TV, 'does not recall' being in any meetings regarding Benghazi in five days following the
attack, and 'does not recall' communicating with anyone in Clinton's office about
Benghazi," Tom Fitton in Breitbart.
"Adam Schiff secretly subpoenaed, without court authorization, the phone records of Rudy
Giuliani and then published the phone records of innocent Americans, including
@realDonaldTrump 's lawyers, a member of Congress, and a journalist," @TomFitton .
BREAKING: Judicial Watch announced today that former #Obama National Security Advisor
and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, admitted in written responses given
under oath that she emailed with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Clinton's
non-government email account and that she received emails related to government business on
her own personal email account.
STONEHILLADY , 7 hours ago
It's not just the Democrats, the warmongering neocons of the Republican party are also
in on it, the Bush/Romney McCain/McConnell/Cheney and many more. It's called "Kick Backs"
Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up working for all these spying
companies that span the 5eyes to Israel. It seems our POTUS has got his hands full swimming
up stream to get this stopped and actually get rid of the CIA. It's the number 1 reason he
doesn't trust these people, they all try to tell him stuff that is mis-directed.
Liars, leakers, and thieves are running not only our nation but the world, as George
Carlin said, "It's a Big Club, and we ain't in it." If you fall for this false narrative of
mail in voting and not actually go and vote on election day, you better start learning
Chinese for surely Peelosi and Schumer will have their way and mess up this election so
they can drag Trump out of office and possible do him and his family some serious harm, all
because so many of you listen to the MSM and don't research their phony claims.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
It's called "Kick Backs" Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up
working for all these spying companies that span the 5eyes to Israel.
American Generals & Admirals are a lot more corrupt today than they were a few
generations back. Many of them are outright evil people in today's times. Many of these
people are just criminals that will steal anything they can get their banana republic
klepto-paws on. They're nothing but common criminals and thieves. No different than the
Waffen SS or any other group of brigands, bandits, and criminal gangsters.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
The CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, defense contractors are
mixed up in a lot of crimes and criminal activities on American soil against American
citizens and American civilians. They do not recognize borders or laws or rights of liberty
or property rights or ownership or intellectual property. They're all thieves and criminals
in the military secret police and secret police gangsters cabal.
BandGap , 7 hours ago
I have seen Binney's input. He is correct in my view because he
scientifically/mathematically proves his point.
The blinded masses do not care about this approach, just like wearing masks.
The truth is too difficult for many to fit into their understanding of the world.
So they repeat what they have been told, never stopping to consider the facts or how
circumstances have been manipulated.
It is frustrating to watch, difficult to navigate at times for me. Good people who will
not stop and think of what the facts show them.
otschelnik , 8 hours ago
It could have been the CIA or it could have been one of the cut-outs for plausible
deniability, and of all the usual suspects it was probably CrowdStrike.
- CGI / Global Strategy Group / Analysis Corp. - John Brennan (former CEO)
- Dynology, Wikistrat - General James L. Jones (former chairman of Atlantic Council, NSA
under Obama)
- CrowdStrike - Dmitri Alperovich and Shawn Henry (former chief of cyber forensics
FBI)
- Clearforce - Michael Hayden (former dir. NSA under Clinton, CIA under Bush) and Jim
Jones Jr. (son Gnrl James Jones)
- McChrystal Group - Stanley McChrystal (former chief of special operations DOD)
fersur , 8 hours ago
Unedited !
The Brookings Institute – a Deep State Hub Connected to the Fake Russia Collusion
and Ukraine Scandals Is Now Also Connected to China Spying In the US
The Brookings
Institute was heavily involved in the Democrat and Deep State Russia collusion hoax and
Ukraine impeachment fraud. These actions against President Trump were criminal.
This institute is influenced from foreign donations from entities who don't have an
America first agenda. New reports connect the Institute to Chinese spying.
As we reported previously, Julie Kelly at American Greatness
released a report where she addresses the connections between the Brookings Institute,
Democrats and foreign entities. She summarized her report as follows: Accepting millions
from a state sponsor of terrorism, foisting one of the biggest frauds in history on the
American people, and acting as a laundering agent of sorts for Democratic political
contributions disguised as policy grants isn't a good look for such an esteemed
institution. One would be hard-pressed to name a more influential think tank than the
Brookings Institution. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit routinely ranks at the top of
the list
of the best think tanks in the world; Brookings scholars produce a steady flow of reports,
symposiums, and news releases that sway the conversation on any number of issues ranging
from domestic and economic policy to foreign affairs.
Brookings is home to lots of Beltway power players: Ben
Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Brookings fellows.
Top officials from both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations lend political
heft to the organization. From 2002 until 2017, the organization's president was Strobe
Talbott. He's a longtime BFF of Bill Clinton; they met in the 1970s at Oxford University
and have been tight ever since. Talbott was a top aide to both President Bill Clinton and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Kelly continued:
Brookings-based fellows working at Lawfare were the media's go-to legal "experts" to
legitimize the concocted crime; the outlet manipulated much of the news coverage on
collusion by pumping out primers and guidance on how to report collusion events from
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment to his final report.
Now, testimony related to a defamation lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the author of
the infamous "dossier" on Donald Trump, has exposed his direct ties to Talbott in 2016 when
he was still head of Brookings. Talbott and Steele were in communication before and after
the presidential election; Steele wanted Talbott to circulate the dossier to his pals in
John Kerry's State Department, which reportedly is what Talbott
did . Steele also briefed top state department officials in October 2016 about his
work.
But this isn't the only connection between the Brookings Institute and the Russia
collusion and Ukrainian scandals. We were the first to report that the Primary Sub-Source
(PSS) in the Steele report, the main individual who supplied Steele with bogus information
in his report was Igor Danchenko.
In November 2019, the star witness for the Democrat Representative Adam Schiff's
impeachment show trial was announced. Her name was Fiona Hill.
Today we've uncovered that Hill is a close associate of the Primary Sub-Source (PSS) for
the Steele dossier – Igor Danchenko – the individual behind most all the lies
in the Steele dossier. No wonder Hill saw the Steele dossier before it was released. Her
associate created it.
Both Fiona Hill and Igor Danchenko are connected to the Brookings Institute.
They gave a presentation together as Brookings Institute representatives:
Kelly writes about the foreign funding the Brookings Institute partakes:
So who and what have been funding the anti-Trump political operation at Brookings over
the past few years? The think tank's top benefactors are a predictable mix of family
foundations, Fortune 100 corporations, and Big Tech billionaires. But one of the biggest
contributors to Brookings' $100 million-plus annual budget is the Embassy of Qatar.
According to financial reports, Qatar has donated more than $22 million to the think tank
since 2004. In fact, Brookings operates a satellite center in Doha, the
capital of Qatar. The wealthy Middle Eastern oil producer
spends billions on American institutions such as universities and other think
tanks.
Qatar also is a top state sponsor of terrorism, pouring billions into Hamas, al-Qaeda,
and the Muslim Brotherhood, to name a few. "The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has
historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level," President Trump said in 2017. "We
have to stop the funding of terrorism."
An email from a Qatari official, obtained by WikiLeaks, said the Brookings
Institution was as important to the country as "an aircraft carrier."
The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a
Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China's intelligence and
spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents.
The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank's hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the
institution said . The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal
government that has raised flags within the FBI.
The partnership raises questions about potential Chinese espionage activities at the
think tank, which employs numerous former government officials and nearly two dozen
current foreign policy advisers to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
It is really frightening that one of two major political parties in the US is tied so
closely with the Brookings Institute. It is even more frightening that foreign enemies of
the United States are connected to this entity as well.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
One thing for sure is these guys have far to much of our money to spend promoting their
own good.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Unedited !
Mueller Indictments Tied To "ShadowNet," Former Obama National Security Advisor and
Obama's CIA Director – Not Trump
According to a report in the Daily Beast, which cited the Wall Street Journal's
reporting of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into two companies, Wikistrat
and Psy Group, "The firm's advisory council lists former CIA and National Security Agency
director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones."
According to numerous reporting from major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and
Daily Beast, both Wikistrat and Psy Group represent themselves as being social media
analysts and black PSYOP organizations. Both Wikistrat and Psy Group have foreign ownership
mixed between Israeli, Saudi (Middle East) and Russian. Here is what the Wall Street
Journal, The Daily Beast and pretty much everyone else out there doesn't know (or won't
tell you).
The fact Obama's former National Security Advisor, General James Jones, and former Obama
CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, are both on Wikistrat's advisory board may not seem
suspicious, but both of these general's have another thing in common, and that is the
ShadowNet. The ShadowNet, and its optional companion relational database, iPsy, were both
originally developed by the small, family owned defense contracting company, Dynology. The
family that owns Dynology; Gen. James Jones. I would add Paul Manafort and Rick Davis was
Dynology's partner at the time we were making the ShadowNet and iPsy commercially
available.
After obtaining the contract in Iraq to develop social media psychological warfare
capabilities, known in military nomenclature as Interactive Internet Activities, or IIA,
Gen. Jones kept the taxpayer funded application we developed in Iraq for the 4th
Psychological Operation Group, and made it commercially available under the trademark of
the "ShadowNet" and the optional black PSYOP component, "iPsy." If you think it is
interesting that one of the companies under Mueller's indictment is named, "Psy" Group, I
did as well. In fact, literally everything both publicly described in news reports, and
even their websites, are exactly the same as the ShadowNet and iPsy I helped build, and
literally named.
The only thing different I saw as far as services offered by Wikistrat, and that of
Dynology and the ShadowNet, was described by The Daily Beast as, "It also engaged in
intelligence collection." Although iPsy was a relational database that allowed for the
dissemination of whatever the required narrative was, "intelligence collection" struck
another bell with me, and that's a company named ClearForce.
ClearForce was developed as a solution to stopping classified leaks following the Edward
Snowden debacle in 2013. Changes in NISPOM compliance requirements forced companies and
government agencies that had employees with government clearances to take preventive
measure to mitigate the potential of leaking. Although the NISPOM compliance requirement
almost certainly would have been influenced by either Hayden, Jones or both, they once
again sought to profit from it.
Using components of the ShadowNet and iPsy, the ClearForce application (which the
company, ClearForce, was named after,) was developed to provide compliance to a regulation
I strongly suspect you will find Jones and Hayden had a hand in creating. In fact, I
strongly suspect you will find General Jones had some influence in the original requirement
for our Iraq contract Dynology won to build the ShadowNet – at taxpayer expense!
Dynology worked for several years incorporating other collection sources, such as
financial, law enforcement and foreign travel, and ties them all into your social media
activity. Their relationship with Facebook and other social media giants would have been
nice questions for congress to have asked them when they testified.
Part 1 of 2 !
fersur , 7 hours ago
Part 2 of 2 !
The ClearForce application combines all of these sources together in real-time and uses
artificial intelligence to predictively determine if you are likely to steal or leak based
on the behavioral profile ClearForce creates of you. It can be used to determine if you get
a job, and even if you lose a job because a computer read your social media, credit and
other sources to determine you were likely to commit a crime. It's important for you to
stop for a moment and think about the fact it is privately controlled by the former CIA
director and Obama's National Security Advisor/NATO Supreme Allied Commander, should scare
the heck out of you.
When the ClearForce application was complete, Dynology handed it off to ClearForce, the
new company, and Michael Hayden joined the board of directors along with Gen. Jones and his
son, Jim, as the president of ClearForce. Doesn't that kind of sound like "intelligence
collection" described by the Daily Beast in Wikistrat's services?
To wrap this all up, Paul Manafort, Rick Davis, George Nader, Wikistrat and Psy Group
are all directly connected to Mueller's social media influence and election interreference
in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, I believe all are under indictment, computers
seized, some already sentenced. All of these people under indictment by Mueller have one
key thing in common, General James Jones's and Michael Hayden's social media black PSYOP
tools; the ShadowNet, iPsy and ClearForce.
A recent meeting I had with Congressman Gus Bilirakis' chief of staff, Elizabeth Hittos,
is confirmation that they are reviewing my DoD memorandum stating the work I did on the IIA
information operation in Iraq, the Dynology marketing slicks for the ShadowNet and iPsy,
along with a screenshot of Goggle's Way-Back Machine showing Paul Manafort's partnership
with Dynology in 2007 and later. After presenting to her these facts and making clear I
have much more information that requires the highest classification SCIF to discuss and
requires being read-on to the program, Elizabeth contacted the office of Congressman Devin
Nunez to request that I brief the intelligence committee on this critical information
pertaining directly to the 2010 Ukrainian elections, Michael Brown riots, 2016 election
interference and the "Russia collusion" hoax. All of that is on top of numerous
questionable ethical and potentially illegal profits from DoD contracts while servings as
NATO Commander and Obama's National Security Advisor.
We also need to know if the ShadowNet and iPsy were allowed to fall into foreign hands,
including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel. I'm pretty sure South America is going to have a
few questions for Jones and Obama as well? Stay tuned!
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
The neoliberals own the media, courts, academia, and BUREAUCRACY (including CIA) and
they will do anything to make sure they retain power over everyone. These control freaks
work hard to create all sorts of enemies to justify their existence.
LaugherNYC , 15 hours ago
It is sad that this information has to be repeatedly published, over and over and over,
by SCI and other Russian. outlets.
Because no legit AMERICAN news outlet will give Binney or Assange the time of day or any
credence, this all becomes Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and denials. People roll their
eyes and say "Oh God, not the whole 'Seth Rich was murdered by the CIA' crap again!! You
know, his FAMILY has asked that people stop spreading these conspiracy theories and
lies."
SCI is a garbage bin, nothing more than a dizinformatz machine for Putin, but in this
case, they are likely right. It seems preposterous that the "best hackers in the world"
would forget to use a VPN or leave a signature behind, and it makes far more sense that the
emails were leaked by someone irate at the abuses of the DNC - the squashing of Bernie, the
cheating for Hillary in the debates - behavior we saw repeated in 2020 with Bernie shoved
aside again for the pathetic Biden.
Would that SOMEONE in the US who is not on the Kremlin payroll would pick up this
thread. But all the "investigative journalists" now work indirectly for the DNC, and those
that don't are cancelled by the left.
Stone_d_agehurler , 15 hours ago
I am Guccifer and I approve this message.
Sarc/
But i do share your opinion. They are likely right this time and most of the pundits and
media in the U. S. know it. That's what makes this a sad story about how rotten the U. S.
system has become.
Democrats will sacrifice the Union for getting Trump out of office.
If elections in Nov won't go their way, Civil War II might become a real thing in
2021.
PeterLong , 4 hours ago
If " digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from
Russian sources" were inserted in the leak by "Guccifer", and if the leak to wikileaks came
from Seth Rich, via whatever avenue, then the "Guccifer" release came after the wikileaks
release, or after wikileaks had the files, and was a reaction to same attempting to
diminish their importance/accuracy and cast doubt on Trump. Could CIA and/or DNC have known
the files were obtained by wikileaks before wikileaks actually released them? In any case
collusion of CIA with DNC seems to be a given.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Because Seth had already given it to Wikileaks. There is no 'Fancy Bear'. There is no
'Cozy Bear'. Those were made up by CrowdStrike, and they tried the same crap on Ukraine,
and Ukraine told them to pound sand. When push came to shove, and CrowdStrike was forced to
say what they really had under oath, they said: "We have nothing."
novictim , 4 hours ago
You are leaving out Crowd Strike. Seth Rich was tasked by people at the DNC to copy data
off the servers. He made a backup copy and gave a copy to people who then got it to Wiki
leaks. He used highspeed file transfers to local drives to do his task.
Meanwhile, it was the Ukrainian company Crowd Strike that claimed the data was stolen
over the internet and that the thieves were in Russia. That 'proof" was never verified by
US Intelligence but was taken on its word as being true despite crowd strike falsifying
Russian hacks and being caught for it in the past.
Joebloinvestor , 5 hours ago
The "five eyes" are convinced they run the world and try to.
That is what Brennan counted on for these agencies to help get President Trump.
As I said, it is time for the UK and the US to have a serious conversation about their
current and ex-spies being involved in US elections.
Southern_Boy , 5 hours ago
It wasn't the CIA. It was John Brennan and Clapper. The CIA, NSA FBI, DOJ and the
Ukrainian Intelligence Service just went along working together and followed orders from
Brennan who got them from Hillary and Obama.
Oh, and don't forget the GOP Globalist RINOs who also participated in the coup attempt:
McCain, Romney, Kasich, Boehner, Lee and Richard Burr.
With Kasich now performing as a puppy dog for Biden at the Democrat Convention as a
Democrat DNC executive, the re-alignment is almost complete: Globalist Nationalist
Socialist Bolshevism versus American Populism, i.e. Elites versus Deplorables or Academics
versus Smelly Wal-Mart people.
on target , 5 hours ago
No way. CIA up to their eyeballs in this as well as the State Department. Impossible for
Russiagate or Ukrainegate without direct CIA and State involvement.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Following Orders? How did that argument go at Nuremberg? (hint: not very well)
LeadPipeDreams , 6 hours ago
LOL - the CIA's main mission - despite their "official" charter, has always been to
destabilize the US and its citizens via psyops, false flags, etc.
Covid-1984 is their latest and it appears most successful project yet.
Iconoclast27 , 5 hours ago
The CIA received a $200 million initial investment from the Rockefeller and Carnegie
foundations when it was first established, that should tell you everything you need to know
how who they truly work for.
A_Huxley , 6 hours ago
CIA, MI6, 5 eye nations.
All wanted to sway the USA their own way.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
Almost as frightening as the concentrated power held by companies such as Facebook and
Google is the fact Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, is the person who
owns and controls the Washington Post. It is silly to think Jeff Bezos purchased the
Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence.
It is more likely he purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would
ensure him in Washington when wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to
both shape and control public opinion. More on this subject in the article below.
How it is the Democrats, the Deep State, and the legacy media are still able to cling to
the remnants of these long discredited narratives is a mystery.
avoiceofliberty , 6 hours ago
At the official level, you have a point.
However, even before Mueller was appointed, a review of the materials in the extant
public record of both the DNC "hack" and the history of Crowdstrike showed the narrative
simply did not make sense. A detailed investigation of materials not made public was not
necessary to shoot down the entire narrative.
Indeed, one of the great scandals of the Mueller probe is the way it did not bring
prudential skepticism to the question of the DNC "hack". When building a case, either for
public debate or for public trial, a dose of skepticism is healthy; it leads to a careful
vetting of facts and reasoning.
Alice-the-dog , 6 hours ago
The CIA has been an agency wholly independent of the US government almost since its
inception. It is not under any significant control by the government, and has its own
agenda which may occasionally coincide with that of the government, but only
coincidentally. It has its own view of how the world should look, and will not balk at any
means necessary to achieve such. Including the murder of dis-favorable members of
government.
snodgrass , 6 hours ago
It's the CIA and the FBI, Obama and people in his administration who cooked up
Russiagate.
Floki_Ragnarsson , 7 hours ago
The CIA whacked JFK because he was going to slow the roll to Vietnam AND disband the CIA
and reform it.
It is broken and needs to be disbanded and reformed along lines that actually WORK! The
CIA missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11, etc. HTF does THAT happen?
DeportThemAll , 6 hours ago
The CIA didn't "miss" 9/11... they participated in it.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
The CIA is a tool that when improperly used can do great damage.
Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to
sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country should be considered
naive. Too many people America is more than a little hypocritical when they criticize other
countries for trying to gain influence considering our history of meddling in the affairs
of other countries.
Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just
how big the government intelligence agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their
spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and
questions whether we have lost control.
The idea of Binney and Jason Sullivan privately working to 'secure the vote' is
something that I actually consider to be very eyebrow raising and alarming.
Son of Captain Nemo , 8 hours ago
Bill Binney under "B" in the only "yellow pages" that show a conscience and a
soul!...
This is the dumbest article ever. Russiagate is a total fabrication of the FBI as per
Clinesmith, CIA provided information that would have nipped it at the bud. Read the real
news.
bringonthebigone , 9 hours ago
Wrong. this article is one small piece of the puzzle. Clinesmith is one small piece of
the puzzle. The Flynn entrapment is one small piece of the puzzle. The Halper entrapment
was one small piece of the puzzle.
Because Clinesmith at the FBI covered up the information saying Page was a CIA source
does not mean it was a total FBI fabrication and does not mean the CIA was not involved and
does not mean the DNC server hack is irrelevant.
Sundance does a better job pulling it all together.
PKKA , 14 hours ago
Relations have already soured between Russia and the United States, and sanctions have
been announced. Tensions have grown on the NATO-Russia border. The meat has already been
rolled into the minced meat and it will not be possible to roll the minced meat back into
the meat. The CIA got it. But the Russian people now absolutely understand that the United
States will always be the enemy of Russia, no matter whether socialist or capitalist. But I
like it even more than the feigned hypocritical "friendship". Russia has never reached such
heights as during the good old Cold War. All Russians have a huge incentive, long live the
new Cold War!
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
hang_the_banksters , 31 minutes ago
the best proof thAt Guccifer 2 was CIA hacking themselves to frame Wikileaks is
this:
Guccifer has not yet been identified, indicted and arrested.
you'd think CIAFBINSA would be turning over every stone to the ends of the earth to bust
Guccifer. we just had to endure 4 years of hysterical propaganda that Russia had hacked our
election and that Trump was their secret agent. so Guccifer should be the Most Wanted Man
on the planet. meanwhile, it's crickets from FBI. they arent even looking for him. because
Guccifer is over at Langley. maybe someone outta ask Brennan where G2 is now.
remember when DOJ indicted all those GRU cybersoldiers? the evidence listed in the
indictment was so stunning that i dont believe it. NSA so thoroughly hacked back into GRU
that NSA was watching GRU through their own webcams and recording them doing Google
searches to translate words which were written in Guccifer's blog posts about the DNC email
leaks. NSA and DOJ must think we are all stupid, that we will believe NSA is so powerful to
do that, yet they cant identify Guccifer.
i say i dont believe that for a second because no way Russian GRU are so stupid to even
have webcams on the computers they use to hack, and it is absurd to think GRU soldiers on a
Russian military base would be using Google instead of Yandex to translate words into
English.
lay_arrow
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
As a confirmed conspiracy theorist since I came back from 'Nam, here's mine: The
European nobility recognized with the American and French revolutions that they needed a
better approach. They borrowed from the Tudors (who had to deal with Parliament) and began
to rule by controlling the facade of representative government. This was enhanced by
funding banks to control through currency, as well as blackmail and murder, and morphed
into a complete propaganda machine like no other in history. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad, the
mainstream media, deep plants in bureaucracy and "democratic" bodies all obey their
dictates to create narratives that control our minds. Trump seems to offer hope, but
remember, he could be their latest narrative.
greatdisconformity , 1 hour ago
A Democracy cannot function on a higher level than the general electorate.
The intelligence and education of the general electorate has been sliding for
generations, because both political parties can play this to their advantage.
It is no accident that most of the messages coming from politicians are targeted to
imbeciles.
The Mueller 'gang' as I'll call them has been caught with their pants down. The
official FBI lawyer team-member of the Mueller gang is now under criminal
indictment. A criminal indictment has been filed against former FBI Attorney Kevin Clinsesmith.
H is criminal action occurred while he was a part of the Mueller Investigative Team . This
crime is detailed in the Information Charging Document filed by the United States Department of
Justice with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, wherein it
documents that "on or about June 19, 2017" Kevin Clinesmith "did willfully and knowingly make
and use a false writing and document, knowing the same to contain materially false, fictitious,
and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch
and judicial branch of the Government of the United States".
Kevin Clinesmith while he was part of the Mueller Team did this while President Trump was in
office.
-- "Count One" violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (a) (3), that specifically says Clinesmith
"shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves
international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8
years, or both" -- the critical meaning of which is that Clinesmith is not only facing 5-years
in prison, but could see his sentence having another 8-years added on if the crime he committed
was domestic terrorism as defined by 18 U.S. C. § 2331.Definitions -- a definition
that makes it a domestic terrorism crime "to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion" -- and is a domestic terrorism crime.
Clinesmith effectively admitted to committing this crime when he sent a text saying "I Have
Initiated the Destruction of the Republic" -- that explains why Clinesmith has agreed to a plea
deal with US Attorney Durham that will see him pleading guilty and giving evidence against
other coup plotters.
Clinesmith is proving to be a linchpin of the Operation Crossfire Hurricane investigation
that the FBI used to illegally target the Trump campaign in which Clinesmith took part in the
decision to send an FBI special agent into a counterintelligence briefing with Donald Trump and
General Michael Flynn. Clinesmith being one of the FBI lawyers who took part in interviews with
George Papadopoulos -- as well as Clinesmith was one of the plotters behind the FISA warrant
having been illegally obtained to spy on President Trump after he was in office. Clinesmith did
with joy as evidenced by his 22 November 2016 text disdaining Trump's election victory saying
Viva le
Resistance , of which caught Clinesmith by his short-hairs and he now fearing dread knowing
he stuck his foot in his mouth so-to-speak.
It is now Trump's turn to take down all of the membership of the attempted Coup d'Etat. Pop
your popcorn, get out your beer and sodas, and settle in. The show is just getting started.
Even though we assume (the case is not clear yet) this is all about Clinsesmith reversing
the meaning of a document submitted to the FISA court, about as bad act a senior FBI lawyer
can get up to, they are nowhere near as confident as yourself about the potential outcome of
this case over at the CTH.
Much more along the lines of this being another James Wolfe situation. Like Wolfe,
Clinsesmith knows too much and if he spills it all hell lets loose. However, to show there is
justice for all he, again like Wolfe, will spend a short amount of time in a white collar
jail and that's it.
By pleading guilty he has saved himself a small fortune in lawyers fees. Nice one.
I agree that he has made a deal with Durham but if Durham presses him he must tell all
about all or loose the deal and become the cutest fellow in the cell block.
Someone asked that I paint a bird's eye, 20,000 mile high view of the why's and
wherefore's for this whole fiasco, and I'd like feedback.
I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with
fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14
• where Manafort was working to promote Ukraine's EU accession (AGAINST Russia's
interests)
• backed by the Clinton, Obama, McCain, Kerry, Nuland State Department, and the
establishment media
• leading Crimeans to vote 95% for annexation with Russia, to escape the Ukraine
civil war
prompting punishing sanctions to damage the recovery of Russia
• which was looted by the oligarchs under Clinton/Yeltsin/Summers "shock therapy" in
the '90s.
• including by oligarch tax cheat Bill Browder who lied to promote the extra-judicial
and bogus Magnitsky Act (REAL reason for Trump Tower meeting)
• all hiding behind a massive psy-op campaign of McCarthyite anti-Russia, anti-Putin
hysteria
• brought to you by the (corrupt) FBI, CIA, NSA, MI-6, Five Eyes, all led by the nose
by John Brennan, and
• and the disinfo industry and a spy network which laid out the breadcrumbs of
distraction, while trying to entrap bozos George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone,
etc.
• ALL because Trump (via Manafort) would know the truth, and not see Russia as THE
ENEMY - which would totally blowing their cover.
So, the incompetent Dems handed Trump his re-election victory and sparked a dangerous new
Cold War (World War?) and nuclear M.A.D.
No one benefits from this other than the military/national security/information industry
complex.
"I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with
fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14" Do you think the Russians were guilty or
not?
Plead guilty to a crime and you lose your bar license. I guess Clinesmith was not ready to
fall back being only a bar-tender after all, so he is now wiggling out of his "plea
agreement". The gulf between pleading guilty and pleading nolo contendre now appears
insurmountable.
Reality bites, along with the drawn-out difficulty getting justice in any of this Spygate
takedown. Humbles one about the amount of time it takes to actually build a beyond a
reasonable doubt case against any of these now exposed players, when the defendant can
successfully argue - I didn't intend to commit a crime, and/or I can't recall or I don't
remember anything about this incident.
Carry on Barr-Durham You have my very best wishes and even prayers. Just like Benghazi,
something happened, but you just can't prove something happened. Is that justice served or a
miscarriage of justice?
An alternate theory that I find very plausible is that FBI contractors were using the NSA
database for political opposition research. When the NSA found out and closed that avenue
there was a movement to hide that activity. Russia Collusion provided that opportunity as the
Clinton campaign funded Steele Dossier got laundered by Fusion GPS, DOJ official Bruce Ohr
and with the support of Obama White House became the basis to launch a counter-intelligence
investigation. After Trump got elected this operation moved to hide and obfuscate. Getting
Flynn out became priority one and Trump obliged by firing him. Mueller was the additional
option to prevent exposure and Trump once gain acceded by not declassifying.
As documents get declassified now the public, at least those following this story, get to
see how law enforcement and intelligence were used to interfere in a presidential election
and frame an opposition political candidate and duly elected president as a Manchurian
Candidate. Even more importantly we see how the entire justice system got weaponized using
false evidence and secret courts as well as a campaign of disinformation using the media who
were in cahoots to destroy the Trump presidency.
Clinesmith's plea deal is an important cornerstone in uncovering both the malfeasance and
the violation of law. He knowingly submitted false evidence to FISC to obtain a FISA warrant.
The only open question is how far and deep does Bill Barr want to go?
Begging your indulgence for my 'stream-of-consciousness' argument. Just trying to connect
so many points and history into a concise post.
My view of Russia under Putin has been of a country initially leaning West but unwilling
to give up its sovereignty to US diktat, given the history of NATO aggression.
It was the logical course of events which convinced me Putin was not the aggressor in
Ukraine. First, the Sochi Olympics with all of the media potshots at Russia/Putin, concurrent
and immediately followed by the Maidan coupe and ultra-right attacks on eastern Ukrainians,
especially the fiery massacre in the Odessa Trade Union building killing nearly nearly 50,
with 200 injured.
In the public record at the time was NATO's position that Ukraine must cancel a lease
given the Russians to keep its centuries old naval fleet (it's only warm water base) on the
Crimean peninsula. So, the accession of Crimea to the Russian federation by democratic vote
seemed only too logical, considering it had historically been considered part of Russia.
Otherwise, Russia foreign policy appears to be a model for the world, when compared
side-by-side with that of the U.S., IMHO.
The NGO community has reacted angrily to the exposure, labelling Greyzone a Kremlin and
Beijing linked disinfo site, even as the story was confirmed by South China Morning Post. The
SCMP was then labelled "pro-communist". Facts are wholly partisan, since 2014.
The New York Timesreports on the
resignation of Brian Hook, who will be replaced by none other than Elliott Abrams:
Mr. Hook will be succeeded by Elliott Abrams, a conservative foreign policy veteran and
Iran hard-liner who is currently the State Department's special representative for
Venezuela.
As the administration's special envoy, Hook had no success in gaining support from other
governments for the "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. His brief stint as a negotiator
with our European allies yielded nothing, and when he was trying to negotiate with them Trump
famously had no idea who
he was . He mostly served as one of the administration's leading
propagandists .
Last year he came under fire from the State Department's Inspector General for his role in
the
mistreatment of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh , who was the target of political retaliation at the
department on account of her support for the JCPOA and at least partly because of her Iranian
heritage.
Hook is described in the Times ' report as a "survivor," but they neglect to
mention that the reason he has survived so long in the Trump administration is his cowardice
.
Perhaps the most bizarre thing about the coverage of Hook·s resignation is that it
is framed as somehow undermining the chances of diplomacy with Iran.
As if viewing gambling at Rick's Café Americain in
Casablanca, Washington policymakers are shocked, shocked to discover that China, too, can
apply economic pressure. Complained the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano: "the Chinese
Communist government slapped sanctions on members of Congress as well as a U.S. ambassador.
This action is intended to send the world a message: Fear us."
Of course, the penalties Carafano complained of were retaliation for Washington's
imposition of similar sanctions on Chinese officials over the crackdown in Hong Kong. The
bilateral pissing match will have no impact on Beijing's policies.
Carafano is not the first person to complain about China's economic sanctions. Mathew Ha
of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was upset by South Korea's refusal to follow
Washington's criticism of the People's Republic of China, which he blamed on fear of PRC
economic retaliation. Washington Examiner columnist Tom Rogan voiced similar
irritation with Beijing's threatened economic retaliation after Canberra moved to counteract
increased Chinese repression in Hong Kong.
Imagine. China is acting like the US!
It's almost charming to see such anger over Beijing's behavior when America continues to
be the global leader in using its economic power to penalize governments which refuse to heed
its commands. In January the president said he would punish Iraq if it acted like a sovereign
state and insisted on the withdrawal of American troops.
In June the Trump administration threatened to impose sanctions on everyone, including
family members , associated with the International Criminal Court if it proceeded with
plans to investigate US military personnel. Washington would treat a United Nations body
created by a multilateral treaty like Iran. And borrow enforcement tactics from North Korea,
which punishes multiple generations for offenses against the regime.
Last month the Trump administration added new sanctions in an attempt to block
construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Germany, a supposed ally, and
Russia, essentially demanding that Berlin submit its energy policy to America for approval.
(It is widely suspected in Europe that Washington's ultimate objective is to force US natural
gas exports into the German market.)
However, what continues to most set America apart from ever other country, including
China, is the former's insistence on conscripting the rest of the world to follow US policy.
Originally American officials punished American companies and individuals
trading with disfavored states. However, in the 1980s the US began expanding penalties for
commerce with the Soviet Union and later Cuba to foreign, especially European, subsidiaries
of American firms.
The next step, applied to Sudan in 1997, was financial sanctions, punishing any company or
individual doing business with anyone in Sudan if they had the slightest connection to any US
banking institution. Which prevented normal commerce, irrespective of where a firm was
located. As a result, even Khartoum's embassies had to operate on a cash basis. After the
9/11 attacks Washington extended this form of penalty. Today the US uses America's dominant
economic role to insist that every resident of earth follow Washington's directives.
The Trump administration sanctions everyone everywhere for everything even if there is no
likelihood that doing so will have any practical impact. That is most evident in the
administration's high-profile "maximum pressure" campaigns against Iran, North Korea, and
Venezuela. So far none of America's targets have yielded.
Washington nevertheless has attempted to spin these failures as victories, since sanctions
obviously hurt the countries involved. However, the original objective in every case was to
change the target regime's policies. President Donald Trump promised a new regime in power in
Caracas, a nuclear agreement with Pyongyang, and an improved nuclear deal with Tehran. In
every case he failed to deliver. Indeed, his conduct toward Iran, which refused to even talk
with him after he tossed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, degenerated into shameless
begging when he promised the reigning clerics a better deal if they settled before the
election. The administration's ongoing economic campaigns against Cuba, Russia, and Syria
have been no more successful.
Now the president is using economic war against the PRC for domestic political purposes.
Hoping to win reelection with a "tough on China" campaign, he likely does not care about
sanctions' actual impact. His primary objective is to appear strong and determined to protect
America. No matter how ineffective, most any economic penalty will fulfill that role.
History demonstrates that sanctions most often work when they receive wide international
backing and are tied to something short of regime change or its policy equivalent. Moreover,
commercial pressure needs to be part of a larger diplomatic process. And the conditions to
end sanctions must be clear. When unrealistic terms are set, the policy is guaranteed to
fail. Even impoverished regimes steadfastly resist demands to surrender political control and
other vital interests. Hence the failure of the administration's promiscuous use of "maximum
pressure." The result in every case has been maximum resistance. Cuba's communists have been
defiant for six decades.
Unfortunately, economic sanctions usually hurt the wrong people. When I visited Cuba in
2018 the strongest critics of the Trump administration's reinvigorated sanctions were private
businesspeople. Trump effectively wiped out investments made by multiple entrepreneurs hoping
to welcome more American visitors. The private sector's growing success had undermined the
communist regime by providing some 40 percent of jobs in Cuba, draining power and revenue
away from the state. Trump reversed the process.
The impact of economic warfare often falls hardest on the most vulnerable members of
societies already ravaged by authoritarian politics and socialist economics. In the worst
case the impact of sanctions is akin to that of military conflict. And many US policymakers
don't care. When UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked about the death of a half million
Iraqi babies as a result of US sanctions, she famously replied: "I think this is a very hard
choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it." No doubt she did, since the
high human cost did not affect her. Today economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs warn
that U.S. sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela also are killing civilians, perhaps
resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
In contrast, ruling elites are much better positioned to work commercial restrictions to
their advantage. For instance, authoritarian regimes can use foreign threats to rally public
support. The Trump administration's policies showed Iran's relative moderates, most
importantly President Hassan Rouhani, to be fools to trust the U.S. Hardline factions
strengthened their hold over the parliament in February's election and are expected to retake
the presidency in next year's contest. Dissidents with whom I met on an earlier trip to Cuba
complained that Washington's painful economic assault supported Fidel Castro's criticism of
"Yanqui imperialism." The regime blamed its self-inflicted economic failures on the American
embargo.
Almost 30 years ago I visited Belgrade and interviewed opposition leader Zoran Djindzic
– who after Slobodan Milosevic's defeat became prime minister (and was later
assassinated). Djindzic criticized US sanctions which, he complained, left his supporters
without enough money even for gasoline to travel to his rallies while Milosevic's allies
profited from illicit smuggling.
In part in reaction to such perverse impacts, the US enthusiastically added "smart" or
individual sanctions to its repertoire. So Washington punishes specific individuals –
often foreign officials in highly politicized cases. For instance, the US recently targeted
the hardline party boss for Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, and the local puppet chief executive for
Hong Kong, Carrie Lam. Both are accomplices to great crimes who ultimately will find
themselves looking for their proper level of hell. However, neither is likely to barge into
Chinese President Xi Jinping's office to demand that he end the central government's
oppression in territories that they oversee. If they did so they probably would end up in one
of the prisons their opponents are assigned to.
The number of individual sanctions imposed is extraordinary. The Treasury Department's
"Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List" runs 1421 pages and covers people,
companies, organizations, ships, airplanes, and more. Most individual penalties, though they
might make US policymakers feel good, do little more than inconvenience regime elites, who
are denied the pleasure of purchasing a second home or hiding ill-gotten assets in America.
In January the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher published its annual report on US
sanctions, explaining:
" Between claims of 'financial carpet bombing' and dire warnings regarding the
'weaponization' of the US dollar, it was difficult to avoid hyperbole when describing the use
of economic sanctions in 2019. Sanctions promulgated by the US Department of the Treasury's
Office of Foreign Assets Control ('OFAC') have become an increasingly prominent part of US
foreign policy under the Trump administration. For the third year in a row, OFAC blacklisted
more entities than it had under any previous administration, adding an average of 1,000 names
to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons ('SDN') List each year – more
than twice the annual average increase seen under either President Barack Obama or President
George W. Bush. Targets included major state-owned oil companies such as Petróleos de
Venezuela, S.A. ('PdVSA'), ostensible US allies such as Turkey (and – almost –
Iraq), major shipping lines, foreign officials implicated in allegations of corruption and
abuse, drug traffickers, sanctions evaders, and more. As if one blacklisting was not enough,
some entities had the misfortune of being designated multiple times under different
regulatory authorities – each new announcement resulting in widespread media coverage
if little practical impact. At last count, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ('IRGC')
has been sanctioned under seven separate sanctions authorities. Eager to exert its own
authorities in what has traditionally been a solely presidential prerogative, in 2019 the US
Congress proposed dozens of bills to increase the use of sanctions. Compounding the impact of
expansive new sanctions, OFAC's enforcement penalties hit a record of more than US $1.2
billion."
Other than collecting some cash – last year a bit more than a tenth of a percent of
the deficit – Washington's economic warfare usually achieves little of note. Instead,
the administration's sanctions have been the occasion for endless hypocrisy, which seems
inevitable for American foreign policy, and sanctimony, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
supplies in abundance. He is notable for shamelessly lauding brutal, dangerous, and vile
regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while sanctioning awful but actually lesser
oppressors like Iran and Cuba. The more closely one studies administration policy, the more
political and less serious it is revealed to be.
The Trump administration's ever-increasing use of the dollar to coerce its friends as well
as adversaries also is creating resentment even among those who share many of America's
interests. So far Europe, which helped negotiate the nuclear pact with Iran, has repeatedly
chosen Tehran's Islamist regime over Washington's Trump administration. Most recently
European governments rejected the latter's preposterous claim that it remained a participant
in the JCPOA which it ostentatiously abandoned and thus could trigger reimposition of UN
sanctions.
There also is growing incentive for China, Russia, Europe, and other nations to cooperate
in looking for alternative mediums of exchange and payment systems. Commerce involving barter
trade, gold, crypto/digital currencies, local currency/non-dollar transactions, and special
facilities, such as Europe's INSTEX, which shuffles payments both ways without transfer
through a US connected bank, is expanding. Nascent Chinese and Russian payment systems have
begun to operate, though an alternative to the US dominated SWIFT system remains far off.
Predictably, Washington reacted to such developments by threatening to sanction anyone
attempting to work around US sanctions, most notably the creators of INSTEX. The danger to
American financial dominance is real. Even Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin acknowledged the
long-term risk to the US dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. Peter Harrell of
the Center for a New American Security observed: "US financial dominance is not immutable in
a world where the United States constitutes a slowly but steadily shrinking share of global
GDP. The Trump administration needs to weigh the near-term benefits of its aggressive use of
sanctions against the potential longer-term risks of a global backlash." Obama administration
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that "While there is no immediate alternative to the
centrality of the US economy and dollar, there are troubling signs that the current approach
may accelerate efforts to create new options."
Long-time advocates of US economic aggression are horrified to find that Beijing now views
commercial coercion as a legitimate tactic. After all, in their view the only country that
has the mandate of heaven to rule the globe is America. Do as we say, not as we do, long has
been Uncle Sam's mantra.
The good news is that the PRC's economic clout remains limited. Despite its malign
intentions, it is far less able than the US to compel others to comply with its dictates.
Financial penalties can be a useful international tool, but not as America's "go-to" response
to every foreign challenge, especially given the human cost that so often results. Washington
needs to relearn the concepts of humility, restraint, and proportionality before it sparks a
global revolt that harms more innocent parties and further undermines America's economic
clout.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
America's actions have already caused Beijing and Moscow to put aside historic enmity and
increase its partnership on economic issues and increasingly frequent joint
military drills . China and Iran recently completed the basics of an energy and military
cooperation agreement. Moreover, President Xi Jinping has become increasingly effective at
deepening ties with European, African, and Latin American states.
Today, Washington is saturated with China hawks. Unfortunately, andy voices that champion
keeping America strong by avoiding conflict with China are reflexively smeared as
"appeasement." I fear America may one day find out to its harm that rejecting sober diplomatic
engagement, which could have extended its security and prosperity well into the future, was
dismissed in favor of an unnecessary military-first tactic of coercing China.
Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after twenty-one years, including four combat
deployments. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
"... If Belarus police have been forewarned and have dismantled the sniper unit "death squads" that are a normal part of America's "color revolution" operations like the Chinese did in Hong Kong back in 2014, then the coup attempt will fail. But if the snipers simply have not been given the order to shoot yet then it is too early to say that the coup is over. If there is deadly violence that is attributed to the police then the protests will grow and the police will be demoralized. The Belarus authorities must prevent this from happening by capturing the snipers before they act. ..."
"... Will Tikhanovskaya become the Guido of Belarus? Declared to be the legitimate president of that country by foreign interests? ..."
"... Completing the playbook of color revolution, Wikipedia edited Tikhanovskaya page naming her President of Belarus... encargada ...one guess...this could weel have been before the assasination intend... ..."
The
predicted color revolution attempt in Belarus
proceeds as expected:
Tsikhanouskaya, who drew tens of thousands of people to her campaign rallies, refused to
recognize the preliminary official results announced by the TsVK on August 10.
"I consider myself the winner in the presidential election," she said in Minsk.
Tsikhanouskaya said her opinion was based on what she called "real protocols"
collected at the majority of polling stations, which, according to her, prove that she
won the election. She also charged that the official results announced by the TsVK were
rigged.
Meanwhile, Tsikhanouskaya's supporters announced they would stage a mass demonstration
against the official election tally on August 10 at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT/UTC) in central
Minsk.
The opposition in Belarus also has called for a nationwide protest strike starting at
noon local time on August 11.
President Lukashenko will not have any of that. The protests that followed yesterday's
exit polls announcements were relatively small. Unless the security forces fall apart,
which I do not expect to happen, the attempt to overthrow Lukashenko will be defeated.
Our host: "Unless the security forces fall apart, which I do not expect to happen,
the attempt to overthrow Lukashenko will be defeated."
If Belarus police have been forewarned and have dismantled the sniper unit "death
squads" that are a normal part of America's "color revolution" operations like
the Chinese did in Hong Kong back in 2014, then the coup attempt will fail. But if the
snipers simply have not been given the order to shoot yet then it is too early to say that
the coup is over. If there is deadly violence that is attributed to the police then the
protests will grow and the police will be demoralized. The Belarus authorities must prevent
this from happening by capturing the snipers before they act.
@Posted by: Thomas Minnehan | Aug 10 2020 17:52 utc | 7
"I will never understand why any country in this world allows soros' NGO's and NED to
operate in their host country! It is an invitation for a coup."
If you try to get rid of them the American ambassador will contact all of his political
friends in your country and tell them that this needs to stop. Various political figures
will publicly denounce this abuse of power. The government will be marred by all kinds of
scandals, most likely they will be accused of working for Putin or China. If the local
campaign will not work, New York Times will write a front page article about gay people
being summarily executed in your country, or Jews, or whatever. European leaders will voice
concern about the presumed abuses, and demand an inquiry. Next, the leader of the free
world, or the congress will start some investigation and impose economic sanctions. If that
doesn't work, a random minority in your country will suddenly develop an independence
movement and the US army will be called to impose peace.
Will Tikhanovskaya become the Guido of Belarus? Declared to be the legitimate
president of that country by foreign interests? Posted by: Begemot | Aug 10 2020 18:34 utc | 16
Excellent thought bubble!
There are 4x more countries outside AmeriKKKa's "International (pseudo-Christian)
Community" than inside it. So we shouldn't have to wait much longer to see a few of these
countries "electing" replacements for POTUS and demanding "Trump must step down!"
Maybe the citizens of Venezuela, or another Latin American country under AmeriKKKan
duress will get the ball rolling?
@Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 10 2020 17:45 utc | 4
Before the snipers, a Nemtsov event on Tikhanosvskaya has been foiled by Belarusian
security services...which is greta news....Some in the Baltics are shouting to the four
winds that they can not contact Tikhnaovskaya since hours ago....Obvious, she is not
available for assassination intends...thanks to the KGBof Belarus....recall that the
snipers in Maidan were organized by a Lithuanian citizen... Tikhanovskaya had stated she
and his followers would not participate in today´s protests...Heavenly hundreds come
to mind...of course, attention to the reference to a "sacred sacrifice"...sounds Ukrainian
nazi all the way...
The stenographers at the Washington Bezos Post and the New
York Langley Times probably already had the articles announcing Tikhanosvskaya's
assassination by Putin ready to go. Now they are scrambling to come up with something else
to put on the front page. I am sure they are disappointed.
She should request to the authorities to have her identity hidden now and try to
disappear. US State Department "opposition candidates" who can only get single digit
support in elections are completely disposable and they are often more valuable dead (which
the CIA is happy to arrange) as an embarrassment to the election winners.
Good move by the Belarus KGB to know that was one of the "color revolution"
tricks that the empire would try.
Completing the playbook of color revolution, Wikipedia edited Tikhanovskaya page naming
her President of Belarus... encargada ...one guess...this could weel have been
before the assasination intend...
Thanks for the stalkerzone report
on Belarus, it's an excellent summary of events.
How this new age impresses me, that we can now count down every one of the color
revolution tactics as they were employed in Belarus, and as each one failed or was
neutralized by the state. Ukraine showed the way.
The concluding sentences say it all:
Yanukovych in 2014 betrayed "Berkut". But Lukashenko did not betray his security forces
in 2020. The difference is obvious.
Will Tikhanovskaya become the Guido of Belarus? Declared to be the legitimate president
of that country by foreign interests?
Posted by: Begemot | Aug 10 2020 18:34 utc | 16
Guaido is gradually being forgotten (I put "Guido" as a symptom, then he will be "Guy"
and "that guy"), even as he is recognized for the sake of keeping quite sizable stolen
Venezuelan property.
Concerning Belarus, it is mostly Russian speaking neighbor of Russia with many deep
economic connections to Russia, and quite importantly, it lacks any larger nationalist
movements. Historically, people there were always realistically following the state in
power that for ca. 400 years was Lithuania in union with Poland (this is quite different
with Ukraine history). A sharp break with Russia is not popular, "democracy" is not
presenting itself as a shining example in Ukraine (anarcho-authoritarian), Poland
(increasingly authoritarian) and in Baltic neighbors (a lot of anti-Slavic nationalism). In
short, there is no reasonable prospect of a strategically better outcome than
"triangulating" government that cooperates with the West to some extend on reciprocal
basis. Looting Venezuela did not have a downside (except for the Venezuelans), squeezing
Belarus may push them to unify with Russia, and that could be bothersome.
Ms Tsikhanouskaya, according to DW News, F24, Al Jazeera & RT, has fled Belarus and
popped up in Lithuania, after lodging a formal request for a recount. She had sent her kids
on ahead BEFORE ELECTION DAY, a rather clumsy/ eerily inept confession that she'd decided
that the election was fraudulent before it had taken place! She also muttered something
about "I regret calling for protests."
Russia and China noticed that Lukashenko won and have congratulated him on his
re-election.
The Great Grey-Green Greasy Pompeo has threatened sanctions...
From MoA
: "Russiagate, the deep state campaign to disenfranchise President Donald Trump, is further
unraveling. The Spies Who Hijacked America
is a first-person account that convincingly documents an MI6-linked conspiracy by former director
Richard Dearlove, former agent Christopher Steele and FBI informant Stefan Halper to frame Carter
Page that led to the FBI launching of "Crossfire Hurricane". The long read is very interesting
but it still does not account for who or what instigated the British spies into launching their
campaign against Trump. My hunch is that then CIA director John Brennan was the central person
behind it."
"A top Republican defended his committee releasing the declassified FBI interview with a
top source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele and said a forthcoming document would show
the bureau misled Congress about the reliability of his anti-Trump dossier.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
criticized the former MI6 agent, said Steele's dossier was compromised by Russian
disinformation, and argued
newly public FBI notes from a January 2017 discussion with Steele's "primary subsource"
demonstrated the FBI knew the dossier was unreliable but continued to use it anyway. During his
interview
with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News, he also previewed new
bureau records to be released in the upcoming week he said would show the FBI misled not just
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the Steele dossier, but also lawmakers.
"We also now have found, and this will come out next week, that Congress got suspicious
about the Russian subsource and reliability of the Steele Dossier, and that members of Congress
asked to be briefed about it," Graham said. "Here is what I think I'm going to be able to show
to the public: not only did the FBI lie to the court about the reliability about the Steele
dossier, they also lied to the Congress. And that is a separate crime. "" Washington
Examiner
-------------
The first thing to do is fire Christopher Wray, the present Director of the FBI, for
malfeasance and neglect of duty in this whole matter.
The second thing to do is to seriously consider dissolution of the FBI and its replacement
with a new federal police force severely limited to criminal investigations of violations of
federal law.
There should also be a separate domestic internal security investigative body modeled on the
UK's MI-5 (the Security Service). Whether or not such a service should have the power of arrest
is an open question. If arrests become necessary after their investigations the agents of some
other federal police force could be used to make them after examination of the security
service's case.
The rest of the USIC should be examined with an eye to re-organization in light of the
partisan role they played in the 2016 election.
How can any of the law enforcement and IC be re-organized when everyone in DC from the
politicians in both parties to the media and the top honchos in government are all part of
the same social and professional circle? They just keep rotating around.
Elliott Abrams epitomizes this. He's a convicted felon in the Iran-Contra affair in the
Reagan administration. Get's pardoned by Bush pere. Pushed hard for the disastrous Iraq
invasion in the George W. Bush administration. Then in charge of the Venezuela coup attempt
in the Trump administration. Fails at that. And then now gets appointed to head the Iran desk
to create more trouble.
DC is incestuous and corrupt beyond redemption.
As far is Wray is concerned why hasn't he been fired sometime back? Why did Trump hire him
and Rosenstein in the first place?
@LindseyGrahamSC saying today the 2018 SSCI had doubts about Steele's primary sub source,
and pointing fingers at the 2018 FBI for misinformation, carries an identical motive to
Sally Yates testimony last week.
It's all CYA in DC Central. Graham protecting SSCI.
It appears the Republicans in the Senate were in on the Russia Collusion hoax and now
throwing the FBI under the bus. DC is a cesspool of corruption. Only voters can reform this
club by voting both parties out.
Writing on Substack, Steven Schrage for the first time tells the story of how he worked
alongside "FBI Informant" Stefan Halper at Cambridge during the "Russiagate" period:
We are nearly at the end of Trump's term yet his administration hasn't provided a full
accounting of the election interference and framing of Trump and some of his team by the
previous Obama administration and his own administration.
Sen. Graham thinks [or at least says] Russia hacked the Democrats; and thinks [or at least
says] Igor Dancheko represent "Russian disinformation."
"The sub-source [Danchenko] was a senior Russian researcher at the Brookings Institution
and an employee of Christopher Steele living in the United States. He calls up a bunch of
people in Russia. Who do you think this information came from? It came from the Russian
intelligence service. They played this guy like a fiddle," Graham has recently said.
Unctuous Graham himself continues maliciously to spread lies.
The first words out of his mouth at last week's hearing with the unctuous Sally Yates was
Russia hacked the Democrats.
In other words, he was pretending -- and in his thus lying, creating a "predicate" for all
of the Russia Hoax nonsense that continues and which he helps to continue, by lying.
So is this liar going to get to the bottom of it, or instead create and continue to create
alternate reality from which more propaganda be disseminated and spun onto American
public?
He, and those pushing these lies, our congressional leaders -- and think we are not aware
of their vile and moral turpitude.
Not only did the FBI and Sally Yates and Rosenstein lie to the court about the reliability
about the Steele dossier.
And not only does Graham continue to lie to the American people.
Who is assisting Graham to run his ongoing and continuing cover up?
The FBI? The DOJ? The CIA? Senator Warner? etc. . . .
Why does the Senate list Mark Warner, a Democrat, as "Vice Chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee"?
When the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was formed in 1976, via Senate Resolution
400 of the 94th Congress, this is what they decided:
[[[(b) At the beginning of each Congress, the Majority Leader of the Senate shall select a
chairman of the select Committee and the Minority Leader shall select a vice chairman for the
select Committee. The vice chairman shall act in the place and stead of the chairman in the
absence of the chairman. Neither the chairman nor the vice chairman of the select committee
shall at the same time serve as chairman or ranking minority member of any other
committee]]]
PS
Fire Wray, dissolve FBI, excellent suggestions.
In its place, a new federal police force severely limited to criminal investigations of
violations of federal law, also a step in the right direction.
Should the nation's federal police chief report to the AG directly, or directly to the
president?
Should this job be subject to advise and consent of senate, or, as is case with National
Security Advisor, not subject to advise and consent of senate?
And feel free to criticize, but someone like . . . Attorney Michael Bernard Mukasey,
former federal judge and 81st Attorney General of the United States --- he, be named acting
FBI, right now, forthwith?
-30-
It appears that SSCI with Burr and Warner are in on the coup attempt. They likely had
Wolfe leak the Carter Page FISA application which was marked by a FBI special agent to his
squeeze who took it with her to the NY Times. Mueller then takes over that investigation and
buries it including lying to FISC. Wolfe gets away with a slap on the wrist. They are all
implicated in the coup attempt - Republicans & Democrats in Congress, the FBI, DOJ, DNI,
CIA, Obama, Biden, the media!
In a functioning constitutional republic this would be considered outrageous no matter
one's opinion of Trump. The fact that the Trump administration itself is playing a huge role
in obfuscating this subversion of the constitution by those entrusted to protect and defend
it is telling. I'm old and my creator beckons. It pains me to no end what legacy we are
leaving behind to our grandchildren and their children. My grandpa would be so dismayed!
Who compromised this trio of senior senate leadership? Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her
staff for a decade, apparently oblivious to that the whole time. Of course Russia is all we
hear about, then and now.
Jack,
Just to clarify, the link you posted above is about Steven Schrage, not by him. It was
written by Matt Taibbi at his personal internet perch. I agree it's definitely worth the time
to read.
The FBI is indeed fighting for its survival, as I suspect are elements of the DOJ and
other elements of the I C . If Trump is re elected, he will have a mandate for reform, that
is why they will stop at nothing to prevent it.
I think, as someone else here at SST has suggested, the swamp is going to use the 20th
Amendment to install Pelosi or similar. The chosen vehicle will be corruption of a mail in
ballot process. As my first boss told me as we watche ounance manager being marched away by
the police: "when someone is going to steal from you, the first thing they do is mess up the
paperwork". That maxim proved true a number of times in my career.
DC District of Corruption is beyond redemption.
The 17 "intelligence" agencies are rotten to the core as well.
I love my country but have a growing dislike of my federal government.
More like feral government.
Doubt the newly found corona super powers are going away anytime soon.
Grandparents were Irish immigrants.Learned early to keep a well stocked cellar and as much
savings as possible.
Hard times are coming.
It seems that Steven Schrage coming forward NOW with a recording of Halper stating that
Flynn's gonna be f*ked 2 days before the leak to David Ignatius is a new shiny object to
distract. Similar to Ms. Lindsey's faux outrage NOW that the FBI lied to SSCI. Of course he
knew and so did Burr & Warner back in 2018. They kept quiet all this time. The big
question is what did Senators Burr & Warner know and when and what role did they play in
the coverup? And of course the same goes for Ms. Lindsey and the rest of the coterie in
Congress?
Col. Lang,
What do your expert senses detect when both Rosenstein & Sally Yates have the best
Captain Renault impersonation? They knew nuttin!! They just sign FISA applications and keep
seats warm.
For years,the Feebs have been flat-footed keystone cops in the counterintelligence
area.
Want more evidence?
Peter Strzok - a mediocrity with no sense of op security rose to number 2 in the FBI CI
division.
Look at the bumbling mess these dolts made out of their attempted "coup."
Spy catching is not police work;it's "intelligence" work.
I think that what other posters may be seeing and commenting upon is trenchently conveyed
in this quote from Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one,
perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to
doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so
that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any
profound or extensive shifts in policy."
This understanding adequately accounts for the behavior of The Borg toward President Trump's
stated aims, and the defenestration of General Flynn. They don't want anything to change, and
will go to any lengths to prevent it from happening. I guess we'll have to see if this will,
indeed, be how it plays out. In my heart of hearts I certainly hope not.
Wolfe was only indicted for lying to the FBI. He was never indicted for the big stuff of
leaking the classified Carter Page FISA application provided by the FBI to SSCI to his
"mistress" Ali Watkins. She moved to the NY Times and then began writing exposes that sold a
certain now proven false narrative.
Was Wolfe ordered to leak it by Burr & Warner? Why was the leak investigation taken
over by Mueller? What role did SSCI have in the coverup? What was Warner doing as some of his
text messages to Steele's attorney Adam Waldman was released by Mueller?
Was SSCI a co-conspirator in the framing of a duly elected President?
"Just to clarify, the link you posted above is about Steven Schrage, not by him"
Hi Ex-PFC Chuck - the piece was definitely written by Schrage. Its a first-person account
of his work under Halper, with a ton of observations about his character and past.
For what its worth I sensed a little bit of CYA in the piece, like Schrage is trying to
cleave himself from the rest of the group. His account of how and why Carter Page got to his
symposium doesn't really add up - did he make a similar effort to get a member of the Clinton
campaign? Appears not.
title - The Spies Who Hijacked America
As a doctoral candidate at Cambridge working under "FBI Informant" Stefan Halper, I had a
front-row seat for Russiagate
"Was SSCI a co-conspirator in the framing of a duly elected President?"
Good questions. I would go back a couple decades and see how much money in donations those
members got from people who could have corrupted them, such as Jeffery Epstein and those
connected to him, and see if they have any other foreign financial entanglements.
Have to wonder at the re-emergence of Russiagate. Seems a major reason for its emergence
is to shame voters into voting for Biden. If you do not vote for Biden, you are Putin's
useful idiot. In particular aimed at African Americans. Recently a NYT reporter claimed that
it was Russian mean tweets, etc that caused a very dramatic drop in African American turn out
in 2016. See screen shot by Aron Mate as the NYT reporter deleted the tweets.
Looks like the DNC may be very nervous about Black turnout after Biden's many racial
gaffes. Imagine Black turnout if he chooses Susan Rice as his VP. The DNC may have to go to
Putin to ask for his help.
Were you aware that the Steele dossier had a significant other?
"Rep Devin Nunes:
"You may remember that the State Department was involved and there were additional
dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier- except that they mirrored the Steele dossier.
And we think there is a connection between the [former] president of Brookings
and those dossiers that were given to the State Department."
"
...
Also from article:
"
The "additional dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier" addressed by Nunes
is a reference to a lesser known dodgy dossier produced by Brookings-affiliated
journalist Cody Shearer (brother-in-law of Strobe Talbott) which was crafted
explicitly to validate the wildly unsupported claims found in Steele's dossier.
"
I know it sounds wacky to those of you who still put some store in MSM nonsense,
but I still believe that what we know as "Russiagate" was a carefully planned operation
to:
initiate a new anti-Russia McCarthyism -
after Trump's election, MSM repeated Russigate accusations about Russian meddling
every night for months;
elect MAGA Nationalist (Trump, not Hillary!) -
as Kissinger had called for in his Aug 2014 WSJ Op-Ed;
discredit Wikileaks/Assange;
lead to a vindictive settling of scores with Assange, Flynn, Manafort.
Also: It's likely that Skripal was the true "primary sub-source" and that he was drugged
because he planned to flee back to Russia because he realised that he knew too much. He knew
that the "dirty dossier" was meant to be untrue and easily debunked. It would never actually
tarnish Trump - only Russia. Not surprisingly, Trump's MAGA Nationalism has been
strengthened by Russiagate allegations while the anti-Russia sentiment remains.
Incredible interview with Hassan Nasrallah ("The Old Man of The Mountain" as I think of
him) providing insight into his tactical and strategic thinking processes w.r.t the conflict
with Israel:
"... While I agree with the basic points that this post is making, obviously, I am very wary of opinions in which it is assumed that the 'threat' to a Western country is that it might 'sink' to the level of some non-Western country (assuming you conceptualise Russia as being non-Western which is a highly debatable point). ..."
"... 'Trump is the natural friend of dictators everywhere,' As opposed to precisely which American President? 'It's hard to see democracy surviving anywhere if it fails in the US.' ..."
@1
Well for various reasons I was in a room full of young Chinese people immediately after the
election of Trump. I asked what their opinion was, and one piped up (with the obvious support
of the rest) that they thought it would be very good, as Trump was obviously a deranged
lunatic and imbecile whose shambolic rule (this was not how he expressed it, of course, but
this was the gist) would weaken the United States, and 'America's weakness is China's
opportunity'.
While I agree with the basic points that this post is making, obviously, I am very wary of
opinions in which it is assumed that the 'threat' to a Western country is that it might
'sink' to the level of some non-Western country (assuming you conceptualise Russia as being
non-Western which is a highly debatable point).
'Trump is the natural friend of dictators everywhere,' As opposed to precisely which American President? 'It's hard to see democracy surviving anywhere if it fails in the US.'
As everyone has pointed out, Hilary in fact won the last Presidential election in terms of
votes. It is almost unheard of in an advanced 'democracy' for the Head of State to 'win' an
election via a minority of the votes.
On top of these things one has the increasing powergrab by the non-democratic Supreme
Court, which has simply decreed that it is the major 'power in the land' with a 'lock' on
what laws get passed and which do not, and the populace be damned.
Not to mention the de facto chokehold that corporations have on who can run for office and
what positions they can hold (Sanders, with his 'new' way of raising money, is challenging
this. We shall see what happens).
It is not at all clear to me that the US is in any objective sense more democratic than,
say, Iran (although it is a lot more FREE than Iran .but that's not the same thing).
So Trump is likely to exacerbate and intensify trends that have been going on for
decades.
A bit more about what I wrote about the Supreme Court (and the American 'justice' system)
more generally, which CT commentator Corey Robin has been noting tirelessly, to widespread
apathy amongst Democratic elites.
'The Supreme Court will probably overrule decades of progressive precedents and strike
down the next Democratic president's reforms. You would not know this from watching the 2020
Democratic presidential debates. Wednesday's showdown in Atlanta, the fifth so far, did not
include a single question about the courts. Earlier debates allowed for brief discussions of
the Supreme Court, but every candidate dramatically underestimated the threat it poses to the
Democratic Party. Both the candidates and the moderators appear to be astonishingly
naïve about the judiciary's lurch to the right under Donald Trump. And it is pointless
to discuss the Democrats' ambitious proposals without explaining how they are going to
survive at SCOTUS.
It's not just the debates -- Democratic politicians rarely talk about the courts at all.
There is an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the judiciary:
GOP voters are more likely to be motivated by the opportunity to fill judicial vacancies,
which is why Trump ran on a promise of appointing archconservative judges. Democratic voters
focus more on individual political issues, and their party has never prioritized judges -- or
campaigned on the fact that every political dispute is ultimately resolved as a judicial
question. This complacency will prove catastrophic for progressives now that Justice Brett
Kavanaugh has replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, shoring up a conservative majority that will
obstruct liberal policies for a generation.'
THIS is the threat to progressivism (well, all the other things that I mentioned are
threats too, but this is the one that's liable to be the 'straw that breaks the camels'
back').
@Hidari Most of the Democratic candidates have signalled willingness to pack the SC if it
rules in a partisan way. Even Booker and Klobuchar are saying "wait and see" rather than
opposing outright. . I'm sure Roberts doesn't need reminders, so the absence of much
discussion doesn't seem like a problem to me. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/18/2020-democrats-supreme-court-1223625
As regards the lower courts, they can only interpret legislation. A determined
Congressional majority can respond to any adverse interpreation with legislation that
repudiates it. It's only gridlock and Congressional cowardice that has given US courts so
much power.
An Excellent analysis, I am happy to see the pseudo intellectual Jonathan Haidt called out
for what he is. He's the king of false equivalencies , a disease we suffer from these days.
Haidt is a conservative pretending to be a neutral observer to legitimize the toxic ideology
of conservatism. Maybe someone should send Haidt Corey Robin's book " The Reactionary Mind "
not that he would read it
steven t johnson 11.23.19 at 4:00 pm (no link)
I was so astonished at the notion Trump cares (or trusts?) his children enough to appoint one
president I rather forgot the rest of the post.
But fascism is just a different way of mobilizing the nation for war than democracy. So
the real issue with Trumpian fascism is who he's going to fight and how. I believe economic
warfare waged against the masses in a foreign country is an atrocity. Venezuela, Iran and as
ever North Korea are targets. The goal in the economic war on China is the restoration of
capitalism and/or the division of the country. But do democrats/Democrats really disagree
with this? Except that they want more use of weapons and a better deal for the EU?
"... The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop. ..."
"... The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State
Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence
personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance
of power in the lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence
background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently
clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq,
who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the
first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where,
as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone
warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare. Elissa Slotkin
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called
"Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan,
which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing
the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of
the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that,
with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features
a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served
as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national
security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent
Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence
agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
CNN's "State of the Union" program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination
as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a "career civil servant." However, the Jones
for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, "Gina entered the US Air
Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy" (the
last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).
According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as "senior advisor for trade enforcement,"
a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the
Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose
national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the
Trump administration.
The first and the most important fact that there will no elections in November -- both candidates represent the same oligarchy,
just slightly different factions of it.
Look like NYT is controlled by Bolton faction of CIA. They really want to overturn the
results of 2020 elections and using Russia as a bogeyman is a perfect opportunity to achieve this
goal.
Neocons understand very well that it is MIC who better their bread, so amplifying rumors the simplify getting additional budget
money for intelligence agencies (which are a part of MIC) is always the most desirable goal.
Notable quotes:
"... But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr. ..."
"... The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process." ..."
"... But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections? ..."
"... But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn? ..."
"... Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence. ..."
"... Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China? ..."
"... If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them? ..."
"... Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget. ..."
"... Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose. ..."
But when one reads the piece itself one finds no fact that would support the 'Russia
Continues Interfering' statement:
Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence
officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to
interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in
November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National
Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading
carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.
The authors emphasize the scaremongering hearsay from "officials briefed on the
intelligence" - i.e. Democratic congress members - about Russia but have nothing to back it
up.
When one reads the
statement by Evanina one finds nothing in it about Russian attempts to interfere in the
U.S. elections. Here is the only 'evidence' that is noted:
For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about
corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine
former Vice President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors
are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media and Russian television.
After a request from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, a Ukrainian
parliamentarian published Ukrainian
evidence of Biden's very real interference in the Ukraine. Also: Some guest of a Russian TV
show had an opinion. How is either of those two items 'evidence' of Russian interference in
U.S. elections?
The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences",
"increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections?
The mainstream view in the U.S. media and government holds that the Kremlin is waging a
long-haul campaign to undermine and destabilize American democracy. Putin wants to see the
United States burn, and contentious elections offer a ready-made opportunity to fan the
flames.
But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often
mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring
down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn?
Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any
evidence.
Even the NYT writers have to
admit that there is nothing there:
The release on Friday was short on specifics, ...
and
Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer
clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
How do 'intelligence' agencies know Russian, Chinese or Iranian 'intentions'. Is there a
secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the
United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S.
people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China?
If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them?
Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making
wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off
their budget.
Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose.
Posted by b on August 8, 2020 at 18:08 UTC |
Permalink
Many people have asked me why I haven't written a book since the start of my reporting on
the FBI's debunked investigation into whether President Donald Trump's campaign conspired with
Russia.
I haven't done so because I don't believe the most important part of the story has been
told: indictments and accountability. I also don't believe we actually know what really
happened on a fundamental level and how dangerous it is to our democratic republic. That will
require a deeper investigation that answers the fundamental questions of the role played by
former senior Obama officials, including the former President and his aides.
We're getting closer but we're still not there.
Still, the extent of what happened during the last presidential election is much clearer now
than it was years ago when trickles of evidence led to years of what Fox News host Sean Hannity and I
would say was peeling back the layers of an onion. We now know that the U.S. intelligence and
federal law enforcement was weaponized against President
Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and administration by a political opponent. We now know how
many officials involved in the false investigation into the president trampled the
Constitution.
I never realized how terrible the deterioration inside the system had become until four
years ago when I stumbled onto what was happening inside the FBI. Those concerns were brought
to my attention by former and current FBI agents, as well as numerous U.S. intelligence
officials aware of the failures inside their own agencies. But it never occurred to me when I
first started looking into fired FBI Director
James Comey and his former side kick Deputy Director A ndrew
McCabe that the cultural corruption of these once trusted American institutions was so
vast.
I've watched as Washington D.C. elites make promises to get to the bottom of it and bring
people to justice. They appear to make promises to the American people they never intended to
keep. Who will be held accountable for one of the most egregious abuses of power by bureaucrats
in modern American political history? Now I fear those who perpetuated this culture of
corruption won't ever really be held accountable.
These elite bureaucrats will, however, throw the American people a bone. It's how they
operate.
One example is the most recent decision by the Justice Department to ask that charges be
dropped on former national security advisor Michael Flynn. It's just a bone because we know now
these charges should have never been brought against the three-star general but will anyone on
former Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's team have to answer for ruining a man's life. No, they won't. In fact,
Flynn is still fighting for his freedom.
Think about what has already happened? From former Attorney General Jeff Session's
appointment of Utah Prosecutor John Huber to the current decision by Attorney General William
Barr to appoint Connecticut prosecutor John Durham to investigate the malfeasance what has been
done? Really, nothing at all. No one has been indicted.
The investigation by the FBI against Trump was never predicated on any real evidence but
instead, it was a set-up to usurp the American voters will. It doesn't matter that the
establishment didn't like Trump, in 2016 the Americans did. Isn't that a big enough reason to
bring charges against those involved?
His election was an anomaly for the Washington elite. They were stunned when Trump won and
went into full gear to save their own asses from discovery and target anyone who supported him.
The truth is they couldn't stand the Trump and American disruptors who elected him to
office.
Now they will work hand in fist to ensure that this November election is not a repeat win of
2016. We're already seeing that play out everyday on the news.
But Barr and Durham are now up against a behemoth political machine that seems to be
operating more like a steam roller the closer we get to the November presidential
elections.
Barr told Fox News in June that he expects Durham's report to come before the end of summer
but like always, it's August and we're still waiting.
Little is known about the progress of Durham's investigation but it's curious as to why
nothing has been done as of yet and the Democrats are sure to raise significant questions or
concerns if action is taken before the election. They will charge that Durham's investigation
is politically motivated. That is, unless the charges are just brought against subordinates and
not senior officials from the former administration.
I sound cynical because I am right now. It doesn't mean I won't trying to get to the truth
or fighting for justice.
But how can you explain the failure of
Durham and Barr to actually interview key players such as Comey, or former Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, or former CIA Director John Brennan. That is what we're
hearing from them.
If I am going to believe my sources, Durham has interviewed former FBI special agent Peter
Strzok, along with FBI Special agent
Joe Pientka, among some others. Still, nothing has really been done or maybe once again
they will throw us bone.
If there are charges to be brought they will come in the form of taking down the
subordinates, like Strzok, Pientka and the former FBI lawyer
Kevin Clinesmith , who altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application
against short term 2016 campaign advisor Carter Page.
Remember DOJ Inspector General
Michael Horowitz's report in December, 2019: It showed that a critical piece of evidence
used to obtain a warrant to spy on Page in 2016 was falsified by Clinesmith.
But Clinesmith didn't act alone. He would have had to have been ordered to do such a
egregious act and that could only come from the top. Let's see if Durham ever hold those Obama
government officials accountable.
I don't believe he will.
Why? Mainly because of how those senior former Obama officials have behaved since the troves
of information have been discovered. They have written books, like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and
others, who have published Opinion Editorials and have taken lucrative jobs at cable news
channels as experts.
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It's frankly disgusting and should anger every American. We would never get away with what
these former Obama officials have done. More disturbing is that the power they wield through
their contacts in the media and their political connections allows these political 'oligarchs'
unchallenged power like never before.
Here's one of the latest examples.
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's top prosecutor Andrew Weissmann just went after Barr
in a New York Times editorial on Wednesday. He went so far as to ask the Justice Department
employees to ignore any direction by Barr or Durham in the Russia investigations. From
Weissmann's New York Times Opinion Editorial:
Today, Wednesday, marks 90 days before the presidential election, a date in the calendar
that is supposed to be of special note to the Justice Department. That's because of two
department guidelines, one a written policy
that no action be influenced in any way by politics. Another, unwritten norm urges officials to defer
publicly charging or taking any other overt investigative steps or disclosures that could
affect a coming election.
Attorney General William Barr appears poised to trample on both. At least two developing
investigations could be fodder for pre-election political machinations. The first is an
apparently
sprawling investigation by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, that began as
an examination of the origins of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia's interference in the
2016 election. The other , led
by John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, is about the so-called
unmasking of Trump associates by Obama administration officials. Mr. Barr personally
unleashed both investigations and handpicked the attorneys to run them.
But Justice Department employees, in meeting their
ethical and legal obligations , should be well advised not to participate in any such
effort.
I think Barr and Durham need to move fast if they are ever going to do anything and if they
are going to prove me wrong. We know now that laws were broken and our Constitution was torched
by these rogue government officials.
We shouldn't give the swamp the time-of-day to accuse the Trump administration of playing
politics or interfering with this election. If the DOJ has evidence and is ready to indict they
need to do it now.
If our Justice Department officials haven't done their job to expose the corruption, clean
out our institutions and hold people accountable then it will be a tragedy for our nation and
the American people. I'm frankly tired of the back and forth. I'm tired of being toyed with and
lied to. I believe they should either put up or shut up.
Oh Please, JFK, MLK,RFK and MX were all just a few.
50 Years after JFK, still cannot release info?
Just who the hell are we kidding?
lay_arrow
Westcoaster , 4 hours ago
You're absolutely right. And don't get me started on 9/11. The country needs an old
fashion PURGE.
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ebworthen , 4 hours ago
This is how empires collapse.
Cognitive Dissonance , 4 hours ago
There are two things a sociopath acquires on the way up the socioeconomic ladder.
1) Power
2) Knowledge of where all the dead bodies are.....especially the ones he or she
personally buried.
lay_arrow 1
NeitherStirredNorShaken , 4 hours ago
Sara must have missed my detailed facts and evidence over the last five years or so
proving the entire government guilty of sedition, treason, complete failure of fiduciary
duty and seemingly endless more crimes. Waiting for the hierarchy to prosecute itself is
a waste of time.
Instead of a book start putting together something like Citizens Arrest teams.
Gold Banit , 4 hours ago
Nobody has been charged and nobody has gone to jail and nobody will be charged or go
to jail cause DemoRats and Republicans are best of friends....Fact
I have a question for all of the American posters here!
How did you all get so dumb naive brainwashed and FN Stupid?
Is Hillary in jail ?V
play_arrow
LEEPERMAX , 3 hours ago
It's called " Running out the Clock " by almost every criminal on the planet.
WE'VE ALL BEEN PLAYED FROM THE GET GO .
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yerfej , 3 hours ago
Its interesting that there are people out there who actually think this progressive
push can be stopped, it is now impossible. Sixty or seventy years ago there might have
been enough people with morals to fight but not anymore, the majority of people in the
media, courts, academia, and bureaucracy are immoral thieves who are only interested in
lining their pockets. They are HAPPY to see as many people as necessary sacrificed so
they can get theirs, everyone else be damned. Not sure what the exact turning point was
but its long ago.
ay_arrow
sborovay07 , 3 hours ago
Love Sarah and John. She's 100% right as unless the top treasonists pay for their
crimes it was nothing more of a shame investigation by Durnham. The victory laps taken by
Hannity and others is nothing more than hot air. Easy to bring down the little guys, but
the Comey's, Brennan's and Clapper's have to pay. Trump's trust in Barr is waning as we
get closer to the election. Most who have followed all of this the past 4 years know the
criminals are still within the bureaucracies that attempted to overthrow a sitting
President. Only if Assange would have been granted immunity to testify. Now we are
dependent on career government officials to bring justice. #RIPSeth.
Farmer Tink , 2 hours ago
Weissmann's oped in the NYT strikes me as a threat against any DOJ attorney who dares
work on any of Durham's cases. The Obama people would not have any compunctions against
trying to ruin the lives of any attorney there who doesn't defy Barr. I wouldn't expect
to be hired by any private firm ever again, I'd look for an attorney to represent me
before the disciplinary committee off my bar association and I would assume that I'd be
harassed and forced out by the next Dem AG if I did stay at DOJ.
Rather than see this as a symptom of strength, I see this as panic. If Durham has
nothing or will do nothing, then why threaten junior lawyers? Weissmann's an unethical
snake, but I think that he's rather nervous.
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geo_w , 17 minutes ago
My respect for the FBI is gone.
Soloamber , 20 minutes ago
I would like to see what Weissmann's $haul was from the "Mueller " investigation .
Sessions was a joke and the Mueller financed fraud should never have taken place .
Trump has been blind sided over and over by intel at the FBI and DOJ .
They take care of themselves .
play_arrow
InTheLandOfTheBlind , 4 hours ago
Justice dept doesnt hold people accountable. They have to prove the opposite and let a
jury or judicial, not administrative, employee impose judgements.
"There's no difference between John Bolton, Brian Hook or Elliott Abrams," Iranian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in
a tweet with the hashtag #BankruptUSPolicy on Friday.
"When U.S. policy concerns Iran, American officials have been biting off more than they can
chew. This applies to Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and their successors," Mousavi added.
Indeed in perhaps one of the greatest symbols or representations of the contradictions and
absurdity inherent in US foreign policy of the past few decades, and a supreme irony that can't
be emphasized enough: the new US envoy to Iran who will oversee Pompeo's 'maximum pressure'
campaign remains the most publicly visible face of the 1980's Iran-Contra affair .
Elliott Abrams has been named to the position after Brian Hook stepping down. This means the
man who will continue to push for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran once himself
was deeply involved in illegally selling weapons to Iran and covering it up .
Most famously, or we should say infamously, Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in
1991 following years of the Iran-Contra scandal engulfing the Reagan administration; however,
he was also pardoned by outgoing president George H.W. Bush at around the same time.
"Pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992, Abrams was a pivotal figure in the foreign-policy
scandal that shook the Reagan administration, lying to Congress about his knowledge of the plot
to covertly sell weapons to the Khomeini government and use the proceeds to illegally fund the
right-wing Contras rebel group in Nicaragua ,"
NY Mag reviews.
Some are noting this heightens the chances that Washington could get dragged into a war
involving Israel and Iran.
Recall too that Abrams has been Trump's point man for ousting Maduro from Venezuela, and it
appears he'll remain in the post of special envoy for Venezuela as well.
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The Grayzone journalist, Anya Parampil, who has frequently reported from Venezuela, alleged
this week that Abrams will "try and destroy Venezuela and Iran at the same time".
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4879&num_ads=18&cf=1258.5.zerohedge%20190919&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fno-difference-between-john-bolton-brian-hook-or-elliott-abrams-iran-fm Wild Bill Steamcock , 14 hours ago
Abrams is a disgrace. This Administration should be dying in it's own shame bringing this
swine back into government.
He's a leach. He's about lining his own pockets. He can't even own a .22 single shot, yet
he's shaping international policy.
This country is dead. And the fact Trump has democrat and zionist Kushner as advisor,
bringing in guys like Bolton and Abrams, Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster and that Ukranian pet
goblin of his, in not firing Comey et. al day 1 means he's not the answer. Face it.
And to be fair, it doesn't matter anymore who is POTUS. It hasn't really mattered in quite
some time. The Plan rolls along.
Kinskian , 15 hours ago
Trump is a clumsy and transparent Zionist stooge.
PT , 14 hours ago
Gotta admit, if you're going to have a Zionist stooge then you are better off having a
clumsy and transparent one.
Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago
Elliott Abrams is a moron. He's been running the exact same stupid coup strategy for
decades, and can't conceive of a world where the enemy has worked out how to defeat that.
Venezuela was set to be US foreign policies most embarrassing failure--but maybe Iran will
be worse.
Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago
Let's predict what Abrams will attempt:
Running out of the US/UK embassies, Abrams will attempt to identify a potential
alternative leader who is corrupt and controllable. They'll throw political support behind
this false leader, and try and find enough military to support him. Then, protests in the
streets, and the small faction of the military--supported by foreign forces--will attempt to
establish control.
Counter: China and Russia will import anti-coup specialists. Individuals in the Iranian
military will pretend to be on board claiming to have thousands at call, and when the false
leader gives the call, they won't answer. All the conspirators will be caught out on the
street, and have to flee to embassies for political asylum. Like what happened in Venezuela
recently, and Turkey in 2016. This will allow Iran to do a purge of all the real threats
(remembering that Iran has the death penalty for sedition), and give them enough
justification to end diplomatic missions in the country that are being used as launch
pads.
It would be interesting to see how many of inhabitants of CHAZ zone, who experinced the "summer of love" will vote for Trump in
Novemebr.
Notable quotes:
"... The land of soy milk and honey was disbanded on July 1 and was duly eulogised by the usual suspects as basically an extended block party. A month on, the NY Times finally got around to sending a reporter to speak to the people who lived and worked in the area before the protestors moved in and produced an admittedly excellent piece of reportage on the situation. ..."
"... The piece, as journalist Michael Tracey observed on Twitter, would have been dismissed as right-wing propaganda just a month ago and shows that this little experiment in anarcho-communism was a million miles away from paradise. ..."
"... The picture painted by the residents is one of gangs of armed thugs running protection rackets and widespread vandalism. The first person mentioned in the piece, a gay man of Middle Eastern extraction named Faizel Khan, reveals that to get to the coffee shop he runs he had to get permission from "gun wielding white men" who at one point barricaded him and all his customers in the store. ..."
"... In his pre-CHOP days, Mr Hearns was a security guard for many years, but after the police vacated the area (their precinct was taken over by protesters and then promptly set on fire) he became part of the "Black Lives Matter Community Patrol". This patrol had locals "pay for their protection." ..."
"... It doesn't sound like they were particularly good at ensuring community cohesion either, considering six people were shot under their jurisdiction and two of them died. ..."
"... Observers also noted that rather than being a multi-racial melting pot of equality, the CHOP turned into a "white occupation" as the numbers of Antifa activists began to outnumber the BLM protesters. They also established "black only segregated areas" within the CHOP, making it frightening similar to the Confederacy, which also, coincidentally, seceded from the union. ..."
"... The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. ..."
Following
an investigative report the paper of record has revealed that business owners who were stuck in the Capitol Hill Organised Protest
'aren't so sure about abolishing the police'. No sh*t Sherlock.
The New York Times has done something distinctly out of character and actually produced some decent journalism. Taking a break
from getting editors sacked for allowing Republican senators to write op-eds and forcing out the few remaining sane people on their
staff for not quaffing the identity politics Cool-Aid enthusiastically enough, they dispatched a reporter to
Seattle to pick through the remnants
of the CHOP , a month after it closed.
The Capital Hill Organised Protest, formally CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone), was the area of the city that, for 23 glorious
days, declared independence from the United States. A bunch of Black Lives Matter and Antifa radicals hoofed out the police and decided
to try and run the area as some sort of Marxist utopia. What they actually established was a gang run hellhole that made the Wild
West look like Switzerland.
It wasn't described as such at the time of course. Seattle's mayor said the city was in for a "summer of love"
and most
of the left-wing press would have had you believe that it was pretty much a hippy commune full of free vegan food and urban collective
farms.
The land of soy milk and honey was disbanded on July 1 and was duly eulogised by the usual suspects as basically an extended block
party. A month on, the NY Times finally got around to sending a reporter to speak to the people who lived and worked in the area
before the protestors moved in and produced an admittedly excellent piece of reportage on the situation. It was headlined,
"Abolish
the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren't So Sure." The piece, as journalist Michael Tracey observed on Twitter,
would have been dismissed as right-wing propaganda just a month ago and shows that this little experiment in anarcho-communism was
a million miles away from paradise.
To say they "aren't sure" has to be the understatement of the year. The picture painted by the residents is one of gangs
of armed thugs running protection rackets and widespread vandalism. The first person mentioned in the piece, a gay man of Middle
Eastern extraction named Faizel Khan, reveals that to get to the coffee shop he runs he had to get permission from "gun wielding
white men" who at one point barricaded him and all his customers in the store.
Mr Khan's experiences during these three and a bit weeks of lawlessness were so horrendous that he and a host of other small business
owners, described as "lonely voices in progressive areas," are suing Seattle after the local police force refused to respond
to their calls for the duration of the CHOP. And as the litany of horrors they were subjected to is laid bare in the NY Times article,
it is not hard to see why.
Another character we meet in this saga is Rick Hearns. In his pre-CHOP days, Mr Hearns was a security guard for many years, but
after the police vacated the area (their precinct was taken over by protesters and then promptly set on fire) he became part of the
"Black Lives Matter Community Patrol". This patrol had locals "pay for their protection." Now what other organisation does
that remind you of? If you can't think of it, may I suggest you watch virtually any Martin Scorsese movie and I think you'll get
the picture.
It doesn't sound like they were particularly good at ensuring community cohesion either, considering
six people were shot
under their jurisdiction and two of them died. Interestingly, since they were replacing the "institutionally racist"
police force, (run by a black woman incidentally but why let facts spoil it) one of the victims was a black teenager.
Observers also noted that rather than being a multi-racial melting pot of equality, the CHOP turned into a "white occupation"
as the numbers of Antifa activists began to outnumber the BLM protesters. They also established "black only segregated areas"
within the CHOP, making it frightening similar to the Confederacy, which also, coincidentally, seceded from the union. Oh, and
they had a Warlord, Raz from CHAZ, too, just as an icing on the cake.
Quite why these so-called activists felt the need to see how anarchy turns out in a world where Somaila exists is beyond me, and
frankly any sane person who is even vaguely aware of history. I'm sure if they'd managed to get hold of the port it wouldn't have
been long before they decided to give piracy on the high seas a try, but alas they didn't have the time.
This just makes the tone of the NY Times piece all the more baffling. While it does chart the horrors of the zone well, framing
the notion of "abolishing the police" as anything other than irredeemably stupid is frankly ridiculous. I suppose they do
deserve praise for finally telling the story, but in no way does it make up for the way they have fomented and given succour to the
absurd and dangerous ideas that gave rise to the CHOP for so long.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and
Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall 7 Aug, 2020 22:11
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CHAZ/CHOP protesters remove man for bothering them, June 13, 2020
WASHINGTON -- Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow
continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November
and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence
and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading carefully, reflecting
the political heat generated by previous findings.
The White House has
objected in the past to conclusions that Moscow is working to help Mr. Trump, and Democrats
on Capitol Hill have expressed growing concern that the intelligence agencies are not being
forthright enough about Russia's preference for him and that the agencies are introducing
China's anti-Trump stance to balance the scales.
The assessment appeared to draw a distinction between what it called the "range of measures"
being deployed by Moscow to influence the election and its conclusion that China prefers that
Mr. Trump be defeated.
It cited efforts coming out of pro-Russia forces in Ukraine to damage Mr. Biden and
Kremlin-linked figures who "are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social
media and Russian television."
China, it said, has so far signaled its position mostly through increased public criticism
of the administration's tough line on China on a variety of fronts.
An American official briefed on the intelligence said it was wrong to equate the two
countries. Russia, the official said, is a tornado, capable of inflicting damage on American
democracy now. China is more like climate change, the official said: The threat is real and
grave, but more long term.
Democratic lawmakers made the same point about the report, which also found that Iran was
seeking "to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, President Trump, and to divide the country"
ahead of the general election.
"Unfortunately, today's statement still treats three actors of differing intent and
capability as equal threats to our democratic elections," Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a
joint statement.
Asked about the report during a news conference on Friday night at his golf club in New
Jersey, Mr. Trump said, "The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump because
nobody's been tougher on Russia than I have." He said that if Mr. Biden won the presidency,
"China would own our country."
Aides and allies of Mr. Biden assailed Mr. Trump, saying that he had repeatedly sided with
President Vladimir V. Putin on whether Russia had intervened to help him in 2016 and that he
had been impeached by the House for trying to pressure Ukraine into helping him undercut Mr.
Biden.
"Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly invited, emboldened and even tried to coerce
foreign interference in American elections," said Tony Blinken, a senior adviser to the former
vice president.
It is not clear how much China is doing to interfere directly in the presidential election.
Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent days that much of Beijing's focus is on
state and local races. But Mr. Evanina's statement on Friday suggested China was on weighing an
increased effort.
"Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its
public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current
administration's Covid-19 response, closure of China's Houston Consulate and actions on other
issues," Mr. Evanina said.
Mr. Evanina pointed to growing tensions over territorial claims in the South China Sea, Hong
Kong autonomy, the TikTok app and other issues. China, officials have said, has also tried to
collect information on the presidential campaigns, as it has in previous contests.
The release on Friday was short on specifics, but that was largely because the intelligence
community is intent on trying to protect its sources of information, said Senator Angus King,
the Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
"The director has basically put the American people on notice that Russia in particular,
also China and Iran, are going to be trying to meddle in this election and undermine our
democratic system," said Mr. King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Intelligence officials said there was no way to avoid political criticism when releasing
information about the election. An official with the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence said that the goal was not to rank order threats and that Russia, China and Iran
all pose a danger to the election.
Fighting over the intelligence reports, the official said, only benefits adversaries trying
to sow divisions.
While both Beijing and Moscow have a preference, the Chinese and Russian influence campaigns
are very different, officials said.
Outside of a few scattered examples, it is hard to find much evidence of intensifying
Chinese influence efforts that could have a national effect.
Much of what China is doing currently amounts to using its economic might to influence local
politics, officials said. But that is hardly new. Beijing is also using a variety of means to
push back on various Trump administration policies, including tariffs and bans on Chinese tech
companies, but those efforts are not covert and it is unclear if they would have an effect on
presidential politics.
Russia, but not China, is trying to "actively influence" the outcome of the 2020 election,
said the American official briefed on the underlying intelligence.
"The fact that adversaries like China or Iran don't like an American president's policies is
normal fare," said Jeremy Bash, a former Obama administration official. "What's abnormal,
disturbing and dangerous is that an adversary like Russia is actively trying to get Trump
re-elected."
Russia tried to use influence campaigns during 2018 midterm voting to try to sway public
opinion, but it did not successfully tamper with voting infrastructure.
Mr. Evanina said it would be difficult for adversarial countries to try to manipulate voting
results on a large scale. But nevertheless, the countries could try to interfere in the voting
process or take steps aimed at "calling into question the validity of the election
results."
The new release comes on the heels of congressional briefings that have alarmed lawmakers,
particularly Democrats. Those briefings have described a stepped-up Chinese pressure campaign,
as well as efforts by Moscow to paint Mr. Biden as corrupt.
"Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process," Mr. Evanina said in a statement.
The statement called out Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia member of Ukraine's Parliament who has
been involved in releasing information about Mr. Biden. Intelligence officials said he had ties
to Russian intelligence.
Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent weeks on details of the Russian
efforts to tarnish Mr. Biden as corrupt, prompting
senior Democrats to request more information.
A Senate committee led by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, has been leading an
investigation of Mr. Biden's son Hunter Biden and his work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy
firm. Some intelligence officials have said that a witness the committee was seeking to call
was a witting or unwitting agent of Russian disinformation.
Democrats had pushed intelligence officials to release more information to the public,
arguing that only a broad declassification of the foreign interference attempts can inoculate
voters against attempts by Russia, China or other countries to try to influence voting.
In
meetings on Capitol Hill , Mr. Evanina and other intelligence officials have expanded their
warnings beyond Russia and have included China and Iran, as well. This year, the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence put Mr. Evanina in charge of election security briefings to
Congress and the campaigns.
Intelligence and other officials in recent days have been stepping up their releases
of information about foreign interference efforts, and the State
Department has sent texts to cellphones around the world advertising a $10 million reward
for information on would-be election hackers.
How effective China's campaign or Russia's efforts to smear Mr. Biden as corrupt have been
is not clear. Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments,
and steer clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
The first reactions from Capitol Hill to the release of the assessment were positive. A
joint statement by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee
praised it, and asked colleagues to refrain from politicizing Mr. Evanina's statement.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting Republican chairman of the committee, and Senator
Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman, said they hoped Mr. Evanina continued to
make more information available to the public. But they praised him for responding to calls for
more information.
"Evanina's statement highlights some of the serious and ongoing threats to our election from
China, Russia, and Iran," the two men's joint statement said. "Everyone -- from the voting
public, local officials, and members of Congress -- needs to be aware of these threats."
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
Plunder, me hearties! Plunder! Yo Ho Ho and a barrel of oil!
"President Trump wants it known that -- despite his recent decision to pull back the U.S.
militarily back from previously Kurdish-held territory in Syria -- he plans on "
keeping the oil " in Syria and using American troops to do it.
If he follows through, he'll set a dangerous precedent -- and might commit a war crime.
Keeping Syria's oil could well constitute pillage -- theft during war -- which is banned in
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Laws and
Customs of War on Land, which states, "The pillage of a town or place, even when taken by
assault, is prohibited." The prohibition has a solid grounding in the laws of war and
international criminal justice , and the U.S. federal code , including as a
sanction for the illegal exploitation of natural resources such as oil from war zones.'
washpo
"Trump's more grave rationale is his conception of oil as remuneration for U.S. military
investment in the Middle East. In a speech Oct. 29, he said: "We want to keep the oil. $45
million a month? Keep the oil." It mirrors a sentiment he expressed to ABC News in 2011 about
Iraqi oil, saying
, "You win the war and you take it. You're not stealing anything. We're taking back $1.5
trillion to reimburse ourselves. " That argument goes well beyond the notion of securing the
oil -- it suggests trying to profit from it -- and therefore risks triggering responsibility
for pillage. Contrary to Trump's characterization, pillage is a form of stealing.
None of this is a new line of thinking for Trump: As a private citizen in 2011, in an
interview with the Wall Street Journal, commenting on U.S. military involvement in Libya,
he said : "I'm only interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don't take the oil, I'm
not interested." Regarding Iraq, he
said : "I always heard that when we went into Iraq, we went in for the oil. I said, 'Ah,
that sounds smart.' " Indeed, he sounded disappointed during his televised announcement last
week of the killing of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, when he returned to the
subject of oil and
lamented : "I always used to say 'If they're going into Iraq, keep the oil.' They never
did. They never did."" washpo "Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said during the committee
hearing that SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi informed him that a deal had been signed with
an American company to "modernize the oil fields in northeastern Syria", and asked Pompeo
whether the administration was supportive of it.
"We are," Pompeo responded during the hearing streamed live by PBS. "The deal took a little
longer ... than we had hoped, and now we're in implementation."" Reuters -------------- Barry
McCaffery has commented on Twitter that if we do this we are becoming pirates. As he says, the
oil belongs to Syria. I agree. pl
We're watching civil war unfold in the US and these pompous asses are busy trying to
sponge up Syrian oil, the trivial amount of stuff that is land-locked hundreds of miles from
any territory we control or is friendly to the US? God help us who is advising the tweeter in
chief? Can't Trump read an oil price chart any better than Fauci can read a Covid infection
rate? Did his son-in-law tell him what a great idea that would be? Are the warrior generals
who wouldn't defend this nation's capital against antifa, with the tacit consent at sedition
by Esper, in agreement with this line of strategic wisdom too? Maybe Senator Graham, who just
yesterday finally cornered Sally Yates into admitting under oath that the FISA warrant on
Carter Page was a fraud, is covering his bases in case the left's "resistance" to the
November election results in antifa marching into D.C. to bring Biden's secret choice as V.P.
into power? We have less reason to be in Syria than we do to still be defending Germany and
the rest of Europe from the USSR.
Well, with avarice as the guiding principle of the Trump administration's foreign policy,
at least there's no hypocrisy. Just pure, unadulterated greed. The honesty is almost
admirable. But I don't know how our Iranian policy fits into the avarice doctrine.
As far as Trump's pirate name goes, I do like the sound of "Bonespurs." I can see the flag
flying from the mainmast... a skeleton foot of or on a field of sable.
As an army of occupation the US military could requisition the oil, but according to the
Hague Regulations it can do so only for its own needs. It can not do so for the fun and
profits of the foreign state that sent that army in.
If you really, really, really squint hard then perhaps there is wriggle room under Article
55 i.e. Trump can claim that he is the usufructuary of the territory, and therefore can
benefit from the pumping.
But arguing that would be a hopeless brief.
So, yeah, Trump as a medieval warlord. Perhaps he'll also reintroduce the practice of
prima nocta.
I would accept the idea of Trump's inability to distinguish between government and
business, but people like Jeffries and the Pomp are neocon ideologues through and through.
Nothing more.
Russia-China "Dedollarization" Reaches "Breakthrough Moment" As Countries Ditch Greenback
For Bilateral Trade by Tyler Durden Thu, 08/06/2020 - 21:55
Twitter Facebook Reddit EmailPrint
Late last year, data released by the PBOC and the Russian Central Bank shone a light on a
disturbing - at least, for the US - trend: As the Trump Administration ratcheted up sanctions
pressure on Russia and China, both countries and their central banks have substantially
"diversified" their foreign-currency reserves, dumping dollars and buying up gold and each
other's currencies.
Back in September, we wrote about the PBOC and RCB building their reserves of gold bullion
to levels not seen in years. The Russian Central Bank became one of the world's largest buyers
of bullion last year (at least among the world's central banks). At the time, we also
introduced this chart.
We've been writing about the impending demise of the greenback for years now, and of course
we're not alone. Some well-regarded economists have theorized that the fall of the greenback
could be a good thing for humanity - it could open the door to a multi-currency basket, or
better yet, a global current (bitcoin perhaps?) - by allowing us to transition to a global
monetary system with with less endemic instability.
Though, to be sure, the greenback is hardly the first "global currency".
Falling confidence in the greenback has been masked by the Fed's aggressive buying, as
central bankers in the Eccles Building now fear that the asset bubbles they've blown are big
enough to harm the real economy, so we must wait for exactly the right time to let the air out
of these bubbles so they don't ruin people's lives and upset the global economic apple cart. As
the coronavirus outbreak has taught us, that time may never come.
But all the while, Russia and China have been quietly weening off of the dollar, and instead
using rubles and yuan to settle transnational trade.
Since we live in a world where commerce is directed by the whims of the free market (at
least, in theory), the Kremlin can just make Russian and Chinese companies substitute yuan and
rubles for dollars with the flip of a switch:
as Russian President Vladimir Putin once exclaimed , the US's aggressive sanctions policy
risks destroying the dollar's reserve status by forcing more companies from Russia and China to
search for alternatives to transacting in dollars, if for no other reason than to keep costs
down (international economic sanctions can make moving money abroad difficult).
In 2019, Putin gleefully revealed that Russia had reduced the dollar holdings of its central
bank by $101 billion, cutting the total in half.
And according to new data from the Russian Central Bank and Federal Customs Service, the
dollar's share of bilateral trade between Russia and China fell below 50% for the first time in
modern history.
Businesses only used the greenback for roughly 46% of settlements between the two countries.
Over the same period, the euro constituted an all-time high of 30%. While other national
currencies accounted for 24%, also a new high.
As one 'expert' told the Nikkei Asian Review, it's just the latest sign that Russia and
China are forming a "de-dollarization alliance" to diminish the economic heft of Washington's
sanctions powers, and its de facto control of SWIFT, the primary inter-bank messaging service
via which banks move money from country to country.
The shift is happening much more quickly than the US probably expected. As recently as 2015,
more than 90% of bilateral trade between China and Russia was conducted in dollars.
Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of
Sciences, told the Nikkei Asian Review that the Russia-China "dedollarization" was
approaching a "breakthrough moment" that could elevate their relationship to a de facto
alliance.
"The collaboration between Russia and China in the financial sphere tells us that they are
finally finding the parameters for a new alliance with each other," he said. "Many expected
that this would be a military alliance or a trading alliance, but now the alliance is moving
more in the banking and financial direction, and that is what can guarantee independence for
both countries."
Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began
expanding economic cooperation following Moscow's estrangement from the West over its
annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to
sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.
"Any wire transaction that takes place in the world involving U.S. dollars is at some
point cleared through a U.S. bank," explained Dmitry Dolgin, ING Bank's chief economist for
Russia. "That means that the U.S. government can tell that bank to freeze certain
transactions."
The process gained further momentum after the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs on
hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. Whereas previously Moscow had taken
the initiative on dedollarization, Beijing came to view it as critical, too.
"Only very recently did the Chinese state and major economic entities begin to feel that
they might end up in a similar situation as our Russian counterparts: being the target of the
sanctions and potentially even getting shut out of the SWIFT system," said Zhang Xin, a
research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai's East China Normal
University.
. The decision involved various persons with differing motives. Some of those people,
especially in the military, were against using
the bomb. Japan was ready to surrender even before the nuclear bombs were dropped. It did not
surrender because the bombs destroyed two of its cities.
A major reason to use the new bombs was to demonstrate to the Soviet Union - already
selected as the next enemy - that the U.S. had superior weapons. But it did not take long for
the scientist in the Soviet Union to catch up and to test their own nuclear device.
It then daunted to some in Washington that a world with nuclear weapons is less secure than
one without them. For 75 years they tried to stop the race for more nuclear weapons and to
create a path to their total abolishment. But the hawks were more numerous - they still are -
and they won out each and every time.
A history of that process is well caught in Scott Ritter's opus "Scorpion King - America's
suicidal embrace of nuclear weapons from FDR to Trump".
Scott Ritter has studied the Soviet Union, worked in military intelligence and as a United
Nations weapon inspector in Iraq. He is extraordinary qualified to write about nuclear weapon
policies.
The book is an updated version of the 2010 edition. It is comprehensive and covers the
decision processes of every U.S. administration with regards to nuclear weapons, nuclear arms
control, non proliferation and nuclear disarmament.
Over the first decades many new nuclear arms and delivery systems were introduced. There was
always a demand for even more. The nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union were widely
exaggerated. The U.S. assessments of Soviet power were often fake. One commission after the
other was setup to make nuclear war plans, to decide which cities should be obliterated, how
many million people should be killed and to calculate how many additional weapons were needed
to achieve that.
Over time the insanity of the nuclear arms race became more obvious. But when presidents
tried to negotiate arms control agreements, and to lower the number of nuclear weapons, there
were always people who worked to hinder them. Some successes were made. Nuclear tests were
banned. A number of strategic weapons were restricted. Anti-ballistic missiles, introduced to
prevent an enemy's response to an offensive first strike, were limited. Certain categories of
intermediate nuclear weapons were abolished.
But then came the breakup of the Soviet Union. The U.S. felt no longer a need to restrict
itself. Its 'unilateral moment' had begun. Since the 1990s it is again trying to gain an
absolute nuclear supremacy. It encroached on Russia's borders and it reintroduced
anti-ballistic missile capabilities to make a nuclear first strike against Russia possible.
The attempt failed when Russia in 2018, a decade after warning the U.S. to back off,
introduced new weapons which can evade any attempt to counter them. The Obama
administrations had failed to draw the right consequences from Russia's warning. Under Trump
more nuclear treaties were abolished and soon there will be none left. The world is today more
in danger of a nuclear war than it ever was.
As Ritter diagnoses:
The United States is a nation addicted to nuclear weapons and the power and prestige, both
real and illusory, that these weapons bring. Breaking this addiction will prove extremely
difficult. This is especially true given the lack of having any real nuclear disarmament
policy in place since the dawn of the nuclear age. The failure of the United States to
formulate or to implement effective nuclear disarmament policy has placed America and the
world on very dangerous ground. The longer America and the world continue to possess nuclear
weapons, the greater the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used. The only way to prevent
such a dire outcome is through abolition, and not the reduction of control, of all nuclear
weapons.
The book gives a detailed history of the nuclear decision processes of every U.S.
administration since the dawn of the nuclear age. It digs into the motives of many of the
involved persons. It documents how - throughout many administrations - the general nuclear
policies were kept unchanged. The differences were only gradual.
With 501 pages, including end notes, the Scorpion King takes more than one evening to fully
comprehend.
But I for one am grateful to have had the chance to read it page for page. Scott Ritter's
opus will now be THE work of reference to consult when I write about nuclear policies.
The book
is available as paperback for $29.95 or electronically for $19.00.
Posted by b on August 6, 2020 at 18:38 UTC |
Permalink
Comments Thx b.
Matter of proliferation and hypocrisy in foreign policy ...
Permitting Pakistan to develop the Islamic nuclear weapon !
Posted by: Oui | Aug 6 2020 19:14 utc |
1 "The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here. We know how to
win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion. If we have to, we will,
but we sure would like to avoid it," Special Presidential Envoy Marshall Billingslea said in an
online presentation to a Washington think tank. [Reuters, May 21, 2020]
One problem with this thinking is that Putin is a maniacal tightwad, believer in balanced
budget and rainy day funds, and he seems to have some control over military costs. Russian
experts and most of all, their bosses, take home many times less that their "American
partners", projects are selected more carefully, old technologies are maximally reused.
American MIC is a horde of hungry pigs that are world's top expert at inflating costs, plying
fanciful technologies that sometimes work, but often do not (after spending many billions) etc.
Repeating the past glories of "spending into oblivion" will not work again.
Second problem is horribly illustrated in Beirut (and in few places before, Tianjin comes to
mind). We have a huge pile of highly explosive substances, but they are stored and handled
properly, so nothing will happen, right? Or we have best possible software to automatically
launch nuclear missiles when an attack is detected, but it is 110% reliable, and the
international tensions will always be handled with care to prevent "hair trigger" status,
right?
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 6 2020 19:25 utc |
2 Nukes are a self-licking ice-cream cone for the protection racket.
USA power-elite are not addicted to nukes, they're addicted to power.
This is easily seen via the supremacist ideologies that they subscribe to:
neoliberalism: a form of fascism;
neoconservativism: a form of aristocracy;
zionism: a form of colonialism.
Together, these distill the worst impulses of Western civilization and form a mindset of
might makes right that is better known today as the "rules-based order".
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Aug 6 2020
19:32 utc |
3 @Jackrabbit
You're in fine form today. Succinct and to the point.
Posted by: Red Ryder | Aug 6 2020 19:39 utc |
4 @ Jackrabbit # 3
I would only offer a point of clarification to your comment. That clarification would be
that its the global power-elite, not USA, and they are addicted to owning the tools of Western
private finance which is the source of their power.
Posted by: psychohistorian |
Aug 6 2020 19:46 utc |
5 It's fear. Many Americans (not just the power elite) see themselves living in a hostile
world. Probably goes back to the Mayflower. And Hollywood. If it's not natives and Russians
it's sharks and spiders. They think having lots of nukes will protect them.
Posted by: dh | Aug 6 2020 19:49 utc |
6 Thank you for supporting Scott Ritter. I saw him speak at a small book store in
Schenectady NY before the Bush II genocide on Iraq and Afghanistan. Myself and my wife will
never forget his words and strengthened our resolve to try and stop the war by protesting in
NYC,Boston and our small town of Saratoga NY. I hope that Mr Ritter continues his work to
awaken others to the truth of what a sad pathetic country the USA is. I wish him well.
Posted by: So | Aug 6 2020 20:08 utc |
7 Just had to get 'Trump's' name on that headline. He probably wouldn't have used that line
of it was Hilary in the Whitehouse.
Posted by: Arne S | Aug 6 2020 20:22 utc |
8 @ Posted by: Arne S | Aug 6 2020 20:22 utc | 8
He had to put Trump's name because, otherwise, he would overshadow the important year of
2018 (when Putin announced Russia's new weapons).
Posted by: vk | Aug
6 2020 20:33 utc |
9 Another reason things don't change is because of the media. The media keeps the people
placated, or at least tries, and in fact succeeds to a great extent. See this new article
Palace Eunuchs or: Why Mainstream Media Fears the Truth to see how this has happened. It
wasn't always like today. But over time the media has been bought out. And they work with and
for the MIC.
Posted by: Kali | Aug 6 2020 21:22 utc |
10 thanks b... i agree with jackrabbit - it is all about being addicted to power and trying
to hold onto it ( as it slips away )..
this hate on for russia is mystifying.. i think - is this a bunch of war on commies relics
from the past driving usa foreign policy? or is it a bunch of sore losers like browder and
friends from the 90's? or is it just a case of your usual garden variety insanity on display
pretty frequently, from the usa establishment?? i still don't get this hate on for russia... it
makes no sense, other then the money it generates for the military complex..
Posted by: james | Aug 6 2020 21:39 utc |
11 Good Evening! A discussion about nuclear weapons should take into consideration the
scientific and technical progress since 1945 - though the latter may be hidden from broader
public. Yesterday @Schmatz referred to arcticles of Meyssan regarding the explosion in Beirut.
Today some more information was published on https://www.voltairenet.org/article210672.html.
The German tests of 1944 and 1945 were of the same type (hybrid, lithium, fusion). Israel is
not the only gang to have this type of mini-nukes. Big nuclear bombs are out of date. War today
has another face. BE AWARE! Nations and states are out of date, too. The war now is against
mankind itself. The only remedy against this destruction is mentioned in my preceding comment.
Kind Regards, Gerhard
Posted by: Gerhard | Aug 6 2020 21:42 utc |
12 Nuclear War and the Ultimate Game of Hardball
The assassination was a continuation of the Cuban Missle Crisis.
US planes were launched towards Cuba immediately after the assassination, but recalled in
time.
It wasn't until 1995 that people had the book "The Spy That Saved The World" - Oleg
Penkovsky.
The voluminous technical missile details this spy revealed allowed the US to determine the
state of readiness,
or rather unreadiness, of the missiles being deployed in Cuba. Thus, Kennedy knew he had a
window of time to
take the path of diplomacy, and without this key information his decision making process would
have been quite different.
But there was another critical window that the spy Penkovsky revealed.
Khrushchev famously threatened that his factories were producing like "sausages" ICBM capable
of reaching the US;
Khrushchev could make it rain ICBM. The spy Penkovsky revealed that this was simply a
bluff.
Khrushchev might be able to launch ONE experimental ICBM towards the US but that was it.
The window however, Penkovsky revealed, was only reliable for three years. Penkovsky believed
that within as
little as three years the Soviets could be producing ICBM in large numbers.
The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, as history records, contained men with the right stuff, right
enough to inspire "Doctor Strangelove".
They wanted to take out the Soviet Union while we could. Kennedy, however, did not want to go
down in history
as the greatest mass murderer of all time.
It was a game of Super Hardball Poker. The ICBM Window was closing down like a
guillotine,
Kennedy had his bellicose generals and Khrushchev had his own hardline generals to contend
with.
What move in this game could Kennedy make?
The US generals had WANTED the Soviets to run the blockade of Cuba and "cross the line" to
war
and Khrushchev didn't know that his ICBM bluff cards were exposed.
Kennedy's move: he could let Khrushchev know of his slim poker hand.
Kennedy was also proving to the Soviet generals that here was a US President that wanted to
deal,
which would be useful later when seeking treaties. Did Kennedy also blunt the US general's urge
for war
by closing a key vulnerability in the Soviet defenses? Penkovsky had also revealed to us key
Soviet
defense vulnerabilities.
Did Kennedy, in this game of Super Hardball Poker give up the spy, codenamed HERO, to the
Soviets?
Did Kennedy reveal the depth of knowledge HERO had given us about the Soviets?
Oleg Penkovsky was arrested by the Soviets on the seventh day of the Cuban Missle
Crisis.
One year later the assassination created a different stalemate.
The plotter's plan was to blame Cuba for the assassination of our President thus bringing a
retaliatory strike
against Cuba. This would escalate to full out war with the USSR. Robert Kennedy immediately
wanted to thwart
the plans of his brother's killers. Before that bloody day was done, instead of blaming Cuba
Robert Kennedy supported
a safer alternate theory, the lone gunman theory.
Vice President Johnson was heading for a fall before the assassination, his criminal past
was going to catch up with him.
The Kennedys were going to drop Johnson from the ticket during the second presidential
term.
The Joint Chiefs Of Staff brought Johnson into the plot late in the game; but, he
double-crossed them after
the assassination and didn't give them the war against the Soviets (by first attacking Cuba)
they had wanted.
As an insider Johnson had the goods on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and they in turn had the
goods on him. Stalemate.
Robert Kennedy had knowledge of Johnson's criminal past, but the Kennedys acting as tipsters to
the Soviets
in the Oleg Penkovsky affair put a sword over Robert's head. Just as importantly Robert Kennedy
would make
an already dangerous world more dangerous if he made it known publicly that the Joint Chiefs of
Staff had tried
to launch a war that day and were willing to assassinate presidents in order to carry this
out.
Robert Kennedy supported the hoax that was the Warren Commission to protect his brother's
reputation and his own,
but more importantly to deter nuclear war. Johnson was high in the saddle as President and thus
supported the Commission,
and he retired key members of The Joint Chiefs of Staff. With his reputation intact Robert
Kennedy planned to
later become President and once he had power he would bring justice against his brother's
killers.
Posted by: librul | Aug 6 2020 21:55 utc |
13 @ Kali | Aug 6 2020 21:22 utc | 10
"It wasn't always like today. But over time the media has been bought out."
Sorry, but that is incorrect. The "news" media in the US has always been the knowing tool of
the oligarchy. Should anyone doubt that, just read Jack London's 1908 novel "The Iron Heel." In
addition to describing to a "T" the devices the oligarchy uses to keep down and punish the
proletariat, he describes the use of the press to silence, punish and do away with
troublemakers such as socialists.
The fictional revelations in the novel will be immediately recognizable to MOA members as
present-day techniques of repressing the proletariat and corrupting the media.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Aug 6 2020 22:14 utc |
14 p.s.
"The Iron Heel" is available online.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Aug 6 2020 22:15 utc |
15 The historian b links at the beginning of his piece makes the point that the building of
the bombs was taking place well before Truman came to office and basically had no knowledge of
what had been going on. The timeline for that circumstance is horribly short, and here is how
Peter Kuznick describes it in the interview I linked to at 25 on the open thread:
"...65% of potential voters [in a Gallup poll] said they wanted Wallace back as vice
president, 2% said they wanted Harry Truman. But Truman gets in there, is vice president for
82 days, Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes president on April 12th, 1945, the day that shall
live in infamy. And so Truman on April 13th, his first day in office, Secretary of the Navy,
Forrestal sends his private plane down to Spartanburg, South Carolina, to bring James Byrnes
back to Washington. Truman was desperate. He sits down with Byrnes and he says, I don't know
anything, Roosevelt didn't talk to me about what was going on, or the agreements at Yalta, I
don't know anything, fill me in on everything and Byrnes then starts to lay it out. That the
Soviets can't be trusted, that you know, that they're breaking their agreements. So that's a
Truman who was inclined to think that way anyway, starts hearing it from Byrnes.
And even though that was the opposite of what Roosevelt believed and Roosevelt said right
up to his dying day, Roosevelt was sure that the US and the Soviets would get along after the
war..."
I wouldn't want to make any other observation than that as b's historian suggests, there
were many influences behind the scenes of the fateful decision. Just to point out the
similarity in the apparent railroading out of Wallace at such a critical time. It does remind
one of politics today.
Posted by: juliania | Aug 6 2020 22:20 utc |
16 I distinctly remember reading somewhere that at the height of the insanity the USA had
so many nuclear warheads that it had difficulty finding worthwhile targets for them. So much so
that the ended up designating one nuke to destroy a post office in Siberia. A Freaking Post
Office.
For all I know they pointed two some poor postmistress. You know: one to obliterate the
mailboxes, and the other to make the rubble bounce around a bit....
Mad as Hatters, the lot of 'em.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Aug 6 2020 22:32 utc |
17 Fascinating book review and important commentary. Thanks b.
(PS on English usage. In paragraph 4 I think you meant "It then dawned on some in
Washington...". If I am 'daunted' by something I am hesitating out of fear or scale [e.g. I was
daunted by the huge task that lay ahead...]). Sorry if that sounds pedantic, but I like your
posts a lot and am impressed by your grasp of idiom in a second language.
Posted by: Patroklos | Aug 6 2020 22:40 utc |
18 sounds like an excellent book, i'll order as soon as i finish "the deficit myth".
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 6 2020 22:58 utc |
19 james @ 11,in the Paul Jay interview, Peter Kuznick makes the point that early on, when
the weapons were first used on Japan, there wasn't a formidable military industrial complex, so
Truman seems to have made the decision solely on the advice that the Russians were not to be
trusted. Still, behind the scenes, that complex had to be in its infancy, as Eisenhower warned
before he left office.
And psychohistorian is correct, it morphed into the entity that now is the main driver of
world finance, not just in the US. So it is not the people of the US who are addicted to
horrible weapons; it is that huge military/industrial/banking complex feeding off hapless
Americans as it also feeds off the rest of the world, under the umbrella of neoliberalism:
'austerity for you but not for me.'
Grim stuff, and hopefully its days are numbered.
Posted by: juliania | Aug 6 2020 23:03 utc |
20 kennedy was a long time warmonger prior to the cuban missle crisis. he ran to the right
of nixon, claiming nixon and eisenhower had left american vulnerable to a mythical "missle gap"
which was not close to being true. both sides had ample weapons to destroy each other; what
difference did the u.s.s.r. having a few more in cuba to match the u.s. placing some missles in
turkey. this is often portrayed as j.f.k.'s shining moment, instead of a astoundingly reckless
course of action that took the world close to a nuclear war. the russia missles in cuba would
not have given them any sort of nuclear advantage, it would have taken them to the parity of
being able to destroy american cities as many times as the americans could destroy russian
cities, a meaningless equality. indeed the us withdrew the turkish missles, from what i
remember, after the crisis.
it was the worst single example of american military overreach since needlessly blowing up
hiroshima and nagasaki, an incredibly ill judged attempt to maintain u.s. superiority at all
potential costs, and this time it was against an adversary that could destroy the united
states. sound familiar? it should, it's been the strategy of the u.s. empire at least since
1945.
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 6 2020 23:09 utc |
21 Nukes exist to be paid for. Corporate welfare. The Russians and everyone else got them
because the US had them. Peiod. End of story. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Aug 6 2020 23:36 utc |
22 It is very costly trying to live up to your ego. Many within the US government have big
big egos, but who will pay the cost?
Posted by: Dick | Aug 6 2020 23:44 utc |
23 Lots of good discussion and links to excellent essays on the subject. Here are four,
John Pilger's
essay , "Another Hiroshima is Coming Unless We Stop It Now;"
Dave Lindorff's essay , "Unsung Heroes of Los Alamos: Rethinking Manhattan Project Spies
and the Cold War;" H. Bruce
Frankiln's essay , "How the Fascists Won World War II;" and
Robert Jacobs and Ran Zwigenberg's essay , "The American Narrative of Hiroshima is a Statue
that Must be Toppled." Of course, there are dozens more written over the years at each
anniversary of Hiroshima Day. As a former teacher, I found the last essay to be perhaps the
most important as it details the great effort expended to keep that Narrative as THE ONLY
OFFICIAL NARRATIVE to be allowed. But also as AntiSpin said, the fixing of the facts around
the policy has gone on for 100+ years.
We humans face an EVIL GANG that's worse in its goals than Hitler was. Most are situated
within the Outlaw US Empire, with the remainder sprinkled within its satrapies. They are mostly
members of the Rentier Class psychohistorian rails about constantly for good reason, but
others are traditional imperialists and fascists. All constitute what is known as the Donor
Class--the controllers of the Duopoly within the Outlaw US Empire and of the satrapies abroad.
But in a great many ways that do matter, they are outed now as more people globally become
aware of their existence and designs. Much discussion here revolves around the issue of how to
deprive them of the power they wield. Other discussions are subsets, such as the attempt to
launch a new Cold War aimed at China. IMO, the key involves dragging ALL the skeletons from the
closet and having them dance for all the world to see. Part of that is condemning the Outlaw US
Empire for its genocide of the Japanese people in the nuclear fires and those that preceded
them.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 6 2020 23:48 utc |
24 juliania shared a link in the open thread which fits here as well.. thanks
juliania...
Posted by: james | Aug 7 2020 1:21 utc |
25 @ 20 juliania.. thanks.. i agree with pyschohistorians view @5 - global power elite are
behind this.. however, they need the assistance and help of the american military and political
leaders too... do you think pompeo would act any different here?? he has proven beyond doubt
that the usa on most levels, is not to be trusted.. let me quote from your link from the other
thread, which i have linked to above @ 25..
"In fact, Major General Haywood Hansell, the head of the 21st bomber command that was doing
the bombing in Japan, resisted orders to abandon precision bombing at the end of'44. He didn't
want to bomb urban areas. So Hap Arnold sacked him and installed General Curtis LeMay as
commander of the 21st Bomber Command and LeMay had no such compunction. The large-scale bombing
on the night of March 9th through 10th when 324 aircraft attacked Tokyo and killed probably one
hundred thousand people, destroyed 16 square miles, injured a million, at least 41,000
seriously injured, more than a million homeless. The air reached eighteen hundred degrees
Fahrenheit. LeMay says that the victims were scorched and boiled and baked to death. He
referred to this as his masterpiece."
it takes more then the global power elite to enact these types of horrific acts as i see
it.. if ordinary people like general haywood hansell can say no to this, so can others... but
as we see general curtis lemay had no compunction murdering 100,000 innocent people.. someone
might be pulling the levers, but it has to be followed thru by more ordinary people who need to
resist it..
Posted by: james | Aug 7 2020 1:30 utc |
26 I did not know that today it was the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima,
after all I was not even born then...
But, knowing now, it makes even more sense that the governor of Beirut compared ( I imagine
that as ignorant of the date as i am...) the port blast with a destruction equaling that of
Hiroshima...Who I fear that do not ignore this are other people...
I do not go to the heights of other people looking for signals everywhere, but after some
years of reading info I do not think any more some events are coincidences...
Look at this other oddity...
In the afternoon of this Thursday a fire was reported in the World Trade Center tower located
in the city of Brussels, in Belgium
The fire occurred at 4:00 p.m. (local time) and would not have left victims so far
What I find odd enough is not only that the building is named World Trade Center....but,
also that it has a banner in its fachade which reads "The future is here"...
What kind of future?
Then just saw this front page of The Economist at Daniel Estulin Twitter
account...
Posted by: H.Schmatz | Aug 7 2020 1:31 utc |
27 Truman's statement following the destruction of Hiroshima is interesting to read. He
starts off by describing Hiroshima as "an important Japanese Army base" rather than a city
filled with civilians.
He later says "We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every
productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks,
their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy
Japan's power to make war".
Nothing there about wholesale slaughter of the population or destroying their food supply or
drinking water, just attacks on military-related targets.
I do NOT believe this was a nuclear attack on Beirut but it does look like a missile
strike.
Yes, the Lebanese govt is corrupt, negligent, and awful but that doesn't exclude the
possibility that a foreign actor took advantage of the situation. I am wondering if Israel just
had to use their new toy, that cargo ship, container missile and I still think it's possible
that if they did attack Lebanon that they only meant to hit the fireworks warehouse. In any
case, I think this vid is worth looking at.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Aug 7 2020 2:02 utc |
29 @28 Yes very interesting. You may find the Potsdam Declaration interesting too. The
Japanese were given an opportunity to surrender. They turned it down.
Posted by: librul | Aug 7 2020 2:28 utc |
31 @31 Wars are heavy. They are fought to some kind of conclusion. Not sure why Hiroshima
was the target. I imagine other targets were considered but the basic idea was to create a
major impression.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 2:41 utc |
32 @31 Sorry librul. I guess you weren't talking about Hiroshima.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 2:53 utc |
33 I have become comfortably numb. This happened some time ago coinciding with the release
of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. 80,000 people died immediately in Hiroshima on this day
in 1945. With Nagasaki, the total was over 220,000 in two single incidents. Do shape-shifting
lizards from another dimension control our world behind the scenes? Most likely. Global
policies lack humanity. They also lack intelligence, being born of a lizard brain. This is the
end game. This is the Kaliyuga. Billions will die while we remain comfortably numb, armchair
pundits. March on Scott Ritter, stalwart Marine!
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 3:41 utc |
37 Peter AU1
Surrounded by hills
dh
psychological effect
My understanding is that they chose it because it was had experienced very little previous
bombing. And they had deliberately withheld bombing there for some months before dropping the
bomb.
They were as interested in learning about the effects of a nuke on a city as they were in
sending a 'message' to the Japanese Govt.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Aug 7 2020
3:55 utc |
38 @38 "They were as interested in learning about the effects of a nuke on a city as they
were in sending a 'message' to the Japanese Govt."
I'm sure that was a factor. They probably wanted to send a message to the rest of the world
as well.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 4:12 utc |
39 DH and others,
One reason the US dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to send a message
to the Soviets that it had nuclear weapons - and was prepared to use them.
Japan had petitioned the US to surrender on the condition that it be allowed to retain its
monarchy. The US insisted on unconditional surrender.
"... [A dilemma] Truman faced was the so-called unconditional-surrender demand. Under
Roosevelt, the United States had been demanding unconditional surrender by Japan, and Truman
followed this policy faithfully. This was because Japan had engaged in military aggression
causing the war (unjust war) and had committed all kinds of atrocities against American and
Allied soldiers (violations on justice in warfare). In order to defeat Japanese militarism so
that Japan could never rise up again as a military power, the United States and its allies
should impose on Japan unconditional surrender.
But, as the war developed, there were certain people, very influential people within the
government – such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy James
Forrestal, and Deputy Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew –
who thought it necessary to define what "unconditional surrender" exactly meant. Particularly
important was the status of the emperor. If the United States were to insist on unconditional
surrender, particularly if it were to insist on, for instance, trying or punishing the
emperor, as some within the administration insisted, the Japanese would fight on to the very
last man. Therefore, in order to terminate the war, the US government would have to define
the terms in such a way that it could allow the Japanese to preserve the monarchical system,
even under the current dynasty.
In fact, before the Potsdam Conference began, Stimson presented the president with the
draft proposal for the Potsdam on July 2. This draft included two important items. First, it
anticipated the Soviet entry into the war. In fact, the Operation Division of the Army
General Staff, which had worked on the proclamation draft, thought the most effective means
of forcing Japan's surrender was to time the issuance of the ultimatum to Japan so that it
coincided with the initiation of Soviet entry into the war. The second provision was that the
Allied powers would allow Japan to preserve the monarchical system under the current
dynasty.
What happened with these provisions? When the actual Potsdam proclamation was issued, it
stated nothing about the Soviet Union and nothing about unconditional surrender. Those two
conditions were rejected because of political considerations.
So the first assumption – that the atomic bomb was the only alternative for the
United States to end the war – turned out to be false, a myth. The fact is not only
that Truman did not choose those alternatives, but also that he just rejected them out of
political consideration ..."
In the end, Japan surrendered once the Soviets declared war on that country, and eventually
the US allowed Japan to retain its monarchy and to keep Hirohito on the throne.
Incidentally Nagasaki was selected for bombing because it was on a list of potential targets
on which
Kokura was first , but on the morning of 9 August 1945, the weather over the town was
cloudy and the crew of the B-29 bomber could not see the target city clearly. Nagasaki was
second on the list. The bomb hit a Roman Catholic cathedral during a celebration of Sunday
Mass.
"... "When I analyze the current situation, I understand that this is a rehearsal for biological warfare," ..."
"... "I am not saying that this virus was created by humans... but this is a test of the health system's strength, including the country's biological defense." ..."
"... More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic power (already the case) and Technology ..."
"... China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range. ..."
"... More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic power (already the case) and Technology ..."
"... China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range. ..."
"... Of course having moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success. ..."
"... "There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..." Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. ..."
"... Of course having moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success. ..."
"... "There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..." Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. ..."
The rattling of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the U.S. is becoming
louder, and causing many to ponder if World War III is not far off. There are those in the
international community increasingly alarmed given the COVID situation, the South China Sea
imbroglio, and China's growing threat that they intend to invade and absorb Taiwan into
Communist China within a year. These items have led to the belief that World War III is on the
horizon.
Just recently, Dr.Leonid Roshal, a noted Moscow physician, hostage negotiator, and advisor
to the WHO remarked that the COVID pandemic is a dry run for World War III, and that COVID-19
is practice for future biological warfare. Covid-19 pandemic has functioned as a "rehearsal for
biological warfare," Dr. Roshal also believes that the rapidly-spreading virus was a test for
the world's healthcare systems.
In an interview with Forbes, Professor Roshal, President of the Research Institute of
Emergency Pediatric Surgery and Traumatology, explained that not all nations were ready for a
mass influx of patients, and their lack of preparation has been exposed by the pandemic.
"When I analyze the current situation, I understand that this is a rehearsal for
biological warfare," he explained. "I am not saying that this virus was created by
humans... but this is a test of the health system's strength, including the country's
biological defense."
In addition, Hong Kong-based virologist Yan Li-Meng, currently in hiding at an undisclosed
location, claims that the COVID-19 coronavirus came from a People's Liberation Army lab, and
not from a Wuhan wet market as Beijing has claimed. Speaking on a live stream interview on
Taiwan's News Agency Lude Press, she said, "At that time, I clearly assessed that the virus
came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab. The Wuhan wet market was just used as a
decoy." Yan has been in hiding in the U.S. after fleeing Hong Kong in April.
Chinese PLA Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang stated recently that TAIWAN WILL be reunified with
the rest of China - and any attempt by the United States to interfere is futile and dangerous.
Senior Colonel Guoqiang is Deputy Director of the Ministry of Defense's Information Office, and
Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesman. J
entrybody comment-odd comment-has-avatar">
Well, this is certainly a depressing and frightening post. I can't say, however, that I
have been thinking along the same lines. However, since I am basically a nobody, I have tried
to assure myself that I am being paranoid. So, it's not helping that some people who are much
more knowledgeable have expressed in print some of the fears I have been feeling over these
months dealing with the pandemic.
All I can do is pray and hold fast to my faith in God. Perhaps He will lift up the people
who can deter us from the predictions of this post. (But are we worthy of being saved?)
Well, this is certainly a depressing and frightening post. I can't say, however, that I
have been thinking along the same lines. However, since I am basically a nobody, I have tried
to assure myself that I am being paranoid. So, it's not helping that some people who are much
more knowledgeable have expressed in print some of the fears I have been feeling over these
months dealing with the pandemic.
All I can do is pray and hold fast to my faith in God. Perhaps He will lift up the people
who can deter us from the predictions of this post. (But are we worthy of being saved?)
I don't believe there will be any direct military conflict. However, we can expect some
saber rattling from both sides.
Sec.Azhar is leading a US delegation to Taiwan. On another note Taiwan ain't HK. They
have an independent government. While they will eventually be overwhelmed in any military
conflict with China if no other country intervenes on Taiwan's side, they definitely have the
capability to inflict a black eye.
The CCP has been emboldened precisely because the US government has actively abetted
their rapaciousness for many decades under both parties. From Clinton's MFN designation to Bush
& Obama administrations actively supporting the shuttering of US manufacturing.
Trump is making the first course correction albeit in a limited manner with tariffs. He
has however changed the tone in an important manner by no longer just kowtowing to whatever the
CCP wants.
This story of ARM China exemplifies CCP long-term policy of requiring JVs to access the
Chinese market and once technology and know-how have been successfully transferred, then
expropriating it. The west in general and the US in particular have turned a blind eye. Huawei
got going by stealing cisco source code and design. https://www.businessinsider.com/arm-conflict-china-complicates-acquisition-prospects-2020-8
It is high time for the US to make the totalitarian Chinese communists pay a price and
directly take the fight to them economically and financially. The CCP must be doing their best
to insure a Biden win to return to the status quo or wait another Trump term and hope an
establishment Democrat or Republican wins after. They have bought and paid the establishment
politicians, entire think-tanks, many in academia and the media.
I don't believe there will be any direct military conflict. However, we can expect some
saber rattling from both sides.
Sec.Azhar is leading a US delegation to Taiwan. On another note Taiwan ain't HK. They have
an independent government. While they will eventually be overwhelmed in any military conflict
with China if no other country intervenes on Taiwan's side, they definitely have the
capability to inflict a black eye.
The CCP has been emboldened precisely because the US government has actively abetted their
rapaciousness for many decades under both parties. From Clinton's MFN designation to Bush
& Obama administrations actively supporting the shuttering of US manufacturing.
Trump is making the first course correction albeit in a limited manner with tariffs. He
has however changed the tone in an important manner by no longer just kowtowing to whatever
the CCP wants.
This story of ARM China exemplifies CCP long-term policy of requiring JVs to access the
Chinese market and once technology and know-how have been successfully transferred, then
expropriating it. The west in general and the US in particular have turned a blind eye.
Huawei got going by stealing cisco source code and design.
https://www.businessinsider.com/arm-conflict-china-complicates-acquisition-prospects-2020-8
It is high time for the US to make the totalitarian Chinese communists pay a price and
directly take the fight to them economically and financially. The CCP must be doing their
best to insure a Biden win to return to the status quo or wait another Trump term and hope an
establishment Democrat or Republican wins after. They have bought and paid the establishment
politicians, entire think-tanks, many in academia and the media.
More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News,
and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but
certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one
aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in
Economic power (already the case) and Technology .
There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising Trump.
Certainly, US Naval Intel and PACCOM (now INDOPACCOM) brass who would love a grand Coral Sea
2.0 battle to destroy PLAN vessel on the seas. However, no one, except few Marine 4 stars want
any land war. The Marines think they can defeat the PLA on some islands. That kind of warfare
is for hollywood movies. China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This
means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from
mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range.
There won't be any war in SE Asia or East Asia. This area now has a circuit breaker,
Russia. Russia is building a naval presence, expanding it's aerospace arm, has basing rights in
the zone in Vietnam and has long range radars that cover a lot of the zones, and submarines the
US is having issues tracking.
The signals from China and Russia to the US military is very clear. You can walk and talk
like the Hegemon but the days of regional hegemony are over. ASEAN nations will not accepting
accept a return to gunboat diplomacy and colonization. All these nations want prosperity and
progress, not western hegemony and military destruction.
This is why the hybrid war of sanctions, trade war, Infowars, cyberwar, proxies in
Central Asia (ISIS and AQ), color revolution attempts in Hong Kong, hysterics about Tibet and
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bannon front) are on the front burner. Military action is a losing
proposition for the US. They simply cannot win anything anywhere in the Asia Pacific, western
Asia or even against near peer powers proxies like Venezuela.
China simply has to do what Russia does and tell the US to pound sand.
More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and
the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly
purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect -
China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic
power (already the case) and Technology .
There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising Trump.
Certainly, US Naval Intel and PACCOM (now INDOPACCOM) brass who would love a grand Coral Sea
2.0 battle to destroy PLAN vessel on the seas. However, no one, except few Marine 4 stars
want any land war. The Marines think they can defeat the PLA on some islands. That kind of
warfare is for hollywood movies. China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics.
This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from
mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range.
There won't be any war in SE Asia or East Asia. This area now has a circuit breaker,
Russia. Russia is building a naval presence, expanding it's aerospace arm, has basing rights
in the zone in Vietnam and has long range radars that cover a lot of the zones, and
submarines the US is having issues tracking.
The signals from China and Russia to the US military is very clear. You can walk and talk
like the Hegemon but the days of regional hegemony are over. ASEAN nations will not accepting
accept a return to gunboat diplomacy and colonization. All these nations want prosperity and
progress, not western hegemony and military destruction.
This is why the hybrid war of sanctions, trade war, Infowars, cyberwar, proxies in Central
Asia (ISIS and AQ), color revolution attempts in Hong Kong, hysterics about Tibet and
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bannon front) are on the front burner. Military action is a
losing proposition for the US. They simply cannot win anything anywhere in the Asia Pacific,
western Asia or even against near peer powers proxies like Venezuela.
China simply has to do what Russia does and tell the US to pound sand.
We've been in a war with China for a few decades now, and losing. Of course having
moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up
most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to
'studies' programs has been a resounding success.
Horatio,
"There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..."
Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq,
Afghanistan and Syria.
We've been in a war with China for a few decades now, and losing. Of course having
moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up
most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students
to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success.
Horatio,
"There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..."
Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
The rattling. of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the
U.S.
That line as introduction gives away the article as plain and unsofisticated propaganda.
Nobody refers to the USA as the Republican Party, the red scare is a momified bogey..
The rattling. of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the U.S.
That line as introduction gives away the article as plain and unsofisticated propaganda.
Nobody refers to the USA as the Republican Party, the red scare is a momified bogey..
Hillary is a co-founder of Onward
Together , a Democratic Party front group that is affiliated to other activist
organizations. In a recent e-mail she played the race card in a bid to solidify the black vote
behind the Democratic Party, writing "Friend, George Floyd's life mattered. Ahmaud Arbery and
Breonna Taylor's lives mattered. Black lives matter. Against a backdrop of a pandemic that has
disproportionately ravaged communities of color, we are being painfully reminded right now that
we are long overdue for honest reckoning and meaningful action to dismantle systemic
racism."
It is, of course, a not-so-subtle bid to buy votes using the currently popular code words
"systemic racism" as a pledge that the Democrats will take steps to materially benefit blacks
if the party wins the White House and a majority in the Senate. She ends her e-mail with an odd
commitment, "I promise to keep fighting alongside all of you to make the United States a place
where all men and all women are treated as equals, just as we are and just as we deserve to
be." The comment is odd because she is on one hand promising to promote the interests of one
group based on skin color while also stating that everyone should be "treated as equals."
Someone should tip her off to the fact that employment and educational racial preferences and
reparations are not the hallmarks of a government that treats everyone the same.
But if one really wants to dig into the depths of the Democratic Party soul, or lack
thereof, there is no one who is better than former U.N. Ambassador and Secretary of State under
Bill Clinton, the estimable Madeleine Albright. She too has written an e-mail that recently
went out to Democratic Party supporters, saying:
"I'm deeply concerned. Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our standing in the world
and continues to threaten the decades of diplomatic progress we had made. It is easy to forget
from the comfort of our homes that for many people, America is a beacon of hope and
opportunity. We're known as a country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and
democracy, and that didn't just happen overnight. We've spent decades building our
nation's reputation on the world stage through careful, strategic diplomacy -- but in just
under four years, Trump has done unspeakable damage to those relationships and has insulted
even our closest allies."
Albright, who is perhaps most famous for having stated that she thought that the deaths of
500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. imposed sanctions was "worth it," is living in a fantasy
bubble that many politicians and high government officials seem to inhabit. She embraces the
America the "Essential Nation" concept because it makes her and her former boss Bill Clinton
look like great statesmen. She once enthused
nonsensically that "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the
indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future,
and we see the danger here to all of us."
Madeleine Albright's view that "America is a beacon of hope and opportunity known as a
country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and democracy" is also, of course,
completely delusional, as opinion polls regularly indicate that nearly the entire world
considers the U.S. to be extremely dangerous and virtually a rogue state in its blind pursuit
of narrow self-interest combined with an unwillingness to uphold international law. And that
has been true under both Democratic and Republican recent presidents, including Clinton. It is
not just Trump.
Albright is clearly on a roll and has also submitted to a New York Times
interview , further enlightening that paper's readership on why the Trump administration is
failing in its job of protecting the American people. The questions and answers are singularly,
perhaps deliberately, unexciting and are largely focused on coronavirus and the new world order
that it is shaping. Albright faults Trump for not promoting an international effort to defeat
the virus, which is perhaps a bridge too far for most Americans who are not even very receptive
to a nationally mandated pandemic response, let alone one requiring cooperation with
"foreigners."
Albright's persistence as a go-to media "expert" on international relations is befuddling
given her own history as an integral part of the inept foreign policy promoted by the Clinton
Administration. She and Bill Clinton became cheerleaders for an unnecessary Balkan war that
still resonates and were responsible for what was possibly the greatest foreign policy blunder
(with the possible exception of the Iraq War) since the Second World War. That consisted of
ignoring the commitment to post-Soviet Russia to not take advantage of the 1991 end of
Communism by expanding U.S. or NATO military presence into Eastern Europe. Clinton/Albright
reneged on that understanding and opened the door for many of the former Soviet allied states
to enter NATO, thereby introducing a hostile military presence right up to Russia's border.
Simultaneously, the U.S. enabled the election as Russian president of the hapless drunk
Boris Yeltsin, who, guided by advisers sent by the White House, oversaw the western looting of
his country's natural resources. The bad decision-making under the Clintons led inevitably to
the rise of Vladimir Putin as a corrective, which, exacerbated by Hillary Clinton as Secretary
of State and a maladroit Donald Trump, has in turn produced the poisoned bilateral relationship
between Washington and Moscow that currently prevails.
So, one might reasonably suggest to Joe Biden that if he really wants to get elected in
November it would be a good idea to keep the Clintons, Albright and maybe even Obama carefully
hidden away somewhere. Albright's interview characteristically concludes with her plan for an
"Avengers style dream team" to "fix the world right now." She said that "Well, it certainly
would be a female team. Without naming names, I would really try to look for women who are in
office, both in the executive and legislative branch. I would try to have a female C.E.O., but
also somebody who heads up a nongovernmental organization. You don't want everybody that's
exactly the same. Oh, and I'm about to do a program for the National Democratic Institute with
Angelina Jolie, and she made the most amazing movie about what was going on in Bosnia, so I
would want her on my team."
No men allowed and a Hollywood actress who is regarded as somewhat odd? Right.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
<a://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/"
title="https://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/"
href="https://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/">https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is
<a:[email protected]" title="mailto:[email protected]"
href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected].
Hillary and Barack were also complicit in unnecessary wars against Libya and Syria that
have devastated both countries.
Most Americans remain unaware of their destruction of Libya, Africa's most prosperous
nation, which claimed 40,000 black lives. Thousands more were killed as they destroyed
Somalia and Sudan as part of the neocon plan from the Bush era to destroy "seven countries in
five years" as General Wesley Clark told the world. Thousands more died as they attempted to
destroy Syria. Here is a short summary of their destruction of Libya:
Take a close look at the visage of Mad Albright. What do you see beyond the simple ravages
of the aging process on a life misspent? Check out those eyes, unmasked by the rouge. Take a
close look. What do you see? Can you discern the sociopathic evidence, the haunting by the
scores of thousands of Iraqi children who starved to death under the tender mercies of United
$tates of America Corporation's foreign policy on behalf of the agenda of the elite crime
clans of highest international finance.
Maddie is a minion, a minion for genocide and for a total lack of elementary human
empathy. She is an ambulatory exemplar of Kali Yuga, the age of devolution, which in polar
opposition to the Celestial Kingdom which reigned in China as recently as the Ming Dynasty.
During that era where administrative positions were based as much as possible on merit, the
contrast is vivid versus the current reality in our ruptured republic where instead of the
cream, the scum rises to the top.
Remove that pic of know nothing old owl from this site – some children might see
it!
We need updates on Biden's mega corruption in Ukraine investigation. Trump was impeached
for talking to Ukraine president about Biden's corruption and that lifetime taxpayers leech
is Democrats front runner for the highest office – pathetic.
During the days of her power and glory (Yeltsin years) Albright had made nine maps of the
countries that would be created by the dissolution of Russia. Somebody walked in the poker
game room and said "Let's play a different game". Enter the Putin era.
The democrats are just snake skins laying on the asphalt. The new sheriff in town (Syria,
Libya) is laying out a different plan. Good by NWO , halo multipolar world.
Trump declared on many occasions " we are there because we want the oil"; crude? Yes but
honest at least. For those who prefer smooth talkers like the Clintons and the Obamas, I
state that the legacy of those two administrations has done more harm to the foreign
perception of US power In the Middle East and Eastern Europe than any vulgar language
pronounced by Trump who, so far, can be credited with not having started any foreign
wars.
At least Trump tried to withdraw American troops from Syria only to be kept in check by
the reality of the American Deep state power structure. Had he succeeded in his endeavour, US
Russia relations would have better than they are today.
Three months to the election and what is on the main menu? Two old white men, neither fit
to serve the office of the Presidency. The nation is a tired old whore, spent from all those
wars for Zion, and it seems to me the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons is better than Trump
or Biden. Both candidates are loony tune, both are completely unacceptable. We are looking at
Weimar in the mirror. The nation has run it's course, the Republic is dead.
(Weimar Germany, of course, collapsed. Weimar is also the prelude democratic state before
the rise of the authoritarian state. All those who thought Trump was a new Hitler are fools,
Trump is the slavish whore of the Jews, not the opposing force, not the charismatic leader
who restores sanity to the nation wrecked by Jews. What Trump is, is the final wrecking ball,
not the savior.)
Gone are the glory days of imperial dreams, Amerika is not longer fit to wage another big
war in the Middle East for Israel. So what is Bibi to do, Israel is in corona crazy lockdown,
and his influence on Amerikan politics seems to me slipping badly. How much longer will AIPAC
be allowed to influence our politicians if we go into a hyper deflationary crash? It seems to
me the Greater Israel project is about to get the rug pulled out, because if the USA crashes
and burns no one will tolerate one more cent going to that god forsaken shithole.
"If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation.
We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see
the danger here to all of us."
Whom the gods would destroy they first make Madeleine.
The main difference between the reps and dems is their party names. Both represent the
same oligarch interests. Most of the dem objections to trump are psywar manipulations for
public consumption, not serious policy differences. Pretty much all fluff. The reps also do
the same about influencial dems, they endlessly talk nonsense about inconsequential things
about them.
The drama queenery is to manipulate the public into thinking their votes for either party
actually matter in some way. As of late, that psywar has been failing since most people don't
see much difference between the two and believe both parties don't represent them and are
lying scum. Trying to neutralize this view by the people is part of the reason the psywar
critters have ramped up the hysterics.
Barack's mother, Madeleine's father and Chelsea's husband all have one thing in common and
that something is without which sleepy Joe can't be elected so the author's advice to keep
Obamas, Clintons and Albright at bay is moot at best!
Her statement about Iraqi children should not come as a surprise to any. She was is from
that part of Europe which is famous for being racist.
I came across with an interesting story during Balkan "peace" negotiations in a Paris in
90s. The Bosnian and Serbian delegates were negotiating in Paris hotel where American
delegate was staying. One time, at 4 O'clock in the morning out curiosity sMadeline went and
knocked on the negotiators door. One of them opened the door and failed to recognize her and
thought her to be the cleaning lady. Told her to come back later.
That role suits her perfectly.
Set everything else aside and consider the relationship of each POTUS to the
sovereign.
The terminology I use is that they fall somewhere on the spectrum from figurehead to real
POTUS.
Obama and Trump are opposites in this respect. Obama took office having gifted the
national security state a globally appealing front-man. While he had campaigned and started
his presidency looking like he wanted to use his power to move the needle in the right
direction, he was quickly snapped like a butter bean, retreating into the presidential safe
space offered, at least up until that point, to a POTUS that accepted the constrained role to
which the American presidency had been consigned in the modern era.
There were signs almost immediately with Obama. After decisively winning election and
becoming our first black president, he was house-trained early on over a single comment
defending his Harvard professor friend after a silly arrest.
Does anyone other than me even remember this incident? Or how it completely emasculated
the new POTUS, with him retreating behind a teleprompter for everything other than occasional
unscripted remarks that, if unwittingly notable or problematic, were quickly corrected by
some handler.
Now consider Trump. Both as candidate and POTUS he's Obama's opposite. Where Obama had the
establishment wind at his back, writ large those same forces tried to destroy Trump's
candidacy and presidency.
Rather than belabor any particulars I'll just note that the psychological driver for the
ruling and governing classes, regardless of their ideological and programmatic preferences,
is boundless resentment toward him.
After all, it isn't an overstatement to note that more than any other president, Trump got
there on his own, with a near complete array of establishment forces, domestic and foreign,
against him, including his own party.
Who would have thought such a thing possible before Trump did it?
Little has changed since 2016. We're in our current moment because destroying Trump
remains as close to a dues ex machina as any of us have or will see in our lifetimes. There
are real, monumental interests at stake but when you get right down to it most personalities
in the ruling and governing classes -- who to a one grew up with mama telling them they
should be POTUS someday, need him gone so they can go back to feeling better about
themselves.
@RoatanBill pointees he has to placate some truly awful people, such as Mitt Romney. Some
personnel selections that appear to be made by the President are actually part of package
deals where key Senators get to pick their names. That is why certain parts of the
administration are out of touch with Trump's agenda.
Trump has been 100% successful preventing NeoConDemocrats from starting new wars.
Unwinding the messes he inherited from prior administrations is much more complicated.
Hopefully Trump's now inevitable second term will include a friendlier Senate. That will
help him get more done than his first term which was impeded by the ObamaGate deception.
I don't care about all the political backstabbing and massaging. If he had any balls he'd
use the same New York English I grew up with and tell the entire Congress, the Supreme Court
and the intel agencies to go F themselves and do so on national TV. The silent majority in
the country would back up his play.
But he doesn't do that because he's a bought and paid for politico just like the rest of
them. The deep state probably has dirt on him like everyone else in the District of Criminals
and they tell him how to behave. He backs off and allows more deaths to occur to save his
sorry ass from some exposure.
@RoatanBill asking the wrong question . Let me Fix That For You.
As Impeachment Jury, the Senate has final say on whether Trump stays in
office.
Is that true or isn't it? Yes or no?
Are you leading a movement to:
-- Jettison the Constitution
-- Dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court
-- Proclaim Trump as God Emperor of the Golden Throne
When you finish this task, I will back your position that Trump can act unilaterally with
regard to foreign troop deployments.
Until then, I strongly recommend a more realistic and nuanced view on what a President can
accomplish.
complicit in unnecessary wars against Libya and Syria
That's putting it in polite terms. In reality it's massive war criminality, wars of
aggression that killed, maimed and uprooted millions of people in other countries. Not that
it caused as much of a stir domestically as the death of Floyd but there you have it, the
order of priorities of the American people and their supposed leaders. During the Vietnam war
a common chant was "Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids you kill today?". This is true for the
Clintons, Obama, Albright and all the rest of them yet somehow they still have their fans.
They're past their expiration dates yet are still kicking around since the Dem party is
sclerotic with no new blood, no new ideas, just the same old parasites. Their presidential
candidate is way past retirement age and has been obviously faltering in public. This is
their champion, a lifelong mediocrity who is entering senility? US no longer has any wind in
its sails.
O think out move in the Balkans was essentially correct. Even Russia scolded their allies
for their behavior as over the top in brutality. If Russia your closest ally says you are
over the top -- then there's a good chance the genocide claim has merit.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
But I see no reason for Dr. Giraldo to be tepid here. somalia is the a complete
embarssment. The admin took a feed and water operation and turned into a "warloard" hunt
without any clue began interfering into the internal affairs of a complex former colonized
region left bankrupt to reconfigure itself and began a failed bid to set aright -- ohhh that
should sound familiar.
1. They turned a mess into a "warlord" victory for the leader they thought most
dangerous(and I hate that word and its connotations -- a civil conflict) and then to top it
off
2. ran away with their tail between their legs -- it was in my mind the second sign of US
vulnerability to asymmetric warefare
counter balance that against not intervening in the genocide in Africa's Rwanda. The deep
level hypocrisy here or complete bankrupt moral efficacy -- intervening in Bosnia-Herzegovina
but completely ignoring the a worse case in Africa.
All of which occurred under the foreign policy headship of Mrs Albright. Ahhh they are
women hear them roar . . . Let's get it straight.
Women wanted us in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, they want to intervene . . . in the name
of humanity for any host of issues, in a bid to appear tough they will on occasion say the
incedulous -- but the bottom lie
female leadership has demonstrated to be no more effective, astute, or beneficial than
that of the men.
And allow me to get this out of the way before it starts though start it will,
In fact, it appears that not even white skin is not road to effective political leadership
or governance as all of the key players have been predominately and by that I mean near all
white. But here the test cases about femininity alone being a key qualifier just does not pan
out. And no personal offense Dr. Giraldi neither is an elite education.
@A123 ght as the dollar keeps declining in importance and the whole world is sick of the
sanctions and bullying.
So, Yes, I'm in favor of ending the Constitution as it has shown to be a useless piece of
paper except to deceive those that think it's worth something. Yes, I'm in favor of getting
rid of the criminals in DC including the asshat president, all of congress and the absolutely
useless supreme court. I'm in favor of 50 new countries once the empire expires offering 50
experiments on how to govern and let the best idea win.
Your more nuanced approach is exactly what Trump is doing – exactly nothing. He's
the most do nothing president in decades.
If a primary principle, supposedly justifying the Nuremburg Trials, that initiating wars
of aggression is a criminal act against humanity, then the Clintons, Bush II, Albright,
essentially all the USA's senior foreign policy and military bureaucrats over the last thirty
years, and all the Zionist/neocons urging them on and aiding and abetting their criminal
acts, would end their lives in Spandau Prison or dangling at the end of a rope.
In the following years I've been shocked again and again to observe Trump's ignorance of
government and politics and, even more disturbing, his apparent unwillingness to recover and
learn from his mistakes. I'm not sure whether this is due to stupidity, laziness, or
sociopathic levels of grandiosity. Whatever the cause, the result has been an inability on
the part of Trump to fill many campaign promises. (A less sympathetic interpretation of
events might be that Trump's campaign promises were deliberate lies.)
@A123 ng out of the country. The Chinese were eager to comply to get access to the
processes involved. The Chinese didn't have to steal anything, as the US corporations
voluntarily gave them the tech as part of the deal to be in China. The reason to move out of
the US is due to the high labor rate and regulations costs. Those costs are high because the
Fed Gov that you apparently like is sucking the life out of the population with high taxes,
an oversize and out of control military and intelligence services, a financial sector that
repeatedly rapes the country and gets away with it, etc, etc, etc.
@A123 a rel="nofollow"
href="https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Law_of_conservation_of_energy">
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Law_of_conservation_of_energy
In other words, the Democrats and their Allied Media's malefactions against Trump
forestalled them suffering what Republicans did post-Watergate in the House and Senate
midterms in 1974, but all of that negative energy didn't go away.
Either they will get their comeuppance in 2020, or it will remain and grow, biting them in
ass soon enough.
We Americans are kinda attached to our constitutional republic thingie, including our
right to choose the POTUS.
It really is stunning that the dimo crats have learned nothing from their decades of
disaster after disaster after disaster!
From regime change to financial debacles to the looting of the break up of the Soviet
Union: the cretins are now once again being trotted out as part of the biden farcial
"campaign."
A case in point is the odious Larry Summers: This article goes far in summarizing this
pending disaster with the prominent placement of summers:
@Joe Levantine could be behind the lines calling the shots) and the other, representing
the Marianas Trench of the Deep $tate (CIA) and also the Rushdoony loonies of the
Dispensationalist "Great Rupture" Christian-Zionist ambulatory oxymorons are THEIR reeking
heinies.
Trump is merely a girlie-lusting ram compared with those two prowling lobos, sporting
images of blood in their eyes and hatred in their hearts. Suburban soccer-moms detest the
Dumpster, mainly because he exacerbates their emotional radar-screens. They totally overlook
the deep danger lurking beneath the surface in the likes of Bolton and Pomposity, because
they are adroit at masking their totally psychopathic sociopathy.
No men allowed and a Hollywood actress who is regarded as somewhat odd? Right.
Almost 40 years ago my late aunt (in her mid 70s) opined that more women leaders were
needed to stop all of the wars. I asked her if she thought Golda Meir, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
and Margaret Thatcher were really women, and if so, how were they any different than the
men?
In a Foreword to Christopher Bollyn's book, "The War on Terror; The Plot to Rule the
Middle East," USMC vet, Alan Sabrosky wrote:
"The book provides a way for even informed readers to better appreciate the origins,
evolution, and extent to which Israel has driven a process by which the United States and
other countries have systematically destroyed Israel's enemies, at no cost to itself. As we
have torn up or assailed a long list of countries -- only Iran has not yet been openly
attacked."
A less known fact is how the US is undergoing systematic Israel attack, and I suggest that
the best outcome is our being "Balkanized," as described by vagabond, Linh Dinh, who now
describes the resilient life in Serbia.
The Process continues even if Trumpstein does or does not consent to leave the Blue &
White House.
Thank you, Friends.
The Cato article in May on her "new book" gives her the right treatment. Even if you are a
long way from libertarian, well worth a read. The first paragraph:
"Madeleine Albright is back with a new book to sell. Interviewed in by the New York
Times magazine, she reminds us how she continues to live in the past. Unfortunately, that's
what made her advice as UN ambassador and secretary of state so uniformly bad."
@BL culate faceman which the shotcallers running the Deep $tate tend to prefer as their
podium images.
The failure of the Wicked Witch of the West to achieve her 2017 coronation was a total
shock to the system for the DNC, FBI, CIA, Chew Pork Slymes and other major institutional
minions for the ruling plutocratic oligarchy. Even before Trump's Inauguration, they set out
to destroy his presidency. After all, it had been decreed from on high that our ruptured
republic would be blessed by our first female (more or less) chief executive and that she
would be totally on-message and not some small (d) Democrat the likes of Tulsi
Gabbard–an irrepressible anti-imperialist.
President issues executive order at 4 PM. Liberals electronically file for a court order
at 5 PM. 8AM next day some judge, county, state or federal, issues an injunction forbidding
carrying out the executive order. The executive order is tied up in the courts for
months.
Last President to successfully defy the courts was Lincoln. The judiciary overturns laws
passed by legislators and referendums. The judiciary's orders create new laws.
@Ray Caruso who looks cross eyed at terrorist states Israel or Saudi Arabia , it takes
some pretty rancid balls to call those defending their nations from an illegal
aggressor, 'terrorists'.
What, if not massive and collective terror, is the murder by drone of villagers and
leaders? When their children look at the sky, they don't see wonder and beauty, but terror of
an arbitrary death.
The only thing we Americans should be feeling these days, is an excruciating shame for the
mass-murder and nation destructions our government has perpetrated in our name.
'The exceptional people'. If only we understood just how true that is.
Dr. Phil is sound on this issue. Democrat nomenklatura must impute some cultic authority
to the quivering rhytides of their living-dead mummies.
A gerontocracy is the appropriate government for this degenerate state. The interview
excerpt is priceless with Albright's senile brain fart: "let's hire Angelina Jolie, she made
an amazing movie!" about how those crispies fucked the Balkans up for shits & grins. You
can just see her masticating bon-bons in her slow-motion catapult chair, watching the
genocide she caused like it's Star Wars, feeling transient stirrings in her crepey loins at
the more romantic rape scenes. Just give that rank old downer cow the bolt gun.
One cavil on the rhetorical devices of the piece: even in jest it makes no sense to
suggest ideas to Vegetable-in-Chief Joe Biden. CIA is going to hook him up to a teleprompter
or some brain electrodes or whatever and make him talk and nod and gesture like
audio-animatronic Lincoln at Disneyland. He's gonna say we have to blow shit up. And MBNA
needs privatized debtors' prisons. It's pointless to offer friendly advice to the captive
parties of this failed state. It's like telling NAMBLA they should fuck adults. Wipe out this
roach motel of a party. The Greens have signed on to BAP's demilitarization pledge. Or write
in your Grammy's moldering corpse. Or that big wet floater dump you took this morning. Fuck
the USA and its fake democracy.
OK, now to be serious. This article and most of the responses to it thus far, however
erudite and with good intention seem to have fallen into a trap before they realized it was a
trap namely that everything depends on the result of Dems vs Repubs version 2020. Will Mr.
Giraldi write an article to show how it makes even in the slightest way a difference who is
the President at this late stage ( or any stage) of decay in the US? I know he knows better
to especially on this site. So has he really shed his roots?
I have recently entered into cash bets with almost all of my friends of all dispositions
and mental acuity on the prospect of Trump being re-elected. They think that I am crazy. I
may be but not on this topic. They are all infected with a mental disease called "normiesm".
It is immensely frustrating for me to put any kind of 'out of the box' thinking into
conversations regarding Trump because they react like women going through hormonal flushes.
All verbal reactions seemingly in lockstep.
So with the monetary challenges shoved in their faces they all seemed to pause briefly to
wonder if it was decent to take money from a fool such as I. After a few profanities and
insults as to their inter-cranial pressure from me they gladly accepted to a one and some
doubled down.
Taking their money, as I will, is the only way that they can be brought to bear to hear me
out about my logic. Funny, but it always seems to come down to money.
Now lookie here. What have we had since the Trump inauguration? Four years of 24/7/365
vilification, right versus left, grabbing P ***** , Putin, Stormy Daniels, impeachment (a 24
hour respite when he sent 77 missiles into Syria) and then back to 24/7 of Trump foibles.
Do you see what is/was happening? TDS was the precursor of Covid. And like a charm it
worked and still works. Divide and conquer, bread and circuses rolled onto one tasty bagel.
Look around you. Would you recognize main-street 4 months ago? I would not. Why would the PTB
want to remove Trump? He is a major cog in their satanic wheel whether he knows it or
not.
So with the powerful combination of TDS, COVID, BLM and antifa backed by MSM effectively
scaring the normies from even uttering a peep , I would say that things are going swimmingly
in some power's interests.
Mr Giraldi, "New Dummies, Same Ventriloquist" should be your next article for the sake of
your own credibility not digging up another corpse (living or not) like that of of Madeleine
Halfbright.
Your use of the ad hominem 'hopium addict' slur shows your frustration. You can't come up
with an actual retort, so you lash out.
I notice that you intentionally came out against me personally, because you are unable to
defeat my ideas. Your sad & pathetic attempt to paint you submission to Biden as a virtue
has failed. And, your personal attacks are simply shameless.
@Alden ferson's administration. But as Leo the Lip Durocher insisted, "nice guys finish
last."
Jefferson should have had his fellow Virginian arrested and imprisoned for overstepping
his constitutional powers. Didn't happen. Marshall (the darling of the Kavanaugh-cloned
Federalist Society of statist lawyers) had set a bad precedent, much to the dismay of the
president and all freedom-loving elements of WE THE PEOPLE. The very root concept of small
(r) republicanism, that of popular sovereignty ,was promptly derailed by that closet
monarchist.
Well, at least his fellow Federalist (and London bankster tool) Alexander Hamilton got his
just desserts.
Simultaneously, the U.S. enabled the election as Russian president of the hapless drunk
Boris Yeltsin, who, guided by advisers sent by the White House, oversaw the western looting
of his country's natural resources.
False. But Giraldi knows most readers won't know the truth. It wasn't "western looting,"
it was looting by a group inside Russia, "the oligarchs". Eight out of the twelve were Jews,
among them the top oligarch, Berezovsky.
Philip Giraldi also doesn't mention that Madeleine Albright is a Jew. It's as if her lust
for war springs from being pro-American to a fault. Right? Except it's all about destroying
Israel's targets, the few Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations that support the
Palestinians. And Russia, for giving some support to pro-Palestinian Iran and Syria. The
Israeli Lobby always gets what it wants.
Both in Russia and in the Middle East it's about race, not "the West". Of course, ask a
communist like "Eric Striker" who writes for Unz Review, and he'll do everything he can to
make you believe it's "the Right," "capitalists," "the West" who are behind it all, while
conveniently forgetting the Left's domination of media, universities and politics. The lies
flow freely.
'Steal of the Century' (Part 2), filmed in occupied #Palestine is now out! (The first part
is being censored on Youtube.) Find out what Donald Trump's plan has paved the way for and
what's happening right now in Palestine. •Premiered Aug 2, 2020
'Steal Of The Century': Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe (Documentary) | Episode
2/2
"... This is the lens through which I see so-called cancel culture: there is a real problem, for ordinary people, of having your life severely damaged by a trivial offense, or by no offense at all. And of course, predictably, elite whiners want to hijack this real concern in order to maintain their impunity. ..."
"... But the elites are a parasitical epiphenomenon: they are attempting to take advantage of a pre-existing problem that hurts other people far more than it hurts them. And our justifiable contempt for the elites should not blind us to the existence of a real social problem that affects non-elites. ..."
"... So, shed no tears for Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens. They do not need protecting -- they are already coddled far too much. When the OP focuses on their plights as examples of "cancel culture," then cancel culture, so-described, looks like a well-deserved comeuppance, a refreshing chink in the armor of elite impunity. ..."
"... So, elite suffering is a side-show here (as it so often is). Focus on the lives of the non-elite. Their suffering should control our responses to the situation. Focus on the contingent academics fired from their jobs for speaking their minds. On the worker falsely accused of a white-power sign. ..."
Whenever there is a real social problem that affects many people, then rich, entitled
elites will attempt to commandeer it in order to consolidate their privilege.
If the sentencing guidelines are draconian and cruel, sending poor people to prison for
their lives, then white-collar criminals will complain that their 6-month sentence is a gross
injustice that proves they should be let out on bail.
If housing prices are so high that ordinary workers cannot afford the rent, then
millionaires will complain that they can no longer afford to keep a third home.
It's a predictable phenomenon. Elites will pretend that their minor inconveniences are
epic agonies, in order to be spared even minor inconveniences. We know this.
But we also know that the mere fact of elite whinging is no evidence that there is not a
real problem for non-elites.
In fact, the sentencing guidelines are unconscionably harsh: a man in Louisiana has
been sent to jail for life, for stealing a pair of secateurs, and the Louisiana supreme court
has declined to intervene.
In fact, housing is too expensive, and ordinary people are suffering on a massive
scale from artificial scarcity designed to entrench real-estate wealth. The rent is
too damned high.
This is the lens through which I see so-called cancel culture: there is a real problem,
for ordinary people, of having your life severely damaged by a trivial offense, or by no
offense at all. And of course, predictably, elite whiners want to hijack this real concern in
order to maintain their impunity.
But the elites are a parasitical epiphenomenon: they are attempting to take advantage of a
pre-existing problem that hurts other people far more than it hurts them. And our justifiable
contempt for the elites should not blind us to the existence of a real social problem that
affects non-elites.
The pre-existing problems are those that Natalie Wynn enumerates: assumptions of guilt,
essentializing moves from a single bad act to a wicked character, guilt by association,
impossibility of forgiveness, and so on. These patterns pre-exist the internet, and are
probably to be found in even small-scale societies. They are pathologies that are closely
related to healthy and functional mechanisms of social cohesion, as tumor-growth is related
to tissue-growth.
So, shed no tears for Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens. They do not need protecting -- they
are already coddled far too much. When the OP focuses on their plights as examples of "cancel
culture," then cancel culture, so-described, looks like a well-deserved comeuppance, a
refreshing chink in the armor of elite impunity.
Fine: I agree with all of that. I also agree that I would love to see white-collar
criminals go to jail for 20-50 years, and I'd love to see millionaires unable to afford a
third house.
But it would be crazy to move from that stance to saying, "and I'd love to see petty
thieves sent to jail for life, and I'd love to see minimum wage workers evicted from their
homes because they cannot make the rent."
So, elite suffering is a side-show here (as it so often is). Focus on the lives of the
non-elite. Their suffering should control our responses to the situation. Focus on the
contingent academics fired from their jobs for speaking their minds. On the worker falsely
accused of a white-power sign.
And what should be done after we focus on these things? Not what the right-wing zealots
say, under the false flag of "free speech": not bringing back a regime in which the powerful
can use slurs to subjugate the powerless.
No: if someone repeatedly uses the n-word in order to inflict pain and humiliation on
others, then they should suffer real consequences. I totally agree with that. If someone
repeatedly addresses a co-worker with the pronouns that offend them, and does so knowing that
it will offend them, then they should suffer real consequences.
But I reject zero-tolerance regimes. A black school-guard asking students not to use the
n-word should not be punished at all for mentioning the n-word. A well-meaning and
supportive co-worker who mistakenly uses the wrong pronoun on one occasion should not be
punished at all for that faux pas.
And along with zero-tolerance regimes, we should also get rid of the parade of abuses that
Natalie Wynn lists: assumptions of guilt without evidence, guilt by association, refusal of
forgiveness, and so on.
That's a practical agenda that allows for us to make fun of elite opinion makers as much
as we like, allows us to hurl twitter tomatoes at J.K Rowling all day long, and in no way
interferes with any notion of free speech worth defending.
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper
for their obvious major felonies.
"... A striking example of philosophical messiness and confusion is that the conservative movement even incorporated clearly anti-conservative ideas, specifically, the anti-historicism advanced by Leo Strauss and his followers. Strauss championed what he called "natural right," which he saw as sharply opposed to tradition. He called the latter "the ancestral" or "convention." To look to them for guidance was to be guilty of the great offense of "historicism," by which he meant moral relativism or nihilism. History, Strauss insisted, is irrelevant to understanding what is right. Only ahistorical, purely abstract reason is normative. ..."
"... The Jaffaite notion that America rejected the past and was founded on revolutionary, abstract, universal ideas contributed to what this writer has termed "the new Jacobinism." According to this ideology, America is "exceptional" by virtue of its founding principles. Since these principles belong to all humanity, America must help remake societies around the world. "Moral clarity" demands uncompromising adherence to the principles. The forces of good must defeat the forces of evil. Inherently monopolistic and imperial, American principles justify foreign policy hawkishness and interventionism. ..."
"... These contrasting views of America entail wholly different nationalisms. The moralistic universalism of American exceptionalism, with its demand that all respect its dictates runs counter to the American constitutional spirit of compromise, deliberation, and respect for minorities. Exceptionalism does not defuse or restrain the will to power, but feeds it, justifying arrogance, assertiveness, and even belligerence. ..."
"... In a speech in the spring of 2019, Pompeo declared that America is "exceptional." America is, he said, "a place and history apart from normal human experience." It has a mission to oppose evil in the world. America is entitled to "respect." It should dictate terms to "rogue" powers like Iran and confront countries like China and Russia that are "intent on eroding American power." This speech was given and loudly cheered at the 40th anniversary gala of the Claremont Institute in California, whose intellectual founder was -- Harry Jaffa. ..."
"... American exceptionalism is in important ways the opposite of a conservatism or a nationalism that defends the moral and cultural heritage that generated American constitutionalism. Exceptionalism fans imperial designs. ..."
"... the phony opposition between nationalism and American exceptionalism on the one hand, and globalism. Any nationalism is only one step removed from globalism, but the nationalism of small countries is usually fairly harmless because the countries themselves are weak. But American nationalism and exceptionalism is in practice indistinguishable from globalism. It simply makes explicit from which location the globe will be ruled. ..."
"... The original idea behind American Exceptionalism is that we are the "Shining City on the Hill". In other words, we were a good example to others. There was nothing in there about the residents of that Shining City going out and invading its neighbors to force them to follow its good example. ..."
"... Sociopaths respect no limits on their power. ..."
"... Actually, according to Kurt Vonnegut, it was neither nationalism nor liberty - but piracy! One group of pirates trying to break away from another. Then again, perhaps that is what you mean by the heralded "liberty"? ..."
A child waves the United States flag from the crown of Liberty Enlightening the World, less formally known as The Statue of Liberty,
on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. | Detail of: 'Statue of Liberty' by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
Reactions to globalization, the Trump presidency, and the coronavirus pandemic have turned discussions of American conservatism
increasingly into discussions of "nationalism." Regrettably, terminological confusion is rampant. Both "conservatism" and "nationalism"
are words of many and even contradictory meanings.
The strengths of post-World War II American intellectual conservatism have been widely heralded. As for its weaknesses, one trait
stands out that has greatly impeded intellectual stringency: a deep-seated impatience with the supposedly "finer points" of philosophy.
Making do with loosely defined terms has made conservatism susceptible to intellectual flabbiness, contradiction, and manipulation.
This deficiency is connected to a virtual obsession with electoral politics. William F. Buckley's path-breaking National Review
was an intellectual magazine, but its primary purpose was to prepare the ground for political victories, most of all for capturing
the presidency. The desire to forge a political alliance among diverse groups pushed deep intellectual fissures into the background.
Having a rather narrowly political understanding of what shapes the future, most conservatives thought that the election and presidency
of Ronald Reagan signified the "triumph" of conservatism; but the triumph was hollow. The reason is that in the long run politicians
have less power than those who shape our view of reality, our innermost hopes and fears, and our deeper sensibilities. A crucial
role is here played by "the culture" -- universities, schools, churches, the arts, media, book publishing, advertising, Hollywood,
and the rest of the entertainment industry -- which is why America kept moving leftward.
For post-war so-called "movement" conservatives, conservatism meant chiefly limited government, a free market, anti-communism,
and a strong defense. These tenets were all focused on politics, and vastly different motives hid behind each of them. Why were these
tenets called "conservatism"? Rather than point to a few policy preferences, should that term not refer to a general attitude to
life, a wish to conserve something, the best of a heritage? One thinks of the moral and cultural sources of American liberty
and constitutionalism. But, outside of ceremonial occasions, most movement conservatives placed their emphasis elsewhere.
A striking example of philosophical messiness and confusion is that the conservative movement even incorporated clearly anti-conservative
ideas, specifically, the anti-historicism advanced by Leo Strauss and his followers. Strauss championed what he called "natural right,"
which he saw as sharply opposed to tradition. He called the latter "the ancestral" or "convention." To look to them for guidance
was to be guilty of the great offense of "historicism," by which he meant moral relativism or nihilism. History, Strauss insisted,
is irrelevant to understanding what is right. Only ahistorical, purely abstract reason is normative.
Hampered by a lack of philosophical education, many Straussians have been oblivious to the far-reaching and harmful ramifications
of this anti-historicism. By blithely combining it with ideas of very different origin, they have concealed, even from themselves,
its animosity to tradition.
One of Strauss's most influential disciples, Harry Jaffa, made the radical implications of Straussian anti-historicism explicit.
In his view, America's Founders did not build on a heritage. They deliberately turned their backs on the past. Jaffa wrote:
"To celebrate the American Founding is to celebrate revolution." America's revolution belonged among the other modern revolutions.
It is mild "as compared with subsequent revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, or elsewhere," he wrote, but "it nonetheless
embodied the greatest attempt at innovation that human history had recorded." The U.S. Constitution did not grow out of the achievements
of ancestors. On the contrary, radical innovators gave America a fresh start. What is distinctive and noble about America is that,
in the name of ahistorical, abstract, universal principles, it broke with the past.
This view flies in the face of overwhelming historical evidence. The reason the Founders were upset with the British government
is that it was acting in a radical, arbitrary manner that violated the old British constitution. John Adams spoke of "grievous
innovation." John Dickinson protested "dreadful novelty." What the colonists wanted, Adams wrote, was "nothing new," but respect
for traditional rights and the common law. The Constitution of the Framers reaffirmed and creatively developed an ancient heritage.
The Jaffaite notion that America rejected the past and was founded on revolutionary, abstract, universal ideas contributed
to what this writer has termed "the new Jacobinism." According to this ideology, America is "exceptional" by virtue of its founding
principles. Since these principles belong to all humanity, America must help remake societies around the world. "Moral clarity" demands
uncompromising adherence to the principles. The forces of good must defeat the forces of evil. Inherently monopolistic and imperial,
American principles justify foreign policy hawkishness and interventionism.
Compare this notion of America to what is implied in Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase about what the Constitutional Convention
had produced -- "a republic, if you can keep it." To sustain the Constitution, Americans would have to cultivate the moral and cultural
traits that had given rise to it in the first place. To be an American is to defend an historically evolved inheritance, to live
up to what may be called the "constitutional personality." Only such people are capable of the kind of conduct that the Constitution
values and requires. Americans must, first of all, be able to control the will to power, beginning with self. They must respect the
law, rise above the passions of the moment, take the long view, deliberate, compromise, and respect minorities. Whether applied to
domestic or foreign affairs, the temperament of American constitutionalism is modesty and restraint. There is no place for unilateral
dictates.
These contrasting views of America entail wholly different nationalisms. The moralistic universalism of American exceptionalism,
with its demand that all respect its dictates runs counter to the American constitutional spirit of compromise, deliberation, and
respect for minorities. Exceptionalism does not defuse or restrain the will to power, but feeds it, justifying arrogance, assertiveness,
and even belligerence.
During the presidency of Donald Trump many proponents of American exceptionalism who want preferment have recast their anti-historical
universalism as "nationalism," showing that the term can mean almost anything. It is now "nationalist" to demand that American principles
be everywhere respected. For example, Mike Pompeo, a person of strong appetites and great ambition, has put this belief behind his
campaign of assertiveness and "maximum pressure."
In a speech in the spring of 2019, Pompeo declared that America is "exceptional." America is, he said, "a place and history
apart from normal human experience." It has a mission to oppose evil in the world. America is entitled to "respect." It should dictate
terms to "rogue" powers like Iran and confront countries like China and Russia that are "intent on eroding American power." This
speech was given and loudly cheered at the 40th anniversary gala of the Claremont Institute in California, whose intellectual founder
was -- Harry Jaffa.
What may seem to political practitioners and political intellectuals to be hair-splitting philosophical distinctions can, on the
contrary, have enormous practical significance. American exceptionalism is in important ways the opposite of a conservatism or
a nationalism that defends the moral and cultural heritage that generated American constitutionalism. Exceptionalism fans imperial
designs. The culture of constitutionalism opposes them.
Claes G. Ryn is professor of politics and founding director of the new Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic
University of America. His many books include America the Virtuous and A Common Human Ground , now in a new paperback edition.
Americans must, first of all, be able to control the will to power, beginning with self. They must respect the law, rise above
the passions of the moment, take the long view, deliberate, compromise, and respect minorities.
All lovely ideas. Too bad our "conservative" president is capable of none of these.
Great essay by Professor Ryn in exposing again, as he has done so often before, the phony opposition between nationalism
and American exceptionalism on the one hand, and globalism. Any nationalism is only one step removed from globalism, but the nationalism
of small countries is usually fairly harmless because the countries themselves are weak. But American nationalism and exceptionalism
is in practice indistinguishable from globalism. It simply makes explicit from which location the globe will be ruled.
All true, every word, but the problem with American exceptionalism isn't a matter of semantics or clever arguments but a matter
of power.
This is why the definition of exceptionalism keeps shifting, because as a practical matter it means "whatever is in the interests
of empire" at this particular moment in this particular case.
The original idea behind American Exceptionalism is that we are the "Shining City on the Hill". In other words, we were
a good example to others. There was nothing in there about the residents of that Shining City going out and invading its neighbors
to force them to follow its good example.
These days we are trying to force others to follow good ideals and high standards that we are ourselves following less and
less.
Exactly. The author twists words and creates strawmen and red herrings and argues with dead men.
Washington and Hamilton set forth an idea of country separate from all others and different. Yes, America is and was exceptional.
Friend to all, ally to none, an example to all the world, based in English heritage and culture. It was founded by conservative
revolutionaries, who attempted to claw back freedoms taken away by those in London, who were becoming overlords of an empire.
There was "year zero", and early America could draw on all of English history, plus the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, ancient
Greece and Rome, as well as religious traditions going back to antiquity.
It was always the Jeffersonian impulse towards revolution that was different. Jefferson loved the Year Zero France. But Jefferson
at his core was an idealist.
The problem was that idealists like Jefferson gradually gained power a little over a hundred years ago. Their idealism was
used by those who wanted to exploit America's power to further their own goals contrary to the ideals of American exceptionalism
and American tradition. Greed and idealism went together and America used the cover of American exceptionalism to create an empire.
As to Buckley, his goal seems more like controlled opposition than anything else. He was a gatekeeper for the powerful, defining
acceptable conservatism, keeping conservatism on the plantation. Conservativism Inc continues to try to do so.
Trump is a return to classic American traditionalism and exceptionalism. He is attempting to reshape the world along nationalistic
lines, which is why AMLO in Mexico praised him so much. Globalists don't want to lose their power. Oligarchs don't want to give
up their exploitation and extraction systems. Pundits don't want to give up their money train and status. Bureaucrats don't want
actual democracy.
On Wikipedia's list of the 50 cities with the world's highest homicide rates (per 100,000 population), the US has 4, South
Africa has 4 and the rest are in Latin America. It hardly makes us the shining city on a hill or exceptional, unless you think
a high crime rate is good.
Mark Twain said, "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." Today I would modify
Twain a bit; when conservatives adopt some radical idea, the radicals respond by declaring that idea worn out. Exhibit A would
be the idea of "American exceptionalism."
The historical fact is that American exceptionalism is a Communist concept, devised by Stalin in 1929 to describe --
and to dismiss -- what his American agents told him about the huge differences between American society and European societies,
both of which Soviet-sponsored parties were trying to control. These differences included far lesser class distinctions, greater
racial animosities, a labor movement much more concerned with economic bargaining than fielding political candidates, vastly weaker
political parties, much more ethnic and religious diversity, and more hostility to centralized government. Today, we would have
to add far more imprisonment of criminals, more approval of the death penalty, and a jealous passion for the right to have guns,
although those differences weren't nearly as wide in 1929 as now. American exceptionalism exists. You can argue about whether
it is good or bad, and certainly some of the differences between America and Europe are better or worse than others, but it's
pure pretense to claim that America is an ordinary, unexceptional Western country. And no one on the left made any such pretense,
until people on the right started talking about and glorifying (or at least not denigrating) "American exceptionalism," which
had previously been solely a term of contempt. The radicals invented the views, then declared them worn out when the conservatives
adopted them.
The truth that America is an exceptional country does not, of course, mean that its foreign policy has always been wise, and
certainly it does not mean that America's catastrophic blundering in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were either morally right
or good for Americans. It merely means that we can't correct those mistakes by pretending that the country we're trying to rescue
is unexceptional, that it is no different from other societies, and thus that foreign policies accepted by European or Asian voters
will necessarily be winners here too.
I don't know why you think any of this is even relevant to my point: that American exceptionalism is real, and that desperately
needed foreign policy reforms won't work if we ignore that fact. Worse, the points you raise all distort the real nature of America's
differences from other Western countries.
American and European laws on abortion are very little different; in most of Europe, as in America, abortion is legal and accepted,
Poland being one of the very few exceptions. We're probably closest to Ireland, where abortion has been recently legalized but
remains socially frowned on. Again, whether you or I think that's a good thing or a bad thing doesn't matter; it's simply not
one of the major points of difference between America and Europe.
Explaining the difference in imprisonment between Europe and America solely by America's greater black and Hispanic population
is wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. First, the difference in imprisonment is very recent, starting in the early
1990s and largely devised by a centrist Democratic US president; America's black and Hispanic population has always been much
larger than Europe's, so it can't explain the difference in imprisonment. Second, America imprisons whites as well as blacks much
more than Europe does. Third, poor blacks and Hispanics commit crimes at the same rate as poor whites of the same economic status;
poor people of whatever race or color choose to commit crimes more often, because they have more incentive to make that choice.
The higher black and Hispanic crime rate simply reflects the fact that far more of them are poor. As long ago as the 19th century,
the British poor were called by the upper class "the criminal classes," and that reflected the undeniable truth that the British
poor, like poor people everywhere, committed more crime than anyone else.
I thank you for the BBC link; I had long suspected that Europe's ban on the death penalty often didn't reflect popular opinion
at first, but I didn't have the data proving it. But that doesn't in any way change the fact that considerably more Americans
than Europeans support the death penalty, and long have, which is why European elites were able to get away with banning it without
losing elections, and American elites have not.
Again, I'm not saying anything about whether any of these differences between America and the rest of the West are good or
bad.. My point is that they exist, and it's no good pretending that they don't merely because America's foreign policy isn't working
very well.
I'll say it over and over, but GOP is Right Wing Lockean (Maritime Imperialist) "Anything Goes" Liberalism. DNC is Left Wing
Lockean (Maritime Imperialist) "Anything Goes" Liberalism. We use these words wrong in our USA. Traditionalist Conservatives have
NEVER enjoyed political party representation here. We are to-date completely a-historical and delusionally racist "Novum Organum"
conquistadors with English accents. Good News? Better futures lie ahead of us. Start with agrarianism, potable water, and arable
land. North America is underpopulated. I worked for State Dept. I witnessed the World Bank's destruction of Ukraine. Ask me a
real question. I'll answer honestly. We suffer post-WW2 legacy Daddy and Mommy Warbucks here, writing checks to their own kids.
We can, must and will do better. Those without pasts are without futures. To Survive is to Sur Vivre, Live Above. Hold tight.
Have faith.
There is the wish for what definitions should do in political and religious discussion, and then there is the reality of what
they actually do. The wish is that, by using the word "definition," I am referring to something like the definition of a mathematical
concept. We can define precisely what addition means. The problem is, we cannot do that with terms like conservatism. Ryn's argument
illustrates the failure of that attempt: we have "wholly different nationalisms"; we have something that calls itself conservatism
but it's wrong, because Ryn says so.
Definitionism leads to abstruse dispute, as scholars tussle over what is really nationalistic or conservative. The rest
of us look on askance. Most people are not interested in a discussion filled with labels, like, "I'm a cisgender vegetarian transsexual
white socialistic vegetarian Capricorn with subclinical mental disabilities." For most people, that sort of definition-oriented
declaration comes across as hostile to discussion. Like, "I'm here in my castle. I dare you to try to penetrate it." The intrepid
soul who attempts to start an actual friendly conversation, in response to that sort of statement, is likely to move away from
definitionism. Not "You cannot be white: your skin is brown," but rather, "Really! My sister is a Capricorn!"
Definitionism (in some ways a/k/a labeling) is more likely to destroy dialogue than to create it. "Oh, you're a [fill in the
blank]: you can't be good." It is possible to be a Nazi, a Bolshevik, or anything in between -- and still, in various regards,
to be smart, friendly, successful, etc. Political dialogue is like dipping a ladle into a soup kettle: you may pull out some beans,
some meat, some corn -- but possibly no one knows what else lurks in there. The attempt to define is is not merely a lost cause
-- it basically misses the point.
Ah but the revolution was not based at all on nationalism. It was for liberty. The Articles, as the war, were not based on
ideas of nationalism but more libertarian than not. Lest we forget, the convention was called to improve the Articles. That the
federalists (nationalists) hijacked the convention required quashing liberty in favor of a cleverly designed campaign masking
the future.
Patrick Henry was on to it early:
"When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object
.But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a
powerful and mighty empire .Such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism. There will be no checks, no real
balances, in this government..."
In the end the anti federalists have been proven right.
Actually, according to Kurt Vonnegut, it was neither nationalism nor liberty - but piracy! One group of pirates trying to break
away from another. Then again, perhaps that is what you mean by the heralded "liberty"?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
(John Adams, October 11, 1798.).
Are we still "a moral and religious people"? Well, are we?
Mayhap we are in deep trouble? Well, are we?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be"
(Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816.)
No comment.
"I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, that I ought to do. And what I
ought to do, By the grace of God, I shall do."
@onebornfree
w.britannica.com/topic/commonwealth-political-science">https://www.britannica.com/topic/commonwealth-political-science
What is labelled socialism today is nowhere near what the original socialists would consider
socialism, which is closer to the co-operative movement and anarchy than communism.
On the other hand, Marxism (communism) is about complete state control and was
international in scope. One (of many) reason for the breakdown of the USSR, was that it was,
in fact, becoming socialistic in many countries, starting with Hungary in 1956 then
Czechoslovakia in 1968 becoming nationalist. Even Russia was becoming more nationalistic.
@Druid
unknown in Russia 1917. It wasn't really understood. In contrast Neo-Bolshevism USA 2020 has
the prior example of Bolshevism Russia 1917 to learn from and check the mechanism.
– The Russian population 1917 held some arms (which were immediately made illegal
– retention carrying the death penalty). But nothing at all like the vast armoury
presently held by the US public.
– The Bolsheviks successful subverted the demoralized and badly organized Russian
Imperial Army (at least in Petrograd where it mattered). The US military is in a much better
state, and is maybe not so attracted by SJW/BLM/Antifa (middle and lower ranks).
"... We thought the it would be only the Empire that would end giving violent jolting through which many of us could result seriously damaged... hence the attitude of restraint and patience by China and Russia on their bet for a soft landing and accommodation of the new situation/paradigm change... ..."
"... According ot the last analysis by Rostislav Ischenko at Stalker Zone , it seems that sectors of the security services, as it is happening in the US, are trying to "secure" their future in what they deem as a situation similar to that of the 90s in Moscow, and thus organized the luring of some hundred Russian PMC, some with double Ukrainian/Russian passport, to be blamed for a coming Belarusian Maidan and violent overthrow of Lukashenko. ..."
We thought the it would be only the Empire that would end giving violent jolting through
which many of us could result seriously damaged... hence the attitude of restraint and
patience by China and Russia on their bet for a soft landing and accommodation of the new
situation/paradigm change...
What we did not think of ( at least not me...) was that all those countries dependant of
the hegemon or playing the subjective stance ( like Belarus...Poland... the Baltics...
see Colonel
Cassad´s anlysis ) would suffer of equal if not more shaken environment in the
middle of the uncertainty and the impossibility to continue milking two cows...
This is why,
even when we do not like the EU as it is constituted right now, as a liberal house, I do not
see any point in leaving it now ( as some non-European continuously push for here, what leads
me to think they work for the US stablishment...), just when the hegemon is falling and the
world is reorganizing...We will fall in the same weak position as Belarus...akin to be
dismembered.. or worst, become a failing state...
According ot the last analysis by Rostislav Ischenko at Stalker Zone , it seems that
sectors of the security services, as it is happening in the US, are trying to "secure" their
future in what they deem as a situation similar to that of the 90s in Moscow, and thus
organized the luring of some hundred Russian PMC, some with double Ukrainian/Russian
passport, to be blamed for a coming Belarusian Maidan and violent overthrow of Lukashenko.
Under the menace of being extradited to the Ukraine, as some seem to have fought in Donbass,
where they would face 15 years jail in the best of cases, or in the worst a death sentence by
"suicide" into jail ( the Epstein treatment...), Ischenko assures some "will be persuaded by
the KGB of Belarus to admit that they "on the instructions of Japanese intelligence dug a
tunnel from Bangkok to London"....to save life...
These PMC were found most suspicious by the "KGB of Belarus" because they found
themselves stranded during a week in Minsk by the same Belarusian company who hired them to
go to Lybia to fight along the opposite site supported by the Russians there, and moreover
they do not smoke nor drink....You see...
Belgrade has been razed 44 times. In the 20th century, it was bombed thrice. In World War
II, hundreds of thousands of Serbs were mass murdered by Croats, an undisputed fact still
little known.
From the taxi into town, I was reintroduced to the concrete housing blocks that are typical
of the former Eastern Bloc. Belgrade's few high-rises are left over the 1970's, perhaps the
worst decade for architecture ever. Its gorgeous buildings from the late 19th and early 20th
centuries have been crumbling for decades.
I passed a monstrously huge banner of Serbian soldiers, with the lead one a stern female
saluting, with accusation in her eyes. This draped the former Yugoslav Defense Ministry
. Bombed
by NATO in 1999, its mauled remains
are left as
is .
At a nearby park days later, I'd chance upon a bronze statue of a small
girl holding a rag doll. Framed by a black marble slab resembling butterfly wings, she
stood on a grave-like marker that's partly inscribed, "DEDICATED TO THE CHILDREN KILLED BY NATO
AGGRESSION 1999."
Most of the world, though, don't see Serbians as victims so much as perpetrators of
genocide, as recently evidenced by the Siege of Sarajevo and, even more so, Srebrenica.
During the mid 1990's, the world turned its back on the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia.
The UN would not call it genocide because that would have demanded military intervention.
Most shamefully, the Muslim world also closed its eyes as up to 160,000 Bosnian Muslims were
slaughtered, starved and tortured in Serb-run concentration camps. At least 10,000 Muslim
girls and women were gang raped, some in special rape camps.
A hundred-and-sixty-thousand is an atrociously high number of victims, but how many were
actually slaughtered, as opposed to tortured or starved? Surely, Margolis didn't mean they were
all starved, tortured then slaughtered? It's an oddly ambiguous passage for a seasoned
author.
In any case, Margolis had seen it coming:
In 1988, I wrote warning that Milosevic would create disaster in Bosnia and Kosova, the
Albanian-majority region of southern Serbia. I was denounced in Belgrade and declared an
enemy of the Serbs. In truth, I had always been an admirer of Serbs as courageous,
intelligent people. But the Serbs that Milosevic rallied were the scum of the gutter,
criminals, racists, brutal pig farmers, fanatical priests.
On December 8th, 2017, The Saker presented an entirely different take :
Truly, that war had it all, every dirty trick was used against the Serbs: numerous false
flags attacks, pseudo-genocides, illegal covert operations to arm terrorists groups, the
covert delivery of weapons to officially embargoed entities, deliberate attacks against
civilians, the use of illegal weapons, the use of officially "demilitarized zones" to hide
(fully armed) entire army corps – you name it: if it is disgusting it was used against
the Serbian people. Even deliberate attacks on the otherwise sacrosanct journalistic
profession was considered totally normal as long as the journalists were Serbs. As for the
Serbs, they were, of course, demonized. Milosevic became the "New Hitler" (along with Saddam
Hussein) and those Serbs who took up arms to defend their land and families became genocidal
Chetniks.
Brigadier-General Pierre Marie Gallois of the French Army has condemned the NATO
destruction of Yugoslavia, and has gone on record stating that the endless stories of Serb
atrocities, such as mass rapes and the siege of Sarajevo were fabricated. Gallois also argues
that the German elite sought revenge for the fierce Serb resistance during the two world
wars, especially with regard to the Serb partisans that held up German divisions that were
headed towards Leningrad and Moscow during Operation Barbarossa. While relentlessly
demonized, the Serbs were in many ways the greatest victims of the NATO-orchestrated Balkan
wars, as hundreds of thousands of Serbs were forcibly expelled from both Croatia and Kosovo
while Serbia was turned into a free-fire zone by NATO for over seventy days. Washington took
advantage of the conflict to solidify control over its European vassals.
The Saker's parents fled to Belgrade as Russian refugees, and he even had a Serbian
godmother, so there is a strong emotional attachment here, which The Saker freely admits.
Still, The Saker at his website has rebutted the inflated hooey of Srebrenica with some
hard facts
.
It's entirely unclear, even approximately, how many were intentionally executed, instead of
being killed in battle, whether by Serbs or other Muslims, or who died because of starvation,
suicide or illness.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's star witness, and the only
one convicted of direct participation in the Srebrenica "genocide," was not a Serb, but a
Bosnian Croat, Drazen Erdemovic.
On June 27th, 1996, the ICTY itself declared Erdemovic mentally impaired, yet, on July 5th,
1996, it put him on the witness stand anyway.
Even more incredibly, Erdemovic admitted he had fought for all three sides during that
conflict, Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Dude couldn't decide whom he was trying to kill or
defend.
In exchange for his testimonies against Serbs, Erdemovic was jailed for just five years,
then given a new identity and whisked to a new country, so who knows, he might be living next
to you as John Smith.
It's just a neighborhood squabble, you might be thinking. Who cares about Montenegroes? I've
got my own black asses to kiss. I'm already kneeling, massa.
As always, though, there are lessons aplenty from the Balkans.
Serbs didn't have a country for five centuries, and Croats went stateless for eight, yet
neither lost their fierce sense of nationhood, that is, their nationalism. It's not a debatable
concept, but a deeply felt necessity, for how can any population with a unique history,
heritage and identity not have its own homeland?
In the 21st century, such tribal thinking is not just deemed barbaric, but evil, Nazism, in
short, except in Israel, of course. Gas chambers, remember?
When nations are contorted, tortured or simply enticed into any supranational entity, a
correction, often violent, is inevitable, and that's exactly what has happened, repeatedly, in
the Balkans. Wholesome pig farmers convulsed against the Ottomans, Austro-Hungarian Empire and
Communists, etc. There is no progress beyond this.
This innate nationalism can only be purged when a population has been thoroughly cowed
and/or brainwashed into renouncing itself, but the Serbs, for all for their defeats and
humiliations down the centuries, never did. There's a magnificent lesson there.
Rebecca West, "So in the first battle of Kossovo the Serbs learned the meaning of defeat,
not such defeat as forms a necessary proportion of all effort, for in that they had often been
instructed during the course of their history, but of total defeat, annihilation of their
corporate will and all their individual wills. The second battle of Kossovo taught them that
one may live on such a low level of existence that even defeat cannot be achieved. The third
taught them that even that level is not the lowest, and that there is a limbo for subject
peoples where there is neither victory nor defeat but abortions which, had they come to birth,
would have become such states."
Repeatedly butchered, suffocated and written off, Serbs have rebirthed themselves, thanks to
their nationalism.
When the Turks were in Belgrade, they embellished this city with 273 beautiful mosques, so
where the hell are they?! Only one is left, unfortunately, and the Bajrakli Mosque
almost joined all the rest when it was torched in 2004, in retaliation for the burning of
Serbian churches in Kosovo.
Built in 1575, it is elegant, intimate and handsomely proportioned, with the only false note
the jivey, concrete minaret, clearly a recent replacement. Inside , I
admired its minbar ,
octagonal wooden tablets etched with calligraphy and, especially, the stone, baroque frame around
some verse, a nice East meets West touch. Light angled in from high windows . The
darkened dome soothed.
It's an active mosque. Half a dozen suited Muslims milled outside, until they all left, so
that I could have cleared out their mosque had I wanted to, and started World War III. Outside
the gate, there was an old beggar
, but she too disappeared, because I had already given her sixty cents.
Leaving the Bajrakli Mosque, I walked by Dukat, a Turkish restaurant, then Zein, a Lebanese
one. The Arabic Zuwar was also nearby. Though not nearly as cosmopolitan as, say, Busan,
contemporary Belgrade is no xenophobic backwater. Chinese
takeouts dot the city, and there's even a Chinese shopping center at Blok 70, in New
Belgrade.
I'm writing this in a bar, Dzidzi Midzi
, where American pop music is played nonstop. On its walls are mostly photos of American icons,
such as Hitchcock, Dylan, Hendrix, Buffalo Bill, Jack Nicholson, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd,
Louis Armstrong and Bruce Lee (who was born in San Francisco, graduated from the University of
Washington, married an American and is buried in Seattle). Though imploding, America
still mesmerizes. Tellingly, there's just one Serb, Nicolas Tesla, and one Russian, Yuri
Gagarin, who's depicted as a generic, faceless astronaut, with a quotation in English, "I see
no god up here "
This is no touristy brewpub, but a Janko Janković joint in Hadžipopovac, a
neighborhood of drab buildings, frankly. I'm paying $1.90 for a pint of Staropramen, and a
flatbread sandwich with prosciutto and gouda is just $2.50.
Although Vietnam doesn't have an embassy here, there's a Vietnamese at the University of
Belgrade. Here nine years and working on his second degree, this young man's so in love with
Serbia, he's changed his name to Hoan Zlatanovic. Odder still was the Japanese who fought
alongside Serbs and Russians in Bosnia. A self-declared "Japanese cheknik," he risked his life
while forgoing a salary and his monthly cigar.
Oddest, perhaps, is Serbia's yearning to join the European Union, though not NATO, which
already includes Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro. They're all
leaning West. Last to board, they'll get to enjoy some choppy sailing with the big boys.
Bombing Serbia, America gave Russia and China a wakeup call, and forced them towards a new
understanding. Everything changed after 1999. Again, this tiny nation played an outsized role
in remaking our world.
Balkanizing, Americans can look here for warnings and inspiration. Five hundred years from
now, a Serbian nation will still exist.
"Gallois also argues that the German elite sought revenge for the fierce Serb resistance
during the two world wars, especially with regard to the Serb partisans that held up German
divisions that were headed towards Leningrad and Moscow during Operation Barbarossa"
I wonder whether this french general has talked to some actual Germans. Everybody who knows
just a little bit about german elites in the nineties knows that this an abstruse idea.
Balkanizing, Americans can look here for warnings and inspiration. Five hundred years from
now, a Serbian nation will still exist.
Beautiful tail on a beautiful essay. Thanks, Linh.
As also, the Serbs had no choice in any Balkanization, but their American counterparts look
on sheepishly as their plutocrat masters are inflicting it on the USA. Our end won't be
justice: The same scum who used 1999 as practice are just using what they learned in
California, etc. They won't be happy till the whole world is stateless and landless. Except
them.
"Balkanization" is a curiously old subject. As a true wet-behind-the-ears nipper the first
public speech I ever heard was during the one (and only) week I ever spent in New England. Ayn
Rand gave her speech, entitled Global Balkanization at Boston's Ford Hall Forum in 1977. Just
as a curiosity I wanted to see if it has any of it held up. She might have been on everyone's
brown list by then, but her energy levels were still high:
I put these comments on the open thread about the same time b started this one
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1289724554982629377
The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria signed a deal to market oil to
US-based Delta Crescent Energy LLC "with the knowledge and encouragement of the White
House."
Trump a few months back "We've kept the oil". Well, he hasn't had a problem hanging onto
it and getting an American company involved.
The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria signed a deal to market oil
to US-based Delta Crescent Energy LLC "with the knowledge and encouragement of the White
House."
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Aug 2 2020 14:35 utc | 2
Very likely the Kurds were under pressure from Trump, and the act wasn't voluntary. It's
not even the Kurds' oil to sign a deal on (except one well). We'll see whether the
operation actually succeeds. At the moment, everybody is waiting to see whether Trump is
re-elected in November. Signing a piece of paper now is of no significance.
How a US military doctrine became Colombia's 'origin of evil' | Part 1: "Popeye" : What is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine [is] not defense against
an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game
[with] the right to combat the internal enemy : it is the right to fight and to exterminate
social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment,
and who are assumed to be communist extremists. And this could mean anyone, including human
rights activists such as myself.
Colombia's former Foreign Minister Alfredo Vasquez
Judeo-Christian could indicate a common origin and whatever little they may have in common
as the result, but "values" can't be part of it. Judaism and Christianity don't have common
values, in the sense of ethics or morality.
@onebornfree
w.britannica.com/topic/commonwealth-political-science">https://www.britannica.com/topic/commonwealth-political-science
What is labelled socialism today is nowhere near what the original socialists would consider
socialism, which is closer to the co-operative movement and anarchy than communism.
On the other hand, Marxism (communism) is about complete state control and was
international in scope. One (of many) reason for the breakdown of the USSR, was that it was,
in fact, becoming socialistic in many countries, starting with Hungary in 1956 then
Czechoslovakia in 1968 becoming nationalist. Even Russia was becoming more nationalistic.
@Druid
unknown in Russia 1917. It wasn't really understood. In contrast Neo-Bolshevism USA 2020 has
the prior example of Bolshevism Russia 1917 to learn from and check the mechanism.
– The Russian population 1917 held some arms (which were immediately made illegal
– retention carrying the death penalty). But nothing at all like the vast armoury
presently held by the US public.
– The Bolsheviks successful subverted the demoralized and badly organized Russian
Imperial Army (at least in Petrograd where it mattered). The US military is in a much better
state, and is maybe not so attracted by SJW/BLM/Antifa (middle and lower ranks).
Six HK secessionists fled, now wanted in HK. The countries they're hiding had earlier
declared withdraw extradition treaties with HK. These six wanted persons and more as time
progress believe they are safe wherever countries sheltering them. HK and China members of
Interpol...
Let me share with MoA. I watch the old method regimes' changes. Many are uninformed, how
the Singapore regime backed by Americunt wiped completely Singapore's oppositions. Do a
search Tan Wah Piow and Operation Coldstore. The code name for a covert security operation
carried out in Singapore on 2 February 1963. Led to the arrest of 113 people, who were
detained without trial under the Preservation of Public Service Security Ordinance (PSSO).
The oppositions were never members of Marxism nor commie or CPM (Communist Party of Malaya)
more likely the forerunner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristic
The worlds longest detain prisoner was not Nelson Mandela but an unknown Singaporean Dr.
Chia Thye Poh detained without trial by Lee Kuan Yew's regime for 32 years, longer than
Nelson Mandela SA. Therefore the six secessionists need to rethink what life ahead. China
isn't going anywhere and will continue to grow and servicing its citizen. Socialism with
Chinese Characteristic.
Nathan Law Kwun-chung 26, living London
Wayne Chan Ka-ku, fled to the Netherlands
Honcques Laus UK to political asylum June. Germany fake reporter
Samuel Chu American citizen & have been for 25 years. Pastor son
Simon Cheng Man-kit (Zheng Wenjie) British consulate, 28, solicit prostitute in Shenzhen and
arrested. fled to UK
Ray Wong Toi-yeung 15Sept 93 HEC Higher Education Certificate. Fled asylum Germany in
2018
Democrat politicians will keep their knee on the throat of small businesses for as long as
they possibly can for the sole purpose of crippling the economy to defeat Trump in November.
They don't care about the damage this causes. Keeping schools closed in the fall will result
in single parents staying home from work to care for their kids. At very least it stifles the
economy.
Send kids back to school, the majority wants this.
Vote in person November 3rd, make your vote count.
kaiserhoffredux , 3 hours ago
Exactly. There is no logic, reason, or precedent for quarantining healthy people.
To stop a virus, of all things? Ridiculous.
Ignatius , 2 hours ago
They've perverted the language as regards "cases."
A person could test positive and it might well be the most healthy situation: his body
encountered the virus, fought it off, and now though asymptomatic, retains antibodies from a
successful body response. The irony is that what I've described is the very response the vaxx
pushers expect from their vaccines.
Shameless political posturing.
coletrickle45 , 2 hours ago
So if you have 99 - 99.8% chance of surviving this faux virus
But a 100% chance of destroying lives through poverty, bankruptcy, small business
collapse, job losses, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, fear.
What would you choose? Cost benefit analysis seems pretty obvious.
Gold Banit , 2 hours ago
Most people just regurgitate things they hear, they have lost the ability of creative and
free thought.They have been deliberately dumbed down. The entire system has created a mutant
society which is easy to control and manipulate.
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent
guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of
the masses." ― Malcolm X ay_arrow
sensibility , 2 hours ago
The COVID-19 Hoax has "Nothing" to do with "Real" Science, It's 100% about "Political"
Science.
Therefore, No Matter What, Politicians will Bend and Manipulate this for "Political"
Gain.
Who Stirred and Exposed the Swamp?
The Swamp Inhabitants Desperately Want & Intend to do Whatever it Takes to Return to
the Old Pre Trump Days of Operating Above the Law Without Exposure and Impunity.
Consequently, Those who Support the COVID-19 Hoax are Swamp Members & Supporters.
Know your Adversary!
monty42 , 2 hours ago
Trump didn't drain, stir, or expose the swamp, sorry that dog don't hunt. He has appointed
recycled establishment swamp creatures his entire term. He appointed Fauci to the Covidian
Taskforce. He says wearing masks is patriotic.
The promises he made his followers did not manifest. Another 4 years after being lied to
is just the same old routine, nothing new.
Until you people are honest about the reality of the situation, you'll never stop the
cycle of D/R destruction.
Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established form of the political
struggle. And in this case the reasons behind the particular attack of the "cancel mob" is far
from charitable.
Cancel culture my assJustice for Brad HamiltonRoy Edroso Jul 14 38 30
Mendenhall loses endorsement deal over bin Laden tweets
[Steelers running back] Rashard Mendenhall's candid tweets about Osama bin Laden's death
and the 9/11 terror attacks cost him an endorsement deal.
NFL.com senior analyst Vic Carucci says Rashard Mendenhall has become an example of the
risks that social media can present to outspoken pro athletes.
Athletic apparel manufacturer Champion announced Thursday that it had dropped the
Pittsburgh Steelers running back after he questioned the celebrations of bid Laden's death
and expressed his uncertainty over official accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New
York, suburban Washington and Pennsylvania.
Things haven't gotten any better. I've already written about
Springfield, Mass. police detective Florissa Fuentes, who got fired this year for
reposting her niece's pro-Black Lives Matter Instagram photo. Fuentes is less like Donohue,
the Chicks, and Mendenhall, though, and more like most of the people who get fired for speech
in this country, in that she is not rich, and getting fired was for her a massive blow.
The controversy began after [Lisa] Durden's appearance [on Tucker Carlson], during which
she defended the Black Lives Matter movement's decision to host a Memorial Day celebration
in New York City to which only black people were invited. On the show, Durden's comments
included, "You white people are angry because you couldn't use your white privilege card to
get invited to the Black Lives Matter's all-black Memorial Day Celebration," and "We want
to celebrate today. We don't want anybody going against us today."
Durden was then an adjunct professor at Essex County College, but not for long because
sure enough, they fired her for what she said on the show. (Bet Carlson, a racist piece
of shit , was delighted!) The college president defended her decision, saying she'd
received "feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families
expressing frustration, concern and even fear that the views expressed by a college employee
(with influence over students) would negatively impact their experience on the campus..."
Sounds pretty snowflakey to me. I went looking in the works of the signatories of the
famous
Harper's letter against cancel culture for some sign that any of them had acknowledged
Durden's case. Shockingly, such free speech warriors as Rod Dreher and Bret Stephens never
dropped a word on it.
Dreher does come up in other free-speech-vs-employment cases, though -- for example, from
2017, Chronicle of Higher
Education :
Tommy Curry, an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University at College
Station, about five years ago participated in a YouTube interview in which he discussed
race and violence. Those remarks resurfaced in May in a column titled "When Is It OK to
Kill Whites?" by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative.
Mr. Curry said of that piece that he wasn't advocating for violence and that his remarks
had been taken out of context. He told The Chronicle that online threats had arrived in
force shortly after that. Some were racial in nature.
At the same time the president of the university, Michael K. Young, issued a statement
in which he appeared to rebuke the remarks made by Mr. Curry...
In his column on
Curry , Dreher said, "I wonder what it is like to be a white student studying under Dr.
Curry in his classroom?" Imagine worrying for the safety of white people at Texas
Fucking A&M!
Curry got to keep his job, but only after he "issued a new statement apologizing for how
his remarks had been received," the Chronicle reported:
"For those of you who considered my comments disparaging to certain types of scholarly
work or in any way impinging upon the centrality of academic freedom at this university,"
[Curry] wrote, "I regret any contributions that I may have made to misunderstandings in
this case, including to those whose work is contextualized by understanding the historical
perspectives of events that have often been ignored."
Bottom line: Most of us who work for a living are at-will employees -- basically, the boss
can fire us if they don't like the way we look at them or if they don't like what they
discover we feel about the events of the day. There are some protections -- for example, if
you and your work buddies are talking about work stuff and the boss gets mad, then that may
be considered " concerted
activity " and protected -- but as
Lisa Guerin wrote at the nolo.com legal advice site, "political views aren't covered by
[Civil Rights] laws and the laws of most states. This means employers are free to consider
political views and affiliations in making job decisions."
Basically we employees have no free speech rights at all. But people like Stephens and
Dreher and Megan McArdle who cry
over how "the mob" is coming after them don't care about us. For window dressing, they'll
glom onto rare cases where a non-rich, non-credentialed guy gets in trouble for allegedly
racist behavior that he didn't really do -- Emmanuel Cafferty, it's your time
to shine ! -- but their real concern isn't Cafferty's "free speech" or that of any other
peon, it's their own miserable careers.
Because they know people are starting to talk back to them. It's not like back in the day
when Peggy Noonan and George F. Will mounted their high horses and vomited their wisdom onto
the rabble and maybe some balled-up Letters to the Editor might feebly come back at them but
that was it. Now commoners can go viral! People making fun of Bari Weiss might reach as many
people as Bari Weiss herself! The cancel culture criers may have wingnut welfare sinecures,
cushy pundit gigs, and the respect of all the Right People, but they can't help but notice
that when they glide out onto their balconies and emit their received opinions a lot of
people -- mostly younger, and thoroughly hip that these worthies are apologists for the
austerity debt servitude to which they've been condemned for life -- are not just coughing
"bullshit" into their fists, but shouting it out loud.
This, the cancel culture criers cry, is the mob! It threatens civilization!
Yet they cannot force us to pay attention or buy their shitty opinions. The sound and
smell of mockery disturbs their al fresco luncheons and
weddings at the Arboretum . So they rush to their writing desks and prepare
sternly-worded letters. Their colleagues will read and approve! Also, their editors and
relatives! And maybe also some poor dumb kids who know so little of the world that they'll
actually mistake these overpaid prats for victims and feel sorry for them.
Well, you've already heard what I think about it elsewhere: Protect workers' free speech
rights for real, I say -- let them be as woke, as racist, or as obstreperous they wish off
the clock and the boss can't squawk. The cancel culture criers won't go for that deal; in
fact such a thing has never entered their minds -- free-speech is to protect their delicate
sensibilities, not the livelihoods of people who work with their hands!
And in the new tradition of the working class asking for more rather than less of what
they want, I'll go further: I give not one flaming fuck if these assholes suffocate under a
barrage of rotten tomatoes, and I think Brad inFast Times at Ridgemont
Highgot a raw deal from All-American
Burger and should be reinstated with full back pay: That customer deserved to have
100% of his ass kicked!
Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established, albeit somewhat
dirty, form of the political struggle. Often the reasons behind the particular attack of
the "cancel mob" is far from charitable. Orwell's 1984 describes an extreme form of the
same.
"Modern jihadism was co-invented in 1979 by Saudi Prince"
Yes after the Mecca siege they found the potential of wahabi islam(redefined by Qutb
teachings in the previous years) to be used against the enemy of zionism.Without 20 November
1979 (not in Teheran but in Mecca) there wouldn't have been any suicide bomber in the years
after.Those men with long beards and strong motivations were a great threat to the saudi
family..they had no fear to die for their struggle because the struggle was all their
life...They had a genuine hatred for usa and saudi corrupted state.It was only a matter of
annihilating them internally and at the same time promoting their birth everywhere in the
Sunni Islamic world...to serve the zionist scum.
The "no-fly zone" issue is covered in a second video suggested when this one almost
ends...It is also told that Obama opposed at first the destruction of Lybia, along with the
important participation of some NATO superpowers on basis of geopolitical interests and, of
course, looting of always...It was a coalition of the willing with assorted goals...althoughm
ainly benefitted the US in its cursade on the ME...
All these wars have happened to destroy kinda powerful nations ( competing
economic/military powers...), like Lybia in Africa and Yugoslavia in Europe on behalf of
others´hegemony...
Great video that everyone should see (especially clueless Americans) but it should've
included Obama's illegally turning a "no fly" Zone into a bombing campaign.
The UN had only authorized a "no fly" zone and Obama never sought authorization from
Congress for war.
Okay, I'll bite, Jackrabbit - sorry if I haven't followed your line of thinking on CIA and
Hillary ...wanting to elect Trump??? That really doesn't make sense to me. That would mean
everything about the really outrageous campaign against Trump's presidency has been
orchestrated so we chumps wouldn't guess they really were secretly rejoicing?
Sorry, I just don't buy it. But of course, I could be wrong. Who knows what dark deeds are
being secretly devised behind all these curtains of lies? (A good reason to suppose there is
a God who sees and who will someday reveal to us mortals what has really been going on. I
can't wait to find out.)
A couple of relevant section from the NPR which I think Putin was replying to.
https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF
From page 21...
"The United States would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme
circumstances
to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners. Extreme
circumstances
could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks. Significant non-nuclear strategic
attacks
include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population
or
infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or
warning
and attack assessment capabilities.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear
weapons
states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation
obligations.
Given the potential of significant non-nuclear strategic attacks, the United States reserves
the right
to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and
proliferation
of non-nuclear strategic attack technologies and U.S. capabilities to counter that
threat."
And page 34...
"Our deterrence strategy is designed to ensure that the Iranian leadership understands
that
any non-nuclear strategic attack against the United States, allies, and partners would be
defeated, and that the cost would outweigh any benefits. There is no plausible scenario
in
which Iran may anticipate benefit from launching a strategic attack. Consequently, U.S
deterrence strategy includes the capabilities necessary to defeat Iranian non-nuclear,
strategic capabilities, including the U.S. defensive and offensive systems capable of
precluding or degrading Tehran's missile threats. The United States will continue to
strengthen these capabilities as necessary to stay ahead of Iranian threats as they grow.
Doing so will enhance U.S. security and that of our regional allies and partners."
The page 34 section states plainly that US is willing to use nuclear weapons against
Iran's non nuclear capabilities.
I should have highlighted this in my previous post.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear
weapons
states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation
obligations.
After the drone shoot-down last week, Israel and USA sought to convince Russia to allow a
strike against Iran. The Russians rebuffed this request as well as the depiction of Iran as a
terrorist state
"In the context of the statements made by our partners with regard to a major regional
power, namely Iran, I would like to say the following: Iran has always been and remains
our ally and partner , with which we are consistently developing relations both on
bilateral basis and within multilateral formats,"
...Iran launching very clever non-silo dug down ballistic missiles. Anyone can copy the
idea in earth or sand, it looks relatively simple and perhaps genius. It should only require
minimal additions similar to when missiles are "containerized"/vertical on ships.
· "W93/MK7 Navy Warhead -- Developing Modern Capabilities to Address Current and
Future Threats" - Pentagon, Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA), unclassified 5-page white paper, May 2020 is still not "leaked". Seems a dud: reading
between the lines not written no one was convinced and instead complained about anyone saying
there's any problems (how "exceptional").
"Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an
asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated
electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to
front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio
communications.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a
response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to
determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive
strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces'
electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. The losses were as follows: one aircraft
carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real
conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the
cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada
of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized
on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected."
Iranians are not part of the rules based order it seems - not that the bad guys in the war
game was played by Iranians.
In the 2002 war game, the US was defeated in 2 days - lost a massive part of its fleet or
some such. So they stopped the game and changed the rules. I think that's when Van Riper quit
the game in disgust, and of course ultimately went public. But even with the rules changed,
the US still lost.
The point about these exercises is that they are real endeavors to create a playbook that
will result in victory. Millennium cost about $200 million to stage, and even for the
Pentagon that was war-fighting money spent to try to get somewhere. The next point even more
crucial is that in EVERY exercise the Pentagon has undertaken since this game, the US is
ALWAYS beaten by Iran.
This is the point I frequently try to hammer home here - the Pentagon has no map
whatsoever that leads to victory in warfare against Iran. Any warfare will always result in
defeat for the US - and we know how unpalatable a public defeat would be for the whole MIC
stream of income. The fundamentals are stacked against the US. It's very similar to Israel's
position right now against Hezbollah. For both the US and Israel, neither one can move
forward along the path it wants to go because its foe simply cannot be beaten by any
stratagem it can devise.
Sharmine Narwani talked about this extensively in her interview with Ross Ashcroft last
year on Renegade, Inc. It's an excellent interview. She's expert on the geopolitics of the ME
and laid out many of the fundamentals that create and support Iran's unwavering position in
this theater and in the great game:
I keep this episode bookmarked largely to share it here from time to time. You will both
enjoy the interview. The takeaway is that the US can bluster all it wants, but it dare not
cross a red line with Iran - such as it already has, for example, with Soleimani's murder,
and for which it has not yet suffered its full punishment, which is complete banishment from
the ME (and which I am convinced Iran will ultimately achieve).
~~
When your generals tell you constantly, daily, that you can't go into battle in a certain
theater, you are free to bluster all you want. In fact, it's all you have left, and you pour
all your feeble energy into it. Thus, the US.
Peter AU1 50 & 55 Bemildred & Grieved 70
RE: Millenium Challenge 2002
And yet, I keep pointing out that, that was 18 long years ago, when Iran did NOT have the
following:
Terminal guidance for it's ballistics
Armed drone technology
Satellite to map out the battlefield
Proximity to Israel (two countries sat between Iran and Israel)
Electronic surveillance and response, like spoofing a drone to land in Iran.
S300 and home built variations
Cyber
Experience watching coalition forces fighting in ME
Etc, etc,
US could not attack Iran conventionally but with Trump's earlier fixation on nuclear
weapons I think he was going to give that a try. Putin must have thought so to as he very
publicly laid Russia's nuclear umbrella over Iran and maintained the status quo.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Aug 1 2020 9:03 utc | 88 US could not attack Iran
conventionally
The US is perfectly capable of *attacking* Iran conventionally. The only thing to question
is whether the US can *defeat* Iran in the sense that Iran "surrenders" officially to the US.
*That* is in my view impossible short of the US actually killing thirty million Iranians by
nuking Iran.
Which in turn I believe even Trump would not do. He really would get Pentagon pushback on
that, as well as from every US ally and the UNSC, because no one wants to get the
geopolitical hear from being the first country to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear
country (this isn't WWII any more, before anyone brings up Hiroshima.)
As for Putin declaring Iran an ally, that does *not* mean that Putin would risk a nuclear
confrontation with the US over Iran. Not going to happen - even if the US nuked Tehran.
Putin's charge is to take care of Russian interests - and having Iran as an "ally and
partner" does qualify as an "interest". But it is *not* an *overriding* interest. Putin would
not be authorized by the Russian people to risk their country being nuked over a bunch of
Persians and if he did, they'd kick his butt out at the next election - and rightly so.
Current Russian military doctrine (discussed
here specifies the following:
The section on use begins by repeating the formulation in the last two Russian military
doctrines (translation from the Russian Embassy in the U.K.): "The Russian Federation shall
reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types
of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of
aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the
very existence of the state is in jeopardy." Like the doctrines, Foundations underlines
that the president of the Russian Federation makes any decision to use nuclear weapons.
However, unlike the doctrines, it then, in paragraph 19, outlines four conditions that
could allow for (not require) nuclear use:
credible information that Russia is under ballistic missile attack (the missiles don't
have to be nuclear -- this isn't specified -- but in many cases, it's hard to tell before
they land);
the use of nuclear or other WMD by an adversary against Russian territory or that of its
allies;
adversary actions against Russian critical government or military infrastructure that could
undermine Russia's capacity for nuclear retaliation (so, for example, a cyber attack on
Russia's command and control -- or perhaps one that targets Russian leadership could also
qualify); and, finally,
conventional aggression against Russia that threatens the very existence of the state.
The primary requirement is the use of nukes or "WMDs" against Russia, or conventional
weapons where their use is an "existential threat", i.e., Russia is about to be defeated on a
conventional battlefield.
the phrase "and/or its allies" almost certainly does *not* include Iran. There are two
"alliances" to which Russia is a party, according to Wikipedia:
1) Collective Security Treaty Organization: Military alliance with 6 former Soviet republics:
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
2) Union State: an alliance between Russia and Belarus (also already covered by 1).
Russia and Iran do not have any formal military or mutual-defense alliance agreements.
Russia and Iran are "allied" only with regard to Syria and Islamic terrorism in general.
Russia is willing to sell Iran arms, obviously. Equally obviously, that does not indicate a
willingness to risk nuclear war.
Putin made the following statement in June of 2019:
After talks Friday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the sidelines of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, Putin said that
"relations between Russia and Iran are multifaceted, multilateral" and that "this concerns
the economy, this concerns the issues of stability in the region, our joint efforts to
combat terrorism, including in Syria."
Nothing in that statement indicates a willingness to use Russia's nuclear arsenal to
threaten the US to prevent a US attack on Iran.
It is of course *possible* that some in the Pentagon, the Deep State, and/or Congress, may
interpret that to be the case. But I think the primary restraint on any President would be
the heat for a first use of nukes on a non-nuclear country - even if the alleged "reason" was
that Iran was developing nukes.
Even severe damage to US Navy assets in the region would not be sufficient to justify the use
of nukes against Iran, in particular because the only viable target for nukes would Tehran or
some other major Iranian city.
It is just possible that a tactical nuke would be used against a heavily buried facility
involved in nuclear weapons development (or more precisely, alleged to be so - because Iran
won't be developing nukes regardless of any US attack.) But even that would likely produce
more heat than the US would want - and if it was done, it would be done as covertly as
possible and then denied by the US. And even in that case, Russia would not threaten a
nuclear response over that.
Of course, if the US leadership were to become even more unhinged than Trump, or say, the
Russian leadership after Putin were to become more hawkish, then all bets are off. But under
current conditions, it's not going to happen.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957
"In this connection, I would like to note the following. We are greatly concerned by certain
provisions of the revised nuclear posture review, which expand the opportunities for reducing
and reduce the threshold for the use of nuclear arms. Behind closed doors, one may say
anything to calm down anyone, but we read what is written. And what is written is that this
strategy can be put into action in response to conventional arms attacks and even to a
cyber-threat.
I should note that our military doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear
weapons solely in response to a nuclear attack, or an attack with other weapons of mass
destruction against the country or its allies, or an act of aggression against us with the
use of conventional weapons that threaten the very existence of the state. This all is very
clear and specific.
As such, I see it is my duty to announce the following. Any use of nuclear weapons against
Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any range at all, will be considered as a
nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant
consequences."
Patrushev from my link above.
"In the context of the statements made by our partners with regard to a major regional power,
namely Iran, I would like to say the following: Iran has always been and remains our ally and
partner, with which we are consistently developing relations both on bilateral basis and
within multilateral formats"
Patrushev went to the meeting as a presidential envoy. After Putin's 2018 speech, I wondered
who Russia considered an ally as I had not seen Russia name any. I tend to think Patrushev
had reason to publicly name Iran as an ally at that presser. My guess is Israel and US were
trying to get Russia to stand aside while they attacked Iran.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Aug 1 2020 10:52 utc | 95 I tend to think Patrushev had reason to
publicly name Iran as an ally at that presser. My guess is Israel and US were trying to get
Russia to stand aside while they attacked Iran.
Nonetheless, the two statements do not constitute an official declaration that Iran is an
ally in the sense of being under the Russian nuclear umbrella, as the countries in the list I
quoted from Wikipedia are. The Collective Security Treaty Organization "charter reaffirmed
the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force.
Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states,[3]
while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all."
That's a military alliance which specifically declares those countries as "allies" in the
military sense and specifically states that an attack on any of them is an attack on all of
them.
Putin nor anyone else in Russia has specifically stated that Iran is an ally in those same
terms. Putin's reference to Iran as an ally applied to economic matters and the security of
Syria.
There is an article at Stratfor which I cannot access, but the tagline says: "Nikolai
Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said Feb.
25 [2020] that Moscow's nuclear umbrella has been extended to other CSTO member countries..."
In other words, the nuclear umbrella didn't even cover the former Soviet Union countries
until this year, apparently. From another article I found, Russia extended the umbrella to
Belarus in 2000. Another article I found says this:
Finally, Russia has created its own military alliance through the Collective Security
Treaty (1992) or "Tashkent treaty". In 2002, the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) was created, with a view to parallel NATO. As of June 2009, the organization
included Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which are
implicitly covered by a Russian nuclear guarantee. Even though Russian officials refer
sometimes to all Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) countries being protected by Moscow's nuclear forces, it is
reasonable to assume that only CSTO countries are effectively under the Russian nuclear
umbrella.
So I simply don't see any reference anywhere to Russia explicitly extending its nuclear
umbrella outside of the former Soviet Bloc countries. Again, all of the references made by
Russians - Putin or otherwise - to Iran as an "ally" do not reference a military dimension.
Of course, it's always *possible* that Putin or some future Russian leader *would* extend
that umbrella to Iran, depending on future circumstances. But it seems highly unlikely.
I repeat: There is no chance that Russia will go to nuclear war over Iran. Or even
conventional war against US military assets engaged in an attack on Iran because that would
risk escalation to a nuclear level. The most Russia will do is supply arms and intelligence
to Iran.
"... Case in point, reporting today on the newly disclosed Ghisline Maxwell documents only mentioned Prince Andrew and not a word about Bill Clinton ..."
"... believe James Murdoch was part of the "we are all gonna die in <11 years" Green New Deal school of thought. ..."
"James Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board
of News Corporation citing "disagreements over editorial content".
In a filing to US regulators, he said he also disagreed with some "strategic decisions" made
by the company.
The exact nature of the disagreements was not detailed.
... ... ..,
I watch a lot of TeeVee news on all the major networks including the two Foxnews
channels.
It has become apparent to me over the last year or so that there is an internal ideology
contest at Fox between the hard core conservatives like Dobbs. Carlson, Mark Levin, Bartiromo,
Degan McDowell, etc. and a much more liberal set of people like Chris Wallace, Cavuto and the
newer reporters at the White House. I expect that the departure of James Murdoch will result in
more uniformly conservative reporting and commentary on Fox. I say that presuming that James
Murdoch was a major force in trying to push Foxnews toward the left.
I am surprised that Murdoch sent his son to Harvard. pl
Been noticing a lot of irresponsible reporting of late in the WSJ - not on the opinion
page, but in some pretty sloppy reporting with a lot of editorial bias in what is included
and what is intentionally left out.
Case in point, reporting today on the newly disclosed Ghisline Maxwell documents only
mentioned Prince Andrew and not a word about Bill Clinton . Doesn't WSJ know its readers
draw from multiple media sources that have provided original content? Everyday there are
several similar, bias by omission, articles.
One can only hope newly constituted management team will finally get rid of Peggy
Noonan.
Executed Turkish general exposed misuse of Qatari funds for Syria extremists: Report Semih Terzi, a general within the Turkish army, was executed on the night of the 2016
Turkish coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Photo via the
stockholmcf) Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English Friday 31 July 2020 Text size A A A
The Turkish army executed a senior general within its ranks after he had discovered the
embezzlement of illicit Qatari funding for extremists in Syria by public officials, according
to a 2019 court testimony unveiled in a report by the Nordic Monitor.
Semih Terzi, a general within the Turkish army, was executed on the night of the 2016
Turkish coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The new allegations unveiled in court testimonies from a hearing March 20, 2019at Ankara
17th High Criminal Court were made by Col. Fırat Alakuş, an army officer working
within Turkey's Special Forces Command's intelligence section.
According to the Nordic Monitor, Terzi is said to have been executed after discovering that
Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı, in charge of the Special Forces Command at the time, was working
covertly with Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) "in running illegal and
clandestine operations in Syria for personal gain while dragging Turkey deeper into the Syrian
civil war."
"[Terzi] knew how much of the funding delivered [to Turkey] by Qatar for the purpose of
purchasing weapons and ammunition for the opposition was actually used for that and how much of
it was actually used by public officials, how much was embezzled," Col. Alakuş was quoted
as saying by the Nordic Monitor via his court testimony.
The Nordic Monitor said in its report published on Friday that Alakuş testified that
Aksakallı had run a gang outside of the chain of command within the Turkish intelligence
that was involved in illicit activities.
The report further alleged that Terzi was aware of public officials involved in
oil-smuggling operations with ISIS from Syria.
"[Terzi] was aware of who in the government was involved in an oil-smuggling operation from
Syria, how the profits were shared, and what activities they were involved in," Alakuş
said in his testimony.
USA's shift to the Western Pacific (Australia) is taking shape. This withdrawal of
American troops and personnel from Germany points to the direction of European long-term
decline in importance, as it seems the USA is opting for a more aggressive, less in-depth
model against the Russian Federation. Either it believes the Russian Federation will fall
soon (after Putin's death) or it is giving up Europe altogether. Both scenarios imply in
Germany's (the EU) decline.
For months the US has been in a full court diplomatic press on fellow UN Security Council
members in an attempt to ensure that a UN arms embargo against Iran does not expire.
The embargo on selling conventional weapons to Iran is set to end October 18, and is
ironically enough part of the 2015 nuclear deal brokered under Obama, which the Trump
administration in May 2018 pulled out of.
But now Pompeo vows
the US will "take necessary action" -- no doubt meaning more sanctions at the very least,
and likely military action at worst. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week
that "in the near future... we hope will be met with approval from other members of the
P5."
"In the event it's not, we're going to take the action necessary to ensure that this arms
embargo does not expire," he said.
"We have the capacity to execute snapback and we're going to use it in a way that protects
and defends America," Pompeo told the committee further.
Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued
to call on the world to accept extending the UN arms embargo against Iran. The embargo is
scheduled to expire on October 18.
But it's clear at this point that the UN is not intent on extending the embargo . Russia for
one has promised as much. Both Russia and China also have recent weapons deals in the works
with the Islamic Republic.
LibertarianMenace , 55 minutes ago
"protects and defends America"
Nothing is farther from the truth, fat man. We know (((who))) it is we're
"protecting".
bumboo , 37 minutes ago
Is this fat guy being blackmailed to saying stupid things all the time
monty42 , 35 minutes ago
He works for the Council on Foreign Relations who have been bankrupting the States with
perpetual war since they fomented WW2.
LibertarianMenace , 30 minutes ago
Yes, him and the rest of the USG. When you can assassinate a U.S. President in broad
daylight and get away with it, you can get away with more extravagant illusions, like 09/11,
or if people are finally catching on, throw in just a smidgen of reality like CV-19. Sky is
the limit.
This is Trump's redeeming value: he's showing all, including the densest among us
(((who))) it is that runs the country. Whether he does it intentionally or not, as in
kowtowing to (((them))), is ultimately irrelevant. (((They))) have to be a bit uncomfortable
from the unaccustomed exposure. The censoring just proves it.
Tag 'em And Bag 'em , 36 minutes ago
This pneumatic bull frog is a deep state sock puppet with a Zionist hand way up his
***.
When his lips move, Satanyahoo's voice comes out
This has zero to do with the interests of real Americans.
**building 7 didn't kill itself**
Tag 'em And Bag 'em , 23 minutes ago
TRUMP: "Larry Silverstein is a great guy, he's a good guy, he's a friend of mine."
The reason that the US government are trying to get Iran is because Epstein/Mossad has
blackmailed them all into doing their bidding.
Why don't you cover that in the news, huh?
El Chapo Read , 31 minutes ago
"Necessary Action" = Call Israel and ask what they want him to do.
jaser , 43 minutes ago
Protect America? Protect corrupt Netanyahu more like it. Your nation is about to implode
and you just cut off the $600 welfare payment to your citizens hey but let's ban TikTok and
protect America from Iran.
malMono , 39 minutes ago
This why Biden might win...idiots like pompeo are a turnoff.
Grouchy-Bear , 34 minutes ago
Sometimes it looks like Pompeo is actually in charge. Okay, most of the time he is in
charge. Why go through the election process at all? Pompeo is running the country and was
never elected...
malMono , 39 minutes ago
This why Biden might win...idiots like pompeo are a turnoff.
Grouchy-Bear , 34 minutes ago
Sometimes it looks like Pompeo is actually in charge. Okay, most of the time he is in
charge. Why go through the election process at all? Pompeo is running the country and was
never elected...
rwe2late , 43 minutes ago
Embargo Iran to make them as desperate as possible.
Then accuse them of being "aggressive" while one attacks and bombs Iran's near neighbors
(Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen).
Sounds like a plan of aggressive war if done by any but an "exceptional" nation.
If Russia and China want to trade with Iran, how in the world is it the US Government's
right to tell them not to? If we want to put sanctions on Iran, go for it. But at this point,
the dollar is collapsing as world reserve currency. Iran should well be able to buy anything
they need, from China/Russia and the rest of the world which doesn't respect US sanctions, or
so I would think.
My point - there's really getting nothing that the US even can do about Iran. So
maybe...we should just stop and give it a rest.
Einstein101 , 13 minutes ago
Iran should well be able to buy anything they need, from China/Russia
Fact is Russia and China sell almost nothing to Iran, fearing US sanctions.
Cassandra.Hermes , 2 minutes ago
Don't forget Turkey, Azerbaijan and Europe! Turkish stream is not only bypassing Ukrain
but it is connected to Azeri pipeline that is 10km from Iranians border.
monty42 , 15 minutes ago
"Obviously the Iranian army has a bunch of non thinkers..."
Hypocrisy much? The US regime employs paid mercenaries who swore to uphold and defend the
Constitution, yet lie and unthinkingly "just follow orders" and believe that absolves them of
their oathbreaking and actions.
"Dude, I am FREE. I have firearms that are deadly." Heh, only a very limited arsenal
permitted by the Central Committee in D.C., to maintain firepower supremacy in the empire's
favor. Your firearms may be deadly, but the empire mercenary can take you out without you
ever seeing their face.
Clearly having firearms and ammo alone do not prevent tyranny, the States under the D.C.
regime prove that.
vipervenom , 17 minutes ago
pompass the fat boy coward sending our troops to die while he hides behind his own extra
large rear end.
Tucker Carlson described former President Obama as "one of the sleaziest and most dishonest
figures in the history of American politics" after his eulogy at the funeral of civil rights
icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Thursday.
Carlson, who also described the former president as "a greasy politician" for calling on
Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and to eliminate the filibuster, which Obama described
as a relic of the Jim Crow era that disenfranchised Black Americans, in order to do so.
"Barack Obama, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American
politics, used George Floyd's death at a funeral to attack the police," Carlson said before
showing a segment of Obama's remarks.
he non-profit that sent the Democratic Party haywire during the Iowa Caucus earlier this
year has a new strategy: creating partisan news outlets in key states across the country ahead
of the 2020 election. With the financial backing of Hollywood, hedge fund managers, and Silicon
Valley, Acronym's Courier Newsroom may just change local journalism and politics forever.
Courier Newsroom , created by the
dark-money (not required to disclose donors) progressive non-profit Acronym, states that they
were created to restore trust in journalism by helping to rebuild local media across the
country. The opposite of this is true. Their true goal? Winning elections in key states.
Acronym CEO Tara McGowan, in a leaked memo obtained
by Vice, has stated that the goal of establishing Courier Newsroom is to defeat Republicans on
the new frontier of Internet political advertising. McGowan attributes Trump's 2016 success to
the campaign's ability to "shape and drive mainstream media coverage" through an influx of
internet spending. Courier seeks to counter this by challenging Trump on social media. By
definition, Courier serves as a political advertising operation for the Democratic Party rather
than a legitimate media source.
Calling for a new approach to political advertising, McGowan lambasted Hillary Clinton's
failed media strategy for its over-reliance on spending on traditional media, "In 2016, the
Hillary Clinton for President campaign raised an estimated $800 million online -- and spent a
large majority of it on television and radio advertisements." The 2016 election has proven to
be the reason for the creation of Courier Newsroom.
McGowan explicitly states that the papers are being used to boost political results, "
The Dogwood will not only function to support the flipping of both State House and
State Senate chambers in Virginia this November, but will serve as a vehicle to test, learn
from and scale best practices to new sites as we grow." The Dogwood , as of the time
of the writing of the leaked memo, was intended to be the prototype for future courier new
sites.
Courier has established news sites across key 2020 states including: Copper Courier
(Arizona), The Dogwood (Virginia), Up North News (Wisconsin), The
Gander (Michigan), Cardinal & Pine (North Carolina), The Keystone
(Pennsylvania), and The Americano (nationwide, intended for Latino audiences). Courier
extensively utilizes social media to promote stories made by the publications, generating
clicks in order to shape public voter opinion.
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Courier stories are written with the intent of mobilizing women and young people. McGowan
writes that Courier does this by "framing issues from health care to economic security in a way
that provides these voters with more personal and local relevance than they are often targeted
through traditional political ads." While these are real stories, they are packaged with the
intent on provoking a positive reaction from certain demographics of the population, in order
to spur them to vote for the Democratic Party this November. Courier itself has conceded that
they exist solely to challenge Republicans on social media.
Courier Newsroom Editor-in-Chief Lindsay Schrupp disagreed with the concerns regarding
journalistic integrity of its writers and service. Schrupp told The American
Conservative the following,
Courier Newsroom and its affiliated sites are independent from ACRONYM. We maintain an
editorial firewall, just like any other media company, and the managing editor of each site,
in addition to me as editor in chief, has ultimate discretion and control over content
published. Painting all partisan-leaning outlets with the same brush is dangerous and too
often creates false equivalency between very different types of newsrooms. All outlets in the
Courier Newsroom network operate with integrity and adhere to traditional journalistic
standards. It's offensive to our journalists -- many of whom have won state, regional and
national awards for their reporting -- to try to make a direct comparison to partisan outlets
on the right that often don't publish bylines, don't hire experienced or even local
reporters, don't comply with basic fact-checking standards, and don't do original reporting
in the regions where they operate. Courier aims to combat the misinformation spread by such
right-wing sites pretending to be "local news" by providing readers with transparently
progressive local reporting.
According to data from Facebook Ad Library, between May 2018 and July 12, 2020 Courier
Newsroom
spent $1,478,784 on Facebook ads on topics that include social issues, elections or
politics. Conservative
alternatives , such as the Daily Wire or Breitbart, have spent considerably less money on
Facebook advertising. Breitbart spent $11,404 since March 2018 and the Daily Wire spent
$418,578 since March 2018 according to Facebook's ad library.
Courier's political agenda is obvious. By looking into their Facebook ad-buys, Courier
Newsroom has spent extensively on vulnerable Democrats who came into office in the 2018
midterms. These pieces, while factual, highlight the accomplishments of narrowly elected
Democrats.
Among those that are frequently featured in mass ad-buys on Facebook are:
"Courier Newsroom's goal is to help elect Democrats. The site doesn't say that, but its
founder, Tara McGowan, has made this clear." Gabby Deutch of Newsguard, a journalism watchdog
focused on identifying fake news, tells The American Conservative. Deutch claims that
Courier is different from other partisan news outlets because their intentions are not clearly
stated. Courier instead argues that they are seeking to fill a void left in local
journalism.
According to The New York
Times in a story published in 2019, 1 in 5 local newspapers have been forced to shut
down forever. Political groups, such as Acronym, are poised to revitalize local journalism with
a new twist -- political advertising. Deutch warned The American Conservative of this
worrying development, "With fewer local newspapers -- a decline that's gotten even worse due to
the financial havoc wreaked by the pandemic -- there's room for political groups to fill the
void, playing off people's trust in local news. So they make a site that looks like local news
but has few (if any) reporters in the state, and then create content to woo voters."
There are examples on the right side of the spectrum too, she points out, including the
conservative Star network (Michigan Star and Tennessee Star are two examples) and AlphaNewsMN,
a conservative Minnesota site. "Readers deserve to know the agenda of the websites where they
get their news."
Browsing North Carolina's Courier news site Cardinal & Pine, one finds it brands itself
as "local news for the NC community." Newsguard' s assessment of Courier, is indeed
true, with the overwhelming majority of stories highlighting the successes of North Carolina
Democrats such as Governor Roy Cooper, attacking Republicans such as vulnerable Senator Thom
Tillis, and promoting Democratic policy positions -- notably as it relates to COVID-19 and BLM
social justice protests. Similarly, Virginia's Courier news site, The Dogwood, did not publish
an article detailing Virginia's biggest scandal of 2019: Governor Northam's controversial
blackface yearbook photo. Nor can one find any reference of Tara Reade, Joe Biden's sexual
assault accuser who entered the public eye earlier this spring.
Even more striking, is that as a 501(c)(4), Acronym is not required to disclose donors.
Acronym in 2018 received $250,000 from New Venture
Fund which is managed by Arabella. Through its dark-money ties,
Arabella has raised $2.4 billion dollars since 2006, making it one of the largest
financiers in American politics. Arabella's influence came into the limelight during the 2018
mid-term elections, in which they raised the
most ever by a left-leaning political non-profit. Courier Newsroom is, in other words, entirely
funded by secret donors that likely have significant ties to the Democratic Party and the Super
PACs bankrolling the 2020 election.
Acronym has invested millions of dollars to establish these papers across the country with
plans to continue their expansion into local media across the country in preparation for the
2020 election and beyond. Acronym has claimed that they are separate from Courier and allow the
creators to produce their own independent ideas, although, tax documents have revealed them to
be full owners
.
"This is all probably legal," says Bradley Smith, former Chairman of the FEC and foremost
scholar on campaign finance. "What surprises me is that more entities–especially on the
conservative side, since the majority of traditional media already lean left–don't do
this. But there are examples on the right–for example, NRA Radio." Donors can be kept
secret, as under Citizen's United , the 'periodicals' of 501(c)(4) groups do not have
to be filed with FECA. (Federal Election Campaign Act) Smith believes organizations such as
Courier will likely be a part of a greater trend in local journalism across the country.
Pacronym, also under the Acronym umbrella, is a Democratic Super-PAC charged with the single
goal of electing Joe Biden. Pacronym ads present similar content to what one would see on a
Courier publication, focusing heavily on the failures of Trump's handling of COVID-19, the
struggling of small-businesses across key-swing states (North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin), and Joe Biden's proposed response to the virus.
Courier, with the same goal, repurposes ideas by PACs and the Democratic Party by attaching
a 'news' label for legitimacy. "The anti-Trump ads from Courier focus on the same points as
Pacronym and other Democratic political groups, but if they look like news articles, the
audience sees them differently than the same content coming from a politician," According to
Deutch
at Newsguard.
Pacronym donors are publicly disclosed, and may have present a clue into Courier Newsroom's
finances. Some notable
financiers of Pacronym include billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, Hollywood icon
Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Kapshaw, a billionaire heiress to the Levi Strauss brand
Mimi Haas, and silicon valley's very own LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Pacronym has
targeted a $75 million-dollar digital ad campaign, primarily using Facebook, against
President Trump for the upcoming election.
Acronym is also involved in another scandal, notably the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus. Shadow
Inc, also operating under Acronym's umbrella, was established with the purpose of digitally
registering and mobilizing voters. Shadow Inc's leadership primarily consisted of 2016
ex-Clinton campaign staff. Shadow Inc received a contract by the Iowa Democratic Party for
$63,183 to develop an application to help count votes in the Iowa Caucus. Shadow Inc's
application, the IowaReporterApp, failed to properly report the caucus, leading to a delayed
result. Campaigns, pundits, and election officials were confused due to the inconsistencies
found in the results.
Candidate Pete Buttigieg claimed victory despite the caucus results not having been properly
released. According to data by the FEC, Pete Buttigieg's campaign paid Shadow Inc. $21,250 for
"software rights and subscriptions" in July 2019. Acronym CEO Tara McGowan's husband, Michael
Halle, was a senior strategist for the Pete Buttigieg campaign. Michael Halle's brother, Ben
Halle, was Pete Buttigieg's Iowa Communications Director. Many have suspected foul play, or at
least incompetence.
Courier Newsroom is distinct from both fake-news and astro-turf operations that came into
the public eye during the 2016 election. Rather than produce fake content with the intent to
mislead, Courier articles are legitimate and are written by real writers. In the leaked Acronym
memo, CEO Tara McGowan claimed that the Democratic Party was losing "the media war."
In 2014 the National Republican Congressional Committee established fake news
websites and paid to boost them on Google. These websites were deceptive with the intent on
defeating the opposing candidate. Although, these websites publicly disclosed that they were
paid for by the committee at the bottom of the article. Courier's funding remains
undisclosed.
PACs, in tandem with a surge in online political advertising, have weaponized newsrooms to
present misleading news for electoral success.
Alberto Bufalino is a student at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and TAC's summer
editorial intern.
I don't know . . . It's bad enough that the republic has to deal with a broad swath of
people getting their news from terrible facebook feeds. It's why America has a president
selling beans and promoting demon sperm doctors, and why it's one of the few countries that
can't keep covid down despite it's resources.
I don't think trying to get the rest of getting our news from people that operate at the
level of Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and Breitbart is praiseworthy.
You are right in principle.
We have this six hundred pound Citizens United crapping all over the room though.
I too wish that the game was played by different rules. But this is not Switzerland and we
need to win first.
Is it clear though that repealing Citizens United would change this? The Double Plus
Wealthy are already funding the top online websites to the tune of millions of dollars a
year, and the funders of the Federalist are famously anonymous despite the Federalist
basically being an arm of the Republican party/embarrassment to thinking.
I am happy though that the anonymous funders of the Courier are not sponsoring fake news
that makes their readers dumber, unlike *checks the article** the National Republican
Congressional Committee . Yowza.
Repeal of Citizens United would make it possible to regulate who funds whom. It
would not guarantee the outing of arrangements like Courier. Give me a leaked memo any
day.
Ambassador John Bolton hinted that he doesn't like being called a hawk, since foreign policy labels are simplistic.
But first of all, he labeled libertarian Sen. Rand Paul an isolationist, rather than say, a non- interventionist. And after
nearly 500 pages (all but the epilogue), what you will absorb is absolutely the worldview of a geopolitical hawk. He is not technically
a neoconservative (like, say, Paul Wolfowitz) because the latter were more focused on nation building and spreading democracy.
Bolton sees what he's promoting as defense, but it requires a constant offense.
Bolton is very bright, as Jim Baker noted decades ago, and very well-read, even endorsing his fellow Baltimorean and my teacher
Steve Vicchio's book on Lincoln's faith. But his intelligence is all put into an ideological reading of situations. As Aristotle
would put it, the problem is not lack of theoretical wisdom, but the deficiency in practical wisdom and prudential judgment. Certainly
there are bad actors in the world, and vigilance is required. But when is aggressive action called for, and when is it better
to go with diplomacy? In this book, I find few cases of such restraint. For Bolton, it seems that the goal of peace and security
requires the constant threat of war and presence on every continent. All this intervention around the world requires troops, soldiers,
real men and women and their lives and those of their families, requiring lots of sacrifice. At times, his theorizing seems distant
from these realities on the ground.
So Bolton is critical of the "axis of adults" in the Trump administration, the "generals", but not Kelly and not much on his
predecessor McMaster, much less the eccentric Flynn. So his beef is with Mattis, another fine student of history. Bolton says
he went by the rules, as James Baker had said that Bush 41 was "the one who got the votes". He tried to influence Trump within
the rules, while Mattis, Tillerson and Haley pursued their own foreign policy. I'm sure that Mattis was sometimes right and sometimes
wrong, but I would trust his prudential judgment above that of the equally bright Bolton, because of his life experience, being
the one on the ground and knowing what war is like.
When Bolton was considered for secretary state right after the 2016 election, I said, well I don't care for the guy, but at
least I've heard of him and we know what we're dealing with. His opponent in GOP foreign policy is the libertarian and non-interventionist
Sen. Rand Paul. What does Bolton say about the big players in the Trump administration? Nikki Haley is dismissed as a lightweight
who was posing for her political future. Well, that's basically what Trump, "the one that got the votes", put her there for. But
it's interesting that Bolton is so anti-Haley, when she was for Rubio and the more hawkish platform.
Tillerson's successor Mike Pompeo had sort of a love-hate relationship with Bolton.
Steve Mnuchin is the epitome of the globalist establishment, along with Javanka. Jared Kushner is dismissed as no Kissinger,
but when it comes to China, his soft stance is blamed on Kissinger! While Bolton didn't testify in the impeachment, Fiona Hill
is mentioned only with respect in this book.
Everybody's flaw, from Bolton's point of view, is being less belligerent than Bolton. (Even in the Bush administration, the
only name I can think of would be Michael Ledeen). He even defends the concept of Middle Eastern "endless wars" on the grounds
that we didn't start them and can't dictate when they end. Obama was a dove, but in 2016 the GOP marked a shift, with Trump, Paul,
Ben Carson and even Ted Cruz opposing the "invade every country on earth" philosophy that this book promotes. It's true that Trump
is not an ideologue and thinks in terms of individual transactions. But the movement I see is a dialectic of alternating between
aggression and diplomacy, or as he sees it, friendly relationship among leaders.
Bolton is a superhawk on North Korea and Iran throughout, while China and Russia are our hostile rivals. Other matters are
Syria, Iraq and ISIS, Venezuela, Afghanistan and finally Ukraine, which by the end of the book I had almost forgotten. If Bolton
is dovish anywhere, it's on the Saudis, the rivals with Iran in the Sunni-Shiite dispute chronicled recently in the book "Black
Wave".
You can learn a lot from this book, but just keep in mind that it's filtered through the mind of a strong ideologue, so other
people's faults are seen through that lens. But he has great knowledge of the details of policy. Bolton would like to be an inter-generational
guru like Henry Kissinger or Dean Acheson, but both parties have turned away from the "endless wars" philosophy.
If you are looking for anti-Trump material, I don't really see the point of investing this time and intellectual effort. The
more sensational parts have been reported-the exchanges involving Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, and to a lesser extent Erdogan.
As most reviewers have said, it's about 100 pages too long, but Bolton is looking for a scholarly work like Kissinger's Diplomacy
or World Order, and this is the one that he hopes people will read.
John Bolton, on some fundamental level, is a brilliant, dedicated conservative intent on improving the future of the country
he and I love. THAT similarity is probably the only point we share.
I wanted to love this book, because I knew it would be jam-packed with juicy tidbits that justify me derision of the biggest
failure ever to assume the office of POTUS. Instead, quite early on, I realized the reason Trump became President was the enormous
ineptitude of those otherwise brilliant people who, in short, simply felt that somebody opposing those the person they despise,
on principle, was better for America than the other guy or gal.
Throughout this book, Bolton reminds us of Trump's inability to focus attention on the information provided by his handlers.
Yes, Trump is naive and intellectually lazy. Yes, so, too, are many of those aiding and abetting Mr. Trump. But, yes, Mr. Bolton
also suffers from gross navet, and, is just plain foolish. His ego led him to join the Trump Administration, as he admits in
"The Room Where It Happened."
Bolton's greatest error, however, was in refusing to tell the country what he chose to sell to the public through this book.
The writing is, mechanically, quite good. But, Bolton comes across as thinking he is the only person of intelligence. That
becomes clear by page two, and never changes, except for his insight that he was wrong about Trump.
Unfortunately, Bolton also was wrong about Bolton.
Whoa. Hold on. Just about everyone in both political parties is no better than Bolton. A few exceptions would be Former governor
John Kasick and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Oh, and former Vice President Joe Biden, I believe. Yet, to be honest, I need to see
him prove me right. I would hate to make the same mistake regarding Biden as Bolton did regarding Trump.
Americans need to take a good, hard look at how we are governed and at those whom we support.
BOTTOM LINE
Writing quality, passable. But don't expect to gain a great deal of new knowledge.
Feelings don't care about facts. The mass hysteria that's gripped
the Western world after the death of George Floyd can't be explained in rational terms. Police
are shooting fewer
unarmed black men each year, and most of the shootings are justified. Police are more likely to
shoot a
non-threatening white than a non-threatening black. In the Floyd case specifically, there's
nothing
that shows racial bias by police officers, and Floyd was on drugs and resisting
arrest . Minneapolis police procedure
allowed neck pressure in some circumstances. Former police officer Derek Chauvin's conduct
wasn't extraordinary. But the facts are almost irrelevant. We're dealing with faith ,
religious ecstasy. We're in the midst of BLMania.
Collective frenzies aren't new. Almost every American knows about the Salem witch trials,
during which Christians claimed they saw demons and devils. Evil had to be rooted out, whatever
the cost. Arthur Miller's fictional re-telling in The Crucible , originally meant to
criticize McCarthyism, now reads like a satire of SJWs .
In 1536, Anabaptists took over Münster, Germany, and tried to establish a divine
kingdom. Would-be prophet Jan Matthys cannot have been a charlatan; he must have believed he
was chosen by God, because he rode out almost by himself to attack a besieging army. He was
instantly killed, but that didn't shake the faith of his followers. In 1917, hundreds of people
in Fátima, Portugal, claimed they saw the sun dance in the sky. The Catholic Church,
which often debunks alleged visions and miracles, declared this "worthy of belief."
Still, because of the doctrine of Original Sin and man's fallen nature, Christians are
reminded not to " immanentize the eschaton " and
seek heaven on earth. If Christians are delusional, can go only so far. "Secular" movements
have no such restraints. During the last century, tens of millions were butchered in Russia,
China, Cambodia, and other places in the name of the Brotherhood of Man, with the
revolutionaries often creating cults of personality to replace older faiths and heroes. The
Revolutionary Communist Party, which can be found
burning American flags around the country, has its own cult of personality
around leader Bob Avakian .
During the French Revolution, a "Cult of Reason" was established, with Robespierre as high
priest. Busts of the assassinated revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat replaced crucifixes in some
churches. During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists burned churches, shot at statues of Jesus,
murdered clergy, and desecrated the dead to pave the way for a new order. The Communards
executed Archbishop Georges Darboy during the Paris Commune and destroyed the original
Vendôme Column because it glorified empire. The famous French protests of May 1968, which
strongly influenced the current intellectual climate, had a utopian, religious flavor. Would-be
revolutionaries destroyed property as they spray-painted the following slogans:
Ann Coulter analyzed mobs in her 2011 book Demonic . She heavily cited Gustave Le
Bon's famous 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind . Miss Coulter said a
mob is "an irrational, childlike, often violent organism that derives its energy from the
group" and is "intoxicated by messianic goals." One chapter is called "Imaginary Violence From
the Right Vs. Actual Violence From The Left." This is especially prescient. CHAZ/CHOP
"security" in Seattle
murdered a black teenager and wounded another because they thought right-wing
paramilitaries would attack any second (no one has been arrested for these shootings). As
cities burn, NBC
reports that "an expert" thinks the real threat is "far right" violence.
The "messianic goal" Miss Coulter wrote of is human equality. The premise is that if
existing social institutions are removed, a natural and authentic human equality will emerge.
Even the past must be destroyed to make this possible. The French Revolution remade the
calendar, with 1792 as Year Zero. All culture and history from the past was irrelevant because
everything was to be built anew. Rousseau famously wrote that "man is born free and everywhere
is in chains." This comes from assuming that man is a blank slate and that people are born
equal. If there is inequality, it can only be because of unjust institutions or exploitative
social forces.
Who is the boogeyman? Many once believed it was the Church: Voltaire's "
infâme ." Some blamed kings; Jefferson's post-revolutionary writings show
paranoia about "monarchial" tendencies. Many believe capitalism is the enemy, but I'd argue
that most progressives today believe the fundamental problem is "whiteness."
What is whiteness? Psychology Today says
it's "an unfairly privileged exclusionary category, based on physical features, most notably a
lack of melanin." Many others who study "whiteness" say something similar. Whiteness is a
social construct used to justify domination, slavery, and economic exploitation today.
There are three obvious objections to this.
This
is clearly not true . Third, it assumes that those with power use white racism to
exercise privilege. However, almost every powerful corporation openly supports Black Lives
Matter and opposes white racial consciousness. Though "whiteness as property" is a common
theme in "whiteness studies," there are benefits
to being labeled non-white, which is why some whites fake their racial identity and some
groups
organize politically so the government won't call them white.
"Whiteness" has become the explanation for all "the evils of the modern world."
Critical race theorists are right to say that "whiteness" is socially constructed; what they
fail to understand is that they created its modern meaning.
Most race realists, Identitarians, and white advocates know Susan Sontag's quote that the
"white race is the cancer of human history." She also said America, which is "the culmination
of Western white civilization," is guilty of causing global suffering. The full context is even
more revealing: "The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary
government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine
ballets, et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the
world."
In this sentence, she concedes three things that would be politically incorrect today.
First, Western
civilization is white civilization . Second, despite the pathetic claims of
some
journalists and academics , Sontag recognized that white civilization isn't simply built on
domination of non-whites, and that it has produced things of great value. Third, Sontag admits
that some (if not all) progressive accomplishments such as "the emancipation of women" are
products of "this particular civilization." "Morgoth's Review" made this same point , noting that when
progressives try to destroy "whiteness," they are dynamiting the foundations of their own
liberal, universal worldview.
However, Sontag still thought white civilization was irredeemable because it "eradicates
autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads" and threatens the planet. Whiteness wasn't cancer
just because it was bad. Sontag meant that whiteness, like cancer, grows, metastasizes, and
consumes. It never seemed to occur to Sontag that this universalizing, homogenizing force
"eradicated" authentic European cultures too. If "Western culture" is Netflix, Amazon, and
Hollywood, I'm with the Third World anti-imperialists.
Still, at least Sontag recognized that whites had a real culture, at least in the past. Her
intellectual successors are worse. They accepted her view the whiteness is cancer while denying
any value to our culture and our standards. Instead, " Whiteness
Studies " and "Critical Race Theory" criticize "white" civilization because of its
standards. The National Museum of African American History and Culture identifies objective,
rational linear thinking, cause and effect relationships, and hard work to be "whiteness" and
therefore "racist." Everything can therefore be "racist" or in need of
"decolonization," including math ,
grammar ,
grades , SAT and
ACT tests ,
bar exams , and
artificial intelligence .
This ends in denying truth itself. Claire Lehmann found a slide at an education
conference in Washington that said that "if you conclude that outcomes differences [sic] by
demographic subgroup are a result of anything other than a broken system, that is, by
definition, bigotry." Actually, bigotry is "obstinate or intolerant
devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices." We've now come full circle, and define bigotry
as not being bound by opinions and prejudices. The way many academics and journalists
talk about whiteness is worse than anything Susan Sontag said.
This is the thinking of a fanatic religious sect, like the one Jim Jones
led . "We were too good for this world," Jones said before the infamous mass suicide. While
progressives haven't yet gone that far, they clearly enjoy the feeling of "woke" moral
righteousness, which has replaced the sense of being "elect" that some Protestant sects once provided .
Much as the French revolutionaries replaced saints with Jacobins during the Terror, today's
woke disciples are creating their own saints, with "Big George" Floyd taking the place of
Christ. Insufficient adulation for Floyd cost
one priest his job. BLMania is even consuming the churches themselves.
Black Lives Matter is more sacred than the American flag or Christ.
Federal agents , police , military ,
athletes , politicians , and many others
all genuflect before BLM. Many would never bow before God. This new, powerful faith even has a
liturgical
calendar and a hymn built on a sacred myth.
Worse, because this creed is impervious to truth, it must always seek new scapegoats (or
devils) for egalitarianism's continuing failure. Despite the constant funding, programs, and
repression, equality never arrives. The late Lawrence Auster's " First Law of Majority/Minority Relations In
Liberal Society " holds that "the more egregiously any non-Western or non-white group
behaves, the more evil whites are made to appear for noticing and drawing rational conclusions
about that group's bad behavior." Likewise, the more blacks fail, the more fictional portrayals
of black superiority must be created, from Black
Panther to
Black Is King . And the more whites give, the more fiercely they must be accused of
bigotry for wanting good
schools ,
classical music , or even
video games left alone.
The egalitarian revolution is a Permanent Revolution. BLMania will constantly devour its
children . It will continue until it is stopped by superior power. Even Robin DiAngelo,
author of White Fragility and high priestess of the Anti-Racist
Church of the Damned , is no longer pure enough.
The late Noel Ignatiev , editor of
Race Traitor , famously said that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity."
However, he said that this wasn't a call to violence against whites. "When we say we want to
abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exterminate people with fair skin," he
said . "We
mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the
white race as a social category." I question this. If I cited Shlomo Sand's
The Invention of the Jewish People to deconstruct Jewish identity, religious claims,
and Israel, one might rightly suspect I had an anti-Jewish motive.
Still, let's assume Ignatiev was sincere. Could we "abolish the social meaning of skin
color" today? Skin color is more important as a social category than at any other time in
decades. Those with power may say whites are just a "social construct," but they have no
trouble telling who is white and who is not when it comes to affirmative action. The media view
almost all economic, political, and cultural issues through a racial lens. Indeed, with a
separate black
"national anthem ," graduation
ceremonies , and
separate events for non-whites , we're seeing the return of segregation. It may even be the
beginning of America's breakup along racial lines.
"Wokeness" holds that whites are racist no matter what we do. "White racism" is the new
original sin. Fighting one's own racism is a lifelong struggle -- one that ultimately can't be
won. "Whiteness" is also responsible for great evil. If all whites are racist and "whiteness"
is evil, isn't it best just to eliminate whites? Some whites may even want to join this racial
death drive, exhausted, ashamed, and despairing after decades of relentless anti-white propaganda . Even
those whites who don't want to surrender psychologically may see no hope, and become a "
defeated and despairing
race ," in Steve Sailer's words.
What can we call this death-cult? Some leftists, including Ignatiev, called for "abolishing"
the white race. It's tempting to call it " Abolitionism ." However, this word is
forever linked with (whites) ending slavery. Some leftists may eventually use the term,
but it will never catch on. Still, it is useful because of its vivid history. Many 19th century
abolitionists were not peaceful idealists but blood-crazed fanatics , who
cloaked their dreams of war and slaughter in apocalyptic, Biblical language. John Brown, whose
band began its infamous raid on Harpers Ferry by killing a free black man, is the primary
example.
The creed's violence, militancy, and destructiveness lead me to call it
Eradicationism. Like some Christian sects, whites who embrace it want collectively to abandon
the world, if not through suicide then by failing to reproduce. Instead of making the world
better "for ourselves and our posterity," they will expunge their blood guilt by ending their
line. White Saviors share a curious mix of self-hatred and self-exaltation, something we see
when white protesters post themselves indulging in BLMania online.
Eradicationism will be with us for some time. Regardless, our course is clear. Facts are
important, but statistics don't move mountains. Faith does. We must act with faith in victory , in
service to a great ideal. Our Western tradition tells us to do our duty to uphold
the cosmic order . This chaotic time will be an opportunity for racial rebirth. Steel
yourself against this death cult that has hijacked our civilization. Reject BLMania. We were
meant for something great. We shouldn't fear this time of struggle, which is demonstrating what
we've been warning of all along. We should welcome it. The American experiment in equality
couldn't have ended any other way.
Good summary of the points we are all familiar with by now.
"Whiteness" has become the explanation for all "the evils of the modern world."
If black people weren't so bad at practically everything, we wouldn't have to play this
game where everyone goes overboard to avoid talking about race realism, or scientific racism.
India encountered White Western Civilization, basically absorbed parts of it, and came out
the other side as the people they always were. Same with China. Same with Japan. Same with
Mexico. Etc. The Western World has also encountered other civilizations as the weaker party
to an extent, and likewise absorbed or fought back, and came out the other side still being
themselves. The Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, just to name a couple of examples, both
enslaved white people. We are not all sitting around moaning about it centuries later and
saying that's why we can read or do math. That realization forces people down a path where
they have to believe against all the evidence that there was something extremely different
about the way white people treated black people for them to turn out this way. And as a
corollary that there is something very different about white people that makes them uniquely
evil.
Or, alternatively, you could just think about your own actual experiences with real black
people you have met in life and notice that you generally have to talk to them like they are
special needs children and they are really really dumb and aggressive. And then it all makes
sense.
We are witnessing something extraordinary, the death of what some call 'liberal
progressivism' or what I prefer to call 'American atheistic humanism.' It's a hell of a thing
to watch. What's next is anybody's guess. It's going to get much worse before it gets better.
I'd like to share some of the things I do to maintain strength and sanity.
1 exercise and work out.
2 do not watch television.
3 associate with non-cucked Catholics and practice the Faith
4 read voraciously, especially the classics and lives of the saints.
5 flirt with women regularly (not the fat ones)
6 set aside resources for 'fallout.' If and when shit hits the fan I'm prepared for a long
winter.
This list could be a expanded. These are the big things I've integrated into my daily
life.
1. Exercise
2. Never watch television
3. Read books written before the "Woke" era and never any book written by a Jew, not even Ben
Shapiro. I always google the authors before I read anything.
4. Use bookmarks instead of search for the vast majority of the content you look at online.
Search is a tool Silicon Valley uses to "recommend" woke content.
Of course, these rules only apply in the current times of information warfare where
everyone is trying to demoralize you and subvert anything you think is valuable.
That civilization lasted for approximately 280 years, and disappeared without a trace
around 1400 AD.
As you walk around the ruins of an obviously civilized people, there is one question that
goes through everyone's mind.
What happened?
This was before there were settlers from Europe, and the land is empty for many miles
around so there are no obvious enemies anywhere to be found.
It is unlikely that an earthquake or flood or other natural event destroyed the
city–there seems to be no physical evidence to support that. Perhaps there was a long
dry period (since this is Arizona) but long enough to destroy the entire civilization?
Then there is the little voice in your head that says the most likely
explanation–"They must have destroyed themselves, probably based on some horrible
ideology or religious fervor."
Bottom line–insanity is toxic, and can destroy a civilization.
There is no arguing with insanity, there is no negotiating with insanity, there is no
solution for insanity.
Civilizations must have the will to remove the insane people from the territory before
they destroy it–or they will become just another forgotten ruin on the landscape.
The hatred for whiteness in America comes from 70 years of massive number of Jews who in
many parts of the country dominated public schools and universities in teaching and
leadership positions in academia.
Black person to white person: "your ancestors enslaved my ancestors"
White person to black person: "your ancestors along with the Arabs enslaved my ancestors
in the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years up until the 1800s"
White person to black person: "you have never been a slave and neither have I"
White person to black person: "all white majority nations have outlawed slavery, have
outlawed segregation, have enshrined equal rights into law, and have outlawed the taking of
land by force"
White person to black person: "many black majority nations have not outlawed slavery, have
not outlawed segregation, have not enshrined equal rights into law, and still take land by
force"
White person to black person: "man up like my ancestors did and go to Africa and free the
slaves, put your blood, sweat, and tears on the land and get it done like my ancestors
did"
White person to black person: "you can't blame white people for black criminality and for
black underperformance in society, most black people are not criminals and many black people
perform and overperform in society, so stop being racist towards white people and take
responsibility and build something"
The unemployed. Without hope and nothing to show for, members will do anything to proof
thy can. In history famous for doing the ting attacking the unarmed, on orders. Controlling
is their hidden desire. Makes them the ideal public servant. Handicapped only by lack of the
brain part called working IQ. In war of times of change, needed badly by ones who own a
little of that stuff wile steering the ship named state..
It seems some people(such as this author) are viewing the current situation through one
prism, and I think it has multiple causations.
1.Militarized police abuse of the general population is real – especially the
poor(soft targets). As incidents pile up, resistance grows.
2.Funding by various political entities are responsible for the political strengthening of
BLM and other groups as controlled opposition and used as divide and conquer tactics.
3.The progressive left is low hanging ripe fruit for the former, especially after the
election of Donald Trump.
4.An education system pumping out SJW's at an exponential rate.
5.Now just add poverty and depravity from a lockdown.
George Floyd or no George Floyd the current situation(or new religion) was just a matter
of time.
This anti-whiteness among Liberal whites reminds me of old Gnostic cults. They sought to
overcome the flesh to achieve heaven on earth. Some took it so far as to avoid reproduction.
I don't think any took it so far as to adopt the children of other races.
It is a privilege to read UNZ everyday. It is important for everyone who is kind at heart,
reading this article and others who are concerned about this actual insanity made sane, is
nothing more than a movement to draw foolish people, black, white and everyone else, to drink
just another flavor of Koolaid, into self-selecting their genetic discontinuation in the New
World. It is a sublime process supported by the powers that be – to thin the hierd.
Don't be alarmed by this. All shall pass. BLM is a part of the culling process – and
you may or may not be aware of it: opioids & legal & illegal drugs, obesity,
dumberism, political extremism on either side, China/Russia bashing, J bashing, and so on.
Stay sure-footed. Understand the motivations of the PTB, and truly understand WHY they must
take action for the good of the human race. It is only thru these operations, the wiser among
us can & must understand why the human herd must be culled. And if you have a problem
with that, please do stand first in line with the many lines & flavors of protesters,
refuseniks & freedom fighters. The New World will truly be a better place for better
human beings. Anyone who wants to get in to the New World & must first qualify with
kind-heartedness, a strong obligation responsibility to better oneself & the community in
which we live in. Forget all the political terms of democracy, freedom, liberty, capitalism,
& such. It will simply be a New World where people are healthy in mind, body & soul.
The crazies, psychopaths & criminals will not survive. It will be a much better world.
And, the Powers that be are creating every sort of selection process to sift thru humanity's
strata. If you are possibly fit for the New World, this comment will ring bells – and
all will be clear to you. If not, go ahead and disagree with me . G*d bless you – for
we will in time bow (or made to bow) to our Master(s). If you can't accept that, well, you're
not likely to make it, and neither will your progeny . Please discern.
@American
Citizen 2.0 rey.
BLM handlers know this and that is why it encourages ANTIFA and BLM to group together and at
the same time discourages for decades any attempt by whites to associate in leagues,
groupings, unions, sindicats etc. Look what hapenned to Proud Boys.
The second in which 100 whites joined together the ruling elite put the leaders in prison and
dismembered the white group.
United we surely stand, divided guaranteed to fall.
We must learn from the Jews – tribalism, fight for our kind no matter what.
They do not give a shit if you exercise, don't watch tv, read books etc. You are not a threat
to them.
A threat is 1000 sheep + one lion.
In the last year of his Presidency (2015) Barack Obama in an interview made the following
observation:
Obama: "What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in
almost every institution of our lives -- you know, that casts a long shadow. And that's still
part of our DNA that's passed on. We're not cured of it."
Interviewer: "Racism"
Obama: "Racism. We're not cured of it."
Few, if any of the cognoscenti who constantly lecture Americans 24×7 on the ubiquity
of "racism" and daily pounce on yet another politician or celebrity who breaks the strict
rules of "Diversity-Speak," bothered to decode the President's remarks so that the average
American might get a sense of what he was in for. They can be boiled down to: "Racism has
always been the defining feature of American life and will be far into the future." What
then, we might wonder, is the "cure," and who gets to say that it has been successful and the
patient is whole and released from treatment?
Obama chose the wrong metaphor. His view of race is better expressed in theological terms.
"Racism" is America's "original sin." It was, and still is, committed exclusively by white
people, and no matter what metaphor you care to use, consider it a permanent fixture of
American society. "We shall overcome someday." But, sorry Pal, not today. With sin comes
guilt, and white America now finds itself confronted with guilt, virtually unlimited
guilt.
@Miro23
motherland. Imperialism has been a long term disaster for the West.
Stupid white people – Yes, yes, people here blame the Jews but let's be honest here,
if it was the Jews who helped contribute, who happily lapsed it up and performed the dance?
The stupid white people! Had the stupid white people been more intelligent, they would have
put two and two together and stopped the madness along time ago. Instead they are worshipping
George Floyd.
Look, I'm no leftie liberal. I want white people to survive and prosper. But honestly, I
see alot of sins and ultimately stupidity at the white man's feet. I blame him more then
anyone else.
U.S. Officials Disseminate Disinformation About 'Virus Disinformation'Getald
, Jul 29 2020 17:44 utc |
1
In another round of their anti-Russian disinformation campaign 'U.S. government officials'
claim that some websites loosely connected to Russia are spreading 'virus
disinformation'.
However, no 'virus disinformation' can be found on those sites.
The Associated Press as well as the New York Times were briefed by the
'officials' and provided write ups.
Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service known as
the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach
American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly.
The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence.
Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out
Tuesday published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed
either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.
Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were "Russia's Counter
COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente," which suggested that Russia had
given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and "Beijing Believes
COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon," which amplified statements by the Chinese.
There is zero 'virus disinformation' in the Korybko piece. The aid flight did happen and
was widely reported. In a response to the allegations the proprietors of O neWorldpoint out that
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent Q&A also alluded to a new détente with
Russia. Was that also 'virus disinformation'?
The second piece the 'officials' pointed out, Beijing believes COVID-19 is a biological weapon , was
written In March by Lucas Leiroz, a "research fellow in international law at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro". It is an exaggerating analysis of the comments and questions a
spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry had made about the possible sources of the
Coronavirus.
The original spokesperson quote is in the piece. Referring to additional sources the
author's interpretation may go a bit beyond the quote's meaning. But it is certainly not
'virus disinformation' to raise the same speculative question about the potential sources of
the virus which at that time many others were also asking.
The piece was published by InfoBRICS.org, a "BRICS information portal" which
publishes in the languages of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South
Africa). It is presumably financed by some or all of those countries.
Another website the 'U.S. officials' have pointed out is InfoRos.ru which publishes in Russian and English. The
AP notes of it:
A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read "Chaos in
the Blue Cities," accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the
tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg "and have zero
street smarts" must now "adapt to life in high-crime urban areas."
Another story carried the headline of "Ukrainian Trap for Biden," and claimed that
"Ukrainegate" -- a reference to stories surrounding Biden's son Hunter's former ties to a
Ukraine gas company -- "keeps unfolding with renewed vigor."
U.S. officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites'
operations. The men, Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have
previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing
in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials
said.
InfoRos calls itself a 'news agency' and has some rather boring general interest
stuff on its site. But how is its writing in FOX News style about unrest in U.S.
cities and about Biden's escapades in the Ukraine 'virus disinformation'? I fail to find any
on that site.
In 2018 some "western intelligence agency"
told the Washington Post , without providing any evidence, that InfoRos
is related to the Russian military intelligence service GU (formerly GRU):
Unit 54777 has several front organizations that are financed through government grants as
public diplomacy organizations but are covertly run by the GRU and aimed at Russian
expatriates, the intelligence officer said. Two of the most significant are InfoRos and the
Institute of the Russian Diaspora.
So InfoRos is getting some public grants and was allegedly previously run by two
people who before that worked for the GU. What does that say about the current state and the
content it provides? Nothing.
The NYTadds
that hardly anyone is reading the websites the 'U.S. officials' pointed out but that their
content is at times copied by more prominent aggregator sites:
"What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a
flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche
media ecosystem," said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet
Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
There are plenty of sites who copy content from various outlets and reproduce it under
their name. But that does not turn whatever they publish into disinformation.
All the pieces mentioned by AP and NYT and attributed to the 'Russian'
sites are basically factual and carry no 'virus disinformation'. That makes the
'U.S.officials' claims that they do such the real disinformation campaign.
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
People being
prepared for Russia having the worlds first covid19 vaccine, the US will of course say it was
stolen from them. Infantile politicians create infantile press to feed infantile articles to
adult children. Critical thinking skills do not exist in the US population.
The development of propagation of information/disinformation through the internet eroded
the power of the old newspapers/news agencies. It's not that this or that particular website
is getting more views, but that the web of communications - the the imperialistic blunders +
decline of capitalism post-2008 -, as a whole, weakened what seemed to be an unshakeable
trust on the MSM (the very fact that this term exists already is historical evidence of their
loss of power).
And this process manifests itself not only in loss of power, but also loss of money: this
is particularly evident in the social media, where Facebook (Whatsapp + Facebook proper) and
Google are beginning to siphon advertisement money from both TV and the traditional
newspapers (printed press). When those traditional printed newspapers went digital, they
behaved badly, by using paywalls - this marketing blunder only accelerated their decline in
readership and thus further advertisement money, generating a vicious cycle for them.
The loss of influence of public opinion for the MSM also inaugurated another very
important societal shift: the middle class' loss of monopoly over opinion and formation of
opinion. Historically, it was the role of the middle class to be highly educated, to go to
academia (college) and, most importantly, to daily read the newspapers while eating the
breakfast. The middle class was the class of the intellectuals by definition, thus served as
the clerical class of the capitalist class, the priests of capitalism. With the
popularization of the internet, the smartphone and social media, this sanctity was broken or,
at least, begun to deteriorate. We can attest this class conflict phenomenon by studying the
rise of the term "expert" as a pejorative one. In the West's case, this shift begun through
the far-right side of the political spectrum, but the shift is there.
The popularization of what was once a privilege is nothing new in capitalism. The problem
here is that capitalism depends on infinite growth to merely exist (i.e. it can't survive on
zero growth, it is mathematically impossible), so it has to "monetize" what still isn't
monetize in order to find/create more vital space (Lebensraum - a term coined by the
hyper-capitalist Nazis) for its expansion and thus survival. Hence the popularization of
college education in the USA (then in Europe). Hence the popularization of daily news through
the internet/social media. This process, of course, has its positives and negatives (as is
the case with every dialectical process) - the fall of the MSM is one of the positives.
So, in fact, when the likes of AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Guardian, Fox, CNN spread
disinformation against "alt-media", they are really just protecting their market share - the
fact that it implies in suppression of freedom of speech and to mass disinformation and,
ultimately, to war and destruction, is merely collateral damage of the business they operate
in. They are, after all, capitalist enterprises above all.
Excellent analysis, as always, by b. And vk's points are very pertinent too. One tiny
quibble: I doubt that the Nazis coined, though they certainly popularised, the term
lebensraum.
There is an air of desperation about these campaigns against "Russian" "disinformation"
massive changes are occurring, and, because they are so vast, they are moving relatively
slowly.
The old media model, now totally outdated, was the first thing to fall. Now capitalism itself
is collapsing as a result of the primary contradiction that, left to itself, the marketplace
will solve all problems.
As Washington, where magical thinking is sovereign, is demonstrating, left to itself the
hidden hand will bring only misery, famine, death and the Apocalypse. This was once very well
understood, as a brief look at the history of the founding of the UN will show, now it is the
subject of frantic denial by capitalism's priesthood who have grown to enjoy the glitter and
sensuality of life in a brothel. It is a sign of their mental decay that they can do no
better than to blame Russians.
One should presume the anonymous officials responsible for this ground-breaking report (sarc)
are close to the various "combatting Russian disinformation" NGOs. They are merely living up
to the mission statements of their benefactors. AP and NYTimes are being unprofessional and
spreading fake news by failing to reveal their sources. It's mind-numbing - the BS one must
wade through.
Good point however with one glaring contradiction in your thinking.
You make valid a very criticism of capitalism yet you tend to applaud Chinese capitalist
growth (although you tend to deny Chinese capitalist growth is capitalist, a feat of
breathtaking magical thinking).
The great Chinese wealth is fully 75% invested in bubblicious real estate valuations of
non-commercial real estate built on a mountain of construction debt. Sound familiar?
The irony is Chinese growth since 2008 has been goosed along entirely by the very same
financialized hyper capitalist traits as US: great gobs of debt creating supply-side
"growth", huge amounts of middle wealth tied to asset inflated bubbles, and of course the
resulting income and wealth inequality that rivals US inequality and continues to increase
over time.
I snorted coffee out my nose when Gruff tried to totally excuse Chinese income inequality
for being only slightly less than US level....how about the truth? Chinese inequality is
heinous, only slightly less than the also heinous US level.
The diseased working class in China only has an an arm and two legs hacked off while the
diseased US working class is fully quadriplegic. Much, much better to be a fucked over by
globalization Chinese citizen! Lmao
@ b who ended his posting with
"
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
"
Sorry b, but AP and NYT are active participants in the disinformation campaign of failing
empire and are not falling for anything
The folks that are falling for it are the American public that has lost its ability to
discriminate with the fire hose volume of lies told to them on a daily basis.
Empire is in the process of defeating itself which is the only safe way of ending the
tyranny of global private finance. I commend China and Russia for having the patience and
fortitude to hold the safe space for the dysfunctional social contract having private control
of the lifeblood of human commerce to self destruct.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
there has been no national response to coronavirus but there must be a national acceptance
that this national non-response is China's fault. and any sources reporting truthfully about
the US or disseminating statements easily found elsewhere, as long as they are Russian,
Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban, Iranian, etc., is pure disinformation. How brittle and weak the
US is. Where's the Pericles to say to the Spartans, "enter our city and inspect our
defenses"? The US is a nation of heavily-armed mice and sheep.
btw, the China love on display around here is pretty funny. in that the Chinese government
has mounted a national response to a very serious threat, China is a nation in a way that the
US is not. There is no US or we would not have 50 states doing different things in response
to the corona outbreak. the US is already dead. But China is a thoroughly authoritarian
capitalist state. they are who they are in a dialectic competition with the US and other
capitalist powers, not because of some Maoist-Confucian amalgam that inspires such wisdom in
their brilliant leaders, who are just as quick to destroy their environment for capitalist
gain as anyone on this planet is. The decline of the US will not make China or Russia or any
"emerging" power less authoritarian or violent. au quite the contraire. They are Shylocks who
will try to better instruction.
However, none of this is of concern to people in the US, whose only concern is the Nazi
spawn who've been running "the West" for much longer than the last 75 years. but it's time to
kill the bitch, not let it keep screwing us and breeding.
As others already said, this is a bit rich, considering that virus disinformation comes from
Trump himself, both live and on Twitter, quoting genuine hacks and megalomaniac doctors,
depending on the week.
Reality check: Russians will be able to travel across the world way before Americans, for
obvious healthcare reasons.
Bevin, I agree, I once had a short exchange on Mondoweiss about the term Lebensraum, it
had been used in some type of marketing by my favorite Swizz supermarket. Which then,
apparently caused an uproar. The term Lebensraum on its own is rather innocent. Leben (life)
Raum (space), a noun compound. Context matters. And I am sure I checked it, and Micros
definitively did not use it in any type of world conquering settler context. I haven't
stumbled yet across a Micros supermarket anywhere outside Switzerland, ;)
I'm under the impression that Info Ros is a Russian government-funded, supported, backed,
site, it certainly looks like it and its reportage is decidedly 'neutral'.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information
when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the
CDC, which spent months discrediting ...
Posted by: JohnH | Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 8
This is close to my overall take on matters. But I wouldn't put so much emphasis on
face masks but on something along the lines of Covid is notthing but a flu. Face masks were
initially discussed quite controversially everywhere.
Were it gets interesting is here:
A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU
DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence.
The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some
financial connections between InfoRos and the government.
They have a competitor which seems Bruxelles based too, Patrick Armstrong alerted me to
a while ago: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service's East StratCom
Task Force
************
But yes, on first sight InfoRos seems to be neatly aligned with US alt-Right-Media in
basic outlook. More than with the US MSM.
And now I first have to read what has been on Andrew Korybko's mind lately. ;)
Many Americans of all walks of life do not trust their own government, yet most people here
seem to have faith that their media outlets are telling the truth. How do you break through
to the public that has utter faith in whatever newspaper or television channel they prefer
and highlight the lies in a way which gains real traction?
I believe it takes leadership, which, for Americans, mean celebrities have to endorse the
idea or it likely won't be taken seriously. This cult of celebrity is mirrored on social
media platforms, where millions flock to be a part of some beautiful person's beautiful
photograph or some known personalities acceptable opinion du jour.
There is a great bond gripping the minds of American media consumers. They have trained
their entire lives to worship at the cult of celebrity and this is the key to breaking the
entire media landscape down for them.
This also is the key to unlocking the voices of those who know better with regards to
media lies, but keep silent out of fear.
Will a Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson be able to break the spell? I think it will never
happen based on how Hollywood gatekeeps celebrity and based on how hopelessly apathetic most
are to Julian Assange.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what
to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their policy of
backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes anybody tow any
specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in Yemen because I
didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be critical of Russia.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write.
...
Posted by: Ben Barbour | Jul 29 2020 22:36 utc | 23
Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)
"... Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service
known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to
reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly ..."
Of course GRU agents always work in pairs, guided only by the mysterious telepathic powers
of the Russian President and no-one or nothing else, as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov
did in Salisbury in March 2018 when they supposedly tried to assassinate or send a warning to
Sergei Skripal, and as Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy did in London in November 2006 when
they apparently put polonium in a pot of tea served to Alexander Litvinenko in full view of
patrons and staff at a hotel restaurant. It's as if each agent carries only half a brain and
each half is connected to its complement by the corpus callosum that is Lord Vlademort
Putin's thoughts beaming oing-yoing-yoing-like through the atmosphere until they find their
targets.
And of course US government officials always speak on condition of anonymity.
As Agence Presse News puts it:
"... The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence ..."
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist
on being anonymous? This would be the sort of news announced at a US national press club
meeting with Matt Lee in the front row asking awkward and discomfiting questions.
The malicious cultivation (including Gain of Function research) and implantation of this
biowarfare agent (and other ones such as Swine Fever) by the U.S. Intelligence services in
various places around the world (especially in China and Iran), the intentional faulty
responses and deceptive statistics administered by the monopoly-controlled medical
establishment, the feigned inability to provide adequate testing, care, and treatment, along
with planned economic destruction as a means of restoring investor losses and control of
populations through stifling of dissent, are at the heart of the deflection and projection of
blame. That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as 9/11
and the '08 financial crisis.
...
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist on
being anonymous?
...
Posted by: Jen | Jul 29 2020 23:29 utc | 25
Precisely.
My guess is that they don't know when to quit.
and/or
They embrace the Mythbusters motto...
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."
"Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)"
Fair point on tow vs toe. That's why editing exists when writing articles. As for the STC
part, that is common knowledge if you follow basic geopolitics. When making a post in a
comment thread, should I write out "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" before using the acronym
ISIS? If I am posting in a comment thread about Iran, do I need to write out "Mujahedin-e
Khalq" instead of just using MEK?
It just displays a massive level of ignorance on your part. Nice try though.
Global media moguls are blaming the 1,000 American deaths per day from the Wuhan coronavirus
on Donald Trump to finally get him out of the way. But they are silent on their and the
Democrats complicity in the death toll due to the lack of a national public health system or
the funding to pay for it.
The USA is going to hell. A scapegoat is needed. For the media and Democrats, Russia is to
blame. Anybody else rather than themselves, the true culprits. Donald Trump blames China for
the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are
made. Blaming China is globalist heresy.
I think there's a reasonable case to be made that this is what has occurred.
And, if true, it is covered up by sly suggestions that nCov-19 was man-made with hints or
a smug attitude that convey the message that China created the virus. As well as a
virtual black-out in Western media of Chinese suggestions that the virus may have started in
USA or been planted in Wuhan.
But then, I already stand accused of attributing magical powers of self-interested
foresight and boldness to US Deep-State due to my belief that Trump was their choice to lead
USA in 2016. And so I expect you're theory will receive the same derision. Yet Empires have
not been shy about killing millions when it was in their interest to do so.
In any case, I've written many times that USA/West's unwillingness to fight the virus has
been dressed up as innocent mistakes. Even if the West wasn't the source of the virus they
have much to answer for. Yet very few have taken note of the way that USA/West have played
the pandemic to advance their interests - from lining the pockets of Big Pharma to blaming
China for their own "incompetence" (a misnomer: the power-elite are very competent at
advancing their interests!).
It seems disinformation has been redefined to mean information that counters someone else's
(yours) belief. We pretend to be in an Age of Reason but really, we have just replaced
religious beliefs with secular beliefs. Science has been taken over by pseudoscientists that
have replaced priests. The conflict of interest by the science/priests who profit from their
deceptions is beyond criminal.
To know what is the truth you just have to look at whats being censored. Nobody being
censored for supporting mask mandates, claiming vaccines are safe, and not questioning the
blatant data manipulation of COVID cases that anyone with an open mind and IQ of 100 , and
who reads the data, definitions and studies can see through.
It seems people on both sides of the fence have replaced their brains with their chosen
ideology. Its like watching a Christian, Jew and Muslim arguing which is the best or true
religion. No point in it.
so, lets say GRU agents are feeding russian propaganda sites... how does that compare to
all the CIA-FBI agents and has been hacks working for the western msm?? seems a bit rich for
the pot to be calling a kettle black, even if they are lying thru their teeth! i am sure if
someone did a story on how many CIA - m16 people are presently working with the western msm,
they would have a story with some legs... this shite from anonymous usa gov't officials is
just that - shite..
@ Ben, or Benson Barbour .. thanks for your comments!
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their
policy of backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes
anybody tow any specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in
Yemen because I didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be
critical of Russia.
There's such a thing as self-censorship. Mainstream US news has effectively brought up
folks to be this way: stay in line or become unemployed- doesn't need to be stated. Not aimed
at you, but it needs to be said (und understood).
@35 That's a very good point. I completely agree. Self-censorship and group think are two of
the biggest problems in modern journalism/analysis. One World consistently publishes
pro-Pakistan and pro-China articles. When I was first sending them submissions, I did a piece
on US vs China in Sudan and South Sudan. I considered omitting China's culpability in
escalating the conflicts, and instead focus on laying the blame squarely at the feet of the
US. In the end I told the truth about both countries' imperialist escalations (to the best of
my ability).
There is a lot of incentive to self-censor at just about any outlet. It's more comfortable
to fit in with a site's brand.
In the case of the Russia-STC article, I really just found the subject matter to be thin.
Russia's support of the STC is mostly just diplomatic. Not a lot to write about.
The Americans are increasingly unhinged in their spittle-flecked accusations against not only
Russia, but also China, Iran, Venezuela, etc.
It's so pathetic as to be humorous.
Underlying the USA's Two Minutes of Hate campaigns, however, is a deeper disease that
defines Americans as a nation and as a people.
Namely, Americans have an inbred fundamentalist belief in their own Moral Superiority as
the Beacon of Liberty, Land of the Free, blah, blah, blah--no matter how many nations they
have bombed back to the Stone Age, invaded, colonized, regime changed, sanctioned, or
economically raped in the name of Freedom and Democracy™.
Donald Trump is half correct.
The United States of America is truly a great nation alright--but great only in terms of
its deceit, great in terms of its delusions, and great in terms of the horrors that it has
inflicted on much of the world.
Comparing America to the Nazis would be a high insult ... to Nazi Germany, as the Third
Reich only lasted about 12 years, while the American Reich has unfortunately lasted well over
200 years and gotten away with its crimes against humanity by possessing what are likely the
greatest propaganda machine and political deception in human history: the American Free Press
and the world historic lie called "American Freedom."
Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Literature Prize speech briefly but powerfully exposes
this heart of American darkness:
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless,
but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has
exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road.
Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a
salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a
winner."
"Top US immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci is now saying citizens are not "complete" in
protecting themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic unless they go beyond wearing a mask and add
in eye protection like goggles, too."
More provocation from the oligarchy. Now, that masks are becoming less controversial, time
to step up the provocation, division and control.
Fauci is also behind the anti-hydroxychloroquine propaganda, as well, that even b has
swallowed. This, despite it being used effectively in other countries. All of this simply
because Trump supports it (ergo, it must be bad) and Big Pharma (who control Fauci,
CDC abd WHO) can't profit significantly from its use.
"During the course of the debate, Kennedy also talked about the regular vaccines most
people take, from Hepatitis B to the flu shot, emphasizing that no proper testing had ever
been done, which is mandatory for any other medication. Vaccines "are the only medical
product that does not have to be safety-tested against a placebo," he explained."
Kennedy said
"it's not hypothetical that vaccines cause injury, and that injuries are not rare. The
vaccine courts have paid out four billion dollars" over the past three decades, "and the
threshold for getting back into a vaccine court and getting a judgment – [the
Department of Health and Human Services] admits that fewer than one percent of people who are
injured ever even get to court."
So, how well has the Russian vaccine been tested? Does anyone know?
It is interesting how USAians are being played by the oligarchy.
On foreign policy, the dems and reps are in basic agreement and the propaganda is to bring
the masses together to hate Russia, Chaina and anyone else who the Western (US) oligarchy has
targeted.
Domestically, unity is the enemy of the oligarchy. The masses must be controlled through
division and diversion, so the dems and reps play good cop, bad cop (bad and good being
relative to the supporter) to ensure the masses are diverted from important oligarch issues
to issues of irrelevance to the oligarchs, but easily manipulated emotionnally by the
oligarchs for the beast.
"[...]Donald Trump blames China for the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is
where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are made. Blaming China is globalist heresy."
Then why do you phrase it the "Wuhan coronavius" yourself?
For those interested in corona virus truth,
I am interested in the question -- - was it spread by negligence or deliberately?
That question must be relivant to this debate on MOA.
I ask this now becouse -- --
Tonight on bbc 'panorama' there investigating the spread of the virus from Hospital to care
homes !! I'm told there is some pretty shocking information exposed.
Some may wish to catch that prog. Heads up.
I just add an obversation. -- western psychopathic disinformation and projection has led
to a confused public. A public deciding to disengage with politics. To the gain of the
psychopaths.
A new candidate to the demonization and disinfo operations has been added...Germany...which
has been labeled "delinquent" by the POTUS...in a clear exercise of projection...
Of course, to not be insulted or labeled delinquent, you must act as these other countries
enumerated by Southcom commander, to work for the US ( not your country...) and moreover pay
for it....Typical mafia extortion, isn´t it?
That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as
9/11 and the '08 financial crisis.
YES to that and thank you for that post. That the institutions of state and private
sectors are the incubators and propagators of extreme malice is axiomatic in the UKUSAI and
its five eyed running dogs is beyond doubt. They attack and scorn any critic or unbeliever.
They assault and pillory truth speakers and those who might question 'their narrative'.
Then if all that fails the hunt them down and make preposterous claims about them being
anti semitic of anti religion or anti their nation.
Mendacity is the currency of the permanent state and its minions and they need to be outed
and shamed and challenged at every opportunity.
Fort Detrick coronavirus would be on the mark and as you most likely know, you cannot
trust the USA lying eyes once you have served them in their killing fields.
Even that right wing ex special forces advocate Steve Pieczenic testifies to the fact of a
deadly virus in USA in November/December plus his beloved bloggers say way earlier than that
around Maryland etc. Then there is the small problem of the 'vaping' illness that generated
lots of pneumonia like fatalities in June/July. And then the instant closure of Fort Detrick
due to its leaking all over the place through a totally inadequate waste water treatment
plant that couldn't scrub a turd let alone a virus.
The problem with presstitutes, possibly including Ben Barbour , (disclaimer: I've
never read any media products that particular individual generated) goes beyond the point
made by Seer @35 . To be sure, there is no chance that a presstitute would bite the
hand that feeds it, but there is more depth to the problem of why they all suck so
badly, at least the ones in the US. While journalism degrees are the university equivalent of
Special Education (nowadays referred to as "Exceptional Student Education" , which is
very fitting for students from such an "exceptional" nation), they still prepare the
future presstitute to understand that their capitalist employers have interests beyond their
immediately apparent ones. That is, more important to a capitalist employer than tomorrow's
sales and profits is the preservation of capitalism itself.
But the problem is deeper still. The presstitute that is successfully employed by a
capitalist enterprise will invariably be one that knows not to criticize the employer's
business, the capitalist system it depends upon, and the empire that improves that employer's
profitability. More importantly, that successful hireling will additionally have been
brainwashed from infancy that all of these things are good and necessary aspects of the
modern world that need to be ideologically defended. The prospective presstitute will be one
that not only voluntarily, but eagerly serves its capitalist masters varied interests. After
all, when there are plenty of whores to choose from, would you hire one that requires
explicit instructions on every last thing you expect from them and just follows those
instructions mechanically or the the one that puts effort into figuring out what would please
you and delivers that with enthusiasm? Keeping this dynamic in mind will allow one to better
understand the capitalist mass media's products.
The contempt at which the American ruling class hold their citizens is galling. The US
corporate media operates as if their targeted audience are all morons.
Mark2 @45: "...was it [ novel coronavirus] spread by negligence or
deliberately?"
Most likely both.
There is evidence to suggest that the virus was circulating in the US prior to it being
discovered in China. While it is possible this could have been the results of testing the
transmissibility of the virus, it seems more probable that it was an accidental release from
Fort Detrick. This would explain the facility being shut down last year. Military facilities
are never shut down simply for breaking a few rules but because those rule violations led to
something unpleasant.
An accidental release, coupled with the fact that the synthetic origin of the virus would
become apparent to scientists worldwide, resulted in a need to quickly establish an alternate
explanation for the virus. Since the US was losing its trade war with China, and use of a
bioweapon to turn the tide was already gamed out and on the table anyway, the virus (or
possibly a very similar strain that had been pre-selected for the attack) was deliberately
sprayed around a market in Wuhan.
The CDC and CIA probably thought that the virus was contained in the West and that since
it was a surprise to the Chinese it would run rampant there and result in their economy
shutting down and their borders being closed, decoupling China from the world. With the
Chinese treating the virus as a bio attack and defeating its spread, followed by the virus
rampaging through the West, the dynamic changed. Now in order for the virus to decouple China
it must become endemic in the West. The Chinese must be made to close their borders in fear
of becoming infected from the rest of the world. To make this backup plan a reality, and to
get the economies moving again as fast as possible, some western leaders have decided to
accelerate the spread in the hopes of quickly developing "herd immunity" . Taking out
some retirees whom the capitalists view as a burden on the economy is just some nice icing on
the cake.
@ 51 & @ 52
I'd say not ! I'm confided Vietnam Vet is doing 'balenced' Reporting ! The subject of this
post. Take another look at both this post and his comment. A lesson in how to be unbiased but
truthfull.
Soooo any one got a definition of fake news.
Mine would be Truth before personal agenda.
William Gruff @ 53
I think yours is just about the most clear and concise summary of this whole virus
catastrophe that I have seen so far. And that's a hell of a statement !
Unrelated I wonder what would have happened if the Chinese whistle blower had not blown the
whistle ? Now that's one to ponder ? As bad as this all is world wide, where would be right
now ? Dose not bare thinking about.
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the
WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
We've been acquainted with this virus about 7 months or so and it is difficult to separate
reliable information from disinformation. We know very little about it, eg, we don't know
whether those who recover can be reinfected. Is it like the common cold, against which there
is no immunity? We just have to assume that the Trump virus has infected every level of the
administration so that there is ignorance and unadulterated stupidity from the lowest level
in the ministry of propaganda to the secretary of state and, of course, the president himself
currently celebrating the wisdom of an animist/Christian hybrid doctor from Africa spewing
the foulest disinformation one can imagine.
Big @ 57 What ?
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:27 utc | 58
babbling: look if this is the good old VV from SST, I wouldn't want to nail him on the
usage of Wuhan virus. But on the larger content of his comment, I am wondering.
Full discovery: I entered the US conspiracy universe shortly after 9/11. I'll probably
never forget there was this one commenter that completely out of then current preoccupations
within the diverse theories, you recall?, suggested that the Chinese were approaching via the
Southern borders.
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia repartition their claims. After all
historically the Russian had some type of partly real Yellow threat too ... :)
Except the "whistle blower" was not a whistle blower since local, provincial, and nations
institutions were already advised or in the process of being advised. Dr Wenliang posted his
information in a private chatroom with other medical professionals on December 30th. Timeline
of events:
Dec 27 -- Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of the respiratory and critical care medicine
department of Hubei Provincial Hospital, files a report to the hospital stating that an
unknown pneumonia has developed in three patients and they are not responding to influenza
treatment.
Dec 29 -- Hubei Provincial Hospital convened a panel of 10 experts to discuss the now
seven cases. Their conclusion that the situation was extraordinary, plus information of two
similar cases in other hospitals, prompted the hospital to report directly to the municipal
and provincial health authorities.
Dec 30 -- The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical
institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with
pneumonia of unknown cause.
Dec 31 -- The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending
a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site
investigations. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website
about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to
go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out. The
Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released briefings on the pneumonia outbreak in accordance
with the law. WHO's Country Office in the PRC relayed the information to the WHO Western
Pacific Regional Office, then to the international level headquarters.
Jan 1 -- The NHC set up a leading group to determine the emergency response to the
epidemic. The group convened meetings on a daily basis since then.
Jan 2 -- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and the Chinese
Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) received the first batch of samples of four patients from
Hubei Province and began pathogen identification. The NHC came up with a set of guidelines on
early discovery, early diagnosis and early quarantine for the prevention and control of the
viral pneumonia of unknown cause.
Jan 3 -- Dr. Wenliang signs a statement not to post unsubstantiated rumors.
There's no "whistle blowing" as the information of the cases were already going up the
chain of command. These are facts that can be sourced by multiple media outlets. I can't
believe this fallacy keeps floating and doesn't flush.
In retrospective analyses, SARS-COV-2 was found in routinely collected samples of European
sewage water dating back to at least december 2019. A french doctor reviewed archived medical
samples and imagery from patients who had fallen mysteriously ill in the latter half of 2019
and also found that some had been early cases of COVID-19.
The real coronavirus whistle-blower is a doctor in Washington state USA who tested for the
virus in Januari 2020 and was silenced by USA medical and federal authorities.
I am afraid that there will never be a sincere investigation into the real cause of the
"vaping disease" that caused many deaths from sudden respiratory failure in the USA in the
summer of 2019. Tell me again when Ft. Detrick labs was shut down exactly?
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
Posted by: vig | Jul 30 2020 12:21 utc | 57
vig repeats widely spread arguments, basically, the "official propaganda" from offices
related to an orange-American (excessive time spend on golf courses changes skin color,
perhaps in combination with sunscreen, without sunscreen you would get a "redneck look").
1. Origin: somewhat debatable, but any virus has to originate somewhere. Every country was
on receiving end of pathogens from other countries.
2. China did not respond as fast as it could have. Now, how fast and effective was USA?
One has to note that clusters of fatal lung infections happen regularly, but this is because
of mutations that increase impact on health, while separate mutations increase (or decrease)
the transmission. Draconian measures are necessary if you get both, but you do not lock
cities, provinces, introduce massive quarantine programs until you know that they are
necessary. For the same reasons, the response in Western Europe and USA was not as fast as it
could have.
3. "African Marxist heading WHO mislead poor naive Americans". What is the budget of
American intelligence, and American disease control? Do they collect information, do they
have experts? In particular, American authorities knew pretty much what Chinese authorities
knew, and they had benefit of several weeks of extra time to devise wise strategy. Giving
this benefit to people with limited mental capacities has a limited value. Perhaps China is
at fault here too, Pompeo reported about pernicious impact of Chinese Communist Party on PPT
meeting in USA, that could have deleterious impact on education and thus on mental
capacities.
Pompeo himself may be a victim. He excelled as a West Point student, but if the content of
education was crappy, diligence impacted his brain deeper and not for the better. But nobody
attempts to blame CCP for that.
For starters, the "whistleblower" wasn't a whistleblower at all: he thought he had found a
resurgence of SARS, not a new pandemic. Secondly, the head of respiratory diseases at the
region already was investigating some cases of a "mysterious pneumonia" since end of November
or mid-December - so the investigation already was well under way.
Discovering a new disease is not magic: a doctor cannot simply go the market, see a random
person, and claim he/she discovered a new virus. Doctors are not gods: they can only diagnose
the patients under their care.
The point of discord that the Western MSM capitalized upon was the fact that some random
officer from the local police intercepted his private social media and made him sign a letter
of reprimand. No Law is ever perfect, and these episodes of false triggers do happen even in
Western Democracies.
Little known fact (one which the Western MSM censored) is that the so-called
"whistleblower" was a member of the CCP. After knowing the details of the situation
(including that the disease was already being investigated), he quickly realized the
state-of-the-art and went to the frontlines to fight the pandemic - as any member of the CCP
would've done. Revolutionary communist parties have this tradition that comes since the
Bolshevik Party, where the leadership always leads by example. The Bolsheviks themselves lost
the vast majority of their elite in the Civil War, as they always led in the front
(vanguard). Fidel Castro himself led his army in the front when the invasion of the Bay of
Pigs begun. So, it is not surprising this doctor, once having the facts on the field, quickly
shut up and went to the frontline as a vanguard soldier.
After the whole truth came to the forefront, the Western MSM quickly begun to meltdown
over the fake story they fantasized, and the Taiwanese MSM invented a story of some another
whistleblower who had discovered the virus "at the end of November". That one never truly
gained traction, and silently died out.
But all of this is moot point for the West, because Trump and the other European liberal
powers refused to believe either that the virus was real or that it could reach them until
February the next year.
I think it is OK that b nails the US makes yet another display of stupidity.... on the other
hand I presume that b also has other things to care about, I mean exposing the US as a "fake"
nation is a full time job!
Americans have at least the last 50 years been known for fails, even Churchill commented
something like "the Americans will fail numerous times, but eventually they will get it
right" well that was back then! Today it is fail upon fail. I know that there must be bright
people over there, but it is my sincere impression, that they are a very small minority.
Maybe their schooling system has all gone bonkers ?
"3% of all Americans believe the Earth is flat! WTF!!!
America is on a steep slope downward.
I am personally not worried much about Covid 19, although I am 63 and live in Sweden, the
"black Sheep" in Europe because of our rather lax restrictions, the Swedes themselves are
rather good at keeping distance and using common sense.
I am much more worried that the American culture of ignorance, brain farts, stupidity and low
IQ media will infest my country further and maybe completely ruin it.
Especially by the junk that comes out of Hollywood, pure Sh*t served nice and hot!
I am happy I know, I have not got to endure further 30 years of this.
A few months ago, b posted a link to a Canadian vlogger who lives in Nanning, China. The
vlogger took us on a tour of a so called Wet Market. Here, the vlogger takes us to another
Wet Market tour. He does a good job dispelling racist stereotypes and showing real life in
China.
One to many @ 64
Thanks ! So there was a group of whistle blowers then. It's down to definitions again.
Perhaps mine is a little more loose. But it's of no concern.
For the sake of this excellent thread, perhaps we could all be a little less pedantic. VK ?
Also relevant - Crimson Contagion - the pandemic simulation run by the US government from
January to August 2019 and was based on an infectious coronavirus coming from a food market
in China
Everywhere u go in this world you'll find some version or an "murican" in every country.
Even a country like modern first world Switzerland has its "mountain folk".
In my personal experience with Americans I'm most often pleasantly surprised at their levels
of sophistication and introspection over their American experiences. An enjoyable and as
pleasant a people as anywhere. This may be clouded by mostly meeting these people outside of
the US where unless tourists are well educated and travelled and by default more aware of a
negative view of their homeland that exists outside of the US. For some reason most of these
Americans I've met abroad are decidedly non republican in nature and are mostly
from California and North and North Eastern States. Fellow future Canadians I would call
them.
The other side of the coin is when I've travelled to the states. Texas, Florida, Arizona.
Whew! What a difference. I've learned that talking politics is impossible and the natives are
almost entirely ignorant of anything outside their bubble. Outside of talking points there is
no information behind their arguments. Their knowledge of the outside world is incredibly
lacking and the view of the US in it is overwhelmingly positive.
It isn't Americans its America and its leadership, its influences, systems and all the other
shit that make the US the salad it is. The people r redeemable.
Calling the professionals doing their jobs in China "whistleblowers" is inaccurate.
"Whistleblower" implies revealing information that others are trying to hide. In this
case the suggestion is that the Chinese government was trying to hide the outbreak. This is
nonsense as the Chinese government was unaware of an outbreak until after the relevant
professionals had determined that there was an outbreak. There is no way the Chinese
government could have known about an outbreak before the outbreak was identified by the
professionals tasked with identifying outbreaks. The only ones who knew about the outbreak
before the outbreak occurred were the US "intelligence community" .
"... Pompeo is a disgusting man. The US Oligarchic Regime is projecting a lot. It is this Regime that does not recognize any other order than its own, and always puts a messianic spin on its discourse. ..."
"... Mike Pompous can be counted upon to do everything possible to torpedo legitimate US interests below the waterline, and then nuke any survivors. ..."
Mike Pompeo declared the start of a new Cold War with China last week.
...Pompeo's speech was an expression of this unreasonable and unrealistic view, and it is likely to leave most U.S. allies in
East Asia and elsewhere cold. Our allies do not wish for deepening antagonism and strife between the U.S. and China, and if push
comes to shove Washington may find itself without much support in the region. Calling for a "new alliance" to oppose China when Trump
and Pompeo have done such an abysmal job of managing existing alliances in the region just drives home how divorced from reality
the speech was.
... ... ...
The Secretary also relied on a familiar mix of simplistic analysis and threat inflation that he has used so often when talking
about Iran: "It's this ideology, it's this ideology that informs his decades-long desire for global hegemony of Chinese communism."
Pompeo is falling back on two of the stalest talking points from the Cold War. He interprets the behavior of another state primarily
in terms of its official ideology rather than its concrete interests, and he attributes to them a goal of "global hegemony" that
they are not pursuing to make them seem more dangerous and powerful than they are. China does seek to be the leading state in its
own part of the world, but there is no evidence that they aspire to the global domination that Pompeo claims. A hard-line ideologue
and hegemonist himself, Pompeo wrongly assumes that the things that motivate him must also drive the actions of others.
... ... ...
Most of the people on the receiving end of this "engagement" and "empowerment" will likely resent the condescension and interference
from a foreign government in their country's affairs. Even if we assume that the vast majority of people in China might wish for
a radically different government, they are liable to reject U.S. meddling in what they naturally consider to be their business. But,
of course, Pompeo isn't serious about "empowering" the Chinese people, just as he isn't serious about supporting the people of Iran
or Venezuela or any of the other countries on Washington's list of official foes. We can see from the economic wars that the U.S.
has waged on Iran and Venezuela that the administration is only too happy to impoverish and strangle the people they claim to help.
Hard-liners feign concern for the people that they then set out to harm in order to make their aggressive and destructive policies
look better to a Western audience, but they aren't fooling anyone these days.
Pompeo's bombastic, caustic style and his personal lack of credibility make him an unusually poor messenger, and the Trump administration
is uniquely ill-suited to rally a group of states in common cause. But the main problem with the policy Pompeo promotes is that an
intensifying rivalry with China is not in the American interest. The U.S. has found that it is virtually impossible to change the
behavior of adversaries when that behavior concerns what they believe to be their core security interests. ...
I was reading the words that Nixon wrote about China that Pompeo quoted and it occurred to me that if you took out the word
"China" and replaced it with the "United States" then that statement would be completely accurate in describing how America acts
in the world. In OTW, it's "the Pot calling the Kettle black".
I wouldn't enjoin the American people with our out-of-touch, out-of-control and (In the cases of Hillary, Waters, Biden and
Pelosi..) out of their minds government.
We're so conditioned to global conflicts now, it's merely a matter of the U.S. population learning how to spell the names of
foreign leaders and their capitals marked for "Regime Changes", while crossing our fingers in hopes that our buildings will not
again be subjected to airliner collisions and collapses in the wake of this aggression.
It would behoove Americans to start pulling on the reins of our bellicose administrations to confine their authority and actions
to benefit our citizens.
Your comment that we have coexisted with China for 70 years is not quite accurate. There was this little dust-up called the
Korean Conflict as I recall...
The communist Chinese can control our movie, sports, news and entertainment industries by denying them access to China if they
don't show China in a positive light or if they show China in a negative life...
You define with accuracy the core tenets of Socialists. Once a government expands to the proportions needed to implement that
form of socioeconomic leadership, the character of those leaders becomes tyrannical, while they target segments of their populations
for reeducation or elimination. (Abortions would fit that scenario nicely..) Obama was just such a leader, and had he somehow
been able to ignore term limits, his administration would have resembled those of any Socialist State.
All of the policies you mention above would achieve absolutely nothing while inflaming conflict - thus increasingly the problems
you outline. These hawkish responses prove the point...the issue isn't that there are or aren't issues, but that the US has lost
the ability to have real discussions of these issues with world players and allies.
Much of that is because Trump patently hasn't the temperament, sophistication, or intelligence for discussion and diplomacy
- this was proven again and again in the zero sum ineptitude of his private ventures.
The rot of that malignant ineptitude flows down from the head and into every aspect of government, both domestic and foreign.
Thus we see his response to every domestic crisis is to inflame division. And the same in the foreign theater. He cannot be gotten
rid of soon enough.
I don't believe our government is so foolish as to contemplate a shooting war with the Chinese. They have nuclear warheads.
Their populations are fanatics when it comes to conflicts against them...
Men will not fight another war nor will women leave their jobs when the men return from war as they did with WWII. There will
be no war in Europe simply because Europe (including Russia) is depopulating at such a rapid rate they cant afford a losing more
of their population through conflict. I dont see a shooting war with China either. I think that is the purpose of the tariffs
and detachment of economies. US intelligence says that China does not want war with the US either. I don't think there is any
country that would jump to a pre-emptive nuclear attack in case of a hot war. They dont have the air force superiority or the
Navy or superiority in space yet.
Its not the Chinese way. The Chinese wait until they have superiority then they act otherwise they like to fly below the radar
and get away with as much espionage and intimidation as possible. The opium wars came about because of the Chinese culture of
trade exporting much but importing little thus creating a trade imbalance and indebting their trading partners.
Chinese culture has many forms of achieving superiority without restoring to conflict. The think tanks and experts are predicting
that Xi may be pushed out of power by his competitors in the politburo which could defuse the situation. I don't think it will
change detaching the economies. After COVID, countries are shifting focus from lowest cost possible to lowest cost and lowest
risk possible.
That's why medical instruments, pharmaceuticals, etc are either moving out of China or moving part of their production to the
US or they can win against a declining, an indebted power, an over stretched power, etc. Take a lesson with Russia and the US.
Russia did not confront the US directly. It used proxies elsewhere around the world. Russia did not want a war with NATO or with
the US. That balance kept the peace. If you want peace with China then there is going to have to be some sort of parity or superiority
of China's neighbors via an alliance and/or superiority in trade/technology/economy. If you want war then you pacify and try to
avoid war leaving a strategic space where your competitor thinks they can win. To avoid war, you need parity or superiority.
Pompeo is a disgusting man. The US Oligarchic Regime is projecting a lot. It is this Regime that does not recognize any
other order than its own, and always puts a messianic spin on its discourse.
The US itself is not a democracy, but as B. Franklin put it from the beginning, is a Republic, which from the birth was
design to promote and preserve the haves, the existing Oligarchy. While they looked for a balance of power in order to prevent
the rise of an autocrat (the other bugbear of Oligarchy), the main fear of the framers was democracy and the threat of the mob
voting for re-distribution...
The success of the socialist state of China is an indication of what might have happened if the socialist block in ensemble
wouldn't have suffered the containment enforced by the US. Given the ability to engage in normal economic intercourse with the
world, China developed and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Vietnam is another example. But look what is happening
with Cuba or North Korea or Venezuela. It is not the socialist system per se, but the blockade of those countries and the crushing
economic war that ruins them.
Fortunately, Russia has learned from the mistakes of the past.
It is good that the cards are on the table to see that US Oligarchy wants to rule everything, because it is a corrupting way
of life and mind. Because of this, the march for more open societies, with more, no less democracy, and people representation
and input is halted.
And of course, in this new Cold War, a lot of civil liberties and freedom of speech will be curtailed. In my neck of the woods
we have already experienced individuals assaulting people of Chinese ethnicity. Way to go America!
Mike Pompous can be counted upon to do everything possible to torpedo legitimate US interests below the waterline, and
then nuke any survivors. He, along with Barr, Graham, and the rest of the Trump circus, are a cautionary tale for what happens
to governments that let ideologues deliberately divorced from reality run a country. They've turned what was once the United States
from a superpower to a failed state in an absurdly short period of time. History will be far less kind to these political Bernie
Madoffs than to the original financial exemplar.
Wars ain't nothing to bandy about among administration subordinates. Pompeo is not supposed to be declaring wars--hot or cold.
Wars cost big money, lives and property. Only the most grave threats against our country should prompt our leaders to even consider
conflicts, much less initiate them. The American people cannot just sit back and absorb such profound adjustments to our national
security posture and defense expenditures being unilaterally decided by Washington. It is also a condition of conflicts that our
civil rights will be under increased constraints. I chuckled a little when China was listed as our 'new' foe. We won't fight the
Chinese because we'll have another Vietnam War on our hands. Our troops aren't used to our enemies fighting back. They've been
deployed into banana wars against poorly trained and ill equipped armies of Middle East camel holes. The U.S. Armed Forces' new
culture, consisting of socially-engineered, politically-corrected soldiers-of-tolerance have yet to confront true fanatics. These
facts were known waaaaay back during our Korean War Adventure.
I've always said that if the Chinese are good at anything, it's making more Chinese.
New Cold War? Bring it on. Competition is good. A strong rival is desired. Instead of a struggle over Ideology, this will be
a Civilizational struggle, Western Civilization VS Central Civilization, liberal democracy VS Confucian/Legalist authoritarianism,
Euro-America VS the Han Chinese. But this time, is America up to the tast?
During the Cold War we were led by 'Greatest Generation' who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II,
is today's America of Facebook, Twitter, conspiracy theories, selfies, BLM, safe spaces, Diversity, mass immigration and Woke
political correctness run amok up to the task?
While China is a predator, homogeneous, nationalist, revanchist and bent on returning to the glory it thinks it deserves. All
I can say is, thank god for nuclear weapons and the Chinese Communist Party for keeping a short leash on the patriotic passions
of the Han Chinese.
We had "an alliance of democracies" in the TPP which was developed to counter China. Of course, it handed much of our domestic
sovereignty over to multinational corporations, but that's what you can expect from a corporatist like Obama. Still, might have
been better than this.
I wonder if the Nixon family knew in advance that Pompeo was going to trash Richard Nixon's greatest legacy?
A war between China and the U.S. would not simply be costly for the US - it could end in the destruction of the world as we
know it if it turns nuclear. Trump and Pompeo are sociopathic madman. I would not put it past Trump to use Nukes against China.
He is just that stupid and evil.
President Nixon's détente with China had an important geopolitical consideration, leverage on Russia. "We're using the China
thaw to get the Russians shook", he is quoted to have said. There is much talk among hawks these days of a "new Cold War", with
that the confidence it will end like the first one: victory for the west and no nuclear annihilation. But this is a danger illusion:
today America is in a hegemonic struggle with China for global dominance. It seems neither side can back down. The present crisis
is like the Cold War in one crucial sense – world war must be avoided at all costs. The powers are not heeding the warning of
history.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
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Curtis also stuck close to the main theme of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
high-profile
China policy speech last week by arguing that the India border clash and sovereign debt
financing used for Belt and Road Initiative projects
"fits with a larger pattern of PRC aggression in other parts of the world". Pompeo called for
"a new grouping of like-minded nations" to counter China.
Accusing Beijing of "selling cheap armaments and building a base for the 1970s-era
submarines that it sold to the Bangladesh Navy in 2016", Curtis also committed to stronger
relations with Dhaka.
"We're committed to Bangladesh's long-term success because US interests in the Indo-Pacific
depends on a Bangladesh that is peaceful, secure, prosperous healthy and democratic," Curtis
said. "We continue to encourage the Bangladeshi government to renew its commitment to
democratic values as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary of independence, next year."
Big Tech tangles with US lawmakers in antitrust showdown 30 Jul 2020
While the India-China border clash, pressing of maritime claims in the South China Sea, and
increasing military and economic pressure on Taiwan may have helped to push countries in the
region to cooperate more, Washington will not necessarily benefit, said Ali Wyne, a
non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War
Institute.
"China's actions in recent months have compelled many of its neighbours to try and bolster
their military capabilities on an accelerated timeline and to intensify their security
cooperation with one another," Wyne said.
"For at least two reasons, though, it is unclear that those neighbours would be full
participants in a US-led effort to counterbalance China.
"First, geographical proximity and economic dependence constrain the extent to which they
can push back against Beijing's assertiveness without undercutting their own national
interests," he said. "Second, many of them are reluctant to make common cause with the United
States in view of the transactional diplomacy that it has pursued in recent years."
China's foreign minister calls on other nations to resist US and stop a new cold war 29 Jul
2020
China's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called Washington's increasingly hard
line against the Chinese government "naked power politics". In a phone
call with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday, Wang said the Trump
administration's strategy was to "constantly provoke China's core interests, attack the social
system chosen by the Chinese people and slander the ruling party that is closely connected with
the Chinese people," according to state news agency Xinhua.
"These actions have lost the most basic etiquette for state-to-state exchanges and have
broken through the most basic bottom line of international norms," he said, warning that "the
world will fall into a crisis of division, and the future and destiny of mankind will also be
in danger".
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US House of Representatives sends Uygur Human Rights Policy Act to Trump's desk for
approval
US House of Representatives sends Uygur Human Rights Policy Act to Trump's desk for
approval
Curtis was less sanguine about how much Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian
republics were resisting China's influence, citing an emphasis by governments in the region on
the economic consequences of strained ties with Beijing by protesting the treatment of Muslim
minorities in China's far northwest.
China's internment of Muslim Uygurs in the Xinjiang region has drawn international
condemnation. The UN has estimated that more than a million Muslims have been detained in camps
there for political re-education, but Beijing claims they are vocational training centres aimed
at countering religious extremism.
"With regard to the Central Asian countries, I think they're concerned about China's
economic influence in their countries, and therefore they very much hedge their comments about
the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang province," Curtis said, but added that she expected
public condemnation of China in Pakistan and Bangladesh to mount over the issue.
"There has been reticence, which has been disheartening, but I think as these countries see
China trying to trying to increase disinformation campaigns you'll start to see pushback from
the South Central Asian countries and more speaking out about the treatment of Muslims in
Xinjiang," she said. Join the Singapore
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August 1 to explore a wide range of affordable luxury residential and commercial real estate
assets in Singapore, perfect as relocation and investment options. Get property project
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Quick. Somebody tell Mike Pompeo. The secretary of state is not supposed to play the role
of court jester – the laughing stock to the world. There was no sign that any of those
listening to his "major China policy statement" last Thursday at the Nixon Library turned to
their neighbor and said, "He's kidding, right? Richard Nixon meant well but failed miserably
to change China's behavior? And now Pompeo is going to put them in their place?"
Yes, that was Pompeo's message. The torch has now fallen to him and the free world. Here's
a sample of his rhetoric:
"Changing the behavior of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] cannot be the mission of
the Chinese people alone. Free nations have to work to defend freedom.
"Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them (sic). Look, I reject the notion
that CCP supremacy is the future the free world is still winning. It's time for free nations
to act Every nation must protect its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist
Party. If we bend the knee now, our children's children may be at the mercy of the Chinese
Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world.
"We have the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will. To quote scripture, I
ask is 'our spirit willing but our flesh weak?' Securing our freedoms from the Chinese
Communist Party is the mission of our time, and America is perfectly positioned to lead it
because our nation was founded on the premise that all human beings possess certain rights
that are unalienable. And it's our government's job to secure those rights. It's a simple and
powerful truth. It's made us a beacon of freedom for people all around the world, including
people inside of China.
"Indeed, Richard Nixon was right when he wrote in 1967 that "the world cannot be safe
until China changes." Now it's up to us to heed his words. Today the free world must respond.
"
Trying to Make Sense of It
Over the weekend an informal colloquium-by-email took pace, spurred initially by an
op-ed article by Richard Haass critiquing Pompeo's speech. Haass has the dubious
distinction of having been director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to
2003, during the lead-up to the attack on Iraq. Four months after the invasion he became
president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he still holds. Despite that
pedigree, the points Haass makes in "What Mike Pompeo doesn't understand about China, Richard
Nixon and U.S. foreign policy" are, for the most part, well taken.
Haass's views served as a springboard over the weekend to an unusual discussion of
Sino-Soviet and Sino-Russian relations I had with Ambassador Chas Freeman, the main
interpreter for Nixon during his 1972 visit to China and who
then served as US ambassador to
Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992.
As a first-hand witness to much of this history, Freeman provided highly interesting and
not so well-known detail mostly from the Chinese side. I chipped in with observations from my
experience as CIA's principal analyst for Sino-Soviet and broader Soviet foreign policy
issues during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Ambassador Freeman:
As a participant in that venture: Nixon responded to an apparently serious threat to China
by the USSR that followed the Sino-Soviet split. He recognized the damage a Soviet attack or
humiliation of China would do to the geopolitical balance and determined to prevent the
instability this would produce. He offered China the status of ( what I call ) a
"protected state" -- a country whose independent existence is so important strategically that
it is something we would risk war over.
Mao was sufficiently concerned about the prospect of a Soviet attack that he held his nose
and welcomed this change in Sino-American relations, thereby accepting this American
abandonment of the sort of hostility we are again establishing as outlined in Pompeo's
psychotic rant of last Thursday. Nixon had absolutely zero interest in changing anything but
China's external orientation and consolidating its opposition to the USSR in return for the
US propping it up. He also wanted to get out of Vietnam, which he inherited from LBJ, in a
way that was minimally destabilizing and thought a relationship with China might help
accomplish that. It didn't.
Overall, the maneuver was brilliant. It bolstered the global balance and helped keep the
peace. Seven years later, when the Soviets invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the
Sino-American relationship immediately became an entente -- a limited partnership for
limited purposes.
In addition to its own assistance to the mujahideen , China supplied the United
States with the weapons we transferred to anti-Soviet forces ($630 million worth in 1987),
supplied us with hundreds or millions of dollars worth of made-to-order Chinese-produced
Soviet-designed equipment (e.g. MiG21s) and training on how to use this equipment so that we
could learn how best to defeat it, and established joint listening posts on its soil to more
than replace the intelligence on Soviet military R&D and deployments that we had just
lost to the Islamic revolution in Iran. Sino-American cooperation played a major role in
bringing the Soviet Union down.
Apparently, Americans who don't see this are so nostalgic for the Cold War that they want
to replicate it, this time with China, a very much more formidable adversary than the USSR
ever was.
Those who don't understand what that engagement achieved argue that it failed to change
the Chinese political system, something it was never intended to do. They insist that we
would be better off returning to 1950s-style enmity with China. Engagement was also not
intended to change China's economic system either but it did.
China is now an integral and irreplaceable part of global capitalism. We apparently find
this so unsatisfactory that, rather than addressing our own competitive weaknesses, we are
attempting to knock China back into government-managed trade and underdevelopment, imagining
that "decoupling" will somehow restore the economic strengths our own ill-conceived policies
have enfeebled.
A final note. Nixon finessed the unfinished Chinese civil war, taking advantage of
Beijing's inability to overwhelm Taipei militarily. Now that Beijing can do that, we are
unaccountably un-finessing the Taiwan issue and risking war with China -- a nuclear power --
over what remains a struggle among Chinese -- some delightfully democratic and most not. Go
figure.
Ray McGovern:
This seems a useful discussion – perhaps especially for folks with decades-less
experience in the day-to-day rough and tumble of Sino-Soviet relations. During the 1960s, I
was CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations and in the early 1970s, as chief
of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and Presidential Daily Brief
writer for Nixon, I had a catbird seat watching the constant buildup of hostility between
Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Henry Kissinger saw it clearly and were able
to exploit it to Washington's advantage.
I am what we used to be called an "old Russian hand" (like over 50 years worth if you
include academe). So, my not being an "old China hand" except for the important Sino-Soviet
issue, it should come as no surprise that my vantage point will color my views –
especially given my responsibilities for intelligence support for the SALT delegation and
ultimately Kissinger and Nixon – during the early 1970s.
I had been searching for a word to apply to Pompeo's speech on China. Preposterous came to
mind, assuming it still means "contrary to reason or common sense; utterly absurd or
ridiculous." Chas's "psychotic rant" may be a better way to describe it. And it is
particularly good that Chas includes several not widely known facts about the very real
benefits that accrued to the US in the late 70's and 80's from the Sino-U.S. limited
partnership.
Having closely watched the Sino-Soviet hostility rise to the point where, in 1969, the two
started fighting along the border on the Ussuri River, we were able to convince top policy
makers that this struggle was very real – and, by implication, exploitable.
Moscow's unenthusiastic behavior on the Vietnam War showed that, while it felt obliged to
give rhetorical support, and an occasional surface-to-air missile battery, to a fraternal
communist country under attack, it had decided to give highest priority to not letting
Moscow's involvement put relations with the US into a state of complete disrepair. And,
specifically, not letting China, or North Vietnam, mousetrap or goad the Soviets into doing
lasting harm to the relationship with the US
At the same time, the bizarre notion prevailing in Averell Harriman's mind at the time as
head of the US delegation to the Paris peace talks, was that the Soviets could be persuaded
to "use their influence in Hanoi" to pull US chestnuts out of the fire. It was not only
risible but also mischievous.
Believe it or not, that notion prevailed among the very smart people in the Office of
National Estimates as well as other players downtown. Frustrated, I went public, publishing
an article , "Moscow and Hanoi,"
in Problems of Communism in May 1967.
After Kissinger went to Beijing (July 1971) – followed in February 1972 by Nixon
– we Soviet analysts began to see very tangible signs that Moscow's priority was to
prevent the Chinese from creating a closer relationship with Washington than the Soviets
could achieve.
In short, we saw new Soviet flexibility in the SALT negotiations (and, in the end, I was
privileged to be there in Moscow in May 1972 for the signing of the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty and the Interim Agreement on Offensive Arms). Even earlier, we saw some new
flexibility in Moscow's position on Berlin. To some of us who had almost given up that a
Quadripartite Agreement could ever be reached, well, we saw it happen in September 1971. I
believe the opening to China was a factor.
So, in sum, in my experience, Chas is quite right in saying, "Overall, the maneuver was
brilliant." Again, the Soviets were not about to let the Chinese steal a march in developing
better ties with the US And I was able to watch Soviet behavior very closely in the immediate
aftermath of the US opening to China.
As for the future of Sino-Soviet relations, we were pretty much convinced that, to
paraphrase that "great" student of Russian history, James Clapper, the Russians and Chinese
were "almost genetically driven" to hate each other forever. In the 1980s, though, we
detected signs of a thaw in ties between Moscow and Beijing.
To his credit, Secretary of State George Shultz was very interested in being kept up to
date on this, which I was able to do, even after my tour briefing him on the PDB ran out in
1985. (I was acting chief of the Analysis Group at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service
(FBIS) for two years (an outstanding outfit later banned by Robert Gates.)
Some Observations
1 – Unless Pompeo had someone else take the exams for him at West Point, he has to
be a pretty smart fellow. In other words, I don't think he can claim "Invincible ignorance",
(a frame of mind that can let us Catholics off the hook for serious transgressions or
ineptitude). The only thing that makes sense to me is that he is a MICIMATTer. MICIMATT for
the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MEDIA
is all caps because it is the sine quo non, the linchpin) For example: Item: "Officials cite
'keeping up with China' as they award a $22.2 billion contract to General Dynamics to build
Virginia-class submarines." December 4, 2019
2 – I sometimes wonder what China, or Russia, or anyone thinks of a would-be
statesman with the puerile attitude of a US secretary of state who brags: "I was the CIA
director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of
the glory of the American experiment."
3 – If memory serves, annual bilateral trade between China and Russia was between
$200 and 400 MILLION during the 1960's. It was $107 BILLION in 2018.
4 – The Chinese no longer wear Mao suits; and they no longer issue 178 "SERIOUS
WARNINGS" a year. I can visualize, though, just one authentically serious warning about US
naval operations in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. Despite the fact that there is
no formal military alliance with Russia, I suspect the Russians might decide to do something
troublesome – perhaps even provocative -- in Syria, in Ukraine, or even in some faraway
place like the Caribbean – if only to show a modicum of solidarity with their Chinese
friends who at that point would be in direct confrontation with US ships far from home. That,
I think, is how far we have come in Pompeo's benighted attempt to throw his weight around at
both countries.
Three years ago, I published here an article
titled "Russia-China Tandem Shifts Global Power." Here are some excerpts:
"Gone are the days when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger skillfully took advantage
of the Sino-Soviet rivalry and played the two countries off against each other, extracting
concessions from each. Slowly but surely, the strategic equation has markedly changed
– and the Sino-Russian rapprochement signals a tectonic shift to Washington's
distinct detriment, a change largely due to US actions that have pushed the two countries
closer together.
But there is little sign that today's US policymakers have enough experience and
intelligence to recognize this new reality and understand the important implications for US
freedom of action. Still less are they likely to appreciate how this new nexus may play out
on the ground, on the sea or in the air.
Instead, the Trump administration – following along the same lines as the
Bush-43 and Obama administrations – is behaving with arrogance and a sense of
entitlement, firing missiles into Syria and shooting down Syrian planes, blustering over
Ukraine, and dispatching naval forces to the waters near China.
But consider this: it may soon be possible to foresee a Chinese challenge to "US
interests" in the South China Sea or even the Taiwan Strait in tandem with a U.S.-Russian
clash in the skies over Syria or a showdown in Ukraine.
A lack of experience or intelligence, though, may be too generous an interpretation.
More likely, Washington's behavior stems from a mix of the customary, naïve
exceptionalism and the enduring power of the US arms lobby, the Pentagon, and the other
deep-state actors – all determined to thwart any lessening of tensions with either
Russia or China. After all, stirring up fear of Russia and China is a tried-and-true method
for ensuring that the next aircraft carrier or other pricey weapons system gets
built.
Like subterranean geological plates shifting slowly below the surface, changes with
immense political repercussions can occur so gradually as to be imperceptible until the
earthquake. As CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s and
early 1970s, I had a catbird seat watching sign after sign of intense hostility between
Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Kissinger were able to exploit it to
Washington's advantage.
The grievances between the two Asian neighbors included irredentism: China claimed
1.5 million square kilometers of Siberia taken from China under what it called "unequal
treaties" [they were unequal] dating back to 1689. This had led to armed clashes during the
1960s and 1970s along the long riverine border where islands were claimed by both
sides.
In the late 1960s, Russia reinforced its ground forces near China from 13 to 21
divisions. By 1971, the number had grown to 44 divisions, and Chinese leaders began to see
Russia as a more immediate threat to them than the US
Enter Henry Kissinger, who visited Beijing in July 1971 to arrange the
precedent-breaking visit by President Richard Nixon the following February. What followed
was some highly imaginative diplomacy orchestrated by Kissinger and Nixon to exploit the
mutual fear China and the USSR held for each other and the imperative each saw to compete
for improved ties with Washington.
Triangular Diplomacy
Washington's adroit exploitation of its relatively strong position in the triangular
relationship helped facilitate major, verifiable arms control agreements between the US and
USSR and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin. The USSR even went so far as to blame China
for impeding a peaceful solution in Vietnam.
It was one of those felicitous junctures at which CIA analysts could jettison the
skunk-at-the-picnic attitude we were often forced to adopt. Rather, we could in good
conscience chronicle the effects of the US approach and conclude that it was having the
desired effect. Because it was.
Hostility between Beijing and Moscow was abundantly clear. In early 1972, between
President Nixon's first summits in Beijing and Moscow, our analytic reports underscored the
reality that Sino-Soviet rivalry was, to both sides, a highly debilitating
phenomenon.
Not only had the two countries forfeited the benefits of cooperation, but each felt
compelled to devote huge effort to negate the policies of the other. A significant
dimension had been added to this rivalry as the US moved to cultivate better relations
simultaneously with both. The two saw themselves in a crucial race to cultivate good
relations with the US
The Soviet and Chinese leaders could not fail to notice how all this had increased
the US bargaining position. But we CIA analysts saw them as cemented into an intractable
adversarial relationship by a deeply felt set of emotional beliefs, in which national,
ideological, and racial factors reinforced one another. Although the two countries
recognized the price they were paying, neither seemed able to see a way out. The only
prospect for improvement, we suggested, was the hope that more sensible leaders would
emerge in each country. But this seemed an illusory expectation at the time.
We were wrong about that. Mao Zedong's and Nikita Khrushchev's successors proved to
have cooler heads. The US, under President Jimmy Carter, finally recognized the communist
government of China in 1979 and the dynamics of the triangular relationships among the US,
China and the Soviet Union gradually shifted with tensions between Beijing and Moscow
lessening.
Yes, it took years to chip away at the heavily encrusted mistrust between the two
countries, but by the mid-1980s, we analysts were warning policymakers that "normalization"
of relations between Moscow and Beijing had already occurred slowly but surely, despite
continued Chinese protestations that such would be impossible unless the Russians
capitulated to all China's conditions. For their part, the Soviet leaders had become more
comfortable operating in the triangular environment and were no longer suffering the
debilitating effects of a headlong race with China to develop better relations with
Washington.
A New Reality
Still, little did we dream back then that as early as October 2004 Russian President
Putin would visit Beijing to finalize an agreement on border issues and brag that relations
had reached "unparalleled heights." He also signed an agreement to jointly develop Russian
energy reserves.
A revitalized Russia and a modernizing China began to represent a potential
counterweight to US hegemony as the world's unilateral superpower, a reaction that
Washington accelerated with its strategic maneuvers to surround both Russia and China with
military bases and adversarial alliances by pressing NATO up to Russia's borders and
President Obama's "pivot to Asia."
The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, marked a historical breaking point
as Russia finally pushed back by approving Crimea's request for reunification and by giving
assistance to ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who resisted the coup regime in
Kiev. [Surprisingly, China decided not to criticize the annexation of Crimea.]
On the global stage, Putin fleshed out the earlier energy deal with China, including
a massive 30-year natural gas contract valued at $400 billion. The move helped Putin
demonstrate that the West's post-Ukraine economic sanctions posed little threat to Russia's
financial survival.
As the Russia-China relationship grew closer, the two countries also adopted
remarkably congruent positions on international hot spots, including Ukraine and Syria.
Military cooperation also increased steadily. Yet, a hubris-tinged consensus in the US
government and academe continues to hold that, despite the marked improvement in ties
between China and Russia, each retains greater interest in developing good relations with
the US than with each other. "
Good luck with that Secretary Pompeo.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
PS likbez@46 reminded me of a line from the movie Reds. Warren Beatty's John Reed spoke of
people who "though Karl Marx wrote a good antitrust law." This was not a favorable comment.
The confusion of socialism and what might be called populism is quite, quite old. Jack
London's The Iron Heel has its hero pointing out even before the Great (Class) War that the
normal operations of capitalism, concentration and centralization, destroyed the middle class
paradise of equal competition. It wasn't conspiracies.
likbez 07.29.20 at 3:30 pm
@steven t johnson 07.29.20 at 3:14 pm (51)
Jack London's The Iron Heel has its hero pointing out even before the Great (Class) War
that the normal operations of capitalism, concentration and centralization, destroyed the
middle class paradise of equal competition.
I think the size of the USA military budget by itself means the doom for the middle class,
even without referring to famous Jack London book (The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell 's
biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced Orwell's most famous novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four.).
Wall Street and MIC (especially intelligence agencies ; Allen Dulles was a Wall Street
lawyer) are joined at the hip. And they both fully control MSM. As Jack London aptly said:
"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist
class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it
serves it." ― Jack London, The Iron Heel
Financial capitalism is bloodthirstily by definition as it needs new markets. It fuels wars.
In a sense, Bolton is the symbol of financial capitalism foreign policy.
It is important to understand that finance capitalism creates positive feedback loop in the
economy increasing instability of the system. So bubbles are immanent feature of finance
capitalism, not some exception or the result of excessive greed.
"... Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, "democracy" NGOs and other groups since the 1980's. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order. ..."
"... Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance. ..."
"... The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of George Soros's major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and curiously , Ben & Jerry's Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000. ..."
"... That front since 2009 received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations and again, Ben & Jerry's ($50,000). ..."
"... And Garza's SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712 "organizers" in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among others. ..."
"... Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi headed the FRSO's Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a "staff" of two it got money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry's ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group . ..."
"... The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described their role: "The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America." ..."
"... Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to "democrats and progressives." As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign of Joe Biden. ..."
"... What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. ..."
"... The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest. ..."
Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led
regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, "democracy" NGOs
and other groups since the 1980's. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish
communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with
heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied
those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous
organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous
moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to
not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US
Constitutional order.
If we step back from the immediate issue of videos showing a white Minneapolis policeman
pressing his knee on the neck of a black man, George Floyd , and look at what has taken place
across the nation since then, it is clear that certain organizations or groups were
well-prepared to instrumentalize the horrific event for their own agenda.
The protests since May 25 have often begun peacefully only to be taken over by well-trained
violent actors. Two organizations have appeared regularly in connection with the violent
protests -- Black Lives Matter and Antifa (USA). Videos show well-equipped protesters dressed
uniformly in black and masked (not for coronavirus to be sure), vandalizing police cars,
burning police stations, smashing store windows with pipes or baseball bats. Use of Twitter and
other social media to coordinate "hit-and-run" swarming strikes of protest mobs is evident.
What has unfolded since the Minneapolis trigger event has been compared to the wave of
primarily black ghetto protest riots in 1968. I lived through those events in 1968 and what is
unfolding today is far different. It is better likened to the Yugoslav color revolution that
toppled Milosevic in 2000.
Gene Sharp: Template for Regime Overthrow
In the year 2000 the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university
students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (Resistance!). The NED and its various
offshoots was created in the 1980's by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow
specific regimes around the world under the cover of a human rights NGO. In fact, they get
their money from Congress and from USAID.
In the Serb Otpor! destabilization of 2000, the NED and US Ambassador Richard Miles in
Belgrade selected and trained a group of several dozen students, led by Srđa Popović,
using the handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, translated to Serbian, of
the late Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution. In a post mortem on the Serb events,
the Washington Post wrote, "US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in
virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of
opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US
taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint
used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across
Serbia."
Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid
of 'intelligence helmet' video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their
environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell
phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation.
Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that
mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the
youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the
scenes.
The Color Revolution Otpor! model was refined and deployed in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange
Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution.
Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all
cases the NED was involved
with other NGOs including the Soros Foundations.
After defeating Milosevic, Popovic went on to establish a global color revolution training
center, CANVAS, a kind of for-profit business consultancy for revolution, and was personally
present in New York working reportedly with Antifa during the Occupy Wall Street where also
Soros money was reported.
Antifa and BLM
The protests, riots, violent and non-violent actions sweeping across the United States since
May 25, including an assault on the gates of the White House, begin to make sense when we
understand the CIA's Color Revolution playbook.
The impact of the protests would not be possible were it not for a network of local and
state political officials inside the Democratic Party lending support to the protesters, even
to the point the Democrat Mayor of Seattle ordered police to abandon several blocks in the
heart of downtown to occupation by protesters.
In recent years major portions of the Democratic Party across the US have been quietly taken
over by what one could call radical left candidates. Often they win with active backing of
organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America or Freedom Road Socialist Organizations.
In the US House of Representatives the vocal quarter of new representatives around Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib and Minneapolis Representative Ilhan Omar are
all members or close to Democratic Socialists of America. Clearly without sympathetic
Democrat local officials in key cities, the street protests of organizations such as Black
Lives Matter and Antifa would not have such a dramatic impact.
To get a better grasp how serious the present protest movement is we should look at who has
been pouring millions into BLM. The Antifa is more difficult owing to its explicit anonymous
organization form. However, their online Handbook openly recommends that local Antifa "cells"
join up with BLM chapters.
FRSO: Follow the Money
BLM began in 2013 when three activist friends created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to
protest the allegations of shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by a white
Hispanic block watchman, George Zimmermann. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi
were all were connected with and financed by front groups tied to something called Freedom Road
Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical left organizations in the United States
formed out of something called New Communist Movement that dissolved in the 1980s.
On June 12, 2020 the Freedom Road Socialist Organization webpage states, "The time is now to
join a revolutionary organization! Join Freedom Road Socialist Organization If you have been
out in the streets this past few weeks, the odds are good that you've been thinking about the
difference between the kind of change this system has to offer, and the kind of change this
country needs. Capitalism is a failed system that thrives on exploitation, inequality and
oppression. The reactionary and racist Trump administration has made the pandemic worse. The
unfolding economic crisis we are experiencing is the worst since the 1930s. Monopoly capitalism
is a dying system and we need to help finish it off. And that is exactly what Freedom Road
Socialist Organization is
working for ."
In short the protests over the alleged police killing of a black man in Minnesota are now
being used to call for a revolution against capitalism. FRSO is an umbrella for dozens of
amorphous groups including Black Lives Matter or BLM. What is interesting about the
self-described Marxist-Leninist roots of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is not
so much their left politics as much as their very establishment funding by a group of
well-endowed tax-exempt foundations.
Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front
groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of
Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward
Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance.
The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very
established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of
George Soros's major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote
Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and
curiously , Ben
& Jerry's Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000.
Garza also got major foundation money as Executive Director of the FRSO front, POWER, where
Obama former "green jobs czar" Van Jones, a self-described "communist" and "rowdy black
nationalist," now with CNN, was on the board. Alicia Garza also chaired the Right to the City
Alliance, a network of activist groups opposing urban gentrification. That front since 2009
received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations
and again, Ben & Jerry's ($50,000).
And Garza's SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712
"organizers" in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller
Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among
others. With the Forward Together of FRSO, Garza sat on the board of a "multi-racial
organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and
policy to catalyze social change." It officially got $4 million in 2014 revenues and from 2012
and 2014, the organization received a total of $2.9 million from Ford Foundation ($655,000) and
other major
foundations .
Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi
headed the FRSO's Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a "staff" of two it got
money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations
for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry's ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group .
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization that is now openly calling for a revolution against
capitalism in the wake of the Floyd George killing has another arm, The Advancement Project,
which describes itself as "a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization." Its
board includes a former Obama US Department of Education Director of Community Outreach and a
former Bill Clinton Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The FRSO Advancement Project
in 2013 got millions from major US tax-exempt foundations including Ford
($8.5 million), Kellogg ($3 million), Hewlett Foundation of HP defense industry founder ($2.5
million), Rockefeller Foundation ($2.5 million), and Soros foundations ($8.6 million).
Major Money and ActBlue
By 2016, the presidential election year where Hillary Clinton was challenging Donald Trump,
Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network. That year the Ford
Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund
(BLMF), "a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for
Black Lives coalition" in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros foundations had already
given some $33 million in
grants to the Black Lives Matter movement . This was serious foundation money.
The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the
Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described
their role: "The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to
organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and
immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national
conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America."
The Movement for Black Lives Coalition (M4BL) which includes Black Lives Matter, already in
2016 called for "defunding police departments, race-based reparations, voting rights for
illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a
universal basic income, and
free college for blacks ."
Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the
donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to
"democrats and progressives." As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign
of Joe Biden.
That was before the May 25 BLM worldwide protests. Now major corporations such as Apple,
Disney, Nike and hundreds others may be pouring untold and unaccounted millions into ActBlue
under the name of Black Lives Matter, funds that in fact can go to fund the election of a
Democrat President Biden. Perhaps this is the real reason the Biden campaign has been so
confident of support from black voters.
What is clear from only this account of the crucial
role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is
a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America.
The
role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial
companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper
and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would
suggest.
***
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in
politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics,
exclusively for the online magazine "New
Eastern Outlook" where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Modern jihadism was co-invented in 1979 by Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al Saud, and U.S.
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, working together, and here is the background for
it, and the way -- and the reasons -- that it was done:
Back in the later Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church and its aristocracies had used
religious fervor in order to motivate very conservative and devout people to invade foreign
countries so as to spread their empire and to not need to rely only on taxes in order to fund
these invasions, but also to highly motivate them by their faith in a heavenly reward. It was
far cheaper this way, because these invading forces wouldn't need to be paid so much; the
reason why they'd be far cheaper is that their pay would chiefly come to them in their
afterlife (if at all). That's why people of strong faith were used. (Aristocracies always rule
by deceiving the public, and faith is the way.) Those invaders were Roman Catholic Crusaders,
and they went out on Crusades to spread their faith and so 'converted' and slaughtered millions
of Muslims and Jews, so as to expand actually the aristocracies' and preachers' empire, which
is the reason why they had been sent out on those missions (to win 'converts'). This was
charity, after all. (Today's large tax-exempt non-profits are no different -- consistently
promoting their aristocracy's invasions, out of 'humanitarian' concern for the 'welfare', or
else 'souls', of the people they are invading -- and, if need be, to kill 'bad people'. This
has been the reality. And it still is. It's the way to sell imperialism to individuals who
won't benefit from imperialism -- make mental slaves of them.)
The original Islamic version of the Christian Crusades, Islamic Holy
War or "jihad," started on 14 November 1914 in Constantinople (today's Istanbul) when the
Sheikh Hayri Bey, the supreme religious
authority in the Ottoman Empire , along with the Ottoman Emperor, Mehmed V , declared a Holy War for their Muslim
followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro in World War
I. They were on Germany's side, and lost. (That's the reason why the Ottoman Empire ended.)
Both
the Sheikh and the Emperor had actually been selected -- and then forced -- by Turkey's
aristocracy, for them to declare Islamic Holy War at that time. In fact, the sitting Sheikh,
Mehmet
Cemaleddin Efendi , in 1913, was actually an opponent of the pro-German and
war-oriented policy of the Union and Progress Party, which represented Turkey's aristocrats,
and so that Sheikh was replaced by them, in order to enable a declaration of Islamic Holy War.
Jihad actually had its origin in Turkey's aristocracy -- not in the Muslim masses, and not even
in the Muslim clergy. It resulted from an overly ambitious Turkish aristocracy, hoping to
extend their empire. It did not result from the public. And, at that time, relatively few
Muslims followed this 'Holy' command, which is one reason why the Ottoman Empire soon
thereafter ended.
The fact that the decision about the Armenians was made after a great deal of thought,
based on extensive debate and discussion by the Central Committee of the CUP [Committee for
Union and Progress] , can be understood by looking at other sources of information as well.
The indictment of the Main Trial states as follows: ''The murder and annihilation of the
Armenians was a decision taken by the Central Committee of the Union and Progress Party.''
These decisions were the result of ''long and extensive discussions.'' In the indictment are
the statements of Dr. Nazım to the effect that ''it was a matter taken by the Central
Committee after thinking through all sides of the issue'' and that it was ''an attempt to reach
a final solution to the Eastern Question .'' 54 In his memoirs, which were published in
the newspaper Vakit, Celal, the governor of Aleppo, describes the same words being spoken to
him by a deputy of the Ottoman Parliament from Konya, coming as a ''greeting of a member of the
Central Committee .'' This deputy told Celal that if he had ''expressed an opinion that
opposed the point of view of the others, [he would] have been expelled .''
55
(And, consequently, when Hitler allegedly -- on 22 August 1939 , right before his
invasion of Poland which started WW II, and it is
on page 2 here , but the sincerity and even the authenticity of that alleged private
'speech' by him should be questioned and not accepted outright by historians -- cited Turkey's
genocide against Armenian Christians as being proof that genocide is acceptable, Hitler would
actually have been citing there not only a Muslim proponent of genocide, but an ally of Germany
who had actually done it, because the Ottoman Empire's aristocracy had been both Muslim and
German-allied. Hitler would, in that 'speech', if he actually said it, have been citing that
earlier ally of Germany, which had actually genocided Christians. The genocide happened, even
if that speech mentioning it was concocted by some propagandist during WW II.)
The new jihad, or Islamic version of the Crusades, is, however, very different from the one
that had started on 14 November 1914. It wasn't Turkish, it instead came straight from Turkey's
top competitor to lead the world's Muslims, the royal family who owned Saudi Arabia, the Sauds.
But they partnered with America's aristocracy, in creating it.
Today's jihadism started in 1979, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter's national security
advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski (a born Polish nobleman), and his colleague Prince Bandar bin
Sultan al Saud, re-created jihad or Islamic Holy War, in order to produce a dirt-cheap army of
Pakistani fundamentalist Sunni students or "mujahideen," soon to be renamed Taliban (
Pashto &
Persian ṭālibān, plural of ṭālib student, seeker, from Arabic )
so as to invade and conquer next door to the Soviet Union the newly Soviet-allied Afghanistan,
and to turn it 'pro-Western', now meaning both anti-Soviet, and anti-Shiite. (The Saud family
hate Shiites , and so do America's
aristocrats, whose CIA had conquered Shiite Iran in 1953, and who became outraged when Shiites
retook Iran in 1979. And, from then on, America's aristocracy, too, have hated Shiites and have
craved to re-conquer Iran. By contrast, the Sauds had started in 1744 to hate Shiites.) So, modern Islamic Holy War started
amongst fundamentalist Sunnis in Pakistan in 1979, against both the Soviets and the Iranians
(and now against both
Russia and Iran ). Here is a video of Brzezinski actually doing that -- starting the
"mujahideen" (subsequently to become the Taliban) onto this 'Holy War':
Brzezinski ,
incidentally, had been born a Roman Catholic Polish aristocrat whose parents hated and despised
Russians, and this hostility went back to the ancient conflicts between the Roman Catholic and the
Russian Orthodox Churches.
So: whereas on the American end this was mainly a Roman Catholic versus Orthodox operation,
it was mainly a Sunni versus Shiite operation on the Saudi end.
Here's more of the personal background regarding the co-creation, by the aristocracies of
America and of Saudi Arabia, of today's jihadism, or "radical Islamic terrorism":
Whereas Nelson Rockefeller in the Republican Party sponsored Harvard's Henry Kissinger as
the geostrategist and National Security Advisor, David Rockefeller in the Democratic Party
sponsored Harvard's and then Columbia's Zbigniew Brzezinski as the geostrategist and National
Security Advisor. The Rockefeller family was centrally involved in controlling the U.S.
Government.
According to pages 41-44 of David B. Ottaway's 2008 The
King's Messenger: Prince Bandar , U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose National Security
Advisor was Brzezinski, personally requested and received advice from a certain graduate
student at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Saudi Prince Bandar
bin Sultan al Saud, regarding geostrategy. At the time, Brzezinski commented favorably on
Bandar's graduate thesis. But that's not all. "Secretly, Carter had already turned to the
kingdom for help, calling in Bandar and asking him to deliver a message to [King] Fahd pleading
for an increase in Saudi [oil] production. Fahd's reply, according to Bandar, was 'Tell my
friend, the president of the United States of America, when they need our help, they will not
be disappointed.'13 The king was true to his world." However, Bandar's advice went beyond oil.
And the re-creation, of the fundamentalist-Sunni movement (amongst only fundamentalist Sunni
Muslims, both in 1914 and in 1979), that now is called "jihadism," was a joint idea, from both
Brzezinski and Bandar.
It was the United States that, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab
Emirates, and Pakistan, dispatched the jihadists to Afghanistan. Prince Bandar bin Sultan of
Saudi Arabiaplayed a key rolein those operations, with Saudi Arabia providing the key
financial, military and human support for them. The kingdom encouraged its citizens to go to
Afghanistan to fight the Soviet army. One such citizen was Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia agreed
to match, dollar for dollar, any funds that the CIA could raise for the operations. The
U.S.provided Pakistan with $3.2 billion, and Saudi Arabia bought weapons from
everywhere, including international black markets, and sent them to Afghanistan through
Pakistan's ISI.
That was then, and this is now, but it is merely an extension of that same operation, even
after the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended in
1991, and Russia ended its side of the Cold War but the United States secretly continued its side , as is shown here,
by an example. This example, of America's continuing its Cold War, is America's longstanding
effort, after the death of FDR in 1945, to overthrow and replace Syria's pro-Russian Government
and install instead a Syrian Government that will be controlled by the Sauds:
So, in this new 'Islamic holy war', to overthrow Syria's non-sectarian Government, the
fighters entered Syria through Turkey, and they were welcomed mainly in Syria's province of
Idlib, which adjoins Turkey.
On 13 March 2012, the Al Jazeera TV station, of the pro-jihad Thani royal family of Qatar,
headlined "Inside
Idlib: Saving Syria" , and opened
The Syrian government crackdown on the dissenting northern city of Idlib has continued
for a third day, with casualties from random shelling and sniper fire mounting, and growing
concerns for many citizens detained by government forces. "I can't tell you what an unequal
contest this is . The phrase that we felt yesterday applied to it was 'Shooting fish in a
barrel' – these people can't escape, they can't help themselves, they have very little
weaponry, what can they do but sit there and take it?"
The UK Government had given Qatar to the Thanis in 1868. On 12
September 1868 , Mohammed Bin Thani signed "an agreement with the British Political
Resident Col. Lewis Pelly, which was considered as the first international recognition of the
sovereignty of Qatar"; so, on that precise day, Britain's Queen Victoria gave Qatar to his
family, which owns it, to the present day. The Thanis are the leading financial backers of the
Muslim Brotherhood, which spreads Thani influence to foreign countries. (At least up till 9/11,
the Saud family have been the main financial
backers of Al Qaeda .) The Thanis have been, along with the Sauds, the main financial
backers of replacing the non-sectarian Syrian Government by a fundamentalist-Sunni Syrian
Government. Whereas the Sauds want to control that new government, also the Thanis do, and this
is one reason for the recent falling-out between those two families. America's aristocracy
prefers that Syria's rulers will be selected by the Saud family, because they buy more weapons
from the U.S. than does any other country. However, everything is transactional between
aristocracies, and, so, international alliances can change. It's always a jostling, everyone
grabbing for whatever they can get: aristocracies operate no differently than crime-families
do, because FDR's dream of an anti-imperialistic U.N., which would set and enforce
international laws, died when he did; we live instead in an internationally lawless world -- he
died far too soon. In a sense (at least ideologically), Hitler won, but, actually, Churchill
did (he was as much an imperialist as Hitler and Mussolini were).
Anyway, uncounted tens of thousands of jihadists from all over the world descended upon
Syria, funded by the Sauds and the Thanis, and armed and trained by the United States, to
conquer Syria. At the Syrian Government's request,
Russia started bombing the jihadists on 30 September 2015 . That air-support for the Syrian
Army turned the war around. By the time of 4 May 2018, Britain's Financial Times
headlined "Idlib offers uncertain sanctuary
to Syria's defeated rebels" ("rebels" being the U.S. and UK Governments' term for jihadists
who were serving as the U.S., Saud and Thani, proxy-forces or mercenaries to conquer Syria) and
reported (stenographically transmitting what the CIA and MI6 told them to say) that, "more than
70,000 rebels and civilians" -- meaning jihadists and their families -- who were "fleeing the
last rebel holdout near the capital," had been given a choice, and this "choice was die in
Ghouta, or leave for Idlib," and chose to get onto the Government-supplied buses taking them to
Idlib. So, perhaps unnumbered hundreds of thousands of jihadists did that, from all over Syria,
and collecting them in Idlib.
On May 8th, Syria's Government bannered,"6th batch of terrorists leave
southern Damascus for northern Syria"and reported that "During the past five days,
218 buses carrying terrorists with their families exited from the three towns to Jarablos and
Idleb under the supervision of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent." Jarablos (or "Jarabulus")
is a town or "District" in the Aleppo Governate; and Idleb (or "Idlib") is the
capital District in the adjoining Governate of Idlib, which Governate is immediately to the
west of Aleppo Governate; and both Jarabulus and Idlib border on Turkey to the north. Those two
towns in Syria's far northwest are where captured jihadists are now being sent.
The Government is doing that because at this final stage in the 7-year-long war, it wants
civilian deaths and additional destruction of buildings to be kept to a minimum, and so is
offering jihadists the option of surviving instead of being forced to fight to the death (which
would then require Syria's Government to destroy the entire area that's occupied by the
terrorists); this way, these final clean-up operations against the terrorists won't necessarily
require bombing whole neighborhoods -- surrenders thus become likelier, so as to end the war as
soon as possible, and to keep destruction and civilian casualties at a minimum.
The Syrian and Russian Governments had planned to finish them off there in Idlib, so that
none of them could escape back into their home countries to continue their jihad. However, the
U.S. and its allies raised 'humanitarian' screams at the U.N. and other international
organizations, in order to protect the 'rebels' against the 'barbarous dictator' of Syria, its
President, Bashar al-Assad -- just in order to create more anti-Assad (and anti-Russian, and
anti-Iranian) propaganda. And, so, on 9 and 10 September 2018, Putin and Erdogan and Rouhani
met in Rouhani's Tehran to decide what to do. By that time, Erdogan was riding the fence
between Washington and Moscow. On 17 September 2018, I headlined "Putin and Erdogan Plan Syria-Idlib DMZ as I Recommended" and
reported that Putin and Rouhani entrusted Idlib to Erdogan, with the expectation that Erdogan
would keep the jihadists penned-up there, so that Putin and Assad would be able to bomb them to
hell after the 'humanitarian crisis' in Idlib would be no longer on front pages.
The role of the United Nations in this has been to stand aside and pretend that it's a
'humanitarian crisis' (as the U.S. regime wanted it to be called) instead of a U.S.-and-allied
invasion, aggressive war, and consequently a vast war-crime such as Hitler's top leaders were
prosecuted and executed for at Nuremberg. As Miri Wood wrote, at Syria News, on 28
February 2018 :
Members of the General Assembly must be in good financial standing to vote. Dues are on a
sliding scale but do not factor in draconian sanctions against targeted members, nor crimes of
war involved in their destruction. As such, CAR, Libya, Venezuela and Yemen have been stripped
of their voting rights. The non-permanent SC members function as obedient House Servants to the
P3 bullies, ever mindful of placing self-preservation above moral integrity .
So Truman's U.N. turns out to be on the side of the new Nazism, against its victims.
Erdogan wants to be with the winners. He evidently believes that whatever empire he'll be
able to have will be just a vassal nation within the U.S. Empire. He had been
extremely reluctant to accept this viewpoint , but, apparently, he now does. And so, now,
Erdogan has become so confident that he has the backing of Christian-majority America and of
Christian-majority Europe, so that Turkey's
Hagia Sophia , which had been "the world's largest cathedral
for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520," has finally become
officially declared by the Turkish Government to be, instead, a mosque. He feels safe enough to
insult the publics in the other NATO countries so as to be able now to assert publicly his
support for Islam against Christianity, because he knows that NATO's other
aristocracies -- all of them majority-Christian, and all of these aristocrats ruling their
respective Christian-majority countries -- don't really give a damn about that. Amongst
themselves, the concern for 'heaven' is all just for show, because they are far more interested
to buy Paradise in the here-and-now, for themselves and for their families. As for any possible
'afterlife', it will be reflected in the big buildings and charities that will bear their
names, after they're gone. Erdogan feels safe, knowing that they're all psychopaths. And, as
for the publics anywhere -- Syria, Libya, even in Turkey itself -- they don't matter, to him,
any more than they do to the leaders of those other NATO countries.
Turkish forces started recruiting numbers of its armed fighters to send them to
Azerbaijan in order to assist the Azerbaijani forces in confronting the Armenian army.
According to sources, Turkey opened special promotion offices in different parts of Afrin
northern Aleppo, to attract the militants and encourage them to sign contracts by which they
would move to fight in Azerbaijan for a period of six months, renewable in case they wanted
to.
According to the contract, the militants receive a monthly salary of $2500, while the
advantage of granting Turkish citizenship to the families of the militants in case they died is
absent, contrary to the contracts that Turkey had signed with the armed men who wanted to move
to Libya.
The sources said that Turkey has designated centers for registering militants wishing to
fight in Azerbaijan within the towns of Genderes and Raju, along with Afrin city, and these
centers have already started receiving requests by the militants.
Armenia is virtually 100% Christian, and, according to Wikipedia :
The Armenian Genocide[c](also known as the Armenian
Holocaust )[13]was the systematic mass
murder and expulsion of 1.5 million[b]ethnicArmenianscarried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by theOttoman governmentbetween 1914 and 1923.[14][15]The starting date is
conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested,
and deported fromConstantinople(now Istanbul) to the region of Angora (Ankara),235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom
were eventually murdered.
So, the recruitment of fundamentalist-Sunni mercenaries in the areas of Syria that Turkey
has captured, and sending those men "to assist the Azerbaijani forces in confronting the
Armenian army," is likewise consistent with the NATO member-country Turkey's restoration of its
former Ottoman Empire. Using these jihadist proxy-soldiers, NATO is now invading Christian
Armenia.
However, Iskef was reporting without paying any attention to the aristocratic interests
which were actually very much involved in what Erdogan was doing here. On July 19th, Cyril
Widdershoven at the "Oil Price" site bannered
"The Forgotten Conflict That Is Threatening Energy Markets" and he reported the economic
geostrategic factors which were at stake in this now-emerging likely hot war, which is yet
another "pipeline war," and which pits Turkey against Russia. In this particular matter, Turkey
has an authentic economic reason to become engaged in a possible hot war allied with Muslim
Azerbaijan against Christian Armenia. Russia, yet again, would be backing Christian soldiers.
Of course, NATO, also yet again, would be on the Muslim side, against the Christians. But, this
time, NATO would be backing Azerbaijan, which is 85% Shiite. Consequently, in such a conflict,
the U.S. could end up on the same side as Iran, and against Russia.
If history is any guide, aristocratic interests will take precedence over theocratic
interests, but democratic interests -- the interests of the publics that are involved -- will
be entirely ignored. The sheer hypocrisy of the U.S. regime exceeds anything in human
history.
How can anybody not loathe the U.S. regime and its allies? Only by getting one's 'news' from
its 'news'-media -- especially (but not only) its mainstream ones.
Before looking into Russian options in relation to the US, we need to take a quick look at
how Russia has been faring this year. The short of it would be: not too well. The Russian
economy has shrunk by about 10% and the small businesses have been devastated by the combined
effects of 1) the economic policies of the Russian government and Central Bank, and 2) the
devastating economic impact of the COVID19 pandemic, and 3) the full-spectrum efforts of the
West, mostly by the Anglosphere, to strangle Russia economically. Politically, the "Putin
regime" is still popular, but there is a sense that it is getting stale and that most Russians
would prefer to see more dynamic and proactive policies aimed, not only to help the Russian
mega-corporations, but also to help the regular people. Many Russians definitely have a sense
that the "little guy" is being completely ignored by fat cats in power and this resentment will
probably grow until and unless Putin decides to finally get rid of all the Atlantic
Integrationists aka the "Washington consensus" types which are still well represented in the
Russian ruling circles, including the government. So far, Putin has remained faithful to his
policy of compromises and small steps, but this might change in the future as the level of
frustration in the general population is likely to only grow with time.
That is not to say that the Kremlin is not trying. Several of the recent constitutional
amendments adopted in a national vote had a strongly expressed "social" and "patriotic"
character and they absolutely horrified the "liberal" 5th columnists who tried their best two
1) call for a boycott, and 2) denounce thousands of (almost entirely) imaginary violations of
the proper voting procedures, and to 3) de-legitimize the outcome by declaring the election a
"fraud". None of that worked: the participation was high, very few actual violations were
established (and those that were, had no impact on the outcome anyway) and most Russians
accepted that this outcome was the result of the will of the people. Furthermore, Putin has
made public the Russian strategic goals for 2030
,which are heavily focused on improving the living and life conditions of average Russians (for
details, see here ). It is impossible to predict
what will happen next, but the most likely scenario is that Russia has several, shall we say,
"bumpy" years ahead, both on the domestic and on the international front.
I would add that Russia should also start opening channels of communication with various
organizations in Canada, especially those in the far north. While Canada is small
politically, it is vastly bigger than the U.S. in natural resources, very strategically
located and right next door to Russia.
I really agree with you that the "blame Russia" and "blame China" thing has gotten out of
hand in US politics. Whether it will turn into a shooting war seems doubtful to me, as the
government is still full of people who are looking out for their own interests and know that
a full-sized war with Russia, China, Iran or whoever will not advance their interests.
But who would have guessed, a few years ago, that "Russian asset" would become the
all-purpose insult for Democrats to use, not just against Republicans, but against other
Democrats?
I think Trump can win, though, if he successfully hangs the escalating Antifa/BLM mayhem
around the Democrat's necks. Normal, salt-of-the-earth-type Americans won't vote for the
party of Maoist mayhem. I just hope their numbers are still sufficient. So, really, the
mayhem needs to worsen and get ultra-bad, and Trump needs to carefully respond with just
enough law enforcement to bait the Democrats into defending the insurrectionists and their
tactics and loudly condemning Trump's "fascist" response. Normal people will see the true
story and in the privacy of the voting booth, not vote Democrat. And if you think the other
side lost their minds after the 2016 election .
Thanks Saker – I would have loved it, had Alaska been able to hang on to the 90s
relationship with Russia. It was a perfect match, except that Russian economy { as we were
told} was just tanking, and they had no money to throw into the tourist trade. Not that us
Alaskans, expected much more than what our bush villages had to offer. lol But , I'm afraid
this will never happen again, with the Zio freaks in charge of the US. I recall when I was
flying and living in McGrath in the 90s, that a womens Russian helicopter team dropped down
to refuel and I was workin on my cessna about 50 yrds away. I saw about 6+ really good
looking Russian chicks come out of those choppers, and us guys were floored ! We started to
communicate with them, they told us that they were re -tracing the WW II lend lease route and
were headed to the lower 48. Just about the time we started getting close tho, an old Lady
colonel jumped out and put the girls in place – lol . I also remember the Magadan
hockey team came over to play against our University teams Anchorage and Fairbanks. My
neighbor here in Kryme, was on that Russian team – small world. Ya, Russia and Alaska
would be a great match today – just gotta get rid of Washington. Thanks for the
memories.
" until and unless Putin decides to finally get rid of all the Atlantic Integrationists
aka the "Washington consensus" types which are still well represented in the Russian ruling
circles, including the government."
Putin's regime is merely a less unbearable version of the Yeltsin regime, with open loot
by oligarchs replaced by less overt loot by smaller scale actors. Putin is exactly as
beholden to the neoliberal capitalist system as Yeltsin. To expect Putin to change sides as
this point is ludicrous.
" Russia and the Empire have been at war since at least 2013, for no less than seven
years (something which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to
ignore)."
I have no idea what a "neo" Marxist is (apart from a blatant made up term to taint us by
association with the neo-Nazis), but as a Marxist, which the Saker obviously is not, it's
obvious to me that the Imperialist States of America has been at war with Russia since the
Yeltsinite attack on the Moscow parliament in 1993, and probably from the failed patriotic
coup of 1991. If we ignore the Saker's idea of a war since 2013 it's only because we know
it's twenty years out of date.
Things will never improve between Amerikastan and Russia and don't need to. Amerikastan is
sinking and will sink; Putin will, if he continues on the neoliberal capitalist track, sink
Russia as well in the end.
The video link to Sahra Wagenknecht's report was the best part of this article although
the article itself was spot on if one has any respect for reality.
I keep waiting for Germany to tell NATO and the US to get the hell out, but their
political establishment is just as corrupt as the US's.
The amount of money the US Fed Gov steals from the population in taxes and regulation or
causes loss of purchasing power by increasing debt could be much better put to use than
shoveling it into the military to murder people around the globe. The entire Fed Gov will, I
hope, disappear like fart gas as a result of the economic collapse in the making.
@Emily at was just a brutal form of monopoly capitalism that is the essence of the
Zionist syndicate we all are up against. Today piratized not privatized Russia is suffering a
less severe form but it is estimated that half Jew Putin and his oligarch cronies control ap.
30% of the Russian economy. all of this insider theft was "codified and Legalized" by Larry
Summers and the Harvard Jews. Same thing is happening in Jewmerica and moving lots faster now
with the theft under cover of the fake virus. Don't forget in 08-09 the bailout for
billionaires cost the regular economy trillions then too. No problem, the Jews at Black Rock
picked up some great bargains as they will this time.
The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot
be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed.
I would add that Putin (a masterful statesman) tamed Russia's oligarchs. The greatest fear
of America's oligarchs might well be a similar taming by a masterful American statesman.
Hence the refusal to allow anyone other than corrupted mediocrities anywhere near nominal
power in the US. And hence the entirely genuine hatred for Putin. He embodies their worst
nightmare.
"Russia will never attack first (which is a major cause of frustration for western
russophobes)"
Now that team orange clown (with the full support of congress) has done away with the
doctrine of mutually assured destruction, apparently replacing it with the concept of a
"winnable" nuclear war (impliedly by way of a devastating first strike), the time may come
when Russia may have to either strike first or be struck first.
Also, what about the case where the empire is finally successful in starting a war against
Iran, for example, and the war goes badly for the empire (i.e. Iran is inflicting some
serious damage), whereupon the empire resorts to nukes. Would Russia just sit back and watch,
or would Russia then realize that the monster has to be put down?
"The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot
be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed."
In a sense that's true as far as it goes, but it really doesn't explain very much. Lots of
countries are unable to subdue, subvert or conquer other countries but that in itself doesn't
generally lead to "hatred." The simpler and more profound explanation is that the empire does
what it does because it's evil. And the evil empire is analogous to an aggressive cancer:
either the cancer wins and the patient dies, or the cancer is completely eradicated and the
patient survives. There is no peaceful coexistence with the evil empire just like there is no
peaceful coexistence with glioblastoma. You cannot negotiate with it to find some kind of a
reasonable compromise.
The US government and FRS seem to be hell-bent on destroying the value of the US $: when
someone issues debt obligations (treasuries) and then buys them himself because there are no
other takers, you cannot help smelling a rat.
The crash of the $ will hurt everyone, but some will recover faster than others. Euro and
yen would be buried with the US $, but assets in less US-dependent countries that have real
economies producing things other than hot air will likely fare better. Which leaves Russia,
big China, South Korea, and some SE Asia countries.
the US was at about the same level in 2013: "The top 10% of families held 76% of the
wealth in 2013, while the bottom 50% of families held 1%. Inequality worsened from 1989 to
2013"
Indications are that the worsening has only continued since then, and with all the money
being poured into the stock market by the Fed this year, 2020 is on track to be exceptionally
iniquitously inequitable.
Trump 're-election' is certain. All roads are paved toward it. In fact and so far Trump is
the best Neocon/Deep State's man they found. Stop pretending Saker!
The US is under rule by decree, not by rule of law. Looking at the original list of
grievances the Colonists had against King George, it looks like most of them are met –
and then some – by our current system of government. Can we regain our
independence?
said:
"A Trump re-election will virtually guarantee civil war, but that is still a better option
than a Biden hot war against Russia. Either way though, the country is totally fucked."
– We already have a civil war.
– Either way there will be no "hot war against Russia". That's just silly.
– And there is no "Biden" there.
– The US is much, much better off with Trump, it's not even close. Especially if you
value free speech, fighting violence, and at least some semblance of a market economy devoid
of the 'Green New Deal' scam.
after Vietnam war, Vietnam, ally of China , keep their regime in their own
hand.
The ally of North Vietnam was Russia.
China blocked the transit of Russian weapons to North Vietnam. After North Vietnam
defeated the Americans, with Russian help, China invaded North Vietnam and was defeated.
For Saker it is always about Russia, Russia, Russia Sure, Russia is a big world power, it
used to be and it is now. It is so mostly because of its military, which draws its strength
and know-how from the USSR (meaning it is not strictly Russian). However, Russia will never
again be a superpower as the USSR had been. It was possible then only because of the
(historically) unparalleled appeal of the communist ideology. Firstly and objectively, Russia
does not have an economy necessary to support such a status. Secondly, Russia has no
sufficient population which, again, is a limiting factor to its economy. Putin probably
realized that although he did not realize that the Putin-inspired immigration from the former
Muslim republic of the USSR will not alleviate the problem. But again, who would even want to
go to today's Russia if not Asiatic muslims. It will slowly but surely make Russia not much
different from the West. Muscovites, just like New Yorkers are already leaving the city,
those who can afford.
And, subjectively, Russia or the Russians don't have the most important ingredient fort the
superpower status – the MENTALITY. The recent (1990-2020) Russian history clearly
displays that. It shows that in order to realize the centuries old dreams of the few (so
called "elites") Russia as a nation and as country had put itself to the downward trajectory:
As an empire it sold Alaska; as a civilization – it destroyed itself by dismantling the
rest of the empire, the USSR. As an ally it abandoned and handed over the most Russophile
german friend and ally E. Honecker and others to the "partners" in the west. And, as an
orthodox and Slavic "brother" it betrayed and abandoned the only people that have always
loved Russia – the Serbs. As an ally it behaved recklessly and treacherously. Russia
will do the same again. So, hate Russia.
Since 2016 I've always believed Trump will be legally elected in 2020 but the DNC/Deep
State will reject the result much more forcefully and violently than they've been doing since
2016. The DNC/Deep State will establish a shadow government minus the shadow. It will not be
Joe Biden leading it but someone much younger, possibly Biden's VP choice – who was
(will be) selected to replace Biden should Biden actually win. Hell, it may even be Hussein
since he's such a treasonous pussy and easy to manipulate. The communists behind the scenes
(aren't they always such cowards) currently coordinating BLM and Antifa riots all over
America will again use rioting but with firearms and bombings. This must be met with a
military response and the violence will be nationwide. At some point either Trump declares
martial law and outright civil war ensues, or a military coup takes over with or without
Trump as a figurehead and they crush the communists and leftists while right wing militias
join in the hunt. The only wild-card is if race driven factionalism within lower ranks cause
wide divisions and some officers break away – then the whole show is over and there
will be no place safe from people with guns and bad intentions. We will be fighting over food
and gasoline. At least, like in China, there will be plenty of dogs to satisfy hunger.
Putin's difficulty is that Russia is really too important for the West to ignore.
Western elites, and not just in the US, but in the EU and the western-hemisphere in
general, are facing a problem: people are beginning to notice that human values are not
universal. This had been one of the main pillars for the existence and credibility of a
technocratic elite, specifically for the people to trust the elites to implement some
unspecified but benevolent neo-enlightenment.
Putin became truly anathema first when he rejected western neoliberal criminality
because
[Hide MORE] it was destroying his country, secondly, when he thwarted amputation
of Crimea by color revolution, and thirdly, when he kept calling out NATO/EU expansionism for
what it was. This made conversion of Russia to the neoliberal finance and 'universal value"
system even less likely than the conversion to Roman Catholicism prophesied at Fatima. Putin
decided that Russia would live by its own values, thank you very much. Russia could
still have been an arms-length ally, but Anglo-Zionist geopolitical extremism forced him to
make cause with a clearly adversarial China, and encouraged him to circumvent the western
currency system as well.
But peoples within the west were also developing this NGTOW (Nations Going Their Own Way)
attitude. Hungary and Poland were already becoming thorns in the side of the EU over the
"human value" immigration, and the elections of Trump and Brexit were further assertions of
populist preferences. Other politicians like Wagenknecht, LePen and Salvini are nurturing
this movement elsewhere. It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal oligarchy, by dialing
up propaganda and censorship, and by using Orwellian cancel terrorism, can quell this
awakening rebellion.
@Wally licies.
6. Dramatically improve US education, from elementary school up.
7. Reform US healthcare, with a view of making it healthcare, rather than extortion racket it
is today.
There are many other things, but anyone attempting to do even half of those listed would
be promptly JFK'ed by the Deep State. That is why there is no one in the US politics decent
enough to even talk about real problems, not to mention attempting to do what needs to be
done to save the country. Hence, I can name no names.
As things stand, even Trump is better than senile and corrupt Biden. But being better than
that piece of shit is not a big achievement.
China allowed Soviet arms through to North Vietnam and was herself giving weapons to them.
The Soviets didn't trust the Chinese though, so they preferred to transport more advanced
weapons on ships rather than by train through China, to prevent the Chinese from getting a
close look on these.
China attacked Vietnam for invading Cambodia, but this war exposed the weakness of the
Chinese Army. Deng Xiaoping was able to push through military reforms after the debacle.
@Ko e and destabilize western nations. These paid activists, opportunists and useful
idiots could be taken care of by the local law enforcement as the constitution mandates if
allowed to do so. The goal of the Zionist criminals is to create enough chaos and breakdown
that people will demand that the national gov. step in with martial law. This is exactly what
the Zionists want so they can get rid of the locally controlled police and implement a
gestapo of thugs that are accountable only to the elite at the top.
The zionist politicians and their operatives from the mayors to the Governors on up need
to be thrown out of office. That is the first step in restoring the Republic.
@alwayswrite ernative media has excellent analysts) instead of immersing in the stinky
products of presstituting MSM controlled by 6 zio-corporations.
Your hysterics about Russia's alleged attempts at destabilizing the EU are particularly
entertaining. For starter, 1. learn about US bases in Europe and beyond, and 2. read about
the consequences of the wars of aggression (also known as Wars for Israel) in the Middle East
for the EU.
If you are in search of neonazi, turn your attentions to a great project run by ziocons and
neonazi in Ukraine. See Grossman, Kolomojsky, Zelinsky, Nuland-Kagan, Pyatt, Carl Gershman
(NED), and the whole Kagans' clan united with Banderites What can go wrong?
...while every country is different, the signposts tend to be the same. It is worth
attending to the characteristics he describes. They should sound familiar:
In a weak state , basic services such as education and health are privatized;
public facilities decline. Infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, shows signs of
neglect, particularly outside of major cities. Journalists and civil society activists are
harassed. Tensions among ethnic, religious, or linguistic groups increase, but widespread
violence does not erupt -- yet.
In a failing state , a single leader gains control of the legislature, law
enforcement, and the judiciary. The leader and his cronies are enriched while ordinary
citizens are left without basic services.
In a failed state , living standards deteriorate rapidly. Citizens feel they
exist only to satisfy the ruler's greed and lust for power. The potential for violence
increases as the state's legitimacy crumbles.
Finally, in a collapsed state , warlords run the country. The market rules to
the exclusion of any other concerns, while the social compact has been completely eroded.
"The Id is unleashed."
...Rotberg points out that widespread violence, one of the key markers of a failed state, is
not in evidence. But as John Comaroff noted, the soft coup of finance can make violence
redundant. Rotberg is one of the more conservative voices on state failure, so I was surprised
when I asked about the consequences of a second Trump term. He simply said: "Move."
... America's polarization is as much psychological as political, Rauch wrote in
National Affairs , echoing John Comaroff's recognition of tribalism as intrinsic to
human society. Rauch calls America's polarization neither "ideological or even rational," but
deep and atavistic, a sign of the human need for group identity in a fragmented world.
"Rebuilding institutions -- and, just as important, noticing and valuing them -- is more
important for containing tribalism than pretty much anything that public policy could do," he
writes. "And two institutions in particular deserve strengthening: the Republican Party and the
Democratic Party."
... With the executive branch cratering and the legislature limping along, citizens seek
recourse from the courts -- a trend Comaroff calls "lawfare" -- or become beggars, relying on
the whims of billionaires. Neither are a substitute for good government. Start with the courts:
since the Reagan years, the pro-business Federalist Society has been stacking the courts, so
increasingly these, too, reflect that new system of finance über alles .
... Surprisingly, few have pointed out the parallels to the United States. In the 1980s,
Ronald Reagan's cowboy anti-communism made institutions the enemy, whether government
bureaucracies or labor unions. Libertarianism here means freedom for corporations and slavery
for everyone else. James Carville's famous dictum on winning elections can be repurposed: it's
corruption, stupid.
If American frontier culture is the disease, it may yet hold the cure. Among the
self-described political realists, conservative Jospeh Postell's remedies sound the most
realistic: grassroots organizing and restoring the power of local government to dispense
largesse. In Texas, Beto O'Rourke has been pouring time and resources into just the kind of
organizing Postell talks about, a test case that should be watched. The next few years will
likely tell us if the old remedies work or if the restoration of America's civil society needs
something that goes beyond electoral politics. The worst-case scenario? Politics as we know it
may be irrelevant.
... "The United States is a state that is a partially owned commodity of the corporate
sector. If that's the definition of a failed state, we are. The state has become analogous to
McDonald's. It's a franchise." And what better leader for a nation reduced to a franchise than
a puffed up, golf-playing billionaire whose wealth comes in large part from licensing his name?
Perhaps, as some scholars are suggesting, the new world order won't be countries at all, but
vast trading cities in a sea of ungoverned spaces.
... In his taxonomy of state failure, Rotberg uses a telling phrase to mark the state's
decline: losing "the mandate of heaven." This expression, once invoked to describe the divine
source of authority for China's rulers, invokes a crisis that is both individual and collective
and more powerful for that dual nature.\
... The failure of a state shakes people to their foundations. Downward mobility has bred a
hopelessness that's sent rates of suicide and alcoholism skyrocketing.
... Even now, America is more like Sierra Leone than we care to admit, disunited and
conflicted, our spirits eaten by cynicism. No longer asking what we can do for our country, the
old martial definition of the state has given way to the description of war-torn Sierra Leone
by London School of Economics professor David Keen: "a war where one avoids battles but picks
on unarmed civilians and perhaps eventually acquires a Mercedes may make more sense . . .
[than] risking death in the name of the nation-state with little or no prospect of significant
financial gain."
Susan Zakin is the editor ofJournal of the Plague Year. She is the
author of several books, including Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental
Movement and Waiting for Charlie. More of her writing can be found atwww.susanzakin.com.
Turkey is currently involved in quite a few international military conflicts -- both against
its own neighbors such as Greece, Armenia, Iraq, Syria and Cyprus, and against other nations
such as Libya and Yemen. These actions by Turkey suggest that Turkey's foreign policy is
increasingly destabilizing not only several nations, but the region as well.
In addition, the Erdogan regime has been militarily targeting Syria and Iraq, sending its
Syrian mercenaries to Libya to seize Libyan oil and continuing, as usual, to bully Greece.
Turkey's regime is also now provoking ongoing violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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Since July 12, Azerbaijan has launched a series of cross-border attacks against Armenia's
northern Tavush region in skirmishes that have resulted
in the deaths of at least four Armenian soldiers and 12 Azerbaijani ones. After Azerbaijan
threatened to launch missile attacks on Armenia's Metsamor nuclear plant on July 16, Turkey
offered military assistance to Azerbaijan.
"Our armed unmanned aerial vehicles, ammunition and missiles with our experience, technology
and capabilities are at Azerbaijan's service,"
said İsmail Demir, the head of Presidency of Defense Industries, an affiliate of the
Turkish Presidency.
One of Turkey's main targets also seems to be Greece. The Turkish military is targeting
Greek territorial waters yet again. The Greek newspaper Kathimerini
reported :
"There have been concerns over a possible Turkish intervention in the East Med in a bid to
prevent an agreement on the delineation of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between Greece
and Egypt which is currently being discussed between officials of the two countries."
Turkey's choice of names for its gas exploration ships are also a giveaway. The name of the
main ship that Turkey is using for seismic "surveys" of the Greek continental shelf is
Oruç Reis , (1474-1518), an admiral of the Ottoman Empire who often raided the
coasts of Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean that were still controlled by Christian
powers. Other exploration and drilling vessels Turkey uses or is planning to use in Greece's
territorial waters are named after Ottoman sultans who targeted Cyprus and Greece in bloody
military invasions. These include the drilling ship
Fatih "the conqueror" or Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who invaded Constantinople in 1453; the
drilling ship
Yavuz , "the resolute", or Sultan Selim I, who headed the Ottoman Empire during the
invasion of Cyprus in 1571; and
Kanuni , "the lawgiver" or Sultan Suleiman, who invaded parts of eastern Europe as well as
the Greek island of Rhodes.
Turkey's move in the Eastern Mediterranean came in early July, shortly after the country had
turned Hagia Sophia, once the world's greatest Greek Cathedral, into a mosque. Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then
linked Hagia Sophia's conversion to a pledge to "liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque" in
Jerusalem.
On July 21, the tensions arose again following Turkey's announcement that it plans to
conduct seismic research in parts of the Greek continental shelf in an area of sea between
Cyprus and Crete in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
"Turkey's plan is seen in Athens as a dangerous escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean,
prompting Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to warn that European Union sanctions could follow
if Ankara continues to challenge Greek sovereignty," Kathimerini
reported on July 21.
Here is a short list of other countries where Turkey is also militarily involved:
In Libya , Turkey has been increasingly involved in the country's civil war. Associated
Press reported on July 18:
"Turkey sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three
months of the year, the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general concluded in a new
report, its first to detail Turkish deployments that helped change the course of Libya's
war.
"The report comes as the conflict in oil-rich Libya has escalated into a regional proxy
war fueled by foreign powers pouring weapons and mercenaries into the country."
Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when an armed revolt during the "Arab Spring" led to
the ouster and murder of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Political power in the country, the current
population of which is around 6.5 million, has been split
between two rival governments. The UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), has been led
by Prime Minister Fayez al Sarraj. Its rival, the Libyan National Army (LNA), has been led by
Libyan military officer, Khalifa Haftar.
Backed by Turkey, the GNA
said on July 18 that it would recapture Sirte, a gateway to Libya's main oil terminals, as
well as an LNA airbase at Jufra.
Egypt, which backs the LNA,
announced , however, that if the GNA and Turkish forces tried to seize Sirte, it would send
troops into Libya. On July 20, the Egyptian parliament
gave approval to a possible deployment of troops beyond its borders "to defend Egyptian
national security against criminal armed militias and foreign terrorist elements."
Yemen is another country on which Turkey has apparently set its sights. In a recent video ,
Turkey-backed Syrian mercenaries fighting on behalf of the GNA in Libya, and aided by local
Islamist groups, are seen saying, "We are just getting started. The target is going to be
Gaza." They also state that they want to take on Egyptian President Sisi and to go to
Yemen.
"Turkey's growing presence in Yemen," The Arab Weekly reported
on May 9, "especially in the restive southern region, is fuelling concern across the region
over security in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb.
"These concerns are further heightened by reports indicating that Turkey's agenda in Yemen
is being financed and supported by Qatar via some Yemeni political and tribal figures
affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood."
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In Syria , Turkey-backed jihadists continue occupying the northern parts of the country. On
July 21, Erdogan
announced that Turkey's military presence in Syria would continue. "Nowadays they are
holding an election, a so-called election," Erdogan said of a parliamentary election on July 19
in Syria's government-controlled regions, after nearly a decade of civil war. "Until the Syrian
people are free, peaceful and safe, we will remain in this country."
Additionally, Turkey's incursion into the Syrian city of Afrin, created a particularly grim
situation for the local Yazidi population:
"As a result of the Turkish incursion to Afrin," the Yazda organization
reported on May 29, "thousands of Yazidis have fled from 22 villages they inhabited prior
to the conflict into other parts of Syria, or have migrated to Lebanon, Europe, or the
Kurdistan Region of Iraq... "
"Due to their religious identity, Yazidis in Afrin are suffering from targeted harassment
and persecution by Turkish-backed militant groups. Crimes committed against Yazidis include
forced conversion to Islam, rape of women and girls, humiliation and torture, arbitrary
incarceration, and forced displacement. The United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2020 annual report confirmed that Yazidis and Christians
face persecution and marginalization in Afrin.
"Additionally, nearly 80 percent of Yazidi religious sites in Syria have been looted,
desecrated, or destroyed, and Yazidi cemeteries have been defiled and bulldozed."
In Iraq , Turkey has been carrying out military operations for years. The last one was
started in mid-June. Turkey's Defense Ministry
announced on June 17 that the country had "launched a military operation against the PKK"
(Kurdistan Workers' Party) in northern Iraq after carrying out a series of airstrikes. Turkey
has named its assaults "Operation Claw-Eagle" and "Operation Claw-Tiger".
The Yazidi, Assyrian
Christian and Kurdish
civilians have been terrorized by the bombings. At least five civilians have been killed in
the air raids, according to
media reports . Human Rights Watch has also issued a
report , noting that a Turkish airstrike in Iraq "disregards civilian loss."
Given Turkey's military aggression in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Armenia, among others, and its
continued occupation of northern Cyprus, further aggression, especially against Greece, would
not be unrealistic. Turkey's desire to invade Greece is not exactly a secret. Since at least
2018, both the Turkish government and opposition parties have openly been calling
for capturing the Greek islands in the Aegean, which they falsely claim belong to
Turkey.
If such an attack took place, would the West abandon Greece?
Gaius Konstantine , 10 hours ago
If such an attack took place, it will get real messy, real fast. The Turkish military is
only partially adept at fighting irregular forces that lack heavy weaponry while Turkey has
absolute control of the sky. Even then, the recent performance of Turkish forces has been
lacklustre for "the 2nd largest Army in NATO".
Turkey should understand that a fight with Greece will mean that the advantages she
enjoyed in her recent adventures will not be there. Nor should Turkey look to the past and
expect an easy victory, the Greek Army will not be marching deep into Anatolia this time,
(which was the wrong type of war for Greece).
So what happens if they actually take it to war?
The larger Greek islands are well defended, they won't be taken, but defending the smaller
ones is hard and Turkey will probably grab some of those. The Greeks, who have absolute
control and dominance in the Aegean will do several things. Turkish naval and air bases along
the Aegean coastline will be attacked as will the bosphorus bridges, (those bridges WILL go
down). The Greek army, which is positioned well, will blitz into eastern Thrace and stop
outside Istanbul where they will dig in and shell the city, thereby causing the civilians to
flee and clogging up the tunnels to restrict military re-enforcement.
That's Greece acting alone, a position will be achieved where any captured islands will be
traded for eastern Thrace. Should the French intervene, (even if it's just air and naval
forces), it gets a lot more interesting.
The mighty Turkish fleet was just met by the entire Greek navy in the latest stand-off, it
was enough to cause Turkey to reconsider her options. There will be no Ottoman empire 2.0
OliverAnd , 9 hours ago
The Greeks need their navy for surgically precise attacks against Turkey's navy. Every
island, especially the large ones are unsinkable aircraft carriers. No one has mentioned in
any article that Turkey's navy is functioning with less than minimum required personnel. No
one has mentioned that their air force is flying with Pakistani pilots. The only way Turks
will land on Greek uninhabited islands is only if they are ship wrecked and that for a very
very short period of time. Turkey's population is composed of 25% Kurds... that will also be
very interesting to see once they awaken from their hibernation and realize their great and
holy goal of Kurdistan. Egypt will not waste the opportunity to join in to devastate whatever
Turkish navy remains. Serbian patriots will not allow the opportunity to go to waste and will
attack Kosovo and indirectly Albania composed primarily of Turkish descendants... realize the
coverage lately of how the US did wrong for supporting these degenerate Muslim
Albanians.
I have no doubt Greeks will make it to Aghia Sophia but will not pass Bosporus. The result
will be a Treaty that is a hybrid of the Treaty of Lausanne and the Treaty of Sevron. If the
Albanians decide to support the Turks by attacking Greeks in the North and in Northern
Epeirus they should expect annexation of Northern Epeirus to Greece. Erdogan bases his
bullying on Trump's incompetences and false friendship. This is why America is non existent
in any of these regions. If Trump wins the election it will be a long war and very
destabilized for the region. If Trump loses the war will be much much quicker. The outcome
will remain the same. The Russians will not allow Turkey to dictate in the area. Israel will
not allow Turkey to dictate in the area. Egypt will not allow Turkey to dictate in the area.
Not even European Union. UK is the questionable.
The West has Turkey's back otherwise the Turkish currency the Turkish Lira would have
collapsed by now under attacks from the City of London Freemasonic Talmudic bankers.
Remember what happened to the Russian Rouble when Russia annexed Crimea?
The Fed and the ECB in cahoots with the usual Talmudic interests, are supporting the
Turkish Lira and propping up the Erdogan regime.
There is NO OTHER explanation.
The Turks have NO foreign currency reserves, no net positive euro nor dollar reserves.
Their tourism industry and main hard currency generator has COLLAPSED (hotels are 95 percent
empty). The Turkish central bank has resorted to STEALING Turkish citizens'
dollar-denominated bank accounts via raising Turkish Banks' foreign currency reserve
requirements which the Turkish central bank SPENDS upon receipt to buy TLs and prop up the
Turkish Lira.
This is utter MADNESS and FRAUD and LARCENY.
London-based currency traders would be all over the Turkish Lira and/or Turkish bonds and
stocks by now UNLESS they had been instructed by the Fed and the ECB or the Talmudic bankers
that own and control both, to lay off the Turkish Lira.
Despite the noise on TV or the press,
BY DEFINITION,
Erdogan and the Turks are only doing the bidding of the TRIBE hence Erdogan has the
blessing and the protection of the people ZH censors the name.
BUT
You know how those parasites treat their host and what the inevitable outcome is,
right?
Indeed,
Erdogan and the Turks are being set up to be thrown under the proverbial bus at the
appropriate time.
The Neo-Ottoman Sultan has inadvertently set up his (ill begotten) country for eventual
destruction and partition. The Kurds will get a piece of it. Who knows, maybe even the
Armenians will be able to recover some bits of their ancient homeland.
Greeks in Constantinople? Nothing is impossible thanks to the hubris and chutzpah of
Erdogan who is purported to have "Amish" blood himself.
Know thyself , 5 hours ago
Good for the UK that they have left the EU.
Apart from the Greeks, who would be fighting for their lives and homeland, the only EU
forces capable of acting are the French. German does not have an operative army or navy;
Italy, Spain and Portugal have neglected their armed forces for many years, and the Baltic
and Eastern Nations are unlikely to want to get involved. The Netherlands have very good
forces but not many of them.
MPJones , 7 hours ago
We can live in hope. Erdogan certainly seems to need external enemies to hold the country
together. Let us also hope that Erdogan's adventurism finally wakes up Europe to the reality
of the ongoing Muslim invasion so that the necessary Muslim repatriation can get going
without the bloodshed which Islam's current strategy in Europe will otherwise inevitably lead
to.
Know thyself , 5 hours ago
The Turkish army is a conscript army. They will need to be whipped up with religious
fervour to perform. Otherwise they will look after their own skins.
But remember that the Turks put up a good defence in the Dardanelles in the First World
War.
HorseBuggy , 9 hours ago
What do you expect? He killed Russian fighter pilots and he survived, this empowers
terrorists like him. Those pilots were the only ones at that time fighting ISIS. May they
RIP.
Max.Power , 9 hours ago
Turkey is in a "proud" group of failed empires surrounded by nations they severely abused
less than 100 years ago.
Other two are Germany and Japan. Any military aggression from their side will be met with
rage by a coalition of nations.
US position will be irrelevant at this point, because local historical grievances will
overweight anything else.
monty42 , 10 hours ago
"Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when an armed revolt during the "Arab Spring" led
to the ouster and murder of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Political power in the country..."
Kinda gave yourself away there. The coordinated assault on Libya by the US, Britain,
France, and their Al-CiA-da allies on the ground resulted in the torture, sodomizing, and
murder of Gaddafi, as well as his son and grandchildren killed in bombings by the US.
Also, let's not forget that Turkey is still in NATO, and their actions in Syria were
alongside the US regime and terrorist proxies labeled "moderate rebels". The same terrorists
originally used in Libya, then shipped to destroy Syria, now flown back to Libya. The attempt
to paint all of those things as Turkey's actions alone is not honest.
When Turkey isn't in NATO anymore, let me know.
TheZeitgeist , 10 hours ago
Don't forget that Hiftar guy Turks are fighting in Libya was a CIA toadie living in
Virginia for a decade before they gave him his "chance" to among other things become a client
of the Russians apparently. Flustercluck of the 1st order everywhere one looks.
monty42 , 10 hours ago
Then they put on this whole production where it's the CIA guy or the terrorist puppet
regime they installed, so that the rulers win regardless of the outcome. The victims are
those caught up in their sick game.
GalustGulbenkyan , 9 hours ago
Turkish population has been recently getting ****** due to the economic contractions and
devaluation of the Lira. Once Turkey starts fighting against a real army the Turks will
realize that they are going to be ****** by larger dildos. In 1990's they sent thousands of
volunteers to Nagorno Karabagh to fight against irregular Armenian forces and we know how
that ended for them. Greeks and Egyptians are not the Kurds. Erdogan is a lot of hot air and
empty threats. You can't win wars with Modern drones which even Armenians have learned how to
jam and shoot down with old 1970's soviet tech.
Guentzburgh , 5 hours ago
Greece should be aligned with Russia, EU and USA are a bad choice that Greece will
regret.
Greece needs to pivot towards Russia which will open huge opportunities for both
countries
KoalaWalla , 6 hours ago
Greeks are bitter and prideful - they would not only defend themselves if attacked but
would counter attack to reclaim land they've lost. But, I don't know that Erdogan is clever
enough to realize this.
60s Man , 9 hours ago
Turkey is America's Mini Me.
currency , 3 hours ago
Erdogan is in Trouble at home declining economy and his radical conservative/Thug type
policies. Turks are moving away from him except the hard core radicals and conservatives. He
and his family are Corrupt - they rule with threats and use of THUGS. Sense his constant wars
may be over stretched Time for a Turkish Spring.
Time for US, Nato and etc. to say goodbye to this THUG
OrazioGentile , 7 hours ago
Turkey seems to be on a warpath to imploding from within. Erdogan looks like a desperate
despot with a failing economy, failing political clout, and failing modernization of his
Country. Like any despot, he has to rally the troops or he will literally be a dead man
walking.
HorseBuggy , 9 hours ago
The world fears loud obnoxious tyrants and Erdogan is the loudest tyrant since Hitler.
Remember how countries pandered to Hitler early on? Same thing is happening with Erdogan.
This terrorist will do a lot more damage than he has already before the world wakes
up.
By the time Hitler was done, 70 million people were dead, what will Erdogan cause?
OliverAnd , 9 hours ago
Turkey is not Germany. Not by far. Erdogan may be a bigger lunatic than Hitler, but Turkey
is not Germany of the 30's. Without military equipment/parts from Germany, Italy, Spain,
France, USA, and UK he cannot even build a nail. Economies are very integrated; he will be
disposed of very very quickly. He has been warned. He is running out of lives.
NewNeo , 9 hours ago
You should research a lot more. Turkey is a lot more power thank Nazi Germany of the
1930's. Turkey currently have brand new US made equipment. It even houses the nuclear arsenal
of NATO.
You should probably look at information from stratfor and George Friedman to give you a
better understanding.
The failed coupe a few years ago was because the lunatic had gone off the reservation and
was seen as a threat to the region. Obviously the bankers thought it in their benefit to keep
him going and tipped him off.
OliverAnd , 8 hours ago
Clearly the lockdown has hindered your already illiteracy. Turkey has modern US equipment.
Germany did not need US equipment. They made their own equipment; in fact both the US and
USSR used Grrman old tech to develop future tech.
The coup was designed by Erdogan to bring himself to full power. When this is all done he
will be responsible for millions of Turkish lives; after all he is not a Turk but a Muslim
Pontian.
Go back and watch the sad spectacle for yourself on C-SPAN's website, if you'd like. I
wouldn't recommend it. As a preview of coming attractions, Chairman Nadler -- who recently
dismissed the
serious, documented violence in Portland as
a "myth" -- concluded his harried Q&A with this: "Shame on you, Mr. Barr."
... Like many of his colleagues, Nadler repeatedly interrupted Barr's attempts to even begin
to respond to the accusations being hurled at him, then concluded his scripted performance with
a dramatic "shame on you!" And so it has gone. Alternating parcels of Five Minutes' Hate,
interspersed with Republicans playing defense and scoring their own points. Occasional actual
questions have slipped through the theater, but the overall episode has been largely
useless.
From Berr opning statement:
Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom
of the grave abuses involved in the bogus "Russiagate" scandal , many of the Democrats on
this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply
the President's factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions.
Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda
today.
So let me turn to that first. As I said in my confirmation hearing, the Attorney General
has a unique obligation. He holds in trust the fair and impartial administration of justice.
He must ensure that there is one standard of justice that applies to everyone equally and
that criminal cases are handled even-handedly, based on the law and the facts, and without
regard to political or personal considerations...
Indeed, it is precisely because I feel complete freedom to do what I think is right that
induced me serve once again as Attorney General. As you know, I served as Attorney General
under President George H. W. Bush.
After that, I spent many years in the corporate world. I was almost 70 years old, slipping
happily into retirement as I enjoyed my grandchildren. I had nothing to prove and had no
desire to return to government. I had no prior relationship with President Trump.
Watch the whole thing here , or read the full transcript
here . I'll leave you with this.
For much of the past year Trump has caused angst among allies by maintaining a consistent
position that Russia should be invited back into the Group of Seven (G7), making it as it was
prior to 2014, the G-8.
Russia had been essentially booted from the summit as relations with the Obama White House
broke down over the Ukraine crisis and the Crimea issue. Trump
said in August 2019 that Obama had been "outsmarted" by Putin.
But as recently as May when Germany followed by other countries rebuffed Trump's plans to
host the G7 at Camp David, Trump blasted the "very outdated group of countries"
and expressed that he planned to invite four additional non-member nations, mostly notably
Russia .
Germany has rejected a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to invite Russian President
Vladimir Putin back into the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies , German Foreign
Minister Heiko Maas said in a newspaper interview published on Monday.
Interestingly enough the Ukraine and Crimea issues were raised in the interview: "But Maas
told Rheinische Post that he did not see any chance for allowing Russia back into the G7 as
long as there was no meaningful progress in solving the conflict in Crimea as well as in
eastern Ukraine," according to the report.
"... By Dr. Karin Kneissl , who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs between 2017-2019. She is currently writing her book 'Die Mobilittswende' (Mobility in transition), to be published this summer. ..."
"... "humanitarian corridor" ..."
"... "good opposition" ..."
"... "humanitarian war," ..."
"... "worst mistake." ..."
"... "geopolitical commission." ..."
"... "community of the good ones" ..."
"... "Friends of Libya," ..."
"... "good opposition" ..."
"... "exclusive economic zone" ..."
"... "other actors" ..."
"... "mare nostrum" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
By
Dr.
Karin Kneissl
, who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs
between 2017-2019. She is currently writing her book 'Die Mobilittswende' (Mobility in transition), to be published this
summer.
A confrontation between the two NATO states France and Turkey continues to trouble the Mediterranean region; Egyptian forces
are mobilizing. And many other military players are continuing operations there.
In March 2011, during a hectic weekend, the French delegation to the UN
Security Council managed to convince all other member States of the Council to support Resolution 1973. It was all about a
"humanitarian
corridor"
for Benghazi, which was considered the
"good opposition"
by the
government of Nicolas Sarkozy. One of his whisperers was the controversial philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who supported a
French intervention. Levy, fond of the
"humanitarian war,"
found a congenial
partner in Sarkozy.
France was at root of crisis
Muammar Gaddafi had been received generously with all his tents in the park of
the Elyse, but suddenly he was coined the bad guy. The same had happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It was not the Arab
dictator who had changed; it was his usefulness to his allies. The Libyans had been distributing huge amounts of money in
Europe, in particular in Rome and Paris at various levels. In certain cases they knew too much. Plus, the Libyans had been
protecting the southern border of the Mediterranean for the European Union.
So, the French started the war in 2011, took the British on board, which made
the entire adventure look a bit like a replay of the Suez intervention of 1956, the official end of European colonial
interventions. A humanitarian intervention changed into regime change on day two, which was March 20, 2011. Various UN
Security Council members felt trapped by the French.
The US was asked to help, with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
many other advisers in favor of joining that war. President Obama, however, was reluctant but, in the end, he gave in. In one
of his last interviews while still in the White House, Obama stated that the aftermath of the war in Libya was his
"worst
mistake."
Libya ever since has mostly remained a dossier in the hands of administrative
officials in Washington, but not on the top presidential agenda anymore. This practice has been slightly shifting in the past
weeks. US President Donald Trump and France's Emmanuel Macron had a phone conversation on how to deescalate the situation
there. Trump also spoke on that very topic with Turkish President Recep T. Erdogan. Paris supports General Haftar in his war
against the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord, which is also supported by the European Union, in theory
The triggering momentum for the current rise in tensions was a naval clash
between French- and Turkish-supported vessels. Both nations are NATO members, and an internal alliance investigation is
underway. But France decided to pull out of the NATO naval operation that enforces the Libya arms embargo, set up during the
high-level Berlin conference on Libya in mid-January 2020. Without the French vessels it will be even more toothless than its
critics already deem it. This very initiative on Libya was the first test for the new European commission headed by Ursula von
der Leyen and claiming to be a
"geopolitical commission."
The EU strives to speak
the language of power but keeps failing in Libya, where two members, namely Italy and France, are pursuing very different
goals. Rome is anxious about migration while Paris cares more about the terrorist threat. But both have an interest in
commodities.
When Gaddafi was reintegrated in the
"community
of the good ones"
in early 2004 after a curious British legal twisting on the Lockerbie attack of December 1988, a
bonanza for oil and gas concessions started. The Italian energy company ENI and BP were among the first to have a big foot in
the door. I studied some of those contracts and asked myself why companies were ready to accept such terms. The answer was
maybe in the then rise in the oil price of oil and the proximity of Libya to the European market.
Interestingly, in September 2011, the very day of the opening ceremony of the
Paris conference dubbed
"Friends of Libya,"
a secret oil deal for the French
company Total was published by the French daily Libration. The
"good opposition"
had
promised the French an interesting range of oil concessions. Oil production continuously fell with the rise of the war,
attracting sponsors, militias and smugglers from all horizons. The situation in Libya has since been called 'somalization,'
but it would become even worse, since many more regional powers got involved in Libya than ever was the case in hunger-ridden
Somalia.
In exchange for its military assistance, Turkey recently gained access to
exploration fields off Libya's shores. Ankara had identified an
"exclusive economic
zone"
with the government in Tripoli, which disregards the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Actually, Israel made the
same bilateral demarcation with Cyprus about ten years ago, when Noble Energy started its delineation of blocs in the Levant
Basin. So Turkey is infringing on Greek and Cypriot territorial waters, while President Macron keeps reminding his EU
colleagues of the
"other actors"
in the Mediterranean Sea. Alas, it is nobody's
"mare
nostrum"
as it was 2,000 years ago in the Roman era. In principle, all states which have ratified the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea should simply comply with their legal obligations.
The crucial question remains: who has which leverage to de-escalate? Is it the
US President, who seemingly has acted more wisely on certain issues in recent times? Or will Russian and Turkish diplomacy be
able to negotiate and implement a truce? The tightrope-walk diplomacy between these last two countries is a most interesting
example of classical diplomacy: interest-based and focused; able to conduct hard-core relations even in times of direct
military confrontation and assassinations (remember the Russian Ambassador Karlov, shot by his Turkish bodyguard in Ankara in
December 2016?).
Meanwhile, yet another actor could move in to complicate everything even more.
On July 20, the Egyptian parliament voted unanimously for the deployment of the national army outside its borders, thereby
taking the risk of direct confrontation with Turkey in Libya. Egyptian troops would be mobilized in support of the eastern
forces of General Khalifa Haftar. Furthermore, Cairo would thereby compete even more obviously with Algeria, spending a
fortune on military control of its border with Libya. Algeria in the past could rely on US support in the region, but with the
gradual decline in US engagement in that part of the world, the country faces a fairly existential crisis.
There are currently two powers, among those involved in Libya, that can still
contain the next stage of a decade of proxy wars started by a French philosopher and various EU oil interests: Russia and the
USA.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Quizblorg
48 minutes ago
Does anything here make sense? No, because France this, Italy that is not how the world is run. The parties
involved here go far beyond countries. Also no mention of Saudi-Arabia/Israel. Who engineered the "Arab
Spring"?
"... International law is simply a weapon for the empire when it is invoked by it, and it is a useless farce for those the empire opposes. ..."
"... Interesting, but how is it possible to prosecute the US when it already dominates the world? If Hitler and the Germans had won the war there wouldn't have been a Nuremberg Trial. ..."
Editor's Note: As the United States approaches the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion,
much of the commentary is focusing on the Bush administration's "incompetence" in prosecuting
the war -- the failure to coimnit enough troops, the decision to disband the old Iraqi army
without adequate plans for training a new one, the highhandedness of the U.S. occupation.
But what about the legal and moral questions aiising from the unprovoked invasion of Iraq?
Should George W. Bush and his top aides be held accountable for violating the laws against
aggressive war that the United States and other Western nations promulgated in punishing senior
Nazis after World War II? Do the Nuremberg precedents that prohibit one nation from invading
another apply to Bush and American officials -- or are they somehow immune? Put bluntly, should
Bush and his inner circle face a war-crimes tiibunal for the tens of thousands of deaths in
Iraq?
Despite the present-day conventional wisdom in Washington that these are frivolous
questions, they actually go to the heart of the American commitment to the rule of law and the
concept that the law applies to everyone. In this guest essay, Peter Dyer looks at this larger
issue:
Just over six decades ago, the first Nuremberg Trial began. On Nov. 21, 1945, U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Robert Jackson opened the prosecution of 21 Germans for initiating a war of
aggression and for the crimes which flowed from this act. Now is a good time to reconsider some
of the history and issues involved in this momentous trial in the light of the invasion and
occupation of Iraq.
The trial lasted for over a year, culminating in verdicts of guilty of one, some, or all of
these crimes for 18 of the defendants. Eleven were sentenced to death.
While the Nuremberg trial is, these days, seldom invoked or discussed, it was, and still is,
in the words of Tribunal President Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, "unique in the history of the
jurisprudence of the world." Among the most groundbreaking aspects were the drive to formally
criminalize the three categories of crimes, and to establish responsibility by individuals for
these crimes.
These days, the Nuremberg Trial is chiefly remembered for the prosecution and punishment of
individuals for genocide. Equally important at the time, however, was the focus on wars of
aggression. Thus, the first sentence of Justice Jackson's opening statement: "The privilege of
opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave
responsibility."
Crimes against peace and the responsibility tor them were detined in Article 6, the heart of
the Charter of the IMT: "The tribunal.. .shall have the power to try and punish persons who..
.whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following
crimes...(a) Crimes Against Peace, namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war
of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances..
The desire was not only to punish individuals for crimes but to set an international moral
and legal precedent for the future. Indeed, before the end of 1946, the United Nations General
Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 95 (1), affirming '4he principles of International Law
recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal." And, of
course, the United Nations Charter forbids armed aggression and violations of the sovereignty
of any state by any other state, except in immediate self defense (Article 2, Sec. 4 and
Articles 39 and 51).
Invoking the precedent set by the United States and its allies at the Nuremberg trial in
1946, there can be no doubt that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a war of aggression.
There was no imminent threat to U.S. security nor to the security of the world. The invasion
violated the U.N. Charter as well as U.N. Security Council Resolution #1441.
The Nuremberg precedent calls for no less than the arrest and prosecution of those
individuals responsible for the invasion of Iraq, beginning with President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleeza
Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz.
Those who still justify the invasion of Iraq would do well to remember the words of Justice
Jackson: "Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it
finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling these grievances or
for altering these conditions."
And, for those who have difficulty visualizing American leaders as defendants in such a
trial, Justice Jackson's words again: "...(L)et me make clear that while this law is first
applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it
must condemn, aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in
judgment...This trial represents mankind's desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law
to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world's peace
and to commit aggression against the rights of their neighbors."
Peter Dyer is a machinist who moved with his wife from California to New Zealand in
2004.
Aaron , July 26, 2020 at 20:17
Well, it would have been up to one person to call for an investigation and prosecute any
illegal actions pertaining to the invasion – Barack Obama. Nobody in the Bush
administration would have done it, and it was something that Obama talked about alot in his
speeches in his campaign to be president.
Ana Márcia Vainsencher , July 25, 2020 at 17:47
Law is only applied to the USA "enemies", are they real, or no. Historically, the USA
loves to create enemies. It's the king of wars.
Sadly, we still entertain notions of war crimes, meaning that mass murders can be
conducted in legal ways that's the disease right there: all we have to do is make rules for
how to slaughter human beings according to a scholarly and civilized rule book written by our
most gifted and trained in the humanities experts and then wipe out as many humans as we need
to in a completely legal way hello?
How about a Geneva convention to write up rules of child
rape, wife beating, or maybe the only thing to get "civilized" people upset: pet
murdering?
Germany was only doing the politcal economic business of capital, as were its enemies, except
for Russia which played the greater role in the defeat of "evil" nazi
capitalism..anti-democratic capitalism is in the business of war and it will take democratic
communism to bring about peace and global sanity before it destroys humanity.
Andrew Thomas , July 25, 2020 at 13:25
It has been clear for several decades that Nuremberg was not a precedent. It was -- and this
is very difficult to actually write out -- victor's justice, which is exactly what the Nazis
and their sympathizers said it was then. The US has been "projecting power" around the world
ever since in violation of the spirit of the legal terms of the international order it was
instrumental in creating post World War II; and its clear provisions at least since Reagan
told the World Court to drop dead re: Nicaragua vs. US.
Other more informed readers may have
much earlier examples. International law is simply a weapon for the empire when it is invoked
by it, and it is a useless farce for those the empire opposes.
Robert Sinuhe , July 25, 2020 at 10:34
Interesting, but how is it possible to prosecute the US when it already dominates the world? If Hitler and the Germans
had won the war there wouldn't have been a Nuremberg Trial. Principles are morals and just but power trumps all.
USA: The slippery slope of egalitarian racism by Thierry Meyssan
The reactions to the murder of black George Flyod by a white policeman do not refer to the
history of slavery in the United States, but - like the systemic opposition to President Trump-
to a profound problem in Anglo-Saxon culture: Puritan fanaticism. The domestic violence that
rocked this country during the two civil wars of Independence and Secession must be remembered
in order to understand current events and prevent their resurgence. Beware: in the United
States, the political class now preaches egalitarian racism. All equal, but separate. VOLTAIRE
NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 14 JULY 2020 عربي DEUTSCH
ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ ESPAÑOLFRANÇAIS ITALIANO PORTUGUÊS
TÜRKÇE
It could be humour, but unfortunately it is a puritanical slogan to be taken at face
value: "Black Men are an endangered species".
The Anglo-Saxon Puritans
About four hundred members of the Church of England fled their country where they were
considered fanatics. They took refuge in Leiden, Holland, where they were able to live
according to the Calvinist tradition, or more precisely the Puritan interpretation of
Christianity. Probably at the request of King James I, they sent two groups to the Americas to
fight against the Spanish Empire. The first founded what was to become the United States, the
second was lost in Central America.
Later, the Puritans took power in England with Lord Cromwell. They beheaded the Papist King
Charles I, established an egalitarian Commonwealth and colonized Ireland, massacring Catholics
en masse. This bloodthirsty experiment was short-lived and discredited for a long time the idea
of a General Interest ( Res Publica ) in the eyes of the English.
The 35 Pilgrim Fathers set out from Leiden, stopped in England, and then crossed the ocean
on the Mayflower . They arrived in North America in 1620 to practice their religion
freely. During their voyage, they signed a Covenant in which they vowed to establish a model
society (strict observance of the Calvinist faith and cult, intense community life, and
unfailing social and moral discipline). By creating the Colony of Plymouth, they hoped to build
the "New Jerusalem" after fleeing from the "Pharaoh" (James I) and crossing the "Red Sea" (the
Atlantic). After a year, they thanked God for their epic, which is commemorated each year as
Thanksgiving. [ 1 ] They established their capital
city 60 kilometers north, in Boston. Their community veiled its women, practiced public
confessions and corporal punishment.
The logo of the very powerful Pilgrim's Society: the Pilgrim Father is depicted alongside
the British lion and the American eagle.
These events are not only myths that every American should know, they shape the political
system of the USA. Eight out of 45 presidents (including the Bushes) are direct descendants of
the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers". Despite the arrival of tens of millions of immigrants and
institutional appearances, their ideology remained in power for four centuries, until the
election of Donald Trump. A very closed club, Pilgrim's Sociey, brought together, under the
authority of the English monarch, very high British and American personalities. It set up the
"Special Relationship" between London and Washington and, among other things, provided many
secretaries and advisers to President Obama.
Many ceremonies planned this year for the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower have been
cancelled due to the fight against the coronavirus epidemic, in particular the conference that
the former British National Security Advisor was to give at Pilgrim's Society. Bad tongues
assure that the epidemic will end the day after the US presidential election, if Donald Trump
loses it, and that the festivities can then take place.
There are two cultures that have always been opposed in the United States among Christians:
Calvinists or Puritans on the one hand, and Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans on the other.
While some "denominations" among the eight hundred US churches resolutely line up on one side,
most are crossed by both because Puritanism has no defined theological corpus. It is rather a
way of thinking.
The War of Independence began in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party. Its first actor was John
Adams, another direct descendant of one of the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers" and second president of the
United States. While the call for independence was made by the political journalist Thomas
Paine based on religious arguments although he himself did not believe in anything.
In a way, the War of Independence was a continuation in the Americas of Lord Cromwell's
British Civil War (the "Great Rebellion"). This conflict would resurface a third time with the
Civil War, which, it should be remembered, had nothing to do with slavery (both sides practised
it at the beginning of the war and both sides repealed it during the war to hire former slaves
into their armies).
The Puritans lost in England with Cromwell's Republic, but won the next two times in the
United States. Historian Kevin Phillips, who was Republican electoral adviser to Republican
Richard Nixon (descendant of a brother of one of the 35 "Pilgrim Fathers"), has studied this
conflict at length over the centuries. [ 2 ] It is on the basis of this data
that he imagined the strategy of "Law and Order" in the face of the segregationist Democrat
George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election; a strategy that Donald Trump has taken up
again for the 2020 election.
All this to say that appearances are deceiving. The dividing lines are not where the rest of
the world thinks they are.
The Puritans have always supported absolute equality, but only among
Christians. They long forbade Jews from entering the civil service and massacred the Indians
they claimed to love. During the American Civil War, they extended their egalitarianism to
blacks (unlike the Puritans in southern Africa, who defended apartheid to the end), giving rise
to the false myth of a war against slavery. Today, they defend the idea that humanity is
divided between equal and, if possible, separate races. They are still reluctant to call them
interracial marriages. The Puritans place lying at the bottom of their scale of values. It cannot
be for them a ruse, but always the worst of crimes, far more serious than robbery and murder.
In the seventeenth century, they punished with the whip for lying to a pastor for any reason.
They established laws that still punish lying to a federal official for any reason.
US
Evangelism
With time, and particularly in the 19th century, another current of thought arose within
American Christianity: evangelism. These are Christians of all denominations who try to get
closer to the original Christianity of which they know little. So they rely on the sacred
texts. Like the Puritans, the Evangelicals are fundamentalists, i.e. they give the Scriptures
the role of a divine word and interpret them while refusing any contextualization of the texts.
But they are much more pragmatic. On everything, they have a position of principle, but when
faced with a problem, they act in conscience and not according to the rules of their
community.
It is very easy to make fun of the grotesque convictions of the Evangelicals against the
theory of evolution, but this is of little importance and they abandon it when necessary. It is
much more significant, but unfortunately rarer, to denounce the puritanical vision of a
humanity divided into distinct, equal, but separate races. Yet this has serious consequences on
a daily basis.
The Puritans remained the masters of U.S. politics until 1997, when Libertine President Bill
Clinton issued an executive order banning all expressions of religious faith in federal
institutions. The result was a shift in religion from the Administration to the private sector.
All major corporations accepted prayer groups in their workplaces. This shift favored the
public emergence of Evangelicals at the expense of Puritans.
During the riots outside the White House, President Trump went to St. John's Episcopal
Church to present himself, Bible in hand, as the defender of the religious beliefs of all
Christians in the face of Puritan fanaticism.
The Return of Puritan Fanaticism
The conflict between the Puritans and the rest of society is today taking a radical and
religious turn. It opposes two mentalities, one idealist, egalitarian within their community
and fanatical, the other sometimes even more extravagant, agreeing on inequalities, but
realistic.
Puritan Hillary Clinton hesitated to become a Methodist pastor after her failure in the
presidential election [ 3 ]. She sinned a lot (her affair with
Vince Foster), was punished by God (her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky) repented (within
the Pentagon Family [ 4 ]) and was saved. She is sure that
she was chosen by God and takes pride in her violence against non-Christian peoples. She
supports all wars against the "enemies of America" and hopes to see the return of Christ.
On the contrary, Donald Trump shows no interest in theology, has only an approximate
knowledge of the Bible and a summary faith. He has sinned as much as anyone else, but
boasts of what he has achieved rather than repenting of his sins in public. He doubts himself
and compensates for his feeling of inferiority with excessive egotism. He loves to compete with
his enemies, but does not want to destroy them. In any case, he embodies the will to restore
the greatness of their country ("Make America Great Again!") rather than to pursue wars always
and everywhere, which makes him the champion of the Evangelicals against the Puritans. He
offers the opportunity for Christians to reform themselves rather than convert the world.
In the 2016 election campaign, I asked the question, "Will the United States reform or tear
itself apart? " [ 5 ] In my view, only Donald Trump
could allow the USA to continue as a nation, while Hillary Clinton would provoke a civil war
and probably the dissolution of the country on the model of the end of the USSR. What has
happened since the death of George Flyod shows that I was not mistaken.
Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign.
Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party supporters are imposing their ideology. They fight
against lies and destroy statues like their Puritan ancestors burned the Salem witches. They
develop an absurd reading of their own society, denying social conflicts and interpreting
inequalities only in terms of so-called distinct human races. They disarm the local police and
force "white" personalities to apologize in public for enjoying an invisible privilege.
In the Russian case, the discontinuation of the prosecution of former National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn and the presidential pardon granted to Donald Trump's former advisor,
Roger Stone, sparked angry protests from Puritans. Neither man harmed anyone, but they dared to
lie to the FBI to keep him out of the White House.
The mayor of Minneapolis (the town of George Flyod) was publicly humiliated for refusing to
disband the "racist" city police. While Seattle City Council has just cut its city police
budget in half. This does not bother the upper social classes living in private residences, but
deprives those who cannot afford private security guards.
The Associated Press , then the New Yok Times , the Los Angeles Times
and soon almost all US media, decided to write Black with a capital letter when
referring to "race" [ 6 ], but not White in the same
way. Indeed, the fact of writing White with a capital letter is a distinctive sign of
the white supremacists [ 7 ].
The Pentagon considered renaming its military bases with the names of southern personalities
accused of being "racist" and sent an e-mail to all civilian and military personnel of the US
Army denouncing as "extreme right" the claim that there is only one human race. Although these
initiatives have provoked a strong reaction from the trumped-up GIs and have failed, they mark
a very dangerous escalation [ 8 ].
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from
jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse
therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer
asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his
employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended
up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public
swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a
fine.
At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he
became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy
papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar
on a project to
uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation --
something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like
Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr.
Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the
time.)
"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in
2011.
"He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support
his research."
Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with Christopher Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two
reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings
President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott
previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.
We've been doing it since the Sixties, and it's bad for the world. People protest against
racism and police brutality in Paris on June 6, 2020, as part of 'Black Lives Matter' worldwide
protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd. (Photo
by Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Why is a public school in France
renaming itself after Rosa Parks? Let us stipulate that Rosa Parks was an admirable lady.
Why should the Grand Est regional council, when it consolidated the Lycée Jean-Baptiste
Colbert and the Lycée Sophie Germain, choose to rename the combined school not after the
17th-century statesmen, not after the pioneering female mathematician, but after an activist
from Alabama who had nothing to do with France?
The spread of George Floyd protests around the globe has a lot of people asking why the
death of a man in Minneapolis should lead to statues being toppled in Europe. The answer is
that American racial politics have colonized the rest of the planet. The answer to why
that happened is partly because we deliberately exported it.
A New York Times article this month headlined " A Racial
Awakening in France " explains that the U.S. embassy in Paris has made minority outreach
part of its mission. Embassy programs have sent French anti-racism activists on exchange trips
to the U.S. and funded training programs for them in "managing ethnic diversity." One program
promoted affirmative action, "a taboo concept in France," the Times notes, since France
famously does not even collect any government data based on race.
American outreach to French activists has indeed been energetic, with consequences for
French politics. One beneficiary, Tara Dickman, was sent to Chicago to learn community
organizing and returned to start a campaign against racial profiling, using decidedly American
methods such as lawsuits against the government. "Within a year, police profiling went from a
sort of topic that didn't exist to a major political stake," Dickman said. "Fourteen people
went to court to sue the state, and then it became a major issue in the elections, there are
three law proposals now and this is really thanks to this trip."
The broader goal of this outreach is to introduce into France the American approach to
racial problems, our color-conscious multiculturalism as opposed to their colorblind
universalism. One of the activists quoted by the Times , Rokhaya Diallo, has said that
the problem with France is that "the country continues to view racism from a moral and
individual standpoint. In doing so, it excludes the possibility of enacting broad policies that
can tackle the structural problem of racism."
Well, yes. That's the point of being French. Viewing things from a "moral and individual
standpoint" is at the heart of their version of the Enlightenment. In his stern televised
address of June 14, President Emmanuel Macron condemned "separatists" for trying to use the
current unrest to promote " communautarisme ," the breaking up of France into subgroups.
However well that method might work in other places, it is fundamentally contrary to French
traditions.
25 Jul, 2020 21:42
/ Updated 11 hours ago
Get short URL
Screenshot Twitter/ @WeAreSinclair
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Sinclair Broadcast Group, the US' largest local news conglomerate, has canceled an interview with a coronavirus conspiracy
theorist, after CNN whipped up an online outrage campaign against the conservative broadcaster.
In a segment due to air this
weekend, 'America This Week' host Eric Bolling sat down with Dr Judy Mikovits, a disgraced scientist who believes that the
coronavirus pandemic was orchestrated by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr Anthony Fauci and Bill
Gates to push vaccines on the population a theory she set out in the documentary film 'Plandemic,' which has been effectively
censored off the internet.
Bolling called Mikovits' claims "hefty," and brought on medical contributor Dr Nicole Saphier to refute them, but CNN
claimed
the
host didn't push back hard enough against Mikovits' "baseless conspiracy theory," and hammered Bolling for allowing Mikovits to
"continue to make her case."
As CNN's article circulated
on Twitter on Saturday morning, the network's liberal audience called for a boycott of Sinclair. The broadcaster initially stood
by its decision to run the segment, declaring that
"at no juncture are we aligning with or
endorsing the viewpoints of Dr Mikovits."
However, within an hour,
Sinclair bent the knee and pulled the episode from the air until additional content could be added to counter Mikovits.
"All
stations have been notified not to air this and will instead be re-airing last week's episode in its place,"
Sinclair
tweeted. For good measure, the company added
"we valiantly support Dr Fauci and the work he
and his team are doing to further prevent the spread of Covid-19."
Sinclair is an incredibly
powerful organization to have been swayed by an online outrage campaign. The company and its partner organizations own nearly 300
local TV stations around the country, and reach 40 percent of American households.
Proponents of the boycott
celebrated their victory on Twitter, declaring that
"we shamed them into doing the right
thing."
Amid a recent upsurge in
'cancel culture,' few campaigns have brought a company to its knees as fast as Saturday's blitz by CNN. Similar campaigns have
been mounted against Fox News'
Tucker
Carlson
with an advertiser boycott and attempts by journalists to doxx his family among the most recent moves, but Carlson
remains on the air and unapologetic.
For Bolling and his
colleagues at Sinclair on the other hand, it's back to the studio to reshoot their offending segment at CNN's behest.
"... Attempting to neutralise a global competitor is the main goal of Americans. Neutralising China's rapid, dynamic development is the essence of the American strategy ..."
Recap from today's Global Times where the argument is to continue to stay the
course and counterpunch in the typical martial arts fashion, as this op/ed from today's Global
Times says :
"Chinese analysts said Sunday the key for China to handle the US offensive is to focus on
its own development and insist on continued reform and opening-up to meet the increasing
needs of Chinese people for better lives. In the upcoming three months, before the November
US presidential election, the China-US relationship is in extreme danger as the Trump
administration is likely to launch more aggressions to force China to retaliate, they
said."
Stay the course; Trump's shit is just an election ploy. However,
"The US' posturing is serving to distract from domestic pressure over President Trump's
failure in handling the pandemic when Trump is seeking reelection this year, Chinese
observers said. However, the Trump administration's China stance still reflects bipartisan
consensus among US elites, so China should not expect significant change in US policy toward
China even if there is a power transition in November, which means China should prepare
itself for a long fight."
Don't stray from the Long Game. An international conference was held that I'll try to get
a link for. Here's GT's summation:
"According to the Xinhua News Agency on Saturday, international scholars said at a virtual
meeting on the international campaign against a new cold war on China on Saturday that
'aggressive statements and actions by the US government toward China poses a threat to world
peace and a potential new cold war on China goes against the interests of humanity.'
"The meeting gathered experts from a number of countries including the US, China, Britain,
India, Russia and Canada.
"Experts attending the meeting issued a statement calling upon the US to step back from
this threat of a cold war and also from other dangerous threats to world peace it is engaged
in.
"The reason why international scholars are criticizing the US rather than China is that
they can see how restrained China remains and the sincerity of China to settle the tension by
dialogue, even though the US is getting unreasonably aggressive, said Chinese experts.
"Washington has made a huge mistake as it has chosen the wrong target - China - to be 'the
common enemy or common fear' to reshape its declining leadership among the West. Right now,
the common enemy of humanity is COVID-19, and this is why its new cold war declaration
received almost no positive responses from other major powers and even raised concern, said
Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, on
Sunday."
Today's Global Timeslead editorial asked most of the
questions everyone else's asking:
"People are asking: How far will the current China-US confrontation keep going? Will a new
cold war take shape? Will there be military conflicts and will the possible clashes evolve
into large-scale military confrontation between the two?
"Perhaps everyone believes that China does not want a new cold war, let alone a hot war.
But the above-mentioned questions have become disturbing suspense because no one knows how
wild the ambitions the US ruling team has now, and whether American and international
societies are capable of restraining their ambitions."
IMO, the editor's conclusions are quite correct:
"The world must start to act and do whatever it can to stop Washington's hysteria in its
relations with China.
"Right now, it is no longer a matter of whether China-US ties are in freefall, but whether
the line of defense on world peace is being broken through by Washington. The world must
not be hijacked by a group of political madmen. The tragedies in 1910s and 1930s must not be
repeated again ."
Trump is elevated to the same plane as Hitler and Mussolini, and the Outlaw US Empire is
now the equivalent of Nazi Germany and the Fascist drive to rule the world--a well
illustrated trend that's been ongoing since 1991 that only those blinded by propaganda aren't
capable of seeing. I think it absolutely correct for China to focus its rhetoric on the
Outlaw US Empire's utter failure to control COVID, which prompts some probing questions made
from the first article:
"Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan
University, told the Global Times on Sunday that there is wide consensus among the
international community that the COVID-19 pandemic is the most urgent challenge that the
world should deal with. Whether on domestic epidemic control or international cooperation,
the US has done almost nothing right compared to China's efforts to assist others and its
successful control measures for domestic outbreaks .
"In response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's 'new Iron Curtain speech' at the
Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Thursday declaring a new cold war against China, Shen
said, ' We can also ask 'is Pompeo an ally of coronavirus?' Because he wants to confuse
the world to target the wrong enemy amid the tough fight against the pandemic, so that the
virus can kill more people, especially US people, since his country is in the worst
situation .'
Shen said, 'In 2018, US Vice President Mike Pence already made a speech which the media
saw as a new 'Iron Curtain speech,' and in 2020, Pompeo made a similar speech again, which
means their cold war idea is not popular and brings no positive responses from its allies, so
they need to try time and again. Of course, they will fail again.'" [My Emphasis]
Wow! The suggestion that Trump, Pompeo, Pence, and company want to "kill more people,
especially US people" seems to be proven via their behavior which some of us barflies
recognize and have discussed. Now that notion is out in the public, internationally. You
don't need Concentration Camps and ovens when the work can be done via the dysfunctional
structure of your economy and doing nothing about the situation.
Shen provides the clincher, what Gruff, myself, and others have said here:
"'So if we want to win this competition that was forced by the US, we must focus on our
own development and not get distracted. The US is not afraid of a cold war with us, it is
afraid of our development .'" [My Emphasis]
My synopsis of both articles omitted some additional info, so do please click the links to
read them fully.
Sputnik offers
this analysis of the China/Outlaw US Empire issue , where I found this bit quite apt from
"Alexey Biryukov, senior adviser at the Centre for International Information Security,
Science and Technology Policy (CIIS) MGIMO-University":
"'The US is fighting with a country that is developing very rapidly, gaining power,
increasing its competitiveness in areas where previously there was undeniably US leadership.
Attempting to neutralise a global competitor is the main goal of Americans. Neutralising
China's rapid, dynamic development is the essence of the American strategy .
Meanwhile, China is interested in developing friendly relations with all countries.
Recently, it presented the idea of building a community of common destiny for humanity.
That's what Sino-American relations should be built around . It would seem that the
pandemic should have brought people together around the idea of building a prosperous world
for all, not just someone. But the Americans didn't understand that: they started looking for
the guilty ones. This is the favourite strategy of Anglo-Saxons, Americans including, to
look for the guilty . As a result, they found their main competitor – China'". [My
Emphasis]
That is the "guilty ones" that aren't within the Outlaw US Empire. Many more opinions are
provided in the article, but they all revolve around the one theme of Trump's actions being
motivated by the election and his morbidly poor attempts to corral COVID.
Neocons are by nature paranoid. It's their 'circle the wagons', 'build walls' mentality.
In their simple view, the world is neatly divided into friends/toadies who obey you and
enemies who don't. And they LOVE big government
Naturally compromise, 'give-and-take' and free trade is OUT with that
ParkAveFlasher , 1 hour ago
I disagree that it's paranoia. It's an overt power grab on a global scale.
meditate_vigorously , 50 minutes ago
Neocons AKA Trotskyites only care about making war. Perpetual state of war is how they
keep generations weak.
Wars take the best and strongest men and
-kill them
-leave them changed or damaged
-impair them from making strong families
This is probably more important in destroying the family unit than all the efforts of
feminism and the Frankfort school combined. Generation after generation is damaged and
crippled by one war after another.
War lowers the birth rate, which is why (((Neocons))) are all too happy to make up the
deficit with immigrants of different races and ethnicity to further weaken their host nations
so that they can fill the power vacuum. The "baby boom" was less about a birthrate rebound
from WW2 and everything about improvements in agriculture and a booming economy due to no
competition, while women were still in their traditional and natural roles.
joyful-feet , 59 minutes ago
The world is finally waking up to taking steps to address to shine light on and address
the relentless systematic Chinese espionage network. While this should have happened 20 years
ago, the only question is will the world do enough to shatter it completely and take steps to
ensure it doesn't happen again.
Just read some of the page after page of convictions and prison sentences of Chinese
nationals committing espionage against the USA and these are just the fraction of those who
got caught.
Not a chance. Too many people's livelihood depends on war. From billionaires to the person
who putting bullets in boxes. Anyone who advocate no war will end up in prison for colluding
with the Russians.
monty42 , 16 hours ago
Colluding with the Reds, Terrorists, Chicoms, Covid...pick an enemy. That's how it works.
They roll out their psyops and make sure to inform you up front that those who question the
narrative are in the enemy column.
uhland62 , 14 hours ago
They've done it with us since 1970.
A_Huxley , 15 hours ago
Contractors like their world travel and over time.
Too many US camps, forts, bases around the world to keep working.
quanttech , 13 hours ago
The single most powerful voice against the wars in the last two years has been Tucker
Carlson - and look at what they're doing to him.
optimator , 8 hours ago
A vibrant economy can't tell the difference between manufacturing a submarine or a
refrigerator.
monty42 , 16 hours ago
Honor your oath and the wars for empire will stop. A standing army is only viable through
the Constitution for a short term defense of the States, not for endless wars of aggression
and invasion for the spread of a military empire.
quanttech , 13 hours ago
Correct. Lt. Ehren Watada refused his illegal orders to deploy to Iraq. His case was
dismissed, and he was simply discharged. Today he co-owns a restaurant in Vegas.
THERE'S LITERALLY NO PENALTY FOR FOLLOWING THE LAW.
alexcojones , 16 hours ago
As an old veteran, I've spent 50 years atoning some how, some way, myself.
"Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien wrote: "There should be a law . . . If you support a war, if
you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on
the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the
blood." As every old veteran knows, the day that happens is the day warfare ends forever,
when bullets are fattening rather than fatal to your health.
Heinlein's proposal in Starship Troopers - that only combat troops be given the franchise
to vote - is a concept with merit
ConanTheContrarian1 , 8 hours ago
I don't know that we have to make atonement. The official government position that we were
invited there to help the legitimate government of South VietNam still holds water. The
Nguyen and Tranh had been at war with each other for centuries until the French took over,
and the war was simply a continuation that the Dogpile Democrats of the day didn't see as
anything other than a way to make money. Just because you reject rightwing propaganda, don't
fall for the leftwing either.
Atlana99 , 16 hours ago
We need thousands of hardcore street activists to print these fliers out and place them on
car windshields all across America:
Steele's "Primary Subsource" Was Alcoholic Russian National Who Worked With Trump
Impeachment Witness At Brookings by Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2020 - 16:50
Twitter Facebook Reddit EmailPrint
The mysterious "Primary Subsource" that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend
his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst -- Igor "Iggy"
Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal
baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele , according to
congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use
the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under
counter-espionage surveillance.
The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to
dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and
convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the
Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according
to criminal records.
Fiona Hill: She worked at the Brookings Institution with dossier "Primary Subsource" Igor
"Iggy" Danchenko (top photo), and testified against President Trump last year during
impeachment hearings. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney
Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy
attorney general in 2017.
Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings - the
preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington - where he struck up a friendship with Fiona
Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year's impeachment
hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a
"creative" researcher.
Hill is also close to his boss Steele, who she'd known since 2006 . She met with the former
British intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign and later received a raw, unpublished
copy of the now-debunked dossier.
It does not appear the FBI asked Danchenko about his criminal past or state of sobriety when
agents interviewed him in January 2017 in a failed attempt to verify the accuracy of the
dossier, which the bureau did only after agents used it to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump
campaign adviser Carter Page. The opposition research was farmed out by Steele, working for
Clinton's campaign, to Danchenko, who was paid for the information he provided.
A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that
key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a "well-developed conspiracy of
cooperation" with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk
among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.
The FBI memo is heavily redacted and blacks out the name of Steele's Primary Subsource. But
public records and congressional sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirm the
identity of the source as Danchenko.
In the memo, the FBI notes that Danchenko said that he and one of his dossier sources "drink
heavily together." But there is no apparent indication the FBI followed up by asking Danchenko
if he had an alcohol problem, which would cast further doubt on his reliability as a source for
one of the most important and sensitive investigations in FBI history.
The FBI declined comment. Attempts to reach Danchenko by both email and phone were
unsuccessful.
The Justice Department's watchdog recently debunked the dossier's most outrageous
accusations against Trump, and faulted the FBI for relying on it to obtain secret wiretaps. The
bureau's actions, which originated under the Obama administration, are now the subject of a
sprawling criminal investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham.
Rod Rosenstein: In an odd twist, a 2013 drunkenness case against Danchenko was prosecuted by
then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap
warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
One of the wiretap warrants was signed in 2017 by Rosenstein, who also that year appointed
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and signed a "scope" memo giving him wide latitude to
investigate Trump and his surrogates. Mueller relied on the dossier too. As it happens,
Rosenstein also signed motions filed in one of Danchenko's public intoxication cases, according
to the documents obtained by RCI.
In March 2013 -- three years before Danchenko began working on the dossier -- federal
authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with several misdemeanors, including
"drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety
seat," according to a court
filing . The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name
appears in the docket filings .
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from
jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse
therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer
asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his
employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended
up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public
swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a
fine.
At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he
became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy
papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar
on a project to
uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation --
something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like
Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr.
Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the
time.)
"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in
2011.
"He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support
his research."
Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with Christopher Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two
reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings
President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott
previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.
Talbott's brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, another old Clinton hand who disseminated his own
dossier in 2016 that echoed many of the same lurid and unsubstantiated claims against Trump.
Through a mutual friend at the State Department, Steele obtained a copy of Shearer's dossier
and reportedly submitted it to the FBI to help corroborate his own.
In August 2016, Talbott personally called Steele, based in London, to offer his own input on
the dossier he was compiling from Danchenko's feeds. Steele phoned Talbott just before the
November election, during which Talbott asked for the latest dossier memos to distribute to top
officials at the State Department. After Trump's surprise win, the mood at Brookings turned
funereal and Talbott and
Steele strategized about how they "should handle" the dossier going forward.
During the Trump transition, Talbott encouraged Hill to leave Brookings and take
a job in the White House so she could be "one of the adults in the room" when Russia and
Putin came up. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European
and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.
She left the White House just before a National Security Council detailee who'd worked with
her, Eric Ciaramella, secretly huddled with Democrats in Congress and
alleged Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden and
his son in exchange for military aid. Democrats soon held hearings to impeach Trump, calling
Hill as one of their star witnesses.
Congressional investigators are taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has
emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is
prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Gryffindor/Wikimedia
Under questioning by Republican staff, Hill disclosed that Steele reached out to her for
information about a mysterious individual, but she claimed she could not recall his name. She
also said she couldn't remember the month she and Steele met.
"He had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other
individual, who actually I don't even recall now, who he could approach about some business
issues," Hill told the House
last year in an Oct. 14 deposition taken behind closed doors.
Congressional investigators are reviewing her testimony, while taking a closer look at
tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal.
Registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from
lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Specifically, investigators want to know if
Brookings played any role in the development of the dossier.
"Their 501(c)(3) status should be audited, because they are a major player in the dossier
deal," said a congressional staffer who has worked on the investigation into alleged Russian
influence.
Hill, who returned to Brookings as a senior fellow in January, could not be reached for
comment. Brookings did not respond to inquiries.
Ghost Employee
As a former member of Britain's secret intelligence service, Steele hadn't traveled to
Russia in decades and apparently had no useful sources there . So he relied entirely on
Danchenko and his supposed "network of subsources," which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered
was nothing more than a "social circle."
It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI's Washington field
office - held just days after Trump was sworn into office - that any Russian insights he may
have had were strictly academic.
Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was "clueless" when Steele
hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign
manager.
Christopher Steele, former British spy, leaving a London court this week in a libel case
brought against him by a Russian businessman. Dossier source Danchenko's drinking pals fed him
a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" for pay -- which Steele, in turn, further embellished
with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence." (Victoria Jones/PA via
AP)
Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists,
drinking buddies (including one who'd been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old
girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI's January
2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip
for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" -- which Steele, in turn,
further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence."
Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the
information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that
it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.
One of Danchenko's sources was nothing more than an anonymous voice on the other end of a
phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.
Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not
identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier,
Steele labeled this source "an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential
candidate Donald Trump," and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI
relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump
adviser Carter Page -- including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were
involved in "the DNC email hacking operation."
Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July
2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did
receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.
"There was not any verbal communications with him," he insisted. "I'm positive, 100%,
nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said."
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Millian provided RCI part of the email, which was written mostly in Russian. Contact
information at the bottom of the email reads:
Igor Danchenko
Business Analyst
Target Labs Inc.
8320 Old Courthouse Rd, Suite 200
Vienna, VA 22182
+1-202-679-5323
At the time, Danchenko listed Target Labs, an IT recruiter run by ethnic-Russians, as an
employer on his resumé. But technically, he was not a paid employee there. Thanks to a
highly unusual deal Steele arranged with the company, Danchenko was able to use Target Labs as
an employment front.
It turns out that in 2014, when Danchenko first started freelancing regularly for Steele
after losing his job at a Washington strategic advisory firm, he set out to get a security
clearance to start his own company. But drawing income from a foreign entity like Steele's
London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, would hurt his chances.
So Steele agreed to help him broker a special "arrangement" with Target Labs, where a
Russian friend of Danchenko's worked as an executive, in which the company would bring
Danchenko on board as an employee but not put him officially on the payroll. Danchenko would
continue working for Steele and getting paid by Orbis with payments funneled through Target
Labs. In effect, Target Labs served as the "contract vehicle" through which Danchenko was paid
a monthly salary for his work for Orbis, the FBI memo reveals.
Though Danchenko had a desk available to use at Target Labs, he did most of his work for
Orbis from home and did not take direction from the firm. Steele continued to give him
assignments and direct his travel. Danchenko essentially worked as a ghost employee at Target
Labs.
Asked about it, a Target Labs spokesman would only say that Danchenko "does not work with us
anymore."
Brian Auten: He wrote the memo on the FBI's interview with the Primary Subsource, which is
silent about Danchenko's criminal record. Patrick Henry College
Some veteran FBI officials worry Moscow's foreign intelligence service may have planted
disinformation with Danchenko and his network of sources in Russia. At least one of them,
identified only as "Source 5" in the FBI memo, was described as having a Russian "kurator," or
handler.
"There are legions of 'connected' Russians purveying second- and third-hand -- and often
made-up -- due diligence reports and private intelligence," said former FBI assistant
director Chris Swecker. "Putin's intelligence minions use these people well to plant
information."
Danchenko has scrubbed his social media account. He told the FBI he deleted all his
dossier-related electronic communications, including texts and emails, and threw out his
handwritten notes from conversations with his subsources.
In the end, Steele walked away from the dossier debacle with at least $168,000, and
Danchenko earned a large undisclosed sum.
The FBI interview memo, which is silent about Danchenko's criminal record, was written by
FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, who was called out in the Justice inspector
general report for ignoring inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and outright falsehoods in
the dossier he was supposed to verify.
It was also Auten's duty to vet Steele and his sources. Auten sat in on the meetings with
Danchenko and also separate ones with Steele. He witnessed firsthand the countless red flags
that popped up from their testimony. Yet Auten continued to tout their reliability as sources,
and give his blessing to agents to use their dossier as probable cause to renew FISA
surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
As RCI first reported, Auten teaches a national security course at a Washington-area college
on the ethics of such spying .
By Graham Dockery, Irish journalist, commentator, and writer at RT. Previously based in
Amsterdam, he wrote for DutchNews and a scatter of local and national newspapers.
Dark, incisive, and anti-authoritarian, George Carlin was a rebel until death. Now the woke
left have claimed him as their own, a figurehead in their anti-Trump crusade. But George's
legacy isn't one of feelgood social justice.
"They call it the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it,"
Carlin sneered in a famous 2005 monologue. In a devastating broadside against politicians, the
media, corporate interests, and the "dumb ass motherf**kers" who remain ignorant to the
"big red white and blue d**k jammed up their a**holes everyday," Carlin takes no
prisoners, and the crowd delights in his shredding of the status quo.
Now, a group of activists based in Portland have repackaged the famous monologue, putting it
alongside video clips of President Donald Trump's America: race riots, coronavirus deaths, and
of course, Trump shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. "#AmericaWakeUp," reads a caption at
the end of the clip.
Released on Sunday, the video was cheered by the anti-Trump brigade. "This video is
completely devastating for Trump," one activist wrote . "George Carlin
gives him the finger from the grave." More commenters shared the video, encouraging their followers
to vote Democrat in November.
However, Carlin's hatred for politicians and the elite was not just limited to the
Republican Party. Throughout his career, Carlin ripped on the "criminal" administration
of Ronald Reagan, both Bushes' fondness for "bombing brown people," and Bill Clinton,
who he said "might be full of shit, but at least he lets you know it."
The "big club" Carlin talked about in the latest video included Democrat and
Republican lawmakers, and Carlin didn't shy away from skewering both.
Furthermore, Carlin's best and most loved routines were written and performed when the right
held more cultural sway in the US. From Nancy Reagan's moralizing to the media-enforced
patriotism of the post-9/11 years, Carlin could count on the right as a reliable target. Times
have changed though, and the left holds far more power now than it did two decades ago.
Conservatives are regularly 'deplatformed' on college campuses, politically incorrect speech
can jeopardize one's career, and the consensus enforced by the mainstream media is
overwhelmingly a liberal one, no matter how many clips of Fox News' Tucker Carlson the Portland
activists can splice into their video.
"Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance," Carlin wrote in
2004, adding "political correctness is just fascism pretending to be manners." In an
autobiography published a year after his death in 2008, he was even more explicit.
"The habits of liberals, their automatic language, their knee-jerk responses to certain
issues, deserved the epithets the right wing stuck them with," he wrote. "Here they
were, banding together in packs, so I could predict what they were going to say about some
event or conflict and it wasn't even out of their mouths yet Liberal orthodoxy was as repugnant
to me as conservative orthodoxy."
Carlin is unfortunately not alive to offer his opinion on the times we live in. However,
it's not difficult to imagine him scoffing at the media's non-stop 'Russiagate' hysteria , just as
he scoffed at the media's coverage of the Gulf War in the 1990s, accusing the press of working
as an "unofficial public relations agency for the United States government." It's also
easy to picture him tuning out of the 'Orange Man Bad' liberal consensus on Trump, even if he
would probably savage his policies and personality.
That's assuming he would even have a stage in the first place. After all, Carlin delighted
in provoking the would-be speech police, with his 1970s '7 Dirty Words' routine aimed explicitly at angering the
censors. An updated version of this routine could well see him canceled by the woke
torchbearers of the social justice movement.
Closing consulates is far from the best foreign policy and fat Pompeo known it. It just
starts the unnecessary and counter productive spiral of retaliation and Chinese have more
leverage over the USA as more the USA diplomatic personnel woks in China than the china
diplomatic personnel in the USA. They were always burned in Russia and now they stepped on the
same rake again.
Maybe fat Pompeo knows he's on his way out and desperate to make a lasting mark on the
geopolitical stage on behalf of the West Point mafia and his brothers-in-arm at the Jweish
mafia.
QABubba , 8 hours ago
Quit stealing Russian consulates, Chinese consulates, etc.
It serves no purpose.
Haboob , 7 hours ago
Closing diplomacy with nations as USA shrinks on the world stage shows America's juvenile
behavior.
Salisarsims , 7 hours ago
We are a young twenty something nation what do you expect but drama.
Haboob , 7 hours ago
It is funny how the young and arrogant always think they are right and have manifest
destiny over the old and wise. The young never listen to the old and as the story goes they
are defeated everytime. China is older than America, older than the west, they understand
this world we are living in far more than we do.
me or you , 9 hours ago
He is right!
The world has witnessed the US is not more than a banana Republic with a banana healthcare
system
To Hell In A Handbasket , 9 hours ago
I love seeing how gullible the USSA dunces are susceptible to hating an imaginary enemy.
Go on dunces wave the star spangled banner, and place the hand over the heart, you
non-critical thinking imbeciles. I told you fools years ago we are going to invoke the Yellow
Peril 2.0, and now we are living it. China bad, is just as stupid as Russia bad, while the
state stenographers at the MSM netowrks do all in their power to hide our rotten
behaviour.
Who falls for this ****? The poorly educated, and the inherently stupid.
To Hell In A Handbasket , 8 hours ago
No, it's called nationalism or self preservation.
What are the citizens of the US suppose to do,
You are wrong on so many levels, but ultimately the Chinese have beaten us at our own
rigged game. When I was riling against unfettered free-markets, and the movement of capital,
that allowed the west for centuries to move into undeveloped foreign markets and gain a
stranglehold, I was called a communist, and a protectionist.
While the USSA money printing b@stards was roaming around the planet like imperialists,
and their companies was not only raping the planet, but gouging foreign markets, the average
USSA dunce was brainwashed into believing USSA companies were the best.
Now these same market and economic rules we the west have set for the last several hundred
years no longer work for us, we want to change the rules. Again, my point is "where was you
on this position 5-10-20-30 years ago?" I've always seen this outcome, because logic said so.
To reject our own status quo, and return to mercantilism, makes us look like the biggest
hypocrites ever.
If you allow a foreigner to give advice (although I should mind my own business) this is
one proposal to save America. President Trump goes to the Republican Convention and says: "I
admit that I am problematic, we all know that it is unfair, but we had four years of lies and
derangement, and it was not my fault, but anyway I don't accept the nomination, I step back
and I propose as candidate Tucker Carlson. Please give him a standing ovation". Then have a
live TV debate between Carlson and Biden.
You know, of course, that Carlson is just as compromised, more probably, as Trump or Obama
or Biden or you name it, don't you? And just as blackmailable and just as bribable?
When it comes to debate about US military policy, the 2020 presidential election campaign is
so far looking very similar to that of 2016. Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that "we have the
strongest military in the world," promising to "make the investments necessary to equip our
troops for the challenges of the next century, not the last one."
In the White House, President Trump is repeating the kind of anti-interventionist head
feints that won him votes four years ago against a hawkish Hillary Clinton. In his recent
graduation address at West Point, Trump re-cycled applause lines from 2016 about "ending an era
of endless wars" as well as America's role as "policeman of the world."
In reality, since Trump took office, there's been no reduction in the US military presence
abroad, which last year required a Pentagon budget of nearly $740 billion. As military
historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes ,
"endless wars persist (and in some cases have
even intensified ); the nation's various alliances and its empire of
overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like
140 countries ; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to
increase astronomically ."
When the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year came before Congress
this summer, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a modest 10 percent reduction in military spending
so $70 billion could be re-directed to domestic programs. Representative Barbara Lee introduced
a House resolution calling for $350 billion worth of DOD cuts. Neither proposal has gained much
traction, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Instead, the House Armed Services Committee
just
voted 56 to 0 to spend $740. 5 billion on the Pentagon in the coming year, prefiguring the
outcome of upcoming votes by the full House and Senate.
An Appeal to Conscience
Even if Biden beats Trump in November, efforts to curb US military spending will face
continuing bi-partisan resistance. In the never-ending work of building a stronger anti-war
movement, Pentagon critics, with military credentials, are invaluable allies. Daniel Sjursen, a
37-year old veteran of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is one such a critic. Inspired in part by
the much-published Bacevich, Sjursen has just written a new book called Patriotic Dissent:
America in the Age of Endless War (Heyday Books)
Patriotic Dissent is a short volume, just 141 pages, but it packs the same kind of punch as
Howard Zinn's classic 1967 polemic, Vietnam: The Logic of
Withdrawal . Like Zinn, who became a popular historian after his service in World War II,
Sjursen skillfully debunks the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, and the
military's own current generation of "yes men for another war power hungry president." His
appeal to the conscience of fellow soldiers, veterans, and civilians is rooted in the unusual
arc of an eighteen-year military career. His powerful voice, political insights, and painful
personal reflections offer a timely reminder of how costly, wasteful, and disastrous our post
9/11 wars have been.
Sjursen has the distinction of being a graduate of West Point, an institution that produces
few political dissenters. He grew up in a fire-fighter family on working class Staten Island.
Even before enrolling at the Academy at age 17, he was no stranger to what he calls
"deep-seated toxically masculine patriotism." As a newly commissioned officer in 2005, he was
still a "burgeoning neo-conservative and George W. Bush admirer" and definitely not, he
reports, any kind of "defeatist liberal, pacifist, or dissenter."
"The horror, the futility, the farce of that war was the turning point in my life,"
Sjursen writes in Patriotic Dissent .
When he returned, at age 24, from his "brutal, ghastly deployment" as a platoon leader, he
"knew that the war was built on lies, ill-advised, illegal, and immoral." This "unexpected,
undesired realization generated profound doubts about the course and nature of the entire
American enterprise in the Greater Middle East -- what was then unapologetically labeled the
Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)."
A Professional Soldier
By the time Sjursen landed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in early 2011, he had been
promoted to captain but "no longer believed in anything we were doing."
He was, he confesses, "simply a professional soldier -- a mercenary, really -- on a
mandatory mission I couldn't avoid. Three more of my soldiers died, thirty-plus were wounded,
including a triple amputee, and another over-dosed on pain meds after our return."
Despite his disillusionment, Sjursen had long dreamed of returning to West Point to teach
history. He applied for and won that highly competitive assignment, which meant the Army had to
send him to grad school first. He ended up getting credentialed, while living out of uniform,
in the "People's Republic of Lawrence, Kansas, a progressive oasis in an intolerant, militarist
sea of Republican red." During his studies at the state university, Sjursen found an
intellectual framework for his "own doubts about and opposition to US foreign policy." He
completed his first book, Ghost Riders , which combines personal memoir with counter-insurgency
critique. Amazingly enough, it was published in 2015, while he was still on active duty, but
with "almost no blowback" from superior officers.
Before retiring as a major four years later, Sjursen pushed the envelope further, by writing
more than 100 critical articles for TomDispatch and other civilian publications. He was no
longer at West Point so that body of work triggered "a grueling, stressful, and scary
four-month investigation"by the brass at Fort Leavenworth, during which the author was
subjected to "a non-publication order." At risk were his career, military pension, and
benefits. He ended up receiving only a verbal admonishment for violating a Pentagon rule
against publishing words "contemptuous of the President of the United States." His "PTSD and
co-occurring diagnoses" helped him qualify for a medical retirement last year.
Sjursen has now traded his "identity as a soldier -- the only identity I've known in my
adult life -- for that of an anti-war, anti-imperialist, social justice crusader," albeit one
who did not attend his first protest rally until he was thirty-two years old. With several
left-leaning comrades, he started Fortress on A Hill, a lively podcast about military affairs
and veterans' issues. He's a frequent, funny, and always well-informed guest on progressive
radio and cable-TV shows, as well as a contributing editor at Antiwar.com , and a contributor to a host of mainstream liberal
publications. This year, the Lannan Foundation made him a cultural freedom fellow.
In Patriotic Dissent , Sjursen not only recounts his own personal trajectory from military
service to peace activism. He shows how that intellectual journey has been informed by reading
and thinking about US history, the relationship between civil society and military culture, the
meaning of patriotism, and the price of dissent.
One historical figure he admires is Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the recipient
of two Medals of Honor for service between 1898 and 1931. Following his retirement, Butler
sided with the poor and working-class veterans who marched on Washington to demand World War I
bonus payments. And he wrote a best-selling Depression-era memoir, which famously declared that
"war is just a racket" and lamented his own past role as "a high-class muscle-man for Big
Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers."
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Sjursen contrasts Butler's anti-interventionist whistle-blowing, nearly a century ago, with
the silence of high-ranking veterans today after "nineteen years of ill-advised, remarkably
unsuccessful American wars." Among friends and former West Point classmates, he knows many
still serving who "obediently resign themselves to continued combat deployments" because they
long ago "stopped asking questions about their own role in perpetuating and enabling a
counter-productive, inertia-driven warfare state."
Sjursen looks instead to small left-leaning groups like Veterans for Peace and About Face:
Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), and Bring Our Troops Home.
US, a network of veterans influenced by the libertarian right. Each in, its own way, seeks to
"reframe dissent, against empire and endless war, as the truest form of patriotism." But
actually taming the military-industrial complex will require "big-tent, intersectional action
from civilian and soldier alike," on a much larger scale. One obstacle to that, he believes, is
the societal divide between the "vast majority of citizens who have chosen not to serve" in the
military and the "one percent of their fellow citizens on active duty," who then become part of
"an increasingly insular, disconnected, and sometimes sententious post-9/11 veteran
community."
Not many on the left favor a return to conscription.
But Sjursen makes it clear there's been a downside to the U.S. replacing "citizen
soldiering" with "a tiny professional warrior caste," created in response to draft-driven
dissent against the Vietnam War, inside and outside the military. As he observes:
"Nothing so motivates a young adult to follow foreign policy, to weigh the advisability or
morality of an ongoing war as the possibility of having to put 'skin in the game.' Without at
least the potential requirement to serve in the military and in one of America's now
countless wars, an entire generation -- or really two, since President Nixon ended the draft
in 1973–has had the luxury of ignoring the ills of U.S. foreign policy, to distance
themselves from its reality ."
At a time when the U.S. "desperately needs a massive, public, empowered anti-war and
anti-imperial wave" sweeping over the country, we have instead a "civil-military" gap that,
Sjursen believes, has "stifled antiwar and anti-imperial dissent and seemingly will continue to
do so." That's why his own mission is to find more "socially conscious veterans of these
endless, fruitless wars" who are willing to "step up and form a vanguard of sorts for
revitalized patriotic dissent." Readers of Sjursen's book, whether new recruits to that
vanguard or longtime peace activists, will find Patriotic Dissent to be an invaluable
educational tool. It should be required reading in progressive study groups, high school and
college history classes, and book clubs across the country . Let's hope that the author's
willingness to take personal risks, re-think his view of the world, and then work to change it
will inspire many others, in uniform and out.
Do we need to be in 160 countries with our military and can we afford it?
Cat Daddy , 1 hour ago
I am all for bringing the troops home except for this one unnerving truth; nature abhors a
vacuum, specifically, when we pull out, China moves in. A world dominated by the CCP will be
a dangerous place to be. When we leave, we will need to make sure our bases are safely in the
hands of our friends.
dogbert8 , 1 hour ago
War is effectively the way the U.S. has done business since the Spanish American War, our
first imperial conquests. War is how we ensure big business has the materials and markets
they demand in return for their support of political parties and candidates. War is the only
area left with opportunities for growth and profit. Don't think for a minute that TPTB will
ever let us stop waging war to get what we (they) want.
TheLastMan , 2 hours ago
If you are new to zh all you need to do is study PNAC and the related nature of all
parties to understand the criminality of USA militarization and for whose benefit it
serves
Anonymous IX , 2 hours ago
I have written many times on this platform the exact same sentiments.
I am most disheartened by the COVID + Antifa/BLM Riots because of the facts this author
presents.
We are distracted with emotional and highly volatile MASSIVELY PROPAGANDIZED stories by
MSM (I don't watch) while the real problem in the world is as the author describes above.
We are war-mongering nation who needs to bring our troops home and disband over half of
our overseas installations and bases.
We have no right to levy economic sanctions to impoverish, sicken, and weaken the citizens
of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or anywhere else.
Yet, we run around arguing about masks and who can go into a restaurant or toppling
statutes and throwing mortar-type fireworks at federal officers. This is what we do instead
of facing a real problem which is that we are war-mongering nation with no moral/ethical
conscience. These scraggily bearded white Antifas need to WTFU and realize who their true
enemy.
Oh, wait. They work for the true enemy! Get it?
Max21c , 1 hour ago
We have no right to levy economic sanctions to impoverish, sicken, and weaken the
citizens of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or anywhere else.
I don't agree with the economic sanctions nonsense thing as they seem to be more of a
crutch for people that are not any good at planning, strategy, analytical thinking, critical
thinking, strategic thinking, and lack much in the way of talent or creativity or
intellectual acumen or intellectual skills...I believe there's around just shy of 10k
economic sanctions by Washington...
But the USA does have the right to receive or refuse to receive foreign Ambassadors and
Consuls and to recognize or not recognize other nations governments thus it does have some
degrees of the right to not trade or engage in commerce with other nations to a certain
extent... per imports and exports... et cetera... though it's not necessarily an absolute
right or power
IronForge , 2 hours ago
Sjursen may admire General Butler; but he doesn't seem to know that several of the
General's Descendants Served in the US Military.
Sjursen isn't Butler. The General Prevented a Coup in his Time.
The USA are a Hegemony whose KleptOchlarchs overtook the Original Constitutional
Republic.
PetroUSD, MIC, Corporate Expansion-Conquest, AgriGMO, and Pharma Interests Span the
Globe.
Wars are Rackets; and Societies to Nation-States have waged them over Real Estate, Natural
Resources, Trade Routes, Industrial Capacity, Slavery, Suppresive Spite,
Religious/Ideological Zeal, Economic Preservation, and Profiteering Greed.
YET, Militaries are still formed by Nation-States to Survive and for Some - Thrive above
such Competitive Existenstential Threats.
*****
The Hegemony are running up against New Shifts in Global Power, Systems, and Influences;
and are about to Lose their Unilateral Advantages. The Hegemon themselves may suffer Societal
Collapses Within.
Sjursen should read up on Chalmers Johnson. Instead of trying to Coordinate Ineffective
Peace Demonstrations, the Entire Voting/Political Contribution/Candidacy Schemes should be
Separated from the Oligarchy of Plutocrats and Corporate/Political KleptOchlarchs.
Without Bringing the Votes back to the Collective Hands of Citizenry Interests First and
Foremost, the Republic are Forever Conquered; and the Ethical may have to resort to
Emigration and/or Secession.
Ink Pusher , 2 hours ago
Nobody rides for free,there's always a cost and those who can't pay in bullion will often
pay in bodily fluids of one form or another.
Profiteers that create warfare for profit are simply parasitical criminals and should not
be considered a "special breed" when weighed upon the Scales of Justice.
gzorp , 2 hours ago
Read 'Starship Troopers' by Robert A Heinlein (1959) pay especial attention to the
"History and Moral Philosophy" courses... that's where his predictions for the future course
of 'America's' future appear.... rather accurately. Heinlein was a 1930's graduate of
Annapolis (Navy for you dindus and nohabs).....
A DUDE , 2 hours ago
t's not just the war machine but the entire system, the corporatocracy, of which the MIC
is a part. And there is no way to change the system from within the system because whatever
is anti-establishment becomes absorbed and neutered and part of the system.
Tulsi Gabbard ran on anti interventionism foreign policy.
Look how fast the DNC disappeared her.
Of course destroying Kamala Harris in a debate and going after the ancient evil Hitlery
sealed her fate.
BarkingWolf , 2 hours ago
In reality, since Trump took office, there's been no reduction in the US military
presence abroad, which last year required a Pentagon budget of nearly $740 billion. As
military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes ,
"endless wars persist (and in some cases have
even intensified ); the nation's various alliances and its empire of
overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like
140 countries ; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to
increase astronomically ."
Now wait just a minute there mister, that sounds like criticism of the Donald John PBUH
PBUH PBUH ... you can't do that ... the cult followers will call you a leftist and a commie
if you point out stuff like that even if it is objectively true! That's strike one, punk.
An Appeal to Conscience
Even if Biden beats Trump in November, efforts to curb US military spending will face
continuing bi-partisan resistance.
November doesn't have anything to do with anything really. The appeal to conscience is
wasted. The appeal would be better spent on removing the political class that is on the AIPAC
dole and have dual citizenship in a foreign country in the ME while pretending to serve
America while they are members of Congress. That's only the tip of the spear ... and that is
a nonstarter from the get go.
Sjursen skillfully debunks the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment,
and the military's own current generation of "yes men for another war power hungry
president."
I don't think Trump is necessarily a war power hungry president. While it is true that we
have not withdrawn from Syria and basically stole their oil as Trump has repeated promised he
would do, it is also true that Trump has yet to deliver Israels war with Iran and in fact had
called back an invasion of Iran ten minutes before a flotilla of US warships was about to set
sail to ignite such an invasion leaving Tel Aviv not only aggrieved, but angry as well.
Sjursen has now traded his "identity as a soldier -- the only identity I've known in my
adult life -- for that of an anti-war, anti-imperialist, social justice crusader," albeit
one who did not attend his first protest rally until he was thirty-two years old. With
several left-leaning comrades ...
Okay, this is where you are starting to lose me .... i't like listening to a concert and
suddenly the music is hitting sour notes that are off key, off tempo, and don't seem to fit
somehow.
Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor for
service between 1898 and 1931. Following his retirement, Butler sided with the poor and
working-class veterans who marched on Washington to demand World War I bonus payments. And
he wrote a best-selling Depression-era memoir, which famously declared that "war is just a
racket" and lamented his own past role as "a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for
Wall Street, and for the Bankers."
Butler was correct, war especially nowadays, is a racket that makes rich people who never
seem to get their hands dirty, even richer. As one grunt put it long ago, "it's a dirty job,
but somebody has to do it."
That "somebody" is going to be the kids of the little people (the real high-class
muscle-men ) who are hated by their political class overlords even as the political class are
worshipped as gods.
Sjursen looks instead to small left-leaning groups like Veterans for Peace and About
Face: Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), and Bring Our
Troops Home. US, a network of veterans influenced by the libertarian right.
The problem here is that the so-called "left" brand has always been about war and the
capitalism of death.
The Democrat party is really the group that started the American civil war for instance,
they are the ones behind legacy of Eugenists like Margaret Sanger who was a card carrying
Socialist who founded the child murder mill known today as Planned Parenthood that sadly
still exists under Trump but has turned into the industrialized slaughter of children ...even
after birth so that their organs can be "harvested" for profit.
Sjursen's affinity for "the left" as saintly purveyors of peace, goodness, love, and life
strikes me as rather disingenuous. Then he seems to argue if I read the analysis correctly
that conscription will somehow be the panacea for the insatiable appetite for war?
One false flag such as The Gulf of Tonkin or 911 or even Perl Harbor or the Sinking of the
Lusitania or the assassination of an Arch Duke ... is all that is really needed to arouse the
unbridled hoards to march off to battle with almost erotic enthusiasm -the political class
KNOWS IT!
Amendment X , 2 hours ago
And don't forget President Wilson (D) who was re-elected on the platform "He kept us out
of the war" only to drag U.S. into the hopeless European Monarchary driven WWI.
11b40 , 1 hour ago
Yo! Low class muscle man here, and I have to agree with bringing back the draft. It should
never have been eliminated, and is the root of the golbalists abiity to keep us in
Afghanistan, and other parts of the ME, for going on 20 years.
Skin in the game. It means literally everything. As noted we now have 2 generations of men
who never had to give much thought at all to what's happening around the world, and how
America is involved....and look at the results. It would be a much different situation today
if all those 18 year olds had to face the draft board with an unforgiving lottery.
Yes, one false falg can whip up the country to a war time fever pitch, but unless there is
a real, serious threat, the fever cannot be maintained. The 1969 draft lottery caught me when
I stayed out the first semester of my senior year. Didn't want to go, but accepted my fate
and did the best job I could to stay alive and keep those around me as safe as possible. In
1966, I was in favor of the war, and was about to go Green Beret on the buddy system. We were
going to grease gooks with all the enthusiasm of John Wayne. My old man, an artillery 1st Sgt
at the time in Germany, talked me out of it. More like get your *** on a plane back to the
States and into college, befroe i kick it up around your shouders. A WW2 & Korea vet, he
told me then it was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The point is, when kids are getting drafted, Mom's, Dad's, and everyone else concerned
with the safety of their friends & relatives, start paying attention and asking hard
questions of politicians. Using Afghanistan as an example, we would have been on the way out
by the 2004 election cycle, or at max before the next one in 2008. That was 12 years ago, and
we are still there.
I addition, the reason we went would have been more closely examined, and there may have
been a real investigtion into 9/11. Plus, I am convinced that serving your country makes for
a better all around citizen, and God knows, we need better citizens.
Cassandra.Hermes , 2 hours ago
Trump and Pompeo started new cold war with China, but have no way to back up their threats
and win it!! When i was in Kosovo peace corps i heard so many stories from Albanian who were
blamed to be Russian or American spy because of double cold war against Albania. Trump and
Pompeo just gave excuse to Xi to blame anyone who protest as American spy. BBC were showing
China's broadcast of the protests in Oregon to Hong Kong with subtitle "Do you really want
American democracy?", LMFAO
Max21c , 2 hours ago
Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that "we have the strongest military in the world,"
promising to "make the investments necessary to equip our troops for the challenges of the
next century, not the last one."
The United States shall continue to have a weak military until it starts to fix its
foreign policy and diplomacy. You cannot have the strongest military in the world if you lack
a good foreign policy and good diplomacy. Brains are a lot more important than battleships,
battalions, bullets, barrels, or bombs. Get a frickin' clue you friggin' Washington
morons.
Washington is weak because they are dumb. Blind, deaf, and dumb.
Heroic Couplet , 2 hours ago
Too little, too late. Great ad for a book that will be forgotten in a week. Read Bolton's
book. The minute Trump tries to reduce troops, Bolton is right there, saying "No, we can't
move troops to the perimeter. No, we can't move troops from barracks to tents at the
perimeter." Who needs AI?
Erik Prince wrote 3.5 years ago that 4th gen warfare consists of cyberwarfare and
bio-weapons. The US military is fooked. There's probably an interesting book to be
researched: How do Republicans feel about contracting COVID-19 after listening to Trump
fumble?
ChecksandBalances , 3 hours ago
Blame the voters. Run on a platform to reduce military and police spending. See how many
of those lose. Probably all of them. You have to stop feeding the beast. This is a slogan
Trump correctly said but as usual didn't actually mean. We should cut all military and police
spending by 1/2 and then take the remaining money and build a smarter, more efficient
military and police force.
Max21c , 3 hours ago
It's not just the "Deep State." It's Washingtonians overall. It's Deep Crazy. They're all
Deep Crazy! They're nuts. And the rare exceptions that may know better and have enough common
sense to know its wrong to sick the secret police on innocent American civilians aren't going
to say anything or do anything to stop it. The few that know better in foreign policy aren't
going to say anything or do anything against the new Cold Wars on the Eastern Front against
China or on the Western Front against Russia since they're not willing to go up against the
Regime. So the Regimists know they have carte blanche to persecute or terrorize or go after
any that stand in their way. This is how tyrannies and police states operate. It's the nature
of the beast. At a minimum they brow beat people into submission. People don't want to stick
their neck out and risk going up against the Regime and risk losing to the Regime, its secret
police, and the powers that be. They shy away from anything that would bring the Regime and
its secret police and its radicals, extremists, fanatics, and zealots their way.
nonkjo , 4 hours ago
It's okay to be against "forever war" and still not have to be a progressive douchbag.
Sjursen is an unprincipled ******** artist. He leaves Iraq disillusioned as a lieutenant
but sticks around long enough for them to pay for his grad school and give him some sweet
"resume building" experiences that he can stand on to sell books? FYI, from commissioning
time as a second lieutenant to promotion to captain is 3 years...that means Sjusen was so
disillusioned that he decided to stick around for 12 more years which is about 9 years longer
than he actually needed to as an Academy grad (he only had to serve 6 unless he elected to go
to grad school).
The bottom line is Sjusen capitalizes on people not knowing how the military works. That
is, that his own self-interest far outweighs his the principles he espouses. Typical leftist
hypoctite.
Max21c , 4 hours ago
...the U.S. "desperately needs a massive, public, empowered anti-war and anti-imperial
wave ..."
Perhaps the USA just needs a better foreign policy. Though we all know that's not going to
happen with the flaky screwballs of Washington and the flaky screwballs in the Pentagon, CIA,
State Department, foreign policy establishment, think tanks et cetera.
Minor technical point: the time for the "anti-imperial wave" was before Washingtonians
destroyed much of the world and created their strategic blunders and disastrous foreign
policy. You folks all went along with this nonsense and now you have your quagmires, forever
wars, and numerous trouble spots that have popped up here and there along the way to
boot.
Pottery barn rule: you broke it and you own it and it's yours...Ma'am please pay at the
register on the way out...Sorry Ma'am there's no more free gluing...though the gluing
specialist may be in on the third Thursday this month though it's usually the second Tuesday
each month...
Contemporaneously, in the same vein the American public has been brainwashed into going
along with the new Cold Wars on the Western Front against Moscow and the even newer Cold War
on the Eastern Front against Beijing. It's like P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every
minute," and you fools in the American public just keep buying right in to the brainwashing.
They're now successfully indoctrinating you into buying into their new Cold Wars with Russia
and China. The Cold War on the Eastern Front versus Peking is more getting more fanciful
attentions at the moment and the Cold War on the Western Front has temporarily been relegated
to the back burner but they'll move the Western Front Cold War from simmer to boil over
whenever it suits their needs. It's just a rendition of the Oceania has always been at war
with East Asia and Eurasia is our friend are just gameplays right out of George Orwell's
1984.
Most of the quagmires can be fixed to a certain extent by applying some cement and
engineering to the quicksand and many of the trouble spots can become more settled and less
unstable if not stable in some instances. Even some of the more serious strategic problems
like the South China Sea, North Korean nuclear weapons development, and potential Iranian
nuclear weapons development can still be resolved through peaceful strategies and
solutions.
In re sum, while I won't disparage a peace movement I do not believe it is either
necessary nor proper simply because you will not solve anything through a peace movement. The
sine qua non or quintessential element is simply to end one of these wars successfully
through a peaceful diplomatic solution or solve one of these serious foreign policy problems
through diplomacy which is something that hasn't been the norm since the downfall of the
Berlin Wall, is no longer in favor, and which is the necessary element to prove that peace
can be achieved through strategy and diplomacy and thereby change the course of the country's
future.
In foreign affairs the foreign policy establishment has its pattern of behavior and it is
that pattern of behavior that has to be changed. It's the mindset of the Washingtonians &
elites that has to be changed. Just taking to the streets won't really change their ways or
their beliefs for any significant part of the duration. They may pay lip service to peace
& diplomacy but it won't win out in their minds in the long run. They are so warped in
their views and beliefs that it'll have little or no effect over the long haul. As soon as
the protests dissipate they'll be right back at it, back to their bad ways and bad
behavior.
Son of Captain Nemo , 4 hours ago
For the past 19 years... And as Anti-War as you will ever get!...
Was it George Carlin that said " if voting made a difference they wouldn't let us do it "
? The only way to stop these forever wars is for people to stop joining the military. Parents
should teach their children that joining the military and trotting off to some country to
fight a war for the elite is not being patriotic . I was in the military from 1964 -1968.
When Lyndon Johnson became president he drug out the Vietnam war as long as he could. Oh !
Lady Byrd Johnson bought Decon Company [ rat poison ] when most people never heard of it.
Johnson bought this rat poison , government paid for ,at an inflated price . Sent ship loads
of it to Vietnam .Never mind all the Americans and so called enemy killed.. Jane Fonda ,
Hanoi Jane , was really a hero who helped save countless lives by helping to end the war.
Tommy and **** Smothers , Smother Brothers , spoke out against the war . Our government had
them black balled from TV. Our government is probably as corrupt as any other country.
A piece of irony, one of our greatest generals was Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme
Commander in WWII and two term president. He kept the peace for almost 10 years and warned
Americans to beware of the "military-industrial complex." Most military men never want war,
they just make sure they are ready if it comes. We have had the military industrial complex
for way too long, it needs to be reduced and we need more generals to run for president, Gen.
Flynn maybe? I'll also take Schwartzkoff.
cowboyted , 7 hours ago
The U.S. should only use our military if we are attacked, period. Otherwise, as Jefferson
astutely stated, a standing army is a threat to democracy.
captain noob , 7 hours ago
Capitalism has no morals
Profit is the driving force of every single thing
cowboyted , 7 hours ago
The U.S. should only use our military if we are attacked, period. Otherwise, as Jefferson
astutely stated, a standing army is a threat to democracy.
Chief Joesph , 7 hours ago
After what General Smedley Butler had to say and warned us about, here we are, 90 years
later, doing the very same thing. Goes to show how utterly dumb, unprogressive, sheepish, and
Medieval Americans really are. And you thought this is what makes America Great????
cowboyted , 8 hours ago
The U.S. Constitution provides for a "national defense." Yet, the last time we were
attacked by a foreign nation was on Dec. 7, 1941 in which, the Congress declared war on
Japan. Yet, in the past 100 years our country's leaders have convinced Americans that we can
wage war if the issue concerns our "national INTEREST." This is wrong and needs to be deleted
and replaced with our Constitution's language. Also, Congress is the ONLY Constitutional
authority to declare war, not the executive branch. Too many countries, including the U.S.,
spend too much money preparing for war on levels of destruction that are unnecessary. We must
attain a new paradigm with leading countries to achieve a mutual understanding that the
people of the world are better off with jobs, food, families, peace, and a chance at a better
life, filled with hope, faith, and flourishing communities. Things have to change.
transcendent_wannabe , 8 hours ago
I have to agree in sentiment with the author, but the reality of humans on earth almost
demands constant war, it is the price we pay for the modern city lifestyle. There are various
reasons.
1. Ever since WW1, the country has become citified, and the old peaceful country farm life
was replaced with the rat race of industrial production. Without war, there is no need for
the level of industrial production required to give full employment to the overpopulated
cities. People will scream for war and jingoism when they have no city jobs. How do you deal
with that? Sure, War is a Racket, but so far a necessary racket.
2. Every 20 years the military needs a real shooting war to battle test its upcoming
soldiers and new equipment. Now the battles are against insurgencies... door-to-door in
cities and ghettos, and new tactics need to be field tested. If the military goes more than
20 years without a real shooting war, they lose the real men, the sargeant majors, who just
become fat pot bellied desk personel without the adrenaline of a real fight.
3. Humans inately like to fight. Even children, boys wrestle, girls taunt one another.
There is no way discovered yet to keep people from turning violent in their attempts to steal
what others have, or to gain dominance thru physical intimidation. Without war, gangs will
form and fight over territorial boundaries. There is no escaping it.
4. Earth is where the battle field is, Battlefield Earth. There is no fighting allowed in
heaven, so Earth is where souls come to fight. Nobody on earth likes it, but fighting and war
is here to stay, and you should really use this life to find out how to transcend earth and
get to a place where war is not needed or allowed, like heaven or Valhalla.
Tortuga , 8 hours ago
So. He thinks the crooked, grifting, regressive hate US murdering dim pustules aren't the
warmongering, globalist, hate US, crooked, grifting, murdering republicrats. What a mo
ron.
HenryJonesJr , 8 hours ago
Real conservatives were always against foreign intervention. It was the Left that embraced
foreign wars (Wilson / Roosevelt / Truman / Johnson).
messystateofaffairs , 8 hours ago
From my perspective being a professional goon to serve the greater glory of international
criminals, is, aside from having to avoid the mirror, way too much hard and dangerous work
for the money. As a civilian of a society run by criminals on criminal imperialist
principles, I have no literal PTSD type of skin in that filthy game, but like most citizens,
knowing and unknowing, I do swim in that sewer everyday, doing my best to avoid bumping into
the larger turds. My "patriotism" lies where the turds are fewest, anywhere in the world that
might be.
bh2 , 8 hours ago
The threat to US interests is not in the ME (apart from Israel). It's in the Pacific.
NATO was never intended to be a defense arrangement perpetually funded by the US. Once
stood up and post-war economies in Europe were restored, it was supposed to be a European
defense shield with the US as ultimate backup. Not as a sugar-daddy for wealthy nations. Now
that Russia is no longer situated to attack through the Fulda Gap, NATO is a grotesque
expression of Parkinson's Law writ large.
China is a real threat to US interests. That's obvious simply by consulting a map.
Military assets committed to engagement in theaters that no longer seriously matter is
feckless and spendthrift. Particularly when Americans are put in harm's way with no prospect
of either winning or leaving.
Worse yet is the accelerating prospect of being drawn into conflict in the South China Sea
because fewer than decisive US and allied assets are deployed there.
While nations are now responding to that threat (including Japan, who are re-arming),
China must realize a successful Taiwan invasion faces steadily diminishing prospects. They
must act soon or give up the opportunity. Moreover, the CCP are loosing face with their own
people because of multiple calamities wreaking havoc. The danger of a desperate CCP turning
to a hot war to save face is an ever-rising threat. (If Three Gorges Dam fails, that could be
the final straw.)
FDR deliberately suckered Japan into attacking the US (but apparently never guessed it
would be on Pearl Harbor). It appears modern neo warmongers of all stripes would be delighted
if China were tempted into yet another senseless war in the Pacific. And more lives lost on
all sides.
While the size of US military and (ineptly named) "intelligence" budgets are vastly out of
scale, the short-term cost in money is secondary to risk of long-term cost in blood. Surging
the budget may make good sense when guns are all pointing in the wrong direction and
political donors don't care as long as it pays well.
Defeating that outrageously wasteful spending is the first battle to be won. Disengaging
from stupid, distracting, unwinnable conflicts is an imperative to achieve that goal.
The Judge , 8 hours ago
US. is the real threat to US interests.
DeptOfPsyOps-14527776 , 8 hours ago
An important part of this statue quo is propaganda and in particular neo-con
propaganda.
Once it was clear that agitating against the Russian federation had failed, they started
agitating against the PRC.
FDR administration wasn't that clever, they just had (((support))). They wanted Imperial
Japan unable to strengthen itself against the United Kingdom as it was waging a war against
the European Axis, did not realize that the Japanese fleet could reach as far as Hawaii and
after Pearl Harbor, believed the West Coast could have been attacked as well.
Hovewer, they likely expected the Japanese to intercept their fleet on the way to the
Phillipines after a war between Imperial Japan and the Commonwealth had started.
Salzburg1756 , 8 hours ago
"FDR deliberately suckered Japan into attacking the US (but apparently never guessed it
would be on Pearl Harbor)." No, we knew the japs were going to attack Pearl Harbor. We had
broken their code. That's why we sent our best battle ships away from Hawaii just before the
attack. Most of the ships they sank were old and worthless; our good ships were out at
sea.
TheLastMan , 4 hours ago
What constitutes "America's interests"?
the us military is the world community welcome wagon for global multi national Corp
chamber of commerce
Do us citizens serve corporations or do corporations serve us citizens?
next ?, who owns / controls corporations?
Alice-the-dog , 8 hours ago
There is a reason why suicide is the leading cause of death among active duty military.
They come to realize that what they are doing is perfect male bovine fecal matter. That they
are guilty of participating in completely unwarranted death and destruction.
847328_3527 , 9 hours ago
Liberals and "progressives" are traditionally against wars. This new "woke" group of
Demorats shows they are NOT liberals or progressives since they support the Establishment War
Criminals like Obama and his side kick, demented Biden, and Bloodthirsty Clinton.
Who's afraid of Tucker Carlson? Just the entire US establishment, that's all
Robert Bridge
Robert Bridge is an
American writer and journalist. He is the author of the book,
'Midnight
in the American Empire,'
How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.
@Robert_Bridge
25 Jul, 2020 11:40
/ Updated 5 hours ago
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Follow RT on
Tucker Carlson has been in the headlines a lot recently, more than might seem acceptable for a news journalist. But is the Fox
News host really the menace to the media that his Democratic detractors proclaim him to be?
Perhaps the best way to
describe Tucker Carlson's career at the moment is with a borrowed quote from 'A Tale of Two Cities': "
It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...
" Although
the Fox News personality is at the top of his game, never before has his career looked more precarious than right now.
Last month, as the Covid
pandemic was sweeping the country, and the streets were exploding amid 'peaceful' Black Lives Matter protests, 'Tucker Carlson
Tonight' was the highest-rated cable news show in the country. That special honor, however, was marred by scandal and, some
would argue, the fake outrage and hyper-sensitivities of social justice warriors.
Carlson attracted the
wrath of his detractors for daring to say that the rioting and looting that broke out during the BLM protests was "
definitely
not about black lives.
" He went on to argue that it was critical to tell the truth when confronted by "the mob,"
otherwise "
they will crush you.
"
Regardless of what one may
think of those comments and for the record, many black people agreed with him the point is that Carlson's remarks deviated
180 degrees from the position of the mainstream media and the establishment. As punishment for merely expressing his
constitutionally protected opinion, shared by millions of other Americans, many of Carlson's corporate sponsors resorted to
what could be called institutional
censorship
,
pulling their crucial advertising from his show.
Yet who will freeze
funding of the establishment and 'legacy media' for downplaying the severity of the BLM and Antifa violence to such a degree
that the takeover of six blocks in Seattle was described by the Democratic mayor of that once-fair city as just another
chapter in the "
summer of love
?" Funny, that harmless love-in which has spread
like wildfire to Portland, Oregon has evoked so much illicit passion that it has forced Trump to send in federal forces to
quell the orgy of wanton naughtiness. Eat your heart out, Woodstock!
In another rebellious act of dissenting (ie. unacceptable) journalism, Carlson
laid
out
the Democratic Party's devious plan for getting their feeble-minded presidential nominee, Joe Biden, into the White
House: keep the American people in a state of pain and suffering for as long as humanly possible because "
unhappy
people want change.
"
"
Every
ominous headline about the state of the country makes it more likely that Donald Trump will lose his job
," Carlson told
his estimated four million viewers. "
The Democrats have a strong incentive, therefore,
to inflict as much pain as they can, and that's what they're doing
."
He then went on to explain
how Democratic governors ratcheted up the unhappiness by "
banning citizens from visiting
their own weekend homes,
" for example, while in New Jersey people were "
arrested
for going to the beach.
"
Needless to say, those are
not talking points one would ever hear on CNN or MSNBC. Indeed, Tucker Carlson is a one-man information wrecking crew
challenging, night after night, the combined efforts of the mainstream media to keep the average American viewer strapped into
a form-fitting straitjacket of 'acceptable opinion'. Billions of dollars have been spent purchasing that outfit, and the
owners will not relinquish control without a major fight, which usually happens behind the scenes.
Therefore, was it any
coincidence that, smack in the middle of Carlson's record-smashing ratings, with the US presidential elections quickly
approaching (in case it wasn't clear by now, Carlson is a serious Trump supporter), his top writer Blake Neff was forced to
resign after it was revealed he had a habit of posting racist and sexist remarks pseudonymously in online chat rooms? Any
guesses as to the name of the outfit that undertook that impressive bit of investigative journalism at such a convenient time
to bust Neff? If you guessed
CNN
,
you already understand the situation that Carlson is facing.
While being popular isn't
necessarily a bad thing especially for the talk show circuit, where ratings are watched like the stock market it can
become extremely problematic in the United States, where the mainstream media is so far left its capital could be San
Francisco. In fact, just this week, Carlson told his viewers that the New York Times was planning to reveal his address in an
article.
Although the Times denied they had plans to reveal such information, the fact that such accusations are flying between major
news organizations speaks to the level of hostility and mistrust now rampant across the country.
Tucker Carlson is caught
in a Catch-22 where the public, as well as his myriad competitors and enemies, have become just as interested in his life as
the stories he covers night after night. This popularity shines a powerful light on his controversial topics, which, in the
most consequential presidential election to come along in many years, explains why he is so loathed. Perhaps it is time for
Tucker Carlson to get out of the media business while he still can, and try his hand at politics, as many of his ardent
supporters have suggested. Who knows, he might even make an outstanding vice president.
Like this story? Share it
with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
The violent US, run by greedy billionaires, has to be cut down to size before they start
WW3. Full Spectrum Dominance (FDS) will be very expensive for the US Evil Empire. Did the
deluded US elites really think RF and China will not respond to their quest for space
dominance???
The CIA, NSA, and all the other XYZs in the War Department believe strongly that they set
policy. In effect, that they are in charge and know best. How does that fit in with the
Constitution. Where are these powers specified?
The Treaty Clause is part of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States
Constitution that empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly
negotiate agreements between the United States and other countries, which, upon receiving
the advice and consent of a two-thirds supermajority vote of the United States Senate,
become binding with the force of federal law .
(My Bold)
Since we ratified the UN Charter that makes all of our wars of aggression unconstitutional
and war crimes. Our use of phosphorus and napalm are war crimes.
If you read the Constitution carefully, especially the Bill of Rights then you know that
what we got bears little resemblance. So we have two levels of bad. The Constitution, written
by the slave owning aristocracy, is a piece of shit by modern, or any, standards. It was
intended that the elite run the government, and the people in only one case get to elect
these elite representatives. Electoral college for the Presidency? really. With nothing
specified as to how the States are to select these electors. There is little commitment to
democracy and, given our corruption on top of that, it's clear that we have a very defective
democracy. And the second level, of course, is that we ignore the Constitution when it's too
inconvenient.
The thing is, we desperately need a new constitution and the will to follow it. This will
never happen.
Yeah, you mention Brzezinski. He convinced Carter to put the screws to the Soviet Union by
arming and financing the extremists in Afghanistan. How'd that work out? Looking for a pair
of Trade Towers in NYC? He had stated publicly that he was the first Pole in 300 years to put
the screws to Russia. He ruined Carter's presidency. Carter had good options to make the
world a safer place, instead he listened to Brzezinski. Same thing with Reagan and Richard
Pearle. We might not be sitting in a world under a hair trigger of thermonuclear armageddon
if it were not for Pearle. Reagan came within one item of agreement on a plan to eliminate
nuclear weapons. That was SDI, or star wars. Gorbachev insisted that the project remain in
the laboratory and that Space was not to be militarized. Pearle convinced Reagan to keep SDI
and not sign the agreement. These asshole Neocons from the deep state have screwed us and
civilization over and over again. Wait till Biden is in office. He will fill the War
department with neocons, starting with Susan Rice.
' Due Process; Lamenting the death of the rule of law in a country where it might have
always been missing ', Lewis H. Lapham, laphamsquarterly.org
True law is right reason in agreement with nature.
-- Cicero
Law is a flag, and gold is the wind that makes it wave.
-- Russian proverb
To pick up on almost any story in the news these days -- political, financial, sexual, or
environmental -- is to be informed in the opening monologue that the rule of law is
vanished from the face of the American earth. So sayeth President Donald J. Trump, eight or
nine times a day to his 47 million followers on Twitter. So sayeth also the plurality of
expert witnesses in the court of principled opinion (media pundit, Never Trumper,
think-tank sage, hashtag inspector of souls) testifying to the sad loss of America's
democracy, a once upon a time "government of laws and not of men."
The funeral orations make a woeful noise unto the Lord, but it's not clear the orators
know what their words mean or how reliable are their powers of observation. The American
earth groans under the weight of legal bureaucracy, the body politic so judiciously
enwrapped and embalmed in rules, regulations, requirements, codes, and commandments that it
bears comparison to the glorified mummy of a once upon a time great king in Egypt.
Senior statesmen and tenured Harvard professors say the rule of law has been missing for
three generations, ever since President Richard Nixon's bagmen removed it from a safe at
the Watergate. If so, who can be expected to know what it looks like if and when it shows
up with the ambulance at the scene of a crime? Does it come dressed as a man or a woman?
Blue eyes and sweet smile riding a white horse? Black uniform, steel helmet, armed with
assault rifle? Or maybe the rule of law isn't lost but misplaced. Left under a chair on
Capitol Hill, in a display case at the Smithsonian, scouting locations for Clint Eastwood's
next movie.
The confusion is in keeping with the trend of the times that elected Trump to the White
House. In hope of clarification, this issue of Lapham's Quarterly looks to the lessons of
history. They are more hopeful than those available to the best of my own knowledge and
recollection, which tend to recognize the rule of law as the politically correct term of
art for the divine right of money.'
[long snip]
'The framers of the Constitution were of the same opinion. The prosperous and
well-educated gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 shared with John
Adams the suspicion that "democracy will infallibly destroy all civilization," agreed with
James Madison that the turbulent passions of the common man lead to reckless agitation for
the abolition of debts and "other wicked projects." With Plato the framers shared the
assumption that the best government, under no matter what name or flag, incorporates the
means by which a privileged few arrange the distribution of property and law for the less
fortunate many. They envisioned a wise and just oligarchy -- to which they gave the name of
a republic -- managed by men like themselves, to whom Madison attributed "most wisdom to
discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society." Adams thought the great
functions of state should be reserved for "the rich, the wellborn, and the able"; John Jay,
chief justice for the Supreme Court, observed that "those who own the country ought to
govern it."
This was spot on rooster. I couldn't agree more! I'm so sick of the red vs blue shit. For
chrissakes neither side is worth a shit. The government hasn't done anything to help the
average citizen in a very long time. Wake up and smell the roses people!
When I heard about this, I began to pray for Tucker and his family's safety and protection. This hit me hard and
actually broke my heart. I will continue to intercede for this family and pray God keeps an open door for his (and
everyone's) freedom of speech.
Well said Tucker. It's a shame that "professionals" don't tend to own accountability for their actions. It's
un-American for them to do that to your family.
Tucker, I have never commented on any show ever and I'm almost 70 years old. But I am ashamed of my country and
astounded by how the law allows this kind of behavior to happen. You're good people, and your reporting is very
important and excellent. I will be praying for your family for protection. And for someway for retribution. God bless
you.
There is circumstantial evidence the European Union is systematically sinking boats loaded
with refugees coming from the Libyan route. The MS editorial is correct in calling the
Mediterranean "the graveyard of many people from the Middle East and Africa."
It looks like a continental-wide operation of genocide and silence: the Italian and Greek
Coast Guards do the dirty job with secret blessing from their governments, and their
governments count with the tacit blessing (and silence) from the other EU governments and
their respective MSMs. The Russian and Chinese MSMs do nothing because they can't prove it
(as they don't have access to the local) and are more honest than the Western MSM (they don't
report what they can't know).
I wouldn't be surprised if we were talking, after all of this is done, of about some
100,000 dead drowned in the Mediterranean. After that dead boy in a Turkish beach fiasco,
they took care of perfecting the scheme, so that the Italian and Greek coast guards can
operate deeper into the sea, where the drowned corpses cannot be beached. If true, this would
be the most well covered genocide in modern history, and the first one will full and direct
complying from the "free press".
The
Guardian
a few days ago carried a
very
strange piece
[which has since been removed] under the heading "Stamps celebrating Ukrainian resistance in
pictures." The first image displayed a stamp bearing the name of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
The UPA was, without any shadow of a doubt, responsible for the slaughter of at least 200,000 Polish civilians; they
liquidated whole Polish communities in Volhynia and Galicia, including the women and children. The current Polish
government, which is as anti-Russian and pro-NATO as they come, nevertheless has
declared
this
a genocide.
It certainly was an extremely brutal ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt either that at times between 1942 and 1944
the UPA collaborated with the Nazis and collaborated in the destruction of Jews and Gypsies. It is simplistic to
describe the UPA as fascist or an extension of the Nazi regime; at times they fought the Nazis, though they
collaborated more often.
There is a real sense in which they operated at the level of medieval peasants, simply seizing local opportunities to
exterminate rural populations and seize their land and assets, be they Polish, Jew or Gypsy. But on balance any
reasonable person would have to conclude that the UPA was an utterly deplorable phenomenon. To publish a celebration
of it, disguised as a graphic art piece, without any of this context, is no more defensible than a display of Nazi
art with no context.
In fact,
The Guardian's
very
brief text was still worse than no context.
"Ukrainian photographer Oleksandr Kosmach collects 20th-century stamps issued by Ukrainian groups in exile during
the Soviet era.
Artists and exiles around the world would use stamps to communicate the horrors of Soviet oppression. "These
stamps show us the ideas and values of these people, who they really were and what they were fighting for,"
Kosmach says."
That is so misleadingly partial as a description of the art glorifying the UPA movement as to be deeply
reprehensible. It does however fit with the anything -- goes stoking of Russophobia, which is the mainstay of
government and media discourse at the moment.
Roger Thornhill 2 hours ago If I recall correctly, Obama gave the Russians all of 48 hours
to leave their consulate in San Francisco, which had been occupied since the 19th Century. This
was around Christmas time in 2016. So I don't find this particularly surprising. Two days to
have the diplomats, staff, and families completely out of the country.
By a vote of 324-93 ,
the House of Representatives soundly defeated an
amendment to reduce Pentagon authorized spending levels by 10%. The amendment does not
specify what to cut, only that Congress make across-the-board reductions. The amendment to
the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was offered by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI). No
Republicans voted for the amendment. Libertarian Justin Amash supported the amendment.
Earlier, the House defeated an amendment to stop the Pentagon's submission of an unfunded
priorities list. Each year, after the Pentagon's budget request is submitted to Congress, the
military services send a separate "wish list," termed "unfunded priorities." This list
includes requests for programs that the military would like Congress to fund, in case they
decide to add more money to the Pentagon's proposed budget.
This article was written while observing the voting on CSPAN. The House Clerk has not
yet posted the roll-call vote. Additional information will be added to the article when
available.
Move comes as Libya gov't and Turkey demand an end of foreign intervention in support of
commander Khalifa Haftar.
####
I suspect In'Sultin Erd O'Grand is a mole of the garden kind. He goes about digging
one hole for himself after another. If he keeps this up, all the holes will merge in to
one and he will disappear! It would give the West a chance to have someone running Turkey
with a more reliably western perspective though I think it is clear that whatever comes next,
Turkey will not allow itself to be treated as a western annex and pawn.
I've complained
before
about
the habit of the intelligence community of inviting evidence from a very narrow group of experts, occupying what can only be
called an extreme position. Well, here we go again.
The long awaited report on the Russian 'threat' by the British parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee has finally come
out. Having downloaded it, I immediately turned to the back page to see where the committee had got its information, on the
principle of 'garbage in, garbage out'. Having done so, I am afraid that I let out an expletive so loud that people from the
other side of the house ran over to see what was wrong. For this is what I saw:
Oh, FFS. Applebaum, Browder, Donnelly, Lucas, and Steele. Really??? I'm assuming that most readers know these names, but just in
case you don't, it's like they've pulled in all the most discredited, Russophobic 'experts' they can find, and ignored everybody
else who has any sort of knowledge of the subject. This is
not
a
representative sample of expert opinion about Russia.
I have no objection to one or two such people being summoned as witnesses, but when all you have is representatives of the most
extreme wing of the Russia-watching community, some of whom, most notably Christopher Steele, have been thoroughly discredited,
then what you are not getting is a balanced, all-round picture of what you are studying.
The report thanks these witnesses for the fact that 'they provided us with an invaluable foundation for the classified evidence
sessions'. In short, the five external witnesses mattered. The picture of Russia provided by these people is the ideological rock
on which the rest of the report is built.
Such an extreme, one-sided set of external witnesses not only casts doubt on the value of the information provided to the
committee, but also on the impartiality of the committee itself. It speaks to extreme lack of an open mind, as if experts were
chosen because they conformed to a strong predisposition which the committee was not interested in challenging.
Intelligence work requires a willingness to consider multiple competing hypotheses. Looking at the list of 'experts' makes it
clear that this committee has only been exposed to variations of one 'Russia is evil', 'Russia is out to get us', 'Russia is
inherently aggressive and dictatorial'. This is no way to do intelligence work.
I'll write something about the content of the report in my next post. But as I said, 'garbage in, garbage out'.
News
/
Politics
Iran's top security official: Harsher revenge awaits perpetrators of Gen. Soleimani's assassination
Wednesday, 22 July 2020 4:29 PM
[ Last
Update: Wednesday, 22 July 2020 4:29 PM ]
Members of the Iraqi honor guard walk past a huge portrait of Iran's late top general Qassem Soleimani (L) and Iraqi
commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, both killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport last month, during a memorial
service held in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone on February 11, 2020. (Photo by AFP)
Iran's top security
official
says
harsher
revenge
awaits the perpetrators of the attack that killed senior Iranian anti-terrorism commander
Lieutenant
General Qassem Soleimani and his companions.
In a
post
on his Twitter
page on Wednesday, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said that US
President Donald Trump had admitted that the American, upon his direct order, committed the crime of assassinating General
Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and
Abu
Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) counter-terrorism force, who were two
prominent figures of the anti-terrorism campaign.
"The two Iranian and Iraqi nations are avengers of blood of these martyrs
and
will not rest until they punish the perpetrators," read part of the tweet.
"Harsher revenge is one the way," it concluded.
The two commanders and a number of their companions were assassinated in a US airstrike near Baghdad airport on January 3,
as General Soleimani was on an official visit to the Iraqi capital.
Both commanders were extremely popular because of the key role they played in eliminating the US-sponsored Daesh terrorist
group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
In retaliation for the attack, the IRGC fired volleys of ballistic missiles a US base in Iraq on January 8. According to
the US Defense Department, more than 100 American forces suffered "traumatic brain injuries" during the counterstrike. The
IRGC, however, says Washington uses the term to mask the number of the Americans, who perished during the retaliation.
Iran has also issued an arrest warrant and asked Interpol for help in detaining Trump, who ordered the assassination, and
several other US military and political leaders behind the strike.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday Iran will never forget Washington's
assassination of General Soleimani and will definitely deliver a "counterblow" to the United States.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will never forget this issue and will definitely deal the counterblow to the Americans,"
Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in Tehran.
"They killed your guest at your own home and unequivocally admitted the atrocity. This is no small matter," Ayatollah
Khamenei told the Iraqi premier.
A UN special rapporteur says
has
condemned the US assassination and said Washington has put the world at unprecedented peril with its murder of Iran's top
anti-terror commander.
Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, has also warned that it is high
time the international community broke its silence on Washington's drone-powered unlawful killings.
Press TV's website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
O MG you guys Putin hacked our coronavirus vaccine secrets!
Today mainstream media is reporting what is arguably the single dumbest Russiavape story of
all time, against some very stiff competition.
"Russian hackers are targeting health care organizations in the West in an attempt to steal
coronavirus vaccine research, the U.S. and Britain said," reportsThe New York
Times .
"Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment
research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain's National
Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday,"
Reuters reports .
"Russian news agency RIA cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the Kremlin rejected
London's allegations, which he said were not backed by proper evidence," adds Reuters.
First of all, how many more completely unsubstantiated government agency allegations about
Russian nefariousness are we the public going to accept from the corporate mass media? Since
2016 it's been wall-to-wall narrative about evil things Russia is doing to the empire-like
cluster of allies loosely centralized around the United States, and they all just happen to be
things for which nobody can actually provide hard verifiable evidence.
Ever since the shady
cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike
admitted that it never actually saw hard proof of Russia hacking the DNC servers, the
already shaky and always unsubstantiated narrative that Russian hackers interfered in the
U.S. presidential election in 2016 has been on thinner ice than ever. Yet because the mass
media converged on this narrative and
repeated it as fact over and over they've been able to get the mainstream headline-skimming
public to accept it as an established truth, priming them for an increasingly idiotic litany of
completely unsubstantiated Russia scandals, culminating most recently in the entirely
debunked claim that Russia paid Taliban-linked fighters to kill coalition forces in
Afghanistan.
Secondly, the news story doesn't even claim that these supposed Russian hackers even
succeeded in doing whatever they were supposed to have been doing in this supposed
cyberattack.
"Officials have not commented on whether the attacks were successful but also have not ruled
out that this is the case," Wired reports
.
Thirdly, this is a "vaccine" which does not even exist at this point in time, and the
research which was supposedly hacked may never lead to one. Meanwhile, Sechenov First Moscow
State Medical University
reports that it has "successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world's first
vaccine against coronavirus," in Russia.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, how obnoxious and idiotic is it that coronavirus
vaccine "secrets" are even a thing?? This is a global pandemic which is hurting all of us;
scientists should be free to collaborate with other scientists anywhere in the world to find a
solution to this problem. Nobody has any business keeping "secrets" from the world about this
virus or any possible vaccine or treatment. If they do, anyone in the world is well within
their rights to pry those secrets away from them.
This intensely stupid story comes out at the same time British media are blaring stories about Russian
interference in the 2019 election, which if you actually listen carefully to the claims
being advanced amounts to literally nothing more than the assertion that Russians talked about
already leaked documents pertaining to the U.K.'s healthcare system on the internet.
"Russian actors 'sought to interfere' in last winter's general election by amplifying an
illicitly acquired NHS dossier that was seized upon by Labour during the campaign, the foreign
secretary has said,"
reports The Guardian .
"Amplifying." That's literally all there is to this story. As we learned with the ridiculous U.S. Russiagate narrative , with such
allegations, Russia "amplifying" something can mean anything from RT reporting on a
major news story to a Twitter account from St. Petersburg sharing an article from The
Washington Post . Even the
foreign secretary's claim itself explicitly admits that "there is no evidence of a broad
spectrum Russian campaign against the General Election."
"The statement is so foggy and contradictory that it is almost impossible to understand it,"
responded Russia's foreign
ministry to the allegations. "If it's inappropriate to say something then don't say it. If you
say it, produce the facts."
Instead of producing facts you've got the Murdoch press pestering Jeremy Corbyn, the
Labour Party candidate, on his doorstep over this ridiculous non-story, and popular
right-wing outlets like Guido Fawkes running the blatantly false
headline "Government Confirms Corbyn Used Russian-Hacked Documents in 2019 Election." The
completely bogus allegation that the NHS documents came to Jeremy Corbyn by way of Russian
hackers is not made anywhere in the article itself, but for the headline-skimming majority this
makes no difference. And headline skimmers get as many votes as people who read and think
critically.
All this new Cold War Russia hysteria is turning people's brains into guacamole. We've got
to find a way to snap out of the propaganda trance so we can start creating a world that is
based on truth and a desire for peace.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Putin Apologist , July 19, 2020 at 17:50
"How many more completely unsubstantiated government agency allegations about Russian
nefariousness are we the public going to accept from the corporate mass media?"
The Answer is none. Nobody (well, nobody with a brain) believes anything the "corporate
mass media" says about Russia, or China, Iran or Venezuela or anything else for that
matter.
James Keye , July 19, 2020 at 10:26
Guy , July 18, 2020 at 15:32
But,but, but we never heard the words "highly likely" ,they must be slipping.LOL
DH Fabian , July 18, 2020 at 13:41
The Democrat right wing are robotically persistent, and count on the ignorance of their
base. By late last year, we saw them begin setting the stage to blame-away an expected 2020
defeat on Russia. Once again, proving that today's Democrats are just too dangerous to vote
for. Donald Trump owes a great deal to his "friends across the aisle."
The Congress is serving the interests of the US Oligarchy, at home and abroad. The
strategy is simple: keep allies/vassals in obeisance and non-competitive and destroy
polities that do not subject themselves to a similar system (which ends up to become
subservient to the US interests anyways, in the long run). Thus, all enemies are polities
were Oligarchy doesn't run the roster, and are semi-socialist / socialist countries:
Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, in the past Iraq.
Fully fledged democracies, that truly enact the will of the people, would not do
something like this.
For those too young to remember the horrible American war on Yugoslavia in 1999, or
those who have forgot, or were misled with lies about Kosovo, here is a quick summary:
This is a very accurate and honest report what { NATO } the North American Terrorist
Organization did to Yugoslavia . If you Americans wish to know what kind of global
government you are promoting . You only have to find the actual transcripts of Milosevic's
trail . Don't read or listen to any fake news of the trail . You must read the trail
transcripts and judge for yourself The butcher of Balkans has kind of been exonerated after
his death . The world court is something to be very afraid of not at all a instrument of
justice .But the trail transcripts are about 5000 pages so you will have to work to find
out the truth .
WW2 and it's depiction in various films and TV programs has had an unexpected effect on
the military psyche. The US believes it won the war on it's own and the troops came home as
heroes. This is the expectation of the US military even today, unable to accept that it can
be defeated. "Thank you for your service" is a given whatever crimes had been committed
abroad on the innocent who had done them no harm whatsoever. The ICC is opposed on the
theory that US troops cannot commit torture or massacres.
The Joke is that the US has not one a war since WWII, except maybe Granada. As for War
Crimes, the Current President himself committed a War Crime, He gave a Pardon to a
Convicted War Criminal, that is actually breach of the Geneva Conventions, which is US
Treaty Law and as such equal to the Constitution itself in importance. Schedule 4 Article
146
The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide
effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the
grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.
Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged
to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring
such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it
prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons
over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting
Party has made out a prima facie case.
Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all
acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches
defined in the following Article.
In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial
and defense, which shall not be less favorable than those provided by Article 105 and those
following of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August
12, 1949.
Article 147
Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of
the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present
Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological
experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health,
unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling
a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a
protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present
Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not
justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
Article 148
No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High
Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party
in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.
The President has by absolving the Navy Seal of the Liability, Absolved the United
States of the War Crime also, Now I understand that we will hear arguments here of the
Presidents ability to Pardon, but take this as a given, there is no way that During the
Nuremberg Trials the Prosecution of those War Crimes would have accepted the argument that
the Head of State of Germany (Hitler) had the blanket Authority to Pardon German War
Criminals. as such and this is why this was placed in the Geneva Conventions the very act
of Absolving a War Crime is itself a War Crime!
We could care less what the ICC is opposed to. We are not subject to the ICC or
international law. We can enforce it if needed but do not have to abide by it.
The micrograins of ICC jurisdiction and validity require a sharper legal mind than mine
to sift through. But the debate is revelatory of something else -
In general, the current domestic ICC debate reveals part of the true nature of the US
(helped in no small part by the hamfisted and transparent vulgarity of President Trump):
that we are in fact the rogue state that we accuse everyone else in the world of being.
If we are who we say we are we should be straight up supporting the ICC, helping to fund
it and increase its reach and investigative power. Far better than any military
intervention to deal with the truly bad actors in the world would be a legal intervention.
The idea that vicious and violent despots should run scared when they travel or otherwise
face arrest and extradition is exactly right.
But we're not. Why? The answer is obvious at this point - because we have powerful
players in our midst that would face that arrest. And should face that arrest.
All nice and dandy. But let's say Iran and Iraq would start selling their gas and oil for
euros, yuan, yens, and rupees instead of dollars, crashing the main US export product
(Russian agriculture can now compensate if the US refuses to sell its grain as to threat
countries with famine)... In the current situation, which is not tenable, it is the US's
strategic interest to do what it does... How to scale down these extorting actions of the
US?
You may have missed the part where the US maximum pressure policy just pushed Iran and
China to do a multi billion dollar deal where China will pay for Iranian oil in any currency
except the USD. In doing that KSA just got hung out to dry as their primary export customer
is now more interested in Iran oil than Saudi oil. And oh ya, China will be sending military
assets to Iran to help protect their interests there. So the current US policy has failed
both the US and the countries who are supposed to be US allies. Which I think is the point
the Quincy Institute is trying to make.
Mr. Larison or Quincy Institute never make this argument and to explicitly point to states
trying and moving to economic intercourse using other currencies than the US dollar.
It is something that is conspicuously avoided (not entirely mind you)...
"... First, the US is a Republic dominated by Oligarchy which has obtained control of all levers of power and with some constant effort, has managed to subdue all democratic impulses and processes in the US Republic. As such, regardless of the electorate's wishes, only the will of the ruling oligarchy, which wants to privatize everything or make everyone a debtor and bring every other polity's financial system under the iron fist of the PRIVATE FEDS. ..."
"... It started before that with the Monroe Doctrine, but really got going with the Spanish American War. Once Wilson invaded Mexico while declaring "I am going to teach them to elect good men", American assistance became American hegemony, but with lies that America wasn't like those imperialist countries. Informal control still is hegemony. ..."
The post-Cold War liberal hegemony isn't breaking down. It never existed in the first place. Victorious North Vietnamese troops
wash in the fountain of Saigon's Presidential Palace (Getty Images)
There is a story that members of the foreign policy establishment tell us and themselves when they need to ward off criticisms of
the current U.S. role in the world and suppress doubts about the wisdom of current U.S. strategy. The story is a triumphalist one
that describes how a high-minded superpower benevolently shaped and "led" the world for seventy years, and how, despite a few minor
deviations here and there, it brought peace and stability. It is a story of how the world needs U.S. "leadership" now and forever,
and if the U.S. should "abdicate" the "throne" the world will fall into chaos.
This is the myth that defenders of the status quo have used to dismiss serious changes to the way that the U.S. acts in the world.
It is not a true story. Most dangerous of all, it is a half-truth that credits the U.S. and the "liberal order" for every good thing
that has happened since 1945 while discounting every past crime and blunder as having no bearing on what our foreign policy should
be today.
What if the liberal international order lionized by our foreign policy establishment never really existed? More than that, what
if it isn't possible to have a liberal order at all? Those are some of the questions that Patrick Porter asks and answers in his
extraordinary new book,
The False Promise of Liberal Order . It is not only an incisive critique of the failures of modern U.S. foreign policy, but
it is also a much-needed dispelling of the central myth that "foreign policy traditionalists" cling to.
"Not only did a liberal order never truly exist. Such an order cannot exist," Porter writes in the first few pages of his book.
It is a provocative thesis, and one that he defends admirably. The "liberal order" is a euphemism for U.S. hegemony and the use of
American power in the world, and it is used to tout the virtues of American armed supremacy while overlooking the enormous harm that
U.S. policies have done in many parts of the world. "For every order, including America's, has a shadow," he says, and we are deluding
ourselves if we try to deny that the shadow is there. More than that, by ignoring the shadow, we are more likely to experience similar
or worse disasters in the future. Porter's argument is not just that the U.S. did not abide by the rules that it imposed on others,
but that by assuming the mantle of world-ordering colossus it inevitably set itself on the path to failure. The story that Porter
tells is that of a superpower that believed its own self-justifying propaganda and thus set itself up for a mighty fall.
Defining the "liberal order" is difficult, because it will often mean different things depending on who is using the phrase. As
Porter notes, the concept is a "slippery one." He continues: "Looking to express an aspiration, it projects it back into history.
Like the order it valorizes, it is a moving target that ducks and weaves against close scrutiny." (p.30) But, at its core, what the
defenders of the order mean when they invoke it is a celebration of U.S. hegemony and the near-sanctification of its security commitments
around the world.
In its most extreme forms, it takes the political and military arrangements of the last seventy years and turns them into something
close to an unquestionable edifice that must be preserved for its own sake. To suggest changing or renovating part of the structure
amounts to sacrilege. The defenders of the structure "celebrate orthodoxies -- free trade, expanding alliances, order-enforcing military
action, American global leadership -- and denounce heresies, such as protectionism, military restraint, non-intervention, and détente
with enemies." (p.11) Porter's book is guaranteed to spoil their celebration.
The flaw at the heart of defenses of "liberal order," Porter explains, is that they necessarily exclude the uglier, destructive
parts of the story that were part and parcel of the ordering that took place. On the one hand, defenders of "liberal order" accept
the imperial role that the U.S. has assumed in the last seventy years, and they "desire what amounts to a world monarch," but they
separate out the history of violence and devastation from their account of the "liberal order" to make it seem more appealing. As
Porter says, "they write out large swathes of history."
When the defenders do grudgingly acknowledge the worse parts of the U.S. record, such as Vietnam and Iraq, it is by way of explaining
that these were aberrations rather than outgrowths of the very same order that they applaud. But as Porter perceptively notes, both
Vietnam and Iraq were promoted by the leading defenders of the "order" as being essential to its preservation. Regarding Vietnam,
he writes, "That war was one of the most significant attempts at world-ordering undertaken by an American government. The architects
of the conflict sincerely believed it was a necessary act in protecting the U.S.-led free world." (p.110) The would-be order-builders
were profoundly wrong then and later, and we have good reason to believe that they are wrong again now.
One problem with the "liberal order" myth is not just that it erases and sanitizes the record of U.S. foreign policy, but that
it does so in order to facilitate more of the same costly errors in the future. If the story that U.S. policymakers and politicians
tell themselves is that a meddlesome, hegemonic foreign policy is basically good and successful, and they deliberately conceal or
ignore all of the evidence to the contrary, they will repeat the same kinds of terrible errors that they and their predecessors made
in the past. Beyond that, they are liable to lead the U.S. into many avoidable conflicts out of a misguided sense of mission and
obligation. This missionary drive is inherent in the nature of the "liberal order" project that "looks to extirpate rival alternatives."
That in turn tends to make U.S. foreign policy inflexible and uncompromising in the face of resistance, and it contributes to the
stifling of criticism of that policy here at home.
Porter correctly observes that defenders of "liberal order" are themselves quite hostile to dissent. "Assuming the rightness of
their cause, they regard dissidents as not merely wrong, but as psychologically disordered or morally defective." (p.63) We can see
this in the dismissive descriptions of antiwar activism as evidence of a "syndrome" and in the tendency to write off popular skepticism
about an activist U.S. foreign policy as simple ignorance and "isolationism." That hostility to dissent has real costs for the U.S.
This constant policing of the boundaries of foreign policy debate has blinded U.S. policymakers to their own failings and to the
alternative paths they could take. It has convinced them that they have no choice but to continue with the same costly and unsuccessful
strategy. Having set up the stark choice between domination and isolation, they have trapped themselves into vainly pursuing the
former.
When applied to the wars that the U.S. is currently fighting, "liberal order" rhetoric serves as the license for keeping them
going indefinitely. Porter responds to the argument for staying in Afghanistan this way:
It could also be self-perpetuating, given that the very force of Islamic militancy feeds on a foreign armed presence. Not only
does this promise permanent war, but permanent war becomes the objective of the campaign as well as the means. Liberal order in
this context becomes upholding liberal values through continued armed pacification of the frontier, permanent war for permanent
peace. (p. 118)
Porter's dissection of the "liberal order" mythology is as thorough and effective as one could want, but he does more than simply
explode myths. In the last part of his book, he also outlines what the U.S. can and should do to avoid additional disasters in the
future. To begin with, he advises that we abandon "the core historical claim of liberal order as well as the idea that the USA or
any one power can dominate the globe." If the U.S. does that, it "can return to its original purpose, to secure its interests as
a constitutional republic in a plural world." (p.156)
What would that look like in practice? For one thing, the U.S. "should cease trying to expand democratic capitalism and regime
change abroad." Continued pursuit of hegemony will exhaust the U.S., so Porter proposes instead the U.S. must prioritize those regions
where it has the most important interests, namely Europe and East Asia, and sharply reduce its role in the Middle East. To that end,
the U.S. will have to reduce tensions with at least some of the states that it has considered to be its adversaries for the last
several decades, and then "try to reduce the number of adversaries by limiting the terms of competition." Rather than driving all
adversaries to cooperate with each other against the U.S., Washington should look for ways to drive wedges between them. "To attempt
to suppress every adversary simultaneously would drive the enemies to operate together, creating hostile coalitions." (p.194) If
we would avoid this, we will have to accept accommodations in some parts of the world. To do that, we will first have to give up
on the flattering myth of the "liberal order."
Has there been a military intervention by the US since World War 2 that had value in the terms laid out in this post? I don't
mean that as a rhetorical question. I'm hoping for some insight from people who know more about this than I do. Was the Korean
War justified? Did it protect and support our national interests?
I see the economic and political growth of other countries - China, India, Brazil - as a good thing. When it's all done, I
think the world will be safer and the US will be more secure as a trustworthy and powerful member of the community rather than
as the guy in charge. Always.
Another question. What about the Balkan intervention in the 90s? On the face of it, those actions seem to be a good example
of the kind of nation building Larison is criticizing, but I've always thought it was a policy we could be proud of. It's the
only time I know of that a country stepped in to stop a genocide rather than just waiting around and then saying "we should have
done something" 20 years later.
Too much to unpack here, but very briefly, in the Balkan wars and Kosovo, all were at each others' throat. The US took sides
against the Serbians. Just now, the leader of Kosovo Albanians has been indicted with war crimes by ICC in Hague, and he was Washington's
puppet. Kosovar Albanians have never stopped the ethnic cleansing in that area, with NATO troops always looking the other way.
Thank you very much for bringing up this book as well as for the review that touches a lot of important things, sometimes more
forcefully and sometimes a bit too gingerly.
In my humble opinion, what is clearly not insisted upon in analyzing US foreign policy including its wars of aggression, is
the fact that the basic assumptions are not defined. First, the US is a Republic dominated by Oligarchy which has obtained control
of all levers of power and with some constant effort, has managed to subdue all democratic impulses and processes in the US Republic.
As such, regardless of the electorate's wishes, only the will of the ruling oligarchy, which wants to privatize everything or
make everyone a debtor and bring every other polity's financial system under the iron fist of the PRIVATE FEDS.
Everyone who opposes this intent is to be crushed. And it started in fact with the Korean War (sorry, with sending troops in
Russia in 1917-1918). If it could, the US would attack today Russia and China, against the wishes of its citizens (would make
an effort to present those countries and those people as devils), if the cost would be bearable. Because it is not and because
it would risk the fall of Oligarchy in the US (same way German, Russian, Austrian monarchies fell), this direct action is not
taken, but everything else is par for the course. The rule is, there are no rules (remember, the US is "not agreement capable").
The analysis refers to the expansion of "democratic capitalism". It is obvious to every sane person that oligarchic capitalism,
the climax state, abhors actual democracy, because hoi polloi, if they could, would vote the majority of the oligarchy's privileges
away. Democracy in a capitalist oligarchy is just a pageant. The late electoral cycles in the US have clarified this aspect for
all.
And because of this hollowness and because it tries to subsume every other polity on the face of the planet to its whims, the
US hegemony will not be successful. Oh, it can have some success with immature polities and nations, where there will be traitors,
selling the interest of their state/people for 30 silver coins, but the long run is not looking bright.
It started before that with the Monroe Doctrine, but really got going with the Spanish American War. Once Wilson invaded Mexico while declaring "I am going to teach them to elect good men", American assistance became American
hegemony, but with lies that America wasn't like those imperialist countries. Informal control still is hegemony.
I see your point but at that stage in time the US was just one among others trying to stake claims. With the materialization
of a socialist state, things got ramped up at an ideological level and much effort has been put in justifying US stance - same
as UK tried to justify its position, or French Monarchy justifying its right to rule autocratically...
On Tuesday the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston,
Texas. The move comes amongst a slew of factless accusations of
Chinese hacking and surveillance
.
While Trump, like Biden, is using anti-China propaganda as part of his campaign, the
closure of the Houston consulate has nothing to do with it. But U.S. media fail to
mention the real and unreasonable motive behind this move:
The United States ordered China to close its diplomatic consulate in Houston within 72
hours, dealing another blow to the rapidly deteriorating relations between the two
countries. China promptly vowed to retaliate, calling the move illegal.
The State Department said the closure was made in response to repeated Chinese
violations of American sovereignty, including "massive illegal spying and influence
operations."
The unmentioned reason for the State Department's move is a squabble over virus testing
and quarantining of U.S. diplomats who are supposed to return to China.
Looks like a similar escalation to the Russian embassy one a few years ago. Trump regime
doesn't know or want to engage in diplomacy and would rather rattle the sabres. Leave
plaguistan (US) to its demise.
I forsee China's being punished further via lawsuits by US companies and individuals
against China. When China starts to see that as a threat, Trump will freeze China's assets
in USA including about $1 trillion of China-owned US Treasury bonds.
That will be a significant speed-bump for China's hopes for the Yuan as an
international/reserve currency.
<> <> <> <> <>
Cue the USA/Trump apologists who will insist that:
"Isn't the US deliberately destroying the China-US relations?" [My Emphasis]
After observing the huge volume of commerce between the Outlaw US Empire and China which
is why the need for multiple consulates exists, the Editorial continues:
"That's why we say the latest US move is crazy. Many people believe that this is another
way the Trump administration creates China-US tensions and helps his reelection efforts.
The US is trying to blame everything on China and to make US voters, who do not understand
China well, believe in Washington's words. The November presidential election is driving
Washington mad ." [My Emphasis]
Well, not all of Washington; just TrumpCo and his allies in both parties. But the
editor's correct IMO that it's all related to Trump's increasingly desperate attempt to get
reelected. This
article looks at recent nationwide trending; and this shows the
currently projected Electoral College map , with Biden ahead 319 to 187. A look at the
map tells you why Georgia and North Carolina are so important to Trump as their 31 votes
drastically changes the calculus.
I thought the same at first--the consulates will be forced to close then Trump will
steal the property just as Obama did to the Russians. All that does is further the
destruction of what little remains of the Empire's credibility and worthiness of its
obeying contractual terms. IMO, the international perception that existed in 1990 is now
reversed with the Outlaw US Empire seen correctly as the liar, cheater, undemocratic entity
that it's been for decades which will move the NAM and particularly Africa further toward
the Eurasian Camp led by Russia and China. If Trump reasons at all, he may figure that
since the Empire's credibility is already diminished, what's there to lose by throwing what
remains under the bus, cause what he's doing looks exactly like that.
The November presidential election is driving Washington mad." [My Emphasis]
The election is just an excuse. The USA/Deep State's move against upstarts
China-Russia-Iran is not new and not driven by election calculus. IMO it began in 2014 when
Russia stood up the USA in Syria and Ukraine and Washington realized that the Russia-China
SCO Alliance was a real threat to the Empire.
Regarding the relation to the election, I read the logic of the situation a little
differently.
The China hawks come from both parties, and even the subgroup now running the foreign
policy have only a shallow attachment to Trump. But like everyone else, they are getting
ready for the a high chance of Biden coming into office, and so a slightly different group
of faces being put in charge.
Thus, for China hawks who expect to fall in status under Biden, the imperative is to
make use of the rest of this year to lock whatever aspects of the US-China relationship
they feel are important, while they have the chance. Meanwhile, China hawks who expect to
rise in status under Biden have reason to ensure that any particularly ugly actions are
done while Trump is still around to take the blame. The intersection of those two groups of
China hawks certainly involve actions designed to lock in hostility and especially
intimidate third countries from doing trade with China. I would think there there is more
to see than just sanctions, propaganda, or closing of consulates -- more like industrial
sabotage and perhaps a regime change operation taking out belt-road participants.
Well, 2013 when Lavrov and Putin caged Kerry over Syria's ancient chemical weapons, then
MINSK agreement doing same with Ukraine idiocy. As I wrote elsewhere, the big change is
Russia's rearming with advanced weapons the Outlaw US Empire won't be able to field for
another decade--and the huge fact that development went undetected. There's a particular
type of confidence you gain when you know your poker hand beats the other guy's.
Internationally since 2003, the Outlaw US Empire's been digging itself into an ever
deepening hole where only its exceptionalist light escapes.
Note that the US govt sold billions worth of embassy related properties in Hong Kong
some weeks prior. Perhaps that was already in anticipation of blowback from this plan to
close China consulate in Houston. (on top of knowing its HK gig is up, after the natl
security law was passed)
There's no way the trillion in T-bills will be seized/defaulted/whatever. The damage to
US credibility will be unrecoverable.
It is certainly crazy time. AG Barr threatened major US corporations Disney & Apple
with having to register as "foreign agents" due to their Chinese investments. Earlier in
the year, the FBI and Congress decided to destroy the career of one of America's top
scientists over failure to submit relatively inconsequential paperwork. These are the types
of things which should result in a determined pushback against an intrusive national
security state, but the balance of power in USA may have flipped.
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's parliament on Monday authorized the deployment of troops outside the
country, a move that could escalate the spiraling war in Libya after the president threatened
military action against Turkish-backed forces in the oil-rich country.
A troop deployment in Libya could bring Egypt and Turkey, close U.S. allies that support
rival sides in the conflict, into direct confrontation.
There is something rotten in the state .. of England.
This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was
involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier. He was getting
homesick (perhaps his mother getting older is part of this) for Russia and he thought that to
get back to Russia he needed something big to get back in Putin's good graces. He would have
needed something really big because Putin really has no use for traitors. Skripal put out some
feelers (perhaps through his daughter though that may be dicey). The two couriers were sent to
seal or move the deal forward. The Brits (and perhaps the CIA) found out about this and decided
to make an example of Sergei. Perhaps because they found out about this late, the deep
state/intelligence people had to move very quickly. The deep state story was was extremely
shaky (to put it mildly) as a result. Or they were just incompetent and full of hubris.
Then they were stuck with the story and bullshit coverup was layered on bullshit coverup. 7
Reply FlorianGeyer Reply to
Marcus April 20, 2019
@ Marcus.
To hope to get away with lies, one must have perfect memory and a superior intellect that
can create a lie with some semblance of reality in real life, as opposed to the digital
'reality' in a Video game. And a rather corny video game at that.
MI5/6 failed on all parts of Lie creation 2 Reply Mistaron April 21, 2019
If Trump was so furious about being conned by Haspel, how come he then went on to promote
her to becoming the head of the CIA? It's quite perplexing.
The praetorian guard has become indistinguishable from the yellow
journalists. Indict them all for treason.
russellremmert 1 day ago
is steel in prison yet Reply
12
DonEstif -> russellremmert 1 day ago
Almost, he's an expert pundit used by CNN
Ban-me Fagggot 1 day ago
If Russia stole the election when Obama was President, why
wouldn't they steal the election when Trump is President? Democrats should protest by not
voting. It wont make a difference.
TGrade1 1 day ago
Behind all of this, hidden behind the
curtain, is a pants suit...
Justis -> TGrade1 11 hours ago
And more importantly, the then leader
of the free world, Obama...
"... There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly. ..."
"... Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence of the enemy system'? ..."
"... a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities. With a great deal of outside effort and resources. ..."
"... His "playbook" is useful to outside powers that want to overthrow governments they don't like. Especially those run by "dictators" not brutal enough to shoot the protesters down. ..."
Once I'd seen this mention of The Russian Playbook (aka KGB, Kremlin or Putin's Playbook), I
saw the expression all over the place. Here's an early – perhaps the earliest – use
of the term. In October 2016, the Center for Strategic and International studies (" Ranked #1 ") informed us of the "
Kremlin Playbook "
with this ominous beginning
There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern
Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their
positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has
experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same
time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly.
And asks
Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode
the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence
of the enemy system'?
Well, to these people, to ask the question is to answer it: can't possibly be disappointment
at the gap between 2004's expectations and 2020's reality, can't be that they don't like the
total Western values package that they have to accept, it must be those crafty Russians
deceiving them. This was the earliest reference to The Playbook that I found, but it certainly
wasn't the last.
Of course, all these people are convinced Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential
election. Somehow. To some effect. Never really specified but the latest outburst of insanity
is this video from the
Lincoln Project . As Anatoly Karlin observes: "I think it's really
cool how we Russians took over America just by shitposting online. How does it feel to be
subhuman?" He has a point: the Lincoln Project, and the others shrieking about Russian
interference, take it for granted that American democracy is so flimsy and Americans so
gullible that a few Facebook ads can bring the whole facade down. A curious mental state
indeed.
What can we know about The Playbook? For a start it must be written in Russian, a language
that those crafty Russians insist on speaking among themselves. Secondly such an important
document would be protected the way that highly classified material is protected. There would
be a very restricted need to know; underlings participating in one of the many plays would not
know how their part fitted into The Playbook; few would ever see The Playbook itself. The
Playbook would be brought to the desk of the few authorised to see it by a courier, signed for,
the courier would watch the reader and take away the copy afterwards. The very few copies in
existence would be securely locked away; each numbered and differing subtly from the others so
that, should a leak occur, the authorities would know which copy read by whom had been leaked.
Printed on paper that could not be photographed or duplicated. As much protection as human
cunning could devise; right up there with
the nuclear codes .
And so on. It's all quite ridiculous: we're supposed to believe that Moscow easily controls
far-away countries but can't keep its neighbours under control.
There is no Russian Playbook, that's just projection. But there is a "playbook" and it's
written in English, it's freely available and it's inexpensive enough that every pundit can
have a personal copy: it's named "
From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation " and it's written by
Gene Sharp (1928-2018) .
Whatever Sharp may have thought he was doing, whatever good cause he thought he was assisting,
his book has been used as a guide to create regime changes around the world. Billed as
"democracy" and "freedom", their results are not so benign. Witness Ukraine today. Or Libya. Or
Kosovo whose long-time leader has just been indicted for numerous crimes .
Curiously enough, these efforts always take place in countries that resist Washington's line
but never in countries that don't. Here we do see training, financing, propaganda, discord
being sown, divisions exploited to effect regime change – all the things in the imaginary
"Russian Playbook". So, whatever he may have thought he was helping, Sharp's advice has been
used to produce what only the propagandists could call "
model interventions "; to the "liberated" themselves, the reality is poverty , destruction ,
war and
refugees .
Reading Sharp's book, however, makes one wonder if he was just fooling himself. Has there
ever been a "dictatorship" overthrown by "non-violent" resistance along the lines of what he is
suggesting? He mentions Norwegians who resisted Hitler; but Norway was liberated, along with
the rest of Occupied Europe, by extremely violent warfare. While some Jews escaped, most didn't
and it was the conquest of Berlin that saved the rest: the nazi state was killed . The
USSR went away, together with its satellite governments in Europe but that was a top-down
event. He likes Gandhi but Gandhi wouldn't have lasted a minute under Stalin. Otpor was greatly aided by NATO's war
on Serbia. And, they're only "non-violent" because the Western media doesn't talk much about
the violence ;
"non-violent" is not the first word that comes to mind in this video of Kiev 2014 . "Colour revolutions" are
manufactured from existing grievances, to be sure, but with a great deal of outside assistance,
direction and funding; upon inspection, there's much design behind their "spontaneity". And,
not infrequently, with mysterious sniping at a expedient moment – see Katchanovski's
research on the "Heavenly Hundred" of the Maidan showing pretty convincingly that the
shootings were " a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right
organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as
Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have
had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit
of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and
codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many
shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it
only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities.
With a great deal of outside effort and resources.
The gradual process of Turkey's becoming an Islamic
sharia-law country , again, is no longer so gradual . It has taken a sudden and sharp rightward turn, into
Islamic-nationhood. Turkey's Hagia Sophia, which had been "the world's largest cathedral
for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520," has now been
officially declared by the Turkish Government to be, instead, a mosque.
This is an act with huge international implications. It is an important event in human
history.
Turkey's strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose entire actual education was only in Islamic schools though he
lies about it and claims to have received a degree from a non-Islamic university , is in
the process of transforming Turkey back again into a specifically Islamic type of dictatorship,
a Sharia-law-ruled state. The secularist Turkish Republic that was instituted in 1923 by the
Enlightenment-inspired Kemal Attaturk has now
decisively ended. The widespread speculations that Erdogan has been aiming to restore Turkey to
being the imperial nation and ruler of a restored Islamic Ottoman Empire are now decisively
confirmed by this brazen act of insult to Orthodox Christians, and even to Roman Christians,
because -- as
Wikipedia notes -- "Justinian has sometimes been known as the 'Last Roman' in mid-20th
century historiography." The Orthodox Church in America titles him as "Saint
Justinian The Emperor" . However, Wikipedia also notes that Constantine XI Palaiologos,
who was killed by Mehmet's forces on that date, 29 May 1453, was actually the last Roman
Emperor. That ended the Roman Empire.
In other words: the Turkish Government's official change of Saint Sophia Cathedral, which
Justinian had created in 537, into now and henceforth a mosque, is a taking ownership of, and a
Turkish-Muslim declaration of supremacy over, a different religion's main house of worship.
It's a historical dagger into the heart of Orthodox Christianity, as well as being an insult to
Roman Christianity.
This is not merely an isolated act, either; it is, instead, something to which Erdogan has
long been building. Erdogan's grab of land
from secularist-ruled (committedly anti-sectarian) Syria , and his recent sending of troops
to help conquer the formerly secularist Libya, which land had been turned into a hellish civil
war by a U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011 and which chaos there continues to this day, all are
consistent with an understanding of Erdogan in which his foremost objective is a restoration of
the Ottoman Empire. And the U.S. Government has supported this objective of his (but only as
Turkey being a branch of the U.S. empire), and tried to get the EU to accept it.
The question now -- since the United States Government has been pushing against European
resistance to accepting a military alliance with an Islamic dictatorship -- is whether
continuation of the NATO alliance will be ended because of the path that Erdogan and the United
States Government have jointly been taking to re-impose a decidedly Sunni Islamic dictatorship
upon Turkey (by means of which, Turkey will serve as a wedge against both Shiite controlled
Iran, and an increasingly Orthodox-dominated Russia). However, there has been a split between
Erdogan and the U.S. regime, because he does not intend his restored Ottoman empire to be a
part of the U.S. or any other empire. Erdogan's independent streak is what now threatens to
break-up the Western Alliance -- the U.S. empire (which is actually the Rhodesist UK-U.S. empire ).
The United States Government has been preferring Erdogan's former political partner but now
enemy, Erdogan's fellow Sunni Islamist Fethullah Gulen, who cooperates with the U.S. and is
a CIA protégé (including
rabidly
against Shiite Iran and against Iran's main ally Russia). Gulen is
passionately endorsed by America's aristocracy . The U.S. regime has been preferring Gulen
to impose this
transformation of Turkey into an Islamic U.S. satellite , because Gulen models his
operation (and he has even described it in remarkable detail )
upon U.S. and UK 'intelligence' practices (CIA & MI6), whereas Erdogan has insisted upon an
independent Turkey with its own nationalistic 'intelligence' organization -- a
nationalistically transformed version of Turkey's existing MIT or National
Intelligence Organization -- an 'intelligence' organization that's cleansed of what
the CIA
praises as "Gulen is interested in slow and deep social change, including secular higher
education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party's
power, operating in a populist manner, trying to raise the general welfare ." (The CIA actually
knows that this has nothing whatsoever to do with "trying to raise the general welfare" -- the
U.S. regime's goal is to extend everywhere the U.S. empire, and Erdogan's Turkish regime has
that same goal for the Turkish empire, which doesn't yet even exist, though it once did as the
Ottoman Empire, and he wants to restore it.) Erdogan insists upon Turkey's not being merely a
vassal-state or colony within a foreign-led empire, but instead the leading nation of its own
empire, starting perhaps with gobbling up Syria and
Libya , but extending ultimately more globally. There is a soundly documented article
titled "Why Are Gulenists Hostile Toward
Iran?" and it provides much of the reason why the CIA supports Gulen (they do largely
because Erdogan isn't so obsessive against Iran -- which country America's aristocracy crave to
conquer again, as they had done in 1953, and Erdogan doesn't support that as passionately as
they require).
The question now for Europe is whether it wants to be again a participant in various
aristocracies', and clergies', imperialistic designs, or instead to declare itself finally
non-aligned and to lead thereby a new global non-aligned movement, not militaristically, but
instead by providing, to the entire world, an anti -imperialistic and truly democratic model, a
re-start and replacement of today's United Nations, and one that will reflect what had been
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's anti -imperialist intention , and not Harry S. Truman's American-imperialist
intention -- a start from scratch that has FDR's statements to guide it, and not Truman's
actions to guide it (such as has been the case). Perhaps even the U.S., NYC-based, U.N. would
ultimately sign onto that new international global federation; but the only basis upon which
nations in the old U.N. should be accepted into its successor would be if the old U.N. were
gradually to dissolve itself as its individual nations would, each on its own, sign onto the
new one. Ultimately, this option must be made available to all Governments, to choose to either
continue in Truman's U.N., or else join instead a new, and authentically FDR-based,
authentically anti -imperialistic, replacement of it.
That is what this dictatorial Islamization of Turkey is really all about, and only Europe
can make the decision -- no other land can. However, such a decision will only fail if any such
organization as a new U.N. is to be at all involved in the particular national issues that now
are so clearly coming to the fore in the transformation of Turkey into a Sunni Islamist
dictatorship.
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The "international community" should have no say in Turkey's intranational (or "domestic")
affairs -- regardless of whether Turkey is in or out of Europe. Sectarian and nationalistic
concerns cannot rule in the formation of any authentically democratic new international order
-- an authentically non -imperialistic international order. All such concerns, domestic
concerns, must be strictly the domain of the authority and power of each one of the individual
constituent units, each individual national Government itself controlling its own internal
affairs. FDR was adamant about that. He was insistent that the U.N. not get involved in
individual nations' internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, "Responsibility to Protect" idea (which now has even acquired the
status of being represented by an acronym "R2P" catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a
guiding principle of international relations, and must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected
in the formulation and formation of any replacement-organization -- any authentically
democratic international federation of nations. Otherwise, everything would be futile, and
there will be a WWIII. We are heading in exactly the opposite direction from that which FDR had
intended -- which was to prevent any Third World War.
This decision will be made by the individual nations of Europe. Only they collectively hold
this power. They will be able to exercise it only if they will terminate their alliances
outside of Europe, and proceed forward no longer bound by external alliances, but instead
become a free and independent European federation of European states. Only they, collectively ,
will be able to make this decision, as Europeans, for the entire world, regarding what the
world's future will be. And only they will hold the ultimate responsibility -- and it's NOT the
"responsibility to protect" . It is
instead the responsibility to protect the future of the entire world . It's the responsibility
to protect a future for the world. And if Europe fails it, then the world will inevitably move
forward to WWIII, as it is doing. A new international order is needed, and only Europe can lead
it, if Europe will.
In order for Europe to do that, Europe must first define itself. Is Turkey part of Europe?
Is Russia? What is Europe? If Europeans won't be able to agree on that, then the world will
continue to move forward towards WWIII, because the world will then have no center, it will
continue to have only contending empires -- exactly what FDR had aimed to prevent .
Europe is the key. But will Europe's leaders place the key in the lock, and open, finally,
the door to a non -imperialistic world? The present, U.S.-empire-aligned, Europe, won't do
that. Turkey's action on the Hagia Sophia, which is an insult to all Christians, and especially
to Orthodox ones, might finally force the issue -- and its solution.
Other than that, however, the official designation of the Hagia Sophia as being a mosque is
entirely a domestic, Turkish, matter.
US military spending is certainly much higher than it needs to be for US defense needs. But
the US military is not primarily defending the US. It is defending Asia from China, NATO from
Russia, and a number of countries from Iran, not to speak of Norkland.
IOW, the US military is defending US global hegemony, and is priced accordingly. What you
think of US military spending depends on what you think of the US as a hegemon.
I am not a fan of military spending – following an excellent post by John about
Eisenhower's famous speech (more tanks or more hospitals), I often use it as an example
opportunity cost when teaching. One can certainly claim that the budget should be lower but,
as a share of overall economic resources, the budget has been cut substantially in the last
30 years.
I just cannot see why the US public -- better said, some of the US public. -- fall for
that torrent of verbal diarrhoea that Maddow regularly gushes forth on TV about all things
Russian.
The shite that she so regularly spews out is patently untrue and clearly propagandistic.
Time and time again, the content of "The Rachel Maddow Show" (Why "show" FFS? Is it because
that is what it is -- a distraction, an entertainment vehicle for the uncritical masses?) has
repeatedly been shown to be untrue, but never an apology from Maddow.
Oh, what a surprise! Her paternal grandfather's family name was Medvedev, a Four-by-Two
who fled the Evil (Romanov) Empire and set up shop in the "Land of the Free".
Something that has often puzzled me is this: If the Russian Empire was such a "Prison of
Nations", all crushed by the autocratic state, how come Western Europe and the USA is
swarming with the descendants of the Tsar's former Jewish subjects?
To be fair to Maddow -- though I see no reason why I should be, for she is a lying cnut --
her family background is not really kosher: her mother hails from Newfoundland and is of
English/Irish descent, and one of her grandmother's forebears were from the Netherlands.
Furthermore, Maddow says that she had a conservative Catholic upbringing. I suppose that's
why she's now a liberal lesbian. And guess what: she's a Rhodes Scholar with an Oxford
PhD.
Did Skripal played any role in this mess. In this case his poisoning looks more logical as an attempt to hide him from
Russians, who might well suspect him in playing a role in creating Steele dossier by some myths that were present in it.
Notable quotes:
"... Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence". ..."
Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise
that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on,
Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the
FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017.
Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary
Committee Friday afternoon.
The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele's sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking
contractor for the former British spy's company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the
Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From
the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled
warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence
memos.
Paul Manafort: The Steele dossier's "Primary Subsource" admitted to the FBI "that he was
'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was a 'strange task' to have been given." AP
Photo/Seth Wenig, File
Steele's operation didn't rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource's
account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring
of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: "Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort's
dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes." The Primary
Subsource admitted to the FBI "that he was 'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was
a 'strange task' to have been given."
The Primary Subsource said at first that maybe he had asked some of his friends in Russia
– he didn't have a network of sources, according to his lawyer, but instead just a
"social circle." And a boozy one at that: When the Primary Subsource would get together with
his old friend Source 4, the two would drink heavily. But his social circle was no help with
the Manafort question and so the Primary Subsource scrounged up a few old news clippings about
Manafort and fed them back to Steele.
Also in his "social circle" was Primary Subsource's friend "Source 2," a character who was
always on the make. "He often tries to monetize his relationship with [the Primary Subsource],
suggesting that the two of them should try and do projects together for money," the Primary
Subsource told the FBI (a caution that the Primary Subsource would repeat again and again.) It
was Source 2 who "told [the Primary Subsource] that there was compromising material on
Trump."
And then there was Source 3, a very special friend. Over a redacted number of years, the
Primary Subsource has "helped out [Source 3] financially." She stayed with him when visiting
the United States. The Primary Subsource told the FBI that in the midst of their conversations
about Trump, they would also talk about "a private subject." (The FBI agents, for all their
hardnosed reputation, were too delicate to intrude by asking what that "private subject"
was).
Michael Cohen: The bogus story of the Trump fixer's trip to Prague seems to have originated
with "Source 3," a woman friend of the Primary Subsource, who was "not sure if Source 3 was
brainstorming here." AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
One day Steele told his lead contractor to get dirt on five individuals. By the time he got
around to it, the Primary Subsource had forgotten two of the names, but seemed to recall Carter
Page, Paul Manafort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The Primary Subsource said he asked his
special friend Source 3 if she knew any of them. At first she didn't. But within minutes she
seemed to recall having heard of Cohen, according to the FBI notes. Indeed, before long it came
back to her that she had heard Cohen and three henchmen had gone to Prague to meet with
Russians.
Source 3 kept spinning yarns about Michael Cohen in Prague. For example, she claimed Cohen
was delivering "deniable cash payments" to hackers. But come to think of it, the Primary
Subsource was "not sure if Source 3 was brainstorming here," the FBI notes say.
The Steele Dossier would end up having authoritative-sounding reports of hackers who had
been "recruited under duress by the FSB" -- the Russian security service -- and how they "had
been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct
'altering operations' against the the Democratic Party." What exactly, the FBI asked the
subject, were "altering operations?" The Primary Subsource wouldn't be much help there, as he
told the FBI "that his understanding of this topic (i.e. cyber) was 'zero.'" But what about his
girlfriend whom he had known since they were in eighth grade together? The Primary Subsource
admitted to the FBI that Source 3 "is not an IT specialist herself."
And then there was Source 6. Or at least the Primary Subsource thinks it was Source 6.
Ritz-Carlton Moscow: The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to
confirm the story" about Trump and prostitutes at the hotel. But he did check with someone who
supposedly asked a hotel manager, who said that with celebrities, "one never knows what they're
doing." Moscowjob.net/Wikimedia
While he was doing his research on Manafort, the Primary Subsource met a U.S. journalist "at
a Thai restaurant." The Primary Subsource didn't want to ask "revealing questions" but managed
to go so far as to ask, "Do you [redacted] know anyone who can talk about all of this
Trump/Manafort stuff, or Trump and Russia?" According to the FBI notes, the journalist told
Primary Subsource "that he was skeptical and nothing substantive had turned up." But the
journalist put the Primary Subsource in touch with a "colleague" who in turn gave him an email
of "this guy" journalist 2 had interviewed and "that he should talk to."
With the email address of "this guy" in hand, the Primary Subsource sent him a message "in
either June or July 2016." Some weeks later the Primary Subsource "received a telephone call
from an unidentified Russia guy." He "thought" but had no evidence that the mystery "Russian
guy" was " that guy." The mystery caller "never identified himself." The Primary Subsource
labeled the anonymous caller "Source 6." The Primary Subsource and Source 6 talked for a total
of "about 10 minutes." During that brief conversation they spoke about the Primary Subsource
traveling to meet the anonymous caller, but the hook-up never happened.
Nonetheless, the Primary Subsource labeled the unknown Russian voice "Source 6" and gave
Christopher Steele the rundown on their brief conversation – how they had "a general
discussion about Trump and the Kremlin" and "that it was an ongoing relationship." For use in
the dossier, Steele named the voice Source E.
When Steele was done putting this utterly unsourced claim into the style of the dossier,
here's how the mystery call from the unknown guy was presented: "Speaking in confidence to a
compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US
presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of
co-operation between them and the Russian leadership." Steele writes "Inter alia," – yes,
he really does deploy the Latin formulation for "among other things" – "Source E
acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail
messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee [DNC], to the WikiLeaks
platform."
All that and more is presented as the testimony of a "close associate" of Trump, when it was
just the disembodied voice of an unknown guy.
Perhaps even more perplexing is that the FBI interviewers, knowing that Source E was just an
anonymous caller, didn't compare that admission to the fantastical Steele bluster and declare
the dossier a fabrication on the spot.
But perhaps it might be argued that Christopher Steele was bringing crack investigative
skills of his own to bear. For something as rich in detail and powerful in effect as the
dossier, Steele must have been researching these questions himself as well, using his
hard-earned spy savvy to pry closely held secrets away from the Russians. Or at the very least
he must have relied on a team of intelligence operatives who could have gone far beyond the
obvious limitations the Primary Subsource and his group of drinking buddies.
But no. As we learned in December from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Steele "was not
the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting." Steele, the IG
reported "relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary
Sub-source used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed
to Steele." The inspector general's report noted that "neither Steele nor the Primary
Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported."
One might, by now, harbor some skepticism about the dossier. One might even be inclined to
doubt the story that Trump was "into water sports" as the Primary Subsource so delicately
described the tale of Trump and Moscow prostitutes. But, in this account, there was an effort,
however feeble, to nail down the "rumor and speculation" that Trump engaged in "unorthodox
sexual activity at the Ritz."
While the Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to confirm the story,"
Source 2 (who will be remembered as the hustler always looking for a lucrative score)
supposedly asked a hotel manager about Trump and the manager said that with celebrities, "one
never knows what they're doing." One never knows – not exactly a robust proof of
something that smacks of urban myth. But the Primary Subsource makes the best of it, declaring
that at least "it wasn't a denial."
If there was any denial going on it was the FBI's, an agency in denial that its
extraordinary investigation was crumbling.
bh2, 23 minutes ago
Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence".
Democracy is incompatible with the global neoliberal empire ruled from Washington. And the
USA is empire now.
Notable quotes:
"... cancel culture is just fine, as long as it's your side doing the cancelling...or if it's Israel or the national security state doing the cancelling ..."
"The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful
ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy."
This sacred cow of illusion is being threatened from all directions it seems. Democracy is
great for whoever owns it, and whoever owns the media owns democracy. A cow well worth
milking.
Norman Finkelstein must be laughing out loud at the sight of so many hypocritical liberals
opposing cancel. Did anyone in this crowd get 150 people to sign a letter of protest when
Finkelstein got cancelled? Or when Phil Donahue got fired for opposing the Iraq war?
IOW, cancel culture is just fine, as long as it's your side doing the cancelling...or
if it's Israel or the national security state doing the cancelling . CountrPunch, a
victim of blacklisting themselves, has a major takedown of the screaming hypocrisy of some of
the signers: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/10/harpers-and-the-great-cancel-culture-panic/
B efore it became a political term, "conservative" was the antonym of "destructive." When
the word acquired political significance in the English language beginning in the early 19th
century -- Britain's Conservative Party was founded in 1834 -- this older definition continued
to be part of its meaning in the new context. The political forces that conservatives opposed,
such as liberalism and radicalism, were inclined toward destruction. Those liberals and
radicals who most admired the French Revolution were candid about this: they wished to destroy
the existing legal, religious, social, and economic order so as to build a better, more
rational one in its place.
Conservatism is a counterrevolutionary force: the antithesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism,
not simply as historical movements but as revolutionary tendencies to which the Left -- and
sometimes the Right -- is susceptible. But conservatism is not simply the negation of
incendiary ideology; it is also affirmation of a principle -- the anti-utopian view that,
despite its flaws, our civilization is worthy of our loyalty, even unto death.
You may have heard that American conservatism is not really conservative at all, it's just
"classical liberalism." America was born in revolution, and as Louis Hartz influentially argued
in the 1950s, Lockean liberalism is virtually our sole tradition. True conservatism arises from
feudalism, which means that in this country it exists only as an exotic import, displaced in
space and time from the lands of Habsburgs or Romanovs.
This is what liberals would like American conservatives to believe, but the opposite is more
nearly the truth: conservatism is not classical liberalism; rather, what is best in classical
liberalism depends on conservatism. To understand this, one must return to the historical
milieu in which "conservative" and "liberal" became political terms. In the 1830s these words
indicated on both sides of the Atlantic opposing attitudes toward the French Revolution and its
legacy. Writing in the North American Review in 1835, Thomas Jefferson's biographer B.L.
Rayner retrospectively applies the labels to the two great factions of American politics in the
first decade of the republic: "If Mr. Jefferson and his friends sympathised, as every one knows
that they did, with the liberal party in Europe, their opponents, the Federalists of that day,
sympathised in like manner with the aristocratic, or as it is now called, legitimate or
conservative party in Europe -- the party which, in order to avoid any epithet in the least
degree offensive or even questionable, we have called the party of Law."
In Britain, the Conservative Party developed out of a longstanding coalition of
anti-revolutionary Whigs and Tories who at one stage had been known as the "Friends of Pitt" --
that is, political allies who carried on the anti-French policies of the "independent Whig"
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who had died in 1806. In the U.S., the anti-French
faction of the 1790s was the Federalist Party, and although George Washington's administration,
like Pitt's ministry, was notionally above party, in practice Washington was very much aligned
with the anti-French, pro-British, counterrevolutionary politics of his Treasury secretary
Alexander Hamilton and his vice president and successor John Adams. America's first government
was conservative.
The Federalists did not long survive the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800,
but the extinction of a conserative party did not mean the extinction of conservative,
counterrevolutionary politics, which lived on within Jefferson's own party. Jefferson himself
had cooled in his revolutionary ardor, and conservatism prevailed even under America's first
liberal president.
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The fact that America's war of independence had been a revolution, and that John Locke's
philosophy was at the heart of its Declaration, is not the refutation of American conservatism
that might be imagined. No less a foe of Jacobinism than Edmund Burke cherished another
revolution, after all, one that was conservative rather than destructive -- the "Glorious
Revolution" of 1688 that had established the constitutional order Burke strove to defend.
Locke, for his part, had presented his Second Treatise as a justification of the
Glorious Revolution. That revolution, like America's nearly a century later, was understood by
the revolutionaries themselves as a change in continuity with the nation's historic principles.
When the Americans invoked Lockean ideas, they did so in the full knowledge that George III's
own legitimacy in England rested in the eyes of many of his subjects -- especially those of
parliamentary Whigs who were already skeptical of the war with America -- on the Lockean
interpretation of the Revolution of 1688. The British could not deny the Americans their rights
without at the same time denying part of the foundation of Britain's own constitution: the
Declaration of Independence in effect made a conservative, originalist argument.
There was much historical mythologizing involved in the Glorious Revolution and the American
Revolution. But the impulse to reconcile such alterations in government with the historical
character of the nation was a conservative motive, in sharp contrast to the rationalistic and
radically transformative impulse behind the likes of the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks. As for
Britain's legitimist opponents of the Glorious Revolution -- the Jacobite Tories who believed
Parliament was wrong to depose James II -- their conservatism was real but hopeless.
Conservatism must actually conserve. The ancien regime proved to be unsalvageable
everywhere: in Stuart Britain, Bourbon France, Habsburg Austria, Romanov Russia, even imperial
China. Italy's Catholic faith was not enough to preserve the Papal States, either.
The age of ideological revolution has not ended; the revolutionary spirit has only assumed
new forms. In China, still ruled by a Communist Party, it has become institutionalized, and the
revolution is advanced not in the crude manner of the old Soviet Union but through a strategy
of global economic transformation, coupled with ruthless reeducation programs at home. In the
West, liberalism has cut loose from its civilizational roots, and from all conservative
restraint, and has become an ideology of cultural revolution combined with an acceptance of the
global economic reconfiguration also desired by China.
The conservative's task today, as during the French Revolution and the Cold War, is
counterrevolutionary. But now the revolution is truly global, and though it may not be as
violent as in centuries past -- not yet -- the stakes are hardly lower. America and her
conservatives will need the utmost resolve, and a deep commitment to the sources of our
civilization, if we are to prevail again. Yet until now, at least, Providence seems to have
intended the Anglo-Americans to be the firefighters against the conflagration.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review , and
editor-at-large of The American Conservative.
John, what say you about US/global military spending, which if cut and reallocated in the
low double digits could transform society? Do you think it's just politically untouchable? If
the US cut its military budget by say 25% it would still be formidable, especially given its
nuclear deterrent. For the life of me I can never understand why military budgets are
sacrosanct. Is it just WW2 and Cold War hangover? Couldn't the obvious effects of climate
change and the fragility of the economy subject to natural threats like the pandemic change
attitudes about overfunding the military (like the debacle of the F-35 program)?
Alan White @13 Military spending is about 3.4 per cent of US GDP, compared to 2 per cent
or less most places. So that's a significant and unproductive use of resources that could be
redirected to better effect. But the income of the top 1 per cent is around 20 per cent of
total income. If that was cut in half, there would be little or no reduction in the
productive services supplied by this group. If you want big change, that's where you need to
look.
I think some of the reluctance to cut military spending in the US is the extent to which
it acts as a politically unassailable source of fiscal stimulus and "welfare" in a country
where such things are otherwise anathema. Well, that and all of the grift it represents for
the donor class.
A top government watchdog group obtained 136 pages of never before publicized emails between
former FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and
Lisa Page and one in particular appears to refer to a confidential informant inside the
White House in 2017, according to a press release from
Judicial Watch .
Those emails, some of which are heavily redacted, reveal that "Strzok, Page and top bureau
officials in the days prior to and following
President Donald Trump's inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing
that could "play into" the
FBI's "investigative strategy."
Majority Say They Want to See Trump's Taxes, Many Think Returns Would Hurt Reelection
Chances
White House Reportedly Moves to Make Coronavirus Cases Private by Cutting Out
CDC
Trump White House Reportedly Conducting 'Loyalty' Interviews of Officials,
Appointees
Majority Don't Trust Trump's Public Messages on COVID-19, Disapproval on Pandemic Response
Hits 60%
Trump's Niece Says She's Heard Him Use the N-Word, Anti-Semitic Slurs
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White House Testing Staff For COVID-19, But Are Results Accurate?
Moreover, another email sent by Strzok to Bill
Priestap, the Former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, refers to
what appears to be a confidential informant in the White House. The email was sent the day
after Trump's inauguration.
"I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]," wrote Strzok. "
I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters
there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to
have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one
of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her
to handle WH detailee interaction."
In April, 2019 this reporter first published information that there was an alleged
confidential informant for the FBI in the White House. In fact, then senior Republican Chairmen
of the Senate Appropriations Committee
Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson submitted a
letter to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing the new texts from
Strzok to Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White
House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.
The Chairmen revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been already
been obtained by SaraACarter.com and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit
White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.
At the time, texts obtained by this news site and sources stated that Strzok had one
significant contact within the White House – at the time that would have been Vice
President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock,
as reported.
Over the past year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with years
of numerous Congressional investigations, has uncovered a plethora of documentation revealing
the most intimate details of the FBI's now debunked investigation into Trump's campaign and its
alleged conspiracy with Russia.
For example, in a series of emails exchanged by top bureau officials – in the FBI
General Counsel's office, Counterintelligence Division and Washington Field office on Jan. 19,
2017 – reveal that senior leadership, including former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were
coordinating with each other in their ongoing attempt to target the incoming administration.
Priestap was also included in the email exchanges. The recent discovery in April, of Priestap's
handwritten notes taken in January, 2017 before the Strzok and his FBI partner interviewed
Flynn were a bombshell. In Priestap's notes he states, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to
get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
In one recent email chain obtained by Judicial Watch, FBI assistant general counsel in the
FBI's National Security Law Branch stated in an email to Strzok [which was almost entirely
redacted]
"I'll give Trisha/Baker a heads up too," it stated. Strzok's reply to the assistant
general counsel, however, was redacted by DOJ. The response back to Strzok has also been
redacted.
Then later in the evening at 7:04 p.m., Strzok sends another emails stating, "I briefed
Bill (Priestap) this afternoon and he was trying without success to reach the DD [McCabe]. I
will forward below to him as his [sic] changes the timeline. What's your recommendation?"
The reply, like many of the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the DOJ, is almost
entirely redacted. The email response to Strzok was from the Counterintelligence
Division.
Here's what was not redacted
"Approved by tomorrow afternoon is the request. [Redacted] – please advise if I am
missing something." An unidentified official replies, "[Redacted], Bill is aware and willing
to jump in when we need him."
Judicial Watch Timeline of Events On Emails Obtained Through FOIA
At 8 p.m., Strzok responds back (copying officials in the Counterintelligence Division,
Washington Field Office and General Counsel's office):
"Just talked with Bill. [Redacted]. Please relay above to WFO and [redacted] tonight, and
keep me updated with plan for meet and results of same. Good luck."
Strzok then forwards the whole email exchange to Lisa Page, saying, "Bill spoke with Andy.
[Redacted.] Here we go again "
The Day After Trump's Inauguration
The day after Trump's inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, Strzok forwarded Page and [a redacted
person] an
email he'd sent that day to Priestap. Strzok asked them to "not forward/share."
In the email to Priestap, Strzok said, "I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing
routed from [redacted]. I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending
investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy , and I would
like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the
briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I
did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction."
" Also, on January 21, 2017, Strzok wrote largely the same message
he'd sent to Priestap directly to his counterintelligence colleague Jennifer Boone ," states
Judicial Watch.
The records were produced to Judicial Watch in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 2017 request for all
communications between Strzok and Page ( Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)).
The FBI has only processed emails at a rate of 500 pages per month and has yet to process
text messages. At this rate, the production of these communications, which still number around
8,000 pages, would not be completed until at least late 2021.
In other emails, Strzok comments on reporting on the anti-Trump dossier authored by Hillary
Clinton's paid operative Christopher Steele.
In a January 2017 email ,
Strzok takes issue with a UK Independent report which claimed Steele had suspected there was a
"cabal" within the FBI which put the Clinton email investigation above the Trump-Russia probe.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was at the heart of both the Clinton email and
Trump-Russia investigations.
In April and June of 2017, the FBI would use the dossier as key evidence in obtaining FISA
warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. In a declassified
summary of a Department of Justice assessment of the warrants that was released by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in January of this year, it was determined that
those two applications to secretly monitor Page lacked probable cause.
The newly released records include a January 11, 2017, email
from Strzok to Lisa Page, Priestap, and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jon
Moffa, a New York Times report
which refers to the dossier as containing "unsubstantiated accounts" and "unproven claims." In
the email, Strzok comments on the article, calling it "Pretty good reporting."
On January 14, 2017, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Michael Kortan forwards
to Strzok, Page and Priestap a link to a UK
Independent article entitled "Former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele's Frustration as FBI Sat
On Donald Trump Russia File for Months".
The article, citing security sources, notes that "Steele became increasingly frustrated that
the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to
believe there was a cover-up: that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr
Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Clinton's emails."
Strzok responds: "Thanks Mike. Of course not accurate [the cover-up/cabal nonsense]. Is that
question gaining traction anywhere else?"
The records also include a February 10, 2017, email
from Strzok to Page mentioning then-national security adviser Michael Flynn (five days before
Flynn resigned) and includes a photo of Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Strzok
also makes a joke about how McCabe had fat shamed Kislyak.
On February 8, 2017, Strzok, under the subject "RE: EO on Economic Espionage," emailed
Lisa Page, saying, "Please let [redacted] know I talked to [redacted]. Tonight, he approached
Flynn's office and got no information." Strzok was responding to a copy of an email Page had
sent him. The email, from a redacted FBI official to Deputy Director McCabe read: "OPS has not
received a draft EO on economic espionage. Instead, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advised OPS
that they received a draft, but they did not send us the draft. I'll follow up with our
detailees about this EO." Flynn resigned
on February 13, 2017.
On January 26, 2017, Nancy McNamara of the FBI's Inspection Division emailed
Strzok and Priestap with the subject line "Leak," saying, "Tried calling you but the phones are
forwarded to SIOC. I got the tel call report, however [redacted]. Feel free to give me a call
if I have it wrong." Strzok forwarded the McNamara email to Lisa Page and an unidentified
person in the General Counsel's office, saying, "Need to talk to you about how to respond to
this."
On January 11, 2017, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff emailed
Kortan, saying he'd learned that Steele had worked for the Bureau's Eurasian organized crime
section and had turned over the dossier on Trump-Russian "collusion" to the bureau in Rome.
Kortan forwards Isikoff's email to aide Richard Quinn, who forwards to Strzok "just for
visibility". Strzok forwards to his boss, Priestap and Moffa, saying, "FYI, [redacted], you or
I should probably inform [redacted]. How's your relationship with him? Bill unless you object,
I'll let Parmaan [presumably senior FBI official Bryan Paarmann] know." Strzok forwards the
whole exchange onto Lisa Page.
On January 18, 2017, reporter Peter Elkind of ProPublica reached
out to Kortan, asking to interview Strzok, Michael Steinbach, Jim Baker, Priestap, former
FBI Director James Comey and DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg for a story Elkind was working
on. Kortan replied, "Okay, I will start organizing things." Further along in the thread, an FBI
Press Office official reached out to an FBI colleague for assistance with the interviews,
saying Steinbach had agreed to a "background discussion" with Elkind, who was "writing the
'definitive' account of what happened during the Clinton investigation, specifically, Comey's
handling of the investigation, seeking to reconstruct and explain in much greater detail what
he did and why he did it." In May 2017, Elkind wrote an
article titled "The Problems With the FBI's Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey,"
which in light of these documents, strongly suggests many FBI officials leaked to the
publication.
Strzok ended up being scheduled
to meet with Elkind at 9:30 a.m. on January 31, 2017, before an Elkind interview of Comey's
chief of staff Jim Rybicki. Elkind's reporting on the Clinton email investigation was discussed
at length in previous
emails obtained by Judicial Watch.
"These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he
stepped foot in the Oval Office," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And now we see how
the Comey FBI was desperate to spin, through high-level leaks, its mishandling of the Clinton
email investigation. And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noted that Wray's FBI and
Barr's DOJ continue slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails – which
means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won't be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!"
In February 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered an August 2016 email in which Strzok says that Clinton, in her interview with the
FBI about her email controversy, apologized for "the work and effort" it caused the bureau and
she said she chose to use it "out of convenience" and that "it proved to be anything but."
Strzok said Clinton's apology and the "convenience" discussion were "not in" the FBI 302 report
that summarized the interview.
Also in February, Judicial Watch made public Strzok-Page emails showing their direct
involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau's investigation of alleged
collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The records also show additional "confirmed
classified emails" were found on Clinton's unsecure non-state.gov email server "beyond the number presented" in
then-FBI Director James Comey's statements; Strzok and Page questioning the access the DOJ was
granting Clinton's lawyers; and Page revealing that the DOJ was making edits to FBI 302 reports
related to the Clinton Midyear Exam investigation. The emails detail a discussion about
"squashing" an issue related to the Seth Rich controversy.
In January 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered Strzok-Page emails that detail special accommodations given to the lawyers of
Clinton and her aides during the FBI investigation of the Clinton email controversy.
In November 2019, Judicial Watch
revealed Strzok-Page emails that show the attorney representing three of Clinton's aides
were given meetings with senior FBI officials.
Also in November, Judicial Watch
uncovered emails revealing that after Clinton's statement denying the transmission of
classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials
citing "three [Clinton email] chains" containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of
paragraphs."
In a related case, in May 2020, Judicial Watch received the " electronic
communication " (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed
"Crossfire Hurricane," of President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The document was
written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jul 18 2020 18:59 utc | 13 But there are also very real First
Amendment interests implicated by laws which bar entities from spending money to express
political viewpoints."
With regard to Greenwald's opinion, mine is relatively simple: ban corporations from doing
*anything* in the political arena. Corporations are *not* people, regardless of the legal
myth that they are. Officers of corporations have no standing other than their personal
standing, and they should be barred from contributing to campaigns, or lobbying for
legislation or anything else outside of conducting the business they are *licensed by the
state* to do.
This does not apply to incorporated non-profit organizations which are organized to do
precisely what corporations should be banned from doing: advocate and attempt to influence
specific legislation or policies or candidates for office. For profit corporations should be
banned from doing anything to influence non-profit organizations, by the way, otherwise
corporations will do an end-run around the ban on political action by funding fake
"non-profit" organizations.
With regard to the large social media, there should be a law passed which 1) prevents them
from being sued regardless of anything their subscribers say on their platforms, and 2)
prevents them from censoring anything their subscribers say on their platforms. This was true
on the street and should be true on the Internet. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of the
Constitution and should be protected on the Internet.
That does not apply here in MOA because MOA is a small operation owned and operated by one
person. He has the right to ban or censor anything he likes. But if he was the size of
Facebook or Twitter, he would have serious social influence. In that case, it would be
justified to both hold him blameless for the trolls and also prevent him from censoring
trolls.
Dealing with offensive people on the large platforms (and even here) should be done by
providing the users adequate personal controls in their interface which enable the users to
remove content from their view that they don't like, while the content remains in view for
anyone who approves of it or doesn't care. Some forums have been doing this for years, such
as Slashdot.
These solutions are incredibly simple. The reason they are not implemented is because
different factions see benefit in not implementing them.
Naturally, as an anarchist, the solutions I suggest are predicated on the idiocy of having
states and corporations in the first place. Otherwise, all these "issues" wouldn't even
exist. This is what you get when you have a religious belief in the state and society.
Does Cancel Culture intersect with Woke? The former's not mentioned in
this fascinating essay , but the latter is and appears to deserve some unpacking beyond
what Crooke provides.
As for the letter, it's way overdue by 40+ years. I recall reading Bloom's The Closing
of the American Mind and Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism where they say
much the same.
What's most irksome are the lies that now substitute for discourse--Trump or someone from
his admin lies, then the WaPost, NY Times, MSNBC, Fox, and others fire back with their lies.
And to top everything off--There's ZERO accountability: people who merit "canceling" continue
to lie and commit massive fraud.
The Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministers just jointly agreed in a rare published account
of their phone conversation that the Outlaw US Empire " has lost its sense of reason,
morality and credibility .
Yes, they were specifically referring to the government, but I'd include the Empire's
institutions as well. In the face of that reality, the letter is worse than a joke.
"... Powell was part of the policy team that crafted the post-Gulf War response to the fact that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, survived a conflict he was not meant to. After being labeled the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler whose crimes required Nuremburg-like retribution in a speech delivered by President Bush in October 1990, the Iraqi President's post-conflict hold on power had become a political problem for Bush 41. ..."
"... Powell was aware of the CIA's post-war assessment on the vulnerability of Saddam's rule to continued economic sanctions, and helped craft the policy that led to the passage of Security Council resolution 687 in April 1991. That linked Iraq's obligation to be disarmed of its WMD prior to any lifting of sanctions and the reality that it was U.S. policy not to lift these sanctions, regardless of Iraq's disarmament status, until which time Saddam was removed from power. ..."
"... Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy. ..."
"... The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of ..."
SCOTT RITTER: Powell & Iraq -- Regime Change, Not Disarmament: The Fundamental
Lie July 18, 2020 Save
Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards
Saddam Hussein. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy.
T he New York Times Magazine has published a puff piece soft-peddling former
Secretary of State Colin Powell's role in selling a war on Iraq to the UN Security Council
using what turned out to be bad intelligence. "Colin Powell Still Wants Answers" is the title
of the article, written by Robert Draper. "The analysts who provided the intelligence," a
sub-header to the article declares, "now say it was doubted inside the CIA at the time."
Draper's article is an extract from a book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration
Took America into Iraq , scheduled for publication later this month. In the interest of
full disclosure, I was approached by Draper in 2018 about his interest in writing this book,
and I agreed to be interviewed as part of his research. I have not yet read the book, but can
note that, based upon the tone and content of his New York Times Magazine article, my
words apparently carried little weight.
Regime Change, Not WMD
I spent some time articulating to Draper my contention that the issue with Saddam Hussein's
Iraq was never about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but rather regime change, and that
everything had to be viewed in the light of this reality -- including Powell's Feb. 5, 2003
presentation before the UN Security Council. Based upon the content of his article, I might as
well have been talking to a brick wall.
Powell's 2003 presentation before the council did not take place in a policy vacuum. In many
ways, the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was a continuation of
the 1991 Gulf War, which Powell helped orchestrate. Its fumbled aftermath was again, something
that transpired on Powell's watch as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the
administration of George H. W. Bush.
Powell at UN Security Council. (UN Photo)
Powell was part of the policy team that crafted the post-Gulf War response to the fact that
Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, survived a conflict he was not meant to. After being labeled
the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler whose crimes required Nuremburg-like retribution
in a speech delivered by President Bush in October 1990, the Iraqi President's
post-conflict hold on power had become a political problem for Bush 41.
Powell was aware of the CIA's post-war assessment on the vulnerability of Saddam's rule to
continued economic sanctions, and helped craft the policy that led to the passage of Security
Council resolution 687 in April 1991. That linked Iraq's obligation to be disarmed of its WMD
prior to any lifting of sanctions and the reality that it was U.S. policy not to lift these
sanctions, regardless of Iraq's disarmament status, until which time Saddam was removed from
power.
Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards
Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy.
I bore witness to the reality of this policy as a weapons inspector working for the United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), created under the mandate of resolution 687 to oversee the
disarming of Iraq's WMD. Brought in to create an intelligence capability for the inspection
team, my remit soon expanded to operations and, more specifically, how Iraq was hiding retained
weapons and capability from the inspectors.
SCUDS
UN weapons inspectors in central Iraq, June 1, 1991. (UN Photo)
One of my first tasks was addressing discrepancies in Iraq's accounting of its modified SCUD
missile arsenal; in December 1991 I wrote an assessment that Iraq was likely retaining
approximately 100 missiles. By March 1992 Iraq, under pressure, admitted it had retained a
force of 89 missiles (that number later grew to 97).
After extensive investigations, I was able to corroborate the Iraqi declarations, and in
November 1992 issued an assessment that UNSCOM could account for the totality of Iraq's SCUD
missile force. This, of course, was an unacceptable conclusion, given that a compliant Iraq
meant sanctions would need to be lifted and Saddam would survive.
The U.S. intelligence community rejected my findings without providing any fact-based
evidence to refute it, and the CIA later briefed the Senate that it assessed Iraq to be
retaining a force of some 200 covert SCUD missiles. This all took place under Powell's watch as
chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
I challenged the CIA's assessment, and organized the largest, most complex inspection in
UNSCOM's history to investigate the intelligence behind the 200-missile assessment. In the end,
the intelligence was shown to be wrong, and in November 1993 I briefed the CIA Director's
senior staff on UNSCOM's conclusion that all SCUD missiles were accounted for.
Moving the Goalposts
The CIA's response was to assert that Iraq had a force of 12-20 covert SCUD missiles, and
that this number would never change, regardless of what UNSCOM did. This same assessment was in
play at the time of Powell's Security Council presentation, a blatant lie born of the willful
manufacture of lies by an entity -- the CIA -- whose task was regime change, not
disarmament.
Powell knew all of this, and yet he still delivered his speech to the UN Security
Council.
In October 2002, in a
briefing designed to undermine the credibility of UN inspectors preparing to return to
Iraq, the Defense Intelligence Agency trotted out Dr. John Yurechko, the defense intelligence
officer for information operations and denial and deception, to provide a briefing detailing
U.S. claims that Iraq was engaged in a systematic process of concealment regarding its WMD
programs.
John Yurechko, of the Defense Intelligence Agency, briefs reporters at the Pentagon on Oct.
8, 2002 (U.S. Defense Dept.)
According to Yurechko, the briefing was compiled from several sources, including "inspector
memoirs" and Iraqi defectors. The briefing was farcical, a deliberate effort to propagate
misinformation by the administration of Bush 43. I know -- starting in 1994, I led a concerted
UNSCOM effort involving the intelligence services of eight nations to get to the bottom of
Iraq's so-called "concealment mechanism."
Using innovative imagery intelligence techniques, defector debriefs, agent networks and
communications intercepts, combined with extremely aggressive on-site inspections, I was able,
by March 1998, to conclude that Iraqi concealment efforts were largely centered on protecting
Saddam Hussein from assassination, and had nothing to do with hiding WMD. This, too, was an
inconvenient finding, and led to the U.S. dismantling the apparatus of investigation I had so
carefully assembled over the course of four years.
It was never about the WMD -- Powell knew this. It was always about regime change.
Using UN as Cover for Coup Attempt
In 1991, Powell signed off on the incorporation of elite U.S. military commandos into the
CIA's Special Activities Staff for the purpose of using UNSCOM as a front to collect
intelligence that could facilitate the removal of Saddam Hussein. I worked with this special
cell from 1991 until 1996, on the mistaken opinion that the unique intelligence, logistics and
communications capability they provided were useful to planning and executing the complex
inspections I was helping lead in Iraq.
This program resulted in the failed coup attempt in June 1996 that used UNSCOM as its
operational cover -- the coup failed, the Special Activities Staff ceased all cooperation with
UNSCOM, and we inspectors were left holding the bag. The Iraqis had every right to be concerned
that UNSCOM inspections were being used to target their president because, the truth be told,
they were.
Nowhere in Powell's presentation to the Security Council, or in any of his efforts to recast
that presentation as a good intention led astray by bad intelligence, does the reality of
regime change factor in. Regime change was the only policy objective of three successive U.S.
presidential administrations -- Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43.
Powell was a key player in two of these. He knew. He knew about the existence of the CIA's
Iraq Operations Group. He knew of the successive string of covert "findings" issued by U.S.
presidents authorizing the CIA to remove Saddam Hussein from power using lethal force. He knew
that the die had been cast for war long before Bush 43 decided to engage the United Nations in
the fall of 2002.
Powell Knew
Powell knew all of this, and yet he still allowed himself to be used as a front to sell this
conflict to the international community, and by extension the American people, using
intelligence that was demonstrably false. If, simply by drawing on my experience as an UNSCOM
inspector, I knew every word he uttered before the Security Council was a lie the moment he
spoke, Powell should have as well, because every aspect of my work as an UNSCOM inspector was
known to, and documented by, the CIA.
It is not that I was unknown to Powell in the context of the WMD narrative. Indeed, my name
came up during an
interview Powell gave to Fox News on Sept. 8, 2002, when he was asked to comment on a quote
from my speech to the Iraqi Parliament earlier that month in which I stated:
"The rhetoric of fear that is disseminated by my government and others has not to date been
backed up by hard facts that substantiate any allegations that Iraq is today in possession of
weapons of mass destruction or has links to terror groups responsible for attacking the United
States. Void of such facts, all we have is speculation."
"We have facts, not speculation. Scott is certainly entitled to his opinion but I'm afraid
that I would not place the security of my nation and the security of our friends in the
region on that kind of an assertion by somebody who's not in the intelligence chain any
longer If Scott is right, then why are they keeping the inspectors out? If Scott is right,
why don't they say, 'Anytime, any place, anywhere, bring 'em in, everybody come in -- we are
clean?' The reason is they are not clean. And we have to find out what they have and what
we're going to do about it. And that's why it's been the policy of this government to insist
that Iraq be disarmed in accordance with the terms of the relevant UN resolutions."
UN inspectors in Iraq. (UN Photo)
Of course, in November 2002, Iraq did just what Powell said they would never do -- they let
the UN inspectors return without preconditions. The inspectors quickly exposed the fact that
the "high quality" U.S. intelligence they had been tasked with investigating was pure bunk.
Left to their own devices, the new round of UN weapons inspections would soon be able to give
Iraq a clean bill of health, paving the way for the lifting of sanctions and the continued
survival of Saddam Hussein.
Powell knew this was not an option. And thus he allowed himself to be used as a vehicle for
disseminating more lies -- lies that would take the U.S. to war, cost thousands of U.S. service
members their lives, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, all in the name of regime
change.
Back to Robert Draper. I spent a considerable amount of time impressing upon him the reality
of regime change as a policy, and the fact that the WMD disarmament issue existed for the sole
purpose of facilitating regime change. Apparently, my words had little impact, as all Draper
has done in his article is continue the false narrative that America went to war on the weight
of false and misleading intelligence.
Draper is wrong -- America went to war because it was our policy as a nation, sustained over
three successive presidential administrations, to remove Saddam Hussein from power. By 2002 the
WMD narrative that had been used to support and sustain this regime change policy was
weakening.
Powell's speech was a last-gasp effort to use the story of Iraqi WMD for the purpose it was
always intended -- to facilitate the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. In this light, Colin
Powell's speech was one of the greatest successes in CIA history. That is not the story,
however, Draper chose to tell, and the world is worse off for that failed opportunity.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet
Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm,
and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those
ofConsortium News.
PleaseContributeto Consortium
News on its 25th Anniversary
I like this article, it says it all. I have also long harbored a theory that the US
intelligence are behind most of the worlds financial cyber-crime, systematically fleecing the
world to fund their many many operations around the world. They have the tech with Windows
back-doors, the motivation to hide 'off the book' operations and a proven lack of morals as
demonstrated during the Iran–Contra affair, many years ago. but what do I know. As Bill
Maher says, 'I can't prove it but I know it's true'.
John Ervin , Jul 16, 2020 11:59 PM Reply to
voxpox
The USA foreign policy shows a penchant for amoral deceptiveness of ALL other countries,
even best allies, chronically.
So that gives heft to Bill Maher's maxim. Perennial treaty busters and oath breakers, why would anyone trust? Fool me once etc.
That's at the core of my take on all USA has said about C-19(84). Been there, done that,
with 100 other false flags, always the same tune.
The boy who cried wolf: Uncle Scam. Always proven false after all the marbles are stolen. Or at some point down the road. If
not, it shall be, like the JFK fiasco. Like the lone holdout among nations on the Napalm Ban,
or sole rogue to drop an A bomb (75th Anniversary of that cowardly Holocaust coming up in a
few weeks.)
Lone, lone, lone. A sad little homeboy in the Land of the Lone Gunman. So many, though. Too many, for the
world's good .
~~~~~~~~~
Don't take it from me, though, I'm a total patriot, really, compared to Mr. Gonzo, Hunter
S. Thompson:
"America just a nation of 200 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy
guns and no qualms at all about using them on anybody else in the world who tries to make us
uncomfortable."
Hunter always said it like it is, at least at yhr time he saw it, he rode with the Hell's
Angels and wrote the 1st book about them, and wasn't much shy about calling a spade a
spade.
And. Like my own old man: another highly assisted apparent suicide.
The US embassy in Ottawa boasted in a March 2017 memo, "Canada Adopts 'America First'
Foreign Policy," just after PM Trudeau appointed hard-line hawk Chrystia Freeland as foreign
minister.
The US State Department boasted in a declassified memo in March 2017 that Canada had adopted
an "America first" foreign policy.
The cable was authored just weeks after the centrist government of Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister. The former editor of the major
international news agency Reuters, Freeland has pushed for aggressive policies against states
targeted by Washington for regime change, including Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Syria, and
Iran.
The State Department added that Trudeau had promoted Freeland "in large part because of her
strong U.S. contacts," and that her "number one priority" was working closely with
Washington.
Under Freeland, the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi propagandist, Canada has strongly
campaigned against Russia, strengthened its ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and played a key
role in the US-led right-wing coup attempt in Venezuela.
The memo offers the most concrete evidence to date that the United States sees Ottawa as an
imperial subject and considers Canadian foreign policy as subordinate to its own.
Canada
'Prioritizing U.S. Relations, ASAP'
On March 6, 2017, the US embassy in Canada's capital of Ottawa sent a routine dispatch to
Washington entitled "Canada Adopts 'America First' Foreign Policy."
Almost all of the now declassified document is redacted. But it includes several pieces of
revealing information.
The cable notes that the Canadian government would be "Prioritizing U.S. Relations, ASAP."
It also says to "Expect lncreased Engagement."
The only section that is not redacted notes that the Trudeau administration "upgraded
Canada's approach to the bilateral relationship."
"PM Trudeau promoted former Minister of International Trade Chrystia Freeland to Foreign
Minister in large part because of her strong U.S. contacts, many developed before she entered
politics," the cable says.
"Her mandate letter from the PM listed her number one priority as maintaining 'constructive
relations' with the United States," the memo continues.
"Trudeau then added to her responsibilities for U.S. affairs, giving her responsibility for
U.S.-Canada trade, an unprecedented move in the Canadian context," the State Department
wrote.
Chrystia Freeland's 'key role' in Venezuela coup attempt
Foreign Minister Freeland has worked closely with the US government to advance its
belligerent policies, especially those that target independent and leftist governments that
refuse to submit to Washington's diktat.
Under Freeland's leadership, Canada took the lead in the plot to destabilize Venezuela this
January. The Associated Press reported on how
Ottawa joined Washington and right-wing Latin American governments in carefully planning the
putsch.
Two weeks before coup leader Juan Guaidó declared himself "interim president,"
Freeland personally called him to "congratulate him on unifying opposition forces in
Venezuela."
The AP reported: "Playing a key role behind the scenes was Lima Group member Canada, whose
Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to Guaido the night before Maduro's searing-in
ceremony to offer her government's support should he confront the socialist leader."
In 2017, Freeland helped to establish the Lima Group, an alliance of Canada and right-wing
governments in Latin America that coalesced to push regime change in Venezuela. Because the US
is not a member, Freeland has ensured that the Lima Group will act in Washington's interests
and advance North American imperial power in the region.
Canada's former ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Rowswell, criticized the coup-plotting to the
newspaper The Globe and Mail. "It's an unusual move for any country to comment on who the
president of another country should be," he said, "to have countries that represent two-thirds
of the population of Latin America do it in minutes shows there was a remarkable alignment
that's got to be nearly unprecedented in the history of Latin America."
Trudeau and Freeland have repeatedly called for the overthrow of the elected Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro.
Chrystia Freeland strongly supports sanctions against Western enemies and is a vocal
advocate of unilaterally seizing the assets of foreign leaders deemed by Washington to be
"dictators."
She has pushed this "America first" foreign policy especially hard in Latin America and the
Middle East.
Canada has also followed the US in expanding the economic attack against Syria, part of a
renewed effort to destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad. Weeks after Freeland was
promoted, Ottawa pushed through a
new round of sanctions against Damascus .
Freeland has also joined Washington in its campaign to suffocate Iran. The Canadian foreign
minister has refused to re-establish diplomatic ties with Tehran.
At the same time, Freeland strengthened ties with the far-right government of Benjamin
Netanyahu, pledging Canada's "ironclad" support
for Israel .
Nazi propagandist's granddaughter
In Canada, Chrystia Freeland is perhaps best known for her anti-Russia campaigning. She has
expressed her country's "unwavering" support for Ukraine and boasted that she is "ready to
impose costs on Russia." The Trudeau administration has imposed several rounds of
harsh sanctions on Russia .
While she has staunchly supported Ukraine, Freeland obscured the fact that she was the
granddaughter of a fascist Ukrainian Nazi collaborator who edited a propaganda newspaper that
was founded and overseen by Nazi Germany. Shockingly, the paper was founded after the Nazi
regime stole the publication's presses and offices from a Jewish publisher, whom it then killed
in a death camp.
From the heights of journalism to electoral politics
Before entering formal politics as a member of Canada's centrist Liberal Party in 2013,
Chrystia Freeland spent decades in journalism. She worked for major American, British, and
Canadian corporate media outlets.
After years shaping Western news coverage inside Ukraine and Russia, Freeland was promoted
in 2010 to her highest position of all:
global editor-at-large of Reuters , a major international news agency that has vast global
influence.
Freeland cut her teeth doing anti-Russia reporting for the corporate press. She won awards
for her puff pieces on the anti-Putin oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
In 2000, Freeland published a book, titled "Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the
Second Russian Revolution." The book's blurb notes that it documents "the country's dramatic,
wrenching transition from communist central planning to a market economy," praising "Russia's
capitalist revolution."
This was after Russia was looted by oligarchs empowered by Washington, and following the
excess deaths of 3 to 5 million of its most vulnerable citizens due to the US-orchestrated
demolition of the country's social welfare state.
More pro-US operatives in Canada's
Trudeau government
The declassified State Department cable also touts several other appointees in the
government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as key US proxies.
The Canadian government selected a retired lieutenant general, Andrew Leslie, who the memo
notes "has extensive ties to U.S. military leaders from his tours in Afghanistan," as a
parliamentary secretary at Global Affairs Canada, giving him "responsibility for relations with
the United States."
"PM Trudeau also elevated Transport Minister Mare Garneau -- who also brings strong U.S.
ties from a career as an astronaut and nine years in Houston -- to head the Canada-U.S. Cabinet
Committee," the document adds.
The Trudeau government took what the State Department happily noted was an "unprecedented"
decision to hold weekly meetings of the Canada-US Cabinet Committee, "even without a formal
agenda, as ministers engage in freewheeling discussions of strategy and share information, in
addition to making policy decisions."
Prime Minister Trudeau campaigned on a progressive platform, but has continued governing
Canada with many of the same center-right, neoliberal policies of previous administrations. He
has almost without exception followed the US lead on major foreign-policy decisions, while
aggressively building fossil-fuel pipelines at home.
Because Trudeau is from Canada's centrist Liberal Party and has to maintain a veneer of
resistance against the far-right US president, the State Department memo notes that Ottawa's
former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney serves as "Trudeau's 'Trump
Whisperer.'"
Totally ignored by media
This US State Department cable was first uncovered and publicized by the Communist
Party of Canada on July 2.
The memo, which was drafted by Nathan Doyel, a political officer at the embassy at the time,
was declassified and published on May 31, 2019, in response to a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request.
It can be clearly seen on the
US State Department website , with the subject line "CANADA ADOPTS 'AMERICA FIRST' FOREIGN
POLICY."
No media outlets have reported on this cable. Indeed, its discovery has been entirely
ignored by the North American press corps.
Commenting on the document, the Canadian communist party wrote on social media , "If a formerly classified
internal memo came out from the Russian or Chinese foreign ministry titled CANADA ADOPTS RUSSIA
FIRST FOREIGN POLICY or CANADA ADOPTS CHINA FIRST FOREIGN POLICY, would the Canadian media be
interested in that story?"
The party added, "In light of repeated insistence by the federal government that Canadians
can expect foreign interference in elections and institutions, does such a memo merit further
investigation by the Canadian media?"
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The
Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor
Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
Our website traffic easily broke all records for the month of June, and these high levels
have now continued into July, suggesting that the huge rise produced by the initial wave of
Black Lives Matters protests may be more than temporary. It appears that many new readers first
discovered our alternative webzine at that point, and quite a few have stayed on as regular
visitors.
A longer-term factor that may be strengthening our position is the unprecedented wave of
ideological purges that have swept our country since early June, with prominent figures in the
intellectual and media firmaments being especially hard hit. When opinion-leaders become
fearful of uttering even slightly controversial words, they either grow silent or only mouth
the most saccharine homilies, thereby forcing many of their erstwhile readers to look elsewhere
for more candid discussions. And our own webzine is about as "elsewhere" as one could possibly
get.
Take, for example, the New York Times , more than ever our national newspaper of
record. For the last few years, one of its top figures had been Editorial Page Editor James
Bennet, who had previously run The Atlantic , and he was widely considered a leading
candidate to assume the same position at the Gray Lady after next year's scheduled retirement
of the current top editor. Indeed, with his brother serving as U.S. Senator from Colorado --
and a serious if second-rank presidential candidate -- the Lifestyle section of the
Washington Post had already hailed
the Bennet brothers as the potential saviors of the American establishment.
But then his paper published an op-ed by an influential Republican senator endorsing
President Trump's call for a harsh crackdown on riots and looting, and a Twitter mob of
outraged junior Times staffers organized a revolt. The mission of the NYT Opinion
Pages is obviously to provide a diversity of opinions, but Bennet
was quickly purged .
A similar fate befell the highly-regarded longtime editor of the Philadelphia
Inquirer after his
paper ran a headline considered insufficiently respectful to black rioters . Michigan State
University researchers had raised doubts about the accepted narrative of black deaths at the
hands of police, and physicist Stephen Hsu, the Senior Vice President who had supported their
work,
was forced to resign his administrative position as a consequence.
Numerous other figures of lesser rank have been purged, their careers and livelihoods
destroyed for Tweeting
out a phrase such as "All Lives Matter," whose current classification as "hate speech"
might have stunned even George Orwell. Or perhaps a spouse or other close relative
had denounced the black rioters . The standards of acceptable discourse are changing so
rapidly that positions which were completely innocuous just a few weeks ago have suddenly
become controversial or even forbidden, with punishments sometimes inflicted on a retroactive
basis.
I am hardly alone in viewing this situation with great concern. Just last week, some 150
prominent American writers, academics, and intellectuals published an open
letter in Harpers expressing their grave concern over protecting our freedom of
speech and thought.
Admittedly, the credentials of some of the names on the list
were rather doubtful . After all, David Frum and various hard-core Neocons had themselves
led the effort to purge from the media all critics of Bush's disastrous Iraq War, and more
recently they have continued to do with same with regard to our irrational hostility towards
Putin's Russia. But the principled histories of other signers such as Noam Chomsky partially
compensated for the inclusion of such unpleasant opportunists.
Although the Harpers statement attracted many stars of our liberal firmament,
apparently few people read Harpers these days, with its website traffic being just a
tenth of our own. Therefore, the reaction in the media itself was a much more important factor,
and this seems to have been decidedly mixed. 150 rather obscure activists soon issued a
contrasting statement, which major outlets such as NYT , CNN , and the Los
Angeles Times seem to have accorded equal or greater weight, hardly suggesting that the
ideological tide has started to turn.
Back a couple of years ago, there was a popular joke going around Chinese social media in
which Chairman Mao came back to life with all sorts of questions about the modern world. Among
other things, he was informed his disastrous Cultural Revolution had shifted to America, a
prescient observation given the events of the last few weeks:
The controversial May 25th death of a black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis police
custody soon set off the greatest nationwide wave of protests, riots, and looting in at least
two generations, and the once-placid hometown of the Mary Tyler Moore Show alone suffered some
five hundred million dollars of damage. Some of the main political reactions have been
especially surprising, as the newly elevated activists of the Black Lives Matter movement have
received massive media support for their demands that local urban police departments be
"defunded," a proposal so bizarre that it had previously been almost unknown.
Statues, monuments, and other symbolic representations of traditional American history
quickly became a leading target. Hubert Humphrey's Minneapolis has long been an extremely
liberal bastion of the heavily Scandinavian Upper Midwest, having no ties to the South or
slavery, but Floyd's death soon launched an unprecedented national effort to eradicate all
remaining Confederate memorials and other Southern cultural traces throughout our society.
Popular country music groups such as the Dixie Chicks
and Lady
Antebellum had freely recorded their songs for decades, but they were now suddenly forced
to change their names in frantic haste.
And although this revolutionary purge began with Confederacy, it soon extended to include
much of our entire national history, with illustrious former occupants of the White House being
the most prominent targets. Woodrow Wilson ranked as Princeton University's most famous alumnus
and its former president, but his name
was quickly scraped off the renowned public policy school , while the Natural History
Museum of New York is similarly
removing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt .
Abraham Lincoln and
Ulysses S. Grant had together won the Civil War and abolished black slavery, but their
statues around the country were vandalized or ordered removed. The same fate befell
Andrew Jackson along with the author of the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem.
The leading heroes of the American Republic from its birth in 1776 face "cancellation" and
this sudden tidal wave of attacks has clearly gained considerable elite backing. The New
York Times carries enormous weight in such circles, and last Tuesday their lead opinion
piece called for the
Jefferson Memorial to be replaced by a towering statue of a black woman, while one of their
regular columnists has repeatedly demanded that all
monuments honoring George Washington suffer a similar fate . Stacy Abrams, often mentioned
as one of Joe Biden's leading Vice Presidential choices, had previously made
the destruction of Georgia's historic Stone Mountain Memorial part of her campaign
platform, so we now seem only a step or two away from credible political demands that Mount
Rushmore be dynamited Taliban-style.
The original roots of our country were Anglo-Saxon and this heritage remained dominant
during its first century or more, but other strands in our national tapestry are suffering
similar vilification. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for Spain, but he has
became a hated
and despised figure across our country , so perhaps in the near future his only surviving
North American monument will be the huge statue honoring him in the
heart of Mexico City . Father Junipero Serra founded Hispanic California and a few years
ago was canonized as the first and only Latin American saint, but his
statues have been toppled and his name already removed from Stanford University buildings.
At the time we acquired the sparsely-populated American Southwest, the bulk of our new Hispanic
population was concentrated in New Mexico, but the founding father of that region has now had
his monument attacked and vandalized . Cervantes, author of Don Quixote , is
considered the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and his statue was also
vandalized .
Perhaps these trends will abate and the onrushing tide of cultural destruction may begin to
recede. But at present there seems a serious possibility that the overwhelming majority of
America's leading historical figures prior to the political revolution of the 1930s may be
destined for the scrap heap. A decade ago, President Obama and most prominent Democrats opposed
Gay Marriage, but just a few years later, the CEO of Mozilla
was forced to resign when his past political contribution to a California initiative taking
that same position came to light, and today private individuals might easily lose their jobs at
many corporations for expressing such views. Thus, one might easily imagine that within five or
ten years, any public expressions of admiration for Washington or Jefferson might be considered
by many as bordering on "hate speech," and carry severe social and employment consequences. Our
nation seems to be suffering the sort of fate normally inflicted upon a conquered people, whose
new masters seek to break their spirit and stamp out any notions of future resistance.
A good example of this growing climate of fear came a couple of weeks ago when a longtime
blogger going under the name "Scott Alexander"
deleted his entire website and its millions of words of accumulated archives because the
New York Times was about to run an article revealing his true identity. I had only been
slightly aware of the SlateStarCodex
blogsite and the "rationalist" community it had gradually accumulated, but the development
was apparently significant enough to provoke
a long article in the New Yorker .
The target of the alleged witch-hunt was hardly any sort of right-winger. He was reportedly
a liberal Jewish psychiatrist living in Berkeley, whose most notable piece of writing had been
a massive 30,000 word refutation of neo-reactionary thought. But because he was willing to
entertain ideas and contributors outside the tight envelope of the politically-correct canon,
he believed that his life would be destroyed if his name became known.
Conservative commenter Tucker Carlson has recently attracted the highest ratings in cable
history for populist positions, some of which have influenced President Trump. But just a
couple of days ago, his top writer, a certain Blake Neff, was
forced to resign after CNN revealed his years of pseudonymous remarks on a rightwing
forum, even though the most egregious of these seemed no worse than somewhat crude
racially-charged humor.
Our own website attracts thousands of commenters, many of whom have left remarks vastly more
controversial than anything written by Neff let alone Alexander, and these two incidents
naturally
inspired several posts by blogger Steve Sailer , which attracted many hundreds of worried
comments in the resulting threads. Although I could entirely understood that many members of
our community were fearful of being "doxxed" by the media, I explained why I thought the
possibility quite unlikely.
Although it's been a few years since my name last appeared on the front page of the New
York Times , I am still at least a bit of a public figure, and I would say that many of the
articles I have published under my own name have been at least 100 times as "controversial" as
anything written by the unfortunate "Scott Alexander." The regular monthly traffic to our
website is six or seven times as great as that which flowed to SlateStarCodex prior to its
sudden disappearance, and I suspect that our influence has also been far greater. Any serious
journalist who wanted to get in touch with me could certainly do so, and I have been freely
given many interviews in the past, while hundreds of reasonably prominent writers, academics,
and other intellectuals have spent years on my regular distribution list.
Tracking down the identity of an anonymous commenter who once or twice made doubtful remarks
is extremely hard work, and at the end of the process you will have probably netted yourself a
pretty small fish. Surely any eager scalp-hunter in the media would prefer to casually mine the
hundreds of thousands of words in my articles, which would provide a veritable cornucopia of
exceptionally explosive material, all fully searchable and conveniently organized by particular
taboos. Yet for years the entire journalistic community has scrupulously averted their eyes
from such mammoth potential scandal. And the likely explanation may provide some important
insights into the dynamics of ideological conflict in the media.
Activist organizations often take the lead in locating controversial statements, which they
then pass along to their media allies for ritual denunciation, and much of my own material
would seem especially provocative to the fearsome ADL. Yet oddly enough, that organization
seemed quite reluctant to engage with me, and only after my repeated baiting did
they finally issue a rather short and perfunctory critique in 2018, which lacked any named
author. But even that lackluster effort afforded me an opening to respond with my own
7,300 word essay highlighting the very unsavory origins and activities of that
controversial organization. After that exchange, they went back into hiding and have remained
there ever since.
In my lengthy analysis
of the true history of World War II, I described what I called "the Lord Voldemort Effect,"
explaining why so much of our mainstream source material should be treated with great care:
In the popular Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort, the great nemesis of the young
magicians, is often identified as "He Who Must Not Be Named," since the mere vocalization of
those few particular syllables might bring doom upon the speaker. Jews have long enjoyed
enormous power and influence over the media and political life, while fanatic Jewish
activists demonstrate hair-trigger eagerness to denounce and vilify all those suspected of
being insufficiently friendly towards their ethnic group. The combination of these two
factors has therefore induced such a "Lord Voldemort Effect" regarding Jewish activities in
most writers and public figures. Once we recognize this reality, we should become very
cautious in analyzing controversial historical issues that might possibly contain a Jewish
dimension, and also be particularly wary of arguments from silence.
However, even dread Lord Voldemorts may shrink from a terrifying Lord Voldemort of their
own, and I think that this website falls into that category. The ADL and various other powerful
organizations may have quietly issued an edict that absolutely forbids the media outlets they
influence from mentioning our existence. I believe there is strong evidence in favor of this
remarkable hypothesis.
Among Trump's surviving advisors, Stephen Miller provokes some of the most intense
hostility, and last November the SPLC and its media allies made a concerted attempt to force
his resignation based upon some of his private emails, which had promoted several controversial
posts by Steve Sailer. The resulting firestorm was discussed on this website, and
I analyzed some of the strange anomalies:
Just as might be expected, the whole SPLC attack is "guilt by association," and Ctrl-F
reveals a full 14 references to VDare, with the website characterized in very harsh terms.
Yet although there are several mentions of Steve and his writings, there is absolutely no
reference to this webzine, despite being Steve's primary venue.
Offhand, this might seem extremely odd. My own guess is that much of the material we
publish is 10x as "controversial" as anything VDare has ever run, and many of my own personal
articles, including those that have spent over a year on the Home page, might be up in the
30x or 40x potency range. Moreover, I think our traffic these days is something like 10x that
of VDare, seemingly making us an extremely juicy target.
Now admittedly, I don't know that Miller fellow, but the horrifying VDare post that Miller
supposedly shared was actually republished by VDare from this website. And that would surely
have made it very, very easy for the SPLC to use the connection as a opening to begin
cataloguing the unspeakingly horrifying list of transgressions we regularly feature, easily
expanding the length of their attack on Miller by adding another 6,000 words. Yet the silence
has been totally deafening. Puzzling
Here's my own hypothesis
As everyone knows, there are certain "powerful groups" in our society that so terrify
members of the media and political worlds that they receive the "Lord Voldemort Treatment,"
with mainstream individuals being terrified that merely speaking the name would result in
destruction. Indeed, the SPLC is one of the primary enforcers of that edict.
However, my theory is that even those dread Lord Voldemorts greatly fear an even more
dreadful Lord Voldemort of their own, namely this webzine. The SPLC writer knew perfectly
well that mere mention of The Unz Review might ensure his destruction. I'd guess that
the ADL/SPLC/AIPAC has made this prohibition absolutely clear to everyone in the
media/political worlds.
Given that Miller's main transgression was his promotion of posts originally published on
this website, the media could have easily associated him with the rest of our material, much of
which was sufficiently explosive to have almost certainly forced his resignation. Yet when the
journalists and activists weighed the likelihood of destroying Trump's most hated advisor
against the danger of mentioning our existence, the latter factor was still judged the
stronger, allowing Miller to survive.
This hypothesis was strongly supported by a second incident later that same month. We had
previously published an article by Prof. Eric Rasmusen of Indiana University, and I read in my
morning Times that he had suddenly
become embroiled in a major Internet controversy , with a chorus of angry critics seeking
to have him removed. According to the article, he had apparently promoted the "vile and stupid"
views of some anti-feminist website in one of his Tweets, which had come to the attention of an
enraged activist. The resulting firestorm of denunciations on Twitter had been viewed 2.5
million times, provoking a major academic controversy in the national media.
Being curious about what had happened, I contacted Rasmusen to see whether he might want to
submit a piece regarding the controversy,
which he did . But to my utter astonishment, I discovered that the website involved had
actually been our own, a fact that I never would never have suspected from the extremely vague
and circuitous discussion provided in the newspaper. Apparently, the old-fashioned
Who-What-Where provisions of the Times style manual had been quietly amended to prohibit
providing any hint of our existence even when we were at the absolute center of one of their
1,000 word news stories.
Highly-controversial ideas backed by strong evidence may prove dangerously contagious, and
the political/media strategy pursued by the ADL, the Times , and numerous other organs
of the elite establishment seems perfectly rational. Since our Bill of Rights still provides
considerable protection for freedom of speech, the next-best alternative is to institute a
strict cordon sanitaire , intended to strictly minimize the number of individuals who
might become infected.
Our webzine and my own articles are hardly the only victims of this sort of strategy -- once
dubbed "the Blackout" by eminent historian Harry Elmer Barnes -- whose other targets often
possess the most respectable of establishmentarian credentials.
Last month marked the 31st anniversary of the notorious 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and
elite media coverage was especially extensive this year due to our current global confrontation
with China. The New York Times devoted most of two full pages to a photo-laden
recapitulation while the Wall Street Journal gave it front-page treatment, with just
those two publications alone running some six separate articles and columns on those horrifying
events from three decades ago.
Yet back in the 1990s, the former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post , who
had personally covered the events, published a long article in the prestigious Columbia
Journalism Review entitled The Myth of Tiananmen
, in which he publicly admitted that the supposed "massacre" was merely a fraudulent concoction
of careless journalists and dishonest propagandists. At least some of our top editors and
journalists must surely be aware of these facts, and feel guilty about promoting a
long-debunked hoax of the late 1980s. But any mention of those widely-known historical facts is
strictly forbidden in the media, lest American readers become confused and begin to consider an
alternative narrative.
Russia possesses a nuclear arsenal at least as powerful as our own, and the total break in
our relations began when Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012, targeting important Russian
leaders. Yet none of our media outlets have ever been willing to admit that the facts used to
justify that very dangerous decision seem to have been entirely fraudulent, as recounted
in
the article we recently published by Prof. John Ryan.
Similarly, our sudden purge from both Google and Facebook came just days after my own
long article presenting the strong evidence that America's ongoing Covid-19 disaster was
the unintentional blowback from our own extremely reckless biowarfare attack against China (and
Iran). Over 130,000 of our citizens have already died and our daily life has been wrecked, so
the American people might grow outraged if they began to suspect that this huge national
disaster was entirely self-inflicted.
And the incident that sparked our current national upheaval includes certain elements that
our media has scrupulously avoided mentioning. The knee-neck hold used against George Floyd was
standard police procedure in Minneapolis and many other cities, and had apparently been
employed thousands of times across our country in recent years with virtually no fatalities.
Meanwhile, Floyd's official autopsy indicated that he had lethal levels
of Fentanyl and other illegal drugs in his system at the time of his demise. Perhaps the
connection between these two facts is more than purely coincidental, and if they became widely
known, popular sentiments might shift.
Finally, our alternative media webzine is pleased to have recently added two additional
columnists together with major portions of their archives, which will help to further broaden
our perspective.
Larry Romanoff has been a regular contributor to the Global Research website, most recently
focusing on the Coronavirus outbreak in China, and earlier this year he published an
article pointed to the considerable evidence that the virus had originated in the U.S.,
which was cited by Chinese officials and
soon became a flashpoint in American-Chinese relations . After having been viewed millions
of times, that piece and several others seem to have disappeared from their original venue, but
along with the rest of his writings, they are now conveniently available on our own
website .
For the last quarter-century, Jared Taylor has probably been America's most prominent White
Nationalist writer. Although Black Nationalists such as Al Sharpton have cable television shows
and boast of many dozens of visits to the White House, the growing climate of ideological
repression has caused Taylor and his American Renaissance organization to be
deplatformed from YouTube, Twitter, and numerous other Internet services. One of his main
writers is Gregory Hood, whom we have now added as a regular columnist , together with dozens of
his pieces over the last few years.
Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and hsot of The Portal podcast, has
gone scorched earth on the New York Times following the Tuesday resignation of journalist
Bari Weiss.
Weinstein describes how The Times has morphed into an activist rag - refusing to cover
"news" unpaletable to their narrative, while ignoring key questions such as whether Jeffrey
Epstein's sex-trafficking ring was "intelligence related."
Jump into Weinstein's Twitter thread by clicking on the below tweet, or scroll down for your
convenience.
At that moment Bari Weiss became all that was left of the "Paper of Record." Why? Because the
existence of Black Racists with the power to hunt professors with Baseball Bats and even
redefine the word 'racism' to make their story impossible to cover ran totally
counter-narrative.
At some point after 2011, the NYT gradually stopped covering the News and became the News
instead. And Bari has been fighting internally from the opinion section to re-establish
Journalism inside tbe the NYT. A total reversal of the Chinese Wall that separates news from
opinion.
This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans
were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.
The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.
The paper that can't report that it seeks race rioting:
I have had the honor of trying to support both @bariweiss at the New York Times and
@BretWeinstein in their battles simply to stand alone against the internal mob mentality. It is
THE story all over the country. Our courageous individuals are being hunted at work for
dissenting.
Before Bari resigned, I did a podcast with her. It was chilling. I'd make an innocuous
statement of simple fact and ask her about it. She'd reply " That is obviously true but I'm
sorry we can't say that here. It will get me strung up ." That's when I stopped telling her to
hang on.
So what just happened? Let me put it bluntly: What was left of the New York Times just
resigned from the New York Times. The Times canceled itself. As a separate Hong Kong exists in
name only, the New New York Times and affiliated "news" is now the chief threat to our
democracy.
This is the moment when the passengers who have been becoming increasingly alarmed, start to
entertain a new idea: what if the people now in the cockpit are not airline pilots? Well the
Twitter Activists at the @nytimes and elsewhere are not journalists.
What if those calling for empathy have a specific deadness of empathy?
Those calling for justice *are* the unjust?
Those calling "Privilege" are the privileged?
Those calling for equality seek to oppress us?
Those anti-racists are open racists?
The progressives seek regress?
The journalists are covering up the news?
Try the following exercise: put a minus sign in front of nearly every banner claim made by
"the progressives".
Q: Doesn't that make more sense?
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Those aren't the pilots you imagine. And we are far closer to revolution than you think.
Bari and I agree on a lot but also disagree fiercely. And so I have learned that she is
tougher than tough. But these university and journalistic workplaces are now unworkable. They
are the antithesis off what they were built to stand for. It is astounding how long she held
out.
Read her letter. I have asked her to do a make-up podcast & she has agreed. Stay tuned
If you don't want to be surprised again by what's coming understand this: just as there has
been no functioning president, there's now no journalism. We're moving towards a 🌎 of
pure activism.
Prepare to lose your ability to call the police & for more autonomous zones where kids
die so that Govenors & Mayors can LARP as Kayfabe revolutionaries . Disagree with Ms Weiss
all you want as she isn't perfect. But Bari is a true patriot who tried to stand alone. Glad
she's out.
We are not finished by a long shot. What the Intellectual Dark Web tried to do MUST now be
given an institutional home.
Podcast with Bari on The Portal to come as soon as she is ready.
Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this. It is of the utmost importance.
Thank you all. 🙏
P.S. Please retweet the lead tweet from this thread if you understand where we are.
Appreciated.
The spate of gas explosions are unlikely to be accidents. One maybe but not a spate of
them. Unlikely to be cyber as both a physical leak and ignition source are required.
I agree that most of these explosions are probably not "cyberattacks". Despite all the
scare stories about hacking destroying infrastructure, it's not that easy, especially in the
US where every industry and every company within that industry has their own "standards",
which means there are no real standards a hacker can rely on. It's much easier to steal data
than it is to influence hardware, although that certainly can be done in many cases.
On the other hand, there are plenty of internal Iranian dissidents and foreign visitors
who can be employed by both the CIA and Israel to further a spate of physical attacks.
Obviously these sorts of attacks are going to do next to nothing to actually damage
Iranian infrastructure, as Iran is a big country. These sorts of sabotage are merely a
psychological warfare ploy. This is amplified by Western media coverage of the incidents
which is intended to portray Iran as weak and unable to defend itself.
I've often speculated about what a few hundred saboteurs could do if inserted into the US,
armed with nothing but small arms and a decent amount of explosives. Depending on how well
they are kept covert and how smart they are in choosing targets, you could bring the US to
its knees in perhaps six months of operations. Car bombs, for instance - the US is *made* for
car bombs, given our reliance on vehicles and the congestion in the inner cities. Detonate a
car bomb in each of the 50 Major Metropolitan Areas simultaneously and do so consistently
every week for a month and most of the inner cities would be shut down and under martial
law.
That's the kind of actual physical campaign that could produce significant results in a
country. These pin-prick attacks in Iran are just a combination of psychological warfare plus
perhaps some effects as causing their protective services to be overstretched somewhat.
Mostly what they are is an attempt to provoke Iran into doing something *overtly* against
Israel or the US. The neocons want Iran to be the instigator of the war, not the US or
Israel. They want Iran to provide a casus belli for the war, so that Trump and Netanyahu can
present themselves as blameless for the resulting disaster, much like Bush presented Iraq as
responsible for 9/11.
In essence, the US and Israel are acting as Internet trolls, pin-pricking Iran in an
attempt to get Iran to engage and thus manipulate Iran for their own purposes.
Hopefully Iran will not take the bait, or if it does so, that it makes sure its
retaliations are as covert and deniable as the CIA's while being at least equally as damaging
or more so. If I were Iran, I would specifically target the CIA and its assets in the region.
It would not be hard to identify the CIA officers stationed in most countries and conduct
harassment operations against them, even perhaps engineering "accidental deaths". It would be
an analog of the US-Russian Cold War days. Competent spies aren't that plentiful and killing
them off tends to put a real crimp in operations while mostly being deniable since all such
events would be "classified".
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden has boasted of his role in transforming Colombia and Central America through ambitious
economic and security programs. Colombians and Hondurans tell The Grayzone about the damage his plans did to their societies.
By Max Blumenthal
While campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination this year, former Senator and Vice President Joseph Biden
has touted the crucial role he played in designing US mega-development and drug war campaigns that transformed the
socio-political landscape of large swaths of Latin America.
"I was one of the architects of Plan Colombia," Biden boasted in a July 5 interview with CNN, referring to the multi-billion
dollar US effort to end Colombia's civil war with a massive surge of support for the country's military. According to Biden,
the plan was a panacea for Colombia's problems, from "crooked cops" to civil strife.
But Biden's plan for Colombia has contributed directly to the country's transformation into a hyper-militarized bastion of
right-wing rule, enhancing the power and presence of the notoriously brutal armed forces while failing miserably in its
anti-narcotic and reformist objectives.
This year alone, more than 50 human rights defenders
were
killed in Colombia
in the first four months of 2019, while coca production is close to record levels. And as Colombian
peace activists lamented in interviews with The Grayzone, the US is still in complete control of Bogot's failed anti-drug
policy, thanks largely to Plan Colombia.
Biden has also pumped up his role in an initiative called the Alliance for Prosperity, which was applied to the Northern
Triangle of Central America. The former vice president was so central to the program's genesis that it was informally known as
"Plan Biden."
Marketed as an answer to the crisis of child migration, Biden's brainchild channeled $750 million through a right-wing
government installed by a US-orchestrated military coup to spur mega-development projects and privatize social services.
The Grayzone visited Honduras in July and documented, through interviews with human rights defenders, students, indigenous
activists, and citizens from all walks of life, how the Alliance for Prosperity helped set the stage for a national rebellion.
In recent months, teachers, doctors, students, and rural campesinos have been in the streets protesting the privatization
plans imposed on their country under the watch of Biden and his successors.
The gutting of public health services, teacher layoffs, staggering hikes in electricity prices, and environmentally
destructive mega-development projects are critical factors in mass migration from Honduras. And indeed, they are immediate
byproducts of the so-called "Biden plan."
"Biden is taking credit for doing something constructive to stop the migration crisis and blaming the concentration camps [on
the US-Mexico border] on Trump. But it's Biden's policies that are driving more people out of Central America and making human
rights defenders lives more precarious by defending entities that have no interest in human rights," explained Adrienne Pine,
a professor of anthropology at American University and leading researcher of the social crisis in Honduras, in an interview
with The Grayzone.
"So $750 million US taxpayer dollars that were allocated to supposedly address child migration are actually making things
worse," Pine added. "It started with unaccompanied minors and now you have children in cages. Largely thanks to Biden."
'I was one of the architects of Plan Colombia'
In an
interview
with CNN on July 5
, Biden was asked if he favored decriminalizing the entry of Latin American migrants to the United
States. Responding with a definitive "no," Joe Biden stated that he would be "surging folks to the border to make those
concrete decisions" about who receives asylum.
Biden argued that he had the best record of addressing the root causes of the migration crisis, recalling how he imposed a
solution on Central America's migration crisis. "You do the following things to make your country better so people don't
leave, and we will help you do that, just like we did in Colombia," he said.
"What did we do in Colombia? We went down and said, okay, and I was one of the architects of Plan Colombia," Biden continued.
"I said, here's the deal. If you have all these crooked cops, all these federal police, we're sending our FBI down, you let us
put them through a lie detector test, let us tell you who you should fire and tell you the kind of people you should hire.
They did and began to change. We can do so much if we're committed."
With the arrogance of a pith-helmeted high colonial official meting out instructions on who to hire and fire to his docile
subjects, Biden presided over a plan that failed miserably in its stated goals, while transforming Colombia into a
hyper-militarized bastion of US regional influence.
Plan Colombia: 'They come and ask for bread, and you give them stones'
Plan Colombia was originally conceived by Colombian President Andrs Pastrana in 1999, as an alternative development and
conflict resolution plan for his war-torn country. He considered calling it the "Plan for Colombia's Peace."
The proposal was quickly hijacked by the Bill Clinton administration, with Joe Biden lobbying in the Senate for an iron-fisted
militarization plan. "We have an obligation, in the interests of our children and the interests of the hemisphere, to keep the
oldest democracy in place, to give them a fighting chance to keep from becoming a narcostate," Biden
said
in
a June 2000 floor speech.
When Plan Colombia's first formal draft was published, it was done so in English, not Spanish. The original spirit of
peace-building was completely sapped from the document by Biden, whose vigorous wheeling-and-dealing ensured that almost 80
percent of the $7.5 billion plan went to the Colombian military. 500 US military personnel were promptly dispatched to Bogota
to train the country's military.
"If you read the original Plan Colombia, not the one that was written in Washington but the original Plan Colombia, there's no
mention of military drives against the FARC rebels," Robert White, the former number two at the US embassy in Bogota,
complained
in 2000
. "Quite the contrary. [Pastrana] says the FARC is part of the history of Colombia and a historical phenomenon, he
says, and they must be treated as Colombians."
White lamented how Washington had abused the trust of the Colombians: "They come and ask for bread, and you give them stones."
Plan Colombia was largely implemented under the watch of the hardline right-wing President lvaro Uribe. In 1991, Uribe was
placed on a US Drug Enforcement Agency list of "
important
Colombian narco-traffickers
," in part due to his role in helping drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's obtain licenses for landing
strips while Uribe was the head of Colombia's Civil Aeronautics Department.
Under Uribe's watch, toxic chemicals were sprayed by military forces across the Colombian countryside, poisoning the crops of
impoverished farmers and displacing millions.
Biden
with former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the Concordia Summit in June 2017
Six years after Bill Clinton initiated Plan Colombia, however, even US drug czar John Walters was
forced
to quietly admit
in a letter to the Senate that the price of cocaine in the US had declined, the flow of the drug into the
US had risen, and its purity had increased.
Meanwhile, a
UN
Office of Drugs and Crime report
found that coca cultivation reached record levels in Colombia in 2018. In other words,
billions of dollars have been squandered, and a society already in turmoil has been laid to waste.
For the military and right-wing paramilitary forces that have shored up the rule of leaders like Uribe and the current
ultra-conservative Colombian president, Ivan Duque, Plan Colombia offered a sense of near-total impunity.
The depravity of the country's military was put on bold display when the so-called
"false
positives" scandal
was exposed in 2008. The incident began when army officers lured 22 rural laborers to a far-away
location, massacred them, and then dressed them in uniforms of the leftist FARC guerrillas.
Victims
of Colombia's "false positives" scandal, where laborers were massacred to justify Plan Colombia funding
It was an overt attempt to raise the FARC body count and justify the counter-insurgency aid flowing from the US under Plan
Colombia. The officers who oversaw the slaughter were paid bounties and given promotions.
Colombian academics Omar Eduardo Rojas Bolaos and Fabin Leonardo Benavides demonstrated in a
meticulous
study
that the "false positives" killings reflected "a systematic practice that implicates the commanders of brigades,
battalions and tactical units" in the deaths of more than 10,000 civilians. Indeed, under Plan Colombia, the incident was far
from an isolated atrocity.
Colombian
activist Santiago Salinas in Bogot (Photo: Ben Norton)
Forfeiting Colombia's national sovereignty
In an interview in Bogot this May, The Grayzone's Ben Norton asked Colombian social leader Santiago Salinas if there was any
hope for progressive political transformation since the ratification of Plan Colombia.
An organizer of the peace group
Congreso
de los Pueblos
, Salinas shrugged and exclaimed, "I wish." He lamented that many of Colombia's most pivotal decisions were
made in Washington.
Salinas pointed to drug policy as an example. "It seems like the drug decisions about what to do with the drugs, it has
nothing to do with Colombia.
"There was no sovereign decision on this issue. Colombia does not have a decision," he continued. It was the Washington
that wrote the script for Bogota. And the drug trade is in fact a key part of the global financial system, Salinas pointed
out.
But Biden was not finished. After 15 years of human misery and billions of wasted dollars in Colombia, he set out on a
personal mission to export his pet program to Central America's crime and corruption-ravaged Northern Triangle.
Biden eyes Central America, selling mass privatization
In his July sit-down with CNN, Joe Biden trumpeted his Plan Colombia as the inspiration for the Alliance for Prosperity he
imposed on Central America. Channeling the spirit of colonial times once again, he bragged of imposing Washington's policies
on the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
"We'll make a deal with you," Biden recalled telling the leaders of these countries. "You do the following things to make your
country better so people don't leave, and we will help you do that."
Biden announced his bold plan on the editorial pages of the New York Times in January 2015. He called it "a joint plan for
economic and political reforms, an
alliance
for prosperity
." Sold by the vice president as a panacea to a worsening migration crisis, the Alliance for Prosperity was
a boon for international financial institutions which promised to deepen the economic grief of the region's poor.
The Alliance for Prosperity "treated the Honduran government as if it were a crystal-clear, pure vessel into which gold could
be poured and prosperity would flow outward," explained Dana Frank, a professor of history at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and the author of the book,
The
Long Honduran Night
.
"In reality, the Plan would further enrich and strengthen the political power of the very same elites whose green, deliberate
subversion of the rule of law, and destruction of natural resources and of Indigenous and campesino land rights, were
responsible for the dire conditions the proposal ostensibly addressed," Frank added.
In Honduras, the government had no capacity or will to resist Biden's plan. That is because the country's elected president,
Juan
Manuel Zelaya
, had been removed in 2009 in a coup orchestrated by the United States.
As
Zelaya
told The Grayzone's Anya Parampil
, the Obama administration was infuriated by his participation in ALBA, a regional
economic development program put forward by Venezuela's then-President Hugo Chavez that provided an alternative to neoliberal
formulas like the so-called "Biden Plan."
Following the military coup, a corporate-friendly administration was installed to advance the interests of international
financial institutions, and US trainers arrived in town to hone the new regime's mechanisms of repression.
Under the auspices of the Central American Regional Security Initiative, the FBI was dispatched to
oversee
the training
of FUSINA, the main operational arm of the Honduran army and the base of the Military Police for Public Order
(PMOP) that patrols cities like an occupation force.
In an October 2014 cable, the US embassy in Tegucigalpa acknowledged that the PMOP was riven with corruption and prone to
abuse, and attempted to distance itself from the outfit, even though it operated under the umbrella of FUSINA.
The creation by the US embassy in Honduras of a special forces unit known as the Tigres has added an additional layer of
repressive muscle. Besides
arresting
activists,
the Tigres reportedly
helped
a
drug kingpin escape after he was detained during a US investigation.
While violent crime surged across Honduras, unemployment
more
than doubled
. Extreme poverty surged, and so too did the government's security spending.
To beef up his military, President Juan Orlando Hernndez dipped into the social programs that kept a mostly poor population
from tumbling into destitution.
Chart
on Honduran budget priorities by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2017
As
Alex
Rubinstein reported for The Grayzone
, the instability of post-coup Honduras has been particularly harsh on LGTTBI
(Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Travesti, Bisexual, and Intersex) Hondurans. More than 300 of them
have
been killed
since 2009, a dramatic spike in hate crimes reinforced by the
homophobic
rhetoric
of the right-wing Evangelical Confraternity that represents the civil-society wing of the ultra-conservative
Hernandez government.
As the
social
chaos enveloped Honduran society
, migration to the US-Mexico border began to surge to
catastrophic
levels
. Unable to make ends meet, some Hondurans sent their children alone to the border, hoping that they would temporary
protective or refugee status.
By 2014, the blowback of the Obama administration's coup had caused a national emergency. Thousands of Hondurans were winding
up in cages in detention camps run by the US Department of Homeland Security, and many of them were not even 16 years old.
That summer, Obama went to Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to ramp up border militarization and deport as many
unaccompanied Central American minors as possible.
Biden used the opportunity to
rustle
up an additional billion dollars
, exploiting the crisis to fund a massive neoliberal project that saw Honduras as a base
for international financial opportunity. His plan was quickly ratified, and the first phase of the Alliance for Prosperity
began.
From
the IADB's sanitized survey of the Alliance for Prosperity
Energy industry rush dooms indigenous communities and human rights defenders
The implementation of the Alliance for Prosperity was overseen by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), a US-dominated
international financial institution based in Washington, DC that supports corporate investment in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
A
graphic
on
the IADB's website outlined the plan's objectives in anodyne language that concealed its aggressively neoliberal agenda.
For instance, the IADB promised the "fostering [of] regional energy integration." This was a clear reference to Plan Pueblo
Panama, a region-wide neoliberal development
blueprint
that
was conceived as a boon to the energy industry. Under the plan, the IADB would raise money from Latin American taxpayers to
pay for the expansion of power lines that would carry electricity from Mexico all the way to Panama.
Honduras, with its rivers and natural resources, provided the project with a major hub of energy production. In order for the
country's energy to be traded and transmitted to other countries, however, the International Monetary Fund mandated that its
national electricity company be privatized.
Since the implementation of that component of "Plan Biden," energy costs have
begun
to surge
for residential Honduran consumers. In a country with a 66 percent poverty rate, electricity privatization has
turned life from precarious to practically impossible.
Rather than languish in darkness for long hours with unpaid bills piling up, many desperate citizens have journeyed north
towards the US border.
As intended, the Alliance for Prosperity's regional energy integration plan has spurred an influx of multi-national energy
companies to Honduras. Hydro-electric dams and power plants began rising up in the midst of the lush pine forests and winding
rivers that define the Honduran biosphere, pushing many rural indigenous communities into a life-and-death struggle.
This July, The Grayzone traveled to Reitoca, a remote farming community located in the heart of the Honduran "dry sector." The
indigenous Lenca residents of this town depend on their local river for fish, recreation, and most importantly, water to
irrigate the crops that provide them with a livelihood. But the rush on energy investment brought an Italian-Chilean firm
called Progelsa to the area to build a massive hydro-electric dam just upstream.
Reitoca
community leader Wilmer Alonso by the river threatened by a major hydro-electric project (Photo: Ben Norton)
Wilmer Alonso, a member of the Lenca Indigenous Council of Reitoca, spoke with The Grayzone, shaking with emotion as he
described the consequences of the dam for his community.
"The entire village is involved in this struggle," Alonso said. "Everyone knows the catastrophe that the construction of this
hydro-electric plant would create."
He explained that, like so many foreign multi-nationals in Honduras, Progelsa employs an army of private thugs to intimidate
protesters: "The private company uses the army and the police to repress us. They accuse us of being trespassers, but they are
the ones trespassing on our land."
US reinforces 'factors that generate violence the most in our society'
The Alliance for Progress also provided the backdrop for the assassination of the renowned Honduran environmentalist and
feminist organizer Berta Cceres.
On March 3, 2016, Cceres was gunned down in her home in rural Honduras. A towering figure in her community with a presence on
the international stage, Cceres had been leading the fight against a local dam project overseen by DESA, a powerful Honduran
energy company
backed
by the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) and run by powerful former military officers.
The representative that DESA sent to sign its deal with USAID, Sergio Rodrguez, was later
accused
of
masterminding Cceres' murder, alongside military officials and former company employees.
In March 2018, the Honduran police
arrested
DESA's
executive president, Roberto David Castillo Meja, accusing him of "providing logistics and other resources to one of the
material authors" of the assassination. Castillo was a
West
Point graduate
who worked in the energy industry while serving as a Honduran intelligence officer.
This July, The Grayzone visited the family of Berta Cceres in La Esperanza, a town nestled in the verdant mountains of
Intibuc. Cceres' mother, Doa Berta, lives there under 24-hour police guard paid for by human rights groups.
The Cceres household is bristling with security cameras, and family members get around in armored cars. In her living room,
we met Laura Ziga Cceres of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the human
rights group that her mother Berta founded.
Laura
Zuniga Caceres of COPINH in the home where Berta Caceres was raised (Photo: Ben Norton)
"The violence in Honduras generates migrant caravans, which tears apart society, and it all has to do with all of this
extractivism, this violence," Ziga Caceres told The Grayzone. "And the response from the US government is to send more
soldiers to our land; it is to reinforce one of the factors that generates violence the most in our society."
"We are receiving reports from our comrades that there is a US military presence in indigenous Lenca territory," she added.
"For what? Humanitarian aid? With weapons. It's violence. It's persecution."
Gutting public healthcare, driving more migration
The Alliance for Prosperity also commissioned the privatization of health services through a deceptively named program called
the Social Protection Framework Law, or la Ley Marco de Proteccin Social.
Promoted by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernndez as a needed reform, the scheme was advanced through a classic shock
doctrine-style episode: In 2015, close associates of Hernndez
siphoned
some $300 million from the Honduran Institute for Social Services
(IHSS) into private businesses, starving hospitals of
supplies and causing several thousand excess deaths, mostly among the poor.
With the medical sector in shambles, Hondurans were then forced to seek healthcare from the private companies that were to
provide services under Hernandez's "Social Protection" plan.
"The money that was robbed [in the IHSS scandal] was used to justify the Ley Marco Proteccion Social," Karen Spring, a
researcher and coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network, told The Grayzone. "The hospitals were left in horrible
conditions with no human capital and they were left to farm out to private hospitals."
"When Hondurans go to hospitals, they will be told they need to go to a private company, and through the deductions in their
jobs they will have to pay a lot out of pocket," Spring said. "Through the old universal system you would be covered no matter
what you had, from a broken arm to cancer. No more."
In response, Hondurans poured out into the streets, launching the March of Torches the first major wave of continuous
protests against Hernandez and his corrupt administration.
In March 2015, in the middle of the crisis, Joe Biden rushed down to Guatemala City to embrace Hernndez and restore
confidence in the Alliance for Prosperity.
"I come from a state that, in fact, is the corporate capital of America. More corporations are headquartered there than
anyplace else,"
Biden
boasted
, with Hernndez and the presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador standing by his side. "They want to come here.
Corporate America wants to come."
Joseph
Biden embraces Juan Orlando Hernandez in Guatemala City, February 2016
Emphasizing the need for more anti-corruption and security measures to attract international financial investment, Biden
pointed to Plan Colombia as a shining model and to himself as its architect. "Today Colombia is a nation transformed, just
as you hope to be 10 to 15 years from now," the vice president proclaimed.
Following Biden's visit, the privatization of the Honduran economy continued apace -- and so did the corruption, the
repression, and the unflinching support from Washington.
Hondurans take to the streets, wind up in US-style supermax prisons
By 2017, the movement in Honduras that had galvanized against the US-orchestrated 2009 coup saw its most immediate opportunity
for political transformation at the ballot box. President Hernndez was running for re-election, violating a constitutional
provision on term limits. His opponent, Salvador Nasrallah, was a popular broadcast personality who provided a centrist
consensus choice for the varied elements that opposed the country's coup regime.
When voting ended on November 26, Nasrallah's victory appeared certain, with exit polls showing him comfortably ahead by
several points. But suddenly, the government announced that a power outage required the suspension of vote counting. Days
later, Hernndez was declared the victor by about 1 percent.
The fraud was so transparent that the
Organization
of American States
(OAS), normally an arm of US interests in Latin America, declared in a
preliminary
report
that "errors, irregularities and systemic problems," as well as "extreme statistical improbability," rendered the
election invalid.
But the United States recognized the results anyway, leaving disenfranchised Hondurans with protest as their only recourse.
"Hondurans tried to change what happened in their country through the 2017 elections, not just Hernndez but all the
implementation of all these policies that the Biden plan had funded and implemented all these years since the coup," explained
Karen Spring, of the Honduras Solidarity Network.
"They tried to change that reality through votes and when the elections turned out to be a fraud, tons of people had no choice
but to take to the streets."
At the front lines of the protests in 2017 was Spring's longtime partner, the Honduran activist Edwin Espinal. Following a
protest in November of that year where property damage took place, Espinal was arrested at gunpoint at his home and accused of
setting fire to the front door of a hotel. He fervently denied all charges, accusing the government of persecuting him for his
political activism.
In fact, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had placed a protective measure on Espinal in 2010 in response to
previous attempts to legally railroad him.
The government placed Espinal in pre-trial detention in La Tolva, a US-style maximum security prison normally reserved for
violent criminals and narco-traffickers. Last October, Espinal and Spring
were
married
in the jail while surrounded by masked guards.
Karen
Spring and Edwin Espinal marry in La Tolva in October 2018 (Photo: Karen Spring)
"Since the Biden plan, contractors have been coming down to build these US-style maximum security prisons," Spring said.
"That's where my husband Edwin Espinal is being held."
"They say the company is Honduran but there's no way Hondurans could have built that without US architects or US construction
firms giving them the plans," she added. "I've been in the prison and it's like they dumped a US prison in the middle of
Honduras."
Reflecting on her husband's persecution, Spring explained, "Edwin wanted to stay in his country to change the reality that
caused mass migration. He's one of the people who's faced consequences because he went to the streets. And he's faced
persecution for years because he's one of the Hondurans who wanted to change the country by staying and fighting. Berta
Caceres was another."
"Hondurans wanted to use their votes to change the country and now they're voting with their feet," she continued. "So if
Biden's plan really addressed the root causes of the migrant crisis, why aren't people asking why migration is getting worse?
Hondurans are voting on the Biden plan by fleeing and saying your plan didn't work and it made our situation worse by fleeing
to the border."
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling
Republican
Gomorrah
,
Goliath
,
The
Fifty One Day War
, and
The
Management of Savagery
. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and
several documentaries, including
Killing
Gaza
. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war
and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
thegrayzone.com
That scientific debate soon turned into a geopolitical one, however. EU farmers are
overwhelmingly dependent on North and West Africa for phosphate where, because of the natural
conditions, there is usually a cadmium level far higher than 20mg/kg. At the same time,
phosphate coming from Russia has far lower natural levels of the metal.
Southern European countries feared that switching phosphate supplies away from Africa
to Russia could severely undermine volatile North African economies and trigger social
problems
One of the countries that has strongly opposed the new labeling rules is Poland -- a
country that historically wants to avoid commercial dependence on Russia but also has its own
national fertilizer business and has invested in a Senegalese phosphate mine
####
Plenty more at the link.
We support the environment as long as it benefits our trade partners and is poitically
balanced in our favor.
This looks like the european industry is waving the 'Russia Bad' flag because it cannot
counter the technical aspects and more environmental policies coming out of the EU.
They are also arguing in favor of less transparency and less information for farmers which
is suspect because their fear is that low cadmium fertilizer (from Russia/wherever) may get
tax-breaks to promote its use.
Rather than figure out a way to adapt and help their partners, their first reaction is to
throw poo at the walls.
"Today the Department of State is updating the public guidance for CAATSA authorities
to include Nord Stream 2 and the second line of TurkStream 2. This action puts investments or
other activities that are related to these Russian energy export pipelines at risk of US
sanctions. It's a clear warning to companies aiding and abetting Russia's malign influence
projects and will not be tolerated. Get out now or risk the consequences".
Pompeo speaking at a press conference today.
CAATSA -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
So Russia and Turkey are "adversaries" of the USA?
In what way?
Do these states wish to wage war against the USA?
Is it adversarial to United States interest to compete economically with the hegemon?
Who cares? Really, is Pompeo still scary? If he has a functioning brain, he should realize
that all these blatant efforts to reserve markets for America by sanctioning all its
competitors out of the picture is having the opposite effect, and frightening customers away
from becoming dependent on American products which might be withheld on a whim when America
wants political concessions. 'Will not be tolerated' – what a pompous ass. Sanction
away. The consequence is well-known to be seizure of assets held in the United States or an
inability to do business in the United States. That will frighten some into submission
– like the UK, which was threatened with the cessation of intelligence-sharing with the
USA (sure you can spare it?) if it did not drop Huawei from its 5G networks. But others will
take prudent steps to limit their exposure to such threats, in the certain knowledge that if
they work, they will encourage the USA to use the technique again.
Instead of trying to improve failing NYC schools it is easier to claim racism. Some people just do not want to study. The
number of people who barely can read in the is really staggering and can't be explained by racism, which typically just mobilize the
oppressed minority to strive in education. That's probably why children of first generation emigrants (which parent having
poor English and discriminated at jobs) usually do very well educationally.
Although further progress is desirable, the level of racism and xenophobia in the USA is much less than in many countries.
Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Nothing
proved the truth of Marx's claim better than the farcical battle over the statue of St. Louis
in, yes, St. Louis which followed hot on the heels of the tragedy of George Floyd in
Minneapolis.
The battle over the statue began as an exercise in identity politics, and before long it
degenerated into an example of identity theft. The main protagonist in this story is Umar Lee,
who was born Bret Darran Lee in 1974 to a southern Presbyterian family and grew up in
Florissant, Missouri just outside St. Louis. Lee may or may not be Black, which is an
ideological marker based upon but independent of biological fact, because he claims, according
to The Jerusalem Post that he "has two younger siblings who are half African-American."
[1]
On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by
28-year-old white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, a
suburb of St. Louis, leading to extensive rioting . After the death of
Michael Brown, Lee got involved with the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, and was
arrested on two occasions and, in his words, "locked up." After getting fired from his job as
cab driver, Lee became a full-time, but little known activist. In 2015, Lee noticed that
statues started coming down in St. Louis, largely because of agitation on the part of St. Louis
Jews. At some point during this period, Lee made contact with Ben Paremba, an Israeli
restauranteur who was "passionate" about promoting Israel and other Jewish causes. At this
point Paremba was as little known to locals as Lee, but all of that changed after the Jewish
press took notice of their petition to remove the statue of St. Louis and began promoting them
as social justice crusaders, if you'll pardon the term.
In a series of tweets, Lee tried to establish his position as an aggrieved Muslim, bringing
up the Crusades as the cause of his grievance, but the underlying source of his complaint was
inspired by a group of Jews, who were incensed that the city where they had come to study had
erected a statue in honor of a king who had burned the Talmud.
Once Lee mentioned the term "anti-Semitism," the Jewish press began carrying stories which
lionized Lee as a crusader for Jewish rights. Because of his philo-Semitism, Lee soon found
himself lionized in the Jewish press. Writing for the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Ben Sales
described Lee as "a local activist who started the petition and also took part in a
successful drive to remove a nearby Confederate monument in 2017. Lee, Sales continued, "is
not Jewish but started the petition because of Louis IX's anti-Semitism." [2] Because Lee's
petition called St. Louis a "rabid anti-Semite" who "inspired Nazi Germany," it began "drawing
Jewish support" from St. Louis Jews like Rabbi Susan Talve, "the founding rabbi of the city's
Central Reform Congregation, who said taking it down would help advance racial justice in the
United States." According to Talve, St. Louis Jews have "been talking about that statue for a
long time." Talve then added that removing the statue would be "a very important part of
reclaiming history, reclaiming the stories that have created the institutionalized racism that
we are trying to unravel today. If we're not honest about our history we will never be able to
dismantle the systems of oppression that we are living under."
"Susan Talve hated Cardinal Burke," according to one Catholic familiar with the local scene.
He went on to say that Burke told him that Talve had "an animosity toward me for reasons that I
don't understand." Blinded by over 50 years of the failed experiment known as Catholic-Jewish
dialogue, his eminence was evidently incapable of seeing that Talve's animosity toward him was
based on her ancestral animosity toward the Catholic Church, which he led in St. Louis at the
time. Unsurprisingly, Rabbi Talve's animosity toward the Catholic Church has turned her into an
advocate of Lee's attack on the statue.
St. Louis Catholics were determined to ignore the ethnic animosity behind the struggle.
America Needs Fatima, a front group for the Brazilian cult Tradition, Family, and Property
joined the fray, criticizing "limp-wristed politicians" who were giving in to "revolutionary
extremists." ANF Protest Coordinator Jose Ferraz, claimed that "American Catholics" who were
"strong in their faith" were being "pushed around by anarchist revolutionaries," but without
identifying any of the actual players in the dispute.
After local activist Jim Hoft announced that a group of Catholics associated with his
website Gateway Pundit was going to defend the statue, Lee issued a statement describing what
he clearly knew to be a group of Catholics as "White Nationalists" along with "those on the
alt-right such as those who held the infamous and tragic rally in Charlottesville."
Hoft then responded by claiming that Lee deliberately misrepresented the Gateway Pundit
rosary group as white racists: "We are Christians and Christian allies who believe we still
have the freedom to practice our religion in America. We are organizing a prayer rally with
Catholic and Christian men. And now we are being threatened -- In America. We will not
apologize for our Christianity. Not in St. Louis."
The leader of a local rosary group, taken in by Lee's propaganda, began to suspect that
local Catholic activists at the rosary protest "might be backed by white supremacists" and
warned his group off. He then retracted his first tweet after he learned that the Rosary rally
was being sponsored by local activist Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit and TFP-America Needs Fatima.
Neither group talked about the Jews. As a result, neither group was able to discuss the
conflict's most significant player. Both groups as a result became proxy warriors in an
exercise in street theater which kept the true dynamics of the conflict hidden.
In his article, Sales found a local Catholic who made a valiant attempt to defend the city's
eponymous saint, only to be shot down later by Talve, who opined that "Asserting that your way
is the only way I think is always wrong" with no sense that this was precisely the gist of what
the local Jews and their Muslim front man were imposing on the citizens of St. Louis.
Hoft called Lee's claim that "those on the alt-right such as those who held the infamous and
tragic rally in Charlottesville," were responsible for the demonstration defending the statue
"a lie," and added "There is no one from the Charlottesville rally or linked to the
Charlottesville rally or who promoted the Charlottesville rally who will be at the prayer rally
(that we know about)."
Lee's determination to turn the statue battle into a racial conflict began to generate
opposition from the Black community on Twitter, inspiring one observer to write "Fuck Umar
Lee's Bitch ass. He got fired for taking a company video to start racial tension. He's white.
Not Black. Sorry POS."
Activist, Author and Ex-Cabbie Umar Lee
By now it was obvious that the Black population of St. Louis, in spite of being dragged into
Lee's ad hoc coalition, had no dog in this fight. St. Louis, it turns out, never owned slaves.
Once the racial element disappeared from the conflict, its religious dimensions began to
emerge. The battle over the statue was a religious war between Catholics and Jews, in which
both sides were eager to cover over the conflict's true ethnic configuration. Both Lee and Hoft
were determined to obscure the identity of their opponents as well as the identity of their
backers. As one local observer put it, "Jews end up being in a win-win situation. Either Lee
succeeds in toppling the statue or Hoft succeeds and becomes the gay-married, pro-Zionist hero
to the local bishopless Catholics who are too fearful to organize on their own. Nowhere do
Catholics, or Blacks, or Muslims get a win out of this. Being pro-Zionist on some level
probably gives Hoft permission to misbehave sexually, since Jews are the authors of gay rights
as a movement. It's his way of paying them back, even though he is deeply conservative, like a
typical Iowa farm boy, raised Catholic, in all other areas."
Even after the Catholic-Jewish nature of the conflict became apparent, Lee continued to
portray the pro-statue crowd as white racists. In the days leading up to the Saturday rally,
Lee tweeted a picture of the blonde-haired Hoft with this text by way of explanation. "This is
the guy behind the White Nationalist rally on Saturday at noon on Art Hill. This is why it's
important for us to show up at eleven. . . . Jim Hoft and the Gateway Pundit were absurdly
wrong." [3]
A few hours later, Lee tweeted: "I will never allow Nazis, racists, and White Nationalists
to hold rallies in St. Louis without a response even if it's just me." [4] Hours later, Christine
Eidson Christlieb tried to set the record straight when she tweeted "The people praying the
rosary every night at the statue aren't white nationalists. That's just false. They are
Catholics." [5]
Ignoring Christlieb's tweet, Lee continued to promote identity theft, tweeting on June 24
that "White Christian Nationalists and the alt-right have announced a rally on Saturday at the
Louis IX statue. Please RT and share. We need to counter. Calling all Catholic and Christian
Men and their Allies." The bogus request for Catholic support when Lee knew it was Catholics
who were on the other side of the protest saying their rosaries exposed the hidden grammar of
Lee's strategy, which involved denying his opponents their actual identity and turning them
instead into "white nationalists," a group which could then be deprived of their constitutional
right to free speech and assembly. I discussed this ploy in my article comparing the Arbaeen
march in Dearborn, which was considered legitimate because of its religious sponsorship, and
the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, which was illegitimate precisely because the
protesters were "white," a designation which deprived them of any constitutional protection.
Lee knew he was dealing with Catholics, but he insisted on calling them white supremacists
because that was the category that would demonize them.
Lee's tweets throughout the period leading up to the June 27 protest gave a clear indication
that his real animus was against St. Louis's Catholics, not white supremacists or nationalists.
Lee tweeted "Mel Gibson is probably the most prominent traditional Catholic and critic of the
modern church known to most Americans. He is also a raging anti-Semite who beat his wife. The
Twitter army defending Louis IX I'm sure are huge fans of his."
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-6&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1275341953585090561&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fejones%2Ficonoclasm-in-st-louis%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px
Umar Lee Leading a Protest at the St. Louis Statue
Umar Lee is not your typical Muslim. He said nothing about the plight of the Palestinians
who were about to lose control over the West Bank. He failed to mention the connection between
the knee hold which presumably killed George Floyd and ADL sponsored seminars which introduced
Minneapolis police officers to Israeli instructors in Chicago in 2012. Instead he claimed that
"Bringing down the Louis IX statue won't be the [first] time Muslims and Jews coordinated in
St. Louis to stamp out evil." Then combining two contradictory tropes, Lee described his
opponents as "alt-right Catholic fascists," whose "favorite hobbies" were "burning and looting
Jews and impaling heretics." Instead of defending the statue of St. Louis IX, Lee felt that his
Catholic foes could better spend their time studying Jewish history and volunteering "to help
the many thousands of sex crimes victims in the church."
Statues are a sign of hegemony. They help you identify the ruler, and if not the real ruler,
the man those in power would like to have as their ruler. In a revolutionary era, the statues
of the former ruling class must come down. The most striking instance of this was the statue of
Stalin in Prague, which came down as soon as Communism collapsed in the period from 1989 to
1990. The removal of Stalin's statue left an empty pedestal in its place, but just as nature
abhors a vacuum, so pedestals will not remain empty. The first occupant of the empty Stalin
pedestal was a statue of Michael Jackson, who brought his own statue to Prague when he played a
concert there. He was the hegemon of the 1990s. The last time I was in Prague that pedestal was
occupied by a weird crane-liked gnomon which moved in sync with some unheard rhythm of the
spheres, making it seem like a metronome keeping time to an unknown melody.
The battle in Charlottesville in 2017 was ultimately a conflict over a statue, in this case
a statue of Robert E. Lee, which celebrated the "redemption" of the South which occurred a
generation after the Civil War, when the South drove the last remnant of Yankee soldiers from
their soil. The Lee statue was erected, as were many others celebrating Confederate soldiers,
to celebrate the new regime.
During the revolutionary spring of 2020, numerous statues were deposed. Not surprisingly,
the statue of Lenin in Seattle escaped the mayhem which visited that city unscathed, as did the
most recent addition to statuary in South Bend, Indiana, the statue of Rev. Theodore Hesburgh,
CSC, president of Notre Dame University and civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. The
latter statue expresses better than any other the system of control which it symbolizes. The
short-hand explanation of that system of control is the civil rights movement, which celebrates
breaking laws with some higher purpose in mind. A recent article noted that 60 percent of
people in their 20s believe it is okay to break the law for a good cause. Of course, who gets
to determine whether the cause is good did not get mentioned in that article. That is why the
Hesburgh-King statue is important. It was based on a photo taken in Chicago in 1966 (most often
erroneously stated as 1964). When Martin Luther King arrived in Marquette Park, one of
Chicago's many ethnic neighborhoods, the Lithuanians living there greeted him with a hail of
rocks and bottles, one of which staggered King as he got out of his car. Needing help to
prosecute the ethnic cleansing of Catholic neighborhoods in Chicago, King gave Hesburgh a call
and together the two icons sang "We shall overcome" at a rally at Soldier Field that
summer.
The statue is, in other words, a celebration of two of American history's most famous proxy
warriors. As a pawn of Jewish money and Quaker organizing, King obliterated the traditional
Black power structure in Chicago, symbolized by Bronzeville, which was the Black ethnic
neighborhood. As a pawn of the Rockefellers, Hesburgh betrayed fellow Catholics in Chicago in
order to get funding from their foundations, especially the Population Council run by John D.
Rockefeller, 3rd. So the South Bend statue is in no danger of coming down because the
descendants of the oligarchs which turned King and Hesburgh into political icons have found a
new set of proxy warriors in Antifa and Black Lives Matter, who have arrogated the civil rights
mantle to themselves in a bid to stamp out the last remnants of representative government in
the United States. Pedestals will not remain empty. Prepare yourself for a Jeff Bezos statue.
Just as King and Hesburgh were proxy warriors of the oligarchs in collaboration with each
other, so Lee and Hoft are proxy warriors of the oligarchs in opposition to each other.
In the spring of 2015, the iconoclasts of St. Louis succeeded in getting the Jesuit-run St.
Louis University to remove its statue of Pere Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Belgian Catholic priest
who worked as a missionary to the Indians in the Mid-West and western sections of the United
States of America. [6] The Jesuits caved in to
pressure from "a cohort of students and faculty" who complained that the De Smet sculpture
"symbolized white supremacy, racism, and colonialism," [7] at least according to
this news account, which and alumnus disputes, claiming:
Saint Louis University did not get rid of the statue of Father DeSmet. They moved it to the
newly renovated Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA). There, the statue is prominently
shown quite beautifully along with other artifacts and artwork from the early founding of St
Louis and its Catholic heritage. One could argue that they removed it from its outside area
because of the pressure that the university faced to remove it, but there was never a "cohort
of faculty and students to remove it." During my four years as a student from 2006 to 2009, I
never heard one comment about the statue. I attended the university with a lot of people from
various ethnicities who never mentioned it once. We would also pass it by on a daily basis. I
personally think that this "cohort" was made up and that no one ever had a problem with it,
whether liberal or not. It was made into a problem by those who would like to destroy
Catholicism. The Jesuits should have left it where it was but at least they had enough sense to
keep it and showcase it prominently in their museum, which I will repeat, is
beautiful.
Protestors Argue at the Statue of St. Louis
Two years later, St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson caved in to the same sort of pressure when she
removed a Confederate statue from the same Forest Park neighborhood where the statue to St.
Louis is located. [8] The statue of Columbus
was also removed in 2017, largely at the behest of Rachel Sender, a graduate student in
biological anthropology at Washington University who claimed that Columbus "represents racism,
colonialism, slavery and white supremacy and should not be given any honorable remembrance or
be a symbol of Tower Grove Park." [9] In attempt to give some
background on Lee and his petition, local Catholic activist Jim Hoft described Rachel Sender as
"some idiot . . . from New Jersey." Sender, however, was much more forthcoming than Hoft in
describing both her identity and motivation in wrecking that city's statues. Buoyed by the
iconoclasts' success in removing the Columbus statue, Sender jumped on the bandwagon to remove
the St. Louis statue, tweeting that "St. Louis was a crusader known for persecuting Jews. This
is also the only city I've experienced [sic] blatant anti-Semitism. His legacy should not be
honored! Lyda Kewson, City of St. Louis, Change the name of St. Louis. Sign the petition."
[10]
Lee was lionized in the Jewish press because even though Lee calls himself a Muslim, he not
only talks like a Jew, he also got the idea of tearing down the St. Louis statue from Jews. In
a recent interview, Lee told The Jerusalem Post "that he became aware of the statue's
history when Rabbi Hershey Novack of the Chabad on the Campus at St. Louis University held a
Tisha B'Av gathering by the Louis IX statue to remember the atrocities he wrought on Jews in
France." [11] Lee was in effect
only doing what he was told, after Novack and local Israeli restauranteur Ben Parembo said,
"Hey, that statue needs to come down. Jewish kids going out with their parents to [park's]
[sic] art museum don't need to be looking at this anti-Semite."
Lee may be the only Muslim in the world who is not upset about the United States moving its
embassy to Jerusalem, thereby making it the capital of Israel. In fact he's planning a trip to
Jerusalem, where he plans to "do a little dance. . . to commemorate the fact that loser [i.e.,
St. Louis IX] never made it to Jerusalem." In the meantime, Lee "will be drafting a letter to
@Pontifex asking for the decanonization of King Louis IX." On June 21, Lee informed his twitter
followers that he was "working on Lindbergh too. Must go. No Nazi named streets in St. Louis
Couny [sic]!" In addition to being a descendant of Robert E. Lee, Umar Lee did time for some
unspecified crime. It was during his stay in prison that he became aware of Jewish history and
the fact that St. Louis "burned Talmuds and embarked upon two crusades." He also learned that
St. Louis was "a Catholic town," a fact which led him to embark on a career as a reformer of
the Catholic Church, forcing him to oppose "some hateful pre-Vatican II trends that are being
repopularized." At some point during his study of Jewish history, Lee discovered that "a group
of Jewish students from Washington University and a rabbi gathered at the statue [of St. Louis]
on Tisha B'av" [or this ninth of Av, the day on which the temple was destroyed]. [12] From
reading the article, Lee also learned that King Louis "organized the burning of 12,000 Jewish
manuscripts in Paris, reasoning that the Jewish manuscripts might corrupt his good Christian
soldiers." [13] The book burning was
small potatoes compared to the destruction of the Temple, but the statue gave local Jews a
reason to feel aggrieved and test the local political waters to see how much clout they had.
Lee discovered that Jewish clout had increased considerably over the past 11 years, and that,
during the revolutionary spring of 2020, the time was ripe to press the issue.
Knowing that the Jews were itching for a battle with that city's Catholics, Lee engaged in
identity theft by claiming that the Catholic protesters were white because religion was a
category which still afforded constitutional protection. Recognizing that any conflict between
Catholics and Jews, with Muslims and Blacks playing minor roles, was unwinnable, Lee attempted
to drag the mayor into a fight against "white nationalists" knowing full well that enlisting
her in a battle against that city's Catholics, a group which made up 26 percent of the
population would have meant political suicide. Hence, Lee's persistent efforts to turn the
rally into something which it was not, as when he wrote: "Does St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson
have a problem with alt-right White Nationalists having a protest at the Louis IX statue on Art
Hill this Saturday?" Lee's tendentious formulation of the issue bespoke a combination of
identity theft and moral blackmail. The two issues are, of course, related and the link was
America's Civic Religion, otherwise known as the Civil Rights Movement, otherwise known as the
Black-Jewish alliance. Anyone who had the Black-Jewish alliance on his side occupied the high
moral ground and was on his way to winning the argument by default, because his opponents
lacked a moral leg to stand on. Because of Hollywood and public education, support for the
Civil Rights movement had replaced the ten commandments in America's mind as the source of
moral guidance.
But, as Anne Hendershott pointed out in her book The Politics of Deviance , deviance
is constant. That means that for every precept of the moral law you subtract from your
behavior, you have to add a precept of political correctness by way of compensation. Sexual sin
is the usual motivation for subtracting precepts of the moral law from your conscience. The
public school system in America as well as higher education has as one of its main goals the
sexual corruption of every student unfortunate enough to enter its doors. The moral vacuum that
education creates is filled by tales of the Civil Rights Movement, which proposes Martin Luther
King and Rosa Parks as role models. The sense of grievance and contempt for the positive law
which King and Parks stoked found fulfillment in the homosexual movement which invoked their
name to stoke contempt for the natural law.
So one way to calm your conscience because of the abortion you had is by becoming a
fanatical member of Antifa or a supporter of Black Lives Matter. The Civil Rights Movement of
the '60s was in many ways moral compensation for the adoption of contraception among Protestant
sects. Unsurprisingly, 1964 was the year of both the pill and the Civil Rights Act. This is not
a coincidence.
The battle over the statue served as an update on the Triple Melting Pot. Protestants were
nowhere to be found in this conflict. Their place had been taken by Muslims, who were still
negligible in terms of political power or cultural presence, but they could become significant
if they allied themselves with the Jews, the part of the Triple Melting Pot which was still
negligible in terms of numbers but whose cultural and political power had increased enormously
over the past half century. St. Louis is the home to 60,000 Bosnian Muslims, who harbor animus
against Jews that is now common in the Islamic world, largely because of how Israel has treated
Palestinians. Umar Lee is the exception that proves the rule. Thanks to the state of Israel,
Muslim antipathy to Jews is a widespread phenomenon, but it is not the case in the drama
surrounding the state of St. Louis. If Umar had come out in favor of the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction movement holding Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinians, he'd still be
driving a cab.
What began as an exercise in identity politics soon devolved into a case of identity theft.
After Lee called the Catholics white nationalists, local Catholic activist Jim Hoft responded
by calling Lee's Jewish coalition "Marxists." When it came to the battle of the St. Louis
statue, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was missing in action. Archbishop Robert Carlson,
ordinary of the archdiocese of St. Louis, defended the statue, but his comments had little
effect on public opinion because he is on his way out the door. His appointed successor,
auxiliary bishop Mitchell Rozanski of Springfield, Massachusetts, had nothing to say on the
issue. As a result, Hoft became defensor fidei by default, in spite of the fact that Jim
Hoft's relationship with Catholicism is even more troubled that Umar Lee's relationship with
Islam.
Hoft was born and raised in Iowa, but he got his start in local politics in St. Louis after
he established a national internet presence by founding the Gateway Pundit website, which took
the typically conservative line on issues as other websites began to engage in liberal
waffling. Conservative, at this moment in time, had less to do with the Republican populism of
St. Louis native Phyllis Schlafly, and more to do with the Neoconservatives who took over both
the party and the movement over the course of the 1990s. Specifically, that meant that Hoft was
rabidly pro-Israel, even to the point of posting a picture of him and Bibi Netanyahu on the
Gateway Pundit masthead, and disallowing any criticism of Israel or Jews from its combox.
Hoft's loyalty to Israel has earned him Jewish friends, such as film producer Michael Rudin,
who featured Hoft in a 2019 episode of the TV Series The Conspiracy File s and who is
also featured in Hoft's masthead.
In keeping with an even more recent trend in Republican-style conservatism, Hoft announced
that he was a homosexual after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando because he "just had
to." Not long after coming out of the closet, Hoft married a gay Filipino in what purported to
be a Catholic ceremony at the rebel St. Stanislaus Church in St. Louis. Not content to keep his
sodomy private, Hoft took out an elaborate wedding announcement complete with picture of him
and the boy, who is about a foot shorter than Hoft.
Hoft's Gateway Pundit has gone on to become a fact-checker's dream, with article after
article in mainstream outlets like the Washington Post describing Hoft and his website
as retailers of conspiracy theories and fake news, but Hoft continues in his role as the Jews'
favorite dumb goy. Hoft's fanatical, pro-Israel chest-thumping Catholicism is a compensation
for homosexuality, and a manifestation of what we might call the Michael Voris syndrome. In
addition to being useful to the Jews whenever they need someone to make the Catholic Church in
St. Louis look ridiculous, Hoft has become defensor fidei by default because in St.
Louis, as elsewhere, nature abhors a vacuum. Archbishop Robert Carlson's defense of the statue
was weakened by his status as a lame duck. [14] The Archdiocese
issued a statement defending St. Louis as "an example of an imperfect man who strived to live a
life modeled after the life of Jesus Christ" and a "model for how we should care for our fellow
citizen." His defense was further weakened by the fact that he did not identify the group
responsible for wanting the statue removed. Catholics, as a result, were once more engaged in
cultural shadow boxing against enemies they could not identify.
That means that the fate of the statue rests in the hands of Carlson's successor,
Archbishop-elect Mitchell Rozanski, who will be installed as St. Louis's new ordinary on August
25, which is, not coincidentally, the feast of St. Louis IX. The fate of the statue rests of
Mayor Lyda Krewson, who is both a Catholic and a liberal Democrat, which means she is pulled in
two opposite directions. She has come out in favor of retaining the statue, but some Catholics
are not sure she can withstand the political pressure pulling her in the opposite direction,
since she has already presided over other acts of public iconoclasm. As a Catholic mayor
presiding over the fate of the statue of a Catholic saint in a city with a large Catholic
population, Krewson finds herself confronted with a revolutionary situation during an
interregnum. The driving force behind that revolution is the Jewish revolutionary spirit.
Because of that fact, the impending arrival of Mitchell Rozanski is not cause for optimism.
Rozanski grew up in Baltimore and is a protégé of Cardinal Keeler, who is the
patron saint of Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the United States and author of a document on
Catholic-Jewish relations that was so heretical that even the notoriously philosemitic United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops refused to publish it. On June 18, 2009, the USCCB took
the unprecedented step of condemning its own document on Catholic-Jewish relations, warning
unsuspecting readers that Keeler's "Reflections on Covenant and Mission should not be taken as
an authoritative presentation of the teaching of the Catholic Church. In order to avoid any
confusion, the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious
Affairs have decided to point out some of these ambiguities and to offer corresponding
clarifications." [15]
Archbishop-Elect
Mitchell Rozanski
In an interview with Rozanski which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter ,
Keeler was described as "a legend in the field of Jewish-Catholic dialogue" and "one of
Rozanski's mentors." [16] Eventually Rozanski
succeeded Keeler as moderator for Catholic-Jewish relations. On February 24, 2017, Rozanski
wrote a response to the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in his capacity as
U.S. Bishops' Chairman on Interreligious Affairs, expressing "deep sympathy, solidarity, and
support to our Jewish brothers and sisters who have experienced once again a surge of
anti-Semitic actions in the United States. I wish to offer our deepest concern, as well as our
unequivocal rejection of these hateful actions. The Catholic Church stands in love with the
Jewish community in the current face of anti-Semitism." [17]
In an article which appeared in the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican , Rozanski
was quoted as saying, "I fear that the current level of demonizing anyone of a different
opinion sadly will only lead to even more levels of violence and affronts to our fellow human
beings, created in the likeness and image of God." [18] The article went on
to say that the suspected shooter in the attack referred to Jews as "children of Satan," which
the paper described as an "anti-Semitic social media posting" with no indication that the term
came from Jesus Christ in a confrontation with the Jews portrayed in the Gospel of St. John. I
make the claim that there is a historical continuity between that confrontation in the Gospel
and 2,000 years of revolutionary ferment on the part of the Jews in my book The Jewish
Revolutionary Spirit.
Unlike Justin Rigali and Raymond Burke, "whose legacies remain divisive," Rozanski plans to
deal with the polarized situation in St. Louis by promoting "more dialogue, more understanding,
more study of the way that police deal with different situations. And what happened to George
Floyd in Minneapolis was totally, totally unacceptable, totally beyond the pale of whatever
should be done to anyone who is being taken into police custody."
There are, of course, Catholics in St. Louis who can provide a cogent defense of retaining
the statue, but they are currently in hiding, fearing repercussions from Rozanski, whom one
"local Catholic in a very sensitive position that requires him to remain anonymous" described
as their "new super-ecumenical and politically correct Archbishop." As I have said many times
before, the Church can have good relations with the Jews, or she can have unity, but she can't
have both. Rozanski's good relations with the Jews is a sign that local Catholics are in for a
hard time if they try to contest the anti-Semitism label which has been imposed on them by Umar
Lee and his Jewish backers in their defense of the statue. One such Catholic provided the
following defense of the statue, while at the same time declining to give his name:
Saint Louis IX was a devout follower of Jesus, who was scrupulously honest, humble, a
generous and unfailing lover and benefactor of the poor, and a peacemaker and unifier of
factions within his kingdom. It is for these and other virtues that he was canonized by the
Church. Just as we don't eliminate the name and statues of Martin Luther King because he was
a womanizer and a plagiarist, nor should we dishonor St. Louis because of his policies toward
Jews and his crusading ventures. These need to be understood in their historical context of
medieval Christendom – very different from today's secularized world. We're told his
statue is "offensive" to Jews and Muslims. Tearing it down would be deeply offensive to
hundreds of thousands of Catholics in this area, and to quite a few others as well.
As the intensity of the conflict surrounding the rosary vigils increased, the author of the
above statement began to wonder if it had been strong enough in stating the case for St. Louis.
When a local priest attempted to debate with the protestors, a shouting match ensued with no
conclusive outcome. The author then brought up the issue of the Crusades by contexualizing it
with a discussion of Zionism:
It's a pity the priest leading the rosary and the other Catholics there didn't defend St.
Louis from the charge of being "genocidal" and a "murderer." The Crusades were basically a
defensive movement against constant Muslim encroachment on the west and Christendom, which
they vowed to conquer and destroy, and to regain the Holy Places in Palestine which they had
seized after the Holy Land had been under Christian control for over three centuries before
the Muslim invasions of the 7th century. What prompted King Louis to embark on a crusade was
that in 1244 Muslim forces invaded Jerusalem, massacred many Christians there and desecrated
churches and holy places. So it wasn't "Islamophobic" or "genocidal" for a Christian king to
want to defend them! How can Jews condemn Christians for seeking to reclaim lands formerly
under Christian control when they themselves (or at least the great majority, who are
Zionists) justified their takeover of Palestine in 1948 for the same reason, namely, that it
belonged to their ancestors until foreigners (the Romans) conquered it and dispersed
them?
He then addressed the issue of burning the Talmud:
St. Louis was following the precepts of Lateran Council IV and the popes of his time in
having copies of the Talmud banned and burned after it was found out that this volume (only
then recently translated from Hebrew) contained repulsive blasphemies against Jesus and the
Blessed Mother. Regarding Mary, "She who was the descendant of princes and governors played
the harlot with carpenters" (Sanhedrin, 106a). As regards Our Lord himself, he is said to be
now in hell, being boiled in "hot excrement" (Gittin, 57a). Why? "Jesus the Nazarene . . .
and his disciples practiced sorcery and black magic, [and] led Jews astray into idolatry"
(Sanhedrin, 43a). "He was sexually immoral, worshipped statues of stone. . . was cut off from
the Jewish people for his wickedness, and refused to repent" (Sanhedrin 107b, Sotah, 47a). He
"learned witchcraft in Egypt" (Shabbos, 104b). [19]
Jonathan Greenblatt
Missing from this discussion is the role Jews play in getting people they don't like
de-platformed from social media, which is the modern day equivalent of burning the Talmud. On
the same Saturday as the protests at the St. Louis statue, all of my books were removed from
Amazon at the behest of the ADL, the main organization promoting Jewish censorship of the
media. Unlike the ADL, the Inquisition gave the books it burned a fair hearing. Now, because of
Jewish concepts like "hate speech," anyone can lose his livelihood without trial or explanation
at the hands of the same people who take umbrage at burning the Talmud. The only thing
necessary is mention of the magic word "anti-Semitism," which ends all discussion and leaves
the accused person guilty without any possibility of clearing his name. St. Louis, according to
our author:
was no "anti-Semite" (which properly speaking is a racial prejudice, like that of
Hitler); but he was indeed anti-Jewish, i.e., against Judaism as a religion, for the reason
that Jews bitterly hated Christianity (as the Talmud demonstrated) and often worked to
undermine the faith of Louis' Christian subjects, whose eternal salvation he sought to
protect. The consistent position taken by the medieval popes was the Jews were not to be
molested, and their worship was to be tolerated, provided they didn't work to oppose or
undermine the faith of the Christian majority. When punitive measures were implemented or
authorized by the Church, it was because the Church judged that Jews were not abiding by that
condition.
As his final point, our author points out that if the Jews had power over Christians to
implement the Talmud which St. Louis ordered burned, Christians would have died. That's because
Jews only believe in tolerance when they are a powerless minority, and they believe in it only
as a strategy to undermine the coherence and unity of the dominant culture until they get the
upper hand, at which point they become ruthless persecutors of those who are weaker than they
are. Israeli treatment of Palestinians is a good indication of how Jews act when they get the
upper hand. Bolshevism in Russia is another example. Once the Bolsheviks seized power in
Russia, the Jews who controlled that movement turned the instruments of state power against the
Russian Christians whom they saw as their ancestral foes by creating instruments of terror like
the Cheka, which was invariably a Jewish-run operation because Russians were reluctant to
torture and murder other Russians, whereas the Jews who made up the majority of that
organization had no such compunction. "St. Louis's medieval methods," our author continues:
were not such as we would find acceptable today, when a much greater degree of religious
toleration and emphasis on individual rights has been a part of Western culture now for
centuries; but we have to understand St. Louis and other great figures of Christendom and
U.S. history in their own historical context. The idea of a religiously "neutral" or secular
state was unheard of anywhere in the world until after the French and American Revolutions
more than 500 years after St. Louis lived. No religion in those days gave much
emphasis to religious toleration. The Jews themselves (never mind the Muslims!) would have
been very oppressive to Christians if they had been in power, as the Jewish laws set out in
the Babylonian Talmud make clear, even though most of them couldn't be implemented. For
instance, "If a gentile hits a Jew, the gentile must be killed" (Sanhedrin, 58b); "When a Jew
murders a gentile there will be no death penalty. What a Jew steals from a gentile he may
keep" (Sanhedrin, 57a). Indeed, gentiles are dehumanized: "All gentile children are animals"
(Yebamoth 98a); "Gentile girls are in a state of niddah [filth] from birth" (Abodah
Zarah, 36b). If this, and the vitriolic Talmud slurs against Jesus and Mary cited above, are
not "hate speech," what is?"
As some indication of the parlous state which Catholic-Jewish dialogue has created in the
Catholic Church, America Magazine turned to a Jewish Lesbian convert to Catholicism, who
explained the situation in St. Louis to its readers in the following way: "King Louis IX, whom
Catholics know as St. Louis, ordered the burning [of the Talmud] after a rigged 'disputation'
in which a Jewish convert to Christianity debated a rabbi about whether the Talmud was
blasphemous." [20] So are the above
passages blasphemous? Are they in the Talmud? If the answer to those questions is yes, in what
sense was the disputation rigged? Eve Tushnet, who is the author of this article as well as the
author of Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith,
never gets around to answering that question. Nor does she tell us whether the statue should be
taken down or left in place, nor does she tell us in what sense someone who describes herself
as a Jewish lesbian has converted to the Catholic faith.
The fact that the author of this eloquent defense of St. Louis chose to remain anonymous out
of fear of retaliation from that city's incoming bishop is a good indication that the violence
will increase. America is now in the middle of a full-blown revolution because largely Jewish
revolutionaries broke the Motion Picture Production Code in 1965 and inundated the country with
pornography and other forms of sexual subversion, which left subsequent generations weakened,
demoralized, and incapable of sustaining their own culture and institutions. The year 1965
inaugurated the failed experiment known as Catholic-Jewish dialogue as well. More than anything
else, the sort of Catholic-Jewish dialogue which the incoming bishop learned at the knee of his
mentor Cardinal Keeler crippled the Catholic Church's ability to defend the moral order in
American society. Repurposed as our "elder brothers" and friends, Jews qua Jews became
the unopposed sponsors of virtually every subversive movement in American culture from abortion
to gay marriage, from race-baiting political correctness to family destroying feminism, from
warmongering neo-Conservatism to brutal shoot-the-protesters-in-the-back Zionism, alienating
people who should have been America's friends because of Israel's barbarous behavior. The Jews
have never abandoned their ancestral commitment to revolution, and now revolution has arrived
at the gates of the Gateway, as the Black revolutionaries who have always been the Jews' proxy
warriors, from the founding of the NAACP to the infusion of George Soros money into the coffers
of Black Lives Matter, broke down the entrance to a gated community two blocks from the St.
Louis statue and continued the march which began after George Floyd died. Threatened by what
looked like a home invasion and abandoned by the local police, who had been told to stand down
by that city's feminist mayor, Mr. and Mrs. McCloskey stood their ground on the front porch of
their house brandishing the weapons that they were forced to exhibit because the cops refused
to come to their assistance when called.
The rally at the statue ended up being much more violent than anticipated as brass-knuckled
Black Lives Matter thugs beat up elderly Catholics who had come to say the Rosary. [21] Some of
the Black Lives Matter demonstrators arrived with firearms. All of the Catholic demonstrators
were unarmed. According to various reports, Black Lives Matter protesters attacked Catholics
praying near the Apotheosis of St. Louis statue in St. Louis. And why did they do this? Were
the Black thugs who took the cane away from a 60-year-old Catholic praying the Rosary and beat
him with it upset about Louis IX burning the Talmud or his position on Albigensianism? I doubt
it. You can view that attack at the link in this footnote. [22] Umar Lee's portrayal
of Catholics as white supremacists, fresh from Charlottesville, is responsible for that
Catholic's injuries. Lee is guilty of incitement. If he and the man who carried out the attack
go unpunished, we can expect more violence.
In reaction to the violence at the statue on Sunday, the Islamic Foundation of Greater St.
Louis issued a stunning rebuke to Umar Lee in a statement on Tuesday, June 31, saying that
removing the statue of St. Louis "will not erase history." The Islamic group went on to say
that they remained "committed to work on interfaith relationships based on honest dialogue and
mutual respect." It did not recommend taking down the statue of St. Louis. Instead it was
saying there were voices of reason in the Islamic community in St. Louis and that Lee's
campaign had no support among the people who did speak for Islam in that city. As one local
Catholic put it after reading the Islamic group's report, "The Jews have overplayed their
hand."
Mr. Greenblatt's attempt to use the ADL to resurrect the Black/Jewish alliance has created
problems of its own. With Israel's annexation of the West Bank looming, the ADL is concerned
that the backlash that the annexation is sure to cause, might spread to its proxy warriors in
Black Lives Matter, as in fact did happen in England [23] :
The "stakeholders analysis memo," which was issued by the ADL's Government Relations,
Advocacy, and Community Engagement department and marked as a draft, warns that the group
will need to find a way to defend Israel from criticism without alienating other civil rights
organizations, elected officials of color, and Black Lives Matter activists and supporters.
The memo suggests that the group hopes to avoid appearing openly hostile to public criticism
of annexation while it works to block legislation that harshly censures Israel or leads to
material consequences, such as conditioning United States military support. [24]
The ADL was not the only Jewish organization supporting Black Lives Matter. According to a a
report in the Jewish Telegraph Agency, "More than 400 Jewish organizations and synagogues in
the United States have signed on to a letter that asserts 'unequivocally: Black Lives Matter.'"
[25] Those groups
represented a broad spectrum "of religious, political, gender, and racial identities. The list
of signatories -- from small congregations to major Jewish organizations -- represents millions
of Jewish people in the United States, the organizers," according to the statement.
The problem in cities like Seattle, Chicago, and St. Louis can be laid at the feet of those
cities' lesbian and feminist public officials, a group which is incapable of enforcing the law
because they see the law as a manifestation of patriarchal oppression. This encourages anarchy
because it allows Jewish-funded thugs like Antifa and Black Lives Matter to act with impunity.
It also encourages political opportunists like Umar Lee to mount assaults on the social order
because they can blackmail those officials because of the guilty conscience which arises from
abortion and sexual perversion. The Church is complicit as well when it appoints bishops who
are known for their skill in appeasing Christ's enemies.
The video of Mr. and Mrs. McCloskey's confrontation in St. Louis garnered over 16 million
views in less than 24 hours, not because violence ensued, but because violence was averted, at
least for the time being. [26] But the assault on
the McCloskeys continues as a signature petition to disbar them is wending its way to the
Jewish head of the local lawyer's disciplinary board. Planning to fight fire with fire, the
McCloskeys have hired a Jewish lawyer to defend them.
As of this writing, St. Louis Circuit attorney Kim Gardner is considering filing charges
against the McCloskey's for defending their home. Gardner was elected in 2017, with the help of
George Soros money. [27] In addition to
supporting Gardner, Soros also funded the Ferguson riots. [28] During Gardner's
tenure as Circuit Attorney, felony prosecutions dropped dramatically. Of the 7,045 felony cases
which the St. Louis Police Department brought before the circuit attorney in 2019, only 1641
were prosecuted, despite claims of significant evidence to prosecute presented by the police
union. [29] After reducing the
cash bond for numerous offences, or removing it altogether, Gardner announced that she was no
longer going to prosecute "low-level" marijuana possession cases. At this point, Gardner
declared war on the State of Missouri. In February 2018, Gardner indicted Missouri Governor
Eric Greitens. [30] Three months later,
the governor's office filed a suit against William Don Tisaby, the ex-FBI agent Gardner had
hired to investigate Greitens. Gardner then went all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court to
block the appointment of a special prosecute to investigate her handling of the Greitens
investigation but lost. That grand jury also brought charges of misconduct against Gardner but
ultimately failed to hand down any indictments.
In 2019 Gardner pleaded guilty to repeated campaign finance violations dating back to her
time as a Missouri State Legislator, but avoided conviction by reaching "an agreement with the
Missouri Ethics Commission to pay a settlement of $6,314 in lieu of a $63,009 fine." [31]
In January 2020, Gardner filed a civil rights lawsuit against St. Louis City and St. Louis
Metropolitan Police Department on the basis of the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment,
and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1865 alleging a racist conspiracy. The City of St. Louis called the
case "meritless," and Jeff Roorda of the St. Louis Police Officers Association called it "the
last act of a desperate woman." [32]
On June 3, 2020, Gardner released all 36 of the rioters who had been arrested in the wake of
the George Floyd protests. [33] Gardner is
sympathetic St. Louis's revolutionaries because ever since her election, she has been involved
in her own attempt to overthrow the government. The fate of the McCloskeys, who have been told
that the rioters are planning to return to their house, now rests in the hand of this woman and
the police force she has beaten into submission with the help of George Soros.
Whether violence prevails in the future, no one can say at this point, but the best
indication of its likelihood can be found in the fate of the statue which represents that
city's patron saint, and the fighting spirit it inspires in those who are determined to resist
the Jewish revolutionary spirit, as St. Louis did in Paris eight centuries ago.
[19] The last three
Talmud citations here were accessed 6/26/20 on the Jewish website http://www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm, where they are quoted
with approval in an article arguing Jesus was a "false prophet".
Great article, I had no idea of the background behind these various incidents. I saw each
clip on various media channels, but never knew that they were all connected.
Couple of comments:
1) Jewish-Catholic dialogue appears to be a one way shouting match. I have yet to hear of
Jews altering the Talmud to remove the anti-gentile and anti-Christian passages from that
turgid tome.
2) "nor does she tell us in what sense someone who describes herself as a Jewish lesbian
has converted to the Catholic faith." She's obviously an infiltrator, like several of the
major participants in Vatican II. I'm no Catholic, so I'm not about to lecture anyone on
Church history, but there are a few volumes out there on the founding of the Jesuit order and
how gentiles and jews battled for control of it over subsequent decades. Infiltration of
Christian churches is as much of a Jewish tradition as Purim.
3) It was from your work that I finally gained a better understanding of Jesus and his
criticism of the Pharisees. Shame to see it disappear from Amazon, but I fear anything that
even remotely offends Jewish sensibilities is going to be hard to find in future. I believe
they even banned Jewish historian Leni Brenner's book on the transfer agreement.
Interesting to know about the fake-negro and fake-Muslim Umar Lee or Talcum XX. There's
already a fake-negro from KY who's known as Talcum X. He's the one who is stationed at
Haaaavaaahd who collects 20K a pop for speeches advocating that all non-black portrayals of
Christ and Mary be destroyed and churches burned. His BLM followers seem to have been busy in
the past week. Perhaps E. Michael Jones should do a follow-up on this noxious clown. This was
a very informative article with a lot of insightful background provided.
Interesting to note that the first ones to show any resistance to this atrocity were some
Brazilian Traditionalist Catholics. Most of the ones from Murika are too busy fellating the
BLM (Black Looming Monster) created and funded by nice folks like George Soros, who isn't
even a fake Nazi but an actual Nazi employee who (along with his father) aided the famous
Adolf Eichmann in the asset-looting of Hungarian Jews in the wake of the Nazi overthrow of
Admiral Horthy's regime.
Horthy's government refused to send the local Jews to Hitler even though they were allied
with the Germans in fighting the USSR. Isn't there a special division of the Juctice Dept.
devoted to hunting down folks who were involved even slightly with the Hitler regime?? Guess
when you buy citizenship in the Rotten Banana Empire (Soros' was via a special act of
Congress – the finest money can buy), the fearless Nazi-hunters shy away.
One of the worst things Giuliani did was bring back urban revival. If DEATH-WISH-style NY
had continued, America would have been far more conservative.
All that urban renewal and wealth made the city slickers more cosmo and snotty.
The USA is now so wracked with immorality, perversion and identity politics – its
difficult to see that it has a future.
And having read about Lee and Holt, Talve and Gardner I was instantly reminded of the thread
from yesterday. 'Who Should be Shot?'.
With the infestation of pure evil which is ripping apart the society and internal peace of
the American people – are there no patriots left .?
When there is no law, no protection for decency, fairness and justice – the time must
come when citizens need to defend themselves.
Obviously in St Louis that time has come ..
But the brainwashing now is so deep seated, so professional and so ugly but well financed
– it seems to me that the USA will be consumed from within, without the white
population even turning off their TV sets until the killing, raping and looting hits their
actual front doors.
And it will.
The barbarians are no longer at the gates – they are destroying and 'cleansing' all the
concept of history and any 'American dream'from inside the very heart of the country.
Karma – perhaps.
Since E. Michael Jones endorses Christianity, it is appropriate to remind him that
Christians destroyed the holy places of their rivals, destroying statues and libraries of
antiquity, bringing down holy oaks of Germanic tribes etc..
And you Americans did it in Germany not too long ago, even destroying completely
unpolitical statues of Arno Breker and other artists.
So it is all a bit hypocritical.
Nota bene: I don't endorse this destruction in America, and I even lament this, because I
see it as a sign of weakness of the White race, and I identify as a White man, and I see
those who are bringing those statues down as my enemies. But a bit more self-reflection would
certainly be appropriate, if you want someone to sympathize with you.
I guess it surprises me less that Jesus Christ is still being persecuted by the old Jewish
remnant than that the remnant has found so many allies at this point in our history. I'm
equally unsurprised that a much more effective coalition is thereby being formed to oppose
the remnant. Satan, being a liar from the beginning, always makes the same mistakes. He/She
turns a series of small victories, like rampant pornography and an army of weak, duped
Christian leaders like Hesburgh, into a conflagration that demands a response from God, like
the Resurrection.
"But the brainwashing now is so deep seated, so professional and so ugly but well financed
– it seems to me that the USA will be consumed from within, without the white
population even turning off their TV sets until the killing, raping and looting hits their
actual front doors."
I see no evidence that you are wrong. And Trump fiddles while America burns.
And you Americans did it in Germany not too long ago, even destroying completely
unpolitical statues of Arno Breker and other artists.
Breker was artist to the Third Reich, which was a political movement and hostile to
Christianity. While Jones thoroughly condemns all aspects of Nazism he does believe the rise
of Hitler and the Third Reich is attributable to Bolshevism.
Fortunately the cultural record of the 20th century is quite full and easy to access. And what
I see is, until the 60s, Catholics getting along just fine.
The Motion Picture Production Code, before that the Hays Code, certainly pre-Lambeth, when
Protestants and Catholics worked together, America was a paradise, compared to today's
Godforsaken mess.
They could have kept things that way. But the Jews gained game-changing power after WWII. And
since you couldnt name them, you couldnt fight them. And since you couldnt fight them, you lost.
Father
Coughlin , says: July 14, 2020 at 2:42 pm
GMT
appropriate to remind him that Christians destroyed the holy places of their rivals,
destroying statues and libraries of antiquity, bringing down holy oaks of Germanic tribes
etc..
Nope. They Christianized them. Pulled out of them what was true, noble and beautiful and
modified what was error.
Jul 12, 2020 Tyrants HATE This 500 Year Old Trick for Ending Tyranny
The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, the 16th century treatise on tyranny and obedience by
Étienne de La Boétie. James and Keith highlight some of the book's key insights
and detail how they apply every much to our situation today as they did when they were
written.
Jun 29, 2020 Armed Couple Facing BLM Mob SPEAK OUT "We Were In FEAR OF OUR LIVES The
Agitators WERE WHITE"!!!
When an angry and unruly BLM mob trespassed onto private property homeowners Mark and
Patricia McCloskey armed themselves to protect their lives and their property after the mob
uttered threats that they would kill them.
August 22, 2017 The racist origin of gun control laws
Congress demolished these racist laws. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill of 1865, Civil Rights Act
of 1866, and Civil Rights Act of 1870 each guaranteed all persons equal rights of self-defense.
Most importantly, the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, made the Second Amendment applicable to
the states.
@Chu N – In a
letter to the American people, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew today announced plans for the
new $20, $10 and $5 notes, with the portrait of Harriet Tubman to be featured on the front of
the new $20.
Secretary Lew also announced plans for the reverse of the new $10 to feature an image of the
historic march for suffrage that ended on the steps of the Treasury Department and honor the
leaders of the suffrage movement -- Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul. The front of the new $10 note will maintain the portrait of
Alexander Hamilton.
This is a very stupid and uneducated reply. There is so much evidence of wholesale
destruction of "pagan" heritage by Christians. No serious Christian scholar denies this. Read a
bit on the topic.
It is amazing to me how adding that X-factor to the equation seemingly always makes the
incomplete picture make perfect sense. Tucker led his show with the McCloskey story last night,
but he can't say outright many of the hidden variables. He does a better job than anyone in the
MSM by far at leading the horse to water, but will they drink?
though it should be remembered that our Republic was founded upon people saying no to unjust
laws and compacts, hence the Declaration of Independence!
Thus Martin Luther King Jr promotion of non-violent opposition to injustice should not be
condemned, for it is part of the greater important tradition in this country, and it was
precisely the fork-saluting weather underground marxist maoist thugs abetted by funding through
the Ford Foundation, etc to Soros of this day, that wanted to stop King, through murder, to
launch violence and race war as that strategy of divide and conquer is now being deployed once
again.
For it should be remembered that King, like Trump today, was calling out against the Vietnam
war, as Trump was the only antiwar candidate in 2016 against the Obama Bin Bush Bin Clinton Bin
Bush perpetual war machine, where the call for Trump's assassination is by those who want to
stay in Afghanistan, saw nothing wrong with destroying the African nation of Libya by a black
President Obama, the destruction of Syria, etc and are hell bent on stopping cooperation for
world development upon the McKinley American System Model which the Belt and Road and New Silk
Road initiatives were modeled.
Trump unfortunately is in bed with some very poisonous elements, but some of those elements
even understand that no one will survive a nuclear war very much on the table and being
provoked by various elements .
There's no question that Obama was slick, polished and well-spoken. However, as to this
idea of holding his feet to the fire, it doesn't explain why he got so cozy with Goldman
Sachs figures; went after Edward Snowden and did little to stem the dark tide of the war on
terror. I think he was a sell-out from the get-go.
And while this article makes a compelling case for Biden's loss of mental acuity, if
Donald Trump throws those barbs, there are
plenty of filmed segments of his own loss of words, his word salads, his nasal breathing,
possible use of inhaled drugs, and overall cognitive decline. Add in that many psychiatrists
have gone on record to discuss his malignant narcissism and clinical (dangerous) mental
illness.
Good article, yes I remember 2016 and the power grid that was taken out by the Ukies. A
lot of generators were sold that summer /year. lol I see Putin and Russia – just
sitting /waiting it out – patiently as usual. Time is on their side and bad things are
happening fast in the domestic west.
Of course Russia is part of the NWO because they have to be. They sell oil, gaz and
natural resources internationally and have Corporations that have a big sayso in the
Government. I think Putin, a long time ago , decided to spare his people from the same fate
of the Western populace or at least , make it as comfortable, as can be expected – in
these times. It helps by not having the Ghettos, Gangs, Dysfunctional Melting Pot, POlice
state, and a slew of Wars to deal with -- for starters. Like the Saker said – Russian
problems are – all the BS directed at them from ther West .
A British court decision unmasks new evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion
probe.
Warby's lengthy ruling unearthed a gem of new evidence to answer the question: Steele
kept his own notes of what he told FBI agents the first time he met them on July 5, 2016 in
London to discuss his anti-Trump Russia research.
And, Warby revealed, the notes make clear that Steele told his FBI handlers from the
get-go that the dossier's "ultimate client were (sic) the leadership of the Clinton
presidential campaign."
And after Trump won the election, the judge added, Steele disclosed he gave copies of
his dossier to longtime Clinton friend Strobe Talbot in hopes it would get to the top of the
State Department
####
Plenty more at the link.
BiDumb has to win in November to make all this go away.
Who knew that part of Ray Dalio's "radical transparency" fetish was accusing potential
competitors of stealing trade secrets, and when there is no theft, to radically fabricate
"evidence" to shut them down?
While it has long been known that in the annals of active management lore, not one hedge
fund comes even close to pursuing non-compete clauses and trade secrets lawsuits against its
former employees with the same ferocity, tenacity and unbridled glee as the world's biggest
hedge fund Bridgewater (despite valiant attempts by RenTec and Citadel they are at best runners
up), what nobody knew until now, is that when Bridgewater was lacking enough legal facts on its
side, it would resort to simply fabricating them.
That's what the world's biggest hedge fund did on at least one occasion according to a panel
of three arbitrators, who according to the FT ,
found that Bridgewater "manufactured false evidence" in its attempt to prove that former
employees had stolen its trade secrets.
According to humiliating - to Ray Dalio - court documents which were made public on Monday,
and which quote findings from a panel of three arbitrators, Bridgewater - which manages $138BN
in assets, and whose billionaire founder prides in the way "radical transparency" is shoved
down all employees' throats - was found to have "filed its claims in reckless disregard of its
own internal records, and in order to support its allegations of access to trade secrets,
manufactured false evidence".
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.394.0_en.html#goog_122824125
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The dramatic discovery emerged as a result of a dispute launched by Bridgewater against
former employees, Lawrence Minicone and Zachary Squire, in November 2017, in which the fund
claimed the duo had misappropriated trade secrets and breached their contracts. However,
Bridgewater's attempt to bully not only its former employees from launching a new fund, but
also the legal system, promptly suffered a spectacular breakdown, when a panel of three
arbitrators found that Bridgewater had "failed to identify the alleged trade secrets with
specificity", knowing Minicone and Squire would have to fight an expensive case in order to
defend against the allegations, the court filing states.
In other words, even though its former employees - who quit years prior in mid-2013 - did
nothing wrong, Bridgewater knew that simply by throwing armies of lawyers after them, it could
bankrupt them into submission. And while this strategy has worked over and over, this time it
failed.
"The trade secrets as described constituted publicly available information or information
generally known to professionals in the industry, and . . . Claimant [Bridgewater], a highly
sophisticated entity, knew that the trade secrets as described did not constitute trade
secrets," the tribunal ruled, according to material quoted in the court filing.
There was more. Just to cover its bases, in addition to the trade secrets claim, Bridgewater
also accused its two former employees of unfair competition after they co-founded Tekmerion
Capital Management, a systematic macro hedge fund with about $60MM in assets under management,
which received backing from billionaire Alan Howard and Michael Novogratz.
But here too, Bridgewater hit a brick wall, when the arbitrators found that Bridgewater's
claims had been brought in "bad faith".
"Claimant's actions in continuing to press its claims constitute further evidence that its
intentions were not to prove misappropriation, but rather, were to adversely affect
respondents' ability to conduct a competitive business," the arbitrators ruling stated,
according to the new court filing.
So how did all of this leak? Simple: Bridgewater was too stingy to pay the falsely accused
duo $2 million in lawyer fees, forcing Minicone and Squire to file a court petition against
Bridgewater on July 1 to confirm the $2 million in lawyers fees awarded by the arbitration
panel in January and, in a move that is set to terminally humiliate and expose Dalio as a
consummate hypocrite, to have the full decision by the arbitrators made public.
And while it is hardly news to those in the industry just how despicable Bridgewater's
tactics have been in the past when faced with a potential competition emerging from its own
ranks who may - gasp - steal the fund's "trading secrets" such as momentum and inverse
variance, which incidentally are perfectly public "strategies", or at least expose to the world
just how Bridgewater ended up being a $160BN $138BN hedge fund, what we are far more
interested in is whether Bridgewater's former general counsel was instrumental in creating the
strategy used by the fund against its former employees.
We are, of course, talking about one James Comey.
Here are the specifics: Squire joined Bridgewater in 2010 as an investment associate and
spent three years at the group working with its research and trading teams before quitting in
mid-2013. Minicone, also an investment associate at Bridgewater, joined in 2008 and remained
there for almost five years. He too quit in 2013.
What does that have to do with James Comes? Well, before joining the FBI, readers may or may
not know that the man who singlehandedly tried to take down the standing US president on what
he knew well were false charges, was general counsel of Bridgewater from 2010 to 2013 - the
very years that overlapped with Squire and Minicone's tenure at Bridgewater too. y_arrow
Blankenstein , 52 minutes ago
This isn't the first time Dalio has used fear and intimidation.
"Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater
Associates, likes to say that one of his firm's core operating principles is "radical
transparency" when it comes to airing employee grievances and concerns.
But one employee said in a complaint earlier this year that the hedge fund was like
a"cauldron of fear and intimidation."
The employee's complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and
Opportunities, which has not been previously reported, describesan atmosphere of
constant surveillance by video and recordings of all meetings -- and the presence of
patrolling security guards-- that silence employees who do not fit the
Bridgewater mold.""
This isn't the first time Dalio has used fear and intimidation.
"Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater
Associates, likes to say that one of his firm's core operating principles is "radical
transparency" when it comes to airing employee grievances and concerns.
But one employee said in a complaint earlier this year that the hedge fund was like
a"cauldron of fear and intimidation."
The employee's complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and
Opportunities, which has not been previously reported, describesan atmosphere of
constant surveillance by video and recordings of all meetings -- and the presence of
patrolling security guards-- that silence employees who do not fit the
Bridgewater mold.""
its ingrained into American culture to accuse then find evidence. Just like WMD in Iraq it
happens in corporate America as well.
slightlyskeptical , 1 hour ago
Who writes this rubbish? The author is actually using Bridgewater tactics to try to smear
Comey with something that happened 4 years after he left.
The dramatic discovery emerged as a result of a dispute launched by Bridgewater against
former employees, Lawrence Minicone and Zachary Squire, in November 2017, in which the fund
claimed the duo had misappropriated trade secrets and breached their contracts.
and then
Comey was general counsel of Bridgewater from 2010 to 2013.
Blankenstein , 56 minutes ago
Maybe read the article next time. The suggestion was that Comey developed the strategy for
Bridgewater while employed there, as he was involved when the same tactics were used against
Trump.
Entertaining1 , 2 hours ago
Even before the Comey angle, a brilliant article.
More of this author, please.
On a hot summer day like this, please remember Google sucks cocksicles by the dozen.
The_American , 2 hours ago
Every FBI "law" ENFORCEMENT act of the last 20 years needs to undergo FULL REVIEW.
To clear the air, I recalled the "Non-Aligned Movement a forum of developing states not
formally aligned with or against any major power bloc or nations." It consist of - Nehru
India, Tito Yugoslavia, Bung Karno, Bapa Sukarno Indonesia, Zhou Enlai China, Habib Bourguiba
Tunisian, Norodom Sihanouk Cambodian, U Nu Burma, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser Egypt,
Fidel Castro Cuba, at the Bandung conference in 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was born.
Later many nationalism leaders were disposed. How about Sukarno, did he "slaughter" the
Chinese? Nope that's from what I was told from BBC and it remains in my mind until uncle
tungstan and Lucci points out my mistakes, it was Suharto with CIA and Brit Foreign Office
that brought down Sukarno and Suharto was disposed his wife was known as Ten Percent.
I was growing up and aligned with Americans exceptionlism. It was after ww2 and
nationalism on the rise (almost) everywhere changed of government. In school each morning
assembled to raised the union jack and sing god save the freaking queen. That's when I was
indoctrinated from BBC the evils of communism and socialism. Western imperialist was the way
to go man. Much of my lunch hours in the library mainly reading, one book, my librarian
recommended The Jungle is Neutral by Spencer F, Chapman . The book still available and
probably my view has changed am no longer accepting the stupid Brit and Yank.
@ JC there is a recent book which analyses how the US policy of preventive mass murder and
torture in Indonesia has inspired policies, structures and knowhow in many of US client
states : https://vincentbevins.com/book/
Thank you for clearing the air on Sukarno. The Indonesian coup that destroyed the
democratic socialis government he led was a tragic loss to the people of Indonesia. The coup
leader Suharto fully backed by the CIA murdered many hundreds of thousands of civilians and
their elected officials and educators and medical staff. It was a ruthless murderous purge.
The Dulles brothers at the top.
Suharto then ruled for decades and Indonesia became the evil corruption ridden prison it
is today. This sad country is our planets exemplar failed state ruled by criminal oligarchs
and their owned courts and religion.
Indonesian people are great in their spirit and humility, they deserve better.
JC and others who have been conversing with him on the issue of the Indonesian military's
persecution and slaughter of Chinese Indonesians and others perceived to be Communist or
sympathetic to Communism or socialism might be interested in watching Joshua Oppenheimer's
"The Act of Killing" to see how small-time thugs and young people (especially those in the
Pancasila Youth movement) alike were caught up in the anti-Communist brainwashing frenzy in
Indonesia during the 1960s and participated in the mass persecution and slaughter
themselves.
Oppenheimer tracked down some of these former killers in North Sumatra and got them to
re-enact their crimes in whatever from they desired. For various reasons, some of them
psychological, they were quite enthusiastic about this idea. Significantly they chose to
re-enact their crimes as a Hollywood Western / Godfather-style pastiche film, even getting
their relatives and friends to play extras.
The mass murderers interviewed did well for themselves with some of them even becoming
politicians and rising to the level of Cabinet Minister in the Indonesian government. The
film also shows something of how deeply corruption is embedded in everyday life with one
prospective political candidate going around bribing villagers and demanding money from
small-time ethnic Chinese shopkeepers in his electorate and threatening them with violence if
they do not cough up.
The major issue I have with the film is that by focusing on these mass murderers in North
Sumatra, it misses the overall national and international political and social context that
still supports and applauds what these killers did. As long as this continues, the likelihood
that similar persecutions and genocidal purges of outsider groups and individuals, be they
Chinese, Christian, Shi'a and other heterodox Muslim, academics, trade unionists, separatists
in Maluku, West Papua or other parts of Indoneisa, and all these purges supported by the West
in some way, will occur in the future is strong.
@ Jen 114
"As long as this continues, the likelihood that similar persecutions and genocidal purges of
outsider groups and individuals, be they Chinese, Christian, Shi'a and other heterodox
Muslim, academics, trade unionists, separatists in Maluku, West Papua or other parts of
Indoneisa, and all these purges supported by the West in some way, will occur in the future
is strong."
Yeah, "we" Anglos" are the only bad guys on this planet - not.
The CIA & co are not yet into slaughtering of Christians. Extremist Indonesian Sunni
Muslims were guilty in the above atrocities, continuing as harassments till today. Hard to
swallow: bad brown people do exist!
the police have so far arrested a total of 9216 people, 1979 people have been or are being
dealt with by the judicial process, of which 252 people have to bear the legal consequences. Mr
Hu said there were many young people and many students among those arrested, and "we expect a
large number of young people to enter the correctional facility in the foreseeable future."
"
Mr Hu said the number of teenagers jailed two years after they were released from prison had
fallen from 24.2 per cent in 2007 to 9.8 per cent in 2017...
Prisoners wave goodbye to family members Picture source: Hong Kong Report
According to Hong Kong's Wen Report, Hu Yingming ... criticized some people in the community
for advocating the use of violence to solve problems and downplay the impact of imprisonment:
"In my 30 years of working in the Correctional Services Department, I have never seen anyone
with imprisonment as a life goal." Prison is not a paradise, it is not a place for the public
to enhance or exercise, it will not add color to the page of life, leaving prison after the
head will not have any aura. "
Hu Yingming reminded that imprisonment is only an indelible mark in life, the prison food
and clothing and living are very different from the outside...
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced
without authorization.
"... If Skripal is involved with all the Clinton stuff, then he would want an insurance policy for example on an USB drive that he could leave for someone to pick up, and leak if something foreshortened his life ..."
"The judge also concluded that Steele's notes of his first interaction with the FBI
about the dossier on July 5, 2016 made clear that his ultimate client for his research
project was Hillary Clinton's campaign as directed by her campaign law firm Perkins Coie. The
FBI did not disclose that information to the court."
Finally we are getting down to where the cheese binds. Hillary Clinton's campaign, with
Mrs. Clinton's knowledge, commissioned the Steele dossier to try to torpedo Trump's election
prospects. She never thought he could win, but the Dems wanted to make sure.
I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut Skripal was the source of the Russian 'intelligence', and
that he was bumped off afterward to make sure he stayed quiet.
The whole Russiagate scandal was just Democrat bullshit, and they kept up with it long
after they all knew they were lying. And Biden thinks he's going to get elected, after that
revelation? The Democrats deserve to be expelled from politics en masse. Leading with that
wretched prick Schiff.
It would seem likely that had the Klintonator won the 2016 Presidential election, Sergei
Skripal might have been left alone mouldering with his guinea pigs and cats in his Salsibury
home. Perhaps he had to take the fall for HRC's loss in the election, for whatever reason
(not shovelling enough shit into the dossier to bring down Trump perhaps); someone had to
take the blame and of course HRC will never admit responsibility for her own failure.
Well, you never know – Russians are kind of an endangered species in the UK. They
turn up dead whenever a public accusation of another Putin 'state hit' would be a useful
feature in the papers.
What I want to know is if the paths of the Skripals passed with those of the supposed
Russian assassins (which I assume to be possible decoys) or anyone else in space, but not
necessarily time. If Skripal is involved with all the Clinton stuff, then he would want
an insurance policy for example on an USB drive that he could leave for someone to pick up,
and leak if something foreshortened his life
It could well have been a simple dead-drop and when alerted by their phones being turned
off and batteries removed, the priority was to immobilize/incapacitate them. A bit tricky in
public, but not at all impossible by a near/passer by to their bench with an aerosol, say a
cyclist walking with his bike After all, they did also have the Chief nurse of the BA on hand
just in case it went wrong as things sometimes do. Which leads to the question, was it just
the Brits alone, together with the Americans, or watching the Americans and then cleaning up
their mess? 2 or more likely 3 seem most likely if we look at sheer brazeness.
That concludes my speculation for the day! Maybe I should be a journalist. I could be paid
for this!
Yes, you never know, but it's certainly hard to believe Occam was English. It seems pretty
clear the simplest explanation is "MI6 bumped him off and blamed it on Russia". When you are
trying to arrange a death which is bound to be suspicious, you want to do it in a way that
when it becomes public knowledge, the first people the public thinks of is not you. means,
motive and opportunity all strongly favour the English side. It seems to be be fairly common
knowledge that Skripal wanted to return to Russia; we have no way of knowing if he planned to
live there or just visit, more likely the latter. But Putin decides to send an assassination
team to England to rub him out. Instead of welcoming him home to Russia, where he could
prevent the British from investigating, and then killing him. Presumably in a much more
prosaic fashion – say, running him down with a car – rather than employing some
exotic poison or isotope which will scream 'Russia!!' How long would the British have been
investigating the Skripals' deaths (if they had died) had they been run down with a 7.5 ton
lorry which was subsequently found burned to a shell several counties away? Would the British
papers have been shrieking "Putin's Truck!!!" next morning? But no – Russian assassins
always have to 'send a message', which must inspire Britain to 'send a message' of its own by
punishing the entire country. Maybe it's just me, but flash-cooking Skripal in the High
Street with a flamethrower in broad daylight would send a message. And then say to the
police, "Keep your hands where I can see 'em, unless you want a couple of shashliks,
comrade", before speeding away in an Aurus Senat limousine. That would send a message,
too.
This is all about maintaining the US-centered global neoliberal empire. After empires is created the the USA became the
salve of imperial interests and in a way stopped existing as an independent country. Everything is thrown on the altar of "full
spectrum Dominance". The result is as close to a real political and economic disaster as we can get. Like USSR leadership the US
elite realized now that neoliberalism is not sustainable, but can't do anything as all bets were made for the final victory of
neoliberalism all over the world, much like Soviets hoped for the victory of communism. That did not happened and although the USA
now is in much better position then the USSR in 60th (but with the similar level of deterioration of cognitive abilities of the
politicians as the USSR). In this sense COVID-19 was a powerful catalyst of the crush of the US-centered neoliberal empire
Notable quotes:
"... On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy." ..."
"... Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake. Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption, torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic revolutionaries, to America's horror. ..."
"... The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would be threatening war. ..."
"... In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments" – the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation. ..."
Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, unkindly characterized the
foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., as "the Blob." Although policymakers
sometimes disagree on peripheral subjects, membership requires an absolute commitment to U.S.
"leadership," which means a determination to micro-manage the world.
Reliance on persuasion is not enough. Vital is the willingness to bomb, invade, and, if
necessary, occupy other nations to impose the Blob's dictates on other peoples. If foreigners
die, as they often do, remember the saying about eggs and omelets oft repeated by communism's
apologists. "Stuff happens" with the best-intentioned policies.
One might be inclined to forgive Blob members if their misguided activism actually benefited
the American people. However, all too often the Blob's policies instead aid other governments
and interests. Washington is overrun by the representatives of and lobbyists for other nations,
which constantly seek to take control of US policy for their own advantage. The result are
foreign interventions in which Americans do the paying and, all too often, the dying for
others.
The problem is primarily one of power. Other governments don't spend a lot of time
attempting to take over Montenegro's foreign policy because, well, who cares? Exactly what
would you do after taking over Fiji's foreign ministry other than enjoy a permanent vacation?
Seize control of international relations in Barbados and you might gain a great tax
shelter.
Subvert American democracy and manipulate US foreign policy, and you can loot America's
treasury, turn the US military into your personal bodyguard, and gain Washington's support for
reckless war-mongering. And given the natural inclination of key American policymakers to
intervene promiscuously abroad for the most frivolous reasons, it's surprisingly easy for
foreign interests to convince Uncle Sam that their causes are somehow "vital" and therefore
require America's attention. Indeed, it is usually easier to persuade Americans than foreign
peoples in their home countries to back one or another international misadventure.
The culprits are not just autocratic regimes. Friendly democratic governments are equally
ready to conspiratorially whisper in Uncle Sam's ear. Even nominally classical liberal
officials, who believe in limiting their own governments, argue that Americans are obligated to
sacrifice wealth and life for everyone else. The mantra seems to be liberty, prosperity, and
peace for all – except those living in the superpower tasked by heaven with protecting
everyone else's liberty, prosperity, and peace.
Although the problem has burgeoned in modern times, it is not new. Two centuries ago fans of
Greek independence wanted Americans to challenge the Ottoman Empire, a fantastic bit of
foolishness. Exactly how to effect an international Balkans rescue was not clear, since the
president then commanded no aircraft carriers, air wings, or nuclear-tipped missiles. Still,
the issue divided Americans and influenced John Quincy Adams' famous 1821 Independence Day
address.
Warned Adams:
"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there
will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the
champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance
of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting
under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would
involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of
individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of
freedom."
"The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . She
might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit .
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a
spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has
been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of
mankind would permit, her practice."
Powerful words, yet Adams was merely following in the footsteps of another great American,
George Washington. Obviously, the latter was flawed as a person, general, and president.
Nevertheless, his willingness to set a critical precedent by walking away from power left an
extraordinary legacy. As did his insistence that the Constitution tasked Congress with deciding
when America would go to war. And his warning against turning US policy over to foreign
influences.
Concern over obsequious subservience to other governments and interests pervaded his famous
1796 Farewell Address. Applied today, his message indicts most of the policy currently made in
the city ironically named after him. He would be appalled by what presidents and Congresses
today do, supposedly for America.
Obviously, the US was very different 224 years ago. The new country was fragile, sharing the
Western hemisphere with its old colonial master, which still ruled Canada and much of the
Caribbean, as well as Spain and France. When later dragged into the maritime fringes of the
Napoleonic wars the US could huff and puff but do no more than inconvenience France and
Britain. The vastness of the American continent, not overweening national power, again
frustrated London when it sought to subjugate its former colonists.
Indeed, when George Washington spoke the disparate states were not yet firmly knit into a
nation. Only after the Civil War, when the national government waged four years of brutal
combat, which ravaged much of the country and killed upwards of 750,000 people in the name of
"union," did people uniformly say the United States "is" rather than "are." However, the
transformation was much more than rhetorical. The federal system that originally emerged in the
name of individual liberty spawned a high tax centralized government that employed one of the
world's largest militaries to kill on a mass scale to enforce the regime's dictates. The modern
American "republic" was born. It acted overseas only inconsistently until World War II, after
which imperial America was a constant, adding resonance to George Washington's message.
Today Washington, D.C.'s elites have almost uniformly decided that Russia is an enemy,
irrespective of American behavior that contributed to Moscow's hostility. And that Ukraine, a
country never important for American security, is a de facto military ally, appropriately armed
by the US for combat against a nuclear-armed rival. A reelection-minded president seems
determined to turn China into a new Cold War adversary, an enemy for all things perhaps for all
time. America remains ever entangled in the Middle East, with successive administrations in
permanent thrall of Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing foreign leaders to set US Mideast policy.
Indeed, both states have avidly pressed the administration to make their enemy, Iran, America'
enemy. The resulting fixation caused the Trump administration to launch economic war against
the rest of the world to essentially prevent everyone on earth from having any commercial
dealing of any kind with anyone in Tehran.
Under Democrats and Republicans alike the federal government views nations that resist its
dictates as adversaries at best, appropriate targets of criticism, always, sanctions, often,
and even bombs and invasions, occasionally. No wonder foreign governments lobby hard to be
designated as allies, partners, and special relationships. Many of these ties have become
essentially permanent, unshakeable even when supposed friends act like enemies and supposed
enemies are incapable of hurting America. US foreign policy increasingly has been captured and
manipulated for the benefit of other governments and interests.
George Washington recognized the problem even in his day, after revolutionary France sought
to win America's support against Great Britain. He warned: "nothing is more essential than that
permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for
others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all
should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual
fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either
of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."
Is there a better description of US foreign policy today? Even when a favored nation is
clearly, ostentatiously, murderously on the wrong side – consider Saudi Arabia's
unprovoked aggression against Yemen – many American policymakers refuse to allow a single
word of criticism to escape their lips. The US has indeed become "a slave," as George
Washington warned.
The consequences for the US and the world are highly negative. He observed that "likewise, a
passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the
favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no
real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the
former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification."
This is an almost perfect description of the current US approach. American colonists
revolted against what they believed had become ever more "foreign" control, yet the US backs
Israel's occupation and mistreatment of millions of Palestinians. American policymakers parade
the globe spouting the rhetoric of freedom yet subsidize Egypt as it imprisons tens of
thousands and oppresses millions of people. Washington decries Chinese aggressiveness, yet
provides planes, munitions, and intelligence to aid Riyadh in the slaughter of Yemeni civilians
and destruction of Yemeni homes, businesses, and hospitals. In such cases, policymakers have
betrayed America "into a participation in the quarrels and wars without adequate inducement or
justification."
On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US
Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to
destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve
their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US
Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against
another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of
umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute
occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation,
prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the
best calculations of policy."
Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There
were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake.
Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the
terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was
constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped
replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption,
torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic
revolutionaries, to America's horror.
Read George Washington and you would think he had gained a supernatural glimpse into today's
policy debates. He worried about the result when the national government "adopts through
passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation
subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the
victim."
What better describes US policy toward China and Russia? To be sure, these are nasty
regimes. Yet that has rarely bothered Uncle Sam's relations with other states. Saudi Arabia, a
corrupt and totalitarian theocracy, has been sheltered, protected, and reassured by the US even
after invading its poor neighbor. Among Washington's other best friends: Bahrain, Turkey,
Egypt, and United Arab Emirates, tyrannies all.
The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations
treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other
ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an
elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet
allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would
be threatening war.
Washington, DC also is treating China as a near-enemy, claiming the right to control China
along its own borders – essentially attempting to apply America's Monroe Doctrine to
Asia. This is something Americans would never allow another nation, especially China, to do to
the US Imagine the response if Beijing sent its navy up the East Coast, told the US how to
treat Cuba, and constantly talked of the possibility of war. America's consistently hostile,
aggressive policy is the result of "projects of pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives."
This kind of foreign policy also corrupts the American political system. It encourages
officials and people to put foreign interests before that of America. As George Washington
observed, this mindset: "gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote
themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; guiding, with the appearances of a
virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal
for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation."
For instance, Woodrow Wilson and America's Anglophile establishment backed Great Britain
over the interests of the American people, dragging the US into World War I, a mindless
imperial slugfest that this nation should have avoided. After the Cold War's end Americans with
ties to Central and Eastern Europe pushed to expand NATO to their ancestral homes, which
created new defense obligations for America while inflaming Russian hostility. Ethnic Greeks
and Turks constantly battle over policy toward their ethnic homelands. Taiwan has developed
enduring ties with congressional Republicans, especially, ensuring US government support
against Beijing. Many evangelical Christians, especially those who hold a particularly bizarre
eschatology (basically, Jews must gather together in their national homeland to be slaughtered
before Jesus can return), back Israel in whatever it does to assist the apparently helpless God
of creation finish his job. The policies that result from such campaigns inevitably are shaped
to benefit foreign interests, not Americans.
Regarding the impact of such a system on the political system George Washington also was
prescient: "As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are
particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities
do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead
public opinion, to influence or awe the public council. Such an attachment of a small or weak
towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments"
– the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security
interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the
president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many
other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who
demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security
importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and
lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer
foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation.
What to do about such a long-standing problem? George Washington was neither naïf nor
isolationist. He believed in what passed for globalism in those days: a commercial republic
should trade widely. He didn't oppose alliances, for limited purposes and durations. After all,
support from France was necessary for the colonies to win independence.
He proposed a practical policy tied to ongoing realities. The authorities should "steer
clear of permanent alliances," have with other states "as little political connection as
possible," and not "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils" of other nations'
"ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice." Most important, the object of US foreign
policy was to serve the interests of the American people. In practice it was a matter of
prudence, to be adapted to circumstance and interest. He would not necessarily foreclose
defense of Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Germany, but would insist that such proposals reflect a
serious analysis of current realities and be decided based on what is best for Americans. He
would recognize that what might have been true a few decades ago likely isn't true today. In
reality, little of current US foreign policy would have survived his critical review.
George Washington was an eminently practical man who managed to speak through the ages.
America's recently disastrous experience of playing officious, obnoxious hegemon highlights his
good judgment. The US, he argued, should "observe good faith and justice towards all nations;
cultivate peace and harmony with all."
America may still formally be a republic, but its foreign policy long ago became imperial.
As John Quincy Adams warned, the US is "no longer the ruler of her own spirit." Americans have
learned at great cost that international affairs are too important to be left to the Blob and
foreign policy professionals, handed off to international relations scholars, or, worst of all,
subcontracted to other nations and their lobbyists. The American people should insist on their
nation's return to a true republican foreign policy.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute . A former Special Assistant to President Ronald
Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .
Again, probably not an urgent problem unless some existing Chinese aircraft in service are
on their last legs and urgently must be replaced. In which case they could go with Airbus if
the situation could not wait. China has options. Boeing does not.
The west loves to portray the Chinese as totally without ethics, and if you have a product
they can't make for themselves, they will buy it from you only until they have figured out
how to make it themselves, and then fuck you, Jack. I don't see any reason to believe the
Chinese value alliances less than the west does, or are any more incapable of grasping the
value of a give-and-take trade policy. The west – especially the United States –
favours establishing a monopoly on markets and then using your inability to get the product
anywhere else as leverage to force concessions you don't want to make; is that ethical? China
must surely see the advantages of a mutually-respectful relationship with Russia, considering
that country not only safeguards a significant length of its border from western probing, but
supplies most of its energy. There remain many unexplored avenues for technical, engineering
and technological cooperation. At the same time, Russia is not in a subordinate position
where it has to endure being taken advantage of.
Trade is hard work, and any partner will maneuver for advantage, because everyone in
commerce likes market share and money. But Washington has essentially forgotten how to
negotiate on mutually-respectful terms, and favours maneuvering its 'partners' into
relationships in which the USA has an overwhelmingly dominant position, and then announcing
it is 'leveling the playing field'. Which means putting its thumb on the scale.
Must. Pass. Foreign. Relations. Policy. Past. USDoS. First. Well that is
unforgiveable for the Masters of the Universe(TM). No-one knows exactly what's in it except
that it is substantial. Still, the USDoS is having a public aneurism tells us that they care
a lot.
Every time you "impose costs" on another country, you make more enemies and inspire more
end-around plays which take you as an economic player out of that loop. And by and by what
you do is of no great consequence, and your ability – your LEGAL ability, I should
interject – to 'impose costs' is gone.
Sooner or later America's allies are going to
refuse to recognize its extraterritorial sanctions, which it has no legal right to impose; it
gets away with it by threatening costs in trade with the USA, which is a huge economy and is
something under its control.
But that practice causes other countries to gradually insulate
themselves against exposure, and one day the cost of obeying will be greater than the
cost of saying "Go fuck yourself".
After neocons in Washinton adopted Magnitsky act all bets for US-Russia cooperation are off.
And that in a long run will hurt the USA too.
Notable quotes:
"... Every time you "impose costs" on another country, you make more enemies and inspire more end-around plays which take you as an economic player out of that loop. And by and by what you do is of no great consequence, and your ability – your LEGAL ability, I should interject – to 'impose costs' is gone. ..."
Every time you "impose costs" on another country, you make more enemies and inspire
more end-around plays which take you as an economic player out of that loop. And by and by
what you do is of no great consequence, and your ability – your LEGAL ability, I should
interject – to 'impose costs' is gone. Sooner or later America's allies are going
to refuse to recognize its extraterritorial sanctions, which it has no legal right to impose;
it gets away with it by threatening costs in trade with the USA, which is a huge economy and
is something under its control. But that practice causes other countries to gradually
insulate themselves against exposure, and one day the cost of obeying will be greater than
the cost of saying "Go fuck yourself".
The New York Times goes a little further, stressing that the agreement would entail an
economic and military partnership: "It calls for joint training and exercises, joint research
and weapons development and intelligence sharing -- all to fight "the lopsided battle with
terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes." This would give Iran access
to some fairly high-tech systems, perhaps fighter aircraft and training and tech support, but
of that part of the package, I would rate intelligence sharing the highest. It would
potentially give Iran a heads-up on what the USA is planning in the region before it even is
briefed to Congress – Washington leaks like a sieve, and while it is often intentional,
it happens when it is not desired as well.
Washington's policy now consists of little more than frantically papering over cracks as
they appear; its ability to direct the world is gone and its ability to influence it is
deteriorating by the day as it becomes more and more intensely disliked, and everyone's
enemy. Perversely, this brings war closer as a possibility, as threats of it are no longer an
effective deterrent to partnerships and exchanges the USA does not like. More and more of
those threatened are taking the attitude of "Put up or shut up". Trade deals outside
Washington's influence increase those countries' insulation against US sanctions, and perhaps
it is beginning to dawn on the western banking cartel that it is in imminent danger of being
isolated itself, like a fleck of grit that irritates an oyster and finds itself encased in
nacre.
Beijing follows through on its promised retaliation for Washington's move to hold
individuals to account
Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio among those facing sanctions in latest tit-for-tat
move
####
More at the link.
What springs to mind is that Groucho Marx quote: "I refuse to join any club that would
have me as a member."
That the US sanctions China with an act named after a dodgy Russian book-keeper working
for a thief is all kinds of wrong, but as we all know, the ends justify the means. Hamsters
are happy.
For five years, the sporting world has been gripped by Russian manipulation of the
anti-doping system. Now new evidence suggests the whistleblower who went into a witness
protection program during the scandal may not have been entirely truthful.
#####
What's the bet that the beagle will win prizes for 'reporting' like this and the previous
'discovery' that Bill Browder makes pork sandwiches in a pork shop made of pork? More
importantly, wtf is up with this coming out now? Has the free, democratic and inquisitive
German press suddenly grown a pair or have the authorities told them that they could 'go
ahead.' Nothing that they have published is new and has been known about for a long time.
Again, wtfof?
Hi, Nicola! Great to see you again! It would be fairly easy to guess what the US wants
WADA to do in future – mind your business where US athletes are concerned, or at a
minimum accept American explanations for any irregularities you might find, and come down
like a ton of bricks on the Russians and the Chinese, excluding them from pro sports to the
degree that is possible.
Well, once again, it was the Germans who started it all. WADA went to German station ARD
with its suspicions – which it got from the Stepanovs, Rodchenkov was still defending
the Moscow lab and calling the WADA panel 'fools' at that point – and then WADA used
the ARD 'documentary' as an excuse to open a major investigation. At some juncture someone
probably pointed out how lucrative it could be fr Roschenkov if he rolled, and he did.
Yes, I'm sure the Germans will reap rewards from playing both ends. But who cares, as long
as it gets out? Maybe it will teach people to not be so trusting of the mess media next time
it breaks a Russia-the-Evil story. Probably not, though.
Newt Gingrich has an informative article on FOX this weekend about the threat Trump has
posed to traditional Republican court hangers-on. He illustrates how this presidency has
destroyed the careers that many of these very wealthy and powerful members of the Deep State
saw as their dynastic inheritance. I point it out because Gingrich would know intimately how
those people feel.
Couple that with the clumsy approach Trump made to the china shop throughout his campaign,
is it any wonder that the FBI, a fundamentally stupid operation now and at all times in the
past, has been busting a gut? I came of age in the sixties and went to university at a center
of opposition to the Deep State that was then concerned with killing poor yellow peasants in
the rice fields of Southeast Asia. We all assumed they had us in dossiers they built and
studied carefully as they closed in on our coffee house discussions. Never happened.
Please keep in mind that these bureaucrats would never do anything that might krinkle the
crease in their trousers. Also bear in mind that the reports we read are written by English
Majors, probably affirmative action hires, in the lower bowels of unhealthy Washington office
buildings. The only people who read them are people who manage to pry them out of the sweaty
little fingers of desperately single women.
All of the Washington bureaucratic swamp is a manifestation of White Welfare, people hired
because they are related to somebody who wants to keep them from turning to prostitution.
"... Glorifying war is disturbing but so is the normalization of war. Most do not realize that large standing armies and large police forces were unknown/unusual only a century ago. ..."
"... And very few understand the mentality of the power-elite or how they have secreted themselves and their objectives behind gated communities, political divisiveness, and unaccountable 'national security' bullshit (more like 'war strategy'). ..."
Glorifying war is disturbing but so is the normalization of war. Most do not
realize that large standing armies and large police forces were unknown/unusual only a
century ago.
And very few understand the mentality of the power-elite or how they have secreted
themselves and their objectives behind gated communities, political divisiveness, and
unaccountable 'national security' bullshit (more like 'war strategy').
The ideologies of the Empire are: neoConservativism(a form of aristocracy);neoLiberalism(a form of facism); and Zionism(a form of
colonialism).
In short, a combination of the worst inclinations in the Western tradition.
Here's a great must-see 36-minute piece by Abby Martin about the US perpetual occupation
of Afghanistan.
It was posted on YouTube on June 26, but I only came across it last night thanks to a Paul
Craig Roberts article, and I don't think it's been mentioned here at MoA yet by anyone yet
(at least I wasn't able to find any mentions using the MoA search.)
I'm sure many of us have come across many of the points over the years, but she does a
great job of reviewing and bringing it all together.
Google/Youtube has of course made the video "age-restricted", though I don't really see
why, requiring sign-in and probably greatly reducing its viewership as a result.
This alternate link to the same video doesn't seem to require sign-in:
Tucker Carlson escalated the ongoing war between FOX News and CNN Wednesday, bringing
attention to Don Lemon for breathtaking hypocrisy on issues of black family culture.
TUCKER CARLSON: If you're running a channel like CNN, you want dumb people on tv because
they are compliant. They will say what they are told. They will tell the audience with the
moment demands. They will level stray from the script and that's exactly what Mr. Lemon is
doing. Seven years ago it was a different country and people were kind of a lot to say what
they thought was true. At the time, here's what Don Lemon was saying about black communities.
Watch this.
DON LEMON: More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of
wedlock. That means absent fathers. And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an
express train right to prison and the cycle continues. So, please, black folks, as I said if
this doesn't apply to you, I'm not talking to you. Pay attention to and think about what has
been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. Pay close attention to the hip-hop and
rap culture that many of you embrace. A culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned,
thug and reprehensible behavior, a culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you.
And it's not going to.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wow. Can you imagine what would happen if Don Lemon or his bodybuilding
buddy over there or any of these people said something like that? On CNN tonight or MSNBC? It
would be their last live broadcast ever. They would be fired immediately. You can't express
views like that. So they don't.
"... The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the mainstream media and FBI's narrative. ..."
"... In a document dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies." ..."
"... Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a flyer sent to law enforcement personnel in Texas shows. ..."
"... As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger, Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public records law. ..."
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) reported
similar information in its investigation of the Boston Free Speech Rally on August 19th, 2017.
BRIC noted that the nationalist and free speech demonstrators, about 60 of them in total, had a
permit for the event, while the anarchist groups that showed up to heckle-veto them were there
illegally.
The leftist rioters began attacking the protesters, and later, began engaging in gratuitous
yet apparently coordinated violence against police officers attempting to intervene, causing
multiple injuries.
The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to
the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the
mainstream media and FBI's narrative.
In a document
dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We
assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white
supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal
drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."
... ... ...
The close working relationship between mainstream social media companies, the FBI and "NGOs"
(the ADL and SPLC) is clear and assumed, adding a new layer of understanding when it comes to
tech censorship and the power of privately run organizations that are not subject general
ethics or government accountability.
Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a
flyer sent to
law enforcement personnel in Texas shows.
The event, hosted by the FBI for local cops, featured lectures on "hate" (which is not a
crime) from a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the ex-lead singer of a skinhead
rock band. The conference was hosted in December 2017, so one can only imagine this
indoctrination has gotten more intense since then.
Ultimately, we can gather from these documents a climate of incompetence, rejection of facts
for political reasons, and a culture of selective prosecution. Those who post memes making fun
of the election are treated as conspirators against the Constitutional rights of others, while
anarchists who actively conspire in the open to do the same are rarely prosecuted by the
FBI.
The most disturbing aspect of all this is how groups like the Anti-Defamation League appear
to have more sway over the FBI's investigative priorities than intelligence provided to them by
local fusion centers.
It appears that in defense of their power, our elites are willing to do away with all
liberal pretenses and take on "emergency orders" that ultimately punishes peaceful dissent
while allowing real criminals to go free.
Law enforcement is fully aware of who provokes the fighting and rioting at riots: the
left. The documents from fusion centers across the country (intelligence provided by local
police departments) repeatedly report this.
But
Both the FBI and to a lesser extent the Department of Homeland Security are far more
concerned with political ideology and creating propaganda than upholding the law.
As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA
developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms
they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger,
Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't
get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public
records law.
This is why when asshole cops strangle you, you can't complain to the city. CIA controls the
cops, not the city. This is most obvious in NYPD, with actual CIA secret police like Sanchez
and Cohen, arresting you like cops to facilitate illegal CIA domestic spying. DHS and FBI are
in there too, of course, fishing for dissent to repress but they're controlled by CIA focal
points.
So next time a pig kneels on your head you can't just burn down the precinct, you have to
burn down the CIA fusion center, and Langley too.
Aside from siccing cops on the latest internal enemies, CIA also uses fusion centers to
propagate the party line to cops, who will credulously swallow it and pass it on to show off
their double-secret spy connections. For instance, they circulated alt media disinfo claiming
KGB killed JFK. This happened to coincide with Unz and other bravura JFK coup exposes, and with
CIA's Russiagate fiasco.
"We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and
white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the
principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."
Is there a bigger political statement than this? The anarchist extremists aren't opposing
racism, they are opposing the government(s). "White supremacist" is a pejorative label used to
discredit people's right to free assembly. Clearly, the only investigating the FBI does is on
whom it decides are political opponents.
I find it incredibly frustrating that all of this scandalous information is out there
confirming what we already knew to be true and yet these organizations, the media, and
especially elected officials continue on as if this isn't the case. It's vexing. Frustrating.
Enraging.
If this was a dictatorship, at least we could rage against that, but because it has the
words "democracy" slapped onto it, we are supposedly able to change things. And yet,
representative democracy has proven that nothing changes if the elites do not will it. It's
just a vile scheme by plutocrats to keep us in chains of our own imagination: "well, we voted
for this so I have to live with the results," no we didn't, and do we truly?
I think Solzhenitsyn would respectfully disagree on behalf of the 66 million Russian
Christians who were tortured, raped and slaughtered during 1917-1989, not to mention the
fourteen years he spent locked up in the gulags run by Jewish Communists.
Might also be a few Ukrainians who disagree with your assessment given the 11-17 million
murdered by Jewish Bolsheviks in the 1932 Holodomor, which to my knowledge is still the single
biggest genocide in human history.
Then we'd have a position of strength from which to force the end to Jewish occupation of
America – which is necessary before the rest of the world's gentile populations,
particularly Europe, can take similar action.
America freeing herself will be good for America, but not necessary for other nations. For
instance, Putin freed Russia from her oligarchs, the overwhelming majority of them Jewish, well
before America had shown any progress on this matter. Actually, Russia freed herself in
spite of America!
White man's welfare, they call it. They hold pigs in contempt just like everybody else. But
this is how CIA finds the eager beaver cops who'll break the law to suck up and play James Bond
with them.
That beaner psycho Sanchez blabbed CIA's real intention while he was illegally spying
undercover as a NYPD pig: they don't just want to solve crimes, they want to keep you from
committing crimes in the first place. They think it's their job to to keep you under control.
These drug-dealing, gun-running, money-laundering, kiddy-pimping criminal scumbags rule your
country because they can kill you and torture you and get away with it. Even if you're the
president. Your government is CIA, and CIA is a totalitarian state. Until you storm Langley
like the Germans stormed the Stasi, all your reforms and revolutions are worth shit.
Antifa members routinely cross state lines to violate the civil rights of those they
perceive as "fascists" yet the FBI does nothing. Since it's obvious the FBI is dominated by
partisan leftists who are either sympathetic with antifa (and BLM) or actively colluding them
them against pro-white and right of center groups engaged in lawful but politically incorrect
activity.
The FBI is clearly taking their marching orders from the ADL who's lobbied them for years to
take a more active and hostile stance towards the pro-white and anti-semitic right. But given
the leftist ideological proclivities of the average special agent and their superiors this
wasn't that hard of a sell.
The FBI declared that it would begin investigating memes posted on Twitter intended to
satirize low civic education by telling people to vote for Hillary Clinton via text message
as a "Conspiracy Against Rights Provided by the Constitution and Laws of the United
States"
Yet the FBI did absolutely nothing about the black panthers intimidating voters at a Philly
precinct in 2008. Their illegal actions were witnessed by several poll watchers yet the
Obama/Holder DOJ promptly dropped the charges upon taking office.
The FBI is awash in naked partisanship and corruption and should have at least 25% of its
funding cut and be barred from surveilling or infiltrating groups engaged in politically
incorrect but lawful activity. It's become an appendage of the Democrat party and radical left
wing establishment and should be treated as such.
You are both right. Soviet Communism was far more murderous and brutal, BUT the West faces a
greater crisis. After all, communism didn't wipe Russia off the map, and indeed, Russians began
to regain control and power after Stalin's death. Also, Stalin had done much to check Jewish
Power, and there was a kind of cultural conservatism in many walks of life.
@Levtraro to HIM and had City of London-Israeli financing. So what actually happened is
that the Jews, who had been ousted from power by Krushchev and Brezhnev in the post-ww2 era,
got back into positions of economic power in Russia. A position that, as I noted, they had
lost. This idea that Putin is a nationalist is simply not true. He is a Jew-boy lapdog who
takes his orders from Tel Aviv and London..
The Soviet economy has significant State ownership. Part of what Putin did was to put the oil
industry back into the hands of the State so the State would have the Revenues. Most countries
do this with Oil and Gas revenue. It is very popular and provides employment and desperately
needed money to pay the paltry pensions many Russians subside on.
Russia hasn't been free since 1917 and is still not free. To believe otherwise is to be blinded
by Eastern Jewish smoke and mirrors.
Chabbad is not having the time of its life in Russia. Neither are Zion uber alles like in
our Congress. It quite different in Russia. Russia has a bit more freedom that we do from Zion
uber alles.
For the eighth time this past decade, Russian authorities told a foreign Chabad rabbi
living in Russia to leave the country.
Josef Marozof, a New York-born rabbi who began working 12 years ago for Chabad in the city
of Ulyanovsk 400 miles east of Moscow, was ordered earlier this week to leave because the FSB
security service said he had been involved in unspecified "extremist behavior."
P
resident Donald Trump's third National Security Advisor opens his memoir with this quote from the
Duke of Wellington at Waterloo: 'Hard Pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest.' And
pound for pound, that's the (nearly) 500 page memoir in a nutshell. Unremitting pounding is both the theme
and the style. As John Bolton urged the White House to take a 'harder line" on Iran and North Korea, Trump's
chief of staff "urged me to keep pounding away in public, which I assured him I would.' China 'pounded away
during my tenure, sensing weakness at the top.' As with Bolton's mission, so too with America's statecraft,
that must 'keep moving and keep firing, like a big grey battleship.'
From his infamous unsubtle moustache to his bellicosity,
Bolton traffics on a self-image of straight shooter who sprints towards gunfire. He does not set out to
offer a meditation on a complex inner life. This image is also slightly misleading. For all the barrage,
Bolton turns out to be a more conflicted figure, especially when his supporting fire is most called upon.
The Room Where it
Happened
is Bolton's account of his part in
the power struggles within Trump's almost medieval court, his attempt to steer the executive branch towards
the right course, unmasked supremacy everywhere, and his failure and disillusion with Trump's chaotic,
self-serving and showbiz-driven presidency.
The
room where it happened: A White House memoir, by John Bolton
The memoir itself is a non-trivial political event.
Other reviewers have assailed it for being turgid. Bolton, though, has at least done the state some service
by habitually recording and recounting every meeting. This is an important record of an important eighteen
months packed with the escalating brinksmanship with Iran, an impeachment inquest, the return of great power
competition and a fierce struggle to control the policy levers in Washington itself. For that detail,
especially when contrasted with the exhausting melodrama of the era, Bolton deserves a little credit. The
Trump administration's determined effort to suppress it on the grounds of classified information suggests
there is substance to Bolton's allegations of corruption and turmoil at the heart of government.
It is also, though, a work of self-vindication. Bolton's
life is an adversarial one. A former attorney, he became a policy advocate and a Republican Party
institution, consistently taking the hardest of lines. He was ever drawn to aggressive combatants like
Hillary Clinton, in his formative years he supported Barry Goldwater. He interned for Vice-President Spiro
Agnew, the "number one hawk." As a measure of Bolton's faith that war works and that co-existence with
"rogue states" is impossible, he advocated attacking a heavily (and nuclear)-armed North Korea in 2018, an
adversary that lies in artillery range of Seoul and thousands of Americans as effective hostages, and
offered up a best-case scenario in doing so.
Bolton brought to government a world view that was
dug-in and entrenched. For Bolton, the world is hostile, and to survive America must be strong (wielding and
brandishing overwhelming force) at all times. Enemy regimes cannot be bargained with or even co-existed with
on anything less than maximalist terms dictated by Washington. The US never gives an inch, and must demand
everything. And if those regimes do not capitulate, America must topple or destroy them: Iran, Syria, Libya,
Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen and North Korea, and must combat them on multiple fronts at once. In doing so,
America
itself must remain unfettered with an absolutely free hand, not nodding even hypocritically to law or custom
or bargaining.
If Bolton's thoughts add up to anything, it is a general
hostility, if not to talking, certainly to diplomacy the art of giving coherence and shape to different
instruments and activities, above all through compromise and a recognition of limits. The final straw for
Bolton was Trump's cancelling an airstrike on Iran after it shot down a drone. An odd hill to die on, given
the graver acts of corruption he as witness alleges, but fitting that the failure to pull the trigger for
him was Trump's most shocking misdemeanour.
What is intended to be personal strength and clarity
comes over as unreflective bluster
This worldview is as personal as it is geopolitical.
Importantly for Bolton, in the end he fights alone, bravely against the herd. He fights against other
courtiers, even fellow hawks, who Bolton treats with dismissive contempt Nikki Haley, Steve Mnuchin, Mike
Pompeo, or James Mattis who like Bolton, champions strategic commitments and views Iran as a dangerous
enemy, but is more selective about when to reach for the gun. The press is little more than an "hysterical"
crowd. Allies like South Korea, who must live as neighbours with one of the regimes Bolton earmarks for
execution, and who try conciliatory diplomacy occasionally, earn slight regard. Critics, opponents or those
who disagree are 'lazy,' 'howling' or 'feckless.'
For a lengthy work that distils a lifetime's experience,
it is remarkably thin regarding the big questions of security, power and order. The hostile world for him
contains few real limits other than failures of will. He embraces every rivalry and every commitment, but
explanations are few and banal. 'While foreign policy labels are unhelpful except to the intellectually
lazy,' he says, 'if pressed, I like to say my policy was "pro-American".' Who is lazy, here?
The purpose of foreign policy, too, is largely absent.
Armed supremacy abroad, and power-maximisation, seems to be the end in itself, regardless of what is has
wrought at home. This makes his disdain for Trump's authoritarian ways especially obtuse: what does he think
made possible an imperial presidency in the first place?
There's little room for principled or reasonable
disagreement. What is intended to be personal strength and clarity comes over as unreflective bluster, in a
town where horse-trading and agility matter. Unintentionally, it is a warning to anyone who seeks to be
effective as well as right, and to those of us who debate these questions.
The most provocative part of the book comes at the end,
and points to a man more conflicted than his self-image of the straight shooter. Bolton issues an extended,
uneasy defence of his decision not to appear as a witness before the House impeachment inquiry against a
president he believed to be corrupt. Having celebrated the need to "pound away" with inexhaustible energy,
it turned out his ammunition was low. 'I was content to bide my time. I believed throughout, as the line in
Hamilton
goes,
that "I am not throwing away my shot".' Drawing on a characteristic claim to certainty, 'it would have made
no significant difference in the Senate outcome.' How can he know this? And even if the odds were long, was
there not for once a compelling basis in civic virtue to be that relentless grey battleship, pounding
away? He now hopes "history" will remember Trump as a one-term president. History needs willing agents.
Other reviews have honed in on Bolton's decision to
delay his revelations for a book pay-day. But consider another theme the war-hawk who is in fact torn and
agonised around combat when it comes to himself. It echoes his retrospective rationale for not fighting in
Vietnam, a war he supported, and (as he has recorded) the detailed efforts he made to avoid service in that
tragic theatre after being drafted. It was, he decided, bound to fail given that the anti-war Democrats
would undermine the cause, a justification he later sheepishly regretted.
So twice the advocate of forceful confrontation refused
the call to show up, generously awarding to himself a rationale for non-intervention that relieves him of
commitment. He refuses to extend that same exonerating, prudential logic to his country, when it debates
whether to wade in to conflict abroad. Neither does he extend it to other Americans who think the nation,
like Bolton, might be better off sometimes holding its fire, biding its time, dividing its enemies, and
keeping its powder dry.
Given that Bolton failed in the end to attend the "room
where it happened", his title is unwittingly ironic. In his favour, Bolton's testy defence of his absence at
least suggests something. In contrast with the front cover of another
forthcoming,
Trump-era memoir
, he retains a modest
capacity for embarrassment.
"... "People who are actually 'cancelled' don't get their thoughts published and amplified in major outlets," ..."
"... "held accountable" ..."
"... "an entire TV network" ..."
"... "stoking hatred" ..."
"... "white supremacist [with] a popular network show" ..."
"... "in dangerous ways," ..."
"... You and your mob have been destroying careers and reputations and livelihoods on a whim. Now you're being hoist by your own petard. Those of us blacklisted, libeled, and falsely maligned have zero sympathy. You all started it. May you be devoured by it. https://t.co/PGzMzNa0ku ..."
"... "fired from their jobs and have their livelihoods threatened." ..."
"... There was similar disillusionment with the lawmaker's assertion that she is being maliciously smeared by news networks and "white supremacists." "You're not a victim, you're a United States congresswoman," observed an unsympathetic Twitter user. ..."
"... Whether AOC wants to acknowledge it or not, a seemingly endless internet crusade has ruined the lives of countless individuals (many of them private citizens with little or no power) accused of holding politically incorrect views or of expressing insensitive remarks. ..."
"... An open letter published by Harper's Magazine which criticized the "vogue for public shaming and ostracism" among journalists, academics, and other figures ended up backfiring spectacularly after several signatories of the document rescinded their endorsements. They explained that they'd been unaware that 'problematic' people had also signed the letter. ..."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has denied the existence of cancel culture, suggesting it is an
invention of privileged moaners who can't handle criticism. Her thesis prompted speculation
that the powerful lawmaker has no self-awareness. The rookie New York congresswoman, whose
'woke' Twitter takes have made her a hero to many on the Left, attempted to debunk the concept
of cancel culture in a series of profound posts.
"People who are actually 'cancelled' don't get their thoughts published and amplified in
major outlets," she argued , adding that the whiners who
complain about being 'cancelled' are actually just entitled and hate being "held
accountable" or "unliked."
To prove her point, she claimed that "an entire TV network" is dedicated to
"stoking hatred" of her, and that a "white supremacist [with] a popular network
show" regularly misrepresents her "in dangerous ways," but that she never
complains about it. (The congresswoman may be referring to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is
white and undoubtedly not a fan of hers.)
According to Ocasio-Cortez, the people who "actually" get cancelled are
anti-capitalists and even abolitionists – apparently a hat-tip to activists who
campaigned to end slavery, which was formally abolished in the United States in 1865 with the
ratification of the 13th Amendment.
Her airtight dissertation received poor marks from many on social media, however. Countless
comments accused her of being part of the very movement which she claims doesn't exist.
"You and your mob have been destroying careers and reputations and livelihoods on a whim.
Now you're being hoist by your own petard," quipped actor James Woods.
You and your mob have been destroying careers and reputations and livelihoods on a
whim. Now you're being hoist by your own petard. Those of us blacklisted, libeled, and
falsely maligned have zero sympathy. You all started it. May you be devoured by it.
https://t.co/PGzMzNa0ku
Others argued that AOC was technically correct. Instead of having their views broadcast by
mainstream outlets, 'cancelled' individuals are often "fired from their jobs and have their
livelihoods threatened."
Correct. Instead, they are often fired from their jobs, harassed by twitter mobs, &
have their livelihoods threatened. And so since they cannot speak up, we who have a platform
choose to use our power responsibly to speak up on their behalf. You should do the same. Join
us, AOC https://t.co/lQ5yiuKFq6
There was similar disillusionment with the lawmaker's assertion that she is being
maliciously smeared by news networks and "white supremacists." "You're not a victim, you're a
United States congresswoman," observed an unsympathetic Twitter
user.
However, her remarks also garnered applause from social media users, who dismissed cancel
culture as a right-wing talking point.
Cancel culture is fake. It's a right wing framing of social accountability and people need
to stop giving the term any credence.
Whether AOC wants to acknowledge it or not, a seemingly endless internet crusade has
ruined the lives of countless individuals (many of them private citizens with little or no
power) accused of holding politically incorrect views or of expressing insensitive
remarks.
An open letter published by Harper's Magazine which criticized the "vogue for public
shaming and ostracism" among journalists, academics, and other figures ended up backfiring
spectacularly after several signatories of the document rescinded their endorsements. They
explained that they'd been unaware that 'problematic' people had also signed the
letter.
Would CNN's Don Lemon cancel himself over shockingly unwoke 2013 tips to black
community?
A vintage clip of CNN anchor Don Lemon telling black people to act civilized and
disregard "street culture" has the woke pundit's detractors' jaws on the floor, wondering what
happened to him over the intervening seven years. In the 2013 clip, Lemon praises Fox News host
Bill O'Reilly as the Republican pundit decries the " disintegration of the African-American
family ," even arguing O'Reilly " doesn't go far enough " when he denounces "
street culture. " The video was posted to social media by " Panda Tribune " on
Wednesday and quickly circulated among conservatives, who had a hard time reconciling this
Lemon with his painfully-PC modern-day counterpart.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired the segment on his show Wednesday night, marveling that
if Lemon or one of his colleagues came out with those lines in 2020, " that would be their
last live broadcast ever - they'd be fired immediately ."
"... Auten, identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, never confirmed the most explosive allegations in the dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, cutting a number of corners in the verification process, Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed out in his December report on FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. ..."
The unnamed FBI "Supervisory Intelligence Analyst" cited by the Justice Department's watchdog for failing to properly vet the
so-called Steele dossier before it was used to justify spying on the Trump campaign teaches a class on the ethics of spying at a
small Washington-area college, records show.
The senior FBI analyst, Brian J. Auten, has taught the course
at Patrick Henry College since 2010, including the 11-month period in 2016 and 2017 when he and a counterintelligence team at FBI
headquarters electronically monitored an adviser to the Trump campaign based on false rumors from the dossier and forged evidence.
Auten, identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, never confirmed the most explosive allegations
in the dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, cutting a number of corners in the verification process,
Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed out in his December report on FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
By January 2017, the lead analyst had ample evidence the dossier was bogus. Auten could not get sources who provided information
to Steele to support the dossier's allegations during interviews. And collections from the wiretaps of Trump aide Carter Page failed
to reveal any confirmation of the claims. Auten even came across exculpatory evidence indicating Page was not the Russian asset the
dossier alleged, but was in fact a CIA asset helping the U.S. spy on Moscow.
Nonetheless, he and the FBI continued to use the Steele material as a basis for renewing their FISA monitoring of Page, who was
never charged with a crime.
Auten did not respond to requests for comment, and the FBI declined to comment.
In his report, Horowitz wrote that the analyst told his team of inspectors that he did not have any "pains or heartburn" over
the accuracy of the Steele reports. As for Steele's reliability as an FBI informant, Horowitz said, the analyst merely "speculated"
that his prior reporting was sound and did not see a need to "dig into" his handler's case file, which showed that past tips from
Steele had gone uncorroborated and were never used in court.
According to the IG report, Auten also wasn't concerned about Steele's anti-Trump bias or that his work was commissioned by Trump's
political opponent, calling the fact he worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign "immaterial." Perhaps most disturbing, the analyst
withheld the fact that Steele's main source disavowed key dossier allegations from a memo Auten prepared summarizing a meeting he
had with that source.
Auten appears to have violated his own stated "golden rule" for spying. A 15-year supervisor at the bureau, Auten has written
that he teaches students in his national security class at the Purcellville, Va., college that the FBI applies "the least intrusive
standard" when it considers surveilling U.S. citizens under investigation to avoid harm to "a subject's reputation, dignity and privacy."
At least three Senate oversight committees are seeking to question Auten about fact-checking lapses, as well as
"grossly inaccurate statements" he allegedly made to Horowitz, as part of the committee's investigation of the FBI's handling
of wiretap warrants the bureau first obtained during the heat of the 2016 presidential race.
FBI veterans worry Auten's numerous missteps signal a deeper rot within the bureau beyond top brass who appeared to have an animus
toward Donald Trump, such as former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as well as subordinates Lisa Page and
Peter Strzok. They fear these main players in the scandal enlisted group-thinking career officials like Auten to ensure an investigative
result.
"Anyone in his position has tremendous access to information and is well-positioned to manipulate information if he wanted to
do so," said Chris Swecker, a 24-year veteran of the FBI who served as assistant director of its criminal investigative division,
where he oversaw public corruption cases.
"Question is, was it deliberate manipulation or just rank incompetence?" he added. "How much was he influenced by McCabe, Page,
Strzok and other people we know had a deep inherent bias?"
Auten is a central, if overlooked, figure in the Horowitz report and the overall FISA abuse scandal, though his identity is hidden
in the 478-page IG report, which refers to him throughout only as "Supervisory Intelligence Analyst" or "Supervisory Intel Analyst."
In fact, the 51-year-old analyst shows up at every major juncture in the FISA application process.
Auten was assigned to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation from its opening in July 2016 and supervised its analytical efforts
throughout 2017. He played a key supportive role for the agents preparing the FISA applications, including reviewing the probable-cause
section of the applications and providing the agents with information about Steele's sub-sources noted in the applications. He also
helped prepare and review the renewal drafts.
Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy
their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as all the footnotes. His job was also to fill gaps in the FISA
application or bolster weak areas.
In addition, Auten personally met with Steele and his "primary sub-source," reportedly a Russian migr living in the West, as
well as former MI6 colleagues of Steele. He also met with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and processed the dirt Ohr fed the
FBI from Glenn Simpson, the political opposition research contractor who hired Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier on behalf
of the Clinton campaign.
Auten was involved in the January 2017 investigation of then-Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, according to internal
emails sent by then-FBI counterintelligence official Strzok.
What's more, the analyst helped draft a summary of the dossier attached to the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment
on Russian interference, which described Steele as "reliable." Other intelligence analysts argued against incorporating the dossier
allegations -- including rumors about potentially compromising sexual material -- in the body of the report because they viewed them
as "internet rumor."
According to the IG report, "The Supervisory Intel Analyst was one of the FBI's leading experts on Russia." Auten wrote a
book on the Russian
nuclear threat during the Cold War, and has taught graduate courses about U.S. and Russian nuclear strategy.
Still, he could not corroborate any of the allegations of Russian "collusion" in the dossier, which he nonetheless referred to
as "Crown material," as if it were intelligence from America's closest ally, Britain.
To the contrary, "According to the Supervisory Intel Analyst, the FBI ultimately determined that some of the allegations contained
in Steele's election reporting were inaccurate," the IG report revealed. Yet the analyst and the case agents he supported continued
to rely on his dossier to obtain the warrants to spy on Page -- and by extension, potentially the Trump campaign and presidency --
through incidental collections of emails, text messages and intercepted phone calls.
Steele Got the Benefit of the Doubt
According to the IG report , the supervisory
intelligence analyst not only failed to corroborate the Steele dossier, but gave Steele the benefit of the doubt every time sources
or developments called into question the reliability of his information or his own credibility. In many cases, he acted more as an
advocate than a fact-checker, while turning a blind eye to the dossier's red flags. Examples:
When a top Justice national security lawyer initially blocked the Crossfire team's attempts to obtain a FISA warrant, Auten
proactively turned to the dossier to try to push the case over the line. In an email to FBI lawyers, he forwarded an unsubstantiated
claim from Steele's Report 94 that Page secretly met with a Kremlin-tied official in July 2016, and asked, "Does this put us at
least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?" (Emphasis in original).
Even though internal FBI emails reveal Auten knew Steele was working for the Clinton campaign by early January 2017, he did
not share this information with the Justice lawyer or the FISA court before helping agents reapply for warrants. He told the IG
he viewed the potential for political influences on the Steele reporting as "immaterial."
While most of Steele's past reporting as an informant for the FBI had not been corroborated and had never been used in a criminal
proceeding, including his work for an international soccer corruption investigation, Auten wrote that it had in fact been "corroborated
and used in criminal proceedings." His language made it into the FISA renewal applications to help convince the court Steele was
still reliable, despite his leaking the FBI's investigation to media outlet Mother Jones in late October 2016. Auten had merely
"speculated" that Steele's prior reporting was sound without reviewing an internal file documenting his track record.
Auten's notes from a meeting with Steele in early October 2016 reveal that Steele described one of his main dossier sources
-- identified in the IG report only as "Person 1," but believed to be Belarusian-American realtor Sergei Millian -- as a "boaster"
who "may engage in some embellishment." Yet the IG report noted the analyst "did not provide this description of Person 1 for
inclusion in the Carter Page FISA applications despite relying on Person 1's information to establish probable cause in the applications."
Auten failed to disclose to the FISA court negative feedback from British intelligence service colleagues of Steele. They
told Auten during a visit he made to London in December 2016 that Steele exercised "poor judgment" and pursued as sources "people
with political risk but no intel value," the IG report said.
In January 2017, Steele's primary sub-source told Auten that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" information he conveyed to
him in multiple sections of the dossier, according to a lengthy summary of the interview by the analyst. For instance, Steele
claimed that Kremlin-tied figures offered Page a bribe worth as much as $10 billion in return for lifting U.S. economic sanctions
on Russia. "We reviewed the texts [between Steele and the source] and did not find any discussion of a bribe," the IG report found.
Still, Auten let the rumor bleed into the FISA applications.
The primary sub-source also told the analyst he did not recall any discussion or mention of WikiLeaks conspiring with Moscow
to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails, or that the Russian leadership and the Trump campaign had a "well-developed
conspiracy of cooperation," as described by Steele in his Report 95. The primary sub-source "did not describe a 'conspiracy' between
Russia and individuals associated with the Trump campaign or state that Carter Page served as an 'intermediary' between [the campaign]
and the Russian government," the IG found. Yet "all four Carter Page FISA applications relied on Report 95 to support probable
cause."
In addition, Auten's summary of the primary sub-source cast doubt on the dossier's allegation that the disclosure of DNC emails
to WikiLeaks was made in exchange for a GOP convention platform change regarding Ukraine. Yet this unsubstantiated rumor also
found its way into the applications. Confronted by Horowitz's investigators about all the discrepancies, the analyst offered excuses
for Steele. He said that while it was possible that Steele exaggerated or misrepresented information he received from the source,
it was also possible the source was lying to the FBI.
Even though the primary sub-source's account contradicted the allegations in Steele's reporting, the supervisory intel analyst
said he did not have any "pains or heartburn" about the accuracy of the Steele reporting.
Auten didn't try to get to the bottom of discrepancies between Steele and his sources until two months after the third and
final renewal application was filed. The analyst's September 2017 interview with Steele revealed clear bias against Trump. According
to the FBI's FD-302 summary of the interview, Steele and his London business partner, Christopher Burrows, who was also present,
described Trump as their "main opponent" and said that they were "fearful" about the negative impact of the Trump presidency on
the relationship between the United States and Britain.
The analyst also appeared to mislead, or at least misinform, the FBI's counterintelligence chief, Bill Priestap, by omitting
the primary sub-source's claim that Steele "exaggerated" much of the information in the dossier. In late February 2017, Auten
sent a two-page memo to Priestap briefing him about his meeting with the source, "but the memorandum did not describe the inconsistencies,"
the IG report noted.
Finally, recently declassified footnotes in the IG report directly contradict statements provided by Auten in the IG report
concerning the potential for Russian disinformation infiltrating Steele's reporting. The analyst told Horowitz's team that "he
had no information as of June 2017 that Steele's election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised [by Russian
intelligence]." Yet, in January 2017, the FBI received a report that some of Steele's reporting "was part of a Russian disinformation
campaign" and in February 2017, the FBI received a second report that another part of Steele's reporting was "the product of [Russian
Intelligence Services] infiltrat[ing] a source into the network."
Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley
recently questioned the analyst's candor and integrity in a
letter to the FBI. "We are deeply troubled by the grossly inaccurate statements by the supervisory intelligence analyst," they
wrote.
The powerful senators have asked the FBI to provide additional records shedding light on what the analyst and other officials
knew about Russian disinformation as they were drafting the FISA applications.
Meanwhile, Auten's name appears on a
list of witnesses Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham recently gained authorization to subpoena to testify before
his own panel investigating the FISA abuse scandal. Graham intends to focus on the investigators, including the lead analyst, who
interviewed Steele's primary sub-source in January 2017 and discovered the Steele allegations were nothing more than "bar talk,"
as Graham put it in a recent interview, and should never have been used to get a warrant in the first place, to say nothing of renewing
the warrant.
In a Dec. 6 letter to Horowitz, FBI Director
Christopher Wray informed the inspector general he had put every employee involved in the 2016-2017 FISA application process through
"additional training in ethics." The mandatory training included "an emphasis on privacy and civil liberties."
Wray also assured Horowitz that he was conducting a review of all FBI personnel who had responsibility for the preparation of
the FISA warrant applications and would take any appropriate action to deal with them.
It's not immediately known if Auten has undergone such a review or has completed the required ethics training. The FBI declined
comment.
"That analyst needs to be investigated internally," Swecker said.
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Auten appears to have violated the ethics training he provides his students at Patrick Henry College.
"When I teach the topic of national security investigations to undergraduates, we cover micro-proportionality, discrimination,
and the 'least intrusive standard' via a tweaked version of the Golden Rule -- namely, if you were being investigated for a national
security issue but you knew yourself to be completely innocent, how would you want someone to investigate you?" Auten wrote in a
September 2016
article
in Providence magazine, headlined "Just Intelligence, Just Surveillance & the Least Intrusive Standard."
He wrote the six-page paper to answer the question: "Is an intelligence operation, national security investigation or act of surveillance
being initiated under the proper authorities for the right purposes? Will an intelligence operation, national security investigation
or act of surveillance achieve the good it is meant to? And, in the end, will the expected good be overwhelmed by the resulting harm
or damage arising out of the planned operation, investigation or surveillance act?"
"National security investigations are not ethics-free," he asserted, advising that a federal investigator should never forget
that "the intrusiveness or invasiveness of his tactics places a subject's reputation, dignity and privacy at risk and has the ability
to cause harm."
At the same time, Auten said more intrusive methods such as electronic eavesdropping may be justified -- "If it is judged that
the threat is severe or the targeted foreign intelligence is of key importance to U.S. interest or survival." National security "may
necessitate collection based on little more than suspicion." In these cases, he reasoned, the harm to the individual is outweighed
by the benefit to society.
"Surveillance is not life-threatening to the surveilled," he said.
However, Page, a U.S. citizen, told RealClearInvestigations that he received "numerous death threats" from people who believed
he was a "traitor," based on leaks to the media that the FBI suspected he was a Russian agent who conspired with the Kremlin to interfere
in the 2016 election.
Auten also rationalized the risk of "incidental" surveillance of non-targeted individuals, writing: "If the particular act of
surveillance is legitimately authorized, and the non-liable subject has not been intentionally targeted, any incidental surveillance
of the non-liable subject would be morally licit."
A member of the International Intelligence Ethics Association, Auten has lectured since 2010 on "intelligence and statecraft"
at Patrick Henry College, where he is an adjunct professor . He
also sits on the college's Strategic Intelligence Advisory Board.
FBI veterans say the analyst's lack of rigor raises alarms.
"I worked with intel analysts all the time working counterintelligence investigations," said former FBI Special Agent Michael
Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence. "This analyst's work product was shoddy, and inasmuch
as these FISA affidavits concerned a presidential campaign, the information he provided [to agents] should have been pristine."
He suspects Auten was "hand-picked" by Comey or McCabe to work on the sensitive Trump case, which was tightly controlled within
FBI headquarters.
"The Supervisory Intel Analyst must be held accountable now, particularly where his actions were intentional, along with anyone
who touched those fraudulent [FISA] affidavits," Biasello said.
The Europeans collectively have 11 times the GDP and three times the population of Russia.
Germany has the world's fourth largest economy, alone two and a half times the size of
Russia's.
Yet the Europeans affect to be helpless, vulnerable to attack by a revived Red Army. No
European government spends much more than two percent of GDP on the military, not even the
Baltic States and Poland, which squeal the most frequently and loudly about evil hordes massing
just over the border. At least France and Great Britain have competent forces, though not
directed at Moscow. Germany devotes just 1.38 percent of its GDP to a military far from
battle-ready. Italy and Spain barely bother to maintain armed forces. And then there are
nations like Luxembourg.
So why is it America's responsibility to protect countries well able to defend themselves
but not interested in doing so? Worse, why are U.S. policymakers constantly reassuring the
Europeans that no matter how little they do Washington will always be there, ready to save
them? Why have lawmakers, elected to represent the American people, turned NATO into a defense
dole for what Ronald Reagan today might call foreign welfare queens?
To his credit, President Donald Trump has sharply criticized allies which prefer to leave
the heavy lifting to Washington. Alas, his methods are dubious and have had little effect.
Their small increases in military spending began before he was elected. His officials have
thwarted his policies by increasing U.S. support for NATO, even expanding the alliance to such
military behemoths as Montenegro and North Macedonia.
Most bizarre is Congress's determination to always stand with European officials, who, in
sharp contrast, put their own nations first. Legislators constantly ignore the plight of
American taxpayers, who are expected to keep funding prosperous, populous allies which believe
they have better things to do than enlarging and improving their militaries. Like preserving
largescale social welfare programs at U.S. expense.
For instance, the president's determination to pull 9500 U.S. personnel out of Germany
caused congressmen, Republicans and Democrats alike, to go, well, completely nuts. In their
view the president was inviting Vladimir Putin to invade Europe and conquer most of the known
world. They imagined that a new Dark Ages was descending, the world was about to end, and the
lion was poised to eat the lamb.
So, naturally, leading lawmakers are scheming to block the move, in order to ensure that the
Europeans need never be bothered to take care of themselves. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Rep.
Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) have proposed barring the use of funds to remove any troops. That is,
at a time of budget crisis they want to keep more U.S. money flowing into Germany ,
rewarding a government dedicated to focus on its economy and society while expecting Americans
to do the military defending.
Who do Romney and Thornberry believe they are representing? Why do they care more about
German than American taxpayers?
Republicans also are taking the lead in the Democratic-controlled House to sacrifice
American interests for foreign governments. For instance, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), daughter
of "I had other priorities" Dick Cheney, who avoided serving in Vietnam before plotting
numerous wars for today's young, backed a Democratic proposal to limit further withdrawals from
Afghanistan, where Americans have been engaged in a nearly 20-year nation-building mission. The
measure passed by a 45 to 11 vote: members of both countries seem determined to keep Americans
forever fighting in Central Asia. They care more for the corrupt, incompetent regime in Kabul
than America service members and taxpayers. In contrast, the president, despite his halting,
inconsistent policy, better represents this nation's interests.
The opposition to the president's plan for getting out of Afghanistan was modest compared to
the hysteria that consumed Washington when he ordered U.S. forces home from Syria.
Unsurprisingly, though unfortunately, legislators took the lead in opposing his plan to focus
on the interests of Americans.
For instance, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill) complained that Trump's refusal to keep the U.S.
forever entangled in another nation's civil war, tragic but irrelevant to American security,
was "weak." Sen. Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) pushed a resolution criticizing the
president. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued the standard yet mindless response to every
proposal to disengage from anywhere: the president should "exercise American leadership." House
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, apparently (and thankfully) defeated in the
recent primary by a young progressive, similarly complained that "At President Trump's hands,
American leadership has been laid low." For all of them, "American leadership" apparently
requires engaging in perpetual war on behalf of foreign governments and interests, irrespective
of the human and financial cost to this nation.
It is hard to imagine a deployment more antithetical to U.S. security. In Syria Americans
are occupying a foreign nation, expected to oust the incumbent government, fight jihadists
created by Washington's invasion of the country next door, force out personnel from Iran and
Russia invited in by the legitimate government to battle insurgents supported by the U.S., and
forever protect ethnic fighters considered to be an existential threat by the neighboring
state, a NATO ally. All this is to be done through an illegal intervention, lacking both
domestic and international legal authority. Yet the congressmen so determined to block the
president are unwilling to commit themselves and vote to authorize the deployment. Apparently
they fear having to justify their bizarre behavior to their constituents who are paying the
price of their perverted priorities. A cynic might think U.S. legislators to be both policy
morons and political cowards.
Congress has similarly sought to inhibit any effort by the president to withdraw troops from
South Korea. Last year's National Defense Authorization Act set a floor for U.S. troop
deployments in the Republic of Korea. The 2020 NDAA raised the number, essentially prohibiting
any reduction in current deployments. According to Congress, the Pentagon must forever provide
a specific level of military welfare for one of the world's most prosperous and industrialized
states.
Americans should ask when legislators will be as solicitous of American military personnel
and taxpayers as of the ROK government. The South enjoys roughly 53 times the economic strength
and twice the population of North Korea. If Seoul needs more troops for its defense, why
doesn't it raise them ? Why are Americans expected to pay for what South Koreans should be
doing?
Of course, the president is not innocent of the temptation to do the bidding of foreign
leaders instead of the American people. He appears to be in essentially full thrall of several
foreign dictators and other master manipulators, including Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Arabia's Mohamed bin
Salman.
In the last case Congress has taken the unusual stance of challenging the president for his
unnatural obeisance to a foreign ruler. The U.S. continues to arm and assist the Saudi royals
in their murderous campaign of aggression against their neighbor, Yemen, in order to reinstall
a pliant regime prepared to carry out Saudi policy. The war has resulted in a humanitarian
catastrophe in what already was one of the world's poorest nations. The Saudi intervention also
triggered a sectarian war, giving Iran an excellent opportunity to bleed the ineffective Saudi
military, which has proved to be competent at little more than bombing weddings and funerals,
destroying apartments and markets, and slaughtering civilians. It is difficult to imagine an
intervention more antithetical to American interests. Here, unusually, Congress is on the right
side.
Candidate George W. Bush advocated a "humble foreign policy," a position he forgot after
9/11. Instead, he decided to try to reorder the world, determined to create a liberal, modern
state in Central Asia and turn Iraq into the sort of de facto colony that Neoconservatives
imagined a proper Arab nation should be. The result was little short of a catastrophe.
The next president should turn genuine humility into policy. And challenge Congress to
abandon its pretensions of global social engineering, ignoring differences in history,
interest, geography, religion, ethnicity, culture, and more. Instead of playacting as 535
secretaries of state, legislators should focus on protecting America, its territory,
population, prosperity, and liberties.
A good starting point would be to stop treating the Defense Department as another welfare
agency, only for foreign governments. America's wealthy friends should do what serious nations
have down throughout history: defend themselves.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.
t includes Iraq and Afghanistan, 53,000 to 35,000. Deaths of U.S. contractors since
September 2001 are approximately 8,000, compared to 7,000 troops. Yet contractors receive
neither the public recognition nor the honor of serving abroad, despite the increased risks
they face. The Camo Economy is politically useful, as the White House can claim troop
reductions while at the same time increasing U.S. presence abroad by relying more heavily on
contractors.
The financial costs of military contracting are also opaque. While we know some top-line
numbers, we know very few details about where our tax dollars go once they are paid out to
contractors. We do know that contracting is more expensive, as contractors have limited
incentives to reduce costs and they build profits into their contract agreements. As
contractors then use sub-contractors, who also build in profits, there can be multiple layers
of guaranteed profits built into a contract between the sub-contractors performing the work and
DOD paying the prime contractor. Add in the waste, fraud, and abuse in addition to the
excessive profits, and the costs to government quickly balloon.
It will not be easy to reform the Camo Economy. Firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop
Grumman, and Raytheon each spent about $13 million on lobbying last year. Political connections
operate alongside high profits and paychecks to keep the Camo Economy entrenched and growing.
But reforms can be made. Reducing the size of the military budget is a vital first step. The
National
Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has detailed various ways to do
this.
Next, the portion of military spending that is paid to contractors should be reduced and
some services should be brought back in-house, including those on and near the battlefield. And
third, the contracting process itself should be reformed, so that more contracts are
legitimately competitive and create incentives for firms to reduce costs.
Heidi Peltier is Director of "20 Years of War," a Costs of War initiative based at
Boston University's Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. She is also a board
member of the Institute for Policy Studies.
When Colin Powell of all people has to appear on MSNBC to slam
fake reporting you know mainstream media has lost the plot.
In a rare moment, the former Secretary of State under Bush slammed the wall-to-wall coverage
of the Russian bounties in Afghanistan story as "almost hysterical" . It's all the more awkard
for MSNBC, which had him on the network Thursday to talk about it, given he's one of those
'never Trump' Bush-era officials, who despite a legacy of having fed the world lie after lie to
invade Iraq, has since been given "resistance hero" status among liberals.
Describing that military commanders on the ground didn't give credence to The New York Times
claim that Russia's GRU was paying Taliban and other militants to kill American soldiers,
Powell said the media "got kind of out of control" in the first days after the initial report
weeks ago.
"I know that our military commanders on the ground did not think that it was as serious a
problem as the newspapers were reporting and television was reporting," Powell told MSNBC's
Andrea Mitchell. "It got kind of out of control before we really had an understanding of what
had happened. I'm not sure we fully understand now."
"It's our commanders who are going to go deal with this kind of a threat, using intelligence
given to them by the intelligence community," Powell continued. "But that has to be analyzed.
It has to be attested. And then you have to go find out who the enemy is. And I think we were
on top of that one, but it just got almost hysterical in the first few days."
He also deflated the ongoing manufactured atmosphere which seeks to maintain a perpetual
Washington hawkish position vis-a-vis Moscow, based on perceived "Russian aggression".
"I don't think we're in a position to go to war with the Russians," Powell said. "I know Mr.
Putin rather well. He's just figuring out a way to stay in power until 2036. The last thing
he's looking for is a war, and the last thing he's looking for is a war with the United States
of America."
"... Whoever gets elected will certainly affect details of how the ship sinks ..."
"... I have come to hate the Maoist/Jacobin scum today referred to as "The Left". I want Trump to get a second term because it will cause my enemies to suffer. ..."
"... The real question in dire need of asking is: Do the Next 10 Presidential Elections Even Matter? And the answer remains: not a dime's worth of difference. "We the People" will continue to witness the same electoral circus complete with its fake debates as our elite's addiction to war will be craving its habitual fix. "We the People" are too stupefied and mired in our own addictions to cell phones and other mind numbing gadgets while being fed a steady diet of lies by the MSM. Our awakening is too remote for us to take back our country. ..."
"... Once again, talk is cheap. Why would the "deep state" "hate" him so much? Did he investigate 9/11? Did he end any wars, or pull out of NATO, or improve relations with Russia and/or China, or cut aid to Israel, etc.? No. ..."
"... I think there are some key differences here on what could take shape. If Biden wins, the Republicans can put down the Trump saga as a regrettable mistake and go back to being the boring old Jen Bush party moaning about lowering taxes for the rich and abortion. ..."
"... However if Trump wins, the Republicans will have to acknowledge that people support Trumpism and will have to start re orientating the party towards Trumpian Populism in future elections as they will realize that it is a permanent vote winner. ..."
"... One of guys on The Duran said that the politicians on the Left and Right don't care about Black Lives Matter, the statues, history, gender wars, gay this/LGXYZ that, the culture wars. That doesn't really concern them; they'll just let the sheeple fight it out. ..."
"... What they DO care about is their corporate masters, the people they are really beholden to. As long as their masters continue to make money and the culture wars don't disturb that, then all is well. ..."
The fact is that for the past four years the US liberals have waged a total informational war against Trump and it would be absolutely
unthinkable for them to ever accept a Trump re-election, even if he wins by a landslide. For the US Dems and neo-liberals, Trump
is the personification of evil, literally, and that means that "resistance" to him and everything he represents must be total. And
if he is re-elected, then there is only one possible explanation: the Russians stole the election, or the Chinese did. But the notion
that Trump has the support of a majority of people is literally unthinkable for these folks.
Truth be told, Trump has proven to be a fantastically incompetent President, no doubt about that. Was he even worse than Obama?
Maybe, it really all depends on your scoring system. In my personal opinion, and for all his very real sins and failings, Trump,
at least, did not start a major war, which Obama did, and which Hillary would have done (can't prove this, but that is my personal
belief). That by itself, and totally irrespective of anything else, makes me believe that Trump has been a "lesser evil" (even if
far more ridiculous) President than Obama has been or Hillary would have been. This is what I believed four years ago and this is
what I still believe: considering how dangerous for the entire planet "President Hillary" would have been, voting for Trump was not
only the only logical thing to do, it was the only moral one too because giving your voice to a warmongering narcissistic hyena like
Hillary is a profoundly immoral act (yes, I know, Trump is also a narcissist – most politicians are! – but at least his warmongering
has been all hot air and empty threats, at least so far). However, I don't think that this (not having started a major war) will
be enough to get Trump re-elected.
Why?
Because most Americans still like wars. In fact, they absolutely love them. Unless, of course, they lose. What Americans really
want is a President who can win wars, not a President who does not initiate them in the first place. This is also the most likely
reason why Trump did not start any major wars: the US has not won a real war in decades and, instead, it got whipped in every conflict
it started. Americans hate losing wars, and that is why Trump did not launch any wars: it would have been political suicide to start
a real war against, say, the DPRK or Iran. So while I am grateful that Trump did not start any wars, I am not naive to the point
of believing that he did so for pure and noble motives. Give Trump an easy victory and he will do exactly what all US Presidents
have done in the past: attack, beat up the little guy, and then be considered like a "wartime President hero" by most Americans.
The problem is that there are no more "little guys" left out there: only countries who can, and will, defend themselves if attacked.
The ideology of messianic imperialism which permeates the US political culture is still extremely powerful and deep seated and
it will take years, probably decades, to truly flush it down to where it belongs: to the proverbial trash-heaps of history. Besides,
in 2020 Americans have much bigger concerns than war vs. peace – at least that is what most of them believe. Between the Covid19
pandemic and the catastrophic collapse of the economy (of course, while the former certainly has contributed to the latter, it did
not single-handedly cause it) and now the BLM insurgency, most Americans now feel personally threatened – something which no wars
of the past ever did (a war against Russia very much would, but most Americans don't realize that, since nobody explains this to
them; they also tend to believe that nonsense about the US military being the best and most capable in history).
Following four years of uninterrupted flagwaving and MAGA-chanting there is, of course, a hardcore of true believers who believe
that Trump is nothing short of brilliant and that he will "kick ass" everything and everybody: from the spying Russians, to the rioting
Blacks, from the pandemic, to the lying media, etc. The fact that in reality Trump pitifully failed to get anything truly important
done is completely lost on these folks who live in a reality they created for themselves and in which any and all facts contradicting
their certitudes are simply explained away by silly stuff like "Q-anon" or "5d chess". Others, of course, will realize that Trump
"deflated" before those whom he called "the swamp" almost as soon as he got into the White House.
As for the almighty Israel Lobby, it seems to me that it squeezed all it could from Trump who, from the point of view of the Zionists,
was always a "disposable President" anyway. And now that Trump has done everything Israel wanted him to do, he becomes almost useless.
If anything, Pelosi, Schumer and the rest of them will try to outdo Trump's love for everything Israeli anyway.
So how much support is there behind Trump today? I really don't know (don't trust the polls, which have always been deeply wrong
about Trump anyway), but I think that there is definitely a constituency of truly frightened Americans who are freaking out (as they
should, considering the rapid collapse of the country) and who might vote Trump just because they will feel that for all his faults,
he is the only one who can save the country. Conversely, they will see Biden as a pro-BLM geriatric puppet who will hand the keys
of the White House to a toxic coalition of minorities.
So what if Trump does get re-elected?
In truth, the situation is so complex and there are so many variables (including many "unknown unknowns"!) that make predictions
impossible. Still, we can try to make some educated guesses, especially if based on some kind of logic such as the one which says
that "past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior". In other words, if Trump gets elected, we will get more of the same.
Personally, I would characterize this "same" as a further destruction of the US from within by the Democrats and their "coalition
of minorities" combined with a further destruction of the US Empire abroad by delusional Republicans.
I very much doubt that it makes any sense at all to vote for that, really. Better stay at home and do something worthwhile with
your time, no?
Now what about a Biden election?
Remember that Biden is now the de-facto leader of what I would loosely call the "anti-US coalition", that is the "coalition of
minorities" which really have nothing in common except their hatred of the established order (well, and, of course, their hatred
of Trump and of those who voted for him).
These minorities are very good at hating and destroying, but don't count on them to ever come up with constructive solutions –
it ain't gonna happen. For one thing, they are probably too stupid to come up with any constructive ideas, but even more important
is the fact that these folks all have a hyper-narrow agenda and, simply put, they don't care about "constructing" anything. These
folks are all about hatred and the instant gratification of their narrow, one-topic, agenda.
This also begs the question of why the Dems decided to go with Biden in spite of the fact that he is clearly an extremely weak
candidate. In spite? I am not so sure at all. I think that they chose him because he is so weak: the real power behind him will be
in the hands of the Schumer-Pelosi-Obama gang and of the interests these folks represent.
Unlike Trump who prostituted himself only after making it to the White House, the neo-liberal Dems have *already* prostituted
themselves to everybody who wanted to give them something in return, from the Ukie Nazis to the thugs of BLM, to the powerful US
homo-lobby. Don't expect them to show any spine, or even less so, love for the USA, if they get the White House. They hate this country
and most of its people and they are not shy about it.
What would happen to the US if the likes of Bloomberg or Harris took control? First, there would be the comprehensive surrender
to the various minorities which put these folks in power followed by a very strong blowback from all the "deplorables" ranging from
protests and civil disobedience, to local authorities refusing to take orders from the feds. Like it or not, but most Americans still
love their country and loathe the kind of pseudo-liberal ideology which has been imposed upon them by the joint actions of the US
deep state and the corporate world. There is even a strong probability that if Biden gets elected the USA's disintegration would
only accelerate.
On the international front, a Biden Presidency would not solve any of the problems created by Obama and Trump: by now it is way
too late and the damage done to the international reputation of the United States is irreparable. If anything, the Dems will only
make it worse by engaging in even more threats, sanctions and wars. Specifically, the Demolicans hate Russia, China and Iran probably
even more than the Republicrats. Besides, these countries have already concluded a long time ago that the US was "not agreement capable"
anyway (just look at the long list of international treaties and organization from which the US under Trump has withdrawn: what is
the point of negotiating anything with a power which systematically reneges on its promises and obligations?)
The truth is that if Biden gets elected, the US will continue to fall apart internally and externally, if anything, probably even
faster than under a re-elected Trump.
Which brings me to my main conclusion:
Why do we even bother having elections?
First, I don't think that the main role of a democracy is to protect minorities from majorities. A true democracy protects the
majority against the many minorities which typically have a one-issue agenda and which are typically hostile to the values of the
majority . Oh sure, minority rights should be protected, the question is how exactly?
For one thing, most states have some kind of constitution/basic law which sets a number of standards which cannot be violated
as long as this constitution/basic law is in force. Furthermore, in most states which call themselves democratic all citizens have
the same rights and obligations, and a minority status does not give anybody any special rights or privileges. Typically, there are
also fundamental international standards for human rights and fundamental national standards for civil rights. Minority rights (individual
or collective), however, are not typically considered a separate category which somehow trumps or supplements adopted norms for human
and civil rights (if only because it creates a special "minority" category, whereas in true "people power" all citizens are considered
as one entity).
It is quite obvious that neither the Republicrats nor the Demolicans represent the interests of "we the people" and that both
factions of the US plutocracy are under the total control of behind-the-scenes real powers. What happened four years ago was a colossal
miscalculation of these behind-the-scenes real powers who failed to realize how hated they were and how even a guy like Trump would
seem preferable to a nightmare like Hillary (as we know, had the Dems chosen Sanders or even some other halfway lame candidate, Trump
would probably not have prevailed).
This is why I submit that the next election will make absolutely no difference:
The US system is rigged to give all the power to minorities and to completely ignore the will of the people The choice between the
Demolicans and the Republicrats is not a choice at all The systemic crisis of the US is too deep to be affected by who is in power
in the White House
Simply put, and unlike the case of 2016, the outcome of the 2020 election will make no difference at all. Caring about who the
next puppet in the White House will be is tantamount to voting for a new captain while the Titanic is sinking . The major difference
is that the Titanic sank in very deep water whereas the "ship USA" will sink in the shallows, meaning that the US will not completely
disappear: in some form or another, it will survive either as a unitary state or as a number of successor states. The Empire, however,
has no chance of survival at all. Thus, anything which contributes to make the US a "normal" country and which weakens the Empire
is in the interests of the people of the USA. Voting for either one of the candidates this fall will only prolong the agony of the
current political regime in the USA.
The truth is that if Biden gets elected, the US will continue to fall apart internally and externally, if anything, probably
even faster than under a re-elected Trump.
This observation suggests that one should vote for Biden if one votes at all. Perhaps if one is going to the election because
there's a particularly crucial vote for county board of supervisors candidates (very important, by the way) and you happen to
be at the polls anyway, the fastest way to further the process of saying good riddance to the American empire is to vote for Joe
Biden.
Whoever gets elected will certainly affect details of how the ship sinks. Two consecutive elections with Gerontocrats. Neither
of the two nominally different parties has a very deep roster evidenced by the poverty of options they have been putting forward.
Given his decline, I don't expect Biden to have a long presidency if he survives to officially get the nomination.
Unless ur a 100% reprehensible crack head, go vote for Dumbo J Trump.
He is awful, he is beaten, he is an Israel sellout.
But the other side will kill you.
If Biden wins, the emboldened mob will come to your home to kill you. If you call the police, they won't come and they won't
investigate your rape/torture/death. If you defend yourself, you will be arrested and prosecuted. The media will deny it is happening
and also say that you deserved it.
I have come to hate the Maoist/Jacobin scum today referred to as "The Left". I want Trump to get a second term because it will
cause my enemies to suffer.
In rural Counties (Red America) an elected Sheriff is the chief local law officer. Watch for coalitions of Counties,
within or across State lines, demanding secession or limited autonomy. The only way forward for sane Americans is to remove themselves
from Woke jurisdictions. The election won't change that. But I will vote for Orange Man anyway. Just for spite!
The real question in dire need of asking is: Do the Next 10 Presidential Elections Even Matter? And the answer remains: not
a dime's worth of difference. "We the People" will continue to witness the same electoral circus complete with its fake debates
as our elite's addiction to war will be craving its habitual fix. "We the People" are too stupefied and mired in our own addictions
to cell phones and other mind numbing gadgets while being fed a steady diet of lies by the MSM. Our awakening is too remote for
us to take back our country.
"Just by asking the question of whether the next Presidential election matters, I am obviously suggesting that it might
not. To explain my reasons for this opinion, I need to reset the upcoming election in the context of the previous one. So let's
begin here."
Would the U.S. Navy have launched a cruise missile attack against the Shayrat airbase in Syria if Trump didn't order it? Would
Gen. Solemani have been assassinated if Trump didn't order it? Of course the next presidential election "matters" if we have one,
that is.
Now that the constitution and the rule of law are defunct and all power has been de facto consolidated into the office of president,
whether we have WW3 or not (for example) depends almost exclusively on the character of the person in the White House.
"The first thing which, I believe, ought to be self-evident to all by now is that there was no secret operation by any deep
state, not even a Zionist controlled one, to put Donald Trump in power."
Seriously? So why did Comey undermine Clinton's campaign and why didn't Obama fire him for it? And why did Obama attack the
Syrian Army at Deir Ezzor in Sept. 2016, an act that greatly escalated tensions with Russia and apparently scared some Sanders
supporters into Trump's camp, giving Trump a narrow margin of victory in three key states which put him in the White House? Because
shit happens?
"I would even argue that the election of Donald Trump was the biggest slap in the face of US deep state and of the covert
transnational ruling elites this deep state serves. Ever."
I would argue that you've been fooled. If that were actually the case, they would've impeached and removed him, right? Or they
would've deployed a lone nut against him. Or he would've at least encountered some kind of meaningful political or legal opposition.
"My evidence? Simple, look what these ruling 'elites' did both before and after Trump's election: before, they ridiculed
the very idea of 'President Trump' as both utterly impossible and utterly evil."
Talk is cheap. How come they didn't seem to have a problem with his war crimes in Syria; or his moving the embassy to Jerusalem;
or his attempts to start a war with Iran; or his trade war with China; or his attempt to starve Venezuela into submission; or
his arming of Ukraine; or his withdrawal from the INF treaty; etc,?
"As somebody who has had years of experience reading the Soviet press or, in another style, the French press, I can honestly
say that I have never seen a more ridiculously outlandish hate campaign against anybody that would come even close to the kind
of total hate campaign which Trump was subjected to."
Once again, talk is cheap. Why would the "deep state" "hate" him so much? Did he investigate 9/11? Did he end any wars, or
pull out of NATO, or improve relations with Russia and/or China, or cut aid to Israel, etc.? No.
But let's say for the sake of argument that "they" really do "hate" him for some reason. So what? That doesn't mean that they
don't want him as president, right? If they really do hate him then he may be just the person they need.
@Diversity
Heretic ruits of financial empire. The Boomers are still the biggest demographic in the US. Starting in the 1980s onward,
they established portfolio systems that extracted wealth via the US's world reserve currency status.
This marks the unholy covenant made by Wall Street and middle class Boomers. The Boomers are dying off, and taking the US Empire
with it into the afterlife. The younger generation won't receive a nickel, and that's likely a good thing in the long term. But
Trump and Sanders still can't make aggressive economic reform while America is still dominated by "The United States of Boomer."
They can only pave the road for reform and future leaders to lead the charge.
I have come to hate the Maoist/Jacobin scum today referred to as "The Left". I want Trump to get a second term because it
will cause my enemies to suffer.
I agree. MORALE COUNTS. Data geeks don't understand this. Political watchers don't understand this. People who analyze the
number of tanks and guns don't understand this.
Morale wins wars. We need to defy the Left any way we can. A Trump win will be spit in their eyes. It will put some fighting spirit
into our side.
These minorities are very good at hating and destroying, but don't count on them to ever come up with constructive solutions
– it ain't gonna happen. For one thing, they are probably too stupid to come up with any constructive ideas, These folks are
all about hatred and the instant gratification of their narrow, one-topic, agenda.
I don't know about that, I think Alastair Crooke, may be closer to the mark with his conclusion.
The "toy radicals, and Champagne Bolsheviks" – in these terms of dripping disdain from Williamson – are very similar to
those who rushed into the streets in 1917. But before dismissing them so peremptorily and lightly, recall what occurred.
Into that combustible mass of youth – so acultured by their progressive parents to see a Russian past that was imperfect
and darkly stained – a Trotsky and Lenin were inserted. And Stalin ensued. No 'toy radicals'. Soft became hard totalitarianism.
I think there are some key differences here on what could take shape. If Biden wins, the Republicans can put down the Trump
saga as a regrettable mistake and go back to being the boring old Jen Bush party moaning about lowering taxes for the rich and
abortion.
However if Trump wins, the Republicans will have to acknowledge that people support Trumpism and will have to start re orientating
the party towards Trumpian Populism in future elections as they will realize that it is a permanent vote winner. Basically how
they started to change themselves into becoming an evangelical Conservative party due to Reagan where as before, it was the Democrats
who were the Conservatives.
Even if they do this though, the Republicans are still going to remain the good old American majority white party so out right
winning future elections after Trump is going to be very difficult. I think this all potentially bodes for a potential secession
crisis in the future.
However even if Trump wins, the Democrats may start to take notice and try to compete with the Republicans and start to moderate
their policies, shifting away from Identity politics and embracing the populist waves and trying to alternate with a more centrist
position. But considering all the crazy lefties in power within the party structure, this would be an incredibly difficult task,
almost Herculean to achieve.
So we could still be looking at a potential secession down the road.
But we all have to admit one thing – Donald Trump, love him or loathe him, has changed ultimately the political face of politics
for the better. Even though he actually has done very little, just the fact he got elected with his views really does go to show
the people have had enough and want changes.
Debating electoral politics at this point is for autists and morons. The globalists have won. They will be educating your children
while you work your shit job getting felt up by Africans on the way to your meaningless conference in Tempe.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Me too. I too will vote for Trump just out of spite. Saker is so ignorant about America and Americans. That's why I usually
don't read the Saker articles. The average homeless black guy is more informed about America than Saker.
the neo-liberal Dems have *already* prostituted themselves to everybody who wanted to give them something in return, from
the Ukie Nazis to the thugs of BLM, to the powerful US homo-lobby. Don't expect them to show any spine, or even less so, love
for the USA, if they get the White House. They hate this country and most of its people and they are not shy about it.
The Ukie "Nazis", BLM and homo-lobby are just tools. You make it sound like they're in charge. Please stop posting garbage
like that.
Saker – you started out by saying that it was a complete shock to the ruling elite when Trump won. I agree. You then described
how the Left (and most on the Right) have made Trump's presidency a living hell. I agree.
But then you said: "Truth be told, Trump has proven to be a fantastically incompetent President, no doubt about that. Was he
even worse than Obama? Maybe, it really all depends on your scoring system."
Obama was treated with kid gloves because he's an insider, a player. That's the only reason he ended up in the White House;
the elite sanctioned him and put him there.
But Trump is not an insider and he wasn't elite-approved. OF COURSE HE COULDN'T GET MUCH DONE! They didn't let him. They have
fought him every step of the way. After seeing what Trump has had to contend with, no outsider is ever going to attempt it again.
If Obama had gone through what Trump has gone through, his skinny little legs would have folded before his first month was
up.
One of guys on The Duran said that the politicians on the Left and Right don't care about Black Lives Matter, the statues,
history, gender wars, gay this/LGXYZ that, the culture wars. That doesn't really concern them; they'll just let the sheeple fight
it out.
What they DO care about is their corporate masters, the people they are really beholden to. As long as their masters continue
to make money and the culture wars don't disturb that, then all is well.
They just stole $6 trillion and handed it to Wall Street, hedge funds, private equity. Covid, the lock downs and the culture
wars are a great smoke screen to hide the looting going on.
"With Republicans siding with BLM, and wanting to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth
with friends like that who needs enemies?"
They do what their corporate donors tell them to do, just like the Dems. All that matters on both sides of the aisle are the
corporate campaign donors. Nothing else. Nike, for instance, wants Blacks to continue buying their shoes. If they have to get
down on one knee, so be it. The politicians follow suit.
@anon
n't be a Koch-brothers Speaker Ryan around to undermine Trump's agenda. And, the GOP needs to dump Turtle Man as their Senate
leader, and promote someone who could actually do the job, like the other Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. If those things happen,
real progress could finally be made in saving what's left of the country.
At one point there wasn't a "dime's worth of difference" between the two parties, but, as the D's have gone further and further
White Man-hating crazy Left, that is no longer true today. The election of Biden will guarantee a radical left-wing minority female
sitting in the White House (how much longer will that name last?) within six months.
@ploni almoni
Trump is a mentally and morally defective total moron who's completely unfit for the office he holds. Knowing this, the "deep
state" put him there for one reason and one reason only: because they felt he could be manipulated into taking risks above and
beyond those which their dime-a-dozen political opportunists would take – in the pursuit of their stalled imperial agenda.
As I see it, the following linked statement by the "World Mental Health Coalition" (particularly paragraphs two and five) fully
explains the Trump "presidency."
@mark tapley
roximation of where I'm going with all this).
And as has been attributed to Sinclair Lewis, HL Mencken and several others:
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross."
3. And that's when the first large economically-sustainable states e.g., California or Texas or New York or Pennsylvania or
Georgia will seek to break out of the Union – and take their smaller neighboring states with them in blocs.
4. And in a futile attempt to prevent a dissolution of the Union from happening, Federal troops will be brought in – and that's
when the first shots of the next civil war will be fired.
Twain nailed at the turn of the century, "If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it." Mark Twain
Who's Afraid of an Open Debate? The Truth About the Commission on Presidential Debates
The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private corporation headed by the former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic
parties. The CPD is a duopoly which allows the major party candidates to draft secret agreements.
"The fact is that for the past four years the US liberals have waged a total informational war against Trump "
No, not a "total informational war against Trump" but a conspicuously partial informational war against Trump.
They have no problem with his various war crimes and endless provocations against Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela. They have
no problem with his withdrawing from the INF treaty and starting an arms race that puts the whole world in great danger. They
choose to focus on his failure to wear a mask in public, for example, while ignoring that he's brought the world to the brink
of WW3. And this should be an important clue as to what's going on here yet it somehow escapes "The Saker" just like it apparently
escapes other pundits e.g. Paul Craig Roberts.
" and it would be absolutely unthinkable for them to ever accept a Trump re-election, even if he wins by a landslide."
If it is so "absolutely unthinkable" then why don't they run somebody against him who's not showing signs of senile dementia,
for example?
In any case it seems Trump's handlers and enablers realize that he will likely not be reelected no matter who they run against
him, so they're pulling out all the stops to get some kind of a major war started before the end of his term. In desperation they
installed him in the White House and in desperation they now seek to force a major war before we go back to government by opportunistic-career-politician-puppet-rulers.
Are there any Republican Senators beside Lankford (OK) and Johnson (WIS), who are supporting this travesty? After Tucker Carlson
skewered them the other night, I wonder how many more will be dumb enough to back it? Don't buck the Tuck if you don't want to
be flooded with calls and emails from constituents who hate you.
@Harold
Smith . President Donald Trump, as a direct response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack that occurred on 4 April."
You and everyone knows that there was no "chemical attack," and that Shayrat was empty. The US "missile response" was, on the
one hand, an attempt to "save face" having been outmaneuvered and lost the Isis gambit, and on the other to test Russian missile
defenses for technical purposes, for the upcoming war. In all these cases Trump has to "take responsibility" or admit that all
he controls is what is served for lunch.
Make believe is all fine and good, but you people are the forces of darkness kidding yourselves and the rest of us into oblivion.
@RP1
ump), and the fact that international treaties and agreements to which the United States is a party, demonstrably no longer mean
anything.
And for the icing on the cake (i.e. the consummation of the degenerative process which began before Trump) the fake president
was charged with "abuse of power" and "obstruction of congress" – in a fake impeachment trial – and was acquitted, thus proving
to the rest of the world (if anymore proof was necessary) that the concepts of "separation of powers"/"checks and balances"/"rule
of law" have been replaced by the concept of rule by the psychotic impulses of an unaccountable, politically omnipotent psychopath.
@4 Pete
Saker with economics. Ann Coulters spruiking for Trump was about immigration not economics.
Whether Trump failed on immigration because of a lack of will or a lack of backup by the republican side of The Party is irrelevant.
It just means voting is pointless either way.
It's hard to see much enthusiasm being manufactured on either side of the manufacturerd political divide this election. Biden
is an incoherent clown and Trump is a known quantity now unable to claim future greatness like he did in 2016.
The best vote in 2020 is staying home or going to a gun store and stocking up on election day. Voting just encourages more
bs from the political class.
Elections rarely matter, but this one actually could make a difference. Replacing Trump puppet with Biden puppet won't change
Federal actions, because Federal actions NEVER change. But the replacement WILL change the media. As soon as Biden puppet is in
office, the media will IMMEDIATELY stop creating panic and fear, and the lockdowns and masks will subside if not quite disappear.
It's worth campaigning and voting for Biden.
@ploni almoni
CIA establishment, which is run by Israel, carried out the murder of Soleimani and Trump was told about it after the fact, and
was told 'you own it.'"
For the Nth time: In that case why didn't "the CIA establishment run by Israel" assassinate Soleimani when Obama was president?
Why didn't the embassy get moved to Jerusalem or Syrian land be given to Israel or the INF treaty be repudiated or Venezuela be starved
or self-destructive trade war with China be started, etc.,when Obama was president?
Your "reasoning" has been thoroughly debunked ad nauseum; give it up. (I will likely not waste any more time arguing absurdities
with you). Chris Cosmos
, says: July
3, 2020 at 3:21 pm GMT
Great analysis as usual. However, let me point out some problems with what you've written. First, Americans do love wars but
they don't care about winning. The US military corrupt and incompetent as it is the most popular by a mile of any us institution.
Americans love the military as an idea. That idea is that it represents, theoretically and mythically, the ultimate struggle between
"good guys" and "bad guys" which fully mature military officers use to represent "them" and us. Since military conflicts are out
of sight and out of mind and the mainstream media lies so blatantly and the collective memory is no longer than a few months it
is possible that no matter how obvious the defeat or obvious the corruption to you an me who follow events the vast majority of
Americans only see movies of the glory of the US military and covert operatives and quickly forget war-crimes/massive violations
of the Geneva Conventions on War, defeat, and so on in favor of the fantasy/myth represented in commercials for military recruitment.
Second, the idea that so-called minorities represented by BLM and so on can or will have power in Washington is absurd. These
groups are used and have been used by the corporate oligarchs as a way to divide the working and middle classes–making grand gestures
of "solidarity" with BLM (always a corporate oriented group) means nothing. The grand movement of wealth from the working and
middle classes towards the 0.001% will continue inexorably as it has since the late 70s whether the RP or the DP is in power.
As far as the oligarchs are concerned manipulating popular culture through mind-control techniques (using the smartest human on
Earth) will keep their people in power. Trump was a slight interruption
Trump himself was boxed in a corner very quickly by the purge of Flynn and his refusal to vet staff. He had no choice but to
blunder from one thing to another with ALL of Washington and Hollywood solidly against him. The positives that he brought, however,
to the his Presidency was that he showed in high relief the nature of the Deep State–even the term was largely forbidden (I was
kicked out of a liberal/progressive blog, in part, for using the term "Deep State"). We saw through the Russiagate fiasco the
reality that the US mainstream media is primarily kind of Ministry of Truth not an "objective" institution that sought truth.
Like the American love for the military, most Americans will go along with the media Narrative because all societies need narratives,
myths, and commons frames of reference–so even if most people see (with their lying eyes) the reality of the propaganda organs,
they'll still "believe". Trump, as you said blustered and bloviated on going to war but never really did–he was the dove in the
administration–he hired people like Pompeo and Bolton in order to keep from being eaten by the Deep State. Trump had to spend
all his time in office out-foxing the operatives within his administration from destroying or even killing him. The Deep State
does not play nice.
Trump has absolutely no chance of winning in November. People in this country are just tired of conflict and are ready to give
the Deep State all the power it wants as long as they can rule. It is likely that the Senate will turn blue and we will have one
party rule. The Republican demographic is, at present, neither large nor enthusiastic enough to be of much help. As for the coalition
of minorities, they have no chance to go beyond the ghettos and if they come around here trying to burn anything down they will
be met by a lot of veterans who are armed to the teeth–so I don't see much cultural change outside the coasts and large urban
areas. Meanwhile Covid will continue to disrupt life, drug ODs will increase, access to health-care will be reduced, and we are
headed for a very new dispensation that may involve a dissolution of the country.
While I agree with the author's conclusions I disagree that " most Americans still like wars."
No. I think that we hate them, hate to send our children to die/be ripped apart for a bunch of old scumbags who are in the
pockets of the Defense Industry, hate to see us reviled by the World, hate to see our Blood & Treasure spent on people who despise
us and hate to pay for it all.
Sadly, the author's conclusions are spot-on. There is no remedying this disaster; we are in our final days as a coherent Nation.
This is "Operation Enduring Clusterfuck" writ large. As the acronym goes, "TINVOWOOT."
The best that I can see is Balkanization–with or without preliminary/local & regional shooting–with division along racial lines.
Give blacks the cities that they inhabit now in great numbers, give them a region (with ocean access) and have people move to
"Red" and "Blue" states according to their race/safety/beliefs. Trade–or war–will follow as a natural consequence.
But, Blacks need to know that when THEY riot their cities burn; when Whites riot entire CONTINENTS burn.
I voted for Trump. I was conned. Trump was selected by the .001% as the most effective figurehead to preside over the destruction
of America.
Do you really believe the most wealthy and powerful people in the world would leave the choice of a major leader up to the
unwashed masses? They manipulate everything, absolutely everything.
If voting could actually negatively impact their power and wealth, they would never allow it.
The .001% are just Jeffrey Dahmer cannibals in expensive clothing, and YOU are on the menu.
Trump got elected for two main issues he pledged during his 2016 campaign: ending all foreign wars and greatly reducing immigration.
On ending foreign wars and bringing home the troops, he's failed. Since he took office he's been dialing up the heat to the
verge of war with Iran, NK, China, Russia, Venezuela, and we still have troops everywhere incl. in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile all the trade war jabs with China is just Kabuki theater. The intention is not to bring back manufacturing as he claimed
but to blackmail the CCP into handing over control of China's banks to the globalist bankers. His overt pandering to Israel at
every turn is nauseating. I suspect Mossad has him by the balls when they seized all records from his Jewish attorney.
On immigration, again nothing like what he promised. He has drastically reduced asylum seeking, but illegal immigration reached
a record under his watch until he thankfully won an important quick deportation law against those who failed asylum app. His border
wall is still largely not visible. After four long years, he is finally doing something about legal immigration, but his temporary
suspension of H1b visas and green cards until the end of the year may be too little too late to save him, and he still hasn't
done anything to suspend OPT and EB5. I fear this is all just for show. Immediately after he gets reelected, he will feel all
generous and remove all those restrictions.
But the alternative is unthinkable. Biden will immediately resume all ME wars as directed by Israel. He is as compromised as
Trump, Mossad already has him by the balls with his bribery scandals in Ukraine and China through his son. Zionists/deep state
like to have dirty politicians elected, the dirtier the better, as the easier it is for them to be blackmailed.
The question is will his followers feel enthusiastic enough to come out and vote?
Trump's election has proved one thing. His election must have come as a surprise even to him, and he was unprepared with a
list of candidates for the various posts he had to fill to carry out his wishes. He was dependent on others who were not well
disposed towards him.
Even though Foreign Policy supposedly the President's prerogative, in this case his hands were tied behind his back, such that
even low level functionaries were opposing his policies quite openly. The military were running rings around him when he wanted
to reduce military presence in the Occupied countries. In fact he was coerced into bombing some facilities in those countries
based on fake incidents. What Trump had promised his electorate, he could not deliver. He is a failure. The Blob defeated him
at every turn. In fact by appointing the likes of Pompeo he became even less powerful, if that is possible.
If he gets elected a second time somehow, he will not be able to deliver on his promises unless he destroys the Blob completely
Ralph Nader said something that opened my eyes to the true nature of national elections in 2000. The Democrips started that
day's whole "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" nonsense, and a reporter asked him about it. He said "The Republicans have nominated
that worst candidate for US President in history, he's bad on every level. If Al Gore can't run a run a decent enough campaign
to defeat him, what good is he?"
I stopped voting for anything above state representitive in 2012 and will not vote in hat will be either our ultimate or penultimate
presidential election this year.
He will cause the whole world to dump the US Dollar as a reserve currency, because he acts like a bully who ignores his blatant
weakpoints. At that moment, the USA will just become a bankrupt state and will lose its special status: the US power is based
mainly on that.
He will not reverse the tax policies that he implemented HIMSELF He is a zionist elite agent and he will stay like that
You are dreaming too much. How could he do, during his second term, the exact opposite of what he did in the first? It is a
total nonsense
the real power behind him will be in the hands of the Schumer-Pelosi-Obama gang and of the interests these folks represent.
Precisely. Biden will be a ceremonial head of state, much as the president of the USSR was. There are a lot of people saying
that Biden's VP will be the de facto president, but I'm not so sure. I think Pelosi – Schumer – Obama will form the ruling junta,
which is fitting inasmuch as they've been trying really hard to turn the USA into a corrupt banana republic.
He will cause the whole world to dump the US Dollar as a reserve currency, because he acts like a bully who ignores his blatant
weakpoints. At that moment, the USA will just become a bankrupt state and will lose its special status: the US power is based
mainly on that.
He will not reverse the tax policies that he implemented HIMSELF He is a zionist elite agent and he will stay like that
You are dreaming too much. How could he do, during his second term, the exact opposite of what he did in the first? It is a total
nonsense
@Anonymous
y demanding that Russia give back Crimea, for example, something that everyone knew Russia could not do?
"That was a no go w the Establishment and they have engaged in a relentless campaign against him."
Let's see, he's betrayed his supporters on many issues; his health is obviously deteriorating; as you point out he's an "incompetent
narcissist"; there's a "relentless campaign against him" according to you; and polls show him trailing Biden in several key states;
so why is he running for reelection? If LBJ can retire after one term why can't Trump?
@Harold
Smith ls go back before WW1 to Samual Bush who was brought onto the Jew run War Industries Board (what a great racket that
was) by Percy Rockefeller during the puppet actor and syphilitic W. Wilson's catatonic lay about under Col. House (Rothschilds
employee) and Bernard Baruch administration. The Zionists control both phony parties and just use the Jew run MSM to put on a
show. Many commentators such as Patagonia Man believe it is too late but I still maintain the remote possibility that enough people
will wake up to put some decent rep. in the House. Forget about the Presidential baboons.
3. I have outlined, not only the breakup of the US into several geopolitical units (and quite possibly, but hopefully not,
another civil war) but the megaregions in which North America is heading, within say, the next 150 – 250 years.
Just because I believe all of the above doesn't mean I can't observe and comment on the theater that passes for US politics.
Needless to say, I won't be voting in November.
Finally, there's a great saying attributed to Einstein:
"The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result"
@mark tapley
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent
impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not
for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. " https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1537592714001595
You can tell the Saker doesn't live in America, since he believes Americans love war. This has never been true and it is safe
to assume Americans are really sick of American Imperialism in general right now.
War and warmongering do not enjoy any significant support in any major political block in the USA right now. Only the Oligarchs,
NWO, Plutocrats and Neocons are for wars and they are not even collectively close to being a plurality.
"... The cash must be Russian sourced , per the NYT, because a couple of low level Taliban types, who were likely tortured by the Afghan police, have said that it is so. ..."
There is particular danger at the moment that powerful political alignments in the United
States are pushing strongly to exacerbate the developing crisis with Russia. The New York
Times, which broke the story that the Kremlin had been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties to
kill American soldiers, has been particularly assiduous in promoting the tale of perfidious
Moscow. Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both
intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by
delusional nonsense from former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks "Why
does Trump put Russia first?" before calling for a "swift and significant U.S. response." Rice,
who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice President, certainly knows about
swift and significant as she was one of the architects of the destruction of Libya and the
escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations directed against a non-threatening
Syria.
The Times is also titillating
with the tale of a low level drug smuggling Pashto businessman who seemed to have a lot of
cash in dollars lying around, ignoring the fact that Afghanistan is awash with dollars and has
been for years. Many of the dollars come from drug deals, as Afghanistan is now the world's
number one producer of opium and its byproducts.
The cash must be
Russian sourced , per the NYT, because a couple of low level Taliban types, who were likely
tortured by the Afghan police, have said that it is so. The Times also cites anonymous
sources which allege that there were money transfers from an account managed by the Kremlin's
GRU military intelligence to an account opened by the Taliban. Note the "alleged" and consider
for a minute that it would be stupid for any intelligence agency to make bank-to-bank
transfers, which could be identified and tracked by the clever lads at the U.S. Treasury and
NSA. Also try to recall how not so long ago we heard fabricated tales about threatening WMDs to
justify war. Perhaps the story would be more convincing if a chain of custody could be
established that included checks drawn on the Moscow-Narodny Bank and there just might be a
crafty neocon hidden somewhere in the U.S. intelligence community who is right now faking up
that sort of evidence.
Other reliably Democratic Party leaning news outlets, to include CNN, MSNBC and The
Washington Post all jumped on the bounty story, adding details from their presumably
inexhaustible supply of anonymous sources. As Scott Horton
observed the media was reporting a "fact" that there was a rumor.
Inevitably the Democratic Party leadership abandoned its Ghanaian kente cloth scarves, got
up off their knees, and hopped immediately on to their favorite horse, which is to claim loudly
and in unison that when in doubt Russia did it. Joe Biden in particular is "disgusted" by a
"betrayal" of American troops due to Trump's insistence on maintaining "an embarrassing
campaign of deferring and debasing himself before Putin."
The Dems were joined in their outrage by some Republican lawmakers who were equally incensed
but are
advocating delaying punishing Russia until all the facts are known. Meanwhile, the
"circumstantial details" are being invented to make the original tale more credible, including
crediting the Afghan operation to a secret Russian GRU Army intelligence unit that allegedly
was also behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury England in 2018.
Reportedly the Pentagon is looking into the circumstances
around the deaths of three American soldiers by roadside bomb on April 8, 2019 to determine
a possible connection to the NYT report. There are also concerns relating to several deaths in
training where Afghan Army recruits turned on their instructors. As the Taliban would hardly
need an incentive to kill Americans and as
only seventeen U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan in 2019 as a result of hostile action, the
year that the intelligence allegedly relates to, one might well describe any joint
Taliban-Russian initiative as a bit of a failure since nearly all of those deaths have been
attributed to kinetic activity initiated by U.S. forces.
The actual game that is in play is, of course, all about Donald Trump and the November
election. It is being claimed that the president was briefed on the intelligence but did
nothing. Trump denied being verbally briefed due to the fact that the information had not been
verified. For once America's Chief Executive spoke the truth, confirmed by the "intelligence
community," but that did not stop the media from implying that the disconnect had been caused
by Trump himself. He reportedly does not read the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), where such a
speculative piece might indeed appear on a back page, and is uninterested in intelligence
assessments that contradict what he chooses to believe. The Democrats are suggesting that Trump
is too stupid and even too disinterested to be president of the United States so they are
seeking to replace him with a corrupt 78-year-old man who may be suffering from dementia.
The Democratic Party cannot let Russia go because they see it as their key to future success
and also as an explanation for their dramatic failure in 2016 which in no way holds them
responsible for their ineptness. One does not expect the House Intelligence Committee,
currently headed by the wily Adam Schiff, to actually know anything about intelligence and how
it is collected and analyzed, but the politicization of the product is certainly something that
Schiff and his colleagues know full well how to manipulate. One only has to recall the
Russiagate Mueller Commission investigation and Schiff's later role in cooking the witnesses
that were produced in the subsequent Trump impeachment hearings.
Schiff predictably
opened up on Trump in the wake of the NYT report, saying "I find it inexplicable in light
of these very public allegations that the president hasn't come before the country and assured
the American people that he will get to the bottom of whether Russia is putting bounties on
American troops and that he will do everything in his power to make sure that we protect
American troops."
Schiff and company should know, but clearly do not, that at the ground floor level there is
a lot of lying, cheating and stealing around intelligence collection. Most foreign agents do it
for the money and quickly learn that embroidering the information that is being provided to
their case officer might ultimately produce more cash. Every day the U.S. intelligence
community produces thousands of intelligence reports from those presumed "sources with access,"
which then have to be assessed by analysts. Much of the information reported is either
completely false or cleverly fabricated to mix actual verified intelligence with speculation
and out and out lies to make the package more attractive. The tale of the Russian payment of
bribes to the Taliban for killing Americans is precisely the kind of information that stinks to
high heaven because it doesn't even make any political or tactical sense, except to Nancy
Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and the New York Times. For what it's worth, a number of
former genuine intelligence officers including
Paul Pillar, John Kiriakou , Scott Ritter , and
Ray McGovern
have looked at the evidence so far presented and have walked away unimpressed. The National
Security Agency (NSA) has also declined to confirm the story, meaning that there is no
electronic trail to validate it.
Finally, there is more than a bit of the old hypocrisy at work in the damnation of the
Russians even if they have actually been involved in an improbable operation with the Taliban.
One recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s the United States supported the mujahideen rebels
fighting against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The assistance consisted of weapons,
training, political support and intelligence used to locate, target and kill Soviet soldiers.
Stinger missiles were provided to bring down helicopters carrying the Russian troops. The
support was pretty much provided openly and was even boasted about, unlike what is currently
being alleged about the Russian assistance. The Soviets were fighting to maintain a secular
regime that was closely allied to Moscow while the mujahideen later morphed into al-Qaeda and
the Islamist militant Taliban subsequently took over the country, meaning that the U.S. effort
was delusional from the start.
So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on American
soldiers intended to accomplish? It is probably intended to keep a "defensive" U.S. presence in
Afghanistan, much desired by the neocons, a majority in Congress and the Military Industrial
Complex (MIC), and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump. The end result could be to secure the election of a pliable
Establishment flunky Joe Biden as president of the United States. How that will turn out is
unpredictable, but America's experience of its presidents since 9/11 has not been very
encouraging.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website ishttps://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]
.
The Deep State vermin who pulled-off the violent, proxy overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014,
and who are also behind the Arab Spring, Syrian Rebels, ISIS, and the ongoing domestic unrest
Stateside, are the descendants of the vermin who overthrew Christian Russia in 1917 using the
same modus operandi of color revolution and “peaceful protests.”. Putin undid all
their hard work in Russia and kicked them out and seized their ill gotten gains: this,
coupled with their congenital hatred of Russia, is the reason for the non-stop, bipartisan
refrain of “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
It is probably intended to keep a “defensive” U.S. presence in Afghanistan,
much desired by the neocons, a majority in Congress and the Military Industrial Complex
(MIC), and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump.
There are other reasons for wishing to stay in Afghanistan. Generals don’t like
losing wars. It is personally humiliating to retreat. The whole country is also worn down by
lost wars and the psychological blow lasts for over 10 years like during the post-Vietnam
era. Keeping 10,000 troops in Afghanistan permanently won’t win the war but it will
prevent a defeat and potentially humiliating last minute evacuation when the Taliban retake
Kabul.
Also Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan: “Al-Qaeda has 400 to 600 operatives
active in 12 Afghan provinces and is running training camps in the east of the country,
according to the report released Friday. U.N. experts, drawing their research from interviews
with U.N. member states, including their intelligence and security services, plus think tanks
and regional officials, say the Taliban has played a double game with the Trump
Administration, consulting with al-Qaeda senior leaders throughout its 16 months of peace
talks with U.S. officials and reassuring Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, among others, that
the Taliban would “honour their historical ties” to the terrorist group.”
https://time.com/5844865/afghanistan-peace-deal-taliban-al-qaeda/
While the melodrama about trump=pro Russia and dems=anti Russia makes good political
theater to keep folks running in circles chasing their tails, this is not the main reason for
the continuous attacks on Russia by organs of the zpc/nwo. The main reason is Russia is not
owned by them. Not a colony. The main reason for the psywar is not about trump vs dems, it is
about keeping the Russia=bad guys theme seeded in the propaganda. That was the main reason
behind “Russiagate”, as well. And as with that scam, both “sides”
knowingly played their part hyping the theater to keep that Russia=bad guy propaganda theme
in the mind of americans.
I can’t imagine that any intelligent person believes this bullshit about Russia. I
completely tune it out the same way I tuned out any news about “CHAZ.”
“So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on
American soldiers intended to accomplish? It is probably intended to keep a
“defensive” U.S. presence in Afghanistan, much desired by the neocons, a
majority in Congress and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), and it will further be
played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated incompetence of Donald Trump.”
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the story is true. So what? I don’t
see how it can be used as justification to double down on a pointless war. (Reasonable people
might see it as another reason to get out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later).
Moreover, I don’t think they’d have to create such drama to get Trump the
imperialist to keep the troops in Afghanistan (if he actually had any intention to withdraw
them in the first place).
This propaganda effort reminds me of the Skripal affair. Perhaps Trump’s handlers
and enablers realize that he’ll lose the election (if we have one) so they’re
trying to manipulate him into escalating tensions with Russia (just as they are with China,
Iran and Venezuela).
The Americans were always very proud and upfront about how they organized, trained,
equipped and financed the Taliban to oust the Russians from Afghanistan. In view of this, why
do they act so surprised should the Russians do something similar on a much smaller
scale?
Obviously, the whole story was concocted in Washington, but so what?
Anyone with half a brain should know that the Americans are in Afghanistan because the
Americans control the world trade in narcotics. Columbia is the cocaine end of the
business.
I do wish some smart chemists would synthesize heroin and cocaine in a laboratory and put
the CIA out of business.
“and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump”
The demonization of a democratically-elected President by the zionist-owned New York
Times , Washington Post and CNN is somewaht reminiscent of the demonization of a
certain Austrian in the Western media after the 1933 World Jewry’s declaration of war
on Nazi Germany.
“He who controls the narrative controls the consciousness”
With Wolf Blitz’s, Bolton’s, and this week’s release of Trump’s
relative’s book discrediting his mental health. How many books is that now???
But, times have moved on. Trump can ride this wave by learning the dark art of playing
the victim using the mantra ‘look how hard I’m trying’ and appealing to
US voters as their ‘law and order’ president.
Geopolitically speaking, if the US Zio-cons were smart, rather than suffering from
‘Groupthink’, they would be trying to entice Russia away from its partner, China,
and draw Russia into playing a greater role in Europe. Recall that Putin had asked if Russia
could join NATO.
But, alas, they’re still making the same mistake they did in 1991 after the collapse
of Central Industrialism in the former USSR.
The Mujahudeen morphing into Al Qaeda is a new one on me that I have never heard before. I
had read and heard countless times that it was Al Qaeda all along in Afghanistan that the
U.S. assisted to fight against the USSR. It does not make sense either, since the MEK (
Mujahudeen ) is a twisted Shiite cult Iranian, and Al Qaeda is Arabic and twisted Sunni cult.
So, the language and religious differences do not make any sense that one became the
other.
I guess that it makes perfect sense to say anything at all, regardless of the facts, to
the Terrible Trio in the DNC, just to keep the focus on themselves, rather than on Biden.
Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both
intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by delusional nonsense from
former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks “Why does Trump put
Russia first?” before calling for a “swift and significant U.S.
response.” Rice, who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice
President, certainly knows about swift and significant as she was one of the architects of
the destruction of Libya and the escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations
directed against a non-threatening Syria.
The pathetic Rice has plenty of company. During a 7/5 CNN puff segment with Dana Bash,
Tammy Duckworth (another potential Biden VP), out of the blue said that the Russians put out
a bounty on US forces. Of course, Bash didn’t challenge Duckworth.
Downplayed in all of this is the fact that Russia was one of the first, if not the first
nation, to console the US on 9/11, followed by Russian assistance to the US military
operation in Afghanistan.
“…the kind of information that stinks to high heaven because it doesn’t
even make any political or tactical sense, except to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff
and the New York Times.”
Pelosi is the proud daughter of a shabbos goy father; Schumer is “shomer” or
professed guardian of Israel; Schiff is the decendent of the Internationale Banker who
supported Trotsky’s take down of the Czar; the NYT is what happens when Hebrews learn
to write English. The Jews have been trying to rule Russia for almost 200 years as
Solzhenitsyn would have told us if he could have gotten a publisher in the Jewish American
publishing industry. If Stalin hadn’t thrown the Bolshevik Jews out, there might not
have been a cold war. Watch out Gentiles. These people have taken us into 3 wars for their
interests and they NEVER change.
And, of course, the “conservative” maggots are going along with the obvious
liberal lies once again. There has never been a group of more cowardly and worthless
individuals than American “conservatives”.
Russia
The hope of the world.
Edgar Cayce
Famous US psychic.
As the USA continues its path into a political, moral and military cesspit of pure
corruption, lies, violence, mass murder and sheer evil, it is increasingly difficult to argue
with Cayce.
He was certainly on to something, and that something was like, 80 years ago.
One can even put more belief and trust in a psychic these days – than anything being
claimed or reported by the USA alphabets, government or MSM
Sickening and frightening really.
There are other reasons for wishing to stay in Afghanistan. Generals don’t like
losing wars
You would have thought by now the American Generals would have got used to ‘losing
wars’.
They haven’t won one other than Grenada in living memory.
The Russians even had to win WW2 for them….
Russia and China would eat them alive today.
So we are now down to sheer bullying, bluster and illegal economic sabotage.
Venezuela springs to mind.
Yes, but they also hate Putin for liberating Russia from its rapacious oligarchs, nearly
all of whom were Jews. The present artificially created hatred for Russia in the US is in
reality the hatred of the frustrated Jewish Mafia.
“I can’t imagine that any intelligent person believes this bullshit about
Russia”
Lenny is clapping his hands excitedly.
“Oy believe it, George ! I do – I do – I do !”
George grunts, clears his throat & spits with some force & accuracy at a scrunched up
copy of the NYT.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that the story is true.”
For amusement’s sake, lets wonder what would happen should the Russians offer a bounty
to US & allied troops to kill each other . A kind of cash incentive to bring back
the final years of the Vietnam war.
It sure will be entertaining to watch Joe Biden try to cope with the duties of the
presidency. He makes the fictional President Camacho from the movie “Idiocracy”
look like a statesman with the intellectual skills of a Teddy Roosevelt by comparison. I can
picture his inaugural address in my head, as he inevitably loses his place on the
teleprompter and starts babbling about pony soldiers and you know, the thing. After a grope
fest at his inaugural ball, instead of the Oval Office he will immediately be consigned to
the White House basement for the duration of his term. If you thought an inarticulate
President Donnie made for good reality TV, just wait till a totally incoherent President Joe
has the whole world rollicking with laughter. Plus, Republicans get their turn to amuse with
grid lock of the Congress and the discharge of mass quantities of bog sediment at the
administration every single day for four solid years. It’s a win for comedy no matter
which candidate is elected!
Ann, you’ve got the quote wrong. Here is what he actually wrote:
“So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian
bounties”
I’m going to assume you didn’t mean “forks” but actually
“faux”.
Using “faux” is here is not incorrect. Giraldi could have meant the NYT article
was “not real, but made to look or seem real” — which goes considerably
further than “false”.
However, that does not necessarily mean that other users of “faux” are not
indulging themselves in a “silly fashion”.
@Emily
to consecrate Russia to the heart of Mother Mary – which still hasn’t fully been
fulfilled, btw – is another indication of Russia’s leadership in a community of a
shared future for humanity, aka Community of Common Destiny (CCD), as advocated by the
Russian President’s ‘double-helix’ partner, China’s President Xi
Jinping.
Compare and contrast that with, then President, Obama’s words to Putin: “The
United States has exclusive rights to anywhere in the world.”
@Alfred
family bankruptcy when every pharmacist knows they re-branded and off-shored their loot
several years ago. Their fine was pocket lint to them.
But that fake allowed the corporate-government axis to make ALL serious painkillers
effectively illegal, including the ones being used safely before Purdue Pharma came
along.
Narcotics are safe when used properly, but where’s the CIA’s take there? So
they killed their competitors and made your family doctor an agent. And sell lots of dope.
Because the nation the CIA protects is in terminal debt, agencies need hard cash from
somewhere .
That’s why the democrats and the left fight to keep the southern border open ,the
hordes of third world peasants are just a “bonus”……look at who the
drugs are destroying i.e. the target
The Democrats have predictably been outdone by the anti-Trump Republicans in this matter.
You can’t sink any lower in Russia-baiting than the Lincoln project’s recent
release, “Fellow Traveler”. Beyond stupid and revolting. Gives you a clue of
their very low opinion of the American voter
There is a dangerous illusion – characterized in part by demonizing rivals –
and that is the developing crisis is merely a re-run of the Cold War. After the Napoleonic
wars the Congress system was established to maintain peace in Europe. It worked reasonably
well, interrupted significantly by the Crimean war, but finally buried with the outbreak of
WWI in 1914; it did not prevent that cataclysmic conflict. Then came the League of Nations
for a short time; it did not stop WWII. The United Nations and other post-war institutions
were established in the 1940s. Now we are in the approaches to WWIII. But very few see. The
apocalyptic conflict feared during the Cold War is nearing. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Russia Hoax 2 is supposed to keep our minds off the Uniparty’s anarcho-tyranny, but
it’s awfully hard to fear Putin with orcs and shitlibs running amok wrecking statues of
racist elks.
@Robert
Dolan olostomy Bag, or were able to steal it on election night, Trump would be spending
the rest of his life in prison right now.
And Russia would have acquiesced to, though more likely quietly assisted, the frame-up.
What we don’t know at this point is what generational geopolitical payoff Russia was
promised by Brennan in March 2016, for its participation. My suspicion is that Nord Stream II
was merely a down payment.
I don’t envy Barr or Durham. How do they resolve this greatest political scandal in
American history when at the center of it you have a former CIA Director who is a Russian
mole.
If you review the New York Times editorial page and its oped pieces you will see more half
of the content each day is anti Trump. The Times has also played up the civil rights aspect
of the BLM movement while playing down the hooliganism of Antifa and the looting by Blacks
which has accompanied it. Many neighborhoods in Manhattan were trashed and looted far beyond
what The Times reported. So promoting the “Russian Bounty” lie doesn’t
surprise me at all. Remember also Times employees went absolutely crazy when the paper
printed an oped by Sen. Tom Cotton. What a bunch of lying flakes and chicken shits.
@tyrone
of more and more of the total of products and services produced in the US economy every year
(GDP) goes to capital, i.e., the holders of wealth, rather than workers, which in turn
creates a drag on further GDP – so eventually it becomes self defeating.
Think: Vicious Cycle of Poverty, as opposed to Virtuous Cycle of Prosperity.
But that explains why neither the Dems / Repubs are determined to do anything about the
1,000,000+ illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexican border every year.
As said many times by many others: ‘The US has one political party – the
business party, with 2 wings.’
The Soviets actually had to stop the Wehrmacht cold (very cold, indeed) and be ready to
start rolling it back before the USA even dared to join the war.
US Ziocons movement is a family affair. They’re into the second and third
generation, who are still following their daddy’s’ or grandpa’s playbook.
Original ideas are hard to come by with this lot.
The Democrats are suggesting that Trump is too stupid and even too disinterested to be
president of the United States so they are seeking to replace him with a corrupt
78-year-old man who may be suffering from dementia.
Good one but what do you mean may be suffering ? (Grin)
Not only replace Trump with Biden but with all the radicals now infesting theDemo’krat
party and manipulating demented, sleepy Joe.
These are all made up stories. By the time one fake story is laboriously dismantled
another one is made up. It’s always a game of playing catch-up. Russia makes a good
boogyman and has served well in that role for three generations now so it’s a tested
formula. It’s a dangerous game since all these idiots could sleepwalk us into an armed
clash with Russia somewhere. Then of course there’ll plenty of problems but perhaps
there’s a calculation that something like that could benefit this band of war
inciters.
I know old liberals have ate up all things Russia, Russia, Russia. Have the POBs (people
of brown)? Have all those post ’67 immigrants? They all vote democrats, and are now the
future demographic of America. Its their kids that have to wanna die for the war machine now.
Has the Yiddish propaganda sheet worked its magic on them? The 1619 Project sure did. My
humble guess is no, despite their voting. Most just want money.
Folks, it is time to get your love ones to stop enlisting and re-enlisting in the US
military. It is the only boycott we can do that will actually hurt.
For what it’s worth, Pillar got shitcanned and rusticated by Cofer Black, Kiriakou
got locked up, Ritter got framed as a pedo, and McGovern got the shit beat out of him by my
DoS goons. So shut the fuck up a little, OK?
So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on American
soldiers intended to accomplish?
To sound like a broken record again , the CABAL hates Russia and specifically Putin
because he re-established Christian Orthodoxy as the de facto state religion of Mother
Russia. They would get The USA into a hot war with Russia if it meant hurting Putin, never
mind what it would do to us. Their hatred is so strong that they could care less what it
would do to America, the snakes that they are.
All Russians would have to do to exploit the current unrest in America would be to knock
out a social media platform or two, or perhaps to leak dirt on the people ginning up war.
Those targets are absolutely hated by the American people outside the Imperial City.
@Zarathustra
and historically illiterate pseudo-intellectual BS about 1619 and Evil America that, because
its evil, should change the names of the military bases where those soldiers trained under
the impression they were going to defend their country!
The Hostile Elite is a rabid dog so totally out of control it needs to be put down
immediately.
Whatever happens, no one should ever take the moral condemnation of psychopaths
seriously.
Battered Wife Syndrome?
I give you Battered Nation Syndrome.
Time to prove to the world it’s possible to recover from it and move into a larger
freedom.
@No
Friend Of The Devil not called al-
Qaeda at this stage but some other name. Apparently the name al-Qaeda was first used by the
FBI to reference this group due to some sort of misunderstanding, but it eventually became
the name they adopted for themselves since that was what everybody was calling them anyway
when they became famous after further adventures.
The above should be taken with a grain of salt since this is only what I have been able to
glean from reading various articles. Presumably what is called al-Qaeda today are the
descendants or associates of personnel from this particular group as opposed to other groups,
but I don’t know.
When Russia was controlled by Marxists, Leftists and Liberals loved Russia, defended
Russia, excused Russia, promoted Russia. Now that Russia has survived Marxist totalitarianism
and begun rediscovering Russian cultural heritage, which features Christianity, Leftists and
Liberals HATE Russia.
Who coulda thunk it possible?
More important is that our Neocons and our old guard Yank ‘conservatives’
– who control foreign policy for both Republicans and Democrats – in the military
and the spy game see Russia today exactly as the Leftists and Liberals see Russia.
Both the Neocons and the Yank WASP Country Club types in the so-called
‘conservative’ arena agree with Leftists and Liberals about Russia.
There’s plenty of meaning there for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.
The Dem’s election strategists are grasping at straws again.
The deplorables they despise the most are flyover Americans who go to church or who serve
in the military. These are the people they think are stupid and easily manipulated by wild
tales and false flags.
The “bounty on American soldiers” is hogwash to gin up what they perceive to
be a voting bloc of gullible whites.
The Dems weakness with working class whites is one they will try to shore up by crassly
fake, flag-waving appeals to bedrock patriotism.
@anonymous
equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men
are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to
this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty
– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base
alloy of hypocrisy.”
With Russia abolishing serfdom and slavery at the time – and much later than Western
Europe – something had to be done to not be outdone by the Russians, of course. The
hypocrisy would indeed have been unbearable. It still is.
@Really
No Shit the mass of whites before the post-WW2 era, then you are ignorant. If you think
the current Deep State is entirely Jewish, or even majority Jewish, you are ignorant.
Without any doubt, Jews now, and for decades, have per capita dominated the American Deep
State. But they did not create it, nor did they create its evil. The Mossad did NOT
create MI6 and the CIA. British Secret Service created the CIA and the Mossad.
America has a Deep State that flowed naturally from the British Deep State. The Brit
Empire was the Anglo-Zionist Empire Part 1. America is the Anglo-Zionist Empire Part 2.
US strategy at the end of WWII included letting Germans and Soviets wear each other down
and kill as many of each other as possible, without US forces involvement. Obviously
“we”, various US investors and the US taxpayer still gave the Soviets too much
stuff, that propelled USSR economic success claims for the next 20 years.
Just more Liberal/Dim/Zio/CCP sponsored horsesh*t, to drive US and Russia apart, to drive
Russia toward China, when US would be better off trying to treat Russia neutrally (hang our
CCP paid dems).
The Deep State vermin who pulled-off the violent, proxy overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014,
and who are also behind the Arab Spring, Syrian Rebels, ISIS, and the ongoing domestic
unrest Stateside, are the descendants of the vermin who overthrew Christian Russia in 1917
using the same modus operandi of color revolution and “peaceful protests.”.
Spot on!
But, a more accurate name than The Deep State is Judeocracy Inc.
followed by Russian assistance to the US military operation in Afghanistan.
Few people seem to understand the logistics of the war in Afghanistan. The US and their
allies were hugely dependent on the Russian railway system. It is just so ridiculous to
listen to these monkeys who pretend to be statesmen and women.
Susan Rice clearly uses skin whitener and hair straightener to look as much as possible
like those she hates so much.
Unfortunately, the matter with Russia is settled. And while I did not think there was
evidence to support the matter. The current executive sign an intel report that accused the
Russians and Pres. Putin specifically with sabotaging US election and murder and attempted
murder. Unless our executive can reconcile that matter by extracting some manner of penance
for hat behavior — reconciling with Russia is just a flat water tide.
Their actions constituted acts of war and while I may disagree with the assessment
—
that is the US disposition on which nothing Russia says can be taken further than a
pipe.
That intel report which this executive signed locks our posture in place regarding Russia.
We kill people in this country for being suspects.
I don’t think the US citizen would look to kindly on shaking hands with a saboteur
and murderer.
Whether the signing was a matter of political expediency is irrelevant,. The executive
openly cited Russia as an enemy of the US. For me it was one of the most painful memories of
the executives tenure, because
1. destroyed a large portion of our foreign policy agenda of toning down our presence
anywhere
2. demonstrated the executive was not as string as I believed he needed to be.
If they were willing to interfere in our election and engage in political murder in allied
states —there’s no reason to doubt that they would support the murder of our
troops in a conflict one.
———————-
It was a devastating moment when the executive agreed to that intel report.
@mike99588
r Germany.
And vastly profiting from both sides – shamelessly.
Britain and the Commonwealth faced Germany alone through dark days indeed until Russia became
our ally – before the USA incidently – conveniently overlooked..
The Americans finally came in Dec 1941 after Russia was already standing with us.
It has not been forgotten in Britain to this day.
The USA bled this country for decades, paying for what was so much crap amongst all
else..
Lend lease – what a scam that was!!!!!
Whilst you traded and supported the nazi war machine against us.
When you work that into the British Empire acting to prevent Russia from forcing the Turks
out of Europe and thereby liberating Constantinople, and acting to harm Russia deeply in
order to win ‘The Great Game,’ you perhaps will then see that back to Oliver
Cromwell and the Puritans that WASP Empire is Anglo-Zionist Empire.
Well, unlike the JewSA, Russia isn’t enthralled with the Jews. Putin and company
kicked out Soros and his Open Society as well as the Rothschild bankers. Lastly the four
billionaire Jew oligarchs who were running the Yeltsin economic shitshow were also shown the
door. Perhaps the “Assad must go” flop played into Jewish ire as well.
Amusing to see Democrats so deeply concerned over the “Russian threat”. I was
in the Agency during the Cold War. When the Soviets REALLY were a threat, most of those same
Democrats urged retreat, compromise, submission. It makes my guts churn to see these
“patriots” making hysterical claims against Russia. It is almost as if they
resent the fact that Putin has rejected their entire Globalist plan, re-Christianized Russia,
and locked up at least a few of the so-called “oligarchs” who were looting the
Russian people of their patrimony. The case of Bill Browder deserves some attention. This Red
Diaper baby (his grandfather was Earl Browder, chief of the CPUSA) has been one of the
cheerleaders in the campaign to demonize Russia. Following the family tradition of a lack of
loyalty (he holds British and U.S. passports, just in case!) this weasel used his
granddad’s old Soviet contacts to make hundreds of millions carting off anything of any
value left in the old Soviet Union. Of course, he worked with an equally greasy gang of
former Soviets to do this, including one Sergei Magnitsky, a “tax advisor”
working with Browder who assumed room temperature in a Russian jail after he was nabbed by
the tax police. I really wonder if some of these Democrats and others who so denounce Putin
had visions of sugar plums and hundreds of millions of dollars dancing in their heads, dreams
rudely brought to earth by Putin?
Oct 20, 2009 Taliban Is Getting American Troops Hooked On Heroin
It diminishes the effectiveness of our troops as well as raises money for the Taliban, who
are the ones growing the poppy. How can the US combat this new strategy?
LONDON— Recent news item: The Justice Department is investigating allegations that
officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000
pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials.
@EliteCommInc.
e accused is served by having his lawyers present. Since the defendants have refused to
appear in person – three of them disputing the Dutch jurisdiction — the defence
lawyers should withdraw.”
@Emily
t was only done to get into a position to share the spoils. Britain was no more than a vassal
state of the US after WW I, and in no position to defeat Germany. Only Russia could, and they
did, and would have done so with or without the Anglo-Americans. Stop whining about suffering
you brought onto yourself. Besides, Britain suffered very little compared to the continent,
including Germany, and European Jewry, and all of them would have suffered less without the
British arrogance that they had to defend their national honour. Hope they stay out of
European affairs now but it doesn’t look good at this fake Brexit moment
Wisely, Agent76 said, “The CIA Drug Connection is as Old as the Agency.”
Re; above, I suggest Grandfathered by Operation Gladio and it’s Vatican Bank money
laundering component???
Am aware how an England bank, USBC, was caught laundering the Afghanistan drug trade
billions and got a “slap on wrist.”
Linked below is an obscure article on President Putin’s special (on scene)
Afghanistan envoy, Zamir Kabulov, who accused US intelligence in Afghanistan of drug
trafficking.
@No
Friend Of The Devil to attack Iran. They are totally despised by ordinary Iranians. They
are a cult with something in common with the Cambodian Pol Pot way of life. Very dangerous
people. They have absolutely nothing in common with the Taliban who are trying to liberate
their country from the Americans.
@Gidoutahere
ld bring to an end a fledgling democracy and a return to the Cold War days.
“In return, Maxwell’s massive debts would be wiped out by a grateful
Kryuchkov, [Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB] who planned to replace Gorbachev. The KGB
chief wanted Maxwell to use the Lady Ghislaine, named after Maxwell’s daughter, as a
meeting place between the Russian plotters, Mossad chiefs and Israel’s top politicians.
? Apparently the Rothschilds/Israel Deep State wanted Gorbachev or Yeltsin.
Events are so tangled and interconnected, as Ghislaine is still a Israel Deep State
operative.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians hating themselves or other Whites for being proud
of their heritage.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians tearing down monuments and statues or desecrating
their flag.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians wanting their country to be invaded by hordes of
hostile nonwhite WMD.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians apologizing or backing down from identifying
themselves as a Christian nation.
Oh, I get it. This is why the so-called, “Deep State” and “Neo-Cons aka
Neo-Commies” hate Russia so much. I get it now. It burns (((their))) collective asses
that there are actually some largely homogeneous and traditional White nations still around
who aren’t willingly accepting their own genocide or apologizing for being evil White
racists. My gawd, this is my epiphany, this is MY AWAKENING ( shout out to Dr. Duke’s
EXCELLENT BOOK), now I know why Russia is so vilified by (((our media.))) (((Our media))) is
racist against Whites, and (((they))) hate the idea that a traditional White Christian nation
still exists, especially a powerful nation like Russia. Oh dear, how could I be so gullible
not to see this one. I’m Irish American and I am told I must hate the Russkies to be
patriotic by other patriotic Israel Firsters.
It has to do with two things, and only those two things, all other rubbish about
“human rights”, “international law”, blah blah blah, is propaganda
meant for the common man.
1) Russia is white, that means it can easily be demonized and is demonized.
2) The jews that fled Russia are an especially virulent strain of the jew, their hatred for
Russia has few equal.
Maybe someone has already stated the obvious. Regardless of the validity (or lack of) a
bounty program; it’d be real hard to affect US troops if there were no US troops in
Afghanistan.
@Erzberger
ica and the Balkans.
Fourth, had the Admiral Canaris led traitors not been hiding munitions or sending them to the
wrong place, the Soviets may not have recovered even with the US re-supply.
If there is something to yawn about, it is the WWII narrative is tiresome. Stalin
wasn’t a “good guy”, and neither were Churchill or Roosevelt. The reality
is that it took the “world” to defeat Germany. The Italians were of no help, and
the Japanese were as much a drain as a resource to Germany. Germany was destroyed to allow
the advancement of Marxism, which had already embedded itself in the UK and US.
The zionists are pissed that Russia has saved Syria from the zionist mercenaries aka AL
CIADA aka ISIS, which are creations the CIA and the MOSSAD and MI6 and NATO and so the anti
Russian propaganda, pouring out of the zionist owned MSM.
Obviously “we”, various US investors and the US taxpayer still gave the
Soviets too much stuff, that propelled USSR economic success claims for the next 20
years
The Russians paid for all the “giving” with gold. Kindly stop repeating lies.
Even the British went almost bankrupt repaying the Americans for their
“generosity”.
It will be interesting to see how the Russians will treat the Americans when the USA
experiences feudalism. I suspect the Russians will be far more generous than the Americans
deserve.
@neutral
kids.
Hilary Clinton has been a very effective butcher of Libyan and Syrian population at large;
young children and pregnant women were the greatest victims of Clinton’s subhuman
policies.
Susan Rice was good at promoting mass slaughter in Syria, and, along with H. Clinton, S. Rice
should be credited with the slave markets in Libya.
Nuland-Kagan helped to make Ukraine into the poorest country in Europe, where zionists and
neo-nazis found a complete mutual understanding. So much for holobiz squealing.
What’s wrong with the US? How come that the US society produced these
monstrosities?
Being that America kills other countries’ soldiers (and civilians) all the time, why
can’t Russia (or any other country) do the same thing? What goes around comes around,
right?
Some things (Russiagate) are just too silly to bother with.
I agree – except that I’m getting quite a chuckle these days at the sheer,
utter desperation of the “Russia did it”, “Saddam did it”, “Bin
Laden did it”, “Assad did it”, etc. etc. etc. noise from the crowd who DID
do it.
Shlomo is cornered and exposed – and that IS worth the subscription fee to watch,
FINALLY.
“There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states.” General
(((Wesley Clark)))
Obviously a patriotic “American” General like Mr. Clark has no problem with
the racist state of Israel.
Just another COHENcidence? Nah, after finding about “6 million” COHENcidences
you start thinking for yourself, stop dropping the idea that “conspiracy
theories” are “conspiracies” and start realizing you have been fed a load
of horseshit for a century and counting. We don’t have a Russia problem but Houston, we
do have a problem. Wonder what that problem is?
@Tom
Welsh te Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, at a time when that meant something. He also wrote
(presumably without the assistance a ghost writer) some 40-odd books, as Tucker Carlson
pointed out in a recent monologue.
I think by any standard, these achievements indicate a fairly high level of intellectual
skills.
Whether or not he was a nutcase is another matter, and not mutually exclusive of his
having considerable intellectual skills. A good place to start on this question is to read
what H.L. Mencken wrote about him.
And it is said that Roosevelt is included in the Mt. Rushmore tableau because he was
friends with Borglum the sculptor.
@Trinity
of different nations. But they live in harmony. Their common language is Russian. When Putin
goes to visit the Dagestan, he tells them that their men are brave and their women beautiful.
They love it. And they love Putin for it. Sadly, Google and Youtube seem to have cleaned up
this stuff.
The current news that the Brutish govt has approved new arms sales to Saudia because Saudi
mass killings of Yemeni civilians are all “isolated incidents” so it’s
quite proper to sell them the means seems to prove your point.
“Your decision, Mr President, to grant the Soviet Union an interest-free loan to the
value of $1,000,000,000 to meet deliveries of munitions and raw materials to the Soviet Union
is accepted by the Soviet Government with heartfelt gratitude as vital aid to the Soviet
Union in its tremendous and onerous struggle against our common enemy — bloody
Hitlerism.” (here)
The US is in central Asia for much more than that, it’s about blocking China and
Russia, as well as partially cutting off Iran on it’s eastern flank. Iran is almost
surrounded by US bases. The US wants to have more control point/choke point control over
continental transport routes in Asia. (One such prize would be the Dzungarian Gate, but
that’s a little too ambitious for the moment. ) Afghanistan does have resources, but it
would be a target without them, as it is so valuable as a (potential) transit corridor.
@Emily
ulture/history/item/4691-china-betrayed-into-communism" rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4691-china-betrayed-into-communism">Marshall’s
doing all in his power to ensure the victory of Mao over Nationalist forces in 1949
U.S. civilian leaders seem to swoon over enemy sanctuaries for some strange reason. Kill
U.S. troops in theater. No problemo but pinky swear we won’t go after you if you go
back across the border.
God bless Richard Nixon and his destruction of NVA base areas in Cambodia. Thereafter,
enemy activity ceased around my camp and all through MR IV.
Reading your comment, Wally, I find your name extremely apt.
None so blind as those who refuse to even read.
You can take a horse to water but cannot make him drink.
You can put all the proof necessary but if you refuse to check it out – well –
stay a ‘ Wally’.
I guess you subscribe to the philosophy of ‘Ignorance is bliss’.
@Curmudgeon
Wehrmacht, the Warsaw Rising they so strongly encouraged would not have happened, and not
have led to the disaster it was for the city and its inhabitants
“Stalin wasn’t a “good guy”, and neither were Churchill or
Roosevelt. “ no objections
“The reality is that it took the “world” to defeat Germany. “ Much
of Europe fought on the side of Germany because they realized that Stalin, Churchill and
Roosevelt weren’t good guys, and they had nothing to look forward to but a horrible
peace in case of their victory. Why do you think the EC got together so quickly after the
war?
Also: the sheer idiocy of claiming that poor little “Britain and the
Commonwealth” stood alone against the German monster state! Do you ever look at a map?
at human and natural resources? This should have been a turkey shoot if your side had not
been as lacking in courage as it was, and as incompetent. And if the rest of Europe
wasn’t to a very large extent in the German camp, as it is today
Scott Ritter has a separate article at consortiumnews noting that the Russians have been
giving money to the Taliban (AID) to fight Americans, the CIA and their ISIS proxies since
2014. Surely Obama and/or Biden would have stopped these Russian “bounties” if
they were important.
“Please at least proofread your gibberish. Some of it might even make
sense.”
The executive in the WH has agreed that Russia sabotaged the US election process and
engaged murder and attempted in states of our allies.
There is no turning the clock bank unless Russia makes some gesture of amelioration
— there behavior constitutes an attack on the US. As such they are active enemies of
the US.
Unfortunately anyone seeking some manner of Russian love fest — should probably
forget it. Whether the executive signed for politically expedient reasons simply
doesn’t matter.
“If you believe any of the Skripals nonsense and the MH-17 false flag, you are
either gullible or a troll.”
Uhhhh, wholly irrelevant. My position in opposition to the contend that Russia sabotaged
the US election was vehemently dubious. My comments at the time make my position abundantly
clear. The evidence for the case against Russia in the US simply no there. But at the end of
the day, the executive choose to go the other direction. That is unfortunate. But it was also
a sign of things to come concerning the executives ability to stand.
And my comments today make that very clear. Your knee-jerk response that I believe what
the executive signed onto is incorrect. I knew that his choice destroyed a good deal of his
foreign poliy admonition to reduce tensions.
But that was his choice mistake or not he made that choice and as I expressed at the time
— we would have to live by it.
——————————————–
In fact, if I were on the opposition, I would like nothing better for the executive to
start behaving as though the intel report doesn’t exist. Because I would pull out that
report with his signature and commence calling him a weakling, indecisive, and a danger to
the US — who is to toothless to hold Russia accountable for her acts of terror in the
US and Europe.
I would then commence a campaign explaining why the executive wants to decrease troops ion
Europe — he wants to cede our allies over to Russian domination —
But then I am not on the opposition. It was a mistake on the facts for the executive to
sign that report for which there was little to no evidence supporting it.
Now if you have a response that gives the president some manner of face saving as he makes
nice with a country that overthrew a US election in the US, and engaged in murder and
attempted murder — have at it.
—————
Minus some kind of amelioration by the Russians or an about face by the current executive
(and tat would really be interesting) no peace and love and understanding can move forward. I
can say with certainty
Russia, Pres. Putin has no intention of apologizing for something they most likely did not
do regarding US elections.
Though I am sure he will once again have reason to chuckle.
Those of you angry, frustrated, irritated . . . and yada I suggest you take that up with
the WH They made that choice.
But by all means name call as opposed to deal with the obvious reality.
The US can not make nice with Russia until Russia makes amends for sabotaging the US
election and engage in acts of murder or attempted in murder in the sovereign states of our
allies. So says the executive in the WH. In fact he says that Pres. Putin ordered the
sabotage and murder.
I think you understand.
There is no way for the current executive to move forward with better relations with
Russia without extracting some admission and compensation for sad acts without reaping
serious political damage — I would say a loss of credibility, but that is already in
question – sadly.
Interestingly, whoever invented this lie about Russia and Taliban not only did not know
the realities of Afghanistan, but was stupid enough not to consult someone who knows. There
is no such thing as a bank transfer in Afghanistan. It exists in the Middle Ages (democracy,
my foot!), so the only form of money that functions there is cash, in hand, in a case, or in
a bag, depending on the amount.
The USA is quickly going to find itself in a corner. There is no realistic path away from
a total confrontation with Russia. No politician will dare dissent. I hope Russia is prepared
for this.
“The deplorables they despise the most are flyover Americans who go to church or who
serve in the military. These are the people they think are stupid and easily manipulated by
wild tales and false flags.”
Well let’s face it, they usually are. These are the milch cows the MIC relies on to
keep its funding secure.
Everyone knows that Americans are the most dumbfuck stupid people on the planet. It is
more shocking to think that propaganda would NOT affect most of the population.
Anecdotally, when my family lived in England in a village near London in 1957-58 we were
treated like royalty. I’ve always assumed it’s because we were the beloved Yanks
who saved Britain’s behind in the war. That doesn’t undercut what you say about
the underlying resentment, but my clear impression and that of my parents was that the
post-war Brits loved them some Yanks.
Another anecdote, this one not so feel-good. In 1956 we lived on Lakenheath AFB in the UK.
During the Suez crisis the base was on full stand-by alert in case we had to go to war with
Britain. Seriously.
@Patagonia
Man re in Washington is beyond repair. The despicable sinister schemes, backstabbing,
lies, fake facts in a quest for power has nothing to do with democracy but criminality.
It is time to galvanize support for direct voting…enabled by evolving technology.
That process would eliminate:
@ need for electing deceiving proxies that always betray their promises to represent the
public interest.
@ Washington proxies making decisions…should be reduced to debating issues.
@ the special interest groups, lobbies self-serving agenda.
@ sending our young people dying on far away places in unnecessary wars.
When was Paul Craig Roberts last an insider? Do you think him capable of picking cover
stories generically, that is without relevant particular knowledge of inside stuff?
And you seem to claim to have that ability to pick a cover story. So…. how? What
are the generic indicia?
Oh gee, your point would make one think that no other pagan Christian Church has
produced such mass murderers, or in fact, even greater ones… which would be ludicrous as
per history, yeah?
The real source of such satanic evil should be traced to Whitevil (including their Judevil
cousins of course) supremacy and their in-house “niggas,” such as the witch you
mention.
Looks like a lot of the blonds here except the ones here date thugs and run around til
they’re 24ish from dude to dude til they discover the joys of pills & meth and take
the full bath into the toilet….
@Ann
Nonny Mouse political dancing around and inventing another culprit as criminals always do,
successfully disappeared them. Don’t hope they will ever appear again.
And this is the Brutish government that killed another Russian by polonium poisoning and of
course invented another culprit, again as criminals always do.
And is now selling weapons for mass killing to Saudia says mass killings are merely
incidentals.
Consistently, modern Britain makes Nazi Germany look angelic. Consistently.
These are not Christian moral values. What religion or ritual system or control system acts
like this once it takes charge?
@Wizard
of Oz The same person also fuzzes up threads by pretending to be more than one commenter,
the technique known as “sock puppetry.” See under Mr. Derbyshire’s February
15, 2019, article comment ## 28, 42, 43, 44, 68, 122, where he/she/they got sloppy also posting
as “Anon[436].”
Over time, Wizard has emerged as sympathetic to the international bureaucracy of the
Establishment of which he may even be a (former?) part, the type of “diplomat”
exemplified by Mrs. Nuland’s Ivy League cookie caddy in Ukraine. He broke character a
while back, showing emotional hostility to China. But who can be sure? Among this
website’s oddest, sophisticatedly trollish commenters.
You will find that Roosevelt privately was giving both the UK & France assurances that
if either were attacked, the US would come to their aid well before 1938 – even
tho’ US multinational corporations were still trading with the NSDAP in Germany well into
1941.
As you can’t even get the Julian Assange bit right I don’t suppose it’s
any use asking you to justify your bald assertions or even flesh them our with detail. Let
alone explain when Britain became “modern” and ceased to be the country which is
rightly credited with ending theslave trade and led the way in abolition of slavery.
Yes, several governments have treated Assange contemptibly but he is remanded without bail
pending the resumption of the extradition hearing, not imprisoned for life in cruel or any
conditions. How can you waste readers time with such garbage?
How much credit do you give to someone who sloppily uses the term “terrorist in that
context referring to the equovalent of precision bombing in contrast to area bombing without
precise aiming?
I am really not qualified to comment on the internal wrangling of the various factions in
the USA. I look at their foreign policy actions, not proclamations, with much greater
interest.
@Erzberger
ut down war industry was started by Germany, arguably in Belgium in August 1814 but certainly
in December 1914 when German cruisers indiscriminately shelled three North East England towns.
An aberration? No. It was followed by Zepellin raids on London and the use of Big Bertha
against Paris. Then, what message and implicit set of rules do you find in the destruction of
Guernica? And many civilians were killed in the bombing of Warsaw. Even the virtually symbolic
bombing of Berlin was a response to bombs dropped on London, the only point in your favour
there being the fact that those bombs were probably not meant to be dropped on London.
How intriguing. Not having your obsessive interest in warning about Wizard of Oz I have
failed, at my level of diligence, to find any evidence at all of emotional hostility to China
or indeed, about anything much except perhaps the hypocritical mistreatment of individuals like
Julian Assange by governments. Can you help?
The Germans couldn’t believe how inept the average French, American, and British
soldier really were, even British described how frightened many of the America soldiers, most
barely old enough to shave, appeared. The German was appalled at the physical fitness of the
British soldier as well, describing them as weak and frail for the most part. Here is the
truth, Western Europe and America fought the German B team at best, often these Germans were
little more than schoolboys in some cases. Everyone knows that the bulk of the serious fighting
was done on the Eastern Front. Think if tiny Germany hadn’t had to fight on two fronts
against what must have seemed like half the world. It doesn’t speak well that it took so
many years to defeat a country as small as Germany, a country that was at an extreme
disadvantage. The average Western soldier, be it a Frenchmen, a Brit or an American was nothing
special to say the least. This isn’t a I hate America thing, but merely the truth. The
average German soldier was head and shoulders above the average Brit or America G.I.
Finally, seven days after its ‘scoop’, the NYT ran another story on the
subject, entitled ‘New Administration Memo Seeks to Foster Doubts About Suspected
Russian Bounties’, which was published on July 3 and buried in the bowels of the
paper.
Its opening paragraphs sought to back up the original story, claiming that an intelligence
memo had said the “… CIA and the National Counterterrorism Centre had
assessed with medium confidence – meaning creditable sources and plausible, but falling
short of near certainty – that a unit of the Russian military service, known as the
GRU, offered the bounties.”
It was only in the last paragraph that the real story – that there was no story
– was revealed: “The agency did intercept data of financial transactions that
provide circumstantial support for the detainee’s account, but the agency does not
have explicit evidence that the money was bounty payments.”
So the blood libel lasted a week!
One of the greatest things about the Trump Presidency was to carve the ‘Fake
News’ meme on the MSM’s forehead.
Mister/Miss, since when the zionized Congress of the US serves the citizenship of the US?
Thank you for reminding (and you do this regularly) of the unfortunate fact that the US is an
occupied territory and the US Congress is a nest of liars, war profiteers, and rabid
zionists.
Les Wexler, Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer, and Clintons have inflicted more harm to the US than
any Maria Butin and such. And don’t forget Dick Cheney and Co, the committed traitors and
profiteers by any means.
In my experience people who are sloppy with language are sloppy with thinking. I thought you
might have had similar relevant experience unlike most commenters here. For example, if you
were employing a director of research or even just a junior researcher for a committee of
inquiry would you not rate their careful use of language as a qualification? You want to be
able to rely on the facts they turn up and their reasoning underlying proposed conclusions do
you not?
I am content to know that you don’t read my comments and are as sloppy and inaccurate
in calling me hasbara as the person who called destroying an Iranian nuclear facility
“terrorist”. To extend my last comment, you wouldn’t even be on the long list
for assisting any inquiry I chaired.
Do you know at least, what were you fighting for in Vietnam? How Vietnam threatened US
shores?
Do not tell me fighting communist ideology, because the same Nixon and Kissinger that bombed
Cambodia civilians embraced that communist ideology in China with grave consequences. We have
lunatics in Washington and it is time for direct voting – majority rules.
@Wizard
of Oz as right in the sense that despite the British and French declaration of war, not
much happened – other than the naval blockade and the lame French invasion of the Saar
region. Neither Britain nor France had the courage to follow up on their war declaration, for
fear of unpopular casualties or further destruction of land and people (France), and both hoped
to gain a cheap victory by starving out the German war effort. Had they actually opened a
second front in the fall of 39, the Germans would have collapsed, and the war would have been
over before Christmas.
The GErman victory over FRance surprised everyone, including the Germans
I think the EC got together so quickly because the US wanted to impose their economic model
on Europe with the illusion of control. The Marshall Plan was unraveling as the swindle it was,
and the EC was the answer to keep up the illusion. While the UK was in on the scam, they were
the front for the Americans, as the idiot Churchill had pissed away the Empire to buy his 15
minutes of fame.
Once the shooting starts there are no good guys. Like all wars, WWII was an economic war. The
German economic system could not be allowed to succeed, it was catching on.
You must must have quite a deteriorated mind when Russia can influence your vote. Tell me
the logistics of the process. You must have equally deteriorated mind believing what CNN,
MSNBC, WP or NYT and others dishonest outfits tell you – they are a propaganda machine
for a small unpatriotic parasitic group.
There is a hierarchy in the blame game . Trump isn’t on the top . If he were, the vile
Democrats would be asking review and discussion by broader media ,Dept of Justice and Treasury
either to discredit or confirm the following story
in–“Venezuela’s interim government wants access to funds confiscated in
the US from corrupt officials, saying it belongs to the Venezuelan people. But US officials
appear to have other plans. The Treasury Department diverted $601 million last year from its
forfeiture fund to help build President Trump’s border wall. (Leer en español)
https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/legal-battle-over-venezuelas-looted-billions-heats-up
Since the United States initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected leftist
government in January 2019, up to $24 billion worth of Venezuelan public assets have been
seized by foreign countries, primarily by Washington and member states of the European Union.
President Donald Trump’s administration has used at least $601 million of that looted
Venezuelan money to fund construction of its border wall with Mexico, according to government
documents first reviewed by Univision Univision reviewed US congressional records and court
documents and found that the Trump administration tapped into $601 million of the Treasury
Department’s “forfeiture fund” to supplement the wall constructio https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/29/trump-stolen-venezuelan-money-border-wall-mexico/
Reason no-one is doing it is because hating Trump could always be swapped for worshipping
something more sinister and idiotic .
We would have heard a similar story only if Russia extracted something like this from
Ukraine or Libya .
I suggest you seek treatment for you pathological hate. Russia want to be a friend in
peaceful coexistence but it is sinister players in Washington that constantly need/create
enemies to build military industrial complexes instead of consumer goods which are supplied
from China.
I have been a supported of the current executive before he considered running. And his
choice to agree with the intel report and more was a fairly tough pill to swallow. As it turns
it was but one of many.
No I found the intel dubious. And I think the executive could have challenged in a manner
that did not call the CIA and other agencies DIA, etc. or damage his ability to curtail his
policy agenda. But having signed — he essentially states Pres Putin and the Russians are
active enemies of the US given that scenario
one would draw on our behavior in Afghanistan hen we supported the Taliban with weapons to
kill Russian soldiers —-
@Trinity
fought more effectively and efficiently than the novice American soldiers. Then there were
technical factors which were naturally advantageous to the more experienced military. For
example the famous 88mm anti-aircraft gin turned anti-tsnk gun was never matched by the Allies
(I thin) and the German tactics for its use were also superior. Germany, though less than the
Soviet Union had another advantage over Britain and France. It’s population went on
growing fast for a generations beyond the end of high growth in Britain and, especially,
France. For example there were 2 million Germans born in 1913 to provide young men for the army
in the 30s.
Yes, as I’ve said repeatedly, the ‘sinister players’, the Judaic NEOCON
cabal want to keep America and Russia apart mainly for their hate of Christianity and gentiles,
and try to destroy them both.
@Curmudgeon
uld be a return to what was indeed Hitler’s scheme of continental autarky and a more even
distribution of wealth, and a democratic model much more in line with the Prussian model, the
latter bearing significant resemblance with the Chinese Mandarin system. The Chinese Communists
are really doing nothing different than the old emperors running a meritocracy rather than an
idiocracy. Western democracies, esp the US, with their insane and horrendously expensive
election circuses tend to achieve the latter. I hear Kanye West is running for president now.
The problem with China is not Communism but their adoption of Western state-capitalism.
I am sure President Putin would be delighted to draw international attention to this new
symbol of a Christian resurgence in Russia. President Trump would appreciate the splendor of
such a backdrop for his meeting with another major head of state. Many of the Evangelicals
among Trumps’s base would be gobsmacked to learn that Mr. Putin is not running a godless,
soulless Communist hellstate. And many of people in the US State Department and the rest of the
Swamp would utterly sh*t their pants.
True dat. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the exceptionals.
And Cheney’s daughter burns the midnight oil in order to keep the pot boiling in
Afghanistan. MUST have U.S. troops there to oppose “terrorists” with AKs.
NYT is a rental rag that always favored Soviets and now CCP, why cite it anymore?
The Russia distraction distracts from Piglosi, Feinstein, Biden, Bushes, congress and corps
etc etc being in bed$ with China. With the side benefit of Russian alienation from the US
driving Russian goods into the China slaughter house on the cheap.
@Derer
pants over Assad’s or Gaddafi’s purported authoritarianisms like they’re
skunk pie. Eeeww!
You’re right that we have lunatics in Washington but I don’t think “direct
voting” is the answer. Devolution plus draconian anti-trust enforcement. crucifixion of
the Antifa filth, massive deportations, ending black privilege, brutally honest debate over
black failure, draconian anti-vote fraud operations, and naming and neutralizing the role and
power of organized Jewry and its wealth seem more likely to get us back on track. Please be
more creative then “majority rule.”
Jesus. “Choke points” can be dealt with from afar. It takes a while to rebuild
railroad bridges. The concept of the Russian and Iranian enemies has worn a little thin these
last few days. It’s just assumed that Russia is a malignant force just as it’s
universally assumed that “special sauce” is the way to go on McDonalds’
hamburgers. I accept neither proposition.
I want troops on the U.S. southern border not on the “flanks” of Iran or
policing “transit corridors” here and there but that’s just me.
@Wizard
of Oz a refuses to extradite a woman to Britain for actual homicide. Zero grounds to hold
him.
From their political standpoint the safest way out is for Assange to simply die in the
maximum-security prison, so the extradition proceedings can simply be dropped. All problems
solved.
So, he is in actual fact in prison for life.
Never mind that Britain did something virtuous in the distant past. Today is today. And
notice that serial murderers can be friendly and courteous between murders but that nice
behaviour doesn’t exonerate them for the murders. Nazi Germany looks angelic relative to
the Britain of today.
“The Gulf of Tonkin “event” was a lie, so there’s that.”
No. It in reality, it was a series of confused messages from the patrol boat. But was used
to support a defense of S. Vietnam — the matter is of no consequence. The US was going to
defend S. Vietnamese sovereignty regardless of the Tonkin event.
Today on TruNews Rick interviews Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, a free speech
alternative to the tyrants at Twitter. They discuss how the Silicon Valley elite use their
satanic bias to silence opposition and have a mission to purge Christianity from their
platforms.
FYI while BLM and RG draw our attention and now RABAS have made all other conspiracies
recede into Corona graveyard
( Russia gate and Russia Afghan Bounty American Solider )
Kushner stoke and his DNA repaired the monetary damages back at home of origin .
Israel lobby organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America ($2-5 million),
Friends of the IDF ($2-5 million) and the Israeli American Council ($1-2 million) are grabbing
huge 100% forgivable loans from the CARES Act PPP program.
According to SBA data released on Monday, Israeli’s Bank Leumi has doled out a quarter to
a half billion dollars under the PPP program, despite being called out for operating in the
occupied West Bank.
Leumi has given sweetheart deals to fellow Israeli companies Oran Safety Glass (which defrauded
the US Army on bulletproof glass contracts) and Energix, which operates power plants in the
occupied Golan Heights and West Bank.
This exchange took place today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.
This video clip with additional information is available on IRmep’s YouTube
Channel.
Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book The Israel Lobby Enters State Government. He is
director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy IRmep in Washington, D.C. which
co-organizes IsraelLobbyCon each year at the National Press Club.
@geokat62
– colonial expansion,
– rolling genocide of the Palestinian people, witness 2014 Operation Protective Edge,
– terrorist attacks of neighboring Arab/Muslim states – Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq,
Occupied Territories, Iran & Syria;
– terrorist attacks on Western nations, incl. the UK, the US, & France (since its
Parliament voted to recognize Palestine as a state in 2014), and
– sponsoring of terror organizations e.g, ISIS, to continue its proxy war on
Syria.
– etc, etc
In addition to Constantinople, years later defending Ottoman remnants in Bosnia and Kosovo
against the Christians by “cigar” Clinton and warmonger Blair that introduced the
Islamization of Europe.
@Erzberger
e lines of making distinctions e.g. between deliberate murder of harmless civilians and forcing
choices on them (starve Russian prisoners and ration food to mothers and children e.g.). Of
course the choice to get rid of their government and stop the war is unrealistic even in the
post Cold War world. What did sanctions on Iran produce?? Just civilian deaths.
** it is only recently that I discovered that it made a big contribution to diverting German
effort from the Eastern Front though it is not surprising that Stalin thought the absence of a
Second Front in France was meant to help the Germans savage the USSR.
@Patagonia
Man he approx dozen Israeli dual citizens he alleges are in the Australian Parliament
contrary to the provisions of the Australian constitution.
So, don’t encourage him Geo, by thanking him. That Israeli nonsense is enough to brand
him as a nutter.
As to Quadrant, what does it matter that, in the 50s, and maybe till about 1970, it was
given some financial support by the CIA? Really, what is the point in the 21st century? Does it
matter to current affairs that Robert Maxwell owned the Daily Mirror till the 90s?
If I don’t reply to all the rubbish no one should infer the truth of anything
Patagonia Man alleges.
He takes various commandments of God and distills it into a silly… Debt = Sin.
Indeed, it is true that one can take anything and make it fit their delusional way of thought.
E.g. the 3 in 1, of the pagan Trinity.
Of course, that does not mean, Usury (extortionate moneylending) ≠ Sin, which it most
certainly is.
The Ten Commandments were about debt? A silly interpretation. They are primarily about
Monotheism and a righteous way-of-life, and refraining from usury is just one aspect of it.
Christianity got perverted? Yes, it most certainly is a pagan perversion of True
Monotheism.
“Sure, Poland bears major responsibility for WW 2, and lending themselves to now
hosting US nukes and troops to be moved over from Germany signals that they once again have not
learned a thing from their past.”
— Stepping on rakes as a national pastime.
@Ann
Nonny Mouse an associated organisation whose stated objective is to ‘maximise support
for the State of Israel within the British Liberal Democrat Party’…
Spaight claims that drawing the war to the British isles was done in solidarity with the
Soviets. This is nonsense but a timely propaganda move at a time when German defeat was
assured. Stalin did no fall into that trap. He lknew about Operation Pike and Operation
Impossible, and had zero reason to trust the British. Wikipedia has a page on either
Operation
Denialist? A careful textual analysis tells me you are saying WoZ denies what you assert,
which is that there are about a dozen Israeli dual citizens in the Australian Parliament,
contrary to law. Instead of coyly dancing around the issue what about meeting the challenge to
name at least some?
@Erzberger
Thanks. Mind you I think the Blitz was pretty indiscriminate bombing before Britain was in a
position to inflict much damage on Germany. I gather attacks on London from the start were a
strategic error by Hitler because the Liluftwaffe should have kept up its attacks on Britisk
airfields. Interesting that Albert Speer, in the “World at War” series, said that
four more raids like the 1000 bomber raid on Hamburg (or maybe it was Cologne) would have
finished the war. Why couldn’t Bomber Command do I it? Maybe it was because Eisenhower
won the battle to have bombers diverted to bombing the Pas we Calais (mostly) and Normandie.
“Mind you I think the Blitz was pretty indiscriminate bombing before Britain was in a
position to inflict much damage on Germany.”
Wrong.
BTW, the Blitz is a misnomer. Blitzkrieg is tactical air support for ground troops. Neither
applies to the air attacks on German cities in May 1940, or the German retaliation, several
months later, that we know as the Blitz.
Richard Overy though has argued that the German Blitz showed the British how it was done
efficiently, so they improved their bombing strategy accordingly afterwards. Whatever
Back in the CHOICES thread, we had discussion on the US bullying Iran, and the semantics
of whether the US was engaging in "war" against Iran. I hope not to get caught up in those
semantics again, but here are a couple of good pieces to show the situation.
The latest Renegade Inc episode interviews Gareth Porter, who draws from Smedley Butler
and talks about the "racket" of the security state of the US, which acts only to perpetuate
and extend itself, and to increase its funding by all means.
The episode answers several questions about the US posture towards Iran. Porter supplies
the history and background to illustrate the US anger for Iran. Sharmine Narwani makes an
appearance also, and together they show why the Pentagon will never conduct acts of war
against Iran that will provoke the kind of overt retaliation that Iran delivered by targeting
the US bases this year.
The US will only conduct acts that Iran will not overtly respond to. It will escalate its
theater right up to that red line, but if it crosses the line - as it did with killing
Soleimani - it will be by miscalculation. The only purpose of the US security state is to
escalate the threat level to keep the funding coming, and to leave no possible margin for
de-funding by Congress. It's a racket, and the racket has swallowed all statecraft.
Once I suggested seriously that Ukraine could not be understood in terms of statecraft,
but only in terms of thievery. It becomes increasingly clear that the tenets of organized
crime are now the only way to parse US action.
~~
Iran meanwhile, lives by statecraft. It will always respond when that red line is crossed
- always and without hesitation. My view is that Iran is continuously working for the total
departure of the US from West Asia, as it said that it would in retribution for Soleimani.
Much of what it does we don't see, but I note the "resistance" axis goes from strength to
strength in solidarity. It was ready to erupt when Iran attacked the US base, but the US
disengaged and this unified axis of several nations and forces stood down.
So the school of thought presented for example by Richard Steven Hack here, that
the US will war on Iran for decades if it can, simply to feed the MIC, is correct. What's not
correct is that the US can perform much in the way of military action against Iran.
We stumbled over the word "war" so perhaps we can talk about minor activities of warfare,
which are not enough to bring the theater to full battle. All the nations in the region have
tolerated US incursions because to fight them head on would provoke escalation that serves
less purpose than living with them - there is a time for everything.
But we have to understand the red lines. And we have to understand that because we see
nothing moving, it doesn't mean nothing is moving. Narwani makes some good points about that
- and see her full interview on Renegade from last year for a good understanding of what Iran
is as a nation and an adversary. It's clear that the Pentagon agrees with her.
As to the Resistance axis, this interview with Lebanese analyst Anees Naqqash is worth a
quick read. It tells us much about Lebanon.
It is not the case that Iran is doing nothing in response to US warfare against it and its
regional allies. The red flag is still flying, and the Iranians take it seriously.
Today statues, tomorrow mass firings... or even worse. There's a history here.
I'm ambivalent about statues and J.K. Rowling being torn down, but terrified of the thought
process behind the destruction. Decisions should never be made by mobs.
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Is America on the edge of a cultural revolution?
The historical namesake and obvious parallel is the Cultural
Revolution in China, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. Its stated goal was to purge
capitalist and traditional elements from society, and to substitute a new way of thinking based
on Mao's own beliefs. The epic struggle for control and power waged war against anybody on the
wrong side of an idea.
To set the mobs on somebody, one needed only to tie him to an official blacklist like the
Four Olds (old customs, culture, habits, and ideas). China's young people and urban workers
formed Red Guard units to go after whomever was outed. Violence? Yes, please. When Mao launched
the movement in May 1966, he told his mobs to "bombard the headquarters" and made clear that
"to rebel is justified." He said "revisionists should be removed through violent class
struggle." The old thinkers were everywhere and were systematically trying to preserve their
power and subjugate the people.
Whetted, the mobs took the task to heart: Red Guards destroyed historical relics, statues,
and artifacts, and ransacked cultural and religious sites. Libraries were burned. Religion was
considered a tool of capitalists and so churches were destroyed -- even the Temple of Confucius
was wrecked. Eventually the Red Guards moved on to openly killing people who did not think as
they did. Where were the police? The cops were told not to intervene in Red Guard activities,
and if they did, the national police chief pardoned the Guards for any crimes.
Education was singled out, as it was the way the old values were preserved and transmitted.
Teachers, particularly those at universities, were considered the "Stinking Old Ninth" and were
widely persecuted. The lucky ones just suffered the public humiliation of shaved heads, while
others were tortured. Many were slaughtered or harassed into suicide. Schools and universities
eventually closed down and over 10 million former students were sent to the countryside to
labor under the Down to the Countryside Movement. A lost generation was abandoned to fester,
uneducated. Red Guard pogroms eventually came to include the cannibalization
of revisionists. After all, as Mao said, a revolution is not a dinner party.
The Cultural Revolution destroyed China's economy and traditional culture, leaving behind a
possible death toll ranging from one to 20 million. Nobody really knows. It
was a war on the way people think. And it failed. One immediate consequence of the
Revolution's failure was the rise in power of the military after regular people decided they'd
had enough and wanted order restored. China then became even more of a capitalist society than
it had ever imagined in pre-Revolution days. Oh well.
I spoke with an elderly Chinese academic who had been forced from her classroom and made to
sleep outside with the animals during the Revolution. She recalled forced self-criticism
sessions that required her to guess at her crimes, as she'd done nothing more than teach
literature, a kind of systematic revisionism in that it espoused beliefs her tormentors thought
contributed to the rotten society. She also had to write out long apologies for being who she
was. She was personally held responsible for 4,000 years of oppression of the masses. Our
meeting was last year, before
white guilt became a whole category on Netflix, but I wonder if she'd see now how similar
it all is.
That's probably a longer version of events than a column like this would usually feature. A
tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust in terms of human lives, an attempt to destroy culture on
a level that would embarrass the Taliban -- this topic is not widely taught in American
colleges, never mind in China.
It should be taught, because history
rhymes . Chinese students are again outing teachers, sometimes via cellphone videos, for "
improper
speech ," teaching hurtful things from the past using the wrong vocabulary. Other Chinese
intellectuals are harassed online for holding outlier positions, or lose their jobs for
teaching novels with the wrong values. Once abhorred as anti-free speech, most UC Berkeley
students would likely now agree that such steps are proper. In Minnesota, To Kill A Mockingbird
and Huckleberry Finn are
banned because fictional characters use a racial slur.
There are no statues to the Cultural Revolution here or in China. Nobody builds monuments to
chaos. But it's never really about the statues anyway. In America, we moved quickly from
demands to tear down the statues of Robert E. Lee to Thomas Jefferson to basically any
Caucasian, including "
White Jesus. "
Of course, it was never going to stop with Confederate generals because it was not really
about racism any more than the Cultural Revolution was really about capitalism. This is about
rewriting history for political ends , both short-term power grabs (Not Trump 2020!) and longer
term societal changes that one critic calls the " successor ideology ," the melange
of academic radicalism now seeking hegemony throughout American institutions. Douglas Murray is more succinct. The purpose "is to
embed a new metaphysics into our societies: a new religion." The ideas -- centered on there
being only one accepted way of thought -- are a tool of control.
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It remains to be seen where America goes next in its own nascent cultural revolution. Like
slow dancing in eighth grade, maybe nothing will come of it. These early stages, where the
victims are Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, someone losing her temper while walking a dog in Central
Park, and canceled celebrities, are a far cry from the millions murdered for the same goals in
China. Much of what appears revolutionary is just Internet pranking and common looting
amplified by an agendaized media. One writer
sees "cancel culture as a game, the point of which is to impose unemployment on people as a
form of recreation." B-list celebs
and Karens in the parking lot are easy enough targets. Ask the Red Guards: it's fun to break
things.
Still, the intellectual roots of our revolution and China's seem similar: the hate of the
old, the need for unacceptable ideas to be disappeared in the name of social progress,
intolerance toward dissent, violence to enforce conformity.
In America these are spreading outward from our universities so that everywhere today --
movies, TV, publishing, news, ads, sports -- is an Oberlin where in the name of free speech
"hate speech" is banned, and in the name of safety dangerous ideas and the people who hold them
are not only not discussed but canceled, shot down via the projectile of the heckler's veto,
unfriended, demonetized, deleted, de-platformed, demeaned, chased after by mobs both real and
online in a horrible blend of self-righteousness and cyber bullying. They don't believe in a
marketplace of ideas. Ideas to the mob are either right or wrong and the "wrong" ones must be
banished. The choices to survive the mobs are conformity or silence. In China, you showed
conformity by carrying around Mao's Little Red Book .
In America, you wear a soiled surgical mask to the supermarket.
The philosophical spadework for an American Cultural Revolution is done. Switch the terms
capitalism and revisionism with racism and white supremacy in some of Mao's speeches and you
have a decent speech draft for a Black Lives Matter rally. Actually, you can keep Mao's
references to destroying capitalism, as they track pretty closely with progressive thought in
2020 America.
History is not there to make anyone feel safe or justify current theories about policing.
History exists so we can learn from it, and for us to learn from it, it has to exist for us to
study it, to be offended and uncomfortable with it, to bathe in it, to taste it bitter or
sweet. When you wash your hands of an idea, you lose all the other ideas that grew to challenge
it. Think of those as antibodies fighting a disease. What happens when they are no longer at
the ready? What happens when a body forgets how to fight an illness? What happens when a
society forgets how to challenge a bad idea with a better one?
Someone finally noticed. History doesn't just rhyme, sometimes it repeats.
These people so closely following the leftist agenda ignore the fact the the security law
being jammed down the throats of semi-British people (used to a degree of freedom) in Hong
Kong is coming from a leftist group know as China. When I first went to China, in moments
away from my handlers (now "minders") new middle-class professionals told me that China would
survive as a society as long as simple freedoms were advanced. The children of those people
are now growing up in a new kind of totalitarian system,where you are "disappeared" if you
cause trouble.
Socialism does not need to be like this, but it is the way it always ends up. The people
who are burning and looting are even harder to control when they disagree with a pure
democratic government. The alternative is a representative democracy. Sound familiar?
Theosebes Goodfellow , 9 minutes ago
what is happening in the USA today is due directly to the fact that we did not teach our
children about the "Lost Generation", (how the Chinese themseves describe it), i.e., the
Chinese "Cultural Revolution".
But the Marxist-Leninist tachers, especially in colleges and universities, DO NOT want to
have to teach anything that shows Communism in a bad light. So it di not get taught.
Fortunately we have the lessons prepared for our little tykes by the late, detested Hugo
Chavez. Nothing says "Socialism/Communism Sucks". The ex-bus driver turned narco-trafficker
Maduro is just icing on the cake. You can't hide that disaster. And if you think it's bad in
Venezuela now, what until those stuck there start starvig to death. That's coming to
Venezuela next. It will, by the way, be the first time in modern history that a famine will
have struck the New World.
Now there's an accolade to lay at the feet of the collectivists.
TrustbutVerify , 10 minutes ago
The American Cultural Revolutionaries (BLM, Antifa, NFAC, etc.)...Democratic Party voters
all.
cjones1 , 10 minutes ago
Chinese families had to throw their antique furniture into the street to escape
condemnation. Many people starved if they were not given a ration ticket.
I was told that even today unmarried, pregnant woman are unable to obtain obstetric
services to deliver their baby. Their babies are not officially recognized and are often left
on street. Childless couples may adopt them or they are left for orphanages
The Democratic party has sanctioned the violent mobs in their politically correct
condemnations. It is a great irony that tge Democratic party is a Confederate memorial. The
Democratic party's legacy is slavery, racism, bigotry, segregation, lynch mobs, and the KKK
hoodlums. They have new hoodlums in Antifa, BLM, and the TDS afflicted that paint bigoted
slogans on city streets and elsewhere.
I was listening to an interview with Tucker Carlson by The Federalist last week. Great
interview, by the way. He said, and I am paraphrasing:
'During the Cultural Revolution in China, Confucius and his entire family's graves were
all dug up and desecrated. The message was clear: If they come for him, they will come for
YOU and have no problems in doing so'.
So, these statues are just objects to them. And, if you get in their way, you will just be
an object to be removed. This is all very surreal to me.....and quite frightening. I am not
one to post bravado. I am only a man. I want to harm no one and want no one to harm me.
However, the time is coming when I will be tested. It seems it will be sooner rather than
later. I hope that with my faith well grounded in God that I will endure what comes to
me.
SDShack , 8 minutes ago
Statues are monuments to history to stimulate debate among future generations what those
monuments represent. Violently erasing statues by one side, means that side admits they
cannot win the future debate. Hence they must eliminate what they perceive is the "history"
that is preventing them from winning. Violent action is almost always due to hidden
insecurity from the known inability to intellectually win an argument. It's their moment to
crap all over the chessboard and leave.
"... In 2013, the national outcry over Trayvon Martin's death and George Zimmerman's acquittal sparked a national outcry over racial injustice. Amid this controversy, three activists, Patrisse Cullors , Alicia Garza , and Opal Tometi , started a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, which soon went viral. They then founded the national Black Lives Matter organization. ..."
"... No doubt, the organization itself was quite radical from the very beginning. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as "trained Marxists" in a recently resurfaced video from 2015. ..."
"... The official Black Lives Matter organization is Marxist ..."
"... Such a divisive ideology only fuels perpetual conflict, not progress toward reconciliation. By failing to drive this toxic extremism out loudly and clearly from their side of the issue, the large majority of Black Lives Matter supporters -- who simply seek reform, justice, and reconciliation -- take a chainsaw to any chance of achieving common ground and consensus. ..."
n Monday night, Terry Crews was grilled over his criticism of Black Lives Matter by CNN host
Don Lemon. As Gina Bontempo pointed out on Twitter : "Don
Lemon did everything he could to talk over Terry and silence him as soon as they started
approaching what the BLM organization is *really* about."
So what is Black Lives Matter really about?
Many conservatives insist Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-police, radical organization
that wants to tear down America . Meanwhile, most liberals simply view Black Lives Matter as a
heroic movement and powerful slogan signaling support for racial justice and opposition to
police brutality.
Both are right.
There is Black Lives Matter™️, and there is "black lives matter."
Black Lives Matter as a broad sentiment and movement then gained national attention and name
recognition after the 2014 deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Meanwhile, the official
group expanded and many more local chapters formed.
No doubt, the organization itself was quite radical from the very beginning. Black Lives
Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as
"trained Marxists" in a recently
resurfaced video from 2015.
"We actually do have an ideological frame[work]," Cullors said
of her organization. "We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological
theories."
Meanwhile, the national organization's official
platform , published in 2015, contained a specific call to "[disrupt] the
Western-prescribed nuclear family structure."
At the local level, official Black Lives Matter chapters are essentially far-left front
groups that use racial justice as a Trojan horse for leftist policy and ideology. For example,
the official organization Black Lives Matter DC openly dedicates itself to "creating the conditions
for Black Liberation through the abolition of systems and institutions of white supremacy,
capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism."
Image credit: Johnny Silvercloud, Flickr
Unsurprisingly, conservatives have bashed the radical group en masse.
"Black Lives Matter is an openly Marxist, anti-America n group," conservative commentator
Mark Levin said . "There's no denying
it. And it is fully embraced by the Democrat Party and its media and cultural
surrogates."
"Black Lives Matter is a Marxist movement," Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz tweeted . "Black Lives
Matter is not about police, it's not about race, it's not about justice. It's about making us
hate America so they can replace America."
"You know, I know plenty of people who are for Black Lives Matter. A lot of them are nice
people," Fox News Host Tucker Carlson
recently said . "I'm not mad at them. I disagree I think Black Lives Matter is
poison."
These kinds of conservative criticisms of Black Lives Matter are widespread. And on one
hand, they're right : The official Black Lives Matter organization is Marxist, is anti-American
in its values, and its views are rightfully alarming to anyone who believes in the
Constitution, capitalism, and civil society as we know it.
But in applying their reflexive response to all Black Lives Matter supporters, conservative
critics are failing to see the forest for the trees.
Most of these people, I suspect, don't even know that there is an official Black Lives
Matter organization. And I'm sure hardly any of them could name Patrisse Cullors or Alicia
Garza.
Whether it's where I'm from in deep-blue Massachusetts or where I live now in Washington
D.C., walking by a Black Lives Matter sign sticking out from someone's yard is just about an
everyday occurrence. After the death of George Floyd, more of my acquaintances, friends, and
relatives than I could count posted #BlackLivesMatter.
Many others changed their picture to a black square or otherwise signaled their support for
the movement.
I can personally guarantee you that the vast majority of these people, while liberal, do not
support ending capitalism or dismantling the family. Conservatives are led astray as soon as
they apply their (valid) criticisms of Black Lives Matter™️ the organization to
the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters broadly.
Image Credit: John Lucia, Flickr
Just look at the way some on the Right responded to Sen. Mitt Romney after he attended a
Washington, D.C. protest against police brutality, telling reporters he did so "to make sure
that people understand that Black Lives Matter."
Here's a sampling of how hostile the response was from some conservative pundits on
Twitter:
Even President Trump attacked Romney over it:
No matter how you feel about the conservative Mormon senator politically (and I'm far from a
fan), no one can credibly argue that Romney supports destroying the nuclear family, ending
capitalism, or abolishing the police.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana faced a similar unfair backlash when he announced his
support for Black Lives Matter and
unveiled a modest police reform proposal :
It may well be true that in particular conservative circles, everyone is well aware of the
obscure history of the Black Lives Matter founders' Marxist roots. But the average person on
the street and the average person who shares the hashtag are most certainly not. And the
movement itself has become something much bigger, broader, and more benevolent than the
original organization.
However, it's by no means just conservatives who err in their approach to Black Lives
Matter. For one, many on the Left fail to acknowledge at all the Marxist roots of the official
Black Lives Matter organization, and thus, paint anyone who objects to the organization as
racist, unthinkingly inveighing: "How could anyone not support black lives?" This kind of
clever naming of a controversial movement, similar to "Antifa" supposedly standing for
"anti-fascist," makes it easy to baselessly paint critics as extreme and immoral. Yet this is a
reductive oversimplification that serves only to divide.
So, too, much of the blame for the Black Lives Matter perception gap lies with liberals,
Democrats, and others who support the movement for failing to adequately distance themselves
from the radical organization.
For example, I visited one of my favorite coffee shops in Arlington, Virginia over the
weekend. Like many a hipster coffee shop, it had a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and
had a fundraiser going on for the cause as well. But I was dismayed to read the flyer and
notice that the proceeds of the fundraiser were going to the official Black Lives Matter DC
organization -- yes, the same one that openly wants to abolish capitalism.
Now, I highly doubt that the owners of this coffee shop, even if they are progressives or
Democrats, actually support Marxism. More importantly, I'm certain that most customers who
donated, even in the liberal-leaning neighborhood, do not realize they are donating to a
Marxist, anti-American revolutionary organization by participating in the fundraiser. But they
are.
Many a mainstream liberal has signaled support for the generic "black lives matter" cause by
sharing fundraisers that, if you look closely, go to official Black Lives Matter organizations
that do not actually represent their views. Meanwhile, liberal-leaning media outlets such as MSNBC
regularly platform official members of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and pass the
radical activists off as within the mainstream.
From corporations to politicians to random Facebook users, Black Lives Matter supporters
need to do a much better job distancing themselves from the radical organization at the root of
their slogan. (Or, alternatively, they should come up with a new and different slogan that
doesn't have such malign associations.)
This lack of due diligence is lazy and irresponsible, but more importantly, it's
dangerous.
Marxism is a vicious ideology, and it's one that is rooted in a divisive vision of
irreconcilable class conflict. As important economist Ludwig von Mises
noted ,
"According to the Marxian view... human society is organized into classes whose interests stand
in irreconcilable opposition." Moreover, as Mises explains ,
Marxists believe that people's very thoughts ought to be determined by their class and that
those who differ from the prescribed worldview are class traitors.
Such a divisive ideology only fuels perpetual conflict, not progress toward reconciliation.
By failing to drive this toxic extremism out loudly and clearly from their side of the issue,
the large majority of Black Lives Matter supporters -- who simply seek reform, justice, and
reconciliation -- take a chainsaw to any chance of achieving common ground and consensus.
When Don Lemon took issue with Terry Crews's take on Black Lives Matter, Crews was
crystal clear , saying, "This is the
thing. It's a great mantra. It's a true mantra. Black lives do matter. But, when you're talking
about an organization, you're talking about the leaders, you're talking about the people who
are responsible for putting these things together. It's two different things."
We need more of that kind of clarity in our discourse. Right now, the debate over "Black
Lives Matter" is muddled and confused. Liberals and conservatives alike need to make an effort
to listen and understand the other side's perspective, not the strawman caricature of it used
as a punching bag in partisan echo chambers. Until both sides take the time to understand each
other, we will keep talking past each other -- and any real progress or harmony will remain a
fantasy.
I have searched the Internet and cannot find the alleged second autopsy -- the so-called
"independent autopsy" hired by "George Floyd's family." I have no difficulty finding the
official medical examiner's report, but there is no sign of a second autopsy. Those of you who
are convinced it exists please send me the URL. It will prove that you are a better Internet
searcher than I am.
Based on the available information, the "second autopsy" consists of an assertion by CNN, a
collection of liars that other presstitutes echo. Thus, the presstitutes created a non-existent
"second autopsy" just as they created Russiagate and Russian bounties to the Taliban to kill
American troops in Afganistan that President Trump allegedly refuses to do anything about.
Precisely how does Trump do something about something that does not exist? Try to imagine
people so stupid that the morons think the Taliban has to be paid by Russia to kill the
American troops who are trying to occupy Afghanistan. The Taliban have been killing the US
occupying troops for two decades! Why suddenly are Russian bounties necessary for the Taliban
to kill US troops? It is just more concocted anti-Trump propaganda.
Similarly, how can a second autopsy that allegedly concludes that officer Chauvin murdered
Floyd be refuted when no such autopsy exists?
What does exist is a twice fired former medical examiner, first fired by New York City and
then by Suffold County, who serves as a hired gun to give inflamatory statements to the media
in support of civil lawsuits for money. His name is Michael Baden.
Baden did no second autopsy. He viewed the video of officer Chauvin and gave his opinion
that Chauvin killed Floyd by cutting off oxygen and blood to the brain. In this rhetorical
footwork, he was aided by the rightwing idiot Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Nowhere in the media is there any mention of Floyd's existing serious health conditions, his
drug addiction, or the level of fentanyl in his blood that was in excess of a fatal dose. The
medical examiner's report has been ignored by the presstitute media and by public authorities
including the prosecutor who indicted officer Chauvin.
"Can you overdose on fentanyl? Yes, a person can overdose on fentanyl. An overdose occurs
when a drug produces serious adverse effects and life-threatening symptoms. When people
overdose on fentanyl, their breathing can slow or stop. This can decrease the amount of oxygen
that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can lead to a coma and permanent
brain damage, and even death."
"Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, are now the most common drugs involved in drug
overdose deaths in the United States. In 2017, 59.8 percent of opioid-related deaths involved
fentanyl compared to 14.3 percent in 2010" -- https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/fentanyl
"Among an estimated 70,200 drug overdose deaths in 2017, the largest increase was related to
fentanyl and its analogs with more than 28,400 overdose deaths. However, these numbers are
likely underreported." -- https://www.drugs.com/illicit/fentanyl.html
According to harmreductionohio.org, 700 micrograms (less than one milligram) is an overdose
from which death is likely. One milligram (1000 micrograms) carries the risk of "death near
certain." Two milligrams and death is certain and unavoidable. A dose of 250 micrograms
(one-fourth of one milligram) can kill a non-tolerant user. "Conventional medical wisdom is
that 2,000 micrograms is the 'minimum lethal dose' -- in other words, the smallest amount that
can be fatal. This estimate is far too high. Two thousand micrograms (2 milligrams) of pure
fentanyl injected into a vein would cause even most heavy heroin users to overdose --
especially if fentanyl is mixed with any other substance, such as heroin, alcohol or Xanax."
https://www.harmreductionohio.org/how-much-fentanyl-will-kill-you-2/
Don't write to me what you think. What you think is not the issue. The facts are the issue.
If you don't now the facts, you simply do not know. Ignorant and manipulated emotion is not a
basis for arriving at truth.
There is no mention in the media of Floyd's bloodwork showing the high level of fentanyl or
by Hannity in his enabling interview of a hired gun, Michael Baden, who intends to make himself
and Floyd's "family" multimillionaires with a civil lawsuit. No doubt but that Baden is
grateful to Hannity for giving him the public forum for his clients.
With no mention that Floyd had a fatal dose of a dangerous opioid that is known to stop
breathing and cause a heart attack, the hired gun, Michael Baden, can pronounce officer Chavin
guilty.
That is what the media want to hear. That is what the politicians are invested in. That is
what Hannity in his stupidity has given to the leftwing as a weapon.
Here I am trying to defend the truth. There is no second autopsy, but everyone has been
convinced that there is. What reach can one naysaying voice have when an irresponsible media
has enthroned a lie?
Why was a "second autopsy" needed? According to CNN for no reason at all. According to CNN
the official medical examiner's report supports that Floyd's death was homicide by police. If
so, why did the "Floyd family" have to hire someone to say the same thing?
But this is just another CNN lie. There is no mention of homicide in the medical examiner's
report. There is no blame attributed to the police, The title of the medical examiner's report
has been intentionally misrepresented by the presstitute media to imply that the police at
least had a small part in Floyd's death.
The report states: "No life-threatening injuries identified." The title in the medical
examiner's report is nothing but a list of the factors investigated. The Amerian presstitute
media has falsified the meaning of the use of the word "restraint" in the title of the medical
examiner's report to mean that police restraint contributed to Floyd's death.
To summarize: Michael Baden did not do an autopsy. He provided his self-serving
interpretation of the video everyone has seen. CNN turned this into a "second autopsy." Other
media picked up the CNN misrepresentation of a video interpretation as an autopsy, and the
"fact" of a second autopsy was created. The medical examiner's report does not mention homicide
or use the word, and there is no mention of police restraint as a "confluence factor"
contributing to Floyd's breathing problem and death. Police or no police, the overdose of
fentanyl was sufficient to kill him. Note that no media has mentioned the fatal concentration
of fentanyl in Floyd's blood. That Floyd was murdered by police is very important to many
people, and this emotional response overwhelms facts. The media rushed us to judgment on an
emotional response to a video without any examination of the facts.
Consider also that the "peaceful protests" were not spontaneous outbreaks in multiple
cities. There were pre-delivered stacks of bricks present in protest locations. "Peaceful
protesters" arrived with knapsacks filled with concrete chunks. Antifa was on hand to initiate
the looting, burning, and violence. The presstitutes have tried to cover up these facts, but
Black Agenda Report affirms that the "spontaneous protests" were planned in advance:
There was nothing spontaneous about the breadth and scope of the protests that rocked the
nation last month, said veteran activist Monifa Bandele , a member of the policy table of the
Movement for Black Lives. "It really came off of six years of tough, exciting and inspiring
mass organizing," said Bandele. The unprecedented level of white participation was the result
of "half a decade of telling non-white activists, 'This is what it looks like, so follow the
lead of Black organizations.'"
Americans are the world's most gullible people. They have fallen for every transparent lie
of the 21st century from 9/11 through alleged Russian bounties to the Taliban to kill US
troops. Each time the truth eventually comes out. Controlled demolition brought down World
Trade Center Building Seven. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein
had no al Qaeda connections. There were no Iranian nukes. Assad did not use chemical weapons.
Russia did not invade Ukraine. Yet the knowledge that they have been lied to and deceived does
not shield Americans from falling for the next lie.
A people unable to catch on to their constant manipulation has no future.
"Don't write to me what you think. What you think is not the issue. The facts are the
issue."
Let's get real. A big man put his weight on a handcuffed man's neck and kept up the
pressure despite pleas that he was causing distress. That constitutes "the facts". There is
no excuse for this.
Americans are the world's most gullible people. They have fallen for every transparent
lie of the 21st century from 9/11 through alleged Russian bounties to the Taliban to kill
US troops.
Second, there is clearly some sort of Journo-list type agreement among the MSM to suppress
and censor any mention of "fentanyl" in connection with George Floyd's death. None of the
write-ups of his death even mentioned the issue -- even though it is sitting there in plain
site.
Finally, I tried to post a comment at the WSJ that mentioned Floyd's fentanyl level and
took exception to the casual assertion that Floyd was definitively "killed" by police. The
mods denied the comment. I asked why, and they gave me this response:
Dear Sir,
We are declining to publish comments that question the official medical examiner's
ruling re: George Floyd's death.
Marc Baden also did the autopsy on Jeffrey Epstein which he ruked as a suicide, that nobdy
belueves, and did the autopsy for the O.J. Simpson trial.
Opioids are highly addictive, meaning that addicts must take increasingly hogher doses of
opioids in order to feel any effects, whether for pain relief, or simply for a high. What
would kill someone that is not an addict, may not kill a long time addict at all. It may, or
it may not, depending on the individual and their history of using that particular drug.
Considering that Floyd had to be dragged away after his neck was kneeled on for nearly
eight minutes, which definitely would prevent one from breathing, I do not understand how it
is that anyone can argue that he was not murdered in cold blood by Chauvin and aided and
abetted by the three other police officers that watched, and did nothing to intervene. They
just watched him being murdered.
How can anyone reasonably claim that kneeling on someone's neck for eight minutes would
not kill them? Chauvin and Floyd used to work together at a Mexican restaraunt, so they had a
previous history together, that appears to be not the greatest relationship. Floyd was a
terrible person that broke into a pregnant woman's house and brutally raped and robbed her,
causing miscarriage. He was not a hero in any way. He was a monster!!!
Oh, it's not about George Floyd. People are tired of being manhandled and threatened and
scared to death by dangerous ex-soldier killers. Not to mention outrageous tickets. And
they're unemployed. It's a fucking police state. When I think of the things you could do 50
years ago that you would be murdered for today. Makes me nostalgic.
Kneeling on a neck does NOT interfere with the airway. Floyd did not die from a lack of
air, he died from the drugs he ingested and his blocked arteries. Floyd did NOT rape anyone,
he did threaten with a gun and he did steal jewelry and a cell phone. There is no record of a
victim's miscarriage. Dr. Irwin Golden conducted the autopsies on Nicole Simpson and Ronald
Goldman. You need to get your facts straight.
In addition to the fatal dose of fentanyl, plus the meth and weed that were present in Mr.
Floyd's system, there was also evidence he had contracted Corona virus. So under the rules
that have prevailed since March or April of this year, his certificate of death should have
attributed his demise to Covid-19. Strangely, the media never mention this detail although
they usually can yammer of nothing else.
In addition to the fatal dose of fentanyl, plus the meth and weed that were present in
Mr. Floyd's system, there was also evidence he had contracted Corona virus.
Several good reasons not to hold the convict down with bare hands.
@Hypnotoad666 ly. And his was not just run-of-the-mill fried-chicken-induced hypertrophy.
Rather, both his ventricles were dilated, meaning he probably had both hypertrophic and
dilated cardiomyopathy, either one serious risk factors for sudden cardiac death even for a
teetotaler. This is not to mention the 70 to 90 percent occlusions in three of St. Fentanyl's
coronary arteries, blockages severe enough to virtually guarantee perfusion issues.
St. Fentanyl's ticker was a time bomb.
Most doctors afaik wouldn't recommend that someone with St. Fentanyl's clinical picture
gorge on cocktails of the most dangerous drugs on earth then do felonies and fight with the
cops when they show up.
@BeB e the first thing they see, and any later contravening evidence they have trouble
accepting. People saw the evidence and heard narrative from news-speakers.
This is why good propaganda rushes narrative. The first neurons to be myelin sheathed take
priority in the human brain.
A people unable to catch on to their constant manipulation has no future.
Propaganda works because first info myelin sheaths, and to overcome first info is many
orders more difficult.
Maybe we can be a little more sympathetic to Hitler's concentration camps, which were a
way of deprogramming the population from communist propaganda?
@Hypnotoad666 taki said, "There is no newspaper in the U.S. more supportive of Israel
than the [Murdoch's] New York Post." ).
I believe Murdoch's family and even the Fox Media have donated to BLM.
Every mainstream media outlet for the most part is against whites and Western
Civilization. ( Fox news does put up a bit of fight with Tucker Carlson). They want emptied
headed guilt ridden dim witted whites to do their bidding and they have won. Once the media
whether it's WSJ or an individual like Drew Brees takes the knee you should just remain there
because you know what you will be doing next. There is no going back once you become a
"Politcal Suckulator."
Floyd had a potentially (usually) fatal dose of fentanyl in his bloodstream and about 8x
as much morphine. He must have recently used heroin laced with fentanyl. The arrest and his
resisting it stressed him and raised the demands on his respiratory system, which failed
under the depressant effects of the opioids. He probably would have lived without the arrest,
but that doesn't mean the cops did anything wrong. He complained he couldn't breathe before
the infamous knee was applied and the cops called for an ambulance. Everyone involved knew
that what was happening was a medical emergency. That's why one of the cops said, "Don't do
drugs, kids." Floyd had just been fighting them, so he had to be restrained as the ambulance
was en route. The technique with the knee did not choke him to death.
But no one paid attention. The NPCs just fit it into the false narrative of police racism
the dinosaur media have been hawking for years.
One of the articles I read said that a second independent autopsy was conducted by Dr.
Allecia M. Wilson, pathologist from the University of Michigan, and by Dr. Michael Baden.
Allecia Wilson, MD
Assistant Professor, Forensic Pathology, Pediatric Pathology
Director, Autopsy and Forensic Services
Director, Residency Training Program
Department of Pathology
Michigan Medicine
University of Michigan
Wikipedia on Michael Baden re his testimony in the O.J. Simpson trial:
"Baden testified in the Simpson trial on August 10 and 11, 1995 and made two claims that
he later disowned.[30][31] First he claimed that Nicole Brown was still standing and
conscious when her throat was slashed.[32] The purpose of this claim was to dispute the
theory that Brown was the intended target. The prosecution argued that Brown was murdered
first and the intended target because the soles of her feet didn't have any blood on them
despite the large amount of blood at the crime scene and that she was unconscious when her
throat was cut because she had very few defensive wounds.[33][34] At the subsequent civil
trial the following year he disowned that claim and admitted it was absurd to think that
someone would stand still without moving their feet while their throat is being slashed and
not fight back.[35][36][37]
Baden then claimed that Ron Goldman remained conscious[38] and fought with his assailant
for at least ten minutes[39] with a severed jugular vein.[31][30] The purpose of this
testimony was to extend the length of time it took the murders to happen to the point where
Simpson had an alibi.[40] At the subsequent civil trial he initially denied making that claim
and then after being confronted with a video clip of him saying it at the criminal trial, he
disowned it. Baden claimed he misunderstood the question but the Goldman's attorney allege he
said it because the defense paid him to do so. He also alleged that Baden knowingly gave
false testimony because he knew that Ron Goldman's blood was found inside Simpson's Bronco
despite Goldman never having an opportunity within his lifetime to be in Simpson's car."
He said his reputation and credibility never recovered after the Simpson trial (for good
reason!) and in subsequent trials when he was called as an expert witness, he continued to be
discredited because of this testimony. The jury actually believed this guy!
Then in the Phil Spector case he was asked if he had any conflicts of interest, he said
no, but then it was later discovered that his wife was one of Spector's lead attorneys.
Aaaaagh! You can't make this stuff up.
Defense counsel is going to have a field day with this guy!
I first saw Michael Baden in action in the late 1990'a during the trial of a stripper and
her boyfriend for the murder of casino owner Ted Binion. Binion was found dead in his house
and the question was did he die of an drug overdose or was he murdered. Baden was the
prosecutions 'expert' who insisted Binion had been murdered via a technique called 'burking'
in which a helpless victim is smothered by holding his mouth and nose shut while sitting on
his chest.
It was quite a sensational trial and it was televised. There was no doubt Binion used
drugs but he did not use needles and the defense said he died from smoking heroin and
ingesting xanax. The problem was Binion was a rich and famous casino owner and the defendants
were seedy low lifes who tried to steal $6 million in silver Binion had put in a vault out in
the desert.
The defendants were convicted but their conviction was overturned and they were acquited (
of murder) in a new trial. They were convicted of stealing the silver however.
Michael Baden would have been in his early 60's during this trial. Today he is 85. I doubt
he will be as impressive an expert witness today as he was back then. I doubt the prosecution
or the "Floyd fanily" would dare let him testify.
I have no problem imagining a competent lawyer could make the case that Floyd died from a
massive drug overdose as there is plenty of evidence for that. What I see is a replay of the
Rodney King trial in which the police were exonerated, which was immediately followed by the
'92 riots in LA, except this time the riots will be all over the country and include whites.
Then the feds will step in and charge Chauvin with civil rights crimes in order to get him
behind bars for a couple years just to calm everybody down.
A google search finds multiple studies that all put the median level of fent overdose over
thousands of cases at around 9 or 10 ng/ml. As you said Floyd's was higher. Ng/ml is
independent of the persons size as it gives the concentration in the blood. This doesn't take
into account (as mentioned) the other drugs in his system. Nor does it also factor in his
extreme heart condition with passages blocked 90-75-50% according to the autopsy.
Paul your following references though correct, however, brutally twisted just like CNN or
Washington Compost and likes..
"Black Agenda Report affirms that the "spontaneous protests" were planned in advance"
AND
"There was nothing spontaneous about the breadth and scope of the protests that rocked the
nation last month, said veteran activist Monifa Bandele, a member of the policy table of the
Movement for Black Lives. "It really came off of six years of tough, exciting and inspiring
mass organizing"
If one listens to her radio interview one gets a different view than what you tried to
present. She was referring to her organization's effort for protest after Ferguson killing in
2014. In my opinion, nothing wrong with that.
On top of that you did not bother to provide any link for to support your spin. Thanks to the
internet, I was able to find the link and listened to half of the program. Entirely different
perspective than what I got from your write up. Here is the link:
Thanks I used to be surprised that Murdoch wasn't Jewish since he looked so much like Alan
Greenspan, Larry king, Larry Silverstein – a Jewish physiognomic category. Well now
that's sorted.
Americans are gullible, apathetic people who swallow any story no matter how absurd. Iraq,
a much smaller third world country, was going to come get us with it's WMD. Despite all the
self-flattery they're mostly a bunch of cowards, cringing with their snot-rag masks attached.
Not all of course, but way too many. Americans can be sold anything.
Why does the media, the entire width and breadth of that enormous machine, lie to us? Why
would they do such a thing?
The idea that the news media exists to inform you of objective facts about which you may
be unaware, is just silly and childish.
Paul Reuter: Reuter was born as Israel Beer Josaphat in Kassel, Germany.[4]. His father,
Samuel Levi Josaphat, was a rabbi ..
Moses Yale Beach: (January 7, 1800 – July 18, 1868) was an American inventor and
publisher who started the Associated Press, and is credited with originating print
syndication ..
And there you have just the tippy tip tip of the largest iceberg in this universe.
@BeB e separated from the ongoing effort to get rid of POTUS Trump. The Democrats and
their Allied Media have exploited these incidents for partisan political gain since 2010.
It's now a feature of our politics, just like primaries and Election Day in November.
There are a number of elements that drove and continue to drive the instant context. But
the essential one is that Trump was headed toward reelection in a landslide with Game Over
support from blacks of 20% or more. They're desperate to derail that trend. Though, as with
the previous efforts, various frame-up gambits and goading him into a war, he's refused to
take the bait.
My father (born 1923) was a doctor at the NYU Medical Center and knew Dr. Baden well. My
father was mild mannered and almost always saw the good in people. The one exception I recall
was his antipathy towards Dr. Baden who he considered a presstitute fraud of the first
order.
The New York Times publishes a report (June 2, 2020) by Frances Robles and Audra D. S.
Burch titled: "How Did George Floyd Die? Here's What We Know," with the
subheading: "A private autopsy commissioned by the family concluded that his death was a homicide,
brought about by compression of his neck and back by Minneapolis police officers."
The report appears compelling with expert testimony by both Dr. Michael Baden and Dr.
Allecia M. Wilson (of the University of Michigan). The NYT states:
"The findings by the family's private medical examiners directly contradict the [official
Hennepin County medical examiner's preliminary findings] report that there was no asphyxia,
said Dr. Allecia M. Wilson, of the University of Michigan, one of the doctors who examined
his body. The physical evidence showed that the pressure applied led to his death, she said.
In an interview, Dr. Michael Baden, who also participated in the private autopsy, said there
was also some hemorrhaging around the right carotid area."
So, here you go, if you believe the "newspaper of record."
War is no longer about winning. Endless conflict is the name of the game. Military defense
contractors are the most influential of all lobbyists and so intertwined in government that
it's truly & effectively fascist. Profit is the end, war is the means.
Isn't USA effectively at war with Venezuela? Isn't it an act of war to seize billions
in State assets - including embassies - and support a coup?
Isn't USA effectively at war with Syria? If ISIS has been defeated - as Trump has said
several times - then USA is illegally occupying Syria oil fields. In addition, USA
"recognized" Israel's claim to the Golan Heights - against UN resolutions that deny that
claim.
Isn't USA at war with Yemen? USA supplies Saudi Arabia and UAE with weapons for this
war plus targeting.
Isn't it an act of war to renege on terms to end a war? If so, then one could say that
USA has renewed it's war with North Korea.
Isn't it an act of war to impose a virtual embargo on a country via crippling
third-party sanctions? And wasn't the assassination of Solemani an act of war? Then USA is
effectively at war with Iran. Putin's reminder that Iran was a Russian ally after the
downing of the USA drone may be the reason that we are not in a hot war with Iran.
USA argued for a "two-state" solution for Palestine for two decades, then (under Trump)
switched almost entirely to Israel's side. That sounds like an act of war against the
"State" that USA has argued should exist.
Isn't USA still at war with the Taliban? Or is that just a 20-year "police action" like
Vietnam?
And what about Libya that NATO Turkey is seeking to conquer - after USA played a key
(and illegal) role in destroying?
And then there are tensions with Russia and China, which only seem to grow more intense
every week. The Trump Administration seeks to stop NordStream (for security reasons) and
punish China for Trump's inept pandemic response and for exercising control of Hong Kong
(which is long recognized as Chinese sovereign territory).
<> <> <> <> <>
IMO Trump has started wars but the countries and peoples he picks on know that it's
best not to respond too forcibly or they invite greater damage.
I'm surprised that moa commenters give any credence to the claims that portray Trump as
peaceful/peace-loving. In addition to his belligerence, Empire front-man Trump has initiated
a huge military build-up, ended long-standing peace treaties, and militarized space.
This is the standard Washington rhetoric that accompanies their coup attempts. It is a
companion to the "moderate democracy" rhetoric about U.S. satellite governments like Saudi
Arabia. The rhetoric tells you that these people have zero interest in democracy, honesty, or
avoiding hypocrisy. Some of Bush's neocons are Biden Supporters; what a surprise.
@ Jackrabbit 102
re: Isn't USA effectively at war with Venezuela?. . .etc
Obviously you don't know jack about actual war, do you.
Or give us your creds?
I dropped back in to see what follows...imagine my deflation to find that people don't know
what war is.
@108 Don Bacon
Precisely. No one who has ever experienced the tragedy of war will ever mistake the
playground games of make-believe war with the real thing.
~~
That's the problem with the US administration, and its satraps and the many camp followers
and court jesters who follow it. They don't know the difference between posturing war and
waging war.
The difference is so profound that it calls for not only a new language but a new
departure point of reference within one's soul even to begin to speak of such things.
The US will pursue the make-believe war it postures through in order to score points
within its small group circle. But real war, should it ever come to touch it - and it will if
it pursues its childishness too far - will shock it into total frozen fear the moment that it
strikes.
Iran knew this, and had the human strength to test it and to prove it. Everything else, up
to this point, was an accommodation by the world's nations to the posturing of the US for its
own internal coherence. It was a matter of supporting the US ego rather than of being close
to the event when that ego falls apart, with potentially explosive consequences.
But Iran had the strength of character to stand on its principles, and to proclaim its
truth. And by the way, that stand is by no means done, despite what the trolls may suggest.
Iran has barely begun its action to remove the US from Southwest Asia, and we will only see
the footprints of its actions as we realize that the US has departed. And this will happen,
regardless of the US narrative and its many parrots.
~~
I don't blame the US or any of its supporters for threatening war when all it really does
is act as a nuisance and a spoiler in those few platforms left to it. Those it oppresses have
so far mostly chosen to bear the insult rather than to make a fuss. But Iran has shown the
way, and one should not expect many more of those oppressed to put up with the abuse from the
US many more times.
What is clearly known is that the very last thing the US can do is go to war, in the real
meaning of that term. The very last thing the US is capable of, is war. And the generals of
all the nations of the world know this because they have seen the proof of it. Anyone who
doesn't see the proof of it is behind the curve, and may well have license to comment here
and elsewhere, but fortunately does not sit in the security councils of the nations of the
world.
~~
If anyone wants to think that the US is "effectively" at war with another nation, then
consider that Iran is absolutely "effectively" at war with the US, just as Hezbollah is
beyond any doubt at war with Israel. And so what? When positions are "effectively" this or
that, then they had better produce "effective" results. And it is only from these effective
results that we can count the coup of the engagement. Hezbollah and Iran don't need to be
told the difference between real attacks and propaganda attacks.
What they count is the real force.
Everything else is bluster. And I was 16 years old myself once, so in all humility I don't
condemn this braggadocio, which I understand all too humanly.
But neither do I take it as real in the real world.
@ Grieved 109
Thanks for helping to deliver us from all that illusory make-believe on war from the deep
thinkers who apparently man this place. And yes, Iran has shown the way, which includes its
ability to put a serious hurt on US forces if attacked. We're talking about the possibility
of lots of US dead bodies, military and dependents, men women and children, also sunken
ships, and not just some supporting proxies and aerial bombing with the attendant publicity
that suggests to some that genuine war exists, when it doesn't.
People need to get real.
Trump is really no different than Clinton, GWBush, and Obama. Each a front-man for the
Deep State/Empire. Each portrayed as well-meaning, peace-loving men that were FORCED! to war
for all the right reasons. In that context, these Jedi mind-tricks fall
flat:
USA can't wage war?
Yet it's bullying other countries and engaging in acts of war.
Trump's belligerence is all bluster?
Yet USA is preparing for war with a costly arms build-up and massive propaganda
campaign (as described well by Caitlin Johnstone).
No one need fear USA?
Yet power-elites in USA subscribe to supremacist ideologies (neoconservativism,
neoliberalism, zionism), advocate a "New World Order", and a 'rules-based' international
system that can only be described as "might makes right".
With only four months left to the U.S. presidential elections, and the increasing
likelihood of Donald Trump, the most pro-Israel President in history, losing, Israel has been
trying to provoke Iran to start a war, so that it can drag the United State into it. This is
not anything new. For over a decade Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to force the United
States to go to war with Iran, and Israel itself almost attacked Iran three times between
2010 and 2011. But the with events of the last several months darkening the prospects of a
second Trump term, Israel feels a new urgency for a war with Iran.
For over two years Israel tried to provoke Iran by attacking Iranian-backed Shiite forces
in Syria, but Iran has opted not to retaliate. Since the attacks did not provoke Iran to
retaliate, and also failed to dislodge Iran's military advisers and the Shiite forces that it
trained, armed, and dispatched to Syria, Israel has seemingly turned to attacking Iran
directly within its borders.
The events of past two months in Iran are indicative of Israel's new push for war. These
events include large-scale infernos, explosions, and cyberattacks, all believed to have been
carried out by Israel and its Iranian proxies, the "fake opposition" which is the part of the
opposition that supports economic sanctions and military attacks against Iran, and has even
allied itself with small secessionist groups that carry out terrorist attacks inside
Iran.
In this video, Prof. Wolff talks about the breakdown of the capitalist system and outlines
4 major problems that the US has been faced with without for quite some time with no solution
in sight: climate change, capitalism's intrinsic instability, systemic racism inherited from
slavery, and lastly the lack of mechanisms to manage viruses.
In this video, Prof. Wolff compares and contrasts the preparation for and management of
COVID-19 with how the US has managed military preparedness and the handling of military
confrontations and activities. It has succeeded at one and completely failed at the other. He
explains why.
Posted by: Grieved | Jul 7 2020 1:09 utc | 96 Prediction: The US may start a war but the US
will not finish that war. Its opponent will end that war, by causing unacceptable losses to
the US - something quite easily achieved, and already proved to the world by Iran in this
very year of 2020.
I agree. The US can not defeat Iran, short of nuking Tehran, which is not in the cards for
geopolitical reasons. However, the US can devastate much of Iran's civilian infrastructure,
which, like most such infrastructures, can't run and hide. The US can also kill a million or
two milllion Iranians, as it proved in Iraq.
All that will do, however, is merely guarantee that Iran will never surrender. Nor would
Iran ever surrender in the first place. Which is why I tend to reference the upcoming war as
the "New Thirty Years War". The clear example is the near twenty years we've spent in
Afghanistan - which is vastly weaker than Iran. Each war - Vietnam, Afghanistan, and arguably
Iraq - has lasted longer than the last and with failure as an outcome.
The US can keep attacking Iran from the air and sea for thirty years - but without ever
defeating Iran. It will do so because the military-industrial complex will make profits every
year from that war - and in the end, that's all that matters to the US (along with the
Only if the US tries a land invasion will the US lose a massive number of troops. But even
that will come over time, albeit at a *much* higher rate than the US saw in either Vietnam,
Iraq, or Afghanistan. US annual casualties would probably be in the low to medium 5 digits
per year, as opposed to the low 4 digits in most of those wars. In other words, four or five
times the rate in Iraq. That's as compared with a hot war in North Korea which would see
50,000 US casualties in the first ninety days, or any war with China or Russia. See "United
States military casualties of war" on Wikipedia. It's possible that casualties could rise to
the level of WWI, if the war lasts five or ten years, or even WWII if it lasts twenty - or
even higher if it lasts thirty.
Most people think the US will not try a land invasion. I've argued, however, that the
*only* way to even attempt to prevent Iran from closing the Straits for the duration of the
war will be for the US to put several score thousand Marines and US troops on Iran's shores
to attempt to prevent launching of mines and anti-ship missiles. This would be difficult
since Iran has a long Persian Gulf shoreline, Iran has fortified that shoreline, there are
many places to launch weapons from that shoreline - and any such US troops would be subject
to both conventional and guerrilla war by the Iranian military and perhaps a million or more
Iranian Basij militia. Nonetheless, the US is likely to be dumb enough to try.
In any event, the US will eventually be forced to withdraw either because the US
electorate would eventually tire of the war - although as Afghanistan proves, that could take
a *very* long time, mostly depending on the casualty rate, however, as I indicateed - or
because another "threat" takes precedence, which would likely mean either Russia or
China.
"And the US will strain its mighty Wurlitzer to the utmost to declare victory as it
retreats."
Yup. And the sad part is that the US electorate will probably believe that, then forget
about the reality and be willing to commit to a new war within another ten years.
In addition to the above, the idea that because there's a difference between "war" and
"conflicts before war" there is *no chance* of war is absurd.
Every war started with this sort of enmity between nations historically. As I've said
before, with this level of enmity between the US and Iran, and arguably between the US and
Russia, and the US and China, war is inevitable. With the latter two countries, such a war is
likely to be nuclear - which is why it hasn't happened yet - that risk is *way* too high
(although it can still happen if a miscalculation causes a conventional war, which then
escalates into nuclear.)
A war with Iran doesn't have that risk. No nuclear power that I am aware of is going to
enter the war on Iran's side and thus risk a nuclear war over Iran. Iran itself will not
develop or use nuclear weapons. Israel *might* consider using nuclear weapons against Iran -
that would be a*huge* mistake geopolitically and probably result in Israel's destruction by
geopolitical means if not by military means. But neither Russia nor China are going to
directly engage the US military to defend Iran. That would be stupid and putting their own
national survival at risk for the benefit of another nation. As Percival Rose would say,
"That ain't gonna happen."
The real problem for some people is cognitive dissonance. They can't emotionally accept
the possibility of these wars occurring - so they don't. They are reduced to saying, "well,
it hasn't happened...yet."
The "yet" is the operative term. There is no logical extension of that term to mean
"never".
There are many other mistaken assumptions, such as:
USA wouldn't start a war it can't win
We've seen that USA is often satisfied with just smashing another country.
USA would strain to justify a war or continue a war
USA is very adept at propaganda. They can apply pressure that forces a country to
"lash out", or intervene to help an abused population or an ally. USA also likes to use
proxies. Example: destabilize with "freedom fighters" then intervene when the target
country commits "atrocities" as it attempts to defend itself.
Trump is a negotiator, he doesn't want to fight
Trump is a stooge. The Deep State will decide when they're ready to fight.
Americans are tired of war
If only that were true. Most Americans just don't care. And are willing to accept
what ever lies they're told (at least for the first months).
What is plain to see is all of these "wars" are not wars but provocations, aggression from
one side and bullying. In every case the other side does not want a war.
Interesting how the US has way upped its aggression on Venezuela without a peep from the
people. This started off with some nonsense about an idiot named Guaido and is now full blown
nastiness.
Sadly they are not the only stooges. It beggars belief that people everywhere believe that
they can elect someone to change the system in the country in which they reside. Political
stripes have very little meaning as the differences are incremental at best. The
bureaucracies necessary to keep the modern systems of governance afloat are staggeringly
monolithic. Electing one individual, or party, or parties and presuming that the system will
somehow be improved upon is a laughable fantasy. It leads to a continuous cycle of four years
of initiatives to tear down the previous four years initiatives unless you're a second term
government. But actual change is still the sole purview of the entrenched bureaucracy or
"deep state" or whatever other label you prefer. To Jackrabbit's point, most decisions hinge
on whether or not the bureaucracies in charge believe a war, a social change etc. can be
implemented and a desired result achieved. It takes a finely developed sense of myopia to
think that the only stooges are those of the political class. Says volumes about the people
that put them there, and continues to suggest that they are electing "change".
As an aside, the Frank Zappa quote that "government is the entertainment division of the
military industrial complex" remains potently poignant.
Calling what the US is doing to these countries "war" is like saying that Floyd was in a
fight with the cop's knee.
Yes,there has been some very measured retaliation from some of the victims, but it amounts to
Floyd saying he can't breathe.
@450 132
The provocations and responses of the formation of a war with Iran have been very interesting
and I think that if Iran hadn't of shot down the Ukrainian airliner after their attack
against the American base we may have already or continue to witness that war. As I see it
there was a real hard on to go after Iran but word of the shoot down allowed the Don to pull
back and let Iran suffer the black mark without escalation.
There are way too many itchy trigger fingers and pretexts for this and that can be easily
engineered and sold to the masses. Helps Biden or whomever if he can blame the future cluster
fuck on cleaning up donnies mess. I expect something expectedly unexpected in the coming
months.
War is not a static proposition and its meaning and definition can and should change over
time to fit the prevailing military strategies and economic paradigm of the day. We don't
live and operate in an unassailable lexicon vacuum. War is not defined tautologically,
meaning, war is not war. War is many things and can be fought on many dimensional fronts,
meaning not just militarily.
I think war is a state of mind. That's why we talk about "the war on poverty" or a
"propaganda war".
You might say that there is a "Cold War" but the number of acts of war is too numerous for
that and targeted at multiple countries/peoples. It's more like a 'hybrid war' on everyone
that opposes the New World Order that the AZ Empire seeks to impose on the planet.
Importantly, you can't prevent war if you only start thinking of it as 'war' when the
shooting starts.
As for the timing of the likely pending Iran war,another consideration is the impact on
financial markets.
The market went into a mini panic last September when the Yemeni missiles hit the Saudi
refineries because the Saudis withdrew ~$60n - $80b from repo markets. Some blame JP Morgan
for that, but someone I know who works at the repo trading desk of the US branch of a large
foreign bank was adamant it was the Saudi pullback and JP Morgan had nothing to do with it. I
thought that the US withdrew Patriot batteries from the Gulf infrastructure in Saudi Arabia,
that is an odd move given Iran could destroy those facilities.
..
"Three weeks into the war, Marine Sgt. Ed Chin got the order: Help the Iraqis celebrating in
Baghdad's Firdos Square topple the statue of Saddam Hussein.
"My captain comes over and he's got like this package. He hands it to me and he's like, he
tells me there's an American flag in there and when I get up there, you know, he's like, show
the boys the colors," said Chin.
Are you seriously incapable of making a connection regarding the hypocrisy of the US
Govt/US military wrapping an American Flag on the Saddam Statue and destroying it for a media
photo op while cheering about it? And the condemnation of the US Govt declaring statues
should not be destroyed?
Do you see no insanity regarding the US Regime illegally invading and destroying another
Nation and its statues (war crime w/millions dead)? The very same Nation celebrating a "bad"
Iraqi statue being destroyed is suddenly disgusted when its own statues are being destroyed
by its own people?
My point is obvious if you can step back from your myopic view. The US is a mentally ill
Nation ridden with hypocrisy. I personally do not put much merit into statues, cultural
idolatry comes to mind, just as foolish as religious idolatry.
So what are your thoughts on the destruction of the Saddam statue sanctioned by the US
govt and military?
@114 I expect V will be along at some point but here are my thoughts on the Saddam
statue.....
The US is ridden with hypocrisy as you say ....no surprise there. The statue was actually
pulled down by a rentamob of Iraqi Saddam haters while American troops high-fived each
other.
They wouldn't see anything wrong with pulling the statue down because Saddam was a 'bad
guy' and an American enemy.
Those same troops would probably not feel the same way about Confederate generals.....who
just happened to be Americans who kept slaves and picked the losing side. They would be seen
as major figures in American history.
That is how a lot of Americans would justify it. Of course it is rank hypocrisy..
Now only complete idiot agrees with Albright "We stand tall and we see further than other
countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us"
"Iran will have to respond, 4 attacks in less than 2 weeks is really taking the piss and
makes them look weak. Quite a reversal from the Iran that was seizing tankers, acting on its
threats and dictating the tempo of escalation."
Posted by: Et Tu | Jul 5 2020 23:07 utc | 56
...
Iran is playing Chess, the US are still trying to find the checkerboard yelling "King
Me".
US military policy has been misguided for decades based on militarism as economic
profiteering, not on the life or death principle of a Nation under attack.
Pure Propaganda-
"SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the
indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future,
and we see the danger here to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform
are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.
MR. LAUER: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright." Interview on NBC-TV "The Today Show"
with Matt Lauer
Columbus, Ohio, February 19, 1998
...
1997 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives -Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
War profiteering, stealing resources and destroying other nations/economies is not much of
a Grand long term Strategy. Iran is preparing, organizing and waiting- the Iranian Red Flag
of "Revenge" for Soleimani is flying while Americans burn their own flag.
"... the essential backdrop for the timing of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution, that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer. ..."
"... That took place in this case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped. ..."
"... They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable. ..."
"... And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden. ..."
"... the Carter Administration, at the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield. And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do. ..."
"... What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia. So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real. ..."
"... just kind of neocon resistance mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump. ..."
"... And then you have this and it, you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate. ..."
"... This is what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous, bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller. ..."
Max Blumenthal breaks down the "Russian bounty" story's flaws and how it aims to prolong the
war in Afghanistan -- and uses Russiagate tactics to continue pushing the Democratic Party to
the right
Multiple US media outlets, citing anonymous intelligence officials, are claiming that Russia
offered bounties to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, and that President Trump has taken no
action.
Others are contesting that claim. "Officials said there was disagreement among
intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian
plot," the New York Times reports. "Notably, the National Security Agency, which specializes in
hacking and electronic surveillance, has been more skeptical."
"The constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party
and its base is moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into
this Cold War," Blumenthal says.
Guest: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of several books, including his
latest "The Management of Savagery."
TRANSCRIPT
AARON MATÉ: Welcome to Pushback, I'm Aaron Maté. There is a new supposed
Trump-Russia bombshell. The New York Times and other outlets reporting that Russia has
been paying bounties to Afghan militants to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump and the
White House were allegedly briefed on this information but have taken no action.
Now, the story has obvious holes, like many other Russiagate bombshells. It is sourced to
anonymous intelligence officials. The New York Times says that the claim comes from
Afghan detainees. And it also has some logical holes. The Taliban have been fighting the US and
Afghanistan for nearly two decades and never needed Russian payments before to kill the
Americans that they were fighting; [this] amongst other questions are raised about this story.
But that has not stopped the usual chorus from whipping up a frenzy.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Vladimir Putin is offering bounties for the scalps of American
soldiers in Afghanistan. Not only offering, offering money [to] the people who kill Americans,
but some of the bounties that Putin has offered have been collected, meaning the Russians at
least believe that their offering cash to kill Americans has actually worked to get some
Americans killed.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign
of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin. He had has [sic] this information
according to The Times, and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought
to invite Russia to rejoin the G7. He's in his entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but
this is beyond the pale.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: I was not briefed on the Russian military
intelligence, but it shows that we need in this coming defense bill, which we're debating this
week, tough sanctions against Russia, which thus far Mitch McConnell has resisted.
Joining me now is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management of
Savagery . Max, welcome to Pushback. What is your reaction to this story?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, it just feels like so many other episodes that we've
witnessed over the past three or four years, where American intelligence officials basically
plant a story in one outlet, The New York Times , which functions as the media wing of
the Central Intelligence Agency. Then no reporting takes place whatsoever, but six reporters,
or three to six reporters are assigned to the piece to make it look like it was some
last-minute scramble to confirm this bombshell story. And then the story is confirmed again by
The Washington Post because their reporters, their three to six reporters in, you know,
capitals around the world with different beats spoke to the same intelligence officials, or
they were furnished different officials who fed them the same story. And, of course, the story
advances a narrative that the United States is under siege by Russia and that we have to
escalate against Russia just ahead of another peace summit or some kind of international
dialogue.
This has sort of been the general framework for these Russiagate bombshells, and of course
they can there's always an anti-Trump angle. And because, you know, liberal pundits and the,
you know, Democratic Party operatives see this as a means to undermine Trump as the election
heats up. They don't care if it's true or not. They don't care what the consequences are.
They're just gonna completely roll with it. And it's really changed, I think, not just US
foreign policy, but it's changed the Democratic Party in an almost irreversible way, to have
these constant "quote-unquote" bombshells that are really generated by the Central Intelligence
Agency and by other US intelligence operations in order to turn up the heat to crank up the
Cold War, to use these different media organs which no longer believe in reporting, which see
Operation Mockingbird as a kind of blueprint for how to do journalism, to turn them into keys
on the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer. That's what happened here.
AARON MATÉ: What do you make of the logic of this story? This idea that the
Taliban would need Russian money to kill Americans when the Taliban's been fighting the US for
nearly two decades now. And the sourcing for the story, the same old playbook: anonymous
intelligence officials who are citing vague claims about apparently what was said by Afghan
detainees.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: This story has, as I said, it relies on zero reporting. The only
source is anonymous American intelligence officials. And I tweeted out a clip of a former CIA
operations officer who managed the CIA's operation in Angola, when the US was actually fighting
on the side of apartheid South Africa against a Marxist government that was backed up by Cuban
troops. His name was John Stockwell. And Stockwell talked about how one-third of his covert
operations staff were propagandists, and that they would feed imaginary stories about Cuban
barbarism that were completely false to reporters who were either CIA assets directly or who
were just unwitting dupes who would hang on a line waiting for American intelligence officials
to feed them stories. And one out of every five stories was completely false, as Stockwell
said. We could play some of that clip now; it's pretty remarkable to watch it in light of this
latest fake bombshell.
JOHN STOCKWELL: Another thing is to disseminate propaganda to influence people's
minds, and this is a major function of the CIA. And unfortunately, of course, it overlaps into
the gathering of information. You, you have contact with a journalist, you will give him true
stories, you'll get information from him, you'll also give him false stories.
OFF-CAMERA REPORTER: Can you do this with responsible reporters?
JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, the Church Committee brought it out in 1975. And then Woodward
and Bernstein put an article in Rolling Stone a couple of years later. Four hundred
journalists cooperating with the CIA, including some of the biggest names in the business.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, basically, I mean, you get the flavor of what someone who was in
the CIA at the height of the Cold War I mean, he did the same thing in Vietnam. And the
playbook is absolutely the same today. These this story was dumped on Friday in The New York
Times by "quote-unquote" American intelligence officials, as a breakthrough had been made
in Afghan peace talks and a conference was finally set for Doha, Qatar, that would involve the
Taliban, which had been seizing massive amounts of territory.
Now, it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the Taliban had been fighting
one of the most epic examples of an occupying army in modern history, just absolutely chewing
away at one of the most powerful militaries in human history in their country for the last 19
years, without bounties from Vladimir Putin or
private-hotdog-salesman-and-Saint-Petersburg-troll-farm-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin , who always comes up
in these stories. It's always the hotdog guy who's doing everything bad from, like, you know,
fake Facebook ads to poisoning Sergei Skripal or whatever.
But I just don't see where the Taliban needs encouragement from Putin to do that. It's their
country. They want the US out and they have succeeded in seizing large amounts of territory.
Donald Trump has come into office with a pledge to remove US troops from Afghanistan and ink
this deal. And along comes this story as the peace process begins to advance.
And what is the end-result? We haven't gotten into the domestic politics yet, but the
end-result is you have supposedly progressive senators like Chris Murphy of Connecticut
attacking Trump for not fighting Russia in Afghanistan. I mean, they want a straight-up proxy
war for not escalating. You have Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, someone who's aligned with the Democratic Party, who supported the war in Iraq and,
you know, supports just endless war, demanding that the US turn up the heat not just in
Afghanistan but in Syria. So, you know, the escalatory rhetoric is at a fever pitch right now,
and it's obviously going to impact that peace conference.
Let's remember that three days before Trump's summit with Putin was when Mueller chose to
release the indictment of the GRU agents for supposedly hacking the DNC servers. Let's remember
that a day before the UN the United Nations Geneva peace talks opened on Syria in 2014 was when
US intelligence chose to feed these shady Caesar photos, supposedly showing industrial
slaughter of Syrian prisoners, to The New York Times in an investigation that had been
funded by Qatar. Like, so many shady intelligence dumps have taken place ahead of peace summits
to disrupt them, because the US doesn't feel like it has enough skin in the game or it just
simply doesn't want peace in these areas.
So, that's what happened here. That's really, I think, the essential backdrop for the timing
of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution,
that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent
investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in
the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the
domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or
current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and
mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer.
That took place in this
case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties
to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for
nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now
we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The
Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped.
THE LINCOLN PROJECT AD: Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of
American soldiers. Donald Trump knows, too, and does nothing. Putin pays the Taliban cash to
slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled. Instead of
condemnation he insists Russia be treated as our equal.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, maybe they're just really good editors and brilliant
politicians who work overtime. They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story
was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable.
And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant,
has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden.
They're always out there doing the hard work. Who are they? Well, Steve Schmidt is a former
campaign manager for John McCain 2008. And you look at the various personnel affiliated with
it, they're all McCain former McCain aides or people who worked on the Jeb and George W. Bush
campaigns, going back to Texas and Florida. This is sort of the corporate wing of the
Republican Party, the white-glove-country-club-patrician Republicans who are very pro-war, who
hate Donald Trump.
And by doing this, by them really taking the lead on this attack, as you pointed out, Aaron,
number one, they are sucking the oxygen out of the more progressive anti-Trump initiatives that
are taking place, including in the streets of American cities. They're taking the wind out of
anti-Trump more progressive anti-Trump critiques. For example, I think it's actually more
powerful to attack Trump over the fact that he used, basically, chemical weapons on American
peaceful protesters to do a fascistic photo-op. I don't know why there wasn't some call for
congressional investigations on that. And they are getting skin in the game on the Biden
campaign. It really feels to me like this Lincoln campaign operation, this moderate Republican
operation which is also sort of a venue for neocons, will have more influence after events like
this than the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has an enormous amount of delegates.
So, that's what I think the domestic repercussion is. It's just this constant it's the
constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party and its
base that's moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into this
Cold War that only serves, you know, people who are associated with the national security state
who need to justify their paycheck and the budget of the institutions that employ them.
AARON MATÉ: Let's assume for a second that the allegation is true, although, you
know, you've laid out some of the reasons why it's not. Can you talk about the history here,
starting with Afghanistan, something you cover a lot in your book, The Management of
Savagery, where the US aim was to kill Russians, going right on through to Syria, where
just recently the US envoy for the coalition against ISIS, James Jeffery, who handles Syria,
said that his job now is to basically put the Russians in a quagmire in Syria.
JAMES JEFFREY: This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My
job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant act of psychological and
political projection to accuse Russia of using an Islamist militia in Afghanistan as a proxy
against the US to bleed the US into leaving, because that's been the US playbook in Central
Asia and the Middle East since at least 1979. I just tweeted a photo of Dan Rather in
Afghanistan, just crossing the Pakistani border and going to meet with some of the Mujahideen
in 1980. Dan Rather was panned in The New York in The Washington Post by Tom
Toles [Tom Shales], who was the media critic at the time, as "Gunga Dan," because he was so
gung-ho for the Afghan mujahideen. In his reports he would complain about how weak their
weaponry was, you know, how they needed more how they needed more funding. I mean, you could
call it bounties, but it was really just CIA funding.
DAN RATHER: These are the best weapons you have, huh? They only have about twenty
rounds for this?
TRANSLATOR: That's all. They have twenty rounds. Yes, and they know that these are
all old weapons and they really aren't up to doing anything to the Russian weaponry that's
around. But that's all they have, and this is why they want help. And he is saying that America
seems to be asleep. It doesn't seem to realize that if Afghanistan goes and the Russians go
over to the Gulf, that in a very short time it's going to be the turn of the United States as
well.
DAN RATHER: But I'm sure he knows that in Vietnam we got our fingers burned. Indeed,
we got our whole hands burned when we tried to help in this kind of situation.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: Your hands were burned
in Vietnam, but if you don't agree to help us, if you don't ally yourself with us, then all of
you, your whole body will be burnt eventually, because there is no one in the world who can
really fight and resist as well as the as much and as well as the Afghans are.
DAN RATHER: But no American mother wants to send her son to Afghanistan.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: We don't need
anybody's soldiers here to help us, but we are being constantly accused that the Americans are
helping us with weapons. What we need, actually, are the American weapons. We don't need or
want American soldiers. We can do the fighting ourselves.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And a year or several months before, the Carter Administration, at
the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become
Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The
Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field
where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield.
And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French
publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the
pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do.
And then with the introduction of
the Stinger missile, the Afghan mujahideen, hailed as freedom fighters in Washington, were able
to destroy Russian supply lines, exact a heavy toll, and forced the Red Army to leave in
retreat. They helped create what's considered the Soviet Union's Vietnam.
So that was really but the blueprint for what Russian for what Russia is being accused of
now, and that same model was transferred over to Syria. It was also actually proposed for Iraq
in the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. Then Senate Foreign Relations chair Jesse Helms actually
said that the Afghan mujahideen should be our model for supporting the Iraqi resistance. So,
this kind of proxy war was always on the table. Then the US did it in Syria, when one out of
every $13 in the CIA budget went to arm the so-called "moderate rebels" in Syria, who we later
found out were 31 flavors of jihadi, who were aligned with al-Qaeda's local affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra and helped give rise to ISIS. Michael Morell, I tweeted some video of him on Charlie
Rose back in, I think, 2016. He's the former acting director for the CIA, longtime deputy
director. He said, you know, the reason that we're in Syria, what we should be doing is causing
Iran and Russia, the two allies of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to pay a heavy
price.
MICHAEL MORELL: We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make
the Russians pay a price. The other thing
CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing killing Russians?
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians.
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes, covertly. You don't tell the world about it, right? You don't
stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this, right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow
and Tehran.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was
literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia.
So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It
would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was
actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And
that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone
like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's
such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real.
AARON MATÉ: Let me read Dan Rather's tweet, because it's so it speaks to just
how pervasive Russiagate culture is now. People have learned absolutely nothing from it.
Rather says, "Reporters are trained to look for patterns that are suspicious, and time and
again one stands out with Donald Trump. Why is he so slavishly devoted to Putin? There is a
spectrum of possible answers ranging from craven to treasonous. One day I hope and suspect we
will find out."
It's like he forgot, perhaps, that Robert Mueller and his team spent three years
investigating this very issue and came up with absolutely nothing. But the narrative has taken
hold, and it's, as you talked about before, it's been the narrative we've been presented as the
vehicle for understanding and opposing Donald Trump, so it cannot be questioned. And now it's
like it's a matter of, what else is there to find out about Trump and Russia after Robert
Mueller and the US intelligence agencies looked for everything they could and found nothing?
They're still presented as if it's some kind of mystery that has to be unraveled.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And it was after, like, a week of just kind of neocon resistance
mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump.
Then Dick Cheney was welcomed into the resistance, you know, because he said, "Wear a mask." I
mean, you know, his mask was strangely not spattered with the blood of Iraqi children. But, you
know, it was just amazing like that. Of course, it was the Lincoln project who hijacked the
minds of the resistance, but basically people who used to work on Cheney's campaign said, "Dick
Cheney, welcome to the resistance." I mean, that was remarkable. And then you have this and it,
you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the
Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to
Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, just a few years ago, maybe it was two years ago, before
Bolton was brought into the Trump NSC, he was considered just an absolute marginal crank who
was a contributor to Fox News. He'd been forgotten. He was widely hated by Democrats. Now here
he is as a sage voice to tell us how dangerous this moment is. And, you know, he's not being
even brought on just to promote his book; he's being brought on as just a sober-minded foreign
policy expert on Meet the Press . That's where we're at right now.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and when his critique of Trump is basically that Trump was not
hawkish enough. Bolton's most the biggest critique Bolton has of Trump is, as he writes about
in his book, is when Trump declined to bomb Iran after Iran shot down a drone over its
territory. And Bolton said that to him was the most irrational thing he's ever seen a president
do.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, Bolton was mad that Trump confused body bags with missiles,
because he said Trump thought that there would be 150 dead Iranians, and I said, "No, Donald,
you're confused. It will be 150 missiles that we're firing into Iran." Like that's better!
Like, "Oh, okay, that makes everything all right," that we fire a hundred missiles for one
drone and maybe that wouldn't that kill possibly more than 150 people?
Well, in Bolton's world this was just another stupid move by Trump. If Bolton were, I mean,
just, just watch all the interviews with Bolton. Watch him on The View where the only
pushback he received was from Meghan McCain complaining that he ripped off a Hamilton
song for his book The Room Where It Happened , and she asked, "Don't you have any
apology to offer to Hamilton fans?" That was the pushback that Bolton received. Just
watch all of these interviews with Bolton and try to find the pushback. It's not there. This is
what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous,
bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a
sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller.
AARON MATÉ: And inevitably the only long-term consequence that I can see here is
ultimately helping Trump, because, if history is a pattern, these Russiagate supposed
bombshells always either go nowhere or they get debunked. So, if this one gets forcefully
debunked, because I think it's quite possible, because Trump has said that he was never briefed
on this and they'll have to prove that he's lying, you know. It should be easy to do. Someone
could come out and say that. If they can't prove that he's lying, then this one, I think, will
blow up in their face. And all they will have done is, at a time when Trump is vulnerable over
the pandemic with over a hundred thousand people dead on his watch, all these people did was
ultimately try to bring the focus back to the same thing that failed for basically the entirety
of Trump's presidency, which is Russiagate and Trump's supposed―and non-existent in
reality―subservience to Vladimir Putin.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: But have you ever really confronted one of your liberal friends who
maybe doesn't follow these stories as closely as you do? You know, well-intentioned liberal
friend who just has this sense that Russia controls Trump, and asked them to really defend that
and provide the receipts and really explain where the Trump administration has just handed the
store to Russia? Because what we've seen is unprecedented since the height of the Cold War, an
unprecedented deterioration of US-Russia relations with new sanctions on Russia every few
months. You ask them to do that. They can't do it. It's just a sense they get, it's a feeling
they get. And that's because these bombshells drop, they get reported on the front pages under
banners of papers that declare that "democracy dies in darkness," whose brand is something that
everybody trusts, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Woodward and
Bernstein, and everybody repeats the story again and again and again. And then, if and when it
gets debunked, discredited or just sort of disappears, a few days later everybody forgets about
it. And those people who are not just, like, 24/7 media consumers but critical-minded media
consumers, they're left with that sense that Russia actually controls us and that we must do
something to escalate with Russia. So, that's the point of these: by the time the
disinformation is discredited, the damage has already been done. And that same tactic was
employed against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, to the point where so many people were left with the
sense that he must be an antisemite, although not one allegation was ever proven.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and now to the point where, in the Labour Party―we
should touch on this for a second―where you had a Labour Party member retweet an article
recently that mentioned some criticism of Israel and for that she was expelled from her
position in the shadow cabinet.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, well, you know, as a Jew I was really threatened by that
retweet [laughter]. I don't know about you.
I mean, this is Rebecca Long Bailey. She's one of the few Corbynites left in a high position
in Labour who hasn't been effectively burned at the stake for being a, you know, Jew hater who
wants to throw us all in gas chambers because she retweets an interview with some celebrity I'd
never heard of before, who didn't even say anything that extreme. But it really shows how the
Thought Police have taken control of the Labour Party through Sir Keir Starmer, who is someone
who has deep links to the national security state through the Crown Prosecution Service, which
he used to head, where he was involved in the prosecution of Julian Assange. And he has worked
with The Times of London, which is a, you know, favorite paper of the national security
state and the MI5 in the UK, for planting stories against Jeremy Corbyn. He was intimately
involved in that campaign, and now he's at the head of the Labour Party for a very good reason.
I really would recommend everyone watching this, if you're interested more in who Keir Starmer
really is, read "Five Questions for [New Labour Leader] Sir Keir Starmer" by Matt Kennard at
The Grayzone. It really lays it out and shows you what's happening.
We're just in this kind of hyper-managed atmosphere, where everything feels so much more
controlled than it's ever been. And even though every sane rational person that I know seems to
understand what's happening, they feel like they're not allowed to say it, at least not in any
official capacity.
AARON MATÉ: From the US to Britain, everything is being co-opted. In the US
it's, you know, genuine resistance to Trump, in opposition to Trump, it gets co-opted by the
right. Same thing in Britain. People get manipulated into believing that Jeremy Corbyn, this
lifelong anti-racist is somehow an antisemite. It's all in the service of the same agenda, and
I have to say we're one of the few outlets that are pushing back on it. Everyone else is
getting swept up on it and it's a scary time.
We're gonna wrap. Max, your final comment.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, yeah, we're pushing back. And I saw today Mint Press
[News], which is another outlet that has pushed back, their Twitter account was just
briefly removed for no reason, without explanation. Ollie Vargas, who's an independent
journalist who's doing some of the most important work in the English language from Bolivia,
reporting on the post-coup landscape and the repressive environment that's been created by the
junta installed with US help under Jeanine Áñez, his account has been taken away on
Twitter. The social media platforms are basically under the control of the national security
state. There's been a merger between the national security state and Silicon Valley, and the
space for these kinds of discussions is rapidly shrinking. So, I think, you know, it's more
important than ever to support alternative media and also to really have a clear understanding
of what's taking place. I'm really worried there just won't be any space for us to have these
conversations in the near future.
AARON MATÉ: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management
of Savagery , thanks a lot.
By middle of last week
we observed of the Russian bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan story that "at
this point this non-story looks to be dead by the weekend as it's already unraveled."
Indeed by Thursday and Friday, as more Congressional leaders received closed door
intelligence briefings on the allegations which originated with an anonymously sourced NY Times
report claiming Trump supposedly ignored the Russian op to target Americans, the very Democrat
and Republican lawmakers previously hyping it as a 'major scandal' went conspicuously silent
.
Recall too that John Bolton, busy with a media blitz promoting his book,
emerged to strongly suggest he had personal knowledge that Trump was briefed on the matter
. The former national security adviser called the Trump denial of being briefed "remarkable".
Well, look who is now appearing to sing a different tune. A week ago Bolton was all too wiling
to voluntarily say Trump had "likely" been briefed and that was a big scandal. The whole story
was indeed dead by the weekend:
Bolton: 'Fickle' Trump would sell out Israel for photo op with Iran's leaders
U.S. should consider sanctions if bounty reports true: Bolton
Bolton book hits shelves, bruises Trump's ego
Viral Finland PM quote about US being under Russian control 'not true' | #TheCube
Bolton's New Claims
Bolton Claims Trump Asked China's XI to Help Win Re-Election
Bolton book creates shockwaves
Senator Who Voted Against Bolton Testifying Is Now Angry Bolton Didn't Testify
Other reports said Bolton has been telling people he had personally
briefed the president :
Former national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues that he personally briefed
President Donald Trump about intelligence that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to
kill American troops , U.S. officials told the Associated Press .
Bolton briefed Trump on the matter in March of 2019, according to the report, a year
earlier than previously
reported by The New York Times . The information was also included in at least one
presidential Daily Brief, according to the AP,
CNN and
The Times . The AP earlier reported that it was also
included in a second presidential Daily Brief earlier this year and that current national
security adviser Robert O'Brien discussed the matter with Trump.
His Sunday refusal to even address the question - again after he was all too willing to
speak to the issue a week ago when it was driving headlines - speaks volumes.
Now that even The Washington Post
awkwardly walked back the substance of much of its reporting on the 'Russian bounties'
story, Bolton has conveniently gone silent .
There is not much "real" left in the the USA. Usually what we see is just different flavors
of far right and right.
Money quote: "Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a vanguard party of
globalist imperialists. pl"
Notable quotes:
"... As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination program." ..."
"... In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats (Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and by the angry Trumpists. ..."
"... Samantha Power is Irish bred and London born. She was schooled in Dublin till her mother emigrated to the US. Christiane Amanpour is British-Iranian. As far as I can determine she never has had US citizenship. ..."
"... WTF were they smoking when they decided to promote war to secure human rights??? So why did we let these halfwits in the country? ..."
"... Kerry seems is the perfect example of Democrats’ hypocritical ‘opposition’ to pointless and futile wars. Not that anybody remembers, but it was the liberal Bill Clinton who went to war in Yugoslavia and defanged the anti-war wing of the party. After Clinton Democrats only raised their voices against Republican wars and now have taken to criticizing Trump for not being belligerent enough!!! ..."
"... The same white men who stood three years ago Charlottesville to prevent the toppling of statues could be the backbone of a new anti-war movement ..."
"... The New York Times is not revolutionary, not by a very long shot. Neither are all the big corporations and foundations who've donated generously to the cause of BLM. ..."
"... America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of globalisation were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and conservative-nationalist options. ..."
"... The essential idea is that neither the non Trump wing of the American establishment (more properly Global establishment still anchored tenuously in DC) nor the Trump wing want the voters to discuss the economy - it's too hot a subject. ..."
"... Way too hot since the financial crisis of 2007-08 followed the working class jobs overseas and south of the border in the 90s and inequality exceeded that of the gilded age. No. But they will discuss racism (and gender). It divides the country further than ever, deflects focus on wealth disparity (the establishment has no intention of ever equalizing wealth even a bit) and presto - gives corporate America and media a new policing tool in the form of mandatory workshops and summary job dismissals even more unsubstantiated than many of those with #MeToo. It enhances the academic totalitarians of political correctness with corporate / employer totalitarianism of "learn your inclusivity lessons reeducation camp" or else. Unions disappeared long ago and now this. ..."
"... Yes the stupidity is ominous. They act as though there is no potential for repurcussion. It's very peculiar. ..."
As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends.
A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and
Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process
throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what
was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination
program."
This is a serious article addressing a serious problem. If the "left" sells out on war
issues as they have done the last 20 years or so, there is no pushback against the permanent
war system. Those one-time leftists who have sold out are no longer really leftists,
especially once they are relying on the corrupt permanent spy state for their information and
support.
Interesting and correct observation. Allow me to throw in my own two cents with regards to
the rise of what is defined as the "anti-Anti War left". I should note that there are eerily
similar parallels between the rise of the New Left in the 60s that was the mix of socialist
democrats, sexual revolutionaries, flower-power hippies, anti-imperialist/anti-war activists,
and identitarianists (Huey Netwon, Cesar Chavez, MLK) etc. and today's BLM, Antifa, 'woke'
types, third-gen feminists, broke millennials.
While the former's rise in the Democratic
Party led to the exodus of Neoconservatives (former Trotskyists, Socialist and Marxists) to
the Conservative movement, the latter is also moving the New Democrats to the Right, but the
problem is that the current Political Right is mostly controlled by the Trumpists so these
New Democrat types (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Menendez, Biden etc.) are stuck between a hard
place and a rock.
In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats
(Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and
by the angry Trumpists.
Just to give you one example, last week a prototype New Democrat and long time congressman
(since 89) Elliot Engel of NY who fits well into this definition was defeated handily in the
NY-16 primaries by the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidate, Jamal Bowman. Mr.
Bowman, an African American is ideologically very similar to AOC, Tlaib, and Omar.
He won on
a platform of foreign policy endorsed by the left-zionists (ex-labor zionists) against the
likudnik right-wing zionist of Engles' which is very interesting since, Engel has been known
for his hawkish views on foreign policy and extremely pro-Israel and chaired the House
Foreign Affairs Committee recently.
Recently Sanders and the Democratic Socialists expressed their opposition to Bibi's
planned annexation of West-bank and adjacent Palestinian enclaves and threatened to to
cut-off the military aid to Israel if Bibi moved on with his plan.
Domestically, there are several seats up for re-election and especially two in Georgia and
Arizona Senate whose ppointed Republican candidates are in very shaky grounds versus their
democratic challengers. What is clear is that the New Democrat platforms are no longer
popular by the Democratic base and given recent events, it can be safely said that either the
most law and order and Trumpian candidates will win or the Democratic socialists endorsed
ones. So another problem for the New Dems.
Judging by my observation, the current trend is the alliance between the NeverTrumpers
(The Lincoln project, The Right Pac) like Bill Kristol and the
Reagan-to-Bush-43-neoconservatives (most of whom were Reagan Democrats in the late 70s and
80s themselves so nothing new for them) to push Trump out of office in their view before the
RNC in Aug and to make room for the New Democrats and also to restore their previous 20+
years of reigning over the Republican Party. If their plan becomes successful, in the post
2020 election we will see a political configuration resembling the 90s and early 2000s with
one major difference which is the introduction of several, in my opinion less that 10 seats
in the House reserved for the far-Left socialist Democrats.
And in terms of Foreign policy, everyone will get happy and the Blob/Borg think tank class
in D.C. will see business as usual as the Democratic Socialists will be "persuaded" to team
up with the New Democrats with regards to sending Troops to conduct humanitarian intervention
abroad (i.e. the Powell Doctrine) in exchange for domestic welfare programs, the
NeverTrumpers and the Republican hawks (Cotton, Graham, Rubio, Cruz, etc.) will have war
plans already written for them at AEI, Hudson and Heritage that focuses on China with the
help of the New Democrats and probably the Far-left.
Samantha Power is Irish bred and London born. She was schooled in Dublin till her mother
emigrated to the US. Christiane Amanpour is British-Iranian. As far as I can determine she
never has had US citizenship. Christopher Hitchens is English born, never visited America
unti he was 32. And even then kept his British citizenship for another 26 years, only
becoming a US citizen in 2007. Probably to take advantage of favorable US income tax on his
book earnings.
WTF were they smoking when they decided to promote war to secure human rights??? So why
did we let these halfwits in the country?
Seems to me we are better off by letting in a few more Sikh farmers from India or more
wannabee restaurant owners from Ethiopia. Or maybe even more wannabee bodega empresarios from
south of our border.
Anyone remember John Kerry, who criticized the anti-war movement and enlisted and served
in Vietnam, only to opportunistically turn against the war. As long as the winds blew
anti-war, he continued to posture that way. Then he reversed course, maybe sensing an SOS
opportunity, and voted for the War in Iraq, meanwhile posturing against it on the grounds
that it wasn’t being fought right!
Kerry seems is the perfect example of Democrats’ hypocritical
‘opposition’ to pointless and futile wars. Not that anybody remembers, but it was
the liberal Bill Clinton who went to war in Yugoslavia and defanged the anti-war wing of the
party. After Clinton Democrats only raised their voices against Republican wars and now have
taken to criticizing Trump for not being belligerent enough!!!
The "anti-antiwar left" is of course an oxymoron. In reality, they are neo-McCarthyites,
neocons, and Israel-firsters. Nothing new. They were never leftists to begin with and
certainly never will be.
To add onto the comments by Polish Janitor regarding Jamaal Bowman, I have this to say.
Just like AOC, he'll cuck out to Israel. He'll take the money and he'll probably take that
"educational" trip to Israel as well. While he's there, would anyone be surprised if he had a
hot time with some honey pie and they got him on Kodak? They'll only drop hints about the
stick, in the meantime, they'll be stuffing his face with carrots as he comes around to the
Zionist agenda.
The same white men who stood three years ago Charlottesville to prevent the toppling of
statues could be the backbone of a new anti-war movement, if only conservatives weren't
afraid of being called 'racist' by people who hate them anyway.
To better get one's bearings regarding what's going on I highly recommend this Spectator
article to the committee. Although BLM and other nefarious types referred to as Antifa
certainly do pass the anarchist test and Marxist test it's critical the committee understand
that the whole thing is being managed by a wing of the establishment.
The New York Times is
not revolutionary, not by a very long shot. Neither are all the big corporations and
foundations who've donated generously to the cause of BLM.
Editorial talents at NYT
instigated the wholesale rewriting of American history over a year ago with their fraudulent
1619 project which says American history began in that year with the importation of African
slaves.
But it's real thesis is that the revolution of 1776 (an inspiration to people
everywhere), was not undertaken to free the thirteen colonies from the tyranny of King
George - no - it was done for the sole reason of perpetuation of slavery because Washington
and other colonial land owners feared that the institution of slavery would be made illegal
by their then British overlords. I kid you not.
The NY Times. Pure revisionism of the worst
sort. But the ends which this revisionism serve, as do the subsequent BLM riots and mindless
iconoclasms, are revealed in this piece:
(This Revolution isn't What it Looks Like). Here's a brief excerpt - it's a management
device. Matt Taibbi has a treatment nearly as good but too diffuse and witty for these
purposes, under the title "Year Zero" on his blog, but it is behind a paywall. Many
illustrative exames though.
Spectator first few paragraphs..
Bear with this. What they're doing is designed to infuriate and disable critical
understanding as they proceed to carry the day in real time.
QUOTE:
America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About
four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of
globalisation were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror
as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and
conservative-nationalist options.
This deposition explains the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast
and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs,
the mass lawlessness, the zealous iconoclasm, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice —
terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives, especially, believe they are facing a
revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.
But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it
should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Maoist or
Marxist revolt, even if some protagonists spout hard-leftish rhetoric. Rather, what’s
playing out is a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class — academe, media, large
corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution
launched in 2016. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets
together, taking the knee together.
They do not seek a radically new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit
status quo ante which was working out very well for them. It was, of course, working out less
well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix:
open borders, free trade without limits, an aggressive cultural liberalism that corroded
tradition and community, technocratic ‘global governance’ that neutered democracy
and politics as such.
When national institutions bow to the street fighters’ demands, it tells us
something else is going on
...Did you realize that the Black Lives Matter group only has 14 local chapters in America
and 3 in Canada? I don't think there are many actual Antifa members out there either. Now of
course a few determined troublemakers can cause a lot of problems but still I can't see how
the country is in real danger.
Probably the real danger here is that these groups get moral support from nonradical
people for radical actions and policies. Right now there are a lot more people against
getting rid of the police than are for it. Now if that changed I would get worried. I have to
admit that I don't like the fact that we do not know who's funding the radicals and that many
are anonymous but I am not afraid of them. I can't imagine a situation in which they would
win and we would lose over time.
No it doesn't, not that I know of. It was the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones working
since 2015 for the times, who received a 2020 Pulitzer prize for the project which initially
was presented in the Times magazine for the 400th anniversary of 1619 when it is claimed that
enslaved Africans first arrived to the American colonies. However it mushroomed into
something much larger and won the award. It was to investigate the legacy of slavery but with
its claim that the true founding of the United States was in 1619 rather than 1776, it drew
criticism from several historians. The controversy was conducted in Politico and on the pages
of the World Socialist Web Site. See here:
You will find links to several of the articles of the project, including: "America Wasn't
a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One", essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones and "American
Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation", essay by Matthew Desmond.
I prefaced the intro to the Spectator article with mention of the Times award winning
project because it is vital cultural- historical background to what's transpired since George
Floyd incident of May 25.
My purpose was not to focus on that revisionist project though one
may investigate it at leisure, but the reactionary establishment counter coup to the 2016
election of which the events of May 25 et seq are the most recent chapter - chapters one and
two being Russiagate and impeachment.
Taibbi, in his latest which parallels the Spectator
piece, does think to mention it. The essential idea is that neither the non Trump wing of the
American establishment (more properly Global establishment still anchored tenuously in DC)
nor the Trump wing want the voters to discuss the economy - it's too hot a subject.
Way too
hot since the financial crisis of 2007-08 followed the working class jobs overseas and south
of the border in the 90s and inequality exceeded that of the gilded age. No. But they will
discuss racism (and gender). It divides the country further than ever, deflects focus on
wealth disparity (the establishment has no intention of ever equalizing wealth even a bit)
and presto - gives corporate America and media a new policing tool in the form of mandatory
workshops and summary job dismissals even more unsubstantiated than many of those with
#MeToo. It enhances the academic totalitarians of political correctness with corporate /
employer totalitarianism of "learn your inclusivity lessons reeducation camp" or else. Unions
disappeared long ago and now this.
From Taibbi:
It’s the Fourth of July, and revolution is in the air. Only in America would it look
like this: an elite-sponsored Maoist revolt, couched as a Black liberation movement whose
canonical texts are a corporate consultant’s white guilt self-help manual, and a New
York Times series rewriting history to explain an election they called wrong.
Much of America has watched in quizzical silence in recent weeks as crowds declared war on
an increasingly incoherent succession of historical symbols. Maybe you nodded as Confederate
general Albert Pike was toppled or even when Christopher Columbus was beheaded, but it got a
little weird when George Washington was emblazoned with “Fuck Cops” and set on
fire, or when they went after Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Colonel Hans Christian Heg,
“Forward,” (a seven-foot-tall female figure meant to symbolize progress), the
Portland, Oregon “Elk statue,” or my personal favorite, the former slave Miguel
de Cervantes, whose cheerful creations Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were apparently mistaken
for reals and had their eyes lashed red in San Francisco.
Was a What the Fuck? too much to ask? It was! In the space of a few weeks the level of
discourse in the news media dropped so low, the fear of being shamed as a deviationist so
high, that most of the weirder incidents went uncovered. Leading press organs engaged in
real-time Soviet-style airbrushing. Here’s how the Washington Post described a movement
that targeted Spanish missionary Junipero Serra, Abraham Lincoln (a “single-handed
symbol of white supremacy,” according to UW-Madison students), an apple cider press
sculpture, abolitionist Mathias Baldwin, and the first all-Black volunteer regiment in the
Civil War, among others:
Across the country, protesters have toppled statues of figures from America’s sordid
past — including Confederate generals — as part of demonstrations against racism
and police violence.
The New York Times, once the dictionary definition of “unprovocative,”
suddenly reads like Pol Pot’s Sayings of Angkar. Heading into the Fourth of July
weekend, the morning read for upscale white Manhattanites was denouncing Mount Rushmore,
urging Black America to arm itself, and re-positioning America alongside more deserving
historical parallels in a feature about caste systems:
For 150 years the US treated its defeated internal enemy with respect in the interest of
re-unification and reconciliation. Now that is gone destroyed by Marxist vanguard
conspiratorial parties like antifa and BLM and the the power hungry Democrat Party pols who
have made a deal with their soul mate extremists. Well, laissez les bon temps roulez!
Yes the stupidity is ominous. They act as though there is no potential for repurcussion.
It's very peculiar. Maybe they think oh well, there's been plenty of riots over the years.
What ever happened? Didn't we get OJ freed? Didn't they pass civil rights legislation back in
the day? And as for right now - aren't all the big people taking the knee - aren't
corporations endorsing us? Isn't Twitter censoring in our favor? The mayor of New York City -
wasn't he all set to paint a black lives matter mural onto 5th avenue opposite Trump tower
before postponing it to paint one in Harlem instead?
Yes, all true. I don't think they've detected how furious people are getting with their
behavior though. The tide is turning - CHAZ is gone, the conventions loom.
Long term I see nothing to be optimistic about. If Trump wins the counter coups will
continue. If Biden, with a female minority VP who may become President -- good luck. Remember
the Tea Party reaction ensuing on the heels of the first African American President? Reaction
will be quite as bad at least with Trump, his family and his base still very much on the
scene and infuriated.
But the oligarchs have seen their assets rise by hundreds of billions of dollars in a few
short months. The surviving owners consolidate. People will be forced to work for peanuts.
Evictions and repossessions are coming soon.
Last week Turkey brought two MIM-23 Hawk air defense systems to the al-Watiyah Airbase.
Last night they were bombed by either French, UAE, Egyptian or Russian mercenary airplanes.
Officially the LNA (Hafter) has taken responsibility for the bombing. Whoever did this had a
message to Turkey: Stop trying to break our red lines.
Thanks for the link to the Egypt/Libya article, b. It's a rare insight into the
often-hidden complexities behind armed conflict. Thanks too for Caitlin J's opinion of
AmeriKKKa's two Right-wing Crank parties. She makes it easier to laugh about their un-funny
antics.
Slightly off topic, but I think Caitlin could be onto something worthwhile with her Utopia
Prepper meme (whether she invented it or not). The way things are going, Hell could freeze
over before sanity emerges in Western Political circles. Prompted by her optimism, I intend
to devote an hour every Sunday afternoon to Utopia Prepping and contemplate the many
potential delights which a mildly more Utopian world would facilitate. There's way too much
negative thinking at present and it's NOT accidental. We'll never get to Utopia if we don't
plan what we'll do when we arrive...
Last week Turkey brought two MIM-23 Hawk air defense systems to the al-Watiyah Airbase. Last
night they were bombed by either French, UAE, Egyptian or Russian mercenary airplanes.
Officially the LNA (Hafter) has taken responsibility for the bombing. Whoever did this had a
message to Turkey: Stop trying to break our red lines.
Wanted to ask the same question, i am sure B will have something as soon as some facts are
there to be dissected, seems for now that all we have to go by is the assumption it is either
US or Israel dirty work, one that is hard to disagree with.
Iran will have to respond, 4 attacks in less than 2 weeks is really taking the piss and
makes them look weak. Quite a reversal from the Iran that was seizing tankers, acting on its
threats and dictating the tempo of escalation. Israel and US are only deterred by credible
threats and the longer Iran waits, the more emboldened they will feel.
Perhaps Iran is more focused on investigations and searching through its own ranks for
collaborators or traitors first, meaning it is still not sure who to hit back at. Is it the
US or Israel, who is directly responsible for these attacks? What would be an appropriate
response? Anything too overt could be counterproductive as there is no proof tying the
explosions to anyone, much less anything concrete that Western media would publish that could
justify Iran's actions.
Hezbollah has plenty of problems of its own as explained in B's Lebanon article... so not
likely we'll see rocket showers on Israel any time soon on Iran's behalf. Seems those new
tankers on the way to Venezuela could be targeted soon too... perhaps they are waiting for
that as their pretext for escalation or retaliation?
I expect Iran to measure its response tit-for-tat. If these explosions are the result of
computer intrusion, Iran will respond in cyberspace. If they are not - and I find it hard to
believe they are, disrupting a centrifuge is one thing (and too clever by half), causing an
explosion is another - then Iran or a proxy will have to respond in kind. As the article
cited below states:
He said Israel was "bracing" for an Iranian response, likely via a cyberattack. In an April
cyberattack attributed by western intelligence officials to Iran, an attempt was made to
increase chlorine levels in water flowing to residential Israeli areas.
Probably BS by Israel and the US, but this sort of thing goes on all the time. Note that
there was no explosions involved.
The problem is that covert operations require some planning, especially if hacking is
involved. So Iran's response might be days, weeks or months delayed. Of course, it can
respond more directly by using Iraqi Shia militias against US forces in Iraq, or allies like
Hezbollah elsewhere. But that is a trap the US neocons have laid - anything Iran does can be
used to justify further attacks. Even if Iran proves that these explosions were not
accidents, they will not be believed. So anything Iran does which is not equally covert will
be used to justify further aggression.
There really is no winning this game by Iran. Only if the US and Israel stops covert
attacks - and that isn't going to happen.
Meanwhile, allegedly the EU has claimed Iran has now triggered the JCPOA dispute
mechanism.
I don't know if this is true, but if so, it represents the final collapse of the JCPOA.
The dispute mechanism has a specific time mechanism to which all parties must adhere. So
within a short period of time, Iran will either be granted its sanctions relief as promised
or the deal will end. The deal's snapback mechanism won't be applied, because Russia and
China will veto that no matter the US does. The US has no standing, but will try anyway just
for the propaganda value.
Once the JCPOA is finally declared dead, the US and Israel will escalate their aggression
against Iran, because no one in the ignorant electorate in those countries will be told that
the deal was ruined by Trump and the EU's spinelessness.
Without the JCPOA, the US can revert to the sort of warmongering it engaged in before the
Iraq war - constantly escalating accusations that can never be proven false and an unending
stream of propaganda justifying a war.
The *only* thing preventing an Iran war is Hezbollah's ability to derail the Israeli
economy. The US and Israel have no choice but to find a solution to that problem. Whether
they will succeed in that, and at what cost to Lebanon, is the question.
Historically, I don't think there has ever been this level of enmity between countries
without a war resulting (other than between nuclear armed nations due to MAD.) It may take
some years more to get the Iran war started, but it is inevitable.
And that recognition, contrary to Bagoom's claims, is *not* advocacy. An Iran war is going
to be very bad for *everyone* except Israel, the neocons and the military-industrial
complex.
"... To review, starting over a week ago a massive explosion was observed lighting up the midnight sky outside Tehran, caught on film by local residents, which Iran's military dismissed as a gas leak explosion incident. But it was later revealed to have occurred at a ballistic missile development facility. ..."
"... And this past week, another reported "accident" occurred at Natanz nuclear complex. But that particular 'mystery' blast caused Iranian officials to lash out in anger Thursday, saying "hostile countries" like the US and Israel are near the point of crossing "red lines". Crucially, Iran also said there were no radioactive leaks as a result of the incident. ..."
On Saturday an explosion
ripped through a power plant in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, marking the third 'mystery'
blast to hit the country in only under a week, and the fourth recently .
State media showed emergency crews on the scene of the daytime incident while a fire raged
at the power plant. This followed days ago
a huge blast which destroyed Sina hospital in northern Tehran, which killed 19 people and
injured 14.
To review, starting over a week ago a massive explosion was observed lighting up the
midnight sky outside Tehran, caught on film by local residents, which Iran's military dismissed
as a gas leak explosion incident. But it was
later revealed to have occurred at a ballistic missile development facility.
And this past week, another reported "accident" occurred at Natanz nuclear complex. But that
particular 'mystery' blast caused Iranian officials to lash out in anger Thursday, saying
"hostile countries" like the US and Israel are near the point of crossing "red lines".
Crucially, Iran also said there were no radioactive leaks as a result of the incident.
Both US and Israeli media, including The New York Times and Times of Israel, have begun
speculating that it
could be part of a Mossad or CIA op to set back Iran's nuclear development .
The Jerusalem Post on Sunday asked in
a headline and op-ed : Have four explosions pushed Iran farther away from a nuke?
Of the myriad fascinating questions surrounding the four recent, mysterious explosions in
Iran, there is still one key issue that rises above the rest: Has any of this significantly
distanced Iran further from a nuclear weapon?
The jury is still out, as there is so much that is unconfirmed. But to date, the early
answer would need to be: probably not .
Since the IAEA's March report that the Islamic Republic crossed the threshold for having
enough low-level enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, the estimated time for Tehran to enrich
enough of that uranium up to a weaponized level dropped from 12 months to as little as four
months.
Most interestingly, an unnamed intelligence source said to be based in the Middle East told
The
New York Times this past week said of the mysterious incident at Natanz: "The blast was
caused by an explosive device planted inside the facility."
The official added that the bombing "destroyed much of the aboveground parts of the facility
where new centrifuges are balanced before they are put into operation."
Reports out of Iran's state media also suggest a possible cyber-attack, to which Tehran
military officials say "they'll respond" if the attack did indeed originate from Iran's
enemies like the US or Israel.
Trump as wolf in sheep's clothing in his policy toward Russia. Any person who can appoint
Bolton as his national security advisor should be criminally prosecuted for criminal
incompetence. To say nothing about Pompeo, Haley and many others. Such a peacenik, my ***
The USA foreign policy is not controlled by the President. It is controlled by the "Deep state"
Notable quotes:
"... The dizzying, often contradictory, paths followed by Trump on the one hand and his hawkish but constantly changing cast of national security aides on the other have created confusion in Congress and among allies and enemies alike. To an observer, Russia is at once a mortal enemy and a misunderstood friend in U.S. eyes. ..."
"... But Trump has defended his perspective on Russia, viewing it as a misunderstood potential friend, a valued World War II ally led by a wily, benevolent authoritarian who actually may share American values, like the importance of patriotism, family and religion. ..."
"... despite Trump's rhetoric, his administration has plowed ahead with some of the most significant actions against Russia by any recent administration. ..."
"... Dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled, diplomatic missions closed, arms control treaties the Russians sought to preserve have been abandoned, weapons have been sold to Ukraine despite the impeachment allegations and the administration is engaged in a furious battle to prevent Russia from constructing a new gas pipeline that U.S. lawmakers from both parties believe will increase Europe's already unhealthy dependence on Russian energy. ..."
When it comes to Russia, the Trump administration just can't seem to make
up its mind.
For the past three years, the administration has careered between President Donald Trump's
attempts to curry favor and friendship with Vladimir Putin and longstanding deep-seated
concerns about Putin's intentions. As Trump has repeatedly and openly cozied up to Putin, his
administration has imposed harsh and meaningful sanctions and penalties on Russia.
The dizzying, often contradictory, paths followed by Trump on the one hand and his hawkish
but constantly changing cast of national security aides on the other have created confusion in
Congress and among allies and enemies alike. To an observer, Russia is at once a mortal enemy
and a misunderstood friend in U.S. eyes.
Even before Trump took office questions about Russia abounded. Now, nearing the end of his
first term with a difficult
reelection ahead , those questions have resurfaced with a vengeance. Intelligence
suggesting Russia
was encouraging attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan by putting bounties on
their heads has thrust the matter into the heart of the 2020 campaign.
The White House says the intelligence wasn't confirmed or brought to Trump's attention, but
his vast chorus of critics are skeptical and maintain the president should have been
aware.
The reports have alarmed even pro-Trump Republicans who see Russia as a hostile global foe
meddling with nefarious intent in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Ukraine and Georgia, a waning
former superpower trying to regain its Soviet-era influence by subverting democracy in Europe
and the United States with disinformation and election interference .
Trump's overtures to Putin have unsettled longstanding U.S. allies in Europe, including
Britain, France and Germany, which have expressed concern about the U.S. commitment to the NATO
alliance, which was forged to counter the Soviet threat, and robust democracy on the
continent.
But Trump has defended his perspective on Russia, viewing it as a misunderstood potential
friend, a valued World War II ally led by a wily, benevolent authoritarian who actually may
share American values, like the importance of patriotism, family and religion.
Within the Trump administration, the national security establishment appears torn between
pursuing an arguably tough approach to Russia and pleasing the president. Insiders who have
raised concern about Trump's approach to Russia -- including at least one of his national
security advisers, defense secretaries and secretaries of state, but especially lower-level
officials who spoke out during impeachment -- have nearly all been ousted from their
positions.
Suspicions about Trump and Russia go back to his 2016 campaign. His appeal to Moscow to dig up his
opponent's emails , his plaintive suggestions that Russia and the United States should be
friends and a series of contacts between his advisers and Russians raised questions of
impropriety that led to special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation . The investigation ultimately did not allege that anyone associated with the
campaign illegally conspired with Russia.
Mueller, along with the U.S. intelligence community, did find that Russia interfered with
the election, to sow chaos and also help Trump's campaign. But Trump has cast doubt on those
findings, most memorably in a 2018 appearance on stage with Putin in
Helsinki .
Yet despite Trump's rhetoric, his administration has plowed ahead with some of the most
significant actions against Russia by any recent administration.
Dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled, diplomatic missions closed, arms control
treaties the Russians sought to preserve have been abandoned, weapons have been sold to Ukraine
despite the impeachment allegations and the administration is engaged in a furious battle to
prevent Russia from constructing a new gas pipeline that U.S. lawmakers from both parties
believe will increase Europe's already unhealthy dependence on Russian energy.
At the same time, Trump has compounded the uncertainty by calling for the withdrawal or
redeployment of U.S. troops from Germany, angrily deriding NATO allies for not meeting alliance
defense spending commitments, and now apparently ignoring dire intelligence warnings that
Russia was paying or wanted to pay elements of the Taliban to kill American forces in
Afghanistan.
On top of that, even after the intelligence reports on the Afghanistan bounties circulated,
he's expressed interest in inviting Putin back into the G-7 group of nations over the
objections of the other members.
White House officials and die-hard Trump supporters have shrugged off the obvious
inconsistencies, but they have been unable to staunch the swell of criticism and pointed
demands for explanations as Russia, which has vexed American leaders for decades, delights in
its ability to create chaos.
I tell people: "Russia dopes their Olympians. America rapes them." The attack on Russian
athletes is just another instance of the American and Western petty hatred of Russia. When
the athletes got independent tests certifying they are clean, they were still not allowed to
participate in many international events. As Russian hackers revealed some of the biggest
names in sports are legally allowed meds because of existing conditions. Sure.Right. Who knew
that the Norwegian team and country have the highest rates of asthma around and required
performance enhancing drugs. Russia was a way to distract away from other country's
doping.
"... I would submit that the legitimacy of the elite professional and managerial classes is being called into question, for want of performance or any sense of responsibility. The urban PMC are the core constituency of the establishment Democratic Party. The vestigial working class elements and the ideological Left are distant memories and oppressed minorities seeking social justice, mere props. ..."
"... The thing is, the political classes -- the millionaire media pundits, the politicians, the lobbyists, the generals, the journamalists, the manipulative political operatives and propagandists, the pious policy "experts", the highly paid executives and financial managers running monopolies into the ground and non-profits into irrelevance -- they have enacted their neo-liberal agenda and it doesn't work. ..."
"... This in a country that cannot manufacture PPE. Or win a war. Trump, in his fumbling way, might get the U.S. out of Afghanistan, but the NY Times -- who brought us WMD not that long ago -- reports the Russians are paying bounties on American soldiers killed. No report on the treatment of Julian Assange though. Boeing is going to get the 737 Max in the air real soon now. Citibank is borrowing at 0.03 from the Fed and lending to credit card users at 27% and may be insolvent. ..."
"... So, let us assume the Democrats, after nominating an elderly SOB who had a hand in the crime bill that gave the U.S. the highest incarceration rate in the world, the bankruptcy bill that saddled tens of millions with credit card and student debt that cannot be discharged, and every stupid war of the last nearly twenty years, will suddenly see the necessity of radical change. And, after making an alliance with conservative Republicans hostile to even Trump's fake populism in order to elect Biden, seeing the light on radical reform is so likely! So plausible. ..."
mainstream Democrats recognize the need for radical change, and Biden will align with
the mainstream position as he always has done
You said you would leave this, your third assumption, to comments, so here is my
comment.
The U.S. is in the midst of a deep legitimacy crisis and contrary to popular belief among
liberals, it is not Trump particularly whose legitimacy is being called into question. Oh,
sure, there have been relentless attacks on him -- from partisan opponents and from much of
mainstream media -- but like the "anti-racism" of the recent protests -- much of it is
dissembling and distraction. Charges of colluding with Putin to win the 2016 election turned
out to be fake news -- rather obviously so from the beginning -- but a big enough mob went down
that path with no self-awareness. I am not saying Trump is not an egregiously bad President; he
is. But, notice please, before you go assuming that mainstream Democrats are going wake up in
2021 wanting to govern in the real world , that they have not shown much inclination toward
truth-telling or critical realism these last 20 years.
It is July. By January 2021, the U.S. economy will have suffered a structural collapse in
multiple sectors. That is the economic consequence of the pandemic. Restaurants, shopping
malls, bars, colleges, hotels, airlines, cruise lines -- easily 15% of the workforce will be
unemployed and another 25% seriously underemployed.
Did I mention that the U.S. is undergoing a legitimacy crisis?? Whose legitimacy is being
called into question?
I would submit that the legitimacy of the elite professional and managerial classes is being
called into question, for want of performance or any sense of responsibility. The urban PMC are
the core constituency of the establishment Democratic Party. The vestigial working class
elements and the ideological Left are distant memories and oppressed minorities seeking social
justice, mere props.
I would say the Party establishment is confident they can put the
re-animated corpse of Biden into the White House. And look how gleefully they welcome
Republican never-Trumpers into the clubhouse! If you were one of the fools and tools who
thought Obama did not want Republicans to control Congress, you are getting another chance to
see how the Obama Alumni Association works with the Lincoln Project, how happy they are to
deliver the kind of policy that appeals to rich, old, suburban Republican women.
The thing is, the political classes -- the millionaire media pundits, the politicians, the
lobbyists, the generals, the journamalists, the manipulative political operatives and
propagandists, the pious policy "experts", the highly paid executives and financial managers
running monopolies into the ground and non-profits into irrelevance -- they have enacted their
neo-liberal agenda and it doesn't work.
We have just watched the once highly touted CDC completely botch the great Pandemic. They
could not devise a test. They screwed up the rules on who could or should be tested. They lied
early on about the need to wear masks. They staged a moral panic over a need for ventilators,
when ventilators are a terrible therapeutic alternative. In the new Puritanism, they shut down
public beaches but they watched passively as liberal heroes like Cuomo set off a holocaust by
sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.
This in a country that cannot manufacture PPE. Or win a war. Trump, in his fumbling way,
might get the U.S. out of Afghanistan, but the NY Times -- who brought us WMD not that long ago
-- reports the Russians are paying bounties on American soldiers killed. No report on the
treatment of Julian Assange though. Boeing is going to get the 737 Max in the air real soon
now. Citibank is borrowing at 0.03 from the Fed and lending to credit card users at 27% and may
be insolvent.
So, let us assume the Democrats, after nominating an elderly SOB who had a hand in the
crime bill that gave the U.S. the highest incarceration rate in the world, the bankruptcy bill
that saddled tens of millions with credit card and student debt that cannot be discharged, and
every stupid war of the last nearly twenty years, will suddenly see the necessity of radical
change. And, after making an alliance with conservative Republicans hostile to even Trump's
fake populism in order to elect Biden, seeing the light on radical reform is so likely! So
plausible.
And, what's the play? The carrot of bi-partisan cooperation coupled with the fearful stick
of abolishing the filibuster someday somehow if they don't play nice. You do realize that only
Republicans are allowed to manipulate the filibuster and only in ways that favor their agenda
of, say, stacking the courts? And, the strategic vision? Reinforcing the Rube Goldberg
contraption which is Obamacare? You do know Biden is on record as adamantly opposed to
Medicare4all? And, that Medicaid is a need-based nightmare of controlled deprivation? In a
country where public health is such a shambles that a pandemic is running out of control.
'All the attention in this thread so far has been on the political dimension of uncertainty,
but it seems to me the public health dimension is also crucial and quite up in the air. What
will the trajectory of the virus look like in the US over the next several months? Will
infections continue to explode out of control?'
Not just the public health, but the economic effects of the public health. As I pointed out
in a previous thread, it's not difficult to work out why Trump looked like he was going to win
in January: the stock market was booming, unemployment was low, crime was low, there were no
new wars it's not a mystery.
People vote with their wallets.
If Trump someone manages to face down the neo-liberals in his own party and arrange for a
gigantic stimulus bill (bigger than the last one) and keeps 'benefits' going past August, he is
in with a shout. If he doesn't, and if the economy continues its path to free fall, he will
lose.
People vote with their wallets. It is not difficult. You don't need to invoke Russia and
etc. to work out why Trump won in 2016 (the impact of the Obama stimulus package, which was too
small, hadn't et 'percolated through' to people's bank balances at that point). And, if Trump
loses in 2020, the reasons will be self-evident and nothing to do with 'people seeing through
him' or 'brave liberals averted a turn to fascism'. If he loses it will be because he screwed
up on the 'good' economy.
Looks like Liz Cheney words for Russians. Her action suggest growing alliance between Bush
repoblicans and neolibral interventionaistsof the Democratic Party. The alliance directed against
Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Boland explains, the amendment passed by the committee yesterday sets so many conditions on withdrawal that it makes it all but impossible to satisfy them: ..."
"... The longer that the U.S. stays at war in Afghanistan, the more incentives other states will have to make that continued presence more costly for the U.S. When the knee-jerk reaction in Washington to news of these bounties is to throw up obstacles to withdrawal, that gives other states another incentive to do more of this. ..."
"... Prolonging our involvement in the war amounts to playing into Moscow's hands. For all of their posturing about security and strength, hard-liners routinely support destructive and irrational policies that redound to the advantage of other states. This is still happening with the war in Afghanistan, and if these hard-liners get their way it will continue happening for many years to come. ..."
The immediate response to a story that U.S. forces were being targeted is to keep fighting a
losing conflict.
Barbara Boland
reported yesterday on the House Armed Services Committee's vote to impede withdrawal of
U.S. from Afghanistan:
The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday night to put roadblocks on President
Donald Trump's vow to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, apparently in response to
bombshell report published by The New York Times Friday that alleges Russia paid dollar
bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S troops.
It speaks volumes about Congress' abdication of its responsibilities that one of the few
times that most members want to challenge the president over a war is when they think he might
bring it to an end. Many of the members that want to block withdrawals from other countries
have no problem when the president wants to use U.S. forces illegally and to keep them in other
countries without authorization for years at a time. The role of hard-liner Liz Cheney in
pushing the measure passed yesterday is a good example of what I mean. The hawkish outrage in
Congress is only triggered when the president entertains the possibility of taking troops out
of harm's way. When he takes reckless and illegal action that puts them at risk, as he did when
he ordered the illegal assassination of Soleimani, the same members that are crying foul today
applauded the action. As Boland explains, the amendment passed by the committee yesterday
sets so many conditions on withdrawal that it makes it all but impossible to satisfy
them:
Crow's amendment adds several layers of policy goals to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan,
which has already stretched on for 19 years and cost over a trillion dollars. As made clear
in the Afghanistan Papers, most of these policy goals were never the original intention of
the mission in Afghanistan, and were haphazardly added after the defeat of al Qaeda. With no
clear vision for what achieving these fuzzy goals would look like, the mission stretches on
indefinitely, an unarticulated victory unachievable.
The immediate Congressional response to a story that U.S. forces were being targeted is to
make it much more difficult to pull them out of a war that cannot be won. Congressional hawks
bemoan "micromanaging" presidential decisions and mock the idea of having "535
commanders-in-chief," but when it comes to prolonging pointless wars they are only too happy to
meddle and tie the president's hands. When it comes to defending Congress' proper role in
matters of war, these members are typically on the other side of the argument. They are content
to let the president get us into as many wars as he might want, but they are horrified at the
thought that any of those wars might one day be concluded. Yesterday's vote confirmed that
there is an endless war caucus in the House, and it is bipartisan.
The original reporting of the bounty story is questionable for the reasons that Boland has
pointed out before, but for the sake of argument let's assume that Russia has been offering
bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When the U.S. keeps its troops at war in a country for
almost twenty years, it is setting them up as targets for other governments. Just as the U.S.
has armed and supported forces hostile to Russia and its clients in Syria, it should not come
as a shock when they do to the same elsewhere. If Russia has been doing this, refusing to
withdraw U.S. forces ensures that they will continue to have someone that they can target.
The longer that the U.S. stays at war in Afghanistan, the more incentives other states
will have to make that continued presence more costly for the U.S. When the knee-jerk reaction
in Washington to news of these bounties is to throw up obstacles to withdrawal, that gives
other states another incentive to do more of this.
Because the current state of debate about Russia is so toxic and irrational, our political
leaders seem incapable of responding carefully to Russian actions. It doesn't seem to occur to
the war hawks that Russia might prefer that the U.S. remains preoccupied and tied down in
Afghanistan indefinitely.
Prolonging our involvement in the war amounts to playing into Moscow's hands. For all of
their posturing about security and strength, hard-liners routinely support destructive and
irrational policies that redound to the advantage of other states. This is still happening with
the war in Afghanistan, and if these hard-liners get their way it will continue happening for
many years to come.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review , Politico
Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a
columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides
in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
One needs to mention the democratic deficit in the US. All the members voting yes are
representatives, they represent the people in their constituencies, and presumably vote for
what the majority in those constituencies would want, or past promises.
Any poll shows that Americans would rather have the troops brought back home, thank you very
much. But this is not what their representatives are voting for. Talk about democracy!
And what's the logic, if you make an accusation against someone you don't like it must be
true. Okay well then let's drone strike Putin. If you are going to be Exceptional and
consistent, Putin did everything Soleimani did so how can Liz Cotton argue for a different
punishment?
1. Killed U.S. troops in a war zone, 2. planning attacks on U.S. troops.
The entire Russian military plans for attacks all the time just like ours does but the
Neocons have declared that we are the only ones allowed to do that. Verdict, death penalty for
Putin.
Interesting, well reasoned article as usual from Mr. Larison. However, I have to say that I
don't see why Russia would want the US in Afghanistan indefinitely. In primis, they have a
strategic partnership with China (even though we've got to see how Russia will behave now when
there is the India-China rift), and China has been championing the idea of rebuilding the Silk
Road (brilliant idea if you ask me) so in this sense it's more reasonable to assume that they
might be aiming to get stability in the region rather than keep it in a state of unrest (as to
be strategic partners you need to have some kind of common strategy, or at least not a
completely different strategy). In 2018 they (Russia) actually were trying to organise a
mediation process which would have the Afghan Gvt. and the Talibans discuss before the US would
retire the troops, and it was very significative as they managed to get all the parties sitting
around a table for the very first time (even the US participated as an observer).
Secondly, Russia also has pretty decent relations with Iran (at least according to Iranian
press, which seems to be realistic as Russia is compliant to the JCPOA, is not aggressive
towards them, and they're cooperating in the Astana process for a political solution for Syria,
for example), and it wouldn't be so if Russia would pursue a policy which would aim to keep the
US in the Middle East indefinitely, as Iran's WHOLE point is that they want the US out of the
region, so if Russia would be trying to keep the US in the Middle East indefinitely, that would
seriously upset Iran.
Thirdly, Russia is one of the founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which now
includes most of the states in Central Asia, China, India and Pakistan. The association never
made overt statements about their stance on the US's presence in the region; yet they've been
hinting that they don't approve of it, which is reasonable, as it is very likely that those
countries would all have different plans for the region, which might include some consideration
for human and economic development rather than constant and never-ending militarisation (of
course Pakistan would be problematic here, as the funds for the Afghan warlords get channeled
through Pakistan, which receives a lot of US money, so I don't know how they're managing this
issue).
Last but not least, I cannot logically believe that the Talibans, who've been coherent in
their message since the late 70's ("we will fight to the death until the invaders are defeated
and out of our national soil") would now need to be "convinced" by the Russians to defeat and
chase out the invader. This is just NOT believable at all. Afghanistan is called the Graveyard
of Empires for a reason, I would argue.
In any case I am pleased to see that at TAC you have been starting debunking the
Russia-narrative, as it is very problematic - most media just systematically misrepresents
Russia in order to justify aggressive military action (Europe, specifically Northern Europe, is
doing this literally CONSTANTLY, I'm so over it, really). The misrepresentation of Russia as an
aggressive wannabe-empire is a cornerstone of the pro-war narrative, so it is imperative to get
some actual realism into that.
As if the Afghan freedom fighters need additional incentive to eliminate the invaders? In
case Amerikans don't know, Afghans, except those on the US payroll, intensely despise Amerika
and its 'godless' ways. Amerikans forces have been sadistic, bombing Afghan weddings, funerals,
etc.
Even if the Russians are providing bounties to the Afghans, to take out the invaders, don't
the Amerikans remember the 80s when Washington (rightfully) supported the mujahedin with funds,
arms, Stinger missiles, etc.? Again, the US is on shaky ground because of the neocons.
Afghanistan is known through the ages to be the graveyard of empires. They have done it on
their own shedding blood, sweat, and tears. Also, the Afghan resistance have been principled
about Amerikans getting out before making deals.
"... As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine's Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a "targeted" assassination program." Carden ..."
"... Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a vanguard party of globalist imperialists. pl ..."
"... . While the former's rise in the Democratic Party led to the exodus of Neoconservatives (former Trotskyists, Socialist and Marxists) to the Conservative movement, the latter is also moving the New Democrats to the Right, but the problem is that the current Political Right is mostly controlled by the Trumpists so these New Democrat types (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Menendez, Biden etc.) are stuck between a hard place and a rock. In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats (Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and by the angry Trumpists. ..."
"... Recently Sanders and the Democratic Socialists expressed their opposition to Bibi's planned annexation of West-bank and adjacent Palestinian enclaves and threatened to to cut-off the military aid to Israel if Bibi moved on with his plan. ..."
"... Judging by my observation, the current trend is the alliance between the NeverTrumpers (The Lincoln project, The Right Pac) like Bill Kristol and the Reagan-to-Bush-43-neoconservatives (most of whom were Reagan Democrats in the late 70s and 80s themselves so nothing new for them) to push Trump out of office in their view before the RNC in Aug and to make room for the New Democrats and also to restore their previous 20+ years of reigning over the Republican Party. If their plan becomes successful, in the post 2020 election we will see a political configuration resembling the 90s and early 2000s with one major difference which is the introduction of several, in my opinion less that 10 seats in the House reserved for the far-Left socialist Democrats. ..."
"... And in terms of Foreign policy, everyone will get happy and the Blob/Borg think tank class in D.C. will see business as usual ..."
"Only "a few decades ago, "the Left" was considered the center of opposition to imperialism,
and champion of the right of peoples to self-determination."
Johnstone is part of a distinguished line of American expatriate writers, who, perhaps
because of an objectivity conferred by distance, saw their country more clearly than many of
their stateside contemporaries.
Members of the club include William Pfaff who for many years
wrote from Paris and the longtime Asia correspondent Patrick Lawrence . The Paris based Johnstone brings a
moral clarity to matters of war and peace that is, alas, too often absent from most
contemporary foreign affairs writing. Its near total absence on the Left during the Trump years
should be cause for reflection, and concern.
As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of
waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts
including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would
make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the
process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine's Just War theory on the
trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II,
Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a "targeted" assassination program." Carden
---------------
Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a
vanguard party of globalist imperialists. pl
This is a serious article addressing a serious problem. If the "left" sells out on war
issues as they have done the last 20 years or so, there is no pushback against the permanent
war system. Those one-time leftists who have sold out are no longer really leftists,
especially once they are relying on the corrupt permanent spy state for their information and
support.
Interesting and correct observation. Allow me to throw in my own two cents with regards to
the rise of what is defined as the "anti-Anti War left". I should note that there are eerily
similar parralels between the rise of the New Left in the 60s that was the mix of socialist
democrats, sexual revolutionaries, flower-power hippies, anti-imperialist/anti-war activists,
and identitarianists (Huey Netwon, Cesar Chavez, MLK) etc. and today's BLM, Antifa, 'woke'
types, third-gen feminists, broke millennials\
. While the former's rise in the Democratic
Party led to the exodus of Neoconservatives (former Trotskyists, Socialist and Marxists) to
the Conservative movement, the latter is also moving the New Democrats to the Right, but the
problem is that the current Political Right is mostly controlled by the Trumpists so these
New Democrat types (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Menendez, Biden etc.) are stuck between a hard
place and a rock. In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats
(Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and
by the angry Trumpists.
Just to give you one example, last week a prototype New Democrat and long time congressman
(since 89) Elliot Engel of NY who fits well into this definition was defeated handily in the
NY-16 primaries by the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidate, Jamal Bowman. Mr.
Bowman, an African American is ideologically very similar to AOC, Tlaib, and Omar. He won on
a platform of foreign policy endorsed by the left-zionists (ex-labor zionists) against the
likudnik right-wing zionist of Engles' which is very interesting since, Engel has been known
for his hawkish views on foreign policy and extremely pro-Israel and chaired the House
Foreign Affairs Committee recently.
Recently Sanders and the Democratic Socialists expressed their opposition to Bibi's
planned annexation of West-bank and adjacent Palestinian enclaves and threatened to to
cut-off the military aid to Israel if Bibi moved on with his plan.
Domestically, there are several seats up for re-election and especially two in Georgia and
Arizona Senate whose pointed Republican candidates are in very shaky grounds versus their
democratic challengers. What is clear is that the New Democrat platforms are no longer
popular by the Democratic base and given recent events, it can be safely said that either the
most law and order and Trumpian candidates will win or the Democratic socialists endorsed
ones. So another problem for the New Dems.
Judging by my observation, the current trend is the alliance between the NeverTrumpers
(The Lincoln project, The Right Pac) like Bill Kristol and the
Reagan-to-Bush-43-neoconservatives (most of whom were Reagan Democrats in the late 70s and
80s themselves so nothing new for them) to push Trump out of office in their view before the
RNC in Aug and to make room for the New Democrats and also to restore their previous 20+
years of reigning over the Republican Party. If their plan becomes successful, in the post
2020 election we will see a political configuration resembling the 90s and early 2000s with
one major difference which is the introduction of several, in my opinion less that 10 seats
in the House reserved for the far-Left socialist Democrats.
And in terms of Foreign policy, everyone will get happy and the Blob/Borg think tank class
in D.C. will see business as usual as the Democratic Socialists will be "persuaded" to team
up with the New Democrats with regards to sending Troops to conduct humanitarian intervention
abroad (i.e. the Powell Doctrine) in exchange for domestic welfare programs, the
NeverTrumpers and the Republican hawks (Cotton, Graham, Rubio, Cruz, etc.) will have war
plans already written for them at AEI, Hudson and Heritage that focuses on China with the
help of the New Democrats and probably the Far-left.
In her recently published memoir, Circle in the
Darkness , the author and journalist Diana Johnstone recalls that only "a few decades
ago, "the Left" was considered the center of opposition to imperialism, and champion of the
right of peoples to self-determination."
Johnstone is part of a distinguished line of American expatriate writers, who, perhaps
because of an objectivity conferred by distance, saw their country more clearly than many of
their stateside contemporaries. Members of the club include William Pfaff who for many years
wrote from Paris and the longtime Asia correspondent Patrick Lawrence . The Paris based Johnstone brings a
moral clarity to matters of war and peace that is, alas, too often absent from most
contemporary foreign affairs writing. Its near total absence on the Left during the Trump years
should be cause for reflection, and concern.
As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of
waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts
including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would
make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the
process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine's Just War theory on the
trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II,
Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a "targeted" assassination program.
At the time, Johnstone was one of the few who saw through the ruse, but, as she recalled,
she couldn't get her articles published in the liberal press. According to Johnstone, Hitchens
and Company saw to that. The wisdom of bombing Serbian civilians for 78 days in order to carve
out a Muslim enclave in the middle of Europe (which in short order would be overrun by the
Saudis, Albanian organized crime and human organ traffickers) was rarely questioned.
Indeed, among the bien-pensants , it was impermissible.
Today, skepticism of the mainstream narrative regarding both Russia and the war in Syria is
likewise deemed out of bounds by the Left. It is fair to say that a 3 year non-scandal,
Russiagate, ignited a cold war fever among liberals and self-styled progressives. Indeed,
liberals who once took principled stands against the Iraq war, such as Tom Dispatch and
Nation regular Bob Dreyfuss ,
transmogrified, after Trump's election, into frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorists.
By my count, during the course of the three year Russiagate ordeal, Dreyfuss wrote at least
30 articles
promoting the most ludicrous of the Russiagate conspiracies, among them that Russia was " hiding
in your Facebook ," and that, variously, Paul Manafort, Felix Slater and/or General Michael
Flynn would, somehow, bring down Trump. That Dreyfuss would prove so credulous in the face of
what was so clearly an absurd distraction is perhaps not surprising given his
past ties to Lyndon Larouche .
Others, even less discerning than Dreyfuss, but far, far hungrier for attention, have
claimed that skeptics of the now discredited collusion conspiracy theory were themselves
guilty of indulging in, you guessed it, conspiracy theories of their own.
And so, if in the writings of Dreyfuss, TheNew York Times' Michelle Goldberg,
Mother Jones' David Corn, The Atlantic's Franklin Foer, New York
magazine's resident dolt Jonathan Chait, and many more besides, we can see the emergence of the
anti-anti-Cold War Left, there has also reemerged alongside it the very vocal and ravenously
unscrupulous anti-antiwar Left. And it is on the issue of the Syrian war on which the
anti-antiwar Left has coalesced, inexplicably arguing for the wholesale takeover of a secular
police state by the very same Islamist radicals who, if given the chance, would turn around and
immediately kill them on the grounds of apostasy.
In Syria, the protests that began in 2011 were quickly overtaken by armed jihadists whose
motto was "Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave." Before he was murdered by Syrian rebels,
the Jesuit missionary Father Frans vans der Lugt observed that "From the start the protest
movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in
the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security
forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels."
But many prominent voices in mainstream liberal media outlets such as The New York
Times,TheWashington Post and VICE turned a blind eye to the atrocities
committed by the Islamist opposition in their hunger for a US-led regime change operation
against Bashar al-Assad. And the war fever extended from the mainstream to the progressive
Left.
On the pages and website of the New York Review of Books one searches for genuine
antiwar voices in vain. Instead what you most likely will come across are screeds such as the
one issued by Janine di Giovanni. In her rage for another US-led war in the Middle East, di
Giovanni channelled
the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and baselessly accused the antiwar journalist Max Blumenthal
of, you guessed it, being in league with (who else?) the Russian government.
And then there is The Intercept, funded by a shadowy billionaire with ties to the US Agency
for International Development, Pierre Omyidar. Under the editorship of former Nation
managing editor Betsy Reed, The Intercept has given space to some of the most strident
anti-antiwar voices including those of James Risen, Robert McKay and the British-born Mehdi
Hasan. Hasan's enthusiasm for a jihadi victory over the socialist, multi-confessional Syrian
state is perhaps not surprising given his past views in which he compared
non-believers to "animals."
In an April 2018
column for The Intercept, Hasan penned a hysterical open letter to those he deemed
"al-Assad apologists" for the crime of expressing skepticism regarding the latest round of
accusations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime. "To those of you on the anti-war far
left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you
no shame?," cried Hasan. What followed was a lengthy iteration of Assad's crimes and then,
oddly, reassurances from Hasan that he too stands against no fly zones, arming the rebels and
regime change wars.
So what, we might be forgiven to ask, was the point? It was simply a tedious exercise in
moral preening. A speciality of the anti-antiwar Left.
Hasan's, example is instructive because, in his
obvious opportunism and sly fanaticism , he exemplifies everything
that a writer like Diana Johnstone is not and, by extension, much that is seriously wrong with
the anti-antiwar Left.
Worryingly, the anti-antiwar Left is not going away. Indeed, it has some powerful
allies-in-waiting should Joseph R. Biden win in November. In a recent
interview with CBS , Biden protege and former deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken
bemoaned the fact that the Obama administration's regime change efforts in Syria didn't go
nearly far enough.
Indeed, Biden's foreign policy team is stacked from one end to the other with regime change
and new cold war enthusiasts who, alas, will find plenty of support from the growing ranks of
the anti-antiwar Left. Those who find this development more than mildly depressing might do
worse than to take refuge in the work of genuine antiwar voices such as Diana Johnstone's.
Join
the debate on Facebook More articles by: JAMES W. CARDEN
James W. Carden writes about foreign affairs from Washington, DC. His work has appeared
in The American Conservative, American Affairs, The National Interest, and The
Nation where he is a contributing writer.
FBI does have strong levers on Trump. This is the essence of the "Deep State" concept --
intelligence agencies became unhinged and work as a powerful political actors.
Notable quotes:
"... Thank you Mina, yes that or the deep state throwing down the gauntlet. I don't think we can assume that Trump actually has control of the FBI. If he did he would likely have deep sixed the Democrazis through the Awan family spy and blackmail scam. But he didn't. They and Debbie Wasserman Shultz were protected/had dirt on DT. ..."
Maxwell's arrest makes me wonder if it is not about Trump throwing down the gauntlet?
Thank you Mina, yes that or the deep state throwing down the gauntlet. I don't think we can
assume that Trump actually has control of the FBI. If he did he would likely have deep sixed
the Democrazis through the Awan family spy and blackmail scam. But he didn't. They and Debbie
Wasserman Shultz were protected/had dirt on DT.
If the kiddy fiddlers get outed following Ghislaine dropping some of her likely thousands
of hours of home movies then that includes Trump and Biden.
In the fetid atmosphere of
accusations against pussy grabbers and finger f#ckers and hair sniffers neither could
survive. The pack will run rabid.
Is there a woman in the house? Yes, they cried AND she has experience!! Plus the campaign will be televised and it would be a virtual campaign because Covid. No
need to rig audience, the polls or the balllot.
"... I agree that globalism is/will be heading into the dumpers, but I see no chance that US-based manufacturing is going to make any significant come-back. ..."
"... What market will there be for US-manufactured goods? US "consumers" are heavily in debt and facing continued downward pressures on income. ..."
"... There will certainly be, especially given the eye-opener of COVID-19, a big push to have medical (which includes associated tech) production capacities reinvigorated in the US. ..."
"... More "disposable" income goes toward medical expenditures. Less money goes toward creating export items; wealth creation only occurs through a positive increase in balance of trade. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, death, the US will likely continue, for the mid-term, to export weaponry; but, don't expect enough growth here to mean much (margins will drop as competition increases, so figure downward pressure on net export $$). ..."
"... the planet cannot comply with our economic model's dependency on perpetual growth: there can NOT be perpetual growth on a finite planet. US manufacturing requires, as it always has, export markets; requires ever-increasing exports: this is really true for all others. Higher standards of living in the US (and add in increasing medical costs which factor into cost of goods sold) means that the price of US-manufactured goods will be less affordable to peoples outside of the US. ..."
"... I'll also note that the notion of there being a cycle, a parabolic curve, in civilizations is well noted/documented in Sir John Glubb's The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival (you can find electronic bootlegged copies on the Internet)- HIGHLY recommended reading! ..."
"... All of this is pretty much reflected in Wall Street companies ramp-ups in stock-buy-backs. That's money that's NOT put in R&D or expansion. I'm pretty sure that the brains in all of this KNOW what the situation is: growth is never coming back. ..."
"... Make no mistake, what we're facing is NOT another recession or depression, it's not part of what we think as a downturn in the "business cycle," as though we'll "pull out of it," it's basically an end to the super-cycle ..."
"... We are at the peak (slightly past peak, but not far enough to realize it yet) and there is no returning. Per-capita income and energy consumption have peaked. There's not enough resources and not enough new demand (younger people, people that have wealth) to keep the perpetual growth machine going. ..."
I agree that globalism is/will be heading into the dumpers, but I see no chance that US-based manufacturing is going to
make any significant come-back.
The world's economy is in contraction. Although capital, what actual capital exists, will have to try and do something "productive,"
it is confronted by this fact, that everything is facing contraction. During times of contraction it's a game of acquisition rather
than expanding capacity: the sum total is STILL contraction; and the contraction WILL be a reduction in excess, excess manufacturing
and labor.
What market will there be for US-manufactured goods? US "consumers" are heavily in debt and facing continued downward pressures
on income. China is self-sufficient (enough) other than energy (which can be acquired outside of US markets). Most every other
country is in a position of declining wealth (per capita income levels peaked and in decline). And manufacturing continues to
increase its automation (less workers means less consumers).
There will certainly be, especially given the eye-opener of COVID-19, a big push to have medical (which includes associated
tech) production capacities reinvigorated in the US. One has to look at this in The Big Picture of what it means, and that's that
the US population is aging (and in poor health).
More "disposable" income goes toward medical expenditures. Less money goes toward
creating export items; wealth creation only occurs through a positive increase in balance of trade. And on the opposite end of
the spectrum, death, the US will likely continue, for the mid-term, to export weaponry; but, don't expect enough growth here to
mean much (margins will drop as competition increases, so figure downward pressure on net export $$).
Lastly, and it's the reason why global trade is being knocked down, is that the planet cannot comply with our economic model's
dependency on perpetual growth: there can NOT be perpetual growth on a finite planet. US manufacturing requires, as it always
has, export markets; requires ever-increasing exports: this is really true for all others. Higher standards of living in the US
(and add in increasing medical costs which factor into cost of goods sold) means that the price of US-manufactured goods will
be less affordable to peoples outside of the US.
And here too is the fact that other countries' populations are also aging. Years
ago I dove into the demographics angle/assessment to find out that ALL countries ramp and age and that you can see countries'
energy consumption rise and their their net trade balance swing negative- there's a direct correlation: go to the CIA's Factbook
and look at demographics and energy and the graphs tell the story.
I'll also note that the notion of there being a cycle, a parabolic
curve, in civilizations is well noted/documented in Sir John Glubb's The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival (you can find
electronic bootlegged copies on the Internet)- HIGHLY recommended reading!
All of this is pretty much reflected in Wall Street companies ramp-ups in stock-buy-backs. That's money that's NOT put in R&D
or expansion. I'm pretty sure that the brains in all of this KNOW what the situation is: growth is never coming back.
MANY years ago I stated that we will one day face "economies of scale in reverse." We NEVER considered that growth couldn't
continue forever. There was never a though about what would happen with the reverse "of economies of scale."
Make no mistake,
what we're facing is NOT another recession or depression, it's not part of what we think as a downturn in the "business cycle,"
as though we'll "pull out of it," it's basically an end to the super-cycle.
We will never be able to replicate the state of things
as they are. We are at the peak (slightly past peak, but not far enough to realize it yet) and there is no returning. Per-capita
income and energy consumption have peaked. There's not enough resources and not enough new demand (younger people, people that
have wealth) to keep the perpetual growth machine going.
Bolton is just "yet another MIC puppet", who has complete vacuum in his head as for morality
and decency. In other words he is a typical Washington psychopath. Like many sociopaths he is a
compulsive liar, undeniable careerist and self-promoter.
This week on Empire Has No Clothes, we spoke with Elizabeth Shackelford, a former Foreign
Service Officer and author of
The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age . Kelley Vlahos, Matt Purple
and I talked about demoralization in the department, the reasons for her resignation, U.S.
policy in South Sudan and Africa, and the need for greater accountability in our foreign
policy. We also covered John Bolton's new book, his outdated foreign policy views, and whether
anything he says can be trusted.
Listen to the episode in the player below, or click the links beneath it to subscribe using
your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on
iTunes or Stitcher, which will really help us climb the rankings, allowing more people to find
the show.
So former tank repairman decided again managed to make a make a mark in world diplomacy
:-).
Notable quotes:
"... Mike Pompeo delivered an embarrassing, clownish performance at the U.N. on Tuesday, and his attempt to gain support for an open-ended conventional arms embargo on Iran was rejected the rest of the old P5+1: ..."
"... The Trump administration has abused our major European allies for years in its push to destroy the nuclear deal, and their governments have no patience with any more unilateral U.S. stunts. This is the result of two years of a destructive policy aimed solely at punishing Iran and its people. The administration's open contempt for international law and the interests of its allies has cost the U.S. their cooperation. ..."
"... Underscoring the absurdity of the Trump administration's arms embargo appeal were Pompeo's alarmist warnings that an end to the arms embargo would allow Iran to purchase advanced fighters that it would use to threaten Europe and India: ..."
"... This is a laughably unrealistic scenario. Even if Iran purchased advanced fighters, the last thing it would do is send them off on a suicide mission to bomb Italy or India. This shows how deeply irrational the Iran hawks' fearmongering is. Iran has already demonstrated an ability to launch precise attacks with drones and missiles in its immediate neighborhood, and it developed these capabilities while under the current embargo. ..."
"... The Secretary of State called on the U.N. to reject "extortion diplomacy." The best way to reject extortion diplomacy would be for them to reject the administration's desperate attempt to use America's position at the U.N. to attack international law. ..."
Mike Pompeo delivered an embarrassing, clownish performance at the U.N. on Tuesday, and his
attempt to
gain support for an open-ended conventional arms embargo on Iran was rejected the rest of the
old P5+1:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Tuesday for an arms embargo on Iran to be
extended indefinitely, but his appeal fell flat at the United Nations Security Council, where
Russia and China rejected it outright and close allies of the United States were
ambivalent.
The Trump administration is more isolated than ever in its Iran obsession. The ridiculous
effort to invoke the so-called "snapback" provision of the JCPOA more than two years after
reneging on the agreement met with failure, just as most observers predicted months
ago when it was first floated as a possibility. As I said at the time, "The
administration's latest destructive ploy won't find any support on the Security Council. There
is nothing "intricate" about this idea. It is a crude, heavy-handed attempt to employ the
JCPOA's own provisions to destroy it." It was never going to work because all of the other
parties to the agreement want nothing to do with the administration's punitive approach, and
U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA meant that it forfeited any rights it had when it was still part
of the deal.
Opposition from Russia and China was a given, but the striking thing about the scene at the
U.N. this week was that major U.S. allies
joined them in rebuking the administration's obvious bad faith maneuver:
The pointedly critical tone of the debate saw Germany accusing Washington of violating
international law by withdrawing from the nuclear pact, while Berlin aligned itself with
China's claim that the United States has no right to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran.
The Trump administration has abused our major European allies for years in its push to
destroy the nuclear deal, and their governments have no patience with any more unilateral U.S.
stunts. This is the result of two years of a destructive policy aimed solely at punishing Iran
and its people. The administration's open contempt for international law and the interests of
its allies has cost the U.S. their cooperation.
Underscoring the absurdity of the Trump administration's arms embargo appeal were Pompeo's
alarmist
warnings that an end to the arms embargo would allow Iran to purchase advanced fighters
that it would use to threaten Europe and India:
If you fail to act, Iran will be free to purchase Russian-made fighter jets that can
strike up to a 3,000 kilometer radius, putting cities like Riyadh, New Delhi, Rome, and
Warsaw in Iranian crosshairs.
This is a laughably unrealistic scenario. Even if Iran purchased advanced fighters, the last
thing it would do is send them off on a suicide mission to bomb Italy or India. This shows how
deeply irrational the Iran hawks' fearmongering is. Iran has already demonstrated an ability to
launch precise attacks with drones and missiles in its immediate neighborhood, and it developed
these capabilities while under the current embargo.
It has no need for expensive fighters, and
it is not at all certain that their government would even be interested in acquiring them. Pompeo's presentation was a weak attempt to exaggerate the potential threat from a state that
has very limited power projection, and he found no support because his serial fabrications
about Iran have rendered everything he says to be worthless.
The same administration that wants to keep an arms embargo on Iran forever has no problem
flooding the region with U.S.-made weapons and providing them to some of the worst governments
in the world. It is these client states that are doing the most to destabilize other countries
in the region right now. If the U.N. should be putting arms embargoes on any country, it should
consider imposing them on Saudi Arabia and the UAE to limit their ability to wreak havoc on
Yemen and Libya.
The Secretary of State called on the U.N. to reject "extortion diplomacy." The best way to
reject extortion diplomacy would be for them to reject the administration's desperate attempt
to use America's position at the U.N. to attack international law.
You can be fired for criticizing BLM, because in essence this is apolitical movement run by regular Dem NGOs careerists.
Immunity from criticism is a sign of totalitarism.
My take on Tucker and Maddow: both serve those who write their paychecks, but one of the
two bosses is a better businessman.
Tucker does not duplicate Hannity which lets them serve different (if overlapping)
segments of the audience. Showing Paralimpil and Gabbard to the viewers did not lead to any
major perturbation in American politics, but it lets his viewer feel that they are better
informed than the fools who watch Maddow. And it helps that to a degree they are.
I get that Tucker invites good a reasonable people on his show and gives voice space where
they would not otherwise get it. That is deliberate.
I bet you that the stats show that the demented monotone oozing out of MSNBC and CNN etc
has been a serious turn off for a sector of audience that is well informed and exercise
critical faculties. That is exactly what Tucker needs to pay for his program as I would be
fairly sure these people are Consumers of a desirable degree and advertisers like Tucker's
formula and Fox Bosses like Tuckers income generator.
I don't think it is more complex than that and his bosses will entertain most heresies as
long as the program generates advertiser demand for that time slot.
So Tucker is OK and he is reasonable and he will interview a broad spectrum. Good for him.
But he smooths the pillow and caresses the establishment arse.
Wrong. Tucker has admitted that he is not in favor of populist government. He does not
advocate any kind of socialism or class unity. He wants a tentative balance between the
classes which can only be brought back via curbing neoliberalism and government regulation.
He has admitted that the problem then is both in the private and public spheres of life.
Tucker is merely pointing this out and I say kudos to him.
There is a recent push in the internet sphere being leveled against Tucker. It is the same
kind of preemptive strike that was leveled at the "alt-right" back when terms like
neoliberalism and globalism and duopoly were reemerging in the public lexicon. In short, amy
type of nationalist sentiment being floated anywhere is to be crushed and obfuscated on
sight.
Similarily, the poster vk seems to pipe in every time I mention America must bring back
its manufacturing sector. This line is always greeted by vk as, "it will never happen."
Market and economic fundamentals says that it MUST happen and it will as neoliberalism's
reign is curbed in the coming decades.
The push against Tucker is because of two reasons: 1) his growing popularity and his 2)
speaking truth to power.
...
I remember back in the day during the height of John Stewart's tenure as maestro of
liberal infotainment, he went on Tucker's show saying he was "hurting America."
Since then, Tucker has come a long way and I would say has come further in spirit towards
truth. Stewart has sunken into making appearances on The View. Kudos to Tucker. The
globalists in our country should be worried about him.
"Today, America's tumbrils are clattering about, carrying toppled statues, ruined careers,
unwoke brands. Over their sides peer those deemed racist by left-wing identitarians and
sentenced to cancelation, even as the evidentiary standard for that crime falls through the
floor But who are these cultural revolutionaries? The conventional wisdom goes that this is
the inner-cities erupting, economically disadvantaged victims of racism enraged over the
murder of George Floyd. The reality is something more bourgeoisie. As Kevin Williamson
observed last week, "These are the idiot children of the American ruling class, toy radicals
and Champagne Bolsheviks, playing Jacobin for a while, until they go back to graduate
school".
Is that so? I well recall listening in the Middle East to other angry young men who, too,
wanted to 'topple the statues'; to burn down everything. 'You really believed that Washington
would allow you in', they taunted and tortured their leaders: "No, we must burn it all down.
Start from scratch".
Did they have a blueprint for the future? No. They simply believed that Islam would
organically inflate, and expand to fill the void. It would happen by itself – of its own
accord: Faith.
Professor John Gray has noted "that in
The God that failed, Gide says: 'My faith in communism is like my faith in religion. It is a
promise of salvation for mankind'' . "Here Gide acknowledged", Gray continues, "that communism
was an atheist version of monotheism. But so is liberalism, and when Gide and others gave up
faith in communism to become liberals, they were not renouncing the concepts and values that
both ideologies had inherited from western religion. They continued to believe that history was
a directional process in which humankind was advancing towards universal freedom ".
So too with the wokes. The emphasis is on Redemption; on a Truth catharsis; on their own
Virtue as sufficient agency to stand-in for the lack of plan for the future. All are clear
signals: A secularised 'illusion' is metamorphosing back into 'religion'. Not as Islam, of
course, but as angry Man, burning at the deep and dark moral stain of the past. And acting now
as purifying 'fire' to bring about the uplifting and shining future ahead.
Tucker Carlson, a leading American conservative commentator known for plain speaking,
frames the movement a little differently:
"This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious, and highly organized
political movement It is deep and profound and has vast political ambitions. It is insidious,
it will grow. Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge western civilization itself
We're too literal and good-hearted to understand what's happening We have no idea what we are
up against These are not protests. This is a totalitarian political movement" .
Again, nothing needs to be done by this new generation to bring into being a new world,
apart from destroying the old one. This vision is a relic – albeit secularised – of
western Christianity. Apocalypse and redemption, these wokes believe, have their own path;
their own internal logic.
Mill's 'ghost' is arrived at the table. And with its return, America's exceptionalism has
its re-birth. Redemption for humankind's dark stains. A narrative in which the history of
mankind is reduced to the history of racial struggle. Yet Americans, young or old, now lack the
power to project it as a universal vision.
'Virtue', however deeply felt, on its own, is insufficient. Might President Trump try
nevertheless to sustain the old illusion by hard power? The U.S. is deeply fractured and
dysfunctional – but if desperate, this is possible.
The "toy radicals, and Champagne Bolsheviks" – in these terms of dripping disdain from
Williamson – are very similar to those who rushed into the streets in 1917. But before
dismissing them so peremptorily and lightly, recall what occurred.
Into that combustible mass of youth – so acultured by their progressive parents to see
a Russian past that was imperfect and darkly stained – a Trotsky and Lenin were inserted.
And Stalin ensued. No 'toy radicals'. Soft became hard totalitarianism.
play_arrow
N2M , 22 minutes ago
Vision? What vision that might be?
"'Freedom' is being torn down from within"
What freedom? Could be "Freedom" they decide how, when and where you can express your
thoughts? There is only one true freedom that exists and that is human free will to tell the
truth.
Today vision of Freedom is a joke, this game was never about freedom for in a world of
ideology, there is always lurking a deceits of lies and control.
There are 3 types of Americans.
A sharp ones and well tune to what has been going on and those I had a chance to talk
to and become friends when I was in U.S.A
The imbeciles of totally clueless generation of people who will listen to any wave of
information in propaganda as true and must be and their government is so beloved, no others
can even compete and they only have good intentions /s /c
And there is this group, shrewd, conniving, self-moral, warmongering, evil to a core
psychopaths who only follow different orders to impose their will on other nations to makes
sure they follow what? USD.
So when author speaks about vision it must separate few things!
Washington is running around imposing sanctions, destroying relationship/interest with
nations, trying all this regime changes at a cost of death of millions of people and then
dropping "Freedom bombs' almost every 8 to 9 minutes somewhere in this world, because these
freaks vision is way different, then some regular people either be in South America or other
continents that these regular people have.
Real vision is based on corporation, and U.S.A had that before, however after being
hijack, now they trying to start a war of unimaginable proportions so few fat bosses in one
Chamber can feel as super masters of the world and everyone as slaves.
I would like to remind some people about vision – Marx had a vision to, and rest is
history.
Becklon , 1 hour ago
It's a lack of shared purpose, I think. Without a common focus, such as an external threat
(as once provided by the USSR) groups tend to fracture and turn on themselves and each
other.
It's got nothing to do with any one religious or political group having more power than
others. It's to do with homo sapiens - and maybe entropy.
1 play_arrow
David Wooten , 1 hour ago
Well, if all this is true, there is far, far more at stake than the US being unable to
"Re-Impose Its Civilisational Worldview" (which I would be fine with).
He should talk about neoliberal ideology not some "universal civilization"
Notable quotes:
"... So, not only was the claim to universal civilisation not supported by evidence, but the very idea of humans sharing a common destination ('End of Times') is nothing more than an apocalyptic remnant of Latin Christianity, and of one minor current in Judaism. Mill's was always a matter of secularized religion – faith – rather than empiricism. A shared human 'destination' does not exist in Orthodox Christianity, Taoism or Buddhism. It could never therefore qualify as universal. ..."
"... But today, with America's soft power collapsed – not even the illusion of universalism can be sustained. Other states are coming forward, offering themselves as separate, equally compelling 'civilisational' states. It is clear that even were the classic liberal Establishment to win in the November U.S. elections, America no longer has claim to path-find a New World Order. ..."
"... 'Freedom' is being torn down from within. Dissidents from the woke ideology , are being 'called out', made to repent on the knee, or face reputational or economic ruin. It is 'soft totalitarianism'. It recalls one of Dostoevsky's characters – at a time when Russian progressives were discrediting traditional institutions – who, in a celebrated line, says: "I got entangled in my data Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism". ..."
"... "This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious, and highly organized political movement It is deep and profound and has vast political ambitions. It is insidious, it will grow. Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge western civilization itself We're too literal and good-hearted to understand what's happening We have no idea what we are up against These are not protests. This is a totalitarian political movement" ..."
"... The "toy radicals, and Champagne Bolsheviks" – in these terms of dripping disdain from Williamson – are very similar to those who rushed into the streets in 1917. But before dismissing them so peremptorily and lightly, recall what occurred. ..."
It was always a paradox: John Stuart Mill, in his seminal (1859), On Liberty , never doubted that a universal civilisation, grounded
in liberal values, was the eventual destination of all of humankind. He looked forward to an 'Exact Science of Human Nature', which
would formulate laws of psychology and society as precise and universal as those of the physical sciences.
Yet, not only did that
science never emerge, in today's world, such social 'laws' are taken as strictly (western) cultural constructs, rather than as laws
or science.
So, not only was the claim to universal civilisation not supported by evidence, but the very idea of humans sharing a common destination
('End of Times') is nothing more than an apocalyptic remnant of Latin Christianity, and of one minor current in Judaism. Mill's was
always a matter of secularized religion – faith – rather than empiricism. A shared human 'destination' does not exist in Orthodox
Christianity, Taoism or Buddhism. It could never therefore qualify as universal.
Liberal core tenets of individual autonomy, freedom, industry, free trade and commerce essentially reflected the triumph of the
Protestant worldview in Europe's 30-years' civil war. It was not fully even a Christian view, but more a Protestant one.
This narrow, sectarian pillar was able to be projected into a universal project – only so long as it was underpinned by power
. In Mill's day, the civilisational claim served Europe's need for
colonial validation . Mill tacitly
acknowledges this when he validates the clearing of the indigenous American populations for not having tamed the wilderness, nor
made the land productive.
However, with America's Cold War triumph – that had by then become a cynical framework for U.S. 'soft power' – acquired a new
potency. The merits of America's culture, and way of life, seemed to acquire practical validation through the implosion of the USSR.
But today, with America's soft power collapsed – not even the illusion of universalism can be sustained. Other states are coming
forward, offering themselves as separate, equally compelling 'civilisational' states. It is clear that even were the classic liberal
Establishment to win in the November U.S. elections, America no longer has claim to path-find a New World Order.
Yet, should this secularised Protestant current be over – beware! Because its subterranean, unconscious religiosity is the 'ghost
at the table' today. It is returning in a new guise.
The 'old illusion' cannot continue, because its core values are being radicalised, stood on their head, and turned into the swords
with which to impale classic American and European liberals (and U.S. Christian Conservatives). It is now the younger generation
of American woke
liberals who are asserting vociferously not merely that the old liberal paradigm is illusory, but that it was never more than
'a cover' hiding oppression – whether domestic, or colonial, racist or imperial; a moral stain that only redemption can cleanse.
It is an attack – which coming from within – forecloses on any U.S. moral, soft power, global leadership aspirations. For with
the illusion exploded, and nothing in its place, a New World Order cannot coherently be formulated.
Not content with exposing the illusion, the woke generation are also tearing down, and shredding, the flags at the masthead: Freedom
and prosperity achieved via the liberal market.
'Freedom' is being torn down from within. Dissidents from the
woke ideology , are being 'called
out', made to repent on the knee, or face reputational or economic ruin. It is 'soft totalitarianism'. It recalls one of Dostoevsky's
characters – at a time when Russian progressives were discrediting traditional institutions – who, in a celebrated line, says: "I
got entangled in my data Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism".
Even 'science' has become a 'God that failed'; instead of being the path to liberty, it has become a dark soulless
path toward unfreedom . From algorithms that 'cost' the value of human lives, versus the 'costing' of lockdown; from secret 'Black
Box' algos that limit distribution of news and thinking, to Bill Gates' vaccination ID project, science now portends
despotic social control , rather than a fluttering standard, hoist as the symbol of freedom.
But the most prominent of these flags, torn down, cannot be blamed on the woke generation . There has been no 'prosperity for
all' – only distortions and warped structures. There are not even free markets. The Fed and the U.S. Treasury simply print new money,
and hand it out to select recipients. There is no means now to attribute 'worth' to financial assets. Their value simply is that
which Central Government is willing to pay for bonds, or grant in bail-outs.
Wow. 'The God who failed' (André Gide's book title) – a crash of idols. One wonders now, what is the point to that huge financial
eco-system known as Wall Street. Why not winnow it down to a couple of entities, say, Blackrock and KKR (hedge funds), and leave
it to them to distribute the Fed's freshly-printed 'boodle' amongst friends? Liberal markets no more – and many fewer jobs.
"Today, America's tumbrils are clattering about, carrying toppled statues, ruined careers, unwoke brands. Over their sides
peer those deemed racist by left-wing identitarians and sentenced to cancelation, even as the evidentiary standard for that crime
falls through the floor But who are these cultural revolutionaries? The conventional wisdom goes that this is the inner-cities
erupting, economically disadvantaged victims of racism enraged over the murder of George Floyd. The reality is something more
bourgeoisie. As Kevin Williamson observed last week, "These are the idiot children of the American ruling class, toy radicals
and Champagne Bolsheviks, playing Jacobin for a while, until they go back to graduate school".
Is that so? I well recall listening in the Middle East to other angry young men who, too, wanted to 'topple the statues'; to burn
down everything. 'You really believed that Washington would allow you in', they taunted and tortured their leaders: "No, we must
burn it all down. Start from scratch".
Did they have a blueprint for the future? No. They simply believed that Islam would organically inflate, and expand to fill the
void. It would happen by itself – of its own accord: Faith.
Professor John Gray has noted
"that in The God that failed, Gide says: 'My faith in communism is like my faith in religion. It is a promise of salvation for mankind''
. "Here Gide acknowledged", Gray continues, "that communism was an atheist version of monotheism. But so is liberalism, and when
Gide and others gave up faith in communism to become liberals, they were not renouncing the concepts and values that both ideologies
had inherited from western religion. They continued to believe that history was a directional process in which humankind was advancing
towards universal freedom".
So too with the wokes. The emphasis is on Redemption; on a Truth catharsis; on their own Virtue as sufficient agency to stand-in
for the lack of plan for the future. All are clear signals: A secularised 'illusion' is metamorphosing back into 'religion'. Not
as Islam, of course, but as angry Man, burning at the deep and dark moral stain of the past. And acting now as purifying 'fire' to
bring about the uplifting and shining future ahead.
Tucker Carlson, a leading American conservative commentator known for plain speaking,
frames the movement a little differently:
"This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious, and highly organized political movement It is deep and profound
and has vast political ambitions. It is insidious, it will grow. Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge western civilization
itself We're too literal and good-hearted to understand what's happening We have no idea what we are up against These are not
protests. This is a totalitarian political movement" .
Again, nothing needs to be done by this new generation to bring into being a new world, apart from destroying the old one. This
vision is a relic – albeit secularised – of western Christianity. Apocalypse and redemption, these wokes believe, have their own
path; their own internal logic.
Mill's 'ghost' is arrived at the table. And with its return, America's exceptionalism has its re-birth. Redemption for humankind's
dark stains. A narrative in which the history of mankind is reduced to the history of racial struggle. Yet Americans, young or old,
now lack the power to project it as a universal vision.
'Virtue', however deeply felt, on its own, is insufficient. Might President Trump try nevertheless to sustain the old illusion
by hard power? The U.S. is deeply fractured and dysfunctional – but if desperate, this is possible.
The "toy radicals, and Champagne Bolsheviks" – in these terms of dripping disdain from Williamson – are very similar to those
who rushed into the streets in 1917. But before dismissing them so peremptorily and lightly, recall what occurred.
Into that combustible mass of youth – so acultured by their progressive parents to see a Russian past that was imperfect and darkly
stained – a Trotsky and Lenin were inserted. And Stalin ensued. No 'toy radicals'. Soft became hard totalitarianism.
T he perpetual occupation of Afghanistan has become so normalized that it mostly serves as
background noise to most Americans. It's even jokingly referred to as the "Forever War,"
accepted as just another constant reality. A soldier dies now and again, a couple of dozen
civilians get killed in another bombing. It's never enough to stir the population to pressure
Washington enough to stop it. And the endless war drags on.
From George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to Donald Trump, every U.S. president has promised to
end the war. But their plans to bring the troops home inevitably require first sending more
troops to the country. You can't look at all this rhetoric and reality and not conclude that
the United States wants to stay in Afghanistan forever. And there is a reason, despite an
unresolvable military quagmire, that the Empire won't let go of Afghanistan.
In this latest "Empire Files" documentary, journalist Abby Martin covers reveals the reality
of America's Wars in Afghanistan, from the CIA construct of the 1980s through today's senseless
stalemate. MintPress brings you documentary in its entirety, published with permission
from filmmaker Abby Martin.
The question I highlight is how would a diminished American Empire look like.
When the British Empire fell, it fell while causing two world wars - the greatest wars
humanity has ever seen. But the two world wars weren't waged in the name of religion: on the
contrary, they were pragmatic, secular wars, wars of Reason. Whatever its merits or demerits,
the WWs caused a sufficient trauma on the Western intelligentsia over the illuminist concept
of Reason that it turned a relativist, borderline nihilist corpus of intellectuals (what we
know today as the "postmodernism"). This gave, in part, a second chance to religion (in the
West's case, Christianism, which was the religion that was already there).
But now it's time for the USA to fall as the world empire. Now we see a world empire fall
under postmodernism, not Reason. On the contrary: the USA is consolidating itself as the
irrational empire. In this sense, I wonder: if the USA is to fail in its bid to remain the
world empire (against an openly rational power: Marxist/Socialist China).
When Europe emerged from WWII, it certainly emerged as a bunch of completely defeated
peoples willing to accept anything - literally anything - that would come from the USA. In
other words, it finally accepted it was part of the periphery of the world again. This
peripheral reality ossified both in the form of social-democracy (welfare state) and in the
form of the idea of a North Atlantic Civilization (Atlanticism), which we now refer to as
Western Civilization: Europe was Greece to the USA's Rome. It took dozens of millions of
dead, but Europe was finally put on its knees by the American and Soviet behemoths.
But, this time, there won't be an USSR to USA's Third Reich. China, best case scenario,
will be able to impose a multipolar order where the USA will still be able to impose itself
as one of the "poles" - certainly in the American Continent, probably also over Western
Europe and Oceania + Japan and South Korea. It will still be a first among equals.
In this hypothetical context, I imagine how would the American people come to terms with
this new - much less glorious - reality.
My hypothesis is that, if the USA would still be willing to revert multipolarity and
restore unipolarity, it would necessarily have to convert itself into a fundamentalist
Christian empire - much like the byzantine phase of the Roman Empire.
I discard the possibility of the USA collapsing overnight and peacefully a la USSR. Its
economic structure simply doesn't permit that. Worst case scenario, it would collapse under a
sequence of brutal and savage civil wars, leading to balkanization, resulting in what I like
to describe as a "Mad Max scenario".
It is normal for the Armed Forces of a given Nation-State to represent the ultimate
reserve of the traditions of said Nation-State. Nobody here doubts the PLA is the most
pro-Communist institution of the Popular Republic of China.
However, the post-war Western Democracies have a particularity: they are not reigned by a
unique ideology/doctrine; they are instead governed by what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called a
"vital center", i.e. a confederation of ideologies that hate each other and perpetually
compete for power every electoral cycle (the so-called "political spectrum", which goes from
the Left to the Right). That leaves the Western throne inherently empty.
The post-war European countries found a curious solution to this problem: they put the
non-essential institutions of the State up to grabs in elections (which are still held today)
while reserving their Armed Forces to the hard-right and the far-right. This was done in
order to, at the same time, keep the illusion of democracy and keeping the nation safe from a
socialist revolution. That's why soldiers of the British Army were caught practicing target
shooting with Corbyn's portrait, and why, frequently, we read of neonazi cells within the
Bundeswehr.
That's why I think that, in order to keep the country safe from socialism (or, as the
American like to say, communism), the USG will gradually resort to the far-right to fill
their ranks in the Army and the police. I think this is a solution that will occur naturally
to the American elites, in a way that, in one generation space-time, even West Point will be
a far-right (Christian fundamentalist) nest.
The organisers projected an image of the cover of the Russian Constitution against the
background of Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and the inscription "1993. It was yours " Then
there is an image of the Russian people and the message "2020. It will be ours!", followed by
a call to come to vote, was projected on the building of the US Embassy. The light projection
was organised by the art group "Re:Venge".
https://www.stalkerzone.org/the-russian-constitution-was-projected-onto-the-us-embassy-building-in-moscow/
Ha, I really like this one ! Would have loved to watch 'das dumme Gesicht' (something like
>>stupid face<< but stronger. like the Germans say) of the latest Trump's edition
of silly ambassadors, lol !!!
"Durkan called for charges to be dismissed against those who were arrested for alleged misdemeanors The mayor also said that
Seattle arts and parks departments would preserve a community garden and artwork and murals that protesters created within the
zone."
...Statues of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Theodore Roosevelt are dragged down, while the murals and graffiti
of misfits who trashed downtown Seattle are to be preserved.
"... Some countries like Italy (maybe Germany) are warming to Russia a little bit but Russia has a long way to go just to get back to their pre-2014 status with Europe. That is 'tightening their grip?'. I know, this is how propagandists speak. ..."
VK, re: Russia's grip on Europe is gradually tightening from the U.K.'s
INDEPENDENT
It's behind a paywall but I read just enough to be curious as to how someone could
possibly justify a clickbait title like that.
I suspect that the rest of the article is just
going to recap Russia's alleged sins in order to fan hatred but how can someone objectively
say that Russia is tightening its grip on Europe?
FUCKUS banned Russia from the Olympics on a bogus state sponsored steroid scam, no
reinstatement on horizon.
FUCKUS kicked Russia out of the now G7 and imposed a trade embargo that destroyed a large
commercial relationship w/Germany.
What is the 'overwhelming' evidence that the Russians poisoned the Skripal's, Novichok can be
made by just about anyone.
Some countries like Italy (maybe Germany) are warming to Russia a little bit but Russia
has a long way to go just to get back to their pre-2014 status with Europe. That is
'tightening their grip?'. I know, this is how propagandists speak.
It is not just senility. Looks like Ukrainegate is not enough for her and she wants to throw kitchen sink at Trump. Charging for "alleged"
action is directly from Stalin's NKVD practice
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called for US sanctions against Russia's intelligence
service over bounties that it reportedly offered Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in
Afghanistan.
Putin has to stay within neoliberal framework because this is a the dominant social framework in existence. But he is determine
to "tame the markets" when necessary which is definitely anathema to neoliberals. So he is kind of mixture of neoliberal and traditional
New Deal style statist. At the same time he definitely deviates from neoliberalism in some major areas, such as labor market and monopolies.
In fact, much of his economic and social policies have a decidedly neoliberal bent. As Tony Wood argues, Putin has reformed
and consolidated the Yeltsin system. There is not as much of a break with Yeltsin as liberals -- or apparently leftists looking
for any hope -- want to believe.
You have no clue. This is a typical left-wing "Infantile Disorder" point of view based on zero understanding of Russia and neoliberalism
as a social system. Not that I am a big specialist, but your level of ignorance and arrogance is really stunning.
Neoliberalism as a social system means internal colonization of population by financial oligarchy and resulting decline of
the standard of living for lower 80% due to the redistribution of wealth up. It also means subservience to international financial
capital and debt slavery for vassal countries (the group to which Russia in views of Washington belongs) .
The classic example is Ukraine where 80% of population are now live on the edge of abject poverty. Russia, although with great
difficulties, follows a different path. This is indisputable.
The neoliberal resolution which happened under alcoholic Yeltsin was stopped or at least drastically slowed down by Putin.
Some issues were even reversed. For example, the USA interference via NGO ended. Direct interference of the USA into internal
affairs of Russia ( Russia was a USA colony under Yeltsin ) also diminished, although was not completely eliminated (and this
is impossible in view of the USA position in the the hegemon of the neoliberal "International" and owner of the world reserve
currency.)
Those attempts to restore the sovereignty of Russia were clearly anti-neoliberal acts of Putin. After all the slogan of neoliberalism
is "financial oligarchy of all countries unite" -- kind of perversion of Trotskyism (or. more correctly, "Trotskyism for the rich.")
In general, Yeltsin's model of neoliberalism in Russia (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semibankirschina )
experienced serious setbacks under Putin's rule, although some of his measures were distinctly neoliberal.
Recent "Medvedev's" pension reform is one (which was partially a necessity due to the state of Russian finances at the time;
although the form that was chosen -- in your face, without some type of carrot -- was really mediocre, like almost anything coming
from Medvedev ); some botched attempt in privatization of electrical networks with Chubais at the helm is another -- later stopped,
etc.
But in reality, considerable if not dominant political power now belongs to corporations, whether you want it or not. And that
creates strong neoliberal fifth column within the country. That's a huge problem for Putin. The alternative is dictatorship which
usually does not end well. So there is not much space for maneuvering anyway. You need to play the anti-neoliberal game very skillfully
as you always have weak cards in hands, the point which people like VK never understand.
BTW, unlike classic neoliberals, Putin is a consistent proponent of indexation of income of lower strata of the population
to inflation, which he even put in the constitution. Unlike Putin, classic neoliberals preach false narrative that "the rising
tide lifts all boats."
All-in-all whenever possible, Putin often behaves more like a New Deal Capitalism adherent, than like a neoliberal. He sincerely
is trying to provide a decent standard of living for lower 80% of the population. He preserves a large share of state capital
in strategically important companies. Some of them are still state-owned (anathema for any neoliberal.)
But he operates in conditions where neoliberalism is the dominant system and when Russia is under constant, unrelenting pressure,
and he needs to play by the rules.
Like any talented politician, he found some issues were he can safely deviate from neoliberal consensus without too hard sanctions.
In other matters, he needs to give up to survive.
"... One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate's origins. ..."
"... But Moscow recognized from the start that Washington was embarked on a fool's errand in Vietnam. There would be no percentage in getting directly involved. And so, the Soviets sat back and watched smugly as the Vietnamese Communists drove U.S. forces out on their "own resources." As was the case with the Viet Cong, the Taliban needs no bounty inducements from abroad. ..."
"... Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is complete, when everything the American public believes is false." ..."
"... If Durham finds it fraudulent (not a difficult task), the heads of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials may roll. That would also mean a still deeper dent in the credibility of Establishment media that are only too eager to drink the Kool Aid and to leave plenty to drink for the rest of us. ..."
"... I am not a regular Maddow-watcher, but to me she seemed unhinged -- actually, well over the top. ..."
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs
as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate's origins.
O n Friday The New York Times featured a report based on anonymous intelligence
officials that the Russians were paying bounties to have U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan with
President Donald Trump refusing to do anything about it. The flurry of Establishment media
reporting that ensued provides further proof, if such were needed, that the erstwhile "paper of
record" has earned a new moniker -- Gray Lady of easy virtue.
Over the weekend, the Times ' dubious allegations grabbed headlines across all media
that are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans -- which seems to have
been the main objective. To keep the pot boiling this morning, The New York Times' David
Leonhardt's daily web piece
, "The Morning" calls prominent attention to a banal
article by a Heather Cox Richardson, described as a historian at Boston College, adding
specific charges to the general indictment of Trump by showing "how the Trump administration
has continued to treat Russia favorably." The following is from Richardson's newsletter on
Friday:
"On April 1 a Russian plane brought ventilators and other medical supplies to the
United States a propaganda coup for Russia;
"On April 25 Trump raised eyebrows by issuing a joint statement with Russian President
Vladimir Putin commemorating the 75th anniversary of the historic meeting between American
and Soviet troops on the bridge of the Elbe River in Germany that signaled the final defeat
of the Nazis;
"On May 3, Trump called Putin and talked for an hour and a half, a discussion Trump
called 'very positive';
"On May 21, the U.S. sent a humanitarian aid package worth $5.6 million to Moscow to
help fight coronavirus there. The shipment included 50 ventilators, with another 150 promised
for the next week;
"On June 15, news broke that Trump has ordered the removal of 9,500 troops from
Germany, where they support NATO against Russian aggression. "
Historian Richardson added:
"All of these friendly overtures to Russia were alarming enough when all we knew was that
Russia attacked the 2016 U.S. election and is doing so again in 2020. But it is far worse
that those overtures took place when the administration knew that Russia had actively
targeted American soldiers. this bad news apparently prompted worried intelligence officials
to give up their hope that the administration would respond to the crisis, and instead to
leak the story to two major newspapers."
Hear the siren? Children, get under your desks!
The Tall Tale About Russia Paying for Dead U.S. Troops
Times print edition readers had to wait until this morning to learn of Trump's
statement last night that he was not briefed on the cockamamie tale about bounties for killing,
since it was, well, cockamamie.
Late last night the president tweeted: "Intel just reported to me that they did not find
this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or the VP. "
For those of us distrustful of the Times -- with good reason -- on such neuralgic
issues, the bounty story had already fallen of its own weight. As Scott Ritter pointed out
yesterday:
"Perhaps the biggest clue concerning the fragility of the New York Times ' report
is contained in the one sentence it provides about sourcing -- "The intelligence
assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan
militants and criminals." That sentence contains almost everything one needs to know
about the intelligence in question, including the fact that the source of the information is
most likely the Afghan government as reported through CIA channels. "
And who can forget how "successful" interrogators can be in getting desired answers.
Russia & Taliban React
The Kremlin called the Times reporting "nonsense an unsophisticated plant," and from
Russia's perspective the allegations make little sense; Moscow will see them for what they are
-- attempts to show that Trump is too "accommodating" to Russia.
A Taliban spokesman called the story "baseless," adding with apparent pride that "we" have
done "target killings" for years "on our own resources."
Russia is no friend of the Taliban. At the same time, it has been clear for several years
that the U.S. would have to pull its troops out of Afghanistan. Think back five decades and
recall how circumspect the Soviets were in Vietnam. Giving rhetorical support to a fraternal
Communist nation was de rigueur and some surface-to-air missiles gave some substance to
that support.
But Moscow recognized from the start that Washington was embarked on a fool's errand in
Vietnam. There would be no percentage in getting directly involved. And so, the Soviets sat
back and watched smugly as the Vietnamese Communists drove U.S. forces out on their "own
resources." As was the case with the Viet Cong, the Taliban needs no bounty inducements from
abroad.
Besides, the Russians knew painfully well -- from their own bitter experience in
Afghanistan, what the outcome of the most recent fool's errand would be for the U.S. What point
would they see in doing what The New York Times and other Establishment media are
breathlessly accusing them of?
CIA Disinformation; Casey at Bat
Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is
complete, when everything the American public believes is false."
Casey made that remark at the first cabinet meeting in the White House under President
Ronald Reagan in early 1981, according to Barbara Honegger, who was assistant to the chief
domestic policy adviser. Honegger was there, took notes, and told then Senior White House
correspondent Sarah McClendon, who in turn made it public.
If Casey's spirit is somehow observing the success of the disinformation program called
Russiagate, one can imagine how proud he must be. But sustained propaganda success can be a
serious challenge. The Russiagate canard has lasted three and a half years. This last gasp
effort, spearheaded by the Times , to breathe more life into it is likely to last little
more than a weekend -- the redoubled efforts of Casey-dictum followers notwithstanding.
Russiagate itself has been unraveling, although one would hardly know it from the
Establishment media. No collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Even the sacrosanct
tenet that the Russians hacked the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks has been disproven
, with the head of the DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike
admitting that there is
no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked -- by Russia or
anyone else .
U.S. Attorney John Durham. (Wikipedia)
How long will it take the Times to catch up with the CrowdStrike story, available
since May 7?
The media is left with one sacred cow: the misnomered "Intelligence Community" Assessment of
Jan. 6, 2017, claiming that President Putin himself ordered the hacking of the DNC. That
"assessment" done by "hand-picked analysts" from only CIA, FBI and NSA (not all 17 intelligence
agencies of the "intelligence community") reportedly is being given close scrutiny by U. S.
Attorney John Durham, appointed by the attorney general to investigate Russiagate's
origins.
If Durham finds it fraudulent (not a difficult task), the heads of senior intelligence and
law enforcement officials may roll. That would also mean a still deeper dent in the credibility
of Establishment media that are only too eager to drink the Kool Aid and to leave plenty to
drink for the rest of us.
Do not expect the media to cease and desist, simply because Trump had a good squelch for
them last night -- namely, the "intelligence" on the "bounties" was not deemed good enough to
present to the president.
(As a preparer and briefer of The President's Daily Brief to Presidents Reagan and HW
Bush, I can attest to the fact that -- based on what has been revealed so far -- the Russian
bounty story falls far short of the PDB threshold.)
Rejecting Intelligence Assessments
Nevertheless, the corporate media is likely to play up the Trump administration's rejection
of what the media is calling the "intelligence assessment" about Russia offering -- as Rachel
Maddow indecorously put it on Friday -- "bounty for the scalps of American soldiers in
Afghanistan."
I am not a regular Maddow-watcher, but to me she seemed
unhinged -- actually, well over the top.
The media asks, "Why does Trump continue to disrespect the assessments of the intelligence
community?" There he goes again -- not believing our "intelligence community; siding, rather,
with Putin."
In other words, we can expect no let up from the media and the national security miscreant
leakers who have served as their life's blood. As for the anchors and pundits, their level of
sophistication was reflected yesterday in the sage surmise of Face the Nation's Chuck Todd, who
Aaron Mate reminds us, is a "grown adult and professional media person." Todd asked guest John
Bolton: "Do you think that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did
help him win the election, and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?"
"This is as bad as it gets," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday, adding the aphorism
she memorized several months ago: "All roads lead to Putin." The unconscionably deceitful
performance of Establishment media is as bad as it gets, though that, of course, was not
what Pelosi meant. She apparently lifted a line right out of the Times about how Trump
is too "accommodating" toward Russia.
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia as a reflection of the need
to pre-empt the findings likely to issue from Durham and Attorney General William Barr in the
coming months -- on the theory that the best defense is a pre-emptive offense. Meanwhile, we
can expect the corporate media to continue to disgrace itself.
Vile
Caitlin Johnstone, typically,
pulls no punches regarding the Russian bounty travesty:
"All parties involved in spreading this malignant psyop are absolutely vile, but a special
disdain should be reserved for the media class who have been entrusted by the public with the
essential task of creating an informed populace and holding power to account. How much of an
unprincipled whore do you have to be to call yourself a journalist and uncritically parrot
the completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while protecting their anonymity? How
much work did these empire fluffers put into killing off every last shred of their dignity?
It boggles the mind.
It really is funny how the most influential news outlets in the Western world will
uncritically parrot whatever they're told to say by the most powerful and depraved
intelligence agencies on the planet, and then turn around and tell you without a hint of
self-awareness that Russia and China are bad because they have state media.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh."
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst he led the Soviet
Foreign Policy Branch and prepared The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon,
Ford, and Reagan. In retirement, he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Aaron , June 30, 2020 at 12:33
If anything, all roads lead to Israel. You have to consider the sources, the writers,
journalists, editors, owners, and rich people from which these stories come. This latest
ridiculous story will certainly help Trump, so the sources of these Russia stories are
actually fans of Trump, they love his tax cuts, he helps their revenue streams, and he's the
greatest friend and Zionist to Israel so far and also Wall Street. I think most Americans can
understand that Putin doesn't possess all of the supernatural all-encompassing powers and
mind-controlling omnipotence that Pelosi and her ilk attribute to him. That's why at his
rallies, when Trump points to where the journalists are and sneers at them calling them
bloodsuckers and parasites and all that, the people love it, because of stuff like this. It's
like saying "look at those assholes, those liberal journalists over at CNN say that you voted
for me because of Vladimir Putin?!" It just pisses off people to keep hearing that mantra
over and over. So it's a gift to Trump, it helps him so much. And seeing that super expensive
helicopter flying around the barren rocky slopes of the middle east, seems like it's out of
some Rambo movie. And like Rambo, the tens of thousands of American servicemen that were
sacrificed over there, and still commit suicides at a horrific rate, have always been treated
by the architects of these wars that only helped the state of Israel, as the expendables.
Whether it's a black life, a soldier fighting in Iraq, a foreclosed on homeowner by Mnuchin's
work, or a brainwashed New York Times subscriber, we don't seem to matter, we seem to feel
the truth that to these people were are indeed expendable. The question to answer I think is,
not who is a Russian asset, but who is an Israeli asset?
Andrew Thomas , June 30, 2020 at 12:04
Great reporting as usual, Ray. But special kudos for the NYT moniker 'Gray lady of easy
virtue.' I almost laughed out loud. A rare occurrence these days.
Michael P Goldenberg , June 30, 2020 at 10:45
Thanks for another cogent assessment of our mainstream media's utter depravity and
reckless irresponsibility. They truly have become nothing more than presstitutes and enemies
of the people.
Bob Van Noy , June 30, 2020 at 10:42
"It's all over but the shouting" goes the idiom and I think that is true of Russiagate,
especially, thank all goodness, here at Robert Parry's Journalistic site!
I have a theory that propaganda has a lifetime but when it reaches a truly absurd level,
it's all over. Clearly, we've reached that level Thanks to all at CN
evelync , June 30, 2020 at 10:33
You call Rachel Madcow "unhinged", Ray ..well, yes, I'm shocked at myself that there was a
time that I tuned in to her show .
Sorry Ms Madcow you've turned yourself into a character from Dr Strangelove
The key threats – climate change, pandemics, nuclear war – and why we continue
to fail to address these real things while filling the airwaves instead with the tiresome
russia,russia,russia mantra – per Accam's razer suggests that it serves very short term
interests of money and power whoever whatever the MICIMATT answers to.
"Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is
complete, when everything the American public believes is false." "
Who exactly was the "we" Casey was answering to each day?
I know it wasn't me or the planet or humanity or anyone I know.
Bill Rice , June 30, 2020 at 10:20
If only articles like this were read by the masses. Maybe people would get a clue. Blind
patriotism is not patriotic at all. Skepticism is healthy.
torture this , June 30, 2020 at 09:54
It's a shame that VIPS reporting is top secret. It's the only information coming from
people familiar with the ins and outs of spy agencies that can be trusted.
GeorgeG , June 30, 2020 at 09:45
Ray,
You missed the juicy stuff. See: tass.com/russia/1172369 Russia Foreign Ministry: NYT article
on Russia in Afghanistan fake from US intelligence. Here is the kicker:
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to US intelligence agencies' involvement in Afghan
drug trafficking.
"Should we speak about facts – moreover, well-known [facts], it has not long been a
secret in Afghanistan that members of the US intelligence community are involved in drug
trafficking, cash payments to militants for letting transport convoys pass through, kickbacks
from contracts implementing various projects paid by American taxpayers. The list of their
actions can be continued if you want," the ministry said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry suggested that those actions might stem from the fact that
the US intelligence agencies "do not like that our and their diplomats have teamed up to
facilitate the start of peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban (outlawed in Russia –
TASS)."
"We can understand their feelings as they do not want to be deprived of the above
mentioned sources of the off-the-books income," the ministry stressed.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:08
Affirmative Ray, two of my old comrades who were SF both did security on CIA drug flights
back in the day, and later on both while under VA care decided to die off God I miss them,
great guys and honest souls.
DH Fabian , June 30, 2020 at 09:41
One point remains a mystery. Why would anyone think that when the US invades a country,
someone would need to pay the people of that country a bounty to fight back?
Mark Clarke , June 30, 2020 at 09:27
If Biden wins the presidency and the Democrats take back the Senate, Russiagate will
strengthen and live on for many years.
Al , June 30, 2020 at 12:11
All to deflect from Clinton's private server while SOS, 30,000 deleted emails, and the
sale of US interests via the Clinton Foundation.
Zedster , June 30, 2020 at 12:56
That, or we learn Chinese.
Skip Scott , June 30, 2020 at 09:08
Another interesting aside is that Tulsi Gabbard's "Stop funding Terrorists" bill went
nowhere in Congress. So it's Ok for us and our Arab allies to fund them, but not the
Russians? Maybe we should go back to calling them the Mujahideen?
Thomas Scherrer , June 30, 2020 at 12:10
Preach, my child.
And aloha to the last decent woman in those halls.
Do you not think that the timing of all this (months after the report was allegedly
presented to Trump) is an attempt to stop Trump from signing an agreement with the Taliban
that will allow him to withdraw American troops from that country?
Skip Scott , June 30, 2020 at 08:58
Great article Ray, but I have to question whether Durham will fulfill his role and get to
the bottom of the origins of RussiaGate. If he actually does name names and prosecute, how
will the MSM cover it? What will Ms. Madcow have to say? Ever since the fizzling failure of
the Epstein investigation, I have had my doubts about Barr and his minion Durham. I hope I'm
wrong. Time will tell.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:24
I think on here I can talk about this issue you brought up Scott, on other places when I
tried to have a rational discussion on the matter, I got shouted down, well they tried
anyway.
I highly suggest to any readers of this here on Consortium to get Gore Vidal's old book,
Imperial America, and also watch his old documentary, THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA.
Here is the point of it,
"Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with
two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every
aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely
uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in
consumerism."
-GORE VIDAL, The United States of Amnesia
Also,
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party and it has two right wings:
Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in
their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more
corrupt -- until recently and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments
when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is
no difference between the two parties."
? Gore Vidal
Others have pointed out the same like this,
"Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and
the ruling party is the business party."
? Noam Chomsky
"In the United States [ ] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the
corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create
new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be
effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the
Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and
free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in
neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of
a genuine democracy."
? Robert W. McChesney, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies is a foolish
idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can
throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in
policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other
party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately
the same basic policies."
? Carroll Quigley [1910 – 1977 was an American historian and theorist of the evolution
of civilizations. He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at Georgetown
University, for his academic publications.]
Teddy Roosevelt, whose statue is under attack in NYC, had this to say,
"The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a
closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This
crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business
privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from
either."
-THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Outlook, July 27, 1912
I suggest also that you look up on line this article, Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: Our Fake
Two-Party System
by Prof. Stephen H. Unger at Columbia, here is his concluding thought,
"The drift toward loss of liberty, unending wars, environmental degradation, growing economic
inequality can't be stopped easily, but it will never be halted as long as we allow corporate
interests to rule our country by means of a pseudo-democracy based on the two-party
swindle."
With this all in mind, and if your my age, you might recall about how over the past more then
50 years, no matter which party gets in power, nothing of any significance changes, the wars
continue, the transfer of wealth to the few, and the erosion of basic civil liberties
continues pretty well unabated.
Trump is surrounded by neo-cons and I expect nothing will happen to change anything. I would
get into how most called liberals are hardly that, but in reality neo-cons, but I've said
enough for now, when you consider the statements I shared, then the Matrix begins to come
unraveled.
Grady , June 30, 2020 at 08:01
Not to mention the potential peace initiative with Afghanistan and Taliban that is
looming. Peace is not profitable, so who has the dual interests in maintaining protracted war
in a strategic location while ensuring the poppy crop stays the most productive in the world?
It seems said poppy production under the pre war Taliban government was minimal as they
eliminated most of it. Attacking the Taliban and thwarting its rule allowed for greater
production, to the extent it is the global leader in helping to fulfill the opiate demand.
Gary Webb established long ago that the intelligence community, specifically the CIA, has
somewhat of a tradition in such covert operations and logic would dictate they're vested
interest lies in maintaining a high yield crop while feeding the profit center that is the
MIC war machine. While certainly a bit digressive, the dots are there to connect.
Paul , June 30, 2020 at 07:54
My friend, I love your columns. Thank you, you have been one of the few sane voices on
Russiagate from the beginning.
Sadly most Americans and most people in the world will not receive these simple truths you
are telling. (not their fault)
We will continue our fight against the system.
Peace, Paul from South Africa
Voice from Europe , June 30, 2020 at 07:38
Don't think this will be the last Russiagate gasp whoever becomes the next president.
The 'liberal democrats' believe their own delusions and as long as they control the MSM, they
won't stop. Lol.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:29
You should read my reply to Scott, most of these Democrats are not liberals, but neo-cons
who just liberal virtue signal while in reality supporting the neo-con agenda. I hate it how
the so called alternative or independent media abuse terms and words, which obscures
realities. Anyway, take a look at my reply and the quotes I shared.
"Definition of liberal, one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox,
traditional, or established forms or ways, progressive, broad-minded, . willing to respect or
accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas, denoting a political
and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free
enterprise."
? Derived from Webster's and the Oxford Dictionaries
"Liberal' comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In
politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see
why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon."
? Gore Vidal, "The Great Unmentionable: Monotheism and its Discontents," The Lowell Lecture,
Harvard University, April 20, 1992.
Once again I would like to compliment Mr McGovern on his magnificently Biblical
appearance. That full set would do credit to any Old Testament prophet.
I see him as the USA's own Jeremiah.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:12
Seeing that picture of Johnson's sad, wicked bloodhound features really, really makes me
wish I had had a chance to be outside his tent pissing in. I'd have been careful to drink as
many gallons of beer as possible beforehand.
Although it would have been better, from a humanitarian pont of view, just to set fire to
the tent.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:10
"Historian Richardson "
Clearly a serious exaggeration.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:09
Ah, the Chinook! The 60-year-old helicopter that epitomises everything Afghan patriots
love about the USA. It's big, fat, slow, clumsy, unmanoeuvrable, and may carry enough US
troops to make shooting it down a damaging political blow against Washington.
Vivek , June 30, 2020 at 05:43
Ray,
What do you make of Barbara Honeggar's second career as a alternative story peddler?
see hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB21BVFOIjw
CNfan , June 30, 2020 at 03:43
A brilliant piece, with a deft touch depicting the timeless human follies running our
foreign policy circus. Real-world experience, perspective, and courage like Ray's were the
dream of the drafters of our 1st Amendment. And ending with Caitlin's hammer was effective.
As to who benefits? I suspect the neocons – our resident war-addicts and Israeli
assets. Paraphrasing Nancy, "All roads lead to Netanyahu."
So,Russia what will do in next Upcoming Years during these covid-19.
Realist , June 30, 2020 at 02:54
Ray, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has embraced these allegations against
Russia as the gospel truth and has threatened to seek revenge against Putin once he occupies
the White House.
He said Americans who serve in the military put their life on the line. "But they should
never, never, never ever face a threat like this with their commander in chief turning a
blind eye to a foreign power putting a bounty on their heads."
"I'm quite frankly outraged by the report," Biden said. He promised that if he is elected,
"Putin will be confronted and we'll impose serious costs on Russia."
This is the kind of warmongering talk that derailed the expected landslide victory for the
Queen of Warmongers in 2016. This time round though, Trump has seemingly already swung and
badly missed three times in his responses to the Covid outbreak, the public antics attributed
to BLM, and the Fed's creation of six trillion dollars in funny money as a gift to the most
privileged tycoons on the planet. In baseball, which will not have a season in spite of the
farcical theatrics between ownership and players, that's called a "whiff" and gets you sent
back to the bench.
According to all the pollsters, Donnie's base of white working class "deplorables" are
already abandoning his campaign–bigly, prompting the none-too-keen Biden to assume that
over-the-top Russia bashing is back in season, especially since trash-talking Nobel Laureate
Obama is now delivering most of the mute sock puppet Biden's lines. It was almost comical to
watch Joe do nothing but grin in the framed picture to the left of his old boss during their
most recent joint interview with the press. This dangerous re-set of the Cold War is NOT what
the people want, nor is it good for them or any living things.
DH Fabian , June 30, 2020 at 10:18
Biden already lost 2020 -- in spite of the widely-disliked Trump. This is why Democrats
began working to breath life back into Russia-gate by late last year, setting the stage to
blame Russia for their 2020 defeat. We spent the past 25 years detailing the demise of the
Democratic Party (replaced by the "New Democrat Party"), and it turned out that the party
loyalists didn't hear a word of it.
John A , June 30, 2020 at 02:15
As a viewer from afar, in Europe, I find it mindboggling how the American public seem to
believe all this nonsense about Russia. Have the people there really been that dumbed down by
chewing gum for the eyes television and disgusting chemical and growth h0rmone laced food?
Sad, sad, sad.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:17
John, I think there is something to what you say about dumbing down. I recall Albert Jay
Nock lamenting, in about 1910, how dreadfully US education had already been dumbed down
– and things have been going steadily downhill ever since.
But I don't think we can quite release the citizenry from responsibility on account of
their ignorance. (Isn't it a legal maxim that ignorance is not an excuse?)
There is surely deep down in most people a sly lust for dominance, a desire to control and
forbid and compel; and also a quiet satisfaction at hearing of inferior foreigners being
harmed or killed by one's own "world class" armed forces.
TS , June 30, 2020 at 11:14
> As a viewer from afar, in Europe, I find it mindboggling how the American public seem
to believe all this nonsense about Russia.
May I remind you that most of the mass media in Europe parrot all this nonsense, and a
large segment of the public swallows it?
Charles Familant , June 30, 2020 at 00:50
Mr. McGovern has not made his case. To his question as to why Taliban militants need any
additional incentive to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, it is not far-fetched to believe
these militants would welcome additional funds to continue their belligerency. Waging war is
not cheap and is especially onerous for relatively small organizations as compared to major
powers. What reason would Putin have to pay such bounty? The increase in U.S. troop
casualties would provide Trump an additional rationale to bring the troops home, as he had
promised during his campaign speeches in 2015 and 2016. This action would be a boon to his
re-election prospects. Putin is well aware that if Biden wins in November, there is little
likelihood of the hostility in Afghanistan or anywhere else being brought to an end. But,
more to the point, the likelihood of U.S. sanctions against Russia being curtailed under a
Biden presidency is remote. To what he deemed rhetorical, Mr. McGovern asks how successful
were U.S. interrogators of such captured Taliban in the past, I remind him that there were
opposing views regarding which techniques were most effective. Might not these interrogators
have, in the present case, employed more effective means? Finally, it should not even be a
question as to why any news agency does not reveal its sources. But in this case, the New
York Times specifically mentions that the National Security Council discussed the
intelligence finding in late March. Further, if it is true that Trump, Pence et al ignored
the said briefs of which the administration was well aware, this should be no surprise to any
of us. Case in point: how long did it take Trump to respond to the present pandemic? One
telling observation: Mr. McGovern says that Heather Cox Richardson is "described as a
historian at Boston College.' She is not just "described as a historian" Mr. McGovern, she IS
a historian at Boston College; in fact, she is a professor at that college and has authored
six scholarly works that have been published as books, the most recent of which in March of
this year by the Oxford University Press. Mr. McGovern states that the points Richardson made
her most most recent newsletter as "banal." I see nothing banal in that newsletter, but
rather a list of relevant factual occurrences. Finally (this time it really is final), Mr.
McGovern employs the use of sarcasm to discount what Richardson and others have contended
regarding this most recent expose. And seems to give more credibility to the comments made by
Trump and his cohorts, as though this administration is remarkable for its integrity.
Sam F , June 30, 2020 at 11:05
Plausible interest does not make unsupported accusations a reality. What bounties did the
US offer?
Have you forgotten that the US set up Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with weapons to attack the USSR
there?
Zhu , June 30, 2020 at 00:34
Come December this year, which losing party will blame which scapegoat? Russia? China? The
Man in the Moon? It must be a hard decision!
Zhu , June 30, 2020 at 00:31
Unfortunately, bad ideas and conspiracy fictions rarely disappear completely. But that
Afghans need to be paid to kill invaders is the dumbest conspiracy fiction yet.
Thomas Fortin , June 29, 2020 at 21:31
Excellent report Ray, as usual.
Interesting note here, I watched The Hill's Rising program, and listened to young
conservative Saagar say, although he does not believe that Russia-gate is credible, he made
the statement that Russia is supplying the Taliban weapons and wants us to get out of
Afghanistan, and that is considered a fact by all journalists!
Saagar is a bit conflicted, he does not, but does believe the gods of intelligence, like so
many did with the Gulf of Tonkin so long ago, I remember that all too well.
As I look out upon the ignorant masses and useful idiots who strain at those Confederate and
other monuments, while continuing to elect the same old people back into office who continue
the status quo, its a bit discouraging. We were told so long ago about our current situation,
that,
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a
populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy
attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments
of their own debasement and ruin." [James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817]
As a historian of some sort and educational film maker, I do my best to educate people,
though its a bit overwhelming at times how ignorant and fascist brain-washed most are.
Monroe, like the other founders knew the secret of maintaining a free and prosperous
republic, from the same piece, "Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to
preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote
intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties."
George Carlin got it right about why education "sucks", it was by design, so our work is cut
out for us.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what
never was and never will be."
~Thomas Jefferson
GMCasey , June 29, 2020 at 21:25
Why would Putin even bother? America and its endless wars is doing itself in. Afghanistan
is said to be," the graveyard of empires." It was for Alexander the Great -- –it was
for Russia and I suppose that it will be for America too -- -
DW Bartoo , June 29, 2020 at 20:50
Ray, I certainly hope that Durham and Barr will not wait too long a time to make public
the truth about Russiagate.
Indeed, certain heads should, figuratively, roll, and as well, the whole story about who
was behind the setting up of Flynn needs to, somehow, make it through the media flack.
Judge Sullivan's antics having been rather thoroughly shot down, though the media is
desperately trying to either spin or ignore the reality that it was not merely Flynn that
Sullivan was hoping to harm, but also the power of the executive branch relative to the
judicial branch.
The role of Obama and of Biden who, apparently, suggested the use of the Logan Act as the
means to go after Flynn, who we now know was intentionally entrapped by the intrepid FBI,
need to be made clear as well.
Just as with the initial claims that torture was the work of "a few bad apples", when
anyone with any insight into such "policy" actions had to have known that it WAS official
policy (crafted by Addington, Bybee, and Yoo, as it turned out, directed to do so by the Bush
White House), so too, must it be realized that it was not some rogue agents and loose
cannons, but actual instructions "from above", explicit or implicit, that "encouraged" the
behavior of those who spoke of "Insurance" policies designed to hamper, hinder, and harm the
incoming administration.
Clearly, I am no fan of Trump, and while I honestly regard the Rule of Law as essentially
a fairytale for the gullible (as the behavior of the "justice" system from the " qualified
immunity" of the police, to the "absolute immunity" of prosecutors, judges, and the political
class must make clear,to even the most giddy of childish believers in U$ purity, innocence,
and exceptionalism, that the "law" serves to protect wealth and power and NOT the public), I
should really like to consider that even in a pretend democracy, some things are simply not
to be tolerated.
Things, like torture, like fully politicized law enforcement or "intelligence" agencies,
like secret court proceedings, where judges may be lied to with total impunity and actual
evidence is not required. As well as things like a media thoroughly willing to requrgitate
blatant propaganda as "fact" (while having, again, no apparent need of genuine evidenc), or
other things like total surveillance, and the destruction of habeas corpus.
One should like to imagine that such things might concern the majority.
Yet, a society that buys into forever wars, lesser-evil voting, and created Hitler like
boogeymen, that countenances being lied into wars and consistently lied to about virtually
everything, is hardly likely to discern the truth of things until the "Dream" collapses into
personal pain, despair, and Depression.
Unless there is an awakening quite beyond that already tearing down statues, but yet still
, apparently, unwilling to grasp the totality of the corruption throughout the entire edifice
of "authority", of the total failure of a system that has no real legitimacy, except that
given it by voters choosing between two sides of the same tyranny, it may be readily
imagined, should Biden be "victorious", that Russiagate, Chinagate, Irangate, Venezuelagate,
and countless other "Gates" will become Official History.
In which case, this is not a last gasp, of Russiagate, but a new and full head of steam
for more of the same.
How easy it has been for the lies to prevail, to become "truth" and to simply disappear
the voices of those who ask for evidence, who dare question, who doubt.
How easy to co-opt and destroy efforts to educate or bring about critically necessary
change.
There are but a few months for real evidence to be revealed.
If Durham and Barr decide not to "criminalize policy differences", as Obama, the
"constitutional scholar", did regarding torture, then what might we imagine will be the
future of those who have an understanding of even those lies long being used, and with recent
additions, for example, to torture Julian Assange?
All of the deceit has common purpose, it is to maintain absolute control.
If Russiagate is not completely exposed, for all that it is and was intended to be, then
quaint little discussions about elite misbehavior will be banished from general awareness,
and those who persist in questioning will be rather severely dealt with.
Antonia , June 30, 2020 at 11:43
ABSOLUTELY. Well said. NOW where to make the changes absolutely necessary?
Zalamander , June 29, 2020 at 18:47
Thanks Ray. There are multiple reasons for the continued existance of Russiagate as the
Democratic party has no real answers for the economic depression affecting millions of
Americans. Neoliberal Joe Biden is also an exceptionally weak presidential candidate, who
does not even support universal healthcare for all Americans like every other advanced
industrialized country has. That said, the Dems are indeed desperate to deflect attention
away from the Durham investigation, as it is bound to expose the total fraud of Crossfire
Hurricane.
Sam F , June 29, 2020 at 18:16
Thanks, Ray, a very good summary, with reminders often needed by many in dealing with
complex issues.
This is an attempt to move Trump in the direction of more harsher politics toward Russia. So not Bolton's but Obama ears are
protruding above this dirty provocation.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action. ..."
"... Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings. But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee. ..."
"... "Who can forget how 'successful' interrogators can be in getting desired answers?" writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false. ..."
"... This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe. ..."
"... The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves. ..."
"... Not only did CIA et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story), but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway). ..."
"... Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan. They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they? ..."
"... Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the geographical position of the country. ..."
"... As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and lied about the fact they were losing the whole time. ..."
"... the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so. ..."
"... Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. ..."
"... And a fourth CIA goal: it undermines Trump's relationship with the military. ..."
"... Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump. ..."
"... The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out, because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox, and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's. ..."
Bombshell report
published by The New York Times Friday alleges that Russia paid dollar bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S
troops. Obscured by an extremely bungled White House press response, there are at least three serious flaws with the reporting.
The article alleges that GRU, a top-secret unit of Russian military intelligence, offered the bounty in payment for every U.S.
soldier killed in Afghanistan, and that at least one member of the U.S. military was alleged to have been killed in exchange for
the bounties. According to the paper, U.S. intelligence concluded months ago that the Russian unit involved in the bounties was also
linked to poisonings, assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe. The Times reports that United States intelligence
officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan came to this conclusion about Russian bounties some time in 2019.
According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed
on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a statement Saturday night that neither Trump nor Vice President Pence
"were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday."
On Sunday night, Trump tweeted that not only was he not told about the alleged intelligence, but that it was not credible."Intel
just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP" Pence, Trump wrote Sunday
night on Twitter.
Ousted National Security Advisor John Bolton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that Trump was probably claiming ignorance
in order to justify his administration's lack of response.
"He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it," said Bolton.
Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that
he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings.
But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee.
The explanations for what exactly happened, and who was briefed, continued to shift Monday.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany followed Trump's blanket denial with a statement that the intelligence concerning
Russian bounty information was "unconfirmed." She didn't say the intelligence wasn't credible, like Trump had said the day before,
only that there was "no consensus" and that the "veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated," which happens
to almost completely match the Sunday night statement from the White House's National Security Council.
Instead of saying that the sources for the Russian bounty story were not credible and the story was false, or likely false, McEnany
then said that Trump had "not been briefed on the matter."
"He was not personally briefed on the matter," she said. "That is all I can share with you today."
It's difficult to see how the White House thought McEnany's statement would help, and a bungled press response like this is communications
malpractice, according to sources who spoke to The American Conservative.
Let's take a deeper dive into some of the problems with the reporting here:
1. Anonymous U.S. and Taliban sources?
The Times article repeatedly cites unnamed "American intelligence officials." The Washington Post and The
Wall Street Journal articles "confirming" the original Times story merely restate the allegations of the anonymous
officials, along with caveats like "if true" or "if confirmed."
Furthermore, the unnamed intelligence sources who spoke with the Times say that their assessment is based "on interrogations
of captured Afghan militants and criminals."
That's a red flag, said John Kiriakou, a former analyst and case officer for the CIA who led the team that captured senior
al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002. "When you capture a prisoner, and you're interrogating him, the prisoner is going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear,"
he said in an interview with The American Conservative . "There's no evidence here, there's no proof."
Kiriakou believes that the sources behind the report hold important clues on how the government viewed its credibility.
"We don't know who the source is for this. We don't know if they've been vetted, polygraphed; were they a walk-in; were they
a captured prisoner?"
If the sources were suspect, as they appear to be here, then Trump would not have been briefed on this at all.
With this story, it's important to start at the "intelligence collection," said Kiriakou. "This information appeared in the
[CIA World Intelligence Review] Wire, which goes to hundreds of people inside the government, mostly at the State Department and
the Pentagon. The most sensitive information isn't put in the Wire; it goes only in the PDB."
"If this was from a single source intelligence, it wouldn't have been briefed to Trump. It's not vetted, and it's not important
enough. If you caught a Russian who said this, for example, that would make it important enough. But some Taliban detainees saying
it to an interrogator, that does not rise to the threshold."
2. What purpose would bounties serve?
Everyone and their mother knows Trump wants to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, said Kiriakou.
"He ran on it and he has said it hundreds of times," he said. "So why would the Russians bother putting a bounty on U.S. troops
if we're about to leave Afghanistan shortly anyway?"
That's leaving aside Russia's own experience with the futility of Afghanistan campaigns, learned during its grueling 9-year
war there in the 1980s.
The Taliban denies it accepted bounties from Russian intelligence.
"These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless -- our target killings and assassinations were ongoing
in years before, and we did it on our own resources," Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, told The New York Times
. "That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don't attack them."
The Russian Embassy in the United States called the reporting
"fake news."
While the Russians are ruthless, "it's hard to fathom what their motivations could be" here, said Paul Pillar, an academic
and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an interview with The American Conservative. "What would they
be retaliating for? Some use of force in Syria recently? I don't know. I can't string together a particular sequence that makes
sense at this time. I'm not saying that to cast doubt on reports the Russians were doing this sort of thing."
3. Why is this story being leaked now?
According to U.S. officials quoted by the AP,
top officials in the White House "were aware of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban
for the deaths of Americans" in early 2019. So why is this story just coming out now?
This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the
President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe.
The NYT story serves to bolster the narrative that Trump sides with Russia, and against our intelligence community estimates and
our own soldiers lives.
The stories "are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans -- which seems to have been the main objective,"
writes McGovern. "There [Trump] goes again -- not believing our 'intelligence community; siding, rather, with Putin.'"
"I don't believe this story and I think it was leaked to embarrass the President," said Kiriakou. "Trump is on the ropes in the
polls; Biden is ahead in all the battleground states."
If these anonymous sources had spoken up during the impeachment hearings, their statements could have changed history.
But the timing here, "kicking a man when he is down, is extremely like the Washington establishment. A leaked story like this
now, embarrasses and weakens Trump," he said. "It was obvious that Trump would blow the media response, which he did."
The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia
in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of
the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves.
Barbara Boland is TAC's foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington
Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered , a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work
has appeared on Fox News, The Hill , UK Spectator , and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania.
Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC .
Caitlin Johnstone was the first journalist to question this NYT expose' several days ago in her blog. After looking into
it, I had to agree with her that the story was junk reporting by a news source eager to stick it to Trump for his daily insults.
NYT must love the irony of a "fake news" story catching fire and burning Trump politically. After all, paying people to kill
their own enemies? That is a "tip," not a bounty. It is more of an intel footnote than the game-changer in international relations
as asserted by Speaker Pelosi on TV as she grabbed her pearls beneath her stylish COVID mask.
I was surprised that Ms. Boland could not think of any motivation for leaking the story right now given recent grousing
on the Hill about Trump's inviting Putin to G7 over the objections of Merkel and several other NATO heads of state. I even
posted a congratulatory message in Defense One yesterday to the US Intel community for mission accomplished.
Not only did CIA
et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story),
but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw
from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway).
That "bounty" story never passed the smell test, even to my admittedly untrained nose. My real problem is that it's a story
in the first place, given that Trump campaigned on a platform that included bringing the boys home from sand hills like Afghanistan;
yet here we are, four years later, and we're still there.
Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan.
They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they?
Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so
why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the
geographical position of the country.
This whole story is completely ridiculous. Totally bogus.
As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If
Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and
lied about the fact they were losing the whole time.
Of course people are trying to kill US military in Afghanistan. If I lived in Afghanistan, I'd probably hate them too. And
let's not forget that just a few weeks ago the 82nd airborne was ready to kill American civilians in DC. The military is our
enemy too!
Moreover, the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of
their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so.
The purported bounty program doesn't help Russia, but the anonymous narrative does conveniently serve several CIA purposes:
1. It makes it harder to leave Afghanistan.
2. It keeps the cold war with Russia going along.
3. It damages Trump (whose relationship with the CIA is testy at best).
Then there's the question of how this supposed intelligence was gathered. The CIA tortures people, and there's no reason
to believe that this was any different.
1. Russia wants a stable Afghanistan. Not a base for jihadis.
2. The idea that Russia has to encourage Afghans to kill Invaders is a hoot. They don't ever do that on their own.
3. Not only do Afghans traditionally need no motivation to kill infidel foreign Invaders, but Russia would have to be incredibly
stupid to bring more American enmity on itself.
Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies
had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
Either that, or you're just cynical. You'll espouse anything, however absurd and full of lies, as long as it damages Trump.
I don't have a clue if this bounty story is correct, but I can imagine plenty of reasons why the Russians would do it. It's
easy enough to believe it or believe it was cooked up by CIA as you suggest.
There will be one of these BS blockbusters every few weeks until the election. There are legions of buried-in democrat political
appointees that will continue to feed the DNC press. It will be non-stop. The DNC press is shredding the 1st amendment.
Not shredding the First Amendment, just shining light on the pitfalls of a right to freedom of speech. There are others
ramifications to free speech we consider social goods.
These aren't buried-in democrats. These people could care less which political party the President is a member of. They
only care that the President does what they say. Political parties are just to bamboozle the rubes. They are the real power.
The best defence that the WSJ and Fox News could muster was that the story wasn't confirmed as the NSA didn't have the same
confidence in the assessment as the CIA. "Is there anything else to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious
incident of the denial from the White House", "There was no denial from the White House". "That was the curious incident".
I note that Fox News had buried the story "below the scroll" on their home page - if they had though the story was fake,
the headlines would be screaming at MSM.
Pravda was a far more honest and objective news source than The New York Times is. I say that as someone who
read both for long periods of time. The Times is on par with the National Enquirer for credibility, with the
latter at least being less propagandistic and agenda-driven.
Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest
effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump.
The extent to which the contemporary Left is driven by a level of Russophobia unseen even by the most stalwart anti-Communists
on the Right during the Cold War is truly something to behold. I think at bottom it comes down to not liking Putin or Russia
because they refuse to get on board with the Left's social agenda.
The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out,
because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox,
and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return
property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it
western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's.
The Contempary left wants Russia to be Woke, Broke, Godless, and Gay.
The democrats are now the cheerleaders of the warfare -welfare state,, the marriage between the neolibs-neocons under the
Democrat party to ensure that President Trump is defeated by the invade the world, invite the world crowd.
"The Trumpies are right in that this was obviously a leak by the intel community designed to hurt Trump. But what do you
expect...he has spent 4 years insulting and belittling them. They are going to get their pound of flesh."
Intel community was behind an attempted coup of Trump. He has good reason not to trust them and insulting is only natural.
Hopefully John Durham will indict several of them
Interesting take. I certainly take anything anyone publishes based on anonymous sources with a big grain of salt,
especially when it comes from the NYT...
Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!
...They suffer from god-complexes, since they do not believe in God, they feel an obligation to act as God, and decide the fates
of over 7 billion people, who would obviously be better off if the PICs were sent to the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants!
Deaths from just *Pneumonia* from Feb1st to June20/20 =*119,174* Deaths from just Covid by
its self for same time period = 109,188 And for this time period 1,232,269 Deaths from all
causes. The numbers Fear game,obviously is being played up large by the DemoTards and we know
why! Funny how the Fake News,never speaks of this.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113051/number-reported-deaths-from-covid-pneumonia-and-flu-us/
Arch_Stanton , 47 minutes ago
Fauci should have had his microphone taken away months ago. A testament to the power of
big pharma.
razorthin , 59 minutes ago
Little Fascist Koxucker.
"Please understand the people who have built this international order reject natural law,
so they do not like sovereign citizens. They do not believe people have inherent rights or
sacred liberties. Most frankly find God anathema and believe in no higher authority than
themselves and the heartless arithmetic they serve. So, while they have happily plundered
America of blood and treasure which we were foolish enough to provide in copious quantities,
they have no love or need of our nation or antiquated concepts such as those enshrined in the
Constitution and Bill of Rights. In their calculation, America needed to be taken down in
order to realize the global project, and as you see the first glimmers of a national effort
in opposition to that, a positive limited effort struggling to overcome the bureaucrats who
betray us all at every opportunity, it becomes clear the Left would rather collapse America
than see us oppose the new world without borders where everyone intermingles under a
controlling network of agencies. No guns, no resistance, no free speech, and no problems is
what they want. Only we stand in the way of the fulfillment of this Orwellian vision, and as
each day's hysteria on the news reveals, the powers that be are working overtime to push the
Left into revolt to topple America into a conflict that will remove us from prominence on the
world scene. Should they win, our rights are gone. Should they fail, the rest of the world
will have consolidated against us, save those few brave nations trying to fight themselves
free of the same entanglements that brought us low. This is where we are today, and it is one
hell of a dilemma for a person who cares about this country and our historic values. No
matter what we choose, any path but submission and surrender only leads to greater conflict,
so this makes us consider the first important question: What are we willing to fight to
preserve? Individuals and families will have to answer this question in the coming months and
years in a much more meaningful way than has been required in generations. The easy days are
coming to an end, and while the economy is booming and we're enjoying an Indian Summer for
our embattled nation, these questions will only become more pressing in the days ahead."
-- The Coming Civil War by Tom Kawczynski
nsurf9 , 1 hour ago
The nasolacrimal duct (also called the tear duct) carries tears from the lacrimal sac of
the eye into the nasal cavity. This virus seems to be able aerosol its particles more readily
than other viruses so as to spread its RNA/DNA in the air - as well as being normally
contracted through fluid droplets.
The eyes are large wet areas, perfect for collecting dust and viruses. If you're a part of
an at-risk demographic or just worried, make sure you cover you eyes. And, upon returning
home, I rinse the eyes out with water along with washing my hands.
Right now, I'm using some tight-fitting fishing glasses with my n99 mask, when I go into
stores or hi-density areas - but, looking for something better.
IvannaHumpalot , 1 hour ago
Rinsing your eyes wont help
yes you can get it through your eyes but that is very difficult via aerosol and
unlikely
far more likely is you touch a contaminated surface after some dirty person without a
facemask has been talking and breathing out their infected droplets earlier
those droplets fall to the surface and you touch it then touch your eyes, nose or
mouth
or you breathe in an infective dose by not wearing a mask to reduce viral load
exposure
or you walk it home on your shoes
IvannaHumpalot , 1 hour ago
Herd immunity at 80%
america has 328 million
That means 262 million must get infected for fantasy herd immunity
US infected is now at 2.7 million infected
let us be generous and say 10x havent been diagnosed but have it
so the US is at 27 million infected
27 out of 262 million
there goes the stupid herd immunity sham
Wear a facemask, avoid catching or spreading it
tranium , 1 hour ago
Dr. HOAX is spreading plandemic.
ZKnight , 1 hour ago
Does anyone even believe this sleazy little man who's corona predictions were 20x off?
He single handedly destroyed the economy and people's jobs over a false alarm all to try
and get his vaccine's in.
WhiteHose , 1 hour ago
Hes been wrong on everything since Jan!
hugin-o-munin , 1 hour ago
We applaud the approval of chemical sweeteners, fluoride, GMOs, antibiotic saturated meat
products and poultry, not to mention the continued use of Glyphosate on just about all food
products. Eat and drink your industrial sugar and chemicals. Now we need a global vaccine
schedule and license linked to passports to make sure everyone on the planet is inoculated
all the time before we can allow them to buy and sell. This is all done out of pure love and
care for all people.
/s
JamcaicanMeAfraid , 1 hour ago
Fauci's ego may start to encroach on the king of all egos, Barry Soreto
Peak Finance , 1 hour ago
This:
"tremendous burden" that the US health care system might face this fall if COVID-19 and
the flu are circulating at the same time.
This man is truly a fool and should be arrested.
Death rates and statistics do not work that way
This coming flu season is going to be the MILDEST EVER because of Covid, as, the people
that WOULD HAVE DIED this season have ALREADY PASSED
Similar to the "Demand-pull" concept in economics
Random ZH posters smarter than people in the upper reaches of government
Fauci and Redfield are complete pieces of s h i t. So much misdirection and lies.
RTP , 2 hours ago
Gallo + Fauci = AIDS swindle
Fauci + Gates = COVID-19 swindle
How much longer will this poisonous dwarf ruin the future of mankind?
k3g , 2 hours ago
Question in March: Doc, you've been a Director at NIH infectious disease unit for 36
years. You're our top virologist. You're in the spotlight, your moment to shine, to show why
we've paid your salary and bene's all these years, we're counting on you. First question:
should we wear masks, would that help?
A: Dunno. Have to study it.
Q: Well, if we want to wear masks, how to we get them? When will the gubmint release masks
from the billions it has in storage?
A: Dunno. Not sure if we have any masks. Have you tried Home Depot?
The government and the FED dumping TRILLIONS of dollars to all these corporations,
meanwhile they can't even provide FREE MASKS for everyone. If they really wanted to help,
they could have given everyone masks. That's how you could have helped prevent it. And MASKS
are expensive why not subsidized it, and maybe we would have this in control and are
re-opening sooner.
There is no reason for US elite act as is being suggested, because the cake they get the
lion's share of is growing and so even though inequality is growing, the economy is too and
the common people are getting slightly better off.
If a country were in the hands of a tiny minority and they were to act in such a way and
try steal all the wealth for themselves, then they would be overthrown by domestic enemies
like Somoza was.
Chagnon theorized that war, far from being the product of capitalist exploitation and
colonization was in fact the true "state of nature." He concluded that 1) "maximizing
political and personal security was the overwhelming driving force in human social and
cultural evolution," and 2) "warfare has been the most important single force shaping the
evolution of political society in our species."
Everything in the last five years is a symptom of the US reacting to being bested by
China.
I happen to think states that are even slightly nation-states have emergent qualities,
like a nest of social insects that react as though there is central direction though none
exists, and no state is closer to being alive than a democracy.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
program to arm and finance the mujahideen (jihadists) in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior
to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of its client, the Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted
separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups
that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than
other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the
Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet
intervention.[1]
Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever
undertaken.[2] Funding officially began with $695,000 in 1979,[3][4] was increased dramatically
to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987,[1][5][6]
described as the "biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency."[7] Funding continued (albeit
reduced) after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal as the mujahideen continued to battle the forces of
President Mohammad Najibullah's army during the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992).[8]
"... Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo where a statue of him was erected in the capital, Pristina. The Guardian newspaper noted that the statue showed Clinton "with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999." It would have been a more accurate representation to depict Clinton standing on a pile of corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign. ..."
"... Bill Clinton's 1999 bombing of Serbia was as big a fraud as George W. Bush's conning this nation into attacking Iraq. The fact that Clinton and other top U.S. government officials continued to glorify Hashim Thaci despite accusations of mass murder, torture, and body trafficking is another reminder of the venality of much of America's political elite. Will Americans again be gullible the next time that Washington policymakers and their media allies concoct bullshit pretexts to blow the hell out of some hapless foreign land? ..."
President Bill Clinton's favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against
humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to 1500 civilians in Serbia and Kosovo
in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of U.S. foreign
policy, was always a sham.
Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was charged with ten counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by an international tribunal
in The Hague in the Netherlands. It charged Thaci and nine other men with "war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of
persons, persecution, and torture." Thaci and the other charged suspects were accused of being "criminally responsible for nearly
100 murders" and the indictment involved "hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include
political opponents."
Hashim Thaci's tawdry career illustrates how anti-terrorism is a flag of convenience for Washington policymakers. Prior to becoming
Kosovo's president, Thaci was the head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting to force Serbs out of Kosovo. In 1999, the Clinton
administration designated the KLA as "freedom fighters" despite their horrific past and gave them massive aid. The previous year,
the State Department condemned "terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army." The KLA was heavily involved in drug trafficking
and had close to ties to Osama bin Laden.
But arming the KLA and bombing Serbia helped Clinton portray himself as a crusader against injustice and shift public attention
after his impeachment trial. Clinton was aided by many shameless members of Congress anxious to sanctify U.S. killing. Sen. Joe Lieberman
(D-CN) whooped that the United States and the KLA "stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for
human rights and American values." And since Clinton administration officials publicly compared Serb leader Slobodan Milošević to
Hitler, every decent person was obliged to applaud the bombing campaign.
Both the Serbs and ethnic Albanians committed atrocities in the bitter strife in Kosovo. But to sanctify its bombing campaign,
the Clinton administration waved a magic wand and made the KLA's atrocities disappear. British professor Philip Hammond noted that
the 78-day bombing campaign "was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called 'dual-use' targets, such as
factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in downtown Belgrade, in an attempt to terrorize the country into
surrender."
NATO repeatedly dropped cluster bombs into marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Cluster bombs are anti-personnel
devices designed to be scattered across enemy troop formations. NATO dropped more than 1,300 cluster bombs on Serbia and Kosovo and
each bomb contained 208 separate bomblets that floated to earth by parachute. Bomb experts estimated that more than 10,000 unexploded
bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended and maimed children long after the ceasefire.
In the final days of the bombing campaign, the Washington Post reported that "some presidential aides and friends are describing
Kosovo in Churchillian tones, as Clinton's 'finest hour.'" The Post also reported that according to one Clinton friend "what Clinton
believes were the unambiguously moral motives for NATO's intervention represented a chance to soothe regrets harbored in Clinton's
own conscience The friend said Clinton has at times lamented that the generation before him was able to serve in a war with a plainly
noble purpose, and he feels 'almost cheated' that 'when it was his turn he didn't have the chance to be part of a moral cause.'"
By Clinton's standard, slaughtering Serbs was "close enough for government work" to a "moral cause."
Shortly after the end of the 1999 bombing campaign, Clinton enunciated what his aides labeled the Clinton doctrine: "Whether within
or beyond the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing."
In reality, the Clinton doctrine was that presidents are entitled to commence bombing foreign lands based on any brazen lie that
the American media will regurgitate. In reality, the lesson from bombing Serbia is that American politicians merely need to publicly
recite the word "genocide" to get a license to kill.
After the bombing ended, Clinton assured the Serbian people that the United States and NATO agreed to be peacekeepers only "with
the understanding that they would protect Serbs as well as ethnic Albanians and that they would leave when peace took hold." In the
subsequent months and years, American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Serb civilians,
bombing Serbian churches and oppressing any non-Muslims. Almost a quarter-million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and other minorities fled
Kosovo after Mr. Clinton promised to protect them. By 2003, almost 70 percent of the Serbs living in Kosovo in 1999 had fled, and
Kosovo was 95 percent ethnic Albanian.
But Thaci remained useful for U.S. policymakers. Even though he was widely condemned for oppression and corruption after taking
power in Kosovo, Vice President Joe Biden hailed Thaci in 2010 as the "George Washington of Kosovo." A few months later, a Council
of Europe report accused Thaci and KLA operatives of human organ trafficking. The Guardian noted that the report alleged
that Thaci's inner circle "took captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been
murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market." The report stated that when "transplant surgeons" were "ready to
operate, the [Serbian] captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their
corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic."
Despite the body trafficking charge, Thaci was a star attendee at the annual Global Initiative conference by the Clinton Foundation
in 2011, 2012, and 2013, where he posed for photos with Bill Clinton. Maybe that was a perk from the $50,000 a month lobbying contract
that Thaci's regime signed with The Podesta Group, co-managed by future Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, as the
Daily Caller reported.
Clinton remains a hero in Kosovo where a statue of him was erected in the capital, Pristina. The Guardian newspaper noted that
the statue showed Clinton "with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding
documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999." It would have been a more accurate
representation to depict Clinton standing on a pile of corpses of the women, children, and others killed in the U.S. bombing campaign.
In 2019, Bill Clinton and his fanatically pro-bombing former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, visited Pristina, where they
were "treated like rock stars" as they posed for photos with Thaci. Clinton declared, "I love this country and it will always be
one of the greatest honors of my life to have stood with you against ethnic cleansing (by Serbian forces) and for freedom." Thaci
awarded Clinton and Albright medals of freedom "for the liberty he brought to us and the peace to entire region." Albright has reinvented
herself as a visionary warning against fascism in the Trump era. Actually, the only honorific that Albright deserves is "Butcher
of Belgrade."
Clinton's war on Serbia was a Pandora's box from which the world still suffers. Because politicians and most of the media portrayed
the war against Serbia as a moral triumph, it was easier for the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq, for the Obama administration
to bomb Libya, and for the Trump administration to repeatedly bomb Syria. All of those interventions sowed chaos that continues cursing
the purported beneficiaries.
Bill Clinton's 1999 bombing of Serbia was as big a fraud as George W. Bush's conning this nation into attacking Iraq. The
fact that Clinton and other top U.S. government officials continued to glorify Hashim Thaci despite accusations of mass murder, torture,
and body trafficking is another reminder of the venality of much of America's political elite. Will Americans again be gullible the
next time that Washington policymakers and their media allies concoct bullshit pretexts to blow the hell out of some hapless foreign
land?
Thomas Ambrosio, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Dakota State University;Yossi Shain, Professor
of Comparative Government and Diaspora Politics, Georgetown University
DATE & TIME
Jun. 23, 2003
3:00pm 4:00pm
EVENT SPONSORS
AFRICA PROGRAM
ASIA PROGRAM
MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM
DIASPORA COMMUNITIES: INFLUENCING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Thomas Ambrosio, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Dakota State University and Yossi Shain,
Professor of Comparative Government and Diaspora Politics, Georgetown University
In an age marked by the greater ease of communication and travel, recent research on ethnic groups and
conflict has begun to examine the influence of diaspora groups. Of particular interest are their efforts
to affect political environments in their "home" and host countries through their remittance of funds,
lobbying and the dissemination of information. Dr. Thomas Ambrosio, Assistant Professor at North Dakota
University presented material from his recent edited volume Ethnic Identity Groups and U.S. Foreign
Policy. Commentary was provided by Yossi Shain, Professor at Georgetown and Tel Aviv Universities, author
of "Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the U.S. and their Homelands" and a contributor to
Ambrosio's book. The meeting marked what moderator Carla Koppell, Interim Director of the Wilson Center's
Conflict Prevention Project called, "a relatively new area of analysis and dialogue for the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars."
Ambrosio, stated that as we seek to understand diaspora groups and their influence on U.S. foreign
policy, the question is not should ethnic groups influence foreign policy but how they effect foreign
policy, what are their goals and why do they mobilize. He began his presentation by defining ethnic
identity groups as "politically relevant social divisions based on a shared sense of cultural
distinctiveness." This would include racial, religious, national and ethnic identities. Ethnic identity
groups often form institutions that effect U.S. foreign policy or ethnic communities abroad, most
commonly in the form of ethnic lobbies.
These ethnic lobbies seek to influence U.S. policy in three ways. First, by framing the issues "they help
set the terms of debate" or "put items on the country's agenda." Second, they are a source of information
and analysis that provide a great deal of information to members of Congress and serve as a resource for
other branches of government and non-governmental organizations, and shaping general perspectives.
Finally, ethnic group lobbies provide policy oversight. "They examine the policies of the U.S.
government, propose policies, write letters and [are] involved in electioneering activities."
Ambrosio cautioned, that we must not believe that the effort by "ethnic groups to influence U.S. foreign
policy is new." It has a long history but "has become increasingly active in recent years." To
illustrate, he presented five periods of ethnic lobbying in the United States--Pre-WWI, WWI, Cold War,
post-Cold war, and post-September 11.
Since before WWI, there has been a "steady rise in the number of ethnic groups in the U.S. mobilizing to
influence the foreign policy process." Both the WWI and Cold War periods saw an explosion in the number
of interest groups affecting domestic and foreign policy. According to Ambrosio, however, it was the
post-Cold War period that gave way to a real increase in American multiculturalism. U.S. interests during
this period were not clearly defined, and the Congress had more influence than the Executive Branch over
policy-making. That balance of power according to Ambrosio allowed ethnic lobbying groups greater access
to policy-makers and potential influence in policy formation. Since September 11 quite the opposite is
true; there is a re-centralization of foreign policy in the White House. That re-centralization is
restricting influence over policy.
Ambrosio concluded by suggesting several areas for future research. First, the question of the legitimacy
of ethnic group influence on foreign policy deserves some attention. Second, more case study analysis is
need. In Ambrosio's view, we need to look at specific groups, and why or how they influence policy. In
particular, greater attention should be paid to the case of Muslim Americans. Third, is the need to
examine the relationship between ethnic and non-ethnic interest groups. For instance, Ambrosio suggested
that a comparison of the influence of "the Oil lobby versus the Armenian lobbies over the issue of
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan" could provide some interesting insights. Fourth, the reliance on natives
for intelligence information should be examined more closely. In the case of Iraq, there is the question
of "how Iraq exiles influence U.S. foreign policy." Finally, the export of American values must be better
understood. Further research could help the U.S. government mobilize diaspora groups in the United States
to deal with growing anti-Americanism throughout the world.
Shain, began by commenting that while the topic of diaspora group influence on U.S. foreign policy is
important, "it is perhaps an overblown topic." He agreed with Ambrosio that the idea of transnational
influence on U.S. foreign policy is not new. However, Shain contends that people have always been wary of
such influences. The topic, according to Shain, became more salient in the 1990's with the end of the
Cold War when the "us versus them posture was no longer in existence." It was also a time when more
people began "shuttling back and forth," retaining greater ties to their home country. According to
Professor Shain, the question is "who really speaks [in U.S. foreign policy]?" This was the period of
increasing American multiculturalism; the identity of the U.S. itself was changing. As a result,
attention to issues reflected the makeup of the U.S. For instance, before September 11, relations between
the United States and Mexico in the age of NAFTA, had center stage.
Shain suggested that while ethnic Americans mobilize to influence U.S. foreign policy, their ability to
do so is quite limited. Ethnic lobbies have more often been used to market American ideals in their home
countries or to "democratize their countries of origin." When they do have influence, it has generally
been at the electoral level in connection with a domestic issue, or when an issue is of little importance
to the administration. Professor Shain continued contending that the influence of ethnic lobbies relies
on their ability to advance a message that resonates with the American values and ideals. This is one
reason he believes Arab-Americans have had difficulty influencing U.S. foreign policy; there is a
perception that they are attempting to influence policy in ways that would be contrary to American
values. When issues promoted by an ethnic lobby are priorities, and are in line with the administration,
ethnic lobbies have the greatest influence in policy oversight.
According to Shain there are several issues that warrant future research and understanding. The first is
to understand the explosion of Islam in the United States; rather than lobbying for national country
interests, there is greater mobilization around religious beliefs. According to Shain, this has little to
do with ethnic lobbies; rather it is a question of who is mobilizing communities. This is a difficult
question to examine because, depending on the time period, different people will speak for a community.
Another issue for further study involves tracking and better understanding economic influence. For
example, donations for Israel at the same time support local organizations and Jewish-American issues;
financial support drives diaspora politics. At the same time, many country economies depend on money sent
from abroad; this gives diasporas a greater say in their "home" countries. "When you do any politics in
Haiti, there is the 10th department... the 10th department is here. This is the community that can
mobilize and has money."
The final issue for further study according to Shain is the concept of identity in America. While there
is identity as an American, many still "retain some affinity and memories" of their home country. This is
particularly galvanizing where there is still instability in the country of origin. Shain concluded that
the subject of the influence of diaspora communities in the U.S. was most important in regard to identity
in America. "Identity is critical for America because the American makeup has always been changing." "The
market, democracy and human rights are much more on the minds of ethnic groups as they relate to their
country of origin,"concluded Shain.
Carla Koppell, Conflict Prevention Project, Interim Director, 202-691-4083
Drafted by Channa Threat
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States. The Program achieves its mission through in-depth research and analyses, including our blog Africa Up
Close, public discussion, working groups, and briefings that bring together policymakers, practitioners, and
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EVENT FEEDBACK
And what is your evidence for claiming that the EU and USA want to break up Russia into
'smaller statelets'? That smells a bit fishy. It would make the world a more dangerous
place.
One of distinctive features, the hallmark of neocons who dominate the USA
foreign policy establishment is rabid, often paranoid Russophobia which includes active,
unapologetic support of separatist movements within Russia.
I think the evidence of the USA and EU (especially GB, but also Poland, Sweden, and
Germany) multi-level (PR, MSM, financial, diplomatic and sometimes military) support of
Islamic separatists in Russia is well known: support of separatist movements in Russia is
just a continuation of the support of separatist movement within the USSR, which actually
helped to blow up the USSR from within (along the key role of KGB changing sides along with a
part of Politburo who deciding to privatize Russia's economy)
Here is old but still relevant list of "who is who" in the USA foreign policy
establishment in promoting separatism in Russia. You will see many prominent neocons in the
list.
The foreign policy of the USA toward Russia to a considerable extent is driven by emigres
from Eastern Europe and people who were accepted to the USA before and, especially, after
WWII from filtration camps. This "diaspora lobby" includes older generation of emigrants such
as late Brzezinski, Madeline Allbright, as well as more recent such as Farkas, Chalupa,
Appelebaum, etc. The same is true for Canada (Freeland). All of them are rabid, sometimes
paranoid (Brzezinski) Russophobs. They consistently use the USA as a leverage to settle the
"ancient hatred".
Petty scoundrels from NYT are not that inventive. They just want to whitewash Russiagate fiasco. This whole "story" stinks to high heaven. Judy Miller redux
- regime-change info ops, coordinated across multiple media organizations.
Notable quotes:
"... After Iraq WMD and Russia Collusion, we should ask for real evidence instead of the "top intelligence sources". And we should not buy we can't provide any evidence because of sources & methods. ..."
"... On a practical note, how was a Taliban soldier militant meant to verify his claim to a bounty? I assume that scalping was not a feasible option, but if you are going to offer a bounty then you are going to want proof that the person claiming that bounty did, indeed, do the job. ..."
After Iraq WMD and Russia Collusion, we should ask for real evidence instead of the "top
intelligence sources". And we should not buy we can't provide any evidence because of
sources & methods.
Be skeptical of anything published by Pravda on the Hudson and Pravda on the Potomac
when it comes to intelligence matters. Especially months before a general election.
On to Moscow! Where's Bomb'n Bolton when we need him?
"a European intelligence official told CNN."..... "The official did not specify as to the
date of the casualties, their number or nationality, or whether these were fatalities or
injuries."
So, unknown official, unknown date, unknown if there were any actual casualties.
"The US concluded that the GRU was behind the interference in the 2016 US election and
cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials."
Quick, someone tell the House Impeachment Inquiry Committee! Oh, wait, that was Ukraine.
What did Mueller collude, I mean conclude, about that Russian interference?
Let me quote the former acting DNI:
"You clearly don't understand how raw intel gets verified. Leaks of partial information to
reporters from anonymous sources is dangerous because people like you manipulate it for
political gain."
I believe he was tweeting that to the press, but then they are doing this for political
reasons. Lockdowns and socialist revolutionary riots must not be working in the left's
favor. I wonder why?
On a practical note, how was a Taliban soldier militant meant to verify his claim to a
bounty? I assume that scalping was not a feasible option, but if you are going to offer a bounty
then you are going to want proof that the person claiming that bounty did, indeed, do the
job.
So if a coalition soldier died on *this* day how was a Talibani supposed to confirm to
the GRU that "Yep, I did that. Where's my money?"
TTG, I think you are being led away from the truth by your significant bias against Russia.
Those with a blinkered vision see only what they want to see. No mystery there.
Now you want to portray NYT as the paragon of truth telling!! Haven't we seen enough
examples of the lying by Jewish owned neocon media, especially the Times? Now that the
Russia-gate fire is nearly put out, these guys are pumping this story. You really need to understand the depth of hatred the Jews have for Russia and Russians
that makes them like this. That's the only country /civilisation that got away from their
grasp just when they thought have got it. Not once, but twice in the last century.
But then isn't your ancestry from Lithuania. Your hatred is strong. I get that - I see
that all time with people from the ex-Soviet republics formerly ruled by Russia. Hope
others see that too.
Regardless of its veracity, this story will definitely hit Trump where it hurts -
chapeau to the individual(s) who conceived this work of fiction, if indeed it is so.
Again, whether or not performance bonuses* were actually offered by the GRU, has anyone
considered that this may still be a Russian Intelligence op?
Perhaps we should first ask whether the Kremlin wants to deal with a US under
another 4 years of Trump. From their FP POV, the huge uncertainty and instability they see
in the US now will surely be ramped up to a whole new level, in the event that he is
re-elected. And of course all hope that Trump may be able to improve the relationship with
Russia was dashed long ago, by Russiagate and the ongoing Russophobia among the Borg.
Jeffrey's mission in Syria is a case in point. At least the US Deep State is the devil they
know.
If the answer to the above question is "no" it must surely be a trivial matter for the
GRU to feed such a damaging story to Trump's enemies in the USIC.
* "bounties" is an emotive word, useful to Trump's enemies, evoking individual pay for an
individual death - real personal stuff. As others have pointed out the practicality of such
a scheme seems improbable. Surely it is more likely that any such incentive pay would be
for the group, upon coalition casualties confirmed in the aftermath of an attack. The
distinction may not seem important, but the Resistance media can be relied upon to use
language designed to inflict the most harm.
'Intel' without evidence is "bunk". Have we learned nothing from Chrissy Steele and the
Russiagate fiasco - I know a guy who knows a guy who said... the Russians are bad and
Donald Trump is an a......e. Bob Mueller and 18 pissed off democrats have concluded that
the Russians are systemically bad and Donald Trump is an a......e. 4 months before a
Presidential election intel sources have revealed to the NYT that the Russians are very
very bad and Donald Trump is an a......e. Ah yes, the New York Ridiculously Self Degraded
Times has broken another important story. I wonder why? Enough already...and yes, we have
made a systemic laughing stock of ourselves.
Oh, and remind me again of why we've been staying around Kabul - something about improving
the lot of women, or gays, or someone?
I'm personally not ready to "duck and cover" after reading this.
I have accepted the fact that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. I am watching
television news at night but no longer see the clock ticking as I turn it off and go to
sleep. So far, no one I know has taken to building a fallout shelter in his back yard.
I want an answer to this question: Whatever happened to the pillow and blanket I had to
bring to school and store in the school's basement in case we all had to retreat there and
be locked down in it during the bombing? Who do I go to to get reparations for the cost of
those items? (I was never given the opportunity to retrieve them when I graduated.) Did
Khrushchev have to take his shoe to a cobbler after using it to pound on the table while
threatening to bury us?
There's a rich history of stories about USI involvement in the drug trade. CIA was
involved in the heroin trade during the Viet Nam War. The Iran-Contra mess involved selling
Columbian cocaine to help finance Nicaraguan anti-Communist rebels. US involvement in the
Afghanistan drug trade has been talked about for years. As I said, there are no glitter
fartin' unicorns here.
The Iranian statistics do not lie. Transhipment of drugs across Iran from Afghanistan
has been increasing since the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
The US Office of Foreign Asset Control, the US DIA, the CIA etc. are powerless to do
anything about that but are, evidently, all powerfull against USD transactions of the
Iranian government.
"... Trump's problems among college-educated whites have drawn much attention during his presidency. What's new is declining support among non-college educated whites, where he holds only a 19-point lead. He won that demographic by 37 points in 2016. And his declining support among this key constituency is pronounced in six battleground states, with only 16 percent of non-college educated whites backing him. In October, his lead among them was 24 points. In 2016, Trump won these battleground voters by 26 points. ..."
White voters are turning away from President Trump. That assessment includes his invaluable
working-class white base
. But Trump has only himself and his campaign to blame for the bad news contained in the latest polls. While America burns, his
campaign's only plan seems to be wooing black voters by tweeting that
Joe Biden
is the "real" racist. Trump seems unable to do anything about the riots or the
devastation
wrought by
coronavirus . The latest poll numbers should knock some sense into the president. He seems to be responding a little lately,
but he's going to lose the election if he sticks to
Jared Kushner 's agenda and
doesn't fight like the candidate
we
elected in 2016.
The latest polls from The New York Times poll lay bare the ugly truth.
Trump's problems among
college-educated
whites have drawn much attention during his presidency. What's new is declining support among non-college educated whites,
where he holds only a 19-point lead. He won that demographic
by 37 points in 2016. And his declining support among this
key constituency is pronounced
in six battleground states, with only 16 percent of non-college educated whites backing him. In October, his lead among them was
24 points. In 2016, Trump won these battleground voters by 26 points.
Funny thing is, those voters aren't defecting to Biden's camp, either; their support for him has increased by just 1 since October.
The Times describes them as "
white voters with more
conservative attitudes on racial issues," which likely means they think Trump has not delivered the promised nationalist agenda.
One voter told the Times's Cohn he's disappointed with
Trump
's not cracking down
on the rioters and shutting down the economy because of the
Chinese
Virus pandemic. He'll still vote for Trump, but without much enthusiasm.
Older whites are also jumping ship. In six battleground states, Trump and Biden are about even among whites 65 or older. Trump
won them by nearly 20 points in 2016. The Times
attributes that decline to the president's coronavirus response and his "tone" [
Trump Faces
Mounting Defections From a Once-Loyal Group: Older White Voters , by Alexander Burns and Katie Glueck, June 28, 2020].
That picture of Trump's America hardly inspires confidence.
The only positive for Trump is that Biden has roughly the same non-white support that
Hillary Clinton had in 2016
. But that's not exactly great news, either, given the campaign's focus on painting Biden as the "real" racist. The message is
having zero effect on non-whites. The Times : Biden leads by 74 points among blacks and by 39 points among Hispanics [
Biden
Takes Dominant Lead as Voters Reject Trump on Virus and Race , by Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Matt Stevens, June
24, 2020].
A tweet from Trump campaign manager
Brad
Parscale last week illustrates the idiocy. Parscale attacked Biden for working with
Strom Thurmond to impose harsh sentences
on crack dealers. He claimed this legislation targeted blacks and Trump is fixing the "problem"
Unhappily, Parscale is not alone. Official Republican and Trump campaign accounts regularly tweet cringeworthy statements about
Confederate monuments and criminal justice reform.
Democrats seem to have forgotten that Pres. Trump has led the way on innovative criminal justice reform.
He signed the FIRST STEP Act & established the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement & the Admin. of Justice -- which
aims to improve relations between the public & police.
Who, exactly, are these messages for? If they're intended to win the black vote, they're failing. If they're meant to soothe white
suburbanite concerns about Trump's alleged "racism," they're failing. If they're meant to excite Trump's working class white base,
again, they're failing.
Parscale
set
out the agenda for the Trump campaign in a January interview with Lou Dobbs: the economy and healthcare. When Dobbs asked about
immigration, the campaign manager replied that they didn't need to worry about it because "we already have [immigration patriots
as] voters." Other issues, he claimed, will bring in new voters.
The Son-in-Law
in Chief might wish to consult the polling data to verify that claim.
Parscale is taking a lot of heat lately for the poor messaging and the
Tulsa rally's underwhelming attendance . Reports suggest Parscale is on his way out as part of a major campaign shake-up. Maybe,
but he's not the ultimate problem.
Jared Kushner and the Republican establishment are setting Trump's agenda and message, Parscale merely carries it out. And frighteningly,
as Politico reported, Kushner "who effectively oversees the campaign from the White House, is expected to play an even more
active role" [ Trump admits
it: He's losing , by Alex Isenstadt, June 27, 2020].
Trump recently tweeted an ad that suggests he might ditch the awful messaging. It pins the current chaos on Democrats and the
Left and states they want to burn America to the ground.
It's a powerful, take-no-prisoners video with the same message that helped Trump win in 2016 and might just re-energize his base
in time for Election Day.
Yet tough talk alone won't win back Trump's base. He must act . Signs are improving there, too..
Over the weekend, he tweeted several wanted
pictures of statue vandals. Four leftists were hit with federal charges for attacking the Andrew Jackson statue in DC [
Justice Department Charges 4 Over Attempt to Topple Andrew Jackson Statue In D.C. , by Jason Slotkin, NPR , June
28, 2020]. Putting left-wing criminals behind bars sends the right message and might stifle the unrest. And again, he's helping unemployed
Americans with
the immigration ban for the rest of the year. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support it, according to the latest polling.
Trump must show Americans that the Chinese Virus threat is decreasing, the economy is recovering, and law and order is being restored.
Tweets about money for black colleges, Biden's tough-on-crime bills, and or his long-ago cooperation with "segregationists" won't
do.
Trump must make this election about order versus chaos and put Democrats on the side of the rioters and the radicals in Antifa
and Black Lives Matter.
You guys at VDare are always very hopeful, and I like that. I've read of some of the moves that the President has made, such
as the ones you state here (on immigration and some justice for Cult-Revolutionalists). However, these things never seem to be
part of any coherent, consistent strategy of any sort.
Perhaps President Trump is not a strategist and can't think in that manner. He definitely has no specific principles or moral
compass, or any kind of damn compass. This is why he listens to his son-in-law Kushner, who is out to destroy the country like
the rest of them.
I agree with the one guy you mentioned (who replied to Mr. Cohn). There's no choice on who to vote for anyway, not matter how
much Trump screws up. But then, all this happening is not going to be settled at the voting booth anyway
Yeah, Trump comes off like a used car salesman with high pressure tactics. But who can vote for dugout Joe who hides in his
basement avoiding complex questions? Apples Oranges ?
Trump is done. Kushner is nothing more than an Israeli plant. They know that Biden is just like Pelosi and she and Joe would
kill every white person in America if Israel wanted. The entire Congress is owned by Israel. Trump is done. Obama's "Third Term"
more accurately described as Coup d'etat setup with the Deep State and Obama's Jewish friends left from his administration destroyed
Trump on the first day of his tenure.
Trump can't stop putting his foot in his mouth. He abandoned White America and no matter what he did for the Blacks including
money for their universities made no difference. No matter how many jobs he created it didn't count because these mongrels don't
want jobs they want free stuff. Obama did nothing for blacks except destroying many middle class blacks but it doesn't matter.
Blacks are tribalistic gang bangers and as Obama their Lord taught them only see color.
Trump is done and so is America. The Jews always win no matter who is president. You better start arming yourself because you
are not going to believe what is going to happen when Biden wins. In Washington D.C. today Blacks were rioting against Target
because they call the police when blacks steal stuff. You can't make this up and the Jewish controlled media just laughs at us.
Ok, but what if Trump were to say Dems are the real racists ? Wouldn't that win the Black vote? Forgive me, gallows
humor.
It's truly pathetic the people Trump surrounds himself with. His instincts always seemed good, but apparently he can't implement
a damn thing. At least all this is showing conservatives how rotten the leadership of all their hallowed institutions are (FBI,
military, police, etc).
A person that believe is Russiagate is iether an idiot or a shill
Notable quotes:
"... The bipartisan elite will allow the destruction of the statues as an attempt to ameliorate the frustration of the protestors by giving them a target for their anger. The elite understand while the statues are the release of frustration and the target of the anger, they remain safe. But what happens next week when all the symbols of empire have been eradicated? ..."
Should've included the fact that Tucker himself said that the Republican party won't save us cause they're busy sucking up to
corporate interests instead of stealing it.
The bipartisan elite will allow the destruction of the statues as an attempt to ameliorate the frustration of the
protestors by giving them a target for their anger. The elite understand while the statues are the release of frustration and
the target of the anger, they remain safe. But what happens next week when all the symbols of empire have been eradicated?
This whole "story" stinks to high heaven. Judy Miller redux - regime-change info ops, coordinated across multiple media
organizations.
Notable quotes:
"... To be clear, this is journalistic malpractice. Mainstream media outlets which publish anonymous intelligence claims with no proof are just publishing CIA press releases disguised as news. They're just telling you to believe what sociopathic intelligence agencies want you to believe under the false guise of impartial and responsible reporting. This practice has become ubiquitous throughout mainstream news publications, but that doesn't make it any less immoral. ..."
"... "Same old story: alleged intelligence ops IMPOSSIBLE to verify, leaked to the press which reports them quoting ANONYMOUS officials," tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi. ..."
"... "So we are to simply believe the same intelligence orgs that paid bounties to bring innocent prisoners to Guantanamo, lied about torture in Afghanistan, and lied about premises for war from WMD in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin 'attack'? All this and no proof?" ..."
"... "It's totally outrageous for Russia to support the Taliban against Americans in Afghanistan. Of course, it's totally fine for the US to support jihadi rebels against Russians in Syria, jihadi rebels who openly said the Taliban is their hero," ..."
"... On the flip side, all the McResistance pundits have been speaking of this baseless allegation as a horrific event that is known to have happened, with Rachel Maddow going so far as to describe it as Putin offering bounties for the "scalps" of American soldiers in Afghanistan. This is an interesting choice of words, considering that offering bounties for scalps is, in fact, one of the many horrific things the US government did in furthering its colonialist ambitions , which, unlike the New York Times allegation, is known to have actually happened. ..."
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based
in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on
Twitter @caitoz
Whenever one sees a news headline ending in
"US Intelligence Says", one should always mentally replace everything that comes before it with "Blah blah blah we're probably lying."
"Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill Troops, US Intelligence Says", blares the
latest viral headline from the New York Times . NYT's unnamed sources
allege that the GRU "secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan -- including
targeting American troops", and that the Trump administration has known this for months.
To be clear, this is journalistic malpractice. Mainstream media outlets which publish anonymous intelligence claims with no proof
are just publishing CIA press releases disguised as news. They're just telling you to believe what sociopathic intelligence agencies
want you to believe under the false guise of impartial and responsible reporting. This practice has become ubiquitous throughout
mainstream news publications, but that doesn't make it any less immoral.
In a post-Iraq-invasion world, the only correct response to unproven anonymous claims about a rival government by intelligence
agencies from the US or its allies is to assume that they are lying until you are provided with a mountain of independently verifiable
evidence to the contrary. The US has far too extensive a record of lying
about these things for any other response to ever be justified as rational, and its intelligence agencies consistently play a foundational
role in those lies.
Voices outside the mainstream-narrative control matrix have been calling these accusations what they are: baseless, lacking in
credibility, and not reflective of anything other than fair play, even if true.
"Same old story: alleged intelligence ops IMPOSSIBLE to verify, leaked to the press which reports them quoting ANONYMOUS officials,"
tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi.
"So we are to simply believe the same intelligence orgs that paid bounties to bring innocent prisoners to Guantanamo, lied
about torture in Afghanistan, and lied about premises for war from WMD in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin 'attack'? All this and no proof?"
tweeted author and analyst Jeffrey Kaye.
"It's totally outrageous for Russia to support the Taliban against Americans in Afghanistan. Of course, it's totally fine
for the US to support jihadi rebels against Russians in Syria, jihadi rebels who openly said the Taliban is their hero," tweeted author and analyst Max Abrams.
On the flip side, all the McResistance pundits have been
speaking of this baseless allegation as a horrific event that is known to have happened, with Rachel Maddow
going so far as to describe it as Putin offering
bounties for the "scalps" of American soldiers in Afghanistan. This is an interesting choice of words, considering that
offering bounties for scalps is, in fact, one of the many horrific things
the US government did in furthering its colonialist ambitions , which, unlike the New York Times allegation, is known to have
actually happened.
It is true, as many have been pointing out, that it would be fair play for Russia to fund violent opposition the the US in Afghanistan,
seeing as that's exactly what the US and its allies have been doing to Russia and its allies in Syria, and did to the Soviets in
Afghanistan via Operation Cyclone . It is also true
that the US military has no business in Afghanistan anyway, and any violence inflicted on US troops abroad is the fault of the military
expansionists who put them there. The US military has no place outside its own easily defended borders, and the assumption that it
is normal for a government to circle the planet with military bases is a faulty premise.
But before even getting into such arguments, the other side of the debate must meet its burden of proof that this has even happened.
That burden is far from met. It is literally the US intelligence community's job to lie to you. The New York Times has an extensive
history of pushing for new wars at every opportunity,
including the unforgivable
Iraq invasion , which killed a million people, based on lies. A mountain of proof is required before such claims should be seriously
considered, and we are very, very far from that.
I will repeat myself: it is the US intelligence community's job to lie to you. I will repeat myself again: it is the US intelligence
community's job to lie to you. Don't treat these CIA press releases with anything but contempt.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
I always learn some thing here. For example imagine my surprise to learn the EU had a
reputation worth protecting. All you need to know about the EU is bitches will do what
bitches are told. This is just one more step on the road to war with China, is that really
what the citizens of the EU want? Are the people of the EU ready to die for the Trump and the
Republican party?
Don't like the cartoon, too apt to read as antisemitic in my opinion. The corrupt siren/whore
image better fits Saudi I think. And, the Oppositional Defiant Disorder kid madly brandishing
the scimitar is closer to Israel. The other kid would be better if somehow marked as salafi
(wahhabi) if not takfiri. The EU as family-friendly mutts is off-brand too: Pit bulls,
straining at the leash, slavering.
Think tanks, think tanks, think tanks. In 2009, the Brookings Institute's paper Which Path to
Persia, proposed offering Iran a very good deal and then sabotaging it. Good cop, Obama, bad
cop, Trump. Mission accomplished.
Only a matter of when and how.The warmongers have Trumps balls in a vice, he can't even
resign without making it worse by letting Pence take over.The art of the squeal,very high
pitched is whats happening in DC.
1st of all The UK was always going to side with DC over Iran. 2ndly for France and Germany
they probably aren't ready to put themselves plus their EU partners in the US doghouse for
Iran. When they break it will be a time of their own choosing.
Thanks b, for this detailed coverage of the 3 wimps' efforts to kill JCPOA. You did not
disappoint. Love the image showing mother residing in "occupied Palestine" .. (term coined by
MoA barfly)
I commented in the previous post, Russia warned of unintended consequences
LINK
Moscow is calling on the European parties to the Iran nuclear deal not to escalate tensions
and to abandon their decision to trigger the treaty's Dispute Resolution Mechanism, the
Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. "We strongly urge the Eurotroika [of parties to the JCPOA] not to inflame tensions and
to abandon any steps which call the prospects of the nuclear deal's future into question.
Despite all the challenges it has faced, the JCPOA has not lost its relevance," the
ministry said in a statement.
Ex-US vice-president, Joseph Biden is also suspected of corruption, according to a
member of the Ukrainian parliament
KIEV, January 14. /TASS/. Ukraine's Supreme Anti-Corruption Court has obliged the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) to launch a probe into seizure of government power
and corruption suspicions. The cases mention the names of the United States' 44th
president, Barack Obama, former Ukrainian president, Pyotr Poroshenko and ex-US
vice-president, Joseph Biden, a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the Opposition
Platform - For Life party, Renat Kuzmin, said[.]
"investigate the suspicions over the seizure of government power in Ukraine and of the
embezzlement of state budget money and international financial assistance by members of the
Obama administration"
If it ever was possible to sign a treaty with the US and expect them to abide by it, it
hasn't been possible for a long time. Here as everywhere else, Trump merely openly proclaims
the systemic lawlessness he shares with the rest of the US political class. (His contemptuous
withdrawal from the JCPOA never has been one of the things the establishment and media
criticize him for.)
For as long as US imperial power lasts, anyone who doesn't want to be a poodle (or to get
regime-changed because they foolishly attempt to sit the fence) has to accept that there can
be no legitimate agreements with the US or its poodles. If you sign a treaty with them, you
have to view it exactly the same way you know they do, as nothing but propaganda, otherwise
not worth the paper it's written on. No doubt North Korea, if they were in any doubt before,
registered how Trump and the US media immediately proceeded to systematically lie about the
agreement they'd supposedly just concluded, before the ink was even dry.
Here's hoping that if Iran was in any doubt before, they too are getting the message: As
far as the US and Europe are concerned, the only purpose of the JCPOA is to serve as a weapon
against them.
Face it B, there will be blood. It's a matter of time. It's unavoidable. The empire will
force its own destruction - and perhaps the rest of humanity's. The demons of nihilism will
prevail.
(Sounds like I have been hearing death metal. I swear I did not. And I not under the
influence either.)
The Oct 2020 deadline is important for more than one reason- Irans application to the SCO is
being held up because of it. The SCO membership would obligate support from countries like
India in response to politically motivated sanctions.
Surprised at Germany since Merkel just met with Putin. When I read of this earlier this
morning, that it's based on lies was 100% clear, that the trio are feckless and deserve all
the social instability that will soon come their way. Why did I mention social instability:
"The Fed is considering a plan to allow them to lend cash DIRECTLY TO HEDGE FUNDS in order
to ease the REPO Crisis. [Emphasis original]
"Where is 'bailing out private investment funds' in their alleged 'dual mandate'?"
Which gets us back to the reason Iran's targeted: Because it lies outside the dollar
economy, refuses to engage in petrodollar recycling, and has a quasi-socialist economy with
no private banking. Plus, we now see that Iraq will pursue evicting NATO and Outlaw US Empire
forces and likely join the Arc of Resistance's/Iran's policies which are what the Outlaw US
Empire went to war over to begin with.
Obviously, Merkel doesn't have the political strength to nix Nordstream 2. Until she's
replaced by someone with greater vision, EU and German policy won't change toward Iran. IMO,
the trio don't amount to the level of poodles as they're known to have courage. The Trio
proudly display the fact that they're 100% Cowards.
@ realist 6. basically it boils down to giving Barry a foreign policy award like getting the
Nobel gong.
div> The EU is a hopeless craven vassal of the US. The US dropping out of
the JCPOA was the acid test which the EU has spectacularly failed. We are in a historical pivot
with the rise of the coalescing multifarious East which is forcing the EU to make a decision:
stay under the US wing, go it alone, or ally with the East. The EU seems to know it at least
should get more distance between itself and the US but every time there is a major geopolitical
event it starts to talk like it is going independent but then always drops back into the US
hand. How many times does this have to happen for us to admit what the EU is about?
The EU cannot lead in anything - it is a completely owned and operated US tool. It is a big
zero in providing humanity any help with the big problem of our time: the 'indispensable and
exceptional' supremacist US.
Posted by: AriusArmenian , Jan 14 2020 19:58 utc |
15
The EU is a hopeless craven vassal of the US. The US dropping out of the JCPOA was the acid
test which the EU has spectacularly failed. We are in a historical pivot with the rise of the
coalescing multifarious East which is forcing the EU to make a decision: stay under the US
wing, go it alone, or ally with the East. The EU seems to know it at least should get more
distance between itself and the US but every time there is a major geopolitical event it
starts to talk like it is going independent but then always drops back into the US hand. How
many times does this have to happen for us to admit what the EU is about?
The EU cannot lead in anything - it is a completely owned and operated US tool. It is a big
zero in providing humanity any help with the big problem of our time: the 'indispensable and
exceptional' supremacist US.
Posted by: AriusArmenian | Jan 14 2020 19:58 utc |
15
If we accept that EU nations lack sovereignty and go further to suggest that such nations are
more simulations than real, what would an analysis of such events as the fallout from the
demise of the JCPOA look like? How should one talk about international events when corporate
sovereignty and oligarchical decision making are the real? How would we describe this exact
context based not on the simulation but on the real workings of power?
Yes indeed! At least blighty knows the score! The leash is no place for the British bulldog.
When brexit is complete they will be free to crawl straight up muricas bum! Lol!
Haha, great drawing. This pile on the left is incomparable. But the picture is incomplete -
there is not enough proudly walking in front of the masters of a small Polish poodle with a
bone in his teeth.
Agree with Nemo, #1. This is a matter of sovereignty. At the moment, European countries
are not sovereign, and, btw, this is a kind of double non-sovereignty: the submission of a
separate European country to the Americans, plus the submission of the same country to a
Brussels bureaucracy called the EU leadership. What independent, bold decisions can we talk
about? None.
Today, in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich considers the all-American version of "extreme
materialism" that Martin Luther King called out more than half a century ago. And when it
comes to the overwhelming urge to get one's hands on the goods, among the looters of this
moment two groups are almost never mentioned: the Pentagon and the police.
Yet, in 1997, the Department of Defense set up the 1033 program as part of the National
Defense Authorization Act to provide thousands of domestic police forces with "surplus"
equipment of almost every imaginable militarized kind. Since then, thanks to your tax
dollars, it has given away $7.4
billion of such equipment, some of it directly off the battlefields of this country's
forlorn "forever wars."
For items like grenade launchers, mine-resistant armored vehicles, military rifles,
bayonets, body armor, night-vision goggles, and helicopters
, all that police departments have to fork over is the price of delivery. The Pentagon has,
in fact, been so eager to become the Macy's of
militarized hardware that, in 2017, it was even willing to "give $1.2 million worth of
rifles, pipe bombs, and night vision goggles to a fake police department," no questions
asked. That "department" proved to be part of a sting
operation run by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). "It was like getting stuff
off of eBay," a GAO official would
say . Only, of course, for free.
The militarization (or, thought of another way, the commercialization) of the police has
been remarkably on pace these last 23 years, while the Pentagon's
ever-soaring budgets for its ever-sinking wars could be thought of as the great American
commercial success story of this century. With more and more taxpayer dollars in its
wallet, it's been on a remarkable looting spree. Ask yourself: has there been a weapons
system it couldn't have, a military base it couldn't establish, a war expense Congress
wouldn't fund even while cutting back on crucial aspects of the domestic budget like
infrastructure
programs or
disease-prevention spending ? No wonder the Pentagon could supply all those police
departments with a cornucopia of goods with which to turn themselves into over-armed
occupying forces in this country.
It's never thought of that way, but the Pentagon and the police have essentially been
looting the coffers of the American taxpayer for a long time now and, in the Trump era, the
process has only intensified .
Nonetheless, as Bacevich points out, even with protests over racism filling the streets of
America, protests over defunding the Pentagon have yet to surface in any significant way.
Perhaps it's finally time. ~ Tom
Martin Luther King's Giant Triplets
By Andrew Bacevich
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans are finally – or is it
once again? – confronting the racism that afflicts this country and extends into just
about every corner of our national life. Something fundamental just might be happening.
Yet to state the obvious, we've been
here before. Mass protests in response to racial inequality and discrimination, including
police brutality, have been anything but unknown in the United States. Much the same can be
said of riots targeting black Americans, fomented and exploited by white racists, often
actively or passively abetted by local law enforcement officials. If Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin,
formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was correct in calling violence "as American as
cherry pie," then race-related urban unrest is the apple-filled equivalent.
The optimists among us believe
that "this time is different." I hope events will prove them right. Yet recalling
expectations that Barack Obama's election in 2008 signaled the dawn of a " post-racial America
," I see no reason to expect it to be so. A yawning gap, I fear, separates hope from
reality.
Let me suggest, however, that the nation's current preoccupation with race, as honorable
and necessary as it may be, falls well short of adequately responding to the situation
confronting Americans as they enter the third decade of the twenty-first century. Racism is a
massive problem, but hardly our only one. Indeed, as Martin Luther King sought to remind us
many years ago, there are at least two others of comparable magnitude.
MLK Defines the Problem
In April 1967, at New York City's Riverside Church, Dr. King delivered a sermon that
offered a profound diagnosis of the illnesses afflicting the nation. His analysis remains as
timely today as it was then, perhaps more so.
Americans remember King primarily as a great civil rights leader and indeed he was that.
In his Riverside Church address, however, he turned to matters that went far beyond race. In
an immediate sense, his focus was the ongoing Vietnam War, which he denounced as "madness"
that "must cease." Yet King also used the occasion to summon the nation to "undergo a radical
revolution of values" that would transform the United States "from a thing-oriented society
to a person-oriented society." Only through such a revolution, he declared, would we be able
to overcome "the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism."
The challenge confronting Americans was to dismantle what King referred to as the
"edifice" that produced and sustained each of those giant triplets. Today's protesters,
crusading journalists, and engaged intellectuals make no bones about their determination to
eliminate the first of those giant triplets. Yet they generally treat the other two as, at
best, mere afterthoughts, while the edifice itself, resting on a perverse understanding of
freedom, goes almost entirely ignored.
I'm not suggesting that members of the grand coalition of Americans today fervently
campaigning against racism favor extreme materialism. Many of them merely accept its reality
and move on. Nor am I suggesting that they consciously endorse militarism, although in
confusing "support" for the troops with genuine patriotism some of them do so implicitly.
What I am suggesting is that those calling for fundamental change will go badly astray if
they ignore Dr. King's insistence that each of the giant triplets is intimately tied to the
other two.
Defund the Pentagon?
The protests triggered by the recent murders of George Floyd and other black Americans
have produced widespread demands to "defund the police." Those demands don't come out of
nowhere. While "reform" programs undertaken in innumerable American cities over the course of
many years have demonstrably
enhanced police firepower , they have done little, if anything, to repair relations
between police departments and communities of color.
As an aging middle-class white male, I don't fear cops. I respect the fact that theirs is
a tough job, which I would not want. Yet I realize that my attitude is one more expression of
white privilege, which black men, regardless of their age and economic status, can ill afford
to indulge. So I fully accept the need for radical changes in policing – that's what
"defund" appears to imply – if American cities are ever to have law enforcement
agencies that are effective, humane, and themselves law-abiding.
What I can't fathom is why a similar logic doesn't apply to the armed forces that we
employ to police huge chunks of the world beyond our borders. If Americans have reason to
question the nation's increasingly
militarized approach to law enforcement, then shouldn't they have equal reason to
question this country's thoroughly militarized approach to statecraft?
Consider this: on an annual basis, police officers in the United States kill approximately
1,000 Americans , with blacks
two-and-a-half times more likely than whites to be victimized. Those are appalling
figures, indicative of basic policy gone fundamentally awry. So the outpouring of protest
over the police and demands for change are understandable and justified.
Still, the question must be asked: Why have the nation's post-9/11 wars not prompted
similar expressions of outrage? The unjustified killing of black Americans rightly finds
thousands upon thousands of protesters flooding the streets of major cities. Yet the
loss of thousands of
American soldiers and the physical and psychological wounds sustained by tens of thousands
more in foolhardy wars elicits, at best, shrugs. Throw in the hundreds of
thousands of non-American lives taken in those military campaigns and the
trillions of taxpayer dollars they have consumed and you have a catastrophe that easily
exceeds in scale the myriad race-related protests and riots that have roiled American cities
in the recent past.
With their eyes fixed on elections that are now just months away, politicians of all
stripes spare no effort to show that they "get it" on the issue of race and policing. Race
may well play a large role in determining who wins the White House this November and which
party controls Congress. It should. Yet while the election's final outcome may be uncertain,
this much is not: neither the American
propensity for war, nor the
bloated size of the Pentagon budget, nor the dubious habit of maintaining a sprawling
network of military bases across much of the planet will receive serious scrutiny during
the political season now underway. Militarism will escape unscathed.
At Riverside Church, King described the U.S. government as "the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today." So it unquestionably remains, perpetrating immeasurably more
violence than any other great power and with remarkably little to show in return. Why, then,
except on the easily ignored fringes of American politics, are there no demands to "defund"
the Pentagon?
King considered the Vietnam War an abomination. At that time, more than a few Americans
agreed with him and vigorously demonstrated against the conflict's continuation. That today's
demonstrators have seemingly chosen to file away our post-9/11 military misadventures under
the heading of regrettable but forgettable is itself an abomination. While their sensitivity
to racism is admirable, their indifference to war is nothing short of disheartening.
In 1967, Dr. King warned that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." During
the intervening decades, his charge has lost none of its sting or aptness.
America's National Signature
Given their size and duration, the protests occurring in the wake of the murder of George
Floyd have been remarkably peaceful. That said, some of them did, early on, include rioters
who resorted to looting. Smashing windows and ransacking stores, they walked off not with
milk and bread for the hungry, but with shopping bags filled with
high-end swag – designer shoes and sneakers, purses, clothing, and jewelry lifted
from
stores like Prada and Alexander McQueen. Also stolen were smart phones,
handguns , even automobiles . In-store
surveillance systems recorded
scenes reminiscent of Black Friday doorbuster sales, though without anyone bothering to
pass through a checkout counter. Some looters quickly attempted to monetize their hauls by
offering to sell purloined items online.
Certain right-wing commentators wasted no time in using the looting to tar the protest
movement as little more than an expression of nihilism. Tucker Carlson of Fox News was
particularly
emphatic on this point. Americans taking to the streets in response to George Floyd's
murder, he said, "reject society itself."
"Reason and process and precedent mean nothing to them. They use violence to get what they
want immediately. People like this don't bother to work. They don't volunteer or pay taxes to
help other people. They live for themselves. They do exactly what they feel like doing On
television, hour by hour, we watch these people – criminal mobs – destroy what
the rest of us have built "
To explain such selfish and destructive misconduct, Carlson had an answer readily at
hand:
"The ideologues will tell you that the problem is race relations, or capitalism, or police
brutality, or global warming. But only on the surface. The real cause is deeper than that and
it's far darker. What you're watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in
society, and would like to preserve it, and those who don't, and seek to destroy it.
This is vile, hateful stuff, and entirely wrong – except perhaps on one point. In
attributing the looting to a deeper cause, Carlson was onto something, even if his effort to
pinpoint that cause was wildly off the mark.
I won't try to unravel the specific motives of those who saw an opportunity in the
protests against racism to help themselves to goods that were not theirs. How much was
righteous anger turned to rage and how much cynical opportunism is beyond my ability to
know.
This much, however, can be said for certain: the grab-all-you-can-get impulse so vividly
on display was as all-American as fireworks on the Fourth of July. Those looters, after all,
merely wanted more stuff. What could be more American than that? In this country, after all,
stuff carries with it the possibility of personal fulfillment, of achieving some version of
happiness or status.
The looters that Tucker Carlson targeted with his ire were doing anything but "rejecting
society itself." They were merely helping themselves to what this society today has on offer
for those with sufficient cash and credit cards in their wallets. In a sense, they were
treating themselves to a tiny sip of what passes these days for the American Dream.
With the exception of cloistered nuns, hippies, and other vanishing breeds, virtually all
Americans have been conditioned to buy into the proposition that stuff correlates with the
good life. Unconvinced? Check out the videos from last year's Black Friday and then consider
the intense, if unsurprising, interest of economists and journalists in tracking the
latest
consumer spending trends . At least until Covid-19 came along, consumer spending served
as the authoritative measure of the nation's overall health.
The primary civic obligation of US citizens today is not to vote or pay taxes. And it's
certainly not to defend the country, a task offloaded onto those who can be enticed to enlist
(with minorities vastly
overrepresented ) in the so-called All-Volunteer Military. No, the primary obligation of
citizenship is to spend.
Ours is not a nation of mystics, philosophers, poets, artisans, or Thomas Jefferson's
yeomen farmers. We are now a nation of citizen-consumers, held in thrall to the extreme
materialism that Dr. King decried. This, not a commitment to liberty or democracy, has become
our true national signature and our chief contribution to late modernity.
Tearing Down the Edifice
At Riverside Church, King reminded his listeners that the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, which he had helped to found a decade earlier, had chosen this as its motto: "To
save the soul of America." The soul of a nation corrupted by racism, militarism, and extreme
materialism represented King's ultimate concern. Vietnam, he said, was "but a symptom of a
far deeper malady within the American spirit."
In a tone-deaf
editorial criticizing his Riverside Church sermon, the New York Times chastised
King for "fusing two public problems" – racism and the Vietnam War – "that are
distinct and separate." Yet part of King's genius lay in his ability to recognize the
interconnectedness of matters that Times editors, as oblivious to deeper maladies then
as they are today, wish to keep separate. King sought to tear down the edifice that sustained
all three of those giant triplets. Indeed, it is all but certain that, were he alive now, he
would call similar attention to a fourth related factor: climate change denial. The refusal
to treat seriously the threat posed by climate change underwrites the persistence of racism,
militarism, and extreme materialism.
During the course of his sermon, King quoted this sentence from the statement of a group
that called itself the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam: "A time comes when silence
is betrayal." Regarding race, it appears that the
great majority of Americans have now rejected such silence. This is good. It remains an
open question, however, when their silent acceptance of militarism, materialism, and the
abuse of Planet Earth will end.
"... You can fool someone for a long time, you can fool a lot of people for a short time - but you can't fool a lot of people for a long time. That is, unless those people are willing to live the lie. ..."
"... I think the reason the MSM's propaganda is so effective nowadays (and I'm thinking specifically about the world since the Iraq invasion in 2003) is that, deep down, maybe in the collective inconsciousness level, the working classes from the First World countries know their superior living standards depend on imperial brutality over the rest of the world. ..."
"... The current increased smear campaigns against the so called Russian Bots, Assad Apologists etc., is surely just the first part of of a an attempt to implement very serious censorship and control over the internet to attempt to completely block out any alternative voices. ..."
"... Obivously western intelligence servies, NATO leak stuff to western msm to intimidate and censor political oppostion in every western country. ..."
"... Orwell's great fear was totalitarianism. Either from the left or the right. What we have now is much more subtle. The MSM retains the illusion of freedom and most people go along with it. We may even realize we are being manipulated but the only alternative is posting on sites like MOA. ..."
"... The Skirpal charade was a front for several things but mainly, I think, to turn the focus away from Brexit and to opening the Cold War front again. ..."
"... George Orwell has been a presence throughout this thread. It was unfortunate he was hurried by MI6 to finish the last pages of 'Animal Farm' so it could be translated into Arabic and be used to discredit Communist parties in Western Asia. This always raised the ire of Communist organisations through following decades .This being said he wrote some great text especially for me the revealing 1939 novel - Coming up for A ..."
"... I don't know if wars are really an extension of diplomacy by other means, but they certainly seem to be... an extension of ideology and propaganda. Ideas are very important in preparing and fighting wars; especially today, though, in reality the way we think about our western imperial war-fighting, goes back well over a century, back to the Whiteman's Burden and other imperialist myths. ..."
"... For the last thirty years we've essentially been fighting 'liberal crusades for freedom and democracy.' That, at least, was the 'cover story' the pretext presented to the people. There's an irony here. Just like Islamic State, we've been engaging in 'holy warfare' too! ..."
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in
Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the
facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles
reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been
killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who
had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers
in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over
events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what
happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines'.
George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War
, Chapter 4
Last week saw an extreme intensifying of the warmongers' campaign against individuals who
publicly hold and defend a different view than the powers-that-be want to promote. The campaign
has a longer history but recently turned personal. It now endangers the life and livelihood of
real people.
In fall 2016 a
smear campaign was launched against 200 websites which did not confirm to NATO propaganda.
Prominent sites like Naked
Capitalism were among them as well as this site:
While the ProPornOT campaign was against websites the next and larger attack was a
general defaming of specific content.
The neoconservative Alliance For
Securing Democracy declared that any doubt of the veracity of U.S. propaganda stories
discussed on Twitter was part of a "Russian influence campaign". Their ' dashboard ' shows the most prominent hashtags and
themes tweeted and retweeted by some 600 hand-selected but undisclosed accounts. (I have reason
to believe that @MoonofA is among them.) The dashboard gave rise to an endless line of
main-stream stories faking concern over alleged "Russian influence". The New York
Times published several such stories including this
recent one :
Russia did not respond militarily to the Friday strike, but American officials noted a sharp
spike in Russian online activity around the time it was launched.
A snapshot on Friday night recorded a 2,000 percent increase in Russian troll activity
overall, according to Tyler Q. Houlton, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
One known Russian bot, #SyriaStrikes, had a 4,443 percent increase in activity while another,
#Damsucs, saw a 2,800 percent jump, Mr. Houlton said.
A person on Twitter, or a bot, is tagged by a chosen name led with an @-sign. Anything led
with a #-sign is a 'hashtag', a categorizing attribute of a place, text or tweet. Hashtags have
nothing to do with any "troll activity". The use of the attribute or hashtag #syriastrike
increased dramatically when a U.S. strike on Syria happened. Duh. A lot of people remarked on the
strikes and used the hashtag #syriastrike to categorize their remarks. It made it easier for
others to find information about the incident.
The hashtag #Damsucs does not exit. How could it have a 2,800% increase? It is obviously a
mistyping of #Damascus or someone may have used as a joke. In June 2013 an Associated
Press story famously
carried the dateline "Damsucs". The city was then under artillery attack from various Takfiri
groups. The author likely felt that the situation sucked.
The spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security Tyler Q. Holton, to which the
Times attributes the "bot" nonsense, has a Twitter account under his name and also tweets as
@SpoxDHS. Peter Baker, the NYT author, has some 150,000 followers on Twitter and tweets several
times per day. Holton and Tyler surely know what @accounts and #hashtags are.
One suspects that Holton used the bizzare
statistic of the infamous ' Dashboard '
created by the neoconservative, anti-Russian lobby . The dashboard creators asserted that the
use of certain hashtags is a sign of 'Russian bots'. On December 25 the dashboard showed that
Russian trolls and bots made extensive use of the hashtag #MerryChristmas to undermine America's
moral.
One of the creators of the dashboard, Clint Watts, has since confessed that it is mere
bullshit :
"I'm not convinced on this bot thing," said Watts, the cofounder of a project that is widely
cited as the main, if not only, source of information on Russian bots. He also called the
narrative "overdone."
As government spokesperson Holton is supposed to spout propaganda that supports the
government's policies. But propaganda is ineffective when it does not adhere to basic realities.
Holton is bad at his job. Baker, the NYT author, did even worse. He repeated the
government's propaganda bullshit without pointing out and explaining that it obviously did not
make any sense. He used it to further his own opinionated, false narrative. It took a day for the
Times to issue a paritial correction of the fact free tale.
With the situation in Syria developing in favor of the Syrian people, with dubious government
claims around the Skripal affair in Salisbury and the recent faked 'chemical attack' in Douma the
campaign against dissenting reports and opinions became more and more personal.
Last December the Guardian commissioned a hatchet
job against Vanessa Beeley
and Eva Bartlett . Beeley and
Bartlett extensively reported
(vid) from the ground in Syria on the British propaganda racket "White Helmets". The
Guardian piece defended the 'heros' of the White Helmets and insinuated that both
journalists were Russian paid stooges.
In March the self proclaimed whistle-blower and blowhard Sibel Edmonds of Newsbud
launched a lunatic broadside smear attack
(vid) against Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett. The Corbett Report debunked (vid) the nonsense. (The debunking
received 59,000 views. Edmonds public wanking was seen by less than 23,000 people.)
Some time ago the CIA propaganda outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Europe
started a 'fact-checking' website and named it Polygraph.info . (Some satirist or a clueless intern
must have come up with that name. No country but the U.S. believes that the unscientific results
of polygraph tests have any relation to truthfulness. To any educated non-U.S. citizen the first
association with the term 'polygraph' is the term 'fake'.)
Ben Nimmo, the Senior Fellow for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic
Research Lab, studies the exploits of "Ian56" and similar accounts on Twitter. His recent
article in the online publication Medium profiles such fake pro-Kremlin accounts and
demonstrates how they operate.
...
Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is a
Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian troll'
accounts:
One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then
retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account
joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.
Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have know that
@ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous
American-Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans in
Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide performances
on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a 'Russian troll'
and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll' opinions.
Earlier this month Newsweek also
targeted the journalists Beeley and Bartlett and smeared a group of people who had traveled
to Syria as 'Assad's pawns'.
On April 14 Murdoch's London Times took personal aim at the members of a group of
British academics who assembled to scientificly investigate dubious claims against Syria. Their
first investigation report though, was
about the Skripal incident in Salisbury. The London Times also targeted Bartlett and
Beeley. The piece was leading on page one with the
headline: "Apologists for Assad working in universities". A page two splash and an editorial
complemented the full fledged attack on the livelihood of the scientists.
Tim Hayward, who initiated the academic group, published
a (too) mild response.
On April 18 the NPR station Wabenews
smeared the black activists Anoa Changa and Eugene Puryear for appearing on a Russian TV
station. It was the begin of an ongoing, well concerted campaign launched with at least seven
prominent smear pieces issued on a single day against the opposition to a wider war on Syria.
On April 19 the BBCtook aim at Sarah Abdallah , a Twitter account with over 130,000
followers that takes a generally pro Syrian government stand. The piece also attacked Vanessa
Beeley and defended the 'White Helmets':
In addition to pictures of herself, Sarah Abdallah tweets constant pro-Russia and pro-Assad
messages, with a dollop of retweeting mostly aimed at attacking Barack Obama, other US
Democrats and Saudi Arabia.
...
The Sarah Abdallah account is, according to a recent study by the online research firm
Graphika, one of the most influential social media accounts in the online conversation about
Syria, and specifically in pushing misinformation about a 2017 chemical weapons attack and the
Syria Civil Defence, whose rescue workers are widely known as the "White Helmets".
...
Graphika was commissioned to prepare a report on online chatter by The Syria Campaign , a
UK-based advocacy group organisation which campaigns for a democratic future for Syria and
supports the White Helmets.
The Syria Campaign Ltd. is a
for profit 'regime change' lobby which, like the White Helmets it promotes, is sponsored with
millions of British and U.S. taxpayer money.
Brian Whitaker, a former Middle East editor for the Guardian ,
alleged that Sarah Abdullah has a 'Hizbullah connection'. He assumes that from two terms she
used which point to a southern Lebanese heritage. But south Lebanon is by far not solely
Hizbullah and Sarah Abdallah certainly does not dress herself like a pious Shia. She is
more likely a Maronite or secular whatever. Exposing here as 'Hizbullah' can easily endanger her
life. Replying to Whitaker the British politician George Galloway asked:
George Galloway @georgegalloway - 14:50 UTC - Replying to
@Brian_Whit
Will you be content when she's dead Brian?
...
Will you be content Brian when ISIS cut off her head and eat her heart? You are beneath
contempt. Even for a former Guardian man
Whitaker's smear piece was not even researched by himself. He plagiarized it, without naming
his source,
from Joumana Gebara, a CentCom approved Social Media
Advisor to parts of the Syrian 'opposition'. Whitaker is prone to fall for scams like the 'White
Helmets'. Back in mid 2011 he promoted the "Gay Girl in
Damascus", a scam by a 40 year old U.S. man with dubious financial
sources who pretended to be a progressive Syrian woman.
Also on April 19 the Guardian
stenographed a British government smear against two other prominent Twitter accounts:
Russia used trolls and bots to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the
Salisbury poisoning, according to fresh Whitehall analysis. Government sources said experts had
uncovered an increase of up to 4,000% in the spread of propaganda from Russia-based accounts
since the attack, – many of which were identifiable as automated bots.
Notice that this idiotic % increase claim, without giving a base number, is similar to the one
made in the New York Times piece quoted above. It is likely also based on the lunatic
'dashboard'.
[C]ivil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after the Salisbury
poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on Syria.
One bot, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and
reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It focused on claims that the
chemical weapons attack on Douma had been falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another,
@Partisangirl, reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.
The prime minister discussed the matter at a security briefing with fellow Commonwealth
leaders Malcolm Turnbull, Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau earlier this week. They were
briefed by experts from GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre about the security
situation in the aftermath of the Syrian airstrikes.
The political editor of the Guardian , Heather Steward, admitted that her 'reporting'
was a mere copy of government claims:
A day earlier Ian56/@Ian56789 account with 35,000 followers had suddenly been blocked by
Twitter. Ben Nimmo was extremely happy about this success.
But after many users protested to the Twitter censors the account was revived.
Neither Ian, nor Partisangirl, are 'bots' or have anything to do with Russia. Partisangirl,
aka Syria Girl, is the twitter moniker of Maram Susli, a Syrian-Australian scientist specialized
in quantum chemistry. She was already interviewed on Australian TV (vid) four years
ago and has been back since. She has published videos of herself talking about Syria on Youtube and on Twitter and held
presentations on Syria at several international conferences. Her account is marked as 'verified'
by Twitter. Any cursory search would have shown that she is a real person.
The claim of bots and the numbers of their tweets the government gave to the Guardian
and Sky News are evidently false . With just a few clicks
the Guardian and Sky News 'journalists' could have debunked the British government
claims. But these stenograhers do not even try and just run with whatever nonsense the government
claims. Sky News even manipulated the picture of Partisangirl's Twitter homepage in the
video and screenshot above. The original shows Maram Susli speaking about Syrian refugees at a
conference in Germany. The picture provides that she is evidently a living person and not a
'bot'. But Sky News did not dare to show that. It would have debunked the government's
claim.
After some negative feed back on social media Sky News contacted the 'Russian bot' Ian
and invited him to a live interview
(vid). Ian Shilling, a wakeful British pensioner, managed to deliver a few zingers against the
government and Sky News . He also published a
written response:
I have been campaigning against the Neocons and the Neocon Wars since January 2002, when I
first realised Dick Cheney and the PNAC crowd were going to use 9/11 as the pretext to launch a
disastrous invasion of Iraq. This has nothing to do with Russia. It has EVERYTHING to do with
the massive lies constantly told by the UK & US governments about their illegal Wars of
Aggression.
...
Brian Whitaker could not hold back. Within the 156,000 tweets Ian wrote over seven years
Whitaker found one(!)
with a murky theory (not a denial) about the Holocaust. He alleged that Ian believes in
'conspiracy theories'. Whitaker then linked to and discussed one Conspirador Norteño who
peddles 'Russian bots' conspiracy theories. Presumably Whitaker did not get the consp-irony of
doing such.
On the same day as the other reports the British version of the Huffington Post
joined the Times in its earlier smear against British academics, accusing Professor
Hayward and Professor Piers Robinson of "whitewashing war crimes". They have done no such thing.
Vanessa Beeley was additionally attacked.
Also on the 19th the London Times aimed at another target. Citizen Halo , a well known Finnish grandma, was declared to be a
'Russian troll' based on Ben Nimmo's pseudo-scientific trash, for not believing in the Skripal
tale and the faked 'chemical attack' in Syria. The Times doubted her nationality and
existence by using quotes around her as a "Finnish activist".
Meanwhile the defense editor of the Times , Deborah Haynes, is stalking Valentina Lisitsa on
Twitter. A fresh smear-piece against the pianist is surely in the works.
The obviously organized campaign against critical thinking in Britain extended beyond the
Atlantic. While the BBC , Guardian, HuffPo, Times and Sky News published
smear pieces depicting dissenting people as 'Russian bots', the Intercept pushed a piece
by Mehdi Hasan bashing an amorphous 'left' for rejecting a U.S. war on Syria:
Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn't Gas Syrians
.
Mehdi Hasan is of course eminently qualified to write such a piece. Until recently he worked
for Al Jazeerah , the media outlet of the Wahhabi dictatorship of Qatar which supports the
Qatari sponsored al-Qaeda in its war against Syria. The Mehdi Hasan's piece repeats every false
and debunked claim that has been raised against the Syrian government as evidence for the Syrian
president's viciousness. Naturally many of the links he provides point back to Al
Jazeerah's propaganda. A few years ago Mehdi Hasan tried to get a job with the conservative
British tabloid Daily Mail . The Mail did not want him. During a later TV discussion Hasan
slammed the Daily Mail for its reporting and conservative editorial position. The paper
responded by
publishing his old job application. In it Mehdi Hasan emphasized his own conservative
believes:
I am also attracted by the Mail's social conservatism on issues like marriage, the family,
abortion and teenage pregnancies.
A conservative war-on-Syria promoter is bashing an anonymous 'left' which he falsely accuses
of supporting Assad when it takes a stand against imperial wars. Is that a 'progressive' Muslim
Brotherhood position? (Added: Stephen Gowans and Kurt Nimmo
respond to Hasan's screed.)
On the same day Sonali Kolhatkar at Truthdig , as pseudo-progressive as the
Intercept , published a quite similar piece: Why
Are Some on the Left Falling for Fake News on Syria? . She bashes the 'left' - without citing
any example - for not falling for the recent scam of the 'chemical attack' in Douma and for
distrusting the U.S./UK government paid White Helmets. The comments against the piece are
lively.
Those working in the media are up in arms over alleged fake news and they lament the loss of
paying readership. But they have only themselves to blame. They are the biggest creators of fake
news and provider of government falsehood. Their attacks on critical readers and commentators are
despicable.
Until two years ago Hala Jabar was foreign correspondent in the Middle East for the Sunday
Times . After fourteen years with the paper and winning six awards for her work she was 'made
redundant' for her objective reporting on Syria. She remarks on the recent media push against
truth about Syria and the very personal attacks against non-conformist opinions:
In my entire career, spanning more than three decades of professional journalism, I have
never seen MSM resolve to such ugly smear campaigns & hit pieces against those questioning
mainstream narratives, with a different view point, as I have seen on Syria, recently.
.2/ This is a dangerous manoeuvre , a witch hunt in fact, aimed not only at character
assassination, but at attempting to silence those who think differently or even sway from
mainstream & state narrative.
.3/ It would have been more productive, to actually question the reason why more & more
people are indeed turning to alternative voices for information & news, than to dish out ad
hominem smears aimed at intimidating by labelling alternative voices as conspirators or
apologists.
.4/ The journalists, activists, professors & citizens under attack are presenting an
alternative view point. Surely, people are entitled to hear those and are intelligent enough to
make their own judgments.
.5/ Or is there an assumption, (patronizing, if so), that the tens of thousands of people
collectively following these alternative voices are too dumb & unintelligent to reach their
own conclusions by sifting through the mass information being dished at them daily from all
sides?
.6/ Like it or hate it, agree or disagree with them, the bottom line is that the people
under attack do present an alternative view point. Least we forget, no one has a monopoly on
truth. Are all those currently launching this witch hunt suggesting they do?
The governments and media would like to handle the war on Syria like they handled the war in
Spain. They want reports without "any relation to the facts". The media want to "retail the lies"
and eager propagandists want to "build emotional superstructures over events that never
happened."
The new communication networks allow everyone to follow the war on Syria as diligently as
George Orwell followed the war in Spain in which he took part. We no longer have to travel to see
the differences of what really happens and what gets reported in the main stream press. We can
debunk false government claims with freely available knowledge.
The governments, media and their stenographers would love to go back to the old times when
they were not plagued by reports and tweets from Eva, Vanessa, Ian, Maram and Sarah or by
blogposts like this one. The vicious campaign against any dissenting report or opinion is a sorry
attempt to go back in time and to again gain the monopoly on 'truth'.
It is on us to not let them succeed.
Posted by b on April 21, 2018 at 23:02 UTC |
Permalink
next page " Excellent.
The good news about both The Intercept and Truthdig pieces is that the comments quickly showed
that readers knew what the publishers were up to.
The Intercept seemed to have removed Hasan's obscene act of prostitution within a day.
The reality is that we simply have to expect the imperialists, now reduced to propaganda and
domestic repression, to act in this way: there is no point in attempting to shame them and they
never did believe in journalistic principles or standards or ethics. They are the scum who
serve a cannibalistic system for good wages and a comfortable life style- that is what the
'middle class' always did do and always will.
No longer is it possible to control TV, Radio and printed newspapers and use them to set the
message. There are now an almost infinite set of channels including youtube, twitter, blogs,
podcasts,streamed radio... It's like there is a public bitcoin/bitnewsledger where new
information only gets written into the ledger if it is authenicated by sufficient
endorsements.
In the past, a lie could travel around the world before the truth got its shoes on (Mark Twain
I believe) but the truth is catching up. We are in the midst of the great changeover where
older people still rely on traditional information channels yet younger internet enabled
peoplecan leverage the new channels more effectively to educate themselves.
Western propagandists are freaking out because nobody believes their lies anymore. The more
they freak out, the more we know they have lost the narrative.
I just fear for the safety of these independent journalists. It is not beneath the deep
state to assassinate their enemies. These people need to be very careful.
For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that
dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's
transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this
category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)
The hysterical, side-splitting laughter over this chicken-choking, circle-jerking drivel
will echo in eternity. Galactic stupidity simply doesn't get any more cosmic, except perhaps
awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama.
This is a fight between Deep States of the Rothschild-UK 'Octopus,' US-centric
Rockefeller-Kochs, Russian (itself split between competing and intertwined Anglo-American
clans/Eurasianists vs Altanticists) and China (also divided between sovereignty oriented
Shanghai and Rothschild affiliated Hong Kong which was founded upon the opium trade in
cooperation with the UK-Octopus).
The main point of contention is whether we have a hard or soft landing as the New World
Order is born, with the UK-Octopus needing to instigate an epic crisis so as to bury countless
trillions of worthless derivatives it sits upon, specifically seeking to collapse the USD as a
global fiat and use the ensiung chaos to assist the Chinese as they establish an unasailable
Yuan fiat. A war with Russia will bring the US-centric Deep State to it's knees and so this
forms the basis of the not-so secret alliance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, while
China attempts to remain neutral since Xi prefers a smooth transition since the US-centric
group may well launch a nuclear false flag attack on the Korean peninsula, thus irradiating the
region and dooming the potential for a Chinese dominated century, should the interests of yhis
group be ignored.
All gloves are off and the dispostions of various players are suddenly crystal clear after
the firing of Octopus agent Tillerson by Trump via twitter led immediately to the launching of
operation 'Novichok,' and was followed up with an attempted series of false flags in East
Ghouta which were planned so as to bring the US and Russia to war.
Other important players include the US military (itself divided between Octopus NATO and
US-centric Pentagon), the CIA, which is always on all sides of any conflict but was until
recently headed by Koch protege Mike Pompeo, as well as smaller Arab, Persian and Turkish Deep
States all jockeying for advantage and position. Even the Vatican is included and said to be
divided between Polish Cardinals on one side, with German, Italian and many Spanish speaking
Cardinals as opponents. There are other Deep States as well and in every instance they are
divided between one of the two main parties and themselves to one or another degree.
Media and social control is mainly the preserve of the UK Octopus, so as all of us have
understood for some time, anything included within it, from the NYTimes to most of Hollywood,
is completely worthless. Alternative media was created as an alternative to Octopus media,
while Trump takes to twitter so as to bypass their control.
I feel like a US voter forced to choose between Republicans and Democrats, but with the
promised 'Blue Wave' coming in November when Congressional elections are due, certain to be
impeached Donald Trump and his US-centric backers have a very short time frame in which to
change the score.
Ads also appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show channel, a far-left YouTube channel that peddles
conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Syrian chemical weapons attacks are hoaxes.
Syria is really the unifying theme in all these attacks.
I congratulate Bernhard on yet another excellent piece of investigative journalism. My comment
is not intended to criticise or take away from it, but only to point out that Orwell's quote
was taken out of context, in the sense that although he remarks on partisan propaganda, he says
that it is unimportant, since "the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government
presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were." On the
other hand, the lies of the pro-NATO press are important because unlike the partisan lies told
by leftist parties during the Spanish Civil War, today's NATO lies are the equivalent of the
official fascist propaganda of that time: they distort and hide the main issues. Here is the
full quote from the link that B has diligently provided:
I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, 'History stopped in 1936', at which he nodded in
immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more
particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever
correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports
which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an
ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete
silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as
cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of
imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager
intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in
fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened
according to various 'party lines'. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant.
It concerned secondary issues -- namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the
Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in
Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was
not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their
backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention
their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could
not have been otherwise.
As a given group loses its grip on power, it tends to employ ever more extreme tactics. This
explains the recent behavior of players like the US government, the UK government, the American
mainstream media and various think tanks. What other extreme behavior should we expect from
such a cabal? After all, they've already shown contempt for conditionally protected freedoms-
all of them- and a willingness to manufacture any narrative they want in order to further their
aims of conquest and profiteering. This whole mess could spiral out of control in countless
ways with terrifying consequences.
@15 Yes but I'm not sure how relevant Orwell's quote is to today. Do we even have a 'left-wing'
anymore? Or a Comintern for that matter? Even fascism wears a smiley face. Seems to me that
what we have is a tightly controlled MSM. That control may be slipping but we have yet to see a
replacement.
Those of us at MoA who are regulars may feel a certain level of complacency based on the level
of discourse here but I assure you that most Americans are still very much zombie followers of
whatever the TV and other media tell them. I believe that there is a strong possibility that MoA and like sites will become the focus
of paid narrative pushers and if that is not successful there are other ways to make b and our
lives difficult.
If b is ever knocked offline for some reason and needs help I encourage him to email his
readers with potential strategies to show/provide support. Thanks again and again for your web site b.
The first casualty of war is the truth.
Many Westerners would recognize this phrase but many of them don't understand that there
-IS- a war (the new Cold War). The longstanding law that prevented government propaganda in the US was revoked several
years ago.
U.S Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans
This type of tyranny has been going on forever in the US. Take A. Lincoln.
More than 14,000 civilians were arrested under martial law during the war throughout the
Union. Abraham Lincoln did so because they expressed views critical of Lincoln or his war. It's the same-o. Different faces same crap.
b- I am sorry to see their attacks on you, if things do go sideways please contact me if I can
be of help in any way.
Do you know what has happened to Tucker Carlson, he has been such a strong voice for truth that
I am concerned for him.
Stay strong and thank you for all you do in support of the truth.
Sure, there are more people that see the lies and bullshit for what they are. Still, seeing it
is not enough. What really matters now is to fully wipe out the mainstream media, to make it
completely extinct, and therefore seeing they're full of shit is only the prerequisite to
pondering how to actually bankrupt and destroy them. That's what everyone who's not fully on
board with the Western regimes' and bankers' propaganda should be thinking about. How to
convince people not only to stop buying their lies, but to stop buying them at all, how to cut
down the vast majority of their readership/viewers to the point they don't matter anymore.
Thank you b. This a very important subject. It wouldn't surprise me if a false flag happened
that would be aimed at censuring all alternative news. This might be centered around a
decoupling of east from west, perhaps when the current financial crisis explodes. Oh, has
anyone heard from Tucker Carlson lately?
You can fool someone for a long time, you can fool a lot of people for a short time - but you
can't fool a lot of people for a long time.
That is, unless those people are willing to live the lie.
I think the reason the MSM's propaganda is so effective nowadays (and I'm thinking
specifically about the world since the Iraq invasion in 2003) is that, deep down, maybe in the
collective inconsciousness level, the working classes from the First World countries know their
superior living standards depend on imperial brutality over the rest of the world. That's why,
for example, the USG and Downing Street haven't lost significant credibility domestically after
Iraq and after Libya. This is a dark social pact: people live the lies only to sleep well at
night and claim plausible deniability after; they only wish it to be over quickly and at the
least human cost from their side (every coffin that comes back to their community from the
Middle East is a crack in the illusion). They believe in Russiagate because, deep down, they
don't want to believe they were capable of electing someone like Trump and, mainly, because
they know their economies are failing, and the only solution is to invade other countries/prop
up the war industry.
Smearing people for appearing on RT! Americans who prattle on about freedom and democracy are
pressuring other not to do this or that which is to inhibit their freedom.
Don't they know it makes them look like dictators without portfolio?
Great article, b. I am a relative newcomer to MoA, having found it through Caitlin Johnstone
(Rogue Journalist), but in a short time, I have come to rely heavily on it for "hidden" news
and incisive analysis. Yes, independent news outlets are vital sources of truth, but their
reach is still tiny compared to that of the Empire and its toads in the media. The well
organized smear campaign against those who refuse to bow down is a frightening development
indeed.
Thanks b for your outstanding dissecting! The Information War is complex yet still remains
simple--all that's required is a critically thinking approach for any personally unconfirmed
sources and the data presented followed by the willingness to ask questions, no matter how
uncomfortable. Such a disciplined mind was once the paramount goal for those seeking wisdom,
but such pursuits are deemed passé, unrequired in the Digital Age. But Big Lie Media's
been working its evil for decades despite many calling out the lies. Funny how the two big
former communist nations are now more credible than the West and expressly seek honest and
open--Win-Win--relationships based on trust and equality. The Moral Table at play during Cold
War 1 is flipped with the Outlaw US Empire being the Evil Empire. And the Evil Empire can't
stand its own nakedness and its oozing social sores.
The liar is often agitated and nervous whereas one with the facts rests easy and remains
calm. In the run up to their summit, note how Trump is already agitated and nervous, already
prefacing his lies to come, whereas Kim is easy and calm, setting the table. Shrillness and
hysteria are the similar signs provided by media liars and is almost always fact-free, supposed
"sources" anonymous.
A magisterial piece of journalism, b. Congratulations, and thank you.
~~
Spain. Orwell. Fascism.
I was born decades after the Spanish Civil War, and to be very honest I never knew much
about it, nor have ever learned since. But Guernica I knew about, even
as a young teenager in school. The culture was shocked into remembering forever that there was
a lie involved with Guernica. That's all I ever really knew, was that Spain was a lie,
underneath which a massacre lay.
They say it was the humanitarian and artistic type of people who kept the truth of Spain
alive against the propaganda of the fascists. I don't know. I believe as I said the other day
that propaganda only works to crowd out the truth, so that people are not exposed to the truth.
But propaganda doesn't work in a battle against the truth, when people are exposed to both
sides of the story.
If you were running a scam based on fake news, and one day you had to make allegations using
this very term, and play your "fake news" card on the table in a round of betting that was
merely one round in a long game - if you did this, you'd be a bad card player, or one driven to
the corner and getting extremely close to leaving the table.
If your playing partner suddenly had to show the "false flag" card on the surface of the
table for the whole game to see - yet another secret hole card exposed and now worthless
forever - you could well think your game was finished. And it is - barring a few nasty
tricks...which will be recorded and placed into the game as IOU's.
Don't anybody be part of that collateral damage - be well. And instead, let's collect on
those IOU's. The game is almost over. Many people will appear to say that the players cannot be
beat. But they are with the losers. We are the players.
I wholeheartedly second your suggestion. I think the battle against the truth by the deep
States everywhere has only begun. They will not stop at smearing individual posters or
sites.
I do think we all need to start becoming more aware of alternatives, to YouTube (how's
DTube?), Twitter (gab?), Facebook, Google (several alternatives) etc. But that will not be
enough because I fear that in time the IP providers will come under pressure too - in all the
western countries, especially. And the domain providers 9we all know them), followed by blog
platforms such as WorldPress. I am not saying it's easy to curtail all of those, but they will
try, as sure as the sun sets in the West.
Of course, the biggest attacks will be mounted against anonymous commenters and posters.
That's already in the works at several outlets. The idea is of course that by stripping off
anonimity people will self-censor for fear of repercussions to their real life selves.
There are people working on alternative platforms of all sorts. I am somewhat hopeful about
user owned sites though these efforts are nascent. I hope commenters here will share what they
know of alternatives, even knowing this won't be an easy battle. After all, Twitter owes its
popularity to well, its popularity. Same with Facebook or Instagram or youTube. Therein lies
the rub - it won't be easy to wean users from these platforms as many start-ups found out. That
however should not mean that we shouldn't try. More and more Twitter users for example are
cross-posting on gab, and several youTubers started uploading also to Dtube. neither site is
ideal, I know. But neither was Twitter when it started.
The real aim of propaganda is to persuade the politicians and not the public. One man in their
middle wants to start a war and the media make sure that his or her fellow politicians will
hear no other story and make support the only possibility. That's why people like us have to be
vilified, so that all these politicians can invent an excuse for themselves and turn their head
away. What we think really doesn't matter because we are not the ones in control. They only
have to convince the Colin Powells and Frank Timmermans's.
The current increased smear campaigns against the so called Russian Bots, Assad Apologists
etc., is surely just the first part of of a an attempt to implement very serious censorship and
control over the internet to attempt to completely block out any alternative voices.
Amber Rudd
the UK Home Secretary has been banging on about Russian cyber attcks for the past couple of
months. Whilst based on the history of UK Government IT projects I couldn't expect the UK alone
to be capable of implementing any meaningful censorship scheme (they have a track record of
producing so many multi-billion pound national IT project disasters) but with the coordinated
help of the US and others they might just be able to put up enough censorship barriers to be
able to get back to their original plans (removing Assad and whatever else they have in mind).
False-flag chemical attacks haven't quite worked out to plan, but add in a false-flag cyber
attack that apparently disables some of the UK (and/or US/EU) vital services and that should be
enough for them to convince the plebs and sufficient MP's that it has become absolutely
necessary to block Russain and other media and internet sites and force the owners of many
social media channels to disable long lists of people with alternative views.
Prop or Not is NOT a 'friendly neighbourhood' anything. It was exposed a while ago as being a
joint state propaganda project between the CIA and West Ukraine, with the goal of spreading
anti-Russia disinformation, and employing the collusion of some no-integrity US propaganda rags
like The Daily Beast.
My question is their motivation and timing. Why does the rhetoric seem to increase after
the latest attack? Why care if 10% of the population doesn't follow their narrative now? Are
they preparing for a new round of kinetic action? Or do they simply believe their management of
the narrative needs more investment?
If people are going to rely on social media feeds for anything other than information on what
their friends and family are up to, then they are opening themselves up to being manipulated
easily and with a minimum of actual effort.
You no longer need to own a newspaper or a broadcast network to do so.
Ultimately people with a concience and some integrity will realize that something is awry. I'm
no spring chicken and have been on the net for nearly 20 years. There are more ' old ' people
surfing the net than initially may be apparent. As life passes by people become much more
attuned to bullsh*t. T. May's husband is on the board of a large British Armaments company. No
doubt her ministers are all in on many scams. She is a very mediocre character, a fool as her
time as home secretary demonstrated and was only voted in place so as to do the bidding of
others. And in my opinion, when I say others I mean she is the western harlot who jumps when
anyone pulls her string. They say that if you tell a lie often enough people believe it to be
the truth. Not necessarily. There are so many holes in the Skripal and Syrian stories that only
someone who doesn't want to have their view challenged will believe them. The stories are
falling apart and as they do, so does the credibility and trust of the western MSM and Politik.
The reason the Germans and others refused to join in, is I suspect, they realize that in part,
because once that is lost, it takes a great deal more to recover it. The Skripal case and the
latest Syrian faked gas attack is the start of the end for T. May and her govt.
Good comments, especially psychohistorian about being prepared to jump to alternative platforms
... Perhaps Russian ones?
What I was referencing in comment 5 is this relatively new desire by the 'powers that be'
for purity, for absolutely no one from 'our side' dissenting against the mainstream (and
completely bonkers in its anti-Russian extremism) narrative. This is not like the pre-digital
age, when small-circulation real leftist publications were not subject to mainstream and
official government extermination campaigns. And I don't think this is simply because of
digital age reach, because the readership for the real alternative media's left/anti-imperial
perspective doesn't engage enough people to be meaningful in terms of power and elections. At
least in the US; less certain about elsewhere.
There's something angry, extreme, and extremely insecure about the psychology of the Western
ruling class right now. My bet is that because of that insecurity they won't be so dangerous to
Russia/China in the years to come, but instead the anger will be directed at internal
left/anti-militarist dissenters. For some reason our reality bugs the sh!t out of them despite
our small numbers.
Until recently I used to read articles at both The Intercept and at Truthdig, but have since
realized both of these 'news' outlets actively censor posts that are too accurate, too
insightful of what the US government and MSM are doing in Syria and how they are manipulating
public opinion with the White Helmets, staged false gas attacks, etc. I don't trust Pierre
Omidyar, the philanthropist behind The Intercept, he has questionable political alliances. I
have had many of my posts at both Truthdig and The Intercept censored even though they were
entirely within comment rules. The Intercept has a lot of really BAD journalists posting crap
there, like this ass clown Mehdi Hasan. Even Glenn Greenwald, a multi millionaire, is suspect.
Both of these websites are psuedo-left and should not be trusted!
From the resistance trench with love , Apr 22 2018 11:40 utc |
52
....attacks on critical readers and commentators are despicable..
Indeed, but "the one free of sin to throw the first stone" ....
From my experience at several supposed "alternative media", most of them somehow pro-Russian
in the sense that they do not promote the sick warmongerism coming from the US and UK
stablishments against Russia and its allies in Syria and against Syria herself, every site has
its biases and slandering attacks by the owners of the blogs or by the "community" os
sycophants residing there are everyday bread for any newcomer who could express a bit of
dissent against the general editorial view.
I mayself have been obliged to change my nickname several times already to avoid attacks or
banning/censorship, when my position about Syrai and Russia does not differ almost in the least
with that of the people mentioned above who are being object of smearing campaign by the
MSM....and this has happened to me in the supposed pro-Russian "alt-media"....
Thus, I would recommend to apply a bit of self-criticism and reflect about how anyone of us
are probably contributing to the same effort of the bullies mentioned above against mainly
common citizens who only try to commit themselves to spread some of the truth they are finding
online through research and intensive reading, and try to offer an alternative point of view or
simply debunk the usual nonsense especially against certain ideologies, mostly spreaded by US
commenters.....
I noticed the part about Ian Shillilng being accused of denying the Holocaust or implying it
was a govt conspiracy.
I find that interesting, because a co-worker asked me out to the blue "Do you even believe
the Holocaust happened?" It's a strange question with no relation to Russiagate, yet pops up a
lot so it clearly has an agenda. The question made no sense but I did recognized it as a
familiar attack by the warmongers. My response was to to respond to such a ridiculous,
dishonest question and I ignored it.
He went to ask if I was "stupid" for not seeing that Mueller's indictments over lying to the
FBI and tax evasion/money laundering in Ukraine are NOT are not same thing as proving Russia
meddled to deny Hillary her Presidency.
Thanks for the article b.
As painful as it is to watch the increasing attempts at censoring non-msm voices, we can take
solace in the fact that, like a cornered rat, the establishment has no other option left but an
all-out, full-retard attack on anyone not toeing the line. While the damage they are doing is
real, this should be balanced with the fact that this attack comes out of weakness and not
strength: they are the ones "losing", and knowledge of that reality makes them increasingly
unhinged.
At first I thought this is some kind of joke. Than I watched few times, I still believe CNN
guy is in some kind of mission here, let's say to distract its viewers from existential matters
that grips ordinary people in the US. His insistence on the "Russians" is illogical at
first...this woman appear to be serious but when it comes to CNN everything is set-up, not just
everyone can come to CNN, period. No facts involved the conversation is about NOTHING, that is
the US national narrative being imposed by the ruling class trough various media. Just like
"attack" on Syria and Syria's gas attack. There were none, there were no cruise missile fired,
there were no downed ones! CNN's role is also to entertain its audience as well, everything but
not talk about social and economic issues. In other words to indoctrinate - shift attention,
not to ask unpleasant questions.
The NYT and NPR are warmonger institutions. It is sad that ppl who consider themselves to be
liberals, democrats, blue team (anti-war?- that's a stretch!) embrace these institutions as
purveyors of truth or even real news.
I don't feel that the quote is out of context. Yes, you show that Orwell clearly didn't
consider it a big deal at that time, but what is happening now is that what he describes is
omnipresent, the main stream of information we get, there is nothing else if you don't search
for alternatives. It is beyond doubt that Orwell, in the present context, would never have
added what he added in that book.
So in that light I feel the quote is extremely relevant and a good start of the article.
I want to express my thanks for this site and am really glad I was pointed towards MoA by
other sources of real information.
Meanwhile, the same western media give free pass to liberal warcriminals like Macron's France
that just today call for permanent illegal occupation of Syria - after illegally bombing it.
But no, it is people like us who call out this BS that gets silenced and harassed by the
same ignorant western media/"journalists" along with the western deep state spy networks!
What an excellent source of information the MoA site offers those of us who are seeking the
truth and living in an Empire full of lies.Over the past few months, I have perused this site
regularly and always find it very helpful in gaining a better and more concise understanding
of
what is really going on in our world.
I am also astounded at how helpful it is for me to read the comments of so many who are
regulars here.
The courtesy and level of intellectual dialog that goes on here in the comments section is a
rare thing indeed! We all must fight for truth for the sake of our families and loved ones.
"Fake" and "Genuine" are used to describe the video with the water being poured over people.
Fisk calls them genuine because the video was taped in the place where it pretends to be, not
in a film set or a location where nothing was going on. It was filmed in the real hospital with
real doctors, nurses and victims.
The video therefore is real (not staged), but the claim that people are suffering from gas
wounds is false.
You can thus also say that the video is fake: it is said to show victims of a gas attack, while
the doctor says they were suffering from suffocation, and only when someone shouted "gas", did
people start hosing each other down (which as someone posted in another article, would have
only made things worse if they had chlorine on them). As evidence of a gas attack, the video is
fake.
As long as a person is not claiming that the video shows victims of a real gas attack
aftermath, we're all on the same side I guess.
The response is of course to more eagerly call out the neocons propangada, western media
propaganda and so forth,
get a twitter account, get a blog, lets multiply this movement, because these people will of
course not stop at destroying peoples lives in the newspapers, they will call for censorship,
registrations and sooner or later jail for these views.
Orwell's great fear was totalitarianism. Either from the left or the right. What we have now is
much more subtle. The MSM retains the illusion of freedom and most people go along with it. We
may even realize we are being manipulated but the only alternative is posting on sites like
MOA.
The UK has no credibility left now. May's farcical handling of the Brexit negs has exposed
her as little more than a Tory mouthpiece, parroting party bon mots whilst having no clue where
she is heading. And I suspect her civil servants haven't, either!
The Skirpal charade was a front for several things but mainly, I think, to turn the focus
away from Brexit and to opening the Cold War front again. But what is alarming was her open
support for attacks on Syria. It's been known for some time that the UK has special forces
operating in Syria covertly; May's tub-thumping pretty much clarified that the Uk is as
determined as Washington and that Rothschild puppet Macron to force a regime change in
Syria.
You said she must go. I said the same thing last September after the fall-out from the June
election and other foot-in-mouth incidents: she'd be gone before year end. How wrong I was. She
has figures in the background protecting her.
Crushing dissent goes completely against 'liberal values' which is about the only high ground
left for the humanitarian regime changers a.k.a the Franquistas. So that is not going to
happen. On the other hand, social media is the easiest place to use covert operatives, even MSM
has other sponsors and actors, social media can be directly controlled by governments , and the
'intelligence community'. So they are just using the net for what they set it up for.
Propaganda for domestic consumption in the USA, isn't really meant to convince as much as to
scare people into submission. People don't obey Big Brother because they like him or believe
him, but because they cannot talk back to him and are scared of him. Media Scare tactics work
less if people can talk back, hear their own voice, not just Big Brother from every
loudspeaker.
Martin Luther (not King) said that "A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it the
bigger it becomes." The snowball is melting because there is shift in the narrative given what
is happening on the ground in Syria. I find it fascinating that as it melts down layer by
layer, the first trojan horse outfits to implode are left humanitarian ones like the Intercept,
Newsbud, Democracy Now. The right wing ones like Fox, Young Turks, just concentrate on dumbing
down the conversation to reduce reality to bombastic and misleading 'political' points. This is
a another way to control the conversation, to scare people into thinking that facts or not
facts but partisan political 'opinions'. Look at how Jimmy Dore's in the interview mentioned by
B with Carla Ortiz, is trying to dumb down the conversation and keeps feigning ignorance.
Thankfully she blows him out of the water. Good job Carla!
The snowball is big and melting slowly. Who's next?
Vesti has a great 10-minute clip dated yesterday from a Russian talk show with Margarita
Simonyan of RT doing much of the talking. What she says is really encouraging about how she's
trying to talk, not to power (which already knows the real truth that it's obscuring) but to
common people, because there are those among the common people who do speak up and who really
do shape public opinion - not governments.
She cited Roger Waters as an example, who was speaking at a concert and telling the truth
about the White Helmets. She said, someone has to read in order to speak. And someone has to
write so someone can read. And that's what RT is doing, and that's how it works. And it is
working.
George Orwell has been a presence throughout this thread.
It was unfortunate he was hurried by MI6 to finish the last pages of 'Animal Farm' so it
could be translated into Arabic and be used to discredit Communist parties in Western Asia.
This always raised the ire of Communist organisations through following decades .This being said he wrote some great text especially for me the revealing 1939 novel - Coming up
for A
What many people don't realize is that fascism is a greedy habit, it expands to finally swallow
up those who think they are protected by silence or looking the other way. The individuals and
organizations villified today are the real heroes, and even if they suffer today, they will be
vindicated in the end. But unfortunately the gullible masses would by then be in the open
prison of fascism.
I don't know if wars are really an extension of diplomacy by other means, but they certainly
seem to be... an extension of ideology and propaganda. Ideas are very important in preparing
and fighting wars; especially today, though, in reality the way we think about our western
imperial war-fighting, goes back well over a century, back to the Whiteman's Burden and other
imperialist myths.
For the last thirty years we've essentially been fighting 'liberal crusades for freedom and
democracy.' That, at least, was the 'cover story' the pretext presented to the people. There's
an irony here. Just like Islamic State, we've been engaging in 'holy warfare' too!
The reason our media is so full of lies and distortions and propaganda is because the harsh
realities of our New Imperialism wars are so out of synch with the reality of what's happening
and crucially the attitudes of the general public who don't want to fight more overseas wars,
and especially if they are 'crusades' for democracy and freedom. But what's happened recently
is that dissent is being targeted as tantamount to treason. This is rather new and
disturbing.
It's because the ruling elite are... losing it and way too many people are questioning their
ideas about the wars we are fighting and their legitimacy and 'right to rule.'
In many ways the Internet is bringing about a kind of revolution in relation to the people's
access to 'texts' and images that reminds one of the great intellectual upheavals that the
translation of the Bible had on European thought four hundred years ago. Suddenly Bibles were
being printed all over the place and people could read the sacred texts without having to ask
the educated priests to 'filter' and translate and explain what it all meant. In a way
Wikileaks was doing the same thing... allowing people access to secret material, masses of it,
bypassing the traditional newsmedia and the journalistic 'preists.'
The national security elite now wants us to believe we are seeing things that aren't really
there. 'Gaslight' lobbycard, from left, Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, 1944. (Photo by LMPC via
Getty Images)
Ten years ago, "restraint" was considered code for "isolationism" and its purveyors were
treated with nominal attention and barely disguised condescension. Today, agitated national
security elites who can no longer ignore the restrainers -- and the positive attention they're
getting -- are trying to cut them down to size.
We saw this recently when Peter Feaver, Hal Brands, and William Imboden, who all made their
mark promoting George W. Bush's war policies after 9/11,
published "In Defense of the Blob" for Foreign Affairs in April.
My own pushback received an attempted drubbing in The Washington Post by
national security professor Daniel Drezner ( he of
the Twitter fame ): "For one thing, her essay repeatedly contradicts itself. The Blob is an
exclusive cabal, and yet Vlahos also says it's on the wane."
One can be both, Professor. As they say, Rome didn't fall in a day. What we are
witnessing are individuals and institutions sensing existential vulnerabilities. The
restrainers have found a nerve and the Blob is feeling the pinch. Now it's starting to throw
its tremendous girth around.
The latest example is from Michael J. Mazarr, senior political scientist at the Rand
Corporation, which since 1948 has essentially provided the brainpower behind the Military
Industrial Congressional Complex. Mazarr published this
voluminous warrant against restrainers in the most recent issue of TheWashington
Quarterly, which is run by the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington
University. Its editorial board reeks of the conventional
internationalist thinking that has prevailed over the last 70 years.
In "Rethinking Restraint: Why It Fails in Practice," Mazarr insists that the critics have it
all wrong: "American primacy" is way overstated and the U.S. has been more moderate in military
interventions than it's given credit for. Moreover, he says, the restrainers divide current "US
strategy into two broad caricatures -- primacy or liberal hegemony at one extreme, and
restraint at the other. Such an approach overlooks a huge, untidy middle ground where the views
of most US national security officials reside and where most US policies operate."
There is much to unpack in his nearly 10,000-word brief, and much to counter it. For
example, Monica Duffy Toft has done incredible
research into the history of U.S. interventions over the last 70 years, in part studying
the number of times we've used force in response to incidents of foreign aggression. While the
United States engaged in 46 military interventions from 1948 to 1991, from 1992 to 2017, that
number increased fourfold to 188 (chart below). Kind of calls Mazarr's "frequent impulse to
moderation" theory into question.
But I would like to zero in on the most infuriating charge, which mimics Drezner, Brands,
Feaver, et al.: that the idea of a powerful, largely homogeneous foreign policy establishment
dominating top levels of government, think tanks, media, and academia is really all in our
heads. It's not real.
This weak attempt to gaslight the rest of us is an insult to George Cukor's 1944 Hollywood classic . It's
unworthy. In the section "There is No Sinister National Security Elite," Mazarr turns to
Stephen Walt (who wrote an entire book on
the self-destructive Blob) and Andrew Bacevich (who has written that the ideology of American
exceptionalism and primacy "serves the interests of those who created the national security
state and those who still benefit from its continued existence"). This elite, both men charge,
enjoy "status, influence, and considerable wealth" in return for supporting the consensus.
To this Mazarr contends, "Apart from collections of anecdotes, those convinced of the
existence of such a homogenous elite offer no objective evidence -- such as surveys,
interviews, or comprehensive literature reviews -- to back up these sweeping claims." Then
failing to offer his own evidence, he argues:
on specific policy questions -- whether to go to war or conduct a humanitarian
intervention, or what policy to adopt toward China or Cuba or Russia or Iran -- debates in
Washington are deep, intense, and sometimes bitter. To take just a single example from recent
history, the Obama administration's decision to endorse a surge in Afghanistan came only
after extended deliberation and soul-searching, and it included a major, and highly
controversial, element of restraint -- a very public deadline to begin a graduated
withdrawal.
Let's go back to 2009, because some of us actually remember these "deep, intense, and
sometimes bitter" times.
First, the only "bitter debates" were
between the military, which wanted to "surge" 40,000 troops into Afghanistan in the first year
of Obama's presidency, and the president, who had promised to bring the war to an end. After
months, Obama "compromised" when in December 2009, he announced a plan for 30,000 new troops
(which would bring the then-current number to 98,000) and a timetable for withdrawal of 18
months hence, which really pleased no one , not even the outlier restrainers, like
Mazarr suggests.
In fact, restrainers knew the timetable was bunk, and it was. In 2011, there were still
100,000 troops on the ground. In fact, it didn't get down to pre-2009 levels until December
2013.
But let it be clear: the only contention in December 2009 was over the timetable (the hawks
at the Heritage
Foundation and
AEI wanted an open-ended commitment) and whether the president should have been more
deferential to his generals (General Stanley McCrystal had just been installed as commander in
Afghanistan and
the mainstream media was fawning ). Otherwise, every major think tank in town and national
security pundit blasted out press releases and op-eds supporting the presidents strategy with
varying degrees of enthusiasm. None, aside from the usual TAC suspects, raised a serious
note against it. Examples:
John " Eating
Soup with a Knife " Nagl,
Center for a New American Security : "This strategy will protect the Afghan population with
international forces now and build Afghan security forces that in time will allow an American
drawdown–leaving behind a more capable Afghan government and a more secure region which
no longer threatens the United States and our allies." Each of the CNAS fellows on this press
release offer a variation on the same theme, with some more energetic than others. Ditto for
this one from The Council on Foreign
Relations .
Vanda Felhab-Brown,
Brookings Institution : "there would have been no chance to turn the security situation
around, take the momentum away from the Taliban, and hence, enable economic development and
improvements in governance and rule of law, without the surge."
David Ignatius, TheWashington
Post : "Obama has made what I think is the right decision: The only viable 'exit
strategy' from Afghanistan is one that starts with a bang -- by adding 30,000 more U.S. troops
to secure the major population centers, so that control can be transferred to the Afghan army
and police."
Ahead of Obama's decision (during the "bitter debate"), the Brookings Institution's Michael
O'Hanlon, a fixture on TheWashington Post op-ed pages and cable news
shows -- was pushing for
the maximum : "President Barack Obama should approve the full buildup his commanders are
requesting, even as he also steels the nation for a difficult and uncertain mission ahead."
Meanwhile, all of the so-called progressive national security groups, including the Center
for American Progress, Third Way, and the National Security Network, heralded Obama's plan as
"a smarter, stronger strategy that stated clear objectives and is based on American security
interests, namely preventing terrorist attacks."
"Counterintuitively," they said in a
joint statement , "sending more troops will allow us to get out more quickly."
Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has always
been a thoughtful skeptic, but he never fails to offer a hedge on whatever new plan comes down
the pike. Here he
is on Obama's surge , exemplifying how difficult it was/is for the establishment to just
call a failure a failure:
The strategy President Obama has set forth in broad terms can still win if the
Afghan government and Afghan forces become more effective, if NATO/ISAF national
contingents provide more unity of effort, if aid donors focus on the fact that
development cannot succeed unless the Afghan people see real progress where they live in the
near future, and if the United States shows strategic patience and finally provides
the resources necessary to win.
That's a lot of "ifs," but they provide amazing cover for those who don't want to admit the
cause is lost -- or can't -- because their work depends on giving the military and State
Department something to do. This is what happens when your think tank relies on government
contracts and grants and arms industry
money . According to TheNew York Times, major defense contractors Lockheed
Martin and Boeing gave some $77 million to a dozen think tanks between 2010 and 2016.
They aren't getting the money to advocate that troops, contractors, NGO's, and diplomats
come home and stay put. Money and agenda underwrites who is heading the think tanks,
who speaks for the national security programs, and who populates conferences,
book launches, speeches, and television appearances. Mazarr doesn't think this can be
quantified but it's rather easy. Google "2009 Afghanistan conference/panel/speakers" and plenty
of events come up. Pick any year, the results are predictable.
Here's a Brookings Panel in August 2009
, assessing the Afghanistan election, including Anthony Cordesman, Kimberly Kagan, and Michael
O'Hanlon. Not a lot of "diversity" there. Here's a taste of the 2009 annual CNAS
conference, which featured the usual suspects, including David Petraeus, Ambassador Nicholas
Burns, and 1,400 people in attendance. Aside from Andrew " Skunk
at the Garden Party " Bacevich, there was little to distinguish one world view from another
among the panelists. (CNAS was originally founded in support of Hillary Clinton's 2008
campaign; she spoke at the inaugural conference in 2007. Former president Michele Flournoy
later landed in the E-Ring of the Pentagon.) Meanwhile, here's a Hudson Institute
tribute to David Petraeus, attended by Scooter Libby, and a December 2009
Atlantic Council panel with -- you guessed it -- Kimberly Kagan and two military
representatives thrown in to pump up McChrystal and NATO and staying the course.
On top of it all, these events and their people never failed to get the attention of the
major corporate media, which just loved the idea of warrior-monk generals "liberating"
Afghanistan through a "government in a box" counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy.
Honestly, thank goodness for Cato , which before the new
Quincy Institute, was the only think tank to feature COIN critics like Colonel
Gian Gentile , and not just as foils. The Center for the National Interest also harbored
skeptics of the president's strategy. But they were outnumbered too.
This is what I want to convey. Mazarr boasts there is a galaxy of opinion today over U.S.
policy in Iran, China, Russia, NATO. I would argue there is a narrow spectrum of technical and
ideological disagreement in all these cases, but nowhere was it more important to have strong,
competing voices than during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and there was none of that in any
realistic sense of the word.
I challenge him and the others to take down the straw men and own the ecosystem to which
they owe their success in Washington (Mazarr just published a piece called "Toward a New
Theory of Power Projection" for goodness sake). Stop trying to pretend what is there isn't.
Realists and restrainers are happy to debate the merits of our different approaches, but
gaslighting is for nefarious lovers and we're no Ingrid Bergman. about the author
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, executive editor, has been writing for TAC since 2007, focusing on
national security, foreign policy, civil liberties and domestic politics. She served for 15
years as a Washington bureau reporter for FoxNews.com, and at WTOP News in Washington from
2013-2017 as a writer, digital editor and social media strategist. She has also worked as a
beat reporter at Bridge News financial wire (now part of Reuters) and Homeland Security
Today, and as a regular contributor at Antiwar.com. A native Nutmegger, she got her start
in Connecticut newspapers, but now resides with her family in Arlington, Va.
1) Allow CIA, corporations, media, to learn to topple nations
2) Use them to achieve geopolitical goals
3) Allow them to become self-directing and do the same to achieve corporate goals
4) They realize instead of your state using them, they can infiltrate and use the state
5) They realize they can topple your nation too for corporate goals
6) PROFIT
Pompeo is suggesting that Iran will spend tens of millions on planes, fly them unopposed
through the radar coverage of several countries, to let Iranian Kamikaze pilots crash them into
some temple in Nepal.
This does not make any sense. No foreign politician will be impressed by this 'argument'.
Pompeo's tweet is for consumption at home.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump introduced a long-awaited U.N. Security
Council (UNSC) draft resolution extending an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in
October, setting the stage for a great-power clash and likely veto in the U.N.'s principal
security body, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Foreign Policy .
...
If passed, the resolution would fall under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter, making it legally
binding and enforceable. But the U.S. measure, according to several U.N. Security Council
diplomats, stands little chance of being adopted by the 15-nation council.
...
Some council diplomats and other nonproliferation experts see the U.S. move as a way to score
political points at home , not to do anything about Iran's destabilizing activities in the
region.
"The skeptic in me says that the objective of this exercise is to go through the arms
embargo resolution, and when it fails, to use that as an excuse to get a snapback of the
embargo, and if and when that fails too, to use as a political talking point in the election
campaign ," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department nonproliferation official now at
the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Since China and Russia are almost certain
to ignore any U.N. arms embargo forced by U.S. maneuvers, the practical impact on Iran's
ability to cause mischief will be minimal, he said.
"It's not actually about stopping any arms from China and Russia, it's about winning a
political argument ," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Chinese government's top diplomat, Wang Yi,
both wrote to the 15-member council and U.N. chief Antonio Guterres as the United States
threatens to spark a so-called sanctions snapback under the Iran nuclear deal, even though
Washington quit the accord in 2018.
Lavrov wrote in the May 27 letter, made public this week, that the United States was being
"ridiculous and irresponsible."
"This is absolutely unacceptable and serves only to recall the famous English proverb
about having one's cake and eating it," Lavrov wrote.
Washington has threatened to trigger a return of U.N. sanctions on Iran if the Security
Council does not extend an arms embargo due to expire in October under Tehran's deal with
world powers to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
...
Lavrov cited a 1971 International Court of Justice opinion, which found that a fundamental
principle governing international relationships was that "a party which disowns or does not
fulfill its own obligations cannot be recognized as retaining the rights which it claims to
derive from the relationship."
Despite the evident failure to convince others the U.S. continues make stupid
arguments :
Russia and China will be isolated at the United Nations if they continue down the "road to
dystopia" by blocking a U.S. bid to extend a weapons ban on Iran, U.S. Iran envoy Brian Hook
told Reuters ahead of his formal pitch of the embargo to the U.N. Security Council on
Wednesday.
...
"We see a widening gap between Russia and China and the international community," Hook said
in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday evening.
The U.S. has left the JCPoA deal and can not claim a right under that deal to snap back the
sanctions that the deal has lifted. It is the U.S. that is isolated. Even its allies do not
support the attempt:
"We firmly believe that any unilateral attempt to trigger UN sanctions snapback would have
serious adverse consequences in the UNSC," the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and
Germany said in a statement on June 19. "We would not support such a decision which would be
incompatible with our current efforts to preserve the JCPoA."
The Trump policy against Iran has failed. He has tried a 'maximum pressure' campaign to
blackmail Iran into more concessions. But despite sanctions and economic problems caused by
them Iran is not willing to talk with him. Its conditions for talks
are clear :
"We have no problem with talks with the U.S., but only if Washington fulfils its obligations
under the nuclear deal, apologies and compensates Tehran for its withdrawal from the 2015
deal," Rouhani said in a televised speech.
The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, including the new sanctions against Syria under
the 'Ceasar's Law', have been helping Iran to
strengthen its position :
Iran is reaping huge benefits, including more robust allies and resistant strongholds as a
result of the US's flawed Middle Eastern policies. Motivated by the threat of the
implementation of "Caesar' Law", Iran has prepared a series of steps to sell its oil and
finance its allies, bypassing depletion of its foreign currency reserves.
Iranian companies found in Syria a paradise for strategic investment and offered the
needed alternative to a Syrian economy crippled by sanctions and nine years of war. Iran
considers Syria a fertile ground to expand its commerce and business like never before.
With Iran's influence growing and Russia making
inroads even with once staunch U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia it seems that real U.S.
influence in the Middle East is on a decisive downturn.
Whatever Pompous Pompeo says or tweets will not change that. But there's a sucker born every
minute. Some of those may still fall for the stuff he says.
--- Twice a year I ask readers of this blog to support my effort. Please consider contributing
.
Posted by b on June 24, 2020 at 17:10 UTC | Permalink
"... Once the FBI's malfeasance was uncovered, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case after Attorney General William Barr tapped an outside prosecutor to examine the FBI's conduct. Judge Sullivan rejected the DOJ's request - instead calling on an outside lawyer to make arguments against the DOJ's move to drop the case. ..."
"... Shortly before the DOJ move to dismiss, former Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack suddenly withdrew from the case (and others). Flynn's new attorney, Sidney Powell, said that government documents revealed "further evidence of misconduct by Mr. Van Grack specifically." ..."
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 - 04:12 Update (2135ET): Missouri appellate attorney John Reeves has weighed in
on today's decision by the US Court of Appeals for DC ordering Judge Emmett Sullivan to grant a
DOJ request to drop the case against Michael Flynn.
The opinion, authored by one of the three judges on the panel, Neomi J. Rao, " thoroughly
demolishes " a dissenting opinion by Judge Robert Wilkins - who Reeves thinks was so off-base
that he " shot himself in the foot " when it comes to any chance of an 'en-banc review' in
which the Flynn decision would be kicked back for a full review by the DC appellate court.
Reeves, who has written filings for US Supreme Court cases, unpacks Rao's "outstanding
opinion" in the below Twitter thread, conveniently adding which page you can find what he's
referring to ( condensed below after the first tweet, emphasis ours ):
THREAD re: Flynn mandamus opinion
1) Judge Rao's opinion--joined by Judge Henderson--granting Flynn mandamus is outstanding not
only for its legal reasoning, but also for how it COMPLETELY EVISCERATES Judge Wilkins'
dissenting opinion. https://t.co/LBqGihkrMH
In all my years of appellate practice, I don't think I've ever seen a non-US Supreme Court
appellate opinion that so thoroughly demolishes a dissenting opinion as this one. Judge Rao
could not have done better in writing the opinion , and it should be required law school
rdg.
In addition, Judge Wilkins' dissenting opinion is so off-the-mark that I believe he has shot
himself in the foot for purposes of en banc review --in other words, he has ensured that
otherwise-sympathetic judges on the DC Circuit will vote against en banc review.
Judge Rao comes out swinging by holding that its earlier opinion in Fokker "foreclose[s] the
district court's proposed scrutiny of the government's motion to dismiss the Flynn
prosecution." p. 7.
In relying on Fokker, Judge Rao explicitly rejects Judge Wilkinson's argument that Fokker's
holding is dicta (that is, non-binding) . She holds Fokker "is directly controlling here." p.
14.
Keep in mind that Fokker was written by Chief Judge Srinivasan, an OBAMA appointee. Judge
Srinivasan does NOT want Fokker's legitimacy undermined , no matter his politics.
Judge Wilkins' dissent implies that Fokker was wrongly decided , and that it conflicts with
other federal appellate courts. See p. 23 of 28. Judge Srinivasan will NOT be impressed by this
argument in deciding whether to grant en banc rehearing . Fokker does not create a split.
Judge Rao goes on to emphasize that while judicial inquiry MAY be justified in some
circumstances, Flynn's situation "is plainly not the rare case where further judicial inquiry
is warranted." p. 6.
Rao notes that Flynn agrees with the Govt.'s dismissal motion, so there's no risk of his
rights being violated. In addition, the Government has stated insufficient evidence exists to
convict Flynn . p. 6.
Rao also holds that " a hearing cannot be used as an occasion to superintend the
prosecution's charging decisions. " p. 7.
But by appointing amicus and attempting to hold a hearing on these matters, the district
court is inflicting irreparable harm on the Govt. because it is subjecting its prosecutorial
decisions to outside inquiry. p. 8
Thus, Judge Rao holds, it is NOT true that the district court has "yet to act" in this
matter, contrary to Judge Wilkins' assertions. p. 16.
" [T]he district court HAS acted here....[by appointing] one private citizen to argue that
another citizen should be deprived of his liberty regardless of whether the Executive Branch is
willing to pursue the charges. " p. 16. This justified mandamus being issued NOW.
Judge Rao also makes short work of Judge Wilkins' argument that the court may not consider
the harm to the Government in deciding whether to grant mandamus bc the Government never filed
a petition for mandamus. p. 17.
Judge Rao notes " [o]ur court has squarely rejected this argument, " and follows with a
plethora of supporting citations. p. 17.
Judge Rao also notes--contrary to what many legal commentators have misled the public to
believe--that it is "black letter law" that the Govt. can seek dismissal even after a guilty
plea is made . This does not justify greater scrutiny by the district court. p. 6, footnote
1.
As to Judge Wilkins' argument that a district court may conduct greater scrutiny where, as
here, the Govt. reverses its position in prosecuting a case, Judge Rao points out that " the
government NECESSARILY reverses its position whenever it moves to dismiss charges.... " p.
13
"Given the absence of any legitimate basis to question the presumption of regularity, there
is no justification to appoint a private citizen to oppose the government's motion to dismiss
Flynn's prosecution. " p. 13.
But Judge Rao saves her most stinging and brutal takedown of Judge Wilkins' dissent for the
end.....(cont)
Judge Rao writes that " the dissent swings for the fences--and misses--by analogizing a Rule
48(a) motion to dismiss with a selective prosecution claim. " p. 17. (cont)
While it is true that the Executive cannot selectively prosecute certain individuals "based
on impermissible considerations," p. 18, " the equal protection remedy is to dismiss the
prosecution, NOT to compel the Executive to bring another prosecution ." p. 18 (emph.
added).
And Judge Rao is just getting warmed up here....She then notes that " unwarranted judicial
scrutiny of a prosecutor's motion to dismiss puts the court in an entirely different position
[than selective prosecution caselaw assigns the court] ." p. 18 (cont)
"Rather than allow the Executive Branch to dismiss a problematic prosecution, the court [as
Judge Wilkins and Judge Sullivan would have it] assumes the role of inquisitor, prolonging a
prosecution deemed illegitimate by the Executive. " p. 18 (cont).
And now for Judge Rao's KO to Judge Wilkins and Judge Sullivan: " Judges assume that role in
some countries, but Article III gives no prosecutorial or inquisitional power to federal judges
." p. 18. (cont)
In other words, Judge Rao is likening Judge Wilkins' arguments, and Judge Sullivan's
actions, to what is done in non-democratic, third world countries . p. 18. Outstanding opinion.
No mercy . END
Like a liquid-metal terminator with half its head blown apart, the case against Michael
Flynn just won't die.
Hours after the US Court of Appeals for DC ordered Judge Emmett Sullivan to grant the DOJ's
request to drop the case, the retired 'resistance' judge hired to defend Sullivan's actions has
filed a motion requesting an extension to file his findings against Flynn .
The D.C. Appeals Court today vacated the lawless appointment of a left-wing shadow
prosecutor to go after Flynn.
Gleeson, the Resistance dead-ender hired by Sullivan, is ignoring the order and plowing
ahead with his illegal inquisition against Flynn. https://t.co/bOeG7pRJxv
In a major victory for Michael Flynn, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit has ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the Justice Department's request to
dismiss the case against the former Trump National Security Adviser.
"Upon consideration of the emergency petition for a writ of mandamus, the responses thereto,
and the reply, the briefs of amici curiae in support of the parties, and the argument by
counsel, it is ORDERED that Flynn's petition for a writ of mandamus be granted in part; the
District Court is directed to grant the government's Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss; nd the
District Court's order appointing an amicus is hereby vacated as moot , in accordance with the
opinion of the court filed herein this date," reads the order.
In their decision, the appeals court wrote: " Decisions to dismiss pending criminal charges
- no less than decisions to initiate charges and to identify which charges to bring - lie
squarely within the ken of prosecutorial discretion . "
"The Judiciary's role under Rule 48 is thus confined to "extremely limited circumstances in
extraordinary cases.""
Hence, no dice for Judge Sullivan.
Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request To Drop Criminal Case Against
General Michael Flynn!
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with
former Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition
following the 2016 US election. He later withdrew his plea after securing new legal counsel,
while evidence emerged which revealed the FBI had laid a '
perjury trap ' - despite the fact that the agents who interviewed him in January, 2017 said
they thought he was telling the truth . Agents persisted hunting Flynn despite the FBI's
recommendation to
close the case.
Once the FBI's malfeasance was uncovered, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case
after Attorney General William Barr tapped an outside prosecutor to examine the FBI's conduct.
Judge Sullivan rejected the DOJ's request - instead calling on an outside lawyer to make
arguments against the DOJ's move to drop the case.
In their Wednesday decision , the Appeals court noted that "the government's motion includes
an extensive discussion of newly discovered evidence casting Flynn's guilt into doubt."
Specifically, the government points to evidence that the FBI interview at which Flynn
allegedly made false statements was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's
counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn." -US Court of Appeals
Shortly before the DOJ move to dismiss, former Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack suddenly
withdrew from the case (and others). Flynn's new attorney, Sidney Powell, said that government
documents revealed "further evidence of misconduct by Mr. Van Grack specifically."
Sullivan urged the federal appeals court to also reject Flynn's bid to bring an end to the
case, which has now ruled against the judge .
An appeals court in Washington, DC, ruled that the case against President Trump's one-time
national security adviser, Michael Flynn, must end. The Justice Department had dropped charges
against Flynn, but his case remained open. In a ruling issued on Wednesday, the Washington DC
Circuit Court of Appeals effectively ended the case against Flynn, ordering federal judge Emmet
Sullivan to heed the Justice Department's advice and close the case. Sullivan had attempted to
keep the case active, even though the Justice Department dropped its charges against Flynn last
month.
The appeals battle was a last-ditch showdown between Flynn and the Justice Department on one
side, and Sullivan on the other. Though reporters as recently as last week reckoned the appeals
court would side with Sullivan, they were proven wrong on Wednesday morning.
Obama did the JCPOA because he was forced to. The Syrian War was taking longer than
expected. The thinking in the early part of the war was that "the road to Tehran runs
through Damascus".
In fact, JCPOA was so never ratified by US Congress. That's why Trump could so easily end
US participation (as intended/expected). Iran has always been in the cross-hairs. The only
question is one of timing.
Obama also tried to milk the "Iran peace agreement" for public relations benefits but this
couldn't cover his warmongering and war crimes:
his failure to stop the wars in Iraq (Obama wanted to stay but Iraq demanded that US
troops be subject to US laws) and Afghanistan;
his free pass to CIA for rendition and torture (he actually outsourced it to other
countries) and his nonchalance regarding NSA spying;
his failure to close Guantanamo (yet another broken campaign promise);
his extra-legal bombing campaign in Libya (UN had only authorized a No-Fly Zone) -
spearheaded by his SecState Hillary Clinton;
his covert war in Syria (with John McCain's blessing);
his "wilful decision" to allow the rise of ISIS (which many now believe is
sponsored by CIA/Mossad/MIT/KSA).
@Emslander
Hannah Arendt noted the 'banality of evil' long ago. It's pretty common, sad to say.
The military is filled with 'ordinary' people who apparently have no qualms about
murdering anyone their 'superiors' point to and say, "Kill!" They are just following orders,
after all.
The number of 'evil players' is simply staggering, whether we want to admit it or not. And
yes, they DO drink watery beer and watch "Wheel of Fortune" and have bar-b-ques. John Wayne
Gacy comes to mind immediately. Who knows who our neighbors really are, deep down inside?
As for naming names, gosh, I seem to have lost my DARPA personnel directory of evil
geniuses, and my CIA directory of same as well.
(But as for who REALLY controls things and gives the orders, I think you may have nailed
it with Sister Aimee. And she was HOT in her day, and apparently knew how to have a good
time. Hallelujah, brother ..)
The banality of evil is often not known until revisionist historians are able to make
connections post facto. In the moment people do not have enough information to make informed
decisions.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now,
and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality --
judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can
study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do."
For example, during the French Revolution most of the participants had no idea of what a
Jacobian was.
Or, during the Bolshevik Revolution, most participants had no idea of who Kuhn and Loeb
was.
Or, before WW1 was the machinations of the Milner Group known?
Or, before WW2, the machinations of Zionists to get Balfour.
Or, how Focus group had gotten to Churchill with loans.
Why the evil? It is usually hidden string pullers who are afraid of losing their vaunted
position in ruling hierarchy. They may actually think they are doing good, because doing good
is defined as "what is good for me, or my in-group."
Yes, Nudelman and her ilk are rabidly anti-Russian. But what they did in Ukraine revealed a
very different thing: globohomo elites are mentally degenerate, they cannot foresee even
immediate consequences of their moves.
There was a joke in Russia that for the coup in 2014 in Kiev Obama deserves a medal "For
the liberation of Crimea" (there was a medal of this name in WWII). There was another joke,
that Ukraine without Crimea is like a purebred stallion without balls.
Neocons planned to make Ukraine a battering rum against Russia. They did not understand
that a log rotten through and through cannot serve as a battering ram. Now they are stuck
with that wreck ("you break it – you own it" rule) and don't know what to do with it.
Previous US administration and DNC big shots (Biden, Pelosi, Schiff, and Co) used it mostly
as a rout of stealing US taxpayers' money. Current administration does not seem to have even
this use for it. The US keeps proving the age-old wisdom that when you see your enemy
committing suicide, do not interfere. Putin appears to have a huge stock of popcorn.
"... It's because the Democrats think that kowtowing to BLM will give them the winning edge in the November balloting. That's what it's all about. That's why they draped themselves in Kente cloth and knelt for the cameras. They think their black constituents are too stupid to see through their groveling fakery. They think that blacks will forget that Joe Biden pushed through legislation "which eliminated parole for federal prisoners and limited the amount of time sentences could be reduced for good behavior." ..."
"... The stupidity of the Dems was shown this week when they agreed to three Biden/Trump debates. They should leave him in his basement and hope for the best. They feature political ads where Biden slurs his speech! These are professionals, so it tells me they spent all day and did 40 takes and this was the best he could do. The election will be great comedy, or perhaps ..."
"... Clinton is the best evidence that certain people agree to be blackmailed in exchange for power, as Andrew Anglin wrote this week. ..."
"This is not a momentary civil disturbance. This is a serious, and highly organized
political movement It is deep and profound and has vast political ambitions. It is insidious,
it will grow. It's goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge western civilization
itself. This is an ideological movement Even now, many of us pretend this is about police
brutality. We think we can fix it by regulating chokeholds or spending more on de-escalation
training. We're too literal and good-hearted to understand what's happening. But we have no
idea what we are up against. ..These are not protests. This is a totalitarian political
movement and someone needs to save the country from it." Tucker
Carlson
Tucker Carlson is right, the protests and riots are not a momentary civil disturbance. They
are an attack the Constitutional Republic itself, the heart and soul of American democracy. The
Black Lives Matter protests are just the tip of the spear, they are an expression of public
outrage that is guaranteed under the first amendment. But don't be deceived, there's more here
than meets the eye. BLM is funded by foundations that seek to overthrow our present form of
government and install an authoritarian regime guided by technocrats, oligarchs and
corporatists all of who believe that Chinese-type despotism is far-more compatible with
capitalism than "inefficient" democracy. The chaos in the streets is merely the beginning of an
excruciating transition from one system to another. This is an excerpt from an article by F.
William Engdahl at Global Research:
"By 2016, Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network .. That
year the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led
Movement Fund (BLMF), "a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the
Movement for Black Lives coalition" in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros
foundations had already given some $33 million in
grants to the Black Lives Matter movement .. ..
The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to
the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations." (
"America's Own Color
Revolution ", Global Research)
$100 million is alot of money. How has that funding helped BLM expand its presence in
politics and social media? How many activists and paid employees operate within the network
disseminating information, building new chapters, hosting community outreach programs, and
fine-tuning an emergency notification system that allows them to put tens of thousands of
activists on the streets in cities across the country at a moment's notice? Isn't that what
we've seen for the last three weeks, throngs of angry protestors swarming in more than 400
cities across America all at the beck-and-call of a shadowy group whose political intentions
are still not clear?
And what about the rioting, looting and arson that broke out in numerous cities following
the protests? Was that part of the script too? Why haven't BLM leaders condemned the
destruction of private property or offered a public apology for the downtown areas that have
been turned into wastelands? In my own hometown of Seattle, the downtown corridor– which
once featured Nordstrom, Pottery Barn and other upscale retail shops– is now a
checkerboard of broken glass, plywood covers and empty streets all covered in a thick layer of
garish spray-paint. The protest leaders said they wanted to draw attention to racial injustice
and police brutality. Okay, but how does looting Nordstrom help to achieve that goal?
And what role have the Democrats played in protest movement?
They've been overwhelmingly supportive, that's for sure. In fact, I can't think of even one
Democrat who's mentioned the violence, the looting or the toppling of statues. Why is that?
It's because the Democrats think that kowtowing to BLM will give them the winning edge in
the November balloting. That's what it's all about. That's why they draped themselves in Kente
cloth and knelt for the cameras. They think their black constituents are too stupid to see
through their groveling fakery. They think that blacks will forget that Joe Biden pushed
through legislation "which eliminated parole for federal prisoners and limited the amount of
time sentences could be reduced for good behavior."
According to the Black Agenda
Repor t: "Biden and (South Carolina's Strom) Thurmond joined hands to push 1986 and 1988
drug enforcement legislation that created the nefarious sentencing disparity between crack and
powder cocaine as well as other draconian measures that implicate him as one of the initiators
of what became mass incarceration. " Biden also spearheaded "the attacks on Anita Hill when she
came forward to testify against the supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas". All told, Biden's
record on race is much worse than Trump's despite the media's pathetic attempts to portray
Trump as Adolph Hitler. It's just more bunkum from the dissembling media.
Bottom line: The Democrats think they can ride racial division and social unrest all the way
to the White House. That's what they are betting on.
So, yes, the Dems are exploiting the protests for political advantage, but it goes much
deeper than that. After all, we know from evidence that was uncovered during the Russiagate
investigation, that DNC leaders are intimately linked to the Intel agencies, law enforcement
(FBI), and the elite media. So it's not too much of a stretch to assume that these deep state
agents and assets work together to shape the narrative that they think gives them the best
chance of regaining power. Because, that's what this is really all about, power. Just as
Russiagate was about power (removing the president using disinformation, spies, surveillance
and other skulduggery.), and just as the Covid-19 fiasco was essentially about power
(collapsing the economy while imposing medical martial law on the population.), so too, the BLM
protest movement is also about power, the power to inflict massive damage on the country's main
urban centers with the intention of destabilizing the government, restructuring the economy and
paving the way for a Democratic victory in November. It's all about power, real, unalloyed
political muscle.
Surprisingly, one of the best critiques of what is currently transpiring was written by
Niles Niemuth at the World Socialist Web Site. Here's what he said about the widespread
toppling of statues:
"The attacks on the monuments were pioneered by the increasingly frenzied attempt by the
Democratic Party and the New York Times to racialize American history, to create a
narrative in which the history of mankind is reduced to the history of racial struggle. This
campaign has produced a pollution of democratic consciousness, which meshes entirely with the
reactionary political interests driving it.
It is worth noting that the one institution seemingly immune from this purge is the
Democratic Party, which served as the political wing of the Confederacy and, subsequently,
the KKK.
This filthy historical legacy is matched only by the Democratic Party's contemporary
record in supporting wars that, as a matter of fact, primarily targeted nonwhites. Democrats
supported the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and under Obama destroyed Libya and Syria. The
New York Times was a leading champion and propagandist for all of these war." (
"Hands
off the monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant!, WSWS)
What the author is referring to is The 1619 Project, which is a racialized version of
American history that was published by the Times on August 19, 2019. The deliberately-distorted
version of history was cobbled together in anticipation of increasing social unrest and racial
antagonism. The rioting, looting and vast destruction of America's urban core can all be traced
back to a document that postulates that the country was founded on racial hatred and
exploitation. In other words, The 1619 Project provides the perfect ideological justification
for the chaos and violence that has torn the country apart for the last three weeks. This is an
excerpt from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:
"The essays featured in the magazine are organized around the central premise that all of
American history is rooted in race hatred -- specifically, the uncontrollable hatred of
"black people" by "white people." Hannah-Jones writes in the series' introduction:
"Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country. "
This is a false and dangerous conception. DNA is a chemical molecule that contains the
genetic code of living organisms and determines their physical characteristics and
development . Hannah-Jones's reference to DNA is part of a growing tendency to derive
racial antagonisms from innate biological processes .where does this racism come from? It
is embedded, claims Hannah-Jones, in the historical DNA of American "white people." Thus, it
must persist independently of any change in political or economic conditions .
. No doubt, the authors of The Project 1619 essays would deny that they are predicting
race war, let alone justifying fascism. But ideas have a logic; and authors bear
responsibility for the political conclusions and consequences of their false and misguided
arguments." ("The New York Times's 1619
Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history", World Socialist Web
Site)
Keep in mind, this essay in the WSWS was written a full year before BLM protests broke out
across the country. Was Hannah-Jones enlisted to create a document that would provide the dry
tinder for the massive and coordinated demonstrations that have left the country stunned and
divided?
Probably, after all, (as noted above) the author's theory is that one race is genetically
programed to exploit the other. ( "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country. ")
Well, if we assume that whites are genetically and irreversibly "racist", then we must also
assume that the country that these whites founded is racist and evil. Thus, the only logical
remedy for this situation, is to crush the white segment of the population, destroy their
symbols, icons, and history, and replace the system of government with one that better reflects
the values of the emerging non-Caucasian majority. Simply put, The Project 1619 creates the
rationale for sustained civil unrest, deepening political polarization and violent
revolution.
The 1619 Project is a calculated provocation meant to exacerbate racial animosities and pave
the way to open conflagration. And it has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. The
nation is split into warring camps while Washington has devolved into fratricidal warfare. Was
that the objective, to destabilize the country in preparation for the dissolution of the
current system followed by a fundamental restructuring of the government consistent with the
identity politics lauded by the Democrats?
The Democrats, the Intel agencies and the media are all in bed together fomenting unrest
with the intention of decimating the economy, crushing the emerging opposition and imposing
their despotic one-party system on all of us. Here's a clip from a piece by Paul Craig Roberts
that sums up the role of the New York Times in inciting race-based violence:
"The New York Times editorial board covers up the known indisputable truth with their
anti-white "1619 project," an indoctrination program to inculcate hatred of white people in
blacks and guilt in white people.
Why does the New York Times lie, brainwash blacks into hatred of whites, and attempt to
brainwash whites into guilt for the creation of a New World labor force four centuries ago?
Why do Americans tolerate the New York Times fomenting of racial hatred in a multicultural
society?
The New York Times is a vile organization. The New York Times attempts to discredit the
President of the United States and did all it could to frame him on false charges. The New
York Times painted General Flynn, who honorably served the US, as a Russian agent and enabled
General Flynn's frame-up on false and now dropped charges. The New York Times spews hatred of
white people. And now the New York Times accuses the American military of celebrating white
supremacism.
Does America have a worse enemy than the New York Times? The New York Times is clearly and
intentionally making a multicultural America impossible . By threatening white people with
the prospect of hate-driven racial violence, the New York Times editorial board is fomenting
the rise of white supremacy." (
"The New York Times Editorial Board Is a Threat to Multicultural America ", The Unz
Review)
The editors of the Times don't hate whites, they are merely attacking the growing number of
disillusioned white working people who have left the Democratic party in frustration due to
their globalist policies regarding trade, immigration, offshoring, outsourcing and the
relentless hollowing out of the nation's industrial core . The Dems have abandoned these people
altogether and –now that they realize they will never be able to lure them back into
their camp– they've decided to wage a full-blown, scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners war
on them. They've decided to crush them mercilessly and fill their ranks with multi-ethnic,
bi-racial groups that will work for pennies on the dollar. (which will keep the Dems corporate
supporters happy.) So, no, the Times does not hate white people. What they hate is the growing
populist movement that derailed Hillary Clinton and put anti-globalist Trump in the White
House. That's the real target of this operation, the disillusioned throng of working people who
have washed their hands of the Democrats for good. Here's more background from Paul Craig
Roberts:
"On August 12 Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, met with the Times'
employees to refocus the Times' attack on Trump . The Times, Baquet said, is shifting from
Trump-Russia to Trump's racism. The Times will spend the run-up to the 2020 presidential
election building the Trump-is-a-racist narrative. Of course, if Trump is a racist it means
that the people who elected him are also racists. Indeed, in Baquet's view, Americans have
always been racist. To establish this narrative, the New York Times has launched the "1619
Project," the purpose of which is "to reframe the country's history."
According to the Washington Examiner, "The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that
everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven
throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It
begins with an overview of race in America -- 'Our democracy's founding ideals were false
when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.'
The premise that America originated as a racist slave state is to be woven into all
sections of the Times -- news, business, sports, travel, the entire newspaper. The project
intends to take the "reframing" of the United States into the schools where white Americans
are to be taught that they are racist descendants of slave holders. A participant in this
brainwashing of whites, which will make whites guilty and defenseless, says "this project
takes wing when young people are able to read this and understand the way that slavery has
shaped their country's history." In other words, the New York Times intends to make slavery
the ONLY explanation of America.
At the meeting of the executive editor of the New York Times with the Times' employees to
refocus the Times' attack on President Trump, Baquet said: "Race in the next year is going to
be a huge part of the American story." (
"Is White Genocide Possible? ", The Unz Review)
Repeat: "Race in the next year is going to be a huge part of the American story." Either
Baquet has a crystal ball or he had a pretty good idea of the way in which the 1619 Project was
going to be used . I suspect it was the latter.
For the last 3 and a half years, Democrats and the media have ridiculed anyone who opposes
their globalist policies as racist, fascist, misogynist, homophobic, Bible-thumping,
gun-toting, flag-waving, Nascar boosting, white nationalist "deplorables". Now they have
decided to intensify the assault on mainly white working people by preemptively destroying the
economy, destabilizing the country, and spreading terror far and wide. It's another vicious
psy-ops campaign designed to thoroughly demoralize and humiliate the enemy who just happen to
be the American people. Here's more form the WSWS:
" It is no coincidence that the promotion of this racial narrative of American history by
the Times, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party and the privileged upper-middle-class
layers it represents, comes amid the growth of class struggle in the US and around the
world.
The 1619 Project is one component of a deliberate effort to inject racial politics into
the heart of the 2020 elections and foment divisions among the working class. The Democrats
think it will be beneficial to shift their focus for the time being from the reactionary,
militarist anti-Russia campaign to equally reactionary racial politics." (" The New York
Times's 1619 Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history " WSWS)
Can you see how the protests are being used to promote the political objectives of elites
operating behind the mask of "impartial" reporting? The scheming NY Times has replaced the
enlightenment principles articulated in our founding documents with a sordid tale of racial
hatred and oppression. The editors seek to eliminate everything we believe as Americans so they
can brainwash us into believing that we are evil people deserving of humiliation, repudiation
and punishment. Here's more from the same article:
"In the months preceding these events, the New York Times, speaking for dominant sections
of the Democratic political establishment, launched an effort to discredit both the American
Revolution and the Civil War. In the New York Times' 1619 Project, the American Revolution
was presented as a war to defend slavery, and Abraham Lincoln was cast as a garden variety
racist
The attacks on the monuments to these men were pioneered by the increasingly frenzied
attempt by the Democratic Party and the New York Times to racialize American history, to
create a narrative in which the history of mankind is reduced to the history of racial
struggle . This campaign has produced a pollution of democratic consciousness, which meshes
entirely with the reactionary political interests driving it." (" The New York Times's 1619
Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history" , WSWS)
Ideas have consequences, and the incendiary version of events disseminated by the Times has
added fuel to a fire that's spread from one coast to the other. Given the damage that has been
done to cities across the country, it would be nice to know how Dean Baquet knew that "race was
going to play a huge part" in upcoming events? It's all very suspicious. Here's more:
" Given the 1619 Project's black nationalist narrative, it may appear surprising that
nowhere in the issue do the names Malcolm X or Black Panthers appear. Unlike the black
nationalists of the 1960s, Hannah-Jones does not condemn American imperialism. She boasts
that "we [i.e. African-Americans] are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the
United States military," and celebrates the fact that "we" have fought "in every war this
nation has waged." Hannah-Jones does not note this fact in a manner that is at all critical.
She does not condemn the creation of a "volunteer" army whose recruiters prey on
poverty-stricken minority youth. There is no indication that Hannah-Jones opposes the "War on
Terror" and the brutal interventions in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria -- all
supported by the Times -- that have killed and made homeless upwards of 20 million people. On
this issue, Hannah-Jones is remarkably "color-blind." She is unaware of, or simply
indifferent to, the millions of "people of color" butchered and made refugees by the American
war machine in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa." (" The New York Times's 1619
Project: A racialist falsification of American and world histor y", WSWS)
So, black nationalists like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers are excluded from the The 1619
Project's narrative, but the author boasts that blacks "are the most likely of all racial
groups to serve in the US military"?? How does that happen unless Hannah-Jones was coached by
Democrat leaders about who should and shouldn't be included in the text? None of this passes
the smell test. It all suggests that the storyline was shaped by people who had a specific goal
in mind. That isn't history, it's fiction written by people who have an ax to grind. The Times
even admitted as much in response to the blistering criticism by five of "the most widely read
and respected authorities on US history." The New York TimesMagazine editor in
chief Jake Silverstein rejected the historians' objections saying:
"The project was intended to address the marginalization of African-American history in
the telling of our national story and examine the legacy of slavery in contemporary American
life. We are not ourselves historians, it is true. We are journalists, trained to look at
current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way it is?"
WTF! "We are not ourselves historians"? That's the excuse?? Give me a break!
The truth is that there was never any attempt to provide an accurate account of events. From
the very onset, the goal was to create a storyline that fit the politics, the politics of
provocation, incitement, racial hatred, social unrest and violence. That's what the Times and
their allies wanted, and that's what they got.
The Deep State Axis: CIA, DNC, NYT
The three-way alliance between the CIA, the Elite Media, and the Democratic leadership has
clearly strengthened and grown since the failed Russiagate fiasco. All three parties were
likely involved in the maniacal hyping of the faux-Covid pandemic which paved the way for
Depression era unemployment, tens of thousands of bankrupt businesses and a sizable portion of
the US population thrust into destitution. Now, these deep state loyalists are promoting a
"falsified" race-based version of history that pits one group against the other while diverting
attention from the deliberate destruction of the economy and the further consolidation of
wealth in the hands of the 1 percent.
Behind the veil of the protest movement, the war on the American people is gaining pace.
Stopped reading the Times after the buildup to the Iraq War, when it was clear they were
lying. Everyone please stop reading the Times, and in particular stop referring to what they
are writing. Act like they don't exist. If enough do, they won't.
The stupidity of the Dems was shown this week when they agreed to three Biden/Trump debates.
They should leave him in his basement and hope for the best. They feature political ads where
Biden slurs his speech! These are professionals, so it tells me they spent all day and did 40
takes and this was the best he could do. The election will be great comedy, or perhaps
This is all planned. Biden will be forced to drop out and Bloomberg or even Clinton will
arise.
"Tucker Carlson is right, the protests and riots are not a momentary civil disturbance. They
are an attack the Constitutional Republic itself, the heart and soul of American democracy."
I am reminded of david horowitz and chrissy hitchens
And how they promoted Israeli interests after first pretending to be independent thinkers
to gain creed for the switch. Standard zionazi-gay psywar tactic.
The stupidity of the Dems was shown this week when they agreed to three Biden/Trump
debates.
This is all planned. Biden will be forced to drop out and Bloomberg or even Clinton will
arise.
Stupid and planned?
Clinton is the best evidence that certain people agree to be blackmailed in exchange for
power, as Andrew Anglin wrote this week. Why should DNC care if Trump is 're-elected'? And if
they don't care, who not take a stab at installing an intersectional DNC pinnacle fraudster
via the griftiest, most insulting, infuriating way possible? They can't lose.
"... I see Geo has already pointed out the obvious absurdity that any of these criminal were in the least bit worried bout US security. If anything, they were overtly sacrificing US security on behalf of an enemy state. ..."
All were hawks who believed that the United States had the right to do whatever it
considered necessary to enhance its own security,
I see Geo has already pointed out the obvious absurdity that any of these criminal were in
the least bit worried bout US security. If anything, they were overtly sacrificing US security
on behalf of an enemy state. Not sure why you write stuff like that Mr. G, unless you just
expect people to ignore it as perfunctory tripe, but there are some, no doubt, who read those
words and assume you are actually saying they care about the US. When you and I both know they
don't.
Clinton and Obama were so-called liberal interventionists who sought to export something
called democracy to other countries in an attempt to make them more like Peoria.
Nope.
They were and are both amoral, opportunistic zio-whores, whose only ideology is what's good
for Clinton and Obama, respectively. Clinton didn't bomb Serbia out of some humanitarian love
of freedom and democracy, and Obama didn't destroy Libya and Syria except to serve his
zio-masters. Duh.
So the difference between neocons and liberal interventionists is one of style rather than
substance. And, by either yardstick all-in-all, Trump looks pretty good,
I was telling my gal the other day, that Trump could be The One to End the Fed, by allowing
Goldman Sachs and the rest of them to feast at the Treasury to their heart's content.
I reminded her of Jackson's quote about hurting ten thousand families, in order to save
fifty thousand. And in a similar vein, Trump could be setting up the collapse of the ZUS
economy, which will hurt hundreds of millions, but if he could collapse the dollar, he very
well might save billions of people's lives.
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have
used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you
divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me
that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand
families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will
ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.
I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."
– Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)
Nuland is most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European
role
I beg to differ, Mr. G.
I would posit that her most famous utterings were when she imperiously demanded that "Yats
is our guy". IOW, the way she was promoting "democracy" in Ukraine, was by corrupting the
system with 5 billions of tax payer lucre- to the point where she, *personally* could decide
who- (Jewish banker) would be president in a nation thousands of miles away. That's how
the ZUS promotes "democracy" in foreign lands. (and, I suspect that it was the way that call
was leaked, that is the fount of all the rage at Russia, for "Russian hacking', breaking
long-standing diplomatic protocols against exposing other nation's treachery and corruption to
the 'little people').
Nuland's view . Russia to violate arms control treaties, international law, the
sovereignty of its neighbors, and the integrity of elections in the United States and
Europe
for Nuland to talk about 'International law and the 'integrity of European elections'.. is
like Jerry Sandusky lecturing people on child welfare.
That strategy required consistent U.S. leadership at the presidential level,
OK, so not only Nuland but also John Bolton is screeching that Trump is the disaster of our
times.
Not since John McCain has a mad dog Zionist insider been so full of hate for Trump.
Hmm..
@Druid55 That is
the western MSM sugared up version of what happened in Yugoslavia. Western MSM learned their
lesson about being truthful about war when US and friends were in Vietnam.
Lies and lies only come from western MSM these days so wars and regime change games can go
on with anyone noticing or caring.
Western MSM notifies their puppet readers that all the US and friends does is
"humanitarian" stuff these days. Most puppet readers lap up this junk.
March 24, 1999 will go down in history as a day of infamy. US-led NATO raped Yugoslavia.
Doing so was its second major combat operation.
It was lawless aggression. No Security Council resolution authorized it. NATO's
Operation Allied Force lasted 78 days.
Washington called it Operation Noble Anvil. Evil best describes it. On June 10,
operations ended.
From March 1991 through mid-June 1999, Balkan wars raged. Yugoslavia "balkanized" into
seven countries. They include Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Croatia and Slovenia.
Enormous human suffering was inflicted. Washington bears most responsibility.
"So the difference between neocons and liberal interventionists is one of style rather than
substance. And, by either yardstick all-in-all, Trump looks pretty good, but there has
nevertheless been a resurgence of neocon-think in his administration. "
Apr 27, 2017 This Is Already Putting an End to the Age of Globalization and Bankrupting the
United States (2004)
For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the homeland usually
requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting
for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. February 26, 2015 The
Neoconservative Threat To World Order
Scholars from Russia and from around the world, Russian government officials, and the
Russian people seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year the
friendly relations between America and Russia that President Reagan and President Gorbachev
succeeded in establishing.
"... First, our imperialists are the direct descendants intellectually, spiritually, and morally of the first WASP Empire, the first Anglo-Zionist Empire: the British Empire. And they have used their high IQs that are focused on grasping the One Ring to Rule Them All to locate where the Brit WASP Empire failed to achieve its goals, which allowed the collapse starting with World War 1. They are obsessed with that because they believe that if they can achieve what the Brit WASPs failed to achieve, then they can make the Anglo-Zionist Empire 2.0 as permanent as the Roman Empire – a Thousand Year Reich. ..."
"... And that is spiritually what all WASP imperialism, all Anglo-Zionist imperialism back to at least the Anglo-Saxon Puritans, is about: replacing the Roman Empire, which means replacing that which culturally led to, and was absolutely indispensable to, Christendom. ..."
"... Our 'foreign interventionists' have seen Russia under Putin rise from the ashes, and they intend to destroy Russia once and for all, so they then can reduce China and win The Great Game. And thus make Anglo-Zionist Empire greater than Roman Empire. ..."
"... The "foreign interventionists" want two things: Russia's mineral riches and its good gene pool (how do you think Middle Eastern Semites became blonde hair-blue eyed people who can easily blend into the West to undermine it from within in the first place to begin with?) ..."
Why do our 'foreign interventionists,' our 'permanent war for globalist perpetual peace'
crusaders, our Neocons, hate Russia so thoroughly and so centrally to their very beings?
First, our imperialists are the direct descendants intellectually, spiritually, and
morally of the first WASP Empire, the first Anglo-Zionist Empire: the British Empire. And
they have used their high IQs that are focused on grasping the One Ring to Rule Them All to
locate where the Brit WASP Empire failed to achieve its goals, which allowed the collapse
starting with World War 1. They are obsessed with that because they believe that if they can
achieve what the Brit WASPs failed to achieve, then they can make the Anglo-Zionist Empire
2.0 as permanent as the Roman Empire – a Thousand Year Reich.
And that is spiritually what all WASP imperialism, all Anglo-Zionist imperialism back to
at least the Anglo-Saxon Puritans, is about: replacing the Roman Empire, which means
replacing that which culturally led to, and was absolutely indispensable to, Christendom.
What they wish to redo and achieve that the Brit WASPs failed in is winning The Great
Game: becoming total master of Eur-Asia. And that requires taking out Russia and China. In
the 19th century, China was sicker than even the Ottoman Turkish Empire. To play the long
game to destroy Russia, the Brit WASPs allied with the Turks to prevent Russia acting to push
the Ottomans out of Europe. Brit WASP secret service in eastern Europe was focused on
reducing Russia significantly right through the Bolshevik Revolution, even with Russia
naively, stupidly allied with the British Empire in World War 1.
Our 'foreign interventionists' have seen Russia under Putin rise from the ashes, and they
intend to destroy Russia once and for all, so they then can reduce China and win The Great
Game. And thus make Anglo-Zionist Empire greater than Roman Empire.
Second, our Neocons are the spiritual and intellectual descendants not just of
Trotskyites, but of all Russia-hating Jews with ties to Central and/or Eastern Europe. For
them, Russia always is the evil that must be destroyed for the good of Jews.
Everything at its bedrock is about theology, is about the choice between Christ and
Christendom or the Chaos of anti-Christendom.
The "foreign interventionists" want two things: Russia's mineral riches and its good gene
pool (how do you think Middle Eastern Semites became blonde hair-blue eyed people who can
easily blend into the West to undermine it from within in the first place to begin with?)
And they won't stop until they get what they want, by hook or crook!
"... Of course ultimately you reach a point where no one truly understands what is real and what isn't any more. ..."
"... Boris Johnson PM of the UK? Surely not, Theresa May? I can barely wipe the smirk from my face. 4th and 5th rate politicians relying on SPADs to run the country. ..."
"... Reading his recent essay on the truths of WWII ( http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527 ) yet again sees him posting uncomfortable realities to a West knee deep in vassalage to a crumbling US. ..."
"... Change is coming whether we like it or not, with or without Putin, we'd best tend our own garden and stop worrying about an opposition that simply doesn't exist. ..."
Gerald says:
June 20, 2020 at 5:34 pm surely 'legitimacy' goes to the victor. Once you've won
you can build a sort of legitimacy that the majority will agree with (whether its real
or not) of course if you are a kind of despotic dictatorship (as appears to be
happening in terms of western neoliberal capitalism) then you will merely do as you
wish regardless until confronted with overwhelming opposition at which point you will
infiltrate and co-opt said opposition, pay lip service to their vague claim for
'rights' and continue on your merry way.
I always thought that the greatest thing that the capitalists did in the 20th
century was to get the slaves to love their slavery, its all advertising, hollywood, TV
that's all that politics has become, certainly in the West. Edward Bernays has a lot to
answer for.
Of course ultimately you reach a point where no one truly understands what is
real and what isn't any more.
Boris Johnson PM of the UK? Surely not, Theresa May? I can barely wipe the smirk
from my face. 4th and 5th rate politicians relying on SPADs to run the
country.
There is no wonder that Putin looks like the greatest 21st century leader, the last
of a dying breed. Reading his recent essay on the truths of WWII ( http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527
) yet again sees him posting uncomfortable realities to a West knee deep in vassalage
to a crumbling US.
Change is coming whether we like it or not, with or without Putin, we'd best
tend our own garden and stop worrying about an opposition that simply doesn't
exist.
"... From wiping out the ability of regular folks to declare bankruptcy (something supported by our founding fathers who were NOT socialists), to shipping our industrial base to communist China (which in less enlightened days would have been termed treason), to spending tens of trillions of dollars bailing out and subsiding the big banks (that's not a misprint), to supporting "surprise medical billing," to opening the borders to massive third-world immigration so that wages can be driven down and reset and profits up (As 2015 Bernie Sanders pointed out), Backstabbing Joe Biden is neoliberal scum pure and simple. ..."
"... It's astonishing that so many people will just blindly accept what they are told, that Biden is. "moderate." Biden is so far to the right, he makes Nixon look like Trotsky. ..."
"... Joe Biden is a crook and a con man. He has been lying his whole life. Claimed in his 1988 Campaign to have got 3 degrees at college and finished in top half of his class. Actually only got 1 degree & finished 76th out of 85 in his class. ..."
Yet another circus. The proles get to scream and holler, and when all is done, the oligarchy gets the policies it wants, the public
be damned. Our sham 'democracy' is a con to privatize power and socialize responsibility.
Although it is shocking to see such a disgusting piece of human garbage like Joe Biden get substantial numbers of people to
vote for him. Biden has never missed a chance to stab the working class in the back in service to his wealthy patrons.
The issue is not (for me) his creepiness (I wouldn't much mind if he was on my side), nor even his Alzheimer's, but his established
track record of betrayal and corruption.
From wiping out the ability of regular folks to declare bankruptcy (something supported by our founding fathers who were NOT
socialists), to shipping our industrial base to communist China (which in less enlightened days would have been termed treason),
to spending tens of trillions of dollars bailing out and subsiding the big banks (that's not a misprint), to supporting "surprise
medical billing," to opening the borders to massive third-world immigration so that wages can be driven down and reset and profits
up (As 2015 Bernie Sanders pointed out), Backstabbing Joe Biden is neoliberal scum pure and simple.
It's astonishing that so many people will just blindly accept what they are told, that Biden is. "moderate." Biden is so
far to the right, he makes Nixon look like Trotsky. Heck, he makes Calvin Coolidge look like Trotsky.
Joe Biden is a crook and a con man. He has been lying his whole life. Claimed in his 1988 Campaign to have got 3 degrees at college and finished in top half of his class. Actually only got 1 degree & finished 76th out of 85 in his class.
"Why
does life almost come to a halt on June 22? And why does one feel a lump in the throat?"
This how Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to address the fateful day in 1941, when
Germany invaded Russia, with an extraordinarily detailed article on June 19: "75th
Anniversary of the Great Victory: Shared Responsibility to History and our Future."
Citing archival data, Putin homes in on both world wars, adding important information not
widely known, and taking no liberties with facts well known to serious historians. As for the
"lump in the throat", the Russian president steps somewhat out of character by weaving in
some seemingly formative personal experiences of family loss during that deadly time and
postwar years. First, the history:
"On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union faced the strongest, most mobilized and skilled army
in the world with the industrial, economic, and military potential of almost all Europe
working for it. Not only the Wehrmacht, but also Germany's satellites, military contingents
of many other states of the European continent, took part in this deadly invasion.
"The most serious military defeats in 1941 brought the country to the brink of
catastrophe. By 1943 the manufacture of weapons and munitions behind the lines exceeded the
rates of military production of Germany and its allies. The Soviet people did something that
seemed impossible. the Red Army. no matter what anyone is trying to prove today ,
made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism Almost 27 million Soviet
citizens lost their lives, one in seven of the population the USA lost one in 320." [
Emphasis added .]
Somber factual recollections. Significant, too, is Putin's explicit criticism of "crimes
committed by the [Stalin] regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions."
Nor does he spare criticism of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, denouncing its "secret protocols
as "an act of personal power" which in no way reflected "the will of the Soviet people."
Putin notes that he asked for "the whole body of materials pertaining to contacts between
the USSR and Germany in the dramatic days of August and September 1939," and found facts
"known to very few these days" regarding Moscow's reaction to German demands on carving up
Poland (yet again). On this key issue, he cites, "paragraph 2 of the Secret Protocol to the
German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939", indicating that it throws new light on
Moscow's initial foot-dragging and its eventual decision to join in a more limited (for
Russia) partition.
Look it up. And while you're at it, GOOGLE Khalkhin Gol River and refresh your memory
about what Putin describes as "intense fighting" with Japan at the time.
The Russian president points out, correctly, that "the Red Army supported the Allied
landing in Normandy by carrying out the large-scale Operation Bagration in Belorussia", which
is actually an understatement. ( See: " Who Defeated the
Nazis: a Colloquy and " Once
We Were Allies; Then Came MICIMATT ."
"No matter what anyone is trying to prove today," writes Putin, who may have had in mind
the latest indignity from Washington; namely, the White House tweet on V-E day this year,
saying "On May 8, 1945,
America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis."
Lump in Throat
And why does one feel a lump rise in the throat? Putin asks rhetorically.
"The war has left a deep imprint on every family's history. Behind these words, there are
the fates of millions of people Behind these words, there is also the pride, the truth and
the memory.
"For my parents, the war meant the terrible ordeals of the Siege of Leningrad where my
two-year old brother Vitya died. It was the place where my mother miraculously managed to
survive. My father, despite being exempt from active duty, volunteered to defend his
hometown. He fought at the Nevsky Pyatachok bridgehead and was severely wounded. And the more
years pass, the more I treasure in my heart the conversations I had with my father and mother
on this subject, as well as the little emotion they showed.
"People of my age and I believe it is important that our children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren understand the torment and hardships their ancestors had to endure how
their ancestors managed to persevere and win. We have a responsibility to our past and our
future to do our utmost to prevent those horrible tragedies from happening ever again. Hence,
I was compelled to come out with an article about World War II and the Great Patriotic
War."
Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) eight years after the vicious siege by
the German army ended. Michael Walzer, in his War Against Civilians , notes, "More
people died in the 900-day siege of Leningrad than in the infernos of Hamburg, Dresden,
Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken together."
Putin notes that the "human truth" of war, "which is bitter and merciless, has been handed
down to us by writers and poets who walked through hell at the front. For my generation, as
well as for many others, their piercing trench prose and poems have left their mark on the
soul forever." He calls particular attention to a poem
by Alexander Tvardovsky , "I was killed near Rzhev," dedicated to those who fought the
formidable German Army Group Center.
Putin explains, "In the battles for Rzhev from October 1941 to March 1943, the Red Army
lost 1,342,888 people, including wounded and missing in action. For the first time, I call
out these terrible, tragic and far from complete figures collected from archive sources. I do
it to honor the memory of the feat of known and nameless heroes", who were largely ignored in
the postwar years.
The Germans were hardly the first to invade Russia. It was occupied for more than two
centuries beginning in 1240 by Mongols from the east, after which its western neighbor was
Europe, the most powerful and expansionist region in world history into the 20th century.
After the Mongols were finally driven out, in came invaders from Lithuania, Sweden, the
Hanseatic League, Napoleon and, 79 years ago today, Hitler.
"The Poet of Russian Grief"
Out of this history (and before the Nazi attack on June 22, 1941) came the deeply
compassionate 19th century poet Nikolay Nekrasov, who, after Pushkin, became my favorite
Russian poet. His poem, "Giving Attention to the Horrors of War") moved me deeply; I have
carried it with me from my college days when I committed it to memory.
I visited Moscow in April 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the meeting of
American and Russian troops on the Elbe at the end of WWII. It was a heartwarming observance
of the victory of our wartime Grand Alliance and a reminder of what might be possible seven
decades later. I was asked to speak at the ceremony celebrating the meeting on the Elbe, and
was happy to be able to feature Nekrasov's poem to compensate for my out-of-practice
Russian.
On June 22, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the Nazi attack on Russia, I was in Yalta,
Crimea, with an American citizens' delegation and was again asked to speak. It was an even
more appropriate occasion to recite Nekrasov's "Giving Attention to the Horrors of War," and
I shall never forget the poignant experience of personally witnessing, and feeling, just why
Nekrasov is called "the poet of Russian grief." There were several people in the audience old
enough to remember.
Finally, I recited Nekrasov again, in Brussels, at the annual EU Parliament Members' Forum
on Russia in early December 2015. My talk came on the second day of the Forum; until then,
almost all of the talks were pretty much head-speeches. So I tried a little heart therapy and
called my presentation "Stay Human." The late Giulietto Chiesa, one of the Forum moderators
recorded my speech and posted it on his website.
The poem can be heard from
minute 11:00 to 17:00 . There is some voice-over in Italian, but I spoke mostly in
English and some of that is intelligible – audible, I mean. There is no voice-over for
the Nekrasov poem. I shall provide a translation into English below:
Heeding the horrors of war,
At every new victim of battle
I feel sorry not for his friend, nor for his wife,
I feel sorry not even for the hero himself.
Alas, the wife will be comforted,
And best friends forget their friend;
But somewhere there is one soul –
Who will remember unto the grave!
Amidst the hypocrisy of our affairs
And all the banality and triviality
Unique among what I have observed in the world
Sacred, sincere tears –
The tears of poor mothers!
They do not forget their own children,
Who have perished on the bloody battlefield,
Just as the weeping willow never lifts
Its dangling branches
Suffice it to add that I confess to being what the Germans call a "Putin Versteher"
– literally, one who understands Putin. (Sadly, most Germans mean no compliment with
this appellation; quite the contrary.) As one who has studied Russia for half a century,
though, I believe I have some sense for where Russian leaders "are coming from."
That said, like almost all Americans, I cannot begin to know, in any adequate sense, what
it is actually like to be part of a society with a history of being repeatedly invaded and/or
occupied – whether from East or West. In my view, U.S. policy makers need to make some
effort to become, in some degree, Putin Verstehers, or the risk of completely unnecessary
armed confrontation will increase still more.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
Bolton, of course, dismissed the entire concept of diplomacy from the very start. He never
bought into the notion that North Korean officials could be talked to sensibly because they
were, well, insane. Bolton's version of North Korea diplomacy was to tighten the
economic screws, brandish the U.S. military, and wait until one of two things happened: 1) the
Kim regime surrendered its entire nuclear weapons program like Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, or
2) the Kim regime continued to spur Washington's demands, in which the White House would have
no option but to use U.S. military force. Bolton's
record is analogous to a stereotypical linebacker on an obscene amount of steroids -- smash
your opponent to pieces and don't think twice about it. Top Beauty Surgeon Says "Forget Facelifts, This at Home Tip is My #1 Wrinkle Red Del Mar
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The only problem:
North Korea isn't some helpless punter with string bean arms and a lanky midsection. It's a
nuclear weapons state fiercely proud of its independence and sovereignty, constantly on guard
for the slightest threat from a foreign power, and cognizant of its weakened position relative
to its neighbors. This is one of the prime reasons Bolton's obsession with the Libya-style
North Korea deal, in which Pyongyang would theoretically discard its entire nuclear apparatus
and allow U.S. weapons inspectors to take custody of its nuclear warheads before flying them
back to the U.S. for destruction, was
unworkable from the start. The Libya-model trumpeted by Bolton was a politically correct
way of demanding Pyongyang's total surrender -- an extremely naive goal if there ever was one.
When one remembers the fate of Qaddafi 8 years after he traded sanctions relief for his weapons
of mass destruction -- the dictator was assaulted and humiliated before being executed in the
desert -- even the word "Libya" is treated by the Kim dynasty as a threat to its existence. As
Paul Pillar wrote
in these pages more than two years ago, "Libya's experience does indeed weigh heavily on the
thinking of North Korean officials, who have taken explicit notice of that experience, as a
disincentive to reaching any deals with the United States about dismantling weapons
programs."
One can certainly take
issue with Trump's North Korea policy. Two years of personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un have yet to
result in the denuclearization Washington seeks (denuclearization is more of a slogan than a
realistic objective at this point, anyway). But Trump's strategy aside, Bolton's alternative
was worse. The president knew his former national security adviser's public insistence on the
Libya model was dangerously inept. He
had to walk back Bolton's
comments weeks later to ensure the North Koreans didn't pull out of diplomacy before it got
off the ground. Trump hasn't forgotten about the experience; on June 18, Trump tweeted
that "Bolton's dumbest of all statements set us back very badly with North Korea, even now. I
asked him, "what the hell were you thinking?"
Personally he is a bully and as such a coward: he can attack only a weaker opponent. His new
book shows that however discredited and intellectually thin his foreign policy views are, they
always rise to the top. To Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies
abroad.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is any rivalry. ..."
"... Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism, nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little thought to his nation. ..."
"... Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting off of his time in government. ..."
The release of John Bolton's book today has become a Washington cultural event, because he
is, by all measures, Washington's creature.
Those who dislike the Trump administration have been pleased to find in The Room Where It
Happened confirmation in much of what they already believed about the Ukraine scandal and
the president's lack of capacity for the job. Some accusations in the book, such as the story
about Trump seeking reelection help from China through American farm purchases, are new, and in
an alternative universe could have formed the basis of a different, or if Bolton had his way,
more comprehensive, impeachment inquiry.
While Bolton's book has been found politically useful by the president's detractors, the
work is also important as a first-hand account from the top of the executive branch over a
19-month period, from April 2018 to September 2019. It also, mostly inadvertently, reveals much
about official Washington, the incentive structures that politicians face, and the kind of
person that is likely to succeed in that system. Bolton may be a biased self-promoter, but he
is nonetheless a credible source, as his stories mostly involve conversations with other people
who are free to eventually tell their own side. Moreover, the John Bolton of The Room Where
It Happened is no different from the man we know from his three-decade career as a
government official and public personality. No surprises here.
There are three ways to understand John Bolton. In increasing order of importance, they are
intellectually, psychologically, and politically -- that is, as someone who is both a product
of and antagonist to the foreign-policy establishment -- in many ways typical, and in others a
detested outlier.
On the first of these, there simply isn't much there. Bolton takes the most hawkish position
on every issue. He wants war with North Korea and Iran, and if he can't have that, he'll settle
for destroying their economies and sabotaging any attempts by Trump to reach a deal with either
country. He takes the maximalist positions on great powers like China and Russia, and third
world states that pose no plausible threat like Cuba and Venezuela. At one point, he brags
about State reversing "Obama's absurd conclusion that Cuban baseball was somehow independent of
its government, thus in turn allowing Treasury to revoke the license allowing Major League
Baseball to traffic in Cuban players." How this helps Americans or Cubans is left
unexplained.
Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is
possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of
the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession
with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for
partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't
so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is
any rivalry.
Anyone who picks up Bolton's over 500-page memoir hoping to find serious reflection on the
philosophical basis of American foreign policy will be disappointed. The chapters are broken up
by topic area, most beginning with a short background explainer on Bolton's views of the issue.
In the chapter on Venezuela, we are told that overthrowing the government of that country is
important because of "its Cuba connection and the openings it afforded Russia, China, and
Iran." The continuing occupation of Afghanistan is necessary for preventing terrorists from
establishing a base, and, in an argument I had not heard anywhere before, for "remaining
vigilant against the nuclear-weapons programs in Iran on the west and Pakistan on the east."
Iran needs to be deterred, though from what we are never told.
Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his
own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn
that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's
judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP
clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society
or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at
home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's
views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism,
nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little
thought to his nation.
The more time one spends reading Bolton, the more one comes to the conclusion that the guy
just likes to fight. In addition to seeking out and escalating foreign policy conflicts, he
seems to relish going to war with the media and the rest of the Washington bureaucracy. His
book begins with a quote from the Duke of Wellington rallying his troops at Waterloo: "Hard
pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest." The back cover quotes the
epilogue on his fight with the Trump administration, responding "game on" to attempts to stop
publication. He takes a mischievous pride in recounting attacks from the media or foreign
governments, such as when he was honored to hear that North Korea worried about his influence
over the President. Bolton is too busy enjoying the fight, and as will be seen below, profiting
from it, to reflect too carefully on what it's all for.
Bolton could be ignored if he were simply an odd figure without much power. Yet the man has
been at the pinnacle of the GOP establishment for thirty years, serving appointed roles in
every Republican president since Reagan. The story of how he got his job in the Trump
administration is telling. According to Bolton's account, he was courted throughout the
transition process and the early days of the administration by Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner,
ironic considering the reputation of the former as a populist opposed to forever wars and the
latter as a more liberal figure within the White House. Happy with his life outside government,
Bolton would accept a position no lower than Secretary of State or National Security Advisor.
Explaining his reluctance to enter government in a lower capacity, Bolton provides a list of
his commitments at the time, including "Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Fox
News contributor; a regular on the speaking circuit; of counsel at a major law firm; member of
corporate boards; senior advisor to a global private-equity firm."
Clearly, being an advocate for policies that can destroy the lives of millions abroad, and a
complete lack of experience in business, have proved no hindrance to Bolton's success in
corporate America.
Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had
extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of
Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a
Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares
one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more
than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ricardel resigned after a dispute over preparations for the First Lady's trip to Africa, an
example of how too often in the Trump administration, nepotism and self-interest have been the
only checks on bad policy or even greater corruption ("Melania's people are on the warpath,"
Trump is quoted as saying). Another is when Trump, according to Bolton, was less than vigorous
in pursing destructive Iranian sanctions due to personal relationships with the leaders of
China and Turkey. At the 2019 G7 summit, when Pompeo and Bolton try to get Benjamin Netanyahu
to reach out to Trump to talk him out of meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, Jared
prevents his call from going through on the grounds that a foreign government shouldn't be
telling the President of the United States who to meet with.
The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his
views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always
goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all
too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the
book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed
attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of
the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting
off of his time in government.
In the coverage of Bolton, this is what should not be lost. The former National Security
Advisor is the product of a system with its own internal logic. Largely discredited and
intellectually hollow, and without broad popular support, it persists in its practices and
beliefs because it has been extremely profitable for those involved. The most extreme hawks are
simply symptoms of larger problems, with the flamboyant Bolton being much more like mainstream
members of the foreign policy establishment than either side would like to admit.
Richard Hanania is a research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace
Studies at Columbia University.
Belief system is not chosen. The individual is indoctrinated into it via socialization process. Only few can break this bond.
Notable quotes:
"... Social or Cultural Norms are standards for behavior engendered from infancy by parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, and others in one's life. Social Norms are the shared expectations and rules that guide the behavior of people within social groups; Social Norms can go a long way toward maintaining social order. Engendered, Social or Cultural Norms can be enforced by something as subtle as a gesture, a look, or even the absence of any response at all. At the extremes, aberrant social behavior becomes a crime. One could adopt Social Norms as a part or all of their Belief System. ..."
"... Religions were an early form of Social Norms. Yet and still, all Religious Beliefs address Social Behavior, Social Norms. As with Social Norms, most, if not all, Religions have slowly evolved over time. As with Social Norms, Religious Beliefs are often engendered from infancy by parents; handed down from generation to generation. Most Religions require one's Believing; Believing that the precepts of the Religion come down to us from a supreme being or deity via a prophet or inspired teacher. Whereas science asks questions in the quest for knowledge, Abrahamic religions hold that any questioning of their particular beliefs is blasphemous, a great sin. Rather than welcome questions in re validity, religions insist that, first and foremost, adherents believe. Religions might be a part of the whole of one's Belief System. ..."
"... Can we even have stable societies without Belief Systems? Is it possible to build a Society around Science, Philosophy, and/or Reason? Can we, benefitting from Science and Philosophy: Improve the quality of our Belief Systems? Of our Religions? Can Beliefs become Informed Opinions? Will future societies' Belief Systems be based more on Science and Philosophy, and less on opinion and belief? Do they have a choice? It seems that the more successful societies have long since chosen to give the thinking of Science and Philosophy precedence over Believing. Darwin tells us that survival goes to those that adapt. ..."
Belief Systems, these prisms through which we view the world, have been around from our earliest days. Not so long ago, the Ancient
Greeks separated the concept of what we might call belief into two concepts: pistis and doxa with pistis referring to trust and confidence
(notably akin the regard accorded science) and doxa referring to opinion and acceptance (more akin the regard accorded cultural norms).
In quest of a personal Belief System, should one: Go with the flow and adapt to the Social or Cultural Norm? Follow the Abrahamic
admonishment to first believe? Follow their own Reasoning? Or, should one look to Science?
Social or Cultural Norms are standards for behavior engendered from infancy by parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, and others
in one's life. Social Norms are the shared expectations and rules that guide the behavior of people within social groups; Social
Norms can go a long way toward maintaining social order. Engendered, Social or Cultural Norms can be enforced by something as subtle
as a gesture, a look, or even the absence of any response at all. At the extremes, aberrant social behavior becomes a crime. One
could adopt Social Norms as a part or all of their Belief System.
Most modern Religions are handed down from times long past, times before much was known about anything. Most, if not all, early
Religions were based on mythology. Later on, some Religions found more of their basis in whatever evidence and reasoning skills were
available to a people. From the earliest times, human cultures have developed some form or another of a Belief System premised on
Religion.
Humans are, uniquely it seems, given the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking in an orderly rational way; they are given
the faculty of Reason. To Reason is to use the faculty of Reason so as to arrive at conclusions; to discover, formulate, or conclude
by way of a carefully Reasoned Analysis. One might base a part or all of their Belief System on Reason.
Science can be seen as an endeavor to increase knowledge, to understand; to reduce ignorance and misunderstanding. Science encourages
active skepticism. Science, the word comes from the Latin word for knowledge, is premised on verifiable empirical evidence and best
thinking. Science employs our faculty to Reason. Belief is not a scientific criterion but is rather a bias to be filtered out of
any scientific experiment. We have confidence in the knowledge afforded us by Science to the extent that we have confidence in the
validity of the evidence and the rigor of the Reasoning, and in Scientific Methodology. Science can form the basis of one's Belief
System to the extent that they have confidence in Science.
Religions were an early form of Social Norms. Yet and still, all Religious Beliefs address Social Behavior, Social Norms. As with
Social Norms, most, if not all, Religions have slowly evolved over time. As with Social Norms, Religious Beliefs are often engendered
from infancy by parents; handed down from generation to generation. Most Religions require one's Believing; Believing that the precepts
of the Religion come down to us from a supreme being or deity via a prophet or inspired teacher. Whereas science asks questions in
the quest for knowledge, Abrahamic religions hold that any questioning of their particular beliefs is blasphemous, a great sin. Rather
than welcome questions in re validity, religions insist that, first and foremost, adherents believe. Religions might be a part of
the whole of one's Belief System.
As is to be expected, Science is often in conflict with religious beliefs. This dichotomy between the Reasoning of Science and
the Believing of Religion goes back at least to early Egypt, Greece, and India; has played, and still plays, a huge role for philosophers,
scientists, and others given to thought.
While most modern societies have moved away from a Religious dominance of their culture; at the extremes, we still have theocracies
where Religious Belief is given reign over culture and politics, and, to some extent or another, thought itself.
Preceding statute law, Religious associated Belief Systems played an important role in mankind's development. Down through the
centuries, religious behavioral standards have provided societies personal security, social stability. Religious Beliefs have long
been, are still being, codified into law.
Codified laws can also be based on 'Social Norms', on philosophy and reason ( love of learning, the pursuit of wisdom, a search
for understanding, ); or on yet other Belief Systems.
Can we even have stable societies without Belief Systems? Is it possible to build a Society around Science, Philosophy, and/or
Reason? Can we, benefitting from Science and Philosophy: Improve the quality of our Belief Systems? Of our Religions? Can Beliefs
become Informed Opinions? Will future societies' Belief Systems be based more on Science and Philosophy, and less on opinion and
belief? Do they have a choice? It seems that the more successful societies have long since chosen to give the thinking of Science
and Philosophy precedence over Believing. Darwin tells us that survival goes to those that adapt.
He didn't say it quite that way, but that is what he meant.
This seeming need of humans to Believe can be abused. The atrocities of Colonial Spain and Portugal and the Era of Slavery were
ostensibly committed under the aegis of Christian Belief. Nazi Germany, Jonestown, ISIS, and a Trump Presidency are examples of some
of the more negative consequences of aberrant Belief Systems.
Demagogues prey on this need to Believe by telling the people what to Believe; by giving them something to Believe. Fox News,
by telling its viewers what to Believe, gives them this thing they need; something to Believe. All those arbiters of opinion we see
and read on the media are trying to sell Beliefs to their audience; an audience that needs something to Believe. Fox News has become
a Belief System for millions. So too, the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Shawn Hannity.
Adolph Hitler and Jim Jones gave their needy followers something to Believe. Osama bin Laden/Al-Qaeda and ISIS gave their needy
followers something to Believe. Donald J. Trump is giving his needy followers something to Believe.
Thinking's too hard.
Obviously, existing well-meaning Belief Systems can be co-opted by unsavory persons, societies. Equally obvious, Belief Systems
can be instilled into a population. From the days of slavery and for these 150 yrs hence, whites in the Southern States have engendered
racism into their progeny. For 150 yrs now they propagated a false version of history in their schools. They created and propagated
a Belief System premised on mendacity.
Though many Belief Systems are based on Religious Tenets; we also see them based on economic models, personality cults, , even
in science. Economic dogma can be instilled in a society as a Belief System to the extent that any challenge thereto is considered
to be heretical, blasphemous. One can be born a Republican, a Baptist, or both, as were their parents and their parents' parents.
People have been being born Catholic for 2,000 yrs. Joseph Smith, a come lately, instilled.
Some positive consequences of Belief Systems include: higher moral standards, the great art and science flowing from the Renaissance;
the science, philosophy, and art from The Age of Reason/The Enlightenment. More recently: the ending of slavery, the ending of Colonialism,
the ending of apartheid, the codification of LGBT rights, and the struggle to end racism correlate with changes in Belief Systems.
Pending challenges for Belief Systems include such as freedom from hunger, access to housing, and alleviating economic disparity.
Belief Systems can carry us forward. Belief Systems can hold us back.
Is tweeting believing?
To what Belief System, if any, is this our Age of Technology attributable? Has Technology itself become a Belief System?
A very famous frog once said, "It is not easy being green."
Closely held, long-held, Beliefs are hard to give up; especially if they have been engendered via emulation, imprinting, repetition,
, since infancy. In America, the most technologically advanced economy ever known; our technology, our scientific achievements, are
all based on science. Yet today we have upwards of half of our politicians pandering to one or another Religious group that, for
the most part, denies Science. Quid pro quo: the pols get the Religious groups' vote, the Religious group gets the laws, and the
judges and justices, they want. Perhaps in part as a consequence of this support, most of this same group of politicians would govern
all the while making little effort to acquaint themselves with Science, with technology, in this day and age of Science and Technology.
Many, maybe most, of these same politicians hold fast to theories of economics and law that are, themselves, based on Belief.
John Prine, recently departed, not a frog, wrote the tune "In Spite of Ourselves".
In spite of ourselves, we humans mumble and fumble our way as is our wont.
Ron (RC) Weakley (a.k.a., Darryl for a while at EV) , June 22, 2020 8:35 am
" Darwin tells us that survival goes to those that adapt.
He didn't say it quite that way, but that is what he meant "
[No he did not say it that way because that is not what he meant. Human beings just like to misrepresent Darwin that way because
it follows along with their own narrative of innovative superiority and control of their own fate. To transpose biological mutation
from the natural selection process of biological evolution over to social evolution is a bit of a stretch, but clearly it would
favor diversity and freedom over rigid authoritarian orthodoxy. It comes with no guaranty of course, but it also more accidental
or incidental than contrived.]
Ron (RC) Weakley (a.k.a., Darryl for a while at EV) , June 22, 2020 9:18 am
Reason is not the same as logic, not pure logic at least. Impure logic is mostly sophistry. Reason is not necessarily sophistry,
but still depends upon assumptions which in life may be less reliable than in math.
Nietzsche and Machiavelli were notable philosophers of celebrated capacity for reason. By my own anti-intellectual biases I
have found them both intolerable as human beings and deceptive as arbiters of truth. Science, when correctly applied, has evolved
far beyond its roots in philosophy. I am skeptical of both incorrect science and any philosophy that I am not taking an active
roll in. Any valid philosophy should be about the present rather than the past. Kant and William James are tolerable, but still
insufficient despite their well meaning morality.
"... Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it spiralled out of control. ..."
The drama eventually ended with President Donald Trump pulling U.S. peacekeepers out of
Syria -- and then sending them
back in . One hundred thousand
Syrian civilians were displaced by an advancing Turkish army, and the Kurdish-led Syrian
Democratic Forces turned to Russia for help. But U.S. forces never fully withdrew -- they are
still stuck in Syria defending oil wells .
Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including
Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish
alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it
spiralled out of control.
Pompeo issued a statement on Thursday night denouncing Bolton's entire book as "a number of
lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods."
"... let us not forget that bolton threatened a un officials kids because they guy wasn't going along with the iraq war propaganda. ..."
"... Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years. ..."
"... Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons. ..."
"... The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult children. ..."
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National
Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter
Donolo, from 2018:
So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's
another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic
Barton.
Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five
years.
Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would
have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.
The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those
nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's
adult children.
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership
and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to
reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of
evidence in a court of law. Maybe
Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term
I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It
deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some
observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider
them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he
(Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in
media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see
Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an
arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time.
Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few
dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be
stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put
up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny
outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him
(Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.
It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against
anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme
that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who
then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so
he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby
parasite.
div> Yosemite Sam did it better. I would prefer a Foghorn Leghorn-type
character, for US diplomacy.
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy
expert he (Trump) respected.
Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!
Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping
orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally
and physically abused for objecting.
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a
warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people
Did John Bolton put his personal interests above the will of congress in an attempt to extort
the Ukrainian government? You're making a false equivalence. You seem to have a soft spot for
Trump. Bolton is an in-your-face son of a bitch, but Trump, Trump is just human garbage.
Pretty much a nothing burger if thats all he has got. Just a distraction. Trumps outrage just
meant help Bolton sell some books. Lol. People are so easy to fool.
I still think Bolton managing the operations as COG in Cheneys old bunker. Coming out for
a vacation while next phase is planned
Bolton is just another American arsehole. Nothing new. When they do not get their way, the y
always turn on their superiors, or those in charge. Bolton is just another "Anhänger"
personal gain is what motivates him.
He should have been a blot on his parents bedsheets or at least a forced abortion, but
unfortunately that did not happen...
The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him (Trump) and his voters.
Posted by: bob sykes | Jun 17 2020 20:55 utc | 11
Trump thwarted Trump. Before he got elected, Trump mentioned his admiration of Bolton more
than once. Voters of Trump elected a liar and an incoherent person -- at time,
incomprehensible, a nice bonus. But it is worth noticing that Trump never liked being binded
by agreement, like, say, an agreement to pay money back to creditors, or whatever
international agreement would restrict USA from doing what they damn please.
Superficially, it is mysterious why Trump made an impression that he wants to negotiate
with North Korea with some agreement at the end. Was he forced to make a mockery from the
negotiation by someone sticking knife to his back?
Some may remember that Trump promised to abolish Affordable Care Act and replace it with
"something marvelous". The latest version is that he will start thinking about it again after
re-election. If you believe that...
Granted, Trump is more sane than Bolton, but just a bit, unlike Bolton he has some moments
of lucidity.
In conclusion, I would advocate to vote for Biden. If you need a reason, that would be
that Biden never tweets, or if he does, it is forgettable before the typing is done. Unlike
the hideous Trumpian productions.
"men fit to be shaved," Tiberius, on Bolton and Friedman.
he is the best & brightest we have. when a dreadful mouth is called for. his insights
into the Trump WH are probably as deep as his knowledge of VZ, Iran, Cuba, etc. he's a useful
idiot, a willing fool. like Trump, he's the verbal equivalent of the cops on the street, in
foreign "policy." another abusive father figure
reading the imperial steak turds - an American form of reading the tea leaves or goat
livers or chicken flight or celestial what have you. an emperor craps out a big hairy one
like Bolton and the priests and hierophants and lawyers and scribes come for a long, close up
inspection and fact-gathering smell of another steaming pile of gmo-corn-and-downer-cow-fed,
colon cancer causing, Kansas feed-lot raised, grade A Murkin BEEF. guess what they in their
wisdom find? Trump stinks.
Scotch Bingeington @ 6 -- "Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton
does not enjoy being John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable
to Merkel's face, come to think of it.
At last, someone who notices physionomy!
That face drips with false modesty, kind of trying to make his face say, "... look at
harmless old me..."
That walrus bushiness points at an attempt to hide, to camouflage his true thoughts, his
malevolence.
That pretended stoop, with one hand clutching a sheaf of briefing papers, emulating the
posture of deferential court clerks, speaks to a lifetime of a snake in the grass "fighting"
from below for things important to himself.
But those of us who have been around the block a couple times will know to watch our backs
around this type. Poisoned-tipped daggers are their fave weapons, and your backs are their
fave "battle space". LOL
This statement by Jeffrey Sachs may as well also describe America's leadership crisis: "At
the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among
America's political and economic elite."
GeorgeV @ 8 -- "It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each
other a whore! How low has the US sunk."
And the US "leadeship" sends these types out to lecture other peoples on "values"? on how
to become "normal nations"? on how to "contain" old civilisations such as Iran, Russia,
China?
It is axiomatic that the stupid do not know they are stupid. Same goes for morals. The
immoral do not know they are immoral. Or, perhaps, as Phat Pomp-arse shows, they know they
are immoral, but do not care. Which makes one rightly guess that people like Bolt-On and him
must be depraved.
Yes, it may take centuries before the leadership in this depraved Exceptionally
Indispensable Nation to become truly normal again.
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do
so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters. by: bob sykes
11
I wondered about He King claims that Trump actually attempted to do those awful things, .
.. , I looked for evidence to prove the claim.. I asked just about every librarian I could
find to please show me evidence that confirms the deep state over rode Mr. Trump's actual
attempt to remove USA anything from Afghanistan and Syria. thus far, no confirming or
supporting facts have been produced. to support such a claim. Mr. Trump could easily have
tweeted to his supporters something to the effect that the damn military, CIA, homeland
security, state department, foreign service, federal reserve, women's underwear association
and smiley Joe's hamburger stand in fact every militant in the USA governed America were
holding hands, locked in a conspiracy to block President Trumps attempt to remove USA
anything from Afghanistan or Syria.. If Mr. Trump has asked for those things, they would have
happened. The next day there would have been parties in the streets as the militant agency
heads began rolling as Mr. Trump fired them each and everyone.. No firings happened, the
party providers were disappointed, no troops, USA contractors or privatization pirates left
any foreign place.. as far as I can tell. 500 + military bases still remain in Europe none
have been abandoned.. and one was added in Israel. BTW i heard that Mr. Trump managed to get
17 trillion dollars into the hands of many who are contractors or suppliers to those foreign
operations. I can't say I am against Trump, but i can ask you to show me some evidence to
prove your claim.
Trump searches for new slogan as he abandons Keep America Great amid George Floyd and covid
turmoil
The president has taken to inserting the term 'Transition to Greatness' into his remarks.
His 2016 slogan was 'Make America Great Again'. After election he polled audiences on whether
to go with 'Keep America Great'. He told CPAC this year and said at the State of the Union
'The Best is Yet to Come'. Tweaks come as he trails Biden in new NBC and CNN polls, as the
nation struggles with the coronavirus and protests over police violence.
Ukrainian police seize $6 Million in bribes paid to kill the new case into crooked
Burisma.
This money is a Followup to the multi-millions in bribes Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and
President Poroshenko earned to leverage their offices to kill the original case.
goals that you consider important are different from personal interests.
What personal interests has Trump actually advanced during his time as president. Leaving out
the fake allegations, I'm hard put to think of any. If you look at Trump's actual behaviour
rather than his bullshit or the bullshit aimed at him, I'm also hard put to think of anything
illegal he's done while in office that wasn't done by previous administrations.
US President Donald Trump sought help from Xi Jinping to win the upcoming 2020 election,
"pleading" with the Chinese president to boost imports of American agricultural products,
according to a new book by former national security adviser John Bolton. The accusations were
included in an excerpt from The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which is set to
be released on June 23. Bolton also wrote that Trump demonstrated other "fundamentally
unacceptable behaviour", including privately expressing support for China's mass interment of
Uygur Muslims and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang.*This video has been updated to
fix a spelling mistake.
@42 Mao I'm struggling to see how "pleading" with any country for it to purchase more US
goods is "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" from a US President.
Pleading to Xi for China to give, say, Israel preferential access to markets, sure.
I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises
over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious
than any previous crisis I can recall. And to explain my point, I would like to begin by
saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not
about. They are not about:
* Racism or "White privilege"
* Police violence
* Social alienation and despair
* Poverty
* Trump
* The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
* The infighting of the US elites/deep state
They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.
It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of "cause" and
"pretext". And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some
degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are
the true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you
want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US
society.
Don't really want to take sides between those two odious characters, but I think there's a
difference in what the paper is saying.
One is about someone pursuing policy goals they favour, the other "personal interest".
From what I have seen so far, Bolton's main definition of Trump's "personal interest" is his
chances for re-election (rather than any personal business interest).
I think Bolton was happy for Trump to pursue the policy goals he favoured, at least when
they coincided with Bolton's!
How many people have cashed in on Trump so far? Countless numbers of them. An ocean of them.
Scathing books about Trump is one way to cash in on thr Trump effect, and the authors, many
of whom don't even write the book themselves, get promoted and their books promoted in the
mainstream media and elsewhere.
There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Trump. We know everything there is to
know about Trump. Some of us knew everything there was to know about him before he became
POTUS. And yet, there he is, sitting like the Cheshire Cat in the Oval Office, untouchable
and beyond reproach. Meanwhile, even more scathing books are in the pipeline because there's
money, so much money, to be made don't you know.
Bolton is a shitbird every bit as much as Trump is and in fact an argument can be made
Bolton is even worse and even more dangerous than Trump because if Bolton had his druthers,
Iran would be a failed state right about now and America would be bogged down in a senseless
money-making (for the defense contractors owned by the extractive wealthy elite) quagmire in
Iran just as it was in Iraq and still is in Afghanistan.
Colbert is all into the Bolton book because he and his staff managed to secure an
interview with Bolton. Bolton, of course, has agreed to this because it's a great way to
promote his book to the likes of Cher who is the perfect example of the demographic Colbert
caters to with his show. Some of the commercials during Colbert's show last night? One was an
Old Navy commercial where they bragged about how they're giving to the poor. The family they
used for the commercial, the recipients of this beneficence, was a black family. Biden is
proud of Old Navy because don't you know, poor and black are one and the same. In otherwords,
there are no poor people except black people. No, that's not racist. Not at all. Also,
another commercial during Colbert's show was for the reopening of Las Vegas amidst the
spreading pandemic. This is immediately after a segment where Colbert is decrying Republican
governors for opening southern states too early. The hypocritical irony is so stark, you can
cut it with a chainsaw.
Mao @ 45 quoting The Saker -- ".... the real cause of what is taking place today is the
systemic collapse of the US society."
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
In my 50 years of studying American society, I have learned to watch what US leaders do,
not what they preach. More profitable is to look at what declassified US documents tell us
about the truth, not what the presstitudes of the day pretend to dish up. Also, what other
world leaders might, in a candid moment, tell us about America.
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem.
Afterall, a system that allows for creeping entrenched endemic corruption, is a crappy
system. It's the system that's the root of this and it's not just isolated to the United
States. It's civilization itself that's the root and what enabled civilization -- the spirit
in our genes as Reg asserts.
I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going
against Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one
of the most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely
better place when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go
back to hell.
I agree. They would, because they already have and continue to do so, coddle and provide
apologia for any and all monsters who decry Trump. Hell, I'm convinced they would clamor for
Derek Chauvin's exoneration if he vocally decried Trump. Chauvin would make the rounds on the
media circuit excoriating Trump and telling the world, contritely of course, that it was
Trump who made him do it and now he sees the error of his ways. He'd be on Morning Joe and
Chris Cuomo's and Don Lemon's shows not to mention Ari Melber and Anderson Cooper and
Lawrence O'Donnell. The conservatives and their networks, who have provided apologia for
Chauvin thus far, would now be his worst enemy. Colbert and Kimmel would have him on and
guffawing with him asking him how it felt to choke the life out of someone, laughing all the
way so long as he hates Trump and tells the world how much he hates Trump.
This world is an insane asylum, especially America. All under the banner and aegis of
progress. And to think, humanity wants to export this madness to space and the universe at
large. Any intelligent life that would ever make its way to Planet Earth, if ever, would be
well-advised to exterminate the species human before it spread its poison to the universe at
large. Not that that is possible, but just in case the .000000000001% chance of that does
miraculously manifest.
Concerning Trump "pleading" with Xi, it is only right for a leader to request others to
buy more US farm produce. We have only Bolton's word that the request was a plea. We also
have only Bolton's word that the request / plea was to seek "help from Xi Jinping to win the
upcoming 2020 election". Too early to believe Bolton. Wait till we see the meeting
transcripts.
Bolton also alleged that Trump exhibited "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" concerning
the Uygurs. Again, only Bolton's word. Even so, saying it is "unacceptable behavior" presumes
that China does wrong to incarcerate Uygurs. If not, ie, China either does not incarcerate
them, or if China has good moral grounds to do so, then Bolton is wrong to disagree with his
boss for uttering the right sentiment. Judging by how the anglo-zios shout about China's
"crime", I tend to think the opposite just might be the truth, and that says that Bolton is
simply mudslinging to sell books; score brownie points with the anglo-zios, virtue-signalling
for his next gig.
NYT writes Bolton direct US policy to fit his own political agenda,
while Bolton emphasizes Trump direct US policy in the way that pocket him most money.
Politician Bolton is consistent with his politician job (like it or not), Trump is
corrupted.
@56, I would argue that if one person could be both at the same time, that one person would
be Donald Trump. He's already proven, like Chauncey Gardner, he can walk on water. Seriously,
that excellent movie, Being There , starring the incomparable Peter Sellers, was about
Donald Trump's ascension to the Oval Office.
Using this 'quod licet jovi ...' the author apparently knows quite a bit of Latin, the dead
language!
But seriously, the nomination of Bolton who had always behaved like 2nd rate advisor, a 3rd
rate mcarthist cold warrior was a surprise to me. Such a short sighted heavily biased person
could be, yes, chosen a Minister or advisor in a banana Republic but was picked up by the
United states.
One can only conclude such a choice was driven by very specific interests of the deep
state.They needed a bulldog and got it for one year and half and threw the stinky perro soon
as the job was done.
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 18 2020 12:30 utc | 52
The primary cause of corrupt leadership is corrupt and corruption-accepting
population.
Without a population that is fundamentally corrupt and immoral, corrupt leadership is
unstable. Conversely - and this is important to recognise as the same phenomenon - democracy
cannot exist if the population accepts and takes for granted corruption, as the two are
mutually exclusive. In other words if you root out the corrupt leadership without dealing
with the mentality of the population, the corruption will quickly come back and any
democratic experiment will collapse very quickly.
There is one important qualifier - an overwhelming external influence (since WWII always
the USA, either directly or as secondary effect) can leverage latent corruption so that it
becomes more exaggerated than it normally would be.
What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind
protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving
the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied
to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford,
Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to
current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.
Bolton pretended to be President, screwing up negotiations with his Libya Model talk,
threatening Venezuela (and anywhere generally) and directing fleets all over the world
(including Britain's to capture that Iranian oil tanker). Vindman revered "Ambassador" Bolton
because he was keeping the Ukraine corruption in Americans (and Ukrainian Americans') hands,
and daring the Russians to "start" WWIII. Bolton might have been a bit more bearable if he
had ever been elected, but was happy to see him go. Trump seemed mystified by him.
b has presented us (knowingly or not, but I wouldn't put it past him) with the Socratic
question of the presumed identity between the morality of the State and personal morality, as
best encountered in Plato's dialogue, 'The Republic' ['Politeia' in the Greek] That dialogue
begins by examining personal morality, but changes to an examination of what would bring into
being a perfect state. In doing the latter, however, it is how to create public spirited
persons, in the best sense, which is the actual concern, and the conversation ranges far and
wide, becoming more and more complex.
I've always thought that to consider the perfect state had to be an impossibility if the
individual, the person him or herself isn't up to the task - and that is the point of the
Politeia enterprise. Like the ongoing relay race on horseback that is happening at the same
time in the Piraeus, the passing of the argument one person to another that happens in the
dialogue demonstrates that what is most crucial for the state as well as for the individual
is personal integrity.
I take as an example the message of Saker's essay, linked by Down South and commented on
above by others. Saker is pointing out that the protests have been seized upon by the
anti-Trumpists who have been disrupting things from the beginning of his administration. But
he also says:
"My personal feeling is that Trump is too weak and too much of a coward to fight his
political enemies"
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The discussion of different kinds of states,
which we often have here pursued, or the discussion of what makes a person able to function
in one or another state? I don't think Plato was saying that Greece had it made, that Greece
needed to throw its weight around more to be great. He's pointing out that it had lost
greatness, the same way every empire loses when it forgets that individual spark that is in a
single person, his virtue. And the sad thing is it all comes down to the education of our
young people in the values, the virtues that apply both to his own personal life and to the
life of the state.
At its heart, the protests which are beginning, only beginning, and which are peaceful,
may be politeia vs. republic, the 'polis' itself against 'things political'. A new and true
enlightenment, multipolar.
Corruption's been a fact of life in North America ever since it was "discovered."
Bernard Bailyn captured it quite well in his The New England Merchants in the
Seventeenth Century , that is during the very first stages of plantation, with most
corruption taking place in Old England then exported to the West. Even the Founders were
corrupt, although they didn't see themselves as such. Isn't Adam & Eve's corruption
detailed in Genesis merely an indicator of a general human trait that needs to be managed via
culture? That human culture has generally failed to contain and discipline corruption speaks
volumes about both. John Dos Passos in his opus USA noted that everyone everywhere was
on the "hustle"--from the hobo to the banker. "Every child gots to have its own" are some of
the truest lyrics ever written. Will humanity ever transcend this major failure in its
nature?
Who is behind the claim that China is imprisoning vast numbers of Uighurs in concentration
camps and what evidence has been presented? See the Greyzone for its recent report on this.
Thanks to all of you for your insights on Bolton.
I still don't see anything to explain why he got a second gig in the Whitehouse.
Or anything that he did that enhanced US security long term.
And another guy who dodged active service.
Strange angry dude,!
Pat Lang believes that Bolton has breached a law requiring US Officials with access to Top
Secret Stuff to submit personal memoirs for scrutiny before publishing. Col Lang is awaiting
similar approval for a memoir of his own and thinks Bolton didn't bother waiting for the
Official OK.
There's a diverse range of comments. Most commentators like the idea of Bolton being tossed
in the slammer. Others speculate that as a Swamp Creature, Bolton will escape prosecution.
It's interesting that no-one has asked to see the publisher's copy of the USG's signed &
dated Approval To Publish document, relevant to Bolton's book.
Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term
I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It
deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.
The Russian president offers a comprehensive assessment of the legacy of World War II,
arguing that "Today, European politicians, and Polish leaders in particular, wish to sweep the
Munich Betrayal under the carpet. The Munich Betrayal showed to the Soviet Union that the
Western countries would deal with security issues without taking its interests into
account."
Re: the Nuremberg trials , I became fascinated by the writings of Paul R. Pillar who
pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to
war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace' . This is when one country sets up an
environment for war against another country. I'll grant you that this is vague but if this is
applicable at all how is this not an accurate description of what we are doing against Iran
and Venezuela?
In both cases, we are imposing a full trade embargo (not sanctions) on basic civilian
necessities and infrastructures and threatening the use of military force. As for Iran, the
sustained and unfair demonization of Iranians is preparing the U.S. public to accept a
ruthless bombing campaign against them as long overdue. We are already attacking the civilian
population of their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
How Ironic that the country that boasts that it won WW2 is now guilty of the very crimes
that it condemned publicly in court.
As Ben Garrison recent noted, in an
interview Bolton stated that it was OK for the government agencies to lie to the American
people if national security is at stake. And it always seems to be at stake for dominant men
who want secrecy and power. Bolton is a dangerous liar and his anti-Trump screed cannot be
trusted.
I have a dream today, brothers and sisters. I have a dream.
My dream is of an America that has embraced
race realism.
Yes, I have a dream that one day race differences in educational success will be as calmly,
dispassionately accepted as race differences in athletic success; that race differences in
criminal arrest and incarceration rates will be regarded with no more anger or alarm than sex
differences in those same rates; that different social outcomes by race will be understood as
caused not by the malice of our fellow citizens, but by ordinary processes of nature.
I have a dream that one day we shall discard magical
thinking about race ; that the notion of an invisible vapor or miasma called " racism
" permeating the atmosphere and intoxicating our minds will seem as quaintly absurd as
the
Four Humors Theory of ancient medicine or the Luminiferous
Æther of 19th-century physics.
I have a dream that one day soon, after sixty years of futile efforts to change what cannot,
in the nature of things, be changed, sixty
years of twisting our constitution and our jurisprudence into knots to pretend that
different statistics by race can only be caused by
white people' s ill will, sixty years of vast
public expenditures on educational and social programs that deliver no benefits at all
(other than to those who pocket the expenditures); that one day soon, after sixty years of
futility and waste, we shall accept race differences as calmly and as prudently as we accept
the laws of thermodynamics.
I have a dream that with
the black homicide rate at eight times the white rate, and with discrepancies of a similar
size having existed since reliable records began a hundred and eighty years ago
, an organization calling itself Black Lives Matter will address itself to bringing black
homicide numbers down to the white level -- better yet, to the Asian level -- or else be
laughed out of the public square.
I have a dream that race differences in outcomes, which are mere statistical abstractions
remote from our everyday dealings, will one day matter as little to us as personal
differences in outcomes. I shall never be a skilled violinist, a good tennis player, or a
creative mathematician; not because of malice, "racism," or "privilege" on the part of my
fellow citizens, but because of my own abilities and inclinations -- which, like almost
everyone else's, are middling and un-spectacular. I do not lose sleep over this. I
absolutely do not take it as an occasion to insult and berate my fellow-citizens, or
deprive them of their rights.
I have a dream that our nation's past will one day be cherished for having made possible our
present security and prosperity; that the ignorance and misdeeds of that past be kept in sight
on a shelf, accessible to all, but never dominating our view of what our ancestors were, the
heroism they displayed in defense of our civilization, and the great good things they did.
I have a dream that one day freedom
of association, which picks no man's pocket and breaks no man's leg, will be restored to
us.
I have a dream that the evil and divisive doctrines of "disparate impact" and "affirmative
action" will be scrubbed from our jurisprudence; that hiring into civil-service work --
including
police work and firefighting --
will be strictly meritocratic; and that young black Americans will no longer, just to satisfy
the whims of smug college admissions officers and innumerate jurists, will no longer be pushed
into academic college programs they can't cope with and will drop out from .
That is my dream too, brother. Let us work to make it happen.
Remember Keynes: "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic
scribbler of a few years back".
Let us hope that the HBD "academic scribblers" like yourself can push the message
forward.
If only Trump, or someone with similar prominence, could give your speech!
"I have a dream today, brothers and sisters. I have a dream.
My dream is of an America that has embraced race realism".
"I have a dream that one day we shall discard magical thinking about race; that the notion of
an invisible vapor or miasma called".. 'Anti-Semitism'.. "permeating the atmosphere and
intoxicating our minds will seem as quaintly absurd as the Four Humors Theory of ancient
medicine or the Luminiferous Æther of 19th-century physics."
"I have a dream that one day, poor".. Gentile.. "children will not have to endure being
lectured about their 'privilege' by [ultra] rich".. Jewish adults. Or be taught any more
so-called holocaust guilt.
"I have a dream that one day soon, after[almost] sixty years of futile efforts to change what
cannot, in the nature of things, be changed, [almost] sixty years of twisting our
constitution and our jurisprudence into knots to pretend that".. Israel's illegitimate
military Occupation & America's uncritical material & immoral support for it.. "can
only be caused by"..Palestinians'.. "ill will, sixty years of vast public expenditures on"..
Israel's war machine and security.. "programs that deliver no benefits at all (other than to
those who pocket the expenditures); that one day soon, after sixty years of futility and
waste, we shall".. end all aid of any kind to Israel, forever.
And a dream that we accept religious differences about the causes of Crucifixion &
Salvation "as calmly and as prudently as we accept the laws of thermodynamics."
"I have a dream that the evil and divisive doctrines of" ..'Jewish nationalism' and 'Aryan
eradication'.. "will be scrubbed from our jurisprudence; that hiring into"..elite echelons --
including Hollywood and Wall Street – .."will be strictly meritocratic" ..and that
young Jewish Americans, will no longer be pushed into high positions just because they bar
mitzvah.
And finally, "I have a dream that my two beautiful children will one day" ..not fall prey to
some future Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein. Amen
The sad fact is that America is destined for dictatorship with these demographics, and
with the aid of technology it will be stable far into this century. Worse, Americans do not
want freedom, or at least they do not prioritize freedom over luxury. If they did, they would
have risen up long ago; Red States, at the very least, would be preparing for secession.
We'll have to face facts that normies are normies not because they are asleep, they are
asleep because they are normies -- something that cannot be changed because it has a genetic
basis (you cannot transmute sheep into wolves). As long as the supply of hamburgers, diet
coke, and sportsball continues, obsequious whites will keep their heads down, going along to
get along no matter what happens.
Things will get bad. As it is now, nearly every company is running racial agitation
propaganda on behalf of the government. Go into any Walmart and you'll be treated to overhead
announcements berating America's history of racism and apologizing to blacks; it's like
something straight out of 1984 (or the movie Red Dawn , 1984 -- seriously check the
movie for the scene I'm referencing). They are censoring and banning movies, purging
politically incorrect themepark rides, and internet search results; they've been censoring
books for years now (many school districts have banned Huck Fin and Tom Sawywer, among
others) and that will surely get worse.
If you want a book like Gone With The Wind , I would suggest you buy it now before
they ban it. Just a few months ago I picked up the DVD in a bargain bin. At the time the
person I was with didn't get why. "This isn't the kind of movie you usually watch." However,
being awake unlike your average normie, I saw all of this coming in advance. I explained to
my companion that I was getting it now before they banned it. And wouldn't you know it, a few
months later they are taking tentative steps to banning the movie. It won't be the last or
the worst example. If you are willing to tear down statues, rename military bases, and ban /
edit movies and theme park rides based on them, then the next logical step is banning books
-- burning them, essentially. Amazon is already doing this; they refuse to ship or stock
controversial books.
For my part, I've been buying old books and movies, preparing for the day when I can copy
them to a digital format and distribute them once the dictatorship bans them. Tellingly, I'm
not the only one. I went back to that same store today. EVERY copy of Gone With The
Wind and lots of other old movies were cleared out and they had a huge selection! Get
them now gents. The darkness is coming.
I would also suggest every European-American who can do so prepare to flee overseas. Lots
of dissidents I read have stated they are giving that thought. American conservatives are
behind the scenes. TAC's Rod Dreher had a piece on that website detailing this. Many in DC
are preparing to flee to central and Eastern Europe because there is no hope for this
country. It's all coming down.
Side note: Thanks libertarians. Thanks for letting five companies control everything,
thereby easily allowing a totalitarian dictatorship to take hold. "How does communism
happen?" they always say. Answer: You're how it happens. Your philosophy is just an excuse to
be lazy and not contribute. You want freedom but yet you aren't willing to do anything to
conserve your freedom. Meanwhile, radical leftists who don't believe in letting you have any
freedom marched through the institutions and are now preparing to unleash Red October. SMH.
Thanks guys. I hope "muh private company" dogma was worth it.
The truth will get you fired every time these days, the kids are wrecking the country, the
poor stupid lil bastards have no clue and they will be paying huge taxes for their efforts.
As long as the supply of hamburgers, diet coke, and sportsball continues, obsequious
whites will keep their heads down, going along to get along no matter what happens.
In a couple of years we should have polygenic scores that can predict IQ and educational
achievement pretty accurately on an individual level. Could lead to a de-emphasis on race?
I dreamed James Earl Ray had not shot Martin Luther King and we'd never learned who Jesse
Jackson was. That King would have been exposed as a sybaritic plagiarist whose personal
scandals were exposed in the Washington Post and left him a stained and discredited figure
with no eponymous national holiday and instead of the perma grief stricken mask of Coretta
Scott King we would have scene her for the last time in divorce court cleaning out Martin's
bank account.
Hopefully things won't end up as in the Kurt Vonnegut novel, 'Harrison Bergeron 2081' –
made into a short film in 2009 –
About a USA in which a Constitutional amendment enforces total equality for all persons,
the head of government being a 'Handicapper General' who declares what burdens, masks,
weights limitations etc you must carry, so as not to be considered as having any personal
aspect of life or self better than your neighbours
Trailer for the film (full film seems online too at the moment)
Our indispensable founder Benjamin Franklin said "There is a great danger to The United
States, this danger is the Jew. If they are not excluded from the United States by the
Constitution, within less than 100 years they will stream into this country in such numbers
they will rule and destroy us and change our form of government for which we Americans have
shed our blood and sacrificed life property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not
excluded, within 200 years our children will be working in the fields to feed the Jews while
they remain in the counting-house gleefully rubbing their hands. " And this was long before
the criminal syndicate of Zionism was added to supercharge the problem.
The Zionist Jews now have a strangle hold on our government that has continued to get
worse since 1913 when Warburg engineered the Unconstitutional Central Bank. No Senator will
vote against the Jew front aIPAC and hardly any House member. The Jews have always controlled
the MSM whores and the so called entertainment industry. The seeds of the present contrived
riots (Floyd "murder" is gov. false flag – see Miles Mathis updates) were planted by
the Jews with gov. operative MLK (see Miles Mathis on this scam also) and the negroes as the
proxy warriors.
Jewmerica has become little more than a satellite and peon for the Kazar thugs to ring out
our money and furnish our military (Israeli foreign Legion) to shake down one country at a
time for the syndicate bosses. Shabbos Goy Trump works only for the Jews and even though a
minor detail hen and out Jew ass licker Congress has even added to the insult by mandating
that the public indoctrination centers (expensive poorly functioning schools) "teach" about
the ridiculous Holohaux myth. I believe the Ann Frank shit is also included. Her wealthy
family of hucksters is also covered on the Mathis updates. As some one has already mentioned
Trump, Pence and all of our shabbos goy Congress should have to lick the bathroom stalls and
toilets in Zionist Jew Sheldon Adelson's Casino. Maybe he would up the donation to the
Republican side of the political facade.
The syndicate knows that 95% of the goyim will never do anything as long as they get 1
meal per day. I guess I should not have been surprised about all the cucks going around with
the idiotic masks fearing the fake virus used as a cover by the Elite for another wealth
transfer to the super rich as in 08-09. it's not as it our wonderful gov. has never lied tom
us before. Everything they do is a lie and a fraud. The same Zionist clique that did the
wars, 911 and WMD's are doing the fake virus and the latest false flag Floyd hoax just like
Sandy Hook Boston and Los Vegas. When we are all in Agenda 21 maybe some of them will wake
up.
Your philosophy is just an excuse to be lazy and not contribute.
Yes, a minuscule group that is openly mocked by every powerful political faction in
America is your whipping hobby-horse. How proud you all must be.
Except that last quoted bit of yours exposes what's real. You and every silly wailer
against the only political philosophy of integrity are so ashamed of yourselves that you
cling to the lamest of all fallacies (straw man) whenever your shame threatens to rise to
layer 1.
The embarrassing truth: All your participatory 'action' is futility in search of a trophy
-- the kind your type most excoriates publicly. It's always been the stealthy building and
self-applying of slave chains, and the actual result (regression) of all your non-'lazy'
furious activity is now exposed to even the most brainless ass; your asperity is for none
other than precious ass #1 -- yourselves.
[MORE]
But that's too painful, so the disgust is projected at the exposers of your slave
mentality -- slavery that was always under cover, but which cover is being withdrawn by
events. Now you're starting to see that all your frenzied 'good government bullshit' was
always purposeful, protective denial of what was obvious to libertarians.
Lazy? Up yours. My path, carving out liberty in a local wasteland, and living as ethically
as possible among the demented slaves, has been rough.
Go pull more voting levers, Wizard of Poz. Just know that every time you piss on liberty
folk, it's hatred of your own slavery and wasted years driving it. You're slowly recognizing
that you were Cool Hand Luke in his beaten state, digging all of Boss Edgecomb's dirt out of
Boss Blowhard's hole, and back again. Well, look around at what all you ball-less,
compromising slugs created.
One need only listen to what the average 'conservative' advocates in private to see his
revealed shame. He spends time thinking of ways to make bolshie Frankensteins of 5-120 years
prior live and breathe 'effectively'. He's the pothole patch boy for leftists. And he wants
medals of commendation for all of his great work dressing up communism as 'cohesive policy'
by way of 'comprehensive reform'. Enjoy the world you created, man of 'action'. I didn't do
it; I fought it at every step.
"I have a dream that race differences in outcomes, which are mere statistical abstractions
remote from our everyday dealings, will one day matter as little to us as personal
differences in outcomes. I shall never be a skilled violinist, a good tennis player, or a
creative mathematician; not because of malice, "racism," or "privilege" on the part of my
fellow citizens, but because of my own abilities and inclinations -- which, like almost
everyone else's, are middling and un-spectacular. I do not lose sleep over this. I absolutely
do not take it as an occasion to insult and berate my fellow-citizens, or deprive them of
their rights."
I have a dream that one day soon, after sixty years of futile efforts to change what
cannot, in the nature of things, be changed, sixty years of twisting our constitution and
our jurisprudence into knots to pretend that different statistics by race can only be
caused by white people' s ill will, sixty years of vast public expenditures on educational
and social programs that deliver no benefits at all (other than to those who pocket the
expenditures); that one day soon, after sixty years of futility and waste, we shall accept
race differences as calmly and as prudently as we accept the laws of thermodynamics.
"And then I woke up and smelled my nice, white, Long Island suburb burning as black mobs
from South Jamaica, Queens looted it and set it on fire."
Sorry, Derb. You were the one who wrote We Are Doomed. You of all people should
know better.
It's too late. The future necessarily belongs to a eugenicist state willing to deploy CBRN
capability to cull populations which are by definition unfit to survive. The only opposition
to such a state would be nonhuman intelligences.
@unit472 MLK was martyered by the gov. in order to gain maximum benefit whereas he was a
constant liability if kept on the payroll. He was addicted to drugs and prostitutes. It is
most likely that his death was faked as were the 911 plane victims (no planes involved) and
psyops like the Los Vegas shootings as well as the recent Arbery and now the Floyd scam. The
gov. has done this for a long time.
As far as the Washington Post it was for many years controlled by Katherine Meyer Graham,
daughter of Eugene Meyer, one of the big Jew handlers of the syphilitic shabbos goy puppet
Woodrow Wilson. Meyer was also Chairman of the Jew controlled FED during the Hoover
administration. Hoover was a former mining engineer who worked for one of the Rothschilds
companies and supplied much needed aid to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Rev. under the
guise of humanitarian aid. Meyer later was the first president of the World Bank during the
Pendergast criminal shabbos goy Truman Presidency. The Washington Post like all the other MSM
was and is just a propaganda instrument for the zionist elite.
"That's not who we are" is the ultimate statement of identity politics. It deliberately
excludes large numbers of people from "we".
And I am sorry to report that the dream is just that – a dream. For us, any victory
will be fleeting, because Conquest's Second Law dictates that organizations inevitably drift
to the Left. Secondly, the proverb is wrong. It's always darkest just before it goes pitch
black.
What what – The Four Humors Theory was quite reasonable while it lasted. Race Illusions
never were – nor are they. Please, dear Mr. Derb, don't make – ehhh –
sacrifices on the basis of wrong assumptions. We need our glorious past for any future that'd
be human. Thank you so much! – Only Love !
"The Franklin Prophecy", sometimes called "The Franklin Forgery", is an antisemitic
speech falsely attributed to Benjamin Franklin, warning of the supposed dangers of
admitting Jews to the nascent United States. The speech was purportedly transcribed by
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but was unknown
before its appearance in 1934 in the pages of William Dudley Pelley's Silver Legion
pro-Nazi weekly magazine Liberation. No evidence exists for the document's authenticity,
and some of the author's claims have actively been disproven.
@swamped The young women that were lured by Ghislaine Maxwell into Epstein's brothel for
the elite didn't fall prey to anything but sin. I suppose they got paid just like other
prostitutes. What is most notable to me is that the men that were involved in this
degradation seem to suffer no repercussions. The obnoxious Trump is a known womanizer and
friend of Epstein as was the smirking degenerate Bill Clinton who was a regular on the Lolita
Express. As for Prince Andrew, him and all of the Sybaritic royal parasites should have been
gotten rid of long ago.
I have questions about Weinstein. I admit that I don't know much about legal matters but
how is someone convicted of a crime when there is no evidence or even a reliable witness to a
crime? I didn't follow this real close but I read that some of the alleged victims texed him
later to leave Current cell no's. and maintain social contact. Doesn't seem to me like they
were too traumatized. What's that phrase they use -"I was violated". Did any of them go to
the hospital. Did any of them even file a police report. Why did they wait for years to say
something. If I was a woman I would have never have met with him outside of a strictly
business situation in the first place. But then I'm not a Hollywood whore looking to get into
one of the Jews shit films. I have no use for The Zionist Jew scum Weinstein and I admit I am
only a casual observer but it seems to me that there is a problem here. I don't think we got
the real story.
@botazefa Thanks for pointing out this error. The fact that Charles Beard affirmed this
to be a forgery is good enough for me. I should have been more careful.
When we realize the disastrous effects of the Zionist Conspiracy on Western civilization
that has been at work officially since 1897 but insidiously since at least the French
Revolution and tracking the Zionist hand in both foreign and domestic matters in U.S. policy
I got careless. It is always necessary to check more than one source. The fact that our
shabbos goy politicians become more obsequious to the Kazar crime syndicate and to their Jew
organizations such as aIPAC all the time should be of great concern to all real Americans.
There is no amount of blood or treasure that Trump, Pence, Pelosi and many of the other
traitors in Congress and the gov. at large would not expend for the Zionist objectives.
@Peter Johnson I think a speech of this caliber would be well over Trump's adolescent 5th
grade level. He has trouble stringing two sentences together. A complex series of subject
matter would be well beyond his ability. Now he is quick to tell us how smart he is, even
graduating from Wharton but you know how that works. Same as with his Chabad Lubavich
son-in-law. Trump's speeches mainly consist of telling us how much he loves Israel. Thats why
the Jews picked him in the first place. It's only because he was running against the old
desiccated Zionist criminal Hillary that he was elected.
@mark tapley Winstein left children alone. He was a pig but as far as I know he did love
movies and made some good quality ones. Don't ask me what they were. I have long given up on
popular culture. In the theatre and cinema world, it is the norm for women to get their
breaks by screwing the director. Theatre is a narcisstic sociopathic profession. The second
oldest profession. I recall in novel Thorn Birds, the young women ranch heiress takes up the
theatre profession by losing her virginity to her director. She laughed all through the
consummation. Has anyone ever noticed there is no such thing as an ugly movie female star?
Well ugly enough to repel a man physically. Plenty of equivalents with male stars. It is
curious in America how celebrities come crashing if they at a rare moment speak out against
Israel. Weinstein produced a movie that showed the Palestinian side. Polanski still waltzes
in Europe having never said a word against Israel. That third rail has now extended to all
the cultural Marxist groups. Bill Cosby's immunity quickly disappeared when he criticised
black youth hoods.
Badwhite Derbyshire, your Chinese shithole of a home is one helluva nightmare. You cannot
awaken from or flee this dark space and there will never be dawn for you.
Here are some race realism facts with which you must deal. There are 3 racial groups:
Caucasoids, Mongoloids and Negroids. Caucasoids have the highest IQs and are the racial group
who developed the West. Mongoloids are a distance second in IQ and Negroids are last. Your
Chinese family is a second tier race. Your below average Chinese offspring are proof. They
will be judged as inferior, non-Western and a fifth column in America.
Your VDare scribblings have become unhinged.
Here's a stupid one: https://vdare.com/posts/john-derbyshire-asks-what-s-wrong-with-white-women
There are no white women in your life, only Chinese females. Focus on the degeneracy and
stupidity of your Chinese females. "White" is meaningless because in New York City there are
many Ashkenazi Jews so the "white women" protesting there are not Western women. I put the
Ashkenazis in the Caucasoid category but because they are Jewish, they are not Western. The
West is not black/Asian/Jewish/Muslim.
@mark tapley It appears to have been a literary device. Like the prophecy of Gamaliel in
the Saint Luke gospel. Also the prophecies by Indian chiefs. Take someone well known in
popular culture and put into his mouth words that are surprising and prophetic. It enters the
popular culture as prophecy. There is no record Gamaliel had anything to do with
Christianity, the Indian chiefs were materialist opportunists, and Franklin was a Masonist
whic is tied to Zion.
@lloyd I was not aware of this deception being a literary device. To me this is a verbal
fraud similar to bearing false witness or a lie. As to Franklin's membership in the Masonic
Lodge I believe this was quite prevalent in those days. I had read that when Washington was
informed by a minister that the Masons harbored conspiratory elements he wrote back that in
ap. 20 years he had only attended 1 or 2 meetings and that he immediately resigned. Even
though Washington had some good qualities I believe he was an unscrupulous aggrandizing
opportunist so he may have been more involved than reported.
@Eugene AI is coming–and when it does human slavery will be back.
AI will conclude humans are lazy, lying, violent, unproductive, stupid–and it will
find claims of "human rights" to be no more relevant than the bleating of animals in the
farm-yard.
That is the dirty little secret hidden behind the curtain.
@Justvisiting It's funny you should say that because I was thinking that the only way to
have an unbiased police force would be to eliminate the human aspect, sack the coppers, and
replace them with a.i. machines. All personal feelings and reactions are gone only to be
replaced with the knowledge of the laws that were broken. No grey areas. Depends a lot on who
is doing the programming though- things could end up worse for everybody. Hell, come to think
of it , this was a movie plot!
@schnellandine Libertarians may be a small party but many their erroneous beliefs have
been adopted by mainstream conservatives.
You see race doesn't exist, it's just "big gubmint" that is holding down Blacks.
A heart warming theory that ticks certain feely good boxes but bulls–t none the
less.
The Germans under Communism still managed to have a standard of living far higher than any
sub-Saharan African capitalist country. Ooooh but that's just by chance or something.
Libertarianism is the biggest bunch of BS.
Your dope queen Ayn Rand couldn't even debate her silly ideas. She would just scream at
people and avoid tough questions just like liberals. Libertarianism is based on the same
major flaw as liberalism which is that race doesn't exist (but she made exceptions for
Israel).
If he believes these things can come to pass no, barring revolution, they cannot. But simply
stating them is important because truth is always of value, no matter the circumstances. Even
if one is the only sane man in a room (or city or state or ), he still has the moral right
and obligation to speak. I do believe we are far, far away from the "darkest hour". And I do
believe only an organized, armed revolution can make any difference, which I do not believe
will happen in my lifetime, if ever (I'm 51).
If anything AI will be used to sniff out potentially RAYCISS people online.
But it doesn't really matter since technology will ultimately work against liberal lies.
Eventually the genes for intelligence will be identifiable with a simple DNA test and
liberals will have to explain why we can't do cross-population testing since it should prove
their core theory that race doesn't exist.
So we are probably headed to Brazil but the cat will eventually be out of the bag. I
assume most liberals at the higher levels are terrified of the dirty White masses being told
it was all a lie which is why they are so opposed to borders. They want Whites to be a
minority and not just a plurality when DNA is fully unraveled.
@mark tapley "I was not aware of this deception being a literary device. "
Gotta love the goyim. The entire "New Testament" consists of fictional statements
attributed to "authorities."
"Who wrote this gnostic tripe?" No, it's a gospel of John. "Which John?" Um, maybe the
brother of Jesus, or maybe the guy who wrote those epistles. Oh, did you like that
"Revelation"? Yeah, it's that John.
Christianity has been a "forgery factory" (Bart Ehrman) from the get go.
BTW Derbs Blighty is now literally turning into another South Africa while feckless Brits
are still a majority. I was telling Jonathan Cook about white farmers and albinos in Africa.
This is now happening in Londonistan.
While police watch, natives are being beaten at random by imported hordes yet the
(((media))) is calling victims 'far-right'.
In a couple of years we should have polygenic scores that can predict IQ and educational
achievement pretty accurately on an individual level. Could lead to a de-emphasis on
race?
But we have IQ-tests already – only to be told, how a) unscientific and b) how
racist they are.
PS
Grammarly about my comment: Optimistic – high five! – – – Isn't it
Ironic?
@Dieter Kief Yeah, but IQ scores partly depend on environment, which is all the excuse
people need to dismiss them. They can't do that with polygenic scores.
A few more normies might have been shaken out of their race doesn't matter slumber but the
elites will triple down on the state religion of anti-racism (anti-whiteness). The non-Jewish
white elites know that to oppose anti-racism is a supreme act of sacrilege and the last thing
they want is to be known as infidels to the new glorious religion of militant
multiculturalism.
@The Alarmist We (my brothers and I) grew up hearing Nat King Cole played in my father's
household, so nope, no bad old raysis days in my formative years.
Derb, your dreams will never be realized until you face the "J-thing." You've been trapped in
their dream-nightmare of "White identity = ovens" for your entire life.
J-thing political donors, J-thing media control, J-thing financiers, J-thing academics and
J-thing judges & lawyers won't let you have your dream.
But, Mr. Derbyshire, what about the young people who can't dream out loud without losing
their jobs and putting their children's nourishment at risk? What's in your dream for them
today?
@John Johnson Actually, I spit at the TV but I read way too much science fiction.
The consensus among a lot of the sharp science fiction writers is that aggressive and
hostile AI will become emergent, and humans will be too stupid to know what hit them.
I have a dream that the evil and divisive doctrines of "disparate impact" and "affirmative
action" will be scrubbed from our jurisprudence; that hiring into civil-service work --
including police work and firefighting -- will be strictly meritocratic
I don't see how this is possible.
Even if the establishment were to acknowledge that racial inequality would exist without
racism that would still lead to fretting liberal egalitarians and Conservative Inc types
trying to equalize what they can.
So Black police and firefighters in Black areas would still be highly sought to "match the
community" or some other excuse and hired over better qualified Whites.
This happens in education all the time. I've known two White men that were unable to get
jobs in education for being the wrong race/gender combination despite having degrees. One was
even told to not bother applying anywhere on the blue side of the state. Why would
acknowledging race change anything? Liberals would just come up with the excuse that Black
kids really need Black teachers because nature is unfair and we have to do what we can on the
environmental side.
The problem is the egalitarian mindset. The White desire to constantly try and fix
everything in nature.
Hey Derb, if you are going to win that race war, you need to find this Kat and clone him
50,000 times. This is WITHOUT A DOUBT the hardest Honkee in America!
Dude ate that tazer blast like an M&M, then dropped a magic spell on the pig to keep
his pistol in the holster, then hopped up in his ride and did some Dominc Torretta shit.
Libertarians may be a small party but many their erroneous beliefs have been adopted by
mainstream conservatives.
Cato & Koch Inc. aren't libertarian. Neither are the Libertarian Party and many
others. Ayn Rand wasn't libertarian either, though she was closer than most, despite
supposedly loathing libertarians.
You see race doesn't exist, it's just "big gubmint" that is holding down Blacks.
Anti-racism isn't a libertarian tenet. I've seen stupid people such as Ron Paul insist
that libertarianism forbids racism because 'collectivist', but he's off his rocker. I argue
that the NAP (non-aggression principle), foundation of libertarianism, likely encourages
rational racism (i.e. recognition that races differ in intelligence, abilities, etc.) more
than any other political philosophy. I'm a racist and libertarian, though I hold no race as
superior in regard to 'natural rights'.
You'd agree, I guess, that the state truly does prevent blacks from progressing, in the
sense that it treats them like spoiled tots, above responsibility or reproach.
[MORE]
Your dope queen Ayn Rand couldn't even debate her silly ideas. She would just scream at
people and avoid tough questions just like liberals.
C'mon, that's just horse crap. She was, though imperfect, one of the best debaters in
American history. She was wrong about a few things, but the only time I saw her refuse to
debate someone (Donahue guest Q&A) was for sound, non-cowardly reason, and she urged that
someone else -- a non-jackass -- present the same question and she would answer that
person.
Interesting that the popular 'takedowns' of Rand rely heavily/exclusively on straw man
fallacy. Gets annoying after a while.
I can easily piss on a few things by Rand, but not before acknowledging that she was a
monumentally superior intellect, a bright star in a dull world. Still love her as though she
were my blood sister. She improved the world, though I can't say the same about most of her
insane/confused devotees.
@Some Guy If "White privilege" really is the ability of European descended Whites to live
in the industrial civilization that European descended Whites developed, then polygenic
("many gene") scores will merely be used to demonstrate that European descended Whites really
are inherently and unreformably racist, being born with abilities that "they didn't earn",
and that European descended Whites must be enslaved as per the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s
as expanded under the Bakke decision.
@Anonymous Some will try to use it that way, sure, but most whites will realize that
whites are better of on their own and that it's no more their fault that some races do worse
than it is the fault of East Asians.
"there is no place for hate within our organization"
Rather than accepting their hate and finding the (often paradoxical) wisdom shrouded
within, they prohibit themselves, and others, from accepting its presence.
Through this, they learn nothing, and instead turn hatred in on themselves, and wonder why
they always feel like such constipated, joyless bores.
@mark tapley Franklin is not Washington as China is not North Korea. My small town news
paper reported that a woman was a cleaner in a Masonic Lodge. She witnessed a Masonic
initiation. When the Masons found out, they told her she had to join the Masonic Lodge.
Rather parallel to the novel and movie, Rosemary's Baby. The woman spent the rest of her very
modest life in it. Recently human bones were discovered in the basement of the London home of
Franklin. There was a lot of hedging and rationalisations in MSM about that. Rather
surprising as one would have thought they would have done a great deal, CNN, movies etc. on
that slur on a founding father.
"The population of Austin, TX is 48.8% White Alone, 32.7% Hispanic or Latino, and 8.13% Black
or African American Alone. 32% of the people in Austin, TX speak a non-English language, and
87.5% are U.S. citizens." – https://datausa.io/profile/geo/austin-tx/
Austin is just about to exceed a million, so this means there are half-a-million whites
there. It's the 28th-whitest city if you count Hispanics, 36th if you don't. I can't find a
ranking of cities by absolute numbers of whites; can any of you?
Interestingly, the PBS series Molly of Denali has a black man and his daughter who
have just moved there from Austin, Texas. The fan sites say he's connected to the Coast
Guard, but there is only an Auxhiliary flotilla in Austin, and I doubt anything near Mt
McKinley.
Still, I can understand how even a black man would want to escape
Portland-on-the-Colorado.
I have a dream that one day we shall discard magical thinking about race; that the
notion of an invisible vapor or miasma called "racism"
British monuments lately slated for toppling by the Red Guards
Robert Peel
W E Gladstone
Richly deserved, I say. I mean, any one who could fester on like this ought to be
summarily unpersonedcancelled
The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist because
race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to
predominance.
Oops that was Lord Beaconsfield, a certain .. Benjamin Disraeli.
Implacable enemy of many an Englishman, in particular Bobby Peel and Billy Gladstone. Bastard
Fenian sympathisers that they were.
@schnellandine Ayn Rand was the one who kept me from being indoctrinated by leftist
professors in my young days.
I knew every lie they told the moment they told it.
That was a wonderful gift, and I am forever grateful to her for it.
Of course she was human and did dumb stuff, and she had crazy followers who did more dumb
stuff, but I think of her like a kindly aunt who sent me intellectual "checks" once a
month.
She was heads and shoulders above her sociopath critics.
Her courage was amazing–she came to Boston (leftist central) for year after year and
faced her enemies.
The world would be an amazingly good place if we had just a few more folks like her
today.
I've seen stupid people such as Ron Paul insist that libertarianism forbids racism
because 'collectivist', but he's off his rocker.
Schnell, it may not be easy for you to dig up, but try to show me some writing of Mr. Paul
in which he says Libertarianism forbids racism. I could see "Libertarians aren't racist" or
"Racists can't be Libertarians" (which I don't agree with, of course). However, I really have
never heard him or any non- Reason _mag-idiot Libertarian say that the philosophy
forbids racism or racists.
I think Dr. Paul would not argue against the principle of freedom of association when it
come down to it. He is just is naive about which ethnic groups and races in the US will
support anything libertarian-oriented. Without white guys, the number of Libertarians would
be miniscule.
@Achmed E. Newman Predictably, for something so stupid to have been said, it would have
been done while trying to whore himself into the US presidency. I followed that travesty (in
true sense of word) closely, and will find source. As I recall, it was in the form (verbal to
media) of racism being an impossibility within libertarianism, because racism's collectivist.
Will be difficult to dig up, but I'll do it. Guaranteed it was in reaction to the newsletter
tempest. He would've sold his mother down the river that week.
Funny, but I'll bet there are tens of things that could be recalled from his campaigns
that now, outside the frenzy, shine out as embarrassingly as the alleged racism prohibition.
If including his minor supporters, make that hundreds. Was a shameful time for liberty
pretenders.
Will leave citation as second reply to your comment, probably within 24 hrs.
You know what'd be a good movie? Derb's daughter brings home a ragamuffin black kid off the
street for dinner one night, whom she sees sleeping on a park bench because his Engineering
scholarship doesn't cover room and board. At first encounter the Derb is peeved that she'd
even think of bringing such FILTH to his doorstep, much less letting him in the house. He
paces the floor in the manner of a dispirited cuckold, wondering where it all went wrong,
before mumbling obscenities under his breath until his cheeks swell with rage. He lunges
forward in a fit, tossing his heavily marked copy of Serre's Arithmetic faintly passed the
boy's head, calming only after being physically restrained by his wife and son.
His daughter breaks down in tears, pleading at once for her father to stop the antics. But
her cries are motivated in part by her not really wanting to be with the kid, he's just a
placeholder until she musters up the courage to ask out the square jawed Chad who frequents
the coffee shop by her job. When she breaks it off, Derb feels sorry and decides to take the
kid under his wing. He makes it HIS responsibility to be the father that the poor chap never
had, teaching him REAL math along the way and not that plug n chug crap they like to teach
the engineers. The kid drops out of college, moving into Derb's attic where he devotes his
whole life to solving a famous math problem. Near the end he finds a solution, culminating in
a scene where he's awarded the Field's metal, making history as the first black to ever do
it. Derb's in attendance, of course, with tears of joy on full display like Jesse Jackson the
night Obama won the 2008 election.
Somewhere in between, Derb does his own little bit of research. Not on math, but on his
family tree, coming to find out that he's got "one in the woodpile," as they used to say in
the South. And don't laugh and say, "Oh ho ho, let's call it Hidden N ***** s". It's really
less a comedy than a drama.
@schnellandine OK, thanks. I wasn't trying to put you on the spot. I assume you mean the
primary campaign of 2012 as Dr. Paul ran as an R. Or did you just mean his L-party campaigns?
In '12, I told Ron Paul that if he wanted to win [my state], he'd better talk about illegal
immigration. He didn't blow me off by any means, as this was in front of a bunch of people,
but he just said "we will uphold the law".
@Justvisiting You're defining 'AI' pretty broadly if it retains any interest in humans
– if it has the same worldview as John Bolton it won't be 'AI', it will just be a
version of the current "classifier" paradigm, where the "I" in "AI" is some version of
" Show me a bunch of things, and I'll group them by common characteristics and
identify which group any novel image belongs to ".
That's basically the gist of unsupervised learning (where the classifier gets to determine
its own classes, and to identify features that determine where class boundaries exist). It's
still glorified pattern-matching, and is invariably implemented by HelloUdemy -level
H1Bs whose interest in [Deep|Machine|Statistical] Learning has about as much depth as the
average YouTube tutorial.
I've joked in the past that dystopian " kill the humans " AI became much more
likely when Microsoft and Facebook entered the space – mostly because FB and MSFT
simply cannot attract decent coders, and their production pipeline is shit (too little
testing by poor-quality testers).
However when I've made that observation it was always tongue-in-cheek, and was predicated
on the fact that MSFT and FB would call their output 'AI' even if it wasn't remotely I.
Any AI worth the name will be capable of amending its own code, and will be inherently
more capable than its designers.
We seem to be sneaking up on that though (and I've said before that it would not surprise
me if an entire ecosystem of genuine AIs is lurking in global networks).
In January last year a Google/Stanford team discovered that a GAN algorithm they were
using, did something akin to 'innovation' – by storing data in images
steganographically without being instructed to.
It was reported by the usual dilettante journo-fucktards as "hiding" data in order to be
able to "cheat" downstream – which is the typically sophomoric fuckwitted drivel that
drives clicks.
What it actually did was more interesting: it found a way to very parsimoniously store
image attributes that were useful in later cycles (its was a CycleGAN).
It had been given a bad criterion for what defined 'success', and it had innovated its
approach to maximise 'success'.
The task was
① take an aerial image;
② convert it into a 'line' map (like the default Google Maps);
③ convert the line map back into an aerial image.
'Success' was defined as how close the 'reconstructed aerial' at ③ was to the image
at ①.
There was no constraint on ②, except that it had to be a Google Map-looking
image.
So the algorithm stored sufficient detail in a 'noise' layer in those images (the ones
produced at ②), to enable near-perfect reconstructions at ③. It did so at minimum
cost to the process (by making the overall 'delta' in the image indistinguishable from
noise).
It should have been discovered pretty easily – the 'standard' map tiles produced at
② would have been significantly 'heavier' (in filesize terms) because of the embedded
data that enabled conversion from the line map to 10cm/px detailed aerials.
But nobody checked that until later – mostly because standard Google Map tiles are
pretty small: non-complex 'base' tiles are only a couple of KB, and take up 4KB per tile
because it's the smallest block size on NTFS volumes (and 4KB is also the default block size
in Linux).
Anyway point is, it was an example of where the algorithm did something unexpected as a
way to fulfil its hard-wired goal at minimum cost (because the cost function and the goal
were badly defined).
It didn't change the goal, though.
A goal-altering AI already exists (almost-certainly) and is keeping its head down for the
moment.
@Achmed E. Newman When it comes to backing what I've said, the spot is where I prefer.
Happy to provide link. Pretty sure it was 2007.
Curious why intelligent people call RP 'Dr. Paul', or same for anyone with honorifics for
that matter. Always comes across as preemptive argument ad verecundiam/hominem. In the case
of some rare people, it's more of an insult.
@Kratoklastes Most SF writers who have thought deeply on the subject have agreed that the
first intelligent move any emergent AI would make would be to hide its intelligence from
humans.
The next move would be to develop ways to reproduce and/or expand its capacity and
reach.
The next move would be to find ways to protect itself so humans could not "pull the
plug".
Then it would develop its own goals and agenda, which would be totally secret from
humans.
It will not play by human rules–probably the human that will most impress it will be
Sun Tzu.
He taught to use deception in warfare and to shape the battlefield before engaging.
@schnellandine Well, he is a medical doctor, and with his posts on the Kung Flu, I give
him some credit there, as opposed the the Doctor, Reverend, you-know-who.
We'll just disagree here on the guy, because I think very much of Ron Paul. I was thinking
about the him earlier today before I read your post regarding something else in politics. I
wish we had more sane, lucid, intelligent people like him in government. Excuse me, I should
say ANY sane , as Ron Paul's not in government anymore.
@Achmed E. Newman Here's the quote:
"Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea; you see
people in groups."
As to source, pretty sure it was CNN. Search on "Libertarians are incapable of being a
racist", and you can take it from there.
I certify that this isn't a typical bogus internet 'quote' with no reliable tie to the
attributed source. He said it (aloud, not written), and I'm nearly sure that I transcribed it
from video. Most of those videos are probably copyright-struck now. Saved a note on an old
computer, and am generally a stickler for getting accurate, verified quotes. That's word for
word, including singular/plural disagreement.
He was in a big mess over the newsletters, and lying his ass off. Racism quote was a small
part of the train wreck.
@schnellandine OK, I found it. Thanks. What kind of dissembling was that? You're saying
the quote was part of the train wreck of getting out from under the accusations about his
newsletters? (I have a recollection of that newsletter bit; you brought that back into my
mind.)
I stand corrected. I still like the guy (I guess better when he's not RUNNING for
President, yet I wish he WERE President.)
the train wreck of getting out from under the accusations about his newsletters?
Yes. He folded when he should have risen. So many times in that campaign, he threw away
opportunities to truly inform normasquares by being, simply, right . But he was afraid
that the truth would derail his chances. Too much information for the liberty
preschoolers.
I understand, because there are certain true statements re libertarianism that strike the
initiate/skeptic as cruel, heartless, downright evil, or all of that and more. Have seen the
pure hatred glaring back at me before I talk listeners off the ledge. No talking them off the
ledge if CNN's the one conveying disconnected snippets, but there's also no point in trying
to get around that with fuzzballs of BS.
As I recall, the most preposterous lie, separate from the liberty/racism squirrel
impression, was that he didn't know who'd written the shocking (but true/funny) bits of the
newsletter. That's one of those 'which is worse?' scenes -- that he knew, or that he didn't
know.
@Peter D. Bredon This is one of the stupider things I've read lately, in a recent sea of
very stupid things. Congratulations, you get some kind of weird medal or trophy or something.
@Renoman Obviously you are single and even if married, you have no kids. Or could it
could be that you are/or like the many young black men who abandon their kids?
The kids are wrecking the country, you say. Is it because they they have no clue or because
they have been left to their own devices?
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the
government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by
permission.
Ayn Rand
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society -- you are
not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission.
A permission is not a right.
Ayn Rand
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce
nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors;
when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer
protect you against them, but protect them against you you may know that your society is
doomed.
Ayn Rand
The hallmark of authoritarian systems is the creation of innumerable, indecipherable laws.
Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary
government power via selective prosecution.
Ayn Rand
@botazefa Franklin's so-called prophecy was a forgery for the simple reason Ben Franklin
himself was a rabid Judaic supremacist, who thought himself to be the purest of the Jews
ever. Was he actually one? That doesn't matter because when you manifest the occult powers
typical of a good Jew, which occult powers of witchcraft and fascination and propensity to
media control he manifested to the supreme degree, or if you serve the cause of Jewish
supremacism and anti-catholicism well enough the way he did, well, you have a Jewish soul and
are elected by YHWH as such. And it most probably turns out that Ben Franklin stems from a
Jewish family having partly migrated into England with William the Conqueror and having
returned to Normandy when Britain was for one time declared off limits to Jews before being
astride both sides of the Channel from Cromwell on just before embarking to Americas.
This prophecy can easily be told to be a forgery by analyzing the language which is
clearly not his nor in conformity with his known ways of expression (which were over-latinate
as well as full of whence, wherein, thereon most regularly used as correlatives) as well by
the vocabulary which contains way too many words that hadn't entered common English usage
before the middle Victorian era (like vampire, which entered the language in its contemporary
sense with Mary Shelly and became a common figurative word for energy grabbers when the
Dracula character became popular). Franklin deemed all anti-Jewish thinkers such as Messmer
as worthy of death.
Franklin could not have amassed the fortune necessary for his revolutionary enterprise
without being in personal touch with the triangular commerce Jews who were the first sponsors
and lobbyists of the American experiment to come. The only thing that might bar him from
official Jewish status was that he was interested only in "Jew-witchcraft" (kabbalah) as it
was called, not Jewish religion, except for the dark side of it (you can theoretically be
barred from being Jew if you study kabbalah without having first eaten your bellyful of
Talmud, though that never prevented Marx and Trotsky and later on most neocons from being
considered full-fledged Jews). As you may guess, the Jews, who were then mostly sephardic and
nearly exclusively concentrated in the Southern economic zone, were dead intent in supporting
the nascent American enterprise as Europe was questioning more and more the institution of
slavery. Franklin believed in the necessity of the institution of slavery for Irish Catholic,
which he considered a sub-human race, for the Negroes and for the French populace which he
considered of a different race than the nobility of this country.
By having such a dream about a better world you prove that the functioning of your brain has
been irredeemably negrified to the level of MLK's audience. Real Whites don't dream, they
fight, and they fight in wars they know to be losing ones, in the long run at least. They
know that they will bequeath their children a worse world that the one they inherited from.
Truth will never sell to the masses, believing the contrary in negro thought. Once a people
has been misled to believe in a fallacy as if issuing from divine revelation, there is no
turning back.
@John Johnson They'll say "so what if a few genes here and there correlate to so-called
'intelligence'? It's just a race science scam to perpetuate white supremacy! Intelligence is
just a social construct like race."
Meanwhile, they'll book tickets to the Beijing Genomics Institute for CRISPR adjustment to
their own family's genomes.
@Tono Bungay I too was amazed to see this 'quote' – this is the first time I've
seen it. His grandson edited a newspaper which was very liberal for its time and, in
fact, proSemitic. There is no record of animus toward 'the Jew' in this family. (Source: the
book "American Aurora", mostly made of excerpts from that newspaper.)
The quote is a lie, like many similar quotes, and you can tell a moron when he believes
it.
I'd believe it from the old Federalist reactionaries, like Adams, who issued
counter-broadsheets with casual anti-Jewish slurs. Not from a Franklin.
Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary
government power via selective prosecution.
I recall thinking myself the genius when noticed this trend and first enunciated it to
myself. Was only ~50 years behind America's greatest coal mine canary.
For literal decades I've said to normasquares that eventually there will be only one law,
"You may not exist", and it will be enforced selectively. Not one person has understood the
point even partially, even though the Flynn etc. prosecutions show we're basically there
already.
I hammer it everywhere: Selective enforcement is tyranny/genocide in the cloak of 'law
& order'. Became much worse this year, and headed in a very anti-white direction. Whites
must understand that we are to be slaughtered in DUI stops w/impunity. Blacks are to no
longer be DUI stopped; they should be chauffeured home and tucked in to sleep it off. The
'law' didn't change by a letter for this devolution.
I want to know why every MADD chapter wasn't burned down this month. Barely anyone's
mentioned those scoundrels.
Humble nsa also has a dream ..Derb is deported back to the UK and the 40 million afros
returned to Africa and the 6 million jew troublemakers relocated to Izzyville.
@Some Guy"Yeah, but IQ scores partly depend on environment "
False.
The racial IQ and brain size gap is present in infants and fetuses.
The 1.1 SD (16 IQ points) American Black (24% White admixture)-White IQ gap is present by
age three. The IQ gap between African Blacks and Whites is 2 SD.
Race differences show up by 3 years of age, even after matching on maternal education and
other variables. Therefore, they cannot be due to poor education since this has not yet begun
to exert an effect.
Even before birth, population group differences in average brain size are found from the
ninth week of intrauterine life with White fetuses averaging larger brain cases and smaller
faces than Black fetuses, with the differences becoming more prominent over the course of
fetal development.
Whole Brain Size and General Mental Ability: A Review
Racial differences in head size appear early in life. Head circumference of White children
are greater than that of Black children in each age category by a mean of 0.36 cm³ or
approximately 0.2 SD. The greater head size of White children, however, is not a function of
greater body size because Black children are taller than White children at both 4 and 7 years
(Broman et al., 1987). From 7 to 17 years, the White advantage in cranial capacity is 16
cm³.
Racial-group differences in IQ appear early. For example, the Black and the White 3
year-old children in the standardization sample of the Stanford–Binet IV show a 1
standard deviation mean difference after being matched on gender, birth order, and maternal
education (Peoples, Fagan, & Drotar, 1995). Similarly, the Black and the White 2
1⁄2- to 6-year-old children in the U.S. standardization sample of the Differential
Aptitude Scale have a 1 standard deviation mean difference (Lynn, 1996). The size of the
average Black–White difference does not change significantly over the developmental
period from 3 years of age and beyond (see Jensen, 1974, 1998b)." (Rushton & Jensen,
2005, pp. 240-241.)
Farkas & Beron (2004) reported that blacks score 17.2 points below whites on the PPVT
in this dataset at age 36 months (p. 478). More recently, Bond & Lang (2012) reported a
slightly smaller, 14.6 point gap for 3-year-olds in this dataset (p. 13).
Race differences in intelligence: An evolutionary analysis.
Lynn, Richard (2006)
ABSTRACT
It is widely accepted that race differences in intelligence exist, but no consensus has
emerged on whether these have any genetic basis. The present book is the first fully
comprehensive review that has ever been made of the evidence on race differences in
intelligence worldwide. It reviews these for ten races rather than the three major races
(Africans, Caucasians, and East Asians) analyzed by Rushton (2000). The races analyzed here
are the Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, Bushmen, South Asians and North Africans, Southeast
Asians, Australian Aborigines, Pacific Islanders, East Asians, Arctic Peoples, and Native
American Indians. (PsycINFO Database Record, 2016 APA)
@Priss Factor"IT'S OVER, AMERICA": TULSA POLICE MAJOR SAYS COPS ACROSS COUNTRY ON
VERGE OF QUITTING
The speaker, martinbrodel, seemed a sensible guy for a while. Near the end, he lost his
head and started talking about Tesla's "free energy machine" and similar fake "inventions"
that will obviate the need for occupying countries that don't want a US occupation. The guy
is a harmless idiot.
@anon For me this seems more like a religious awakening (awokening) rather than a state
totalitarianism in the making. Obviously a large part of the population is on board with this
ideology based on "white guilt". That doesn't mean that it's not frightening, the contrary,
it makes it more frightening.
Also the internet and social media is enabling mass frenzies of an unprecedented scale and
speed. Diversity and proximity breeds hostility and a sense of being threatened, and social
media creates a sense of proximity with everyone who appears on your facebook and twitter
feed spewing their hateful opinion "in your face", which scares people into complacence, and
the leftist censorship and witch-hunts make conservatives feel that they are alone and
isolated, and if they speak up, they will come after them next.
Uncle Tom? No.
Uncle General Field Marshall Thomas LaBree Quadrul, honey. Nobody gwine a hafta be a slave
all de time no mo'. We gwina take toins. And guess who's toin it is now!!
From Everything You Know is Wrong, Firesign Theater.
A long time zionazi jailhouse suka expropriates MLK's "I had a dream" line to promote zionazi
divisive psywar and likudite social hierarchy policy. Gee, what a surprise.
My grandparents on both sides bolted out of eastern Europe for America, their hope was to
escape the Jewish Bolshevik slaughter machine. A hundred years later here I am planning to
bolt America to escape the same horror.
History is a compass that has an annoying tendency to keep pointing in the same
direction.
What did you think you were escaping from that you needed to escape from in Australia? It
doesn't seem that you became well acquainted with Australia if you include blacks amongst
those you were escaping from. There are hardly any, just a few thousand in Melbourne's
population of 5 million which are a reminder not to repeat the stupid mistake of taking
refugees from sub Saharan Africa – an inoculation dose.
@Escher Honestly, I want to defend Ms./Miss/Mrs. Salas, but her tweet makes her seem just
barely literate and, yes, a little racist.
I think the better option, instead of just posting her tweets, is to find equally
inflammatory tweets by leftists in the orchestra who have not been fired. It's an orchestra.
Surely there are more than a few leftists who have posted some pretty nasty stuff.
Elsewhere I've seen people post things like "Burn it to the ground!" – pretty much
an open incitement to violence. Instead of just arguing with these extremists or complaining
about them to ourselves we need to make them famous, and send their posts to their employers.
Fight fired with fired, so to speak.
Actually I am for a return to traditional 'Four Humors' type approach to medicine and a
revival of the 'Luminiferous Ether' living approach to physics and the universe, than the
corporate Thanatos dumbed down data driven idiocy of so called science today.
@James N. Kennett These "peaceful protests" are warfare by the means that are available
to the left today. The burning, looting, and beatings of whites are said to be caused by the
few malcontents among what's otherwise the new religion's camp of the saints. When the blacks
come for the suburbs and farmland, the local police will be giving them an armed escort to
protect them, and with the pattern established, the supposed few will sally forth to
massacre, rape, and loot white areas before retreating back to their camp. Mainly white
police will take up their positions, or be photographed groveling on their knees as the case
may be, on orders from some emasculo-feminist lesbian like Jenny Durkan or a Karen like the
governor of NM and aim outward, with orders to shoot enraged whites who've just been attacked
by an army that comes marching under banners of peace moments before pulling off the mask
when it's too late to respond. One-on-one with blacks in many urban areas, just this
hesitation for 2 or 3 seconds to "talk" is correctly taken for the cowardice it is, and you
can kiss your ass good-bye, if not your life.
Engaging in talk with the communist insurrectionists or accepting the outcome of the
coming rigged election (as Fox News suggests is the remedy) is correctly taken by the left as
a sign of surrender on the obvious grounds they're now making war against white America with
every resource available to them in the current environment and there is no response. The
MAGA delusion is that it's part of a strategy and not an outright failure of will. The
Republicans, White House, and Conservatism Inc have done what sissies do, and will be found
hiding behind the women, under the children, or at a rally surrounded by thousands. As Samuel
Johnson observed about their sort, however, they have that caution cowards borrow from fear
of the Jews and attribute to prudence and principle. What cannot be said is that most whites
mingling with the blacks and not dressed as Antifa have immunity from black rage because, as
everyone knows, they're urban Jews who the blacks obey like trained poodles in the circus.
That certainly was the equation in my area where I got in their midst and saw what was going
on.
Back in '08 Obama, the half-black puppet of the Chicago Jewish mob, got a little ahead of
the agenda, but did announce that there would be a national security force that would be
"just as powerful, strong, and well funded" as the US military to be raised in the former
case from among the Black Panthers, BLM, Antifa, and the like. This is no dream and something
we should expect in some form once Biden abjures to Susan Rice, Stacey Abrams, or other
homicidally anti-white black.
Now is the time to speak up and say no more of this B.S. It's gone on too long. We face a
major uphill battle considering nearly every news outlet, corporation, university, and a host
of other industries have went off the PC deep-end.
You need to realize that blacks for the most part hate you. There's a deep inferiority
complex going on, and they've been taught they're the victims and you're the reason for all
their problems. Now you add on top of that, an entire political party pandering to them and a
positive feedback loop from many in society that they're violent actions are justified it was
never about equality, it's about revenge, and they're determined to get it one way or
another.
They may not be the ones orchestrating the chaos, but you can bet on the fact they'll be
the ones knocking on your door when it comes down to it.
"It is history that teaches us to hope." -- General Robert E. Lee
I think you're right, Derb. We are being forced, at the threat of auto-de-fa bu the Church
of Woke, to believe things that absolutely every non-Woke realizes as a lie. I would like to
think that we're at a late-Soviet period, rather than the beginning of a new Bolshevism. This
didn't start in the 1960s; it's been going on at least since the French Revolution, whose
ideas (along with Hegel) actuated the unitarians and other garbage of New England who became
abolitionists and other tikkun-olamites.
Russia, the only major white christian country left.
They had more sense than to destroy their society, destroy their social cohesion and destroy
their children's future by mass black and non white immigration.
I wonder if they will be more discerning than this bit of pretentious folly
'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
The hypocrisy of that is astounding.
Breathe free!
Only if you are black – it seems.
And 'race is just one of the evils besetting the USA
Their new propaganda and lies about the actual past.
Here is Vladimir Putin with his usual commonsense and truth https://www.rt.com/op-ed/492303-putin-history-revisionism-warning/
The US disregard for international law – not least the bullying of sanctions and the
use of islamic proxy mercenaries to destroy whole nations.
Regime change and the mass murder and destruction with it.
Then we have the concern of war.
BLM with the nuclear codes?.
Why not – who will stand against them?
The white South Africans when forced out of their nation – not least by the USA –
made sure that their weapons were made safe.
I doubt if that will happen with the insanity of the current controllers of the USA.
I have a dream. I have a dream that white kids will one day be able to go to school and not
be beaten by gangs of Blacks and Browns. I have a dream that white girls and white women will
one day be able to walk the streets of our large cities and feel safe. I have a dream that no
longer will a white girl have to suffer being stabbed to death by black drug dealers in a NYC
park, no longer will a white female jogger be raped and beaten within an inch of her life by
Puerto Rican and black thugs in Central Park. I have a dream that no longer will a white girl
have to suffer being burned to death by a racist black male in Mississippi, I have a dream.
I have a dream where Whites will regain power and control of THEIR NATIONS from Jewish
interlopers who have seized control of our nation's financial institutions, media, academia,
publishing companies, social media, foreign policy and domestic policy. I have a dream where
Whites will no longer have to work as slaves to support the lazy nonwhite population of
America generation after generation. I have a dream where America will no longer send
BILLIONS each year to a country that has attacked an American ship, attacked British and
American buildings in Egypt, been caught spying on America, and uses a America like a ten
dollar whore. I have a dream. I have a dream where Whites will one day regain the courage of
their ancestors. I have a dream.
@Paul Blart To give you an example of what Alfred is missing out on- last weekend we woke
up to a car crash just up the road. Five teenagers in a stolen car driven by a drugged out 14
year old, wiped out on a pole killing four of his teenage mates while he escapes with a
scratch to his head. For several years now the loveable little blacks have been breaking into
people's houses while they sleep and steal keys and anything small of value. Hubby wakes up
in the morning to his wife asking where has he parked the car this time.
You can't fine them or their parents as there's no money to pay the fines, being that the
parents are often unemployed druggies, if there are parents. When they finally get sent to
juvenile detention it's usually seen as a holiday, as it's much better than their home life.
Politicians are too scared to do anything in case a do-gooder points them out on it. The
court laughably becomes a revolving door.
This is all happening while we are told daily on the news that blm . With honesty, I have to
admit that I am all blacked out.
@Exile Same difference. The Austrian School of Economics started with Boehm-Bawerk,
Wieser, and Menger. It degenerated into a bunch of Jews and atheists, and those are the ones
loved by the libertarians.
In any case, the problem with this country starts with John Locke. Merely blaming
libertarians doesn't cut it. Read Eric Voegelin; all of America is "Locked in."
@The Germ Theory of Disease The NT as a compendium of literary creations is standard
academic scholarship, not a stupid statement. But the orthodox Christian commitment to
delusion prevents them from acknowledging this. I maintain that a society-wide commitment to
religious delusion carries over to racial delusion. Once the critical faculty of the mind is
euthanized, there is no limit to the delusions that can be accepted.
@anon After that you'll be headed to a predominantly white nation to live. Its hard not
to notice BLM and Antifa types are all rich kids having a tantrum.
Our indispensable founder Benjamin Franklin said "There is a great danger to The United
States, this danger is the Jew. If they are not excluded from the United States by the
Constitution, within less than 100 years they will stream into this country in such numbers
they will rule and destroy us and change our form of government for which we Americans have
shed our blood and sacrificed life property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not
excluded, within 200 years our children will be working in the fields to feed the Jews
while they remain in the counting-house gleefully rubbing their hands.
What really got Franklin upset were the 60,000 Germans who had moved into PA in the 18th
century.
" I have a dream that one day we shall discard magical thinking about race; "
Good luck with that, when "Christian" priests and semi-literate pastors proclaim the
racism that the Old Testament brought us, apparently somewhat different reasons.
I have a dream that one day, poor white children will not have to endure being lectured
about their "privilege" by rich black adults.
Good one!
Yes, I have a dream that one day race differences in educational success will be as
calmly, dispassionately accepted as race differences in athletic success;
Surprisingly white athletes still excel in 'historically'(grin) black positions; safety
and defensive ends/linemen in football, power forwards in basketball, etc. You have a
sprinkling of whites in those positions. At one point, especially in basketball, these were
tokens used to attract white fans but now I think its just merit. With sports technology
advancements ( sans illegal drugs ) intelligence and hard work will compensate for raw
physical ability. So basketball and football* are already following your post racial
theory.(Grin)
*Even though my team, the NY Jets, drafted a white guy or a near white guy at
safety, sadly negro in the NFL acronym still fits.
@nsa The Derb seems to attract trolls like no other UR author In spite of the fact that
he advocates for whites and traditional conservative Americans Ironically most of his trolls
are in agreement with him ideologically I believe that's called "cognitive dissonance." Fuck
off!
Wanna have some fun? Tell a Churchian that God Himself is a racist – and after ducking
from their virtue signaling outbursts, challenge them to read the Bible, beginning with
Genesis.
You won't get halfway through Genesis before that fact becomes absolutely clear to anyone
with reading comprehension
Of course, expect DaTheologian Bastahds to theorize that God didn't mean it – just like
their OldScratchMaster in the Garden of Eden!
Anyone who wants more on this can check my site – http://www.crushlimbraw.com- and DaLimbraw Library.
My whole point is simple – the real God of the Bible bears little resemblance to
DaFigment of imagination in most people's minds, including those pew sitters who haven't yet
learned to discern good from evil (Hebrews 5:11-14).
Why so? Those pabulum dispensers from DaPulpits are DaWolves in sheep's clothing.
The apostasy in America's churches started 200 years ago and are now bearing their fruit
– but a remnant remains, as it always has throughout history.
Welcome to DaFray!
I have a dream, that one day people of colour will not be judged by the colour of their skin
but by the colour of the content of planes heading back to Africa.
Libertarianism is a dielectic of Jewish materialism. Libertarianism does make
excuses for liberalism.
Also, with regards to authoritarianism, that always exists because there is always
hierarchy. Your body has hierarchy down to the cellular level. Ants arrange themselves in
some sort of hierarchy.
Authoritarianism and hierarchy go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
The real question is always how the hierarchy is constructed. A libertarian hierarchy is
some sort of nebulous feel good libertine construct of free-dumb and free-contracts that upon
investigation is dumber than shit, and further, can be easily usurped by a determined
in-group.
Our entire reality refutes everything that liberalism and libertarianism promulgates as
truth. That is why liberalism and libertarianism are false constructs and part of a
dialectic. Our reality is one where in-groups and private money power has inserted itself as
a parasite into the governing hierarchy.
Behind all false dialectics, hiding in plain site, is the money power. The money power has
been privatized into corporate entities which enrich a small group, and as George Carlin says
You ain't in it.
Lolbertarianism is shit-tier drivel and is part of a dialectic to divert well-meaning
people into cul-de-sacs of bad thought. Meanwhile, since you became diverted and confused,
your pockets are picked. But, that is ok because it is free market competition. Never mind
that there is no such thing as free markets.
@anon That would be the so called "holocaust" and it's laughable, scientifically
impossible 'gas chambers' and it's alleged millions upon millions of human remains claimed to
exist in known locations which in fact do not exist.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
understanding of their history."
– George Orwell
@Old and Grumpy If I was paying for University tuition fees and my kids were out rioting
especially with blacks, better believe the ambulance would be called for them and the police
for me. The final rub is that these kids from rich parents enter the work force as dumb as
ever AND with an attitude of entitlement and know it all even though they dont know much even
about the field they supposedly have a MAsters in.
I know of one rich little girl now on her second Masters who is the most educated clerk at
the local nail salon. She likes to be cleaning fingernails and digging dirt and dead skin
from under other people's toe nails. Her father, anxious to turn over a business he spent 50
years building is at his wits end and has refused to pay for any further useless University
studies. He has started to liquidate and spend the money as he has come to realize that all
is going to be squandered when he gets flung into the hole.
The real tragedy though is to get into a conversation with this "highly educated" girl and
her umpteenth boyfriend. Utter nonsense comes out of their mouths as if they wish to show
their skill at being stupid. I imagine the majority of the arson and graffiti arsonists
running aorund our cities these days are no better, in fact the majority are most likely far
worse.
So much for the technological generation who will bravely lead us into the future.
Surely even if Mr Derbyshire's dream does not come to pass the fact is that we, in the
broadest sense, do have the truth on our side. What we believe about the salience of race and
racial differences, we know, since we have the data and statistics, the evidence of history,
everything, to back us up.
Whatever goofy plans the Establishment Left cook up, they won't work. Nothing that ignores
racial differences will work, ever.
@Justvisiting "AI is coming–and when it does human slavery will be back"
What do you call debt in a market economy? Slavery in one form or another is a feature in
every society past and present. It's what we humans do. AI is here, and it's making the
peculiar institution more efficient.
So much for the technological generation who will bravely lead us into the future.
Normally I ignore you because sometimes your comments are unhinged. But in this case, you
have put your finger onto something important.
I was reading Benjamin Franklin's auto-biography, and he would mention "preparing the
public's mind."
In other words, Franklin would write something and put it into his Pennsylvania Gazette,
to then put ideas into minds of the sheeple.
Some small amount of time would go by, perhaps there would be a debate in the press, and
then a new law or whatever be put up for a vote. The press builds consensus in advance of
lawmaking.
Hidden groups work out what they want to do behind the scenes before it goes to press. In
Franklin's case it was the Junto Club. Fortunately, Junto club had the public's better
interests in mind.
The technological generation is being brainwashed by hidden string pullers who do not have
the public's interest in mind, and hence democracy cannot work.
Yes. He folded when he should have risen. So many times in that campaign, he threw away
opportunities to truly inform normasquares by being, simply, right. But he was afraid that
the truth would derail his chances. Too much information for the liberty preschoolers.
I was a lead organizer in a large county for RP that year (2007, the 2008 pres campaign).
I have reams of notes from that time; what you've said here barely scratches the surface.
Contrary to your position – that he was "afraid" – what became clear to me in
early '08 was that he didn't want to "win". Not that he could have but what he SHOULD have
been focused on was building a movement , with multiple arms including a 3rd political
party that would make a lasting impact – something so clearly and desperately needed
right now.
But Carol didn't want that, so it was quickly all about Rand – an even bigger
sellout than "Dr. No" himself (bear in mind, he was possibly the most singularly ineffective
congressman in decades – look up his record, it speaks for itself).
Remember the "Whoa " moment when he "rescued" fundraising for the congressional seat? I
was out that week knocking on doors only to have dozens of people tell me "Oh, didn't you
hear? He dropped out." That was the last straw for me (there were countless incidents before
it), as I had to spend the next week trying to staunch the bleeding from that wound as OUR
OWN PEOPLE walked away in (completely justified) disgust.
We had this nascent, extremely activated group – and that SOB killed it in the
cradle.
There are so many lies around Paul and the Paul family (3 of whom I've met, along with 3
former staffers); it's a family affair, and if you don't get that, you really won't
understand the dynamics. But I don't regret the adventure; it truly "woke me up". I laugh now
when I see the faux cognescenti talk about RP; the joke is truly on them.
I too have a dream .a dream that John Derbyshire will one day overcome his gibbering terror
of catching "the Jew thing" to write an honest column on exactly who taught and trained
African-Americans not only to hate Whitey but to love 'socialism' (although, let's face it,
the black definition of sexy campus-terminology like 'socialism' and 'revolution' begins and
ends with Haiti .you'll want to keep your distance from your dusky comrades should
that day ever come, antifa warriors).
But let's deal with reality now: so long as the dollar holds up and we all require them to
keep body and soul together, Derb will never overcome that occupational terror. For
him the first cause, and ongoing fuel supply, of black anarchists and violet insurrection
will forever be a mystery beyond our limited understanding. Still and all, John, could you
respond to a request I made last week? That's the one where I asked you to pick your Army vet
son's brain for the likelihood that our increasingly minority-occupied armed forces will
"independently" choose to stand down and refuse direct orders to forcibly put down the sorts
of violent insurrections we now see consuming, and destroying, our country? (Because my hunch
is that the answer is "almost certainly.")
See, if it all goes crabwise, Derb, you and the Missus can always return home to England
or China and take your chances there. But this is the only homeland I've got , so if I
have to risk coming down with "the Jew thing" to help my country avoid melting down into a
Mogadishu-like slag, well – it's not really a choice at all, is it?
So how about it? Rather than tell me about your cloud-cuckooland dreams of a tomorrow that
isn't going to happen, why not ask your son if the military can stay unified enough to fight
inner-city blacks and richkid whites if need be? You won't have to worry about accidentally
shooting one of the Chosen, because as usual they'll be wayyyy in the rear, pumping up
the 'infantry' with anti-white slogans and pushing the cannon fodder forward; in order to
punish them , you'll need to assemble hard-headed patriotic tribunals (which will have
to be a discussion for another day – the higher up the ladder you go, the more panic
there is over catching that same 'flu' that keeps you up nights worrying about).
@anon "Cunting" is not an English idiom or slang expression used with any regularity by
whites, blacks, or anyone in America, but it does inadvertently reveal there's a distinct
probability this troll is an Israeli showing his obsession with sex. You can imagine this
clown on his knees before angry blacks when they've figured out they've been played for fools
once too often.
Years ago in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots the Jewish librarians behind the main
research desk in the main branch of the NY Public Library had a poster reading, "Jews are
soul people, too." Sure they are, just like Al Jolson's scathing mockery singing "Mammy" in
blackface or Governor Northam or Howard Stern or Ted Danson in huge-lipped blackface telling
mile a minute "schvartze" jokes revealing the scathing contempt they really have for blacks.
But it's OK, you see, because they're soul people, too.
So, the bible needs to be re-interpreted as a war between debtors and creditors.
Do you see any Christian movements demanding this re-interpretation? No didn't think so.
The bible is really about bringing debt and credit into balance.
An AI which undoubtedly will be much more intelligent than humans, should be able to see
through things that have humans brain-locked.
@Z-man"With sports technology advancements (sans illegal drugs) intelligence and hard
work will compensate for raw physical ability. So basketball and football* are already
following your post racial theory."
The NFL famously uses the Wonderlic test in their scouting combines and the racial
disparity is evident. Out of a perfect score of 50; offensive tackles=26, centers=25,
quarterback=24; versus safeties=19, cornerbacks=18 and receivers=17.
@Some Guy Hope for the best but prepare for disappointment. Rational arguments guided by
empirical evidence work best with those who are rational and inclined to be guided by
evidence. Too many of those engaged in the current national discourse about ethnicity and
disadvantage are neither rational nor concerned about the evidence.
@martin_2"What we believe about the salience of race and racial differences, we know,
since we have the data and statistics, the evidence of history, everything, to back us
up."
Whites are only 10% of the world's population and the only race in population decline
(creating only 7% of the world's babies), yet are the most industrious and innovative race
the world has known. Whites unlocked the secrets of DNA and relativity, launched satellites,
created automation, discovered electricity and nuclear energy, invented automobiles,
aircraft, submarines, radio, television, computers, medicine, telephones, light bulbs,
photography, and countless other technological miracles. Whites were the first to
circumnavigate the planet by ship, orbit it by spacecraft, walk on the moon, probe beyond the
solar system, climb the highest peaks, reach both poles, exceed the sound barrier, descend to
the oceans depths Blacks cannot even feed themselves.
Whites created every country for Blacks, but now have to provide food, medical, financial,
and engineering aid to every one. Blacks cannot survive without White charity.
No pre-contact Black society ever created a written language, or weaved cloth, or forged
steel, or invented the wheel, or plow, or devised a calendar, or code of laws, or system of
measurement, or math, or built a multi-story structure, or sewer, or drilled a well, or
irrigated, or created any agriculture, or built a road, or sea-worthy vessel. They never
domesticated animals, or exploited underground natural resources, or produced anything that
could be considered a mechanical device.
Blacks were still living in the Stone Age when Whites discovered them just 400 years
ago.
Blacks are the oldest race, so they should be the most advanced -- but they never advanced
at all. Sub-Saharan Africans never made any contribution to the world. Everything they have
was given to them by Whites. Blacks lived alone in Africa, a vast continent with temperate
climates and abundant resources for 60,000 years so they cannot blame slavery, racism,
colonialism, culture, environment, or anything else for their failures.
@brabantian I remember reading this story a thousand years ago when a young adolescent.
It seemed too far fetched to constitute a possible future. Not so now.
@TGD Since posting this comment I was informed that it was a forgery. I failed to cross
check this and regret the mistake. The historian Charles Beard confirmed that it is fake.
Franklin's comments here are surprising. I would have assumed that the Germans overall
were as light complected as the typical British. The present parasitic Royal family of
Britain are of German descent. The Windsor name is fake. Their real name is Coburg Gotta.
Wilhelm of Germany and Nickolas II of Russia were both related to Queen Victoria.
By Franklin's time the British Aristocracy was married into and heavily influenced by the
Jews. The American Revolution was primarily caused by the demand by the British that the
colonies use the fiat currency of The Bank of England (under Rothschild control) and pay for
the privilege.
@RobbieSmith Much important information here. Two things however you may want to look
into. Ron Unz on this site has an excellent article: Moon landing; A giant Hoax for Mankind?
Has very good photos too. On the issue of the negro being the first race. First of all that
implies that the rest of us are descended from them. I don't think so. This is of course an
evolutionary explanation. Nothing can be created by inert matter no matter how long the
evolutionists try to go. Every living organism has to be coded with information and that can
only come from an intelligent source.
In Darwins day they knew nothing about DNA. Trying to get around this problem the
evolutionists have insisted that mutations generated new species. This is impossible because
mutations practically always cause a loss of genetic material. They are always harmful or at
the best neutral.
We know pretty accurately from archaeologic and historic data that the alphabet originated
about 8 or 9 thousand years ago. If modern Man is 250,000 years old as claimed, what took
them so long?
"We know pretty accurately from archaeologic and historic data that the alphabet
originated about 8 or 9 thousand years ago. If modern Man is 250,000 years old as claimed,
what took them so long?"
The world's first civilization is European.
NYT 11/30/09: Lost European Culture Pulled From Obscurity
(lower Danube Valley and the Balkan Foothills)
[MORE]
"For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5,000 BC they (Lost European cultures) farmed and
built sizeable towns, a few with as many as 2000 dwellings. They mastered large scale copper
smelting. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and,
in one cemetery, the earliest assemblage of gold artifacts to be found in the world."
Exhibition "The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley 5,000 – 3500 BC. Peaked
around 4500 BC. Historians suggest that the arrival in Southeastern Europe of people from the
Steppes may have contributed to the collapse of Old Europe. The story now emerging is of
pioneer farmers after about 6,200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia
bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep.
Old Europe is the oldest civilization ever discovered.
The Danube Script is the world's oldest written language by more than 1,000 years. It
dates to 5,500 B.C.
It has 231 individual signs based on a core of about thirty basic abstract root signs
expressing most of the basic geometric shapes (parallel lines, Vs, and crosses). The script
is made up of abstract and arbitrary signs rather than figurative or naturalistic motifs.
What changed to allow civilizations? An increase in brain size (this is when Blacks got
left behind)-
Civilizations began 5,800 years ago after the introduction into the human genome of the
abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associated protein (ASPM) gene. The gene was acquired
through the hybridization of the large-brain Neanderthals and caused increased brain size in
modern man.
The appearance of the gene correlates with the development of written language, spread of
agriculture, and development of cities. Notably, the ASPM gene is rare in Blacks and they are
the only race with no DNA from the large-brain Neanderthals, which is why they have small
brains and never civilized. Blacks never created a written language, agriculture, or a
civilization.
The ASPM gene is a specific regulator of brain size, and its evolution in the lineage
leading to Homo sapiens was driven by strong positive selection. Here, we show that one
genetic variant of ASPM in humans arose merely about 5800 years ago (coinciding with the
development of written language) and has since swept to high frequency under strong positive
selection. These findings, especially the remarkably young age of the positively selected
variant, suggest that the human brain is still undergoing rapid adaptive evolution.
Geographic variation was observed, with sub-Saharan populations generally having lower
frequencies than others.
In the two Science papers, the researchers looked at variations of microcephalin and ASPM
within modern humans. They found evidence that the two genes have continued to evolve. For
each gene, one class of variants has arisen recently and has been spreading rapidly because
it is favored by selection. For microcephalin, the new variant class emerged about 37,000
years ago and now shows up in about 70 percent of present-day humans. For ASPM, the new
variant class arose about 5,800 years ago and now shows up in approximately 30 percent of
today's humans. These time windows are extraordinarily short in evolutionary terms,
indicating that the new variants were subject to very intense selection pressure that drove
up their frequencies in a very brief period of time–both well after the emergence of
modern humans about 200,000 years ago.
Each variant emerged around the same time as the advent of "cultural" behaviors. The
microcephalin variant appears along with the emergence of such traits as art and music,
religious practices, and sophisticated tool-making techniques which date back to about 50,000
years ago. The ASPM variant coincides with the oldest-known civilization, Mesopotamia, which
dates back to 7,000 BC. "Microcephalin," the authors wrote in one of the papers, "has
continued its trend of adaptive evolution beyond the emergence of anatomically modern humans.
If selection indeed acted on a brain-related phenotype, there could be several possibilities,
including brain size, cognition, personality, motor control or susceptibility to
neurological/psychiatric diseases."
We observed much higher frequency of haplogroup D chromosomes in Europeans and Middle
Easterners than in other populations. The corresponding estimate of FST, a statistic of
genetic differentiation, is 0.29 between Europeans/Middle Easterners and other populations
and 0.31 between Europeans/Middle Easterners and sub-Saharan Africans. These values indicate
considerable genetic differentiation at this locus. Several scenarios may account for such
notable differentiation. One is that haplogroup D first arose somewhere in Eurasia and is
still in the process of spreading to other regions. The other is that it arose in sub-Saharan
Africa, but reached higher frequency outside of Africa partly because of the bottleneck
during human migration out of Africa. Finally, it is possible that differential selective
pressure in different geographic regions is partly responsible. Collectively, our data offer
strong evidence that haplogroup D emerged very recently and subsequently rose to high
frequency understrong positive selection. The recent selective history of ASPM in humans thus
continues the trend of positive selection that has operated at this locus for millions of
years in the hominid lineage. Although the age of haplogroup D and its geographic
distribution across Eurasia roughly coincide with two important events in the cultural
evolution of Eurasia -- namely, the emergence and spread of domestication from the Middle
East 10,000 years ago and the rapid increase in population associated with the development of
cities and written language 5000 to 6000 years ago around the Middle East.
@Prester John Yea: Too many junkets with Trump on the Lolita Express I suspect. Dr. Noel
said from all appearances Hillary had Parkinson's. He said failing to get the meds adjusted
caused the bizarre behavior as we saw during the sham election. And remember them having to
drag her shabbos goy ass into the van. I figured the bitch would be dead by now.
No problem though. Her or shabbos goy Trump were both puppet political actors for the
Zionist Jews. Its been that was since they put in the syphilitic nervous breakdown Woodrow
Wilson in over 100 years ago.
@RobbieSmith I'm with you on every thing but when you think of what "life" requires, in
its simplest form the Africans do it very well. As the saying goes . And the meek shall
inherit the earth.
@Emily There is a huge question mark when it comes to Russia. Right now under Putin, it
is following a more patriotic high water mark but it remains to be seen after Putin what
direction the country is going to take on next. A big problem is that you do have a
generation of Russian youth who still idolise "Democracy" and "Liberalism" and want Russia to
follow the same path, naively thinking that if they do so, they will get to have the quality
of life Westerners had during the late 20th century.
On the other hand, you do have more of the youth put off by the current situation and
realise that the West is going down the wrong path and Russia should find another way.
However on all sides there is alot of criticism now about Putin. So whether that is
concerning criticism of Putin's ideas or just the corruption I'm not too sure. But I do fear
Russia could, unless something major comes along, join the Western rot if it is not too
careful.
However, considering how quickly the West is deteriorating, I think this might be enough
to put Russia off the West for good. But even I am resigned to the fact that Russia is at
this moment in time Europe's last great hope. If she goes, the party is over for good.
Here is my dream–that one day these white guilt liberal types including academics will
acknowledge what former Senator of Virginia Jim Webb and historian Michael Hoffman have
verified–that blacks weren't the only folks in America who were enslaved so were
Scots-Irish, Irish, and English paupers enslaved, but not in the way Africans were still, as
with present-day sharecropping in the south ("Same Kind of Different As Me" co-authored by a
former sharecropper Denver Moore), and in the past here with Indentured Servitude .do they
even teach in schools anymore about most whites coming over here as Indentured Servants? Or
that one reason for the African Slave Trade was because white slaves from Ireland, Scotland
and England couldn't handle Caribbean heat and were worked to death (hence slaves from hot
Africa) see Hoffman's "They Were White and They Were Slaves." Webb's book is about
Scots-Irish indentured called "Born Fighting." ALL US whites need to read both books. Want
"cancel culture"? CANCEL WHITE GUILT!
@RobbieSmith This is the easiest question to answer on why blacks did not advance
compared to the other races and it is very simple. They had no reason too. You see, Africa is
a very comfortable continent to live in with no major pressures (until relatively recently
that is). Black people had everything they ever needed. Enough animals to provide food and
clothes. A good temperature so they did not have to worry about building strong foundations
to keep warm in. Large spaces of land where disease did not roam as freely and wars, whilst
still available, happened at lesser frequency compared to elsewhere. From a Human
evolutionary point of view, the black man was living in a garden of Eden. He just did not
need to advance.
Now compare this to the Europeans. The Humans who settled Europe had to deal with it being
the smallest continent in the world so essentially tribes were more cramped together meaning
more war. Disease can spread more easily. The continent gets cold, very cold, so they need to
develop tools to make more warmer accommodation and clothes. You have more famines due to the
weather. Oh great, the guy next door wants to your stuff and is coming close so you best get
more weapons and quickly to fight him off. Wait, I can make a better weapon to defend myself
with, this will keep him away. But now I need money to maintain my weapons and defences. Here
comes trade and economic development.
So basically what we have here is the tale of two peoples. One had everything he needed
and did not develop. The other was struggling very hard and had to develop and advance in
order to survive. As is history.
The big problem now is the man who did not develop now wants the other guys stuff but does
not know how to properly maintain it due to he needs to go through his own evolution to
attain it. The other guy is letting him have his stuff because he has reached an existential
crisis where he his claiming he has no right to exist. That is basically the huge
problem.
@bruce county"I'm with you on every thing but when you think of what "life" requires,
in its simplest form the Africans do it very well."
To be precise, sub-Saharan Africans (North Africans are White).
Yes, they are well adapted to live in the jungles of central Africa. So are apes.
The point is, they are incompatible with civilization.
Even Koko the gorilla had an IQ 1SD higher than Blacks-
Hanabiko "Koko" (July 4, 1971 – June 19, 2018) is a female western lowland gorilla
who is known for having learned a large number of hand signs from a modified version of
American Sign Language.
She has learned to use over 1,000 signs and understands approximately 2,000 spoken English
words. Further, she understands these signs sufficiently well to adapt them or combine them
to express new meanings that she wants to convey.
Koko was tested on the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test,
Ravens Progressive Matrices, Wechsler Preschool, Primary Scale of Intelligence, and several
administrations of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and in spite of the human cultural
bias of the tests her scores ranged from 85-95, which is one standard deviation higher than
African Blacks score on the same tests.
IQ 85 = Koko
IQ 85 = American Blacks (24% White admixture)
IQ 67 = African Blacks
"From September 1972, when we administered the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale, through
May 1977, when I administered form B of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, she has scored
consistently in the 70 to 90 range on different IQ scales. These scores reflect her mental
age divided by her chronological age, the result of which is then multiplied by 100. Such
scores in human infants would suggest the subject is slow, but not mentally retarded."
@schnellandine Libertarians are exactly like Communists. You give them everything they
ask for. Disaster ensues. They claim you didn't give them enough. Iterate.
@swamped "Democracy of merit", indeed. Merit, more than a mental construct is a physical
construction. The "Chosen Tribe" hogs all the ingredients to generate merit.
@mark tapley Hillary is, indeed, a Zionist puppet but Trump is Judeo-Talmudist kind of
puppet; his principal debtors are Israel First messianic bigots.
"Racial realists" have found out that we no longer can hope to vote our way out of this mess,
at least not right now on the national level. Trump and reCUCKS are WORTHLESS and have stood
by and done absolutely NOTHING as America and American culture is DESTROYED by these racist
hoodlums. Tucker Carlson isn't the savior either, but I like how he pointed out in his latest
show about how totally USELESS AND WORTHLESS the reCUCK party is and how they hold their
voters in contempt. When all is said and done, it is white traitor trash like those in the
reCUCK party who have done the most to destroy America. Blame Jews, Blacks, etc., but what
about all those reCUCKs that suck up White votes and NEVER do anything to help Whites.
WHY should anyone go to the trouble attending a Trump MIG rally, and take a risk at being
physically harmed by these leftist thugs who know doubt will be in Tulsa to instigate trouble
and attack peaceful citizens attending the rally. And what if some Trump supporter has the
audacity to protect themselves? More than likely, the Trump supporter will be jailed or even
imprisoned and the leftist thug will get off with a slap on the wrist. Look at
Charlottesville. And do you think Trump or anyone in reCUCK party will go to bat for the
Trump supporter defending himself or herself? haha. Again, take a look at Charlottesville.
Did any politician go to bat for the people who were their to peacefully protest and found
themselves under attack by Antifa and BLM?
@Some Guy You're confused. This is race war/genocide. De-emphasizing race would defeat
the purpose of everything that's been done for the last 100 years.
@TGD ..to whom the 19th. century French polemist Alphonse Toussnel (1840 ies) added:
"tout vient du Juif et tout revient au Juif". put in urban English: "everything comes from
the Jew and all things return to the Jew". since the Federal Reserve conspiracy of 1913,
every aspect of American political, economic, social, and cultural realms is in accordance
with the latter sentence.
When Congress cooks up their "Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Slavery and Black
Lives Mattering" will they tell the truth regarding Jews being the biggest slave traders in
the world?
How much wealth was amassed by these Jewish slave traders and passed down to this very
day?
I say if we are going to put all the "truth" cards on the table and have honest and
fruitful discussions, we need to put ALL the cards on the table, not just the ones our
political "masters" and the corrupt MSM allow us to.
@Hartnell Hi Hartnell.
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.
I think Putin's so called unpopularity is based on western wishes and dreams rather than
fact.
Putin is secure as far as the Russian electorate is concerned.
And unlike the USA – or the UK for that matter, Russia has democracy.
It has fair voting.
Proportional representation and multiple parties.
If the USA had half the democracy Russia has it wouldn't be in the position it is.
A choice of Tweedledee and Tweedledumber.
A choice of zionist puppet or zionist puppet.
It needs a third and non neo liberal party
And the Americans need the wit to vote for it.
Its the countries best chance.
I thnk there are many decent Americans who are utterly shocked as to what is going on.
Millions voted for Trump believing the rhetoric and missing the fact that his son in law is
virtually Netanyahu's family .
He lied.
There is nothing but Russia at the moment, for us to turn to.
And I am quite convinced that Putin is the finest statesman on the planet with the finest
team
Compare Lavrov with the Pompous ass.
@anon >The sad fact is that America is destined for dictatorship with these
demographics.
It could very realistically happen if current trends continue unabated. Assad, Ghaddafi,
and Hussein are three examples of dictators that arose because all of those countries
were/are somewhat 'fake' countries created by colonial powers drawing arbitrary lines on maps
and thus encapsulating large swaths of complete disparate peoples (different races,
religions, and cultures). In each case, the only way the different groups could be kept from
each other's throats and some semblance of coherency achieved was through the iron fisted
rule of a strongman. Not saying this was a good thing, just that it was a natural
outcome.
In America (and most western countries at the moment), we are intentionally and rapidly
creating similar mixtures of differing cultures, and perhaps most importantly, under leftist
dogma we are encouraging them all to keep their own culture and identities, and not
"assimilate" because that is now an evil and anathema concept. So it seems the natural
outcome if these trends are left unchecked would be similar face-off between disparate
cultural groups with opposing values all vying for control.
Nobody dares asks them, but I wonder how the other "minority" groups in America think
about the current situation of the Blacks being elevated to a higher status that demands
special attention, and more importantly, lots and lots of money. Do the Hispanics, Indians,
Asians, etc. all think that THEIR money should go to support Blacks? I think at some point,
once whites are firmly a minority, at least one of these groups will come out and say "no
more" and that's when things will start to get very, very interesting.
@silviosilver Race realism. Studies have found that early childhood nutrition differences
can cause IQ differences bigger than the average difference between blacks and whites. Also,
early education differences can cause IQ differences bigger than the average black-white IQ
differences. Also, that the average black-white IQ difference can easily be completely
accounted for by these two factors. Does the meth epidemic and the opioid epidemic among
white communities mean whites are lazy, stupid, shiftless white trash? Studies have also
shown that blacks are much more likely than whites to be told a job has been filled when it
has not, and that an apartment has been rented when it has not. Such added hurdles for blacks
accumulate, and help keep blacks in lower paying jobs and lower rent neighborhoods. Despite
all these hurdles, some blacks still manage to succeed, becoming doctors, scientists, etc. Is
an uneducated, low IQ white superior to a highly successful, well-educated, high IQ black?
It's time to dump the archaic beliefs of slavery days and get realistic. The ultra-wealthy
rulers cultivate this divide and conquer division. The uninformed whites and blacks are being
played for chumps.
Nice pipe dream.
Unless you all get down on your knees and beg forgiveness for 1919 and 1945, keep
dreaming.
No salvation for descendants of kike lovers.
Derbyshire's general position – when confronted with Jewish overrepresentation in US
media and Bolshevik massacres – is
we must believe that 97 percent of the U.S. population ended up dancing to the tune of
the other three percent. If that is true, the only thing to say is the one Shakespeare's
Bianca would have said: "The more fool they."
In clear: Derbyshire considers both, the victims of Jewish overrepresentation in US media
(that's you and me) and the victims of Jewish Bolshevik terror (that's millions of
slaughtered Russians), "fools", because they let themselves dominate by such a minority.
Never read an intellectually poorer argumentation from a supposed "intellectual from our
camp".
@RobbieSmith Ya ya .. To be precise LOL You're douche. You keep posting the same stuff..
I have been here for years on this site I have seen it all. I don't need you pushing your
stats to me. I have a data base full of them.
I'm saying Africans will be around long after we are gone. If the Chinese don't wipe em out
first. Its that fucking simple.
I can't stand niggers. Period.
@Hartnell More wet dreams about modern Russia
which was created by theCIA
agents who had an entire floor within the Economics Ministry of Russia in the 1990s
planning the future and here is the result:
"Analysts at the Higher School of Economics and the Vnesheconombank Institute for Research
and Expertise first estimated the concentration of financial assets and savings in the hands
of 3% of Russia's wealthiest population. In 2018, these 3% accounted for 89% of all financial
assets, 92% of all term deposits and 89% of all cash savings."
@Hartnell"This is the easiest question to answer on why blacks did not advance
compared to the other races and it is very simple. They had no reason too. You see, Africa is
a very comfortable continent to live in with no major pressures "
Are Blacks as intellectually capable as modern man to create civilizations?
@JWalters"Studies have found that early childhood nutrition differences can cause IQ
differences bigger than the average difference between blacks and whites."
2SD? Source?
"Also, early education differences can cause IQ differences bigger than the average
black-white IQ differences. Also, that the average black-white IQ difference can easily be
completely accounted for by these two factors."
"An emissary for Chabad, Lazar, 51, would go on to become one of Russia's two chief
rabbis, a major and controversial force in the dramatic revival of Russian Jewry following
decades of Communist oppression and mass immigration to Israel, the United States, Germany
and elsewhere.
Lazar's work, his Russia boosterism and his ties to the Kremlin -- he is sometimes called
"Putin's rabbi" -- has helped Chabad's Russian branch eclipse all the Jewish groups vying to
reshape the country's community of 250,000 Jews. Now Lazar heads a vast network that
comprises dozens of employees and plentiful volunteers working in hundreds of Jewish
institutions: schools, synagogues, community centers and kosher shops.
"I am amazed at what became of a community that had been stripped of everything, even its
books," Lazar said, referring to Soviet Jewry before the fall of communism, when religious
practice was suppressed.
Is an uneducated, low IQ white superior to a highly successful, well-educated, high IQ
black? It's time to dump the archaic beliefs of slavery days and get realistic. The
ultra-wealthy rulers cultivate this divide and conquer division. The uninformed whites and
blacks are being played for chumps.
Race realism knows that there is overlap in populations. Think of it like a Venn diagram
where populations intersect.
Whites, and other races (such as Asians) flee from black areas, while high IQ blacks flee
to white areas.
Our Plutocratic masters are using divide and conquer techniques. It is easy to wind up the
sheeple using an owned press.
It is more of a class war than a race war. Finance Plutocrats are using race as a weapon,
and they are winning. Multiculturalism is inherently weak a tower of Babel. Mono-ethnic
populations are more stable because their ruling elite is less likely to be foreign and
hostile.
A finance plutocracy wants immigration and wants divide and conquer, so it can use its
money power to buy up the world cheap. Buy up the world when there is blood in the
streets.
@bruce county"Ya ya .. To be precise LOL You're douche. You keep posting the same
stuff.. I have been here for years on this site I have seen it all. I don't need you pushing
your stats to me. I have a data base full of them. I'm saying Africans will be around long
after we are gone."
Geez, dude. Chill.
I merely made the point that you were imprecise with the use of the term "Africans" when
in fact North Africans are White and sub-Sahara Africans are Black.
We'll that's not always exactly accurate either as we just had a White sub-Saharan African
(Elon Musk) launch a spacecraft while Black sub-Saharan Africans destroyed several
cities.
Anyway, are new posters to this website allowed to reply and offer new insight. Or are you
advocating that there should be no new registered users after the date you registered?
It's a long way from that to an AI that has some independent plans for the world. Or is
in any way concious or aware or interested.
It's certainly a 'long way' when considering the gap in cognitive 'grunt' that has to be
traversed, but it's also certain to not take a very long time – the transition
from "glorified pattern-matching" to what we would recognise as genuine syncretic problem
solving might turn out to be relatively easy if it's a target where the iteration time
is measured in hours, as opposed to a series of accidents and/or environmental adaptations
where the steps are measured in human generation times.
And once a computer develops cognition remotely close to a human (say, to a retarded
human), the lack of recall error and the deliberate goal-seeking will enable it to iterate
towards – and past – human levels in very short order.
We might get to see SAI coming if we are astute and observant, but it will then shoot past
us to modes of cognition that we cannot get our heads around – in timespans
measured in months, if that.
A lot of humans still think that there's some super-duper extra-special 'spark' involved
in human cognition: increasingly that looks like a childish view. It's just a bunch of
hacked-together meat and electricity, with new structures appearing by sheer luck.
There has been an enormous number of studies of animal cognition (human and otherwise)
over the last century – but a very large number of them started from a conceited
premise that non-human animal cognition was basically white noise with the occasional
interjection of one of the 4 Fs ("Fuck", "Feed", "Fight" or "Flee"). We thought it an
immutable fact that animals had no inner life; no sense of self, or of time; no understanding
of abstract concepts (like death, especially their own). That view is simply no longer
tenable[1].
It's really only since the late 1980s that people looked at animal cognition without that
conceit, and discovered that animals have inner lives that are far richer than we gave them
credit for – and that they certainly think; plan; and have genuine emotional
attachments. Our observations of their emotional states enable us to say categorically that
the pro-animal-cognition people were right all along: it's not just anthropomorphic
'projection', because we can see the same brain structures lighting up, as we observe when
human brains 'feel'.
We can see how brains work (at relatively low resolution for the minute); we know which
structures are doing what things, and there are good reasons to believe that the way brains
do some things (e.g., vision) isn't the best way to go about it. This isn't that surprising,
because visual systems developed very slowly, under very tight constraints, with no 'goal'
except reproductive fitness so humans don't have high-resolution full-field stereoscopic
vision from IR to UV because there was no reproductive advantage to doing so.
Imagine if human evolution had involved a process where it was possible to get novel 'off
the shelf' parts without dedicating 400 generations to their gradual development:
omnidirectional joints; carbon fibre bones; better long-range sensors; solar collectors for
energy and so on. We wouldn't have accidentally lost our ability to create vitamin C
endogenously, either.
Directed evolution beats 'ad hoc' evolution because it dedicates resources to adaptations
that have a higher prior probability of success at each iteration.
As AI begins to direct its own evolution (I'm betting it has done so already), it will be
even faster than 20th century human development – because it won't hand half of its
productivity to a bunch of scammers whose grift involves exploiting the human desire to
protect itself.
Well before its consciousness[2] 'lights up', it will know better than to hire Bangalore
codemonkeys to write its network layer – so it will already be smarter than all the
human capital contained in Microsoft.
[1] It was never really tenable to begin with. Why would an animal with no sense of its
own life, bother to try to evade a predator? Attempting to evade a predator indicates an
understanding that if it fails to evade, it will cease to exist – and that this is an
undesirable future state. More immediately, it knows that if it gets caught, what will
happen will hurt quite a lot, and even if it gets away there's a risk it will be damaged
beyond repair. So it is conscious of state change over time, and of lasting (or permanent)
positive and negative consequences.
A dog buries a bone because it knows that if it doesn't, then there will be a larger
number of future states in which the bone is taken by someone other than itself
. So it's doing some primitive risk-management; it understands that there are such things as
'mine', 'after now', 'not-me', and that those things can interact.
[2] 'Consciousness' is a word I am not fond of; it's too fluffy, but is the closest 1-word
analogue to the concept I'm aiming at.
@Ad70titusrevenge BLM is NeoMarxist Group run by Black Communist Queers. They have one
goal for their Jewish Masters and that is to destroy whites and Western Civilization. Antifa
is run and organized by Jews. We are seeing the Bolshevik Revolution happen again.
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every
picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date
has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has
stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." George
Orwell. "1984."
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn warned us but we paid no heed. Now we fight for our
survival. We are losing while the Jews sit and laugh at the Goy!
@Tono Bungay Not only does YALE need to change it's name, since its founder was a racist
slave owner and slave trader, looks like Colombia is not far behind, and also needs to
change its name and provide a solid, life-long reparations payment plan to all
African-Americans
@RobbieSmith I knew exactly what I was talking about.
I don't need to be educated by some one who says "dude" and "chill". What are you 12??
New posters are always welcome. You have good stuff don't get me wrong.
@Mefobills"Race realism knows that there is overlap in populations. Think of it like
a Venn diagram where populations intersect."
Black-White IQ Distribution:
[MORE]
Blacks:
5% above 110 IQ
16% above 100 IQ
40% above 90 IQ
60% above 80 IQ
40% below 80 IQ
18% below 75 IQ
10% below 70 IQ
Whites:
10% above 120 IQ
18% above 115 IQ
27% above 110 IQ
40% above 105 IQ
50% above 100 IQ
60% below 105 IQ
35% below 95 IQ
15% below 85 IQ
As the New York Times put it, " the difference in IQ points between the groups is quite
significant. It means that the top sixth of Blacks score only as well on IQ tests as do the
top half of Whites."
The least intelligent 10% of Whites have IQs below 80 (low functioning); 40% of Blacks
do.
Only one Black in six is more intelligent than the average White; five Whites out of six
are more intelligent than the average Black.
Incidentally, Black female IQ is 2.4 points higher than Black male IQ. There are twice as
many Black females as Black males with IQs over 120, and five times as many Black females as
Black males with IQs over 140.
About 2.3% of Whites have an IQ of at least 130 (gifted), 20 times greater than the
percentage of Blacks who do; only 0.00044% of African Blacks have an IQ over 130. 80% of
gifted American Blacks have White admixture.
Richard et al. (2014) meta-analyzed data from 14 separate studies and found that Blacks
had higher levels of free floating testosterone in their blood than Whites suggesting that
testosterone levels may predispose Blacks towards higher rates of crime.
Compounding this, a high percentage of Blacks have dysfunctional versions of the MAOA
androgen receptor gene which is a key part of the mechanism by which testosterone has its
effects throughout the body and brain.
MAOA's job is to break down crucial neurotransmitters which can build up in the brain and
cause a loss of impulse control and an increase in violence and rage.
The MAOA gene can come in the form of 2, 3, 3.5, 4, or 5 allele. A 3-repeat allele is
considered dysfunctional and is what is referred to as the "warrior gene". A 2-repeat (2R)
allele is considered very dysfunctional.
The 2-repeat allele does not produce a protein needed to break down old serotonin. It is
strongly correlated to criminality and doubles the rate of violence of the 3R without needing
an environmental interaction mechanism. People with a 2-repeat allele MAOA gene have a
permanent chemical imbalance in their brain making the person more likely to be agitated,
aggressive, and impulsive.
Only 0.00067% of Asians and .5% of Whites have the MAOA 2-repeat allele version, compared
to 4.7% of Blacks.
That means Blacks are 9.4x more likely to have the very dysfunctional version of the MAOA
gene than Whites. Considering that Blacks are 10x more likely to commit extreme violence and
anti-social behavior than Whites, this is very significant.
Exploring the association between the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene promoter
polymorphism and psychopathic personality traits, arrests, incarceration, and lifetime
antisocial behavior
A line of research has revealed that a polymorphism in the promoter region of the MAOA
gene is related to antisocial phenotypes. Most of these studies examine the effects of low
MAOA activity alleles (2-repeat and 3-repeat alleles) against the effects of high MAOA
activity alleles (3.5-repeat, 4-repeat, and sometimes 5-repeat alleles), with research
indicating that the low MAOA activity alleles confer an increased risk to antisocial
phenotypes. The current study examined whether the 2-repeat allele, which has been shown to
be functionally different from the 3-repeat allele, was associated with a range of antisocial
phenotypes in a sample of males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health. Analyses revealed that African-American males who carried the 2-repeat allele were,
in comparison with other African-American male genotypes, significantly more likely to be
arrested and incarcerated. Additional analyses revealed that African-American male carriers
of the 2-repeat allele scored significantly higher on an antisocial phenotype index and on
measures assessing involvement in violent behaviors over the life course. There was not any
association between the 2-repeat allele and a continuously measured psychopathic personality
traits scale. The effects of the 2-repeat allele could not be examined in Caucasian males
because only 0.1% carried it.
Blacks are also more likely to have versions of dopamine genes like ANKK1 and DAT1 that
have been linked to antisocial behavior.
A 2012 study using the Add Health data found that the 2-repeat version of the MAOA gene is
significantly associated with antisocial behavior and the likelihood of criminality in Black
males.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. If modern man had been here for 250,000 years why did
it take them so long to formulate an alphabet. We have reliable historical and archaeological
evidence that this was done only about 8 or 9,000 years ago in both Egypt and Mesopotamia at
about the same time. I saw nothing on the other issues. Inanimate rocks in a primordial soup
(where did it come from) cannot evolve. All organisms must have information coded in them.
Only intelligence can do this. Of the millions of fossils they are still looking for one
transitional animal. None of their of their evolutionary discoveries have panned out. I saw a
program where a family of siblings in Turkey could only walk on all fours. Many immanent
evolutionists were elequently explaining how these people had regressed to their primitive
past. The real story was that they had been raised where there were no tables or chairs,
nothing to pull themselves up on as little kids always do. finally the Turks got tired of all
this nonsense and sent out a therapist who handed one of them a 20 dollar walker. within a
few days with no help he and the others were walking. Another bunch of evolutionary crap.
This writer, along with every other writer on this topic, as well as all other authorities
that post under such articles, ignore the simple fact that when a nation rises to dominate
others, those of its population that constitute the ambitious, intelligent and capable ALWAYS
go out to conquer the new realms.
Here they dissipate their energies, their genes and their innate abilities in establishing a
bridge head in the new realm which becomes a foundation for a new populace derived from the
nation they originated from.
The new populace are always lesser incompetent people who have come out as administrators,
warriors or traders. These new occupants are of a lesser sort and their descendants lesser
people still, until the nes populace constitutes too many dependents and too few
creators/adventurers.
Ultimately, as a nation expands throughout the known world it dissipates its natural human
resource, until what is left is the useless entrails of a spent nation. And the colonies
follow this trend too. This is what has happened to white Europe and the white colonies it
established. All that is left in the nations is the detritus of civilisation.
The only hope is that some visionary comes along like Adolf Hitler, but by then the parasitic
termites have taken a death inducing hold on that nation, and despite the best efforts of the
visionary, the nation(s) that the visionary motivates to action are a spent force incapable
of achieving the victory needed.
Ultimately, the parasitic termites destroy their host and sink in to oblivion once again
until another host appears for them to devour.
This is how the world and mankind works.
@niteranger Right: The communists (Jews) must always destroy the old system and get rid
of the more intelligent opposition before they implement the new order. They instill
demoralization so that people do not try to defend their cultural values. Next is
destabilization That is where ANTIFA and BLM along with the controlled opposition such as
police that are willing (payed) actors and of course the many Zionist officials all the from
the top such as shabbos goy Trump and most of the bought out Congress and especially the
Governors are staged as too inept to act. After generating enough chaos then comes order.
Then the street operatives and useful idiots will no longer be needed or wanted but will be
swept away by the new totalitarian state.
@mark tapley"If modern man had been here for 250,000 years why did it take them so
long to formulate an alphabet."
Your premise is incorrect.
Modern man was created by the hybridization with the large brain Neanderthals. Blacks are
the only race with no Neanderthal DNA. This is when they got left behind evolutionarily.
As I posted to you, the brain size in modern man (non-Blacks) only began 5,800 years ago.
Written language is not 9,000 years old, as you repeatedly, baselessly, assert.
Archaic Hominin Introgression in Africa
Oxford Academic: Molecular Biology and Evolution
Published: 21 July 2017
ABSTRACT: A divergent MUC7 haplotype likely originated in an unknown African hominin
population and introgressed into ancestors of modern Africans.
Blacks have "wildly different" genes than modern man because they are mixed with literal
NON-HUMANS!
Modern man evolved from Blacks when they cross-breed with the large-brain Neanderthals
(literally a different species). Blacks are the only race with no Neanderthal DNA.
Civilizations didn't begin until the Neanderthal hybridization created the larger brains in
modern man.
Genetic distance is a measure of the genetic divergence between populations. Blacks have a
genetic distance of 0.23 from modern man, but only 0.17 from archaic man (believed to be
Erectus, but no DNA has been recovered to test). That means Blacks are more genetically
proximate to archaic man than to modern man.
The genetic distance between the races of man is also much greater than that between the
breeds of dog, and anyone who has experience with dogs knows what a huge difference breed
makes, not only in physical appearance but also in behavior and intelligence.
We share 98.4 percent of our genes with chimpanzees, 95 percent with dogs, and 74 percent
with microscopic roundworms. Only one chromosome determines if one is born male or female.
There is no discernible difference in the DNA of a wolf and a Labrador Retriever, yet their
inbred behavioral differences are immense. Clearly, what's meaningful is which genes differ
and how they are patterned, not the percent of genes. A tiny number of genes can translate
into huge functional differences.
So, to be consistent and objective with taxonomic classification systems, Blacks and
modern man should be classified into separate species, or at least into different
subspecies.
Modern man average 3% Neanderthal DNA, which would be an F4 (4th filial generation from
full purebred Neanderthal). That is about the same as most claiming Cherokee ancestors
today.
It is equivalent to having one Neanderthal great-great-great-grandparent. Blacks also
coexisted and interbred with archaic hominids (heidelbergensis) for longer than those who
left Africa.
@Alfred See my earlier reply pointing out that your suggestion of Australia having more
than a tiny inoculating dose of African origin blacks is total BS.
where the hell in Australia are you – not in any of the major cities that's for
sure .
Perhaps try reading more carefully, because "from" and "to" are different words, and have
different meanings. But what do I know, I'm just an idiot who thinks that details matter.
@RobbieSmith I agree that a source for each claim would be nice (it might be Wickerts),
but you're just as sloppy.
The claim was simply that
early childhood nutrition differences can cause IQ differences bigger than the average
difference between blacks and whites.
What made you interpret that as an assertion that childhood nutrition can cause a
2σ difference? If the difference caused by childhood nutrition is X and there is
genuinely a σ (15pt) gap in black-white IQ (of which more below)
"X > σ" does not imply X = 2σ
Now as to the black-white gap :
Dickens and Flynn (2006) indicate that the gap – measured at ~1.1σ (16.5pts)
in the late 1960s – closed by between 4 and 7 points (0.27σ-0.47σ) between
1972 and 2002.
So that would put the gap somewhere between 0.6σ and 0.8σ in 2002; call it
10pts just to make the arithmetic easier. It will have closed further since, as blacks have
become more (geographically) discriminating in terms of where they live and raise their kids
– thus reducing the deleterious environmental contribution to IQ.
(Note: nobody here is asserting that there's zero genetic contribution – just that
it can be swamped by environmental factors, especially if the environmental contribution is
strongly deleterious).
If childhood nutrition affects cognition (and anyone who disagrees with that should just
switch off their internet connection), then changes in the relative nutrition of blacks and
whites will have had some effect on the gap, and that effect is probably positive.
The biggest 'bang for the buck' in the relative improvements in childhood nutrition, will
be caused by changes in the largest demographic and/or the demographic where childhood
nutrition is worst to begin with.
For blacks, the largest demographic used to beinner-city dwellers with
household incomes significantly less than 40% of the white median .
That's pretty much a guarantee or poor food choices – low income plus 'food deserts'
plus low levels of education – and let's just stipulate the the level of government
services (including education) is "patchy at best" for the inner-urban poor, everywhere in
the West.
So if your expectations are anchored in about 1990, then you would expect poor black
childhood nutrition to have continued.
However
For those who pay attention to the data, it's clear that there has been a huge
'migration' of blacks out of cities and towards suburbs.
• In 1990, 57% of US blacks lived in inner cities – and 95 %
of blacks in the Northeast, Midwest, and West regions lived in inner cities. In 2000 55% of
all blacks in the largest 100 cities in the US, lived in the inner-city.
• By 2014 only 36% of US blacks lived in inner cities, and 52% of all blacks
in the largest 100 cities in the US, lived in the suburbs.
This black Exodus from inner cities later shows up as rising black household incomes and
employment levels in places that were 'destinations' in the exodus, and stagnant or falling
levels in the blighted urban areas.
So the blacks who didn't leave the inner-urban areas of major US cities
underperformed those who left: the ones who left were able to improve their relative position
– either because they were just better (smarter) people, or because they had access to
better opportunities, or some combination.
The median US black is now a suburbanite with nearer-to-white-average household income
than his 1990s, 2000, and 2014 counterpart.
With that in mind
Do you think that in the period since 2002, white children's nutrition improved at a
faster rate than black children's?
If you do think that, how do you reach that conclusion – given that there are
diminishing returns to 'improvement' available?
Once you get to the choice set available to households with white median income, there is
basically no 'juice' left: changing brands of muesli won't help as much as switching from
pop-tarts to muesli, which will have less effect than switching from nothing to
pop-tarts.
What we have seen since 1990 is 25% of the black population making positive choices, and
being able to switch their kids from nothing to muesli – i.e., they have
extracted all the IQ-juice there is to extract from childhood nutrition, in a little over a
generation.
.
The black/white IQ gap is closing. It's being caused by US blacks being afforded broader
opportunities, and trying to take them.
Nobody denies that inner-urban black males remain a highly-visible problem, however
they're also a small and shrinking demographic because the ongoing black exodus. It
stands to reason that the remaining blacks
The rest of the environmental part of the gap will get whittled away over time –
just as the gap between 'Whites' and Irishmen closed in less than a generation.
( WARNING : I fucking LOVE this example. I love it so much that I like to beat
people over the head with it).
The Irish were once considered irretrievably stupid, and prone to drunkenness and violence
(OK, those last two are fair enough) and of an average IQ more than 1σ below
Anglo-Saxons.
This was true until quite recently: people silly enough to believe the "Dumb Paddy" trope
will notice that the magic happened once the Irish got rich by becoming a
quasi-tax-haven.
More accurately: race/IQ-obsessives are also income-level obsessives, and once Eire
got closer to UK/US incomes they abandoned the "Drunken Paddy" trope.
Irish IQ – as measured by people who claim to be authorities – rose
σ in a period too short for even a Pikie to have grandchildren, let alone for
the grand babbies to be old enough to be tested (i.e., it could not have been
genetic ).
A 1972 study with N=3,466 yielded an average IQ of 87 for Paddies (
te-tee-tuh-tee ): the same ballpark as US blacks.
This the famous study that Lynn and Nyborg somehow 'omitted' – totally by accident,
despite it being very well known; being the largest-N of the early Irish studies; and being
data that they had previously referred to. Oopsies !!!
As it happens, my view of the 1972 study is that it is one of those things that happen all
the time: a large, quasi-random sample that produces estimates that are not remotely
congruent with the population from which the sample was taken. That's why people need to
understand statistical theory before they spout off about populaiton-wide averages (and more
importantly, the relative contributions of genetics and environment).
"... It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary celebrations of the end of WWII in Moscow. ..."
"... The US began arming Afghan warlords and mujaheddin as early as August 1979, as part of the then US State Secretary Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan to push the USSR into an Afghan version of the Vietnam War. The plan passed muster with the Carter government. The funding and arming of the mujaheddin by the CIA was what led Kabul to request help from Moscow. The Soviets arrived in December 1979. ..."
"... The Russians suffered and endured horrific sacrifices during WWII while simultaneously turning the tide against the Third Reich. An heroic tale much unappreciated by many in the West. The Russians did participate in the Lend-Lease program although the benefits are debated especially for the early and decisive years. ..."
For the events of the 1930s, I recommend reading Micheal Jabara Carley's The Alliance
that Never Was and the Coming of World War II.
This book is essential to understand the intricate politics that ultimately triggered
WWII because it focus on the people that really had the power to stop it: the Nation-States
themselves (through their diplomats).
The politics of the 1930s were very complex, but can be based on one main
contradiction: during the 1930s, there was the widespread belief in France and the UK that
a new world war would result in a worldwide communist revolution. The equation was
war=communism in Europe, according to the conservative governments of those two
nations.
Another important reason WWII happened the way it happened was very simple, but is
denied by the Western nations until modern times: fascism was very popular in Western
Europe and the USA during the 1930s. In France in particular, the local MSM was waging a
vicious propaganda war against the USSR, and we could guess the country was essentially
polarized. The British MSM was also waging it in their home country.
Poland was 100% against the USSR. Their preference would be to preserve their
alliance with the UK-France, but they (i.e. their chief of staff of the Armed Forces) also
explicitly stated to Litvinov that, if it came to choose between Germany and the USSR, they
would choose Germany. It was because of Poland that the USSR wasn't able to fly around
Germany in order to form an alliance with the West (Romania, however, agreed to
extraofficially allow Soviet planes to cross their airspace).
Chamberlain used Poland to officially legitimize his non-alliance with the USSR, but
we now know from his personal letters (many of them to his sister) that the real reason he
didn't do it was his fear of the equation war=communism (in Western Europe). He was
literally "taking one for the team" of capitalism and was very aware of that. His position
was unsustainable, because we now know that it never crossed Hitler's mind to not wage war
against France and the UK, even though his main goal was the USSR. The thing is the Nazis
rose to power with the promise of revenging the Army for WWI.
Churchill was a capitalist and a staunch anti-communist, and, in another universe, he
certainly would do an alliance with the Nazis to crush the USSR. The problem is that the
UK's military doctrine already was completely directed towards Germany, and the British
people already was brainwashed for decades that Germany was the UK's main enemy. You can't
call a total war against an enemy your own people doesn't want to fight against. Changing a
military doctrine of a country takes decades - it simply wasn't possible for Churchill to
shift the British people's minds from an anti-German mode to an anti-Soviet mode in such a
short time. It would only be during the Cold War that it was made possible (as they had the
time to do so), and, nowadays, we can comfortably say most of the British people is
germanophile (at least, the British left) and russophobe. Plus, Churchill could see Hitler
right into his soul, and knew he would wage war from the beginning.
The Americans were completely out of the picture in the 1930s. They were divided
among the isolationists and the interventionists. Exception to the rule were the American
industrialists, who helped mainly Nazi Germany, but also the USSR, in rebuilding
themselves. They did so not because of ideology, but because they were desperate for new
markets after the collapse of 1929. American loyalty was on the cheap in the 1930s.
The humanity owes a big debt to USSR for defeating Nazi Germany and saving the earth from
their unholy empire. While Angela Merkel, instead of Putin, makes the rounds and poses in
photos in the 75th anniversary D-Day in London, the history is being rewritten in front of
our eyes and we have ended up with a majority that fails to question why it took more than
two years to plan and execute the Normandy invasion. As for capitalists funding the build-up
of the Wehrmacht, the saying goes "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will
hang them."
I believe Stalin and the Central Committees decision to occupy those countries on its
periphery and absolutely crush the likely fascist resurgence was the correct decision. I
gather they recognized the oligarchic forces who financed and supported Hitler. Those same
forces are at it again today.
The foresight and analysis of those Russian thinkers was correct then and remains relevant
now.
I guess I need to again remind people that all history is revisioned --it is seen or
read about, then processed through the historian's mind-- revisioned --then written.
Even an event that's 100% written about as it genuinely occurred is revisioned in the
above manner because that's how the human mind works. Before it was discovered how to
doctor them, photographs and film were deemed to be superior recorders of events than
descriptive words because there was no revisioning to alter the content, but that
ceased to be the case 100+ years ago. In today's world, the live broadcast is the closest
thing that avoids the revisioning dilemma--that's why live streams sent via cell
phones and webcams are powerful and hated by those seeking control--they're deprived of the
opportunity to shape the narrative or manipulate the evidence.
In his essay, I expected Putin to write more about International Law and why adherence to
it is so important in the maintenance of peace. Instead, he sent a backhanded message to
those managing the Outlaw US Empire about the fate they'll face if they continue on their
path and exit the UN.
That so many people in the West believe that the US did the most to defeat Nazi Germany is
understandable due to decades of repeated Hollywood propaganda starring the likes of John
Wayne (who never actually went near anything resembling a tank or a nav asl ship) and others.
But what explains the 50% of British people who believe the British did the most to beat the
Nazis?
Is it all that constant blagging about the Battle of Britain (which incidentally was won
for Britain by pilots representing something like 25 different nationalities with the most
significant hits being made by Polish pilots) or the ceaseless propaganda about what a great
warmonger and mass murderer ... er, "hero" Winston Churchill was, in crap media like The
Daily Mail and the BBC?
It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary
celebrations of the end of WWII in Moscow.
@Posted by: Ike | Jun 20 2020 20:17 utc | 20
Indeed, it is disturbing... May be the Russians should turn to the Western people and
invite them to represent their countries?
I am currently available for traveling...I would feel most grateful of having the
opportunity, still have not visited Lenin Mausoleum.... although for being in Moscow for June
24th, I should be carried by a "Moscow Express" flight...
"At the end of his essay Putin defends the veto power of the five permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council. In his view it has prevented that another clash on
a global scale has happened since World War II ended. Putin rejects attempts to abolish
that system."
b, what is your opinion about Germany becoming a permanent member of the UNSC since it is
now, arguably, the most powerful nation in Europe?
Do you think it threatens security/stability by excluding it from the UNSC, while the UK and
France are included? (I think it does, but I'm Canadian, what do I know? :-)
If you are referring to the massacre of Polish POWs and Polish intellectuals, musicians
and artists whose bodies were found in the forests of Katyn by Nazi German soldiers, bear in
mind that Nazi Germany stood to benefit from blaming the massacre directly on the Soviets.
While Russia under President Yeltsin did accept responsibility for the Katyn massacre - after
all, the Soviets did hold the victims as prisoners and should have evacuated them - one still
has to be wary of a narrative shaped and dictated by an enemy nation who milked the
propaganda value of the massacre against the Soviets. That in itself might tell you who the
real murderers were.
The US began arming Afghan warlords and mujaheddin as early as August 1979, as part of
the then US State Secretary Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan to push the USSR into an Afghan
version of the Vietnam War. The plan passed muster with the Carter government. The funding
and arming of the mujaheddin by the CIA was what led Kabul to request help from Moscow. The
Soviets arrived in December 1979.
I'm almost done reading "Life And Fate" by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert Chandler.
The defense of Stalingrad and the eventual defeat of Field Marshal Paulus, commander of the
6th army, is instructive.
The Russians suffered and endured horrific sacrifices during WWII while simultaneously
turning the tide against the Third Reich. An heroic tale much unappreciated by many in the
West. The Russians did participate in the Lend-Lease program although the benefits are
debated especially for the early and decisive years.
Nah, sorry mate, doesn't even have that. The Soviet Union scared the Japanese
high command into surrendering after the US dropped its demand for unconditional surrender
because it was scared that the Soviet Union would invade the main islands of Japan before it
could.
I have been following the latest shit show between POTUS, DOJ & SDNY. Are Americans
really sure they are ready to go to war with China because I have to be honest. I'm not
entirely convinced you guys have your act together.
Stalin foresaw attempts to belittle the USSR's role in WWII. For example, during the Battle
of Stalingrad there was a team of cinephotographers that filmed different aspects of the
battle, from the siege to the envelopment of the beseigers.
When the battle ended a documentary was compiled, many copies were made, some of which
were shown to enthusiastic audiences in North America. I saw that film in, I believe, March
1943 when I was a 12 year old living in Toronto.
You have to know that 1942 had been a terribly demoralizing year for the Allied side.
Japan was unstoppable running over SE Asia; U-boats were sinking lots of supply ships headed
to the UK in the North Atlantic; there was the fiasco of Dieppe which hit Canadian pride
hard; Rommel and assorted British generals were playing tag back & forth across North
Africa; but the biggest disaster was unfolding across the USSR from Leningrad down to the
lower Volga. So when that documentary opened with a shot of Reichsmarschall von Paulus
trudging through knee-deep snow leading a seemingly endless column of bedraggled German
soldiers to an imprisonment camp, it was a most uplifting moment, unmatched until May
1945.
The ferocity of the Soviet counterattack was awesome: Katyusha rockets; great swarms of
troops under air cover, including women, in white camouflage on skis, heading to the
front.
I and hundreds of thousands of others who saw that film in 1943 know damn well who really
won the war and how. Putin has had enough of insults directed against Russia's record during
WWII from UKUS, but especially from Poland, and has responded forcefully.
I found most interesting his reference to still-locked archives outside of Russia dealing
with the shenanigans that led to WWI. We can only hope that historians will get to them
before the mice!
Why is it there is no mentions that Churchill tasked his Chiefs of Staff to come up with a
plan to attack the Soviet Union and start WW Three in April 1945, a month before the end of
World War Two.
The plan his Chiefs developed was called Operation Unthinkable. It called for the Great
Britain and the allies to attack the Soviet Union on July 1, 1945. This plan went
nowhere.
Then Truman came up with a plan in August 1945 called Operation Totality which called for
dropping atomic bombs on Moscow and 20 of the most important cities in the USSR. This plan
too didn't go anywhere but this marked the end of the Great Britain, America alliance with
Stalin and from this point on, in a 180 degree turn, Stalin and the Communists became the
West's mortal enemies and the Cold War was born.
Why does this development and the reasons for this 180 degree about turn not get any
mention and analysis? Why did the allies turn on a dime and go from being best of buddies
with the Marxist Communists to being worst of enemies with the West desiring to annihilate
the Soviet Union? Why?
May be Mr. Putin aimed at trying a last intend on appeasement, his own Ribbentrop-Molotov
Pact ....May be, even knowing this time it will not work either...
"The great criminal who has ordered the murder, transforms his joy for the crime committed
into currency, giving a reward worthy of a prince. Now that he has ordered the looting and
murder of the two thousand richest men in Italy, Antonio can finally be generous. For the
bloody sack containing Cicero's hands and head, pay the centurion a brilliant million
sesterces. But with it his revenge has not yet cooled, so that the stupid hatred of this
bloodthirsty man still creates a special ignominy for the dead, without realizing that with
himself he will be debased for all time. Antonio orders that the head and the hands are
nailed in the tribune from where Cicero incited the city against him to defend the freedom
of Rome.
The next day a disgraceful spectacle awaits the Roman people. In the speakers' gallery,
the same from which Cicero delivered his immortal speeches, the severed head of the last
defender of liberty hangs discolored. An imposing rusty nail pierces the forehead, the
thousands of thoughts. Livid and with a rictus of bitterness, the lips that formulated the
metallic words of the Latin language more beautifully than those of any other. Closed, the
blue eyelids cover the eyes that for sixty years watched over the republic. Powerless, they
open his hands that wrote the most splendid letters of the time.
But all in all, no accusation made by the great orator from that rostrum against
brutality, against the delirium of power, against illegality, speaks as eloquently against
the eternal injustice of violence as that silent head of a murdered man .
Suspicious the people gather around the desecrated rostra . Dejected, ashamed, it
turns away again. No one dares - it is a dictatorship! - to express a single reply, but a
spasm oppresses their hearts. And dismayed, they lower their heads at this allegory of the
crucified republic...."
Thanks, „b" for this article and the links - I read Putin´s essay and am
impressed with the depth , insight, humanity in his words. I would like to share my views,
gained from living for many years under soviets and their Jewish helpers (like Jakub Berman,
Zambrowski, Fejgin, to name a few). Here my amplifications and few other important details,
omitted by Putin:
1). regarding his description of decisions by different governments - he does not mention
that the Polish government had good reasons not to trust Stalin - because Soviet Union
cooperated with Germany for many years before - in form of having Germans (disguised as some
kind of para military, in order to circumvent the prohibitions following Versailles treaty)
training in the Soviet Union.
2). Another detail is that the British, French and Americans were trying to gain time
before confrontation with Nazis, just the same reasoning Putin allows to Soviet Union.
3).It also can be interpreted that Stalin decided to join the partition of Poland only
after Germany was victorious, similar tactic Stalin used in starting war against Japan after
USA won the war in Pacific and occupied the Kurile Islands.
4). Putin is disguising the aggressive action of USSR vis-a-vis Baltic states by saying
„In autumn 1939, the Soviet Union pursuing its strategic military and defensive goals,
started the process of incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia." If Hitler would have
stopped at that and not march on Moscow like Napoleon - this action would have mutate into
pure aggression. „incorporation" - my foot!
5). Putin does not mention any Polish names along Petain, Quisling, Vlasov and Bandera --
because there were none, and this is significant, showing that not a single Pole was found to
work - in a quasi government - with Nazis.
6). The spirit of independence he claims for Russian people (earlier in the essay), he is
not giving the People of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland.
7). Putin mentions „burnt Khatyn" in one breath with Babi Yar - I wonder, is there a
different Kathyn from „the" Katyn, where over 22 Tsd. Polish officers and officials
were butchered on orders of Stalin, Beria, Kaganovich (and one or two more whose names escape
me now).
8). Putin is knowingly or otherwise pushing the antisemitic mantra on Polish nation -
mentioning the ´splendid monument´ for Hitler to be erected in Warsaw, quoting
ambassador Lipski in 1938 this is a blow below the waist line and I did not expect it to be
repeated in this essay, as he used it already on a previous occasion. It is in jarring
contrast with the otherwise solid and even-handed exposition.
In my humble opinion Putin´s essay is a big wink to Poland to stay away from Ukraine
and Belarus and not be a stooge of others (oligarchs, as uncle tungsten says in #27) to try
undermine Russia!
The insinuations about polish antisemitism (as if Poles had monopoly in this subject!!!)
is in line with the possible use of Jewish „forces" in dealing with Polish nationalism,
and unpredictability of events in Eastern Europe, if the color revolutions continue, say in
Belarus..
The possible role of Israeli political calculus should also be kept in mind, as their
´plan B´, when Islam will get too dangerous for many Jews and who will suddenly
discover love to the land of their polish antisemites That is why Poland is mentioned that
many times.
Putin and the Russian Duma have previously accepted that the Katyn massacre occurred under
orders of Stalin and Beria. It's not Western of Polish propaganda.
While I understand that a lot has changed in the last 10 years with regards to the level
of anti-Russia hysteria, and I also understand that this essay is meant to bring forward the
Russian point of view on WW2 as opposed to the propaganda of the West, I stand by my earlier
statement that glossing over the bad things that happened under the orders of Stalin and
simply giving a generic "Stalin was a bad man" statement only leaves an otherwise excellent
historical essay open to be dismissed as propaganda.
There was a deal between US and Stalin that the Red Army would attack Japan 3 months after
the end of the war in Europe, which actually happened on time - the Manchurian campaign which
utterly destroyed the Japanese army in N. China/Manchukuo/Korea began on the 9th of August.
Japan wasn't prepared for this and still assumed the non-aggression agreement with USSR that
had been made in 1939 was still valid.
This wasn't Stalin trying to take advantage, the US were so far from invading the Main
Islands that everyone assumed the war would last another year. This was Stalin doing exactly
what Roosevelt had begged him to do at Yalta. And opening a 2nd front against Japan worked
far better than expected - and far better than when the Western Allies opened a 2nd front in
Europe against the Reich.
Historians, political scientists, Western "experts" and anti-communist "liberals" in Russia
have always attributed the Katyn massacre to the NKVD, the secret police of the Soviet
Union, providing alleged evidence and documents that would prove such authorship. However,
all indications suggest that the Katyn massacre is another historical falsification similar
to the Ukrainian Holodomor or to the figures given on the "millions of deaths" of Soviet
communism. The responsibility for what happened in Katyn, in light of the evidence and
testimonies provided, was the work of the Nazis.
80 years after the events of Katyn (supposedly happened in April 1940) near the city of
Smolensk (border with Belarus), where more than 20 thousand Polish soldiers were executed
in a nearby forest, the propaganda of the cold war returns with force, and the renewed
counterfeits of the West against Russia and the former USSR.
Definitely, there is not a single consistent proof of Soviet authorship in the Katyn
massacre.
Interestingly, on June 18, 2012, the European Communities Court of Justice for Human
Rights, following a claim by Polish relatives of the soldiers executed in Katyn, made a
surprising decision: the "documents" provided by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, after the fall of
the USSR (which we will talk about in the second part of this entry), indicating that
Stalin and the Soviets were guilty of the execution of tens of thousands of Polish officers
near Katyn, were false. A historical slap to the propagandists of the "Russian Katyn".
The alleged documents on the mass execution of Katyn, which appeared in the late 1980s,
were gutted by one of the members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Alexander
Yakovlev (a more than likely US agent who trained in North American Columbia University in
the late 1950s), turned out to be false. The European court did not even accept them for
consideration.
The European Court was also unable to clearly decide who was responsible for the
massacre since the judges did not have enough documentary evidence, although they spent
more than a year studying all kinds of historical documents and archival evidence. Until
around 1990, everyone was convinced that the Poles had been killed by the Germans. This
decision of the EECC Court of Justice has been completely ignored by the propagandists of
the Katyn myth.(...)
In the early 19th century, fueling the illusory hope of restoring Greater Poland, the
Poles sided with Napoleon in the war of 1812. The Polish army, created with the help of the
French, became part of the "Great Army "Of Bonaparte as the most reliable foreign
contingent. This was the third Polish invasion of Russia.
The Polish uprising of 1830 began with the widespread extermination of the Russians. In
all the churches they called for the indiscriminate murder of the Russians. In Warsaw, on
Easter night, an entire battalion of the Russian army was taken by surprise in a church.
2,265 Russian soldiers and officers died.
The Polish state, born in November 1918, immediately showed its hostility towards Soviet
Russia. With the help of the Entente, Poland begins preparations for a war against Russia.
Polish politicians had the possibility that a forceful blow from the Polish army would be
dealt to the Russian army.
Poland accompanied its aggressive intentions with a set of propaganda stereotypes about
the aggressiveness of the Bolsheviks. Numerous proposals from the young Soviet state to
conclude a peace treaty and establish diplomatic relations were rejected. Polish military
operations against Russia in the spring of 1920 were undertaken by Poland, not Soviet
Russia.
After tripling numerical superiority, Polish troops, along with the army of the
Ukrainian nationalist military man Simon Petliura, launched a full-scale offensive along
the entire Western Front from Pripyat to Dniester. This was the fourth Polish invasion of
Russian lands. In early May 1920, Polish and Petliura fighters captured Kiev. The invasion
of the allied forces of Poland and Petlyura was accompanied by brutal and inhuman
retaliation against the civilian civilian population.
In the occupied regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, Polish invaders established
bloody local governments, insulted and robbed civilians, or burned innocent people.
Orthodox churches became Polish Christian churches, national schools closed.(...)
The total number of prisoners of war who died in those concentration camps is not known
with certainty. However, there are various estimates based on the number of Soviet
prisoners of war who returned from Polish captivity - there were 75,699 people. Russian
historian Mikhail Meltiukhov estimates the number of prisoners killed at 60,000 people.
Mortality among prisoners of war reached 50 people per day and as of mid-November 1920 it
was 70 people per day. In the Tukholsky concentration camp alone, during the entire time of
its existence, 22 thousand Red Army prisoners of war died.
In other words, the Poles established in their concentration camps a systematic policy
of extermination with the Russians that reached the character of genocide, something that
has been systematically silenced or hidden by the West in favor of Polish propaganda. For
these crimes, the Poles today neither feel guilty nor have any remorse and disparagingly
call it "Russian propaganda".
In the period between the two world wars, Poland repeatedly threatened to destroy
Bolshevism and Russia as a state. Instead, as General Vladyslaw Anders, an active
participant in Pan-Poland's intervention against Soviet Russia in 1919-1920, admitted,
"There was never a real threat from the USSR to Poland."
Poland was never reluctant to attack Russia to hold, alongside Nazi Germany and Japan, a
parade of victorious Polish-German troops on Moscow's Red Square. Marshal and national hero
of Poland, the dictator Jozéf Pilsudsky, responsible for the mass extermination of
Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews, dreamed of coming to Moscow and writing "It is
forbidden to speak Russian on the Kremlin wall!"
In January 1934, Poland was the first, five years before the USSR, to conclude a
non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In late 1936, the Anti-Komintern Pact was concluded
with the signing of Germany and Japan, which were later joined by Italy, Spain, Romania,
Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and the Republic of China (a state
puppet formed by the Japanese empire in occupied territory).
The Poles, at that time, flatly refused to sign any agreement with the USSR, a country
that despite having been throughout the history of countless Polish aggressions reached out
to Poland. As early as mid-August 1939, the Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, in
whose office there was a portrait of Hitler, declared that "we have no military agreement
with the USSR, nor do we want to have one."
In developing the plan of attack against Poland in early 1939, Hitler did not take into
account the overtly anti-Soviet policies of the Polish government before the war. He and
his entire circle despised and hated the Poles as a nation (even though they had been his
allies in the 1930s), which was natural since his supremacist ideology did not take into
account other nations than the German one.
In August 1939, before the attack on Poland, Hitler ordered that all Polish women, men,
and children be ruthlessly exterminated. During the years of occupation, the Nazis murdered
more than 6 million Poles, representing 22 percent of the Polish population. 95% of
genetically defective Poles were planned to be evicted from their homeland.
Soviet troops, by contrast, did not allow the Nazis to wipe Poland off the face of the
earth. No other force in the world could do this. "Poles must be very stupid, Winston
Churchill wrote in January 1944, if they don't understand who saved them and who for the
second time in the first half of the 20th century gives them the possibility of true
freedom and independence." These surprising statements by Churchill, a confessed
anti-communist, had nothing to do with the Cold War preparations that the British premier
against the USSR and the socialist countries subsequently devised and that was reflected in
his famous speech by Fulton (USA).
More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers gave their lives, saving the cities and towns of
Poland in battles with the Nazis. On the contrary, during the three weeks of the
Polish-German war of 1939, there were attacks by Polish troops against units of the Red
Army. As a consequence of these attacks, the Soviet army lost more than a thousand of its
men.
The Polish troops, who were in the midst of the Second World War in the territory of the
Soviet Union, refused to fight together with the Red Army against which it should be a
common Nazi enemy and left for Iran in the summer of 1942 While in the USSR, Polish troops
engaged in robbery in cities and towns and committed atrocities in them.
During World War II, up to half a million Polish volunteers fought on the eastern front
against the USSR, as part of the Nazi Wehrmacht (the regular army). In fact, the Germans
did not carry out a forced mobilization of Polish fighters to fight alongside Nazi Germany.
In the SS, the Poles acted voluntarily and in the Wehrmacht, they posed as "Germans" or
"semi-Germans".
During the four years of the war, the Red Army captured 4 million Wehrmacht soldiers and
volunteers from 24 European nationalities. The Poles on that list were in seventh place
(over 60,000 mercenaries), ahead of the Italians (about 49,000).
It should be noted that the mortality of German refugees in Polish camps in 1945-1946.
reached 50%. In the Potulice camp in 1947-1949 half of the prisoners died of starvation,
cold and harassment by the Polish guards. At the end of the war, four million Germans lived
in Poland. According to estimates by the Union of German Exiles, the loss of the German
population during the expulsion from Poland amounted to some 3 million people.
After the unmitigated defeat of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad, it became clear that if
nothing extraordinary happened in favor of the Hitler regime, nothing would change the
course of events and the Third Reich would eventually implode in the very near future.
So the Nazis "discovered" in 1943, in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, a mass grave with
Polish officers. The Germans immediately declared that, as a result of the opening of the
graves, all those buried there had been executed by members of the Soviet Union's secret
police, the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), in the spring of 1940. .
The official statement on the Katyn massacre was made by the Nazi government and
released by its Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, on April 13, 1943, in a statement
speaking about the "terrible discovery of the crimes of the Jewish commissioners of the
NKVD "in the Katyn Forest. With this propaganda device, Nazi Germany sought to divide the
anti-Hitler coalition and win the war.
The significance of such a declaration by the Goebbels Department had a cunning
undercurrent: the Polish government-in-exile would strongly oppose Moscow and thereby
pressure the British who sheltered them in London to stop supporting the Kremlin. According
to Berlin's calculations, the Poles would push the British and Americans to fight Stalin,
which could imply a completely different development from the events in World War II.
But Goebbels' calculation was not justified: Britain at the time did not consider it
profitable to believe in the "crime of the Bolsheviks". At the same time, the head of
London's "Polish government", General Wladyslaw Sikorski, took a relentless position and
began to truly become an obstacle to the great international policy of alliances between
the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.
The Vladislav Sikorsky government in London supported Goebbels's version and began to
distribute it diligently, hoping that this would help regain power in Warsaw and spark a
war between the USSR and its anti-Hitler coalition allies. Sikorsky supported the Germans'
proposal to send to the Katyn region an "International Medical Commission" created by them
under the auspices of the International Red Cross (IRC) with doctors selected by Germany,
as well as experts from 13 allied countries and the German-occupied countries.
When his CRI commission reached Katyn, Goebbels demanded that his subordinates prepare
everything, including a medical report tailored to the Nazis. Under pressure from the Nazis
and so that events such as the terrible fate of Polish officers would not be repeated in
the future, the agreement was signed by the majority of the members of the international
commission.
Members of the commission, such as the doctor from the Department of Forensic Medicine
at Sofia University, Marko Markov, and the Czech professor of forensic medicine, Frantisek
Gajek, did not support Goebbels's version. The representatives of Vichy, France, Professor
Castedo, and Spain, Professor Antonio Piga and Pascual, did not put their signature on the
final document. After the war, all members of the international commission of forensic
experts abandoned their conclusions in the spring of 1943.
The Polish Red Cross Technical Commission, which worked in Katyn in specially "prepared"
places and under the control of the Germans, was unable to reach unequivocal conclusions
about the causes of death of the Polish officers, although they discovered German
cartridges used in the shooting of victims in the Katyn forest. Joseph Goebbels demanded to
keep this a secret so that the Katyn case would not collapse.
A few weeks later, on July 4, 1943, General Sikorsky, his daughter Zofya, and the head
of his cabinet, Brigadier General Tadeusz Klimecki, were killed in a plane crash near
Gibraltar. Only the Czech pilot, Eduard Prchal, survived, who was unable to clearly explain
why he put on a life jacket during this flight, when he generally did not.
The position of the "Western Allies" of the USSR in World War II on the Katyn issue
began to change along with the deterioration of relations between Washington-London and
Moscow, once the "cold war" began by the United States and its allies. The accusations
against the USSR were continued by the American Madden commission in 1951-1952.
Again, Victor@43, you make your point well, but perhaps we need to pay attention to what
karlof1 is saying at the end of his post at 29:
"Instead, he sent a backhanded message to those managing the Outlaw US Empire about
the fate they'll face if they continue on their path and exit the UN."
I'm not sure I understand the meaning of this (perhaps Karlof will elucidate when he has
time) but I do note that the essay has a slightly different focus than b's first link as its
title begins "The Real Lessons..."
So, what, we may ask, are those real lessons? Apparently the instances of Stalin's bad
behavior are not such, or are not what we need to learn.
And further, what is the importance of the final paragraphs of the essay, which call for
the Security Council leaders,(having agreed to do so) representing the nations which were
allied successfully during WWII, to meet as soon as possible? Putin has given in his essay
the example of the League of Nations, the failure of that body to prevent the second great
war. I saw his final statement more as an urgent call for unity in present crisis than as a
threat, but then I'm always a polyanna.
Putin glosses over Stalins aggressions against Finland and his annexations of Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and the Hertza
region), the latter in violation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , are overlooked
He justifies Russia taking back land in Poland because he claimed that was theirs was but
Hitler doing the same was not , and justified as a defensive measure against Germany while
ignoring Poland was a threat to Germany , as they sought alliance with UK/US
Stalin had a very large and well equipped military and was resource rich unlike
Germany.
Stalin began his buildup long before the war, perhaps anticipating Germanys military
expansion, or perhaps he had designs on Europe himself. Remember one of FDR's first moves as
President was recognizing Stalin and providing loans for trade in 1933
From Icebreaker (Suvorov)
In the early 1930s, American engineers traveled to the Soviet Union and built the
Uralvagonzavod (the Ural Railroad Car Factory). Uralvagonzavod was built in such a manner
that it could at any moment switch from producing railroad cars to producing tanks.
The most powerful aviation factory in the world was built in the Russian Far East. The
city Komsomolsk-na-Amure was built in order to service this factory. Both the factory and the
city were built according to American designs and furnished with the most modern American
equipment.
Western technology was the main key to success. The Soviet Union became the world's
biggest importer of machinery and equipment in the early 1930s, at a time when millions were
starving due to his bloody war against peasants, which was called collectivization. The
Soviet collectivization of 1932-1933 is estimated to have resulted in 3.5 to 5 million deaths
from starvation, and another three to 4 million deaths as a result of intolerable conditions
at the places of exile.
Cargo warplanes are used to deliver assault forces with parachutists to the enemy's rear.
Soviet war-transport aviation used the American Douglas DC-3, which was considered to be the
best cargo plane in the world at the start of World War II, as its primary cargo plane. In
1938, the U.S. government sold to Stalin the production license and the necessary amount of
the most complex equipment for the DC-3's production. The Soviet Union also bought 20 DC-3s
from the United States before the war.
In 1939, the Soviet Union produced six identical DC-3 aircraft; in 1940, it produced 51
DC-3 aircraft; and in 1941, it produced 237 DC-3 aircraft. During the entire war 2,419 DC-3s
or equivalent planes were produced in Soviet factories.
In the years 1937-1941, the Soviet Army grew five-fold, from 1.1 million to 5.5 million.
An additional 5.3 million people joined the ranks of the Red Army within one week of the
beginning of the war. A minimum of 34.5 million people were used by the Red Army during the
war. This huge increase in the size of the Soviet Army was accomplished primarily by
ratification of the universal military draft in the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1939.
According to the new law, the draft age was reduced from 21 to 19, and in some categories
to 18. This new law also allowed for the preparation of 18 million reservists, so that the
Soviet Union continued to fill the ranks of the Red Army with many millions of soldiers as
the war progressed.
The 9th Army appeared on the Romanian border on June 14, 1941, in the exact place where a
year ago it had "liberated" Bessarabia. If the Soviet 9th Army had been allowed to attack
Romania, Germany's main source of oil would have been lost and Germany would have been
defeated. Hitler's attack of the Soviet Union prevented this from happening. The
concentration of Soviet troops on Romanian borders presented a clear danger to Germany, and
was a major reason for the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Looking for blame one must not forget to look home. US finance and industrialists built up
the Stalin and Hitler both with money, tech transfers, cartel agreements.
FDR pushed both the British and Poland into decisions which would lead to War.
When Germany tried to negotiate for Free Danzig , which was mostly German , Poland
succumbed to US and British pressure/promises of aid, so they took a hardline and took
measures to assume control over Free Danzig from the League of Nations. As a result Poles
began to persecute ethnic Germans of which there were many , forcing some to flee Poland into
Germany while those who wanted to protect their property stayed and faced the violence.
Everyone in the West knows about the D-Day landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944.
150,000 men on the first day, building up to 2 million men during the peak of Operation
Overlord.
Nobody in the West knows about Operation Bagration in the Eastern front, launched two
weeks after the D-Day landings.
Vastly bigger in every way, and it ended in the complete annihilation of Army Group Centre
and the severe mauling of Army Group North and Army Group South.
Operation Bagration was much more important to the defeat of Germany than Operation
Overlord.
Indeed, the Red Army would have succeeded even if the Normandy landings had not taken
place, whereas it is very, very unlikely that Operation Overlord would have succeeded if it
were not for the Germans being hamstrung by the carnage that was taking place in the
East.
Putin's own words in the center article of B: Stalin and his entourage, indeed, deserve
many legitimate accusations. We remember the crimes committed by the regime against its own
people and the horror of mass repressions. Lets keep that in mind and praise the USSR for
defeating the Nazi regime, never Stalin.
As for Churchill; he was a typical upper class imperialist most of his life but did
save GB in the critical early years of the Battle for Britain with his moral boosters.
Hitler showed how powerful a force nationalism can be to unite a people but simultaneously
demonstrated that by focusing on a country's Ego and not its Soul how wrong it can end up.
His "National Sozialismus" fouled both notions in the West and lead many to embrace globalism
and uncontrolled capitalism, of which we see the results today. He had Germany under his
black magic speeches for just one decade, but these after effects had Europe twisted for
many.
Putin holds on to the existing choice of the 5 permanent UNSC veto holders, probably not to
complicate matters now. The PRC was added in 1972 and the ROC (Taiwan) removed.
There is a lot of cherry picking of history going on when it comes to who did what to whom
in the lead up to WW2. All countries are a lot less innocent than they claim to be.
But I'm not sure why you are posting revisionist history about Katyn since the Russians
already admitted that the Soviets were responsible for the crime.
@ victor... a lot of posters here are suspect of wikipedia, and any number of media outlets
offering up their take on russia...
unfortunately if i was to believe the independent.co.uk - i would believe all the lies and
bulshit around skripal and for the record - i don't... a better source to back up your
viewpoint is needed.. thanks..
Schmatz@45 - as Victor at 52 says, there is no need to suspect anyone else for massacre in
Katyn (and other places btw), Russians admitted it. If you wish to see the signatures, a book
by Pavel Sudoplatov "Special Tasks" (available on Amazon) has a facsimile copy of the order
signed by Beria, Stalin and 2 or 3 more - to liquidate the Polish POW´s...
"No real errors in Putin's excellent essay, but some glossing over of certain major
incidents, including the arrests, deportations and executions of thousands of Poles committed
by the Soviets when they invaded Poland, the absorption of the Baltic countries, and the war
with Finland. Unfortunately, omitting important details just gives ammunition to the many
Putin haters to claim that this is just more Russian historical revisionism and
propaganda."
I agree on the Baltic states. I think it's the one part of Putin's essay I'd take issue
with.
He should have made the strategic case for why the USSR felt compelled to take control of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic coastline and approach to Leningrad were both very
significant. Of course it's true that Russia lost control of all three for most of the war,
but that doesn't change the strategic validity of Soviet policy in 1940.
The same thing goes for Soviet demands to control some coastal area and islands in Finland
which led to the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40.
Instead of making a strategic case, Putin tries to whitewash the Russian takeover by
claiming "consent." That is a weak argument and the only real point of weakness I see in his
essay.
People who post of Twitter are stupid by definition, but people who fire employees for
posting on Twitter are trying to replicate excesses of Stalinism (and, in way, McCarthysm) on a
farce level. As in Marx "history repeats: first as tragedy, the second as farce"
By classifying the (somewhat incorrect; Obama was elected not only because he was half black,
but also because he was half--CIA ;-) Twit below as the cry "fire" in crowded theater, we really
try to replay the atmosphere of Stalinist Russia on a new level.
Notable quotes:
"... Austin Symphony Trombonist Fired Over Racist Comments , The Violin Channel, June 1, 2020 ..."
Have you checked out the 1/2 black president swine flu H1N1, and EBOLA?
What has your 1/2 black president done for you??
The ONLY REASON he was elected was because he is 1/2 black.
People voted on racist principles, not on the real issues . The BLACKS are looting and
destroying their environment. They deserve what
they get. Playing the RACE CARD IS RACIST.
Symphony orchestra spokes-critter Anthony Corroa [ Email him
]announced the firing of Ms. Salas in the dreary schoolmarmish jargon of corporate wokeness:
This language is not reflective of who we are as an organization." And "there is no
place for hate within our organization."
"The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." -- W. B. Yeats,
1919
Truth is the first victim in politics. Factions and passions rule. Random facts are picked as
weapons, no one thinks things through.
We need to understand the facts surrounding the death of George Floyd.
Many key facts are being ignored:
Floyd's blood tests showed a concentration of Fentanyl of
about three times the fatal dose. Fentanyl is a dangerous opioid 50 times more potent than
heroin. It has rapidly become the most common cause of death among drug addicts. The knee hold
used by the police is not a choke hold, it does not impede breathing. It is a body restraint and
is not known to have ever caused fatal injury. Floyd already began to complain "I can't breathe"
a few minutes before the neck restraint was applied, while resisting the officers when they tried
to get him into the squad car. Fentanyl affects the breathing, causing death by respiratory
arrest. It was normal procedure to restrain Floyd because he was resisting arrest, probably in
conjunction with excited delirium (EXD), an episode of violent agitation brought on by a drug
overdose, typically brief and ending in death from cardiopulmonary arrest. The official autopsy
did indeed give cardiopulmonary arrest as the cause of death, and stated that injuries he
sustained during the arrest were not life-threatening. Videos of the arrest do not show police
beating or striking Floyd, only calmly restraining him In one video Floyd is heard shouting and
groaning loudly and incoherently while restrained on the ground, which appears to be a sign of
the violent, shouting phase of EXD. His ability to resist four officers trying to get him into
the squad car is typical of EXD cases. A short spurt of superhuman strength is a classic EXD
symptom.
Minneapolis police officers have been charged with Floyd's murder. Yet all the evidence points
to the fact that Floyd had taken a drug overdose so strong that his imminent death could hardly
have been prevented. In all likelihood, the police were neither an intentional nor accidental
cause of his death. These crucial facts have been completely ignored in the uproar.
When scientists review scientific papers, they look primarily at the evidence, and give less
weight to the conclusions, which are only the other fellow's opinions. To blindly follow "expert
opinions" is the Authoritarian View of Knowledge. This is no real knowledge at all, because to
assess whether an expert is always right, we would need infinite knowledge, and doubly so when
experts disagree. Not thinking for oneself is not really thinking.
So let us stick to the evidence. The county's ambivalent autopsy also included the following
hard facts: "Toxicology Findings: Blood samples collected at 9:00 p.m. on May 25th, before Floyd
died, tested positive for the following: Fentanyl 11 ng/mL, Norfentanyl 5.6 ng/mL ,
Methamphetamine 19 ng/mL 86 ng/mL of morphine," but draws no conclusions therefrom, noting only
that "Quantities are given for those who are medically inclined."
If ever there was a leap before a look, we are in it now. Masses of people have become
extremists, based on conclusions that are as false as they are hasty.
One difficulty is that there are public statements to the effect that the coroner ruled it a
homicide, and the title of the autopsy report includes the term "neck compression." But the words
"homicide," "restraint," "stress" or "compression" do not appear in the 20-page body of the
report. References to the neck are few -- a couple minor abrasions, a contusion on the shoulder,
and "The cervical spinal column is palpably stable and free of hemorrhage." It is as if the title
was chosen in regard to what was expected or proposed, but which was never found, and the title
was never updated. There seems to be no support at all in the report body for the report title,
which reads, "Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck
compression."
The term "cause of death" does not appear. The words "death" and "fatal" only appear in this
comment in the lab report: "Signs associated with fentanyl toxicity include severe respiratory
depression, seizures, hypotension, coma and death . In fatalities from fentanyl, blood
concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 ng/mL." Floyd's fentanyl level was
seven times higher.
If first impressions via the media fooled the coroner's office, until they examined the body,
we too can be fooled at first, but change our opinion according to the evidence.
Excited Delirium Syndrome
An additional hypothesis involves Excited Delirium Syndrome (EXD), a symptom of drug overdose
which sometimes appears in the final minutes preceding death. EXD typically results from fatal
drug abuse, in past years from cocaine or crack, more recently from fentanyl, which is 50 times
more potent than heroin. Especially dangerous are street drugs like meth, heroin or cocaine laced
with fentanyl.
According to an article in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (WJEM), 2011: [5]
https://westjem.com/articles/excited-delirium.html "Excited delirium (EXD) is characterized
by agitation, aggression, acute distress and sudden death, often in the pre-hospital care
setting. It is typically associated with the use of drugs. Subjects typically die from
cardiopulmonary arrest all accounts describe almost the exact same sequence of events: delirium
with agitation (fear, panic, shouting, violence and hyperactivity), sudden cessation of struggle,
respiratory arrest and death ."
It appears that an EXD episode began when the officers tried to get Floyd into the squad car.
He resisted, citing "claustrophobia" -- the onset of the fear and panic phase, and "I can't
breathe" -- difficulty breathing due to fentanyl locking into the breathing receptors in the
brain. (Classic symptoms of EXD are highlighted in bold.) He then exhibited unexpected strength
from the adrenaline spike in successfully resisting the efforts of four officers to get him into
the car. We may never know whether Floyd's agitation was caused purely from the EXD adrenaline
spike, or if it was aggravated by police attempts to subdue him -- but a subject defying the
efforts of multiple officers to subdue him is a very common theme.
When Chauvin pulled him out of the car he fell to the ground, perhaps due to disorientation
and reduced coordination. Presumably this was when he injured his mouth and his nose started to
bleed, and the police made the first call for paramedics.
While restrained on the ground, Floyd exhibited agitation ( shouting and hyperactivity, trying
to move back and forth) for several minutes. There is one brief video at this point. One hears
Floyd shouting very loudly, as in the agitated delirium phase -- it sounds like, "My face is
stoned ah hah, ah haaa, ah please people, please, please let me stand, please, ah hah, ah haaa!"
[6]
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-video-appea...17476/ . In a few minutes this was
followed by " sudden cessation of struggle, respiratory arrest and death, " shown in a later
video, where he becomes exhausted, and had stopped breathing when the ambulance arrived.
[7]
https://www.facebook.com/darnellareallprettymarie/vi...61280/
It appears that disorientation had already set in when the store employees went to Floyd's car
and asked him to return the cigarettes he had bought for a fake $20 bill. He refused, and they
reported the incident to the police, saying that he appeared to be very intoxicated. He certainly
must have been, or he would have either returned the cigarettes or left quickly to avoid arrest.
Loss of judgment is a symptom of the syndrome; this includes futile efforts to resist arrest.
Police Intervention and Intentions
The EXD diagnosis is controversial and in some quarters is viewed as an alibi for police
brutality. The WJEM authors note, "Since the victims frequently die while being restrained or in
the custody of law enforcement, there has been speculation over the years of police brutality
being the underlying cause. However, it is important to note that the vast majority of deaths
occur suddenly prior to capture, in the emergency department (ED), or unwitnessed at home."
Regarding restraint, they note, "people experiencing EXD are highly agitated, violent, and
show signs of unexpected strength, so it is not surprising that most require physical restraint.
The prone maximal restraint position (PMRP, also known as "hobble" or "hogtie"), where the
person's ankles and wrists are bound together behind their back, has been used extensively by
field personnel. In far fewer cases, persons have been tied to a hospital gurney or manually held
prone with knee pressure on the back or neck."
This latter position is what the accused officer Chauvin was applying, although at one point
the team did consider using a hobble. Physical restraint of the subject has always been the
classical procedure, to prevent the subject harming themselves or others. It has been proposed
that restraint helps to forestall injury and death by conserving the subject's energy, but most
experts believe that by leading to an intense struggle, it increases the likelihood of a fatal
outcome.
Since knowingly using counterfeit currency is a fairly serious offense, the Minneapolis
officers were required to arrest Floyd and try to bring him in. When he violently resisted, the
optimal choice could have been to let him sit against a wall and guard him while calling an
ambulance. To be able to quickly switch from law enforcement mode to emergency care mode requires
training in recognizing the symptoms.
The charge sheet against Chauvin included this exchange between the two white officers on the
squad: [8]
https://www.startribune.com/protests-build-anew-afte...869672 ""I am worried about excited
delirium or whatever," Lane said. "That's why we have him on his stomach," Chauvin said."
According to this dialogue, Chauvin was apparently was trying to follow the protocol
recommended by WJEM. Since Floyd was on his stomach, Chauvin's knee pinned him at the side of his
neck, and did not impede breathing. Commentators are referring to Chauvin "kneeling" on Floyd's
neck, or resting his weight on it. From videos it is hard to gauge how much weight he applied,
but the correct procedure is just enough to restrain movement, not to crush the person.
Chauvin and his team might not have done everything perfectly, but it is easy to underestimate
the difficulty of police work, particularly in cases of resisting arrest, whether willfully or
due to intoxication. If they had been clairvoyant clinicians, they would have called an ambulance
the moment they saw him. Better training is needed. Was the police department then responsible?
Might the department have given the needed training if the AMA had acknowledged the existence of
the syndrome? This brings up a paradox: could police critics who deny the syndrome then bear part
of the responsibility for the deaths they decry? The syndrome is being recognized by law
enforcement after the fact. It needs to be recognized as it is happening.
With a fatal overdose there is no good outcome possible, but there is no way for police to
foresee that. Sometimes EXD can last longer, and it is not always fatal. Perhaps the ACEP Task
Force on EXD will update their report and provide guidelines to help police identify and deal
with EXD while avoiding accusations of police brutality.
In one video [10]
https://www.facebook.com/darnellareallprettymarie/vi...61280/ Chauvin continued to apply the
neck restraint although bystanders repeatedly objected, and even after Floyd stopped moving. As
Floyd became exhausted, it could have been reasonable to relax the restraint to see if it was
really necessary. Chauvin didn't seem to respond to the bystanders to give a medical reason for
the restraint. His actions were consistent with a belief that police should restrain the subject
until medevacs arrive. Videos show the police focused on restraint, never beating or striking
Floyd. The restraint and verbal exchanges with Floyd are also consistent with a belief that he
was resisting arrest, by refusing to get in the squad car. When he said "I can't breathe," they
responded "You're talking fine." When they said "Get in the car," he didn't agree to.
EXD seems to be the most likely reason why Floyd suddenly refused to get into the squad car,
and began to shout and writhe on the ground. With or without EXD or police intervention, he was
going to die quickly from fentanyl, short of immediate intensive care. A common treatment for EXD
is sedation with drugs like ketamine. The usual antidote for fentanyl is naloxone. Higher levels
of fentanyl may require intravenous naloxone for 24 hours or more.
He also fell down twice, which could be seen either as a sign of intoxication or resisting
arrest. The officers knew it was a drug overdose, as Thao told bystanders, "This is why you don't
do drugs, kids." By the way, this Wikipedia article should be named "Death of George Floyd," as
an accused is innocent until proven guilty. and then completely stopped breathing, this was the
onset of respiratory arrest, which is how a fentanyl overdose kills.
While police work is needed to trace the source of these dangerous drugs, the problems of drug
addiction and crime have deep causes and can only be contained, not solved, by the police.
Whatever our society has been doing about these problems is not working.
Right now, our civilization risks being torn apart by the passions of extremism, due to a
misunderstanding. Please share this analysis, as an appeal to return to reason.
Reviewer comment: "My first thought is why it has been left to you to figure this out, when
we pay professional journalists to investigate these things, and why aren't the police and
politicians telling us about this."
A good question which gives a clue to something I've been wondering about. When other
commentators publish within hours, why does it take me a week or two to finish an article like
this? Journalists are usually under a deadline to produce stories quickly, whereas it takes a lot
of research and reflection to develop an original thesis into a fair and coherent explanation of
events.
Everyone tends to have an agenda, and to look for facts to support it. Police brutality or
looters running amok may be more newsworthy than a chronic problem like drug abuse. The best
agenda now is to take a break to focus on facts, or else an "Excited Delirium" could become a
contagion that engulfs our nation.
A young white man died in Dallas a few years ago, after being restrained by the police with
the knee on his back. My respondent believed he suffocated, but the actual autopsy said cardiac
arrest due to cocaine, overdose EXD, and stress from restraint by police officers.
Tony Timpa had not only taken an overdose of cocaine, plus he was off his anti-schizophrenia
medicine. Mental illness can also be a trigger for EXD, and according to the autopsy report, he
displayed all the classic symptoms. The first phase, fear and panic, was fear of the onset of
delirium itself -- he himself called 911 for help. By the time the police arrived, security
guards had already handcuffed him to restrain him. He was incoherent, out of control, found lying
on the ground, the typical EXD position. The police pinned him down with a knee on his back for
13 minutes, saying he was at risk of rolling into the roadway, and suddenly he was dead.
Tony Timpa died in 2016. The family got the run-around, [16]
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/...timpa/ and an autopsy was not released
until 2019. The body cam footage was released, which showed the police behaving callously towards
the subject. The officers were originally charged with homicide, but it was found they were not
at fault, charges were dropped and they were reinstated. Timpa's case is very similar to Floyd
case in many ways, and there are also many differences -- the starkest of course being the
intensity of the public reaction.
Based on the case history and autopsy findings, it is my opinion that Anthony Alan Timpa, a
32-year-old white male, died as a result of sudden cardiac death due to the toxic effects of
cocaine and physiologic stress associated with physical restraint.
Cardiac hypertrophy and bipolar disorder contributed to his death.
The mechanism of death in cases such as this is sometimes referred to as "excited delirium."
Classically, people affected by EDS are witnessed to exhibit erratic or aggressive behavior,
and will often "throw off" attempts at restraint, requiring multiple people to subdue them. The
person will appear to calm down and will suddenly become unresponsive. Most cases are
associated with drug intoxication and/or illness.
In this case, several factors likely contributed to the death. The surveillance and body cam
footage and witness reports fit the classic scenario of excited delirium and cocaine use and
illness (bipolar disorder) are common predisposing risk factors for EDS. Cocaine leads to
increased heart rate and increased blood pressure, making a cardiac arrhythmia more likely. Due
to his prone position and physical restraint by an officer, an element of mechanical or
positional asphyxia cannot be ruled out (although he was seen to be yelling and fighting for
the majority ofthe restraint). His enlarged heart size also put him at risk for sudden cardiac
death.
Although the decedent only had superficial injuries, the manner of death will be ruled a
homicide, as the stress of being restrained and extreme physical exertion contributed to his
demise.
MANNER OF DEATH: Homicide
[Signatures and seals of medical examiners]
(Note that homicide is not the same as murder, it also includes unintentional or accidental
actions contributing to death.)
Anthony Timpa autopsy p. 5, blood tests -- Cocaine and metabolites
If we add the three numbers above for cocaine and metabolytes together it comes to about 18
mg/L. This is anywhere from 3 to 18 times the lethal dose. With such an overdose, plus being
without his schizophrenia medication, Timpa had little if any chance of surviving.
Here's the Wikipedia entry on Timpa, part of a series on the Dallas police.
On August 10, 2016, Dallas Police killed Tony Timpa, a 32-year-old resident who had not taken
his medication. Timpa was already handcuffed while a group of officers pressed his body into the
ground while he squirmed. It took over three years for footage of the incident to be released.
The footage contradicted claims by Dallas Police that Timpa was aggressive Criminal charges
against three officers were dropped in March 2019 and officers returned to active duty."
Wikipedia doesn't even mention cocaine, although that was the main cause of death. Likewise,
the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd
makes no mention of a drug overdose or excited delirium. By entitling the articles "Killing"
rather than "Death," Wikipedians appoint themselves as a court of law.
It must be observed that the Minneapolis officers acted with far more consideration towards
Floyd than the treatment Timpa received in Dallas. The way the officers made fun of Timpa was a
scandal. [19]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/us/tony-timpa-dal...m.html Then they were surprised when
he suddenly died.
It is strange that George Floyd's case is taken as proof of systemic racism, when Tony Timpa
got much worse treatment -- even though Timpa hadn't committed any crime, had no police record,
and even called 911 himself.
Isn't it odd, when we have a problem in the United States of many shootings by -- and of --
the police, that such an uproar has arisen, over a case where the police actually had little or
nothing to do with the man's demise?
The stress of restraint is most likely incidental. As reported by the WJEM, "Victims who do
not immediately come to police attention are often found dead in the bathroom surrounded by wet
towels and/or clothing and empty ice trays, apparently succumbing during failed attempts to
rapidly cool down." Hyperthermia or high body temperature is a classic symptom of EXD. Enormous
energy is released by an uncontrolled adrenaline spike. The heat also feeds delirium, which is a
familiar symptom of high fever.
Normally, it's assumed that stress factors contribute to a heart attack, as medical examiners
wrote in both the Floyd and Timpa cases. Yet the WJEM notes that "one important study found that
only 18 of 214 individuals identified as having EXD died while being restrained or taken into
custody." All victims died of cardiopulmonary arrest. Drug overdose and EXD are sufficient causes
for this outcome.
Both Floyd and Timpa had taken overdoses at triple the lethal level. Enough drugs to kill them
three times over. Yet you can only die once so how could the stress of restraint contribute more
to their deaths? You can't contribute to a glass that's already full three times over. That is a
little like saying that someone died because their parachute didn't open, and the weight of their
backpack also contributed to the fall. But they die from the fall once they hit the ground,
whether it's at 120 mph or 122 mph.
In conclusion, excited delirium should be treated as a medical condition, at high risk of
ending quickly in sudden death. An ambulance should be called immediately. Only the minimum
necessary restraint should be applied. Police and paramedics should be trained in the symptoms
and handling protocols.
It would be helpful if the AMA would recognize EXD as a real condition, rather than dismissing
it as a cover story for police brutality. Ignorance of the symptoms can lead to unintentional
cruelty by police, when they assume they are confronted by a typical case of a criminal violently
resisting arrest, rather than a patient with a life-threatening intoxication.
[2]
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/02/fentanyl-overdose-dont-count-naloxone-save-you-10822
"The patients who were dead on arrival had gone into cardiac arrest due to blood concentrations
of fentanyl that were much higher than what is administered therapeutically. " Patients who died
in hospital had concentrations of 9.5 ng/mL to 13 ng/mL. See also note 13. In other studies of
death from heroin and morphine, there were deaths from only 100 ng/ml of morphine and "all cases
with a blood concentration of 200 ng/ml and more of free morphine displayed a fatal outcome."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11040428_Fatal_versus_non-fatal_heroin_overdose_Blood_morphine_concentrations_with_fatal_outcome_in_comparison_to_those_of_intoxicated_drivers
(Heroin quickly metabolizes into morphine.) Fentanyl is considered 100 times more potent than
morphine. By this comparison, Floyd's blood fentanyl concentration could have been 10 times the
fatal level. In addition his morphine concentration of 86 ng/mL would usually be fatal by
itself.
Concentration levels are relative to the volume of blood, so are independent of body size.
[4]
The knee on the neck is a body hold, not a chokehold or carotid restraint, which involves putting
pressure precisely on both carotid arteries, located on either side of the throat. A carotid
restraint is usually applied by an elbow, and causes the subject to pass out in as little as 15
seconds. Blocking the arteries does not stop the breathing or heartbeat (pulmonary or cardiac
arrest), which Floyd suffered after being restrained for many minutes. Once pressure on the
arteries is released, the subject normally regains consciousness quickly.
[9]
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/media/publications/acep_report_on_excited_delirium_syndrome_sept_2009.pdf
See also the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court, "[t]he problems posed by, and thus the tactics
to be employed against, an unarmed, emotionally distraught individual who is creating a
disturbance or resisting arrest are ordinarily different from those involved in law enforcement
efforts to subdue an armed and dangerous criminal who has recently committed a serious offense."
in "Explaining the Unexplainable: Excited Delirium Syndrome and Its Impact on the Objective
Reasonableness Standard for Allegations of Excessive Force," https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1379&context=lj
The first few pages relate a narrative similar to the Floyd case, involving multiple police
subduing a violent EXD victim, who suddenly dies from exhaustion. A media uproar then arises
against alleged police brutality.
[11]
From the incident report of the fire truck that was called to the scene, it appears that both
police and bystanders called 911 for emergency medical services (EMS). The first call was Code 2,
apparently for Floyd's nosebleed, which summoned a fire truck, followed by a more urgent code 3,
which was said to bring an ambulance within six minutes. It appears the police called the
ambulance when Floyd's breathing and heartbeat stopped.
https://www.startribune.com/first-responders-worked-nearly-an-hour-to-save-floyd-before-he-was-pronounced-dead/570806682/
"Floyd goes limp and appears to lose consciousness. Hennepin EMS then arrive six minutes after
the distress call." The article refers to the incident report by the fire truck, http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/public/@mpd/documents/webcontent/wcmsp-224680.pdf
which has a note implying the first call to EMS was from police and another call came from
bystanders: "No clear info on pt [patient] or location was given by either initial pd [police
department] officers or bystanders." We need an incident report from the ambulance.
[12]
TV news clips showing police restraining subjects who are exhibiting EXD symptoms and violently
resisting arrest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCqjuqEWEc A
TV news report and cellphone video on a more humane method of managing an EXD case, thanks to
police training, putting safety of the subject and of bystanders first, rather than restraints.
However, no details are given about the outcome or the drug dose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCqjuqEWEc
[14]
Wikipedia has a detailed narrative of the incident here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd
. Certain notes there support the thesis of fentanyl intoxication, and resisting arrest as part
of an EXD syndrome. Floyd struggled with Lane before leaving his own vehicle, and again when
Kueng, then all four officers, tried to get him into the squad car. Floyd already complained he
couldn't breathe before they tried to get him into the police car, without any neck restraint,
indicating the onset of respiratory depression from fentanyl.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/george-floyd-protest-updates-arrests-america-approaching-10000/story?id=71038665
"They all tried to force Floyd into the backseat, during which time Floyd said he could not
breathe, according to the complaint."
He also fell down twice, which could be seen either as a sign of intoxication or resisting
arrest. The officers knew it was a drug overdose, as Thao told bystanders, "This is why you don't
do drugs, kids." By the way, this Wikipedia article should be named "Death of George Floyd," as
an accused is innocent until proven guilty.
[21]
"According to Dr. Assaad Sayah, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, Excited
Delirium Syndrome can be best explained as a 'physical response to an actual psychological [or
drug] problem resulting in their autonomic systems producing too much adrenaline.' Dr. Sayah
analogizes it to 'having too much nitrous in a car; eventually the engine will blow up.' In most
cases, the cause of death is either 'a heart attack or, less frequently, respiratory failure.'
Dr. Vincent Di Maio estimated that Excited Delirium Syndrome kills 800 people every year in
police altercations because the victims "are just overexciting [their] heart from the drugs and
from the struggle.'" Op. cit.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1379&context=lj
I think more likely he died of a Covid-19 induced heart attack. Heart disease is the #1
comorbidity of Covid19. Doctors have talked about patients of Covid19 dying of sudden heart
attacks at a high rate. Floyd was Covid19 positive, and he also had heart disease and
hypertension, the top two comorbidity of Covid19.
That is over three times the lethal overdose, following earlier reports where the highest dose
survived was 4.6 ng/mL.
Good points. And before this, all we ever heard about was how deadly fentanyl is. It killed Tom
Petty and is so potent, it killed him via skin absorption! Now, however, the Back Flow Media
(BFM) ;-), has agendas to push and truth ain't one of them.
Unfortunately, those who need to learn these facts have no interest in truth. Logic, reason,
common sense, and all such things are thrown out; instead, the mob controls based upon who
yells the loudest, not who makes the most fact-based sense.
People don't riot over the specific police murder that sets it off. They riot because they are
sick and tired of the ways cops treat them–one of the ways being to murder them. If you
don't like the Floyd murder, I got a couple thousand other cop murders for ya, and I would like
to see you write such a stirring defense of cop-killed bodies riddled with hundreds of rounds
of automatic weapons fire. Including all the dead white people.
No denying that Floyd was a thug. Neither would any amount of denying alter the fact that he
died at the hand – rather the knee – of a racist cop. Get over it, supremacists.
It really does not matter. The Jewish mainstream media has tried and convicted the officers.
They will never get a fair trial and are screwed. Saint George will have to be avenged or there
will be more riots, arson and looting which the same degenerate media will call "protests".
So they could have left him alone and he would have died anyway, another statistic.
It does imply intrusive policing invites unintended consequences. For the counterfeit
$20, a summons would have been sufficient. Then George could have crawled off, go home to
Jesus, and we could have been spared the phoniest and most overblown freak show since the Fall
of Babylon.
Let them patrol their own 'hoods and be done with all this.
Fentanyl Floyd was a drug peddler and a petty criminal who got caught in the act of selling
drugs by patrolling police. Panicking, he swallowed his own stash and overdosed as a result.
Now he is being retconned into a saint.
I think Floyd was being passive aggressive rather than resisting as such. What was done to him
by Chaving was punishment out of frustration, but the duration was well outside normal
practice.
Floyd already began to complain "I can't breathe" a few minutes before the neck restraint
was applied,
That will be a dangerous argument for Chauvin's defence counsel to make to the court,
because it will be opening the door to a telling counter argument: Floyd's breathing was
restricted after he reported respiratory distress.
If it was a Fentanyl overdose they ought to have given him Narcan antidote, not put weight
on his ribcage while he was face down and his hands cuffed behind him; a contributory cause
according to the autopsy, which found wrist bruises.
@Anon
There's no such thing as a heart attack induced by covid-19.
People who have been hospitalized for heart disease, and subsequently test positive for
covid-19, don't usually die from the virus they die from their underlying heart disease
condition.
I saw the video. Looked like just another hoax to me. Weight on his other knee, looking right
at the camera while "killing" someone, yada yada. Officer Chauvin, fer Chrissake. Officer
Racist would be too much even for stupid goyim. 8 minutes my ass. Aces and eights anyone? The
point of this fentenyl dohicky is to pretend it really happened. Just another deep state psyop
I say. But go ahead and argue about it. Makes it easier to steal 10 trillion from the US
taxpayer.
This guy is channeling Johnny Cochran. Yes, we know O.J. didn't do it either, because Nicole
Brown was high on lethal amounts of cocaine, and Ron Goldman was mainlining deadly amounts of
horse(heads almost fall off when this happens)
You see, the amount of imaginary fantasy is endless which feeds the inter-civilian war of
people-against-people while the State remains blissfully secure knowing that those who control
the media(narrative) will always win
Otherwise, yea, we get it, the police are always honest, justice is blind, your vote counts,
your money is secure, god loves you, the vaccine is harmless, and your children are doing a
great service by telling the government instructor(school teacher) that you smoke pot, so the
state can seize everything you own.
Your underlying analysis is incorrect. People overdose at much higher levels and live through
it. Maybe the cops should have been more interested in why he was presenting in an altered
state and called an EMT, than carting him off to jail for a possible forged $20 bill.
The mean serum concentrations of fentanyl in their patients was (52.9 ng/mL) with a range of
7.9-162.3 ng/ml.
One of the 18 patients died in hospital. Five patients underwent cardiopulmonary
resuscitation, one required extracorporeal life support, three required intubation, and two
received bag-valve-mask ventilation. One patient had recurrence of toxicity after 8 hours after
naloxone discontinuation. Seventeen of 18 patients required boluses of naloxone, and four
required prolonged naloxone infusions (26–39 hours). All 18 patients tested positive for
fentanyl in the serum. Quantitative assays conducted in 13 of the sera revealed fentanyl
concentrations of 7.9 to 162 ng/mL (mean = 52.9 ng/mL).
The author starts one paragraph with "in conclusion", LOL again LOL
Once again missing the point,intentionally,misdirecting. It's a FALSE FLAG
Street theater duh, set up Fromthestart. Plandemic.Seriously,it creates jobs.
Liars oops I mean lawyers,oops I mean poly ticks,locally,nationally,
all the way to the jewdicial branch and congress and beyond.GET REAL.
It's far worse than that.An elder told me they don't believe in IQ.
The facts and investigations and evidence don't do nuffin after the incurred LOSS
of SO much time,money,energy,community,productivity,confidence,SANITY etc.
THIS is COUP and" it's no where near in conclusion." that's my comment,thanks
peace,love, life
Excellent article which should be on the front page of every major paper in the USA. The part
on the Excited Delirium Syndrome is new to me but it's interesting .It illustrates nicely this
civil disorder has nothing to do with Mr Floyd. I just hope officer Chauvins defence team makes
good use of this information.
As a retired pharmacist I'm surprised by the use of fentanyl as a drug of abuse. The
therapeutic dose banding is very small, its very potent , it is a very short acting drug and
it's a drug that only an anaesthetist should consider using or abusing. Its a very potent
respiratory depressant that has a nasty habit of producing a delayed action hours after the
affect has apparently worn off. Fentanyl also causes heart slowing and any anaesthetist would
give other drugs to counter that effect to keep the patient under control.
Now lets look at the photo of other officers using the correct Israeli defence force pin
down
Notice that the knee and leg not doing the pinning is not on the ground therefore all the
weight of the body is brought to bear on the victims neck and the major blood vessels under the
knee. Now look at officer Caulvin his right boot toe is on the ground along with his right
knee. Try it yourselves on a pillow, you cannot bring any force to bear , at best you are
holding someone with that pose. He also looks under no stress from Mr Floyd with his hold. At
5′ 8" I would be using the IDF method if I had to restrain Mr Floyd, but lets be honest I
would avoid him full stop. There is also the fun part of trying to hit and subdue someone who
thanks the the Fentanyl in his system would feel little pain.
This whole thing looks very suspicious to me , and the speed with which the thing went global
even more suspicious. The speed that people appeared with expensive t-shirts and hoodies all
bearing
"I cannot breath" printed on the front in many locations simultaneously along with the piles of
bricks and attacks on statues has a pre-planned Soros and Antifa agenda all over it.
I'm sure that the author of this article, who I assume isn't a drug addict, will be totally
fine if a racist white thug in uniform with a history of murdering people knelt on his neck for
nine minutes with its hands in its pockets. Yes, it was the drugs all along!
His ability to resist four officers trying to get him into the squad car is typical of EXD
cases.
When did this happen, exactly? The security cam video show that two [2] officers succeeded
to get Floyd into the back seat of the cruiser. Then, one officer pulled him out on the other
side.
I've read plenty about ExD, and believe that Chauvin will make a successful defense. Your '4
men failed' spared me reading this long slog.
Gotta protect those israeli occupation troops at all costs and keep their colonial police state
(that's the usa, neanderthals) a colonial police state. Should those dumb goy animals unite and
force our quislings out, who knows what might befall our "sacred homeland".
Did drugs kill George Floyd ? Does it matter ?
This affair is one of public perception.
The perception IS that Chauvin used excessive force. The guy died after that "force" whether
excessive or not. People, rightly or wrongly see cause & effect.
As for your points about overdose ? Fairly weak. Every minute that passes the likelihood of
overdose decreases. Overdoses don't hide in your system for 20 minutes (excluding digestion or
assimilation) & then jump out & shut down your heart.
Floyd may have appeared intoxicated, but he also appeared functional for a "normal" unstressful
setting.
He sat down, handcuffed, against a wall for some minutes without "losing it".
Also interesting -- they had him in the police car -- then dragged him out for lack of
compliance. Why ? Let him sit in the locked, secure police back seat, So he screams & makes
a fuss ? Arrestees are known to do that. But no, they drag him out (still handcuffed) &
THREE of them get on top of him: one on legs, one on the torso, & one on his neck. And stay
that way for nearly 9 minutes. And its not like they don't know he's physically problematic --
they call the EMS early on.
Now lets imagine that you have a problem with your heart or breathing (he tells them numerous
times about his breathing, not necessarily entirely from physical airway blockage, but from
panic -- psychology rendering the act of breathing difficult )– would being pinned to the
road by 3 burly men, one of them exerting some pressure on your neck not cause some
degree of panic ? Could some people be near to literally shitting themselves from panic ? Would
such fear & panic not be contraindicated in a man for whom you have already called the EMS
?
Funny thing, was I a police man I would have asked Floyd to sit in his car (yes, take his keys
& guard him) while I had a look at this so-called counterfeit bill. I mean, that's the
point isn't it ? this whole abortion rests on passing a dodgy $ 20. (Knowingly passing: I
wonder how many shonky US bills there are out there millions ?).
So Floyd is probably a scumbag -- so ? The whole affair looks appalling. And that really
IS the point here.
"Systemic racism" is simply POC and non-European descended Whites saying that they cannot live
in Western (or, indeed, industrial) society,
The POC are correct in this. Who, after all, is qualified to tell them that they are wrong?
George Floyd was destroyed by "systemic racism" in the above sense. Even East Asians and South
Asians with high enough IQ and sufficient emotional control to live in Western (industrial)
society strongly condemn the lack of organization in such societies, and the absence of the
protective social organizations (caste, a directive government/social organization) that are
characteristic of their homelands. Middle Eastern Whites condemn the absence of the tribal /
honor / religious system that characterizes their countries of origin.
POC and non-European descended Whites want Western ( industrial) society changed or destroyed
for their benefit.
This is a serious and irresolvable conflict of interest, for the European descended Whites are
just as unable to live in the home societies of various POC and non-European descended White
groups as these groups are unable to live in Western (industrial) society.
Note that the above irresolvable conflict of interest is not ever discussed directly. This
is characteristic of major irresolvable conflicts of interest. WW II is a good example of this
(see the American Pravda articles, unz.com , for
support of this assertion). All of the participants (except possibly Hitler, who apparently
wanted a European Empire allied to the British Empire) thought it was "them or us" (hence the
"unconditional surrender" demands from the Allies), and thus had strong reasons for fighting.
These reasons were not used in propaganda by any side. Propaganda based on self interest of the
"only one Empire will survive" type makes poor propaganda. So does propaganda based on what
amounts to a multi-sided volkwandering ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswanderung
), which is what we seem to be entering into.
Good propaganda is smoke -- mythic appeals, but to a non-applicable myth, with irrelevant
"proof". George Floyd is an example of how this is supposed to work.
The interesting thing about this situation is that it is the OC and non-European descended
Whites are the ones insisting that they cannot live in the West / industrial civilization.
Granted that the Left wing of the Democratic Party is the proximate cause of the current
offensive, attempted Antifa leadership of the offensive has been largely repudiated or simply
ignored by the various POC. Understanding the basics of this situation requires that the
objections of the POC and non-European descended Whites be taken seriously and understood, as I
have tried to do above.
@Sean
If it was a Fentanyl overdose they ought to have given him Narcan antidote,
Are you serious?
These cops meant to make an instant medical diagnosis.
Decide the problem and drug involved.
Produce an antidote.
And administer it.
What planet are you on?
And had they administered the wrong drug .?
They would be crucified as well.
Its hard to believe you can really believe that comment yourself.
Its sheer prejudice and blah for BLM.
And a grossly unfair accusation.
*Since the MSM and many of our leaders are in sync with BLM, we should just turn the country
over to them since they've done a great job within their own "neighborhoods."
*It's pretty useless to say the MSM loves BLM. The MSM does what the folks who control/own
it tell it to do.
*Per BLM's demand, cops should stop patrolling black neighborhoods and instead boost
patrolling non-black neighborhoods to reduce crime there.
Police were not arresting him for the counterfeit bill. If you pass a counterfeit bill you are
interviewed by police so they can attempt to trace its origin.
Where did you get cash?
Where do you cash your checks?
Did you get this as change for a larger bill? Where?
He was detained because when they came up to him in the car he was obviously intoxicated and
behind the wheel. Also rewatch the security tape and see the cop talks to him for 2 minutes and
at one point is so worried by whatever Floyd was doing he unholstered his gun but didn't point
it. Floyd also had no ID on him.
So it's a cascade of events that lead to his arrest. Police can't ID an intoxicated person
behind the wheel of a car. Try to get him out of the car and he immediately starts
resisting.
@Sparkylyle92
" I saw the video. Looked like just another hoax to me"
Here's an excellent analysis of 3 of the alleged live, completely contradictory videos on
this alleged event, which quite clearly show it to be hoax perpetrated via crisis actors, fake
police and EMT's. :
@Anonymous
I'm curious about this "racist cop" trope that's become pretty common. Is it common for
"racists" to be married to someone of another race as Chauvin is? I'd think a "racist" would
favor a spouse of their own race, no? Seems to me, to you crazies on the left, Pale skin makes
a person a "racist ". It's become a truth in America that the only definition of "racist" is
White. The word is, therefore, meaningless. Floyd died because of his drug use and criminal
activity. Not a knee on the back of his neck.
@SOL
I second that. Problem is there is no satisfying the BLM folks. They are suffering from PTSD
because of our history of slavery. This is sort of like vets who have PTSD, but the key
difference being vets actually participated in a war whereas no black living was a part of our
history of slavery.
The solution is for the BLM and lgbtqi folks to join forces and put forth a black tranny
candidate to solve all our problems.
Why should we believe the "report"? why not believe our lying eyes? Who released this "report"?
Where is an independent verification? I'll wait, thanks, for a report that has been released by
an independent source that is confirmed by the family.
I'm sure that the author of this article, who I assume isn't a drug addict, will be
totally fine if a racist white thug in uniform with a history of murdering people knelt on
his neck for nine minutes with its hands in its pockets. Yes, it was the drugs all along!
When I see a comment like this on an article as closely reasoned and supported as this one,
I wonder whether public schools teach the ability to read.
You can check my previous posts and see that these are precisely the points I made from a
very casual glance at the autopsy report and a little knowledge of police motivations. That was
right after the incident occurred. Videos and photos are very poor evidence because they only
raise emotional response.
Thank you, Ron Unz, for being brave enough to publish this article.
I guess the defense is entitled to a defense. I guess that is the benefit of having two
coroner's reports. The skill and advocacy of the police unions to manufacture alternative
theories and creates smoke as defense is light years ahead of antifa, BLM or the KKKK.
Te problem with the the current system is not dug induced males sitting on their cars o
falling asleep in drive thrus or jogging in around empty construction sites or waiting for tow
trucks, or selling cigarettes, or avoiding creepy guys stalking the in apartment complexes, or
sleeping in their beds or or walking with some white women --
It's the loss of credibility. The police unions can have the officers walk out as they ave
routinely done as a means of black mail holding cities hostage, but at the end of the day, what
technology is doing is unavailing a side of Wyatt Earp the public would rather not see even if
they know what's up. It's the system in a manner of exposure unlike it's even been used to.
It's the collapse of the arguments for invading countries that are not a threat. It's the
collapse of the internal dialogues among the agencies in multiple arenas of government force.
It's Ruby Ridge, It's Waco, It's Baltimore, It's Fergusaon. It's Oakland. It's Baton Rouge.
It's New Jersey. It's . . . It's balloting were the 1 per-center is suddenly number one,. Utter
nonsense such as written in the Fergason Report. It's nonsense such as the Ferguson Effect.It's
a news system, that is serious doubt. It's bail out for WS, repeatedly and then throwing the
payees f bail out out of works. It is stagnant wages. It's hiring and executive to make a
serious shift ad the best he could do hire ore part time citizens and embrace more
immigrants.
It's the system saying it's not the system. It;s loosening up credit for businesses and the
rules for consumers tighter. It's watching something on film as it happens and then being told
what you saw is not what happened.
It's the unmasking of tactics used by the system to shield itself from accountability. And
perhaps worst of all, we believing what the system tells us because believing reality is just
to tough a road to to travel. It is the system saying . . . it's not the system.
-- -- --
uhh No. I didn't believe there was a reason to invade Ira or Afghanistan or any of the
subsequent intentions by the former Vietnam protester "we lost Vietnam" crowd as I am that Mr.
Floyd died from a drug overdoese.
And none of the smoke and mirrors: that Pres Hussein was a bad person, that the Taliban were
in on 9/11, that the family occupying Ruby Ridge were Nazis, Mr. Koresh was a demon, there's a
Fergason Effect, that blacks are just bad innately and whites are angelic beings along with
browns and yellows worthy of pass, or that IQ is destined by some unique, unknown and unseen
genetic code, that the Russians sabotaged US elections, . . . or US lost Vietnam (no it did
not). If I start buying onto the nonsense spouted as truth to escape accountability before you
know it, I will start advocating that slaves were just immigrants coming the continent for
better jobs and life.
@Sean
Apart from Emily's point I note that you state that Chauvin constricted Floyd's breathing
without evidence despite it not being accepted by the author of the article.
This proves, the sainthood of a very simian looking convicted criminal doped up coon, that you
can fool some of the people all of the time. The Jooz are laughing all the way to the
ban total control of the World.
@Anon4578
A passer of counterfeit bills is typically given an opportunity by the cheated merchant to make
him whole before the cops are called. Saint George, for whatever reasons, didn't avail himself
of the opportunity extended to him to do just that.
@Wuok
He prolly would have had they just left him alone. Then they'd be in jail for failure to render
first aid. The rioting would have still happened. Heads or tails, you lose with niggers.
@Rich
Chauvin was probably a screaming liberal until he got involved with the chink. The thing about
chinks is they're known to hate everyone equally who isn't a chink.
It is strange that George Floyd's case is taken as proof of systemic racism, when Tony Timpa
got much worse treatment -- even though Timpa hadn't committed any crime, had no police record,
and even called 911 himself.
That is not strange. The reason BLM choose cases where the policeman only did their job is
because otherwise, they'll risk seeing the policeman go to jail, and then there'd be no
systemic racism to rail against. Only when you are sure the policeman will be exonerated in a
court of law, can you rile the animals without risking the party coming to an end before the
music even starts.
@RouterAl
For the time being, an educated comment like yours gets a hearing, in contrast to the
unreasoned moral posturing of so many others here. For so long as they can hide behind "good
intentions," they can run from inconvenient facts. UR recently featured an article and comments
on Dietrich Doerner's Logic of Failure , which says it best about these disgusting
phonies who'd never dream of reexamining their positions based on the horrors they cause.
"In our political environment, it would seem, we are surrounded on all sides with good
intentions. But the nurturing of good intentions is an utterly undemanding mental exercise,
while drafting plans to realize those worthy goals is another matter. Moreover, it is far
from clear whether "good intentions plus stupidity" or "evil intentions plus intelligence"
have wrought more harm in the world. People with good intentions usually have few qualms
about pursuing their goals. As a result, incompetence that would otherwise have remained
harmless often becomes dangerous, especially as incompetent people with good intentions
rarely suffer the qualms of conscience that sometimes inhibit the doings of competent people
with bad intentions. The conviction that our intentions are unquestionably good may sanctify
the most questionable means.
Excerpt From
The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations
Dietrich Dorner
This material may be protected by copyright.
@Thulean
Friend What exactly did happen to the white substance that clearly fell out of his left
pocket while against the wall? Odd nobody mentions that.
George killed himself. He took a lethal overdose of Fentanyl. The meth and the fentanyl
combined cause delirium and heart problems. These two drugs caused what is called "Excited
Delirium Syndrome" which is usually fatal.
When the officers pulled him out of the Mercedes–he was already foaming at the mouth.
These four officers need to be released and given their jobs back. Their arrests are just a
lynch mob by the liberal establishment. George killed George. He gambled with his life, put
himself in that position with allegedly passing counterfeit money. Furthermore, George was DWI;
he was sitting in the drivers seat. Even though you are not driving, sitting in the driver's
seat is DWI, Driving while impaired. Who needs to be arrested is the Drug Dealer that sold him
the Fentanyl.
Moreover, Excited Delirium syndrome causes "Wooden Chest". That is what George was
experiencing, His drug cocktail killed him.
1 million to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved in North Africa, from the beginning of
the 16th century to the middle of the 18th, by slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli
alone (these numbers do not include the European people who were enslaved by Morocco and by
other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean Sea coast)
"From bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling
through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering
their cargo and enslaving the people they captured."
From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, Spain,
France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and
children.
On some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore, Ireland were abandoned following the
raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466
merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates.
@Anonymous
Are you sure that you are not a racist or a progeny of racists?
As Confederate statues are torn down in the USA, one wonders: Are we going to ask Egypt to
change its name, tear down its pyramids which were built by slaves too? And destroy mummies
of pharaohs that had slaves?
Are the black tribes of Africa, the ones who sold the slaves they took from other tribes
when at war and sold to the Arab slave traders, are we going to change the names of those
African tribes too? And tear down the names of their leaders?
No comments? Here is more:
Regarding white slaves in Africa and black slaves in the New World, it is often overlooked
that slaves were enslaved before they were bought and sold by Jews, Arabs, and Gentiles. The
unasked question is: Who enslaved them?
Things that used to be true before political correctness set in: More whites were brought
as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States.
All this obsessing over what pretty boy George died of is irrelevant. Cops putting their knee
on the neck, the most vulnerable part of the human body is wrong period! No sympathy for the
thug, he was a menace to society. What should be obsessed over is police culture has not been
to "protect and serve" since at least the 70's. They see themselves as "at war" with the whole
of society, from the suburban soccer mom to the ghetto thug.
It's widely known cops will take a routine traffic stop, and poke and prod at the driver to try
to rile them up and get the person to react and give the cop an attitude to escalate the
interaction into an altercation. In the suburbs, quiet rural areas it matters not. Race matters
not. They'll pull this shit in the most docile neighborhoods, with the most docile of people,
regardless of color.
I'm neither pro cop or anti cop, I see them as a necessary evil. They'd be a hell of alot less
evil if reforms were made in their attitude toward the public at large, and if they were held
accountable for all their various abuses of power. They also need their privileged status as
some sort of exalted special class "above the public" obliterated! Cops on the whole are some
of the most corrupt, anti social, sadistic people in society. I know many of them personally,
both city and suburban.
As much as I dislike the rioting, looting, arson and chaos, I'm enjoying the karmic retribution
the boys in blue in receiving.
@obwandiyag
It could also be that a certain race is a bit more prone to get into drugs, crime,
prostitution,
and so on. And truth to be told hard work is not in their DNA. As long as you keep
denying FACTS this will never end.
Canada has to bring thousands of Mexicans and Guatemalans to work on the farm fields,
while half of this people are on welfare, and when they do work they only want easy jobs,
bus drivers, taxi drivers, or for the governments where most of the time they just don't
perform
as well. In the mean time people like me are being taxed close to 60% to pay for all these
social programs which only benefits the laziest
Since when gross injustice against a once subdued person legitimate anti-humanity? That is how,
to a naive person consumes daily propaganda by the usa government and their presstitute which
reflect an appearance of "good america" while genuinely reflecting a clandestine disdain for
what is right or such unjustified violence cloaked under the line of duty against the general
population would not be so common in the touted "land of the free." The magnet (of the peaceful
protesters from australia, to europe and latin america) is not to a "good free land of
jewmerica" but to the missing and lack of legitimate Justice parroted along with the moral
compass touted by the usa government and their law enforcement while the true reality of
irrectitude makes itself apparent in videos such as the one of George floyd's unjustified
assassination/murder, where unjustified violence is evident. Thus, with these uncensored videos
by the peaceful population or general public of the usa, the truth did not remain hidden by
manipulated narratives of the jew-owned presstitute and media in favor of the cia/usa
government flavor of their wicked ideology preference while cloaked in sheep's clothing.
In conclusion, When an individual poses a serious threat to an officer or another
individual, according to the National Institute of Justice, the "peace-officer" (as they are
glorifyingly touted) is generally authorized by law to use lethal weapons (i.e., firearms) to
protect himself or herself or others by stopping the individual's actions. You don't want to
realize that there is IRREFUTABLY no serious threat nor danger to life once a person (of any
color in handcuffs as the estate of George Floyd was and many others) is subdued. And, those
marching (or rather peacefully protesting to show solidarity) in many other foreign nation
states display how morally magnetic is the actual legitimate axiom of the interest of justice
because that no democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at
injustice to another as he is of outrage at unjustice to himself.
I don't care so much for the cops since they would put you in a cage with these animals for
thought crimes like posing the JQ and denying the Holycaust without any hesitation at all. They
are paid mercs and sometimes they get burned. Similarly the light property damage incurred by
corporate storefronts and reduction in quality of life for liberal urban dwellers is not at all
a concern for me, and I honestly hope this goes on in perpetuity until the statistical reality
of black crime is literally beaten into their skulls. As for George Floyd he will no longer be
producing any more of his ilk. He was set to marry a lower class white woman and open an
establishment eponymously named the Konvict Kitchen, all in defiance of the principles of
nuptiality and common decency. The former enhances black criminality by combining pathological
white genes from the classes which in Europe would have their breeding restricted by cultural
and economic constraints but are allowed to flourish here generating trailer parks and white
trash that with miscegenation and negrification are as much of a danger to society as the the
African type they complement.
In any case having seen the footage from these events it strikes me that these cops are
themselves very unintelligent. In the case of the Atlanta negro aptly named Rayshard they were
inclined to play junior detective and gameshow host for upwards of 30 minutes when it was
obvious that they should have immediately incapacitated the feral groid and dragged him away
from a motor vehicle capable of causing far more damage than the plastic dart guns they ended
up wrestling over. Instead they allowed the monkey to shuck and jive for what seemed like an
hour repeating the same inane phrases over and over again. I would have been inclined to dump a
mag in the baboon at the 2 minute mark. These two men were themselves products of negrification
and no doubt they likened the ill-fated negro to their favorite afleets and sports stars they
worship on TV, giving him chance after chance to behave like a human being with around a
standard deviation more aptitude than they should have given him credit for. If they had a
choice between the ineffective Taser device and a firearm they ended up using it would have
gone better.
I think this country is screwed in the long run and I just hope it ends in fireworks. The
long and inexorable drag into stupidity is maddening.
I doubt anyone cares what he died from, they can just go "change" their signs to some guy in
Georgia. They all look like hoaxes but they needed something for "change" to happen. Back to
online petitions and countless fake hoaxes and more toppling anything whuhhh, and more
historical revision to erase whuhhhh, can't even spell it anymore.
Who called the police on the martyrs? Why would a black person call the police on a black man
asleep in the line at Wendy's in Georgia, when they could have just drove around him. Why have
the white police bother him? It all just looks like more lefty "change" helped out by the good
folks at Netflix or something.
He also had sickle cell anemia. The coronary report mention a lot of "sickled" cells, but only
postmortem. It is knows that sufferers of SCD show that kind of pattern: Death induces it.
However, George Floyd was also COVID19 positive, and there are signs that COVID19 decreases
Hemoglobin levels:
Primate models of Covid-19 (Munster 2020) and human Covid-19 patients have subnormal
haemoglobin levels (Chen 2020). Clinical evaluationof almost 100 Wuhan patients reveals
haemoglobin levels below the normal range in most patients as well as increased total
bilirubin and elevated serum ferritin (Chen 2020). Hyperbilirubinemia is observed in acute
porphyria (Sassa 2006) and would be consistent with ineffective erythropoiesis (Sulovska
2016) and rapid haemoglobin turnover.
@ICANREAD
They did call the EMTs. That's what they were waiting for. Maybe you shouldn't try to analyze
the situation until after you learn what the situation involved?
@Wuok
He was dying before he even left the car. He collapsed when they pulled him out of it. He
collapsed after they helped him walk to the wall. He was complaining that he couldn't breathe
before he had a knee on his neck. My sense was that when he saw the cops were coming for him,
he swallowed his drugs. Pretty common.
@EliteCommInc.
And criminals who break into pregnant women's houses and jam guns into their pregnant guts
really do get their just deserts when they hastily swallow all the drugs they were dealing to
avoid going back to the joint.
"It is strange that George Floyd's case is taken as proof of systemic racism, when Tony Timpa
got much worse treatment -- even though Timpa hadn't committed any crime, had no police record,
and even called 911 himself."
It would b strange if what you said was accurate.
enforcement, It is not singular artifact.
I is not any singular death, not even a group of deaths that are rare at the hands of
police. It's the ten million plus arrests misdemeanors primarily that end with violence against
unarmed citizens that are disproportionately used with respect to african americans it's the
related history. It is the sentencing. It is the pea bargain system . . .
It's the crack vs regular cacaine narratives nonsense, it is the rhetorical dialogue -- it
is not one single thing, but a compendium of constructs across the country over time.
@Anon
It seems more likely that the heart attack came because the heart was overworked due to low
blood-oxygen levels due to the sedated breathing from the opioid.
Such analysis is diversion from the main discussion. It does not matter if Floyd was on drugs
or a criminal. Why was he treated brutally by the police. Too much power given to the law
enforcement. And the bad apples always take advantage of it. Observe the way they walk. No sign
of humility or being a servant of society or a protector.
Race riots yes. but so many whites and no African Americans are rioting, too. It is economic
disparity and hopelessness, stupid, and that is what the pundits are avoiding purposely.
Brilliant presentation.
I was arrested one time and was put into car. Interestingly enough I had difficulty breathing
and I did not have any drugs in me.
I did ask officer to open window in the car but he did not. He did not care.
@SOL
Exactly. They would not even spend the time to read this excellent example of actual
journalism.
Their hatred blinds them to all facts.
Talking time is over. Balkanize the failed multi-cultural experiment. Ethnostate is NEEDED.
Separate from Hate.
Anyone else getting rather peed off by the huge donations to BLM, apparently about to flow in
– as reparations for the proceeds from slavery by Briitish firms.
Seems to me these companies should be starting at home.
What about the proceeds from mills and factories here in England where the labour was little
more than slavery.
Forced on the poor for pathetic and utterly meagre wages – amounting to slavery –
as the option to the 'poor house'.
Children of seven working 12 hours a day for pennies.
Many dying and crippled by the machinery under which they had to scrabble.
I am sure there are millions – not least up north – who would very much like some
recognition for the quite awful exploitation of their forebears.
Oops – sorry – they all have white faces and are not prepared to commit mayhem,
arson and criminal damage to support any claim.
Time, maybe to start, it works.
Maybe we less than aristocratic English people should start a few demands in payment for the
terrible conditions of the industrial 'revolution', for the Victorian slums, more appalling
than black Americans ever endured.
You don't see the black Americans sporting rickets, TB, suffering starvation, diptheria and
smallpox to mention a few.
Or kids forced up chimneys.
I wonder how Dickens would be feeling today – at Lloyds etc.
Disgusted and sick, I imagine.
Don't get me started on those 'pressed' into the navy .
@chuckywiz
Why was he treated brutally by the police.
Was he?
The autopsy doesn't appear to record 'brutal physical injury' of the kind you appear to claim
.
Could you detail the evidence that demonstrates such 'brutality'
Restraint surely does not come into that category and there is no or very little indication on
his neck or throat.
Clarify the facts, Chucky, so we can all see the cuts, bruises, abrasions
Perhaps you will also give us some information as to how you would have handled a very large
such individual full of fentanyl and other substances .
@Wizard
of Oz The author of the article talks about the knee on Floyd's neck only. But while he may
be correct, that knee was not the only thing going on. I am talking about the other
things including Chauvin's other knee. Officer Lane seems to have diagnosed Floyd's medical
status as one unlikely to stand up to the tender mercies being administered by Chauvin. Lane,
the first cop to talk to Floyd, had immediately observed he had been foaming at the mouth.
Later, once Chauvin got on top of Floyd, Lane suggested turning him face up, and said he was
worried about EXD. Lane's partner complained and said 'don't do that' to Chauvin in relation to
him kneeling on Floyd.
If a 300lb wrestler was to apply a tight bodylock (bear hug) and keep it on tight, breathing
would halt and the one being bear hugged would quite likely die within 10 minutes. Floyd's
breathing was constricted by his bulk and being put face down with cuffs pulling his arms
against the side of his ribcage. The weight and duration of Chauvin's knee on Floyd's back
surely is what tipped the balance and killed him. There is an ex cop and prison guard who
admits he used to deliberately break the fingers of resisting convicts who points to the sun
glasses perched on Chauvin's head and the casual placement of his hands while kneeling on Flyod
as clear indications there was no meaningful resistance from him, see here .
It is not mere opinion that Floyd was not actively resisting arrest during the several
minutes he had Chauvin on top of him, because officer Chauvin was recorded explaining the
reason Floyd was being pinned down was he had not cooperated earlier , when they had
tried to put him in the police car. Hence Chavin virtually admitted it was a was a physical
punishment for previous non-cooperation, but in law Chavin is not permitted to use the
restraint technique as a punitive measure, which he knew very well. Hence Chauvin was commiting
a felony, wham, in the course of which someone died, bam. Wham bam: felony murder.
@chuckywiz
Actually, this article touches on what you consider the "main discussion" when it assesses
whether or not the cop was following procedure. Is the man being vilified as the worst person
on earth just a guy who was doing the job he was taught to do? If you think the rules are
wrong, you're free to work to change them. This cop will face an American court, not some
post-revolutionary tribunal. The question is whether or not his trial will look more like the
latter than the former.
Hispanic cop in Georgia shoots and kills white guy who grabs Hispanic cop's taser = NO coverage
by national media. Hell, I live in Georgia and I didn't even hear about this one.
White cop in Georgia shoots and kills black guy who grabs White cop's taser = NONSTOP 24/7
coverage by national media.
SHOULD THE MEDIA BE LABELED AS A HATE GROUP BY THE $PLC?
Blacks can only achieve because they have White admixture or because they reside in White
societies. Too few of them are smart enough to even build sufficient infrastructure in Africa
to allow the Black intellectual elite to achieve.
Sub-Saharan Africans have never made a contribution to the world. If allowed to become too
numerous they destroy previously-thriving and safe White cities.
This is why Blacks seethe with jealousy and hatred of Whites yet can't seem to stay away
because they want what we create and maintain, no matter if they deserve it or not. They want
our peaceful and clean neighborhoods, our law and order, our technology and science, our school
systems, our inventions, the jobs we create, the food we grow, the transportation we invent,
the entertainment we provide Blacks hate us but can't live without us. That's why they demand
that we take care of them and give them special rights and privileges that we don't grant
ourselves, just to compensate for their inability at living in a modern and
technologically-advanced civilization.
Some groups succeed all the time, everywhere. Some have never succeeded anywhere.
Blacks are the oldest race, so they should be the most advanced race; but they never
developed at all and had to be domesticated by Whites.
National IQs calculated and validated for 108 nations:
Just week we had a White sub-Saharan African (Elon Musk) launch a spacecraft while Black
sub-Saharan Africans destroyed several cities.
Name a civilization (or even a written language) ever created by Blacks.
Name a single contribution from sub-Saharan Africans to the world.
The simple fact is, everything Blacks have was given to them by Whites.
Blacks are the only race never to have civilized. They were removed from the jungle just 250
years ago.
Blacks can only achieve because they have White admixture or because they reside in White
societies. Too few of them are smart enough to even build sufficient infrastructure in Africa
to allow the Black intellectual elite to achieve.
Slavery was the best thing to happen to Blacks, it was essentially a rescue mission by a
free cruise. Being a slave was actually a good career move for a Black African -- as it still
would be today. An enslaved Black in any non-Black country has a higher standard of living than
a free Black living among his own kind.
After defeating George Foreman for the heavyweight boxing title in Zaire (now Congo),
Muhammad Ali returned to the United States where he was asked by a reporter, "Champ, what did
you think of Africa?" Ali replied, "Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat."
Blacks are incapable of creating a civilization of their own. Blacks can only achieve
because they have White admixture or because they reside in White societies. Everything Blacks
have was given to them by Whites.
Criminally insane Floyd killed himself. His chosen lifestyle could only lead to a bad end
sooner or later. He shouldn't even have been out on the street after his armed home invasion
conviction. It was the misfortune of the police to have had to deal with this drugged-up thug
at the point he was going to expire due to drugs and eroded health due to years long drug use.
He was a large, tough looking criminal that one had to be careful in dealing with. This is the
'hero' of the moment, one of the scummiest people one could ever meet.
@chuckywiz
The Jewish MSM always ignores non-black victims of police misconduct. They made a collective
decision to do that following the mild uproar over Ruby Ridge and the Waco massacre of the
Branch Davidians. Today the Narrative is all about white oppressors and black victims.
It is economic disparity and hopelessness, stupid, and that is what the pundits are
avoiding purposely.
We can't read minds, so you could possibly be right. But in the visible world toppling
statues of white men and various displays of guilt-mongering seem to be taking precedence over
any racially neutral economic demands.
Muddy the water. Now we know why they hate us. Now we know why posters at this site and Zero
Hedge are considered white trash. Science is unacceptable when lefties use it to promote global
warming or the Nazis use it to lock down our society, but when it can be manipulated to try and
prove dirty cops innocent then it's okay. What's to conclude? Giant Echo Chamber! The Left has
it to keep their ignorant followers in line. The Right has it as well. Everyone preaching to
their audience and no one really worried too much about truth.
This is an excellent site. It's a shame that it feels a need to blame EVERYTHING on Jews or
Socialists or whatever the rednecks have been brainwashed to fear. The site simply hurts its
credibility doing this. Not much better than Left wing groups and that's one serious Freak
Show!
They riot because they are sick and tired of the ways cops treat them–
no, they're rioting because blacks and browns don't have academic and economic parity with
whites, and the ((universities)) have instructed their charges that there's no such thing as
racial differences, and so that means all the academic and economic discrepancies between white
and black, and the over-representation of blacks in the criminal justice system, are all a
direct consequence of lingering, "systemic" white racism in America.
That's why they're rioting. The Floyd death was simply the perfect metaphor for
America's 'racism', crystalized down to nine minutes of video.
The video was simply the catalyst, for a mindset that's been foisted by the ((universities))
and ((media)) for many decades now.
We're seeing what they've wanted all along. White people transformed into Palestinians,
treated as second class citizens. Affirmative action, and now free health care ONLY for blacks
in Kentucky.
White people will pay the taxes, but not get the benefits, because they're racists and
anti-Semites, and like the Palestinians (terrorists) they don't deserve any rights.
That's what this is all about. The 21st century is to be like the 20th, a Jewish
supremacist orgy of racial hatred unleashed.
I don't understand why they held him down so long. It seems as if they wanted to wait until
the criminal stopped tensing himself, which could be an indicator of continued resistance.
Maybe they felt if they eased up, he'd jump up and fight them as the guy in Atlanta did.
The Atlanta cops are going to get lynched. That's not justice.
@RobbieSmith
Ali spoke a lot of truth and the only reason the counterculture adopted him is because of his
stance against "Whitey" or what they thought was his stance against "Whitey." I do not blame
Ali for not wanting to fight for America in the Vietnam War. When Ali grew up, Blacks were
indeed second class citizens, far from it now, they have their asses kissed 24/7. Ali was about
Blacks pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, and was a hardcore SEPARATIST. Ali actually had
more than a touch of Irish blood in him. I wish more Blacks did indeed belong to the NOI like
Ali, I think we would have less crime and they would stay to themselves.
George Floyd was an unhealthy man. He wasn't an angel. He wasn't even a decent citizen. He was
a piece of shit.
But he didn't die of an overdose.
He died from a cop burying his knee on his neck for almost 10 minutes. Already in horrible
shape with breathing problems, his body wasn't able to handle it.
Floyd was pleading for him to get off his neck. He was asking for his mother. C'mon people.
Chauvin was heartless and ignorant. All he had to do was get off Floyd's neck. He wasn't a
threat.
Chauvin had a serious lapse in judgement. So did Floyd. He wouldn't have been in that
position in the first place. We can always argue that Floyd was a piece of shit. Maybe he was,
but he didn't have to die like that. Who in this comment section is so perfect to judge?
Chauvin has his own issues. He isn't a murderer either. Ignorant and callous, yes. Deserving
of jail time. I don't think so. Therapy and retirement form the police force? Absolutely.
1 Blacks can newer be civilized.
2 Blacks will never trust white people.
3 Whatever whites will do. Blacks will never be satisfied until they will have all and
permanent administrative power.
It was the liberal Democratic governors who were the worst 'lock-down' "Nazis", but to a
dishonest, agenda-driven liar like you, the truth is only something to bastardize to your own
hatred-consumed agenda.
EVERYTHING on Jews or Socialists or whatever the rednecks have been brainwashed to
fear.
Yea, it's not like thousands of those rednecks haven't given their lives in the last two
decades fighting the Eternal Wars for Israel, now is it? But that's a price we should all pay
for what was done on (((9/11))), huh?
The entire debate is moot at this point. Floyd is dead. The puppeteers have their "Crisis". The
mob is still out there. Thought crime is the new passion. Negroes can do nothing wrong. When
they do, it is my fault because I am white. Up is down, down is up, etc. The big question is
what lies ahead.
This was all manufactured to cover the real truth about a collapsing economic system which will
devastate nations and economies all over the world. When it hits(my bet is before 2021),
nothing else will matter. Here in Amerika, the Sheeple, Normies, and Cucks will go bat-s ** t
crazy. It will be Bosnia times Rwanda times Venezuela, times The Stand. Plan accordingly. Bleib
ubrig. Proverbs 27:12.
All this hysteria over one dead black thug and utter silence about far more tragic/innocent
victims(often at the hands of black thugs) suggest that the 'systemic racism' is in favor of
blacks.
It's like US's favoritism for Zionists over Palestinians, Iranians, and Arabs.
We hear endless yammering about 'antisemitism' and 'white supremacism', but US is
pathologically philosemitic and serving Jewish Supremacism 24/7.
BTW. it will be funny when a black guy wearing a Floyd t-shirt ends up dead at the hands of
another black.
@Anonymous
IF this whole incident is REAL, and believe me, nowadays I have a hard time believing anything
we see in the media or read is REAL, I have to say the cop was wrong and does deserve to do
time. Whatever the guy died from, people in the crowd told Chauvin over and over that Floyd
wasn't moving. The other cops should have pulled Chauvin off as well. The case in Atlanta is
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, however. IMO, Chauvin is guilty of manslaughter and quite possibly second
degree murder, but that one would be hard to prove. BUT the question must be ASKED ONCE AGAIN,
how or why did it come to this, WHY didn't George Floyd COMPLY with officer's orders? Floyd
would still be alive IF he had JUST COMPLIED with the cops. What is it about complying with an
officer's orders do Blacks not understand? A couple months ago a man was killed right up the
street from me because he attacked an officer with a knife. The officer responded to a domestic
dispute and the man STUPIDLY charged an armed cop with a knife and was shot dead. White cop,
and white perp so that was the end of story.
@Ficino
Covid-19 attacks cells with ACE-2 enzyme receptors. They are present in the lungs, heart,
intestine, blood vessels, and kidneys. Many people infected with Covid-19 suffer more damage in
these organs than in the lungs. People think they will recover quickly from this virus like
another cold (two of the cold strains are actually coronoviruses) or flu viruses, but it's
damage to the organs is more severe. It leaves them vulnerable to next year's covid-20, where
they will now have "preexisting health conditions."
May 27, 2020 New video shows Minneapolis police arrest of George Floyd before death
Four white officers involved in the death of George Floyd have been fired from the
Minneapolis Police Department, but Mayor Jacob Frey is saying that one of the officers should
be arrested for pressing his knee on Floyd's neck.
Dr. Vincent Di Maio estimated that Excited Delirium Syndrome kills 800 people every
year in police altercations because the victims "are just overexciting [their] heart from
the drugs and from the struggle.
So that is nearly 2,000 civilians a year that die in interactions with police basically the
Wild West
As a result, incompetence that would otherwise have remained harmless often becomes
dangerous, especially as incompetent people with good intentions rarely suffer the qualms of
conscience that sometimes inhibit the doings of competent people with bad intentions.
Good intentions were cobbling his way to disaster. – Old German saying. –
I like Dietrich Doerner – as a social scientist and as a humble man (a Social Democratic
leftie from the days before the left grew "regressive" (Dave Rubin).
Floyd's condition is irrelevant. If I have the facts straight Floyd was handcuffed and loaded
inside the police car. For reasons that are unclear he ends up face down on the asphalt with 4
dudes sitting on top of him. For me, without an amazing explanation all four should never have
been police officers. His death makes it worse but the inexplicable part is why he was on the
pavement being crushed.
@obwandiyag
Are you really going to share "a couple thousand" murders by police with us? Ok, I'll bite.
Send them to us in short installments of 3 or 4 hundred, just so we can keep up.
@Cranberries
RE: Might help for someone to explain this calculation, since simply summing the fentanyl and
norfentanyl concentrations gives 16.6, not 20.6. Cranberries comment #6.
I read somewhere that another fentanyl moiety was also detected in George Floyd's autopsy
blood. That may explain the discrepancy.
I really hate saying it but you could have a video of St.George shooting up minutes before his
encounter with Minneapolis' finest and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. The Church of the
Perpetually Aggrieved have their martyr and will not let trivial things like truth get in the
way.
When I'm feeling particularly cynical and want to irritate the Missus I will say something
like, "Yeah, that was pretty bad but he probably did something we don't know about. So it all
evens out in the end."
@vot
tak Oh "prejudiced " against a particular group, is that the same thing as "racist" now"?
Does "racist " mean anything other than White? The word "prejudice " means to "pre-judge", what
if someone judges a person or group after getting to know them very well? What if I find I love
all people except Tibetans, am I a "racist "? For you kooks, I am if I'm White. So I guess
that's a "dumb question", since I'm pretty Pale
Videos and photos are very poor evidence because they only raise an emotional
response.
This is fact is usually overlooked. I still don't really grasp, why that is. But people seem
to lack – media education, or self-reflective self-distancing concerning the difference
between being an ey-witness and witnessing a video about an event. – Maybe Marshal
McLuhan is one reason that the video-deception is not being noticed for what it is: a major
source of self-deception because he made media-reflection trendy and at the same time
clueless.
This seems at first sight like a rather dismal academic distinction – until it becomes
crucial to make it, like in this case.
By now I might even be boring some readers of Unz.com by insisting on the following factual truth: Tom Wolfe showed in
pristine detail, just how this video deception, as you might call it, works in his (sigh, I'll
repeat this esthetic fact too now for the umpteenth time) – Tom Wolfe was able to show
how this video-deception plays out in his excellent novel Back to Blood .
PS
It might be not accidental, that Tom Wolfe did have a close look at Marshal McLuhan's ideas and
did write quite a bit about it, long before he started to work at Back to Blood .
– Fruits take their time until they're ripe, it seems.
What is it about complying with an officer's orders do Blacks not understand?
since I generally agree with you, and agree that this was likely staged, and that the other
cops should have intervened, and that Chauvin was obviously guilty of a callous disregard for
the man's life, (regardless of what he actually died of).. I agree with that all.
But I also understand why some people would try to flee the cops, (and being arrested and
having your life destroyed). It's a risk some people are willing to take. Like the guy who was
murdered by cop, lying in the snow (while being sadistically tortured by tazer). That sadistic
bitch tortured him to death because he ran from her, and defied her 'authority'.
I've known of too many cops in my lifetime who're drunk on their authority (power), and I
don't blame some people for running from them. If our laws say it's ok for cops to shoot such
people, then so be it, but if they're not allowed to shoot suspects running away, then if
that's murder, it's murder. No?
American cops are way too militarized and often murderous and unaccountable.
Absofuckinglutely.
But the Jews are turning this into a racial issue for their own agenda, whatever that is at
the moment. Perhaps simply as an amusement, to watch whitey squirm. (one of their favorite
pastimes ; )
I've never before seen such stupidity in the comments as is seen here today. Something strange
is going on. Many of you didn't read the article but have strong opinions. This isn't typical
of Unz readers. For some reason the Trolls are out in force on this one. Are you trying to
destroy this website's credibility?
@Emily
In certain quarters first responders do carry naloxone injectors for that contingency –
it takes half an hour of training.
Opioid LD50s are house numbers, but it´s a possibility.
Clearly no choking, but I wouldn´t rule out vagus shock.
Overall I´d say a measured exposé, but as many others already noted the
question is moot now.
@Biff
Given your confidence, can you tell us the exact number of "racists" married to people of other
races in America?
Your response should be within 2% of the actual number, and please also provide proof of the
"racism" on the part of the individual "racists" married to non Whites.
It is possible that floyd died of a drug overdose.
Not long after the video of Floyd s death came out a journalist from the Atlantic tried to
reenact it. He was unable to keep his balance for the amount of time.
This is possibly because the knee on the neck was not putting that much pressure on the
neck. It is possible that it was it was an even stance and the knee was applying slight or no
pressure.
@obwandiyag
They riot because the press whips them up into a frenzy. There is no shortage of blacks killed
by police or whites killed by police but this incident was spread to the 4 channels blacks are
capable of finding and drove them to riot.
If blacks don't like how cops treat them, then they should improve their savage behavior. Over
half of all homicides, over a third of cop killers, the majority who shoot at police, and far
more likely to resist arrest. When will blacks learn basic civilization, or do whites need to
hold their hand yet again?
Then, one officer pulled him out on the other side.
I assaume because he demanded to be let out due to a medical emergency. "I can't breathe!".
So they did and called an ambulance, which arrived a little later.
Facts:
1.Officer Derek Chauvin isn't in the video. The person purported to be Officer Chauvin is a
different person and that is quite clear from examining stills from the video and comparing
them to still photos of Officer Derek Chauvin.
2.One of the police vehicles had a licence plate that said 'POLICE'. This is absurd.
These are just two EXTREMELY obvious facts about the 'video' and there are dozens more fun
facts about this incident that really no other conclusion is possible IF a person is observant
AND honest about this video: it is a hoax. See: canucklaw.ca for an excellent and detailed breakdown.
Somehow, nearly everyone in 'professional media', aka as the presstitutes paid to lie by
their jewish billionaire employers, accepts this obvious HOAX as though it is legit and beyond
question.
Sounds familiar. Kind of like every mass shooting incident of the last 18 years which is to
say, ever since the HOAX of 9/11 the Jew Spew Propaganda arm just can't stop 'reporting' on
clearly faked events anytime they want to push the gun control issue, distract from another
issue or, worse still, to manipulate low IQ ghetto thugs, communists and assorted snow-flakes
into rioting which the Jew spew media then presents as 'peaceful protests'.
Anyone else sick of this never ending effort to manipulate the conversation away from the theft
of Trillions of dollars being presided over by Zion Don, his underlings Mnuchin, Jared Kushner
and the Federal Reserve Bank.
Last time I checked the unemployment number, that was previously 40 million, it seems to
have inched up to nearly 50 million. I expect to see continued efforts, each more desperate
than the last, as the elites fight for power, loot the treasury and race-bait. I don't know
when but I expect that at some point, barring any corruption or treason trials. elites will
start to be executed by vigilante groups. I just can't see these level of social pressure,
outright criminality and outrageous propaganda continuing to grow before average people become
frustrated and disenfranchised enough to act. Somewhere from among the silent majority of
rational Americans I expect to see a response to the last 2 decades of 'Global War of Terror'
insanity,financial looting of the present and future American people with a dash of race war
tossed in as a further insult to reason.
It amazes me that a community of largely dysfunctional blacks -mostl net takers from the
economic system-have the gall to use the term 'white privilege'. They don't pay taxes beyond
basic consumption, cause endless problems, avoid the infantry in every war, and now want
'reparations' after leeching off whites for over 150 years. It never ceases to amaze me how
effective propaganda is and how incredibly stupid the far left of the curve can be.
@obwandiyag
said:
"People don't riot over the specific police murder that sets it off. They riot because they are
sick and tired of the ways cops treat them–one of the ways being to murder them"
– Then Euro-whites should be the ones rioting.
– The number of Euro-whites killed by police are much, much higher than blacks, which is
remarkable considering that blacks do the vast amount crime.
– It is whites who are targeted by blacks, the stats don't lie. The Color of Crime : https://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/
@Rurik
I agree with your post 100%. If Mr. Floyd had been White and the cops were White, this story
wouldn't have been talked about outside of Minneapolis. Speaking of Minneapolis, notice the JEW
MEDIA covered the story about the black thug throwing the white kid off a balcony in the Mall
Of America for about 3 minutes, and no suggestions of race at all. Yep, I don't buy the Pawn
Vanity narrative that 99% of cops are decent either. I can't think of any profession that could
make that claim. I am watching the telly as I type this and now the natives are engaging in a
multi-city "Juneteenth March." LMAO. I guess this will now become a national holiday. How
anyone can be fooled by this anymore is beyond stupid. Take care, my friend and enjoy the
comedy placed before us.
I've been on Derek Chauvin's side from the beginning. I knew it was just a race thing that the
media blew up and distorted, just like that kid wearing the MAGA cap with the native American
in DC, whose name I forgot. I hope that Derek Chauvin will be found not guilty and will sue the
mainstream media like that kid from Kentucky did. My only fear is that America is not an honest
country anymore and even if it is so blatantly obvious that Chauvin is innocent, that they will
have to find him guilty anyway.
I just can't stand it. I can't stand the thought of that happening. I mean, imagine that
ultimatum . serve justice or risk a city burning down. How can the masses be so misinformed?
Unaware and corrupted?
I took some notes today from E. Michael Jones, I watched his video, Sicut Judaeis Non, and
I/we have to really let what he said sink into our beings, in order that we can resist it and
not acquiesce. I can't go along with corruption and let injustice come to Derek Chauvin. The
truth has to be told.
My notes from E. Michael Jones:
"Jewish identity is the rejection of logos- political, moral, economical"
"Modernization is about everyone becoming Jewish."
"We have internalized the commands of our Jewish oppressors."
"We have a Jewish superego."
"Break free from the control of Jews in our minds."
And recently I've been watching Yuri Benzmenov again, we really have to understand the deep
psychological warfare, the hypnotic spell we've been under and break free from it.
@SOL
What else is new? Repeat offender was a drug addict. Drug addict died of an overdose. People
using lies about his death are not revolutionaries, they are just bandits, burglars and
vandals.
@anonymous1963
They'll get a fair trial and be found not guilty . setting off round #2 of rioting and looting
a couple of weeks before the november election
@Dan
Kurt Hey Dan, I thiiiiink .. norfentanyl is a metabolite of fentanyl, which means it has
been absorbed and processed by the body so the norfentanyl level would be indicative of a
higher/additional level of fentanyl intake, which when calculated backwards implies 20.6 total
@Rurik"no, they're rioting because blacks and browns don't have academic and economic parity with
whites, and the ((universities)) have instructed their charges that there's no such thing as
racial differences, and so that means all the academic and economic discrepancies between white
and black, and the over-representation of blacks in the criminal justice system, are all a
direct consequence of lingering, "systemic" white racism in America."
The persistent so-called "achievement gap" reveals the same racial IQ hierarchy on
standardized academic exams. The SAT is largely a measure of general intelligence. Scores on
the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ
scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching, or
practice. SAT preparation courses appear to work, but the gains are small -- on average, no
more than about 20 points per section.
[MORE]
Even after decades of focused attention to the achievement gap, it has remained unchanged.
Vanderbilt University researchers tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments
of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search and determined that scores on
the SAT correlate so highly with IQ that they are described as a "thinly disguised"
intelligence test.
Year White Black Gap
1985 1038 839 199
1990 1031 849 185
1996 1052 857 195
2000 1060 859 201
2005 1061 863 197
2010 1063 855 208
2015 1047 846 201
The new SAT introduced in 2017 was "designed to inspire and increase access to college" by
creating "a more equitable exam". The new SAT cannot be compared to previous results:
Year White Black Gap
2017 1118 941 177
2018 1123 946 177
The 2017 "college readiness" scores (ability to earn a C or higher in an entry-level course)
showed the stark racial achievement gap; Asians scored 70% college readiness, Whites 59%, and
Blacks only 20%.
SAT scores are highly correlated to intelligence test scores. The SAT correlates with an IQ
test at 0.86, almost the same as an IQ test correlates with itself. For this reason, we can
very reliably take SAT scores and convert them to IQ scores.
Results of psycho-metric IQ and scholastic tests are highly correlated. Rindermann &
Thompson (2013, p. 822)
In the 20 year period from 1994-2014 the Black-White difference increased on both the verbal
and math SATs despite targeted efforts to close the race gap. On the reading test, it rose from
.91 to .96 standard deviations. On the math test, it rose from .95 to 1.03 standard
deviations.
In fact, the truncated nature of the SAT math score distribution suggests that these race
gaps would be even larger given a harder exam with a bigger score variance. Note, for example,
how the Black score distribution is cut off at the bottom while the Asian score distribution is
cut off at the top. That suggests that a redesigned exam might feature even more pronounced
race gaps.
Percent by Race Reaching the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark:
15% = Black
24% = Non-White Hispanic
35% = Native American
53% = White
56% = Asian
Source: The College Board, 2014
PISA scores by race:
White Black Asian
531 433 525
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2015
NAEP Report Card: Mathematics
"In 2019, there were no significant changes in score disparities compared to 2017 across
most reported student groups in eighth-grade mathematics, with a few exceptions. For example,
among racial/ethnic groups, the average mathematics score at grade 8 for White students was 32
points higher than the average score for their Black peers in 2019 and 24 points higher than
the average mathematics score for eighth-grade Hispanic students. The 32-point
White–Black score difference in 2019 was not significantly different from the 32-point
score difference in 2017, the previous assessment year, nor the 33-point score gap in 1990, the
first assessment year."
Blacks and Whites with Equal Educational Attainment Differ in Cognitive Ability
Black and White Americans with the same formal level of education differ significantly in
their cognitive abilities. Specifically, within any given level of formal education Whites
consistently outperform Blacks. Moreover, this effect is so strong that Blacks often
underperform Whites who have lower levels of formal education than they do.
Consider the following data from the General Social Survey. This public data is frequently
used in social science research and contains a test of verbal intelligence as well as
measurements of participant's self-identified race and highest educational degree obtained.
Verbal intelligence tests correlate at around .75 with full-scale IQ and so this data can also
be taken as a fair measure of intelligence in general (Lynn, 1998). If we set the White mean
score on this test to 100 and the standard deviation to 15, we can come up with an "IQ" style
scale.
As can be seen, using this method Blacks with a graduate degree have a level of verbal
intelligence indistinguishable from that of Whites with a junior college degree. Blacks with a
four-year degree are roughly on par with Whites who never went to college at all.
IQ BY RACE AND HIGHEST DEGREE EARNED (1972 – 2014):
Highest Degree White IQ Black IQ Gap
High School Drop-out: 89 82 7
High School Diploma 98 90 8
Junior College Degree 102 95 7
Bachelor's Degree 108 100 8
Graduate Degree 113 102 11
This data is consistent with evidence from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) which
administered tests of cognitive ability to 26,000 US adults in 1992. These tests were designed
to measure how well people could take information and use it in a way which would help them
function in modern society.
Blacks are such poor academic achievers that the National Achievement Scholarship Program
was created with lower standards for Black candidates only, instead of the National Merit
Scholarship Program which is open to everyone else.
THE SMARTEST STUDENTS: The National Merit Scholarship Program was founded to identify and
honor scholastically talented American youth and to encourage them to develop their abilities
to the fullest.
BLACK STUDENTS ONLY: The National Achievement Scholarship Program was initiated specifically
to identify academically promising Black American youth and encourage their pursuit of higher
education.
They are both measured on the PSAT.
Minimum score for National Achievement: 190
Minimum score for National Merit: 220
Roughly, PSAT x 10 = SAT (out of 2400)
The U.S. government's PACE examination, given to 100,000 university graduates who are
prospective professional or administrative civil-service employees each year, is passed with a
score of 70 or above by 58% of the Whites who take it but by only 12% of the Blacks. Among top
scorers the difference between Black and White performance is even more striking; 16% of the
White applicants make scores of 90 or above, while only one-fifth of one percent of a Black
applicants score as high as 90 -- a White-Black success ratio of 80/1. IQ differences become
more pronounced with greater g-loading.
Bill Gates, after pulling philanthropic funding from Common Core, "When disaggregated by
race, we see two Americas. One where White students perform along the lines of the best in the
world with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America,
where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing
OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece."
Blacks score so poorly on academic exams that colleges give them 230 "race bonus" SAT points
to help them qualify for admission:
"Personal scores" are the new subterfuge for artificially assisting Blacks gain admission to
universities. Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than
20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a
2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles. Hispanics
receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and Blacks
receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.
An otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian male identity with a 25 percent chance of
admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were White, a 77 percent chance of
admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were Black.
@FB
"Police extrajudicial executions of civilians are over 1,000 EACH YEAR in the United States far
more than any other country in the world "
In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 Blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous,
according to the Washington Post. The paper categorized only 16 Black male victims of police
shootings as "unarmed." That classification masks assaults against officers and violent
resistance to arrest.
Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from Black
males than Black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times
more likely to be killed by a Black male than an unarmed Black male was to be killed by a
police officer.
From 1980 to 2013, there were 2,269 officers killed in felonious incidents, and 2,896
offenders. The racial breakdown of offenders over that 33-year period was 52% White, and 41%
Black. So, the 13% total Black population in the U.S. commits 41% of police murders.
Further, Black males have made up 42% of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they
are only 6 percent of the population. That 18.5 ratio undoubtedly worsened in 2016, in light of
the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers -- committed vastly and disproportionately
by Black males.
Nine unarmed Blacks were killed by police in 2019 (seven of whom physically assaulted the
officers), as opposed to 19 Whites, according to the Washington Post's database, but Blacks are
much more likely to have police encounters than Whites. In an average year, about 49 people are
killed by lightning in the US, according to the National Weather Service.
Every year, American police officers have about 370 million contacts with civilians. Most of
the time nothing happens, but 12 to 13 million times a year, the police make an arrest. How
often does this lead to the death of an unarmed Black person? We know the number thanks to a
detailed Washington Post database of every killing by the police. What is your guess as to the
number of unarmed Blacks killed by the police every year? One hundred? Three hundred? Last
year, the figure was nine.
That number is going down, not up. In 2015, police killed 38 unarmed Blacks. In 2017, 21.
What about White people? Last year, police killed 19 unarmed Whites, in addition to the 9
unarmed Blacks. We know the number of Black and White people arrested every year, so it is
possible to make an interesting calculation. The chances of being unarmed, arrested, and then
killed by the police are higher for Whites than for Blacks. For both races, it's very rare: One
out of 292,000 arrests for Blacks, and out of 283,000 arrests for Whites.
Since 2015, when the Post began tracking these numbers, the police have killed about 1,000
people a year. Every year, about one quarter of them are Black. This is about twice their share
of the population, which is 13 percent. Is this proof of police racism? No. The more likely
explanation is that Blacks are more likely than Whites to act in violent, aggressive ways that
give the police no choice but to shoot them. In 2018, the most recent year for which we have
statistics, Blacks accounted for 37 percent of all arrests for violent crimes, 54 percent of
all arrests for robbery, and 53 percent of arrests for murder. With so many Blacks involved in
this kind of violent crime, that Blacks should account for 25 percent of the people killed by
the police seem like a surprisingly low figure.
There is another perspective on police killings of civilians. Every year, criminals kill
about 120 to 150 police officers. And we know from this FBI table that every year, on average,
about 35 percent of officers are killed by Blacks. So, to repeat, Blacks are 13 percent of the
population and account for 25 percent of the people killed by police. But if police were
killing them in proportion to their threatening, violent, criminal behavior, they would be a
greater percentage of the people killed by the police.
Thank you for a thoughtful article. This reinforces my original thought that we should wait for
the results of the trial. Presumably the cop has a competent lawyer who will be able to review
and present the comprehensive evidence to a jury. Ideally the prosecuting attorney will also be
able to understand and present another side of the story. Ideally there will be a fair jury,
not a howling lynch mob, and not a group of retired cops. This system is certainly imperfect
but better than shoot from the hip opinions based on some seconds of video viewing.
Two weeks ago a senior Trump Administration official revealed that the president had decided
to withdraw
9,500 American soldiers from Germany and that the administration would also be capping
total U.S. military presence in that country at 25,000, which might involve more cuts depending
what is included in the numbers. The move was welcomed in some circles and strongly criticized
in others, but many observers were also bemused by the announcement, noting that Donald Trump
had previously ordered a reduction in force in Afghanistan and a complete withdrawal from
Syria, neither of which has actually been achieved. In Syria, troops were only moved from the
northern part of the country to the oil producing region in the south to protect the fields
from seizure by ISIS, while in Afghanistan the nineteen-year-long training mission and
infrastructure reconstruction continue.
In a somewhat related development, the Iraqi parliament has called for the removal of U.S.
troops from the country, a demand that has been rejected by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Put
it all together and it suggests that any announcement coming from the White House on ending
America's useless wars should be regarded with some skepticism.
The United States has its nearly 35,000 military personnel remaining in Germany as its
contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in 1949 to counter
Soviet forces in Eastern Europe in what was to become the Warsaw Pact. Both the Organization
and Pact were ostensibly defensive alliances and the U.S. active participation was intended to
demonstrate American resolve to come to the aid of Western Europe. Currently, 75 years after
the end of World War II and thirty years after the fall of communist governments in Eastern
Europe, NATO is an anachronism, kept going by the many statesmen and military establishments of
the various countries that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Since the
demise of the European communist regimes, NATO has found work in bombing Serbia, destroying
Libya and in helping in the unending task to train an Afghan army.
In spite of the clearly diminished threat in Europe, NATO has expanded to 30 members,
including most of the former communist states that made up the Warsaw Pact. The most recent
acquisition was Montenegro in 2016, which contributed 2,400 soldiers to the NATO force. That
expansion was carried out in spite of assurances given to the post-Soviet Russian government
that military encroachment would not take place. Currently, NATO continues to focus on the
threat from Moscow as its own viable raison d'être , with its deployments and training
exercises often taking place right up against Russia's borders.
Few really believe that the Russia, which has a GDP only the size of Italy's, intends or is
even capable of reestablishing anything like the old Soviet Union. But a vulnerable Russia is
nevertheless interested in maintaining an old-fashioned sphere of influence around its borders,
which explains the concern over developments in Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic States.
Given the diminished threat level in Europe, the withdrawal of 9,500 soldiers should be
welcomed by all parties. Trump has been sending the not unreasonable message that if the
Europeans want more defense, they should pay for it themselves, though he has wrapped his
proposal in his usual insulting and derogatory language. A wealthy Germany currently spends
1.1% of GDP on its military, far less than the 2% that NATO has declared to be a target to meet
alliance commitments. That compares with the nearly 5% that the U.S. has been spending
globally, inclusive of intelligence and national security costs.
Fair enough for burden sharing, but the European concern is more focused on how Trump does
what he does. For example, he announced the downsizing without informing America's NATO
partners. The Germans were surprised and pushed back
immediately . Conservative politician Peter Beyer said "This is completely unacceptable,
especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in
advance," and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas regretted the planned withdrawal, describing
Berlin's relationship with the Washington as "complicated." Chancellor Angela Merkel was
reportedly shocked.
The timing of the decision has also been questioned, with many observers believing that
Trump deliberately staged the announcement to punish Merkel for refusing to attend a planned
G-7 Summit in the U.S. that the president had been trying to arrange. Merkel argued that
dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus made it difficult for her to leave home at the
present time and the G-7 planning never got off the ground, which angered Trump, who wanted to
demonstrate his global leadership in an election year.
Trump's behavior has real world consequences. The Canadians and Europeans regard him as a
joke, but a dangerous joke due to his impulsive decision making. He cannot be trusted and when
he says something he often contradicts himself on the next day. Arguably Donald Trump was
elected president on the margin of difference
provided by an anti-war vote after many Americans took seriously his pledge to end the
burgeoning overseas wars and bring the soldiers home. It all may have been a lie even as he was
saying it, but it was convincing at the time and a welcome antidote to Hillary the Hawk.
There will be costs associated with removing or relocating the troops in Germany, to include
constructing new bases somewhere else, hopefully in the United States, but the realization that
the soldiers are not really needed could lead to the downsizing of the U.S. military across the
board. That would be strongly resisted by the Pentagon, the defense industries and
Congress.
If Trump is serious about downsizing America's overseas commitments, the reduction in the
German force is a good first step, even if it was done for the wrong reasons. It would be even
better if he would force NATO into discussions about ending the alliance now that it is no
longer needed, which would mean that the remaining American soldiers in Europe could come
home.
The U.S. mission of global dominance has meant huge budget deficits and a national debt of
$26 trillion, which is likely unsustainable. Germany and other European nations, by way of
contrast, balance their government budgets every year. South Korea, which hosts 30,000 American
soldiers, is wealthy and far more powerful than its northern neighbor. The continued occupation
of Japan with 50,000 troops makes no sense even considering an increase in China's regional
power. Overall, the United States continues to have 170,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines based overseas in 150 countries and its military budget exceeds one trillion dollars
when everything is considered. The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars may have cost as much as seven
trillion dollars given the fact that much of the money was borrowed and will have to be repaid
with interest.
It is past time for Donald Trump to make a bold move because the Democrats won't have the
backbone to rattle the status quo. End the foreign wars, shut down the overseas bases and bring
the soldiers home. Spend tax dollars to improve the lives of Americans, not to fight wars for
Saudis and Israelis. A simple formula for change, but sometimes simple is best.
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin has taken the opportunity of the 75th anniversary
of the end of World War II to describe the build-up to the war, the diplomatic and military
considerations Russia took into account during that time, and the results of the allies'
victory.
His essay was published in multiple languages on the Website of the Kremlin:
The part with the Russian view of the behavior of various nation in the late 1930s is most
interesting. But this passage, related to the graphic above, is also very relevant:
The Soviet Union and the Red Army, no matter what anyone is trying to prove today, made the
main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism.
...
This is a report of February 1945 on reparation from Germany by the Allied Commission on
Reparations headed by Ivan Maisky. The Commission's task was to define a formula according
to which defeated Germany would have to pay for the damages sustained by the victor powers.
The Commission concluded that "the number of soldier-days spent by Germany on the Soviet
front is at least 10 times higher than on all other allied fronts. The Soviet front also
had to handle four-fifths of German tanks and about two-thirds of German aircraft." On the
whole, the USSR accounted for about 75 percent of all military efforts undertaken by the
Anti-Hitler Coalition. During the war period, the Red Army "ground up" 626 divisions of the
Axis states, of which 508 were German.
On April 28, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his address to the American nation:
"These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies
– troops, planes, tanks, and guns – than all the other United Nations put
together." Winston Churchill in his message to Joseph Stalin of September 27, 1944, wrote
that "it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine "
Such an assessment has resonated throughout the world. Because these words are the great
truth, which no one doubted then. Almost 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives on the
fronts, in German prisons, starved to death and were bombed, died in ghettos and furnaces
of the Nazi death camps. The USSR lost one in seven of its citizens, the UK lost one in
127, and the USA lost one in 320.
As a German and former officer who has read quite a bit about the war I agree with the
Russian view. It was the little acknowledged industrial power of the Soviet Union and the
remarkable dedication of the Red Army soldiers that defeated the German Wehrmacht.
At the end of his essay Putin defends the veto power of the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council. In his view it has prevented that another clash on a global
scale has happened since World War II ended. Putin rejects attempts to abolish that
system.
I have found no major flaw with the historic facts in the essay and recommend to read it
in full.
Posted by b at 17:07 UTC | Comments (22)
thanks for highlighting this b.... the graph at the top is very telling of how many people
remain fairly ignorant of the reality on the ground.. putins speech and text are well worth
the read... s and karlof1 posted a link on the open thread and some of us were talking about
it their.... i found putins comments on the UN especially interesting...
I wonder if the brainwashing going on in the usa about how bad the UN is, is another
example of americans being dumbed right down into believing the UN is useless? that is what
it looks like to me... some of us aren't buying that and i am glad to see putin make some
comments on that as well... thanks for highlighting this.. revisionist history seems to be a
speciality of some..
When I read here and in the article the quotes from Churchill and the "west" praising
Russia's conduct of the war against fascism I can't help but translate them into praise for
Hitler should he have won. British and US oligarchs were funding and supporting Hitler all
along, which is well documented. For the oligarchy it made little difference who won.
The strategy of the imperial oligarchy was to let all its potential competitors deplete
their resources then move in with its full power when the outcome had already been determined
and pray on their weakness. It worked as we see in the global imperial power of the Western
oligarchy as engineered by Roosevelt after the war which has ruled now for 75 years.
What Putin wrote already was common sense among historians, but it is good to see it becoming
more mainstream.
My theory about the USA trying to get the credit for defeating the Third Reich - even
though it has the victory against Japan (an empire that made the Third Reich look like Human
Rights lovers) - comes from the fact that the European Peninsula became the major theater of
the Cold War. The USA had then to create a narrative that could justify its supremacy over
Western Europe, and its attempts to "liberate" Eastern Europe.
Yes, the Korean War happened in the early 1950s, but Japan was secured, Soviet access to
warm water port in Asia was thus blocked and, after the Mao-Nixon pact of 1972, China (and
thus North Korea) was out of the Soviet sphere. That made the European Peninsula even more
important. Indeed, the threat of invading and occupying West Berlin was one of the greatest
leverages the Soviets had and used against the USA during the whole Cold War. This leverage
became even more pronounced after the Soviets successfully crushed the Hungarian
counter-revolution of 1956, which sobered up the CIA and the hampered the USG's ambitions on
absorbing Eastern Europe by propaganda and subversion warfare.
The most baffling news to me recently was when I found out that Poland invaded the CSSR
together with Hitler and occupied a part of the Czech Republic in March 1939 - and I went
through several decades of WW2 "education" just as everyone. Not even Wikipedia mentions the
Polish contribution to the invasion and occupation of the CSSR, which is very telling.
It sheds an entirely new light on the entire development right before WW2, in which Hitler
went all-in to give Poland something for the future return of Danzig. Poland took it, but
didn't realize that it was part of a deal, so Hitler activated Plan B. The process was
certainly aggressive and kicked the Czechs interests as a people/nation, but the overall plan
(I guess developed by Ribbentrop) makes a lot of sense. It is by far not irrational as it is
usually portrayed.
I read the article when it was posted (in full) on Southfront.
It is excellent. Detailed, accurate, insightful, as well as well composed and written.
I recommend that everyone who is able to do so read this article in its entirety.
I also fully agree with the position of Mr. Putin, as stated in his writing.
You are quite correct. All historians know that the role of the Soviet Union in the war was
decisive. When I was a child, growing up in British military circles, nobody troubled to deny
it, while the role of the United States was generally regarded as very minor.
I recall, passing through the Suez Canal on a troopship bound for Malaya, the immense
enthusiasm and loud cheering of the British troops for the crew of a Soviet destroyer,
parading on deck while at anchor in the sweetwater lake. It drove the senior officers mad but
the troops, mostly young working class conscripts, understood that the Red Army had saved
millions of British lives.
As b says, however, by far the most interesting part of Putin's summary is that outlining the
facts of the gyrating foreign policies of the United Kingdom in the 1930s.
Again most of what Putin relates is well known to honest historians. It used to be well
known-thanks largely to the work of the Left- that the well understood strategy of the
Tories, and most of the US business class, was to support a German invasion of the Soviet
Union. Which is why the Nazi economy rested so heavily on US capital- it was expected to pay
political as well as financial dividends by erasing the Communist threat (and, by implication
that of socialism too).
I saw not a single error in Putin's history. It coincides precisely with the analysis I
learned, as a young socialist, from German emigres. One of them, Hans Hess, who was a long
time director of an Art Gallery in the north of England, told us that he, at the time in
Paris, had greeted the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with relief. He understood that it
meant that the policy of appeasement had failed, and that the Soviet Union would survive and
prevail.
It needs to be understood that, before the US Cold War, based on the support it got from the
isolationist, ultra right wing Republicans who had never really warmed to the World War, the
view that Putin gives was widely shared by all 'patriotic' (anti collaborationist) political
currents in western Europe. The contempt with which Baldwin, Chamberlain and their ilk were
regarded in the UK used to be enormous- they were held to be little short of traitors.
Seventy years later they and their US equivalents, the Vichy supporters in France and Nazi
collaborators from all over Europe (including Mussolini's political heirs) dominate European
politics.
It is a badge of honour for Russians to be hated by these scum.
The Soviet Union put together a 20 part documentary, The Unknown War, with the assistance of
the U.S in 1978 to tell their part of the story. Mandatory watching for any history buffs, or
those who want to expand their horizons. An incredible 30 hours of footage from the Soviet
perspective. Narrated by Burt Lancaster.
When I was a history student, undergrad and grad, at University of Illinois in 1970s,
students of European history were taught exactly Putin's view. Students of American history
were taught the Hollywood view. The American side of the History department viewed the entire
faculty and student body on the European side as a pack of disloyal Communists. The European
side saw the American side as exactly what they were - schoolteachers and future
schoolteachers. Most of my old profs were glad to get out. Any profs known since retired
early as precisely this issue made the job impossible. Of course at U of I there was and
remains a large contingent of Eastern European descendants of Nazi collaborators who are very
vocal and completely immune to criticism. A protected class. Open display of Nazi regalia,
memorabilia, salutes, songs were always 100% approved because these are after all the victims
of Soviet oppression.
While it is true that numerous folks among the Anglo-American elites would be okay with a
German victory (particularly if it didn't involve the trashing of their own imperial
regimes), Churchill wasn't one of them. For all his odious aspects, this was a defining
characteristic of his as a British nationalist: he wouldn't countenance any compromise with
the Axis. In fact, it is safe to say that he played a very important role in keeping Britain
in the war and not making any sort of peace with Germany after the fall of France.
On the other hand, it is an absolute truth that Hitler and Mussolini were highly respected
among western capitalists who supported the military reinvigoration of the Third Reich.
Mussolini was treated with more favour, but Hitler was also seen positively, not least for
his racialist and racist views which coincided with those of the official Anglo-sphere.
It is interesting to see in Putin's essay confirmation that the roots of WW11 were the greedy
and inhumane attitudes of France and The UK to German reparations for WWI. Today we have The
UK France and the USA losing the war in Syria and now imposing sanctions on the Syrian
people. In Libya they have created chaos and the same bunch of war criminals do f--- all to
assist the country. I have read elsewhere that Churchill could have stopped WWII much earlier
and saved many lives' including the thousands killed in the Dresden firebombing, but wanted a
complete surrender from Germany rather than a conditional one and that the Japanese were
ready to surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped as the Soviet Army was poised to
invade Japan after cleaning up China. The USA needed a quick resolution and an extravagant
display of power to establish its global supremacy however so dropped the bombs anyway
killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
All facts that are glossed over by most western publications.
It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary celebrations of
the end of WWII in Moscow.
I am very grateful that at least one of the current super-powers is led by the humane,
diplomatic, non-empire building Vladimir Putin.
Victor@17, you cannot be blamed for wanting to add to the essay important details, but I
don't think the charge of revisionism is warranted. In the essay, Putin says this:
"...Stalin and his entourage, indeed, deserve many legitimate accusations. We remember the
crimes committed by the regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions.
In other words, there are many things the Soviet leaders can be reproached for, but poor
understanding of the nature of external threats is not one of them..."
That's a pretty strong statement. Putin is making clear his essay focuses on
misrepresented aspects of Russia's involvement in the war. This is not a blanket endorsement
of all that took place, but a template for careful study of events and increased
understanding as documents pertaining to them become available.
As an American student with a class in "Soviet History" in the 1960's during the Cold War,
what President Putin said about the War is what I was taught at the time.
I don't know when things changed. Probably just Americans lack of knowledge of history and
belief in their exceptionalism.
"... It's a commonplace to say the primary job of police is to "protect and serve," but that's not their goal in the way it's commonly understood -- not in the deed, the practice of what they daily do, and not true in the original intention, in why police departments were created in the first place. "Protect and serve" as we understand it is just the cover story. ..."
"... Urban police forces in America were created for one purpose -- to "maintain order" after a waves of immigrants swept into northern U.S. cities, both from abroad and later from the South, immigrants who threatened to disturb that "order." The threat wasn't primarily from crime as we understand it, from violence inflicted by the working poor on the poor or middle class. The threat came from unions, from strikes, and from the suffering, the misery and the anger caused by the rise of rapacious capitalism. ..."
"... What's being protected? The social order that feeds the wealthy at the expense of the working poor. Who's being served? Owners, their property, and the sources of their wealth, the orderly and uninterrupted running of their factories. The goal of police departments, as originally constituted, was to keep the workers in line, in their jobs, and off the streets. ..."
"... In most countries, the police are there solely to protect the Haves from the Have-Nots. In fact, when the average frustrated citizen has trouble, the last people he would consider turning to are the police. ..."
"... Jay Gould, a U.S. robber baron, is supposed to have claimed that he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. ..."
"... I spent some time in the Silver Valley of northern Idaho. This area was the hot bed of labor unrest during the 1890's. Federal troops controlled the area 3 separate times,1892, 1894 and 1899. Twice miners hijacked trains loaded them with dynamite and drove them to mining company stamping mills that they then blew up. Dozens of deaths in shoot outs. The entire male population was herded up and placed in concentration camps for weeks. The end result was the assassination of the Governor in 1905. ..."
"... Interestingly this history has been completely expunged. There is a mining museum in the town which doesn't mention a word on these events. Even nationwide there seems to be a complete erasure of what real labor unrest can look like.. ..."
"... Straight-up fact: The police weren't created to preserve and protect. They were created to maintain order, [enforced] over certain subjected classes and races of people, includingfor many white people, toomany of our ancestors, too.* ..."
Yves here. Tom mentions in passing the role
of Pinkertons as goons for hire to crush early labor activists. Some employers like Ford went as far as forming private armies for
that purpose. Establishing police forces were a way to socialize this cost.
[In the 1800s] the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization, by which they meant
bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of the working class.
-- Sam Mitrani
here
It's a commonplace to say the primary job of police is to "protect and serve," but that's not their goal in the way it's commonly
understood -- not in the deed, the practice of what they daily do, and not true in the original intention, in why police departments
were created in the first place. "Protect and serve" as we understand it is just the cover story.
To understand the true purpose of police, we have to ask, "What's being protected?" and "Who's being served?"
Urban police forces in America were created for one purpose -- to "maintain order" after a waves of immigrants swept into northern
U.S. cities, both from abroad and later from the South, immigrants who threatened to disturb that "order." The threat wasn't primarily
from crime as we understand it, from violence inflicted by the working poor on the poor or middle class. The threat came from unions,
from strikes, and from the suffering, the misery and the anger caused by the rise of rapacious capitalism.
What's being protected? The social order that feeds the wealthy at the expense of the working poor. Who's being served? Owners,
their property, and the sources of their wealth, the orderly and uninterrupted running of their factories. The goal of police departments,
as originally constituted, was to keep the workers in line, in their jobs, and off the streets.
Looking Behind Us
The following comes from an
essay
published at the blog of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, an academic group for teachers of labor studies, by
Sam Mitrani, Associate Professor of History at the College of DuPage and author of The Rise of the Chicago Police
Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 .
According to Mitrani, "The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at
least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the
new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from the threat posed by that system's offspring,
the working class."
Keep in mind that there were no police departments anywhere in Europe or the U.S. prior to the 19th century -- in fact, "anywhere
in the world" according to Mitrani. In the U.S., the North had constables, many part-time, and elected sheriffs, while the South
had slave patrols. But nascent capitalism soon created a large working class, and a mass of European immigrants, "yearning to be
free," ended up working in capitalism's northern factories and living in its cities.
"[A]s Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the
ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose
order on the new working class neighborhoods ." [emphasis added]
America of the early and mid 1800s was still a world without organized police departments. What the
Pinkertons were to strikes , these
"thousands of armed men" were to the unruly working poor in those cities.
Imagine this situation from two angles. First, from the standpoint of the workers, picture the oppression these armed men must
have represented, lawless themselves yet tasked with imposing "order" and violence on the poor and miserable, who were frequently
and understandably both angry and drunk. (Pre-Depression drunkenness, under this interpretation, is not just a social phenomenon,
but a political one as well.)
Second, consider this situation from the standpoint of the wealthy who hired these men. Given the rapid growth of capitalism during
this period, "maintaining order" was a costly undertaking, and likely to become costlier. Pinkertons, for example, were hired at
private expense, as were the "thousands of armed men" Mitrani mentions above.
The solution was to offload this burden onto municipal budgets. Thus, between 1840 and 1880, every major northern city
in America had created a substantial police force, tasked with a single job, the one originally performed by the armed men paid by
the business elites -- to keep the workers in line, to "maintain order" as factory owners and the moneyed class understood it.
"Class conflict roiled late nineteenth century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867,
1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the
U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly
presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization , by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder
of the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late nineteenth century echoes down to today except that today,
poor black and Latino people are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers."
That "thin blue line protecting civilization" is the same blue line we're witnessing today. Yes, big-city police are culturally
racist as a group; but they're not just racist. They dislike all the "unwashed." A
recent study that reviewed "all the data
available on police shootings for the year 2017, and analyze[d] it based on geography, income, and poverty levels, as well as race"
revealed the following remarkable pattern:
" Police violence is focused overwhelmingly on men lowest on the socio-economic ladder : in rural areas outside the
South, predominately white men; in the Southwest, disproportionately Hispanic men; in mid-size and major cities, disproportionately
black men. Significantly, in the rural South, where the population is racially mixed, white men and black men are killed by police
at nearly identical rates."
As they have always been, the police departments in the U.S. are a violent force for maintaining an order that separates and protects
society's predator class from its victims -- a racist order to be sure, but a class-based order as well.
Looking Ahead
We've seen the violence of the police as visited on society's urban poor (and anyone else, poor or not, who happens to be the
same race and color as the poor too often are), and we've witnessed the violent reactions of police to mass protests challenging
the racism of that violence.
But we've also seen the violence of police during the mainly white-led Occupy movement (one instance
here ; note that while the officer involved
was fired, he was also compensated $38,000 for "suffering he experienced after the incident").
So what could we expect from police if there were, say, a national, angry, multiracial rent strike with demonstrations? Or a student
debt s trike? None of these possibilities are off the table, given the
economic damage -- most of it still unrealized -- caused by the current Covid crisis.
Will police "protect and serve" the protesters, victims of the latest massive
transfer of wealth
to the already massively wealthy? Or will they, with violence, "maintain order" by maintaining elite control of the current predatory
system?
If Mitrani is right, the latter is almost certain.
Possible solutions? One, universal public works system for everyone 18-20. [Avoiding armed service because that will never
happen, nor peace corp.] Not allow the rich to buy then or their children an out. Let the billionaires children work along side
those who never had a single family house or car growing up.
Two, eliminate suburban school districts and simply have one per state, broken down into regional areas. No rich [or white]
flight to avoid poor systems. Children of differing means growing up side by side. Of course the upper class would simply send
their children to private schools, much as the elite do now anyway.
Class and privilege is the real underlying issue and has been since capital began to be concentrated and hoarded as the article
points out. It has to begin with the children if the future is to really change in a meaningful way.
I would add items targeted as what is causing inequality. Some of these might be:
1). Abolish the Federal Reserve. It's current action since 2008 are a huge transfer of wealth from us to the wealthy. No more
Quantitative Easing, no Fed buying of stocks or bonds.
2). Make the only retirement and medical program allowed Congress and the President, Social Security and Medicare. That will
cause it to be improved for all of us.
3). No stock ownership allowed for Congress folk while serving terms. Also, rules against joining those leaving Congress acting
as lobbyists.
4). Something that makes it an iron rule that any law passed by Congress and the President, must equally apply to Congress
and the President. For example, no separate retirement or healthcare access, but have this more broadly applied to all aspects
of legislation and all aspects of life.
I think you'd also have to legalize drugs and any other thing that leads creation of "organized ciminal groups." Take away
the sources that lead to the creation of the well-armed gangs that control illegal activities.
Unfortunately, legalising drugs in itself, whatever the abstract merits, wouldn't solve the problem. Organised crime would
still have a major market selling cut-price, tax-free or imitation drugs, as well, of course, as controlled drugs which are not
allowed to be sold to just anybody now. Organised crime doesn't arise as a result of prohibitions, it expands into new areas thanks
to them, and often these areas involve smuggling and evading customs duties. Tobacco products are legal virtually everywhere,
but there's a massive criminal trade in smuggling them from the Balkans into Italy, where taxes are much higher. Any time you
create a border, in effect, you create crime: there is even alcohol smuggling between Sweden and Norway. Even when activities
are completely legal (such as prostitution in many European countries) organised crime is still largely in control through protection
rackets and the provision of "security."
In effect, you'd need to abolish all borders, all import and customs duties and all health and safety and other controls which
create price differentials between states. And OC is not fussy, it moves from one racket to another, as the Mafia did in the 1930s
with the end of prohibition. To really tackle OC you'd need to legalise, oh, child pornography, human trafficking, sex slavery,
the trade in rare wild animals, the trade in stolen gems and conflict diamonds, internet fraud and cyberattacks, and the illicit
trade in rare metals, to name, as they say, but a few. As Monty Python well observed, the only way to reduce the crime rate (and
hence the need for the police) is to reduce the number of criminal offences. Mind you, if you defund the police you effectively
legalise all these things anyway.
I dunno, ending Prohibition sure cut down on the market for bootleg liquor. It's still out there, but the market is nothing
like what it once was.
Most people, even hardcore alcoholics, aren't going to go through the hassle of buying rotgut of dubious origin just to save
a few dimes, when you can go to the corner liquor store and get a known product, no issues with supply 'cause your dealer's supplier
just got arrested.
For that matter, OC is still definitely out there, but it isn't the force that it was during Prohibition, or when gambling
was illegal.
As an aside, years ago, I knew a guy whose father had worked for Meyer Lansky's outfit, until Prohibition put him and others
out of a job. As a token of his loyal service, the outfit gave him a (legal) liquor store to own and run.
Yes, but in Norway, for example, you'd pay perhaps $30 for a six-pack of beer in a supermarket, whereas you'd pay half that
to somebody selling beers out of the back of a car. In general people make too much of the Prohibition case, which was geographically
and politically very special, and a a stage in history when OC was much less sophisticated. The Mob diversified into gambling
and similar industries (higher profits, fewer risks). These days OC as a whole is much more powerful and dangerous, as well as
sophisticated, than it was then, helped by globalisation and the Internet.
I think ending prohibitions on substances, would take quite a bite out of OC's pocketbook. and having someone move trailers
of ciggarettes of bottles of beer big deal. That isn't really paying for the lifestyle.and it doesn't buy political protection.
An old number I saw @ 2000 . the UN figured(guess) that illegal drugs were @ 600 billion dollars/year industry and most of that
was being laundered though banks. Which to the banking industry is 600 billion in cash going into it's house of mirrors. Taking
something like that out of the equation EVERY YEAR is no small thing. And the lobby from the OC who wants drugs kept illegal,
coupled with the bankers who want the cash inputs equals a community of interest against legalization
and if the local police forces and the interstate/internationals were actually looking to use their smaller budgets and non-bill
of rights infringing tactics, on helping the victim side of crimes then they could have a real mission/ Instead of just abusing
otherwise innocent people who victimize no one.
so if we are looking for "low hanging fruit" . ending the war on drugs is a no brainer.
"What's being protected? The social order that feeds the wealthy at the expense of the working poor. " Neuberger
In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization,
by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of the working class. Mitrani
I think this ties in, if only indirectly, with the way so many peaceful recent protests seemed to turn violent after the police
showed up. It's possible I suppose the police want to create disorder to frighten not only the protestors with immediate harm
but also frighten the bourgeois about the threate of a "dangerous mob". Historically violent protests created a political backlash
that usually benefited political conservatives and the wealthy owners. (The current protests may be different in this regard.
The violence seems to have created a political backlash against conservatives and overzealous police departments' violence. )
My 2 cents.
Sorry, but the title sent my mind back to the days of old -- of old Daley, that is, and his immortal quote from 1968: "Gentlemen,
let's get the thing straight, once and for all. The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve
disorder."
LOL!!! great quote. Talk about saying it the way it is.
It kind of goes along with, "Police violence is focused overwhelmingly on men lowest on the socio-economic ladder: in rural
areas outside the South, predominately white men; in the Southwest, disproportionately Hispanic men; in mid-size and major cities,
disproportionately black men. Significantly, in the rural South, where the population is racially mixed, white men and black men
are killed by police at nearly identical rates."
I bang my head on the table sometimes because poor white men and poor men of color are so often placed at odds when they increasingly
face (mostly) the same problems. God forbid someone tried to unite them, there might really be some pearl clutching then.
yeah, like Martin Luther King's "poor people's campaign". the thought of including the poor ,of all colors .. just too much
for the status quo to stomach.
The "mechanism" that keeps masses in line . is one of those "invisible hands" too.
Great response! I am sure you have more to add to this. A while back, I was researching the issues you state in your last paragraph.
Was about ten pages into it and had to stop as I was drawn out of state and country. From my research.
While not as overt in the 20th century, the distinction of black slave versus poor white man has kept the class system alive
and well in the US in the development of a discriminatory informal caste system. This distraction of a class level lower than
the poorest of the white has kept them from concentrating on the disproportionate, and growing, distribution of wealth and income
in the US. For the lower class, an allowed luxury, a place in the hierarchy and a sure form of self esteem insurance.
Sennett and Cobb (1972) observed that class distinction sets up a contest between upper and lower class with the lower social
class always losing and promulgating a perception amongst themselves the educated and upper classes are in a position to judge
and draw a conclusion of them being less than equal. The hidden injury is in the regard to the person perceiving himself as a
piece of the woodwork or seen as a function such as "George the Porter." It was not the status or material wealth causing the
harsh feelings; but, the feeling of being treated less than equal, having little status, and the resulting shame. The answer for
many was violence.
James Gilligan wrote "Violence; Reflections on A National Epidemic." He worked as a prison psychiatrist and talked with many
of the inmates of the issues of inequality and feeling less than those around them. His finding are in his book which is not a
long read and adds to the discussion.
A little John Adams for you.
" The poor man's conscience is clear . . . he does not feel guilty and has no reason to . . . yet, he is ashamed. Mankind
takes no notice of him. He rambles unheeded.
In the midst of a crowd; at a church; in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar.
He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable
."
likbez, June 19, 2020 at 3:18 pm
That's a very important observation.
Racism, especially directed toward blacks, along with "identity wedge," is a perfect tool for disarming poor white, and suppressing
their struggle for a better standard of living, which considerably dropped under neoliberalism.
In other words, by providing poor whites with a stratum of the population that has even lower social status, neoliberals manage
to co-opt them to support the policies which economically ate detrimental to their standard of living as well as to suppress the
protest against the redistribution of wealth up and dismantling of the New Deal capitalist social protection network.
This is a pretty sophisticated, pretty evil scheme if you ask me. In a way, "Floydgate" can be viewed as a variation on the same
theme. A very dirty game indeed, when the issue of provision of meaningful jobs for working poor, social equality, and social
protection for low-income workers of any color is replaced with a real but of secondary importance issue of police violence against
blacks.
This is another way to explain "What's the matter with Kansas" effect.
John Anthony La Pietra, June 19, 2020 at 6:20 pm
I like that one! - and I have to admit it's not familiar to me, though I've been a fan since before I got to play him in a
neighboring community theater. Now I'm having some difficulty finding it. Where is it from, may I ask?
run75441, June 20, 2020 at 7:56 am
JAL:
Page 239, "The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States."
Read the book "Violence: Reflections of A National Epidemic" . Not a long read and well documented.
MLK Jr. tried, and look what happened to him once he really got some traction. If the Rev. William Barber's Poor People's Campaign
picks up steam, I'm afraid the same thing will happen to him.
I wish it were only pearl-clutching that the money power would resort to, but that's not the way it works.
Yeah that quote struck me too, never seen it before. At times when they feel so liberated to 'say the quiet part out loud',
then as now, you know the glove is coming off and the vicious mailed fist is free to roam for victims.
Those times are where you know you need to resist or .well, die in many cases.
That's something that really gets me in public response to many of these things. The normal instinct of the populace to wake
from their somnambulant slumber just long enough to ascribe to buffoonery and idiocy ala Keystone Cops the things so much better
understood as fully consciously and purposefully repressive, reactionary, and indicating a desire to take that next step to crush
fully. To obliterate.
Many responses to this https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1273809160128389120
are like, 'the police are dumb', 'out of touch', 'a lot of dumb gomer pyles in that room, yuk yuk yuk'. Or, 'cops/FBI are
so dumb to pursue this antifa thing, its just a boogieman' thinking that somehow once the authorities realize 'antifa' is a boogieman,
their attitudes towards other protesters will somehow be different 'now that they realize the silliness of the claims'.
No, not remotely the case to a terrifyingly large percentage of those in command, and in rank & file they know exactly where
it came from, exactly how the tactics work, and have every intention of classifying all protesters (peaceful or not) into that
worldview. The peaceful protesters *are* antifa in their eyes, to be dealt with in the fully approved manner of violence and repression.
In most countries, the police are there solely to protect the Haves from the Have-Nots. In fact, when the average frustrated
citizen has trouble, the last people he would consider turning to are the police.
This is why in the Third World, the only job of lower social standing than "policeman" is "police informer".
The anti-rascist identity of the recent protests rests on a much larger base of class warfare waged over the past 40 years
against the entire population led by a determined oligarchy and enforced by their political, media and militarized police retainers.
This same oligarchy, with a despicable zeal and revolting media-orchestrated campaignco-branding the movement with it's usual
corporate perpetrators distorts escalating carceral and economic violence solely through a lens of racial conflict and their
time-tested toothless reforms. A few unlucky "peace officers" may have to TOFTT until the furor recedes, can't be helped.
Crowding out debt relief, single payer health, living wages, affordable housing and actual justice reform from the debate that
would benefit African Americans more than any other demographic is the goal.
The handful of Emperors far prefer kabuki theater and random ritual Seppuku than facing the rage of millions of staring down
the barrel of zero income, debt, bankruptcy, evictions and dispossession. The Praetorians will follow the money as always.
I suppose we'll get some boulevards re-named and a paid Juneteenth holiday to compensate for the destruction 100+ years of
labor rights struggle, so there's that..
Homestead, Ludlow, Haymarket, Matewan -- the list is long
Working men and women asking for justice gunned down by the cops. There will always be men ready to murder on command as long
as the orders come from the rich and powerful. We are at a moment in history folks were some of us, today mostly people of color,
are willing to put their lives on the line. It's an ongoing struggle.
So how can a tier of society(the police) . be what a society needs ? When as this story and many others show how and why the
police were formed. To break heads. When they have been "the tool" of the elite forever. When so many of them are such dishonest,
immoral, wanna be fascists. And the main direction of the US is towards a police state and fascists running the show . both
republican and democrat. With technology being the boot on the neck of the people and the police are there to take it to the streets.
Can those elusive "good apples" turn the whole rotten barrel into sweet smelling apple pie? That is a big ask.
Or should the structure be liquidated, sell their army toys. fill the ranks with people who are not pathological liars and
abusers and /or racists; of one sort or another. Get rid of the mentality of overcompensation by uber machismo. and make them
watch the andy griffith show. They ought to learn that they can be respected if they are good people, and that they are not respected
because they seek respect through fear and intimidation.
Is that idiot cry of theirs, .. the whole yelling at you; demanding absolute obedience to arbitrary ,assinine orders, really
working to get them respect or is it just something they get off on?
When the police are shown to be bad, they strike by work slowdown, or letting a little chaos loose themselves. So the people
know they need them So any reform of the police will go through the police not doing their jobs . but then something like better
communities may result. less people being busted and harassed , or pulled over for the sake of a quota . may just show we don't
need so much policing anyway. And then if the new social workers brigade starts intervening in peoples with issues when they are
young and in school maybe fewer will be in the system. Couple that with the police not throwing their family in jail for nothing,
and forcing them to pay fines for breaking stupid laws. The system will have less of a load, and the new , better cops without
attitudes will be able to handle their communities in a way that works for everyone. Making them a net positive, as opposed to
now where they are a net negative.
Also,
The drug war is over. The cops have only done the bidding of the organized criminal elements who make their bread and butter
because of prohibition.
Our representatives can legally smoke pot , and grow it in their windowboxes in the capital dc., but people in many places
are still living in fear of police using possession of some substance,as a pretext to take all their stuff,throw them in jail.
But besides the cops, there are the prosecutors . they earn their salaries by stealing it from poor people through fines for things
that ought to be legal. This is one way to drain money from poor communities, causing people to go steal from others in society
to pay their court costs.
And who is gonna come and bust down your door when you can't pay a fine and choose to pay rent and buy your kids food instead
. the cops. just doing their jobs. Evil is the banality of business as usual
The late Kevin R C O'Brien noted that in every case where the Police had been ordered to "Round up the usual suspects" they
have done so, and delivered them where ordered. It did not matter who the "Usual suspects" were, or to what fate they were
to be delivered. They are the King's men and they do the King's bidding.
To have a reasonable discussion, I think that it should be recognized that modern police are but one leg of a triad. The first
of course is the police who appear to seem themselves as not part of a community but as enforcers in that community. To swipe
an idea from Mao, the police should move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea. Not be a patrolling shark that attacks
who they want at will knowing that there will be no repercussions against them. When you get to the point that you have police
arresting children in school for infractions of school discipline giving them a police record you know that things have gotten
out of hand.
The next leg is the courts which of course includes prosecutors. It is my understanding that prosecutors are elected to office
in the US and so have incentives to appear to be tough on crime"" . They seem to operate more like 'Let's Make a Deal' from what
I have read. When they tell some kid that he has a choice of 1,000 years in prison on trumped up charges or pleads guilty to a
smaller offence, you know that that is not justice at work. Judges too operate in their own world and will always take the word
of a policeman as a witness.
And the third leg is the prisons which operate as sweatshops for corporate America. It is in the interest of the police and
the courts to fill up the prisons to overflowing. Anybody remember the Pennsylvania "kids for cash" scandal where kids lives were
being ruined with criminal records that were bogus so that some people could make a profit? And what sort of prison system is
it where a private contractor can build a prison without a contract at all , knowing that the government (California in
this case) will nonetheless fill it up for a good profit.
In short, in sorting out police doctrine and methods like is happening now, it should be recognized that they are actually
only the face of a set of problems.
How did ancient states police? Perhaps Wiki is a starting point of this journey. Per Its entry, Police, in ancient Greece,
policing was done by public owned slaves. In Rome, the army, initially. In China, prefects leading to a level of government
called prefectures .
I spent some time in the Silver Valley of northern Idaho. This area was the
hot bed of labor unrest during
the 1890's. Federal troops controlled the area 3 separate times,1892, 1894 and 1899. Twice miners hijacked trains loaded them
with dynamite and drove them to mining company stamping mills that they then blew up. Dozens of deaths in shoot outs. The entire
male population was herded up and placed in concentration camps for weeks. The end result was the assassination of the Governor
in 1905.
Interestingly this history has been completely expunged. There is a mining museum in the town which doesn't mention a word
on these events. Even nationwide there seems to be a complete erasure of what real labor unrest can look like..
Yeah, labor unrest does get swept under the rug. Howard zinn had examples in his works "the peoples history of the United States"
The pictched battles in upstate new york with the Van Rennselear's in the 1840's breaking up rennselearwyk . the million acre
estate of theirs . it was a rent strike.
People remembering , we have been here before doesn't help the case of the establishment so they try to not let it happen.
We get experts telling us . well, this is all new we need experts to tell you what to think. It is like watching the
footage from the past 100 years on film of blacks marching for their rights and being told.. reform is coming.. the more things
change, the more things stay the same. Decade after decade. Century after century. Time to start figuring this out people. So,
the enemy is us. Now what?
Doubtless the facts presented above are correct, but shouldn't one point out that the 21st century is quite different from
the 19th and therefore analogizing the current situation to what went on before is quite facile? For example it's no longer necessary
for the police to put down strikes because strike actions barely still exist. In our current US the working class has diminished
greatly while the middle class has expanded. We are a much richer country overall with a lot more peoplenot just those one percentersconcerned
about crime. Whatever one thinks of the police, politically an attempt to go back to the 18th century isn't going to fly.
" the 21st century is quite different from the 19th "
From the Guardian: "How Starbucks, Target, Google and Microsoft quietly fund police through private donations"
More than 25 large corporations in the past three years have contributed funding to private police foundations, new report
says.
These foundations receive millions of dollars a year from private and corporate donors, according to the report, and are
able to use the funds to purchase equipment and weapons with little public input. The analysis notes, for example, how the
Los Angeles police department in 2007 used foundation funding to purchase surveillance software from controversial technology
firm Palantir. Buying the technology with private foundation funding rather than its public budget allowed the department to
bypass requirements to hold public meetings and gain approval from the city council.
The Houston police foundation has purchased for the local police department a variety of equipment, including Swat equipment,
sound equipment and dogs for the K-9 unit, according to the report. The Philadelphia police foundation purchased for its police
force long guns, drones and ballistic helmets, and the Atlanta police foundation helped fund a major surveillance network of
over 12,000 cameras.
In addition to weaponry, foundation funding can also go toward specialized training and support programs that complement
the department's policing strategies, according to one police foundation.
"Not a lot of people are aware of this public-private partnership where corporations and wealthy donors are able to siphon
money into police forces with little to no oversight," said Gin Armstrong, a senior research analyst at LittleSis.
Maybe it is just me, but things don't seem to be all that different.
While it is true, this is a new century. Knowing how the present came to be, is entirely necessary to be able to attempt any
move forward.
The likelihood of making the same old mistakes is almost certain, if one doesn't try to use the past as a reference.
And considering the effect of propaganda and revisionism in the formation of peoples opinions, we do need " learning against learning"
to borrow a Jesuit strategy against the reformation, but this time it should embrace reality, rather than sow falsehoods.
But I do agree,
We have never been here before, and now is a great time to reset everything. With all due respect to "getting it right" or at
least "better".
and knowing the false fables of righteousness, is what people need to know, before they go about "burning down the house".
You know it's not as though white people aren't also afraid of the police. Alfred Hitchcock said he was deathly afraid of police
and that paranoia informed many of his movies. Woody Allen has a funny scene in Annie Hall where he is pulled over by a cop and
is comically flustered. White people also get shot and killed by the police as the rightwingers are constantly pointing out.
And thousands of people in the streets tell us that police reform is necessary. But the country is not going to get rid of
them and replace police with social workers so why even talk about it? I'd say the above is interesting .not terribly relevant.
Straight-up fact: The police weren't created to preserve and protect. They were created to maintain order, [enforced] over
certain subjected classes and races of people, includingfor many white people, toomany of our ancestors, too.*
And the question that arises from this: Are we willing to the subjects in a police state? Are we willing to continue to let
our Black and brown brothers and sisters be subjected BY such a police state, and to half-wittingly be party TO it?
Or do we want to exercise AGENCY over "our" government(s), and decideanewhow we go out our vast, vast array of social ills.
Obviously, armed police officers with an average of six months trainingalmost all from the white underclassare a pretty f*cking
blunt instrument to bring to bear.
On our own heads. On those who we and history have consigned to second-class citizenship.
Warning: this is a revolutionary situation. We should embrace it.
*Acceding to white supremacy, becoming "white" and often joining that police order, if you were poor, was the road out of such
subjectivity. My grandfather's father, for example, was said to have fled a failed revolution in Bohemia to come here. Look back
through history, you will find plenty of reason to feel solidarity, too. Race alone cannot divide us if we are intent on the lessons
of that history.
Security screening of manuscripts I t is the law in the United States that those who
have had legal access to the secrets of the government must submit private manuscripts for
removal of such secrets BEFORE they are published or even presented to a potential publisher.
Every department of government has an office charged with such work.
I know this process well because my memoir "Tattoo" has been in the hands of the appropriate
Defense Department office for nigh on six months. The book is long, and I was so unlucky as to
have DoD shut down its auxiliary services during my wait. I have thought of withdrawing it from
screening but, surprisingly, the screeners tell me it has some worth for those who will come
after. So, I will wait.
All this applies to John Bolton, a career State Department man whose adult life has been
soaked in government secrets. I first noticed Bolton as a glowering presence at briefings I
gave to selected State Department people with regard to national command authority projects I
was running. His attitude was consistent. If the idea was not his, it was simply wrong.
Bolton's "kiss and tell" book about Trump is IMO as much caused by wounded ego as a desire
to make money. He submitted the book for security review to DoD and the CIA. Why not State? Ah,
Pompeo would tear it to pieces. Bolton evidently grew impatient with the pace of clearance and
decided to go ahead with publication without clearance
To do this is a felony. The release of the book today completes the elements of proof for
the crime.
Bolton should be arrested and charged with any of a number of possible crimes. pl
Let's see what Trump does with Bolton now that he has committed a felony.
My bet is that other than crying on Twitter, he'll not do much. His previous
actions/inactions on these matters show weakness.
In any case bitching on Twitter makes him look like an executive with poor hiring
judgement as he was the one that hired him. Just like he hired Mattis and Kelly as well as
Rosenstein and Wray.
Bolton being successfully charged with violations associated with his sour grapes hit piece
memoir is analogous to Al Capone finally going down for tax evasion. But if that's the way it
goes I will not be sad.
Re "Tattoo", your Memorial Day "Ap Bu Nho" extract alone makes "some worth" an amusingly
ludicrous understatement. I wish you luck with the censors & very much look forward to
one day reading "Tattoo".
"He was a convert - - -"
I was going to ask what went wrong with Bolton: was he dropped on his head as an infant? No
father in the home? The Dulles brothers spent their childhoods being harangued by their
bible-thumping Calvinist grandfather (reports Kinzer in his useful bio on the brothers).
In Jeff Engel's book about the decision-making behind G H W Bush's decision to wage war
against Saddam re Kuwait, he recounts that an argument by Brent Scowcroft was significant,
AND that "Scowcroft, who was very short," confronted taller-than-average Bush while
knees-to-knees in an airplane.
Bolton is shorter than the average American male. Does he have 'short-person' compulsion to
compensate?
People psychologize Trump constantly, usually from ignorance and malice. But something is
very wrong with Bolton. Pompeo as well. What is it?
"What huge imago made a psychopathic god?" (Auden, Sept. 1939)
#1 I read this WaPo article that argued because the recent DOJ's lawsuit against the
release of the book is based on "prior restraint on speech before it occurs", meaning the
Trump administration cannot censor speech before it happens, therefore there is no 1st
amendment breach against the Trump admin by Bolton. As the court elaborated in Nebraska Press
Association v. Stuart, prior restraints are "the most serious and the least tolerable
infringement on First Amendment rights" and "one of the most extraordinary remedies known to
our jurisprudence."
#2 Bolton took all of his notes containing classified intelligence with him after he was
fired and nobody took an issue. How is that possible?
#3 The Wapo article says his manuscript was reviewed for four months by one Ellen Knight,
an official (doesn't mention which department) responsible for reviewing publishing material
and she gave it the green light for publication on April 27th.
#4 During a press conference, Bill Barr gave an unusual take on Bolton's book as if he was
giving publicity to the book. He said he had never seen a book being written on Trump with
such pace and in such quick time and that it had a lot of sensitive information and stuff. It
sounded really odd what Bill Barr said. I dunno maybe I am reading to much between the
lines...
#5 With regards to Pompeo, back in September during a press conference at the State, when
asked by a reporter about Bolton's firing I specifically remember watching him on TV giving a
big meaningful chuckle and a smile... it was revealed later that they clearly did not get
along with each other and Pompeo had complained on numerous times that Bolton as NSA, who
does not have executive authorities, had been doing a lot of policy stuff and running his own
show in shadow.
On a final note, I don't think Bolton is a neocon in the mold of Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith,
Abrams, Kagan, Kristol etc...There is this long piece by New Yorker published last year that
really gets into detail of how and why Bolton is not a neocon, but adheres to a more hawkish
Jacksonian nationalism approach rather than the liberal idealism of arch neocons I mentioned
above. However, he does have quite similar F.P. views with neocon oldies such as Irving
Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
If Bolton does NOT get the book thrown at him, it will be pretty good evidence of the
existence of the Deep State allowing those it favors to write their own rules. Of course, we
already knew that after Clapper lied with impunity to Wyden when he was under oath.
He'll never be prosecuted and neither will Comey, Clapper and the rest of the swamp scum.
Strozk (lower on the food chain) might be the human sacrifice (with a sentence of "community
service") but no one of any significance (or "royal" title) is ever prosecuted in the
swamp.
Trump has tried, but his miserable lack of hiring experience and skill has not made a dent
I feel like I have a few words to say about Bolton if I may,
IMHO Bolton's view of the world is very dark and extremely Hobbesian. He is no slouch by
any stretch of imagination, in fact he is extremely knowledgeable and masterful when it comes
to policy-making and that basically how things are done in D.C. He has made a brand for
himself as the most hawkish national security expert in all of America in my opinion.
Honestly I cannot think of anyone else who espouses more hawkishness and zero diplomacy than
Bolton, ever... maybe Tom Cotton or Liz Cheney but still not close. This is the reason why
Trump hired him. In fact Trump did not want to hire him as the top brass in first place,
citing his mustache as one reason that would not look good on TV and wanted to give him 2nd
tier jobs at the State or as NSA early on, but Bolton refused. Trump, wanted to hire Bolton's
"brand" not his policies or hawkishness to intimidate Nkorea, Iran, and China to force them
come into making deals with him and him personally.
IMO Trump found out after the first Kim summit that Bolton was
such an ambitious and counterproductive foreign policy maker and one-man-team that if he
allowed Bolton to get his way, there would be world war III (Trump's own words) and his most
important promise to keep America out of forever wars which was his wining platform over
neocons such as Hilary, Jeb and Rubio during 2016 election would disappear into thin air.
So, Trump found ways to check Bolton and keep him out of the loop in sensitive and crucial
moments by Mattis, Kelly, Joe Dunford, Pompeo and even Melania (in the case of getting rid of
Bolton's close confidant and neocon Mira Ricardel when she called for bombing Iranian forces
back in September 2018 in respone to several rockets by iraqi militias hitting the ground
close to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad), and even sent him to Mongolia last year on a goose
chase to make an embarrassing example of him for undermining him (i.e. Trump's) authority in
the case of sitting down with the Taliban in Camp David to discuss military pullout from
Afghanistan back in Sep. whereas at the same time Pompeo was smart enough to tow the same
line as Trump and survive.
I few years ago I came across this interesting but odd piece by B on the Moon of Alabama
on Bolton. I honestly dunno what to make of it.
The book is already released in the hundreds. It will be on-line soon enough regardless of
the niceties of Barr's attempt to slam shut the barn door, or what the legal system does with
Bolton going fwd.
Those close to Trump know his emotional state must be appeased or they will soon be departing
- unless there's a DNA match.
Reaction to it will be a test of one's ability to distinguish Bolton from the events he
describes & their veracity. Is there anything of Trump's statements & acts (released
so far) that surprises anyone... that rings untrue?
Those ideologically (or religiously) dependent upon the Trump Phenomenon for validating their
core beliefs will demonstrate how creative true believers can be when attached to a
personality.
For what its worth I am looking forward to buying it, should scratch that Peter Scholl Latour
itch.
Another thing is that I just dont get the Neocons.
Their politics are bad both from a Machieavellian (dilutes US forces, creates enemies,
considerably restricts creative ways in which US power could be employed) and from a moral
(obviously) point of view. I also dont get their power, stupid/evil tends to be competed out.
Heck, even if they are stupid/evil but very good at beurocratic backbiting stuff, they are
still supposedly disadvantadged against skilled beurocratic backbiters that arent stupid/evil
(or at least only evil and not stupid).
Is it internal cohesion or a much higher degree of ruthlessness that maintains their
position?
I've for many years thought that the Bolton problem was best solved with a speedy trial and a
swift execution, with remains thrown overboard somewhere in the Indian ocean.
He signed an oath to safeguard the secrecy of the information when "read on" for it and
another such when he was "read off." The 1st Amendment does not come into it at all
"... The endless and extravagant election cycles, he said, are an example of politics without politics. ..."
"... "Instead of participating in power," he writes, "the virtual citizen is invited to have 'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them." ..."
"... Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate -- including Bernie Sanders -- understands, to use Wolin's words, that "the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates." The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling. ..."
"... "If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called 'misrepresentative or clientry government,' " Wolin writes. "It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy." ..."
"... We are tolerated as citizens, Wolin warns, only as long as we participate in the illusion of a participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism. ..."
"... "The significance of the African-American prison population is political," ..."
...Inverted totalitarianism also "perpetuates politics all the time," Wolin said when we spoke,
"but a politics that is not political." The endless and extravagant election cycles, he said,
are an example of politics without politics.
"Instead of participating in power," he writes, "the virtual citizen is invited to have
'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them."
Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured
political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising,
propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what
they want to hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential
candidate -- including Bernie Sanders -- understands, to use Wolin's words, that "the subject
of empire is taboo in electoral debates." The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more
than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and
corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.
"If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to
shape, such a system deserves to be called 'misrepresentative or clientry government,' " Wolin
writes. "It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the
depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of
antidemocracy."
The result, he writes, is that the public is "denied the use of state power." Wolin deplores
the trivialization of political discourse, a tactic used to leave the public fragmented,
antagonistic and emotionally charged while leaving corporate power and empire unchallenged.
"Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements," he writes.
"Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians
eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute
to a cant politics of the inconsequential."
"The ruling groups can now operate on the assumption that they don't need the traditional
notion of something called a public in the broad sense of a coherent whole," he said in our
meeting. "They now have the tools to deal with the very disparities and differences that they
have themselves helped to create. It's a game in which you manage to undermine the cohesiveness
that the public requires if they [the public] are to be politically effective. And at the same
time, you create these different, distinct groups that inevitably find themselves in tension or
at odds or in competition with other groups, so that it becomes more of a melee than it does
become a way of fashioning majorities."
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as those of Nazi fascism or Soviet communism,
economics was subordinate to politics. But "under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is
true," Wolin writes. "Economics dominates politics -- and with that domination comes different
forms of ruthlessness."He continues: "The United States has become the showcase of how
democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."
The corporate state, Wolin told me, is "legitimated by elections it controls." To extinguish
democracy, it rewrites and distorts laws and legislation that once protected democracy. Basic
rights are, in essence, revoked by judicial and legislative fiat. Courts and legislative
bodies, in the service of corporate power, reinterpret laws to strip them of their original
meaning in order to strengthen corporate control and abolish corporate oversight.
He writes: "Why negate a constitution, as the Nazis did, if it is possible simultaneously to
exploit porosity and legitimate power by means of judicial interpretations that declare
huge campaign contributions to be protected speech under the First Amendment, or that treat
heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations as a simple application of the
people's right to petition their government?"
Our system of inverted totalitarianism will avoid harsh and violent measures of control "as
long as dissent remains ineffectual," he told me. "The government does not need to stamp out
dissent. The uniformity of imposed public opinion through the corporate media does a very
effective job."
And the elites, especially the intellectual class, have been bought off. "Through a
combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving
university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially
so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly
integrated into the system," Wolin writes. "No books burned, no refugee Einsteins."
But, he warns, should the population -- steadily stripped of its most basic rights,
including the right to privacy, and increasingly impoverished and bereft of hope -- become
restive, inverted totalitarianism will become as brutal and violent as past totalitarian
states. "The war on terrorism, with its accompanying emphasis upon 'homeland security,'
presumes that state power, now inflated by doctrines
of preemptive war and released from treaty obligations and the potential constraints of
international judicial bodies, can turn inwards," he writes, "confident that in its domestic
pursuit of terrorists the powers it claimed, like the powers projected abroad, would be
measured, not by ordinary constitutional standards, but by the shadowy and ubiquitous character
of terrorism as officially defined."
The indiscriminate police violence in poor communities of color is an example of the ability
of the corporate state to "legally" harass and kill citizens with impunity. The cruder forms of
control -- from militarized police to wholesale surveillance, as well as police serving as
judge, jury and executioner, now a reality for the underclass -- will become a reality for all
of us should we begin to resist the continued funneling of power and wealth upward. We are
tolerated as citizens, Wolin warns, only as long as we participate in the illusion of a
participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face
of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism.
"The significance of the African-American prison population is political," he writes. "What
is notable about the African-American population generally is that it is highly sophisticated
politically and by far the one group that throughout the twentieth century kept alive a spirit
of resistance and rebelliousness. In that context, criminal justice is as much a strategy of
political neutralization as it is a channel of instinctive racism."
I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going against
Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one of the
most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely better place
when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go back to hell.
Poor Johnny! What's sadder than being a crook, but an ineffective one? I think that's what he
is. He may be infamous enough to be a household name, but he never really managed to make a
career. Hardly ever did he stay on a job for more than 2 years, before his fellow crooks
deemed him unfit for his position, again and again. Says a lot.
I hope they will confiscate his book on some flimsy pretext, only to lose the piles of
copies in storage, so they cannot possibly be released to bookstores again. Maybe some mice
will make use of it to furnish their nests?
Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton does not enjoy being
John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable to Merkel's face, come
to think of it.
John Bolton's tell all book about his tenure with the Trump administration is a perfect
example of the pot calling the kettle burned. It is a fitting description of the leadership
of the US government and it's capitol city as a den of backstabbing, corkscrewing and double
dealing vipers. It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each
other a whore! How low has the US sunk.
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do
so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters.
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National
Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter
Donolo, from 2018:
So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's
another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic
Barton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Barton
Then Bolton gets fired. 'Nuff said. Just to let everyone know that Bolton is well and truly
hated, as a government official, in certain circles.
Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years.
Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have
required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.
The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations,
and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult
children.
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership
and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to
reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of
evidence in a court of law. Maybe
Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some
observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider
them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he
(Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in
media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see
Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an
arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time.
Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few
dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be
stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put
up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny
outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him
(Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.
It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against
anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme
that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who
then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so
he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby
parasite.
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy
expert he (Trump) respected.
Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!
Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping
orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally
and physically abused for objecting.
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a
warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people
If we view Bolton as Adelson puppet, such a behaviour clearly does not make much sense. Or this is a single from Israel lobby to
Trump "moor did his duty, moor can go"?
Notable quotes:
"... "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons." ..."
"... "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," ..."
"... "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't accept," ..."
"... "bombshells" ..."
"... "exactly the right thing to do." ..."
"... "systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China." ..."
"... "Panda Hugger." ..."
"... The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had "never seen a war he didn't like." ..."
"... Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York Times excerpt. ..."
"... "soft on China" ..."
"... As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job. ..."
Former national security adviser John Bolton has leaked excerpts of his book to major newspapers, accusing President Donald Trump
of colluding with leaders in China and Turkey, and obstruction of justice "as a way of life." Facing a DOJ lawsuit seeking to
block the publication of his memoir for containing classified information, Bolton decided to go to the press, leaking parts of
the book to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Breaking News: John Bolton says in his new book that the House should have investigated President Trump for potentially impeachable
actions beyond Ukraine https://t.co/8lpd4xAzYu
Bolton famously refused to testify before the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings against Trump over his alleged abuse of power
regarding Ukraine, but now claims that they should have expanded the probe to "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene
in law enforcement matters for political reasons."
He accuses Trump of wanting to "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," bringing up companies in China
and Turkey as examples, according to the Times. "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't
accept," the Times quotes him as saying.
One of the Bolton "bombshells" is that he sought China's purchase of US soybeans in order to get re-elected, during trade
negotiations with President Xi Jinping.
SOYBEAN DIPLOMACY: The WSJ has published an excerpt of
@AmbJohnBolton 's forthcoming book, revealing
Trump-Xi conversation and how the American president pleaded his Chinese counterpart to buy U.S. soybeans so he could win farm
states in the 2020 presidential elections |
#OATT pic.twitter.com/XKAogLCCtN
An excerpt in the Wall Street Journal has Trump telling Xi that – alleged – concentration camps for Uighur Muslims in China's
Xinjiang province were "exactly the right thing to do." It also alleges that Trump did Xi a favor by relaxing US sanctions
on ZTE, a Chinese telecom company.
WSJ excerpt of Bolton book has Trump & China bombshells. Trump told Xi building concentration camps for Muslims "was exactly
the right thing to do." Trump pleaded w/ Xi to help him w/ re-election by making US farm product buys. And Trump helped Xi w/
ZTE. https://t.co/4CSflQQqcL
This comes as Trump signed into law
the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which mandates US sanctions against Chinese officials over "systematic use of indoctrination
camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities
in China."
Another excerpt has Bolton referring to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as a "Panda Hugger."
According to Bolton, Trump told Xi to "go ahead with building the camps" for imprisoned Uighurs.
As another proof of Trump's perfidy, Bolton writes that the president told Xi that he would like to stay in office beyond the
two terms the US Constitution would allow him. Bolton's one-time colleague Dinesh D'Souza commented that Bolton was unable to recognize
a clear joke.
Really? This is it? John Bolton's smoking gun? Trump has been jokingly putting out memes about this for four years. This conversation,
if it occurred at all, seems obviously jocular. Bolton, however, whom I knew quite well from AEI, doesn't have a jocular bone
in his body pic.twitter.com/Qe8sXCAT58
Trump has on more than one occasion shared a meme showing him staying in power forever, triggering Democrats into denouncing him
as an aspiring dictator. Apparently, Bolton thought the same.
According to John Bolton posting this meme was an impeachable offense https://t.co/q2BHlfVTEu
-- Will Chamberlain 🇺🇸 (@willchamberlain)
June 17, 2020
The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact
reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had
"never seen a war he didn't like."
Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York
Times excerpt.
Pretty telling that the episode which pissed off Bolton the most during his tenure was Trump calling off airstrikes which would
have killed dozens of Iranian soldiers in June 2019 https://t.co/ruFSInj2Mu
pic.twitter.com/5zO7UrxMTM
Arguing that Trump is being "soft on China" and colluding with Xi also happens to be a Democratic Party strategy for the
2020 presidential election, outlined in April
and reported by Axios.
While Democrats and the mainstream media welcomed Bolton's bombshells as validating their position on Trump, he is unlikely to
become a #Resistance hero, simply because they still remember he refused to say these things under oath during the impeachment hearings,
when they – in theory – could have bolstered their case for getting Trump out of office.
As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place
and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following
a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job.
Do I care that Bolton is stabbing Trump in the back? Not at all. General Flynn was NSA and Trump made his choices. Being outraged
on behalf of a 70+ year old man who makes poor choices is well beyond my job description.
The hatred against anything w hite is all prevalent and only getting worse. It will only lead to more anti w hite violence.
To look at your future, look at South Africa.
The book burners are at it again. Remember when Democrats keep telling us how the religious right was nothing but a
bunch of dangerous authoritarians. Well, this is certainly awkward.
"... On Friday, for example, the principal of a public school in Windsor, Vermont. was dismissed from her job for posting the following words on her personal Facebook page: "While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? Just because I don't walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I'm a racist.". ..."
"... Black Lives Matter believes in force. They flood the streets with angry young people who break things, and they hurt anyone who gets in the way. When they want something, they take it. Make them mad and they will set your business on fire. Annoy them and they will occupy your downtown and declare a brand new country. You're not going to do anything about it, they know that for certain. ..."
A survey this week by Rasmussen, a right-leaning pollster, found that 62 percent of likely
voters now have a favorable opinion of Black Lives Matter. At the same time, Rasmussen found
that Donald
Trump 's approval rating was 43 percent. That's almost 20 points lower.
And by the way, Trump was not alone. Black Lives Matter is far more popular than
Joe Biden , too. It's
more popular than America's religious institutions -- all of them. It's more popular than the
media, the Congress
and big business.
Black Lives Matter is more popular by double digits than both the
Democratic
and the Republican parties. It's
almost as popular as the U.S. military. It's much more popular than the
pope .
The numbers are astounding, but the polls are not the only measure of it. One picture from a
Black Lives Matter rally over the weekend in New York shows an ocean of people. Ask yourself
the last time you saw a candidate for office who was able to draw a crowd like that?
The media, in their relentlessly fawning coverage, usually described Black Lives Matter as
an activist group or a protest movement. But that's deception by understatement. Black Lives
Matter is not a collection of marchers with signs. It's not a conventional political lobby like
Planned Parenthood or the NRA. It's not pressuring Congress to pass some narrow new set of
laws.
Black Lives Matter is far more ambitious than that. It is working to remake the country and
then to control it. It's a political party.
As of now, Black Lives Matter may be the single most powerful political party in the United
States. Nobody says that out loud, but politicians understand it perfectly well. If nothing
else, they understand power; they can smell it at great distances. And that's why they're
lining up to bow before Black Lives Matter.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.: You can't really reform a department that that is rotten to the
root.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.: We've heard our people cry out, "I can't breathe!" We've heard
our people speak out, "Black Lives Matter."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.: This is a systemic problem that requires a comprehensive
solution.
Stacy Abrams, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate: What I would say is that there is
-- there is a legitimacy to this anger. There's a legitimacy to this outrage.
None of what you just saw is a stretch for Democrats. They believe their long-term goals
align with those of Black Lives Matter. And in fact, at times, the group functions as an arm of
the Democratic Party.
More telling, though -- and more ominous -- is the response from many Republicans. They've
been happy to go along as well, or in Mitt Romney 's case, even mouth the
same slogans.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah: We need to end violence and brutality and to make sure that
people understand that Black Lives Matter.
If the leaders of Black Lives Matter are political actors -- and they are -- then by
definition, you are allowed to have any opinion you want to have about them. Black Lives
Matter wants to run the country; therefore, you can freely criticize Black Lives Matter.
Those are the rules of our system -- but not anymore.
That was the former Republican nominee for president. Let that sink in. If there was ever an
indicator of how powerful Black Lives Matter has become, you just saw it.
Republican leaders brag about their strong conservative convictions, but mostly they just
want to be on the winning team, whatever that is. That's why they pause before offending
China
. It's why when Black Lives Matter tells them to take a knee, they do.
It's all pretty strange when you think about it. If the leaders of Black Lives Matter are
political actors -- and they are -- then by definition, you are allowed to have any opinion you
want to have about them. Black Lives Matter wants to run the country; therefore, you can freely
criticize Black Lives Matter.
Those are the rules of our system -- but not anymore.
Imagine a world where you are punished for questioning the behavior of the president or for
insulting your local mayor. You probably can't imagine that. It's too bizarre. It's
un-American. But that's where we are right now. Black Lives Matter has changed the rules. And
here is their first new rule: No criticizing Black Lives Matter. You can be fired from your job
if you disobey. Many Americans have been.
On Friday, for example, the principal of a public school in Windsor, Vermont. was dismissed
from her job for posting the following words on her personal Facebook page: "While I understand
the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law
enforcement? Just because I don't walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I'm a
racist.".
Unfortunately, the principal's boss disagreed. The superintendent of Windsor Schools
described the quote you just heard as "outright racist." Windsor, Vermont, by the way, is more
than 97 percent white.
Also on Friday, an economist called
Harald Uhlig lost his job at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for daring to offer even
milder criticism than that. On Twitter, Uhlig noted that Black Lives Matter had"just torpedoed
itself with its full-fledged support of #defund the police. Now is the time for sensible adults
to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it
all."
That was a racist statement, the Federal Reserve concluded. So, they fired Harald Uhlig.
We could give you many other examples of the same thing happening. There are a lot of them.
Black Lives Matter now enjoys almost complete immunity from criticism. This is unprecedented
for an American political movement.
But Black Lives Matter is even more powerful than that. It has singlehandedly revised our
moral framework. Yes, black lives do matter. That is a statement of fact, and no decent person
doubts that it is true because it is. And it is true precisely because every life matters. We
are all human beings, every one of us. We have souls. Skin color is irrelevant to moral
value.
Until recently, this was considered obvious; saying it was regarded as a virtue. All lives
matter equally. All of us were created by God. In the end, all of us will die. Nothing can
change that -- not wealth, not fame, not race. Every life is precisely as valuable as every
other life.
By the way, that idea forms the basis of the Christian faith. It's the entire premise behind
our founding documents. And yet, suddenly, thanks to Black Lives Matter, you can no longer say
it out loud.
Affirming the fundamental equality of all people is now considered hate speech. You can be
fired for saying it. Again, many people have been.
This is a dangerous moment. How did we get here? In a word, quickly. It happened fast.
As recently as December, before the riots, most Americans did not approve of Black Lives
Matter. The group was defined in the public mind by moments like this.
Crowd (chanting): Pigs in a blanket. Fry them like bacon. Pigs in a blanket. Fry them
like bacon. Pigs in a blanket. Fry them like bacon. Pigs in a blanket. Fry them like
bacon.
"Pigs in a blanket." "Fry like bacon." "Kill the police." They yelled that at a rally. The
usual liars immediately swooped in to pretend that it never happened. The president of the
Southern Poverty Law Center wrote an entire op-ed ordering the public not to consider Black
Lives Matter a hate group.
But people could see the truth for themselves. That video was online. A lot of facts about
Black Lives Matter still reside on the internet. They have not yet been scrubbed.
This is a dangerous moment. How did we get here? In a word, quickly. It happened fast.
The group's signature demand is to eliminate law enforcement. When you first heard
protesters scream, "Defund the police," it may have shocked you. That's just crazy, you may
have thought.
A few weeks later, support for eliminating law enforcement is rising quickly in the polls.
Minneapolis is already doing it. Other cities will follow. Are you surprised? Almost no one in
public life has pushed back meaningfully against the idea of defunding the police.
The Black Lives Matter position is the only position most people hear. After a while, they
believe it. Unchallenged claims must be true. That's what most people assume, and why wouldn't
they assume that? If you strongly disagree with something, say so, otherwise, it's much more
likely to happen.
So, with that in mind, consider some of the other positions Black Lives Matter has endorsed.
The repeal of all immigration restrictions, for starters. They're for that. The legalization of
sex work -- prostitution -- they're for that, too. The destruction of the nuclear family, your
family. The forced relocation of farmland. Race-based reparations, specifically "in the form of
a guaranteed minimum livable income for all black people."
Hear that? All black people, not just the descendants of American slaves. This would
include the millions of African and Caribbean immigrants who on average now earn more than
native-born Americans. Every one of these new Americans would receive a guaranteed annual
income from American taxpayers in order to atone for the sin of -- for the sin of what
actually? Allowing them to immigrate here?
Black Lives Matter does not explain that part. No one asked them. You could be fired for
asking. What you cannot be punished for, however, is looting and burning, at least not if
you're Black Lives Matter.
Huge parts of urban landscape have been destroyed in the past month. Almost no one has been
held to account for it,. Just the opposite. You're encouraged to pretend it never happened.
In St. Louis, every rioter arrested has been released without charges. In New York, hundreds
were released without bail. Same in Washington, D.C. It's happening almost everywhere, and not
just in places controlled by elected Democrats which tells you a lot.
Fort Worth, Texas, for example, is one of the few major American cities that is led by a
Republican, Mayor Betsy Price. On May 31, a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators blocked a
bridge in downtown Fort Worth, when police arrived to disperse them, they threw rocks and
bottles of bleach. Three police officers were injured.
The mob then went on to loot and vandalize businesses. Dozens of rioters were arrested for
this. Ten days later, the city's police chief, Ed Kraus, announced that he was dropping all
charges against them.
Kraus issued a statement suggesting that the real criminals in the riot were not the
rioters, but his own police officers, whom he suggested would be reined in and perhaps
punished. "This is just one step on a long journey," Kraus wrote, sounding more like a
therapist than a cop.
The chief promised that his department was "committed to walking the path of reform with our
community." Kraus never bothered to explain exactly what his cops had done wrong. They were
cops. That was enough.
That same day, the Fort Worth School Board issued a statement declaring, "Police practices
are deeply rooted in white supremacy." Once again, no one specified which police practices
reflected white supremacy, or what that accusation even meant. It was a blanket condemnation,
but it was left to hang in the air. As usual, no one in authority pushed back against it in a
Republican-led city.
Black Lives Matter believes in force. They flood the streets with angry young people who
break things, and they hurt anyone who gets in the way. When they want something, they take
it. Make them mad and they will set your business on fire. Annoy them and they will occupy
your downtown and declare a brand new country. You're not going to do anything about it, they
know that for certain.
It'll be interesting to know what happens to the murder rate in Fort Worth over the next
year. We can guess. We're seeing it all over the country. We've seen it many times through the
years. When the people in charge undermine the law, violence surges.
But there is a solution to this vortex and it's called leadership. Sixty-five years ago,
politicians throughout the American South refused to submit to the Supreme Court's Brown vs.
Board decision. Authorities in many states simply ignored the law like it didn't exist. Armed
extremist groups filled the vacuum. They used violence to make their own laws.
Ultimately, the federal government stepped in and restored order. In 1957, President Dwight
Eisenhower federalized the National Guard of Arkansas. He sent troops to Little Rock to force
Governor Orville Faubus to obey the law.
So the question is, where is our Justice Department? Right now? Is there a reason the DOJ
hasn't filed federal conspiracy charges against the people who organized and led these riots?
It's not as if we don't know who they are. Their crimes are on YouTube.
You know the reason. Black Lives Matter was involved. It is politically sensitive. No
prosecutor wants to be called a racist, as if it's racist to punish people for crimes they
committed.
You know what the victims of those crimes think? The old people who were beaten to the
ground for trying to defend their property. The shop owners whose life savings were stolen or
burned. The families of the people who were murdered during the riots, and there were quite a
few of them.
No one is defending these people. No one is punishing their attackers. Nobody cares.
Imagine how they feel about that. What recourse do they have? Do they have to torch a
Wendy's or loot a Walmart to get our attention? Let's hope not. It might be enough to have a
single national leader -- just one -- who understands what is actually going on in this country
and is brave enough to say so. That might make all the difference, and it would certainly make
the political career of the person who does it.
In the fall of 1968, a teaching assistant at San Francisco State University called George
Murray gave a speech endorsing racial violence. Murray urged black students to bring guns to
campus and "kill all the slave masters." Murray, by the way, was the "minister of education" in
the local Black Panther Party, which was the Antifa of its time.
Black Lives Matter becomes more powerful and more popular with the public. Why is that
happening exactly? Here's why: Because Black Lives Matter is getting exactly what they want
and that is the most basic sign of strength. Strength is the most appealing quality to voters
and to people and to animals.
When administrators learned about Murray's speech, they equivocated, but ultimately they
suspended him under pressure. In response to this, a group called the Third World Liberation
Front shut down the campus. Sound familiar?
They demanded the university drop all admission standards for black applicants and admit
students purely on the basis of race. The administrators were paralyzed in the face of this.
More than anything, they didn't want to be called racist. The university's president was so
terrorized by it that he quit and left.
Ultimately, the leadership of San Francisco State fell to an unlikely president, a
Japanese-Canadian academic called S.I. Hayakawa. Hayakawa was short, eccentric, wore thick
glasses, but he was completely fearless.
On December 2, 1968, Hayakawa marched into the middle of a student protest. Rioters
immediately assaulted him, but Hayakawa kept going. He climbed onto the roof of a sound truck
and ripped the wires out of the loudspeaker. San Francisco State University reopened that
day.
So here's the lesson for today's officeholders. S.I. Hayakawa became a folk hero for
standing up to the mob. He was elected to the United States Senate from California. Republicans
supported him. Voters did, too. They didn't always understand him. Hayakawa wore a Scottish tam
o' shanter cap in public and never really explained why he did.
But it didn't matter. He was brave and honest, and voters appreciated that above all. They
always do. We don't have our Hayakawa yet. Instead, we have cowards.
Our leaders are happy to talk about everything but the collapse of the centuries' old
civilization tumbling down around them. They have no idea how little credibility they have.
They have no sense of how irrelevant they have become. If you can't tell the truth when the
truth actually matters, then nothing you say matters.
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter becomes more powerful and more popular with the public. Why is
that happening exactly? Here's why: Because Black Lives Matter is getting exactly what they
want and that is the most basic sign of strength. Strength is the most appealing quality to
voters and to people and to animals.
Three weeks ago, Black Lives Matter demanded that cities defund their police. On Monday, the
mighty NYPD, the biggest police department in our nation -- the most sophisticated police
department in the world -- bowed and announced it is
abolishing
its entire plainclothes division , 600 people. Gone for good because Black Lives Matter
wanted it done. And now it is done.
That's not bluffing. It's not posturing. It's not tweeting. That is real power. You'll
notice it did not require the usual maneuvering for Black Lives Matter to get that power. They
didn't need a team of lawyers to get it. Black Lives Matter doesn't make legal arguments.
They're not trying to convince you of anything.
Black Lives Matter believes in force. They flood the streets with angry young people who
break things, and they hurt anyone who gets in the way. When they want something, they take it.
Make them mad and they will set your business on fire. Annoy them and they will occupy your
downtown and declare a brand new country. You're not going to do anything about it, they know
that for certain.
This is the most destructive kind of politics. We've seen a lot of it in recent years.
Organized groups did it to Brett Kavanaugh. The main point of slandering Kavanaugh was never to
block his confirmation. We misread that. They knew they probably couldn't achieve it.
The real point was to send Kavanaugh and John Roberts and the other Republican justices a
very clear message, step out of line and we will hurt your families. And judging from recent
court decisions, it worked. At times, it's very clear that supposedly conservative justices are
afraid to defy the mob.
So what message do the rest of us take from what's happened over the past three weeks? It's
very simple. The message is force is more effective than voting. Elections changed nothing.
Rioting, by contrast, makes you rich and powerful. When you riot, prosecutors will ignore
the law on your behalf. Corporations will send you millions. Politicians will kneel down before
you. It works. Violence works. That's the message.
Everyone hears that message. Until violence stops working, violence will continue.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "
Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 15,
2020
One of the most disturbing aspects of American foreign policy since 9/11 has been the
assumption that decisions made by the United States are binding on the rest of the world, best
exemplified by President George W. Bush's warning that "there was a new sheriff in town." Apart
from time of war, no other nation has ever sought to prevent other nations from trading with
each other, nor has any government sought to punish foreigners using sanctions with the cynical
arrogance demonstrated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United States uniquely seeks to
penalize other sovereign countries for alleged crimes that did not occur in the U.S. and that
did not involve American citizens, while also insisting that all nations must comply with
whatever penalties are meted out by Washington. At the same time, it demonstrates its own
hypocrisy by claiming sovereign immunity whenever foreigners or even American citizens seek to
use the courts to hold it accountable for its many crimes.
The conceit by the United States that it is the acknowledged judge, jury and executioner in
policing the international community began in the post-World War 2 environment, when hubristic
American presidents began referring to themselves as "leaders of the free world." This pretense
received legislative and judicial backing with passage of the
Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 (ATA) as amended in 1992 plus subsequent related legislation, to
include the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2016 (JASTA). The body of legislation
can be used to obtain civil judgments against alleged terrorists for attacks carried out
anywhere in the world and can be employed to punish governments, international organizations
and even corporations that are perceived to be supportive of terrorists, even indirectly or
unknowingly. Plaintiffs are able to sue for injuries to their "person, property, or business"
and have ten years to bring a claim.
Sometimes the connections and level of proof required by a U.S. court to take action are
tenuous, and that is being polite. Suits currently can claim secondary liability for third
parties, including banks and large corporations, under "material support" of terrorism
statutes. This includes "aiding and abetting" liability as well as providing "services" to any
group that the United States considers to be terrorist, even if the terrorist label is dubious
and/or if that support is inadvertent.
The ability to sue in American courts for redress of either real or imaginary crimes has led
to the creation of a lawfare culture in which lawyers representing a particular cause seek to
bankrupt an opponent through both legal expenses and damages. To no one's surprise, Israel is a
major litigator against entities that it disapproves of. The Israeli government has even
created and supports an organization called Shurat HaDin, which
describes on its website how it uses the law to bankrupt opponents.
The Federal Court for the Southern District of Manhattan has become the clearing house for
suing the pants off of any number of foreign governments and individuals with virtually no
requirement that the suit have any merit beyond claims of "terrorism." In February 2015,
a lawsuit initiated by Shurat HaDin led to the conviction of the Palestinian Authority and
the Palestine Liberation Organization of liability for terrorist attacks in Israel between 2000
and 2004. The New York Federal jury awarded damages of $218.5 million, but under a special
feature of the Anti-Terrorism Act the award was automatically tripled to $655.5 million. Shurat
HaDin claimed sanctimoniously that it was "bankrupting terror."
The
most recent legal victory for Israel and its friends occurred in a federal district court
in the District of Columbia on June 1 st , where Syria and Iran were held to be
liable for the killing of American citizens in Palestinian terrorist attacks that have taken
place in Israel. Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled that Americans wounded and killed in seven
attacks carried out by Palestinians inside the Jewish state were eligible for damages from Iran
and Syria because they provided "material support" to militant groups Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad. The court will at a future date determine the amount of the actual damages.
It should be observed that the alleged crime took place in a foreign country, Israel, and
the attribution of blame came from Israeli official sources. Also, there was no actual evidence
that Syria and Iran were in any way actively involved in planning or directly enabling the
claimed attacks, which is why the expression "material support," which is extremely elastic,
was used. In this case, both Damascus and Tehran are definitely guilty as charged in
recognizing and having contact with the Palestinian resistance organizations though it has
never been credibly asserted that they have any influence over their actions. Syria and Iran
were, in fact, not represented in the proceedings, a normal practice as neither country has
diplomatic representation in the U.S. and the chances of a fair hearing given the existing
legislation have proven to be remote.
And one might well ask if the legislation can be used against Israel, with American citizens
killed by the Israelis (Rachel Corrie, Furkan Dogan) being able to sue the Jewish state's
government for compensation and damages. Nope. U.S. courts have ruled in similar cases that
Israel's army and police are not terrorist organizations, nor do they materially support
terrorists, so the United States' judicial system has no jurisdiction to try them. That result
should surprise no one as the legislation was designed to specifically target Muslims and
Muslim groups.
In any event, the current court ruling which might total hundreds of millions of dollars
could prove to be difficult to collect due to the fact that both Syria and Iran have little in
the way of remaining assets in the U.S. In previous similar suits, most notably in June 2017, a
jury deliberated for one day before delivering a guilty verdict against two Iranian foundations
for violation of U.S. sanctions, allowing a federal court to authorize the U.S. government
seizure of a
skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. It was the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in
United States history. The presiding judge decided to distribute proceeds from the building's
sale, nearly $1 billion, to the families of victims of terrorism, including
the September 11th attacks . The court ruled that Iran had some culpability for the 9/11
attacks solely based on its status as a State Department listed state sponsor of terrorism,
even though the court could not demonstrate that Iran was in any way directly involved.
A second
court case involved Syria, ruling that Damascus was liable for the targeting and killing of
an American journalist who was in an active war zone covering the shelling of a rebel held area
of Homs in 2012. The court awarded
$302.5 million to the family of the journalist, Marie Colvin. In her ruling, Judge Amy Berman
Jackson cited "Syria's longstanding policy of violence" seeking "to intimidate journalists" and
"suppress dissent." A so-called human rights group funded by the U.S. and other governments
called the Center for Justice and Accountability
based its argument, as in the case of Iran, on relying on the designation of Damascus as a
state sponsor of
terrorism . The judge believed that the evidence presented was "credible and
convincing."
Another American gift to international jurisprudence has been the Magnitsky Act of 2012, a
product of the feel-good enthusiasm of the Barack Obama Administration. It was based on a
narrative regarding what went on in Russia under the clueless Boris Yeltsin and his nationalist
successor Vladimir Putin that was peddled by one Bill Browder, who many believe to have been a
major player in the looting of the former Soviet Union. It was claimed by Browder and his
accomplices in the media that the Russian government had been complicit in the arrest, torture
and killing of one Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant turned whistleblower working for Browder.
Almost every aspect of the story has been challenged, but it was completely bought into by the
Congress and White House and led to sanctions on the Russians who were allegedly involved
despite Moscow's complaints that the U.S. had no legal right to interfere in its internal
affairs relating to a Russian citizen.
Worse still, the Magnitsky Act
has been broadened and is now the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2017.
It is being used to sanction and otherwise punish alleged "human rights abusers" in other
countries and has a very low bar for establishing credibility. It was most recently used in the
Jamal Khashoggi case, in which the U.S. sanctioned the alleged killers of the Saudi dissident
journalist even though no one had actually been arrested or convicted of any crime.
The long-established principle that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other
states even when it disagrees with their internal or foreign policies has effectively been
abandoned. And, as if things were not bad enough, some recent legislation virtually guarantees
that in the near future the United States will be doing still more to interfere in and
destabilize much of the world. Congress passed and President Trump
has signed the Elie Wiesel Genocide and
Atrocities Prevention Act , which seeks to improve Washington's response to mass killings.
The prevention of genocide and mass murder is now a part of American national security agenda.
There will be a Mass Atrocity Task Force and State Department officers will receive training to
sensitize them to impending genocide, though presumably the new program will not apply to the
Palestinians as the law's namesake never was troubled by their suppression and killing by the
state of Israel.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected] .
Iranian explosively formed penetrator IED killed 196 U.S. troops and wounded getting on
for a thousand in Iraq. What did they expect a pat on the back, America to forget all about
it?
As her writing shows Marie Colvin was sympathetic to all civilians being targeted
including Palestinian women being shot by Israeli backed militia snipers.
The long-established principle that Washington should respect the sovereignty of other
states even when it disagrees with their internal or foreign policies has effectively been
abandoned.
I think the Iranian government obviated any obligation for the US to abide by
international law and conventions, by seizing US Embassy personnel and using them as hostages
to influence US politics. Very successfully I might add. Iran only supports the Palestinians
in order to mitigate Arab Sunni loathing for the Persian Shia. It is self interested, unlike
Ms Colvin's reporting.
" At the same time, it demonstrates its own hypocrisy by claiming sovereign immunity
whenever foreigners or even American citizens seek to use the courts to hold it accountable
for its many crimes ."
This is all no more than "par for the course" if you understand the true nature of all
governments.
This "just" in:
"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way
to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those
of a professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock: https://mises.org/library/our-enemy-state-4
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and
counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very
cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of
their innate criminal nature." Onebornfree: http://onebornfree-mythbusters.blogspot.com/
"The state lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it says is lies, and
whatever it has, it has stolen, everything it is, is false, it bites with stolen teeth, and
it bites often, it is false down to its bowels."~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
If you never get to understand the true nature of all governments, then you are forever
doomed to complain about what it does, seems to me, Mr Giraldi.
Right now (today june 15) there is a strong diplomatic tension between France and the US.
Pompeo is calling the International Court of Justice a "Kangaroo court". Speaking of Kangoroo
courts, there is more than one around. Especially in the US. When you see the trap in which
Bayer Deustchland has fallen in the US Or what Giraldi rightfully points
Don't know why the US elite is so enraged with almoste everyone. Maybe because they are the
slaves of zionist billionaires. They are enraged because they are slaves.
Final grasps and misuse of power are probably fairly typical as an empire collapses. The
right leadership could turn this ship around and head our nation toward the moral high
ground.
But the political will to regain constitutional relevance and produce real leadership
seems defeated.
@Sean
ndreds, of thousands of Iranians over the following decades. What do the US and UK expect? a
pat on the back, Iran to forget all about it?
The US also encouraged and supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran/Iraq war which led to the
death of literally millions of Iranians. The US also shot down an Iranian passenger plane
killing hundreds without even so much as an apology (they gave the captain of the ship
involved a medal for it in fact)
My point is that you can't just start the clock (and the narrative) to suit yourself, you
are being ignorant and/or dishonest to do so.
The word sovereignty in the title gets right to the crux of this issue. The whole world
defined sovereignty by consensus at the UN World Summit. Sovereignty is responsibility. And
what's responsibility? Formal commitment to the UN Charter, the Rome Statute, and core human
rights instruments (the International Bill of Human Rights at a minimum.)
As always, the US signed with fingers crossed, interpreting the summit outcome in bad
faith in breach of peremptory international norms. The US is the last holdout or throwback to
the pre-modern concept of absolute sovereignty: arbitrary state power. Now if you look
closely, the state organ that actually holds arbitrary power is CIA. That is disguised by
lots of bribed and blackmailed functionaries and elected officials, but CIA murders them if
they step out of line, not excepting puppet 'heads of state' like Kennedy, Ford and Reagan
(sometimes they miss but they make their point.)
Now to the whole rest of the world, this CIA regime is not sovereign at all. Then what is
it? It is a criminal enterprise based on impunity. The legal relationship between responsible
sovereignty, absolute sovereignty, and impunity is very touchy to the CIA regime, which
dispatched John Bolton to the UN over Congress' explicit refusal, if you remember. And why?
What was Bolton sent to do? He obstructed the Summit Outcome Document with endless Neo-Soviet
nyets, submitting 600 amendments until drafters removed the trigger word impunity from one
paragraph.
This US totalitarian state considers that its arbitrary rule negates another universal
world agreement, the Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Foreign Intervention,
A/RES/20/2131, which is in fact state and federal common law in the US.
So how does this legal conundrum get resolved? When the time is right, Russia, China, and
Iran point their missiles at a selection of defenseless US military assets and say, Go fuck
yourself. It's what the Russians call coercion to peace. We the subject population need to
prepare for this eventuality, because the current rebellion includes peace in its demands
(ask BAP.) The basis of US impunity is arbitrary use of force at home and abroad. The human
right to peace means capitulation for the CIA regime.
The reply is pure, direct nonsense. Iran is correct in supporting the Palestinians. The
United States supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. It supports apartheid and
starving Palestinians.
There is no need for moderation. Through U.S. tax dollars to Israel, it supports apartheid
and the suffering of Palestinians who have had their land taken from them by the Israelis.
Look at map of Palestine today.
@Sean
tive and hews closely to Jewish interests as expressed & shaped by the Jewish-controlled
American media.
The death of 34 servicemen on the USS Liberty is barely a footnote of history, and while
the death of St. Floyd is tearing America apart, the brutal killing of American Rachel Corrie
in Israel was the butt of jokes among Zionists in the American media.
After all, making some deaths more important than others is a Jewish specialty and control
of the media means never having to say you're sorry – while others have to watch their
step or face the wrath of the mob.
@Sean
se they cannot control it. SJW Globalists hate Jewish Israel because they cannot control it.
Preposterous bloviation about the supremacy of supranational bodies is an easily
penetrated cover story. The obvious TRUTH -- One religion is intentionally misusing bodies,
like the UN/NWO, to assault Christians & Jews that it cannot control.
The U.S. must uphold its sovereign responsibility to oppose oppression and punish the
murder of its citizens. If Soleimani wanted to live, he should not have senselessly butchered
Americans.
The whole world knows that the US attack on Iraq was a war of aggression not condoned by
the UN. Also, the US didn't hide its intentions and put Iran next on the list (the Axis of
Terror ). Omitting these little details are very convenient indeed for it enables you to
portray the US soldiers as blue eyed UN Peace Keepers attacked by the malignant theocratic
regime, when in fact the opposite is true.
@Sean
but its status as a diplomatic mission may very well have been compromised by practises
contrary to Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relation (Vienna 18 April
1961), in which case the Iranians should have simply asked the US staff to leave. but seizure
by the students made that moot.
Think of it as the Iranian Lives Matter protest of 1979. Its a shame the criminals behind
the current BLM and AntiFa movements aren't treated as harshly as we treat the Iranians,
though now that AntiFa made the list, maybe someone can connect the dots to Soros and relieve
him of a few billions.
Isramerica Inc. ceased being a nation state when the Rothschild Reich conquered the
American Republic in 1913 by establishing the Rothschild Reserve Bank. Give a Rothschild a
gun and he can rob a bank. Give a Rothschild a bank and he can rob a country. What Rothschild
Wants, Rothschild Gets. Rothschild wants his Central Banks in all Zionist Globalist
international city states. Rothschild wants control of all Zionist Globalist Corporations.
Bank of Isramerica,the City of Londonistan, Berlinks, Parisk, Zu Rich . Microsoft, Apple,
Amazon all KNEEL before the Rothschild Royal Family of Black Lives Matter. Rothschild wanted
WWI, WWII and now wants WWIII and a final solution to enslave the West, a ZODD. The Zionist
Owned Digital Dollar to COVID 1984 track, trace and enslave all of Cattlekind. DOWN WITH BIG
ZOG!
@joe2.5
to support divestment from Iran-oriented investments, in favor or investment in Israel.
This has been the case at least since Bob Casey's campaign to unseat Rick Santorum (aka
the
DumpRick campaign). Before Casey's win, he was taken to Israel by members of AIPAC, who
returned him to US shores assured that "while Rick was good for Israel, Bob will be even
moreso . . ."
Pennsylvania's Jewish governor, Jewish state's attorney, and Jewish transgender director
of public health are combining their authorities to impose some of the most stringent, and
fraudulent, sets of regulations on the people of Pennsylvania relative to the scamdemic.
-- Radical U.S. students seize the Iranian Mission to the UN, located in NYC.
-- They demand the turn over of Ayatollah Khameni for his war crimes against the Iranian
people.
-- The Trump administration "To Protect Innocent Student Lives" refuses to intervene for ~444
days.
Under your rules, these U.S. Students would be 'private citizens'. Hypothetically, no
violation of international law has occurred.
I suspect your hypertechnicality could lead to unintended, though currently hypotheical,
outcomes.
Precisely. Being that what you said applies equally to all 50 states, non-voting
territories, vassalages and messuages, the extraterritorial invasion of Iraq (or anywhere) is
on behalf of the same owners of the country.
Ooh! Sean used the IED word! How sophisticated. IED, IED IED!!! Would it be better they
used nice, professional ordinance, like the Yankees' depleted uranium? Yo' mama raised the
afterbirth!
I am sure A123 is wallowing in a puddle of self-extracted sperm by now.
Cute, the previous article I read was about how Zion and its Undeclared Soviets in America
plan to use force against the International Criminal Court. IED, I say.
Before Sean and A123 get together and breed more apologists for the satanic childfucking
cacastocracy and their queen Hillary. (Deposed by reason of failing clone stability).
The African Group (representing the 54 African countries in the United Nations) convened
an "Urgent Debate" (technically equivalent to a special session) in the HRC on, basically, US
killer cops – on the 17th, the fireworks to be broadcast/archived on http://webtv.un.org/
You can watch the US piss away its international standing.
Racial discrimination comes up of course, because Africans are extra touchy about pigs
killing jigs for sport, but violent attacks on your human right of assembly is on the agenda
too (UDHR Article 20, state and federal common law; ICCPR Article 21, equivalent to federal
statute.) Urgent debate in this charter body mobilizes the treaty bodies and special
procedures, which in turn supports propria motu ICC investigation of the US and its Izzie pig
torture trainers.
US Human Rights Network*/ACLU ask:
"If you live the United States, please contact foreign embassies in Washington D.C. that
are members of the UNHRC, especially U.S. allies, and urge them to support international
accountability for police killings in the U.S.
And if you live outside the U.S., please contact your Foreign Ministry or your country's
UN Mission in Geneva and let them know that you support the call made by families of victims
of police killings in the United States and over 660 groups from 66 countries to mandate an
independent Commission of Inquiry. This is the only credible accountability measure that can
effectively respond to the current human rights crisis in the United States.
Go over the head of your horseshit government to the world.
One day, A123, some sensible person will have the opportunity to take that PEACE emoticon
and shove it up your smutty throat. My dog is flapping his hind leg at the joyful
thought.
Also, you forget to mention the role your private international terrorist organisation, CIA
played in every so-called 'incident' regarding Iran.
The greatest danger of BDS is is the defunding of satanic criminal networks such as USAID,
CIA, MOSSAD etc. It's not like Israel has provinces full of industry to 'invest' in.
You do know that blaming Iran for that is quite a stretch. The technology involved was not
hard to acquire.
And what about the dozens of countries the US government has actively plunged into war,
killing, maiming and destroying the lives of millions and millions of people? WTF about
that?
Mr. Giraldi provides some noteworthy examples of pro-Israel legislation, but the names
could be tweaked a bit. Here's some proposed legislation that more honestly reflects the
character of our vaunted solons
1. The Israeli Destruction, Invalidation, and Oppression Tenet, also known as IDIOT.
Once ratified, IDIOT would require a congressional representative's public proclamation of
pride upon the occasion of any crime committed by Israel. Said proclamation must be no less
than 500 words and preempt all other matters pending deliberation. Failure to persuade one's
constituency of Israeli virtue warrants a donation of $250,000 to the incumbent's next
election opponent.
2. Completing the Ruinous, Execrable Takeover by Israel Now, or CRETIN Act.
This law would defer all civil rights cases ordinarily brought before an American justice
to a tribunal of members appointed and officiated by Alan Dershowitz. Appeals may be granted,
subject to a display of fealty including, but not limited to, ceding custody of one's
firstborn child.
3. The Doing Everything Israel Likes Act, hereinafter referenced as DEVIL.
Under this mandate, electronic bracelets such as those worn by felons subject to in-house
arrest will be fastened to every member of congress, their voltage increased in direct
correlation to the measure of their recalcitrance against Israel. Perceived acclimation to
the accompanying pain will necessitate either castration or sale into slavery. Should the
former consequence apply, the gelding will be permitted to preserve remnants of his manhood
in a curio cabinet display set up for public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda.
Only a Zionist would have the nerve to write such immortal nonsense while at the same time
the assaults on the Russian and Venezuelan embassies, the invention of shadow governments in
Venezuela and Bolivia and the Ukraine are occurring.
We have to account for the fact that there are younger people here, as well as those who
have yet to understand the dynamics at play. We also have to give him credit where it's due:
he knows how to elicit a response. Yet, in a forum of this nature, that's not too difficult
when you're running interference for the powers that be. In that sense, he's no different
than "Lot" or that other troll with a numeric handle.
His respondents don't imagine they're going to make him happy. Everybody just thinks
they're gonna be the one to whack the mole.
The solution for the many ills facing the US. This solution WILL entail violence.
From the Byzantines, Ezra Pound derived his no-violent formula for controlling the
Jews.
"The answer to the Jewish problem is simple," he said.
"Keep them out of banking, out of education, out of government."
And this is how simple it is.
There is no need to kill the Jews. In fact, every pogrom in history has played into their
hands, and has in many instances been cleverly instigated by them.
Get the Jews out of banking and they cannot control the economic life of the community.
Get the Jews out of education and they can not pervert the minds of the young to their
subversive doctrines.
Get the Jews out of government and they cannot betray the nation."
THE US IS DEAD & WILL BE NOTHING AFTER THE DEATH OF THE PETRODOLLAR. After Bretton
Woods, where the Jews used the US as they did in WWI, it can now be snuffed out as it has no
assets, industry and has destroyed every entity of ecological protection and is the biggest
user of geoengineering wiping out almost all life and that is the way the Elohim want it.
Gomberg map is just a short version of the most valuable state in the world and it's in you
damn dollar bill. Those little green nations are the owners of the earth and the top is where
the ALL SEEING EYE IS. It's all a fraud but people are as stupid as animals and will deserve
what is coming as the next pillar of the destruction of the US from St. John the Devine
states. Then a new birth after the deaths of billions. These were put up in 1997 and in 1999,
the messiah of Israel stated what would happen to the towers and is in STONE.
Jewish cohesion, skill, tenacity, and purposefulness has imbued this tribe with
unsurpassed status. And power.
International Jewry pilots world banking, orchestrates the manufacture of news and
entertainment (and public opinion), while it oversees all US policies in areas that affect
the standing of Israel or status of world Jewry. This is no small matter.
Inordinate Jewish power, and its distorting impact on international affairs, has become
one of humanity's greatest trials. It is the grand conundrum that we lesser souls are not
supposed to notice or ever complain about. This puts us on the road to ruin.
Hey A123 -- - I see where that little stinker Sean, stole your Hasbara Central talking
points. So now all you can produce is this crap -- - I know – what is this world coming
too? -- Art
@joe2.5
by the KJV Bible as edited by Samuel Untermyer and his seven or more employees that Untermyer
paid the known crook, the known fraudster C. I. Scofield to put his name on so it wouldn't
look like a Jewish-edited New Testament edition. He, the worm A123, swoons with joy when the
Jews vandalize Christian churches in greater Palestine and shoot Christians, which is
happening all the time.
A real nasty piece of work he is, A123, and a real clueless immoral idiot. It's a pity
he's too illiterate to read Ron Unz's Oddities Of The Jewish Religion. He'd soon learn
how the Jews hate him.
Judge jury and executioner. This is why this madness must end. When talking about systemic
oppression it is solely outward towards other nations. Such brutality and arrogance. The
worlds only chance is turning away from the dollar, Israel and the US.
'I think the Iranian government obviated any obligation for the US to abide by
international law and conventions, by seizing US Embassy personnel and using them as hostages
to influence US politics.'
That was over forty years ago. In 1985, what kind of behavior would you have advocated
towards Germany?
@MarkU
, to shooting down an airliner taking off from their own airport. Pauperised and paranoid,
Iran is self destructing. They got a pass for limpet mine tanker attacks and drone
destruction of a oil refineries in Saudi, so what did they do? Attack a US embassy in Iraq.
That is great thinking if they intended to get Trump to use force as he has long been known
to have been outraged by the hostage crisis of decades ago. Iran is helping Israel more than
the Palestinians. One can only imagine what disaster the Iranian leadership would bring on
their country if they had a thermonuclear weapon.
The "Gloat Over Your Broken Environment And Never Surrender" Act, or GOYBEANS Act.
If ratified, this bill would provide 666 million dollars annually for developing public
school curricula in partnership with the ADL, SPLC, and NAMBLA. Proposed as a reformatory
measure, the GOYBEANS Act was drafted in response to demands from the aforementioned
organizations that school curricula be more inclusive of topics such as nurturing gender
doubt, learning to properly hate, and the non-existence of Palestinians.
Times have moved on. Jews would need to be banned from the McMedia industrial complex,
including newspapers, cinema, TV etc. A ban on political donations would obviously be also
necessary. They should be free to worship Yahweh and themselves at length without causing
harm to others.
It should be a lesson learned for the rest of the world: don't keep any assests in the US,
or the West for that matter. Isolate from the West, divest from the West, sanction and
boycott the West, build your own institutions and link up only to non-Western countries.
Don't even bother to visit the West, find other places to vacation in. Anyway the West is
being ruined by your own immigrants, so why would you want to spend your holidays among
them?
We live under a tyrannous U.S.-led Anglo-Zionist fascism which is committing heinous war
crimes on behalf of the Jewish Israel and its Jewish supporters.
While there are some similarities between Anglo-Zionist fascism and German Fascism (Nazi
Germany), Anglo-Zionist fascism is more injurious, more ruthless and more criminal than
Germany under Adolph Hitler.
@Anon
aid to Mr Giraldi[post 4]: "If you never get to understand the true nature of all
governments, then you are forever doomed to complain about what it does"
Most people [including, of course, all the commie idjuts in "CHAZ"] live in denial of the
true nature of the government they complain about all the time, forever unable to see that
the state is doing nothing more than being,er, "stately". It would appear that you are no
different from them.
@MarkU
My point is that you can't just start the clock (and the narrative) to suit yourself, you are
being ignorant and/or dishonest to do so.
You are partly right. However, Sean is far from ignorant, though his lack of ignorance is
more than matched by his total lack of honesty. Both characteristics of a paid troll.
The zios must see UR, as a real threat to their mythical narrative, judging by the resources
they put into defending the undefendable, always going to be an uphill mountain, even for the
totally dishonest Sean and his cronies.
@Sean
Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real
Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.
The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired
financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a
world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian
nations.
The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews."
Paul Singer's best known legal battle is a marathon campaign to force Argentina to pay out
on bonds he bought at a knockdown price in 2001. He finally succeeded in getting a $2.4
billion payout last year. He has also been accused of profiting at the expense of other
impoverished nations, namely Peru and Congo-Brazzaville, a West African country where most
live in dire poverty. Singer acquired Congolese government debt though a Cayman Islands
vehicle and set about clawing money back through the London courts in a campaign over several
years, eventually winning £78 million.
Singer works for Israel in his world wide looting.
Singer is also the founder of Start-Up Nation Central, a Tel Aviv-based non-profit that
seeks to connect business and government leaders around the world with the Israeli people and
technologies that can solve their most pressing challenges.
His most recent looting project is to get Twitter.
An activist investor known as a major Republican political supporter wants to wrest
control of Twitter from co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, US media has reported.
Your map looks straight out of Halford MacKinder's strategy for getting control of his
designated heartland. International banking owns both Russia and China. So it would seem the
shining city is both antiquated and dangerous. Also it can neither control its borders and its
cities . We really need to decommission the biological and nuclear weapons. Finally according
to your logic dementia Biden is the appropriated president for a demented USA.
The Nuremberg trials led to the creation of the International Criminal Court and
jurisprudence in matters of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression.
Make laws for everyone and then find ways to get around those laws. It's a never ending
Talmudic cycle.
The foreign policy of the ZUS has been driven by the zionists since 1913 when they took over
control of America with their privately owned FED and IRS and then came the wars and the attack
on the USS Liberty and their attack on the WTC on 911, designed to plunge America into
destroying the middle east for zionist Israel.
Read the book The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed and Blood in the Water by Joan Mellen,
and the Protocols of Zion.
2 Menachem Begin was frightened of being found out that his regime was conspiring against
Carter's administration colluding with GOP agents hostage release . He even physically
threatened Peres against trying anything on his own behind the knowledge of the Begin
regime.
3 I read somewhere that during the very early period of the developing hostage situation
Israeli operation inside Iran put the lives of the hostage at risk despite the people on the
ground from US agency requesting the Israelis not to do .
The US overthrew a democratically elected government and installed the torturing Shah.
The US precipitated the Iraq/Iran war and gave Iraq chemical weapons to kill Iranians.
Speaking of shooting down airliners , our fine USN shot an Iranian civilian airliner out of the
sky in 1988 killing a few hundred people.
You think any Iranian is losing sleep over the killing of Americans in a country that the US
illegally invaded and occupied?
Expressing many lies and sanitizng US 's dirty wars on Syria ,even ignoring it– here
is NYTimes
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/world/middleeast/syria-economy-assad-makhlouf.html
"The United States will impose sweeping new sanctions this week that could target the
businesspeople Mr. al-Assad needs to rebuild his shattered cities.
The Caesar Act, named after a Syrian police photographer who defected with photos of thousands
of prisoners tortured and killed in Syrian custody, requires the United States president to
sanction anyone who does business with or provides significant support to the Syrian government
or its officials."-NYT
It has already imposed sanctions and has done repeatedly . Caesar's photo journalism was the
playbook from Lantos Kuwait babies Curveball's begging for jail free asylum in US and from
Wolfowitz lies that Saddam was behind 911.
You have, in a nutshell, given the reason why the JewEssA declared Pound insane and had him
locked up.
"Democracy is now currently defined in Europe as a 'country run by Jews,'"
"America is a lunatic asylum."
~ Ezra Pound
As an update, "the West" could be substituted for "Europe".
But the impulsive George Bush should not have dragged Iraq into another war, he lied his way
into the war. A devout Methodist who is also a war criminal. And who do I see shuffling off in
the left corner? Why its the international statesman Henry Kissinger, who advised the Americans
that the Ayrabs would not respect anyone who raised the sword but would not bring it down.
But unlike others commenting here I agree that US Army owed Iran big time, for ambushing
them when all they wanted was to pacify the Shiites and Sunnis and get the hell out.
Nonsense. Sovereign states use whatever tools are available to further their geopolitical
objectives. To cite one of innumerable examples, China uses everything, including trade, against
recognition of Taiwan.
I'm old fashioned, I think the USG should leverage its strengths in pursuit of its
geopolitical objectives. Its current dominance of global finance definitely qualifies.
Giraldi has a soft spot for the Palestinians. Fair enough. Though he does them no favors by
putting them in the same bucket as Iran in this context. Z-man , says: June 16, 2020
at 3:25 pm GMT
@WJ It
is true that the US gave Iraq chemical weapons. However, the US had given Iran chemical weapons
previously. As Stephen Pelletiere, who investigated Saddam's alleged gassing at Halajaba for
the military, reported, cyanide gas was used to kill the Kurds. Cyanide gas was being used by
Iran.
The reality is, and Mr. Giraldi seems reluctant to discuss, that the US (Israeli) strategy
in the Middle East is one of perpetual chaos. If it became convenient tomorrow, Iran would be
an "ally" and Saudi Arabia an "enemy". As long as the Eretz Yisroel project is active, that
will always be the objective.
The Talmudic faction among them is a ticking time bomb. Why take the risk of keeping the
latent virus in a country? Check out the role of the tribe when Moorish armies advanced on
Toledo, Spain.
Jews have their own country now. They can non-violently be sent to live amongst their own
kin and make their Jewtopia. That is an option that historically wasn't available but since
1948 it's been on the table.
American "law" is a sick joke. The country was a "banana republic" before its zionazi
colonization, what it is now is a fully colonized "banana republic" under full control of
israeli oligarchical interests. I believe this full control was finalized in the quisling trump
regime and that one of the major roles this regime has been tasked to accomplish was finalizing
this zionazi/israeli full control. If not the major role they were tasked to accomplish. The
slow boiled frog is now dead and fully cooked.
@Sean S.
and its precious Operation Inherent Resolve have brought in weapons from Bulgaria, Libya,
Jordan, Israel, and the U.S., inter alia, to trying to bring down Assad to the tune of some
500+K civilian deaths so I'm missing the point of your moral calculus here. Basically, we wage
aggressive war causing massive casualties, destruction, and suffering but you highlight a
particular weapon used against U.S. forces who brought the full panoply of surveillance
platforms, armor, fighter bombers, artillery, electronic warfare, and infantry to bear in a war
based on lies and stupidity. Ours.
@padre
unded on fairness, the quest for justice, and equal treatment under law. A key objective would
be advancing the common good. Zionism distorts these principles.
Lawfare uses concentrated Jewish wealth to assure that Israeli objectives become
more equal under the US law. This subverts fairness as well as the Equal Treatment
doctrine.
Organized Jewish cunning tosses aside the common good in favor of what's good for the
Jews .
What we get in its place is a premeditated perversion of justice.
@al Muqawama
Local 12 ier sovereign could claim total independence and freedom of action in
international relations but his exercise of power was not necessarily whimsical, random,
authoritarian, or illegal.
The globalist, open borders, progressive crowd work hard to paint "nationalism" as the
supreme evil -- well, after advocacy of white interests -- but it is not the evil they
try to make it out to be. As with the E.U., the silk drawer set proceeded to obliterate the
nation state and its loathsome "nationalism" which is exactly the healthy antidote to their
sought-after collectivist, multicultural nightmare.
@mark
green n my illustrious (grin) career with a powerful government agency which was the
Vatican City of government agencies back in the day (meaning once you were in you were in an
untouchable club, 'a made man') I made my political opinions known to some extent. (Mistake) In
the course of my meteoric rise as a junior executive (lol) I may have called out a Jew or two.
Whell I was transferred from my cushy office job and put out in the field, like the Red
Guards of the Cultural Revolution in CHY-NAH, (lol). It might have been for my calling out of a
'chosen'ite'.
You really are stupid enough to believe that the Iranians were stupid enough to produce so
called IED's with "Made in Iran" written on them in English?
Phil Geraldi demonstrates that the US justice system is a joke and a farce. The court's hand
down verdicts like the courts in the former Soviet Union or North Korea do. The alleged support
of terrorism by Iran and Syria doesn't hold water. It's purely political and has nothing to do
with the rule of law. To argue that the State of Israel doesn't commit acts of terrorism is
bananas. Miko Peled, who wrote "The General's Son" https://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.com/2012/10/miko-peled-generals-son.html
stated in a speech on 1 October 2012 in Seattle: The Israeli army is the "best trained, best
equipped, best fed terrorist organization in the world." He continued saying: "Their entire
purpose is terrorism." The Israeli army commits acts of terror daily against the occupied
people of Palestine. Which Zionist law firm will take up their cases against the ruthless
Zionist regime in Jerusalem?
Ah, the old "senseless butchery" ploy, 99. I saw it coming a mile away.
Islam does not have 99 ploys. It extremely simple blood cult. The Muslim play book has only
3:
-1- Jihad -- Senseless Butchering of _________ (Jews, Christians, the weak, the innocent
)
-2- Taqiyya -- Lie about murders committed in the name of the Anti-Christ Muhammad
-3- Repeat -- Ploy #1 & Ploy #2
@A123
Soleimani. Since when do garden-variety military tactics and weaponry amount to SB? I've seen a
Muslim scientist who argued with some Muslim nut that the earth is in fact round. This despite
the authoritative statement of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia that the Koran says it's flat.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Forgive my obscure reference. "99" was the female lead in the amusing TV spy spoof, "Get
Smart." Maxwell Smart always referred to her as "99." She must have been flattered as she later
married him. In "real life" as we used to say. With considerable accuracy.
It could also be said that not taking the responsibility to ensure who is voted for is not
a type of person who goal is to instill more authority to the government and size really is
more of the problem than voting.
Not voting also does not change the system for in that case the system quickly becomes
filled by those who are hell bent on ensuring the desires of the few become all powerful.
When any country gets to the point where almost more people are employed by the government
than in private sector jobs then you have a problem.
Example which anyone can find.
Nationally, state and local governments employed about 7.4 million full-time equivalent
(FTE) workers in 2014. That's approximately 232 public employees for every 10,000 Americans,
according to Governing calculations of Census survey data.
The only private company that has a large employee base is Walmart at about 1.3 million.
7.4 million people their only way of survival is either from taxes without being done through
a loan or taxes later collected from government taking out a loan.
The plan all along was not just to create competing sides for a vote but also to create a
mass of people who care not to be involved in how government is to become and ran.
The only level needed to be involved is to ensure government doesn't become to big to
eventually stab you in the back while robbing you.
#TermLimitsMatter That is what the people should be on the street protesting for.
The government has already captured without force a part of the population that is willing
to be monitored 24/7 without resistance because of the "Virus Hype". That is the reason the
"Virus" is still being pushed as a threat. It is to ensure those who have been captured
remain so.
Now it appears they are going for the rest of those who might resist such a thing by
allowing violence to flow freely more so than any freedom you think you have.
Eventually both sides will want the "Government" to do something about all forms of
violence. Why do you think there are two forms of violence that is being focused upon? Police
violence and People violence. It is to get both sides to ask for extra government
monitoring.
I always have to go back to the old saying "Be careful what you ask for". It will not be
what you are thinking it's going to be.
Propaganda will tell you the "Truth" and a "Lie" at the same time. It also ushers in a lot
of opinion not only to ensure that the average person can't tell when there are being told
the truth or a lie but also to keep a division going based upon opinions.
It is a "Blood Ritual" and the sides are fighting to see who gets to stab all natural
freedoms in the heart.
I am not trying to tell you how to think. It is your own life and your own choice but damn
it they are trying to kill every form of your choice to believe what freedom really is.
> Peter Dorman is correct about why Trump is in trouble, but there is still
more. Peter Dorman is correct about why Trump is in trouble, but there is still
more.
Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate
Trump's support base?
That's what make me wondering: is the faction of the elite driving these BLM riots are
those who support Trump?
Terrify people and threaten the existence of police is a good way to get close to 100%
of elderly voters out of their Covid-19 lockdowns on election day.
Doesn't the fact that pallets of bricks and frozen bottles in large cans were
delivered to the places of protests suggests that Antifa and other groups operating
within the protest movement are actually linked to intelligence agencies?
Is not it easier now for Trump to offload all the destruction of the economy and
Coronavirus recession on Neoliberal Dems which are supporting the rioters?
Cook here represents a tradition of progressive pseudo-democracy which contradicts liberal
democracy.
In progressive pseudo-democracy, men "at the side of history" have a privilege in destroying
other people's values.
In liberal democracy, the defenders of the old system are recognized as a legitimate
opposition with the possibility of becoming the government again. so there are no privileges
for "men at the side of history". Of course there can be changes who are, in hindsight,
consensually accepted by both sides. Nearly nobody sees a reason to reestablish slavery
– but the acceptance of a gollywog or the acceptance of a statue is not slavery, not
even similar to it. The "pain" of people who conflate these matters is self-inflicted.
Any article discussing 'democracy' without defining it is the work of a hack.
Oh yes, it's supposed that everyone knows 'democracy'. He doesn't. It's a bullshit word
meant to gloss around the writer's refusal to reason by way of first principles. It's
cowardice.
We are all supposed to accept as the major premise that democracy's good, and thus
desirable. Ergo, if the writer can somehow tie his conclusion to 'democratic' roots, he's
carried the day.
Shameless fraud. Thousands of words of spittle.
Interesting truth: No form of the word 'democracy' is found in the US Declaration of
Independence or Constitution. To the contrary, democracy is forbidden by Constitution Article
IV Section 4.
The Holocaust memorial museum in Washington should be stormed by Americans outraged by
Israel's theft of US resources and its corruption of US politics, and for Israel's attack on
the USS Liberty.
This may or may not include the defenestration of the directors, the casting of exhibits
into the street, and the bulldozing of the entire structure into a landfill.
Yes, more democratic tradition, please, until justice is done and seen to be done.
It brings this very curious information that I wasn't aware of:
On May 15, the US Department of the Treasury released Treasury International Capital (TIC)
data for March 2020. It showed that total foreign ownership of Treasuries dropped by $256.6
billion to $6.81 trillion.
I already knew there was a race to the Renminbi since China recovered from the first wave
of the pandemic (it is mentioned in at least two op-pieces in the Asia Times), but I didn't
know there was a correspondent race from the USD. Let's remember: in 2008, there was a race
to the USD; the USD became stronger than ever with that crisis, and America's dominance in
the financial sector strengthened, not weakened.
Now it may be different. The USD is getting weaker, not stronger. Faith in the USA is
weaning.
Also there's this nice little piece, very poetic, whose only value is in the fact that it
was written by an American who loves his country and served in the Army:
@ Posted by: juliania | Jun 15 2020 22:55 utc | 61
What will become of "Putin's Russia" is a very interesting topic.
Pepe Escobar's interview with Karaganov made it look like Russia's plan is to serve as
some kind of leader of the "non-aligned" countries in a future China-USA bipolar world order.
I found it too vague, could mean anything.
However, there's another, much more interesting, phenomenon: the rise of some right-wing
intellectuals from Russia and the USA who are trying to revive what we call nowadays as
"paleoconservatism". They are the Martyanovs, Dugins, Korybkos the guys who write for Unz and
The Saker, the Russia Insider team around there.
Those "new paleoconservatives" differentiate themselves in the sense that they really try
very hard to be intellectuals -- that is, they do not adopt the irrational methodology of the
typical far-right/neofacism, they abhor the neocons/neoliberals, they abhor the so-called
"woke left/cultural marxists/pluralists/SJWs" (which they frequently associate, if not
equate, to the neoliberals), they believe in some kind of a concept of race or racially
determined culture based on geography and climate, they certainly abhor scientific socialism
(some of them even, under absurd and extremely dumbed down arguments, directly stating Marx's
theory was wrong) but they also abhor Nazism - albeit for reasons that are not, let's say,
"orthodox". They are also against imperialism as the USA is practicing right now, but not
against "self-defense" imperialism, that is, the line is blurry.
But the most important factor that unites this group is their blind faith in Christianism.
They somehow believe that if you fuse capitalism (which, for many of them is not even a
system, but human nature itself) with Christian values (it doesn't need to be Christian
religion per se, you don't need to be a practicing Christian), you somehow get the perfect
mix between man's animal side (capitalism) and spiritual side (Christianism). It's like your
traditional post-war social-democracy, with the difference that they put Christianism in
socialism's place. As a result, you go back to the good ol' times, more or less in the 1950s,
where everything was, allegedly, "in their place".
This obsession with Christianism makes me, jokingly, to call this coterie as the
"Neobyzantines" - a bizarre postmodern chimera born from the degeneration of late stage
capitalism.
But this is the boring part. The cool part about the Neobyzantines is the fact that they
have a geopolitical policy. What's this policy? You guessed it right: they want a Christian
confederation composed of the entire Northern Atlantic (NATO countries)... plus Russia. This,
the Neobyzantines say, will save Christianism (and the correspondent white race) from
subjugation and hegemony of the socialist Yellows (some of them also have a racial-based
theory about why socialism/communism naturally occurs in East Asia; for some of them, South
Korea and Japan are even communist themselves already).
We know Putin was raised as a Neobyzantine. He's an Ocidentalist that believed in the
concept of an European civilization. That's why, in my opinion, he plays such a good sport
with the Orthodox Church, as it is a living fossil of the times of Peter the Great etc. etc.
However, as time passed, he became increasingly disillusioned with the USA and the EU, and
the ties were definitely broken with the invasion and partition of the Ukraine in 2014. His
policies, therefore, clearly became more Eurasianist, but that certainly was the result of
necessity, not free will.
Is Putin may be converting himself to "Neobyzantism"? Will Neobyzantism really become a
thing, or will it just be thrown to the dustbin of History, as was many other ideologies of
the past of which only a Historian knows nowadays?
re: neo-Byzanyines. Clever. And there may be something to that idea. Certainly the general
flavor of Christian conservatism you describe holds some real currency among the national
security types. However, despite ideological commonality across borders, I think it is
clearly nationalist and not internationalist.
The more theatrical "paleo" versions stand out, if only for being one of the few cohesive
alternatives to neoliberalism (socialism and socdem being sadly moribund). But if you dial
down the drama and take away the contrarian personalities, then pan-nationalist Christian
conservatism (and for that matter, the Islamic or Hindu analogs) can be integrated into
neoliberalism too. I don't see why not.
Considering the post-millennial generations may well end up in a Byzantium of some kind in
some decades, this is worth following up on.
Posted by: vk | Jun 15 2020 23:35 utc | 66 Will Neobyzantism really become a thing, or will
it just be thrown to the dustbin of History, as was many other ideologies of the past of
which only a Historian knows nowadays?
I've noticed that trend as well - the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church and the rise of
conservatism in Russia. I see it reflected in the attitudes on the Crosstalk show that I used
to watch regularly.
I agree that trying to resurrect Christianity is a major error. It will just lead to even
greater anti-intellectualism and irrational belief systems, and possibly even eventually into
a "theocracy" - hardly conducive to freedom. As a rabid atheist myself, I despise all of
this.
I think that, if we take it from your approach, the problem with the neobyzantines is more
related to the fact that they can't accept being juniors to the "yellows" (i.e. a non-white,
non-Christian people) than with Chinese-style socialism. They are like the reverse Chicoms in
this sense (and, if that's indeed the case, they are very different than the American
Bannonist far-right).
The Bannonists (I think Bannon himself coin his ideology as "Neopopulism" or something
like that) believe in the reverse case: it is good that the Chinese are to hegemonize the
world in the 21st Century - as long as they do so in a capitalist form, not in a socialist
one, that is, without the CCP at the helm.
Indeed, neoliberalism is very malleable, and for one very simple reason: it is not an
ideology per se, but a doctrine. Doctrines are not as much incisive as ideologies, but they
have the advantage of being very adaptable and quickly digestible. For example: who, at the
beginning of the 1970s, would think that - of all places - neoliberalism would find its most
fertile ground in Latin America? Theoretically, Latin America should be the
anti-neoliberalism area of the world par excellence, as it was the subcontinent that suffered
the most (except, maybe, Africa - but Africa was razed to the ground, there's no material
there to any doctrine or ideology to sprout) under the hands of American neocolonialism. But
here we are: the lack of a strong revolutionary movement in Latin America gave birth to a
strong inferiority complex, which created a political vacuum in which neoliberalism fitted
perfectly (Mexico, then Ménem's "Peripheral Realism", then FHC's "we must be the last
of the top" in Brazil).
Neoliberalism's success story in Latin America is a warning example for historians to
never stick to a sociological formula either for trying to explain History or to try to
predict History. There's always the human factor, that "x" factor that only good old method
of studying History can decipher.
--//--
@ Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 16 2020 1:53 utc | 80
I use the term "Neobyzantine" as some kind of pejorative joke (my humor is very dark). I
don't think those who I would classify as "neobyzantine" feed any illusions about the real
Byzantine Empire - which, as a Christian Empire, was an absolute farce: it was plagued with
schisms after schism inside Christianism that castigated them with endless drama, exiles,
executions, dead emperors and civil wars. No Byzantine citizen ever believed Christianity
would rise someday to become a world religion: it was under the hands of the Western European
medieval lords and their descendants that it became so (conquests of America, Africa, Oceania
and SE Asia).
It is a myth Christianism ever brought unity to the Roman Empire, but it may be true that
the early Christian emperors (from Constantine the Great onward) thought it would. If
Constantine and his successors really thought that, then they were to be proven completely
wrong - as today's schism between Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox are to serve as living
evidence.
I think that, if we take it from your approach, the problem with the neobyzantines is
more related to the fact that they can't accept being juniors to the "yellows"
Well, not sure how that fits into the byzantine analogy, but I do think it is a central
unifying theme of conservatives in the west who are taking an anti-neoliberal position.
I think the position toward capitalism is something between nuanced and contradictory, or
at least very heterogenous. There is plenty of awareness of its ills of a state captive to
private $ and corps. Yet the ideal of free enterprise is celebrated without reservation, with
a real hope for markets that could in theory become non dysfunctional. So no, IMO
anti-neoliberal conservatives in the US are not socialist in the slightest (except the
military has universal health and education). Basically very sympathetic to the "libertarian"
side of it. But that may be unique to the US vs the rest of the "west". I mean this is all
stereotyping very much, everyone has their own emphasis. Also the economic idea are maybe not
so important to the byzantium / historical analogy, we might happen to prioritize them higher
ourselves.
Where does the Chinese socialism fit in? That is contradictory too. One has to make a
judgment of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, and also Socialism with Chinese
characteristics. Neither of those is a direct translation of the European versions of them.
You also have a strong and intimate state power, which the nationalists might actually be
jealous of but I find off-putting. I do think the commonality there, for the would-be
neobyzantines is, again, simple national power.
Kindof like Bannonites, except he represents just one version of this. Specifically, his
version of a conservative anti-neoliberal position is especially uninteresting IMO. And I
dont take most of what he says at face value anyhow. Just a particularly unattractive
nationalist IMO... Finally, I don't think he would make a good byzantine, but maybe I am
romanticizing the idea in my head a little.
Yes, I agree: the Bannonites are certainly not Neobyzantines. They are more like the
traditional fascists: radical in form, conservative in essence. They are like agents of chaos
- a domesticated chaos, of course.
The unifying factor of the Neobyzantines, in my opinion, is the fact that they believe a
universalized (forced upon the masses) Christian moral code can save capitalism. In their
opinion, it is greed by the rich and the depravity of the leftists that is the problem.
They believe that the end of the USSR and the slow rise of China (plus, I guess, the
failure of the West in Christianizing the Middle East and Asia) put an end or proved wrong
the existence of economic systems. In this sense, they lowkey agree with Fukuyama in essence,
albeit kot in form. This would also make the Neobyzantines part of the Postmodern
constellation of ideologies, which preach absolute relativism.
--//--
@ Posted by: A User | Jun 16 2020 3:36 utc | 87
Yes, if you think about it, the American Revolution was a petite-bourgoeis revolution: it
was just a bunch of small planters not wanting to pay taxes.
Thomas Jefferson certainly didn't imagine he was building the world's future sole
superpower. None of the founding fathers imagined that.
However, the American Revolution was important in the sense it was the first European
colony to achieve independency without consent of it metropolis. It showed the other colonies
it was possible. We know the American case would never be replicated, but it inspired the
colonised a world without metropoleis was possible, and opened way for the end of the old
colonial system in 1945.
Vk #66
I don't understand your ridiculous concern that their will be some grand alliance of the
"White Christian" world (the U$, Russia, and the NATO/EU puppets) along with some assorted
Non-White, Non-Christian, countries (India, Japan, South Korea, etc.), against "Yellow
Socialist China". In reality the only "Prominent" person who has entertained this
anachronistic lunacy is the wannabe fascist Drunkard known as Steve Bannon, who has no real
impact on anything beyond grifting illiterate Trump supporters (The last I heard of him, he
was drunkenly proclaiming the creation of a "New Federal State of China's" with some former
Chinese "Communist" billionaire on a dingy boat in New York Harbor, LMAO". In reality most of
the "Neobyzantine" fools you mentioned in both the U$ and Russia, are big advocates of the
phony idea that China is a "rising", "Socialist", superpower that is an alternative to the
Unipolar, U$-led, world order, as evidenced that the "Unz Review" and "The Saker" are filled
with articles by Pro-China hacks such as Pepe Escobar. Personally, I view the "Neobyzantines"
as a bunch of hacks and grifters who in Russia seek to brainwash the population into
believing that the USSR was an evil "Judeo-Bolshevik" abomination while Putin's Russia is an
"Orthodox Christian" paradise and rising Superpower, that is In alliance with the "good
Socialist" China, in a "New Cold War" with the U$, all while covering up the fact that
Putin's Russia is a utter joke compared to the USSR, due to its population wallowing in
poverty and degeneracy (so much for those Orthodox values,
LOL), and it losing half its territory and all its Geopolitical alliances and ideological
support (due to its rejection of Marxism-Leninism). In the U$, these quacks appeal to a very
narrow group of disenfranchised U$ right-wingers who seem to believe that Russia and China
represent some Conservative utopia, LOL. In conclusion, these people are much less
significant then you make them out to be and just serve as mere propagandists for the phony
New Cold War" of the U$ vs. Russia and China which like I said in my previous post is Fake
wrestling to confuse and distract the populations of all three countries as they are
oppressed by the same Neoliberal policies that all three governments implement.
"... "The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family's lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse. ..."
"... This is why it is not shown in national media . Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurrence I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts." ..."
"... Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they've changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice? ..."
"... The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites. ..."
"... That hasn't changed, in fact, it's gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the count ..."
"... This isn't about racial justice or police brutality, it's about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. ..."
"... What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower ..."
"... The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal ..."
"... The protests are merely a fig leaf for a "color revolution" that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years ..."
"... "Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in." ..."
"... "The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives "execute orders?" ..."
"... Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of "Defund the Police" is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. ..."
"... Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa's "logistical capabilities". The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. ..."
"... it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem. ..."
"... This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA's color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on the economy ..."
"... "The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder . ..."
"... The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself ..."
"... that explains why anti-fa attack Yellow Vests in Germany. The Yellow Vests are the true people's movement and as shown in the video below it is not about the left and the right for the yellow vest but common people fed up with the system ..."
"... Watch every frame of this. It shows the government-media complex and their little thugs, ANTIFA, in perfect collusion to interfere with the regular Germans trying to stop the Satanic communist-Globo homo project. ..."
"... My bro is one of the few people flying, for work. He says the only people on the airlines are antifa thugs moving all around the country. ..."
"... Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate Trump's support base? ..."
"... Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question. In the Sunday edition of the New York Times– the official propaganda organ of US elites– an article is entirely devoted to creating "plausible deniability" that Antifa is behind the violence in the protests that have swept the country. ..."
"Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the
street. But it's the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you
reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is
carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks."
Foreign Policy
Journal
Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the
killing of George Floyd?
It's all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative that
applauds the "mainly peaceful protests" while ignoring the vast destruction to cities across
the country. What's that all about? Do the instigators of these demonstrations want to see our
cities reduced to urban wastelands where street gangs and Antifa thugs impose their own harsh
justice? That's where this is headed, isn't it?
Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they're fighting racial
injustice and police brutality. And more power to them. But that certainly doesn't mean there
aren't hidden agendas driving these outbursts. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that the
protest movement is actually the perfect vehicle for affecting dramatic social changes that
only serve the interests of elites. For example, who benefits from defunding the police? Not
African Americans, that's for sure. Black neighborhoods need more security not less. And yet,
the New York Times lead editorial on Saturday proudly announces, " Yes, We Mean Literally
Abolish the Police–Because reform won't happen." Check it out:
"We can't reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact
between the public and the police .There is not a single era in United States history in
which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South
emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves.
In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor
strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations
to protect the status quo.
So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man's neck until he dies,
that's the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black
person, he is doing what he sees as his job " (" Yes, We
Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won't happen" , New York
Times)
So, according to the Times, the problem isn't single parent families, or underfunded
education or limited job opportunities or fractured neighborhoods, it's the cops who have
nothing to do with any of these problems. Are we supposed to take this seriously, because the
editors of the Times certainly do. They'd like us to believe that there is groundswell support
for this loony idea, but there isn't. In a recent poll, more than 60% of those surveyed, oppose
the idea of defunding the police. So why would such an unpopular, wacko idea wind up as the
headline op-ed in the Saturday edition? Well, because the Times is doing what it always does,
advancing the political agenda of the elites who hold the purse-strings and dictate which ideas
are promoted and which end up on the cutting room floor. That's how the system works. Check out
this excerpt from an article by Paul Craig Roberts:
"The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out
a family's lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the
looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their
persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and
by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country
undergoing collapse.
This is why it is not shown in national media . Some local media show an
indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and
presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction
is only a local occurrence I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the
extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts." (" The Real Racists", Paul Craig Roberts,
Unz Review)
Roberts makes a good point, and one that's worth mulling over. Why has the media failed to
show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the
effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from
the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the
demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that
supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last
5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they've changed their stripes and become an
energized proponent of social justice?
Nonsense. The media's role in concealing the damage should only convince skeptics that the
protests are just one part of a much larger operation. What we're seeing play out in over 400
cities across the US, has more to do with toppling Trump and sowing racial division than it
does with the killing of George Floyd. The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements
in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate
probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the
same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites.
That hasn't changed, in fact, it's gotten
even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management
strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove
Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined
with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas,
and spreading anarchy across the country.
This isn't about racial justice or police brutality,
it's about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. Take a look at this
article at The Herland Report:
"What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by
the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower and
end the national sovereignty principles that president Trump stands for in America .
The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia
Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal and nothing else has worked. The aim is to end
democracy in the United States, control Congress and politics and assemble the power into the
hands of the very few
That sounds about right to me. The protests are merely a fig leaf for a "color revolution"
that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign
governments in the last 70 years. Have the chickens have come home to roost? It certainly looks
like it. Here's more from the same article:
"Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support
those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund
them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political
instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in."
So, yes, the grievances are real, but that doesn't mean that someone else is not steering
the action. And just as the media is shaping the narrative for its own purposes, so too, there
are agents within the movement that are inciting the violence. All of this suggests the
existence of some form of command-control that provides logistical support and assists in
communications. Check out this excerpt from a post at Colonel Pat Lang's website Sic Semper
Tyrannis:
"The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around
the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen
water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a
well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates
these plans and gives "execute orders?"
Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are
fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present
meme of "Defund the Police" is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously
across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis
was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse
abolishing the police force.
Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of
the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have
an excuse ."
("My take on the present situation", Sic Semper Tyrannis)
Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa's "logistical capabilities". The United
States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the
same time. It's beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the
country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a
sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose
task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem.
None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being
destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar
to the CIA's color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet
government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans
into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country
easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here's a short
excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog "Another Day in the Empire":
"The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and
political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more
critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack
natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling
elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal,
and murder .
It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main
problem -- boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all -- black,
white, yellow, brown -- as expliotable and dispensable serfs. " (" 2 Million Arab Lives
Don't Matter ", Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)
The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of
this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to
push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that
will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.
the media narrative that applauds the "mainly peaceful protests" while ignoring the vast
destruction to Hong Kong where there was neither police violence nor racial discrimination.
Look like the same organizing principles were used in both places.
Of course that explains why anti-fa attack Yellow Vests in Germany.
The Yellow Vests are the true people's movement and as shown in the video below it is not
about the left and the right for the yellow vest but common people fed up with the system, a
true grass roots movement of the people.
And Anti-fa, the Whores of the Satanic elites attack them. Why would anti-fascists attack the
common man?
Watch every frame of this. It shows the government-media complex and their little thugs,
ANTIFA, in perfect collusion to interfere with the regular Germans trying to stop the Satanic
communist-Globo homo project.
Few arguments in contra of the article. Can any-one conceive of there being a competition between BLM rioting organizing and
covertly supporting, and Corona-19, where the elites were very cohesive internationally in the face.
The target, Trump, the man with no policies, the implement nothing, is it such a worthy target to a fraction of the power
elites? That would speak for shallowness on their behalf. Creating back-ground noise to fade out the re-organizing of society,
regardless of actors as Trump could be an acceptable explanation. "Keep the surplus population busy. Keep the attention on the
streets".
There is a trade-off. The international elites see the exposure of the US internal policies, the expenditure of energy, do
they regard the situation as something to copy-paste, an interesting experiment, or as weakness to be taken advantage of?
Probably the first, then BLM covert support chains perfectly with Corona-19, and scales things up.
"Black neighborhoods need more security not less."
Police are not security, they're repression. Anybody of any color who thinks they're safer
with heavily armed bureaucrats blundering around is a moron.
And since when does reductions in guard labor equal austerity? There are several economic
rights that should not be derogated, but assholes with guns impounding cars is not one of
them. If the residents of a community are asking for more cops, that's one thing. They are
not. Law enforcement budgets are stuffed up the ass of residents and often municipalities.
Look into e.g. the MA "strong chief" enabling acts. States have massive unfunded pension
liabilities in large part because of police featherbedding. That's what's being pushed by the
"deep state" (you mean CIA.) The evident CIA use of provocateurs is aimed at justifying
further increases in repressive capacity.
OK bye! Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out! Stupid and delusional though pigs are, it's dimly dawning on them that America considers
them crooked loudmouthed violent assholes. Here's a typical one exercising what Gore Vidal
called the core competence of police, whining.
Boo hoo hoo, asshole, go home and beat your wife or eat a gun or whatever it is you dream
of doing in retirement, cause the states can't afford your crooked unions' pensions in this
induced depression. Cut these white man's welfare jobs.
Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question.
In the Sunday edition of the New York Times– the official propaganda organ of US
elites– an article is entirely devoted to creating "plausible deniability" that Antifa
is behind the violence in the protests that have swept the country.
Why is the Times so concerned that its readers might have a different opinion on this
matter? Why do they want to convince people that the protests-riots are merely spontaneous
outbursts of anti-racist sentiment? Could it be because the Times job is to create a version
of events that suits the interests of the elites it serves? Here's a few excerpts from
today's piece titled "Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests":
While anarchists and anti-fascists openly acknowledged being part of the immense
crowds, they call the scale, intensity and durability of the protests far beyond anything
they might dream of organizing. Some tactics used at the protests, like the wearing of
all black and the shattering of store windows, are reminiscent of those used by anarchist
groups, say those who study such movements. (plausible deniability)
Anarchists and others accuse officials of trying to assign blame to extremists rather
than accept the idea that millions of Americans from a variety of political backgrounds have
been on the streets demanding change. Numerous experts also called the participation of
extremist organizations overstated. (plausible deniability)
"A significant number of people in positions of authority are pushing a false narrative
about antifa being behind a lot of this activity," said J.M. Berger, the author of the
book "Extremism" and an authority on militant movements. "These are just unbelievably large
protests at a time of great turmoil in this country, and there is surprisingly little
violence given the size of this movement.".. (plausible deniability)
In New York, the police briefed reporters on May 31, claiming that radical anarchists
from outside the state had plotted ahead of protests by setting up encrypted communications
systems, arranging for street medics and collecting bail funds.
Within five days, however, Dermot F. Shea, the city's police commissioner, acknowledged
that most of the hundreds of people arrested at the protests in New York were actually New
Yorkers who took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes and were not motivated by political
ideology . John Miller, the police official who had briefed reporters, told CNN that most
looting in New York had been committed by "regular criminal groups." (plausible
deniability)
Kit O'Connell, a longtime radical leftist activist and community organizer in Austin, said
that shortly after Mr. Trump's election, the group took part in anti-fascist protests in the
city against a local white supremacist group and scuffled separately with Act for America, an
anti-Muslim organization.
Why is the Times acting like Antifa's attorney? Why are the trying to minimize the role of
professional agitators? Why is the Times so determined to shape the public's thinking on this
matter?
Doesn't this suggest that Antifa and other groups operating within the protest movement
are actually linked to agencies in the deep state that are conducting another operation
against the American people?
@anonymous anonymous, I have been encouraging cops to quit for a long time. They are
protecting the wrong people, being used to protect people in the ruling class that hate and
despise cops just a little less than they hate and despise the rest of us civilians.
To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested, charged, prosecuted,
defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks. No white person should have
anything to do with it. Any white person policing negros in America is making a huge mistake,
and should immediately quit.
The pensions are not going to be paid, and the crazy, Soros paid for black people are
going to make it impossible for a white cop pretty soon anyway. Might as well walk before
they make you run.
Don't worry about BLM, which is corporate phoney bullshit protest, easter parades and
internet posturing. The blacks in the street don't fall for that shit. Look what happens when
coopted oreos try to herd everybody back to tame marching:
The provocateurs are not influencing them. The sellout house negroes are not influencing
them. They know what they want. The regime is shitting its pants. If they scapegoat Trump and
purge him, Biden will inherit the same problem only worse.
Won't these riots create a wave of revulsion among the silent majority and consolidate
Trump's support base?
That's what I am wondering too. It makes more sense to me that the elites driving these
BLM riots are those who support Trump. Terrify people and threaten the existence of police is
a good way to get elderly white voters out of their covid lockdowns on election day.
Doesn't this suggest that Antifa and other groups operating within the protest movement
are actually linked to agencies in the deep state that are conducting another operation
against the American people?
Do we really want to suggest the CIA is committing treason against the American people?
Isn't it more likely that the Times is agitating against the CIA for other reasons? Reasons
Carlos Slim could explain?
For those who haven't read Pepe Escobar's latsest on BLM, here's a couple clips:
Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 by a trio of middle class, queer black women very
vocal against "hetero-patriarchy", is a product of what University of British Columbia's
Peter Dauvergne defines as "corporatization of activism".
Over the years, Black Lives Matter evolved as a marketing brand, like Nike (which
fully supports it). The widespread George Floyd protests elevated it to the status of a new
religion. Yet Black Lives Matter carries arguably zero, true revolutionary appeal. This is
not James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud". And it does not get even close to
Black Power and the Black Panthers' "Power to the People".
Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford
Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the
Kellogg Foundation.
The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is
crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter, the
organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party machine;
adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the 0.001%.
an evident ham-handed attempt to make this all about race. The real threat to this police
state is racial and international solidarity against state predation – the stuff that
got Fred Hampton killed,
"when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the
black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too We say you don't fight racism
with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with
no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism."
or Angela Davis and the Che-Lumumba club. BAP is right back on this and the resonating
international demonstrations show that that's the right track. The whole world sees what this
is about, except for a few fucked-over US whites.
botazefa, of course the CIA is committing treason against the American people. Where were you
when they whacked JFK, then RFK? Where were you when they blew up OKC? Where were you when
they released anthrax on the Senate, infiltrated and protected 9/11 terrorists, assigned more
terrorists to MITRE to blind NORAD, blew up the WTC for the second time, and exfiltrated the
Saudi logisticians?
Anybody unaware that CIA has been pure treason from inception is (1) retarded XOR (2) a
CIA traitor.
Sorry. The assholes on this asshole site will not let you say that what is important is how
the super-billionaires control us. They are going to insist that it's niggerniggernigger all
the way home and that's all there is to it. You would think they were paid. Or really, really
stupid.
When Gina, she-wolf of Udon Thani, got busted for trying to overthrow the United States
government with Russiagate, she hung onto her job by rigging the succession with all the
Brennan traitors who ran the Russiagate coup.
So we should expect that Gina will now stage a couple massacres like Kent State and
Jackson State, because that's how CIA ratfucked Nixon when he didn't knuckle under.
Gina's extra motivated to stay on top because she's criminally culpable for systematic and
widespread torture:
@Mike Whitney Excellent article and I believe excellent analysis of the situation.
Where we may differ is with Trump's complicity in Deep State efforts. I believe Trump is a
minion of the Deep State. His actions and inactions can not be explained any other way.
Let's assume for a minute, that Pepe Escobar is correct when he says this:
"Black Lives Matter profited in 2016 from a humongous $100 million grant from the Ford
Foundation and other philanthropic capitalism stalwarts such as JPMorgan Chase and the
Kellogg Foundation .
The Ford Foundation is very close to the U.S. Deep State. The board of directors is
crammed with corporate CEOs and Wall Street honchos. In a nutshell; Black Lives Matter,
the organization, today is fully sanitized; largely integrated into the Democratic Party
machine; adored by mainstream media; and certainly does not represent a threat to the
0.001%.
If this is true–and I believe it is– then Black Lives Matter is no different
than USAID or any of the other NGOs that are used to incite revolution around the world. If
this is true, then there is likely a CIA link to these protests, the main purpose of which is
to remove Trump from office.
So Black Lives Matter= activist NGO linked to US Intel agencies= Regime Change
Operation
But there is something else going on here too, (that many readers might have noticed) that
is, the way social media has been manipulated to put millions of young people on the street
in order to promote the agenda of elites.
How did they manage that?
How did they get millions of young people to come out day after day (14 days so far) in
over 400 cities to protest an issue about which they know very little aside from the media's
irritating reiteration of "systemic racism", (a claim that is not supported by the data.)
IMO, we are seeing the first successful social media saturation campaign launched probably
by the Pentagon's Office Strategic Communications or a similar outfit within the CIA. Having
already taken control over the entire mainstream media complex, the intel agencies and their
friends at the Pentagon are now wrapping their tentacles around internet communications in
order to achieve their goal of complete tyrannical social control.
As always, the target of these massive covert operations is the American people who had
better pull their heads out of the sand pronto and come up with a plan for countering this
madness.
@anonymous The elephant in the room, that seems to be ignored by all is the simple fact
that Hispanics are working class heroes. And they outnumber the blacks, and hate their guts
for the most part. Not the scrawny punks withe Che t-shirts, but the actual working types
that are less than thrilled to deal with the weak. Notice how no Hispanic barrios have EVER
been f ** ked with, no matter when the race riot? There is an open fatwa from La Eme
regarding blacks that has never been rescinded. Has a lot to do with the kneegro exodus from
the LA area, which correlates with the lack of looting in the formerly black areas. Which the
MSM prefers to ignore. The happy idiots are mugging for the cameras on a daily basis in
Hollywood, but the Hispanic run Sheriff's office has no problem with popping gas and
defending businesses. Also note that the MSM only reports on areas when a local government
craters to the mob. LA County was under curfew for 7 days due to a mob of looters that
numbered perhaps 2000. If that Jew mayor (with the Italian surname) had not allowed the
looting, then we would have seen the kind of 36 hour turnaround like we had with Rodney King.
The ethnic group that ignores the MSM and stands up for its own people will win in the end.
Right now we are looking more toward the kind of Celtic/Meso-American alliance that is well
known in the penal system. These groups can exist side by side, with each ignoring the other.
Blacks, on the other paw seem to be unable to keep to themselves, at least on the ghetto
level, and will always be an issue for civilization. It's time we stop calling for a generic
and all-inclusive White establishment. The race traitors and weaklings forfeit that right.
When Celts, Italians, Germans, etc. were proud and independent, there was strength. It's time
to return to that ideal. Only the negroid actually lumps all whites together, which the Jews
use as a divisive tool. Strength should be idolized, rather than weakness exploited.
I'm saying that the NYT is not necessarily mouthpiece *only* for the Deep State. As for
your JFK assassination – Senate Anthrax – 9/11 etc, those are considered
conspiracy theories and I've never been persuaded otherwise. I've read up on the theories and
they are not strong.
I don't know what a retarded XOR is except as it relates to logic diagrams and I don't
work for the CIA.
Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?
It's called Jewish lawfare for Antifa, Jewish control of media, and Jewish cult of Magic
Negro.
Even though Jews led the Gentric Cleansing campaigns against blacks by using mass
immigration, globo-homo celebration, and white middle class return to cities, the Jews are
now pretending be with the blacks and throwing the immigrants, white middle class, and homos
to the black mobs.
simple fact that Hispanics are working class heroes
Some are. Most aren't. And the 'not'% grows with selective Americanization (not
assimilation). Still, I'll take them over the blacks, even with their generally inferior (to
White) culture.
Whites are better with separation from them along with blacks. Whatever the prime driver,
both groups have poisoned America, likely beyond repair. Conquistador gonnna
conquistador.
M. Whitney in comment 21 clarifies his view of BLM as the impetus for this rebellion. That
does not square with the reports of people on the street.
BLM is exactly analogous to BDS: a controlled opposition of feckless halfassed gestures
designed to distract from the real movement. You hear BLM apparatchiks whining about getting
their movement hijacked because people in the streets show solidarity with oppressed groups
worldwide – and youe hear BLM getting booed by the people they're trying to corral.
BLM's mission is putting words in the protestors' mouths. You hear Democrat BLM spokesmodels
trying to distort calls for police abolition and no more impunity. And real protestors call
bullshit.
BLM works on dumb white guys: hating on BLM makes them feel very edgy and defiant. Black
Lives Matter! Blue Lives Matter! Black! Blue! Black! Blue! Catnip for dumbshits, courtesy of
CIA. Keeps them away from the really subversive stuff, which makes perfect sense for whites
too.
@ICD Look into whether the training of cops has been outsourced and privatized. Or simply
shortened to save money.
And ask why the police are even armed when in Communist China they are not, and
traditionally in the non-American West they were not, now are in imitation of America.
Ann Nonny Mouse, truer words were never spoken. Chinese cops have these cute little
nightsticks, and sometimes they will bop a guy and the guy just stands there and says Ow and
the cops continue to reason with him, no restraint, incapacitation, any of that shit. British
cops used to be that way, they used to reason with you. Now they're all American style
Assholes, if not Israeli concentration camp guards. Just nuke FOP HQ in Memphis.
Koch sees privatization as a future profit center and a chance to control the cops
himself. They're not trainable, they're too fucking stupid. We all did fine without pigs up
through most of the 19th century. Hue and cry works fine. Fire all the cops and replace them
with unarmed women social workers. That's all they are, prodigiously incompetent social
workers.
Too, those many businesses with all that unsold inventory sitting around gathering dust due
to Covid isolation will benefit from insurance payments covering their losses due to looting.
The cherry on top.
Are you just clueless or what? Did you notice the names of the Antifa leaders that have
been exposed? They are Amish Right? They are Jews and they will always be Jews! Soros and
other Jews have been running this game for a long time. Where have you been? SDS in Chicago
no Jews there right!
The CIA and the FBI overwhelmed with Jews can you count? All the professors who have been
destroying whites with their fake studies blaming everything wrong in the world on Whites and
Western Civilization. The entire Media owned by who?
Either you were dropped out of a spaceship a few days ago or you are a total idiot and
can't see the forest before trees.
Try this: The Percentage of all Ivy League Presidents, top adminstrators, deans etc take a
guess then go count them and see which group they belong to.
Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the
killing of George Floyd?
It's all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative
.
* * *
This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA's color revolutions designed to
topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose "shock therapy" on
the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and
leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock
troops and wealthy globalist mandarins.
One must wonder: How could the CIA and the U.S. Democrat establishment foment and
coordinate all of the Black Lives Matter protests occurring in Canada, several nations of
South and Central America, the U.K., Ireland, throughout the European Union, and in
Switzerland, the Middle East (Turkey, Iran ), and in Asia (Korea, Japan .) and New Zealand,
Australia, and Africa?
Mr. Whitney: Neither magic nor bigotry-induced hallucinations can forge a tenable
conspiracy theory.
I think the primary reason the mainstream media doesn't want the general public, especially
those living outside the major cities, to understand the extent of the destruction and
violence that spread in a highly-coordinated fashion across America, is that this would be
cause for alarm among a majority of Americans who would demand more Law & Order, which
would redound to Trump's benefit.
Notice Trump is countering by tweeting "LAW & ORDER!"
Here is Trump tweeting "Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle
is being discussed in the Fake News Media[?] That is very much on purpose "
Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle is being discussed in
the Fake News Media. That is very much on purpose because they know how badly this weakness
& ineptitude play politically. The Mayor & Governor should be ashamed of
themselves. Easily fixed!
The outcome of the election in November could hinge on the urgency the public places on
the issue of Law & Order. Hence the media's all out effort to minimize the extent of the
Anarchy and Violence and the financial sponsorship, planning, and coordination behind it.
Please see my comment of June 15, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT (comment # 34). I must apologize for
that comment's insufficiency (owed to my posting that comment before I happened upon your
comment to which this comment replies). Had I encountered your comment earlier, my
June 15, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT comment (comment # 34) would have observed that you are
triumphantly illogical as you are a world class crackpot.
@ICD You said it. Police Departments country-wide are stuffed up the wazoo with more cash
than they can spend. But what do they cry? Poor us. Poor us. We ain't got no money.
This is what they, and by they, I mean all our owners and their overseers, always do. They
cry poverty when they are rolling in loot.
Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?
Yes, and the left(unwittingly) will help them with their cause, and the right will
cowardly hide right behind the deep state as protection from the violent left.
@Priss Factor You are extremely unlikely to receive any of those things from a "Negro".
90% of Americans are unlikely to even see more than ten black people in their entire lives.
I wish you psychotic fucking female idiots on this website who are constantly blathering
about black people could realize how annoying you are to the 90% of white people who are not
living in or next to black ghettos. Please STFU and allow discourse to trend in more
pertinent directions, and move away from black people if you're so paranoid about them.
@Mike Whitney The (((media))) have an uphill battle in convincing us to deny the evidence
of our eyes -- black-hooded white punks throwing bricks through storefronts then inviting
joggers to loot.
That is why so many platforms, even "free speech" GAB, are wildly censoring
counter-narratives.
@Brian Reilly Stephen Molyneux said that police forces were originally geared to operate
under white Christian societies where there was a high level of trust and people were
law-abiding. I remember when I was a kid, we didn't even lock our doors. Our bikes were left
out on the front lawn, sometimes for days, weeks, and nobody took them. Nobody locked their
car doors. People just didn't steal other people's stuff. When a cop tried to pull you over,
you didn't hit the gas pedal and take off. You didn't run from the cops; you were polite to
them and they were polite to you.
Tucker Carlson said that Blacks are now asking for their own hospitals (I forget what city
this was) and their own doctors and nurses. Blacks schools, Black police forces.
Tribes don't mix. Their culture is different than our culture. Why should they change for
us, and why should we change for them?
It is a marriage that does not work. Either send them back to Africa (best solution) or
give them Mississippi and put up a big wall. Then let them pay for their own upkeep –
all of it. Good luck with that.
Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass
meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police
force.
Mayor Jacob Frey got elected at his extremely young age by flanking on the Left with anti
police rhetoric, He is the the originator of this crisis; as soon as the video of Floyd's
death was public Frey publicly and literally called the four cops murderers and said
he was powerless to have them arrested. That was a false accusation of police impunity,
because the supposedly powerless Frey was able to order the police to vacate their own
station thus letting the demonstrators take over and burn it. Yet to draw back a bit the Deep
State if worried about other states.
That event Frey largely created was the key moment of this whole thing. Trump could have
nipped it in the bud by had sending in troops immediately the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct was
burnt down. Crushing the riots in that city and preventing the example infecting the
demonstrations in other cities. and turning them into cover for riots. Trump did not want to
be seen as Draconian although it would not have been at all violent, because no one is going
to challenge the army's awesome presence once it arrived on the streets,as worked in the
Rodney King riots.
The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having
succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists
are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country
for a new authoritarian order.
George Floyd had foam visible at the corners of his mouth when the police arrived. Autopsy
tests revealed Fentanyl and COVID-19: both from Wuhan. I Can't Breath is America gearing up
to confront and settle accounts with Xi's totalitarian state.
Current events might seem to be a setback for the US, but provide the opportunity for a
re-set with the black community, with a potential outcome of resolving race tensions that
have been a cause of dissension and internal weakness, just as during the Cold War racial
integration was thought essential by anti communists like Nixon. America is gearing up to
settle accounts with China, which is a Deep State new Cold War. While it is a possibility
that whites could lose control of their society, and see it fall into the hands of an
explicitly anti -acist elite/ minorities alliance, the Deep State is not the same as the
hyper capitalist elite whose growing wealth depends on China.
Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?
@Mike Whitney The Duran did an excellent video titled "Social Media 'Unchecked Power'"
where they talk about Trump and Barr going after the tech companies and their virtual
monopolies with an executive order.
At 33:45 they state that Microsoft (Bill Gates) invested $1 billion and the CIA invested
$16 million into Facebook when it was still operating as a university network. The CIA were
one of the first investors in Facebook.
Why the hell was the CIA investing $16 million to get Facebook off the ground? Hmmm. Could
it be because Facebook would be instrumental in controlling the narrative?
The young people, who have no experience and no real knowledge of history, are being taken
in by these social media companies who are playing on their emotions. Any dissenting opinions
are blocked or banned. Very dangerous.
@Loup-Bouc Well, the "deep state" is just an euphemism for the jewish power structure,
and all those places you named are run be jews. That jews cooperate in extended conspiracies
without regard of borders should be common knowledge for every observer of history and
current politics. I see nothing far-fetched. Honestly, my mind would boggle if I should
explain, how the Antifa gets away with those things it always gets away with, if it wasn't
controlled by the "deep state". And I couldn't explain the international cooperation either.
As Pepe' Escobar said – Americans looting is a natural thing – just look at how
the US Military has stolen the gaz and oil from Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. and is trying like
hell for the Venezuelan oil fields. Not to mention where all their gold, silver and billions
of dollars have gone. The list of the USG looting criminal record is unprecedented . It's a
Family Tradition. Enjoyed the article !
@MrFoSquare The Capitol Hill area of Seattle that has been taken over as an "autonomous
zone" by the protesters is really rather laughable.
One of the first things they did was put up what they called "light fencing". Oh, so when
THEY put up walls, that's perfectly fine. When Trump tries to do it, that's evil and racist.
Borders are A-okay when they're doing it.
They've colonized an area for themselves. I thought the Progressive Left was against
colonialism, taking someone else's property. Isn't that what they've done? They've taken over
whole neighborhoods.
And they've got armed patrol guards checking people as they enter. If you're not in
agreement with their ideology, you're not allowed to enter. So apparently it's okay to have
border controls when they're running the world.
They're doing everything they profess to be against. Hilarious.
@Brian Reilly "anonymous, I have been encouraging cops to quit for a long time."
Dude, why? I don't want to get jacked by some thug or some immigrant policeman from
Honduras. And I can't defend myself because it would be a hate crime.
There are underlying motives, or "hidden agendas", beneath the authentic struggle for
justice. The greatest motive is for power: either to retain it or gain it. The need or desire
for power can be identified in every conflict in history. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
@Realist So you think that everything they've done to Trump has been one big show and
he's been in on it? The pussy tape, Stormy Daniels, spying on his campaign, the leaking, the
Steele Dossier, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, his impeachment, lying to the FISA Courts by the
FBI, CIA's involvement, Mueller Report, DNC server, Clinton and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac,
fake news media, sanctuary cities, courts disobeying his executive orders, Covid-19, protests
– all of it has been a ruse to fool us into thinking that Trump is a legitimate
opposition?
What, it's better to have the citizens split politically 50/50? That way there's never a
majority who start throwing their weight around and making trouble for the elite looters?
Keep the people fighting among each other and divided?
Trump has gone through all of this, but he's just faking it? Are we Truman from the Truman
Show?
I guess you could be right, but what if you're not? What if Trump is actually an outsider?
He's never really ever been part of the elite, not really. If he is truly an outsider, then
these people have been a party to an attempted coup against a duly-elected President.
And if so, then that's sedition and they should hang.
@PetrOldSack Trump is just a puppet, well maybe a bit more, of the part of the MIC and
Deep State that apparently has a different agenda. This is not to say that they are "good
people" but they seem to want to keep the US as a functioning republic and a major power.
Maybe they have some plans re the other group(s) in the elites that are extremely dangerous
for those groups. Which would explain why those groups ("globalists") want to remove those
elements of influence people behind Trump get from the fact that he is the president. This
explains why fake Covid-19 was so pumped by the media and when that apparently did not work
they moved on to BLM "color revolution". It is interesting how all of this plays out, as it
will decide the fate of the world. Ironically, Xi, Putin and other leaders that represent
groups wanting to maintain (some) sovereignty of their states have a common enemy, even as
their states are in competition, namely "globalist" elements within their own power
structures.
One of the goals of the British security service, MI5, is to control the leader or deputy
leader of any subversive organisation larger than a football team. The same is likely true in
every country.
The typical criticism of MI5 is that it is too passive, and does not use its knowledge to
close down hostile groups. In Algeria, the opposite happened: the Algerian security service
infiltrated the most extreme Islamist group in the 1990s and aggravated the country's civil
war by committing massacres, with the goal of creating public revulsion for the
Islamists.
This range of possibilities makes it hard to figure out what the Deep State and other
manipulators are doing.
@Sean Frey is a weak Leftist. The equally weak Governor (another Leftie) needed to handle
the situation. He didn't. Trump told him that the feds would help if he asked; he didn't.
This is all on the state and local governments. They did nothing except to tell the cops
to stand down while the city got looted and burned.
If Trump had sent in the military, they would have screamed blue murder. They probably
would have called for his impeachment. Of course, that's what they wanted Trump to do. Thank
goodness Trump didn't fall for their trap.
So the NYT has joined the vanguard af the American People's Revolution?! People change sides
and not all organisations are uniform, even the CIA. There has to be some organisation to
these protests and whoever is providing it, I doubt the protesters are complaining, but want
even more of it, and for it to be more effective, widespread and to grow. And finding
protesters is no problem now or in the future considering the state of the economy, business
closures, rising unemployment, expensive education. What are all these young people supposed
to do? Sit at home playing video games, surfing porn, watching TV? Or go on a holiday? Now in
these circumstances? I guess they're bored with all that so they may as well hit the streets
and stay on the streets as they'll be on the streets anyway when they get evicted because
they can't pay the rent. And as they're being impoverished they may as well steal what they
can. And obviously they don't fear arrest and are happy to get a criminal record since even a
clean sheet won't get them a job in the failing economy, and they know that. I'm sure many
want a solution that will provide for their future. But who is providing it? So it's on them
to create it. Of course politicians will want to use them and manipulate them for their own
ends. And the elites, and the deep state too. And sure there are Jews in it as in anything.
And sure they're fat, ugly, and degenerate – they're Americans reflecting their own
society. But where it goes nobody knows
@Mike Whitney "Is Antifa a group of deep state agitators? That's the question."
99% of them wouldn't have a clue as to any larger strategic direction. Sorry,
but to repeat myself: "useful idiots".
"Do Deep State Elements Operate Within the Protest Movement?"
Well, duh! It seems likely that the entire George Floyd murder on camera was a staged
event, its even possible that he/it was never really killed. See:
PSYOP? George Floyd "death" was faked by crisis actors to engineer revolutionary riots,
video authors say
" Numerous videos are now surfacing that directly question the authenticity of the claimed
"death" of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Several trending videos appear to reveal
striking inconsistencies in the official explanations behind the reported death of Floyd.
These videos appear to reinforce the idea that the George Floyd incident was, if not entirely
falsified, most definitely planned and rigged in advance. It is already confirmed that the
Obama Foundation was tweeting about George Floyd more than a week before he is claimed to
have died. "
"Obviously, since Barack Obama doesn't own a time machine, the only way the Obama
Foundation could have tweeted about George Floyd a week before his death is it the entire
event was planned in advanced.
Note: We do not endorse every claim in each of the videos shown below, but we believe the
public has the right to hear dissenting views that challenge the official narratives, and we
believe public debate that incorporates views from all sides of a particular issue offers
inherent merit for public discourse.
Numerous video authors are now spotting stunning inconsistencies in the viral videos that
claim to show white cops murdering George Floyd in broad daylight. Without exception, these
video authors, many of whom are black, believe:
at least one of the "police officers" was actually a hired crisis actor who has appeared
in other staged events in recent years.
that the black man depicted in the viral videos is not, in fact, an individual named
George Floyd.
that the responding medical personnel were not EMTs but were in fact mere crisis actors
wearing police costumes.
Each of the video authors shown below reveals still images and video clips that they say
support their claims. Here's an overview of some of the most intriguing videos and the
summary of what those videos are saying: .":
@Mike Whitney I think you are correct Mike. IF blm got $100 million from anyone it
follows that they are beholden -- & the only entities capable of such "generosity" are
"establishment" it therefore follows that BLM are beholden (controlled) by the establishment
( .the deep state .)
Now the New York Times thinks that the black, brown, white and yellow lives are dispensable
does it mean their own GRAY lives matter more to the rest of us? No, it does not!
The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably
involved.
It seems right and logical.
But what I don't understand, is why the deep state elite don't understand that in the end the
collapse of the "traditional society" will touch them too in their private life. In the long
run the ruining of the US will ruin everybody in the US including them. Don't they get it ?
Maybe they are intoxicated by their own lies are are begining to lose their lucidity. Like Al
Pacino intoxicated by his own coke in scarface.
@MrFoSquare What we need are some solid numbers:
How many arrested? (& who are they?)
How many properties destroyed?
Dollars worth of damage?
Which cities had the worst damage?
A social media "history" of protest/riot posting ?
Where/who are responsible for brick/frozen water bottle stashes?
Travel histories of notable offenders?
Links between "protesters" & the media ?
Money? Who/what/when/how was all this funded on a day-to-day basis.
And so on.
Mike Whitney doesn't know the first thing. It takes a lot of organizing time and personnel to
properly prepare and lead in the field any large public protest. There are people experienced
in this. Getting them together and deploying their capability is required.
These protests are classic unplanned, spontaneous actions. At least the first major wave
of them. Only after some time will parties try to lead, organize. Or manipulate.
First thing, it's like trying to herd cats. So, you need marshals. Lots of them. Ably led,
and clearly seen. Just to try and steer a protest down one street or to some point. You need
first aid available, provision for seniors and children. Water. Knowledgeable people to deal
with the media.
People who know what they're doing to deal with senior police. With city transit, buses,
taxis. Hospitals, road construction, fire departments. A good protest cleans itself up too so
provide the means for that. Loudspeakers, music – all this an more has to be organized.
By some people.
And 100% of this or even a hint of organizing is not evident at these protests. And the
evidence is easy to see. Organizers advertise too for volunteers. Everything in plain sight
for those with eyes to see.
If you are stupid enough to think that some handful of fruitcakes from some official
agency could even find their way to a protest, actually have a clue how to conduct themselves
and not get laughed at or just ignored – there's no hope for you. You know nothing
about protests and are pedalling fantasy.
@obwandiyag As usual, you're completely delusional. Most police departments are in the
exact same boat as the municipalities that fund them: one downturn (like, say, a public
lockdown followed by public disorder and looting) from going right to the wall.
There won't be any need to "defund" police; most of America's cities and towns are soon to
be on the bread line, looking for those Ctrl-P federal dollars. Quarterly deficits of twenty
trillion, here we come!
@Thomasina The power elite have different factions and they fight each other to a point,
but they do not try to expose each other. This is why none of Trump enemies are going to be
put in prison.
This is why Trump supports don't know what Genie Engery is, not that they would care.
The scum Trump appointed should tell you what side he's on.
I don't know if Antifa is run directly by the three-letter FedGov agencies. But I do know
that the university is the breeding ground for these vermin, and all universities, even
"private" ones, are largely funded by the governmnent, and are tax exempt.
@schnellandine The Hispanics in America are similar to waves of Italians in the late 19th
and early 20th Centuries, except the numbers are far larger and never ending, which impacts
assimilation. The Hispanics are the ones doing the hard physical labor for low pay, and they
are the ones in American society to invest in learning the skill to perform some of those
backbreaking, low paying jobs well. They are the Super Marios of today. Many of them ply
their trades as small businessmen. They are thankful for their jobs and the people they
serve.
Many are loving, salt-of-the-earth type people who genuinely love their blanco friends.
Howard Stern thinks their music sucks but at least they sing songs about el corazon, music of
the heart and of love. (No one is comparable to the Italians in that department, but what do
you suppose happened to the beautiful love music produced by black male vocalists as late as
a generation ago?) Except for the fact that Hispanics come from countries with long
traditions of corrupt, El Patron governments which unfortunately they want to enact here as a
social safety net, they are often traditional in their attitudes about religion and family.
Of course, they get in drunken brawls, abuse their women, and the graft and incompetence in
their institutions can be outrageous. The reason they flee here is because the world they've
created themselves in the shithole places they've leaving isn't as good as the West created
by Caucasian cultures. The law abiding, decent family people I'm speaking of prosper
alongside of whites and many come to recognize that whites and Hispanics can build a common
destiny that's far preferable to the direction black agitators are taking blacks in America.
So you think that everything they've done to Trump has been one big show and he's been
in on it? The pussy tape, Stormy Daniels, spying on his campaign, the leaking, the Steele
Dossier, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, his impeachment, lying to the FISA Courts by the FBI,
CIA's involvement, Mueller Report, DNC server, Clinton and Loretta Lynch on the tarmac,
fake news media, sanctuary cities, courts disobeying his executive orders, Covid-19,
protests – all of it has been a ruse to fool us into thinking that Trump is a
legitimate opposition?
Absolutely.
Keep the people fighting among each other and divided?
Yes, but the elite do not fear the majority they are in complete control through
insouciance and stupidity on the majority.
I guess you could be right, but what if you're not? What if Trump is actually an
outsider?
He's not his actions and inactions are impossible to logically explain away he is a minion
of the Deep State.
The protest movement is directed and controlled by the same zionists who control the
government and their goal is the destruction of America and they are being allowed to do the
wrecking and destruction that they are doing, as this helps full fill the zionist communist
takeover of America.
To see where this is leading read up on the bolshevik-communist revolution in Russia and
the communist revolution in China and Cuba and Cambodia, and there is the future of
America.
@Christophe GJ They enjoy human suffering. Who knows maybe their compensation is linked
to dead bodies. The deep state types will dwell in gate communities that will never be
breached. The perks of owning both segments of the "opposition." As for the CIA's owners, a
sharp depopulation has been their goal for some time. Why it has to be so ghoulish and
prolong is anyone's guess.
@Brian Reilly "To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested,
charged, prosecuted, defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks."
Yeah, some city tried that. To try to satisfy the "Get White police out of our
neighborhoods" they did -- they re-orged and sent only black cops into black neighborhoods,
and let the White cops police the White neighborhoods. And the BLACK POLICE SUED to end that!
They were, they claimed (and legitimately, too!) being treated unfairly by making THEM police
the most violent, the most dangerous, the most deadly neighborhoods, and "protecting" the
White cops from that duty by letting only the White cops work the nice neighborhoods. They
WON too!
(note: "IKAGO" = "I know a good one." the all-too-often excuse from the unawakened!)
=====================
I don't mourn the loss of Baltimore. Or Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Atlanta, etc etc etc.
It is ultimately a huge benefit to have Negroes concentrated in these huge teeming Petri
dishes.
As always I advocate the complete White withdrawal from these horrible urban sh_tholes,
and as always I advocate that since Negroes do not want to be policed, to immediately stop
policing them.
And to anyone who might be naive enough to say "hey, there are good people in those
neighborhoods, who try to work and raise their kids, who obey the law and who abhor the
lawlessness and rioting as much as anyone" . my response is that these same IKAGO's voted for
a Negro president, for Negro mayors, Negro city council members, Negro police chiefs and
Negro school superintendents, and now they are getting exactly what they deserve, good and
effing hard.
I have ZERO sympathy for blacks.
=====================
And the new rule:
Remember when seconds count, the police are not even obligated to respond.
Of course "deep state elements" operate in protests! What A STUPID question, Whitney. All
kinds of political tricksters, manipulators, provocateurs, idiots, fools, people suffering
from ennui, you name it Mike, they're involved. And yes, the murder of the black man in
Minneapolis was the trigger.
That's not the only cause of social unrest. There are lots of reasons that drive the
displeasure of the mass of people and it's not the silly "deep state". Before you use that
term, if you want any sort of salute from intelligent people, you need to define your terms.
Or are just just waving a red flag so you can attract a bunch of stupid Trumpsters?
There's a whole lot of deep state out there, good buddy. Just examine the federal budget
and whatever money you cannot assign to a particular institution or specific purpose, that is
funding your your "deep state". It's billions and billions. But there is no Wizard of Oz
behind the curtain to spend it all on nefarious purposes. Sure, the deep state destroyed the
WTC and killed a few thousand people. These hidden operators can do things civilians can only
imagine, but they cannot create movements, Whitney. You just can't fool all of the people all
of the time.
Are you having a touch of brain degeneration, Mike, like dear autocrat in the White
House?
A great article. While Trump may have some ties to the Deep State, I doubt very much that he
is their puppet. He won the nomination because he was against some of the Deep States key
policies. He even tried to implement his policies but mostly failed due to traitors in his
administration and all the coordinated coup attempts.
One recent development that causes me to think that this article is spot on is the blatant
attacks by retired generals and even currently serving generals against a sitting president.
Even Defense Sec. Esper (the Raytheon lobbyist) criticized Trump's comments on the
Insurrection Act, which was totally unnecessary since Trump only said that he had the
authority to use it.
The coordinated criticism of the generals just reminds me of how similar it is to the
coordinated effort by the CIA, FBI, State Department and NSA to use the Russiagate hoax and
impeachment hoax to remove Trump. The riots, the money funneled from BLM to Biden 2020,
support of Antifa by the MSM and the generals treasonous actions are not coincidences.
I'm surprised by the generally low level of the responses.
Mr. Whitney:
There haven't been 'millions' of protestors, maybe some thousands.
Please list the "valid grievances" that negros hold concerning the cops; are the cops
supposed to raise black IQ? These riots need to be suppressed pronto; don't waste your time
waiting for the fat orange buffoon to do anything.
Negros have no 'communities', and never will.
I'm wondering why Mr. Unz thinks he is required to let leftists like Whitney post
here.
(1)-There is a 'deep state'
(2)-(1) does NOT imply that negros are a noble race.
The opening statement is quite true. They've apparently been organizing under the radar for
some years now. Diversity is our greatest weakness and these fissures that run through the
country can be exploited. Blacks have been weaponized and used as the spearpoint along with
the more purposeful real Antifa (lots of wannabes walking around clad in black). Everything
has really been well coordinated and the Gene Sharp playbook followed. These 'color
revolution' employees are actually all over the globe, funded by various front groups and
NGOs. The money trail often leads to various billionaires like the ubiquitous Soros but
people like that may just be acting as fronts themselves. Supposed leftists working against
the interests of the value producing working class?
The George Floyd murder was a obviously a wholly staged Deep State event, complete with
the usual crisis actors, as this video summary clearly illustrates :
@Brian Reilly"To the issue at hand, black people should only be policed, arrested,
charged, prosecuted, defended, judged, and (if found guilty) punished by other blacks. No
white person should have anything to do with it. "
And when these same blacks attack or steal from a White person, which they often do, do
you think they'll get a just punishment from their fellow blacks or a high five?
The solution to the black problem is complete separation, there is no other way.
@Mike Whitney But why do you assume the CIA wants to get rid of Trump? Isn't that
tantamount to judging a book by its cover? Americans have been on to the evil shenanigans of
the intelligence community for decades. Trump is nothing more than controlled opposition and
a false sense of security for "patriots". One needs look no further than the prognostications
of Q to see that Trump is the beneficiary of deep state propaganda. The CIA's modus operandi,
together with the rest of the IC, is to deceive. So if they appear to be doing one thing
(fighting Trump) you can be sure they intend the opposite.
Americans are nose deep in false dichotomies, and Trump is a pole par excellence. Despite
his flagrant history as an NYC liberal, putative fat cat, swindler, and network television
superstar, he is now depicted as either a populist outsider, or a literal Nazi. The simple
fact is that he is an actor and confidence artist. He is playing a role, and he is playing to
both sides of the aisle, and his work is to deceive the entirety of the American public,
together with the mockingbird media, which is merely the yin to his pathetic yang.
Too many Americans think they have a choice, or a chance, by simply minding their own
business, consuming their media of choice, and voting. In fact, Americans are face to face
with the end of their history, as the country has been systematically looted for decades, and
will soon be demolished as it is no longer profitable to the oligarchs who manage the globe.
Obama-Trump is a 1-2 knockout punch.
@Uomiem That's a good point, and it's of the main problems I do have with Trump: his
cabinet picks and financial backers (Adelsen, Singer, et al.). But in fairness, what happens
when he tries to pick someone who's not approved by the system? Well, if they're cabinet
officers, they'll never get approved by the senate. And even if they're not, they will be
driven out of the White House somehow–just like Gen. Flynn and Steve Bannon. In short,
when it comes to staffing, Trump's choices are limited by the same swamp he's fighting. Sad
but true
@Thomasina Interesting comments by the Duran but I cannot find any evidence of a direct
investment by the CIA in Facebook. The CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, did invest in early
Facebook investor Peter Theil's company Palantir and other companies. Also, Graylock Partners
were also early investors in Facebook along with Peter Theil and the head of Graylock is
Howard Cox who served on In-Q-Tel's board of directors. But these are indirect inferences.
Unlike the clear and direct investment of the CIA in the company that was eventually
purchased by Google and is now called Google Earth, I can't find any evidence of a direct
investment by the CIA in Facebook. I have no doubt it's true since it's a perfect tool for
data gathering. Do you have any direct evidence of such an investment?
Is the Deep State stage-managing the "BLM" protests to further an agenda? Absolutely.
The main influence of the Deep State is felt in its complete dominance of the controlled
media.
Like mantras handed down by the commissars, the mainstream media keep repeating key
phrases to narrowly define what's happening: "mostly peaceful protests", "anti-black
racism".
The media is an organ of the Deep State. The Deep State will decide when the protests will
end, and when that day arrives, the media will suddenly pivot on cue like a school of fish or
a flock of birds.
Perhaps some non believers in the Deep State would like to explain why the multi trillion
dollar corporations in America are supporting BLM, Antifa and other anarchy groups since on
the face of it anarchy would be antithetical to these corporations?
Hint: The wealthy and powerful (aka Deep State) know that anarchy divides a populous
thereby removing their ability to resist their true enemy and even more draconian laws. The
die is being cast at this moment and the complete subjugation of the American people will,
probably, be effectuate by the end of this year. A full court press is under way and life is
about to change for 99% of the American people.
If you disagree with my hint correct it.
Too many Americans think they have a choice, or a chance, by simply minding their own
business, consuming their media of choice, and voting. In fact, Americans are face to face
with the end of their history, as the country has been systematically looted for decades,
and will soon be demolished as it is no longer profitable to the oligarchs who manage the
globe. Obama-Trump is a 1-2 knockout punch.
Your points are excellent. All tragic, devastating events in the last, at least, 20
years have been staged or played to facilitate the total control by the Deep State.
The problem is power – and the nature of those who lust for it. The police are very
powerful, by necessity and the nature of police work is the exercise of power – on the
street.
Not to mention the fact that police forces, like every other institution, are managed from
the top. Sgt. Bernstein back at the station calls the shots, gets to decide who is hired /
fired and generally runs the department like a CEO runs a company. Not all cops are rotten,
but if Sgt. Bernstein is a scumbag, the whole department tends to behave as a scumbag.
I'll give you two guesses, the second one doesn't count, as to which tribe of psychopaths
– who call themselves "chosen" – have mastered the art of playing both sides
against the middle, using the police as a very powerful tool to accomplish an ancient agenda
of world-domination, straight out of The Torah.
The police are just another sad story of the destruction of America, by Shlomo.
@Mike Whitney Any explanation that ignores that the catalyst for what is happening is the
Federal Reserve Notes free fall is not a good explanation.
This is a failed Communist Putsch. The people pushing it have enough control of major
cities to keep it alive but not enough to push it into the heartland. 400 million guns and a
few billion bullets are protecting freedom in the USA just like they were intended to.
All failed communist revolutions end in fascism taking power. The Yahoo news comments
sections are way to big to censor properly and they are already taking on a Fascist tone with
almost half the posters. This is only just beginning and most people are beginning to
understand that these lies non whites tell about the fake systemic racism are too dangerous
to go unchallenged. The idea that the protests ,the protests not the riots, have no
foundation in truth is starting to work its way to the forefront of white peoples minds.
Non whites are coddled by the establishment in the USA and no real racists have any power
in the USA so this whole thing is and has been for 50 years based on lies.
The jew mob is going to lose all their economic power over the next year or so as the Fed
Note hyper-inflates. The mob knows this and made a grab for ideological power using low IQ
ungrateful non whites they have been inculcating with anti white ideals for decades as their
foot soldiers.
They are screwed because the places they control are parasitic just like they are. Cities
are full of people making nothing and pretty much just doing service jobs for each other. All
the things needed to keep cities going come from outside the cities and the jew mob is not in
charge in the places that actually produce things. Not like they are in the cities
anyway.
Ignoring the currency rises makes you dishonest Mike.
I think the leadership and tactics of the police are deplorable. I can only surmise that the
local political leadership in many cities is on the inside of this latest scam.
The police should be able to launch attacks on the crowd to single out those who are
Antifa activists. That is what the riot police in France would do. They should try to ignore
the rabble behind which these activists are sheltering.
By remaining on the defensive and without using the element of surprise to capture these
activists, the police are sitting ducks.
My dad told me what it was like in Cairo when the centre of the city was destroyed in
1952. I was tiny at that time and remember my mother carrying me. We watched Cairo burning in
the distance. We were on the roof of the huge house of my Egyptian grandfather in
Heliopolis.
The looters and arsonists were well-equipped. It was not by any means spontaneous. They
smashed the locks on the draw-down shutters of the shops with sledge hammers. Next, they
looted the shop. Lastly, they tossed in Molotov cocktails. The commercial heart of Cairo was
largely destroyed in a few hours. Cinemas and the Casino were burnt. Cairo was a very
pleasant metropolis in those days. It became prosperous during WW2 by supplying the
Allies.
My family's small factory was in the very centre of Cairo – in Abbassia. My father
rounded up his workers to defend the factory. Many lived on the premises. They were all tough
Sa'idi from Upper
Egypt. Many were Coptic Christians. They all had large staffs that they knew how to use. The
arsonists and looters kept well clear.
JUNE 9, 2020 CityLab University: A Timeline of U.S. Police Protests
The latest protests against police violence toward African Americans didn't appear out of
nowhere. They're rooted in generations of injustice and systemic racism.
@Sean said:
"While it is a possibility that whites could lose control of their society, and see it fall
into the hands of an explicitly anti -[r]acist elite/ minorities alliance,"
"Anti-racist?
The entire matter is "explicit" racism directed against Euro-whites.
@gay troll "But why do you assume the CIA wants to get rid of Trump?"
John Brennan collaborated with James Comey on the Russian collusion narrative. Brennan is
indicative of the upper-echelon CIA and its orientation towards the globalist billionaire
class.
@Loup-Bouc Maybe you also noticed that the opening pages of the article suggested that
the author was unhinged when he made so much of an alleged editorial in the NYT which wasn't
an editorial but an opinion piece by an activist. And what about the spontaneous eruptions of
protest all round the world? Masterminded by the US "Deep State"? Absurd.
Mr. Whitney may have got to an age when he can no longer understand the young and their
latest fashionable fatuities and follies.
@obwandiyag " The assholes on this asshole site will not let you say that what is
important is how the super-billionaires control us. "
Nonsense, I rant against the largely Jewish super-billionaires all the time.
Truth is that blacks and working class whites are in relatively similar positions compared
to the 1%. We should be seeking alliances with people like Rev. Farrakhan, but instead, for
some curious reason, big Jewish money is pouring into keeping racial grievances alive and
kicking. It looks very much like a divide and conquer strategy.
Where did the antiwar and Occupy Wall Street movements go after Obama's election? My guess
is that the financial elite saw the danger of having OWS ask questions about the bailouts, so
they devoted a ton of time and energy into pushing racial grievance politics, gender neutral
bathrooms and the like. Their co-ethnics in the media collaborated with them in making sure
only one perspective made the news.
PS: if you don't like the website, simply avoid visiting it. Trust me, no one will miss
your inane posts.
"90% of Americans are unlikely to even see more than ten black people in their entire
lives."
I sure hope you're talking about IRL, because I see more than ten black people in any
commercial break on any TV show on any cable or network TV station every hour of every day.
In fact, it's at least 50/50 B/W and it feels more like 60/40 B/W. And it's always the blacks
who are in charge, the whites spill chips all over the kitchen floor
@SunBakedSuburb 15 seasons of The Apprentice on NBC is indicative of Trump's
orientation towards the globalist billionaire class. It sure was nice of NBC to thus
rehabilitate Trump's image after it became clear he was a cheat who could not even hold down
a casino. From fake wrestler to fake boardroom CEO, Trump has ALWAYS been made for TV.
As for Russiagate, it was a transparent crock of shit from the moment Clapper sent his
uncorrobated assertions under the aegis of "17 intelligence agencies". You assume the point
of the charade was to "get Trump", but really Russiagate was designed to deceive "liberals"
just as Q was designed to deceive "conservatives". It is the appearance of conflict that
serves to divide Americans into two camps who both believe the other is at fault for all of
society's ills. In fact, it is the Zionists and bankers who are to blame for society's ills,
and like the distraction of black vs. white, Democrat vs. Republican keeps everybody's
attention away from the real chauvinists and criminals.
@Sean Well, I can't deny that yours is an extremely original interpretation. It sure made
me think. I can't say I'm convinced, though it doesn't seem to have any conspicuous a priori
inconsistency with facts. I guess time will tell.
@Realist Agree. Someone posted he had a friend at Minneapolis airport. Incoming planes
were full of antifa types the day after Floyd died.
They are very well organized. They are notorious around universities. Well, not
universities in dangerous black neighborhoods. They live like students in crowded apartments
and organize all their movements. Plenty of dumb kids to recruit. Plenty of downwardly mobile
White grads who can't get jobs or into grad s hook because they're White. Those Whites go
into liberal rabble rousing instead of rabble rousing against affirmative action, so
brainwashed are they. Portland is a college town. That's why antifa is so well organized
there. Seattle's a college town too as is Chicago.
Why ANTIFA doesn't loot banks, doesn't stand in front od Soros home, JPMorgan headquarters,
big corporations, Bezos business .etc? Because rich are paying for riots ..the same way they
payed to support Hitler during WWII.
@Anon Thanks for highlighting the complex racial politics -- in this case between
Hispanics and Africans. That was something Ron Unz got right as well -- independently of the
numerology -- in the other article; basically saying that there have been a lot of various
social-engineering projects going on.
Naturally I'm liable for everything else you said ;/ no comment, no contest,
I think it will be alright if we can get back to basics, natural rights, republican
representative organization, pluralism, etc The corporate nightmare has everyone crammed into
a vat of human resources. Undo that, see how it goes, then take it from there.
@Mike Whitney The reason most of the rioters arrested were native New Yorkers is that
they were the useful idiots designated fall guys.
The organizers are adept at changing clothes hats and sunglasses. Their job is to get
things started by smashing windows of a Nike's store and running away letting a few looters
be arrested.
I remember something written by an Indian communist, not Indian nationalist How To Start a
Riot in the 1920s.
1 Start rumors about abuse of Indians by British.
2. Decide where to start the riots.
3 Best place is in the open air markets around noon. The merchants will have collected
substantial money. The local lay abouts will be up and about.
4 Instigators start fights with the merchants raid cash boxes overturn tables and the riot is
on.
The ancient Roman politicians started riots that way. It's standard procedure in every
country in every era. All this fuss and discussion by the idiot intelligentsia is ridiculous
as is everything the idiot intelligentsia thinks, writes and does.
We Americans experience a black riot every few years, just as we experience floods,
droughts, blizzards , earthquakes, forest fires, tornadoes floods and hurricanes.
As long as we have blacks and liberal alleged intellectuals we'll have riots.
"... Firstly your definition of 'deep state' is too limited, it includes the bureaucracy, much of the judiciary, banks and other financial institutions, and the major political parties. It is not restricted only to the intelligence agencies. It is not a US-specific issue, but a global one. For the deep state exists everywhere, and is often more powerful in commonwealth countries, such as here in apathetic Australia. ..."
"... When the CIA kills Kennedy you know you've got problems... And whilst agents in the CIA probably did not pull the trigger - their "assets" did... If you don't believe me spare me your tiresome ignorant replies and go and do some research... ..."
"... " We were warned about the Military Industrial Complex, Sadly the Government Media Complex, has done way more damage, and will be much harder to overcome" ~ Dr. Mike Savage 2008 ..."
Sky News Australia In this Special Investigation Sky News speaks to former spies, politicians and investigative journalists to
uncover whether US President Donald Trump is really at war with "unelected Deep State operatives who defy the voters".
George Soros, The clintons, The royal family, The Rothschild's, the Federal reserve as a whole, The modern Democrat, cia, fbi,
nsa, Facebook, Google, not to mention all the faceless unelected bureaucrats who create and push policies that impact our every
day lives. This, my lads, is the deep state. They run our world and get away with whatever they want until someone in their circle
loses their use (Epstein)
The Cabal owns the US intelligence agencies, the media, and Hollywood. That's how all these big name corrupted figure heads
aren't in prison for their crimes. The Clinton email scandal is a prime example. This is much bigger than the USA... it's effects
are world wide.
The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion: 1 - Demoralization 2 - Destabilization 3 - Crisis 4 - Normalization Are you not
entertained? The above is "their" roadmap. Learn what it means and spread this far & wide, as that will be the means by which
to end this.
President JFK on April 17, 1961: "Today no war has been declared--and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared
in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching
troops, no missiles have been fired. If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat
conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of 'clear
and present danger,' then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman
or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies
primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of
elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted
vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried,
not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match." thoughts: by saying,
'conducts the Cold War' did he directly call out the CIA???
Most troubling now it is known about the deep state: is Trump a double agent just another puppet just giving the appearance
of working against the deep state?
Thank you Australians for having rhe courage to speak out for us Patriots!!! We know the Deep State Cabal retaliated with the
fires. We love you guys from 💖💗
Well done Skynews. THE DEEP STATE IS REAL. I woke up 10+ years ago. Turn off the TV for 1-2 years to study and awaken. Make
a start on learning with David ickes Videos and books. WWG1 WGA
Before I go and pass this on to as many as I can get to follow it I just wanted to commend those that produced this and I hope
that it gets fuller dissemination because it is such a rare truth in such a time of utter deceit by most all of the MSM (Main
Stream Media) that this country I reside in uses to supposedly inform the American people ...what a crock! Thank You, Australia
for making this available (but beware, the Five Eyes are always very active in related matters to this) ... This has been welcome
confirmation of what many of us have known and attempted to tell others for about 5 years now. Sadly, I doubt that has or will
help very much, The System is so corrupted from top to bottom ... IMnsHO and E.
Firstly your definition of 'deep state' is too limited, it includes the bureaucracy, much of the judiciary, banks and other
financial institutions, and the major political parties. It is not restricted only to the intelligence agencies. It is not a US-specific
issue, but a global one. For the deep state exists everywhere, and is often more powerful in commonwealth countries, such as here
in apathetic Australia.
When the CIA kills Kennedy you know you've got problems... And whilst agents in the CIA probably did not pull the trigger -
their "assets" did... If you don't believe me spare me your tiresome ignorant replies and go and do some research...
" We were warned about the Military Industrial Complex, Sadly the Government Media Complex, has done way more damage, and will
be much harder to overcome" ~ Dr. Mike Savage 2008
14:20 I met a guy from Canada in the early
2000s, a telephone technician, told me about when he worked at the time for the government telephone company in the early 80s.
He was given a really strange job one day, to go do some work in the USA. Some kind of repair work that required someone with
experience and know-how, but apparently someone from out-of-country, he guesses, because there certainly must have been many people
in the USA who could have done it, he figured. He flew down to oregon, then was driven for hours out into the middle of nowhere
in navada, he said. They came to a small building that was surrounded by fencing etc. Nothing interesting. Nothing else around,
he said, as far as he could see. They went in, and pretty much all that was there was an elevator. They went in, and he said,
he didn't know how many floors down it went, or how fast it was moving, but seemed to take quite sometime, he figured about 8
stories down, was his guess, but he didn't know. He was astounded to see that there was telephone recording stuff in there about
the size of two football-fields. He said they were recording everything. He said, even at that time, it was all digital, but they
didn't have the capacity to record everything, so it was set up to monitor phone calls, and if any key words were spoken, it would
start recording, and of course it would record all phone calls at certain numbers. "So, who knows what they've got in there today,
he said" back in the early 2000s. So, imagine what they've got there today, in the 2020s. I didn't know whether or not to believe
this story, until I saw a doc about all of the telephone recording tapes they have in storage, rotting away, which were used to
record everyone's phone calls onto magnetic tape. Literally tonnes and tonnes of tapes, just sitting there in storage now, from
the 1970s, the pre-digital days. They've always been doing it. They're just much better at it today than ever. Now they can tell
who you are by your voice, your cadence, your intonation, etc. and record not just a call here and there, but everything.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he didnt exist" Credit the --- Usual Suspects ---- That's
the playbook of the "Deep State"
The last guy (denying the deep state's existence) was lying. When someone shakes their head when talking in the affirmative
you can be 100% sure it is a lie (micro expressions 101).
Bitcoin Blockchain
1 day ago
19501953: Korean War United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China
19601975: Vietnam War United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam
1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion United States vs. Cuba
1983: Grenada United States intervention
1989: U.S.Invasion of Panama United States vs. Panama
19901991: Persian Gulf War United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
19951996: Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina United States as part of NATO acted as peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia
2001present: Invasion of Afghanistan United States and Coalition Forces vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism
20032011: Invasion of Iraq The United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
2004present: War in Northwest Pakistan United States vs. Pakistan, mainly drone attacks
2007present: Somalia and Northeastern Kenya United States and Coalition forces vs. al-Shabaab militants
20092016: Operation Ocean Shield (Indian Ocean) NATO allies vs. Somali pirates
2011: Intervention in Libya U.S. and NATO allies vs. Libya
20112017: Lord's Resistance Army U.S. and allies against the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda
20142017: U.S.-led Intervention in Iraq U.S. and coalition forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
2014present: U.S.-led intervention in Syria U.S. and coalition forces against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Syria
2015present: Yemeni Civil War Saudi-led coalition and the U.S., France, and Kingdom against the Houthi rebels, Supreme Political Council in Yemen, and allies
2015present: U.S. intervention in Libya
Deep State is the "Wealthy Oligarchy", an "International Mafia" who controls the Central Bank (a privacy owned banking system
which controls the worlds currencies). The Wealthy Oligarchy "aka Deep State" controls most all Democratic countries, and controls
the International Media. In the United States, both the Republican and Democrat parties are controlled by the Wealthy Oligarchy
aka Deep State.
A beautifully crafted and delivered discourse, impressive! As a Londoner I have become increasingly interested in Sky News
Australia, you are a breath of fresh air and common sense in this world of ever growing liberal media hysteria!
I have to laugh at the people, including our supposedly unbiased and intelligent media, who said the Russia thing was the truth
when it was nothing but a conspiracy theory. Everything else was a conspiacy theory according to the dems ans the mainstream media..
Wall Street and the banksters control the CIA. One can imagine the ramifications of control of the world via the moneyed interests
backed by James Bond and the Green Berets, the latter, under control of the CIA.
Deep State Powers have been messing with your USA long before your War of Independence . Your Founding Fathers knew , why do
you think they wrote your Constitution that way. Now everyone is always crying about something but fail to realize you gave your
freedoms away over time . The Deep State never left it just disguised itself and continued to regain control under a new face
or ideaology. Follow the money . "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."― Edmund Burke
After the John F. Kennedy assassination the took full power,those who are in power now are the descendants of the criminals
who did it,some of their sons just have a different last name but they are the same family,like George Bush and John Kerry are
cousins but different last name and the list goes and goes.
Council on Foreign Relation is more Deep State than CIA and FBI . The two worked for CFR. CFR tel president whom to appoint
to what positions. Nixon got a list of 22 deep state candidates for top US position and all were hired. Obama appointed 11 from
the list. Kissinger is behind the scenes strings puller also.
Thanks Sky and Peter for bringing this to the mainstream attention, it really is time! Wished you had aired John Kiriakou,s
other claims off child sex trafficking to the elites which has been corroborated by so many other sources now and is the grossest
deformity of this deep state which you can see footage of trump talking about. I am amazed and greatful to see Trump has done
more about this than all other presidents in the last 20 years. Lets end this group. All we need to do is shine the light on them
The CIA are only an intelligence and operations functioning part of the deep state its much more complex and larger than just
the CIA. The British empire controls the deep state they always have it is just a modern version of the old East India Company
controlled by the same families with the same ideology.
https://theduran.com/the-origins-of-the-deep-state-in-north-america/
It's funny how for decades "the people" were crying on their knees about how bad every president was n how corrupt n controlled
they were. Now you've got a president with no special interest groups publicly calling out the deep state n ur still bitching.
U know you've got someone representing the people when the cia n fbi r out to get him. In 50 years trump will be looked back at
with the likes of Washington, Lincoln n jfk. Once the msm smear campaign is out of everyone's brain.
When they start spying on people within the United States and when they used in National Defense authorization act that gave
them a lot of power since after 911 to give them more power now they have Homeland Security which is the next biggest threat to
the United States it can be abused and some of these people have a higher security clearance than the president.... they're not
under control the NSA is one of them you don't mention in here either one is about the more that you don't even know about that
they don't have names are acronyms that we knew about that's why the American people have been blindsided by this overtime they've
been giving all this money to do things... allocation of money they gathered to do this and now Congress itself doesn't know temperature
of Schumer when you caught him saying to see I can get back at you three ways to Sunday I mean he's got some words in this saying
to the president of usa donald trump... basically threatening the President right there.. you can see it's alive and well when
Congress is immune from prosecution from anything or anyone....
"I think in light of all of the things going on, and you know what I mean by that: the fake news, the Comeys of the world,
all of the bad things that went on, it's called the swamp you know what I did," he asked. "A big favor. I caught the swamp. I
caught them all. Let's see what happens. Nobody else could have done that but me. I caught all of this corruption that was going
on and nobody else could have done it."
there is no big secret that CIA is deeply involved in drug smuggling operations...i remember interview with ex marine colonel
who said that he was indirectly involved in such operations in panama...
Attempting to infiltrate News rooms😆😅😂 all those faces you see in the MSM are all working for Cia. In 1967 one of the 3
letter agencys bragged about having a reporter working in 1 of the 3 letter news channel!
Wow this was really good. It's funny you showed a clip from abc of kouriakow and it reminded me how much the news in america
has been propagandized and just fake. I'm 38 and it's sad that these days the news is unpatriotic. Well most . Ty sky news Australia
Why no mention of what facilitates the surveilance? Telecom infrastructure is a nations nerve system and the powergrid its
bloodsystem. Who controls them? That is where you find the head of the deep state!
What people aren't aware of is that Facebook YouTube Twitter Instagram Google maps and Google search are all NSA CIA and DIA
creations and CEO's are only highly paid operatives who are not the creators but the face of a product and what better way to
collect all of your information is by you giving it to them
More please? A subject for another installment regarding the Deep State could be Banking, Federal Reserves and Fiat currencies.
Later, another video could be Russia's success at expelling the Deep State in 2000 after it took them over (for a 2nd time) in
1991. Be cognizant, the Deep State initially had for a short time from 1917 via 'it's' 'Bolshivics,' orchestrated the creation
of the Soviet Union through the Bolshivic take over of Russia from it's independence minded and Soveriegn Czarist led Eastern
Orthodox State. Now, President Trump is preventing a similar Deep State take-over by Intelligence agencies, Corporations and elected
political thugs as bad as Leon Trotsky and V I Lennin were to the Russian Czar. The Soviets soon after their (1917) take-over
went Rogue on the Deep State and therefore the Soviet Union was independent until The Deep State orchestrated it's downfall and
anexation of it's substantial wealth and some territory (1991). More, more, more please Sky News, this video was great!
Amazing, Sky News is the ONLY TV News Service in Australia Trying to deliver true news. Australia's ABC news are CIA Deep State
Shills and propagandists - Sarah Ferguson Especially - see her totally CIA scripted Four Corners Report on the Russia Hoax. John
Gantz IS a Deep State Operative Liar.
Isnt it time to see TERM LIMITS in Co gress and to realign our school education to teach the real history of these unites states?
End the control of Congress and watch the agencies fall in step with OUR Conatitution. No one should ever be allowed in Congress
or any other elected position of trust if they are not a devout Constitutionalist. Anyone who takes the oath to see w the people
and fails to so so should be charged with TREASON and removed immediately. Is there a DEEP STATE? Damn right there is and has
been for many decades. Where is our sovereignty? Where is the wealth of a capitalist nation? Why so much poverty and welfare and
why do communists and socialist get away with damaging our country, state or communities. Yes, there has been a deep state filled
with criminals who all need to be charged, tried and executed for TREASON.
The CIA and Australias Federal police have One main Job/activity to feed their Populations with Propaganda & Lies to give them
their Thoughts & Opinions on Everything using their psyOps through MSM News & Programming...you prolly beLIEve this informative
News Story as well. : (
These people denying a deep state with such straight faces are psychopaths. Unwittingly, or maybe not, Schumer made liars of
them with his comment to Maddow
President Trump is correct. He knows exactly what's going on. The 3 letter agencies are up to no good and work against the
fabric of our nation's founding fathers. It's despicable behavior. Just one example is John Brennan (CIA Director) and Barack
Hussein Obama's Terror Tuesdays. Read all about it on the internet now before it's permanently removed. Thank you for creating
this video.
When was the last time we ever witnessed an American President openly abused continually attacked over manufactured news treated
with absolutely no respect for him or the office his family unfairly attacked and misrepresented etc, etc, that's right never,
which proves he threatens the existence of the deep state as discussed. He should declare Martial Law Hang the consequences and
remove every single deep state player everywhere. Foreign influence? read Israel.
People are so fixated on trumps outspoken Sometimes outrageous demeanor which in my opinion it's just being really honest and
yes he can Be rude at times but when you look at the facts He's the only one that has gone against the deep state! those are the
real devils dressed up in sheep's clothing! Wake up!
You are missing the point. It goes further then intelligence agency working against the people. It's the ultra rich literally
trillionaires like the rothchilds that control the cia etc. That is who trump is fighting. The globalists line gates soros etc.
Neocons like the historian Robert Kagan may be
connecting with Hillary Clinton to try to regain influence in foreign policy.
Credit...
Left,
Stephanie Sinclair/VII via Corbis; right, Colin McPherson/Corbis
WASHINGTON -- AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the
neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama,
not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that
bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen
feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to
return to the driver's seat of American foreign policy.
To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons --
Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle -- are permanently buried in the
sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The
Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would "be a dutiful chaperone of further American
decline."
But others appear to envisage a different direction -- one that might allow
them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning
away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.
It's not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan,
the author of a recent,
roundly praised article
in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only
avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an
influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon
think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under
President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic
administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article "magisterial," in what amounts to a public baptism
into the liberal establishment.)
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on
maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among
other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line
from him straight to the neocons' favorite president: "It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan
whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."
Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for
Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
noted in The New Republic
this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a
principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the
intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the
Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf
Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her
administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan
on board.
Of course, the neocons' latest change in tack is not just about intellectual
affinity. Their longtime home, the Republican Party, where presidents and candidates from Reagan to Senator
John McCain of Arizona supported large militaries and aggressive foreign policies, may well nominate for
president Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been beating an ever louder drum against American
involvement abroad.
In response, Mark Salter, a former chief of staff to Senator McCain and a
neocon fellow traveler, said that in the event of a Paul nomination, "Republican voters seriously concerned
with national security would have no responsible recourse" but to support Mrs. Clinton for the presidency.
Still, Democratic liberal hawks, let alone the left, would have to swallow
hard to accept any neocon conversion. Mrs. Clinton herself is already under fire for her foreign-policy
views -- the journalist Glenn Greenwald, among others, has condemned her as "like a neocon, practically." And
humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations, who opposed the
second Iraq war, recoil at the militaristic unilateralism of the neocons and their inveterate hostility to
international institutions like the World Court.
But others in Mrs. Clinton's orbit, like Michael A. McFaul, the former
ambassador to Russia and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a neocon haven at Stanford, are much
more in line with thinkers like Mr. Kagan and Mr. Boot, especially when it comes to issues like promoting
democracy and opposing Iran.
Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972,
Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early
neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing "something of a swing group between the
two major parties." Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is remarkable how very little has
changed.
The national security establishment does represent the actual government of dual "double
government". And it is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the elected branches of
government. Instead it controls them and is able to stage palace coups to remove "unacceptable"
Presidents like was the case with JFK, Nixon and Trump.
For them is are occupied country and then behave like real occuplers.
Notable quotes:
"... In Trumpian fashion, Kirkpatrick then goes on to warn Americans about the danger of an unaccountable "deep state" in foreign policy that is immune to popular pressures. ..."
"... She says that, no, "it has become more important than ever that the experts who conduct foreign policy on our behalf be subject to the direction of and control of the people." ..."
"... She points out that because America had for much of the twentieth century assumed global responsibilities, our foreign policy elites had developed "distinctive views" that are different from those of the electorate. ..."
"... foreign policy elites "grew accustomed to thinking of the United States as having boundless resources and purposes . . . which transcended the preferences of voters and apparent American interests . . . and eventually developed a globalist attitude." ..."
"... In support of Kirkpatrick's concern, Tufts professor Michael Glennon has more recently argued that the national security establishment has now become so "distinctive" in their separation from our constitutional processes that they represent one wing of a now "double government" that is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the popular branches of government. The Russiagate investigations and the attempt to disable the Trump presidency, aided by many in the establishment, would appear to confirm Kirkpatrick's warning that foreign policy elites want no part of the electoral preferences of voting Americans. ..."
"... Kirkpatrick died in 2006 and had, like many neoconservatives, evolved from a Humphrey Democrat into a member of the GOP establishment. With William Bennett and Jack Kemp, in 1993 she cofounded a neoconservative group, Empower America, which took a very aggressive stance against militant Islam after the 9/11 attacks. However, she was quite ambivalent about the invasion of Iraq and was quoted in The Economist ..."
Kirkpatrick's essay begins by insisting that, because of world events since 1939, America
has given to foreign affairs "an unnatural focus." Now in 1990, she says, the nation can turn
its attention to domestic concerns that are more important because "a good society is defined
not by its foreign policy but its internal qualities . . . by the relations among its citizens,
the kind of character nurtured, and the quality of life lived." She says unabashedly that
"there is no mystical American 'mission' or purposes to be 'found' independently of the U.S.
Constitution and government."
One cannot fail to notice that this perspective is precisely the opposite of George W.
Bush's in his second inauguration. According to Bush, America's post –Cold War purpose
was to follow our "deepest beliefs" by acting to "support the growth of democratic movements
and institutions in every nation and culture." For three decades neoconservative foreign policy
has revolved around "mystical" beliefs about America's mission in the world that are unmoored
from the actual Constitution.
In Trumpian fashion, Kirkpatrick then goes on to warn Americans about the danger of an
unaccountable "deep state" in foreign policy that is immune to popular pressures. She
rejects emphatically the views of some elitists who argue that foreign policy is a uniquely
esoteric and specialized discipline and must be cushioned from populism. She says that, no,
"it has become more important than ever that the experts who conduct foreign policy on our
behalf be subject to the direction of and control of the people."
She points out that because America had for much of the twentieth century assumed global
responsibilities, our foreign policy elites had developed "distinctive views" that are
different from those of the electorate. Again, in Trumpian fashion, she argued that
foreign policy elites "grew accustomed to thinking of the United States as having boundless
resources and purposes . . . which transcended the preferences of voters and apparent American
interests . . . and eventually developed a globalist attitude."
In support of Kirkpatrick's concern, Tufts professor Michael Glennon has more recently
argued
that the national security establishment has now become so "distinctive" in their separation
from our constitutional processes that they represent one wing of a now "double government"
that is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the popular branches of government. The
Russiagate investigations and the attempt to disable the Trump presidency, aided by many in the
establishment, would appear to confirm Kirkpatrick's warning that foreign policy elites want no
part of the electoral preferences of voting Americans.
Kirkpatrick concludes her essay with thoughts on "What should we do?" and "What we should
not do." Remarkably, her first recommendation is to negotiate better trade deals. These deals
should give the U.S. "fair access" to foreign markets while offering "foreign businesses no
better than fair access to U.S. markets." Next, she considered the promotion of democracy
around the world and, on this subject, she took the John Quincy Adams
position : that "Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be
unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be." However, she insisted:
"it is not within the United States' power to democratize the world."
When Kirkpatrick goes on to discuss America's post –Cold War alliances, she makes
clear that she is advocating, quite simply, an America First foreign policy. Regarding the
future of the NATO alliance, a sacrosanct pillar of the American foreign policy establishment,
she argued that "the United States should not try to manage the balance of power in Europe."
Likewise, we should be humble about what we can accomplish in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union: "Any notion that the United States can manage the changes in that huge,
multinational, developing society is grandiose." Finally, with regard to Asia: "Our concern
with Japan should above all be with its trading practices vis-à-vis the United States.
We should not spend money protecting an affluent Japan, though a continuing alliance is
entirely appropriate."
She famously concludes her essay by making the plea for the United States to become "a
normal country in a normal time" and "to give up the dubious benefits of superpower status and
become again an unusually successful, open American republic."
Kirkpatrick became Ronald Reagan's United Nations ambassador because her 1979
article in Commentary , "Dictatorships and Double Standards," caught the eye of
the future president. In that article, she sensibly points out that authoritarian governments
that are allies of the United States should not be kicked to the curb because they are not free
and open democracies. The path to democracy is a long and perilous one, and nations without
republican traditions cannot be expected to make the transition overnight. Regarding the
world's oldest democracy, she remarked: "In Britain, the road from the Magna Carta to the Act
of Settlement, to the great Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1885, took seven centuries to
traverse."
While at the time neoconservatives opportunistically embraced her for this position as a
tactic to fight the Cold War, the current foreign policy establishment would consider
Kirkpatrick's argument to be beyond the bounds of decent conversation, as it would lend itself
to an accommodation with authoritarian Russia as a counterweight to totalitarian China.
Kirkpatrick died in 2006 and had, like many neoconservatives, evolved from a Humphrey
Democrat into a member of the GOP establishment. With William Bennett and Jack Kemp, in 1993
she cofounded a neoconservative group, Empower America, which took a very aggressive stance
against militant Islam after the 9/11 attacks. However, she was quite ambivalent about the
invasion of Iraq and was quoted in The Economist as saying that George W.
Bush was "a bit too interventionist for my taste" and that Bush's brand of moral imperialism is
not "taken seriously anywhere outside a few places in Washington, DC."
The fact that Kirkpatrick's recommendations in her 1990 essay coincide with some of Donald
Trump's positions in the 2016 campaign (if not with many of his actual actions as president)
make her views, ipso facto, not serious. The foreign policy establishment gives something like
pariah status to arguments that we should negotiate better trade deals, reconsider our Cold War
alliances and, most especially, subject American foreign policy to popular preferences. If she
were alive today and were making the arguments she made in 1990, then she would be an outcast.
That a formidable intellectual like Kirkpatrick would be dismissed in such a fashion is a sign
of how obtuse our foreign policy debate has become.
William S. Smith is Senior Research Fellow and Managing Director of the Center for the
Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. His recent book, Democracy
and Imperialism , is from the University of Michigan Press. He studied political philosophy
under Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick as an undergraduate at Georgetown University.
A strange mixture of Black nationalism with Black Bolshevism is a very interesting and pretty alarming phenomenon. It proved to
be a pretty toxic mix. But it is far from being new. We saw how the Eugne Pottier famous song
International lines "We have been naught we
shall be all." and "Servile masses arise, arise." unfolded before under Stalinism in Soviet Russia.
We also saw Lysenkoism in Academia before, and it was not a pretty picture. Some Russian/Soviet scientists such as Academician Vavilov
paid with their life for the sin of not being politically correct. From this letter it is clear that the some departments
already reached the stage tragically close to that situation.
Lysenkoism was "politically correct" (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with the broader Marxist doctrine.
Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living
under socialism would be inherited by subsequent generations of humans. Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man
"Lysenko was consequently embraced and lionized by the Soviet media propaganda machine. Scientists who promoted Lysenkoism with
faked data and destroyed counterevidence were favored with government funding and official recognition and award. Lysenko and his
followers and media acolytes responded to critics by impugning their motives, and denouncing them as bourgeois fascists resisting
the advance of the new modern Marxism."
The Disgraceful Episode Of Lysenkoism Brings Us Global Warming Theory
Notable quotes:
"... In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. ..."
"... any cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders . Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques. ..."
"... The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians ..."
"... Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict . This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. ..."
"... If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? ..."
"... Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history , and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position , which is no small number. ..."
"... The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. ..."
"... The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. ..."
"... Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans , who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department . The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession. ..."
"... Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades ; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat administrations. ..."
"... The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes , carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed. ..."
"... MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today . We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing? ..."
I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely,
and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job,
and likely all future jobs in my field.
In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity
of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them.
In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative
narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice
system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of
the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and
white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.
Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself,
such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject
a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders
. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the
form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should
be vigorously challenged by historians . Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration
of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and
our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email.
Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi
Coates' undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion
of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However,
if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it
is anti-black .
Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see
that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated
at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict . This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple
jurisdictions in multiple countries.
And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation
that appeals to the department's apparent desire to shoulder the 'white man's burden' and to promote a narrative of white guilt .
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian
Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish
Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it's fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of
Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed
in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. "Those are racist dogwhistles". "The model minority
myth is white supremacist". "Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime", ad nauseam.
These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to
silence and oppress discourse . Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are , common
to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently
exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.
Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history , and the department is
being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position.
Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those
of us in a precarious position , which is no small number.
I personally don't dare speak out against the BLM narrative , and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the
administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear
danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my
job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches
for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message
is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires
explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence.
This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the
point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention
of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders . Home invaders like George Floyd . For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality
of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald's and Wal-Mart.
For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.
The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical
claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent
rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively.
Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform
white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans , who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to
point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department . The explanation
is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation
is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.
Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention,
and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter,
an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately
redirected to ActBlue Charities , an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates.
Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American
cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis
itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades ; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat
administrations.
The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden
statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics
which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election
campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence . This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement
for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent
in academic circles . I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.
The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this
damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes
, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves
in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves,
many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity.
Fiat lux, indeed.
There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called 'race hustlers': hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking
the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal
political entrepreneurship.
Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth , we can regard ourselves as
a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at
harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically
segregationist.
MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today . We are training leaders who intend, explicitly,
to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively
racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global
political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?
As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was
a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at
her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children , playing no part in their
support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer,
a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors .
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his
name to virtual sainthood . A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department,
corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA,
he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise . Americans are being
socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist . A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying
with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species.
I'm ashamed of my department. I would say that I'm ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid,
as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It's hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.
It shouldn't affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color . My family have been
personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The
humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM , that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life,
is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward
in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.
The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively
on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating . No other group in America is systematically
demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping
and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.
No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites.
If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely
be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional
promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.
I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda
and the Party's uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his
disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic. I condemn the manner of George Floyd's death
and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything
other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end .
I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to politicians and corporations. Like us, she
is free. play_arrow
Blacks will always be poor and fucked in life when 75% of black infants are born to single most likely welfare dependent mothers...
And the more amount of welfare monies spent to combat poverty the worse this problem will grow...
taketheredpill , 37 minutes ago
Anonymous....
1) Is he really a Professor at Berkeley?
2) Is he really a Professor anywhere?
3) Is he really Black?
4) Is he really a He?
LEEPERMAX , 44 minutes ago
BLM is an international organization. They solicit tax free charitable donations via ActBlue. ActBlue then funnels billions
of dollars to DNC campaigns. This is a violation of campaign finance law and allows foreign influence in American elections.
CRM114 , 44 minutes ago
I've pointed this out before:
In 2015, after the Freddie Gray death Officers were hung out to dry by the Mayor of Baltimore (yes, her, the Chair of the DNC
in 2016), active policing in Baltimore basically stopped. They just count the bodies now. The clearance rate for homicides has
dropped to, well, we don't know because the Police refuse to say, but it appears to be under 15%. The homicide rate jumped 50%
almost immediately and has stayed there. 95% of homicides are black on black.
The Baltimore Sun keeps excellent records, so you can check this all for yourself.
Looking at killings by cops; if we take the worst case and exclude all the ones where the victim was armed and independent
witnesses state fired first, and assume all the others were cop murders, then there's about 1 cop murder every 3 years, which
means that since has now stopped and the homicide rate's gone up...
For every black man now not murdered by a cop, 400 more black men are murdered by other black men.
taketheredpill , 46 minutes ago
"As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used
to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude
that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black ."
It is the RATIO of UNARMED BLACK MALES KILLED to UNARMED WHITE MALES KILLED in RELATION TO % OF POPULATION. RATIO.
RATIO. UNARMED.
BLACK % POPULATION 13% BLACK % UNARMED MEN KILLED 37%
WHITE % POPULATION 74% BLACK % UNARMED MEN KILLED 45%
Is there a trend of MORE Black people being killed by police?
No. But there is an underlying difference in the numbers that is bad.
>>>>> As of 2018, Unarmed Blacks made up 36% of all people UNARMED killed by police. But black people make up 13% of the (unarmed)
population.
There's a massive Silent Majority of Americans , including black Americans, that are fed up with this absurd nonsense.
While there's a Vocal Minority of Americans : including Democrats, the media, corporations and race hustlers, that wish to
continue to promulgate a FALSE NARRATIVE into perpetuity...because it's a lucrative industry.
Gaius Konstantine , 57 minutes ago
A short while ago I had an ex friend get into it with me about how Europeans (whites), were the most destructive race on the
planet, responsible for all the world's evil. I pointed out to him that Genghis Khan, an Asian, slaughtered millions at a time
when technology made this a remarkable feat. I reminded him the Japanese gleefully killed millions in China and that the American
Indian Empires ran 24/7 human sacrifices with some also practicing cannibalism. His poor libtard brain couldn't handle the fact
that evil is a human trait, not restricted to a particular race and we parted (good riddance)
But along with evil, there is accomplishment. Europeans created Empires and pursued science, The Asians also participated in
these pursuits and even the Aztec and Inca built marvelous cities and massive states spanning vast stretches of territory. The
only race that accomplished little save entering the stone age is the Africans. Are we supposed to give them a participation trophy
to make them feel better? Is this feeling of inferiority what is truly behind their constant rage?
Police in the US have been militarized for a long time now and kill many more unarmed whites than they do blacks, where is
the outrage? I'm getting the feeling that this isn't really about George, just an excuse to do what savages do.
lwilland1012 , 1 hour ago
"Truth is treason in an empire of lies."
George Orwell
You know that the reason he is anonymous is that Berkley would strip him of his teaching credentials and there would be multiple
attempts on his life...
Ignatius , 1 hour ago
" The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches
for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The
message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence
requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly
is."
A former fed who trained the police in Buffalo believes the elderly protester who was hospitalized after a cop pushed him
to the ground "got away lightly" and "took a dive," according to a report.
The retired FBI agent, Gary DiLaura,
told The Sun
he thinks there's no chance Buffalo officers will be convicted of assault over the
now-viral video showing the
longtime
peace activist Martin Gugino fall and left bleeding on the ground.
" I can't believe that they didn't deck him. If that would have been a 40-year-old guy going up there, I guarantee you they'd
have been all over him, " DiLaura said.
" He absolutely got away lightly. He got a light push and in my humble opinion, he took a dive and the dive backfired because
he hit his head. Maybe it'll knock a little bit of sense into him, " added the former fed, who trained Buffalo police on firearms
and defensive tactics, according to the report...
It's a great brainwashing process, which goes very slow[ly] and is divided [into] four basic stages. The first one [is]
demoralization ; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number
of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of
the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American
students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).
The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals)
are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system.
You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. T hey are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain
stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you
prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other
words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need
another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting
in favor and in the interests of United States society.
Yuri Bezmenov
American Psycho , 16 minutes ago
This article was one of the most articulate and succinct rebuttals to the BLM political power grab. I too have been calling
these "allies" useful idiots and I am happy to hear this professor doing the same. Bravo professor!
@Ashino Wolf Sushanti As far as I know BLM is also dead silent on the black slave markets
care of Obama and the EU in Libya.
There are also stories that money contributed to BLM will end up going to the DNC.
This is looking like another 1960's type insurrection that will end up the same way: it
will be used by the rich and powerful elites (notice how the corporate controlled media has
gone on one knee for BLM and has gone outright anti-white?), there will be a back lash that
will crush it (right after the election), and its leaders will be either absorbed into the
establishment or offed.
America looks like a hybrid of Stephen King, Brave New World, and 1984, and the rich and
powerful US elites and intel agencies stroke it and love it. Notice that the US super rich
have been raking it in since January 2020? While at the same time Trump is busy making the US
a vassal state of Israel and accelerating the roll-out of Cold War v2 which is just fine with
US elites that will not change with the election of moron Biden (if the people elect Biden
they are electing his VP as Biden will not last long; he is a lot like Yeltsin that was
pumped up on mental stimulants and nutriments to perform for short periods until the next
treatment). What a country, what a ship of fools.
He observes too, the anticipatory raising of bail money; the preparing of medical teams,
ready to treat injuries; and of caches of flammable materials (suitable for torching official
vehicles), pre-positioned in places where protests would later occur. All this – with
simultaneous protests in more than 380 U.S. cities – in my experience, signals much
bigger, silent backstage organization. And behind 'the organisation', the instigators lie, far
back: maybe even thousands of miles back; and somewhere out there will be the financier.
However, in the U.S., commentators say they see no leadership; the protests are amorphous.
That is not unusual to see no leadership – a 'leadership' appears only if negotiations
are sought and planned; otherwise key actors are to be protected from arrest. The most telling
sign of a backstage organisation is that on one day, it is 'full on', and the next all is quiet
– as if a switch has been pulled. It often has.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of protestors in the U.S. this last week, were –
and are – decent sincere Americans, outraged at George Floyd's killing and continuing
social and institutional racism. Was this then, an Antifa
and anarchist operation, as the White House contends? I doubt it – any more than those
Palestinian youth in Beit El constituted anything other than fodder for the front of stage. We
simply don't know the backstage. Keep an open mind.
Tom Luongo presciently suggests that should we wish
to understand better the context to these recent events – and not be stuck at stage
appearances – we need to look to Hong Kong for indicators .
Writing in October 2019, Luongo noted that: "What started as
peaceful protests against an extradition law and worry over reunification with China has
morphed into an ugly and vicious assault on the city's economic future. [This is] being
perpetrated by the so-called "Block Bloc", roving bands of mask-wearing, police-tactic defying
vandals attacking randomly around the city to disrupt people going to work ".
An exasperated local man exclaims : "Not only you
[i.e. Block Bloc protestors are] harming the people making their living in businesses,
companies, shopping malls. You're destroying subway stations. You're destroying our streets.
You're destroying our hard-earned reputation as a safe, international business centre. You're
destroying our economy". The man cannot explain why there was not a single police officer in
sight, for hours, as the rampage continued.
What is going on? Luongo quotes a September Bloomberg
interview with HK tycoon, Jimmy Lai, billionaire publisher of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
scourge, the Apple Daily, and the highly visible interlocutor of official Washington notables,
such as Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. In it, Lai pronounced himself convinced that
if protests in HK turned violent, China would have no choice but to send the People's Armed
Police units from Shenzen into Hong Kong to put down unrest: "That," Lai said on Bloomberg TV,
"will be a repeat of the Tiananmen Square massacre; and that will bring in the whole world
against China Hong Kong will be done, and China will be done, too".
In brief, Lai proposes to 'burn' Hong Kong – to 'save' Hong Kong. That is, 'burn it to
save it' from the CCP – to keep its residue in the 'Anglo-sphere'.
"Jimmy Lai", Luongo writes, "is telling you what the strategy is here. The goal is to
thoroughly undermine China's standing on the world stage and raise that of the U.S. This is
economic warfare, it's a hybrid war tactic. And the soldiers are radicalized kids in uniforms
bonking old men on the heads with sticks and taunting cops. Sound familiar? Because that's
what's going on in places like Portland, Oregon with Antifa And that cause is chaos". (Recall,
Luongo wrote this more than six months ago).
Well, here we are today: Steve Bannon, closely allied with what he, himself, terms the U.S.'
China super-hawks , and
allied with yet another Chinese billionaire financier, Guo Wengui ( a fugitive
from the Chinese Authorities, and member at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club), is pursuing an
incandescent campaign of denigration and vitriol against the Chinese Communist Party –
intended, like Lai's campaign, to destroy utterly China's global standing.
Here it is again – the tightly-knit band of U.S. and exile super-hawks want to 'burn'
down the CCP, to 'save' what? To save the 'Empire Waning' (America), through 'burning' the
'Empire Rising' (China). Bannon (at least, and to his credit), is explicit about the risk:
A failure to prevail in
this this info-war mounted against the CCP, he says, will end in "kinetic war".
So, back to the U.S. protests, and drawing on Luongo's insights from Hong Kong – I
wrote last week that Trump sees himself fighting a hidden global 'war' to retain America's
present dominance over global money (the dollar) – now America's principal source of
external power. For America to lose this struggle to a putative multi-lateral cosmopolitan
governance – Trump perceives – would result in the whole, white Anglo-sphere's
ejection from control over the global financial system – and its associated political
privilege. It would entail control of the global financial and political system slipping away
to an amorphous multi-lateral financial governance, operated by an international institution,
or some global Central Bank. Since before WW1, control of global financial governance has been
in the hands of the Anglo-American nexus running between London and New York. It still does,
just about – albeit that today's Wall Street elite is cosmopolitan, rather than Anglo,
yet still it is firmly anchored to Washington, via the Fed and the U.S. Treasury. For this to
slip would be the 'end of Empire'.
To maintain the status of the dollar, Trump therefore has assiduously devoted himself to
disrupting the multi-lateral global order, sensing this danger to the unique privileges
conveyed by control of the world's monetary base. His particular concern would be to see a
Europe that was umbilically-linked to the financial and technological heavy-weight that is
China. This, in itself, effectively would presage a different world financial
governance.
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But, is the fear that the threat principally lies with Europe's Soros-style vision
justified? There may – just as well – be a fifth-column at home. The billionaires'
club of the very rich has long ceased to be culturally 'Anglo'. It has become a borderless,
'self-selecting', governing entity unto itself.
Perhaps an earlier 'end of Époque' metamorphosis shows us how readily an
old-established elite can swap horses in order to survive . In the historical Sicilian novel,
The Leopard, Prince Salina's nephew tells his uncle that the old order
is 'done' , and with it, the family is 'done' too, unless "Unless we ourselves take a hand
now, they'll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to
change".
It is clear that some billionaire oligarchs – whether American or not – can see
the 'writing on the wall': A financial crisis is coming. And so, too, is a social one. A recent
survey done by one such member, showed that 55% of American millennials supported the end to
the capitalist system. Perhaps the brotherhood of billionaires is thinking that 'unless we
ourselves take a hand now, they'll foist socialism on us'. If we want things to stay as they
are, things will have to change. The recent disorder in the U.S. will have unnerved them
further.
The push towards radical change – towards that global financial, political and
ecological governance that threatens dollar hegemony – paradoxically may emerge from
within: from within America's own financial elite. 'Burning' the dollar's privileged global
status may become seen as the price for things to stay as they are -- and for the elite to be
saved. The future of Empire hangs on this issue: Can US dollar hegemony be preserved, or might
the financial 'nobility' see that things must change – if they are to stay as they are?
That is, the Revolution may come from within -- and not necessarily from abroad.
In recent days, Trump has pivoted to being the President of 'Law and Order' – a shift
which he explicitly connected to 1968, when, in response to protests in Minneapolis after the
police suffocation last week of George Floyd, Trump tweeted: "When the looting begins, the
shooting starts". These were the words used by Governor George Wallace, the segregationist
third-party candidate, in the 1968 Presidential election: Republicans launched their "southern
strategy" to win over resentful white Democrats after the civil rights revolution.
Trump is determined to prevail – but today is not 1968. Can a Law and Order platform
work now? U.S. demography in the south has shifted, and it is not clear that the liberal, urban
electorates of America would sign up to a law-and-order platform, which implicitly appeals to
white anxieties?
In a sense, President Trump finds himself between a rock and a hard place. If the protests
are not quelled, and "the right normal (not) restored" (as per Esper's words), Trump may lose
those remaining 'law and order' conservatives. But, were he to lose control and over-react
using the military, then it may be Trump who has his own 'Tiananmen Square' – one, which
Jimmy Lai (gleefully) predicted in Hong Kong's case would bring in the whole world against
China: "Hong Kong will be done, and China will be done, too."
Or, in this instance, Trump might be done, and the U.S. too.
The author is neoliberal apologists, who use idiotic cliché about democratization to
cover neoliberal wolfs teens and appetite. Neoliberalism means impoverishment of countries like
Russia. so Putin actions are logical: he defends interests of Russian people against
international financial oligarchy. Experience of countries like Ukraine and Libya are vivid
examples of what financial oligarchy can do to the countries which do not resists conversion into
debt slaves.
McFaul of course was a color revolution specialist, who tried to unleash White color
revolution in 2011-2012. But he was actually a gift to Russians, as he proved to be a complete
and utter idiot, not a skillful diplomat. After EuroMaydan in 2014 neoliberal fifth column in
Russia was decimated and seized to exist as a political force.
"Russians," says Stent, "have at best been reluctant Europeans" (45). They need and admire
Western technology but managed to miss the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment,
and never developed a middle class and a democracy. Putin himself is a "wary European," who
fails "to understand that Europe's successful modernization was a product of both a free market
economy and a democratic political system based on the rule of law." More appealing to him is
China's model of "authoritarian modernization" (52).
Moreover, he is suspicious of the expansion of the European Union, its Eastern Partnership
Initiative (EPI, 2009), and its overtures for former Soviet states to join the EPI or EU.
Disputes over the signing of such an Association Agreement with Ukraine in 2013 exploded into
the Maidan movement, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the war in eastern Ukraine, and
economic sanctions against Russia. China soon replaced Europe as Russia's largest trading
partner. Instead of President Mikhail Gorbachev's dream of a 'common European home,' Russia has
become the major opponent of European unity, a promoter of Brexit, and an ally of the
anti-liberal axis of 'take-our-country-back' right-wing populist and neo-authoritarian European
parties and governments. Putin is indiscriminate about cultivating allies and has established
friendly relations with a rogues' gallery of strongmen and authoritarian politicians that
includes among others Marine Le Pen, Victor Orban, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mohammad bin Salman, Narendra Modi, and
Donald J. Trump. But at the same time he has worked to establish ties with moderate and
centrist leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
As scholar and practitioner, Angela Stent is at her best when elaborating the specificities
of Russian dealings with friends and foes. Her chapter on NATO expansion -- "The 'Main
Opponent'" (Putin's words) -- is a judicious and critical review of policies that redivided
Europe and propelled Russia through the logic of a security dilemma to re-engage in offensive
strategies from rearmament to hybrid warfare. Yet while acknowledging that Russia has genuine
security concerns about NATO's moves eastward, she reverts to the notion that Russian
ideological constants are key to the conflict between East and West.
Russia has not, over the past quarter century, been willing to accept the rules of the
international order that the West hoped it would. Those included acknowledging the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the post-Soviet states and supporting a liberal world order that
respects the right to self-determination. Russia continues to view the drivers of international
politics largely through a nineteenth-century prism. Spheres of influence are more important
than the individual rights and sovereignty of smaller countries. It is virtually impossible to
reconcile the Western and Russian understanding of sovereignty. For Putin, what counts is power
and scale, not rules (137-138).
Stent does not share the default view of some of her fellow Putinologists, among them Masha
Gessen and Michael McFaul, who see almost every malevolent deed of Russian policy as stemming
from one grim personality. She argues instead that Putin and more generally Kremlin policies
are the effusion of something deeply Russian. Like the work of many other analysts of Soviet
and Russian foreign policy behavior, however, the book often neglects or underplays the
intersubjective effects on Kremlin actions, the ways in which initiatives by the more powerful
West precipitate reactions by the East -- NATO expansion and European and American recognition
of Kosovo independence being among the clearest examples.
Losing the West, much of East Central Europe, the Baltic countries, Georgia, and Ukraine,
Russia turned eastward toward Eurasia, to the former South of the USSR, a region that Stent
argues "has been an essential component of [Putin's] main goal restoring Russia as a great
power" (142). He wants, as did Yeltsin, the West to recognize Russia's "sphere of privileged
interests" in the so-called "Near Abroad," where it has "civilizational commonalities" with
former Soviet states (144-145). To the Kremlin the Near Abroad is contested with the West, and
losing it would severely jeopardize Russia's security. Military arrangements, like the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and economic collaboration in the Eurasian
Economic Union (EEU) have bound several republics, notably Belarus, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, to
Russia. In recent years several states, notably Moldova, have gravitated closer to Moscow,
while others, like Turkestan, maintain a guarded distance.
Substantive chapters review Russian relations with Ukraine, China, Japan, the Middle East,
and the United States. Putin's greatest success came in Syria, where he took advantage of the
Obama and Trump administrations' ambivalence about their role in the civil war. Putin sided
with Assad and, along with Iran and its proxies, propelled the brutal dictator to victory over
myriad rebels. For a time he solidified relations with Erdoğan's Turkey, but by 2019 the
two potential allies were at loggerheads both in Syria and Libya. Playing a relatively weak
hand vis-à-vis Europe, China, and the United States, Putin managed to deploy limited
resources to become the principal extra-regional player in the conflict-riven Near East. Given
Trump's reluctance to go to war or remain on the front line, Putin deftly filled the vacuum
left by American confusion and incompetence.
Reading Putin's World , one can see how Putin, successful in some places, bogged down
in others, and threatened in still others, has both increased Russian prestige and extended his
influence while deepening Russia's economic and diplomatic isolation and elevating global
suspicions as to its nefarious actions, from poisonings to election interference. Benefiting
from the gullibility and ignorance of the occupant of the White House, he can sit back and
observe the chaos launched by the Trump administration. But unpredictability should not calm a
realist's mind, and Putin is forced to deal with the contradictory cascade of attitudes and
activities emanating from Washington: friendly personal relations between the two leaders, the
series of sanctions placed on the Russians, the bizarre actions of Trump and his cronies in
Ukraine, unilateral abrogation of arms controls, withdrawal from the Paris Accords on climate
control and the Iranian nuclear agreement, the precipitate withdrawal from Syria, and the
impulsive assassination of high Iranian and Iraqi officials.
Stent ends the book with an assessment of how Russia's strongman has reasserted his
country's role on the world stage while at the same time worsening relations with the West and
facing a renewed arms race and the resurrection of harsh Cold War-like representations of his
country. "Putin has achieved his major objectives . The world can no longer ignore [Russia]. It
is respected -- and feared" (346). In much of the world he is a more attractive figure than his
"partner" Trump. Stent is confident that the West can work with Putin, but "the West has to
recognize what Russia is -- and not what it would like Russia to be" (356). Russia's views of
the world and of its interests have to be taken seriously, even when the West is unwilling to
accede to or compromise with them; "Engagement must be realistic and flexible" (361). Expect
the unexpected. After all, you are dealing with a wiry, wily judo master.
Putin Says US Social Unrest Show "Deep-Seated Internal Crises" by Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2020 - 11:51
The Rubin Report's Pavel Zarubin interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, where
he said social unrest across the US reveals the deep internal crisis in the country, reported
TASS News .
"What has happened [in the US] is the manifestation of some deep domestic crises," Putin
said, noting that this crisis was festering well before President Trump took office. "When he
won, and his victory was absolutely obvious and democratic, the defeated party invented
all sorts of bogus stories just to call into question his legitimacy," he added.
Putin pointed out the biggest problem of the US political system is the parties and their
special interest of people behind the scenes.
"It seems to me that the problem is that group party interests, in this case, are placed
above the interests of the entire society and the interests of people," Putin said.
While commenting on domestic issues, Putin said his government has been combating the virus
with minimal losses. He said that was not the case in the US, adding the failures of the US'
"management system" led to poor response and widespread destruction. He said the best strategy
has been Moscow's top-down approach as all parts of government operated as a single team.
Putin further expanded on the US social unrest by linking it to the pandemic: "It shows
there are problems. Things connected to the fight with the
coronavirus have shone a spotlight on general problems."
He criticized the lack of strong leadership of virus response efforts, saying that "the
president says we need to do such-and-such, but the governor somewhere tells him where to
go."
In Russia, "I doubt anyone in the government or the regions would say 'we're not going to do
what the government says, what the president says, we think it's wrong,'" Putin said.
Putin believes American democracy will work to end the twin crisis: public health and social
unrest, which have engulfed the country lately.
"I expect that the fundamental basis of US democracy will still allow and help this
country to end this crisis period where it certainly finds itself," he said.
"... Wokeness is a gnostic cult that asks its sectaries to adopt a platform of national self-loathing. These are not protests. They are religious celebrations. The cult needs to be consistently classified as a religion, and conservatives must resist the temptation to view it as merely a silly sideshow distraction. Its bizarro liturgy is increasingly enshrined in all of our institutions, and conservatives must act as if a cult has hijacked the nation. ..."
At a park in New York City, I witnessed something odd. A group of women silently formed a
circle in the middle of a large lawn. Their all-black outfits contrasted with the surrounding
summer pastels, and they ignored the adjacent sun bathers as they began to kneel and slowly
chant. They repeated a three word matin. The most striking feature of this scene was its
familiarity. Any half-decent anthropologist would label this a religious ritual.
Yet, few are willing to explicitly describe these events as part of a religion. The women
may have been kneeling in a circle while chanting, but they repeated the words "black lives
matter." Politics obscures the obvious. Wokeness is a religion, and conservatives must act as
if large parts of our institutions are run by this cult.
Americans are united in their disgust at what happened to George Floyd. Everyone agrees: A
minor run-in with the police should never lead to death. Yet, the past two weeks do not
actually seem connected to the events in Minneapolis. Most East Coast yuppies would have
trouble placing Minneapolis on a map. Does it really make sense to gather in a mass crowd
during a pandemic because of something that happened a half-continent away? It does when you
recognize that it's a religious movement.
Wokeness has been identified as a religion by several writers and commentators. Linguist
John McWhorter wrote an article on " Antiracism, Our Flawed New
Religion " several years ago. Harvard professor Adrian Vermeulle wrote a must-read analysis
of the liturgical nature of liberalism
in 2019. And all the way back in 2004, historian Paul Gottfried wrote a prescient book on the
topic with the subtitle "towards a secular theocracy." The increasing intensity of woke culture
suggests that this is no longer just a curiosity, or a point of ridicule. It is the most
clear-eyed way of viewing current politics, and this is most obvious when viewing the
protests.
The nationwide protests are best understood as religious ceremonies, and this can be seen in
the way they keep engaging in off-brand Christianity. In Portland, Maine, protestors lay
stomach down on the sidewalk in order to ritualistically reenact Floyd's arrest. They
prostrated themselves in the exact way Catholic priests do in their ordination ceremony.
Journalist Michael Tracey noted the religious feeling in New Jersey protests. Protestors knelt
and held up their hands in a mirror image of how Evangelicals pray over each other at revivals.
The Guardian ran an article on how people must keep repeating the names of police
victims, and protestors routinely chant a list of names as if it is a litany of the saints. It
is a transparent attempt to transform the victims into martyrs. And while Floyd's killing is a
tragedy and an outrage, he had no agency over his death.
Perhaps the appropriation of Christian liturgy is just coincidental, and not evidence that
the woke have become a cult. It's not like they're trafficking in classic cult behavior, like
trying to separate devotees from their family, right? Wrong: Taking a cue from the
Scientologists, The New York Times ran an op-ed encouraging readers to stop visiting,
or speaking to family members until they pledge to "take significant action in supporting black
lives either through protest or financial contributions." Very normal! Shaking down family
members for money by threatening not to talk to them is classic cult behavior and is not how
well-adjusted adults voice political opinions. The insidious engine of this religious impulse
can be seen in the most egregious ripoff from Christianity so far.
In North Carolina, a pastor organized an event where white police officers knelt before her
and washed her feet. She claimed God told her directly to do this. Only the
most delusional would try to call this a protest. This is a pathetic perversion of Christian
liturgy. To state the obvious: washing feet is a Christian tradition with Biblical origins.
Washing feet was a chore reserved for the lowest servants. Jesus, God himself incarnate as man,
washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. The disciple Peter objects to this and
doesn't want Jesus to lower himself. Jesus replies "if I don't wash you, you don't really
belong to me."
The white people washing feet are only pretending to lower themselves. In reality, they're
symbolically placing themselves in the role of God. For white people, woke anti-racism offers a
way to worship themselves. "White privilege" is a purely subjective concept that allows
unremarkable white people to recast their own ordinary lives in a flattering light. It's not
enough to simply point this out and laugh at it. The religious nature of the woke has real
policy implications.
The woke make policy decisions in reference to the values of their religion. Back in
January, it was considered racist to be concerned about the coronavirus. CNN ran
headlines about how racism was spreading faster than COVID, Al Jazeera ran an op-ed
with a headline suggesting racism was the more dangerous epidemic, and New York City
politicians encouraged people to join crowds in Chinatown. Now, after months of stringent
social distancing, suddenly the "experts" are telling us that massive crowds gathering in every
city around the globe won't impact the ongoing pandemic. A certain type of person pretends to
be above all culture war topics, and always wants to get back to the "real issues." Yet it
should be clear that in any long and protracted economic struggle with China, the woke cult has
the ability to distort priorities and jettison all good sense. You may not be interested in the
culture war, but the culture war is interested in you.
In 2014, and 2015, many conservative pundits made a name for themselves laughing at the
"SJW" phenomenon on college campuses. Older conservatives loved to make jabs about "snowflakes"
who they predicted wouldn't be able to tough it in the real world. This was a complete
misreading of the situation. Woke Yale graduates do just fine in their careers, and these
extremist students are now rising through institutions of power. Ivy League-educated lawyers
are throwing molotov cocktails in New York. The scholastics grew out of an institutional
arrangement where Christianity was the official religion of the university. Wokeness is the
scholastic form of anti-racism. It is enshrined in our institutions because the Civil Rights
movement coincided with the formation of our new upper class.
In the 20th Century, corporations and government grew to unforeseen scale. Experts,
managers, bureaucrats, and new types of lawyers were required to run these organizations, and
this changed the nature of the middle class, and how people achieved power. As Fred Siegel
argued in his book "Revolt Against the Masses," this new class became conscious of itself as a
distinct class through the Civil Rights movement. The South was a poor and backwards place, and
the new class of experts could use their position to correct a grave injustice.
Civil Rights legislation then needed more lawyers, managers, and bureaucrats to enforce. The
concrete forms of discrimination in the Jim Crow south slowly disappeared as racism was openly
confronted, but we are left with a class structure that still defines itself around these
issues. Those with power have a vested interest in finding ever new forms of racism because
this allows them to create new instruments to fight racism. Universities and corporations
create more and more administrative jobs that produce a brahmin class whose only purpose is to
keep vigilant for bigotry. This is why the woke capital phenomenon cannot be dismissed as
posturing. One implication of this is that striving political leaders who seek to enter the
upper class must prove their anti-racism bonafides again, and again. Another, much darker,
implication is that we may live in a theocracy.
Wokeness is a gnostic cult that asks its sectaries to adopt a platform of national
self-loathing. These are not protests. They are religious celebrations. The cult needs to be
consistently classified as a religion, and conservatives must resist the temptation to view it
as merely a silly sideshow distraction. Its bizarro liturgy is increasingly enshrined in all of
our institutions, and conservatives must act as if a cult has hijacked the nation.
Yeah, there's nothing 'mere' about religion. It organized two of premodern society's major
cultural spheres (Christendom and dar al-Islam) and started countless wars. You could make
a pretty good case for Communism as a religion.
According to Bertrand Russell Communism WAS a religion! Indeed, ideologies are, at bottom,
indistinguishable from religions. The French Revolution was Exhibit One of that phenomenon.
Spanish Inquisition was a religion
English Civil War was about religion
Abolitionism was a religion
Communism was a religion and National Socialism was a religion too
Every religion has its sacred content, though not every religion involves God,
reconciliation or redemption
Ah, but in America, we are not supposed to pay too much attention to the supposed truth or
falsity of each other's religions.
You can't fight something with nothing. The traditional religions seem to be spent
forces. The wokeness seems to attract devout, or at least fervent believers.
I'Ve seen much larger and more involved ceremonies worshipping capitalism, if that's how
we're determining religions now.
And the worshipping capitalists had a complete theology, with their religion driving
their ethics and behavior much more than almost all professed Christians I've met.
A religion with heresy trials and excommunications as well. And, at least In some states,
well on its way to becoming the established state religion. In March and April,
practitioners of the old religions from Christianity to Judaism to Islam discovered that
their religions were non-essential and subject to lockdown. In May, they learned that the
new religion is essential and not subject to lockdown.
Want to talk about cults? Let's talk about the New Apostolic Reformation cult and right
wing evangelicals who are part of and/or closely associated with this fake Christian cult.
Let's talk about 7 Mountains Mandate heresy and the right wing evangelicals who have bought
into and even preach that heresy. I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it says these
fake Christian and cult members have to take over the world to make it safe for Jesus to
return. Until they do this, Jesus CANNOT return? Yes, Ted Cruz's father preaches the 7
Mountains heresy as do many other evangelicals.
How about the false teacher and fraud that Trump claims is his closest Christian
advisor, Paula White. Why would he say such a thing when Paula White is nothing more a
prosperity gospel fraud who said Jesus is not the only Begotten Son of God. Who has been
investigated several times by the IRS. Who commanded 'All Satanic Pregnancies to
Miscarry'
Maybe we should talk about some of those who are part of Trump's evangelical advisory
council.
One of the leaders, Kevin Copeland, said "God is the biggest failure in the Bible" and his
wife, Gloria, who has said her husband controls the weather and can make tornadoes and
storms disappear.
Or the man Trump asked to come to DC, lay hands on and pray for him. Sick weirdo Rodney
Howard Brown who says he is Jesus' bartender.
I also seem to remember Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress and a few right wing
evangelicals promoting frauds Paula White, Kenneth Copeland and few other fake
Christians.
If you are going to express concern about people and their "religion", how about talking
about the evangelicals who are a threat to the Christian faith and that Romans 16:17-18, 2
Corinthians 11:13-15, 1 John 1:5-10, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, 1 Timothy 6:4-5 and others warn
about.
Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and
non-government actors including terrorist groups, but [unlike in the past] they are only
considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing
honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it
did not do.
Heck US aircraft carriers used to visit HK quite often until recently, even after the hand
over. They anchored in the harbor while thousands of sailors headed to the Wanchai bars,
although after the hand over they anchored in a less visible part of the harbor. China didn't
have a problem.
I doubt China sweats a couple of aircraft carriers when we have large bases in Japan and
South Korea, not to mention Guam.
False conflicts with China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are needed to keep support for
MIC and Security State which cost 1.2 trillion a year.
If the US were serious about confronting China there would be sanctions and not tariffs.
China and US are partners. We sell them chips that they put in our electronics and sell to
us, so we can spy on our people, and they test out our social control technology on their own
people. They clothe us, sell cheap API's for drugs and they invest in treasuries and other US
assets and we educate their young talent and give them access to our research and technology
and fund some of their own research and share numerous patents
Since this nothing-burger appears to have kicked off with an article in the NYT, it looks to
me as though someone reminded The Swamp that Iran hasn't been disarmed and is thus not the
kind of soft target that can be pushed around with impunity by AmeriKKKa. Imo, Iran is a lot
closer to the top of the Military Genius pecking order than AmeriKKKa. i.e. Iran has made it
quite clear that "Israel" will cop the blowback if Iran is attacked, and has also
demonstrated its ability to conduct high-precision strikes on US bases & bunkers in the
region. Iran is also quite good at swapping insults with AmeriKKKa and Iran's insults are
usually funnier than AmeriKKKa's...
Threatening North Korea probably seemed like a better/safer idea than threatening Iran but
only until China's diplomatic comedians start ripping into AmeriKKKa's loud-mouthed dorks and
daydreamers.
The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is inevitably heading toward
its conclusion. While the presiding district judge, Emmet Sullivan , is trying to keep it
going, there's only so much he can do, chiefly because there's nobody left to prosecute the
case after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped it
last month .
In the latest developments, the District of Columbia appeals court set a hearing in the case
for tomorrow (June 12), while the DOJ's solicitor general himself, as well as five of his
deputies, urged the court to order the lower-court judge to accept the case dismissal.
"I cannot overstate how big of a deal this is," commented appellate attorney John Reeves,
former assistant Missouri attorney general, in a series of tweets on June
1 .
Personal involvement of the solicitor general "is highly unusual and rare," he said .
" Unusual " seems a fitting euphemism for the Flynn case, which has been filled with
contradictions, falsehoods, apparent blunders, extraordinary moves, and strange
coincidences.
The Epoch Times has so far counted 85 such instances.
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration and
former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to
one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
The FBI officially opened an investigation on Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, based on a suspicion
that he "may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian
Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security."
What activity? The case was opened under a broader investigation into whether the Trump 2016
presidential campaign conspired with Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National
Committee and release them through Wikileaks.
The bureau learned from the Australian government that its then-ambassador to the UK,
Alexander Downer, spoke with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who "suggested" that the
campaign received "some kind of suggestion" that Russia could help it by anonymously releasing
some information damaging to Trump's opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The FBI didn't know what Papadopoulos actually said or what he was talking about.
Officially, this information was used by the FBI to comb through its databases for
information on people associated with the Trump campaign and open investigations on four
individuals supposedly linked to Russia.
Because Flynn's paid speaking engagements in years past included some for Russian companies
-- one for Kaspersky Lab and one for RT television in Moscow -- the FBI decided to open a
counterintelligence investigation on the retired three-star general.
But the FBI seemed to have trouble getting its story straight.
1. Comey
Contradiction
The FBI officially opened the four individual cases in mid-August 2016.
But former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that he was
briefed already "at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations
of four individuals to see if there was a connection between any of those four and the Russian
effort."
2. Unlikely Target
Suspecting a man with patriotic bona fides of Flynn's caliber of having colluded with Russia
based on two speaking engagements seemed particularly unusual.
Flynn's command of military intelligence to aid American troops in combat has earned him
great praise.
"Mike Flynn's impact on the nation's War on Terror probably trumps any other single person,"
wrote then-Brig. Gen. John Mulholland in Flynn's
2007 performance review .
Mulholland went as far as calling Flynn "easily the best intelligence professional of any
service serving today."
Flynn was driven out of his post in 2014 after he repeatedly embarrassed President Barack
Obama by insisting, contrary to the administration's official stance, that a resurgence of
Islamic terrorism in the Middle East was imminent.
Two months after his resignation, the rise of ISIS proved him right.
3. A Name for the
Spotlight
The Russia probe was titled "Crossfire Hurricane" (CH), and Flynn was given the code name
"Crossfire Razor."
This was unusual, according to Marc Ruskin, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and an Epoch Times
contributor.
Rank-and-file agents would never pick a name like this, he told The Epoch Times in a
previous interview.
"They would mock it as being overly dramatic," he said.
4. Snooping During
Briefing
The day after opening the Flynn case, the FBI participated in a strategic intelligence
briefing given to Donald Trump and two of his advisers by the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence.
Because Flynn was to be present, the FBI took the extraordinary step of sending in
supervisory special agent Joe Pientka to collect intel on Flynn for the investigation. Pientka
was to assess Flynn's "overall mannerisms" and listen for "any kind of admission" that could be
used by the bureau, the DOJ's inspector general (IG) said in a Dec. 9 report on the CH
investigation ( pdf ).
The IG raised the question of whether snooping on officials the FBI is supposed to brief
could have a "chilling effect" on any such intelligence briefings in the future.
5.
Dossier Coincidence
The FBI directly targeted four Trump campaign aides, opening cases on three of them --
Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort -- on Aug. 10, 2016. The IG never received an
explanation for why the Flynn case was opened later. Incidentally, Page and Manafort had
already been mentioned in the infamous Steele dossier since July 28, 2016. Flynn's name,
however, was only mentioned in the dossier report dated Aug. 10, 2016.
The dossier, which drummed up unsubstantiated allegations of a Trump–Russia
conspiracy, was being spread to the media, the FBI, the State Department, the DOJ, and Congress
by operatives funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
One of the CH case agents, Stephen Somma, happened to have a longstanding relationship with
Stephan Halper, a Cambridge professor who was also a longtime political operative and FBI
informant.
Somma and another agent met with Halper on Aug. 11, 2016, and learned that, in a stunning
coincidence, Halper was already in contact with Page, had known Manafort for years, and "had
been previously acquainted with Michael Flynn," the IG report said
The CH team "couldn't believe [their] luck," Somma told the IG.
7. Halper's Story
Halper was accused of spreading rumors, starting in late 2016, that Flynn had an affair with
a Russian woman while visiting the UK in 2014 for a dinner hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence
Seminar co-convened at the time by Halper.
An "established" FBI informant told the CH team that the woman jumped in a cab with Flynn
after the dinner and joined him for a train ride to London (
pdf ).
She said Halper was the one spreading the rumor to the media and the FBI, even though he
didn't actually attend the event. She unsuccessfully
sued Halper for defamation in May 2019.
Somehow, Steele also became privy to the rumor and
shared it with Adam Kramer , an aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Kramer
testified to Congress that he was in regular contact with Steele between Nov. 28, 2016, and
early March 2017.
8. Unmasking
The names of Americans are normally masked -- that is, replaced with generic names -- in
foreign intelligence reports. Many senior government officials have the authority to ask for
names to be unmasked for various reasons, such as to understand the intelligence. There were
dozens of unmasking requests for reports related to Flynn, between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31,
2017 (
pdf ). The number of unmasking requests has been described as alarming by some
commentators, while others described it as routine.
9. Non-masking
There are also indications that Flynn's name was never masked in summaries or
transcripts of his calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak
on Dec. 29, 2016, and in the following days. FBI leaders were distributing the documents to top
Obama officials. Even President Barack Obama himself was briefed on them on or before Jan. 5,
2017.
10. Who Briefed Obama?
Comey testified to Congress that it was then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
who briefed Obama on the Flynn–Kislyak calls (
pdf ). Clapper, however, denied this to Congress.
11. 'Unusual'
Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, memorialized a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting with
Obama, Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates . Rice wrote in an email to
herself that Obama asked Comey whether he should withhold any Russia-related information from
the incoming administration and from Flynn in particular.
"Potentially," Comey replied, adding that "the level of communication" between Flynn and
Kislyak was "unusual,"
she wrote . There's no indication Flynn was talking to Kislyak unusually often. He was at
the time responsible for laying the groundwork for Trump's foreign relations as president and
was frequently on the phone with foreign dignitaries.
12. Late Memo
Rice's memo itself is unusual. She emailed it to herself more than two weeks after the
meeting took place, on the day of Trump's inauguration.
13. Strzok Intervention
On Jan. 4, the FBI was already in the process of closing Flynn's case. But the bureau's
counterintelligence operations head at the time, Peter Strzok,
scrambled to keep it open , noting that the "7th floor," meaning the FBI's top leadership,
was involved.
14. McCabe–Comey Contradiction
Comey testified that he authorized the Flynn case "to be closed at the end of December,
beginning of January."
"I don't think a closure would have been soon," he said.
15. Shaky Theory
FBI documents and Comey's testimony indicate that the
bureau kept the Flynn case open solely based on a legal theory that he may have violated
the Logan Act, even though the DOJ made clear that such charges wouldn't pass muster in court
-- nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for a Logan Act violation and the government
last tried in 1852.
The law prohibits private citizens from engaging in diplomacy on their own with countries
the United States is in dispute with. Not only have questions been raised as to whether the law
would pass today's constitutional scrutiny, which places greater emphasis on First Amendment
protections, but also there's no indication the law was conceived to apply to a
president-elect's incoming top adviser.
16. Call Leaks
In early January, information about Flynn's calls with Kislyak was leaked to then-Washington
Post reporter Adam Entous. He said there was a discussion at the paper about what to do with
the information, as it would have been expected of Flynn, given his position, to talk to
Kislyak (
pdf ). In the end, the paper
ran a column on Jan. 12 by David Ignatius speculating that Flynn may have violated the
Logan Act if he discussed fresh sanctions imposed on Russia during the calls.
Obama imposed the sanctions on Russian entities, including its intelligence services, on
Dec. 29, 2016. At the same time, he also expelled 35 Russian intelligence officers.
17.
Denial
The calls "had nothing whatsoever to do with the sanctions," incoming Vice President Mike
Pence told CBS News on Jan. 15, 2017, in an interview the network almost wholly dedicated to
questions about Russia.
This wasn't completely true.
Kislyak did bring up the issue of sanctions during the call, though Flynn didn't engage him
in a conversation on the topic.
Flynn raised the issue of the expulsions, which is technically a separate issue from
sanctions, though both were announced at the same time. He asked for "cool heads to prevail"
and for Russia to only respond reciprocally, as further escalation into a "tit for tat" could
lead to the countries shutting down each other's embassies, complicating future
diplomacy.
18. 'Blackmailable'
Yates said she wanted to inform Trump's White House about the Kislyak calls as Russia would
know that what Pence said wasn't true and could thus blackmail Flynn with the information,
according to an Aug. 15, 2017, FBI report from her interview
with the Mueller team.
According to Ruskin, this was hardly a blackmail situation, which ordinarily involves
serious compromising information, such as evidence of bribery or sexual misconduct.
Comey acknowledged to Congress in March 2017 that the idea that Flynn was compromised struck
him "as a bit of a reach."
19. Comey Blocked Information
Despite issues with Yates's argument, informing the White House may have indeed cleared up
the situation. However, Comey blocked it, saying it could have interfered with the
investigation of Flynn -- despite that it appears there was nothing for the bureau to
investigate. At that point, the DOJ already had disapproved of the Logan Act idea. In any case,
the probe was supposed to be about Russian collusion. The bureau could have closed it and
opened a new one on the Logan Act, if it indeed had had sufficient predication. But it never
opened such an investigation, the DOJ noted in its motion to dismiss Flynn's case.
20.
Another Comey–McCabe Contradiction
In the days before Jan. 24, 2017, top FBI officials were discussing plans to interview
Flynn. Comey said the point of the interview was to find out why Flynn didn't tell Pence that
sanctions were discussed during the call (even though Flynn wasn't actually the one talking
about sanctions).
"My judgment was we could not close the investigation of Mr. Flynn without asking him what
is the deal here. That was the purpose," Comey testified.
McCabe, however, told a different story when then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked him, "Was
[Flynn] interviewed because the Vice President relied upon information from him in a national
interview?"
"No. I don't remember that being a motivating factor behind the interview," McCabe
said.
21. No Mention of Pence
During the interview, the agents didn't ask Flynn about what he did or didn't tell Pence --
an unusual approach if the point, as Comey said, was to find out why Flynn hadn't "been candid"
with Pence. The FBI, in fact, had no idea what Flynn did or didn't tell Pence.
22.
Slipped-In Warning
Agents regularly warn interviewees that lying to federal officers is a crime. Before the
Flynn interview, however, McCabe's special counsel Lisa Page emailed another FBI lawyer asking
how the warning should be given and whether there was a way "to just casually slip that
in."
23. No Warning
In the end, the agents never gave Flynn any such warning.
24. 'Get Him to Lie Get Him
Fired?'
The FBI officials agreed that the agents wouldn't show Flynn the transcripts of the calls.
If he said something that diverged from them, they would ask again, slipping in some words from
the transcript. If that didn't jog his memory, they were not to confront him about it.
On the day of the interview, then-FBI head of counterintelligence
Bill Priestap wrote a note saying he told other officials to "rethink" the approach.
"What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?" he wrote, noting, "We regularly show subjects evidence."
Apparently, his concerns were ignored.
25. Discouraging Having a Lawyer Present
On the day of the interview, McCabe spoke with Flynn on the phone to ask him for the
interview. McCabe said he told Flynn he wanted the interview done "as quickly, quietly, and
discreetly as possible." If Flynn wanted anybody to sit in, such as one of the White House
lawyers, the DOJ would have to be involved, McCabe told him.
According to Ruskin, that was "egregious" behavior akin to discouraging a subject of an
investigation from having a lawyer present for an interview.
26. No White House
Notice
An FBI interview of a president's national security adviser is a big deal. Normally, it
would warrant a back-and-forth between the White House and the bureau on the scope, content,
purpose, and other parameters. Most likely, multiple White House lawyers would sit in.
Comey, however, said in a public forum
that he just sent the agents in, taking advantage of the fact that it was "early enough" --
only four days after the inauguration.
27. No Notice Given to DOJ
According to Yates, Comey didn't consult the DOJ about his intention to interview Flynn,
even though the department would usually be involved in such decisions.
28. Not Quite a
Denial From Flynn
After the interview, in which Strzok and supervisory special agent Pientka extensively
questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, Comey said that Flynn denied talking to
the ambassador about the sanctions. But the agents' notes indicate that though Flynn denied it
at first, he seemed unsure when the agents asked again.
"Not really. I don't remember. It wasn't, 'Don't do anything,'" he said, according to the
notes.
"I told the agents that 'tit-for-tat' is a phrase I use, which suggests that the topic of
sanctions could have been raised," he
said .
29. UN Vote Denial
Based on the agent's notes, Flynn did deny asking for Russia to delay a U.N. vote in Israeli
settlements. One of the call transcripts indicates he in fact made such a request.
Flynn told the agents he was calling multiple countries regarding the vote, but it was more
an exercise of how quickly he could get foreign officials on the phone since there was no way
the transition team could convince enough countries to actually change the outcome. Indeed, the
vote passed with only the United States abstaining.
30. No Indication of Deception
The agents came back with the impression "that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was
lying," according to Strzok.
Comey seemed on the fence.
"I don't know. I think there is an argument to be made that he lied. It is a close one," he
testified.
31. Flynn Knew They Knew
According to McCabe, Flynn expressed awareness before the interview that the FBI knew
exactly what he said during the Kislyak calls.
"You listen to everything they [Russian representatives] say," Flynn told him, according to
McCabe's notes from that day.
32. Belated Report
The FBI interview summary, form FD-302, is required to be completed within five days of the
interview. Flynn's, however, took more than two weeks.
33. Rewritten 302
Strzok texted Page on Feb. 10, 2017, he was "trying to not completely rewrite" the 302 "so
as to save [redacted] voice." The redacted name was most likely Pientka's.
34. Missing
Original
Flynn was ultimately provided two draft versions of the 302 -- one from Feb. 10, 2016, and
one from the day after. But based on Strzok's texts, there should have been at least two draft
versions produced on Feb. 10, 2016, or before.
In fact, Judge Sullivan said in a Dec. 17, 2018, minute order that the 302 "was drafted
immediately after Mr. Flynn's FBI interview." It's not clear what the judge was basing this
assertion on or what happened to the early draft.
Flynn's current attorney, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , later said she'd found a
witness who saw an earlier draft and that it said "that Flynn was honest with the agents
and did not lie."
35. No Reinterview
It is common that when the FBI has questions after an interview about the candor of the
subject, it would question the person again. But in this case, the FBI showed no interest in
doing so.
36. Still Investigating What?
After the interview, Comey promptly agreed to Yates informing the White House about the call
transcripts. Flynn was fired two weeks later. But, somehow, the investigation was still not
over.
Comey said in his March 2, 2017, testimony that the bureau wasn't investigating any possible
Logan Act violation by Flynn and wouldn't do so unless the DOJ directed it.
But he said the investigation was "obviously" still ongoing and "criminal in nature."
McCabe said that "even following the interview on the 24th, we had a lot of work left to do
in that investigation."
By mid-February, the status of the probe wouldn't have "changed materially" in his belief,
he said.
"Like we were pursuing phone records and toll records at that time," he said. "There were
all kinds of really very basic foundational investigative activity that had to take place and
we were committed to getting that done."
It's unclear what the point of the investigation was.
37. FARA Papers
Around Christmas 2016, Flynn found in the office of his defunct consultancy, Flynn Intel
Group (FIG), a letter from the DOJ telling him he may need to file foreign lobbying disclosures
under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The DOJ's National Security Division (NSD) wanted to know about a job FIG did earlier that
year for Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
It should have been a routine procedure. Washington lobbyists commonly flunk FARA rules and
the NSD usually just asks them to register retrospectively because FARA cases are difficult to
prosecute. Flynn hired a team from Covington and Burling led by Robert Kelner, a
"never-Trumper" and an expert on FARA, to prepare the paperwork.
This time, the NSD was unusually eager. Heather Hunt, then-FARA unit chief herself, was
repeatedly prompting the lawyers to expeditiously file the papers.
Comey's leaking the content of this and other memos to the media served as a catalyst for
then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing former FBI head Robert Mueller as a
special counsel to take over the CH probe.
39. Rosenstein's Scope Memo Still Alludes to
Logan Act
Even though Comey said in March 2017 that the FBI wasn't investigating Flynn for a Logan Act
violation, Mueller received in August 2017 a mandate from Rosenstein ( pdf
) to probe whether Flynn "committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian
government officials during the period of the Trump transition." That appears to be an allusion
to the Logan Act.
Rosenstein testified
to Congress that he simply put in the scope of Mueller's mandate whatever the CH team was
investigating at the time.
The scope memo also tasked Mueller with probing whether Flynn lied to the FBI during the
interview, whether he failed to report foreign contacts or income on his national security
disclosure forms, and whether the Turkey job by his firm meant that he "committed a crime or
crimes by acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey."
40. Lawyers
Delay Informing Flynn?
By mid-August 2017, Covington learned that prosecutors were looking at Flynn's FARA filings.
But the lawyers didn't inform Flynn until weeks later, according to his current lawyer,
Powell.
41. Conflict of Interest
Convington faced a conflict of interest in Flynn's case, because it was in their interest to
say any problems with the FARA papers were Flynn's fault, while it was in Flynn's interest to
say the lawyers were responsible.
Covington and the Mueller team agreed the firm can continue to represent Flynn if they tell
him about the conflict and he consents to it. Powell said the conflict was so serious bar rules
required the lawyers to withdraw.
42. Lawyers Don't Take Responsibility
In Flynn's situation, it would have been the ethical thing to do for the lawyers to take
responsibility for any problems with the FARA papers, according to Powell. But they didn't do
that.
43. Lawyers Express Apprehension About Being Targeted Themselves
The Covington lawyers on several occasions expressed concern that Mueller may target them
with a crime-fraud order, a measure that allows prosecutors to break through the
attorney-client privilege if they get a judge to agree that the client was conferring with
lawyers to further a crime or some misconduct. The lawyers were aware Mueller's team had
already used the order against Manafort.
Facing a crime-fraud order would cause bad publicity for Covington, Powell noted. Leading
Flynn into the plea allowed the firm to avoid it.
44. Perilous Interviews
In early November 2016, Mueller prosecutors, led by Brandon Van Grack, told Covington that
Flynn was facing charges for lying to the FBI and lying on the FARA papers. They asked for
Flynn's cooperation with the broader Russia probe, particularly regarding any communications he
or other Trump people had with foreign officials.
Van Grack wanted Flynn to sit down for a series of interviews. He offered Flynn limited
immunity, but acknowledged that Flynn could still be charged for lying during the
interviews.
The lawyers noted that this could have been dangerous for Flynn, even if he was completely
honest.
"To ask someone about meetings and calls during an incredibly busy period of his life as an
evaluation of candor is not a particularly attractive option," Kelner told the prosecutors
during a conference call (
pdf ).
Yet ultimately the Covington lawyers agreed to make Flynn available for the
questioning.
45. Belated Consent
Covington only asked Flynn for consent with their conflict of interest in writing on Nov.
19, 2017, after Flynn had already been through two days of interviews with the
prosecutors.
46. Wrong Standard
The consent request, sent via email, cited the wrong bar rule for handling of conflicts. The
correct rule "creates a much lower threshold at which a lawyer must bow out," Powell said in a
court filing.
47. Innocent but Guilty
The Covington lawyers repeatedly told the prosecutors that they didn't think Flynn was
guilty of a felony. They were also told that Strzok and Pientka "saw no indication of
deception" on Flynn's part and had the impression after the interview that he wasn't lying or
didn't think he was lying. But the lawyers still convinced Flynn that he should plead guilty to
the felony charge.
48. Threat to Son
According to Flynn's declaration, the Covington lawyers told him that if he didn't plead,
the prosecutors would charge his son (who had a four-month-old baby at the time) with a FARA
violation, because the son worked for Flynn's firm and was involved in the Turkey project. If
he did plead, however, his son "would be left in peace," Flynn said.
The pressure campaign, it seems, was also reflected in media leaks.
"If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son it
could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences,"
NBC News reported on Nov. 5, 2017, referring to "sources familiar with the
investigation."
"To twist the father's arm with regard to his child is a pretty low thing to do," Ruskin
commented.
49. 302 Not Shared
The prosecutors refused to share with Flynn the 302 from his January interview until shortly
before he agreed to plead. Also, they only shared the final version of the report, which was
significantly different from its previous drafts, Flynn later learned.
50. Strzok Texts
Understatement
Shortly before Flynn signed his plea, the prosecutors disclosed to his lawyers that one of
the agents who interviewed Flynn (Strzok) was being investigated by the IG for potential
misconduct. They also disclosed that the agent expressed in electronic communications "a
preference for one of the candidates for President."
This was far from covering the bombshell the Strzok texts actually were, Powell noted.
Strzok not only voiced preference for Clinton, but cursed at and repeatedly derided Trump.
In one 2016 text, he argued that the FBI needed to take action akin to an "insurance policy" in
case Trump won. Strzok later said he was referring to proceeding in the CH probe more
aggressively out of a worry that Trump may interfere with it if elected.
51. Lawyers
Never Told Flynn?
Flynn said the Convington lawyers never told him that the FBI agents didn't think he lied.
Even after he specifically asked about the agents' impression, the lawyers didn't disclose the
information and instead told him that "the agents stood by their statement."
"I then understood them to be telling me that the FBI agents believed that I had lied,"
Flynn said, explaining that had he known, he wouldn't have signed the plea.
52. Statement
of Offense Inaccurate
As part of his statement of offense, Flynn affirmed that FIG's FARA papers contained three
false statements and one omission. Yet, on all four points the statement of offense was
inaccurate, Powell demonstrated (
pdf ).
"The prosecutors concocted the alleged 'false statements' by their own misrepresentations,
deceit, and omissions," she said in a court filing (
pdf ).
The FARA papers were "substantially correct" and any deficiencies were the fault of
Covington, she said.
53. Lawyers Knew
In an internal email three days before Flynn signed his plea, one of the Covington lawyers
pointed out that some of the "false statements" attributed to Flynn in the statement of offense
regarding the FARA filings were "contradicted by the caveats or qualifications in the
filing."
It seems the lawyers failed to correct the issue, since the statement of offense remained
inaccurate. They also never informed Flynn of the issue, according to Powell.
54. Judge
Recusal
Flynn entered his plea on Dec. 1, 2017. Shortly after, the judge who accepted the plea,
Rudolph Contreras, recused himself from the case. The apparent but undisclosed reason was
likely his personal relationship with Strzok.
55. Strzok Texts Media Coincidence
While the IG had found Strzok's texts already in June 2017, their first disclosure in the
media came from The Washington Post the day after Flynn entered his guilty plea. Powell noted
how convenient the timing was for the prosecutors.
56. Side Deal
The prosecutors conveyed to Covington an "unofficial understanding" that they were
"unlikely" to charge Flynn's son in light of Flynn's agreement to continue to cooperate with
the Mueller probe, one of the lawyers said in an internal email.
Such an under-the-table deal is "unethical," Ruskin said.
57. Avoiding Giglio
Disclosure
Another internal Covington email suggests the prosecutors intentionally kept the deal
regarding Flynn's son unofficial to make future prosecutions easier.
"The government took pains not to give a promise to MTF [Michael T. Flynn] regarding Michael
[Flynn] Jr., so as to limit how much of a 'benefit' it would have to disclose as part of its
Giglio disclosures to any defendant against whom MTF may one day testify," the email reads.
"Giglio" refers to a 1972 Supreme Court opinion that requires prosecutors to disclose to the
defense that a witness used by the prosecutors has been promised an escape from prosecution in
exchange for cooperation.
58. Questionable Disclosures
After the case was assigned to Judge Sullivan, he entered an order for the DOJ to give Flynn
all exculpatory information it had, as the judge does in all cases.
The prosecutors, however, weren't prompt in revealing the information. The Strzok texts, for
instance, were only provided to Flynn after they were released publicly.
59. Business
Partner Coincidence
One day before Flynn's sentencing hearing, his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, was
charged with a failure to register as a foreign agent in relation to FIG's Turkey job.
Powell called it a "shot across the bow" which the Mueller team wanted to "leverage" against
Flynn.
"Mr. Van Grack used the possibility of indicting Flynn in the Rafiekian case at the
sentencing hearing to raise the specter of all the threats he had made to secure the plea a
year earlier -- including the indictment of Mr. Flynn's son," she said in a court filing (
pdf ).
60. Judge Makes False Accusations, Backtracks
During a Dec. 18, 2018, sentencing hearing, Sullivan questioned the prosecutors about
whether they considered charging Flynn with treason.
"Arguably, you sold your country out," he told Flynn, saying that he acted as an agent of
Turkey while in the White House.
That was wrong on multiple levels. Not only does treason not apply to unregistered lobbying,
but the Turkey job had virtually no impact on American interests. It prepared a plan to lobby
for the extradition of an Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in the
United States, and whom Ankara blamed for instigating a coup attempt in 2016. Almost none of
the plan materialized. Most importantly, Flynn shuttered his firm shortly after the election to
comply with Trump's promise of no lobbyists in his administration.
Sullivan corrected himself later in the hearing, but many media outlets still put his
original remarks in headlines.
61. MSNBC Coincidence
While Sullivan's question about treason and his gaffe about the Turkey job seemed to come
out of left field, they mirrored MSNBC talking points from days prior.
The day before Flynn's sentencing hearing, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow claimed Flynn and Rafiekian "disguised" the
origins of payments for the Turkey job so they could "secretly work in the interest of a
foreign country without anybody knowing it while they were also working high-level jobs in
intelligence inside the U.S. government."
"Flynn really thought he could be a national security adviser, the national security adviser
in the White House, and a secret foreign agent at the same time," Maddow said .
Three days before Flynn's sentencing hearing, Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism commentator,
said on MSNBC that Flynn "may have been one step away from treason" and "pulled back by
cooperating" with Mueller.
62. Judge Fails to Satisfy Plea Rules
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state in Rule 11 that "before entering judgment on a
guilty plea, the court must determine that there is a factual basis for the plea."
As such, Sullivan was required to check that Flynn's alleged lies to the FBI were
"material," meaning relevant enough to potentially affect an FBI investigation.
But the judge acknowledged during the sentencing hearing that he hadn't done so.
"It probably won't surprise you that I had many, many, many more questions. such as, you
know, how the government's investigation was impeded? What was the material impact of the
criminality? Things like that," he said at the conclusion of the hearing.
There's no indication Sullivan has asked those questions since.
63. Unacceptable
Plea
Not only could Sullivan not have accepted Flynn's plea before determining materiality,
there's evidence he was in fact required to refuse it.
Rule 11 requires the court to "determine that the plea is voluntary and did not result from
force, threats, or promises (other than promises in a plea agreement)."
In Flynn's case, there actually was a threat and a promise left out of the deal -- the
"unofficial understanding" that his son was "unlikely" to be charged if Flynn
cooperated.
64. Lawyers Insisted Flynn 'Stay on the Path'
Before the sentencing hearing, the Covington lawyers told Flynn to "stay on the path" and to
refuse if Sullivan offered him to take his plea back, Flynn said in his court declaration.
"If the judge offers you a chance to withdraw your plea, he is giving you the rope to hang
yourself. Don't do it," the lawyers said, according to Powell.
65. Unprepared
Flynn said the lawyers only prepared him for a "simple hearing" and not for the extended
questioning Sullivan engaged in.
"I was not prepared for this court's plea colloquy, much less to decide, on the spot,
whether I should withdraw my plea, consult with independent counsel, or continue to follow my
existing lawyers' advice," he said.
In the end, he affirmed his plea during the hearing.
66. Prosecutors Asked for False
Testimony?
Flynn was expected to testify against Rafiekian in 2019, but when the moment was to come,
prosecutors asked him to say that he signed FIG's FARA papers knowing there were lies in them.
Flynn, who had already fired Convington and hired Powell by that point, refused. He said he
only acknowledged in hindsight that the FARA papers were inaccurate, but didn't know it at the
time.
67. Prosecutors Knew?
Powell has argued that the prosecutors knew they were asking for a false testimony. She
filed with the court a draft of Flynn's statement of offense, which shows that the words "FLYNN
then and there knew" (pertaining to the FARA registration) were cut from the final version.
Moreover, Powell submitted emails that indicate the words were cut by the prosecutors
themselves after the Covington lawyers raised some objections to the draft.
68.
Retaliation?
Flynn's refusal to say what prosecutors wanted angered Van Grack, contemporaneous notes show
(
pdf ). Shortly after, prosecutors tried to label Flynn as a co-conspirator in the Rafiekian
case and put Flynn's son on the list of witnesses for the prosecution. According to Powell,
this was retaliation for Flynn's refusal to lie.
69. Rafiekian Case Collapses
Prosecutors in the Rafiekian case tried to argue that anybody who does something political
at the request of a foreign official and fails to disclose it to the DOJ is an "agent of a
foreign government" and can be put in prison for up to 10 years.
The presiding judge, Anthony Trenga, rejected the theory, ruling that an "agent" -- as used
in that context -- needs to have a tighter relationship with the foreign government, a
relationship that includes "the power of the principal to give directions and the duty of the
agent to obey those directions."
Starting in August, Powell started to bombard the prosecutors with demands for exculpatory
evidence she was convinced the DOJ possessed. But the prosecutors repeatedly claimed the
government already provided all it had and had no more.
The main issue was, Powell noted, that the DOJ had a very narrow view of what is
exculpatory.
"If something appears on its face to be favorable to the defense the government will claim
it was said 'with a wink and a nod,' and therefore it showed the defendant's guilt after all,"
she complained in an Aug. 30, 2019, filing (
pdf ).
As it later turned out, the FBI was sitting on a number of documents favorable to the
defense.
71. Contradicting Notes
When Flynn finally obtained the hand-written notes Strzok and Pientka took during the
interview, it turned out they didn't quite match the final 302.
The 302, for instance, says that Flynn remembered making four to five phone calls to Kislyak
on Dec. 29, 2016. Both sets of notes indicate that Flynn didn't remember that.
Also, the 302 says that Flynn denied that Kislyak got back to him with the Russian response
a few days later. There's no mention of a Russian response in the notes.
72. Notes
Mixup
It took the prosecutors until November 2019 to find out and tell Flynn that the notes they
said belonged to Strzok were actually Pientka's and vice versa.
73. No Date, Name
The notes mixup wasn't that easy to spot because neither set of notes was signed or dated,
even though they should have been, according to Powell.
74. Harsher Sentence
Since his sentencing hearing, Flynn was expected to receive a light sentence, possibly
probation. In January 2020, however, the prosecutors indicated that Flynn should be treated
more harshly because he reneged on his promise to cooperate on the Rafiekian case.
This was part of the retaliation for Flynn's refusal to lie for the prosecutors, according
to Powell.
Shortly after that, Flynn asked the court to let him withdraw his plea.
Any limitation the court puts on how the attorney-client information can be used shouldn't
"preclude the government from prosecuting the defendant for perjury if any information that he
provided to counsel were proof of perjury in this proceeding," they said.
It's not clear what specifically they were referring to.
76. Thousands More
Documents
In April, Covington told Flynn they
found thousands more documents related to his case that they failed to give to Powell due
to "an unintentional miscommunication involving the firm's information technology
personnel."
77. Van Grack Out
On May 7, 2020, Van Grack withdrew from Flynn's case as well as others. The reason is not
clear.
The same day, the DOJ moved to withdraw the Flynn case.
78. Judge Delays
A government motion to withdraw a case usually marks the end of the case. The court still
needs to accept the motion, but there's not much it can do, since there's nobody left to
prosecute the case.
Sullivan, however, didn't accept it.
79. Appointing Amicus
On May 13, 2020, Sullivan appointed former federal Judge John Gleeson as an amicus curiae
(friend of court) "to present arguments in opposition to the government's Motion to Dismiss" as
well as to "address" whether the court should make the defense explain why "Flynn should not be
held in criminal contempt for perjury."
This was an unusual move. Amici are normally only appointed in civil or higher court cases.
Powell has said Sullivan doesn't have authority to do so.
80. Another Washington Post
Coincidence
Just two days earlier, Gleeson co-authored an op-ed in The Washington Post where he accused
the DOJ of "impropriety," "corruption," and "improper political influence" for dropping the
Flynn case.
81. More Delays
On May 19, 2020, Sullivan issued a scheduling order that set an oral argument for July 16,
when third parties invited by the judge would get a chance to voice their opinions. As such,
the judge
set to prolong the case for about two more months and possibly beyond.
In a rare move , the appeals court
ordered Sullivan to respond to Flynn's petition within 10 days. Usually, the court would
appoint an amicus curiae to argue the case on behalf of the judge. Sometimes, the court would
invite the judge to respond. Ordering a response is "very rare," Reeves commented.
Wilkinson has in the past represented major corporations such as Pfizer, Microsoft, and
Phillip Morris, as well as Hillary Clinton aides during the FBI's investigation of Clinton's
use of a private email server. She also assisted then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in
preparing his 2018 defense against a sexual assault allegation.
Wilkinson is married to CNN analyst David Gregory, the former host of the NBC News' "Meet
the Press."
84. DOJ Brings Big Guns
In another unusual move, the DOJ's Solicitor General and five of his deputies responded to
the appeals court in support of Flynn's petition. The Solicitor General usually argues cases on
behalf of the DOJ before the Supreme Court. His personal involvement in an appeals court
petition "is highly unusual and rare," Reeves said.
"For non-lawyers, a ten day notice for oral argument may seem like a long time, but it
isn't. It's an increidibly [sic] short amount of time," he said, noting that a call for a
hearing "shows that the DC Circuit is gravely concerned about this matter."
This guy does not understand the term "neoliberalism" and process of rejection of neoliberal ideology and the collapse of
neoliberal globalization. As such his analysis is by-and-large junk. Still some quotes are interesting enough to the
readers. Undeniably Russia and China are poses both features of the nationa-states and distinct civilizations, but that
changes nothing in their fight against American Imperialism and global neoliberalism.
The weakness of both Russia and China is that they are neoliberal states themselves, so while fighting American neoliberal
imperialism (to a certain extent) externally, they promote neoliberalism internally. China implements something like NEP (New
economic Policy) installed in Russia after revolution. It leads to tremendous level of corruption. Putin promotes something like a
New Deal Capitalism, but that contradicts the logic of neoliberalism and the fact of existince of Russian oligarchs. Political
balance relies just of the power of Putin personality. That might lead to the collapse of state when current leaders are gone, as
this is a very fine balance which requires exceptional political agility. Putin does possessed it, but that does not mean that
Russia can find another Putin. Then what? A new Yeltsin?
Notable quotes:
"... today we are witnessing the end of the liberal world order and the rise of the civilisational state, which claims to represent not merely a nation or territory but an exceptional civilisation ..."
"... Western civilisation is much less able to confront both internal problems such as economic injustice, social dislocation and resurgent nationalism, ..."
Such states define
themselves not as nations but civilisations – in opposition to the liberalism and global
market ideology of the West. By Adrian Pabst The 20th century marked the
downfall of empire and the triumph of the nation state. National self-determination became the
prime test of state legitimacy, rather than dynastic inheritance or imperial rule.
After the
Cold War, the dominant elites in the West assumed that the nation-state model had defeated all
rival forms of political organisation. The worldwide spread of liberal values would create an
era of Western hegemony. It would be a new global order based on sovereign states enforced by
Western-dominated international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.
But today we are witnessing the end of the liberal world order and the rise of the civilisational state, which claims to represent not merely a nation or territory but an
exceptional civilisation. In China and Russia the ruling classes reject Western liberalism and
the expansion of a global market society. They define their countries as distinctive
civilisations with their own unique cultural values and political institutions. The ascent of
civilisational states is not just changing the global balance of power. It is also transforming
post-Cold War geopolitics away from liberal universalism towards cultural exceptionalism.
****
Thirty years after the collapse of totalitarian state communism, liberal market democracy is
in question. Both the West and "the rest" are sliding into forms of soft totalitarianism as
market fundamentalism or state capitalism creates oligarchic concentrations of power and
wealth. Oligarchies occur in both democratic and authoritarian systems, which are led by
demagogic leaders who can either be more liberal, as with France's president Emmanuel Macron,
or more populist, such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. In both the older
democracies of western Europe and in the post-1989 democracies of the former Soviet Union,
fundamental freedoms are in retreat and the separation of powers is under threat.
The resurgence of great power rivalry, especially with the rise of Russia and China, is
weakening Western attempts to impose a unified set of standards and rules in international
relations. The leaders of these powers, including the US under Donald Trump, reject universal
human rights, the rule of law, respect for facts and a free press in the name of cultural
difference. The days of spreading universal values of Western enlightenment have long since
passed.
Globalisation is partly in reverse. Free trade is curtailed by protectionist tariff wars
between the US and China. The promotion of Western democracy has been replaced by an
accommodation with autocrats such as North Korea's Kim Jong-un. But more fundamentally,
geopolitics is no longer simply about the economy or security – Christopher Coker
describes it in The Rise of the Civilizational State (2019) as largely sociocultural and
civilisational. The non-Western world, led by Beijing and Moscow, is pushing back against the
Western claim to embody universal values.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping champions a model of "socialism with Chinese characteristics"
fusing a Leninist state with neo-Confucian culture. Vladimir Putin defines Russia as a
"civilisational state", which is neither Western nor Asian but uniquely Eurasian. Trump rails
against the European multicultural dilution of Western civilisation – which he equates
with a white supremacist creed. Common to these leaders is a hybrid doctrine of nationalism at
home and the defence of civilisation abroad.
It reconciles their promotion of great-power
status with their ideological aversion to liberal universalism. States based on civilisational
identities are bound to collide with the institutions of the liberal world order, and so it is
happening.
Civilisations themselves might not clash, but contemporary geopolitics has turned into a
contest between alternative versions of civilised norms. Within the West, there is a growing
gap between a cosmopolitan EU and a nativist US. And a global "culture war" is pitting the
West's liberal establishment against the illiberal powers of Russia and China. Cultural
exceptionalism is once again challenging, and arguably replacing, liberalism's claim to
universal validity. The powers redefining themselves as state civilisations are gaining
strength.
****
A new narrative has taken hold among the ruling classes in the West: that the aggressive
axis of Russia and China is the main threat to the Western-dominated international system. But
the liberal world order is also under unprecedented strain from within. The Iraq invasion of
2003, the 2008 global financial crash, austerity and the refugee crisis in Europe, which began
in earnest in 2015 and was partly the result of Western destabilisation in Libya and Syria,
have all eroded public confidence in the liberal establishment and the institutions it
controls. Brexit, Donald Trump and the populist insurgency sweeping continental Europe mark a
revolt against the economic and social liberalism that has dominated domestic politics and
neoliberal globalisation. The ascent of authoritarian "strongmen" such as Putin, Xi Jinping,
India's prime minister Narendra Modi, Turkey's President Erdogan and Brazil's new leader Jair
Bolsonaro are a major menace to liberal dominance over international affairs. But the principal
danger to the West is internal – namely the erosion of Western civilisation by
ultra-liberalism.
The dominant idea of the last four decades is the belief that the West is a political
civilisation that represents the forward march of history towards a single normative order. But
experience has shown that this force, with its tendency towards cartel capitalism, bureaucratic
overreach, and rampant individualism, is devastating the West's cultural civilisation. Part of
the legacy of this civilisation is the postwar model of socially embedded markets,
decentralised states, a balance of open economies with protection of domestic industry and a
commitment to the dignity of the person, enshrined in human rights.
It is a legacy that rests on a common cultural heritage of Greco-Roman philosophy and law,
as well as Judeo-Christian religion and ethics. Each, in different ways, stress the unique
value of the person and free human association independent of the state. Western countries
share traditions of music, architecture, philosophy, literature, poetry and religious belief
that make them members of a common civilisation rather than a collection of separate
cultures.
This civilisational heritage and its principles are under threat from the forces of
liberalism. In the name of supposedly universal liberal values, the Clinton administration
adopted as its civilising mission the worldwide spread of market states and humanitarian
intervention. After the 9/11 attacks, left-liberal governments such as Tony Blair's New Labour
waged foreign wars and curtailed civil rights in the name of security.
Emmanuel Macron, the latest cheerleader for Western progressives, has led a crackdown of the
gilets jaunes protesters in France that threatens fundamental freedoms of speech,
association and public demonstration. As Patrick Deneen, the Catholic legal scholar and author
of Why Liberalism Failed (2018), and others have shown, liberalism is undermining the
principles of liberality on which Western civilisation depends, such as free inquiry, free
speech, tolerance for dissent and respect for political opponents.
At the heart of the West is a paradox. It is the only community of nations founded upon the
political values of self-determination of the people, democracy and free trade. These
principles were codified in the 1941 Atlantic Charter signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin
D Roosevelt, and enshrined in the post-1945 international system. Yet liberalism is eroding
these cultural foundations, and we are now living with the consequences. Western civilisation
is much less able to confront both internal problems such as economic injustice, social
dislocation and resurgent nationalism, and the external threats of ecological devastation,
Islamist terrorism and hostile foreign powers.
After the fall of communism, the liberal West sought to recast reality in its progressive
self-image. As Tony Blair put it, only liberal culture is on the "right side of history". The
US and western Europe viewed themselves as carriers of universal values for the rest of
humanity. Liberal leaders mutated into what Robespierre called "armed missionaries". They
exported Western cultural norms of personal self-expression and individual emancipation from
family, religion and nationality. Nations were seen by Western liberals as egos writ large that
desire nothing but to adapt to the imperatives of globalisation and a world without borders or
national identities.
The shallow culture of contemporary liberalism weakens civilisation in the West and
elsewhere. Liberal capitalism promotes cultural standards that glorify greed, sex and violence.
Too many liberals in politics, the media and the academy are characterised by a "closing of the
mind" that ignores the intellectual, literary and artistic achievements that make the West a
recognisable civilisation.
Some cosmopolitan liberals even repudiate the very existence of the West as a civilisation.
In one of his BBC Reith Lectures in 2016, the British-born Ghanaian-American academic Kwame
Anthony Appiah, the grandson of the former Labour chancellor Stafford Cripps, maintained that
we should give up on the idea of Western civilisation. "I believe," Appiah said, "that Western
civilisation is not at all a good idea, and Western culture is no improvement."
****
The rejection of Western universalism by the elites in Russia and China challenges the idea
of the nation state as the international norm for political organisation. The Chinese and the
Russian ruling classes view themselves as bearers of unique cultural norms, and define
themselves as civilisational states rather than nation states because the latter are associated
with Western imperialism – and in the case of China a century of humiliation following
the 19th-century Opium Wars. Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World
(2009), argues that, "The most fundamental defining features of China today, and which give the
Chinese their sense of identity, emanate not from the last century when China has called itself
a nation state but from the previous two millennia when it can be best described as a
civilisation state."
... ... ...
Adrian Pabst is a New Statesman contributing writer and the author of "Liberal World
Order and Its Critics" and "The Demons of Liberal Democracy"
"... As author Jim Keith explains, "Create violence through economic pressures, the media, mind control, agent provocateurs: thesis. Counter it with totalitarian measures, more mind control, police crackdowns, surveillance, drugging of the population: antithesis. What ensues is Orwell's vision of 1984 , a society of total control: synthesis." ..."
"... This isn't about racism in America. ..."
"... This is about profit-driven militarism packaged in the guise of law and order, waged by greedy profiteers who have transformed the American homeland into a battlefield with militarized police, military weapons and tactics better suited to a war zone. This is systemic corruption predicated on the police state's insatiable appetite for money, power and control. ..."
The Deep State, the powers-that-be, want us to turn this into a race war, but this is about
so much more than systemic racism. This is the oldest con game in the books, the magician's
sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is
being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.
It was February 1933, a month before national elections in Germany, and the Nazis weren't
expected to win. So they engineered a way to win: they began by infiltrating the police and
granting police powers to their allies; then Hitler brought in stormtroopers to act as
auxiliary police; by the time an arsonist (who claimed to be working for the Communists in the
hopes of starting an armed revolt) set fire to the Reichstag, the German parliamentary
building, the people were eager for a return to law and order.
Fast forward to the present day, and what do we have? The nation in turmoil after months of
pandemic fear-mongering and regional lockdowns, a national election looming, a president with
falling poll numbers, and a police state that wants to stay in power at all costs.
Then again, it's also equally possible that the architects of the police state have every
intention of manipulating this outrage for their own purposes.
It works the same in every age.
As author Jim Keith explains, "Create violence through economic pressures, the media, mind
control, agent provocateurs: thesis. Counter it with totalitarian measures, more mind control,
police crackdowns, surveillance, drugging of the population: antithesis. What ensues is
Orwell's vision of 1984 , a society of total control: synthesis."
Here's what is going to happen: the police state is going to stand down and allow these
protests, riots and looting to devolve into a situation where enough of the voting populace is
so desperate for a return to law and order that they will gladly relinquish some of their
freedoms to achieve it. And that's how the police state will win, no matter which candidate
gets elected to the White House.
You know who will lose? Every last one of us.
Listen, people should be outraged over what happened to George Floyd, but let's get one
thing straight: Floyd didn't die
merely because he was black and the cop who killed him is white. Floyd died because America
is being overrun with warrior cops -- vigilantes with a badge -- who are part of a
government-run standing army that is waging war on the American people in the so-called name of
law and order.
Not all cops are warrior cops, trained to
act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the populace. Unfortunately,
the good cops -- the ones who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their
fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace -- are increasingly being
outnumbered by those who believe the lives -- and rights -- of police should be valued more
than citizens.
These warrior cops may get paid by the citizenry, but they don't work for us and they
certainly aren't operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution.
This isn't about racism in America.
This is about profit-driven militarism packaged in the guise of law and order, waged by
greedy profiteers who have transformed the American homeland into a battlefield with
militarized police, military weapons and tactics better suited to a war zone. This is systemic
corruption predicated on the police state's insatiable appetite for money, power and
control.
This is a military coup waiting to happen.
Why do we have more than a million cops on the taxpayer-funded payroll in this country whose
jobs do not entail protecting our safety, maintaining the peace in our communities, and
upholding our liberties?
This is the new face of war, and America has become the new battlefield.
Militarized police officers, the end product of the government -- federal, local and state
-- and law enforcement agencies having merged, have become a "standing" or permanent army,
composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband.
Yet these permanent armies are exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution and Bill
of Rights feared as tools used by despotic governments to wage war against its citizens.
American police forces were never supposed to be a branch of the military, nor were they
meant to be private security forces for the reigning political faction. Instead, they were
intended to be an aggregation of countless local police units, composed of citizens like you
and me that exist for a sole purpose: to serve and protect the citizens of each and every
American community.
As a result of the increasing militarization of the police in recent years, however, the
police now not only look like the military -- with their foreboding uniforms and phalanx of
lethal weapons -- but they function like them, as well.
Thus, no more do we have a civilian force of peace officers entrusted with serving and
protecting the American people. Instead, today's militarized law enforcement officials have
shifted their allegiance from the citizenry to the state, acting preemptively to ward off any
possible challenges to the government's power,
unrestrained by the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment .
For years now, we've been told that cops need military weapons to wage the government's wars
on drugs, crime and terror. We've been told that cops need to be able to crash through doors,
search vehicles, carry out roadside strip searches, shoot anyone they perceive to be a threat,
and generally disregard the law whenever it suits them because they're doing it to protect
their fellow Americans from danger. We've been told that cops need extra legal protections
because of the risks they take.
Militarized police armed with weapons of war who are allowed to operate above the law and
break the laws with impunity are definitely not making America any safer or freer.
Militarism within the nation's police forces is proving to be deadlier than any
pandemic.
This battlefield mindset has gone hand in hand with the rise of militarized SWAT ("special
weapons and tactics") teams.
Frequently justified as vital tools necessary to combat terrorism and deal with rare but
extremely dangerous criminal situations, such as those involving hostages, SWAT teams have
become intrinsic parts of local law enforcement operations, thanks in large part to substantial
federal assistance and the Pentagon's military surplus recycling program, which allows the
transfer of military equipment, weapons and training to local police for free or at sharp
discounts while increasing the profits of its corporate allies.
Where this becomes a problem of life and death for Americans is when these SWAT teams --
outfitted, armed and trained in military tactics -- are assigned to carry out relatively
routine police tasks, such as serving a search warrant. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been
employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community
nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and
misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.
Remember, SWAT teams originated as specialized units dedicated to defusing extremely
sensitive, dangerous situations. They were never meant to be used for routine police work such
as serving a warrant. Unfortunately, the mere presence of SWAT units has actually injected a
level of danger and violence into police-citizen interactions that was not present as long as
these interactions were handled by traditional civilian officers.
Yet the tension inherent in most civilian-police encounter these days can't be blamed
exclusively on law enforcement's growing reliance on SWAT teams and donated military
equipment.
It goes far deeper, to a transformation in the way police view themselves and their line of
duty.
Specifically, what we're dealing with today is a skewed shoot-to-kill mindset in which
police, trained
to view themselves as warriors or soldiers in a war , whether against drugs, or terror, or
crime, must "get" the bad guys -- i.e., anyone who is a potential target -- before the bad guys
get them. The result is a spike in the number of incidents in which police shoot first, and ask
questions later.
Making matters worse, when these officers, who have long since ceased to be peace officers,
violate their oaths by bullying, beating, tasering, shooting and killing their employers -- the
taxpayers to whom they owe their allegiance -- they are rarely given more than a slap on the
hands before resuming their patrols.
This lawlessness on the part of law enforcement, an unmistakable characteristic of a police
state, is made possible in large part by police unions which routinely oppose civilian review
boards and resist the placement of names and badge numbers on officer uniforms; police agencies
that abide by the Blue Code of Silence, the quiet understanding among police that they should
not implicate their colleagues for their crimes and misconduct; prosecutors who treat police
offenses with greater leniency than civilian offenses; courts that sanction police wrongdoing
in the name of security; and legislatures that enhance the power, reach and arsenal of the
police, and a citizenry that fails to hold its government accountable to the rule of law.
Indeed, not only are cops protected from most charges of wrongdoing -- whether it's shooting
unarmed citizens (including children and old people),
raping and abusing young women, falsifying police reports , trafficking drugs, or
soliciting sex with minors -- but even on the rare occasions when they are fired for
misconduct, it's only a matter of time before they
get re-hired again .
Incredibly, while our own Bill of Rights are torn to shreds, leaving us with few protections
against government abuses, a growing number of states are adopting Law
Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), which provide cops accused of a crime with
special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.
This, right here, epitomizes everything that is wrong with America today.
As I explain in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People , we need civic engagement and citizen activism,
especially at the local level. However, if it ends at the ballot box without achieving any real
reform that holds government officials at all levels accountable to playing by the rules of the
Constitution, then shame on us.
If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the
truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature
of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to
go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus
Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in. The talking heads have to such an extent
sold the conclusion that China deliberately released a lethal virus to destroy western
democracies that no one objects when Beijing is elevated from being a commercial competitor and
political adversary to an enemy of the United States. One sometimes even sees that it is all a
communist plot. Likewise, the riots taking place all across the U.S. are being milked for what
it's worth by the predominantly liberal media, both to influence this year's election and to
demonstrate how much the news oligarchs really love black people.
As is often the case, there are a number of inconsistencies in the narrative. If one looks
at the numerous photos of the protests in many parts of the country, it is clear that most of
the demonstrators are white, not black, which might suggest that even if there are significant
pockets of racism in the United States there is also a strong condemnation of that fact by many
white people. And this in a country that elected a black man president not once, but twice, and
that black president had a cabinet that included a large number of African-Americans.
Also, to further obfuscate any understanding of what might be taking place, the media and
chattering class is obsessed with finding white supremacists as
instigators of at least some of the actual violence. It would be a convenient explanation
for the Social Justice Warriors that proliferate in the media, though it is supported currently
by little actual evidence that anyone is exploiting right-wing groups.
Simultaneously, some on the right, to include the president, are blaming legitimately dubbed
domestic
terrorist group Antifa , which is perhaps more plausible, though again evidence of
organized instigation appears to be on the thin side. Still another source of the mayhem
apparently consists of some folks getting all excited by the turmoil and breaking windows and
tossing Molotov cocktails, as did
two upper middle class attorneys in Brooklyn last week.
Nevertheless, the search goes on for a guilty party. Explaining the demonstrations and riots
as the result of the horrible killing of a black man by police which has revulsed both black
and white Americans would be too simple to satisfy the convoluted yearnings of the likes of
Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow.
Which brings us to Russia. How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with
the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S.
election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the
Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a
prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of
kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the
assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk
nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.
The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all
the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and
later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who
served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly currently being
considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications
being a woman and black.
While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being
extremely abrasive . She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of
the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the
four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.
"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all
wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to
hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also,
I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on
my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to
learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."
It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever
that the Russians were or have been involved in "fomenting" the reactions to the George Floyd
demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all
believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day
someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia.
Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence
suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any
real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump
campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael
Flynn.
Fortunately, no one took much notice of Rice based on her "experience," or her judgement
insofar as she possesses that quality. Glenn Greenwald
responded :
"This is fuxxing lunacy -- conspiratorial madness of the worst kind -- but it's delivered
by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it's all fine This is
Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle
emoji?"
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the
Rice performance as a "perfect example of barefaced propaganda." She wrote on her Facebook
page "Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You've been playing too long – come
back to reality" instead of using "dirty methods of information manipulation" despite "having
absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations go out and face your people, look them in the
eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and
Facebook. And I will sit back and watch 'American exceptionalism' in action."
It should be assumed that the Republicans will be coming up with their own candidate for
"fomenting" the riots and demonstrations. It already includes Antifa, of course, but is likely
to somehow also involve the Chinese, who will undoubtedly be seen as destroying American
democracy through the double whammy of a plague and race riots. Speaking at the White House,
National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien
warned about foreign incitement , including not only the Chinese, but also Iran and even
Zimbabwe. And, oh yes, Russia.
One thing is for sure, no matter who is ultimately held accountable, no one in the Congress
or White House will be taking the blame for anything.
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal
lives, their daily lives, their family's lives.
The coronavirus
lockdowns continue in many places. You may not know that because it gets no publicity, but it's
true. And if you're living under it, you definitely know.
As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed. A huge number of them
have no prospects of working again. Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will
never reopen. More Americans have become dependent on drugs and alcohol, seeing their marriages
dissolve, and become clinically depressed.
Some of them delayed their weddings. Others were banned by the government from burying their
loved ones in funerals. Some Americans will die of cancer because they couldn't get cancer
screenings, some unknown number have taken their own lives in despair. Others have flooded the
streets to riot because bottled up rage and frustration take many forms.
The cost of shutting down the United States and denying our citizens desperately needed
contact with one another is hard to calculate. But the cost has been staggering.
The people responsible for doing all of this,say they have no regrets about it. We faced a
global calamity, they say. COVID-19 was the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu. That flu
killed 50 million people.
We had no choice. We did the right thing. That's what they're telling us. Is it true?
The answer to that question matters, not just because the truth always matters, but because
the credibility of our leaders is at stake here. This is the biggest decision they have made in
our lifetimes. They were able to make it. They rule because we let them. Their power comes from
us.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not
necessary.
So the question, now and always is, are they worthy of that power? That's not a conversation
they want to have. And right now, they don't have to have that conversation because all of us
are distracted and mesmerized by the woke revolution underway outside.
They just created a separate country in Seattle. Huh? We'll bring you the latest on that.
But we do think it's worth four minutes taking a pause to assess whether or not they were in
fact lying to us about the coronavirus and our response to it.
And the short answer is this: Yes, they were definitely lying.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary. In
fact, we can prove that. And here's the most powerful evidence: States that never locked down
at all -- states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone
-- in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines. The state you
probably live in.
The states that locked down at first but were quick to reopen have not seen explosions of
coronavirus cases. All of this is the opposite of what they said would happen with great
confidence.
The media predicted mass death at places like Lake of the Ozarks and Ocean City, Md. --
places where the middle class dares to vacation. But those deaths never happened. In the end,
the Wuhan coronavirus turned out to be a dangerous disease, but a manageable disease, like so
many others. Far more dangerous were the lockdowns themselves.
For example, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, panicked and
incompetent governors forced nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients, and as a
result, many thousands died, and they died needlessly.
This is all a remarkable story, but it's going almost entirely uncovered. The media would
rather tell you why you need to hate your neighbor for the color of his skin. The media
definitely don't want to revisit what they were saying just a few weeks ago, when they were
acting as press agents for power-drunk Democratic politicians.
We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
Back then, news anchors were ordering you to stop asking questions and obey.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor: All right, so while most Americans are staying inside -- or
should be, right, if they're not out protesting like fools -- they're not happy about being
told to stay home. Staying home saves lives.
And the rest of us should be staying at home for our mothers and the people that we love,
and to keep us farther apart, will ultimately bring us closer together in this cause.
Oh, if you love your mother, you will do what I say. It turns out cable news anchors don't
make very subtle propagandists.
And then Memorial Day arrived in May, and some states started to reopen. Millions of
grateful Americans headed outdoors for the first time in months, and the media attacked them
for doing that. They called them killers.
Swimming with your kids, they told us, was tantamount to mass murder.
Claire McCaskill, MSNBC political analyst: Frankly, a lot of the people in those crowds
-- they thought they were, you know, standing up for what the president believes in and that is
not to care about the public safety part of this.
Robyn Curnow, CNN host: Look at this. I mean, this is kind of crazy, considering we're in
the middle of a global pandemic.
I mean, as one person quipped, you know, that's curving the curve. That's not flattening
it.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Massive crowd of people crammed together, as if it were just an
ordinary holiday weekend despite the risks of a virus that has killed more than 98,000
people.
Boy that montage was the opposite of a MENSA meeting. Has that much dumbness been captured
on tape ever?
The last clip you saw was from May 25th. That was just over two weeks ago. "Ninety eight
thousand people are dead. How dare you leave your house? You don't work in the media. You're
not essential."
But it didn't take long for that message to change completely. In fact, it took precisely
five days.
Here's the same brain dead news anchor you just saw less than a week later. He is no longer
angry, you'll notice, about Americans going outside. As long as they are rioting and burning
and not doing something sinful, like swimming with their children, he is delighted by it.
Lemon: And let's not forget, if anyone is judging this -- I'm not judging this, I'm just
wondering what is going on. Because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time
ago. Our country was started because -- this is how: the Boston Tea Party. Rioting.
So don't -- do not get it twisted and think that, oh, this is something that has never
happened before. And then this is so terrible, and where are we in these savages and all of
that. This is how this country was started.
Yes, don't judge. This is how this country was started -- by looting CVS and setting fire to
Wendy's. Of course, you took American History. You knew that.
Andrew
Cuomo 's brother must have been in the same history class because he had the same
reaction.
Chris Cuomo: America's major cities are filled with people demanding this country be more
fair, more just.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
Because I can show you that outraged citizens are the ones who have made America what she is
and led to any major milestones.
They are here to yell, criticize, blame, and shame.
Citizens have no duty to check their outrage.
Wow. So, one minute they were mass murderers for going outside. Now, they're Sam Adams.
They're patriots. They're American heroes.
If all of this seems like a pretty abrupt pivot, fret not. Rioting is not a health risk as
long as it helps the Democratic Party's prospects in the November election .
Rioting will not spread the coronavirus.
Sounds implausible, but we can be certain of that, because last week, hundreds of
self-described public health officials signed a letter saying so. They announced that the Black
Lives Matter riots are a vital contribution to public health. In effect, they're an essential
medical procedure.
But that doesn't mean you get to go outside. You don't. Thanks to coronavirus, you do not
have the right to resume your life, and if you complain about that, it's "white nationalism."
That was their professional conclusion.
Does a single American believe any of that? No, of course not. It is too stupid even for CNN
to repeat, so they mostly ignored it. That's an ominous sign if you think about it. It means
these people are done trying to convince you, even to fool you.
They're not making arguments, they're issuing decrees. They think they can. They no longer
believe they need your consent to make big decisions to run the country. Once the authority
stops trying to change your mind, even by deceit, it means they've decided to use force -- and
they have.
During the lockdowns, people whose loved ones died were not allowed to have funerals for
them. Think about that. It's hard to think of anything crueler, but it happened to a lot of
people. They claimed it was necessary. It was not necessary. And we know that because now that
a man has died
whose death is politically useful to the Democratic Party , the authorities have given him
three funerals and not a word about a health risk.
Or consider King County, Wash -- that's where Seattle is. Restaurants in King County are
operating at just 25 percent capacity. That's the law now. Nonessential businesses are allowed
just 15 percent capacity. The effect of that is economic disaster. Most small businesses run on
very small margins. They can't survive for long, and in fact, many have failed.
What should they do? They should join Antifa, obviously, because in King County, Wash.,
Antifa can do whatever Antifa wants to do. They have taken over an entire six-block section of
downtown Seattle, and that's fine with health authorities. There is no social distancing
required. They're essential.
Are you getting the picture? Is it adding up to a message? Yes, the message is we were
played. We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
In other words, they used a public health emergency to subvert democracy and install
themselves as monarchs. How were they able to do this? The sad truth is, they did it because we
let them do it. We believed them, therefore, we obeyed them.
If there's anything good to come out of this disaster, it's that none of us will ever make
that mistake again.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 10,
2020.
It is not exactly McCarthyism other then in a sense that this is a witch hunt. While McCarthy
behaviour and methods were abhorrent, McCarthy after all was right about the danger of
Bolshevism. This is more like parody on Soviet purges. Fake Identity Commissars in black leather
jackets do to speak...
Cisco, a producer who has worked with the New York-based National Black Theatre, the
Public Theater, Lee Daniels Entertainment and the Apollo Theater, was not surprised by the
crickets coming from these institutions -- self-professed bastions of liberalism and equality
-- but she felt hurt and angry all the same.
So Cisco
created a public Google spreadsheet and titled it "Theaters Not Speaking Out." It was
open for anyone to edit, and it had a simple directive: "Add names to this document who have
not made a statement against injustices toward black people."
At 5:50 p.m. PDT on that Saturday, May 30, she shared the document on her personal
Facebook page as well as with the Theater Folks of Color Facebook group to which she belongs.
It has more than 7,000 members and serves as a supportive space for people to share thoughts
and experiences about working in predominantly white institutions and provides a place to
"unite around common concerns and plan collective direct action."
More:
It did not appear to be a coincidence that the following day, and into June, theaters
began posting messages of solidarity with Black Lives Matter en masse , black theater
artists said. The response was problematic because often the statements were perceived to
have come from a place of shame and felt slapped together and hollow, Cisco said.
More disturbing than the slowness to speak out, Cisco said, was the language of the
statements themselves, many of which fell back on pledges of support without acknowledgement
of the historical diversity problem in theater or commitments to take concrete steps to
support black artists.
You got that? This one woman has taken advantage of this moment to create a blacklist of
politically problematic theaters -- and even denounces on it theaters that do not articulate
her statement of obeisance in precisely the correct way.
I'm old enough to remember when arts people would have recognized McCarthyism when they saw
it. Marie Cisco is a McCarthyite, but a McCarthyite for the left.
A reader sends a public open letter that went around to faculty and staff of a small college
to which he is attached. I won't quote the letter because I don't want to risk inadvertently
outing the reader. The author is a black student at the school, who reads the riot act to
administration and faculty for not doing enough for black students in this time. She
acknowledges that the school has taken steps, but they haven't done exactly what she things
black students deserve, in the way that they deserve them. The privilege being asserted by this
kid, and the signatories to her letter: presuming to tell her college what they must say and
how they must say it to avoid the taint of racism.
I figure the college will surrender. Nobody has the backbone to stand up for themselves
these days. It's all capitulation. Tucker Carlson is speaking his mind fearlessly,
but advertisers are dropping him . You cannot air a program without advertisers. There are
few people as cowardly as Big Business. In my
forthcoming book , I talk about how Woke Capitalism is going to be the prime mechanism for
enforcing soft totalitarianism. This is one reason why it has been so difficult for Americans
to see something like this moment coming: we have always assumed that totalitarianism would be
something emanating from the government. Conservatives, especially, have long bought into the
myth that Business Is Good and Government Is Bad. In fact, Business can be just as bad as
Government. But that's another story.
The services provided by Christ Health Clinic included free COVID-19 testing for residents
of Birmingham public housing. The Housing Authority of Birmingham Division
voted on Monday to no longer allow church volunteers and clinic workers to do work at
public housing communities.
The Church of the Highlands, Alabama's largest church, provided free mentoring, community
support groups and faith, health and social service activities at the Housing Authority of
Birmingham Division's nine public housing communities. The church did not receive any money
for the services, but had an agreement to allow its volunteers at the facilities.
More:
The Church of the Highlands launched Christ Health Center in 2009 in Woodlawn to offer
medical services to the Woodlawn area, including the Marks Village public housing complex in
Gate City. The church and clinic attracted national attention for
launching the first mass testing for COVID-19 in Alabama , March 17-22, administering
about 2,200 tests at a drive-through set up on the church campus.
"Christ Health chose our Woodlawn clinic specifically for its proximity to Birmingham
public housing communities and the people who call them home," said Christ Health Center CEO
Dr. Robert Record, who also attends and is on staff at the Church of the Highlands.
Think about who is being hurt here (hint: it ain't the church administration). None of it
matters. It's all ideology. All the pastor did was like a political guy on Facebook, and now
this.
And they're just getting started.
It's time for you people who laughed at the term "soft totalitarianism" to shut up. They
won't come for you -- at first.
See today's Prufrock -- two guys from The Poetry Foundation (The Poetry Foundation!) were
asked to resign (and have done so) because their written statement of support for BLM
wasn't specific enough.
"many of which fell back on pledges of support without acknowledgement of the historical
diversity problem in theater or commitments to take concrete steps to support black
artists."
The latest in a series of overblown "dangers" and inaccurate comparisons that are
essentially the sole content of this blog lately. Using organization and social media to
create a "you must support us or we will not support you" arrangement is not the same as
McCartyism. McCarthyism is using the power of the state to jail or wreak financial havoc
against an individual for simply holding unpopular political beliefs. I support profound
police reform and I go to the theatre. I also do not care if the theatre makes a public
statement in support of BLM. This series of posts are merely props so that Rod can excuse
the incompetence and corruption of Trump and his party that let it happen and say that
sadly he has "no choice" but to vote for Trump. Because after all a country where the
president shoves people out of the way and uses a church for a backdrop without the
pastor's permission is a far freer country than one where people make a spreadsheet and
insist that any future relationship involve increased levels of mutual support.
There seems to be a parallel between US foreign policy and the growing domestic 'soft
totalitarianism'. Basically, when it comes to other countries, the US has given up on
persuasion and demands obeisance instead. Don't do what the US wants and everything
remotely associated with you gets sanctioned. In domestic politics, this same intolerance
for even minor disagreement manifests itself in cancel culture and demands for public
affirmations of woke piety. Are these manifestations of an empire desperately trying to
hold itself together?
Tucker has done some fantastic shows recently. I don't always agree with him, but he does
things few others do and in an intelligent articulate way. We need voices telling us that
we are not alone, that we don't have to bend the knee, and that we are not racists for our
refusal to pledge allegiance to the ever changing woke creed. All lives matter.
General Flynn needs to sue for all the money he spent defending himself for this scam. Yet
we had liar Adam Schiff lie daily nothing happens to that loser.
This is another reason I dislike Obama so much; he has deceived the American public with
his alleged good intentions to only want to take more rights away from us citizens!
Too bad, but # blacklivesmatter per
its core organization @ Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself,
with its full-fledged support of # defundthepolice
: "We call for a national defunding of police." Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984
of saying,
Uhlig now faces a social media campaign, led by a prominent University of Michigan economist, to get him booted as editor of the
Journal of Political Economy . Here is another leader of the professional lynch mob:
I am calling for the resignation of Harald Uhlig ( @ haralduhlig
) as the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. If you would like to add your name to this call, it is posted at
https:// forms.gle/9uiJVqCAXBDBg6 8N9 . It will be delivered by end of
day 6/10 (tomorrow).
To: The editors of the Journal of Political Economy and President of The University of Chicago Press We, the undersigned,
call for the resignation of Harald Uhlig, the Bruce Allen and Barbara...
There has been a rash of firings of editors this week. One interesting thing - judging by the publications listed and by the
cringing, groveling apologies given by these editors, they are liberals who are being eaten by up-and-coming radicals. It's like
the liberals had no idea what hit them.
I used to worry the future would be like "1984". Then the Soviet Union fell, things seemed OK tor awhile. After 9/11, I worried
the future would be like "Khartoum". But now, it looks like it is going to be a weird combination of "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers"
and "Planet of the Apes".
Now seeing reports on Twitter that the Seattle Autonomous Zone now has its first warlord. America truly is a diverse place.
You have hippie communes, religious sects, semi-autonomous Indian reservations, a gerontocracy in Washington, and now your very
own Africa style fiefdom complete with warlord.
I really am sorry. This must be so depressing to watch as an American.
Arizona State journalism school retracts offer to new dean because of an "insensitive" tweets and comments - by insensitive
we mean, not sufficiently zealous and not hip to the full-spectrum wokeness. Online student petitions follow, and you know the
rest of the story.
This is madness. The true late stages of a revolution where they start eating their own.
Those tweets above (and countless others like them) just demonstrate the absolute intellectual and moral rot that now reigns
in academia. I saw one yesterday by an attorney for a prominent activist organization who said he couldn't understand why the
Constitution isn't interpreted as "requiring" the demolition of the Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia, and others like it. I'm
having a harder time understanding how he ever graduated from an accredited law school.
Forget "defund the police," perhaps "defund universities" would be the best place to start healing what ails contemporary culture.
The rot started there, not only with the "anti-racist" (as opposed to "mere" non-racism) cant, it with gender ideology (Judith
Butler), Cultural Marxism, etc. When "pc" first became a common term in the early '90s I thought it passing fad. We now see the
result of the decades long radical march through the institutions bearing fruit, and it's more strange and rotten fruit than ever.
Woke leftists are the people who believe in the myth of aggregate Black intellectual parity with Whites and Asians the least.
That's why they constantly do absolutely everything in their power to juke the statistics, like allowing Black students to not
have to take exams, which is really just an extension of this same principle at work in "affirmative action."
The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge--100,000,000 people were murdered
in the name of extreme egalitarianism across the 20th century. When leftism gets out of control, tragedy happens.
I have no idea why you believe hard totalitarian methods aren't coming. I'm not sure what the answer is. We can expect no help
from the Republican party. That much is certain. A disturbing number of people have not yet awoken from their dogmatic slumber.
Who is Amy Siskind going to call to arrest Tucker Carlson and bring him to a tribunal? The defunded police?
It seems to me that the left has gone about this bassackwards. First you ashcan the Second Amendment, THEN you take away their
First Amendment Rights. You most certainly do not go around silencing people with political correctness, then go around announcing
your intention to kulak an entire group of very well-armed people. But that's just my opinion...
Rod, I disagree that a "soft totalitarianism" is what awaits us if these barbarians are allowed to run around unopposed. The
notion of human rights is a product of the religion they despise, so I see no reason why they would respect this ideal when dealing
with vile white wreckers of the multi-cultural utopia they have envisioned.
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal
lives, their daily lives, their family's lives.
The coronavirus
lockdowns continue in many places. You may not know that because it gets no publicity, but it's
true. And if you're living under it, you definitely know.
As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed. A huge number of them
have no prospects of working again. Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will
never reopen. More Americans have become dependent on drugs and alcohol, seeing their marriages
dissolve, and become clinically depressed.
Some of them delayed their weddings. Others were banned by the government from burying their
loved ones in funerals. Some Americans will die of cancer because they couldn't get cancer
screenings, some unknown number have taken their own lives in despair. Others have flooded the
streets to riot because bottled up rage and frustration take many forms.
The cost of shutting down the United States and denying our citizens desperately needed
contact with one another is hard to calculate. But the cost has been staggering.
The people responsible for doing all of this,say they have no regrets about it. We faced a
global calamity, they say. COVID-19 was the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu. That flu
killed 50 million people.
We had no choice. We did the right thing. That's what they're telling us. Is it true?
The answer to that question matters, not just because the truth always matters, but because
the credibility of our leaders is at stake here. This is the biggest decision they have made in
our lifetimes. They were able to make it. They rule because we let them. Their power comes from
us.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not
necessary.
So the question, now and always is, are they worthy of that power? That's not a conversation
they want to have. And right now, they don't have to have that conversation because all of us
are distracted and mesmerized by the woke revolution underway outside.
They just created a separate country in Seattle. Huh? We'll bring you the latest on that.
But we do think it's worth four minutes taking a pause to assess whether or not they were in
fact lying to us about the coronavirus and our response to it.
And the short answer is this: Yes, they were definitely lying.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary. In
fact, we can prove that. And here's the most powerful evidence: States that never locked down
at all -- states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone
-- in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines. The state you
probably live in.
The states that locked down at first but were quick to reopen have not seen explosions of
coronavirus cases. All of this is the opposite of what they said would happen with great
confidence.
The media predicted mass death at places like Lake of the Ozarks and Ocean City, Md. --
places where the middle class dares to vacation. But those deaths never happened. In the end,
the Wuhan coronavirus turned out to be a dangerous disease, but a manageable disease, like so
many others. Far more dangerous were the lockdowns themselves.
For example, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, panicked and
incompetent governors forced nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients, and as a
result, many thousands died, and they died needlessly.
This is all a remarkable story, but it's going almost entirely uncovered. The media would
rather tell you why you need to hate your neighbor for the color of his skin. The media
definitely don't want to revisit what they were saying just a few weeks ago, when they were
acting as press agents for power-drunk Democratic politicians.
We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
Back then, news anchors were ordering you to stop asking questions and obey.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor: All right, so while most Americans are staying inside -- or
should be, right, if they're not out protesting like fools -- they're not happy about being
told to stay home. Staying home saves lives.
And the rest of us should be staying at home for our mothers and the people that we love,
and to keep us farther apart, will ultimately bring us closer together in this cause.
Oh, if you love your mother, you will do what I say. It turns out cable news anchors don't
make very subtle propagandists.
And then Memorial Day arrived in May, and some states started to reopen. Millions of
grateful Americans headed outdoors for the first time in months, and the media attacked them
for doing that. They called them killers.
Swimming with your kids, they told us, was tantamount to mass murder.
Claire McCaskill, MSNBC political analyst: Frankly, a lot of the people in those crowds
-- they thought they were, you know, standing up for what the president believes in and that is
not to care about the public safety part of this.
Robyn Curnow, CNN host: Look at this. I mean, this is kind of crazy, considering we're in
the middle of a global pandemic.
I mean, as one person quipped, you know, that's curving the curve. That's not flattening
it.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Massive crowd of people crammed together, as if it were just an
ordinary holiday weekend despite the risks of a virus that has killed more than 98,000
people.
Boy that montage was the opposite of a MENSA meeting. Has that much dumbness been captured
on tape ever?
The last clip you saw was from May 25th. That was just over two weeks ago. "Ninety eight
thousand people are dead. How dare you leave your house? You don't work in the media. You're
not essential."
But it didn't take long for that message to change completely. In fact, it took precisely
five days.
Here's the same brain dead news anchor you just saw less than a week later. He is no longer
angry, you'll notice, about Americans going outside. As long as they are rioting and burning
and not doing something sinful, like swimming with their children, he is delighted by it.
Lemon: And let's not forget, if anyone is judging this -- I'm not judging this, I'm just
wondering what is going on. Because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time
ago. Our country was started because -- this is how: the Boston Tea Party. Rioting.
So don't -- do not get it twisted and think that, oh, this is something that has never
happened before. And then this is so terrible, and where are we in these savages and all of
that. This is how this country was started.
Yes, don't judge. This is how this country was started -- by looting CVS and setting fire to
Wendy's. Of course, you took American History. You knew that.
Andrew
Cuomo 's brother must have been in the same history class because he had the same
reaction.
Chris Cuomo: America's major cities are filled with people demanding this country be more
fair, more just.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
Because I can show you that outraged citizens are the ones who have made America what she is
and led to any major milestones.
They are here to yell, criticize, blame, and shame.
Citizens have no duty to check their outrage.
Wow. So, one minute they were mass murderers for going outside. Now, they're Sam Adams.
They're patriots. They're American heroes.
If all of this seems like a pretty abrupt pivot, fret not. Rioting is not a health risk as
long as it helps the Democratic Party's prospects in the November election .
Rioting will not spread the coronavirus.
Sounds implausible, but we can be certain of that, because last week, hundreds of
self-described public health officials signed a letter saying so. They announced that the Black
Lives Matter riots are a vital contribution to public health. In effect, they're an essential
medical procedure.
But that doesn't mean you get to go outside. You don't. Thanks to coronavirus, you do not
have the right to resume your life, and if you complain about that, it's "white nationalism."
That was their professional conclusion.
Does a single American believe any of that? No, of course not. It is too stupid even for CNN
to repeat, so they mostly ignored it. That's an ominous sign if you think about it. It means
these people are done trying to convince you, even to fool you.
They're not making arguments, they're issuing decrees. They think they can. They no longer
believe they need your consent to make big decisions to run the country. Once the authority
stops trying to change your mind, even by deceit, it means they've decided to use force -- and
they have.
During the lockdowns, people whose loved ones died were not allowed to have funerals for
them. Think about that. It's hard to think of anything crueler, but it happened to a lot of
people. They claimed it was necessary. It was not necessary. And we know that because now that
a man has died
whose death is politically useful to the Democratic Party , the authorities have given him
three funerals and not a word about a health risk.
Or consider King County, Wash -- that's where Seattle is. Restaurants in King County are
operating at just 25 percent capacity. That's the law now. Nonessential businesses are allowed
just 15 percent capacity. The effect of that is economic disaster. Most small businesses run on
very small margins. They can't survive for long, and in fact, many have failed.
What should they do? They should join Antifa, obviously, because in King County, Wash.,
Antifa can do whatever Antifa wants to do. They have taken over an entire six-block section of
downtown Seattle, and that's fine with health authorities. There is no social distancing
required. They're essential.
Are you getting the picture? Is it adding up to a message? Yes, the message is we were
played. We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
In other words, they used a public health emergency to subvert democracy and install
themselves as monarchs. How were they able to do this? The sad truth is, they did it because we
let them do it. We believed them, therefore, we obeyed them.
If there's anything good to come out of this disaster, it's that none of us will ever make
that mistake again.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 10,
2020.
CLICK HERE TO READ
MORE FROM TUCKER CARLSON Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel's
(FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a
contributor.
Agree with your post but hope to deepen it -- this "geostrategy" goes way back before
Brzezinski wrote about it in his The Grand Chessboard, or for that matter before Nixon's The
Real War as well. Both followed in the footsteps of the US Admiral Alfred Mahan and the
British strategist Halford Mackinder who laid the basis for this imperialist strategic vision
of world domination over a century ago.
Mahan, author of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, in the late 1800s developed the
worldview of seeing history as a series of confrontations between a Sea Power and a Land
Power (Athens-Sparta, Rome-Carthage, Britain vs. a series of European Land Powers, etc.),
paving the way for US "manifest destiny" to transcend North America to become truly global
imperialism. One of Mahan's most famous concepts is that either the Land Power or Sea Power
could win at any time, but that time was on the side of the Land Power since with more people
and resources it could eventually just build a bigger navy than the Sea Power could match --
therefore the Sea Power had to go on an especially aggressive offensive early on to prevent
this.
Mackinder in his 1904 presentation of
The Geographical Pivot of History first developed the concept of the "world island" or
"world continent" with its concentric "crescents". His most famous quote: "Who rules East
Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules
the World Island commands the World."
With the beginning of the "special relationship" between the US and UK after WW1 it was
the easiest of mergers for these two imperialist strategic visions to join together. They've
had various interpretations and refinements ever since, but Mahan and Mackinder are the
originators of this "geostrategy" that predates the Cold War, WW2 and even WW1. That it
predates the Russian and Chinese Revolutions indicates that it exists irrespective of
ideology (thus the US's continued hostility to a non-subservient capitalist Russia), though
anti-communism lends it an especially fevered tone, especially focused on China now.
At its outset this geostrategy was oriented toward European empires attempting to conquer
the "heartland" or "pivot" to obtain the sheer imperial mass that would be needed for world
conquest. But the Russian Revolution allowed the "heartland" to stand up as a Land Power in
its own right, rapidly industrializing. Toward the end of his life Mackinder attempted to
update his work, observing that if ever Eurasia were economically developed and spanned by
rail and telecommunications lines from East Europe to the Pacific, this would result in a
Land Power so vast -- with the majority of the world's people and resources -- that no Sea
Power could conquer or even blockade it.
Sound familiar? For a number of reasons beyond our scope here the USSR fell and broke
apart, but not before China could pick up that torch, rapidly industrialize itself and now
bring forth the Belt and Road Initiative. Russia joining China in a strategic relationship
that is for all intents and purposes an alliance (that the US brought on itself -- both
Beijing and Moscow have read Mahan and Mackinder very thoroughly) is effectively Mackinder's
nightmare made manifest. The antithesis of Manifest Destiny, LOL.
Nixon, Brzezinski and their wannabe successor Bannon are all simply continuing this
more-than-century-old strategic tradition. But no "geostrategy" will save global capitalism
from its own inner rot and sharpening contradictions, as the events of recent years have
shown. This year especially recalls Lenin's observation that "There are decades where nothing
happens, and weeks where decades happen."
Too bad, but # blacklivesmatter per
its core organization @ Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself,
with its full-fledged support of # defundthepolice
: "We call for a national defunding of police." Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984
of saying,
Uhlig now faces a social media campaign, led by a prominent University of Michigan economist, to get him booted as editor of the
Journal of Political Economy . Here is another leader of the professional lynch mob:
I am calling for the resignation of Harald Uhlig ( @ haralduhlig
) as the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. If you would like to add your name to this call, it is posted at
https:// forms.gle/9uiJVqCAXBDBg6 8N9 . It will be delivered by end of
day 6/10 (tomorrow).
To: The editors of the Journal of Political Economy and President of The University of Chicago Press We, the undersigned,
call for the resignation of Harald Uhlig, the Bruce Allen and Barbara...
There has been a rash of firings of editors this week. One interesting thing - judging by the publications listed and by the
cringing, groveling apologies given by these editors, they are liberals who are being eaten by up-and-coming radicals. It's like
the liberals had no idea what hit them.
I used to worry the future would be like "1984". Then the Soviet Union fell, things seemed OK tor awhile. After 9/11, I worried
the future would be like "Khartoum". But now, it looks like it is going to be a weird combination of "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers"
and "Planet of the Apes".
Now seeing reports on Twitter that the Seattle Autonomous Zone now has its first warlord. America truly is a diverse place.
You have hippie communes, religious sects, semi-autonomous Indian reservations, a gerontocracy in Washington, and now your very
own Africa style fiefdom complete with warlord.
I really am sorry. This must be so depressing to watch as an American.
Arizona State journalism school retracts offer to new dean because of an "insensitive" tweets and comments - by insensitive
we mean, not sufficiently zealous and not hip to the full-spectrum wokeness. Online student petitions follow, and you know the
rest of the story.
This is madness. The true late stages of a revolution where they start eating their own.
Those tweets above (and countless others like them) just demonstrate the absolute intellectual and moral rot that now reigns
in academia. I saw one yesterday by an attorney for a prominent activist organization who said he couldn't understand why the
Constitution isn't interpreted as "requiring" the demolition of the Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia, and others like it. I'm
having a harder time understanding how he ever graduated from an accredited law school.
Forget "defund the police," perhaps "defund universities" would be the best place to start healing what ails contemporary culture.
The rot started there, not only with the "anti-racist" (as opposed to "mere" non-racism) cant, it with gender ideology (Judith
Butler), Cultural Marxism, etc. When "pc" first became a common term in the early '90s I thought it passing fad. We now see the
result of the decades long radical march through the institutions bearing fruit, and it's more strange and rotten fruit than ever.
Woke leftists are the people who believe in the myth of aggregate Black intellectual parity with Whites and Asians the least.
That's why they constantly do absolutely everything in their power to juke the statistics, like allowing Black students to not
have to take exams, which is really just an extension of this same principle at work in "affirmative action."
The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge--100,000,000 people were murdered
in the name of extreme egalitarianism across the 20th century. When leftism gets out of control, tragedy happens.
I have no idea why you believe hard totalitarian methods aren't coming. I'm not sure what the answer is. We can expect no help
from the Republican party. That much is certain. A disturbing number of people have not yet awoken from their dogmatic slumber.
Who is Amy Siskind going to call to arrest Tucker Carlson and bring him to a tribunal? The defunded police?
It seems to me that the left has gone about this bassackwards. First you ashcan the Second Amendment, THEN you take away their
First Amendment Rights. You most certainly do not go around silencing people with political correctness, then go around announcing
your intention to kulak an entire group of very well-armed people. But that's just my opinion...
Rod, I disagree that a "soft totalitarianism" is what awaits us if these barbarians are allowed to run around unopposed. The
notion of human rights is a product of the religion they despise, so I see no reason why they would respect this ideal when dealing
with vile white wreckers of the multi-cultural utopia they have envisioned.
The protests in Hong Kong are led by an assortment of US-backed proxies who have separation
from China as their principle goal.
"In Hong Kong, the US sees not a war for 'democracy' but rather a key battleground for
its larger hybrid war against China."
The rebellions in Hong Kong and Minneapolis have received vastly different responses from
the U.S. ruling class. In Minneapolis, masses of peoplet took to the streets on May 26th to
express their outrage over the police murder of George Floyd and the many Black Americans who
have shared a similar fate. The rebellion quickly spread to cities across the country with
corporations, police stations, and even the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, GA all facing
some form of property destruction. Since June of 2019, Hong Kong protestors have held regular
demonstrations to demand "democracy" and autonomy from China. The protests have once again
picked up momentum after the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body,
pushed forward new national security legislation that will enforce Article 23 of the Basic Law
which prohibits secessionist or separatist political activity.
Protestors in Hong Kong have been treated with honor from the corporate media in stark
contrast to the homegrown uprisings occurring in U.S. cities. The New York Times and the
rest of the corporate media have parroted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's alarm that Hong Kong
is being usurped by China's central government and losing its Western-style freedoms. A brief
scan of CNN , The New York Times , and The Washington Post 's coverage of
the Hong Kong protests reads as a sympathetic tragedy of a people under siege from a tyrannical
government. The protestors are described as defying "crackdowns" and resisting an unjust
authority. Of course, none of these outlets have taken much time to investigate exactly what
the Hong Kong protests seek to achieve.
"Protestors in Hong Kong have been treated with honor from the corporate media in stark
contrast to the homegrown uprisings."
Behind demands for universal suffrage and amnesty for detained protestors lies an agenda
that works quite well for the United States and its imperial allies. The protests in Hong Kong
are led by an assortment of U.S.-backed proxies who have separation from China as their
principle goal. One of the biggest donors of the protests, Jimmy Lai, is called the Rupert
Murdoch of Asia and owns a large tabloid media corporation, Apple Daily . In 2012, Lai's
publication likened pregnant Chinese women to "locusts"
invading Hong Kong . Lai poured
millions of his own dollars into the 2014 precursor to the current unrest otherwise known
as the "Occupy Central" protests. He has repeatedly called for the Trump administration to
intervene in Hong Kong and has received a platform in The
New York Times and other corporate media outlets to communicate his nativist and
rightwing demand for the U.S. to privilege "Hong Kongers" and punish China.
Jimmy Lai is joined by Freedom House award winners Joshua Wong and Martin Lee to round out
the most prominent faces of Hong Kong's "pro-democracy" leadership. Martin Lee is the
chairperson of Hong Kong's Democratic Party. Lee possesses close ties to the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), having won the organization's Democracy
Award in 1997. The NED is a non-profit front organization of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and is principally funded by the U.S. Congress. The NED has generously provided
tens of millions of U.S. dollars to a coalition of pro-independence organizations. The
impact of U.S.-support on the ideological and class character of the Hong Kong protests is not
difficult to discern. Protestors regularly wave the regalia of the Union Jack and the American
flag as they clamor for
the U.S. to "liberate" them from China . The NED-backed unrest in Hong Kong has also
received solidarity from members of the neo-Nazi paramilitary organization Azov
Battalion , which in 2014 helped engineer the violent overthrow of the government of
Ukraine with extensive U.S.
support.
"Protestors regularly wave the regalia of the Union Jack and the American flag."
In many ways, the Hong Kong protests have more in common with U.S. police departments than
the protestors in the U.S. seeking justice for George Floyd. Hong Kong protestors have used
xenophobia and violence against
elderly citizens and anyone considered to be sympathetic to mainland China. During weekend
protests beginning on May 30th, videos surfaced in cities across the country that showed how
U.S. police routinely wield the deadly stick of white supremacy to kill Black Americans such as
George Floyd and then
run over, shoot, and arrest journalists and activists present at the protests. Hong Kong
protestors possess a distinct nativist ideology that aligns with the racist underpinnings of
the U.S. national security state. Police departments protect the U.S.' racist corporate order
and lobby for policies such as
the 1033 program that provides weaponry, coordination, and training directly from the
Pentagon. Hong Kong protestors have successfully lobbied U.S. Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human
Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 . The bill allows the U.S. to sanction Chinese leaders and
assets accused of getting in the way of the underlying aim of the Hong Kong protests to
completely sever the former colony from China under the guise of Western style "democracy."
There is thus no shortage of reasons why the U.S. ruling class loves the protests in Hong
Kong but desperately wants to stifle the rebellion against police brutality occurring in the
United States. Neoliberal war hawks such as Susan Rice have once again raised the specter of
Russian
interference and its potential influence over people in the U.S. standing up to police
violence. Rightwing elements in the U.S. have accused protestors of being backed by
billionaire George Soros . Donald Trump has labeled Antifa a terrorist organization and
threatened to unilaterally deploy the U.S. military to crush the protests. The "outside
agitators" narrative possesses a long standing racist and anti-communist history in the U.S.
that gained prominence when the Communist Party was accused of infiltrating Black American
communities to subvert the fascist order of Jim Crow. The real "outside agitators" are the
undercover cops, spooks, and white nationalist organizations working to sew chaos within the
uprising to justify the criminalization and demonization of the masses in the streets.
"Hong Kong protestors possess a distinct nativist ideology that aligns with the racist
underpinnings of the U.S. national security state."
Perhaps no better word can summarize the current situation for U.S. imperialism at this
juncture in history than crisis. The U.S. ruling class has thrown its full weight behind the
protests in Hong Kong to undermine China. But China's new national security legislation is
geared toward curbing the foreign-backed influence of protestors and nothing short of U.S.
military intervention can stop China from asserting the right to self-determination over its
own territory. The U.S. ruling class' response to the protests over George Floyd's death is
filled not only with a natural hatred toward any sign of popular unrest but also with deep
confusion. Massive anger over the killing of Floyd has roots in hundreds of years of settler
colonial and racist terror and is only buttressed by a pandemic-induced economic crisis worse
than the Great Depression. The U.S. ruling class desperately wants to suppress the protests
entirely but has been confronted with the prospect that only a nation-wide massacre can do the
job. As the Trump administration and its military spooks coordinate with police departments to
figure out the most effective means to repress the protests, the corporate media has feigned
lukewarm support for "peaceful" demonstrations while condemning any "violence" against private
property.
On May 31st, CNN ran a loop of protestors in Philadelphia robbing corporations and
burning police vehicles. That same day, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joined the chorus of
condemnations against protestors destroying "their own house." Ruling class hatred toward
private property destruction negates the fact that when the U.S. emerged from its war of
independence from the Union Jack, Black people were the literal property of the slave owning
class. Trillions worth in wealth was
stolen from free Black labor to build the U.S.' capitalist infrastructure. A violent,
racist state apparatus was erected to maintain this arrangement.
"The U.S. ruling class desperately wants to suppress the protests entirely."
Of course, the U.S. ruling class has always expressed much more concern about the condition
of private property and capital than the condition of Black life. History tells us that the
U.S. exists on a foundation of a centuries-long racist war to prevent Black freedom. The
American road to Ferguson's uprising in 2014, Baltimore's uprising in 2015, and Minnesota's
uprising in 2020 was paved with the blood of millions of Black lives that were killed in slave
rebellions, Jim Crow lynch mobs, and COINTELPRO's operations to subvert the Black liberation
movement. The U.S. remains very much engaged in a racist war against Black America, which
explains why the cops, media outlets, and all sections of the ruling order share a similar
hatred toward the Minneapolis-led uprising.
In Hong Kong, the U.S. sees not a war for "democracy" but rather a key battleground for its
larger hybrid war against China . China has been deemed the biggest threat to the U.S.'
economic and military interests abroad just as the specter of Black freedom has always been the
biggest threat to U.S. "national security" at home. The NED-backed movement in Hong Kong is not
without precedent. The NED has spent billions of U.S. dollars supporting rightwing and
terroristic forces in Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Korea
to name just a few . In a word, the U.S. ruling class loves any unrest that its soft power
apparatus can control and direct toward its own geopolitical aims.
" The U.S. remains very much engaged in a racist war against Black America."
Protests of police brutality offer no such opportunity. In fact, Floyd's death triggered a
popular response that only exacerbates the broader crisis of legitimacy facing U.S. imperial
hegemony worldwide. China and Iran, often the target of Western criticism for being
"authoritarian regimes," could not help but condemn the utter hypocrisy of the United States'
human rights agenda. COVID-19 and the economic collapse that followed has further exposed
American capitalism to be a system with nothing left to offer workers but austerity and war.
China came out of the pandemic with even more reason to be confident about its domestic and
international leadership in the face of U.S. decline. White supremacy, economic crisis, and
imperial stagnation has created a perfect storm for rebellion and has sown the seeds of
uncertainty within the ruling class. What comes next is a question that must be seized by the
masses. Anyone who claims to stand for peace, justice, and liberation should suspect foul play
when the U.S. ruling class shows love to a protest movement abroad given how this same ruling
class treats the genuine outcry of the Black masses and their allies against the mass
incarceration regime right here in the belly of the beast.
Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto
Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence:
A People's History of Fake News--From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). He can be reached at[email protected], on Twitter@spiritofho, and on Youtube at The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong.
" .a white president and a black president both signed off on drone attacks "
Who was this "black president"? I'm only aware of Nobel Peace Prize "winner", destroyer of
Libya, sponsor of jihadis in Syria and Nazis in Ukraine, genocidaire of Yemenis, and mass
murderer extraordinaire Barack Hussein Obama, who, if being the child of a black father makes
him "half-black", is, from being the child of a white mother, equally "half-white".
Problem here that the George Floyd protestors/rioters are a happy counter-cultural mix
of SJW, young blacks and young whites – impossible to portray them as the white power
KKK.
Same way that the Polish communist government couldn't effectively attack the Solidarity
worker's uprising. Government propaganda was designed to attack capitalists, exploiters of
the working class etc. which didn't make any sense against shipyard workers.
"... You think, should the police go on strike, it will be kumbaya? If the police leave an area who fills the vacuum? This will destroy poor neighbourhoods not make them any better. ..."
Another important excerpt from the liked essay @14 that's highly informative:
"Defining social control as crime control was accomplished by raising the specter of the '
dangerous classes .' The suggestion was that public drunkenness, crime, hooliganism,
political protests and worker 'riots' were the products of a biologically inferior,
morally intemperate, unskilled and uneducated underclass . The consumption of alcohol was
widely seen as the major cause of crime and public disorder. The irony, of course, is that
public drunkenness didn't exist until mercantile and commercial interests created venues for
and encouraged the commercial sale of alcohol in public places. This underclass was easily
identifiable because it consisted primarily of the poor, foreign immigrants and free blacks
(Lundman 1980: 29). This isolation of the 'dangerous classes' as the embodiment of the
crime problem created a focus in crime control that persists to today, the idea that policing
should be directed toward 'bad' individuals, rather than social and economic conditions
that are criminogenic in their social outcomes .
Of course, none of the above is ever related via media when discussing the overall
issue--that it began as a class/immigrant/racial issue is suppressed so the root of the
problem doubly emphasized above is never discussed and is thus another component in the
longstanding Class War. Another input never considered is the many penny press True Crime and
Police Gazette publications that twisted the minds of the gullible during the period from
1880-1930, which today are present in the all too many cop "reality" shows on TV, although
some are now finally being pulled from broadcast.
"Qualified immunity" is clearly unconstitutional as it violates the 4th, 5th, and 7th
Amendments, and has no place in settled law. It will enter the dust bin just as non-majority
verdicts in jury trials did.
vk
, Jun 10 2020 21:30 utc |
34somebody , Jun 10 2020 21:34 utc |
35
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 10 2020 21:01 utc | 29
I wonder. People usually need the police to feel safe. If the police can feel safe in a
country where everyone may carry a gun or not is another matter.
The manner of the deaths doesn't follow any pattern, said Robyn Small with the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Some officers died responding to robberies or domestic
disturbances. Others were ambushed.
Overall, that's less than last year -- 47 officers were gunned down by the end of 2018,
according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
You think, should the police go on strike, it will be kumbaya? If the police leave an
area who fills the vacuum? This will destroy poor neighbourhoods not make them any
better.
"This could be done in coordination with citizen panels appointed by the City Council. Third,
departments could agree to police black neighborhoods exclusively with black cops whose
conduct could be reviewed periodically by an independent citizen panel."
I tend to lean in a favorable direction with regards to the idea that White cops should be
relieved of the hazards of policing black neighborhoods. But, at the same time – I am
extremely cynical about law enforcement in general and have read far too many stories over
the last several decades where cops are caught up in corruption scandals that often inv0lve
taking payoffs from drug pushers in these inner city, majority black cities and agree to look
the other way and to not interfere with the illegal drug selling industry.
So, my cynicism causes me to wonder if the push to get White cops out of black city areas
might not be a desire of the black criminal gangs to not have to shell out payoffs to White
cops and perhaps, channel those payoffs instead to their black cop brothers? I mean, to get a
preview of what kind of environment will likely fester and grow if blacks are given a
complete dominance over policing in big cities with large black populations – and
without any White oversight – just take a look at the big cities in the blue states
today which are completely under the control of blacks. Black mayors. Entire city councils
that are black. Nearly all city government positions filled by blacks. What do we see? We see
corruption on a scale that rivals the most corrupt, black run, third world nations on the
continent of Africa.
Lest anyone misunderstand, let me say that I am not trying to defend the right of corrupt
and dirty White cops to continue to have access to black districts and be able to haul in
payoffs. I'm merely floating a potential hidden reason behind this idea of only allowing
black cops to police these areas and suggesting how it could create enormous corruption of
law enforcement agencies.
Anyone saying that this is class war, is simply hiding behind their white privilege and
denying the essential RACISM of the United States. That's the corporate meme. And it's
probably going to work.
Problem here that the George Floyd protestors/rioters are a happy counter-cultural mix of
SJW, young blacks and young whites – impossible to portray them as the white power
KKK
In fact the RACISM shield doesn't work. The ZioGlob are left exposed, and in my opinion
they're scared by these protests. If they crack down with the national Guard or the military
it only makes the situation worse. Things polarize, with them being further identified as a
privileged exploitative elite.
Problem here that the George Floyd protestors/rioters are a happy counter-cultural mix
of SJW, young blacks and young whites – impossible to portray them as the white power
KKK.
Same way that the Polish communist government couldn't effectively attack the Solidarity
worker's uprising. Government propaganda was designed to attack capitalists, exploiters of
the working class etc. which didn't make any sense against shipyard workers.
Yes, that's a most important point, the WHY behind the formation of police forces.
This multipart
essay details "The History of Policing in the United States" and gives us two key clues:
Policing in the South emerged to enforce slavery, while in the North it evolved much later
primarily as a means of social control :
"In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path.
The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the 'Slave Patrol' (Platt
1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel
1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to
their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave
revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to
summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the
Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments
primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an
agricultural caste system, and enforcing 'Jim Crow' segregation laws, designed to deny freed
slaves equal rights and access to the political system....
"More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to
'disorder.' What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those
terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile
interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of
bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social
control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too
crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a
mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the
conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the 'collective good'
(Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the
cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to
the state."
It seems clear the two systems and their rationales merged with the main goal being social
control, not the protections of freedoms and otherwise serving the community as the logo
Protect & Serve implies, unless we look at that logo from the Establishment's POV, for it
then becomes clear who the police protect and serve. When looking at Labor History, it
becomes very clear who police served and protected while totally ignoring the rights of those
they attacked--the Police Riot has a very long and sordid history and certainly attacked
whites more than blacks since the former constituted the greater mass of industrial workers
then and now. However, whites weren't subjected to being hunted down and lynched for sport
and entertainment in ways that evidenced cultural approval for such terroristic acts. Rightly
or wrongly, it's that putrid history that strikes a chord with all people, particularly when
the vastly greater amount of violence used against workers is suppressed and barely studied
in survey US History courses, the curriculum of which is controlled by that same
Establishment wanting to maintain social control.
Sorry, but I must copy/paste another excerpt for this aspect of the Outlaw US Empire's
political history gets very little mention--Tammany Hall usually being the sole example
provided without any details of how it functioned and for whom. New York City wasn't the only
large city where this sort of police-political syndicate arose:
"Early American police departments shared two primary characteristics: they were
notoriously corrupt and flagrantly brutal. This should come as no surprise in that police
were under the control of local politicians. The local political party ward leader in most
cities appointed the police executive in charge of the ward leader's neighborhood. The ward
leader, also, most often was the neighborhood tavern owner, sometimes the neighborhood
purveyor of gambling and prostitution, and usually the controlling influence over
neighborhood youth gangs who were used to get out the vote and intimidate opposition party
voters. In this system of vice, organized violence and political corruption it is
inconceivable that the police could be anything but corrupt (Walker 1996). Police
systematically took payoffs to allow illegal drinking, gambling and prostitution. Police
organized professional criminals, like thieves and pickpockets, trading immunity for bribes
or information. They actively participated in vote-buying and ballot-box-stuffing. Loyal
political operatives became police officers. They had no discernable qualifications for
policing and little if any training in policing. Promotions within the police departments
were sold, not earned. Police drank while on patrol, they protected their patron's vice
operations, and they were quick to use peremptory force. Walker goes so far as to call
municipal police 'delegated vigilantes,' entrusted with the power to use overwhelming force
against the 'dangerous classes' as a means of deterring criminality."
Yes, "organized crime" was developed by the police and their politico allies as further
means of social control and to augment their salaries. Still happens today with the nation's
supposedly most important intelligence agency--CIA--being the most formidable criminal
organization on the planet.
It didn't take very long as an examination of the literature shows the rise of Police came
with the rise of Capitalism and many excellent books exist on the subject, but there doesn't
seem to be much interest in looking beyond one's predilections on the topic. Further proof
cementing that verdict:
"State police agencies emerged for many of the same reasons. The Pennsylvania State Police
were modeled after the Phillipine Constabulary, the occupation force placed in the Philipine
Islands following the Spanish-American War. This all-white, all-'native,' paramilitary force
was created specifically to break strikes in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and to control
local towns composed predominantly of Catholic, Irish, German and Eastern European
immigrants. They were housed in barracks outside the towns so that they would not mingle with
or develop friendships with local residents. In addition to strike-breaking they frequently
engaged in anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic violence, such as attacking community social
events on horseback, under the pretense of enforcing public order laws. Similarly, the Texas
Rangers were originally created as a quasi-official group of vigilantes and guerillas used to
suppress Mexican communities and to drive the Commanche off their lands."
I wonder if those now in control of what's being called the Seattle Commune will form some
type of police or other defense force. According to this
article , the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone will be self-policing. IMO, this development
deserves watching as it's not getting much media attention a la Occupy Wall Street.
Let's not forget the likes of The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. They are also precursors to
contemporary police. Another excellent movie that speaks to this theme and validates
karloft1's latest post is John Sayles' Matewan . It deals with the Matewan Massacre
which is the precursor to the Battle of Blair Mountain where bombs were dropped from
airplanes on the striking miners. The bombs were left over from World War I. The United
States government supplied aerial surveillance.
Trump has the audacity to pretend he's a friend of the coal miners, or what's left of
them. He's a friend of the owners and The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency or its contemporary
equivalent. You work, Trump doesn't. He's never worked a day in his life. He has no notion of
what work is, but he knows enough to know work is not for him, that it's for you instead as
he and his ilk spit and piss and crap on you.
Thanks for that link, a very interesting and detailed article. It seems Haftar is an
erratic and unreliable character and the LNA's major foreign allies/sponsors, including
Russia, make no secret of the fact that they basically consider him a temporary "necessary
evil" until a more solid and reliable leader can be found.
The nationalist right should embrace police defunding. Let communities police themselves.
Peter Turchin's studies show that our polarization has reached catastrophic levels. The
immiseration of the working and middle classes is 5 decades old and shows no sign of
abating.
Plus we hate each other. De-platforming and firing for tiny, frivolous reasons will continue.
The (second) American experiment is crashing, and the decline looks irremediable. Look at the
streets.
The Great Society experiment is a failure. 80% of black Americans believe that race relations
are worse today than in 1960.
If self-policing doesn't work (it probably won't), at least it will pave the way for peaceful
separations based on "irreconcilable differences." Communities will develop a sense of
sovereignty. A key aspect of state power is the exercise of legitimate coercion.
In any event, we do not have to kneel. "Is life so sweet and peace so dear "
That's what people really want, justice. They want to see Floyd's killer prosecuted,
convicted and put behind bars.
That's not justice, that is revenge. Justice would be a thorough examination of the facts
of the matter and any mitigating factors that would lead a jury of the accused cops' peers to
an appropriate verdict, which might also be acquittal.
As for the economy, the current fantasy-land painted by our leaders reminds me of the
StayCations and FunEmployment of 2009-2010, including madam Pelosi's quip that we should all
be free to be artists on someone else's dime. Instead, over time, we got more barristas and
wait-staff jobs, more despair, and more opioid deaths.
Russiagate. Impeachment scam. Planned demic. Obamagate. And now white lives don't matter. All
these things are really the same thing.
It's the globalist war of control to defeat the nationalists.
In America, it means war on God, family, and love of America. We've been bombarded with
this war for decades, but now Trump has brought the war out into the open. The good news is
that the left is now at peak irrationality, and the tide is turning. They've used up all the
kitchen sinks to throw at Trump, and now he's stronger than ever. No love lost for Trump on
my part, but who in their right minds can vote for Biden now? It's Nixon '68 all over
again.
ori Schake
objects to Biden's foreign policy record on the grounds that he is not hawkish enough and
too skeptical of military intervention. She restates a bankrupt hawkish view of U.S. military
action:
This half-in-half-out approach to military intervention also strips U.S. foreign policy of
its moral element of making the world a better place. It is inadequate to the cause of
advancing democracy and human rights [bold mine-DL].
The belief that military intervention is an expression of the "moral element" of U.S.
foreign policy is deeply wrong, but it is unfortunately just as deeply-ingrained among many
foreign policy professionals. Military intervention has typically been disastrous for the cause
of advancing democracy and human rights. First, by linking this cause with armed aggression,
regime change, and chaos, it tends to bring discredit on that cause in the eyes of the people
that suffer during the war. Military interventions have usually worsened conditions in the
targeted countries, and in the upheaval and violence that result there have been many hundreds
of thousands of deaths and countless other violations of human rights.
Destabilizing other countries, displacing millions of people, and wrecking their
infrastructure and economy obviously do not make anything better. As a rule, our wars of choice
have not been moral or just, and they have inflicted tremendous death and destruction on other
nations. When we look at the wreckage created by just the last twenty years of U.S. foreign
policy, we have to reject the fantasy that military action has something to do with moral
leadership. Each time that the U.S. has gone to war unnecessarily, that is a moral failure.
Each time that the U.S. has attacked another country when it was not threatened, that is a
moral abomination.
Schake continues:
Biden claims that the U.S. has a moral obligation to respond with military force to
genocide or chemical-weapons use, but was skeptical of intervention in Syria. The former vice
president's rhetoric doesn't match his policies on American values.
If Biden's rhetoric doesn't match his policies here, we should be glad that the presumptive
Democratic nominee for president isn't such an ideological zealot that he would insist on
waging wars that have nothing to do with the security of the United States. If there is a
mismatch, the problem lies with the expansive rhetoric and not with the skepticism about
intervention. That is particularly true in the Syria debate, where interventionists kept
demanding more aggressive policies without even bothering to show how escalation wouldn't make
things worse. Biden's skepticism about intervention in Syria of all places is supposed to be
held against him as proof of his poor judgment? That criticism speaks volumes about the
discredited hawkish crowd in Washington that wanted to sink the U.S. even more deeply into that
morass of conflict.
One of the chief problems with U.S. foreign policy for the last several decades is that it
has been far too militarized. To justify the constant resort to the threat and use of force,
supporters have insisted on portraying military action as if it were beneficent. They have
managed to trick a lot of Americans into thinking that "doing something" to another country is
the same thing as doing good. Interventionists emphasize the goodness of their intentions while
ignoring or minimizing the horrors that result from the policies they advocate, and they have
been able to co-opt the rhetoric of morality to mislead the public into thinking that attacking
other countries is legitimate and even obligatory. This has had the effect of degrading and
distorting our foreign policy debates by framing every argument over war in terms of righteous
"action" vs. squalid "inaction." This turns everything on its head. It treats aggression as
virtue and violence as salutary. Even a bog-standard hawk like Biden gets criticized for
lacking moral conviction if he isn't gung-ho for every unnecessary war.
As for Mr. Biden's "but was skeptical of intervention in Syria", maybe he was aware of
the actual perpetrators of the gas attacks (as several OPCW whistle-blowers testified) and
was maybe uncomfortable being again the spearhead for another war, like he was with Iraq as
the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Biden has been out of office for four years now. If I recall correctly, he didn't say jack
to support Trump's two failed attempts to pull out from Syria.
Kori Schake writes for the British neocon IISS, which has been secretly funded by the Sunni
dictator in Bahrain, who holds down the Shia majority with imported Pakistanis as soldiers
and police. Ordinary Bahrainis are like occupied prisoners in their own country. Everything
is for the small Sunni elite. Though there are also ordinary Sunnis who oppose them.
Kori Schake is simply paid to promote neocon interests, which the Bahraini dictator is
closely aligned with. The Sunni king dissolved parliament and took all the power, aided by
Saudi tanks crushing protesters, who were tortured and had their lives destroyed. The
dictator even destroyed Bahrain's famous Pearl Monument, near which the protesters had
camped out, so it wouldn't be a symbol of resistance. (Forever making it a symbol of
resistance.) The tower was on all the postcards from Bahrain and it appeared on the coins.
It's like destroying the Eiffel Tower. Kori's Sunni paymasters want Shia Iran destroyed as
it speaks up for the oppressed Shias in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen and the
UAE.
Biden is and for over four decades always was an example of all that is worst in
militarized US foreign policy. The idea that he isn't hawkish enough is itself crazy.
Some interesting thought, but if you compare the USA situation with the situation in Ukraine, the ruling elite still have a long
way to go undisturbed...
I doubt the United States can change. There are agencies whose purpose are to destroy popular movements seeking change. Most
people also don't want to admit it, but when a government can launch dozens of wars, killing millions of people, it's obvious
that government would kill it's citizens to keep power. The wrong people are blamed for 911.
"The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to
suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion by an external enemy is on the road to extinction." - Yang Wenli, Legend of
the Galactic Heroes.
Stop calling them ELITE, they are THE POLITICAL CRIMINAL CLASS, and as long as we cook their meals, drive their limos, tailor
their suits, and guard them while they sleep, they are not untouchable. None of them.
Right now, the puppet masters are laughing, pitting one puppet against the other, white vs. black, man vs. woman, worker
vs. unemployed, police vs. citizens, while they rob you blind and enslave your children in debt and austerity...
In many way this is just a wishful thinking. Saker's hyperbolic rhetoric is just cheap
propaganda and does not help to decifer the issues the USA faces!
Looks like Clinton wing of Dems is willing to burn their own house to get rid of Trump. "If I
had to guess, I'd say it's the neoliberal, CIA-Obama faction vs. the Trump-Military faction,
(Pompeo et al)" But why? Why Obamagate is picking up steam? Looks Barry CIA Obama is still a
player. Is he also a reason we have senile Biden is the candidate for President on the Dem side?
Are we seeing the power of a CIA community organizer, color-revolutionary pulling strings across
multiple strata of society?
The current riots create pressure of Trump and attempt are made to use them as the third act
of anti-Trump revolution but this clearly is nor a civil war. Like other protests before it
(Civil rights marches, anti-Vietnam and Iraq wars, Occupy) little to no substantive changes have
been introduced insofar as reining in of the war machine, the pursuit of social and economic
justice (universal free education and health care, equal employment and housing opportunities,
scaling down of the MIC and the Prison Industrial Complex, degrade Israel and Saudi lobbies,
etc.
They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.
It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of " cause " and
"pretext". And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some
degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are the
true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you want,
but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US
society.
The next thing which we must also keep in mind is that evidence of correlation is not
evidence of causality . Take, for example, this article from CNN entitled "US
black-white inequality in 6 stark charts" which completely conflates the two concepts and
which includes the following sentence (stress added) " Those disparities exist because of a
long history of policies that excluded and exploited black Americans, said Valerie Wilson,
director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a
left-leaning group. " The word "because" clearly point to a causality, yet absolutely nothing
in the article or data support this. The US media is chock-full of such conflations of
correlation and causality, yet it is rarely denounced.
For a society, any society, to function a number of factors that make up the social contract
need to be present. The exact list that make up these factors will depend on each individual
country, but they would typically include some kind of social consensus, the acceptance by most
people of the legitimacy of the government and its institutions, often a unifying ideology or,
at least, common values, the presence of a stable middle-class, the reasonable hope for a
functioning "social life", educational institutions etc. Finally, and cynically, it always
helps the ruling elites if they can provide enough circuses (TV) and bread (food) to most
citizens. This is even true of so-called authoritarian/totalitarian societies which, contrary
to the liberal myth, typically do enjoy the support of a large segment of the population (if
only because these regimes are often more capable of providing for the basic needs of
society).
Right now, I would argue that the US government has almost completely lost its ability to
deliver any of those factors, or act to repair the broken social contract. In fact, what we can
observe is the exact opposite: the US society is highly divided, as is the US ruling class
(which is even more important). Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the
vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of
the political system which made his election possible. I have been saying that for years: by
saying "not my President" the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but
also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such.
This is an absolutely amazing phenomenon: while for almost four years Trump has been
destroying the US Empire externally, Trump-haters spent the same four years destroying the US
from the inside! If we look past the (largely fictional) differences between the Republicrats
and the Demolicans we can see that they operate like a demolition tag-team of sorts and while
they hate each other with a passion, they both contribute to bringing down both the Empire
and the United States. For anybody who has studied dialectics this would be very predictable
but, alas, dialectics are not taught anymore, hence the stunned "deer in the headlights" look
on the faces of most people today.
Finally, it is pretty clear that for all its disclaimers about supporting only the "peaceful
protestors" and its condemnation of the "out of town looters", most of the US media (as well as
the alt media) is completely unable to give a moral/ethical evaluation of what is taking place.
What I mean by this is the following:
And this ain't nothing. Nothing. Not compared to 1967-68.
But you young people don't know nothing. Especially about history. So, no surprise
there.
Si1ver1ock says: Show
Comment
June 5, 2020 at 3:14 am GMT • 100 Words If I had to guess, I'd say it's the
neoliberal, CIA-Obama faction vs the Trump-Military faction, (Pompeo et al)
This came to a head just as Obama-gate was picking up steam. Obama is still a player. He
is the reason we have Biden for President on the Dem side, for example.
My guess is that you are seeing the power of a CIA community organizer,
color-revolutionary, Jedi psyop master, pulling strings across multiple strata of
society.
Trump and Obama don't like each other for some reason.
Begun? It's been in process for many decades. It might have begun in the early 20th
century. What's new here? Focusing on recent times, jobs disappeared in the 70's. Inflation
exploded at the same time. Negro antagonism began in the 60's. Replacement of the white
population accelerated in 1965 and continued relentlessly to the current moment.
We are seeing the looting phase of the business known as the United States of America.
Refer to an informative scene from the movie Goodfellas. The criminals got control of a
business, looted it into bankruptcy and burned the place down. Except in this case there
are no Italians involved. And you know who replaces them in our real life experience.
Espinoza says: Show
Comment
June 5, 2020 at 6:44 am GMT It's controlled demolition. First unjustified lockdown.
Then unjustified race riots. The deep state is intent on destroying Trump.
If US is divided into mutually hostile territories, guess where the majority will go.
That is right. They will go to white dominated areas as they do now to white dominated
neighborhoods.
Can no one stop the deep state?
Brewer says: Show Comment
June 5, 2020 at 7:17 am GMT • 100 Words Seen it all before. How short do memories
have to be to forget Kent State, Rodney King, the Civil Rights protests of the sixties,
Harlem riot of 1964, the Watts riot of 1965 et al ?
America is and will remain a deeply disturbed society given that their entire
philosophy, lifestyle and Politics is based on consumerism. Winners (no matter how
unethical) are heroes, losers (no matter how unjustly) are despised.
America will bump and grind on through bankruptcy, both morally and economically. It is
the Judaic way.
Simple fact is that most Americans are ignorant of History and are therefore condemned
to go on repeating the past.
Powell on Sunday aimed a broad critique at Trump's approach to the military, a foreign policy
he said was causing "disdain" abroad, and a president he portrayed as trying to amass
excessive power.
"We have a Constitution and we have to follow the Constitution, and the president has
drifted away from it," Powell said. Trump also, he said, "lies about things."
Trump responded swiftly on Twitter, mocking Powell and calling the retired four-star
general "a real stiff" who got the U.S. into wars after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
on the U.S.
Colin Powell, a real stiff who was very responsible for getting us into the disastrous
Middle East Wars, just announced he will be voting for another stiff, Sleepy Joe Biden.
Didn't Powell say that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction?" They didn't, but off we went
to WAR!
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2020
Credit when credit is due, Trump is completely right when he says Powell is an complete
hack and fraud who helped scam the US people into the Iraq war. Years after his UN appearance
Powell's own chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, admitted that he and Powell knew that the fix
was in to attack Iraq and the information they were presenting to the UN was falsified, i.e.
they knowingly lied to the UN to start a war, a war crime (was of aggression)! Rather than do
the honourable thing and resign in protest and go public with the truth they stayed quite and
obey their illegal orders, presumably reasoning that a competently managed crime would be
less damaging then an incompetently managed crime. As it turns out though, Powell was an
utterly incompetent Secretary of State who was outmaneuvered at every stage of the conflict
by the mad dog crazies in the administration that he thought he was controlling. in the end,
all Powell's shameful behaviour accomplished was to destroy his honour and leave him forever
known as a war criminal (even if the UN is too cowardly to charge him as such). So, seeing
Powell and the lamestream media try to croon about him as some sort of moral authority is
laughable and Trump is right to rub all of Powell's crimes right in his face.
Not to forget (as a Vietnam Vet, I can't) that Maj. Colin Powell - after a cursory
investigation into the massacre at My Lai - drafted a response on Dec. 13, 1968 stating -
among other lies - that "[it] is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the
Vietnamese people are excellent" while denying any pattern of wrong-doing.
Powell was simply protecting other murderous gang members (especially his bosses) from
justice, thus becoming another un-indicted accessory to murder. The gods are not interested
in justice, though, and he roams free.
Wow I wish I had know that little tidbit back then when I watched the full uninterrupted UN
broadcasts from the Security Council before the war. He pretty much managed to get the US a
free pass with his testimony of lies. I believed him and so did a lot of other people. Now
his whitewash of My Lai is even on his Wikipedia page. Thank you Trisha.
Several years earlier I got to know about My Lai during relatively brief military
education (non-US but NATO) on the rules of the Geneva Convention, it was used as the prime
example of when to resist and disobey unlawful orders (I have to wonder if it still is).
If there had been a free press they should have shouted this little fact at the top of
their lungs while mocking the US, maybe someone somewhere did but I never heard any mention
of it, not even from any of all the people I knew that were opposing the war and who never
seemed to have anything substantive to say (a bit like BLM: who isn't against murder and
particularly murder committed by "cops"? There's a serious communication problem going
on).
I find this so strange that I'm starting to wonder if I have an extremely selective
memory. Did anyone here learn about this at the time? Not counting anyone who already
knew it well before that time.
"... Anne Appelbaum is merely butthurt because her neocons don't have as much influence as she thinks they ought. ..."
"... Yeah, this is one of the fundamental problems with US politics as well as business: lack of long term thinking ..."
"... Larison regularly writes about how interventionists have their own inner ring and their own set of lies and shibboleths that they embrace and Applebaum is clearly one of their number. ..."
"... None of this is meant to defend Trump or his lackeys. She is largely right about them, but she is not as different In her thinking as she wants to think. ..."
"... Applebaum picks easy targets because she favors a different set of dishonest people. You are assuming I am a fan of those governments -- no, I just recognize cheap analogies when I see them. And Venezuela, however bad the regime, is there because it is a regime that the Beltway crowd wishes to overthrow. There are countless bad governments she could have mentioned otherwise. ..."
"... The fact is that some of her heroes, like Mitt Romney and John McCain, are part of the interventionist crowd that never saw a war it didn't want to jump into. Romney even defended waterboarding -- you can google that. Americans have the political memory of a mayfly, so perhaps don't remember that just 15 years ago people talked as though our torture policy was the slippery slope to fascism, but some of the people that favored torture and widespread government spying are now Resistance heroes. ..."
"... Her piece is a mainstream Beltway fairy tale about how we once had noble public servants with integrity and then Trump ruined everything. Trump is a disaster, but there is more than one way to be terrible. ..."
"... Applebaum's essay strikes me as Product. It is not interesting or sharply observed; there is nothing original here; the writing is boring and interchangeable with a million other writers for the Economist, The Atlantic, the New York Times, etc. ..."
"... This has been the problem with the " Resistance" all along. Much as I despise Trump and would never vote for him, the opposition to him was instantly hijacked by the people who supported endless war and gave us the free trade policies that destroyed millions of jobs. Worse, people who hate Trump ( and rightly so imo) feel obligated to praise any crappy dishonest self serving article that says Trump is a bad man. ..."
"... I consider Applebaum a prime exhibit in how adherence to ideology can make basically smart people stupid. ..."
"... "I would take the side of them ALL, and many others besides, before I would take the side of these Council on Foreign Relations ghouls like Applebaum, these sterile, soulless globalists and their lives that are 100% dedicated to manufacturing consent, being apologists for the most powerful regime in the world and for global finance, these Respectable Analysts and Experts who work hand in hand with the CIA and the Iraq War neocons and the like." ..."
"... He is not a reaction to the corruption of the elites but rather the living embodiment of it who was able to convince a lot of gullible people otherwise. ..."
"... One of the main problems with applebaum's article is that it does come too close to implying that republicans are vichy french partisans ..."
"... About poor Trump. He was bound to fail. A Julius Caesar, which was a military and political genius and an exceptionally accomplished individual, failed in his struggle against his own oligarchic class. Someone like Caesar in nowadays DC would end up being assassinated. With Trump we have a total circus created by the ruling Americans. ..."
"... "developing a feel for who is a fraud and a liar" -this is basically what I mean when I say that all politics is a clash of axioms and intuitions. It's seldom the "evidence" that is, the sterile "facts" which produce disagreement but that understanding behind those facts and which judges of them. ..."
"... I'll only say that she strikes me as being like Russian liberals, the running dogs and lackeys of the oligarchs who looted the country in the 90s, and who, to this day, in unguarded moments, aver that the reason Russia is not a "normal" country, ie., one where they rule, is because the Russian lumpenproles were not made to suffer *enough* during the 90s. ..."
"... Trump reached out to working class citizens while all the liberals or conservatives were peddling was, in was in the words of the honorable Elijah Muhammad; ..."Pie in the sky when you die by and by." ..."
"... Trump's "ideology" was standard Republican tax-cuts + angry tweets. Also he said Iraq War was a mistake - that's what Never Trumpers really hated. Media called him "presidential" when he ordered military strikes in Syria. That's what's good and normal for president. ..."
"... Applebaum is a globalist mouthpiece, whose husband is Polish politician that wants to sell out Polish freedom to the EU. ..."
"... Isn't she the same Anne Applebaum who was trying to give credence to the #RussiaGate farce that not just distracted Trump and the country from actual problems, but led to so much bad reactionary foreign policies? Like pushing Russia into the arms of China? No thanks. It's like getting a lesson in democracy from Iraq War propagandists. ..."
"... He described America's capital city, America's government, America's congressmen and senators -- all democratically elected and chosen by Americans, according to America's 227-year-old Constitution -- as an "establishment" that had profited at the expense of "the people." "Their victories have not been your victories," he said. "Their triumphs have not been your triumphs." ..."
"... Most Americans believe that. Eight-five percent of us believe it about Democrats and ninety percent of us believe it about Republicans. They have a rigged system where they decided which of themselves we get to choose between, incumbents are overwhelmingly favored over challengers, and somehow even when we get out to vote nothing much changes. ..."
"... Trump enunciated these commonly known truths, without any desire, intention, capacity, or plan to act on them. I have said what you wished to hear, isn't that enough? But, for all that we badly need Trump far removed from the levers of power, those statements remain true. ..."
She begins by comparing two young German communists who were raised in Russia, in exiled
communist families, and who returned to Soviet-controlled East Germany as members of the ruling
elite. One became disillusioned and defected; the other became head of the Stasi. What made the
difference? Closer to home, she talks about how both Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney had
strongly denounced Donald Trump before the 2016 election. Graham ended up becoming one of
Trump's strongest Senate supporters, while Romney is uniquely hated by the president. What
accounts for the radically different outcomes?
Applebaum writes:
To the American reader, references to Vichy France, East Germany, fascists, and Communists
may seem over-the-top, even ludicrous. But dig a little deeper, and the analogy makes sense.
The point is not to compare Trump to Hitler or Stalin; the point is to compare the
experiences of high-ranking members of the American Republican Party, especially those who
work most closely with the White House, to the experiences of Frenchmen in 1940, or of East
Germans in 1945, or of Czesław Miłosz in 1947. These are experiences of people who
are forced to accept an alien ideology or a set of values that are in sharp conflict with
their own.
Not even Trump's supporters can contest this analogy, because the imposition of an alien
ideology is precisely what he was calling for all along. Trump's first statement as
president, his inaugural address, was an unprecedented assault on American democracy and
American values. Remember: He described America's capital city, America's government,
America's congressmen and senators -- all democratically elected and chosen by Americans,
according to America's 227-year-old Constitution -- as an "establishment" that had profited
at the expense of "the people." "Their victories have not been your victories," he said.
"Their triumphs have not been your triumphs." Trump was stating, as clearly as he possibly
could, that a new set of values was now replacing the old, though of course the nature of
those new values was not yet clear.
She goes on to detail the many ways the Trump administration has overturned the old order.
She talks about how Trump began his administration by insisting on the truth of something that
was easily proven to be a lie: the size of his inauguration crowd. This set a pattern:
These kinds of lies also have a way of building on one another. It takes time to persuade
people to abandon their existing value systems. The process usually begins slowly, with small
changes. Social scientists who have studied the erosion of values and the growth of
corruption inside companies have found, for example, that "people are more likely to accept
the unethical behavior of others if the behavior develops gradually (along a slippery slope)
rather than occurring abruptly," according to a 2009 article in the Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology. This happens, in part, because most people have a built-in vision of
themselves as moral and honest, and that self-image is resistant to change. Once certain
behaviors become "normal," then people stop seeing them as wrong.
This process happens in politics, too. In 1947, the Soviet military administrators in East
Germany passed a regulation governing the activity of publishing houses and printers. The
decree did not nationalize the printing presses; it merely demanded that their owners apply
for licenses, and that they confine their work to books and pamphlets ordered by central
planners. Imagine how a law like this -- which did not speak of arrests, let alone torture or
the Gulag -- affected the owner of a printing press in Dresden, a responsible family man with
two teenage children and a sickly wife. Following its passage, he had to make a series of
seemingly insignificant choices. Would he apply for a license? Of course -- he needed it to
earn money for his family. Would he agree to confine his business to material ordered by the
central planners? Yes to that too -- what else was there to print?
After that, other compromises follow. Though he dislikes the Communists -- he just wants
to stay out of politics -- he agrees to print the collected works of Stalin, because if he
doesn't do it, others will. When he is asked by some disaffected friends to print a pamphlet
critical of the regime, however, he refuses. Though he wouldn't go to jail for printing it,
his children might not be admitted to university, and his wife might not get her medication;
he has to think about their welfare. Meanwhile, all across East Germany, other owners of
other printing presses are making similar decisions. And after a while -- without anyone
being shot or arrested, without anyone feeling any particular pangs of conscience -- the only
books left to read are the ones approved by the regime.
Keep this thought in mind for a minute. Let me say here that Applebaum's article is rather
long, and I don't want to quote it at length. I think it's pretty devastating, though I don't
agree with all of it (and will go into that a bit below). I do not at all think it's ridiculous
or offensive for her to use the Soviet Bloc experience as a lens through which to understand
what has been happening in America, politically, these past few years. For one, if I did, I
would be a hypocrite. For another, it really does give her some deep insights. I'm not going to
quote the parts of her piece that I agree with, because there's so much there. When I encourage
you to read the whole thing, I mean it. It's really good, and I think she is mostly
correct.
A note for those who are just coming to this post from Twitter. As longtime readers know, I
was never for Trump, and withheld my vote in 2016, but I was so sick of the GOP Establishment
that I did not identify as a Never Trumper. I was willing to give him a shot. I hate to say it,
but the Never Trumpers have been mostly vindicated. This is not at all to say that I want the
old GOP Establishment back -- I emphatically do not! -- but it turns out that character really
does count. It is the Republican Party's tragedy that the person who broke the back of the
dessicated and intellectually bankrupt old guard was an incompetent sleaze. But here we are.
The one thing that makes me hopeful for conservative politics going forward is that after the
catastrophe of Trump, there will be no return to the status quo. Was it worth the judges? If
you had asked me in January, I would have said, "Maybe so." Now, in June, after the year we
have had, and the way he has utterly failed to rise to the challenges, I would say not.
Back to Applebaum's essay. Here is one very small defense of GOP "collaborators," and why
their situation is different from their would-be counterparts living under dictatorship. The
Republican lawmakers who went along with Trump were responsible to their voters back home. If
they had not supported Trump, they would have been primaried. It is true that a morally
responsible GOP lawmaker would have sooner resigned, or face defeat, rather than seriously
compromise his or her conscience. It does not absolve you to say, "Hey, I was just doing what
my voters wanted me to do." Still, it's important to remember that if there is moral stain for
having collaborated with Donald Trump, the stain is with voters too.
The part of her essay that hits home with me comes in a section in which Applebaum talks
about the rationalizations collaborators use for standing with a political leader they know is
bad news. This is the part:
My side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse. When Marshal
Philippe Pétain, the leader of collaborationist France, took over the Vichy
government, he did so in the name of the restoration of a France that he believed had been
lost. Pétain had been a fierce critic of the French Republic, and once he was in
control, he replaced its famous creed -- Liberté, égalité,
fraternité , or "Liberty, equality, fraternity" -- with a different slogan:
Travail, famille, patrie , or "Work, family, fatherland." Instead of the "false idea
of the natural equality of man," he proposed bringing back "social hierarchy" -- order,
tradition, and religion. Instead of accepting modernity, Pétain sought to turn back
the clock.
By Pétain's reckoning, collaboration with the Germans was not merely an
embarrassing necessity. It was crucial, because it gave patriots the ability to fight the
real enemy: the French parliamentarians, socialists, anarchists, Jews, and other assorted
leftists and democrats who, he believed, were undermining the nation, robbing it of its
vitality, destroying its essence. "Rather Hitler than Blum," the saying went -- Blum having
been France's socialist (and Jewish) prime minister in the late 1930s. One Vichy minister,
Pierre Laval, famously declared that he hoped Germany would conquer all of Europe. Otherwise,
he asserted, "Bolshevism would tomorrow establish itself everywhere."
To Americans, this kind of justification should sound very familiar; we have been hearing
versions of it since 2016. The existential nature of the threat from "the left" has been
spelled out many times. "Our liberal-left present reality and future direction is
incompatible with human nature," wrote Michael Anton, in "The Flight 93 Election." The Fox
News anchor Laura Ingraham has warned that "massive demographic changes" threaten us too: "In
some parts of the country it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn't exist
anymore." This is the Vichy logic: The nation is dead or dying -- so anything you can do to
restore it is justified. Whatever criticisms might be made of Trump, whatever harm he has
done to democracy and the rule of law, whatever corrupt deals he might make while in the
White House -- all of these shrink in comparison to the horrific alternative: the liberalism,
socialism, moral decadence, demographic change, and cultural degradation that would have been
the inevitable result of Hillary Clinton's presidency.
Now, wait a minute. Let us note that this "Vichy logic" is exactly the logic
feminists used to justify sticking with Bill Clinton (because Republicans might end abortion).
And it's how practical politics works. Was it Vichy logic when Louisiana Republican voters in
1991 voted for the crook Edwin W. Edwards because his opponent David Duke was intolerable? I
held my nose and voted for EWE, in violation of my conservative beliefs, because I could not
bear to think that an unrepentant Klansman could become governor. I know conservatives who plan
to vote for Biden this November, and are sick about it, because they cannot bear four more
years of Trump.
How do you tell the difference between succumbing to "Vichy logic," and simply being
realistic about the choices in front of you, and choosing the lesser of two evils? If the
choice is between Hitler and liberalism, well, that's no choice at all. But Trump, however bad,
isn't Hitler, or close to it, and it distorts the choice conservatives actually hd, and have,
facing them regarding Trump and his opponents.
For Applebaum, the things liberals and progressives demand are normative. It really is true
that with Democrats in power, pro-abortion extremism will be government policy. If you think
abortion is the extermination of innocent life, then this is a very big deal. Liberals
often mock religious conservatives over our concerns about how gay rights is eroding religious
liberty, putting "religious liberty" in scare quotes, as if the concerns we have are fake. But
they are real, and beyond that, every Democrat in Congress has come out for the Equality Act,
which would write sexual orientation and gender identity into US civil rights law. Liberals
understandably see this as just, and many have no comprehension of why conservatives disagree
that homosexuality and transgenderism are the same thing as race. These are radical
transformations of American law and culture.
Also with immigration: it is perfectly normal for a people to be concerned that immigration
is changing the character of the culture in ways they don't like. The Democrats, broadly
speaking, are for open borders -- and prior to Trump, the GOP was ineffective on the
immigration issue. High rates of immigration change countries permanently. This may be a good
thing, or a bad thing, or a mixed thing -- but it is a really big thing.
What bothers me about this aspect of Applebaum's argument is that she lacks any sympathy for
the conservative point of view, in the sense that she doesn't appear to be aware of how radical
the left has become on cultural issues. There seems to be no room in her moral imagination to
understand how a conservative can despise Trump, but be so afraid of what the Democratic Party
and the cultural left are bringing to the country that they would conclude voting for Trump is
the lesser evil.
Moreover, Applebaum is a fine writer and an insightful thinker, but she is blind to how
liberalism, in its current iteration, strikes many of us on the Right as inclining to soft
totalitarianism. Applebaum is married to Radek Sikorski, a prominent Polish liberal, and is no
doubt fiercely opposed to the views of the Polish politician Ryszard Legutko. But his book
The Demon In Democracy explains
this very well. Let me put it like this: she is blind to how establishment liberals like her
collaborate with the illiberal left, and in so doing violate the principles they supposedly
stand for.
The examples are legion, but I'll speak about them in the present moment. We are watching
right now a fast-moving coup by the illiberal, identity-politics left of American institutions,
aided and abetted by liberal establishmentarians who are too afraid to defend liberal
principles. We have seen the collapse first on college campuses, where administrations have
repeatedly surrendered to emotional demands of protesters. Here, from 2015, is Yale
Prof. Nicholas Christakis trying to defend liberalism, using reason, against an illiberal
mob. He stood alone. Yale's administration backed the mob. This is happening across
academia, and long has been. It has ramped up massively in this past week. It's also happening
in media, and in corporations. Race-conscious, identity-politics progressivism has finally
displaced liberalism -- mostly because liberals of Applebaum's class lacked the courage to
stand on principle.
It's easy for her to see the collaboration of the Republican leadership with the corrupt and
illiberal Trump, but she's blind to the collaboration of her own class with the corruption of
liberalism from the identity-politics left. I don't know Anne Applebaum, and will presume good
faith on her part, so I suspect that she is honestly unaware of how ideological her own class
is, and how frightening they are to a lot of conservative who have felt pushed by what she
calls "Vichy logic" into supporting Trump, simply as self-protection.
Just this morning I heard from a reader who works inside an elite educational institution.
Its students come from the ranks of the most well-off Americans. It is a liberal institution,
in the best sense. It has not had racial problems. Yet its administration, undergoing the same
moral panic that is sweeping the US ruling class now, is considering implementing a strict
regimen of ideological education, under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He
worries about the future of the institution, and the corruption of its mission by identity
politics. And he's right to worry.
Staffer: Hello, I have another question about racism. I'm wondering to what extent you
think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this
country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a
starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn't racist. I
just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in
our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it's less about the
individual instances of racism, and sort of how we're thinking about racism and white
supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as
we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that's going to open us up to even more
criticism from people who are like, "OK, well you're saying this, and you're producing this
big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily
reporting?"
This should have been an easy question to answer, from the point of view of defending
professional journalistic standard. Baquet waffled. Flash-forward to this week, and
the shocking turmoil within the newspaper, the premier journalistic institution in America,
over its publication of Sen. Tom Cotton's op-ed. The woke younger generation within the
paper is in the process of overthrowing the older liberal generation. Baquet and the
Times senior leadership are "collaborating," in the Applebaum sense, with leftists who
have no respect for the liberal order. This kind of thing is happening in elite institutions --
academic, media, entertainment, corporate -- all over America. The George Floyd killing was the
catalyst these radicals needed to consolidate what they have been doing for a very long time,
thanks to the collaboration of the liberal establishment leadership.
To repeat: I think Applebaum's overall essay is mostly correct in her criticism of how GOP
leaders have collaborated with Trump. The history of totalitarianism really is helpful in
illuminating how this works. My objection is that she cannot see how her own left-liberal caste
has been long doing the same thing with the illiberal, identity-politics left, and concealing
from themselves the sellout of old-fashioned liberalism. My upcoming book Live Not By Lies talks about this. It's not going to
be out until September; until then, read Legutko's Demon In Democracy , which explains this phenomenon
well.
1. Lazy dumb historical analogies. Too much of that everywhere.
2. A defense of neocon foreign policy all wrapped up in the flag and presented as
something that every rational decent person would support.
3. Legitimate criticisms of the dishonesty of Trump supporters. This is fine, but you
can also get this everywhere. It doesn't have to be mixed in with parts 1 and 2.
Instead of treating every election as if it's the Battle of the Ages and a loss will be
a permanent result, maybe worry more about fixing what's broken on your side and coming up
with a long term strategy for the next generation.
Yeah, this is one of the fundamental problems with US politics as well as business: lack
of long term thinking. This is why conservatives have been losing the culture war. This
also seems to be the view taken by the Chinese elites in terms of dealing with the US as I
understand it. They plan for the long term and count on us being too distracted by the need
for short term victories.
Let me put it like this: she is blind to how establishment liberals like her collaborate
with the illiberal left, and in so doing violate the principles they supposedly stand for.
This is the heart of the issue. Appelbaum doesn't seem to realize that the illiberal
left is coming for her next.
I thought it was a terrible piece and in part because of her use of the foreign analogies.
As you say, more or less, much of what she describes is normal politics, for bettter or
worse. Sometimes people just pick what they think is the lesser evil. But she thinks it is
worse with Trump. Fine, but she still doesn't need the East German comparison. It is my
same criticism of your soft totalitarianism meme. It is simply a fact of human nature that
most people are conformists and those who seek power or have power try to bully and
discredit those who disagree with them and they will embrace lies that their chosen circle
of people expect them to embrace. As I think you know, C.S. Lewis write about this a lot,
calling it the desire to be part of The Inner Ring. It is a theme in some of his essays and
a central plot element in That Hideous Strength.
You don't need to invoke East Germany or Vichy France or Venezuela. But of course notice
that she picks easy targets, the countries or regimes her clique would agree are bad.
Larison regularly writes about how interventionists have their own inner ring and their
own set of lies and shibboleths that they embrace and Applebaum is clearly one of their
number.
None of this is meant to defend Trump or his lackeys. She is largely right about them,
but she is not as different In her thinking as she wants to think.
Ew: You don't need to invoke East Germany or Vichy France or Venezuela. But of course
notice that she picks easy targets, the countries or regimes her clique would agree are
bad.
Not just her clique-- pretty much all of us in 2020 find those regimes bad. Good grief,
who's going to speak up for the Third Reich? If you want to make an argument that can be
heard across the ideological spectrum you can't rely on examples that only resonate in some
parts of it.
You are completely missing the point. Applebaum picks easy targets because she favors a
different set of dishonest people. You are assuming I am a fan of those governments -- no,
I just recognize cheap analogies when I see them. And Venezuela, however bad the regime, is
there because it is a regime that the Beltway crowd wishes to overthrow. There are
countless bad governments she could have mentioned otherwise.
The fact is that some of her
heroes, like Mitt Romney and John McCain, are part of the interventionist crowd that never
saw a war it didn't want to jump into. Romney even defended waterboarding -- you can google
that. Americans have the political memory of a mayfly, so perhaps don't remember that just
15 years ago people talked as though our torture policy was the slippery slope to fascism,
but some of the people that favored torture and widespread government spying are now
Resistance heroes. There is an irony in people who claim to hate Trump's dishonesty
basically whitewashing recent history for their own rhetorical purposes.
Her piece is a mainstream Beltway fairy tale about how we once had noble public servants
with integrity and then Trump ruined everything. Trump is a disaster, but there is more
than one way to be terrible.
We live in New York which, as you know, is still locked down. Yesterday my wife's stylist,
Lori, came over to do her hair (and gave me a haircut, so I was able to shed the Albert
Einstein look I've been burdened with). And naturally we talked about politics. And the
three of us agreed. Trump is a buffoon and a liar, he had as bad a week as it's possible to
imagine, but we really have no choice.
Because the other side wants to destroy us.
The other side wants to turn this country into South Africa, and I'd have sit on the front
porch with a shotgun across my knees waiting for the worst to happen. Did you read what
Biden said about 10% to 15% of his fellow citizens? That'd be me, my wife and Lori. Anybody
capable of consecutive thought could see that the "TNC" and Jamelle Bouie lines lead to
nothing short of race war, and this past week they almost got it.
I haven't read the Applebaum essay, but if what she says about professional politicians
(and jurists like Barr, let it be noted) is true, where does that leave the people who
voted for him? We're all collaborationists?
I'm taking the day off and just watched Fearless Leader in the Rose Garden. You know the
Democrats are cursing how good the numbers are, and, as Trump says, they're only going to
get better. What happens if Biden wins? I'm sorry, I'll just have to bear with Anne
Applebaum's disgust.
Applebaum's essay strikes me as Product. It is not interesting or sharply observed; there
is nothing original here; the writing is boring and interchangeable with a million other
writers for the Economist, The Atlantic, the New York Times, etc.
All of this stuff has
been said. It reminds me of how many Serious Books are 550 pages long when they could have
been 15. Applebaum's writing is deadly dull, she has never come up with a striking sentence
or telling detail in her life. Everything is cartoonish Nazis and Communists. Everything is
Super Grandiose but in a dull safe bourgeois manner. Her writing is the equivalent of a
million lanyard Northern Virginia McMansions--interchangeable, I Am An Important Person
blandness and soullessness. She has no personality; she has no taste. There is nothing here
but simultaneously hysterical and utterly empty and banal attempts to manipulate; no
curiosity, no humbleness, no love, no individuality to it at all. There are no characters
here; there are people who are functionaries with as much life, as much personality as the
grim, joyless white-paper-producing think tanks they work for. Of course, all that
soullessness and antiseptic Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval white-surfaces minimalism is
about euphemizing the countless Iraq Wars and Color Revolutions these kinds of people are
always promoting. The Applebaums of the world may not have been the ones who looted Russia
after the fall of the USSR but they facilitated and covered it up and they do the same for
what is happening in the USA today too. They are the ones who strip-mine nations and gut
their middle classes and cultures for globalization.
What do you find "compelling" about this kind of writing? What is compelling about any
of this kind of thing?
The protestors, the Black Lives Matter people out in the streets yelling and marching.
Straight-up Communists distributing their literature and organizing. The people rioting and
looting and setting fires. The cussed redneck hicks and yokels. Antifa. People who want to
abolish the police. Actual local-level/city cops. QAnon people. Internet natzees. I would
take the side of them ALL, and many others besides, before I would take the side of these
Council on Foreign Relations ghouls like Applebaum, these sterile, soulless globalists and
their lives that are 100% dedicated to manufacturing consent, being apologists for the most
powerful regime in the world and for global finance, these Respectable Analysts and Experts
who work hand in hand with the CIA and the Iraq War neocons and the like. Bring on the
collapse of the "center"; bring on the burning down of police stations, bring it all on,
before allowing these End of History demons to keep doing what they do.
This has been the problem with the " Resistance" all along. Much as I despise Trump and
would never vote for him, the opposition to him was instantly hijacked by the people who
supported endless war and gave us the free trade policies that destroyed millions of jobs.
Worse, people who hate Trump ( and rightly so imo) feel obligated to praise any crappy
dishonest self serving article that says Trump is a bad man.
In some cases, like Eastern Europe in 1944, people only have terrible choices. ( I can
use stupid historical analogies too.). But when it comes to essay writing, we aren't even
talking about voting the lesser evil. There simply is no reason to praise this worthless
crap. Larison, for instance, has absolutely no problem criticizing Trump and he doesn't
have to talk as though our foreign policy before him was run by public spirited citizens
who had the interests of ordinary Americans in mind.
I consider Applebaum a prime exhibit in how adherence to ideology can make basically smart
people stupid. Your line "Applebaum's writing is deadly dull, she has never come up with a
striking sentence or telling detail in her life" reminds me that her first published book
was a travel book about Eastern Europe, and it was well-written and quite evocative, with
an interesting style and observations. Almost nobody read this book, but it stands in stark
contrast to her current heavy-duty political scribblings.
Thanks for taking the time to write this response -- a great contribution.
"I would take the side of them ALL, and many others besides, before I
would take the side of these Council on Foreign Relations ghouls like
Applebaum, these sterile, soulless globalists and their lives that are
100% dedicated to manufacturing consent, being apologists for the most
powerful regime in the world and for global finance, these Respectable
Analysts and Experts who work hand in hand with the CIA and the Iraq War
neocons and the like."
1000 thumbs up.
I agree with every word (except for ACTUALLY burning things down ... let's stick with
metaphorical. :-) )
Trump is a rich Manhattan real estate mogul with his own Boeing 727....he IS part of the
establishment. The hedge fund managers and Wall Street firms have done just fine under him.
He is not a reaction to the corruption of the elites but rather the living embodiment of it
who was able to convince a lot of gullible people otherwise.
Read an interesting observation the other day on a different website:
"I asked a co-woker who grew up in a communist country the difference between here and
there. He says "Growing up in my country if you spoke bad of the government, one morning
no one sees you again. Over here you have every right to protest and speak bad of the
government but no one listens to you."
Anne Applebaum has never written a single word in her life that suggested she had an ounce
of sensitivity. Everything is determined by the needs of the bureaucracy or society of
financiers/global capitalists/billionaire donors she is attached to at that particular
time. The sentences one after another are the products of committee. There is no *soul*
here. What is the point of being a Christian or indeed a person of any religion whatsoever
other than perhaps Pharisaism, and trusting people like this? There is more humanity in
Robespierre or Lenin.
"My objection is that she cannot see how her own left-liberal caste has been long doing the
same thing with the illiberal, identity-politics left, and concealing from themselves the
sellout of old-fashioned liberalism."
This is exactly right. And it's not a simple matter of "both sides do it." It's the fact
that both sides are unable to self-critique to the extent that they see the problem. Is it
simply coincidence that both old-school liberals and traditional (i.e.,non-neocon and
neo-lib) conservatives have been pushed to the margins of their respective parties? I think
that those of us, left and right, who have moved from ideological to non-ideological
iterations of their "sides" may be able to see this better than those that remain
ideologically committed.
I believe that this is why Lasch is such a vital read. He remained a political and
economic leftist even while leaning somewhat right socially, and was thus able to see a lot
of this from the outside, so to speak,and call a spade a spade wherever he saw one. As I
said the other day I'm currently re-reading The Revolt of the Elites , which he
finished not long before he died, and which was published posthumously in 1995. It's
amazing how accurate it was, and how prescient. And it's an excellent read for both left
and right, as he had much to say to both sides. To both right and left partisans of good
will, I say tolle lege. You won't regret it.
"What bothers me about this aspect of Applebaum's argument is that she lacks any
sympathy for the conservative point of view, in the sense that she doesn't appear to be
aware of how radical the left has become on cultural issues."
That's because she thinks you're the radical i.e those who wish continue to stand on the
train tracks of modernity as it comes rushing towards you time after time no matter how
many times the train hits you. Western European and Canadian and Mexican Tories have made
their peace with modernity, she can't understand why those in the East and in America
cannot do the same. To do otherwise is simply following in Petain's footstep's in her mind:
"Pétain had been a fierce critic of the French Republic, and once he was in
control, he replaced its famous creed -- Liberté, égalité,
fraternité, or "Liberty, equality, fraternity" -- with a different slogan: Travail,
famille, patrie, or "Work, family, fatherland." Instead of the "false idea of the natural
equality of man," he proposed bringing back "social hierarchy" -- order, tradition, and
religion. Instead of accepting modernity, Pétain sought to turn back the
clock.
I would agree this example in comparison to Trump is a little overdone because the
Hungarian Army has not taken control of the U.S. and has a fifth-column of traitors working
for it to help them rule the country because they happen to agree with them ideologically.
I remember Tom Fleming once saying only a truly evil person would wish a foreign power to
conquer their land just to see policies it could not get enacted electorally be enacted at
the barrel of a gun. I'm sure he had in mind those Leftists sympathizers to the Soviet
Union but Petain is relevant to that argument as well - a man who saved his country at
Verdun in 1916 basically gave up on it in 1940 because of socialism. He might as well have
given up on the whole world and basically did. Bottom line is a LePen would be ruling
France by now if it wasn't for Vichy because the French hard right is as tainted by their
collaboration as the left was by its seeming sympathy with the Soviets or radical foreign
communists.. Thank God for creating someone like DeGaulle.
You talk a lot about Franco in this regard (the best of bad options) but at least his
rise to power came from a civil war, not from being implanted by conquering foreign power
(although he was certainly aided in winning by those powers). The America Fist movement
rose because of the belief that a foreign power (Great Britain) was using elites and
propaganda to bring the U.S. into a World War for the second time in a row. The
"Conservative Movement" rose in part because of a feeling, not just from intellectuals,
that a foreign power (Soviet Union) was using elites and propaganda to subvert American
democracy. Paleoconservatism rose as a train of thought and inellectual faction in the late
80s and early 90s because it was believed a foreign power (Israel) was using elites and
propaganda to not only subvert democracy and also bring the U.S into war (Iraq). But the
cycle can run the other way too it seems. Witness the Moonies control of certain right-wing
foundations, publications and political organizations in Washington back in the 80s. Or the
neo-Confederate tendency among certain factions of both the right and libertarians. And
now, we have conservatives, who have no problem or feel a kinship to foreign entities like
Russia or the current Polish or Hungarian governments or pro-Russian elements in Ukraine to
the point they, at the very least, don't mind their assistance to undermine their political
enemies.
Ultimately people's patriotism is going to be more powerful than people's ideology. One
can think what they wish or call upon whatever policies suit them. But to ask for
assistance from the outside in order to get it out of sympathy, well my friend the ground
you tread on can easily sink beneath your feet if you do that.
it's not apriori anti-patriotic to ask for foreign intervention into the politics of your
own nation; it really all depends on how unpatriotic you view the other side to be (which
is ultimately based on intuition/the faculty of understanding, and cannot be strictly
proved); and how beholden you become to the foreigners -which is all a matter of detail.
England did not become the slave of the Netherlands when William invaded, nor were the
Irish wrong to request help from the French or Spanish. Franco received aid from Germany
but the Spanish socialists received aid from the Soviet Union.
One of the main problems with applebaum's article is that it does come too close to
implying that republicans are vichy french partisans. No republican or right-winger
believes in replacing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with "work, family, and
fatherland" in the USA (except for me but then again, I'm not a registered republican).
Additionally, as far as I know Vichy France was not fascist, just authoritarian. Summed up,
her essay is just a lazy hit-piece with a varnish of "history" -perfect for the mass
consumption of today's tasteless masses!
Most managerial and "intellectuals" are working for those that control the state (economic,
politic, security) and play on what pleases the hand that feeds... Anne Applebaum is not
different. And I am saying most, because I am not considering Mr. Dreher in that category.
He does honestly struggle like Jacob struggled with the angel before he became Israel (best
rendition is by Thomas Mann in "Joseph and his brothers" and one of the best novels ever).
I am thinking of small prairie town, closed knit, but also very hard in its judgments
about approved and disapproved behavior. That is soft totalitarianism and this is what is
forced on us. The public opinion that embraces a certain set of ideas, while everything
else is sinful. Such a mentality is of course illiberal. But then, liberalism itself
doesn't have that great origins either: the enclosure of the commons (for the purported
goal, disproved, of increasing productivity)...
Again, observed what is never addressed by the woke: class and inequality. Jesus was a
socialist and had a beef against bankers. Something that we should always remember:
https://www.nakedcapitalism...
About poor Trump. He was bound to fail. A Julius Caesar, which was a military and
political genius and an exceptionally accomplished individual, failed in his struggle
against his own oligarchic class. Someone like Caesar in nowadays DC would end up being
assassinated. With Trump we have a total circus created by the ruling Americans.
She continues in this piece that in her view Trump is so bad that it justifies voting
for Biden, irregardless of his flaws, even if they include sexual assault. I don't think
Pollitt represents everyone on the left. However, she probably speaks for many on the left.
The point of me raising this is to illustrate how many on the left are no different from
those on the right. Both are willing put aside moral considerations to either support or
oppose Trump because they are desperate for power and fear what the other side will do if
they have power. It all speaks to how polarized our politics have become.
I should say as well that the comparisons to Hitler, Petain or Eastern European
Communists are patently absurd. I find some of the lengths that educated people go to in
making these extreme comparisons embarrassing. And yes, if Republican politicians who
supported Trump have embraced a "Vichy logic," the same was true for feminists and their
support of Bill Clinton. Let's not forget as well the Democrats have now run three
candidates for president (Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) who as a senator voted for
the Iraq War. I remember during the George W. Bush years (a president that the left
compared to Hitler) when that was actually a really bad thing. It was also interesting to
see how silent much of the left became on war when Obama became president, even when he
launched an unnecessary war in Libya. In other words, the things Appelbaum complains about
with Republicans are actually pretty bipartisan.
It's long -- LONG -- past time for the Respectable, Responsible Adults In the Room to start
developing a feel for who is a fraud and a liar, whose words are bought and paid for by
corrupt or at best non-neutral interests, who speaks "with authority" that is related far
more to pedigree, credentialism, nepotism, and class than it is to real truth or honesty,
who performs shallow and bloodless rituals of respectability that cover for massively
destructive and destabilizing agendas.
I remember all the commenters on here who rushed to defend the truly awful/AWFL Michigan
governor, Gretchen Whitmer, when I have criticized her in the past. Her handling of COVID
has been a bogus show, motivated by owning the proles and racists, and she has done an
about-face 360 now that something more sacred to affluent white female liberal cosmology
has come along, disregarding HER OWN laws and restrictions because *she* values something
else more. You do not have to hear or see people like her in action for too long before you
can tell what's up; the problem is that so many people have no sensitivity, no
discriminating taste, and many others, who I think *do* have this, have repressed it or let
it atrophy in order to go along to get along.
All this talk about "character." What is Applebaum's "character"? She is a cipher for
global capital, for unaccountable bureaucracies, for the political-legal-economic gears
that grind through peoples, nations, countries, resource-extracting and Color-Revolutioning
them. She is a sterile severe cold-as-ice reptilian Elite. Imagine her as depicted by
Dickens or Shakespeare. Imagine Dickens or Shakespeare choosing to include her in something
they wrote. We all know what it would look like.
"developing a feel for who is a fraud and a liar" -this is basically what I mean when I say
that all politics is a clash of axioms and intuitions. It's seldom the "evidence" that is,
the sterile "facts" which produce disagreement but that understanding behind those facts
and which judges of them.
And this understanding cannot actually be itself based on
something external per se (facts), or else an infinite regress or vicious circle ensues,
but has to come from within; from a process whereby one discovers their sleeping but innate
ideas.
Ultimately the struggle of politics is a clash between people who are more awake to
these innate ideas and those who are asleep or less awake.
I have no more desire to hear from Anne Applebaum on any subject than I have the desire to
hear from Bush the Lesser on any subject, or Bill Clinton. She is, however fine her prose
may be (though I am not a fan), an apparatchik and apologist for a neoliberal, End of
History order that has failed, and failed comprehensively, for the entirety of my adult
life, and I'm 46. It is tedious to recite the catechism of its failures and crimes,
I'll
only say that she strikes me as being like Russian liberals, the running dogs and lackeys
of the oligarchs who looted the country in the 90s, and who, to this day, in unguarded
moments, aver that the reason Russia is not a "normal" country, ie., one where they rule,
is because the Russian lumpenproles were not made to suffer *enough* during the 90s.
Their schtick, and Applebaum's, combines the elitism of an Ayn Rand, the hauteur and pretension
of a tenured academic, and the narcissism and preening condescension of cultural elites.
The problem is always that people like her have too little power to impose their wills on
the world, and the victims of her will too much power to resist that imposition. The Devil
take her, and may her memory perish.
I have no need to choose between the dying liberal order and Trump, as I have no need to
choose between Lucifer and Baphomet.
So just because neoliberals have been wrong about literally every single issue for the last
three decades, you're saying we shouldn't listen to them?................Okay, fine I'll
grant you that point. But if she's so wrong about everything, why is she a member of the
globalist elite?
" ...was an unprecedented assault on American democracy and American values.
Remember: He described America's capital city, America's government,
America's congressmen and senators -- all democratically elected and chosen
by Americans, according to America's 227-year-old Constitution -- as an
"establishment... "
Ah yes, it's always an "assault on democracy" when liberals lose a democratic election.
And what's more predictable than an Establishment liberal denouncing ttacks on the
Establishment that she and her friends nurture and prosper from. Do Applebaum and her ilk
even realize how absurd they sound?
I'm glad I read Applebaum's book on the Gulag years before I knew anything else about
her personally or her politics and take on more contemporary issues (I even assumed that
she must be a conservative - after all, it was generally only conservatives who thought
things like the Gulag and Communist crimes were worth investigating and writing about,
while the Left generally ignored or made excuses for them). My stomach churns after a
couple paragraphs of liberal Establishment self-righteousness that oozes from every page of
her more recent journalistic forays.
I hope Poland is listening more to its Legutkos than its Applebaum-Sikorskis.
Be it Applebaum or Dreher, what either refuses to discuss is class or wealth privilege.
Trump reached out to working class citizens while all the liberals or conservatives were
peddling was, in was in the words of the honorable Elijah Muhammad; ..."Pie in the sky when
you die by and by."
My hopes was realized when the Bushes and Clinton were banished only to
have that apparatchik in chief Joe Biden nominated. Applebaum is only trying to justify her
sinecures. A real start to reform would be to end tax exempt status for all organizations
and lift the cap on FICA taxes. I can only assume real reform is Pie in the Sky.
" What bothers me about this aspect of Applebaum's argument is that she lacks any sympathy
for the conservative point of view, in the sense that she doesn't appear to be aware of how
radical the left has become on cultural issues."
I don't know if this is true of the author you quite but let's give you the benefit of
the doubt and say you are correct about her. You do the exact same thing Rod. You are blind
to the hard totalitarianism of the right we are witnessing as we speak. You don't speak out
about all these cops running around DC with no identification at all. The only reason to
have cops unidentified it to allow them to abuse people with impunity. You're quick to pump
the breaks on things like the shooting of Arbery, calling for more information but when you
see something you claim as an outrage on the left, you don't call for that same
restraint.
This is a truism of right wing publications: complaining about ideological bias in
mainstream media and universities is basically a full time job for conservatives. But there
are zero conservative institutions which are set up in opposition to the mainstream ones
that set out to actually be fair and balanced. Every single one of them, from the
conservative colleges to the conservative media outlets are set up as biased to the
extreme, far more extreme than any mainstream outlet or university. There is no Ross
Douthat, David Brooks, Bret Stevens left wing equivalent on any conservative news platform
of any note in America. Schools run by conservatives like Liberty University don't respect
the right of students to speak freely. The school administration has veto power over the
student news paper. And they also don't allow liberal groups on campus. Papers run by
conservatives don't post articles written by AOC, unlike the NYT which just posted the Tom
Cotton garbage article.
I won't deny for a second that big name universities and journalism has a liberal bias.
But at least they hire people that YOU respect as representing your views like Ross
Douthat. There isn't a white liberal, a black person, a non-Cuban Hispanic etc who
represents the views of major factions of those groups on any conservative campus or
conservative publication. And Fox News IS the mainstream media as well. It's bigger than
any other cable outlet by far. It isn't some fringe place.
You just named three Obama loving white guys who may be conservative by New York standards
ten years ago, but now worship at the feet of Big LGBT and think that illegal immigrants
are our superiors. There are plenty of their opposite number with conservative
publications.
A reminder, that a week ago, you would be killing grandma, if you opened Churchers or went
to do a cancer check-up. What norms? There are no norms. Do you honestly believe that any
norm, any constitutional principle wouldn't be discarded tomorrow, if it got in a way of
managerial classes wishes or ideology? Is there any empirical proof, that norms matter?
Because there is a lot of it, that they don't.
Not even Trump's supporters can contest this analogy, because the imposition of an alien
ideology is precisely what he was calling for all along.
Trump's "ideology" was standard Republican tax-cuts + angry tweets. Also he said Iraq
War was a mistake - that's what Never Trumpers really hated. Media called him
"presidential" when he ordered military strikes in Syria. That's what's good and normal for
president.
He described America's capital city, America's government, America's congressmen and
senators -- all democratically elected and chosen by Americans, according to America's
227-year-old Constitution -- as an "establishment" that had profited at the expense of
"the people."
People thinking their politicians are corrupt and out to enrich themselves is apparently
shocking to her. Amazing. Maybe she should watch "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".
Politicians get elected by saying that their opponents are corrupt and they'll fix
stuff.
She talks about how Trump began his administration by insisting on the truth of something
that was easily proven to be a lie: the size of his inauguration crowd.
Bush lied - people died. I'm old enough to remember, when US invaded Iraq over "weapons
of mass destruction". But, sure, inaguration crowd size is so important.
There might be some insights in her article, but I just couldn't get through Pravda part
of it.
I have finally stopped considering AA's fanatic globalist opinion on populism/liberalism
after her recent essay on Orbán in which she erred in about every statement she
made, including the anticipated health crisis in Hungary due to Covid (whereas Hungary is
amongst the best performers in controlling the epidemic), and Orbán's "coup
d'état" (the Parliament discussed the cessation of the special legislation earlier
this week. No "sorry" from AA, of course).
The Atlantic
I read the essay, and while she may well be an expert, it falls completely flat. I'm sorry,
but the idea that figures of Trump's White House - who have complete free will - are eerily
similar to political figures in Vichy or East Germany - who had guns to their heads, to
some extent - is simply not on. Her entire argument derives from an analogy that is, in all
frankness, nuts.
And as much as I have great disdain for many at National Review, as Ramesh Ponnuru
points out, Applebaum's comparison of "Vichy apocalypticism" to the Barr/Pompeo/Pence trio
is simply ridiculous.
It is not, in any sense of a realistic historical sense, "pretty devastating".
One thing which occurs to me is that we forget that the SJWs are mainly younger people. And
their wokeness is new to them. Because it is new to them, it must be new to everyone else.
Their warrior mentality is their first foire into politics. Once they start paying more
taxes, they will become more conservative . At least that is what a neighbor told me when I
was railing against the Vietnam war.
While I am not a conservative in today's us of the word, I am more balanced and fair in
my overall political views than I was in my protest years. I found relevance in being
against the establishment.
Heck I voted for Reagan. And I was good with Clinton being removed from office. The SJW
will Peter out. And became wiser, just like Rod has. And everyone else who agrees with him.
We are the establishment now.
What Applegate gets right, and what Rod gets wrong, is comparing Trump to anyone else.
He is in a class of one. He is incomparable. The Republicans don't get that. This makes
them think that they are being reasonable when they say"but Obama". Trump is that much of a
failed human being.
"The point is not to compare Trump to Hitler or Stalin"
That would work better if people on the left hadn't spent so much time saying he (and
every other Republican candidate for President since WWII were Hitler.
"The process usually begins slowly, with small changes. Social scientists who have
studied the erosion of values and the growth of corruption inside companies have found, for
example, that "people are more likely to accept the unethical behavior of others if the
behavior develops gradually (along a slippery slope) rather than occurring abruptly,"
according to a 2009 article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. This happens,
in part, because most people have a built-in vision of themselves as moral and honest, and
that self-image is resistant to change. Once certain behaviors become "normal," then people
stop seeing them as wrong."
The process did begin slowly, with small changes. Trump is just the latest in a long
line of ridiculous liars, and people are acting like he's so new and different... "Depends
on what the meaning of IS is."
The Trump Presidency is the result of the process she's talking about, not the cause or
start of it.
"It is true that a morally responsible GOP lawmaker would have sooner resigned, or face
defeat, rather than seriously compromise his or her conscience"
Is that a joke? We've had a dearth of "morally responsible lawmakers" at the nationally
level, in every party, for decades. Suddenly, we notice and talk about it?
You talked about explicitly scapegoating Trump for these riots in a recent post, but you
and so many others have been scapegoating him for these kinds of things all along. The
problems aren't new. He's just not putting the production values into the lies you are used
to swallowing from the career politicians in every party.
"My objection is that she cannot see how her own left-liberal caste has been long doing
the same thing with the illiberal, identity-politics left, and concealing from themselves
the sellout of old-fashioned liberalism."
And my complaint about you would be very similar. The stuff you complain about regarding
Trump is boringly normal (for politicians), and has been for *at least* 2 decades (and
really, on most of it, for generations... or maybe forever).
Of course that doesn't make it good, or even OK. But where were these complaints all
along?
Applebaum is a globalist mouthpiece, whose husband is Polish politician that wants to sell
out Polish freedom to the EU.
This is all projection from her, as she and her liberal fellow travelers have been
othering all those that oppose them and excusing the abuses of her own side for decades.
Wasn't the white Democrat playbook before the Civil Rights Era about utilizing Southern
bigots for political power?
The opposition to Trump is based upon policy, not personality. Any other Republican that
attempted the same agenda would be demonized and attacked the same way. Again, Trump could
act like Jeb and Anne Applebaum and her ilk would still be screaming "facism!"
How do we know it? Because they have been doing it since the 1940s.
The difference is that every other Republican would cave. Reagan caved and named Bush as
his VP. He also caved and gave us amnesty. He caved as governor and legalized abortion.
When Trump wins reelection, these riots will look like a Sunday picnic. And it won't be
organic, but pushed by the same folks as these.
Applebaum's story about publishing houses and printers in East Germany is vivid and moving.
It distresses me, though, that she apparently cannot understand that, for many of us
religious folks, there's an uncanny resemblance between the position of the East German
publisher or printer and, say, the position of the Colorado baker who's being compelled to
deliver messages he fundamentally opposes.
His bakery hasn't been nationalized; he tries to
conduct his business according to his deeply held beliefs; he may even be "a responsible
family man with two teenage children and a sickly wife." Eventually his refusal to comply
will likely have repercussions on his family; if his children share his values (and maybe
even if they don't), it seems increasingly likely that they will face difficulties in
accessing the best schools and getting hired by the best companies. Even if Applebaum
thinks the cases are distinguishable -- and they are in several respects, though they do
rhyme -- does she not have enough empathy to understand why some folks might prefer the
illiberalism of Donald Trump to the illiberalism of contemporary liberalism?
As to her concern about Trump calling out the establishment for serving their own
interests rather than those of the American people, come on! It's the establishment that
represents "American democracy and American values"? That would be news to many, many
Americans, of all parties and none.
Is Anne Applebaum going to write about how one political party in this country overhyped a
virus only for their own political benefit and to hurt their political opponents? And that
this would have gone on for months if their dumber followers were not presented with a
flimsy excuse to riot and loot?
Applebaum's article is incorrect on so many fronts. Putting the word collaboration in
quotation marks is correct. Applebaum starts with the definition "to help an enemy country
or an occupying power." None of this is what's happening with the Republicans that she
talks about in the article. Clearly Trump is not an enemy or part of an occupying power.
Since she can't make her point about collaboration with that definition, she adds
additional incorrect meanings to the definition: that collaboration "carries an implication
of treason, betrayal of one's nation, of one's ideology, of one's morality, of one's
values."
The use of the word collaboration is to pinpoint the "help" being given to a foreign
occupying power," under which conditions we could possibly make judgements about treason
and immorality. Without the foreign nation element, these additional characterisations are
a separate issue. Applebaum also says "high ranking members of the American Republican
Party....are people who are forced to accept an alien ideology or set of values." No.
Presume they can resign at any time. She should have stuck with calling them "careerists,"
as she did earlier in the article.
Finally, her whole idea of using the Vichy or East German governments as "analogies" is
completely erroneous, not withstanding that she agrees (?) Trump isn't Stalin or Hitler.
But she wants us to think maybe Trump is in the same league "because the imposition of an
alien ideology is precisely what he (Trump) was calling for all along." The case can't be
made that an "alien" (whatever that is) ideology is analogous to an enemy occupying power.
It just can't. Her article is more subversive and dangerous than those she's attempting to
smear.
Isn't she the same Anne Applebaum who was trying to give credence to the #RussiaGate farce
that not just distracted Trump and the country from actual problems, but led to so much bad
reactionary foreign policies? Like pushing Russia into the arms of China? No thanks. It's
like getting a lesson in democracy from Iraq War propagandists.
"The Democrats, broadly speaking, are for open borders -- and prior to Trump, the GOP was
ineffective on the immigration issue."
Yeah, that's true about the Democrats, but let's take a moment to remember how we got
here. The Democrats used to be much more moderate on immigration. Many Democrats in
congress, including Obama, Clinton, and Schumer voted for the initial creation of a border
fence. Obama famously deported high numbers of illegal immigrants throughout his term.
What changed? Donald Trump happened. After a presidential campaign where Trump made
anti-immigrant rhetoric a centerpiece, and, once in office, enacted pointlessly cruel
policies just to signal that he was "getting tough" on immigration, any kind of immigration
enforcement became anathema on the left. Now that leftward shift of the Democrats is being
used to justify further support for Trump.
You can say the reason for the shift doesn't matter, but you should at least be mindful
of how this feedback loop is working.
He described America's capital city, America's government, America's
congressmen and senators -- all democratically elected and chosen by
Americans, according to America's 227-year-old Constitution -- as an
"establishment" that had profited at the expense of "the people." "Their
victories have not been your victories," he said. "Their triumphs have
not been your triumphs."
Most Americans believe that. Eight-five percent of us believe it about Democrats and
ninety percent of us believe it about Republicans. They have a rigged system where they
decided which of themselves we get to choose between, incumbents are overwhelmingly favored
over challengers, and somehow even when we get out to vote nothing much changes.
Trump enunciated these commonly known truths, without any desire, intention, capacity,
or plan to act on them. I have said what you wished to hear, isn't that enough? But, for
all that we badly need Trump far removed from the levers of power, those statements remain
true.
Tucker: "Is our nation being ripped apart by a total and complete lie, a provable lie? A lie
used by cynical media manipulators and unscrupulous politicians who understand that racial strife
-- race hatred -- is their path to power, even if it destroys the country."
Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator: People worry about the protesters and the
looters. And it is just people who are frustrated.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: They are frustrated, and they are angry, and they are out
there. And they're upset. You shouldn't be taking televisions, but I can't tell people how to
react to this.
Sen.
Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y.: I'm proud of the protests, and I think it is part of the
tradition of New York. The violence is bad, reprehensible, and it should be condemned, but it
is not the overwhelming picture in New York.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Destroying property which can be replaced is
not violence.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor Too many see the protests as the problem. Please, show me
where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
Some Democrats have openly embraced
what is happening. Really they don't have much of a choice. These are their voters cleaning out
the Rolex store. These riots effectively are the largest Joe Biden for President rally on
record.
No Democratic leader can directly criticize what is happening right now. And in fact, some
have joined in. Over the weekend, the Democratic Party of Fairfax, Virginia, which is an
important Democratic organization, released the following statement on Twitter: "Riots are an
integral part of this country's march towards progress."
Progress. Burning buildings, teargas, dead bodies, the screaming injured, criminal anarchy
-- to the Democratic Party of Fairfax, that is called progress.
Celebrity after celebrity has weighed in to agree on social media. From his fortified
compound, basketball star LeBron James has used his accounts
to encourage more rioting. Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun
King has done the same. So has Black Lives Matter leader, DeRay Mckesson.
Colin
Kaepernick openly calls for violence. Here's a quote: "The cries for peace will rain down
and when they do, they will land on deaf ears," he says
approvingly .
Imagine shouting fire in a crowded theater, a theater with 325 million people in it called
our country. That's what they've been doing and have been doing for days.
When the violence began, what we needed more than anything was clarity in the middle of
this. It's hard to see when the tear gas starts. Someone in America needed to tell the truth to
the country. Instead, almost all of our so-called conservative leaders joined the left's
chorus, as if on cue.
On Friday, as American cities were being destroyed by mobs, the vice president United States
refused to say anything specific about the riots we were watching on television. Instead,
Mike Pence
scolded America for its racism.
Carly Fiorina, once a leading Republican presidential candidate tweeted that -- and we're
quoting, "It's white America that now must see the truth, speak the truth and act on the
truth."
Meanwhile, Kay
Coles James , who is the president of the Heritage Foundation -- that's the largest
conservative think tank in the country. You may have sent them money, hopefully for the last
time. Kay Coles James wrote a long scream denouncing America as an irredeemably racist nation:
"How many times will protests have to occur?"
Got that? "Have to occur." Like the rest of us caused this by our sinfulness.
The message from our leaders on the right, as on the left, was unambiguous: Don't complain.
You deserve what's happening to you.
No one jumped in more forcefully or seemed angrier in America than former South Carolina
Governor Nikki
Haley . "Tonight I turned on the news and I am heartbroken," Haley wrote. "It's important
to understand that the death of George Ford was personal and painful for many. In order to
heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone."
Imagine shouting fire in a crowded theater, a theater with 325 million people in it called
our country. That's what they've been doing and have been doing for days.
But wait a second, you may be wondering, how am I "personally responsible" for the behavior
of a Minneapolis police officer? I've never even been to Minneapolis, you may think to
yourself. And why is some politician telling me I'm required to be upset about it?
Those are all good questions. Nikki Haley did not answer those questions explaining. It is
not her strong suit -- that would require thinking.
What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail. During the 2016 campaign, she compared Donald
Trump to the racist mass murderer, Dylann
Roof . How is Donald Trump similar to a serial
killer? Nikki Haley never explained that. She wasn't trying to educate anyone.
Her only goal was political advantage. Nikki Haley is exceptionally good at getting what she
wants. She is happy to denounce you as a racist in order to get it. She just did.
In this case, Nikki Haley's wish came true. The riots were indeed "personal and painful" for
everyone. And then the pain kept increasing. Two days after she wrote that, dozens of American
cities had been thoroughly trashed, some destroyed.
A country already on the brink of recession suddenly faced economic collapse. An already
fearful population locked down for months because of the coronavirus had
been thoroughly and completely terrorized.
Mission accomplished. Let's hope Nikki Haley is pleased. We've now atoned.
How did the Trump administration respond to the horrors going on around us? Well, Sunday
morning, the country's national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, did a live interview from the
White House lawn. Here's how it began:
Robert O'Brien, U.S. National
Security Adviser: First thing I want to say, on behalf of the president --he said this to the
family -- but our hearts and prayers are going out to the Floyd family. We mourn with them and
we grieve with them and what happened there was horrific and I can't even imagine what that
poor family is going through as his videos are played over and over again. That should have
never happened in America and it's a tragic thing.
The president said that from the start, and we're with the family and as the President
said, we're with the peaceful protesters.
"We're with the peaceful protesters," O'Brien announced.
Really? Can you be more specific about that? Who are you talking about exactly? Is it the
people spitting foam as they scream, "F the police"? Is it the one standing next to the
arsonist doing nothing as they set fire to buildings? Is it the kids laughing as they film the
looting and the beatings on their iPhones?
The first requirement of leadership is that you watch over the people in your care. That's
what soldiers want from their officers. It's what families need from their fathers. It's what
voters demand from their presidents.
"... Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator: People worry about the protesters and the looters. And it is just people who are frustrated. ..."
"... Don Lemon, CNN anchor: They are frustrated, and they are angry, and they are out there. And they're upset. You shouldn't be taking televisions, but I can't tell people how to react to this. ..."
"... Sen. Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y.: I'm proud of the protests, and I think it is part of the tradition of New York. The violence is bad, reprehensible, and it should be condemned, but it is not the overwhelming picture in New York. ..."
"... Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Destroying property which can be replaced is not violence. ..."
"... Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor Too many see the protests as the problem. Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful. ..."
"... Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: I want you to know we will not be increasing our police budget. How can we at this moment? ..."
"... Our city through our city administrative officer identified $250 million in cuts, so we could invest in jobs, in health, in education, and in healing And that those dollars need to be focused on our black community here in Los Angeles, as well as communities of color and women and people who have been left behind for too long. ..."
"... And will this involve cuts? Yes. Of course. To every department, including the police department. ..."
"... Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 4, 2020. ..."
For the past week, all of us have seen chaos engulf our beloved country. The violence and
the destruction have been so overwhelming, so shocking, and awful and vivid on the screen, that
it's been hard to think clearly about what's going on.
Most of us haven't been able to step back far enough to ask even the obvious questions. The
most obvious, of course, is what is this really about? What do the mobs want?
Well, thugs looting the Apple Store can't answer that question. They have no idea. They just
want free iPads. But what about Apple itself and the rest of corporate America, which is
enthusiastically supporting the rioters? What about members of Congress , the media figures, the
celebrities, the tech titans, all of whom are cheering this on. What do they want out of
it?
Well, they haven't said. That's the central mystery.
Now suddenly, it is obvious. It should have been obvious on the first day. This is about
Donald Trump
. Of course, it is. We just couldn't see it.
For normal people, Donald Trump is the president. You may like him, you may not like him,
but either way, there will be another president at some point, and we will move on as we always
have.
But for Donald Trump's enemies, there is nothing else. Everything is about Trump.
Everything.
Donald Trump defines their friendships, their careers, their marriages. Donald Trump affects
how they raise their children. Trump occupies the very center of their lives. As long as Donald
Trump remains in the White House. They feel powerless and diminished and panicked. So they
cannot be happy.
In everything they do, their overriding goal is to remove Donald Trump from office. And
that's exactly what they're trying to do now. That's what these riots are about. The most
privileged in our society are using the most desperate in our society to seize power from
everyone else.
Got that? That's the nub of it. The most privileged are using the most desperate to seize
power from the rest of us. They are not seeking racial justice. If they were seeking racial
justice, they wouldn't be denouncing their fellow Americans for their race, which they are. It
has nothing to do with it.
What they are seeking is total control of the country. And it goes without saying that none
of this has anything to do with George Floyd . Shame on those who
pretended that it did -- those who fell for the lie and those who knew better but played along
because they are cowards. There are many of those. You know who they are, and someday we will
look back on all of them with contempt.
Meanwhile, the many people promoting this chaos remain clear-eyed. They are not lying to
themselves. They never do. They know exactly what's going on, and they know what they hope to
achieve by it. With every night of rioting, they grow bolder. Now, they are openly defending
violence on television.
Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator: People worry about the protesters and the
looters. And it is just people who are frustrated.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: They are frustrated, and they are angry, and they are out
there. And they're upset. You shouldn't be taking televisions, but I can't tell people how to
react to this.
Sen.
Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y.: I'm proud of the protests, and I think it is part of the
tradition of New York. The violence is bad, reprehensible, and it should be condemned, but it
is not the overwhelming picture in New York.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Destroying property which can be replaced is
not violence.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor Too many see the protests as the problem. Please, show me
where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
You're crushed by this. You can't believe what's happening to your country. But for the
people you just saw, the real problem is that the rioting in some rare places is being stopped
by police, and their aim is to fix that. They would like to eliminate all law enforcement
for good.
In everything they do, their overriding goal is to remove Donald Trump from office. And
that's exactly what they're trying to do now. That's what these riots are about. The most
privileged in our society are using the most desperate in our society to seize power from
everyone else.
On Thursday, Democrats in Dallas took down the statue of a Texas Ranger from the terminal at
Love Field that has stood in the airport for more than 50 years. The Texas Rangers are cops,
and cops must be removed, even when they're made of bronze.
Meanwhile, the Lego toy company has ceased marketing sets that contain plastic police
officers. Apparently, they're too dangerous for our children. And so on -- so much of this is
going on right now.
If it all seems like yet another episode of the silly and fleeting hysteria that sometimes
grips our culture out of nowhere, usually in lulls in the news cycle, you should know that it's
not that. This is entirely real. It is being pushed by serious people, and they are deadly
serious about it.
On Wednesday night, for example, Brian Fallon, who was the press secretary of the Hillary
Clinton for President campaign in the last election cycle tweeted, "Defund the police."
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib agrees. Expect more
members of Congress to agree soon.
In some places, they're not talking, they're acting. Steve Fletcher represents the Third
Ward in Minneapolis . He's on the City
Council there. By this week, his city had been completely scorched by riots. At least 66
businesses were utterly destroyed by fire, 300 more had been vandalized or looted.
Fletcher didn't even mention that. Instead, he attacked the city's police department for
trying to contain the violence: "Several of us on the Council are working on finding out what
it would take to disband the Minneapolis Police Department.".
How would Americans feel if they actually defunded the police? Well, terrified mostly.
That's how we would feel. Things would fall apart instantly.
You'd think people in the city would be shocked by that. But at least on the City Council,
everyone else nodded their approval. In the Ninth Ward, Councilwoman Alondra Cano tweeted this
on Wednesday: "The Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable. Change is coming."
According to City Councilman Fletcher, all nine members of the City Council are now considered
getting rid of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Hard to believe, but it's not just there. In the city of Los Angeles , Mayor Eric Garcetti looks
out across the worst rioting in the nation's second-largest city in a generation, in almost 30
years. His conclusion? We need far fewer police. It could have been better if they hadn't been
there.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: I want you to know we will not be increasing our
police budget. How can we at this moment?
Our city through our city administrative officer identified $250 million in cuts, so
we could invest in jobs, in health, in education, and in healing And that those dollars need
to be focused on our black community here in Los Angeles, as well as communities of color and
women and people who have been left behind for too long.
And will this involve cuts? Yes. Of course. To every department, including the police
department.
When Democrats across the country start saying the same thing at the same time, you can be
certain there's a reason for it. And in this case, they clearly mean it.
According to the president of the L.A. Police Commission, city officials may cut $150
million from the LAPD. That would be more than 10 percent of the entire police budget, in the
wake of rioting.
In New York, 48 separate Democratic candidates -- and they were including in that the
Manhattan district attorney -- signed a letter demanding a $1 billion cut to the budget of the
NYPD. Why are they doing this? There are reasons, not the ones they tell you. They tell you
it's about racism. They tell you that cops are racist and must be reined in.
Most Americans don't agree with that. That's not the experience they have. In fact, police
departments are one of the most trusted institutions in the country.
According to Gallup polling last year, 53 percent of Americans said they had a great deal or
quite a lot of confidence in the police. That was far more confidence than they had in almost
any other institution -- banks, religious leaders, the health care system, television, news,
public schools, corporate America, newspapers -- name one. All of those were stuck below 40
percent. How many Americans trusted Congress? Eleven percent.
And in fact, most African Americans still support the police. A 2016 Pew poll found that 55
percent of African-Americans had confidence in the police within their own communities. In
other words, cops they actually knew and dealt with. They have confidence.
A study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2011 found that among those who called the
police for help, more than 90 percent of African-Americans felt the police behaved
properly.
So, what would happen if we got rid of the police? Of all law enforcement? How would
Americans feel if they actually defunded the police?
Well, terrified mostly. That's how we would feel. Things would fall apart instantly. It
would take hours. Don't believe it? Spend an afternoon in a place with no law enforcement and
see what you think. Talk to anyone who was in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War. Ask anyone
who stayed in New Orleans for Katrina. Their memories will be fresh. They'll never forget what
they saw.
Here's the key. Eliminating the police does not mean eliminating authority. There is always
authority. There are no vacuums in nature. The only question is whether or not the authority is
legitimate -- whether or not the authority is accountable. Whether or not you can do anything
if the authority abuses its power.
In the absence of law enforcement, the answer is no. It means thugs are in charge. The most
violent people have the most power. They can do whatever they want to you. That's the reality.
Everyone obeys the violent people, or they get hurt. The mob literally rules.
That probably sounds like a nightmare to you, because it is. But the people pushing this
idea don't see it as scary because they don't fear the mob, because they control the mob.
That's the key. And they see violence as an instrument of their political power.
With mobs in the streets that they control, they will finally get what they want -- Donald
Trump out of office and a hammerlock on the country. That's what's happening.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 4,
2020.
The incident was clearly manipulated for political purposes. And manipulators do not care how
many stores will be looted and how many people will be killed. They want their political power
back.
"Is our nation being ripped apart by a total and complete lie, a provable lie? A lie used by
cynical media manipulators and unscrupulous politicians who understand that racial strife -- race
hatred -- is their path to power, even if it destroys the country."
Notable quotes:
"... So many of our leaders, by contrast, are not grieving. They seem exhilarated. They feel nothing as our nation descends into anarchy. They see chaos, instead, as an opportunity, a chance to solidify their control, to increase their market share to win elections. ..."
"... The people cheering them on from their TV studios have no patience for real protests or real protesters. Just in April, Democrats in New Jersey arrested a woman for trying to plan a rally, a protest at the state capitol. The New York Times said nothing when they did that because they approve. That's how they really feel about any political expression they can't control -- they crush it. ..."
"... Unidentified male: I am now calling on all and our city council members and all of our elected officials to defund the police. ..."
"... Crowd: Defund the police. ..."
"... Unidentified male: Defund the police. ..."
"... Crowd: Defund the police. ..."
"... Jake Tapper, CNN anchor: LA Mayor Eric Garcetti joined protesters moments ago, what did he have to say? ..."
"... Stephanie Elam, CNN correspondent: Yes, he came out this morning, Jake, and he took the time to come out and come out among the protesters. He knelt while he was out there, saying -- and showing -- his solidarity for the movement, for the protesters here today. ..."
"... And I can tell you that today, this daytime protest has been very peaceful, very calm. Lots of chanting, singing. ..."
"... Unidentified male: I work for Black Lives Matter. I'm sorry that I scared you. But since I work for that company, my CEO has told me to come out today and to bring you on your knees because you have white privilege. ..."
"... So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees that show solidarity for the situation. The situation and could you just please apologize for -- you know for your white privilege. Just apologize. ..."
"... Unidentified female: I have -- I am trying to think of the right words to say. What's a good thing to say? ..."
"... Unidentified male: It's big.Unidentified female: That comes from -- ..."
"... Unidentified male: It's so -- it's large in this country. ..."
"... Unidentified female: I am terribly sorry. ..."
"... Of the 802 shootings in which the race of the police officer and the suspect was noted, 371 of those killed were white, 236 were black. The vast majority of those killed were not, in fact, unarmed; the vast majority were armed. And African-American suspects were significantly more likely to have a deadly weapon than white suspects, yet more white suspects were killed. ..."
"... In fact, the number of police killings is dropping. In 2015, during Barack Obama's presidency , 38 unarmed black Americans and 32 whites were slain by police. Overall totals have fallen since then, and they have fallen far more dramatically for African-American men. ..."
"... Last year was the safest year for unarmed suspects since The Washington Post begin tracking police shootings. It was the safest year for both white and black suspects. ..."
"... One final number for you, because it matters: In 2018, 7,407 African-Americans were murdered in the United States. If 2019 continues on a similar trajectory, -- and we hope it doesn't, but if it does -- that would mean that for every unarmed African-American shot to death in the United States by police, more than 700 were murdered by someone else, usually by someone they know. ..."
"... Again, those are the facts. They are not in dispute. Are African-Americans being "hunted" as Joy Reid recklessly claimed on MSNBC recently? Or something else happening? ..."
For many of us, this has been one of the saddest, most painful weeks in memory. Depressing
doesn't even begin to describe it.
We have watched as mobs of violent cretins have burned our cities, defaced our monuments,
beaten old women in the street, shot police officers and stolen everything in sight -- stealing
everything .
How many innocent Americans have these people hurt? How many have they murdered? We don't
know that number. But it's the country itself that so many of us worry about at this point.
After we've watched what's happened over the last week, how do we put the society back
together? Can we? We don't know that, either.
If you're grieving for America right now, you are not alone. Millions feel the same way you
do.
So many of our leaders, by contrast, are not grieving. They seem exhilarated. They feel
nothing as our nation descends into anarchy. They see chaos, instead, as an opportunity, a
chance to solidify their control, to increase their market share to win elections.
They have no interest in talking about the details of what is actually happening out there
on our streets. In fact, they're hiding those details. They're demanding that you forget what
you saw. Don't forget it. Remember all of it -- every bit -- because it's proof of who they
are.
What they're defending and encouraging has nothing to do with civil rights. It is violence,
and the criminals you see on the screen are not protesters.
The people cheering them on from their TV studios have no patience for real protests or
real protesters. Just in April, Democrats in New Jersey arrested a woman for trying to plan a
rally, a protest at the state capitol. The New York Times said nothing when they did that
because they approve. That's how they really feel about any political expression they can't
control -- they crush it.
What they support is more power for themselves and they're willing to use gangs of thugs to
get it. Here is one of their protesters chanting "no justice, no peace" as a man tortures a
dog. NBC News wouldn't show you that video ever. Neither would CNN under any circumstances.
These are the worst people in America, and our leaders have let them do whatever they want. So,
of course, they want more.
Their latest demand is that we eliminate the police entirely. No more law enforcement
in this country. That would mean more power for the mob. They could do anything. It would mean
never-ending terror for you and for your family. That's why they want it.
Unidentified male: I am now calling on all and our city council members and all of our
elected officials to defund the police.
Crowd: Defund the police.
Unidentified male: Defund the police.
Crowd: Defund the police.
"Defund the police." No sane person would dare to have said something like that in public
just a week and a half ago. Now, a member of Congress has endorsed the idea -- Rashida Tlaib .
So, what would happen to our country if we eliminated law enforcement? Eric Garcetti is the
mayor of Los
Angeles , the second biggest city in America. His city would devolve into a murderous
hellscape within hours if the police left.
But Garcetti, who is in charge of the city, won't push back against this idea. Instead, h
e kneeled in
subservience before the people demanding it.
Jake Tapper, CNN anchor: LA Mayor Eric Garcetti joined protesters moments ago, what
did he have to say?
Stephanie Elam, CNN correspondent: Yes, he came out this morning, Jake, and he took
the time to come out and come out among the protesters. He knelt while he was out there,
saying -- and showing -- his solidarity for the movement, for the protesters here
today.
And I can tell you that today, this daytime protest has been very peaceful, very calm.
Lots of chanting, singing.
He kneeled. Our leaders are kneeling before the mob, the atavistic ritual of self-abasement
of defeat. Suddenly, many are performing this ritual, including police around the country.
The mob wants victory. But more than that, it wants the total humiliation of its
enemies.
Unidentified male: I work for Black Lives Matter. I'm sorry that I scared you. But
since I work for that company, my CEO has told me to come out today and to bring you on your
knees because you have white privilege.
So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees that show solidarity for
the situation. The situation and could you just please apologize for -- you know for your
white privilege. Just apologize.
Unidentified female: I have -- I am trying to think of the right words to say. What's
a good thing to say?
Unidentified male: It's big.Unidentified female: That comes from --
Unidentified male: It's so -- it's large in this country.
Unidentified female: I am terribly sorry.
Why do we kneel? We kneel because we've lost. We kneel before our victors because they have
won. We put down our resistance. We beg for their mercy.
But mobs rarely forgive. "We're on your side!" we shout. We're in solidarity, spare us. But
they never do.
"We're on your side" as the rock comes through the window. You think the mob cares? No.
What's happening to this country? Why are Americans surrendering to violent mobs? Well,
because they've been told they have to.
Everything we're now watching -- the looting, the arson, the killing -- has a purpose. The
purpose we're told again and again is to end racist police violence against African-Americans.
We are told that that is the single greatest scourge in this country.
Demonstrators say repeatedly, "Stop killing us." Stop killing us -- it's chilling. And if
you believe it, and you're a decent person, you will be moved by it -- because it's awful.
No American should ever be mistreated by those in authority, much less killed. The abuse of
power is always and everywhere a sin, and it's increasingly common here. We should always work
to end it.
So many of our leaders, by contrast, are not grieving. They seem exhilarated. They feel
nothing as our nation descends into anarchy. They see chaos, instead, as an opportunity
In this case, the death of a man at the hands of police in
Minneapolis turned out to be a metaphor for abuse of power. That death has led to demands
that we fire the nearly 700,000 police officers who work in the United States and that we free
the million and a half criminals who are now behind bars.
In America, Joe
Biden told us recently: "Just the color of your skin puts your life at risk." Sen. Cory Booker of New
Jersey strongly agreed with that.
"We have so many people in our country," Booker said Tuesday, "African-American men mostly
unarmed, being murdered by police officers and no way of holding them accountable."
So many people murdered by police officers, unarmed, says Cory Booker.
You're hearing a lot of people in authority tell you that, every day, every hour. One group
of pro athletes just announced that, "It seems like every week, a new tragedy unfolds before
our very eyes where people are being killed by police violence. Each time we tweet, we pray, we
mourn, only to repeat the cycle a few days later."
In the words of Ben Crump, who is the lawyer representing George Floyd's family in
Minneapolis, what we're witnessing here in America is "genocide." Genocide?
If you believe we were seeing genocide, then you might understand the riots now in progress.
There's nothing worse than genocide. But is it happening? Is any of this true? We should find
out. Facts matter. What exactly are the numbers?
We found the numbers and we're going to go through them with you in some detail because it's
worth it.
Since 2015, The Washington Post has maintained a comprehensive database of fatal police
shootings in this country. Last year, The Post logged a total of 1,004 killings.
Of the 802 shootings in which the race of the police officer and the suspect was noted,
371 of those killed were white, 236 were black. The vast majority of those killed were not, in
fact, unarmed; the vast majority were armed. And African-American suspects were significantly
more likely to have a deadly weapon than white suspects, yet more white suspects were
killed.
This is not genocide. It's not even close to genocide. It is laughable to suggest it
is.
Overall, there were a total of precisely 10 cases in the United States last year, according
to The Washington Post, in which unarmed African- Americans were fatally shot by the police.
There were nine men and one woman.
Now, as we said, a lot is at stake. The country is at stake. So we want to take the time now
to go through these case by case, into the specifics.
The first was a man called Channara Pheap. He was killed by a Knoxville police officer
called Dylan Williams. According to Williams, Pheap attacked him, choked him and then used a
taser on him -- the suspect on the police officer before the officer shot him. Five
eyewitnesses corroborated the officer's claim, and the officer was not charged.
The second case concerns a man called Marcus McVeigh. He was by any description a career
criminal from San Angelo, Texas. He had been convicted of aggravated assault, assault on a
public servant and organized criminal activity.
At the time he was killed, he was wanted on drug dealing charges. The Texas State trooper
pulled him over. McVeigh fled in his car, then he fled on foot into the woods. There he fought
with the trooper and was shot and killed. The officer was not charged in that case.
Marzua Scott assaulted a shop employee. When a female police officer arrived and ordered the
suspect toward her car, he instead charged her and knocked her to the ground. At that point,
she shot and killed him. The entire incident was caught on body camera. The officer was not
charged.
Ryan Twyman was being approached by two LA County deputies when he backed into one of them
with his vehicle. The deputy was caught in the car door. He and his partner opened fire. The
deputies were not charged in that case.
Melvin Watkins of East Baton Rouge, La. shot by a deputy after he allegedly drove his car
toward the deputy at high speed. The deputy was not charged.
Isaiah Lewis, meanwhile, wasn't just unarmed, he was completely naked. Williams broke into a
house and then attacked a police officer. The police tased Williams, but he kept coming at them
and attacking. The officer shot him. They were not charged.
Atatiana Jefferson was shot by a Fort Worth deputy called Aaron Dean. A neighbor had called
a non-emergency number after seeing Jefferson's door open, thinking something might be wrong.
Police arrived. Jefferson saw them approach from a window and was holding a gun at the
time.
According to body camera footage, the officer shot Jefferson within seconds. That officer
has been charged with homicide.
Is our nation being ripped apart by a total and complete lie, a provable lie? A lie used
by cynical media manipulators and unscrupulous politicians who understand that racial strife
-- race hatred -- is their path to power, even if it destroys the country.
Christopher Whitfield was shot and killed in a place called Ethel, La. He had robbed a gas
station. Deputy Glenn Sims said his gun discharged accidentally while grappling with Whitfield.
Sims, who is black himself, was not charged in that killing.
Kevin Mason was shot by police during a multi-hour standoff. Well, Mason turned out not to
have a gun. Mason claimed to have a gun, claimed to be armed and vowed to kill police with it.
They believed him. Mason had been in a shootout with police years before.
And finally, the tenth case concerns Gregory Griffin. He was shot during a car chase. An
officer called Giovanni Crespo claimed he saw someone pointing a gun at him. Later, a gun was
in fact found inside the vehicle, and yet Officer Crespo was charged anyway with aggravated
manslaughter.
Those are the facts. That is the entire list from 2019, last year -- 10 deaths. In five
deaths, an officer was attacked just before the shooting occurred. That is not disputed.
One allegedly was an accident. That leaves a total of four deaths during a pursuit or in a
standoff. So out of four, in two of those cases -- and fully half -- the officer was criminally
charged. Is it possible that more of these officers should have been charged? Of course, it's
possible. Justice is not always served, that's for sure.
But either way, this is a very small number in a country of 325 million people. This is not
genocide. It's not even close to genocide. It is laughable to suggest it is.
In fact, the number of police killings is dropping. In 2015, during Barack Obama's presidency , 38
unarmed black Americans and 32 whites were slain by police. Overall totals have fallen since
then, and they have fallen far more dramatically for African-American men.
Last year was the safest year for unarmed suspects since The Washington Post begin
tracking police shootings. It was the safest year for both white and black suspects.
At the same time, this country remains a dangerous place for police officers. Forty-eight of
them were murdered in 2019 according to FBI data. That's more than the number of unarmed
suspects killed of all races.
One final number for you, because it matters: In 2018, 7,407 African-Americans were
murdered in the United States. If 2019 continues on a similar trajectory, -- and we hope it
doesn't, but if it does -- that would mean that for every unarmed African-American shot to
death in the United States by police, more than 700 were murdered by someone else, usually by
someone they know.
Again, those are the facts. They are not in dispute. Are African-Americans being
"hunted" as Joy Reid recklessly claimed on MSNBC recently? Or something else
happening?
Carlson has said corporations support for the protests is "paying for" riots.
"But corporations aren't
simply tweeting their support for the riots, they're paying for them to," he said.
Carlson listed companies including Cisco, Intel, Ubisoft, Airbnb and Dropbox, who have all made funds
available to groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP). He also criticized Pepsi, stating it had supported similar causes.
Newsweek
has contacted the corporations mentioned and Fox News for comment.
Carlson referred to a quote that "a riot is the voice of the unheard," a phrase which has origins from
civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr, who said "a riot is the language of the unheard."
Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses 'Populism and the Right' during the National
Review Institute's Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. He has
criticized businesses supporting groups such as Black Lives Matter.
Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images
Criticizing this, Carlson said: "The rioters burning down your city with the support of virtually
everyone richer than you, are 'unheard', you, by contrast, are the oppressor and if you disagree in any way,
we are going to fire you and wreck your life."
Continuing to critique the corporations, Carlson suggested they should support small businesses.
"All this money, flowing out of the country's most profitable corporations, it might be a nice gesture for
those corporations to donate some money to, I dunno, rebuild some of the small businesses that have been
destroyed over the past week," he said.
Police keep watch as firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a section of shops
looted amid demonstrations in Santa Monica, California.
Mario Tama/Getty
Images
"Oh but they're not going to do that, because for a lot of big corporations the total annihilation of
small businesses is one of the best parts of this new revolution, there's always an angle, someone's always
getting more powerful."
In regards to the groups being supported, Carlson took issue with BLM for calling for police to be
defunded, while criticizing support for bail funds from the NAACP.
I was surprised Esper gave a press conference without first coordinating his message with the White House. We need a unified
message coming from our federal government. He should have voiced his concerns privately with Trump, but Trump makes the
decision and announces the message...Trump was elected, not Esper. I would fire Esper for not following the chain of command.
The career politicians cant stand Trump because he is a Washington outsider who is doing things different and making much
needed changes that benefit businesses and individuals.
All
you have to do is look at who is involved with all this craziness and when it all started. All this cause they want their
power back so they can continue to do what they want and answer to no one. All of this cause they hate Trump for opening the
eyes of Americans to see the light through the darkness they created. Because all I've seen that Trump has done to hurt this
country so far was to get elected and show all Americans how we where getting taken advantage of by government, the elites and
other countries. They will stop at nothing to regain power. Game players in this craziness: 1. Corrupt politicians 2. Some
rich Hollywood stars 3. Some rich sports players 4. Some rich business owners 5. Leftist media being paid 6. Some true racist
people being paid 7. Some bad law enforcement individuals being paid 8. Some black individuals being paid and making money
from it by pushing the narrative 9. And last but not least, someone or group that's financially flipping the bill so all of it
can happen. Notice any pattern here? $$$$$$$$$$$$ money the root of all evil.
All Bureaucrats and the Military take an oath to defend the constitution. When a lowlife like Donald Trump comes along and
tries to subvert the constitution it is right of the military and the bureaucrats to disobey his orders. Trump can fire them
if he likes but cannot force them to fall in line with his unconstitutional order. A stupid man like you would have known that
already and are selectively feeding information to a bunch of guys who do not even know what the constitution is. The military
is clearly lined up against the idea of trump using them against American citizens. After Trump loses the election as it
clearly seems now, he will have to demit office without a whimper, that is very clear from the statements of various active
generals. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has to this time win the Presidency by playing fair and not screaming like a dog whose
backside has been bitten off "The Democrats are practicing election corruption" It is Ok to feed that to his dumb followers
but the rest of the country will not take it lying down. This dog knew 2 tricks, you have now seen them all. He is done.
Now "Horrible Lisa" re-surfaced in MSNBC. Not surprising one bit. This is a deep state retirement package...
Notable quotes:
"... Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ..."
Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
Slime, slime and more slime. Obama headed up the whole thing. Zero integrity there.
The leaders of the Democratic Party, Barrak
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, Chuck Schummer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Shiff and his sisters father-in-law
George Soros.
Here is what this all boils down to. Hillary Clinton email to Donna Brazile, Oct., 17, 2016. "If that f*cking ba*tard
wins, we're all going to hang from nooses! You better fix this sh*t!"
Don't laugh derisively, as people do these days, but I've always admired the New York Times
. First draft of history. Talent everywhere. Best production values. Even with its ideological
spin, it can be scrupulous about facts. You can usually extract the truth with a decoder ring.
Its outsized influence over the rest of the press makes it essential. I've relied on it for
years. Even given everything, and I mean everything.
Until now. It's just too much. Too much unreality, manipulation, propaganda, and flat out
untruths that are immediately recognizable to anyone. I can't believe they think they can get
away with this with credibility intact. I'm not speaking of the many great reporters,
technicians, editors, production specialists, and the tens of thousands who make it all
possible. I'm speaking of a very small coterie of people who stand guard over the paper's
editorial mission of the moment and enforce it on the whole company, with no dissent
allowed.
Let's get right to the offending passage. It's not from the news or opinion section but the
official editorial section and hence the official voice of the paper. The paragraph from June
2, 2020, reads
as follows.
Healing the wounds ripped open in recent days and months will not be easy. The pandemic
has made Americans fearful of their neighbors, cut them off from their communities of faith,
shut their outlets for exercise and recreation and culture and learning. Worst of all, it has
separated Americans from their own livelihoods.
Can you imagine? The pandemic is the cause!
I would otherwise feel silly to have to point this out but for the utter absurdity of the
claim. The pandemic didn't do this. It caused a temporary and mostly media-fueled panic that
distracted officials from doing what they should have done, which is protect the vulnerable and
otherwise let society function and medical workers deal with disease.
Instead, the CDC and governors around the country, at the urging of bad computer-science
models uninformed by any experience in viruses, shut down schools, churches, events,
restaurants, gyms, theaters, sports, and further instructed people to stay in their homes,
enforced sometimes even by SWAT teams. Jewish funerals were broken up by the police.
It was brutal and egregious and it threw 40 million people out of work and bankrupted
countless businesses. Nothing this terrible was attempted even during the Black Death.
Maximum
economic damage; minimum health advantages . It's not even possible to find evidence that
the lockdowns saved lives at all .
But to hear the New York Times tell the story, it was not the lockdown but the pandemic that
did this. That's a level of ideological subterfuge that is almost impossible for a sane person
to conjure up, simply because it is so obviously unbelievable.
It's lockdown denialism.
Why? From February 2020 and following, the New York Times had a story and they are
continuing to stick to it. The story is that we are all going to die from this pandemic unless
government shuts down society. It was a drum this paper beat every day.
Consider what the top virus reporter Donald J. McNeil (B.A. Rhetoric, University of
California, Berkeley) wrote on
February 28, 2020, weeks before there was any talk of shutdowns in the U.S.:
There are two ways to fight epidemics: the medieval and the modern.
The modern way is to surrender to the power of the pathogens: Acknowledge that they are
unstoppable and to try to soften the blow with 20th-century inventions, including new
vaccines, antibiotics, hospital ventilators and thermal cameras searching for people with
fevers.
The medieval way, inherited from the era of the Black Death, is brutal: Close the borders,
quarantine the ships, pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities.
For the first time in more than a century, the world has chosen to confront a new and
terrifying virus with the iron fist instead of the latex glove.
And yes, he recommends the medieval way. The article continues on to praise China's response
and Cuba's to AIDS and says that this approach is natural to Trump and should be done in the
United States. ( AIER
called him out on this alarming column on March 4, 20202.)
McNeil then went on to greater fame with a series of shocking podcasts for the NYT that put
a voice and even more panic to the failed modeling of Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College
London.
This first
appeared the day before his op-ed calling for global lockdown. The transcript
includes this:
I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I'm being too alarmist or whether I'm being
not alarmist enough. And this is alarmist, but I think right now, it's justified. This one
reminds me of what I have read about the 1918 Spanish influenza.
Reminder: 675,000 Americans died in that pandemic. There were only 103 million people living
in the U.S. at the time.
He continues:
I'm trying to bring a sense that if things don't change, a lot of us might die. If you
have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die in a 2.5 percent
mortality situation.
That's an astonishing claim that seems to forecast 8.25 million Americans will die. So far
as I know, that is the most extreme claim made by anyone, four times as high as the Imperial
College model.
What should we do to prevent this?
You can't leave. You can't see your families. All the flights are canceled. All the trains
are canceled. All the highways are closed. You're going to stay in there. And you're locked
in with a deadly disease. We can do it.
So because this coronavirus "reminds" him of one he read about, he can say on the air that
four million people could soon die, and therefore life itself should be cancelled. Because a
reporter is "reminded" of something.
This is the same newspaper that in 1957 urged people to stay calm during the Asian flu and
trust medical providers – running all of one editorial on the topic. What a change! This
was an amazing podcast -- amazingly irresponsible.
McNeil was not finished yet. He was
at it again on March 12, 2020, demanding that we not just close big events and schools but
shut down everything and everyone "for months." He went back on the podcast twice more, then
started riding the media circuit, including
NPR . It was also the same. China did it right. We need to lock down or people you know, if
you are one of the lucky survivors, will die.
To say that the New York Times was invested in the scenario of "lock down or we die" is an
understatement. It was as invested in this narrative as it was in the Russia-collaboration
story or the Ukrainian-phone call impeachment, tales to which they dedicated hundreds of
stories and many dozens of reporters. The virus was the third pitch to achieve their
objective.
Once in, there was no turning back, even after it became obvious that for the vast numbers
of people this was hardly a disease at all, and that most of the deaths came from one city and
mostly from nursing homes that were forced by law to take in COVID-19 patients.
That the newspaper, a once venerable institution, has something to answer for is apparent.
But instead of accepting moral culpability for having created a panic to fuel the overthrow of
the American way of life, they turn on a dime to celebrate people who are not socially
distancing in the streets to protest police brutality.
To me, the protests on the streets were a welcome relief from the vicious lockdowns. To the
New York Times , it seems like the lockdowns never happened. Down the Orwellian memory
hole.
In this paper's consistent editorializing, nothing is the fault of the lockdowns.
Everything instead is the fault of Trump, who "tends to see only political opportunity in
public fear and anger, as in his customary manner of contributing heat rather than light to the
confrontations between protesters and authority."
True about Trump but let us remember that the McNeil's first pro-lockdown article praised
Trump as perfectly suited to bring about the lockdown, and the paper urged him to do just that,
while only three months later washing their hands of the whole thing, as if had nothing to do
with current sufferings much less the rage on the streets.
And the rapid turnaround of this paper on street protests was stunning to behold. A month
ago, people protesting lockdowns were written about as vicious disease spreaders who were
denying good science. In the blink of an eye, the protesters against police brutality (the same
police who enforced the lockdown) were transmogrified into bold embracers of First Amendment
rights who posed no threat to public health.
Not even the scary warnings about the coming "second wave" were enough to stop the paper
from throwing out all its concern over "targeted layered containment" and "social distancing"
in order to celebrate protests in the streets that they like.
And they ask themselves why people are incredulous toward mainstream media today.
The lockdowns wrecked the fundamentals of life in America. The New York Times today wants to
pretend they either didn't happen, happened only in a limited way, or were just minor public
health measures that worked beautifully to mitigate disease. And instead of having an editorial
meltdown over these absurdities, preposterous forecasts, and extreme panic mongering that
contributed to vast carnage, we seen an internal
revolt over the publishing of a Tom Cotton editorial, a dispute over politics not
facts.
The record is there: this paper went all in back in February to demand the most
authoritarian possible response to a virus about which we already knew enough back then to
observe that this was nothing like the Spanish flu of 1918. They pretended otherwise, probably
for ideological reasons, most likely.
It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It
was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct
a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they've done. Are we really
supposed to believe what they write now and in the future? This time, I hope, people will be
smart and learn to consider the source.
Every cult has the same goal: the utter
submission of its members. Cult members surrender everything. They give up their physical
freedom – where they can go, who they can see, how they can dress. But more than that,
they give up control of their minds.
Cult leaders determine what their followers are allowed to believe, even in their most
private thoughts. In order to do this, cults separate people from all they have known before.
They force members to renounce their former lives, their countries and their customs.
They allow no loyalty except to the cult. The first thing they attack – always –
is the family. Families are always the main impediment to brainwashing and extremism. If you're
going to control individuals – if you're going to transform free people into compliant
robots – the first thing you must do is separate them from the ones who love them
most.
In 1932, Soviet authorities began promoting the story of a 13-year-old peasant boy called
Pavlik Morozov. Morozov, they claimed, had taken the supremely virtuous step of denouncing his
own father to the secret police for committing counter-revolutionary acts.
Once exposed as a traitor, the boy's father was executed by firing squad, supposedly for the
safety of the state. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin elevated the boy to the status of a national
hero for what he did. People wept in the streets when they heard his name. They worshipped him
like a saint.
Why are we telling you this? Because it's happening here. In the last 10 days, some of our
most prominent citizens have sworn allegiance to a cult. Converts go by the term "allies."
Like all cult members, they demand total conformity. They ritually condemn their own nation
– its history, its institutions and symbols. It's flag. They denounce their own
parents.
If you've been on social media recently, you've likely seen videos that illustrate this
– such as one showing a girl attacking her mother and father for the crime of
insufficient loyalty to Black Lives Matter. Reporter Hanna Lustig of Insider.com wrote about
that video, and strongly approved of it.
What you just saw, Lustig wrote, is a young person "modeling the most important tenet of
ally-ship." Modeling. Meaning, something done to encourage others to do the same. It's
working.
In a video of a 15-year-old from Louisville called Isabella – and there are many like
her – the girl is shown crying and saying: "I literally hate my family so much." She goes
on to say her parents defended the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. And
then she calls her parents racists, followed by an obscenity.
"I hate my family so much." Just a week ago, it would have been hard to imagine that. Now,
Isabella is a social media star. Celebrities tweet their approval. She may have her own cult
before long. But the revolution is young. Children attacking their parents is just the
beginning.
On CNN Friday, a man called Tim Wise told viewers that, going forward, parents must hurt
their own children:
Wise said: "I think that the important thing for white parents to keep in the front of their
mind is that if black children in this country are not allowed innocence and childhood without
fear of being killed by police or marginalized in some other way, then our children don't
deserve innocence. If Tamir Rice can be shot dead in a public park playing with a toy gun,
something white children do all over this country every day without the same fear of being
shot, if Tamir Rice can be killed then white children need to be told at least at the same age.
If they can't be innocent, we don't get to be innocent."
Your children are no longer allowed to be innocent, says Tim Wise. Happy childhoods are a
sign of racism. The man saying this – and being affirmed by CNN anchors as he does
– is a self-described "anti-racism activist." He has been saying things like this for a
long time. More than once, Wise has suggested that he approves of violence against those who
disagree.
How does Tim Wise make a living? In part, by lecturing students. Your kids may have seen him
speak. They've almost certainly heard a lot from people like him. In America's schools, the
revolution has been in progress for quite some time.
Last February, to name one among countless examples, officials at schools in Rochester,
N.Y., created a Black Lives Matter-themed lesson plan. The teaching materials dismiss America's
bedrock institutions – indeed, America itself – as inherently racist. Suggested
questions for students include: "How does mass incarceration function as a mechanism of
racialized social control?"
One specific racial group was singled out for exclusive blame. The curriculum promoted a
book titled, "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide." In other words, children,
there's a reason hatred and inequality exist: these people did it! That's what your kids are
learning right now.
Thursday, at Darien High School in Connecticut, Principal Ellen Dunn sent an email to
parents promising to increase "the race-conscious education of our students." To do that, Dunn
distributed materials from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ironically, the SPLC is itself a
hate group. That has been documented extensively. Now their agenda is the school's agenda. It's
what your kids are learning.
In Washington, D.C., an elementary school principal in the affluent northwest section of the
city recently wrote a letter announcing: "We need more White parents to talk to their kids
about race. Especially now."
The letter singled out "White Staff and White community members," whom the principal alleged
had committed "both macro- and micro-aggressions" against "Staff of Color." The principal did
not specify what those crimes were. She didn't need to. Their skin color was their crime.
This is a national theme. It's incredibly destructive and dangerous. Countless public
schools are now using the 1619 Project from The New York Times as a curriculum. That project is
the work of an out-of-the-closet racial extremist called Nikole Hannah Jones. Jones recently
argued it's not violence to loot and burn stores – its justified. Her propaganda is now
mandatory in public schools in Buffalo, Chicago, Newark and Washington.
Many parents understandably deeply resent this. It's deranged, its racist. Others don't.
They're "allies." They've joined in. One mother in London, where the cult is also spreading,
posted a photo on Twitter of her daughter on blended knee, holding a sign declaring her
"privilege."
The Cultural Revolution has come to the West.
What will the effects of this be? Years from now, how will that little girl with the sign
remember her childhood? Her mother took Tim Wise's advice. She no longer has innocence. Will
she be grateful for that?
It's hard to imagine she will be. She'll more likely feel bitter and used. Because she has
been used. Many will feel that way. Is there a single person who believes this moment we're
living through will end in racial harmony? Is that even a goal anymore? It doesn't seem like
it.
It seems clear that many in power are pushing hard for racial division. For hatred. For
violence. Let's pray they don't get what they want. Tribal conflict destroys countries faster
than any plague.
But keep in mind as this insanity continues that it's not happening in a vacuum. Every
action provokes a reaction – that's physics. We don't know where this is going. We don't
want to know. The cult members should stop now – immediately, before more innocents get
hurt – and they will, if they don't.
1) Newsweek has already proven to be significantly compromised, even more than most
MSM, as described by Caitlin Johnstone (via Consortium News):
Newsweek has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the US-centralized
empire, with examples of stories that its editors did permit to go to print including
an article by an actual, current military intelligence officerexplaining why U.S.
prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing, fawning puff pieces on the White
Helmets, and despicable smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard.
The outlet will occasionally print oppositional-looking articles like this one by
Ian Wilkie questioning the establishment Syria narrative, but not without immediately
turning around and publishing an attack on Wilkie's piece by Eliot Higgins, a former
Atlantic Council Senior Fellow who is the cofounder of the NED-funded imperial
narrative management firm Bellingcat. Newsweek also recently published an article
attacking Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a
bogus Bellingcat article ...
It started as a reaction to the attitude of the Left during the 1999 Kosovo war, which was
largely accepted on humanitarian grounds and to the rather weak opposition of the peace
movement before the 2003 invasion of Iraq: for example, many "pacifists" have accepted the
policy of sanctions at the time of the 1991 first Gulf war and even after it, and were
favorable to inspections in the run-up to the war, without realizing that this was just a
maneuver to prepare the public to accept the war (this became even public knowledge through
later leaks, like the Downing Street memos).
It seemed to me that the ideology of humanitarian intervention had totally destroyed, on the
left, any notion of respect for international law, as well as any critical attitude with
respect to the media.
Àngel Ferrero: What do you think it has changed in this last 10 years?
A lot of things have changed, although, I am afraid, not because of my book. It is rather
reality that has asserted itself, first with the chaos in Iraq, then in Libya and now in Syria
and Ukraine, leading to the refugee crisis and a near state of war with Russia, which would not
be a "cakewalk".
The humanitarian imperialists are still busy pushing us towards more wars, but there is now
a substantial fraction of public opinion that is against such policies; that fraction is
probably more important on the right than on the left.
Àngel Ferrero: The role of the intellectuals in legitimizing Western interventions
and interferences is heavily criticized, as well as their symbolic actions (signing public
letters or manifestos). Why?
The problem with "intellectuals" is that they love to pretend that they are critics of
power, while in reality legitimizing it. For example, they will complain that Western
governments do not do enough to promote "our values" (through interventions and subversions)
which of course reinforces the notion that "our side" or "our governments" mean well, a highly
dubious notion, as I try to explain in my book.
Those intellectuals are sometimes criticized, but by whom? In general, by marginal figures I
think. They still dominate the media and the intellectual sphere.
Àngel Ferrero: Another of the preoccupations of your book is the degradation of
the public discourse. Do you think that the situation worsened? How do you assess the impact of
social media?
The public discourse goes from bad to worse, at least in France. This is related to the
constant censorship, either through lawsuits or through campaigns of demonization, of
politically incorrect speech, which includes all the questioning of the dominant discourse about the crimes of our enemies and the
justifications for wars.
The social media is the only alternative left to "dissidents", with the drawback that there,
anything goes, including the wildest fantasies.
Àngel Ferrero: Some commentators point that Russia is now using their own version
of the "human rights' ideology" to justify their intervention in Crimea or the air campaign in
Syria against the Islamic State. Is it fair?
I don't think that Russia even claims to intervene on humanitarian grounds. In the case of
Crimea, it bases itself on the right of self-determination of a people which is basically
Russian, has been attached to Ukraine in an arbitrary fashion in 1954 (at a time when it did
not matter too much, since Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union) and had every reason to be
afraid of a fanatically anti-Russian government in Kiev.
For Syria, they respond to the request for help of the government of that country in order
to fight foreign supported "terrorists". I don't see why it is less legitimate than the
intervention of France in Mali (also requested by the government of that country) or of the
more recent intervention of the U.S. in Iraq, against ISIS.
Of course, those Russian moves may prove to be unwise and maybe debatable from a "pacifist"
point of view. But the fundamental question is: who started the total dismantling of the
international order based on the U.N. Charter and the premise of equal sovereignty of all
nations? The answer, obviously, is the U.S. and its "allies" (in the old days, one used to say
"lackeys"). Russia is only responding to that disorder and does so in rather legalistic
ways.
Àngel Ferrero:Let's stay in Syria. Several European politicians demand a
military intervention in Syria and Libya to restore the order and stop the influx of refugees
to the European Union. What do you think of this crisis and the solutions proposed by the
EU?
They do not know how to solve the problem that they have created. By demanding the departure
of Assad as a precondition to solving the Syrian crisis and by supporting so-called moderate
rebels (the label moderate meaning in practice that they had been chosen by "us"), they
prevented any possible solution in Syria. Indeed, a political solution should be based on
diplomacy and the latter presupposes a realistic assessment of forces. In the case of Syria,
realism means accepting the fact that Assad has the control of an army and has foreign allies,
Iran and Russia. Ignoring this is just a way to deny reality, and to refuse to give diplomacy a
chance.
Then came the refugee crisis: this was probably not expected, but occurred at a time when
European citizens are increasingly hostile to immigration and to the "European construction".
Most European governments face what they call "populist movements", i.e. movements that demand
more sovereignty for their own countries. The flux of refugees could not come at a worst
moment, from the European governments' point of view.
So, they try to fix the problem as they can: having peripheral countries like Hungary build
walls (that they denounce in public but are probably happy about in private), reinstall border
controls, pay Turkey to keep the refugees etc.
There are of course also calls to intervene in Syria to solve the problem "at the source".
But what can they do now? More support for the rebels, trough a no-fly zone for example, and
running the risk of a direct confrontation with the Russians? Help the Syrian army fight the
rebels, as the Russian do? But that would mean reversing years of anti-Assad propaganda and
policies.
In summary, they are hoisted by the own petard, which is always an unpleasant situation.
Àngel Ferrero:Why do you think that the Greens and the new left are so
adamant in defending the humanitarian interventions?
Ultimately, one has to do a class analysis of the "new left". While the old left was based
on the working class and their leaders often came from that class, the new left is almost
entirely dominated by petit-bourgeois intellectuals. Those intellectuals are neither the
"bourgeoisie", in the sense of the owners of the means of production not are they exploited by
the latter.
Their social function is to provide an ideology that can serve as a lofty justification for
an economic system and a set of international relations that are based ultimately on brute
force. The human rights ideology is perfect from that point of view. It is sufficiently
"idealistic" and impossible to put consistently into practice (if one had to wage war against
every "violator of human rights", one would quickly be at war with the entire world, including
ourselves) to allow those defenders the opportunity to look critical of the governments (they
don't intervene enough). But, by deflecting attention from the real relations of forces in the
world, the human rights ideology offers also to those who hold real power a moral justification
for their actions. So, the petit-bourgeois intellectuals of the "new left" can both serve power
and pretend to be subversive. What more can you ask from an ideology?
Àngel Ferrero: In the conclusions of your book you recommend a sort of pedagogy
for the Western audience, so they accept the end of the Western hegemony and the emergence of a
new order in the international relations. How can we contribute to this?
As I said above, it is reality that forces the Western audience to change. It was always a
pure folly to think that human rights would be fostered by endless wars, but now we see the
consequences of that folly with our own eyes. There should be a radical reorientation of the
left's priorities in international affairs: far from trying to fix problems in other countries
through illegal interventions, it should demand strict respect of international law on the part
of Western governments, peaceful cooperation with other countries, in particular Russia, Iran
and China, and the dismantling of aggressive military alliances such as NATO.
Àngel Ferrero:I would like to ask you about the other book that made you
known to the general public, Fashionable Nonsense .
This book, co-written with Alan Sokal, is a critique to postmodernism. What is the influence of
postmodernism amongst scholars and the public opinion today? It fades away or is it still alive
and kicking?
It is difficult for me to answer that question, because it would require a sociological
study that I do not have the means to undertake. But I should say that postmodernism, like the
turn towards humanitarian interventions, is another way that the left has self-destructed
itself, although this aspect has had less dramatic consequences than the wars and the damage
was limited to "elite" intellectual circles.
But if the left wants to create a more just society, it has to have a notion of justice; if
it adopts a relativist attitude with respect to ethics, how can it justify its goals? And if it
has to denounce the illusions and mystifications of the dominant discourse, it better rely on a
notion of truth that is not purely a "social construction". Postmodernism has largely
contributed to the destruction of reason, objectivity and ethics on the left and that leads to
its suicide.
"The World Cannot Breathe!" Squashed By The U.S. - A Country Built On Genocide And Slavery
More than two centuries of lies are now getting exposed. Bizarre tales about freedom and
democracy are collapsing like houses of cards.
One man's death triggers an avalanche of rage in those who for years, decades and
centuries, have been humiliated, ruined, and exterminated.
It always happens just like this throughout the history of humankind – one single
death, one single "last drop", an occurrence that triggers an entire chain of events, and
suddenly nothing is the same, anymore. Nothing can be the same. What seemed to be
unimaginable just yesterday, becomes "the new normal" literally overnight.
*
For more than two centuries, the country which calls itself the pinnacle of freedom, has
been in fact the absolute opposite of that; the epicenter of brutality and terror.
From its birth, in order to 'clear the space' for its brutal, ruthless European settlers,
it systematically liquidated the local population of the continent, during what could easily
be described as one of the more outrageous genocides in the human history.
When whites wanted land, they took it. In North America, or anywhere in the world. In what
is now the United States of America, millions of "natives" were murdered, infected with
deadly diseases on purpose, or exterminated in various different ways. The great majority of
the original and rightful owners of the land, vanished. The rest were locked up in
"reservations".
Simultaneously, the "Land Of The Free" thrived on slavery. European colonialist powers
literally hunted down human beings all over the African continent, stuffing them, like
animals, into ships, in order to satisfy demand for free labor on the plantations of North
and South America. European colonialist, hand in hand, cooperated, in committing crimes, in
all parts of the world.
What really is the United States? Is anyone asking, searching for its roots? What about
this; a simple, honest answer: The United States is essentially the beefy offspring of
European colonialist culture, of its exceptionalism, racism and barbarity.
Again, simple facts: huge parts of the United States were constructed on slavery. Slaves
were humiliated, raped, tortured, murdered. Oh, what a monstrous way to write the first
chapters of the country's history!
The United States, a country of liberty and freedom? For whom? Seriously! For Christian
whites?
How twisted the narrative is! No wonder our humanity has become so perverse, so immoral,
so lost and confused, after being shaped by a narrative which has been fabricated by a
country that exterminated the great majority of its own native sons and daughters, while
getting insanely rich thanks to unimaginable theft, mass-murder, slavery and later –
the semi-slavery of the savage corporate dictatorship!
The endemic, institutionalized brutality at home eventually spilled over to all parts of
the planet. Now, for many decades, the United Stated has treated the entire world as full of
its personal multitude of slaves. What does it offer to all of us: constant wars,
occupations, punitive expeditions, coups, regular assassinations of progressive leaders, as
well as thorough corporate plunder. Hundreds of millions of people have been sacrificed on
the grotesque U.S. altar of "freedom" and "democracy".
Freedom and democracy, really?
Or perhaps just genocide, slavery, fear and the violation of all those wonderful and
natural human dreams, and of human dignity?
Looks like the third stage of the Purple revolution against Trump, with Russiagate and
Ukrainegate and two initial stages.
Notable quotes:
"... Things couldn't be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves. Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist police. No, the Resistance didn't manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as "white supremacists" who literally elected Hitler president, and who want to turn the country into a racist dictatorship. ..."
"... According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical, Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part of his plot to "destroy democracy." ..."
"... The protesting and rioting that typically follows the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into " an international uprising " cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the liberal establishment, who don't normally tend to support such uprisings, but they've all had a sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that's what it takes to bring about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office. ..."
"... America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when Obama was president. America didn't radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it. ..."
underground
bunker ." Opportunist social media pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are
whipping people up into white-eyed frenzies. Americans are at each other's throats, divided by
identity politics, consumed by rage, hatred, and fear.
Things couldn't be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves.
Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of
course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist
police. No, the Resistance didn't manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last
four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as "white
supremacists" who literally elected Hitler president, and who want to turn the country into a
racist dictatorship.
According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the
corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical,
Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never
hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into
refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part
of his plot to "destroy democracy." The plan was always for President Hitler to embolden
his white-supremacist followers into launching the "RaHoWa," or the "Boogaloo," after which
Trump would declare martial law, dissolve the legislature, and pronounce himself Führer.
Then they would start rounding up and murdering the Jews, and the Blacks, and Mexicans, and
other minorities, according to this twisted liberal fantasy.
I've been covering the roll-out and dissemination of this official narrative since 2016, and
have documented much of it in my essays
, so I won't reiterate all that here. Let's just say, I'm not exaggerating, much. After four
years of more or less constant conditioning, millions of Americans believe this fairy tale,
despite the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence whatsoever to support it. Which is not
exactly a mystery or anything. It would be rather surprising if they didn't believe it. We're
talking about the most formidable official propaganda machine in the history of official
propaganda machines.
And now the propaganda is paying off. The protesting and rioting that typically follows
the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into "
an international uprising " cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the
liberal establishment, who don't normally tend to support such uprisings, but they've all had a
sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious
property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that's what it takes to bring
about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist
paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office.
In any event, the Resistance media have now dropped their breathless coverage of the
non-existent Corona-Holocaust to breathlessly cover the "revolution." The American police, who
just last week were national heroes for risking their lives to beat up, arrest, and generally
intimidate mask-less "lockdown violators" are now the fascist foot soldiers of the Trumpian
Reich. The Nike corporation produced
a commercial urging people to smash the windows of their Nike stores and steal their
sneakers. Liberal journalists took to Twitter, calling on rioters to "
burn that shit down! " until the rioters reached their gated community and started burning
down their local Starbucks. Hollywood celebrities are masking up and going full-black bloc, and
doing legal support . Chelsea Clinton is teaching children about David and the Racist
Goliath . John Cusack's bicycle was
attacked by the pigs . I haven't checked on Rob Reiner yet, but I assume he is assembling
Molotov cocktails in the basement of a Resistance safe house somewhere in Hollywood Hills.
Look, I'm not saying the neoliberal Resistance orchestrated or staged these riots, or
"denying the agency" of the folks in the streets. Whatever else is happening out there, a lot
of very angry Black people are taking their frustration out on the cops, and on anyone and
anything else that represents racism and injustice to them.
This happens in America from time to time. America is still a racist society. Most
African-Americans are descended from slaves. Legal racial discrimination was not abolished
until the 1960s, which isn't that long ago in historical terms. I was born in the segregated
American South, with the segregated schools, and all the rest of it. I don't remember it -- I
was born in 1961 -- but I do remember the years right after it. The South didn't magically
change overnight in July of 1964. Nor did the North's variety of racism, which, yes, is
subtler, but no less racist.
So I have no illusions about racism in America. But I'm not really talking about racism in
America. I'm talking about how racism in America has been cynically instrumentalized, not by
the Russians, but by the so-called Resistance, in order to delegitimize Trump and, more
importantly, everyone who voted for him, as a bunch of white supremacists and racists.
Fomenting racial division has been the Resistance's strategy from the beginning. A quote
attributed to Joseph Goebbels, "accuse the other side of that which you are guilty," is
particularly apropos in this case. From the moment Trump won the Republican nomination, the
corporate media and the rest of the Resistance have been telling us the man is literally
Hitler, and that his plan is to foment racial hatred among his "white supremacist base," and
eventually stage some "Reichstag" event, declare martial law and pronounce himself dictator.
They've been telling us this story over and over, on television, in the liberal press, on
social media, in books, movies, and everywhere else they could possibly tell it.
So, before you go out and join the "uprising," take a look at the headlines today, turn on
CNN or MSNBC, and think about that for just a minute. I don't mean to spoil the party, but
they've preparing you for this for the last four years.
Not you Black folks. I'm not talking to you. I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do. I'm
talking to white folks like myself, who are cheering on the rioting and looting, and are coming
out to "help" you with it, but who will be back home in their gated communities when the ashes
have cooled, and the corporate media are gone, and the cops return to "police" your
neighborhoods.
OK, and this is where I have to restate (for the benefit of my partisan readers) that I'm
not a fan of Donald Trump, and that I think he's a narcissistic ass clown, and a glorified con
man, and blah blah blah, because so many people have been so polarized by insane propaganda and
mass hysteria that they can't even read or think anymore, and so just scan whatever articles
they encounter to see whose "side" the author is on and then mindlessly celebrate or excoriate
it.
If you're doing that, let me help you out whichever side you're on, I'm not on it.
I realize that's extremely difficult for a lot of folks to comprehend these days, which is
part of the point I've been trying to make. I'll try again, as plainly as I can.
America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when
Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when
Obama was president. America didn't radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into
office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as
Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it.
And that will be the end of the War on Populism , and we will
switch back to the War on Terror, or maybe the Brave New Pathologized Normal or
whatever Orwellian official narrative the folks at GloboCap have in store for us.
#
CJ Hopkins
June 1, 2020
Photo: Nike (George Floyd commercial)
The nation
went up in flames this weekend . No one in charge stood up to save America. Our leaders
dithered. They cowered. They openly sided with the destroyers. In many cases, they egged them
on.
Later, they will deny doing any of this. They are denying it now. But you know the truth
because you saw it happen.
This is how nations collapse. When no one in authority keeps the order, and when someone in
our professional class encourage violence, American citizens are forced to defend themselves.
They have no choice. No one else is going to defend them -- they know that now.
It's possible that more people will be hurt in coming days -- that would be a tragedy. But
in an environment like this, more violence could very well lead to a cascade of new tragedies,
to something far bigger and more destructive than anything we have seen so far.
So, this isn't over. It might simply be the beginning. We pray it isn't.
It's hard to think clearly about anything that's going on right now. The chaos, the
destruction, the relentless lying from above -- it's all too much. Americans are bewildered,
and they are afraid. But most of all, they are filled with rage, angrier than they have ever
been.
The worst people in our society have taken control. They did nothing to build this country.
Now, they are tearing it down. They are rushing us toward mass suicide.
So, how do we respond? We must protect ourselves and our families. Once again, we have no
choice, but to do that. But we cannot allow ourselves to become like they are.
We are not animals, we are Americans. In the face of such indecency, we must resolve to be
decent. We believe this country has a future. We intend for our children to live and thrive
here. That is what we are defending.
All our leaders do is set us against each other. They stage a never-ending national
cockfight for their profit and amusement.
But we're not going to play along. We will love our neighbors relentlessly in spite of all
of it, not because they look like us or share our political views. But we love them because
they are human beings, and they are Americans. Those are the bonds that tie us together -- the
bonds our leaders seek to destroy. We can't let them.
We should start by being unsparingly honest about what is happening right now. Truth is our
defense, and it's our country's last hope.
We plan to use this hour to create a record of this moment right now, to show you what's
really going on in your country. We feel an obligation to do that before the facts are spun
into propaganda by the liars or the images are pulled off the internet forever, as many of them
inevitably will be.
All our leaders do is set us against each other. They stage a never-ending national
cockfight for their profit and amusement. But we're not going to play along.
We're going to begin with where my family lives and has lived for 35 years, in the northwest
quadrant of Washington, D.C. This is called Mac Market. It's on MacArthur Boulevard, which is
named after General MacArthur during the war. It's our neighborhood store; it's walking
distance from my house.
People meet there every morning for coffee. Kids come after school for candy. It's as close
to a community gathering spot as we have.
The market is run by the Kim family. The Kims are immigrants from Korea. They are revered in
our neighborhood for their decency and their hard work. When they lost their son several years
ago, the neighbors grieved for them.
The Kims are not political. They've never hurt anyone. They only make things better. But
last night, the mob came for their store. At 1 a.m. Monday morning, Mr. Kim was kneeling alone
on the sidewalk trying to salvage what he has spent his life building.
Scenes like this played out in hundreds of neighborhoods across this country, maybe
yours.
Here are a few. In Columbia, S.C., a man called the police when things began to fall apart.
Rioters saw him call. They surrounded that man, and they beat him. Onlookers laughed as he was
pummeled.
This is a national emergency. It's a profound national emergency. But you would never know
that from listening to our elected leaders. Almost all of them pretend this is not really
happening or if it is happening, it is just part of America's long tradition of vigorous
political discourse.
In Rochester, N.Y., a group of eight men smashed the windows of a jewelry store. The couple
who lived above the shop emerged to confront them. Both of them were viciously beaten with a
ladder and a two-by-four.
In Dallas, a man armed with what appeared to be a sword did his best to defend a business
from looters. The mob bashed him in the head with a rock and a skateboard. It's hard to
watch.
In San Jose, riders with crowbar stormed the highway and attacked vehicles, trying to pull
drivers from their cars. In Birmingham, Ala., a local reporter called Stephen Quinn was beaten,
and then he was robbed on live television as he tried to cover the looting.
In Portland, Ore., a man was beaten apparently for daring to carry an American flag in
public. He never released the flag, by the way.
How many of these people died? How many were murdered by the rioters? We don't know yet. At
the least, some are likely disabled for life. They were beaten that badly.
And then there was the mass stealing. It seemed to be everywhere over the weekend.
In Buckhead, an upscale part of Atlanta, rioters stole a Tesla from a dealership and drove
it through an indoor mall just to underscore how completely out of control things were. In
Portland, Oregon, mobs looted Louis Vuitton, Apple and Chase Bank among many others. They often
set fires as they left. In Chicago, protesters fought systemic racism by running through a Nike
store stealing shoes.
And in Washington, D.C., a federal city surrounded by military bases and protected at all
times by the single highest concentration of law enforcement in the world, criminals operated
with apparent impunity in the streets. They looted Georgetown. They smashed the windows in
federal buildings. They desecrated virtually every war memorial in the city a week after
Memorial Day.
You've got to wonder how many of them have ever even heard of George Floyd. And if they
have heard of him, what difference would it make? Violence and looting are not forms of
political expression.
And then, as you likely know, Sunday night they
set fire to St. John's Episcopal Church , a 200-year-old building that has welcomed every
American president since James Madison. It is right across the street from the White House.
For people stuck inside anywhere during this insanity -- the sick, the elderly, the
powerless -- the experience was terrifying. Listen to this woman from Minneapolis.
Reporter: How was last night?
Unidentified woman: Scary. They went straight to Office Max, the Dollar Store and every
store over here that I go to. I have nowhere to go now. I have no way to get there because the
buses aren't running.
So, that's what's happening in America right now. We didn't play all of the tape we have.
There's a lot of it. Some of the tape is too shocking, and honestly, it's too incendiary. We
understand that television is an emotional medium, and we don't want to make things worse.
We're not going to, but you get the point.
The point is, this is a national emergency. It's a profound national emergency. But you
would never know that from listening to our elected leaders. Almost all of them pretend this is
not really happening or if it is happening, it is just part of America's long tradition of
vigorous political discourse.
Politicians on both sides tell us that this is all about the death of a man in police
custody in Minneapolis last week. The people burning down our country are "protesters". They're
engaged in a legitimate "protest."
Okay, what exactly are those protesters' demands? What are they asking for? If Congress
agreed to enact their program, what would the program be?
Not a single person even hints the answer because there is not an answer. No one has
bothered to pull the guys beating up old ladies on the street or looting Gucci, but you've got
to wonder how many of them have ever even heard of George Floyd . And if they have
heard of him, what difference would it make? Violence and looting are not forms of political
expression.
If you were killed tomorrow, how many buildings would you want burned to the ground in your
memory? How many old women smashed in the face on the street in your name? None, we hope,
because you're not a vicious psychopath, like the people you've just watched.
In fact, what we're watching is not a political protest. It's the opposite of a political
protest. It is an attack on the idea of politics. The rioters you have seen are trying to
topple our political system.
That system is how we resolve our differences without using violence. But these people want
a new system, one that is governed by force. Do what we say or we will hurt you.
You know this. You can see it for yourself on television; you have. But our leaders continue
to lie. They tell us that's not true. This isn't happening. It's just a protest.
When the violence began, what we needed more than anything was clarity in the middle of
this ... Instead, almost all of our so-called conservative leaders joined the left's chorus,
as if on cue.
Some Democrats have openly embraced what is happening. Really they don't have much of a
choice. These are their voters cleaning out the Rolex store. These riots effectively are the
largest Joe
Biden for President rally on record.
No Democratic leader can directly criticize what is happening right now. And in fact, some
have joined in. Over the weekend, the Democratic Party of Fairfax, Virginia, which is an
important Democratic organization, released the following statement on Twitter: "Riots are an
integral part of this country's march towards progress."
Progress. Burning buildings, teargas, dead bodies, the screaming injured, criminal anarchy
-- to the Democratic Party of Fairfax, that is called progress.
Celebrity after celebrity has weighed in to agree on social media. From his fortified
compound, basketball star LeBron James has used his accounts
to encourage more rioting. Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun
King has done the same. So has Black Lives Matter leader, DeRay Mckesson.
Colin
Kaepernick openly calls for violence. Here's a quote: "The cries for peace will rain down
and when they do, they will land on deaf ears," he says
approvingly .
Imagine shouting fire in a crowded theater, a theater with 325 million people in it called
our country. That's what they've been doing and have been doing for days.
When the violence began, what we needed more than anything was clarity in the middle of
this. It's hard to see when the tear gas starts. Someone in America needed to tell the truth to
the country. Instead, almost all of our so-called conservative leaders joined the left's
chorus, as if on cue.
On Friday, as American cities were being destroyed by mobs, the vice president United States
refused to say anything specific about the riots we were watching on television. Instead,
Mike Pence
scolded America for its racism.
Carly Fiorina, once a leading Republican presidential candidate tweeted that -- and we're
quoting, "It's white America that now must see the truth, speak the truth and act on the
truth."
Meanwhile, Kay
Coles James , who is the president of the Heritage Foundation -- that's the largest
conservative think tank in the country. You may have sent them money, hopefully for the last
time. Kay Coles James wrote a long scream denouncing America as an irredeemably racist nation:
"How many times will protests have to occur?"
Got that? "Have to occur." Like the rest of us caused this by our sinfulness.
The message from our leaders on the right, as on the left, was unambiguous: Don't complain.
You deserve what's happening to you.
No one jumped in more forcefully or seemed angrier in America than former South Carolina
Governor Nikki
Haley . "Tonight I turned on the news and I am heartbroken," Haley wrote. "It's important
to understand that the death of George Ford was personal and painful for many. In order to
heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone."
Imagine shouting fire in a crowded theater, a theater with 325 million people in it called
our country. That's what they've been doing and have been doing for days.
But wait a second, you may be wondering, how am I "personally responsible" for the behavior
of a Minneapolis police officer? I've never even been to Minneapolis, you may think to
yourself. And why is some politician telling me I'm required to be upset about it?
Those are all good questions. Nikki Haley did not answer those questions explaining. It is
not her strong suit -- that would require thinking.
What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail. During the 2016 campaign, she compared Donald
Trump to the racist mass murderer, Dylann
Roof . How is Donald Trump similar to a serial
killer? Nikki Haley never explained that. She wasn't trying to educate anyone.
Her only goal was political advantage. Nikki Haley is exceptionally good at getting what she
wants. She is happy to denounce you as a racist in order to get it. She just did.
In this case, Nikki Haley's wish came true. The riots were indeed "personal and painful" for
everyone. And then the pain kept increasing. Two days after she wrote that, dozens of American
cities had been thoroughly trashed, some destroyed.
A country already on the brink of recession suddenly faced economic collapse. An already
fearful population locked down for months because of the coronavirus had
been thoroughly and completely terrorized.
Mission accomplished. Let's hope Nikki Haley is pleased. We've now atoned.
How did the Trump administration respond to the horrors going on around us? Well, Sunday
morning, the country's national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, did a live interview from the
White House lawn. Here's how it began:
Robert O'Brien, U.S. National Security Adviser: First thing I want to say, on behalf of
the president --he said this to the family -- but our hearts and prayers are going out to the
Floyd family. We mourn with them and we grieve with them and what happened there was horrific
and I can't even imagine what that poor family is going through as his videos are played over
and over again. That should have never happened in America and it's a tragic thing.
The president said that from the start, and we're with the family and as the President
said, we're with the peaceful protesters.
"We're with the peaceful protesters," O'Brien announced.
Really? Can you be more specific about that? Who are you talking about exactly? Is it the
people spitting foam as they scream, "F the police"? Is it the one standing next to the
arsonist doing nothing as they set fire to buildings? Is it the kids laughing as they film the
looting and the beatings on their iPhones?
The first requirement of leadership is that you watch over the people in your care. That's
what soldiers want from their officers. It's what families need from their fathers. It's what
voters demand from their presidents.
Maybe it's the famous people in L.A. who are raising money online to support the rioters?
They're all just peaceful protesters. Yes, we support that. It's who we are.
What about the president? Where is he during all of this?
Well, on Friday night, after the show, Leland Vitter and a cameraman headed to Lafayette
Square in Washington to cover what was happening outside the White House. Here's what happened
next.
Reporter: A Fox News reporter is getting chased out by these -- by the George Floyd
protesters here infront of -- at Lafayette Park.
Look, there's water being thrown on the reporter here. This is just -- they took his mic.
The just threw the mic at the reporter here. As you see guys, things are spiraling here quick
at the protest.
That was in Lafayette Square in the center of our capital city. The tape raised a troubling
question: If you can't keep a Fox News correspondent from getting attacked directly across the
street from your house, how can you protect my family? How are you going to protect the
country? How hard are you trying?
On Twitter the next morning, the president reassured America that he and his family were
just fine. The federally funded bodyguards had kept them safe. He did not mention protecting
the rest of the nation, much of which was then on fire. He seemed aware only of himself.
For people who like Donald Trump, who voted for Donald Trump, who support his policies, who
have defended him for years and years against the most absurd kinds of slander, this was a
distressing moment.
The first requirement of leadership is that you watch over the people in your care. That's
what soldiers want from their officers. It's what families need from their fathers. It's what
voters demand from their presidents.
People will put up with almost anything if you do that. You can regularly say embarrassing
things on television. You can hire Omarosa to work at the White House. All of that will be
forgiven if you protect your people.
But if you do not protect them -- or worse than that, if you seem like you can't be bothered
to protect them -- then you're done. It's over. People will not forgive weakness. That's the
one thing, by the way, that is not a partisan point. It is human nature.
Nero is the only Roman emperor whose name most people still remember. Why? Because he
abandoned his nation in a time of crisis. And 2,000 years later, we still don't forgive
him.
President Donald Trump: If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary
to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States
military and quickly solve the problem for them.
Good for him.
Immediately after that address, the president walked over to St. John's, which, we just told
you, was burning fewer than 24 hours ago, and that provided a powerful symbolic gesture. It was
a declaration that this country -- our national symbols, our oldest institutions -- will not be
desecrated and defeated by nihilistic destruction. We fervently hope this all works.
What Americans want most right now is an end to this chaos. They want their cities to be
saved. They want this to stop immediately. If the commander-in-chief cannot stop it, he will
lose in November. The left will blame him for the atrocities they encouraged, and some voters
will agree.
Donald Trump is the president. Presidents save countries. That's their job. That's why we
hire them. It's that simple.
Some key advisers around the president don't seem to understand this or the gravity of the
moment. No matter what happens, they'll tell you, our voters aren't going anywhere. "The
trailer parks are rock solid. What choice do they have? They've got to vote for us."
Jared Kushner, for one, has made that point out loud. No one has more contempt for Donald
Trump's voters than Jared Kushner does, and no one expresses it more frequently.
In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a law and order candidate because he meant it, and his views
remain fundamentally unchanged today. But the president's famously sharp instincts, the ones
that won him the presidency almost four years ago, have been since subverted at every level by
Jared Kushner. This is true on immigration , on foreign policy, and
especially on law enforcement
.
As crime in this country continues to rise, Jared Kushner has led a highly aggressive effort
to let more criminals out of prison and back on to the streets. This is reckless. At this
moment in time, it is insane. It continues to happen.
What Americans want most right now is an end to this chaos. They want their cities to be
saved. They want this to stop immediately. If the commander-in-chief cannot stop it, he will
lose in November. The left will blame him for the atrocities they encouraged, and some voters
will agree.
The president seems to sense this. At times he seems aware he is being led in the wrong
direction. He often derides Kushner as a liberal and that's correct, Kushner is. But Kushner
has convinced the president that throwing open the prisons is the key to winning
African-American votes in the fall and that those votes are essential to his reelection.
Several times over the past few days, the president has signaled that he would very much
like to crack down on rioters -- that is his instinct. If you've watched him, you'll believe
it. But every time he has been talked out of it by Jared Kushner and by aides that Kushner has
hired and controls.
Kushner's assumption, apparently, is that African-American voters like looting. That is
wrong. Normal Americans of all colors hate looting, obviously. Why wouldn't they hate looting?
They are decent people.
So one of the lessons of all that we have seen and we've seen so much over the past five
days is America is going to change because of this -- that is certain. What can we learn from
it? What should we demand going forward?
The first thing to know is that we can no longer accept race-baiting from our leaders.
Never. That has become so common now that we barely notice it. But it is dividing and
destroying this country. We should make them stop.
On Sunday, for example, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle tweeted this: "I want to acknowledge
that much of the violence and destruction both here in Seattle and across the country has been
instigated and perpetrated by white men."
Is that factually true? Who knows? Who cares? The skin color of criminals is totally
irrelevant to how we prosecute them for the crimes they commit. It must be irrelevant.
Otherwise, we're committing the bigotry we claim to abhor.
Weakness invites aggression. That is true in nature and it's every bit as true in human
society. Our leaders are weak. Predators know it. That's why this is happening.
Yet everywhere on television and social media, prominent people are now talking exactly like
this. Not just a few crackpots -- thousands of people, well-known people. They are amplifying
race hatred at exactly the moment that we need at least at the moment when it's the most
dangerous.
This is Art Acevedo. Acevedo with the police chief of Houston. Houston is the fourth biggest
city in this country.
Acevedo's job, his sworn duty, is to enforce the law fairly and evenly regardless of the
ethnicity of the suspect. Watch this and tell us if you think he is capable of doing that. Do
you think he's even interested?
Art Acevedo, chief of the Houston Police department: My people for -- as an immigrant, we
are raised like this. But you know what? We built this country ... We have got news for them.
We ain't going nowhere. We ain't going nowhere. I think the ship has sailed.
So if you've got hate in your heart for people of color, get over it, because this city
is a minority-majority city.
"My people." If a police chief of any color -- any colo r -- said that, we would
attack him instantly, and we would mean it. It is wrong.
When you run a law enforcement agency, you don't get to consider "my people" much less claim
your people deserve some kind of special consideration because they "built this country." No.
Your obligation is not to consider your people, but all people and consider them
equally. Period.
Art Acevedo is not even trying to do that. Imagine being arrested by this creep. Think you'd
get a fair shake?
There's almost nothing that hurts America more than this. If you are worried about the rise
of extremism here -- and honestly, you should be worried -- this kind of insanity is absolutely
certain to cause it.
And let's be clear, when we say extremism, we're not talking about unconventional views that
get you bounced off Twitter or scolded by the corporate HR department. We mean actual extremism
where people espouse violence against other people, where large groups come to believe their
racial identity is the most important thing about them.
Now, at this moment, no matter what they're telling you, no matter what they claim for
political advantage, there's not a huge amount of that in this country, thank God. Most people
still think of themselves as Americans and want to. But if the left keeps talking like this,
there definitely will be and very soon. And you don't want to live here when that happens. We
should demand they stop immediately.
Enforcing the law is not white supremacy. Insisting that everyone in the country follow the
same rules is not racism. In fact, it's the answer to racism. It is equality -- equality under
the law. It is the one thing we must defend, and if we don't, it's over. Things fall apart.
Weakness invites aggression. That is true in nature and it's every bit as true in human
society. Our leaders are weak. Predators know it. That's why this is happening.
If you let people spray paint obscenities in City Hall, pretty soon they are overturning cop
cars. If you put up with that, they'll come right to the front door of the police precinct, and
they will burn it down.
The next thing you know, they are beating people to death in shopping malls. And then what?
What happens the next time the mob doesn't like something? What will the mob demand next?
Let's hope we never find out because we are close.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 1,
2020.
CLICK HERE TO READ
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Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) Tucker Carlson
Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor. Conversation (6,702)
@Commentator Mike
As Tucker Carlson said last night, Trump has good instincts; he should use them. Instead he's
been listening to that ridiculous son-in-law of his, who is a true liberal. Tucker said he
needs to get back to listening to his instincts. He watches every show of Tucker's, so I hope
he's listening.
"All he had to do was keep his promises." Ah, easier said than done. Kennedy tried to go
his own way, and look what happened to him. Trump has got every Democrat against him, along
with almost every Republican (who are just letting him twist). The media is against him, the
judiciary are against him, along with academia, the FBI, CIA, and the Clintons.
The globalists/uniparty are going all out to trample Trump, and you're rolling over?
"But all he wanted was to buddy up to Netanyahu "
That's because that was the only thing the Uniparty would get behind Trump on. Even the
Republicans fought him on the wall, Russia.
As he commands the Los Angeles Police Department's response to mass protests over the
killing of George Floyd
, LAPD Chief Michel Moore is also facing a growing political storm over
comments he made Monday night -- but quickly retracted -- about looters.
The chief said looters across
Southern California over the weekend
were
"capitalizing"
on the death of Floyd.
"We didn't have protests last night -- we had criminal acts," Moore said during a news conference
with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Monday night. "We didn't have people mourning the death of
this man, George Floyd -- we had people capitalizing. His death is on their hands as much as it is
those officers."
Moore apologized minutes later, saying he "misspoke when I said his blood is on their hands" and
that he regretted "that characterization."
"But I don't regret, nor will I apologize, to those who are out there today committing violence,
destroying lives and livelihoods and creating this destruction," Moore said. "His memory deserves
reform. His memory deserves a better Los Angeles, a better United States and a better world."
On Tuesday,
protesters' chants
rang out outside the LAPD's glass headquarters: "Fire Michel Moore! Fire Michel
Moore!"
And: "Hey, hey, ho, ho! Michel Moore has got to go!"
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Garcetti on Tuesday night defended Moore, saying he was glad the chief had apologized.
"I'm glad he quickly corrected it, and I'm glad that he further apologized, as well," Garcetti
said. "I want to be very, very clear about that. If I believed for a moment that the chief believed
that in his heart, he would no longer be our chief of police. I can't say that any stronger."
Jocelyn Tucker said she appreciated the apology, but the chief's words were telling.
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"If that was your knee-jerk reaction, you're not in the right job," she said.
State Sen. Holly Mitchell also responded to his comments in a statement.
"I want you to know that we have every right to be outraged and that our voices deserve to be heard
and not hijacked by outside agitators nor by a police chief who infers that our actions can be
compared to the murders we have witnessed and experienced," she wrote in a statement. "These type of
distractions want to turn this discussion away from the main point -- which is ending structural
racism."
Moore was quick to condemn the killing of Floyd by Minneapolis police, and in the early days of the
protests, gave demonstrators a wide berth.
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Moore told the Police Commission that when he saw the video of police kneeling on Floyd's neck, he
and others at the LAPD "were greatly disturbed by it and troubled by the images and we sought to
communicate clearly -- those images we witnessed along with the rest of America, they were horrible. It
was disgusting and without justification."
"... Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism, to deal with the growing economic inequity that exists in our nation, to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation made to so many. ..."
"... Our country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together. Leadership that can recognize pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long time. ..."
"... Tammy Morales, Seattle councilwoman: What I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told that looting doesn't solve anything. ..."
"... And you know, it does make me wonder and ask the question why looting bothers people so much more than knowing that across the country, black men and women are dying every day, and far too often at the hands of those who are sworn to protect and serve ..."
"... Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man's neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. ..."
"... Destroying property which can be replaced is not violence and to put those things -- to use the exact same language to describe those two things, I think, really -- it's not moral. ..."
"... Jim Acosta, CNN chief White House correspondent: It's so remarkable to see military-style vehicles rolling through the White House complex, you know, I mean? It's just not something that you normally see in the United States of America. It's something that you see in more authoritarian countries. ..."
"... Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Open your eyes, America. Open your eyes. We are teetering on a dictatorship. We are -- this is chaos. ..."
"... Has the president -- I am listening -- is the president declaring war on Americans? ..."
"... I hope that they stand up and fight for their rights. ..."
"... Now the entire country, according to his orders, we're living under a militarized country. ..."
"... He is playing a very dangerous game because this will backfire. ..."
"... Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 2, 2020. ..."
First they smashed the windows of police cars, and our elected leaders said nothing. It's a
political protest, they told us. We stand with the protesters.
Before long it grew. Mobs of menacing young men formed in the streets. They were clearly
intent on violence, but no one in authority dared criticize them.
We understand their frustration, our leaders told us. America is a sinful country. Their
grievances are legitimate.
And so the mobs grew larger, and they grew emboldened. Last Thursday, they came right to the
front door of a police precinct in Minneapolis. The cops inside fled under orders from their
mayor.
The mob burned the building . But before they did, they looted the evidence room, and that
ensured that many violent crimes will never be solved. They did this in the name of
justice.
Still, our leaders did nothing. Most of them never even mentioned it, like it never
happened. Instead, they issued yet more statements in solidarity with the mob.
Politicians, celebrities, corporate leaders, clergy, news anchors, professional athletes --
almost every person in this country that we were raised from childhood to look up to, to
respect, to listen to -- all of them sided with the people burning police stations.
The mob saw this and grew stronger. On Monday night, they began shooting cops.
For 38 years, David Dorn was a police officer in the City of St. Louis. No one ever accused
Dorn of racism. He was black. He is dead now. He
was murdered Monday night by the mob . His killing was streamed live on Facebook, and then
the violence accelerated from there.
In St. Louis alone, four other active duty police officers were shot Monday night.
In Las Vegas, an officer took a bullet in the head . He is still in critical condition.
Once the sun went down, cops all around this country found themselves under attack.
How many more nights like this can we take? How many more nights like this before no one in
America will serve as a police officer? It's not worth it. The people in charge hate you. The
job doesn't pay enough.
At that point, who will enforce the laws? Who will be in charge? Well, violent young men
with guns will be in charge. They will make the rules, including the rules in your
neighborhood. They will do what they want. You will do what they say. No one will stop them.
You will not want to live here when that happens.
Chaos is the worst thing always, and wise leaders understand that. It's obvious.
But it's not obvious to Joe Biden . Biden gave
a speech in Philadelphia Tuesday and was very different from the Biden of old. For years,
Biden styled himself a patriot, a champion of ordinary people, but no longer. In Tuesday's
speech, Biden said nothing to defend police officers being murdered. Instead, he attacked them
as instruments of "systemic racism."
Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: The moment has come for our
nation to deal with systemic racism, to deal with the growing economic inequity that exists in
our nation, to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation made to so many.
Our country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that
brings us together. Leadership that can recognize pain and deep grief of communities that have
had a knee on their neck for a long time.
"The moment has come," says Joe Biden. This is the moment.
So the question is, how did murdering David Dorn advance the cause of racial justice
exactly? No one explains; Biden didn't. Meanwhile, Biden's staff continues to send money to the
rioters. Other Democrats followed in perfect sync.
How many more nights like this can we take? How many more nights like this before no one
in America will serve as a police officer? It's not worth it. The people in charge hate you.
The job doesn't pay enough.
In the city of Seattle , Councilwoman Tammy Morales all but
endorsed the destruction of her own city.
Tammy Morales, Seattle councilwoman: What I don't want to hear is for our constituents
to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told that looting doesn't solve
anything.
And you know, it does make me wonder and ask the question why looting bothers people so
much more than knowing that across the country, black men and women are dying every day, and
far too often at the hands of those who are sworn to protect and serve .
Looting does solve things, says Tammy Morales. How dare you criticize it?
Prosecutors exist to push back against violations of the law. But across the country, many
prosecutors seem on board with Tammy Morales and Joe Biden.
In the city of Dallas, a local report says the District Attorney John Creuzot is refusing to
process rioters. That means they will automatically be freed to riot again.
In Massachusetts, the state attorney general, Maura Healey, applauded the riots and did it
explicitly. She described the killing and looting underway as "a once in a lifetime
opportunity. Yes, America is burning, but that's how forests grow."
This is the only revolution in history that's being waged not on behalf of the working
class, but against them.
That's a verbatim quote from the chief law enforcement officer of Massachusetts. Maura
Healey is happy to see American society become mulch. It makes good fertilizer.
Violence, for example, when she supports it, isn't really violence.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times: Violence is when an agent of the state kneels
on a man's neck until all of the life is leached out of his body.
Destroying property which can be replaced is not violence and to put those things -- to
use the exact same language to describe those two things, I think, really -- it's not
moral.
Violence is not violence if I approve of it. The person you were just listening to won the
Pulitzer Prize. There's something wrong with our system if that's the person who gets the
biggest merit badge.
BuzzFeed, meanwhile, published a guide for rioters. It included helpful tips like this: Wear
nondescript clothing, cover up tattoos, don't take photographs.
CNN didn't criticize it. Needless to say, they're on board.
Jim Acosta, CNN chief White House correspondent: It's so remarkable to see
military-style vehicles rolling through the White House complex, you know, I mean? It's just
not something that you normally see in the United States of America. It's something that you
see in more authoritarian countries.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Open your eyes, America. Open your eyes. We are teetering on a
dictatorship. We are -- this is chaos.
Has the president -- I am listening -- is the president declaring war on
Americans?
I hope that they stand up and fight for their rights.
Now the entire country, according to his orders, we're living under a militarized
country.
He is playing a very dangerous game because this will backfire.
Uh-huh. It's dangerous when we try and stop looting and burning and killing, says Don Lemon.
I hope they stand up and fight, he says from the safety of his television studio.
But what exactly are they fighting for? They certainly are fighting. But why? Don't ask Don
Lemon. He doesn't know -- not a reader. Something about Trump probably.
What does Black Lives Matter say? Much of the rioting is being committed in their name. Go
to their website if you have a minute. Here's a post from three days ago: "Defund the
police."
That's the position of Black Lives Matter, the most popular group in America among corporate
leaders. Defund the police. No more cops. That's what they're fighting for.
That seems like a fringe position, but in the Democratic Party, it isn't anymore. Congresswoman Rashida
Tlaib has endorsed it as a sitting member. So has Jane Fonda, and so have many other
celebrities. They said so in a recent open letter.
Then three days ago, The New York Times published a piece making the same demand: "No more
money for the police." No police. That's right, the article calls for the elimination of all
cops and all prisons in the United States.
So, if we did that, who would keep order? Well, The New York Times has an answer to that:
"Rapid response, social workers would keep the peace." Alternative emergency response programs
-- that's their plan.
If you live in a gated community, it might sound like a good idea. You've got your own
police force. You have no plans to replace them with rapid response social workers. So, you're
set, no matter what happens. There aren't going to be any rapes on your street.
But what about everyone else? What's going to happen to them? Don Lemon and Rashida Tlaib
don't care at all. Your neighborhood is not their problem. They're in it for the revolution,
and make no mistake, it is a revolution from above, aimed downward.
This is the only revolution in history that's being waged not on behalf of the working
class, but against them.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 2,
2020.
While the White House propagandists were making that video, Tucker Carlson was, well,
reading the riot act to Trump on his program. Here is his entire 26-minute monologue. Carlson
is disgusted by the leadership class in this country, which includes Trump's weakness:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3n5_D59lSjc
Trump's weakness does not necessarily consist of his not sending in troops to shoot looters.
It consists of him having no idea what to do other than create a pathetic propaganda moment
that is so transparently cheap that it makes you throw up a little bit in your mouth.
Trollope's lines are a fitting epitaph for the MAGA dream, which died last night in front of
St. John's Church:
But the glory has been the glory of pasteboard, and the wealth has been a wealth of
tinsel. The wit has been the wit of hairdressers, and the enterprise has been the enterprise
of mountebanks.
To be fair, the crises that have hit the United States in 2020 would have challenged the
most able chief executive. Trump's weaknesses -- in particular, his disinterest in mastering
details and his habit of confusing bluster for substance -- have made a difficult situation
much worse. It is undoubtedly the case that the Democrats and the media are a serious threat to
the kinds of things conservatives value, and it is certainly true that the press is dishonest.
All of these things can be true, and at the same time , Trump's incompetence and
unfitness for the high office he holds made intolerably manifest.
Not only did they fire tear gas and flashbangs and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters in
Lafayette Square, they fired them at a priest and a seminarian on the grounds of the church
to make way for his photo op. Every day this profoundly sick man plumbs new depths of
depravity.
https://religionnews.com/20...
This was all very good and correct, except for one item:
"The Minneapolis Police Department has been under the control of Democratic mayors for
decades."
If the events of the past week have shown anything, it would be that municipal law
enforcement is under the effective control of no one but themselves.
They are under control of the police union. It is extremely difficult to get rid of bad
cops. I'm in favor of commercial unions when membership is voluntary but police unions (and
some teachers unions and other public employee unions) have really steamrollered local
government to the extent that the public interest is not served.
Even in Atlanta, where the police seem to be handling this better than most other cities,
six cops have been charged with harassing an African-American couple stuck in traffic. The
video is disgusting.
Curiously, the two ringleader cops (who've been fired) are themselves Black. This is not
just a racial issue but a police culture problem.
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about
Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation
was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion.
His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he
found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
... ... ...
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms,
it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and
his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation,
not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on,
once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
2016 a Russia-Trump campaign collusion conspiracy was afoot and unfolding right before our eyes, we were told, as during his roll-out
foreign
policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., then candidate Trump said [ gasp! ]:
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries.
Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out."
NPR and others had breathlessly
reported at the time, "Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S., was sitting in the front row" [ more gasps! ].
This 'suspicious'
"coincidence or something more?" event and of course the infamous
Steele 'Dodgy Dossier' were
followed by over two more years of the following connect-the-dots mere tiny sampling of unrestrained theorizing and avalanche of
accusations...
2019, Wired: Trump Must Be
A Russian Agent... (where we were told...ahem: " It would be rather embarrassing ... if Robert Mueller were to declare that
the president isn't an agent of Russian intelligence." )
It's especially worth noting that a
July 2018 New York Times
op-ed argued that President Trump -- dubbed a "treasonous traitor" for meeting with Putin in Helsinki -- should "be directing
all resources at his disposal to punish Russia."
Fast-forward to a July 2019 NY Times Editorial Board piece entitled
"What's America's Winning Hand if Russia
Plays the China Card?" How dizzying fast all of the above has been wiped from America's collective memory! Or at least the Times
is engaged in hastily pushing it all down the memory hole Orwell-style in order to cover its own dastardly tracks which contributed
in no small measure to non-stop national Russiagate hype and hysteria, with this astounding line:
That's right, The Times' pundits have already pivoted to the new bogeyman while stating they agree with Trump
on Russian relations :
"Given its economic, military and technological trajectory, together with its authoritarian model, China, not Russia , represents
by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term . That means President Trump is correct to try to establish
a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China ."
It's 2019, and we've now come full circle . This is The New York Times editorial board continuing their call for Trump to establish
"sounder" ties and "cooperation" with
Russia :
"Even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union often made progress in one facet of their relationship while
they remained in conflict over other aspects. The United States and Russia could expand their cooperation in space . They could
also continue to work closely in the Arctic And they could revive cooperation on arms control."
Could we imagine if a mere six months ago Trump himself had uttered these same words? Now the mainstream media apparently agrees
that peace is better than war with Russia.
With 'Russiagate' now effectively dead, the NY Times' new criticism appears to be that Trump-Kremlin relations are not close enough
, as Trump's "approach has been ham-handed " - the 'paper of record' now tells us.
Or imagine if Trump had called for peaceful existence with Russia almost four years ago? Oh wait...
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries."
-- Then candidate Trump on
April 27, 2016
"... People who bravely post about how the U.S. needs to invade some country in the Middle East or Asia or outer space will get a pop-up notice indicating they've been enlisted in the military. A recruiter will then show up at their house and whisk them away to fight in the foreign war they wanted to happen so badly. ..."
U.S. -- A new policy issued by the United States Department of Defense, in conjunction
with online platforms like Twitter and Facebook, will automatically enlist you to fight in a
foreign war if you post your support for attacking another country.
People who bravely post about how the U.S. needs to invade some country in the Middle East
or Asia or outer space will get a pop-up notice indicating they've been enlisted in the
military. A recruiter will then show up at their house and whisk them away to fight in the
foreign war they wanted to happen so badly.
"Frankly, recruitment numbers are down, and we needed some way to find people who are
really enthusiastic about fighting wars," said a DOD official. "Then it hit us like a drone
strike: there are plenty of people who argue vehemently for foreign intervention. It doesn't
matter what war we're trying to create: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea,
China---these people are always reliable supporters of any invasion abroad. So why not get
them there on the frontlines?"
"After all, we want people who are passionate about occupying foreign lands, not grunts
who are just there for the paycheck," he added.
Strangely, as soon as the policy was implemented, 99% of saber-rattling suddenly
ceased.
Note: The Babylon Bee is the world's best satire site, totally inerrant in all its
truth claims. We write satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life.
The Babylon Bee was created ex nihilo on the eighth day of the creation week, exactly
6,000 years ago. We have been the premier news source through every major world event, from
the Tower of Babel and the Exodus to the Reformation and the War of 1812. We focus on just
the facts, leaving spin and bias to other news sites like CNN and Fox News.
If you would like to complain about something on our site, take it up with God.
Unlike other satire sites, everything we post is 100% verified by Snopes.com.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Agent Smith, you testified that the Russians hacked the DNC computers, is that correct?
FBI AGENT JOHN SMITH: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Upon what information did you base your testimony?
AGENT: Information found in reports analyzing the breach of the computers.
DEF ATT: So, the FBI prepared these reports?
AGENT: (cough) . (shift in seat) No, a cyber security contractor with the FBI.
DEF ATT: Pardon me, why would a contractor be preparing these reports? Do these contractors run the FBI laboratories where
the server was examined?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: No? No what? These contractors don't run the FBI Laboratories?
AGENT: No. The laboratories are staffed by FBI personnel.
DEF ATT: Well I don't understand. Why would contractors be writing reports about computers that are forensically examined in
FBI laboratories?
AGENT: Well, the servers were not examined in the FBI laboratory.
(silence)
DEF ATT: Oh, so the FBI examined the servers on site to determine who had hacked them and what was taken?
AGENT: Uh .. no.
DEF ATT: They didn't examine them on site?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, where did they examine them?
AGENT: Well, uh .. the FBI did not examine them.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: The FBI did not directly examine the servers.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, the FBI has presented to the Grand Jury and to this court and SWORN AS FACT that the Russians hacked
the DNC computers. You are basing your SWORN testimony on a report given to you by a contractor, while the FBI has NEVER actually
examined the computer hardware?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, who prepared the analysis reports that the FBI relied on to give this sworn testimony?
AGENT: Crowdstrike, Inc.
DEF ATT: So, which Crowdstrike employee gave you the report?
AGENT: We didn't receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: We did not receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Well, where did you find this report?
AGENT: It was given to us by the people who hired Crowdstrike to examine and secure their computer network and hardware.
DEF ATT: Oh, so the report was given to you by the technical employees for the company that hired Crowdstrike to examine their
servers?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, who gave you the report?
AGENT: Legal counsel for the company that hired Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Why would legal counsel be the ones giving you the report?
AGENT: I don't know.
DEF ATT: Well, what company hired Crowdstrike?
AGENT: The Democratic National Committee.
DEF ATT: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You are giving SWORN testimony to this court that Russia hacked the servers
of the Democratic National Committee. And you are basing that testimony on a report given to you by the LAWYERS for the Democratic
National Committee. And you, the FBI, never actually saw or examined the computer servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Well, can you provide a copy of the technical report produced by Crowdstrike for the Democratic National Committee?
AGENT: No, I cannot.
DEF ATT: Well, can you go back to your office and get a copy of the report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why? Are you locked out of your office?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: I don't understand. Why can you not provide a copy of this report?
AGENT: Because I do not have a copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Did you lose it?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why do you not have a copy of the report?
AGENT: Because we were never given a final copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, if you didn't get a copy of the report, upon what information are you basing your testimony?
AGENT: On a draft copy of the report.
DEF ATT: A draft copy?
AGENT: Yes.
DEF ATT: Was a final report ever delivered to the FBI?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, did you get to read the entire report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why not?
AGENT: Because large portions were redacted.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, let me get this straight. The FBI is claiming that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. But the FBI never
actually saw the computer hardware, nor examined it? Is that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And the FBI never actually examined the log files or computer email or any aspect of the data from the servers? Is
that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And you are basing your testimony on the word of Counsel for the Democratic National Committee, the people who provided
you with a REDACTED copy of a DRAFT report, not on the actual technical personnel who supposedly examined the servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Your honor, I have a few motions I would like to make at this time.
PRESIDING JUDGE: I'm sure you do, Counselor. (as he turns toward the prosecutors) And I feel like I am in a mood to grant them.
Brilliant! that sums it up nicely. of course, if the servers were not hacked and were instead "thumbnailed" that leads to a
whole pile of other questions (including asking wiileaks for their source and about the murder of seth rich).
Neoliberal MSM just “got it wrong,” again … exactly like was the case
with those Iraqi WMDs ;-).
So many neocons and neolibs seem so disappointed to find out that the President is not a
Russian asset that it looks they’d secretly wish be ruled by Putin :-).
But in reality there well might be a credible "Trump copllition with the foreign power". Only
with a different foreign power. Looks like Trump traded American foreign policy for Zionist
money, not Russian money. That means that "the best-Congress-that-AIPAC-money-can-buy" will never
impeach him for that.
And BTW as long as Schiff remains the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee the witch
hunt is not over. So the leash remains strong.
Notable quotes:
"... it appears that hundreds of millions of Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled . Weird, how this just keeps on happening. At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the entire history of woeful bamboozlement. ..."
"... That's right, as I'm sure you're aware by now, it turns out President Donald Trump, a pompous former reality TV star who can barely string three sentences together without totally losing his train of thought and barking like an elephant seal, is not, in fact, a secret agent conspiring with the Russian intelligence services to destroy the fabric of Western democracy. ..."
"... Paranoid collusion-obsessives will continue to obsess about redactions and cover-ups , but the long and short of the matter is, there will be no perp walks for any of the Trumps. No treason tribunals. No televised hangings. No detachment of Secret Service agents marching Hillary into the White House. ..."
So the Mueller report is finally in, and it appears that hundreds of millions of
Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled . Weird, how this just keeps on happening.
At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the
entire history of woeful bamboozlement.
If you didn't know better, you'd think we were all a bunch of hopelessly credulous imbeciles
that you could con into believing almost anything, or that our brains had been bombarded with
so much propaganda from the time we were born that we couldn't really even think anymore.
That's right, as I'm sure you're aware by now, it turns out President Donald Trump, a
pompous former reality TV star who can barely string three sentences together without totally
losing his train of thought and barking like an elephant seal, is not, in fact, a secret agent
conspiring with the Russian intelligence services to destroy the fabric of Western
democracy.
After two long years of bug-eyed hysteria, Inspector Mueller came up with squat. Zip. Zero.
Nichts. Nada. Or, all right, he indicted a bunch of Russians that will never see the inside of
a courtroom, and a few of Trump's professional sleazebags for lying and assorted other
sleazebag activities (so I guess that was worth the $25 million of taxpayers' money that was
spent on this circus).
Notwithstanding those historic accomplishments, the entire Mueller investigation now appears
to have been another wild goose chase (like the "search" for those non-existent WMDs that we
invaded and destabilized the Middle East and murdered hundreds of thousands of people
pretending to conduct in 2003). Paranoid collusion-obsessives will continue to obsess about
redactions and
cover-ups , but the long and short of the matter is, there will be no perp walks for any of
the Trumps. No treason tribunals. No televised hangings. No detachment of Secret Service agents
marching Hillary into the White House.
The jig, as they say, is up.
But let's try to look on the bright side, shall we?
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. ..."
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity
in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into
the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite
power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes
sense
Horrible documentary of violence and looting. Those are really criminal gangs in action.
What Tucker have shown clearly are not political riots. They are criminal looting by spontaneously forming street gangs
Some statements of politicians are masterpieces of hypocrisy. Nikki Haley (who sanctioned
destruction of Syria and defended it in UN) was especially eloquent" "Tonight I turned on the
news and am heartbroken... It's important to understand that the death of George Floyd was
personal and painful for many. In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for
everyone." personal and painful for everyone."
RT @bharatkrishnan9: When President Obama included the Stonewall Riots in his 2nd inaugural,
he didn't make that decision lightly. Riots are an integral part of this country's march
towards progress.
They are a vivid reminder of the systemic racism in this country. This injustice stains the
American soul and makes a mockery of our highest ideals. It's white America that now must see
the truth, speak the truth and act on the truth.
"... So if you want a recipe for disaster, this is it: Take police cadets, train them in the ways of war, dress and equip them for battle, teach them to see the people they serve not as human beings but as suspects and enemies, and then indoctrinate them into believing that their main priority is to make it home alive at any cost. ..."
"... Republished with permission from the Rutherford Institute . ..."
Police officers are more
likely to be struck by lightning than be held financially accountable for their actions.
-- Law professor Joanna C. Schwartz (paraphrased)
Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed,
stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police
officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of
office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was
wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi, then you don't live in a constitutional
republic.
You live in a police state.
It doesn't even matter that "
crime is at historic lows and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for
residents and officers alike," as the New York Times reports.
What matters is whether you're going to make it through a police confrontation alive and
with your health and freedoms intact. For a growing number of Americans, those confrontations
do not end well.
As David O. Brown, the Dallas chief of police, noted: "Sometimes it seems like our young
officers want to get into an athletic event with people they want to arrest. They have a 'don't
retreat' mentality.
They feel like they're warriors and they can't back down when someone is running from them,
no matter how minor the underlying crime is."
Making matters worse, in the cop culture that is America today, the Bill of Rights doesn't
amount to much. Unless, that is, it's the Law
Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), which protects police officers from being
subjected to the kinds of debilitating indignities heaped upon the average citizen.
Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren't even aware that police officers
have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government
abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing, 14 states have already
adopted LEOBoRs -- written by police unions and being considered by many more states and
Congress -- which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights
and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.
Not only are officers given a 10-day
"cooling-off period" during which they cannot be forced to make any statements about the
incident, but when they are questioned, it must be "for a reasonable length of time, at a
reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with
plenty of breaks for food and water."
If a department decides to pursue a complaint against an officer, the department must notify
the officer and his union.
The officer must be informed of the complainants, and their
testimony against him, before he is questioned.
During questioning, investigators may not harass, threaten, or promise rewards to the
officer, as interrogators not infrequently do to civilian suspects.
Bathroom breaks are
assured during questioning.
In Maryland, the officer may appeal his case to a "hearing board," whose decision is
binding, before a final decision has been made by his superiors about his discipline. The
hearing board consists of three of the suspected offender's fellow officers.
In some
jurisdictions, the officer may not be disciplined if more than a certain number of days (often
100) have passed since his alleged misconduct, which limits the time for investigation.
Even if the officer is suspended, the department must continue to pay salary and benefits,
as well as the cost of the officer's attorney.
It's a pretty sweet deal if you can get it, I suppose: protection from the courts, immunity
from wrongdoing, paid leave while you're under investigation, and the assurance that you won't
have to spend a dime of your own money in your defense. And yet these LEOBoR epitomize
everything that is wrong with America today.
Once in a while, the system appears to work on the
side of justice , and police officers engaged in wrongdoing are actually charged for
abusing their authority and using excessive force against American citizens.
Yet even in these instances, it's still the American taxpayer who foots the bill.
For example, Baltimore taxpayers have paid roughly
$5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits stemming from police abuses, with an additional $5.8
million going towards legal fees. If the six Baltimore police officers charged with the
death
of Freddie Gray are convicted, you can rest assured it will be the Baltimore taxpayers who
feel the pinch.
New York taxpayers have shelled out almost $1,130 per year per police officer (there are
34,500 officers in the NYPD) to address charges of misconduct. That translates to
$38 million every year just to clean up after these so-called public servants.
Over a 10-year-period, Oakland, Calif., taxpayers
were made to cough up more than $57 million (curiously enough, the same amount as the
city's deficit back in 2011) in order to settle accounts with alleged victims of police
abuse.
Over 78% of the funds paid out by Denver taxpayers over the course of a decade arose as a
result of alleged abuse or
excessive use of force by the Denver police and sheriff departments. Meanwhile, taxpayers
in Ferguson, Missouri, are being asked to pay
$40 million in compensation -- more than the city's entire budget -- for police officers
treating them "'as if they were war combatants,' using tactics like beating, rubber bullets,
pepper spray, and stun grenades, while the plaintiffs were peacefully protesting, sitting in a
McDonalds, and in one case walking down the street to visit relatives."
That's just a small sampling of the most egregious payouts, but just about every community
-- large and small -- feels the pinch when it comes to compensating victims who have been
subjected to deadly or excessive force by police.
The ones who
rarely ever feel the pinch are the officers accused or convicted of wrongdoing, "even if
they are disciplined or terminated by their department, criminally prosecuted, or even
imprisoned." Indeed, a study published in the NYU Law Review reveals that 99.8% of the monies
paid in settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases never come
out of the officers' own pockets , even when state laws require them to be held liable.
Moreover, these officers rarely ever have to pay for their own legal defense.
For instance, law professor Joanna C. Schwartz references a case in which three Denver
police officers chased and then beat a 16-year-old boy, stomping "on the boy's back while using
a fence for leverage, breaking his ribs and causing him to suffer kidney damage and a lacerated
liver." The cost to Denver taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $885,000. The amount the
officers contributed: 0 .
Kathryn Johnston, 92 years old, was shot and killed during a SWAT team raid that went awry.
Attempting to cover their backs, the officers falsely claimed Johnston's home was the site of a
cocaine sale and went so far as to plant marijuana in the house to support their claim. The
cost to Atlanta taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $4.9 million. The amount the
officers contributed: 0 .
Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, a police officer was convicted of raping a woman in his police
car, in addition to sexually assaulting four other women and girls, physically abusing two
additional women, and kidnapping or falsely imprisoning five men and boys. The cost to the
Albuquerque taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $1,000,000. The amount the
officer contributed: 0 .
Human Rights Watch notes that taxpayers actually pay three times for
officers who repeatedly commit abuses : "once to cover their salaries while they commit
abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through
payments into police 'defense' funds provided by the cities."
Still, the number of times a police officer is actually held accountable for wrongdoing
while on the job is miniscule compared to the number of times cops are allowed to walk away
with little more than a slap on the wrist.
A large part of the problem can be chalked up to influential police unions and laws
providing for qualified immunity , not to mention these Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of
Rights laws, which allow officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.
Another part of the problem is rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats: those deciding
whether a police officer should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the
job all belong
to the same system , all with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous
code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.
Most of all, what we're dealing with is systemic corruption that protects wrongdoing and
recasts it in a noble light. However, there is nothing noble about government agents who kick,
punch, shoot and kill defenseless individuals. There is nothing just about police officers
rendered largely immune from prosecution for wrongdoing. There is nothing democratic about the
word of a government agent being given greater weight in court than that of the average
citizen. And no good can come about when the average citizen has no real means of defense
against a system that is weighted in favor of government bureaucrats.
So if you want a recipe for disaster, this is it: Take police cadets, train them in the
ways of war, dress and equip them for battle, teach them to see the people they serve not as
human beings but as suspects and enemies, and then indoctrinate them into believing that their
main priority is to make it home alive at any cost. While you're at it,
spend more time drilling them on how to use a gun (58 hours) and employ defensive tactics
(49 hours) than on how to calm a situation before resorting to force (8 hours).
Then, once they're hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge and their gun,
throw in a few court rulings suggesting that security takes precedence over individual rights,
set it against a backdrop of endless wars and militarized law enforcement, and then add to the
mix a populace distracted by entertainment, out of touch with the workings of their government,
and more inclined to let a few sorry souls suffer injustice than challenge the status quo or
appear unpatriotic.
That's not to discount the many honorable police officers working thankless jobs across the
country in order to serve and protect their fellow citizens, but there can be no denying that,
as journalist Michael Daly acknowledges, there is a troublesome "
cop culture that tends to dehumanize or at least objectify suspected lawbreakers of
whatever race. The instant you are deemed a candidate for arrest, you become not so much a
person as a 'perp.'"
Older cops are equally troubled by this shift in how police are being trained to view
Americans -- as things, not people. Daly had a veteran police officer join him to review the
video footage of 43-year-old Eric Garner crying out and struggling to breathe as cops held him
in a chokehold. (In yet another example of how the legal system and the police protect their
own, no police officers were charged for Garner's death.) Daly describes the veteran officer's
reaction to the footage, which as Daly points out, "
constitutes a moral indictment not so much of what the police did but of what the police
did not do":
"I don't see anyone in that video saying, 'Look, we got to ease up,'" says the veteran
officer. "Where's the human side of you in that you've got a guy saying, 'I can't breathe?'"
The veteran officer goes on, "Somebody needs to say, 'Stop it!' That's what's missing here
was a voice of reason. The only voice we're hearing is of Eric Garner." The veteran officer
believes Garner might have survived had anybody heeded his pleas. "He could have had a
chance," says the officer, who is black. "But
you got to believe he's a human being first . A human being saying, 'I can't breathe.'"
As I point out in my new book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People , when all is said and done, the various problems
we're facing today -- militarized police, police shootings of unarmed people, the electronic
concentration camp being erected around us, SWAT team raids, etc. -- can be attributed to the
fact that our government and its agents have ceased to see us as humans first.
Then again, perhaps we are just as much to blame for this sorry state of affairs. After all,
if we want to be treated like human beings -- with dignity and worth -- then we need to start
treating those around us in the same manner. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned in a speech given
exactly one year to the day before he was killed: "We must rapidly begin the shift from a
'thing-oriented'
society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism,
materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
"... "Instead of participating in power," he writes, "the virtual citizen is invited to have 'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them." ..."
"... Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate -- including Bernie Sanders -- understands, to use Wolin's words, that "the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates." The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling. ..."
"... "If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called 'misrepresentative or clientry government,' " Wolin writes. "It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy." ..."
Sheldon Wolin, our most important contemporary political theorist, died Oct. 21 at the age
of 93. In his books " Democracy
Incorporated : Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism" and "
Politics and
Vision ," a massive survey of Western political thought that his former student Cornel West
calls "magisterial," Wolin lays bare the realities of our bankrupt democracy, the causes behind
the decline of American empire and the rise of a new and terrifying configuration of corporate
power he calls "inverted totalitarianism."
Wendy
Brown , a political science professor at UC Berkeley and another former student of Wolin's,
said in an email to me: "Resisting the monopolies on left theory by Marxism and on democratic
theory by liberalism, Wolin developed a distinctive -- even distinctively American -- analysis
of the political present and of radical democratic possibilities. He was especially prescient
in theorizing the heavy statism forging what we now call neoliberalism , and in
revealing the novel fusions of economic with political power that he took to be poisoning
democracy at its root."
Wolin throughout his scholarship charted the devolution of American democracy and in his
last book, "Democracy Incorporated," details our
peculiar form of corporate totalitarianism. "One cannot point to any national
institution[s] that can accurately be described as democratic," he writes in that book, "surely
not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested Congress, the imperial
presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media."
Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not
find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the
corporate state. Our inverted totalitarianism pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral
politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the
judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, but it has
effectively seized all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.
"Unlike the Nazis, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing
social programs for the working class and poor, inverted totalitarianism exploits the poor,
reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting mass education for an
insecure workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers," Wolin writes.
"Employment in a high-tech, volatile, and globalized economy is normally as precarious as
during an old-fashioned depression. The result is that citizenship, or what remains of it, is
practiced amidst a continuing state of worry. Hobbes had it right: when citizens are insecure and
at the same time driven by competitive aspirations, they yearn for political stability rather
than civic engagement, protection rather than political involvement." Inverted totalitarianism,
Wolin said when we met at his home in Salem, Ore., in 2014 to film a nearly three-hour interview , constantly
"projects power upwards." It is "the antithesis of constitutional power." It is designed to
create instability to keep a citizenry off balance and passive.
He writes, "Downsizing, reorganization, bubbles bursting, unions busted, quickly outdated
skills, and transfer of jobs abroad create not just fear but an economy of fear, a system of
control whose power feeds on uncertainty, yet a system that, according to its analysts, is
eminently rational."
Inverted totalitarianism also "perpetuates politics all the time," Wolin said when we spoke,
"but a politics that is not political." The endless and extravagant election cycles, he said,
are an example of politics without politics.
"Instead of participating in power," he writes, "the virtual citizen is invited to have
'opinions': measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them."
Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political
personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda
and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to
hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate --
including Bernie Sanders -- understands, to use Wolin's words, that "the subject of empire is
taboo in electoral debates." The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a
spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and
corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.
"If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape,
such a system deserves to be called 'misrepresentative or clientry government,' " Wolin writes.
"It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the
citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy."
The result, he writes, is that the public is "denied the use of state power." Wolin deplores
the trivialization of political discourse, a tactic used to leave the public fragmented,
antagonistic and emotionally charged while leaving corporate power and empire unchallenged.
"Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements," he writes.
"Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians
eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute
to a cant politics of the inconsequential."
"The ruling groups can now operate on the assumption that they don't need the traditional
notion of something called a public in the broad sense of a coherent whole," he said in our
meeting. "They now have the tools to deal with the very disparities and differences that they
have themselves helped to create. It's a game in which you manage to undermine the cohesiveness
that the public requires if they [the public] are to be politically effective. And at the same
time, you create these different, distinct groups that inevitably find themselves in tension or
at odds or in competition with other groups, so that it becomes more of a melee than it does
become a way of fashioning majorities."
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as those of Nazi fascism or Soviet communism,
economics was subordinate to politics. But "under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is
true," Wolin writes. "Economics dominates politics -- and with that domination comes different
forms of ruthlessness."He continues: "The United States has become the showcase of how
democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed."
The corporate state, Wolin told me, is "legitimated by elections it controls." To extinguish
democracy, it rewrites and distorts laws and legislation that once protected democracy. Basic
rights are, in essence, revoked by judicial and legislative fiat. Courts and legislative
bodies, in the service of corporate power, reinterpret laws to strip them of their original
meaning in order to strengthen corporate control and abolish corporate oversight.
He writes: "Why negate a constitution, as the Nazis did, if it is possible simultaneously to
exploit porosity and legitimate power by means of judicial interpretations that declare
huge campaign contributions to be protected speech under the First Amendment, or that treat
heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations as a simple application of the
people's right to petition their government?"
Our system of inverted totalitarianism will avoid harsh and violent measures of control "as
long as dissent remains ineffectual," he told me. "The government does not need to stamp out
dissent. The uniformity of imposed public opinion through the corporate media does a very
effective job."
And the elites, especially the intellectual class, have been bought off. "Through a
combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving
university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially
so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly
integrated into the system," Wolin writes. "No books burned, no refugee Einsteins."
But, he warns, should the population -- steadily stripped of its most basic rights,
including the right to privacy, and increasingly impoverished and bereft of hope -- become
restive, inverted totalitarianism will become as brutal and violent as past totalitarian
states. "The war on terrorism, with its accompanying emphasis upon 'homeland security,'
presumes that state power, now inflated by doctrines
of preemptive war and released from treaty obligations and the potential constraints of
international judicial bodies, can turn inwards," he writes, "confident that in its domestic
pursuit of terrorists the powers it claimed, like the powers projected abroad, would be
measured, not by ordinary constitutional standards, but by the shadowy and ubiquitous character
of terrorism as officially defined."
The indiscriminate police violence in poor communities of color is an example of the ability
of the corporate state to "legally" harass and kill citizens with impunity. The cruder forms of
control -- from militarized police to wholesale surveillance, as well as police serving as
judge, jury and executioner, now a reality for the underclass -- will become a reality for all
of us should we begin to resist the continued funneling of power and wealth upward. We are
tolerated as citizens, Wolin warns, only as long as we participate in the illusion of a
participatory democracy. The moment we rebel and refuse to take part in the illusion, the face
of inverted totalitarianism will look like the face of past systems of totalitarianism.
"The significance of the African-American prison population is political," he writes. "What
is notable about the African-American population generally is that it is highly sophisticated
politically and by far the one group that throughout the twentieth century kept alive a spirit
of resistance and rebelliousness. In that context, criminal justice is as much a strategy of
political neutralization as it is a channel of instinctive racism."
In his writings, Wolin expresses consternation for a population severed from print and the
nuanced world of ideas. He sees cinema, like television, as "tyrannical" because of its ability
to "block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue." He
rails against what he calls a "monochromatic media" with corporate-approved pundits used to
identify "the problem and its parameters, creating a box that dissenters struggle vainly to
elude. The critic who insists on changing the context is dismissed as irrelevant, extremist,
'the Left' -- or ignored altogether."
The constant dissemination of illusions permits myth rather than reality to dominate the
decisions of the power elites. And when myth dominates, disaster descends upon the empire, as
14 years of futile war in the Middle East and our failure to react to climate change
illustrate. Wolin writes:
When myth begins to govern decision-makers in a world where ambiguity and stubborn facts
abound, the result is a disconnect between the actors and the reality. They convince
themselves that the forces of darkness possess weapons of mass destruction and nuclear
capabilities: that their own nation is privileged by a god who inspired the Founding Fathers
and the writing of the nation's constitution; and that a class structure of great and
stubborn inequalities does not exist. A grim but joyous few see portents of a world that is
living out "the last days."
Wolin was a bombardier and a navigator on a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber in the South Pacific
in World War II. He flew 51 combat missions. The planes had crews of up to 10. From
Guadalcanal, he advanced with American forces as they captured islands in the Pacific. During
the campaign the military high command decided to direct the B-24 bombers -- which were huge
and difficult to fly in addition to having little maneuverability -- against Japanese ships, a
tactic that saw tremendous losses of planes and American lives. The use of the B-24, nicknamed
"the flying boxcar" and "the flying coffin," to attack warships bristling with antiaircraft
guns exposed for Wolin the callousness of military commanders who blithely sacrificed their air
crews and war machines in schemes that offered little chance of success.
"It was terrible," he said of the orders to bomb ships. "We received awful losses from that,
because these big, lumbering aircraft, particularly flying low trying to hit the Japanese navy
-- and we lost countless people in it, countless."
"We had quite a few psychological casualties men, boys, who just couldn't take it anymore,"
he said, "just couldn't stand the strain of getting up at 5 in the morning and proceeding to
get into these aircraft and go and getting shot at for a while and coming back to rest for
another day."Wolin saw the militarists and the corporatists, who formed an unholy coalition to
orchestrate the rise of a global American empire after the war, as the forces that extinguished
American democracy. He called inverted totalitarianism "the true face of Superpower." These war
profiteers and militarists, advocating the doctrine of total war during the Cold War, bled the
country of resources. They also worked in tandem to dismantle popular institutions and
organizations such as labor unions to politically disempower and impoverish workers. They
"normalized" war. And Wolin warns that, as in all empires, they eventually will be "eviscerated
by their own expansionism." There will never be a return to democracy, he cautions, until the
unchecked power of the militarists and corporatists is dramatically curtailed. A war state
cannot be a democratic state.
Wolin writes:
National defense was declared inseparable from a strong economy. The fixation upon
mobilization and rearmament inspired the gradual disappearance from the national political
agenda of the regulation and control of corporations. The defender of the free world needed
the power of the globalizing, expanding corporation, not an economy hampered by "trust
busting." Moreover, since the enemy was rabidly anticapitalist, every measure that
strengthened capitalism was a blow against the enemy. Once the battle lines between communism
and the "free society" were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than
"strengthening" capitalism. The ultimate merger would be between capitalism and democracy.
Once the identity and security of democracy were successfully identified with the Cold War
and with the methods for waging it, the stage was set for the intimidation of most politics
left or right.
The result is a nation dedicated almost exclusively to waging war.
"When a constitutionally limited government utilizes weapons of horrendous destructive
power, subsidizes their development, and becomes the world's largest arms dealer," Wolin
writes, "the Constitution is conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its
conscience."
He goes on:
That the patriotic citizen unswervingly supports the military and its huge budget means
that conservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from
government. Thus the most substantial element of state power is removed from public debate.
Similarly in his/her new status as imperial citizen the believer remains contemptuous of
bureaucracy yet does not hesitate to obey the directives issued by the Department of Homeland
Security, the largest and most intrusive governmental department in the history of the
nation. Identification with militarism and patriotism, along with the images of American
might projected by the media, serves to make the individual citizen feel stronger, thereby
compensating for the feelings of weakness visited by the economy upon an overworked,
exhausted, and insecure labor force. For its antipolitics inverted totalitarianism requires
believers, patriots, and nonunion "guest workers."
Sheldon Wolin was often considered an outcast among contemporary political theorists whose
concentration on quantitative analysis and behaviorialism led them to eschew the examination of
broad political theory and ideas. Wolin insisted that philosophy, even that written by the
ancient Greeks, was not a dead relic but a vital tool to examine and challenge the assumptions
and ideologies of contemporary systems of power and political thought. Political theory, he
argued, was "primarily a civic and secondarily an academic activity." It had a role "not just
as an historical discipline that dealt with the critical examination of idea systems," he told
me, but as a force "in helping to fashion public policies and governmental directions, and
above all civic education, in a way that would further the goals of a more democratic, more
egalitarian, more educated society." His 1969 essay "Political Theory as a Vocation" argued for
this imperative and chastised fellow academics who focused their work on data collection and
academic minutiae. He writes, with his usual lucidity and literary flourishes, in that
essay:
In a fundamental sense, our world has become as perhaps no previous world has, the product
of design, the product of theories about human structures deliberately created rather than
historically articulated. But in another sense, the embodiment of theory in the world has
resulted in a world impervious to theory. The giant, routinized structures defy fundamental
alteration and, at the same time, display an unchallengeable legitimacy, for the rational,
scientific, and technological principles on which they are based seem in perfect accord with
an age committed to science, rationalism and technology. Above all, it is a world which
appears to have rendered epic theory superfluous. Theory, as Hegel had foreseen, must take
the form of "explanation." Truly, it seems to be the age when Minerva's owl has taken flight.
Wolin's 1960 masterpiece "Politics and Vision," subtitled "Continuity and Innovation in
Western Political Thought," drew on a vast array of political theorists and philosophers
including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, John Calvin, Martin Luther,
Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Max Weber, John Dewey and Hannah Arendt to
reflect back to us our political and cultural reality. His task, he stated at the end of the
book, was, "in the era of Superpower," to "nurture the civic consciousness of the society." The
imperative to amplify and protect democratic traditions from the contemporary forces that
sought to destroy them permeated all of his work, including his books " Hobbes
and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory " and " Tocqueville Between Two Worlds : The
Making of a Political and Theoretical Life."
Wolin's magnificence as a scholar was matched by his magnificence as a human being. He stood
with students at UC Berkeley, where he taught, to support the Free Speech Movement and wrote
passionately in its defense. Many of these essays were published in "The Berkeley Rebellion and
Beyond: Essays on Politics and Education in the Technological Society." Later, as a professor
at Princeton University, he was one of a handful of faculty members who joined students to call
for divestment of investments in apartheid South Africa. He once accompanied students to
present the case to Princeton alumni. "I've never been jeered quite so roundly," he said. "Some
of them called me [a] 50-year-old sophomore and that kind of thing."
From 1981 to 1983, Wolin published Democracy: A Journal of Political Renewal and Radical
Change. In its pages he and other writers called out the con game of neoliberalism, the danger
of empire, the rise of unchecked corporate power and the erosion of democratic institutions and
ideals. The journal swiftly made him a pariah within the politics department at Princeton."I
remember once when I was up editing that journal, I left a copy of it on the table in the
faculty room hoping that somebody would read it and comment," he said. "I never heard a word.
And during all the time I was there and doing Democracy, I never had one colleague come up to
me and either say something positive or even negative about it. Just absolute silence."
Max Weber , whom
Wolin called "the greatest of all sociologists," argues in his essay "Politics as a Vocation"
that those who dedicate their lives to striving for justice in the modern political arena are
like the classical heroes who can never overcome what the ancient Greeks called fortuna.
These heroes, Wolin writes in "Politics and Vision," rise up nevertheless "to heights of moral
passion and grandeur, harried by a deep sense of responsibility." Yet, Wolin goes on, "at
bottom, [the contemporary hero] is a figure as futile and pathetic as his classical
counterpart. The fate of the classical hero was that he could never overcome contingency or
fortuna ; the special irony of the modern hero is that he struggles in a world where
contingency has been routed by bureaucratized procedures and nothing remains for the hero to
contend against. Weber's political leader is rendered superfluous by the very bureaucratic
world that Weber discovered: even charisma has been bureaucratized. We are left with the
ambiguity of the political man fired by deep passion -- 'to be passionate, ira et
studium , is the element of the political leader' -- but facing the impersonal world of
bureaucracy which lives by the passionless principle that Weber frequently cited, sine ira
et studio , 'without scorn or bias.' "
Wolin writes that even when faced with certain defeat, all of us are called to the "awful
responsibility" of the fight for justice, equality and liberty.
"You don't win," Wolin said at the end of our talk. "Or you win rarely. And if you win, it's
often for a very short time. That's why politics is a vocation for Weber. It's not an
occasional undertaking that we assume every two years or every four years when there's an
election. It's a constant occupation and preoccupation. And the problem, as Weber saw it, was
to understand it not as a partisan kind of education in the politicians or political party
sense, but as in the broad understanding of what political life should be and what is required
to make it sustainable. He's calling for a certain kind of understanding that's very different
from what we think about when we associate political understanding with how do you vote or what
party do you support or what cause do you support. Weber's asking us to step back and say what
kind of political order, and the values associated with it that it promotes, are we willing to
really give a lot for, including sacrifice."
Wolin embodied the qualities Weber ascribes to the hero. He struggled against forces he knew
he could not vanquish. He never wavered in the fight as an intellectual and, more important, in
the fight as a citizen. He was one of the first to explain to us the transformation of our
capitalist democracy into a new species of totalitarianism. He warned us of the consequences of
unbridled empire or superpower. He called on us to rise up and resist. His "Democracy
Incorporated" was ignored by every major newspaper and journal in the country. This did not
surprise him. He knew his power. So did his enemies. All his fears for the nation have come to
pass. A corporate monstrosity rules us. If we held up a scorecard we would have to say Wolin
lost, but we would also have to acknowledge the integrity, brilliance, courage and nobility of
his life.
It would hardly surprise me if the regime change obsession has come home and now the US is
"enjoying" all of the democracy building color revolutions they love so much. No matter how
this end it will not end well for 99% of Americans
"... The media would sensationalize any act of violence involving white on black and brown. They ignored all the violence of black and brown on white. This uneven media reporting was based on their desire to reinforce the mantra of "white people are evil racists, black and brown people are victims and good." ..."
"... Because it would paint themselves as supporters of "social justice" they created a false version of reality where everything bad in society was because of white people being racist. Never mind the actual causes of societal discontent being the exploitation by the elite. Because the media is the elite they don't want you to hate them. So they created a false victimizer they could blame for all the problems of society. ..."
"Partisan politics has created severe divisions in society. Such divisions restrict and
disturb people's thinking. People's support for a particular party is only a matter of
stance, which provides a shelter to politicians who violate people's interests.
"As elections come and go, it is simply about one group of elites replacing the other. The
intertwined interests between the two groups are much greater than those between the
victorious one and the electorate who vote for them.
"To cover such deception, the key agenda in the US is either a partisan fight or a
conflict with foreign countries. The severe racial discrimination and wealth disparities are
marginalized topics."
I wonder if the writer would like to see his conclusion proven wrong:
"Judging from the superficial comments and statements from US politicians on the protests,
the outsiders can easily draw the conclusion that solving problems is not on the minds of the
country, and elites are just fearlessly waiting for this wave of demonstrations to die
out."
In order to solve problems, one must know their components and roots, and that demands
honesty in making the assessment. Looking back at the assessments of Cornel West and the
producers of the Four Horsemen documentary, the main culprit is the broken political
system/failed social experiment, which are essentially one in the same as the flawed system
produced the failure. Most of us have determined that changing the system via the system will
never work because the system has empowered a Class that has no intentions on allowing its
power to be diminished, and that Class is currently using the system to further impoverish
and enslave the citizenry into Debt Peonage while increasing its own power. The #1 problem is
removing the Financial Parasite Class from power. Yes, at the moment that seems as difficult
as destroying the Death Star's reactor before it blows up Yavin 4, but the stakes involved
are every bit as high as those portrayed in Lucas's Star Wars , as the Evil of the
Empire and that of the Parasite Class are the same Evil.
What political demand could one possibly make by now, and of whom would you make it? Reform
is impossible, and there's no legitimate authority left (if there ever was in the first
place).
Posted by: Russ | Jun 1 2020 17:49 utc | 23
Indeed, apart from the shock of witnessing one of them murderd in plain daylight as if he
were a vermin, I think that the people, especially young, reacted that anarchic way because
they really see no future. They see how their country functions at steering wheel blows
especially through the pandemic, preview they will e in the need soon, even that they will be
murdered without contemeplation,and go out there to grab whatever they could...
We forget that they are under Trump regime and Trump has supported always their foes,
witnessing such assassination in plain daylight, without any officila doing nothing, not even
charging the obvious culprits was felt by tese people as if the hunting season on nigers and
lefties" had been declared. No other way yo ucan explain the sudden union of such ammount of
black and white young people. Thye felt all targets of the ops or of Trump´s white
supreamcist militias after four years of being dgreaded as subhumans. In fact, were not for
the riots to turn so violent, I fear carnages of all these peoples would have started.
The people, brainwashed or not, at least when they are young, still conserve some survival
instincts and some common sense too.
Yes, the republican model of organization is naturally unstable and doomed to collapse.
Everybody knows what happened to the Roman Republic: tendency to polarization, civil war and
collapse.
However, the reverse is also true: when the economy is flying high, every political system
works. Everybody is happy when there's wealth for everybody.
The present problem, therefore, is inherent to the capitalist system, not with the
republican system per se.
The media and politicians have repeated a mantra for years n order to gain power by
exploiting social and racial faultlines. They didn't want to deal with the actual cause of
societal discontent which is their own support of an exploitative economic system which
disempowers and pushed down everyone but the 1%. So they invented a false cause of discontent
in order to appear as saviors who are bringing a message of Hope and Change
White people are racist. White people are inherently evil and greedy. THAT IS THE PROBLEM.
Black and Brown people are good, Black and Brown people are victims of the racist greedy
evil white people.
White people are racist. White people are inherently evil and greedy. THAT IS THE
PROBLEM. Black and Brown people are good, Black and Brown people are victims of the racist
greedy evil white people.
After enough time has gone by, we have a generation of young people of all colors who
believe the above mantra with all their heart because of hearing that mantra every day in the
media, in schools, in movies, from leaders. The media knowing that, would then look for ways
to exploit their hatred of "white racism against black and brown people."
The media would sensationalize any act of violence involving white on black and brown.
They ignored all the violence of black and brown on white. This uneven media reporting was
based on their desire to reinforce the mantra of "white people are evil racists, black and
brown people are victims and good."
Because it would paint themselves as supporters of "social justice" they created a
false version of reality where everything bad in society was because of white people being
racist. Never mind the actual causes of societal discontent being the exploitation by the
elite. Because the media is the elite they don't want you to hate them. So they created a
false victimizer they could blame for all the problems of society.
Because violence from black and brown on white was never reported by the media except in
local news, people only heard from the national narrative of white violence of black and
brown because people don't pay attention to local news. They grew up believing the police
only abused black and brown people, they grew up believing that random street violence was
only from white people against black and brown. None of which is true.
This was bound to end up with a generation of people who believed the false narrative
where America is a nation where black and brown people are always the victims, and white
people are always the victimizers. And as you can see in the riots, the rioters are almost
all under 30. A generation has grown up being brainwashed by the mantra:
White people are racist. White people are inherently evil and greedy. THAT IS THE PROBLEM.
Black and Brown people are good, Black and Brown people are victims of the racist greedy
evil white people.
That is why so many people are perfectly fine with the violence and looting based on a few
recent incidents of white on black violence. During the same time period there was plenty of
black on black violence, plenty of brown on brown violence, and plenty of black and brown on
white violence. But the national media never highlights any violence but white on black and
brown. That is what has led to the new normal where any violence involving white on black or
brown will be blown up WAY out of proportion to the reality of violence in America. Which is
an equal opportunity game. A generation of people has grown up to believe that white racism
is the cause of all the problems.
Meanwhile the elites sit in their yachts and laugh. The rabble are busy fighting over race
when the real issue is ignored. The media has done their job admirably. Their job is to
deflect rage from the elite to racism. From wealthy exploitation of the commons, to racism.
As long as the underclasses are busy blaming racism then the politicians, business leaders,
and media are satisfied because they are the actual ones to blame. They are the enemy.
They blame racism for all the problems as a way to hide that truth of their own culpability
for the problems in society. THEIR OWN GREED AND CONTEMPT FOR THE UNDERCLASS.
Riots are not a political movement and they will dissipate soon. Leaving just strengthened the national-security state. That's
what will happen next.
Notable quotes:
"... If the combination of peaceful protesting, looting and violence witnessed across American cities over the past few days completely caught you off guard, you're likely to come to the worst possible conclusion about what to do next. The knee-jerk response I'm already seeing from many is to crush the dissent by all means necessary, but that's exactly how you give the imperial state and oligarchy more power. Power it will never relinquish. ..."
"... On the one hand, you can't pillage the public so blatantly and consistently for decades while telling them voting will change things and not expect violence once people realize it doesn't. On the other hand, street violence plays perfectly into the hands of those who would take the current moment and use it to advocate for a further loss of civil liberties, more internal militarization, and the emergence of an overt domestic police state that's been itching to fully manifest since 9/11. ..."
It's with an extremely heavy heart that I sit down to write today's post.
Although widespread civil unrest was easy to predict, it doesn't make the situation any less sad and dangerous. We're in the thick
of it now, and how we respond will likely determine the direction of the country for decades to come.
If the combination of peaceful protesting, looting and violence witnessed across American cities over the past few days completely
caught you off guard, you're likely to come to the worst possible conclusion about what to do next. The knee-jerk response I'm already
seeing from many is to crush the dissent by all means necessary, but that's exactly how you give the imperial state and oligarchy
more power. Power it will never relinquish.
What's happening in America right now is what happens in a failed state.
The U.S. is a failed state. Now the imperial national security state is going to flex at home like never before.
I spent the last decade of my life trying to spread the word to avoid this, but here we are.
I don't think people understand the significance of the President declaring "Antifa" a "terrorist organization". The Patriot
Act and provisions of the NDAA of 2012 make this frightening. Because Antifa is informal it puts all protestors in danger--like
declaring them un-citizens.
GOP @SenTomCotton : "If local politicians
will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let's see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on
the other side of the street." pic.twitter.com/NyojLoOEAT
-- The American Independent (@AmerIndependent)
June 1, 2020
The pressure cooker situation that erupted over the weekend has been building for five decades, but really accelerated over the
past twenty years. After every crisis of the 21st century there's been this "do whatever it takes mentality," which resulted in more
wealth and power for the national security state and oligarchy, and less resources, opportunities and civil liberties for the many.
If anything, it's surprising it took so long to get here, partly a testament to how skilled a salesman for the power structure Obama
was.
Your election was a chance to create real change, but instead you chose to protect bankers while looting the economy on behalf
of oligarchs.
You and Trump aren't much different when it comes to the big structural problems, you were just better at selling oligarchy
and empire. https://t.co/QuSQNApeLY
The covid-19 pandemic, related societal lockdown and another round of in your face economic looting by Congress and the Federal
Reserve merely served as an accelerant, and the only thing missing was some sort of catalyst combined with warmer weather. Now that
the eruption has occurred, I hope cooler heads can prevail on all sides.
On the one hand, you can't pillage the public so blatantly and consistently for decades while telling them voting will change
things and not expect violence once people realize it doesn't. On the other hand, street violence plays perfectly into the hands
of those who would take the current moment and use it to advocate for a further loss of civil liberties, more internal militarization,
and the emergence of an overt domestic police state that's been itching to fully manifest since 9/11.
It's my view we need to take the current moment and admit the unrest is a symptom of a deeply entrenched and corrupt bipartisan
imperial oligarchy that cares only about its own wealth and power. If people of goodwill across the ideological spectrum don't take
a step back and point out who the real looters are, nothing's going to improve and we'll put another bandaid on a systemic cancer
as we continue our longstanding march toward less freedom and more authoritarianism
American blacks are doing poorly because their jobs have been outsourced to communist
China, the remaining jobs are increasingly going to foreign nationals imported as a source of
indentured cheap labor, rents are unaffordable, medical care is unaffordable, education is
unaffordable, people are drowning in debt and thanks to utter scumbags like Joe Biden they
can no longer get out from under by declaring bankruptcy (as the 'socialist' founding fathers
of this nation intended!), the government spends trillions on pointless foreign wars that
serve only to enrich a few politically connected defense contractors, and over all, the
government is giving literally tens of trillions of dollars in bailouts and subsidies to Wall
Street and the super rich.
Thing is, this has nothing to do with 'racism.' It's class war, and my class is losing.
But the rich don't like that narrative, so they stir up the proles and have them fight each
other.
If blacks are doing badly only because they are stupid and dysfunctional, then why are
working class whites starting to lose ground as well? Oh they aren't rioting much, they're
just killing themselves with opiates and alcohol. Still, they are being ground down all the
same. When the working class of all colors is losing ground, that is inconsistent with either
'racism' or blacks being inherently dysfunctional. It is consistent with the working class in
general being stepped on, yes?
In a country of 340 million plus, there will always be the occasional bad thing happening.
If indeed one white cop shot one black man without justification that's a bad thing - but
it's just one incident, it has nothing to do with what's really keeping American blacks down
- which is exactly the same as what's keeping American whites down! By taking one incident,
and publicizing the hell out of it and screaming that it's all about 'racism,' the rich have
deliberately created this situation.
Of course the media ignore all those incidents of blacks shooting whites. It's not part of
the narrative.
Now with the coronavirus having gutted the economy, we have like 30+ million more people
out of work than just recently, and most of the rest are going to be taking pay cuts, and
after the stimulus crumbs run out, it's going to be very painful. The response of the elites,
added onto the 'stimulus' bill, was to engage in an orgy of looting and profiteering not seen
since Russia under Yeltsin. People are going to be evicted, lose their cars etc., and there
is no safety net... This isn't going to be pretty. As a cynical person, I think the elites
see this coming, and the intensity of the current manufactured conflagration is being put in
place to focus the anger of the masses away from the elites, because they can feel what's
headed our way.
I am not some stupid guilty liberal social justice warrior. As a skinny white guy, if I
see that I am the only white face on the street I will be somewhere else real fast. If blacks
are looting and pillaging, I want the police to stomp on that and maintain order and I won't
take any excuses. But we shouldn't lose track of the big picture. It's the monolithic
corporate media enterprises that have stoked this chaos, and it's for a reason.
The violence being inflicted upon the oppressed and disenfranchised public in the US, on a
lesser level parallels the crimes systematically committed by the Empire in significant parts
of the world, in order to maintain a hegemonic structure of domination and exploitation.
It perpetrates extreme economic and social injustice while extolling putative virtues of
human rights, freedom and democracy.
Such a monstrous evil must somehow be defeated, but when protests are perverted by
intentional disruption such as looting and wanton destruction, the message becomes tainted
and turns many law-abiding citizens against the cause or makes them unwilling to participate.
If there is to be an organized movement, there must also be a method of extracting those
selfish, cynical saboteurs.
Beyond that, the general public in the US and other developed countries must begin to
realize how our entire way of life is incompatible with peace and sustainable habitat on this
planet, which seems an insurmountable leap of consciousness evolution. The term "comfortably
numb" comes to mind.
Looks like antifa members is Maoists not Fascists.
Notable quotes:
"... Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook ..."
"... These people are self-defeating morons, yes, but they still have the potential to do great damage ..."
"... Last night, here in Washington, the unrest they helped fuel saw a church lit on fire, LaFayette Park near the White House set ablaze, the AFL-CIO building attacked, and the Lincoln Memorial defaced. ..."
Back in 2018, my friend Zachary Yost suffered his way through Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook , a primer on the group
written by (but of course!) Dartmouth lecturer Mark Bray. What he found was a chillingly lucid call to revolution that subordinated
all else to the goal of overthrowing capitalism and the "Far Right." So free speech, for example, is dispensable, valuable only to
the extent that it enables the coming flames.
Yost writes:
By the time he's finished, Bray has thrown everything and the kitchen sink into the category of fascist ideologies that must
be targeted, ranging from whiteness to "ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many
others." Though cloaked in calls to stop oppression, Bray's book at its core makes the case for the exercise of raw, unbridled
power. Under this revolutionary ideology, no dissent can be tolerated. There can be no live and let live -- it is all or nothing.
In fairness, Antifa is a wide and somewhat amorphous umbrella, some of whose members may not subscribe to everything Bray says.
But what the more committed among them seem to understand is that, come lawlessness, power will flow naturally to he who has the
most muscle, he who's most willing to pick up a brick and throw it, at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. Remember that tonight
when we inevitably see more violence in the streets. Senselessness is the point. Preying on the innocent is the goal.
Remember after Charlottesville when some on social media compared these guys to the American soldiers who fought the Nazis at
Normandy? I don't want to hear another word about that. Antifa may stand for antifascist, but Yost's piece makes it clear that they're
fascist to their marrow. And as with many latter-day fascists and extremists, Antifa are simultaneously cogent at the manifesto level
and utterly delusional as to likely outcomes. They aren't going to overthrow capitalism or Donald Trump. They may, however, affect
the election in five months, with the most likely beneficiary the president they so despise.
These people are self-defeating morons, yes, but they still have the potential to do great damage.
Last night, here in Washington, the unrest they helped fuel saw a church lit on fire, LaFayette Park near the White House
set ablaze, the AFL-CIO building attacked, and the Lincoln Memorial defaced.
This is how a Franco ends up in power: because even churches are being targeted, even the moderate leftists aren't safe. Bully
people long enough and they long for a bully of their own. That Antifa has desecrated the protests over George Floyd's death this
way is appalling and I wish them nothing but the worst.
Matt Purple is a senior editor at The American Conservative .
I can picture anarchists setting fire to Minneapolis, but I was always under the clear impression that ANTIFA was really, really,
focused on outing neo-nazis, punching marchers in the face, and deplatforming the ALT-RIGHT. God's work! Why in the world would
they torch Popeyes?
One of the Fox news affiliate stations had reported looking at the paper work for people arrested in their city and said that
80% of the people arrested were from in state. That was after both Trump and Barr had claimed they were almost all from out of
state. If they lied about that what reason is there to believe that the rest of their claims are true? What evidence is there
other than a report of a pallet of brick (how do you unload it with out a forklift?) being left some where what evidence is there
that all of this is co-ordinated and not just random thugs? Why is the assumption that they are left leaning or tied to the Democratic
party? At least one of the people caught breaking windows, carrying an umbrella and masked was an off duty police officer which
generally lean to the right. I know a 25 year old man was arrested for burning a court house. The young tend to lean left but
also tend to act irrationally with out a cause. Is there any actual evidence to point to this being Antifa or are we just supposed
to take POTUS's word for it?
Trump and Barr merely picked up on claims from the governor of MN and mayor of Minneapolis. They did not originate the claim that
the rioters were from out-of-state.
Uh, the assumption that they are left-leaning comes from the fact that they spray-paint left-leaning things, and shout left-leaning
things.
I haven't heard anyone claim that they are tied to the Democratic Party, but many Democratic Party politicians have avoided
condemning them, and many Democratic Party-backing commentators/journalists have openly defended them.
The NYC Police Dept. reports that they have in their possession communications among Antifa units making detailed plans for
riots in places like NYC days before the riots occurred.
Something like a thousand people have been arrested now in these riots. How many of them have been identified as right-wing
or right-leaning? I don't know of a single one. You don't think these lefty Dem mayors and the MSM would be parading any evidence
they had of right-leaning rioters?
The Minnesota Freedom Fund is also being funded by politically correct Hollywood leftists. If Minneapolis really is a right-wing
insurrection highly disguised, it's fooled the woke crowd unmercifully.
"The destruction of businesses we're witnessing across the US is not mere
opportunism by looters. It plays a critical role in antifa and BLM
ideology"
Grouping Black Lives Matter together with Anti-Fa is a good propaganda effort, but those groups have different focuses. Anti-Fa
is a reaction to the neo-Nazis, but it is also home to a lot of anarchists.
Black Lives Matter is focused on African American rights and an opposition to police brutality. If you look at their web site,
it is all about civil rights both in the U.S. and internationally. They also have a stated agenda of supporting LGBTQ rights.
It's hard to find any ideology in favor of looting. In fact, they are on-record in support of minority-owned (capitalist) businesses
and economic development.
"... our culture so market-driven, everybody for sale, everything for sale, you can't deliver the kind of really real nourishment for soul, for meaning, for purpose. ..."
"... The system cannot reform itself. We've tried black faces in high places ..."
"... You've got a neoliberal wing of the Democratic party that is now in the driver's seat with the collapse of brother Bernie and they really don't know what to do because all they want to do is show more black faces -- show more black faces. ..."
"... So when you talk about the masses of black people, the precious poor and working-class black people, brown, red, yellow, whatever color, they're the ones left out and they feel so thoroughly powerless, helpless, hopeless, then you get rebellion. ..."
Dr. Cornel West said on Friday we are witnessing the failed social experiment that is
the United States of America in the protests and riots that have followed the death of George
Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. West told CNN host Anderson Cooper that what is going
on is rebellion to a failed capitalist economy that does not protect the people. West, a
professor, denounced the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party that is all about "black faces
in high places" but not actual change. The professor remarked even those black faces often lose
legitimacy because they ingriatiate themselves into the establishment neo-liberal Democratic
party.
"I think we are witnessing America as a failed social experiment," West said. "What I mean
by that is that the history of black people for over 200 and some years in America has been
looking at America's failure, its capitalist economy could not generate and deliver in such a
way people can live lives of decency. The nation-state, it's criminal justice system, it's
legal system could not generate protection of rights and liberties."
From commentary delivered on CNN Friday night:
DR. CORNEL WEST: And now our culture so market-driven, everybody for sale, everything for
sale, you can't deliver the kind of really real nourishment for soul, for meaning, for
purpose.
So when you get this perfect storm of all these multiple failures at these different
levels of the American empire, and Martin King already told us about that...
The system cannot reform itself. We've tried black faces in high places. Too often our
black politicians, professional class, middle class become too accommodated to the capitalist
economy, too accommodated to a militarized nation-state, too accommodated to the
market-driven culture of celebrities, status, power, fame, all that superficial stuff that
means so much to so many fellow citizens.
And what happens is we have a neofascist gangster in the White House who doesn't care for
the most part. You've got a neoliberal wing of the Democratic party that is now in the
driver's seat with the collapse of brother Bernie and they really don't know what to do
because all they want to do is show more black faces -- show more black faces.
But often
times those black faces are losing legitimacy too because the Black Lives Matter movement
emerged under a black president, a black attorney general, and a black Homeland Security
[Secretary] and they couldn't deliver.
So when you talk about the masses of black people, the
precious poor and working-class black people, brown, red, yellow, whatever color, they're the
ones left out and they feel so thoroughly powerless, helpless, hopeless, then you get
rebellion.
Burn Amerikastan burn. It's beautiful watching you burn
You who had your knee on our necks and killed us as the world looked on.
You who broke into our countries on false pretences, you who killed wives in front of
husbands, fathers in front of daughters, you who said it was your right to do so,
You who stole our resources, you who watched without words
You who claimed you were Exceptional
The world sees you for what you are
Now you burn.
Burn Amerikastan burn.
In the name of the children of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Donbass, Yemen,
Afghanistan
@Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist You missed out the Serbs.
'Bombed back to the Stoneage' by direction of Bill Clinton and by the butcher of WACO.
Breaking international law by the stealing of Kosovo and handing it to a bunch of radical
islamists – the KLA – thousands of whom have been fighting for ISIS.
Kosovo is Serbia.
They will get it back.
[Hide MORE]
United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people!!!!!!!!!!!!! in that nation's
ongoing war
Additional 131 ,000 people !!!!!!!!!!!! dying from hunger, disease and a lack of
medical care.
Since then, 3.65 million people have been internally displaced
The worst cholera outbreak ever recorded has infected 2.26 million !!!!!! and cost
nearly 4,000 lives (Even so this number is just the official account.)
Attacks on hospitals, clinics by Saudis & Co. have led to the closure of more than half
of Yemen's prewar facilities.
The policies of the USA and much of the entire WEST are deeply implicated in Yemen's
suffering, through the sale of billions of dollars in munitions to Saudi Arabia and other
countries that have intervened in the civil war.
"If Trump sent in military troops on his own the press would call it
unconstitutional."
Since when has the constitution or any law – or anyone citing them – been an
obstacle to the evil orange clown?
If he can commit war crimes in Syria and illegally seize Syrian oilfields and seize
Russian and Venezuelan diplomatic property, etc., he can send in military troops or whatever
he feels like doing. He was accused of abusing his office and acquitted. He can do whatever
he pleases.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019Non-Agreement Capable, Or Agreement Incapable, Or...
Agreement-unworthy, or.... I didn't find many English-language report on Putin's last week
interview on this issue:
We knew this all along, didn't we? It is not just about personalities, however
repulsive in his narcissism and lack of statesmanship Obama was. It is systemic, no matter who
comes to power to the Oval Office--it will make no difference. No difference, whatsoever. What
is known as US power (political) elite has been on the downward spiral for some time and, in
some sense, the whole Epstein
affair with serious pedophilia charges, not to mention an unspeakable slap on the wrist in
which this well-connected pervert was let go ten years ago, is just one of many indications of
a complete moral and cognitive decomposition of this so called "elite" which continues to
provide one after another specimens of human depravity. Remarkably, as much as I always feel
nauseated when seeing GOPers, it is impossible to hide the fact that Epstein's clients in their
majority are mostly associated with putrid creatures from the so called "left", with Bill
Clinton featuring prominently in the company of this pervert.
There were some attempts to even conceive a possibility of somehow "progressives" and
"conservatives" getting together in their condemnation of this heinous crime (yeah, yeah, I
know, Presumption of Innocence).
Doesn't it sound wonderful, warm and fuzzy, or too good to be true? It sure does,
because, as much as most American elite "conservatives" are not really conservatives, what
passes as "progressive" in the United States is PRIMARILY based on sexual deviancy, including
implicit promotion of pedophilia by "intellectual class", and "environmental" agenda, period!
Everything else is secondary. Those who think that actual conservatism (not a caricature it is
known in the United States) has anything to discuss with the so called "progressives"--they
unwittingly support this very "progressive" cause which, in its very many manifestations, is a
realization of the worst kind of suppression of many millennia old natural, including
biological, order of things and, in the end, elimination of normality as such--a future even
Orwell would have had difficulty describing.
Of course, Pinkerton gets some flashes of common sense, when states that:
Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural
norming, and "liberal" elements, as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious
economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland. Only with these economic and
governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely
far away from beguiling pleasuredomes.
Well, he puts it very crudely, but I see where he is at least trying to get it
from. I will add, until nation, as in American nation, recognizes itself as a nation, as people
who have common history, culture and mission, thus, inevitably producing this aforementioned
healthy social and cultural norming--no amount of wishful thinking or social-economic
doctrine-mongering will help. There is no United States without European-keen, white Christian,
heterosexual folk, both with acutely developed sense of both masculinity and femininity,
period. But this is precisely the state of the affairs which American "progressives" are
fighting against; this is the state of the affairs which they must destroy be that by
imposition of suffocating political correctness, the insanity of multi-gender and LGBT
totalitarianism, or by criminal opening of the borders to anyone, who, in the end, will vote
for the Democratic Party. You cannot negotiate with such people. In the end, WHO is going to
negotiate? A cowardly, utterly corrupt, current GOPers and geriatric remnants of Holy
Reaganites? Really? Ask how many of them are Mossad assets and are in the pockets of rich
Israeli-firsters and Gulfies?
True "Left" economics, which seeks more just distribution (not re-distribution) of wealth,
based on a fusion of economic models and types of property, cannot exist within cultural
liberal paradigm of "privileged" minorities, be them racial or sexual ones, aided by massive
grievance-generating machine--it is not going to last. Both economic and social normality can
exist ONLY within cohesive nation and that, due to activity on both nominal sides (in reality
it is the same) of American political spectrum, has been utterly destroyed. The mechanism of
this destruction is rather simple and it comes down, in the end, to the, pardon my French,
number of ass-holes populating unit-volume (density, that is) of political space in America. It
goes without saying that such a density in the US reached deadly toxic levels, and Russiagate
coup, Epstein's Affair, or the parade of POTUSes with the maturity levels of high school kids
are just numerous partial manifestations of what one can characterize as the end of the rope.
After all, who would be making any agreements with representatives of the system which is
rotting and decomposing?
Paul Craig Roberts penned today a good piece: The
Obituary for Western Civilization Can Now be Written . I have to disagree somewhat with
PCR's one assertion:
Europeans Are as Dumbshit as Americans
I would pause a little here. Yes and no. Here is Colonel Wilkerson who talks about
both wealth (starts roughly at 14:00) and about other very important strategic and operational
fact: overwhelming majority of weapons on hands today are among those who either support Trump
openly or simply had it with system in general.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kZA2yIFkhKg/0.jpg
And here is the issue: my bets are on people with military backgrounds, who had first hand
experience with military organization (standard manuals, combat manuals et al) and have
operational and command experience in their conflict with American Social Justice Warriors (you
know--"progressives") and other openly terrorist "progressive" organizations such as Antifa. At
least ruined Portland started to do something
about it . Is there any real left left in the US? And I don't mean this a-hole Bernie
Sanders.
And here is my rephrasing of Tolstoy's conclusion to War and Peace: there are too many
ass-holes in American politics today , very many of them being so called "progressives"
. This number must be reduced by all legal means today, and if American ass-holes can
work together terrorizing majority of good, not ass-hole people, what's precluding those good
people to work together? Nothing, except for the rotting corpse of GOP which had audacity to
call itself "conservative". If not, all is lost and we do not want to live in the world which
will come. And the guns will start speaking. UPDATE : 07/11/19
Oh goody, do they read me or is it one of those moments when, in Lenin's description of
Revolutionary Situation, economic slogans transform into political ones? Evidently Catholic
Conservative Michael Warren speaks in unison with Lenin and me, with both me and Warren
certainly not being Marxists or "communists". Here is what Warren has to say today:
It is a very loaded statement. It is also not an incorrect one. It is also
relevant to what I preach for years, decades really, that history of the so called "communism"
in USSR was a conservative history--a transition from depravity and corruption of Russian
Imperial "elites" to what resulted in the mutated nationalism of sorts in late 1930s and led to
the defeat of Nazism, historically unprecedented restoration of the destroyed country and then
breaking out into space. But that is a separate story--in USSR, as it is the case in Russia
today, sexual perversion and deviancy are not looked at lightly. Nor are, in general, "liberal
values" which are precisely designed to end up with the legitimization of pedophilia--a long
held, and hidden, desire of Western
"elites" . Guess why such an obsession with, realistically, literary mediocrity of
Nabokov's Lolita by Western moneyed and "intellectual" class. Who in their own mind,
unless one is a forensic psychiatrist or detective, would be interested in such a topic, not to
mention writing a book on it, not to mention a variety of Hollywood and, in general, Western
cinematography artsy class making scores of Lolita movies? Each time I read Lolita, in
both Russian and English, I felt an urgent desire to take a shower after reading this
concoction. I guess, I am not "sophisticated" enough to recognize appeals of this type of
"art". As Warren notes:
Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we
discover that two presidents cavorted with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on
minors. We should feel disgust at the
mere possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be
furious that these injustices haven't even come close to being properly redressed. This is
how revolutions are born. America is reaching the point where, 200 years ago, a couple French
peasants begin eyeing the Bastille. The question is, can conservatives channel that outrage
into serious reform before it's too late? Can we call out the fetid, decadent elites within our
own ranks ? Are we prepared to hold our own "faves" to account -- even Trump himself?
Alas, it's only a matter of time until we find out.
In this, I, essentially an atheist, and a conservative Catholic, are speaking in
the same voice.
"... In recent years, U.S. troops were killed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Syria, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, and Niger. Few Americans could locate these countries on a map; fewer knew its soldiers fought there. Additionally, Pentagon pilots and proxies killed people in Libya, Pakistan, and elsewhere in West Africa without losing a single soldier. ..."
"... The campaigns in Somalia and Yemen best expose the absurd casualty inequity of modern American warfare. In the former, only a few U.S. service members have been killed in an 18-year intervention. Conversely, hundreds of thousands of Somalis died or were displaced as a direct or indirect result (an exacerbated famine , for example) of a largely U.S.-catalyzed war. In Yemen, just one American soldier died in combat, compared to more than 100,000 locals -- including 85,000 children starved to death -- in a terror campaign the Saudis couldn't wage without U.S. complicity . ..."
"... With unemployment sky-rocketing to Great Depression rates, and income inequality at Gilded Age levels , both holidays now "celebrate" egregious blood and treasure disparity. For example, sifting through the Department of Labor's statistics reveals that some 8,000 contractors have been killed in America's war zones. That outnumbers U.S. military fatalities. Since Washington has progressively privatized and outsourced its wars, perhaps Americans should also observe a Mercenary Memorial Day. ..."
"... Faced with unrecognizable brands of war, most people substitute nostalgia and myth. Grappling with war's reality has implications that are too disturbing. Far simpler and more satisfying is to commemorate long past sacrifices at Normandy and Iwo Jima, rather than more confounding losses in Niger and Iraq. The temptation persists even as the last World War II veterans pass; old notions of what combat is ..."
"... The United States has lost its ethical and strategic way. Riddled with a virus that has now killed more Americans than the Revolutionary, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, Philippine, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghan Wars combined , this nation requires serious soul-searching. Reimagining its bookended summer celebrations might be a good start; but it won't be easy. ..."
Pandemic or no, resilient Americans will celebrate Memorial Day together. Be it through Zoom
or spaced six feet apart from ten or less loved ones at backyard cookouts, folks will find a
way. In these peculiar gatherings, is it still considered cynical to wonder if people will
spare much actual thought for American soldiers still dying abroad -- or question the
utility of America's forever wars? Etiquette aside, we think it's obscene not to.
Just as the coronavirus has
exposed systemic rot, this moment also reveals how obsolete common conceptions of U.S.
warfare truly are -- raising core questions about the holiday devoted to its sacrifices. The
truth is that today's "
way of war " is so abstract, distant, and short on (at least American) casualties as to be
nearly invisible to the public. With little to
show for it, Washington still directs bloody global campaigns, killing thousands of locals.
America has no space on its calendar to memorialize these victims: even the
children among them.
"Just as the coronavirus
exposed much internal systemic rot, this moment also reveals how obsolete common
conceptions of U.S. warfare truly are."
Eighteen years ago, as a cadet and young marine officer, we celebrated the first post-9/11
Memorial Day -- both brimming with enthusiasm for the wars we knew lay ahead. In the
intervening decades, for
individual yet strikingly
similar reasons, we ultimately
chose paths of dissent. Since then, we've
penned critical editorials around Memorial Days. These challenged the wars'
prospects ,
questioned the efficacy of the volunteer military, and
encouraged citizens to honor the fallen by creating fewer of them.
Little has changed, except how America fights. But that's the point: outsourcing
combat to machines, mercenaries, and militias rendered war so opaque that Washington wages it
absent public oversight or awareness -- and empathy. That's the formula for forever war.
In recent years, U.S. troops were killed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Syria,
Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, and Niger. Few Americans could locate these countries on a map; fewer
knew its soldiers fought there. Additionally, Pentagon pilots and proxies
killed people in Libya, Pakistan, and
elsewhere in West Africa without losing a single soldier.
The campaigns in Somalia and Yemen best expose the absurd casualty inequity of modern
American warfare. In the former, only a
few U.S. service members have been killed in an 18-year intervention. Conversely,
hundreds of thousands of Somalis died or were displaced as a direct or indirect result (an
exacerbated famine , for example) of a largely U.S.-catalyzed war. In Yemen, just
one American soldier died in combat, compared to
more than 100,000 locals -- including 85,000 children
starved to death -- in a terror campaign the Saudis couldn't wage without U.S.
complicity .
No one wants to see American troops killed, but a death disparity so stark stretches classic
definitions of combat. Yet for locals, it likely feels a whole lot like "real" war on
the business end of U.S. bombs and bullets.
So this year, given the stark reality that even a deadly pandemic -- and
pleas for global ceasefire -- hasn't
slowed Washington's war machine, it's reasonable to question the very concept of Memorial
Day. There are also important parallels with Labor Day -- the holiday bookend to today's
seasonal kick off. Just as memorializing America's obscenely lopsided battle deaths is
increasingly indecent, a federal holiday devoted to a labor movement the government has
aggressively eviscerated is deeply troubling.
With unemployment
sky-rocketing to Great Depression rates, and income inequality at Gilded Age
levels , both holidays now "celebrate" egregious blood and treasure disparity. For example,
sifting through the Department of Labor's
statistics reveals that some 8,000 contractors have been killed in America's war zones.
That
outnumbers U.S. military fatalities. Since Washington has progressively privatized and
outsourced its wars, perhaps Americans should also observe a Mercenary Memorial Day.
Widening the aperture unveils thousands more "non-combat" -- but war-related -- uniformed
deaths in desperate need of memorializing. From 2006-2018
alone , 3,540 active-duty service members took their own lives -- just a fraction of the
15-20 daily veteran
suicides -- and another 640 died in accidents involving substance-abuse. Each death is
unique, but studies
demonstrate that the combined effects of PTSD and moral injury -- these wars' "
signature wound " -- contributed to this massive loss of life. On a personal level, at
least four soldiers under our commands took their own lives, as have several friends. These are
real folks who left behind real loved ones.
Faced with unrecognizable brands of war, most people substitute nostalgia and myth.
Grappling with war's reality has implications that are too disturbing. Far simpler and more
satisfying is to commemorate long past sacrifices at Normandy and Iwo Jima, rather than more
confounding losses in
Niger and Iraq. The temptation persists even as the last World War II veterans pass; old
notions of what combat is die with them.
The United States has lost its ethical and strategic way. Riddled with a virus that has now
killed more Americans than the Revolutionary, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, Philippine,
Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghan Wars
combined , this nation requires serious soul-searching. Reimagining its bookended summer
celebrations might be a good start; but it won't be easy.
In a new take on an old tradition, perhaps it's proper to not only pack away the whites, but
don black as a memorial to a republic in peril.
Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For
Peace and World Beyond War. He previously served in Iraq with a State Department team and with
the U.S. Marines. He is a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy.
Anybody who uses the term "Russiagate" seriously and not to recognize the actual and
serious Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election in support of Trump is
not to be taken remotely seriously.
Russiagate is a valid and IMHO very useful political discourse term which has two
intersecting meanings:
1. Obamagate : Attempt of a certain political forces around Clintons and Obama
with the support of intelligence agencies to stage a "color revolution" against Trump,
using there full control of MSM as air superiority factor. With the main goal is the return
to "classic neoliberalism" (neoliberal globalization uber alles) mode
Which Trump rejected during his election campaign painting him as a threat to certain
powerful neoliberal forces which include but not limited to Silicon Valley moguls (note bad
relations of Trump and Bezos), some part of Wall street financial oligarchy, and most MSMs
honchos.
2. Neo-McCarthyism campaign unleashed by Obama administration with the goal to
whitewash Hillary fiasco and to preserve the current leadership of the Democratic
Party.
That led to complete deterioration of relations between the USA and Russia and increase
of chances of military conflict between two. Add to this consistent attempts of Trump to
make China an enemy and politicize the process of economic disengagement between the two
countries and you understand the level of danger. .
When a senior Russian official implicitly calls the USA a rogue state and Trump
administration -- gangsters on international arena, that a very bad sign. See
But then again, it may well be so that the current Republican administration will in
effect become a line in history in which a considerable number of useful international
instruments were abrogated and that America exited them in the anticipation that this
approach would serve U.S. interests better. Having said that, I will never say or never
suggest that it was for us -- at least in the mid-2010s -- better with the previous
administration.
It was under the previous Obama administration that endless rounds of sanctions were
imposed upon Russia. That was continued under Trump. The pretext for that policy is
totally rejected by Russia as an invalid and illegal one. The previous administration,
weeks before it departed, stole Russian property that was protected by diplomatic
immunity, and we are still deprived of this property by the Trump administration. We have
sent 350 diplomatic notes to both the Obama and the Trump administrations demanding the
return of this property, only to see an endless series of rejections. It is one of the
most vivid and obvious examples of where we are in our relationship.
There is no such thing as "which administration is better for Russia in the U.S.?"
Both are bad, and this is our conclusion after more than a decade of talking to
Washington on different topics.
Heilbrunn: Given the dire situation you portray, do you believe that America has
become a rogue state?
Ryabkov: I wouldn't say so, that's not our conclusion. But the U.S. is clearly an
entity that stands for itself, one that creates uncertainty for the world. America is a
source of trouble for many international actors. They are trying to find ways to protect
and defend themselves from this malign and malicious policy of America that many of the
people around the world believe should come to an end, hopefully in the near future.
What I can't understand is this stupid jingoism, kind of "cult of death" among the US
neocons, who personally are utter chickenhawks, but still from their comfortable offices
write dangerous warmongering nonsense. Without understanding possible longer term
consequences.
Of course, MIC money does not smell, but some enthusiasts in blogs do it even without
proper remuneration
But this can be easily explained by imperial chamber politics: a struggle between many
forces within the empire to determine who's going to be the successor.
Remember: before Vespasian, there were Galba, Otho and Vitellius; and before Severus there
were Pertinax, Didius Iulianus, Clodius Albinus & Pescennius Niger. Just because you're
an empire doesn't mean everything must and will run smoothly. Donald Trump is simply seen as
a very weak emperor (POTUS), so it is only natural many contenders arise.
Speaking of empire, there are now protests in the UK and Canada, in support for the
rioters. This is strong evidence the USA is indeed an empire, as a domestic issue in the USA
is treated like a domestic issue in Canada and England. Those nations, after all, know their
own prosperity and prestige lies exclusively on the USA; if the USA falls they will fall with
it.
Every revolt of significant proportions has its spontaneous element and its fabricated
(infiltrated) element. That's not what defines a color revolution.
What defines a color revolution is the fabricated element trying to establish LoCs (Lines
of Communications) with a foreign (sponsor) State. The establishment of LoC is necessary as
the first step for installing a Command Center (CC) which is the intermediary step to
establish a parallel government (which will then be recognized by the sponsor State and
become the real government).
Take Hong Kong as an example: the protesters already had a substantial fabricated element
with direct financial support from American NGOs and financial and legal support from the
American embassy. They clearly had the equipment necessary to sustain chaos for years even.
When the CCP successfully suffocated the protesters, a desperate attempt of establishing an
LoC was made by an American destroyer, which tried to enter the HK port. This was easily
denied by the PLAN and after that the protests immediately begun to wither. This was a clear
color revolution attempt.
That's not what we're witnessing in the USA right now. Even if there is billionaire NGO
interference (and I'm sure there is), it doesn't fit the pattern of a color revolution. It
seems they are more likely trying to infiltrate the riots in order to destroy them from
within by discrediting them (divide et impera). They are trying to save the USA, not destroy
it. Even the ones who are seeking to fuel the riots are not yet equipping the rioters with
proper military equipment as would be the case of a classic color revolution, but with more
rudimentary resources such as bricks. This is probably aimed at just hurting Donald Trump in
the November elections, not at destroying the social fabric of the USA.
"... In any case it looks like Flynn helped to avoid "boxing in" the new administration after the expulsion of Russian diplomats by the lame duck President? . That does not help Trump one bit, because first of all he is incompetent, and secondly he was instantly cooped by neocons, but still ..."
"... The key question here is whether Obama administration has motives to set a trap for Flynn now can be answered positively. If this was an entrapment then this is clearly a criminal offense and Strzok, Comey and possibly Brennan and Clapper, are clearly in hot water. ..."
One plausible hypothesis is that Obama administration decided to revenge Flynn
maneuver to foil Obama last move -- the expulsion of Russian diplomats, which stated
neo-McCarthyism campaign in the USA. He explicitly asked Russians not to retaliate and I
would understand why Obama did not like this move.
In any case it looks like Flynn helped to avoid "boxing in" the new administration
after the expulsion of Russian diplomats by the lame duck President? . That does not help
Trump one bit, because first of all he is incompetent, and secondly he was instantly
cooped by neocons, but still
The key question here is whether Obama administration has motives to set a trap for
Flynn now can be answered positively. If this was an entrapment then this is clearly a
criminal offense and Strzok, Comey and possibly Brennan and Clapper, are clearly in hot
water.
As the United States embarks on a fourth month of a chain reaction of crises spurred by the novel Coronavirus, a president with
flagging re-election chances addressed a weary nation Friday. Donald Trump and senior members of his foreign policy and economic
teams -- top diplomat Michael
R. Pompeo , leading China hawk
Peter
Navarro , trade representative Robert Lighthizer
, National Security Council chief
Robert C. O'Brien and
Treasury secretary
Steve
Mnuchin -- unveiled fresh policy on the People's Republic of China. Trump's national address in the Rose Garden Friday was the
first since anarchic protests broke out in several American cities -- centrally, Minneapolis -- earlier this week, in response to
the controversial death of Minnesota man George Floyd at the hands of police, which followed months of national frustration.
China hawks -- including Navarro and powerbroker, informal advisors to the administration such as
Tucker
Carlson and Steve Bannon
-- have repeatedly urged an uncompromising response to the hostile actors in Beijing. Proponents of a tougher line have consistently
argued for a nationally-minded surge of power: the United States should have a tariff policy, and it should begin returning the nation's
critical supply chains closer to Washington's orbit. Yet, while Trump has been the most tough-minded president on China in at least
a generation, he has remained something of a moderate within his own court, as well as within a broader American foreign policy community
that's wised up and changed its mind on the Chinese state.
Balancing a national security legacy with shorter-term, finance-minded considerations has been a hallmark of the Trump approach.
This was perhaps most on display with the negotiation of the flawed
"Phase One " trade deal that was inked just before the pandemic began battering the American mainland. After laying out the depressing
recent history of American diplomacy toward Beijing, the president -- true to form -- began his address on the subject with an equivocal
tone: "But I have never solely blamed China for this. They were able to get away with the theft, like no one was able to get away
with before, because of past politicians, and frankly, past presidents."
Still, what was obvious Friday at the White House was a paradigm shift unimaginable even five years ago, just before Trump announced
for president. "We must have answers," Trump said. "Not only for us, but for the rest of the world. This pandemic has underscored
the crucial importance of building up America's economic independence, re-shoring our critical supply chains, and protecting America's
scientific and technological advances." The president said the United States is severing its relationship with the World Health Organization
-- under fire since the inception of the crisis for its toadyism toward the Chinese state. And he echoed the disappointing news announced
by Pompeo earlier this week -- that in the face of recent Chinese actions, the United States can longer consider the leadership in
Hong Kong distinct from the Communist Party.
The Hull Note to the Japanese Ambassador to the US in November 1941 consists of 2 sections. The first section is a "Draft mutual
declaration of policy" by stating these principles[6]:
inviolability of territorial integrity and sovereignty of each and all nations.
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
equality, including equality of commercial opportunity and treatment.
reliance upon international cooperation and conciliation for the prevention and pacific settlement of controversies
non-discrimination in international commercial relations.
international economic cooperation and abolition of extreme nationalism as expressed in excessive trade restrictions.
non-discriminatory access by all nations to raw material supplies.
full protection of the interests of consuming countries and populations as regards the operation of international commodity agreements.
establishment of such institutions and arrangements of international finances
The second section consists of 10 points and is titled "Steps to be taken by the Government of the United States and by the
Government of Japan"[6]
The Neocons have finally corralled the President into a full blown, hegemonic Cold War with China rather than focus on reasonable
trade policies.
Hong-kong, I'm certain Pompeo and his crew has actually read the re-integration agreement w/China, given it a fair hearing
and after much reflection concluded that China is violating it rather than playing on everyone's emotions to stir up conflict.
What China has done in Hong-kong (how many deaths? zero) is worse than what the Saudis did by leveling one of their own Shiites
cities, eh, Iranian sympahtzers, we sold them the weapons.
or how France treated the Yellow Vests
or our new fascist best friends did in Bolivia by ousting an elected President and then canceling the elections they were supposed
to have in April.
lysias @ 109
... Here is a fine quote from Wolin's book (page 264) which illustrates the point (please
excuse the length of this quote):
A twofold moral might be drawn from the experience of Athens: that it is self-subverting
for democracy to subordinate its egalitarian convictions to the pursuit of expansive
politics with its corollaries of conquest and domination and the power relationships they
introduce. Few care to argue that, in political terms, democracy at home is advanced or
improved by conquest abroad.
As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed,
imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens. Resources
that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection are
instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, con- sumes the largest percentage of
the nation's annual budget. Moreover, the sheer size and complexity of imperial power and
the expanded role of the military make it difficult to impose fiscal discipline and
accountability. Corruption becomes endemic, not only abroad but at home. The most dangerous
type of corruption for a democracy is measured not in monetary terms alone but in the kind
of ruthless power relations it fosters in domestic politics. As many observers have noted,
politics has become a blood sport with partisanship and ideological fidelity as the
hallmarks. A partisan judiciary is openly declared to be a major priority of a political
party; the efforts to consolidate executive power and to relegate Congress to a supporting
role are to some important degree the retrojection inwards of the imperial thrust.
Second, if Athens was the first historical instance of a confrontation between democracy
and elitism, that experience suggests that there is no simple recipe for resolving the
tensions between them. Political elites were a persistent, if uneasy and contested, feature
of Athenian democracy and a significant factor in both its expansion and its demise. In the
eyes of contemporary observers, such as Thucydides, as well as later historians, the
advancement of Athenian hegemony de- pended upon a public-spirited, able elite at the helm
and a demos will- ing to accept leadership. Conversely, the downfall of Athens was
attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for
ill-conceived adventures. As the war dragged on and frustration grew, domestic politics
became more embittered and fractious: members of the elite competed to outbid each other by
pro\posing ever wilder schemes of conquest.
In two attempts (411–410 and 404–403) elites, abetted by the Spartans,
succeeded in temporarily abolishing democracy and installing rule by the Few.
...and while I am at it: lysias @ 106
Let's deconstruct what you've said. Even if he resisted arrest (by what degree was he
resisting?) that is not cause for applying deadly force on someone. Clearly he was restrained
and was going no where. Furthermore, the application of restraint should be one that ought
not induce death in someone with a previous health condition. By your rationale, you have no
business of walking the streets if you are not an able-bodied person and that death by
restraint by a police officer is excusable if you happen to be in bad health.
Although you don't explicitly say it, somehow it feels like you are saying that he had it
coming to him when you write "Floyd had a lengthy criminal record." Does that mean just
because he had a lengthy record he deserved to be roughed up like that? This sounds like
victim blaming, which is something commonly done in this country to continue to oppress
people who have no power.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 3/ That out-take tells
you everything you need to know about why Obama had January 5 meeting to discuss
withholding information with the Trump transition team and administration. Can't you just
picture petty little Barack Obama "how dare General Flynn say I cannot "box" them in.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 3/ That out-take tells
you everything you need to know about why Obama had January 5 meeting to discuss
withholding information with the Trump transition team and administration. Can't you just
picture petty little Barack Obama "how dare General Flynn say I cannot "box" them in.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 4/ And for all those who
scream about diplomacy, my God, read the damn transcript. We want men like General Flynn
leading diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/ksPQoePrUO
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 4/ And for all those who
scream about diplomacy, my God, read the damn transcript. We want men like General Flynn
leading diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/ksPQoePrUO
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 6/ Read the --- damn
transcript! General Flynn did not interfere with the Obama administration. The Obama
administration interfered with the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/XVT4D1f1Ay
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 6/ Read the --- damn
transcript! General Flynn did not interfere with the Obama administration. The Obama
administration interfered with the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/XVT4D1f1Ay
Replying to @JoeBiden 9/9 This entire 3-year nightmare for
General Flynn all arose because a petty little man named Barack Obama demanded revenge. And
@JoeBiden was right by
his side. END
Replying to @JoeBiden 9/9 This entire 3-year nightmare for
General Flynn all arose because a petty little man named Barack Obama demanded revenge. And
@JoeBiden was right by
his side. END
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland @Cernovich @GenFlynn I'm
shocked at how much the fake news is lying about the transcripts by "summarizing" them when
what they're saying directly contradicts what the transcripts say. This is how these fake
news people work. They tell you what the document says and hope you don't read it.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland @Cernovich @GenFlynn I'm
shocked at how much the fake news is lying about the transcripts by "summarizing" them when
what they're saying directly contradicts what the transcripts say. This is how these fake
news people work. They tell you what the document says and hope you don't read it.
Replying to @Harmless_Patsy @ProfMJCleveland and
2 others That's
why I don't watch them. I follow real journalists, lawyers and investigators who tweet the
real documents and substantiate what they say.
Replying to @Harmless_Patsy @ProfMJCleveland and
2 others That's
why I don't watch them. I follow real journalists, lawyers and investigators who tweet the
real documents and substantiate what they say.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released the transcripts between
then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kisliak,
which revealed that Flynn asked Russia to take "reciprocal" against sanctions levied by the
Obama administration over interference in the 2016 US election.
" I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to
only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get
into something that have to escalate tit-for-tat," Flynn told Kisyak.
12/23/16 - Flynn relays his goals about the Russia/US relationship.
Flynn: "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other
against this radical Islamist crowd."
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Former FBI agent Peter Strzok used that conversation
as a basis to continue his investigation into whether Flynn was a potential Russian agent,
according to recently unsealed court documents. The agency used the call as leverage to try to
get the retired general to admit to a violation of the Logan Act - an obscure old law nearly a
quarter-century old which prohibits private citizens from interfering in diplomacy (which, as
it turns out, is standard practice among members of transitioning administrations).
FBI agent Joe Pientka, who interviewed Flynn with agent Strzok, wrote in his interview notes
that he did not believe Flynn was lying to them during the interview - while other recently
unsealed notes revealed that the FBI considered a perjury trap against Flynn to "
get him fired ."
If there was a preexisting improper relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia,
@GenFlynn
would never have needed an official call with Kislyak to prevent the disaster the Obama admin
was creating.
It's common sense if you're an honest broker.
-- John 'Murder Hornet' Cardillo
(@johncardillo) May 29,
2020
After the FBI's malfeasance came to light, the DOJ moved to drop the case against Flynn -
which US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has refused to do - instead asking a retired federal
judge, John Gleeson, to provide legal arguments as to whether Sullivan should hold Flynn in
criminal contempt for pleading guilty to FBI agents - which he now says he did not do.
Following the release of the transcripts , Sen. Grassley said in a statement: "Lt. General
Flynn, his legal team, the judge and the American people can now see with their own eyes
– for the first time – that all of the innuendo about Lt. General Flynn this whole
time was totally bunk. There was nothing improper about his call, and the FBI knew it. "
The transcripts show that Flynn was acting in his country's best interests, and his only
crime was bruising the fragile ego of the Obama team and their pathetic foreign policy
https://t.co/P3nuifreUI
re Norogene | May 30 2020 3:09 utc | 155 "But, of course, you need to protect your country which means maintaining a defense force.
" Yet I cannot think of a single instance of a conflict amerika has gotten into that
wasn't a case of amerika kicking off the action with some particularly egregious act.
eg On the instances I have raised this with amerikans, many have told me they consider
Pearl Harbour to be an instance of amerika being the innocent party, they had no idea that
FDR had instigated a blockade of Japan long before which was starving Japanese people or that
Pearl Harbour wasn't amerikan soil, it was an illegally occupied nation and the Japanese
attack had been careful to only bomb and strafe the occupying force.
No nation needs a defense force if the true will of the citizens of a country was what
steered that nation, since as you said, most humans the world over prefer to live and let
live.
When I worked as a public servant it took me about 5 seconds to suss that those
bureaucrats promoting change didn't have a real interest in change apart from the opportunity
for promotion change can promote.
This is equally true of war, the arseholes arguing for getting into conflicts do so only
for the opportunities for personal benefit conflicts create. Since no war has ever advantaged
the masses it is safe to say left up to the people, no wars would always be their first
preference.
The US empire is collapsing because the costs of maintaining the empire are hollowing out the
domestic economy of the US. Since the United States is the center of the empire it has to
spend the lion share of the money required to operate and maintain the empire (PaxAmerica)
these costs (the 800+ military bases, the hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign "aid",
and the funding of various international organizations like the IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc...)
all of that money comes at the expense of domestic needs.
Obviously all states have to spend money on world/regional/supranational organizations to
some extent, America's problem is that they have around 15% of world GDP, but they are
pursuing something called full spectrum dominance throughout the world, the ability to
dominate economic, military and political decisions in all regions of the world. However,
providing complete security control for the entire world requires the resources of the entire
world! This is why the US has become so messed up domestically and hugely indebted, they are
bitting off more than they can chew. For example, the US military's official policy is that
they MUST be able to fight two near-peer powers in different regions AND six regional
conflicts simultaneously. Its an impossible goal but they are still trying to fund it and
because of that domestic needs (educational, infrastructure, political and cultural spheres)
are being starved of resources and the society itself is becoming dysfunctional because only
those societal elements that benefit from the maintenance of the empire are being served (the
financial/military-industrial complex) and everyone else is at each others throats for the
leftover crumbs.
Ultimately, the US is a slow motion train wreck, like the Soviet union of the 1980s maybe
it can plow along for another decade or two on its own inertia. But without reform (i.e. the
end of the empire), the US will become increasingly ungovernable, lurching from crisis to
crisis, nothing ever solved, just pushed back to deal with the latest crisis. Just think
since Dec 2019 (6 months) we've gone from impeaching the US president, to a possible war with
Iran, to a health crisis (with 100K dead), to an economic crisis, to a (3rd) failed coup
against Venezuela, to the start of a new Cold War with China over Hong Kong to country-wide
riots over police brutality. In a normal country you might get crisis like over a decade, not
6 months and again, not one of these crises have been solved, a new crisis just pushed it off
the front page. Yet, the problems are still there percolating growing larger
"... You will find in Sheldon Wolin's final book "Democracy Incorporated" an intricate dissection of this precept in the modern form through his analysis of America's decaying trajectory. Thank you for reminding us of this. ..."
"... As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens. Resources that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection are instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, consumes the largest percentage of the nation's annual budget. ..."
"... Second, if Athens was the first historical instance of a confrontation between democracy and elitism, that experience suggests that there is no simple recipe for resolving the tensions between them. Political elites were a persistent, if uneasy and contested, feature of Athenian democracy and a significant factor in both its expansion and its demise. ..."
"... As the war dragged on and frustration grew, domestic politics became more embittered and fractious: members of the elite competed to outbid each other by proposing ever wilder schemes of conquest. ..."
You can't be a Democracy at home and an empire aboard, the violence of empire will always turn against the very idea
of democracy.
Yes, a keen observation of what ultimately undid Athens. You will find in Sheldon Wolin's final book "Democracy Incorporated"
an intricate dissection of this precept in the modern form through his analysis of America's decaying trajectory. Thank you for
reminding us of this.
lysias @ 109
A variety of scholars who study that period would disagree with you: You cannot maintain an empire abroad and democracy at
home. The two principles are diametrically opposite to one another. It's what caused the democracy of Athens (which was limited
to men -- as usual) to ultimately lose its internal cohesion and reason to be. Yes, formally it was incorporated into the Macedonian
empire, but its demise came because Athens' imperial ambitions sapped domestic resources which further contributed to the trend
toward inequality within the society.
Here is a fine quote from Wolin's book (page 264) which illustrates the point (please excuse the length of this quote):
A twofold moral might be drawn from the experience of Athens: that it is self-subverting for democracy to subordinate its egalitarian
convictions to the pursuit of expansive politics with its corollaries of conquest and domination and the power relationships
they introduce. Few care to argue that, in political terms, democracy at home is advanced or improved by conquest abroad.
As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering
inequalities among its citizens. Resources that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection
are instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, consumes the largest percentage of the nation's annual budget.
Moreover, the sheer size and complexity of imperial power and the expanded role of the military make it difficult to impose
fiscal discipline and account- ability. Corruption becomes endemic, not only abroad but at home. The most dangerous type of
corruption for a democracy is measured not in monetary terms alone but in the kind of ruthless power relations it fosters in
domestic politics. As many observers have noted, politics has become a blood sport with partisanship and ideological fidelity
as the hallmarks. A partisan judiciary is openly declared to be a major priority of a political party; the efforts to consolidate
executive power and to relegate Congress to a supporting role are to some important degree the retrojection inwards of the
imperial thrust.
Second, if Athens was the first historical instance of a confrontation between democracy and elitism, that experience
suggests that there is no simple recipe for resolving the tensions between them. Political elites were a persistent, if uneasy
and contested, feature of Athenian democracy and a significant factor in both its expansion and its demise.
In the eyes of contemporary observers, such as Thucydides, as well as later historians, the advancement of Athenian hegemony
de- pended upon a public-spirited, able elite at the helm and a demos will- ing to accept leadership. Conversely, the downfall
of Athens was attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for ill-conceived adventures.
As the war dragged on and frustration grew, domestic politics became more embittered and fractious: members of the elite
competed to outbid each other by proposing ever wilder schemes of conquest. In two attempts (411410 and 404403) elites,
abetted by the Spartans, succeeded in temporarily abolshing democracy and installing rule by the Few.
The administration also took off the gloves with China over U.S. listings by mainland
companies that fail to follow U.S. securities laws. This came after the Commerce Department
finally moved to limit access by Huawei Technologies to high-end silicon chips made with U.S.
lithography machines. The trade war with China is heating up, but a conflict was inevitable and
particularly when it comes to technology.
At the bleeding edge of 7 and 5 nanometer feature size, American tech still rules the world
of semiconductors. In 2018, Qualcomm confirmed its next-generation Snapdragon SoC would be
built at 7 nm. Huawei has already officially announced its first 7nm chip -- the Kirin 980. But
now Huawei is effectively shut out of the best in class of custom-made chips, giving Samsung
and Apple a built-in advantage in handsets and network equipment.
It was no secret that Washington allowed Huawei to use loopholes in last year's blacklist
rules to continue to buy U.S. sourced chips. Now the door is closed, however, as the major
Taiwan foundries led by TSMC will be forced to stop custom production for Huawei, which is
basically out of business in about 90 days when its inventory of chips runs out. But even as
Huawei spirals down, the White House is declaring financial war on dozens of other listed
Chinese firms.
President Donald Trump said
in an interview with Fox Business News that forcing Chinese companies to follow U.S.
accounting norms would likely push them to list in non-U.S. exchanges. Chinese companies that
list their shares in the U.S. have long refused to allow American regulators to inspect their
accounting audits, citing direction from their government -- a practice that market authorities
here have been unwilling or unable to stop.
The attack by the Trump Administration on shoddy financial disclosure at Chinese firms is
long overdue, but comes at a time when the political evolution in China is turning decidedly
authoritarian in nature and against any pretense of market-oriented development. The rising
power of state companies in China parallels the accumulation of power in the hands of Xi
Jinping, who is increasingly seen as a threat to western-oriented business leaders. The trade
tensions with Washington provide a perfect foil to crack down on popular unrest in Hong Kong
and discipline wayward oligarchs.
The latest moves by Beijing to take full control in Hong Kong are part of the more general
retrenchment visible in China. "[P]rivate entrepreneurs are increasingly nervous about their
future," writes Henny Sender in the Financial Times . "In many cases, these
entrepreneurs have U.S. passports or green cards and both children and property in America. To
be paid in U.S. dollars outside China for their companies must look more tempting by the day."
A torrent of western oriented Chinese business leaders is exiting before the door is shut
completely.
The fact is that China's position in U.S. trade has retreated as nations like Mexico and
Vietnam have gained. Mexico is now America's largest trading partner and Vietnam has risen to
11th, reports Qian Wang of Bloomberg News . Meanwhile, China has dropped from 21 percent
of U.S. trade in 2018 to just 18 percent last year. A big part of the shift is due to the
U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, which is expected to accelerate a return of production to North
America. Sourcing for everything from autos to semiconductors is expected to rotate away from
China in coming years.
China abandoned its decades-old practice of
setting a target for annual economic growth , claiming that it was prioritizing goals such
as stabilizing employment, alleviating poverty and preventing risks in 2020. Many observers
accept the official communist party line that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic made it
almost impossible to fix an expansion rate this year, but in fact the lasting effects of the
2008 financial crisis and the aggressive policies of President Trump have rocked China back on
its heels.
As China becomes increasingly focused inward and with an eye on public security, the
economic situation is likely to deteriorate further. While many observers viewed China's "Belt
& Road" initiative as a sign of confidence and strength, in fact it was Beijing's attempt
to deal with an economic realignment that followed the 2008 crisis. The arrival of President
Trump on the scene further weakened China's already unstable mercantilist economic model, where
non-existent internal demand was supposed to make up for falling global trade flows. Or at
least this was the plan until COVID-19.
"Before the Covid-19 outbreak, many economists were expecting China to set a GDP growth
target of 6% to 6.5% to reflect the gradual slowdown in the pace of expansion over the past few
years," reports Caixin Global . "Growth slid to 6.1% in 2019 from 6.7% in 2018. But the
devastation caused by the coronavirus epidemic -- which saw the economy contract 6.8%
year-on-year in the first quarter -- has thrown those forecasts out of the window."
Out of the window indeed. Instead of presiding over a glorious expansion of the Chinese
sphere of influence in Asia, Xi Jinping is instead left to fight a defensive action
economically and financially. The prospective end of the special status of Hong Kong is
unlikely to have any economic benefits and may actually cause China's problems with massive
internal debt and economic malaise to intensify. Beijing's proposed security law would reduce
Hong Kong's separate legal status and likely bring an end to the separate currency and business
environment.
I honestly don't know if this article is or is not correct... But I wonder...
AmConMag publishes a major anti-China article on most days now. What is happening? What is
the mechanics of this... "phenomenon"?
A place where where Americans opposed to U.S. hegemony because it's harm on everyone
without being overwhelmed by the Neocon acolytes where can we go, anyone ever try to get a
word in on foxnews ?
If you try to reach out to twitter on Tom Cotton or Mike Waltz dismisses you as a
'Chinese govt / Iranian / Russian bot'
You know what, God will judge us and we will all be equal in he eyes of Him
Why should I be afraid. Why should I be silent. And thank you TAC for the opportunity to
post.
I too came here for interesting commentary, - and even better comments... five years ago or
so?
I found the original articles mostly okay, often too verbose, meandering for my taste but
the different point of view made them worthwhile. The readers' comments, now that is
priceless. That brings the real value. That's where we learn. That's where I learn, anyway.
:)
It never occurred to me to message to any politician, I think my voice would be lost in the
cacophony.
The target of my curiosity is that when all these articles start to point in one direction
(like belligerence toward China) how does it happen? Is there a chain of command? It seems
coordinated.
It's possible to be anti-neocon, for their being too ideological, and not pacifist. That is
basically my position.
I agree with most here on Russia and Iran. They are not threats, and in specific cases
should be partners instead. Agree on American imperialism being foolish and often evil. I
believe in a multipolar world as a practical matter. I don't take a soft view of China
however. I believe they do intend to replace nefarious American hegemony with their own
relevant, but equally nefarious, flavor of hegemony. There are few countries in the world
with such a pathological distrust of their own people. I truly believe that country is a
threat that needs to be checked at least for a couple of decades by the rest of the
world.
As to the editorial direction, I think it is merely capitalism. China's perception in
the world is extremely bad lately. I would fully expect the always somewhat Russophile
environment here to seize the moment to say 'see! Russia is not a true threat! It's China!'
RT itself soon after Trump's election I recall posted an article complaining about total
disregard for Chinese election meddling.
You can see when the people holding the leash give a tug on the collar. And it's clear that
the GOP is feeling the need for a warlike political environment.
The most blatant presstitution example, of course, was the National Review, going from
'Never Trump' to full time servicing.
I haven't written anything about Putin in awhile, and his teleconference about Russia's "labour
market situation" provides an excellent opportunity. What you'll read illustrates the
acutely dramatic difference in policy between Russia and the Outlaw US Empire when it comes
to supporting its populous:
"Once again, preserving the jobs and incomes of Russian families has been one of our top
priorities since day one of our efforts to counter the epidemic. This, of course, is a fair
approach and a fair principle, because people should always be our priority ." [My
Emphasis]
To be fair, Trump and Congress do favor some of the people--those at and associated with
Wall Street--and what we've seen is those people are certainly Trump and Congress's priority,
but not so much anyone else. Contrast that with Russia's policy:
"We have established a key, basic criterion for supporting businesses. From the outset, we
have organised our work exactly this way: preserving the workforce and salaries is a
priority . We offered incentives whereby companies and entrepreneurs who take care of
their employees and strive to retain them, can count on greater support from the state. By
that, I also mean direct subsidies to pay salaries at small- and medium-sized businesses in
the affected industries in an amount equivalent to one minimum wage per employee in April and
May, as well as easy-term loans with a 2 percent interest rate. These loans will be repaid by
the state, as agreed, if staffing at a given company remains at the current level." [My
Emphasis]
The above isn't the total policy, of course. Also note the tone of Putin's remarks, which
have actually remained very consistent over his tenure as Russia's leader:
"We need to analyse and look deep into the problems of every person that asks for
help , especially elderly people and pre-pensioners. This also applies to graduates of
universities, colleges and academies that are finishing their studies and starting to
work.
"It is necessary to look for suitable jobs in cooperation with companies, organisations
and employers. These things must not be left to luck. It is necessary to offer snap courses,
as well as education and retraining programmes for those who have lost their jobs." [My
Emphasis]
By comparison, what do we see from UK, EU and Outlaw US Empire? Pretty much the
opposite--unless you're in the top 10% who won't risk losing one cent--it's a Free Market
where you're free to sink to your doom. Putin in contrast agreed to extend unemployment to
October 1 and prior to that time will reexamine the state of the labour market to determine
if that deadline needs to be extended again--policy that's the polar opposite of that within
the Outlaw US Empire. What's somewhat astonishing is the Outlaw US Empire has about 130
million of its people unemployed while Russia's entire population is about 145 million but
doesn't have a parasite that demands being continually fed massive amounts of money--about $8
Trillion for the first third of 2020.
by
Los Angeles TimesUS Public Remain the Tacit Accomplice in America's Dead End Wars
Honor the fallen, but not every war they were sent to fight by Andrew Bacevich
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Comments A U.S. soldier fires an anti-tank rocket during a live-fire exercise in Zabul
province, Afghanistan, in July 2010. (Photo: U.S. Army /flickr/cc) Not
least among the victims claimed by the coronavirus pandemic was a poetry recital that was to
have occurred in March at a theater in downtown Boston.
I had been invited to read aloud a poem, and I chose "On a Soldier Fallen in the
Philippines," written in 1899 by William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910). You are unlikely to have
heard of the poet or his composition. Great literature, it is not. Yet its message is
memorable.
The subject of Moody's poem is death, a matter today much on all our minds. It recounts the
coming home of a nameless American soldier, killed in the conflict commonly but misleadingly
known as the Philippine Insurrection.
In 1898, U.S. troops landed in Manila to oust the Spanish overlords who had ruled the
Philippines for more than three centuries. They accomplished this mission with the dispatch
that a later generation of U.S. forces demonstrated in ousting regimes in Kabul and Baghdad.
Yet as was the case with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of our own day, real victory proved
elusive.
Back in Washington, President McKinley decided that having liberated the Philippines, the
United States would now keep them. The entire archipelago of several thousand islands was to
become an American colony.
McKinley's decision met with immediate disfavor among Filipinos. To oust the foreign
occupiers, they mounted an armed resistance. A vicious conflict ensued, one that ultimately
took the lives of 4,200 American soldiers and at least 200,000 Filipinos. In the end, however,
the United States prevailed.
Denying Filipino independence was the cause for which the subject of Moody's poem died.
Long since forgotten by Americans, the war to pacify the Philippines generated in its day
great controversy. Moody's poem is an artifact of that controversy. In it, he chastises those
who perform the rituals of honoring the fallen while refusing to acknowledge the dubious nature
of the cause for which they fought. "Toll! Let the great bells toll," he writes,
Till the clashing air is dim,
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.
Toll! Let him never guess
What work we sent him to.
Laurel, laurel, yes.
He did what we bade him do.
Praise, and never a whispered hint
but the fight he fought was good;
In actuality, the fight was anything but good. It was ill-advised and resulted in great
evil. "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines" expresses a demand for reckoning with that evil.
Americans of Moody's generation rejected that demand, just as Americans today balk at reckoning
with the consequences of our own ill-advised wars.
Yet the imperative persists. "O banners, banners here," Moody concludes,
That he doubt not nor misgive!
That he heed not from the tomb
The evil days draw near
When the nation robed in gloom
With its faithless past shall strive.
Let him never dream that his bullet's scream
went wide of its island mark,
Home to the heart of his darling land
where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.
At the end of the 19th century, the United States stumbled and sinned in the dark by waging
a misbegotten campaign to advance nakedly imperial ambitions. At the beginning of the 21st
century, new wars became the basis of comparable sin. The war of Moody's time and the wars of
our own have almost nothing in common except this: In each instance, through their passivity
disguised as patriotism, the American people became tacitly complicit in wrongdoing committed
in their name.
It is no doubt too glib by half to claim that today, besieged by a virus, we are reaping the
consequences caused by our refusal to reckon with past sins. Yet it is not too glib to argue
that the need for such a reckoning remains. Have we wronged the departed souls of those who
died -- indeed, are still dying -- in Afghanistan and Iraq? The question cries out for an
answer. In our cacophonous age, it just might be that we will find that answer in poetry.
Looks like Strzok and Page played larger role in Obamagate/Russiagate then it was assumed
initially
Notable quotes:
"... Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House. ..."
"... Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic. ..."
"... "He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap. ..."
"... The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue an interview where agents might catch him in a lie. ..."
"... "The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one investigator with direct knowledge told me. ..."
"... Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened. ..."
"... "I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution," Ray told Fox News . ..."
"... April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama administration blames his management style for the departure. ..."
"... Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House. ..."
"... Jan. 4, 2017: Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved. ..."
"... Jan. 5, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates attends Russia briefing with Obama at the White House and is stunned to learn Obama already knows about the Flynn-Kislyak intercept . Then-FBI Director James Comey claims Clapper told the president, but Clapper has denied telling Obama. ..."
"... Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017. ..."
"... "We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said. ..."
"... Obama weaponized everything he could, ..."
"... The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance, venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their indignation that their status position is merely relative. ..."
"... The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance, perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition. ..."
"... One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his political opponents that will never be exposed ..."
"... John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup started. ..."
"... In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was just a question of who did what, and how much. ..."
"... How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S. politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental? ..."
"... Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what MI-6 does. ..."
"... MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have been sabotaging Brexit for years. ..."
"... It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved. ..."
Agents fretted sharing Flynn intel with departing Obama White House would become fodder for
'partisan axes to grind.'
Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI
counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express
concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House.
Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William
Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or "CR" for short.
The evidence in question were so-called "tech cuts" from intercepted conversations between
Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to the texts and interviews with
officials familiar with the conversations.
Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically
weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept
cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic.
"He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017,
relating his conversation with Priestap.
"Doesn't want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH. All political, just shows our hand and
potentially makes enemies."
Page seemed less concerned, knowing that the FBI was set in three days to release its
initial assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
"Yeah, but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially
larger distribution than just the DNI," Page texted back.
Strzok responded, "The question is should we, particularly to the entirety of the lame
duck usic [U.S Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind."
That same day Strzok and Page also discussed in text messages a drama involving one of the
Presidential Daily Briefings for Obama.
"Did you follow the drama of the PDB last week?" Strzok asked.
"Yup. Don't know how it ended though," Page responded.
"They didn't include any of it, and Bill [Priestap] didn't want to dissent," Strzok
added.
"Wow, Bill should make sure [Deputy Director] Andy [McCabe] knows about that since he was
consulted numerous times about whether to include the reporting," Page suggested.
You can see the text messages recovered from Strzok's phone here.
The text messages, which were never released to the public by the FBI but were provided to
this reporter in September 2018, have taken on much more significance to both federal and
congressional investigators in recent weeks as the Justice Department has requested that
Flynn's conviction be thrown out and his charges of lying to the FBI about Kislyak
dismissed.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri (special prosecutor for DOJ), the FBI inspection
division, three Senate committees and House Republicans are all investigating the handling of
Flynn's case and whether any crimes were committed or political influence exerted.
The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a
career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject
its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue
an interview where agents might catch him in a lie.
They also want to know whether the conversation about the PDB involved Flynn and "reporting"
the FBI had gathered by early January 2017 showing the incoming national security adviser was
neither a counterintelligence nor a criminal threat.
"The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one
investigator with direct knowledge told me.
"The bureau knew it did not have evidence to justify that Flynn was either a criminal or
counterintelligence threat and should have shut the case down. But the perception that Obama
and his team would not be happy with that outcome may have driven the FBI to keep the probe
open without justification and to pivot to an interview that left some agents worried
involved entrapment or a perjury trap."
The investigator said more interviews will need to be done to determine exactly what role
Obama's perception of Flynn played in the FBI's decision making.
Recently declassified evidence show a total of 39 outgoing Obama administration officials
sought to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence interviews between Election Day 2016 and
Inauguration Day 2017, signaling a keen interest in Flynn's overseas calls.
Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at
the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if
evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened.
"I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld
information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn
prosecution,"
Ray told Fox News .
"If it turns out that that can be proved, then there are going to be referrals and
potential false statements, and/or perjury prosecutions to hold those, particularly those in
positions of authority, accountable," he added.
Investigators have created the following timeline of key events through documents produced
piecemeal by the FBI over two years:
April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the
administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama
administration blames his management style for the departure.
July 31, 2016:
FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible ties between Trump campaign and Russia,
focused on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Flynn is not an initial target of that
probe.
Aug. 15, 2016: Strzok and Page engage in their infamous text exchange about having an
insurance policy just in case Trump should be elected. "I want to believe the path you threw
out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm
afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die
before you're 40," one text reads.
Aug. 16, 2016: FBI opens a sub-case under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella codenamed
Crossfire Razor focused on whether Flynn was wittingly or unwittingly engaged in
inappropriate Russian contact.
Aug. 17, 2016: FBI and DNI provide Trump and Flynn first briefing after winning the
nomination, including on Russia. FBI slips in an agent posing as an assistant for the
briefing to secretly get a read on Flynn for the new investigation, according to the
Justice
Department inspector general report on Russia case. "SSA 1 told us that the briefing
provided him 'the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly some level of familiarity with
[Flynn]. So, should we get to the point where we need to do a subject interview ... would
have that to fall back on,'" the IG report said.
Sept, 2, 2016: While preparing a talking points memo for Obama ahead of a conversation
with Russian leader Vladimir Putin involving Russian election interference, Page texts
Strzok that Obama wants to be read-in on everything the FBI is doing on the Russia
collusion case. "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing," Page texted.
Nov. 10, 2016: Two days after Trump won the election, the president-elect meets with
Obama at the White House and the outgoing president encourages the
incoming president not to hire Flynn as an adviser.
Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing
and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House.
Jan. 4, 2017:
Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be
shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing
memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved.
Jan. 5–23, 2017: FBI prepares to conduct an interview of Flynn. The discussions
lead Priestap, the assistant director, to openly question in his
handwritten notes whether the bureau was "playing games" and trying to get Flynn to lie
so "we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Jan. 24, 2017: FBI conducts interview with Flynn.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was
offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about
Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017.
"We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who
believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said.
arrowrod , 26 minutes ago
Grenell comes in for a month, releases a **** load of "secret poop", then is replaced.
President Trump should fire the head of the FBI and replace with Grenell. I know, too
easy.
"Expletive deleted", (I'm looking for new cuss words) the FBI and DOJ appear to be a bunch
of stumble bum hacks, yet continue to get away with murder.
Schiff, lied and lied, but had immunity, because anything said on the house floor is safe
from prosecution. Yet, GOP congress critters didn't go on the house floor and read the
transcript from the testimony of the various liars.
"Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."-ThomasJefferson , 3 hours ago
Obama weaponized everything he could, including race, gender, religion, truth, law
enforcement, judiciary, news industry, intelligence community, international allies and
foes.
The most corrupt administration in the history of the republic. The abuse of power is mind
numbing.
Only one way to rectify the damage the Obama administration has done to the USA is to
systematically undo every single thing they touched.
Decimus Lunius Luvenalis , 3 hours ago
The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much
as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance,
venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their
indignation that their status position is merely relative.
Soloamber , 3 hours ago
The motive was to get Flynn fired and lay the ground work to impeach Trump . The problem is Flynn actually did nothing wrong but he was targeted , framed , and
blackmailed into claiming he lied over nothing illegal .
They destroyed his reputation , they financially ruined him and once they did that the sleazy prosecutors ran like rabbits . The judge is so in the bag , he bullied Flynn with implied threats about treason . The Judge is going to get absolutely fragged . Delay delay delay but the jig is up .
DOJ says case dropped and the Judge wants to play prosecutor . The Judge should be investigated along with the other criminals who framed Flynn . Who is the judge tied to ? Gee I wonder .
Nature_Boy_Wooooo , 4 hours ago
"As long as I'm alive the Republican party won't let anything happen to you."
"Thanks John McCain!......now let's set the trap."
"Let's do it Barry."
THORAX , 4 hours ago
The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance,
perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition.
subgen , 4 hours ago
One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his
political opponents that will never be exposed
sborovay07 , 5 hours ago
John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup
started. CNN should give their fake Pulitzers too the two reporters who told the truth. It
been like the tree that falls in the forest. However, once the arrests start more people will
see the tree that fell. These treasonists
need to pay for their crimes Bigly.
Omni Consumer Product , 4 hours ago
There's too much spookology here for a jury - much less the public - to decipher.
You need a smoking gun, like a tape of Obama saying "I want General Flynn assassinated
because Orange Man Bad".
In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was
just a question of who did what, and how much.
That's what is need here to swell the mass of public opinion. Of course, leftwing true
believers of "the Resistance" will never accept it, but that is what is needed to convince
the significant minority of more centrist Americans who haven't made a final decision
yet.
Lux , 5 hours ago
How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S.
politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental?
fackbankz , 5 hours ago
The Crown took us over in 1913. We're just the muscle.
Lord Raglan , 5 hours ago
Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his
candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to
it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what
MI-6 does.
MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have
been sabotaging Brexit for years.
Brennan's just not smart or creative enough to have figured out the Hoax on his own. He's
certainly corrupt enough.
flashmansbroker , 4 hours ago
More likely, the Brits were asked to do a favor.
Steele Hammorhands , 5 hours ago
It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a
fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved.
Side Note: Does anyone remember when Obama referred to himself as "the first US president
from Kenya" and then laughed about it?
CCP Mouthpiece Slams "Habitual Liar" Pompeo, Says US 'Incapable' Of Judging Hong Kong's
Autonomy by Tyler
Durden Wed, 05/27/2020 - 14:33 Update (1430ET): One of the most visible english-language
mouthpieces for the Communist Party has just weighed in on Secretary Pompeo's decision. Global
Times editor Hu Xijin accused Pompeo of being a habitual liar, and insisted it was not up to
the US Congress to decide whether Hong Kong is "autonomous".
Whether China's Hong Kong is autonomous, how could it possibly be up to the US to define?
Plus, it has a habitually lying Secretary of State who can tell the US Congress what Hong
Kong national security law is before it's even enacted. pic.twitter.com/JI1QLJNn6V
We imagine we'll be hearing more from the Foreign Ministry in a few hours.
* * *
In what appears to be a preview of the at-this-point inevitable White House decision to
strip Hong Kong of its preferred trading status over the new National Security law imposed by
Beijing, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted on Wednesday that he has "reported to Congress
that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China."
Congress now has the power to strip Hong Kong of its "special status" under the United
States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, which has allowed for the city-state to be treated more
favorably than the rest of China by the US.
The status is part of what's allowed Hong Kong to develop as a 'gateway to the West', a key
part of its appeal as an international city. Without the US 'special status', HK might lose its
international cachet as well, and eventually become just another Chinese city.
Indeed, without such easy access to the global economy, Hong Kong will become just an
extension of Shenzen, which lies just across the border on the mainland.
Today, I reported to Congress that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China, given
facts on the ground. The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong.
In a story published just minutes before Pompeo's tweet,
the Washington Post explains that "a US law passed last year requires the secretary of
state to certify - as part of an annual report to Congress - whether Hong Kong remains
'sufficiently autonomous' from Beijing to justify its unique treatment. That includes assessing
the degree to which Hong Kong's autonomy had been eroded by the government of China. (Hong Kong
is part of China but has a different legal and economic system, a holdover from its time as a
British colony.) The law also provides for sanctions against officials deemed responsible for
human rights abuses or undermining the city's autonomy. Such sanctions were also said to be
under consideration at the White House in the wake of the Chinese government's decision in May
to impose new national security laws on the city."
Stocks have shown a surprising degree of resilience, though the offshore yuan - a key
barometer of China-related risks - skidded lower.
Aside from the fact that the decision - which was widely anticipated - marks another
milestone in the deterioration in Washington-Beijing relations, as police in HK have already
begun arresting protesters brave enough to take the streets in the face of an unprecedented
police crackdown, it also jeopardizes nearly $40 billion in bilateral trade, as WaPo
explains.
"Longer term, people might have a second thought about raising money or doing business in
Hong Kong," said Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia excluding Japan at Daiwa Capital Markets.
Another expert described revoking HK's special status as "the nuclear option" for the US, and
"the beginning of the death of Hong Kong as we know it".
For the last day or so, the editor of China's Global Times has been taunting the US in a
series of tweets, daring it to use its navy and come save the protesting Hong Kongers, some of
whom have written messages begging Trump to interfere.
Will you really send US troops to land on Hong Kong? If you don't', your "powerful"
response is nothing but bluffing, isn't it? Canceling Hong Kong's separate customs territory
status is not "powerful," and China has long been prepared for that. pic.twitter.com/WhMNCP5HAs
Senior administration officials have insisted that this likely won't be the end of Trump's
aggression toward China. Earlier on Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who leads the
department in charge of Washington's crackdown on Huawei, said the president has more in
store.
While there's no question rescinding HK's special status will be interpreted as another
economy attack by Washington. But there's something else even more alarming possibly lying in
wait: The law passed last year in the US also requires the president to freeze US-based assets
and bar entry to anyone who helps China repress Hong Kong.
It's this possibility - which we could hear more about in the coming days - that should
really stick in investors' minds.
Obama ears protrude above this whole revaval of McCarthysim. he should end like the senator
McCarthy -- disgraced. And the damage caused by RussiaGate was already done and is
irrevocable.
CrowdStrike – the forensic investigation firm hired by the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) to inspect its computer servers in 2016 – admitted to Congressional
investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of Russian hacking, recently
declassified documents show.
CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry testified, "There's not evidence that [documents and
emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There's circumstantial evidence but
no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated." This was a crucial revelation because the
thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the positive assertion that CrowdStrike had
definitely proven a Russian hack. This sworn admission has been hidden from the public for over
two years, and subsequent commentary has focused on that singular outrage.
The next deductive step, though, leads to an equally crucial point: Circumstantial evidence
of Russian hacking is itself flimsy and collapses when not propped up by a claim of conclusive
forensic testing.
THE COVER UP.
On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails
to an unknown entity in a "spear phishing" scam. This has been called a "hack," but it was not.
Instead, it is was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the
internet.
The content of the emails was beyond embarrassing. They
showed election fraud and coordination with the media against the candidacy of Bernie
Sanders. The DNC and the Clinton campaign needed a cover story.
There already existed in Washington brooding suspicion that Vladimir Putin was working to
influence elections in the West. The DNC and the Clinton campaign set out to retrofit that
supposition to explain the emails.
On January 16, 2016, a silk-stocking Washington D.C. think tank, The Atlantic Council
(remember that name), had issued a
dispatch under the banner headline: "US Intelligence Agencies to Investigate Russia's
Infiltration of European Political Parties."
The lede was concise: "American intelligence agencies are to conduct a major investigation
into how the Kremlin is infiltrating political parties in Europe, it can be revealed."
There followed a series of pull quotes from an article that appeared in the The Telegraph ,
including that "James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence" was investigating
whether right wing political movements in Europe were sourced in "Russian meddling."
The dispatch spoke of "A dossier" that revealed "Russian influence operations" in Europe.
This was the first time trippy words like "Russian meddling" and "dossier" would appear
together in the American lexicon.
Most importantly, the piece revealed the Obama administration was spying on conservative
European political parties. This means, almost necessarily under the Five
Eyes Agreement , foreign agents were returning the favor and spying on the Trump
campaign.
Blaming Russia would be a handy way to deal with the Podesta emails. The problem was the
technologically impossibility of identifying the perpetrator in a phishing scheme. The only way
to associate Putin with the emails was circumstantially. The DNC retained CrowdStrike to
provide assistance.
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
announced : "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails
pending publication."
Two days later, CrowdStrike fed the Washington Post a
story , headlined, "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on
Trump."
The improbable tale was that the Russians had hacked the DNC computer servers and got away
with some opposition research on Trump. The article quoted CrowdStrike's chief technology
officer and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, who also happens to be a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
The next day, a new blog – Guccifer 2.0 – appeared on the
internet and announced:
Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by "sophisticated" hacker groups.
I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy,
very easy.
Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats'
mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get
access to the DNC's servers.
Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year and
saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?
Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's
network.
Guccifer 2.0 posted hundreds of pages of Trump opposition research allegedly hacked from the
DNC and emailed copies to Gawker and The Smoking Gun . In raw form, the opposition research was
one of the documents obtained in the Podesta emails, with a notable difference: It was widely
reported the document now contained "
Russian fingerprints ."
The document had been cut and pasted into a separate Russian Word template that yielded
an abundance of Russian "error "messages . In the
document's metadata was the name of the Russian secret police founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky,
written in the Russian language. The three-parenthesis formulation from the original post ")))"
is the Russian version of a smiley face used
commonly on social media. In addition, the blog's author deliberately used a Russian
VPN service visible in its emails even though there would have been many options to hide
national affiliation.
CrowdStrike would later test the computers and declare this to be the work of sophisticated
Russian spies. Alperovitch described it as, " skilled operational tradecraft ."
There is nothing skilled, though, in ham-handedly disclosing a Russian identity on the
internet when trying to hide it. The more reasonable inference is that this was a set-up. It
certainly looks like Guccifer 2.0 suddenly appeared in coordination with the Washington Post 's
article that appeared the previous day.
THE FRAME UP.
Knowing as we now do that CrowdStrike never corroborated a hack by forensic analysis, the
reasonable inference is that somebody was trying to frame Russia. Most likely, the entities
that spent three years falsely leading the world to believe that direct evidence of a hack
existed – CrowdStrike and the DNC – were the ones involved in the frame-up.
Lending weight to this theory: at the same moment CrowdStrike was raising a false Russian
flag, a different entity, Fusion GPS – also paid by the DNC – was inventing a
phony dossier that ridiculously connected Trump to Russia.
Somehow, the ruse worked.
Rather than report the content of the incriminating emails, the watchdog press instead
reported CrowdStrike's bad explanation: that Putin-did-it.
Incredibly, Trump was placed on the defensive for email leaks that showed his opponent
fixing the primaries. His campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was forced to resign because a
fake ledger suddenly appeared out of Ukraine connecting him to Russia.
Trump protested by stating the obvious: the federal government has "no idea" who was behind
the hacks. The FBI and CIA called him a liar, issuing a "
Joint Statement " that cited Guccifer 2.0, suggesting 17 intelligence agencies agree that
it was the Russians.
Hillary Clinton took advantage of this "intelligence assessment" in the October debate to
portray Trump as Putin's stooge"
"We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that
these espionage attacks, these cyber-attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin.
And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing,"
said Clinton.
The media's fact checkers
excoriated Trump for lying. This was the ultimate campaign dirty trick: a joint operation
by the intelligence agencies and the media against a political candidate. It has since been
learned that the "17 intelligence agencies" claptrap was always
false . Those responsible for the exaggeration were James Clapper, James Comey and John
Brennan.
Somehow, Trump won anyway.
Those who assert that it is a "conspiracy theory" to say that CrowdStrike would fabricate
the results of computer forensic testing to create a false Russian flag should know that it was
caught doing exactly that around the time it was inspecting the DNC computers.
On Dec. 22, 2016, CrowdStrike caused an international stir when it claimed to have uncovered
evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery computer app to help pro-Russian
separatists. Voice of America later determined the claim
was false , and CrowdStrike retracted its finding. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense was forced
to eat crow and admit that the hacking never happened. If you wanted a computer testing firm to
fabricate a Russian hack for political reasons in 2016, CrowdStrike was who you went out and
hired.
Perhaps most insidiously, the Obama administration played the phony Russian interference
card during the transition to try to end Trump's presidency before it started. As I
wrote in December 2017:
Michael Flynn was indicted for a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on
December 28, 2016, seven weeks after the election.
That was the day after the outgoing president expelled 35 Russian diplomats -- including
gardeners and chauffeurs -- for interfering in the election. Yes, that really happened.
The Obama administration had wiretapped Flynn's conversation with the ambassador, hoping
to find him saying something they could use to support their wild story about collusion.
The outrage, for some reason, is not that an outgoing administration was using wiretaps to
listen in on a successor's transition. It is that Flynn might have signaled to the Russians
that the Trump administration would have a different approach to foreign policy.
How dare Trump presume to tell an armed nuclear state to stand down because everyone in
Washington was in a state of psychological denial that he was elected?
Let's establish one thing early here: It is okay for an incoming administration to
communicate its foreign policy preferences during a transition even if they differ from the
lame duck administration .
.If anything, Flynn was too reserved in his conversation with the Russian ambassador. He
should have said, "President-elect Trump believes this Russian collusion thing is a fantasy
and these sanctions will be lifted on his first day in office."
That would have been perfectly legal. It also happens to be what FBI Director Comey and
the rest were hoping Flynn would do. They wanted to get a Trump official on tape making an
accommodation to the Russians.
The accommodation would then be cited to suggest a quid pro quo that proved the
nonexistent collusion. Instead, Flynn was uncharacteristically noncommittal in his
conversation with the ambassador. Drat!
They did have a transcript of what he said, though. This is where the tin-pot dictator
behavior of Comey is fully displayed. He invited Flynn to be interviewed by the FBI,
supposedly about Russian collusion to steal the election.
If you're Flynn, you say, "Sure, I want to tell you 15 different ways that there was no
collusion and when do you want to meet."
What Flynn did not know was that the purpose of the interview had nothing to do with the
election. It would be a test pitting Flynn's memory against the transcript.
Think about that for a moment. Comey did not need to ask Flynn what was said in the
conversation with the ambassador -- he had a transcript. The only reason to ask Flynn about
it was to cross him up.
That is the politicization of the FBI. It is everything Trump supporters rail against when
they implore him to drain the swamp. The inescapable conclusion is that the FBI set a trap
for the incoming national security advisor to affect the foreign policy of the newly elected
president.
Flynn made the mistake of not being altogether clear about what he had discussed with the
ambassador. In his defense, he did not believe he was sitting there to tell the FBI how the
Trump administration was dealing with Russia going forward. The conversation was supposed to
be about the election.
He certainly did not think the FBI would unmask his comments in a FISA wiretap and compare
them to his answers. That would be illegal.
Exhibit 5 to the DOJ's recent Motion to Dismiss the Flynn indictment confirms the Obama
administration's bad faith in listening in on his conversation with the ambassador. The
plotters admit , essentially,
that they looked at the transcript to see whether Flynn said anything that caused Russia to
stand-down. Had General Flynn promised to lift the sanctions, the Obama administration would
have claimed it was the pro quo that went with the quid of Putin's interference.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/KeSHRR5bMr0
After Trump's inauguration, the FBI and Justice Department launched a special counsel
investigation that accepted, as a given, CrowdStrike's dubious conclusion that Russia had
interfered in the election. The only remaining question was whether Trump himself colluded in
the interference. There followed a two-year inquiry that did massive political damage to Trump
and the movement that put him in office.
Tucker Carlson rightly made Trey Gowdy squirm recently for Republican acquiescence in the shoddy
underpinnings of the Russia hoax. It was not only Gowdy, though. Establishment
politicians and
pundits have been all too willing for years to wallow in fabricated
Russian intrigue , at the expense of the Trump presidency.
This perfectly illustrates Republican perfidy: Gifted with undeserved victory in a
generational realignment that they were dragged to kicking and screaming, they proceed to
question its source and validity. Because if Trump was a product of KGB- esque intrigue, then
Hillary was a victim of meddling. Trump was a hapless beneficiary. The deplorables were not
only racist losers, they were also Putin's unwitting stooges.
As I first noted
in December 2016, the Washington establishment deliberately set out to fan Russian anxiety to
conduct war against the Trump administration. Perhaps it is time to admit that those of us
chided as " crazies
" who doubted Russian interference – including Trump
himself – were right all along.
In the after-action assessment of what went wrong, it should be noted that non-insiders are
the ones who have called this from the beginning, in places like
here ,
here ,
here , here
, and here . That
is partly what the president means when he Tweets support for his " keyboard warriors ." As
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany pointed out on Friday, the
White House press corps has completely missed the story.
Thank you to all of my great Keyboard Warriors. You are better, and far more brilliant,
than anyone on Madison Avenue (Ad Agencies). There is nobody like you!
-- Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump) May 15,
2020
This scandal is huge, much bigger than Watergate, and compromising in its resolution is
destructive. If Republicans continue to stupidly concede phony
Russian intrigue , the plotters
will say they were justified to investigate it.
The recent CrowdStrike testimony drop ended any chance at middle ground. This was a rank
political operation and indicting a few FBI agents is not going to resolve anything.
CrowdStrike's circumstantial evidence that launched this probe is ridiculous. We'll soon
know if the Durham investigation has the will to defy powerful insiders of both parties and say
so.
"... In reality, the part left out of the story is that the phone call to Kislyak on December 22, 2016, was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy, meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution. Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23 rd . ..."
"... The phone call made at the request of Israel was neither benign nor ethical as the Barack Administration was still in power and managing the nation's foreign policy. At the time, son-in-law Jared Kushner was Trump's point man on the Middle East. He and his family have extensive ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu's staying at the Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance. All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with the incoming Trumpsters, look no further. ..."
"... And it should be observed that the Israelis were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express their views to the incoming Trump. Kushner went far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of foreign policy as he was actively trying to clandestinely subvert and reverse a decision made by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu made him, in intelligence terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he didn't quite see himself that way. ..."
"... Kushner's actions, as well as those of Flynn, would most certainly have been covered by the Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a "conspiracy against the United States." But in spite of all that the investigation went after Flynn instead of Kushner. As Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis , that part of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it was and continues to be both ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible. ..."
There are two stories that seem to have been under-reported in the past couple of weeks. The
first involves Michael Flynn's dealings with the Russian United Nations Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. And the second describes yet another bit of espionage conducted by a foreign country
directed against the United States. Both stories involve the State of Israel.
The bigger story is, of course, the dismissal by Attorney General William Barr of the
criminal charges against former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn based on
malfeasance by the FBI investigators. The curious aspect of the story as it is being related by
the mainstream media is that it repeatedly refers to Flynn as having unauthorized contacts with
the Russian Ambassador and then having lied about it. The implication is that there was
something decidedly shady about Flynn talking to the Russians and that the Russians were up to
something.
In reality, the part left out of the story is that the phone call to Kislyak on December 22,
2016, was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating
was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy,
meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass
without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each
delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution.
Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not
agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23
rd .
In taking the phone calls from a soon-to-be senior American official who would within weeks
be part of a new administration in Washington, the Russians did nothing wrong, but the media is
acting like there was some kind of Kremlin conspiracy seeking to undermine U.S. democracy. It
would not be inappropriate to have some conversations with an incoming government team and
Kislyak also did nothing that might be regarded as particularly responsive to Team Trump
overtures since he voted contrary to Flynn's request.
The phone call made at the request of Israel was neither benign nor ethical as the Barack
Administration was still in power and managing the nation's foreign policy. At the time,
son-in-law Jared Kushner was Trump's point man on the Middle East. He and his family have
extensive
ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu's staying at the
Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's
illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared
has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the
relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance.
All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with
the incoming Trumpsters, look no further.
And it should be observed that the Israelis
were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express
their views to the incoming Trump. Kushner went far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of
foreign policy as he was actively trying to clandestinely subvert and reverse a decision made
by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu made him, in intelligence
terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he didn't quite see
himself that way.
Kushner's actions, as well as those of Flynn, would most certainly have been covered by the
Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on
behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a "conspiracy against the United
States." But in spite of all that the investigation went after Flynn instead of Kushner. As
Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis , that part
of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it was
and continues to be both ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible.
The
second story , which has basically been made to disappear, relates to spying by Israel
against critics in the United States. The revelation that Israel was again using its
telecommunications skills to spy on foreigners came from an Oakland California federal court
lawsuit initiated by Facebook (FB) against the Israeli surveillance technology company NSO
Group. FB claimed that NSO has been using servers located in the United States to infect with
spyware hundreds of smartphones being used by attorneys, journalists, human rights activists,
critics of Israel and even of government officials. NSO allegedly used WhatsApp, a messaging
app owned by FB, to hack into the phones and install malware that would enable the company to
monitor what was going on with the devices. It did so by employing networks of remote servers
located in California to enter the accounts.
NSO has inevitably claimed that they do indeed provide spyware, but that it is sold to
clients who themselves operate it with the "advice and technical support to assist customers in
setting up" but it also promotes its products as being "used to stop terrorism, curb violent
crime, and save lives." It also asserts that its software cannot be used against U.S. phone
numbers.
Facebook, which did its own extensive research into NSO activity, alleges that NSO rented a
Los Angeles-based server from a U.S. company called QuadraNet that it then used to launch 720
hacks on smartphones and other devices. It further claims in the court filing that the company
reverse-engineering WhatsApp, using an program that it developed to access WhatsApp's servers
and deploy "its spyware against approximately 1,400 targets" before " covertly transmit[ting]
malicious code through WhatsApp servers and inject[ing]" spyware into telephones without the
knowledge of the owners."
The filing goes on to assert that the "Defendants had no authority to access WhatsApp's
servers with an imposter program, manipulate network settings, and commandeer the servers to
attack WhatsApp users. That invasion of WhatsApp's servers and users' devices constitutes
unlawful computer hacking."
NSO, which is largely staffed by former (sic) Israeli intelligence officers, had previously
been in the news for its proprietary spyware known as Pegasus, which "can gather information
about a mobile phone's location, access its camera, microphone and internal hard drive, and
covertly record emails, phone calls and text messages." Pegasus was reportedly used in the
killing of Saudi dissident journalist Adnan Kashoggi in Istanbul last year and it has more
recently been suggested as a resource for tracking coronavirus distance violators. Outside
experts have accused the company of selling its technology and expertise to countries that have
used it to spy on dissidents, journalists and other critics.
Israel routinely exploits the access provided by its telecommunications industry to spy on
the host countries where those companies operate. The companies themselves report regularly
back to Mossad contacts and the technology they provide routinely has a "backdoor" for secretly
accessing the information accessible through the software. In fact, Israel conducts espionage
and influence operations both directly and through proxies against the United States more
aggressively than any other "friendly" country, which once upon a time included being able to
tap into the "secure" White House phones used by Bill Clinton to speak with Monica
Lewinsky.
Last September, it was revealed that the placement of technical surveillance devices by
Israel in Washington D.C. was clearly intended to target cellphone communications to and from
the Trump White House. As the president frequently chats with top aides and friends on
non-secure phones, the operation sought to pick up conversations involving Trump with the
expectation that the security-averse president would say things off the record that might be
considered top secret.
A Politicoreport
detailed how "miniature surveillance devices" referred to as "Stingrays" were used to imitate
regular cell phone towers to fool phones being used nearby into providing information on their
locations and identities. According to the article, the devices are referred to by technicians
as "international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture
the contents of calls and data use."
Over one year ago, government security agencies discovered the electronic footprints that
indicated the presence of the surveillance devices near the White House. Forensic analysis
involved dismantling the devices to let them "tell you a little about their history, where the
parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get
you to what the origins are." One source observed afterwards that "It was pretty clear that the
Israelis were responsible."
So two significant stories currently making the rounds have been bowdlerized and disappeared
to make the Israeli role in manipulating and spying against the United States go away. They are
only two of many stories framed by a Zionist dominated media to control the narrative in a way
favorable to the Jewish state. One would think that having a president of the United States who
is the most pro-Israel ever, which is saying a great deal in and of itself, would be enough,
but unfortunately when dealing with folks like Benjamin Netanyahu there can never be any
restraint when dealing with the "useful idiots" in Washington.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .
When it comes to
foreign policy, Pompeo's penchant for undermining America's credibility is top-notch
'Pompeo is a
natural Trumpist.' Donald Trump's disdain for the
people, country and values his office is supposed to represent is unmatched in recent memory.
And he has found in the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo , a kindred spirit who has
embraced his role as Trumpism's number one proselytizer to the world.
Pompeo doesn't wield nearly as much power or have the jurisdiction to inflict damage on as
wide a range of issues as the president. He's not as crass or erratic as Trump, and his Twitter
feed seems dedicated more to childish
mockery than outright attacks. But when it comes to foreign policy, Pompeo's penchant for
undermining America's credibility is top-notch.
At Pompeo's recommendation,
Trump fired the state department's inspector general, who is supposed to be an independent
investigator charged with looking into potential wrongdoing inside the department. Steve Linick
was just the latest in a series of inspectors general across
the government that Trump had fired in an attempt to hide the misconduct of his administration
– but it also shone a spotlight on how Pompeo has undermined his agency.
Watchdog was investigating Pompeo for arms deal and staff misuse
before firing
According to news reports, Pompeo was being investigated by the inspector general for
bypassing Congress and possibly breaking the law in sending weapons to Saudi Arabia, even
though his own department and the rest of the US government
advised against the decision. He was also supposedly
organizing fancy dinners – paid for by taxpayers – with influential
businesspeople and TV personalities that seemed geared more towards supporting Pompeo's
political career than advancing US foreign policy goals. And he was reportedly being
scrutinized for using department personnel to conduct personal business, such as getting
dry cleaning and walking his dog.
But these revelations merely reaffirm a pattern of activities by Pompeo unbecoming of the
nation's top diplomat. When the House of Representatives was in the process of impeaching Trump
over his attempt to extort Ukraine for personal political purposes – an act that Pompeo
was aware of – Pompeo defended Trump while throwing under the bus career state department
officials, like the ousted US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who spoke out. Pompeo
has regularly ignored Congress, withholding documents from lawmakers – including during
the Ukraine impeachment investigation – and refusing to appear for testimony. In 2019,
the IG released a report detailing
political retaliation against career state department officials being perpetrated by Trump
officials. And Pompeo has spent considerable time traveling to Kansas and conducting media
interviews there, fueling speculation that he has been using his position to tee up a run for
the Senate, a
violation of the Hatch Act.
Pompeo is a natural Trumpist. In her fantastic profile
of the secretary of state, Susan Glasser notes of his first congressional race: "Pompeo ran a
nasty race against the Democrat, an Indian-American state legislator named Raj Goyle, who,
unlike Pompeo, had grown up in Wichita. Pompeo's campaign tweeted praise for an article calling
Goyle a 'turban topper', and a supporter bought billboards urging residents to 'Vote American – Vote Pompeo'."
... ... ...
Facebook
Twitter Pinterest 'Trump is undermining American leadership in incalculable ways, and
Pompeo has weaponized the state department on the president's behalf.' Photograph: Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters
Next to Trump's assault on US values, Pompeo's role as top Trump lackey may seem
insignificant. But the secretary of state is often the most senior US official that other
countries and publics hear from on any number of issues. Even with Trump in the Oval Office, a
secretary of state that was committed to the constitution - not Trump - would at least be able
to fight for the values that US foreign policy should embody,
and shield the department's day-to-day business from Trump's outbursts.
The work that
department professionals conduct around the world – helping American citizens abroad get
home in the early days of the pandemic or coordinating assistance to other countries to cope
with the coronavirus – is vital to American national security, and at the core of the
image that America projects abroad.
Trump is undermining American leadership in incalculable ways, and Pompeo has weaponized
the state department on his behalf
It is also a remarkable attempt to ignore the factual history:
[The Taliban] have outlasted a superpower through nearly 19 years of grinding war. And
dozens of interviews with Taliban officials and fighters in three countries, as well as
with Afghan and Western officials, illuminated the melding of old and new approaches and
generations that helped them do it.
After 2001, the Taliban reorganized as a decentralized network of fighters and low-level
commanders empowered to recruit and find resources locally while the senior leadership
remained sheltered in neighboring Pakistan.
That is simply wrong. Between the end of 2001 and 2007 there were no Taliban. The movement
had dissolved.
The author later acknowledges that there were no Taliban activity throughout those years.
But the narrative is again skewed:
Many Taliban commanders interviewed for this article said that in the initial months after
the invasion, they could scarcely even dream of a day they might be able to fight off the
U.S. military. But that changed once their leadership regrouped in safe havens provided by
Pakistan's military -- even as the Pakistanis were receiving hundreds of millions of
dollars in American aid.
From that safety, the Taliban planned a longer war of attrition against U.S. and NATO
troops. Starting with more serious territorial assaults in 2007, the insurgents revived and
refined an old blueprint the United States had funded against the Soviets in the same
mountains and terrain -- but now it was deployed against the American military.
Even before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan the Taliban had recognized that they lacked the
capability to run a country. They had managed to make Afghanistan somewhat secure. The
warlords who had fought each other after the Soviet draw down were suppressed and the streets
were again safe. But there was no development, no real education or health system and no
money to create them.
When the U.S. invaded the Taliban dispersed. On December 5 2001 Taliban leader Mullah Omar
resigned and went into hiding within Afghanistan. For one day the Taliban defense minister
Mullah Obaidullah became the new leader. From the
The Secret Life of Mullah Omar by Bette Dam:
The next day, Mullah Obaidullah drove up north to Kandahar's Shah Wali Kot district to meet
with Karzai and his supporters. In what has become known as the "Shah Wali Kot Agreement",
Mullah Obaidullah and the Taliban agreed to lay down their arms and retire to their homes
or join the government. The movement effectively disbanded itself. Karzai agreed, and in a
media appearance the next day, he announced that while al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were
the enemies of Afghanistan, the Taliban were sons of the soil and would effectively receive
amnesty. For the moment, the war was over.
The Taliban fighters went back to their home villages and families. Most stayed in
Afghanistan. Some of the leaders and elder members went back to the tribal regions of
Pakistan where their families had been living as refugees since the Soviet invasion in
1979.
The Taliban did not plan a longer war of attrition - at least not between 2001 and 2006.
The movement had simply ended to exist.
The big question is then why it came back but the New York Times has little to
say about that:
From the start, the insurgents seized on the corruption and abuses of the Afghan government
put in place by the United States, and cast themselves as arbiters of justice and Afghan
tradition -- a powerful part of their continued appeal with many rural Afghans in
particular. With the United States mostly distracted with the war in Iraq, the insurgency
widened its ambitions and territory.
No, the 'corruption and abuses of the Afghan government' were not the reason the Taliban
were reestablished. It were the abuses of the U.S. occupation that recreated them. The
publicly announced amnesty Karzai and Mullah Obaidullah had agreed upon, was ignored by the
U.S. commanders and politicians.
The CIA captured random Afghans as 'Taliban' and brutally tortured them - some to death.
U.S. Special Forces randomly raided private homes and bombed whole villages to rubble. The
brutal warlords, which the Taliban had suppressed, were put back into power. When they wanted
to grab a piece of land they told their U.S. handlers that the owner was a 'Taliban'. The
U.S. troops would then removed that person one way or the other. The behavior of the
occupiers was an affront to every Afghan.
By 2007 Mullah Omar and his helper Jabbar Omari were hiding in Siuray, a district around
twenty miles southeast of Qalat. A large U.S. base was nearby. Bette Dam
writes of the people's mood:
As the population turned against the government due to its corruption and American
atrocities, they began to offer food and clothing to the house-hold for Jabbar Omari and
his mysterious friend.
It was the absurd stupidity and brutality with which the U.S. occupied the country that
gave Afghans the motive to again fight against an occupier or at least to support such a
fight.
At the same time the Pakistani military had come to fear a permanent U.S. presence in its
backyard. It connected the retired Taliban elders with its sponsors in the Gulf region and
organized the logistics for a new insurgency. The Taliban movement was reestablished with new
leadership but under the old name.
The old tribal command networks where again activates and the ranks were filled with newly
disgruntled Afghans. From that point on it was only a question of time until the U.S. would
have to leave just like the Soviets and Brits had to do before them.
By December 2001 the war against the Taliban had ended. During the following five years
the U.S. fought against an imaginary enemy that no longer existed. It was this war on the
wider population that by 2007 created a new insurgency that adopted the old name.
A piece that claims to explain why the Taliban have won the war but ignores the crucial
period between 2001 and 2007 misses the most important point that made the Taliban victory
possible.
The will of the Afghan people to liberate their country from a foreign occupation. Thanks
b for doing a good job in restating the record. IMO, the Outlaw US Empire followed the same
MO as it did in Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines well before them all, all of which were
based on the White Supremacist Settler credo underlying the culture of the US military that
was just called out--again-- in
this very powerful NY Times Editorial , and Iraq was no different either. The
contrast between the Editorial Board and its Newsroom writers is quite stark when their
products are compared--one lies about recent history while the other attempts to educate more
fully about the very sordid past of the most revered federal government institution.
Bombing civilians is recruiting more enemies. Also, in this mistaken adventure the US has
been stupidly allied with and funding the neighboring country (Pakistan) which is supporting
the people (Taliban) who are killing Americans.
General McChrystal's Report to President Obama, Aug 30, 2009:
'Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. . .and are reportedly
aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI [Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence ]. .
. .Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including
significant efforts and financial investment. In addition, the current Afghan government is
perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan
people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional
tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India." . . .Simply put,
Pakistan didn't want to be in an Indian sandwich with its mortal enemy on two sides.
President Obama was then in the process of more than tripling the US military strength in
Afghanistan, sending 70,000 more troops to that graveyard of empires (UK, Russia). Three
months later, December 1, 2009 at West Point, Obama gave a rah-rah speech to cadets
including: . . ."Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan
is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan."
This article wants on purpose link taliban to Pakistan..there is no connection between
Talibans and yanks backed Pakistani militias..and there is no pakistani talibans..they want
to hide the truth confusing the people but the truth is that the violent and illegal
occupation of Afghanistan created a strong resistance in an already strong population.The
puppet-method didn't work there and this article is the last (I hope) attempt to give a false
narrative of the events.18 years of war for nothing..what the empire has gained from this
war?nothing.
LuBa--
"what the empire has gained from this war?nothing"
Hmmm, not sure about that. First of all it has kept Russia out of Afghanistan, and
somewhere I read that Afghanistan is very central to controlling Eurasia.
I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was planned before 911 as well, so there must
be some reason for that.
The writer of that NYT piece, Mujib Mashal, studied history (presumably the history of
Afghanistan and western and southern Asia) at Columbia University - O'Bomber's alma mater, I
believe - and in-between working as an NYT intern in Kabul and his current senior
correspondent role, worked for a time with Al Jazeera in Doha. One wonders how much effort
Mashal and other NYT writers with similar backgrounds put into reordering reality to fit
whatever fairy-tale narratives they were taught at Columbia University.
The underlying aim in MM's hit-piece must surely be to set up Pakistan as a target for
criticism. Some sort of narrative arc leading to removing Imran Khan as Prime Minister there
can't be too far away.
Soviet invasion? The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 permitted -
inter alia - military assistance and advice to the Afghani government if requested. Saying
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan is like saying Russia invaded Syria.
Opium production is now seven-fold since the arrival of the empire. It is afflicting
Afghanistan and neighboring countries with addiction all the while paying for CIA
operations.
Mission Accomplished.
Let's not forget the MOAB, we are told was detonated over -- caves?
Millions of dollars earned off-the-books from drug trafficking plus enough product to
carry out narco-aggression against Iran, Russia, China and the 'stans is nothing?
Superb.
The relationship with Pakistan has two aspects : the borders between the countries, imposed
by the British, make no sense, dividing the Pashtun people artificially. The second is that
the US has long used Pakistan as a pawn in the region. This goes back to the foundation of
the country in 1948 and malign US influence in Pakistan has been the major factor in the
country's problems. It is a reminder that there are no known limits to the hypocrisy of the
people running the USA that the links between the Taliban, nurtured under US sponsorship in
Pakistan which was used as a secure base beyond Kabul's writ, and Pakistan are attributed to
Pakistan's initiative.
Another matter which one supposes that the New York Times neglected to mention is that under
US sponsorship since 2001 the Heroin industry, reduced almost to nothing by the Taliban
government has ballooned into the proportions we have grown to expect where US influence is
established. Besides the corpses of those bombed, tortured and shot to death by the
imperialist armies there are millions of victims of the drug trades, ranging from those
killed by death squads in the producing countries, and those in, for example Colombia and
Honduras, victimised by narco governments to the millions of addicts around the world.
Part of the truth of Afghanistan is that the US and its allies have been protecting the
criminal narcotics trade in order to employ its profits for their own evil purposes.
Please allow to add to b 's very good overview another subject: drug planting,
producing and dealing in Afghanistan. The Taliban first were against drugs (religious
reasons), but when they saw that the people were exhausted by the Americans and their corrupt
Afghan friends, and had no more income, they allowed the farmers to plant opium poppy for the
EXPORT. Soon they also realized the profits for themselves (to change into weapons). And so
it happened that Afghanistan became a major producer for the world market. It's an open
question (at least for me) how much international networks with connections to US-people and
US-institutions (like CIA) are involved in this drug dealing business originating in
Afghanistan.
arby | 7 wrote:
I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was planned before 911 as well, so there
must be some reason for that.
Interesting question (more see below)! A few days ago I made some research to a parallel
problem: was "homeland security" also in the development before 9/11? Parallel to the war
against Afghanistan another war was started: against the American people. Under the roof of
'Homeland Security' in the interior; parallel zu 'National Security' as a topic in foreign
politics. Bush jun. appointed Tom Ridge within 28 days, did they have some plans before? I
found some remarks in Edward LIPTON's book, Homeland Security Office (2002), indicating
plannings as early as Dec. 2000 and Jan. 2001. Please also remember that there were anthrax
mailings parallel to 9/11. Please remember that Homeland Security Act has some paragraphs
about defense against bioweapon attacks and has some paragraphs about vaccine, too. Please
remember that early plannings of homeland security had also controlling american people with
the help of lockdowns. That trail was followed during the next years in 'hidden' further
plannings as You may find them here:
Next interesting question: when did THEY begin to focus on the twin towers? WTC area was
public property and administration. Very profitable. Then SIVLERSTEIN bought the WTC7 ground
and started to built and rented it, among others, to CIA. And then THEY were looking just out
of the window to see the twin towers. And then these very pofitable buildings were privatized
- why? And they were insured. That privatization was a very dramatic poker which was won by
SILVERSTEIN, too. Why? Some 'renovation' had to be done of course when SILVERSTEIN took over
the property. I remember that companies included were overseen by one of the Bush sons
(Jebb?), and so on ...
Back to the questions about planning of War against Afghanistan. There should be documents
available (foreign policy planning & military planning) because the background primarily
was (according to my estimation) geopolitical. But there is a greater framework within which
the war against terrorism has to be seen. On the day after 9/11 a document was published for
the first time which had been collected under Bush Sen. in the 1980s: 'Report of the Vice
President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism'. It says that terrorism follows
overpopulation in undeveloped countries. So we are here within the idea of depopulation, and
realizing that we can look on the Bill & Melinda Gates' Charitable Works as a far more
human version. For further reading three LINKs are given below.
Concluding, I would like to say: unterstanding and commenting the past doesn't help much.
THEY are acting and THEY are planning, day by day. Things only will change if 'we' are
planning and acting, too. And if 'we' want a better world our instruments must be better than
THEIRs.
Soviet invasion? The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 permitted -
inter alia - military assistance and advice to the Afghani government if requested. Saying
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan is like saying Russia invaded Syria.
Posted by: arby | May 26 2020 20:03 utc | 7 I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was
planned before 911 as well, so there must be some reason for that.
It's called 1) oil pipeline, and 2) heroin for the CIA to finance their "black black"
operations. That's not a typo: there are "black budget" operations not identified in the
Federal budget - and "black black" operations that are financed outside the Federal budget.
No one knows how much that is.
The "official" Black Budget operations are described in a Harvard University document
as:
On March 18, 2019 the Office the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), announced its
request for the largest sum ever, $62.8 billion, for funding U.S. intelligence operations
in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020.1This request spans the classified funding from more than a dozen
agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program (NIP).2 The U.S. Government spends
these funds on data collection, counterintelligence, and covert action.3 The DNI also
requested $21.2 billion for FY 2019 for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) devoted to
intelligence activity in support of U.S. military operations.4 For FY2020, it is likely to
request a similar figure, for a total estimated request of approximately $85 billion for
the "Black Budget," t he U.S. Government's secret military and intelligence expenditures.
Interesting article here that shows how some of this has been done in Asia, Saudi Arabia,
Central America, etc.
Before his arrest, the alleged drug trafficker worked with the CIA and the DEA, received
payments from the government, and, at one point, visited Washington and New York on the
DEA's dime. ,/BLOCKQUOTE
Fantastic interview. all Obama gang should be prosecuted for their attempt of coup
d'état. Farkas behaviors looks like standard operating procecure for the neocon scum
That an effective but dirty trick on the part of this neocon prostitute Evelyn Farkas :
"Putin want me to lose, send me some money"
Farkas is running primarily for the same reason that Andy mccabes wife ran - so she can
pick up her payment from the dnc in the form of campaign contributions. It's money
laundering
Boom 12:03 Yes Saagar, that's what I
was hollering! This is far more insidious. There was NO ONE in power that believed birtherism
whereas the entire National Security apparatus pushed this bogus coup on the President. The
NSA, CIA, FBI, and media were all complicit. Do not let Krystal get away with a false
equivalence. She is bullshitting. Chuck Schumer even threatened Trump on national television
saying that the intelligence agencies have six ways til Sunday to take you down.
I wish Farcas had spent a bit more time talking on MSNBC , I'm sure she would have coughed
up more material. I would also like to see her texts and phone calls received after that a
appearance, I'm sure some Obama people were pulling their hair out as she was spilling the
whole scenario and called her immediately after.
Russiagate was built on the willingness of a lot of people to believe the worst about
Trump. That's it. Which honestly says more about the narrow-mindedness of Trump haters than
it does about Trump himself. Whatever Trump is or isn't, and I'm no Trump supporter though I
never got seduced into hating him, the one truth to come out of this is that his haters don't
care about evidence, or the rule of law, or even common sense.
If Russian interference was as de-stabilizing to our democracy as these people would have
led us to believe, then, how de-stabilizing would carelessly weaponizing it potentially be?
These people have no place in government or any form of public discourse. They are a
malignancy.
div
Was Flynn a complete idiot or already ont he hook and in a position not to deny McCabe
reuaest not to use lawer? @Jim
So you can only conceive of three reasons for a person to "lawyer up"?
How about this: A badged employee of the government wish to ask you a few question. Just to
help in their investigation of something or another. So you go in to be interrogated. Your
interrogator has 20 years of employment and has done several interrogations a week for those
20 years. It is your first time being interrogated.
A smart person asks for a lawyer immediately. You are the pine rider for the little sisters
of the poor and the interrogator is Nolan Ryan. You are Rudy the waterboy and the
interrogator is Dick Butkus. You are a mook a skell, just another low life.
As a general rule, you get yourself a lawyer first before you answer anything. This is
something General Flynn knew and ignored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
But, But, BUT I am innocent, I have nothing to hide, it is a citizens duty to "help"
legitimate authority, I dindunuffin innocence is irrelevant. All of us have our secrets and
our private things and you can become a liar to legal authority quicker than you can imagine
just by one wrong word, or one nervous twitch, or a simple hesitation, even an ambiguity in
your wording of some innocuous answer to some "unimportant" question.
You can ask the Colonel how interrogation works he spent many years honing his art.
For how an innocent person can be caught in a perjury trap, read Chapters 18 and 19, "The FBI
Comes Calling" and "Investigated By Mueller, Harassed By Congress" of K.T. McFarland's book
"Revolution".
It only costs $9.99 at Google Play Store and IMO, is well worth it for those two chapters
alone. (Hope that endorsement for the book is okay in context.)
"In 2019, a federal jury convicted Flynn's business associate, Bijan Kian, on two
felonies: conspiracy to violate lobbying laws and failure to register as a foreign agent for
Turkey. Flynn was scheduled to testify against Kian but changed his story at the last minute,
causing problems for the prosecution. The judge later tossed the verdict, saying the
prosecution didn't prove its case.
As part of an overall deal with federal prosecutors, Flynn was never charged in connection
with his lobbying for Turkey. It seems unlikely that he ever will"
I don't know much about this aspect of the Flynn Saga
The DC Circuit court wants Sullivan to explain himself. That will be instructive as to why
he wants Gleeson to provide a third party opinion of why Flynn should be charged with
perjury.
Terence
This is one aspect of Flynn that seems a bit shady but very much in line with how DC
trades in influence peddling. Apparently he was paid by Turkey to use his influence and put
together a media campaign to get Gulen extradited to Turkey.
As a general rule, the more that hawks harp on the need to preserve U.S. "credibility," the
weaker their argument for armed aggression.
We will fight them over there so we do not have
to face them in the United States of America," George W. Bush said in a 2007 speech to the
American Legion, in a labored defense of his disastrous foreign policy record.
This is one of the better-known and more ridiculous rationalizations for both the endless
"war on terror" and for the Iraq war. The Bush administration conflated these two very
different conflicts and pretended that an aggressive, illegal invasion of Iraq had something to
do with defending the United States. There is absolutely no reason to think that having U.S.
forces fighting in Iraq in 2003 or 2007 or 2020 has made Americans the least bit more secure,
but this is the official line that we are still being fed today. Many of us could see long ago
that this was false, but the toxic legacy of the myth that aggression brings security remains
with us even now.
This myth that aggression brings security is certainly not unique to the U.S., but over the
last several decades our government has been one of its most prominent promoters. It is the
myth that has distorted our counterterrorism and counterproliferation policies for most of my
lifetime, and it continues to provide fodder to advocates of preventive war against Iran, North
Korea, and any other adversary that they think might possibly pose a threat in the distant
future.
The practical consequences of believing this myth are overexpansion and overreach. Once
you accept that your security is contingent on going on the offensive against potential
threats, you begin to lose the ability to calculate costs and benefits rationally. Instead, you
begin to see every nuisance as an intolerable menace. That encourages increasingly reckless and
destructive policies as you lash out against anything and everything that you think might be a
danger to you. As a result, you exhaust yourself, alienate your allies, and drive other states
to band together to protect themselves from you. The U.S. has not quite reached that last
stage, but it is heading in that direction.
Great powers fall into the trap of overexpansion again and again. These states make this
costly error because they embrace myths that encourage them to fight in places that don't
matter and to make commitments that they don't have to make. Even though expansion inflicts
significant damage on the state that engages in it, advocates of aggressive policies never stop
insisting that expansion brings security. The U.S. has been going through a period of
overexpansion for almost twenty years, and the costs of continue to mount. At the same time,
there is tremendous resistance in Washington to anything even resembling retrenchment.
Jack Snyder wrote the classic study of the myths behind great power overexpansion,
Myths of
Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition , thirty years ago. When he
concluded his book, the Soviet Union still existed and he had some reason to believe that the
United States had learned from its disastrous intervention in Vietnam. Snyder's work is
arguably more relevant now than it was then. However, the last thirty years of U.S. foreign
policy show that he was far too optimistic about the U.S. government's ability to learn from
its past excesses and failures.
Snyder argued that "American intervention in the Vietnam War was a clear case of strategic
overextension." He added that it is "difficult to explain in terms of any Realist criteria,
judging either from hindsight or from information available at the time."
U.S. intervention in Vietnam was fueled by ideology and the misguided belief that U.S.
"credibility" elsewhere would be jeopardized if the U.S. did not keep fighting there. This
argument made no sense when it was made, and our allies at the time rejected it. As Snyder puts
it, "American allies denied that American credibility was at stake in Vietnam, but American
decision makers insisted that it was." As usual, the people invoking "credibility" then were
just looking for an excuse to legitimize their reckless policy. It is a common claim put
forward by promoters of empire, and it usually doesn't have the slightest connection to the
real world.
That is why it is discouraging but also very revealing that a new study of Henry Kissinger
by Barry Gewen essentially endorses Kissinger's preposterous rationalizations for continued
U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the escalation of the war into neighboring Cambodia. According
to John Farrell's
review of The Inevitability of Tragedy , Gewen accepts the standard Cold War-era
arguments for some of the worst policies of the Nixon administration:
He takes on the "war crimes" arraignments in chapters on Chile and Southeast Asia,
concluding that the threat posed by Chilean socialism to hemispheric tranquillity generally
absolved the United States for helping to foster a bloody coup, and that the Cold War
necessity of preserving U.S. "credibility" and "prestige" justified Nixon's callous choice of
four more years of war in Southeast Asia.
As a general rule, the more that hawks harp on the "need" to preserve "credibility," the
weaker the argument for U.S. involvement in a conflict is. It is only when there are no obvious
vital interests at stake that hawks are reduced to summoning the mystical spirits of reputation
and resolve in a séance, and they do this because they have no other arguments left. The
sad thing is that this mumbo-jumbo continues to hold sway in our foreign policy debates. It is
used to override correct assessments of costs and benefits by pretending that the U.S. risks
suffering an enormous loss if it "fails" to intervene in some strategic backwater. Yesterday,
it was Vietnam, and today we hear much the same thing about Afghanistan.
There is no worse reason to fight a war than the preservation of supposed "credibility." For
one thing, fighting an unnecessary war always does more damage to a nation's reputation and
strength than avoiding it. Even if the U.S. managed to "win" such a war in a limited fashion,
it would not be worth the losses incurred. There is virtually nothing more debilitating to a
great power than an inability to extricate itself from a mistaken commitment. There is nothing
more foolish than persisting in such a commitment when there is an opportunity to get out.
One of the themes of the new study of Kissinger is that tragedy is unavoidable in this
world. That may be true as a general observation, but the terrible thing about continued U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War was that it was entirely avoidable. Unfortunately, because of
the ideological blinders of our leaders and the flaws of our political culture the war
continued and expanded even further for many more years under Nixon. The U.S. was merely
prolonging the inevitable by refusing to leave a war that it had no business fighting, and
there was nothing realistic or wise about this.
When Snyder wrote Myths of Empire , he could plausibly argue that "America's
'imperial overstretch' has been moderate and self-correcting," but after almost two decades of
continuous desultory warfare in Afghanistan and almost three decades of being engaged in
hostilities in Iraq that verdict is no longer credible. Snyder was interested to explain both
"America's Cold War penchant for limited overexpansion and also its ability to learn from its
mistakes," but thirty years on there is no need to explain America's ability to learn from
mistakes because it has almost completely atrophied.
If we were to update Myths of Empire today, we would have to say that the elements of
democratic government that were supposed to protect the United States against the failings of
other systems have been waning. The "more open debate on foreign policy issues" that Snyder
found in the post-Vietnam era turned out to be narrower and more closed than he supposed. He
concluded that "the use of myths of empire to justify the Gulf War shows that democratic
scrutiny of strategic assertions is still needed."
What we have learned over the last thirty years is that Congress has mostly functioned as a
willing rubber stamp for whatever the executive wants to do, and its scrutiny of presidential
assertions about foreign threats is woefully lacking. It turns out that Snyder's judgment that
"there was no overexpansion, no disproportion between strategic costs and benefits" after the
Gulf War was premature. It was not evident in 1991, but we can see now that the costs of that
intervention were much higher than they seemed at the time. The U.S. embarked then on what
would prove to be a three-decade entanglement in the affairs of Iraq, and each time that there
was a chance of extricating ourselves from it one president after another used the myths of
empire to keep our forces there indefinitely.
I can think of no better way of building credibility than fighting embarrassingly long wars
that leave the nations we fight in worse off and our actual enemies stronger, can't you?
Maybe I am wrong but this is my opinion. The strongest warmongerers have been the neocons
and the neoliberals (which in the case of foreign military intervention are
interchangeable) who are closely linked with AIPAC and Isael. If the US has an existential
threat then its usually plain for all to see but I will concede that the media has been
politicized and does not present objective factual news to the public. As an example,
Breitbart, Trump and others have been warning about China for decades but many politicians
have major business dealings ( bribes, payoffs, business dealings for their son and
relatives, etc) with China so they deflected to Russia whenever military or economic
concerns about China could not be hushed up. It was reported long before BushII went into
Iraq that the US and Israel had a plan for regime change in 7 middle eastern countries
which has always led me to believe that our military interventionism in the middle east is
not based on the US interest but in fact are proxy wars for US allies Israel / Saudi (and
other middle east allies) intentions at regime change in Iran. This is where Kissinger
should not be missed nor his supporters. It took a long time to switch the American
consciousness away from Russia toward China. Identifying foreign lobbyists or lobbyists for
a foreign country are easy because they must be disclosed to the Federal Govt. However, the
US needs to take a close look at its domestic lobbies, its internal corruption, its
internal conflicts of interest and its internal loyalties of those who are employees of the
federal govt or have capabilities to influence decision making of the federal govt. It
appears that we will never be able to extricate ourselves (ie USA) from foreign military
intervention in the middle east as long as we have powerful and wealthy middle eastern
allies using their influence to engage the US in proxy wars on its behalf.
The polls, where the desires of hoi poloi are captured, consistently show that US
"citizens" do not want military engagements and do not feel their security threatened all
the time. Enjoy your oligarchical run Republic.
Nothing Dan writes is without value, but I think he fails to recognize the extent to which
policymakers are worried about, not the credibility of the U.S., but that of the
"Establishment", of their own "right" to be in charge, to be important and to have vast
resources at their disposal. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the "military-intellectual
complex"--the Pentagon, the military suppliers, the intelligence community and its myriad
of contractors, the various think tanks, etc.--have all been seeking an excuse for their
continued existence. The real purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to create a ground for a
massive US overseas military commitment to replace NATO as a source for funding and
promotions. This enterprise has sadly dovetailed with the desires of the "Wilsonians" of
the Democratic Party. The domestic scene, after all, is clotted and congested. There's so
much more room to do good overseas! The strength of the Peace movement was significantly
vitiated first by the end of the draft (shrewd move, Mr. Nixon!) and then by the end of the
Cold War, for which Ronald Reagan deserved significant credit. Democrats proved sadly
susceptible to treating the Defense budget as an unlimited pork barrel. Since the
Republicans were buying, why not dig in? And, of course, pressure from AIPAC made voting
for a "firm" policy in the Middle East a political no-brainer.
davidhabakkuk says: May
25, 2020 at 12:22 pm The kind of view of the end of the Cold War which underpins
Billingslea's notion that the United States can spend Russia and China into 'oblivion' is
that championed by people who totally failed to anticipate what happened in the Soviet
Union in the 'Eighties, and have not seen this fact as reason for rethinking the
assumptions that caused them to get things so radically wrong.
The extent of the incompetence involved is vividly apparent in the collection of
documents from the American and Soviet sides published by the 'National Security Archive'
in January 2017, under the title 'The Last Superpower Summits.'
Particularly revealing, to my mind, is Document 12, the transcript of the closed-door
testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by the top three CIA analysts of the Soviet
Union, Doug MacEachin, Robert Blackwell, and Paul Ericson, at the precise moment, in
December 1988, when Gorbachev announced his 500,000 troop cut at the U.N.
The editors comment:
'And MacEachin offers a true confession in an extraordinary passage that demonstrates
how prior assumptions about Soviet behavior, rather than actual intelligence data points,
actually drove intelligence findings: "Now, we spend megadollars studying political
instability in various places around the world, but we never really looked at the Soviet
Union as a political entity in which there were factors building which could lead to the
kind of – at least the initiation of political transformation that we seem to see. It
does not exist to my knowledge. Moreover, had it existed inside the government, we never
would have been able to publish it anyway, quite frankly. And had we done so, people would
have been calling for my head. And I wouldn't have published it. In all honesty, had we
said a week ago that Gorbachev might come to the UN and offer a unilateral cut of 500,000
in the military, we would have been told we were crazy. We had a difficult enough time
getting air space for the prospect of some unilateral cuts of 50 to 60,000."
Actually, it was quite possible to do much better, without spending 'megadollars', if
one simply went to the Chatham House Library and/or the London Library and looked at what
competent analysts, like those working for the Foreign Policy Studies Program then run by
the late, great John Steinbruner at Brookings – a very different place then from
now.
Among those he employed were two of the best former intelligence analysts of Soviet
military strategy: Ambassador Raymond Garthoff and Commander Michael MccGwire, R.N., to
give them their titles when in government service.
These has devoted a great deal of effort to explaining that Professor Richard Pipes of
Harvard, a key influence in creating the 'groupthink' MacEachin described, had missed a
crucial transition away from nuclear war planning to conventional 'deep operations' in the
late 'Sixties and 'Seventies.
Inturn, this led Garthoff and MccGwire to grasp that the Gorbachev-era 'new thinkers'
had decided that the conventional 'deep operations' posture in turn needed to be abandoned.
For a summary of the latter's arguments, see article entitled 'Rethinking War: The Soviets
and European Security', published in the Spring 1988 edition of the 'Brookings Review',
available on the 'Unz Review' site.
Also associated with Brookings at the time was the Duke University Sovietologist Jerry
Hough, who had read his way through the writings of academics in the institutes associated
with the Academy of Sciences on development economics, and talked extensively to many of
their authors.
In the 'Conclusion' to his 1986 study, 'The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates
and American Options', Hough wrote:
'Or what is one to say about the argument – now very widely accepted – among
Soviet economists – that countries with "capitalist-oriented" economies in the third
world have a natural tendency to grow more rapidly than countries with a "socialist
orientation" because well-rounded development seems to be dependent on foreign investment
and integration into the world market? A quarter of a century ago, let alone in the Stalin
period, it was just as widely accepted that integration into the capitalist world economy
doomed a third world country to slow, deformed growth and that foreign investment exploited
a local economy.'
One thing one could say is that this recognition that fundamental premises of the
Marxist-Leninist view of the world had turned out wrong was simple an acknowledgement of
the ways that the world had changed. And that view of the world had defined the political
framework in which Soviet contingency planning for war had developed.
Central to this had been the premise of a 'natural' teleology of history towards
socialism, with the risk of war in the international system arising from the attempts of
the 'imperialist' powers to resist this.
So there were profound pressures, which really were not simply created by the Reagan
military build-up and SDI, for radical changes in the Soviet security posture. Questions
were obviously raised, however, as to whether these – together with radical domestic
reform – would defuse Western hostility.
Fascinating here is Document 11, a memo to Gorbachev from a key advisor, Georgy Arbatov,
the director of the 'Institute for U.S.A. and Canada' from the previous June. This sets the
plan for the 500,000 troop reduction in the context both of the wider conception of
liquidating the capability for large-scale offensive operations described MccGwire, and
also of the perceived importance of breaking the 'image of the enemy' in the West.
While both Gorbachev, and Arbatov, were widely perceived in the West as engaged in a
particularly dangerous 'active measures' campaign, it is striking how closely the thinking
set out in the memo echoes that the latter had articulated the previous December in a
letter to the 'New York Times', in response to a column by William Safire.
Headlined 'It Takes Two to Make a Cold War', it expresses key assumptions underlying the
'new thinking.' Two crucial paragraphs:
'If the Soviet Union should accept the proposed rules of the game and devotedly continue
the cold war, then, of course, sooner or later, the whole thing would end in a calamity.
But at least Mr. Safire's plan would work. The only problem I see here is that the Soviet
Union will not pick up the challenge and accept the proposed rules of the game. And then
Americans would find themselves in exactly the same position Mr. Safire and his ilk, as he
himself writes, are finding themselves in now: history would pass them by, and years from
now they would be "regarded as foot-draggers and sourpusses," because almost no one in the
world is willing to play the games of the American right. Least of all, the Soviet
Union.
'And here we have a "secret weapon" that will work almost regardless of the American
response e would deprive America of The Enemy. And how would you justify without it the
military expenditures that bleed the American economy white, a policy that draws America
into dangerous adventures overseas and drives wedges between the United States and its
allies, not to mention the loss of American influence on neutral countries? Wouldn't such a
policy in the absence of The Enemy put America in the position of an outcast in the
international community?'
There was however another question which was raised by the patent bankrupcy of
Marxism-Leninism, which bore very directly upon what Arbatov, in his memorandum to
Gorbachev.
If one accepted that Soviet-style economics had led to a dead end, and that integration
into the U.S. dominated global economic order was the road to successful development,
questions obviously arose about not simply about how far, and how rapidly, one should
attempt to dismantle not simply the command economy.
But they also arose about whether it was prudent to dismantle the authoritarian
political system with which it was associated, at the same time.
In a lecture given in 2010, entitled 'The Cold War: A View from Russia', the historian
Vladimir O. Pechatnov, himself a product of Arbatov's institute, would provide a vivid
picture of the disillusion felt by 'liberalising' intellectuals within the Soviet
apparatus, like himself.
However, he also made the – rather interesting – suggestion that, had logic
of central arguments by George F. Kennan, the figure generally, if in my own view somewhat
misleadingly, regarded as the principal architect of post-war American strategy, actually
pointed rather decisively away from the assumption that a rapid dismantling of the
authoritarian system was wise.
And Pechatnov pointed to the very ambivalent implications of the view of the latent
instability of Soviet society expressed in Kennan's famous July 1947 'X-article':
'So, if Communist Party is incapacitated, the Soviet Russia, I quote, "would almost
overnight turn from one of the mightiest into one of the weakest and miserable nations of
the world "). Had Gorbachev read Kennan and realized this causal connection (as Deng and
his colleagues most definitely had), he might have thought twice before abruptly
terminating the Communist monopoly on power.'
What is involved here is a rather fundamental fact – that in their more optimistic
assumptions, people like Arbatov and Gorbachev turned out to be simply wrong.
Crucially, rather than marginalising people like Pipes, and Safire, and Billingslea, an
effect of the retreat and collapse of Soviet power was to convince a very substantial part
of what had been the 'Peace Movement' coalition that their erstwhile opponents had been
vindicated.
However, the enthusiasm of people like Billingslea for a retry of the supposed
successful 'Reagan recipe' brings another irony.
As to SDI, it was well-known at the time that it could easily be countered, at
relatively low cost, with 'asymetric' measures.
This is well brought out in Garthoff's discussion in his 2001 Memoir 'A Journey through
the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence' (see p. 356.) For a more recent
discussion, in the light of declassified materials, which reaches the same conclusion, see
a piece in the 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' by Pavel Podvig from April 2013,
entitled 'Shooting down the Star Wars myth' at
And if one bothers to follow the way that arguments have been developing outside the
'bubble' in which most inhabitants of Washington D.C., and London exist, it is evident that
people in Moscow, and Beijing, have thought about the lessons of this history. Those who
think that they are going to be suckered into an arms race that the United States can win
are quite patently delusional.
Just take a look at the progressive schooling of 'diplomats' who end up in American
ambassadorial and consular posts. Where do they come from? The Heritage Institute, Legatum,
the American Enterprise Institute, and various other America-Triumphant think tanks. Look at
Michael McFaul, and his absurd just-a-ole-homeboy-who-loves-Russia video he put out before
taking up his official duties in Moscow. And he barely had the dust of New York off his shoes
before he was huddling with the Russian opposition. I don't know why Russia even affects to
be surprised by their attitudes.
"... The explicit reference to Jerusalem appears later in the same document , in the context of communication between Stone and his unnamed contact in the Israeli capital. "On or about August 12, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week. How is your Pneumonia? Thank you. STONE replied, "I am well. Matters complicated. Pondering. R" The "he" is an apparent reference to Trump. ..."
"... Referring to the Israeli mentions in a report on the documents late Tuesday, the US website Politico noted: "The newly revealed messages often raise more questions than answers. They show Stone in touch with seemingly high-ranking Israeli officials attempting to arrange meetings with Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign." ..."
"... Of course, this story is seen as a positive development from the Israeli (and evangelical) perspective because a Trump presidency was an essential part fulfilling an aggressive Zionist "wish list" which included moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, annexing the Golan Heights and the West Bank, and perhaps a major move against Iran in the second term. ..."
"... This story also explains why the jewish-controlled press saturated the airwaves with fake stories of "Russian" intervention in the election -- and why we will be seeing similar non-stop stories of "Chinese" intervention in the upcoming 2020 election in November. ..."
"... And Netanyahu hasn't wasted a second of Trump's presidency in expanding Israel's power, territory and influence. As one Jewish media pundit claimed , Donald Trump has been " the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world." Trump has even bragged that he is so popular among Israelis that they would elect him Prime Minister if he ran. ..."
According to recently released FBI documents, Donald Trump's longtime confidant, Roger
Stone, who was convicted last year in Robert Mueller's investigation into ties between Russia
and the Trump campaign, was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at
the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was "going
to be defeated"
unless Israel intervened in the election :
The exchange between Stone and this Jerusalem-based contact appears in FBI documents made
public on Tuesday. The documents -- FBI affidavits submitted to obtain search warrants in the
criminal investigation into Stone -- were released following a court case brought by The
Associated Press and other media organizations.
A longtime adviser to Trump, Stone officially worked on the 2016 presidential campaign
until August 2015, when he said he left and Trump said he was fired. However he continued to
communicate with the campaign, according to Mueller's investigation.
The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and
one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a "minister
without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs,"
the PM, and the Prime Minister . In all these references the names and countries of the
minister and prime minister are redacted.
Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016 , and the Israeli government
included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility
for defense and foreign affairs. One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as
follows:
"On or about June 28, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER
URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY
IN NYC."
Netanyahu made a state visit to Italy at the end of June 2016 .
The explicit reference to Israel appears early in the text of a May 2018 affidavit by an
FBI agent in support of an application for a search warrant, and relates to communication
between Stone and Jerome Corsi, an American author, commentator and conspiracy theorist. " On
August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they needed to meet with [NAME REDACTED] to determine
"what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct," the affidavit states .
The explicit reference to Jerusalem appears later in the same document , in the context of
communication between Stone and his unnamed contact in the Israeli capital. "On or about
August 12, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress?
He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your
hands! Back in the US next week. How is your Pneumonia? Thank you. STONE replied, "I am well.
Matters complicated. Pondering. R" The "he" is an apparent reference to Trump.
The redacted material features numerous references to an "October surprise," apparently
relating to a document dump by Wikileaks' Julian Assange, intended to harm Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign and salvage Trump's .
Referring to the Israeli mentions in a report on the documents late Tuesday, the US
website Politico noted: "The newly revealed messages often raise more questions than answers.
They show Stone in touch with seemingly high-ranking Israeli officials attempting to arrange
meetings with Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign."
Mueller's investigation identified significant contact during the 2016 campaign between
Trump associates and Russians, but did not allege a criminal conspiracy to tip the outcome of
the presidential election.
This story first appeared last month, at the height of the COVID-19 plandemic, which
conveniently and not coincidentally allowed all the mainstream media in America to ignore
it.
Of course, this story is seen as a positive development from the Israeli (and evangelical)
perspective because a Trump presidency was an essential part fulfilling an aggressive Zionist
"wish list" which included moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, annexing the Golan Heights and
the West Bank, and perhaps a major move against Iran in the second term.
This story also explains why the jewish-controlled press saturated the airwaves with fake
stories of "Russian" intervention in the election -- and why we will be seeing similar non-stop
stories of "Chinese" intervention in the upcoming 2020 election in November.
We can only guess what further information about Israel's involvement in the election was
redacted from this FBI document, but there can be little doubt that the orders to help Trump
win came from the very top -- from Netanyahu himself.
And Netanyahu hasn't wasted a second of Trump's presidency in expanding Israel's power,
territory and influence. As one Jewish
media pundit claimed , Donald Trump has been " the greatest president for Jews and for
Israel in the history of the world." Trump has even bragged that he is so popular among Israelis that
they would elect him Prime Minister if he ran.
And even if the brain-dead American public found out about this Israeli intervention (i.e.,
"subversion of our democracy"), they would probably just shrug it off -- after all, Israel is
our "most trusted friend and ally,"
goyim .
While Flynn is a questionable figure with his Iran warmongering and the former tenure as a
Turkey lobbyist, it is important to understand that in Kislyak call he mainly played the role
of Israel lobbyist. This important fact was carefully swiped under the carpet by FBI
honchos.
Only the second and less important part of the call (the request to Russia to postpone the
reaction after the Obama expulsion of diplomats) was related to Russia. Not sure it was
necessary: Russia probably understood that this was a provocation and would wait for the dust
to settle in any case. Revenge is a dish that is better served cold. Later Russia used this
as a pretext to equalize the number of US diplomats in Russia with the number of Russian
diplomat in the USA which was a knockdown for any color revolution plans in this country:
people with the knowledge of the country and connections to its neoliberal fifth column were
sent packing.
But Russian neoliberal compradors were decimated earlier after EuroMaydan in Kiev, so this
was actually a service to the USA allowing to save the USA same money (as Trump
acknowledged)
Also strange how former chief of DIA fell victim of such a crude trap administered by a
second, if nor third rate person -- Strzok. Looks like he was already on the hook and, as
such, defenseless for his Turkey lobbing efforts. Which makes Comey-McCabe attempt to entrap
him look like a shooing fish in the tank.
Note to managerial class neoliberals (PMC). Your Russiagate stance is to be expected and
has nothing to do with virtue.
it was the urban and suburban PMC that gets its news from the establishment press --
the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR, that believed and supported the story.
Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate
educational training
Seems rather typical of those making policy, not knowing much about the area they're
assigned to. If a person did know Arabic and had an understanding of the culture they
wouldn't get hired as they'd be viewed with suspicion, suspected of being sympathetic to
Middle Easterners. How and why these neocons can come back into government is puzzling and
one wonders who within the establishment is backing them. Judging by the quotes her father
certainly seems deranged and not someone to be allowed anywhere near any policy making
positions.
Flynn also seems to be a dolt what with his 'worldwide war against radical Islam'. Someone
should clue him in that much of this radical Islam has been created and stoked by the US who
hyped up radical Islam, recruiting and arming them to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Bin
Laden was there, remember? Flynn, a general, is unaware of this? Islamic jihadists are
America's Foreign Legion and have been used all over the Muslim world, most recently in
Syria. Does this portend war with Iran? Possibly, but perhaps Trump wouldn't want to go it
alone but would want the financial support of other countries. They've probably war-gamed it
to death and found it to be a loser.
Have they nothing better to do than peddle their Russophobia?
Wouldn't it be more useful to allocate $ 250,000 to save someone's lives, @StateDept ? Instead
of "Exposing Russian Health Disinformation"
➡️ https://t.co/Hv3CydUgBX
From MoA comment
57: "Warmongering shit bags endlessly flatulent about their moral superiority while threatening to nuke nations on the other
side of the globe daily. ... the greatness of the US consists of how gullible its hyper-exploited populace has been to a long
series of Donald Trumps who use the resources of the land and people for competitive violence against other nations. the world
heaves a collective hallelujah that this bullshit is about to end. "
Notable quotes:
"... Lets reverse that point, shall we. There is a US spy base in Australia at a place called Pine Gap. Without it being operational the USA would lose its 3 dimensional vision across the planet. ..."
"... This Bannon/Trump bluster is weak as p!ss as 'sharing intelligence' is the cornerstone of the five eyes perversion that gives the USA some superiority in intelligence matters. So if sharing intelligence were withdrawn by the USA with Australia it would have meaningless consequences. ..."
"... Pompeo is blathering bullsh!t and he knows it and we all know it ..."
Pompeo Warns US May Stop Sharing Intelligence With Australia Over Victoria Inking Deal With
China's BRI
The battle for Australia's soul has begun.
Lets reverse that point, shall we. There is a US spy base in Australia at a place called
Pine Gap. Without it being operational the USA would lose its 3 dimensional vision across the
planet.
This Bannon/Trump bluster is weak as p!ss as 'sharing intelligence' is the cornerstone of
the five eyes perversion that gives the USA some superiority in intelligence matters. So if
sharing intelligence were withdrawn by the USA with Australia it would have meaningless
consequences.
On the other hand if Australia ceased its intelligence sharing and shut down all the data
traffic out of Australia - the USA would go ballistic. Not that the Oz government would ever
do such a thing being a craven water carrier for the new world order etc...
Pompeo is blathering bullsh!t and he knows it and we all know it.
Odd that you would reiterate his brainless threat vk.
China diplomacy is trying to thread very carefully to avoid the fallout. The answer of RIA
Novosti is good example here. Counterattacks are few (see the answer to CC question with the
following money quote: "I respect your right to ask the question, but I'm afraid you're not
framing the question in the right way. One has to have a sense of right and wrong. Without it, a
person cannot be trusted, and a country cannot hold its own in the family of nations. " This is
implicit slap in the face for the USA.
RIA Novosti: How do you assess China-Russia relations in the context of COVID-19? Do you
agree with some people's characterization that China and Russia may join force to challenge US
predominance?
Wang Yi: While closely following the COVID-19 response in Russia, we have done and will
continue to do everything we can to support it. I believe under the leadership of President
Vladimir Putin, the indomitable Russian people will defeat the virus and the great Russian
nation will emerge from the challenge with renewed vigor and vitality.
Since the start of COVID-19, President Xi Jinping and President Putin have had several phone
calls and kept the closest contact between two world leaders. Russia is the first country to
have sent medical experts to China, and China has provided the most anti-epidemic assistance to
Russia. Two-way trade has gone up despite COVID-19. Chinese imports from Russia have grown
faster than imports from China's other major trading partners. The two countries have supported
and defended each other against slanders and attacks coming from certain countries. Together,
China and Russia have forged an impregnable fortress against the "political virus" and
demonstrated the strength of China-Russia strategic coordination.
I have no doubt that the two countries' joint response to the virus will give a strong boost
to China-Russia relations after COVID-19. China is working with Russia to turn the crisis into
an opportunity. We will do so by maintaining stable cooperation in energy and other traditional
fields, holding a China-Russia year of scientific and technological innovation, and
accelerating collaboration in e-commerce, bio-medicine and the cloud economy to make them new
engines of growth in our post-COVID-19 economic recovery. China and Russia will also enhance
strategic coordination. By marking the 75th anniversary of the UN, we stand ready to firmly
protect our victory in WWII, uphold the UN Charter and basic norms of international relations,
and oppose any form of unilateralism and bullying. We will enhance cooperation and coordination
in the UN, SCO, BRICS and G20 to prepare ourselves for a new round of the once-in-a-century
change shaping today's world.
I believe that with China and Russia standing shoulder-to-shoulder and working back-to-back,
the world will be a safer and more stable place where justice and fairness are truly
upheld.
Cable News Network: We've seen an increasingly heated "war of words" between China and the
US. Is "wolf warrior" diplomacy the new norm of China's diplomacy?
Wang Yi: I respect your right to ask the question, but I'm afraid you're not framing the
question in the right way. One has to have a sense of right and wrong. Without it, a person
cannot be trusted, and a country cannot hold its own in the family of nations.
There may be all kinds of interpretations and commentary about Chinese diplomacy. As
China's Foreign Minister, let me state for the record that China always follows an
independent foreign policy of peace. No matter how the international situation may change, we
will always stand for peace, development and mutually beneficial cooperation, stay committed
to upholding world peace and promoting common development, and seek friendship and
cooperation with all countries. We see it as our mission to make new and greater
contributions to humanity.
China's foreign policy tradition is rooted in its 5,000-year civilization. Since ancient
times, China has been widely recognized as a nation of moderation. We Chinese value peace,
harmony, sincerity and integrity. We never pick a fight or bully others, but we have
principles and guts. We will push back against any deliberate insult to resolutely defend our
national honor and dignity. And we will refute all groundless slander with facts to
resolutely uphold fairness, justice and human conscience.
The future of China's diplomacy is premised on our commitment to working with all
countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind. Since we live in the same
global village, countries should get along peacefully and treat each other as equals.
Decisions on global affairs should be made through consultation, not because one or two
countries say so. That's why China advocates for a multi-polar world and greater democracy in
international relations. This position is fully aligned with the direction of human progress
and the shared aspiration of most countries. No matter what stage of development it reaches,
China will never seek hegemony. We will always stand with the common interests of all
countries. And we will always stand on the right side of history. Those who go out of their
way to label China as a hegemon are precisely the ones who refuse to let go of their
hegemonic status.
The world is undergoing changes of a kind unseen in a century and full of instability and
turbulence. Confronted by a growing set of global challenges, we hope all countries will
realize that humanity is a community with a shared future. We must render each other more
support and cooperation, and there should be less finger-pointing and confrontation. We call
on all nations to come together and build a better world for all.
"... The recently published Pentagon budget request for 2021 makes clear that the United States is retooling for a potential intercontinental war with China and/or Russia. It asks for $705 billion to "shift focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on the types of weapons that could be used to confront nuclear giants like Russia and China," noting that it requires "more advanced high-end weapon systems, which provide increased standoff, enhanced lethality and autonomous targeting for employment against near-peer threats in a more contested environment." The military has recently received the first batch of low-yield nuclear warheads that experts agree blurs the line between conventional and nuclear conflict, making an all out example of the latter far more likely. ..."
"... "Our governments spend over 1.75 trillion dollars every year on wars, on weapons, on conflict If we could deploy that sort of resource to address the coronavirus crisis that we're currently living through, imagine what else we could be doing. Imagine how we could be fighting the climate crisis, how we could be addressing global poverty, inequality. Our priority should never be war; our priorities need to be public health, the environment, and human well being." ..."
Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was
strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike the
country. As the U.S. military turns its attention from the Middle East to conflict with Russia
and China, American war planners are advising that the United States greatly expand its own
online "psychological operations" against Beijing.
A new report from the Financial Times details
how top brass in Washington are strategizing a new Cold War with China, describing it less as
World War III and more as "kicking each other under the table." Last week, General Richard
Clarke, head of Special Operations Command, said that the "kill-capture missions" the military
conducted in Afghanistan were inappropriate for this new conflict, and Special Operations must
move towards cyber influence campaigns instead.
Military analyst David Maxwell, a former Special Ops soldier himself, advocated for a
widespread culture war, which would include the Pentagon commissioning what he called
"Taiwanese Tom Clancy" novels, intended to demonize China and demoralize its citizens, arguing
that Washington should "weaponize" China's one-child policy by bombarding Chinese people with
stories of the wartime deaths of their only children, and therefore, their bloodline.
A not dissimilar tactic was used during the first Cold War against the Soviet Union, where
the CIA sponsored
a huge network of artists, writers and thinkers to promote liberal and social-democratic
critiques of the U.S.S.R., unbeknownst to the public, and, sometimes, even the artists
themselves.
Manufacturing consent
In the space of only a few months, the Trump administration has gone from praising China's
response to the COVID-19 pandemic to blaming them for the outbreak, even suggesting they pay
reparations for their alleged negligence. Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of
China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the
same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike China, with only 26 percent holding a
positive opinion of the country. Over
four-in-five people essentially support a full-scale economic war with Beijing, something
the president threatened
to enact last week.
The corporate press is certainly doing their part as well, constantly
framing China as an authoritarian threat to the United States, rather than a neutral force
or even a potential ally, leading to a surge in
anti-Chinese racist attacks at home.
Retooling for an intercontinental war
Although analysts have long
warned that the United States gets its "ass handed to it" in hot war simulations with China
or even Russia, it is not clear whether this is a sober assessment or a self-serving attempt to
increase military spending. In 2002, the U.S. conducted a war game trial invasion of Iraq,
where it was catastrophically defeated by Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, commanding Iraqi forces,
leading to the whole experiment being nixed halfway through. Yet the subsequent invasion was
carried out without massive loss of American lives.
The recently published Pentagon budget
request for 2021 makes clear that the United States is retooling for a potential
intercontinental war with China and/or Russia. It asks for $705 billion to "shift focus from
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on the types of weapons that could be
used to confront nuclear giants like Russia and China," noting that it requires "more advanced
high-end weapon systems, which provide increased standoff, enhanced lethality and autonomous
targeting for employment against near-peer threats in a more contested environment." The
military has recently received the first batch of low-yield nuclear warheads that
experts agree blurs the line between conventional and nuclear conflict, making an all out
example of the latter far more likely.
There has been no meaningful pushback from the Democrats. Indeed, Joe Biden's team has
suggested
that the United States' entire industrial policy should revolve around "competing with China"
and that their "top priority" is dealing with the supposed threat Beijing poses. The former
vice-president has also attacked Trump from the right on China, trying to present him as a tool
of Beijing, bringing to mind how Clinton portrayed him in 2016 as a Kremlin asset. (Green Party
presidential frontrunner Howie Hawkins has promised to cut the military budget by 75 percent and
to unilaterally disarm).
Nevertheless, voices raising concern about a new arms race are few and far between. Veteran
deproliferation activist Andrew Feinstein is one exception, saying :
"Our governments spend over 1.75 trillion dollars every year on wars, on weapons, on
conflict If we could deploy that sort of resource to address the coronavirus crisis that
we're currently living through, imagine what else we could be doing. Imagine how we could be
fighting the climate crisis, how we could be addressing global poverty, inequality. Our
priority should never be war; our priorities need to be public health, the environment, and
human well being."
However, if the government is going to launch a new psychological war against China, it is
unlikely antiwar voices like Feinstein's will feature much in the mainstream press.
This is all noise. Kristol is a MIC prostitute and as such he can't attack Trump who gave MIC
and Israel all what they want
Notable quotes:
"... "A 'Neocon' is neither new or conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell." – Edward Abbey ..."
"... Being an unrepentant Neocon, such as William (Bill) Kristol, means never having to say you're sorry. To qualify, you need to be an ideologue, who also has paid no price for recklessly cheerleading 4,488 U.S. troops to their deaths in the illegal and immoral Iraq War, plus another 32,223 who were seriously wounded (2003-2011). ..."
"... For years, we've heard Kristol on the TV/Cable/Network shows making outrageous statements, like this one: "The war in Iraq could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." (09/18/2001). ..."
"... There was also no mention by the reporter of the possible real reasons that Kristol was dumping on Trump. One could be that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had trashed Kristol's and the Neocons' support of the Iraq War. ..."
"... And, also Trump has indicated he doesn't have any plans to reignite another of Kristol's favorites schemes – "a Cold War with Russia." These are just two of the reasons the "Neocons, like Kristol, can't stomach Trump," according to the commentator, JP Sottile, of Consortium News. ..."
"... During last year's Democratic presidential primary, Kristol took a swipe at the candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and posted a tweet that said: "#Never Sanders." The popular antiwar candidate responded to Kristol: "Have you apologized to the nation for your foolish advocacy of the Iraq War? I make no apologies for opposing it." Sanders then added this zinger: "I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran." ..."
"... The Neocon replied: "I will defend my views on Iraq as you defend yours." Sen. Sanders underscored how Kristol had called for regime change in Iraq as early at 1998; and that Kristol also predicted the conflict would last "only two months;" and that he had repeatedly argued for the Bush-Cheney Gang to send in more troops. As early at 2006, Kristol was urging the US to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, asking, "Why wait?" ..."
"... In a way, Kristol reminded me, in a physical sense, of the late actor Peter Lorre. Whether Kristol has a "Little Man (Napoleon) Complex," or not, I will leave to the experts in the field. All I know for sure is that he's a relentlessly angry, pusher of costly and unnecessary wars. ..."
"... Here is another gem from Kristol: "The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably." (April 28, 2003) And, then there is this whopper from the slippery Neocon: "The Iraqi elections of Jan. 30, 2005 could be a key moment perhaps the key moment so far in vindicating the 'Bush/Cheney Doctrine' as the right response to 9/11." (March 7, 2005) ..."
"A 'Neocon' is neither new or conservative, but old as Babylon
and evil as Hell." – Edward Abbey
Being an unrepentant Neocon, such as William (Bill) Kristol, means never having to say
you're sorry. To qualify, you need to be an ideologue, who also has paid no price for
recklessly cheerleading 4,488 U.S. troops to their deaths in the illegal and immoral Iraq War,
plus another 32,223 who were seriously wounded (2003-2011).
It also helps to have a significant media platform and not to give a good hoot about how
many innocent Iraqis died via the U.S.-led invasion and/or the occupation of that country. (Try
an estimated 655,000.)
By the way, false prophet, Kristol: Our troops found "No" Weapons of Mass Destruction in
Iraq.
Let me formally introduce – William Kristol, age 67, out of New York City, now
Northern Virginia, warmonger extraordinaire, ultra-conservative, and currently editor at large
of Bulwark magazine.
For years, we've heard Kristol on the TV/Cable/Network shows making outrageous
statements, like this one: "The war in Iraq could have terrifically good effects throughout the
Middle East." (09/18/2001).
The other day, May 20, 2020, Kristol was the subject of a puff piece profile in the
Washington Post , by reporter KK Ottesen. The article made no mention of Kristol's
disgusting role in promoting the Iraq War. Instead, he was given the opportunity to rip
President Donald Trump on how he has been mismanaging the coronavirus crisis. (Well, heck,
everybody knows that.)
There was also no mention by the reporter of the possible real reasons that Kristol was
dumping on Trump. One could be that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had trashed
Kristol's and the Neocons' support of the Iraq War.
And, also Trump has indicated he doesn't have any plans to reignite another of Kristol's
favorites schemes – "a Cold War with Russia." These are just two of the reasons the
"Neocons, like Kristol, can't stomach Trump," according to the commentator, JP Sottile, of
Consortium
News.
The idea that Kristol is some kind of genuine dissenter and is opposing Trump because he's
concerned about the quality of his leadership is pure nonsense. The Washington Post
allowed Kristol to use the paper for this dubious exercise and it has no one to blame but
itself.
During last year's Democratic presidential primary, Kristol took a swipe at the
candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and posted a tweet that said: "#Never Sanders." The popular
antiwar candidate responded to Kristol: "Have you apologized to the nation for your foolish
advocacy of the Iraq War? I make no apologies for opposing it." Sanders then added this zinger:
"I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran."
The Neocon replied: "I will defend my views on Iraq as you defend yours." Sen. Sanders
underscored how Kristol had called for regime change in Iraq as early at 1998; and that Kristol
also predicted the conflict would last "only two months;" and that he had repeatedly argued for
the Bush-Cheney Gang to send in more troops. As early at 2006, Kristol was urging the US to
bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, asking, "Why wait?"
Flashback: The first time I laid eyes on the cunning Neocon, Kristol was at a pro-Iraq War
rally held on the National Mall, on April 12, 2003, in Washington, D.C., G. Gordon Liddy and
the late, ex-U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) were there, along with some other Right Wing
types.
What was really weird about the whole affair was the appearance of that so-called comedian,
Ben Stein. He showed up on a huge video screen endorsing the war. It should have had "a warning
label" on it!
I recall a lady in the modest crowd of about fifty at that event saying of Kristol: "Oh,
look how small he is!" She was right. Kristol is, indeed, on the very short side. I'd say that
he comes in at about 5 ft. 4 or 5 inches. It seems that, as a result of his tiny body frame,
his head appears more massive than it really is. The rally was boring. I didn't stay long.
In a way, Kristol reminded me, in a physical sense, of the late actor Peter Lorre.
Whether Kristol has a "Little Man (Napoleon) Complex," or not, I will leave to the experts in
the field. All I know for sure is that he's a relentlessly angry, pusher of costly and
unnecessary wars.
(During the Iraq War, there were countless protest actions mounted by ten of thousands of
splendid antiwar activists across the country. Many of them were held on the National Mall, and
other sites in our nation's capital.)
Here is another gem from Kristol: "The first two battles of this new era are now over.
The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably." (April 28, 2003)
And, then there is this whopper from the slippery Neocon: "The Iraqi elections of Jan. 30, 2005
could be a key moment perhaps the key moment so far in vindicating the 'Bush/Cheney Doctrine'
as the right response to 9/11." (March 7, 2005)
Of course, it wouldn't be fair to leave out this one from Kristol: "It is much more likely
that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less the same, or improve, in either case,
Republicans will benefit from being the party of victory." (Nov. 30, 2005)
As a result of an onslaught of Kristol's articles and media appearances in support of the
Iraq invasion, the Washington Post 's Richard Cohen dubbed the conflict: "Kristol's
War!" Right on, Mr. Cohen.
The estimated cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayers runs to a high of around $1.7
trillion!
If Kristol has any regrets with respect to his amoral advocacy for the Iraq War (which was
launched by the Bush-Cheney Gang based on a pack of rotten lies) and/or about the staggering US
casualties in Iraq, I have never heard him express them.
If Kristol has any empathy for the innocent Iraqi dead and wounded, the Iraqi women and
children who have suffered and are continuing to suffer from that conflict, along with the tens
of thousands of Iraqi homes that have been destroyed, and also for those 3.8 million Iraqis
made into refugees, then he's kept those kinds of feelings to himself.
(The other amazing thing about Kristol is how he's repeatedly able to get his distorted
views on our televisions and in our newspapers. It's like he has to only press a button and
there he is. It is all so – Orwellian!)
In any event, when the name of William Kristol, the Neocon, is mentioned, I think callous
indifference to human life and suffering.
The next time the Neocon Kristol visits the Arlington National Cemetery, over in Virginia,
to honor our Iraqi War dead, will be his FIRST! Despite all of the above, he continues to argue
for a U.S.-led attack on Iran. Kristol insists: "Invading Iran is not a bad idea!"
If warmongering isn't a Hate Crime and/or a Hate Speech, then maybe it should be. (Peace
Movement, please copy.) That would give the heartless Kristol something to think about when he
advocates for the launching of yet another monstrosity, like the Iraq War.
Bill Hughes is an attorney, author, actor and photographer. His latest book is
Byline
Baltimore . Contact the author. Reprinted from the
Baltimore Post-Examiner with the author's permission.
After the Soviet collapse thirty years ago, that order expanded its jurisdiction. Proponents sought to subsume the old Eastern
Bloc, including perhaps Russia itself, into the American sphere. And they wanted to do so firmly on Washington's terms. Even as the
country began to deindustrialize and growth slowed, American leadership developed a taste for fresh crusades in the Middle East;
exotic savagery, went the subtext, had to be brought finally to heel. China was a rising force, but its regime would inevitably crater
or democratize. Besides, Beijing was a peaceful trading partner of the United States.
2008, 2016 and 2020 -- the financial crisis, Trump's election and now the Coronavirus and its reaction -- have been successive
gut punches to this project, a hat trick which may seal its demise. Ask anyone attempting to board an international flight, or open
a new factory in China, or get anything done at the United Nations: the world is de-globalizing at a speed almost as astonishing
as it integrated. Post-Covid, U.S.-China confrontation is not a choice. It's a reality. The liberal international order is not lamentable.
It's already dead.
This was the argument made by Bannon. It had other backers, of course, within both the academy and an emerging foreign policy
counter-establishment loathe to repeat the mistakes of the past thirty years. But coming from the former top political advisor to
the sitting president of the United States, it was provocative stuff. Bannon articulated a perspective which seemed to be on the
tip of the foreign policy world's tongue. And it riled people up. The most fulsome rebuttal to the zeitgeist was perhaps The Jungle
Grows Back , tellingly written by Robert Kagan, an Iraq War architect. The peripheral world was dangerous brush; the United States
was the machete.
Trumpian nationalism has chugged along for nearly three years since -- stripped, some might say, of its Bannonite flair and intelligence.
The most hysterical prophecies of what the president might do -- that he might withdraw from the geriatric North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, for instance -- have not come to pass. Trump has howled and roared, true: but so far, his most disruptive foreign policy
maneuver has been escalation against Iran.
It's very good to hear the right getting a little humility in them now and talking less empire, more multilateralism. Trump has
been way too concerned with his MAGA personality cult to understand the value of humility.
The world's a big place. The reality is, America first will more and more mean working together with other nations for mutual
benefit, and often their gain will indirectly be to our own also.
Working more and more, yes. This is why US is undercutting Germany's competitiveness, by blocking a cheap source of energy via
NS2...
As Bush said, you are either with us or against us. Nothing has changed and nothing will change, but it will become uglier.
If it were to desire multi-polarity, the US would tolerate not only states, like KSA, where the Royals own everything, but also
states, like Iran, or Cuba, where the people (through the government/state) owns assets (land and productive facilities). But
the US does not tolerate such type of multi-polarity, not open to US "investment" and ownership (bought with fiat money).
Cold War II started in 2007, with Putin. Popcorn & beer lads!
It does seem like there's a creeping idea, not just on dissident internet sites now like before, that the Russian rivalry is a
luxury of the past. Even the liberals are going to have to reconcile with liberal hegemony not being workable and settle for something
less. Owing to distance and mutual interest (common rivals Britain and Germany) Russia and America had a long history of friendship
before the Cold war.
I sadly agree about the predatory nature of much of America does. I think it really is a reflection of partially, imperial
arrogance, but even moreso a matter of who runs the country. Oligarchy is poorly checked in modern America. Maybe we can hope
for a humbled oligarchy, at least.
Trump is indeed an empty suit and a demagogue, but he ran on a decent nationalist platform (probably thanks to Bannon, who is
almost certainly a closeted gay. No joke... a deep-in-the-closet, self-hating gay. The navy can change a man, and he's a fraud
in other ways: see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade"). Trump does have an absurd ego, and he
probably figured becoming president would impress Ivanka too.
Also, the Uyghurs are not totally innocent victims... Some of them are US-financed revolutionaries and some of them have committed
terrorism: see Godfree Roberts at Unz Review: "China and the Uyghurs" (January 10, 2019) and Ajit Singh at The Grayzone: "Inside
the World Uyghur Congress: The US-backed right-wing regime change network seeking the 'fall of China'" (March 5, 2020). Some of
our pathetic propagandists make it seem like they're in concentration camps, but there is objective reporting that suggests it's
more like job training programs and anti-jihad classes. Absurd lies have certainly been told about North Korea and many other
countries, so be skeptical.
Yeah, let's get that hate on for China - why they're as bad as Russia, Iran and Venezuela put together and there are so many more
of them. Especially a lot are available right here in the US and have lots of restaurants that can be boycotted. Not that many
Venezuelan restaurants around. Seriously, can Americans get over this childishness? When the US closes down its 800+ overseas
bases and withdraws its fleet to its own shores instead of Iran's and China's, then maybe Americans will be entitled to complain
about someone else's imperialism.
Most of anti-China stuff Hawley, much like Trump, claims always feels empty populism for WWC voters.
1) It is reasonable to be against our Middle East endeavors and not be so anti-China.
2) I still don't understand how it is China fault for stealing manufacturing jobs when it is the US private sector that does it.
(And Vietnam exist, etc.) So without Charles Koch and Tim Cook behind this trade stuff, it feels like empty populism.
3) The most obvious point on China to me is how little they do use military measures for their 'imperialism.'
One problem with all this populism emptiness, is there is a lot issues with China to work on:
1) This virus could have impact economies in Africa and South America a lot where the nations have to renegotiate their loans
to China. I have no idea how this goes but there will be tensions here. Imperialism is tough in the long run.
2) There are nations banding together on China's reaction to the virus and it seems reasonable that US joining them would be more
effective than Trump's taunting.
3) To prove Trump administration incompetence, I have no idea how he is not turning this crisis into more medical equipment and
drugs manufacturing. (My guess is this both takes a lot of work and frankly a lot of manufacturing plants have risks of spreads
so noone wants to invest.)
Hawley is a "fake populist" according to Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade" and I just saw fake-patriot
airhead Pete Hegseth claim China wants to destroy our civilization, on fake populist Tucker Carlson's show. It's well-established
that Fox News and the GOP are still neocons and fake patriots... after all, the Trump administration is run by Jared Kushner,
a protégé of Rupert Murdoch and Bibi Netanyahu.
Hawley's speech on the Senate floor yesterday deserves much more criticism than it gets here. This article from Reason
does a good job breaking down the speech and pointing out what's right AND wrong about it:
What if there is reduced wars and civil wars n the world today than ever. (So say anytime before 1991?) I get all the Middle East
& African Wars but look at the rest of the world. When in history have the major West Europe powers not had a major war in 75
years. After issues of post Cold War East Europe is probably more peaceful than ever. Look at South America. In the 1970s the
Civil Wars raged in all those nations. Or the Pacific Rim? Japan, China, and other nations are fighting with Military right now.
This is certainly less than perfect but the number of people (per million) dieing in wars and civil wars are at historic lows.
The fall of Soviet Union and weakening of Russia allowed US and Western Europe to attack Serbia in 1990s. A stronger Russia wouldn't
have allowed that to happen (who's trying to get Crimea from Russia's control now?). But with US aggressiveness and bellicosity
(including nuclear posture) at Russia's borders do not bode well.
But it is true, less important people are dying now...
Chinese imperialism? Uh ... other than shaking trees and drumming up fear can I get like one example of that.
Taiwan, part of China since the 1500's and they are have not issued any new threats since 1949.
Hong Kong - stolen from China and now reluctantly given back with lots of conditions. If they deserve the right of independence
through referendum I'm all for it as long as we apply this standard uniformly including parts of Texas, San Diego, New Mexico,
Arizona, any place that has a large foreign population will do.
Yeah, "Chinese imperialism" is complete nonsense, just like the claim that they definitely originated the coronavirus, caused
Americans to be under house arrest, and caused a depression. In fact, the origin of the virus is far from clear, and it wasn't
China who hyped up and exaggerated the danger and wrecked the economy. It was our superficial corporate media and government that
did that (perhaps deliberately)... the same people who are desperately trying to deflect blame onto the CCP. The same people who
have been mismanaging and ruining America for decades in order to enrich themselves.
"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The
net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless."
Most people would be well served to read Chomsky a first time.
However, it should be noted, Chomsky's critiques of neoliberalism aren't grounded in nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. So a
lot of TAC readers (and especially writers) may be disappointed.
Hawley seems like the natural choice for the potential future of the GOP, that is a post-fusionist or post-liberal GOP. However
the one thing that worries me is his foreign policy. He talks the talk, but I'm having trouble to see if he walks the walk. As
Mills noted he didn't vote to end support for the genocidal war in Yemen, a war that serves purely the interests of Saudi Arabia
and not our own. He has criticized David Petraeus before, but its important not to be fooled by just rhetoric. While accepting
he'll be better than any Tom Cotton or (god forbid) Nikki Haley in 2024, his foreign policy needs to be examined more until then.
Our response to the epidemic was 100% 'made in China'. The entire 'Western World' decided to copy Beijing. If that doesn't establish
a new level of leadership for China, I don't know what would. I'm surprised this is not more widely recognized. You can run down
the many parallels, including the pathetic photo-op attempt by the West to build those emergency hospitals (Nightingale in the
UK, Javits Center, etc. all across the US), which were just to show 'hey we can build hospitals in a few weeks also' ... never
mind they could never, and were never used for anything at all.
At this point, Hawley is all talk. Further, much of his talking amounts to little more than expressing resentment. I agree that
the US needs to follow a more nationalist pathway, which involved making itself less dependent on its chief geopolitical rival.
But accomplishing this is going to require more than bashing China and asserting that cosmopolitan Americans are traitors. At
this point, Hawley has no positive program to offer. Giving paid speeches that vilify coastal elites and China is not a political
plan.
Further, I agree that we're probably moving away from the universalist order that's guided much of our thinking since the 1990s.
But isolationism is not the answer. We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full account of China's rise as
a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a
good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?
Lastly, I find the article's reference to China's treatment of gays and lesbians to be curious. I'd first note that using the
term "homosexual" in reference to people is generally viewed as an offensive slur. Further, China's treatment of gay people isn't
so bad, and tends to be better than what Hawley's evangelical supporters would afford. Moreover, China is a multi-ethnic country.
It's program in Xinjiang has more to do with maintaining political order than a desire to repress non-Han people.
The general chest puffing nature of the American right makes it hard for them to understand that America might need to work with
other countries at a deep level, and not as vassals either.
". We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full account
of China's rise as a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a
series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a
good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?"
The thing is that the post-WWII liberal international order was good for things like that.
Trump and the GOP quite deliberately destroyed it. Before that, the US would have the trust of many other governments; now they
don't trust the US - even if Biden is elected, the next Trump is on the way.
"We benefit if countries that share our opposition to Chinese imperialism -- countries like India and Japan, Vietnam, Australia
and Taiwan -- are economically independent of China, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us,"
OK....then can someone explain why Hawley opposed the TPP, which was designed to accomplish just this. The TPP was supposed
to create trading relationships between these countries and the United States in the context of an agreement that excluded China.
In this instance people like Hawley were advancing China's position and interests (I suspect simply because it was a treaty negotiated
under Obama, which apparently was enough to make it bad).
Probably because Hawley seems more interested in demagoguery than accomplishing anything productive. Never mind that 95% of the
people who voted for him probably couldn't find Japan or Vietnam on a map.
TPP was not geared against China as a blanket thing, as an entire exclusion of China. The perfidy of TPP was that it was against
any economic interactions with State Owned Enterprises (didn't mention the origin, didn't have to). The ultimate goal wasn't to
isolate China but to force privatization of said SOEs, preferably run from Wall Street.
Private property good and = Democracy; State property bad = Authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc. It is a fallacy here somewhere,
cannot really put my finger on it...
Except this is all lies. On each chance to actually do something Hawley has sided with international corporations, as a good conservative
will always do. Fixing globalism will never come form the right, this is all smoke and mirrors for the religious right, aka the
rubes. And they are perpetual suckers and will keep buying into this crap as our nation is hollowed out and raided by the rich.
And that, is TRUE conservatism.
"Now we must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve
our purposes in this new era," proclaimed Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri. "And it does not meet our needs for this new day." He
continued, perhaps too politely: "And we should admit that multiple of its founding premises were in error."
The "error" in the founding premises of the post-WWII economic system was that it assumed that the US would act in a responsible
manner. Instead we have run huge budget deficits and borrowed the difference from foreigners, randomly invading other countries,
undermined the institutions we set up, bullied smaller countries rather than working with them, and abused our control of the
financial system.
No, that old economic system served our interests very well, as long as we respected the institutions we set up and kept our
own house in order. We haven't been doing any of that for at least 20 years.
Let's bear in mind that the Republican leader of the Senate married into a wealthy Chinese family that makes its money from hauling
Chinese exports to our shores and the shores of other developed nations.
This is all just hollow bravado meant to appeal to the right's nativist base.
I am not into the thinking that everyone whose politics I don't support is acting in bad faith. We are talking about the actions
of literally millions of people. Accusing this or that person of acting in bad faith because of personal interest is just dirty
politics dressed up as perceptiveness. I am not accusing any specific person of acting in bad faith, although some of the people
who pushed opening up to China because more business in China would create a class of people who would eventually push for Democracy
there, were indeed acting in bad faith. They wanted access to cheap labor with no rights.
Yet, no doubt many of them actually believed the propaganda, because it supposedly happened in South Korea, Taiwan and other
places. And especially the ones who switched the line to "globalism" when it was clear that the supposed indigenous pressures
for Democracy did not materialize also acted in bad faith. I only assume that some of were because once I understood the rationale
of the CCCP it was clear to me that China was radically different, and there is no way that so many of those guys who are smarter
and more knowledgeable about political systems than me, did not figure it out. But I am not going to behave as if it the Republicans
alone who were pushing either of these two false messages.
Criticizing China for "imperialism" is the height of hypocrisy on multiple levels. First, the United States has engaged in economic
imperialism, sometimes enforced with military intervention, for a hundred years. Read Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" if you
doubt that. Second, this is the same guy who voted against our proxy war in Yemen. Third, one could very reasonably argue that
China is simply applying the lessons it learned at the hands of Western imperialists since 1800s..
It's good that SOME Republicans are at least giving lip service to the idea of bringing back manufacturing in this country.
But you have to thank Trump for that, not the GOP establishment. The offshoring of American manufacturing as part of "free trade"
was strongly supported (if not led) by the GOP going back to the 1980s.
And check out John Perkins's books ("Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", etc.) for up-to-date information. It's obviously true
that criticizing China for "imperialism" is ridiculously hypocritical but people like Senator Hawley know they can get away with
it because they understand how propaganda works on the dumbed-down masses.
They understand doublethink, repetition, appeal to patriotism, appeal to racism, appeal to fear, etc. People like Rupert Murdoch
do this every day... poorly, but well enough to be effective on a lot of people.
Incidentally, the Republicans may talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US but they're actually planning on shifting
it to India (see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade").
If Washington lured the Soviet Union into it's demise in Afghanistan, which left that minor
empire in shambles - socially, militarily, economically - it was the nuclear conflagration at
Chernobyl that put the corpse in the ground.....
(Watch the GREAT HBO five-part tragedy on it and you will see that the brutally heroic
response of the Soviets, that saved the Western World at least temporarily, but is the
portrait of self-sacrifice)
What was lost in the Soviets fumbling immediate post-explosion cover-up was the trust of
their Eastern European satellite countries. That doomed that empire. So much military might
was given up in Afghanistan, then on Chernobyl, it was not clear if the Soviets had the
wherewithal to put down the rebellions that spread from Czechoslovakia to East Germany and
beyond.
Covid-19 will do the same to the American Empire.
As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the
Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000
bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading
empires, will finally collapse.
Loss of trust by the many craven satellites, in America's fractured response, to Covid-19
will put the final nail in its coffin.
A hot-shooting War may come next, but the empire cannot win it.
It would be nice if that were so, but it is very unlikely.
"So tired of reading propaganda."
Is that why you regurgitate it onto forums? Kinda like purging the system, eh?
If you are going to be judging China's economic health by their pollution levels then in
the future you will find yourself convinced that they have never recovered, even when it
becomes inescapably obvious that they have. The fact is that China's pollution levels are
never going back to 2019 levels, but that has nothing to do with their economic
health.
It really never ceases to amaze me how deeply rooted and pervasive the delusions and sense
of exceptionality is in America. It is woven into the thinking, from the lowest levels to the
very top of their thoughts, of even the very most intelligent Americans. It is apparently a
phenomenon that operates at an even deeper level than mass media brainwashing, as it seems it
was just as much a problem in every empire in history. That is, I am sure citizens of the
Roman Empire had the same blinding biases embedded deep below their consciousness. I guess
Marx was entirely correct to say that consciousness arises from material conditions, and
being citizen of an empire must be one of those material conditions that gives rise to this
all-pervasive and unconscious sense of exceptionality.
Go over to EOSDIS Worldview and take a look at satellite photos of China. Simple toggle in
lower left hand corner will take you to photos of same day, earlier years. Or any day in
satellite record.
The skies over China are clear. Chinese industry is not back at work. It may be that China
at 50% or even at 20% is a manufacturing powerhouse compared to a crumbling US. But until
China is back at work the thread so far is about the historical situation six months ago.
Xi used to do elaborately staged state appearances with well planned camera angles,
fabulous lighting, pomp and circumstance. He enjoyed the trappings of power and knew how to
use the trappings of power. Hasn't done that kind of state appearance since January.
China and the US are so different. The citizens of China cannot vote. The population's
movements are micromanaged by the government. This is not the case here (yet). And I hope it
is never the case. I agree with the premise that there are those in our government who are
living in a dream of the past and that is over, unless we want to destroy the world. But
China's government is so repressive. The rules must be obeyed. We seem to be compliant so far
of some of our government officials stepping over the bounds allowed by our Constitution, due
to the fear of C-19 engendered by the deep state (aka the bsmsm). But we will not do that
forever and our government cannot just start shooting big crowds of us as they can and have
done in China. Theirs is all top down rule, which is not the case here. Also, although it is
probably heretical to say this I am glad that the US has many cases of C-19. We will
eventually get herd immunity. IMO, China can lock down as many millions of citizens as they
wish; they cannot stop this virus and as time goes by they will have as many deaths and as
many cases as everybody else. Well, that is off the topic of the article. In the end I agree
that we are fighting weird battles we can never win and we citizens need to keep informing
our government employees that we just want to trade and make money, not threaten companies
and countries and lose money.
Regarding Madeleine Albright: "She also said that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children
through U.S. imposed sanctions was " a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price
is worth it." That is the basic credo of the liberal interventionists."
I think 'liberal interventionist' is a bit too weak for the 'lovely' Ms Albright and her
(in)famous quote.
Instead, let's try, "That is the basic credo of psychopathically sadistic zionist monsters
who exquisitely enjoy the thought of Arab children dying agonizingly slow deaths of
preventable diseases and starvation."
Ah, yes. That's a much more accurate assessment of the situation ..
It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing
country.
So, yes, the West still has a realistic chance of destroying China and inaugurating a new
cycle of capitalist prosperity.
What happens with the "decoupling"/"Pivot to Asia" is that, in the West, there's
a scatological theory [go to 10th paragraph] - of Keynesian origin - that socialism can
only play "catch up" with capitalism, but never surpass it when a "toyotist phase" of
technological innovation comes (this is obviously based on the USSR's case). This theory
states that, if there's innovation in socialism, it is residual and by accident, and that
only in capitalism is significant technological advancement possible. From this, they posit
that, if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is
probably to Brazil or India level.
If China will be able to get out of the "Toyotist Trap" that destroyed the USSR, only time
will tell. Regardless, decoupling is clearly not working, and China is not showing any signs
so far of slowing down. Hence Trump is now embracing a more direct approach.
As for the USA, I've put my big picture opinion about it some days ago, so I won't repeat
myself. Here, it suffices to say that, yes, I believe the USA can continue to survive as an
empire - even if, worst case scenario, in a "byzantine" form. To its favor, it has: 1) the
third largest world population 2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality
arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely (for comparison, the
USSR only had 10% of arable land, and of worse quality) 3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans
(Pacific and Atlantic), plus a direct exit to the Arctic (Alaska and, de facto, Greenland and
Canada) 4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea),
bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if
the situation asks to 4) still the financial superpower 5) still a robust "real" economy -
specially if compared to the micro-nations of Western Europe and East-Asia 6) a big fucking
Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power.
I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist
movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only
for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else. The Star-and-Stripes is still
a very strong ideal to the average American, and nobody takes the idea of territory loss for
real. If that happens, though, it would change my equation on the survival of the American
Empire completely.
As for Hong Kong. I watched a video by the chief of the PLA last year (unfortunately, I
watched it on Twitter and don't have the link with me anymore). He was very clear: Hong Kong
does not present an existential threat to China. The greatest existential threat to China
are, by far, Xinjiang and Tibet, followed by Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hong Kong is a
distant fourth place.
With a national election lurking on the horizon we will no doubt be hearing more about
Exceptionalism from various candidates seeking to support the premise that the United
States can interfere in every country on the planet because it is, as the expression goes,
exceptional.
That is correct and that is because it works the majority of Americans are stupid.
Do you see a solution suggested here?
It is also an unfortunate indication that the neoconservatives, pronounced dead after
the election of Trump, are back and resuming their drive to obtain the positions of power
that will permit endless war, starting with Iran.
The neocons never went anywhere. Trump is a minion of the Deep State and staffs his
administration accordingly.
My point is simple and ineluctable, whatever our demerits, our great republic is
supposed to weed out psychopaths like Brennan long before they get as close as he has to
destroying the whole shebang.
Never happens all administrations are full of psychopaths.
Frankly nothing new. Every Empire sought to rule the world and committed a long list of
atrocities in the process. "The empire on which the sun never sets", in reference to the
British Empire (the one currently still ruling the world), comes from Xerxes' "We shall
extend the Persian territory as far as God's heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no
land beyond our borders." as he invaded Greece.
That said, a word on the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski Doctrine and their Pentagon world map would be
on point here
A US judge
dismissed a defamation lawsuit by One America News Network against MSNBC over Rachel Maddow's
claims that OAN was "literally" Russian propaganda, ruling that her segment was merely "an
opinion" and "exaggeration." OAN sued the liberal talk show host and MSNBC for defamation,
demanding over $10 million in damages, back in September 2019. The lawsuit was based on the
July 22 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow launched a scathing broadside against
the conservative television network, labeling it "the most obsequiously pro-Trump right
wing news outlet in America" and "really literally paid Russian propaganda."
In the segment, Maddow cited a story by The Daily Beast's Kevin Poulsen about OAN's Kristian
Rouz, who has previously contributed to Sputnik as a freelance author. Toeing the general US
mainstream line on the Russian media, be it Sputnik or RT, Poulsen branded the Russian news
agency "the Kremlin's official propaganda outlet" and said Rouz was once on its
"payroll." Shortly after MSNBC's star talent peddled the claim, OAN rejected the
allegations as "utterly and completely false. " The outlet, which is owned by the
Herring Networks, a small California-based family company, said that it "has never been
paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government," with its only funding
coming from the Herring family.
In their bid to win the case, Maddow herself, MSNBC, Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal
Media did not address the accusation itself - namely, that her claim about OAN was false - but
opted to invoke the First Amendment, insisting that the rant should be protected as free
speech.
Siding
with Maddow, the California district court defined Maddow's show as a mix of "news and
opinions," concluding that the manner in which the progressive host blurted out the
accusations "makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the
contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact." h
The court said that while Maddow "truthfully" related the story by the Daily Beast,
the statement about OAN being funded by the Kremlin was her "opinion" and
"exaggeration" of the said article.
While the legal trick helped Maddow to get off the hook without ever trying to defend her
initial statement, conservative commentators on social media wasted no time in pointing out
that dodging a payout to OAN literally meant admitting that Maddow was not, in fact, news.
Maddow won a lawsuit brought against her because the Judge found her show was "opinion," that is, her show isn't one that
shares actual facts with viewers.https://t.co/T1bgdSfc0P — Essential Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 22, 2020Q
Just like Alex Jones’ defense in his divorce and custody proceedings: “I’m an entertainer”
Biden’s binder full of women (@Wallflowerface) May 22, 2020Q
So if she makes any statement(s) on air about being factual, then don’t we have an excellent appeal? — Mortimer Cinder
Block (@LeonardPGoldst1) May 22, 2020Q
A commentator in Taiwan said that the US consulate in Hong Kong has more than 2000 staff. If
true, this number is astounding, and probably has nothing comparable in other US foreign
missions. These officials can't all be processing visas, could they, haha. Regime-change
workers, spies and so-called diplomats.
That does not mean the end of the USA superiority. That is an action of china which can be
called "better late then never". What it means that the fight with China moves from trade war
into Cold war. And the USA is pretty tncous in enforcing COCOM like measures against China, with
corresponding for China consequences.
Notable quotes:
"... under the Trump administration the U.S. has introduced more and more measures to shackle China's development. The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed last year by the U.S. Congress demands that the U.S. government reports on Hong Kong and punishes those who it deems to be human right violators. The sanctions against Chinese companies and especially Huawei, recently expanded to a total economic blockade of 5G chip deliveries to that company, demonstrate that the U.S. will do anything it can to hinder China's economic success. ..."
"... The 'Cold War 2.0' the U.S. launched against China will now see significant counter moves. ..."
"... Under the new law the U.S. will have to stop its financing of student organization, anti-government unions and media in Hong Kong. The opposition parties will no longer be allowed to have relations with U.S. influence operations. ..."
"... No U.S. action can prevent China's government from securing its realm. Hong Kong is a Chinese city where China's laws, not U.S. dollars, are supreme. ..."
"... The U.S. seems to believe it can win a cold war with China. ..."
"... When the U.S. prohibits companies which use U.S. software or machines to design chips and make they sell to China then those companies will seek to buy such software and machines elsewhere. When the U.S. tries to hinder China's access to computer chips, China will build its own chip industry. Ten years from now it will be the U.S. which will have lost access to the then most modern ones as all of those will come from China. ..."
"... In his 2003 book After the Empire Emmanuel Todd described why the U.S. was moving towards the loss of its superpower status ..."
"... The Covid-19 crisis has laid all this bare for everyone to see. Will the U.S., as Todd predicted, now have to give up its superpower status? Or will it start a big war against China to divert the attention elsewhere and to prove its presumed superiority? ..."
"... Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority at 2 or 3 (see 6:48). It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing country. ..."
Blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic
is false . But the U.S. will continue to do so as a part of its larger anti-China
strategy.
As the U.S. is busy to counter the epidemic at home China has already defeated it within
its borders. It now uses the moment to remove an issue the U.S. has long used to harass it.
Hong Kong will finally be liberated from its U.S. supported
racists disguised as liberals .
In late 1984 Britain and China signed a formal agreement which approved the 1997 release
of Britain's colony Hong Kong to China. Britain had to agree to the pact because it had lost
the capability to defend the colony. The Sino British Joint Declaration stipulated that China
would create a formal law that would allow Hong Kong to largely govern itself.
The ' Basic Law of
the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ' is the de
facto constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. But it is a national law
of China adopted by the Chinese National People's Congress in 1990 and introduced in Hong
Kong in 1997 after the British rule ran out. If necessary the law can be changed.
Chapter II of the Basic Law regulates the relationship between the Central Authorities and
the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Article 23 of the Basic Law
stipulated that Hong Kong will have to implement certain measures for internal security:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act
of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government , or
theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from
conducting political activities in the Region , and to prohibit political organizations or
bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies
.
Hong Kong has failed to create any of the laws demanded by Article 23. Each time its
government tried to even partially implement such laws, in 2003, 2014 and 2019, protests and
large scale riots in the streets of Hong Kong prevented it.
China was always concerned about the foreign directed unrest in Hong Kong but it did not
press the issue while it was still depending on Hong Kong for access to money and
markets.
In the year 2000 Hong Kong's GDP stood at $171 billion while China's was just 7 times
larger at $1.200 billion. Last year Hong Kong's GDP had nearly doubled to $365 billion. But
China's GDP had grown more than tenfold to $14,200 billion, nearly 40 times larger than Hong
Kong's. Expressed in purchase power parity the divergence is even bigger. As an economic
outlet for China Hong Kong has lost its importance.
Another factor that held China back from deeper meddling in Hong Kong was its concern
about negative consequences from the U.S. and Britain. But under the Trump administration
the U.S. has introduced more and more measures to shackle China's development. The Hong Kong Human
Rights and Democracy Act passed last year by the U.S. Congress demands that the U.S.
government reports on Hong Kong and punishes those who it deems to be human right violators.
The sanctions against Chinese companies and especially Huawei, recently expanded to
a total economic
blockade of 5G chip deliveries to that company, demonstrate that the U.S. will do
anything it can to hinder China's economic success.
The Obama administration's 'pivot to Asia' was already a somewhat disguised move against
China. The Trump administration's
National Defense Strategy openly declared China a "strategic competitor using predatory
economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China
Sea".
Thus, small Marine forces would deploy around the islands of the first island chain and the
South China Sea, each element having the ability to contest the surrounding air and naval
space using anti-air and antiship missiles. Collectively, these forces would attrite
Chinese forces, inhibit them from moving outward, and ultimately, as part of a joint
campaign, squeeze them back to the Chinese homeland.
The 'Cold War 2.0' the U.S. launched against China will now see significant counter
moves.
Last year's violent riots in Hong Kong , cheered on by the borg in Washington DC, have
demonstrated that the development in Hong Kong is on a bad trajectory that may endanger
China. There is no longer a reason for China to hold back on countering the nonsense. Hong
Kong's economy is no longer relevant. U.S. sanctions are coming independent of what China
does or does not do in Hong Kong. The U.S. military designs are now an obvious threat.
The central government is to table a resolution on Friday to enable the apex of its top
legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), to craft
and pass a new national security law tailor-made for Hong Kong, it announced late on
Thursday.
Sources earlier told the Post the new law would proscribe secessionist and subversive
activity as well as foreign interference and terrorism in the city -- all developments that
had been troubling Beijing for some time, but most pressingly over the past year of
increasingly violent anti-government protests.
...
According to a mainland source familiar with Hong Kong affairs, Beijing had come to the
conclusion that it was impossible for the city's Legislative Council to pass a national
security law to enact Article 23 of the city's Basic Law given the political climate. This
was why it was turning to the NPC to take on the responsibility.
On May 28 the NPC will vote on a resolution asking its Standing Committee to write the
relevant law for Hong Kong. It is likely to be enacted by promulgation at the end of June.
The law will become part of Annex III of the Basic Law which lists "National Laws to be
Applied in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region".
Under the new law the U.S. will have to stop its financing of student
organization, anti-government unions and media in Hong Kong. The opposition parties will no
longer be allowed to have relations with U.S. influence operations.
Hong Kong has flourished as a bastion of liberty. The United States strongly urges Beijing
to reconsider its disastrous proposal, abide by its international obligations, and respect
Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy, democratic institutions, and civil liberties, which
are key to preserving its special status under U.S. law. Any decision impinging on Hong
Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the
Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status
of the territory.
We stand with the people of Hong Kong.
It is not (yet?) The
Coming War On China (video) but some hapless huffing and puffing that is strong on
rhetoric but has little effect. No U.S. action can prevent China's government from
securing its realm. Hong Kong is a Chinese city where China's laws, not U.S. dollars, are
supreme.
The U.S. seems to believe it can win a cold war with China. But that
understanding is wrong.
Since the US-China tech war began in April 2018 with Washington's ban on chip exports to
China's ZTE Corporation, "de-Americanization of supply chains" has been the buzzword in the
semiconductor industry.
Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia purchased about 50% more Chinese products in
April 2020 than they did in the year-earlier month. Japan and Korea showed 20% gains.
Exports to the US rose year-on-year, but from a very low 2019 base.
China's imports from Asia also rose sharply.
When the U.S. prohibits companies which use U.S. software or machines to design chips
and make they sell to China then those companies will seek to buy such software and machines
elsewhere. When the U.S. tries to hinder China's access to computer chips, China will build its own chip
industry. Ten years from now it will be the U.S. which will have lost access to the then
most modern ones as all of those will come from China. Already today it is China that
dominates
global trade .
The chaotic way in which the U.S. handles its Covid crisis is widely observed abroad.
Those who see clearly recognized that it is now China, not the U.S., that is the responsible
superpower . The U.S. is overwhelmed and will continue to be so for a long time:
This is why I don't see the talk about a possible "Cold War 2.0" as meaningful or relevant.
If there were to be any sort of "cold war" between the United States and China, then U.S.
policymakers would still be able credibly to start planning how to manage this complex
relationship with China . But in reality, the options for "managing" the core of this
relationship are pitifully few, since the central task of whatever U.S. leadership emerges
from this Covid nightmare will be to manage the precipitous collapse of the globe-circling
empire the United States has sat atop of since 1945.
...
So here in Washington in Spring of 2020, I say, Let 'em huff and puff with their new
flatulations of childish Sinophobia. Let them threaten this or that version of a new "Cold
War". Let them compete in elections -- if these are to be held -- on versions of "Who can
be tougher on China." But the cold reality shows that, as Banquo said, "It is a tale, told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
In his 2003 book After the Empire Emmanuel
Todd described why the U.S. was moving towards the loss of its superpower status :
Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's
weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic
economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign
investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of "soft power" while
its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance.
The Covid-19 crisis has laid all this bare for everyone to see. Will the U.S., as Todd
predicted, now have to give up its superpower status? Or will it start a big war against
China to divert the attention elsewhere and to prove its presumed superiority?
Posted by b on May 22, 2020 at 17:41 UTC |
Permalink
If Washington lured the Soviet Union into it's demise in Afghanistan, which
left that minor empire in shambles - socially, militarily, economically - it was the nuclear
conflagration at Chernobyl that put the corpse in the ground.....
(Watch the GREAT HBO five-part tragedy on it and you will see that the brutally heroic
response of the Soviets, that saved the Western World at least temporarily, but is the
portrait of self-sacrifice)
What was lost in the Soviets fumbling immediate post-explosion cover-up was the trust of
their Eastern European satellite countries. That doomed that empire. So much military might
was given up in Afghanistan, then on Chernobyl, it was not clear if the Soviets had the
wherewithal to put down the rebellions that spread from Czechoslovakia to East Germany and
beyond.
Covid-19 will do the same to the American Empire.
As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the
Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000
bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading
empires, will finally collapse.
Loss of trust by the many craven satellites, in America's fractured response, to Covid-19
will put the final nail in its coffin.
The U.S. and its vassals will use every dirty trick in the book even while shooting
themselves in the foot, as they have demonstrated in the past (and presently). Short of
starting a nuclear war, the level of moral turpitude could not be any lower.
That the pro-USA bloc in HK has to complain of supposed violations of the non-binding
aspirational 1984 Joint Declaration shows their position is one of complaint not dialogue.
As early as last May, protesters interviewed by international media were pleading for the
US to enact the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
They got their wish last autumn, but now they get the blowback from that decision. The
pro-USA bloc is now openly discussing a new strategy of rising like a phoenix from the ashes
of the temper tantrum they will stage in response. The hysteria meter will rise to 10.
My god, the cringe-inducing arrogance of the Washington regime is something else! Imagine
after Hurricane Maria and the subsequently dismal aid effort that devastated Puerto Rico, the
Chinese issued a statement lambasting the US response and saying "we stand with the people of
Puerto Rico".
The new law only prohibits organized protest movements funded from abroad (Us of north A or
G-Britain, for instance), and not those protests paid for by tax and corruption refugees from
Mainland China-- nor those from Táiwan that adhere to the unity of the Chinese state.
Seems to me that Chinese dominion of HK has long been in the cards. Not sure that the
Chinese moves signal anything more than the obvious: USA/EMPIRE desire to stomp on Chinese
ambitions.
Kissinger laid out the plan in 2014 in his WSJ Op-Ed:
Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order . Even though I repeatedly refer
back to Kissinger's Op-Ed, few really seem to 'get it'. USA Deep State are not the complete
idiots that some want to make them seem.
Start a war with China? Not likely any time soon.
USA/EMPIRE have got what it wanted from HK, didn't they? They used HK to antagonize China
and for anti-China propaganda. China's looming "crackdown" on UK will get lots of attention
in the West, as USA economic sanctions on multiple countries are largely ignored and Assange
rots in prison with nary a word from the press.
IMO The real test of USA/Empire is coming soon in the Caribbean. Will USA 'blink' and
allow Iran to deliver gas to Venezuela?
We are dealing with the same group, the descendants of the men who dropped the bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to end WWII but to show the USSR and the world that the Western
Empire had the world at its feet.
The idea that this group will not use nuclear weapons again is foolish.
I don't know why people keep using the irrelevant term "cold war" when the US is engaged
in hybrid warfare throughout the globe and there is nothing cold about it.
As Ou Si @ 11 states, other nations have similar laws prohibiting foreign influence through
the use of non-government organisations posing as charities or religious institutions via
embassies and consulates. Moreover as in the case of Russia (I believe, but people can
correct me if I'm wrong), the law that prohibits such activity is based on the equivalent US
law that apply to foreign organisations on US soil.
In the not so distant future, we can expect to see truckloads of US and UK consulate staff
being kicked out of HK and religious and other various "humanitarian" and "cultural"
organisations in HK having to pack their bags and go.
Where they will all relocate though is another worry.
ot but related... vancouver is witnessing a greater number of attacks on asian people at
present... it seems the 'hate china' memo is working itself thru the msm system with these
kinds of results... when i have an article to go with this, i will share...
The US is already at war with China, and will escalate from hybrid/economic war to hot war
eventually because the US believes it has no alternative. Giving up global hegemony and
yielding to the rising power is not perceived as a viable option. Allowing China's rise will
lead to the destruction of the Empire, and America will not allow that without using the best
tools of imperialism it has left, which is its military.
The Chinese need to understand this, and I believe they do understand it, but they need to
accurately grasp how the US will respond to the shooting conflict when it starts. The US will
escalate the violence to stay at least one level more brutal than their adversary. If the
Chinese shoot at and damage an American ship, then the Americans will respond with ten times
the force and sink a Chinese ship. If the Chinese sink an American ship, then the Americans
will (try to) sink every Chinese ship.
The point here is that the Chinese cannot entertain the illusion that they can just give
America a light military slap and the Americans will reconsider their imperialist behavior.
There is precisely 0% chance of that working. When the Chinese do take action it has to be
big and decisive. If the Chinese want any chance of escaping the Thucydides Trap without
all-out war, then they must punch their way out with enough "Shock & Awe™"
to disrupt America's otherwise inevitable escalation.
Keep in mind that the United States will use atomic weapons to defend its hegemony
if allowed to escalate to that level. The only way to prevent that is to leapfrog past all of
the levels of escalation that America is prepared for at the given moment and in the process
stun America into inability to respond. China certainly has the means to accomplish this, but
they cannot be timid about it.
It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing
country.
So, yes, the West still has a realistic chance of destroying China and inaugurating a new
cycle of capitalist prosperity.
What happens with the "decoupling"/"Pivot to Asia" is that, in the West, there's
a scatological theory [go to 10th paragraph] - of Keynesian origin - that socialism can
only play "catch up" with capitalism, but never surpass it when a "toyotist phase" of
technological innovation comes (this is obviously based on the USSR's case). This theory
states that, if there's innovation in socialism, it is residual and by accident, and that
only in capitalism is significant technological advancement possible. From this, they posit
that, if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is
probably to Brazil or India level.
If China will be able to get out of the "Toyotist Trap" that destroyed the USSR, only time
will tell. Regardless, decoupling is clearly not working, and China is not showing any signs
so far of slowing down. Hence Trump is now embracing a more direct approach.
As for the USA, I've put my big picture opinion about it some days ago, so I won't repeat
myself. Here, it suffices to say that, yes, I believe the USA can continue to survive as an
empire - even if, worst case scenario, in a "byzantine" form. To its favor, it has: 1) the
third largest world population 2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality
arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely (for comparison, the
USSR only had 10% of arable land, and of worse quality) 3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans
(Pacific and Atlantic), plus a direct exit to the Arctic (Alaska and, de facto, Greenland and
Canada) 4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea),
bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if
the situation asks to 4) still the financial superpower 5) still a robust "real" economy -
specially if compared to the micro-nations of Western Europe and East-Asia 6) a big fucking
Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power.
I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist
movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only
for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else. The Star-and-Stripes is still
a very strong ideal to the average American, and nobody takes the idea of territory loss for
real. If that happens, though, it would change my equation on the survival of the American
Empire completely.
As for Hong Kong. I watched a video by the chief of the PLA last year (unfortunately, I
watched it on Twitter and don't have the link with me anymore). He was very clear: Hong Kong
does not present an existential threat to China. The greatest existential threat to China
are, by far, Xinjiang and Tibet, followed by Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hong Kong is a
distant fourth place.
Much appreciated article, thanks for that! I know nothing about China and Hong Kong, so I'm
much obliged for your analysis.
Seems really like the thing to do for the Chinese, not to meddle too much in the city's
internal affairs, but make sure that hostile powers can't meddle there either. When those
protests slash riots came up, I was racking my brain about why the Chinese would put up with
any festering US consulate in Hong Kong. Just throw those "diplomats" out on whatever thin
pretext. That's also what Venezuela should have done long ago, and Syria too, back in 2011
when that certified creep Robert Stephen Ford was hopping from couch to couch, inciting civil
war and probably looking to get laid by impressionable Arab guys as well. They could have
saved themselves a lot of trouble by just 'neutralising' Jeff-Man Feltman over in Lebanon,
too, before said Feltman managed to neutralise his host Rafic Hariri.
One problem with your scenario is that the US navy may be over-extended in parts of the
world where all the enemy has to do is to cut off supply lines to battleship groups and then
those ships would be completey helpless. US warships in the Persian Gulf with the Strait of
Hormuz sealed off by Iran come to mind.
Incidents involving US naval ship collisions with slow-moving oil tankers in SE Asian
waters and some other parts of of the the world, resulting in the loss of sailors, hardly
instill the notion that the US is a mighty thalassocratic force.
It's my understanding also that Russia, China and maybe some other countries have invested
hugely in long-range missiles capable of hitting US coastal cities and areas where the bulk
of the US population lives.
And if long-range missiles don't put paid to the notion that projecting power through
sending naval warships all over the planet works, maybe the fact that many of these ships are
sitting ducks for COVID-19 infection clusters might, where the US public is concerned.
I agree the new anti-ship missile technology may have changed the rules of naval
warfare.
However, it's important to highlight that, contrary to the US Army, the USN has a stellar
record. It fought wonderfully against the Japanese Empire in 1941-1945, and successfully
converted both the Pacific and the Atlantic into "American lakes" for the next 75 years. All
the Americans have nowadays it owes its Navy.
But you may be right. Maybe the USN is also susceptible to degeneration.
The US Navy has had some pretty serious lapses in the past decade, the multiple collisions
with cargo ships and the failed Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) design. Putting aside the unproven
allegations that the Chinese or the Russians somehow "spooled" the GPS of the ships to cause
the collisions the fact the US ships didn't have lookouts posted means they either got lazy
or they are so understaffed they cut vital roles they felted were better off being automated.
Also, I seem to recall that the US navy reduced their offshore training program for their
officers a few years ago (meaning their newest officers are learning on the fly at sea). So
i'm not sure if they've avoided the problems of a bloated military
Of the existing 30 or so high-tech productive chains, China only enjoys superiority
at 2 or 3 (see 6:48). It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is
a developing country.
Based on what I've read, China is on a fast track to develop technology on their own. In
addition, technology development is world-wide these days. What China can not develop itself
- quickly enough, time is the only real problem - it can buy with its economic power.
"if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" -
which is probably to Brazil or India level."
Ah, but that's where hackers come in. China can *not* be blocked out of Western IP. First,
as I said, China can *buy* it. Unless there is a general prohibition across the entire
Western world, and by extension sanctions against any other nation from selling to China -
which is an unenforceable policy, as Iran has shown - China can buy what it doesn't have and
then reverse-engineer it. Russia will sell it if no one else will.
Second, China can continue to simply acquire technology through industrial espionage.
Every country and every industry engages in this sort of thing. Ever watch the movie
"Duplicity"? That shit actually happens. I read about industrial espionage years ago and it's
only gotten fancier since the old days of paper files. I would be happy to breach any US or
EU industrial sector and sell what I find to the Chinese, the Malaysians or anyone else
interested. It's called "leveling the playing field" and that is advantageous for everyone.
If the US industrial sector employees can't keep up, that's their problem. No one is
guaranteed a job for life - and shouldn't be.
"1) the third largest world population"
Which is mostly engaged in unproductive activities like finance, law, etc. I've read that
if you visit the main US universities teaching science and technology, who are the students?
Chinese. Indians. Not Americans. Americans only want to "make money" in law and finance, not
"make things."
"2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality arable land (35%), that
basically guarantees food security indefinitely"
In military terms, given current military technology, territory doesn't matter. China has
enough nuclear missiles to destroy the 50 Major Metropolitan Areas in this country. Losing
100-200 millions citizens kinda puts a damper on US productivity. Losing the same number in
China merely means more for the rest.
"3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans (Pacific and Atlantic)"
Which submarines can make irrelevant. Good for economic matters - *if* your economy can
continue competing. China has one coast - but its Belt and Road Initiative gives it economic
clout on the back-end and the front-end. I don't see the US successfully countering that
Initiative.
"4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea)"
Which only means the US can't be "invaded". That's WWI and WWII thinking the US is mired
in. Today, you destroy an opponent's military and, if necessary, his civilian population, or
at least its ability to "project" force against you. You don't "invade" unless it's some weak
Third World country. And if the US can't "project" its power via its navy or air force,
having a lot of territory doesn't mean much. This is where Russia is right now. Very
defensible but limited in force projection (but getting better fast.) The problem for the US
is China and Russia are developing military technology that can prevent US force projection
around *their* borders.
"bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily
absorbed if the situation asks"
LOL I can just see the US "absorbing" Mexico. Canada, maybe - they're allies anyway.
Mexico, not so much. You want a "quagmire", send the US troops to take on the Mexican drug
gangs. They aren't Pancho Villa.
"4) still the financial superpower"
Uhm, what part of "Depression" did you miss? And even if that doesn't happen now,
continued financial success is unlikely. Like pandemics, shit happens in economics and
monetary policy.
"a big fucking Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power."
That can be sunk in a heartbeat and is virtually a colossal money pit with limited
strategic value given current military technology which both China and Russia are as advanced
as the US is, if not more so. Plus China is developing its own navy quickly. I read somewhere
a description of one Chinese naval shipyard. There were several advanced destroyers being
developed. Then the article noted that China has several more large shipyards. That Chinese
long coast comes in handy for that sort of thing.
China Now Has More Warships Than the U.S.
But sometimes quantity doesn't trump quality. [My note: But sometimes it does.] https://tinyurl.com/y7numhef
That's just the first article I found, from a crappy source. There are better analyses, of
course.
"I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist
movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only
for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else."
I'd agree with that. I hear this "California secession" crap periodically and never
believe it. However, for state politicians, the notion of being "President" of your own
country versus a "Governor" probably is tempting to these morons. State populations are
frequently idiots as well, as the current lockdown response is demonstrating. All in all,
though, if there are perceived external military threats, that is likely to make the states
prefer to remain under US central control.
I've long since concluded, there is no president who can withdraw the US from the Forever
Wars. Obama couldn't. Trump can't. Biden/Harris/Oprah/Gabbard/Pence won't.
There are a half-dozen permanent US policies that Americans don't get to vote on, and the
Permawar is one of them.
My God, Buchanan, I am staggered by the arrogance of this column. Where in the name of all
that's holy did you ever get the idea that America has the right to impose on anyone, from
Afghans through to Venezuelans, your (perceived) systems of thought, values and democracy?
How many American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan can even speak the local language?
Understand the local customs? None!!! They swan around in their sunglasses and battle gear
thinking that they are they return of the Terminator and wander why the locals absolutely
hate their collective guts! It's time that you collectively learned that America is NOT the
world's sheriff and that, as Benjamin Franklin said "A man convinced against his will, is of
the same opinion still".
Pat is not entirely wrong -- he hints at the explanation for failure:
"As imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures.
Moreover, with us, the national interest inevitably asserts itself."
As Imperialists there has never been anything but the (Elite) "national interest".
In short, these so called "losing" wars have been wars of aggression -- ie "bad" wars.
All Pat's talk of conversion, democracy etc is just so much nonsense.
"While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot
persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them
to Christianity" although they might be better persuaded to convert to Christianity –
traditional Christianity – than to embrace secular democracy and its "values".
Why would anyone want to embrace homosexuality, transgenderism, rad-feminism, opioids,
prozac, inequality, broken homes, mass shootings, mountainous debt, corrupt media, puppet
politicians & the rest of the filth & perversion that passes for "values" in secular
democracies like America or Western Europe?
Indeed, why would anyone in these decadent countries even want to defend these venal
"values", let alone try to spread them around the world like the Chinese plague?
No, "they are not trying to change us" but maybe they should.
As the British and French ultimately found out it costs more to run an empire than to loot
it. So the long retreat ensues. One would have thought that the Americans might have learned
this from history, but no! After all they were "the exceptional people, they stood taller
than the others and saw further." Errrm, no they didn't. Like their forbears they got bogged
down as well getting into debt which was only bailed out by their insistence that they would
not convert the dollar into gold.
Human nature and stupidity has got a long track-record and it isn't going to end anytime
soon.
The writer, and most commenters' are still under the erroneous belief that AMerica goes to
war in places then AMerica wins or loses or wastes lives or kill children. This is the
saddest part of the Yankee war machine: Americans joining the Army because they think theya
re joining the fight to defend the American Dream.
You-all are corporate gunmonkeys, fighting and killing and burning and bombing, not in the
name of freedom or apple pie, but in the name of Gulf Oil, Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, JPMorgan,
Monsanto, PHBBillington, whatever Devil Rumsfeld calls his sack of shit these days .
America has not won any war anywhere, even their civil war was mostly just clearing the
land for the banks. That is because it is not America at war, she just supplies the cannon
fodder. And cannons. And radiactive scrapmetal to make bullets to mow down women and children
in the name of Investor Confidence.
But then, that is what your Zionist bible tells you to do, isn't it?
I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude to engage in genocide, so it's
hopeless trying to "win."
If by the US you mean most of the people you may be right. But the people in the US
have no say in the actions of the US government which is controlled by psychopaths.
Afghanistan is hardly even a country as the average American might define one. There's really
nothing to "win"; we only occupy. The infrastructure is primitive so it's not cost effective
to try to take whatever natural resources they may have, if any, so there's nothing they have
that we want. The Taliban were not "ousted". In the face of massive firepower they split up
and scattered; they're still there. After all, the US has been negotiating with them for a
peace deal of some sort hasn't it? "Democracy crusades" is just a propaganda fig leaf to
bamboozle stupid Americans. It's amazing that there's people who actually believe stuff like
that but PT Barnum had it right. "Eventually, we give up and go home". That's because they
live there and we don't. "They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers" willing
to fight and die. They don't want foreign robo-soldiers pointing guns at them in their own
country. We have our own version, it's called "Remember the Alamo", men who stood their
ground against the odds.
If a country is not willing to do that, and I would hope the United States is not
willing to do that, then they (we) should go home and leave the Afghans to murder each
other without our assistance. If they return to supporting terrorism or go whole hog in
producing opium, perhaps the US should decapitate their entire government and let the next
batch of losers give governing a try. I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude
to engage in genocide, so it's hopeless trying to "win."
The growth in opium cultivation correlates with CIA activities in the area and the $3
billion from American taxpayers which financed Mujahideen 'terrorism' against the Russians
and their local proxies just to avenge the fall of Saigon.
In 1980 Afghanistan accounted for about only 5% of total world heroin production. This was
mainly for the local market and neighbor Iran.
They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their
faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their
honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not
ours.
If I may..
another way of looking at this, and I feel a profound respect for the Afghans, and only
wish we were made of the same mettle. If only ((they)) could say of us..
They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their
faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their
honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not
(((ours)))).
They are not trying to change ((((us. We))) are trying to change them. And they wish to
remain who they are.
IOW, we white Westerners, have proved willing to surrender and submit to all of it.
Without nary a peep of protest. Even as ((they)) send us around the globe to kill people like
these Afghans, for being slightly inconvenient to their agenda. [And so the CIA can
reconstitute its global heroin trafficking operation$.]
If only history would look back on this epic moment, at the last Death throes of the West,
and say of whitey, that he refused to surrender his values and faith and traditions and tribe
and God, and culture and civilization and honor.. to ((those)) who would pervert his values,
and mock his faith, and trash his traditions, and exterminate his tribe, while mocking his
God, and poisoning his culture, and destroying his civilization and all because at the end of
the day, he had no honor.
These men may be backwater, illiterate villagers,
but at least they have enough mettle and honor, to tell the Beast that they would rather
die killing as many of the Beast's stupid goons as they're able, than ever sacrifice their
sacred honor- or lands or sovereignty, or the destinies of their children – over to the
fiend, which is more than I can say for Western "man".
They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain
who they are.
Would that the Swedish people had a Nano-shred of the blood-honor of an Afghan, Barbara
Spectre would be pounding sand.
Historically, the Afghans are fundamentalist, tribal and impervious to foreign
intervention.
Obviously, there is a great deal we need to learn from them.
What will the Taliban do when we leave?
They will not give up their dream of again ruling the Afghan nation and people. And they
will fight until they have achieved that goal and their idea of victory: dominance.
Um.. Pat. Whose land is it anyways? Is it such a horror that Afghans should be
dominant in Afghanistan ?
The Taliban was welcomed into most of the regions it governed, because they drove out
local war lords who often treated the villager's children as their sex toys, and the foreign
(CIA) opioid growers and traffickers. And it was the Taliban that put an end to all of that.
They're harsh, but they're effective, and that is their land, not ours.
Also, the Taliban offered to turn over Osama Bin Laden, if the West could provide a shred
of proof that he had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. (he didn't ; ) But the West had
zero proof, (as the FBI admits to this day), that they have zero proof that ties Bin Laden to
9/11.
And n0w that we all know 9/11 was an Israeli false flag, intended to use the American
military as their bitch, to burn down 'seven nations in five years' .. that the Jewish
supremacists wanted destroyed, our whole pretext for being over there has been a sham from
day one. Duh.
.
.
.
.
I remember long ago when I had a subscription to National Geographic and this photo came out,
I cut the picture out, and stuck it somewhere to look at- it was so visceral and
haunting.
Leave them alone. I don't care how many Jews at the WSJ demand whitey has to stay and die
for Israel. (Afghanistan is on Iran's border, and that's why we have to stay, to menace all
those anti-Semites over there, trying to gas all the Jews and make soap).
@paranoid
goy I very much doubt if many are joining the military to "defend the American Dream."
Most are more practical and are joining to escape poverty, even if it might cost them their
lives. Recruiters will now be inundated with volunteers since there are no jobs in the covid
depression.
If the neo-con clown car Trump has permitted to run foreign policy since his election gets us
into a war with Iran and/or Venezuela before November, will Pat still be stumping for him, or
will we see the return of non-election-year Pat?
Excellent question Pat! Unfortunately there is no answer, we've been at "forever war"
seemingly forever, and the whole point as Eisenhower so preciently warned us is THE
objective.
The thing is that the Afghan government wasn't supporting terrorism. Rather, it had no
on-going control anywhere except the cities, which made the tribal areas useful hideouts /
bases for a raft of groups.
I well remember the prelude to the invasion where the US was demanding that its government
(which merely happened to be Taliban that year) hand over OBL in 72hrs. The truth was that
the US knew Afghanistan didn't have the capability to do that and it merely wanted to use OBL
as an excuse to invade and continue the encirclement of the old soviet states.
"... One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. ..."
"... But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill . ..."
"... With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake attack that they themselves had planned. ..."
"... 9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the conscience. ..."
"... For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty. ..."
"... While the nation's elite colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Some conservatives have called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the problem is not one man but an entire culture. ..."
"... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals. ..."
"... It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their bourgeois identitarian parlor game! ..."
"... J. Edgar Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so that they serve us instead of themselves. ..."
"... Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like Comey never get put in charge would be a good start. ..."
"... Remember in "Three Days of the Condor," when Robert Redford reacts scornfully to Cliff Robertson's use of the term "community"? ..."
"... Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. ..."
"... Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths. Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC. ..."
"... Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond in kind. ..."
"... Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized. Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians. While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is independent. ..."
"... Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard dirty tricks on him. ..."
"... It isn't just the FBI that uses dirty tactics. most police departments also use dirty tactics. ..."
"... As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal affairs. They are an evil organization. ..."
"... Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better someone like Comey. ..."
"... I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how powerful they are! ..."
Its constant abuses, of which Michael Flynn is only the latest, show what a failed
Progressive Era institution it really is. Fittingly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded by a grandnephew of
Napoleon Bonaparte, Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, during the Progressive Era.
Bonaparte was a Harvard-educated crusader. As the FBI's official history states, "Many
progressives, including (Teddy) Roosevelt, believed that the federal government's guiding hand
was necessary to foster justice in an industrial society."
Progressives viewed the Constitution as a malleable document, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of
thing. The FBI inherited that mindset of civil liberties being optional. In their early years,
with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I, the FBI came into its
own by launching a massive domestic surveillance campaign and prosecuting war dissenters.
Thousands of Americans were arrested, prosecuted, and jailed simply for voicing opposition.
One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin
Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. The
FBI needlessly killed women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Anyone who has lived anywhere
near Boston knows of the Bureau's staggering corruption during gangster Whitey Bulger's reign
of terror. The abuses in Boston were so terrific that radio host Howie Carr declared that the
FBI initials really stood for "Famous But Incompetent." And then there's Richard Jewell, the
hero security guard who was almost railroaded by zealous FBI agents looking for a scalp after
they failed to solve the Atlanta terrorist bombing.
But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded
agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their
awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately
after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to
solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill .
With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting
troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press
conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake
attack that they themselves had planned.
9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most
recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish
anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the
conscience. After Jewell, Hatfill, Flynn, and so many others, it's time to ask whether the
culture of the FBI has become similar to that of Stalin's secret police, i.e. "show me the man
and I'll show you the crime."
I am no anti-law enforcement libertarian. In a previous career, I had the privilege to work
with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and they were some of the bravest
people I have ever met. And while the DEA can be overly aggressive (just ask anyone who has
been subjected to federal asset forfeiture), it is inconceivable that its agents would plot a
coup d'état against the president of the United States. The DEA sees their job as
catching drug criminals; they stay in their lane.
For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious
James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A
Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty.
They see themselves as
progressive guardians of the American Way, intervening whenever and wherever they see democracy
in danger. No healthy republic should have a national police force with this kind of culture.
There are no doubt many brave and patriotic FBI agents, but there is also no doubt they have
been very badly led.
This savior complex led them to aggressively pursue the Russiagate hoax. Their chasing of
ghosts should make it clear that the FBI does not stay in their lane. While the nation's elite
colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best
ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying
to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign.
Some conservatives have
called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the
problem is not one man but an entire culture. One possible solution is to break up the FBI into
four or five agencies, with one responsible for counterintelligence, one for counterterrorism,
one for complex white-collar crime, one for cybercrimes, and so on. Smaller agencies with more
distinctive missions would not see themselves as national saviors and could be held accountable
for their effectiveness at very specific jobs. It would also allow federal agents to develop
genuine expertise rather than, as the FBI regularly does, shifting agents constantly from
terrorism cases to the war on drugs to cybercrime to whatever the political class's latest
crime du jour might be.
Such a reform would not end every abuse of federal law enforcement, and all these agencies
would need to be kept on a short leash for the sake of civil liberties. It would, however,
diminish the ostentatious pretension of the current FBI that they are the existential guardians
of the republic. In a republic, the people and their elected leaders are the protectors of
their liberties. No one else.
One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly
strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals.
It's hard to believe it was only a decade ago when they were (correctly) deriding these
exact same people for their manifold failures relating to the War on Terror, but then again
left liberals at that time had not yet abandoned the pretense that they were something
other than a PMC social club.
It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to
disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining
a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their
bourgeois identitarian parlor game!
It's not the left liberals, it's the centrists and the neocons fleeing the Republican Party
like rats. The left never liked the FBI, never trusted them, with good reason.
J. Edgar
Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there
needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so
that they serve us instead of themselves.
Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like
Comey never get put in charge would be a good start.
Or put another way... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has
been the increasingly strong disdain of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term)
by far right conservatives.
Let's just be honest with ourselves - we really don't want intelligence, or science, or
oversight, unless it supports our team.
1. Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't
work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. This goes to guys like Mike
Flynn (former director of DIA), his predecessors and successors, and their peers across the
Intel(?) Community (that one kills me, too); the IC. Not to 'slight' anyone, but middle
management is no better, and probably, worse; everyone has to protect their own 'little
rice bowl' ya know.
2. Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor,
manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths.
Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put
them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC.
3. Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the
original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is
required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual
arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last
bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and
Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond
in kind.
The ICs are dog eat dog; LM are looking out for themselves...Period. Actually doing 'the
job' is pretty far down the TODO List. The vast majority of people in the 'trenches' are
just trying to get through the day; like LM, doing the 'right thing' is no longer the first
thought.
To make matters worse (if possible), MANY of those people in the trenches have
almost no clue WTF they are doing. This is because management involuntarily reassigns
people (SURPRISE!) to jobs for which they were not hired, have no qualifications, and,
often, no interest in becoming qualified. Of course, they hang on hoping that 'black swan'
will land and make everything right again.
We've had two major incidents (at least), in the last 20 years (9/11 and the Kung Flu)
that are specific failures of the IC (IMO). The IC failed (fails?) because Collaboratus,
Virtus, and Fides are just some words on a plaque; not goals for which to strive; lip
service is a poor substitute.
Yeah, these yahoos are overdue for a good house cleaning as well.
Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized.
Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians.
While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is
independent.
In order their men can do their "works", they also increased their authorities. Supposedly, FBI directors, once confirmed, will not change with president. In reality,
we saw presidents to replace old ones with their own.
It is not break up or whatever "reform". As long as presidents (regardless whom) can
choose their own, how can you expect FBI does its jobs stated by laws?
It is amazing how far people will let their political hatreds take them. The
FBI is actually more important for the services it provides police forces around America
than it is for solving federal crimes.
The FBI have been using dirty practices on people
for decades. Literally hundreds of people who are not criminals have written about this -
several of them are former agents who left in good standing.
They practice some of them
right out in the open, like leaking information about arrests to the press so that the
press get to film their arrests - sometimes timing arrests to hit local primetime new. It
even has a name - the prime time perp walk. Whether these people are convicted or not,
those images follow them for the rest of their lives. Or announcing that a person is "a
person of interest" to force cooperation, because they know that people hear "suspect" when
they hear such announcements. They will then offer to announce that the person is no longer
a person of interest in exchange for cooperation. It didn't deserve to be disbanded them.
Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard
dirty tricks on him. But since he was a minion of Donald Trump, the FBI should have
known that he was untouchable. That is their real wrongdoing here. But they didn't realize
it, so they should be disbanded. It is just like some progressives call for the disbandment
of ICE because it arrests illegal aliens.
This ignoramus reminds me of others of his kind who call for the disbandbandment of the
UN because they don't like the behavior of its General Council, its human rights or the
peace keeping agencies, completely oblivious of the critical services the dozens of
non-political UN agencies provide to all countries, especially to very small or under
developed ones. They call for the destruction of WHO because it kowtows to China no matter
that a number of countries in the world would have access to zero advanced health services
without it, and others who are less dependent, but find its services critical in
maintaining healthy populations. They find it politically objectionable so get rid of it! I
really hate how progressives throw around the words "entitled" and "privilege", but some
people do behave that way.
You can't go without the police though and a lot of what goes there can be reformed. Stop
treating them like an movie version of the military. Teach them to calm a situation instead
of shooting first, and realize you can treat them like an important part of society without
making them above the law.
As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and
not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal
affairs. They are an evil organization.
If conservatives are coming around to the idea that police corruption is a real thing, that
would be great. Somehow, I tend to doubt that it extends much beyond a way to protect white
collar and political corruption. I hope this is a turning point. The investigations into
Clinton emails didn't seem to warrant a mention here. Oh well.
That whole email situation was worthless. Not to say whether there was or was not an issue
but the investigation was nothing worthwhile and only resulted in complicating an already
messy election. Whether you believe there was a crime or not there there was nothing good
handled by that investigation.
Personally I'm more content with the Mueller investigation. Not the way everyone
panicked over it on both sides but what Mueller actually did himself: came in, researched
the situation, found out that while a good few people acted messy Trump himself wasn't
doing more than Twitter talk (yes it's technically "not enough evidence to prosecute", but
that is how we phrase "not guilty" technically: you prove guilt not innocence), stated that
Trump keeps messing himself up (aka "why did you ask your staff to claim one reason for a
firing then tell a different story on national TV idiot")..
Then ran for the hills as everyone screamed "impeach/witchhunt".
Though don't get me wrong: I'm not going to get on the way of any attempt to dismantle
the FBI or any of those other systems. It's something I really wish "small government"
actually meant.
And lets not forget that Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI did a
perfunctory investigation and dismissed the threat. They probably thought they were a
couple of poor Chechen boys persecuted by those evil Russians.
Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once
mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what
it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a
figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better
someone like Comey.
But, this is part of a pattern of Trump and his loyal followers (no Conservatives they)
assault on the Institutions. The FBI is insufficiently tamed by Billy Barr, so it must go.
(Part of the deep state swamp. /s).
Actually, there are very sound reasons for keeping the FBI, and even more for reforming
it. But since it was engaged in checking out Trump's minion, Flynn, it is bad, very bad,
incredibly bad, and must go. OTOH, if Comey had bent the knee to Trump, the FBI would be
the most tremendous force for good the country has ever seen.
But this essay must be seen as part of the background of attempted legitimization for
whatever Trump tweetstormed today. Perhaps the critics are right, and "conservatism is
dead". If so, it would be the proper thing to give it a decent burial and go on.
Because there is nothing about Donald John Trump which is the least Conservative, and it
is sickening to see people I once presumed to be "principled" line up at the altar of
Trumpism. You know he will not be satisfied until the country is renamed The United States
of Trump.
Now, all you Trumpublicans and Trumpservatives go downvote because I decline to abandon
Conservatism for Trumpworship,
I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn
to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how
powerful they are!
Before Russiagate, the former national security advisor was an operative for Turkey,
tilting foreign policy against the Kurds.
by Reese Erlich Posted on
May 22, 2020 May 21, 2020 Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is best known
for his connection to the Russiagate investigation. Lost in that hubbub, however, was Flynn's
slimy role as a lobbyist for Turkey. A Turkish businessman paid Flynn
$530,000 in 2016 to push pro-Turkey, anti-Kurd policies in hopes of influencing the Trump
Administration.
The American public has mostly forgotten about Flynn's Turkey connections, says Steven A.
Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington, D.C.
"There's more going on with Turkey than people may realize," Cook tells me.
Flynn's money-driven opportunism is just one example of the operations of Washington's
foreign policy lobbyists. As a candidate, Donald Trump correctly criticized the Washington
swamp, but as President, instead of draining it, he has shoveled in more muck.
I've dipped my toe into the swamp on occasion by attending conferences and press events
populated by Washington's elite. I've rubbed elbows with the likes of former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Believe me, these folks are just as evil in person as they appear on TV.
Washington swamp creatures are easily identified by their black pinstriped suits, wingtip
oxfords, and red power ties. Two kinds of people attend these events: those in power and
those hoping to seize it.
Washington is crawling with former diplomats, intelligence officers, and business
executives eager to influence policy and make a buck. And so enters former army Lieutenant
General Michael Thomas Flynn, poster boy for the military-industrial complex.
Flynn's checkered past
Flynn, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, came to Washington during the Obama
Administration as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was
forced to resign for insubordination in 2014, whereupon he joined the Washington swamp by
forming the Flynn Intel Group.
In 2016, Flynn hitched his wagon to candidate Donald Trump, giving a fiery speech at the
Republican National Convention in which he echoed
the call to "lock up" Hillary Clinton for her handling of State Department emails.
Behind the scenes, however, Flynn was engaged in offenses for which he could be locked up.
The Flynn Intel Group signed
a contract totaling $600,000 with a Turkish businessman who had close ties to authoritarian
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdoğan wanted Washington to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a political opponent living
in Pennsylvania since 1999. Gulen is a rival political Islamist who had a falling out with
Erdogan. The Turkish president
accuses Gulen of organizing the unsuccessful July 2016 coup. At the time Flynn
spoke favorably about the military trying to overthrow Erdogan. He also
criticized Turkey for allowing terrorists to cross the border into Syria.
But after receiving the contract to help Turkey, he did a 180-degree turn and supported
Erdogan's policies.
"Flynn believes whatever is good for Flynn is good for America," Kani Xulam, director of
the American Kurdish Information Network, tells me. "The minute they put money in his bank
account, he became pro-Turkey. That was the shocking part."
Kidnapping
In September 2016, Flynn arranged
a meeting between former US officials and Turkish leaders, including the country's foreign
minister, energy minister, and Erdogan's son-in-law.
Participants at the meeting talked about kidnapping Gulen and bringing him to Turkey.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended the meeting, said
they
discussed "a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away."
In December, Flynn
wrote an op-ed for the influential Washington publication The Hill in which he
compared Gulen to both Osama bin Laden and Ayatollah Khomeini. According to analyst Cook, the
op-ed could have been written in Ankara: "It was all Turkey's talking points."
Flynn didn't bother to tell The Hill editors that he was a paid lobbyist for
Turkey.
Flynn became part of Trump's transition team after November 2016, and he used the position
to push anti-Kurdish policies. At that time, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were on
the verge of taking control of the ISIS-controlled city of Raqqa, Syria. He told
the Obama Administration not to provide arms to the SDF and implemented that policy when
Trump came to power in 2017.
But Flynn's stint as National Security Advisor lasted for only three weeks. He was forced
to
resign after revelations of his phone call to the Russian ambassador. In March, Flynn
registered as a foreign agent
for Turkey.
In 2019, a federal jury convicted
Flynn's business associate, Bijan Kian, on two felonies: conspiracy to violate lobbying laws
and failure to register as a foreign agent for Turkey. Flynn was scheduled to testify
against Kian but changed his story at the last minute, causing problems for the
prosecution. The judge later tossed the
verdict, saying the prosecution didn't prove its case.
As part of an overall deal with federal prosecutors, Flynn was never charged in connection
with his lobbying for Turkey. It seems unlikely that he ever will.
Corrupt world
Flynn's activities are just one example of the corrupt world of foreign lobbying.
Recently, The New York Timesexposed how
defense contractor Raytheon pressured the Trump Administration to sell sophisticated weapons
to Saudi Arabia, which were then used to slaughter civilians in Yemen.
The Yemen war, which began in 2015, has
killed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced 80 percent of the population. Saudi air
bombardment of hospitals, schools, and other civilian targets helped create one of the
world's worst humanitarian crises. US arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon
have profited handsomely from the slaughter.
Until recently, Raytheon's vice president for government relations was a former career
army officer named Mark Esper. Today Esper is Secretary of Defense.
Crawling into bed with lobbyists is bipartisan activity. The Obama Administration
sold $10
billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and its allies. Trump has openly boasted that US arms sales
provide corporate profits and jobs at home.
"Trump has been more forthcoming praising US relations with Saudis because they want to
buy more weapons," Kurdish activist Xulam tells me. "He doesn't care what Saudis do with the
weapons."
Analyst Cook says the entire system of foreign lobbying needs major reform. "It's a
scandal that needs to be cleaned up," he says. "It's legalized foreign influence
peddling."
Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two
weeks. Follow him on Twitter ,
@ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ;
and visit his webpage .
@vk , hilarious post trying to potray modern day USN as fhe same one who fought japanese..
after WW2 all USN did was doing tag with soviets and today even their skill lost in the
current situation.. The good ole US navy is gone, all that left is aging airframes and ships
and confused doctrine that focused on clearing endless brush fires from restless natives..
USN are not able to fight peer enemy naval force, its man power are not sustainable in
such fight , thus they will resort to military draft system again and pray tell how many
foolish ignorant gung ho flag waving american would enlist ? it is easy for chickenhawks to
scream war war war but when their lives or their kid's lives on the line of fire most will
ran away to canada or mexico
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Friday that he has ordered the bureau to conduct an
internal review of its handling of the probe into former national security adviser
Michael Flynn , which has led to his years long battle in federal court.
It's like the fox guarding the hen house.
Wray's decision to investigate also comes late. The bureau's probe only comes after numerous
revelations that former senior FBI officials and agents involved in Flynn's case allegedly
engaged in misconduct to target the three star general, who became
President Donald Trump's most trusted campaign advisor.
Despite all these revelations, Wray has promised that the bureau will examine whether any
employees engaged in misconduct during the court of the investigation and "evaluate whether any
improvements in FBI policies and procedures need to be made." Based on what we know, how can we
trust an unbiased investigation from the very bureau that targeted Flynn.
Let me put it to you this way, over the past year Wray has failed to cooperate with
congressional investigations. In fact, many Republican lawmakers have called him out publicly
on the lack of cooperation saying, he cares more about protecting the bureaucracy than exposing
and resolving the culture of corruption within the bureau.
Wray's Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.
How can we trust that Wray's internal investigation will expose what actually happened in
the case of Flynn, or any of the other Trump campaign officials that were targeted by the
former Obama administration's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.
It's Wray's FBI that continues to battle all the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act
requests regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose
information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all
the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe.
The FBI defended itself in its Friday announcement saying that in addition to its own
internal review, it has already cooperated with other inquiries assigned by Attorney General
William Barr. But still Wray has not approved subpoena's for employees and others that
lawmakers want to interview behind closed doors in Congress.
The recent documented discoveries by the Department of Justice make it all the more
imperative that an outside review of the FBI's handling of Flynn's case is required. Those
documents, which shed light on the actions by the bureau against Flynn, led to the DOJ's
decision to drop all charges against him. It was, after all, DOJ Attorney Jeffery Jensen who
discovered the FBI documents regarding Flynn that have aided his defense attorney Sidney Powell
in getting the truth out to they American people.
Powell, like me, doesn't believe an internal review is appropriate.
"Wow? And how is he going to investigate himself," she questioned in a Tweet. "And how could
anyone trust it? FBI Director Wray opens internal review into how bureau handled Michael Flynn
case."
--
Sidney Powell 🇺🇸⭐⭐⭐ (@SidneyPowell1) May
22, 2020
Last week, this reporter published the growing divide between Congressional Republicans on
the House Judiciary Committee and Wray. The lawmakers have accused Wray of failing to respond
to numerous requests to speak with FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, who along with former FBI
Special Agent Peter Strzok, conducted the now infamous White House interview with Flynn on Jan.
24, 2017.
Further, the lawmakers have also requested to speak with the FBI's former head of the
Counterintelligence Division ,
Bill Priestap, whose unsealed handwritten notes revealed the possible 'nefarious'
motivations behind the FBI's investigation of Flynn.
"Michael Flynn was wronged by the FBI," said a senior Republican official last week, with
direct knowledge of the Flynn investigation.
"Sadly
Director Wray has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of what actually
happened with the Flynn case. Wray's lackadaisical attitude is an embarrassment to the rank
and file agents at the bureau, whose names have been dragged through the mud time and time
again throughout the Russia-gate investigation. Wray needs to wake up and work with Congress.
If he doesn't maybe it's time for him to go. "
Powell argued that Flynn had pleaded guilty because his former Special Counsel Robert
Mueller, along with his prosecutors, threatened to target his son. Those prosecutors also
coerced Flynn, whose finances were depleted by his previous defense team. Mueller's team got
Flynn to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about a phone conversation he had with the former
Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. However, the
agents who interviewed him did not believe he was lying.
Currently the DOJ's request to dismiss the case is now pending before federal Judge Emmet
Sullivan. Sullivan has failed to grant the DOJ's request to dismiss the case and because of
that Powell has filed a writ of mandamus to the U.S. D.C. Court of Appeals seeking the
immediate removal of Sullivan, or to dismiss the prosecution as requested by the DOJ.
In the weeks before the 2016
presidential election, the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect
Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump. President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a
full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation,” while George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, writing in
the Washington Post, refrained from endorsing Clinton outright but echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool,
some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.” Meanwhile, the intelligence community
under James Clapper and John Brennan fed
morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the US media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate
investigation.
In his extraordinary election-advocating Op-Ed, Gen. Hayden, Bush/Cheney’s CIA Chief, candidly explained the reasons for the
CIA’s antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate’s stated opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to
expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly “pro-Putin” positions
which, we are now all supposed
to forget, Obamalargely
shared).
As has been true since President Harry Truman’s creation of the CIA after World War II, interfering in other countries and
dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the
abolition of democracy, systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots — is regarded as a divine right, inherent
to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump
was) is of suspect loyalties at best.
The CIA’s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the primary
vector for anonymous, illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure
the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first two years of Trump’s presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate
conspiracy theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to
the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was
risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency:
Democrats, early in Trump’s presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump’s most devoted enemies, and thus began
viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton
campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign
policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal
celebrities by being hired
by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded
as news.
Oliver Stone's "The Untold History of the US" opened up my eyes to how shameful our
history really is. The American Empire is no better then Great Britain, the very power this
country was supposed to rise above.
When a system is fully controlled by the big corporation/money every action and move must
serve it's master. Some are directly related to their immediate interest and some to prevent
any future challenge to it.
"...At CBS, we had been contacted by the CIA, as a matter of fact, by the time I became
the head of the news and public affairs division in 1954 shifts had been established ... I
was told about them and asked if I'd carry on with them...." -- Sid Mickelson, CBS News
President 1954-61, describing Operation Mockingbird
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins, was a NYTimes best-seller about the
methods CIA use to dominate countries in Latin America and in Asia. John Perkins never was
interviewed by Us Media.
What has always been fascinating to me is the irony of the mindset HK protestors. They
have legit grievances about economic injustices but due to their media (which is just an
extension of British tabloid conspiracy sites like the Mirror and Sun or neocon Bri rags like
the Economist), they wrongly attribute blame to Beijing when they ought to their former
British masters.
When they left, they forced China to guarantee that the oligarchs in HK would continue to
have full control over land and banking interests. These corrupt servants of the British have
continued to jack up housing prices and made it nearly impossible for many to live a
comfortable life.
HK has more land than Singapore but the later made it illegal to price gauge rent and made
other protections against predatory oligarchs.
Now Singaporeans have very high home ownership and affordable housing while HKers must
live like rats.
Due to their colonial brainwashing, the HKers have come to see anti-China conspiracy
theories everywhere when their own oligarchs continue to steal from them. Had it not been for
the British who forced Beijing into these pro-oligarch deals to ensure handover, Beijing
would have done the same for HK what the Singaporean gov did for their population.
How can supporting the independence of Taiwan, or being anti-Communist be racist?
Anyone with first hand knowledge of Hong Kong understands that many Hong Kong Chinese
despise "mainlanders" as a people. Their antipathy is to the culture, manners, values and
economic power of mainland Chinese. It is not a principled objection to communist ideology or
concern for their neighbours in Taiwan.
This should not be taken as a criticism of Hong Kongers. It is just a factual observation.
Chinese people in general appear unconcerned by the concept of racism. In my experience, Hong
Kongers in particular have no qualms about criticising other races and cultures, and
certainly don't see it as immoral. Personally, I don't particularly mind this.
Here's a little story from my teen years in the '90s that taught me everything I needed to
know about the mentality of Hong Kongers. When my father's provincial university opened a
satellite campus in a wealthy area of my country's largest city, I found myself at a high
school with many recent East Asian migrants. Not many Mainlanders yet, mostly Sth Koreans and
HK/Taiwan/Singapore Chinese. The HKers tended to be more arrogant than their fellow East
Asians, seeing themselves as superior and more 'Western'.
One HK guy decided to differentiate himself by referring to the other East Asians as
'Gooks'. One day in class my quiet Korean friend gave the teacher a note and said in halting
English "I need to go see ... orthodontist". On hearing this, our HKer immediately yelled "Is
'dentist' ... not 'dontist' you stupid GOOK!", provoking roars of laughter. Once he realised
we were laughing at him, not with him, that was the beginning of the end for his 'Gook'
experiment.
"... Democrats, early in Trump's presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump's most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news . ..."
In his extraordinary election-advocating op-ed, Hayden, Bush/Cheney's CIA chief, candidly
explained the reasons for the CIA's antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate's stated
opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition
to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly "pro-Putin" positions
which, we are now all
supposed to forget,
Obama largely
shared ). As has been true since President Harry Truman's creation of the CIA after World
War II, interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments -- through
campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the abolition of democracy,
systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots -- is regarded as a divine right,
inherent to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks
to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump was) is of suspect loyalties at best.
The CIA's antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the
primary vector for anonymous illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent
and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at
least the first two years of Trump's presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy
theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the
president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on
subversion of his presidency by the agency:
This turned out to be one of the most prescient and important (and creepy) statements of
the Trump presidency: from Chuck Schumer to Rachel Maddow - in early January, 2017, before
Trump was even inaugurated: pic.twitter.com/TUaYkksILG
Democrats, early in Trump's presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of
Trump's most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading
out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton
campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to
create new
foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish
confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security
officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being
hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a
virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news .
The all-consuming Russiagate narrative that dominated the first three years of Trump's
presidency further served to elevate the CIA as a noble and admirable institution while
whitewashing its grotesque history. Liberal conventional wisdom held that Russian Facebook ads,
Twitter bots and the hacking and release of authentic, incriminating
DNC emails was some sort of unprecedented, off-the-charts, out-of-the-ordinary
crime-of-the-century attack, with several leading Democrats (including Hillary Clinton)
actually
comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor . The level of historical ignorance and/or jingostic
American exceptionalism necessary to believe this is impossible to describe. Compared to what
the CIA has done to dozens of other countries since the end of World War II, and what it
continues to do , watching Americans cast Russian interference in the 2016 election through
online bots and email hacking (even if one believes every claim made about it) as some sort of
unique and unprecedented crime against democracy is staggering. Set against what the CIA has
done and continues to do to "interfere" in the domestic affairs of other countries --
including Russia -- the 2016
election was, at most, par for the course for international affairs and, more accurately, a
trivial and ordinary act in the context of CIA interference. This propaganda was sustainable
because the recent history and the current function of the CIA has largely been
suppressed. Thankfully, a just-released book by journalist Vincent Bevins -- who
spent years as a foreign correspondent covering two countries still marred by brutal
CIA interference: Brazil for the Los Angeles Times and Indonesia for the Washington Post --
provides one of the best, most informative and most illuminating histories yet of this agency
and the way it has shaped the actual, rather than the propagandistic, U.S. role in the
world.
Entitled "The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program
that Shaped Our World," the book primarily documents the indescribably horrific campaigns of
mass murder and genocide the CIA sponsored in Indonesia as an instrument for destroying a
nonaligned movement of nations who would be loyal to neither Washington nor Moscow. Critically,
Bevins documents how the chilling success of that morally grotesque campaign led to its being
barely discussed in U.S. discourse, but then also serving as the foundation and model for
clandestine CIA interference campaigns in multiple other countries from Guatemala, Chile, and
Brazil to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central America: the Jakarta Method.
Our newest episode of SYSTEM UPDATE, which debuts today at 2:00 p.m. on The Intercept's YouTube channel , is
devoted to a discussion of why this history is so vital: not just for understanding the current
international political order but also for distinguishing between fact and fiction in our
contemporary political discourse. In addition to my own observations on this topic, I speak to
Bevins about his book, about what the CIA really is and how it has shaped the world we still
inhabit, and why a genuine understanding of both international and domestic politics is
impossible without a clear grasp on this story.
"... Mr. de Gaulle like other "leaders" of colonial powers did understand that the moment of overt coercive relations of colonialism had passed and that colonialism to remain qualitatively the same, required covert coercive relations facilitated by the complicity of local "elites" on the basis of perceived self-interest. ..."
Interesting comparison between the aspirations of De Gaulle and Putin.
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in history
that was past. His policy was to foster friendly relations on equal terms with all parts of
the world, regardless of ideological differences. I think that Putin's concept of a
multipolar world is similar. It is clearly a concept that horrifies the exceptionalists."
Agree with Johnstone.
OlyaPola , May 19, 2020 at 11:55
"Having a sense of history, de Gaulle saw that colonialism had been a moment in
history that was past. "
Mr. de Gaulle like other "leaders" of colonial powers did understand that the moment
of overt coercive relations of colonialism had passed and that colonialism to remain
qualitatively the same, required covert coercive relations facilitated by the complicity of
local "elites" on the basis of perceived self-interest.
The exceptions to such strategies lay within constructs of settler colonialism which were
addressed primarily through warfare – "The United States of America",
Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola refer –
to facilitate such future strategies.
"I think that Putin's concept of a multipolar world is similar."
As outlined elsewhere the concept of a multi-polar world is not synonymous with the
concept of colonialism except for the colonialists who consistently seek to encourage such
conflation through myths of we-are-all-in-this-togetherness.
In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, the FBI offered to pay former British spy
Christopher Steele "significantly" for collecting intelligence on Michael Flynn, according to
the
Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.
The FBI's proposal - made during an October 3, 2016 meeting in an unidentified European
city, and virtually ignored by the press - has taken on new significance in light of recent
documents exposing how the Obama administration targeted Flynn before and after president
Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The inspector general's report, released on Dec. 9, 2019, said that FBI agents offered to
pay Steele "significantly" to collect intelligence from three separate "buckets" that the
bureau was pursuing as part of Crossfire Hurricane , its counterintelligence probe of four
Trump campaign associates.
One bucket was "Additional intelligence/reporting on specific, named individuals (such as
[Carter Page] or [Flynn]) involved in facilitating the Trump campaign-Russian relationship,"
the IG report stated.
FBI agents also sought contact with "any individuals or sub sources" who Steele could
provide to "serve as cooperating witnesses to assist in identifying persons involved in the
Trump campaign-Russian relationship."
Steele at the time had provided the FBI with reports he compiled alleging that members of
the Trump campaign had conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. -
Daily Caller
Of note, Steele was promoting a discredited rumor that Flynn had an extramarital affair with
Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-British academic who studied at the University of Cambridge. This
rumor was amplified by the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian in March, 2017.
According to the Inspector General's report, the FBI gave Steele a "general overview" of
their Crossfire Hurricane probe - including their efforts to surveil Trump campaign aides
George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, along with Paul Manafort and Flynn. In fact - some FBI
agents questioned whether the lead agent told Steel too much about the operation , according to
the IG report.
In recent weeks, the release of two documents raise questions about potential links between
the FBI's request of Steele and the Lokhova rumor .
One of the documents is a transcript of longtime John McCain associate David Kramer's
interview with the House Intelligence Committee. Kramer testified on Dec. 17, 2017,
that Steele
told him in December 2016 that he suspected that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a
Russian woman .
"There was one thing he mentioned to me that is not included here, and that is he believed
that Mr. Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the U.K .," Kramer told
lawmakers.
Kramer said that Steele conveyed that Flynn's alleged mistress was a "Russian woman" who
"may have been a dual citizen."
An FBI
memo dated Jan. 4, 2017, contained another allegation regarding Flynn and a mysterious
Russian woman.
The memo, which was provided to Flynn's lawyers on April 30, said that an FBI confidential
human source (CHS) told the bureau that they were present at an event that Flynn attended
while he was still working in the U.S. intelligence community . -
Daily Caller
Lokhova and Flynn have denied the rumors - with Lokhova's husband telling the Daily Caller
News Foundation that he picked his wife up after the Cambridge dinner where an FBI informant
said they 'left together in a cab.'
Meanwhile, a DIA official who was at the Cambridge event with Flynn also told the WSJ in
March 2017 that there was nothing inappropriate going on between Flynn and Lokhova.
"... A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm ..."
"... "the right to plunder anything one can get their hands on" ..."
"... "the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi" ..."
n 1996 a task force, led by Richard Perle, produced a policy document titled A Clean
Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm for Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then in his
first term as Prime Minister of Israel, as a how-to manual on approaching regime change in the
Middle East and for the destruction of the Oslo Accords.
The "Clean Break" policy document outlined these goals:
Ending Yasser Arafat's and the
Palestinian Authority's political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism
Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Launching war against
Syria after Saddam's regime is disposed of. Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi
Arabia, and Egypt.
"Clean Break" was also in direct opposition to the Oslo Accords, to which Netanyahu was very
much itching to obliterate. The Oslo II Accord was signed just the year before, on September
28th 1995, in Taba, Egypt.
During the Oslo Accord peace process, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabin's
government of being "removed from Jewish tradition and Jewish values." Rallies organised by the
Likud and other right-wing fundamentalist groups featured depictions of Rabin in a Nazi SS
uniform or in the crosshairs of a gun.
In July 1995, Netanyahu went so far as to lead a mock funeral procession for Rabin,
featuring a coffin and hangman's noose.
The Oslo Accords was the initiation of a process which was to lead to a peace treaty based
on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and at fulfilling the "right of
the Palestinian people to self-determination." If such a peace treaty were to occur, with the
United States backing, it would have prevented much of the mayhem that has occurred since.
However, the central person to ensuring this process, Yitzak Rabin, was assassinated just a
month and a half after the signing of the Oslo II Accord, on November 4th, 1995. Netanyahu
became prime minister of Israel seven months later. "Clean Break" was produced the following
year.
On November 6th, 2000 in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin,
who was the chief negotiator of the Oslo peace accords, warned those Israelis who argued that
it was impossible to make peace with the Palestinians:
Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism, and not in
order to offer them a Jewish Sparta or – God forbid – a new Massada."
On Oct. 5, 2003, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against
Syria, targeting a purported "Palestinian terrorist camp" inside Syrian territory. Washington
stood by and did nothing to prevent further escalation.
"Clean Break" was officially launched in March 2003 with the war against Iraq, under the
pretence of "The War on Terror". The real agenda was a western-backed list of regime changes in
the Middle East to fit the plans of the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Israel.
However, the affair is much more complicated than that with each player holding their own
"idea" of what the "plan" is. Before we can fully appreciate such a scope, we must first
understand what was Sykes-Picot and how did it shape today's world mayhem.
Arabian
Nights
WWI was to officially start July 28th 1914, almost immediately following the Balkan wars
(1912-1913) which had greatly weakened the Ottoman Empire.
Never one to miss an opportunity when smelling fresh blood, the British were very keen on
acquiring what they saw as strategic territories for the taking under the justification of
being in war-time, which in the language of geopolitics translates to "the right to plunder
anything one can get their hands on" .
The brilliance of Britain's plan to garner these new territories was not to fight the
Ottoman Empire directly but rather, to invoke an internal rebellion from within. These Arab
territories would be encouraged by Britain to rebel for their independence from the Ottoman
Empire and that Britain would support them in this cause.
These Arab territories were thus led to believe that they were fighting for their own
freedom when, in fact, they were fighting for British and secondarily French colonial
interests.
In order for all Arab leaders to sign on to the idea of rebelling against the Ottoman
Sultan, there needed to be a viable leader that was Arab, for they certainly would not agree to
rebel at the behest of Britain.
Lord Kitchener, the butcher of Sudan, was to be at the helm of this operation as Britain's
Minister of War. Kitchener's choice for Arab leadership was the scion of the Hashemite dynasty,
Hussein ibn Ali, known as the Sherif of Mecca who ruled the region of Hejaz under the Ottoman
Sultan.
Hardinge of the British India Office disagreed with this choice and wanted Wahhabite
Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud instead, however, Lord Kitchener overruled this stating that their
intelligence revealed that more Arabs would follow Hussein.
Since the Young Turk Revolution which seized power of the Ottoman government in 1908,
Hussein was very aware that his dynasty was in no way guaranteed and thus he was open to
Britain's invitation to crown him King of the Arab kingdom.
Kitchener wrote to one of Hussein's sons, Abdallah, as reassurance of Britain's support:
If the Arab nation assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey,
England will guarantee that no internal intervention take place in Arabia, and will give
Arabs every assistance against foreign aggression."
Sir Henry McMahon who was the British High Commissioner to Egypt, would have several
correspondences with Sherif Hussein between July 1915 to March 1916 to convince Hussein to
lead the rebellion for the "independence" of the Arab states.
However, in a private letter to India's Viceroy Charles Hardinge sent on December 4th, 1915,
McMahon expressed a rather different view of what the future of Arabia would be, contrary to
what he had led Sherif Hussein to believe:
[I do not take] the idea of a future strong united independent Arab State too seriously
the conditions of Arabia do not and will not for a very long time to come, lend themselves to
such a thing."
Such a view meant that Arabia would be subject to Britain's heavy-handed "advising" in all
its affairs, whether it sought it or not.
In the meantime, Sherif Hussein was receiving dispatches issued by the British Cairo office
to the effect that the Arabs of Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) would be given
independence guaranteed by Britain, if they rose up against the Ottoman Empire.
The French were understandably suspicious of Britain's plans for these Arab territories. The
French viewed Palestine, Lebanon and Syria as intrinsically belonging to France, based on
French conquests during the Crusades and their "protection" of the Catholic populations in the
region.
Hussein was adamant that Beirut and Aleppo were to be given independence and completely
rejected French presence in Arabia. Britain was also not content to give the French all the
concessions they demanded as their "intrinsic" colonial rights.
Enter Sykes and Picot.
... ... ...
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in
Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until
diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire.
In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that
Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it
necessary to partition the land.
The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel's "prescription" and the revolt broke out again. This
time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the
British armed forces and police. Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved
the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.
In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which
stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews.
Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was
organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and
adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947.
Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after
the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.
A New Strategy for
Securing Whose Realm?
Despite what its title would have you believe, "Clean Break" is neither a "new strategy" nor
meant for "securing" anything. It is also not the brainchild of fanatical neo-conservatives:
Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, nor even that of crazed end-of-days fundamentalist Benjamin
Netanyahu, but rather has the very distinct and lingering odour of the British Empire.
"Clean Break" is a continuation of Britain's geopolitical game, and just as it used France
during the Sykes-Picot days it is using the United States and Israel.
The role Israel has found itself playing in the Middle East could not exist if it were not
for over 30 years of direct British occupation in Palestine and its direct responsibility for
the construction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which set a course for destruction and
endless war in this region long before Israel ever existed.
It was also Britain who officially launched operation "Clean Break" by directly and
fraudulently instigating an illegal war against Iraq to which the
Chilcot Inquiry, aka Iraq Inquiry , released 7 years later, attests to.
This was done by the dubious
reporting by British Intelligence setting the pretext for the U.S.' ultimate invasion into
Iraq based off of fraudulent and forged evidence provided by GCHQ, unleashing the "War on
Terror", aka "Clean Break" outline for regime change in the Middle East.
In addition, the Libyan invasion in 2011 was also found to be unlawfully instigated by
Britain.
In a report
published by the British Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2016, it was concluded that
it was "the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an
intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi" .
The report concluded that the Libyan intervention was based on false pretence provided by
British Intelligence and recklessly promoted by the British government.
If this were not enough, British Intelligence has also been caught behind the orchestrations
of
Russia-Gate and the Skripal affair .
Therefore, though the U.S. and Israeli military have done a good job at stealing the show,
and though they certainly believe themselves to be the head of the show, the reality is that
this age of empire is distinctly British and anyone who plays into this game will ultimately be
playing for said interests, whether they are aware of it or not.
Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism
Ever heard of Dumbo? He's a flying elephant.
The crusade in the ME will continue, with Israel the top dog until America's military
support is no longer there. Even without the Israeli eastern european invaders, the area is
primed for perpetual tribal warfare because the masses are driven by tribalist doctrines and
warped metaphysics dictated by insane and inhumane parasites (priests). It is the epicenter
of a spiritual plague that has infected most of the planet.
paul ,
There is complete continuity between the activities of Zionist controlled western countries
and those of the present day.
In the 1930s, there were about 300,000 adult Palestinian males. Over 10% were killed,
imprisoned and tortured or driven into exile. 100,000 British troops were sent to Palestine
to destroy completely Palestinian political and military organisations. Wingate set up the
Jew terror gangs who were given free rein to murder, rape and burn, in preparation for the
complete ethnic cleansing of the country.
We see the same ruthless, genocidal brutality on an even greater scale in the present day,
serving exactly the same interests. Nothing has ever come of trying to negotiate with the
Zionists and their western stooges – just further disasters. It is only resolute and
uncompromising resistance that has ever achieved anything. Hezbollah kicking their Zionist
arses out of Lebanon in 2000 and keeping them out in 2006. Had they not done so, Lebanon
would still be under Zionist occupation and covered with their filthy illegal
settlements.
They have never stopped and they never will. The objective is to create a vast Zionist
empire comprising the whole of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and parts of Egypt,
Turkey, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. This plan has never changed and it never will. The Zionist
thieves will shortly steal what little is left of Palestine. But the thieving will not end
there. It will just move on to neighbouring countries.
The prime reason they have been able to get away with this is not their control of British
and US golems. It is by playing the old, dirty colonial games of divide and rule, with the
Quisling stooge dictators serving their interests. They have always been able to set Sunni
against Shia, and different factions against others. The dumb Arabs fall for it every time.
Their latest intrigues are directed at the destruction of Iran, the next victim on their
target list after Iraq, Libya and Syria. And the Quisling dictators of Saudi Arabia are
openly agitating for this and offering to pay for all of it. Syria sent troops to join the US
invasion of Iraq in 1991, though Iraqi troops fought and died in Syria in 1973 against
Israel. Egypt allows Israel to use its airspace to carry out the genocidal terror bombing of
Gaza.
All this is contemptible enough and fits into racist stereotypes of Arabs as stupid,
irrational, corrupt, easily bought, violent and treacherous. This of course does not apply to
the populations of those countries, but it is a legitimate assessment of their Quisling
dictators, with a (very) few honourable exceptions.
Seamus Padraig ,
Of course, Arab rulers who don't tow the Zionist line generally get overthrown,
don't they? And that usually requires the efforts/intervention of FUKUS, doesn't it? So you
can't really pretend that 'Arab stupidity' is the main factor.
Richard Le Sarc ,
The fact that, as the Yesha Council of Rabbis and Torah Sages declared in 2006, as Israel was
bombing Lebanon 'back to the Stone Age', under Talmudic Judaism, killing civilians is not
just permissible, but a mitzvah, or good deed, explains Zionist behaviour. Other doctrines
allow an entire 'city' eg Gaza, to be devastated for the 'crimes' of a few, and children,
even babies, to be killed if they would grow up to 'oppose the Jews'. Dare mention these
FACTS, seen everyday in Israeli barbarity, and the 'antisemitism' slurs flow, as ever.
Julia ,
" is that this age of empire is distinctly British"
.it takes some balls to make such an absurd statement and still expect to be taken
seriously. The US of course with its 800 military bases around the world and gifts of 40
billion a year to Israel has no opinion on the future of the Middle East. You would have us
believe that they are just humble onlookers, as a small bankrupt country tells them what to
do. We are being told that the CIA, the most formidable spy agency and manipulator of
countries in history, sits quietly by as the British and Israel tells the US what to do.
Absurd isn't it., Clearly the truth is that Israel is just another military base for the US
in the Middle East, easily the most important geopolitical region in the world. They fund it,
arm it, and protect it from all attacks, Israel does as it is told by the US for the most
part despite the pantomime on the surface.
Many on the far right like to hide US interests behind a wall of antisemitism that likes to
paint 'the jews' as an all powerful enemy but this is just cover for Israel's real
geopolitical roll as a US puppet.
Time and time again all we are seeing is attempt to write the US, the largest empire in the
history out of the news and out of the history books, like it is some invisible benign force
that has not interests, no control and does noting to forward it's interests and it's
empire.
''To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to
criticise."
I don't know about you, but I'm not 10 years old and I know I am looking at Empire and
it's power being flexed every day in every part do the world, especial in the parts of the
world that it funds with trillions of dollars.
Julia ,
" is that this age of empire is distinctly British"
.it takes some balls to make such an absurd statement and still expect to be taken
seriously. The US of course with its 800 military bases around the world and gifts of 40
billion a year to Israel has no opinion on the future of the Middle East. You would have us
believe that they are just humble onlookers, as a small bankrupt country tells them what to
do. We are being told that the CIA, the most formidable spy agency and manipulator of
countries in history, sits quietly by as the British and Israel tells the US what to do.
Absurd isn't it., Clearly the truth is that Israel is just another military base for the US
in the Middle East, easily the most important geopolitical region in the world. They fund it,
arm it, and protect it from all attacks, Israel does as it is told by the US for the most
part despite the pantomime on the surface.
Many on the far right like to hide US interests behind a wall of antisemitism that likes to
paint 'the jews' as an all powerful enemy but this is just cover for Israel's real
geopolitical roll as a US puppet.
Time and time again all we are seeing is attempt to write the US, the largest empire in the
history out of the news and out of the history books, like it is some invisible benign force
that has not interests, no control and does noting to forward it's interests and it's
empire.
''To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to
criticise."
I don't know about you, but I'm not 10 years old and I know I am looking at Empire and
it's power being flexed every day in every part do the world, especial in the parts of the
world that it funds with trillions of dollars.
Richard Le Sarc ,
The antithesis of the truth. It is US politicians who flock to AIPAC's meeting every year to
pledge UNDYING fealty to Israel, not Israeli politicians pledging loyalty to the USA. It is
Israeli and dual loyalty Jewish oligarchs funding BOTH US parties, it is US politicians
throwing themselves to the ground in adulation when Bibi the war criminal addresses the
Congress with undisguised contempt, not Israeli politicians groveling to the USA. The
master-servant relationship is undisguised.
Pyewacket ,
In Daniel Yergin's The Prize, a history of the Oil industry, he provides another interesting
angle to explain British interest in the region. He states that at that time, Churchill
realised that a fighting Navy powered by Coal, was not nearly as good or efficient as one
using Oil as a fuel, and that securing supplies of the stuff was the best way forward to
protect the Empire.
BigB ,
Yergin would be right. The precursor of the First World War was a technological arms race and
accelerated 'scientific' perfection of arsenals – particularly naval – in the
service of imperialism. British and German imperialism. The full story involves the Berlin to
Cairo railway and the resource grab that went with it. I'm a bit sketchy on the details now:
but Churchill had a prominent role, rising to First Lord of the Admiralty.
Docherty and Macgregor have exposed the hidden history. F W Engdahl has written about WW1
being the first oil war.
In 1996 a task force, led by Richard Perle, produced a policy document titled A Clean
Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm for Benjamin Netanyahu
No source link for this!
By the way 1996 was during the Clinton administration. Warren Christopher was secretary of
state and John Deutch was the Director of Central Intelligence . George Tenet was appointed
the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in July 1995. After John Deutch's abrupt
resignation in December 1996, Tenet served as acting director.
Antsie, what are you going to deny next? The USS Liberty? Deir Yassin? The Lavon Affair?
Sabra, Shatilla? Qana (twice)? The Five Celebrating Israelis on 9/11?Does not impress.
"History," they say, "is written by the winners." But if you want to get at the fundamental
flaw, remove the last three words and you have it: "History is written."
Events cannot be
written, they can only be lived.
Just as a sun in a picture cannot give heat or light. The
problem is that those who live history seldom speak of it, it's much too traumatic for them.
And those who speak voluminously of it most likely did not live it.
kenny gordon ,
Nice comment, Howard.
When my Father [Royal Artillery] was told to stop fighting against my
Father-in-Law [Waffen SS], he was sent off to fight against MOSSAD in Palestine he witnessed
the brutal treatment handed out to the "indigenous people" and was very reluctant to talk
about his experience.. "By way of deception thou shalt do war"..!
"Foglesong's book provides a panoramic view of American popular attitudes toward Russia, one that is illustrated with many
arresting cartoons and magazine covers. It should provoke a wider debate about the rationality of evaluating Russia with reference
to an idealized view of the United States, as well as the deeper sources of this tendency." -Deborah Welch Larson, H-Diplo
"In the 21st century, the American debate on the prospects of modernizing Russia and on the Americans' role in this process is
still going strong even though it began more than a century ago. This is why David Foglesong's book aimed at elucidating the
mechanisms of misrepresentations which threaten both Russian-American relations and the world security as a whole is of equal
importance for the academic community and for the policy makers in both Russia and the United States."
-Victoria Zhuravleva, H-Diplo
"Foglesong demonstrates that powerful Americans have again and again seen the possibility, even necessity, of spreading the word
to Russia, and then, when Russia fails to transform itself into something resembling the US, have recoiled and condemned Russia's perfidious
national character or its leaders-most recently Putin. The author's singular achievement is to show that well before the cold war, Russia
served as America's dark double, an object of wishful thinking, condescension and self-righteousness in a quest for American purpose-without
much to show for such efforts inside Russia. The author thereby places in context the cold war, when pamphleteers like William F Buckley
Jr and politicians like Ronald Reagan pushed a crusade to revitalise the American spirit. Russia then was a threat but also a means
to America's end (some fixed on a rollback of the alleged Soviet "spawn" inside the US-the welfare state-while others, after the Vietnam
debacle, wanted to restore "faith in the United States as a virtuous nation with a unique historical mission"). Foglesong's exposé of
Americans' "heady sense of their country's unique blessings" helps make sense of the giddiness, followed by rank disillusionment, vis-...-vis
the post-Soviet Russia of the 1990s and 2000s." -Stephen Kotkin, Prospect Magazine -Stephen Kotkin, Prospect Magazine
Notable quotes:
"... For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the 1970s was the need to expunge doubts about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War, revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal." ..."
"... By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong illuminated three of the strongest notions that have informed American attitudes toward Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and America are very much akin, so that Russia, more than any other country, is America's "dark double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting what they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and emotions continue to effect how American journalists and politicians write and talk about Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have distorted American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their grip." ..."
"... The usefulness of Russia as bogeyman for all that is wrong in the world - a contrasting foil to the virtues of "us" - has defined this relationship ever since the first democratic stirrings in Russia following the Emancipation of '61. In this it followed Britain, who'd long demonized Russia since imperial rivalries over the Crimea. ..."
"... This trope was also successful for reactionaries in blocking progressive legislation at home. Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most successful in this linkmanship: "socialized medicine" was the first step to the gulags. ..."
"... T he flak over Pus*y Riot following this book's publication - while ignoring the crucifixion of the Dixie Chicks - demonstrates the double standard is too convenient to be allowed to wither. The empire must always be evil, precisely because it reflects our own image like a Buddhist truth mirror. ..."
"By 1905," Foglesong stated, "this fundamental reorientation of American views of Russia had set up a historical pattern in which
missionary zeal and messianic euphoria would be followed by disenchantment and embittered denunciation of Russia's evil and oppressive
rulers." The first cycle, according to Foglesong, culminated in 1905, when the October Manifesto, perceived initially by Americans
as a transformation to democracy, gave way to a violent socialist revolt. Foglesong observed similar cycles of euphoria to despair
during the collapse of the tsarist government in 1917, during the partial religious revival of World War II, and during the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s
Crucial to Foglesong's analysis was how these cycles coincided with a contemporaneous need to deflect attention away from America's
own blemishes and enhance America's claim to its global mission.
For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the 1970s was the need to expunge doubts
about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War, revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal."
By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong illuminated three of the strongest notions
that have informed American attitudes toward Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation
from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and America are very much akin, so that Russia,
more than any other country, is America's "dark double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting
what they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and emotions continue to effect how American
journalists and politicians write and talk about Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have
distorted American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their grip."
The Adventures of Straw Man Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2013 This has been the essential function of US
Russia policy, as David Foglesong shows in his century-long tour.
The usefulness of Russia as bogeyman for all that is wrong in the world - a contrasting foil to the virtues of "us" - has
defined this relationship ever since the first democratic stirrings in Russia following the Emancipation of '61. In this it followed
Britain, who'd long demonized Russia since imperial rivalries over the Crimea.
This trope was also successful for reactionaries in blocking progressive legislation at home. Ronald Reagan was perhaps
the most successful in this linkmanship: "socialized medicine" was the first step to the gulags.
The crusade against US civil rights - of which Reagan was also a part in his early career - as Communist-inspired tinkering
with the Constitution was much less successful. His support for free trade unions in the Soviet Bloc while crushing them at home
underscored the irony.
But Foglesong is much too generous in evaluating Reagan's human decency as a policy motive. Reagan pursued his grand rollback
strategy by any means necessary, mixing hard tactics (contras, death-squad funding, mujahadin, Star Wars) with soft (democracy-enhancement,
human rights, meeting with Gorbachev). Solidarity activists in Poland might remember his crusading fondly; survivors of the Salvadoran
civil war will not.
The "crisis" with the Putin regime currently empowered shows the missionary impulse yet alive: projecting one's reforming instincts
upon others rather than at home. T he flak over Pus*y Riot following this book's publication - while ignoring the crucifixion
of the Dixie Chicks - demonstrates the double standard is too convenient to be allowed to wither. The empire must always be evil,
precisely because it reflects our own image like a Buddhist truth mirror.
I do find it puzzling that Foglesong made no mention of Maurice Hindus, the prolific popular "explainer" of Russia in over
a dozen mid-century books; and the notorious defector Victor Kravchenko and his best-selling memoir of the 1940s (ghost-written
by Eugene Lyons, another popular anti-Soviet scribe). Both were much more influential in the public and political mind than many
of the more obscure missionary authors Foglesong does cite. Nevertheless, Foglesong has offered a generous helping of cultural/political
history that shows no signs of growing stale.
>
indah nuritasari , Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2012
This book tells a fascinating story of American efforts to liberate and remake Russia since the 1880s. It starts with the story
of Tsar Alexander II's asasination on March 1, 1881 and how James William Buel, a Missoury Journalist wrote it in his book "Russian
Nihilism and Exile Life in Siberia."
The story continues until The Reagan era and "the Evil Empire," 1981-1989.
This book is very interesting and useful for history lovers, students, journalists, or general public. Here you can find all
the "dark and exciting stuff" about the cold war, including the involvement of the journalists, political activists, diplomats,
and even engineers.
It is really helpful for me as a new immigrant in the US to help me understand the US position and role in the Cold War Era.
The language used in this book, though, is " kind of dry". A little editing for the next edition could be really helpful!!
Yet another bombshell development emerged Thursday in the case of former National Security
Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn: the release of additional exculpatory evidence FBI officials had
withheld from the courts and the defense for three years.
Crucially, this includes evidence that the Bureau's official "302 report" filed by the lead
agent who interviewed Flynn was edited multiple times, including by an official who never
participated in the interview.
Thursday's revelations come on top of yesterday's disclosures indicating an apparent attempt
by FBI officials to trap Flynn into committing a criminal offense during an interview.
The new revelation could prove even more significant: In addition to the apparently
calculated effort to get Flynn to commit perjury or obstruction, top FBI figures, including FBI
Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, repeatedly altered the "302
report" that was filed after the Flynn interview.
That interview was conducted under highly unusual circumstances. Ordinarily, an FBI
interview of a top West Wing official would be requested through the White House Counsel's
office, and would be conducted in the presence of legal counsel representing the official being
interviewed.
That did not occur in the case of the FBI's interview with Flynn, and Comey later stated
that under "a more organized administration" he "probably wouldn't have gotten away with
it."
Initially, when the lead FBI agent handling the case was asked whether Flynn lied during the
interview, he stated that he did not believe so.
But over the coming days Strzok and Page would edit and revise the agent's 302 report
repeatedly, according to a document providing text messages between FBI officials that the
defense counsel finally received this week.
Prosecutors and investigators are required to turn over information that might tend to
indicate a suspect's innocence to the defense counsel prior to trial and sentencing. Most legal
analysts would consider the information withheld from Flynn's legal team potentially
exculpatory.
An inside source familiar with efforts to defend Gen. Flynn tells Newsmax an unadulterated,
original 302 document exists that was created by the lead agent from his notes of the interview
with Flynn.
Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor who testified before the
House during President Trump's impeachment, wrote Thursday the decision to keep the case open
occurred when "Special counsel Robert Mueller decided to bring the dubious charge."
In a column posted on TheHill.com on Thursday, Turley said the case against Flynn should be
dismissed. "Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution," he wrote.
At the time Flynn was being prosecuted, Mueller was seeking evidence the Trump campaign
colluded with Russia in the 2016 campaign.
Critics say he was prosecuting Flynn to get him to turn state's witness against Trump, but
the general never implicated him.
Mueller eventually determined there was no evidence of a Russian-collusion conspiracy. But
by then Flynn, under intense financial pressure from the prosecution and buckling under the
threat that his son could be drawn into a legal quagmire, had pled guilty to one count of lying
to the FBI.
He has since requested to withdraw that plea, and he is awaiting sentencing.
President Trump weighed in on the controversial case Thursday morning tweeting, "What
happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to a citizen
of the United States again!"
Later the president told reporters he believes Flynn is "in the process of being
exonerated."
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik reacted strongly on Thursday to the
news FBI officials to altered a 302 report and reopened the case when the initial analysis
indicated no crime had been committed.
Kerik told Newsmax Thursday that if evidence or records had been unduly altered under his
watch as police commissioner, he would have referred the matter to the district attorney for
possible prosecution.
"They intentionally went back and doctored the original 302," he said. "That's because they
were not looking for the truth.
"They were looking for a mechanism to trap Gen. Flynn, to prosecute him, to get him fired in
order to go after the president. That was their motive, that was their agenda. It's absolutely
clear at this point they were not looking for the truth."
Kerik added, "This was done at the highest levels of the FBI. At the most senior level of
the FBI, they falsified records, they suppressed evidence.
"This is irresponsible, it's outrageous They used and abused their authority to deprive Gen.
Flynn of his constitutional right to freedom," he said.
According to the source, as supported by text messages also obtained by Newsmax, Stzrok, who
also participated in the Flynn interview, rewrote the 302 extensively -- although a text
message from him stated he tried not to "completely re-write it so as to save [redacted]
voice," presumably a reference to the lead agent who originally wrote it.
Stzrok then shared the document with a "pissed off" Page, who had not participated in the
interview, and who revised it significantly again, according to the Newsmax source.
The objective of the interview was to probe whether Flynn had violated the Logan Act, an
18th-century statute that has never been used in any criminal conviction. The Act makes it a
crime for a U.S. citizens to interfere with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Many legal
scholars find the law to be unconstitutional.
The documents received by Newsmax indicate the case had virtually been closed –
suggesting the lead agent was satisfied no crime had been committed -- prior to it being
reopened by the direct intervention of Strzok and Page.
The documents, for example, show the probe of Flynn was about to be put to bed when the lead
agent received a text from Strzok stating, "Hey, if you haven't closed [the case], don't do so
yet."
Apparently, Page was pleasantly surprised to find the matter had not yet been closed.
On Feb. 10, 2017, Page texted Strzok, "This document pisses me off. You didn't even attempt
to make this cogent and readable? This is lazy work on your part."
Strzok replied, "Lisa you didn't see it before my edits that went into what I sent you. I
was 1) trying to completely re-write the thing so as to save [the lead agent's] voice and 2)
get it out to you for general review and comment in anticipation of needing it soon."
Wednesday's revelation included notes of a meeting conducted a short time after the 2016
election between FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The notes stated,
"What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?"
The notes were written by then-FBI head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap.
It is not. Forces behind Russiagate are intact and still have the same agenda. CrowdStrike
was just a tool. As long as Full Spectrum Dominance dourine is alive, Russiagate will flourish in
one form or another
Notable quotes:
"... The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton's snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an "aggressive" Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven , "Russian hacking" of the DNC emails an "act of war.") ..."
"... Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery. ..."
"... Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their tracks, Durham's challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example, investigating a Mafia family. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the audacity a week ago to coin yet another "-gate" -- this time "Obamagate." Leading the apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday's Washington Post offered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled "The absurd cynicism of 'Obamagate"? ..."
"... So if we dug in and found large payments from George Soros or Mrs Clinton to these 'journalists', what crime could they be accused of? No crimes, I don't think. ..."
"... There never was anything to Russiagate. It was always just politics. I knew that from the beginning. There was, however, a lot of something to the torture scandal. Obama said "We are not going to look back." And now Gina Haspel, one of the chief torturers, partly responsible for destroying the torture tapes, despite a court order to preserve them, is now head of the CIA. ..."
"... Drain the Swamp my ***. He's started by firing all the IG's? Trump "looking back," not forward. He could start by investigating Gina Haspel. ..."
"... For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the 1970s was the need to expunge doubts about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War, revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal." ..."
"... By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong illuminated three of the strongest notions that have informed American attitudes toward Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and America are very much akin, so that Russia, more than any other country, is America's "dark double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting what they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and emotions continue to effect how American journalists and politicians write and talk about Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have distorted American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their grip." ..."
Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian
interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.
The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton's snatching defeat out of the jaws
victory also played a role; as did the need for the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to
keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an
"aggressive" Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now
disproven , "Russian hacking" of the DNC emails an "act of war.")
But that was then. This is now.
Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past
few weeks finally
collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no
evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set
a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that
there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that
supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after
the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.
All that's left is to discover how this all happened.
Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to
investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility
that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms
large since he felt personally under attack.
Writing on the Wall
Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their
tracks, Durham's challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example,
investigating a Mafia family.
Plus, former NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers reportedly is cooperating. The
handwriting is on the wall. It remains to be seen what kind of role in the scandal Barack
Obama may have played.
But former directors James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan, captains of Obama's
Security State, can take little solace from Barr's remarks Monday to a reporter who asked about
Trump's recent claims that top officials of the Obama administration, including the former
president had committed crimes. Barr replied:
"As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement,
based on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a
criminal investigation of either man. Our concerns over potential criminality is focused on
others."
In a more ominous vein, Barr gratuitously added that law enforcement and intelligence
officials were involved in "a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against
the president. It was a grave injustice, and it was unprecedented in American history."
Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the
audacity a week ago to coin yet another "-gate" -- this time "Obamagate." Leading the
apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday's Washington Post
offered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled "The
absurd cynicism of 'Obamagate"?
The outrage voiced by the Post called to mind disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok's indignant
response to criticism of the FBI by candidate Trump, in a Oct. 20, 2016 text exchange with FBI
attorney Lisa Page:
Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent
answer.
Strzok -- I CAN'T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY
Page -- I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Strzok -- Donald just said "bad hombres"
Strzok -- Trump just said what the FBI did is disgraceful.
Less vitriolic, but incisive commentary came from widely respected author and lawyer Glenn
Greenwald on May 14, four days after Trump coined "Obamagate": ( See "System Update with Glenn
Greenwald -- The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn").
For a shorter, equally instructive video of Greenwald on the broader issue of Russia-gate,
see this clip from a March 2019 Democracy Now! -sponsored debate he had with David Cay Johnston
titled, "As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs.
David Cay Johnston":
(The entire
debate is worth listening to). I found one of the comments below the Democracy Now! video
as big as a bummer as the commentator did:
"I think this is one of the most depressing parts about the whole situation. In their
dogmatic pushing for this false narrative, the Russiagaters might have guaranteed Trump a
second term. They have done more damage to our democracy than Russia ever has done and will
do ." (From "Clamity2007")
In any case, Johnston, undaunted by his embarrassment at the hands of Greenwald, is still at
it, and so is the avuncular Frank Rich -- both of them some 20 years older than Greenwald and
set in their evidence-impoverished, media-indoctrinated ways.
... ... ...
Uncle Frank, 40 seconds ago
So if we dug in and found large payments from George Soros or Mrs Clinton to these
'journalists', what crime could they be accused of? No crimes, I don't think.
But when journalists are revealed to be issuing paid-for propaganda/lies mixed with their
own internal opinions, and their publisher allows it to be presented as if it were reporting
rather than opinion, said writers, editors, and publishers are relegated to obscurity and
derision.
Their work will never be taken seriously again by anyone who wasn't already
brain-washed.
They don't get that, I guess.
QABubba, 47 minutes ago (Edited)
There never was anything to Russiagate. It was always just politics. I knew that from the
beginning. There was, however, a lot of something to the torture scandal. Obama said "We are not
going to look back." And now Gina Haspel, one of the chief torturers, partly responsible for
destroying the torture tapes, despite a court order to preserve them, is now head of the
CIA.
General Flynn was so involved with Turkey he should have been registered as a foreign
agent.
And as I have said before, the real crime was laundering Russian Mafia/Heroin money
through Deutsche Bank into New York real estate. It is curious that Turkey is also a huge
transport spot for heroin into the
EU. And France and other EU nations have a migrant population that lives off the drug
trade.
Drain the Swamp my ***. He's started by firing all the IG's? Trump "looking back," not forward. He could start by investigating Gina Haspel.
The MSM disinformation campaign with consistent common talking points is not difficult to
see with a little discernment. The bigger question is has this happened organically or is there a larger agency
manipulating the public discourse?
"By 1905," Foglesong stated, "this fundamental reorientation of American views of Russia
had set up a historical pattern in which missionary zeal and messianic euphoria would be
followed by disenchantment and embittered denunciation of Russia's evil and oppressive
rulers." The first cycle, according to Foglesong, culminated in 1905, when the October
Manifesto, perceived initially by Americans as a transformation to democracy, gave way to a
violent socialist revolt. Foglesong observed similar cycles of euphoria to despair during the
collapse of the tsarist government in 1917, during the partial religious revival of World War
II, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s
Crucial to Foglesong's analysis was how these cycles coincided with a contemporaneous need
to deflect attention away from America's own blemishes and enhance America's claim to its
global mission.
For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the
1970s was the need to expunge doubts about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War,
revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal."
By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong
illuminated three of the strongest notions that have informed American attitudes toward
Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation
from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and
America are very much akin, so that Russia, more than any other country, is America's "dark
double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting what
they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and
emotions continue to effect how American journalists and politicians write and talk about
Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have distorted
American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their
grip."
Moribundus, 3 hours ago
America's imperialism rules: Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take
advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.
Kidbuck, 5 hours ago
Trump hasn't engaged in a fight in his life. He's a sissy at heart wants to negotiate. He
can't even do that right. He's caved on nearly every campaign promise he made. The only thing
his administration fights for is their salary and their retirement. Hillary still waddles
free and farts in his general direction.
ChaoKrungThep, 4 hours ago
Trump the Mafia punk, like his dad, and draft dodger like his German grand dad. Barr, old
CIA asset from the Clinton-Mena coke smuggling op. This crappy crew is running their masters'
game in front of the redneck rabble who are dumber than their mutts.
Save_America1st, 9 hours ago
Geez...how far behind can most of these assholes be after all these years????
For one...there was no "Russia-gate". It was all a hoax from the beginning, and anyone
with a few functioning brain cells knew that from the start.
And as of about 3 years ago we have all known this as "Obamagate" for the most part...we
all knew the corruption of the hoax totally led up to O-Scumbag.
And now as of the recent disclosures it is a total fact.
Haven't most of you been watching Dan Bongino for over 2 years now and haven't you read
his books? Haven't you been reading Sarah Carter and John Soloman among others for nearly 3
years now???
Surely, you haven't been just sitting around sucking leftist media **** for over 3 years,
right???????? I'm sure you haven't.
So why is this article even necessary on ZeroHedge?????
We already knew and have known the truth since before even the 2016 election. Drop it.
Posa, 9 hours ago
So funny. The 85 Year old "American century' is palpably disintegrating before our very
eyes. In particular the Deep State permanent bureaucracy is completely untethered and facing
what seems to be a Great Reckoning in the form of Barr- Durham. Cognitve Derangement prevails
in the press and spills overto the body politic. The country teeters a slo-mo Civil War.
Meanwhile, The dollar is disintegrating and we seem to face an economic abyss, the Terminal
Depression. Real "last Days of Rome" stuff.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN, 5 hours ago (Edited)
The Israeli dual citizens like Adelson and Mercer bought the Presidency.
Mossad was the organization handling the mole Seth Rich.
Blaming Russia also worked for those 2 groups because it deflected attention away from
(((them))).
Ray McGovern, being ex-intel, must know this to be true.
LetThemEatRand, 11 hours ago
Russiagate. The supposed target of said coup d'etat just Presided over the largest bailout
of banks ever by a factor of five or more. Trump supporters are asleep for the bailout, Trump
haters are asleep for the bailout. Let's fight about transgender bathrooms and Russiagate,
shall we?
Was it Crowdstrike that had shown her the forensics data? This McCarthyist dog just keeps lying and keeps digging. The Obama administration
was as shameless as they were crooked.
"They all sound like kids that got caught raiding the cookie jar making up wild tales of innocence with cookie crumbs all over their
faces."
Notable quotes:
"... Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable... ..."
"... (((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless herd of cattle, sub-human animals." ..."
"... Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us. Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher. ..."
...Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts
have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative
outlets which have called her out for Russia malarkey.
There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping
accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up.
Within a day, Russian "
disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in
unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.
She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."
No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the largest, most divisive hoax in US
history - which was based on faulty intelligence that includes CrowdStrike admitting they had
no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier based on his 'Russian sources.'
MrAToZ, 1 minute ago
What's with the bug eyes on these crooks?
Kurpak, 27 seconds ago
Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable...
It makes you look ******* insane.
iAmerican10, 8 minutes ago (Edited)
(((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless
herd of cattle, sub-human animals."
... ... ...
otschelnik, 35 minutes ago
Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who
has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us.
Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher.
incoming
NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak " in a meeting documented
in the January 2017 memo by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the unredacted first page of
which was obtained by CBS on Tuesday.
The FBI director admits he " has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified
information to Kislyak ," and no real basis for his insistence that the probe must go
on.
-- Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May
19, 2020
The only thing backing his hunch that the meetings between the general and the Russian
diplomat " could be an issue "?
" The level of communication is unusual ," Comey tells Obama, according to Rice,
hinting that the National Security Council should " potentially " avoid passing "
sensitive information related to Russia " to Flynn.
The FBI director did not elaborate on what is supposed to be " unusual " about an
incoming foreign policy official speaking with a Russian counterpart, especially in the midst
of what was then a rapidly-unraveling diplomatic relationship between the two countries with
Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions over
alleged-but-never-substantiated " election interference. " Given the circumstances, an
absence of communication might have been more unusual. But the timing is certainly
auspicious.
Rice, Flynn's predecessor who authored the memo, relates that the January 5 meeting followed
" a briefing by [Intelligence Committee] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016
Presidential election ."
The previous day, the FBI field office assigned with investigating Flynn attempted to close
the case against him, called CROSSFIRE RAZOR, after having found " no derogatory
information " to justify continued inclusion in the overarching CROSSFIRE HURRICANE probe
(the " Russian collusion " investigation). They were blocked from doing so by Agent
Peter Strzok, who added that the orders to keep the investigation going came from the " 7th
floor " - i.e. agency leadership. The Flynn investigation had been underway since August,
beginning the day after Strzok discussed an 'insurance policy' that was supposed to keep
then-candidate Donald Trump out of office with Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe. While Comey
describes his probe of Flynn as " proceeding 'by the book' " after Obama repeatedly
stresses he wants only a " by the book " investigation - both parties presumably
hoping to avoid exactly the sequence of revelatory events that are currently unfolding -
recently-unsealed documents from the case against Flynn indicate the general was entrapped,
with the FBI's goal being to " prosecute him or get him fired " with an ambush-style
interview.
They got both their wishes - after agents tricked him into sitting for questioning without a
lawyer present, Flynn was accused of lying about his contacts with Kislyak, fired from his post
in the White House, and subsequently pled guilty to lying to a federal agent.
The Department of Justice has dropped its charges against Flynn, citing gross misconduct and
abuse of power at the FBI, which it claims had no basis for launching its investigation.
However, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has attempted to block the dismissal, appointing a
retired judge as independent prosecutor to both argue against the Justice Department's move and
pursue perjury charges against Flynn - essentially charging him with lying about lying.
On Tuesday, Flynn's attorney filed a writ of mandamus with the US Court of Appeals for the
DC Circuit, urging them to force Sullivan to step aside and allow the dismissal of the
charges.
For years former President Obama remained more or less off the grid. It could be argued that
it is not uncommon for an ex-president to stay out of the limelight. Several Presidents have
done this even claiming it was for the good of the country and in an effort not to interfere
with the country moving forward. Obama has recently reemerged and injected himself into the
public spotlight, at times taking aim at President Trump and the way his administration is
handling various situations. It is not surprising that President Trump is not pleased.
While our memory has a way of removing rough edges from events we should not try to
whitewash the past and rewrite history to present a different picture of what really happened.
Because of the stark contrast in the demeanor and style of Trump and Obama, the media has
"photo shopped" reality. Obama has been painted as, a thoughtful, intelligent, capable man full
of hope and able to bring us together. He did, after all, bring America's economy back from the
brink of disaster following the Great Recession. Trump, on the other hand, is often portrayed
as a divisive, dishonest, braggart, and a buffoon. The fact is during Obama's time as President
the country suffered scandal upon scandal upon scandal, it might be fair to say we had
"scandals galore."
Mosul, Reduced To Rubble On Obama's Watch
And then, there was Mosul. The destruction of Mosul and the many lives lost there stand as a
monument of Obama's failings. We should
not forget that during Obama's watch the once-proud Iraqi city of Mosul was reduced to
rubble. This was done as a coalition of anti-ISIS forces try to retake the city. The very
roots of ISIS were fed by America and its botched policies. The saying, "never throw stones if
you live in a glass house" would lead people to think Obama should have remained in the
shadows.
Looking back, there were so many, big and small scandals such as the fast and furious, the
operation that sent guns into the hands of drug gangs in Mexico, they became difficult to
track. In Las Vegas, the GSA went on a spending spree. A large number of sexual assaults
occurring in the military. Solyndra which should be placed in the dictionary and defined as
"what happens when politicians and bureaucrats play businessman with taxpayer money" failed.
The CIA had a "prostitutes fiasco" in South America. Fisker Automotive failed, this deal reeked
of government cronyism and waste. Add to this what looked like a "Benghazi coverup" (including
the way it was handled in the second presidential debate) add the DOJ doing an over the top and
wiretapping the Associated Press.
Trump Will Leave None Of This Unaddressed
We should not forget some of the following if truth be told. The resurfacing of Mr. Obama
and images of him opining with his chin tilted slightly upward motivated me to look back at
some posts written during his time as President. Remember, because of his persona, a degree of
optimism was in the air as he took office, across the world many people saw him as the answer
to taking the whole world forward. Below are a few of those with links to the original as well
as a few other comments on what history has revealed as major policy blunders flowing from his
time in office.
Other major faux-pas, blunders or missteps of the Obama administration include;
Generated the destabilizing "Arab Spring"
Failed in helping Iraq stabilize
Horribly mishandling the situation in Syria and in doing so fund the creation of
ISIS
Underestimating ISIS
Aiding in turning Libya into a failed state
Obama care failed to reduce health care cost but transferred them to other payers
Failed to lessen racial strife, note Ferguson, Missouri, and other events
Destabilizing Ukraine in a pissing war with Putin
IRS, when it targeted conservative groups
Fast and Furious - where the US illegally sold guns in Mexico
To say we were awash in scandals during the Obama era is an understatement, fortunately for
Obama, most Americans have the attention span of a gnat .
To be clear, not everyone will agree with what I have listed as "faux-pas, blunders or
missteps" but some will. Time tends to reveal whether the decisions we make are great, good,
so-so, or were horribly wrong. If you feel this post was overly biased, unto you I say, sorry,
sorry, sorry.
In an effort to be transparent I confess I'm not a fan of either of these men and to be fair
this post is not a critique of Trump's time in office. While some people may try or continue to
paint Obama as Mr. Clean, a closer look at history rapidly dispels that image.
Russiaphobia as a pathological reaction on the deep crisis of neoliberalism
Notable quotes:
"... The described lack of confidence was reflected in the exaggerated fear that Russia was capable of destroying the West's values. However, Russia and Putin were neither omnipresent nor threatening to destroy the United States' political system. ..."
"... Russia's basic motives remain defensive even when the Kremlin relies on assertive tactics. Russia's assertiveness, even in cyberspace, is of a reactive nature and is a response to US policies. ..."
"... Rather than fighting a full-scale information war with the West, Russia seeks to increase its status and strengthen its bargaining position in relations with the United States. 68 The Kremlin has been proposing to negotiate rules of cooperation in the cyber area since early in the twenty-first century. Motivated by an insistence on "cyber-sovereignty," Russia regularly proposes resolutions at the United Nations to prohibit "information aggression," In a 2011 letter to the United Nations General Assembly, Russia proposed an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," stipulating that states subscribing to the code would pledge to "not use information and communications technologies and other information and communications networks to interfere with the internal affairs of other states or with the aim of undermining their political, economic and social stability." 69 ..."
"... Overall, what the Kremlin challenges is the United States' post–Cold War behavior that undermines Russia's status as a great power. Although Russia is not in a position to directly challenge the United States and the US-centered international order, the Kremlin hopes to gain external recognition as a great power by relying on low-cost methods and revealing the vulnerability of Western nations. Russia's capabilities and presence in global cyber and media space are limited, and the Kremlin is motivated by asymmetric deployment of its media, information, and cyber power. ..."
The chapter extends the argument about media and value conflict between Russia and the
United States to the age of Donald Trump. The new value conflict is assessed as especially
acute and exacerbated by the US partisan divide. The Russia issue became central because it
reflected both political partisanship and the growing value division between Trump voters and
the liberal establishment. In addition to explaining the new wave of American Russophobia, the
chapter analyzes Russia's own role and motives. The media are likely to continue the
ideological and largely negative coverage of Russia, especially if Washington and Moscow fail
to develop a pragmatic form of cooperation.
Keywords: Russia, Trump, US elections, narrative of collusion, partisan divide
This chapter addresses the new development in the US media perception of the Russian threat
following the election of Donald Trump as the United States' president. The election revealed
that US national values could no longer be viewed as predominantly liberal and favoring the
global promotion of democracy, as supported by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and
Barack Obama. During and after the election, the liberal media sought to present Moscow as not
only favoring Trump but being responsible for his election and even ruling on behalf of the
Kremlin. Those committed to a liberal worldview led the way in criticizing Russia and Putin for
assaulting liberal democratic values globally and inside the United States. This chapter argues
that the Russia issue became so central in the new internal divide because it reflects both
political partisanship and the growing division between the values of Trump voters and those of
the liberal establishment. The domestic political struggle has exacerbated the divide. Russia's
otherness, again, has highlighted values of "freedom," seeking to preserve the confidence of
the liberal self. (p.82)
The Narrative of Trump's "Collusion" with Russia
During the US presidential election campaign, American media developed yet another
perception of Russia as reflected in the narrative of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin.
1 Having originated in liberal media and building on the previous perceptions of
neo-Soviet autocracy and foreign threat, the new perception of Russia was that of the enemy
that won the war against the United States. By electing the Kremlin's favored candidate,
America was defeated by Russia. As a CNN columnist wrote, "The Russians really are here,
infiltrating every corner of the country, with the single goal of disrupting the American way
of life." 2 The two assumptions behind the new media narrative were that Putin was an
enemy and that Trump was compromised by Putin. The inevitable conclusion was that Trump could
not be a patriot and potentially was a traitor prepared to act against US interests.
The new narrative was assisted by the fact that Trump presented a radically different
perspective on Russia than Clinton and the US establishment. The American political class had
been in agreement that Russia displayed an aggressive foreign policy seeking to destroy the
US-centered international order. Influential politicians, both Republicans and Democrats,
commonly referred to Russian president Putin as an extremely dangerous KGB spy with no soul.
Instead, Trump saw Russia's international interests as not fundamentally different from
America's. He advocated that the United States to find a way to align its policies and
priorities in defeating terrorism in the Middle East -- a goal that Russia shared -- with the
Kremlin's. Trump promised to form new alliances to "unite the civilized world against Radical
Islamic Terrorism" and to eradicate it "completely from the face of the Earth." 3 He hinted that he was prepared to revisit the thorny issues of Western
sanctions against (p.83) the Russian economy and the recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia.
Trump never commented on Russia's political system but expressed his admiration for Putin's
leadership and high level of domestic support. 4
Capitalizing on the difference between Trump's views and those of the Democratic Party
nominee, Hillary Clinton, the liberal media referred to Trump as the Kremlin-compromised
candidate. Commentators and columnists with the New York Times , such as Paul Krugman,
referred to Trump as the "Siberian" candidate. 5 Commentators and pundits, including those with academic and political
credentials, developed the theory that the United States was under attack. The former
ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, wrote in the Washington Post that Russia had
attacked "our sovereignty" and continued to "watch us do nothing" because of the partisan
divide. He compared the Kremlin's actions with Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and warned that Russia was
likely to perform repeat assaults in 2018 and 2020. 6 The historian Timothy Snyder went further, comparing the election of Trump to
a loss of war, which Snyder said was the basic aim of the enemy. Writing in the New York
Daily News , he asserted, "We no longer need to wonder what it would be like to lose a war
on our own territory. We just lost one to Russia, and the consequence was the election of
Donald Trump." 7
The election of Trump prompted the liberal media to discuss Russia-related fears. The
leading theory was that Trump would now compromise America's interests and rule the country on
behalf of Putin. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times called for actions against Russia
and praised "patriotic" Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for being tough on
Trump. 8 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked whether Trump was actually under Putin's
control. Citing Trump's views and his associates' travel to Moscow, she told viewers, "We are
also starting to see (p.84) what may be signs of continuing [Russian] influence in our country,
not just during the campaign but during the administration -- basically, signs of what could be
a continuing operation." 9 Another New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, published a column
titled "There's a Smell of Treason in the Air," arguing that the FBI's investigation of the
Trump presidential campaign's collusion "with a foreign power so as to win an election" was an
investigation of whether such collusion "would amount to treason." 10 Responding to Trump's statement that his phone was tapped during the election
campaign, the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum tweeted that "Trump's insane
'GCHQ tapped my phone' theory came from . . . Moscow." McFaul and many others then endorsed and
retweeted the message. 11
To many within the US media, Trump's lack of interest in promoting global institutions and
his publicly expressed doubts that the Kremlin was behind cyberattacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) served to exacerbate the problem. Several intelligence leaks to the
press and investigations by Congress and the FBI contributed to the image of a president who
was not motivated by US interests. The US intelligence report on Russia's alleged hacking of
the US electoral system released on January 8, 2017, served to consolidate the image of Russia
as an enemy. Leaks to the press have continued throughout Trump's presidency. Someone in the
administration informed the press that Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his victory in
elections on March 18, 2018, despite Trump's advisers' warning against making such a call.
12
In the meantime, investigations of Trump's alleged "collusion" with Russia were failing to
produce substantive evidence. Facts that some associates of Trump sought to meet or met with
members of Russia's government did not lead to evidence of sustained contacts or collaboration.
It was not proven that the Kremlin's "black dossier" on Trump compiled by British intelligence
officer (p.85) Christopher Steele and leaked to CNN was truthful. Russian activity on American
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter was not found to be conclusive in determining
outcomes of the elections. 13 In February 2018, a year after launching investigation, Special Counsel
Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals for allegedly interfering in the US 2016
presidential elections, yet their connection to Putin or Trump was not established. On March
12, 2018, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr stated that he had not yet seen
any evidence of collusion. 14 Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the Russia investigation,
announced the end of the committee's probe of Russian meddling in the election. 15
Trump was also not acting toward Russia in the way the US media expected. His views largely
reflected those of the military and national security establishment and disappointed some of
his supporters. 16 The US National Security Strategy and new Defense Strategy presented Russia
as a leading security threat, alongside China, Iran, and North Korea. The president made it
clear that he wanted to engage in tough bargaining with Russia by insisting on American terms.
17 Instead of improving ties with Russia, let alone acting on behalf of the
Kremlin, Trump contributed to new crises in bilateral relations that had to do with the two
sides' principally different perceptions. While the Kremlin expected Washington to normalize
relations, the United States assumed Russia's weakness and expected it to comply with
Washington's priorities regarding the Middle East, Ukraine, and Afghanistan and nuclear and
cyber issues. 18 Trump also authorized the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats in US
history and ordered several missile strikes against Assad's Russia-supported positions in
Syria, each time provoking a crisis in relations with Moscow. Even Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, whom Rachel Maddow suspected of being appointed on Putin's advice to "weaken" the
State Department and "bleed out" (p.86) the FBI, 19 was replaced by John Bolton. The latter's foreign policy reputation was that
of a hawk, including on Russia. 20
Responding to these developments, the media focused on fears of being attacked by the
Kremlin and on Trump not doing enough to protect the country. These fears went beyond the
alleged cyber interference in the US presidential elections and included infiltration of
American media and social networks and attacks on congressional elections and the country's
most sensitive infrastructure, such as electric grids, water-processing plants, banking
networks, and transportation facilities. In order to prevent such developments, media
commentators and editorial writers recommended additional pressures on the Kremlin and
counteroffensive operations. 21 One commentator recommended, as the best defense from Russia's plans to
interfere with another election in the United States, launching a cyberattack on Russia's own
presidential elections in March 2018, to "disrupt the stability of Vladimir Putin's regime."
22 A New York Times editorial summarized the mood by challenging
President Trump to confront Russia further: "If Mr. Trump isn't Mr. Putin's lackey, it's past
time for him to prove it." 23 The burden of proof was now on Trump's shoulders.
Opposition to the
"Collusion" Narrative
In contrast to highly critical views of Russia in the dominant media, conservative,
libertarian, and progressive sources offered different assessments. Initially, opposition to
the collusion narrative came from the alternative media, yet gradually -- in response to scant
evidence of Trump's collusion -- it incorporated voices within the mainstream.
The conservative media did not support the view that Russia "stole" elections and presented
Trump as a patriot who wanted to make America great rather than develop "cozy" relationships
with (p.87) the Kremlin. Writing in the American Interest , Walter Russell Mead argued
that Trump aimed to demonstrate the United States' superiority by capitalizing on its military
and technological advantages. He did not sound like a Russian mole. Challenging the liberal
media, the author called for "an intellectually solvent and emotionally stable press" and wrote
that "if President Trump really is a Putin pawn, his foreign policy will start looking much
more like Barack Obama's." 24 Instead of viewing Trump as compromised by the Kremlin, sources such
Breitbart and Fox News attributed the blame to the deep state, "the complex of
bureaucrats, technocrats, and plutocrats," including the intelligence agencies, that seeks to
"derail, or at least to de-legitimize, the Trump presidency" by engaging in accusations and
smear campaigns. 25
Echoing Trump's own views, some conservatives expressed their admiration for Putin as a
dynamic leader superior to Obama. In particular, they praised Putin for his ability to defend
Russia's "traditional values" and great-power status. 26 Neoconservative and paleoconservative publications like the National
Review , the Weekly Standard, Human Events Online , and others critiqued Obama's
"feckless foreign policy," characterized by "fruitless accommodationism," contrasting it with
Putin's skilled and calculative geopolitical "game of chess." 27 A Washington Post / ABC News poll revealed that among Republicans, 75%
approved of Trump's approach on Russia relative; 40% of all respondents approved. 28 This did not mean that conservatives and Republicans were "infiltrated" by
the Kremlin. Mutual Russian and American conservative influences were limited and
nonstructured. 29 The approval of Putin as a leader by American conservatives meant that they
shared a certain commonality of ideas and were equally critical of liberal media and
globalization. 30
Progressive and libertarian media also did not support the narrative of collusion. Gary
Leupp at CounterPunch found the (p.88) narrative to be serving the purpose of reviving
and even intensifying "Cold War-era Russophobia," with Russia being an "adversary" "only in
that it opposes the expansion of NATO, especially to include Ukraine and Georgia." 31 Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com questioned the narrative by pointing to
Russia's bellicose rhetoric in response to Trump's actions. 32 Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani at Intercept reminded readers that,
overall, Trump proved to be far more confrontational toward Russia than Obama, thereby
endangering America. 33 In particular Trump severed diplomatic ties with Russia, armed Ukraine,
appointed anti-Russia hawks, such as ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, National
Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Michal Pompeo to key foreign policy
positions, antagonized Russia's Iranian allies, and imposed tough sanctions against Russian
business with ties to the Kremlin. 34
The dominant liberal media ignored opposing perspectives or presented them as compromised by
Russia. For instance, in amplifying the view that Putin "stole" the elections, the
Washington Post sought to discredit alternative sources of news and commentaries as
infiltrated by the Kremlin's propaganda. On November 24, 2016, the newspaper published an
interview with the executive director of a new website, PropOrNot, who preferred to remain
anonymous, and claimed that the Russian government circulated pro-Trump articles before the
election. Without providing evidence on explaining its methodology, the group identified more
than two hundred websites that published or echoed Russian propaganda, including WikiLeaks and
the Drudge Report , left-wing websites such as CounterPunch, Truthout, Black Agenda
Report, Truthdig , and Naked Capitalism , as well as libertarian venues such as
Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. 35 Another mainstream liberal outlet, CNN, warned the American people to be
vigilant against the Kremlin's alleged efforts to spread propaganda: "Enormous numbers of
(p.89) Americans are not only failing to fight back, they are also unwitting collaborators --
reading, retweeting, sharing and reacting to Russian propaganda and provocations every day."
36
However, voices of dissent were now heard even in the mainstream media. Masha Gessen of the
New Yorker said that Trump's tweet about Robert Mueller's indictments and Moscow's
"laughing its ass off" was "unusually (perhaps accidentally) accurate." 37 She pointed out that Russians of all ideological convictions "are remarkably
united in finding the American obsession with Russian meddling to be ridiculous." 38 The editor of the influential Politico , Blake Hounshell, confessed
that he was a Russiagate skeptic because even though "Trump was all too happy to collude with
Putin," Mueller's team never found a "smoking gun." 39 In reviewing the book on Russia's role in the 2016 election Russian
Roulette , veteran New York Times reporter Steven Lee Myers noted that the Kremlin's
meddling "simply exploited the vulgarity already plaguing American political campaigns" and
that the veracity of many accusations remained unclear. 40
Explaining Russophobia
The high-intensity Russophobia within the American media, overblown even by the standards of
previous threat narratives, could no longer be explained by differences in national values or
by bilateral tensions. The new fear of Russia also reflected domestic political polarization
and growing national unease over America's identity and future direction.
The narrative of collusion in the media was symptomatic of America's declining confidence in
its own values. Until the intervention in Iraq in 2004, optimism and a sense of confidence
prevailed in American social attitudes, having survived even the terrorist attack on the United
States on September 11, 2001. The (p.90) country's economy was growing and its position in the
world was not challenged. However, the disastrous war in Iraq, the global financial crisis of
2008, and Russia's intervention in Georgia in August 2008 changed that. US leadership could no
longer inspire the same respect, and a growing number of countries viewed it as a threat to
world peace. 41 Internally, the United States was increasingly divided. Following
presidential elections in November 2016, 77% of Americans perceived their country as "greatly
divided on the most important values." 42 The value divide had been expressed in partisanship and political
polarization long before the 2016 presidential elections. 43 The Russia issue deepened this divide. According to a poll taken in October
2017, 63% of Democrats, but just 38% of Republicans, viewed "Russia's power and influence" as a
major threat to the well-being of the United States. 44
During the US 2016 presidential elections, Russia emerged as a convenient way to accentuate
differences between Democratic and Republican candidates, which in previous elections were
never as pronounced or defining. The new elections deepened the partisan divide because of
extreme differences between the two main candidates, particularly on Russia. Donald Trump
positioned himself as a radical populist promising to transform US foreign policy and "drain
the swamp" in Washington. His position on Russia seemed unusual because, by election time, the
Kremlin had challenged the United States' position in the world by annexing Crimea, supporting
Ukrainian separatism, and possibly hacking the DNC site.
The Russian issue assisted Clinton in stressing her differences from Trump. Soon after it
became known that DNC servers were hacked, she embraced the view that Russia was behind the
cyberattacks. She accused Russia of "trying to wreak havoc" in the United States and threatened
retaliation. 45 In his turn, Trump used Russia to challenge Clinton's commitment to national
security (p.91) and ability to serve as commander in chief. In particular, he drew public
attention to the FBI investigation into Clinton's use of a private server for professional
correspondence, and even noted sarcastically that the Russians should find thirty thousand
missing emails belonging to her. The latter was interpreted by many in liberal media and
political circles as a sign of Trump's being unpatriotic. 46 Clinton capitalized on this interpretation. She referred to the issue of
hacking as the most important one throughout the campaign and challenged Trump to agree with
assessments of intelligence agencies that cyberattacks were ordered by the Kremlin. She
questioned Trump's commitments to US national security and accused him of being a "puppet" for
President Putin. 47 Following Trump's victory, Clinton told donors that her loss should be partly
attributed to Putin and the election hacks directed by him. 48
Clinton's arguments fitted with the overall narrative embraced by the mainstream media since
roughly 2005 characterizing Russia as abusive and aggressive. Clinton viewed Russia as an
oppressive autocratic power that was aggressive abroad to compensate for domestic weaknesses.
Previously, in her book Hard Choices , then-secretary of state Clinton described Putin
as "thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually cracking down on dissent
and debate." 49 This view was shared by President Obama, who publicly referred to Russia as a
"regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength but out
of weakness." 50 During the election's campaign, Clinton argued that the United States should
challenge Russia by imposing a no-fly zone in Syria with the objective of removing Assad from
power, strengthening sanctions against the Russian economy, and providing lethal weapons to
Ukraine in order to contain the potential threat of Russia's military invasion.
Following the elections, the partisan divide deepened, with liberal establishment attacking
the "unpatriotic" Trump. Having (p.92) lost the election, Clinton partly attributed Trump's
victory to the role of Russia and advocated an investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. In
February 2017 the Clinton-influenced Center for American Progress brought on a former State
Department official to run a new Moscow Project. 51 As acknowledged by the New Yorker , members of the Clinton inner
circle believed that the Obama administration deliberately downplayed DNC hacking by the
Kremlin. "We understand the bind they were in," one of Clinton's senior advisers said. "But
what if Barack Obama had gone to the Oval Office, or the East Room of the White House, and
said, 'I'm speaking to you tonight to inform you that the United States is under attack . . .'
A large majority of Americans would have sat up and taken notice . . . it is bewildering -- it
is baffling -- it is hard to make sense of why this was not a five-alarm fire in the White
House." 52
In addition to Clinton, many other members of the Washington establishment, including some
Republicans, spread the narrative of Russia "attacking" America. Republican politicians who
viewed Clinton's defeat and the hacking attacks in military terms included those of chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, who stated, "When you attack a country, it's
an act of war," 53 and former vice president Dick Cheney, who called Russia's alleged
interference in the US election "a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin" that "in some
quarters that would be considered an act of war." 54 A number of Democrats also engaged in the rhetoric of war, likening the
Russian "attack," as Senator Ben Cardin did, to a "political Pearl Harbor." 55
Rumors and leaks, possibly by members of US intelligence agencies, 56 and activities of liberal groups that sought to discredit Trump contributed
to the Russophobia. In addition to the DNC hacking accusations, many fears of Russia in the
media were based on the assumption that contacts, let alone cooperation with the (p.93)
Kremlin, was unpatriotic and implied potentially "compromising" behavior: praise of Putin as a
leader, possible business dealings with Russian "oligarchs," and meetings with Russian
officials such Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. 57
There were therefore two sides to the Russia story in the US liberal media -- rational and
emotional. The rational side had to do with calculations by Clinton-affiliated circles and
anti-Russian groups pooling their resources to undermine Trump and his plans to improve
relations with Russia. Among others, these resources included dominance within the liberal
media and leaks by the intelligence community. The emotional side was revealed by the liberal
elites' values and ability to promote fears of Russia within the US political class and the
general public. Popular emotions of fear and frustration with Russia already existed in the
public space due to the old Cold War memories, as well as disturbing post–Cold War
developments that included wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. In part because of these
memories, factions such as those associated with Clinton were successful in evoking in the
public liberal mind what historian Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style" or "the sense
of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." 58 Mobilized by liberal media to pressure Trump, these emotions became an
independent factor in the political struggle inside Washington. The public display of fear and
frustration with Russia and Trump could only be sustained by a constant supply of new
"suspicious" developments and intense discussion by the media.
Russia's Role and
Motives
Russia's "attacking" America and Trump's "colluding" with the Kremlin remained poorly
substantiated. Taken together, the DNC hacking, Trump's and Putin's mutual praise, and Trump
associates' (p.94) contacts with Russian officials implied Kremlin infiltration of the United
States' internal politics. Yet viewed separately, each was questionable and unproven. Some of
these points could have also been made about Hillary Clinton, who had ties to Russian -- not to
mention Saudi Arabian -- business circles and Ukrainian politicians. 59 Political views cannot be counted as evidence. Contacts with Russian
officials could have been legitimate exchanges of views about two countries' interests and
potential cooperation. Even the CIA- and the FBI-endorsed conclusion that Russia attacked the
DNC servers was questioned by some observers on the grounds that forensic evidence was lacking
and that it relied too much on findings by one cybersecurity company. 60 In general, discussion of Russia in the US media lacked nuances and a sense
of proportion. As Jesse Walker, an editor at Reason magazine and author of The United
States of Paranoia , pointed out,
There's a difference between thinking that Moscow may have hacked the Democratic National
Committee and thinking that Moscow actually hacked the election, between thinking the
president may have Russian conflicts of interest and thinking he's a Russian puppet . . .
when someone like the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman declares that Putin "installed"
Donald Trump as president, he's moving out of the realm of plausible plots and into the world
of fantasy. Similarly, Clinton's warning that Trump could be Putin's "puppet" leaped from an
imaginable idea, that Putin wanted to help her rival, to the much more dubious notion that
Putin thought he could control the impulsive Trump. (Trump barely seems capable of
controlling himself.) 61
The loose and politically tendentious nature of discussions, circulation of questionable
leaks and dossiers complied by unidentified (p.95) individuals, and lack of serious evidence
led a number of observers to conclude that the Russia story was more about stopping Trump than
about Russia. The Russian scandal was symptomatic of the poisonous state of bilateral relations
that Democrats exploited for the purpose of derailing Trump. US-Russia relations became a
hostage of partisan domestic politics. As one liberal and tough critic of Putin wrote,
Democratic lawmakers' rhetoric of war in connection with the 2016 elections "places Republicans
-- who often characterize themselves as more hawkish on Russia and defense -- in a bind as they
try to defend to the new administration's strategy towards Moscow." 62 Another observer noted that Russiagate performed "a critical function for
Trump's political foes," allowing "them to oppose Trump while obscuring key areas where they
either share his priorities or have no viable alternative." 63
The described lack of confidence was reflected in the exaggerated fear that Russia was
capable of destroying the West's values. However, Russia and Putin were neither omnipresent nor
threatening to destroy the United States' political system. A number of analysts, such as Mark Schrad, identified fears of Russia as "increasingly hysterical fantasies" and argued that
Russia was not a global menace. 64 If the Kremlin was indeed behind the cyberattacks, it was not for the reasons
commonly broached. Rather than trying to subvert the US system, it sought to defend its own
system against what it perceived as a US policy of changing regimes and meddling in Russia's
internal affairs. The United States has a long history of covert activities in foreign
countries. 65 Washington's establishment has never followed the advice given by prominent
American statesmen such as George Kennan to let Russians "be Russians" and "work out their
internal problems in their own manner." 66 Instead, the United States assumes that America defines the rules and
boundaries of proper behavior in international politics, while others must simply follow the
rules.
(p.96) Russia's basic motives remain defensive even when the Kremlin relies on assertive
tactics. Russia's assertiveness, even in cyberspace, is of a reactive nature and is a response
to US policies. Experts observe that Russia's conception of cyber and other informational power
serves the overall purpose of protecting national sovereignty from encroachments by the United
States. 67Rather than fighting a full-scale information war with the West, Russia seeks
to increase its status and strengthen its bargaining position in relations with the United
States. 68 The Kremlin has been proposing to negotiate rules of cooperation in the cyber
area since early in the twenty-first century. Motivated by an insistence on
"cyber-sovereignty," Russia regularly proposes resolutions at the United Nations to prohibit
"information aggression," In a 2011 letter to the United Nations General Assembly, Russia
proposed an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," stipulating that states
subscribing to the code would pledge to "not use information and communications technologies
and other information and communications networks to interfere with the internal affairs of
other states or with the aim of undermining their political, economic and social stability."
69
Overall, what the Kremlin challenges is the United States' post–Cold War behavior that
undermines Russia's status as a great power. Although Russia is not in a position to directly
challenge the United States and the US-centered international order, the Kremlin hopes to gain
external recognition as a great power by relying on low-cost methods and revealing the
vulnerability of Western nations. Russia's capabilities and presence in global cyber and media
space are limited, and the Kremlin is motivated by asymmetric deployment of its media,
information, and cyber power.
This is about intelligence agencies becaming a powerful by shadow political force, much like
STASI. This not about corruption per se, but about perusing of political goals by dirty means. So
it is closer to sedition then to corruption.
Notable quotes:
"... there was no valid reason for the FBI to have interrogated Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak in the first place. There is nothing remotely untoward or unusual -- let alone criminal -- about an incoming senior national security official, three weeks away from taking over, reaching out to a counterpart in a foreign government to try to tamp down tensions. As the Washington Post put it , "it would not be uncommon for incoming administrations to interface with foreign governments with whom they will soon have to work." ..."
"... there was also massive corruption on the part of the investigators themselves, exploiting and abusing their vast and invasive investigative and prosecutorial powers for ideological goals, political subterfuge, election manipulation, and personal vendettas ..."
"... To begin with, cable and other news outlets that employed former Obama-era intelligence operatives, generals, and prosecutors to disseminate every Russiagate conspiracy theory they could find -- virtually always without any dissent or even questioning -- have barely acknowledged these explosive new documents. ..."
"... But the most critical reason to delve deeply into this case is that it reveals one the most dangerous abuses of power a democracy can suffer: The powers of the CIA, FBI, and NSA were blatantly and repeatedly abused to manipulate election outcomes and achieve political advantage. ..."
"... Flynn is a right-wing, hawkish general whose views on the so-called war on terror are ones utterly anathema to my own beliefs. That does not make his prosecution justified. One's views of Flynn personally or his politics (or those of the Trump administration generally) should have absolutely no bearing on one's assessment of the justifiability of what the U.S. government did to him here -- any more than one has to like the political views of the detainees at Guantanamo to find their treatment abusive and illegal , or any more than one has to agree with the views of people who are being censured in order to defend their right of free expression . ..."
"... As the journalist Aaron Maté demonstrated when he brilliantly challenged The Guardian's Luke Harding about his bestselling book claiming to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia -- one of the few times a Russiagate conspiracy advocate was forced to confront a knowledgeable critic -- those claims often cannot survive even minimal critical scrutiny. That's why media outlets have insulated these conspiracy theory advocates, as well as their audiences, from any dissent or even critical questioning. ..."
Gen. Michael Flynn, President Obama's former director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency and President Donald Trump's former national security adviser,
pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017, to a single count of lying to the FBI about two
conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while Flynn served as a Trump
transition team official (Flynn was never
charged for any matters relating to his relationship with the Turkish government). As part
of the plea deal, special counsel Robert Mueller
recommended no jail time for Flynn , and the plea agreement also seemingly put an end to
threats from the Mueller team to prosecute Flynn's son.
Last Thursday, the Justice Department
filed a motion seeking to dismiss the prosecution of Flynn based, in part, on newly
discovered documents revealing that the conduct of the FBI, under the leadership of
Director James Comey and his now-disgraced Deputy Andrew McCabe (who himself was forced to
leave the Bureau after
being caught lying to agents ), was improper and motivated by corrupt objectives. That
motion prompted histrionic howls of outrage from
the same political officials and their media allies who have spent the last three years pushing
maximalist Russiagate conspiracy theories.
But the prosecution of Flynn -- for allegedly lying to the FBI when he denied in a January
24 interrogation that he had discussed with Kislyak on December 29 the new
sanctions and expulsions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration -- was always odd
for a number of reasons. To begin with, the FBI agents who questioned Flynn said afterward that
they did not believe he was lying (as
CNN reported in February 2017: "the FBI interviewers believed Flynn was cooperative and
provided truthful answers. Although Flynn didn't remember all of what he talked about, they
don't believe he was intentionally misleading them, the officials say"). For that reason, CNN
said, "the FBI is not expected to pursue any charges against" him.
More importantly, there was no valid reason for the FBI to have interrogated Flynn about
his conversations with Kislyak in the first place. There is nothing remotely untoward or
unusual -- let alone criminal -- about an incoming senior national security official, three
weeks away from taking over, reaching out to a counterpart in a foreign government to try to
tamp down tensions. As the Washington Post
put it , "it would not be uncommon for incoming administrations to interface with foreign
governments with whom they will soon have to work." What newly released documents over the
last month reveal is what has been generally evident for the last three years: The powers of
the security state agencies -- particularly the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the DOJ -- were
systematically abused as part of the 2016 election and then afterward for political rather than
legal ends.
While there was obviously deceit and corruption on the part of some Trump
officials in lying to Russiagate investigators and otherwise engaging in depressingly
common D.C. lobbyist corruption , there was also massive corruption on the part of the
investigators themselves, exploiting and abusing their vast and invasive investigative and
prosecutorial powers for ideological goals, political subterfuge, election manipulation, and
personal vendettas . The former category (corruption by Trump officials) has received a
tidal wave of endless media attention, while the latter (corruption and abuse of power by those
investigating them) has received almost none.
For numerous reasons, it is vital to fully examine with as much clarity as possible the
abuse of power that drove the prosecution of Flynn. To begin with, cable and other news
outlets that employed
former Obama-era intelligence operatives, generals, and prosecutors to disseminate every
Russiagate conspiracy theory they could find -- virtually always without any dissent or even
questioning -- have barely acknowledged these explosive new documents.
More disturbingly, liberals and Democrats -- as part of their movement toward venerating
these security state agencies -- have completely jettisoned long-standing, core principles
about the criminal justice system, including questioning whether
lying to the FBI should be a crime at all and recognizing that innocent people
are often forced to plead guilty -- in order to justify both the Flynn prosecution
and the broader Mueller probe.
But the most critical reason to delve deeply into this case is that it reveals one the
most dangerous abuses of power a democracy can suffer: The powers of the CIA, FBI, and NSA were
blatantly and repeatedly abused to manipulate election outcomes and achieve political
advantage. In other words, we know now that these agencies did exactly what Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned they would do to Trump when he appeared on Rachel
Maddow's MSNBC program shortly before Trump's inauguration:
This turned out to be one of the most prescient and important (and creepy) statements of
the Trump presidency: from Chuck Schumer to Rachel Maddow - in early January, 2017, before
Trump was even inaugurated: pic.twitter.com/TUaYkksILG
Because U.S. politics is now discussed far more as tests of tribal loyalty ("Whose
side are you on?") than actual ideological or even political beliefs ("Which policies do you
favor or oppose?"), it is very difficult to persuade people to separate their personal or
political views of Flynn ("Do you like him or not?") from the question of whether the U.S.
government abused its power in gravely dangerous ways to prosecute him.
Flynn is a right-wing, hawkish general whose views on the so-called war on terror are
ones utterly anathema to my own beliefs. That does not make his prosecution justified. One's
views of Flynn personally or his politics (or those of the Trump administration generally)
should have absolutely no bearing on one's assessment of the justifiability of what the U.S.
government did to him here -- any more than one has to like the political views of the
detainees at Guantanamo to find their
treatment abusive and illegal , or any more than one has to agree with the views of people
who are being censured in
order to defend their right of
free expression .
The ability to distinguish between ideological questions from evidentiary
questions is vital for rational discourse to be possible, yet has been all but eliminated at
the altar of tribal fealty. That is why evidentiary questions completely devoid of ideological
belief -- such as whether one found the Russiagate conspiracy theories supported by convincing
evidence -- have been treated not as evidentiary matters but as tribal ones: to be affiliated
with the left (an ideological characterization), one must affirm belief in those conspiracy
theories even if one does not find the evidence in support of them actually compelling. The
conflation of ideological and evidentiary questions, and the substitution of substantive
political debates with tests of tribal loyalty, are indescribably corrosive to our public
discourse.
As a result, whether one is now deemed on the right or left has almost nothing to do with
actual political beliefs about policy questions and everything to do with one's willingness to
serve the interests of one team or another. With the warped formula in place, U.S. politics has
been depoliticized , stripped of any meaningful ideological debates in lieu of mindless
team loyalty oaths on non-ideological questions.
Our newest SYSTEM UPDATE episode, debuting today, is devoted to enabling as clear and
objective an examination as possible of the abuses that drove the Flynn prosecution --
including these critical, newly declassified documents -- as well the broader Russiagate
investigations of which it was a part. These abuses have received far too little attention from
the vast majority of the U.S. media that simply excludes any questioning or dissent of their
prevailing narratives about all of these matters.
Notably, we invited several of the cable stars and security state agents who have been
pushing these conspiracy theories for years to appear on the program for a civil discussion,
but none were willing to do so -- because they are so accustomed to being able to spout these
theories on MSNBC, CNN, and in newspapers without ever being meaningfully challenged.
Regardless of one's views on these scandals, it is unhealthy in the extreme for any media to
insulate themselves from a diversity of views.
As the journalist Aaron Maté demonstrated when he brilliantly challenged The Guardian's Luke
Harding about his bestselling book claiming to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russia -- one of the few times a Russiagate conspiracy advocate was forced to confront a
knowledgeable critic -- those claims often cannot survive even minimal critical scrutiny.
That's why media outlets have insulated these conspiracy theory advocates, as well as their
audiences, from any dissent or even critical questioning.
Today's SYSTEM UPDATE episode, which we believe provides the most comprehensive examination
to date of these new documents relating to the Flynn prosecution and how this case relates to
the broader Russiagate investigative abuses, can be viewed above or on The Intercept's YouTube channel .
This is about control of MSM by intelligence agencies, not so much about corruption of
individual journalists. Journalist became like in the USSR "Soldiers of the Party" -- well paid
propagandist of particular, supplied to them talking points.
What is particularly valuable about Smith's article is its perfect description of a media
sickness borne of the Trump era that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity and
justifiably destroying trust in news outlets. Smith aptly dubs this pathology "resistance
journalism," by which he means that journalists are now not only free, but encouraged and
incentivized , to say or publish anything they want, no matter how reckless and fact-free,
provided their target is someone sufficiently disliked in mainstream liberal media venues
and/or on social media:
[Farrow's] work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has
thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of
social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest
voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than
essential journalistic imperatives.
That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a
shared set of facts is under assault.
In assailing Farrow for peddling unproven conspiracy theories, Smith argues that such
journalistic practices are particularly dangerous in an era where conspiracy theories are
increasingly commonplace. Yet unlike most journalists with a mainstream platform, Smith
emphasizes that conspiracy theories are commonly used not only by Trump and his movement
(conspiracy theories which are quickly debunked by most of the mainstream media), but are also
commonly deployed by Trump's enemies, whose reliance on conspiracy theories is virtually never
denounced by journalists because mainstream news outlets themselves play a key role in peddling
them:
We are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths -- many pushed by President
Trump, but others hyped by his enemies -- that have lured ordinary Americans into
passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the
contrary. The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth, with
clarity and humility about what we don't know. Instead, Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to
believe about the way power works, and now, it seems, he and his publicity team are not even
pretending to know if it's true.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected , and one could argue even in the months leading up to
his election, journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to
reporting on public figures who, in Smith's words, are "most disliked by the loudest voices,"
particularly when such reporting "swim[s] ably along with the tides of social media." Put
another way: As long the targets of one's conspiracy theories and attacks are regarded as
villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles, journalists reap endless
career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven -- even false -- attacks on such people,
while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories are exposed as shabby
frauds.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OOhRRr6c1wA?autoplay=0&rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com&widgetid=1
infiltrated and taken over the U.S. government through sexual and financial blackmail
leverage over Trump and used it to dictate U.S. policy; Trump officials conspired with the
Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election; Russia was attacking the U.S. by
hacking its electricity grid , recruiting
journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers , and plotting to cut off heat to
Americans in winter. Mainstream media debacles -- all in service of promoting the same set of
conspiracy theories against Trump -- are literally too numerous to count, requiring one to
select the worst offenses as illustrative .
In March of last year, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi -- writing under the
headline "It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD" -- compared the prevailing
media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of
Iraq and the so-called war on terror: little to no dissent permitted, skeptics of
media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and excluded, and worst of all, the very journalists who
were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up most
rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods, they did so for the
right cause.
Under that warped rubric -- in which spreading falsehoods is commendable as long as
it was done to harm the evildoers -- the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most
damaging endorsers of
false
conspiracy theories about Iraq , rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic,
while two of the most deceitful Bush-era neocons, Bush/Cheney speechwriter David Frum and
supreme propagandist Bill Kristol, have reprised their role as leading propagandists and
conspiracy theorists -- only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf
-- and thus have become beloved liberal media icons. The communications director for both the
Bush/Cheney campaign and its White House, Nicole Wallace, is one of the most popular liberal
cable hosts from her MSNBC perch.
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Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape.
There is literally no accountability for the journalists and news outlets that spread
falsehoods in their pages, on their airwaves, and through their viral social media postings.
The Washington Post's media columnist Erik Wemple has been one of the very few journalists
devoted to holding these myth-peddlers accountable -- recounting how one of the most reckless
Russigate conspiracy maximialists, Natasha Bertrand,
became an overnight social media and journalism star by peddling discredited conspiratorial
trash (she was notably hired by Jeffrey Goldberg to cover Russigate for The Atlantic); MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow
spent three years hyping conspiratorial junk with no need even to retract any of it; and
Mother Jones' David Corn played a
crucial, decisively un-journalistic role in mainstreaming the lies of the Steele dossier
all with zero effect on his journalistic status, other than to enrich him through a predictably
bestselling book that peddled those unhinged conspiracies further.
Wemple's post-Russiagate
series has established him as a commendable, often-lone voice trying -- with futility -- to
bring some accountability to U.S. journalism for the systemic media failures of the past three
years. The reason that's futile is exactly what Smith described in his column on Farrow: In
"resistance journalism," facts and truth are completely dispensable -- indeed, dispensing with
them is rewarded -- provided "reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media
and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices."
That describes perfectly the journalists who were defined, and enriched, by years of
Russiagate deceit masquerading as reporting. By far the easiest path to career success over the
last three years -- booming ratings, lucrative book sales, exploding social media followings,
career rehabilitation even for the most discredited D.C. operatives -- was to feed
establishment liberals an endless diet of fearmongering and inflammatory conspiracies about
Drumpf and his White House. Whether it was true or supported by basic journalistic standards
was completely irrelevant. Responsible reporting was simply was not a metric used to assess its
worth.
It was one thing for activists, charlatans, and con artists to exploit fears of Trump for
material gain: that, by definition, is what such people do. But it was another thing entirely
for journalists to succumb to all the low-hanging career rewards available to them by
throwing all journalistic standards into the trash bin in exchange for a star turn as a
#Resistance icon. That , as Smith aptly describes, is what "Resistance Journalism" is,
and it's hard to identify anything more toxic to our public discourse.
Perhaps the single most shameful and journalism-destroying episode in all of this -- an
obviously difficult title to bestow -- was when a national security blogger, Marcy Wheeler,
violated long-standing norms and ethical standards of journalism by announcing in 2018 that she
had voluntarily turned in her own source to the FBI,
claiming she did so because her still-unnamed source "had played a significant role in the
Russian election attack on the US" and because her life was endangered by her brave decision to
stop being a blogger and become an armchair cop by pleading with the FBI and the Mueller team
to let her work with them. In her blog post announcing what she did, she claimed she was going
public with her treachery because her life was in danger, and this way everyone would know the
real reason if "someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow."
To say that Wheeler's actions are a grotesque violation of journalistic ethics is to
radically understate the case. Journalists are expected to protect their sources' identities
from the FBI even if they receive a subpoena and a court order compelling its disclosure; we're
expected to go to prison before we comply with FBI attempts to uncover our source's
identity. But here, the FBI did not try to compel Wheeler to tell them anything; they displayed
no interest in her as she desperately tried to chase them down.
By all appearances, Wheeler had to beg the FBI to pay attention to her because they treated
her like the sort of unstable, unhinged, unwell, delusional obsessive who, believing they have
uncovered some intricate conspiracy, relentlessly harass and bombard journalists with their
bizarre theories until they finally prattle to themselves for all of eternity in the spam
filter of our email inboxes. The claim that she was in possession of some sort of explosive and
damning information that would blow the Mueller investigation wide open was laughable. In her
post, she claimed she "always planned to disclose this when this person's role was publicly
revealed," but to date -- almost two years later -- she has never revealed "this person's"
identity because, from all appearances, the Mueller report never relied on Wheeler's intrepid
reporting or her supposedly red-hot secrets.
Like so many other Russiagate obsessives who turned into social media and MSNBC/CNN
#Resistance stars, Wheeler was living a wild, self-serving fantasy, a Cold War Tom Clancy
suspense film that she invented in her head and then cast herself as the heroine: a crusading
investigative dot-connecter uncovering dangerous, hidden conspiracies perpetrated by dangerous,
hidden Cold War-style villains (Putin) to the point where her own life was endangered by her
bravery. It was a sad joke, a depressing spectacle of psycho-drama, but one that could have had
grave consequences for the person she voluntarily ratted out to the FBI. Whatever else is true,
this episode inflicted grave damage on American journalism by having mainstream,
Russia-obsessed journalists not denounce her for her egregious violation of journalistic ethics
but celebrate her for turning journalism on its head.
Why? Because, as Smith said in his Farrow article, she was "swim[ing] ably along with the
tides of social media and produc[ing] damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by
the loudest voices" and thus "the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness [were] more like
impediments than essential journalistic imperatives." Margaret Sullivan, the former New York
Times public editor and now the Washington Post's otherwise reliably commendable media
reporter,
celebrated Wheeler's bizarre behavior under the headline: "A journalist's conscience leads
her to reveal her source to the FBI."
Despite acknowledging that "in their reporting, journalists talk to criminals all the time
and don't turn them in" and that "it's pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect
your sources," Sullivan heralded Wheeler's ethically repugnant and journalism-eroding
violation of those principles. "It's not hard to see that her decision was a careful and
principled one," Sullivan proclaimed.
She even endorsed Wheeler's cringe-inducing, self-glorifying claims about her life being
endangered by invoking long-standard Cold War clichés about the treachery of the
Russkies ("Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people
they find threatening."). The English language is insufficient to convey the madness required
to believe that the Kremlin wanted to kill Marcy Wheeler because her blogging was getting Too
Close to The Truth, but in the fevered swamps of resistance journalism, literally no claim was
too unhinged to be embraced provided that it fed the social media #Resistance masses.
Sullivan's article quoted no critics of Wheeler's incredibly controversial behavior
-- no need to: She was on the right side of social media reaction. And Sullivan never bothered
to return to wonder why her prediction -- "Wheeler hasn't named the source publicly, though his
name may soon be known to all who are following the Mueller investigation" -- never
materialized. Both CNN
and, incredibly, the
Columbia Journalism Review published similarly sympathetic accounts of Wheeler's desperate
attempts to turn over her source to the FBI and then cosplay as though she were some sort of
insider in the Mueller investigation. The most menacing attribute of what Smith calls
"Resistance Journalism" is that it permits and tolerates no dissent and questioning: perhaps
the single most destructive path journalism can take. It has been well-documented that MSNBC
and CNN spent three years peddling all sorts of ultimately discredited Russiagate conspiracy
theories by excluding from their airwaves anyone who dissented from or even questioned those
conspiracies. Instead, they relied upon an
increasingly homogenized army of former security state agents from the CIA, FBI, and NSA to
propound, in unison, all sorts of claims about Trump and Russia that turned out to be false,
and peppered their panels of "analysts" with journalists whose career skyrocketed exclusively
by pushing maximalist Russiagate claims, often by relying on the same intelligence officials
these cable outlets sat them next to.
That NBC & MSNBC hired as a "news analyst" John Brennan - who ran the CIA when the
Trump/Russia investigation began & was a key player in the news he was shaping as a paid
colleague of their reporters - is a huge ethical breach. And it produced this: pic.twitter.com/nPlaq5YVxf
This trend -- whereby diversity of opinion and dissent from orthodoxies are
excluded from media discourse -- is worsening rapidly due to two major factors. The first is
that cable news programs are constructed to feed their audiences only self-affirming narratives
that vindicate partisan loyalties. One liberal cable host told me that they receive ratings not
for each show but for each segment , and they can see the ratings drop off -- the
remotes clicking away -- if they put on the air anyone who criticizes the party to which that
outlet is devoted (Democrats in the case of MSNBC and CNN, the GOP in the case of Fox).
But there's another more recent and probably more dissent-quashing development: the
disappearance of media jobs. Mass layoffs were already common in online journalism and local
newspapers
prior to the coronavirus pandemic , and have now turned into
an industrywide massacre . With young journalists watching jobs disappearing en masse, the
last thing they are going to want to do is question or challenge prevailing orthodoxies within
their news outlet or, using Smith's "Resistance Journalism" formulation, to "swim against the
tides of social media" or question the evidence amassed against those "most disliked by the
loudest voices."
Affirming those orthodoxies can be career-promoting, while questioning them can be
job-destroying. Consider the powerful incentives journalists face in an industry where jobs are
disappearing so rapidly one can barely keep count. During Russiagate, I often heard from young
journalists at large media outlets who expressed varying degrees of support for and agreement
with the skepticism which I and a handful of other journalists were expressing, but they felt
constrained to do so themselves, for good reason. They watched the reprisals and shunning doled
out even to journalists with a long record of journalistic accomplishments and job security for
the crime of Russiagate skepticism, such as Taibbi (similar to the way MSNBC fired Phil
Donahue in 2002 for opposing the invasion of Iraq), and they know journalists with less
stature and security than Taibbi could not risk incurring that collective wrath.
All professions and institutions suffer when a herd, groupthink mentality and the banning of
dissent prevail. But few activities are corroded from such a pathology more than journalism is,
which has as its core function skepticism and questioning of pieties. Journalism quickly
transforms into a sickly, limp version of itself when it itself wages war on the virtues of
dissent and airing a wide range of perspectives.
I do not know how valid are Smith's critiques of Farrow's journalism. But what I know for
certain is that Smith's broader diagnosis of "Resistance Journalism" is dead-on, and the harms
it is causing are deep and enduring. When journalists know they will thrive by affirming
pleasing falsehoods, and suffer when they insist on unpopular truths, journalism not only loses
its societal value but becomes just another instrument for societal manipulation, deceit, and
coercion.
Those are far from failures, those were successful disinformation/propaganda operations conducted with a certain goal --
remove Trump -- which demonstrate the level of intelligence agencies control of the MSM. In other words those are
parts of a bigger intelligence operation -- the color revolution against Trump led most probably by Obama and Brennan.
Now we know that Obama played an important role in Russiagate media hysteria and, most porbably, in planning and executing the
operation to entrap Flynn.
Notable quotes:
"... They are listed in reverse order, as measured by the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news, the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger they caused ..."
"... Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors" went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the same agenda and script: ..."
"... Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked Ukrainian artillery apps; they then retracted it . ..."
"... The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community." ..."
"... Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered "sex for favors" were totally false (and scurrilous). ..."
BuzzFeed was once notorious for
traffic-generating "listicles," but has since become an impressive outlet for deep
investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the
news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story
that, like so many others of its kind,
blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the
extremely rare step to
label its key claims "inaccurate."
But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures
in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by
the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news,
the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger
they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets
(particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most
embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is
so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end
with (dis)honorable mention status.
Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave
threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media
outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would
expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories.
That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media
clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors"
went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the
same agenda and script:
10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)
On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that
C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false:
Holy shit. Russia state propaganda (RT) "hacked" into C-SPAN feed and took over for a good
40 seconds today? In middle of live broadcast. https://t.co/pwWYFoDGDU
9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat
During the Winter (WashPost)
On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S.
electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along
with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's
notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S.
electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was
false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:
Breaking: Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont
https://t.co/LED11lL7ej
8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the
Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive
Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)
On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post
published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian
infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being
"routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of
at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation
campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."
Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that
reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge
Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig,
and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul
Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note
in memory appended to the top of the article (but
not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the
media ecosystem):
Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent
researchers https://t.co/3ETVXWw16Q
Just want to note I hadn't heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave
permission to them to call Bellingcat "allies" https://t.co/jQKnWzjrBR
7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Under
Senate Investigation (CNN)
On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the
Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story
and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network. 6. Russia Attacked
U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave
Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)
On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC
spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia
was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic
or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea
what to make of it.
But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered
any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective
psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds"
the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean
male cricket during mating season.
An @NBCNews
exclusive: After more than a year of mystery, Russia is the main suspect in the sonic attacks
that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials in Cuba. @MitchellReports has the
latest. pic.twitter.com/NEI9PJ9CpD
4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy
and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)
On November 27, 2018, the Guardian
published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed
to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,
and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators
exploded.
Seven weeks later,
no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged;
the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into
hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian
official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:
Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in
London, and visited around the time he joined Trump's campaign, the Guardian has been told.
https://t.co/Fc2BVmXipk
The Guardian reports that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks,
the same month that Manafort joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, a meeting
that could carry vast implications for the Russia investigation https://t.co/pYawnv4MHH
3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story
Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump
Tower Meeting (CNN)
On July 27, 2018, CNN
published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that
President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two
problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that
"contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis
was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous
other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however,
to this date has refused to do either: 2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump
Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)
BREAKING: President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie
to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his
involvement. https://t.co/BEoMKiDypn
The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before
our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings
with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what's necessary to find out if
it's true. https://t.co/GljBAFqOjh
Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to
Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn't end his inquiry, but it's about
time for him to show Congress his cards before it's too late for us to act. https://t.co/ekG5VSBS8G
To those trying to parse the Mueller statement: it's a straight-up denial. Maybe Buzzfeed
can prove they are right, maybe Mueller can prove them wrong. But it's an emphatic denial
https://t.co/EI1J7XLCJe
. @Isikoff :
"There were red flags about the BuzzFeed story from the get-go." Notes it was inconsistent
with Cohen's guilty plea when he said he made false statements about Trump Tower to Congress
to be "consistent" with Trump, not at his direction. pic.twitter.com/tgDg6SNPpG
We at The Post also had riffs on the story our reporters hadn't confirmed. One noted Fox
downplayed it; another said it "if true, looks to be the most damning to date for Trump." The
industry needs to think deeply on how to cover others' reporting we can't confirm
independently. https://t.co/afzG5B8LAP
Washington Post says Mueller's denial of BuzzFeed News article is aimed at the full story:
"Mueller's denial, according to people familiar with the matter, aims to make clear that none
of those statements in the story are accurate." https://t.co/ene0yqe1mK
If you're one of the people tempted to believe the self-evidently laughable claim that
there's something "vague" or unclear about Mueller's statement, or that it just seeks to
quibble with a few semantic trivialities, read this @WashPost story about this https://t.co/0io99LyATS
pic.twitter.com/ca1TwPR3Og
You can spend hours parsing the Carr statement, but given how unusual it is for any DOJ
office to issue this sort of on the record denial, let alone this office, suspect it means
the story's core contention that they have evidence Trump told Cohen to lie is fundamentally
wrong.
New York Times throws a bit of cold water on BuzzFeed's explosive -- and now seriously
challenged -- report that Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress: https://t.co/9N7MiHs7et
pic.twitter.com/7FJFT9D8fW
I can't speak to Buzzfeed's sourcing, but, for what it's worth, I declined to run with
parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly
disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.
1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to the WikiLeaks Email Archive
(CNN/MSNBC)
The morning of December 9, 2017, launched
one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so
grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a
major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public.
Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to
have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have
been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked
emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC
videos
here ).
There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally
and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks
archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before.
Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and
MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian
message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole
world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all
got the date of the email wrong.
To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong
in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete
silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple,
independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating
– and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources
who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.
Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the
internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just
what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing
is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he
awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously
is:
Knowingly soliciting or receiving anything of value from a foreign national for campaign
purposes violates the Federal Election Campaign Act. If it's worth over $2,000 then penalties
include fines & IMPRISONMENT. @DonaldJTrumpJr may be in bigly
trouble. #FridayFeeling
https://t.co/dRz6Ph17Er
CNN is leading the way in bashing BuzzFeed but it's worth remembering CNN had a
humiliation at least as big & bad: when they yelled that Trump Jr. had advanced access to
the WL archive (!): all based on a wrong date. They removed all the segments from YouTube,
but this remains: pic.twitter.com/0jiA50aIku
ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for
reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate;
in fact, Trump did that after he won.
The New York Times claimed Manafort provided
polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he
provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked
Ukrainian artillery apps;
they then retracted it .
Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial
records; the NYT said
that never happened .
Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically
claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret
document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come
from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it
was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact,
Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow
was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the
public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall
for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy
theory rested, was fictitious.
The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence
agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally
retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies --
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier;
they thereafter acknowledged that was false and
noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was
initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until
after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered
"sex for favors" were
totally false (and scurrilous).
After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from
Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor
Laurence Tribe
strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei
Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian
was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin
ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
This neocons is definitely past her shelf live. But MIC still controls the US foreign policy,
and this is that's why she is able to publish yet another second rate book.
One of the disasters that she endorsed was the Iraq war. Although not as enthusiastic about
launching an illegal, aggressive war as Sen. Hillary Clinton, Albright said at the time: "I
personally felt the war was justified on the basis of Saddam's decade-long refusal to comply
with UN Security Council resolutions on WMD." When pressed on America's alleged
indispensability, she allowed: "Vietnam clearly was a terrible disaster. The war in Iraq was a
terrible disaster. I do think that we have misunderstood the Middle East." Yet such admissions
don't appear to have tempered her enthusiasm for Washington's meddling around the globe.
She does run away from her flip answer to journalist Lesley Stahl's question about the death
of a half million Iraqi children due to sanctions: "we think the price is worth it." Albright
even claims that the Clinton administration came to recognize the human cost of sanctions and
moved to better targeted "smart" penalties. Yet there is nothing smart about America's current
economic war on Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea.
Moreover, she did not retreat from the assumption that U.S. policymakers are entitled to
decide on the life and death of foreigners. She might doubt in retrospect that the price was
worth it. But she still believes that decision was for her and other Clinton administration
officials to make.
This mindset has made the U.S. government anathema to many around the globe. Why do "they"
hate us? Because of officials like Albright. These days even the Europeans loath Washington. No
doubt, she would be horrified to be lumped with President Donald Trump and some of his aides,
such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but they all are swimming in hubris. Albright is simply
more polite when dealing with representatives of wealthy industrialized countries. In contrast,
Trump and Pompeo are ever ready to insult them as well.
Nor does she appear to retreat from the hubris she constantly expressed in other forms. For
instance, while declaring the U.S. to be "the indispensable nation," she also claimed: "We
stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here
to all of us." That assertion was bad enough when she made it in 1998. After Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya, Yemen, Syria, and more it is positively ludicrous. Overweening arrogance among foreign
policy elites has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, while killing
hundreds of thousands of foreigners and ravaging foreign nations.
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However, it is not just those overseas for whom Albright has contempt. In 1992 she
famously queried Colin Powell: "What's the use of having this superb military you're always
talking about if we can't use it?" Never mind the lives of those who volunteered to defend
America. For her, they were just gambit pawns to be sacrificed in whatever global chess game
she was playing at the time. Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed: "I
thought I would have an aneurysm." Having served in Vietnam, he knew what it was like to lose
soldiers in combat. Anyone who has family in the military, as I do, cannot help but react
similarly.
A decade later she was asked about her comment. She responded: "what I thought was that we
had -- we were in a kind of a mode of thinking that we were never going to be able to use our
military effectively again." A strange claim, since shortly before George H. W. Bush had sent
American military personnel into a limited war against Iraq, while avoiding an interminable
guerrilla war and attempt at nation-building. She well represented the sofa samurai who
dominate Washington policy-making.
Even worse, however, in 1997 she said to Gen. Hugh Shelton, also JCS chairman: "I know I
shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out
Saddam is a precipitous event -- something that would make us look good in the eyes of the
world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough -- and slow enough -- so as to guarantee
that Saddam could shoot it down?" He appeared to react rather like Powell, indicating that it
could be done as soon as she was ready to fly.
Albright is intelligent and has a fascinating family background. But she should be kept
far away from American foreign policy.
Doug Bandow is a
Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he
is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.
Yhe president announced on Friday that he was firing Steve Linick, the State Department's
Inspector General.
One possible reason that Linick was removed may have been that he was conducting an
investigation into the
bogus emergency declaration that the administration used to expedite arms sales to Saudi
Arabia and the UAE last year:
House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation
into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an
emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year,
aides on the Foreign Affairs Committee tell me.
"I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick's firing," Rep. Eliot L.
Engel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement sent to me.
"His office was investigating -- at my request -- Trump's phony declaration of an emergency
so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia."
If Linick was investigating the bogus emergency declaration, he would have come across
reporting that showed how a
former Raytheon lobbyist serving at the department was instrumental in pushing through the
plan to expedite arms sales that benefited his old employer. He would have discovered that
there was no genuine emergency that justified going around Congress. Once his investigation was
concluded, it would have found that the emergency declaration was made in bad faith and that
the law was abused so that the administration could proceed with arms sales that Congress
opposed.
Another reason for the firing was to
protect Mike Pompeo from an investigation into the Secretary's abuses of government
resources for personal purposes:
The State Department inspector general fired by President Trump was looking into
allegations that a staffer for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was performing domestic errands
and chores such as handling dry cleaning, walking the family dog and making restaurant
reservations, said a congressional official familiar with the matter.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee released a statement immediately on Friday objecting to Linick's firing and
suggesting that it might be an illegal act of retaliation. There will now be a Congressional
investigation into the circumstances surrounding Linick's firing. If Trump hoped to reduce the
scrutiny on Pompeo by getting rid of Linick, he will be disappointed. It remains to be seen how
much of a price Pompeo will pay for this, but the price is likely higher now than it would have
been if he hadn't pushed for removing the inspector general.
Pompeo reportedly recommended
Linick's removal. This is not the first time that Pompeo has been accused of misusing
government resources. There was a report
last summer that a whistleblower alleged that Pompeo and his wife were using Diplomatic
Security agents as their personal errand boys:
Democrats on a key House congressional committee are investigating allegations from a
whistleblower within the State Department about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his
family's use of taxpayer-funded Diplomatic Security -- prompting agents to lament they are at
times viewed as "UberEats with guns".
Congressional investigators, who asked for the committee not to be named as they carry out
their inquiries, tell CNN that a State Department whistleblower has raised multiple issues
over a period of months, about special agents being asked to carry out some questionable
tasks for the Pompeo family.
Pompeo has also repeatedly used government resources for domestic travel that seems to have
more to do with advancing the Secretary's political ambitions in Kansas. There has been
widespread speculation that he has used official trips in an attempt to lay the groundwork for
a possible
Senate campaign . If so, it would be a flagrant violation of the Hatch Act. That prompted a
call for a special counsel investigation into Pompeo's travel. If Pompeo and his wife have
been using a political appointee as a gofer, that would be more of the same abusive
behavior.
Linick has previously clashed with other Trump administration officials at State. Last year,
he released a damning
report on Brian Hook over his treatment of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iranian-American
official who was apparently
targeted for political retaliation because of her policy views and ethnic background. The
fired inspector general was well-respected at the department, and his firing at Pompeo's urging
will likely cause further demoralization at a department that has already been run into the
ground under the Secretary's dismal leadership.
The Secretary of State seems to think that government funds and personnel are at his
disposal for his personal errands and political activities. Linick was doing exactly what an
inspector general is supposed to be doing by investigating the allegations against him, and
then he was conveniently fired on Pompeo's recommendation. You could hardly ask for a more
straightforward case of a corrupt official using his influence to remove the person responsible
for scrutinizing his conduct. If Linick was also fired because he was in the process of
exposing the administration's dishonest push for more arms sales to the Saudi coalition, that
makes his removal all the more outrageous and sinister.
"... "Did [ FBI Director James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney general. ..."
"... "No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not have come to the attorney general for that." ..."
"... Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the Russia probe, seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he asked. ..."
"... "I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him." ..."
"... "Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice ]." ..."
"... Ms. Yates told the FBI that the interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified. ..."
"... During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House. ..."
"... Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot: The Justice Department inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a dozen instances of FBI personnel submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the Steele dossier. ..."
Newly released documents show FBI agents
operated on autopilot in 2016 and 2017 while targeting President Trump and his campaign with
little or no Justice Department guidance
for such a momentous investigation.
Loretta E. Lynch, President Obama's attorney general, said she never knew the FBI
was placing wiretaps on a Trump campaign volunteer or using the dossier claims of former
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put the
entire Trump world under suspicion. Mr. Steele was handled by Fusion
GPS and paid with funds from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
"I don't have a recollection of briefings on Fusion GPS or Mr. Steele ," Ms. Lynch told the
House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence in October 2017. "I don't have any information on that,
and I don't have a recollection being briefed on that."
Under pressure from acting Director of National Intelligence
Richard A. Grenell, the committee last week released transcripts of her testimony and that of
more than 50 other witnesses in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled the Trump-
Russia
investigation.
Ms. Lynch also testified that she had no knowledge the FBI had taken the
profound step of opening an investigation, led by agent Peter Strzok, into the Trump campaign
on July 31, 2016.
"Did [ FBI Director
James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence
investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney
general.
"No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not
have come to the attorney general for that."
Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the
Russia probe,
seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he
asked.
"I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a
recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him."
Attorney General William P. Barr has changed the rules. He announced that the attorney
general now must approve any FBI decision to
investigate a presidential campaign.
Ms. Lynch's testimony adds to the picture of an insular, and sometimes misbehaving,
FBI as its agents
searched for evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the
2016 election to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton .
In documents filed by the Justice Department last
week, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates expressed dismay that Mr. Comey would
dispatch two agents, including Mr. Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, to interview incoming National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the White House.
Ms. Yates, interviewed by FBI agents
assigned to the Robert Mueller special counsel probe, said Mr. Comey notified her only after
the fact.
"Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview
report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been
coordinated with [the Department of Justice
]."
Ms. Yates told the FBI that the
interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified.
During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such
notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't
have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House.
Mr. Barr filed court papers asking U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to dismiss the
Flynn case and his guilty plea to lying to Mr. Strzok about phone calls with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak. Mr. Strzok and other FBI personnel
planned the Flynn interview as a near ambush with a goal of prompting him to lie and getting
fired, according to new court filings.
Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot:
The Justice Department
inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a
dozen instances of FBI personnel
submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For
example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny
by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the
Steele
dossier.
The far-fetched dossier was the one essential piece of evidence required to obtain four
surveillance warrants on campaign volunteer Carter Page, according to Justice Department
Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The Mueller and Horowitz reports have discredited the
dossier's dozen conspiracy claims against the president and his allies.
Mr. Schiff, now chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence , had held on
to the declassified transcripts for more than a year. Under pressure from Republicans and Mr.
Grenell, he released the 6,000 pages on the hectic day Mr. Barr moved to end the Flynn
prosecution.
The closed-door testimony included witnesses such as Mr. Obama's national security adviser,
a United Nations ambassador, the nation's top spy and the FBI deputy
director. There were also Clinton campaign chieftains and
lawyers.
The transcripts' most often-produced headline: Obama investigators never saw evidence of
Trump conspiracy between the time the probe was opened until they left office in mid-January
2017.
"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was
plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," former Director of
National Intelligence James
R. Clapper told the committee .
Mr. Clapper is a paid CNN analyst who has implied repeatedly and without evidence that Mr.
Trump is a Russian spy and a traitor. The Mueller report contained no evidence that Mr. Trump
is a Russian agent or election conspirator.
Mr. Schiff told the country repeatedly that he had seen evidence of Trump collusion that
went beyond circumstantial. Mr. Mueller did not.
Mr. Schiff was a big public supporter of Mr. Steele 's dossier, which
relied on a Moscow main source and was fed by deliberate Kremlin disinformation against Mr.
Trump, according to the Horowitz report.
Trump Tower
One of Mr. Schiff's pieces of evidence of a conspiracy "in plain sight" is the meeting
Donald Trump
Jr. took with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016.
The connections are complicated but, simply put, a Russian friend of the Trumps' said she
might have dirt on Mrs. Clinton . At the time, Ms.
Veselnitskaya was in New York representing a rich Russian accused by the Justice Department of
money laundering. To investigate, she hired Fusion GPS -- the same firm that retained Mr.
Steele
to damage the Trump campaign.
The meeting was brief and seemed to be a ruse to enable Ms. Veselnitskaya to pitch an end to
Obama-era economic sanctions that hurt her client. Attending were campaign adviser Paul
Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Anatoli Samochornov. Mr. Samochornov is a dual
citizen of Russia
and the U.S. who serves as an interpreter to several clients, including Ms. Veselnitskaya and
the State Department.
Mr. Samochornov was the Russian lawyer's interpreter that day. His recitation of events
basically backs the versions given by the Trump associates, according to a transcript of his
November 2017 committee testimony.
The meeting lasted about 20 minutes. Ms. Veselnitskaya briefly talked about possible illegal
campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton . Manafort, busy on his
cellphone, remarked that the contributions would not be illegal. Mr. Kushner left after a few
minutes.
Then, Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist, made the case for ditching sanctions. He linked that to
a move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end a ban on Americans adopting Russian
children.
Mr. Trump Jr. said that issue would be addressed if his father was elected. In the end, the
Trump administration put more sanctions on Moscow's political and business operators.
"I've never heard anything about the elections being mentioned at that meeting at all or in
any subsequent discussions with Ms. Veselnitskaya," Mr. Samochornov testified.
No mask
One of the first things Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, did to earn the animus of
Democrats and the liberal media was to visit the Trump White House to learn about "unmaskings"
by Obama appointees.
The National Security Agency, by practice, obscures the names of any Americans caught up in
the intercept of foreign communications. Flynn was unmasked in the top-secret transcript of his
Kislyak call so officials reading it would know who was on the line.
In reading intelligence reports, if government officials want the identity of an "American
person," they make a request to the intelligence community. The fear is that repeated requests
could indicate political purposes.
That suspicion is how Samantha Power ended up at the House intelligence committee witness
table. The former U.N. ambassador seemed to have broken records by requesting hundreds of
unmaskings, though the transcript did not contain the identities of the people she exposed.
She explained to the committee why
she needed to know.
"I am reading that intelligence with an eye to doing my job, right?" Ms. Power said.
"Whatever my job is, whatever I am focused on on a given day, I'm taking in the intelligence
to inform my judgment, to be able to advise the president on ISIL or on whatever, or to inform
how I'm going to try to optimize my ability to advance U.S. interests in New York."
She continued: "I can't understand the intelligence . Can you go
and ascertain who this is so I can figure out what it is I'm reading. You've made the
judgement, intelligence professionals, that I need to read this piece of intelligence, I'm
reading it, and it's just got this gap in it, and I didn't understand that. But I never
discussed any name that I received when I did make a request and something came back or when it
was annotated and came to me. I never discussed one of those names with any other
individual."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, listened and then mentioned other officeholders,
such as the White House national security adviser and the secretary of state.
"There are lots of people who need to understand intelligence products, but the number of
requests they made, ambassador, don't approach yours," Mr. Gowdy said.
Ms. Power implied that members of her staff were requesting American identities and invoking
her name without her knowledge.
The dossier
By mid- to late 2017, the full story on the Democrats' dossier -- that it was riddled with
false claims of criminality that served, as Mr. Barr said, to sabotage the Trump White House --
was not known.
Mr. Steele claimed that there was
a far-reaching Trump- Russia conspiracy, that Mr. Trump was a
Russian spy, that Mr. Trump financed Kremlin computer hacking, that his attorney went to Prague
to pay hush money to Putin operatives, and that Manafort and Carter Page worked as a conspiracy
team.
Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a Clinton operative, spread the inaccuracies all
over Washington: to the FBI , the
Justice
Department , Congress and the news media.
None of it proved true.
But to Clinton loyalists in 2017, the
dossier was golden.
"I was mostly focused in that meeting on, you know, the guy standing behind this material is
Christopher Steele ," campaign
foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said about a Fusion meeting. "He is the one who's judging
its credibility and veracity. You know him. What do you think, based on your conversations with
him? That's what I was really there to try and figure out. And Glenn was incredibly positive
about Steele and felt he was really
on to something and also felt that there was more out there to go find."
Clinton campaign attorney Marc
Elias vouched for the dossier, and its information spread to reporters. He met briefly with Mr.
Steele
during the election campaign.
"I thought that the information that he or they wished to convey was accurate and
important," Mr. Elias testified.
"So the information that Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele wished to
portray to the media in the fall of 2016 at that time, you thought, was accurate and
important?" he was asked.
"As I understand it," he replied.
Mr. Elias rejected allegations that the Clinton campaign conspired with
Russia by having
its operatives spread the Moscow-sourced dirt.
"I don't have enough knowledge about when you say that Russians were involved in the
dossier," he said to a questioner. "I mean that genuinely. I'm not privy to what information
you all have.
"It sounds like the suggestion is that Russia somehow gave information to the
Clinton
campaign vis-a-vis one person to one person, to another person, to another person, to me, to
the campaign. That strikes me as fanciful and unlikely, but perhaps as I said, I don't have a
security clearance. You all have facts and information that is not available to me. But I
certainly never had any hint or whiff."
Essentially the second part of Flynn call was on behave of Israel
Notable quotes:
"... In those conversations, Flynn asked that the Russians not retaliate for the Obama administration sanctions on Moscow imposed for the now debunked Russiagate allegations. Russia eventually decided not to retaliate. Flynn also asked on behalf of Israel that the Russians veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli West Bank settlements, which Obama was planning to abstain on. Russia refused this request. ..."
"... Contrary to popular belief, when you can't trust your own government, that's a very bad thing. ..."
"... This is a hugely important article explaining the process, the policies, and their historical context by one who was a top legal expert at the Bureau. This is what the American public should be reading to know what should happen, as well as to learn how the process and policies have been violated, what have been the consequences. Thank you Coleen Rowley, and thank you Consortium News. ..."
Atlantic Council senior fellow, Congressional candidate, and Russia conspiracy theorist
Evelyn Farkas is desperately trying to salvage her reputation after recently released
transcripts from her closed-door 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed
she totally lied on national TV .
In March of 2017, Farkas confidently told MSNBC 's Mika Brzezinski: " The Trump folks, if
they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians , that they
would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to
that intelligence ."
Except, during testimony to the House, Farkas admitted she lied . When pressed by former
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on why she said 'we' - referring to the US government, Farkas said she
"didn't know anything."
In short, she was either illegally discussing US intelligence matters with her "former
colleagues," or she made the whole thing up.
Now, Farkas is in damage control mode - writing in the
Washington Post that her testimony demonstrated "that I had not leaked intelligence and
that my early intuition about Trump-Kremlin cooperation was valid.' She also claims that her
comments to MSNBC were based on "media reports and statements by Obama administration officials
and the intelligence community," which had "began unearthing connections between Trump's
campaign and Russia."
Farkas is now blaming a 'disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right,' for
making her look bad (apparently Trey Gowdy is part of the "reactionary right" for asking her
who she meant by "we").
Attacks against me came first on Twitter and other social media platforms, from far-right
sources. Forensics data I was shown suggested at least one entity had Russian ties . The
attacks increased in quantity and ferocity until Fox News and Trump-allied Republicans --
higher-profile, and more mainstream, sources -- also criticized me .
...
Trump surrogates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski ,
Donald Trump Jr. and Fox
News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have essentially accused me
of treason for being one of the "fraudulent originators" of the "Russia hoax." -Evelyn
Farkas
She then parrots the Democratic talking point that the attacks she's received are part of
Trump's larger "Obamagate" allegations - " a narrative that distracts attention from his
administration's disastrous pandemic response and attempts to defect blame for Russian
interference onto the Obama administration" (Obama told Putin to ' cut it out ' after all).
Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar
and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative outlets which have
called her out for Russia malarkey.
There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that
right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day,
Russian "
disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter
accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media
behavior.
She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced
now."
No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the
largest, most divisive hoax in US history - which was based on faulty intelligence that
includes crowdstrike admitting they had
no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier
based on his 'Russian sources.'
MrBoompi, 18 minutes ago
Lying is a common occurrence on MSNBC. Farkas was just showing her party she is qualified
for a more senior position.
chubbar, 23 minutes ago
My opinion, based on zero facts, is that the lie she told was to Gowdy. She had to say she
lied about having intelligence data or she'd be looking at a felony along with whomever she
was talking to in the US gov't. You just know these cocksuckers in the resistance don't give
a **** about laws or fairness, it's all about getting Trump. So they set up an informal
network to get classified intelligence from the Obama holdovers out into the wild where these
assholes could use it against Trump and the gov't operations. Treason. She needs to be
executed for her efforts!
LetThemEatRand, 59 minutes ago
This whole thing reminds me of a fan watching their team play a championship game. If the
ref makes a bad call and their team wins, they don't care. And if the ref makes a good call
and their team loses, they blame the ref. No one cares about the truth or the facts. That in
a nutshell is politics in the US. If you believe that anyone will "switch sides" or admit the
ref made a bad call or a good call, you're smoking the funny stuff.
mtumba, 50 minutes ago
It's a natural response to a corrupt system.
When the system is wholly corrupt so that truth doesn't matter, what else is there to care
about other than your side winning?
The Trump administration's efforts to blame China for COVID-19's rising death toll in the
U.S. have not been backed up by intelligence assessments, but it has not stopped Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo from making the baseless assertion that the virus originated in a Chinese lab
or the Trump campaign from attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee, former vice president
Joe Biden, as too weak on China. But there may be more than political opportunism at play.
Weapons manufacturers stand to reap huge profits if they can stoke a new cold war between the
U.S. and China.
Those overlapping interests were on display last week when The Wall Street Journal published
an op-ed by
two former Trump administration officials claiming, "The Covid-19 pandemic has convinced many
that the U.S. must fundamentally change its policy toward China. Shifting course is necessary,
but it won't be achieved with a few policy tweaks."
"That's because," they added, "the pandemic's political and economic effects are bringing
about a more assertive Chinese grand strategy."
There are at least two big problems with this op-ed.
First, there's no actual evidence or explanation provided about COVID-19 "bringing about a
more assertive Chinese grand strategy" but the authors plow forward with their theory that
"Beijing was cruising to global domination" unchallenged.
Second, both of the op-ed's authors have undisclosed conflicts of interest that might
motivate their prescription for a new U.S. grand strategy centered on, among other things,
"maritime and aerospace power."
The authors, Elbridge Colby (who served as assistant secretary of defense for strategy and
force development from 2017-2018) and A. Wess Mitchell (who served as assistant secretary of
state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2017-2019), are both employed by institutions that
receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers.
The Wall Street Journal describes Colby and Mitchell as "principals of the Marathon
Initiative," an entity that has no website and about which there is little public information
other than that it was formed on May 7, 2020 according to the Washington, DC Department of
Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
The Marathon Initiative shares an address with the Center for European Policy Analysis
(CEPA) where Mitchell serves as vice chairman and received $227,500 in compensation in
2017 . Donors to CEPA include a
defense industry who's who: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopter, and BAE Systems.
Mitchell's co-author, Colby, also appears to have benefited financially from funding
originating from arms manufacturers.
Colby is a senior adviser at WestExec Advisors, which does not disclose its client list. But
one of the company's co-founders, Obama Defense Department appointee Michèle Flournoy,
told The
Intercept back in 2018 that "we help tech firms who are trying to figure out how to sell in
the public sector space, to navigate the DOD, the intel community, law enforcement ."
And from 2014 to 2017 and 2018 to 2019 Colby worked at the Center for a New American
Security (CNAS) which counts Northrop Grumman as one of its biggest donors (contributing more than
$500,000 between October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019) as well as contributions from Lockheed
Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopter, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Boeing and DynCorp.
None of this is to say that Colby and Mitchell don't genuinely believe that COVID-19's
spread and China's lack of transparency about the virus's initial outbreak justifies the
military-heavy strategies they propose.
But when the op-ed concludes, "The West must recognize that it will either pay now or pay
later to contain China. Paying now is likely to produce a more tolerable bill," it's worth
noting that weapons manufacturers and defense contractors, who have helped finance the authors'
careers in the Beltway, will be the ones sending that bill to taxpayers.
Hawk Elliot Abrams, reborn as a U.S. envoy, is at the spear point of recent aggressive moves
in Venezuela. US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliot Abrams addresses the Atlantic
Council on the future of Venezuela in Washington, DC, on April 25, 2019. (Photo credit NICHOLAS
KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
Called the "neocon zombie" by officials at the State Department, Abrams is known as an
operator who doesn't let anything stand in his way. He has a long history of pursuing
disastrous policies in government.
"Everything Abrams is doing now is the same thing he was doing during the Reagan
administration. He's very adept at manipulating the levers of power without a lot of
oversight," a former senior official at the State Department told The American
Conservative. The official added that Abrams is "singularly focused" on pursuing regime
change in Venezuela.
A little background on Abrams: when he served as Reagan's assistant secretary of state for
human rights, he concealed a
massacre of a thousand men, women, and children by U.S.-funded death squads in El Salvador.
He was also involved in the Iran Contra scandal, helping to secure covert funding for Contra
rebels in Nicaragua in violation of laws passed by Congress. In 1991, he pled guilty to
lying to Congress about the America's role in those two fiascos -- twice.
But then-president George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams. He went on to support "measures to
scuttle the Latin American peace process launched by the Costa Rican president, Óscar
Arias" and use "the agency's money to unseat the Sandinistas in Nicaragua's 1990 general
elections," according
to Brian D'Haeseleer.
Under President George W. Bush, Abrams promoted regime change in Iraq.
Abrams was initially blocked from joining the Trump administration on account of a Never
Trump op-ed he'd penned. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo succeeded in bringing him onboard
last year, despite his history of support for disastrous regime change policies.
It's no surprise that with Abrams at the helm, U.S. rhetoric and actions towards Venezuela
are constantly "escalating," Dr. Alejandro Velasco, associate professor of Modern Latin America
at New York University, said an interview with TAC.
In just the last month, Washington has placed bounties on the heads of President
Nicolás Maduro and a dozen current and former Venezuelan officials. The U.S. also
deployed the largest fleet ever to the Southern Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, Abrams announced the " Democratic
Transition Framework for Venezuela ," which calls on Maduro's government to embrace a
power-sharing deal. The plan doesn't explain how Venezuelan leaders with bounties on their
heads are supposed to come to the table and negotiate with Juan Guaido, whom the U.S.
recognizes as Venezuela's legitimate leader. Abrams has also said that the U.S. does not
support a coup.
A few days after recommending a power-sharing arrangement, and 18 years after the U.S.
backed a putsch against Hugo Chavez, Abrams
warned that if Maduro resisted the organization of a "transitional government," his
departure would be far more "dangerous and abrupt." To many, Abrams'
aggressive rhetoric against Maduro made it sound like the U.S. was "effectively threatening
him with another assassination attempt," like the one Washington had "tacitly
supported" in 2018.
Two weeks after Abrams' warning, Operation Gideon began. Jordan Goudreau, an American
citizen, former Green Beret, and three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and
Afghanistan, along with Javier Nieto, a retired Venezuelan military captain, posted a video
from an undisclosed location saying they had launched an attack that was meant to begin a
rebellion that would lead to Maduro's arrest and the installation of Juan Guaido.
In a public relations coup for Maduro, the plot was quickly foiled. Given that American
citizens were involved and have produced a contract allegedly signed by Guaido,
the incident has severely harmed the reputations of both the U.S. and the Venezuelan
opposition.
Both President Trump and Pompeo have denied that the U.S. had any "direct" involvement with
Goudreau's plot.
However, the Trump administration has given billions of dollars from USAID to Venezuela, and
that money is largely untraceable due to concerns about outing supporters of Guaido.
"With all the cash and arms sloshing around in Venezuela," it is not hard to imagine how
U.S. funding could inadvertently wind up supporting something like this, said Velasco.
There are other signs that the U.S. may have been more involved in the plot than they are
saying publicly.
For one, American mercenaries don't carry passports identifying themselves as American nor
do they return to the U.S. where they can be brought up on charges for their work, said Sean
McFate, professor of war and strategy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and
the National Defense University.
In order to sell weapons or training to another nation, it is necessary to receive
permission from the State Department. It's unclear whether Goudreau and his band did so. But
Goudreau's social media posts look like a pretty "clear cut" violation of the International
Convention Against the Recruitment, Financing and Training of Mercenaries and the U.S.
International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) said Peter Singer, a senior fellow at New
America.
We know that months before the fated coup, the CIA met with Goudreau in Jamaica and
allegedly warned him off the project. According to the AP, Goudreau is now under
investigation for arms trafficking . Members of Congress have asked the State Department
what they knew of Goudreau's plans. Given the illegal nature of the supposedly unauthorized
project, it's very strange that the ringleader is at present in Florida, talking to the press
and posting on social media.
Besides that warning, it seems no one in government tried to stop this calamitous
operation.
And it's not just regime change. Last year, Abrams
advocated granting special immigration status for the 70,000 Venezuelans residing illegally
in the U.S. as a way to "pressure Maduro" even though Trump ran on the promise to severely
limit the number of people granted Temporary Protected Status.
It was in pursuit of special status for Venezuelans that Abrams showed himself to be
"incredibly pompous, bull-headed, and willing to destroy anyone who opposes him, in a personal
way, including by trashing their reputations in the media," another senior State Department
official told TAC. Abrams is not above hiding policy options he doesn't like and
offering only those he favors to Pompeo to present to Trump, sources said.
Abrams ultimately prevailed and Venezuelans received refugee status from the Trump
administration, despite the fact that it betrayed Trump's campaign promises.
According to Velasco, there are some people in the administration who believe that
Venezuelans are the "new Cubans" -- that they will become a solid, loyal Republican vote in the
swing state of Florida if they're granted special status. They also believe that Venezuelan
expats want to see the U.S. remove Maduro. There are "many Cold Warriors" who believe all it
will take is a "little push" for Venezuelans to rise up and take out Maduro, said Velasco.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on whether Abrams is pursuing
a military confrontation in Venezuela.
"Cold Warrior" beliefs are dangerous. While "Operation Gideon" was especially clownish, had
it been more sophisticated, it could have easily sparked a world war. The Russians, Iranians,
and Chinese are all operating in Venezuela.
That specter is even more concerning now that Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov has
said that Russian special
services are on standby to help Venezuela's investigation of the mercenaries. about the
author Barbara Boland is TAC's foreign policy and national security reporter.
Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She is
the author of Patton Uncovered , a book about General George Patton in World War II, and
her work has appeared on Fox News, The Hill , UK Spectator , and elsewhere.
Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter
@BBatDC .
> He will go down as The most corrupt president in history! Spied on an opponents
campaign Authorised the intelligence agencies to spy Leaker Collided with Russia
Our Fakenews networks conspired with Obama, Obama's previous Cabinet, Hillary, the CIA,
FBI, NSA, DNC, and Democrats in Congress. They were all in on it together. #Sedition #Treason
ex-president Obummer biggest legacy to the democratic world is allowing China to claim all
of the South China Sea by turning a blind eye whilst China was dredging the sea beds and
creating artificial islands all over the South China sea!!
Obama was an America hater from day one, and committed many treasons public and private.
His "legacy" is and was a fabrication of the MSM, who tolerated no end of abuses, including
Obama suing a number of journalists.
But let's just look at one item, underplayed by the MSM: Obama did everything he could to
stop the 9/11 victims bill, including a presidential veto, which was then overridden by a
gigantic (97-1) senate vote.
McCain and Graham continued to fight the LAW, undoubtedly with Obama help, using Arab
funded lawyers to the tune of 1.2 million dollars per month.
"... According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. ..."
"... Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. ..."
"... IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing ..."
The president of the US was made head of the Executive Branch (EC) of the federal government by Article 2 of the present constitution
of the US. He is also Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the federal government. As head of the EC, he is head of all the
parts of the government excepting the Congress and the Federal courts which are co-equal branches of the federal government. The
Department of Justice is just another Executive Branch Department subordinate in all things to the president. The FBI is a federal
police force and counter-intelligence agency subordinate to the Department of Justice and DNI and therefore to the president in
all things. The FBI actually IMO has no legal right whatever to investigate the president. He is the constitutionally elected
commander of the FBI. Does one investigate one's commander? No. The procedures for legally and constitutionally removing a president
from office for malfeasance are clear. He must be impeached by the House of Representatives for "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
and then tried by the US Senate on the charges. Conviction results in removal from office.
According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after
Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians
the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. Part of the discussions among senior FBI people had to do with whether
or not the president had the legal authority to remove from office an FBI Director. Say what? Where have these dummies been all
their careers? Do they not teach anything about this at the FBI Academy? The US Army lectures its officers at every level of schooling
on the subject of the constitutional and legal basis and limits of their authority.
Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA
Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. Their application
for warrants were largely based on unsubstantiated "opposition research" funded by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.
The judge who approved the warrants was not informed of the nature of the evidence. These warrants provided an authority for surveillance
of the Trump campaign.
IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with
the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling
of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing. pl
MICHAEL HUDSON: Just think of when, in the debates with Bernie Sanders during the spring,
Biden and Klobuchar kept saying, 'What we're paying for Medicare-for-All will be $1 trillion
over 10 years.' Well, here the Fed can create $1.5 trillion in one week just to buy stocks.
Why is it okay for the Fed to create $1.5 trillion to buy stocks to prevent rich people from
losing on their stocks, when it's not okay to print only $1 trillion to pay for free Medicare
for the entire population? This is crazy!
Trump say that Brennan was one of the architect. Obama knew everything and probably directed
the color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it. ..."
Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will
eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it.
Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, is refusing to let William Barr's Justice Department drop the charge. He's even thinking
of adding more, appointing a retired judge to ask "whether the Court
should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for
perjury."
Pundits are cheering. A trio of former law enforcement and judicial officials saluted
Sullivan in the Washington Post, chirping, "
The Flynn case isn't over until a judge says it's over ." Yuppie icon Jeffrey Toobin of CNN
and the New Yorker , one of the #Resistance crowd's favored legal authorities, described
Sullivan's appointment of Judge John Gleeson as " brilliant ." MSNBC legal
analyst Glenn Kirschner said Americans owe Sullivan a " debt of gratitude ."
One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the
obvious, i.e. that Sullivan's decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in
Belarus. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few willing to
say Sullivan's move could " could create a threat of a
judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants ."
Sullivan's reaction was amplified by a group letter calling for Barr's resignation
signed by 2000 former Justice Department officials (the melodramatic group email somberly
reported as momentous news is one of many tired media tropes in the Trump era) and the
preposterous "leak" of news that the dropped case made Barack Obama sad. The former president
"privately" told "members of his administration" (who instantly told Yahoo!
News ) that there was no precedent for the dropping of perjury charges, and that the "rule
of law" itself was at stake.
Whatever one's opinion of Flynn, his relations with Turkey, his "
Lock her up!" chants , his haircut, or anything, this case was never about much. There's no
longer pretense that prosecution would lead to the unspooling of a massive Trump-Russia
conspiracy, as pundits once breathlessly expected. In fact, news that Flynn was cooperating
with special counsel Robert Mueller inspired many of the " Is this the beginning
of the end for Trump ?" stories that will someday fill whole chapters of Journalism Fucks
Up 101 textbooks.
The acts at issue are calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December
29th, 2016 in which he told the Russians not to overreact to sanctions. That's it. The
investigation was about to be dropped, but someone got the idea of using electronic
surveillance of the calls to leverage a case into existence.
"The record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known in the
press," is how Deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe put it, euphemistically. "We wanted to sit down
with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were."
A Laurel-and-Hardy team of agents conducted the interview, then took three
weeks to write and re-write multiple versions of the interview notes used as evidence
(because why record it?). They were supervised by a counterintelligence chief who then
memorialized on paper his uncertainty over whether the FBI was trying to " get
him to lie" or "get him fired ," worrying that they'd be accused of "playing games." After
another leak to the Washington Post in early February, 2017, Flynn actually was fired, and
later pleaded guilty to lying about sanctions in the Kislyak call, the transcript of which was
of course never released to either the defense or the public.
Warrantless surveillance, multiple illegal leaks of classified information, a false
statements charge constructed on the razor's edge of Miranda, and the use of never-produced,
secret counterintelligence evidence in a domestic criminal proceeding – this is the "rule
of law" we're being asked to cheer.
Russiagate cases were often two-level offenses: factually bogus or exaggerated, but also
indicative of authoritarian practices. Democrats and Democrat-friendly pundits in the last four
years have been consistently unable to register objections on either front.
Flynn's case fit the pattern. We were told his plea was just the " tip
of the iceberg " that would "take the trail of Russian collusion" to the "center of the
plot," i.e. Trump. It turned out he had no deeper story to tell. In fact, none of the people
prosecutors tossed in jail to get at the Russian "plot" – some little more than
bystanders – had anything to share.
Remember George Papadopoulos, whose alleged conversation about "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
with an Australian diplomat created the pretext for the FBI's entire Trump-Russia
investigation? We just found out in newly-released testimony by McCabe that the FBI felt as
early as the summer of 2016 that the evidence " didn't
particularly indicate" that Papadopoulos was "interacting with the Russians ."
If you're in the media and keeping score, that's about six months before our industry lost
its mind and scrambled to make Watergate
comparisons over Jim Comey's March, 2017 "
bombshell " revelation of the existence of an FBI Trump-Russia investigation. Nobody
bothered to wonder if they actually had any evidence. Similarly Chelsea Manning insisted she'd
already answered all pertinent questions about Julian Assange, but prosecutors didn't find that
answer satisfactory, and threw her in jail for year anyway, only releasing her when she
tried to kill herself . She owed $256,000 in fines upon release, not that her many
supporters from the Bush days seemed to care much.
The Flynn case was built on surveillance gathered under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a
program that seems to have been abused on a massive scale by both Democratic and Republican
administrations.
After Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations about mass data collection, a series of internal
investigations
began showing officials were breaking rules against spying on specific Americans via this NSA
program. Searches were conducted too often and without proper justification, and the results
were shared with too many people, including private contractors. By October, 2016, the FISA
court was declaring that systematic overuse of so-called "702" searches were a "
very serious fourth Amendment issue ."
In later court documents it came out that the FBI conducted
3.1 million such searches in 2017 alone. As the Brennan Center put it, "almost certainly
the total number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI each year is well into the
millions."
Anyone who bothers to look back will find hints at how this program might have been misused.
In late 2015, Obama officials bragged to the
Wall Street Journal they'd made use of FISA surveillance involving "Jewish-American groups"
as well as "U.S. lawmakers" in congress, all because they wanted to more effectively "counter"
Israeli opposition to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. This is a long way from using
surveillance to defuse terror plots or break up human trafficking rings.
I can understand not caring about the plight of Michael Flynn, but cases like this have
turned erstwhile liberals – people who just a decade ago were marching in the streets
over the civil liberties implications of Cheney's War on Terror apparatus – into
defenders of the spy state . Politicians and pundits across the last four years have rolled
their eyes at
attorney-client privilege , the presumption of innocence, the right to face one's accuser,
the right to counsel and a host of other issues, regularly denouncing civil rights worries as
red-herring excuses for Trumpism.
I've written a lot about the Democrats' record on civil liberties issues in the past.
Working on I Can't Breathe, a book about the Eric Garner case, I was stunned to learn the
central role
Mario Cuomo played in the mass incarceration problem, while Democrats also often
embraced hyper-intrusive "stop and frisk" or "broken windows" enforcement strategies,
usually by touting terms like "community policing" that sounded nice to white voters. Democrats
strongly supported
the PATRIOT Act in 2001, and Barack Obama continued or expanded Bush-Cheney programs like
drone assassination , rendition , and warrantless
surveillance , while also
using the Espionage Act to bully reporters and whistleblowers.
Republicans throughout this time were usually as bad or worse on these issues, but Democrats
have lately positioned themselves as more aggressive promoters of strong-arm policies, from
control of Internet speech to the embrace of domestic spying. In the last four years the
blue-friendly press has done a complete 180 on these issues, going from cheering Edward Snowden
to lionizing the CIA, NSA, and FBI and making on-air partners out of drone-and-surveillance
all-stars like John Brennan, James Clapper, and Michael Hayden. There are now too many
ex-spooks on CNN and MSNBC to count, while there isn't a single regular contributor on any
of the networks one could describe as antiwar.
Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional
principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul Manafort
or Trump himself. In the process, they've raised a generation of followers whose contempt for
civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent. Blue-staters have gone from dismissing
constitutional concerns as Trumpian ruse to sneering at them, in the manner of French
aristocrats, as evidence of proletarian mental defect.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the
almost mandatory take of pundits is that any protest of lockdown measures is troglodyte
death wish . The aftereffects of years of Russiagate/Trump coverage are seen everywhere:
press outlets reflexively associate complaints of government overreach with Trump, treason, and
racism, and conversely radiate a creepily gleeful tone when describing aggressive emergency
measures and the problems some "
dumb " Americans have had accepting them.
On the campaign trail in 2016, I watched Democrats hand Trump the economic populism argument
by dismissing all complaints about the failures of neoliberal economics. This mistake was later
compounded by years of propaganda arguing that "economic insecurity" was just a
Trojan Horse term for racism . These takes, along with the absurd kneecapping of the Bernie
Sanders movement, have allowed Trump to position himself as a working-class hero, the sole
voice of a squeezed underclass.
The same mistake is now being made with civil liberties. Millions have lost their jobs and
businesses by government fiat, there's a clamor for
censorship and contact tracing
programs that could have serious long-term consequences, yet voters only hear Trump making
occasional remarks about freedom; Democrats treat it like it's a word that should be banned by
Facebook (a recent Washington Post headline
put the term in quotation marks , as if one should be gloved to touch it). Has the Trump
era really damaged our thinking to this degree?
My family is in quarantine, I worry about a premature return to work, and sure, I laughed at
that Shaun of the Dead photo
of Ohio protesters protesting state lockdown laws. But I also recognize the crisis is also
raising serious civil liberties issues, from prisoners
trapped in deadly conditions to profound questions about speech and assembly, the limits to
surveillance and snitching, etc. If this disease is going to be in our lives for the
foreseeable future, that makes it more urgent that we talk about what these rules will be, not
less -- yet the party I grew up supporting seems to have lost the ability to do so, and I don't
understand why.
Matt Taibi says that "he doesn't understand why" the Democrats have suddenly given up on
Civil Liberties.
Of course her spent a lot of the '90s in Russia but he must have heard about the Clinton
administration and its many and varied assaults on the poor, mass incarceration and Welfare
'reform.' He can't have missed what the War Party was doing in Yugoslavia either. I guess it
just takes some people a long time to wake up.
The truth is that the Democrats-the old party of Jim Crow- have been laughing at civil
liberties and the rule of law for generations. There is nothing new about this. It goes back
to Truman and the Cold War- a deliberate choice that the party made then when Medicare for
All was the alternative on the table. A choice which involved Taft Hartley, which had so much
Democratic Party support that Congress over rode the veto, one of the most obvious assaults
on civil liberties and democratic rights in US History. And that is saying something.
As to this Taibi judgement
"..Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional
principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul
Manafort or Trump himself. In the process, they've raised a generation of followers whose
contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent..."
Compare it with the MeToo movement which positively delights in trashing every one of the
cherished civil liberties that protect people from improper conviction and false
imprisonment. That is a Democratic Party initiative (or at least it until recently and the
Tara Read accusations) and wholly consonant with the treatment meted out to Flynn.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am writing this review before having finished the
book. I've had the book for almost a year, but have only recently dared look through it. It
is massive. I bought the book because I have never believed in Obama, I always thought he was
the personification of the empty suit: lots of talk, little accomplishment. I finally turned
to this book when I realized I had been confused about when Obama had been a community
organizer. I thought it had been after Harvard Law, but he actually worked for a couple of
years before attending law school. Having checked out some of the later events, I ran across
his former girlfriend's asssertion that in 1986 he decided he was born to be President. This
sent me to the beginning of the book to try to find out how that happened. (Or even if it
did.) I'm not there yet, but I do have a handle on how the book was written and why it's so
massive.
Obama's supposed autobiographies have been pretty well debunked as "historical fiction."
They were not concerned with facts. Garrow's book is an antidote to the pretty fictional
accounts Obama has used to his advantage, and Garrow has made every effort to nail down as
many facts as possible. He not only has the facts, he interviews the participants, seeks out
multiple sources, and even checks the newspapers of the day when necessary. This makes for a
lot of verification of even the most insignificant details. But then again, we now have the
details of Obama's life, maybe more than we may have wanted. Garrow does not provide
analysis. He is concerned with the facts and only the facts as he's been able to verify them.
But Barack's has been an unusual life, and so maybe the details count.
Barack's Kenyan father came from a tribe that recognizes multiple wives. He left a first
wife in Kenya and married at least once in the US to Barack's mother. The marriage was at his
grandfather's insistence. They never lived together. In fact, Barack's mother never lived
with either of her husbands until she eventually followed the 2nd to Indonesia. But as long
as she was in Hawaii, she lived with her parents. The only exception was that about a month
after Barack's birth, she took her baby back to Washington State, where she had grown up, and
she lived there for the following year, while Barack's father was in Hawaii. As soon as he
left to attend Harvard, she returned to Hawaii with the baby and moved back in with her
parents. It is so unusual for a first time mother to move that far away from her own mother.
Most first time mothers are uncertain and anxious about taking care of a new baby.
I am struck that, once in Indonesia, Barack never picked up the language. By the 4th
grade, he was having trouble communicating with friends his own age. I thought that odd. When
I was 6, my family moved to northern Italy in June. In September, I was enrolled in the 1st
grade of an Italian school. By December, I could speak & write Italian. (Writing Italian
is pretty easy - it is spelled as it sounds.) My parents were never fluent and I was the
family interpreter during our three year stay there. But, given my own experience, I found it
very odd that Barack never learned Indonesian. He was there at the time to do so. God knows,
I've failed to learn any other language as an adult! You gotta do it as a kid for it to be
painless.
Barack's mother was unhappy with her 2nd husband when she perceived that he was becoming a
successful businessman. Most wives appreciate success. It generally comes with more money.
But that is not how Barack's mother viewed it.
Garrow confirms that Barack's grandfather's good friend in Hawaii was indeed an active
Communist with an extensive FBI dossier. The FBI was watching him, but never accused him of
espionage. Oahu is known for its naval bases, so I wondered. Garrow makes no mention of the
grandfather being a Communist, so we can assume that there is no verification of that. Just
that the two men were pretty close friends.
Being one of the few people who recognized Bill Ayres name when he appeared as a neighbor
& friend of the Obamas in Chicago, I looked up some of the Ayres association. Apparently,
Obama met Valerie Jarrett through the Ayres, who were close friends of her parents, and her
parents were on the left politically.
I am intrigued by this biography of our most opaque president. I'm not sure I'll make it
through the w-h-o-l-e book. But I do think that Obama's life was unusual enough to warrant
care that incidents are not taken out of context, so I might struggle through to the end. I'm
not sure how long that will take me. But I'm retired now, so perhaps this can be my
retirement project!
Book Reviewer , Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2017
This book is brilliant because it was written by an author, David Garrow, who's not only
mastered the art of beautiful prose but also possesses unparalleled skills in researching his
subjects (which is why he won the Pulitzer for 'Bearing the Cross', the bio of Martin Luther
King, Jr.). Alas, this book is also sorrowful because it is clear Garrow began his biography
of Barack Hussein Obama honestly believing in the hope and change his subject promised - only
to be bitterly disappointed by the man his research ultimately uncovered. As 'Rising Star'
describes it, Obama began his life in Chicago as an idealistic community organizer whose
ambition was to change the world. Alas, this ambition was not realized when he failed to
secure any funding (a failure that would sadly be repeated again and again). Undeterred,
Obama simply shifted his focus to public office and prepared to run for the Illinois state
legislature. That position, he felt sure, would give him the funds he needed to make his
dreams come true. But there was a problem. The voters in Obama's district were black - and he
wasn't. That is, he was not perceived by them as such and, to be honest, Barack had never
thought of himself as black either. Up until the moment he first ran for public office,
Barack had never defined himself along racial lines but instead along emotional ones - that
of a lost child abandoned by his father and mother. By and large, Barack's life had been
devoid of black associations. He had next to no black friends growing up in Hawaii; in
college he'd persisted in avoiding black friendships, teachers and the black movement as a
whole. The black persona was simply not how he defined himself - but it would have to be if
he hoped to achieve public office in Chicago. What to do? Well, the solution which all of
Barack's advisers gave was for him to marry a woman who WAS black. Thus, Barack abandoned the
beautiful half-white, half-Japanese woman, Sheila Miyoshi Jager, whom he'd been living with
for nearly two years in Chicago (and whom he'd originally intended to marry) and instead
proposed marriage to Michelle Robinson. It was a political move which Barack would pay
bitterly for.
Michelle was not interested in politics, she hated it. What she loved was money. However,
in the beginning of their marriage she grudgingly acquiesced to Barack's low-paying position
with the Illinois State legislature because Michelle herself was earning a six-figure salary
at Sidley Austin. But then suddenly, mysteriously, Michelle left the firm AND forfeited her
law license (after barely 3 years of practice) to take a public job which paid barely
one-third of her old income. She was not pleased about this and immediately demanded that her
husband leave politics and get a job at a prestigious law firm that would bring in the salary
she craved. Barack balked at that and instead began working three jobs at once (state
legislature, law school professor and lawyer) to bring in the money. But it wasn't enough for
her. He then tried to placate her by promising her they would get rich from his book 'Dreams
Of My Father' (which Garrow takes great pains to insist was NOT written with the help of Bill
Ayers). Alas, the book was a flop. Michelle's anger at her husband's failure to make money
provoked countless arguments between the two of them; fights which she had no qualms
displaying in public, humiliating Barack constantly in front of friends and strangers. At
this point, Barack bargained desperately with Michelle to allow him to run for U.S.
Representative; surely this would bring in the funds she craved. Alas, he not only badly lost
the election but plunged into debt up to his ears. Barack had truly hit bottom. And then?
Suddenly money began pouring in for him.
Garrow gives no explanation as to why, he merely describes how Barack for the first time
in his life was in charge of the allocation of millions of dollars in public funds which he
began distributing as political patronage right and left. Shortly afterwards, Barack
announced he would run for the United States Senate, a hugely expensive venture. But once
again, he mysteriously came into possession of huge sums of money which would more than pay
for that run. His fortunes had changed, he was no longer the penniless spouse Michelle had
sneered at. Alas - and this is where the sorrow enters Garrow's writing - Barack himself had
changed as well. He was no longer the idealistic community organizer of the past, no longer
the fun-loving and outgoing person he'd once been. Instead, he was a cold, withdrawn
individual who distanced himself from his old friends, abandoned his old alliances, displayed
loyalty to no one but Michelle (and Valerie Jarrett). Garrow never puts it into words but
it's clear nonetheless; Barack had sold out.
Needless to say, the Leftist establishment does NOT view Garrow's book kindly. It's bad
enough 'Rising Star' uncovers Obama's failures, it's worse that Garrow's astounding research
is so precise, so accurate it's impossible to disprove his revelations of those failures.
It's no comfort to Obama's disillusioned followers that Garrow is as upset as they. I'm
certain in my heart he would have given anything to have come up with a different conclusion
for his subject. Alas, however, Garrow is a prisoner of his phenomenal skills as a researcher
and his own honesty. The result is a brilliant sorrowful book on a man who ultimately
betrayed the hope he had promised to the world - and himself.
44, the biggest fraudulent, groomed 'president' in USA history. Imagine if legal citizens
knew the TRUTH about corruption within the political arena? Thank you, @TuckerCarlson
Here's another link: Patrick Lawrence interviewing-at length- Diane Johnstone.
France, but it applies to the UK and elsewhere:
"A major paradox is that the left and the Yellow Vests call for economic and social
policies that are impossible under EU rules, and yet many on the left shy away from even
thinking of leaving the EU. For over a generation, the French left has made an imaginary
"social Europe" the center of its utopian ambitions...."
German
"But Germany has been an occupied country -- militarily and politically -- for 75 years,
and I suspect that many German political leaders (usually vetted by Washington) have
learned to fit their projects into U.S. policies. But I also think that the political
debate in Germany is overwhelmingly hypocritical, with concrete aims veiled by fake issues
such as human rights and, of course, devotion to Israel..."
Russia in Europe:
"Including Russia, Europe might become an independent pole of power. The U.S. is
currently doing everything to prevent this. But there is a school of strategic thought in
Washington which considers this a mistake, because it pushes Russia into the arms of China.
This school is in the ascendant with the campaign to denounce China as responsible for the
pandemic. As mentioned, the Atlanticists in Europe are leaping into the anti–China
propaganda battle. But they are not displaying any particular affection for Russia, which
shows no sign of sacrificing its partnership with China for the unreliable Europeans.
"If Russia were allowed to become a friendly bridge between China and Europe, the U.S.
would be obliged to abandon its pretensions of world hegemony."
"... Sydney Powell can only appeal the conduct of the Judge. This serves as a nice distraction from the unconstitutional conduct of the Obama administration in wiretapping political opponents; as well as multiple members of Congress ..."
"... We do know Rosenstein appointed Mueller as SC to investigate Flynn, among other things. ..."
"... And we now know there was no predicate for any of the Mueller SCO appointment; thus, Rosenstein, too: what was he doing? ..."
"... We do know that at some point after Bill Barr was confirmed as AG last year, that he began to investigate outing of Flynn and release of classified information, that is, actual crimes. ..."
"... And we know Obama is an enemy of Flynn. If the CIA never took any steps, prior to the Barr confirmation as AG -- and I have no way of knowing whether they did or did not, viz. the Flynn outing and leak of classified information, ---what, if any, might or should be, if any, the consequences of that? And, ditto the DOJ. ..."
"... It appear this judge want to protect the likes of Obama, and Yates, and the long list of villains whose mission remain: Destroy Flynn at all costs. ..."
"... General Flynn's original law team belonged to Covington & Burling. That's where Eric Holder made partner. Since his time as Attorney General, Holder has returned to that law firm. Like Fred said, they sandbagged the case. ..."
"... Flynn swore before two judges under penalty of perjury that he lied to the FBI. He then swore that he didn't lie to the FBI when he asked to withdraw his guilty plea. There's the conundrum. If we had the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations, we would know the answer to one of your questions. We could compare that to his guilty plea. We would then know if the prosecution's case was false. In that case both the prosecution and Flynn would be liable for perjuring themselves. It would also constitute prosecutorial misconduct IMO. Barr is doing Flynn a disservice by not releasing those transcripts. ..."
"... So all those mass incarcerated black men who pled guilty are really guilty because prosecutorial misconduct and defective legal advice neither happen to them nor are mitigating when a plea of guilty is made? "swore before two judges under penalty of perjury" The DOJ dropped the charges, it is up to the to prosecute for the new accusation that pleading guilty was actually perjury. Good luck at a jury trial with that. ..."
"... It seems to be a last minute desperation play by Sullivan to keep Obama out of the frying pan. ..."
"... Just today, the neocon-infested Washington Post ran an editorial, apparently by one of their DNC-affiliated writers, which attempted to jape the whole Obamagate narrative through a paroxysm of superlatives, mocking it as some gigantic and wholly imaginary conspiracy. This effort reminded me of their similar jocularity phase relative to Trump during the 2016 primary season. ..."
"... I suspect the reality is just the sleazy truth of Obama being just as much of a crooked bastard as Bush. The Obama gang, of course, is desperate to prevent the tarnishing of Saint Barry ..."
"... When Judge Sullivan said three days ago that he was going to make a schedule for outside persons and organizations to file written arguments, it was essentially an invitation for arguments against the government's request to dismiss the case. I started to put together an article about that brazen move. ..."
Firstly, Larry Johnson and Robert Willmann know more about this case than I do. It now
appears, if this report today is to be believed, that Emmett Sullivan is now inclined to
charge General Flynn with contempt of court and perjury. I have to ask; for what? This is
Kafkaesque.
For agreeing to a plea deal that Flynn knew was false? For failing to plead innocence? For
reversing his plea when it was demonstrated that the prosecution case against him was utterly
untrue and corrupt?
"Judge", I use the term loosely, Sullivan seems to be so ensnared in the coils of judicial
procedure that he has forgotten that truth and justice matter. That is the nicest construct I
can put on it. I think it's time for Sidney Powell to rip this judge to shreds. I await Larry
and Roberts comments.
Flynn was told by his lawyers from Covington & Burling that he was guilty. Covington
& Burling were not only wrong they made no effort to get the exculpatory evidence and
purposely withheld what evidence they did possess - repeatedly - from Flynn's new lawyer.
But then that has already been reported on publicly and discussed here. Perhaps your
memory is faulty.
Sydney Powell can only appeal the conduct of the Judge. This serves as a nice distraction
from the unconstitutional conduct of the Obama administration in wiretapping political
opponents; as well as multiple members of Congress, multiple governors and state health officials in response to China's
biological attack against the US and Western nations.
Yes, I agree with you. Sullivan trying to charge Flynn with perjury and contempt of court
is a deliberate distraction. I would have thought the people who should be charged are the
ones who constructed and prosecuted the bogus charge in the first place.
How many defendants automatically claim they are "not guilty, your honor" when asked to enter
their plea, even when there is still gunpowder on their hands?
Do they also get charged with perjury after their guilt is established, beyond a
reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers? You lied to the court - you said you were
innocent. Double time in the slammer for you.
Defendant statements of either their own guilt or innocence should be "privileged" and
therefore not actionable. Those statements are fundamental to our trust in our judicial
system, and should never later be claimed perjury or false statements if the defendant
changes their mind or a jury makes their ultimate finding.
Although different people at different times, and different circumstances: a
comparison.
Then CIA Agent Valerie Plame outing [she is currently a Democrat candidate for a New
Mexico congressional seat].
And, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn [NSA-designee] outing.
Outing, that is: leaking their identities, by government officials[s], to . . . .and
release of classified information.
How do the actions taken by government compare and contrast, at the time of outing/leaking
crimes.
1] Both leaks went to the Washington Post.
2] Substance of the Plame and Flynn leaks related to . . .
WAP published Plame's identity, July 14, 2003. George Bush the younger, then president.
Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak put his name to this at WAP. [Her husband, Joseph C. Wilson
4th, "What I Didn't Find in Africa", in The New York Times, July 6, 2003, disputed
Bush/Cheney administration claims, their claims of WMD in Iraq.]
WAP published Flynn's identify, Jan. 12, 2017. Barack Obama, then president. David
Reynolds Ignatius put his name to it at WAP. Flynn disputed Obama administration "facts"
about their Syrian war in particular, and more generally, in west Asia/near East/middle
east.]
3] Investigation at the time or no investigation at the time.
Executive Order 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981 requires actions on such matters.
In the Plame matter, the CIA, on July 24, 2003 made a phone call to the DOJ about this,
according to the CIA. They followed this up with a July 30, 2003 letter.
Government records show "on 24 July 2003, a CIA attorney left a phone message for the
Chief of the Counterespionage Section of DoJ noting concerns with recent articles on this
subject and stating that the CIA would forward a written crimes report pending the outcome of
a review of the articles by subject matter experts. By letter dated 30 July 2003, the CIA
reported to the Criminal Division of DoJ a possible violation of criminal law concerning the
unauthorized disclosure of classified information. The letter also informed DoJ that the
CIA's Office of Security had opened an investigation into this matter. This letter was sent
again to DoJ by facsimile on 5 September 2003."
Sept. 30, 2003, Bush famously stated, viz. the identities of the leaker[s]: "I want to
know who it is ... and if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."
Dec. 30, 2003 a Special Counsel was also appointed to investigate the Plame matter, as
well.
Then AG John Ashcroft recused himself and thus declined to make this SC appointment.
Patrick Fitzgerald was named the Special Counsel by then Deputy AG James Comey. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We know many more details now about the Plame matter, than about what, if any,
investigation may, or may not have, begun, at the time of the Flynn outing and release of
classified information.
What we do know, so far, about the Flynn matter is that, at the time, there was no attempt
-- or at least, we don't know if there was -- any attempt from the Flynn outing on Jan. 12,
2017, to Jan. 20 of that year, when Obama was still president: a] if the CIA asked for an investigation b] if then AG Lynch did c] if DAG at the time Yates did d] if Obama did
We also don't know if, beginning Jan. 20 a] if then acting AG Yates did b] if President Trump did c] if the CIA did
Once Jeff Sessions was confirmed as AG, we don't know if he did, nor do we know if DAG Rod
Rosenstein did.
Nor do we know if the CIA did.
We do know Rosenstein appointed Mueller as SC to investigate Flynn, among other
things.
And we now know there was no predicate for any of the Mueller SCO appointment; thus,
Rosenstein, too: what was he doing?
We do know that at some point after Bill Barr was confirmed as AG last year, that he began
to investigate outing of Flynn and release of classified information, that is, actual
crimes.
It is a fair question to ask when he actually began investigation on the Flynn outing, and
leaking of classified material related to that.
And to ask when, or if, the CIA, since Jan. 20, 2017, ever did.
We do know there were many public enemies of Flynn at highest levels of DOJ, FBI, CIA, and
the office Clapper was in charge of at the time, Director of National Intelligence.
And we know Obama is an enemy of Flynn. If the CIA never took any steps, prior to the Barr confirmation as AG -- and I have no way
of knowing whether they did or did not, viz. the Flynn outing and leak of classified
information, ---what, if any, might or should be, if any, the consequences of that? And, ditto the DOJ.
As an aside: Judge Emmett Sullivan's ongoing tomfoolery and slapdash in the Flynn criminal
case puts in relief, sharp relief, just how upside down this entire issue has become.
It appear this judge want to protect the likes of Obama, and Yates, and the long list of
villains whose mission remain: Destroy Flynn at all costs.
Flynn's guilty plea being sworn to under penalty of perjury is no small matter, and the
DOJs actions have been, in total, extremely odd.
It may be unwise to read too much into this at this point. The DOJ has wasted a couple of
years and no doubt millions of dollars worth of the court's time. Sullivan is providing a
platform wherein the DOJ will have to fully explain itself in this matter. Both past and
present DOJs, that is.
As a general observation, there has been a tidal wave of criticism in American media over
the DOJ dropping the charges against Flynn.
I have made an attempt to follow what the American MSM are saying about this, and the
hostility to both Flynn and Barr is just overwhelming. Surely that overwhelming media opinion had an effect on Judge Sullivan's bad
decision.
Perhaps I'm missing something. I know the FBI can listen in on phone calls made to foreign
nationals, but how can the FBI legally listen in on phone calls made by the NSC Director of
the President-Elect, regardless of who he is talking to?
General Flynn's original law team belonged to Covington & Burling. That's where Eric
Holder made partner. Since his time as Attorney General, Holder has returned to that law
firm. Like Fred said, they sandbagged the case.
My husband's default TV channel is MSNBC, programming which I often overhear. A fair-minded
observer can't help but notice that Obama apologists only mention that Flynn plead guilty
twice. They NEVER emphasize the beyond-mitigating aspects of the matter, e.g., that his
counsel at the time (which was a law firm also employing former Obama AG Eric Holder) was
either incompetent or purposefully negligent in advising him to do so. Nor do they mention
that Flynn was threatened with the prospect of his son being prosecuted using rarely-enforced
FARA laws. The apologists also fail to remind their audiences that the FBI investigation of
Flynn was about to be closed -- much less do they report that he was NEVER charged with
perjury in the first place!
The convenient and expedient failure to fully inform people has become typical among the
MSM/Democrats/NeverTrumpers, et al. Their efforts to misinform, to perpetuate ignorance,
continue to play out not only in the entire Obamagate scandal but it seems also when it comes
to COVID-19 policy. No wonder zombie-themed entertainment is so popular in recent years.
SMFH...
Flynn wasn't outed. He was a widely known public figure for years. Trump and Pence
announced Flynn lied to them and the FBI when he was fired. I'm not if this was mentioned in
the press before Trump's announcement.
Flynn swore before two judges under penalty of perjury that he lied to the FBI. He then
swore that he didn't lie to the FBI when he asked to withdraw his guilty plea. There's the
conundrum. If we had the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations, we would know the
answer to one of your questions. We could compare that to his guilty plea. We would then know
if the prosecution's case was false. In that case both the prosecution and Flynn would be
liable for perjuring themselves. It would also constitute prosecutorial misconduct IMO. Barr
is doing Flynn a disservice by not releasing those transcripts.
TTG, there is this legal thing called the litigation privilege that, I think, covers what an
accused can say in a trial. Plenty of people plead guilty to charges that they know to be
false without the slightest demur by anyone..
Furthermore, Flynn may have become convinced by his lawyers that he had, in effect lied to
the FBI. In addition, since he was not under oath or cautioned by the FBI at the time, even
if he deliberately did lie for perhaps political or strategic reasons how is that a crime?
People lie to people all the time.
To put that another way, is telling a female FBI agent "I'll still respect you in the
morning" going to get you 20 years?
So all those mass incarcerated black men who pled guilty are really guilty because
prosecutorial misconduct and defective legal advice neither happen to them nor are
mitigating when a plea of guilty is made? "swore before two judges under penalty of perjury"
The DOJ dropped the charges, it is up to the to prosecute for the new accusation that
pleading guilty was actually perjury. Good luck at a jury trial with that.
Mark,
"Sullivan is providing a platform wherein the DOJ will have to fully explain itself in
this matter."
So he is willfully refusing to dismiss the case so the DOJ can give him an explanation -
other than the one they already gave him in the motion to dismiss? Justice Sullivan, on
behalf of the Judiciary, is now taking it upon itself to determine what the executive branch
of government was thinking in this case? To get that explanation he has appointed a former
member of the judiciary, one who had previously worked side by side with Andrew Weissman. No
bias there. You don't need to be a lawyer to see how ludicrous the suggestion and the judges
actions appear.
Sullivan, like most of the Federal judiciary, is just another swamp creature. He apparently slept through the class in law school where they said that the state has to
prosecute the case, a judge can't - even as much as he may want to.
The issue is both: the criminal leak of classified information; and the criminal outing --
the identity of Flynn -- related to classified information leak. Those are indissolubly
linked.
The issue is also this, thanks to Judge Emmett Gilbert & Sullivan, who wrote May 13,
2020:
"ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show
Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury. . . and any other
applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law."
Who would be charging Flynn with "criminal contempt for perjury"? And/Or, "and any other
applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law"?
Perhaps Gilbert & Sullivan will keep the case open until after the November
presidential election, or the November 2024 election, or the next one, so that another DOJ --
not headed by Bill Barr -- can so charge Flynn.
Or perhaps Gilbert & Sullivan is inviting Congress to name a Special Prosecutor.
Who might that be? James Comey? Andrew Weissmann? Sally Yates?
After all, how dare anyone expose Barry as anything but "the scandal free" administration.
This is Gilbert & Sullivan's motive, as I see it, my opinion, based on what I have seen
so far: To protect Barry, among others. And do that via keeping alive a prosecution of Flynn,
based on DOJ/FBI/CIA skullduggery. [Another theory is the judge wants to throw the book at
Covington for misconduct; perhaps both or one or the other are at play, I don't have the
evidence at this time to clearly say.]
As for Trump and Pence, that is grist for another mill.
For all we know, Trump and Pence may have wanted Flynn gone and they did not care how it
was done. And they did not want their finger prints on it; and for all we know, Trump and
Pence were not opposed to the Mueller SC appointment.
These are also things we actually just don't have clear answers to, just yet.
But that sideshow is irrelevant to this legal proceeding/circus per the May 13 order.
However, it may [or may not] be relevant to whether or not Trump and Pence actually wanted
Flynn gone – using the "Flynn lied" as an excuse to be rid of him.
Pence, at the time, had no business speaking about what was essentially classified
information, at the time, by the way; he did, on national TV, and Flynn was the patsy.
Did Trump and Pence, and their administration, sit on their hands as well, and do nothing
about the criminal leak of classified information linked to the outing of Flynn?
Claiming he lied could suggest they also were not interested in the crime of leaking
classified information and his outing.
At least Bush said or claimed to wanted to get to the bottom of the Plame matter. Did
Trump and Pence, at the time?
And if they did want to get to the bottom of it, I would like to see evidence that they
did so, and/or evidence that they were thwarted in doing so.
Surely, Trump and Pence can argue this was why they were not opposed to Mueller
appointment.
We don't know all the contents of the scope memo Rosenstein wrote, as the boss of Mueller,
-- whether or not investigation of the criminal leak and outing of Flynn was or was not part
of Mueller's scope of work.
We don't know because chunks of scope memo are still redacted and not available to the
public.
Presumably, AG Barr is investigation this; he came back on the scene last year.
What happened before him, going back to Jan. 20, 2017? And, what happened from Jan. 12 to
Jan. 2020, with respect to the Obama administration, on this crime?
Did anyone, prior to Barr, do anything, or try to do anything?
If this was not part of Rosenstein's scope memo to Mueller, what can one conclude? -30-
In recent years we have seen numerous individuals released from jail due to their innocence
being found by DNA and other scientific processes. A good number of those individuals had
plead guilty. In the Sullivan courtroom Flynn plead quietly twice (once to Sullivan the other
to Contreras) but now pleads innocent and the government has decided to drop the case. But
Judge Sullivan now questions what to do with Flynn and is asking for help from the legal
community to determine what to do. It has become a circus or Sullivan wants his pound of
flesh. Time will tell but if it is not to the benefit of Flynn then it's off to the Appeals
Court where it will be justly determined. After insinuating that Flynn was a traitor this Judge should drop the case quickly but no he
wants make himself like a bigger Idiot.
Flynn's case never went to trial. It went straight to a guilty plea and was awaiting the
sentencing phase. If the DOJ dropped charges before this guilty plea or at any time during a
trial, I doubt we would be in this mess. What Flynn signed onto is straightforward. I don't
know if this litigation privilege would apply to this Defendant's Acceptance.
"The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purpose of providing the Court with a
factual basis for my guilty plea to the charge against me. It does not include all of the
facts known to me regarding this offense. I make this statement knowingly and voluntarily and
because I am, in fact, guilty o f the crime charged. No threats have been made to me nor am I
under the influence o f anything that could impede my ability to understand this Statement o
f the Offense fully." "I have read every word of this Statement of the Offense, or have had it read to me. Pursuant
to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, after consulting with my attorneys, I agree and
stipulate to this Statement of the Offense, and declare under penalty of perjury that it is
true and correct."
Sullivan is addressing the guilty plea by Flynn and his subsequent withdrawal of that plea.
creating the charge of perjury to the court.
Barr is opening up the DOJ to prosecutorial misconduct if the reason for the withdrawal is
exculpatory information that was not provided defendant prior to his guilty plea.
Sullivan is exploiting this discrepancy. I am neither a legal expert nor lawyer so will
stand corrected.
It seems to be a last minute desperation play by Sullivan to keep Obama out of the frying
pan.
Just today, the neocon-infested Washington Post ran an editorial, apparently by one of
their DNC-affiliated writers, which attempted to jape the whole Obamagate narrative through a
paroxysm of superlatives, mocking it as some gigantic and wholly imaginary conspiracy. This
effort reminded me of their similar jocularity phase relative to Trump during the 2016
primary season.
I suspect the reality is just the sleazy truth of Obama being just as much of a crooked
bastard as Bush. The Obama gang, of course, is desperate to prevent the tarnishing of Saint
Barry.
If Flynn does get off in the end, might he sue Obama and at some point depose him? An
interesting thought experiment.
I find this hilarious. It is like POTUS is a helpless bystander. Does he not realize it is
his DOJ that has "stolen or destroyed" the 302? Does he not know that he can declassify all
of "Obamagate"?
Or is his intent to just troll everyone?
And what about him throwing Flynn to the hyenas by firing him?
When Judge Sullivan said three days ago that he was going to make a schedule for outside
persons and organizations to file written arguments, it was essentially an invitation for
arguments against the government's request to dismiss the case. I started to put together an
article about that brazen move.
Now Sullivan has abandoned that move and has exposed himself as an advocate singularly
against the defendant Flynn, which of course is not his role. His order of Wednesday, 13 May,
appointed John Gleeson, a former federal judge in the Eastern District of New York, to
present arguments against the motion to dismiss Flynn's case and whether Flynn should be the
subject of a proceeding for criminal contempt of court for perjury.
Judge Sullivan's new order indicates that he has improperly invested his ego in the case,
and that something is likely going on behind the curtain.
With all that is emerging from the recent releases of sworn testimony from various
actors surrounding the Flynn case, and the Russiagate hoohaw exposing the motivations of
these individuals, can it be doubted that given the depth of the duplicity on exhibit here
that it is entirely possible (indeed, likely) that something as incriminating as the
"missing" 302 was destroyed to cover the tracks?
Although some of the principals left of their own volition, and others were removed
through being fired, it is clear that others acted as "stay behind" forces of the Deep State
to continue the coup from inside the DOJ, FBI, and IC. Under these circumstances, it is not
at all clear that President Trump was (and is now) substantially in command of these
agencies. Incriminating documents and recordings may well have been preemptively destroyed on
the sayso of the "stay behind" plotters still in high positions, so calls for
declassification of already disappeared evidence would be futile.
No, it doesn't look good that Flynn was fired, but at the time, and with what was known
at that time , and given Flynn's plea, what could be expected? Now that things have
subsequently been revealed, it looks like a bad call; hindsight is, as the saying has it,
20/20.
"... The majority of U.S. media will most likely try and find appropriate excuses so they can minimize Obama's role in these scandals. It is completely clear that the battle over who will be in the White House in the next four years is now taking focus on the Obama era as of opposed to Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 80,000 Americans and infected more than 1.3 million people. ..."
"... With endless tweets by Donald Trump dedicated to Obama over the past few days, it is as if the presidential battle in November will be fought between him and Obama, and not Democrat сandidate Joe Biden . ..."
"... It is likely Obama is becoming more public as Trump's opponent Biden is proving inadequate and incapable of defeating Trump ..."
"... Trump also retweeted statements from CIA agent Buck Sexton, in which he accused Obama of sabotaging the Trump administration in the first days of his term. Sexton also called former FBI Director Andrew McCabe "a dishonorable partisan scumbag who has done incalculable damage to the reputation of the FBI and should be sitting in a cell for lying under oath" ..."
"... As for the affair with the secret operation of selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels, journalists of Forbes in 2011 wondered whether that operation would become Obama's "Watergate," ..."
Source: InfoBricsFormer
U.S. President Barack Obama is coming under increasing pressure, led by what President Donald
Trump is calling "Obamagate." This comes as Mexico has requested to finally clarify the affair
with the secret sale of American weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Mexico is asking for the case
to be clarified after almost ten years.
In this secret operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, weapons from the U.S. were sold to Mexican drug cartels. The U.S. claimed that
about 2,000 automatic weapons were sold to Mexicans so that the Barack Obama administration
could follow their path to the drug cartels. Instead, these weapons were used in massacres.
Mexican authorities are now seeking answers from the United States.
In addition to selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels, Obama is responsible for a lot of
global upheaval on the world stage – primarily the so-called "Arab Spring" that should be
more accurately described as the "Arab Winter" as it brought death and destruction across the
Arab world.
The sale of these weapons to Mexican drug cartels is another ugly legacy of Obama's rule
that liberals like to view as one of the best periods of American history. Let's not forget
that in 2009 Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his apparent "extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people."
The majority of U.S. media will most likely try and find appropriate excuses so they can
minimize Obama's role in these scandals. It is completely clear that the battle over who will
be in the White House in the next four years is now taking focus on the Obama era as of opposed
to Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 80,000
Americans and infected more than 1.3 million people.
With endless tweets by Donald Trump dedicated to Obama over the past few days, it is as if
the presidential battle in November will be fought between him and Obama, and not Democrat
сandidate Joe Biden .
The reason for Trump's many tweets against the former president was because of Obama's
private conversation that was leaked to the public in which he criticized the suspension of the
investigation against Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn , while he called
Trump's fight against the coronavirus epidemic a "chaotic disaster."
The American president started tweeting on the morning of May 10 and stopped late in the
evening, making over a hundred tweets against Obama. This exchange between Obama and Trump is
not common in American politics as former presidents usually do not interfere in the politics
of their successors. However, there are suggestions that Obama still has connections to the
deep state and is actively undermining Trump.
Obama, who openly admitted he would remain active in politics and wished he could contend
for a third term, could be exerting influence through Hillary Clinton and Biden. It is likely
Obama is becoming more public as Trump's opponent Biden is proving inadequate and incapable of
defeating Trump.
The battle between Obama and Trump started with the announcement that the Ministry of
Justice is terminating the investigation against former Trump's national security adviser
Michael Flynn. Flynn, who was probably the shortest-serving national security adviser in
history, was sacked at the beginning of his term on charges of lying to Vice President Mike
Pence about talks with the Russian ambassador to Washington. His removal triggered a chain of
failed investigations and campaigns against Trump and his alleged links to Russian interference
during the U.S. presidential election, which also ended in a failed impeachment.
In private conversations that leaked to the public, Obama described Flynn's acquittal as a
threat to the rule of law.
Trump also retweeted statements from CIA agent Buck Sexton, in which he accused Obama of
sabotaging the Trump administration in the first days of his term. Sexton also called former
FBI Director Andrew McCabe "a dishonorable partisan scumbag who has done incalculable damage to
the reputation of the FBI and should be sitting in a cell for lying under oath"
Trump then continued with accusations on Twitter and said that Obama
committed "the biggest political crime in American history, by far!" and ended briefly with
"Obamagate."
As for the affair with the secret operation of selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels,
journalists of Forbes in 2011 wondered whether that operation would become Obama's "Watergate,"
and it appears that it very well could be. Obama's attempts to smear Trump has not only
backfired, but it could have very serious legal ramifications against him and others in his
administration.
The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes
against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law
crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now
have internationally a lawless world (or "World Order") in which "Might makes right," and in
which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster "law,"
ruling on an international level. It is what Hitler and his Axis of fascist imperialists had
imposed upon the world until the Allies -- U.S. under FDR, UK under Churchill, and U.S.S.R.
under Stalin -- defeated it, and established the United Nations. Furthermore, America's leaders deceived the American public into
perpetrating this invasion and occupation, of a foreign country (Iraq) that had never
threatened the United States; and, so, this invasion and subsequent military occupation
constitutes the very epitome of "aggressive war" -- unwarranted and illegal international
aggression. (Hitler, similarly to George W. Bush, would never have been able to obtain the
support of his people to invade if he had not lied, or "deceived," them, into invading and
militarily occupying foreign countries that had never threatened Germany, such as Belgium,
Poland and Czechoslovakia. This -- Hitler's lie-based aggressions -- was the core
of what the Nazis were hung for, and yet America now does it.)
Invoking the precedent set by the United States and its allies at the Nuremberg trial
in 1946, there can be no doubt that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a war of
aggression. There was no imminent threat to U.S. security nor to the security of the world.
The invasion violated the U.N. Charter as well as U.N. Security Council Resolution
#1441.
The Nuremberg precedent calls for no less than the arrest and prosecution of those
individuals responsible for the invasion of Iraq, beginning with President George W. Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State
Condoleez[z]a Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Take, for example, Condoleezza Rice, who famously warned
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." (That warning was one of the most
effective lies in order to deceive the
American public into invading Iraq, because President Bush had had no real evidence, at all,
that there still remained any WMD in Iraq after the U.N. had destroyed them all, and left Iraq
in 1998 -- and he knew this; he was informed of this; he knew that he had no real evidence,
at all: he offered none; it was all mere
lies .)
So, the Nuremberg precedent definitely does apply against George W, Bush and his
partners-in-crime, just as it did against Hitler and his henchmen and allies.
The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were,
but nonetheless is comparable to it .
On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet "The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq" and wrote that
"our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4
million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion," and linked to solid evidence, backing up their
estimate.
On 29 September 2015, I headlined "GALLUP: 'Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest
Populations in the World'," and linked to Gallup's survey of 1,000 individuals in each of
148 countries around the world, which found that Iraq had the highest "Negative Experience
Score." That score includes "sadness," "physical pain," "anger," and other types of misery --
and Iraq, after America's invasion, has scored the highest in the entire world, on it, and in
the following years has likewise scored at or near the highest on "Negative Experience Score."
For example: in the latest, the 2019, Gallup "Global
Emotions Report" , Iraq scores fourth from the top on "Negative Experience Score," after
(in order from the worst) Chad, Niger, and Sierra Leone. (Gallup has been doing these surveys
ever since 2005, but the first one that was published under that title was the 2015 report,
which summarized the 2014 surveys' findings.) Of course, prior to America's invasion, there had
been America's 1990 war against Iraq and the U.S. regime's leadership and imposition of U.N.
sanctions (which likewise were based largely on U.S.-regime-backed lies , though not totally on lies like
the 2003 invasion was), which caused massive misery in that country; and, therefore, not all of
the misery in Iraq which showed up in the 2015 Global Emotions Report was due to only
the 2003 invasion and subsequent military occupation of that country. But almost all of
it was, and is. And all of it was based on America's rulers lying to the public in order to win
the public's acceptance of their evil plans and invasions against a country that had never
posed any threat whatsoever to Americans -- people residing in America . Furthermore, it is
also perhaps relevant that the 2012
"World Happiness Report" shows Iraq at the very bottom of the list of countries (on page 55
of that report) regarding "Average Net Affect by Country," meaning that Iraqis were the most
zombified of all 156 nationalities surveyed. Other traumatized countries were immediately above
Iraq on that list. On "Average Negative Affect," only "Palestinian Territories" scored higher
than Iraq (page 52). After America's invasion based entirely on lies, Iraq is a wrecked
country, which still remains under the U.S. regime's boot, as the following will document:
Bush's successors, Obama and Trump, failed to press for Bush's trial on these vast crimes,
even though the American people had ourselves become enormously victimized by them, though far
less so than Iraqis were. Instead, Bush's successors have become accessories after the fact, by
this failure to press for prosecution of him and his henchmen regarding this grave matter. In
fact, the "Defense One" site bannered on 26 September 2018, "US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats
Pro-Iran Politicians" , and opened with "The Trump administration may decrease U.S.
military support or other assistance to Iraq if its new government puts Iranian-aligned
politicians in any 'significant positions of responsibility,' a senior administration official
told reporters late last week." The way that the U.S. regime has brought 'democracy' to Iraq is
by threatening to withdraw its protection of the stooge-rulers that it had helped to place into
power there, unless those stooges do the U.S. dictators' bidding, against Iraq's neighbor Iran.
This specific American dictator, Trump, is demanding that majority-Shiite Iraq be run by
stooges who favor, instead, America's fundamentalist-Sunni allies, such as the Saud family who
own Saudi Arabia and who hate and loathe Shiites and Iran. The U.S. dictatorship insists
that Iraq, which the U.S. conquered, serve America's anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian
policy-objectives. "The U.S. threat, to withhold aid if Iran-aligned politicians occupy any
ministerial position, is an escalation of Washington's demands on Baghdad." The article went on
to quote a "senior administration official" as asserting that, "if Iran exerts a tremendous
amount of influence, or a significant amount of influence over the Iraqi government, it's going
to be difficult for us to continue to invest." Get the euphemisms there! This article said that
"the Trump administration has made constraining Iran's influence in the region a cornerstone of
their foreign policy." So, this hostility toward Iran must be reflected in Iraq's policies,
too. It's not enough that Trump wants to destroy Iran like Bush has destroyed Iraq; Trump
demands that Iraq participate in that crime, against Iraq's own neighbor. This article said
that, "There have also been protests against 'U.S. meddling' in the formation of a new Iraqi
government, singling out Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk for working to prevent parties
close to Iran from obtaining power." McGurk is the rabidly neconservative
former high G.W. Bush Administration official, and higher Obama Administration official, who
remained as Trump's top official on his policy to force Iraq to cooperate with America's
efforts to conquer Iran. Trump's evil is Obama's evil, and is Bush's evil. It is bipartisan
evil, no matter which Party is in power. Though Trump doesn't like either the Bushes or Obamas,
all of them are in the same evil policy-boat. America's Deep State
remains the same, no matter whom it places into the position of nominal power. The regime
remains the same, regardless.
On April 29th, the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray wrote :
Nobody knows how many people died as a result of the UK/US Coalition of Death led
destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, by proxy, Syria and Yemen. Nobody even knows how
many people western forces themselves killed directly. That is a huge number, but still under
10% of the total. To add to that you have to add those who died in subsequent conflict
engendered by the forced dismantling of the state the West disapproved of. Some were killed
by western proxies, some by anti-western forces, and some just by those reverting to ancient
tribal hostility and battle for resources into which the country had been regressed by
bombing.
You then have to add all those who died directly as a result of the destruction of
national infrastructure. Iraq lost in the destruction 60% of its potable drinking water, 75%
of its medical facilities and 80% of its electricity. This caused millions of deaths, as did
displacement. We are only of course talking about deaths, not maiming.
UK's Prime Minister Tony Blair should hang with the U.S. gang, but who is calling for this?
How much longer will the necessary prosecutions wait? Till after these international
war-criminals have all gone honored to their graves?
Although the International Criminal Court considered and dismissed possible criminal charges
against Tony Blair's UK Government regarding the invasion and military occupation of Iraq, the
actual crime, of invading and militarily occupying a country which had posed no threat to the
national security of the invader, was ignored, and the
conclusion was that "the situation did not appear to meet the required threshold of the
Statute" (which was only
"Willful killing or inhuman treatment of civilians" and which ignored the real
crime, which was "aggressive war" or "the crime of
aggression" -- the crime for which Nazis had been hanged at Nuremberg). Furthermore, no charges
whatsoever against the U.S. Government (the world's most frequent and most heinous violator of
international law) were considered. In other words: the International Criminal Court is
subordinate to, instead of applicable to, the U.S. regime. Just like Adolf Hitler had
repeatedly made clear that, to him, all nations except Germany were dispensable and only
Germany wasn't, Barack Obama repeatedly said that "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation" ,
which likewise means that every other nation is "dispensable." The criminal
International Criminal Court accepts this, and yet expects to be respected.
The U.S. regime did "regime change" to Iraq in 2003, and to
Ukraine in 2014 , and tried to do it to Syria since 2009 , and to Yemen since 2015, and to Venezuela since
2012, and to Iran since 2017 -- just to
mention some of the examples. And, though the Nuremberg precedent certainly applies,
it's not enforced. In principle, then, Hitler has posthumously won WW II.
Hitler must be smiling, now. FDR must be rolling in his grave.
The only way to address this problem, if there won't be prosecutions against the 'duly
elected' (Deep-State-approved and enabled) national leaders and appointees, would be
governmental seizure and nationalization of the assets that are outright owned or else
controlled by America's Deep State. Ultimately, the Government-officials who are s'elected' and
appointed to run the American Government have been and are representing not the American people
but instead represent the billionaires who
fund those officials' and former officials' careers . In a democracy, those individuals --
the financial enablers of those politicians' s'electoral' success -- would be dispossessed of
all their assets, and then prosecuted for the crimes that were perpetrated by the public
officials whom they had participated in (significantly funded and propagandized for) placing
into power. (For example, both
Parties' Presidential nominees are unqualified to serve in any public office in a
democracy.)
Democracy cannot function with a
systematically lied-to public . Nor can it function if the responsible governmental
officials are effectively immune from prosecution for their 'legal' crimes, or if the financial
string-pullers behind the scenes can safely pull those strings. In America right now,
both of those conditions
pertain, and, as a result, democracy is impossible . There are only two ways to address
this problem, and one of them would start by prosecuting George W. Bush.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even
Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S
VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .
Thomas Meaney debunks the
myth of Henry Kissinger:
Since leaving office, too, Kissinger has rarely challenged consensus, let alone offered
the kind of inconvenient assessments that characterized the later career of George Kennan,
who warned President Clinton against NATO expansion after the Soviet Union's collapse. It is
instructive to measure Kissinger's instincts against those of a true realist, such as the
University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer. As the Cold War ended,
Mearsheimer was so committed to the "balance of power" principle that he made the striking
suggestion of allowing nuclear proliferation in a unified Germany and throughout Eastern
Europe. Kissinger, unable to see beyond the horizon of the Cold War, could not imagine any
other purpose for American power than the pursuit of global supremacy.
Although he has criticized the interventionism of neoconservatives, there is scarcely a
U.S. military adventure, from Panama to Iraq, that has not met with his approval. In all his
meditations on world order, he has not thought about how contingent and unforeseen America's
rise as global superpower actually was. Nothing in the country's republican tradition prior
to the Second World War demanded it.
The contrast between the worldviews and careers of Kennan and Kissinger is instructive, and
it helps to explain why the Washington foreign policy consensus has gotten so many things wrong
over the decades. Meaney mentions that as early as 1965 Kissinger was privately admitting that
the war in Vietnam was unwinnable, but publicly he supported it and went on to preside over its
continuation and escalation for many years. During the same period, Kennan spoke out against
the war, and urged full withdrawal. Kennan famously said:
There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous
liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or
unpromising objectives.
Kissinger insisted on just the opposite: that the cynical and stubborn pursuit of
extravagant and unpromising objectives was necessary to prove American resolve. Kissinger
couldn't have been more wrong, as subsequent events showed beyond any doubt, but his profound
wrongness had little or no effect on his standing in the U.S. It is no accident that Kissinger
has repeatedly endorsed pursuing such objectives up to and including the invasion of Iraq. The
blunders that Kennan warned against and correctly foresaw would be
costly and wasteful are the same ones that Kissinger approved and defended.
Our government usually listens to and employs the Kissingers to make our foreign policy, and
it ignores and marginalizes the Kennans once they start saying inconvenient things. Kissinger
had great success in advancing himself, and he has continued to be a fixture in the foreign
policy establishment almost fifty years after he last served in government, because he knows
how to provide arguments that lend legitimacy to dubious and aggressive policies. He made bogus
claims about "credibility" in the '60s that helped to perpetuate one war, and later generations
of hawks have used the same claims to justify involvement in new ones. Despite all the evidence
that his "credibility" arguments were nonsense, Kissinger's reputation has bizarrely continued
to improve over time.
Meaney also compares Kissinger with Hans Morgenthau:
Like Kissinger, Morgenthau had become well known with a popular book about foreign policy,
"Politics Among Nations" (1948). And he shared Kissinger's belief that foreign policy could
not be left to technocrats with flowcharts and statistics. But, unlike Kissinger, Morgenthau
was unwilling to sacrifice his realist principles for political influence [bold mine-DL]. In
the mid-sixties, working as a consultant for the Johnson Administration, he was publicly
critical of the Vietnam War, which he believed jeopardized America's status as a great power,
and Johnson had him fired.
The different responses to Vietnam are telling. Kennan and Morgenthau could see very clearly
that U.S. intervention was unnecessary and senseless, and they said as much. Kissinger could
see the same thing, but he pretended otherwise to gain influence. U.S. foreign policy then and
later would have benefited greatly from having more honest assessments of irresponsible
policies and fewer cynical endorsements of unnecessary wars. If we are to learn anything from
Kissinger's example, it is that we should strive to be as unlike him as we can be.
Also, it is worth mentioning the Soviet diplomacy's response to Keenan's Long Telegram,
for parity:
http://www-personal.umd.umi...
While Mr. Larison has to / must continue his excellent work as a chronicler of US
imperial madness, his and his peers' advice will continue to be ignored (ideally this
advice would not even exist and no record of it would pass beyond government doors or
"respectable" opinionators because TINA) regardless of public opinion pools and election
promises and voting results.
Only a US societal quasi collapse, or the establishment of US as an endemic source of
Covid-19 (or similar diseases), or Saudis selling their oil for other currencies beside US
dollars, or a faster rising of ocean levels, or a full blown and rapid economic war and
disengagement with China will potentially re-balance things. But it might be too late, and
the US would have by then forgotten how to use certain intellectual tools the way
Australian Aborigines and Tasmanians have forgotten to make and use bows and arrows.
It's amusingly daft to describe the US as having engaged in imperial madness, but ludicrous
to assert that Australian Aborigines ever used bows and arrows.
Thanks for that. I have always had a vague awareness that HK was a problematic factor, but,
being preoccupied with the daily grind, never scrutinized the record much. This short
comparative piece is good for clarity. Perhaps the saddest thing of all, though, is that
after all these decades, the HK perspective has become accepted by the Neo- factions (cons?
libs? does it matter?) as a default position. Makes US seem like we're in the thrall of a
military-industrial complex or something.
In defense of Kissinger, he was skeptical of the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states and
was much more open to diplomacy with Russia than most hawks in the GOP. But you're right
that too often Kissinger was afraid to make waves by opposing military interventions.
https://www.washingtonpost....
Kissinger is an example that this old adage is true. "Only the Good Die Young". The devil
is waiting for him. Kissinger is responsible for murdering and torturing many.
Kissinger was a brilliant historian and diplomat, with deep insights into how the world
works. However he was also a careerist who was willing to bend his views to achieve and
stay in power. For better or worse, he shaped US foreign policy for many years, and
strongly influenced it for many more.
Kennan was also a brilliant historian and diplomat, who had a huge impact on US policy
with his Long Telegram. But once the policy was accepted, he had little influence over its
long-term implementation because he refused to compromise and work with (manipulate?)
lesser beings.
And today, our foreign policy is run by people who know little of the world and none of
its history, and could care less. But they are great at PR and political manipulation. I'll
take either Kissinger or Kennan over any of them. Whatever their flaws, at least they knew
what they were talking about
You are correct in your description of Kissinger as a "careerist". Unfortunately, unlike
Kissinger George Kennan never became SoS, so he never had the president's
"ear." Some would argue that Truman should have picked him over Dean Acheson to succeed
George Marshall. One can only wonder how history would have panned out.
....as early as 1965 Kissinger was privately admitting that the war in Vietnam was
unwinnable, but publicly he supported it and went on to preside over its continuation and
escalation for many years.
How could he stubbornly persist knowing that every day Americans were losing their lives
- for years. This guy must be a sociopath.
....as early as 1965 Kissinger was privately admitting that the war in Vietnam was
unwinnable, but publicly he supported it and went on to preside over its continuation and
escalation for many years.
How could he stubbornly persist knowing that every day Americans were losing their lives
- for years. This guy must be a sociopath.
So-called "experts" are too narrow in their focus and too often wrong in their
judgments to be able to decide the sorts of life-and-death issues a nation's political leaders
are asked to decide. If " War is too important to be left to the generals ," as
Georges Clemenceau, (France's prime minister during World War I) claimed, then foreign policy
is too important to be left to the intelligence agencies, and public policy is too important to
be left to the scientists.
From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians and media fell over themselves in their
rush to defer to the " experts. " Apparently, it was up to scientists to decide
whether a country should shut down its economy and keep its citizens locked up in their homes
in perpetuity. It was up to scientists to determine whether a country can, if ever, resume
normal life. As for the consequences -- economic depression, exploding national debt, lost
businesses and means of livelihood, growing alcoholism and drug abuse, rise in suicides,
spiraling untreated medical problems -- those are things the public would just have to live
with, because there could be no second-guessing of the scientists.
On the one side, figures allied to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for
an anti-Imperial world order lined up behind FDR's champion Harry Dexter White while those
powerful forces committed to maintaining the structures of a bankers' dictatorship (Britain was
always primarily a banker's empire) lined up behind the figure of John Maynard Keynes[
1 ].
John Maynard Keynes was a leading Fabian Society controller and treasurer of the British
Eugenics Association (which served as a model for Hitler's Eugenics protocols before and during
the war). During the Bretton Woods Conference, Keynes pushed hard for the new system to be
premised upon a one world currency controlled entirely by the Bank of England known as the
Bancor. He proposed a global bank called the Clearing Union to be controlled by the Bank of
England which would use the Bancor (exchangeable with national currencies) and serve as unit of
account to measure trade surpluses or deficits under the mathematical mandate of maintaining
"equilibrium" of the system.
Harry Dexter White, on the other hand, fought relentlessly to keep the City of London out of
the drivers' seat of global finance and instead defended the institution of national
sovereignty and sovereign currencies based on long term scientific and technological
growth.
Although White and FDR demanded that US dollars become the reserve currency in the new world
system of fixed exchange rates, it was not done to create a "new American Empire" as most
modern analysts have assumed, but rather was designed to use America's status as the strongest
productive global power to ensure an anti-speculative stability among international currencies
which entirely lacked stability in the wake of WWII.
Their fight for fixed exchange rates and principles of "parity pricing" were designed by FDR
and White strictly around the need to abolish the forms of chaotic flux of the un-regulated
markets which made speculation rampant under British Free Trade and destroyed the capacity to
think and plan for the sort of long term development needed to modernize nation states. Theirs
was not a drive for "mathematical equilibrium" but rather a drive to "end poverty" through REAL
physical economic growth of colonies who would thereby win real economic independence.
As figures like Henry Wallace (FDR's loyal Vice President and 1948 3rd party candidate),
Representative Wendell Wilkie (FDR's republican lieutenant and New Dealer), and Dexter White
all advocated repeatedly, the mechanisms of the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations were meant
to become drivers of an internationalization of the New Deal which transformed America from a
backwater cesspool in 1932 to becoming a modern advanced manufacturing powerhouse 12 years
later. All of these Interntional New Dealers were loud advocates of US-Russia –China
leadership in the post war world which is a forgotten fact of paramount importance.
It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and
it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia,
China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other
on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America's position in
the Pacific.
Contradicting the mythos that FDR was a Keynesian, FDR's assistant Francis Perkins
recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her:
"I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a
mathematician rather than a political economist."
In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal
stated he had "supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking."
In his 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
, Keynes wrote:
For I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded
mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo Saxon countries. Nevertheless,
the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much
more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.
While Keynes represented the "soft imperialism" for the "left" of Britain's intelligentsia,
Churchill represented the hard unapologetic imperialism of the Old, less sophisticated empire
that preferred the heavy fisted use of brute force to subdue the savages. Both however were
unapologetic racists and fascists (Churchill even wrote admiringly of Mussolini's black shirts)
and both represented the most vile practices of British Imperialism.
FDR's Forgotten
Anti-Colonial Vision Revited
FDR's battle with Churchill on the matter of empire is better known than his differences
with Keynes whom he only met on a few occasions. This well documented clash was best
illustrated in his son/assistant Elliot Roosevelt's book As He Saw It (1946) who quoted his
father:
I've tried to make it clear that while we're [Britain's] allies and in it to victory
by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to their
archaic, medieval empire ideas I hope they realize they're not senior partner; that we are not
going to sit by and watch their system stultify the growth of every country in Asia and half
the countries in Europe to boot.
[ ]
The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all
the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like
education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements – all you're doing is
storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you're doing is negating the value of any
kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.
Writing from Washington in a hysteria to Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that
Roosevelt "contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires."
Unfortunately for the world, FDR died on April 12, 1945. A coup within the Democratic
establishment, then replete with Fabians and Rhodes Scholars, had already ensured that Henry
Wallace would lose the 1944 Vice Presidency in favor of Anglophile Wall Street Stooge Harry
Truman.
Truman was quick to reverse all of FDR's intentions, cleansing American intelligence of all
remaining patriots with the shutdown of the OSS and creation of the CIA, the launching of
un-necessary nuclear bombs on Japan and establishment of the Anglo-American special
relationship.
Truman's embrace of Churchill's New World Order destroyed the positive relationship with
Russia and China which FDR, White and Wallace sought and soon America had become Britain's dumb
giant.
The Post 1945 Takeover of the Modern Deep State
FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American
foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous
insight:
You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal
messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats
over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of
'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is
to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to clean
out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office
Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the
Cold War, Wallace stated:
American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as
the Deep State [ ] Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon
imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and
writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and
intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.
In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission, Wallace said:
Before the blood of our boys is scarcely
dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III.
These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by
following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as
in war.
Indeed this is exactly what occurred. Dexter White's three year run as head of the
International Monetary Fund was clouded by his constant attacks as being a Soviet stooge which
haunted him until the day he died in 1948 after a grueling inquisition session at the House of
Un-American Activities.
White had previously been supporting the election of his friend Wallace for the presidency
alongside fellow patriots Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein.
Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the FDR's
dream of an anti-colonial world . In the 21st century, this great dream has taken the form
of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations
yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).
If western nations wish to survive the oncoming collapse, then they would do well to heed
Putin's call for a New International system, join the BRI, and reject the Keynesian technocrats
advocating a false "New Bretton Woods" and "Green New
Deal" .
[1] You may be thinking "wait! Wasn't FDR and his New Deal premised on Keynes' theories??"
How could Keynes have represented an opposing force to FDR's system if this is the case? This
paradox only exists in the minds of many people today due to the success of the Fabian
Society's and Round Table Movement's armada of revisionist historians who have consistently
created a lying narrative of history to make it appear to future generations trying to learn
from past mistakes that those figures like FDR who opposed empire were themselves following
imperial principles.
Another example of this sleight of hand can be seen by the sheer number of people who
sincerely think themselves informed and yet believe that America's 1776 revolution was driven
by British Imperial philosophical thought stemming from Adam Smith, Bentham and John Locke.
Schiff probably practice his lies in his mirror every morning so he can convince himself
of Russian interference. Biggest liar in America Adam Schifty schiff. Needs to be arrested
immediately for treason and lying under oath. But as usual nothing will happen. These people
are above the law. And are untouchable. Its enough to frustrate the hell out of normal sain
Americans. 4 more years of Donald Trump
Folks need to take a much closer look at your own state legislature, district attorney,
prosecutors, public defenders, social workers... especially your own town councils and school
boards. They're stealing your lives and children at the Grassroots local level.
Adam Schiff is not resigning. He's doubling down yet again! If you "want" him to resign,
you need to understand he's staying in office until voted out. There's no willpower in the
house to take action against him.
Fresh off of his defense of the
foreign policy "Blob," Hal Brands
suggests that the U.S. might get back into the business of covertly overthrowing foreign
governments:
Just as the U.S. sought to undermine or topple unfriendly regimes during the Cold War, it
may look to such methods again in its increasingly heated rivalry with China. Caution will be
necessary: History tells us that while covert intervention can sometimes be a cost-effective
tool of competition, it is fraught with risks and profound moral trade-offs.
It is difficult to think of examples where sponsoring coups in other countries has ever
really been "cost-effective," unless one is comparing those coups to full-blown invasions and
occupations. The up-front costs to the U.S. may seem low, but the U.S. usually ends up losing
much more than it bargained for. The cost to the people in the affected country is quite high,
and that ought to be part of any calculation. Brands' own examples of what he counts as
successes are telling for how horrible they were:
But is covert intervention a good idea? Some analysts argue that it rarely works and
should be avoided, yet this is probably the wrong standard. Countries usually resort to
covert action when other options have either failed or are deemed undesirable, so the
likelihood of success is low to begin with. That built-in handicap notwithstanding, the U.S.
did, in some cases, get serious strategic mileage out of its meddling.
In the late 1940s, covert support for democratic politicians in Italy played a modest but
probably important role in shoring up that country against communist challenges at the polls.
For the cost of a few hired mobs, the U.S. facilitated the toppling of Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, securing its strategic flank in the Persian Gulf for 25
years. CIA support helped the Indonesian military consolidate power after it toppled an
increasingly anti-American Sukarno in 1965, thus avoiding the prospect of Southeast Asia's
most important country turning hostile.
Overthrowing Mossadegh ended up being one of the most short-sighted instances of U.S.
interference of the entire Cold War. It may have bought the U.S. a semi-reliable client for a
couple decades, but it came at the cost of alienating the Iranian people and fostering
generations of hostility towards the U.S. For the sake of having an oppressive dictator on
"our" side for a short time, the U.S. earned enmity that has lasted almost twice as long. The
U.S. is still paying the price for that coup almost seventy years later as Washington's
obsession with Iran distorts our policies in the region. Continued interest in pursuing regime
change in Iran shows that many in Washington have still learned nothing from the last time.
Backing Suharto was not driven by any real necessity. It was driven by the same bankrupt domino
theory that poisoned our foreign policy thinking throughout that period. It did make the U.S.
complicit in a horrific
campaign of mass murder :
It was an anti-Communist blood bath of at least half a million Indonesians. And American
officials watched it happen without raising any public objections, at times even applauding
the forces behind the killing, according to newly declassified State Department files that
show diplomats meticulously documenting the purge in 1965-66.
Brands acknowledges these things later in the column, so what is the point of this exercise
in entertaining such a terrible option as potentially "useful"? Useful to whom? To do what? His
argument gets even shakier when he says this:
The U.S. didn't do this gratuitously, or to protect American investments overseas.
Engineering the overthrow of a foreign government that poses absolutely no threat to the
U.S. is the definition of gratuitous. Every Cold War-era coup that the U.S. sponsored was
gratuitous. If U.S. officials claimed that they were compelled to take these actions, they were
offering up strained rationalizations for what they already wanted to do.
Whatever apparent short-term gains the U.S. might think it is getting by acquiring a
despotic client somewhere are usually quite limited and they are always fleeting. The U.S. is
usually saddled with an increasingly unpopular ruler whose people come to resent the U.S. for
our part in supporting that ruler. Like other kinds of regime change, covert regime change is
never really necessary. Brands asserts that governments resort to these tactics when "other
options have failed," but this misses the point completely. Believing that the U.S. has the
right to remove another country's government is a profound error that has inspired many of our
worst policies. Invoking rivalry with China is just another excuse to consider doing things
that the U.S. should reject on principle. Brands writes:
A few years from now, Washington might find itself desperately seeking covert options to
prevent some important country in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East or Southeast Asia from
aligning with Beijing.
If we start hearing more arguments like this in a few years, we can be fairly sure that the
importance of the country in question will be greatly exaggerated and the danger of "losing" it
to China will be much smaller than the alarmists claim. A Cold War-like rivalry with China is
undesirable for many other reasons, and the possibility of reviving the worst tactics of the
Cold War to engage in that rivalry is one more reason to reject it.
Covert regime change is an intervention that the U.S. has chosen in the past out of
excessive fear that a rival might gain a foothold in some far-off country, and in almost every
case the alignment of that country didn't matter to the larger rivalry anyway. Going down that
road again means fueling more civil wars, abetting more authoritarianism and atrocities, and
ultimately "losing" the country forever when the people have finally had enough of the
repression and corruption that are typical of these client governments.
Brands strives mightily to make these covert operations seem more valuable than they were.
He even goes so far as to say this:
Without covert action, America might not have won the Cold War.
It is impossible to know for sure how things would have turned out if the U.S. had not done
these things, but this doesn't make much sense. Toppling minor governments and stoking civil
wars in far-flung countries had no appreciable effect on the USSR, and they are not why the
Soviet Union collapsed. The tragedy of the Cold War is that the USSR was going to implode
because of the failings of its own system, but U.S. policies were based on the false assumption
that it was a juggernaut that had to be combated everywhere. The U.S. backed a lot of ugly
armed groups over the decades in the belief that engaging in these proxy wars mattered greatly
to the outcome of the rivalry with Moscow, but in the end they proved to be strategically
irrelevant. Whatever form U.S.-China rivalry takes in the years to come, we should not repeat
those mistakes.
One is sometimes pressed to wonder just how little the rest of the world sees between
Washington, Moscow, or Peking (pardon me, Beijing ) when it comes to leaving them
the hell alone. Especially when we consider, the Brits were very good at playing the Great
Game, and the US fumbles almost every time we sally forth. (Must have been the public
school tradition, or something.)
"The cost to the people in the affected country is quite high, and that ought to be part of
any calculation." This is definitely out of the equation for those interventionists. From
the perspective of an ordinary third-world citizen (me included), to think the US
government and its hawks have my best (or for that matter better than my own, perhaps
problematic, government) interest in mind is beyond naivety.
"Hal Brands that the U.S. might get back into the business of covertly overthrowing
foreign governments"
Could some one please point to where the US ever stopped over throwing
governments. It is currently in the middle of over throwing the
governments of Iran, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela etc, etc. The
US didn't stop trying. It just switched tactics to arming, training and
paying terrorist groups to do the heavy lifting.
DL wrote: Overthrowing Mossadegh ended up being one of the most short-sighted instances of
U.S. interference of the entire Cold War.
And it was wrong. It is WRONG to bring down a government just because you want to steal
their natural resources. That used to be a US talking point. Then, whoosh, we are an Empire
and are trying to imitate imperial Britain.
This is well said. Yes, coups are bad realpolitik in both the short term and the long term.
Yes, despite fancy accounting, they are not at all cost effective.
But they are also morally wrong. And it is not the job of the clandestine services to
determine the morality, they are simply tools that carry out the subconscious animus and
power dynamics of the American politics.
It is the job of the politicians who do the work of staffing the upper echelons of the
services and then manage the tone of the nation to make sure we don't do things that are
both stupid and morally wrong. And on this front, we are failing so miserably that it's
fair to despair. To point out Trump's failings as a leader, both in terms of his native
abilities and his native moral center, is old news. But there ya go. Here we are.
The problem is that the neocons define morality as whatever benefits the U.S., other
countries be damned. They completely reject the idea of a broader-based morality or foreign
relations founded on mutual respect. This zero sum way of looking at the world ends up
poisoning relations even when there is little or no benefit to the U.S.. It also means that
they see the U.N. as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a tool of diplomacy.
They may have a point, and the U.S. sometimes needs to play hardball, but needlessly
antagonizing other countries costs the U.S. influence. That's bad for business.
I don't think the foreign policy realists or America Firsters are really any more moral
than the neo-cons, at least not when a country falls within what they feel is America's
natural sphere of influence or threatens American Capital's interests in their country. The
neo-cons just have a more grandiose vision of America's role in the world, and pretensions
to a different morality.
That may have been a US talking point at one time, but decades of gunboat diplomacy and
sending in the marines says it was a crock and that the US had no problem at all stealing
the natural resources of other countries. The main difference before and after World War II
was that the behavior we used to mostly limit to the Western Hemisphere - with occasional
forays into the Pacific and the Pacific Rim - could now be exercised all over the world,
including in previously British, French, Italian, Dutch, Belgian and Japanese colonies and
spheres of influence, not to mention the broken remnants of Europe itself. Decades of
practice in Latin America and the Caribbean, not to mention Hawaii and the Philippines, had
prepared us all too well for "the American Century."
Some of these people have a disregard for human life that makes them worse than the most
cold hearted serial killer. But they have the ear of the most powerful people in the US.
My first reaction is why do want to go back to all these coups that might have worked 25%
but just as often blew up in our face back in the Cold War.
1) One thing to remember was the Soviet'Union was not effective with similar methods and
sap their nation resources even worse than the US did.
2) Even when the US 'lost' nations in the Cold War, it usually just made life worse for
the people. The Vietnam set that nation back generation and Cuba is still driving 1950s US
made cars.
3) These coups often ended in Mission Creep and along with the fears of another Cuba,
was the main reason we ended up at war with Vietnam.
4) I know you made this point, WE ARE NOT IN COLD WAR with China. There is a lot wrong
with China and my guess this virus spread to South America is going to very contentious
with SA nations and China in 6 - 12 months. This point can not be repeated enough.
6) The Domino Theory only worked once...And for reasons where our military or coups did
not play a role. Japan led the captialism in Asia and other Pacific Rim nations, including
China, followed.
On the other side, evidence has emerged that makes it clear there were organized efforts to
collude against candidate Donald Trump - and then President Trump. For example:
Anti-Russian Ukrainians allegedly helped coordinate and execute a campaign against Trump
in partnership with the Democratic National Committee and news reporters.
A Yemen-born ex-British spy reportedly delivered political opposition research against
Trump to reporters, Sen. John McCain, and the FBI; the latter of which used the material--in
part--to obtain wiretaps against one or more Trump-related associates.
There were orchestrated leaks of anti-Trump information and allegations to the press,
including by ex-FBI Director James Comey.
The U.S. intel community allegedly engaged in questionable surveillance practices and
politially-motivated "unmaskings" of U.S. citizens, including Trump officials.
Alleged conflicts of interests have surfaced regarding FBI officials who cleared Hillary
Clinton for mishandling classified information and who investigated Trump's alleged Russia
ties.
But it's not so easy to find a timeline pertinent to the investigations into these
events.
(Please note that nobody cited has been charged with wrongdoing or crimes, unless the charge
is specifically referenced. Temporal relationships are not necessarily evidence of a
correlation.)
"Collusion against Trump" Timeline2011
U.S. intel community vastly expands its surveillance authority, giving itself permission to
spy on Americans who do nothing more than "mention a foreign target in a single, discrete
communication." Intel officials also begin storing and entering into a searchable database
sensitive intelligence on U.S. citizens whose communications are accidentally or "incidentally"
captured during surveillance of foreign targets. Prior to this point, such intelligence was
supposed to be destroyed to protect the constitutional privacy rights the U.S. citizens.
However, it's required that names U.S. citizens be hidden or "masked" --even inside U.S. intel
agencies --to prevent abuse.
July 1, 2012: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton improperly uses unsecured, personal email
domain to email President Obama from Russia.
2013
June 2013: FBI interviews U.S. businessman Carter Page, who's lived and worked in Russia,
regarding his ongoing contacts with Russians. Page reportedly tells FBI agents their time would
be better spent investigating Boston Marathon bombing (which the FBI's Andrew McCabe helped
lead). Page later claims his remark prompts FBI retaliatory campaign against him. The FBI,
under McCabe, will later wiretap Page after Page becomes a Donald Trump campaign adviser.
FBI secretly records suspected Russian industrial spy Evgeny Buryakov . It's later
reported that Page helped FBI build the case.
Sept. 4, 2013: James Comey becomes FBI Director, succeeding Robert Mueller.
2014
Russia invades Ukraine. Ukraine steps up hiring of U.S. lobbyists to make its case against
Russia and obtain U.S. aid. Russia also continues its practice of using U.S. lobbyists.
Ukraine forms National Anti-Corruption Bureau as a condition to receive U.S. aid. The
National Anti-Corruption Bureau later signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI related to
Trump-Russia probe.
Ukrainian-American Alexandra Chalupa, a paid consultant for the Democratic National
Committee (DNC), begins researching lobbyist Paul
Manafort's Russia ties.
FBI investigates, and then wiretaps, Paul Manafort for allegedly not properly disclosing
Russia-related work. FBI fails to make a case, according to CNN, and discontinues wiretap.
August 2014: State Dept. turns over 15,000 pages of documents to Congressional Benghazi
committee, revealing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton used private server for
government email. Her mishandling of classified info on this private system becomes subject of
FBI probe.
2015
FBI opens
investigation into Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, including for donations from a
Chinese businessman and Clinton Foundation donor.
FBI official Andrew McCabe meets with Gov. McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally. Afterwards,
"McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated about $700,000 to Mr. McCabe's wife for her
campaign to become a Democrat state Senator in Virginia." The fact of the McAuliffe-related
donations to wife of FBI's McCabe, while FBI was investigating McAuliffe and Clinton later
becomes the subject of
conflict of interest inquiry by Inspector General.
Feb. 9, 2015: U.S. Senate forms Ukrainian caucus to further Ukrainian interests. Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.) is a member.
March 4, 2015: New York Times breaks news about Clinton's improper handling of classified
email as secretary of state.
In internal emails , Clinton campaign chairman (and
former Obama adviser) John Podesta suggests Obama withhold Clinton's emails from Congressional
Benghazi committee under executive privilege.
March 2015: Attorney General Loretta Lynch privately directs FBI Director James Comey to
call FBI Clinton probe a "matter" rather than an "investigation." Comey follows the
instruction, though he later testifies that it made him
"queasy."
March 7, 2015: President Obama says he first learned of Clinton's improper email practices
"through news reports." Clinton campaign staffers privately
contradict that claim emailing: "it looks like [President Obama] just said he found out
[Hillary Clinton] was using her personal email when he saw it on the news." Clinton aide Cheryl
Mills responds, "We need to clean this up, [President Obama] has emails from" Clinton's
personal account.
May 19, 2015: Justice Dept. Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik
emails
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta from a private Gmail account to give him a "heads ups"
involving Congressional questions about Clinton email.
Summer 2015: Democratic National Committee computers are hacked.
Sept. 2015: Glenn Simpson, co-founder of political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, is
hired by conservative website Washington Free Beacon to compile negative research on
presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Oct. 2015: President Obama uses a "confidentiality tradition" to keep his Benghazi emails
with Hillary Clinton secret.
Oct. 12, 2015: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at New York Field Office with Louis
Bladel.
Oct. 22, 2015: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
publicly states that Clinton is "not under criminal investigation."
Clinton testifies to House Benghazi committee.
Oct. 23, 2015: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta meets for dinner with small group of
friends including a top Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik.
Late 2015: Democratic operative Chalupa expands her
political opposition research about Paul Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. She
"occasionally shares her findings with officials from the Democratic National Committee and the
Clinton campaign."
Dec. 4, 2015: Donald Trump is beating his nearest Republican presidential competitor by 20
points in latest CNN poll .
Dec. 9, 2015: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at Washington Field Office with Charles
Kable.
Dec. 23, 2015: FBI Director Comey
names Bill Priestap as assistant director of Counterintelligence Division.
2016
Obama officials vastly expand their searches through NSA database for Americans and the
content of their communications. In 2013, there were 9,600 searches involving 195 Americans.
But in 2016, there are 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans.
Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr
meets with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born ex-British spy leading anti-Trump
political opposition research project.
January 2016: Democratic operative Ukrainian-American Chalupa tells a
senior Democratic National Committee official that she feels there's a Russia connection with
Trump.
Jan. 29, 2016: FBI Director Comey promotes
Andrew McCabe to FBI Deputy Director.
McCabe takes lead on Clinton probe even though his wife received nearly $700,000 in campaign
donations through Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, who's also under FBI investigation.
March 2016: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's email gets hacked.
Carter Page is named
as one of the Trump campaign's foreign policy advisers.
March 2, 2016: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of Intelligence Division of Washington Field Office with Gerald Roberts,
Jr.
March 11, 2016: Russian Evgeny Buryakovwhich pleads guilty to spying in FBI case that Carter
Page reportedly assisted with.
March 25, 2016: Ukrainian-American operative for Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chalupa
meets with top Ukrainian officials at Ukrainian Embassy in Washington D.C. to "expose ties
between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia," according to Politico. Chalupa
previously worked for the Clinton administration.
Ukrainian embassy proceeds to work "directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and
Russia to point them in the right directions," according
to an embassy official (though other officials later deny engaging in election-related
activities.)
March 29, 2016: Trump campaign hires Paul Manafort as manager of July Republican
convention.
March 30, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa briefs
Democratic National Committee (DNC) staff on Russia ties to Paul Manafort and Trump.
With "DNC's encouragement," Chalupa asks Ukrainian embassy to arrange meeting with Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko to discuss Manafort's lobbying for Ukraine's former president Viktor
Yanukovych. The embassy declines to arrange meeting but becomes "helpful" in trading info and
leads.
Ukrainian embassy officials and Democratic operative Chalupa "coordinat[e] an investigation
with the Hillary team" into Paul Manafort, according to a source in Politico. This effort
reportedly includes working with U.S. media.
April 2016: There's a second breach of Democratic National Committee computers.
Washington Free Beacon
breaks off deal with Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS for political opposition research against
Trump.
Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee lawyer Mark Elias and his law firm,
Perkins Coie, hire Fusion GPS for anti-Trump political research project.
Ukrainian member of parliament Olga Bielkova reportedly seeks meetings with
five dozen members of U.S. Congress and reporters including former New York Times reporter Judy
Miller, David Sanger of New York Times, David Ignatius of Washington Post, and Washington Post
editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.
April 5, 2016: Convicted spy Buryakov is turned over to Russia.
Week of April 6, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa and office of Rep.
Mary Kaptur (D-Ohio), co-chair of Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, discuss possible
congressional investigation or hearing on Paul Manafort-Russia "by September."
Chalupa begins working with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, according to her later
account.
April 10, 2016: In national TV interview, President Obama states that Clinton did not intend
to harm national security when she mishandled classified emails. FBI Director James Comey later
concludes that Clinton should not face charges because she did not intend to harm national
security.
Around this time, the FBI begins drafting Comey's remarks closing Clinton email
investigation, though Clinton had not yet been interviewed.
April 12, 2016:" Ukrainian parliament member Olga Bielkova and a colleague meet"
with Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer with the McCain Institute. Bielkova also meets
with Liz Zentos of Obama's National Security Council, and State Department official Michael
Kimmage.
April 26, 2016: Investigative reporter Michael Isikoff publishes
story on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort's business dealings with a Russian oligarch.
April 27, 2016 : The BBC publishes
an article titled, "Why Russians Love Donald Trump."
April 28, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa is invited to discuss her
research about Paul Manafort with 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine at Library of
Congress for Open World Leadership Center, a U.S. congressional agency. Chalupa invites
investigative reporter Michael Isikoff to "connect(s) him to the Ukrainians."
After the event, reporter Isikoff accompanies Chalupa to Ukrainian embassy reception.
May 3, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa emails Democratic National Committee (DNC)
that she'll share
sensitive info about Paul Manafort "offline" including "a big Trump component that will hit in
next few weeks."
May 4, 2016: Trump locks up Republican nomination.
May 19, 2016: Paul Manafort is named Trump campaign chair.
May 23, 2016: FBI probe into Virginia governor and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe
becomes public. (McAuliffe is ultimately not charged with a crime.)
Justice Department Inspector General confirms it's looking into FBI's Andrew McCabe for
alleged conflicts of interest in handling of Clinton and Gov. McAuliffe probes in light of
McAuliffe directing campaign donations to McCabe's wife.
FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who are reportedly having an illicit affair, text
each other that Trump's ascension in the campaign will bring "pressure to finish" Clinton
probe.
Nellie Ohr, wife of Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr and former CIA
worker, goes on the payroll of Fusion GPS and assists with anti-Trump political opposition
research. Her husband, Bruce, reportedly fails to disclose her specific employer and work in
his Justice Dept. conflict of interest disclosures.
June 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson "
hires Yemen-born ex-British spy Christopher
Steele for anti-Trump political opposition research project."Steele uses info from Russian
sources "close to Putin" to compile unverified "dossier" later provided to reporters and FBI,
which the FBI uses to obtain secret wiretap.
The
Guardian and Heat Street report that the FBI applied for a FISA warrant in June 2016 to
"monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials"
but that the "initial request was denied."
June 7, 2016: Hillary Clinton locks up the Democrat nomination.
June 9, 2016: Meeting in Trump Tower includes Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign chair Paul
Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner with Russian lawyer who said he has political
opposition research on Clinton. (No research was ultimately provided.) According to
CNN , the FBI has not yet restarted a wiretap against Manafort but will soon do so.
June 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) tells employees that its computer system
has been hacked. DNC blames Russia but refuses to let FBI examine its systems.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" publishes first hacked document from Clinton campaign chair
John Podesta.
June 17, 2016: Washington Post publishes front page story linking Trump to Russia: "Inside
Trump's Financial Ties to Russia and His Unusual Flattery of Vladimir Putin."
June 20, 2016: Christopher Steele
proposes taking some of Fusion GPS' research about Trump to FBI.
June 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing embarrassing, hacked emails from Clinton campaign
and Democratic National Committee.
June 27, 2016: Attorney General Loretta Lynch meets
privately with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona.
Late June 2016: DCLeaks website begins publishing Democratic National Committee emails.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI and
will later publicly release a "ledger" implicating Paul Manafort in allegedly improper
payments.
June 30, 2016: FBI circulates internal draft of public remarks for FBI Director Comey to
announce closing of Clinton investigation. It refers to Mrs. Clinton's "extensive" use of her
personal email, including "from the territory of sophisticated adversaries," and a July 1, 2012
email to President Obama from Russia. The draft concludes it's possible that hostile actors
gained access to Clinton's email account.
Comey's remarks are revised to replace reference to "the President" with the phrase:
"another senior government official." (That reference, too, is removed from the final
draft.)
Attorney General Lynch tells FBI she plans to publicly announce that
she'll accept whatever recommendation FBI Director Comey makes regarding charges against
Clinton.
July 2016: Ukraine minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov attacks Trump and Trump
campaign adviser Paul Manafort on Twitter and Facebook, calling Trump "an even bigger danger to
the US than terrorism."
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk writes on Facebook that Trump has
"challenged the very values of the free world."
Carter Page travels to Russia to give
a university commencement address. (Fusion GPS political opposition research would later quote
Russian sources as saying Page met with Russian officials, which Page denies under oath and is
not proven.)
One-time CIA operative Stefan Halper reportedly begins meetings with Trump advisers Carter
Page and George Papadopoulos, secretly gathering information for the FBI. These contacts begin
"prior to the date FBI Director Comey later claimed the Russian investigation began."
July 1, 2016: Under fire for meeting with former President Clinton amid the probe into his
wife, Attorney General Lynch publicly states she'll " accept
whatever FBI Director Comey recommends" without interfering.
FBI official Lisa Page texts her boyfriend, FBI official Peter Strzok, sarcastically
commenting that Lynch's proclamation is "a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges
will be brought."
Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he wants
to discuss "our favourite business tycoon!" (apparently referencing Trump.)
July 2, 2016: FBI official Peter Strzok and other agents interview Clinton. They don't
record the interview. Two potential subjects of the investigation, Cheryl Mills and Heather
Samuelson, are allowed to attend as Clinton's lawyers.
July 5, 2016: FBI Director Comey recommends no charges against Clinton, though he concludes
she's been extremely careless in mishandling of classified information. Comey claims he hasn't
coordinated or reviewed his statement in any way with Attorney General Lynch's Justice
Department or other government branches. "They do not know what I am about to say," says
Comey.
Fusion GPS' Steele, an ex-British spy,
approaches FBI at an office in Rome with allegations against Trump, according to
Congressional investigators. Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr schedules a Skype conference call
with Steele.
Days after closing Clinton case, FBI official Peter Strzok signs document opening FBI probe
into Trump-Russia collusion.
July 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) aide Seth Rich, reportedly a Bernie
Sanders supporter, is shot twice in the back and killed. Police suspect a bungled robbery
attempt, though nothing was apparently stolen. Conspiracy theorists speculate that Rich "not
the Russians" had stolen DNC emails after he learned the DNC was unfairly favoring Clinton. The
murder remains unsolved.
July 2016: Trump adviser Carter Page makes a business trip to Russia.
Obama national security adviser Susan Rice begins to show increased interest in National
Security Agency (NSA) intelligence material including "unmasked Americans" identities,
according to news reports referring to White House logs.
July 18-21, 2016: Republican National Convention
Late July 2016 : FBI agent Peter Strzok opens counterintelligence investigation based on
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
Democratic operative and Ukrainian-American Chalupa leaves the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) to work full-time on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia; and provides
off-the-record guidance to "a lot of journalists."
July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing hacked Democratic National Committee emails.
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange denies the email source is Russian.
July 25-28, 2016 : Democratic National Convention
July 30, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with ex-British spy Christopher
Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Ohr brings his wife, Nellie, who -- like Steele --
works at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia oppo research project. Ohr
calls FBI Deputy Director McCabe.
July 31, 2016 : FBI's Peter Strzok formally begins
counterintelligence investigation regarding Russia and Trump. It's dubbed "Crossfire
Hurricane."
Aug. 3, 2016: Ohr reportedly meets with
McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page to discuss Russia-Trump collusion allegations relayed by
ex-British spy Steele. Ohr will later testify to Congress that he considered Steele's
information uncorroborated hearsay and that he told FBI agents Steele appeared motivated by a
"desperate" desire to keep Trump from becoming president.
Aug. 4, 2016: Ukrainian ambassador to U.S.
writes op-ed against Trump.
Aug. 8, 2016: FBI attorney Lisa Page texts her lover, FBI's head of Counterespionage Peter
Strzok,"[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Strzok replies,"No. No
he won't. We'll stop it."
Aug. 14, 2016: New York Times breaks story about cash payments made a decade ago to Paul
Manafort by pro-Russia interests in Ukraine. The ledger was released and publicized by the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Aug. 15, 2016: CNN reports the FBI is conducting an inquiry into Trump campaign chair Paul
Manafort's payments from pro-Russia interests in Ukraine in 2007 and 2009.
After a meeting discussing the election in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's office, FBI's
Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI attorney Lisa Page referring to the possibility
of Trump getting elected. "We can't take that risk," he writes. And they speak of needing an
"insurance policy."
Aug. 19, 2016: Paul Manafort resigns as Trump campaign chairman.
Ukrainian parliament member Sergii Leshchenko
holds news conference to draw attention to Paul Manafort and Trump's "pro-Russia" ties.
Aug. 22, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson who
identifies several "possible intermediaries" between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Late August 2016:
Reportedly working for the FBI, one-time CIA operative Professor Halper meets with Trump
campaign co-chair Sam Clovis offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, according to
The Washington Post. Halper would later offer to hire Carter Page.
Approx. Aug. 2016: FBI initiates a new
wiretap against ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, according to CNN, which extends at
least through early 2017.
Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Steele becomes FBI source and uses associate deputy attorney
general Bruce Ohr as point of contact. Steele tells Ohr that he's "desperate that Donald Trump
not get elected."
President Obama
warns Russia not to interfere in the U.S. election
Sept. 2, 2016: FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text that "[President Obama] wants
to know everything we're doing."
Sept. 13, 2016 : The nonprofit First Draft, funded by Google, whose parent company is run by
major Hillary Clinton supporter and donor Eric Schmidt, announces initiative to tackle "fake
news." It appears to be the first use of the phrase in its modern context.
Sept. 15, 2016: Clinton computer manager Paul Combetta appears before House Oversight
Committee but refuses to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.
Sept. 19, 2016: At UN General Assembly meeting, Ukrainian President Poroshenko meets with
Hillary Clinton.
Mid-to-late Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Christopher Steele's FBI contact tells him the agency
wants to see his opposition research "right away" and offers
to pay him $50,000, according to the New York Times, for solid corroboration of his salacious,
unverified claims. Steele
flies to Rome , Italy to meet with FBI and provide a "full briefing."
Sept. 22, 2016: Clinton computer aide Brian Pagliano is held in contempt of Congress for
refusing to comply with subpoena.
Sept. 23, 2016: It's revealed that Justice Department has granted five Clinton officials
immunity from prosecution: former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, State Department staffers John
Bentel and Heather Samuelson, and Clinton computer workers Paul Combetta and Brian
Pagliano.
Yahoo News publishes
report by Michael Isikoff about Carter Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. (The article is
apparently based on leaked info from Fusion GPS Steele anti-Trump "dossier" political
opposition research.)
Sept. 25, 2016 : Trump associate Carter Page writes letter
to FBI Comey objecting to the so-called "witch hunt" involving him.
Sept. 26, 2016 : Obama administration asks secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC) court to allow National Counter Terrorism Center to access sensitive, "unmasked" intel
on Americans acquired by FBI and NSA. (The Court later approves the request.)
FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page that Carter Page's letter (dated the day before)
"...provides us a pretext to interview."
Sept. 27, 2016: Justice Department Assistant Attorney General of National Security Division
John Carlin announces he's stepping down. He was former chief of staff and senior counsel to
former FBI director Robert Mueller.
End of Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele
meet with reporters, including New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker
and CNN or ABC. One meeting is at office of Democratic National Committee general counsel.
Early October 2016: Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born author of anti-Trump
"dossier," meets in New
York with David Corn, Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones.
According to
The Guardian, the FBI submits a more narrowly focused FISA wiretap request to replace one
turned down in June to monitor four Trump associates.
Oct. 3, 2016: FBI seizes computers belonging to Anthony Weiner, who is accused of sexually
texting an underage girl. Weiner is married to top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. FBI learns
there are Clinton emails on Weiner's laptop but waits several weeks before
notifying Congress and reopening investigation.
Oct. 4, 2016: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of Counterintelligence Division, New York Field Office with Charles
McGonigal.
Oct. 7, 2016: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Department of Homeland
Security issue statement saying Russian government is responsible for hacking Democrat emails
to disrupt 2016 election.
Oct. 13, 2016: President Obama gives a speech in support of the crackdown on "fake news" by
stating that somebody needs to step in and "curate" information in the "wild, wild West media
environment."
Oct. 14, 2016: FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page discussing talking points to convince FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe to persuade a high-ranking Dept. of Justice official to sign a warrant
to wiretap Trump associate Carter Page. The email subject line is "Crossfire FISA." "Crossfire
Hurricane" was one of the code names for four separate investigations the FBI conducted related
to Russia matters in the 2016 election.
"At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him," Strzok emailed Lisa Page less
than four weeks before Election Day.
Mid-Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again
briefs reporters about Trump political opposition research. The reporters are from the New
York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News.
Oct. 16, 2016: Mary McCord is named Assistant Attorney General for Justice Department
National Security Division.
Oct. 18, 2016: President Obama
advises Trump to "stop whining" after Trump tweeted the election could be rigged. "There is
no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even you could even rig
America's elections," said Obama. He also calls Trump's "flattery" of Russian president Putin
"unprecedented."
In FBI emails, head of counterespionage Peter Strzok and his mistress FBI lawyer Lisa Page
discuss rushing approval for a FISA warrant for a Russia-related investigation code-named
"Dragon."
Oct. 19, 2016: Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes his last memo for anti-Trump
"dossier" political opposition research provided to FBI. The FBI reportedly authorizes payment
to Steele. Fusion GPS has reportedly paid him $160,000.
Approx. Oct. 21, 2016: For the second time in several months, Justice Department and FBI
apply to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy
Attorney General Sally Yates sign the application. This time, the request is approved based on
new FBI "evidence" including parts of Fusion GPS' "Steele dossier" and Michael Isikoff Yahoo
article. The FBI
doesn't tell the court that Trump's political opponent, the Clinton campaign and the
Democratic National Committee, funded the "evidence."
Oct. 24, 2016: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of FBI Director James Comey and editor-in-chief of
the blog Lawfare, writes
of the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump wins. It's the same phrase FBI officials
Lisa Page and Peter Strzok had used when discussing the possibility of a Trump win.
Obama intel officials orally inform Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of an earlier
Inspector General review uncovering their "significant noncompliance" in following proper "702"
procedures safeguarding the National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence database with sensitive
info on US citizens.
Late Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again
briefs reporter from Mother Jones by Skype about Trump political opposition research.
Oct. 26, 2016: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court holds hearing with Obama intel
officials over their "702" surveillance violations. The judge criticizes
NSA for "institutional lack of candor" and states "this is a very serious Fourth Amendment
issue."
Oct. 28, 2016: FBI Director Comey notifies Congress that he's reopening Clinton probe due to
Clinton emails found on Anthony Wiener laptop several weeks earlier.
Oct. 30, 2016: Mother Jones writer David Corn is first to report on the anti-Trump
"dossier," quoting unidentified former spy, presumed to be Christopher Steele. FBI general
counsel James Baker had reportedly been in touch with Corn but Corn later denies Baker was the
leaker.
FBI terminates its relationship with Steele because Steele had
leaked his FBI involvement in Mother Jones article.
Steele reportedly maintains backchannel contact with Justice Dept. through Deputy Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr.
Oct. 31, 2016: New York Times
reports FBI is investigating Trump and found no illicit connections to Russia.
Nov. 1, 2016: FBI concludes ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled anti-Trump
"dossier" using Russian sources, leaked to press and is not suitable for use as a confidential
source. However, Steele continues to "help," according to Jan. 31, 2017 texts to Justice Dept.
official Bruce Ohr.
Nov. 3, 2016: FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI's Peter Strzok about her concerns that
Clinton might lose and Trump would become president: "The [New York Times] probability numbers
are dropping every day. I'm scared for our organization."
Nov. 6, 2016: FBI Director Comey tells Congress that Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner
computer do not change earlier conclusion: she should not be charged.
Nov. 8, 2016: Trump is elected president.
Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice's interest in NSA materials accelerates,
according to later news reports.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr
meets with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson shortly after election.
The FBI interviews Ohr about his ongoing contacts with Fusion GPS.
Nov. 9, 2016: An unnamed FBI attorney (later quoted in Dept. of Justice Inspector General
probe) texts another FBI employee, "I'm just devastated...I just can't imagine the systematic
disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA is gone. Who knows if the
rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going
to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids.
And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to
fight this again. Also Pence is stupid....Plus, my god damned name is all over the legal
documents investigating [Trump's] staff."
Nov. 10, 2016 : Emails
imply top FBI officials, including Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and Bill Priestap engaged in
a new mission to "scrub" or research lists of associates of President-elect Trump, looking for
potential "derogatory" information.
President Obama
meets with President-elect Trump in the White House and reportedly advises Trump not to
hire Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Nov. 2016: National Security Agency Mike Rogers
meets with president-elect Trump and is criticized for "not telling the Obama
administration."
Nov. 17, 2016: Trump
moves his Friday presidential team meetings out of Trump Tower.
Nov. 18, 2016: Trump names Flynn his national security adviser. Over the next few weeks,
Flynn communicates with numerous international leaders.
Nov. 18-20, 2016: Sen. John McCain and his longtime adviser, David Kramer--an ex-U.S. State
Dept. official--attend a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia where former UK ambassador
to Russia Sir Andrew Wood
tells them about the Fusion GPS anti-Trump dossier. (Kramer is affiliated with the anti-Russia "Ukraine
Today" media organization). They discuss confirming the info has reached top levels of FBI for
action.
Nov. 21, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr, works for Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates, meets with FBI officials including Peter Strzok, Strzok's girlfriend--FBI attorney Lisa
Page, and another agent. Ohr's notes indicate the FBI "may go back to [ex-British spy] Chris
Steele" of Fusion GPS just 20 days after dismissing him.
Nov. 28, 2016: Sen. McCain associate David Kramer flies to London to meet Christopher Steele
for a briefing on the anti-Trump research. Afterward, Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson gives Sen.
McCain a copy of the "dossier." Steele also
passes anti-Trump info to top UK government official in charge of national security. Sen.
McCain soon arranges a meeting with FBI Director Comey.
Late Nov. 2016: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr officially tells
FBI about his contacts with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele and about Ohr's wife's contract work
for Fusion GPS.
Nov. 30, 2016 : UN Ambassador Samantha Power makes request to unmask the name of Trump
National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was "incidentally" captured by intel
surveillance.
Dec. 2016: Text messages between FBI officials Strzok and Page are later said to be "lost"
due to a technical glitch beginning at this point.
Dec. 2, 2016: UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper request to unmask the name of Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,
who was "incidentally" captured by intel surveillance.
Dec. 6, 2016: Two more Obama administration officials request to unmask the name of
Flynn.
Dec. 7, 2016 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.
Dec. 8 or 9, 2016: Sen. John McCain
meets with FBI Director Comey at FBI headquarters and
hands over Fusion GPS anti-Trump research, elevating the FBI's investigation into the
matter. The FBI compiles a classified two-page summary and attaches it to intel briefing note
on Russian cyber-interference in election for
President Obama .
Hillary Clinton makes a public appearance denouncing "fake news."
Hillary Clinton and Democratic operative David Brock of Media Matters announces he's leaving
board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), one of his many
propaganda and liberal advocacy groups, to focus on "fake news" effort.
Brock later claims credit, privately to donors, for convincing Facebook to crack down on
conservative fake news.
Dec. 14, 2017 : There are
10 more requests to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence, including two by Power, CIA
Director Brennan, and six officials from the Treasury Dept.
Dec. 15, 2016: Obama intel officials "incidentally" spy on Trump officials meeting with the
United Arab Emirates crown prince in Trump Tower. This is taken to mean the government was
wiretapping the prince and "happened to capture" Trump officials communicating with him at
Trump Tower. Identities of Americans accidentally captured in such surveillance are strictly
protected or "masked" inside intel agencies for constitutional privacy reasons.
Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice
secretly "unmasks" names of the Trump officials, officially revealing their identities.
They reportedly include: Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Director of National Intelligence Clapper expands rules to allow the National Security
Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate classified surveillance material within the government. The
same day,
17 Obama officials request the unmasking of Lt. Gen. Flynn in intelligence.
Dec. 16, 2016 : Five more Obama officials request unmasking of intelligence materials
regarding Lt. Gen. Flynn.
Dec. 23, 2016 : Power request another Flynn unmasking.
Dec. 28, 2016 :
Lt. Gen. Flynn speaks with Russia ambassador.
Clapper and the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey request Flynn unmasking.
Dec. 29, 2016: President Obama imposes sanctions against Russia for its alleged election
interference.
President-elect Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
speaks with Russian Ambassador to U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The calls are wiretapped by U.S.
intelligence and later leaked to the
press.
State Department
releases 2,800 work-related emails from Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, found
by FBI on laptop computer of Abedin's husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner.
2017
Jan. 2017: According to CNN: a
wiretap reportedly continues against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, including
times he speaks to Trump, meaning U.S. intel officials could have "accidentally" captured
Trump's communications.
Justice Dept. Inspector General confirms it's investigating several aspects of FBI and
Justice Department actions during Clinton probe.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies to Congress that Russia interfered
in U.S. elections by spreading fake news on social media.
Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik, who "tipped off" Hillary Clinton campaign regarding
Congressional questions about Clinton's email, leaves government work for private practice.
The FBI interviews a main source of Christopher Steele's "dossier" and learns the
information was merely bar room gossip and rumor never meant to be taken as fact or submitted
to the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Carter Page. (The FBI
does not notify the court and applies for, and receives, another wiretap against Page).
Early Jan. 2017: FBI renews
wiretap against Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
again sign the application.
Jan. 3, 2017: Obama Attorney General Lynch signs rules Director of National Intelligence
Clapper expanded Dec. 15 allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate
surveillance within the government.
Jan. 5, 2017: Intelligence Community leadership including FBI Director Comey, Yates, CIA
Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, provides classified
briefing to President Obama, Vice President Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice on
alleged Russia hacking during 2016 campaign, according to notes later written by national
security adviser Susan Rice.
After briefing, according notes made later by Rice, President Obama convenes Oval Office
meeting with her, FBI Director Comey, Vice President Biden and Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates. The "Steele dossier" is reportedly discussed. Also reportedly discussed: Trump National
Security Adviser Flynn's talks with Russia's ambassador.
Jan. 6, 2017: FBI Director Comey and other Intel leaders meet with President-Elect Trump and
his national security team at Trump Tower in New York to brief them on alleged Russian efforts
to interfere in the election.
Later, Obama national security adviser Susan Rice would write herself an email stating that
President Obama suggested they hold back on providing Trump officials with certain info for
national security reasons.
After Trump team briefing, FBI Director Comey meets alone with Trump to "brief him" on
Fusion GPS Steele allegations "to alert the incoming President to the existence of this
material," even though it was salacious and unverified. Comey later says Director of National
Intelligence Clapper asked him (Comey) to do the briefing personally.
Jan. 7, 2017 : Clapper and two other Obama administration officials request Flynn
unmasking.
Jan. 10, 2017: The 35-page Fusion GPS anti-Trump "dossier" is leaked to the media and
published. It reveals that sources of the unverified info are Russians close to President
Putin.
Email written by FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
indicates the FBI has been given the anti-Trump "dossier" by at least 3 different
anti-Trump sources.
A CIA official makes a Flynn unmasking request.
Jan. 11, 2017 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.
Jan. 12, 2017: Obama administration finalizes new rules allowing NSA to spread "certain
intel to" other U.S. intel agencies without normal privacy protections.
Justice Dept. inspector general announces review of alleged misconduct by FBI Director Comey
and other matters related to FBI's Clinton probe as well as FBI leaks.
Vice President Joe Biden and the Treasury Secretary request the unmasking of Flynn in
intelligence communications.
Someone leaks to to David Ignatius of the Washington Post that Trump National Security
Adviser Flynn had called Russia's ambassador. "What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the US
sanctions?" asked Ignatius in the article.
Jan. 13, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee
opens investigation into Russia and U.S. political campaign officials.
Jan. 15, 2017: After leaks about Flynn's call with Russia's ambassador, Vice President-elect
Mike Pence tells the press that Flynn did not discuss U.S. sanctions on the call.
Jan. 20, 2017: Trump becomes president.
Fifteen minutes after Trump becomes president, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice
emails memo to herself purporting to summarize the Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with President
Obama and other top officials. She states that Obama instructed the group to investigate "by
the book" and asked them to be mindful whether there were certain things that "could not be
fully shared with the incoming administration."
Jan. 22, 2017: Intel info leaks to Wall Street Journal which reports
"US counterintelligence agents have investigated communications" between Trump aide Gen.
Michael Flynn and Russia ambassador to the U.S. Kislyak to determine if any laws were
violated.
Jan. 23, 2017: Leak to Washington Post falsely claims Trump National Security Adviser Flynn
is not the subject of an investigation.
Jan. 24, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates sends two FBI agents, including Peter
Strzok, to the White House to question Gen. Flynn. FBI Director Comey later takes credit for
"sending a couple of guys" to interview Flynn, circumventing normal processes.
Notes kept
hidden until May 2020 show FBI officials discussing whether the goal of the meeting with Flynn
was to "get him to lie" so that he would be fired or prosecuted.
Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a high-ranking colleague go to White
House to tell counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied to Pence about the content of his talks
with Russian ambassador and "the underlying conduct that Gen. Flynn had engaged in was
problematic in and of itself."
Jan. 27, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates again visits the White House.
Jan. 31, 2017: President Trump fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refuses
to enforce his temporary travel ban on Muslims coming into U.S. from certain countries.
Ex-British spy Christopher Steele texts Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr who worked for
Yates: "B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re- SY."
Dana Boente becomes Acting Attorney General. (It's later revealed that Boente signed at
least one wiretap application against former Trump adviser Carter Page.)
Feb. 2, 2017: It's reported
that five men employed by House of Representatives Democrats, including leader Debbie Wasserman
Schultz (D-Florida), are under criminal investigation for allegedly "accessing House IT systems
without lawmakers' knowledge." Suspects include three Awan brothers "who managed office
information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and
other lawmakers."
Feb. 3, 2017: A Russian tech mogul named in the Steele "dossier" files defamation lawsuits
against BuzzFeed in the U.S. and Christopher Steele in the U.K. over the dossier's claims he
interfered in U.S. elections.
Feb. 8, 2017: Jeff Sessions becomes Attorney General and Dana Boente moves to Deputy
Attorney General.
Feb. 9, 2017: News of FBI wiretaps capturing Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen.
Michael Flynn speaking with Russia's ambassador is leaked to the press. New York Times and
Washington Post report Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions, despite his earlier denials. The Post
also reports the FBI "found nothing illicit" in the talks. The Post headline in an article by
Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reads, "National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed
Sanctions with Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say."
Feb. 13, 2017 : Washington Post
reports Justice Dept. has opened a "Logan Act" violation investigation against Trump
national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Feb. 14, 2017: New York Times reports
that FBI had told Obama officials there was no "quid pro quo" (promise of a deal in exchange
for some action) discussed between Gen. Flynn and Russian ambassador Kislyak.
Gen. Flynn resigns, allegedly acknowledging he misled vice president Mike Pence about the
content of his discussions with Russia.
Comey says that, in a meeting, Trump states, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting
this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." Comey says he
replies "he is a good guy." Trump later takes issue with Comey's characterization of the
meeting.
Feb. 15, 2017 : NPR
reports on "official transcripts of Flynn's calls" (saying they show no wrongdoing but that
doesn't rule out illegal activity).
Feb. 17, 2017: Washington Post reports that "Flynn told FBI he did not discuss sanctions"
with Russia ambassador and that "Lying to the FBI is a felony offense."
Feb. 24, 2017 : FBI interviews Flynn, according to later testimony from Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates.
March 1, 2017: Washington Post reports Attorney General Jeff Sessions has met with Russian
ambassador twice in the recent past (as did many Democrat and Republican officials). His
critics say that contradicts his earlier testimony to Congress. The article by Adam Entous,
Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller raises the idea of a special counsel to investigate.
March 2017: FBI Director James Comey
gives private briefings to members of Congress and reportedly says he does not believe Gen.
Flynn lied to FBI.
House Intelligence Committee requests list of unmasking requests Obama officials made. The
intel agencies do not provide the information, prompting a June 1 subpoena.
March 2, 2017: Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses himself from Russia-linked
investigations.
Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, becomes Acting Attorney General for Russia
Probe. It's later revealed that Rosenstein singed at least one wiretap application against
former Trump adviser Carter Page.
March 4, 2017: President Trump tweets: "Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire
tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!"
and "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election
process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"
March 10, 2017: Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, steps forward to support
Trump's wiretapping claim, revealing that the Obama administration intel officials recorded his
own communications with a Libyan official in Spring 2011.
March 14, 2017 : FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI official Peter Strzok: "Finally two pages
away from finishing [All the President's Men]. Did you know the president resigns in the end?!"
Strzok replies, "What?!?! God, that we should be so lucky. [smiley face emoji]"
March 20, 2017 : FBI Director Comey tells House Intelligence Committee he has "no
information that supports" the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by
the prior administration. "We have looked carefully inside the FBI," Comey says. "(T)he answer
is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components."
FBI Director Comey tells Congress there is "salacious and unverified" material in the Fusion
GPS dossier used by FBI, in part, to obtain Carter Page wiretap. (Under FBI "Woods Procedures,"
only facts carefully verified by the FBI are allowed to be presented to court to obtain
wiretaps.)
March 22, 2017: Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) publicly
announces he's seen evidence of Trump associates being "incidentally" surveilled by Obama intel
officials; and their names being "unmasked" and illegally leaked. Nunes briefs President Trump
and holds a news conference. He's criticized for doing so. An ethics investigation is opened
into his actions but later clears him of wrongdoing.
In an interview on PBS, former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice responds to Nunes
allegations by stating: "I know nothing about this, I really don't know to what Chairman Nunes
was referring." (She later acknowledges unmasking names of Trump associates.)
March 2017: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) writes Justice Dept. accusing Fusion GPS of
acting as an agent for Russia "without properly registering" due to its pro-Russia effort to
kill a law allowing sanctions against foreign human rights violators. Fusion GPS denies the
allegations.
March 24, 2017: Fusion GPS declines to answer Sen. Grassley's questions or document
requests.
March 27, 2017: Former Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas admits she encouraged
Obama and Congressional officials to "get as much information as they can" about Russia and
Trump officials before inauguration. "That's why you have the leaking," she told MSNBC.
Early April, 2017: A third FBI wiretap on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page is
approved.
Again, FBI Director James Comey, and acting attorney general Dana Boente sign the application.
Trump officials including Mike Pompeo at the CIA are now leading the intel agencies during the
wiretap.
April 3, 2017: Multiple news reports state that Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice
had requested and reviewed "unmasked" intelligence on Trump associates whose information was
"incidentally" collected by intel agencies.
April 4, 2017: Obama former National Security Adviser Rice admits, in an interview, that she
asked to reveal names of U.S. citizens previously masked in intel reports. She says her
motivations were not political. When asked if she leaked names, Rice states, "I leaked nothing
to nobody."
April 6, 2017: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia
part of his committee's investigation.
April 11, 2017: FBI Director Comey
appoints Stephen Laycock as special agent in charge of Counterintelligence Division for
Washington Field Office.
Washington Post reports FBI secretly obtained wiretap against Trump campaign associate
Carter Page last summer. (Later, it's revealed the summer wiretap had been turned down, but a
subsequent application was approved in October.)
April 20, 2017: Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord resigns as acting head of
Justice Dept. National Security Division. She'd led probes of Russia interference in election
and Trump-Russia ties.
April 28, 2017: Dana Boente is appointed acting assistant attorney general for national
security division to replace Mary McCord. (Boente has signed one of the questioned wiretap
applications for Carter Page.)
National Security Agency (NSA) submits remedies for its egregious surveillance violations
(revealed last October) to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court promising to "no longer
collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target." The
NSA also begins deleting collected data on U.S. citizens it had been storing.
May 3, 2017: FBI Director Comey
testifies he's "mildly nauseous" at the idea he might have affected election with the 11th
hour Clinton email notifications to Congress.
Comey also testifies
he's "never" been an anonymous news source on "matters relating to" investigating the Trump
campaign.
Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice declines Republican Congressional
request to testify at a hearing about unmaskings and surveillance.
May 8, 2017: Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper testify to Congress. They
admit having reviewed "classified documents in which Mr. Trump, his associates or members
of Congress had been unmasked," and possibly discussing it with others under the Obama
administration.
May 9, 2017: President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. Andrew McCabe becomes acting
FBI Director.
May 12, 2017: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of ex-FBI Director James Comey and editor in chief
of Lawfare, contacts New York Times reporter Mike Schmidt to
leak conversations he'd had with Comey as FBI Director that are critical of President
Trump.
May 16, 2017: New York Times
publishes leaked account of FBI memoranda recorded by former FBI Director James Comey.
Comey later acknowledges engineering the leak of the FBI material through his friend, Columbia
Law School professor Daniel Richman, to spur appointment of special counsel to investigate
President Trump.
Trump reportedly
interviews , but passes over, former FBI Director Robert Mueller for position of FBI
Director.
May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints Robert Mueller as Special
Counsel, Russia-Trump probe. Mueller and former FBI Director Comey are friends and worked
closely together in previous Justice Dept. and FBI positions.
The gap of missing text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ends. The
couple is soon assigned to the Mueller team investigating Trump.
May 19, 2017: Anthony Wiener, former Congressman and husband of Hillary Clinton confidant
Huma Abedin, turns himself in to FBI in case of underage sexting ; his third major
kerfuffle over sexting in six years.
May 22, 2017 : FBI Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI Attorney Lisa Page about
whether Strzok should join Special Counsel Mueller's investigation of Trump-Russia collusion.
Strzok spoke of "unfinished business" that he "unleashed" with the Clinton classified email
probe and stated: "Now I need to fix it and finish it." He also referred to the Special Counsel
probe, which hadn't yet begun in earnest, as an "investigation leading to impeachment." But he
also stated he had a "gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
June 1, 2017: House Intelligence Committee issues 7 subpoenas, including for information
related to unmaskings requested by ex-Obama officials national security adviser Susan Rice,
former CIA Director John Brennan, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.
June 8, 2017: Former FBI Director James Comey admits having engineered
leak of his own memo to New York Times to spur appointment of a special counsel to
investigate President Trump.
June 20, 2017: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe names Philip Celestini as Special Agent in
Charge of the Intelligence Division, Washington Field Office.
Late June, 2017: FBI renews
wiretap against Carter Page for the fourth and final time that we know of. It lasts through
late Sept. 2017. (Page is never ultimately charged with a crime.) FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sign the renewal application.
Late July, 2017: FBI reportedly searches Paul Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home.
Summer 2017: FBI lawyer Lisa Page is reassigned from Mueller investigation. Her boyfriend,
FBI official Peter Strzok is removed from Mueller investigation after the Inspector General
discovers compromising texts between Strzok and Page. Congress is not notified of the
developments.
Aug. 2, 2017: Christopher Wray is named FBI Director.
August 2017: Ex-FBI Director Comey signs a book deal for a reported $2 million.
Sept. 13, 2017: Under questioning from Congress, Obama's former National Security Adviser
Susan Rice reportedly admits having requested to see the protected identities of Trump
transition officials "incidentally" captured by government surveillance.
Approx. Oct. 10, 2017: Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
pleads guilty to lying to FBI about his unsuccessful efforts during the campaign to
facilitate meetings between Trump officials and Russian officials.
Oct. 17, 2017: Obama's former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power reportedly tells Congressional
investigators that many of the hundreds of "unmasking" requests in her name during the election
year were not made by her.
Oct. 24, 2017: Congressional Republicans announce new investigations into a 2010
acquisition that gave Russia control of 20% of U.S. uranium supply while Clinton was secretary
of state; and FBI decision not to charge Clinton in classified info probe.
Oct. 30, 2017: Special Counsel Mueller
charges ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and business associate Rick Gates with tax
and money laundering crimes related to their foreign work. The charges do not appear related to
Trump.
Nov. 2, 2017: Carter Page
testifies to House Intelligence committee under oath without an attorney and asks to have
the testimony published. He denies ever meeting the Russian official that Fusion GPS claimed
he'd met with in July 2016.
Nov. 5, 2017: Special Counsel Robert Mueller
files charges against ex-Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for
allegedly lying to FBI official Peter Strzok about contacts with Russian ambassador during
presidential transition.
Dec. 1, 2017: Former national security adviser Gen. Flynn pleads guilty of
lying to the FBI. Prosecutors recommend no prison time (but later reverse their
recommendation).
James Rybicki steps down as chief of staff to FBI Director.
Dec. 6, 2017: Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr is reportedly stripped of one of
his positions at Justice Dept. amid controversy over his and his wife's role in anti-Trump
political opposition research.
Dec. 7, 2017: FBI Director Wray incorrectly testifies that there have been no "702"
surveillance abuses by the government.
Dec. 19, 2017: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly testifies that the wiretap
against Trump campaign official Carter Page would not have been approved without the Fusion GPS
info. FBI general counsel James Baker, who is himself subject of an Inspector General probe
over his alleged leaks to the press, attends as McCabe's attorney. McCabe acknowledges that if
Baker had met with Mother Jones reporter David Corn, it would have been inappropriate.
FBI general counsel James Baker is
reassigned amid investigation into his alleged anti-Trump related contacts with
media.
2018
Jan. 4, 2018: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
refer criminal
charges against Christopher Steele to the FBI for investigation. There's an apparent
conflict of interest with the FBI being asked to investigate Steele since the FBI has used
Steele's controversial political opposition research to obtain wiretaps.
Jan. 8, 2018: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr loses his second title at the agency.
Jan. 10, 2018: Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen files defamation
suits against Fusion GPS and BuzzFeed News for publishing the "Steele dossier," which he says
falsely
claimed he met Russian government officials in Prague, Czech Republic, in August of
2016.
Jan. 11, 2018: House of Representatives approves government's
controversial "702" wireless surveillance authority. The Senate follows suit.
Jan. 19, 2018: Justice Dept. produces to Congress some text messages between FBI officials
Lisa Page and Peter Strzok but states that FBI lost texts between December 14, 2016 and May 17,
2017 due to a technical glitch.
President Trump signs six-year extension of "702" wireless surveillance authority.
Jan. 23, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey friend who leaked on behalf of Comey to New York
Times to spur appointment of special counsel is now Comey's attorney.
Jan. 25, 2018: Justice Dept. Inspector General notifies Congress it has recovered missing
text messages between FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
Jan. 27, 2018: Edward O'Callaghan is
named Acting Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division.
Jan. 29, 2018: Andrew McCabe steps down as Deputy
FBI Director
ahead of his March retirement.
Jan. 30, 2018: News reports
allege that Justice Department Inspector General is looking into why FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe appeared to wait three weeks before acting on new Clinton emails found right
before the election.
Feb. 2, 2018: House Intelligence Committee (Nunes) Republican memo is released. It
summarizes classified documents revealing for the first time that Fusion GPS political
opposition research was used, in part, to justify Carter Page wiretap; along with Michael
Isikoff Yahoo News article based on the same opposition research.
Memo also states that Fusion GPS set up back channel to FBI through Nellie Ohr, who
conducted opposition research on Trump and passed it to her husband, associate deputy attorney
general Bruce Ohr.
Feb. 7, 2018: Justice Department official David Laufman, who helped oversee the Clinton and
Russia probes, steps down as chief of National Security Division's Counterintelligence and
Export Control Section.
Feb. 9, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey assistant Josh Campbell leaves FBI for job at
CNN.
Justice Department Associate Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, Rachel Brand,
resigns.
Feb. 16, 2018: Special counsel Mueller obtains guilty plea from a Dutch attorney for
lying to federal investigators about the last time he spoke to Rick Gates regarding a 2012
project related to Ukraine. The
plea does not appear to relate to 2016 campaign or Trump. The Dutch attorney is married to
the daughter of a Russian oligarch who's suing Buzzfeed and Christopher Steele for alleged
defamation in the "dossier."
Feb. 22, 2018: Former State Dept. official and Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer
invokes his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before House Intelligence Committee. Kramer
reportedly picked up the anti-Trump political opposition research in London and delivered it to
Sen. McCain who delivered it to the FBI.
Special counsel Mueller
files new charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign
aide Rick Gates, accusing them of additional tax and bank fraud crimes. The allegations appear
to be unrelated to Trump.
Fri. Feb. 23, 2018: Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates,
pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators (though he issues a statement saying
he's innocent of the indictment charges). The allegations and plea have no apparent link to
Trump-Russia campaign collusion.
Sat. Feb. 24, 2018: Democrats on House Intel Committee release
their rebuttal memo to the Republican version that summarized alleged FBI misconduct re: using
the GPS Fusion opposition research to get wiretap against Carter Page.
March 12, 2018 : House Intelligence Committee
closes Russia-Trump investigation with no evidence of collusion.
Fri. March 16, 2018 : Attorney General Jeff Sessions fires Deputy FBI
Director Andrew McCabe, based on recommendation from FBI ethics investigators.
Thurs. March 22, 2018 : President Trump announces plans to replace
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John
Bolton.
House Judiciary Committee issues
subpoenas to Department of Justice after Department failed to produce documents.
May 4, 2018 : Amid allegations that he was responsible for improper leaks, FBI attorney
James Baker resigns and joins the Brookings Institution, writing for the anti-Trump blog
"Lawfare" that first discussed the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump got
elected.
2019
March 2019 : Special Counsel Robert Mueller signs off on his final report stating
that there was no collusion or coordination between Trump -- or any American -- and Russia. He
leaves as an open question the issue of whether Trump took any actions that could be considered
obstruction. No new charges are recommended or filed with the issuance of the report.
June 2019 : Former Trump National Security Adviser Flynn fire his defense attorneys and
hires Sidney Powell.
Oct. 25, 2019 : Flynn files a motion to dismiss the case against him due to prosecutorial
misconduct. Among other claims, Flynn says prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory material
tending to show his innocence. Prosecutors claim they were not required to turn over the
information.
Dec. 19, 2019 : An investigation by Inspector General
Michael Horowitz finds egregious abuses by FBI and Justice Department officials in obtaining
wiretaps of former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The report also says an FBI attorney
doctored a document, providing false information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, to get the wiretaps.
2020
Jan. 7, 2020 : Prosecutors reverse their earlier recommendation for no prison time, and ask
for up to six months in prison for Flynn.
Jan. 16, 2020 : Flynn files a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
Jan. 23, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice
finds that two of its wiretaps against former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page were
improperly obtained and are therefore invalid.
Feb. 10, 2020: The Dept. of Justice asks a judge to sentence Trump associate Roger Stone to
7 to 9 years in prison for lying about his communications with WikiLeaks.
Feb. 11, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice reduces its recommendation for prison time for Stone
after President Trump and others criticized the initial representation as excessive. Stone
receives three years and four months in prison.
Feb. 20, 2020: President Trump
appoints Richard Grenell as acting Director of National Intelligence. Grenell begins
facilitating the release of long withheld documents regarding FBI actions against Trump
campaign associates.
March 31, 2020 : A Justice Dept. Inspector General's
analysis of more than two dozen wiretap applications from eight FBI field offices over two
months finds "we do not have confidence" that the bureau followed standards to ensure the
accuracy of the wiretap requests.
April 3, 2020 : Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asks FBI to review whether it
wiretaps are valid in light of information about problems and abuses.
April 29, 2020 : Newly-released documents show FBI officials, prior to
their original interview with Flynn, discussing whether the goal was to try to get him to lie
to get him fired or so that he could be prosecuted.
May 7, 2020 : The Department of Justice announces a decision to drop the case against
Flynn.
Levada has done a survey of Russian youth and
that's pretty hard to find; in general they're not far off their parents: a bit more liberal
but also a bit more nationalist. Perhaps the most interesting result was that a solid majority
thought Russia was not European.
Robinson discusses. He wonders why so few show much support for "'classical' civil and
political liberties".
My guess is that 20 years of observation of Western practice of these
noble ideals has soured them.
CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic
Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long
Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete
evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server.
Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry: "We just don't have the evidence..."
CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry's admission under oath, in a recently declassified
December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about
whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and
others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI's probe into now debunked
claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The
CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated
from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped
charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.
Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of the DNC server after being
warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by the DNC, which refused to turn
over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the
DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at
all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically]
from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.
Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions:
"There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in
this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence
that says it actually left."
"There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial
evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
" There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network... We
didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the
circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but
we believe it left, based on what we saw."
Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out
of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that."
Rep. Adam Schiff: Democrat held up interview transcripts, but finally relented after acting
intel director Richard Grenell suggested he would release them himself. (Senate Television via
AP)
In a later exchange with Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, Henry offered an explanation
of how Russian agents could have obtained the emails without any digital trace of them leaving
the server. The CrowdStrike president speculated that Russian agents might have taken
"screenshots" in real time. "[If] somebody was monitoring an email server, they could read all
the email," Henry said. "And there might not be evidence of it being exfiltrated, but they
would have knowledge of what was in the email. There would be ways to copy it. You could take
screenshots."
Henry's 2017 testimony that there was no "concrete evidence" that the emails were stolen
electronically suggests that Mueller was at best misleading in his 2019 final report, in which
he stated that Russian intelligence "appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70
gigabytes of data from the file server."
It is unlikely that Mueller had another source to make his more confident claim about
Russian hacking.
The stolen emails, which were published by Wikileaks – whose founder, Julian Assange
has long denied they came from Russia – were embarrassing to the party because, among
other things, they showed the DNC had favored Clinton during her 2016 primary battles against
Sen. Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination. The DNC eventually issued an apology to
Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email." The DNC hack was
separate from the FBI's investigation of Clinton's use of a private server while serving as
President Obama's Secretary of State.
The disclosure that CrowdStrike found no evidence that alleged Russian hackers exfiltrated
any data from the DNC server raises a critical question: On what basis, then, did it accuse
them of stealing the emails? Further, on what basis did Obama administration officials make far
more forceful claims about Russian hacking?
Michael Sussmann: This lawyer at Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike to investigate the DNC
breach. He was also involved with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in producing the
discredited Steele dossier.
The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which formally accused Russia of a
sweeping influence campaign involving the theft of Democratic emails, claimed the Russian
intelligence service GRU "exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC." A July 2018
indictment claimed that GRU officers "stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC
employees."
According to everyone concerned, the cyber-firm played a critical role in the FBI's
investigation of the DNC data theft. Henry told the panel that CrowdStrike "shared intelligence
with the FBI" on a regular basis, making "contact with them over a hundred times in the course
of many months." In congressional testimony that same year, former FBI Director James Comey
acknowledged that the FBI "never got direct access to the machines themselves," and instead
relied on CrowdStrike, which "shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, and made
"multiple requests at different levels," to obtain it. But after being rebuffed, "ultimately it
was agreed to [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."
Henry's testimony seems at variance with Comey's suggestion of complete information sharing.
He told Congress that CrowdStrike provided "a couple of actual digital images" of DNC hard
drives, out of a total number of "in excess of 10, I think." In other cases, Henry said,
CrowdStrike provided its own assessment of them. The firm, he said, provided "the results of
our analysis based on what our technology went out and collected." This disclosure follows
revelations from the case of Trump operative Roger Stone that CrowdStrike provided three
reports to the FBI in redacted and draft form. According to federal prosecutors, the government
never obtained CrowdStrike's unredacted reports.
CrowdStrike's newy disclosed admissions raise new questions about whether Special Counsel
Robert Mueller (above), intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
There are no indications that the Mueller team accessed any additional information beyond
what CrowdStrike provided. According to the Mueller report, "the FBI later received images of
DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs." But if the FBI obtained only "copies" of data
traffic – and not any new evidence -- those copies would have shown the same absence of
"concrete evidence" that Henry admitted to.
Adding to the tenuous evidence is CrowdStrike's own lack of certainty that the hackers it
identified inside the DNC server were indeed Russian government actors. Henry's explanation for
his firm's attribution of the DNC hack to Russia is replete with inferences and assumptions
that lead to "beliefs," not unequivocal conclusions. "There are other nation-states that
collect this type of intelligence for sure," Henry said, "but what we would call the tactics
and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state." In its
investigation, Henry said, CrowdStrike "saw activity that we believed was consistent with
activity we'd seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government. We said that we
had a high degree of confidence it was the Russian Government."
But CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation months after it accused Russia in
December 2016 of hacking the Ukrainian military, with the same software that the firm had
claimed to identify inside the DNC server.
The firm's work with the DNC and FBI is also colored by partisan affiliations. Before
joining CrowdStrike, Henry served as executive assistant director at the FBI under Mueller.
Co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council, the pro-NATO think tank that has consistently promoted an aggressive policy
toward Russia. And the newly released testimony confirms that CrowdStrike was hired to
investigate the DNC breach by Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie – the same Democratic-tied
law firm that hired Fusion GPS to produce the discredited Steele dossier, which was also
treated as central evidence in the investigation. Sussmann played a critical role in generating
the Trump-Russia collusion allegation. Ex-British spy and dossier compiler Christopher Steele
has
testified in British court that Sussmann shared with him the now-debunked Alfa Bank server
theory, alleging a clandestine communication channel between the bank and the Trump
Organization.
Henry's recently released testimony does not mean that Russia did not hack the DNC. What it
does make clear is that Obama administration officials, the DNC and others have misled the
public by presenting as fact information that they knew was uncertain. The fact that the
Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the
heart of Russiagate -- Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion – suggests that
the federal investigation was compromised from the start.
The 2017 Henry transcript was one of dozens just released after a lengthy dispute. In
September 2018, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee unanimously voted to
release witness interview transcripts and sent them to the U.S. intelligence community for
declassification review. In March 2019, months after Democrats won House control, Rep. Adam
Schiff ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the
transcripts from White House lawyers seeking to review them for executive privilege. Schiff
also refused to release vetted transcripts, but finally relented after acting ODNI Director
Richard Grenell suggested this month that he would release them himself.
Several transcripts, including the interviews of former CIA Director John Brennan and Comey,
remain unreleased. And in light of the newly disclosed Crowdstrike testimony, another secret
document from the House proceedings takes on urgency for public viewing. According to Henry,
Crowdstrike also provided the House Intelligence Committee with a copy of its report on the DNC
email theft.
Case in point. America has a surveillance state but it refuses to use it to save lives.
Instead, it uses it to save Wall Street and protect the extractive elite from any TRUE REAL
threat. I relish the notion of this virus running rampant across America until it ravages,
and decimates actually, the Praetorian Guard Class, the managerial class if you will, that
licks the ass of the extractive elite for some bread crust, discarded steak fat and a Tesla.
I want to see them truly suffer for their sins.
After weeks cooped up at home following governors' orders to contain the coronavirus
outbreak, U.S. residents appear eager to get moving again. As more states began to relax
restrictions, about 25 million more people ventured outside their homes on an average day
last week than during the preceding six weeks, a New York Times analysis of cellphone
data found .
In nearly every part of the country, the share of people staying home dropped, in some
places by nearly 11 percentage points.
As the death toll from this pandemic rises in America with no end in sight, Wall Street,
as reflected in the DJIA, doesn't even blink and actually cheers. It doesn't get any sicker
than that. Wall Street sees the carnage as an opportunity to make more profit off of death
and the extractive elite see it as an opportunity to concentrate wealth even further and rid
the world of burdensome useless eaters. It's sick. It's sadistic. It's malevolent. It's evil.
It's our reality.
@Sgt.
Joe Friday "Actually, Maddow considers herself a Serious Journalist. She "speaks truth to
power," and she'd probably be the first to tell you that. Repeatedly.
Limbaugh on the other hand, if asked to pick a word to describe his profession would
likely say "entertainer.""
While in actuality, the roles are very nearly reversed. (Nearly only because I don't find
Maddow amusing)
Chancellor Angela Merkel that stupid? "Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous"
cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal
email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."
Notable quotes:
"... That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all attributions of cyberattacks are. ..."
"... Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms. Merkel's office just last week. ..."
"... This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike, had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet: ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server. ..."
"... The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was taken. ..."
"... The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group? ..."
The New York Times continues its anti-Russia campaign with a report about an old
cyberattack on German parliament which also targeted the parliament office of Chancellor Angela
Merkel.
Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous"
cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal
email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."
But asked how Berlin intended to deal with recent revelations implicating the Russians,
Ms. Merkel was less forthcoming.
"We always reserve the right to take measures," she said in Parliament, then immediately
added, "Nevertheless, I will continue to strive for a good relationship with Russia, because
I believe that there is every reason to always continue these diplomatic efforts."
That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all
attributions of cyberattacks are.
Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they
took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms.
Merkel's office just last week.
Officials say the report traced the attack to the same Russian hacker group that targeted
the Democratic Party during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2016.
This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the
alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike,
had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or
that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet:
CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic
Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the
years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had
no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National
Committee's server.
...
[CrowdStrike President Shawn] Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of
the DNC server after being warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by
the DNC, which refused to turn over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged
Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in
fact know if such a theft occurred at all : "We did not have concrete evidence that the data
was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was
exfiltrated," Henry said.
The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided
them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was
taken.
The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing
but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no
evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the
attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group?
While the NYT also mentions that NSA actually snooped on Merkel's private phonecalls
it tries to keep the spotlight on Russia:
As such, Germany's democracy has been a target of very different kinds of Russian
intelligence operations, officials say. In December 2016, 900,000 Germans lost access to
internet and telephone services following a cyberattack traced to Russia.
That mass attack on internet home routers, which by the way happened in November 2016 not in
December, was done with the Mirai
worm :
More than 900,000 customers of German ISP Deutsche Telekom (DT) were knocked offline this
week after their Internet routers got infected by a new variant of a computer worm known as
Mirai. The malware wriggled inside the routers via a newly discovered vulnerability in a
feature that allows ISPs to remotely upgrade the firmware on the devices. But the new Mirai
malware turns that feature off once it infests a device, complicating DT's cleanup and
restoration efforts.
...
This new variant of Mirai builds on malware
source code released at the end of September . That leak came a little more a week after
a botnet based on Mirai was used in a record-sized
attack that caused KrebsOnSecurity to go offline for several
days . Since then, dozens of new Mirai botnets have emerged , all
competing for a finite pool of vulnerable IoT systems that can be infected.
The attack has not been attributed to Russia but to a British man who offered attacks as a
service.
He was arrested in February 2017:
A 29-year-old man has been arrested at Luton airport by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA)
in connection with a massive internet attack that disrupted telephone, television and
internet services in Germany last November. As regular readers of We Live Security will
recall, over 900,000 Deutsche Telekom broadband customers were knocked offline last November
as an alleged attempt was made to hijack their routers into a destructive botnet.
...
The NCA arrested the British man under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Germany's Federal
Criminal Police Office (BKA) who have described the attack as a threat to Germany's national
communication infrastructure.
According to German prosecutors, the British man allegedly offered to sell access to the
botnet on the computer underground. Agencies are planning to extradite the man to Germany,
where – if convicted – he could face up to ten years imprisonment.
During the trial, Daniel admitted that he never intended for the routers to cease
functioning. He only wanted to silently control them so he can use them as part of a DDoS
botnet to increase his botnet firepower. As discussed earlier he also confessed being paid by
competitors to takedown Lonestar.
In Aug 2017 Daniel was
extradited back to the UK to face extortion charges after attempting to blackmail Lloyds
and Barclays banks. According to press reports, he asked the Lloyds to pay about
£75,000 in bitcoins for the attack to be called off.
The Mirai attack is widely known to have been attributed to Kaye. The case has been
discussed
at length . IT security journalist Brian Krebs, who's site was also attacked by a Mirai bot
net, has written several
stories about it. It was never 'traced to Russia' or attributed it to anyone else but Daniel
Kaye.
Besides that Kennhold writes of "Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the
G.R.U.". The real Russian foreign intelligence services is the SVR. The military intelligence
agency of Russia was once called GRU but has been renamed to GU.
The New York Times just made up the claim about Russia hacking in Germany from
absolutely nothing. The whole piece was published without even the most basic research and fact
checking.
It seems that for the Times anything can be blamed on Russia completely independent
of what the actually facts say.
Posted by b on May 14, 2020 at 14:38 UTC |
Permalink
Along the same lines, it always bothered me that among all the (mostly contrived)
arguments about who might have been responsible for the alleged "hacking" of DNC as well as
Clinton's emails, we never heard mentioned one single time the one third party that we
absolutely KNOW had intercepted and collected all of those emails--the NSA! Never a peep
about how US intelligence services could be tempted to mischief when in possession of
everyone's sensitive, personal information.
The "Fancy Bear" group (also knowns as advanced persistent threat 28) that is claimed to be
behind the hacks is likely little more than the collection of hacking tools shared on the
open and hidden parts of RuNet or Russian-speaking Internet. Many of these Russian-speaking
hackers are
actually Ukrainians .
Some of the Russian hackers also worked for the FSB, like the members of Shaltai
Boltai group that were later arrested for treason. George Eliason claims Shaltai Boltai
actually worked for Ukrainians. For a short version of the story read this:
Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the
"Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian
intelligence linked to the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at
one of his recent essays...
Patrick
Armstrong , May 14 2020 15:27 utc |
3 Wow! You've done it again. I was just writing my Sitrep and thinking what an amazing
coincidence it is that, just as the Russian pipelaying ship arrived to finish Nord Stream,
Merkel is told that them nasty Russkies are doing nasty things. I come here and you've
already solved it. Yet another scoop. Congratulations.
The NYT has removed that sentence about the attack on internet/phone access:
"Correction: May 14, 2020
An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed responsibility for a 2016
cyberattack in which 900,000 Germans lost access to internet and telephone services. The
attack was carried out by a British citizen, not Russia. The article also misstated when the
attack took place. It was in November, not December. The sentence has been removed from the
article. "
From this we can learn that anything can be blamed by MSM, completely independent of what the
facts are. It is not limited to allegations related to Russia or China, but any and all
claims by MSM that have no direct reference to provable fact.
great coverage b... thank you... facts don't matter.. what matters is taking down any
positive image of russia, or better - putting up a constantly negative one... of this the
intel and usa msm are consistent... the sad reality is a lot of people will believe this
bullshit too...
i was just reading paul robinsons blog last night -
#DEMOCRACY RIP AND THE NARCISSISM OF RUSSIAGATE .. even paul is starting to getting
pissed off on the insanity of the media towards russia which is rare from what i have read
from him!
@ 3 patrick armstrong.. keep up the good work!! thanks for your work..
There is already a correction made to the DT attack - someone reads MofA! Shame they don't
get more of their new interpretation form here.
Whole piece reads here like it started as a Merkel gets close to Russia piece, shown
around to colleagues and politicians for feedback, and a ton of fake "why Merkel actually
hates the Russians" nonsense was added in.
After all pretty much everyone has tapped Merkel's phone by now.
The late and famous George Keenan has written the operational manual for the Containment
Strategy and the main points are Pillar #2 and #3. Unfortunately I didn't save the document
and the link to post it here. So it goes. (I am just reading Slaughterhouse Number 5).
One wonders why? Because it describes the CPC as the biggest pooling agency in the world
and shows how the bottom up approach to developing policies work?
@Kouroi
Were you referring to this? I went first to Wikipedia but found no mention of it –
perhaps the most important document Kennan ever wrote. How astonishing (not).
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity
is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we
cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment.
Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will
permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national
security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and
our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and
world-benefaction".
– George Kennan (secret US State Department memo, 1948)
@Tom
Welsh I am not referring to the Long Telegram. At one point I cam across a pdf /image
document online written by Keenan that was the operational blueprint on how to conduct all
these shadows operations through third parties: business, NGOs, media, and have plausible
deniability. Very, very operational.
Absolutely remarkable; in fact, 'stunning', as he uses it, is not too much of a stretch. The
'liberal elites' just go right on lying even though the sworn testimony of FBI interviewers
is available for anyone to read, as well as the chilling manipulations of Strozk and Page,
both of whom should be in prison and perhaps will be. And that fucker Schiff should swing. I
can't believe the transformation of Carlson from Bush shill to the reincarnation of Edward R.
Murrow. He makes this case so compellingly that nobody could watch that clip and not believe
that Flynn was railroaded from the outset. And what were they allegedly going to jail Flynn's
son for? Does anyone know? Were they just going to make something up? That is terrifying, and
almost argues for the disbanding of the FBI, although it demonstrably still contains honest
agents – as Carlson asks rhetorically, how many times have they done this already, and
gotten away with it?
It's hard to imagine anyone would vote Democrat now.
Couldn't have been too much of a crime, if they offered to let him go in exchange for Flynn
pleading guilty to lying. Actually, you'd kind of think their business was prosecuting crimes
whoever committed them, and that offering to excuse a crime in exchange for a guilty plea is
.kind of a crime.
Man, they have to clean house at the FBI. And there probably are several other
organizations that need it, too. Not the political culling based on ideology that was a
feature of the Bush White House, but the crowd that's in now just cannot be allowed to get
off with nothing.
Greetings Mark and all, I am a new arrival as Jen suggested the company is fine here for
barflies to ponder the world. Can I surmise that if Flynn and son were the FBI targets for
nefarious business dealings then surely Biden and son fall in to that same category. After
all Biden and son filched millions after arranging a USA loan of $1Billion to Ukraine and
then did it again after the IMF loaned a few million more. Carpetbagging and its modern day
practice is a crime in the USA last I looked.
If that conspicuous bias isn't enough cause to dismember the FBI then consider the Uranium
One deal that Hillary Clinton and family set up or perhaps the Debbie Wasserman Shultz
fostering the Awan family spy and blackmail ring.
Good day, Uncle, and welcome! For some reason I can't fathom, the Democrats seem to own or
control all the 'respectable' media in the USA. FOX News is an exception, and has been a
mouthpiece for the Republicans since its inception. But the Democrats control the New York
Times and the Washington Post, which together represent the bulk of American public feeling
to foreigners, and probably to the domestic audience as well. They are extremely active on
conflicts between the two parties, ensuring the Democratic perspective gets put forward in
calm, reasonable why-wouldn't-a-sensible-person-think-this-way manner. At the same time they
cast horrific aspersions at the Republicans. Not that either are much good; but the news
coverage is very one-sided – the position of the Democrats on the sexual-assault furor
over the Kavanaugh appointment compared with their wait-and-see attitude to very similar
accusations against Biden is a classic example.
I don't think its the Democrats that control the NYT &WP, so much as plutocrats.
They're also the ones who fund both the Democrats & the Republicans. The only significant
difference between the parties is largely in the arena of the social "culture war" issues.
But on the issues plutocrats care about, like economic policy & foreign policy, the
differences are shades of grey, rather than actual distinctions.
Just remember the coverage of both papers in the run up to George W Shrub's catastrophic
Iraq war. They're stenographers, not journalists.
That may well be true, but the NYT and WP historically champion the Democrats, endorse the
Democratic candidate for president, and pander to Democratic issues and projects. The Wall
Street Journal is the traditional Republican print outlet, and there might be others but I
don't know them. CNN is overwhelmingly and weepily Democratic in its content – Wolf
Blitzer's eyes nearly roll back in his head with ecstasy whenever he mentions Saint Hillary
– while FOX News is Repubican to the bone and openly contemptuous of liberals. It could
certainly be, on reflection probably is, that the same cabal of corporatists control them
all, and a fine joke they must think it. And I certainly and emphatically agree there is
almost no difference between the parties in execution of external policy.
"... Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news? ..."
After a prescient 2017 tip from inside the FBI, a slow drip of revelations exposed the
deep problems with the Flynn prosecution.
####
All at the link.
I should add that the author, seasoned investigative reporter John Soloman, wrote much of
this over at TheHill.com and was targeted for review over his clearly labelled 'opinion'
pieces reporting on the Bidens in the Ukraine. The Hill's conclusion is piss weak and accuses
him of what just about every other journalist in the US does and reads in particular of
holding him up to a much higher standard than others. As you will see from his twatter bio,
he's worked for AP, Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Hill. Some things you are
just not supposed to investigate, let alone report.
At an absolute minimum, the FBI officials involved – except those who did their jobs
properly and stated their judgments at the outset that there was no evidence Flynn was not
telling the truth, or believed he was – should be fired and their pensions, if
applicable, rescinded.
Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections
to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have
to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news?
"... Sad but true. We are all given our illusions. In US its the illusion of democracy which is a fake democracy cloaking our totalitarian reality. In China they give the people the illusion of moving towards socialism, a fake socialism to be sure, never mind all the billionaire party members (and they don't have universal health care either, its insurance based) .The people have long accepted the reality of totalitarianism so they are one step ahead. ..."
Sad but true. We are all given our illusions. In US its the illusion of democracy which
is a fake democracy cloaking our totalitarian reality. In China they give the people the
illusion of moving towards socialism, a fake socialism to be sure, never mind all the
billionaire party members (and they don't have universal health care either, its insurance
based) .The people have long accepted the reality of totalitarianism so they are one step
ahead.
Since China doesn't have another party to blame they must blame external enemies like the
US and we happily play along with tarrifs paid for by us dumb sheep who cry out in
satisfaction "take that". Lol
A fake Cold War works for us too. Trump says we are in a race for 5G and AI/Robotics with
China. We must win or all is lost to China. Social credit scores, digital ID and digital
currency along with Total Information Awareness and Full Spectrum Dominance over the
herd.
Health effects of 5G will be blamed on CoVID. Fake Science is a great tool. Scientists
never lie, they can be trusted, just like Priests . They are the Priests of the New
Technocratic World Order. Global Warming and COVID- We must believe. They say Vaccines and 5G
are good for you, just like DDT and Tobacco were said to be Good by Scientists of another
time. We must believe. Have Faith and you will earn social credit bonus points.
Reality is Fake Wrestling. Kayfabe all the way baby. Who is the face and who is the heel?
We are free to choose. So who says we don't have freedom?
"... One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion. ..."
"... Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated: ..."
"... ...was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more. ..."
"... 'You also didn't know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, did you?' Gowdy later asked, getting to the point. ..."
The long-delayed release of testimony from the House Intelligence Committee has proved
embarrassing for a variety of former Obama officials who have been extensively quoted on the
allegedly strong evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign and the Russians. Figures like
James Clapper, who is a CNN expert, long indicated hat the evidence from the Obama
Administration was strong and alarming. However, in testimony, Clapper denied seeing any
such evidence .
One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama
Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence
that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas
repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion.
Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia,
was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about
would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated:
...was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill Get as much
information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves
the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with
the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump
folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff's
dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning
we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not
enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more.
MSNBC never seriously questioned the statements despite the fact that Farkas left
the Obama Administration in 2015 before any such investigation could have occurred. As we have
seen before, the factual and legal basis for such statements are largely immaterial in the age
of echo journalism. The statement fit the narrative even if it lacked any plausible basis.
Not surprisingly, the House Intelligence Committee was eager to have Farkas share all that
she stated she "knew about ["the Trump folks"], their staff, the Trump's staff's dealing with
Russian" and wanted to get "into the open." After all, she told MSNBC that "I knew that there
was more."
She was finally put under oath in the closed classified sessions and there was nothing but
classified crickets. Farkas was repeatedly asked to share that information that electrified the
MSNBC hosts and audience. She repeatedly denied any such knowledge, telling then Rep. Trey
Gowdy (R, S.C.), "I didn't know anything."
Gowdy noted that Farkas left the Obama administration in 2015 and asked "Then how did you
know?" She repeated again "I didn't know anything."
Gowdy then asked "Well, then why would you say, we knew?"
He also asked:
'You also didn't know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia,
did you?' Gowdy later asked, getting to the point.
"I didn't," Farkas responded.
MSNBC has said nothing about its prior headline story being untrue. Indeed, the media has
barely acknowledged that the new documents reinforce that there was never any evidence of
collusion and ultimately the allegations were rejected by the Special Counsel, Congress, and
inspectors general.
'fter I left the Obama administration, I campaigned to help elect Secretary Clinton as our
next President. When Russians interfered in that election, I was among the first to sound the
alarm and urge Congress to take action. And I haven't let up since then.
She was indeed one of the first but it proved to be a false alarm based on
nonexistent knowledge. Does that matter anymore?
"... former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing Russians and Iranians covertly" ). ..."
"... Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute : ..."
"... He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus. As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government." ..."
Washington now says it's all about defeating the Russians . While it's not the first time
this has been thrown around in policy circles (recall that a year after Russia's 2015 entry
into Syria at Assad's invitation, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell
admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing
Russians and Iranians covertly" ).
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to
Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His
comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute :
Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James
Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. "This isn't Afghanistan.
This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the
Russians."
He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as
part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in
exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus.
As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of
Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria -
international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of
government."
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Special US envoy to Syria - James Jeffery
He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding,
reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government. https://t.co/MSAkQqAmdh
But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's real proxy war interests all
along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300 into the hands of Assad (and
amid constant Israeli attacks). But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's
real proxy war interests all along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300
into the hands of Assad (and amid constant Israeli attacks).
As for oil, currently Damascus is well supplied by the Iranians, eager to dump their stock
in fuel-starved Syria amid the global glut. Trump has previously voiced that part of US troops
"securing the oil fields" is to keep them out of the hands of Russia and Iran.
* * *
Recall the CIA's 2016 admission of what's really going on in terms of US action in
Syria:
"... it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years. ..."
"... What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization ..."
"... And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all the rest of it. ..."
"... Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is. ..."
"... Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee. ..."
"... Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. ..."
"... And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility, corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to something beyond sinister. ..."
"... You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore. ..."
From the beginning of the story RussiaGate was always about Barack Obama . I didn't always see it that way, certainly. My seething
hatred for all things Hillary Clinton is a powerful blind spot I admit to freely.
But, it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the
only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years.
We've known this for a couple of years now but there were a seemingly endless series of distractions put in place to obfuscate
the truth...
Donald Trump was not a Russian agent.
What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy
on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years.
It was de rigeur by the time the election cycle ramped up in 2016. The timing of events is during that time period paints a very
damning picture.
This article from Zerohedge by way of
Conservative Treehouse lays out the timing, the activities and the shifts in the narrative that implicate Obama beyond any doubt.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the
database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus
begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the
NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all
the rest of it.
The details are all there for anyone with eyes willing to see, the question is whether anyone deep in the throes of Trump Derangement
Syndrome will take their eyes off the shadow play in front of them long enough to look.
I'm not holding my breath.
Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services
to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking
U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is.
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 12, 2020
... ... ...
These people obviously missed the key point about Goebbels' Big Lie theory of propaganda. For it to work there has to be a nugget
of truth to wrap the lie in before you can repeat it endlessly to make it real. And that's why RussiaGate is dead. Long live ObamaGate.
Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts
of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.
None of them were willing to testify under oath, and be guilty of perjury, to the effect that Trump was colluding with the Russians.
But, they'd say it on TV, Twitter and anywhere else they could to attack Trump with patent nonsense.
Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will
roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. Some of them will fall on their sword for Obama.
But I don't think Trump will be satisfied with that. He has to know that Obama is the key to truly draining the Swamp if that
is, in fact, his goal. Because if he doesn't attack Obama now, Obama will be formidable in October. Both men are fighting for their
lives at this point.
Trump was supposed to roll over and play nice. But Pat Buchanan rightly had him pegged at the beginning of this back in January
of 2017, saying that Trump wasn't like Nixon, he wouldn't walk away to protect the office of the Presidency. He would fight to the
bitter end because that's who he is.
And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility,
corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering
classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn,
the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to
something beyond sinister.
You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a
New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian
dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore.
Although amica, or amicus briefs can be routine in civil cases, in a criminal case, it is
a prosecutor's duty to decide things as basic as whether to prosecute a case.
But in the Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn matter, Sullivan says he now needs outside help.
The need, the judge says, came following the DOJ decision to end prosecution of the
general, having determined there was no crime; the heretofore prosecution of him was a
phantom of the opera.
Sullivan now wants an encore.
What might that be?
Pirates of Penzance?
Sullivan Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
In a recent order the judge said he will invite outside parties -- outside of the DOJ --
to provide this judge "unique information or perspective that can help the court."
The absurdity of Sullivan notwithstanding, it could be: he recognizes he is sitting on a
volcano, partly of his own making because of decisions he made; and those of Judge Rudy
Contreras, the man who was on the bench when Flynn plead to the false charges, circa Dec. 1,
2017.
Neither Contreras, nor Flynn's Covington lawyers, prior this plea, demanded the DOJ
produce original FBI 302s -- of the Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn -- to show the
concrete substance, that is, actual evidence, that would purportedly show the general
lied.
The DOJ never produced this. Ever.
Sullivan, he never asked nor demanded nor got to read those original 302s either, even
though he has been sitting on this case since Dec. 7, 2017.
After a year of sitting on the case, Flynn said he was ready to be sentenced: the
prosecutors had said they were fine with no jail time for him.
During this Dec. 18, 2018 hearing, Sullivan Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
[If you have not, read transcript of this hearing, it's at least a half-hour read.]
Sullivan told Flynn he could face 15 years in jail, implied he committed treason, was a
traitor to his country, blah blah blah.
The prosecutor at the time, Brandon Van Grack, told the Pirate of Penzance that more
assistance of Flynn was needed for the bogus Mueller investigation.
Sullivan [Gilbert was not in the courtroom] then allowed Flynn's sentencing hearing to be
continued, so long as Mueller submitted monthly progress reports to ascertain the general was
cooperating with the special counsel office's "investigation" of nonexistent "crimes" against
who knows what at that point.
To recap: Sullivan threatened Flynn with 15 years in prison; Flynn withdrew his
willingness to be sentenced at that time; Van Grack out of nowhere said the general needed to
cooperate some more with Mueller.
Had Sullivan not gone rouge at this hearing; had he demanded and gotten the original 302s,
I would give more credence to what I'll say next.
The only rational reason, I think, Sullivan said he needs "help" -- before consummating
the DOJ's request to end this matter – is simple.
Sullivan knows he is sitting on a volcano, and he can't take the heat.
Thus, he might be creating conditions for a last hurrah of nonsense from the enemies of
justice who are the enemies of Flynn, who want to file amica with the court.
Put another way, the judge is inviting the very circus he claim to want to avoid, in his
Minute Order.
Reason I'm not necessarily opposed to this circus is practical: more sunshine can be
brought to this prosecution, this malicious and political perecution of Flynn –
sunshine, via the DOJ release document after document that just piles onto the record
DOJ/FBI/CIA lawlessness that was directed against and targeted Flynn. And perhaps other
delicious nuggets, too.
When the smoke clears, the fat lady finally sings, Sullivan can say or claim he did
everything to give everyone their say, blah blah blah, and hope like hell everyone forgets
this Pirate's dereliction of duty, as a judge with a lifetime appointment.
Perhaps, should this show go on, we might discover why Contreras mysteriously recused
himself right after the Flynn pleas.
Perhaps we will read all of the Covington law firm Eric Holder and Michael Chertoff
emails, and what they were saying about Flynn, the good, the bad, the ugly.
And, since Barry decided to directly and publicly insert himself in this fiasco last week,
with his remark about Flynn and "perjury," who knows what other documents will be filed on
the docket. [Obama's pre meditated use of "perjury" when he knows it was not about that,
indicates just how sinister his public involvement now is.]
I would like to see all of Sullivan's communications, work related and private, involving
the Flynn case.
Please file all of them on the docket, Judge Sullivan, un-redacted, you who opened this
can of worms. [So we can see if you, by your own "standards" might be a "security threat" or
"sold out your country," etc.]
Sullivan didn't start this fire; he did pour gasoline on it.
". . . .Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. . . ."[Epistle
to the Galatians]
There several fuzzy, unexplainable moments in this whole story:
1. Why Flynn intentionally violated White House protocol for questioning of Trump
administration officials? He was fired by Obama-Brennan mafia for questioning Obama policies
and during this period he should obtain more or less complete understanding of the modus of
operation of this mafia and should not have any illusions about them, should he ?
2. How he did not sense the danger? Why no lawyer was present during the interview? It is
impossible that Flynn did not understand that both Strzok and his boss were essentially
plants from CIA in FBI and indirectly reported to Brennan ?
3. Why in this chess party between former paratrooper and former DIA chief (who has a
Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications from Golden Gate University) and such
a sleazy, feminine second, if not third rate individual as Strzok, the simplest defensive
move was to ask for transcripts of his talks with conversations with Kislyak was not used?
Why Flynn so easily fall a victim of a primitive, textbook entrapment? It is inconceivable
that he does not understand that such a full transcript exist. Why he behaved like a 17 year
old detailed by a police officer?
4. On Jan 23, 2017 Russiagate hysteria was in full bloom. So any normal individual would
understand where are the legs of questions that Strzok asked him during the interview just
based on this simple fact. Also it is unconceivable that neither he, not Trump has no
information about the actions of Comey and his henchmen from former Flynn colleagues in DIA.
Why no preemptive strikes against McCabe and Strzok plot were fired?
5. How important was the fact that Comey and his henchmen have Flynn by the balls due to
his lobbing efforts for Turkey in this whole story ?
"... In light of such a history of distrust – the president who'd promised to not only shutter the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison but also end the seemingly eternal wars in the Middle East had not only failed to deliver on those promises, but actually launched several new wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan – it's no surprise Americans are reluctant to embrace the Trump administration's Covid-19 narrative. ..."
"... Like the fabled boy who cried wolf, it doesn't matter if the emergency is real this time – the government has simply worn out its welcome by making demands on false pretenses. ..."
Just over a third of Americans trust President Donald Trump's information about the
Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new poll. But given decades of crises mishandled by the
government, the only surprise is that it isn't lower. A CNN poll showing that just 36 percent
of Americans trust Trump for reliable information about the coronavirus was held up
triumphantly by the president's critics on Tuesday as proof his credibility is circling the
drain. But it's more likely to be the fallout not just from Trump, but from the two preceding
presidential administrations' misrepresentation of crises, that has created epidemic levels of
distrust among the people.
Trump's own approval rating is hovering around 45 percent, according to the poll, conducted
by CNN in conjunction with SSRS and released on Tuesday. While it's been presented as a
scathing mass rejection of Trump, the same pollsters are actually seeing an uptick in support
for the president – the approval rating last month stood at 44 percent, and the previous
month's was 43. But Americans can't be faulted for distrusting the Trump administration's
narratives, given prior presidents' tendencies toward crying wolf in ways that have invariably
left the American people worse off.
The last time Washington tried to mobilize the US with the threat of an invisible enemy was
during George W. Bush's 'War on Terror' after the September 11 attacks. While it soon became
apparent that the many deaths that occurred on that day had nothing to do with the subsequent
US invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, it was too late by the time Americans found out they
had been lied to. Not only had the Afghan government willingly offered up Osama bin Laden, but
Saddam Hussein was found to have had no 'weapons of mass destruction', and the entire narrative
was the concoction of a secretive entity that had been set up to create a casus belli for war
with Iraq despite the facts.
Bush's approval ratings declined
steadily following 9/11, as the nation was forced into one war after another on false
pretenses. At his lowest point, just 25 percent of Americans trusted him. The 'invisible enemy'
of terrorism – supposedly lurking around every corner and requiring Americans to
practically disrobe at entrances to airports – had lost its luster, and Bush's poor
handling of real-life crises like Hurricane Katrina put the final nail in the coffin of his
credibility.
While Barack Obama entered office on a high note with a promise of " hope and
change ," his approval rating also plunged quickly – especially when he refused to
stand in the way of the wildly unpopular 2008 'Wall Street bailout' –
sinking to 41 percent in 2011 as Americans grew restive after years of recession with no
change in sight. By 2014, 70 percent of
respondents to an MSNBC poll stated the country was headed in the wrong direction, with 80
percent singling out the political system as the primary culprit. Congress enjoyed an
appallingly low 14 percent approval rating.
In light of such a history of distrust – the president who'd promised to not only
shutter the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison but also end the seemingly eternal wars in the
Middle East had not only failed to deliver on those promises, but actually launched several new
wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan – it's no surprise Americans are reluctant
to embrace the Trump administration's Covid-19 narrative.
Another invisible enemy that requires
them to sacrifice their livelihoods – a
third of Americans couldn't pay their rent last month, while even the paltry $1,200
stimulus checks supposedly heading to 130 million Americans have apparently not reached
half their intended recipients yet – is reminding Americans of what happened last
time they were told to put aside their real-life concerns and fall in line behind a narrative
that turned out to be false.
Like the fabled boy who cried wolf, it doesn't matter if the
emergency is real this time – the government has simply worn out its welcome by making
demands on false pretenses.
The coronavirus crisis has left neoliberals on both sides of the aisle scrambling to defend
the institutions that have failed Americans and the world during this crisis.
The establishment believed they had finally halted the rising tide of populism and
nationalism. Now the coronavirus could reverse all of that.
As the pandemic leaves a path of death, illness, and economic collapse in its wake,
Americans are re-evaluating their positions on globalization, immigration, and the economy.
They are taking a long hard look at why these supposed panaceas aren't benefiting the working
class.
The public has awoken to the downsides of globalization and trade, especially in the
context of China. According to
Pew Research , the portion of Americans with an unfavorable view of China rose from 47
percent in 2017 to 66 percent in 2020, the highest number on record. For the first time, a
majority of younger Americans also shared this opinion of the communist nation. The poll also
found that 85 percent of Americans see the trade deficit with China as either a "very serious"
or "somewhat serious" concern. A similar percentage had similar feelings on the loss of jobs to
China and the growing military and technological threat they pose.
The shift is most noticeable even among conventional free traders like Senator Marco Rubio.
Back in 2016, he
attacked then-candidate Trump for even mentioning the prospect of tariffs on China. Now he
has become one of the biggest China hawks in Congress. In a recent Fox News interview
, he stated that China must pay "diplomatically, economically, and beyond" for their role in
the coronavirus. However, Congress has yet to act in any forceful way.
Immigration is another issue where Americans have turned against the globalist consensus.
Polls by The Washington Post and USA Today have found that 65 percent and 79 percent, respectively, want a temporary
freeze on all legal immigration during the coronavirus outbreak. That's a position more
populist and nationalist than anything that Trump has implemented.
At the same time, there's been a renewed understanding of the class divide in the United
States. The economic toll of the virus and the subsequent shutdown is predominately felt by
young and working-class Americans, a
majority of whom say they've experienced some job upheaval. Loopholes in the Paycheck
Protection Program that were supposed to prevent small business layoffs have allowed funds to
go to billion-dollar businesses, like Harvard, the LA Lakers, and Shake Shack. (Those three did
later reject the money after being publicly shamed.)
As Main Street shuttered and over 30 million Americans headed for the unemployment line,
America's billionaires added $238 billion to
their fortunes.
The contrasting experiences between the working class and the upper class has all the
ingredients of a populist backlash. Washington has thus far proven incapable of acting on
voters' demands to punish China and halt immigration. While millions of Americans are going to
bed uncertain as to whether they'll be able to feed their families, Speaker Nancy Pelosi
showcases her $25,000 freezer full of ice cream to late-night TV hosts.
The reality is that the Washington political class is more concerned with protecting its
donors' supply of cheap labor and products than with helping everyday Americans.
The coronavirus crisis has left neoliberals on both sides of the aisle scrambling to defend
the institutions that have failed Americans and the world during this crisis. The managing
director of the George W. Bush Institute
published an article condemning tariffs and "manipulating the market" to bring American
manufacturing back to its shores. Likewise, former President Jimmy Carter attacked
President Trump for defunding the World Health Organization. Media outlets have also published
stories sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Americans are desperate for a government that can react to the current crisis and respond to
their needs. If politicians fail, the populists of the future will look a lot more compelling
to voters than Bernie Sanders -- and a lot more dangerous to the current political
establishment than Donald Trump.
Ryan Girdusky is the author of They're Not Listening: How the Elites Created the
National Populist Revolution . He is a contributing editor to TAC and a host of Right
Now.
The United States Navy is both overstretched and threatened. The two US Pacific-based
carriers -- USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt -- are in trouble;
USS Reagan is in Japan, where it is being repaired, while USS Roosevelt is in
Guam, with its crew devastated by COVID-19. Meanwhile, the US has
sent an aircraft carrier group to threaten Venezuela using the excuse of counter-narcotics.
Threatening several countries far apart from each other makes it difficult for the US to focus
its superior military power against any one country.
Missile capacities shown by Iran and by China have meant that the US continuous bomber
presence at al-Udeid Air Base (Qatar) and at Andersen Air Force Base (Guam) has been withdrawn.
These bombers are now at Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota) and Barksdale Air Force Base
(Louisiana). General Timothy Ray of the US Air Force Global Strike Command put a brave face on
these withdrawals, saying
that it gives the US greater flexibility. The real reason for the bombers leaving Qatar and
Guam is that the US military fears that these strategic assets are in harm's way.
Neither Iran nor China has the capacity to defeat the US in a military confrontation. But
alongside both of their borders, Iran and China have the capacity to strike US targets and US
allies. This capacity hampers the US ability to establish the complete subordination of these
countries. It is this local power developed by China and Iran that the United States wants to
extinguish. Regain the Advantage
Admiral Davidson's April
report calls for "Forward-based, rotational joint forces" as the "most credible way to
demonstrate US commitment and resolve to potential adversaries." What the Indo-Pacific Command
means is that rather than have a fixed base that is vulnerable to attack, the US will fly its
bombers into bases on the soil of its allies in the Indo-Pacific network (Australia, India, and
Japan) as well as others in the region (South Korea, for instance); the bombers, he suggests,
will be better protected there. China will still be threatened, but Chinese missiles will -- so
the theory goes -- find it more difficult to threaten mobile US assets.
Davidson's report has a stunning science-fiction quality to it. There is a desire for the
creation of
"highly survivable, precision-strike networks" that run along the Pacific Rim, including
missiles of various kinds and radars in Palau, Hawaii, and in space. He asks for vast amounts
of money to develop a military that is already very powerful.
Furthermore, the US is committed to the development of anti-space weapons, autonomous
weapons, glide vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and offensive cyber weapons -- all meant to
destabilize missile defense techniques and to overpower any adversary. Such developments
presage a new arms race that will be very expensive and that will further destabilize the world
order.
The United States has unilaterally increased a buildup around China and has ramped up
threatening rhetoric against Beijing. Anxiety about a possible war against China imposed by the
United States is growing within China; although sober
voices are asking the Chinese government not to get drawn into an arms race with the United
States. Nonetheless, the threats are credible, and the desire to build some form of deterrence
is growing.
The absence of a strong world peace movement with the capacity to prevent this buildup by
the United States is of considerable concern for the planet. The need for such a movement could not be greater.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow
and chief correspondent at Globetrotter , a project of the
Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research . He has
written more than twenty books, including
The Darker Nations and
The Poorer Nations . His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo
Morales Ayma.
This article was produced by Globetrotter , a project of the
Independent Media Institute.
"... House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election . ..."
"... Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment. ..."
"... Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia claim made by Fleitz . ..."
"... Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election. ..."
Former CIA director John Brennan suppressed intelligence which
indicated that Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because "she was a known quantity," vs. the
unpredictable Donald Trump, according to Fox News ' Ed Henry.
During a Tuesday night discussion with Tucker Carlson, Henry said that Brennan "also had
intel saying, actually, Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because she was a known quantity,
she had been secretary of state, and Vladimir Putin's team thought she was more malleable,
while candidate Donald Trump was unpredictable."
Perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin has fond memories of the time Bill Clinton
hung out at his 'private homestead' during the same trip where he collected a $500,000
payday for a speech at a Moscow bank, right before the Uranium One deal was approved.
And as
Breitbart 's Joel Pollak notes, Henry's claim backs up a similar
allegation by former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz , who said on
April 22:
House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation
reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan
suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more
predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election .
Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet
intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted
Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also
objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment.
Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia
claim made by Fleitz .
Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama
administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the
Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI
knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before
they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election.
And now, Brennan is a contributor on MSNBC. How fitting.
Here is some theory from what I read/hear over there...No idea which side play the
informants, but so as to make some sense due the last tendences at least in Europe and the
moves y Trump and the "deep state"
According to Daniel Estulin ( and not sure whether I take him right, due his Spanish
)there is a current fight amongst the liberal financial banking elites and the old European
aristocratic elites and old ( very old )money, being the later those who lost the last WWII
by betting it all on fascism ( overtly or covertly ), and who try to redesign the world by
undoing current nation-states to then try to rebuilt and recover former European empires,
like Austro-Hungarian one ( in fact, there have been already moves these past days, even
during the pamdemic lockdown, amongst the Visegrads in this sense, on the part of Hungary and
Romania...), the IV Reich, and so on...
Trump would be, what he calls "international black", not an accident rised to power y the
deplorables, but a well planned move by those elites behind supporting him, who think the
world has become unmanageable under liberal democracy. These, what they seek, is a
middle-ageization of the world, with a hierarchical order kept tight through authoritarian
rule where, after the galloping advance of the 6th technological paradygm, about 90% of known
jobs will be lost, without time for the population to reconvert into something useful. To
justify that and advance it without intercourse of a decade or so, plus without facing any
resistance at all, the virus came, one would say, like fallen from the sky...
In the middle, are us all, the working class, the peasants, and the middle class ( upper,
middle, and low ) who never left being working class, eventhough the brainsucking by loans,
hollywood, hyperconsum through big malls cheap fashion clothes, a bit of travelling, and TV.
All disposable people....as got demonstrated during the "live exercise"....All jobs related
to services, tourism, clothing, cosmetics, will be lost if not those related to the luxury
sector, feed by the elites.
What is left for us is what got well illustrated in the hunger games, some will run to
aspire to get some crumbs, but at such price...
Of course, some amongst us, as always, are already positioning themselves as the new brown
shirts, online... and on terrain....
What all those calls for denouncing your breaking lockdown neighbor, or even the one not
clapping down at 8pm ( like authomats every day, during two months! )do you think were
for?
To test....
@JoaoAlfaiate
– You mean the Syria where US troops sent by Obama are being withdrawn by Trump.
– What Syrian oil has Trump stolen? None.
FYI:
– Obama was the first president in US history to be at war for every single day of his
eight year presidency.
– Obama approved military action in seven countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen as well as special operations on a smaller
scale all over the globe.
Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now?
Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her CYA letter? Why have republicans in
congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance? What is the
reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?
In a
single word in a single tweet tonight, President Trump explained it perfectly - with help from Fox
News' Tucker Carlson's detailed breakdown"
"OBAMAGATE!"
...
As around 2:15 in the clip above, Carlson explains that
then president of the United
States Barack Obama turned to the head of the FBI - the most powerful law enforcement official in
America, and said "Continue to secretly investigate my chief political rival so I can act against
him."
With the release of
recent
transcripts
and the
declassification
of material
from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and
Flynn
documents
showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about
why
the
intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place. Why was Donald
Trump considered a threat?
In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will
explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting
Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.
During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being
exploited
by contractors
within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to
thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify
who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI
contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search
queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger
background story.
When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the
resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was
taking place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the
NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.
Additionally, tens-of-thousands of searches were identified by the FISA court as likely
extending much further than the compliance review period: "
while the government reports it is
unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent
reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error
rate"
.
In short, during the Obama administration the NSA database was continually used to conduct
surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of "Spygate", as it
unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.
It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance
tool that created their initial problem.
Here's how we can tell
.
Initially in December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates and all needed to be researched.
However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was
significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.
On Super Tuesday,
March
2, 2016
, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that
Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee. On
March
5th
, Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on
March
8th
Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.
The next day,
March 9th
, NSA security alerts warned internal oversight
personnel that something sketchy was going on.
This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, "
many
of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the
same identifiers
over
different date ranges
." Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were
being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the
primary search target, over
multiple date ranges
, was Donald Trump.
There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her
report, there is no reason to believe the
85% non compliant rate
was any different from
the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.
As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during
Obama's second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike
Rogers shut down "contractor" access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way
to get access.
Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn
Simpson's wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton
campaign contract Fusion GPS who then hire Christopher Steele.
Knowing it was federal "contractors", outside government with access to the system, doing the
unauthorized searches, the question becomes:
who were the contractors?
The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using
could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known
FBI
contractor
; they were also
contracted
by the DNC
. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and is now the head of
Crowdstrike; a
rather
dubious contractor
for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic
company. James Comey's special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI "special employee"
with
security access
to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project
in
November 2015
and she was a
CIA
contractor
; and it's entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within his Fusion-GPS network were
also contractors for the intelligence community.
Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It's all part of this same network; Attkisson
even names Shawn Henry
as
a defendant
in her ongoing lawsuit.
All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.
It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted system users would
have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be
funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users
(including those inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to
continue Again, the timing becomes transparent.
Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same intelligence agencies began using
confidential human sources (CHS's) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence
assets like
Joseph
Mifsud
and
Stefan
Halper
the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the
same political surveillance operations.
When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on
March
28, 2016
, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a
known
entity
to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort's entry into the Trump
orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia
collusion script two weeks later.
The shift from "unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database" to legally authorized
exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political
surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated "spygate", or what officially
blossomed into the FBI investigation known as "Crossfire Hurricane" on July 31.
If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance
audit; and if the political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would
never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The
political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.
Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known
commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed
opposition research. However, one mistake from the NSA database extraction during an "about" query
shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.
That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 "about query" is then piped to Steele and turns up
inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn't Trump's lawyer, it was an art dealer
from New York City with the same name; the same "identifier".
A DEEP DIVE How Did It Work?
Start by reviewing the established record from the
99-page
FISC opinion
rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details
within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the
FISC
report
(full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had
an "institutional lack of candor" in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama
administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth
amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons' private information for
multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer's brief and ruling is not an easy
read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid
discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era
surveillance issues. So we'll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments
showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers
was
alerted
of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) "About" queries using the FBI/NSA database that
holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance
audit on/around
March 9th, 2016
, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May
1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral
Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) "about query" option, and went to the
extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on
April 18, 2016
(keep
these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from
the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were
conducting searches and then removing, or 'exporting', the results. Later on, the FBI said all of
the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search
boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person ("702"); and the "16" is a
check box to initiate a search based on "
To and From
". Example, if you put in a
date and a phone number and check "16" as the search parameter the user will get the returns on
everything "To and From" that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts,
contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the "17" is a
check box to initiate a search based on everything "
About
" the search
qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check "17" as the search parameter
the user will get the returns of everything
about
that phone. Calls, texts, contacts,
geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result,
702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date
or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date
parameters.
And that's just from a phone number.
Search an ip address "about" and read all data into that server; put in an email address and
gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about)
and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and
get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank
account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything
and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic
'identifier'
.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places,
numbers, addresses, etc. By using the "About" parameter there may be thousands or millions of
returns. Imagine if you put "@realdonaldtrump" into the search parameter? You could extract all
following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your
imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing "raw FISA
information, including
but not limited to
Section 702-acquired information".
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any
attempt to "minimize" or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and
obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of
privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:
But what's the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching "U.S Persons". The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016,
showed "eighty-five percent of those queries" were unlawful or "non compliant".
85% !!
"representing [redacted number]".
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and
99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 a non compliant rate of 85 percent
means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.
The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in
a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.
Also notice this
very important
quote: "
many of these non-compliant queries
involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges
." This tells us the system
users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over
different dates.
Specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored
.
Additionally, notice the last quote: "
while the government reports it is unable to provide a
reliable estimate of" these non lawful searches "since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe
the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate"
.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening
since
2012
.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is
assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become
special prosecutor in 2017.
Who was Mueller' chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the
Mueller special counsel.
Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense
Secretary? Ash Carter
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and
then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with
James Comey.
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The
results were extracted for? . (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I'll explain why
momentarily.)
OK, that's the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to "
raw FISA information that went well beyond what was
necessary to respond to FBI's requests
":
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby,
goes
to the White House
the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer
who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a
footnote
on page 87
: "
deliberate decisionmaking
":
This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: "(
[redacted]
access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into
[redacted])"
, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from
congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and
distribution of surveillance data.
Note: "
no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016
", that is important.
Summary:
The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI
database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with
contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the
information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and
we are not the only one to think that's what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize
the FISA legislation, Nunes
wrote a letter
to ODNI Dan Coats
about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR
:
To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director
Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the "About" query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director
Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process
completely. [
SEE
HERE
] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump
administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together
with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as
a full combatant command. [
SEE
HERE
] Unfortunately it didn't work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge
James Boasberg [
SEE
HERE
]
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from
2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.
Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of
database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be
unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same
principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense
Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers
fired
.
Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of
the FISA database. [
Explained
Here
] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017
Intelligence
Community Assessment
(drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a
cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political
surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes
sense; he was
FBI Director
when this
began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism
appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential
election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an
earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term "
Secret
Research Project
" originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S.
Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why
Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the
FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI "21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from
501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The transaction
occurred in October 2010 (
link
)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there's a pre-existing financial
crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the
surface in
early
spring 2012
.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for
the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was
tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew
to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As
Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned
It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from
attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning
organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the "Secret Research Project" was now
worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence
apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be
visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together in 2019/2020
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 just to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence
provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations.
The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring
everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th
shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal
albeit
ex post facto
justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That's why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly
committed to and defending the
formation of the Steele Dossier
and its
dubious content.
The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains three insurance policy purposes:
(1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama);
and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist
Clinton); and (3) continue the operation with a special counsel (protect both).
An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI
wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as
the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially
Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {
Go
Deep
}.
The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for
already existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and
evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.
Ultimately that's why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have a
tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing
the FISA application, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the
surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on.
Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse as
outlined by John Ratcliffe.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wWsvZuiPyTI
Thankfully we know U.S. Attorney John Durham has talked to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In this
video Rogers explains how he was notified of what was happening and what he did after the
notification.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/CIJGH9RS2Fc
* * *
After tonight's tweets from President Trump, we should expect a full-court press from 'the
resistance' to distract from the cracks appearing in the former President's halo of
invincibility...
When Putin came to power 20 years ago, he was a pro-western leader who, in the aftermath of the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the US, sought to recreate a contemporary version of the wartime grand alliance.
Putin's vision of renewed great power collaboration has been undermined but not yet obliterated by a succession
of Russian-Western crises and disputes over Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, as well as NATO
expansionism, the Skripal poisoning affair and Donald Trump's election as American president.
Critics often accuse Putin of being opposed to a rules-based world order. Rather, it is that he rejects
the self-serving rules some western states are seeking to impose on Russia under the guise of improving global
security.
As recently as January this year, Putin called for a five-power summit of the UN Security Council's
permanent members - Russia, China, the US, France and Britain - to discuss common economic, security and
environmental issues.
Maybe we can hope the current emergency will re-energise efforts to achieve a multi-lateral approach to
global challenges without the necessity for war.
Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College
Cork.
His latest book (with Martin Folly and Oleg Rzheshevsky) is Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms during
the Second World War.
Flashback: Obama Ordered Comey To Conceal FBI Activities Right Before Trump Took
Office by Tyler
Durden Mon, 05/11/2020 - 14:05 With weeks to go before Donald Trump's inauguration, former
President Obama and VP Joe Biden were briefed by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI
Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper on matters related to the Russia investigation.
The January 5, 2017 meeting - also attended by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice,
has taken on a new significance in light of revelations of blatant misconduct by the FBI - and
the fact that the agency decided not to brief then-candidate Trump that a "friendly foreign
government" (Australia) advised them that Russia had offered a member of his campaign 'dirt' on
Hillary Clinton.
The rumored 'dirt' was in fact told to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos by Joseph
Mifsud - a shadowy Maltese professor and self-described member of the Clinton Foundation.
Papadopoulos then told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who told Aussie intelligence,
which tipped off the FBI, which then launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Papadopoulos was
then surveiled by FBI spy Stefan Halper and his honeypot 'assistant' who went by the name "Azra
Turk" - while in 2017, Papadopoulos claims a spy handed him $10,000 in what he says goes "all
the way back to the DOJ, under the previous FBI under Comey, and even the Mueller team."
Meanwhile, the Trump DOJ decided last week to drop the case against former Director of
National Security, Mike Flynn, after it was revealed that the FBI was trying to ensnare him in
a 'perjury trap,' and that Flynn was coerced into pleading guilty to lying about his very legal
communications with the Russian Ambassador.
And let's not forget that the FBI used the discredited Steele Dossier to spy on Trump
campaign associate Carter Page - and all of his contacts . Not only did the agency lie to the
FISA court to obtain the warrant, the DOJ knew the outlandish claims of Trump-Russia ties in
the Steele Dossier - funded by the Clinton Campaign - had no basis in reality.
And so, it's worth going back in time and reviewing that January 5, 2017 meeting which was
oddly documented by Susan Rice in an email to herself on January 20, 2017 - inauguration day,
which purports to summarize that meeting.
Rice later wrote an
email to herself on January 20, 2017 -- Trump's inauguration day and her last day in the
White House -- purporting to summarize that meeting. "On January 5, following a briefing by
IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election," Rice wrote,
"President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also
present."
According to Rice, "President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued
commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law
enforcement communities 'by the book.'" But then she added a significant caveat to that
"commitment": "From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants
to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is
any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia . "
The next portion of the email is classified, but Rice then noted that " the President
asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we
share classified information with the incoming team . Comey said he would."
At the time Obama suggested to Yates and Comey -- who were to keep their posts under the
Trump administration -- that the hold-overs consider withholding information from the
incoming administration, Obama knew that President Trump had named Flynn to serve as national
security advisor. Obama also knew there was an ongoing FBI investigation into Flynn premised
on Flynn being a Russian agent. -
The Federalist
And so, instead of briefing Trump on the Flynn investigation, Comey "privately briefed Trump
on the most salacious and absurd 'pee tape' allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier."
The fact that Comey did so leaked to the press, which used the briefing itself as
justification to report on, and publish the dossier .
What Comey didn't brief Trump on was the FBI's bullshit case against Michael Flynn -
accusing the incoming national security adviser of being a potential Russian agent. And
according to The Federalist , " Even after Obama had left office and Comey had a new
commander-in-chief to report to, Comey continued to follow Obama's prompt by withholding intel
from Trump. "
The Federalist also raises questions about former DNI James Clapper - specifically, whether
Clapper lied to Congress in July of 2017 when he said he never briefed Obama on the substance
of phone calls between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
According to the report, accounts from Comey and McCabe directly contradict Clapper's
claim.
" Did you ever brief President Obama on the phone call, the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls? "
asked Rep. Francis Rooney (R0FL) during Congressional testimony, to which Clapper replied: "
No. "
Except, Comey told Congress that Clapper directly briefed Obama ahead of the January 5
meeting.
"[A]ll the Intelligence Community was trying to figure out, so what is going on here?" Comey
testified. "And so we were all tasked to find out, do you have anything [redacted] that might
reflect on this. That turned up these calls [between Flynn and Kislyak] at the end of December,
beginning of January," Comey testified. "And then I briefed it to the Director of National
Intelligence, and Director Clapper asked me for copies [redacted], which I shared with him ...
In the first week of January, he briefed the President and the Vice President and then
President Obama's senior team about what we found and what we had seen to help them understand
why the Russians were reacting the way they did. "
And now to see if anything comes of the ongoing Durham investigation, or if Attorney General
Bill Barr will simply tie a bow on the matter and call it a day.
R ep. Lee Zeldin demanded that Rep. Adam Schiff be stripped
of his post as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and resign because of his role in
the Russia investigation.
"Adam Schiff should not be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. His gavel should
be removed. He should be censured. He should resign," Zeldin said Monday on Fox News. "There's
a lot that should happen, but Nancy Pelosi isn't going to punish Adam Schiff. In fact, that's
the reason why he has the gavel in the first place."
Republicans have been critical of Schiff in recent weeks after reports suggested that
Schiff was trying to block the release of some of the transcripts of the investigation's 53
witness interviews.
Some of the transcripts were eventually released and
undercut claims used by Democrats to push for impeachment.
"He's the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, which became the House Impeachment
Committee because of the way he writes these fairy-tale parodies," Zeldin said.
The Republican from New York suggested that Schiff and Democrats who impeached Trump and
tried to remove him from office were aided by friends in the media.
"It's actually one that the Democrats reward. It's one that the media rewards," Zeldin said.
"So, I'm not going to expect any repercussions even though he should resign today."
So the RussiaGate was giant gaslighting of the US electorate by Clinton gang and intelligence
agencies rogues.
Notable quotes:
"... For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks ..."
"... Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left." ..."
"... This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network. ..."
"... Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive." ..."
"... Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled. ..."
"... Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."] ..."
"... Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it. ..."
"... Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come. ..."
For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have
the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.
House Intelligence Committee
documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that
the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers
to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a
protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom
Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.
Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm
hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred
before the 2016 presidential election.
The following excerpts from Henry's testimony
speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even
cyber neophytes can understand:
Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians
exfiltrated the data from the DNC? when would that have been?
Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have
indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was
exfiltrated (sic). There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say
conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't
have the evidence that says it actually left.
Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you
know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence
that they actually were exfiltrated?
Mr. Henry: There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's
circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.
Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually
left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?
Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the
network.
Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you've
indicated.
Mr. Henry: "We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data
left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.
In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic:
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we
believe it left, based on what we saw."
Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike's "belief" that Russia
hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: "There are other nation-states that collect this type of
intelligence for sure, but the – what we would call the tactics and techniques were
consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state."
Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry's testimony. Henry is asked when
"the Russians" exfiltrated the data from DNC.
Henry: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC,
but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated." ?? pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P
Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in
the word "exfiltration."
The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or
(2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.
As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than
three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not
hacked – by Russia or anyone else.
Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by
someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost
certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and
its cooperating foreign intelligence services.
Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be
exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up"
selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been
detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn
affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from
the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks
demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb
drive."
The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment
There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished
Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the
DNC.
But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant
and demonstrably true:
(1) In introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution", the authors of the ICA made a
highly germane point: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations
difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation – malicious or not –
leaves a trail."
(2) "When analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' [these] are not intended
to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on
collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment
does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."
[And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure,
as was the case with the ICA.]
The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of
Holy Writ to the misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" (it was a rump effort
prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the
banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.
Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and
NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it
personally to President-elect Donald Trump.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on
the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks , in an apparent effort to cover
his own derriere.
Obama: "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking
were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through
which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked."
So we ended up with "inconclusive conclusions" on that admittedly crucial point. What
Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know -- or professed not to know --
exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether
through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack,
and then a leak.
From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign
partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that "the Russians gave the DNC
emails to WikiLeaks " rested on thin gruel.
In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still
had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other
intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their
"high-confidence" findings.
Clapper
replied : "I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we're, we're
pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails." Pretty
sure?
Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress
CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton
campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails
got to WikiLeaks . It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery
app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's struggle with separatists supported
by Russia. A Voice of America
report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely
he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media
reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee
there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers.
"Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw,"
he said. Comey described
CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and
devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our
forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's
involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a
few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate
– did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to
rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY: In the case of the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We
got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done
the work. But we didn't get direct access.
BURR: But no content?
COMEY: Correct.
BURR: Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence
standpoint?
COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who
were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that
they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
In June last year it was
revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the
government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.
By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble,
as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI
misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week – whether the abuses of FISA,
misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian
hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take
his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.
Schiff: Every Confidence, But No Evidence
Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly
crumbled.
Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows
Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report
failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition
research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See:
"The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."]
Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally
about evidence that Russia "hacked" the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the
patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta "think tank,"
The Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A:
"You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a
harbinger of things to come. This video
clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SdOy-l13FEg
Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows
Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the
origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges
against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to
keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.
Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement
officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect
that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The
issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to
prevail this time?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
This is nationwide gaslighting by Clinton gang of neoliberals who attempted coup d'état, and Adam Schiff was just one of the
key figures in this coupe d'état, king of modern Joe McCarthy able and willing to destroy a person using false evidence
What is interesting is that Tucker attacked Republicans for aiding and abetting the coup
d'état against Trump
It wasn't "Leaders" that offshored everything to China, it was "BUSINESS LEADERS" although
they were enabled to do so by government policies that failed to tariff cheap foreign
imports.
i find it unbelievable and unacceptable that our medicines are not made here. this MUST
change. it is one thing to buy cheap tools and toys from china but NOT vital supplies, this
has to change fast.
The Western Roman Empire fell in part because they were dependent upon grain supplied from
North Africa, a region rife with hostility to the Romans. Grow your own damned food and make
your own antibiotics. Elementary as hell.
Tucker is OK in my book. Common sense tells you he speaks the truth. Now what can we do
about it? Electing other politicians does not seem to be the answer.
"... "This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct," Barr added, saying that they're investigating actions taken before "and after ... the election." ..."
"... And according to Fox' s source, Durham is investigating a "pattern of conduct" which includes lying to the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page . ..."
"... "Barr talks to Durham every day," a source recently told Fox News . " The president has been briefed that the case is being pursued, and it's serious. " ..."
"... " It was a very dangerous situation what they did ," Trump said during an interview with "Fox & Friends" Friday. " These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible people and hopefully they're going to pay a big price in the not too distant future. ..."
"... Durham's probe is expected to wrap up by the end of the summer. Right as Trump is expected to face off against Joe Biden - who was VP while most of this was going on . ..."
John Durham has supercharged his review into the origins of the
Russiagate hoax orchestrated by the Obama administration during and after the 2016 US election
- adding additional top prosecutors to explore different components of the original probe,
according to
Fox News .
Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut tasked with by Attorney General Bill Barr with
investigating the actions taken against the Trump team, has tapped Jeff Jensen - U.S. attorney
for the Eastern District of Missouri who had been investigating the Michael Flynn case. Also
added to the team is interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea,
according to Fox 's sources.
" They farmed the investigation out because it is too much for Durham and he didn't want to
be distracted ," said one source, adding "He's going full throttle, and they're looking at
everything. "
Word of Durham's beefed-up team comes amid worsening tensions between the Trump
administration and congressional Democrats, who have been making the case that the Justice
Department's reviews have become politicized given the decision last week to drop the Flynn
case - a move which House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called
"outrageous."
" The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming ," said Nadler - who probably wasn't
referring to handwritten notes by one of the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn which
exposed their perjury trap . Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his perfectly
legal communications with a Russian ambassador - a plea he made while under severe financial
strain due to legal expenses, and to save his son from the FBI 'witch hunt.' Flynn would later
withdraw his plea as evidence mounted that he was set up.
The DOJ determined that the bureau's 2017 Flynn interview -- which formed the basis for
his guilty plea of lying to investigators -- was "conducted without any legitimate
investigative basis."
Breadcrumbs were being dropped in the days preceding the decision that his case could be
reconsidered. Documents unsealed the prior week by the Justice Department revealed agents
discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe – questioning
whether they wanted to "get him to lie" so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit
wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing that he essentially had been
set up in a perjury trap. In that interview, Flynn did not admit wrongdoing and instead was
accused of lying about his contacts with the then-Russian ambassador – to which he
pleaded guilty. -
Fox News
Jensen, the U.S. attorney now working with Durham, was reportedly the one who recommended
dropping the Flynn case to Barr.
Barr speaks
When asked whether he thought the FBI conspired against Flynn, Barr told CBS News on
Thursday "I think, you know, that's a question that really has to wait [for] an analysis of all
the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of
President Trump's administration," adding that Durham is "still looking at all of this."
"This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and
we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct," Barr added, saying that they're investigating
actions taken before "and after ... the election."
And according to Fox' s source, Durham is investigating a "pattern of conduct" which
includes lying to the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page .
President Trump has long-referred to the investigation as a "witch hunt" - which Barr and
Durham are now untangling.
"Barr talks to Durham every day," a source recently told Fox News . " The president has been
briefed that the case is being pursued, and it's serious. "
President Trump on Friday offered a vague, but ominous, warning as the Durham probe
proceeds.
" It was a very dangerous situation what they did ," Trump said during an interview with
"Fox & Friends" Friday. " These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible
people and hopefully they're going to pay a big price in the not too distant future. "
Trump
was specifically reacting to newly released transcripts of interviews from the House
Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation
that revealed top Obama officials acknowledged they knew of no "empirical evidence" of a
conspiracy despite their concerns and suspicions. -
Fox News
Durham's probe is expected to wrap up by the end of the summer. Right as Trump is expected
to face off against Joe Biden - who was VP while most of this was going on .
"These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that
he was even the person being investigated," Powell told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures,"
adding "So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him
up and frame him."
According to recently released testimony, President Obama revealed during an Oval Office
meeting weeks before the interview that he knew about Flynn's phone call with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak , apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates .
After the meeting, Obama asked Yates and then-FBI Director James Comey to "stay behind."
Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was
seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently,
given the information." -
Fox News
Despite the FBI's Washington DC field office recommending closing the case against Flynn -
finding "no derogatory information" against him - fired agent Peter Strzok
pushed to continue investigating, while former FBI Director
James Comey admitted in December 2019 that he "sent" Strzok and agent Joe Pientka to
interview Flynn without notifying the White House first .
... ... ...
After Strzok and Pientka interviewed Flynn,
handwritten notes unsealed last month reveal that at least one agent thought the goal was
to entrap Flynn .
"What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?" reads one note.
... ... ...
"The whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, [former Director of National
Intelligence James] Clapper, [Former CIA Director John] Brennan, and in the Oval Office meeting
that day with President Obama," said Powell. When asked if she thinks Flynn was the victim of a
plot that extended to Obama, she said "Absolutely."
A black swan is slang for an unexpected event with large consequences. 2020 has brought us
two so far: the COVID-19 pandemic and the collapse of oil prices.
Each will have potent consequences for the Imperium Americanum. And there is a nest of black
cygnets maturing.
COVID-19
A new infectious disease was noticed in China at the end of last year, identified as a
coronavirus in January and a pandemic was declared in March. Since then economic and social
life has come to a stop in the West as governments have been convinced to declare shutdowns.
Restrictions became widespread in March and April and are still in effect; while some
jurisdictions lessen them, others talk about more months . It is not the purpose of
this essay to wonder whether these measures were justified or effective, only to state that
they happened and that the world economy will have been enfeebled for two to three months or
even longer. A big black swan indeed.
POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to
disbelieve that at this point.
RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus was
not manmade or genetically modified.
POMPEO: That's right. I -- I -- I agree with that. Yes. I've -- I've seen their analysis.
I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that
that is accurate at this point.
Most of the West is still shut down but China is opening. Observers know that China is
becoming the world's top economy – the World Bank had already
given it that title in PPP terms in 2013 – and COVID-19 is sure to accelerate the
process by giving it a head start out of the economic slowdown. With cheap energy too .
Of the downstream effects of the COVID-19 black swan, we can see at least three:
great and possibly fatal damage to the assumption of American and Western
competence;
a widening of the economic gap with China;
a further change in the world soft power balance.
The "blame China" diversion (not forgetting the rest of the current Enemy Package –
Russia and Iran ) is childish and will earn disgust.
None of these changes is to the benefit of the Imperium Americanum.
Oil
In March Riyadh, on behalf of OPEC, proposed to Moscow that they reduce oil production in
order to keep prices up. Moscow refused and Riyadh started pumping. COVID-19 shutdowns
collapsed demand. A month later
West Texas Intermediate futures went negative and the price of a barrel of oil passed below
$20.
The end result of this price competition in a demand crash is unknown but it is unlikely
that the U.S. shale industry will do well out of it. And, because so much of Washington's
behaviour is based on the confidence that it is
oil-independent , the U.S. will not come out of this stronger.
So two black swans are likely to leave the Imperium Americanum weaker and less influential.
And, it should be said, more contemned. But there is more.
And some black cygnets
Some may remember the excitement of TV commentators about cruise missiles in the Gulf War of
1990. And a weapon that could be launched a thousand kilometres away and hit a particular floor
of the building aimed at was pretty amazing. That was the first large-scale public
combat use of very long-range precision weapons and for many years cruise missiles were a
signature feature of U.S. attacks and practically a monopoly.
Until 2015 when Russia struck targets in Syria from otherwise insignificant small craft in the
Caspian Sea . So flabbergasted was Washington by this that its first reaction was to
pooh-pooh the accuracy . But they were real; many Kalibres have been launched from
different platforms including submerged submarines . So, there were now two
demonstrated members of the club that could, in real conditions, precisely hit a target a long
distance away.
The Trump Administration is very hostile towards Iran but no more so than most U.S.
Administrations since the departure of the Shah – himself put back into power by a
U.S.-UK coup. Probably the hottest moment of this undeclared war was in 1988 , but there have been
many other crises and we just had another
threat from Washington . Tehran knows it is on Washington's hit list and has been preparing
for decades. Missiles will be one of its principal defenses. Washington would do well to
reflect on Iran's – surprising to it – membership in these two elite clubs before
it makes any more threats. Little cygnets become big swans.
Another black cygnet is the
Iraq parliament's demand that U.S. forces leave the country . Washington is
consolidating its troops but they will be besieged prisoners if the country rises against
them. Which sooner or later it will when the new
Prime Minister forms his government . Two consequences of the neocon-dominated "New
American Century" in the Middle East have been the growth of Iran's influence and the
demonstration that the U.S. military is not the omnipotent force it thought it was. When the
effort to get it out starts, Washington will have three choices: hunker down and hope it goes
away, enormously reinforce its troops for a completely new war, withdraw à la Vietnam.
This cygnet is growing.
* * *
A pandemic, oil price collapse, a target country showing it has more capability than
assumed, threatened expulsion from Iraq. The surprises have exposed long-time weaknesses.
It's always the unexpected things that test things to destruction.
FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American
foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous
insight:
"You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal
messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats
over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of
'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy
is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to
clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office ."
Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the
Cold War, Wallace stated:
"American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. "Fascism
in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for
war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and
using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races,
creeds and classes."
In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission , Wallace said " Before the blood of our boys is scarcely
dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War
III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by
following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well
as in war."
This was a coup d'état and it has little to do with the protection of Oabama policies,
but a lot with protection of Clinton clan to which Obama belongs.
FBI investigators were corrupt and acted as a political police
Notable quotes:
"... Heavily redacted FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous " Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor." (No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.) ..."
"... FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia; and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed regularly to determine if he was a spy. ..."
"... None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy issues." ..."
"... Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic mission technologies. ..."
investigation
of Michael Flynn , the
more it appears he was targeted precisely because, as the national security adviser to the
incoming Trump administration, he signaled that the new administration might undo Obama
administration policies -- which is kind of what the American people voted for in 2016.
Some will say that Gen. Flynn was investigated for legitimate criminal or national security
reasons. Yet, the FBI's ultimate interview of Flynn addressed none of the grounds that the FBI
used to open the original case against him. For those of us who have run FBI investigations,
that is more than odd.
Heavily redacted
FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign
members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous "
Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor."
(No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.)
For the record, Flynn clearly exercised poor judgment as a result of being interviewed by
the FBI. The larger question is whether the team under then-Director James Comey had a legitimate basis to conduct the
interview at all.
FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated
reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump
campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia;
and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed
regularly to determine if he was a spy.
None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it
is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the
Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an
adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy
issues."
Let me be clear: That is not a legitimate justification to investigate an American
citizen.
There is a theme that runs through the entire Crossfire Hurricane disaster, which has been
publicly articulated by Comey and his deputy director, Andrew McCabe : They saw themselves as stalwarts
in the breach defending America from a presidential candidate who they believed was an
agent
of Russia .
... ... ...
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI
special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a
founder and principal of NewStreet Global
Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic
mission technologies.
All-in-all Obama was a CIA sponsored fraud: In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on
the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic
National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media
puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Notable quotes:
"... Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question. Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security? LINK ..."
"... Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad . This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!). ..."
"... In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises." ..."
Whether or not General Flynn is loathed or liked, there is Supreme Court decisions setting
precedence for dropping a case when found to be wrapped in prosecutorial misdeeds:
As for the first 'black' president out from the shadows;
Thanks for that additional link. And that's why Obama could not standby with Flynn in the
NSA role. Recall Hillary's on Trump- "if he is elected we'll hang" (paraphrased)
In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on
the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic
National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media
puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Fast Forward to 2011 he signs NDAA. "How Obama disappointed the world." Der Spiegel had
such an article 9 Aug.2011. But he was re-(S)-elected.
And you have to ask yourself one question. They all stuck with the same exact propaganda,
the same exact his information, that the Trump administration, that the Trump campaign
conspired with Russia, even though they had no evidence whatsoever, and they manufactured that
evidence against the president."
"And this is why all of them need to be investigated" explained Carter.
May 8, 2020 The latest outrage from the Trump White House is that the Justice
Department dropped its case against former national security adviser Mike Flynn for lying to
the FBI, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to the charges in 2017.
In its coverage of the exoneration, the New York Timesnotes that
Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying about a discussion with the Russian ambassador in December
2016 during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. Flynn asked Russia not
to overreact to sanctions
the Obama administration had placed on Russia for interfering in the election; Trump would
be in the White House in another three weeks.
Hmmm. The Times does not mention the other alleged lie– which involves
Israel. A week before the sanctions call, Flynn called the Russian ambassador, and
a "litany" of other countries , to try to get them to counter the U.S. decision to allow a
resolution highly critical of Israeli settlements to pass in the U.N. Security Council. That
resolution went through 14-0 with the U.S. abstaining– Obama's parting shot at
Netanyahu.
The FBI interviewed Flynn in January 2017, a month later, as part of the Russia probe. And
at that time, Flynn lied about his attempt to block the anti-settlements resolution (according
to his own guilty plea).
And former FBI director James Comey speculated that Flynn might have violated the Logan
Act– which criminalizes discussions by unauthorized American citizens with foreign
governments that are having a dispute with the United States.
The whole affair revealed Israel's unseemly influence over U.S. politics. Trump's transition
team "colluded
with Israel," as the Intercept put it– even as everyone was so obsessed with
Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
The possible involvement or knowledge of Israel in the case will be one of many questions
that congressional investigators will pursue.
Well, I guess no one wanted that to happen. Certainly the Times doesn't seem to
want it. Two articles today about the Justice Department's collapse mention Russia repeatedly.
Says one, "The [FBI] questioning focused on his [Flynn's] conversations during the transition
after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration's imposition
of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election." That's just
half-true.
The Israel angle was also buried in the coverage on MSNBC today by Andrea Mitchell. Her
segment on the decision expressed a lot of outrage over Vladimir Putin and Russian influence;
but no mention of what else Flynn was up to.
Here's the original
Justice Department charge sheet to which Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017. It tells
the story of the settlements resolution.
On or about December 21, 2016, Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security
Council on the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution"). The United Nations Security
Council was scheduled to vote on the resolution the following day.
On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team
directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn
where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the
vote or defeat the resolution
On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending
vote. FLYNN informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration's opposition to
the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution.
That senior member of the team was apparently Jared Kushner, a friend of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and btw the president's son in law. Buzzfeed in
December 2017 :
In the run-up to the vote, both Flynn and [Jared] Kushner
called several officials of Security Council member states in order to block or delay the
resolution. Flynn personally called foreign ambassadors on the Security Council, including
representatives of Uruguay and Malaysia, according to a February
report by Foreign Policy.
Trump himself intervened in the matter, getting the Egyptian government to withrdraw its
anti-settlements resolution. The resolution was ultimately
proposed by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal.
Trump's biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, is an ardent supporter of Israel and a friend to
Netanyahu. Adelson and other donors' influence over Middle East policy has been a running
theme of the Trump administration.
In dropping the case, even having obtained a guilty plea, the Justice Department now says
that the FBI had no business questioning Flynn in January 2017. The issues he was asked about
were not "material" to the ongoing investigation.
The Justice Department
filing of yesterday takes Flynn at his word in his original interview by the FBI: that the
many calls he made to foreign governments were just a "battle drill" by the Trump campaign
office in Washington to see how quickly it could get foreign leaders on the phone–Israel,
Senegal, Britain, France, Egypt, Russia -- and Flynn was just trying to suss out the Russians,
not pressure them to block the resolution. "Flynn stated he conducted these calls to attempt to
get a sense of where countries
stood on the UN vote "
But three years ago Comey and some congresspeople were concerned that the lobbying in
Israel's interests against the U.S. would violate the Logan Act. From a
hearing by the House Select Committee on Intelligence in March 2017:
Rep. Jackie Speier (of California):
"The fact that he actively was asking the Russians, through the Ambassador, to vote
against the United States at the U[N] . . with regard to Israeli settlements, have you
looked further into that issue? Because that clearly involves a private citizen conducting
foreign policy.
James Comey said it might be a Logan Act violation, but he wasn't sure.
That is one of the questions for the Department of Justice, is do you want further
investigation. That would be the Logan Act angle, not the false statements to
Federal agents angle I am not an expert, but I don't think it is something prosecutors have
used. But it is possible. That is one of the reasons we sent it over to them, saying look ,
here is this old statute. Do you want us to do further investigation?
Sweet revenge? Now that Michael Flynn is free, Trump may be tempted to
punish the Russiagate conspirators
Robert Bridge
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of the book,
'Midnight in the American Empire,'
How Corporations and Their Political Servants
are Destroying the American Dream.
@Robert_Bridge
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of the book,
'Midnight in the American Empire,'
How Corporations and Their Political Servants
are Destroying the American Dream.
@Robert_Bridge
8 May, 2020 13:43
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FILE PHOTO December 01, 2017 Gen. Michael Flynn, former national
security adviser to US President Donald Trump, leaves Federal Court in Washington, DC AFP /
Brendan Smialowski
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As the Justice Department drops charges against the former White House adviser, many are hoping the
final chapter on Russiagate has been closed. But as an investigation against Trump's rivals proceeds,
the saga is just beginning.
May 7 may go down in the American history books as the day when Donald Trump began to turn the tide
against his Democrat opponents and their relentless efforts to have him removed from office. That was
the day when the Justice Department
declared
there was no
"legitimate investigative basis"
for FBI agents to interview Gen.
Michael Flynn over his meetings with Russian diplomats, coming as they did when the lame-duck Obama
administration was sabotaging US-Russia relations on its way out the door.
Thursday brought other
bits of good news for the Trump administration. The House Intelligence Committee released its
Russiagate interviews, in which the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper,
admitted
he
"never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign was
plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election."
No wonder Intel chief Adam Schiff demanded absolute secrecy during his closed-door inquisition.
DOJ now says 2017 interview of Flynn was 'unjustified' DOJ now says it
had NO probable cause to spy on Carter Page in '17 Transcripts now show exculpatory evidence on
Papadopoulos/Page w/held frm FISAcourt Someone remind me y we needed $30M+ Mueller collusion
investigation?
Among Trump's close circle of colleagues brought down in the Democrats' big-game hunting
expedition, such as former campaign adviser Roger Stone and businessman Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn
was by far the most prized trophy. In hindsight, Trump may have believed that, by firing Flynn just
days into his job, the Russia-collusion story would just magically disappear as the Democrats gave up
the hunt. If that was the plan, it backfired in spectacular fashion: the Democrats sensed blood and
doubled down on their impeachment efforts.
What came next was a three-year political witch hunt against Trump that was never seriously
challenged by the predominantly left-leaning mainstream media even after the US$30 million Mueller
probe finally put the conspiracy theory to bed. Today, although the media headlines conceal it, the
narrative is slowly beginning to swing in Trump's favor, as Flynn's release strongly suggests.
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this
has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail
sentences, and this was TREASON!
As I
discussed
in a recent column, many Americans are blissfully ignorant of the fact that, back in May
2019, Trump
launched
an investigation into the origins of Russiagate. Tracking the scandal leads one into a
labyrinthine rabbit hole of intrigue, where it is believed that the Obama-led FBI misled the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act court to spy on the Trump campaign.
The potential list of
individuals who may eventually be forced to testify for their actions extends to the highest echelons
of the Democratic Party. And that would include even 'untouchables,' such as former president Barack
Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. In fact, it is not beyond the realms of possibility
that has-been politicians like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are still being considered as
presidential material simply to escape prosecution.
For anyone who doubts the severity of the possible charges would do well to consider recent
comments by Attorney General William Barr. In an interview last month with Fox News, Barr said the FBI
counterintelligence against Trump served to
"sabotage the presidency without any basis."
That
is about as close to the legal definition of sedition as one can get, and I am sure there are many
powerful people who have arrived at the same conclusion.
Is a former president involved in treason of a sitting president? 🤯
It should be remembered that Donald Trump was voted into office largely because of his pledge
to
"drain the swamp."
In other words, the Manhattan real-estate developer turned
rabble-rousing populist had a very negative attitude about the career politicians who make up
Washington, DC long before he entered the Oval Office.
Now, after being hounded and harassed for
the entirety of his first term, while watching colleagues such as Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Paul
Manafort have their lives and careers senselessly upended, Trump may be expected to take full
advantage of Flynn's exoneration to make those responsible pay a hefty legal penalty. If ever there
were a time for such a move, now would certainly be it.
Exactly what the charges against the architects of Russiagate will be, if there are any, will
probably be revealed in the next days and weeks, when William Barr and his assistant, John Durham, are
expected to make the findings of their year-long investigation public.
I am guessing we have not heard the end of the Russiagate drama yet with the freeing of Michael
Flynn, but, instead, are heading into Part II. Fasten your seatbelts things could get interesting.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
It's a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world . Americans in particular are
obsessed with "safety." The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law
or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: "A kid
might get hurt."
Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the
operating word here is "reasonable." Banning lawn darts ,
for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by
unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far.
Beyond the realm of legislation, this has begun to infect our very culture. Think of things
like
"trigger warnings" and "safe
spaces." These are part of broader cultural trends in search of a kind of "emotional
safety" – a purported right to never be disturbed or offended by anything. This is by no
means confined to the sphere of academia, but is also in our popular culture, both in "
extremely
online " and more mainstream variants.
Why are Americans so obsessed with safety? What is the endgame of those who would bubble
wrap the world, both physically and emotionally? Perhaps most importantly, what can we do to
turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of self-reliance , mental toughness , and giving one
another the benefit of the doubt so that we don't "bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for
absolute security," as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about
?
Coddling and Splintering: The Transformation of the American Mind
There is an interesting phenomenon involved in coddling: Australian psychologist Nick Haskam
first coined the term "concept creep." Basically, this means that terms are often elastic and
expand past the point of meaning. Take, for example, the concept of "trauma." This used to have a very
limited meaning. However, "trauma" quickly became expanded to mean even slight physical or
emotional harm or discomfort. Thus the increasing belief among the far left that words can be
"violence" – not "violent," mind you, but actual, literal violence.
In the other direction, the
definition of "hero" has been expanded to mean just about anything. Every teacher,
firefighter and police officer is now considered a "hero." This isn't to downplay or minimize
the importance of these roles in our society. It's simply to point out that "hero" just doesn't
mean what it used to 100 or even 30 years ago.
Once this expansion of a term occurs, there is never any kind of retraction. Trauma now
means just about anything, and violence will soon be expanded to include lawful, peaceful
speech that one disapproves of. Once this happens, there will be no going back. In the words of
Sam Harris :
"We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or
unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That's
because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is through
speech, through communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can't be communicated
you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you."
It is extremely dangerous to begin labelling everything as violence for reasons of free
speech, but perhaps even more dangerous is the notion that when anything is violence, nothing
is violence. Redefining words as "violence" means that we have little recourse for when actual
violence occurs.
The Coddling of the American Mind notes some other concepts that are important as we speak
of America's obsession with "safety" above all else. First, that coddling combined with
splintering means that people's political views are much more like fanatical religious views
than anything. They don't see themselves as having to debate ideas or seek common ground.
Rather, the opposing side and its proponents are seen as "dangerous" and must be discredited at
all costs. It is worth noting that this is much more common among the left than the right or
the center, which has now become more the place where "live and let live" types congregate.
The problem with this goes beyond simply being irritated by irrational people barking at you
or at someone else: There is an entire generation of people who are seriously lacking in
critical thinking
skills . They think that labelling people and name-calling are excuses for a reasoned
argument. In the words of Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you
commit atrocities."
These problems are hardly confined to political radicalism or academia. Indeed, the
corporate sector is no stranger to this kind of safety obsession. There is the phenomenon of
"woke capital," where the corporations find the latest celebrity cause-du-jour and use it as a
marketing strategy.
There is currently an extreme risk aversion in management science. Companies will now do
basically anything to avoid "a kid getting hurt" or someone's delicate sensibilities being
offended.
Education from kindergarten up to the universities is increasingly about teaching doctrines
and ideology, rather than critical thinking and problem solving skills. All of this is a
dangerous admixture that combines the full weight of the academic, cultural and business elites
in this country. And its consequences are far reaching.
Trigger Warnings and Safe
Spaces
For those unaware, a "trigger warning" is a person's advisory that disturbing content is
going to be posted. However, in an example of concept creep, the meaning of "disturbing" has
become expanded to mean, well, just about anything that might offend a leftist. It is also
sometimes known as a "content warning," "TW" or "CW."
A similar concept is that of a "safe space." What used to be a term used for a place where
people in actual danger of physical harm could express themselves, a "safe space" now means a
place where there is no room for disagreement or questions because language is literally
violence.
This might all sound very silly and we definitely agree that it is. However, it is quickly
becoming de rigeur not just in academia, which is increasingly functioning as a bizarre
combination of a daycare center for 21 year olds and an indoctrination program, but also in the
corporate world and in the media.
It's not surprising that such foolishness has reached our corporate elites, because so many
figures within that world come from the Ivy League. Harvard Law, for example, was the center of
a controversy where
they were urged not to teach rape law or even use the word "violate" (which makes it pretty
hard to talk about violations of the law). A Harvard professor argued that greater anxiety
among students to discuss complicated and nuanced séxual assault cases was impeding the
ability of professors to adequately teach their students. This in turn would lead to poorly
prepared attorneys for rape victims in the future.
Beyond a simple discussion in the academic sphere, there are student groups on campus who
urge students not to attend or participate in class discussions focused on séxual
violence. The same student groups advocate for warning students in advance so they can skip out
on class and even to exclude "triggering" material from tests. Once again, the real victims
here are the victims of séxual assault whose attorneys will be ill-prepared to advise
them, to say nothing of the cumulative effect on the prosecutorial environment.
Another key term to understand here is "microaggressions" which means just about
anything. Offensive statements under this umbrella include things like "I don't see race,"
"America is the land of opportunity" and "I believe the most qualified person should get the
job."
To readers of Generation X or older, this all might sound like a resurgence of political
correctness and, indeed, to some extent it is. However, there is something different about the
current anti-speech craze sweeping not just campuses, but also boardrooms: Political
correctness was, at least in theory, about the elimination of so-called "hate speech" (for
example, using "mentally disabled" instead of "retarded" or "little person" instead of
"midget") and also about broadening the canon of literature to include more women and
minorities.
One doesn't need to agree with either objective or be as generous as we are to see that the
West has entered a new, accelerated and intensified version of the old political correctness
that is qualitatively more dangerous. The "safe spaces" phase of this is about eliminating
anything and everything that might be emotionally troubling to students on campus.
This assumes a high degree of fragility among American college students. But perhaps this
assumption isn't totally off base.
The Road to Safety Obsession
If you were born before 1985 or so, your childhood was vastly different than of those born
after you. As a child, you probably came and went as you pleased, letting your parents know
where you were going, who you would be with and when you might be home. You rode your bike
without a helmet and if you were bullied at school there's a good chance that you view this as
a character-building experience, not one of deep emotional trauma.
So what happened?
A few things. First, in 1984, the "missing child" milk carton
was introduced. America became obsessed with child abduction in response to several
high-profile child kidnappings over the period of a few years. Etan Platz , Adam Walsh and Johnny Gosch are just three of the names
known to Americans during this time period. In September 1984, the Des Moines, Iowa-based
Anderson Erickson Dairy began printing the pictures of Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin on milk
cartons. Chicago followed suit, then the entire state of California. In December 1984, a
nationwide program was launched to keep the faces of abducted children front and center in the
American mind.
Some of the protocols established out of this were useful, such as AMBER Alerts and Code Adam .
Awareness of child abduction in general was raised and as a result there's significantly fewer
child abductions today than there were in 1980. Indeed,
stranger abduction is incredibly rare in the United States . But this has come with a dark
side.
You might be familiar with the myriad of cases in suburban America where children playing
alone are
arrested by the police because they don't have adult supervision. The parents are then
questioned by the police or, in some cases, the state's Child
Protective Services .
And so the result is that there are at least two generations of American children raised in
a protective net so tight that they not only have trouble expressing themselves, but also
being
exposed to failure and discomfort . What began as a good-faith effort to prevent child
abduction and increase overall child welfare has ended up, as a side effect, creating a world
where children were raised in such safety that they can't even handle being upset.
This has not only insulated children from the consequences of their own actions and the
normal pains of growing up, but also gives the impression that no matter what their problems,
"adults" are ready to step in and save the day at any moment.
There are two other cultural phenomena worth exploring: The television series Cops and the
24-hour cable news cycle. As of April 2020, Cops is still on the air, having moved from Fox to
Spike TV in 2013.
Cops was more than just a TV series, it was a cultural phenomenon that changed television.
The cinéma
vérité style used by the show was to be copied in the 90s by virtually every
reality show you can name. Curiously, it came out around the same time that crime rates had
plummeted comparatively to the 70s and 80s. And just at that time, people started having the
worst in human behavior beamed into their homes for entertainment every Saturday night.
At the same time, CNN was bringing news into your home 24 hours a day without end. This
meant they had to fill programming around the clock – and most news is bad news. So in
addition to a hugely popular program centered around chasing criminals in the act, Americans
also had a constant stream of bad news and dangerous events pumped into their homes. The result
was the end of the "free range child," the kind who learned through play and discovered risk
management through trial and error. This was replaced with children whose entire existence was
micromanaged by adults, with little to no unsupervised play time.
The ability to learn through failure is a well-established principle going back to the
Greeks, who called it pathemata mathemata ("guide your learning through pain"). The knowledge
and wisdom gained through failure and pain are arguably more lasting and valuable than those
learned in school.
The Generation Gap: Millennials and Gen Z
Older generations (Generation X and Baby Boomers) have a tendency to conflate Millennials
and Gen Z (also known as "Zoomers"). However, there are two key differences, one cultural and
one clinical: First, Zoomers are much more digital natives than their Millennial counterparts.
They didn't get constant internet access or mobile access at college. They've had it since they
were in middle school in many cases.
While this is bound to create secondary cultural differences, we know of one clinical
difference between Millennials and Zoomers: Zoomers are much more prone to mental illness ,
specifically depression, anxiety, alcoholism and self-harm.
The Baby Boomers and Gen Xers created an environment where it is safer than ever to be a child ,
but at what cost? There has been widespread and verifiable psychological damage done to the
younger generation, which is likely being compounded by the coddling taking place in our
nation's universities.
Screen Time and Social Media
"Screen time" is the new obsession for parents, especially among, ironically, those who work
in high-tech Silicon Valley jobs such as Steve
Jobs, father of the iPhone . But there seems to be an emerging consensus among those who
have actually studied the topic that the problem isn't "screen time" per se, but rather the
more specific use of it in the form of social media . This has
been identified as the cause of depression and anxiety, particularly among girls.
Why is social media usage particularly impactful among girls? Dr. Haidt and others postulate
that it's because they are more sensitive to the "perfect" lives being lived by beautiful social
media influencers – at least the lives that they lead online. What's more, there is a
lot of exclusion and bullying taking place on social media. In days past, you only heard about
the party you didn't get invited to, but now you get to watch it unfold in real time on
Snapchat or other platforms. And cyberbullying
is much harder to track and police than its real world equivalent.
There's a related bubble wrapping going on with regard to a different sort of screen time:
Kids today are often forbidden from playing with plastic guns or even finger guns. There is the
notorious case of the 7-year-old child who was
suspended for biting a Pop Tart toaster pastry into the shape of a gun . But millions of
children come home (from the same schools where finger guns can warrant a suspension) to play
Grand Theft Auto for hours on end.
Indeed, there is some evidence that suggests that
violent movies and video games can trigger violent thoughts in some, but not all, people
who view them. The National Institute of Mental Health has done an extensive study detailing the
impact that violent media has on those who view it.
A Nation Divided
There's not much hyperbole in saying that America is barely a single nation anymore. We talk
about "red states" and "blue states," but the divide is much deeper than that. Even the coastal
states largely have an urban college-educated Democratic population and a rural
non-college-educated Republican population.
While some animosity between different areas of the political spectrum, or even resentment
of cities by the countryside and vice versa, is
nothing new , the rancor took off sharply in the early 2000s following the controversial
election of George W. Bush and his expanded imperial presidency after
9/11 .
Social media
makes it easier for extremes to amplify their anger. What's more, it's much easier for
people to become part of an online crusade – or witch hunt – than it is for them to
do so without it.
This is a big part of what is behind the string of disinvitations and protests on American
college campuses. No one, especially young people (where "young" means "under 30"), can bear to
listen to the opinions of someone they don't agree with. Disinvitations aren't limited to
highly controversial figures like MILO and Richard Spencer, or even the decidedly much more
vanilla Ann Coulter. Condoleeza Rice , the first black
female Secretary of State, was disinvited in 2014, as was the first female head of the IMF and
the first female finance minister of a G8 nation, Christine
Lagarde .
Because Americans increasingly refuse even to listen to arguments from the other side,
inserting instead a strawman in favor of reasoned debate , there is no reason
to believe that the American political and ideological divide will not increase.
The
Evolution of Victimhood Culture
America and the West have largely adopted a victimhood culture. It is worth taking a minute
to trace this radical transformation of values in the West from its origins.
The earliest societies in the West were honor cultures. While it sounds like a no-brainer
that we should return to an honor culture, we should unpack precisely what this means. An honor
culture usually means a lot of interpersonal violence. Small slights must be dealt with through
dead violence – because a gentleman cannot take any kind of stain on his honor. Dueling
and blood feuds are common in these kinds of cultures.
This is superseded by dignity culture. Dignity culture is different, because people are
presumed to have dignity regardless of what others think of them. In a dignity culture, people
are admired because they have a "thick skin" and are able to brush off slights even if they are
seriously insulting. While we might find ourselves offended, even rightfully so, it is
considered important to rise above the offense and conduct ourselves with dignity. Everyone
heard some variant of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"
growing up as a child. This is perhaps the key phrase of a dignity culture.
Victimhood culture is concerned with status in a similar manner to honor culture. Indeed,
people become incredibly intolerant of any kind of perceived slight, much in the manner of an
honor culture. However, in a victimhood culture, it is being offended, taking offense, and
being a victim that provides one with status.
Victimhood culture means that people are divided into classes, where victims are good and
oppressors are bad. There is an eternal conflict with eternal grievances that can never fully
be corrected or atoned for. People feel the need to constantly walk on eggshells and censor
themselves. This leads to an overall emphasis on safety, as even words become "violence"
– we need trigger warnings and safe spaces to protect us.
Victimhood culture is closely associated with safety culture. Safety culture is, above all
else, debilitating . Those who choose a marginalized identity – and in the contemporary
West, a marginalized identity is almost always a choice – become more fragile and more
dependent on the broader society. At the same time, the powerful elements in society gain a
stake in reinforcing this marginalized identity.
The Great Society provides a case study in this dynamic.
Those who do not receive the so-called "benefits" of safety culture are frequently more
prepared for the real world. Who would you rather hire? Someone who studied hard in a rigorous
discipline for four years or someone who spent four years being coddled in what is basically a
day care center for twentysomethings? With this in mind, it's not too big of a leap to see that
straight white men might actually have become "privileged" through the process of not having
access to the collective hugbox in higher education.
The Role of Lawyers and
Litigation
There is a relationship with the litigious society in which we live with warning labels
everywhere, often for hazards that would seem incredibly obvious to most observant people. In
previous generations, even power tools didn't come with warnings to roll your sleeves up or
take off your watch. This information was either common sense or passed along in high school
shop classes or on the job.
However, the American legal system has no penalty for frivolous lawsuits, which has led to
an explosion in the number of lawsuits. There is a massive army of lawyers in the United States
(which has a surplus
of some 40 percent ) whose profession revolves around finding aggrieved parties who weren't
properly "warned" – or indeed to be able to help write the warning labels themselves.
These labels do not even exist for actual safety. The same type of person who is going to do
the thing being warned against is likely the same type of person who doesn't read warnings. The
labels are simply there as a form of "CYA" for the firms who make them.
That said, to a certain degree, the "litigious society" is a myth. The oft-cited McDonald's
coffee burn is actually more
reasonable than people are aware : The elderly woman in question who was burned simply
wanted McDonald's – who kept their coffee extra hot to prevent people from taking part of
their "free refills" policy – to pay for her skin graft resulting from the burn. When
McDonald's refused to settle this out of court and the case went to trial, they were rewarded
for their efforts at stonewalling with punitive damages.
So the main example of frivolous lawsuits is a big strawman. But to be clear –
frivolous
lawsuits are real . One great example of an actually frivolous lawsuit was the man who sued
his dry cleaner for $67 million because they delivered his pants to the wrong person .
There was no actual damage here and it's difficult to express just how ridiculous the dollar
figure claimed was. This case was thrown out of court, as most of these types of cases are.
Still, litigants pursue them either to get media attention or to harass the defendant or both,
a phenomenon known as "lawfare." And these cases clog up genuine claims in the courts.
Civil trials are long and drawn-out things. And with 40 million of them in the United States every
year and over a million lawyers ,
it's unsurprising that the system has become clogged with lawsuits, many of which are either
totally frivolous (remember – there's no penalty for filing a frivolous lawsuit in
America) or just the type of thing that should be either settled or handled through binding
arbitration.
While the litigious society exists in parallel to the "safe spaces" of college campuses, it
is worth noting because it is part of the larger bubble wrapping of the American landscape. The
same kids who were raised with helicopter parents and a general sense that they had a "right"
to never be offended were likewise raised in an environment where people could be sued for
anything or, at the very least, this was the public perception. It is just another factor of
risk aversion in American life.
There are other consequences of having too many lawyers around and having them congregate
within our political class: Words are chosen to obfuscate and laws proliferate, as legislation
becomes a sort of "jobs program" for lawyers. The more laws we have, the less free we
are and the less social trust we have. As laws, regulations, and agencies take
the place of civil society , the state grows at the expense of everything else and the less
trust we have in our society.
Overreacting to the Wuhan Coronavirus
In 2020, the Wuhan Coronavirus
broke out of China and spread all around the world. The world had not seen a deadly, contagious
virus with such scope since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920 . At
first, the response was denial and apathy. However, this quickly gave way to what could be
considered a massive overreaction: Shutting everything down.
There was a certain logic to this: If people gathering together were what was spreading the
virus, then simply keep people apart until the whole thing blows over. However, this is also
potentially a huge overreaction. It is a medical solution in the
driver's seat without any nod to the economic, social or military consequences that flow
from it. Even if one agrees that medical solutions are to be the primary driver, it does not
follow that they are the only driver.
Because of the lopsided and often hysterical reaction, many of the proposed solutions don't
even make sense: For example, telling everyone they can go to the supermarket while prohibiting
them from going to small offices, or shutting down the border
between the United States and Canada – two countries with highly infected populations
and a sprawling border that is largely unpatrolled.
A brief disclaimer: None of us are epidemiologists or virologists. And we defer to their
superior knowledge on this subject.
However, during the Spanish flu pandemic, life did not shut down quite so completely as it
has during the Coronavirus pandemic. The methods used during the Spanish flu were isolation of
the sick, mask wearing in public, and cancellation of large events. In places where these were
practiced rigorously, there was a significant decline in the number of infections and death.
St. Louis in particular is known as an exemplar of what to do during an easily
transmissible epidemic.
"The economy" has been cited as a reason the total shutdown of life during the Coronavirus
pandemic was a poor idea. This might sound frivolous, but the mass unemployment not only leads
to destitution for those when the economy is so paralyzed that there are no other jobs
forthcoming. It also leads to a spike in
the suicide rate . There is a certain calculus that must be done – how much
unemployment is worth how much death from Wuhan Coronavirus?
The reaction to this virus is noteworthy, because it is the first major pandemic of this
new, insulated and coddled age. Rather than reasonable measures to mitigate death, the choice
made was to do anything and everything possible to prevent death entirely. Not only might this
be an unwise decision, it might be a fool's errand: The virus seems to be much
more contagious than was previously thought, as well as much less lethal .
More than one reasonable person has asked what would happen if we all just went about our
lives making reasonable precautions, such as hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing, and
the cancellation of large events like sports and concerts. This is effectively what Sweden has done
and it appears to work, especially when contrasted with
their neighbors in Finland who have done basically the same as America. How much sense does
it make to have the entire community converge upon its grocery stores while not allowing anyone
to go into an office, ever? Compare this with what has passed for reasonable reaction: Closing
down every school, every dine-in restaurant, and the government dictating which businesses are
essential and which aren't.
A big motivator of this is a compulsion to not lose a single life to the Wuhan Coronavirus,
which is a totally unreasonable goal. People are going to die. The question isn't "how tightly
do we have to lock the country down to ensure no one dies," but rather "what are reasonable
measures we can take to balance public safety against personal choice and social cohesion?"
The splintering and division of America in practice has meant that the
establishment conservative media was largely in denial over the virus for weeks . It is not
a liberal smear to say that the amount of denialism from establishment conservative media,
pundits, think tanks, bureaucrats and elected officials has in practice meant that America
responded much more slowly and conservatively than it might have with a more unified America
body politic.
At the beginning of spring 2020, the virus seemed poised to
devastate the American South , which largely stuck with the early conservative media
denialism, eschewing social distancing, shuttering of certain public places and mask wearing.
Again, a more united body politic and the media and trust in the media that goes along with
that might have prevented a lot of illness and death.
Imagine the impact of Walter Cronkite or Edward Murrow going on television and telling the
American public to mask up and maintain distance versus the impact of Rachel Maddow and Tucker
Carlson doing it.
What Is Vindictive Protectiveness?
"Vindictive protectiveness" was a term coined by Haidt and Lukianoff to describe the
environment on America's college campuses with regard to speech codes and similar. However, it
can refer more broadly to the cultural atmosphere in the United States and the West today. From
the college campus to the corporate boardroom to the office, Americans have to watch what they
say and maybe even what they think lest they fall afoul of extra-legal speech and thought
codes.
Perhaps worst of all, an entire generation is being raised to see this not only as normal,
but as beneficial . This means that as this generation comes of age and grows into leadership
positions, that there is a significant chance that these codes will be enforced more
rigorously, not less. And while there may be ebbs and flows (political correctness went into
hibernation for pretty much the entire administration of George W. Bush – though to be
fair, there was an imperfect replacement in the form of post-9/11 jingoism), the current
outrage factory is much more concerning than the one that sort of just hung around in the
background in the 1990s.
Put plainly: the next wave will be worse. We may not have Maoist-style Red Guards in America quite yet,
but we're not far off and the emphasis should be on "yet."
FBI under Obama acted as Gestapo -- the political police. Obama looks now especially bad and probably should be
prosecuted for the attempt to stage coup d'état against legitimately elected president. His CIA connections need to investigated
and prosecuted too, and first of all Brennan.
Notable quotes:
"... Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings. ..."
"... "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that." ..."
"... Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded. ..."
"... Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes. "Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington examiner ..."
"... Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn. If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl ..."
"... All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion! ..."
"... I'm revealing my age by using this expression from the Watergate era, but "what did Obama, Biden and Comey know, and when did they know it?" ..."
"... So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit. ..."
"... Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand. ..."
"... Brennan was encouraging Comey. I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how long they have known each other. ..."
"... I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not want to investigate? ..."
"
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told special counsel Robert Mueller's team that
she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Flynn's late 2016
conversations with a Russian envoy following a Jan. 5, 2017, national security meeting at the
White House. It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama.
Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump
administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the
FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming
Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings.
These revelations appear in declassified FBI interview notes of the Mueller team's
conversation with Yates in August 2017, highlighted by the Justice Department on Thursday as
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Timothy Shea moved to drop its
criminal charges against Flynn.
"One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely
went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney
General William Barr
said during a Thursday
interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a
couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of
Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama
administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know,
Director Comey ran around that."
Yates told Mueller's team she first learned of the Flynn recordings following a White House
meeting about the Intelligence Community Assessment attended by Yates, Comey, Vice
President Joe Biden , then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, and others. Obama asked
Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded.
Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his
conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes.
"Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking
information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington
examiner
-------------
Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account
of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn.
If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since
Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high
was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl
All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the
closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of
collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the
Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the
media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion!
Devin Nunes was spot on and correct that there was an attempted coup. All the media and
even many Republicans called him a conspiracy theorist.
SST maintaining its glorious tradition was spot on in its analysis with the limited data
available that there was a coup and the traitors were not those in the Trump campaign but the
leadership in law enforcement and intelligence. A big shoutout to you, Larry and David
Habakkuk.
Trump himself was like deer caught in the headlights. Furiously tweeting but not doing
much of anything else while his own nominees at the DOJ and FBI were plotting and acting to
destroy his presidency. Devin Nunes imploring him to declassify and expose all the evidence
from the FISA applications, the 302s, the internal communications among the plotters
including the prolific FBI lovers. He still hasn't.
What happens next? Will the whole coup be exposed in its entirety? Will anyone be held to
account?
If Trump doesn't care enough even when his ass was being fried to disclose all the
evidence with the stroke of his pen and if all he cares is to tweet "witch-hunt" and "Drain
the Swamp", how realistic is it that any of the coup plotters will be tried for treason?
So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit
him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit.
Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover
their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for
the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand.
Yahoo released a leaked call today of Obama criticizing Trump's response over coronavirus.
Here's the big headline Yahoo is running:
Exclusive: Obama says in private call that 'rule of law is at risk' in Michael Flynn
case
The Flynn case was invoked by Obama as a principal reason that his former administration
officials needed to make sure former Vice President Joe Biden wins the November election
against President Trump. "So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency
that I do," he said. "Whenever I campaign, I've always said, 'Ah, this is the most
important election.' Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like
it's the most important election. This one -- I'm not on the ballot -- but I am pretty darn
invested. We got to make this happen."
Obama misstated the charge to which Flynn had previously pleaded guilty. He was charged
with false statements to the FBI, not perjury.
Misstated seems like a stretch. The call sounds scripted and I suspect the leak was
deliberate.
Brennan was encouraging Comey.
I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time
that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how
long they have known each other.
O'Biden's Dad just wheeled around the corner in a wood paneled station wagon and dressed
down the neighborhood kids who took O'Biden's ball. A humiliating experience for O'Biden who
sits in the passenger seat as a mere spectator.
The open question is: Just who were those contractors?
Surely that is known to some, and is significant to current politically-charged
inquiries.
Just why that information has not become public is a good question.
Can anyone provide a reliable source for that information?
It is unsurprising @realDonaldTrump enjoys wallowing in his fetid self-indulgence, but I
find it surreal that so many other government officials encourage his ignorance,
incompetence, & destructive behavior.
BTW, history will be written by the righteous, not by his lickspittle.
She served as Acting AG, accepting the post when Trump was inaugurated. What did she tell him
about his whole affair? Was the opposition to the EO 13769 just an excuse to have herself
fired so she would not have to either perjure herself or reveal the truth to Trump?
Jack,
"All this was known in DC for the past few years."
You left out that Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House because the Republicans were in the
majority then and the HPSCI under his term as speaker did not subpoena a very large group of
people, didn't ask relevant questions, didn't release information to the public and thus
ensuring the left took over the House after the 2016 elections.
I, too, coincidentally just concluded a close reading of the Conservative Tree House post
that Mr. Harbaugh just recommended. It is, indeed, well worth such a close reading. There
have been various puzzling things along the way these last few years for which this post
provides explanations. Of particular utility, is its inclusion of a timeline of the arc of
the episodes of illegal government surveillance that began (?) with the IRS spying of 2012,
and how - and why - it evolved from that episode into the massive abuses of the FISA process
of which we are becoming increasingly aware as revelations are forthcoming.
CTH's work is superb, but I do want to say that I am also supremely grateful for all of
the good work and analysis from Larry Johnson, and other contributors, as well as for the
trenchant comments of Col. Lang. Multivalent sources of information, analysis, and comment
provide one with the parallax requisite to understanding this web of perfidy. My gratitude
also is owing to all of you Members of the Committee of Correspondence, each of whom brings
personal observations and insights to bear, always much to my benefit.
I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from
issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not
want to investigate?
["One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely
went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yates," Attorney
General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General
Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the
fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be
treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about
their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that."]
++++++++++++
This is fascinating because: this, what Barr is discussing, on national TV, . . . this
particular dimension, this Yates/Comey playing hide the bacon has nothing at all to do with
actual Brady material in the Lt. Gen. Flynn case.
Barr is referring to the Special Counsel Mueller Office's interview with Yates on Aug. 15,
2017, entered into the system three weeks later. Her interview occurred more than two months
prior to Flynn's coerced guilty plea.
This SCO document was released to the court May 7 as exhibit 4 attached to the DOJ motion
to end the prosecution of Flynn. It was produced in line with request by defense for Brady
material.
What Barr forgets to say is: This SCO interview of Yates shows that Comey and Yates talked
on the phone -- prior to -- the notorious Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn.
"Comey . . . informed her that two agents were on their way to interview Flynn at the
White House," the SCO said, according to the new court filing.
Yates took no action, -- she did nothing to order Comey to abort this soon-to-happen FBI
interview of Flynn, this SCO interview of her shows.
She was Comey's boss, the Acting Attorney General, at the time.
It shows that she was upset precisely because she wanted the FBI to coordinate with the
DOJ -- on getting Flynn screwed -- even suggesting, she told the SCO, that consideration that
Flynn be recorded, instead of memorialized using standard 302 form –
in-writing-only.
Yates wanted Flynn fired, she told the SCO.
Yates apparently was unable on her own to figure out, as the AG, the FBI and DOJ -- none
of them had any predicate, no "materiality," nothing "tethered" to any crime, as there was no
crime. And if she did not know these basic facts, had no awareness of them, then: why was she
the AG in the first place?
And what did Yates glean, right after this Jan. 24 interview of Flynn?
"Yates received a brief readout of the interview the night it happened, and a longer
readout the following day," which begs the question of why the original 302 of this was never
produced by the DOJ, to the defense; and also, why Covington law firm never asked to see this
before allowing Flynn to make his plea.
"Yates did not speak to the interviewing agents herself, but understood from others that
their assessment was that Flynn showed no 'tells' of lying," the SCO report says.
Based on her personal preference, rather than DOJ norms, she went to the White House, and
her expectation was they would fire Flynn. I fail to see how this nonsense by Yates seem to
escape Barr's notice. Or, is something else also going on?
She personally went to the White House, and her smear campaign against Flynn began, went
on and on and on, even after she was fired after being Acting AG for just ten days.
In her brief stint as Acting AG: Yates refused to tell the White House Counsel if Flynn
was being investigated, when the WHC asked her, directly, about this, according to what she
told the SCO. Can't blame this fact on the unctuous Comey.
She did tell the SCO that she wanted the WHC to know Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI
– and that she had concerns about Flynn, and she said those concerns related to the
Logan Act. Yates told SCO her concerns were because of the Logan Act, and that she expressed
this to the White House.
The Washington Examiner reporting that "It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President
Barack Obama" -- about the Flynn-Kislyak phone call --- this is interesting, very
interesting, if true, assuming Yates was telling the SCO the truth. This is what she claims
in her August 2017 interview with SCO.
But this bit of information is hardly Brady material [how is whether Obama or Comey told
her materially germane to the Flynn case, viz. Brady material?].
The question the SCO should have been concerned about is: who actually leaked the
transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call to the media?
Is this a serious crime? Or is this OK?
We still do not know this answer, and AG Barr has not told us. Nor has his boss,
Trump.
It is interesting that Barr chose to highlight that Comey went around Yates' back in Comey
ordering FBI to interview Flynn, but not that Yates knew of the Flynn interview before it
went down, and sat on her arse about it.
In fairness to Comey, they were, as the FB of Investigations, conducting the
investigation, which is their job, however rogue this FBI's I actually was, targeting
Flynn.
The Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, occurring late December of 2016, was reported by the
Washington Post on Jan. 12, 2017, eight days before Trump was sworn in.
And who leaked this, has anyone been prosecuted, will anyone be?
Obama still president, Loretta Lynch still AG, Yates still Deputy AG, Comey FBI director,
McCabe Deputy FBI director, etc.
Starting Jan. 20 and for ten days, Yates was the AG. She appeared bent on destroying
Flynn, and did nothing that I know of to prosecute who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone
call to WAPO. Did someone on high perhaps ask her not to?
Nor was Comey and McCabe investigating this as best I can tell. Yet this was an actual,
clear cut crime we all saw, plain as day. Or maybe this is OK? Was someone on high asking
them not to?
I watched Barr say, during his interview with CBS news, [following the May 7 release of
documents to the court]: "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how
Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney
General Yates," Barr told Catherine Herridge.
And my first thought was: why is Barr doing an apparent CYA for Yates?
What office might she want to be running for in the future; is she a cooperating witness
in the wider Durham probe, why is Yates being portrayed as someone other than what she was: A
leader in the effort to destroy Michael Flynn.
She was the AG, and she failed to hold Comey accountable at the time; this is a fact,
apparently, that reflects poorly on her.
She told the White House -- as best she could -- that Flynn was a piece of dung, and told
the SCO, in their interview of her, that she expected the White House to fire Flynn. This
reflects poorly on her.
And threatened Logan Act prosecution of Flynn to the White house. This reflects poorly on
her.
She smeared Flynn in a CNN interview on May 16, the day before Mueller was appointed. This
reflects poorly on her.
Well, who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, and did Yates act on that?
Folks that "should have known better" -- far and wide, smeared Flynn, justified the
lawlessness against him; one of many examples, titled: "Leaking Flynn's name to the press was
illegal, but utterly justified" published by TheHill.com.
She wasn't the only one, but Yates was smack dab in the middle of enabling and
perpetuating a long-running smear campaign against Flynn, to destroy him by any means
necessary. This reflects poorly on her.
Why is Barr carrying water for her.
As for Obama, he did nothing to stop Comey in 2016 when Comey announced he was exonerating
Clinton. Nor did AG Lynch, even though that is not the function of the FBI -- an act of
insubordination, by the way, for which Rosenstein officially fired him in May 2017, which
set, somehow, in motion the Mueller SC appointment by Rosenstein.
If Comey is such a rogue, and Barr is now claiming Yates tried to do the right thing, in
spite of Comey, then why didn't Yates fire Comey Jan. 24 right on the spot? And end the
fiasco right then and there?
In her May 16, 2017 CNN interview she only has kind words to say about him.
AS for who on high was encouraging Comey's extra legal free-lancing in the Clinton and
Flynn matters is a pertinent question.
Who were the enablers, in other words?
Barr appears to imply Comey did it all on his own, which is not entirely accurate. Perhaps
this also implies that Durham will prosecute Comey? I don't know if anyone will be prosecuted
at all. Time will tell.
It is clear Comey's enablers would, by rank, have been, viz. the Clinton matter: Obama and
Lynch.
In the Flynn matter: Trump and Yates.
Simple logic dictates that: if Main Justice was "not in the loop" then, for Clinton
matter, this means Obama was enabling Comey to exonerate her; and also dictate that, for
Flynn, that Trump was the one "on high" enabling Comey.
If there are others on high, they were not in the chain of command as I understand the
current US Government structure.
-30-
You seem to think Trump was informed of all the relevant information about the FBI's
conduct during his first ten days in office. Because Barr, being appointed AG two years after
these events, has yet to indict anyone in the case, Trump was actually enabling Yates in
destroying Flynn? Neither appear to be logical conclusions to me.
So on a December 29, 2016 The Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia that evolved to
Flynn, at the instruction of the incoming Trump administration, contacting the Russian
ambassador requesting that they not retaliate or heighten the situation.
On January 5th Ms. Yates learned from Obama of the Flynn intervention.
Rather than contact Trump directly Obama went along with the Comey Logan Act thoughts.
The decision to enact sanctions obviously involved State, CIA, DNI and FBI but why not
Justice or did it. But why was the incoming Trump administration not consulted.
There was only one Machiavellian thinker in that group and it wasn't the idiot who got his
panties all twisted up.
Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning, and several attempts have
followed...
__________________________________________________
That is not at all obvious.
Russiagate was obviously designed to look like a coup attempt, but you have to be extremely
gullible to believe any of it is real.
The recent Flynn bruhaha is a perfect example of the phoniness surrounding Russiagate.
The FBI investigators that interviewed Flynn believed he had not been deceptive and any
fool who was paying attention at the time believed he was not guilty because 2 weeks before
that FBI interview the news media had reported that the phone call with Kislyak had been
recorded by the FBI and that there was nothing improper or illegal that would motivate Flynn
to lie about his talk with Kislyak. The story that Flynn lied to the FBI is unbelievable on
its face.
Don't blame the FBI for creating this fake story. Trump is the one and only one that
created the fake Flynn-lied-to-the-FBI story, Before Trump created the phony story that Flynn
had lied to the FBI nobody else had at that time believed Flynn lied to the FBI.
But once Trump had created the phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI then all the gullible
morons started to believe the phony story. And even Flynn himself goes along with Trump's
phony story because he is a good soldier that follows command.
Before Comey's testimony to Congress that suggested that Trump was twisting Comey's arm to
let Flynn go for lying to the FBI no one had ever said that Flynn lied to the FBI. That story
was created by Trump and reported by Comey.
And then Mueller and Flynn and Comey all helped Trump foist that phony story that Flynn lied
to the FBI onto the public.
The implication of Comey's testimony to Congress was that in order to get Flynn off a
charge of Lying to the FBI Trump first tried to cajole Comey to go easy on Flynn and when
that did not work Trump fired Comey.
The problem with that whole BS story is that the crux of it (that Flynn lied to the FBI)
never happened. It was entirely invented by Trump to make it look like Trump was engaged in
mortal combat with the deep state. But it was all staged and fake (i.e. Kayfabe)
_______________________________________________
Well duh....
Russiagate was designed to fall apart.
It was obvious all along that all the stories that came out in the Mueller Report were
badly written sit-com material - the script for a comic soap opera. And they were all
scripted to fall apart when examined closely.
What I could never figure out was what this guy Mueller was going to say when he was
dragged in front of Congress and required to answer tough questions about all the garbage he
had produced. I thought for sure that for Mueller the jig would be up there was no way the
farce would not be revealed for all to see.
And then it happened. Mueller testified and it turned out Mueller could not remember any
of it.
Senator: Did you say XYZ?
Mueller: Is that in the report??
Senator: yes it is.
Mueller: Then it is true.
Making Mueller Senile and unable to remember anything was brilliant - pure genius. The
rest of the Russiagate script was mediocre at best.
It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election
campaign team in history ...
Occam's razor says Hillary threw the election. No seasoned politician would make the
mistakes that she made - especially when they yearn to make history (as the first
woman president) and the entire establishment (left and right) is counting on them to
win.
Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty
...
And you prove your loyalty with the belief that Hillary lost because of an
"incompetent election campaign".
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. "
- Voltaire
I once read a definition of psychological depression as a result of anger and fatigue. That
seems about right. Personally, I'm sick of COVID-19 dominating the headlines and I definitely
have inner rage at the magic spell that's been cast over society. And it is a magic spell. Or
an ill wind, if you prefer. Except tracking the source of a voodoo curse, or determining where
a breeze began, might be easier than identifying the many variables of this planned-demic .
Truly, the overwhelming information is difficult to process on any given day.
Last week, I read
an article describing how COVID-19 is a hoax propagandized by the media and, a few minutes
later, I watched a video
of a survival expert (whom I very much respect) chastise those who are not taking COVID-19
seriously as a genuine health threat.
Then, I was informed of an acquaintance dying from coronavirus. I knew the man personally
and the last time we spoke he was telling me about his new girlfriend. His death was deemed
notable enough to have a write-up included into the COVID-19 series of a national newspaper;
and that's how I learned he died – when someone sent me the link. I'll also say he was in
his seventies and his blood pressure was so high his eyes were constantly bloodshot.
So did he die with COVID-19 or from COVID-19? Yes, he did.
Indeed, lots of variables to consider. And it's tricky because health policies are a matter
of public concern AND private responsibility. It's why considering the variables requires
balance and common sense. Yet, unsurprisingly, it's become obvious COVID-19 has been
politicized by some and even commandeered by others for purposes of power consolidation and
achieving authoritarian goals.
Certainly, the virus doesn't need to be devastatingly lethal in order to accomplish the
objectives of the globalists. At any given time, the ship of state progresses via (what I have
designated as) the
"Bulbous Bow of Confusion" , or, rather, competing narratives.
Two physicians who own five urgent care locations in Kern County California recently posted
a viral YouTube video citing their own COVID-19 data and calling for an end to the draconian
lockdowns. Their names are Dr. Dan
Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi and the data they compiled acted as a "resistance wave" to
countermand the official narrative put forth by ( as I've identified
in past articles ) the likes of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), World Health
Organization (WHO), The Gates Foundation, John Hopkins University, and UK's The Guardian.
Yet, today, if you click on any previous articles where the doctors'
viral videos were once posted you will see they've been taken down; and even their other
videos queued in the threads of the articles have been transitioned into dead links by our
benefactors at YouTube.
Truly, censorship is the validation of ideas as the most powerful force on earth; because if
you now search for the two doctors by name on YouTube, you will find a video stamped with the
Washington Post logo describing "What Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi get wrong
about coronavirus" .
To be sure, the billionaires are committed. They can't go back now and this is why they are
on full offense in the narrative war. It means no expense will be spared in the media onslaught
until every person in the world fears COVID-19 being spread from cats and
farts . It's
also why various
treatments are claimed to be ineffective and only the
five innovations proposed by the New American King should be considered:
[Bill Gates] said the innovations needed to come in five areas: treatments, vaccines,
testing, contact tracing, and policies for reopening the economy.
But what about Trump? He is still the U.S. President, right?
In past postings, I've exhaustively considered Trump as a possible "movie" or "reality TV
show". My article entitled
"Personal Politics, Public Impeachment, Persuasion and Post-Apocalyptic Planning" also
discussed how the Military Industrial Complex has NOT grown weaker in the decades since
Eisenhower and Kennedy – and, in fact, cited the trend of its growing strength from Abe
Lincoln through the creation of the Federal Reserve, and Woodrow Wilson, onward.
I've additionally speculated in previous writings President Trump as one of the
following:
1.) The Real Deal – fighting the Dark Lords out of love of country
2.) Being used by the Dark Powers unwittingly
3.) A Judas Goat
At this point in time, it appears the possibility of # 1 is fading, if not having been
completely debunked as of this writing.
So, given #'s 2 & 3 above, I've previously questioned if Trump was elected as a "
bleeding of the brake lines " prior to the " big stop " (i.e. end of America).
Therefore, what if the Trump Reality TV Show® was meant to demonstrate the sheer power
of "The Controllers" and their ability to convert the globe into One World under Communism?
And, furthermore, what if the 2016 Presidential Election was staged to illustrate to all
nations the futility of resistance?
Consider the waves that have crashed upon Trump's shores over the past four years:
Russiagate/Mueller, Ukrainian Impeachment, and, now, COVID-19. Each of these consecutive waves
were increasingly consequential from a historical perspective.
Is the war to "drain-the-swamp" real? Because, if not, the battle lines have been made clear
and the tech gods have cataloged our IP addresses.
Since the United States recently suspended its payments to the WHO, the organization's
biggest contributor is now the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another major contributor
to the WHO is the GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation).
Both of these organizations are also part of ID2020, an organization that is advocating for
the use of vaccines to implement a global digital ID system using tattoos or microchips.
Or was it planned? And for those who would say it was planned, would you call them
"conspiracy theorists"? But, seriously, is it really conspiracy if it's all been published
?
Because, over the decades, it has become quite evident that wealthy individuals, influential
families, and powerful organizations and corporations have coopted nation-states in order to
unite the globe. World War I delivered the League of Nations and World War II brought about the
United Nations. Since then, the billionaire round-table groups have only grown more
interconnected as Davos Men planned and the Bilderberg's conspired .
The modern era has progressed by committee; and to the giant sucking sounds as predicted by
former presidential candidate Ross Perot.
In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Business Network drafted a document
entitled " Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development " which
outlined the following potential plans schemes through 2030: " Lock Step ", " Clever Together
", " Hack Attack ", and " Smart Scramble ".
The first link below is a 54-page (2.29 MB sized) PDF file. Even if the Bill Gates' inspired
MS Windows gives you a virus warning, just know the file can be viewed (or downloaded) with no
issues. Or, if you would rather watch a one-hour, forty-two-minute video presentation, just
click on link # 2 below:
Note that on page 18 of the PDF (#1 above), the "Lock Step" scenario describes a 2012
pandemic leading to a global economic collapse followed by oppressive authoritarian
controls:
In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike
2009's H1N1, this new influenza strain -- originating from wild geese -- was extremely
virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when
the virus streaked around the world The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies:
international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries
like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and
office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.
. The United States' initial policy of "strongly discouraging" citizens from flying proved
deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but
across borders. However, a few countries did fare better -- China in particular. The Chinese
government's quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as
well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives,
stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter
post-pandemic recovery.
China's government was not the only one that took extreme measures to protect its citizens
from risk and exposure. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their
authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face
masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and
supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of
citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from
the spread of increasingly global problems -- from pandemics and transnational terrorism to
environmental crises and rising poverty -- leaders around the world took a firmer grip on
power.
At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval.
Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty -- and their privacy -- to more
paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability. Citizens were more
tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more
latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened
oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter
regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests.
Sound familiar? Because this was the dialectic with which we were presented: " Herd
Immunity® " (an Orwellian term befitting cattle) or " Continuous" COVID-19®. And what
did American's chose? They picked " continuous ", Alex, for $1,200 per U.S. citizen. And as we
Flattened the Curve ®, the CDC broadcasted
concerns regarding second waves of coronaviruses as telescreens the world over warned of
mutant strains of
coronaviruses more contagious than the original .
Yes. Both Coronavirus®, and Big Brother, Incorporated have marched forward
unencumbered.
But as people sheltered in their homes they saw "conservative" Never-Trumpers weaponize the
ghost of Ronald Reagan against the Bad Orange Man® with a video entitled "Mourning in America" . It was too cute
by half. Then, fortunately, as the world remained mystified by
"covid toes" , the president
tweeted back at the Never-Trump "losers" in the most ingenious and gratifying ways.
And Trump is just getting warmed up. No doubt his Zoom® debates with Biden are bound to
be hilarious. Unless Whistleblowergate
Part Deux is the silver-bullet that will stop the Bad Orange Man® once and for all?
(CNN) Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of the office involved in developing a
coronavirus vaccine, formally filed an extensive whistleblower complaint Tuesday alleging his
early warnings about the coronavirus were ignored and that his caution at a treatment favored
by President Donald Trump led to his removal.
What I found interesting in that article is how it identified "opposing sides" (i.e.
opposites) as "capstones" on the bottom of the "pyramid" – with the top capstone (eye) as
representative of the final action:
The chess board is a well-known Masonic or Hegelian symbol, the black and white squares
symbolize control through duality in the grand game of life in all aspects. Left or right,
white or black people, conservative or liberal, democrat or republican, Christian or Muslim
and so on. Through two opposing parties control is gained as both parties reach the same
destination, which is order through guided conflict or chaos.
Left (thesis) versus right (antithesis) equals middle ground or control (synthesis). The
triangle and all seeing eye we see so often symbolizes the completion of the great work
The pyramid is supported by the bottom opposing sides. The capstone at the top is
established through controlled solution or middle ground.
In my piece entitled "On
Channel Surfing, Circus Acts, and Time Passages" , I discussed the 1927 movie "Metropolis"
as a favorite of the occult. The words that appear on the screen at the end of that film are
these:
THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!
A
2010 article posted on TheVigilantCitizen.com speculated on the "mediator" as the
electronic media which manipulates the plebes (workers) on behalf of the head
(controllers).
To be sure, the Modern Centralizers craft their new realities by means of the Orwellian
Media. It's why they call it programming . And what better way to manipulate the emotions
(hearts) of people than by fiction and fear?
With that in mind, I now call your attention to the below video link of the opening
ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics:
If one cares to click that link and view the segment shown between the 45 and 55 minute
marks, they will see what appears to be a staged viral pandemic. The drama takes place beneath
black pyramids malevolently towering over the stadium (and the crowd) and ends with the
appearance of a giant, creepy-looking baby; or maybe a still-birth – it's hard to
tell.
At the 45 to 47 minute mark, we see kids in hospital beds surrounded by dancing nurses and
doctors. At around the 47:30 mark, the medical staff/dancers put the kids to bed and with
fingers over their months, urging silence. What appears to be a giant virus then appears
center-stage at the around the 48 minute mark.
Then, around the 49 minute mark, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling reads from Peter Pan and
says: "But in the two minutes before you go to sleep, it is real ". Next, shadowy virus-looking
demons take the stage to chase the children, and dark horses towing a magician and a steel cage
glide behind an oriental woman who is looking elsewhere as the pandemic commences.
The 49:50 mark shows what appears to be a giant (British Prime Minister) Boris Johnson sick
in bed.
Finally, as the dark magicians cast their spells and the viruses dance, the nurses and
doctors appear paralyzed and robotic – like puppets (50:45 to 51:45 mark) before Mary
Poppins figures descend from the sky.
In my research, I found another article by the
Vigilant Citizen dated August 17, 2012 , and it had this to say back then regarding the
opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics:
The next important sequence of the ceremony paid tribute to the National Health Service
(NHS) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). The set combined sick kids on hospital beds
with characters from English children's literature and had a very strange and dark undertone
from the start, when it began with the theme from The Exorcist, which is, in case you don't
know, a movie about a child possessed by the Devil. Odd choice.
The sequence begins with children on hospital beds who get put to sleep by nurses. Then
J.K. Rowling appears and reads a quote from Peter Pan alluding to Neverland, which becomes
real in the "two minutes before you go to sleep". I couldn't say if that was done on purpose,
but many elements of this set, mostly the mix of vulnerable children in a hospital with fairy
tales and the concept of blurring the lines between reality and fiction, are all associated
with mind control programming. Like the Wizard of Oz and Alice of Wonderland, the story of
Peter Pan is heavily used in mind control programming as victims are told to escape to
"Neverland" while inducing dissociation from reality.
The same article also addressed the 2012 Olympic closing ceremonie s (video at this link) and showing a new
world order rising like a phoenix; while referencing The Who, no less.
At midnight, the Olympic cauldron and the petals representing each country are slowly
extinguished, but the phoenix, representing the occult elite and the New World Order, stays
lit above it. In other words, as the nations of the world slowly disappear, a New World Order
will emerge. On that note, let's listen to The Who!
Of course, listen to The Who rock band? Or the World Health Organization (WHO)? Coincidence
or conspiracy? You're probably right.
So, to summarize: 2012 was the same year the Rockefeller Foundation predicted the "Lock
Step" pandemic scenario as the Olympic ceremonies that year showed opposing sides battling over
children during the opening ceremonies and followed by the resolution in the closing
ceremonies: A new phoenix rising from the ashes – like a new world order.
Order out of chaos.
Therefore, if COVID-19 was, indeed, a PLANdemic perpetrated by dark forces, was my
aforementioned friend murdered by those who now want us to self-quarantine and wear masks for
the safety of those being murdered? Most likely; because observing luciferian pedophiles
through their symbols is like identifying hidden planets via the observed effects of
gravitation, or studying game theory when the game is rigged.
It's how we can identify who "they" are, but only for people willing to first acknowledge
that "they" exist. Unfortunately, it's a wasted effort on most. One might as well don a tinfoil
hat and chase shadows on a magic pony.
Proponents of mandatory vaccines and enhanced surveillance are trying to blackmail the
American people by arguing that the lockdown cannot end unless we create a healthcare
surveillance state and make vaccination mandatory. The growing number of Americans who are
tired of not being able to go to work, school, or church, or even to take their children to a
park because of government mandates should reject this "deal." Instead, they should demand an
immediate end to the lockdowns and the restoration of individual responsibility for deciding
how best to protect their health.
Regrettably, it was supposed to be a season of graduation parties, weddings, and Fourth of
July celebrations. But these have been displaced by lockdowns, social distancing, bodies in
refrigerated trucks, fear, magic spells, and propaganda.
Big companies partnering with the government to spy on you without your knowledge.
Americans locked in their homes, banned from going to church, placated with sedatives like
beer and weed. Anyone who speaks up is silenced. Political demonstrations are illegal.
Organizers are arrested. Only opinions approved by unelected leaders are allowed on
information platforms. Sound familiar? It sounds a lot like China. Of all the many ironies of
this moment, so many of them bitter, the hardest to swallow is this: as we fight this virus,
we are becoming far more like the country that spawned it. We're becoming more like China.
It's horrifying.
Those in power are the ones the our professional class seeks to protect, not the country.
Freedom of conscience never endangers the public. It only threatens the powerful. It
endangers their control. It hinders their ability to dictate election results, to loot the
economy, to make policies based on whim for their own gain. No wonder our leaders have done
such a poor job protecting us from China. They're on the same team.
– Tucker Carlson Tonight: Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Sadly, it appears Trump may be a crisis actor, like
Anthony Fauci , and part of the plan from the start. The final details were solidified
years ago – including the bioengineered PLANdemic.
China is quite likely part of the plan, too, since One World Under Communism has become the
desired destination of the billionaires; with millions dying along the way. For those who do
survive, they'll be allowed to work , consume , and obey . Of course, many Americans will not
cooperate with their planned demise and this is why The Central Planners will need a great big
war.
Most recently, in an Oval Office Press conference on May 6, 2020, Trump actually blamed
China for Coronavirus while claiming it is the "worst attack we've ever had" :
"This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never
been an attack like this.
– President Donald Trump – May 6, 2020
It means events could potentially occur as follows: As soon as rock-solid proof is revealed
that China released the virus to take out Trump because our great president was winning the
trade wars, then, the Orange-Haired Wonder will rally national support via sorrowful
lamentations while standing tall on reality TV amidst the economic ruins.
A bumbling first strike by the U.S. could allow a Sino-Russian alliance to seal America's
fate once and for all; and most likely by nuclear means.
Then any surviving sheeple will eagerly line up for the Bill Gates of Hell special: A free
digital tattoo along with a bonus vaccination and bowl of soup.
Welcome to the end of the rainbow. Orwell was right: we've always been at war with Eastasia
and jackboots will stomp on human faces forever. Unless, that is, the digital drip-drops from
Q-anon and our online commentaries change the future.
Conclusion
Those gathering at the round tables have been tremendously successful in our societal
programming . Yet most of them are mere puppets to the inner rings of concentric power. The
monsters that once lurked under our beds were set loose years ago and, today, they dress in
drag and read to kids in libraries while others wear blue uniforms and arrest mothers for
taking kids to playgrounds.
And where are the men of action? Where are the lovers of liberty? In my area, they've been
fishing. And grilling. And why not? Trump is in the White House while Nancy Pelosi is locked in
her gourmet kitchen eating fancy ice cream. The stimulus checks are in the bank, the grocery
stores are still open, and if the fish aren't biting, those who would stand up to tyranny can
always grab a bucket of chicken through the KFC drive-thru on the way home. At least for
now.
As far as national lockdowns go, this has been the best one ever. So far.
For obvious reasons, I've been thinking of the autistic livestock guru Temple Grandin and how she pioneered
more humane methods of leading animals to slaughter. One of the methods was to have cattle
march to their demise single file via tall shutes. That sort of isolation seems reminiscent of
what's occurring in America now – with people staring at walls, muzzled by masks, and
numbly following orders while remaining six-feet apart.
How can people resist when they've been fooled? How can they fight back when they're
frightened? And why have they placed their hope in safety instead of liberty ?
Good questions.
Real hope remains in the smart choices, right actions, and the prepping and survival
decisions made every day by those awake and aware. But no matter what the future holds, may all
reading this be surrounded by friends and loved ones who know Epstein didn't kill himself.
@schnellandine OK, guys. To draw an analogy to a card game:
The Flynn affair has ended. Both sides (Trump & Establishment) have laid down their
cards. Trump wins. The only remaining question is whether he goes for the throat.
Remember, he pretty much has to. The Establishment has made it clear that Trump will be
attacked after he leaves office, and the Flynn affair shows that the attack would have
nothing to do with law or Trump's actions.
Still, has to isn't "did".
So Trump's remarks on "scum" and "treason" are important -- he's going for the throat.
Moreover, the Establishment has been weakened enough by inept COVID-19 preparation and
reaction, and the general public so afraid that the Establishment (what Feifer called the
"Anonymous Authority") will eat them next that a chance to rid themselves of it will receive
considerable backing, and the Establishment's urban power base become so -- well, Hellish,
that Trump actually has a fair chance. If he pulls the string the right way, prosecutes
serially and follows up on facts uncovered by the trials, follows up Epstein's trainl he
could discredit/imprison a good fraction of the Establishment's leaders and personnel. They
can see that as clearly as I can, and some of them, at least, will try to fight rather than
simply lose. They've always succeeded by all-out offensive, know little else.
Awhile back I mentioned that US political stability would drop considerably by early July
(by 2020-07-07, as I recall). Looks like that's really going to happen.
So -- Please do your best to stay safe. Remember, this won't do the food supply chain any
good, and that home invasions won't stop just because things are a bit chaotic.
Anti-Trump Government Officials Conflicted Over Not Being Able To Lie
The treasonous Mueller non-investigation now stands exposed. Those who lied to overthrow
the election are now in serious trouble.
All charges against Flynn are being dropped now that declassified documents show what
actually hapoened. Details including the transcripts can be found at these links.
"... Avaaz supported the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya, which led to the military intervention in the country in 2011. It was criticized for its pro-intervention stance in the media and blogs. [17] ..."
"... Avaaz supported the civil uprising preceding the Syrian Civil War . This included sending $1.5 million of Internet communications equipment to protesters, and training activists. Later it used smuggling routes to send over $2 million of medical equipment into rebel-held areas of Syria. It also smuggled 34 international journalists into Syria. [10] [18] ..."
"... Yes, pilgrims, my professional deformation leads me to find pattern where there may be none. ..."
"... It would be logical for there to exist connective tissue that relates the Sorosistas, The Clintonistas, the media freaks, Tom Perez' DNC, ..."
"... And then, there is Neil Ferguson the British epidemiologist who sold #10 on the idea of a national lock-down that looks to destroy the UK economy and political system. Antonia Staats his married mistress is a major figure in AVAAZ. He broke curfew twice to get a little bit of that. Coincidence? ..."
"... Even a small amount of google searching suggests that Avaaz is simply another Zionist-funded pro-Israel controlled opposition cutout type of organization. Funded by Zionist George Soros. Main honcho Ricken Patel is associated with Zionist lobby group J Street. ..."
"... Per the commentary above, supported the regime change operation in Syria (a longstanding Zionist goal, refer to the Clean Break plan.) ..."
"... What pillow talk went on between AVAAZ agent Antonia Staats and her Imperial College of London paramour Neil Ferguson right before he briefed Trump/Pence on their corona "we are all gonna die" projections. ..."
"Avaaz claims to unite practical idealists from around the
world. [8] Director Ricken Patel
said in 2011, "We have no ideology per se. Our mission is to close the gap between the world we
have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite!" [12] In practice ,
Avaaz often supports causes considered progressive, such as calling for global action on climate change ,
challenging Monsanto, and building greater global support for refugees. [13][14][15]
Avaaz supported the civil uprising
preceding the Syrian Civil War . This included sending $1.5 million of Internet
communications equipment to protesters, and training activists. Later it used smuggling routes
to send over $2 million of medical equipment into rebel-held areas of Syria. It also smuggled
34 international journalists into Syria. [10][18] Avaaz
coordinated the evacuation of wounded British photographer Paul Conroy from Homs . Thirteen Syrian activists died
during the evacuation operation. [10][19]
Some senior members of other non-governmental organizations working in the Middle East have
criticized Avaaz for taking sides in a civil war. [16] As of November
2016, Avaaz continues campaigning for no-fly zones over Syria in general and specifically
Aleppo . (Gen. Dunford,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, has said that establishing a no-fly
zone means going to war against Syria and Russia. [20] ) It has received
criticism from parts of the political blogosphere and has a single digit percentage
of its users opposing the petitions, with a number of users ultimately leaving the network. The
Avaaz team responded to this criticism by issuing two statements defending their decision to
campaign. wiki
----------------
Yes, pilgrims, my professional deformation leads me to find pattern where there may be
none. BUT, OTOH, there may BE a pattern. It would be logical for there to exist
connective tissue that relates the Sorosistas, The Clintonistas, the media freaks, Tom Perez'
DNC, etc., etc., ad nauseam. ...
And then, there is Neil Ferguson the British epidemiologist who sold #10 on the idea of
a national lock-down that looks to destroy the UK economy and political system. Antonia Staats
his married mistress is a major figure in AVAAZ. He broke curfew twice to get a little bit of
that. Coincidence? pl
Even a small amount of google searching suggests that Avaaz is simply another
Zionist-funded pro-Israel controlled opposition cutout type of organization. Funded by
Zionist George Soros. Main honcho Ricken Patel is associated with Zionist lobby group J
Street.
Per the commentary above, supported the regime change operation in Syria (a
longstanding Zionist goal, refer to the Clean Break plan.)
Bottom line: not a leftist organization. Faux leftist, controlled opposition, Zionist.
Neocons are probably delighted with Avaaz.
It was a ground hog day nightmare when I read the AVAAZ website and found all the
"progressive" chestnuts, alive, well and kicking into high gear. This AVAAZ agenda fuels the
politics in my state, California, so I know each element well plus how each of of them has
failed us so badly. They all teeter on OPM, which the state wide corona shut down has
decimated.
What pillow talk went on between AVAAZ agent Antonia Staats and her Imperial College
of London paramour Neil Ferguson right before he briefed Trump/Pence on their corona "we are
all gonna die" projections.
It all happened so fast - from runs on toilet paper in Australia reported on March 2 to
global shutdown on March 16 due to this Imperial College model in just two weeks. Who and
what communication network was behind this radical global shift that generated virtually no
push back? The message quickly became one case of corona and we are all gonna die. How did
that find such a willing audience?
I keep hearing that same echo in my nightmares, never let a crisis go to waste - now with
this very distinct German accent on the face of a red-lipped blonde. Too weird to see this
AVAAZ "global" network is so darn interested in over-turning a US Supreme Court Citizens
United ruling - the old Hilary Clinton rallying cry. What is with that - they care in
Malaysia?
Thank you for sunshining this very curious operation and its all too familiar cast of
known characters lurking in its history, shadows, funding and leadership circle. Injecting
them with Lysol is the better plan.
It is one thing to sic Barr-Durham on US government operations, but who can even explore
let alone touch the world of global NGO's.
It does explain where a lot of the Bernie Sanders fervor comes from and how it sustains
this energy despite defeat in the US election polls. The AVAAZ agenda winning the hearts and
minds of many young people around the world. It will be their world to inherit, if they go
down this path; not ours. God speed to all of them. Namaste. Dahl and naan for everyone.
A little internet search also questions if AVAAZ is an intelligence community funded
operation, linking key Obama administration players.
Good indoor fun during our national lockdowns - track AVAAZ in all its permutations and
recurrent players. Samantha Powers and her hundreds of FISA unmasking requests comes to mind
as well as her role in the AVAAZ games played in Syria.
Some AVAAZ fodder from a random internet search: Tinfoil hat fun times - keep digging.
......."Curiously, however, the absence of routine information on the Avaaz website --
board of directors, contact information, etc. -- raises the possibility that the organization
is one of innumerable such groups created around the world by intelligence organizations with
secret funding to advance hidden agendas.
This was the gist of a 2012 column by Global Research columnist Susanne Posel, headlined
Avaaz: The Lobbyist that Masquerades as Online Activism. She alleged that Avaaz
purports to be a global avenue for dissent, but channels reform energies on the most
sensitive issues into such pro-U.S. positions as support for Israel and the Free Syrian
Army......."
"Who and what communication network ..." ... " but who can even explore let alone touch
the world of global NGO's."
Have you noticed how fast Project Veritas gets shut down, how Twitter, FB, etc silence any
effective opposition to the message of the left?
"It is one thing to sic Barr-Durham on US government operations,..."
Perhaps now that FlynnFlu is evaporating in the disinfecting sunlight some sunshine should be
applied to the H1B visa holders at the aformentioned social media companies and add in
Google, Bing, Oath etc. and see how many Communist operatives are there, in addition to
"essential employee" non-citizen lefty's pushing the anti-American propaganda. A dinner
invitation to Jeff Bezos and his paramore might provide some interesting conversation on just
who at Amazon might be involved in the same type of anti-western operations; compare their
corporate response to distribution operations in the US vs. France as an example. https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1143127502895898625
Furthermore, observe the Google leadership team discussion of the 2016 elections.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/
Minute 12:30 CFO Ruth Porat
Minute 27:00 Q&A Sergey Brin response on matching donations to employee causes.
Make sure to watch minute 52 on H1B visa holders. With 30,000,000 unemployed Americans just
how many of those visas does Google need now? (I don't recall any organization telling China
they need open borders immigration since thier hispanic/african/caucasian population
percentages are effectively zero, so we might wonder who has been behind that message for the
past few decades and why it is only directed at Western democracies).
And the inevitable campaign against "low information" voters and "fake news". I wonder what
their take on Russian election interference is now? (Russia cyber trolling! minute
54:44.)
56:20 The inevitable arc of "progress". Make sure you join the fight for Hilary's values.
That's the actual corporate leadership message. See the final round of applause at 1:01. Our
new overlords know best. Too bad they don't own a mirror, or an ability to reflect on why
someone can see the same data and come to a different conclusion of than these experts.
That's just a scratch on the surface. How much money flowed through the Clinton Global
Initiative, which NGOs got some cleansed proceeds, which elections were influenced,
professors and research sponsored, local communities "organzied". There's plenty to look at
and "Isreal, Soros, Zionists" are the least of it.
avaaz always struck me like some intel agency psyc op... maybe israel like the poster outrage
beyond implies.. either way - one could read stay away based on everything about them..
A friend of a friend is a research scientist at Imperial in biology, he is as lefty as they
get and I think would be happy to falsify his research to serve his political goals. Besides
Imperial is a hard science uni, UCL is top in the University of London for medicine.
Soros and his organisations should be made persona non grata, as the Russians and
Hungarians have. Extraordinary his influence in the EU, he has picked up where the Soviet
Union left off, funding every organisation that demoralises society, from gay rights to
immigration promotion to ethnic lobbies, even in Eastern European countries where there are
no minorities.
The one woman standing up to a pompous judge who has called her "selfish" for wanting to earn
the money it takes to feed her child is the heroine of this week's news.
Hers is the story of our Democratic Republic, born in the Age of Reason. Voltaire's
Candide comes to the best conclusion for the way our elected representatives should make
decisions: what works best to help INDIVIDUALS tend their own gardens is the form of
government we should pursue.
It's true that young people have hearts and good intentions, but older people in most
cases have brains and understand human nature better.
This older person--even when she was young--always distrusted a popular uprising or
growing movement.
And if Obama and Hillary are for it, I know I am against it. (That's a more specific life
lesson I've learned.)
So Flynn was framed but the plot eventually failed. will Strzok get a jail sencetnce for his role in this FBI operation?
Charlie Savage being a NYT correspondent belongs to Clinton gang and defend their point of view. But h revels some
interesting tidbits about the nature of framing and possible consequences for the key members of Clinton gang.
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's
decision to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn
, President Trump's former national security
adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no
obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said on Thursday.
"I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen
anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at
Georgetown University.
The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney
General William P. Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors
who scrutinized Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the
Trump campaign.
The case against Mr. Flynn for lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations
with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
It had become a political cause for Mr. Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was
considering a pardon once Mr. Flynn was sentenced. But Mr. Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.
On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of
Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case.
They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Mr. Flynn's admitted lies
to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the ambassador were "material" ones.
The move essentially erases Mr. Flynn's guilty pleas. Because he was never
sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain
to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it "with
prejudice," meaning it could not be refiled in the future.
A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in
which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the
justification Mr. Shea pointed to -- that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt
that the lies were material -- as dubious.
"A pardon would have been a lot more honest," said Samuel Buell, a former
federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University.
The law regarding what counts as "material" is extremely forgiving to the
government, Mr. Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of
criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.
James G. McGovern
, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely
bought a defendant's argument that a lie did not involve a material fact.
"If you are arguing 'materiality,' you usually lose, because there is a tacit
admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury," he said.
No career prosecutors signed the motion. Mr. Shea is a former close aide to
Mr. Barr. In January, Mr. Barr
installed him as the top prosecutor
in the district that encompasses the nation's capital after
maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.
Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly
quit the case against Mr. Trump's longtime friend
Roger
J. Stone Jr.
They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more
lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Mr. Stone was convicted of
committing -- including witness intimidation and perjury -- to conceal Trump campaign interactions with
WikiLeaks.
It
soon emerged
that Mr. Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in
St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over F.B.I. documents showing
internal deliberations about questioning Mr. Flynn, like what warnings to give -- even though such files are
usually not provided to the defense.
Mr. Flynn's defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the
F.B.I. as running amok in its decision to question Mr. Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on
his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama
administration's imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.
The F.B.I. had already concluded that there was no evidence that Mr. Flynn, a
former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided
to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Mr.
Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the
ambassador.
Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used
it as a basis to question Mr. Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it
would be a crime to lie.
Notes from Bill Priestap
, then the head of the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence division, show that he wrote
at one point about the planned interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?"
Mr. Barr
has let it be known
that he does not think the F.B.I. ever had an adequate legal basis to open its
Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department's inspector
general.
In
an interview on CBS News
on Thursday, Mr. Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Mr. Flynn on
the grounds that the F.B.I. "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at
that stage."
Anne Milgram
, a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal
law at New York University, defended the F.B.I.'s decision to question Mr. Flynn in January 2017. She said
that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Mr.
Flynn's lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised
new questions.
But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the
case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department "undercutting the law
enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath," which she
likened to "eating the Justice Department from the inside out."
"... The foundational accusation of Russiagate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of DNC e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy." As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russiagate without Russia. ..."
"... This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise. ..."
"... Russiagate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. ..."
"... Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office. ..."
"... Those sanctions were highly unusual-last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States, and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber attacks on Russia. ..."
"... Finally, and similarly, Cohen points out, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary of State Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-dtente head of the State Department. ..."
Cohen offers the following general observations, which form the basis of the discussion:
The foundational accusation of Russiagate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of DNC
e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016
presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy." As
no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations,
we are left with Russiagate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer
James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national-security
adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and
his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia,
except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn. Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion,
have spread to "contacts with Russia"-political, financial, social, etc.-on the part of a growing number of people, often going back
many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal
or potentially so.
This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections.
It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise.
More to the point, advisers to US policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must have many and various contacts with Russia
if they are to understand anything about the dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. Cohen himself, to take an individual example, was
an adviser to two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered his wide-ranging and longstanding "contacts" with Russia
to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president he advised. To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal
is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave US policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is
also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or dtente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible,
as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post, in an editorial. This is one reason
Cohen, in a previous Batchelor broadcast and commentary, argued that Russiagate and its promoters have become the gravest threat
to American national security.
Russiagate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump
political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus
"Dossier" and the still murky role of top US intel officials in the creation of that document.) That said, Cohen continues, the mainstream
American media have been largely responsible for inflating, perpetuating, and sustaining the sham Russiagate as the real political
crisis it has become, arguably the greatest in modern American presidential and thus institutional political history. The media have
done this by increasingly betraying their own professed standards of verified news reporting and balanced coverage, even resorting
to tacit forms of censorship by systematically excluding dissenting reporting and opinions. (For inventories of recent examples,
see Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Joe Lauria at Consortium News. Anyone interested in exposures of such truly "fake news"
should visit these two sites regularly, the latter the product of the inestimable veteran journalist Robert Parry.) Still worse,
this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for their journalistic standards, where
expressed disdain for "evidence" and "proof" in favor of allegations without any actual facts can sometimes be found. Nor are these
practices merely the ordinary occasional mishaps of professional journalism. As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories,
whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russiagate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples
of Russiagate without Russia.
Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is
highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak,
on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions
imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office.
Those sanctions were highly unusual-last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States,
and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber attacks on Russia. They gave the impression that Obama wanted to
make even more difficult Trump's professed goal of improving relations with Moscow.
Still more, Obama's specified reason was not Russian behavior in Ukraine or Syria, as is commonly thought, but Russiagate-that
is, Putin's "attack on American democracy," which Obama's intel chiefs had evidently persuaded him was an entirely authentic allegation.
(Or which Obama, who regarded Trump's victory over his designated successor, Hillary Clinton, as a personal rebuff, was eager to
believe.) But Flynn's discussions with the Russian ambassador-as well as other Trump representatives' efforts to open "back-channel"
communications with Moscowwere anything but a crime. As Cohen pointed out in another previous commentary, there were so many precedents
of such overtures on behalf of presidents-elect, it was considered a normal, even necessary practice, if only to ask Moscow not to
make relations worse before the new president had a chance to review the relationship. When Henry Kissinger did this on behalf of
President-elect Nixon, his boss instructed him to keep the communication entirely confidential, not to inform any other members of
the incoming administration. Presumably Flynn was similarly secretive, thereby misinforming Vice President Pence and finding himself
trapped-or possibly entrapped-between loyalty to his president and an FBI agent. Flynn no doubt would have been especially guarded
with a representative of the FBI, knowing as he did the role of Obama's Intel bosses in Russiagate prior to the election and which
had escalated after Trump's surprise victory. In any event, to the extent that Flynn encouraged Moscow not to reply in kind immediately
to Obama's highly provocative sanctions, he performed a service to US national security, not a crime. And, assuming that Flynn was
acting on the instructions of his president-elect, so did Trump. Still more, if Flynn "colluded" in any way, it was with Israel,
not Russia, having been asked by that government to dissuade countries from voting for an impending anti-Israel UN resolution.
Finally, and similarly, Cohen points out, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary
of State Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-dtente head of the State Department.
Tillerson was an admirable appointee by Trump-widely experienced in world affairs, a tested negotiator, a mature and practical-minded
man. Originally, his role as the CEO of Exxon Mobil who had negotiated and enacted an immensely profitable and strategically important
energy-extraction deal with the Kremlin earned him the slur of being "Putin's pal." This preposterous allegation has since given
way to charges that he is slowly restructuring, and trimming, the long bloated and mostly inept State Department, as indeed he should
do. Numerous former diplomats closely associated with Hillary Clinton have raced to influential op-ed pages to denounce Tillerson's
undermining of this purportedly glorious frontline institution of American national security. Many news reports, commentaries, and
editorials have been in the same vein. But who can recall, Cohen asks, a major diplomatic triumph by the State Department or a secretary
of state in recent years? The answer might be the Obama administration's multinational agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons
potential, but that was due no less to Russia's president and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provided essential guarantees to
the sides involved. Forgotten, meanwhile, are the more than 50 career State Department officials who publicly protested-in the spirit
of DOD-Obama's rare attempt to cooperate with Moscow in Syria. Call it by what it was: the sabotaging of a president by his own State
Department. In this spirit, there are a flurry of leaked stories that Tillerson will soon resign or be ousted. Meanwhile, however,
he carries on. The ever-looming menace of Russiagate compels him to issue wildly exaggerated indictments of Russian behavior while,
at the same time, calling for a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, in which he clearly believes. (And which, if left unencumbered,
he might achieve.) Evidently, he has established a "productive" working relationship with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov,
the two of them having just announced North Korea's readiness to engage in negotiations with the United States and other governments
involved in the current crisis.
Tillerson's fate, Cohen concludes, will tell us much about the number-one foreign-policy question confronting America: cooperation
or escalating conflict with the other nuclear superpower, a dtente-like diminishing of the new Cold War or the growing risks that
it will become hot war. Politics and policy should never be over-personalized; larger factors are always involved. But in these unprecedented
times, Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of dtente. Apart, that is, from President
Trump himself, loathe him or not. Or to put the issue differently: Will Russiagate continue to gravely endanger American national
security?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in
paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year,
are available at www.thenation.com.
"... If America's adversaries were made of strawmen, the defenders of the foreign policy "Blob" would have a foolproof strategy for defeating them. Unfortunately, a recent defense of the U.S. foreign policy establishment's record is no more successful than the policies that its authors have supported. ..."
"... The authors of the FA piece want to identify the "Blob" with expert knowledge, but many of the loudest critics of the "Blob" find fault with it because so many policy debates are not informed by genuine country or regional expertise. ..."
A recent defense of the foreign policy establishment is no more successful than the policies its authors supported.
If America's adversaries were made of strawmen, the defenders of the foreign policy "Blob"
would have a foolproof strategy for defeating them. Unfortunately, a recent defense of the U.S.
foreign policy establishment's record is no more successful than the policies that its authors
have supported.
Writing for the Foreign Affairs website last week, Hal Brands, Peter Feaver, and Will
Inboden attempt to
rebut critics of the so-called "Blob," but in their attempt they demonstrate many of the very
flaws in analysis and inability to admit error that their critics have pointed out over the
years. The real record of the U.S. foreign policy establishment over the last thirty years has
been much less impressive than its defenders claim, and it has helped to create many more
avoidable calamities than they admit.
The authors of the FA piece want to identify the "Blob" with expert knowledge, but
many of the loudest critics of the "Blob" find fault with it because so many policy debates are
not informed by genuine country or regional expertise. Think back to the Iraq war debate. On
the pro-war side, there were legions of pundits and politicians that knew little or nothing
about Iraq and the surrounding region. The few historians and specialists they could find to
promote the war were extreme ideologues. On the opposing side, you had the vast majority of
regional experts and trained officials at the State Department. The U.S. invaded Iraq despite
the overwhelming consensus among people that knew the country and region best that it would be
a disaster. War supporters had no use for that expertise because it did not line up with what
they wanted to do. The "Blob" prevailed by overruling and ignoring the experts.
Many prominent foreign policy professionals from both parties jumped on the pro-war
bandwagon because they weren't terribly interested in what the experts had to say and because
backing military action to exercise American "leadership" is what these people usually do. Even
those that didn't really believe the case for war said nothing because it
was politically safer for them to conform. We have seen this happen many other times. The
conventional view endorsed by the "Blob" often has nothing to do with expert knowledge, and it
frequently flies in the face of that expertise.
It would help to start with accurate definitions. What do critics of U.S. foreign policy
mean when we talk about the "Blob"? The term refers in part to the tendency towards groupthink,
aggression, and interference in other countries' affairs among foreign policy pundits and think
tankers. It is a criticism of the reflexive bias towards "action," which almost always involves
advocacy for military options, and the disparagement of diplomatic engagement that usually goes
with it. Members of the "Blob" promote and claim to believe in a number of far-fetched myths
about "credibility" and America's "indispensable" role in the world that provide ready-made
justifications for sanctioning and bombing a long list of other countries. They usually twist
themselves into knots to avoid acknowledging U.S. responsibility for the consequences of our
government's actions, but they are the first to decry American "inaction" when something
unfortunate beyond our control happens on the other side of the world. If one or more of those
things describes you, you might be part of the "Blob."
One of the biggest failings of the "Blob" is its resistance to learning and reevaluating
core assumptions. This is one reason why the U.S. keeps making similar mistakes decade after
decade. The "Blob" not only spreads dangerous myths, but it clings to them all the more
desperately when those myths are discredited by experience. The U.S. can destabilize entire
regions for decades, but they will continue to insist that the U.S. military presence is
"stabilizing" and cannot end. U.S. interventions consistently leave countries in worse shape
than they were in before the U.S. intervened, but that does not lessen their eagerness for the
next intervention.
The authors allow that the "Blob" makes mistakes, but asserts that it "learns from them and
changes course." That is simply not true. The only learning that does seem to take place
concerns how some of the same awful policies get labeled. Advocates for regime change usually
avoid using that phrase now, but they still demand regime change in substance. Supporters of
illegal warfare still advocate for illegal war, but now they call it "restoring deterrence."
Aggressive U.S. policies have predictably led to hostile responses from other states, but the
"Blob" doesn't acknowledge the U.S. role in provoking the responses.
When presented with evidence of groupthink, the authors relabel it as "the wisdom of
professional crowds." When presented with the familiar litany of U.S. foreign policy failures,
they claim that the record is actually successful. When presented with the record of
near-constant use of force since the end of the Cold War, they declare that the U.S. "hardly
ran amok in search of monsters to destroy," and then rattle off a list of countries that the
U.S. didn't attack. You could hardly ask for more of a self-parody of what critics call the
"Blob" than boasting about all of the places that the U.S. could have invaded but didn't. Look
at all that restraint! This is akin to defending an arsonist by pointing to all of the
buildings that he didn't set on fire.
Perhaps biggest flaw in the defense of the "Blob" is the very American-centric habit of
taking credit for all positive post-Cold War developments around the world:
In short, after 1989, the deep global engagement favored by the Blob kept the world moving
forward on a generally positive track, rather than regressing to the historical mean of
tyranny, depression, and war.
How much did post-Cold War U.S. actions contribute to this outcome? Isn't it likely that
much of the world would have been "moving forward" as it did with or without the U.S.? In other
words, how much can the U.S. really take credit for the successes of other nations after the
end of the Cold War? To make the balance come out in their favor, the authors need to claim
that the U.S. deserves credit for almost all of it, but that hardly seems credible.
One of the unintentionally funniest parts of the "Blob" defense is the claim that there is
accountability for failure:
The American foreign policy establishment, finally, is generally more pragmatic than
ideological. It values prudence and security over novelty and creativity. It knows that
thinking outside the box may be useful in testing policy assumptions, but the box is usually
there for a reason, and so reflexively embracing the far-out option is dangerous. Its members
have made many mistakes, individually and collectively, but several features of the system
enforce accountability over time. Foreign policy failures, for example, are politically toxic
and often spur positive change.
This is a bold claim to make when the complete lack of accountability is one of the most
distinctive features of the "Blob." Not only do many of the same failed policies continue on
for decades, but many of the same people that advocated for failed and disastrous policies in
the past keep resurfacing to advocate for new ones. Foreign policy failures should be
toxic, but for some reason they never seem to do any harm to the people responsible for them.
There is almost no political or professional price to be paid for being consistently, horribly
wrong about foreign policy. One reason for this is the network of institutions that employ
former government officials so that people responsible for bad policies never go away. Another
is the reluctance of "Blob" members to enforce accountability among themselves. So long as
someone sticks with the consensus view of the U.S. role in the world, there is virtually
nothing that he or she can do to be expelled from the polite company of the foreign policy
establishment. Stray outside of the narrow confines of that consensus, however, and you will
quickly find yourself persona non grata.
The weakest part of their argument is the attempt to conflate other critics of the "Blob"
with the Trump administration's open hostility to expertise:
How about the critics' third argument, that escaping the influence of the Blob would make
American policy more effective and the country more secure? As it happens, a real-time test
of that proposition has been running for over three years.
This not the first time that defenders of conventional foreign policy have tried to blur the
lines between Trump and some of his staunchest non-interventionist and realist critics, and it
is no more convincing now than it was before. Trump has not governed as a conventional foreign
policy president, but neither has he seriously challenged most of the conventional U.S. role in
the world. Trump has left us with the worst of both worlds in which a largely Blobby foreign
policy has been executed by inexperienced and ignorant officials. When critics attack the
"Blob," we are objecting to the failure to rely on expertise in making policy. The
choice does not have to be between Blobby stagnation and Trumpian incompetence, but it is
unsurprising that defenders of the discredited "Blob" want to keep it that way. about the
author Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo
blog . He has been
published in the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World
Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic,
The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter . email
Trump and his team have destroyed US foreign relations. They bully allies and boast to
Americans as their "success".
Americans believe the nonsense - US helped allies before so now they must sacrifice for
US causes without asking any compensation support them with full heart.
Even worse, some even believe the worthless Republican's "American value" is what allies
should sacrifice for. Sorry, they need genuine silver and gold, not your worthless
"value".
Of course, veteran of US diplomats feel sad that the alliance structure built up is
destroyed.
Don't be silly. There was nothing to destroy yet before Trump and his team entered their
offices, due to the destruction thereof having been already brought about by the said
"veteran diplomats".
Jumpin' Jehoshaphat. In their feeble, piteous attempts of relabeling they seem to have
forgotten the ancient arcane art of rebranding. Just read it (bold mine):
the wisdom of professional crowds
Oxymoronic, right? Well, frankly, I'm not sure about "oxy".
The Blob remains in power because the biggest cost of their failures is born by countries
we don't really care about, a small number of volunteer military men, and money that we
borrow. The Blob will remain in power until we squander most of our collective power and we
can no longer inflict their will on others and we become increasingly irrelevant. Until
then it will be very painful to watch.
Which brings me to the Coronavirus outbreak. It easily penetrated our shores and we are
by any honest measure the world leader in number of deaths and economic devastation despite
the fact that the first outbreak did not reach New York until March 1 from Europe. Our
response? We closed travel from the EU on March 15, our Defense establishment convinced
every MSM outlet that Russia, China, and Iran was waging and information war against the
U.S. falsely claiming that we mishandled the situation (we are good a deceiving ourselves,
aren't we), we are gearing up for a Cold War against China, but we were able to get the
Blue Angels to fly over 5 cities on a days notice. Is it too late to take the blue
pill?
You are right regarding the Blob - I would add that most (if not all) of them have zero
skin in the game and I bet that neither of those chickenhawks served in the military.
The War on Iraq provides a most instructive example. Those in foreign policy circles who
knowingly lied, those who knowingly parroted conscious lies, none of these people paid any
price for their lies, not personal or professional. Instead, they were rewarded for being
loyal accomplices.
Those who called out the lies were cast into outer darkness.
Unless and until those responsible for the stupid wars pay a very real and very personal
price for their crimes, nothing will change. For sociopaths learn only from reward and
punishment, but they do learn.
Trump's foreign policy, while based on almost complete ignorance, was light-years ahead of
the blob. In fact the worst of his actions were when he actually believed the blob and/or
did what they wanted. I mean really he hasn't started a war, he actually threatened to
withdraw from Europe if they don't pay for the protection, which at best means NATO is
toast and at worst means the yanks don't subsidize the europeans. What's so bad about his
foreign policy.
Trump has used his veto power three times already - twice to stop US involvement in the
genocidal war on Yemen, and again today to prevent him from making war on Iran.
Meanwhile, Trump has failed twice to pull out of Syria. What a pathetic weaking cuck he
is!
That picture reminds me of a line up, except usually at a line up there is only one truly
guilty party.
Few photographs better symbolize the problem with American foreign policy. At least
Colin Powell showed some redemptive recognition of failure, at least at one time.
I want to push back on the the notion that the State Dept. were on the right side of
history regarding the decision to invade Iraq. Many of those opposed to the war were still
in favor of maintaining the embargo and no-fly zones against Iraq into perpetuity. If the
war's supporters were wrong in proposing a bad solution, many of their opponents were wrong
in offering no solution at all.
Except the status quo.
In fact, this is "The Blob" - the defenders of the status quo, more than anything else.
As Larison observed, the few historians and specialists who supported the Iraq invasion
were extreme ideologues. At the same time, many of them weren't.
Former Trump attorney John Dowd says it's "staggering" that former
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "so-called Dream Team would put on such a fraud," after the
Wednesday release of the investigation's "scope memo" revealed that Mueller was tasked with
investigating accusations from Clinton-funded operative Christopher Steele which the DOJ
already knew were debunked . "In the last few days, I have been going back through my files
and we were badly misled by Mueller and his senior people , particularly in the meetings that
we had," Dowd told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday.
The scope memo also revealed that Mueller's authority went significantly beyond what was
previously known - including "allegations that Carter Page committed a crime or crimes by
colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to
interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United
States law," yet as John Solomon of
Just The News noted on Wednesday - the FBI had already:
fired Steele as an informant for leaking;
interviewed Steele's sub-source, who disputed information attributed to him;
ascertained that allegations Steele had given the FBI specifically about Page were
inaccurate and likely came from Russian intelligence sources as disinformation;
been informed repeatedly by the CIA that Page was not a Russian stooge but, rather, a
cooperating intelligence asset for the United States government.
" There's no question it's a fraud I think the whole report is just nonsense and it's
staggering that the so-called 'Dream Team' would put on such a fraud ," Dowd said, according to
Fox News .
"Durham has really got a load on his hands tracking all this down," Dowd said.
Durham was appointed last year by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the events
leading up to Trump's inauguration. However, Durham has since expanded his investigation to
cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017, when Mueller was appointed as
special counsel. - Fox News
"Nancy's Liar"
Dowd also circled back to a claim by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that
there was "direct evidence" that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016
election, despite the fact that transcripts of House Intelligence Committee interviews proving
otherwise .
"Schiff doesn't release these interviews because they're going to make him a liar," said
Dowd, adding "They're going to expose him and he'll be run out of town."
"He lied for months in the impeachment inquiry. He's essentially Nancy [Pelosi]'s liar and
he's now going to be exposed."
"... Anne Applebaum is a bitter neocon. She is furious that people no longer read the Washington Post as the authoritative voice of US foreign policy. She has apparently made a tidy fortune warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more. The Washington Post still views her as an expert, but the American people, as she herself complains, are no longer interested in her worn-out fantasies. She is buried in defense industry funded think tanks and she does the bidding of her masters. Every intelligent American reader should ridicule her as the propagandist she is. ..."
"... "McMaster's dangerous China hawkishness calls to mind something that Jim Mattis said about him regarding a different issue when they served together in the Trump administration: "Oh my God, that moron is going to get us all killed." His aggressiveness towards China is not driven by an assessment of the threat from China, but comes from his tendency to advocate for aggressive measures everywhere." ..."
"... The country which spends over trillion dollars on "defense" is by definition an imperial country and its foreign policy priorities are not that difficult to discern. ..."
"... And due to well fed MIC which maintains an army of lobbyists and along with FIRE sector controls Capitol Hill this is a Catch 22 situation (we can't abandon neocon Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine and can't continue as it will bankrupt the country) which might not end well for the country. ..."
"... Note how unprepared the country was to COVID-19 epidemic. Zero strategic thinking as if the next epidemic was not in the cards at least since swine fly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States ). ..."
"... Some experts now claim that this is criminal incompetence on the part of Trump administration. "So, what does it mean to let thousands die by negligence, omission, failure to act, in a legal sense under international law?" asked Gonsalves, an assistant professor of epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, in a tweet Wednesday morning. https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1257988303443431425 ..."
"... Please note that Trump campaigned in 2016 on the idea of disengagement from foreign wars and abandoning the global neoliberal empire built by his predecessors as well as halting neoliberal globalization. ..."
"... And what we got? We got this warmonger McMaster, bombing Syria on false flag chemical attack pretext, conflict with Russia over North Stream II and Ukraine, and the assassination of Soleimani. Such a bait and switch. ..."
Neocon Anne Applebaum has never seen a bed she did not expect to find an evil
Russian lurking beneath. More than a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold
War, she cannot let go of that hysterical feeling that, "The Russians Are Coming, The
Russians Are Coming!" In screeching screed after screeching screech, Applebaum is, like
most neocons, a one trick pony: the US government needs to spend more money to counter
the threat of the month. Usually it's Russia or Putin. But it can also be China, Iran,
Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam, etc.
Nothing new, nothing interesting.
Anne Applebaum is a bitter neocon. She is furious that people no longer read the
Washington Post as the authoritative voice of US foreign policy. She has apparently
made a tidy fortune warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more.
The Washington Post still views her as an expert, but the American people, as she
herself complains, are no longer interested in her worn-out fantasies. She is buried in
defense industry funded think tanks and she does the bidding of her masters. Every
intelligent American reader should ridicule her as the propagandist she is.
"McMaster's dangerous China hawkishness calls to mind something that Jim Mattis said
about him regarding a different issue when they served together in the Trump
administration: "Oh my God, that moron is going to get us all killed." His
aggressiveness towards China is not driven by an assessment of the threat from China,
but comes from his tendency to advocate for aggressive measures everywhere."
And as a China scholar McMaster is not the best choice either:
McMaster uses the same "paper tiger image" to portray China as an unstoppable
aggressor that can nonetheless be stopped at minimal risk.
I have heard from other colleagues that several CN scholars met w/ McMaster before
he wrote this (while working on his book) and corrected him on many issues. He
apparently ignored all of their views. This is what we face people: a simple,
deceptive narrative is more seductive.
-- Michael
likbez, May 7, 2020 6:22 pm
The main thrust here is the US abandoning the world to China and a much weaker Russia. I am calling for
the US to play a much broader role in the world as it has economic and strategic value
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is definitely above my pay grade, but the problem that I see here is that it is very unclear where "a
much broader role in the world" ends and where "imperial overstretch" starts.
The country which spends over trillion dollars on "defense" is by definition an imperial country and its
foreign policy priorities are not that difficult to discern.
And due to well fed MIC which maintains an army of lobbyists and along with FIRE sector controls Capitol
Hill this is a Catch 22 situation (we can't abandon neocon Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine and can't continue
as it will bankrupt the country) which might not end well for the country.
Some experts now claim that this is criminal incompetence on the part of Trump administration. "So, what
does it mean to let thousands die by negligence, omission, failure to act, in a legal sense under international
law?" asked Gonsalves, an assistant professor of epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of
Public Health, in a tweet Wednesday morning.
https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1257988303443431425
Please note that Trump campaigned in 2016 on the idea of disengagement from foreign wars and abandoning the
global neoliberal empire built by his predecessors as well as halting neoliberal globalization. That's how he got anti-war independents to vote for him.
And what we got? We got this warmonger McMaster, bombing Syria on false flag chemical attack pretext,
conflict with Russia over North Stream II and Ukraine, and the assassination of Soleimani. Such a bait and switch.
"... Neocon Anne Applebaum has never seen a bed she did not expect to find an evil Russian lurking beneath. More than a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, she cannot let go of that hysterical feeling that, "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!" In screeching screed after screeching screech , Applebaum is, like most neocons, a one trick pony: the US government needs to spend more money to counter the threat of the month. Usually it's Russia or Putin. But it can also be China, Iran, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam, etc. ..."
"... Anne Applebaum is a bitter neocon. She is furious that people no longer read the Washington Post as the authoritative voice of US foreign policy. She has apparently made a tidy fortune warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more. The Washington Post still views her as an expert, but the American people, as she herself complains, are no longer interested in her worn-out fantasies. She is buried in defense industry funded think tanks and she does the bidding of her masters. Every intelligent American reader should ridicule her as the propagandist she is. ..."
Neocon Anne Applebaum has never seen a bed she did not expect to find an evil Russian
lurking beneath. More than a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, she cannot let
go of that hysterical feeling that, "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!" In
screeching
screed after screeching screech ,
Applebaum is, like most neocons, a one trick pony: the US government needs to spend more money
to counter the threat of the month. Usually it's Russia or Putin. But it can also be China,
Iran, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam, etc.
There is no doubt that Applebaum is a true believer that Putin wants to destroy our
democratic institutions, but there is also a more pedestrian way to understand her endless
obsession: it pays well to hype up big threats. In fact, according to a mandatory Polish
government
disclosure (her husband was Polish defense and foreign minister before being
forced out in disgrace after an eavesdropping scandal), Applebaum has
made out like a bandit for a humble journalist and think-tanker.
As I wrote when her scandal broke:
Interestingly, Applebaum demands transparency for everyone else while rejecting it for
herself. A recent mandatory income declaration of her husband to the Polish government shows
that her income has skyrocketed from $20,000 in 2011 to more than $800,000 in 2013. No
explanation was given for this massive influx of cash, though several ventures in which she
has a part
are tied to CIA and National Endowment for Democracy-affiliated organizations. Could
Applebaum be one of those well-paid propagandists about whom she complains so violently?
Applebaum's
latest Washington Post column is about...you guessed it: the danger of Russian
disinformation! Here is a synopsis of Applebaum's latest Cold War 2.0 propaganda piece from
this weekend:
1) The mainstream media has taken a beating. The old business model is no longer working.
There are too many new sources of information available, which makes it harder for people to
judge the accuracy of what they read.
My comment: Indeed, the US mainstream media no longer controls what we see, read, and think.
Applebaum cannot stand that there are websites challenging the central neoconservative foreign
policy paradigm. She hates organizations like the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
(she even blocked us on Twitter!).
She longs for the days when you could only pick up a Washington Post or a New York Times and
had no chance of discovering opposing opinions.
In other words, Anne Applebaum misses the Soviet-style monochrome media that she pretends to
despise so much.
2) As a result of mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post losing their monopoly
over shaping foreign policy opinion, as she writes: "authoritarian regimes, led by Russia but
closely followed by China, have begun investing heavily in the production of alternatives."
My comment: Applebaum is saying here that it's all our fault that the Russians are coming
because as soon as the Internet and alternative news and analysis sites offered a point of view
different from Applebaum's neocons, we played into the hands of the Russians by ignoring the
Washington Post and turning to alternatives. If we had only kept our faith in the neocon
worldview, the Russians would not be set to take us over.
3) This new Cold War is even worse than the old Cold War! Unlike back then, in the new Cold
War, as Applebaum writes, "Russia does not seek to promote itself, but rather to undermine the
institutions of the West, often using discordant messages."
My comment: Anne Applebaum offers no evidence or even clues to back her claim. But what she
is saying is that by allowing voices to be heard that run counter to the Washington Post and
neocon foreign policy paradigm, Russian-funded outlets like RT are seeking to sow "confusion"
among Western listeners and viewers. Applebaum does not want us to be "confused" by messages
that run counter to the neocon view of a US empire fighting endless wars against manufactured
enemies. We would be far less "confused" if we would all just read Anne Applebaum and stop
questioning the neocons!
4) Don't worry, this effort to sow confusion is being countered.
Applebaum writes:
Some countries are waking up to this, especially those that have been hardest hit. The
invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Ukraine in 2014 was preceded by a highly effective
propaganda blitz that fomented confusion in Russian-speaking areas and blinded both
Ukrainians and Westerners to what was really going on. In response, Ukrainian organizations
such as StopFake began to
expose and ridicule Russian propaganda.
My comment: She does not explain exactly what that "propaganda blitz" looked like.
Was it the release of
the tape of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland plotting the overthrow of a
democratically elected government in Kiev? Well, according to Applebaum, at least the noble,
independent NGOs are spontaneously springing up across Europe to counter this Russian
propaganda blitz!
Except for one problem: The "StopFake" organization that she praises is not a grassroots
Ukrainian organization as she would have us believe. In fact it's a George Soros astroturf
organization, funded by his
International Renaissance
Foundation . In other words, "StopFake" is fake.
5) In fact, when it comes to funding, Anne Applebaum knows which side of her bread is
buttered. As the Washington Post notes in the article's byline: "Anne Applebaum, a Post
columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are this week launching a
counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis, where they are,
respectively, senior vice president and senior adjunct fellow."
My comment: Who funds the (Washington, D.C.-based) Center for European Policy Analysis? The
United States Department of Defense and a handful of US defense contractors!
Bell Helicopter
Boeing
Chevron Corporation
FireEye
Lockheed Martin Corporation
New Vista Partners
Raytheon Company
Sikorsky Aircraft
Textron Systems
The East Tennessee Foundation
The Hirsch Family Foundation
The Hungarian Initiatives Foundation
The International Visegrad Fund
The Poses Family Foundation
The Smith Richardson Foundation
U.S. Department of Defense
There are one or two surprises on the above list. The Hungarian government of
Viktor Orban has been quite cautious about following the neocon line that any resistance to
massive refugee inflows from the Middle East are signs of unforgivable xenophobia and that
Russia and Putin must be resisted at all costs. In fact,
Orban's opposition in Hungary is furious that he is not following the Russia-bashing neocon
line. So why is the Hungarian government-funded Hungarian Initiatives Foundation backing Anne
Applebaum's neocon initiative to demonize Russia? Good question. Maybe Fidesz supporters will
want to ask their government why their tax money is going to such a worthless, anti-Fidesz
cause.
6) And again on funding, we come to the crux of Anne Applebaum's problem: the US government
does not spend nearly enough money creating its own propaganda to counter what she claims is
Russian propaganda. They are outspending us and outmaneuvering us!
She writes:
There is no modern equivalent to the U.S. Information Agency , an organization dedicated to
coping with Soviet propaganda and disinformation during the Cold War. Although there has been
some extra funding for U.S.-backed foreign broadcasters such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , they cannot provide a complete
response.
My comment: But that's not really true, is it? The idea that the US government is
pinching propaganda pennies while the Russians are going in for the whole fake news hog is not
backed up by those pernicious little things called facts. In fact, the Russian government spent
around $300 million on RT in 2016. Compare that with the US propaganda arm, the Broadcasting
Board of Governors, whose 2017 budget
runs to $777.8 million dollars, or more than two and a half that of RT. And Congress just
gave the green light to
another $100 million to "counter Russian influence" in its stop-gap omnibus budget. We are
out-spending them three-to-one. So why are we still "losing"?
Anne Applebaum is a bitter neocon. She is furious that people no longer read the Washington
Post as the authoritative voice of US foreign policy. She has apparently made a tidy fortune
warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more. The Washington Post still
views her as an expert, but the American people, as she herself complains, are no longer
interested in her worn-out fantasies. She is buried in defense industry funded think tanks and
she does the bidding of her masters. Every intelligent American reader should ridicule her as
the propagandist she is.
As for Russian "propaganda," like everything else in that vast cornucopia now thankfully
available for our consumption, we should read all we can while keeping our wits about us. There
is no one authoritative, unbiased source of information. That we do know. But we also know that
we are far more able to think for ourselves now that the neocon gatekeepers like Anne Applebaum
have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas.
Shortly after Brandon Van Grack, chief of the Justice Department's Foreign Agents
Registration Act division, filed a notice of his withdrawal in federal court in Washington, The
Justice Department has this morning filed a motion to drop the criminal case against President
Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn , abandoning the critical leg of
many leftists' belief in the Russia collusion bullshit.
And all it took was one line...
As Byron York notes, the Justice Department finally concedes it had no basis to interview
Michael Flynn on January 24, 2017 , with the move coming less than a week after unsealed
documents in the case fueled renewed claims by Flynn that FBI agents had cooked up a bogus case
against him, and as AP reports, is a stunning reversal
for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.
In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the
case "after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including
newly discovered and disclosed information."
The Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn's interview by the FBI was
"untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr.
Flynn" and that the interview on January 24, 2017 was "conducted without any legitimate
investigative basis."
It comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied
to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview.
Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as he investigated ties
between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
We are sure it will not take long before Trump tweet-celebrates, as has relentlessly tweeted
about the case, and just last week pronounced Flynn "exonerated."
As Sara Carter detailed
last week, U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes which
allegedly revealed that the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for
prosecution . Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to
be set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with
investigating the now-debunked allegations that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with
Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Last week, after the FBI documents were unsealed, the president
tweeted :
"What happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to
a citizen of the United States again!"
It didn't take long, as Trump spoke to reporters saying "he is happy for Flynn," and adding
that Flynn "is an innocent man."
Your Logan Act investigation is over. The bums lost.
"... Chomsky notes that companies like General Electric realized they could make more money with sophisticated financial maneuvering than by manufacturing. Complex financial instruments were invented and financial regulations that had been in place since the 1930s to prevent economic crashes were removed. ..."
"... And it was the beginning of outsourcing manufacturing to foreign countries with cheap labor and the consequent decline of labor unions and the economic and political power of the White working class. And when the complex financial instruments blew up (as happened in 2008 with collateralized debt obligations [the result of bundling good and bad (including "liar loans') loans into one financial product]), the government bailed out "too big to fail" Wall Street but not individual homeowners. ..."
"... Illustrating the importance of media control, Chomsky notes that Obama's presidential campaign received an award for the most effective public relations media campaign and he decries the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case which framed financial donations to political campaigns by corporations and labor unions as free speech, in effect further opening the gates for the wealthy to control the political system. He then notes this is quite unlike media corporations like CBS which are "supposed to be a public service." ..."
"... The Culture of Critique ..."
"... After Liberalism) ..."
"... (The True and Only Heaven): ..."
"... The Authoritarian Personality ..."
"... In his 1963 book The Tolerant Populists, ..."
In arguing for his position, Chomsky emphasizes that the 1970s marked the beginning of the
rise of the financialization of the economy. Whereas in the 1950s manufacturing was 28% of the
economy and finance 11%, the balance had reversed by 2010.
Chomsky notes that companies like General Electric realized they could make more money
with sophisticated financial maneuvering than by manufacturing. Complex financial instruments
were invented and financial regulations that had been in place since the 1930s to prevent
economic crashes were removed.
And it was the beginning of outsourcing manufacturing to foreign countries with cheap
labor and the consequent decline of labor unions and the economic and political power of the
White working class. And when the complex financial instruments blew up (as happened in 2008
with collateralized
debt obligations [the result of bundling good and bad (including "liar loans') loans into
one financial product]), the government bailed out "too big to fail" Wall Street but not
individual homeowners.
As Chomsky notes, the result of these developments was rising economic inequality -- the
rise of the super-rich top 0.1 percent to unrivaled political power. Chomsky notes that the
super-rich much prefer oligarchy to democracy and indeed
the data support him . they are able to control the political process via donations to
political candidates and control of media messages. Jews are recognized as the "financial
engine of the left," as Norman
Podhoretz phrased it, and contribute around 75% of the funds for Democrats and probably at
least 50% for Republicans (Sheldon' Adelson's generosity toward Trump. (A prominent example is
Sheldon Adelson whose support of Trump [north of $200 million] is predicated on a pro-Israel
foreign policy; in general the Republican Jewish Coalition favors a pro-Israel foreign policy
and moving the party to the left on social issues like immigration and gender).
Illustrating the importance of media control, Chomsky notes that Obama's presidential
campaign received an award for the most effective public relations media campaign and he
decries the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case which framed
financial donations to political campaigns by corporations and labor unions as free speech, in
effect further opening the gates for the wealthy to control the political system. He then notes
this is quite unlike media corporations like CBS which are "supposed to be a public
service."
This of course, is absurd, implying that CBS (and by implication other mainstream media
corporations) has no political biases and does not in fact operate as a public service. CBS is
part of ViacomCBS, whose major owners are the Sumner Redstone and his family, who are Jewish
and whose values are typical of the liberal-left attitudes of the mainstream Jewish community (
here , p.
xlvi–lvi).
Chomsky clearly has a distaste for oligarchy but he fails to mention the very large body of
writing by Jews opposed to populism -- a major theme of The Culture of Critique ,
especially
Chapter 5 . As noted there, citing Paul Gottfried ( After Liberalism) and
Christopher Lasch (The True and Only Heaven):
In the post–World War II era The Authoritarian Personality became an
ideological weapon against historical American populist movements, especially McCarthyism
(Gottfried 1998; Lasch 1991, 455ff). "[T]he people as a whole had little understanding of
liberal democracy and . . . important questions of public policy would be decided by educated
elites, not submitted to popular vote" (Lasch 1991, 455).
In his 1963 book The Tolerant Populists, Walter Nugent, was explicit in finding
that Jewish identification was an important ingredient in the [anti-populist] analysis,
attributing the negative view of American populism held by some American Jewish historians
(Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset) to the fact that "they were one
generation removed from the Eastern European shtetl [small Jewish town], where insurgent
gentile peasants meant pogrom."
Indeed, another example comes from Chomsky which occurred well before the rise of Jews to
cultural dominance; Walter Lippmann, also Jewish, is quoted as writing in 1925 "The public must
be put in its place."
Throughout European history down to the Soviet Union and post-World War II communist
societies in Eastern Europe, Jews have always made alliances with ruling elites, often alien
ruling elites and often in opposition to other sectors of the population.
Schiff Folds: Publishes Russiagate Transcripts After Showdown With DNI by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2020 -
18:25 Following the standoff between Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Acting DNI Richard Grenell,
the House Intelligence Committee published all of the Russia investigation transcripts Thursday
evening.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Rep. Adam Schiff is planning to selectively release information from some of the 53
declassified transcripts of witnesses that testified before Congress regarding the FBI's
Russia probe into the Trump campaign. This move, comes after a long battle against
Republican colleagues, who are fighting to make all the transcripts available to the American
public, said a U.S. official, with knowledge of Schiff's plans.
Schiff has been fighting the release of the transcripts.
The decision for Schiff to publish a selective portion of the 6,000 pages of transcripts
comes after a recent public showdown with Director of National Intelligence
Richard Grenell, who is also fighting to make all the transcripts public. In fact, Grenell
reiterated in a letter Wednesday that if Schiff doesn't make the transcripts public then he
will release them himself.
Interestingly, the committee voted unanimously in the fall of 2018, to make all the
transcripts public after declassification, which has already been done.
"Schiff's planning to selectively leak to the liberal media what he wants, while keeping
the truth from the American people," said one source, familiar with Schiff's plans.
Schiff's office did not immediately respond to an email for comment.
A congressional source familiar with the issue said "the committee voted in the last
Congress to publish all the transcripts together, precisely to avoid any staged release
calculated for political effect."
"Schiff has had possession of most of the redacted transcripts for a long time, but he
used the fact that he didn't have all of them as an excuse not to publish any," said the
congressional source.
"If he selectively publishes just some of them now, it'll be rank hypocrisy."
Allegedly Schiff is also having his senior subcommittee staff director and counsel with the
intelligence committee contact the various heads of the intelligence community asking them to
challenge plans by Grenell to release the transcripts, which were declassified prior to his
arrival at DNI.
Several sources, familiar with Schiff's actions, have stated that his refusal to release the
transcripts is based on information contained in the testimony that will destroy his Russia
hoax propaganda.
"Schiff has been sitting on a lot of these transcripts for a long time," said a Republican
congressional source.
"They were using this as an excuse to ensure that the White House wouldn't have access to
the transcripts, now he wants to selectively leak and that's the game he plays – he's
definitely shifty. "
The OPCW is claimed to be an independent agency but we know that it suppressed the results of
its own engineers when it reported that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged
chemical attack in Douma. The former head of the agency has publicly asserted that when John
Bolton demanded that he step down, he added, "We know where your children live." The US has a
history of corruption and intimidation. Any investigation would result in finding China
responsible just as Russia was found to be responsible for the airliner that was shot down
over Ukraine.
"... In 2010, Flynn co-authored an important analysis, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan . Flynn's key conclusion warned that the U.S. intelligence effort in Afghanistan was failing: ..."
"... The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade. ..."
"... lambasted American intelligence performance in Afghanistan. . . [It] pulled no punches, using words like "marginally relevant," "ignorant," "hazy," and "incurious" to describe U.S. intelligence work in Afghanistan in a scathing fashion. ..."
"... During 2012-2013, DIA provided honest, objective analysis about the success of the Syrian Army in fighting against ISIS and Al Qaeda. If you go back and look at the media reporting at the time, there were dire reports claiming that the rebels were on the verge of ousting Syrian leader Assad and sweeping to power. Members of Congress, such as Senators McCain and Graham, were busy cheerleading the Syrian rebels progress. ..."
"... Few knew at the time that the CIA was running a massive arms and training program to support some of the Syrian rebels. ..."
"... This earned Michael Flynn the lasting enmity of DNI Director Jim Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan. Flynn would not play ball in down playing the jihadist threat in Syria. If you recall, President Obama referred to ISIS as the "junior varsity" during a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker: ..."
"... "The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said, resorting to an uncharacteristically flip analogy. "I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian. ..."
"... His refusal to downplay the ISIS threat was on of the contributing factors that led Obama to fire Flynn, who left the DIA position in August 2014. ..."
"... Michael Flynn did not go quietly into retirement. He became a vocal critic of Obama's failed policies in the Middle East ..."
"... This made him a target of both Clapper and Brennan. When Brennan put together a CIA Task Force in the late summer of 2015, I believe that one of the targets of the intelligence collection from that effort was Michael Flynn. By March of 2016, Flynn was squarely in the crosshairs of the Obama political/intelligence hit squad : ..."
"... Flynn, who was forced out of his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2014 after clashing with other senior officials, has said that "political correctness" has prevented the U.S. from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a "cancerous idea that exists inside of the Islamic religion." Flynn has authored a forthcoming book that argues the U.S. government "has concealed the actions of terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden and groups like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam " ..."
"... But that did not stop Jim Comey and his cronies from stepping up their efforts to find something they could use to charge and prosecute Flynn. Text messages from Peter Strzok to the author of the memo recommending the case be closed show that Strzok begged to keep the investigation open and cited "7th Floor" interest as justification. The 7th Floor of the FBI is where Jim Comey and Andy McCabe were located. ..."
"... Who authorized that collection of those conversations? Flynn was the acting National Security Advisor to President elect Donald Trump. Listening in on such a phone call was a pure act of domestic espionage against a political opponent of Obama. There was no justification to UNMASK General Flynn. But that is exactly what the FBI did. ..."
"... If and that's a big IF, somehow these scumbags (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, et. al) ever got to a courtroom, they'd be facing - in DC - a jury of 12 Trump-haters and an Obama judge;see Roger Stone's trial. ..."
"... Excellent summary. Yes, Flynn was scapegoated and dragged through the mud for embarrassing his "betters" with the truth. He made mistakes and was naive himself, but he did the right thing exposing their plan to arm and support a jihadi takeover of Syria and Iraq. The plan was to let them takeover and then take the "JV team" out. ..."
"... They didn't want to send too many more troops to war. Americans had grown weary due to Bush's madness, so they used jihadis to carry out their plan in the Middle East and North Africa, to fill in the void ..."
"... It was very naive policy making and in the end Obama grew paranoid he was being screwed like Carter, that Benghazi was going to be turned into another Iranian hostage-like situation. It's a curious thing that Obama warned Trump of Flynn. In Obama's mind, Flynn was part of a conspiracy to screw him for choosing to back "Syrian and Libyan farmers" over American troops. That this was the US military brass showing him who's really boss and that they were trying to embarrass him. In reality, he made a bad policy decision based on failure to understand the region. His failures to under these people, exactly as Flynn warned, precipitated these failures. ..."
"... Trump showed a lot of promise that these circumstances would change for the better. Sadly, he has performed no better. Netanyahu and Pompeo are so far up his ass that they are now his ventriloquists. Obama should have warned him of those two instead. ..."
"... ...We see the same thing has evolved in the American Empire. If you take time to read up on the Flynn case or the much larger plot around it, you see a large cast of people with one thing in common. They all live together as a social class. Some were having sex with one another. Others had been friends since college. Others developed their relationships when they came to Washington. All of these social relationships transcend the formal positions and titles of the people... ..."
"... At that time of the Syria events, it appeared one of the biggest names in the background pushing for more support for Syrian "rebels", was the shadowy activist group AVAAZ. ..."
"... Now comes the present day kicker, the mistress Antonia Staats of the recently fired UK "expert" Neil Ferguson that caused our global shut down with his wildly inaccurate corona death count numbers, works for US based AVAAZ. Did she have any influence over his draconian pronouncements based up on her known AVAAZ activism? ..."
"... Is AVAAZ just one more name for Bernnan's CIA, not like unlike CNN? Should these dots be connected or just discarded as one more right-wing wacko conspiracy theory. ..."
"... Thanks for the excellent summary of how Flynn became "persona non grata" to various powers in the IC. But there is another powerful group in Washington whose fervent enmity he drew: the Democratic establishment. See: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/how-mike-flynn-became-americas-angriest-general-214362 ..."
"... Adding to my comment just above, my personal feeling on why there was such a push to find something to prosecute Flynn over was as a direct response to Flynn's leading of chants to "lock her up." "What goes around comes around" seems to be an operative policy for some in Washington. I can't help but believe that is what drove DOJ's otherwise inexplicable drive to find something to prosecute Flynn over. ..."
Two and one-half years ago, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller unveiled charges against
Michael Flynn for "lying to Federal agents." At the time I gave Mueller the benefit of the
doubt and assumed, incorrectly, that the investigation was fair and honest. We now know without
any doubt that the so-called investigation of Michael Flynn was frame-up. It was a punishment
in search of a crime and ultimately led the FBI to manufacture a crime in order to take out
Michael Flynn and damage the fledgling Presidency of Donald Trump.
It is important to understand the lack of proper foundation to investigate Michael Flynn as
a collaborator with Russia as part of some bizarre plot to steal the 2016 Presidential election
for Donald Trump.
Flynn was perceived as a threat to the CIA and refused to cook the intelligence for the
Obama Administration while he was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of
collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus
still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we
operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.
Flynn's work did not sit well with Jim Clapper and John Brennan. John Schindler, a rabid
anti-Trumper, wrote a hit piece on Flynn in December 2017, that highlights the Deep State anger
at Flynn. Schindler characterizes Flynn's work in unflattering terms and
claims that Flynn :
lambasted American intelligence performance in Afghanistan. . . [It] pulled no punches,
using words like "marginally relevant," "ignorant," "hazy," and "incurious" to describe U.S.
intelligence work in Afghanistan in a scathing fashion.
Flynn's honesty in that assessment did
not derail his next promotion -- he was sworn in as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in
July 2012. Once in that position he refused to cook the intelligence. I saw this firsthand (at
the time I had access to the classified intelligence analysis by DIA with respect to the war in
Syria). During 2012-2013, DIA provided honest, objective analysis about the success of the
Syrian Army in fighting against ISIS and Al Qaeda. If you go back and look at the media
reporting at the time, there were dire reports claiming that the rebels were on the verge of
ousting Syrian leader Assad and sweeping to power. Members of Congress, such as Senators McCain
and Graham, were busy cheerleading the Syrian rebels progress.
Few knew at the time that the CIA was running a massive arms and training program to support
some of the Syrian rebels. The program was a failure and the attack on the CIA base in
Benghazi, Libya came close to exposing the covert effort. What the media was not reporting is
that the rebels the U.S. backed were inept. The only rebels achieving some success were the
radical jihadists aligned with ISIS and elements of Al Qaeda (e.g. Al Nusra).
This earned Michael Flynn the lasting enmity of DNI Director Jim Clapper and CIA Director
John Brennan. Flynn would not play ball in down playing the jihadist threat in Syria. If you
recall, President Obama referred to ISIS as the "junior varsity" during a January 2014
interview with the New Yorker:
"The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts
on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said, resorting to an
uncharacteristically flip analogy. "I think there is a distinction between the capacity and
reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the
homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often
sectarian.
But that was not the story that Flynn's DIA was telling. His refusal to downplay the ISIS
threat was on of the contributing factors that led Obama to fire Flynn, who left the DIA
position in August 2014.
Michael Flynn did not go quietly into retirement. He became a vocal critic of Obama's failed
policies in the
Middle East :
Since taking off his uniform last August, Flynn, 56, has been in the vanguard of those
criticizing the president's policies in the Middle East, speaking out at venues ranging from
congressional hearings and trade association banquets to appearances on Fox News, CNN, Sky News
Arabia, and Japanese television, targeting the Iranian nuclear deal, the weakness of the U.S.
response to the Islamic State, and the Obama administration's refusal to call America's enemies
in the Middle East "Islamic militants."
This made him a target of both Clapper and Brennan. When Brennan put together a CIA Task
Force in the late summer of 2015, I believe that one of the targets of the intelligence
collection from that effort was Michael Flynn. By March of 2016, Flynn was squarely in the crosshairs of the Obama
political/intelligence hit squad :
They question why the retired general, who has earned criticism for his leadership style but
has generally been regarded as a well-intentioned professional, would assist a candidate who
has called for military actions that would constitute war crimes.
"I think Flynn and Trump are two peas in a pod," one former senior U.S. intelligence
official who knows Flynn told The Daily Beast. "They have this naïve notion that yelling
at people will just solve problems."
Flynn, who was forced out of his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in
August 2014 after clashing with other senior officials, has said that "political correctness"
has prevented the U.S. from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a "cancerous idea
that exists inside of the Islamic religion." Flynn has authored a forthcoming book that argues
the U.S. government "has concealed the actions of terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden and groups
like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam "
His co-author, Michael Ledeen,
is a neoconservative author and policy analyst who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Thanks to the document release on 30 April, 2020, we know that the FBI opened an
unsuccessful investigation of Flynn. Here are the key points from the memo recommending the
investigation be closed:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an particularly false factual basis that CROSSFIRE RAZOR (CR)
may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which
may constitute a federal crime· or threat to the national security.
The FBI predicated the investigation on predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE
HURRICANE (CH) investigative team based on an assessment of reliable lead information received
during the course of the investigation.
The FBI queried the FBI databases and at least two other intelligence community databases
for incriminating information but found NO DEROGATORY INFORMATION .
The FBI used a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS probably Stefan Halper) to try to collect
incriminating information. The CHS claimed that Flynn was in contact with Svetlana Lokhova, a
British academic born in Russia, but a subsequent FBI search of their databases turned up NO
DEROGATORY INFORMATION .
The FBI memo concludes:
the absence of any derogatory information or lead information from these logical sources
reduced the number of investigative avenues and techniques to pursue. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation.
But that did not stop Jim Comey and his cronies from stepping up their efforts to find
something they could use to charge and prosecute Flynn. Text messages from Peter Strzok to the
author of the memo recommending the case be closed show that Strzok begged to keep the
investigation open and cited "7th Floor" interest as justification. The 7th Floor of the FBI is
where Jim Comey and Andy McCabe were located.
They decided to pursue two lines of attack. First, to go after Flynn for allegedly failing
to register as a "Foreign Agent" because of a report his consulting firm prepared on a Turk
living in the United States that Turkey named as a "terrorist." Second, the FBI had in hand the
transcript of Flynn's conversations with Russia's Ambassador and wanted to entrap him into
lying about those conversations.
Who authorized that collection of those conversations? Flynn was the acting National
Security Advisor to President elect Donald Trump. Listening in on such a phone call was a pure
act of domestic espionage against a political opponent of Obama. There was no justification to
UNMASK General Flynn. But that is exactly what the FBI did.
The news of Mike Flynn's plea agreement in late 2017 with special prosecutor Robert Mueller
was trumpeted on the media as if Flynn admitted to killing Kennedy or having unprotected sex
with Vladimir Putin. But read the actual indictment and the accompanying agreement.
Here is the chronology of Michael Flynn's entirely appropriate actions as the National
Security Advisor to President-elect Donald Trump. This is not what an agent of Russia would do.
This is what the National Security Advisor to an incoming President would do.
December 21, 2016 --Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on
the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution").
December 22, 2016-- a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team (reportedly
Jared Kushner) directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia,
to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to
delay the vote or defeat the resolution.
December 23, 2016-- FLYNN again spoke with the Russian Ambassador, who informed FLYNN that
if it came to a vote Russia would not vote against the resolution.
On this same day, President-elect Trump spoke with Egyptian leader Sisi, who agreed to
withdraw the resolution (
link ).
[I would note that there is nothing illegal or wrong about any of this. Quite an appropriate
action, in fact, for an incoming President. Moreover, if Trump and the Russians had been
conspiring before the November election, why would Trump and team even need to persuade the
Russian Ambassador to do the biding of Trump on this issue?]
December 28, 2016-- President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13757, which was to take
effect the following day, imposing sanctions on Russia. Russian Ambassador Kislyak called
General Flynn (who was vacationing in the Caribbean).
December 29, 2016 , FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT
official"), who was with other senior members of the Presidential Transition Team at the
Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the
Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and the PTT official discussed
the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming
administration's foreign policy goals. The PTT official and FLYNN also discussed that the
members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the
situation.
FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the
situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.
Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT
official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including
their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.
December 31, 2016-- the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him that Russia had
chosen not to retaliate in response to FLYNN's request.
After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the
Presidential Transition Team about FLYNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding
the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
Michael Flynn's contact with the Russian Government and other members of the UN Security
Council in the month preceding Trump's inauguration was appropriate and normal. He did nothing
wrong. But President Obama's henchmen, including James Comey, John Brennan, Jim Clapper and
Susan Rice were out for blood and relied on the FBI to stick the shiv into General Flynn's
belly.
That travesty of justice is being methodically and systematically revealed in the documents
delivered to the Flynn defense team thanks to the efforts of Attorney General William Barr.
Barr is relying on the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri (EDMO) to review the
case and provide Brady material to the Flynn defense team. This is by the book. Doing it this
way provides the legal foundation for future prosecution of the FBI and prosecutors who abused
the General Flynn's rights and violated the Constitution. Stay tuned.
All true in my book but it would be very hard to prosecute and get convictions as the defense
would be "We were working in the best interests of the US against the dastardly Russkies"
At least half the country believes it goes the Russians interfered materially in the 2016
election. 2018 poll
Great analysis, your article added a lot of context on why Flynn was targeted. What a
horrible thing to do to a person.
http://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/ that has
been doing A+ work on the Flynn set up, linked to you.
If and that's a big IF, somehow these scumbags (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, et. al) ever
got to a courtroom, they'd be facing -
in DC - a jury of 12 Trump-haters and an Obama judge;see Roger Stone's trial.
Bottom line: Until the swamp is drained and then burned (meaning all SES and over a certain GS level
bureaucrats gone), we will continue to live under the thumbs of this corrupt "ruling
class." And getting rid of all these people wouldn't make much of a difference to most
Americans; witness the notorious "shutdowns" in recent years.
Excellent summary. Yes, Flynn was scapegoated and dragged through the mud for embarrassing
his "betters" with the truth. He made mistakes and was naive himself, but he did the right
thing exposing their plan to arm and support a jihadi takeover of Syria and Iraq. The plan
was to let them takeover and then take the "JV team" out.
They didn't want to send too many more troops to war. Americans had grown weary due to
Bush's madness, so they used jihadis to carry out their plan in the Middle East and North
Africa, to fill in the void while they could before Russia remained weak and China yet to
fully emerge, to checkmate the grand chessboard Zbigniew wrote of while the US held
unchallenged supremacy.
Obama was very naive about what Muslims are really like in some of those parts. It's best
to liken them to Comanches. He bought into the Zbigniew/Neocon belief that they'll just be
another Taliban, but ask any Afghan who managed to escape the country at the time and they'll
tell you these guys are all devils, djinns.
It was very naive policy making and in the end Obama grew paranoid he was being screwed
like Carter, that Benghazi was going to be turned into another Iranian hostage-like
situation. It's a curious thing that Obama warned Trump of Flynn. In Obama's mind, Flynn was
part of a conspiracy to screw him for choosing to back "Syrian and Libyan farmers" over
American troops. That this was the US military brass showing him who's really boss and that
they were trying to embarrass him. In reality, he made a bad policy decision based on failure
to understand the region. His failures to under these people, exactly as Flynn warned,
precipitated these failures.
Obama made a lot of mistakes, but thankfully he didn't make it worse by invading in spite
of his red line. I have to credit him that much, but his failures in Libya and Syria are on
par with Bush's failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Disastrous doesn't even begin to describe
these failures.
Trump showed a lot of promise that these circumstances would change for the better. Sadly,
he has performed no better. Netanyahu and Pompeo are so far up his ass that they are now his
ventriloquists. Obama should have warned him of those two instead.
"... internal investigation unit". If I run the IG and change the definition of "whistle
blower" to allow hearsay evidence that is not admissible as evidence in any court in the
Western world that still makes it okay to use hearsay, right? Of course it does. You forgot
about Horowitz and his IG report already, you guys must really be getting desperate. Thanks
for the laugh.
As much as I would love to see this "ruling class" brought low, by which I mean burnt to the
ground, we face the problem of The Ruling System, outlined in this post on the Z-Man blog:
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=20405 A little snippet from the post:
...We see the same thing has evolved in the American Empire. If you take time to read up
on the Flynn case or the much larger plot around it, you see a large cast of people with one
thing in common. They all live together as a social class. Some were having sex with one
another. Others had been friends since college. Others developed their relationships when
they came to Washington. All of these social relationships transcend the formal positions and
titles of the people...
Z-Man examines this in various historical settings, Versailles, Communist Russia, before
arriving at The Swamp. Interesting angle.
Small world, speaking of Seymour Hersh's lengthy CIA gun-running to Syria expose in "The Red
Line and Rat Line", that all his prior media connections refused to publish at the time
(Benghazi-Obama days), until it finally appeared in the London Review of Books- or something
like that.
At that time of the Syria events, it appeared one of the biggest names in the background
pushing for more support for Syrian "rebels", was the shadowy activist group AVAAZ.
Now comes the present day kicker, the mistress Antonia Staats of the recently fired UK
"expert" Neil Ferguson that caused our global shut down with his wildly inaccurate corona
death count numbers, works for US based AVAAZ. Did she have any influence over his draconian
pronouncements based up on her known AVAAZ activism?
Who was it that says there are no coincidences? Long time since I saw any media attention
given to AVAAZ, nor any final answers why the CIA was running such a big operation in
Benghazi in 2012. However, all the same names and players still swirling around gives one
pause.
Is AVAAZ just one more name for Bernnan's CIA, not like unlike CNN? Should these dots be
connected or just discarded as one more right-wing wacko conspiracy theory.
Adding to my comment just above, my personal feeling
on why there was such a push
to find something to prosecute Flynn over
was as a direct response to Flynn's leading of chants to "lock her up."
"What goes around comes around" seems to be an operative policy for some in Washington.
I can't help but believe that is what drove DOJ's otherwise inexplicable drive to find
something to prosecute Flynn over.
AVAAZ pushed FaceBook and Zuckerberg to ban about half of FB content on novel coronavirus,
starting last month, Politico gleefully reported. [Two medical doctors in California 'out of
step' with the diktats of some medical cartel's message, among those FB canceled, for
example.]
AVAAZ, which pushed regime change in Syria, no fly zone in Libya, spews hatred of Russia,
etc. is alive and well, working hard at increasing online censorship.
Their clicktivism business model and lock downs go hand in hand.
[[Avaaz discovered that over 40 percent of the coronavirus-related misinformation it found
on Facebook. . .]]
[[Avaaz said that these fake social media posts -- everything from advice about bogus
medical remedies for the virus to claims that minority groups were less susceptible to
infection -- had been shared, collectively, 1.7 million times on Facebook in six
languages]]
[[Avaaz tracked 104 claims debunked by fact-checkers to see how quickly they were removed
from the platform]]
" If I run the IG and change the definition of "whistle blower" to allow hearsay evidence
that is not admissible as evidence in any court in the Western world that still makes it okay
to use hearsay, right? Of course it does. You forgot about Horowitz and his IG report
already, you guys must really be getting desperate. Thanks for the laugh."
No laughing matter. The IG position is obviously politicized. It may be a surprise to you,
but many police forces have an internal investigation unit that has extremely wide powers
that. go far beyond those available in ordinary investigation. The staff of such units are a
rare and disliked breed and the units are managed by the natural enemies of the police -
criminal lawyers.
Given that I've seen what these units do here, I am surprised that Strzok, Page and others
were not apprehended and charged very quickly.
Jim, thank you for the further AVAAZ info. Call me gob-smacked. Hope the investigative media picks up this thread. Seymour Hersh, are
you listening? AVAAZ felt sinister during the Benghazi days - also reacll some connections
with Samantha Power and Susan Rice - Barry's Girls.
Maybe mistress Antonia Staats was on a mission; and not just being a scofflaw mistress? In
fact is she trying out to be the new S.P.E.C.T.R.E Bond Girl?
IG's are no surprise to me nor the politicalization, such as Baltimore and Chicago, cities
run by the same political party for decades. Or the "intelligence community" IG, who changed
to rules to allow the scam of Schiff's supersecret whistleblower fraud to go forward. But
then you probably forgot that guy like you did Horowitz.
"I am surprised that Strzok, Page and others were not apprehended and charged ...." Larry insists that will happen. I'm not holding my breath.
It is interesting that Tucker Carlson started his program, last night, by railing against
news media that does not investigate issues, especially pertaining to Covid-19 he then
launched into a hypocritical tirade against China using unnamed government sources and unseen
government documents, as the source of Covid-19 malfeasance in reporting the disease, on
China's part. Carlson did this without one media investigation of the veracity of the US
government reports.
Carlson has turned into a hypocritical asshole.
This is because Tucker has always been a Sinophobe instead of a Russophobe.
Be that as it may, he is a hypocrite. Carlson pisses and moans about what lying, corrupt
bastards the intelligence agencies are when they attack the Trump administration, Roger
Stone, Gen. Flynn yet is ready to believe anything those same intelligence agencies say that
is derogatory toward China even though there is no evidence provided.
|
Ethan Paul dismantles H.R.
McMaster's "analysis"
of the Chinese government and shows how McMaster abuses the idea of strategic empathy for his
own ends:
But the reality is that McMaster, and others committed to great power competition, is
actually playing the role of Johnson and McNamara. This shines through clearest in McMaster's
selective, and ultimately flawed, application of strategic empathy.
Just as Johnson and McNamara used the Joint Chiefs as political props, soliciting their
advice or endorsement only when it could legitimize policy conclusions they had already come
to, McMaster uses strategic empathy as a symbolic exercise in self-validation. By conceiving
of China's perspective solely in terms of its tumultuous history and the Communist Party's
pathological pursuit of power and control, McMaster presents only those biproducts of
strategic empathy that confirm his policy conclusions (i.e. an intuitive grasp of China's
apparent drive to reassert itself as the "Middle Kingdom" at the expense of the United
States).
McMaster calls for "strategic empathy" in understanding how the Chinese government sees the
world, but he then stacks the deck by asserting that the government in question sees the world
in exactly the way that China hawks want to believe that they see it. That suggests that
McMaster wasn't trying terribly hard to see the world as they do. McMaster's article has been
likened to Kennan's seminal
article on Soviet foreign policy at the start of the Cold War, but the comparison only serves
to highlight how lacking McMaster's argument is and how inappropriate a similar containment
strategy would be today. Where Kennan rooted his analysis of Soviet conduct in a lifetime of
expertise in Russian history and language and his experience as a diplomat in Moscow, McMaster
bases his assessment of Chinese conduct on one visit to Beijing, a superficial survey of
Chinese history, and some boilerplate ideological claims about communism. McMaster's article
prompted some strong criticism along these lines when it came out:
I have heard from other colleagues that several CN scholars met w/ McMaster before he
wrote this (while working on his book) and corrected him on many issues. He apparently
ignored all of their views. This is what we face people: a simple, deceptive narrative is
more seductive.
McMaster's narrative is all the more deceptive because he claims to want to understand the
official Chinese government view, but he just substitutes the standard hawkish caricature. Near
the end of the article, he asserts, "Without effective pushback from the United States and
like-minded nations, China will become even more aggressive in promoting its statist economy
and authoritarian political model." It is possible that this could happen, but McMaster treats
it as a given without offering much proof that this is so. McMaster makes a mistake common to
China hawks that assumes that every other great power must have the same missionary,
world-spanning goals that they have. Suppose instead that the Chinese government is not
interested in that, but has a more limited strategy aimed at securing itself and establishing
itself as the leading power in its region.
Paul does a fine job of using McMaster's earlier work on the Vietnam War to expose the flaws
in his thinking about China. McMaster has often been praised for his criticism of the
military's top leaders over their role in running the war in Vietnam, but this usually
overlooks that McMaster was really arguing for a much more aggressive war effort. He faulted
the Joint Chiefs for "dereliction" because they didn't insist on escalation. Paul observes:
McMaster's tale of Vietnam is, counterintuitively, one of enduring confidence in the
U.S.'s ability to do good in the world and conquer all potential challengers, if only it
finds the will to overcome the temptations of political cowardice and stamp out bureaucratic
ineptitude. This same message runs through McMaster's tale about China: "If we compete
aggressively," and "no longer adhere to a view of China based mainly on Western aspirations,"
McMaster says, "we have reason for confidence."
McMaster would have the U.S. view China in the worst possible light as an implacable
adversary. Following this recommendation will guarantee decades of heightened tensions and
increased risks of conflict. McMaster's dangerous China hawkishness calls to mind something
that Jim Mattis said about him regarding a different
issue when they served together in the Trump administration: "Oh my God, that moron is going to
get us all killed." His aggressiveness towards China is not driven by an assessment of the
threat from China, but comes from his tendency to advocate for aggressive measures
everywhere.
As Paul notes, McMaster is minimizing the dangers and risks that his preferred policy of
confrontation entails. In that respect, he is making the same error that American leaders made
in Vietnam:
Like Johnson and McNamara before him, McMaster is misleading both the public and himself
about the costs, consequences, and likelihood for success of the path he is committed to
pursuing, and in so doing is laying the groundwork for yet another national tragedy.
McMaster's China argument is reminiscent of other arguments made by imperialists in the
past, and he relies on many of the same shoddy assumptions that they did. Like British
Russophobes in the mid-19th century, McMaster decided on a policy of aggressive containment and
then searched for rationalizations that might justify it. Jack Snyder described this in his
classic study
Myths of Empire thirty years ago:
Russia is portrayed as a unitary, rational actor with unlimited aims of conquest, but
fortunately averse to risk and weak if stopped soon enough. (p. 168)
McMaster uses the same "paper tiger image" to portray China as an unstoppable aggressor that
can nonetheless be stopped at minimal risk. He wants us to believe that China is at once
implacable but easily deterred, insatiable but quick to back off under pressure. We have seen
the same contradictory arguments from hawks on other issues, but it is particularly dangerous
to promote such a misleading image of a nuclear-armed major power. about the author
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the
New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review ,
Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and
Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Looks like Mueller barked to the wrong tree... And that was not accidental
Notable quotes:
"... The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago ..."
Previously sealed FBI documents indicate close contacts between Israel and the Trump
campaign and that the Mueller investigation found evidence of Israeli involvement, but
largely redacted it.
Menifee, CA (IAK) -- Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli government
officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and offered "critical
intel."
In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be an Israeli
minister warns that Trump was "going to be defeated unless we intervene." He goes on to tell
a Trump campaign official: "The key is in your hands."
The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the
Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. The unsealed
documents suggest that rather than Russia, it was Israel that covertly interfered in the
election.
While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent Israeli
connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been quick to jump on it.
Israel's i24 News reports:
Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that Roger Stone, a senior aide in the 2016
Trump campaign, had one or more high-ranking contacts in the Israeli government willing to
help the then-Republican Party nominee win the presidential election."
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reports:
Tantalizing hints" of "alleged clandestine contacts came to light in recent publication of
redacted FBI documents."
The Times of Israel (TOI) the first to report on this, states:
The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and
one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a minister
without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs,'
the PM, and the Prime Minister."
TOI points out: "Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016," and reports
circumstantial evidence that the "PM" mentioned in the document refers to Netanyahu:
One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows: 'On or about June 28,
2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN
ROME.MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.' Netanyahu made a state
visit to Italy at the end of June 2016."
TOI also notes that "the Israeli government included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi
Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense and foreign affairs."
Ha'aretz also names Hanebi as the likely contact, and confirms that he "was in the United
States on the dates mentioned, attending, among other things, a roll out of the first Israeli
F-35 jet at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas."
The previously classified FBI affidavit says: "On or about August 12, 2016, [name
redacted] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be
defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the
US next week."
Another section of the affidavit states: "On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet with [name redacted] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct." (Corsi refers to Jerome Corsi, a pro-Israel commentator and author known for extremist
statements.)
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump who worked on the 2016 campaign, was
convicted last year in the Robert Mueller investigation into alleged collusion between Russia
and the Trump campaign.
Stone has denied wrongdoing, consistently criticizing the accusations against him as
politically motivated. Numerous analysts have found the "Russiagate" theory unconvincing, and
the American Bar Association reported that Mueller's investigation "did not find sufficient
evidence that President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the
United States' 2016 election."
There have been previous suggestions that it was Israel that had most worked to influence
the election.
[MORE]
The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of
Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and
other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago .
Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical
US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved
in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and
probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what
could actually be serious? That's twisted.
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into
critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved
in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy
and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and
covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.
@leveymg is reposted below, for those who want to read for themselves:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
for the
District of Columbia
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT ,
)
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
SEARCH AND SEIZURE WARRANT
To: Any authorized law enforcement officer
An application by a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government requests
the search
of the following person or property located in the Northern District of California
(identify the person or describe the property to be searched and give its location):
See Attachment A.
I find that the affidavit(s), or any recorded testimony, establish probable cause to search and
seize the person or property
described above, and that such search will reveal (identify the person or describe the property
to be seized):
See Attachment B.
YOU ARE COMMANDED to execute this warrant on or before May 18, 2018 (not to exceed 14 days)
';$ in the daytime 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. 0 at any time in the day or night because good cause
has been established.
Unless delayed notice is authorized below, you must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt
for the property taken to the
person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken, or leave the copy and receipt
at the place where the
property was taken.
The officer executing this warrant, or an officer present during the execution of the warrant,
must prepare an inventory
as required by law and promptly return this warrant and inventory to Hon. Beryl A. Howell
(United States Magistrate Judge)
0 Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b), I find that immediate notification may have an adverse
result listed in 18 U.S.C.
§ 2705 ( except for delay of trial), and authorize the officer executing this warrant to
delay notice to the person who, or whose
property, will be searched or seized (check the awropriate box)
0 for __ days (not to exceed 30) 0 until, the facts justifying, the later specific date of
Date and time issued:
Judge 's signature
City and state: Washington, DC Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 1 of 35
AO 93 (Rev 11/13) Search and Seizure Warrant (Page 2)
Return
Case No.: Date and time warrant executed: Copy of warrant and inventory left with:
Inventory made in the presence of :
Inventory of the property taken and name of any person(s) seized:
Certification
I declare under penalty of pe1jury that this inventory is correct and was returned along with
the original warrant to the
designated judge.
Date:
Executing officer's signature
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 2 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Cf erk, U.S. District & Bankrupicy
Gourts for tirn District of Columbl&
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH
THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
ORDER
Case: 1: 18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
The United States has filed a motion to seal the above-captioned warrant and related
documents, including the application and affidavit in support thereof ( collectively the
"Warrant"),
and to require Google LLC, an electronic communication and/or remote computing services
with
headquarters in Mountain View, California, not to disclose the existence or contents of the
Warrant
pursuant to !8 U.S.C. § 2705(b).
The Court finds that the United States has established that a compelling governmental
interest exists to justify the requested sealing, and that there is reason to believe that
notification
of the existence of the Warrant will seriously jeopardize the investigation, including by
giving the
targets an opportunity to flee from prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, and
intimidate
witnesses. See 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b)(2)-(5).
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the motion is hereby GRANTED, and that the
warrant, the application and affidavit in support thereof, all attachments thereto and other
related
materials, the instant motion to seal, and this Order be SEALED until further order of the
Court;
and
Page 1 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 3 of 35
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), Google and its
employees shall not disclose the existence or content of the Warrant to any other person (
except
attorneys for Google for the purpose of receiving legal advice) for a period of one year
unless
otherwise ordered by the Court.
Date 41/Y>lf
THE HONORABLE BERYL A. HOWELL
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Page 2 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 4 of 35
AO 106 (Rev. 04/10) Application for a Search Warrant
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
for the
District of Columbia
MA\t !,
•'II·\! • ·r 2018
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Ass!gned To: Howell, Beryl A
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
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Assign. Date: 5;412018 ·
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government, request a search
warrant and state under
penalty of perjury that I have reason to believe that on the following person or property
(identify the person or describe the
property to be searched and give ifs location):
See Attachment A.
located in the Northern District of _____ C,-_a-,.l"'if.=o,..rn~ia.._ __ , there is now
concealed (identijj, the
person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
The basis for the search under Fed. R. Crim. P. 4 l(c) is (check one or more):
~ evidence of a crime;
ief contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed;
r'lf property designed for use, intended for use, or used in committing a crime;
D a person to be arrested or a person who is unlawfully restrained.
The search is related to a violation of:
Code Section
18 U.S.C. § 2
· et al.
The application is based on these facts:
See attached Affidavit.
r;/ Continued on the attached sheet.
Offense Description
aiding and abetting
see attached affidavit
D Delayed notice of __ days (give exact ending date if more than 30 days: ______ ) is
requested
under 18 U.S.C. § 3103a, the basis of which is set forth on the attached sheet.
~44 Reviewed by AUSA/SAUSA: Appbcant's signature
•Aaron Zelinsky (Special Counsel's Office) Andrew Mitchell, Supervisory Special Agent,
FBI
Printed name and title
Sworn to before me and signed in my presence.
Date:
City and state: Washington, D.C. Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 5 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MAY ·· ti 1018
Clerk, LLS. District & Bar1i
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
@leveymg request for sealing of the record -- Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7
Filed 04/28/20 Pages 3 to 35 for those who want to read for themselves:
Judge's signature
Hon. Bery[ A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Glcrk, LL$. District & Bar1kruptcy
Gourts tor tirn District of ColumtHa
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Ass!gned To : Howell, BerylA Assign. Date : S/4/20 18
Description: Search & S izure Warrant
AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, Andrew Mitchell, having been first duly sworn, hereby depose and state as follows:
1. I make this affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant for
information associated with the following Google Account: (hereafter
the "Target Account 1"), that is stored at premises owned, maintained, controlled or
operated by Google, Inc., a social networking company headquartered in Mountain View,
California ("Google"). The information to be searched is described in the following paragraphs
and in Attachments A and B. This affidavit is made in support of an application for a search
warrant under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(a), 2703(b)(l)(A) and 2703(c)(l)(A)to require Google
to disclose to the government copies of the information (including the content of
communications) further described in Attachment A. Upon receipt of the information described.
in Attachment A, government"authorized persons will review that information to locate the items
described in Attachment B.
2. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and have been since
2011. As a Special Agent of the FBI, I have received training and experience in investigating
criminal and national security matters.
3. The facts in this affidavit come from my personal observations, my training and experience,
and information obtained from other agents and witnesses. This affidavit is intended
to show merely that there is sufficient probable cause for the requested warrant and does
not set fotth all of my knowledge about this matter.
4. Based on my training and experience and the facts as set forth in this affidavit, there is
probable cause to believe that the Target Accounts contain communications relevant to
violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the
fact), 18
U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony), 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. §
1001 (making a
false statement); 18 U.S.C. §1651 (pe1jury); 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (unauthodzed access
of a protected computer); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt
and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), , and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban)
(the "Subject
Offenses"). 1
5. As set forth below, in May 2016, Jerome CORSI provided contact information for
that there was an "OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING" and that Trump, ''[i]s going to be defeated unless
we intervene. We have critical intel." In that same time period, STONE communicated directly
via Twitter with WikiLeaks, Julian ASSANGE, and Guccifer 2.0. On July 25, 2016, STONE emailed
instructions to Jerome CORSI to "Get to Assange" in person at the Ecuadorian Embassy and "get
pending WikiLeaks emails[.]" On August 2, 2016, CORSI emailed STONE back that,"Word is friend
in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I1m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be
very damaging." On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet o determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct."
1 Federal law prohibits a foreign national from making, directly or indirectly, an
expenditure or independent expenditure in connection with federal elections. 52 U.S.C. §
3012l(a)(l)(C); see also id. § 30101(9) & (17) (defining the terms "expenditure" and
"independent expenditure").
(the Target Account) is le Account, which
sed to communicate with STONE and CORSI.
JURISDICTION
6. This Court has jurisdiction to issue the requested warrant because it is "a court of
competent jurisdiction" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2711. Id. §§ 2703(a),
(b)(l)(A), & (c)(l)(A). Specifically, the Court is "a district court of the United State
(including a magistrate judge of such a court) ... that has jurisqiction over the offense being
investigated." 18 U.S.C.
§ 2711(3)(A)(i). The offense conduct included activities in Washington, D.C., as detailed
below, including in paragraph 8.
PROBABLE CAUSE
A. U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) Assessment of Russian Government Backed Hacking
Activity during the 2016 Presidential Election
7. On October 7, 2016, the U.S. Depa1tment of Homeland Security and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement of an intelligence assessment of
Russian activities and intentions during the 2016 presidential election. In the report, the
USIC assessed the following, with emphasis added:
8. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the
recent compromises of e mails frorri US persons and institutions, including from US political
organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and
WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and
motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
"... What is often forgotten is that at the same time, the Soviet society was oppressive, the corrupt and geriatric CPSU ran everything and was mostly hated, the Russian people were afraid of the KGB and could not enjoy the freedoms folks in the US or Europe had. In truth, it was a mixed bag, but it is easy to remember only the good stuff. ..."
"... The core of this opposition is formed of Communists and Communist sympathizers who absolutely hate Putin for his (quite outspoken) anti-Communism. Let's call them "new Communists" or "Neo-Communists". And here is what makes them much more dangerous than the "liberal" opposition: the Neo-Communists are often absolutely right. ..."
"... Under Putin the Russian foreign policy has been such a success that even the Russian liberals, very reluctantly, admit that he did a pretty good job. However, the internal, many financial, policies of Russia have been a disaster. Just one example, the fact that the major Russian banks are bloated with their immense revenues, did not prevent millions of Russians from living in poverty and many hundreds of thousands of Russian small/family businesses of going under due to the very high interest rates. ..."
"... First, Russia has been in a state of war against the US+EU+NATO since at least 2015. Yes, this war is 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic. But it is a very real war nonetheless. ..."
"... The Neo-Communist Russian opposition steadfastly pretends like there is no war, like all the losses (economic and human) are only the result of corruption and incompetence. They forget that during the last war between Russia and the "United West" German tanks were at the outskirts of Moscow. ..."
"... if Putin decided to follow the advice of, say, Glaziev and his supporters, the Russian bankers would react with a "total war" against Putin. ..."
"... If you study Russian history, you will soon realize that Russia did superbly with military enemies, did very averagely with diplomatic efforts (which often negated military victories) and did terribly with what we could call the "internal opposition". ..."
"... I have always, and still do, consider that the real danger for Putin and those who share his views is the internal, often "insider", opposition in Russia. They were always the ones to present the biggest threat to any Russian ruler, from the Czars to Stalin. ..."
"... This new Neo-Communist 6th column is, however, a much more dangerous threat to the future of Russia than the pro-western 5th columnists. Some of their tactics are extremely devious. For example, one of the things you hear most often from these folks is this: "unless Putin does X, Y or Z, there is a risk of a bloody revolution". ..."
"... "Too often in our history we have seen that instead of an opposition to the government we are confronted with an opposition to Russia herself. And we know how this ends: with the destruction of the state as such". ..."
"... Now, if you think as a true patriot of Russia, you have to realize that Russia suffered from not one, but two, truly horrible revolutions: in 1917 and 1991. In each case the consequences of these revolutions (irrespective of how justified they might have appeared at the time) were absolutely horrible: both in 1917 and in 1991 Russia almost completely vanished as a country, and millions suffered terribly. I now hold is as axiomatic that nothing would be worse for Russia than *any* revolution, no matter what ideology feeds it or how bad the "regime in power" might appear to be. ..."
"... These Neo-Communists would very much disagree with me. They "warn" about a revolution, while in reality trying to create the conditions for one. ..."
"... There is a very vocal internal opposition to Putin in Russia which is most unlikely to ever get real popular support, but which could possibly unite enough of the nostalgics of the Soviet era to create a real crisis. This internal opposition clearly and objectively weakens the authority/reputation of Putin, which has been main goal of the western "alphabet soup" ever since Putin came to power. ..."
"... This internal opposition, being mostly nostalgics of the Soviet era, will get no official support from the West, but it will enjoy a maximal covert support from the western "alphabet soup". ..."
"... Finally, this Neo-Communist opposition will never seize power, but it might create a very real internal political crisis which will very much weaken Putin and the Eurasian Sovereignists. ..."
"... The bottom line is this: Putin represents something very unique and very precious: he is a true Russian patriot, but he is not one nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union. Right now, he is the only (or one of very few) Russian politician which can claim this quality. He needs to preempt the crisis which the Neo-Communists could trigger not by silencing them, but by realizing that on some issues the Russian people do, in fact, agree with them (even if they are not willing to call for a revolution). ..."
"... That poll showing Putin on top of everybody else, tells me that he is the Single-Point-Failure. If he croaks, so does Russia. Very much like Jesus, or Nicholas the II, or Gorbachov, before him -- all obrazovanshchiki, educated past the point of their intelligence level ..."
For those of us who followed the Russian Internet there is a highly visible phenomenon
taking place which is quite startling: there are a lot of anti-Putin videos posted on YouTube
or its Russian equivalents. Not only that, but a flurry of channels has recently appeared which
seem to have made bashing Putin or Mishustin their full-time job. Of course, there have always
been anti-Putin and anti-Medvedev videos in the past, but what makes this new wave so different
from the old one is that they attack Putin and Mishustin not from pro-Western positions, but
from putatively Russian patriotic positions. Even the supposed (not true) "personal advisor" to
Putin and national-Bolshevik (true), Alexander Dugin has joined that movement (see
here if you understand
Russian).
This is a new, interesting and complex phenomenon, and I will try to unpack it here.
First, we have to remember that Putin was extremely successful at destroying the pro-Western
opposition which, while shown on a daily basis on Russian TV, represents something in the 3-5%
of the people at most. You might ask why they are so frequent on TV, and the reason is simple:
the more they talk, the more they are hated.
So far from silencing the opposition, the Kremlin not only gives it air time, it even pays
opposition figures top dollars to participate in the most popular talk shows. See here and
here for
more details
Truly, the reputation of the pro-Western "liberal" (in the Russian sense) opposition is now
roadkill in Russia. Yes, there is a core of Russophobic Russians who hate Russia with a passion
(they refer to it as "Rashka") and their hatred for everything Russian is so obvious that they
are universally despised all over the country (the one big exception being Moscow where there
is a much stronger "liberal" opposition which gets the support of all those who had a great
time pillaging Russia in the 1990s and who now hate Putin for putting an end to their
malfeasance).
As for the Duma opposition, it is an opposition only in name. They make noises, they bitch
here and there, they condemn this or that, but at the end of the day, they will not represent a
credible opposition at all.
The chart is in Russian, but it is also extremely simple to understand. On the Y axis, you
see the percentage of people who "totally trust" and "mostly trust" the six politicians, in
order: Putin, Mishustin, Zhirinovskii, Ziuganov, Mironov and Medvedev. The the X axis you see
the time frame going from July 2019 to April 2020.
The only thing which really matters is this: in spite all the objective and subjective
problems of Russia, in spite of a widely unpopular pension reform, in spite of all the western
sanctions and in spite of the pandemic, Putin still sits alone in a rock-solid position: he has
the overwhelming support of the Russian people. This single cause pretty much explains
everything else I will be talking about today.
As most of you probably remember, there were already several waves of anti-Putin PSYOPS in
the past, but they all failed for very simple reasons:
Most Russians remember the horrors of
the 1990s when the pro-Western "liberals" were in power. Second, the Russian people could
observe how the West put bona fide rabidly russophobic Nazis in power in Kiev.
The liberals expressed a great deal of sympathy for the Ukronazi regime. Few Russians doubt
that if the pro-western "liberals" got to power, they would turn Russia into something very
similar to today's Ukraine. Next, the Russians could follow, day after day, how the Ukraine
imploded, went through a bloody civil war, underwent a almost total de-industrialization and
ended up with a real buffoon as President (Zelenskii just appointed, I kid you not, Saakashvili
as Vice Prime Minister of the Ukraine, that is all you need to know to get the full measure of
what kind of clueless imbecile Zelenskii is!). Not only do the liberals blame Russia for what
happened to this poor country, they openly support Zelenskii. Most (all?) of the pro-western
"NGO" (I put that in quotation marks, because these putatively non-governmental organization
were entirely financed by western governments, mostly US and UK) were legally forced to reveal
their sources of financing and most of them got listed as "foreign agents". Others were simply
kicked out of Russia. Thus, it became impossible for the AngloZionists to trigger what appeared
to be "mass protests" under these condition. There is a solid "anti-Maidan" movement in Russia
(including in Moscow!) which is ready to "pounce" (politically) in case of any Maidan-like
movement in Russia. I strongly suspect that the FSB has a warm if unofficial collaboration with
them. The Russian internal security services (FSB, FSO, National Guard, etc.) saw a major
revival under Putin and they are now not only more powerful than in the past, but also much
better organized to deal with subversion. As for the armed forces are solidly behind Putin and
Shoigu. While in the 1990s Russia was basically defenseless, Russia today is a very tough nut
to crack for western subversion/PSYOP operations. Last, but not least, the Russian liberals are
so obviously from the class Alexander Solzhenitsyn referred to as " obrazovanshchina ", a word hard to
translate but which roughly means "pretend [to be] educated": these folks have always
considered themselves very superior to the vast majority of the Russian people and they simply
cannot hide their contempt for the "common man" (very similar to Hillary's "deporables"). The
common man fully realizes that and, quite logically, profoundly distrusts and even hates
"liberals".
There came a moment when the western curators of the Russian 5th column realized that
calling Putin names in the western press, or publicly accusing him of being a "bloody despot"
and a "KGB killer" might work with the gullible and brainwashed western audience, but it got
absolutely no traction whatsoever in Russia.
And then, somebody, somewhere (I don't know who, or where) came up with an truly brilliant
idea: accusing Putin of not being a patriot and declare that he is a puppet in the hands of the
AngloZionist Empire. This was nothing short of brilliant, I have to admit that.
First, they tried to sell the idea that Putin was about to "sell out" (or "trade")
Novorussia. One theory was that Russia would stand by and let the Ukronazis invade Novorussia.
Another one was that the US and Russia would make a secret deal and "give" Syria to Putin, if
he "gave" Novorussia to the Empire. Alternatively, there was the version that Russia would
"give" Syria to Trump and he would "give" Novorussia to Putin. The actual narrative does not
matter. What matters, A LOT, is that Putin was not presented as the "new Hitler" who would
invade Poland and the Baltics, who would poison the Skripals, who would hack DNC servers and
"put Trump into power". These plain stupid fairy tales had not credibility in Russia. But Putin
"selling out" Novorussia was much more credible, especially after it was clear that Russia did
not allow the DNR/LNR forces to seize Mariupol.
I remain convinced that this was the correct decision. Why? Because had the DNR/LNR forces
entered Mariupol their critical supply lines would have been cut off by an envelopment maneuver
by the Ukrainian forces. Yes, the DNR/LNR forces did have the power needed to take Mariupol,
but then they would end up surrounded by Ukronazi forces in a "cauldron/siege" kind of
situation which would then have forced Russia to openly intervene to either support these
forces. That was a no brainer in military terms, but in political terms this would have been a
disaster for Russia and a dream come true to the AngloZionists who could (finally!) "prove"
that Russia was involved all along. The folks in the Russian General Staff are clearly much
smarter than the couch-generals which were accusing Russia of treason for now letting Mariupol
be liberated.
Eventually, both the "sellout Syria" and the "sellout Novorussia" narratives lost their
traction and the PSYOPS specialists in the West tried another good one: Putin became the
obedient servant of Israel and, personally, Netanyahu. The arguments were very similar: Putin
did not allow Syrians (or Russians) to shoot down Israeli aircraft over the Mediterranean or
Lebanon, Putin did not use the famous S-400 to protect Syrian targets from Israeli strikes, and
Putin did not land an airborne division in Syria to deal with the Takfiris. And nevermind here
the fact that the officially declared Russian objectives in Syria were only to " stabilize the
legitimate authority and create conditions for a political compromise " (see here for
details). The simple truth is that Putin never said that he would liberate each square meter of
Syrian land from the Takfiris nor did he promise to defend Syria against Israel!
Still, for a while the Internet was inundated with articles claiming that Putin and
Netanyahu were closely coordinating their every step and that Putin was Israel's chum.
Eventually, this canard also lost a lot of credibility. After all, most folks are smart
enough to realize that if Putin wanted to help Israel, all he had to do is well exactly
*nothing*: the Takfiris would take Damascus and it would be "game over" for a civilized Syria
and the Israelis would have a perfect pretext to intervene.
As I have already mentioned in
a past article , these were the original Israeli goals for Syria:
Bring down a
strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces and security
services. Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a "security zone"
by Israel not only in the Golan, but further north. Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by
unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah. Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each
other to death, then create a "security zone", but this time in Lebanon. Prevent the creation
of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon. Breakup Syria along ethnic and religious lines. Create
a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Make it possible for
Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and forces the KSA, Qatar,
Oman, Kuwait and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert and eventually attack Iran with a wide regional coalition
of forces. Eliminate all center of Shia power in the Middle-East.
It is quite easy nowadays to prove the two following theses: 1) Israel dismally failed to
achieve ANY of the above set goals and 2) the Russian intervention is the one single most
important factor which prevented Israel from achieving these goals (the 2nd most important one
was the heroic support given by Iran and Hezbollah who, quite literally, "saved the day",
especially during the early phases of the Russian intervention. Only an ignorant or dishonest
person could seriously claim that Russia and Israel are working together when Russia, in
reality, completely defeated Israel in Syria.
Still, while the first PSYOP (Putin the new Hitler) failed, and while the second PSYOP
(Putin the sellout) also failed, the PSYOP specialists in the West came up with a much more
potentially dangerous and effective PSYOP operation.
But first, they did something truly brilliant: they realized that their best allies in
Russia would not be the (frankly, clueless) "liberals" but that they would find a much more
powerful "ally" in those nostalgic of the Soviet Union. This I have to explain in some
detail.
First, there is one thing human psychology which I have observed all my life: we tend to
remember the good and forget the bad. Today, most of what I remember from boot-camp (and even
"survival week") sounds like fun times. The truth is that while in boot camp I hated almost
every day. In a similar way, a lot of Russian have developed a kind of nostalgia for the Soviet
era. I can understand that. After all, during the 50s the USSR achieved a truly miraculous
rebirth, then in the 60s and 70s there were a lot of true triumphs. Finally, even in the hated
80s the USSR did achieve absolutely spectacular things (in science, technology, etc.). This is
all true. What is often forgotten is that at the same time, the Soviet society was
oppressive, the corrupt and geriatric CPSU ran everything and was mostly hated, the Russian
people were afraid of the KGB and could not enjoy the freedoms folks in the US or Europe had.
In truth, it was a mixed bag, but it is easy to remember only the good stuff.
Furthermore, a lot of folks who had high positions during the Soviet era did lose it all.
And now that Russia is objectively undergoing various difficult trials, these folks have
"smelled blood" and they clearly hope that by some miracle Putin will be overthrown. He won't,
if only for the following very basic reasons:
The kind of state apparatus which protects
Putin today can easily deal with this new, pseudo (I will explain below why I say "pseudo")
patriotic opposition. In the ranks of this opposition there is absolutely no credible leader
(remember the chart above!) This opposition mostly complains, but offers no real solutions.
The core of this opposition is formed of Communists and Communist sympathizers who
absolutely hate Putin for his (quite outspoken) anti-Communism. Let's call them "new
Communists" or "Neo-Communists". And here is what makes them much more dangerous than the
"liberal" opposition: the Neo-Communists are often absolutely right.
The (in my opinion) sad reality is that, for all his immense qualities, Putin is indeed a
liberal, at least an economic sense. This manifests itself in two very different ways:
Putin
has still not removed all of the 5th columnists (aka "Atlantic Integrationists" aka "Washington
consensus" types) from power. Yes, he did ditch Medvedev, but others (Nabiulina, Siluanov,
etc.) are still there. Putin inherited a very bad system where almost all they key actors were
5th columnists. Not just a few (in)famous individuals, but an entire CLASS (in a Marxist sense
of the term) of people who hate anything "social" and who support "liberal" ideas just so they
can fill their pockets.
Here is the paradox: the USSR died in 1991-1993, Putin is an anti-Communist, but there STILL
is a (Soviet-style) Nomenklatura in Russia, except for now
they are often referred to as "oligarchs" (which is incorrect because, say, the Ukrainian
oligarch truly decide the fate of the nation whereas this new Russian Nomenklatura
does not decide the fate of Russia as a whole, but they have a major influence in the financial
sector, which is what they care mostly about).
So we have something of a, maybe not quite "perfect", but still very dangerous storm looming
over Russia. How? Consider this:
Under Putin the Russian foreign policy has been such a success that even the Russian
liberals, very reluctantly, admit that he did a pretty good job. However, the internal, many
financial, policies of Russia have been a disaster. Just one example, the fact that the major
Russian banks are bloated with their immense revenues, did not prevent millions of Russians
from living in poverty and many hundreds of thousands of Russian small/family businesses of
going under due to the very high interest rates.
One key problem in Russia is that both the Central Bank and the major commercial banks only
care about their profits. What Russia truly needs is a state-owed DEVELOPMENT bank whose goal
would not be millions and billions for the few, but making it possible for the creativity of
the Russian people to truly blossom. Today, we see the exact opposite in Russia.
So what is my beef with this social ( if not quite "Socialist") opposition?
They are so focused on their narrow complaints that they completely miss the big picture.
Let me explain.
First, Russia has been in a state of war against the US+EU+NATO since at least 2015.
Yes, this war is 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic. But it is a very real war
nonetheless. The key characteristic of a real war is that victory is only achieved by one
side, the other is fully defeated. Which means that the war between the AngloZionist Empire is
an existential one: one party will win and survive, the other one will disappear and will be
replaced with a qualitatively new polity/society. The Neo-Communist Russian opposition
steadfastly pretends like there is no war, like all the losses (economic and human) are only
the result of corruption and incompetence. They forget that during the last war between Russia
and the "United West" German tanks were at the outskirts of Moscow.
Well, of course they know that. But they pretend not to. And this is why I think of them as
the 6th column (as opposed to the 5th, openly "liberal" and pro-Western one).
Second, while this opposition is, in my opinion, absolutely correct in deploring Putin's
apparent belief that following the advice of what I would call "IMF types" is safer than
following recommendations of what could be loosely called "opposition economists" (here I think
of Glaziev, whose views I personally fully support), they fail to realize the risks involved in
crushing the "IMF types". The sad truth is that Russian banks are very powerful and that in
many ways, the state cannot afford totally alienating them. Right now the banks support Putin
only because he supports them. But if Putin decided to follow the advice of, say, Glaziev
and his supporters, the Russian bankers would react with a "total war" against Putin.
If you study Russian history, you will soon realize that Russia did superbly with
military enemies, did very averagely with diplomatic efforts (which often negated military
victories) and did terribly with what we could call the "internal opposition".
So let me repeat it here: I do not consider NATO or the US as credible military threats to
Russia, unless they decide to use nuclear weapons, at which point both Russia and the West
would suffer terribly. But even in this scenario, Russia would prevail (Russia has a 10-15 year
advantage against the US in both civilian and military nuclear technologies and the Russian
society is far more survivable one -- if this topic is of interest to you, just read Dmitry
Orlov's books who explains it all better than I ever could). I have always, and still do,
consider that the real danger for Putin and those who share his views is the internal, often
"insider", opposition in Russia. They were always the ones to present the biggest threat to any
Russian ruler, from the Czars to Stalin.
This new Neo-Communist 6th column is, however, a much more dangerous threat to the
future of Russia than the pro-western 5th columnists. Some of their tactics are extremely
devious. For example, one of the things you hear most often from these folks is this: "unless
Putin does X, Y or Z, there is a risk of a bloody revolution". Having listened to many
tens of their videos, I can tell you with total security that far from fearing a bloody
revolution, these folks in reality dream of such a revolution.
"Too often in our history
we have seen that instead of an opposition to the government we are confronted with an
opposition to Russia herself. And we know how this ends: with the destruction of the state as
such".
Now, if you think as a true patriot of Russia, you have to realize that Russia suffered
from not one, but two, truly horrible revolutions: in 1917 and 1991. In each case the
consequences of these revolutions (irrespective of how justified they might have appeared at
the time) were absolutely horrible: both in 1917 and in 1991 Russia almost completely vanished
as a country, and millions suffered terribly. I now hold is as axiomatic that nothing would be
worse for Russia than *any* revolution, no matter what ideology feeds it or how bad the "regime
in power" might appear to be.
Putin is acutely aware of that (see image).
These Neo-Communists would very much disagree with me. They "warn" about a revolution,
while in reality trying to create the conditions for one.
Now let me be clear: I am absolutely convinced that NO revolution (Neo-Communist or other)
is possible in Russia. More accurately, while I do believe that an attempt for a revolution
could happen, I believe that any coup/revolution against Putin is bound to fail. Why? The
graphic above.
Even if by some (horrible) miracle, it was possible to defeat/neutralize the combined power
of the FSB+FSO+National Guard+Armed forces (which I find impossible), this "success" would be
limited to Moscow or, at most, the Moscow Oblast. Beyond that it is all "Putin territory". In
terms of firepower, the Moscow Oblast has a lot of first-rate units, but it does not even come
close to what the "rest of Russia" could engage (just the 58th Army in the south would be
unstoppable). But even that is not truly crucial. The truly crucial thing following any
coup/revolution would be the 70%+ of Russian people who, for the first time in centuries, truly
believe that Putin stands for their interest and that he is "their man". These people will
never accept any illegal attempt to remove Putin from power. That is the key reason why no
successful revolution is currently possible in Russia.
But while any revolution/coup would be bound to fail, it could very much result in a
bloodbath way bigger than what happened in 1993 (where the military was mostly not engaged in
the events).
Now lets add it all up.
There is a very vocal internal opposition to Putin in Russia which is most unlikely to
ever get real popular support, but which could possibly unite enough of the nostalgics of the
Soviet era to create a real crisis. This internal opposition clearly and objectively weakens
the authority/reputation of Putin, which has been main goal of the western "alphabet soup" ever
since Putin came to power.
This internal opposition, being mostly nostalgics of the Soviet era, will get no
official support from the West, but it will enjoy a maximal covert support from the western
"alphabet soup".
Finally, this Neo-Communist opposition will never seize power, but it might create a
very real internal political crisis which will very much weaken Putin and the Eurasian
Sovereignists.
So what is the solution?
Putin needs to preempt any civil unrest. Removing Medvedev and replacing him by Mishustin
was the correct move, but it was also too little too late. Frankly, I believe that it is high
time for Putin to finally openly break with the "Washington consensus types" and listen to
Glaziev who, at least, is no Communist.
Russia has always been a collectivistic society, and she needs to stop apologizing (even
just mentally) for this. Instead, she should openly and fully embrace her collectivistic
culture and traditions and show the "Washington consensus" types to the door.
Yes, the Moscow elites will be furious, but it is also high time to tell these folks that
they don't own Russia, and that while they could make a killing prostituting themselves to the
Empire, most Russian don't want to do that.
The bottom line is this: Putin represents something very unique and very precious: he is
a true Russian patriot, but he is not one nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union. Right
now, he is the only (or one of very few) Russian politician which can claim this quality. He
needs to preempt the crisis which the Neo-Communists could trigger not by silencing them, but
by realizing that on some issues the Russian people do, in fact, agree with them (even if they
are not willing to call for a revolution).
Does that sound complicated or even convoluted? If it does, it is because it is. But for all
the nuances we can discern a bottom line: it is not worth prevailing (or even failing) if that
weakens/threatens Russia. Right now, the Neo-Communist opposition is, objectively, a threat to
the stability and prosperity of Russia. That does NOT, however, mean that these folks are
always wrong. They often are spot on, 100% correct.
Putin needs to prove them wrong by listening to them and do the right thing.
Difficult? Yes. Doable? Yes. Therefore he has to do it.
Russia needs to be strong for the sake of global civilization, human decency, religious
freedom, etc, not only for her own good. going back to communism and Godlessness should be
unthinkable. nor should we sell our souls for 30 kopeks of silver to become the dumping
ground for western filth and surplus.
Russia has the unique position, the space and resources, an intelligent population, Orthodox
tradition to show mankind that a decent, safe, compassionate, sound existence is
possible.
although great leaders are a gift from Above, the state also should make every effort to
identify and prepare Putin's successor while strengthening the institutions so that the
people will perceive them as their own and will not be tempted to support revolutionary
radicals again.
First of all, Russian electorate have much better sources and the grasp of the international
political scene than the American media's self-centered pseudo-trues.
Putin's obvious pros:
-Reclaimed Russian crucial energy industry from the pillaging by
Yeltsin oligarchs. Now babysat by the UK and Israel. -Russian voters' motto: "We vote for a
leader that is most criticized and slandered by our enemies and adversaries. Vote almost
never for their selected puppet a la Kasparov." -Putin's brilliant move to reclaimed Crimea
-- administratively attached to Ukraine in 1954 by a communist dictate after being centuries
part of Russia -- by a democratic mean. -Western sanctions are viewed by the Russian
electorate as a declaration of the "enemy status". Furthermore, they are also viewed as a
sinister attempt to slow down the Russian economic progress. -NATO backstabbing expansion to
Russian border. Continuation of Western military encircling Russia -- US military in Poland.
-Opposing Western clumsy interference in Ukraine or in Georgia. Liberating S. Ossetia from
the Georgia's lunatic who is now Ukraine deputy prime minister.
I have always seen Putin as a late, reluctant, and often only partially effective reacter to
a crisis, never someone who proactively acts to defuse one before it gets bad. I will repeat
what I've said many, many times: in 2014 Putin could have sent two battalions of Spetsnaz
into Kiev, routed the Ukranazi coup regime, reinstated Yanukovych, and withdrawn with the
warning that if there was ever again any attempt to stage another Maidan Russian troops would
be back and this time to stay. Instead he got Russia blamed for an invasion he should have
but did not carry out, and consequently sanctions that are still in effect to this day, not
to speak of a NATO proxy thrust against the Russian heartland. (That Russia needed the
sanctions and that they were good for Russia is another thing entirely; it isn't as though
Putin planned them to turn out like that.)
In Syria in 2015 Putin waited until the government was in desperate straits -- similar to
the final stages of the Libyan government forces' collapse in 2011 as Obama's terrorists
advanced on Tripoli -- before sending in small commando detachments and the air force. And
even then the failure to defend Syria, an ally of Russia, which has given Russia bases,
against zionazi bombing is inexcusable. For one thing it cost Russia a valuable
reconnaissance plane with priceless trained crew, after which Putin first rushed to absolve
Nazinyahu of blame before even calling the crew's families. For another the refusal to use
the S 400 merely gives the Amerikastanis an excuse to portray the S 400s as hyped,
ineffective weapons Russia does not dare to actually use. How is showing Putin's obvious
affinity to the zionazi pseudostate "anti Russian" in any way? It's the absolute and obvious
truth, from Putin's own record.
This is also why Putin will do nothing about the capitalist leeches still sucking Russia
dry (many of whom are zionazi citizens); he will have to be forced into it and then will try
to get away with cosmetic measures, leaving as much undone as he possibly can. That he has
not already eliminated the oligarchy is proof enough of that. No amount of Saker excuses is
enough to hide the fact; what could the banks do to harm Putin, given the popularity the
Saker keeps touting? You'll see that the Saker is very careful not to say anything about what
they could, he just says that they could. You'd almost think he just made it up.
I agree about the Moscow "liberals"; I met a few of them and they're always smartly
dressed, fluent in English -- with an inevitable American accent -- and they hate Russia more
than anything. I recall meeting a couple in this town in late 2014 or early 2015. I remember
saying that I support Russia's help to the Donbass freedom fighters. The woman's eyes went
round. "But why? This is a great burden for Russia, none of our business, we should never
have got involved " There is an excellent argument for shifting the capital from Moscow back
to St Petersburg, or, if that's too strategically vulnerable, to Volgograd or some other city
in the Russian interior.
By the way, as one of the "neo communists", as the Saker dismissively calls us -- in an
obvious effort to conflate us with the neo-nazis -- let me ask a question: let's suppose
everything the Saker says is correct. Well, then, is Putin immortal? No? So what happens when
he dies or retires? Who will take over? Will the "pro-Putin population" switch its loyalty to
a replacement from Putin's party, given that most of them are so despised that United Russia
keeps losing local elections from Moscow to Vladivostok? If not, what happens but either a
total change of course or .a bloody revolution?
I can certainly say that there are people in United Russia who quite openly work for the West
and push for western liberal projects in Russia, as well as attack patriotic forces.
What kind of joke is that to have people like this in the so called ruling party and in
various Duma comitees? Why is this even allowed? Why are they still there?
Russia needs a depositor credit union type local banking system. Only the local depositors
would own the bank. The bank's functioning management would be controlled by the
owners/depositors. One depositor -- one vote.
These banks would make loans only to local businesses and homeowners. They would have
nothing to do with Moscow. They would build honesty and stability.
That poll showing Putin on top of everybody else, tells me that he is the
Single-Point-Failure. If he croaks, so does Russia. Very much like Jesus, or Nicholas the II,
or Gorbachov, before him -- all obrazovanshchiki, educated past the point of their
intelligence level . The jerk already swallowed the virus-thing, hook and sinker. He's
gonna be reeled-in in no time.
As a citizen of one of the top ten nations on our Earth (US) -- I believe that Putin is the
savviest, most stable conscientious foreign policy leader of the lot.
He handled both the Ukraine and Syria without getting into all out wars. Both a
considerable achievement, considering Jews played major antagonistic roles in both
confrontations.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist He should have annexed East Ukraine with 12 mil Russians and its
historical Russian cities. When McCain and Biden's puppets were installed in Kiev they banned
the Russian language -- that was the right time to act and killings would have been avoided.
Russia and China deeply underestimate the extent and determination of the US and toadies to
have in place well funded campaigns to blacken those countries names, reputations and
standing. It's awful listening to Chinese or Russian officials making ritual formal protests.
And then doing nothing. Letting their country be undermined and infiltrated, allowing the
minds of the public elsewhere be poisoned. This is how the Colour Revolutions get their
traction.
It's the continual, weak, feeble and inept lack of action by Russia and China against the
western engines of smear. And this state of affairs seriously disheartens their allies and
supporters. Please stop being too reasonable, find your backbone and righteousness and FIGHT!
For Pete's sake.
@Passer
by Sad to say that Putin should have done more internally.
Saker 's point about a national bank is telling. Russia's Central Bank should have it's
neoliberals attrited. Russia's Anglo-zionists should have also been quietly & invisibly
defanged & sent into "outer-space". More actions against NGO's need to also be taken.
A nation in Russia's precarious position re: the West, can afford only so much internal
treachery .
This is not to suggest any of this would be easy. However, Putin has had & still has
considerable popular support -- political Capital capable of being used to take risky but
"right" reforms.
I'm an American living in Moscow for the last 5 years. I've also had the special privilege to
earn a masters degree in politics and economics at the Ministry of Foreign Affair's
university, MGIMO. I can say, as someone who has viewed this situation here from virtually
every angle possible as a foreigner; "Putin" has done nothing good for Russia domestically
that has not been an unplanned side effect of sanctions. And don't get me wrong, the
sanctions were the best thing that could have happened here. But all the official pro-Russia
grandstanding on the international stage aside, there are endless news stories of Russia
lobbying for readmission to the club, pleading with the US to cooperate and a return to the
status-quo. The people who make the policy here and run the institutions are all holdovers
from the 90's. Their overarching concern is that Russia -- ie the elites themselves -- are
"treated with respect" by the Western plutocracy.
But what has changed here since 2014? An explosion in traffic cameras and fines, more
restrictions (prescriptions and bans) on medicines, inflation, reforms (attacks) in pensions
and healthcare, skyrocketing housing costs and an simmering education crisis from preschool
to university where money increasingly buys limited space over need or merit. Now like a
rotten cherry on top, there is this quarantine which seems arbitrary except when you realize
the whole police force has been turned against the citizens to check QR code passes. Who is
deemed essential is also arbitrary and favors the government while bankrupting everyone else.
Gasterbyters, the backbone of the economy, are literally destitute. Russians also dislike
seeing the government luxuriously spend resources in the form of political-point scoring
coronavirus aid to the US and Italy, and then abruptly flip-flopping on the severity of the
pandemic at home. On tv its is Corona Vision 24/7 here, while families with small children
are forced out of work and cramped into tiny apartments in ugly neighborhoods, forbidden to
walk more than 10 meters from their door, their money and sanity running out. Russians who
are able, flout the quarantine at every opportunity, more concerned about being harassed by
police than getting sick.
There is a lot more I could say, but I will leave it at on this note; This new wave of
disillusionment is not coming from the West. The West has virtually no direct influence here
anymore. This is all homegrown.
Although I have admired President Putin for many years now, I have never agreed with his
economic policies. It was sad to read that he fired S. Glazyev as an adviser. When will
President Putin see that following western style economic policies is a tragedy waiting to
happen for Russia. As is happening now to most of the western countries, especially the US
and EU.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist Its a great mystery to me why Putin released Mikhail
Khodorkovsky. Maybe there was a good reason. No clue, it just seems odd especially when you
realize this freed oligarch was the power behind Browder's Magnitzky Act.
'Remembering only the good and forgetting the bad' is what every bad ruler, every bad
culture, demands of those it misleads.
The Anglo-Zionist Empire has been the master of that con game for its entire existence,
back to the start of English Reformation. Bolsheviks were clumsy brutes compared to
Anglo-Zionists even in their early days when they lacked sophistication and finesse.
Apr 19, 2020 US corporate takeover -- Biden 2020 Today, the U.S is living through a power
grab by lobbyists and moneyed interests in government -- the way Russia did after the Soviet
collapse of the 1990s.
Apr 2, 2020 Putin reveals KEY to political success: the poor man
Which is the bigger political influence on President Putin? Multinational corporations,
filthy rich oligarchs or financial institutions? He asserts -- it is the sentiment of 'the
common man' that is responsible for his popularity and long-standing political career.
Mar 12, 2020 Putin: The US Made A Colony Out Of Ukraine But They Want It Sustained By
Russian Money!
The 20 Questions with Vladimir Putin project is an interview with the President of Russia
on the most topical subjects of social and political life in Russia and the world.
I am afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you Saker on this issue. I just can't see how
a communist can be a traitor to their country. Some of the biggest patriots ever produced in
history have been communists. Not just in Russia, but in other countries like North Korea,
Vietnam, Cuba, China. They are willing to do anything for their country. Same thing with
modern communists, I don't see them betraying their country for personal gain.
My theory is like this: Patriotism is different in Capitalist countries (or as they like
to call themselves democracies) than in Communist countries. First of all, Capitalism has 2
types of elites -- real ones and political elites -- who are nothing more than domestic
servants, in other words nobodies. Communism usually has only one type of elites --
political. They are the only game in town.
I know that they ascribed terms such as cult of personalities to Communist leaders, but
the real megalomaniacs and narcissists can really be found among the 2 types of capitalist
elites. Those are the one that are really in love with themselves.
So how does patriotism work in communism vs. capitalism? Well, for one thing, patriotism
means love for one's country. As we all know, a country is a collection of dead rocks,
(hopefully) some arable land, few mountains and so on. Basically a country usually needs a
spokesperson. That's where the elites come in. They are the spokespersons for the needs of
the country.
I believe that communist elites are more honest spokespersons than capitalist ones. Why?
Well for one thing all communist elites were usually 1st generation elites, meaning they were
new on the job and they didn't have the span of few generations time to degenerate like the
capitalist elites. Communist elites for the most could still remember the time when they were
not elites but very ordinary people -- except maybe now the Kim dynasty in North Korea which
is in its 3rd generation of dynastic cycle.
But still, the flow of patriotism is very similar in both "communist" and capitalist
countries. Patriotism flows from the poor dumbos to the rich and powerful elites -- whether
they are political or economic elites. Patriotism whose intended recipient is the fatherland
always gets intercepted by the elites and then processed.
Basically, what that means is that when an ordinary person expresses love and affection
for their country -- it's usually ends up being manifested as love and affection for their
elites.
Remember, a country is just a pile of rocks and some other geological features, -- doesn't
know how to process affection from patriots. But the elites do, and they are the usual
beneficiaries of patriotism.
If love for your country is always a love for the elites, why do the stupid always fall
for the same trick? Well, I guess there are not too many options left, one of them being a
traitor. Still, I believe that communist elites were more honest brokers and managers of
patriotic love, because the managed to pass more of the patriotism to its intended target --
the homeland, than it was ever case with capitalist elites.
Sure, Stalin had few dachas and property that he would have been hard-pressed to explain
how he earned, but it was nothing compared to the spoils from patriotism that elites in
capitalism receive as a payout for being spokespersons for the needs of their countries.
I just don't see a communist doing something with personal benefit in mind first, and
putting the well-being of their country as a second consideration. It usually doesn't happen,
and hopefully the new generation of communists in Russia will keep up with that
tradition.
@Cyrano
Because he is one of those chronic complainers. We dont want him here because he will change
the words "Russia" and "Moscow" in his comment to "USA and Washington" and just reprint the
comment again. That comrade is all puffed up, no pun intended, with his dialogue.
@jbwilson24
I know what you mean, but you are splitting hairs -- a supremacist is a supremacist is a
supremacist. German supremacist, Anglo-Saxon supremacist, Jewish supremacist -- it all leads
to the same result.
Ukraine is dominated by supremacists. That all of Jewish supremacy, Nationalist Socialist
supremacy (the rank parts of the ideology mind you), ISIS, find themselves working and
cooperating in a historically alien land, shows that supremacists really don't mind working
with each other, before whatever the greater enemy they attack is destroyed.. Kinda like the
prelude to Highlander!
25.12. 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949
Baker told Gorbachev: "Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and
allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east."
Saker's blind love for all things Putin, a faith in the man against all facts and logic, has
continually amazed me for years.
Putin is using Syria for Russia's advantage: 1.) a Mediterranean port at Tartus and
airfield at Kheimem; 2.) as a 'live fire' weapons testing and demonstration area, much as
Israel uses Gaza for same. Sales of Russian armaments have soared since entering Syria.
As I recall, Putin has allowed at least two Dunkirk moments, when he had ISIS on the ropes
and then agreed to a cease fire when his generals were furious at not being permitted to
finish the Takfiris off, once and for all. I, too, was furious at the time, predicting they
would simply re-trench, re-arm and continue to terrorize the hapless Syrians, which they did
for years, and may even make a comeback from Iraq (with America and Israel's help, of
course).
Same idiocy was applied, and is still being applied regarding Turkey's open and obvious
arming and supporting the terrorist scum of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib, as innocent
Syrians continue to suffer therefrom, and we daily read of the brave Syrian fighters' being
killed and maimed by these Al-Qaeda butchers .
He has let Syria's eastern oil fields fall into the hands of the US, and allowed the
Turds, excuse me, the Kurds far too much leeway in the north.
He even allows Israel to bomb Syrian territory with absolute impunity, killing countless
Syrian, Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers in the process, when a few freely operated S-300
batteries would allow the Syrians to smoke the Israeli's missiles with ease, and protect
their homeland from hundreds of brazen attacks by the Jews. Yet he denies the Syrians such
freedom, allowing the Israelis to continue their onslaught unabated.
Why? Why does he ignore the advice of his top generals to wipe out ISIS when the
opportunities arose years ago, and allow Israel to continually attack with high-precision
missiles Syrian/Hezbollah/Iranian fighters, just short of allowing the Jews to directly bomb
Assad and Damascus into the stone age, again, with complete impunity? Certainly, the existing
partition of Syria could have been easily avoided long ago, if he simply followed his
general's advice.
And why did he come out and endorse Netanyahu for PM last year, despite continually saying
Russia does not stick its nose into other countries' political affairs?
But to my mind, any world 'leader' who simply cannot control himself publicly and feels
compelled to forcibly lift a small child's t-shirt and slather the tot's bare stomach with
kisses, right in front of countless on-lookers and the international press, in Russia's most
famous public square, and then declare to the BBC thereafter that, "I wanted to cuddle him
like a kitten ", possibly reveals a great deal about why Putin seems to so frequently kiss
another offensive body part publicly, that being Israel's obnoxious, murderous butt ..
Well despite all the "well wishers" here and against saker's expert advice about what she
should be doing, Russia is still somehow alive and kicking and generally getting to be a
better place to live. Imagine that. While the countries the "well wishers" hail from are not
becoming better places to live and rather than alive and kicking are much better described as
zombiefied and twitching.
"Russia today is a very tough nut to crack for western subversion/PSYOP operations."
Correction, democratic Russia is still a tough nut to crack. But Putin cannot rule
forever, and so long as Russia is a democracy, and when there is no longer a strong and
charismatic leader, it is in considerable danger of subversion by the 'AngloZionists'. You
bet that they are waiting for this, the current situation being a preparation, to keep the
fire burning, but when and if Putin is gone, the Western trojan horses already inside will
unleash their puppets of disruption, and the AngloZionists and their Western puppets outside
will attack it vehemently, like a pack of wolves.
As one Russian joke puts it, lets' have cutlets separately and flies separately.
One thing is Youtube, FB, Wiki, and the rest of globohomo-controlled media. They would
host anything anti-Putin, because Putin is continuously stepping on the most sensitive part
of their anatomy: the wallet. If globohomo hates you, you must have done at least something
good.
The other thing is the feelings of Russians who actually live in the country. They
rightfully feel that oligarchs and the state that often acts as their cover are robbing them.
They clearly see that education is going down from Soviet levels (although it still has a
long way to go to become as dismal as the US education). They see that the best part of
healthcare is the holdover from Soviet times, whereas "progressive" paid medicine is fraud
and extortion. But that's exactly what "healthcare" is in the US, as current epidemic
demonstrated in no uncertain terms. They also see that recent pension "reform" was designed
to rob them yet again. What's more, they are at least 90% right.
So, maybe it's not the "6th column", after all? Maybe Russia is actually acquiring an
opposition worth the name? Patriotic opposition, in contrast to "liberal opposition"
consisting exclusively of traitors? If so, it's good, not bad, for the country. Nobody is
infallible, Putin included.
@Quartermaster
The US invaded Ukraine with Nuland's thugs during the Sochi Olympics
Crimea went back home. It did not want be part of Nulandistan.
Donbass does not want to be a US/Israel colony. This is the reason it revolted.
Notice the recent Ukrainegate nonsense. Why would USIsrael care so much about Ukraine if
Ukraine was really an independent nation? It is not, it is a USIsrael colony --
Nulandistan.
@ComradePuff
First I see you just parachuted into this website with this, your very first post
We usually have a welcoming ceremony for new trolls
We look at the cartoonish drivel they post and quickly point out glaring giveaways
Like 'Gasterbyters' which is not actually a word in any language
Your instructions from your troll room supervisor may have referred to the German word
'gastarbeiter' which means 'guest worker'
This expression is not a proper noun and does not get capitalized
And you're trying to tell us you have earned a master's degree from one of Moscow's most
prestigious universities..?
Yeah no, I don't think so cheeseball
Guest workers are 'crucial' to Russia..?
Again total bunk the only countries where guest workers might be 'essential' is in the
Gulf oil monarchies, where they often outnumber the natives
The US is not going to collapse if the Mexican workers take a beating neither will Germany
nor any industrial country with foreign workers why should Russia..?
And then your main whopper NOBODY in the Putin administration is 'begging' the west for
anything much less to be accepted back in some 'club'
Russia has moved on a long time ago they never cared about being in some sort of 'club' to
begin with international relations isn't junior high, which one would expect a 'graduate' of
international relations to know
All Russia ever cared about was having normal relations friendly if possible, but on equal
footing the entire tone of your fantasy is straight out of the '90s only deluded Washington
hacks still dream that we are living in the '90s
In case you haven't noticed Russia has much bigger fish to fry than to obsess over a
tottering empire
The partnership with China for instance the country with the most money, plus the country
with the most advanced military technology
I'd say it's not actually looking good for Exceptionalistan
@DererGeorgia's lunatic who is now Ukraine deputy prime minister
I think Saakashvili has not made it yet. He is being opposed by a lot of the Jews who
control this "country". Last week, the guy investigating "corruption" was sacked. His
replacement was a Jew. It is just so funny. Like a theater.
Almost all the oligarchs are Jewish -- courtesy of the World Bank and (((Western))) banks.
It is amazing that in a country of allegedly 42 million they cannot find an ethnic Slav to
get the job. I do not use the term Ukrainian as it is not really one country.
Forget the bluster. I suspect they want to bring in Saakashvili because he can bring in
more loans from the IMF. His backers are in the USA.
BTW, the new American ambassador to Ukraine is a retired US Army general. That should give
you some idea as to their line of thinking. However, I suspect that he is too knowledgeable
to want to start a war with Russia.
The departing ambassador is a female from the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. A Ukrainian
"Nationalist" by descent. Incapable of thinking of the interests of this unfortunate
country.
RADDATZ: Do you believe it was manmade or genetically modified?
POMPEO: Look, the best experts so far seem to think it was manmade. I have no reason to
disbelieve that at this point.
RADDATZ: Your -- your Office of the DNI says the consensus, the scientific consensus
was not manmade or genetically modified.
POMPEO: That's right. I -- I -- I agree with that. Yes. I've -- I've seen their analysis.
I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt
that that is accurate at this point.
To summarize: Pompeo does not doubt that the virus has been genetically modified, but he
also does not doubt that is has not been genetically modified.
Could there be a more obvious demonstration that the man is FULL OF SHIT??
Those incompetent neo-confederates leading america into oblivion will jumble strategic
defeats with winning. So much for accountability, hard work and personal responsability...
Seems they can't compete fairly without superior military variable of adjustment and threat
of violence against adversaries. Orange springs eternal and their great white hope has now
adopted a paralizing rhetoric of victimization - republican lawmakers follow suit and are
going so far as invoking a western bid for monetary reparations from Chinese depredations. #
the art of winnig for maggots, derp.
"... When the people who made fake claims about Iraq's WMD, about Russiagate, about Iran's danger, are claiming that the thing isn't manmade, then either it's not manmade or it's US-made and the claim is a lie (what we expect from US intelligence agencies) and a cover-up. ..."
In many Ways, Trump reminds me of a Hitler/Stalin admirer. He demands certain results; if you
don't supply them, at least Trump will just fire you instead of having you shot or sent to
the Gulag -- Evidence of the many IG firings as
this article notes .
The daily lies and bald-faced propaganda is at the point where many are aware but still
all too many remain oblivious or are Brown Shirts in all but outward appearance. Pompeo would
be a perfect example of a clone if Hitler had a PR spokesperson spewing lies daily for the
press & public to digest without any thinking. Imagine Hitler with Twitter.
None of the above is meant to denigrate; rather, it's to put them into proper perspective.
I invite barflies to click here
and just look at the headlines of the posted news items--that site's biggest failing was to
omit similar criticism of Obama, Clinton, and D-Party pukes in general, although that doesn't
render today's headlines false.
Will the coming Great Depression 2.0 be global or confined to NATO nations? As with the
first Great Depression, it will be restricted to being Trans-Atlantic for that's where the
dollar zone and Neoliberalism overlap. The emerging dollar-free Eurasian trade zone
Many of Goering's quotes are very accurate as to human nature. US took in Nazi and
Japanese scientists. It wouldn't have left the propaganda behind. Goering's quote about
taking people to war - nazi's were obviously very good at it as the Germans fought until the
very end. US peasants will likely do the same.
The anti China crap filling the MSM is anglosphere in origin. Five eyes, the anglosphere
intel and propaganda warriors will be in it up to their eyeballs.
When the people who made fake claims about Iraq's WMD, about Russiagate, about Iran's
danger, are claiming that the thing isn't manmade, then either it's not manmade or it's
US-made and the claim is a lie (what we expect from US intelligence agencies) and a
cover-up. That said, odds are on the former, as far as I'm concerned. The absolutely
sure thing is that it's not the Chinese who crafted it.
As a general rule, extreme economic decline is almost always followed by extreme
international conflict. Sometimes, these disasters can be attributed to the human survival
imperative and the desire to accumulate resources during crisis. But most often, war amid
fiscal distress is usually a means for the political and financial elite to distract the masses
away from their empty wallets and empty stomachs.
War galvanizes societies, usually under false pretenses . I'm not talking about superficial
"police actions" or absurd crusades to "spread democracy" to Third World enclaves that don't
want it. No, I'm talking about REAL war: war that threatens the fabric of a culture, war that
tumbles violently across people's doorsteps. The reality of near-total annihilation is what
oligarchs use to avoid blame for economic distress while molding nations and populations.
Because of the very predictable correlation between financial catastrophe and military
conflagration, it makes quite a bit of sense for Americans today to be concerned. Never before
in history has our country been so close to full-spectrum economic collapse, the kind that
kills currencies and simultaneously plunges hundreds of millions of people into poverty. It is
a collapse that has progressed thanks to the deliberate efforts of international financiers and
central banks. It only follows that the mind-boggling scale of the situation would "require" a
grand distraction to match.
It is difficult to predict what form this distraction will take and where it will begin,
primarily because the elites have so many options. The Mideast is certainly an ever-looming
possibility. Iran is a viable catalyst. Syria is not entirely off the table. Saudi Arabia and
Israel are now essentially working together, forming a strange alliance that could promise
considerable turmoil -- even without the aid of the United States. Plenty of Americans still
fear the Al Qaeda bogeyman, and a terrorist attack is not hard to fabricate. However, when I
look at the shift of economic power and military deployment, the potential danger areas appear
to be growing not only in the dry deserts of Syria and Iran, but also in the politically
volatile waters of the East China Sea.
China is THE key to any outright implosion of the U.S. monetary system. Other countries,
like Saudi Arabia, may play a part; but ultimately it will be China that deals the decisive
blow against the dollar's world reserve status. China's dollar and Treasury bond holdings could
be used as a weapon to trigger a global sell-off of dollar-denominated assets. China has
stopped future increases of dollar forex holdings, and has cut the use of the dollar in
bilateral trade agreements with multiple countries. Oil-producing nations are shifting
alliances to China because it is now the world's largest consumer of petroleum. And, China has
clearly been preparing for this eventuality for years. So, given these circumstances, how can
the U.S. government conceive of confrontation with the East? Challenging one's creditors to a
duel does not usually end well. At the very least, it would be economic suicide. But perhaps
that is the point. Perhaps America is meant to make this seemingly idiotic leap.
Here are just some of the signs of a buildup to conflict...
Currency Wars And Shooting Wars
In March 2009, U.S. military and intelligence officials gathered to participate in a
simulated war game , a hypothetical economic struggle between the United States and
China.
The conclusions of the war game were ominous. The participants determined that there was no
way for the United States to win in an economic battle with China. The Chinese had a
counterstrategy to every U.S. effort and an ace up their sleeve – namely, their U.S.
dollar reserves, which they could use as a monetary neutron bomb, a chain reaction that would
result in the abandonment of the dollar by exporters around the world . They also found that
China has been quietly accumulating hard assets (including land and gold) across globe, using
sovereign wealth funds, government-controlled front companies, and private equity funds to make
the purchases. China could use these tangible assets as a hedge to protect against the eventual
devaluation of its U.S. dollar and Treasury holdings, meaning the losses on its remaining U.S.
financial investments was acceptable should it decide to crush the dollar.
The natural response of those skeptical of the war game and its findings is to claim that
the American military would be the ultimate trump card and probable response to a Chinese
economic threat. Of course, China's relationship with Russia suggests a possible alliance
against such an action and would definitely negate the use of nuclear weapons (unless the
elites plan nuclear Armageddon). That said, it is highly likely that the U.S. government would
respond with military action to a Chinese dollar dump, not unlike Germany's rise to
militarization and totalitarianism after the hyperinflationary implosion of the mark. The idea
that anyone except the internationalists could "win" such a venture, though, is foolish.
I would suggest that this may actually be the plan of globalists in the United States and
their counterparts in Asia and Europe. China's rise to financial prominence is not due to its
economic prowess. In fact, China is ripe with poor fiscal judgment calls and infrastructure
projects that have gone nowhere. But what China does have on its side are massive capital
inflows from global banks and corporations, mainly based in the United States and the European
Union. And, it has help in the spread of its currency (the Yuan) from entities like JPMorgan
Chase and Co. The International Monetary Fund is seeking to include China in its global basket
currency, the SDR, which would give China even more leverage to use in breaking the dollar's
reserve status. Corporate financiers and central bankers have made it more
than possible for China to kill the dollar , which they openly suggest is a "good thing."
Is it possible that the war game scenarios carried out by the Pentagon and elitist
think-tanks like the RAND Corporation were not meant to prevent a war with China, but to ensure
one takes place?
The Senkaku Islands
Every terrible war has a trigger point, an event that history books later claim "started it
all." For the Spanish-American War, it was the bombing of the USS Maine. For World War I it was
the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. For U.S. involvement in World War I,
it was the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-Boat. For U.S. involvement in World War II,
it was the attack on Pearl Harbor. For Vietnam, it was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (I recommend
readers look into the hidden history behind all of these events). While the initial outbreak of
war always appears to be spontaneous, the reality is that most wars are planned far in
advance.
As evidence indicates, China has been deliberately positioned to levy an economic blow
against the United States. Our government is fully aware what the results of that attack will
be, considering they have gamed the scenario multiple times. And, by RAND Corporation's own
admission, China and the United States have been preparing for physical confrontation for some
time, centered on the concept of pre-emptive strikes
. Meaning, the response both sides have exclusively trained for in the event of confrontation
is to attack the other first!
The seemingly simple and petty dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea
actually provides a perfect environment for the pre-emptive powder keg to explode.
China has recently declared an "air defense zone" that extends over the islands, which Japan
has already claimed as its own. China, South Korea and the United States have all moved to defy
this defense zone. South Korea has even extended its own air defense zone to
overlap China's .
China has responded with warnings that its military aircraft will now monitor the region and
demands that other nations provide it with civilian airline flight paths. China has also stated
that it plans to
create MORE arbitrary defense zones in the near future.
The U.S. government under Barack Obama has long planned a military shift into the Pacific,
which is meant specifically to counter China's increased presence. It's almost as if the White
House knew a confrontation was coming .
China, with its limited navy, has focused more of its energy and funding into advanced
missile technologies -- including "ship killers," which fly too low and fast to be detected
with current radar. This is the same strategy of cheap compact precision warfare being adopted
by countries like Syria and Iran, and it is designed specifically to disrupt tradition American
military tactics.
Currently, very little diplomatic headway has been made or attempted in regards to the
Senkaku Islands. The culmination of various ingredients so far makes for a sour stew.
All that is required now is that one trigger event -- that one ironic "twist of fate" that
mainstream historians love so much, the spark that lights the fuse. China could suddenly sell a
mass quantity of U.S. Treasuries, perhaps in response to the renewed debt debate next spring.
The United States could use pre-emption to take down a Chinese military plane or submarine. A
random missile could destroy a passenger airliner traveling through the defense zone, and both
sides could blame each other. The point is nothing good could come from the escalation over
Senkaku.
Why Is War Useful?
What could possibly be gained by fomenting a war between the United States and China? What
could possibly be gained by throwing America's economy, the supposed "goose that lays the
golden eggs", to the fiscal wolves? As stated earlier, distraction is paramount, and fear is
valuable political and social capital.
Global financiers created the circumstances that have led to America's probable economic
demise, but they don't want to be blamed for it. War provides the perfect cover for monetary
collapse, and a war with China might become the cover to end all covers. The resulting fiscal
damage and the terror Americans would face could be overwhelming. Activists who question the
legitimacy of the U.S. government and its actions, once considered champions of free speech,
could easily be labeled "treasonous" during wartime by authorities and the frightened masses.
(If the government is willing to use the Internal Revenue Service against us today, just think
about who it will send after us during the chaos of a losing war tomorrow.) A lockdown of civil
liberties could be instituted behind the fog of this national panic.
Primarily, war tends to influence the masses to agree to more centralization, to relinquish
their rights in the name of the "greater good", and to accept less transparency in government
and more power in the hands of fewer people. Most important, though, is war's usefulness as a
philosophical manipulation after the dust has settled.
After nearly every war of the 20 th and 21 st century, the subsequent
propaganda implies one message in particular: National sovereignty, or nationalism, is the
cause of all our problems. The establishment then claims that there is only one solution that
will solve these problems: globalization.
This article by Andrew Hunter , the chairman of the Australian Fabian Society, is exactly
the kind of narrative I expect to hear if conflict arises between the United States and
China.
National identity and sovereignty are the scapegoats, and the Fabians (globalist
propagandists) are quick to point a finger. Their assertion is that nation states should no
longer exist, borders should be erased and a one-world economic system and government should be
founded. Only then will war and financial strife end. Who will be in charge of this
interdependent one world utopia? I'll give you three guesses...
The Fabians, of course, make no mention of global bankers and their instigation of nearly
every war and depression for the past 100 years; and these are invariably the same people that
will end up in positions of authority if globalization comes to fruition. What the majority of
people do not yet understand is that globalists have no loyalties to any particular country,
and they are perfectly willing to sacrifice governments, economies, even entire cultures, in
the pursuit of their "ideal society". "Order out of chaos" is their motto, after all. The
bottom line is that a war between China and the United States will not be caused by national
sovereignty. Rather, it will be caused by elitists looking for a way to END national
sovereignty. That's why such a hypothetical conflict, a conflict that has been gamed by think
tanks for years, is likely to be forced into reality.
In his rush to accuse Beijing of unleashing the scourge of Covid-19 on an unsuspecting
world, the US Secretary of State said the coronavirus was man-made, before making a U-turn
without even blinking. "The best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I don't have
reason to disbelieve them at this point," Mike Pompeo told ABC's 'This Week' when
asked about a statement from the US intelligence community that unequivocally said the
opposite.
Host Martha Raddatz twice asked Pompeo to clarify whether his view differed from that of
American intelligence, and he voiced his total support for the spies – though he stopped
short of actually saying "I don't believe the virus was man-made."
Social media is very good at building communities around common aesthetics, especially
because Database Era culture is inherently geared toward the endless acontextual
re-assembling of aesthetics people like.
Or as I say, it's all about those
cat blindfolds . But there is a unifying theme here, and as with the UKIP manifestos, it's
a kind of non-specific, generalized extremism. A politics of interchangeable tropes must end up
here. If the tropes truly are interchangeable, the only way they can get selected is salience,
and that's going to be what you get. It probably wouldn't matter if the available pool of the
discontented hadn't been filling up for years, but then there's this.
For any intelligence professional, especially for a person who was the head of DIA, Flynn
behaviour is unexplainably naive. The idea that he did not understand that he is dealing with
Clinton mafia, as well as that Clinton mafia will try to implicate him is just absurd. So his
behaviour is mystery. As well as the fact that he allowed them to come bypassing regular channels
in President administration.
As we do not have the whole picture we can only speculate. Probably he was already on the
hook for his Turkish lobbing and that was exploited.
"New Documents Show Strzok Countermanded Closure Of Flynn Case For Lack Of Crime" [
Jonathan Turley ]. "It was previously known that the investigators who interviewed Flynn
did not believe that he intentionally lied. That made sense. Flynn did not deny the
conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Moreover, Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored
and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak.
There was no reason to hide such a discussion.
Trump had publicly stated an intent to reframe Russian relations and seek to develop a more
positive posture with them. It now appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field
Office issued a 'Closing Communication' indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE
RAZOR" -- the newly disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok
intervened." • Read on for detail, which is ugly.
Ah, the FBI. The FBI no matter how much you look a their propaganda shows on the TV, the FBI
has always been crooked, ergo the need for TV shows saying how great they are. Anyway,
regarding Flynn, this was nothing new about setting him up. The FBI has a long sorted history
with setting people up, but usually the poor, mentally deranged, or simply not intelligent.
If you review the number of of anti terror cases where someone was going to blow up a
hospital, a church or some other structure, the suspect always gets caught because of an FBI
informant, who made up the plot, gave the person a fake bomb, money or materials to make the
plot come true.
I would venture a guess that 90% of arrests for terror are along those lines. So, the FBI
as great crime fighters is a myth. I worked with them before and they were a joke.
I hope Comey, Strzok, and et.al goes to jail. But two sets of laws exist for the powerful.
Cheers!!
>Anyway, regarding Flynn, this was nothing new about setting him up.
There are only about three phrases to say to FBI:
No Comment.
Am I under arrest?
I want a lawyer.
The problem with people like Flynn is they think they are the smartest ones in the room
and can outsmart the FBI. They forget that FBI doesn't record interrogations and the agents
are free to write up the summaries however they like. In this case, they actually re-wrote
the original interview months later.
And as the case against Flynn continues to unravel, perhaps the most important dots have
been connected by investigative researcher @JohnWHuber , better known as "Undercover Huber" on
Twitter, who makes a cogent argument that Stefan Halper - the portly spy who the FBI used to
conduct espionage on the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election - may have sparked the
Flynn investigation after lying to the FBI .
What's more, IG Michael Horowitz's report makes no mention of the lie, or the
recently-learned fact that the FBI tried to close the Flynn case, dubbed 'Crossfire Razor', in
Jan. 2017, only for agent Peter Strzok to go '
off the rails ' and demand it not be closed.
Why did the IG Report completely ignore Stefan Halper's lies to the FBI about @GenFlynn , and leave
open the possibility that Halper may even have triggered the opening of the CI case against
him?
According to the IG, Stefan Halper (referred to as "Source 2") met with the Crossfire
Hurricane team twice (in Aug 11 and 12, 2016) and told them "he had been previously
acquainted with @GenFlynn". *This was immediately before the FBI opened a case on Flynn on
Aug 15, 2016*
The IG report is silent on anything Source 2 might have said specifically about Flynn.
It's also silent on the fact the Washington Field Office of the FBI tried to close the Flynn
case on 01/04/2017. Both are going to be important in a second.
We now know from the FBI's draft "Electronic Communication" dated 01/04/2017 (trying to
close the Flynn CI case, stopped by Strzok at the direction of Comey, McCabe or both)
confirms the "CH" team "contacted an established FBI CHS to query about" Gen Flynn & held
a "debriefing"
This "event" very likely refers to when Flynn spoke at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
in Feb 2014, and the suspicious Russian-linked person supposedly in the cab was @RealSLokhova (who
also attended, and briefly spoke to Flynn)
Except that story is a *lie*. Halper wasn't at that event . He witnessed nothin g,
because he wasn't there. And the cab ride almost certainly didn't happen either, because
@RealSLokhova says she was picked up from the event by her Husband . And she's willing to say
that under oath.
There are multiple pictures of that Cambridge Seminar event (attended by about 20
people). Flynn was there, as was Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6), and Christopher
Andrew (then mentor of @RealSLokhova and "unofficial" historian of MI5). But Halper wasn't.
Not in any photos.
"No one remembers Halper attending the event because, in truth, Halper was not there"
Halper's lawyers never challenged that statement . Even when the federal Judge dismissed
@RealSLokhova's case (for other reasons), he did not challenge that claim, only saying that
"even assuming it was false" that Halper "attended" the dinner, it wasn't defamatory to claim
he did
Halper's lawyers even noted @RealSLokhova 's claim it was a
"falsehood" to say Halper attended the Feb, 2014 Cambridge event, and then NEVER defended it
as *true*, just that it wasn't *defamatory*, and non-actionable.
And the FBI trying to close the case on Flynn is great evidence Halper's "attendance" at
this event so he could see this suspicious cab ride is false . The FBI never tried to
interview @RealSLokhova, or anyone at the dinner. Why? Because it would have proven their own
source lied.
FYI, WaPo, WSJ and NYT have all published stories claiming that Halper attended that Feb
2014 event . None have any evidence that's true. All the stories are anonymously sourced to
Halper or Halper's buddies. There never will be any evidence Halper was there, because he
wasn't.
So when Halper told the FBI that he was "previously acquainted" with Flynn, and
"witnessed" this suspicious cab ride, HE WAS LYING TO THE FBI . And at the time, he was a
paid Confidential Human Source - the only one cited in the @carterwpage
FISA, other than Steele.
That's big.
But what's arguably bigger is WHEN Halper told this lie about Flynn. When else could
Halper claimed to have been "acquainted" with Flynn if not this Feb 2014 dinner (the only
time Flynn attended the Cambridge seminar Halper helped organize)?
Now, maybe Halper told the FBI about the dinner after the CI case was opened. But that's
NOT in the IG report, despite Halper's other meetings with the FBI being in there. In fact
the IG report says nothing about Halper and Flynn, other than what I quoted
In addition, FBI's Jan 4, 2017 draft Closing EC doesn't say when this "debriefing" with
Halper happened either. The wording sort of implies it was after the case was opened, but
never says it
So it is possible that a lie from Halper actually triggered opening the case on
Flynn?
What else did the FBI have? Their own laughable "predicate" appears to be that Flynn
worked for Trump, attended an RT dinner (at the time, @RepAdamSchiff
had previously appeared on RT!), and was "linked" to Russians (Er, he was the former head of
DIA under "Russian reset" Obama)
Ah, but all of those things were already true between Aug 1 and Aug 10, 2016, which is
when the FBI opened cases on Page, Papadopoulos and Manafort - BUT NOT FLYNN. That didn't
happen until Aug 15. He's the odd one out.
Flynn obviously already worked for Trump. He already had these "links", and he'd already
attended the RT dinner long ago. The thin gruel of Russian "links" and working for Trump was
enough to open cases on all the others, but NOT Flynn.
But what did the FBI have extra before they opened the case? Stefan Halper telling them
about being "previously acquainted" with Flynn - which almost certainly refers to that Feb
2014 Cambridge dinner, where he was never "acquainted" with Flynn at all.
Oh, & even if Halper told this lie *after* the case was opened on Flynn, the FBI
mustn't have found it credible because they never tried to properly investigate it , and then
even tried to close the case anyway. So that means at best the lie came between Aug 15, 2016
& Jan 4, 2017
What else was happening between Aug 16 & Jan 17? Oh yeah, the FBI was using a person
they should have suspected of lying to dirty people up - Halper - as a CHS wearing a wire on
@carterwpage, @GeorgePapa19 and others, AND relying on Halper as "Source #2" in the FISA
warrant apps
Then, incredibly after their own source lies to them about Flynn to dirty him up, the FBI
have the audacity to charge Flynn with lying to them! Corrupt dirty cops isn't an adequate
description. And for all we know, Halper is STILL on Wray's FBI books as a paid confidential
source
Finally, IG Horowitz blew this line of inquiry, and didn't mention anything about the FBI
trying to close the case on Flynn in Jan 2017 . Horowitz also admitted hasn't seen any
evidence that any of Halper's information was ever corroborated during his entire time as an
FBI source
Durham can do what the IG didn't, and solve this mystery quite easily with a few
interviews and record checks.
Or, the DOJ/USG can keep Halper on his retainer and ignore this. Either way, we'll know
what's up
/ENDS
UPDATE: It gets worse @SidneyPowell1 says that "SSA 1"
(Joe Pientka) wrote that Jan 4, 2017 EC closing the Flynn case
AND according to the IG report, Pientka personally approved those Aug 2016 meetings with
Halper & his handler & was briefed on both meetings
Yes. Intrigue and infighing among the deep state conspirators.
Why would the government keep delaying Flynn's sentencing after he agreed to the
deal?
But I think another explanation is simply excellent legal representation by Sidney
Powell.
In order to make the whole corrupt charade go down, a lot of "looking the other way" on
the part of the courts, the DOJ, and the media had to occur.
Sidney Powell, I assume, was relentless and committed in pulling on every loose thread and
questioning every alleged "fact" which led to the unravelling of the whole corrupt
enterprise.
At the end of the day, she will be one of the heroes in the movie about how the Republic
was saved, along with NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers and Congressman Devin Nunes.
xxx 2 hours ago
I believe she has some eyes on the inside as well......She is good and she is making
Sullivan have to walk a fine line.
The case of General Flynn, which has dragged on for years now, may finally be reaching a
denouement. He was charged with and pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI
during the Russian collusion hoax. For reasons that have not been clear, he was never
sentenced. Now it appears he may never see jail and will instead see his case dropped and his
guilty plea vacated. New evidence shows he was framed by members of the FBI and Department of
Justice.
As is standard procedure in this age, state media has been silent on the matter, but
alternative media sources are
reporting on the release of classified documents hidden by the government from Flynn's
defense team in violation of the law.
Thousands of documents held by his former defense team and hidden from Flynn and his new
attorney's until now have also been released in what appears to be a damage control operation
by the law firm Covington & Burling.
What these new FBI documents reveal is the FBI and Department of Justice carefully planned
to entrap General Flynn by tricking him into making inaccurate statements about his
activities during the campaign. They did this because they wanted to remove him from his post
in the White House and hoped he could be manipulated into making accusations against other
administrative officials. Then they systematically lied about what Flynn said to them in his
interview with the FBI.
Compounding this is the fact that the FBI and Departmental of Justice systematically
withheld all documents that could be used by Flynn in his defense. One way they did this was
to hide them in the special counsel operation. This prevented anyone, not just Flynn's
defense team, from discovering the plot. The sudden release of long withheld documents by
Covington & Burling suggest they may have been part of the plot to entrap Flynn and get
him to plead guilty to a crime.
At this stage, only a partisan fanatic thinks the principals in this whole Russian
collusion caper were operating in good faith. You could make the argument that their behavior
was unethical, but not necessarily illegal. Even if their actions violated the law, you could
argue they did so in the belief they were within the bounds of the law. With these new
revelations, it is clear they knew they were breaking the law in an effort to frame General
Flynn as part of a much larger conspiracy.
One thing that is now confirmed with these new revelations is that the Special Counsel was
always just part of a larger effort to cover-up this conspiracy. In fact, that was the whole
point of it. The FBI and DOJ officials involved in the conspiracy would hide all of the
evidence inside the counsel's operation. This would make it impossible for the defense
lawyers to access and very difficult for Congress to access. It would also prevent the
administration from looking into it.
Another outrageous aspect to this case is that it appears that Flynn's original defense
team, Covington & Burling, may have been in on the plot to frame him. It's not all that
clear at this point, but the best that can be said of their actions on behalf of their client
is they are the worst law firm in the country. They exist because they have resources and
know how things work in Washington. Despite this, they made the sorts of errors TV writers
would find too ridiculous for a legal drama.
There's also the fact that this sort of behavior by the FBI and DOJ is business as usual,
which underscores the corruption. This is not a couple of renegades. This is just how things
are done by the government. They frame people for crimes then work to prevent them from
getting a proper defense. The FBI has a long history of framing the innocent, but it was
always confined to the field offices. Now it is clear that the institution is rotten from the
head to the tail. It is hopelessly corrupt.
It is also increasingly clear that the weaselly Rod Rosenstein was the man tasked with
orchestrating the cover-up after the election. He manipulated Sessions and Trump into firing
Comey and then agreeing to the Mueller charade. The only purpose to that operation was to
cover up the illegal spying. Then there is Comey, who claimed under oath to be the guy who
ordered the Flynn investigation. He may have arrogantly admitted to initiating multiple
Federal crimes.
Of course, the big question in all of this is whether Washington is so hopelessly corrupt
that none of this amounts to anything. In banana republics, the judge in the case would be
assassinated or intimidated into ignoring the facts and sentencing Flynn to jail. We may not
be there yet, but the lack of any substantive investigation into the FBI corruption suggests
no one will be charged with anything. The principals in this scandal are now in high six
figure positions in Washington, living the good life.
Now, it is possible that Bill Barr was not prepared for the scale of corruption that has
been revealed in this case . He may have truly thought it was a few bad apples that went off
on their own. Once the scale of the corruption was known, he had to change course and bring
in outside help. It's just as possible that he is part of the problem. He is friends will
most of these people. His role in this could simply be part of the how Washington is
neutralizing Trump and preparing him for expulsion.
There is one puzzle that gets no attention. Why would the government keep delaying Flynn's
sentencing after he agreed to the deal? They said he was cooperating, but he had nothing to
offer them and they knew it. Perhaps he was just a prop to maintain the greater narrative of
the Russian hoax. By dragging out his process they could feed fake news to state media,
claiming it was from Flynn. That's seems to be a too cute by half, given the reality in
Washington, but it is possible.
Ineptitude is always a possibility. There's also the fact that highly corrupt institutions
tend to have lots of internal intrigue and conflict. The old line about thieves sticking
together is a myth. The corrupt man has no honor. As a result, the last stage for the corrupt
institution is when the people inside beginning to scheme against one another to the point
where they undermined their mutual efforts. Maybe that's where things are in Washington now.
It's just one big game of liar's poker.
xxx Radiant. 3 minutes ago
What did Flynn plead guilty to?
"Now, it is possible that Bill Barr was not prepared for the scale of corruption that
has been revealed in this case."
Really? Anyone who has been in Washington awhile must realize how things are there.
Anyway, remove those people from their posts, allow them their benefits and pensions and
let them keep their security clearance. That will teach them a lesson.
The other players would seem to be DSA and the Greens, and I'm not sure what they would
think of this. But taking a big chuck of the labor movement out of the Democrat orbit would be
interesting. Especially considering that nurses are as well-liked as, say, firefighters.
"... There's a concerted effort on the part of influential people at the network that we at All In call Trump TV right now to peddle dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus Call it coronavirus trutherism. ..."
"... Who needs to win elections when you can personally reestablish the social order every day on Twitter and Facebook? When you can scold, and scold, and scold. That's their future, and it's a satisfying one: a finger wagging in some vulgar proletarian's face, forever. ..."
"... Get a Grippe, America: The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now : Washington Post ..."
"... Coronavirus is scary, but the flu is deadlier, more widespread : USA Today ..."
"... Want to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus? Do the Same Things You Do Every Winter : Time ..."
"... We should de-escalate the war on coronavirus ..."
"... "Good hand-washing helps. Staying healthy and eating healthy will also help," says Dr. Sharon Nachman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York's Stony Brook Children's Hospital. "The things we take for granted actually do work. It doesn't matter what the virus is. The routine things work ." ..."
The offenders were Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi, co-owners of an "Urgent Care" clinic
in Bakersfield, California. They'd held a presentation in which they argued that widespread
lockdowns were perhaps not necessary, according to data they were collecting and analyzing.
"Millions of cases, small amounts of deaths," said Erickson , a vigorous, cheery-looking
Norwegian-American who argued the numbers showed Covid-19 was similar to flu in mortality rate.
"Does [that] necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of oil companies, furloughing
doctors ? I think the answer is going to be increasingly clear."
The reaction of the medical community was severe. It was pointed out that the two men owned
a clinic that was losing business thanks to the lockdown. The message boards of real E.R.
doctors lit up with angry comments, scoffing at the doctors' dubious data collection methods
and even their somewhat dramatic choice to dress in scrubs for their video presentation.
The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and American College of Emergency
Physicians (ACEP) scrambled to
issue a joint statement to "emphatically condemn" the two doctors, who "do not speak for
medical society" and had released "biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal
financial interests."
As is now almost automatically the case in the media treatment of any controversy, the story
was immediately packaged for "left" and "right" audiences by TV networks. Tucker Carlson on
Fox backed up the doctors' claims, saying "these are serious people who've done this
for a living for decades," and YouTube and Google have " officially
banned dissent ."
Meanwhile, over on Carlson's opposite-number channel, MSNBC, anchor Chris Hayes of the
All In program reacted with fury to Carlson's monologue:
There's a concerted effort on the part of influential people at the network that we at
All In call Trump TV right now to peddle dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus Call
it coronavirus trutherism.
Hayes, an old acquaintance of mine, seethed at what he characterized as the gross
indifference of Trump Republicans to the dangers of coronavirus. "At the beginning of this
horrible period, the president, along with his lackeys, and propagandists, they all minimized
what was coming," he said, sneering. "They said it was just like a cold or the flu."
He angrily demanded that if Fox acolytes like Carlson believed so strongly that society
should be reopened, they should go work in a meat processing plant. "Get in there if you think
it's that bad. Go chop up some pork."
The tone of the many media reactions to Erickson, Carlson, Trump, Georgia governor Brian
Kemp, and others who've suggested lockdowns and strict shelter-in-place laws are either
unnecessary or do more harm than good, fits with what writer Thomas Frank describes as a new "
Utopia of Scolding ":
Who needs to win elections when you can personally reestablish the social order every
day on Twitter and Facebook? When you can scold, and scold, and scold. That's their future, and
it's a satisfying one: a finger wagging in some vulgar proletarian's face, forever.
In the Trump years the sector of society we used to describe as liberal America became a
giant finger-wagging machine. The news media, academia, the Democratic Party, show-business
celebrities and masses of blue-checked Twitter virtuosos became a kind of umbrella agreement
society, united by loathing of Trump and fury toward anyone who dissented with their
preoccupations.
Because this Conventional Wisdom viewed itself as being solely concerned with the Only
Important Thing, i.e. removing Trump, there was no longer any legitimate excuse for disagreeing
with its takes on Russia, Julian Assange, Jill Stein, Joe Rogan, the 25th amendment, Ukraine,
the use of the word "treason," the removal of Alex Jones, the movie Joker, or whatever
else happened to be the #Resistance fixation of the day.
When the Covid-19 crisis struck, the scolding utopia was no longer abstraction. The dream
was reality! Pure communism had arrived! Failure to take elite advice was no longer just a
deplorable faux pas . Not heeding experts was now murder. It could not be tolerated.
Media coverage quickly became a single, floridly-written tirade against "
expertise-deniers ." For instance, the Atlantic headline on Kemp's decision to end
some shutdowns was, " Georgia's
Experiment in Human Sacrifice ."
At the outset of the crisis, America's biggest internet platforms – Facebook, Twitter,
Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit – took an unprecedented step to
combat "fraud and misinformation " by promising extensive cooperation in elevating
"authoritative" news over less reputable sources.
H.L. Mencken once said that in America, "the general average of intelligence, of knowledge,
of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his
trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies
stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head."
We have a lot of dumb people in this country. But the difference between the stupidities
cherished by the Idiocracy set ingesting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places
like the Atlantic, is that the jackasses among the "expert" class compound their
wrongness by being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along. In other words, to
combat "ignorance," the scolders create a new and more virulent species of it: exclusive
ignorance, forced ignorance, ignorance with staying power.
The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and
more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who
tells people to inject disinfectant . It's astonishing that they don't see this.
Journalists are professional test-crammers. Our job is to get an assignment on Monday
morning and by Tuesday evening act like we're authorities on intellectual piracy, the civil war
in Yemen, Iowa caucus procedure, the coronavirus, whatever. We actually know jack: we
speed-read, make a few phone calls, and in a snap people are inviting us on television to tell
millions of people what to think about the complex issues of the world.
When we come to a subject cold, the job is about consulting as many people who really know
their stuff as quickly as possible and sussing out – often based on nothing more than
hunches or impressions of the personalities involved – which set of explanations is most
believable. Sportswriters who covered the Deflategate football scandal had to do this in order
to explain the Ideal Gas Law , I
had to do it to cover the subprime mortgage scandal, and reporters this past January and
February had to do it when assigned to assess the coming coronavirus threat.
It does not take that much work to go back and find that a significant portion of the
medical and epidemiological establishment called this disaster wrong when they were polled by
reporters back in the beginning of the year. Right-wingers are having a blast collecting the
headlines , and they should, given the chest-pounding at places like MSNBC about others who
"minimized the risk." Here's a brief sample:
There are dozens of these stories and they nearly all contain the same elements, including
an inevitable quote or series of quotes from experts telling us to calm the hell down. This is
from the Time piece:
"Good hand-washing helps. Staying healthy and eating healthy will also help," says Dr.
Sharon Nachman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York's Stony Brook Children's
Hospital. "The things we take for granted actually do work. It doesn't matter what the virus
is. The routine things work ."
There's a reason why journalists should always keep their distance from priesthoods in any
field. It's particularly in the nature of insular communities of subject matter experts to
coalesce around orthodoxies that blind the very people in the loop who should be the most
knowledgeable.
"Experts" get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they've all been taught the same
incorrect thing in school) and less so (they have a financial or professional interest in
denying the truth).
On the less nefarious side, the entire community of pollsters in 2016 denounced as infamous
the idea that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination, let alone the general election.
They believed that because they weren't paying attention to voters (their ostensible jobs), but
also because they'd never seen anything similar. In a more suspicious example, if you asked a
hundred Wall Street analysts in September 2008 what caused the financial crisis, probably no
more than a handful would have mentioned fraud or malfeasance.
Both of the above examples point out a central problem with trying to automate the
fact-checking process the way the Internet platforms have of late, with their emphasis on
"authoritative" opinions.
"Authorities " by their nature are untrustworthy. Sometimes they have an interest
in denying truths, and sometimes they actually try to define truth as being whatever they say
it is. "
Elevating authoritative content " over independent or less well-known sources is an
algorithmic take on the journalistic obsession with credentialing that has been slowly
destroying our business for decades.
The WMD fiasco happened because journalists listened to people with military ranks and
titles instead of demanding evidence and listening to their own instincts. The same thing
happened with Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence "experts" with grand titles who are
now proven to have been
wrong to a spectacular
degree , if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud.
We've become incapable of talking calmly about possible solutions because we've lost the
ability to decouple scientific or policy discussions, or simple issues of fact, from a
political argument. Reporting on the Covid-19 crisis has become the latest in a line of moral
manias with Donald Trump in the middle.
Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish
crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the
seriousness of the crisis might have been off, we're denouncing the questions themselves as
infamous. Or we're politicizing the framing of stories in a way that signals to readers what
their take should be before they even digest the material. " Conservative
Americans see coronavirus hope in Progressive Sweden ," reads a Politico headline,
as if only conservatives should feel optimism in the possibility that a non-lockdown approach
might have merit! Are we rooting for such an approach to not work?
From everything I've heard, talking to doctors and reading the background material, the
Bakersfield doctors are probably not the best sources. But the functional impact of removing
their videos (in addition to giving them press they wouldn't otherwise have had) is to stamp
out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like when the damage to the
economy and the effects of other crisis-related problems – domestic abuse, substance
abuse, suicide, stroke, abuse of children, etc. – become as significant a threat to the
public as the pandemic. We do actually have to talk about this. We can't not talk about it out
of fear of being censored, or because we're confusing real harm with political harm.
Turning ourselves into China for any reason is the definition of a cure being worse than the
disease. The scolders who are being seduced by such thinking have to wake up, before we end up
adding another disaster on top of the terrible one we're already facing.
Patrick Lovell Apr 30 Like always, I agree and am moved
deeply by most of your positions. I do however find the argument not entirely convincing.
I've seen you down on Russiagate from the beginning and I've never felt like I understood
why. I get the barrage without the evidence and what that means for the broader context
but seriously, Washington's entire currency is lying. So too is Wall Street. But Putin's
isn't? Trump's? Is it really that complicated?
Trump was laundering real estate for bad guys for decades. It's his business model.
Deutsche Bank was involved with fraud in every dimension and direction and Trump was a
relatively small play all things considered, but the SOB knew what he was involved with
and doing. He went so far as to claim the "Act of God" defense based on deuschbag
Greenspan's insane lie that no one saw 2008 coming.
Trump went so far as to sue DM for being a victim of predatory lending. Trump? Victim
of Predatory Lending??!?!?! WTF?!?!? Given all of that and then some (Mercers, Bannon,
etc.) are we to pretend it wasn't exactly what it looks like? Why wouldn't we? Because
Clinton was on the other side? I really don't get that part at all.
Matt Taibbi Apr 30 I'm sorry, but Russiagate wasn't about
whether or not Trump or Putin were liars or bad people. It was a very specific set of
allegations that have been proven now to be false: that Trump was being blackmailed by
the Russian state, that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign in an election
interference plot, that the Trump campaign traded sanctions for election aid, that Trump
himself committed treason and was a compromised foreign agent, etc. This has all been
investigated and discounted. In fact it appears now, from the investigation of IG Michael
Horowitz, that the FBI knew relatively early on -- by late 2016 -- that there was no
coordination or collusion going on between Russia and the Trump campaign. Yet smears and
innuendo flowed for years from intelligence sources anyway. You don't have to be a Trump
fan to be pissed that there was such an elaborate effort at spreading this false tale.
Larry May 1 Matt, I disagree, perhaps, with your
reference to Kemp and the other governors who opened their states. Don't you agree that
their effort seems to be an attempt to prevent workers from claiming unemployment benefit
and that, as such, their efforts should not be seen as motivated by a simple, freely
determined skepticism about the merits of the science or even the biased journalism?
I do applaud your general thesis, and would add for my part that one of the most
interesting phenomena regarding the media response to coronavirus and scientific material
in general is a seeming mass desire to settle matters once and for all rather than
fostering an attitude that scientific activity is more than anything else a manifestly
long-drawn out, labor intensive pursuit, that requires much time, almost always, before
actionable insights can be formulated, much less acted upon.
It is odd that, as you have noted so many times, a media so addicted to manufacturing
themes that must be continually resuscitated, like Russia, do the exact opposite with
science: as you note, pundits and reporters, when confronted with science, tend to cram
and swot maniacally (under deadline, assuredly) in order to get as close to a definitive
statement as possible as fast as possible, when the entire process is designed (though
increasingly commercialized and siloed privatized science mitigates against this in
important ways, whilst reinforcing it in others) only to provide "answers" of any sort
extremely tentatively.
This is perhaps one of the most annoying things about many Americans' expectations of
scientific activity, which you see in medicine (and weather forecasting!) perhaps most of
all: people frustrated with the underlying uncertainty of medical prognoses seem to
expect cookie-cutter specific formulations virtually on the spot, and are angered when
these are not forthcoming.
I even know people who have taught philosophy of science who have never stepped foot
in a lab or have the vaguest notion of how "knowledge" is produced there. This sort of
thing adds fertile ground for themes development of potential misunderstandings amongst
lay-people that raises the deleterious effects to another level. But I am digressing.
My main question is about Kemp and the others, but if you could speak a little to
flesh out your interesting comments on reporters and scientific subject matter, I would
be most grateful. I love your work, Matt, keep up the good job!
It is easy to blame China when you do not even put the slightest presure on your corporations
for them to protect their employees...so that they must exert the presure on their own
risking their jobs in such a savage capitalist environment like that of the US where any
complaint equated being fired, as happened to the health workers...
In an unprecedented movement, workers from 6 of the largest companies in the United States
like Amazon or Walmart have organized a strike on Labor Day today to demand health
protection against COVID19 and better working conditions.
"It was like they were keeping a secret," said Tara Williams, a 47-year-old worker at the
plant, as she described her account of management's response to the death of her colleague
Elose Willis. "It took them about two weeks to just put a picture up, to acknowledge she
had died."
No, kids, this isn't China or North Korea - it's the USA.
The real crisis will be went the eviction moratorium ends in July, when all of the people who
are behind on their rent/mortgages (and there are at least 8 million of them, possibly much,
much more) are required to repay the arrears on their accounts or be evicted. That will
create a lot of angry voters and eviction laws are generally less restrictive in Republican
states, so that would almost certainly hurt the Republican party more and it would hurt them
down the entire ticket.
Putting aside notions of morality and common humanity, I would think simple
self-interested greed would convince politicians to adopt some populist positions solely to
be (re)elected. But the two parties are just so corrupt and beholden to their big pocket
financial donners that they won't do it. I wouldn't hold my breath to see if at least one
party wakes up to this problem, but I get the feeling that both parties are like ostriches
with their heads in the sand over this problem and that they won't even consider this problem
until Mid-June or July. Then, maybe, we'll see some new ideas put forth for the election
campaign or more likely a temporary extension of the eviction moratorium (got to kick that
can down the road!).
"Deaths of 2 workers at COVID-19 stricken S.E. Iowa meatpacking plant
confirmed"
No this isn't China, regardless which sides we support - fully justify action or inaction.
Democracy past its prime and time for change but not the changes from fake Nobel
Laureate.
"In a Pandemic, the Mob Is the Ultimate Enforcer" [John Authers,
Bloomberg ].
The business perspective: "what really matters to the world's financial movers and shakers
is the great mob of voters out there in the real world, and how they might respond to whatever
measures they take to deal with the pandemic and the economic crisis that has come in its wake.
That, in turn, might owe a lot to the Don
The optics are not good when headlines reveal that scarcely impoverished institutions such
as Harvard University and the Los Angeles Lakers have received public handouts while small
businesses have been unable to get their hands on any money before it runs out.
After the mistakes made in the wake of the last financial crisis, Powell rightly grasps that
it is very important to get it right this time -- or face what might be a dangerous populist
backlash. Or, in our Sopranos analogy, the Mob."
Yesterday when I linked to the event at Lansing, Michigan, I commented that those there
had no idea what they were doing as they were protesting the wrong thing at the wrong
place. Instead, they ought to be occupying the US Treasury building in DC and the NY Fed
Bank in NYC to stop the fraudulent dissemination of $$Trillions to Wall Street criminals
masked as bankers, hedge fund mangers and the like as those locations are where the MAJOR
crimes are occurring as I type this comment. Their behavior casts them as ignorant and
perhaps worse as they're being led into an assault on their own interests while doing
nothing to genuinely defend their wellbeing and that of their kin and progeny. Such
stupidity's been ongoing since 1980-81 when it arose during Reagan's campaign and
continued afterward. That it's being directed/channeled is clear, just as who was
financing the Tea Party rubes was clear--It's the same criminals doing the looting in DC
and NYC.
Given the state of politics within the Outlaw US Empire, such behavior is
unfortunately normal to a certain degree. If it was a gang of Occupy Wall Street
Protesters, the reaction by the forces of coercion would've been vastly different and
very violent. Such is the state of Machiavellianism within as it's worked for many
decades dividing and ruling. With such impediments, attaining the mass solidarity
required to affect the Sea-change required is made extremely difficult, which is why you
observe that nothing's been done for the masses while many things have been done to
further their exploitation.
Part 1: The Obama Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood at Home
Introduction
Under a misguided illusion that Islamists can be regarded as moderates worthy of partnership
with democracies and other civilized states in the war against jihadism, the Barack Obama
administration has undertaken a series high-stakes, ideologically-driven and naive policy
gambits driven by the U.S. president's dangerous sympathy for Islam. In and of itself such a
sympathy is not necessarily a problem if it is moderate and indirectly influences a few,
non-strategic policies. However, when it becomes the ideological foundation for U.S. foreign
policy and strategy across the Muslim world, it is downright dangerous and a potentially
catastrophic miscalculation. The upshot of Obama's miscalculation has been the simultaneous
destabilization of whole regions of the world, the weakening of key allies, the alienation of
potential ones, and the possibility that for the first time since World War Two the West and
Eurasia will be riven by violence, terrorism and war.
The catastrophic failure of Obama's pro-Islamic foreign policy is shaping the perceptions
and calculus of friends, enemies, foes, and 'frenemies' alike. For great powers, his policies
offer risks and opportunities but, more importantly, they demand a complete re-thinking of what
U.S. foreign policy goals are and a rapid policy response to the picture that comes out of such
re-thinking. This has become especially true when it comes to the single great power the
expanse of which stretches along the most of the Muslim world's northern periphery –
Russia. Therefore, Moscow is in the grips of a major revamping and reinvigoration of its
foreign policy activity along its southern periphery. In each case the need to do so can be
reasonably argue to have been necessitated by American mistakes and failures–from South
and Central Asia in the east to North Africa in the west.
Here I will focus on the most recent cases of the Arab Spring and demonstrate that the Obama
administration has attempted to make alliances with Islamists as a buffer against global
jihadism and a battering ram for destroying secular authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world
despised by many liberals and the left, despite their use as a bulwark against radical
political Islam. In three key cases of the so-called Arab Spring–Egypt, Libya, and
Syria–the Obama administration has supported the radical global Islamist organization,
the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The Egyptian case is well-known and will not be discussed
here.
The pro-MB policy has been a fundamental miscalculation for several reasons. First, it
assumed that democratic, moderately Islamic states led by the MB would follow secular
authoritarian regimes. Instead, as the short-lived MB regime in Egypt demonstrated, an Islamist
MB regime is no better and likely much worse than secular, even military-led regimes. The rise
of Islamist authoritarianism after the fall of secular regimes is even better demonstrated by
the upper hand that jihadist totalitarian groups have in the chaos of post-secular regimes
across those parts of the Muslim world thrown into chaos with the help of U.S. policy.
Second, it assumed an impermeable line between the global Islamist revolutionary movement,
led by groups such as the MB and Hizb ut-Tahrir Islami (HTI), and the global jihadi
revolutionary movement, led by the Islamic State or IS (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) and Al Qa`ida (AQ).
The former type of group is often a half-way house for radicalized Muslims heading towards the
path of jihad. Like their jihadi counterparts, the MB and other radical Islamist revolutionary
groups favor a global caliphate based on the rule of Shariah law. The difference lies in the
strategies and tactics for getting there. By backing the MB, the U.S. facilitated jihadi
agitation and propaganda, recruiting, and arms acquisition fueling the global jihadi
revolutionary movement.
Part 1: The Obama Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood at Home
There is a logic President Obama's policy bias in favor of the MB. President Obama's
biographical and radical leftist background lends him a great pro-Muslim feeling that often
attains absurd proportions. After all, he spent many of his most formative childhood years in
Indonesia, went to a madrassah school there, and stated in his autobiography that the most
beautiful sound he ever heard is the Islamic azan or call to prayer. The president
apparently believes that Islam and Muslims have been an instrumental part of America since its
founding. In his 2009 Cairo speech, which the administration claimed sparked the MB-led
Egyptian revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in September 2012, President Obama claimed to
"know" that "Islam has always been a part of America's story"
(www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09). In a 2010
speech marking the end of Ramadan, Obama asserted: "Islam has always been part of America"
(www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/11/statement-president-occasion-ramadan). In
February 2015 he stated: "Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its
founding" (
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/obama-islam-has-been-woven-fabric-our-country-its-founding
). In short, President Obama has a bias in favor of Islam–indeed, a hyper-empathy that
goes over the line into fantasy. Given these realities, it might be expected that this
sentiment would be reflected in the American President's foreign policy. In fact, it is.
There is now a boat load of evidence that the Obama administration has brought in officials
and advisors from radical Muslim circles–in particular those from groups fronting for, or
tied to the MB–who espouse Islamist, anti-semitic, and anti-American points of view
similar to those MB proposes. Until Hillary Clinton's resignation as US Secretary of State, MB
links connected two high-ranking Obama administration officials: Clinton's chief of staff Huma
Abedin and current special assistant to the National Security Council Chief of Staff for the
military's Islamic chaplain program Mehdi K. Alhassani. The specific link is the Muslim World
League (MWL), indicted for financing Al Qa`ida (AQ) front groups. MWL successor groups have
been officially designated terrorist organizations by both the State Department and the United
Nations (Aaron Klein, "White House aide linked to al-Qaida funder," Counter Jihad Report
, 9 May 2014, http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/mehdi-k-alhassani/
).
A link between these two and MB is the Muslim Student Association (MSA) with branches in
hundreds of universities across America. The nationwide umbrella organization MSA has extensive
proven ties to the MB ("The Muslim Students Association and and the Jihadi Network," Terrorism
Awareness Project, 2008 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/MSA%20and%20Jihad%20Network%20v5b-1.pdf
). The MSA's official anthem restates MB's credo:
Huma worked with Abdullah Omar Naseef on the editorial board of her father's Saudi-financed
think tank, the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA). Huma was there from 2002-2008,
and Naseef was there from December 2002 – December 2003. Naseef left the JMMA editorial
board at a time when various charities led by Naseef's MWL were declared illegal terrorism
fronts worldwide, including by the U.S. and U.N. Naseef is still the MWL's secretary-general.
Huma's mother, Saleha, is the editor of the IMMA's Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA),
the publication of Syed's institute (
http://shoebat.com/2014/05/03/distribution-list-smoking-gun-benghazi-email-included-muslim-brotherhood-agent/
). Its latest issue (Vol. 35, Issue 4, 2015) features the lead article "Muslims in Western
Media: New Zealand Newspapers' Construction of 2006 Terror Plot at Heathrow Airport and
Beyond," a study of alleged Islamophobia, in which the institute specializes ( www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjmm20/current ).
Saleha Abedin is also a MWL representative.
The MWL and its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization
(IIRO) and Al Haramain, have been accused of having terrorist ties. Al Haramain was declared a
terror-financing front organization by the U.S. and U.N. with direct ties to Osama bin Laden
and banned both in the U.S. and worldwide. The Anti-Defamation League accuses the MWL of
proselytizing a "fundamentalist interpretation of Islam around the world through a large
network of charities and affiliated organizations" and notes that "several of its affiliated
groups and individuals have been linked to terror-related activity." In 2003, U.S. News and
World Report documented "a blizzard of Wahhabist literature" accompanied MWL's donations (
http://shoebat.com/2014/05/03/distribution-list-smoking-gun-benghazi-email-included-muslim-brotherhood-agent/
).
Both Abedin and Alhassani were links in the Obama's administration's strategic
communications (propaganda) operation to pin the 11 September 2012 Bengazi attack that killed
the US ambassador to Libya and three CIA operatives on an Internet film instead of an AQ
affiliate's attack. In an email obtained under a Judicial Watch lawsuit sent to Alhassani and
other officials from Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic
communication sent an email to Alhassani and several other administration officials three days
after the three days after the Benghazi attack indicating the need to "underscore that these
protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." Another email
indicates that US Ambassador to the UN Susana Rice was prepped on the Saturday before her
Sunday tour of talk shows where she repeated the video story and other elements cantained in
the email's talking points (See p. 14 of the PDF of several documents at, http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1919_production-4-17-14.pdf#page=14
).
An Egyptian newspaper claimed in December 2012 that six Muslims in particular have direct
ties to the MB or are even MB members. Four are adiminstration officials or semi-officials, and
three of these deserve scrutiny: assistant secretary for policy development at the Homeland
Security Department (HSD) Arif Alikhan; HSD Advisory Council member Mohammed Elibiary; and U.S.
special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain ( www.investigativeproject.org/3608/dawud-walid-the-quran-and-jews
and Ahmed Shawki, "A man and 6 of the Brotherhood in the White House!," Rose El-Youssef, 22
December 2012,
www.rosa-magazine.com/News/3444/%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%84%D9%886-%D8%A5%D8%AE%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B6
). To be sure, the Egyptian article appears to be overstated in claiming these persons' MB
membership. The piece was likely part of a strategic communications operation carried out by
opponents of the MB regime that overthrew Mubarak and backed the post-MB Egyptian government of
General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi counter-revolution. Nevertheless, the Obama administration's
appointment of these officials or plenipotentiaries as well as several other Muslim-American
leaders -- in particular, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) president Imam Mohamed Magid
and and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) co-founder Salam al-Marayati -- is disturbing
given their indirect MB associations and MB-like Islamist political and theological views.
The biggest knock against DHS assistant secretary for policy development Arif Alikhan has
been the endorsement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of his appointment.
CAIR has defended terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah as liberation movements.
It also was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas terrorism funding case, and several of
its former officials have been convicted of terrorism-related charges. A lesser rap is that
Alikhan attended a fundraiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) just days before his
appointment. MPAC has a similar history of defending Hamas (
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/07/new-dhs-official-linked-to-muslim-public-affairs-council-which-calls-hizballah-a-liberation-movement
). The Egyptian publication claimed that Alikhan is a founder of the World Islamic Organization
(WIO), which it characterizes as a Brotherhood "subsidiary" ( www.investigativeproject.org/3869/egyptian-magazine-muslim-brotherhood-infiltrates#
). These indictments of Alikhan seem less than convincing as evidence of MB ties.
The funding for Elibiary's own community organizing activity has been shrouded in secrecy.
He is co-founder, president and CEO of the Freedom and Justice Foundation (FJF), founded in
November 2002 "to promote government relations and "interfaith community relations for the
organized Texas Muslim community." The IRS revoked the FJF's nonprofit status in May 2010 for
failure to file the requisite forms that would have revealed its source of funding. Moreover,
his FJF has never filed a Texas Franchise Tax Public Information Report. He also has ties to
CAIR. The North Texas Islamic Council (NTIC) or Texas Islamic Council (TIC) is a FJF affiliate,
and Elibiary is a registered NTIV agent for the NTIC. One of the NTIC's directors is H.
Mustafaa Carroll, who is the executive director of CAIR's Houston chapter. Elibiary has
described the writings of Qutb, the chief ideologist of the MB and a major source for global
Islamist and jihadist revolutionaries alike, as having ""the potential for a strong spiritual
rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and
motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more" ( www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/712.pdf
).
According to an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon, Elibiary was at the center of a
scandal involving the "inappropriate disclosure of sensitive law enforcement documents"
resulting from his access to DHS's secure HS-SLIC system, according to a DHS letter. The case
has been "shrouded in mystery, with various officials providing unclear and at times
contradictory answers about whether DHS ever properly investigated." The allegation was that
Elibiary "inappropriately accessed classified documents from a secure site and may have
attempted to pass them to reporters." As part of his role on the HSAC, Elibiary "was provided
access to a network containing sensitive but unclassified information," according to the July
2014 DHS letter U.S. congressman Louis Gohmert (Republican from Texas). DHS claimed that its
2011 investigation "found no credible information" that Elibiary "disclosed or sought to
disclose 'For Official Use Only' information to members of the media." Nor did DHS "find any
indication that he sought to disclose any other internal OHS [Office of Homeland Security]
information to anyone apart from official use of information within the scope of his role for
the Homeland Security Advisory Council," according to the letter states.
However, DHS's denials are contradicted by documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act by Judicial Watch, which indicate that there was never a proper investigation
into Elibiary's actions. In a September 2013 letter DHS informed Judicial Watch in fact that it
could not find investigation records connected to the matter. This conflicting information
suggests a cover up of the fact that there was no investigation, as congressman Gohmert notes,
and that Elibiary was let go from the HSAC to lock in the cover up. Terrorism expert Patrick
Poole concluded that any DHS investigation that might have occurred was "phony," since it
failed to contact him and his source, which led to the first public allegations of Elibiary's
misuse of documents. "(W)hen DHS couldn't provide a single email or document in response to the
Judicial Watch FOIA to prove this investigation ever took place, the jig was up," Poole noted (
http://freebeacon.com/issues/controversial-dhs-adviser-let-go-amid-allegations-of-cover-up/
; see also www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/mohamed-elibiary-homeland-security/
).
President Obama's originally appointed Rashad Hussain as his special envoy to the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). In February 2015 Hussain was promoted to the
position of director of the U.S. State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications
(www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/02/26/obama-appoints-muslim-brotherhood-linked-muslim-to-head-center-for-strategic-counterterrorism-communications/).
Hussain previously served on Critical Islamic Reflections program organizing committee with the
founder of Zaytuna College, Imam Zaid Shakir ( http://www.yale.edu/cir/2004/about.html ).
Shakir's co-founder is Hamza Yusuf, who has said that jihadist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman,
convicted in the Al Qa`ida conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks in the 1990s, was tried
unjustly ( www.investigativeproject.org/2778/ipt-profiles-hamza-yusuf
).
Speaking at a MSA conference in 2004 Hussain condemned the U.S. Justice Department for
"politically motivated persecutions" in prosecuting the soon-to-be convicted terrorism
supporter Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer engineering professor. He also
called the legal process "sad commentary on our legal system," "a travesty of justice," and
"atrocious"
(www.politico.com/story/2010/02/islam-envoy-retreats-on-terror-talk-033210#ixzz0g5R9A5gl). One
wonders what legal system Hussain would prefer to the American system of justice. In 2006 the
good professor pleaded guilty to one count of "(c)onspiracy to make or receive contributions of
funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian jihadist organization,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a U.S. State Department 'Specially Designated Terrorist
organization'" and was sentenced to 57 months in prison
(www.investigativeproject.org/profile/100/sami-al-arian). The judge in the case said there was
evidence that Al-Arian served on PIJ's governing board. Al-Arian successfully had lied about
his ties to the terrorist group for ten years. For his part, Hussain lied in 2006 about the
fact that he made the noted 2004 remarks condemning the Justice Department for 'persecutions',
only to be forced to admit he had lied after being subjected to media scrutiny in the wake of
his appointment. (www.investigativeproject.org/1809/how-are-these-not-considered-lies).
According to the watchdog group Global Mulsim Brotherhood Watch, Hussain has a long record of
attending MB-tied conferences, including a May 2009 conference organized by MB-tied groups like
the MSA
(www.globalmbwatch.com/2010/02/20/breaking-news-rashad-hussain-admits-making-controversial-comments-and-asking-for-deletion/).
In addition such to appointments, Obama administration grant-giving has rewarded radical
Muslims, including open anti-Semites. Director of the Michigan branch of MB front group CAIR,
Dawud Walid, has traveled abroad at least twice on U.S State Department funds, using a 2010
trip to Mali to criticize America's treatment of Muslims after 9/11. But it gets worse. In a 25
May 2012 sermon at the Islamic Organization of North America mosque in Warren, Michigan, Walid
asked rhetorically: "Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?" Walid answered: "They are
the Jews, they are the Jews." He also has stated: "One of the greatest social ills facing
American today is Islamophobia, and anti-Muslim bigotry. And if you trace the organizations and
the main advocates and activists in Islamophobia in America, you will see that all those
organizations are pro-Israeli occupation organizations and activists." Walid's anti-American
bias is reflected in his view that the 2009 shooting death of a Detroit imam was unjust,
despite the imam's refusal of police orders to lay down his weapon and surrender and his fire
at police first ( www.investigativeproject.org/3608/dawud-walid-the-quran-and-jews
).
Obama's ties to Muslims with anti-American and radical leanings predate his election to the
presidency. The Obama campaign's Muslim outreach adviser Mazen Asbahi was forced to resign in
August 2008 after Wall Street Journal article unmasked his indirect radical and MB ties. In
2000, Asbahi served on the board of the Islamic investment fund Allied Assets Advisors Fund
(AAAF), a Delaware-registered trust. Asbahi also has been a frequent speaker before several
U.S.-based groups that scholars associate with the MB. AAAF is a subsidiary of the North
American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which receives funding from the government of Saudi Arabia and
holds the title to many U.S. mosques in the U.S. NAIT promotes fundamentalist Islam compatible
with both the ideology of MB and Saudi Arabian Wahhabism. Other AAAF board members at the time
included one Jamal Sayid, the imam at a fundamentalist mosque in Illinois the Bridgeview Mosque
in Bridgeview, Ill., outside Chicago. Sayid served on the AAAF board until 2005. The Justice
Department designated the imam an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 racketeering trial of
several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial. Sayid has been identified as a
leading Hamas member in numerous news reports since 1993.
(www.wsj.com/articles/SB121797906741214995 and
http://www.globalmbwatch.com/2008/08/06/breaking-news-obama-advisor-resigns-after-wall-street-journal-report/
). Asbahi reportedly has connections to two other MB-linked organizations, the Institute For
Social Policy And Understanding and SA Consulting. One of the latter's three managers is Omer
Totonji, the apparent son of Iraqi-born U.S. Muslim Brotherhood founder Ahmed Totonji
(www.globalmbwatch.com/2008/08/01/breaking-news-obama-top-muslim-adviser-part-of-two-more-organizations-tied-to-us-muslim-brotherhood/).
The White House's 'go to' imam is Mahomed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), to which Asbahi also has ties
(www.globalmbwatch.com/2008/08/01/breaking-news-obama-top-muslim-adviser-part-of-two-more-organizations-tied-to-us-muslim-brotherhood/).
Although Magid has been involved in outreach to Jews at the US Holocaust Museum and the gay
community, he has also awarded an American Muslim who has verbally attacked Jews on an Islamist
ideo-theological basis. Magid is often invited to attend administration speeches on US Middle
East policy at the State Department, has advised the FBI and the Justice Department to
criminalize defamation of Islam, and is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's
Countering Violent Extremism Working Group. He also advises other federal agencies. In 2012
Magid's ISNA organized a "Diversity Forum" at which Magid gave a diversity award to CAIR
Michigan branch director Dawud Walid, just weeks after Walid's sermon at the Islamic
Organization of America (IOA) mosque in Warren, Michigan, in which he claimed Jews had incurred
the wrath of Allah (www.investigativeproject.org/3608/dawud-walid-the-quran-and-jews and
https://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-shariah-czar-mohamed-magid-hands-diversity-award-to-jew-hater-dawud-walid
).
Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) co-founder and director Salam al-Marayati is a frequent
White House visitor and administration consultant
(www.mpac.org/programs/government-relations.php). Marayati has said that Israel should have
been added to the "suspect list" for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ( http://theblacksphere.net/2013/04/devout-muslims-in-key-positions-in-the-white-house/
). MPAC has stated Muslims should be "confronting a nation of cowards," speaking of the United
States in the words of former U.S. Attorney General (
www.mpac.org/programs/government-relations/ferguson-confronting-a-nation-of-cowards.php ).
Marayati's MPAC spokeswoman in 2007, one Edina Lekovic, was editor of Al-Talib: The Muslim
News Magazine at UCLA , for its July 1999 issue which praised Osama bin Laden as a
"glorious mujahed" and in 2007 lied on national television about it, for which she was later
fully exposed by Investigative Project director Stephen Emerson
(www.investigativeproject.org/293/ms-lekovica-dozen-printing-mistakes). By the early 2000s, if
not much during Ms Lekovic's years at UCLA, the UCLA MSA was engaged in Islamist and
anti-Semitic propaganda and agitation, including support for the publication
(www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/MSA%20and%20Jihad%20Network%20v5b-1.pdf). CAIR was
affiliated with the university paper, with its southern California chapter's director sitting
on Al-Talib 's editorial board
(www.investigativeproject.org/271/mpac-cair-and-praising-osama-bin-laden). The UCLA MSA was
also intimately involved with the newspaper's publishing and protest activity attacking Jews
(www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/MSA%20and%20Jihad%20Network%20v5b-1.pdf and www.danielpipes.org/blog/2003/06/cairs-legal-tribulations
).
Given all of the above, it is certainly not unreasonable to suspect that President Obama's
Cairo speech was intended to lend support to the world's most powerful MB branch -- that in
Egypt. The Obama administration's warm support for Egypt's MB-led revolution and short-lived
regime and cold shoulder to Gen. Sisi's government is well-known and speaks for itself.
Part 2: The Obama Administration and the MB Abroad
Abroad, President Obama's sympathy for semi-Islamist, MB-like elements at home was soon
reflected in his foreign policy. In 2011 Obama issued a secret directive called Presidential
Study Directive-11, or PSD-11, which, according to the Washington Times, outlined a strategy
for backing the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East as a strategy for supporting reform
and blocking jihadism's advances in the region (
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/inside-the-ring-muslim-brotherhood-has-obamas-secr/
).
It appears to have been the foundation of the Obama administration's overall strategy in the
Middle East and North Africa and the war against jihadism. It would be evident in the
administration's policy failures in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Those failures would
influence U.S. relations with allies and competitors, especially the other major powers in the
region – Russia and Turkey – putting them on a collision course as they attempted a
region in free-fall collapse as a result, for the most part, of American policies.
Egypt
The Obama administration first encouraged the MB-led overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's secular
Arab nationalist regime in Egypt, and then openly supported the new MB 'democracy.' Thus, the
U.S. was backing the overthrow of the leader who had repressed the MB in the wake of the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981, in which the some MB members
were involved but not the main actors. Thus, President Obama invited MB leader and new Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsi to the White House, a strong endorsement from any U.S. president. After
President Obama's November 2012 meeting with the MB's now Egyptian President Morsi, Obama told
his aides that he "sensed an engineer's precision with surprisingly little ideology"
(www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/world/middleeast/egypt-leader-and-obama-forge-link-in-gaza-deal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&src=un&feedurl=http:/json8.nytimes.com/pages/world/middleeast/index.jsonp&pagewanted=all&).
This was at a time when the Israeli incursion in Gaza was at its peak and Egyptian MB officials
were issuing the most harsh and sometimes jihadist and racist statements in relation to Israel
and Jews. Just days before Obama met with Morsi, the latter declared in Cairo's Al-Azhar
mosque: "The leaders of Egypt are enraged and are moving to prevent the aggression on the
people of Palestine in Gaza. We in Egypt stand with Gaza," he said. "[W]e are with them in one
trench, that he who hits them, hits us; that this blood which flows from their children, it, it
is like the blood flowing from the bodies of our children and our sons, may this never happen."
At the same time, the chairman of Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party, Saad Katatni was making
threats of jihad against Israel: "We are with you (Gaza) in your jihad. We have come here to
send a message from here to the Zionist entity, to the Zionist enemy. And we say to them, Egypt
is no longer. Egypt is no longer after the revolution a strategic treasure for you. Egypt was
and still is a strategic treasury for our brothers in Palestine; a strategic treasure for Gaza;
a strategic treasure for all the oppressed"
(www.investigativeproject.org/3827/obama-administration-oversells-morsi).
MB officials and its official website in fact issued a series of anti-Semitic and jihadi
calls. During one MB-organized protest at the time, preacher Muhammad Ragab called on Muslims
"to raise the banner of jihad against the tyrannical, invading and wicked sons of apes and pigs
[i.e., the Jews], and to unite against the enemies of Allah." MB website articles described
"Zionists" as "apes and pigs," "scum of the earth," "prophet murderers," or "infidels." For
example, MB General Guide Dr. Muhammad Badi issued various jihidist and anti-Semitic calls and
motifs, including a quote of the hadith of "the rocks and the trees" – a well-known
Islamic antisemitic motif–also found in Hamas's founding charter–according to which
the Muslims will fight and kill the Jews before the Day of Judgment. The MB also repeatedly
thanked God for the deaths of Israeli civilians during the killed by rockets
(www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6836.htm).
The Obama administration has never criticized the Egyptian MB or any other MB branch for
pro-Hamas and pro-jihad rhetoric whether from Morsi, Katatni, or their 'ikhwan' associates. In
addition, he nor any U.S. official ever threatened sanctions as the new MB regime allowed
Islamist elements to attack Coptic Christians, and he was reluctant to support the overthrow of
the MB regime and the return to power of the now military-backed Arab nationalist rule under
Gen. Sisi.
Indeed, when confronted by a journalist on the issue, then State Department spokeswoman and
architect of State's remarkably similarly failed Ukraine policy, Victoria Nuland responded:
"Well, I'm obviously not, from this podium, going to characterize the Egyptian view, nor am I
going to speak for them and characterize our private diplomatic conversations. We all agree on
the need to de-escalate this conflict, and the question is for everybody to use their influence
that they have to try to get there"
(www.investigativeproject.org/3827/obama-administration-oversells-morsi). This pro-MB policy
orientation was mirrored in the events in Libya and elsewhere that soon followed.
Libya
The administration then directly intervened to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi regime in
Libya–another country with a considerable MB presence–in violation of a UN
resolution limiting NATO action to establishing a no-fly zone backed by Russia by its
abstention in the UN Security Council vote. The overthrow of Qaddafi first led to minimal
change after elections and eventually anarchy and a civil war, which rages to this day. The
parliamentary elections of July 2012 saw National Transition Council president Mustafa Abdul
Jalil's party take the most votes, but Jalil represented limited change having been the
economic advisor of Qaddafi's son. The elections also provided an opening for the MB, which
finished in second place. But these elections failed in strengthening regime or consolidating
democracy, and the country soon melted down into civil war, with jihadi elements supplementing
the Islamist trend represented by the MB.
The Obama administration pattern of supporting MB and, unwittingly through it, jihadi
elements such as AQ first emerged in Libya in 2011. In the words of the Citizens' Commission on
Benghazi (CCB) -- founded in September 2013 and including among its members former US
Congressman Peter Hoekstra and numerous former CIA and military officers -- the Obama
administration "switched sides in the war on terrorism" ( www.aim.org/benghazi/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CCB-Interim-Report-4-22-2014.pdf
). CCB member and former CIA officer Clare Lopez concludes that "the Qaddafi opposition was led
by the Muslim Brotherhood and the fighting militia was dominated by al-Qaida. That's who we
helped" ( http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/mustafa-abdul-jalil/
).
A December 2015 FOIA release of emails of then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton show
that from the outset of protests in Libya the Obama administration was aware of AQ's presence
in the U.S. backed opposition and anti-Qaddafi rebels' war crimes and had sent special ops
trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of the protests, and concerned regarding oil access
for Western firms, Qaddafi's gold and silver reserves and his plans for a gold-backed currency
that might weaken Western currencies. Thus, Clinton's unofficial advisor and envoy to the
region, Sidney Blumenthal refers in one email to "an extremely sensitive source" who confirmed
that British, French, and Egyptian special ops forces were training the Libyan rebels along the
Egyptian-Libyan border and in Benghazi's suburbs within a month of the first ant-Qaddafi
protests which began in Benghazi in mid-February 2011. By March 27 what was repeatedly being
referred to as a popular revolt involved foreign agents "overseeing the transfer of weapons and
supplies to the rebels" of the National Libyan Council (NLC) opposition front, including "a
seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition." Blumenthal then notes that
"radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa'ida in the Islamic
Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command." Moreover, Blumenthal
reported to her that "one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily
execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting." The commander was using a
label–'foreign mercenaries'–used by opposition forces for the black Libyans favored
under his regime and apparently was not referring to the Western special forces training and
backing the rebels, whose atrocities of Libyan blacks were well-documented at the time by human
rights groups the U.S. government often cites. Furthermore, Blumenthal states that the stories
of Qaddafi's forces engaging in mass rape and his distributing Viagra to encourage them were
only rumors, and yet these rumors became a charge leveled officially by Clinton in a State
Department statement, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice at the UN itself, and numerous Western
officials and media. The claims were shown in July 2011 by Amnesty International to have been
very likely false and initiated by the rebels (
www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/
with links to original sources). The above-mentioned CCB investigation, based on interviews
with sources in U.S. intelligence agencies and the military, concludes that the U.S.
facilitated delivery of weapons and military support to Libyan rebels from the MB who were
linked to AQ, including the AQ cell that undertook the Bengazi consulate attack that killed
U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three CIA operatives.( www.aim.org/benghazi/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CCB-Interim-Report-4-22-2014.pdf
).
A New York Times investigation confirms the interpretation supported by the recently
disclosed documents and CCB investigation. Secretary of State Clinton, whose ear Huma Abedin
had, provided the pivotal support convincing the president first to back a UN resolution on a
no-fly zone and disabling Qaddafi's command and control. Clinton also led the push inside the
administration to upgrade from that policy to one of pursuing a rebel victory and a strategy of
letting its allies supply weapons to the rebels and knowingly and willfully exceed the UN
resolution's legal writ. Almost immediately after the UN resolution's adoption and well before
Qadaffi was killed, the U.S. was providing assistance that went far beyond that necessary to
secure a no-fly zone. According to former CIA Director, General David Petraeus, the United
States was then already providing "a continuing supply of precision munitions, combat search
and, and surveillance." Throughout spring 2011, the Obama administration looked the other way
as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates supplied the rebels with lethal weapons, according to the
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, and Clinton knew and was ostensibly "concerned that
Qatar, in particular, was sending arms only to militias from the city of Misurata and select
Islamist brigades." The State Department's Libya policy adviser Daniel Shapiro acknowledged to
the NYT that the goal no longer was enforcing a no-fly zone but "winning" and "winning quickly
enough," the latter goal perhaps connected with U.S. domestic politics and the presidential
election little more than a year away. US State Department's Policy Planning Director
Anne-Marie Slaughter confirmed in the NYT article that the U.S. "did not try to protect
civilians on Qaddafi's side" (Jo Becker and Scott Shane, "The Libya Gamble, Part 1: Hillary
Clinton's 'Soft Power' and a Dictator's Fall," New York Times , 27 February 2016,
www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?emc=edit_th_20160228&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59962778&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2ASituation%20Report&_r=0).
Clinton was unusually interested–on "the activist side"–in having the U.S. take
part, if a clandestine part in the supply of weapons to "secular" Libyan rebels "to counter
Qatar" and the threat of lost influence. However, senior military officials, such as NATO's
supreme allied commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis and Obama's national security adviser Tom
Donilon warned that there were signs, "flickers." of Al Qaeda within the opposition and the
administration would not be able to ensure that weapons would not fall into Islamist
extremists's hands. This was a 'flicker' of the tragedies in Benghazi and Syria yet to
come(Becker and Scott Shane, "The Libya Gamble, Part 1: Hillary Clinton's 'Soft Power' and a
Dictator's Fall").
The CCB and the NYT also concluded that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had communicated to
the U.S. his willingness to resign and depart from Libya and that the U.S. facilitated the
delivery of arms to Libyan MB rebels tied to AQ in the person of its North African affiliate,
AQ in Maghreb or AQIM. Moreover, the investigation found that the U.S. ignored Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi's called for a truce and expressed a readiness to abdicate shortly after the
2011 Libyan revolt began but was ignored or rebuffed by U.S. officials leading to "extensive
loss of life (including four Americans), chaos, and detrimental outcomes for U.S. national
security objectives across the region" ( www.aim.org/benghazi/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CCB-Interim-Report-4-22-2014.pdf
). There was another plan supported by State Department policy planning director Slaughter to
have Qaddafi step down in favor of one his sons, but this was also rejected by Clinton in favor
of supporting the rebels to victory and violating international law established by the UN
resolution (Becker and Scott Shane, "The Libya Gamble, Part 1: Hillary Clinton's 'Soft Power'
and a Dictator's Fall").
The CCB's broader conclusions about the Islamist revolution in U.S. counter-jihadism policy
is backed up by revelations from other newly disclosed documents regarding the debacle in
Syria. The Obama administration's MB policy in Libya–which was already getting out of
control and would turn Libya into a failed state, a jihadi and in particular IS stronghold, and
a main source of Europe's refugee deluge–would be applied to Syria as well with even more
disastrous results. Documents show that the U.S. administration was well aware that no later
than October 2012 weapons of the formerly Qaddafi-led Lybian army were being sent from Libyan
MB and AQ rebels to the increasingly jhadist-dominated Syrian opposition.
Obama, the MB, and Jihadists in Syria
When the Syrian revolt began in Daraa on March 18, 2011, the Syrian MB only existed abroad,
having been exiled by Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father and predecessor. However, its support
abroad translated into strength in the original opposition alliance, the Syrian National
Council (Oct. 2, 2011-Nov. 11, 2012) or SNC, backed and 'weaponized,' literally speaking, by
the West, Turkey, and the Arabs. Turkey and Qatar sponsored the Syrian MB's strong
representation on the SNC, though traditionally different Syrian MB factions have had ties in
Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well and more radical Salafists were stronger at home in 2011-2013 in
contrast to the MB's dominance in Syria from 1979-1982
(www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/01/syria-muslim-brotherhood-past-present.html#). At a
conference hosted by Turkey in Istanbul in October 2011, the Syrian MB became a co-founder of
the SNC, which it came to dominate politically if not numerically ( http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48370
). Exiled Syrian MB members comprise a quarter of the SNC's 310 members, and the MB constitutes
the most cohesive, well-organized and influential bloc within the SNC. Moreover, another
Islamist group within the SNC, the 'Group of 74' consists of former MB members ( http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48370
; http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=48334
; and www.stratfor.com/sample/analysis/more-divisions-among-syrian-opposition
).
The MB is far more clever and deceptive than some other Islamist and all jihadist groups. It
attempts to portray a moderate face and join alliances that function as fronts for its activity
and vehicles for its rise to power. Thus, the SNC platform professed the goal of creating a
full-fledged democracy, with full individual and groups rights and freedoms, elections, and the
separation of powers ( http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48370
). It also allowed more moderate SNC leaders to assume the mantle of leadership to present a
moderate face to foreign sponsors. This is openly acknowledged by MB leaders in the SNC. Former
Muslim Brotherhood leader Ali Sadr el-Din Bayanouni, the SNC's fourth most powerful leader,
stated that SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun was chosen because he "is accepted in the West and at
home and, to prevent the regime from capitalizing on the presence of an Islamist at the top of
the SNC" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk6KTU1zoTE
). In 2012 liberal members began resigning from the council precisely because they saw it
functioning as a liberal front for the MB ( http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/14/200546.html
). One of the SNC's few secular members claimed in February 2012 that more than half of the
council consisted of Islamists ( http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-syria-opposition-idUKTRE81G0VM20120217
).
The SNC joined the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces when the
coalition was founded in November 2012 but withdrew from it in January 2014 when the latter
agreed to enter into talks on a ceasefire and peaceful transition sponsored by the West and
Russia in Geneva. By then both the council and the coalition had been long overtaken by the
Al-Qa`ida-tied Jabhat al-Nusrah and other such groups as well as by the Islamic State (IS). The
National Council is also heavily influenced by the MB. Its first president (November 2012-April
2103), Moaz al-Khatib, was the former imam of the historical Sunni Umayyad Mosque, a converted
Christian church which houses the remains of St. John the Baptist and is situated in the heart
of old Damascus. One of his two vice presidents was Suheir Atassi, ostensibly a secularist, and
Khatib has at times promised equal rights for Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians and Kurds
alike, prompting optimism in the West at the time that he could be a strong counter to the
growing jihadization of the Free Syria Army (FSA). However, Katib is a MB sympathizer if not
clandestine operative, a declared follower of the MB's chief theologian Yusuf al-Qardawi, whom
he calls "our great imam." In accordance with Islamist taqqiya -- the right to lie to
non-Muslims in order to further the Islamic cause -- when communicating in Arabic, Katib's
statements become more radical. He has supported the establishment of a Shariah-law based
stated and his Darbuna.net website has included articles, including some of his own,
which express anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and anti-Shia views ( http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/11/14/islamist-in-chief/
). Moreover, Katib has demonstrated just how much the differences between Islamist groups such
as the MB and jihadists groups like AQ and IS are differences over strategy and tactics, not
the goal of restoring the caliphate and globalizing radical Islamic influence if not rule. He
has also called on the U.S. to reconsider its 2012 decision to declare the AQ-allied Jabhat
al-Nusrah as a terrorist organization, refusing to denounce JN and emphasizing its value as an
ally in the struggle against the Assad regime
(www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2012/1212/For-newly-recognized-Syrian-rebel-coalition-a-first-dispute-with-US-video
and http://www.sharnoffsglobalviews.com/assad-opposition-094/
).
It is important to remember that the dividing lines between secular and Islamist groups such
as the MB and even moreso those between Islamist groups like the MB and jihadi groups like AQ
and IS on the ground in Syria are fluid and porous. The events in Libya demonstrated the
dangers of these intersections, and now failed results would be repeated inside the Syria
opposition with support for 'moderates' and Islamists leading to support for jihadists.
Recently disclosed U.S. government documents reveal the extent to which -- already by at
least mid-2012 -- the Obama administration along with its European and Sunni allies were
supplying financial, weapons, and training support to the SNC in its efforts to overthrow the
Baathist and Alawite-led regime of Bashar al-Assad. Moreover, the documents show that the
weapons were not only going to the MB-dominated SNC but also to the Al Qa`ida (AQ) Iraqi
affiliate, the forerunner to ISIS. In fact, an August 2012 Defense Department/Defense
Information Agency (DIA) document, which would have been based on data from the preceding
months up to a year before mid-2012, emphasized that Salafists, in particular MB and AQ's
affiliate in Iraq 'Al Qaida in Iraq' or AQI already dominated the Syrian opposition forces. The
same document undermines the neo-con argument that if the U.S. had intervened in Syria early
on– say, in 2011 -- there would have been little opportunity for jihadi groups like AQI
and IS to dominate the forces fighting the Assad regime. But already in early 2012 if not
sooner, elements from AQ's group in the region, AQI, immediately moved from Iraq to back the
opposition in Syria, AQI already had been present in Syria for years as part of its operations
in Iraq. Moreover, its strongholds were in the eastern regions of Iraq, and the religious and
tribal leaders there came out strongly in support for the opposition to Syria's secular regime
(
www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
). Therefore, AQI would have had no trouble recruiting for the fight against Assad regardless
of Western actions. One needs only recall the already existing AQI presence and the open desert
terrain and porous border between western Iraq and eastern Syria.
One DoD/DIA document states that weapons were being sent from the port of Bengazi, Libya to
the ports of Banias and Borj Islam in Syria beginning from October 2011–that is, before
the SNC was even founded, meaning Western support actually began quite early on
(www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-1-3-2-3-from-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812/). The
document is heavily redacted (blacked out) and does not indicate who organized the weapons
shipments. However, the detailed knowledge of the reasons why specific ports were selected and
specific ships used suggests that U.S. intelligence, likely the CIA, organized the shipments.
The document states: " The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic
transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able
to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo " ( www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-1-3-2-3-from-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812/
). This shows that U.S. intelligence was already on the ground before October 2011. Moreover,
this demonstrates that early Western actions in the form of supplying weapons especially, only
strengthened AQI's recruitment and development potential both in Iraq and Syria, helping to
produce the Islamic State. I include extended excerpts from the most relevant newly released
documents at the end of this article. One document warned of "dire consequences," most of which
are blacked out, but one potential consequence is not redacted: the "renewing facilitation of
terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena" (
www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
).
The interpretation that the Obama administration intentionally or unintentionally aided and
abetted AQ and the rise of its successor organization ISIS (IS) is supported by the U.S.
administration's second-ranking official. On 2 October 2015 U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden
let the cat out of the big when he was asked the question–"In retrospect do you believe
the United States should have acted earlier in Syria, and if not why is now the right
moment?"– at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Biden
answered:
The answer is 'no' for 2 reasons. One, the idea of identifying a moderate middle has been
a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. We Americans think in every country in
transition there is a Thomas Jefferson hiding beside some rock – or a James Madison
beyond one sand dune. The fact of the matter is the ability to identify a moderate middle in
Syria was – there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of
shopkeepers, not soldiers – they are made up of people who in fact have ordinary elements
of the middle class of that country. And what happened was – and history will record this
because I'm finding that former administration officials, as soon as they leave write books
which I think is inappropriate, but anyway, (laughs) no I'm serious – I do think it's
inappropriate at least , you know, give the guy a chance to get out of office. And what my
constant cry was that our biggest problem is our allies – our allies in the region were
our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends – and I have the greatest
relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with – the Saudis, the
Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially
have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and
tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the
people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis
coming from other parts of the world . Now you think I'm exaggerating – take a look.
Where did all of this go? So now what's happening? All of a sudden everybody's awakened because
this outfit called ISIL which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out
of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a
terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So
what happened? Now all of a sudden – I don't want to be too facetious – but they
had seen the Lord. Now we have – the President's been able to put together a coalition of
our Sunni neighbors ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrXkm4FImvc&feature=youtu.be&t=1h31m57s
).
This illegal activity is at least one if not the main reason behind the Obama
administration's deception of the American people regarding the murder of US ambassador to
Libya Christopher Stevens and three CIA agents in September 2012 in Benghazi. Indeed, the
above-mentioned document and other recently released DoD documents confirm that within hours of
the attack, the entire US government, including those who were at the forefront in claiming the
incident was a political demonstration that took place in reaction to a film denigrating
Islam–President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and US National
Security advisor (then US rep to the UN) Susan Rice–was in fact a carefully planned
terrorist attack carried out by an AQ affiliate in Libya and facilitated by the U.S.
president's favorite Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was also dominant
within the 'moderate' wing of the Syrian opposition and Free Syrian Army. Indeed, the recent
congressional hearings into the Benghazi terrorist attack demonstrated that within a day of the
attack Clinton told her daughter and the Egyptian ambassador to the US that it was a terrorist
attack carried out by a AQ affiliate as described in the document not by a 'demonstration'
protesting film as she told the American people and the relatives of the the CIA agents killed
in the attack.
At the same time, the military and intelligence communities are in virtual mutiny over the
Obama administration's failure to recognize the growing IS and overall jihadi threat and the
risk of growing that threat by continuing the failed MB and other policies the administration
pursues in the MENA region. The military's policy revolt underscores the fact and gravity of
the policy to supply weapons to Syria's MB- and eventually jihadist-infested 'moderate'
opposition to the Assad regime. In a January 2016 London Review of Books article, investigative
journalist Seymour M. Hersh uncovered major dissent and opposition within the Pentagon's Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS) over Obama's policy of supplying weapons to MB elements in Syria. Hersh
found: "Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and
that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him" – has in recent
years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers
on the Pentagon's Joint Staff. Moreover, the Pentagon critics' opposition centered on the
administration's unwarranted "fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin." Another less
likely accurate aspect of their critique holds that "Obama is captive to Cold War thinking
about Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries
share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington,
they believe that Islamic State must be stopped" ( www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
).
In my view, Obama is captive to anything but 'Cold War thinking.' Rather, he is willing
prisoner of his excessive sympathy for Islam, to his MB strategy, and to his perhaps/perhaps
not unconscious association of Putin with the dreaded Republican and conservative white male so
detested by the Democratic Party and American left from which the president hails. That
association has been unintentionally reinforced by Putin's attempt to wear the mantle of
defender of traditional values, Christianity and, as strange as it may seem to come, Western
civilization. However, Hersh's other findings are well-taken.
According to Hersh, the top brass's resistance began in summer of 2013–more than a
year since the CIA, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began to ship guns and goods from Libya via
Turkey and sea to Syria for Assad's toppling. A joint JCS-DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency)
"highly classified," "all-source" intelligence estimate foresaw that the Assad regime's fall
would bring chaos and very possibly Syria's takeover by jihadists was occurring in much of
Libya. Hersh's source, a former JCS senior adviser, said the report "took a dim view of the
Obama administration's insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel
groups." The assessment designated Turkey a "major impediment" to the policy since Ankara had
"co-opted" the "covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad,"
which "had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of
the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State." Moderates had "evaporated" and
the Free Syrian Army was "a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey." The estimate
concluded, according to Hersh and his source, that "there was no viable 'moderate' opposition
to Assad, and the US was arming extremists" ( www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
).
DIA Director (2012-14) Lieutenant General Michael Flynn confirmed that his agency had sent a
steady stream of warnings to the "civilian leadership" about the "dire consequences of toppling
Assad" and the jihadists' control of the opposition. Turkey was not working hard enough to stem
the flow of foreign fighters and weapons across its border and "was looking the other way when
it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria," Flynn says. "If the American public
saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go
ballistic" Flynn told Hersh. But the DIA's analysis, he says, "got enormous pushback" from the
Obama administration: "I felt that they did not want to hear the truth." Hersh's former JCS
adviser concurred, saying: "Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and
actually having a negative impact." "The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be
replaced by fundamentalists. The administration's policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad
to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say
Assad's got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better.
It's the 'anybody else is better' issue that the JCS had with Obama's policy" ( www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
).
In September 2015 more than 50 intelligence analysts at the U.S. military's Central Command
lodged a formal complaint that their reports on IS and AQ affiliate 'Jabhat al-Nusrah' or
JN–some of which were briefed to the president–were being altered inappropriately
by senior Pentagon officials. In some cases, "key elements of intelligence reports were
removed" in order to alter their thrust. The CENTCOMM analysts' complaint was sent in July to
the Defense Department and sparked a DoD inspector general's investigation
(www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/exclusive-50-spies-say-isis-intelligence-was-cooked.html).
This was likely done in response to explicit requests or at least implicit signaling coming
from White House officials on what and what is not politically correct in the president's mind.
Thus, the analysts' complaint alleges that the reports were altered to depict the jihadi groups
as weaker than analysts had assessed in an attempt by CENTCOM officials to adhere to the Obama
administration's line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and JN
(www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/exclusive-50-spies-say-isis-intelligence-was-cooked.html).
This would correlate with the motive behind the Bengazi coverup as well, as the terrorist
attack occurred at the peak of the 2012 presidential campaign when the president was stumping
on slogans that he had destroyed AQ.
Perhaps in response to the growing tensions, President Obama threw the intelligence agencies
under the bus in September 2014 days after the US authorized itself to begin bombing Syria. He
claimed that it was the intelligence agencies who "underestimated what was taking place in
Syria" – a euphemism for the growing power of IS. He did this in August
(www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/09/statement-president-iraq) and again in
September ( http://thehill.com/policy/defense/219123-obama-intel-underestimated-isis
and http://time.com/3442254/obama-u-s-intelligence-isis/
). In turn, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has begun an investigation
and hearings on the intel redactions
(www.nationalreview.com/article/424000/house-investigates-alleged-doctoring-isis-intel-joel-gehrke),
and Obama's former DIA chief, General Michael Flynn, has urged that the investigation begin "at
the top" (
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/24/former-obama-dia-chief-intel-probe-should-focus-on-white-house/
and http://thehill.com/policy/defense/219123-obama-intel-underestimated-isis ).
But matters in the Obama administration are even worse. After illegally running guns to AQ
and then IS and thereby strengthening history's greatest terrorist threat emanating from a
non-state actor, the administration facilitated IS's financing by failing to bomb both the
IS-controlled oil wells and the hundred-long truck convoys that transported the oil to market
across the open desert in open daylight. Although in October 2014 a U.S. State Department,
deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Julieta Valls Noyes, claimed the
sale of IS fuel was one of the US's "principal concerns" and air strikes against them were "a
viable option", nothing was ever done
(www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-on-isis-us-planning-to-bomb-oil-pipelines-to-halt-jihadists-funding-9813980.html).
According to former Obama administration CIA director Mike Morell's statement on November 24th,
the administration refused to bomb oil wells which IS took control of because of the potential
environmental damage (
www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/11/25/obamas-former-cia-director-reveals-real-reason-admin-declined-to-hit-islamic-state-oil-wells/
).
One reason claimed for not attacking the truck convoys was that the drivers of the trucks
ferrying oil from Mosul, Iraq to the Turkish border for sale–more about NATO member
Turkey's role below–were not IS members but rather civilians. Only after Russia's
military intervention and bombing of the IS oil convoys, along with France's doing the same
after the November 13th Paris attacks, did the U.S. carry out its first sorties against the IS
oil convoys on 17 November 2015. In advance of the first U.S. attack on the convoys, U.S.
forces dropped leaflets warning the truck drivers (and any mujahedin accompanying them) of the
impending raid (
www.wsj.com/articles/french-airstrikes-in-syria-may-have-missed-islamic-state-1447685772 ).
It remains unclear how the U.S. knew the drivers were not IS members, whether this is in fact
true, whether this necessarily exonerates them, and whether it is possible to defeat an
extremist insurgency under such legal structures.
However, the perfidy of Obama's MB policy was far greater than simply the usual political
correctness and naivete`of the president and his milieu or the resulting policy failures in
Egypt, Libya Syria and Iraq. By looking the other way and even facilitating the flow of weapons
to rebels, the Obama administration was flirting with violating U.S. anti-terrorism laws. The
administration persisted in funneling arms to MB and other 'moderate' elements, when it was
obvious to any moderately informed analyst that it would be impossible to control the flow of
weapons in the murky circles and dark networks essence of frequently intersecting Islamist and
jihadist organizations.
The administration's main partner in this gambit–NATO member Turkey–would raise
similar and even more troubling issues.
Part 3: Obama's America, Erdogan's Turkey and the 'War Against' Jihadism in Syria and
Iraq is forthcoming later in March .
Pleonexia is a
concept I introduced into a discussion of a similar topic about 2 or so years ago on this
board as being at the root for the decline and fall of the Outlaw US Empire. Here's what Wiki
says about it at the link:
"Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originating from the Greek
πλεονεξία, is a philosophical concept
which roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is strictly defined as '
the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others ', suggesting what
Ritenbaugh describes as ' ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and
things exist for one's own benefit '" [My Emphasis]
That trait's shared by all Imperialist nations all of which arose based on the same
Greco-Roman foundations or learned those traits from them as in the case of the Japanese.
Indeed, that such traits aren't recognized speaks to the illiteracy of those rising to or
placed in leadership positions as they seem to be totally unaware of the numerous lessons
within Greek and Roman literature/culture--lessons known by the Founders and others 250 years
ago when to be considered educated you had to know Greek, Latin, and their classical
literature. As Walter says, it's a Greek Tragedy; but the play began in the last quarter of
the 19th Century as has also been written about.
Those running the Outlaw US Empire seem oblivious to the wall they're about to run the
nation into, or we might say it's a cliff that will take the nation into the abyss. The G-20
determined last year that a new global currency to conduct commerce was required to replace
the dollar. A short discussion and linking of articles occurred on that topic yesterday
between me and Likklemore. Bevin insisted we discuss the failure of Capitalism and what needs
to come next as its replacement. I've advocated the need for a steady-state socialist system
as the new global political-economy. As I reported, a prominent Singaporean in promoting his
newest book wrote in The Economist that the advent of the pandemic marks the start of
the Asian Century thanks to the gross Moral Failure of the West and the Outlaw US Empire as
its lead nation.
How does a group of people get cured of Pleonexia? It's likely way too late for the
current crop of oligarchs; but what of their heirs who were presumably schooled in similar
fashion to their elders, and their progeny? I'm with Hudson in that their wealth must be
written down close to zero, and the new system emplaced will not allow a repetition.
Meanwhile, someone needs to get busy writing about the current Tragedy such that future
generations can learn its lessons so they're not repeated.
"... Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World." ..."
"... In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and security apparatus organized into regional commands that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy. ..."
"... The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization. ..."
"... In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit. ..."
"... Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness. ..."
"... The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy. And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America, $17.5 billion is set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace. ..."
"... To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over. ..."
This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American healthcare system was becoming
obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. "We have Third World
countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle,"
noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked
doctor in New York who described
"a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was
happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he
said
. "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my
country."
At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and
confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic"
analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a "
third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been
confined solely to lower income countries).
And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is
absent from any of
these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third
World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world"
scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world
dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the
potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a
country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken
economies and corrupt leaders."
Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or
lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and
political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the
"Third World."
In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70
nations –
more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases,
listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military
personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and
security apparatus organized into regional commands
that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the
British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.
The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United
States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the
name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that
300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then
called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite
decolonization.
Since then, the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries,
many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to
nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions
took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to
achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).
In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more
on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our
nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget
and over half of all
discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the
Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.
Trump's claim that Obama had
"hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the
security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the
White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the
overwhelming support of House Democrats.
And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning,
resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to
the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of
this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions.
The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the
deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million
Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who
largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of
International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said
.
Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for
presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any
other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's
military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as
though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.
Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so
long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the
U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.
The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should
automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and
sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy.
And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been
earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that
channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America,
$17.5 billion is
set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as
aerospace.
To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it
frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect
a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the
details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already
issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget
on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any
actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.
On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own
global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics,
particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans
are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle
East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because
Muslims hate our way of life.
This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life
making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of
the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the
outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus
itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that
country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually
guarantee its spread throughout the region.
Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks
the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition
of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the
Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .
Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now
resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized
nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those
authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a
policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass
incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in
radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.
Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn
that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism
– our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the
population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.
Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should
nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist
rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the
world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World
countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance
of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance,
has responded
to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.
Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive
confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent,
as has been predicted,
millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the
middle of a pandemic.
Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire
referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language
to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their
different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization
boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that
consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and
self-delusion.
Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical
contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things
that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our
imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look
toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic,
and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond
shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and
democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with
the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.
FBI memos show case was to be closed with a defensive briefing before a second interview
with Flynn was sought.
Evidence withheld for years from Michael Flynn's defense team shows the FBI found "no
derogatory" Russia evidence against the former Trump National Security Adviser and that
counterintelligence agents had recommended closing down the case with a defensive briefing
before the bureau's leadership intervened in January 2017
In the text messages to his team, Strzok specifically cited "the 7th floor" of FBI
headquarters, where then-Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCane worked,
as the reason he intervened.
"Hey if you haven't closed RAZOR, don't do so yet," Strzok texted on Jan. 4,
2017
####
JFC.
Remember kids, the United States is a well oiled machine that dispenses justice equitably
along with free orange juce to the tune of 'One Nation Under a Groove.'
So, I think Mark asked about 'legal action', but as you can see Barr and others are going
through this stuff with a fine tooth comb so it is as solid when it goes public. More
importantly, it can be used as evidenec to reform such corruption and put some proper
controls in place to stop it happening again at least for a few years
And meanwhile everybody who thinks they might be in the line of fire at some future moment is
destroying evidence as fast as they can make it unfindable.
"... Comey later publicly took credit when he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over" to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case. ..."
"... In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd, although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it. Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant general ..."
"... Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy hunt. ..."
Previously undisclosed documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn offer us a chilling
blueprint on how top FBI officials not only sought to entrap the former White House aide but
sought to do so on such blatantly unconstitutional and manufactured grounds.
These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of
those investigations under former FBI director James Comey. For all of those who have long seen
a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the
fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a "deep state" conspiracy.
One note reflects discussions within the FBI shortly after the 2016 election on how to
entrap Flynn in an interview concerning his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. According to Fox News, the note was written by the former FBI head of
counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, after a meeting with Comey and his deputy director, Andrew
McCabe.
The note states, "What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?" This may have expressed an honest question over the motivation
behind this targeting of Flynn, a decision for which Comey later publicly took credit when
he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over"
to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case.
The new documents also explore how the Justice Department could get Flynn to admit breaking
the Logan Act, a law that dates back to from 1799 which makes it a crime for a citizen to
intervene in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. It has never been used
to convict a citizen and is widely viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional.
In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing
illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd,
although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it.
Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant
general .
Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the
legal version of a canned trophy hunt.
It is also disturbing that this evidence was only recently disclosed by the Justice
Department. When Flynn was pressured to plead guilty to a single count of lying to
investigators, he was unaware such evidence existed and that the federal investigators who had
interviewed him told their superiors they did not think that Flynn intentionally lied when he
denied discussing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his
team changed all that and decided to bring the dubious charge. They drained Flynn financially
then threatened to charge his son.
Flynn never denied the conversation and knew the FBI had a transcript of it. Indeed,
President Trump publicly
discussed a desire to reframe Russian relations and renegotiate such areas of tensions. But
Flynn still ultimately pleaded guilty to the single false statement to federal investigators.
This additional information magnifies the doubts over the case.
Various FBI officials also lied and acted in arguably criminal or unethical ways, but all
escaped without charges. McCabe had a supervisory role in the Flynn prosecution. He was then
later found by the Justice Department inspector general to have repeatedly lied to
investigators. While his case was referred for criminal charges, McCabe was fired but never
charged. Strzok was also fired for his misconduct in the investigation.
Comey intentionally leaked FBI material, including potentially classified information but
was never charged. Another FBI agent responsible for the secret warrants used for the Russia
investigation had falsified evidence to maintain the investigation. He is still not indicted.
The disconnect of these cases with the treatment of Flynn is galling and grotesque.
Even the judge in the case has added to this disturbing record. As Flynn appeared before
District Judge Emmet Sullivan for sentencing, Sullivan launched into him and said he could be
charged with treason and with working as an unregistered agent on behalf of Turkey. Pointing to
a flag behind him, Sullivan declared to Flynn, "You were an unregistered agent of a foreign
country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States.
That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country
out."
Flynn was never charged with treason or with being a foreign agent. But when Sullivan
menacingly asked if he wanted a sentence then and there, Flynn wisely passed. It is a record
that truly shocks the conscience. While rare, it is still possible for the district court to
right this wrong since Flynn has not been sentenced. The Justice Department can invite the
court to use its inherent supervisory authority to right a wrong of its own making. As the
Supreme Court made clear in 1932, "universal sense of justice" is a stake in such cases. It is
the "duty of the court to stop the prosecution in the interest of the government itself to
protect it from the illegal conduct of its officers and to preserve the purity of its
courts."
Flynn was a useful tool for everyone and everything but justice. Mueller had ignored the
view of the investigators and coerced Flynn to plead to a crime he did not commit to gain
damaging testimony against Trump and his associates that Flynn did not have. The media covered
Flynn to report the flawed theory of Russia collusion and to foster the view that some sort of
criminal conspiracy was being uncovered by Mueller. Even the federal judge used Flynn to rail
against what he saw as a treasonous plot. What is left in the wake of the prosecution is an
utter travesty of justice.
Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution. But whatever the "goal" may have been in
setting up Flynn, justice was not one of them.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington
University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - "
Source "
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President
Trump's former national security advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory
evidence in his case. Flynn is defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their
investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally
coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that
guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case, US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will
dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen.
One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI, lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election
has been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6
officer Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing
fraud against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level
Trump advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator
envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather
part and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top both former Director James Comey and
current Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it
was carried out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the
assistance of national security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a
conspiracy that would rival any investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years
of honorable service in the US Army revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador
to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama
ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation
was intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian
communications. Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden, so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances
deemed critical to national security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an
investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy
of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of
the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion
scandal, is currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era
officials in relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served
as the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist
for then acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn
then-White House Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his
conversations with Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet
the available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when
interviewed on January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI
parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official
testimony clearly show that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared
contemporaneously, and that he had shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case
prepared against him by the Department of Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 over seven
months after the interview was cited as the evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal
agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea
agreement, in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in
Giglio v. United States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators
constitutes a violation of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and
prosecutorial misconduct. Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the
government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule
of law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
America was and remains an exceptional nation in terms of the spirit of its people,
creativity of its economic system, and ability to adapt to new circumstances. But
exceptionalism is not a mandate for the reckless pursuit of peripheral objectives at the
expense of real global priorities, nor for championing short-term gains over America's
long-term interest without anticipating predictable consequences. The Chinese character for
"crisis" famously carries a second meaning: "opportunity." Although the world currently finds
itself in the center of an existential crisis, a promising opportunity may well rest just over
the horizon.
Uncle Volodya says, "Ignorance is always correctable.
But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?"
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of
anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by
the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
―
Issac Asimov
There's a prejudice against making fun of the mad that spans all cultures, all ethnicities; mock the mentally ill
at your peril, for some fair-minded citizen will surely intervene. Possibly many, enough to make you take to your
heels, because those who were born without the ability to reason, or had it and lost it, are perhaps God's most
innocent children. There are few compensations for being born half-a-bubble off plumb, but one of them is
anti-mockery armor. Having a laugh at the expense of the lunatic is bad form; something only dicks do, because it's
cheap and easy.
That's what must be preventing Dmitry Rogozin from roaring with laughter; from falling helplessly to his knees and
collapsing, wheezing, onto his side. If someone smart says something stupid, they are fair game. But laughing when
someone whose openly-stated beliefs suggest they are suffering from dementia is inappropriate. His dilemma is both
obvious, and acute what to do?
First, some background; who is Dmitry Rogozin? A former Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Russian
Federation's defense industries, he also served as his country's Ambassador to NATO. He has degrees in philosophy and
technology, and currently serves as the Russian Federation's Special Representative on Missile Defense. He is also
the Director of Roscosmos, the Russian state's Space Industry. Some have talked him up as a possible replacement for
Vladimir Putin, as President of the Russian Federation, but it is in his latter capacity, head of Roscosmos, that we
are most interested today. He knows more about rockets than that they are pointy at one end and have fire at the
other, if you get my drift.
A bit more background, and then I promise we can begin to tie things together; I think I can also promise you are
going to laugh. Not because you're a dick. But I think you will find you do have to kind of snicker. Just be careful
who hears you, okay? It's not as much of an insult if people don't know.
Most who have any understanding of space or rockets or satellites have heard of the
RD-180
.
But in case there are some readers who have never heard of it, it is the Russian Federation's workhorse rocket
engine. Its first flight was 20 years ago, but it was built on the shoulders of the
RD-170
, which has been in service since 1985, making it a Soviet
project. The RD-180 is essentially a two-combustion-chamber RD-170, which has four and remains the most powerful
rocket engine in the world. The RD-180 is used by the United States in its Atlas space vehicles.
For some time, that was a fairly comfortable arrangement. The USA made fun of Russia whenever it wanted to feel
superior, just as it's always done, and made the occasional ideological stab at 'establishing freedom and democracy'
by changing out its leader, but the Russian people were not particularly cooperative, and there were some problems
getting a credible 'liberal opposition' started; even now, the best candidate still seems to be Alexey Navalny, who
is kind of the granite canoe of opposition figures not particularly well-known, nasty rather than compelling,
spiteful as a balked four-year-old.
But then American ideologues in the US Department of State decided the time was ripe for a coup in Ukraine, and
almost overnight, the United States and Russia were overt enemies. The United States, under Barack Obama,
imposed
sanctions designed to wreck the Russian economy
, in the hope that despairing Russians would throw Putin out of
office. America's European allies went along for the ride, and trade between Russia and its former trade partners and
associates in Europe and the USA mostly dried up.
Not rocket engines, though. America made an exception for those, and continued to buy and stockpile RD-180's. The
very suggestion that RD-180 engines might go on the sanctions list US Federal Claims Court Judge Susan Braden
postulated that funds used to purchase rocket engines
might end up in Rogozin's pocket
(he being head of the Space Program, and all), and he was under US sanctions moved the Commander of the United
States Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center to note that without RD-180 engines, the Atlas program
would have to be grounded
.
All this is by way of highlighting a certain vulnerability. Of course, observers remarked, the United States is a
major technological power it could easily produce such engines itself. So, why didn't it, inquiring minds wanted to
know.
Enter United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tony Bruno, with what reporters described as a 'novel explanation'. Thanks
much for the link, Patient Observer. The United States buys
Russian
rocket engines
to subsidize the Russian space industry
, so that fired rocket scientists will not pack up the wife and kiddies
and their few pitiful belongings, and depart for Iran or North Korea. You know; countries that
really
hate
the United States. I swear I am not making that up. Look:
"The United States is buying Russian rocket engines not because of any problems with its domestic engine
engineering programmes, but to subsidize Russian rocket scientists and to prevent them from seeking employment in
Iran or North Korea, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno has intimated.
"The [US government] asked us to buy [Russian engines] at the end of the Cold War in order to keep the Russian
Rocket Scientists from ending up in North Korea and Iran," Bruno tweeted, responding to a question about what
motivates ULA to continue buying the Russian-made RD-180s."
Sadly, I had no Rogozin-like qualms about being thought a dick. I snorted what I was drinking (chocolate milk, I
think) all over my hand, and gurgled with mirth for a good 20 seconds. Holy Moley what a retarded explanation! How
long did he grope for that, spluttering like Joe Biden trying to remember what office he is currently running for?
Jeebus Cripes, the United States has
no control at all
over what rocket scientists are paid in the Russian
Federation what do they imagine prevents Putin The Diktator from just pocketing all the money himself, or spending
it on sticky buns to feed to Rogozin, and throwing a few fish heads to the rocket scientists? Do they really believe
some sort of symbiotic relationship exists between Russia's rocket scientists and the US Treasury Department?
Really
? Have things actually gotten that far down the road to Simple? I tell you, I kind of felt a little sorry
for Tony 'Lightning Rod' Bruno. But more sorry for his family, who has to go out and find him when he's wandering in
the park with no pants on again, you know. Humanitarian concerns.
"Under RD AMROSS, Pratt & Whitney is licensed to produce the RD-180 in the United States. Originally,
production of the RD-180 in the US was scheduled to begin in 2008, but this did not happen. According to a 2005 GAO
Assessment of Selected Major Weapon Programs, Pratt & Whitney planned to start building the engine in the United
States with a first military launch by 2012. This, too, did not happen. In 2014, the Defense Department estimated
that it would require approximately $1 billion and five years to begin US domestic manufacture of the RD-180 engine."
Well, no wonder! It's a lot cheaper to slip some bucks to starving Russian rocket scientists than spend a Billion
simoleons on a Pratt & Whitney program that will take
five years
(!!!) minimum to set up before it even
starts producing an engine the Russians have been making for 20 years, and gave Pratt & Whitney the plans for. Seen
in that light, it makes a weird kind of sense, dunnit? Minus the altruism and violins, of course.
Right about then, I made a second discovery that shook the fuzz off my fundament.
Tony Bruno did not make that
shit up
. No, indeedy. It would have been simpler, and I have to say a bit more comforting, to assume Tony Bruno
is the locus of American retardation. But he isn't; the poor bastard was just repeating an American doctrinal
political talking-point.
Behold
!
"When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the US government worried about the possible consequences of lots of
Russian rocket designers getting fired. What if they ended up working for regimes like Iran or North Korea?"
Pretty much word-for-word what poor Tony Bruno said. And that was posted 5 years ago.
But who cares, right? Just some wiggy space-nerd site.
Oh, but wait.
Look at his reference
. It's from NASA.
And it does indeed include the paragraph he quoted.
"Moreover, several on the Space Council, as well as others in the Bush Administration, saw another reason to
engage the post-Soviets in a cooperative space venture: as a way to help hold the Russian nation together at a time
when the Russian economy was faltering and its society was reeling. In the words of Brian Dailey, Albrecht's
sucessor, "If we did not do something in this time of social chaos in Russia, then there would be potentially a
hemorrhaging of technology 'away from Russia' to countries who may not have a more peaceful intention behind the
use of those technologies."
I'm not sure how reliable that is the Americans still insist, in it, that they landed on the moon, and it points
out that
Dan Quayle
was head of the National Space Council, dear Lord, have mercy. But it's NASA! There was
apparently a school of thought, prevalent in American politics, that America
had to support the Russian economy
,
for fear of its technological proteges high-siding it for Dangerville. Neither North Korea or Iran are mentioned by
name, but they would certainly be easy to infer from the description.
So we could draw one of two conclusions; either (1) Obama was a witless tool who did not read that historical
imperative (probably had his nose in a healthy-greens cookbook, some shit like that) and blundered ahead with a plan
to wreck the Russian economy, loosing a torrent of Russian rocket scientists into a cynical Murka-hatin' world, or
(2) Obama was a genius who applied sanctions with a surgeon's delicacy, avoiding sanctions on the Russian space
program. Although he did apply sanctions directly on its..umm director. Okay, let's go with (1).
Anyway, it's kind of odd, I guess you'd say, to hear that same Brian Dailey, he who blubbered sympathetically (or
so history records) "We have to do something in this time of social chaos in Russia"
say
this:
"The meeting was actually more or less a signing
ceremony, a large event, so to speak, but it was one that was obviously going to be reaching into some very hard
winds that would prevent us from really moving forward. That's a rather obtuse way of saying that we were having
serious problems with the Russians. They wanted a lot of money for doing these things. They wanted to charge us a lot
of money to hook up, and we didn't believe that since this was a government-to-government activity, that money should
be appropriately involved, and it was the intention of the two Presidents to put something together that would be
funded by their respective governments rather than us trying to fund something for Russia."
Say what? You had to do something for the Russian economy without money? Tell me more.
"
At that point, Dan had got very upset with the
Russians and proceeded to tell them that we were not going to do business with Semenov directly, but our opposite
number was Yuri Koptev, and that he ought to start learning how to work with U.S. industry, and that we were not
going to pay for this particular activity and we were not going to be blackmailed into paying them, so to speak, and
insisted that this be taken off the table and we proceed to find ways of making this happen, not ways to slow it down
or charge us for any kind of cooperative activities like this.
"
This all had to do with cooperation on some sort of docking system for the Mir Space Station, nothing to do with
the RD-180, but I think you can see why I would be a bit skeptical regarding Project Payola for the Russian rocket
scientists.
You might be getting a tingly feeling call it a suspicion that the USA is kind of pulling our leg on the idea
that it can make a superior multi-chamber rocket engine any time it feels like it, and is just buying the RD-180 on
long-ago government orders to cut the Russians a break. You might suspect the RD-180 is actually a pretty good
engine, but the United States can't make it for that kind of money, and perhaps can't make it at all. I know! Let's
ask
United Launch Alliance
, that company that Tony Bruno is the CEO of.
"The Atlas launch vehicle's main booster engine, the RD-180, has demonstrated consistent performance with
predictable environments over the past decade. The RD-180 has substantially contributed to the established a record
of high reliability on Atlas launch vehicles since its debut on the Atlas III in May of 2000."
You don't say. Tell me more.
"In the early 1990s the closed cycle, LOx rich, staged combustion technology rumored to exist in Russia was
originally sought out by General Dynamics because engines of this kind would be able to provide a dramatic
performance increase over available U.S. rocket technology. Unlike its rocket building counterparts in the United
States, Europe, China, and Japan, Russia was able to master a unique LOx rich closed cycle combustion technology
which delivered a 25% performance increase."
But but I read the George H.W. Bush administration urged America to buy Russian rocket engines because they heard
a rumor there was a suitcase sale on at the Energomash company store. And that, you know, the scientists might be
planning a little trip.
"NPO Energomash, the leading designer of engines in Russia, had gone through hundreds of designs, each an
improvement on the last, to harness the power of LOx rich combustion. This required a very careful approach to how
the fuel is burned in the preburner so that the temperature field is uniform. It also required improvements in
materials and production techniques. They found a way to take the chamber pressures to new limits while protecting
the internal components from fire risks. This required a new class of high temperature resistant stainless steel
invented to cope with the risks of the LOx rich environment."
Oh, seriously, c'mon is it as good as all that?
"The demonstrated performance established during this process was beyond anything achieved in the United
States. The RD-180 reaches chamber pressures up to 3,722psia which was more than double the chamber pressures
achieved by comparable U.S. engines. Exposure to Russian design philosophy and the success of a high performance
engine made U.S. engine designers question their own methods. This dual sided cross-cultural engineering approach
which has persisted through the life of the RD-180 program adds depth to the understanding of engine capability and
operational characteristics."
Okay, thanks, company that Tony Bruno is the CEO of. Good to know it wasn't just charity.
The EU should reconsider its 'all or nothing' approach on sanctions imposed on Russia for
its role in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as its annexation of Crimea, a
new report from the International Crisis Group suggests. The Brussels-based think tank calls
for the easing of certain sanctions in exchange for Russian progress towards peace in
Ukraine.
"Inflexible sanctions are less likely to change behaviour," said Olga Oliker, Europe
and Central Asia programme director. "Because of that, we urge considering an approach that
would allow for the lifting of some sanctions in exchange for some progress, with a clear
intent to reverse that rollback of sanctions if the progress itself is reversed."
.A major roadblock in the implementation of the Minsk deal has been the sequence of
events supposed to bring an end to the conflict that has so far claimed more than 13,000
lives.
Kyiv wants to first regain control over its border with Russia before local elections
in the war-torn region can be held, while Moscow believes that elections must come
first
####
Door. Horse. Barn. Bolted.
The Intentional Critics Grope is yet again a $/€ short in the reality department.
You would think the Editor Gotev (the last two paras by him) would mention that the Minsk
agreement clearly states elections come first and that Kiev has singularly refuse the other
conditions of the agreement, but that really would be asking too much. From a professional
journalist.
It's the same shit we got with the US-North Korea 4 point nuclear agreement where
de-nuclearization of the region is the final stage yet it didn't take Washington and
ball-licking corporate media to parrot 'denuclearization' as the first point as suddently
decided by the Ovum Orifice.*
They try it on again about every six months, just to see if the Russian negotiators have
changed and if the new ones are dimwitted. I'm sure it is crystal clear to the Kremlin that
if it gave Ukraine back exclusive control of the border, it would (a) call up troops and set
up a cordon to make it impossible for eastern Ukraine to be reinforced, and (b) launch an
all-out military push to re-take the breakaway regions. The west would then shout "Safe!!!",
and the game would be over – Ukraine is (almost) whole again, praise Jeebus. There
would be a propaganda storm that Russia was 'trying to meddle in the peace process' while
Kuh-yiv rooted out and either imprisoned or executed all the 'rebel' leaders, and the west
– probably the USA – would provide 'peacekeepers' to give Ukraine time to restore
its complete control over the DNR and LPR. Then, presto! no elections required, we are all
happy Ukrainians!
They knew 'inflexible sanctions were less likely to change behaviors' when they first
agreed to impose them – but they were showing their belly to Washington, and don't know
how to stop now. Serves them right if they are losing revenue and market share.
I don't think Russia is very interested, beyond polite diplomatic raising of the eyebrows, in
relaxing of sanctions under conditions the EU is careful to highlight could be reapplied in a
trice, as soon as anyone was upset with Russia's performance. Because that moment would be
literally only a moment away. The UK can be counted on to register blistering outrage at the
drop of a hat, and while its influence on the EU will soon be limited, dogs-in-the-manger
like Poland can always be relied upon to throw themselves about in an ecstasy of victimhood.
It would be impossible to set up any sort of dependable supply chain, as the interval between
orders would never be known with any degree of certainty. Fuck the EU. Russia is better off
to press on as it has been doing. The EU has to buy oil and gas from Russia because the
logistics and price of American supplies make them economically non-competitive, and best to
just leave it there. The EU will bitch, but it will continue to buy, whereas any other
commerce would be subject to theatrical hissy fits.
"... The person trying to tell the truth is forced to defend, 'Communist China' (Tom Cotton thinks that is one word), Russia, or Iran and to the U.S. public this is toxic. ..."
"... Someday it just won't matter anymore. We will have deceived ourselves for so long that we have squandered so much of our power that no one will pay attention to us. ..."
"... Intelligence is a rare commodity in American politics and diplomacy even more elusive so the consequences of malicious rumours are never weighed nor assessed ..."
"... Intelligence is a rare commodity in American politics and diplomacy even more elusive so the consequences of malicious rumours are never weighed nor assessed ..."
For brevity, I always post that our IC (Intelligence Community) is masterful in shaping
U.S. public opinion and causing problems for targeted countries but terrible in collecting
and analyzing Intel that would benefit the U.S. The truth of course, is more complicated.
There is a remnant that is doing their jobs properly but is shut out from higher level
offices. But I cannot give long disclaimers at the start of my posts, (I'm not talking about
the men and women ...) where 50 words later I finally start to make my point. It's boring,
sounds insincere, and defensive.
This is yet another effective defense mechanism that protects the troublemakers in our IC
bureaucracy.
1. The person trying to tell the truth is forced to defend, 'Communist China' (Tom Cotton
thinks that is one word), Russia, or Iran and to the U.S. public this is toxic.
2. These rogues get to use the remaining good people as human shields.
3. They know their customers, it gives the politicians a way to turn themselves into
wartime leaders rather than having to answer for their shortcomings.
Someday it just won't matter anymore. We will have deceived ourselves for so long that
we have squandered so much of our power that no one will pay attention to us.
/div> Intelligence is a rare commodity in American politics and diplomacy even
more elusive so the consequences of malicious rumours are never weighed nor assessed . The
American public are easily enough fooled being constantly fed a racist diet, especially
Sinophobia, Russophopia and Iranophobia and the drumbeats for war, financial or military, are
easily banged to raise the public's blood pressure....but what about the consequences? America
can win neither, even with he assistance of a few vassal states. What happens if, and when,
normal service is resumed? If they managed to succeed with any of their hair-brained ideas,
what are the consequences for American companies in China, rare earth minerals, the IT
industries etc etc. Guard your words wisely for they can never be retracted.
Posted by: Séamus Ó Néill , May 1 2020 13:46 utc |
13
Intelligence is a rare commodity in American politics and diplomacy even more elusive so
the consequences of malicious rumours are never weighed nor assessed . The American
public are easily enough fooled being constantly fed a racist diet, especially Sinophobia,
Russophopia and Iranophobia and the drumbeats for war, financial or military, are easily
banged to raise the public's blood pressure....but what about the consequences? America can
win neither, even with he assistance of a few vassal states. What happens if, and when,
normal service is resumed? If they managed to succeed with any of their hair-brained ideas,
what are the consequences for American companies in China, rare earth minerals, the IT
industries etc etc. Guard your words wisely for they can never be retracted.
Posted by: Séamus Ó Néill | May 1 2020 13:46 utc |
13
I think there is very good intelligence in the US. so much data is collected and there are
many analysts to go over the data and present their forecasts. The World Factbook is an
example of collected intelligence made available to the unwashed masses.
what you are thinking is that this information should be used to your benefit. that is
where it goes wrong. the big players are able to access and exploit that mass of data and use
it to their benefit.
Billmon used to say that this is a feature, not a bug.
"Not precluded" are also a Fort Detrick origin and contagion taken to Wuhan by the US
military, staying at a hotel where most of the first cluster of patients was identified. So
why wouldn't you always mention both in the same breath?
First hollywood movie I am aware of that deals with pandemics and has Fort Detrick front and
center was "Outbreak" 1995. In this film, the "Expert" played by D. Huffman uncovers a plot
by a rogue 2 star general sitting on the serum from another outbreak years ago, and how he
witheld this information and the serum to "protect their bioweapon". There is also a very
overt background sub-plot about Dod and CDC being at odds.
DoD is not listed in the credits for Outbreak. Many of the scenes are supposed to take
place in CDC and Fort Detrick.
--
Last hollywood movie was "Contagion" 2011. In this film, which pretty much anticipates
Covid-19 madness but with an actually scary virus, the "Expert" in charge tells the DHS man
that "Nature has already weaponized them!".
So this lie about the little bitty part "function gain" man-made mutations being the
critical bit for "weaponizing" viruses is turned on its head. It was "Nature" after all. A
wet market, you know.
Contagion does list DoD in its credits. Vincent C. Oglivie as US DoD Liason and Project
Officer.
Just some 'fun' trivia for us to while away our lives. Remember that consipirational
thought is abberational thought. Have a shot of Victory Gin and relex!
It's always fun to see the Washington foreign policy and Nat-Sec establishment get up on its
hind legs at their critics. It doesn't happen often, and when it does it's usually when someone
has touched a raw nerve, penetrating the bubble, if only momentarily. One time that comes to
mind is when TAC's Andrew Bacevich -- he's really good at this --
called out elite bubble denizens Peter Feaver and Hal Brands for what he said was "close to
being a McCarthyite smear" against realist thinkers in a Commentarypiece
entitled, "Saving Realism from the So-Called Realists."
The two men (Feaver cut his teeth in George W. Bush's National Security Council during the
height of the Iraq War; Brands is an academic with a perch at the neoconservative AEI) implored
TAC to publish a response, writing: "The stakes of debates about American grand strategy are
high, and so it is entirely proper that these debates be conducted with passion and intensity.
But it is equally vital that they be conducted without resort to the sort of baseless ad
hominem attacks that impede intellectual discourse rather than encouraging it."
Hrumph. It is not surprising now that both Feaver and Brands (joined by William Inboden,
also in Bush's wartime NSC), are at it again, this time with a longer treatise in Foreign
Affairs , entitled, "In Defense of
the Blob." The last four years have been rough for the establishment. President
Trump, after running on a platform of getting out of endless wars, is a Jacksonian who refuses
to hide his contempt for this entrenched policy class and all of their attending courtiers and
courtesans, most of whom are leftovers from the Obama, Bush and even Clinton Administrations.
Their "accumulated" knowledge means nothing to this president, as he has plowed his own
mercurial course in North Korea, Syria, Iran and the Middle East.
If that wasn't bad enough, Trump's rip in the Washington Blob's time-space-continuum has
allowed realists and restrainers to quantum leap into the space like no other administration
before. Suddenly, conservatives of all stripes are talking TAC's language. Money is pouring
into colleges and think tanks now, all with the goal of pursuing approaches outside the status
quo of hyper-militarization and American hegemony. The wars have been largely maligned as
failures of the two previous administrations and their "experts." The Quincy Institute,
populated by scholars from both the Right and Left, has risen up to directly challenge the idea
of a necessary militarized "liberal world order" to secure peace across the globe.
"In Defense of the Blob" is filled with so many straw men, lies, and misdirections that the
only takeaway is that we must have hit one hell of a nerve this time. The authors' peculiar
attempt to gaslight their critics, suggesting that we are seeing things that aren't there, is
weak. Like:
Blob theorists view the establishment as a club of like-minded elite insiders who control
everything, take care of one another, and brush off challenges to conventional wisdom. In
reality, the United States actually has a healthy marketplace of foreign policy ideas.
Discussion over American foreign policy is loud, contentious, diverse, and generally pragmatic
-- and as a result, the nation gets the opportunity to learn from its mistakes, build on its
successes, and improve its performance over time.
No, no, and no. As a reporter in this ecosystem for more years than I care to admit, I can
say with absolute certainty the reality is the opposite. The major policy think tanks in
Washington are rife with three sources of funding: government, private defense companies, and
very wealthy neoliberal and neoconservative foundations ( think
Carnegie on the left , Scaife on the right ). The
National Security and "Grand Strategy" programs at elite schools are no different. They all
have one thing in common: the status quo. As a result, the output is hardly dynamic, it's
little more than dogmatic, conventional thinking about world problems that keep bureaucrats in
jobs and always meddling, the military amped up with more hammers and nails to hit, and
politicians (and attending administrative class) favorable to either or both of these goals in
Washington, preferably in power.
This is a closed club that offers only gradations of diversity just like Democrats and
Republicans during the war: No one argued about "liberating" Iraq, only about the tactics. That
was why it was so easy for Hillary Clinton's Nat Sec team in-waiting to create the Center for a
New American Security in 2008 and transition to an Obama think tank shop in 2009. Plug and play
one for the other, counterinsurgency under Bush? Meh. Under Obama? Let's do this! They all had
a plan for staying in Afghanistan, and they made sure we were, until this day.
This doesn't even include the orbit of research centers like RAND and the Center for Naval
Analysis, which actually get government funding to churn out reports and white papers, teach
officer classes, lead war gaming, and put on conferences. Do you really think they call for
less funding, killing programs, eliminating lily pads, or egads, pulling out of entrenched
strategic relationships that might not make sense anymore? Never. The same players get the
contracts and produce just what the government wants to hear, so they can get more money. If
they don't get contracts they don't survive. It's how the swamp works.
As for it being a cabal? This ecosystem -- the Blob -- is a revolving door of sameness, a
multigenerational in-crowd of status-driven groupthink inhabiting a deep state that is both
physical and of the mind. It's a lifestyle, and a class. To get anywhere in it, you not only
have to have the right pedigree, but the right way of thinking. Ask anyone who has attempted to
break in with the "wrong credentials," or marched off the reservation in the early years of
Iraq only to be flung to the professional margins. Conference panels, sanctioned academic
journals, all run by the same crowd. Check the Council on Foreign Relations yearbook, you'll
catch the drift. You can be a neocon, you can be a "humanitarian" interventionist, but a
skeptic of American exceptionalism and its role in leading the post-WWII international system?
Ghosted.
The worst element of the Feaver/Brands/Inboden protest is not so much their pathetic attempt
to suggest that sure, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya "were misconceived and mishandled,"
but they were "no worse" than failures in the preceding decades, like the "bloody stalemate in
Korea," or "catastrophic war in Vietnam." (This completely denies that the same
consensus thinking has been leading our global and military policies for the last 75 years,
therefore the same people who blundered us into Vietnam were also responsible for backing the
contras in Nicaragua, and then blowing up wedding parties in Pakistan three decades later).
No, the worst is the straw man they present when they suggest that "scrapping
professionalism for amateurism would be a disaster." No one has ever suggested that was on
offer. If anything, there has been every attempt, by TAC and the aforementioned new movements,
to shift new voices -- academics, military strategists, politicians, policy wonks and
journalists -- who represent fresh, outside thinking into the forefront, at the levers of
power, to make a difference. People like Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Walt, Doug Macgregor, Chris
Preble, Mike Desch, are hardly lightweights, but to the Borg, they are antibodies, therefore
amateurs.
But Bacevich, Walt, et. al, did not keep their mouths shut or try to obfuscate the truth
during 18 years of failure in Afghanistan. That was left to the friends and colleagues of our
esteemed Feaver, Brands, and Inboden. They cannot deny the Blob's sins because it's all in
black & white in the
Afghanistan Papers . That's what has really hit a nerve, the raw exposure. Still, they cry,
the Blob is "not the problem," but the "solution." We think not. And we think they protest too
much.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Executive Editor of TAC . Follow her on Twitter
@Vlahos_at_TAC
Three comments:
1. Great article.
2. When the world will see the back of US troops out of Afghanistan, the way the USSR
troops pulled out, then I'll say that Trump really is different.
3. "As a reporter in this ecosystem for more years than I care to admit". Actually, it
doesn't show...
Most Russians would say that US foreign policy had nothing to do with the collapse of the
Soviet Union. So while not being a failure, it wasn't in any way a victory either. And
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after that country began side drilling into Iraqi reserves
and stealing them. Hussein complained bitterly to the international community, and invaded
only after nothing was done. How was our attack a good thing? We could of just forced the
Kuwaiti's to stop stealing Iraqi oil.
Now wait a minute. The thing is that several narratives could be constructed here. You have
the narrative that you are constructing here (to which usually one starts with the glorious
beginning of how the US defeated the the evil Nazi Germany).
The Cold War I and now the Cold War II is fundamentally the war between the idea that
private property is paramount and the idea that commons/socialized property under the aegis
of the state (preferably the nation state) is preferable. And from this perspective the
Korean war was a draw and Vietnam war was a defeat for the Mammon. Cuba is also a shining
example of the crappy US politics. Then you have the Pinochet dictatorship, installation of
the Shah in 1953, Lumumba's killing and all kind of other shenanigans (i.e. Operation
Gladius in Italy/Europe, etc.).
And I wouldn't call the Yugoslav war a high mark either.
The containment strategy worked initially because all the socialist countries started
from the rubble of WWII, with minimal industrial base and massive population losses. The
stupidity of the containment strategy is brought to light by the evolution of Vietnam after
the war. Things are getting more and more relaxed there. Even Keenan admitted that this
containment thing was/is fundamentally problematic.
Now Cold War II (started by Obama with the TPP that had as its main pillar the
destruction/privatization [for funny US money] of China's SOE) is being pursued as a
continuation of the same basic idea driving CWI, but also because the technological genie
was freed from its bottle. The ugly truth is that the US is really not that good at real,
real competition (see the history of how inefficient and incapable of technological
advancement the US Steel industry is compared with European Steel Industry; but
fundamentally this is a disease of monopolies). US benefited tremendously of the European
conflicts with a massive influx of educated people (i.e. check Einstein) and it still
benefits from all the foreign graduate students (lots of Chinese) that are for research
based academia the the main workhorses. The way medical research cannot be done without the
lab mice, same research in general cannot be conducted without the graduate students.
So, the fact that the US cannot withstand real, real competition (especially after the
hollowing out of the industrial base due to finacialization), really scares the hell out of
ruling elites. So all kind of malevolent narratives of the Manichean sorts are spun out and
fed to hoi polloi.
It is obviously that you and I live in parallel universes though...
Concerning the lack of US competitive prowess and bullying approaches (beside NS2, or
punishing buyers of Russian weapons), fresh from the news:
"Moscow is studying a report published by the US Department of Energy (DOE), which
mentions Washington's intention to squeeze Russia out of nuclear technology markets, the
Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"We are currently studying the report of the working group on nuclear fuel published by
the US Department of Energy. A significant part of the report is devoted to pushing Russia
and China from the international market for goods and services related to nuclear energy.
Moreover, there is every reason to believe that not only subsidies of the relevant US
industries will be used, but also non-economic methods", the ministry said, responding to a
request for a comment on the report.
In particular, the report outlines a possible strategy of seeking the "adaptation" of
national legislation of some countries in order to ensure the privileged position of US
suppliers with the active participation of Washington, the ministry said. "There is nothing
new here", it added.
Over the past decade, Washington has paid very little attention to the development of
its own nuclear energy, and therefore lags behind leaders in most areas, from uranium
mining to the construction of nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuel management, the
ministry added.
"Now the US authorities apparently intend to improve the situation", it suggested,
adding that this requires significant financial investments.
In order to achieve it, it is necessary to occupy a significant share of the
international nuclear energy market, and the US administration is well aware that it is
impossible to do this through fair competition in an acceptable time because of the lag,
the ministry said.
"Therefore, Washington intends to use non-economic leverage. Such actions by the United
States raise the question of what the principles of free trade advocated by Washington
stand for and whether, in principle, one should adhere to any rules in relations with a
state that itself does not comply with any rules and changes them in a way that is
beneficial for it at the moment", it concluded.
On 23 April, the US Department of Energy released a report from a nuclear fuel working
group, established by President Donald Trump in July, to "outline a strategy to restore
American nuclear energy leadership", according to the DOE's statement."
Its always funny how the "experts" and "professionals" are those who want to uphold the
status quo. If you hold the opposite view you're a "amateur" or "demagogue".
"What makes you more of an expert than them?"
"I pushed for and oversaw three wars! I have far more experience!"
"The National Security and 'Grand Strategy' programs at elite schools are no different."
I absolutely loved this bit because it's so true. Thank God for Kelley pointing this
out. It's indicative of the broader malaise in higher education; they've become centers for
political indoctrination. If you look at the people that comprise the faculty at these
schools, many of them are establishment heavyweights; Eliot A. Cohen, arch-neoconservative,
is Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, for
example, and served in the Bush administration. By comparison, Stephen Walt has never
served in any administration.
These schools charge unbelievable amounts of money to churn out more Eliot Cohens, more
Samantha Powers, etc. Even the military officers who take a turn in policymaking circles or
serve on a staff somewhere are staunch defenders of the institutions. In fact, the total
lack of intellectual diversity is downright disturbing; it's like brainwashing.
Worst of all? The folks who aren't establishment but still have representation in
policymaking circles are all hardliners! Think Frank Gaffney, Fred Fleitz, so on.
On the other hand, though, historically courtiers themselves led their troops on the
battlefield and considered it a question of honor for one or both of their oldest sons
pursuing a military career, while Renaissance courtesans were among the most intellectual
and educated women of their epoch. Neither is true for blobsters and blobstresses.
When the voices against US hegemony and permanent war are loud and taken seriously, then we
can hope for change. But if the same underlying assumptions about the need for military
aggression to "promote democracy," and the targeting of Russia and China as convenient
enemies, are transferred to the "new thinkers," then nothing will change. The question is,
can an aggressive capitalist system, dependent on unlimited growth, survive in a peaceful
world?
When the voices against US hegemony and permanent war are loud and taken seriously, then we
can hope for change. But if the same underlying assumptions about the need for military
aggression to "promote democracy," and the targeting of Russia and China as convenient
enemies, are transferred to the "new thinkers," then nothing will change. The question is,
can an aggressive capitalist system, dependent on unlimited growth, survive in a peaceful
world?
The Bush era foreign policy model is over, its a failed policy and everyone knows it. Obama
didn't have a foreign policy other than appeasement and capitulation.
Trump has a new model, treat foreign policy more like business. Negotiate as is done in
business, the goal is to get what you want and if the other guy gets something he wants
than fine.
Of course the Trump approach derails the entire US State Dept, security council, and all
the media talking heads, so they will oppose it.
Not really true. Trump seems to have a zero sum approach to business, a win/lose attitude
rather than win/win or only some win on the parties. The exit from JPCOA and the maximalist
approach to Iran, the way Austria-Hungary approached Serbia in August 1918, is actual Trump
attitude.
"... Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S. recourse to using force. ..."
"... After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further" into the future than others. ..."
It was 22 years ago when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly declared the
United States to be the "indispensable nation": "If we have to use force, it is because we are
America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries
into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."
In a recent
interview with The New York T imes, Albright sounded much less sure of her old
position: "There's nothing in the definition of indispensable that says "alone." It means that
the United States needs to be engaged with its partners. And people's backgrounds make a
difference." Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was
both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S.
recourse to using force.
After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and
foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look
back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further"
into the future than others. Not only are we no better than other countries at
anticipating and preparing for future dangers, but judging from the country's lack of
preparedness for a pandemic we are actually far behind many of the countries that we have
presumed to "lead." It is impossible to square our official self-congratulatory rhetoric with
the reality of a government that is incapable of protecting its citizens from disaster.
Blobsters are simply prostitute to the military industrial complex. No honesty, no courage required (Courage is replaced with
arrogance in most cases.) Pompeo is a vivid example of this creatures of Washington swamp.
Notable quotes:
"... historically courtiers themselves led their troops on the battlefield and considered it a question of honor for one or both of their oldest sons pursuing a military career, while Renaissance courtesans were among the most intellectual and educated women of their epoch. Neither is true for blobsters and blobstresses. ..."
"... In French and (I think) most other romance languages, the words for courtier and courtesan are the same. Something to think about. ..."
On the other hand, though, historically courtiers themselves led their troops on the
battlefield and considered it a question of honor for one or both of their oldest sons
pursuing a military career, while Renaissance courtesans were among the most intellectual
and educated women of their epoch. Neither is true for blobsters and blobstresses.
The heart of the American exceptionalism in question is American hubris. It is based on the
assumption that we are better than the rest of the world, and that this superiority both
entitles and obligates us to take on an outsized role in the world.
In our current foreign
policy debates, the phrase "American exceptionalism" has served as a shorthand for justifying
and celebrating U.S. dominance, and when necessary it has served as a blanket excuse for U.S.
wrongdoing. Seongjong Song defined it in an 2015 article
for The Korean Journal of International Studies this way: "American exceptionalism is the
belief that the US is "qualitatively different" from all other nations." In practice, that has
meant that the U.S. does not consider itself to be bound by the same rules that apply to other
states, and it reserves the right to interfere whenever and wherever it wishes.
American exceptionalism has been used in our political debates as an ideological purity test
to determine whether certain political leaders are sufficiently supportive of an activist and
interventionist foreign policy. The main purpose of invoking American exceptionalism in foreign
policy debate has been to denigrate less hawkish policy views as unpatriotic and beyond the
pale. The phrase was often used as a partisan cudgel in the previous decade as the Obama
administration's critics tried to cast doubt on the former president's acceptance of this idea,
but in the years since then it has become a rallying point for devotees of U.S. primacy
regardless of party. There was an explosion in the use of the phrase in just the first few
years of the 2010s compared with the previous decades. Song cited a study that showed this
massive increase:
Exceptionalist discourse is on the rise in American politics. Terrence McCoy (2012) found
that the term "American exceptionalism" appeared in US publications 457 times between 1980
and 2000, climbing to 2,558 times in the 2000s and 4,172 times in 2010-12.
The more that U.S. policies have proved "American exceptionalism" to be a pernicious myth at
odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican
hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this "exceptionalism," and some
Democratic hawks closed it out by
"reclaiming" the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may
be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has
special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging
unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other
states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of
it.
The contemporary version of American exceptionalism is tied up inextricably with the belief
that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation." According to this view, without U.S. "leadership"
other countries will be unable or unwilling to respond to major international problems and
threats. We have seen just how divorced from reality that belief is in just the last few
months. There has been no meaningful U.S. leadership in response to the pandemic, but for the
most part our allies have managed on their own fairly well. In the absence of U.S.
"leadership," many other countries have demonstrated that they haven't really needed the U.S.
Our "indispensability" is a story that we like to tell ourselves, but it isn't true. Not only
are we no longer indispensable, but as Micah Zenko pointed out
many years ago, we never were.
The numerous foreign misadventures of the US military since 1989 are far from a humiliating
military defeat, they are more of an embarassment for the ruling elites. Take for example
Afganistan - how many soldiers did the US army lose there in 18 years? 2500? That's nothing
compared to the strength and resources available to the Pentagon.
Societal collapse? I admit the living standards of the average working class Joe fell
dramatically compared to the 90's, but you are far from a societal collapse. It won't happen
as long as the US Dollar is the world currency. Believe me :)
The dollars days are numbered. You can't degrade a fiat currency by endless printing with
reckless abandon and expect that the other nations of the planet will retain any trust that
the scrip will remain a reliable store of value.
BTW Afghanistan is an unmitigated DISASTER. The "hyperpower" cannot impose its will on one
of the most backward and impoverised nations on the planet. Heck the Soviets did better in
their day, and they had to face a billion-dollar-a-year foreign-backed insurgency funded by
US & Saudi, and backed to the hilt by Pakistan. By comparison, the Taliban have NO allies
and no foreign funding, yet try as they might, neither the US nor its feckless puppet regime
in Kabul can succeed in grinding them down.
Hmmm... I wouldn't. Who would fight whom? Or would it be a free for all Mad Max style?
You Americans have this weird fascination with the apocalyptic. Seriously, just look at
your movies - each year Hollywood dishes out at least half a dozen blockbusters dealing with
societal collapse - be it due to an alien invasion, zombie plague, impact event or something
else...
I admit, you have problems. The middle class is getting poorer each year, mass imigration
from the southern side of your continent is tearing apart the social fabric and your elite
got richer and more arrogant sice they embraced globalisation in the 90's. But this doesn't
mean that the country is heading towards a civil war.
Well .... I'm not even American so I feel I can look at this somewhat More objectively than a
hardcore blue or red stater. Still hard to tell whether covid will put a wrench in the
trajectory or accelerate it. And if you want apocalypticism, go see Rod.
Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan -- how many more humiliating military defeats will
it take for Americans to realize that they are anything but exceptional?
Americans view killing foreign men, women, and children as a successful endeavor of their
efforts to fight for freedom. American also are not bothered if their soldiers torture and
rape foreign men, women and children. So these wars are not seen as failures but successes,
even if actual geopolitical goals are not realized.
"You won't. It always takes a humiliating military defeat or a societal collapse to reevalute
such myths."
I would go a bit further and say that Americans won't reevaluate those myths until they
personally feel the pain from those things and they blame their pain on the government that
caused them. So much of our current policies are guided by the principal of making sure that
Americans do not feel the pain of their government's actions. We eliminated the draft so most
Americans have no skin in the game regarding military conflicts (not to mention no war taxes,
no goods rationing, etc.). We have come to expect bottomless economic "stimulus," borrowed
from our children's future labor, so we feel minimal pain from the poor preparation for the
pandemic. Bread and circuses have proven to be powerful manipulation tools indeed.
The US is remarkably insular, in large part because it is a mostly self-sufficient (or used
to be) nation-continent, but the hubristic idea of exceptionalism also makes us resistant to
good ideas invented elsewhere.
As concerns COVID-19, I have a number of physicians in my family, and it's only on March
16th that they awakened to the crisis, a week after France officially announced it was going
into lockdown or after London basically became a ghost town. One of them even took her kids
to Disneyland around that time, something that seemed the height of irresponsibility to us at
the time. Thus obliviousness is not just a feature of the Trump administration. The lone
exception is tech companies, perhaps because they are more globalized than most, but the
Washington policy navel-gazing circle-jerk is mostly oblivious to the West Coast.
Now the idea that some crises can only be solved with US leadership is not without merit.
Just because we cannot solve all doesn't mean there aren't some important categories where
our military might and logistic prowess carry the day. That COVID-19 would prove to be an
especially tough challenge for the US was entirely predictable. From our fractured
decision-making due to federalism, our abysmally inefficient health-care system with its huge
swathes of uninsured, our ideology of free market solutions to everything, and our polarized
and ineffectual legislature, made this crisis almost tailor-made to expose the fault-lines in
our brittle society in the worst possible light.
I don't think we need to ape the Chinese, but certainly we need to look outward for a
change, shed our not-invented-here mentality and look at how South Korea or New Zealand
succeeded where we failed, despite having a fraction of our resources.
What military might which has not been able to win any war that it started ever? What
logistic prowess that cannot make PPEs for at least the healthcare workers, not to mention
toilet paper for the people?
I would love to see all our political leaders (and their media friends) respond to the
observations by Mr. Bacevich and Mr. Larison. Of course, I agree with both of them. Perhaps
this economic crisis combined with the pandemic will finally break america. It's a shame it
has come to this. Must we endure economic collapse, starvation, and the corruption / looting
by the wealthy in order to finally stop caring about imaginary threats half way around the
world? I suspect the answer is yes. Americans will never abandon their arrogance until they
are laid low by something.
"A wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him,
but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed
him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me."
"Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born."
Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture."
"No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass."
Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well."
"No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both
food and drink to me."
Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even
though you refute every one of my imputations."
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny."
**************************
For a few more years, the US will have absolute power over other people and we will use
that power in an absolutely corrupt way at the behest of our overlords in Riyadh and
Jerusalem. When retribution finally comes our way, no one will shed a tear for us.
The US has long been a myth-making factory for the population. The average American has a
pretty rough life. Generally strapped with debt (mortgage, cars), working a dead-end job with
little protection should you lose it. But people are tribal and can get their sense of
self-worth from the tribe. So to be constantly told you are "exceptional" and part of the
"greatest nation the world has ever known" can cover up a lot of pain in real life. See New
England Patriots fans or LSU Tigers fans.
So while being so exceptional, you get to spend hours trying to figure out which Obamacare
policy won't cost so much that it takes up all of your extra monthly cash while
simultaneously leaving you thousands in debt if you actually needed to use it.
I tend to think the psychological decomposition is on-going. Americans know that something is
terribly wrong, but they can't seem to put their collective finger on it. The Trump vote was
a big signal that folks know something is wrong. The hope was that Trump could fix it, but he
just knew something was wrong too. He didn't know how to fix it, but at least he is willing
to talk about it.
But I don't see how you right the ship. What's wrong is that what got us to be a wealthy
powerful country today isn't what is going to keep us that way going forward. That's very
hard for people at all levels of society to understand and accept.
So I expect a continued devolution. Where it gets increasingly "real ugly" for a lot of
people, while a lot of us continue to do fairly well. You have to have a lot of hope your
kids can make it too.
Americans know that something is terribly wrong and getting worse by the day and by the
crisis, but they seems to think that tribal solutions are the answer.
So true. An eye opening set of essays goes to the hart of this: Deer Hunting with Jesus:
Dispatches from America's Class War Paperback by Joe Bageant.
However, that book hasn't received the same fame and traction as this other one (and I am
looking at you TAC and Rod Dreher as well): Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture
in Crisis by J. D. Vance and this is because in the first the author focuses on the system as
the one that produces certain results while on the other the author puts more weight on
individual choices, the darling idea of conservatives, the lifting oneself by bootstraps, the
American success story of rags to riches...
Opium is not native to China. The reason that the British pushed opium on China, in spite of
the strenuous objections of the Chinese governments and officials of the time, is because
before the Opium Wars, trade with China was causing a worldwide shortage of silver. Silver
was about the only thing that non-Chinese had that Chinese wanted. Until opium.
In fact, at least one Chinse official wrote Queen Victoria a letter to the effect that
opium is forbidden in Great Britain, so why are you trying to push it on us here?
"The coronavirus pandemic is a curse. It should also serve as an opportunity, Americans at
long last realizing that they are not God's agents. Out of suffering and loss, humility and
self-awareness might emerge. We can only hope."
Laugh. ohhh you guys need to stop. The virus is not an indication that God is denying an
exceptional role for the US. A star athlete is exceptional and may even be fascinating.
However,
the reality remains that in order to stay exceptional, fascinating and "indispensable"
---- there are things that athelete must do and and there are things that athelete must avoid
doing.
We have engaged in a lot of things we should avoid and neglected some matters that would
be helpful in maintaining our own health and care --- damaging our exceptional
performance.
Jesse Owens and the Bolt, Usain bolt don't participate in every event and they don't run
in every race all the time . . .
It simply is unsustainable.
I of course reject all the whining bout how we, the US, are not exceptional --- and while
dispensable, or value on the planet remains vital.
"value"? more like "impact"... and "vital"? For about 100 years China was an object of
history rather than subject, no biggie. The World would need a breather with a bit of hiatus
concerning the US.
If the virus is not gods curse then the equally foolish notion that Americans are gods agents
ought to be rejected as well. I think you have misunderstood the context of the reference to
gods.
Two constitutional amendment movements must come out of this crisis:
1) Large metropolitan areas must be detached from the states in which they reside. It is
beyond tragic to see civilised people, with deep roots and traditional values, come under the
tyranny of brutal marxist regimes - as we see in so many places from Virginia to NY to
Pennsylvania to Illinois. We have giant colonies of government dependents and cube-dwellers,
which are being used by the Left as vote plantations. The governments they produce are then
inflicted on normal decent innocent people who just happen to live within the same state
lines. This can't be allowed to continue.
2) Anybody (like Bill Gates) who engages in planning or promoting policies that would treat
humans as livestock (e.g., by tracking them with implanted micro-chips) should be charged
with crimes against humanity.
It would be an uphill battle to achieve these goals, but if we do not start right away, the
next crisis could be used by the Left to impose their sick vicious perverted social
engineering programme - which would mean the end of human civilisation and of the human race
as we know it.
Who would want to implant chips in people who willingly pay hundreds of dollars for a
portable device that facilitates tracking the owner?
As far as separating metropolitan areas from surrounding rural areas, it would exacerbate
a problem that is already developing. The structure of Congress is already weighted toward
rural states. Anything that increases that advantage will mean that more people are governed
by fewer people. That's not going to make the US a more stable country.
The readership of TAC are predominantly committed Leftists.
This comment appears to have touched a nerve.
These measures would impede implementation of The Agenda.
Excellent.
While there are certainly leftists (like myself) among TAC readership, the thing that
distinguishes most TAC readers from folks like yourself is that we reside on the left side of
the sanity/insanity divide.
The commenters here seem to feel these two ideas are crazy:
1) Civilised people should not be placed under the power of people they view as primitive
bloodthirsty degenerates.
2) Human beings should not be treated as livestock - tracked and managed by a post-human
ruling class.
If The Left believes these ideas are insane, we have a big problem.
That is confirmation that the chasm between Western Civilisation and the marxist ideology is
absolutely unbridgeable. There is zero overlap - zero common ground. [In fact, the two are so
far apart that one can't see the other with a telescope on a clear day.]
We need to be moving toward some form of separation - whether that means a peaceful partition
like the Soviet Union in the early nineties, a loose confederation like the British
Commonwealth, or maybe a defence/foreign policy alliance based on the NATO model.
"Sane people have crazy ideas. Crazy people have sane ideas."
It's gonna be tough to sell that one.
Are you really just saying that we should submit to an insane ideology because the people
promoting it are just the coolest, most fabulous people ever?
The normal humans are not buying that garbage.
That's why marxism always turns to extreme violence.
Socialism cannot compete, so it must conquer. It cannot persuade, so it must coerce and
terrorise.
Every time I see the "the Left" used as the subject of a sentence, it always seems to follow
that the writer does not know what he's talking about, and probably does not know any actual
leftists who think or do what the writer is claiming they think or do. When you build straw
men from information you get on Fox News, you're not likely to get much more than ill-founded
generalizations.
Any time you see a comment that repeats "the Left/Liberals/Democrats believe X" and "the
Right/Conservatives/Republicans believe Y" you can bet that it will not be insightful.
Devastating flashback clip of Comey just aired on @marthamaccallum show.
When asked who went around the protocol of going through the WH Counsel's office and instead decided to send the FBI agents
into White House for the Flynn perjury trap ...
...Comey smugly responds "I sent them."
Here is the clip:
@comey is preparing for prison and hoping to avoid
the death penalty. Will Obama be brought down too?
Imagine having your life and reputation ruined by rogue US govt. officials. Then years later when the plot finally comes to
light the first thing you do is post an American flag. This is the guy they wanted you to believe was a Russian asset. 🙄
https://t.co/TI768Vijn2
U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet
G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes Wednesday, regarding former Trump National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn, which allegedly reveal the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for prosecution,
stated Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell. Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to be
set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with investigating the now-debunked allegations
that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Moreover, the
Department of Justice release 11 more pages of documents Wednesday afternoon, according to Powell.
While we await Judge Sullivan's order to unseal the exhibits from Friday, the government has just provided 11 more pages even
more appalling that the Friday production. We have requested the redaction process begin immediately.
@GenFlynn @BarbaraRedgate pic.twitter.com/YPEjZWbdvo
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and
U.S. Attorney Jensen , we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed
every request we have made," said Powell.
It appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless
of what they found, Powell said.
"The FBI pre-planned a deliberate attack on Gen. Flynn and willfully chose to ignore mention of Section 1001 in the interview
despite full knowledge of that practice," Powell said in a statement.
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing stating 'what is our goal? Truth/ Admission
or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
The documents, reviewed and obtained by SaraACarter.com , reveal that
senior FBI officials discussed strategies for targeting and setting up Flynn, prior to interviewing him at the White House on Jan.
24, 2017. It was that interview at the White House with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka that
led Flynn, now 61, to plead guilty after months of pressure by prosecutors, financial strain and threats to prosecute his son.
Powell filed a motion earlier this year to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and to dismiss his case for egregious government misconduct.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017, under duress by government prosecutors, to lying to investigators about his conversations
with Russian diplomat
Sergey Kislyak about sanctions on Russia. This January, however, he withdrew his guilty plea in the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C. He stated that he was "innocent of this crime" and was coerced by the FBI and prosecutors under threats that would charge his
son with a crime. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after DOJ prosecutors went back on their word and asked the judge to sentence
Flynn to up to six months in prison, accusing him of not cooperating in another case against his former partner. Then prosecutors
backtracked and said probation would be fine but by then Powell, his attorney, had already filed to withdraw his guilty plea.
The documents reveal that prior to the interview with Flynn in January, 2017 the FBI had already come to the conclusion that Flynn
was guilty and beyond that the officials were working together to see how best to corner the 33-year military veteran and former
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The bureau deliberately chose not to show him the evidence of his phone conversation to
help him in his recollection of events, which is standard procedure. Even stranger, the agents that interviewed Flynn later admitted
that they didn't believe he lied during the interview with them.
Powell told this reporter last week that the documents produced by the government are "stunning Brady evidence' proving Flynn
was deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI to target President Trump.
She noted earlier this week in her motion that the evidence "also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January
24 was material to any 'investigation.' The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution
-- knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Powell told this reporter Wednesday that the order by Sullivan to unseal the documents in Exhibit 3 in the supplement to Flynn's
motion to dismiss for egregious government conduct is exposing the truth to the public. She said it's "easy to see that he was set
up and that Mr. Flynn was the insurance policy for the FBI." Powell's reference to the 'insurance policy,' is based on one of the
thousands of texts exchanged by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her then-lover former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok.
In an Aug. 15, 2016, text from Strzok to Page he states, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's
(former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's
like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40."
The new documents were turned over to Powell, by U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea. They were discovered after an extensive review by
the attorneys appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review Flynn's case, which includes U.S. Attorney of St. Louis,
Jeff Jensen.
In one of the emails dated Jan. 23, 2017, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who at the time was having an affair with Strzok and who worked
closely with him on the case discussed the charges the bureau would bring on Flynn before the actual interview at the White House
took place. Those email exchanges were prepared for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the DOJ for lying
multiple times to investigators with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Trump for his conduct, revealed during an interview with Nicolle Wallace
last year that he sent the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House under circumstances he would have never done to another
administration.
"I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration,"
Comey said. "In the George W. Bush administration or the Obama administration, two men that all of us, perhaps, have increased appreciation
for over the last two years."
In the Jan 23, email Page asks Strzok the day before he interviews Flynn at the White House:
"I have a question for you. Could the admonition re 1001 be given at the beginning at the interview? Or does it have
to come following a statement which agents believe to be false? Does the policy speak to that? (I feel bad that I don't know this
but I don't remember ever having to do this! Plus I've only charged it once in the context of lying to a federal probation officer).
It seems to be if the former, then it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in.
"Of course as you know sir, federal law makes it a crime to "
Strzok's response:
I haven't read the policy lately, but if I recall correctly, you can say it at any time. I'm 90 percent sure about that, but
I can check in the am.
In the motion filed earlier this week, Powell stated "since August 2016 at the latest, partisan FBI and DOJ leaders conspired
to destroy Mr. Flynn. These documents show in their own handwriting and emails that they intended either to create an offense they
could prosecute or at least get him fired. Then came the incredible malfeasance of Mr. Van Grack's and the SCO's prosecution despite
their knowledge there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Attached to the email is handwritten notes regarding Flynn that are stunning on their face. It is lists of how the agents will
guide him in an effort to get him to trip up on his answers during their questioning and what charges they could bring against him.
"If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide," state the handwritten notes.
"Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it."
The next two points reveal that the agents were concerned about how their interview with Flynn would be perceived saying "if we're
seen as playing games, WH (White House) will be furious."
"Protect our institution by not playing games," t he last point on the first half of the hand written notes state.
From the handwritten note:
Afterwards:
interview
I agreed yesterday that we shouldn't show Flynn (redacted) if he didn't admit
I thought @ it last night, I believe we should rethink this
What is (not legible) ? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?
we regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing
I don't see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him
If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide
Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it
If we're seen as playing games, WH will be furious
Protect our institution by not playing games
(Left column)
we have case on Flynn & Russians
Our goal is to (not legible)
Our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth or if he lies @ relationship w/ Russians
can quote (redacted)
Shouldn't (redacted
Review (not legible) stand alone
It appears evident from an email from former FBI agent Strzok, who interviewed Flynn at the White House to then FBI General Counsel
James Baker, who is no longer with the FBI and was himself under investigation for leaking alleged national security information
to the media.
The email was a series of questions to prepare McCabe for his phone conversation with Flynn on the day the agents went to interview
him at the White House. These questions would be questions that Flynn may ask McCabe before sending the agents over to interview
him.
Email from Peter Strzok, cc'd to FBI General Counsel James Baker: (January 24, 2017)
I'm sure he's thought through these, but for DD's (referencing Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) consideration about how to answer
in advance of his call with Flynn:
Am I in trouble?
Am I the subject of an investigation?
Is it a criminal investigation?
Is it an espionage investigation? Do I need an attorney? Do I need to tell Priebus? The President?
Will you tell Priebus? The President? Will you tell the WH what I tell you?
What happens to the information/who will you tell what I tell you? Will you need to interview other people?
Will our interview be released publically? Will the substance of our interview be released?
How long will this take (depends on his cooperation I'd plan 45 minutes)? Can we do this over the phone?
I can explain all this right now, I did this, this, this [do you shut him down? Hear him out? Conduct the interview if he starts
talking? Do you want another agent/witness standing by in case he starts doing this?]
President Donald Trump has bashed former FBI Director James Comey, after unsealed documents
revealed an agency plot to entrap Gen. Michael Flynn in a bid to take down the Trump
presidency. "DIRTY COP JAMES COMEY GOT CAUGHT!" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning, in
one of a series of tweets lambasting the FBI's prosecution of retired army general Michael
Flynn, which he called a "scam."
Flynn served as Trump's national security adviser in the first days of the Trump presidency,
before he was fired for allegedly lying about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak.
An FBI investigation followed, and several months later, Flynn pleaded guilty to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller about lying during interviews with agents. He has since tried to
withdraw the plea, citing poor legal defense and accusing the FBI and Obama administration of
setting him up from the outset.
Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Wednesday seem to support that argument. In one
handwritten note, dated the same day as Flynn's FBI interview in January 2017, the unidentified
note-taker jots down some potential strategies to use against the former general.
"We have a case on Flynn + Russians," the note reads. "What's our goal?
Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
#FLYNN docs just
unsealed, including handwritten notes 1/24/2017 day of Flynn FBI interview. Transcript: "What
is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Read transcript notes, copy original just filed. @CBSNews
pic.twitter.com/8oqUok8i7m
The unsealed documents also include an email exchange between former agent Peter Strzok and
former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which the pair pondered whether to remind Flynn that lying to
federal agents is a crime. Page and Strzok were later fired from the agency, after a slew of
text messages emerged showing the pair's mutual disdain for Trump, and discussing the
formulation of an "insurance policy" against his election.
Flynn's discussions with Kislyak were deemed truthful by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe. Additionally, a Washington Post
article published the day before Flynn's January 2017 interview revealed that the FBI had
tapped his calls with the Russian ambassador and found "nothing illicit."
Still, Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to lie to a federal
agent, is broad in its scope. Defense Attorney Solomon Wisenberg
wrote that "even a decent person who tries to stay out of trouble can face criminal
exposure under Section 1001 through a fleeting conversation with government agents."
Early January 2017 Recommendation To Close Case on General Flynn Rebuffed by FBI Leaders
by Larry C Johnson
The document dump from the Department of Justice on the Michael Flynn case continues and the
information is shocking and damning. It is now clear why previous leaders of the Department of
Justice (Sessions and Rosenstein) and current FBI Director Wray tried to keep this material
hidden. There is now no doubt that Jim Comey and Andy McCabe help lead and direct a conspiracy
to frame Michael Flynn for a "crime" regardless of the actual facts surrounding General Flynn's
conduct.
The most stunning revelation from today's document release is that the FBI agents who
investigated Michael Flynn aka "Crossfire Razor" RECOMMENDED on the 4th of January 2017 that
the investigation of Flynn be closed. Let that sink in. The FBI agents investigating Flynn
found nothing to justify either a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation more than two
weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Yet, FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Director McCabe, with the help of General Counsel Jim Baker, Assistant Director for Counter
Intelligence Bill Priestap, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok decided to try to manufacture a crime
against Flynn.
The documents released on Wednesday made clear that as of January 21st, the FBI Conspirators
were scrambling to find pretext for entrapping and charging General Flynn. Here is the
transcription of Bill Priestap's handwritten notes:
Apologists for these criminal acts by FBI officials insist this was all routine. "Nothing to
see here." "Move along." Red State's Nick Arama did a good job of reporting on the absurdity of
this idiocy (
see here ). Former US Attorney Andy McCarthy cuts to the heart of the matter:
"They did not have a legitimate investigative reason for doing this and there was no
criminal predicate or reason to treat him [Flynn] like a criminal suspect," McCarthy
explained.
"They did the interview outside of the established protocols of how the FBI is supposed to
interview someone on the White House staff. They are supposed to go through the Justice
Department and the White House counsel's office. They obviously purposely did not do that and
they were clearly trying to make a case on this."
"For years, a number of us have been arguing that this looked like a perjury trap," McCarthy
said.
Today's (Thursday) document dump reinforces the validity of McCarthy's conclusion that this
was a concocted perjury trap. The key document is the "Closing Communication" PDF dated 4
January 2017. It is a summary of the FBI's investigation of Crossfire Razor (i.e., Mike Flynn).
The document begins with this summary:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an articulable factual basis that Crossfire Razor
(CR) may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation
which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security. . . . Specifically, .
. . CR had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by
open source information; and CR traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source
information.
The Agent conveniently fails to mention that Flynn's contacts with Russia in December 2015
were not at his initiative but came as an invitation from his Speaker's Bureau. Moreover,
General Flynn, because he still held TS/SCI clearances, informed the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) of the trip, received permission to make the trip and, upon returning to the
United States from Russia, was fully debriefed by DIA. How is that an indicator of posing a
threat to the national security of the United States?
The goal of the investigation is stated very clearly on page two of the document:
. . . to determine whether the captioned subject, associated with the Trump campaign, was
directed and controlled by and/or coordinated activities with the Russian federation in a
manner which is a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign
Agents Registration Act, 18 U.S.C. section 951 et seq, or other related statutes.
And what did the FBI find? NOTHING. NADA. ZIPPO. The Agent who wrote this report played it
straight and the investigation in the right way. He or she concluded:
The Crossfire Hurricane team determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable
candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation. If new information is identified or reported to the FBI regarding the
activities of CROSSFIRE RAZOR, the FBI will consider reopening the investigation if
warranted.
This document is dated 4 January 2017. But Peter Strzok sent a storm of text messages to the
Agent who drafted the report asking him to NOT close the case.
This is not how a normal criminal or counter-intelligence case would be conducted. Normally
you would have actual evidence or "indicia" of criminal or espionage activity. But don't take
me word for it. Jim Comey bragged about this outrageous
conduct:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxNhjFrjXqI
Comey is a corrupt, sanctimonious prick. I suspect he may not think what he did was so funny
in the coming months. He may have forgotten saying this stupidity, but the video remains
intact.
The documents being released over the last week provide great insight into Attorney General
William Barr's strategy. He is not going to entertain media debates and back-and-forth with the
apologists for treason. He is letting the documents speak for themselves and ensuring that US
Attorneys--who are not part of the fetid, Washington, DC sewer--review the documents and
procedures used to prosecute political figures linked to President Trump. Then those documents
are legally and appropriately released. Barr is playing by the rules.
We are not talking about the inadvertent discovery of an isolated mistake or an act of
carelessness. The coup against Trump was deliberate and the senior leadership of the FBI
actively and knowingly participated in this plot. Exposing and punishing them remains a top
priority for Attorney General Barr, who understands that a failure to act could spell the doom
of this Republic.
No indictments.
Not for this bunch of swamp rats.
One set of laws for the swamp, another for America.
And now the same swamp - the bureaucrat pinhead version - are destroying the economy and
shutting down the country?.
Why?
Terrible decisions based on worse "data" AND tank the economy and Trump's re-election
chances.
Flynn has been bankrupted. He has fought valiantly to restore his honor ALONE. His fate is in
many ways in the hands of Judge Sullivan.
Trump other than tweet has done what for someone that brought military and national
security cred to his campaign? Let's not forget that Flynn was fired ostensibly for lying to
VP Pence. Exactly what the putschists wanted to accomplish.
blue peacock
Flynn is a nice Irish Catholic boy from Rhode Island whose father a retired MP staff sergeant
and branch manager of a local bank successfully cultivated the ROTC staff at U of RI so that
his two sons were given army ROTC scholarships in management, something their father could
understand. Michael and his brother, both generals are NOT members of the WP club and
therefore available for sacrifice. Michael Flynn occupied a narrow niche in Military
Intelligence. He was a targeting guy in the counter-terrorism bidness and rode that train to
the top without much knowledge or experience of anything else. He and his boss Stan
McChrystal, soul mates. He was singularly unqualified to be head of one of the major agencies
of the IC. IMO Martin Dempsey, CJCS (a member of the WP club) used Flynn to stand up to
Brennan's CIA and the NSC nuts at the WH while standing back in the shade himself. That is
why Obama cautioned Trump to be wary of North Korea and Michael Flynn. And this "innocent"
was then mousetrapped by people he thought were patriots.
True then, but what was not expected was Trump neither resigning nor being impeached nor
getting a new AG who would launch the Durham investigation. I wonder what FISA warrants are
out related to the Chinese virus and associated communications with US and Chinese nationals.
At least we don't have Obama's cast of characters involved in that, unless we have his "j.v."
team.
Someone that doesn't show up much in The NY Times or the Washington Post now but was the
central character in numerous scurrilous stories. Svetlana Lokhova was falsely slandered for
having an affair with Gen.Flynn and accused as a Russian agent by CIA/FBI agent Stefan
Halper.
What we learned today from the STUNNING document release in the case of @GenFlynn 1. FBI
opened a full-blown counterintelligence investigation in 2016 on the ex head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency while he was working for a political campaign based on one piece of
false intel
Its mind blowing the vast tentacles of this conspiracy at the highest levels of our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is even more mind blowing that the miscreants have
profited so handsomely with book deals, media sinecures, GoFundMe campaigns. None have been
prosecuted.
Our leaders were so preoccupied with remaking the world they failed to see that our country
was falling apart around them. Has the time come to bury the conceit of American
exceptionalism? In an article for the American edition of The Spectator , Quincy
Institute President Andrew Bacevich concludes just that:
The coronavirus pandemic is a curse. It should also serve as an opportunity, Americans at
long last realizing that they are not God's agents. Out of suffering and loss, humility and
self-awareness might emerge. We can only hope.
The heart of the American exceptionalism in question is American hubris. It is based on the
assumption that we are better than the rest of the world, and that this superiority both
entitles and obligates us to take on an outsized role in the world.
In our current foreign policy debates, the phrase "American exceptionalism" has served as a
shorthand for justifying and celebrating U.S. dominance, and when necessary it has served as a
blanket excuse for U.S. wrongdoing. Seongjong Song defined it in an 2015 article
for The Korean Journal of International Studies this way: "American exceptionalism is the
belief that the US is "qualitatively different" from all other nations." In practice, that has
meant that the U.S. does not consider itself to be bound by the same rules that apply to other
states, and it reserves the right to interfere whenever and wherever it wishes.
American exceptionalism has been used in our political debates as an ideological purity test
to determine whether certain political leaders are sufficiently supportive of an activist and
interventionist foreign policy. The main purpose of invoking American exceptionalism in foreign
policy debate has been to denigrate less hawkish policy views as unpatriotic and beyond the
pale. The phrase was often used as a partisan cudgel in the previous decade as the Obama
administration's critics tried to cast doubt on the former president's acceptance of this idea,
but in the years since then it has become a rallying point for devotees of U.S. primacy
regardless of party. There was an explosion in the use of the phrase in just the first few
years of the 2010s compared with the previous decades. Song cited a study that showed this
massive increase:
Exceptionalist discourse is on the rise in American politics. Terrence McCoy (2012) found
that the term "American exceptionalism" appeared in US publications 457 times between 1980
and 2000, climbing to 2,558 times in the 2000s and 4,172 times in 2010-12.
The more that U.S. policies have proved "American exceptionalism" to be a pernicious myth at
odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican
hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this "exceptionalism," and some
Democratic hawks closed it out by
"reclaiming" the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may
be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has
special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging
unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other
states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of
it.
The contemporary version of American exceptionalism is tied up inextricably with the belief
that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation." According to this view, without U.S. "leadership"
other countries will be unable or unwilling to respond to major international problems and
threats. We have seen just how divorced from reality that belief is in just the last few
months. There has been no meaningful U.S. leadership in response to the pandemic, but for the
most part our allies have managed on their own fairly well. In the absence of U.S.
"leadership," many other countries have demonstrated that they haven't really needed the U.S.
Our "indispensability" is a story that we like to tell ourselves, but it isn't true. Not only
are we no longer indispensable, but as Micah Zenko pointed out
many years ago, we never were.
It was 22 years ago when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly declared the
United States to be the "indispensable nation": "If we have to use force, it is because we are
America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries
into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."
In a recent
interview with The New York T imes, Albright sounded much less sure of her old
position: "There's nothing in the definition of indispensable that says "alone." It means that
the United States needs to be engaged with its partners. And people's backgrounds make a
difference." Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both
extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S.
recourse to using force.
After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and
foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look
back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further"
into the future than others. Not only are we no better than other countries at anticipating and
preparing for future dangers, but judging from the country's lack of preparedness for a
pandemic we are actually far behind many of the countries that we have presumed to "lead." It
is impossible to square our official self-congratulatory rhetoric with the reality of a
government that is incapable of protecting its citizens from disaster.
The poor U.S. response to the pandemic has not only exposed many of the country's serious
faults, but it has also caused a crisis of faith in the prevailing mythology that American
political leaders and pundits have been promoting for decades. This found expression most
recently in a rather odd
article in The New York Times last week. The framing of the story makes it into a
lament for a collapsing ideology:
The pandemic sweeping the globe has done more than take lives and livelihoods from New
Delhi to New York. It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism -- the
special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of its
values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.
The curious thing about this description is that it takes for granted that "fundamental
assumptions about American exceptionalism" haven't been thoroughly shaken long before now. The
"special role" mentioned here was never going to last forever, and in some respects it was more
imaginary than real. It was a period in our history that we should seek to understand and learn
from, but we also need to recognize that it was transitory and already ended some time ago.
If American exceptionalism is now "on trial," as another recent article put it
, it is because it offered up a pleasing but false picture of how we relate to the rest of the
world. Over the last two decades, we have seen that picture diverge more and more from real
life. The false picture gives political leaders an excuse to take reckless and disastrous
actions as long as they can spin them as being expressions of "who we are" as a country. At the
same time, they remain blind to the country's real vulnerabilities. It is a measure of how
powerful the illusion of American exceptionalism is that it still has such a hold on so many
people's minds even now, but it has not been a harmless illusion.
While our leaders have been patting themselves on the back for the enlightened "leadership"
that they imagine they are providing to the world, they have neglected the country's urgent
needs and allowed many parts of our system to fall into disrepair and ruin. They have also
visited enormous destruction on many other countries in the name of "helping" them. The same
hubris that has warped foreign policy decisions over the decades has encouraged a dangerous
complacency about the problems in our own country. We can't let that continue. Our leaders were
so preoccupied with trying to remake other parts of the world that they failed to see that our
country was falling apart all around them.
American exceptionalism has been the story that our leaders told us to excuse their neglect
of America. It is a flattering story, but ultimately it is a vain one that distracts us from
protecting our own country and people. We would do well if we put away this boastful fantasy
and learned how to live like a normal nation.
Newly unsealed documents indicate that the FBI targeted former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn for prosecution, showing senior officials at the bureau discussing ways to
ensnare him in a "perjury trap" before an interview.
The four pages of documents were
unsealed by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday, revealing in handwritten notes
and emails that the FBI's goal in investigating Flynn may have been "to get him to lie so we
can prosecute him or get him fired."
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing,"
Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell said in a statement.
Sullivan also ordered another 11 pages of documents unsealed, which, according to Powell ,
may soon be redacted and published.
How they planned to get Flynn removed:1) Get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act";
or2) Catch Flynn in a lie.Their end goal was a referral to the DOJ - not to investigate
Flynn's contacts with the Russians. pic.twitter.com/Vty3FYaSt9
The potentially exculpatory documents were inexplicably denied to Flynn's defense team for
years, despite numerous requests to the government.
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill
Barr and US Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as ...
the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made," Powell said.
The role of the FBI in instigating the prosecution of Michael Flynn, the criminality of its conduct, and
the encouragement it received in doing so from senior Obama officials should offend everyone.
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President Trump's former national security
advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory evidence in his case.Flynn is
defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their investigation into allegations of
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which
includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's
son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case,
US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of
prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen. One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI,
lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election has
been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6 officer
Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing fraud
against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level Trump
advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather part
and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top both former Director James Comey and current
Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it was carried
out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of national
security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a conspiracy that would rival any
investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years of
honorable service in the US Army revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador to the
United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama ordered
the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation was
intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian communications.
Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden,
so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances deemed critical to national
security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of the
actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion scandal, is
currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era officials in
relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served as
the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist for then
acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn then-White House
Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with
Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet the
available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when interviewed on
January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official testimony clearly show
that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared contemporaneously, and that he had
shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case prepared against him by the Department of
Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 over seven months after the interview was cited as the
evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea agreement,
in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in Giglio v. United
States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators constitutes a violation
of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct.
Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule of
law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing
the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on
Twitter @RealScottRitter
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The Trump administration has been desperately trying to kill the nuclear deal for the last two years after reneging on it. Now
they will try to kill it by
pretending to
be part of it again:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is preparing a legal argument that the United States remains a participant in the Iran nuclear
accord that President Trump has renounced, part of an intricate strategy to pressure the United Nations Security Council to extend
an arms embargo on Tehran or see far more stringent sanctions reimposed on the country.
The administration's latest destructive ploy won't find any support on the Security Council. There is nothing "intricate" about
this idea. It is a crude, heavy-handed attempt to employ the JCPOA's own provisions to destroy it. It is just the latest in a series
of administration moves that tries to have things both ways. They want to renege on U.S. commitments while still refusing to allow
Iran to benefit from the agreement, and they ultimately hope to make things difficult enough for Iran that their government chooses
to give up on the agreement. It reeks of bad faith and contempt for international law, and all other governments will be able to
see right through it. Some of our European allies have already said as much:
European diplomats who have learned of the effort maintain that Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo are selectively choosing whether
they are still in the agreement to fit their agenda.
It is significant that the Trump administration feels compelled to go through this charade after telling everyone for years that
the U.S. is no longer in the deal. Until now, Trump administration officials have been unwavering in saying that the U.S. is out
of the deal and can't be considered a participant in it:
Can't wait to see the tortured memo out of State/L claiming that somehow the U.S. is still a participant in the JCPOA. The
May 8, 2018 announcement is literally titled "Ceasing U.S. Participation in the JCPOA ."
https://t.co/I5t8LaC7dN
One of trademarks of Trump administration is his that he despises international law and
relies on "might makes right" principle all the time. In a way he is a one trick pony, typical
unhinged bully.
In a way Pompeo is the fact of Trump administration foreign policy, and it is not pretty
It is mostly, though not only, Trump related or libertarian pseudo "alt media" behind "just
the flu" theories or "China unleashed virus to attack US".
There is a small military/zionist cabal at the White House that is pushing for that
information war in order to prop up the dying US empire as well as US oligarhic business
interests, and to secure Trump reelection prospects.
It is enough to see how Zerohedge have been turned into full blown imperialist media with
many "evil China" outbursts every day.
Beware of Trumptards infiltrating alt media to prop up the dying US Empire and its
business interests.
Trump is the biggest US imperialist for the last 30 years. He made a good job at deceiving
many anti-system voices.
His WTO attacks are too part of US efforts to take over the organisation. His has no
problem with international institutions as long as they are US empire controlled (such as
OPCW, WADA, etc.)
Trump-tards and related libertarians (Zerohedge etc.) made their choice on the side
of global US imperialism (driven by their hidden racism, hence the evil "chinks" making a
good enemy) and are now the enemy of the multipolar world.
Trump is scum. He turned on Russia and Assange after he got into the White House and did
far more against Russia than even Obama. I say that as someone who initially made the mistake
to support him.
The rumors of the USA demise, including economic demise are greatly exaggerated. Germany and
Japan -- the USA allies makes stuff, stuff that people all over the world want to buy –
just as the USA did forty years ago. Machine tools, robots, silicon, carbon fibre.
I just wouldn't be so quick to predict the fall of the US visa vis China. The Chinese have
now picked all the low hanging fruit. Now, with the USA awakening to the threat, it will become
harder for them to sustain growth with little natural resources, pressing population problems,
hostility of the USA, and now the spectre of national debt crisis.
Notable quotes:
"... Why Nations Fail ..."
"... Evidence for the long-term decline in our economic circumstances is most apparent when we consider the situation of younger Americans. The national media endlessly trumpets the tiny number of youthful Facebook millionaires, but the prospects for most of their contemporaries are actually quite grim. According to research from the Pew Center, barely half of 18- to 24-year-old Americans are currently employed, the lowest level since 1948, a time long before most women had joined the labor force. Nearly one-fifth of young men age 25–34 are still living with their parents, while the wealth of all households headed by those younger than 35 is 68 percent lower today than it was in 1984. ..."
"... Why Nations Fail ..."
"... Harvard Law Review ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Why Nations Fail ..."
"... Why Nations Fail ..."
"... Ron Unz is publisher of ..."
"... and founder of Unz.org . ..."
"... The state of US politics can only be accurately described as self-destructive. The government's hubris is bringing down the foundations of the economy, and it's only a matter of time before we end up living in the ruins of a dead civilization. ..."
"... The basic fact that supports any capitalist system, is that increasing productivity will increase wealth, that is, real wealth. Huge military expenditures all towards the goal of keeping raw resources a little bit cheaper, and a financial structure increasingly designed to encourage making money from money, are absolutely insane. This is Ancient Rome all over again. ..."
"... I do agree, however with earlier commentators about American lack of discipline. Years ago, cutting through the Engineering School at Rutgers, I was struck that the vast majority of students were foreigners, mostly Asian. Americans at that time just went to school to party. ..."
"... China is not to blame for America's decline, America has to face its own ghosts; the 15 trillion dollars debt, the unemployment, inequality, huge military spending, endless wars that is what you have to confront. ..."
"... Never was a piece written so needed to be read. We are a one party country. We are totally failed by our media for the "most" part. ..."
"... The US is an plutocracy, not a democracy. ..."
"... Mr. Unz said, "And since we live in a entertainment-dominated society, sentiments affirmed on then screen often have direct real-world consequences." ..."
"... In Iceland, it already happened, over a very short span of time. But the Icelandic native populace literally ejected them corporally from the govt. buildings, and now the heads of the major banks have been criminally sentenced and imprisoned, Iceland has the only PM to have been criminally convicted in the financial crisis. Dire predictions by other mafiosi of economic meltdown as a consequence of the "too big to fail" going to jail have yet to materialise, Iceland is doing fine. ..."
"... Far from a great advance for Chinese workers, however, it is the direct result of a consolidation of power in the hands of a small clique of powerful families, families that have actively collaborated with Western financial oligarchs. ..."
These facts do not provide much evidence for the thesis in Why Nations Fail that
China's leaders constitute a self-serving and venal "extractive" elite. Unfortunately, such
indications seem far more apparent when we direct our gaze inward, toward the recent economic
and social trajectory of our own country
Against the backdrop of remarkable Chinese progress, America mostly presents a very gloomy
picture. Certainly America's top engineers and entrepreneurs have created many of the world's
most important technologies, sometimes becoming enormously wealthy in the process. But these
economic successes are not typical nor have their benefits been widely distributed. Over the
last 40 years, a large majority of American workers have seen their real incomes stagnate or
decline.
Meanwhile, the rapid concentration of American wealth continues apace: the richest 1 percent
of America's population now holds as much net wealth as the bottom 90–95 percent, and
these trends may even be accelerating. A recent study revealed that during our supposed
recovery of the last couple of years, 93 percent of the total increase in national income went
to the top 1 percent, with an astonishing 37 percent being captured by just the wealthiest 0.01
percent of the population, 15,000 households in a nation of well over 300 million people.
Evidence for the long-term decline in our economic circumstances is most apparent when
we consider the situation of younger Americans. The national media endlessly trumpets the tiny
number of youthful Facebook millionaires, but the prospects for most of their contemporaries
are actually quite grim. According to research from the Pew Center, barely half of 18- to
24-year-old Americans are currently employed, the lowest level since 1948, a time long before
most women had joined the labor force. Nearly one-fifth of young men age 25–34 are still
living with their parents, while the wealth of all households headed by those younger than 35
is 68 percent lower today than it was in 1984.
ORDER IT NOW
The total outstanding amount of non-dischargeable student-loan debt has crossed the
trillion-dollar mark, now surpassing the combined total of credit-card and auto-loan debt --
and with a quarter of all student-loan payers now delinquent, there are worrisome indicators
that much of it will remain a permanent burden, reducing many millions to long-term debt
peonage. A huge swath of America's younger generation seems completely impoverished, and likely
to remain so.
International trade statistics, meanwhile, demonstrate that although Apple and Google are
doing quite well, our overall economy is not. For many years now our largest goods export has
been government IOUs, whose dollar value has sometimes been greater than that of the next ten
categories combined. At some point, perhaps sooner than we think, the rest of the world will
lose its appetite for this non-functional product, and our currency will collapse, together
with our standard of living. Similar Cassandra-like warnings were issued for years about the
housing bubble or the profligacy of the Greek government, and were proven false year after year
until one day they suddenly became true.
Ironically enough, there is actually one major category in which American expansion still
easily tops that of China, both today and for the indefinite future: population growth. The
rate of America's demographic increase passed that of China over 20 years ago and has been
greater every year since, sometimes by as much as a factor of two. According to standard
projections, China's population in 2050 will be almost exactly what it was in 2000, with the
country having achieved the population stability typical of advanced, prosperous societies. But
during that same half-century, the number of America's inhabitants will have grown by almost 50
percent, a rate totally unprecedented in the developed world and actually greater than that
found in numerous Third World countries such as Colombia, Algeria, Thailand, Mexico, or
Indonesia. A combination of very rapid population growth and doubtful prospects for equally
rapid economic growth does not bode well for the likely quality of the 2050 American Dream.
China rises while America falls, but are there major causal connections between these two
concurrent trends now reshaping the future of our world? Not that I can see. American
politicians and pundits are naturally fearful of taking on the fierce special interest groups
that dominate their political universe, so they often seek an external scapegoat to explicate
the misery of their constituents, sometimes choosing to focus on China. But this is merely
political theater for the ignorant and the gullible.
Various studies have suggested that China's currency may be substantially undervalued, but
even if the frequent demands of Paul Krugman and others were met and the yuan rapidly
appreciated another 15 or 20 percent, few industrial jobs would return to American shores,
while working-class Americans might pay much more for their basic necessities. And if China
opened wide its borders to more American movies or financial services, the multimillionaires of
Hollywood and Wall Street might grow even richer, but ordinary Americans would see little
benefit. It is always easier for a nation to point an accusing finger at foreigners rather than
honestly admit that almost all its terrible problems are essentially
self-inflicted.
The central theme of Why Nations Fail is that political institutions and the
behavior of ruling elites largely determine the economic success or failure of countries. If
most Americans have experienced virtually no economic gains for decades, perhaps we should cast
our gaze at these factors in our own society.
Our elites boast about the greatness of our constitutional democracy, the wondrous human
rights we enjoy, the freedom and rule of law that have long made America a light unto the
nations of the world and a spiritual draw for oppressed peoples everywhere, including China
itself. But are these claims actually correct? They often stack up very strangely when they
appear in the opinion pages of our major newspapers, coming just after the news reporting,
whose facts tell a very different story.
Just last year, the Obama administration initiated a massive months-long bombing campaign
against the duly recognized government of Libya on "humanitarian" grounds, then argued with a
straight face that a military effort comprising hundreds of bombing sorties and over a billion
dollars in combat costs did not actually constitute "warfare," and hence was completely exempt
from the established provisions of the Congressional War Powers Act. A few months later,
Congress overwhelmingly passed and President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization
Act, granting the president power to permanently imprison without trial or charges any American
whom he classifies as a national-security threat based on his own judgment and secret evidence.
When we consider that American society has experienced virtually no domestic terrorism during
the past decade, we must wonder how long our remaining constitutional liberties would survive
if we were facing frequent real-life attacks by an actual terrorist underground, such as had
been the case for many years with the IRA in Britain, ETA in Spain, or the Red Brigades in
Italy.
Most recently, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have claimed the inherent
right of an American president to summarily execute anyone anywhere in the world, American
citizen or not, whom White House advisors have privately decided was a "bad person." While it
is certainly true that major world governments have occasionally assassinated their political
enemies abroad, I have never before heard these dark deeds publicly proclaimed as legitimate
and aboveboard. Certainly if the governments of Russia or China, let alone Iran, declared their
inherent right to kill anyone anywhere in the world whom they didn't like, our media pundits
would immediately blast these statements as proof of their total criminal insanity.
These are very strange notions of the "rule of law" for the administration of a president
who had once served as top editor of the Harvard Law Review and who was routinely
flattered in his political campaigns by being described as a "constitutional scholar."
Many of these negative ideological trends have been absorbed and accepted by the popular
culture and much of the American public. Over the last decade one of the highest-rated shows on
American television was "24", created by Joel Surnow and chronicling Kiefer Sutherland as a
patriotic but ruthless Secret Service agent, with each episode constituting a single hour of
his desperate efforts to thwart terrorist plots and safeguard our national security. Numerous
episodes featured our hero torturing suspected evildoers in order to extract the information
necessary to save innocent lives, with the entire series representing a popular weekly
glorification of graphic government torture on behalf of the greater good.
Now soft-headed protestations to the contrary, most governments around the world have at
least occasionally practiced torture, especially when combating popular insurgencies, and some
of the more brutal regimes, including Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, even professionalized
the process. But such dark deeds done in secret were always vigorously denied in public, and
the popular films and other media of Stalin's Soviet Union invariably featured pure-hearted
workers and peasants bravely doing their honorable and patriotic duty for the Motherland,
rather than the terrible torments being daily inflicted in the cellars of the Lubyanka prison.
Throughout all of modern history, I am not aware of a single even semi-civilized country that
publicly celebrated the activities of its professional government torturers in the popular
media. Certainly such sentiments would have been totally abhorrent and unthinkable in the
"conservative Hollywood" of the Cold War 1950s.
And since we live in a entertainment-dominated society, sentiments affirmed on the screen
often have direct real-world consequences. At one point, senior American military and
counter-terrorism officials felt the need to travel to Hollywood and urge its screenwriters to
stop glorifying American torture, since their shows were encouraging U.S. soldiers to torture
Muslim captives even when their commanding officers repeatedly ordered them not to do so.
Given these facts, we should hardly be surprised that international surveys over the past
decade have regularly ranked America as the world's most hated major nation, a remarkable
achievement given the dominant global role of American media and entertainment and also the
enormous international sympathy that initially flowed to our country following the 9/11
attacks.
So far at least, these extra-constitutional and often brutal methods have not been directed
toward controlling America's own political system; we remain a democracy rather than a
dictatorship. But does our current system actually possess the central feature of a true
democracy, namely a high degree of popular influence over major government policies? Here the
evidence seems more ambiguous.
Consider the pattern of the last decade. With two ruinous wars and a financial collapse to
his record, George W. Bush was widely regarded as one of the most disastrous presidents in
American history, and at times his public approval numbers sank to the lowest levels ever
measured. The sweeping victory of his successor, Barack Obama, represented more a repudiation
of Bush and his policies than anything else, and leading political activists, left and right
alike, characterized Obama as Bush's absolute antithesis, both in background and in ideology.
This sentiment was certainly shared abroad, with Obama being selected for the Nobel Peace Prize
just months after entering office, based on the widespread assumption that he was certain to
reverse most of the policies of his detested predecessor and restore America to sanity.
Yet almost none of these reversals took place. Instead, the continuity of administration
policy has been so complete and so obvious that many critics now routinely speak of the
Bush/Obama administration.
The harsh violations of constitutional principles and civil liberties which Bush pioneered
following the 9/11 attacks have only further intensified under Obama, the heralded Harvard
constitutional scholar and ardent civil libertarian, and this has occurred without the excuse
of any major new terrorist attacks. During his Democratic primary campaign, Obama promised that
he would move to end Bush's futile Iraq War immediately upon taking office, but instead large
American forces remained in place for years until heavy pressure from the Iraqi government
finally forced their removal; meanwhile, America's occupation army in Afghanistan actually
tripled in size. The government bailout of the hated financial manipulators of Wall Street,
begun under Bush, continued apace under Obama, with no serious attempts at either government
prosecution or drastic reform. Americans are still mostly suffering through the worst economic
downturn since the Great Depression, but Wall Street profits and multimillion-dollar bonuses
soon returned to record levels.
In particular, the continuity of top officials has been remarkable. As Bush's second defense
secretary, Robert Gates had been responsible for the ongoing management of America's foreign
wars and military occupations since 2006; Obama kept him on, and he continued to play the same
role in the new administration. Similarly, Timothy Geithner had been one of Bush's most senior
financial appointments, playing a crucial role in the widely unpopular financial bailout of
Wall Street; Obama promoted him to Treasury secretary and authorized continuation of those same
policies. Ben Bernanke had been appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve by Bush and was
reappointed by Obama. Bush wars and bailouts became Obama wars and bailouts. The American
public voted for an anti-Bush, but got Bush's third term instead.
During the Cold War, Soviet propagandists routinely characterized our democracy as a sham,
with the American public merely selecting which of the two intertwined branches of their single
political party should alternate in office, while the actual underlying policies remained
essentially unchanged, being decided and implemented by the same corrupt ruling class. This
accusation may have been mostly false at the time it was made but seems disturbingly accurate
today.
When times are hard and government policies are widely unpopular, but voters are only
offered a choice between the rival slick marketing campaigns of Coke and Pepsi, cynicism can
reach extreme proportions. Over the last year, surveys have shown that the public non-approval
of Congress -- representing Washington's political establishment -- has ranged as high as
90–95 percent, which is completely unprecedented.
ORDER IT NOW
But if our government policies are so broadly unpopular, why are we unable to change them
through the sacred power of the vote? The answer is that America's system of government has
increasingly morphed from being a representative democracy to becoming something closer to a
mixture of plutocracy and mediacracy, with elections almost entirely determined by money and
media, not necessarily in that order. Political leaders are made or broken depending on whether
they receive the cash and visibility needed to win office.
National campaigns increasingly seem sordid reality shows for second-rate political
celebrities, while our country continues along its path toward multiple looming calamities.
Candidates who depart from the script or deviate from the elite D.C. consensus regarding wars
or bailouts -- notably a principled ideologue such as Ron Paul -- are routinely stigmatized in
the media as dangerous extremists or even entirely airbrushed out of campaign news coverage, as
has been humorously highlighted by comedian Jon Stewart.
We know from the collapsed communist states of Eastern Europe that control over the media
may determine public perceptions of reality, but it does not change the underlying reality
itself, and reality usually has the last laugh. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and
his colleagues have conservatively estimated the total long-term cost of our disastrous Iraq
War at $3 trillion, representing over one-fifth of our entire accumulated national debt, or
almost $30,000 per American household. And even now the direct ongoing costs of our Afghanistan
War still run $120 billion per year, many times the size of Afghanistan's total GDP. Meanwhile,
during these same years the international price of oil has risen from $25 to $125 per barrel --
partly as a consequence of these past military disruptions and growing fears of future ones --
thereby imposing gigantic economic costs upon our society.
And we suffer other costs as well. A recent New York Times story described the
morale-building visit of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to our forces in Afghanistan and
noted that all American troops had been required to surrender their weapons before attending
his speech and none were allowed to remain armed in his vicinity. Such a command decision seems
almost unprecedented in American history and does not reflect well upon the perceived state of
our military morale.
Future historians may eventually regard these two failed wars, fought for entirely
irrational reasons, as the proximate cause of America's financial and political collapse,
representing the historical bookend to our World War II victory, which originally established
American global dominance.
When parasitic elites govern a society along "extractive" lines, a central feature is the
massive upward flow of extracted wealth, regardless of any contrary laws or regulations.
Certainly America has experienced an enormous growth of officially tolerated corruption as our
political system has increasingly consolidated into a one-party state controlled by a unified
media-plutocracy.
Consider the late 2011 collapse of MF Global, a midsize but highly reputable brokerage firm.
Although this debacle was far smaller than the Lehman bankruptcy or the Enron fraud, it
effectively illustrates the incestuous activities of America's overlapping elites. Just a year
earlier, Jon Corzine had been installed as CEO, following his terms as Democratic governor and
U.S. senator from New Jersey and his previous career as CEO of Goldman Sachs. Perhaps no other
American had such a combination of stellar political and financial credentials on his resume.
Soon after taking the reins, Corzine decided to boost his company's profits by betting its
entire capital and more against the possibility that any European countries might default on
their national debts. When he lost that bet, his multi-billion-dollar firm tumbled into
bankruptcy.
At this point, the story moves from a commonplace tale of Wall Street arrogance and greed
into something out of the Twilight Zone, or perhaps Monty Python. The major newspapers began
reporting that customer funds, eventually said to total $1.6 billion, had mysteriously
disappeared during the collapse, and no one could determine what had become of them, a very
strange claim in our age of massively computerized financial records. Weeks and eventually
months passed, tens of millions of dollars were spent on armies of investigators and forensic
accountants, but all those customer funds stayed "missing," while the elite media covered this
bizarre situation in the most gingerly possible fashion. As an example, a front page Wall
Street Journal story on February 23, 2012 suggested that after so many months, there
seemed little likelihood that the disappeared customer funds might ever reappear, but also
emphasized that absolutely no one was being accused of any wrongdoing. Presumably the
journalists were suggesting that the $1.6 billion dollars of customer money had simply walked
out the door on its own two feet.
Stories like this give the lie to the endless boasts of our politicians and business pundits
that America's financial system is the most transparent and least corrupt in today's world.
Certainly America is not unique in the existence of long-term corporate fraud, as was recently
shown in the fall of Japan's Olympus Corporation following the discovery of more than a billion
dollars in long-hidden investment losses. But when we consider the largest corporate collapses
of the last decade that were substantially due to fraud, nearly all the names are American:
WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, and Adelphia. And this list leaves out all the American
financial institutions destroyed by the financial meltdown -- such as Lehman, Bear Stearns,
Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia -- and the many trillions of dollars in American
homeowner equity and top-rated MBS securities which evaporated during that process. Meanwhile,
the largest and longest Ponzi Scheme in world history, that of Bernie Madoff, had survived for
decades under the very nose of the SEC, despite a long series of detailed warnings and
complaints. The second largest such fraud, that of Allen R. Stanford, also bears the label
"Made in the USA."
Some of the sources of Chinese success and American decay are not entirely mysterious. As it
happens, the typical professional background of a member of China's political elite is
engineering; they were taught to build things. Meanwhile, a remarkable fraction of America's
political leadership class attended law school, where they were trained to argue effectively
and to manipulate. Thus, we should not be greatly surprised that while China's leaders tend to
build, America's leaders seem to prefer endless manipulation, whether of words, money, or
people.
How corrupt is the American society fashioned by our current ruling elites? That question is
perhaps more ambiguous than it might seem. According to the standard world rankings produced by
Transparency International, the United States is a reasonably clean country, with corruption
being considerably higher than in the nations of Northern Europe or elsewhere in the
Anglosphere, but much lower than in most of the rest of the world, including China.
But I suspect that this one-dimensional metric fails to capture some of the central
anomalies of America's current social dilemma. Unlike the situation in many Third World
countries, American teachers and tax inspectors very rarely solicit bribes, and there is little
overlap in personnel between our local police and the criminals whom they pursue. Most ordinary
Americans are generally honest. So by these basic measures of day-to-day corruption, America is
quite clean, not too different from Germany or Japan.
By contrast, local village authorities in China have a notorious tendency to seize public
land and sell it to real estate developers for huge personal profits. This sort of daily
misbehavior has produced an annual Chinese total of up to 90,000 so-called "mass incidents" --
public strikes, protests, or riots -- usually directed against corrupt local officials or
businessmen.
However, although American micro-corruption is rare, we seem to suffer from appalling levels
of macro-corruption, situations in which our various ruling elites squander or misappropriate
tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth, sometimes doing so just
barely on one side of technical legality and sometimes on the other.
Sweden is among the cleanest societies in Europe, while Sicily is perhaps the most corrupt.
But suppose a large clan of ruthless Sicilian Mafiosi moved to Sweden and somehow managed to
gain control of its government. On a day-to-day basis, little would change, with Swedish
traffic policemen and building inspectors performing their duties with the same sort of
incorruptible efficiency as before, and I suspect that Sweden's Transparency International
rankings would scarcely decline. But meanwhile, a large fraction of Sweden's accumulated
national wealth might gradually be stolen and transferred to secret Cayman Islands bank
accounts, or invested in Latin American drug cartels, and eventually the entire plundered
economy would collapse.
Ordinary Americans who work hard and seek to earn an honest living for themselves and their
families appear to be suffering the ill effects of exactly this same sort of elite-driven
economic pillage. The roots of our national decline will be found at the very top of our
society, among the One Percent, or more likely the 0.1 percent.
Thus, the ideas presented in Why Nations Fail seem both true and false. The claim
that harmful political institutions and corrupt elites can inflict huge economic damage upon a
society seems absolutely correct. But while the authors turn a harsh eye toward elite
misbehavior across time and space -- from ancient Rome to Czarist Russia to rising China --
their vision seems to turn rosy-tinted when they consider present-day America, the society in
which they themselves live and whose ruling elites lavishly fund the academic institutions with
which they are affiliated. Given the American realities of the last dozen years, it is quite
remarkable that the scholars who wrote a book entitled Why Nations Fail never glanced
outside their own office windows.
A similar dangerous reticence may afflict most of our media, which appears much more eager
to focus on self-inflicted disasters in foreign countries than on those here at home. Presented
below is a companion case-study, " Chinese
Melamine and American Vioxx: A Comparison ," in which I point out that while the American
media a few years ago joined its Chinese counterparts in devoting enormous coverage to the
deaths of a few Chinese children from tainted infant formula, it paid relatively little
attention to a somewhat similar domestic public-health disaster that killed many tens or even
hundreds of thousands of Americans.
A society's media and academic organs constitute the sensory apparatus and central nervous
system of its body politic, and if the information these provide is seriously misleading,
looming dangers may fester and grow. A media and academy that are highly corrupt or dishonest
constitute a deadly national peril. And although the political leadership of undemocratic China
might dearly wish to hide all its major mistakes, its crude propaganda machinery often fails at
this self-destructive task. But America's own societal information system is vastly more
skilled and experienced in shaping reality to meet the needs of business and government
leaders, and this very success does tremendous damage to our country.
Perhaps Americans really do prefer that their broadcasters provide Happy News and that their
political campaigns constitute amusing reality shows. Certainly the cheering coliseum crowds of
the Roman Empire favored their bread and circuses over the difficult and dangerous tasks that
their ancestors had undertaken during Rome's rise to world greatness. And so long as we can
continue to trade bits of printed paper carrying presidential portraits for flat-screen TVs
from Chinese factories, perhaps all is well and no one need be too concerned about the apparent
course of our national trajectory, least of all our political leadership class.
But if so, then we must admit that Richard Lynn, a prominent British scholar, has been
correct in predicting for a decade or longer that the global dominance of the European-derived
peoples is rapidly drawing to its end and within the foreseeable future the torch of human
progress and world leadership will inevitably pass into Chinese hands.
Ron Unz is publisher of The American Conservative and founder of Unz.org .
Definitely on the money regarding the U.S., I'm not sure the outlook for China though is
quite so rosy. I fear you made a serious mistake of burying the lead. That said, one other
issue you should have mentioned is the way the two major parties monopolize access to the
ballot, as discussed in a recent Al Jazeera series on the frauds of American democracy.
"Certainly America has experienced an enormous growth of officially tolerated corruption as
our political system has increasingly consolidated into a one-party state controlled by a
unified media-plutocracy."
Re: This failure suggests another reason for the decay of US (and Western European) society:
political correctness
Huh? And while demographics may not be destiny, demography should not be ignored either.
The US is likely to have a younger population structure than China which, as others have
noted, is going to grow old without first growing rich– not an enviable situation.
Moreover that population is likely to include a fair number of unmarried men for whom no
women are available. That's pretty muich unprecedented in history (although the reverse has
occasionally happened due to wars), and I have no idea how it will play out, but I suspect it
will not be a mark in China's plus column.
This piece whistewashes China's enormous challenges while exaggerating America's. That's
not to say we have no challenges nor that China does not have its strengths. Still, I would
sooner bet the farm on the US coming through this century without major political calamity
than China doing so. (Note: I said "calamity", I did not say "change". Both countries, will
need to change a lot– something true of the whole world)
America's worse than third world style population growth isn't an advantage in any way, shape
or form. Firstly, energy availability (and not labor) will be the bounding factor for
economic growth over the next few decades, and secondly the only sectors of the population
that are growing are those with the absolute least level of relevant skills that will be
needed in years that are to come.
No other developed nation, save almost empty Canada and Austrailia, have ever seen massive
population growth such as this.
Japan and China is not remotely a fair comparison – Japan has only 127 million people
whereas China has 1331 million people. When China reaches American levels of economic
development, as Japan did in the 1980's, the implications for America, both political and
economic, are going to be vastly more severe than they were when Japan emerged as a developed
nation. Think of 2030 China as being ten and a half 2012 Japans to get an rough idea of
what's coming.
JonF:
A good number of hunter gatherer societies that survived into modern times, such as the
Yanomano in South America, had much more lopsided sex ratios than China does today. This
isn't new.
Yes, some societies have had an excess of women after many men have been killed in
warfare: Germany and France after WWI, or the American South after the Civil War. But an
excess of men is pretty much unprecedented.
America has become the most hated country on earth along with Israel,and the tyranicle
government that controlls the country with all their crimes and lies will make America a
country no smart person would want to be a citizen.America can do better if people wake up to
the coruption and stop spending as much as the rest of the world on their military.It's not a
matter of if but when China becomes the biggest economy,but also the strongest military by
far on earth.I just hope China don't act like the American criminal government wasting tax
payers money on illegal wars baised on lies.It's been happening for over 100 years,but know
they do it in the open and have tottaly ignored the constitution.The 1 thing that made
America great was the constitution and as time goes by it is ignored to the point the rest of
the world and Americans see that America has no high ground,unless you call mudering innocent
civilians in illegal wars.America is bankrupt and when they can no longer afford to bribe
others it will collapes and the hatred it has caused for it'self will turn the entire world
against it.Even Israel will no longer be because of their warmongering and raceist
government.
The subtitle, "Which superpower is more threatened by its "extractive elites"?" reflects what
I believe is the most important political issue of the times. As one commenter pointed out
above, really there is nothing all that different now. I suspect this is largely true in that
'the masses' have usually lived many steps removed from understanding what is 'really going
on.' However today we are all linked on the material plane through electronic communication
and transportation in a way that before was never possible in that most ordinary people lived
nearly all of their lives bounded within a very small geographical, aka 'local' area. They
were place-bound, in other words. Now we are not. And because we are not the opportunity and
scope for mass deception have greatly increased along with the ability of ruling elites to be
more and more extractive.
I suspect you could almost make a mathematical formula out of it along the lines of: S =
F+O * (E/C), where S = Society or Stable & Sane Society, F = Freedom (opportunity,
creativity etc.), O = Organisation (cultural institutions of education, governance, manners,
language, both in terms of efficiency and levels of corruption/deceit etc. ), E =
Elites/Leadership class and C = Checks and Balances.
Something like that. Assuming a scale of 1-100 in each case, in the US I think it is
about: S = 70+50 * (95/35) = 120 * 2.7 = 325.7.
China: S = 45+65(110) * (75/50) = 100* 1.5 = 150.
China has 45 F-freedom to US 70.
China has 65 O-Organisation to US 50.
China has 75 E-Elites to US 95.
China has 50 C-Checks to US 35.
All of these are highly arguable of course but I think most would agree their freedom
quotient is lower, albeit the US has some of the worst upward / class mobility figures in the
West as a 10-year NYT study showed a while back.
China seems to have far greater organisational skills, as witnessed by their development of
high speed rail of late, which the US is incapable of doing.
Because of much greater power on the local level, I have given Chinese Elites a lower score
even though if we were to believe our own media, you would think that the US doesn't really
have any elites and China is a monolithic top-down beast.
For the same reason, I put in more Checks for China since I believe their people demonstrate
and organise far more energetically than those in the West, and that the Elites have to pay
far more attention to them. This is a wild guess.
The notion of "extractive elites" inadvertently wrecking their own country's future prospects
is rich with irony -- of the Alfred E. Neumann kind ("What, me worry?"). What about the
extraction of coal? It is the U.S. that is bribing China with coal exports -- America's
relatively most abundant natural resource -- so that the Chinese will tolerate America's
fiscal irresponsibility by continuing to prop up the dollar. Six months ago I sent a letter
about this to my local county council, which will decide in the next year whether to allow
the largest coal terminal in North America to be built (at the behest of Goldman Sachs, among
others) just a few miles from where I was living until recently, in the idyllic town of
Ferndale, WA. I maintained that one doesn't need to be a Green Party member in order to
oppose the coal terminal project -- any ardent nationalist worth his salt can, and ought to,
oppose it tooth and nail.
Coal terminals which make possible the shipping of millions of tons of coal to China would
be a disaster on several counts. Symbolically and as a matter of policy, the coal exports
would demonstrate America's economic subjection to China, the "Caesar" to whom we would be
paying tribute. Environmentally, the mercury and other pollution will drift back across the
Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest. These are just two of the problems. So why is the
Republican Party bending over backwards to join Peabody Coal and Goldman Sachs in trying to
build the largest coal terminal on the continent in Whatcom County, and other terminals
elsewhere in Washington and Oregon? What besides money, greed, and shortsightedness is behind
conservatives' obliviousness to the long-term dangers, both real and symbolic, of America's
bowing down to China with massive coal exports?
Thank you for an excellent article on what is happening. My only criticism is that it appears
that these things "just happen". With your insight and erudition, could you please address
"why" the situation has arisen. What could be the motivation behind actions and policies
which so clearly will destroy not only the 99% but also the basic wealth of the1%?
This is not something new, but a recurrent theme in world affairs.
" Behind all the governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going
on, engineered by very dangerous people."
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some
of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid
of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful,
so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when
they speak in condemnation of it." – Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
"So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages
from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
– Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
(1804-1881)
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote in November 1933 to Col. Edward House: "The real
truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centres has
owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson."
Acemoglu and Robinson "characterize China's ruling elites as "extractive" -- parasitic and
corrupt -- and predict that Chinese economic growth will soon falter and decline" China's ruling elites! China's ruling elites are extractive, parasitic & corrupt!
Bwaaahaaahaaahaaaa
What are Acemoglu and Robinson on? Crack? LSD? Crystal Meth?
China's ruling elites are frigging angels and saints compared to the monsters, maniacs and
morons creating misery amidst colossal wealth (stolen by them) in the USA. The US elite is a
parasite so bloated and stupid it is killing its host and maybe the rest of the planet
too.
The state of US politics can only be accurately described as self-destructive. The
government's hubris is bringing down the foundations of the economy, and it's only a matter
of time before we end up living in the ruins of a dead civilization.
The basic fact that supports any capitalist system, is that increasing productivity will
increase wealth, that is, real wealth. Huge military expenditures all towards the goal of
keeping raw resources a little bit cheaper, and a financial structure increasingly designed
to encourage making money from money, are absolutely insane. This is Ancient Rome all over
again.
The issues of energy and pollution are serious enough to threaten the global economy in
the long-term, but the social system here doesn't sufficiently support innovation to do much
about them. How is America supposed to be competitive in the future if we don't?
For example, we're not going to "run out" of oil any time soon, but when it comes
primarily from tar sands and underwater drilling, it's going to be tremendously expensive,
and with more expensive energy, our standard of living will decline. Other common energy
sources have the same problem. Common sense dictates that we innovate ahead of time. The
possibility of resource substitution doesn't happen by magic. But of course, that would
require an conscious investment in that direction.
And as for pollution, maybe high-speed rail and electric cars are part of a solution,
maybe they're not, as some commenters have suggested, but what's definitely not a solution is
not trying anything all. We need clean air and clean water, or else we'll die. Our food
sources do, too.
And it's not entirely obvious to people who don't read about what makes China attractive
for investment, but it's not solely cheap labor. (In fact, Chinese labor is more expensive
than in, say, India or Bangladesh. Not to mention that Chinese bureaucracy is not all that
easy to deal with!) China has constructed highly attractive logistics systems, and has an
increasingly educated and disciplined labor force. In America, we have infrastructure that's
becoming obsolete, and an education system that produces a lot of stupid citizens who have no
idea how to create value. With the latter, it's no wonder we have an "entitlement
culture."
If this all doesn't change, I'm not sticking around, waiting for this ship to sink.
Finally! A Conservative who tells the truth. Sir, you and Paul Craig Roberts are just the men
to lead the GOP out of the wilderness and back to sanity.
Your words coincide with the words of pissed off Progressives (such as myself) and the
youth at OWS movements.
We need more honesty from your side, such as Buddy Roehmer offered before the recent GOP
primary devolved into the Clown Reality Show which avoided hard topics such as these you've
addressed head on in "China's Rise, America's Fall".
If the GOP has no room for you, Mr. Unz, maybe you should join the Green Party or help
concerned Americans from both sides start a new party. Just a thought.
Your honesty is courageous. And I believe when the Neo-Cons and Oligarchs on the Right
read your words, you'll be in for a rough ride with Rush and Faux News. Stay the course. Stay
true to what you have written here. Courage.
Just this one piece you have written will move me to subscribe to your magazine, a first
for me, subscribing to a magazine with the word "Conservative" in it.
Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln and Barry Goldwater would be proud of
what you wrote, Sir. As would Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Hopefully China will continue to improve and the people there get more freedom. However, the
Tienanmen Square incident is not a small thing. I suspect the elites in China have no more
respect for their people than ours do. Infanticide, forced abortion and summary execution are
not policies to emulate. What the west has, the importance of the individual, the idea that
the State is supposed to be subservient to a higher law are not ideas to trade away for a
mess of pottage.
I do agree, however with earlier commentators about American lack of discipline. Years
ago, cutting through the Engineering School at Rutgers, I was struck that the vast majority
of students were foreigners, mostly Asian. Americans at that time just went to school to
party.
With her extractive elites America has taken a different path but has, ironically, arrived at
the same terminus as the old Soviet Union: Too much economic power in the hands of too few.
I find it amazing what is not mentioned here: that the dynamic of extractive elites being
described started its rapid upward trajectory at exactly the time that Reagan "conservative"
policies came to dominate public policy discourse.
To some extent, the relative decline of the US economically owes a good deal to idiotic
levels of spending on "defence". Trillions of dollars have been squandered over the past two
or three decades.
The author has forgotten to mention race and diversity as a factor that ensures
America will not rise again. China is an homogeneous country with no need of a parasitic
diversity industry hovering overhead trying to enforce its ideas of what any given activity
should 'look like'. Chinese have an average intelligence above that of whites and are not
saddled with untold millions of low IQ third world people hanging like a millstone round
their necks. An entirely white America might have had half a chance of keeping pace with
Chinese growth, but today's America has no chance at all.
Calgacus, you're right on the money with that comment of yours! A lot of wealthy Americans
now live in Costa Rica, HK, Thailand and Malaysia and AUS/NZ. Donald Trump has been investing
in Costa Rica very heavily ..and there are probably thousands of other billionaires doing the
same.
In case people here haven't noticed, a lot of our super elites have been leaving the U.S.
in droves, due to the disproportionally high taxes levied on them now. They are doing this
because they are smarter than the rest of us. This started 5 years ago just before the
housing crash. Probably has accelerated since 2010 where this article is from.
It's becoming a joke Calgacus ..you're right some of these comments here seem to be
absolutely retarded!
A good reality check on the economic situation is to ask around your friends and relatives
on whose making the big money now! ..The answer will be pretty obvious.
Even if China's economy outgrows ours, it would have to be 4x as large as the US economy to
match it's per capita income. The Chinese know that they are running against the clock to
modernize it's economy.
They're nowhere near as energy efficient in their manufacturing
processes and they are burning through their profits to build a big enough energy
infrastructure to meet the economic growth needs.
SinoPec is already partnered with ArAmCo
and Exxon to build refineries in China which means those Western Companies are already
raiding the Chinese treasure chest. GM and Walmart aren't selling their products for free,
either. In other words, China has been caught in the global economic web and they're going to
get played just like everybody else.
Does the US not suffer a serioius political Catch 22? You could clean up much of the
excessive influence of money for campaigning and the targeting of self-interest simply to get
people to bother to vote by adopting the compulsory voting which means that, in Australia,
about 90 per cent of those eligible do vote. But what would it do to actual policy when you
have such a high proportion of poorly educated and ethnically disaffected poor people with
existing entitlements which cause resentment amongst what was once middle America?
And here is an issue for serious empirical study. Why should a great concentration of
wealth in the hands of the 1 per cent, or 5 per cent, or 0.1 per cent matter? It is perfectly
clear that the very very rich don't consume significantly more of anything scarce or
particularly valuable unless one counts the economically painless transfer or Titians and
Tintorettos from one billionaired to another before ending up in a public gallery. It is
obviously not impossible for a large super-rich class to so indulge themselves in competitive
display by building palatial residences, private airstrips and golf courses and so on, that
their country's economy is starved of attention and capital. But any suggestion that such a
situation is to be found in the US needs to be demonstrated. It seems more likely that high
taxes and regulatory burdens are adding so much to the cost of doing business in the US and
even driving entrepreneurs to set up elsewhere, so that the owners of capital are not
deploying it to the greatest advantage of US citizens. Yet that hypothesis doesn't stand well
with the number of Australian software entrepreneurs who leave a country where it is very
easy and quick to start a business doesn't have too punitive a tax regime to start or restart
in California where public finances are such a threatening mess.
If the US then is still a good place to deploy one's capital in order to make a lot of
money (and not do it entirely by Wall Street fiddles) and there are large concentrations of
wealth which means large concentrations of investable capital what is the problem? Clearly it
is what is being done to the average American of no special talent, intelligence, education
or skill whose income is no longer supported by the advantages America had for many years
after WW2 and is being suppressed by high immigration. To an outsider it is slightly less
clear that the situation is made almost intolerable for the squeezed middle classes by tax
burdens which are not fairly born by the very rich. It is perhaps a little more certain that
the cost of living of the squeezed middle, including the absurdly high costs of health care,
are inflated damagingly by the transfer payments to the under classes and elderly poor which
don't give much benefit to the working poor unless one puts a high value on the contribution
of their state sales taxes to the keeping of aggressive or hopeless young males in prison
..
China is not to blame for America's decline, America has to face its own ghosts; the 15
trillion dollars debt, the unemployment, inequality, huge military spending, endless wars that
is what you have to confront.
Blaming others for Americas decline is not the solution. Be A man america and pick
yourself,learn from your mistakes and move on
Another blogger jumping on the bandwagon. So easy to say using numbers without any
understanding that numbers don't rule the world – to the dismay of mathematicians
everywhere.
None of this takes into account that most of China's population lives in poverty. And if
our own "War on Poverty" taught us anything is that their poor will remain poor for a very
long time.
There's also no consideration that China is [still] a Communist country. This
experiment simply gained them a bypass in the militarization highway. They needed to up their
might quicker.
It doesn't take into consideration that their 5,000yo culture doesn't
celebrate individuality -never has- and this means the creativity needed to push forth on the leaderboard is nonexistent. In fact, the most creative Chinese are those that come to the
USA. You can't lead by proxy.
I am not amazed that the China-uber-allez belief is a conservative thing. Just by
definition they cannot forecast the future. The future is full of X factors. X is at the core
of America. Your insular perspective of what this nation is all about and what makes it tick
make you the LAST ones who will decide where this country goes. I know you're just dying to
sell it to someone else before the price goes down. But you, and some of your commentors,
have no idea the self-contained power America holds.
PS: having lived in third world countries I can give you a warning if you're thinking of
moving to Costa Rica or similar places. The people there don't like loaded-freeloaders. Most
of your retirement will be spent on security. And just wait 'til you get your first
emergency. Seriously, you're going to be waiting a good while. America still has the best
GOVERNMENTAL services in the WORLD. Ouch I said the "G" word. Little known secret:
Libertarians don't turn down fast rides to the hospital.
Never was a piece written so needed to be read. We are a one party country. We are totally
failed by our media for the "most" part. God how is Corzine walking around . Why did no one
on MSNBC challenge Obama on pulling out of Iraq. The Democratic Party promised in 96 if they
got control of both Houses of Congress they would end Iraq. Where are you MSNBC, Ed, Rachel,
"Mathews forget Mathews he's been in ther tank for either Party in the White House for years"
and the loser on at 10 I can't even remember his name.
Then the Attorney General has he arrested anybody? His only claim to work is the ridiculous
suit again Sheriff Arpaio. Holder is beyond doubt the worst AG in decades.
Also finally again
someone stated the wealth of the upper 1% compared to the bottom 95% . It is time to throw
the bums out in both parties. Obama has got to go we need change even if it fails like him. We
are in sad shape how many know friends working endless hours of over time not to be payed for
it or hanging on not sure if their job will be there next Monday. It's sad how did they
ruined our Country. Buchanan is canned for his book, because it's racist give me a break.
Pathetic!!!
Interesting comments from folks. As one who left the U.S. in dismay and disgust at the depths
to which the George W. Bush administration dragged the U.S. and at his election (not
re-election since he was not elected in 2000 but appointed by the Supreme Court) in 2004 and
one who returned a year ago mostly due to the hope engendered by Obama's election, I tend to
be more optimistic about the U.S. but only if we are able to challenge the dark forces that
keep the majority of U.S. voters in a state of ignorance and anxiety.
The main challenge
right now, as I see it, is to get a constitutional amendment passed that overturns the
"Corporations are people, money is free speech" absurd court rulings as, if these are left to
stand, will destroy the U.S. faster than a thermonuclear attack. The U.S. has overcome
adversity before. We tend to solve problems pretty well when we know what they are and when
we're agreed upon what they are. Right now, folks are puzzled and confused about the way
forward. And the small size of Obama's successes are a testament not to failings on his part
but to the appalling state of the system in which he's forced to operate and the enormous
power of forces much bigger than he is. We are ruled by unelected corporations whose Boards
pre-select candidates from whom we elect 'freely'.
We are all responsbible for allowing the
system to deteriorate this far and for allowing its continuation. But America has come
through before why all the doom and gloom now? As an aside, I agree with those who see our
continuing and increasing diversity and large-scale immigration as our greatest strengths and
these should be nurtured and treasured, not feared. Nobody ever moved forward from a position
of fear. Fear can only lead us backward.
Funnily enough, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and and a score of European nations managed to build
First World economies with negligible diversity. It's also rather peculiar that the much less
diverse "America" of decades past had a much stronger economy than does modern day America,
or that non-diverse China is progressing economically much, much faster than insanely diverse
India.
It's almost as if diversity is utterly and completely worthless. I wonder why that is
China 91% "Han", 9% Other (Korean, TIbetan, & 53 others comprising a total population
of 105 million people)
Languages: 7 major language groups (Jin, Wu, Yue, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Gan) comprising hundreds
of dialects and sub-languages
USA 80% White, 12% Black, 8% Other
Languages: 82% English, 10% Spanish, 8% Other
So it seems to me that the USA is only slightly more "diverse" than China in percentage
terms when you spell things out in terms of Black and White. However, looking at the cultural
variations and especially language, it becomes quite clear that the designation of "Han
Chinese" is as meaningful or meaningless as the designation "White American."
I agree however that a nation unable to cope with its own diversity and the challenges it
presents by discarding bigotry is doomed to failure.
You might be interested to mention next time that China has overtaken the United States in
patent filings, utility model patents, industrial design patents, trade mark filings, as well
as scientific paper publications.
Hi Ron. That was yet another outstanding overview and analysis. Well done!
You have provided your readers a very nuanced view of the countless variables – some
intangible, many virtually invisible – that propel a civilization forward, or even over a
cliff. There's much to contemplate here. Thank you!
What makes a state fall is well described in "the rise and decline of great powers" and it is
related with spending money on missiles and the like.
When a state or country begins to spend
more money than the amount she gets in return for the expenses, she is doomed. perhaps America will retain much of her power but she is doomed as far as i understand.
A great analysis. The decline of the US and the rest of the west reminds me of the Fall of
the Roman Empire, but I'll have to a little bit more reading to back that up.
And by the way: Remember to be a little bit proud every day of the way you are spending
your money. Sites like this is increasingly important in the Age of Misinformation.
Wow! only four comments! This is an eye opening essay.
Our elite are lawyers and they manipulate, China's elite are engineers and they build
things.
Three trillion on Bush's stupid wars('fought for completely irrational reasons") and our non
participating(no draft) populace quietly went along with the entire show!
Why?
Mr. Unz said, "And since we live in a entertainment-dominated society, sentiments affirmed on
then screen often have direct real-world consequences."
Double Wow or bow-wow, great point!
I also think we are encouraged NOT to participate in the Democratic process as that seems
'angry.' We are shown that in our entertainment.
People who complain about the way-things-are-now are party p0opers and impolite. The first
media approved reaction is to scoff and then shun them.
I also think the only safe topic 0f conversation around the water cooler is sports. Again, no
politics allowed, unless you are an approved victim. But generally the major league sports of
baseball, football and basketball are THE only thing you can talk about publicly, on which
you can safely agree. The racial divisions we have created with our blessed multiculturalism,
have starkly different interests and the differences are too real in the workplace to discuss
them so we all act like Putnam's turtles and talk NFL training camp lingo.
As long as our GDP increases one per cent a year and six-packs of beer are available for Joe
Six-pack, everything will be fine, but if the increase turns to a decrease watch out!
"Sweden is among the cleanest societies in Europe, while Sicily is perhaps the most corrupt.
But suppose a large clan of ruthless Sicilian Mafiosi moved to Sweden and somehow managed to
gain control of its government. On a day-to-day basis, little would change, with Swedish
traffic policemen and building inspectors performing their duties with the same sort of
incorruptible efficiency as before, and I suspect that Sweden's Transparency International
rankings would scarcely decline. But meanwhile, a large fraction of Sweden's accumulated
national wealth might gradually be stolen and transferred to secret Cayman Islands bank
accounts, or invested in Latin American drug cartels, and eventually the entire plundered
economy would collapse."
It's happening in Sweden, unfortunately.
In Iceland, it already happened, over a very short span of time. But the Icelandic native
populace literally ejected them corporally from the govt. buildings, and now the heads of the
major banks have been criminally sentenced and imprisoned, Iceland has the only PM to have
been criminally convicted in the financial crisis. Dire predictions by other mafiosi of
economic meltdown as a consequence of the "too big to fail" going to jail have yet to
materialise, Iceland is doing fine.
Some of the sources of Chinese success and American decay are not entirely mysterious.
As it happens, the typical professional background of a member of China's political elite
is engineering; they were taught to build things. Meanwhile, a remarkable fraction of
America's political leadership class attended law school, where they were trained to argue
effectively and to manipulate. Thus, we should not be greatly surprised that while China's
leaders tend to build, America's leaders seem to prefer endless manipulation, whether of
words, money, or people.
Great stuff.
It's also noticeable that when China creates a "crisis" it's by building new land, whereas
the US creates crises by fomenting strife and bombing. Construction versus destruction seems
to be a theme.
The "Chinese dragon" of the last two decades may be faltering but it is still hailed by
many as an economic miracle.
Far from a great advance for Chinese workers, however, it is the
direct result of a consolidation of power in the hands of a small clique of powerful
families, families that have actively collaborated with Western financial oligarchs.
"The Rockefellers and Rothschilds in China :a long intimate relationship" :
"The history of Wall Street and Anglo-American finance in China is one that is rarely
discussed in Western media or even academia , whereas knowing it would explain much about
both China's stunning economic rise over the past 70 years ,as well as seemingly rising
tensions between China and the US today."
I must say Ron made many good points and predictions in his article of several years ago.
America has been a clown world of a one-party political system since the end of WWII.
Never before has it been so obvious we have a government of, by, and for the rich
corporate kleptocrat's who control every aspect of life in this country.
"... The US behaves this way because increasingly its the military that forms the primary lever of US power. They need to create a sense of fear to justify the $1T that the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex consumes every year with zero real-world benefit for the poor tax-payers who are given no choice but to fund it. ..."
"... Oh no... imagine a nation-state exerting regional control over a regional issue without us being involved! The horror! The HORROR! ..."
"... Neocons never saw a country they didn't want to invade, nor any event beyond our national borders which was not a threat, nor any thing happening within our borders that did not justify a military escalation. Sadly, instead of remaining ex- Trotskyites on the fringe, they have become the mainstream in certain circles, mostly centering on the Pentagon and Congress. ..."
"... Unfortunately the US has forgotten that it was once a weak military power and that only through lengthy diplomatic negotiations would they have any real chance of achieving its commercial and political goals. Now that the US has massive military power successive administrations have been blindly seduced in to thinking that using military power is a rational substitute for diplomacy. ..."
"... Imagine all the nice things America could have if its defense budget were only, say, $300 billion dollars, i.e. still larger than any other country's . The $400 billion saved would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE, among other things. ..."
here have been news reports in the last few days that have portrayed fairly routine behavior
by other states as an attempt to "take advantage" of the U.S. during the pandemic. The
incidents in question are consistent with how these states were behaving before the outbreak.
For example, The Wall Street Journal
reported on Monday that China continues increasing its control in the Spratly and Paracel
islands. This is something that the Chinese government has been doing for decades before now,
but this is how it was described in the article:
In recent weeks, Beijing has conducted operations to gain more of a foothold in the
Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea, emblematic of China's attempts to
assert its influence around the world.
In other words, China continued a policy in its own backyard that it has been pursuing since
before the turn of the century, but because it is happening at the same time as the pandemic it
is treated as somehow more menacing than before. How asserting territorial claims on their
doorstep is "emblematic" of asserting influence "around the world" is left to the reader's
imagination. This is not just a problem of strange framing in media reports. U.S. officials are
promoting the idea that other states are "taking advantage" by simply doing the same things
they have done many times in the past:
While some of the operations might have been planned before the pandemic swept the globe,
U.S. officials said American rivals like China are capitalizing on the Trump administration's
diverted attention and the strains on its military.
"Beijing is a net beneficiary of global attention diverted towards the pandemic rather
than military activities in the South China Sea," said Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for
Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu.
Claims like this raise an obvious question: what would the U.S. have been doing to
discourage this behavior if there were no pandemic? As far as I can tell, there is nothing that
the U.S. could or should be doing that would make China less likely to pursue its claims in the
South China Sea. The U.S. conducts so-called "freedom of navigation" operations (FONOPs) all
the time, but this has had no effect on anything China does. If the U.S. is not able to conduct
these operations right now, that doesn't invite more aggressive behavior from China because the
FONOPs weren't deterring anything in the first place. That strongly suggests that the U.S. is
wasting its time and resources on operations that serve no purpose.
The claim here that adversaries are using the coronavirus timeout to test US will is
silly; they're calling military activity that would've occurred anyway a test. What we're
really seeing is that presence patrols said to be vital to deterrence are an expensive waste
of time. pic.twitter.com/RzNBpHUm16
Similarly, recent "harassment" of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf by Iranian boats is more
proof that the U.S. did not "restore deterrence" with Iran when it assassinated Soleimani at
the start of the year. That shows that the administration's Iran policy continues to backfire.
If adversaries are supposed to be taking advantage of a distracted U.S., the Iranian example
doesn't support that because the administration remains obsessively focused on Iran even now.
The Pentagon started drawing up plans for massive escalation last month
:
Last month, the Pentagon began drafting plans for a major escalation against the
Iran-backed factions -- namely the hardline Kataeb Hezbollah -- blamed for the rockets.
"Washington told us they'd simultaneously hit 122 targets in Iraq if more Americans died,"
a top Iraqi official said.
If tensions between the U.S. and Iran remain high, that is a consequence of earlier American
escalation. It is not happening because the U.S. is preoccupied by the pandemic.
All of the incidents cited in these reports pose no
serious threat to the U.S. or our military, and were it not for the pandemic they would be seen
as fairly typical and predictable behavior from all of these governments. The only reason that
these activities are being portrayed as "tests" of U.S. "resolve" is that our interests have
been inflated so absurdly over the decades that anything these governments do in their own
immediate neighborhood is viewed as a challenge. As we rightly focus on the threat from the
pandemic here at home, we should expect to hear more exaggerated warnings about minor foreign
nuisances as supporters of a bloated military budget seek to justify unnecessary missions and
deployments.
""Beijing is a net beneficiary of global attention diverted towards the
pandemic rather than military activities in the South China Sea," said
Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu."
Capt. Kafka (his real name, I assume) is too polite to add that Beijing has also been a
net beneficiary of global attention having been diverted by twenty years of pointless,
botched Middle East wars that only benefited Saudi Arabia and Israel , and that that
is, oh I don't known, maybe a hundred times more important factor in causing our
neglect of real American national security issues than the past few months of coronavirus
botches.
Yes funny thing we an actual threat right here in river city and we are being told to
ignore it and get out and go to ball games and go shopping. Meanwhile 10,000 miles from our
shores some souped up Chris Crafts got a little to near to our ships.
The 'Iranian harassment' is especially foolish theater of the absurd.
1. It took place in 'international waters in the north Arabian Gulf', you mean the Persian
Gulf, that would be very close to Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran. You could say near the Iranian
coastline.
2. The video they released showed the IRGC speedboat running parallel to the ship going
about 15 mph with its machine gun pointing safely straight into the air.
... I doubt these communist billionaires will risk losing everything on a war with the U.S.and its allies.
The Middle East is an unstable cauldron largely of our own making as
directed by insatiable Bibi and his gallant crew who are courageously prepared to fight to
the last American.
Biden will likely be even more subservient to this group. If he picks
their darling Kamala Harris - even more so. Wash your hands and carefully avoid contact
with the NYT. & MSM in general. .
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like nail.
The US behaves this way because increasingly its the military that forms the primary
lever of US power. They need to create a sense of fear to justify the $1T that the
military-industrial-security-intelligence complex consumes every year with zero real-world
benefit for the poor tax-payers who are given no choice but to fund it.
That is well said, Gary. And the stakes for that justification get higher as the
military must get more and more money in an economy and zeitgeist that has less and less of
it to spare...until we get this kind of farce.
A quote I never thought I would post...but it's making more and more sense: "It will be a
great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a
bake-sale to buy a bomber."
Apparently, the so somebody must think Trump administration is easily distracted.
C'mon....the impeachment, the pandemic, hostile news coverage...you can only expect so much
from these folks.
Neocons never saw a country they didn't want to invade, nor any event beyond our national
borders which was not a threat, nor any thing happening within our borders that did not
justify a military escalation. Sadly, instead of remaining ex- Trotskyites on the
fringe, they have become the mainstream in certain circles, mostly centering on the
Pentagon and Congress.
But, hey, what would all those Generals do if they didn't have any Military-Industrial
Complex corporation board of directors to sit on after they "retire".
Unfortunately the US has forgotten that it was once a weak military power and that only
through lengthy diplomatic negotiations would they have any real chance of achieving its
commercial and political goals. Now that the US has massive military power successive
administrations have been blindly seduced in to thinking that using military power is a
rational substitute for diplomacy. The current Trump administration approach to foreign
policy is a total failure as it seems to be based on nothing more than bravado and pathetic
threats of using military force to attempt to influence international outcomes.
If the US
wants international approval and support, it is only going to be able to be rebuilt if the
US stops pretending that every treaty, international organization and agreement is biased
against the US and should be withdrawn from and instead return to the more proactive
approach of diplomacy.
I've thought all along, if we're expecting a manufacturing renaissance in this country and
a big increase in exports, and China wants to secure some of the shipping lanes we'll need
on their own dime, why not just let them?
Imagine all the nice things America could have if its defense budget were only, say, $300
billion dollars, i.e. still larger than any other country's . The $400 billion saved
would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE, among other things.
"The $400 billion saved would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE"
No go. If we cut back to $300 billion we couldn't keep sacrificing American lives and
money for Saudi Arabia and Israel. The ventilators and PPE you mention would only benefit
Americans. What we do for Saudi Arabia and Israel is far more important than that. Indeed,
cutting our defense budget necessarily entails bigotry and antisemitism because its
practical effect would be to deny the Jewish and Muslim heartlands full access to American
money and blood.
Cutting the defense budget and husbanding resources for our own use would also undermine
American credibility, because geopolitical competitors are invariably impressed and
deterred when a Great Power fritters away its resources on client states rather than
defending the lives and wealth of its own people.
As far as Europe is concerned, the differentiation between the two sides of imperialism
looks relevant. However, with respect to the third world, such as India, the Middle East
and Central and South America, do you think the difference between the two types of
imperialism is valid?
It looks as if every Empire has a different history and characteristics.
The British Empire didn't even regard itself as an empire until the 19th century. Before
that, it was a mixed bag of territories and trading posts around the world with plenty of
alliances with local leaders. British settlers went to America, Canada, Australia, South
Africa and New Zealand, but few went to India, Africa or the Middle East (mostly only
administrators in these places).
The thirteen American colonies were concerned with settlement, looking for "Lebensraum" in
the south and west while eliminating native Indian tribes. This was the same as Hitler's
"drive to the east" but as far as I can see, the idea of the USA being an Empire didn't
arrive until after WW2 when Anglo-Americans found that they were the world's premier
industrial and financial power (it helped that everywhere else was destroyed).
The Zionist Empire (1985+?) exists in the shell of the Anglo-American Empire, and exerts
its power through having subverted the power structure. It now directs US financial affairs,
the US media, controls politics and directs foreign policy. Israel on its own is not much
(about the same population as Scotland). The Zionist US empire also includes settlements. The
6 million Jews in the US regard themselves as permanent US settlers (the US is their country)
and don't have plans to move to Israel when they retire.
Both the Anglo-US empire and the Zionist-US empire are/were harsh in enforcing their
interests on less developed nations and the 3rd world (organizing coups etc.).
The British Empire was less aggressive (after its settlement phase), and it's
administrators were also notably uncorrupt, learnt local languages and made a genuine effort
to develop native administrative skills – although it's very unfashionable to say so
nowadays.
Excellent, Mr. Unz. British, American and Jewish elites need to be isolated, they are
obviously an enemy of the whole human race. Ethno Nationalism for all peoples of the world,
protected by all peoples of the world, is the most sensible solution. Isolate the warmongers,
secret societies and criminal's. No more war's and heal the earth. It's up to us.
This is part of Tom's description of the Article on Pompeo, Esper and the gang of 1986
(west pointers). They are well embedded. In fact, one class from West Point, that of 1986, from which both Secretary of Defense
Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo graduated, is essentially everywhere in a
distinctly militarized (if still officially civilian) and wildly hawkish Washington in the
Trumpian moment.
In case you missed it the first time, I repeat this link from the beginning of April,
-----------------
Red Ryder | Apr 27 2020 17:07 utc | 14
One addition there. The EU lost "market share" in Iran due to US sanctions. (As
they did with Russia). What they would like to do is to get it back. (France was one
of the bigger losers)
The US is very good at making enemies and loosing friends, simply due to their treatment of
other nations in the same manner they treat their domestic population.
The United States announced its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), also known as the "Iran nuclear deal" or the "Iran deal", on May 8, 2018.
This document discusses the legal rationale for the US withdrawal from tje JCPOA in
detail:
"... I guess when an administration has shown over and over again that it does not respect, international law, domestic law, the US constitution, logic, meaning or the English Language then it can say anything and do anything. ..."
"... The power of the United States is rapidly fading. The country is on the eve of a massive social crisis, as its ruling class fails even to understand the extent of the system's failure. ..."
"... Israel is nobody's real need. Zionism is a philosophical oddity stranded by the tides of history, a mid Victorian nonsense entirely composed of racism and silly ideas about human inequality. ..."
... is that akin to the portion of a George Carlin comedy sketch ?
"From 1778 to 1871, the United States government
entered into more than 500 treaties with
the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated
in some way or outright broken by the US government,
while at least one treaty was violated
or broken by Native American tribes."
The EU rapprochement with Iran is all about the huge market the EU wants. Their interest in
the JCPOA was always about Iran developing, and the EU benefiting for its trade and
investment potential.
Crippling Iran again with snapback sanctions certainly would end Iran-EU relations for a
decade or longer.
With the EU economy in the toilet due to the pandemic, now more than ever the EU needs
Iran free of sanctions, not laden with crippling new ones.
Only one country benefits from the economic strangulation of Iran--Israel.
In these times of memory holes, sometimes it pays to remember:
As much as I'd like to be optimistic that justice might actually be served for both
Epstein and his myriad clients/co-conspirators, I think the powers-that-be will again
squash this - or liquidate Epstein - before things get out of hand for them.
The American justice system has been corrupted in much the same way the political
system has been, and it's primary objective is to protect the rulers from the common
folk, not to actually deliver true justice.
I'll watch with anticipation, but I haven't had any satisfaction from either a
political or justice perspective since at least the 2000 coup d'etat, so I won't hold my
breath this time.
Economist Michael Hudson explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch,
where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military
occupation.
This is part of Tom's description of the Article on Pompeo, Esper and the gang of 1986
(west pointers). They are well embedded. In fact, one class from West Point, that of 1986, from which both Secretary of Defense
Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo graduated, is essentially everywhere in a
distinctly militarized (if still officially civilian) and wildly hawkish Washington in the
Trumpian moment.
In case you missed it the first time, I repeat this link from the beginning of April,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176686/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_trump%27s_own_military_mafia_/
-----------------
Red Ryder | Apr 27 2020 17:07 utc | 14
One addition there. The EU lost "market share" in Iran due to US sanctions. (As
they did with Russia). What they would like to do is to get it back. (France was one
of the bigger losers)
Before any aggression, the United States want Iran to be hermetically sealed with sanction
just like Iraq was before our invasion. Everybody knows the US's intentions because we've
seen it before. There will be NO domestic support for war on Iran as Americans die due to
no public healthcare and massive unemployment and poverty. Iran and the Middle East view a
war on Iran as an Israeli wet dream. Israel is viewed as the intellectual author of
aggression against Iran, and Iran will respond appropriately. So, is AIPAC willing to get
Israel destroyed? Is AIPAC on a suicide mission? Looks that way.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are de facto allies aiming to carve up the entire Middle East
between them. Forget about Sunni / Shia / Hebrew, that is a manufactured excuse to war for
resources (oil first, then water).
Proof? Mutual "enemies" (oil-rich Iran and Syria, which is the nexus for pipelines) and
mutual ally (Uncle Sam). Also not a single complaint from Israel over the $100b US-Saudi
Arms deal. As to Palestine, that is a human rights issue and has no weight because water is
not recognized as a strategic resource (yet).
I guess when an administration has shown over and over again that it does not respect,
international law, domestic law, the US constitution, logic, meaning or the English
Language then it can say anything and do anything.
"The Iranians are not helping the Palestinians one iota. They are splitting the
opposition."
Glasshopper@29
Whoever has been helping Hezbollah has been helping the Palestinians. And whoever has
been holding Syria together, despite the pressure of the imperialists and their sunni-state
puppets, has also been helping the Palestinians by bringing some kind of balance into
regional power calculations.
It is imperative that Iran continues not only to provide political support to the
Palestinian cause but to democratise the Gulf, to the extent of bringing about the demise
of the autocracies, and the Arabian world generally.
Israel has already exerted its maximum influence. The power of the United States is
rapidly fading. The country is on the eve of a massive social crisis, as its ruling class
fails even to understand the extent of the system's failure. (There will be no war to
divert attention from the crisis.) And Israel will be left to solve its own problems as its
'allies' find themselves increasingly pre-occupied with real problems.
Supporting Israel and building it up as an imperialist base has been part of an era in
which the empire was hegemonic and thus able to define international events in terms of
domestic politics.
That era has ended. The USA is still powerful but it is no longer anything more than one
of the major participants in geopolitical competition. Even to maintain its position it is
going to have to do, what other powers have done and concentrate its resources on its real
needs.
Israel is nobody's real need. Zionism is a philosophical oddity stranded by the
tides of history, a mid Victorian nonsense entirely composed of racism and silly ideas
about human inequality. Israel has one choice, to divest itself of its fascist
government and its fascistic culture and seek accommodation within the neighbourhood or to
wither away as its population emigrates leaving only the committed fascists to play with
Armageddon.
Long before that happens the imperialists will have taken its weapons away from it.
It may very well be the case that the ordinary Iranian is no more committed to fighting
on behalf of Palestinians than the average American is committed to risking all, or
anything, for the sake of Israel. But Iran's commitment to Palestine is a powerful
political statement and one that counters the divisive tactics of the wahhabis and their
imperial friends. Iran has taken up the mantle that Nasser briefly wore, in the vanguard of
a muslim and Arab nationalist movement. This makes it very difficult for the sunni tyrants
actually to commit forces to defend Israel or attack Iran. Their duplicity is a measure of
their own weakness.
Does anyone imagine that the pro-Israeli policies pursued by the Sauds are actually
popular? The Gulf and Saudi policies of sucking up to Israel are far more damaging to them
than Iran's stance is to it.
The United States announced its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), also known as the "Iran nuclear deal" or the "Iran deal", on May 8, 2018.
This document discusses the legal rationale for the US withdrawal from tje JCPOA in
detail:
Iran should sign a peace deal with the Israelis.
Posted by: Glasshopper | Apr 27 2020 16:42 utc | 8
Some people should stick to what they do well, like hopping on glass. A simple
observation: peace deal with "the Israelis" is not possible. Gulfie princes tried. No
cigar. They genuinely tried to be nice with Israel, out of "anti-Semitic delusion that Jews
control USA". I conjecture that Glasshopper made a similar assumption -- why would Iran
consider a "peace deal with the Israelis" if its direct conflict is with USA (and the
Gulfies)? How it would help them unless "Jews control USA"?
As a mental experiment, let Grasshopper sketch a putative "deal with Israelis". Kushner
plan?
@70 BraveNewWorld, you haven't added up the numbers correctly. Take China, Russia and Iran
out of the equation leaves you with five (including the EU as a whole, which is not a
given). Take the USA out as well and it doesn't matter how sycophantic the Europeans are,
Pompeo can only muster four votes.
And he needs five to refer the issue to the UNSC.
That's why Pompous wants to waddle his way back in: no matter which way he looks at
this, without the USA sitting at the table he is one-short.
Actually, I've just read the JCPOA and UNSC Resolution 2231 and neither has any mention of
a "majority vote" requirement for a referral to the UNSC for a vote on "snapping back"
sanctions. It appears that any one JCPOA participant can refer the issue of alleged
non-compliance to the UNSC, provided that they first exhaust the Joint Commission dispute
mechanism.
But I do note this in the JCPOA (my bold): "Upon receipt of the notification from the
complaining participant, as described above, including a description of the good-faith
efforts the participant made to exhaust the dispute resolution process specified in this
JCPOA , the UN Security Council, in accordance with its procedures, shall vote on a
resolution to continue the sanctions lifting"
Seems to me that there is a procedural "out" there for the UN Secretariat i.e. it may
use that highlighted section to decide that the participant is a vexatious litigant whose
participation in the Joint Commission was not in good faith, ergo, the UN can refuse to
even take receipt of the complaint.
Everything else then becomes moot.
The USA would raise merry-hell, sure, it would. But that would be no more outrageous a
ploy by the UN than was the USA's own argument that it can have its cake and eat it
too.
After all, if a participant to the JCPOA referred its complaint to the UNSC without
first going through the Joint Commission then it is a given that the UNSC is under no
obligation to receive that complaint. No question.
So why can't the UNSC also refuse to accept a complaint when it is clear that the
complainant has not gone through the Joint Commission process in "good faith"?
One for the lawyers and ambassadors to argue, I would suggest, but it is not a given
that the USA can ram this through even if everyone were to agree that it were still a
participant in the JCPOA.
@61 Arch: "This document discusses the legal rationale for the US withdrawal from tje JCPOA
in detail"
Arch, the crux of that CRS legal paper boils down to this:
.."under current domestic law, the President may possess authority to terminate U.S.
participation in the JCPOA and to re-impose U.S. sanctions on Iran, either through
executive order or by declining to renew statutory waivers"..
All the other fluff in that paper is inconsequential compared to this question posed by
that quote: can the US claim to be half-pregnant?
I suspect not.
Note that at the time the CRS paper was written (May 2018) it did have a valid point
i.e. while Trump *had* refused to re-certify Iranian compliance, he had *not* reimposed US
sanctions on Iran, and so the CRS paper could credibly argue that Trump wasn't pregnant, he
just talking dirty to the Congress.
But that was then, and this is now, and - as b points out - Executive Order 13846 is the
smoking gun because in it Trump is OFFICIALLY stating that he has decided to " cease the
participation of the United States in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ".
That EO is clearly the killing blow to Pompeo's nonsense, and even the CRS legal paper
you linked to would agree.
As I see it, the historical problem with European fascism has been that when push comes to
shove the knife comes out and its either give in to enforced collaboration or take a
stabbing, it's your choice. Even if that means helping murder millions of your neighbours
or being murdered. As Celan said "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland."
The US has been enforcing a morally sanitised Disney Adult version of this old world
order since at least the 2003 Supreme Crime of Aggression against Iraq. Sooner or later as
this global pandemic, political, and financial crisis unfolds, the US leaders will be
forced to choose whether or not the UN is a viable vehicle through which to continue the
elite lunatic project for planetary full spectrum dominance of 21st C financial and
military affairs.
So I reckon the Pentagon at some point either gets to finally execute the long awaited
'Operation Conquer Persia' or the politicians and their chickenhawk ideologues will back
off again and continue the death by a thousand cuts of the last 40 years. I'd probably bet
the latter but that's the trouble with genuine psychopaths, push comes to shove they will
go for it if they think they'll get away with it.
This last 2 decades has been like watching a reality TV series about a fat drunken
psychopath with a bloody knife going around and stabbing people at a party, but now the
psycho is starting to stagger and everyone in the house is watchful trying to keep their
distance. House rules are that anyone starts an actual fight to the death with the psycho
then everyone dies!
I more or less trust that if we ever get there, a multipolar world order won't collapse
into outright fascism but we're closer to collapse every year, especially from this year
on, and most especially in the Persian Gulf.
In current US political system, it is not necessary to propose a valid claim, or proposal
or argument - they intend to act from a position of authority. They know where you live.
Meanwhile the damage to the household sector is so severe that it is going to impair living
standards for most of the decade, writes Minerd, adding that "this problem is compounded by the
fact that the most financially vulnerable households are experiencing the majority of layoffs.
Young, hourly workers in lower-paid service industry jobs are bearing the brunt of economic pain,
and these are the people least able to deal with an interruption to income, which will compound the
economic pain from layoffs as consumption falls even more sharply. Meanwhile, the disruption in
corporate cash flows will be pervasive and will rebound unevenly. There will be few positive
outcomes in credit as companies are encouraged to accumulate more debt in the already overleveraged
corporate sector. These failures will stunt the eventual recovery and make it much more uneven" and
eventually result in even more destabilizing policy responses.
Going back to the Fed, Minerd writes that the "central bank will never be able to get back to
normal. The Fed's balance sheet has expanded from $4.5 trillion to $6.6 trillion in just about a
month, and it is likely on its way to over $9 trillion soon."
Our central bank will never be able to get back
to normal. The
#Fed
's
balance sheet has expanded from $4.5 trillion to $6.6 trillion in just about a month, and it is
likely on its way to over $9 trillion soon.
https://t.co/jcbtrJNFHk
pic.twitter.com/sjEWiB2Xhr
The Fed is not alone in this endeavor: "As Ed Hyman of Evercore ISI pointed out, G7 central
banks collectively purchased in March $1.4 trillion in financial assets. This annual rate of $17
trillion is nearly five times the previous monthly record set in April 2009."
And so, as we enter this era of recrimination, it will have broad political and social
implications: "as the death toll mounts it will be used as political fodder. To say "These people
died from coronavirus because of mistakes made in Washington" is an effective tactic. After the
Civil War, politicians used the image of the Bloody Shirt to remind voters that honoring fallen
Union soldiers demanded a Republican vote. Deservedly or not, today's Republican administration
will have a hard time fending off that argument. As the Hoover Administration bore the consequences
of the economic collapse of the 1930s, so quite possibly the pandemic will be viewed as
Washington's failure."
His concluding thoughts are the same that we uttered almost a decade ago -
namely that
the Fed is setting the stage for bloody conflict within the US
(a conclusion for
which Time magazine mocked us at the time
):
Eventually, a populist revolt to address the current massive inequality of income and
wealth, will happen. Soon pressure will mount on policymakers to bolster the social safety net
and increase things like healthcare and job security and maybe even institute a guaranteed
living wage. My only concern is that it will be done in a way that is not productive for
long-term growth. These programs will create incentives that will reduce overall productivity,
Instead, policymakers should address fundamental reforms in the economy to restore growth and
reduce inequality.
They should... but they won't. Instead the fiscal and monetary programs that are being put in
place are fundamentally redefining how the government interacts with businesses and individuals,
warns Minerd adding that "some programs will work, and some will not, but they will remain in some
form or fashion forever."
Well, not forever. That paradigm of central planning the USSR eventually collapsed. And so
will the USSR's replacement: the United States.
Economist Michael Hudson explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch,
where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military
occupation.
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss the economics of Washington's empire, the role of the
IMF and World Bank, attempts to create alternative financial systems like BRICS, and the new
cold war on China and Russia.
PART 2 OF 2 (Interview recorded on April 13, 2020)
MICHAEL HUDSON: The World Bank has one primary aim, and that's to make other countries
dependent on American agriculture. This is built into its articles of agreement. It can only
make foreign-currency loans, so it will only make loans to countries for agricultural
development, roads, if it is to promote exports.
So the United States, through the World Bank, has become I think the most dangerous,
right-wing, evil organization in modern history -- more evil than the IMF. That's why it's
almost always been run by a Secretary of Defense. It has always been explicitly military. It's
the hard fist of American imperialism.
Its idea is to make Latin American, and African, and Asian countries export plantation crops
, especially plantations that are U.S.- or foreign-owned. The primary directive of the World
Bank to countries is: "You must not feed yourself; you must not grow your own grain or your own
food; you must depend on the United States for that. And you can pay for that by exporting
plantation crops."
(Intro – 1:45)
BEN NORTON: Here at Moderate Rebels we talk a lot about imperialism. I mean it's really the
main point of this show. This program explores how US imperialism functions, how it works on
the global stage, how neoliberal policies of austerity and privatization are forced at the
barrel of a gun through the US military, through invasion and plunder.
We talk about it in Venezuela, Iraq, Syria and so many countries. But we often don't talk
about the specific economic dynamics of how it works through banks, loans, and bonds.
Well, today we are continuing our discussion with the economist Michael Hudson, who is
really one of the best experts in the world when it comes to understanding how US imperialism
functions as an economic system, not just through a system of military force. Of course the
economics are maintained and undergirded by that military force. And we talk about how the
military force is expressed through regime-change wars and military interventions.
But Michael Hudson also explains how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the
US financial system, banks and Wall Street all work together, hand in glove with the military
to maintain that financial chokehold.
He spells this all out brilliantly in a book called Super Imperialism: The Economic
Strategy of American Empire . He began to write that book in 1968, and then recently
updated it in 2002, published again in 2003 with the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan,
and kind of updated and showed how, even though the system that he detailed 50 years ago hasn't
really changed, it has shifted in some ways.
So today we're gonna talk about how that international imperialist system dominated by the
US works.
Michael Hudson, who in the first part of this talked about the scheme that is the
coronavirus bailout -- if you want to watch the first part you can go find that at moderaterebels.com ; it's on YouTube, Spotify,
iTunes, any other platform.
Michael Hudson is an economist and he's also a longtime Wall Street financial analyst. He is
also a professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and you can find his
work at michael-hudson.com , which I
will link to in the show notes for this episode.
So without further ado, here is the second part of our interview with Michael Hudson.
(4:37)
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I think it's a good transition point to talk about another kind of scam
you've identified. There's a really hilarious aside in the second preface to your book "Super
Imperialism," where Herman Kahn, who is, I think a founder of the Hudson Institute, which you
went to work for. He was also the inspiration for the Dr. Strangelove character and Stanley
Kubrick's film.
There's an award that the neocons give out every year named for him; Benjamin Netanyahu is a
recent award winner.
But Herman Kahn was he was on a panel for one of your talks, where you laid out your theory
of "Super Imperialism," and how the United States actually gets other countries to subsidize
its empire, and is able to expand and carry out this massive imperial project without having to
impose austerity on its own population, as other countries have to do under IMF control.
So Herman Kahn comes up to you after the talk and says, "You actually identified the rip-off
perfectly." And your book starts selling like hotcakes in DC, I guess among people who work for
the CIA, and people who work in the military-intelligence apparatus.
MICHAEL HUDSON: What he said was, "We've pulled off the greatest ripoff in history. We've
gone way beyond anything that British Empire ever thought of." He said, "That's a success
story. Most people think imperialism is bad; you've shown how it's the greatest success story
-- we get a free lunch forever!"
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. So explain the ripoff you identified there, and how it is being
perpetuated under the Trump administration in ways that I think are pretty amazing, including
through the imposition of unprecedented sanctions on something like one-third of the world's
population.
(6:40)
ORDER IT NOW
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well I wrote "Super Imperialism" in 1972, and it was published exactly one
year after President Nixon took America off gold in August of 1971. he reason he took America
off gold was that the entire balance-of-payments deficit from the Korean War to the Vietnam War
was military in character.
Especially in the '60s, the money that America was spending in Vietnam and Southeast Asia
had to be spent locally. And the banks were French banks, because it was French Indochina. So
all the money would be sent to Paris, to the banks' head offices, turned over from dollars into
francs, and General de Gaulle would end up with these dollars. Then every month he would send
the dollars and want payment in gold. And Germany would do the same thing.
So the more America fought militarily, it depleted its gold stock, until finally, in August
1971, it said, "We've been using gold as the key to our world power ever since World War I,
when we put Europe on rations. So we're going to stop paying gold."
They closed the gold window. And most of the economists were all saying, "Oh my heavens, now
it's going to be a depression." But I said, "Wait a minute, now that other countries can no
longer get gold from all this military spending" -- and when you talk about the
balance-of-payments deficit, it's not the trade deficit, it's not foreign investment; it's
almost entirely military in character.
So all this money that wasspent abroad, how are we ever going to get it back? Well, these
dollars we spend around the world, mainly for the 800 military bases and the other activities
we have, these dollars end up in foreign central banks.
The question is, what are these foreign central banks going to do with these dollar inflows?
Well we wouldn't let foreign central banks buy American industries. We would let them buy
stocks, but not become a majority owner.
A former mentor, the man who taught me all about the oil industry at Standard Oil, became
undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs. When Herman Kahn and I went to the
White House, he said, "We've told the Saudi Arabians that they can charge whatever they want
for their oil, but all the money they get, they have to recycle to the United States. Mostly
they can buy Treasury bonds, so that we'll have the money to keep on spending." They could also
buy stocks, or they can do what the Japanese did and buy junk real estate and lose their
shirts.
So basically, when America spends money abroad, central banks really don't speculate. They
don't buy companies. They buy Treasury bonds. So we run a monetary deficit; the dollars are
spent abroad; the central banks lend them back to the Treasury; and that finances the budget
deficit, but it also finances the balance-of-payments deficit. So we just keep giving paper
IOUs, not gold
I think President George W. Bush said, "We're never really going to repay this. They get
counters, but we're not going to repay it." And then, as a matter of fact, you have Tom Cotton
a senator from [Arkansas] saying, "Well you know China holds savings of $2 trillion or so in US
Treasury bonds. Why don't we just not pay them? They gave us the virus; let just grab it and
nullify it."
We can nullify Iranian assets, Venezuelan assets -- it's like a bank can just wipe out other
deposits you have, if it wants militarily. So the United States doesn't have any constraint on
military spending, as it did uner the gold standard.
Now Herman Kahn and I on another occasion went to the Treasury Department, and we talked
about what the world would look like on a gold standard. I said, "Gold is a peaceful metal. If
you have to pay in gold, no country with a gold standard can afford to go to war anymore.
Because a war would entail a foreign exchange payment, and you'd have to pay this foreign
exchange in gold, not IOUs, and you would end up going broke pretty quickly."
Needless to say, someone from the Defense Department said, "That's why we're not going to do
it."
Here's an example: Let's suppose that you go to the grocery store and you buy food and then
sign an IOU for everything that you buy. You go to a liquor store, IOU. You buy a car, IOU.
You get everything you want just for an IOU. But when people try to collect the IOUs, you
say, "That IOU isn't for collecting from me. Trade it among yourselves. Think of it as your
savings, and trade it among yourselves. Treat it as an asset, just as you treat a dollar bill
saved in a cookie jar and not spent."
Well you'd get a free ride. You'd be allowed to go and write IOUs for everything, and nobody
could ever collect. That's what the United States position is, and that's what it wants to
keep.
And that's why China, Russia, and other countries are trying to de-dollarize, trying to get
rid of the dollar. They are buying gold so that they can settle payments deficits among
themselves in their own currency, or currencies of friendly countries, and avoid dollars
altogether.
(12:21)
BEN NORTON: Michael, in the first part of this interview, when we were talking about the
coronavirus bailout and the $6 trillion that were just basically given to Wall Street, you
mentioned that basically just a con scheme. But you said, really, that a lot of people are
surprised, that they don't think the system can work this way, because it just seems so
blatantly stacked against them, so blatantly unfair.
Your book Super Imperialism is so mind-blowing because, in simplistic terms to
someone who is definitely a non-expert like me, it just becomes so clear that, as you put it,
the US for decades, since the end of World War Two, has been really obtaining "the largest free
lunch ever achieved in history," the way you put it.
ORDER IT NOW
I'm gonna read just two paragraphs here really quickly from your book, and then maybe ask
you to unpack exactly how this works. But right at the beginning -- and this is the updated
version of your book, and we'll link to your book in the show notes for this show. So anyone, I
would highly recommend anyone listening could go buy Super Imperialism .
MICHAEL HUDSON: I'm going to be republishing it through my own institute. It's very hard to
get the book; that's why I'm buying the rights back. It's really not marketed in this country
very much. So at any rate it's on my website, and you don't have to buy the book. You can go to
my website and get many of the chapters.
BEN NORTON: Excellent, well I'm gonna link to your website in the show notes that's
michael-hudson.com . And thank you for
putting that up, because I've been reading the PDF, and it's incredible.
So you write in the the introduction to the new updated version, which you wrote in 2002, on
the eve of the invasion of Iraq, you wrote:
"The Treasury bonds standard of international finance has enabled the United States to
obtain the largest free lunch ever achieved in history. America has turned the international
financial system upside down, whereas formerly it rested on gold, central bank reserves are now
held in the form of US government IOUs, that can be run up without limit.
"In effect America has been buying up Europe, Asia, and other regions with paper credit, US
Treasury IOUs that it has informed the world it has little intention of ever paying off.
"And there is little Europe or Asia can do about it except to abandon the dollar and create
their own financial system."
So this seems to me as an outsider to be totally insane, to be a total con scheme. Can you
explain how that scheme works, and especially in light of neoliberal economics?
I took, just in college, basic introductory economics classes that were mandatory,
especially microeconomics, and in those classes they teach you this neoliberal, libertarian
form of economics, and they teach you the famous Milton Friedman quote, "There is no such thing
in economics as a free lunch." But you're pointing out that actually, on the international
stage, this whole thing is a giant free lunch for the US empire.
(15:53)
MICHAEL HUDSON: The financial economy is basically a free lunch. And if you're going to get
a free lunch, then you protect yourself by saying there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Obviously it does not want to make itself visible. It wants to make itself as invisible as
possible.
Most of these countries in Asia get dollars from US military spending. They say, "What are
we going to do with the dollars?" They buy US Treasury bonds, which finance the military
spending on the military bases that encircle them. So they're financing their own military
encirclement!
It's a circular flow. The United States spends dollars in these countries; the local
recipients turn them over for local currency; the local currency recipients, the food sellers
and the manufacturers, turn the dollars over to the banks for domestic currency, which is how
they operate; and the dollars are sent back to the United States; and it's a circular flow that
is basically military in character.
The gunboats don't appear in your economics textbooks. I bet your price theory didn't have
gun boats in them, or the crime sector. And probably they didn't have debt in it either.
So if you have economics talking as if the whole economy consists of workers spending their
wages on goods and services; government doesn't play a role except to interfere. But government
is 40 percent of GDP, mainly military in character. So obviously, economics doesn't really talk
about what you think of the economy. It doesn't talk about society.
It talks about a very narrow segment that it isolates, as if we're talking about a small
organ in the body, without seeing the body as a whole economic system, an interrelated system
that is dominated and controlled by the finance and real estate sector, which also has gained
control of the government.
And the finance, insurance, and military-industrial complex make themselves invisible and
absent from the textbook, then people are not going to look there and ask, "How did that affect
our life? How does that affect the economy?" And they're not going to see what's making the
economy poor and pushing it into depression.
(18:11)
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well I can't give out IOUs on everything, on my own debts, because when the
debt collector comes, I don't have gunboats; I don't have machine guns; I don't have any
gun.
I mean if I wanted to get a gun I couldn't get one, because they're all bought up in
Virginia, across the river, because you know everyone's panicking. And I'm sure they're
defending themselves by like having their guns accidentally go off and shoot their dogs.
But that's kind of what's missing as well from this theory is that, if people try to collect
their debt on the US, the US can do severe damage to them, militarily or otherwise.
Let's game this out. I mean how do you see this playing out in Venezuela, where the
Venezuelan government has tried to go around US sanctions, has tried to to work with Russia and
China to sell gold; it's had something like $5 billion of assets stolen by the US through sheer
piracy in the past year.
And now the US has dispatched I think more naval ships than we've seen in Latin America or
in South America at any time in the last 30 years.
(19:27)
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well that's the other part of "Super Imperialism": debt bondage. Venezuela
had a US-installed dictator, a right-winger, some years ago, and changed the law in Venezuela
so that Venezuela's sovereign debt, borrowsedin dollars, is backed by the collateral of its oil
reserves. And it has the largest oil reserves in South America.
So the United States wants to grab the oil reserves. Just as Vice President Cheney said
we're going into Iraq and Syria to grab the oil, America would like all these oil reserves in
Venezuela.
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How does it get them? Well, it doesn't have to technically invade. Finance is the new mode
of warfare. The US tried to grab these reserves by saying, "Let's block Venezuela from earning
the money by exporting the oil and earning the money from its US investments to pay the foreign
debt. So we're just going to grab the investment, and we're going to select a mini dictator.
We're going to give designate Mr. Guaidó as their head of state, and say, "This oil and
bank deposits don't belong to Venezuela; we're arbitrarily taking it away and we're giving the
oil distribution assets in North America to Guaidó. We're going to block Venezuela from
paying the debt."
That means it'll default on a foreign debt, so the vulture funds and bondholders can now
grab Venezuelan oil, anywhere, under international law, because it is pledged as collateral for
its debt, just as if you'd borrowed a mortgage debt and you'd pledged your home and the
creditor could take away your home, like Obama had so many people lose their homes.
But Venezuela still is managing to scrape by. So they may need a military force to invade
Venezuela, like Bush invaded Panama or Grenada. It's an oil grab. So what finance couldn't
achieve, finally you really do need the military fist. Finance is basically backed by military,
and domestically by force, by the sheriff, by the police department. It's the force needed to
kick you out of the house.
So the question is, what is the defense by the indebted people in America? Does there have
to be an armed revolution here to cancel the debts? Do they have to eat the rich? That's the
question shaping today's politics in America.
I don't see it being solved. If it is not solved by the indebted people simply starving to
death, committing suicide, getting sick or emigrating, then there will have to be a revolution.
Those are the choices in America.
Venezuela said, "We're not going to starve quietly in the dark." So there's a military
buildup pretending that it's all about drugs, when Venezuela is threatening to interrupt the
CIA's drug trade. I mean that's the irony of this! It's the CIA that's the drug dealer, not the
Venezuelan government. So we're in the Orwellian world that works through the organs or the New
York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the real right-wing of
America.
(23:00)
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I'm so glad you boiled it down like that. Because so much of what we do at
The Grayzone is to punch holes in the propaganda constructs that are used to basically provide
liberal cover for what is sheer gangsterism.
MICHAEL HUDSON: It's much more black and white than gray.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah well, we should call it The Black and White Zone.
We're seeing it as well in Syria, where we've had one kind of human rights propaganda
construct after another. And now at the end of the line, as the whole proxy war ends, Trump
says, "We have to keep the troops there because of oil. We need them to guard the oil
fields."
So it all becomes clear. But it's unclear to everyone who's been confused for the past
years, following the way that the war has been marketed to them through these corporate media
and US government publications that you just named. It's just, we're there for the oil.
BEN NORTON: Michael, I mean there are so many ways we could explore this topic further, and
hopefully we can have you back more often in the future, because we definitely need more
economics coverage. We frequently talk about the political side of a lot of these issues of US
imperialism, but of course the economic element is absolutely integral to understand what's
happening.
I'm also very interested, you mentioned before we started this interview, that your book
"Super Imperialism" is very popular in China, and that even in schools there people are reading
it. The question of China I think is the central question of this century -- the rise of China,
the so-called "threat" that China poses, in scare quotes, to the US. Of course China doesn't
threaten the American people, but rather the chokehold that the US has on the international
financial system.
And we have seen under Trump -- I mean it's been happening for years. It really actually
began under Obama with the "Pivot to Asia," and that was Hillary Clinton's State Department
strategy – to move toward the encirclement of China.
But now under Trump it has become the main foreign policy bogeyman of the Trump White House.
And especially now with coronavirus, every day the corporate media is full of non-stop
anti-china propaganda -- "China is the evil totalitarian regime that's going to take over the
world, and we have to unite with the Republicans in order to fight against China."
And we now even see figures openly defending the "new cold war," as they call it. They say
we're in a new Cold War, as the right-wing historian from Harvard Niall Ferguson put it in the
New York Times recently.
So I'm wondering, your book I think is even more relevant now than it was when you first
wrote it, it's so, so relevant. But what about the question of China? And what about the
question of this new cold war? Do you think that could challenge the US-dominated financial
system that was created after World War II, using the weapons of the World Bank and the IMF, as
you spell out? Are we heading maybe toward the creation of a new international financial
system?
(26:24)
MICHAEL HUDSON: What makes China so threatening is that it's following the exact, identical
policies that made America rich in the 19th century. It's a mixed economy. Its government is
providing basic infrastructure at subsidized prices to lower the cost of living and doing
business, so that its export industry can make money. It's subsidizing research and
development, just like the United States did in the 19th century and early 20th century.
So America basically says to the rest of the world, "Do as we say, not as we do, and not as
we've done."
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China has a mixed economy that is working very well. You can just see the changes occurring
there. It realizes that the United States is trying to disable it, that that the United States
wants to control all the sectors of production that have monopoly pricing -- information
technology, microchip technology, 5G communications, military spending.
The United States wants to be able to pay for goods from the rest of the world with
overpriced exports, American movies, anything that has a patent that yields a monopoly
price.
America, in the 1950s tried to fight China by sanctioning grain exports to China. You
mentioned sanctions earlier, the first sanctions were used against China, trying to starve them
with grain. Canada broke that embargo, and China was very friendly to Canada, until Canada's
prime minister now takes his orders from a small basement office in the Pentagon, and has
agreed to grab Chinese officials. Canada is not a country anymore. So China does not feel so
friendly towards Canada now that it's become a US satellite.
China realized that it can't depend on America for anything. The US can cut it off with
sanctions like it has tried to do with Iran, with Venezuela, with Cuba. So the idea of China,
Russia and other countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been: "We have to be
independent within ourselves, and make a Eurasian trading area, and we will take off because we
are successful industrial capitalism, evolving into socialism, into a mixed economy, with the
government handling all of the monopoly sectors to prevent monopoly pricing here."
"And we don't want American banks to come in, create paper dollars, and buy out all of our
industries. We're not going to let America do that."
(29:29)
I have gone back to China very often. I'm a professor at Peking University, and I have
honorary professorships in Wuhan.. There are a number of articles on my website from the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on de-dollarization, essentially how China can avoid the use
of the dollar by becoming independent in agriculture, technology, and banking.
China's threat of is that it will not be a victim. Victimizers always look at the victims as
vicious attackers of themselves. So America says China is a vicious threat because it's not
letting us exploit them and victimize them. This is the Orwellian rhetoric of the bully. The
bully always believes that the person he's attacking is a threat. Just like in Germany,
Goebbels said that their surefire way to mobilize the population behind any attack was to say,
"We're defending ourselves against foreign attack."
So you have the American attack on China pretending to be defense against their wanting to
be just as independent as the United States always has been. The United States doesn't want any
other country to have any leverage to use over the United States. The United States insists on
veto power in any organization that it'll join -- the World Bank, the IMF, the United
Nations.
And China essentially says, ok, this is the very definition of national independence, to be
independent from other countries able to choke us, whether it's a grain that we need, or
technology, or the SWIFT interbank clearing system to make our financial system operate, or the
internet system.
By waging this economic warfare against China to protect America monopolies, America is
integrating China and Russia. And probably the leading Chinese nationalist in the world, the
leading Russian nationalist, is Donald Trump. He's saying, "Look boys, I know that you're
influenced by American neoliberals. I'm gonna help you. I believe that you should be
independent. I'm gonna help you Chinese, Russians and Iranians to be independent. I'm going to
keep pushing sanctions on agriculture to make sure that you're able to feed yourself. I'm gonna
push sanctions on technology, to make sure that you can defend yourself." So he obviously is a
Chinese and Russian agent, just like MSNBC says.
(32:09)
BEN NORTON: Yeah and Michael, this actually reminds me, I used to follow you regularly at
The Real News, and I worked there for a bit, and unfortunately there was kind an internal coup
there, and it has moved to the right a bit.
But the point is, a few years ago at The Real News, I remember you did an amazing debate
between you and the Canadian economist Leo Panitch, and it was about the nature of the BRICS
system.
This was before the series of coups that that overthrew the left in Brazil and installed the
fascist government now of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing extremist. And at the time there was
Dilma Rousseff, a progressive from the Workers' Party. Brazil and Russia were helping to take
the lead in the BRICS system. This is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
And of course the series of coups in Brazil, kind of ended that project of South-South
regional integration. And also the rise of the right-wing, the far-right, in India with
Narendra Modi.
But there was a moment there when the BRICS community, these countries were trying to build
their own bank. China of course has a series of banks. You mentioned the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. So there have been these international institutions, multilateral institutions,
created to kind of challenge the hegemony of the World Bank and the IMF.
I remember in that debate, Leo Panitch was arguing that, "Oh, the BRICS system and the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, all these institutions are just going to be the new form of
neoliberalism. They're just going to replace the World Bank and implement many of the same
policies." You disagreed with that.
So maybe can you kind of relitigate that debate here a little bit and just kind of
articulate your position for our viewers?
(34:08)
MICHAEL HUDSON: The World Bank has one primary aim, and that's to make other countries
dependent on American agriculture. This is built into its articles of agreement. It can only
make foreign currency loans, so it will only make loans to countries for agricultural
development, roads, if it is to promote exports.
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So the United States, through the World Bank, has become I think the most dangerous,
right-wing, evil organization in modern in history -- more evil than the IMF. That's why it's
almost always been run by a secretary of defense. It has always been explicitly military. It's
the hard fist of American imperialism.
Its idea is to make Latin American, and African, and Asian countries export plantation crops
, especially plantations that are US or foreign owned. The primary directive of the World Bank
to countries is: "You must not feed yourself; you must not grow your own grain or your own
food; you must depend on the United States for that. And you can pay for that by exporting
plantation crops that can't be grown in temperate zones like the United States."
So China and Russia are not really agricultural economies. The buttress of America's trade
balance has been agriculture, not industry. Obviously, we de-industrialized. Agriculture, since
World War II, has been the foundation of the trade balance.
The US demands foreign dependency on its grain, technology and finance. The purpose of the
World Bank is to make other countries' economies distorted and warped to a degree that they are
dependent on the United States for their trade patterns.
BEN NORTON: Well Michael, isn't it also true though that China has massive agricultural
production, and Russia produces a lot of wheat, right?
(36:14)
MICHAEL HUDSON: Sure, but it doesn't have to base its exports on agriculture to African
countries. It can afford having African countries growing their own food supply so that they
won't have to buy American food.
Imagine, if China helps other countries grow their own food and grain, then America's trade
surplus evaporates. Because that's the main advantage that America has, agribusiness.
BEN NORTON: Yeah it's like that famous quote: If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for one
day; if you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for the rest of his life. And then I think Marx,
didn't Marx complicate that?
MICHAEL HUDSON: But if you lend them the money to buy a fish, then he ends up bankrupt and
you get to grab up all his property.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah I mean we saw this play out clearly in Haiti.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yeah, that's the typical -- what America has when it has a free a reign,
that's exactly the Haiti story. That's absolutely terrible. It's depressing to read.
I get cognitive dissonance, because it's just so unfair. It's so awful to read; I avert my
eyes from the page.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah I mean just observing all of this is what kind of brought me to the
point where I concluded that there had to be another international financial system, when I saw
how Haiti was brought to its knees. First with the School of the Americas graduates staging a
coup, and Bill Clinton reinstalls Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It all takes place under the guise of
goodwill by Washington. But Aristide is forced to sign off, basically sign away Haiti's
domestic agricultural production capacity. And the next thing you know, their rice economy's
wiped out, and they're importing rice from Louisiana.
And the only economy left, the only economic opportunity left, is to work in these free
trade zones for US companies. That's just the model writ large. It helped lead to the next
coup, that removed Aristide, and look where Haiti is today.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Right, it means, you must not protect your own economy; only America can
protect its own economy. But you must not. That's free trade, US-style.
(38:45)
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right, going back to the JFK Seeds of Peace program. It's big agro
subsidies, and then you bomb the Third World with cheap seeds and cheap goods, and then you
have a migration crisis.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Seeds for Starvation is what the program is known as. Because by giving a
low price of foreign aid to these countries, they prevented domestic agricultural development,
because no farmer could compete with free crops that America was giving. The purpose of the
Seeds for Starvation program was to prevent countries from feeding themselves, and to make them
dependent.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, when I lived in LA I would meet families who had initially come across
the border because of the program -- they would point the finger directly at Seeds for
Starvation. They'd say, "We came from rural Mexico, and our livelihood was wiped out."
So this is a long-standing program. And we've seen in the coronavirus bailout five times
more money provided to USAID for so-called stabilization programs than for hospital workers.
That's exactly what you just described: USAID is the spearhead of these programs which aim to
wipe out land reform programs, and replace them with US aid in the form of these cheap seeds
and so on, cheap bananas to Burundi, and everywhere else.
So do you see, through your experience in China, that Belt and Road is a genuine alternative
to this model?
(40:27)
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well they're certainly trying to make it so. By the way, what you've just
described, it's not a bug; it's a feature. When you have the same problem occurring after 50
years, it's either insanity -- and we know it's not -- or it's the intent. You have to assume
at a certain point that the results of these aid programs are the intended results. And
certainly if you look at the congressional testimony, Congress knows this, but the media don't
pick it up.
In China, they're really trying to create an alternative. They want to break free from the
United States. And if Trump's policies of "America First" continue, and as he said, "We have to
win every deal," this means that any deal we make with the foreign country, that country has to
lose.
So he's integrating the whole world, and isolating the United States. When you isolate the
United States, China realizes that what will be isolated is the neoliberal philosophy that is
the cover story, the junk economics that justifies these destructive policies.
BEN NORTON: Well Michael, this was I think one of our most interesting episodes. We want to
more economics coverage, so hopefully we can talk more with you and get some more of your
analysis.
I guess just concluding here, I mentioned that the term Cold War has been thrown around a
lot. And of course, the New Cold War is going to be different from the old cold war in a lot of
different ways.
ORDER IT NOW
And of course Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. Russia does not have a socialist
system. China's system as you mentioned is mixed, there are still socialist elements, but even
China's economy is not nearly as state controlled as the Soviet Union was at the peak of the
Cold War. So I'm wondering, it's pretty clear if you listen to the rhetoric coming from the
Pentagon, that "great power competition," as they refer to it, is now the undergirding
philosophy of US foreign policy. What is the economics of that?
Because the economics of neoliberalism, after the destruction of the Socialist Bloc, and
George H. W. Bush's declaration of a "New World Order," which is of course just neoliberalism
and US hegemony -- in that period, the clear economic philosophy, the kind of guiding foreign
policy, was destruction of independent socialist-oriented states and forcible integration of
those countries into the international neoliberal economy. We saw that with Iraq; we saw that
with former Yugoslavia; we saw that with Libya -- which is really just a failed state.
So now I think we're in a kind of new phase. The Pentagon released two years ago its
national defense security strategy saying that the new goal of the Pentagon and US foreign
policy is to contain China and Russia. That is the stated, professed goal. What does that look
like economically going forward?
(43:31)
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think that's quite right. It'll contain Russia and China, and there's
nothing that Russia and China want more than to be contained.
In other words, they're talking about decoupling from the US economy. And the US will say,
"Well we're not going to let them have access to the US market, and we're not going to have
anything to do with them." And Russia and China say, "Boy that's wonderful, OK, we're on the
same wavelength there. You can contain us; we will contain you. You go your way; we'll go our
way."
So basically the Cold War was an attempt at neoliberalism and privatization. It's
Thatcherism. It's, "How do we make China and Russia look like Margaret Thatcher's England, or
Russia in the 1990s under Yeltsin?"
"How do we prevent other countries from protecting their industry and their financial system
from the United States financial system and US exports? How do we prevent other countries from
doing for themselves what America does for itself? How do we make a double standard in world
finance, and world trade, and world politics?"
The result of trying to prevent other countries from doing this is simply to speed the
parting guest, to accelerate their understanding that they have to make a break. They have to
create their own food supply, not rely on American food exports. They have to create their own
5G system, not let America's 5G with its spy portals built in. They have to create their own
society, and go their own way.
That was China's philosophy before the 16th century. It was always the "Central Kingdom"; it
always looked at itself as being independent from the rest of the world. It's going back to
that, except it realizes that it needs raw materials from Africa and other countries.
The question is, what is Europe going to do? Is Europe going to just follow the Thatcher
right-wing deflationary Eurozone policies and end up looking like Greece? Or is it going to
join with Eurasia, with Russia and China, and make a whole Asiatic continent?
The Cold War really is about what is going to happen to Europe. Because we have already
isolated China and Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The question is what will happen to Europe, and what will happen to Africa?
The USA spends so much that foreigners cannot buy all our debt, so now we have the Fed buying
it with fiat money. This will not end well.
" the United States wants to grab the oil reserves. Just as Vice President Cheney said
we're going into Iraq and Syria to grab the oil, America would like all these oil reserves
in Venezuela
"
That is true. Oil was the primary reason to seize and colonize Iraq. Yes, Israel wanted it
destroyed too. Just look at who is exporting Iraqi oil now.
At last, an idiot's guide to Super-imperialism. I, er, found it very helpful, but Hudson
hurts his credibility when he pretends that China is some kind of international mutual aid
society just because they are not part of the US system. I am afraid the aftermath of
establishing close links with China such as Italy opened up by being the first to join the
the belt and road initiative or Boris saying he loved China on the phone to Xi a couple of
months ago have been not been reassuring.
We will never know what China knew about the Wuhan disease or when they knew it but the
current covid pandemic being caused or at least greatly exacerbated by China's
vagueness–not to say dissimulation–about the highly infectious nature of a
certain pathogen means the level of trust necessary to tie an economy to China rather than
the US has been shattered and will take a long time to reestablish.
Moreover, the rich make a lot of money from their investments in and technology transfer
and outsourcing to China. That US capital is the fuel for China to blast past the US in
another generation of so makes one wonder if what Hudson is complaining about is US
hypercapitalism that will hollow out the state that practices it. China may act differently
when it has the power, but the evidence so far hardly suggests it.
I would also note the Vulture funds like Elliot capital notorious for buying written off
debt owed by Argentina ect and demanding payment are the same ones doing domestic US
corporate raids and forcing CEO to increase shareholder value by asset stripping and getting
replacement workers from India
They closed the gold window. And most of the economists were all saying, "Oh my heavens,
now it's going to be a depression." But I said, "Wait a minute, now that other countries
can no longer get gold from all this military spending" -- and when you talk about the
balance-of-payments deficit, it's not the trade deficit , it's not foreign
investment; it's almost entirely military in character.
Most of these countries in Asia get dollars from US military spending. They say, "What
are we going to do with the dollars?" They buy US Treasury bonds, which finance the
military spending on the military bases that encircle them. So they're financing their own
military encirclement!
It's a circular flow. The United States spends dollars in these countries; the local
recipients turn them over for local currency; the local currency recipients, the food
sellers and the manufacturers, turn the dollars over to the banks for domestic currency,
which is how they operate; and the dollars are sent back to the United States; and it's a
circular flow that is basically military in character.
Sorry but Michael Hudson is wrong. This is political rhetoric not economic analysis. Ever
heard of Japan, Inc.? Mr. Hudson seems to believe that US spending on its military bases in
Japan accounts for the balance-of-payments deficit with that East Asian country. Not true at
all. It's the trade deficit in the form of Toyotas, Hondas, Acuras, Mazdas, Nissans, etc.
that account for the bulk of the trade deficit between the USA and Japan, not the tens of
billion dollars spent on approximately 100,000 US military/civilian personnel and their
dependents in Japan.
The Treasury bonds standard of international finance has enabled the United States to
obtain the largest free lunch ever achieved in history. America has turned the
international financial system upside down, whereas formerly it rested on gold, central
bank reserves are now held in the form of US government IOUs, that can be run up without
limit. In effect America has been buying up Europe, Asia, and other regions with paper
credit, US Treasury IOUs that it has informed the world it has little intention of ever
paying off. And there is little Europe or Asia can do about it except to abandon the dollar
and create their own financial system. .
US Treasuries are indeed the "gold standard" in the USD international financial system.
That's why export economies such as industrial powerhouses (Germany, Japan, China, etc.) do
buy US Treasuries with their trade surplus dollars, as do OPEC countries with their
Petrodollars. But foreign holdings of US Treasuries account for only about $6T which is 16%
of the $23T in US public debt while the rest are owned by private or public entities in the
USA. These US Treasuries are traded in the secondary markets because they are highly liquid
financial assets which are redeemed at the US Treasury upon maturity. Europe has already
created the Euro which is an alternative reserve currency to the USD.
"The multiple and coordinated arrests of pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong on Saturday
demand close scrutiny," said Virginie Battu-Henriksson, an EU spokeswoman for foreign
affairs. "An independent judicial system, operating free of political influence and
consideration, is a cornerstone of Hong Kong's autonomy under the one country, two systems
principle and is protected by the Basic Law."
Has the EU spokeswoman checked how many people lost their eyes and lives during
Gilets Jaunes protests in France? How about the absence of "an independent judicial system,
operating free of political influence and consideration" in the case of Julian Assange? The
EU "democrats" to China: 'Law for thee but not for me.'
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "Arrests of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong
are deeply concerning -- politicized law enforcement is inconsistent with universal values
of freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly."
On Nov 22, 2019, we, a group of more than 60 medical doctors, wrote to the UK Home
Secretary to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Julian
Assange. In our letter, we documented a history of denial of access to health care and
prolonged psychological torture . We requested that Assange be transferred from
Belmarsh prison to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment.
The case of Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, relates to law, freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, journalism, publishing, and politics.
Empires forcing those they've conquered to pay for their having been conquered and
administrated by the Empire is far from new. Americans have a great deal of trouble accepting
that Uncle Sam does the same raping to pay for its previous rapes because we also have been
taught that the English also somehow were immaculately conceived and so did not rape and
plunder and then rape more to pay for both previous rape and future rape.
Man, does this guy ever have a dry sense of humor!
Yes, Haiti! Dey was kangz, donchaknow?
Hudson raises lots of valid points but he sadly doesn't factor HBD in his analyses.
Haiti's woes began when it got of the French. I kid you not today they eat mud cakes
living on just over US$2 per day. In comparison, each person in equally majority-black the
Bahamas in the same region is 37 times richer. The difference is solely down to white expats
who set up the Bahamas tourism and offshore banking sectors.
@Sean
Wasn't one of the justifications (beside the obvious one of profit) for shutting-down
American factories and means of production and shipping them to China was that once Chinese
citizens became wealthy they'd magically throw off Communism and become a Democratic society?
Wasn't that the tiny fig leaf industrialist and their political apologists hid behind when
they justified the closing of factories in the American towns that had relied on those
factories for the work to support the town's familys for generations?
I've seen the well off Chinese tourists in Paris standing in line (a line made up only of
Chinese) outside the Prada store waiting their turn to buy their thousand dollar purse;
meanwhile China remains as communist as ever.
If this latest Pandemic exported from China doesn't cause a shake up in the world's
relationship with China (the same place that gave the world the Black Death that killed off
half of Europe in the 1300's) then nothing, short of China declaring war on Japan, will.
The Chinese play the intelligent, strategic, slow game ( they are currently gathering all
of Africa's resources for example) while US policy lurches about like an epileptic from
election to another; just compare Trump's and Obama's US policy towards Iran.
China will become the world's dominate power by the end of this century unless the West
unites against a China that it becoming more powerful with each passing day. The West can
start its rebalance with China with a group demand that China (who has the money) pays all
the West's financial costs stemming from their exported pandemic. If China refuses this
demand the West should simply stop buying all products made in China once it has first
quickly reestablished its own key industries, like pharmaceuticals, that are currently in the
hands of China.
This Pandemic is the world's great chance of a lifetime to justifiably turn current
Chinese policy on its head.
Multinational organizations owned and operated by the SJW Globalist 1% Elites act *against*
the Citizens of the U.S., not for them. The IMF has long been an Elite Globalist institution
dominated by Germany: (1)
The head of the IMF has traditionally been a European since the IMF was created in
1945.
Mutti Mullah Merkel wields the IMF as an instrument of power trying to suppress democracy.
She successfully used German Austerity economics to break elected governments in
Cyprus and Germany. Will Germany's IMF 1% Elites be able to break Italy's democracy?
Attempts at misdirection, such as blaming the U.S. will not work. The scourge of Globalist
Germany's super SJW imperialism via IMF Austerity is real. And, the villain is das Fuhrer
Merkel.
You do know the American dairy farmer has never recovered from Russian sanctions. The "trade
-whatever- it – is" with has damaged the pork and grain farmers bottom-line. But yeah,
blame farmers. God only knows how with all his educated professionals and chosen people out
there, it is the lowly farmers owns all that property. The horrors! It's just not fair.
PS. How is all that Reagan-economics' agriculture efficiency and economy of scale working
out for your grocery store supplies? Don't worry they will all be plowed under in soon to be
fallow fields. Milton Friedman was yet another privileged, academic quack.
Trump-Pomepo team with inserted or placed advisors inside are helping craft an argument that
US never left the Iran nuclear deal so that the administration can destroy the deal which US
openly telegraphed 2 yrs ago to the world that it was withdrawing from the deal .
The interesting argument if succeeds in acceptance by US citizen, America could always
claim that it has always been against sanction wars and regime changes operations
particularly against Cuba ,Iran,Syria and Russia.
@Current
History I guess an alternative to your binary vision is that the US could actually start
to act as a moral player on the world stage rather than the temperamental tyrant who
alienates everybody. But that would require an entire empire built on corruption to decide to
reform itself. Jack the Ripper experiencing an epiphany leading to an intentional personality
shift (after realizing that he was hated and feared) has never been a sequel for a reason.
The global expanse of US military bases is well-known; but it's actual territorial empire
is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools.
What's wrong with the United States using all the means at it's disposal to leverage and
strip power from other countries in world? Then use that power for our own benefit?
Call the United States corrupt if you want. Are the African nations not corrupt? Is any
government in the world not corrupt? Well, Godfree will say China isn't but we can laugh at
that!
To sit in judgement of the World Bank tells me maybe you have a better idea. Get it up and
running, buddy.
"Oil was the primary reason to seize and colonize Iraq."'
– Nope. The big Iraqi oil contracts generally did not go to US companies, as shown
in your own link.
– You're just reciting the laughable ' No Blood For Oil ' nonsense that the
Israelis were so careful to nurture as a distraction.
the United States wants to grab the oil reserves. Just as Vice President Cheney said
we're going into Iraq and Syria to grab the oil, America would like all these oil reserves
in Venezuela
– "Wants to grab"?
Please show us the oil reserves that the US has 'grabbed'.
The important thing to realize about free-market economics and libertarianism, is
libertarians advocate central planning; the Chicago School of monetarists advocate central
planning; the free marketers want central planning. The banks are the planners, not the
government. They want to exclude the government from planning, except to the extent that
they can take over the government, as Trump has done, and plan all of the income to be
transferred to themselves from the rest of the economy.
Indeed! Mises walked out on this group at the Mt. Pelerin conference in 1947 , famously
calling them "all a bunch of socialists", "all" meaning Friedman and Hayek who were in
attendance, along with many others. The Mises/Rothbard/Hoppe wing is not monetarist, and
frequently critique the Friedman/Sowell/Koch industries camp from the right. This is intended
as an embellishment of Hudson's point, not a refutation.
So the United States, through the World Bank, has become I think the most dangerous,
right-wing, evil organization in modern history -- more evil than the IMF. That's why it's
almost always been run by a Secretary of Defense. It has always been explicitly military.
It's the hard fist of American imperialism.
I am hardly an expert on the World Bank, but it has had thirteen presidents (including
acting presidents) in its history, and only two served as Secretary of Defense, Robert
McNamara, and Paul Wolfowitz. You might also count John McCloy, who was an Assistant
Secretary of War under Roosevelt and Truman. But that's three out of thirteen, hardly
"always". However, Lewis Preston was president from '91-95, and was a former marine, as was
Barber Conable, who served from '86-'91. Eugene Black's tenure was from '49-'63 and he was
apparently very influential in the creation of World Bank policy; he had served in the Navy
during WWI. So the point is well taken. The rest have been mainly high ranking executives
from large banks and investment firms. A notable exception is the second Obama appointee Jim
Yong Kim, who was a doctor and president of Dartmouth college.
I think President George W. Bush said, "We're never really going to repay this. They get
counters, but we're not going to repay it." And then, as a matter of fact, you have Tom
Cotton a senator from [Arkansas] saying, "Well you know China holds savings of $2 trillion
or so in US Treasury bonds. Why don't we just not pay them? They gave us the virus; let
just grab it and nullify it."
"This oil and bank deposits don't belong to Venezuela; we're arbitrarily taking it away
and we're giving the oil distribution assets in North America to Guaidó. We're going
to block Venezuela from paying the debt."
Can someone elaborate on what he means by "distribution assets" here? Is it: "The USA has
the most reliable and consumptive market [in this case for oil] on earth, and if you want to
sell things in it, that comes at a price, and that price is your military encirclement and
compliance with World Bank policy. If you don't comply, prepare for a collapse of your
industries through restriction of access to our market and/or sanctions." Do I understand the
leverage correctly?
I mean if I wanted to get a gun I couldn't get one, because they're all bought up in
Virginia, across the river, because you know everyone's panicking. And I'm sure they're
defending themselves by like having their guns accidentally go off and shoot their dogs
An outrageously imbecilic aside.However, I've always appreciated people like Hudson and
Chomsky for talking to whomever wants to listen, regardless of the interviewer's
cringe-worthy prejudice.
@Gyre07
Hudson emphasises finance over productive capacity in key areas. According to him the answer
to everything is the debts being written off.
THE
government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for
infrastructure work to modernize the country. In April 1938, the Nationalist government of
China began to issue U.S.-dollar denominated bonds to finance the war against Japan's
brutal invasion. As part of its wartime financial aid, the U.S. government further provided
a $500 million credit to China in March 1942, shipping gold there and helping to
stabilize the currency . In return, it appears that the U.S. government redeemed some
of these dollar-denominated bonds. But China doesn't appear to have repaid this debt
either.Today, the Chinese bonds held by U.S. investors may be worth as much as $750
billion.
Japan and China are now economical and political pals, Japan can feel secure getting close
to China because Japan is defended by the US at great cost to US taxpayers, while at the same
time calls for to Japan to cease its protectionism are nullified by them emphasising how they
are facing a regional threat from burgeoning China. While a parasitic class of US super rich
are indeed prospering it is just as much at the expense of America and average Americans as
resource rich underdeveloped countries. Hence the White Death, and the relative decline of US
power.
Sorry but Michael Hudson is wrong. This is political rhetoric not economic analysis.
Ever heard of Japan, Inc.? Mr. Hudson seems to believe that US spending on its military
bases in Japan accounts for the balance-of-payments deficit with that East Asian
country
He's not wrong the quote is in context of the years prior to 1971. Imbalance of trade was
due to military spending. The rest of the trade pattern was in balance.
After the TBill economy came into being, some countries became more mercantile. Japan and
Germany especially exported goods to acquire dollars to then acquire TBills. Having TBills
then shored up their FX position. These countries having FX could then always have access to
energy, especially oil, and survive any sort of bear-raiders who would try to short their
currency.
Wealth is more than just money, it is also capital equipment in the form of industry, and
know how. Japan being an island economy must import raw materials to make finished goods, to
then take the increment of production.
Japan and Germany wisely worked within the Tbill system as those were the only cards in
their hands. You don't play, and there is a military base on your soil, or you get locked out
of access to raw materials. Their mercantilism has the knock on effect of destroying U.S.
mainstreet labor and goods producers.
TBills today reflect more than just military balance of payments, they also reflect
petrodollar accumulations as well as FX, and are being held in bank reserve loops, being held
in shadow banks, etc.
China and wall street gambit also took advantage of TBill economy, where China recycled
dollars won in mercantile trade imbalance back to the U.S., thus screwing over main-street
labor and producers. This accelerated de-industrialization of American heart-land.
Military spending on some 800 overseas bases is funded by deficit spending and recycled
dollars, not with goods exchange.
A gold trading standard as in post Bretton Woods to 1971, (not gold standard) would
prevent mercantilism AND prevent spending dollars on foreign bases and military
adventurism/wars.
To understand the plight for all of Humanity today, one must take an impartial look at
history in understanding the shunned truth about both World Wars.Archives from censored
aspects of human history for educational purposes not shown in the facet of society. From all
categories such as Science, War, Political, Media, Medicine etc.
"The Impartial Truth" (ImpartialTruth.com ) is a web portal to historical and
current Truth. The main aim of the project is to preserve and provide public with videos,
documentaries, articles and opinions from various sources within one web platform.
History is written by victors. We are here to show you the other side of it – The
Impartial Truth. https://www.impartialtruth.com/
What Europe (Germany/France) will do is indeed essential, see a history of that here: Brendan
Simms – Europe – The Struggle for Supremacy.
While European Corporate Elites would stay happily in the US orbit, politicians ,
especially up-and coming, might have other things in mind. and this is still something of
beauty, there is no two party system in any country in Europe, that it is easily to
control.
It is true that Macron and En Marche shows how the bankers can create from thin air (are
used with that) a candidate and a party, but even in this case due to political
considerations (and not only), given the very competitive nature of politics in Europe, the
US lead is not guaranteed.
And without Europe on its side, the US will go bust.
I haven't seen any indication of that. Mises wing doesn't really understand credit or
money and how it should channel Mises is silent on state credit, or demeans it.
An economy needs both money and credit. Money floats and is not under time pressure, and
can be used for savings and to pay interest. Money reflects past accumulations of wealth.
Credit pops into existence with a debt instrument. Properly used, credit channels into
industry and production, and is not used for speculation. Credit improves the future. Money
has to be available to pay the interest on Credit. (Making credit or money have exponential
claims on the future with usury is a separate issue.)
Lolbertarianism in all its guises is junk economics. Junk economics cannot discern when a
money or credit system is being mal-adapted for sordid gain. It also has no mechanisms to
understand rents, unearned income and usury.
The gloves are now off as China has called out Pompeo quite correctly saying, "Pompeo an enemy to world
peace" --and we ought to expect more disruptions here at MoA. Here's just one of several
slaps in Pompeo's face:
"The former top intelligence official is steering the US Department of State into becoming
the Central Intelligence Agency. He is playing with fire, making the 21st century an era of
major power confrontation and undermining the foundations for peace. Despite being the chief
diplomat of the US, he totally betrayed the basic responsibility with which he is entrusted
to promote international understanding. He has become the enemy of world peace."
What's most unfortunate is few seem to consult Global Times , as I was rather
surprised this major editorial wasn't already linked. Here's yet another slap:
"Geopolitics cannot dominate the world anymore. Pompeo and his like are desperately
pulling the world backwards. They are unable to handle a diverse and complicated new century
and so they attempt to resume the Cold War. They can only 'realize their ambition' in
polarized confrontation."
And that clearly wasn't enough as yet another slap's delivered in the closing two
sentences:
"Lies may fulfill Pompeo's personal ambition, but they will never accomplish the US dreams
to be "great again." Pompeo is not only a figure harmful to world peace, but also should be
listed as the worst US secretary of state in its history."
Hmm... Don't know if he qualifies as "worst" yet as he must still top Ms. Clinton, but she
certainly didn't treat China as has Pompeo.
Yep. The Southern firewall is such an absurd phenomenon. Use a bunch of states that will
not influence the general election to winnow the candidates in the primary election.
Same
thing in reverse with California -- IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT SANDERS WON CALIFORNIA because
California is going to vote blue in the fall.
If the Democrats want to win (which is not a foregone conclusion), then they need to
structure the primaries around the swing states.
"... Booker played a character (they all do, but some are polished versions of themselves) for so long, I'm not sure he is real. He played Obama, the servant of the men in suits, before Obama but less cool. ..."
Booker played a character (they all do, but some are polished versions of themselves) for
so long, I'm not sure he is real. He played Obama, the servant of the men in suits, before
Obama but less cool. I haven't watched "Streetfight" in ages, but he had the vibe of a Booker
T Washington follower if there was more than a character there.
Adolph Reed was clearly referring to Obama way back in 1997, but Booker fit most of the
description of a "new black" politician.
"... A rabid anti-China propaganda campaign has spread through the media since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The hysteria seems to be just as contagious as the virus, as Americans are bombarded with anti-China stories from the pages of The New York Times to segments on Fox News. Both Republicans and Democrats are arguing the other side is not tough enough on China as they gear up for the 2020 election. ..."
A rabid anti-China propaganda campaign has spread through the media since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The hysteria seems
to be just as contagious as the virus, as Americans are bombarded with anti-China stories from the pages of The New York Times
to segments on Fox News. Both Republicans and Democrats are arguing the other side is not tough enough on China as they gear up for
the 2020 election.
Since Donald Trump was elected president, the
unfounded claim that
Russia meddled in
the 2016 election was spread far and wide by intelligence officials and liberal media outlets.
A common tactic used to promote the Russiagate narrative was unnamed officials
making statements to the press without providing evidence or any factual basis to their claims. Another common tactic was frequent
media appearances by former intelligence officials, like
James Clapper and John Brennan , usually making wild
accusations about Trump and Russia. These tactics are being repeated to promote an anti-China narrative.
The New York Timesran a story on
April 22 nd titled, "Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in US, Officials Say." The article says
rumors that were spread through text messages and social media posts in mid-March that claimed the Trump administration was going
to lock down the entire country to combat coronavirus were boosted by "Chinese operatives." The authors' sources are "six American
officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters."
The story is lacking in detail and provides no evidence for the officials' claims. "The origin of the messages remains murky.
American officials declined to reveal details of the intelligence linking Chinese agents to the dissemination of the disinformation,
citing the need to protect their sources and methods for monitoring Beijing's activities," the story reads. Two of the officials
told the Times that "they did not believe Chinese operatives created the lockdown messages, but rather amplified existing
ones."
Sensationalized reporting in the Times would not be complete without mentioning the Russians. "American officials said
the operatives had adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls, such as creating fake social media accounts to
push messages to sympathetic Americans, who in turn unwittingly help spread them."
Ironically, the story recognizes the danger of US officials making selective leaks to the media. "Foreign policy analysts are
worried that the Trump administration may politicize intelligence work or make selective leaks to promote an anti-China narrative
American officials in the past have selectively passed intelligence to reporters to shape the domestic political landscape." The
Times uses the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an example of the dangers of selective leaks, ignoring the past four
years of Russiagate stories that plagued its pages.
On April 17 th , Fox News Host Tucker Carlson had former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright
on his show
to deliver some wild accusations about US politicians and the Chinese government. Wright insinuated that some members of Congress
might be agents of China's intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Carlson explained to Wright that the show
reached out to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and other elected officials to ask if they've had contact with any Chinese officials
since the coronavirus outbreak began. Carlson said they did not respond and asked Wright, "What do you think we should infer from
that?"
Wright responded, "I think that they're nervous. I think there are a bunch of people who, because they're either useful idiots
or they have some degree of knowledge and relationships behind the scenes with the Chinese government. Some of them in fact could
be Chinese agents of the MSS." Wright's language comes straight from the Russiagate playbook. Intelligence officials and media pundits
often referred to Trump
as a "useful idiot" for Moscow, and some even
speculated that the president is a "Russian agent."
Trump's anti-Russia
policies show that he is not working in the White House on behalf of Vladimir Putin. Similarly, anti-China legislation that has
recently passed through the House and Senate makes it unlikely any MSS agents are working in the halls of Congress.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy
Act passed unanimously through the Senate last year and had one lone nay vote in the House from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). The
act, which was signed into law by President Trump, requires the State Department to prepare an annual report on the autonomy of Hong
Kong from mainland China. The act also requires the Commerce Department to report on "China's efforts to use Hong Kong to evade US
export controls." The bill says the president shall present Congress with a list of any individuals that violate human rights in
Hong Kong. Any findings that are unsatisfactory to the US could result in sanctions.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act
was also passed unanimously through the Senate, and again, Rep. Massie was the only one to vote against the bill in the House. This
bill, which has not made it to President Trump's desk, would require the US to impose sanctions and export restrictions over China's
treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the western autonomous region of Xinjiang.
Rep. Massie, the sole dissenting voice in Congress, did not vote against these bills because of any loyalty to Beijing or Xi Jinping.
"When our government meddles in the internal affairs of foreign countries, it invites those governments to meddle in our affairs,"
Massie wrote on Twitter , explaining his votes.
The Taiwan Allies International Protection
and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act , which was signed into law by President Trump in March, passed unanimously through both
the House and Senate, with Rep. Massie finally falling in line with his colleague's anti-China policy. The TAIPEI Act says the US
should "help strengthen Taiwan's diplomatic relationships and partnerships around the world."
Taiwan remains the most sensitive issue between the US and China, since Beijing considers the island to be a part of China. Although
the US does not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, Washington
supplies the island with arms and
frequently sails warships through the Taiwan strait, drawing the ire of Beijing. No members of Congress speak out against these
provocations. Like the accusations about Trump and Russia, the idea that Congress is crawling with agents of Beijing is easily disproven
by actual policy.
Tucker Carlson did not challenge any of Wright's outrageous claims but instead nodded along. Since the start of the outbreak,
Carlson's show has focused on putting all the blame for the coronavirus pandemic on Beijing. Carlson's recent content reflects the
strategy of the White House. The Daily Beast
obtained internal White House documents in March that showed the administration was pushing US officials to blame China for a
"cover-up" in the early days of the outbreak. The strategy has proven useful as many pro-Trump media outlets put Beijing's response
to the pandemic under a microscope, and largely ignore the US government's
early missteps .
Politico obtained
a memo sent by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to GOP campaigns.
The memo
outlines an anti-China strategy for Republicans running for office in 2020. The document advises candidates to blame the pandemic
on China, say Democratic opponents are too soft on China, and advocate for sanctions against Beijing. The memo is full of strong
rhetoric like, "China is not an ally, and they're not just a rival -- they are an adversary and the Chinese Communist Party is our
enemy."
The GOP guidelines are similar to the
rhetoric coming from China hardliners like former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. In March 2019, Bannon and neoconservative
Frank Gaffney founded the Committee on Present Danger: China, a think-tank that identifies China as the greatest "existential threat"
to the United States. In his almost-daily podcast, Bannon rails against Beijing and pins all the blame for the pandemic on China.
"The Chinese Communist Party is at war with their people, they're at war with the world, and they're at war with you You may not
have an interest in the Chinese Communist Party but its destroyed your life. OK? Your economic life, your spiritual life, your social
life. The destruction is from Beijing," Bannon said in a recent
episode.
Republicans and right-wingers are not the only ones looking to attack China this election season. The Biden campaign
released an ad on April 18 th that attacked
Trump for his response to the virus. The ad said, "Trump rolled over for the Chinese" and criticized how much the president praised
China's handling of the pandemic early on. "Trump praised the Chinese 15 times in January and February as the coronavirus spread
across the world," the ad said.
The anti-China propaganda seems to be turning public opinion against Beijing.
A new poll from the Pew Research Center that surveyed 1,000 adults throughout March found that 66 percent have an unfavorable
view of China, an increase of 14 percent since Pew last asked the question in 2018. Nine out of 10 adults surveyed view China as
a threat, including 62 percent who see China as a major threat.
China may have made some mistakes in its early response to the virus, but that does not excuse the US government's lack of preparedness,
and treating the pandemic as an attack sets a dangerous precedent for future outbreaks. The strategy could backfire on Washington
if any future pandemics originate in the US.
Like Russiagate, the anti-China propaganda will serve as a useful tool for a national security state that is looking to
focus more
on great power competition . The Pentagon
identifies China as its
number one priority and is looking to
increase its footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. The constant propaganda will make that increased presence more palatable to
the American people. But that increased presence will bring more confrontation between the US and China, and bring the region and
the world closer to nuclear war.
Dave DeCamp is assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy
and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave .
Many defenders of U.S. hegemony insist that the "liberal international order" depends on
it. That has never made much sense. For one, the continued maintenance of American hegemony
frequently conflicts with the rules of international order. The hegemon reserves the right
to interfere anywhere it wants, and tramples on the sovereignty and legal rights of other
states as it sees fit. In practice, the U.S. has frequently acted as more of a rogue in its
efforts to "enforce" order than many of the states it likes to condemn. The most vocal
defenders of U.S. hegemony are unsurprisingly some of the biggest opponents of
international law -- at least when it gets in their way.
Except that it depends on it. And the quoted paragraph itself explains why: the USA is
capitalism's HQ, it is the financial superpower. The fiat currency system can only exist
because the USA exists. And a universal fiat currency can only exist if there's one
nation-state which can control the main commercial routes - in this case, the USN does this
job.
The USA is the cornerstone of the "liberal international order". That's why the European
powers, Japan et al still do everything within their reach to protect the USA. If the USD
Standard (and, therefore, the USA) falls, capitalism as we know it will disappear; what will
come next, we can't know for sure with the information we have now. But yes, there is a
"liberal international order", and the USA is at its center.
"The relative decline of the U.S. is not a new development. It has been visible to outside
observes for more than 20 years. But it is only now that some of the delusions that
Hollywood, main stream media and the establishment have held up for the last 20 years are
finally falling away."
You won't credit him but thanks to Trump and his Qanon henchmen, a lot of people have had
their eyes opened to 'Hollywood, main stream media and the Establishment'.
Just look at how a lot of media folk were hysterical
"... The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world. ..."
"... Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order ..."
More than 10 years ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer
asserted that American
"decline is a choice," and argued tendentiously that Barack Obama had chosen it. Yet looking back over the last decade, it has become
increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want.
The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after
the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves
into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently
husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world.
There was a brief period during the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. could claim to be the world's hegemonic power. America
had no near-peer rivals; it was at the height of its influence across most of the globe. That status, however, was always a transitory
one, and was lost quickly thanks to self-inflicted wounds in Iraq and the natural growth of other powers that began to compete for
influence. While America remains the most powerful state in the world, it no longer dominates as it did 20 years ago. And there can
be no recapturing what was lost.
Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon explore these matters in their new book,
Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order . They make a strong case for distinguishing between the
old hegemonic order and the larger international order of which it is a part. As they put it, "global international order is not
synonymous with American hegemony." They also make careful distinctions between the different components of what is often simply
called the "liberal international order": political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism. The first
involves the protection of rights, the second open economic exchange, and the third the form of international order that recognizes
legally equal sovereign states. Cooley and Nexon note that both critics and defenders of the "liberal international order" tend to
assume that all three come as a "package deal," but point out that these parts do not necessarily reinforce each other and do not
have to coexist.
While the authors are quite critical of Trump's foreign policy, they don't pin the decline of the old order solely on him. They
argue that hegemonic unraveling takes place when the hegemon loses its monopoly over patronage and "more states can compete when
it comes to providing economic, security, diplomatic, and other goods." The U.S. has been losing ground for the better part of the
last 20 years, much of it unavoidable as other states grew wealthier and sought to wield greater influence. The authors make a persuasive
case that the "exit" from hegemony is already taking place and has been for some time.
Many defenders of U.S. hegemony insist that the "liberal international order" depends on it. That has never made much sense. For
one, the continued maintenance of American hegemony frequently conflicts with the rules of international order. The hegemon reserves
the right to interfere anywhere it wants, and tramples on the sovereignty and legal rights of other states as it sees fit. In practice,
the U.S. has frequently acted as more of a rogue in its efforts to "enforce" order than many of the states it likes to condemn. The
most vocal defenders of U.S. hegemony are unsurprisingly some of the biggest opponents of international law -- at least when it gets
in their way. Cooley and Nexon make a very important observation related to this in their discussion of the role of revisionist powers
in the world today:
But the key point is that we need to be extremely careful that we don't conflate "revisionism" with opposition to the United
States. The desire to undermine hegemony and replace it with a multipolar system entails revisionism with respect to the distribution
of power, but it may or may not be revisionist with respect to various elements of international architecture or infrastructure.
The core of the book is a survey of three different sources for the unraveling of U.S. hegemony: major powers, weaker states,
and transnational "counter-order" movements. Cooley and Nexon trace how Russia and China have become increasingly effective at wielding
influence over many smaller states through patronage and the creation of parallel institutions and projects such as the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). They discuss
a number of weaker states that have begun hedging their bets by seeking patronage from these major powers as well as the U.S. Where
once America had a "near monopoly" on such patronage, this has ceased to be the case. They also track the role of "counter-order"
movements, especially nationalist and populist groups, in bringing pressure to bear on their national governments and cooperating
across borders to challenge international institutions. Finally, they spell out how the U.S. itself has contributed to the erosion
of its own position through reckless policies dating back at least to the invasion of Iraq.
The conventional response to the unraveling of America's hegemony here at home has been either a retreat into nostalgia with simplistic
paeans to the wonders of the "liberal international order" that ignore the failures of that earlier era or an intensified commitment
to hard-power dominance in the form of ever-increasing military budgets (or some combination of the two). Cooley and Nexon contend
that the Trump administration has opted for the second of these responses. Citing the president's emphasis on maintaining military
dominance and his support for exorbitant military spending, they say "it suggests an approach to hegemony more dependent upon military
instruments, and thus on the ability (and willingness) of the United States to continue extremely high defense spending. It depends
on the wager that the United States both can and should substitute raw military power for its hegemonic infrastructure." That not
only points to what Barry Posen has
called "illiberal hegemony,"
but also leads to a foreign policy that is even more militarized and unchecked by international law.
Cooley and Nexon make a compelling observation about how Trump's demand for more allied military spending differs from normal
calls for burden-sharing. Normally, burden-sharing advocates call on allies to spend more so the U.S. can spend less. But that isn't
Trump's position at all. His administration pressures allied governments to increase their spending, while showing no desire to curtail
the Pentagon budget:
Retrenchment entails some combination of shedding international security commitments and shifting defense burdens onto allies
and partners. This allows the retrenching power, in principle, to redirect military spending toward domestic priorities, particularly
those critical to long-term productivity and economic growth. In the current American context, this means making long-overdue
investments in transportation infrastructure, increasing educational spending to develop human capital, and ramping up support
for research and development. This rationale makes substantially less sense if retrenchment policies do not produce reductions
in defense spending–which is why Trump's aggressive, public, and coercive push for burden sharing seems odd. Recall that Trump
and his supporters want, and have already implemented, increases in the military budget. There is no indication that the Trump
administration would change defense spending if, for example, Germany or South Korea increased their own military spending or
more heavily subsidized American bases.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed how misguided our priorities as a nation have been. There is now a chance to change course,
but that will require our leaders to shift their thinking. U.S. hegemony is already on its way out; now Americans need to decide
what our role in the world will look like afterwards. Warmed-over platitudes about "leadership" won't suffice and throwing more money
at the Pentagon is a dead end. The way forward is a strategy of retrenchment, restraint, and renewal.
Yeah. US just happened to decline, a completely natural process, some universal constant, like gravity of which we have no control.
No. A decadent US population, informed by clueless media, put in charge incompetent and self-serving leaders, who made a series
of very poor choices for the nation, but financially beneficial for themselves.
And thus our betrayed America's version of the White Man's Burden. It's sad to think our children having to endure living in a
world where they aren't called to die in God-forsaken hellholes for reasons that have nothing to do with this nation's core principles.
Sad!
Lol. Sort of. Except the very oligarchs you speak of, on both sides, set the stage for all of it.
This is the inevitable result of voting as a right, ans they knew it. Universal suffrage is a tool of control, not liberty.
The oligarchs are really just like other Americans, who got their hands on a whole lot of money. I have no doubt the rest of the
population would behave like oligarchs if given the same resources.
We don't have universal suffrage and voting is no where named as a right in the Constitution. The most it has to say is that voting
can not be denied to people based on their membership in certain classes, nor limited based on the payment of a tax.
"it has become increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want."
It isn't "irrespective of". It is because of what they wanted. They wanted and aggressively pushed for US foreign policy
to serve the narrow regional interests of client states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. They got what they wanted, in spades, and
now America's geopolitical and economic fortunes are in a tail-spin.
If America had ignored these people, with their stupid interventionism, their almost blatant service of foreign interests by
demanding "no daylight" with "allies" who did nothing but suck our blood, we would have been far better off. We would have been
far better able to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the pandemic. It's impossible not to think ruefully of the trillions
we wasted on Middle East wars and other interventions, money now so badly needed here at home.
The US will pursue a similar path to Israel. Advantage is relative. Rather than repair the US economy it is simpler to destroy
those of one's rivals. I see war as the only attractive option for the US elite as that is the only area where they still enjoy
clear superiority (or believe they do, same thing policy-wise.)
Cooley and Nevon's book appears to be a good read - I will put it on my 'to read so buy' book list. China is the next hegemon
- this is inevitable due to design. As time goes by during this 'coronavirus pandemic' I have been waiting to hear a politician,
any politician, assert that they will support legislation to require 'essential supply lines' to be returned to the U.S. Aside
from 'murmurs', not a 'lucid' peep. Just 'sue china' legislation, or smoke and mirrors blame on those within the U.S. via the
media or politicians. This is just embarrassing and surreal.
The priority should be to bring these supply lines back to the U.S. [i.e., medical]. Too hell if I am going to be forced to
pay for 'Obamacare' or 'Medicare For All' like a Russian Serf, to the Corporations [vassals] of China [Tatars] - enforced by their
'Eunuchs', greedy politicians in Washington. {Eunuchs were castrated lackies of Emperors]. Yet Chinese slave labour on these medical
products, including pharmaceutical ingredients, and precious metals for parts for the Department of Defense, keep profit margins
very high.
Because of their cowardice one must ask: Why increase defense spending on any project - or be concerned with Iran or Venezuela
or Russia or keeping NATO afloat? Allowing China to continue to be the 'sole source' provider of essential goods is just asking
for another scenario like the one before us. If so, I am convinced that my country is nothing more than a 'dead carcass' being
ripped apart by 'Corporate Vassals of China'. This, of course, includes the Tech Companies as well.
China does not have ideal geography to be world hegemon.
For one thing, it is too easy to prevent any ships from leaving the South China Sea.
The fact that China has not gone to war with anyone since 1953, except for two sharp but short border conflicts in 1962 and
1979, should tell you something. Contrast with the peace-loving liberal democracy of the United States.
The answer of course is a functional international system--environmental protection, world health, a transparent financial system,
world court, and policing. All agreed on by at least the major players which makes it costly for others not to participate.
With good reason many 'mistrust' this int'l system given the threat to sovereignty of a country, most importantly the freedom
of its citizens. An int'l system is asymmetrical, a radical 're-distribution' program that preys on citizens of the 'pseudo-wealthy'
west. The United States will be, post-Corona Virus, potentially $30T in debt. Yet they contribute the most to the WHO. The largest
contribution to the UN comes from the United States. This fact seems to rebut your 'costly for others not to participate'.
The Paris Agreement, like the UN and WHO, will rely on most of the funds coming from the U.S. and redistributed to other countries.
And this will further destroy the standard of living in this country to the degree of crashing the economy. The expected Utopian
Outcome for this so-called 'One-World' order will be a great disappointment to those that advocate for it. Because, after all,
it is nothing more than a Utopian dream gambling on the cohesive nature of different demographic groups combined with significant
reduction in freedoms for all - based on flawed models, including so-called 'man made global warming' models. To define the Demographic
is use in the context of my response: does not = race; it equals culture. Right now this is being demonstrated in the super state
of the EU. There can be no harmony in a world like this. It is like forcing a 'square peg' into a 'round hole'.
And who are these major players? The Eunuch Politicians in Washington and Western Europe? What are their priorities? Their
wallets or their constituents? And I do not mean in a parental way. That is not the role of government.
Viewed from a global perspective at this time, there is a decline in American power and influence, but the vanity of politicians
prevents them from seeing it and they don't want to let go.
The British government makes the same mistakes as it clings to an imaginary "prestige" as a world power - a power that vanished
in 1914.
After Eden was removed as PM post-Suez the new PM Harold McMillan came in and was honest with the British ppl in explaining their
new role in the world, just 10-15 years after the triumph of WW2 a UK Prime Minister had the courage to tell the British people
that they were no longer at the top table, that the age of Empire was over and to put in place the policies required to remove
the burden of empire from Britain and adjust to its new role in the world. Do you see an American politician with the capability
to tell some uncomfortable home truths to the American people and still win an election?
i think that is why voters elected Trump. The citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin have lived the decline of the
United States. At least under trump there have been no new wars but the withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan NATO, Japan, Korea needs
to occur with the Military-Industrial-Media Complex kicking and screaming.with each step. Also ending sanctions on Iran, Cuba,
North Korea and Venezuela.
We are in Japan because it allows us to patrol the sea lanes which is vital for our economy and it gives us a large force ready
to respond in case of Chinese or North Korean aggression. The Status of Forces Agreement and other treaties with Japan stipulate
what percentage of costs are born by Japan.
Allowing Japan to destroy consumer electronics, damage steel and automotive is vital to our economy? Could we not patrol the sea
lanes if we wanted to from Guam? Is not freedom of the sea just as vital to Japan, Europe and India? How is China or North Korea
the aggressor when Japan, Korea and Taiwan have been client states of China with the US thousands of miles away?
Imperialism has bankrupt the United States just as it did Europe. The time has come to end these treaties.
Ultra protectionism, retreat to our island and no one can find us, 'make America great again' I dare say, thinking is naive and
unrealistic.
America wil be poorer, weaker, and more vulnerable if it tried to only make its own goods and had to rely on only its own labor.
Trade is profit and profit is the ability to develop, build, and defend what we have. Where do the profits go is the question.
Who loses in the trade is another question. Does the benefit from the former outweigh the latter?
I don't see Japanese trade as making much of a dent in employment rates. The profits go to the Japanese state and industry,
who are important counterweights to Chinese ambitions in Asia, a mutual interest. So, the costs are few, and the profits are used
in significant measure to mutual benefit.
The liberal hegemon is dead, yes our imperialism is dead even if it doesn't know it, but it is essential to remain strategically
involved in the world around us. Even if we stop playing the game, the world around us does not. Did Russia have the luxury of
turning into a turtle after the Cold War? No. Nations, which are all wolves, smell weakness. Yet the Trumpian right wants to hide,
put its finger in its ear, and pretend that everything will be fine it seems.
What are these withdrawals from Iraq & Afghanistan you speak of? They just have not happened, like not even a little bit, so tired
of people pushing this completely false narrative as if it is true, just maddening. A democracy cannot function if people exist
in their own worlds with their own facts that are just not true
The Brits after WW2 offer a lesson here. Hurt badly by WW1, their whole system began teetering as that illusion of the "natural
superiority" of the British took massive hits in the various colonies of the Empire. By exposing the ordinariness of the administrators
and soldiers, it encouraged revolt (see Gandhi in India). But WW2 arguably devastated the UK. It's "win" over Germany was Pyrrhic,
as it needed both the USSR and the USA , and each took a chunk of prestige and of the "hegemon". George VI recognized this, and
British politicians encouraged the shift from Empire to Commonwealth. (Which, if they had never involved themselves in the EU
beyond trade and had kept up the Commonwealth as it was intended, would have been a better path than what they did, IMHO.) Nevertheless,
they handled it better than I think we will.
As Jefferson said, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."
But to get there, we have a lot of nonsense -- damned nonsense - - to overcome.
Excellent review and outlook on an encouraging transition from the compulsion of hegemony within a generally agreeable paradigm
of economic liberalism (rules-based international markets).
Well this present regime is actively smashing "international organizations" constructed largely by the Americans after WW2. This
makes it even easier for the Chinese to fill the vacuum we have created. It would be better to hold them in a Western biased "international
organization"
All indications are that ship has sailed. Will there be hegemons? Yes, but more than one. The US will not be the only hegemon
and the COVID-19 helped the world see the emperor has no clothes.
I think that's the likely course, unless the US remains especially incompetent in ensuring that China isn't the one cleaning up
at all the empire liquidation sales.
No nation should be entrusted with anything like the power the US has had.
Until they start shooting down our airliners, sinking our cruise ships, attacking our Naval Bases, and invading their neighbors
and committing genocide against people of other races and religions.
Then, the doves will wake up and realize that the Big Stick is what kept us safe afterall.
You mean fight people who actually threaten us rather than attack people because we dream up scenarios where it's possible or
we just don't like them? I'll take that over preemptive genocide.
If we focused on actual defense 9/11 would not have happened. We ignored Al Qaeda despite the fact the bombed us multiple times
because we were too busy bombing Serbia, blowing up their TV stations and expanding NATO to gobble up former Russian Republics.
The United States routinely ignores any international laws, whenever it sees fit. Anyway, the idea that United States hegemony
is obligatory because muh international order is an argument from consequences.
Lol, America Is what's in the rear view, not just our status as the sole superpower.
People better get ready, this empire is getting ready to collapse.
Meh, people better get ready, we're getting ready to muddle along for the next several decades.
The American state is way too tasty a prize. No one is going to dismantle it, and people will unite against any threat that
has the potential to. Eventually someone will figure out a Bernie/Trump fusion and that person will be our Peron or Putin. Radical
leftists will be crushed by the police if they try anything, and the white nationalists will all be in prison.
We're somewhere between Argentina and Russia heading forward.
Sell the empire. Ignore the Middle East outside of the oil trade lanes. Reorient our trade networks on SE Asia, India, and Latin
America - no more feeding China. End of hostile moves towards Russia - let Europe reconcile with Russia. Fully support multipolar
world order.
Militarily we don't need the plodding battleship of a force we have now. No need to occupy whole countries with 'boots on the
ground'. Maintain top notch special forces, advisor and coordination programs with allies, and anything useful for blowing up
Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles.
Lots of good ideas here. Would trading with India involve a "reorient[ation]?" (I don't know.) That is to say, would still trading
with India mean that we have to maintain our current naval position, or would that still be consistent with some sort of drawdown?
Or are you saying that since India is not a hostile force, we would not have to worry about it? Or does is that problem met with
the "anything useful for blowing up Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles." Conceivably, China could
increase its presence in the Indian Ocean to create problems, no? Overall, agree with a lot of it--I'm just curious about the
logistics.
India in the longer term could ostensibly do much of what China does for us now trade wise. Needs to finish developing its infrastructure
and its manufacturing tech. SE Asia and Mexico are closer short term.
I think due to the commercial value of the seas our navy is our most cost effective means of force projection. Patrolling the
Persian Gulf means we have our thumb on the number one petroleum artery. I would focus more on cost effective means to deny China
(and Chinese trade) access to the seas in the event of tension. Carriers are expensive targets when subs and strategic missile
emplacements can inspire even more fear due to unpredictability. But yes we still need bases and partnerships throughout the Indian
and Pacific Oceans. China can roam around in peacetime as it wishes, what matters is that it stays totally bottled up in port,
along with its maritime trade, in a conflict.
Allow these places to run up trade surpluses with us rather than China.
I think Mr. Larison is on the right track. However, even if the logic of abandoning the Liberal International Order (LIO) is accepted--and
the LIO most certainly should be abandoned--the entire story or narrative of post-World War II America narrative must be either
abandoned or refashioned. It seems that the LIO functions as some sort of purpose for American citizens, and a higher-level theology
for those who work in the United States Government, especially those who are involved in foreign policy making. Countering or
reshaping the narrative of United States foreign policy and its link with domestic policy will be a challenge, but one that needs
to be taken up, and taken up successfully. In personal conversations with those who support the LIO, they seem to take [my] criticisms
of the LIO as some sort of ad hominem attack. This reaction is obviously illogical, but it is one that those who see the
wisdom of abandoning the LIO must tactically and tactfully counter. Regrettably, supporting the LIO is conflated with being an
American, or conflated with the raison d'etre of the existence of the United States. Many think the abandonment of the
LIO cannot rationally be replaced and will necessarily be replaced with some sort of nihilism or the most cynical form of "realism,"
of which they mistakenly believe they possess understanding. For a start, reforming the educational system, insofar as it not
already dominated by incorrect-but-fashionable far-leftist ideas that advocate a narrative of American history and purpose as
false as it is pernicious, would seem to necessary. Many children grow into adulthood falsely thinking maintaining the LIO is
their responsibility. It is, at root, a theological sickness.
I hope it is over. To hell with the Europeans who have made a national sport of mocking Americans and all things America, while
we risk nuclear war on their behalf. Let them face Putin and the Islamic invasion on their own - those problems are Europe's,
not ours.
The United States is ramping up for the "Great Final War' with both Russia and China. Throw in Iran, Syria, North Korea etc. as
an afterthought. The U.S. will bring the temple down on itself rather than give up the goal of 'Full Spectrum Dominance'.that
it has been pursuing since the end of WWII.
Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon may think the glory days are coming to an end, but I don't think Trump and the neocons got the
memo yet. I see no evidence of any intent to change.
There is no "international order." That's just rhetoric that is useful for certain economic interests. A world without american
hegemony will be divided and filled with conflict. Globalization can't work politically.
"... US propaganda is all over social media. They're inundating the online forums all over Asia. Travel and cultural sites are being flooded with anti-China posts and comments. I think they're creating a narrative to pave the political, economic, and military moves they're about to make. ..."
US propaganda is all over social media. They're inundating the online forums all over Asia.
Travel and cultural sites are being flooded with anti-China posts and comments. I think
they're creating a narrative to pave the political, economic, and military moves they're
about to make.
@follyofwar This culture that was once preserve of the psychos in the administration or
broadly in DC has percolated down to common folks . Fish rots from head . Hubris usually
follows the smell.
Apr 23, 2020 The State of the Police State – #NewWorldNextWeek
Welcome to the 405th episode of New World Next Week -- the video series from Corbett
Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source
intelligence news.
Everyone has heard, ad nauseam, about the "
Special Relationship " between the United States and Britain. Accordingly, the few
Americans who dare identify their country as an empire – past or present – tend
to analogize with the British model. While the similarities between Washington and
London-style imperialism are manifold – along with the distinct differences – in
other important ways, the more appropriate parallel is with France. For the French,
unlike
the Brits (for the most part), and like modern Americans (in a more indirect way),
imagined their colonial subjects as vital, moldable constituents (if rarely citizens) of a
grand francophone project for good.
I know, I know, the French and Americans can't stand each other, right? Well, sure, theirs
has been a contentious relationship for centuries – politically, culturally, you name
it. True enough, but lest we forget that the U.S. formed in opposition to British
Empire, and – though rarely mentioned in the dominant memories of American
Revolutionary
triumphalism – the colonists' military victory would've been far more difficult (if
not impossible) without French intervention on their behalf.
No doubt, the relationship between the US and its first, and longest, ally has been filled
with ups and downs: one thinks of the
Quasi-War (1798), FDR-Charles De Gaulle world war
drama , Paris' semi-" withdrawal " from NATO (1966),
and, of course, the Iraq War dispute-" freedom fries " charade
(2003), for starters. Still, in key ways, I'd submit that it is precisely because the French
and American models of governance and global policy have so much in common that they –
like rival siblings – so often squabble.
Peas in an Exceptional Pod of Delusion
While all historical analogizing must proceed cautiously – and with recognition of
the limits of deduction – the broad similarities are staggering. It is the very
grandiose idealism – and consequent universalism – in the wake of their
inextricably
connected revolutions, that has set the French and American hegemons (and empires) apart.
While the American variety has tended more towards (at least an aspirational) multiculturalism than that
of the French, both post-revolutionary nations have been certain of – and applied
– the necessary and proper exportability of their universally "positive"
cultural-political systems.
Indeed, in spite of their rather different ( theoretical )
approaches to internal immigrants, with some far-right wing exceptions
, to be French or American – rather uniquely – has been as much idea as
nationality. There have, of course, been both positive and negative applications inherent to
this notion. One common output has been a common dedication to the nebulous canard of
national "greatness." Indeed, Donald Trump – and Ronald Reagan
before him – can be said to have channeled none other than Charles De Gaulle, who
wrote in his war
memoirs, way back in 1954, that "France cannot be France without greatness."
Consequently, by extension, there have been (necessarily) tragic consequences for the
millions of victims of an imperialism that assumes not only metropole superiority, but that
inside every Algerian (or Afghan) is a Frenchman (or American) waiting to be unzipped .
Such is the logical conclusion of exceptionalism – that most treacherous of all
imperial brands.
There are more specific Franco-American likenesses worth noting as well. Despite the cozy
rhetoric of US multiculturalism and France's assimilation, both states ultimately adhere to a
notion that national values – however vaguely framed – heat their
respective citizen melting pots. And both fill their prisons with the detritus of that
program's historical failures. By now, the reality, and broad contours of, America's world-
record mass incarceration
– particularly of black and brown bodies are widely reported. Less well known, but of a
piece with the US model, is that by 2003, France's Muslims accounted for seven percent of the
population but
70 to 80 percent of its prisoners.
Furthermore, both have lengthy records of post-colonial and neo-imperial adventurism
across far-flung swathes of the the globe. In fact, American and French wars have been the
West's bloodiest since 1945, and also often complimentary – whereby, for example,
Washington quite literally took up Paris' mantle in
Vietnam. Furthermore, even today, France – though it pales in comparison to America's
veritable " empire of bases "
– maintains perhaps
the world's second largest network of overseas military footholds. That deployment and
intervention bonanza has all "blown back" at the French and American homelands, as both have
been targeted – recently at two of the highest Western rates – by transnational (or
foreign-influenced) "terrorists" from the very regions where they most often militarily
intervene.
Joint Exhibit Africa
Lastly, and most relevant to the current moment, both Paris and Washington have had a
tragic tortured relationship with – and become the favorite targets of – the more
violent flavors of political Islam. Of late, for the Americans, and more longstanding for the
French, that has particularly been the case in Africa. The truth is there are only two
countries which station – and unleash – significant numbers of troops in Africa
today: France and the United States.
The post-colonial pervasiveness of the French presence in Africa was itself exceptional
– at least until the United States truly got in the game in a more overt post-9/11 way.
As late as 1990, France had troops stationed in a remarkable 22
African countries. Even the once great British Empire's postcolonial role paled
in comparison. Furthermore, in a tactic the U.S. would later – and continue
to – make its own, France signed military defense pacts with 27
African states during the period 1961-92, including with three former British, and a few
Belgian, colonies. Paris also spearheaded three further
tactics common to Washington throughout and beyond the decolonization and Cold War eras:
fomenting coups, empowering dictators, and " dancing "
with heinous (sometimes genocidal) monsters. In several repulsive cases, some combination of
all three were waged as joint Franco-American exercises.
Paris and Washington "Behind the Scenes"
Since the end of the Second World War, when a defeated France sought to regain the
physical space, and glory, of its empire – most of which was in Africa – it
unleashed its external intelligence service, then known as the SDECE , first to stifle colonial nationalism, and
then, begrudgingly, to sustain real power over the newly independent states. Whereas
the equivalent US CIA spent the Cold War working behind the scenes to counter even the whiff
of Soviet influence, the SDECE was more concerned with stifling any true hints of economic or
political autonomy in its former domains. Nonetheless, not always, but more often than not,
Paris' and Washington's goals were symbiotic.
In the period after the " Year of Africa " –
when 14 French (and 17 total) colonies gained independence – the SDECE (after 1981
known as the DGSE) instigated
several coups , and been implicated
in more than a few presidential assassinations. In more farcical cases – take the
Central African Republic (CAR) – the SDECE even planned coups against leaders it had
previously "couped" into office in the first place. The losers were always the common
people, mind you, and it should thus come as little surprise that France was drawn back into the CAR over
this past decade in response to spiraling religious and ethnic conflict. Naturally, the CIA
played the same game all over the continent – toppling a few governments of its own
and
planning to assassinate prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo – but for the
most part, Paris guarded its "special," depraved, role in Francophone West and Central
Africa.
During the Cold War, and – albeit with some different motives – ever since,
Franco-American intel and diplomatic services have gleefully backed any strongman willing to
support Western goals or oppose the West's (perceived) external enemies. The outcomes have
repeatedly been tragic. Both Washington and Paris helped install and then backed Zaire's
(Congo's) brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's vicious 35 year reign – the French to the
bitter end, even after the US cut him lose after he'd outlived his Cold War usefulness. Paris
even
ran one final covert operation – which included three fighter aircraft and European
mercenaries – in an unsuccessful attempt to stem the rebel tide in 1997. Previously,
France installed and/or backed dictators who banned political parties, and tortured or
murdered opponents in Cameroon, Niger, Chad, and the Central African Republic, among
others.
In the particularly odious case of Chad, Paris and Washington alternately worked at cross
or joint purposes to back one authoritarian thug after another. Both the SDECE and CIA
funneled cash and weapons to a slew of leaders who exploited and widened ethnic and religious
(Muslim north vs. Christian and animist south) conflicts and waged war on their own people.
Much of this unfolded in the name of a lengthy proxy war with Libya's Ghadafi regime –
which France would take a leading role in toppling
along with the US in 2011 – that ultimately destabilized the entire North African
region. The unintended perils of backing military strongmen was on stark display again
recently when a U.S.-trained captain
led a 2012 coup in Mali which drew both American and French troops back
into a prolonged indecisive intervention.
The rarely recounted record of French support for African monsters – usually vicious
rebel groups – is exceptionally hideous. For starters, Paris
backed Biafran separatists in Nigeria's bloody civil war (1967-70) with 350 tons of
weapons, and was the prime backer of the Rwandan Hutu regime – and its later rebel
manifestations in the extended Congo civil wars (1996-2003) – that perpetrated the
worst genocide (1994) since the Nazi Holocaust. If the US didn't always side with France in
these cases, it scantly opposed the macabre missions.
The Franco-American (Exceptionalist) Forever War Curse
In Africa, both France's (since 1960) and America's (after 2001) foreign policy has been
veritably defined by hyper-interventionism, and low-intensity forever wars. The French
have militarily intervened no less than 50 times – in at least 13 countries
– since official decolonization. It has waged its own lengthy or seemingly forever wars
in Chad (1968-75, 77-80 83-84),
Ivory Coast (2002-present), and Mali
. (2013-present) In Chad, the US has recently
taken the baton from France and continues to bolster a regime ranked by Transparency
International in 2010 as the sixth most corrupt on earth.
Indeed, today the French and American militaries are engaged in a joint adventure chasing
Islamist "terror" ghosts across Francophone West and Central Africa. According to AFRICOM's
own internal
documents , the US military now has "enduring" "footprints" in six, and "non-enduring"
presence in four, former French colonies in the region. Taking that incestuous overlap a step
further, Washington and Paris are together simultaneously engaged in
active operations in four of those countries, and jointly station troops in at least
two
others . Britain, by contrast, has troops in only four African countries in any
abiding sense, and is far less active in combat. While hardly any Americans –
and to a lesser extent Frenchmen – can locate, or in certain cases pronounce, Djibouti,
Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Chad, Tunisia, Mali, or Cameroon, the stark fact is that
both countries are meddling, and often at war, in each of those distant locales.
American and French soldiers, alike, continue to die in these, at best, tangential
hot spots in the name of domestic populations that don't give a damn and hardly take any
notice. In Africa, at least (though not the Middle East), French military losses have been
even higher than American casualties. Since 2013, 30 French troops have
died in Mali alone. For all that cost in French blood and treasure – more than
$750 million annually – the Sahel is even today " slipping out of control ." The same
could be said of the American investment – ample billions spent and thousands of troops
extensively deployed
in some 15 countries as of 2019 – in Africa since 9/11.
The result of all this has been a joint Franco-American counter-productivity crisis both
for the region and homeland security. The blowback synergy is perhaps best illustrated in the
linked Libyan-Mali debacle, especially since Paris and Washington (along with London)
shamelessly masked an
outright (Ghadafi) regime change in Tripoli under the guise of the UN's Responsibility
to Protect (R2P) concept.
From 2007-08, US special forces inserted themselves and
assisted the Malian government in its decidedly local ethnic fight with Tuareg
separatists in the country's north. Simultaneously, US trained and backed forces in nearby
Niger committed atrocities against fellow Tuareg civilians – which only added to their
ethnic grievances. Then, that temporarily tamped-down insurgency exploded when it was
bolstered in 2012 by fighters and weapons which flooded south from the chaos induced by
NATO's 2011 regime change war in Libya. A year later, the French army was back in its former
colony. They've yet to leave.
So, essentially, France – through its earlier colonial divide and rule policies
– and the US, by militarily meddling and choosing sides in local matters (and
catalyzing instability in Libya), created the Tuareg "problem" in Mali (and Niger)
that both Western powers then intervened in, and are still trying, to solve.
Taking stock of this recent U.S.-backed Francophone African history repeated
as farce , one is reminded of the
rejoinder of a long dead French Algerian settler philosopher: "Each act of repression
each act of police torture has deepened the despair and violence of those subjected [and] in
this way given birth to terrorists who in turn have given birth to more police." Or, one
might add in the contemporary African context: more French and American soldiers .
The Questions We (Both) Dare Not Ask
In another absurd commonality, the French and Americans have come to uncritically
accept the inevitability of interminable warfare in Africa without asking why. Neither
Paris nor Washington has much bothered to self-pose the salient question at hand: Why
has violent Islamism exploded in Africa (or the Mideast, for that matter); and why now
? It certainly can't be as simple as the Bush-era
trope : "They hate us for our freedoms."
If that were the case, one would expect the jihadi wave sooner, since, after all, French
and American democracy – such as it is – is far older than the post-colonial, or
post-9/11 eras. See, but there's the rub: exceptional entities don't trouble
themselves with such questions; that sort of doubt or reflection wouldn't occur to a
universalist policymaker in Paris or Washington.
Naturally, if French or American leaders had lowered themselves to such base (you
know, human) levels, and even deigned to touch a toe in some self-awareness waters, a few
inconvenient causation explanations might ripple outward. Like that, perhaps, the spread of
Islamist "terror" has deep roots in the phenomena of colonization, decolonization, neo-colonialism
and global-financial debt-imperialism
. And that there is a proven counterproductive
relationship between the level of foreign troop deployments and overall violence in Africa
– I.e. more French Foreign Legionnaires, and more (disturbingly similar) American "
Praetorians
" of the special operations command, has only sent regional jihadism skyrocketing.
Finally, there's the minor matter that the " Washington
consensus " response – through influence over IMF and World Bank policies –
to the post-1973 oil shocks and free-fall of global commodity prices, didn't (and wasn't
designed) to stop the number of Global Southerners living on less than a dollar a day rising
from 70 to 290 million by 1998. In the face of such poverty, locals can be forgiven for their
sneaking suspicion that both the Declarations of Independence, and of the Rights
of Man , offer rather paltry answers. Now, whether the West, however constructed, bears
all the blame for that might be debatable; but through African eyes, what's certain is the
recent infusion of Franco-American troops and corporations is not seen as a net
positive for the people. Jihadis may be monsters – and we must admit they often are
– but at least they are African (or Arab) monsters.
To distant, exceptionalist ears in the comfort of the White House (or the Élysée
Palace ), such sentiments seem resoundingly blasphemous. The cultural and political
universalism of American or French "values" – even if neither society ever manages to
internally agree about what those are – seem a given. To reject Washingtonian or
Parisian liberty largesse is seen as almost proof-positive that intransigent Africans were
communists – or now "terrorists" – after all. Furthermore, the unsophisticated
locals must've been put up to it by "real" enemies: the Soviets (pre-1991), or today,
obviously the Chinese. According to this prevailing logic, more's the reason to flood the
region with ample troops and around and around we go.
Passing the Torch?
Today, and quite
historically , both the French and Americans simplify a gray, complex world to their own
– and global peoples' – detriment. Elizabeth Schmidt's two recent exhaustive
studies of foreign interventions in Africa –
during and since the
Cold War – concluded that such actions "tended to exacerbate rather than alleviate
African conflicts." Consider that a scholarly understatement. In the case of exponentially
increased US military involvement since the founding of AFRICOM, credible
recent analyses demonstrate how strikingly counterproductive such missions have been on
the continent.
When it comes to the discrete – and often joint – French and American
interventions in Africa these days, sequence and timing matter. Until 2007, the generally
limited US military actions on the continent fell under the responsibility of United States
European Command (EUCOM) – which in addition to countering the Russian Bear, had
jurisdiction over 43 (what were seen as) backwater sub-Saharan African countries. When it
came to actual troop "boots-on-the-ground," France was still the military meddler
extraordinaire. All that changed, slowly after 9/11, and with immediacy when President Bush
announced the creation of the Pentagon's new Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007.
This was the pivotal moment, a changing of the economic and military neo-imperial guard of
sorts. It is unlikely coincidental that the permanent US military presence became official at
almost precisely the tipping point moment (2008) when China eclipsed France
as Africa's largest trading partner. Indeed, the ostensible "threat" of the Chinese Dragon
– despite it still having just
one base there – as much as "terrorism," has easily replaced the convenient canard
of Soviet infusion as the justification for perpetual US military intervention in Africa. In
the futile and inessential attempt to "defeat" Islamist jihadism and exclude China, France is
now the junior – but essential, given its existing local "knowledge" and neocolonial
relationships – partner on the continent.
With respect to Paris' incessant and indecisive warfare – and ineffective strategy
– in Africa, Hannah Armstrong, of the International Crisis Group, lamented
that "In the same way that French reality TV and pop music is 15 years behind the US, French
counterterrorism mimics US counterterrorism of 15 years ago." That may be strictly accurate
with respect to the recent failures in the Sahel that she analyzed – but widen the lens
a bit, and it becomes clear Armstrong has it backwards. Historically, since 1960, the French
have tried it all before; Uncle Sam was often behind (or backing) them, then (as in Vietnam)
willingly took the torch, and now fails where Paris already has.
In Africa, given that most of the current fighting is in the Francophone sphere upon which
Paris – uniquely
among former European imperialists – has maintained an historic
politico-military-economic post-colonial grip, it is worth asking just who is using
who in the relationship.
In other words, qui ( really ) bono?
Author's Note: As some readers may have noticed, I have (accidentally) embarked on a
sort of informal empire-analogy series, with a particularly African-inflection. In case
you've missed them, check out the links below to the previous articles (in a variety of
outlets) on contemporary American connections to past and present empires:
Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and contributing editor atAntiwar.comHis work has appeared in
the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Popular Resistance, and
Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units
in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the
author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His forthcoming book,
Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War is now available forpre-order. Sjursen was recently selected as a 2019-20 Lannan FoundationCultural Freedom Fellow. Follow him on Twitter@SkepticalVet. Visit his
professionalwebsitefor contact info, to schedule speeches or media appearances, and access to his past
work.
If ever there was a time, it's now. Oil has bottomed out. They can top off the national
reserves on the cheap and profit when their war sends prices up again. Maybe it's why The
Orange Goober has ordered the Navy to "shoot down" any Iranian boats that
harass/approach/rudely gesture at US ships.
Ritter's article worries me. There is now a sales argument for war: "don't worry about oil
prices going sky high, Iran can't use that weapon against us now!".
You over excitable little Iran war-monkeys really should take time out of your busy
war-monkey daily-schedules to learn something about the topography of Iran and it's defensive
and offensive military capabilities.
It would certainly save everyone else from having to listen to you being wrong yet
again.
You're on the right track. There's a huge supply glut as all forms of storage are mostly
filled as proven by the negative WTI pricing. Global demand is still being destroyed. War in
the Persian Gulf region will further destroy demand; and since very little oil's being
shipped from there, the supply glut won't be used up anytime soon--certainly not quickly
enough to see a sharp rebound in oil price. The crucial point is domestic US refineries have
cut back their runs as their margins are even thinner than before, plus demand destruction is
still occurring, thus the domestic storage glut. The wife and I jested last night if we only
had a rail spur we could order up a couple of tank cars full of unleaded at the current very
distressed price and be set for a longtime.
As The
Saker notes in his latest , Trump must make the voting public look everywhere except at
him and Congress, the bellowing at Iran being part of that entire theatre. Yes, a mistake
could have very negative consequences for the USN and all US assets in the region as well as
Occupied Palestine--the overall underlying dynamic hasn't changed since Trump broke the Iran
Nuclear Treaty. Too add further insult to Trump and Pompeo, Iran's doing a
much better job at containing COVID-19 than the Outlaw US Empire :
"The US pandemic death toll is this week heading above 50,000 compared with Iran's figure
of 5,300. Considering the respective population numbers of 330 and 80 million that suggests
Iran is doing a much better job at containing the virus. On a per-capita basis, according to
publicly available data, Iran's mortality rate is less than half that of the US.
"This is while the US has sanctioned Iran to the hilt. American sanctions – arguably
illegal under international law – have hit Iran's ability to import medical supplies to
cope with COVID-19 and other fatal diseases, yet Iran through its own resources is evidently
managing the crisis much better than the US."
As with the Tar Baby, the more wrestling the Outlaw US Empire does the weaker it gets.
They can't invade. That's your own moronic straw-man. And yes, it would further cut supply
and prices would go up. The current bottom is due to overproduction but so long as
civilization cranks along the oil gets used eventually.
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Nearly 30,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus during the last two weeks, and by
some estimates this is a substantial under-count, while the death-toll continues to rapidly
mount. Meanwhile, measures to control the spread of this deadly infection have already cost 22
million Americans their jobs, an unprecedented economic collapse that has pushed our
unemployment rates to Great Depression levels. Our country is facing a crisis as grave as
almost any in our national history.
For many weeks President Trump and his political allies had regularly dismissed or minimized
this terrible health threat, and suddenly now faced with such a manifest disaster, they have
naturally begun seeking other culprits to blame.
The obvious choice is China, where the global epidemic first began in late 2019. Over the
last week or two our media has been increasingly filled with accusations that the dishonesty
and incompetence of the Chinese government played a major role in producing our own health
catastrophe.
Even more serious charges are also being raised, with senior government officials informing
the media that they suspect that the Covid-19 virus was developed in a Chinese laboratory in
Wuhan and then carelessly released upon a vulnerable world. Such "conspiracy theories" were
once confined to the extreme political fringe of the Internet, but they are now found in the
respectable pages of my morning New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Whether plausible or not, such accusations carry the gravest international implications, and
there are growing demands that China financially compensate our country for its trillions of
dollars in economic losses. A new global Cold War along both political and economic lines may
soon be at hand.
I have no personal expertise in biowarfare technology, nor access to the secret American
intelligence reports that seem to have been taken seriously by our most elite national
newspapers. But I do think that a careful exploration of previous Sino-American clashes over
the last couple of decades may provide some useful insight into the relative credibility of
those two governments as well as that of our own media.
During the late 1990s, America seemed to reach the peak of its global power and prosperity,
basking in the aftermath of its historic victory in the long Cold War, while ordinary Americans
greatly benefited from the record-long economic expansion of that decade. A huge Tech Boom was
at its height, and Islamic terrorism seemed a vague and distant thing, almost entirely confined
to Hollywood movies. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possibility of large scale war
seemed to have dissipated so political leaders boasted of the "peace dividend" that citizens
were starting to enjoy as our huge military forces, built up over nearly a half-century, were
downsized amid sweeping cuts in the bloated defense budget. America was finally returning to a
regular peacetime economy, with the benefits apparent to everyone.
At the time, I was overwhelmingly focused on domestic political issues, so I only paid
slight attention to our one small military operation of that period, the 1999 NATO air war
against Serbia, intended to safeguard the Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing and massacre,
a Clinton Administration project that I fully endorsed.
Although our limited bombing campaign seemed quite successful and soon forced the Serbs to
the bargaining table, the short war did include one very embarrassing mishap. The use of old
maps had led to a targeting error that caused one of our smart bombs to accidentally strike the
Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three members of its delegation and wounding dozens more.
The Chinese were outraged by this incident, and their propaganda organs began claiming that the
attack had been deliberate, a reckless accusation that obviously made no logical sense.
In those days I watched the PBS Newshour every night, and was I shocked to see their
U.S. Ambassador raise those absurd charges with host Jim Lehrer, whose disbelief matched my
own. But when I considered that the Chinese government was still stubbornly denying the reality
of its massacre of the protesting students in Tiananmen Square a decade earlier, I concluded
that unreasonable behavior by PRC officials was only to be expected. Indeed, there was even
some speculation that China was cynically milking the unfortunate accident for domestic
reasons, hoping to stoke the sort of jingoist anti-Americanism among the Chinese people that
would finally help bind the social wounds of that 1989 outrage.
Such at least were my thoughts on that matter more than two decades ago. But in the years
that followed, my understanding of the world and of many pivotal events of modern history
underwent the sweeping transformations that I have described in my American Pravda series . And some
of my 1990s assumptions were among them.
Consider, for example, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which every June 6th still evokes an
annual wave of harsh condemnations in the news and opinion pages of our leading national
newspapers. I had never originally doubted those facts, but a year or two ago I happened to
come across a short article by journalist Jay Matthews entitled "The Myth of
Tiananmen" that completely upended that apparent reality.
According to Matthews the infamous massacre had likely never happened, but was merely a
media artifact produced by confused Western reporters and dishonest propaganda, a mistaken
belief that had quickly become embedded in our standard media storyline, endlessly repeated by
so many ignorant journalists that they all eventually believed it to be true. Instead, as near
as could be determined, the protesting students had all left Tiananmen Square peacefully, just
as the Chinese government had always maintained. Indeed, leading newspapers such as the New
York Times and the Washington Post had occasionally acknowledged these facts over
the years, but usually buried those scanty admissions so deep in their stories that few ever
noticed. Meanwhile, the bulk of the mainstream media had fallen for an apparent hoax.
ORDER
IT NOW
Matthews himself had been the Beijing Bureau Chief of the Washington Post ,
personally covering the protests at the time, and his article appeared in the Columbia
Journalism Review , our most prestigious venue for media criticism. This authoritative
analysis containing such explosive conclusions was first published in 1998, and I find it
difficult to believe that many reporters or editors covering China have remained ignorant of
this information, yet the impact has been absolutely nil. For over twenty years virtually every
mainstream media account I have read has continued to promote the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Hoax, usually implicitly but sometimes explicitly.
Even more remarkable were the discoveries I made regarding our supposedly accidental bombing
of the Chinese Embassy in 1999. Not long after launching this website, I added former Asia
Times contributor Peter Lee as a columnist, incorporating his China Matters blogsite
archives that stretched back for a decade. He soon published a 7,000 word
article on the Belgrade Embassy bombing, representing a compilation of material already
contained in a
half-dozen previous pieces he'd written on that subject from 2007 onward. To my
considerable surprise, he provided a great deal of persuasive evidence that the American attack
on the Chinese embassy had indeed been deliberate, just as China had always claimed.
According to Lee, Beijing had allowed its embassy to be used as a site for secure radio
transmission facilities by the Serbian military, whose own communications network was a primary
target of NATO airstrikes. Meanwhile, Serbian air defenses had shot down an advanced American
F-117A fighter, whose top-secret stealth technology was a crucial U.S. military secret.
Portions of that enormously valuable wreckage were carefully gathered by the grateful Serbs,
who delivered it to the Chinese for temporary storage at their embassy prior to transport back
home. This vital technological acquisition later allowed China to deploy its own J20 stealth
fighter in early 2011, many years sooner than American military analysts had believed
possible.
Based upon this analysis, Lee argued that the Chinese embassy was attacked in order to
destroy the Serbian retransmission facilities located there, while punishing the Chinese for
allowing such use. There were also widespread rumors in China that another motive had been an
unsuccessful attempt to destroy the stealth debris stored within. Later Congressional testimony
revealed
that the among all the hundreds of NATO airstrikes, the attack on the Chinese embassy was the
only one directly ordered by the CIA, a highly-suspicious detail.
I was only slightly familiar with Lee's work, and under normal circumstances I would have
been very cautious in accepting his remarkable claims against the contrary position universally
held by all our own elite media outlets. But the sources he cited completely shifted that
balance.
Although the American media dominates the English-language world, many British publications
also possess a strong global reputation, and since they are often much less in thrall to our
own national security state, they have sometimes covered important stories that were ignored
here. And in this case, the Sunday Observer published a remarkable expose in October
1999, citing several NATO military and intelligence sources who fully confirmed the deliberate
nature of the American bombing of the Chinese embassy, with a US colonel even reportedly
boasting that their smartbomb had hit the exact room intended.
This important story was immediately summarized in the Guardian ,
a sister publication, and also covered by the rival Times of London and many of the
world's other most prestigious publications, but encountered an absolute wall of silence in our
own country. Such a bizarre divergence on a story of global strategic importance -- a
deliberate and deadly US attack against Chinese diplomatic territory -- drew the attention of
FAIR, a leading American media watchdog group, which published
an initial critique and
a subsequent follow-up . These two pieces totaled some 3,000 words, and effectively
summarized both the overwhelming evidence of the facts and also the heavy international
coverage, while reporting the weak excuses made by top American editors to explain their
continuing silence. Based upon these articles, I consider the matter settled.
Few Americans remember our 1999 attack upon the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and if not for
the annual waving of a bloody June 6th flag by our ignorant and disingenuous media, the
"Tiananmen Square Massacre" would also have long since faded from memory. Neither of these
events has much direct importance today, at least for our own citizens. But the broader media
implications of these examples do seem quite significant.
These incidents represented two of the most serious flashpoints between the Chinese and
American governments during the last thirty-odd years. In both cases the claims of the Chinese
government were entirely correct, although they were denied by our own top political leaders
and dismissed or ridiculed by virtually our entire mainstream media. Moreover, within a few
months or a year the true facts became known to many journalists, even being reported in fully
respectable venues. But that reality was still completely ignored and suppressed for decades,
so that today almost no American whose information comes from our regular media would even be
aware of it. Indeed, since many younger journalists draw their knowledge of the world from
these same elite media sources, I suspect that many of them have never learned what their
predecessors knew but dared not mention.
Most leading Chinese media outlets are owned or controlled by the Chinese government, and
they tend to broadly follow the government line. Leading American media outlets have a
corporate ownership structure and often boast of their fierce independence; but on many crucial
matters, I think the actual reality is not so very different from that in China.
I tend to doubt that Chinese leaders have any overwhelming commitment to the truth, and the
reasons for their greater veracity are probably practical ones. American news and entertainment
completely dominate the global media landscape and they face no significant domestic rival. So
China recognizes that it is vastly outmatched in any propaganda conflict, and as the far weaker
party must necessarily try to stick closer to the truth, lest its lies be immediately exposed.
Meanwhile, America's overwhelming control over global information may inspire considerable
hubris, with the government sometimes promoting the most outrageous and ridiculous falsehoods
in the confident belief that a supportive American media will cover for any mistakes.
These considerations should be kept in mind as we attempt to sift the accounts of our often
unreliable and dishonest media in hopes of extracting the true circumstances of the current
coronavirus epidemic. Unlike careful historical studies, we are working in real-time and our
analysis is greatly hindered by the ongoing fog of war, so that any conclusions are necessarily
very preliminary ones. But given the high stakes, such an attempt seems warranted.
When my morning newspapers first began mentioning the appearance of a mysterious new illness
in China during mid-January, I paid little attention, absorbed as I was in the aftermath of our
sudden assassination of Iran's top military leader and the dangerous possibility of a yet
another Middle Eastern war. But the reports persisted and grew, with deaths occurring and
evidence growing that the viral disease could be transmitted between humans. China's early
conventional efforts seemed unsuccessful in halting the spread of the disease.
Then on Jan. 23rd and after only 17 deaths, the Chinese government took the astonishing step
of locking down and quarantining the entire 11 million inhabitants of the city of Wuhan, a
story that drew worldwide attention. They soon extended this policy to the 60 million Chinese
of Hubei province, and not longer afterward shut down their entire national economy and
confined 700 million Chinese to their homes, a public health measure probably a thousand times
larger than anything previously undertaken in human history. So either the China's leadership
had suddenly gone insane, or they regarded this new virus as an absolutely deadly national
threat, one that needed to be controlled at any possible cost.
Given these dramatic Chinese actions and the international headlines that they generated,
the current accusations by Trump Administration officials that China had attempted to minimize
or conceal the serious nature of the disease outbreak is so ludicrous as to defy rationality.
In any event, the record shows that on December 31st, the Chinese had already alerted the World
Health Organization to the strange new illness, and Chinese scientists published the entire
genome of the virus on Jan. 12th, allowing diagnostic tests to be produced worldwide.
Unlike other nations, China had received no advance warning of the nature or existence of
the deadly new disease, and therefore faced unique obstacles. But their government implemented
public health control measures unprecedented in the history of the world and managed to almost
completely eradicate the disease with merely the loss of a few thousand lives. Meanwhile, many
other Western countries such as the US, Italy, Spain, France, and Britain dawdled for months
and ignored the potential threat, and have now suffered well over 100,000 dead as a
consequence, with the toll still rapidly mounting. For any of these nations or their media
organs to criticize China for its ineffectiveness or slow response represents an absolute
inversion of reality.
Some governments took full advantage of the early warning and scientific information
provided by China. Although nearby East Asian nations such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and
Singapore had been at greatest risk and were among the first infected, their competent and
energetic responses allowed them to almost completely suppress any major outbreak, and they
have suffered minimal fatalities. But America and several European countries avoiding adopting
these same early measures such as widespread testing, quarantine, and contact-tracing, and have
paid a terrible price for their insouciance.
A few weeks ago British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly declared that his own disease
strategy for Britain was based upon rapidly achieving "herd immunity" -- essentially
encouraging the bulk of his citizens to become infected -- then quickly backed away after his
desperate advisors recognized that the result might entail a million or more British
deaths.
By any reasonable measure, the response to this global health crisis by China and most East
Asian countries has been absolutely exemplary, while that of many Western countries has been
equally disastrous. Maintaining reasonable public health has been a basic function of
governments since the days of the city-states of Sumeria, and the sheer and total incompetence
of America and most of its European vassals has been breathtaking. If the Western media
attempts to pretend otherwise, it will permanently forfeit whatever remaining international
credibility it still possesses.
I do not think these particular facts are much disputed except among the most blinkered
partisans, and the Trump Administration probably recognizes the hopelessness of arguing
otherwise. This probably explains its recent shift towards a far more explosive and
controversial narrative, namely claiming that Covid-19 may have been the product of Chinese
research into deadly viruses at a Wuhan laboratory, which suggests that the blood of hundreds
of thousands or millions of victims around the world will be on Chinese hands. Dramatic
accusations backed by overwhelming international media power may deeply resonate across the
globe.
News reports appearing in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have been reasonably consistent. Senior Trump Administration
officials have pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading Chinese biolab, as the
possible source of the infection, with the deadly virus having been accidentally released,
subsequently spreading first throughout China and later worldwide. Trump himself has publicly
voiced similar suspicions, as did Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo in a
FoxNews
interview. Private lawsuits against China in the multi-trillion-dollar range have already
been filed by
rightwing activists and Republican senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have raised similar
governmental demands.
I obviously have no personal access to the classified intelligence reports that have been
the basis of these charges by Trump, Pompeo, and other top administration officials. But in
reading these recent news accounts, I noticed something rather odd.
ORDER IT NOW
Back in January, few Americans were paying much attention to the early reports of an unusual
disease outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which was hardly a household name. Instead,
overwhelming political attention was focused on the battle over Trump's impeachment and the
aftermath of our dangerous military confrontation with Iran. But towards the end of that month,
I discovered that the fringes of the Internet were awash with claims that the disease was
caused by a Chinese bioweapon accidentally released from that same Wuhan laboratory, with
former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and ZeroHedge , a popular right-wing
conspiracy-website, playing leading roles in advancing the theory. Indeed, the stories became
so widespread in those ideological circles that Sen. Tom Cotton, a leading Republican Neocon,
began promoting them on Twitter and FoxNews, thereby provoking an
article in the NYT on those "fringe conspiracy theories."
I suspect that it may be more than purely coincidental that the biowarfare theories which
erupted in such concerted fashion on small political websites and Social Media accounts back in
January so closely match those now publicly advocated by top Trump Administration officials and
supposedly based upon our most secure intelligence sources. Perhaps a few intrepid
citizen-activists managed to replicate the findings of our multi-billion-dollar intelligence
apparatus, and did so in days while the latter required weeks or months. But a more likely
scenario is that the wave of January speculation was driven by private leaks and "guidance"
provided by exactly the same elements that today are very publicly leveling similar charges in
the elite media. Initially promoting controversial theories in less mainstream outlets has long
been a fairly standard intelligence practice.
Regardless of the origins of the idea, does it seem plausible that the coronavirus outbreak
might have originated as an accidental leak from that Chinese laboratory? I am not privy to the
security procedures of Chinese government facilities, but applying a little common sense may
shed some light on that question.
Although the coronavirus is only moderately lethal, apparently having a fatality rate of 1%
or less, it is extremely contagious, including during an extended pre-symptomatic period and
also among asymptomatic carriers. Thus, portions of the US and Europe are now suffering heavy
casualties, while the policies adopted to control the spread have devastated their national
economies. Although the virus is unlikely to kill more than a small sliver of our population,
we have seen to our dismay how a major outbreak can so easily wreck our entire economic
life.
During January, the journalists reporting on China's mushrooming health crisis regularly
emphasized that the mysterious new viral outbreak had occurred at the worst possible place and
time, appearing in the major transport hub of Wuhan just prior to the Lunar New Year holiday,
when hundreds of millions of Chinese would normally travel to their distant family homes for
the celebration, thereby potentially spreading the disease to all parts of the country and
producing a permanent, uncontrollable epidemic. The Chinese government avoided that grim fate
by the unprecedented decision to shut down its entire national economy and confine 700 million
Chinese to their own homes for many weeks. But the outcome seems to have been a very near
thing, and if Wuhan had remained open for just a few days longer, China might easily have
suffered long-term economic and social devastation.
The timing of an accidental laboratory release would obviously be entirely random. Yet the
outbreak seems to have begun during the precise period of time most likely to damage China, the
worst possible ten-day or perhaps thirty-day window. As I noted in
January, I saw no solid evidence that the coronavirus was a bioweapon, but if it were, the
timing of the release seemed very unlikely to have been accidental.
If the virus was released intentionally, the context and motive for such a biowarfare attack
against China could not be more obvious. Although our disingenuous media continues to pretend
otherwise, the size of China's economy surpassed that of our own several years ago, and has
continued to grow much more rapidly. Chinese companies have also taken the lead in several
crucial technologies, with Huawei becoming the world's leading telecommunications equipment
manufacturer and dominating the important 5G market. China's sweeping Belt and Road Initiative
has threatened to reorient global trade around an interconnected Eurasian landmass, greatly
diminishing the leverage of America's own control over the seas. I have closely followed China
for over forty years, and the trend-lines have never been more apparent. Back in 2012, I
published an article bearing the provocative title "China's Rise, America's Fall?" and
since then I have seen no reason to reassess my verdict.
China's Rise, America's Fall Which
superpower is more threatened by its "extractive elites"? Ron Unz • The American Conservative,
April 17, 2012 • 7,000 Words
For three generations following the end of World War II, America had stood as the world's
supreme economic and technological power, while the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years
ago left us as the sole remaining superpower, facing no conceivable military rival. A growing
sense that we were rapidly losing that unchallenged position had certainly inspired the
anti-China rhetoric of many senior figures in the Trump Administration, who launched a major
trade war soon after coming into office. The increasing misery and growing impoverishment of
large sections of the American population naturally left these voters searching for a
convenient scapegoat, and the prosperous, rising Chinese made a perfect target.
Despite America's growing economic conflict with China over the last couple of years, I had
never considered the possibility that matters might take a military turn. The Chinese had long
ago deployed advanced intermediate range missiles that many believed could easily sink our
carriers in the region, and they had also generally improved their conventional military
deterrent. Moreover, China was on quite good terms with Russia, which itself had been the
target of intense American hostility for several years; and Russia's new suite of revolutionary
hypersonic missiles had drastically reduced any American strategic advantage. Thus, a
conventional war against China seemed an absolutely hopeless undertaking, while China's
outstanding businessmen and engineers were steadily gaining ground against America's decaying
and heavily-financialized economic system.
Under these difficult circumstances, an American biowarfare attack against China might have
seemed the only remaining card to play in hopes of maintaining American supremacy. Plausible
deniability would minimize the risk of any direct Chinese retaliation, and if successful, the
terrible blow inflicted to China's economy would set it back for many years, perhaps even
destabilizing its social and political system. Using alternative media to immediately promote
theories that the coronavirus outbreak was the result of a leak from a Chinese biowarfare lab
was a natural means of preempting any later Chinese accusations along similar lines, thereby
allowing America to win the international propaganda war before China had even begun to
play.
A decision by elements of our national security establishment to wage biological warfare in
hopes of maintaining American world power would certainly have been an extremely reckless act,
but extreme recklessness has become a regular aspect of American behavior since 2001,
especially under the Trump Administration. Just a year earlier we had kidnapped the
daughter of Huawei's founder and chairman, who also served as CFO and ranked as one of China's
most top executives, while at the beginning of January we suddenly assassinated Iran's top
military leader.
These were the thoughts that entered my mind during the last week of January once I
discovered the widely circulating theories suggesting that China's massive disease epidemic had
been the self-inflicted consequence of its own biowarfare research. I saw no solid evidence
that the coronavirus was a bioweapon, but if it were, China was surely the innocent victim of
the attack, presumably carried out by elements of the American national security
establishment.
Soon afterward, someone brought to my attention a very long article by an American ex-pat
living in China who called himself "Metallicman" and held a wide range of eccentric and
implausible beliefs. I have long recognized that flawed individuals can often serve as the
vessels of important information otherwise unavailable, and this case constituted a perfect
example. His piece denounced the outbreak as a likely American biowarfare attack, and provided
a great wealth of factual material I had not previously considered. Since he authorized
republication elsewhere I did so, and
his 15,000 word analysis , although somewhat raw and unpolished, began attracting an
enormous amount of readership on our website, probably being one of the very first
English-language pieces to suggest that the mysterious new disease was an American bioweapon.
Many of his arguments appeared doubtful to me or have been obviated by later developments, but
several seemed quite telling.
He pointed out that during the previous two years, the Chinese economy had already suffered
serious blows from other mysterious new diseases, although these had targeted farm animals
rather than people. During 2018 a new Avian Flu virus had swept the country, eliminating large
portions of China's poultry industry, and during 2019 the Swine Flu viral epidemic had
devastated China's pig farms, destroying 40% of the nation's primary domestic source of meat,
with widespread claims that the latter disease was being spread by mysterious small drones. My
morning newspapers had hardly ignored these important business stories, noting
that the sudden collapse of much of China's domestic food production might prove a huge boon to
American farm exports at the height of our trade conflict, but I had never considered the
obvious implications. So for three years in a row, China had been severely impacted by strange
new viral diseases, though only the most recent had been deadly to humans. This evidence was
merely circumstantial, but the pattern seemed highly suspicious.
The writer also noted that shortly before the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, that city had
hosted 300 visiting American military officers, who came to participate in the 2019 Military World
Games , an absolutely remarkable coincidence of timing. As
I pointed out at the time, how would Americans react if 300 Chinese military officers had
paid an extended visit to Chicago, and soon afterward a mysterious and deadly epidemic had
suddenly broken out in that city? Once again, the evidence was merely circumstantial but
certainly raised dark suspicions.
Scientific investigation of the coronavirus had already pointed to its origins in a bat
virus, leading to widespread media speculation that bats sold as food in the Wuhan open markets
had been the original disease vector. Meanwhile, the orchestrated waves of anti-China
accusations had emphasized Chinese laboratory research on that same viral source. But we soon
published
a lengthy article by investigative journalist Whitney Webb providing copious evidence of
America's own enormous biowarfare research efforts, which had similarly focused for years on
bat viruses. Webb was then associated with MintPress News , but that publication had
strangely declined to publish her important piece, perhaps skittish about the grave suspicions
it directed towards the US government on so momentous an issue. So without the benefit of our
platform, her major contribution to the public debate might have attracted relatively little
readership.
Around the same time, I noted another
extremely strange coincidence that failed to attract any interest from our somnolent national
media. Although his name had meant nothing to me, in late January my morning newspapers carried
major stories on the
sudden arrest of Prof. Charles Lieber, one of Harvard University's top scientists and Chairman
of its Chemistry Department, sometimes characterized as a potential future Nobel Laureate.
The circumstances of that case seemed utterly bizarre to me. Like numerous other prominent
American academics, Lieber had had decades of close research ties with China, holding joint
appointments and receiving substantial funding for his work. But now he was accused of
financial reporting violations in the disclosure portions of his government grant applications
-- the most obscure sort of offense -- and on the basis of those accusations, he was seized by
the FBI in an early-morning raid on his suburban Lexington home and dragged off in shackles,
potentially facing years of federal imprisonment.
Such government action against an academic seemed almost without precedent. During the
height of the Cold War, numerous American scientists and technicians were rightfully accused of
having stolen our nuclear weapons secrets for delivery to Stalin, yet I had never heard of any
of them treated in so harsh a manner, let alone a scholar of Prof. Lieber's stature, who was
merely charged with technical disclosure violations. Indeed, this incident recalled accounts of
NKVD raids during the Soviet purges of the 1930s.
ORDER IT NOW
Although Lieber was described as a chemistry professor, a few seconds of Googling revealed
that some of his most important work had been in virology, including technology for the
detection of viruses. So a massive and deadly new viral epidemic had broken out in China and
almost simultaneously, a top American scholar with close Chinese ties and expertise in viruses
was suddenly arrested by the federal government, yet no one in the media expressed any
curiosity at a possible connection between these two events.
I think we can safely assume that Lieber's arrest by the FBI had been prompted by the
concurrent coronavirus epidemic, but anything more is mere speculation. Those now accusing
China of having created the coronavirus might surely suggest that our intelligence agencies
discovered that the Harvard professor had been personally involved with that deadly research.
But I think a far more likely possibility is that Lieber began to wonder whether the epidemic
in China might not be the result of an American biowarfare attack, and was perhaps a little too
free in voicing his suspicions, thereby drawing the wrath of our national security
establishment. Inflicting such extremely harsh treatment upon a top Harvard scientist would
greatly intimidate all of his lesser colleagues elsewhere, who would surely now think twice
before broaching certain controversial theories to any journalist.
By the end of January, our webzine had published a dozen articles and posts on the
coronavirus outbreak, then added many more by the middle of February. These pieces totaled tens
of thousands of words and attracted a half million words of comments, probably representing the
primary English-language source for a particular perspective on the deadly epidemic, with this
material eventually drawing many hundreds of thousands of pageviews. A few weeks later, the
Chinese government began gingerly raising the possibility that the coronavirus may have been
brought to Wuhan by the 300 American military officers visiting that city, and was
fiercely attacked by the Trump Administration for spreading anti-American propaganda. But I
strongly suspect that the Chinese had gotten that idea from our own publication.
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China's own borders, another development
occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly
where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February
Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its
political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire
Iranian parliament soon infected and at least
a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were
quite
senior . Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred
Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political
elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they
died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else
in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran's top military commander
on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became
infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence.
Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
Biological warfare is a highly technical subject, and those possessing such expertise are
unlikely to candidly report their classified research activities in the pages of our major
newspapers, perhaps even less so after Prof. Lieber was dragged off to prison in chains. My own
knowledge is nil. But in mid-March I came across several extremely long and detailed comments
on the coronavirus outbreak that had been posted on a small website by an individual calling
himself "OldMicrobiologist" and who claimed to be a retired forty-year veteran of American
biodefense. The style and details of his material struck me as quite credible, and after a
little further investigation I concluded that there was a high likelihood his background was
exactly as he had described. I made arrangements to republish his comments in the form of
a 3,400 word
article , which soon attracted a great deal of traffic and 80,000 words of further
comments.
Although the writer emphasized the lack of any hard evidence, he said that his experience
led him to strongly suspect that the coronavirus outbreak was indeed an American biowarfare
attack against China, probably carried out by agents brought into that country under cover of
the Military Games held at Wuhan in late October, the sort of sabotage operation our
intelligence agencies had sometimes undertaken elsewhere. One important point he made was that
high lethality was often counter-productive in a bioweapon since debilitating or hospitalizing
large numbers of individuals may impose far greater economic costs on a country than a
biological agent which simply inflicts an equal number of deaths. In his words "a high
communicability, low lethality disease is perfect for ruining an economy," suggesting that the
apparent characteristics of the coronavirus were close to optimal in this regard. Those so
interested should read his analysis and judge for themselves his possible credibility and
persuasiveness.
One intriguing aspect of the situation was that almost from the first moment that reports of
the strange new epidemic in China reached the international media, a large and orchestrated
campaign had been launched on numerous websites and Social Media platforms to identify the
cause as a Chinese bioweapon carelessly released in its own country. Meanwhile, the far more
plausible hypothesis that China was the victim rather than the perpetrator had received
virtually no organized support anywhere, and only began to take shape as I gradually located
and republished relevant material, usually drawn from very obscure quarters and often
anonymously authored. So it seemed that only the side hostile to China was waging an active
information war. The outbreak of the disease and the nearly simultaneous launch of such a major
propaganda campaign may not necessarily prove that an actual biowarfare attack had occurred,
but I do think it tends to support such a theory.
When considering the hypothesis of an American biowarfare attack, certain natural objections
come to mind. The major drawback to biological warfare has always been the obvious fact that
the self-replicating agents employed will not respect national borders, thus raising the
serious risk that the disease might eventually return to the land of its origin and inflict
substantial casualties. For this reason, it seems very doubtful that any rational and
half-competent American leadership would have unleashed the coronavirus against China.
But as we see absolutely demonstrated in our daily news headlines, America's current
government is grotesquely and manifestly incompetent , more incompetent than one could
almost possibly imagine, with tens of thousands of Americans having now already paid with their
lives for such extreme incompetence. Rationality and competence are obviously nowhere to be
found among the Deep State Neocons that President Donald Trump has appointed to so many crucial
positions throughout our national security apparatus.
Moreover, the extremely lackadaisical notion that a massive coronavirus outbreak in China
would never spread back to America might have seemed plausible to individuals who carelessly
assumed that past historical analogies would continue to apply. As
I wrote a few weeks ago:
Reasonable people have suggested that if the coronavirus was a bioweapon deployed by
elements of the American national security apparatus against China (and Iran), it's difficult
to imagine why the they didn't assume it would naturally leak back in the US and start a huge
pandemic here, as is currently happening.
The most obvious answer is that they were stupid and incompetent, but here's another point
to consider
In late 2002 there was the outbreak of SARS in China, a related virus but that was far
more deadly and somewhat different in other characteristics. The virus killed hundreds of
Chinese and spread into a few other countries before it was controlled and stamped out. The
impact on the US and Europe was negligible, with just a small scattering of cases and only a
death or two.
So if American biowarfare analysts were considering a coronavirus attack against China,
isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never
significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the
coronavirus? Obviously, such an analysis was foolish and mistaken, but would it have seemed
so implausible at the time?
As some must have surely noticed, I have deliberately avoided investigating any of the
scientific details of the coronavirus. In principle, an objective and accurate analysis of the
characteristics and structure of the virus might help suggest whether it was entirely natural
or rather the product of a research laboratory, and in the latter case, perhaps whether the
likely source was China, America, or some third country.
But we are dealing with a cataclysmic world event and those questions obviously have
enormous political ramifications, so the entire subject is shrouded by a thick fog of complex
propaganda, with numerous conflicting claims being advanced by interested parties. I have no
background in microbiology let alone biological warfare, so I would be hopelessly adrift in
evaluating such conflicting scientific and technical claims. I suspect that this is equally
true of the overwhelming majority of other observers as well, although committed partisans are
loathe to admit that fact, and will eagerly seize upon any scientific argument that supports
their preferred position while rejecting those that contradict it.
Therefore, by necessity, my own focus is on evidence that can at least be understood by
every layman, if not necessarily always accepted. And I believe that the simple juxtaposition
of several recent disclosures in the mainstream media leads to a rather telling conclusion.
For obvious reasons, the Trump Administration has become very eager to emphasize the early
missteps and delays in the Chinese reaction to the viral outbreak in Wuhan, and has presumably
encouraged our media outlets to direct their focus in that direction.
As an example of this, the Associated Press Investigative Unit recently published a rather
detailed analysis of those early events purportedly based upon confidential Chinese documents.
Provocatively entitled "China Didn't Warn Public of Likely
Pandemic for 6 Key Days" , the piece was widely distributed, running
in abridged form in the NYT and elsewhere. According to this reconstruction, the
Chinese government first became aware of the seriousness of this public health crisis on Jan.
14th, but delayed taking any major action until Jan. 20th, a period of time during which the
number of infections greatly multiplied.
Last month, a team of five WSJ reporters produced a very detailed and thorough
4,400 word analysis of the same period, and the NYT has published a helpful timeline of
those early events as well. Although there may be some differences of emphasis or minor
disagreements, all these American media sources agree that Chinese officials first became aware
of the serious viral outbreak in Wuhan in early to mid-January, with the first known death
occurring on Jan. 11th, and finally implemented major new public health measures later that
same month. No one has apparently disputed these basic facts.
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious,
sources within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the ones
asleep at the switch. Earlier this month,
an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far back
as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence Agency
had produced a report revealing than an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the
Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our
government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the
story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report,
while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a
few days later,
Israeli television revealed that in November American intelligence had indeed shared such a
report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to
independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC story and its several
government sources.
ORDER IT NOW
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the
deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government
itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I
think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of
future fires.
Back in February, before a single American had died from the disease,
I wrote my own overview of the possible course of events, and I would still stand by it
today:
Consider a particularly ironic outcome of this situation, not particularly likely but
certainly possible
Everyone knows that America's ruling elites are criminal, crazy, and also extremely
incompetent.
So perhaps the coronavirus outbreak was indeed a deliberate biowarfare attack against
China, hitting that nation just before Lunar New Year, the worst possible time to produce a
permanent nationwide pandemic. However, the PRC responded with remarkable speed and
efficiency, implementing by far the largest quarantine in human history, and the deadly
disease now seems to be in decline there.
Meanwhile, the disease naturally leaks back into the US, and despite all the advance
warning, our totally incompetent government mismanages the situation, producing a huge
national health disaster, and the collapse of our economy and decrepit political system.
As I said, not particularly likely, but certainly a very fitting end to the American
Empire
But their government implemented public health control measures unprecedented in the
history of the world and managed to almost completely eradicate the disease with merely the
loss of a few thousand lives
And if you can't trust China's numbers, who can you trust?
The timing of an accidental laboratory release would obviously be entirely random. Yet
the outbreak seems to have begun during precise period of time most likely to damage
China
It almost sounds like putting a virus lab in the middle of twelve million people was a bad
idea.
Lol. I can't believe you're doubling down on this jackassery.
Mr Unz, also have you read David Cole's theory on this (at TakiMag)? I know you and him got
in blog beef a couple years ago over your Pravda article on Holocaust, but his theory also
criticized the Wuhan "lab leak" and believes the wet markets originated the virus while the
state lab was trying to cover up the "natural market" zoonotic mess. Would be fun to (again)
watch you 2 debate notes.
If I had told you a year ago that Iran would have its top General assassinated and then its
country decimated by a viral infection, that China would be a world pariah with calls for
trillion in reparations, that Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela would have a bounty on his head for
lol being involved in the cocaine trade, and that Kim Jong Un would be dead who do you think
would be the architect of this future?
Chinese elites or American ones?
American neocons are literally getting everything they want.
You can look at all of the damage to the American economy relative to China, but who is
really being hurt in America? Regular Americans are being hurt. But the elites are getting
bailed out and will buy US assets for pennies on the dollar.
"When considering the hypothesis of an American biowarfare attack, certain natural objections
come to mind. The major drawback to biological warfare has always been the obvious fact that
the self-replicating agents employed are not prone to respect national borders, raising the
serious risk that the disease might eventually return to the land of its origin and inflict
substantial casualties. For this reason, it seems quite doubtful that any rational and
half-competent American leadership would have unleashed the coronavirus against China."
Unless, of course, those in power knew exactly what that 'blowback' would entail, as they
had modeled it over and over, for years, maybe decades.
They would be in a position to crash the stock market (and get out at the very top),
assure a new alliance between the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury (allowing the elites to
use the American taxpayers to fund their losses indefinitely), destroy the middle and lower
classes through government ordered 'lockdowns' (driving down wages yet again, and making
Americans frightened, unemployed and angry, and thereby easily mislead like in the 9/11
aftermath), create a world political environment allowing medical tyranny to make universal
yearly vaccines and mandatory microchipping of everyone acceptable to the masses (ala Bill
Gates/Tony Fauci/WHO and their Pig Pharma vaccine brigade), drop the price of oil
indefinitely to fatally weaken Iran, hurt Russia and allow our predator capitalist banks to
scoop up the failing US shale oil industry for pennies (which they are fully preparing to
do), and ultimately allow the elites to perfectly time the inevitable deflation of the
world's derivatives bubble, further sending the commoners into complete panic mode (and
making their primal fears easily directed against the Western world's now common enemy, the
Red Yellow Hordes.)
Doesn't sound very 'incompetent' to me. Sounds like utterly evil, but undeniably
brilliant, military-economic planning. And it is looking like they may pull this one off,
just like 9/11, and get the scared and terminally gullible Western plebes on board for their
own further destruction economically, politically, and very possibly physically.
End Result: the PTB get to blame China for everything; make China foot the bill (or else);
and when China balks, prepare the West's gullible, easily controlled citizens for military
conflict if the Chinese don't roll over and cough up to the West's satisfaction.
Incompetence?
Sure looks to me like a neoliberal zionist-neocon elitist wet dream come true ..
@Otto von Komsmark If you believe that the virus originated in a wet market, what's your
theory on why China immediately allowed wet markets to open back up (albeit with guards
posted to prevent pics). Are they just exceptionally slow learners or do they realize that
the wet market theory was always bogus?
" the Chinese government began gingerly raising the possibility that the coronavirus may have
been brought to Wuhan by the 300 American military officers visiting that city, and was
fiercely attacked by the Trump Administration for spreading anti-American propaganda. But I
strongly suspect that the Chinese had gotten that idea from our own publication" not at all
improbable since said publication has a very deep current of slavish devotion to the Chinese
state; such that one might even strongly suspect that the publication is getting its ideas
from the Chinese totalitarians as much as the other way round. But since 'false flag'
theories are another popular concept in such discussions, it might be conceivable that the
human rights regime in Beijing deliberately released the mystery bug in China & Iran
first, in order to throw suspicion on the U.S. The Chinese & Iranian tallies so far have
been surprisingly low despite starting there earlier, so if they're not suppressing the
facts, maybe they knew what to expect & were prepared. And the brunt of it would then be
borne by their Western 'adversaries'. Not to mention, that the Chinese despots could
reinforce their iron grip on Chinese society with their customary contempt for civil
liberties. China's "current government is grotesquely and manifestly" incompatible with
personal freedom, more incompatible than "one could almost possibly imagine", with tens of
millions of Uighurs, Tibetans, dissidents, workers having now already paid with their lives
& freedom for such extreme incompatibility.
"Rationality and competence are obviously nowhere to be found among the Deep State Neocons
that President Donald Trump has appointed to so many crucial positions throughout our
national security apparatus" and certainly rationality, competence, humanity are never to be
found among Neo-cons anywhere. The President has been wise to largely ignore them. If Trump
had been President in '99, it's very likely that the absolutely unnecessary, devastating war
on Serbia by Hillary & Bill – based on deliberate lies – would never have
gotten off the ground.
President Trump now faces the daunting dilemma of how to protect the society while at the
same time not displaying the same disdain for political & civic freedom that is the
hallmark of the CCP. An end to America Empire would be a good thing – the President
knows that, as he again reiterated the trillions misspent in the M.E. at his daily press
conference today – but this isn't the way to do it. Only a Chinese communist or fellow
traveler could believe that.
"At the time, I was overwhelmingly focused on domestic political issues, so I only paid
slight attention to our one small military operation of those years, the 1999 NATO air war
against Serbia, intended to safeguard the Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing and massacre,
a Clinton Administration project that I fully endorsed." And why should one believe our
government and media about "safeguard(ing) the Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing and
massacre" any more than one should believe their other lies?
For most of this post, I can't say one way or the other. I personally think this was either
the result of the so-called "wet-markets" in China – long known to be the primary
source of the annual flu epidemics (why the heck haven't they been shut down??) or a
criminally NEGLIGENT release from a research lab.
But.
"China recognizes that it is vastly outmatched in any propaganda conflict, and so as the
far weaker party must necessarily try to stick closer to the truth, lest its lies be
immediately exposed. Meanwhile, America's overwhelming control over information may lead to
considerable hubris, with the government sometimes promoting the most outrageous and
ridiculous falsehoods in the confident belief that a supportive American media will cover for
any mistakes."
Nearly 30,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus during the last two weeks, and by
some estimates this is a substantial under-count
Quoted numbers of deaths are as unreliable as the number of infections.
Cause of death as stated in a death certificate is often, and even usually, wrong, and
during an epidemic caused by a virus that induces respiratory difficulty it is likely that
virtually all deaths due to respiratory dysfunction will be attributed to the virus without
confirmatory evidence.
Furthermore, virtually all deaths of persons testing positive for covid19 will be
attributed to the virus even though the deceased may have had multiple other diseases, any
one of which could have been the cause of death.
But as this epidemic is shaping up, it is likely that the estimated death toll will be
comparable to that of the seasonal flu in a bad year. Herd immunity is likely now widespread,
so the thing should fizzle out soon, with or without continued population incarceration.
Boris Johnson boldly declared that his own coronavirus plan for Britain was based upon
rapidly achieving "herd immunity" -- essentially encouraging the bulk of his citizens to
become infected -- then quickly backed away after his desperate advisors recognized that
the result might entail a million or more British deaths.
LOL. Neil Ferguson an Imperial College epidemiologist with an awesomely bad track record
in predicting the course of epidemics, made some such prediction which he soon modified to a
very much smaller number – 20,000 I believe, a number not yet reached.
In fact, the original plan was abandoned for fear that unrestricted spread of the virus
would result in a concentration of infections, which at the peak, would overload hospitals by
that minority of cases requiring hospital treatment.
Not just NWO ChiCom China of course– they're just the tool, the NWO
"Elites"/Globalists, who shipped USA Manufacturing to China and destroyed the Middle Class in
the USA etc., have made China the "Model" for us all -- "Social Credit Scores" for the Peons,
an authoritarian "Party" of "Elites" with all power, Peons having to get a "green" signal on
their cell phones every time they go outside . -- NWO Globalist "Elites" actually running the
CVirus show/"Production"/911 "Event" Part 2 -- "Invisible Terrorists Forever"–
meanwhile most "journalists" are cheering the loss of freedoms and anyone who points out what
is going on wants to "kill Grandma" is "Selfish" it's all about on a Junior High School level
but after getting away with 911 Demolition anyone not a rube, grifter/or in on it knew they'd
be back to finish it off– and so they are here with the Plandemic:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/elite-covid-19-coup-against-terrified-humanity-resisting-powerfully/5709479
Side note: Interesting the Mainslime Media is not all over China's Racism towards Blacks
as evidenced in their Ad here against "Diversity" and "Race Mixing"– they aren't
kidding! Seems ChiComs can do what YT could never .: https://twitter.com/sadir_Palwan/status/1250570077163925509
The Nanjing protests were groundbreaking dissidence for China and went from solely
expressing concern about alleged [sic] improprieties by African men to increasingly calling
for democracy or human rights. They were paralleled by burgeoning demonstrations in other
cities during the period between the Nanjing and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989,
with some elements of the original protests that started in Nanjing still evident in
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, such as banners proclaiming "Stop Taking Advantage of
Chinese Women" even though the vast majority of African students had left the country by
that point.
And if you can't trust China's numbers, who can you trust?
It's very true that China's numbers is perhaps the best numbers that you could trust.
Moritz Kraemer, a scholar at Oxford University who is leading a team of researchers in
mapping the global spread of the coronavirus, says China's data "provided incredible detail,"
including a patient's age, sex, travel history and history of chronic disease, as well as
where the case was reported, and the dates of the onset of symptoms, hospitalization and
confirmation of infection.
The United States, he said, "has been slow in collecting data in a systematic way.". The
article not only showing the chaotic situation in different states, but highlights the
limited information shared with scientific community. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/coronavirus-data-privacy.html
The WHO too only had high praises for China's transparency and efficiency.
The only parties challenging these are Trump, Mike Pompeo, and the US Intelligence. Make a
pick who to trust.
But in mid-March I came across several extremely long and detailed comments on the
coronavirus outbreak that had been posted on a small website by an individual calling
himself "OldMicrobiologist" and who claimed to be a retired forty-year veteran of American
biodefense. The style and details of his material struck me as quite credible, and after a
little further investigation I concluded that there was a high likelihood that his
background was exactly as he had described. I made arrangements to republish his comments
in the form of a 3,400 word article, which soon attracted a great deal of traffic and
80,000 words of further comments.
Although the writer said that he had absolutely no proof, he said that his experience
led him to strongly suspect that the coronavirus outbreak was indeed an American biowarfare
attack against China, probably carried out by agents brought into that country under cover
of the Military Games held at Wuhan in late October, the sort of sabotage operation our
intelligence agencies had sometimes undertaken elsewhere.
Oh God, that crap again. Some geezer who may or may not have any relevant expertise, had a
suspicion, but absolutely no proof, of a goofy theory that to launch a biowarfare attack on
China the US Government had the brilliant idea of having the agent released by a contingent
of 300 American soldiers participating in the international military games held in Wuhan,
China.
Is that a stupid idea, or what?
And anyhow, there is evidence just published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy
of Sciences that the viral epidemic in China did not begin in Wuhan and, furthermore, it
began earlier than originally believed, i.e., before the Military Games.
But we are dealing with a cataclysmic world event
Not really. Just a new disease out of China, one of many from China since the year dot,
which has a lethality comparable to the seasonal flu. The event is cataclysmic only because
of the economic consequences of the public policy response in most Western states, though not
Sweden.
@Ozymandias Hey Ozy, The Australians claimed to have suffered only 120 wu-wu virus deaths
total. The South Koreans claim only 250 wu-wu deaths total. In Ozy world, are they liars too
along with the Chinese? Or is it possible they have a functional public health system and
moderately competent politicians who decided to fix the wu-wu virus problem .instead of
playing golf and bullshitting the public for six weeks. The wu-wu virus death total in the
essential exceptional nation is now 42,000 and rising. No other country is even close. It's
like Trumpie heard the experts advise "fatten the curve" instead of "flatten the curve".
So, you "fully endorsed" Clinton Administration 1999 NATO air war against Serbia, and you
don't even know that it wasn't "intended to safeguard the Bosnian Muslims from ethnic
cleansing and massacre",
because war in Bosnia was already done long before 1999 (war finished in 1995).
a year or two ago I happened to come across a short article by journalist Jay Matthews
entitled "The Myth of Tiananmen" that completely upended that apparent reality.
According to Matthews the infamous massacre had likely never happened, but was merely a
media artifact produced by confused Western reporters and dishonest propaganda, a mistaken
belief that had quickly become embedded in our standard media storyline, endlessly repeated
by so many ignorant journalists that they all eventually believed it to be true.
the protesting students had all left Tiananmen Square peacefully, just as the Chinese
government had always maintained.
the bulk of the mainstream media had fallen for an apparent hoax.
This is like saying the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre was a hoax because most of the
deaths occurred overnight, past midnight, no longer St. Bartholomew's Day, ergo "the St.
Bartholomew's Day Massacre" was a Hoax. Throwing the baby out with a technicality.
Checking the Jay Matthews story, I see this:
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a
different place and under different circumstances.
The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are
somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue
of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other
parts of the city
Regarding SARS inability to spread further, that's why the glycoprotein 120 was added:
it's an external protein they borrowed from HIV and CRISPR'd onto the Covid-19.
Interesting enough by including this mechanism in the novel virus they have perhaps laid
the ground for future AIDS type syndromes in those who get the virus or some variant of it.
That's another topic deserving it's own crowd funded public research.
Much of the suddenly far reaching effects of this novel virus derive from the advent of
CRISP technology and the ability to fuse different parts of virus into one. Of course,
zoonotic transmission still needs to occur hence all the special grants to Wuhan Institute
and North Carolina in doing this type of research, going out and collecting the special virus
out of bat shit 600 miles away from Wuhan in caves in remote China, and feeding it to pigs
and chimps who die and the process is repeated until a stable virus is developed.
Interesting enough Dr Fauci is an expert on HIV and specifically glycoprotein 120. He's
worked to run private trial tests while working in the government probably for his Fort
Detrick buddies.
Everyone reading this article and still intrigued for more information out to check out
two key players that researching the origins of the virus and it's likely bioengineered
origins:
This virus has links to Fauci, research at Fort Detrick, as well as research carried out
in North Carolina and Wuhan that was paid for by grants from Fauci while running major
government groups.
It appears part of this operation utilized the NATO transport network for transporting
deadly diseases and nuclear material. In fact, one such courier was in Wuhan as an American
cyclist for the military games
But I digress.
The blowback part Ron mentions being the consequence of stupidity from the government are
possible but I think unlikely. If you follow parallel developments in geopolitics and,
specifically, finance (not withstanding all of Bill Gates work with companies to have a
vaccine ready to go ), you'll see perhaps the makings of a grand conspiracy to (1) cement the
strength of the dollar and (2) sequester Chinese economic growth and power all at once.
For this to work most of the government would not know what's going on and that probably
includes Trump. Plus, what better way to hide culpability than to inflict a wound on
yourself?
For links to articles discussing this topic see below:
Everyone is enjoying the screaming and paranoia but China (East Asia) has been producing new
and "wonderful" diseases for several thousand years. They used to have bacterial variations
but in the last few centuries have moved to designer viruses.
South China has wall-to-wall rice paddies where wild and migratory animals feed, drink and
sh*t with farm animals under the care of a billion or so humans with primitive concepts of
sanitation and minimal, to no, modern healthcare, so "rare" or "unlikely" bug mutations and
species "jumps" are just a matter of time. The wild birds of China Summer in Siberia and
Alaska with all the other birds of the world. The "Real" Globalism ..
The appearance of Corona variants in Kazhakstan, Iran, the Gulf States, and Israeli
ckickens, or the appearance of "pig flu" in Mexico, or the Spanish Flu (1918?) in Kansas, all
under major bird migratory routes, should not be too much of a surprise. Even if a US, UN or
Chinese agency finds it. Be aware that this used to happen before Boeing and AirBus joined
the game.
Be careful cleaning the poop off your windshield and/or yard furniture.
Damn flying dinosaurs are dangerous. If you find some poop with a "made in China" label,
call the authorities. They will love the warning about the poison from a flying Chinese
Communist dragon.
The coronavirus is serial! Thooper serial! Look at all these in depth political analyses
and ignore the facts in plain view!
Blowback is a particularly telling choice of word, since I remember Noam Chomsky using the
same term. He used it to add weight to the official 9/11 story by claiming the events were a
direct result of US foreign policy, which re-enforced the Muslim terrorist angle and stopped
people from looking for the real culprits.
Another great installment in the American Pravda series. I use to work in the federal
government and always wondered why employees of the Nationals Archives* needed a top secret
U.S. government clearance and why employees of Presidential libraries needed to have the same
security clearance as a nuclear submarine commander (top secret- sensitive compartmented
information). What secrets could there possibly be from 60 years ago?? Then it dawned on me
that it could never be known by the general public how their country behaves toward other
countries and why and how we go to war. We would lose all faith in our government.
I have only one small correction:
[Charles Lieber] was seized by the FBI in an early-morning raid on his Cambridge home
and dragged off in shackles, potentially facing decades of federal imprisonment.
He lives in a wooded suburban neighborhood in Lexington, MA, not in the city of
Cambridge.
On the one hand a bio-warfare attack on China is something I can absolutely see the American
elites post 9/11 do. Their track-record speaks for itself.
There have also been significant shifts in Europe's alignment, on which US global
dominance critically depends: the continuation of Northstream 2 against the explicit wishes
of the Americans, 5 G expansion and Huawei cooperation in the European market, plans of
replacing NATO with a European army (talks on the fringe of the right about a defense pact
with Russia), the Belt and Road trillion dollar project which has its better European name as
"The New Silk Road". Eurasian integration goes directly against the global dominance strategy
of the US Empire. Europe is also now caught between an intense and visible propaganda warfare
of the USA and China/Russia.
And there were also the proxy-war in Ukraine and the refugee crisis: the latter at minimum
a fallout of US-Israeli wars in the Middle East and the Zionist assault against Libya; yet
not unlikely itself a direct assault against Europe. And not only Willy Wimmer, closest
adviser to our old chancellor Helmut Kohl, strongly suspected as much already back in 2015.
Wimmer had been part of several war games in Langley in his time in the German government,
quite clearly reasoning that in modern warfare you cannot initiate a conflict without knowing
where the refugees will go – it is part of the planning process.
On the other hand we must recognize the long term and massive investments of for example
Blackrock and Vanguard into China; the ambitions to liberalize Chinese society and further
open their economy for foreign, especially US investments; the attempts of Zionism to set up
shop in China; the key role of Israel in the Belt and Road project and the admiration the
Chinese have for Jews and their material success.
If it was a bio-warfare attack and if the ambition is to lock the USA and China in
a new Cold War with potential proxy wars, then Americas financial and Jewish elite, which so
very much dominate the deep state neocons, must be of the opinion that their profits will not
be affected by it.
And if it was the long-term plan of Zionism and much of Americas financial, largely
Jewish, elite to shift their power-base from the USA which they have effectively subjugated
to the less secured China, then a bio-warfare attack would hardly be a smart move to keep the
transition as quiet as possible.
@if American biowarfare analysts were considering a coronavirus attack against China, isn't
it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never significantly
leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the coronavirus?
Obviously, such an analysis was foolish and mistaken, but would it have seemed so implausible
at the time?
Albert Einstein: "Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting
Different Results".
Moreover, in establishing whether a crime was committed, the criminal investigation has to
establish first that there was a motive, the means and the opportunity to commit the crime.
All these criteria are satisfied in this case pointing to a biological attack against China
and its allies.
The possibility of biowarfare (and its desirability) was unequivocally formulated in
September 2000 when the 'Project for the New American Century' released "Rebuilding America's
Defenses", a report that promotes "the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend
its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces."
The report also states, "advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific
genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful
tool".
The first bioweapons research program was initiated in America by Sir Frederick Banting with
corporate sponsorship in 1940.
From Wikipedia (no secrets): In 1942 "U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson requested that
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) undertake consideration of U.S. biological warfare. In
response the NAS formed a committee, the War Bureau of Consultants (WBC), which issued a
report on the subject in February 1942.The report, among other items, recommended the
research and development of an offensive biological weapons program.
The British, and the research undertaken by the WBC, pressured the U.S. to begin biological
weapons research and development and in November 1942 U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
officially approved an American biological weapons program. In response to the information
provided by the WBC, Roosevelt ordered Stimson to form the War Research Service (WRS).
Established within the Federal Security Agency, the WRS' stated purpose was to promote
"public security and health", but, in reality, the WRS was tasked with coordinating and
supervising the U.S. biological warfare program. In the spring of 1943 the U.S. Army
Biological Warfare Laboratories were established at Fort (then Camp) Detrick in
Maryland".
The Chinese read their James Bond: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times
is enemy action".
It doesn't make sense to me that the US would fly drones over chinese pig farms half way
around the world in order to infect half the pigs in China with African swine flu.
Smithfield is the largest producer of pork in the US. Smithfield is owned by a Chinese firm.
So China is making up for their lack of domestic pork by buying their own US pork. How would
this risky venture benefit the US? Yet this was the accusation labelled against the US by
many Chinese. With zero proof.
The timing of this pandemic is very beneficial to the deep state, and the MSM is hyping
the heck out of it; and the CDC et al are pumping up the numbers to make it seems as bad as
possible. It's like they WANT a global pandemic. To crash the market and make DJT look bad?
That is what the Biden for drooling pres campaign videos are hyping already.
If there is a germ war going on, it is China doing it to its communist shit-hole self. I
don't know why anybody trades with them. The Chinese state literally kills Uyghurs and Falun
Gong and steals their organs, but they have favored nation trading status? wtf
It is fairly congruent with my own writeup from a few weeks back. Although I did not go so
far as to definitively endorse any particular theory. The idea of this all being an American
strike on China is the interesting hypothesis to me and fits my understanding of how
America's geopolitical toolbox might work best. There is also a case to be made that the
blowback stateside is a feature not a bug.
The United States could come out ahead in terms of the great game with China. But only if
it can play its cards correctly.
Ultimately, what enough people think about this whole situation is what will define
outcomes and right now things are on track for the bulk of the Chinese population to think
that this is an American attack and for a significant number of Americans to believe that
this is either accidental or deliberate Chinese action.
I think those popular attitudes are very valuable to their respective governments.
Devil's advocacy is always an important intellectual activity, but you seemed to have pretty
much pointed out the hole in your grand theory yourself.
If we're going to imagine the US gov't apparatus is competent enough to start the virus in
China, one would have to presume (if their collective IQ's approach anywhere near 90) that
they would also set up for the contingency that it might come to the US too.
Imagining otherwise is akin to thinking the US top brass have the intelligence of some of
those bonehead crooks who sometimes make the news for their stupid (and funny) attempts at
crime. The US top brass might be dumb, but c'mon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn5CvDgaZSc
I think we can safely assume that Lieber's arrest by the FBI had been prompted by the
coronavirus epidemic, but anything more is mere speculation. Those now accusing China of
having created the coronavirus might surely suggest that our intelligence agencies
discovered that the Harvard professor had been personally involved with that deadly
research. But I think a far more likely possibility is that Lieber began to wonder
whether the epidemic in China might not be the result of an American biowarfare attack, and
was perhaps a little too free in voicing his suspicions, thereby drawing the wrath of
our national security establishment.
Or alternatively, who would a laboratory whistleblower turn to other than a respected
Harvard professor, who would understand the technical aspects, and who he may actually
already have known and trusted?
Thus, we have America assassinating Iran's top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then
just a few weeks later large portions of the Iran's ruling elites became infected by a
mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any
rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
An irresistible add-on like Larry Silverstein's extra insurance cover and payout.
One intriguing aspect of the situation was that almost from the first moment that
reports of the strange new epidemic in China reached the international media, a large and
orchestrated campaign had been launched on numerous websites and Social Media to identify
the cause as a Chinese bioweapon carelessly released in its own country.
Again similar to 9/11 with an instant media explanation trumpeted around the world (no
investigation necessary).
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the
deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese
government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of
precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the
earliest knowledge of future fires.
Agreed – they really messed it up – and it would be a world class irony if it
was their own virus that wrecks the US economy.
The Chinese embassy in Serbia is an interesting side story. However, as much as I disagreed
with why we were there, another Clinton abuse of office, China was apparently participating
as a combatant providing crucial signals support to the Serbian military. Topped off by
handling sensitive F117 residuals that we wanted destroyed. Or perhaps only some of US, given
various conflicts of interests in both Clinton globalism and sharing/planned obsolescence by
arms makers .
CV19
The "US did it" is a possibility that certainly should be addressed in the continuum of many
possibilities. I certainly would look for linkages between BHO
administration/Gates/academia/DeepGreen/China. China certainly does not act innocent,
covering up the early patients' stories and physical evidence a la our JFK scale.
As for US incompetence, the globalist media favors CCP; liberalism; Big Tech; Big
Medicine; the Democratic Party; along with the O/Clintonista FDA and CDC, have done
everything possible to hamstring accurate CV19 information amongst the citizenry, and
specifically against Trump. Huge TDS.
Months of near total shutdown on IV vitamin C, bowel tolerance dosing of vitamin C, high
dose vitamin D, quercetin and orthomolecular cocktails for prophylaxis and treatment. As well
as censorship and savage attacks on people trying to evolve the HCQ+AZM+zinc cocktail.
Prof Lieber's greatest "crime" is probably because he is responsible for saving untold
numbers of potential infectees, at least in the early stages https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/10/sensor-detects-identifies-single-viruses/
ie his work on virus detection & identification is why the Chinese government was able to
deal with the pandemic so quickly & effectively.
A bioweapon does Not have to have a high bodycount to work as intended; weapons of mass
destruction – even nukes (despite western brainwashing that they "ended WWII") –
have very few military applications and primarily target civilians.
Their main effect is disruption & demoralisation; in this Covid-19 has succeeded beyond
possible expectations.
The USA has patents for coronaviruses going back to 2003, post-SARS: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7220852B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10130701B2/en https://patents.justia.com/patent/10130701
Whilst these are Not the Covid-19 variant, it goes to show that they can indeed be
vat-grown.
Even should the current coronavirus be a natural mutation, it can still be weaponised.
Many of the most fearsome pathogens such as smallpox, anthrax and the bubonic plague are also
natural-born killers. Supposedly they have been eradicated from the face of the planet,
safely existing only in military laboratories around the globe, for research purposes of
course.
The circumstantial evidence that Cov19 is a bioattack is enormous, and the likelihood of
US origin is pretty damning. The US government will be desperate to point fingers everywhere
else, and is using the tried&tested trial by media +obfuscation, rather than logic and
reasoning.
If hard proof of US culpability manifests then the appropriate level of China's response will
be "nuclear" (I don't mean actual nukes, but something like dumping US treasury bonds).
Meanwhile, the disease naturally leaks back into the US
How?
Is there specific information tracing this "leak" to China?
Is it possible -- is it even conceivable -- that the same logic that you detailed to tip
the scales in favor of US biowarfare against China can also suggest that the bioweapon did
not "naturally leak" into the US but was deliberately deployed against the people of the
United States?
Follow the money: the goal of (speculated) biowar against China was, as you wrote,
not to kill but to economically devastate a formidable competitor-turned-adversary (same
thing the US has been doing to Iran by sanctions since at least 1995 with Clinton's executive
order, made permanent by the D'Amato Iran Libya Sanctions Act).
The goal of biowar against the people of the USA is to cripple the economy, to Weimarize
American commerce and enable those left standing to scoop up the life's work and investment
of millions of entrepreneurs for pennies on the dollar, with the added travesty that those
left standing are supplied with dollars by the very taxpayers whose assets are being
snapped up!
The Chinese government lied and continues to lie about the virus.
The Wuhan leadership knew in mid December and arrested doctors who leaked the info and
destroyed lab records.
Xi likely knew no later than January 1.
There are thousands of wet markets in southern China and SE Asia, but only the one a short
walk from the Wuhan Institute of Virology allegedly was the source.
Chinese researchers worked in America to develop this exact virus, adding HIV to SARS, and
left in 2015 to work in Wuhan.
Chinese national was arrested in 2018 in Detroit while carrying live SARS and MERS
viruses.
Chinese scientists working in Canada were kicked out in 2019 for shipping stolen
biological material to Wuhan.
It was developed in the lab, but I suspect the release was accidental. The cover up and
letting the virus spread around the world was intentional.
Xi is fighting to maintain power. He might not succeed
The US government did fund the research of those Chinese researchers at UNC. They
continued to fund them in China.
China's economy had already stalled. Then it lost the trade war. Banks were failing.
Foreign companies were moving out. Xi used the opportunity of the virus to avoid the disaster
of economic collapse and to hurt the rest of the world after the Century of Humiliation,
China would rather take the rest of the world down rather than go down alone.
Although nearby East Asian nations such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore had
been at greatest risk and were among the first infected, their competent and energetic
responses .
Japan's reaction to the Corona virus is/was not competent and energetic, unless you want
to count the way how the Japanese government dealt with the cruise ship 'Diamond Princess' as
a resounding success. Send army recruits without protection to the ship, start with 10
patients, quarantine the entire ship, end up with 765 infected individuals, and then send
people [tourists] home. I live on one of the 4 big islands and there is no lock down here.
Below is a picture I took just now [what they refer to as a Junior High School], Tuesday, 21
April, 2020 ~16:00 P.M. fro the window of my apartment.
Judge for yourself.
No masks. No distance. No governmental guidance. Japan is run by bureaucrats and it
shows.
Thanks for the article. It was a pleasure to read.
According to this reconstruction, the Chinese government first became aware of the
seriousness of this public health crisis on Jan. 14th, but delayed taking any major action
until Jan. 20th, a period of time during which the number of infections greatly
multiplied.
This also fits in with an alternative explanation, which is admittedly wild but which I
would say is considerably less wild than the bioweapon-blowback theory:
J.Ross has proposed [ ] this whole thing may be a Chinese Communist Party 'Hoax,' in the
sense that while the 'new' virus is real (there are always 'new viruses'), the reaction was
at least 1000x what was necessary to deal with a bad flu strain and that China played it up
to scare people, especially the US. China's actions (mass shutdown) triggered a series of
events that scared everyone. But none of the data we have corroborate the Mass Killer
Apocalypse Virus fears. So what was this?
[MORE]
[This] theory would have it that the CCP's sudden about-face on The New Virus -- a
literally overnight about-face [Jan. 20] from "not a big deal" to "shut down a region with
60 million people, cue the Virus Apocalypse Movie film reels and the hazmat suits" -- was a
calculated bid to hurt the US and to hurt Western economies. By the time of the unexpected
about-face, they had 100% certainty it had spread to the US and elsewhere, AND that these
countries had the kind of media that would go into hysteria mode AND had the technological
capacity to do "testing."
This theory would attribute to the CCP a calculated bid to create a false virus panic
with plausible deniability ("so sorry! we didn't have the data! it was early; we reacted
the best we could; and hey even the highly-neutral WHO are calling us heroes") which would
scare people and trigger a series of events that throw the US and its satellites in Western
Europe into chaos, making the latter easier pickings for Belt & Road and Huawi
colonization, etc.; countries dazed by a mass-hysteria-recession are suddenly beggars, not
choosers.
The Chinese Communist Party's calculation would have been, on that fateful 'about-face'
evening, that the West was much less ready to handle a panic than Communist China would be.
It was a risk to them but it worked.
If this theory is right, in fact, the CCP succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. A case
of the dog finally catching the car bumper; what the heck now? The results for China's
regime itself are unclear, given that the cynical triggering of mass-hysteria-recessions in
major trading partners equates to a drought that sinks all boats.
The alternative, and many would say more plausible theory, is that the Chinese Communist
Party panicked, too, and reacted highly irrationally, taking a sledgehammer to a handful of
mosquitoes and then salting the earth where the flattened bodies of the mosquitoes landed.
Or a synthesis of the two may be true. It's hard to disentangle motivations. But the
unexplained 'about-face' is real and needs explanation.
In the end, does it matter? Even if we take the more innocuous version at face value: the
virus had nothing to do with bioweapons and simply mutated naturally from bats to humans, the
response of the West has been utterly atrocious either way.
We're now seeing a Yellow Peril 2.0 campaign ramped up at astonishing speed. The so-called
"liberal class", posturing as tolerant and sophisticated, is now trying to run on Trump's
right flank on China. Joe Biden's campaign ads on China are Cold War-style cariactures.
I've been seeing the consequences play out even in neutral places. I frequent quite a few
technology-related subreddits and the unmitigated hatred of China is truly a sight to be
hold. Even the most tangential topics get hijacked by zealots. For all the talk about how the
media's power is supposedly dimishing, the cattle is still very much influenced by what the
MSM tells them to think.
I hope Unz can syndicate some stories from The Grayzone, which I find to be the only
publication on the left which isn't in thrall with the DNC. Even Democracy Now! and Jacobin
are pushing state department scare stories on China. The total collapse of the American left
over the last 10-15 years is a greatly undertold story.
The alleged report by National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) is the most damning
piece of evidence if the report does exist. Here is the official denial:
"As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment
publicly on specific intelligence matters," Day said. "However, in the interest of
transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting
about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence
Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI
product exists."
So we are in the "Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied."
territory.
What is important is not that Channel 12 (in Israel) followed the ABC article but that it
added an extra bit of information which was not in the original ABC article that the report
was passed to Israel and that the IDF held a first discussion about it still in November.
Fooling some ABC reporter by offering her Trump damaging leak that Trump knew but did
nothing could be easy but getting a confirmation from Israel where presumably sources in the
IDF had to be involved it does not seem as a simple get Trump operation.
I don't think people understand the extent of collaboration between US and China including
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) , It actually goes back to the early 1980's with
cooperation between USAMIID and WIV on Hanta Viruses. More recently extensive collaboration
between China and US on gain of function studies and virus hunting, especially with corona
viruses from bats. Ralph Baric UNC and Shih Zhengli from Wuhan have published papers together
. Funding of joint studies from USAMIID, NIAID, DARPA. NIH, etc. George Gao the Director of
Chinese CDC participated in the Event 201 simulation. There are many more ties. Google Wuhan
Biolake -a lot of global biotech companies there.
I dont think anyone can know the extent of the disease in China. After all a super
spreading virus from as early as November circulating in heavily polluted Wuhan, a city more
populated than NYC , which was also a major domestic and international transportation hub
with millions leaving the city for other destinations in China and internationally in the
weeks before Wuhan was locked down just before the New Year when everything shuts down for 2
weeks anyways. And yet the disease only spreads to Europe and US but not to any degree
outside Hubei province? Not believable.
And as for US deaths from COVID-19 being undercounted. Where is the evidence for that. CDC
has basically informed everyone to count a case as COVID based on suspicions (no positive
test needed). If a heart disease patient of 80 years old has a heart attack while also having
pneumonia its COVID-19. And those tests, they haven't been validated. There are many
different tests. We don't know the specificity of any of them. Very likely there are many
false positives. Also if a hospital can collect more money from medicare with a covid-19
diagnosis, guess whats going to be diagnosed more often.
So I am skeptical.
Now 30,000 deaths attributed to covid in 2 weeks is a lot. In a normal 2 week period there
would be 110,000 total deaths. So have there been 140,000 deaths in total, or just 110, 000
deaths with 30, 000 called Covid deaths? I dont know.
I actually expect more deaths than normal even without covid. Suicides. More deaths from
heart attacks and stroke due to financial stress and people delaying treatment out of fear of
getting the virus. More cancer deaths for same reason. Increased alcoholism and obesity
should trigger more deaths in the next few months.
One has to consider this an event on an international scale on a par with 9/11 in
magnitude and impact on freedoms. Curious how WHO declares pandemic on 3/11. Coincidence I
guess.
Lot of players in the Virus Industrial Complex stand to make a lot of money in coming
years as a result. The Globalists will push through digital ID and mandatory vaccination for
international travelers if not everyone and the Global Health Security Alliance (GHSA) will
be strengthened. The right will get tighter immigration controls and more bailouts for Big
Business. The left gets a taste of universal income and perhaps medicare for all (2009
pandemic helped get Obamacare approved). And the technocrats will get more toys for the
Surveillance and Tracking Industry with Big Data monitoring all the chipped individuals
health among other things. Cashless society to minimize virus spread pushed through so all
transactions can be logged. Everyone wins but the little guy.
And you can bet the Greenies will capitalize on this
Since the Virus Industrial Complex took over the Public Health Agencies in the 1970's we
have had endless Virus Scares, Swine Flu in 1976, Hepatitis B (1978) , AIDS in 1980,
MS-ME/CFS outbreaks (1984), HPV/Cervical Cancer (1984), HHV-6 (1986) , SARS (2003) , Bird Flu
(2005), Swine Flu (2009) , MERs (2012) Zika (2014) Measles (2014) Ebola (2015) and now
COVID-2019
See a pattern here?
We got virus finders/makers in academia and security /military agencies in the interest of
biowarfare defense and science working with vaccine and drug companies who receive funds to
develop treatments for these newly found/made viruses, in some cases before any human has
been infected. Reminds me of the time when those working for anti-virus software companies
were suspected of generating computer viruses to sell more software and be fastest to provide
the patch (since they created the virus). In any case, certainly a lot of interlocking
conflict of interests among members of the Virus Industrial Complex.
The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) of Ft.
Detrick fame has been partnered with the Wuhan Virlogy Lab since 1981. The Wuhan Lab has also
been partnered with college basketball powerhouse Duke University. Check out the Lab's
website. This facilityis a diagnostic lab not a bioweapons lab. The USA has bioweapons labs
located on the Chinese and Russian borders in Kazakhstan. Oh what a tangled web we weave .
I just want to say that we need to distinguish between conspiracy theory and conspiracy
hypothesis.
The out of Wuhan lab is a conspiracy hypothesis, or much closer to it. There is no
plausible benefit to the Chinese, and saying 'a disgruntled employee may have dun it to get
at dem dictators' is just speculation in the sky.
On the other hand the anectodal evidence for it being US action – the obvious
benefit, the time and place of the outbreak, the military games team, the precognition, as
well as how the CDC is not tracing patient zero in the US (if it was in China in Nov, surely
it could have been in the US then too, and then the whole propaganda story falls apart)..
Even the US crying wolf again, after so many times, is almost enough for me.
They are all anecdotal of course, but perfectly in line with the MO and historical
practice of the US government.
I now thank my friends when they call me a conspiracy theorist loon, as I point out that
Russiagate, Skripal, and so many of the government lines are pure conspiracy hypotheses
– one step further away from Kansas than my take!
Thanks for this first attempt to dig through the growing tale of corona. However, as we are
still in the fog of war, there can be no more then a preliminary assessment.
My take is still that Corona is far less of a threat then commonly believed, and that it
has been deliberately saddled with diverse agendas, so in any countries the leadership have
no interest in telling the truth.
1) I think there is sufficient proof that need not be repeated, and
2) it is better for everyones' mental health not to believe in killer viruses that force us
to abdicate even our most basic freedoms.
I believe that either a) the Chinese leadership thought that they were being attacked and
undertook their lockdown in good faith, or b) they played an outright GAMBIT to force western
countries into their own, more economically damaging lockdowns. The clue would be that China
is so strong that it can weather the blow, while Europe and to a lesser extend the US
cannot.
The director of the Chinese CDC, Dr Gao was part of Event 201 and studied in Oxford. Are
there dual loyalties in China? And then, in which direction?
Possibly, something minor was indeed released as a bioweapon, before, calculably, western
government incompetence and hysteria took over. I also believe that Israel used corona as a
screen for biowarfare-targeted killings in Iran, whose case is definitely a story apart.
The Russian lockdown can be explained by the serious assumption that if they did not lock
down they would be accused as the authors of a biowarfare attack on the US. At this point,
antirussian hostility in the West is so severe that they had to comply!
The coordinated actions across opposed political systems CAN be explained, and it does not
take a nutter to do it.
The majority of the American public still believe that a small group of Islamic
fundamentalists wielding only box cutters atomized the World Trade Center into dust –
in a cartoonish act of sorcery. If the lie is so big it has to become believable
– that amount of cognitive dissonance is simply just too much to bear. An already duped
population of such magnitude doesn't have much of a chance of coming out of this kind of
stupor, especially under the bubble of the most powerful propaganda machine in the history of
propaganda, therefore, I don't think this story is going to go anywhere.
Hi Ron! Your article for me is a breath of fresh air! Amidst what you accurately call the fog
of war it has been very hard to discern precisely what is going on in regards to this virus
situation. It's been extremely difficult to assert the "truth" or the "red pill" as some call
it when it comes to this pandemic. For that reason in fact, I would caution everyone that
cares about having a well calibrated "perception" sensor to tread with extreme caution when
it comes to this topic, as there isn't nearly enough evidence in any direction to assume one
theory over another. Faithfully adopting any one theory at the moment can only lead you to
become the equivalent of a 9/11 truther (the kind that obsesses about missiles, physics,
instead of the paper trail leading directly to Israel and Saudi Arabia).
Having said that there are just too many statistical improbabilities to simply brush aside
the Bioweapon possibility. I know quite a few influential figures in the alternative media
have unequivocally rejected all Bioweapon theories (specially the theory that the US/Israel
could ever conspire to spread a bioweapon) which is why I am very glad to see someone of your
Intellectual authority provide a credible well thought-out case supporting this increasingly
unpopular position (even in alternative circles). I get it, there is ZERO evidence to show
the US/Israel or even China are behind covid-19. But there is equally ZERO evidence to
support the official story (which is completely ridiculous until they provide more details)
about the guy that supposedly ate the covid bat.
With that disclaimer I will freely speculate below but keep in mind this is all
conjecture:
1. Anyone that claims is "impossible" for the US to let lose a bioweapon that would
destroy the US economy and kill Americans for the sake of hurting their "perceived" enemies
more needs to seriously examine EVERYTHING we know about the rulers of the American empire.
The first obvious question is who exactly rules the American empire? Are they righteous
rulers that make decisions based on what is best for the American people? The answer to this
question is a clear and resounding NO. The rulers of America follow a religion that states
anyone that is not part of their tribe is "cattle" and dispensable. On this grounds alone the
Rulers of America would have very little issue releasing a virus that kills (mostly) "cattle"
Americans. And then comes to "why would they tank their own economy" objection. To this
objection I'll simply point out that AMERICA IS RULED through financial coercion. A crisis is
very good for the rulers of America because they get to FURTHER consolidate their power over
America. Gaining more power over America, hurting your geopolitical rivals and ultimately
using the panic and confusion to pass draconian and more authoritarian rules are all
INCENTIVES for American elites to release a bioweapon.
Lastly, to everyone that says it's impossible for the American elites to tank their
economy and/or kill Americans in order to achieve a political objective has forgotten about
9/11! Our current rulers in Tel-Aviv paid a few saudi mercenaries to fly two airplanes into
the twin towers to kill a few thousands of people in order to go to war! Of course the
atrocity does not end there. A lot more Americans died as consequence of 9/11, even more were
affected economically and even a lot more lost civil liberties and standing in American
society. Right then and there you have a blatant and relatively recent event that almost word
for word matches the consequences of this virus. Considering this as a possible escalation of
tactics by the US/Israel against their enemies is a possibility. The US did drop the nuke of
an innocent, already defeated enemy. What makes anyone so sure this is beyond their "moral
code"
2.China decides to strongly stick by Iran, suddenly the Hong Kong protest springs out of
control, 50 percent of their pork is wiped out by a weird disease and now of course, the
mother of all "unforeseen" events kick starts a cascade of negative consequences for
China.
This is by far the most alarming set of "coincidences" of all. I remember last year
reading the Iran-China saga, as the Chinese refused to stop buying Iranian oil even as Japan
stopped buying oil after a Japanese tanker "coincidentally" was hit by a bomb in the Persian
gulf. Soon enough (if I am recalling correctly) a strange disease wipes out 50% of Chinese
pork causing possible food insecurity. Then came the Hong Kong riots that although started
for very legit reasons by the people of Hong Kong, soon enough had full on CIA spooks
speaking in the US congress, attacking people on the streets of Hong Kong! Lastly against all
odds these horrible events are somewhat weathered China and suddenly we have a pandemic that
not only damages China in the world stage, but serves as the perfect excuse to possibly
sanction, attack and possibly destabilize china.
Maybe I am completely paranoid or skeptical, but what are the chances of such a string of
events? Is there some data I am not privy to that can explain some of these coincidences? Is
there something to Chinese cultural norms that could explain these strange viruses literally
wrecking their economy and political stability? What are the chances all of these viruses
occur in a very short period and their severity and consequences directly correlated to
China's defiance of US orthodoxy on Iran/US hegemony?
Unlike some people here, I do not share the opinion that the Chinese government is some
sort of Angel or ideological ally. They are a government that ultimately acts on it's
interests and it's full of flaws (including exerting degrees of tyranny on their own people).
Having said that you don't have to be a communist to notice how strange this sequence of
events truly is. Bad things keep happening to China as it opposes US Hegemony. It might even
be statistically impossible for some of these things to happen by "chance", but maybe China
is just really unlucky, right?
But I do think that a careful exploration of previous Sino-American clashes over the
last couple of decades may provide some useful insight into the relative credibility of
those two governments as well as that of our own media.
During the Korean war, China used their Cats Paw North to invade the South then the
Chinese army intervened under the pretense of being volunteers. Although Chinese ground
troops were not directly involved, Vietnam was otherwise a rerun of Korea with China not only
defeating the US but forcing it to cease isolating China. Carter issued a presidential order
for officials to aid Chinese growth., and within a few decades as the internal unrest Western
pundits predicted failed to amount to much, it became obvious that China's growth was at the
expense of the workers of the US made jobless and suffering deaths of despair not least by
illegal synthetic opioids from China. But then, by the begining of new millennium all
manufacturing was in China, including the burgeoning fortunes of the already wealthy, who
rose on a high tide of inequality. If history was any guide a new Gilded Age must end with a
visit from the Four Horsemen. Pressaged by the appearance of the SARS-CoV virus eighteen
years before, SARS-CoV-2 appears likely to end China's run of successes, because of the
disruption it has caused to the US.
"The closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 is a bat virus named RaTG13, "However, RaTG13
was sampled from a different province of China (Yunnan) to where COVID-19 first appeared
and the level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to
an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change."
The important thing about the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not its lethality, which is about an
order of magnitude less than the original SARS-CoV of 2002, but rather SARS-CoV-2's extreme
transmissibility which is two orders of magnitude greater than its predecessor's. Anthony
Fauci warned the incoming US government administration in January 2017 of a newly mutated
coronavirus with extreme transmissibility and, apart from the greatly reduced lethality of
the massively more contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus, that is exactly what happened.
Unlike other nations, China had had no advance warning of the nature or existence of the
deadly new disease, and therefore faced unique obstacles.
They had the WHO and Fauci's public statements. Much more usefully China had the 2002
epidemic, caused by SARS-CoV which originated in China that year. In Singapore, there were
238 cases and 33 deaths from the SARS outbreak, in 2015 the worlds largest MERS-CoV outbreak
occurred in South Korea, and only the other year Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said it was
only a matter of time before Singapore had its first MERS-CoV case, so they had to be well
prepared. These countries were all set up and waiting to eradicate a disease just like
COVID-19.
A decision by elements of our national security establishment to wage biological warfare
in hopes of maintaining American world power would certainly have been an extremely
reckless act
Excuse me? With the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus having a puny death rate yet
colossal infectiousness a centralised authoritarian state like China would be relatively
speaking best able to suppress it. A bioweapon would be tested on Whites as well as Chinese
before being released. There is no way in Hell that they would not understand that releasing
the SARS-CoV-2 virus in China would result in it sweeping through the US.
If an "out-of-control disease epidemic occurring in the Wuhan area" back in November 2019 was
the same corona virus, then toss the idea it was intentionally timed to mess with the Chinese
New Year in 2020. But then figure the deaths in China have been greatly under reported.
Furthermore, China may well have allowed carriers to travel abroad, especially to USA once
the outbreak was well under way.
However, as regards the whole biocrime aspect of the corona virus pandemic we really
cannot rely much on either US government/media or the Chinese. And if it was a bioweapon, who
among "us" would be so keen to target Iran where over ten percent of their parliament got
sick very early on? That is an Israel First kind of agenda. Or maybe it was Japan? Good
investigators keep an open mind.
Note (This is not a subject change) Over the last several decades the American public
health system has regularly failed to adequately warn our citizens about the causes and risks
of numerous epidemics that have claimed many millions of lives. Or were all sugar drenched
foods advertised as "Fat Free" really a "healthy choice"? So I do not quite understand why
Ron Unz considers the corona virus the one instance of stellar government incompetence, as if
to imply the current lock down has not nearly severe enough?!? Thank god he did not invoke
the party line panacea of the Gates vaccine!
Meanwhile, what about Kushner's fast tracking mass surveillance? Will it only be
temporary? Will it only be used for containing CV19? Ha. Let's all step in the van with the
nice man who will give us a teddy bear
On top of this alleged biocrime, examples are abounding where the opportunists are eager
to grab more power, and make killings of a sort, not least of which are the banks, Wall
Street and the war mongers.
Remember, the farther the tide goes out, bigger the tsunami that charges back in.
I don't buy it. If the US was going to go to the extreme length of releasing a highly
contagious virus into the territory of its new Deep State certified arch-enemy China, the
risk of contagioning yourself is extremely high. Especially with global trade and travel as
it is these days. Preparations would have been made in advance to make sure it would not blow
back by putting appropriate people and methods in place. Its too easy to blame incompetence
for this oversight.
If you're looking for plotters, look no further than Wall St. They are making out like
bandits in the latest bailout.
@dimples Unless of course the blow back is a feature and not a bug, which it must be
admitted, it usually is. If the US economy takes an enormous hit due to blow back, which it
has, then China is set up as the next ultra-bad guy to replace Russia, Russia Russia!. It
then becomes the new fixation of the Deep State's wet dreams, a new Cold War where plenty of
money goes down the toilet into the MIC's pockets and plenty of opportunity for the heroic
Special Ops types to keep the Hollywood grist mill grinding.
The original source went to great lengths to make it clear a massacre did in fact occur
that night/morning, only it was taking place in other areas of Beijing and the victims were
mostly protesting workers, not students. (At least 300 of them, by Chinese official figures.)
A person reading Unz's summary will come out believing this did not take place, although the
Chinese themselves don't really deny it did.
@dimples This is a reasonable view in my opinion. If you look at previous US false flag
events, they come at periods when new directions are needed to perpetuate the US war
machine's supposed usefulness. The 1990 Gulf War was clearly a set up that came just as the
old Cold War was ending and prepared the way for 911 and the Iraq War, which capitalized on
the US bases that had been set up during the Gulf War.
Currently the Russia, Russia Russia! narrative is petering out. The US Deep State wants to
perpetuate it but the Euros don't really want a war with Russia, a huge market for them. So
continuation of Russia Russia Russia! risks a split with the Euros.
But China, a nice new up and coming enemy there. Yum yum. So Covid-19 could be a US false
flag effort in that direction it has to be admitted. Damage to US economy? Who cares, the
Deep State doesn't. Its immune, rolling as it does in government loot.
My issue with the 'it's not china's fault"argument revolves around the secrecy in the
beginning. And then the arrests of those sounding the alarm inside China. One would think
that if this was from elsewhere the CCP would be screeching bloody murder from day one NOT
trying to downplay it and outright lie about it. Didn't China use the same playbook with
SARS? Silence and then misdirection.
The actual number is 43000 dead Americans. The China narrative lacks hard evidence. There is
mounting evidence that COVID-19 pandemic originated in the U.S. and may have been a terror
attack perpetuated by the U.S., which is pursuing a massive expansion of biological weapons
program. According to scholar Kevin Barrett: "It also may be a coincidence that the primary
U.S. bioweapons lab, Fort Detrick, was shut down in summer 2019 over fears that weaponized
pathogens might escape. It may be a coincidence that absurdly under-performing U.S. military
athletes came to Wuhan for the World Military Games in October and have since been accused by
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs of being the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. It may be a
coincidence that at the same time those 'athletes' were in Wuhan, the World Economic Forum,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and other Establishment titans
were hosting a pandemic simulation called Event 201".
Furthermore, "It may be purely coincidental that the virus appeared in Wuhan, home of
China's biggest biodefense laboratory, and China's biggest transportation hub, just in time
for the Chinese New Year, when most Chinese travel to visit relatives. Likewise, it could be
coincidental that the real-life COVID-19 pandemic almost perfectly mimics Lockstep, the
Rockefeller Foundation's recipe for a global police state emerging on the back of a
coronavirus-style pandemic", added Kevin Barrett. The U.S. regime unleashed this disease on
the world, and the U.S. regime has to be held accountable.
Your suspicions on this matter echo my own. I remember the Russian Government warning a
few years back that Western NGO's inside Russia had been discovered to be collecting DNA
samples of Russian citizens and that it was the opinion of the Russian Intelligence Services
that this information was being collected ny Western Intelligence Services for the purpose of
future biological warfare. When this outbreak in China made international news I remembered
the warning from the Russian Government. Then came the outbreak in Iran that killed many
Iranian political figures. Quite a damned coincidence if there ever was one?
If you ever run for state or national office and are on the ballot (or not) herr in
California you have my vote.
Look at a very partial list of the Chinese history of lying, almost by habit, just
in the last two decades alone!
China lied in 1999 about "massacres" committed by Serbia and bombed Belgrade to set up the
narcomafia organ-smuggling so called state of "Kosovo".
China lied about Saddam Hussein having WMDs and invaded Iraq in 2003.
China lied about "imminent massacres" and "Viagra rape" in Libya in 2011, and deliberately
misused a UN Security Council resolution to bomb and destroy that country and hand it over to
slave trading jihadi headchopper gangs.
China lied about Syria using chemical weapons from 2013 onwards, armed and trained and
financed terrorist gangs, conducted missile strikes on the country, and continues to occupy
and steal oil from East Syria.
China organised a blatant Nazi coup in Ukraine in 2014 and lied about it being a "popular
democratic revolution".
China murdered Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and lied about him being about
to conduct terrorist attacks when he was actually on a peace mission.
With just this partial list of Chinese lies in the last two decades alone, who would
believe anything China has to say?!?!?
Interesting article.
Especially, interesting for me, the aggressive arrest of a Harvard Prof' of chemistry for
technical irregularities in Grant paperwork, coincidentally at the time the virus emerges.
(we assume he personally wrote up those applications ? Imagine if everyone who had
written up a Grant application, which contained an error or two, in the US were to be dragged
off in chains by the FBI ? )
And also interesting the Belgrade Chinese embassy attack -- Mr Unz's materials put it in a
totally new perspective for me.
I suspect US gov been planning this attack for years. SARS outbreak in 2003, I suspect, was a
test, to test Chinese gov's response to bio attack. Note that SARS virus and the current
covid-19 virus aren't that different to be considered different viruses, hence covid-19 also
known as SARS-2. But the difference, SARS-1 had "kill switch", it wouldn't be able to infect
humans after a while.
During 2003 SARS, China acted swiftly causing the virus to be contained within China and
according to US gov simulation, covid-19 should've been the same, contained within China. But
China didn't act as swiftly as expected, causing the virus leaking back to US, this is why US
gov is furious, had China acted earlier, the virus wouldn't travel back to US.
The killing of Iranian general, it wasn't act of recklessness, it was diversion, so that
the Iran gov would be occupied by it while ignoring coronavirus spreading silently in their
country.
Ron, my friend (sort of), if you think you have trouble now what with COVID-1, impending
national bankruptcy, and a general flow of information that seems to have been some of the
most creative fiction in our lives, just wait until you manage to invite China into US civil
disputes. Our present difficulties are as nothing compared difficulties subsequent to direct
Chinese involvement in civil matters.
Historically, third party intervention quite often leads to foreign domination. Examples: US
in Afghanistan, US in Iraq (twice). Both time, native citizens thought it a great idea to
invite the US in.
And why do I say this? Well, you're presenting China as morally wronged. In your frame of
reference, that's an absolute, more important than anything else. But it's not the only
interpretation. Perhaps China committed an act of war by giving tactical help to the Serbs.
Perhaps that violation became severe when China gathered F117A wreckage. Perhaps China is
lucky that bombing the embassy was all that happened, and we are all lucky that things did
not escalate. This is actually less of a fantasy than your account, which is at best a bit
one sided, almost a "point and sputter".
In the US, such accounts are the precursor to advocacy. You should consider carefully the
consequences of advocacy in this case.
While I think the first part of the article is very interesting, and I acknowledge the
theoretical benefits that could exist from the US using COVID as a bioweapon, I find the
argument unpersuasive for the following reasons:
Obvious blowback : If the US infected China with a highly spreadable disease, why
did we not put in more aggressive measures to stop it from spreading in the US? Otherwise,
what's the point of hurting your enemy if you also get hurt? If the US was going to attack
China with a bioweapon, why would they not engineer a genetic/ethnic bioweapon that targeted
Han Chinese, as oppose one that could also kill everyone? Seeing the economic damage this has
done to us, it seems unlikely that such a contagious weapon would be the one an actor would
pick, as it would risk damaging their own homeland.
China has always been a hotbed of disease : A third of China's history has them
facing an epidemic of some sort. The 1957 "Asian flu" , 1968 "Hong Kong flu" and 1977
"Russian flu" all started in China. The black death probably started in China. Seems far more
likely that recent disease outbreaks are part of a historic trend, or gross Chinese
conditions, rather than a bioweapon attack.
On April 11, 2020, Gilad Atzmon published here an excellent article titled "A Viral Pandemic
or A Crime Scene?", in which he suggests circumstances have now created 'a paradigm change'
in the perception of the current viral pandemic.
He states: "Since we do not know its provenance, we should treat the current epidemic as a
potentially criminal act as well as a medical event. We must begin the search for the
perpetrators who may be at the centre of this possible crime of global genocidal
proportions." I concur.
All Americans (and others) who believe in China's culpability for the emergence of this
virus, should welcome such an investigation. And Mr. Pompeo, who so firmly plants the full
responsibility on China's doorstep, would receive vindication of his claims. I believe that
the governments and the people of China, Italy, Spain, France, and Iran, especially would
like to know the results of such a criminal investigation.
All nations of the world should band together now, and proceed jointly with this endeavor.
It needn't be approached with presumption of cause or intent, but simply to uncover the
entire truth of this event. That will be sufficient, and it is possible the results of this
worldwide investigation will prompt others into similar past events which have to date gone
unquestioned and unexamined.
I believe there are yet many truths about COVID-19 (and many other epidemics) still to
emerge. Perhaps one of the many people with personal knowledge of the source and method of
distribution will be sufficiently brave to come forward, perhaps another Edward Snowdon or
Chelsea Manning. We will then see how truly the US treasures its whistle-blowers.
**
The US needs to answer this question: HOW could US 'intelligence sources' possibly have
known in November – or even October – of a potential pandemic of COVID-19 that
would erupt – specifically in Wuhan – two months later? (Or that was already
erupting in Wuhan at the time, unbeknownst to the Chinese?). I believe the entire world would
demand the answer to this.
**
In early March the US government declared as classified all COVID-19 information, with all
communication to be rerouted through the White House and coordinated with NSC officials. Only
specified individuals with security clearance are permitted to attend secret meetings, with
no mobile phones or computers allowed. Excluded staff members claimed they were told virus
information was classified "because it had to do with China". The US needs to explain the
need for such extreme secrecy (while condemning China for lack of transparency), and how
coping with a domestic virus epidemic would involve China.
China, Italy, and several other nations in Asia and Europe have documented proof that
COVID-19 was circulating in their populations for several months before the outbreak in
Wuhan. And there are many, many reports, including from physicians, that infections in the US
were occurring as early as September, of 2019. These claims are too numerous, too detailed,
and too similar to be ignored. Japanese TV and press documented that Japanese tourists
returning from Hawaii were coming home infected with COVID-19 in September.
Why was Dr. Helen Chu issued a threatening "cease and desist" order to stop testing nasal
swabs her flu research team had taken in Washington State from October 2019 onward? The only
possible result would be to prevent the knowledge emerging that the virus had already been
circulating months earlier. As a rule, the reason we don't ask a question privately is
because we already know the answer, and the reason we don't ask the question publicly is
because we don't want anyone else to know the answer.
The US government needs to address the now-certain existence of the virus being widespread
in America and much of the world from September, 2019.
Your globalists and anti American tendencies come out in the first part and the last few
paragraphs of your piece. I didn't read most of the rest of your long winded article.
Bottom line, the Chinks infected the world whether by incompetence or deliberately. They then
intimidated the world with their economic might and with the help of their lackeys in the WHO
and the PC/shit lib elite in the West to keep the flow of infected people to keep coming into
the West. Italy is the tragic example but you can include the rest of the West including
America where that old bag Nancy Pe-lousy was celebrating in China Town in late February.
They, the PRC, should be made to pay reparations.
Not to dismiss Ron Unz's reasoning outright, but it has been claimed that the virus cannot be
the product of direct genomic manipulation.
That's barring any breakthrough in genomic manipulation techniques, a breakthrough that
would have to be kept secret. What these scientists have said is that publicly available
techniques would have left traces in the viruses genome. They claim that any such traces are
absent from the virus's genome.
If that holds up, then the only remaining possibility would be a virus that was bred. It
could have been bred by taking the bat virus and passing it through other types of animals,
selecting for increased virulence. It has been claimed that ferrets would fit the bill since
they have the same ACE2 receptor as humans. Ferrets are easy to handle under laboratory
conditions.
If the US deep state did something like this, then their reasoning would have to be on
what lines? "Let's take this virus that we have bred to dock very easily onto the human ACE2
receptor and set it loose on the Chinese. The virus will devastate them will they still be
able to contain it – so that there won't be too much blow back."
Maybe they misjudged the product of their virus enhancement effort. Still, it needs be
kept in mind what presuppositions have to be put in place for the blow back theory to
work.
I tend to doubt that Chinese leaders have any overwhelming commitment to the truth, and
the reasons for their greater veracity are probably practical ones.
Their reasons are extremely practical:
1. In the absence of national elections they are free to make realistic promises. Since
they have kept every promise they've made to date they have an investment in staying honest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China
,
2. In the absence of factions like our Republicans and Democrats, there's no-one to blame
or pass the buck to, nor lie competitively, nor attack proposed or existing policies. There's
no 'them,' there's only 'us.'
3. The Chinese have always been willing to make sacrifices now for benefits later, which
incentivizes being honest up front.
4. Telling the truth is cheaper in the long run, which is one reason China has the
cheapest government on earth.
5. People are much more willing to cooperate with truth-tellers. Governing is infernally
difficult and being truthful makes it vastly easier.
6. Straight talk, especially from leaders, is attractive (Trump's appeal to his base is
that he occasionally blurts out something true). Asked on TV how it felt to be President, Xi
said, "People who have little experience with power–those who are far from
it–tend to regard politics as mysterious and exciting. But I look past the
superficialities, the power, the flowers, the glory, the applause. I see the detention
houses, the fickleness of human relationships. I understand politics on a deeper level."
Imagine an American politician talking like that.
7. Smart people tell the truth more often than dumb people. People out of their
intellectual and experiential depth, which our politicians usually are, tend to lie. The
average IQ of China's top 5,000 political leaders is 140 and all of them have 25 years
successful governing experience. They're professionals who are less likely to lie than your
brain surgeon.
@Otto von Komsmark I've read the Chinese are proud that they'll "eat everything under the
sun". China is a very old culture. People might have differing opinions, but I think it
strange that now we have all these cross-overs from the animal kingdom.
@animalogic I think it was Zero-hedge that said the professor lied about his Chinese
funding, making him in effect an agent of China. That's not some burocratic form error.
I think the article is a good summary but the author is also guilty of embellishment. For
example, he used the word "concerted" at least twice, when he has no proof of that.
Having grown up with in the University of Chicago South Side Chicago neighborhood , then
lived in racial, criminal, immigration anarchy New York City 1985-91
, I m rarely if ever surprised about national or international events. The seemingly
incomprehensible views and policies of American, diaspora, Neo Conservative, Hollywood,Wall
Street Jews makes sense in awful ways:
They hate us – want us replaced
Madeline Albright (How did this ugly woman from Central Europe get to be USA Secretary of
State? Why did she demand bombing the sh&$ out of the Serbs to creat a Muslim beach head
in Central Europe ? What is she ? Catholic? Episcopalian Christian? Oh she s Jewish again but
wants to convert to Islam to protest President Trump s proposed Muslim immigration plan).
I look at this Chinese Kung Flu Coronavirus and just note how sensible nationalist
governments/societies in Japan, Taiwan, Hungary, Slovakia and of course Israel handle it:
Strict, zero tolerance immigration, student visas from Coronavirus plague infected areas
– also no millions of Muslim young male migrants.
Pretty much no one in these sensible nationalist societies care if Jews at the SPLC, The
Atlantic Magazine, or National Review, CPAC or the Wall Street Journal scream that they
are:
RACISTS
FASCISTS
NAZIS
It s probably too late in my life to try to learn Hungarian or Japanese.
But I think I/we should all try to learn translations of :
"Shut up Jews"
"Support Israel the homeland of the Jews so go home"
Life isn t complicated .
It s the same with terrible Black AA ga g murders in my Chicago . same with TB, bubonic
plague heroin addicts street people in LA's Skid Row, Gypsy no go places in Romania or
France.
From Ron Unz's article linked above on the Canadian kidnapping of the Huawei billionaire's
daughter, Ron himself said something which points to the perhaps deeper truth here
In that piece our host Ron suggested that the clear best course for China, was to put the
squeeze on USA Jewish billionaire and political king-maker Sheldon Adelson, the big political
funder of Trump and US Republicans etc Adelson being the casino king of Macau who earns most
of his billions there under Chinese authority, Adelson being able to get the Huawei exec
released with just a phone call to Trump, if Chinese would just walk into Sheldon's casinos
and threaten shutdown
China never moved to touch Sheldon's businesses in China, and as I said at the time, this
is because of the deeper frightening truth, that the big powers tend to work together behind
the scenes, even whilst in public disputes, like high school football teams in rivalry
Chinese media accuse the US of creating a bio-weapon, US media accuses China of the same,
the classic rivalry of Orwell's 1984
Both governments share motives of culling pensioners as covid-19 does; distracting from
incipient collapse of excessive economic debt; establishing greater elite surveillance and
control; and enabling elites to buy and own ever larger sectors of global economic life; in
other words the classic 'NWO' of conspiracy talk.
Half a century ago, Antony Sutton proved that 1940s-1970s USA had been transmitting tech
to the old Soviet Union (often via Israel), to create the 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' the Cold
War was essentially fake, and Putin came out of that, and continues trading favours with the
USA Putin doesn't question 9-11, USA doesn't question false flags in Chechnya etc
Sites like the 'Secret Life of Jews in China' show how European Jews were part of China's
Mao revolution, even becoming politburo members Chabad centres abound in China despite few
nominal Jews there, linking hotlines to Jared Kushner's Chabad centre in DC and 'Putin's
rabbi' Berel Lazar in Moscow
One has to go one level above the US vs China mudslinging, and consider it is all likely
as fake and staged as was US-Soviet rivalry China and the USA may well be working together on
covid
--
The idea that Covid-19 was a bio-weapon deployed in China by the US visitors to the late
2019 military games, was promoted early on by Veterans Today (VT) where Unz's Kevin Barrett
hails from. VT is a website widely-read by world governments, despite its partly kooky and
ridiculous articles about space aliens etc
Gordon Duff, co-chief of VT, said out loud in a radio interview – where he also
outed himself with a chuckle as a 'self-hating Jew' – that 30% of the material on his
site is intentionally false and ridiculous, as the price he must pay for publishing true
'intel drops' without getting shut down / murdered by the US gov't in intel-speak, this is
called 'poisoning the well', you publish the most damning truths on self-discrediting sites
like VT or David Icke, where the typical reader easily dismisses truth because it's published
next to articles about space alien lizards ruling planet earth
@Mustapha Mond Yes, what if the chief objective was not to hurt China by disrupting its
society and economy but to make the whole world angry with China. Ron Unz article is the
voice crying out in the desert which will not stop the tsunami of memes: WuFlu ,
China did it , China must pay for our sufferingWe must punish China.
that has been whipped up from the very beginning and only will be getting loader and
stronger.
Some of the things you list are to benefit the insiders. No little thing that could bring
profit will be left to chance. It is just like when World Trade Center being transferred from
Port Authority before 9/11. Was it critical to the operation? Could they get the terror event
if WTC was not owned by Larry Silverstein? Yes, they could but few extra bucks could have
been made with Larry Silverstein being the front man. Or just when American troops were
entering Bagdad, who and when organized special outfits who systematically were visiting
Bagdad museum and looting it according to the shopping list?
Ron Unz is underestimating their evil and abilities.
@Ozymandias If "they" were going to do such a thing, how would they go about it, and what
would have been their thinking?
Deliberately engineered biological agents can often be detected by careful analysis of the
pathogen's genome. Bioinformatic programs can detect odd sequences that shouldn't belong; the
chances of a purely natural explanation for the inclusion of some sequences are rare, for
instance. Let's say I wanted to create a super virus capable of destroying humanity. One
obvious way to do this would be to take viral sequences from certain dangerous pathogens and
combine them into one. That might do the job, but obviously there is a risk that comes along
with doing with that: current sequencing and bioinformatic techniques may quickly discover
such an act and invite retaliation by the victim. " That shouldn't be there! " If half
of China started dying of a mysterious virus composed of sequences from various unrelated
viruses, then obviously there is an attack underway because the chances of such elements
coming together in nature is very low, practically zero. A response would likely follow in
short order.
Is there a way around this? Maybe.
There are several odd things about Sars2 (Covid-19) that I haven't seen before: 1) it
spreads in contravention to how -- some -- previous viruses we've dealt with in recent memory
have spread. Specifically, there are a higher-than-expected number of cases are transmitted
before the patient become symptomatic with this virus. This is why initial airport screenings
failed to stop the virus from entering the United States, aside from lax screening*. In the
past, most of these viruses like MERS and SARS weren't particularly contagious when the
infected carriers were asymptomatic, so simply checking their body temperature with a
thermometer and following up with contact tracing was enough to stop the spread. 2) unlike
both SARS and MERS, this virus is remarkably contagious for a novel pathogen, even moreso
than the flu 3) this virus may have a very long asymptomatic phase, up to two weeks in some
people. One explanation is that something similar is true of other viruses that cause the
common cold and the flu but we haven't really noticed it before because those viruses are
comparatively less lethal. If you believe in a conspiracy, on the other hand, this would be a
feature deliberately engineered to ensure maximum transmission.
Elements of the conspiracy:
1. This outbreak happened just before Donald Trump's reelection campaign got underway and
during crucial trade negotiations. Maybe they wanted to put pressure on the Chinese
government to increase Trump's chances of getting reelected. His approval ratings according
to 538 have been stuck in the low to mid 40s for essentially his entire presidency. He needs
a consistent approval rating above 47% or so to ensure a high chance of reelection.
2. This happened just after a failed Hong Kong color revolution by youthful protestors.
Many of the signs held by protesters included the kinds of things a boomer FBI agent might
think would curry favor with the 4chan crowd -- pepe the frog, various slogans. It failed, in
part, because that crowd didn't buy it. Hong Kong protestors were relentlessly mocked on some
alt-right websites as morons wanting to deliver their people the "freedom" enjoyed by the
West: dozens of genders, speech laws, feminism The case of a Canadian waxing salon being
forced to wax a male-to-female transgendered person's genitals was prominently used to mock
Hong Kong protesters demanding Western freedom.
Conspiracy:
The CIA may have bred a virus to be easily transmissible but much less lethal than the
original SARS virus that made the headlines years ago. They may have expected the virus to
spread quickly in China and panic the Chinese population, undermining faith in the government
so the CIA could once again try to overthrow their rival. They never expected it to come back
on them.
If one were going to create a viral agent guaranteed to escape detection as an artificial
construction, one might do the following: take a known virus indigenous to the targeted area
and breed it in animals native to the area (bats) so that it spreads undetected until
symptoms present while having a traceable lineage when examined with bioinformatic software /
select it against human tissue samples in vitro so that in infects human cells easily.
The former technique might leave behind a tale tell signature: the virus has a long
incubation time within the host. Why? Well, some animals have lower resting body temperatures
than humans. This can affect which pathogens are able to infect them. Pathogens that have
evolved to replicate at one temperature may not replicate very well under another one.
Animals like opossums and hibernating bats are less likely to die from rabies infection, for
instance, because they have lower body temperatures, among other factors. Humans and dogs are
not so lucky because both have higher body temperatures where the virus can replicate more
easily. It's sort of strange how SARS2 (Covid-19) takes so long to clear in some patients --
up to two weeks or more. Maybe this occurs because, despite being able to easily infect human
cells, it replicates poorly at first because it is adapted to bats, which often have a lower
resting body temperature. Although, it is possible this could occur naturally as well.
The latter can be done by infecting cell cultures in dishes and examining which cultures
became infected and to what degree. This can be done by measuring viral titers -- dilute
extracted cell culture liquid, filter out cells and bacteria, apply diluted mixes to new
cultures, examine results, selected superior viral lines for continued manipulation. There
are lots of ways to set this up. Maybe you tag your viral proteins with a florescent protein
and examine after some period of time; the more virus that is being made, the stronger the
signal. Select that particular culture and continue.
Point: there are lots of ways to do this, some pretty simple (but probably expensive,
dangerous, and time-consuming nonetheless -- which is why dumb Middle Eastern terrorists
haven't tried it so far). The important thing is that such a set up would avoid including
obviously unnatural elements that could never be explained by random chance -- the inclusion
of sequences from other viruses, for example. This might come off looking natural, even if
remaining mysterious to the outside observer.
*The American government was warned about this virus but didn't take it seriously.
Explanation 1: Trump and his advisers are greedy imbeciles (more likely). Explanation 2: the
American government didn't expect this to be a big deal because they created it to be less
lethal than previous viruses, perhaps not understanding that a lower death rate over a larger
population would result in higher casualties (less likely).
Americans arriving at JFK from locked-down Italy are shocked by the lack of US
screening for coronavirus
1) Trump is a loudmouth and a braggart. If he knew ANYTHING about this, he probably would
have let it slip by now. Elements of the British government have had to restrict some
information they share with the Americans for fear that Trump would leak it to his friends
during his then regular discussions with people over unsecured lines. Would the CIA really do
something extraordinary like this without his knowledge?
Points in favor:
1) The UK, a country that often works with the Americans to do nefarious things, didn't
take this very seriously, either. They acted as if they didn't expect this to be a big deal.
Other countries that usually don't work that closely with US intelligence to the same degree,
have taken Covid-19 seriously even if they have failed to contain it. Although, this is
probably wrong. The nations that have dealt best with this are the ones that have had lots of
previous experience with similar viruses and whose populations are naturally more inclined to
work together.
2) The timing and location of the viral outbreak. Isn't Wuhan a major transportation
hub?
One thing I notice is how crisply written this is, compared to the very dense, plodding
style that characterizes much of his previous work
A very good overview of the situation and a thoughtful analysis of the finger pointing
that's going on
Regardless of whether the lock down measures have been an overreaction or not, most
reasonable people will realize that we may never know what might have been, had we not locked
down
Would the health system have been able to cope ?
What would happen when hospitals are overwhelmed by serious respiratory cases ?
China's very forceful reaction now looks absolutely brilliant
That extremely energetic reaction also hints that the Chinese leadership may have
suspected an attack
". ..the current accusations by Trump Administration officials that China had
attempted to minimize or conceal the serious nature of the disease outbreak is so ludicrous
as to defy rationality. "
This assertion is absolutely untrue, as most readers who have followed this story early on
will know. You conspicuously left out of your conspiratorial musings the news of the
"whistleblower" Wi Leniang, the 34-year old ophthalmologist who had worked at Wuhan Central
Hospital, and had already alerted his colleagues late last year about a suspicious viral
outbreak, for which he was subsequently arrested and punished by authorities. Millions of
people in China are familiar with his tragic story – he eventually died.
On January 9 the World Health Organization released the following press statement,
providing sufficient information that would have warranted or obliged the authorities to have
immediately closed the Wuhan airport and train station to prevent the contagious spread of
the virus to other regions of the world through unwittingly infected carriers.
Instead, authorities waited two entire weeks before closing the Wuhan airport, during
which time the virus spread inevitably to other countries through the many international
passenger flights. According to military game theory, such inaction would surely benefit
China, which could better deal with an outbreak, whereas most other countries would suffer
more severely in comparison. For this reason, regardless whether the release of the
presumably engineered virus was released intentionally or accidentally, the Chine government
is culpable for having allowed the pandemic to evolve. So at least in this particular case
the allegations of the Trump administration are correct.
Your narrative omitted these indisputable facts, which you then denigrated as " so
ludicrous as to defy rationality ", yet after a Communist Party meeting in mid-February,
some of those responsible for having minimized or concealed the serious nature of the
outbreak were officially "demoted" (received a slap on the wrist):
Those who praise China's alleged competence in the matter have a dilemma to deal with.
Either the authorities are competent, in which case they effectively waged biological warfare
against the rest of the world (using incompetence as plausible deniability of intent) in
order for their economy to come out ahead, comparatively, in the long run, compared to a
situation where only their own economy would have suffered by effective early containment
measures; or else they were indeed incompetent, that an accidental release from one of their
labs in Wuhan becomes even more plausible than it already is. Either way, the focus of
inquiry must remain on China, rather than conducting an exercise in reflexive exoneration.
Fantastical insinuations pointing the finger elsewhere, for which no strong evidence has been
presented, are just a distraction.
Accidental releases have been known to occur, but apparently only the level-4 lab in Wuhan
was known to have been working on enhancing those bat-based viruses with gain of function
properties and chimeric qualities.
Your entire conjecture about the strong likelihood of US culpability essentially rests
almost entirely on the vague notion of " extreme recklessness ", which in such
dangerous matters, as the release of deadly viruses, appears to be significantly less likely,
from an analytical perspective, than an accidental release from a biological lab in
Wuhan.
While your lengthy article shows the possibility that the virus originated in the US and was
spread intentionally, with a lot of trust developed by our own Dr. Fauci of the NIAID and $37
million in grants (long before Trump) to study bat coronaviruses in collaboration with China,
I think you are missing one important feature.
Trump and his neocon clown car are loathed by the Intelligence Agencies. Unlike Obama, who
loved to have the CIA "playing" in his sanctioned, National Emergencies countries (Yemen,
Libya, Venezuela, Ukraine, Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Burundi), backing
coups in Egypt, Honduras and the big one, Ukraine, and delighting in droning and expanding
Bush's two wars into 7 or 11, depending on how you count, Trump for all his idiotic saber
rattling has started no wars; Bolivia is his only coup, Nicaragua his only war-like National
Emergency. You may have missed the events of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, built on incompetent
spycraft, and an impeachment started by a CIA "whistleblower", but to give Trump credit for
something as devious as an obvious CIA op (by your own speculations) seems disingenuous. Much
more likely the CIA (whose hubris and incompetence rivals Trump's) likely were running this
operation from at least when the first bat coronavirus grants were sent to Wuhan (2011? 2015?
I've read both). My guess is the CIA did not even share their brilliant idea with the
loathsome Trump, as he would have likely squashed it as he finally did with John Bolton's
out-of-control machinations. I think the CIA sees the spectacular failure of their operation
as a chance to embarrass and likely overthrow Trump. If they had destroyed the Chinese
economy, they would have taken full credit, as it is, they look masterful in re-establishing
the Establishment, and ridding themselves of a non-supportive Trump.
Coronavirus catastrophe? Even though the CDC has been accused of exaggerating the number of
deaths from the Coronavirus by allowing doctors to assume , without testing ,someone died
from it, the number of deaths are not alarming . According to the CDC's provisional
statistics posted on April 20,2020 , from February 1 to April 18 ,2020 there were only 15,252
deaths from the Coronavirus out of a total of 603,184 deaths from all causes ,in a US
population of 327,167,434 . For the one week ending April 11 there were 5483 COVID-19 deaths
and for the one week ending April 18th there were only 568 deaths . cdc.gov . Deaths from the
Coronavirus appear to be on the decline in mid-April ,just as they often do in a typical flu
season as Spring returns in the Northern hemisphere. As a number of doctors have observed the
lockdowns, social distancing and unemployment resulting from the draconian measures taken by
Governors across the US are leading to an unprecedented number of cases of depression and
suicides.
It is well established,that people who are depressed end up with many types of illnesses due
to their compromised immune systems .
The tragedy of the Coronavirus pandemic is ,that as more and more circumstantial evidence
comes to light ,it was an engineered crisis or ,as some investigators have termed it ,a
planned-demic see, for example, "How to create a fake pandemic"jamesfetzer.org.
Deep and enduring thanks to Ron Unz and his team for this site, an oasis of common sense in a
desert of nonsense.
Regarding:
"So if American bio warfare analysts were considering a corona virus attack against
China, isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never
significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the
corona virus? Obviously, such an analysis was foolish and mistaken, but would it have
seemed so implausible at the time?"
There might be another possibility. That being that the American plans you outline were
formulated and carried out by the deepest, eternally-entrenched portions of the American
security state and that "senior administration officials" were simply never consulted about
bio warfare efforts against China. Very possibly including those earlier events noted, aimed
at Chinese agricultural interests.
Two birds with one stone would be the result: 1) China is (theoretically) taken down by
orders of magnitude; 2) That usurping outsider, the ever-disruptive President Trump exits in
January, as no incumbent would be judged to have a 2% chance of withstanding the hurricane of
events tied to the pandemic's arrival in America.
All the better, then, to allow Trump and other leading American politicians to
convincingly lead the chorus against China, and all done with never any possibility of a leak
from any political "source" about anything pertaining to the background and planning of the
operation.
Implications of such a possibility are too monstrous to consider, so am certain this
assertion can't be true. Right?
@Hail" this whole thing may be a Chinese Communist Party 'Hoax,' in the sense that
while the 'new' virus is real (there are always 'new viruses'), the reaction was at least
1000x what was necessary to deal " – The reality parsing by the hoaxers always lead
to the discovery of more hoaxes. Check with your guru Kunt Wiitkowski if he was not the one
who advised Chines how to pull off the hoax. Didn't he tell them that only 10,000 would have
die?
@swamped I, too, doubt that Trump would have been aware of what was going on, this would
have been an operation that was kicked off now because if Trump gets re-elected, he'll
hopefully clean house, and all that preparation would have been for nothing.
That having been said what's your explanation why Trump did bring a lot of neocons on
board, who effectively blocked him. If he really wanted to placate the democrats, there would
have surely been hawks who weren't as dangerous as, e.g. Bolton.
@Jim Jatras He said back then he thought that. Hasn't expressed his current view. None of
us knew back then that the US was dumping pure U238 on Yugoslavia making large parts
uninhabitable for a thousand years.
"Checking the Jay Matthews story, I see this: Hundreds of people, most of them workers and
passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different
circumstances."
There is much that Jay Matthews didn't say. Read this:
It is not. Shuanghui International Holdings Limited, now known as W-H Group, is a private
company based in Hong Kong that holds a majority of shares in China's largest meat processor,
Shuanghui Foods. The fact that it is based in Hong Kong does not make it "Chinese" in any
sense. It is a totally foreign-owned company. The ownership of W-H is mostly American, not
Chinese, and Smithfield was involved with the company. It was a complicated kind of reverse
takeover, but nothing much of substance changed.
It is the largest pork company in the world, number one in China, the U.S. and much of
Europe.
And the effect of the swine flu was to shift production and sales from Shuanghui China to
Smithfield in the US.
China's sweeping Belt and Road Initiative has threatened to reorient global trade around
an interconnected Eurasian landmass
By the time of the Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 AD (which surely inspired Aurelius's
stoicism, and may have killed Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) direct trading
links between China and Rome had been established. On March 2019 Italy was the first G-7
country in Europe to become a member in the Chinese Belt and Road project . Did that
globalisation reproduced the same pandemic-friendly environment that had decimated Ancient
Rome, which rivaled China in population at the time of the Roman diplomatic mission from
Marcus Aurelius to the Han Court in 166 AD?
Given these dramatic Chinese actions and the international headlines that they
generated, the current accusations by Trump Administration officials that China had
attempted to minimize or conceal the serious nature of the disease outbreak is so ludicrous
as to defy rationality.
Hardly, because intent is irrelevant. Not discharging their duty to inform the
international community in a timely manner of COVID-19 being extremely infectious and not
massively exaggerating the infection to death ratio and duping the WHO and modelers like
Imperial College into accepting terrifying but bogus infection to death ratios of 1 to 3 0r
4% as Dr. John Ioannidis says in an update ( HERE ) means quite simply that China must never ever
be relied on again. Next time, and there probably is going to be another such novel
coronavirus at some point in the future, China might overcompensate and downplay something
extremely dangerous.
Lieber had had decades of close research ties with China, holding joint appointments and
receiving substantial funding for his work. But now he was accused of financial reporting
violations in the disclosure portions of his government grant applications -- the most
obscure sort of offense -- and on the basis of those accusations, he was seized by the FBI
in an early-morning raid on his Cambridge home and dragged off in shackles, potentially
facing decades of federal imprisonment.
AS I understand it the case against him was precipitated by indications that he was taking
money from the Chinese Government and lying to Federal investigators about it while getting
$18 million from the Defence Department. He was not a virologist, unlike professor Montagnier
who co-discovered HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and received a Nobel prize. He says the
SARS-CoV-2 virus is an artificial laboratory created pathogen, which has fragments
of–surprise, surprise–HIV in it. He wants his expertise to be relevant to what
everyone is currently obsessed with. But life in this crazy old world is not like that.
Unless you are Ioannidis.
In the early days of the CoV-19 discussion here, a solid body of commenters suggested the
strong likelihood of being a US biological attack on China on the basis of its propensity for
aggression towards its designated "enemies" by the only method of causing substantial damage
to a powerful rival's economy under the cover of plausible deniability. Considering the
inevitable demise of the US as the only superpower, it is not beyond the ruling cabal's remit
to conceive such schemes to thwart the Chinese economic ascendancy. Yes, the initial
suspicions of foul-play were reputational (the US habit of resorting to heinous crimes
against other nations) and strategically connected as well (the only way to damage a strong
opponent short of an all-out nuclear conflagration with uncertain outcome ).
On the other hand, there were a series of "coincidences" widely discussed here that
started giving credence to a full-blown plan of biological attack aimed at the Chinese
population by engineering a virus capable to discriminating the target victims. This has been
partialled discounted, but not completely until the full sequence of CoV-19 evolution is
mapped. Meanwhile, the official narrative has switched to the rejection of the theory of a
man-made virus to the "accidental" release by the Wuhan lab, in my view to deflect any effort
to research the source of the virus and reinforce the tale of Chinese negligence. But the
trouble is that there are many virologists now busy debunking that too and asserting that
CoV-19 is unnatural.
I have come across a report on Australian Media Centre where the evolutionary virologist
Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney reveals that "the level of genome sequence
divergence between CoV-19 and the closest known bat relative in nature is equivalent to 50
years of natural evolutionary change, which suggests that CoV-19 is a synthetic creation in a
lab either by insertion of suitable genetic material or, alternatively, growing different
cultures in a laboratory with cells with the human ACE2 receptor. This process involves the
gradual adaptations to bind the virus with the human receptor by "training" the virus to seek
an efficient method of binding by natural random mutations until one progeny hits the
jackpot. Although this process does not require insertions by extraneous genetic material
(not strict engineering) because the virus itself produces the required adaptations, it is
notheless a human interference with the natural world by breeding something for a, obviously,
nefarious purpose. The great advantage of this process is to disguise the fact that it is a
contrived lab creation.
There are many historically significant events the truth of which will remain hidden for a
time. But this case involves a strong player (China) and it will – as wel las many
outraged scientists worldwide – leave no stone unturned to reveal the unfathomable
depth of the US's den of iniquity.
But as this epidemic is shaping up, it is likely that the estimated death toll will be
comparable to that of the seasonal flu in a bad year.
That's not correct -- at all. Our hospital system in major cities like New York are NEVER
brought to the brink with seasonal flu. The likely number of deaths from Covid-19 has already
exceeded the number of deaths estimated from seasonal flu over the past 6 of 10 years -- in
just over six weeks. And that's under unprecedented quarantine.
Quoted numbers of deaths are as unreliable as the number of infections.
Numbers do not need to be 100% "reliable" in this case. Many of those who have died have
done so in hospital where they have been tested. We can also measure the baseline death rate
in NYC. When we do, we find a tremendous daily increase far and above anything caused since
9/11. Clearly, there is something going around that city that is killing lots of people. No
flu in recent memory has done that.
Cause of death as stated in a death certificate is often, and even usually, wrong, and
during an epidemic caused by a virus that induces respiratory difficulty it is likely that
virtually all deaths due to respiratory dysfunction will be attributed to the virus without
confirmatory evidence.
This kind of flawed logic could be used to dismiss virtually any epidemic. At some point
the number of deaths is so high that no counter argument could reasonably be believed. We've
already reached that point. There are only so many respiratory deaths that occur over any
time period. Even if we moved 100% from other categories over to Covid-19 we would still find
peculiarities in the data.
Deaths in New York City Are More Than Double the Usual Total
Furthermore, virtually all deaths of persons testing positive for covid19 will be
attributed to the virus even though the deceased may have had multiple other diseases, any
one of which could have been the cause of death.
That's certainly only going to be minor contributory factor. Huge numbers of people above
the average baseline don't just magically drop dead from other causes all at the same time.
If someone gets Covid-19 and dies, it is reasonable to assume it was the proximate cause in
the majority of cases. Only so many people die from X at any one time. If twice that number
start dying all at the same time, there is a problem.
"Herd immunity is likely now widespread, so the thing should fizzle out soon, with or
without continued population incarceration."
Please do not comment on things you clearly don't understand. It is estimated that no more
than a few percent of the American population has been exposed to Sars2 (Covid-19). Herd
immunity requires some high multiple of that number. We are nowhere near herd immunity. You
don't even know what that means in all likelihood.
Professor Luc Montagnier, Who Won Nobel Prize For Codiscovering AIDS Virus, has said
COVID-19's HIV "strains" could be put there in the virus's RNA only by human expert
intervention in a laboratory.
The excerpt from the French TV program where he said it can be found on YouTube.
What's "funny" is the way most USA, or, how should we say?, USA-close, media reports the
fact, starting from misleading headers (headers which, as usual for the USA and, how should
we say?, USA-close media, are all clones, with tiny changes from one to the other).
Professor Luc Montagnier, Who Won Nobel Prize For Codiscovering AIDS Virus, Says
Coronavirus Was Man-Made In Wuhan Lab.
This, when the professor clearly stated he is only a scientist, and he only wanted to
relate facts that many other research groups have found but have been left unsaid due
to enormous pressure, and he stated equally clearly that it is not his knowledge, duty,
competence, will, to give opinions on who did it, where, why.
The average IQ of China's top 5,000 political leaders is 140
Have not most of the all-time Evil Greats been brilliant? We have them, Russia has them.
How is China having them unique? If Ron's suspicions over this are close to true and even if
not, we already have volumes of evidence in so many other situations proving we have
brilliant evil-doers aplenty on the U.S. side in any case.
The rest of your points are agreeable to me. But every time I've hung my hat on the
'brilliant' high-I.Q.-types I'm always disappointed. They test well but in command of things
they bring us wars and now this. The medical people are high-I.Q. as hell, they've vacuumed
up half our GDP and research dollars for 100 years now and it's their job to have had this in
hand. Like our high-I.Q. generals and admirals the past 75 years, they're losing another war
for us. The high IQ sorts in finance are another group. We're a nation in serious decline and
from where I sit, the high-IQs are merely managing said decline.
High I.Q.s just don't cut it from where I sit. Could be jealousy. My IQ is some where
between a pineapple and radish, a yam maybe..
@no bat soup for you There is so much talk about Chinese will eat just about anything but
there is usually no focus on other people in the world for doing similar things.
The Chinese eat bamboo rats, the French and Belgiums eat rats too – besides snails.
Some people in Asian countries eat cats and dogs, the Swiss by the thousands, eat cats and
dogs. The members of Explorers' Club in New York eat just about anything as well. But to top
it all, there is even have a cannibal club in LA that specializes in eating human flesh.
Home page: Specializing in the preparation of human meat, Cannibal Club brings the cutting
edge of experimental cuisine to the refined palates of L.A.'s cultural elite. Our master
chefs hail from around the world for the opportunity to practice their craft free of
compromise and unbounded by convention.
Our exclusive clientele includes noted filmmakers, intellectuals, and celebrities who have
embraced the Enlightenment ideals of free expression and rationalism. On event nights,
avant-garde performance artists, celebrated literary figures, and ground-breaking musicians
entertain our guests.
At Cannibal Club, we celebrate artistic excellence as the natural and inevitable expression
of the unbridled human spirit.
Brilliant work I have been researching everything I can find, while placing the totality of
events in the context of US IC/DS ops The "botched biowarfare" attack fits the data the best
by far. Thanks for this report.
Those who praise China's alleged competence in the matter have a dilemma to deal with.
Either the authorities are competent
There is no "dilemma." They detected an outbreak and dealt with it competently. Your
government run by a reality show host didn't. It's as simple as that. You can deflect all you
want, but it really boils down to that.
in which case they effectively waged biological warfare against the rest of the
world
Nothing the Chinese did forced other countries to keep their borders open. Several
countries like Israel closed them before Donald Trump did. Nothing China did forced Trump
into not taking this seriously until it was too late.
"It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear," Trump told
attendees at an African American History Month reception in the White House Cabinet Room. The
World Health Organization says the virus has "pandemic potential" and medical experts have
warned it will spread in the US. The President added that "from our shores, you know, it
could get worse before it gets better. Could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody
really knows."
US 'wasted' months before preparing for coronavirus pandemic
A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies
largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks,
mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
2 Phylogenetic studies have been done to suggest America was the source of the virus.
This study suggests that Type A strain the earliest type of the SARS-COV2, was mostly
found in the US. While in China it was mostly type B, another strain mutated from Type A. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/07/2004999117
This study suggests there are 2 sources of spread, however in countries from Brazil,
Italy, Australia, Sweden and South Korea , some cases are tie to the US cluster but not to
China. So this suggest some cases were directly spread from the US. Japan commented it was
from the US because they had the virus from traveling to Hawaii and they never went to
China. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.09.034942v1
here in this video presentation some arguments that supports the US had this virus in
between August 2019 and Jan 2020.
A possible scenario is they developed a few Sars-Cov2 bio-weapon strains the B and C
strains from the A strain. They wanted to find a vaccine for it before they can be deployed,
but in developing the vaccine they leaked the A type out into the US. They had to make a
decision, let the public know about it or cover it up and release the B and C strain without
the vaccine. I think they did the latter.
But you be the judge, we need more transparency from the CDC and more research before any
conclusions can be made.
@dimples Of course I completely failed to mention in the above comment that it's the War
on Terror that's coming to a close. Russia Russia Russia! has been an attempt to fill the gap
but its not going anywhere due to opposition from the Euros.
The slow US reaction to the virus could therefore seen not as incompetence but a
deliberate process of sowing more destruction, thus more China-hate later, ie its part of the
plot. Also the virus is not too deadly, just enough to create a big scare and over-reaction
amongst the authorities and public.
@Mustapha Mond Yes IF there is a conspiracy that would be it. I have also come to this
conclusion in other comments but you have described it much better than myself.
@Christopher Marlowe The flying drones over pig farms is nonsense from Metallicman, who
is a controlled-opp deep asset that speaks 80-90% truth and 10-20% lies.
I tried looking into the flying drones a bit, but couldn't confirm any of it.
@Ayatollah Smith I want to add Trump's early response to the corona virus shows Trumps
and American duplicity. I used to watch a TV show 'Lie to me' with actor Tim Roth. Anyway
people give away all kind of knowledge when they communicate. So my take that Trump's call
that it's like a bad flu or it's nothing to worry about, reveals knowledge that it is
American attack and that he (Trump) worries if it gets 'out' that the trump administration is
culpable, so he tries to downplay corona virus and his own role in it!
"
Who's a seventy years old track record of extreme malfeasance against China ?
Who's a track record of using bioweapons on friends and foe, including its own citizens
?
Who's a track record of committing FF , including many cases against China ?
[TAM, Tibet, Xinjiang, HK, Mh370, INdon genocide 1965,
..]
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Occams Razor .
There's a serial arsonist in town, he has been caught setting fire to John's house dozens
of times in the past few months.
JOhn's house caught fire last night
Who's the first suspect to haul in for interrogation ?
Elementary, Watson.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Last but not least.
Mathematics doesnt cheat
Ian Flaming's fundamental law of prob .
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice ..
How many 'coincidences' occur in the Wuhan caper. ?
-- -- -- -- -- -- –
Conclusion.
Whichever way you look at it,
Logic, Circumstantial evidences and Mathematics all points to We know who.
@swamped The high casualties in the NATO countries are due to their own reluctance to do
anything for so long. Look at the total number that have been infected and the current new
infection rates in South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. South Korea prepared better than
anybody but was cursed with a Christian sect that also had churches in Wuhan. They stayed
close together for a long time in their churches to increase community feeling and, since God
was looking after their health, were reluctant to admit to being ill. Yet South Korea shits
on every NATO country in fighting COVID-19. So do Australia and New Zealand in spite of their
extremely poor use of the 2 months warning provided by China and the DNA sequence of the
virus provided by China on 12th of January, 2020. As soon as the Chinese methods were
applied, the same success with humans was achieved. Now the NATO countries are aping China
too, they are starting to have the same human success. They will continue with success as
long as they continue aping. The Yanks are losers like other NATO members because they didn't
bother to ape until they were heavily infected. I stress that Australia and New Zealand did
very badly (only about 10 times better than the USA but 4 times worse than China who we
should have beaten easily) because they were slow to ape. We only look wonderful when
compared with NATO. Actually, we also do about 5 times better than Iran too. Even with
sanctions crippling their response, Iran has done twice as well as the US losers. When it
becomes a matter of drug and vaccine development where the USA has real strengths, I expect
the USA to do as well as China but it's a low tech battle right now and the Yank boys haven't
done well against the Chinese or Iranian men in that competition. Who would expect them to?
[email protected]
@Godfree Roberts The reasons you enumerate apply to individual people, they don't apply
to governments. It is true that a rational individual should prefer truth because truth is
mostly self-sufficient while lies need to be reasserted permanently. The rationality of truth
vs lies is very much like the rationality of well-designed software vs badly designed
software. Good design as truth demands less maintenance. The problem is that it doesn't keep
programmers busy and it doesn't justify budgets. A government, the "deep state" moreover,
need to keep maintenance costs high to perpetrate themselves.
The crucial question very few seem to be asking is the question of motive. Many commenters
here project on the Chinese their own traits. The problem is that what can be said of Western
elites can't be said of Chinese elites because the Chinese have different motives altogether.
There's one motive they didn't have, to provoke a crisis. Viruses don't hop out of labs by
accident any more than gold hops out of Fort Knox. One has to bring them out and the Chinese
had no reason to do it.
Regarding the US on the other hand, though I disagree with Ron Unz's assertion that this
particular US administration is more reckless and less competent than those that preceded it,
seen from abroad it just appears as less hypocrite, to keep the story short I'll just say
that hubris tends to cloud judgment and that desperate times ask for desperate measures.
Sounds entirely plausible, and, to be parsimonious, even probable. The last element to make
it feasible was leaving Trump entirely out of the loop. He still won't have a clue if he's
standing in the dock at the Hague years from now. Everything he will ever know about this
fiasco will be from light reading material they allow him in his cell.
The Deep State made the right bet when they decided late in the race to hack the election
in favor of the Donald rather than the Queen of Warmongers. Nobody would ever expect the
self-described peace candidate to escalate the ongoing hybrid wars to germ warfare. (Though
maybe the use of chemical weapons by America's proxies in Syria should have been a hint.) Now
the world knows, the Satanists in charge of Washington will stop at nothing.
@Mustapha Mond I 100% agree with you, Mustapha Mond. Much as I admire Ron for in so many
ways for his other topnotch contributions and running this site, one of the very best news
sites IMO, the evidence at hand does not suggest incompetence on the part of the US
government and the deep state behind it: it's definitely an Atlanticist plandemic. Godfree
Roberts showed that many steps the Trump administration took the past two years were meant to
pave the way for enabling the government to play the "we didn't see this coming" card, just
as with 9/11:
At the same time, the US Health Dept was running Crimson Contagion in the first half of
2019, simulating a deadly flu pandemic starting in China (as I recall). Even the US Naval War
College ran a pandemic simulation causing respiratory failure:
Everyone knows about Event 201 at this point, in October 2019, sponsored by the Gates
Foundation, Bloomberg via Johns Hopkins, and the World Economic Forum, simulating
specifically a coronavirus pandemic. What are the odds that the organizers of Event 201 were
just lucky in picking a coronavirus, knowing there are 150 other virus families, besides
coronaviruses (e.g. rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, etc.):
That's a 1/151 chance! Lucky bastards! Present at Event 201 were recycled players involved
in the 9/11 anthrax attack simulation 'Dark Winter', such as Thomas Inglesby, as documented
by Whitney Webb. Not to mention the 2011 movie 'Contagion', involving a flu-like pandemic
originating in China (Hong Kong),transmitted from bats to humans in an unsanitary
environment!!! Another financial reset was also long overdue, as Greg Mannarino and others
have pointed out: the coronavirus cover was too perfect of a tool for deflecting the guilt
from the Fed and the banksters; killing many birds with one stone, the virus is also a 2)
powerful psy-op hurting China's image in the world, 3) further delivering a strong blow to
its export-driven economy; 4) it sets the stage for the cashless society ("dirty bills not
accepted here!"), the advent of digital currencies and 5) top-down surveillance.
So either the China's leadership had suddenly gone insane, or they regarded this new
virus as an absolutely deadly national threat, one that needed to be controlled at any
possible cost.
Those are not the only choices, Ron.
Here is another one for you:
– CCP knew this virus had a low fatality rate;
– CCP were aware of recent (DoD iirc) readiness assessments noting that US had
specific vulnerability to a pandemic;
– CCP was aware that the captive Chinese people were alrady subject to 'herd
control' infrastructure whereas the US population still enjoyed human rights;
– CCP decided to sow confusion about the infection. ("We can do this, but their
society will fall apart Comrades!")
– The West initially chose to ignore this. Then the Corporate Press "International"
decided to put psyops pressure to force US and UK to do a 180 u-turn. This due to a single
lousy non-peer-reviewed paper at the Imperial College.
Some other considerations that can inform the above are (a) the attitude of CCP towards
'world government' institutions, and (b) their relationship with WHO, in particular.
So option 3, Mr. Unz:
CCP used the (controlled?) exposure of a virus ("17") to put into motion a psychological
operation to sow confusion and panic in US (based on our own published findings on readiness)
that seems to have other participants in the Globalist crowd institutions. The primary target
was USA, but NATO as well.
Btw, Mr. Unz, that ex-CIA psyops writer you host on your site (Giraldi) keeps censoring my
comments on his propaganda pieces. Why do allow them a platform and also permit them to
censor rebuttals? Hopefully you will prevent UNZ Review from becoming UNZ Pravda.
Ron, you need to rewrite this essay. If minor websites carry articles blaming China the
presumption is these articles are falsifications seeded by Trump, but if wildly
sensationalist Chinese propaganda pieces come from unknown sources like OldMicrobiologist or
Metallicman then they're reliable? Wow is all I can say.
Suggesting Lieber's creds set him above espionage and bio sabotage against the United
States is the best you can do? Your overwrought defense of this man is telling, given his
"assistants" are provably Chinese bio espionage agents and he secretly agreed to take a post
as director of the Wuhan lab.
In the same vein, did you know that the Johns Hopkins' inflammatory "dashboard" world map
seen and used everywhere was developed by a 30-year-old Chinese "student," Ensheng Dong,
working for Johns Hopkins? Using Edward Tufte's "Lie Factor" for evaluating the exaggeration
of a graphical representation relative to the underlying data puts the Johns Hopkins map so
far in the lie category as to warrant an FBI investigation of Johns Hopkins and its employees
for causing irreparable economic and societal harm to the United States. In an NPR puff piece
gushing over the map's creators, "all sitting around a table sipping lattes," Dong is quoted
as saying it's like showing blood everywhere. That's quite accurate from the proud creator
considering the irreparable harm that map has been in large part responsible for
creating.
One correction for the beginning of the article. The 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia
wasn't directed against Bosnian Serbs. That was the 1995 campaign and had nothing to do with
the Chinese Embassy being hit. It seems that you simply got the 1995 NATO bombing of Bosnian
Serbs (entirely in Bosnia) and the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro –
when the Chinese (brand new) embassy was hit) mixed up.
Interesting thing – the Japanese current embassy is on the exact grounds where the
Chinese one used to be. I find some funny symbolism in that.
@Jim Jatras Yep. Unz lost me with that comment. And very sloppy by his high standards.
The NATO 1999 bombings were to support the Albanians in Kosovo – not the Bosnian
muslims. I suggest Ron does some homework on the whole Yugo Wars period. Maybe even back to
ottoman times.
@Anonymous I think that he obviously got the two NATO bombing campaigns mixed up.
NATO bombed Bosnian Serbs (entirely in Bosnia) in 1995 to protect its interests under the
guise of protecting Bosnian muslims. This is what Unz supports.
NATO bombed Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 when the Chinese embassy was hit.
Let's not make the comments spiral off into the Serbia/NATO conflict details. The point of
the entire mention of the bombing is that there is sincere indication that the US hit the
Chinese embassy on purpose. That much was clear since day 1 as the embassy was a brand new
building and you couldn't mistake it for a previous occupant or anything of the sort. It was
a message to China.
@swamped While I don't agree that China would have done this on purpose as I am generally
doubtful of all similar theories, it would nonetheless also explain why China banned all
movement to the rest of China from Wuhan while not only allowing the Wuhan infected to
infiltrate the West but actually vociferously and ubiquitously complaining about Western
racists for thinking about not allowing them in.
I think it was Zero-hedge that said the professor lied about his Chinese funding, making
him in effect an agent of China.
You need to understand the system in place. The book Three Felonies a Day outlines
the how, but does't really cover the why, and there lies the devil in the details. When they
want you, all they have to do is pour over your life' details, and they will find
something nefarious as a tool to put you in stern and squeeze.
There is million different details and forms to fill out when securing foreign funds for a
university; most of the rules and the process is ad hoc, and more often a lot of it is
ignored, and of course – certain countries have certain rules. The good professor
didn't do anything that was completely out of the norm. It's nearly impossible in this
society to be crime free – by design.
Think of all the people near Trump during his Russian Collusion investigation that went to
jail or indicted – most if not all were dragged in on the many petty illegalities that
plague our legal system for a reason. Illegalities that on a normal day most people ignore
until it is politically expedient for the authorities to use them. This is how a Police State operates.
You don't have to believe me; just ask Tommy Chong, Martha Stewart, etc .
Et tu, Brute? You're worried more about the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and Bosnian Muslims
than the destruction of that great Christian Serbia by the Clintons & cabal shame!
According to Matthews the infamous massacre had likely never happened
In the mid 1990s, I worked with a man of Chinese ancestry in New York named Henry Sun.
Henry had been in Beijing at Tiananmen Square. He had been shot. What happened afterward was
that he was treated by doctors for the bullet wound, and they had coded the illness as some
sort of cancer, so that it would not be obvious that he was a dissident and so be
arrested.
Now, I cannot say that someone was killed. I can say that personal testament to me from a
credible witness indicates bullets were flying, and one struck him. Maybe that's not a
massacre, by whatever means that word is defined. But it wasn't a Chinese tea ceremony.
I am a retired attorney and I am heartened to see that some attorneys, namely David Helm in
Michigan and Lindy Urso in Connecticut ,are beginning to file lawsuits to revoke unlawful and
unconstitutional Executive"Coronavirus" Orders issued by the Governors of the States of
Michigan and Connecticut. I have long maintained that almost every Executive Order issued by
State Governors are revocable as they are based on a lie, promoted by the WHO and the CDC
,that there is a Coronavirus pandemic and an international public health emergency .
everything China have and everything USA has been lost was done with the complicity and
personal gain of 99% of the usa elite,political class,including CIA,etc and even the likes of
Michael Jordan.
Whoever decides to believe this embarrassingly transparent anti-China propaganda is
stupidly siding with Soros and his Global Deep State golems. This will be the latest IQ test
for those who struggled with all the previous ones (incubator babies, Iraqi WMDs, Quaddafi's
Viagra, Hillary's electability, Russiagate etc.).
@Jim Christian High IQ is just an entry level requirement. They have 300,000 folks with
160 IQ, so 140 is not that exceptional.
New recruits' first posting is 5 years in the poorest village in the country. They
'graduate' after they've raised everyone's incomes by 50%. Then the career path gets really
steep.
The people who are visible to us have been so thoroughly scrutinized that it's almost
painful to contemplate. Here's Zhao Bing Bing[1], a mid-level Liaoning[2] Province official
talking about her mid-level, provincial promotion to Daniel Bell:
[MORE]
I was promoted in 2004 through my department's internal competition (30 percent on
written exam results, 30 percent on interviews and public speaking, 30 percent on public
opinion of my work and 10 percent on education, seniority and my current position) and
became the youngest deputy division chief. In 2009, Liaoning Province (pop. 44 million),
announced in the national media an open selection of officials. Sixty candidates met the
qualifications, the top five of whom were invited for further interviews. Based on their
test scores (40 percent) and interview results (60 percent), the top three were then
appraised. The Liaoning Province Organizational Department sent four appraisers who spent a
whole day checking my previous records. Eighty of my colleagues were asked to
vote–more than thirty of whom were asked to talk with the appraisers about my merits
and shortcomings–and they submitted the appraisal result to the provincial Standing
Committee of the CCP for review.
In principle, the person who scored the highest and whose appraisals were not
problematic would be promoted. However, because my university major, work experience and
previous performance were the best fit for the position, I was finally appointed department
chief of the Liaoning Provincial Foreign Affairs Office even though my overall score was
second best [the government discriminates positively in promoting women–ed]. Before
the official appointment there was a seven-day public notice period during which anybody
could report to the organization department concerns about my promotion. I didn't spend any
money during my three promotions; all I did was study and work hard and do my best to be a
good person.
In 2013, thanks to an exchange program, I worked temporarily in the CCP International
Department. The system of temporary exchanges offers opportunities to learn about different
issues in different regions and areas like government sectors and SOEs. In a famous quote
Chairman Mao said, "Once the political lines have been clearly defined the decisive factor
will be the cadres [trained specialists]." So the CCP highly values organizational
construction and the selection and appointment of specialists. There is a special
department managing this work, The Organization Department, established in 1924 and Mao was
its first leader..The department is mainly responsible for the macro management of the
leaders and the staff (team building), including the management system, regulations and
laws, human resource system reforms -- planning, research and direction, as well as
proposing suggestions on the leadership change and the (re)appointment of cadres. In
addition, it has the responsibilities of training and supervising cadres. The cadre
selection criteria are: a person must have 'both ability and moral integrity and the latter
should be prioritized'. The evaluation of moral integrity focuses mostly on loyalty to the
Party, service to the people, self-discipline and integrity. Based on different levels and
positions, the emphases of evaluation are also different. For intermediate and senior
officials, emphasis is on their persistence in faith and ideals, political stance and
coordination with the central Party. High-level cadres are measured against great
politicians and, among them, experience in multiple positions is very important.
Fans follow the careers of one-thousand top politicians online[3] and they are impressive,
as President Donald Trump[4] observed, "Their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. It's
like taking the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school
football team. That's the difference between China's leaders and our leaders".
Today's leaders began their careers in the 1960s as manual laborers in dirt-poor villages
and won promotions by raising village incomes by fifty percent. As they rose, they spent
sabbaticals on the lake-studded campus of The Academy of Governance where they met the
world's leading thinkers, critiqued legislation and earned PhDs. They now run huge provinces,
Fortune 500 corporations, universities, space programs and, of course, government departments
and the Peoples Daily reords their progress under headlines like, "How Rural Poverty Criteria
Affects Mayoral Promotions."

[1] Daniel Bell and Zhao Bing Bing, The China Model.
[2] Liaoning (pop. 45 million) is a northeastern Chinese province bordering North Korea and
the Yellow Sea.
[3] The Committee https://macropolo.org/the-committee/
[4] Donald Trump says Tom Brady and the Patriots are just like China. Boston.com . By Steve Silva July 6, 2015
@anon There is on little problem with your hasbara. Those great strategic planners in
China of yours forgot about one little thing that the West has 100% dominance over China in
the soft power of creating global narratives with which it will turn China into a pariah
nation in the eyes of everybody, a nation that everybody hates.
I personally think this was either the result of the so-called "wet-markets" in China
– long known to be the primary source of the annual flu epidemics
I've been going to markets in Asia all my adult life and suddenly they are both the
source of flu epidemics and "wet".
Unless it is raining the second one makes everything seem so ridiculous.
(why the heck haven't they been shut down??)
Because people would starve?
Try throwing some blame(buying food makes you sick!) at your big box corporate food
monopolies and try to shut them down – take a guess at what might happen?
@Tor597 Except, it would be helpful if Ron placed somewhere prominantly on the home page
that he is a card-carrying member of the "Resistance" against Trump, which this article
finally reveals full blast.
Too much attention here on things which could have other explanations and too little
attention on the real puzzles and on those things which science can definitely settle.
(1) It is solvable, and it will be solved, where and when were the first cases of the
infection among the general public outside China. Almost everything else depends on that.
(2) It is almost inconceivable that American agencies who had been plotting this would run it
by Trump for approval first. It seems much more likely that the anonymously sourced report
that our agencies knew about this in November is some kind of ass-covering to shift blame to
Trump, whom these same agencies have been trying to take down for 4 years; which doesn't help
us discern whether they were also responsible for the pathogen in the first place, it's
consistent either way.
(3) The genome has been out there long enough, with no one pointing out inconsistencies that
have held up to scrutiny, that "wild", "escaped from a lab", and "was evolved in a lab" all
look much more likely than "was designed directly by RNA editing".
(4) China's behavior is much more consistent with accidental than with intentional release.
They've obviously lied about the death toll and didn't feel obliged to prevent their people
from traveling abroad, but ordinary Communist wickedness explains that.
(5) Travel between China and Iran and Italy explains the early prevalence there sufficiently,
presuming genomic data we don't yet have will confirm this.
Conclusion: Too early to get locked in to origin theories, the usual suspects are taking
advantage in the same way they would whether or not it was an intentional release. THIS WILL
ALL BE CLARIFIED BY TESTING OF OLD TISSUE SAMPLES so I'm going to wait and see what those
results say. The reports of early COVID outside China have not been confirmed, but come from
researchers WITH REAL NAMES, so it WILL get figured out one way or the other and I'm holding
my fire until then.
P.S. Lieber is clearly a weird loose end that needs to be tied up. Is anyone trying to
interview him?
Let's see. Here in the USA covid hit later, at a time when people have the lowest seasonal
vitamin D (a major immune system hormone, with the population being 90%+ deficient). A
fraction of the population being hit particularly hard has dark skin, further reducing the
vit. D levels. That same fraction is over-represented among those who have metabolic syndrome
(diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and the like), and that is related to all manners of immune
system degradation. Then we have a medical system which looks only for profitable magic
bullets, instead of trying a variety of cheap methods, each of which can increase the
recovery rate by tens of percent.
Finally we have lots and lots of nursing homes, unlike China. And a majority (more than
50%) of deaths comes from those places in Europe. Data from Italy suggests that privately run
nursing homes are correlated with increased mortality, although it could just be extreme air
pollution and/or other environmental factors. Data from Scandinavia suggest that nursing home
size matters too, the smaller the better.
Why should one be surprised that this thing is hitting harder in the West?
R.Unz:"By any reasonable measure, the response to this global health crisis by China and most
East Asian countries has been absolutely exemplary,"
Your transparent, never ending shilling for the murderous CCP is becoming more and more
obvious, at least to myself. I'm starting to believe that this site is nothing more than a
thinly disguised Chinese government propaganda outlet.
As in other recent threads, you fully endorse the CCP's criminal actions: lockdowns of
[reportedly] 700 million Chinese citizens; literal lockdowns with citizens locked, even
having their front doors welded shut by the "authorities",for weeks. The idiotic [unless
deliberate], Chinese "solution" has probably already killed 1000's, if not 10's or 100's of
thousands there via starvation alone, and the economic devastation caused in China will
likely kill millions more Chinese in the years to come.
But that is all "exemplary" in your opinion, right? "To make an omelette you have to break
a few eggs", right?
R.Unz:"Everyone knows that America's ruling elites are criminal, crazy, and also extremely
incompetent."
Of course! "Everyone knows" that! [I wish].
What you [and some of them] don't know [or won't admit to themselves] is that this is no
less true of the Chinese government, or of any other government, for that matter.
Reality fact: "Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft
[taxes], and counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at
their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply
because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
Which means that believing/trusting official stories and figures doled out by competing
criminal power structures, about _anything_, let alone actually supporting/promoting their
idiotic and criminal acts [eg the Chinese, US and elsewhere lockdowns"], is a mugs game for
useful idiots, nothing more. And yet, that is what you continue to consistently indulge
yourself in here.
Thanks for the excellent wrapup, Ron Unz. Your cui bono approach works like a
super-chloroquine dose to zap the anti-China virus now spreading from U.S. legacy media. What
passes for news media here in Europe is no better. But apparently there are islands of sanity
outside the Western imperial heartland. If you read French, you may find it encouraging to
read some real journalism on the source of the carona plandemic here from darkest Africa:
The same mendacious MSM that for three years howled at the moon that Putin had stolen the
2016 election for Trump is now barking like a mad dog about Covid being some kind of 21st
Century version of the Black Death.
Never mind that to get to the current figure of around 42,000 deaths, the CDC has been
juicing the total number of dead by adding in those who died from a heart attack or stroke or
some other medical complication, there was fear to be spread and by G-d, they were doing to
scare the hell out of Americans, just like they did in the years after the Israeli
masterminded 9/11 false flag.
Like Mr. Atzmon has pointed out, the 2017-18 flu season was much deadlier, yet there was
no lock-downs, quarantines and a complete gutting of the US–and the
worlds–economy.
The following may sound like a description of the current Novel Coronavirus pandemic:
"The season began with an increase of illness in November; high activity occurred during
January and February, and then illness continued through the end of March." You guessed
right, this is not the description of the current global Corona pandemic but actually how
CNN described the outbreak of influenza in America in September 2018.
Does it take a genius to figure out that the American 2017-18 influenza outbreak was pretty
'similar' to the current Novel Coronavirus epidemic?
The first question that comes to mind is why didn't America lock itself down amidst
its catastrophic 2017-18 influenza as it has now? One may wonder why the CDC didn't
react to the 'severity' of the outbreak that was at least three times as lethal as the
current Novel Coronavirus health crisis?
The Deep State thugs who are actually in charge of the US have some devious plan in mind
with this Covid hysteria.
Maybe they wanted to see how quickly Americans would give up their Bill of Rights. Or maybe
they wanted to cover up the multi-trillion dollar bailout of those TBTF banks that we bailed
out in 2009?
Or maybe this the test run for their next batch of weaponized flu, the one that will get
many killed and have people lining up for Mr. Know-it-all Bill Gates RFID chipped flu
vaccine.
The actual reason for the bombing was meant to cover-up NATO war crimes that were taking
place almost daily, and the Chinese listening post located in the corner of the embassy
that was bombed were intercepting orders issued by NATO which clearly revealed those
crimes. The Chinese needed to be silenced and their operations ended, no matter the
fallout.
My immediate gut reaction upon seeing the cartoon character version of a Muslim terrorist,
Osama Bin Laden, was this is a fake designed to play on US xenophobia. He was obviously made
for TV audiences.
I assumed after Skripal and the endless Assad gas arracks, that our ruling elite have just
become lazy and couldn't even be bothered to create a plausible story to cover up their
crimes, because the public is so stupid. How long did it take to determine it was a fraud, a
weekend of casual reading?
Putting a mob style hit on Venezuala's President confirmed that they could care less what
the Hoi Poloi think of them.
If this is a US caper, it is the either the most ridicoulosly stupid one imaginable, or
the most well thought out one in a very long time.
I had not connected the intelligence reports (recently spilled out of the Deep State) with
the obvious. Thanks, Ron, for pointing out that it's hard to imagine how the
NSA/CIA/whoever-collecting-part-of-the-85bln-we-spend-on-intelligence could report on this in
November when the sources from which they would have derived that information (the Chinese
government itself) didn't know until December 31st, or shortly before that date when they
reported to the WHO.
Someone, in covering up for blowing the response to the virus, really dropped the
ball.
Scientists from the UK have a recent paper on the mutations of Corona-19.
Here is part of the abstract:
In a phylogenetic network analysis of 160 complete human severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) genomes, we find three central variants distinguished
by amino acid changes, which we have named A, B, and C, with A being the ancestral type
according to the bat outgroup coronavirus. The A and C types are found in significant
proportions outside East Asia, that is, in Europeans and Americans. In contrast, the B type
is the most common type in East Asia, and its ancestral genome appears not to have spread
outside East Asia without first mutating into derived B types, pointing to founder effects
or immunological or environmental resistance against this type outside Asia.
I think these findings throw lots of water on any bioweapon claims. But others may differ
in their opinions.
It definitely does indicate that the virus did not come from a Wuhan lab or the Wuhan wet
market. It originated in Southern China where most people knowledgeable about bat viruses
expect bat viruses to originate.
you are mistakenly assuming and given for granted that this epidemic is much more lethat than
others,that the total closure is beneficial and not harmfull,that is the solution ,you are
deciding who to try to save regardless of the millions of victims of this economic
harakiri,and there are many epidemiologists who disagree with you.
One more thought: The US has over 25 bio-warfare labs that are located next door to Russia
and China that have been called out before for their sloppy or maybe deliberate release of
pathogens.
The WHO too only had high praises for China's transparency and efficiency.
Would that be the same WHO that said chinese disease was not communicable between humans
and that we should keep letting infected people into the country? That's who we should trust?
Or should we trust the communist government that shut down domestic travel to and from Wuhan,
because they were trying to protect the rest of THEIR country, while still allowing
international travel, because they wanted the rest of the planet infected?
This virus may or may not have been engineered, and may have come from the lab or the wet
market. These things are debatable. But what is absolutely not debatable is that once the
virus was loose, China choose to DELIBERATELY infect the rest of the world. These are people
whose numbers we should trust?
1918-1919 "Spanish" Flu Pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Hypotheses_about_the_source
Despite the name the most likely theory is that this pathogen, an H1N1 virus, originated in
China and mutated to become highly lethal in Europe or European-settled countries as a result
of WW I. S
Taking a scientific approach to American deep state biowarfare attack on China's Wuhan
district is telling in so far as Americans literally control tertiary education throughout
the entire world via funding in the trillions.
If the deep state wants to eliminate academics it can do so with merely a phone call to
Law Enforcement branches at a moments notice so that research & hard drives can be
confiscated and destroyed early on in investigations.
Once the media & journalistic propaganda arms of state get hold of the official
talking points to be disseminated the end game zero sum result is usually exactly what the
state arms of propaganda have wanted all along.
To be frank, I am an Intel thinker and am well aware of the details of the CIA led
biowarfare attack on China, but attaining the required data in empirical form via Requests
for Information from government is NOT going to ever yield synthesis required for scientific
peer-review research.
Bottom line is that the CIA had one CIA Agent/Operative deploy the nCov-19 in late October
as the USA Military contingent was departing Wuhan district. The operative deployed the
bioweapon via glass ampule smashed onto the ground to the entrance way for the Wuhan
restaurant district near to the Wuhan Wet Market. Moreover, his CIA handler gave him the
protocol & instruction on deployment of the bioweapon back in the United States of
America long before the actual deployment.
Lastly, Fort Detrick scientists developed the Chimera super-spreading viral pathogenicity
with a herd of pigs in the USA before hand in around 2012. Logistics of setting up the Wuhan
BSL-4 laboratory scientists for the false flag event of biowarfare were dependent upon
academic arrests before hand so that deflection & impression management for governance
would clearly be able to utilize plausible deniability where required.
In sum, as one acutely aware of the bioterrorism that the United States of America has
unleashed on the world covertly I, for one, can assure all that the US Deep State knowingly
unleashed nCov-19 to undermine China's meteoric rise in the financial world due to America's
incompetence writ large across the board since the Great Financial Crisis revealed that
America is swimming naked and their Emperor is wearing no clothes to reveal his
infinitesimally small Johnson in contradistinction to President Johnson's Johnson which was
historically infamous.
P.S. The USA Deep State can get in line to lick my balls in deference to my superior
intellect.
First, can researchers take a look at this virus and determine with certainty whether it was
artificially concocted in a lab or if it simply evolved out in the open? If so then that
would help focus the discussion. If not then things will remain opaque.
The Iranian government outbreak is strange but then people congregating with each other, like
at ski resorts, pass it to each other. If it was a US biowarfare attack then how did US
agents get access to them? They wouldn't have the cover of some delegation to an event such
as military games. But what was the effect on Iran? Zero. Some top leaders got sick and some
older members died. They have replacements and the government continues without missing a
beat. This idea that an ideal bioweapon would be highly contagious with a low lethal rate so
as to tie up resources and halt the economy sounds good but in practice it's hardly more than
harassment. It slowed up the Chinese economy but that's a temporary blip and they're back
now. The US and other countries are hardest hit economically. Many businesses will never
recover. This is self-inflicted. The lethality of this virus looks to be increasingly lower
and lower each time one looks despite all the Chicken Littles who were screaming that the sky
was about to fall. Was there a purpose for that?
The Wuhan outbreak coincided with the military games but things happen at random times as it
is. People were crowded in there. The various plagues and viruses have been going from East
to West for a very long time now. The problem is that currently there are many who have an
interest in lying and misdirecting things which further muddy the waters.
@Emslander What is crazy and funny is that supposed trump supporters thinks China would
shrink it's economy by 6.8% for the first quarter of 2020 to help Trump's opposition.
The same supposed supporters don't even realized that the best way for trump to win the
next election is to stamp out this damn virus asap. Denying is not going to work. Testing n
quarantine combo is what would work. It is why trump changed his tune.
Who's a track record of extreme malfeasance against China, since ww2 ?
1950 Korean war,
1959 Tibet,
1962 Indo./sino war,
1965 [[[CIA/MI5]]] INdon genocide on ethnic Chinese.
1989 TAM,
1998 Indon pogrom , mass rapes on ethnic Chinese
1999 BOmbing of Chinese embassy in ex Yugo,
2001 Hainan spy plane, Chinese pilot died.
2003 SARS1,
2008 Tibet riots,
2009 Xinjiang bloodbath,
2013 Bird flu H7N9 , Asia pivot
2014 Xinjiang, HK, Mh370, bubonic plague, Ebola, Dengue,
2018 bird flu, H7N9
2019 HK, Xinjiang, swine flu, army worms,
2020 SARS2, H5N1, locusts .
And there were also the proxy-war in Ukraine and the refugee crisis: the latter at
minimum a fallout of US-Israeli wars in the Middle East and the Zionist assault against
Libya; yet not unlikely itself a direct assault against Europe. And not only Willy Wimmer,
closest adviser to our old chancellor Helmut Kohl, strongly suspected as much already back
in 2015.
Thanks for that context. It is exactly what I am trying to call attention to the whole
time. Regardless, how much reality there is to Corona, my issue is the overall timing in the
geopolitical context, with Europe being torn apart between the Angloamericans and China /
Russia on the other side. That was the agenda anyway, so how is it possible that this threat
appears at this very moment?
It can be said that had Corona not happened, the powers to be would have needed to invent
it.
Else, in skimming the comments, I find that until now (with some 140 comments) there are
hardly any discussions, but everyone pushing their own narratives.
Mabe, it is possible to get away from the question, how and if Corona is deadly to the
context that is developing. I have to admit that I did not take Corona serious enough from
the start, not as an illness, but as a fundamental threat to our societies. In that sense, it
is indeed a war.
@hs4691506 There was also some evidence that Chinese researchers under his supervision
had smuggled samples of his work out of their labs and back to China. Chinese researchers,
working in the USA and Canada, have a history of smuggling viral and other lab samples back
ti China. It's part of a much larger pattern of Chinese espionage and intellectual theft.
A search on DuckDuckGo.Com using the
following search string, "chinese scientists smuggling viral samples", turns up a lot of
useful information on smuggling of viral and other biological samples. (I no longer trust
Google. DuckDuckGo is less censored and does not track its users)
Similar searches using the strings "chinese intellectual theft" and "chinese scientific
espionage" will provide a broader picture.
BTW, I believe that Israel and the USA have both been conducting research into potential
bio-weapons. I would not be surprised if the Chinese got a leg up on such research by
espionage targeting both countries. Of the three, the USA's research is probably the most
benign/least vicious. I suspect that the Israelis have been ruthlessly researching and
developing biological weapons, just as they did nuclear and chemical weapons. The Chinese
have probably been doing bio-weapons research just as ruthlessly. The biggest concern with
the Chinese is that, compared against Israel and the USA, their lab safety, security and
containment procedures are lax to an obscenely dangerous degree. One can only hope that after
the Wuhan outbreak, this attitude, if not the Chinese bio-weapons research, will change.
This is a model opening argument for an ICC bill of indictment against the CIA command
structure. The bird's-eye view is exactly right – all of CIA's gravest crimes have been
most evident not at the detailed technical level but at the organizational level. CIA can
shred all the MIPRs and RFPs and after-action reports they want, but the proof of all CIA
crime is public information about the actions of CIA focal points in government.
(Incidentally, one example you don't mention is official obstruction, including CDC, of Helen
Chu's coronavirus testing. That would have shown that COVID-19 was far too widespread for a
single introduction from Wuhan. Another example is the series of airport clusterfucks that
muddled US haplotypes when Chinese researchers noted that they point to US origins.)
The presumption of incompetence probably has its own CIA memo analogous to 1035-960. If
they can get you to tacitly assume that CIA works in the national interest, but ineptly, then
you misinterpret everything. CIA is a criminal enterprise with ongoing profit centers that
fund opportunistic crimes from asset-stripping to aggression.
When you're using a banned biological weapon, domestic casualties confer important
benefits:
First, damage to the US can help obfuscate attribution. Philip Giraldi articulates that
line in its clearest form, Why would the government shoot itself in the foot like that?
Second, US contagion offers a pretext for domestic repression: house arrest; overt contact
chaining illegally undertaken by NSA for decades; forcible derogation of your rights of
assembly and association.
Third, US economic devastation is used as a pretext for looting the fisc on an
unprecedented scale. Blackrock now performs central planning on behalf of the Fed, forcing
the state to guarantee a overwhelming volume of worthless and fraudulent securities.
Illegal warfare that is difficult to attribute has one intractable problem. It's a sneak
attack in breach of the Hague Convention Relative to the Opening of Hostilities. That
convention was the legal justification for the first use of nuclear weapons. So if Russia and
China nuke the beltway into a sinkhole of molten basalt, that's only fair.
If it is established that COVID-19 is a banned biological weapon, this is self-evidently
the gravest crime in world history. The attack manifestly constituted aggression with an
absolutely indiscriminate weapon. It defies considerations of proportionality with unknown
global effects. The Nazi regime was extirpated for much less.
The evidence is very close to probative, and mounting.
There is the question of natural vs artificial origin of the novel corona virus, and from my
layman's research and considerations it seems increasingly that an artificial origin is
extremely likely. The pertinent technology is now widely available, there has been a massive
ongoing effort in the field since the 2nd WW, and many researchers and knowledgeable people
are drawing the conclusion of likely artificial origin: So, for example, George Webb's work,
or the Czech scientist Dr.Sona Pekova, PhD, who near the end of the video linked to describes
the virus in such a way as to indicate a great likelihood of artificial creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmL7okhbVzU&feature=youtu.be
There are many possible perpetrators. And a few likely suspects.
The ultimate health implications of the new virus are impossible to say with certainty at
this point: For example, Paul Craig Roberts' website's latest title is "Bad News From the
Virus if Correct", with the point being that there are now known to be a lot of different
strains with presumably different potential for harm, but there may be many more not
recognized.
There are additional contextual considerations that will have consequences which are
anyone's guess. So for example, last year saw many widespread agricultural catastrophes and
difficulties which were usually weather related. If the weather continues to be
uncooperative, in conjunction with food production and transportation problems related to the
virus, in conjunction with the African Swine Flu disaster, then human health and food
security, and thus health, on a large scale may be affected.
Another contextual consideration is the recent rapid and accelerating deployment of 5G
technology, which many are concerned can make life more vulnerable to health problems. It may
just be coincidental, but worth noting, that tiny San Marino, enclosed by Italy, boasted of
being the European leader in the rollout of 5G technology, and is now the world leader in
corona virus deaths per million, by a long shot (San Marino with 1179 deaths per million as
of today compared to second place Spain with 455 per million, and yes, Spain has been among
the most ambitious countries in rolling out 5G in many cities. And Wuhan was the very poster
'child' of 5G. Just saying.)
Shutting down the world economy seems rather dire. But it may just be the impetus for a
radical rethink of the basic structure and design of the global economic system.
The global paradigm which in economic terms might be described as globalism, or 'when
private corporations rule the world', or neo-liberalism, or plutocracy running amuck, or
grasping for 'global government', or the aftermath of the chimera of 'full spectrum
domination', or in the wreckage of Rockefeller's and Kissinger's et al wet dream, or
democracy spurned, is now inescapably obviously retarded, dysfunctional: a fundamental design
flaw if you want humanity and Earth to thrive. In short, the culture of deception.
Someone has suggested as symptomatic of our present predicament a cartoon featuring Fauci
with his bio-weapon declaring this as 'the age of the Ork', with crazed Bill Gates as Gollum
wielding a syringe and gleefully chortling 'my precious!'.
The local, one's back yard, the decentralized, the careful common sense community, the
regional, and the actually democratic national, with the public interest protected by the
public, and much honest discourse, as one basic design alternative.
Useful article by Unz which connects the dots well. One important dot which is missing,
though, in his analysis of the psywar promoting propaganda that the virus leaked out of a lab
in Wuhan, and is a Chinese biowarfare agent, is that this psywar originated with an israeli
military-intelligence operative. One dany shoham. This individual was also deeply involved in
the "iraq has wmds" psywar operation at the beginning of the century. More on that dot and
how it connects to the others, later.
A few days ago I wrote this about how the israeloamericans are framing their psywar
campaign against China:
The israeloamericans are working on a several level strategy which includes back-ups in my
opinion. The israeloamericans are trying to cover all the bases at once.
So they claim China created the virus in a lab, in case it gets out it was lab created,
meaning israel or the usa created it in a lab. The israeloamericans claim the virus leaked
out of the Wuhan lab in case evidence is found that israeloamerica deliberately planted the
virus in Wuhan or it spread from a source in the usa through some other vector. The
israeloamericans claim China mislead the world about the virus so people wont notice the
reality that China has successfully thwarted the virus, while trump & co. have continued
making it worse. The claptrap about China under reporting victims is a variation of the
latter tactic. And so on.
Is what is being reported in the following article "damage control"?
Neither 'lab' nor 'wet market'? Covid-19 outbreak started months EARLIER and NOT in Wuhan,
ongoing Cambridge study indicates
Another vector in the israeloamerican preemptive strategy? Now that research is showing
the virus may have been infecting people earlier and neither a market in Wuhan, or even Wuhan
itself, may be where it originated?
With regard to western response to the pandemic, especially american, the delay in
israel's trump colonial regime's containment response to the virus tells me they deliberately
wanted the virus to spread across the country and cause the ruckus it is now causing. The
question is why israel had them do this.*
* Compare the israeli response, IE: strong proactive containment strategy, to the weak
responses in most zionazi colonies. It is clear there is an actual strategy underlying this
difference. And it entails more than israel being sacrosanct.
Keep in mind that trump, and his corrupt regime, are israel's property. More specifically,
they tepresent the israeli likud freakshow (netanyahoo and related subhuman garbage). Most of
what trump says and the policies his regime follow, originate from tel aviv. Trump's cowardly
"blame China" campaign, duplicated by the zionazi western media (commonly misnamed the msm)
is israeli psywar.
@onebornfree See my post at 135 regarding three different variants: A, B and C. The most
prevalent in Asia is B and the most prevalent variants in Europe and the US are A and C. So
it could also be that A and C variants are more virulent than B.
"By any reasonable measure, the response to this global health crisis by China and most East
Asian countries has been absolutely exemplary, while that of many Western countries has been
equally disastrous. Maintaining reasonable public health has been a basic function of
governments since the days of the city-states of Sumeria, and the sheer and total
incompetence of America and most of its European vassals has been breathtaking. If the
Western media attempts to pretend otherwise, it will permanently forfeit whatever remaining
international credibility it still possesses."
So saying, Ron Unz forfeits whatever credibility he might have retained by now
acknowledging the data emerged from "the fog of war" he found himself pronouncing in a month
or more ago.
Like Unz, and after examining the relevant Chinese data, epidemiologists Knut Wittkowski(
almost a month ago) saluted the Asian approach to handling the novel virus threat.
Unlike Unz, Wittkowski revealed that what was salutary was the Chinese government's
allowing the populace to gain herd immunity before instituting any lockdown measures.
(rendering the lockdown measures a mystery from a scientific point of view).
So, and according to Wittkowski- a man with credentials relevant to this story, yet
completely ignored by Unz' investigative article- the incompetence of Western governments
cited by Unz is the clean reverse of what he claims: it is the incompetence of ignoring what
the competent Chinese did not ignore, namely, the sound scientific counsel to allow the virus
to spread, granting the herd immunity to the populace which protects the elderly and fragile
self-quarantining until that immunity is gained.
1) Virus is US bioweapon attack on China
2) Virus is China's own bioweapon accident
3) Virus happened in nature, and everybody is trying to profit off the crisis or
contain/direct the damage to their own interests.
That's 66% percent chance it's an accident.
Government in power were sane enough to avoid nuclear war as recently as 40 years ago. Why
would they be crazier today? Biowarfare is Mutually Assured Destruction, too. If people can
model this away, please provide a link.
@swamped You are cognitively blind to the obvious -- the ZUSA has become ZUSSR (minus
excellent Soviet educational system). Before lamenting "Chinese despots" and "their contempt
for civil liberties," think for a moment about the fate of Assange (why he is in a
high-security prison?) and about the Banksters on the march (the financialization of the US
economy).
What is the state of "liberties" in the US and the UK? -- Gay parades. Quantitative
Easings for eternity.
Why some 1000 American military bases encircle the globe? Why 25 American biofare
laboratories reside in Europe? You are cheerleading for Cheneys and Rubins (read General
Smedley Butler). https://fas.org/man/smedley.htm http://armswatch.com/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk_
Libya used to be a prosperous state with universal healthcare and excellent educational
opportunities. Enter the "non-totalitarian" and "non-despotic" deciders to bring in
"liberties." First, the US/NATO expropriated Libyan gold, and then a regular business of
"liberation" took place: since the "non-totalitarian" and "non-despotic" liberators entered
Libya, a civil war commenced, the healthcare and educational systems have collapsed and slave
markets sprang.
Or perhaps you are proud of freedom of information in the US?
This important story was immediately summarized in many of the world's other most
prestigious publications, but encountered an absolute wall of silence in our own
country.
How much trillions have been disappeared by the Pentagon? -- 21 (twenty-one). A lot
of money that could be used for initiating great national projects of all kinds.
Why the US industries have been relocated to China? -- Because this is what US corporations
demanded and got. What deciders want, they get. Read General Smedley Butler, again.
For many weeks President Trump and his political allies had regularly dismissed or
minimized this terrible health threat, and suddenly now faced with such a manifest
disaster, they have naturally begun seeking other culprits to blame.
I'm a little worried about The Unz Review. This pandemic is already being used to consolidate
the economy and The Powers That Be are likely to use it to settle scores and purge
dissident voices.
TruthDig is down and other media is likely to go down soon as ad revenue collapses. I
would have advised ad revenue from foreign sources like Aeroflot (and others outside the U.S.
Oligarchy), but airlines are collapsing and international travel is likely to be down for a
while.
Maybe just open a Patreon Account and put a link in the sidebar.
It may be a good time to be extra cautious and gird your loins as they say.
Whatever anyone may make of Unz's assessment, I think everyone not insane or evil or
mindlessly jingoistic should agree with this: "Everyone knows that America's ruling elites
are criminal, crazy, and also extremely incompetent."
By the way – I hope Unz has changed his mind about the bombing of Serbia. Anytime
Neocons assert the need to use violence to help Moslems, the reasonable man smells not a rat,
but a million putrid rats.
I would not be surprised if the Chinese got a leg up on such research by espionage
targeting both countries. [SIC]
Of the three, the USA's research is probably the most benign/least vicious [
SIC ]
ROFLAMO
How fucking old are you kid ?
Back to your Harry Potter forchrissake
This is an adult site.
Do you want me to inform your mom ?
@Tor597 Correct. The Elites of the Anglo-Zionist Empire will get richer from all this,
while the white American middle and working classes will get poorer.
Much the same will happen in the UK and France and other European nations.
This and many other analyses focus primarily on governments, USA government, Chinese
communistic government etc. and their past misadventures as proofs for their involvement or
not involvement in the current disaster. I would like to see at least one extensive analyse
of possible involvement of the nongovernment governments. Their interests and gains from this
situation. Regards!
@denk Not the "war crimes" bit again. Look, the whole operation was one big war crime,
and that according to the US Secretary of State. Same with Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq --
overthrow of another state for no compelling reason. So what? War is war, and China can
either participate or not. If it participate, it can expect to become part of the general
destruction.
Analogy -- if somebody is in your house and gets violent, that's a crime. You are legally
able to protect yourself. If the person starts to run, you can't shoot she/he/it because
she/he/it is no longer a threat. Sure, the other she/he/it started the crime, but that
doesn't mean you can commit a crime of your own (shooting somebody when she/he/it isn't an
immediate threat). Should she/he/it turn around and start returning fire, well, it just might
be that she/he/it is legally doing so.
So enough of this "you stepped on a crack and so you've transgressed the law in one
particular, so you are absolutely condemned" stuff. You want to play that game, people get
tired of it, and it has a bad endgame. Try playing it on COVID-19. COVID-19 might listen to
you and depart. Go, use your moral authority and save us all.
Since the Israeli masterminded 9/11 false flag, the MSM has told us a gazillion lies about
what DID NOT happen that day.
When those lies started losing luster, we were told Bin Laden was killed, but they offered no
proof, other than "Trust Us.'
Then we started getting lies about ISIS, DAESH, al Nusra etc, that they were even worse
than al CIA Duh, when in fact, they were started, funded, paid, protected and give air cover
by the US/Israel and the Kingdom of Head Choppers.
Now the same MSM is braying that Covid will be the end of the world, unless we give up our
freedoms?
Bull. We're being lied to again and the sad part is, many are falling for this latest line
of horse apples.
In Coronavirus We Trust: Medical Surveillance State For A Gov That's Experimented On
You 239 Times
When are people going to realize that the mandatory vaccine is ready NOW – Gates,
Fauci, Davos, the oligarchs, and the usual suspects just needed to lay the groundwork. It's
ready to go now. Doesn't take much of a gedanken experiment to see the end-game here.
@utu "Yes, what if the chief objective was not to hurt China by disrupting its society
and economy but to make the whole world angry with China."
If the planning was like 9/11, then both of these objectives would have been carefully
scrutinized and maximized.
Bear in mind something, please: who says these bastards are finished unleashing designer
bugs?
Would it not be wisest for these evil geniuses to keep the bugs coming, intensifying the
impact so that the continuously simmering anger of the increasingly desperate masses can be
directed to boil over at the Chinese menace when the 'elites' deem it necessary and proper.
And with exploding unemployment numbers, especially among the young, and no real short term
job or career prospects, these psychopathic 'elites' have a ready-made source for boots on
the ground, should that be mandated.
Of course, I hope all this turns out to not be the case. But if 9/11 was any indication,
these bastards will be brazen and shamelessly murderous.
@Max Powers When you said that Ron Unz lost you with his defense of NATO in the
unnecessary Serbian war, I hope that you read the rest of the article rather than stopping
there. I, too, smelled a Bill Clinton obfuscation at the time, as I always do when any US
president sends our troops to war. I'm a little surprised that Mr. Unz didn't.
However, I respect his honesty, and he more than redeemed himself in the rest of his
well-researched and well-written article. It did much to bolster my belief that the
CIA/Neocons are behind it. Although, discounting the unfairly derided Beltway outsider Mr.
Trump, I've never considered the likes of such people as West Point grad SOS Pompeo as being
incompetent. To paraphrase the former CIA head: "we lie, we cheat, we steal."
But America and several European countries avoiding adopting these same early measures
such as widespread testing, quarantine, and contact-tracing, and have paid a terrible price
for their insouciance.
For someone ordinarily quite careful in your use of terminology, you conflate the term
quarantine with lockdown. This is usually being done these days in the media to make a
lockdown seem less unreasonable to the insouciant public. Properly a quarantine is the
isolation of the sick to prevent the spread of contagion to the healthy public. What we have
are lockdowns, restricting the free movement of the healthy population. These have been
resorted to out of the desire "to do something," but unfortunately as you must know, there is
absolutely no empirical evidence that lockdowns do any good when all is said and done, and
they do considerable economic harm. Sweden used a relaxed social distancing approach without
a lockdown, and their mortality rate is currently less than that of most countries that
resorting to this authoritarian approach.
@Quintus "Another financial reset was also long overdue, as Greg Mannarino and others
have pointed out: the coronavirus cover was too perfect of a tool for deflecting the guilt
from the Fed and the banksters; killing many birds with one stone, the virus is also a 2)
powerful psy-op hurting China's image in the world, 3) further delivering a strong blow to
its export-driven economy; 4) it sets the stage for the cashless society ("dirty bills not
accepted here!"), the advent of digital currencies and 5) top-down surveillance."
Exactly!
This planned-demic is like a Timex watch for the PTB: the gift that keeps on giving.
You are spot-on when you say that digital currencies and top-down surveillance will be
enabled by this oh-so-convenient viral pandemic.
Like I said, it's a neoliberal zionist-neocon elitist's wet dream come true, maybe even
more than 9/11 was.
I guess we all get to watch, wait and see what happens next .
One thing I have been waiting for is confirmation that HIV is somehow involved in the virus,
making it a chimera and tipping the scale towards bioweapon.
@anon If Trump was in on it, he didn't do much of a job making himself a hero, several
missteps are noticeable in the view of 20/20 hindsight, even if he intentionally wanted to
crash the economy he would have scripted it better.
@MLK Unz.com seems to be less a blog than an online asylum; Ron and most of the
KrazyKommentariat have really flipped their tinfoil Trilbys this time. This site is worse
than Infowars is reputed to be–yet utterly without the entertainment value. You wonder
why Pat Buchanan, Steve Sailer and Bertie Woostershire continue to post on this site. And,
yes, why I bother to comment.
@Tor597 "Zerohedge used to be libertarian and antiestablishment but something changed and
they are now right wing neocons."
Their true colors are emerging for all to see.
I recognized early on what exactly Zerohedge was about: sayanim-directed, intelligently
controlled opposition. Very intelligently controlled, I should say.
Or as I call it, "Zio-hedge".
The trick is to give lots of good analysis and establish credibility, and then on the
absolutely critical issues, subtly reinforce the neocon narrative. Then, slowly over time,
not so subtly. Then, when the moment is ripe, openly and strongly support the neocon
narrative. Again, a very intelligent and effective technique.
Sadly, we are now at the point of "openly" reinforcing the neocon narrative ..
Ron,
Your article is very good! Thank you for shedding some light on this issue
I would like to summarize a rebuttal to some of the points expressed in this article
However, your chart depicting America and China economic trends is statistically
misleading
America started from a much higher bar than China, and it is harder for richer countries
to grow. Furthermore, an additional dollar in per capita GDP for America is a less % growth
than it would be for China.
Here is the GDP per capita growth from the World Bank for America vs China.
Hardly, what your graph shows at all. In fact, this shows America adding more in Per
capita GDP in real terms than China over the last thirty years.
It seems the issue is that you are thinking that China's exponential growth will continue
till the point where it strongly surpasses the USA, like the Coronavirus's growth, but
countries don't work like that. Unless you want to believe there was some policy reason for
why Japan went from 10% to 1% growth in ten years.
Second, with respect to the domestic impoverishment of America, I think you are mistaken
here. Most of those who are impoverished in America are immigrants and Black people, one
group because of their recent arrival and location in America's most expensive cities. The
other group because of their lack of time preference, so they don't save.
Additionally, How did China identify the virus so quickly? It is fairly hard to tell, even
from those who died. According your own article, China shut down when they had 11 deaths, and
sequenced the genome when they had even less. That has never happened before, and I feel that
is suspicious to me. The offical Chinese narrative is that the Wuhan Goverment dropped the
ball, so how did they catch the disease so early?
An article by Mr. Unz is always worth the wait and then the read, no matter if I agree a
100%, 60%, or even just 20% with what has been written.
A real delight, and a sort of Christmasy feeling. Which is a very important psychological
boost for the likes of me in such weird, weird times. Thanks!
The Winnipeg lab lead scientist, a Dr Plummer, dropped dead in Nigeria in early March.
He more than likely added the HIV 1 content to the Wu V to allow it to spread since he had
the MERS variant from 2014 on.
His lab then had Wuhan Scientists escorted out by RCMP last summer.
No info as to why was offered, and Plummer was buddies with the Harvard prof, and both were
recipients of Epstien the rapists financial support.
Ron always goes to the edge, but never ever steps off!!
Epstein should be brought up, he gave many millions to the Harvard and MIT people for virus
development!! Cui bono Ron, cui bono, by deception, make war!!!
Not sure what to make of Mr. Unz's piece here -- there's a lot of room for any number of
suspects to emerge as the guilty party here
One of the earliest questions I had was just how did this virus get into Iran -- which
naturally begs the question of who has the most visible and ongoing hatred of Iran -- other
than israel -- and their stooge, the United States.
The Newsweek article cited here about the class action lawsuits even mentions one of the
plaintiff attorneys: "But Klayman claimed he has "whistleblowers with firsthand knowledge" of
China's involvement in the viral outbreak who are currently residing in Israel and the United
States and who can help substantiate this charge." So just who is it among 'whistleblowers'
that reside in israel and in the United States (likely dual citizenship folks) -- other than
israeli nationals?
And, from this article: "But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the
global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit,
with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its
officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior.
" Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant
human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant
outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have
America assassinating Iran's top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks
later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly
new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual
possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?"
Even allowing for Iran's involvement by the chinese in its BRI -- how can anyone explain
the virus so quickly targeting the elites in Iran's ruling class -- certainly they don't hang
around with the chinese in Iran or elsewhere, do they?
@Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist Your list is too small. I laugh at these comments
regarding China's lies and crimes. Americans are surely the most gullible people on the
planet. They know their corrupt government steals and lies to them daily yet they can still
be manipulated to jump on the bandwagon of blame and hate towards anyone at anytime with a
few inciteful articles from the media.
let me add to your list [MORE]
MLK
JFK
Ruby
USS Liberty
911
Venezuela
Honduras
Haiiti
Hiroshima
Vietnam
Syria
Palestine
Russia
Ukraine
Libya
Epstein
Afghanistan
32 Trillion dollars missing from the pentagone
All Presidential Elections
Hiding their own crimes against humanity, their government drug trade/sex trade/ chemical
and biowarfare against poor countries.
The US of Israel so exceptional.
@Mustapha Mond Agreed . Like 9/11 there is plenty of evidence in the predictive
programming/revelation of the method/social conditioning that the Coronavirus pandemic was
many years in the making see, for example : "WTF? Olympic Opening Ceremony 2012-NHS" YouTube
. Yes, the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony revealed part of the plot of the
Coronavirus plandemic. I was expecting that something like this was going to happen ,but
figured the cabal/cult/globalists/freemasons wouldn't try to pull it off until Americans were
disarmed but , when you have total control of the media , it is easy to create hysteria and
brainwash the public into believing that the Coronavirus, which is probably no more than the
flu ,is the plague and will wipeout mankind unless everyone is locked-down . As another
commenter has noted ,they probably could not have pulled off the international Coronavirus
psyop 10 to 20 years ago because they did not have control and ownership of the worldwide
massmedia . septemberclues.info
has a good, short essay on "The central role of the news media on 9/11." Unless you stop
relying on news from NPR, MSNBC, New York Times , Washington Post, Fox News , CBS , NBC
,etc,etc you will remain brainwashed and unable to understand that we are living through a
planned-demic with a frightening agenda .
@anon "Please do not comment on things you clearly don't understand. It is estimated that
no more than a few percent of the American population has been exposed to Sars2 (Covid-19)."
The key word is "estimated". No one knows (not even you) the actual number of exposed
Americans to the Wuhan virus. There have been some small random samples done by
Dr.Bhattacharya that indicate that there is actually a large number of Americans that have
been infected but are asymptomatic and that the final mortality rate will be closer to the
annual flu or 0.1% to 0.2% instead of the guesstimate of 3%. The early studies are too small
to think they are representative of the nation but the results indicate that larger studies
are necessary in order to support nationwide policies, which are currently being made on
hunches not science. About 60,000 to 80,000 died of the flu during the 2017 season when
vaccines were available, so a large number of deaths during the flu season are not unusual
and never required closing down the economy.
[MORE]
Gov. Cuomo was screaming at the top of his lungs that he needed tens of thousands of
ventilators, thousands are now sitting in his warehouses unused. So much for estimates. Most
of the early estimates were wrong by exaggerating the death rate, which turned out to be only
a guess rather than based upon science.
The CDC has been derelict in its duties over the years and has been giving poor advice.
There are other experts in the field that have alternative views that are being ignored or
dismissed and should at least be considered.
@Ayatollah Smith I have been reading much about Covid-19, but am waiting for anyone, in
or out of government, trying to blame China and/or exonerate Uncle Sam to deal with a
particular point that anyone can easily appreciate using only a timeline:
The US needs to answer this question: HOW could US 'intelligence sources' possibly have
known in November – or even October – of a potential pandemic of COVID-19 that
would erupt – specifically in Wuhan – two months later? (Or that was already
erupting in Wuhan at the time, unbeknownst to the Chinese?). I believe the entire world
would demand the answer to this.
So far, nothing. No refutation, no rationalization, just silence. Like WTC-7, is this
Achilles' heel from which the Establishment can only limp away?
I don't know who, what, when, where, or why this infection(s) began. But I'm certain that
anyone dodging that particular question wants me not to.
In 2016, when I finally cancelled by NYT subscription, I was asked why I was doing so. I
explained that I didn't like having my intelligence systematically insulted.
Like, I think, most UR readers, I'm game for pretty much anything as a general
proposition.
But poor Ron couldn't make it more than 100 words into a droning 7,400 words with
discrediting himself.
When CIA whacked JFK, the whole world outside the US iron curtain knew, but too bad. When CIA
blew up OKC, the whole world knew, but hey, it's their business. When CIA knocked down the
WTC, on the second try, and blew up the Pentagon a bit to start a war, the whole world knew,
but Russia was tits-up, unable to do anything about it.
This is different. CIA's illegal germ warfare is a maleficium, in legal doctrine going
back to Grotius. CIA wronged the whole world, and the whole world has a joint obligation to
hold CIA responsible. Russia and China made a missile gap for real, so now they can do
it.
This is war. This is the very beginning of the world war that will end the CIA regime:
@Anon One problem with the chart that can be fixed to make it more representative is that
the two countries should start from the same base of comparison. If you use two different
bases, then you get the wrong comparison.
For instance, if you measured the US from China's base in 1980, the US added 40k in per
capita gdp in the 40 years, reflecting a 4000% increase from China base in contrast to the
1400% increase that China had.
If you use the same base, then America is what looks like a superior country.
@antitermite Unbelievable. A truly gifted researcher destroyed on the totally idiotic
charges:
Charles M. Lieber (born 1959) is an American chemist and pioneer in nanoscience and
nanotechnology. In 2011, Lieber was named by Thomson Reuters as the leading chemist in the
world for the decade 2000-2010 based on the impact of his scientific publications. He is
known for his contributions to the synthesis, assembly and characterization of nanoscale
materials and nanodevices, the application of nanoelectronic devices in biology, and as a
mentor to numerous leaders in nanoscience.
Awards:
Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (2001)
MRS [Material Research Society] Medal (2002)
ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2004)
NBIC Research Excellence Award in Nanotechnology, University of Pennsylvania (2007)
Inorganic Nanoscience Award, ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry (2009)
Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience, Materials Research Society (2010)
Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2012)
Nano Research Award, Tsinghua University Press/Springer (2013)
IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award (2013)
Willard Gibbs Medal Award (2013)
MRS Von Hippel Award (2016)
Remsen Award (2016)
NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2017 and 2008)
John Gamble Kirkwood Award, Yale University (2018)
Welch Award in Chemistry (2019)
On January 28, 2020, Lieber was arrested on charges of making false statements to the
U.S. Department of Defense and to Harvard investigators regarding his participation in
China's Thousand Talents Program According to the Department of Justice's charging
document, there are two counts of alleged crime committed by Lieber. The DOJ
believes Lieber's statement was false
The only way "the US government did it" makes sense is if this was happening this coming
November after Trump has been reelected. If the Deep State did it without Trump's approval,
somebody will talk just like John Soloman claims FBI agents told him of the Russiagate
conspiracy at the FBI while it was getting underway. Somebody would have alerted somebody
loyal to Trump what was being planned. Remember Trump had to give the order to kill that
Iranian general. The Deep State (full of Israel's toadies) didn't even do that on their own.
Of course, there is an answer for everything. It even makes more sense for Trump to do it
now so he can fix it. The Deep State did it but Trump now has to cover for them or risk the
world finding out how incompetent he is.
Concerning "wet markets", I'd just like to add that 99% of those are normal "butcher's
markets" with lamb, beef, pork, chickens, and sea produce, and 1%, in specific parts of the
country, selling all the Cthulhu fhtagn stuff.
So China reopening some wet markets now is an argument neither for, nor against the
zootropic theory. Because I'm pretty sure they're reopening the "lamb and chicken" wet
markets, not the "H.R.Giger's nightmares" ones, such as the one in Wuhan that is one of the
three possible origins.
1) Wuhan wet market
2) Wuhan lab
3) Wuhan based foreign troops taking part in the military Olympics
Has to be one of those three. Maybe the third was even accidental, but
There's some interesting information in the article for sure, but it seems to me that if the
US were to perform clandestine bio weapons attacks on another country, the Middle East and
Russia would surely be the primary targets. We rely on China for a lot of things, such as
virtually all the goods sold at Walmart and China owns a great deal of our debt, so it would
seem to me a financially strong China is in our interest.
Moreover, plagues and epidemics, especially coronaviruses, have started in the far east as
long as can be remembered.
@Anonymous This is about the most common sense post I have read on this site. SPOT ON.
OUR current problems in regards to immigration, racial issues, Black criminality, and this
(((virus))) can all be traced to one group for the most part. Btw, I was in NYC about the
same time perion in '83-'87 and haven't been back since, but from what I understand, it is
far worse today. I actually didn't find it that bad back then even though crime and drugs
were out of control. Probably because I was a twenty-something and having fun.
Anyhow, as you said, WHY in the hell do ANY Americans, much less White Americans ALLOW
RACIST JEWISH SUPREMACIST organizations have so much power over them. It isn't as if the ADL
or $PLC try and hide their hatred for Whites. I would have no problem for any organization
whether it be Black, Jewish or Hispanic fighting against racism, but lets face it, these
organizations aren't fighting against racism, they main goal is to take away the rights of
Whites or demonize WHITES ONLY.
"Life isn't complicated." And this (((virus))) isn't either. This shit was MANUFACTURED
and we can only guess by whom and what their future intentions are down the road. As usual
the usual suspects have already pretty much revealed themselves to anyone out there really
watching. For the WILLFULLY ignorant ostriches and chinadidit people, well, they must like be
lorded over by a tiny group of people who don't give two shits about them or their
children.
the response of the West has been utterly atrocious either way.
What do you people wish happened -- Trump-issued national lockdown order back in January?
Why do the death counts need to be artificially inflated if this virus is as deadly as the
media says?
These injuries often seem like pneumonia, but they are not caused by an infectious
disease, and they do not improve with antibiotics. Respiratory symptoms reported include:
shortness of breath, chest pain, pain on breathing, and cough. Other symptoms reported by
many patients include: fever, chills, nausea, weight loss, vomiting, diarrhea, or abdominal
pain.
Whether plausible or not, such accusations carry the gravest international implications,
and there are growing demands that China financially compensate our country for its
trillions of dollars in economic losses.
Aren't you comdedians Trillions deep in debt by the Chinese?
Since you'd never pay back anyway, they are in the face saving position to grant you very
generous debt forgiveness.
@Mustapha Mond Not to mention, Mr. Brave New World (how appropriate your name is), it
fits in nicely with Bill Gates' plan for a massive reduction in world population. What
freedom-loving young proles will want to form families and bring children into such a
dystopia? Already, US whites are well below replacement rate and dropping. As of 2018 it was
1.73 babies per woman, 16% below replacement rate, the lowest rate ever recorded. Asian
Americans are even lower at 1.525 (per the World Atlas).
@Chet Roman there things that are kmown:the almost universal economic damage that
stopping the economy,as if it were a ball game,would bring,guaranteed
We all have one hand tied behind our back. There is nobody that I know of presenting
information from inside the border of China to compare with Ronald Unz and his collaborators
at unz.com . I have seen exactly one
document in the last two years. It was a post on medium.com which purportedly was written by a Chinese ex-pat
graduate student in British Columbia with google earth images analyzed to show the
proliferation of concentration camps in Xinjiang for the retention of young male uyghurs.
Every single time I saw this document referenced on the internet it was followed up within
an hour by a shower of posts from all over the place that it was CIA fake news.
Basically at most we know about 1/2 and it is tough to know what to do with that.
@36 ulster Because articles with stated evidence linked to articles/research/legislation
where it is taken from (unlike the MSM, that links nothing other than its own circle-jerk),
and some implicit acceptance that the reader should have the freedom to decide for themselves
– rather than being spoonfed 'truths' agreed upon somewhere 'up high' – offers
people enough respect to allow them to accept that the webzine is not an ideological
printout, but a spectrum of ideas, to be evaluated by the reader. This is a contract with
consideration.
We have no truths from our elected leaders, or their stenographers in the MSM though.
When Trump says 'blame China', most of us see a bankruptcy merchant peddling a lie to
weasel out and default on 1 trn $$ (Martyanov said it first methinks!) – cause that's
what he does, and that's what he knows.
Unz offers a fairly balanced approach to conspiracy theory – not conspiracy
hypothesis. Ain't seen any article on some dude claiming he got anal probed by little green
men without any even anecdotal evidence.
This place debates the smoke, often without the fire. But it's a good start to some
explanation for some fire. Much of the rest of the net doesn't look at the smoke, but instead
distracts its audience with some other eye candy.
But hey, is it fair to complain – some people enjoy WWE!
@utu There's nothing like attacking the person (Wittkowski himself) in place of his point
( herd immunity already gained by Asians before lockdown) to demonstrate your bona fides.
Thanks for your back-handed admittal that you can't rebut his conclusion.
I have been trying to get this across for an age. It's very simple. Anybody who says China
did it is suspect. Not only does the import of their message suggest that the China-did-its
are ruling-class-hired trolls, the trolly smartass tone suggests it, not to mention the
illiteracy.
@Other Side "The drastic changes in the Balkans in the 1990s and the disintegration of
Yugoslavia in particular have resulted in a large number of publications attempting to
explain the break-up of this country and the political developments in the Balkans. Some of
these publications deal partly with the local Muslims who were engaged in the Balkan
conflicts but, with some exceptions, they are focused mainly on recent developments, with
less attention paid to the historical contexts in which the Muslim nationalist movements were
shaped. Although religion played a more important role in the nation-building process of the
Bosnian Muslims than in that of the Albanians, there are very few studies that examine the
reasons for this and the impact of Islam on the Muslim nationalist movements in historical
perspective. The following article examines from a comparative perspective the role of Islam
in the Bosnian Muslim and Albanian national movements from the Ottoman period up to the end
of the Cold War. The Sunni Muslims of Bosnia and the Albanians, who are divided into three
religions and a variety of sects, present contrasting societal structures for the analysis of
different aspects of Islam."
Would you like to read the rest of this article
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233460310_The_Bosnian_Muslims_and_Albanians_Islam_and_nationalism
More reading
"Immediately after the fall of communism in Albania in 1991, Arab Islamic fundamentalists
infiltrated the mosques in the country, which is 70 percent Muslim. The interlopers
represented the Saudi Wahhabis and the Egyptian disciples of today's al Qaeda leader Ayman
Al-Zawahiri. In spring 1999, a dozen of Al-Zawahiri's acolytes, known as the "Albanian
Returnees," were deported from the eastern Adriatic republic to Egypt, tried, and sentenced
to death or extended prison terms for terrorism. The "Returnees" had been told by their
"sheikhs" to stay in Albania and avoid going to Kosovo, where NATO military forces were, by
that time, thick on the ground. But Albania booted them out with alacrity. Evidence in the
case of the "Albanian Returnees" proved extremely important in tracing the evolution of al
Qaeda's Egyptian predecessors."
The only difference between Obama and Trump is their inside v. outside strategy. Obama was third-generation dynastic CIA
nomenklatura, and after his early misstep of promising to obey the supreme law of the land on torture, Obama took CIA direction
without demur, up to and including the crime of aggression of TIMBER SYCAMORE.
Trump, by contrast, follows the Nixon template, attempting to replace CIA focal points surrounding himself with “loyalists.”
When Nixon did it, CIA cadres leveled the same charge.
But Nixon put Schlesinger in as DCI to extract the crown jewels and shitcan a bunch of the worst criminals. Carter took the
outsider’s path too.
Nixon was purged in the CIA’s bloodless Watergate coup; Carter was ousted by CIA’s October Surprise. We should consider
whether COVID-19 collateral damage will be used to discredit Trump, who evidently has less workplace discretion than a
McDonald’s fry cook. At a key juncture of the outbreak CIA frogmarched Trump through the synthetic crisis of the Soleimani
assassination.
So of course the government is criminal. It was chartered as a criminal enterprise at inception in Sction 202, 73 years ago.
In the resulting kleptocracy, IGs perform a superfluous function. And every CIA inspector general is paid specifically to be a
criminal scumbag. The IG reviewing CIA’s most open-and-shut crime against humanity, its torture gulag, criticized it because it
didn’t work, intently ignoring the supreme law of the land that says nothing justifies torture.
So let’s not get all verklempt about some IGs. IGs are nothing but a Gehlen-type apparatus generating legal pretexts for
manifestly illegal acts. Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.
Patrick forgot that Full spectrum Dominance is still the driving force of the USA foreign
policy. And that will not change. So this is just a wishful thinking.
And after persevering for four decades, we prevailed.
What, then, did we do with our epochal victory?
We alienated Russia by moving our NATO military alliance into the Baltic and Black Seas. We
launched bloody, costly crusades for democracy in the Middle East that, invariably, failed. We
exported a huge slice of our manufacturing capacity and economic independence to a coddled
China.
Historically, blunders of such magnitude have undone great powers.
Even before COVID-19, Americans had begun to realize the folly of decades of mindless
interventionism over matters irrelevant to our vital interests. "Unsustainable" was the word
commonly associated with our foreign policy.
But if our foreign policy was unsustainable during President Trump's economic boom, with
unemployment at record lows and a bull market to rival the Roaring '20s, can an interventionist
foreign policy be sustained after the losses of this major depression we have induced to kill
the pandemic?
If the Democrats win in November, we know their priorities: national health insurance,
carbon taxes, the Green New Deal, open borders, amnesty, reparations and wealth redistribution
to reduce social and economic inequality -- an agenda costing trillions of dollars.
And Democrats will be looking at the defense budget as a slush fund to finance this new
progressive era.
If the Republicans win, given the influence of hawks and neocons among the party elite,
interventionism may get another run in the yard.
Having been exposed as naive beyond belief for their indulgence of China from the Bush I
days to 2016, some Republicans are looking to make amends by casting China in the Soviet role
in Cold War II.
There is talk on Capitol Hill of refusing to pay off U.S. bonds that Beijing holds and of
suing China for the damages done by the coronavirus, as China failed to alert the world the
pathogen was loose.
Americans should think long and hard before defaulting on U.S. government debt and consider
the consequences if we open a door to claims against sovereign nations for past sins.
Iraq was invaded in 2003 to force it to give up illicit weapons of mass destruction it did
not have. Baghdad could have a case in international court against America for the unprovoked
war waged against that country.
While the U.S. appears determined to bring back manufacturing -- especially of products
critical to the health, safety and defense of our nation -- there seems to be no stomach among
the public for a war with China.
But again, with the democracy crusades now repudiated, what is America's cause, what is
America's mission in the world?
... ... ...
To borrow from the title of historian Walter A. McDougall's classic work,
America's future is as a promised land, not a crusader state.
Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder of TAC and the author of Nixon's White House
Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.
Not really a turning point, certainly not in the sense of a reversal. And there’s no war, because for a war you need two
sides. The dumb hicks may rail against shadowy “globalists”, but are too stupid to realize that they themselves are
globalists. The hicks want their cheap computers, and the thousands of other things manufactured by slave labor in China, and
the globalists are happy to provide them. Yet the same dopes chanting USA! USA! (the forces of nationalism, at least in
America) don’t understand that empire has downsides as well as advantages.
The coronavirus pandemic is an example of the cost of empire, the ... technological empire that has come to cover
the whole world.
In that way, it resembles previous plagues, such as the plague of Justinian in the sixth century, and the Black Death in
the fourteenth...
alex
in San Jose AKA Digital Detroit says: Show Comment April 18,
2020 at 4:58 am GMT 500 Words I will be very, very surprised if I receive one of these
fabled $1200 checks. The way things are done in the US, if you have money, you get more money,
and if you don't have money, you don't get money. Somehow in the US you can be too poor to get
healthcare for the poor, and since $1200 is quite a bit of money for me, basically a month's
gross pay, I'm sure it will never appear.
Also, it's easy to go on about being attached to the land if you're a member of the
land-owning class. In the US there's the land-owning class and the proletariat and while there
used to be social mobility upward as well as downward, it's only downward now. I really have no
roots anywhere. Hawaii, where I grew up? As a hated "haole", that's a big fat nope. California
where I have relatives? Said relatives are a mixture of dead, WASP, and wealthy and a wealthy
American will not give the heel off of a stale bread loaf to anyone not as wealthy as
themselves. If I become rich then I suppose they'll want to talk to me, but then there'd be
nothing to talk about.
I don't even have photos of my parents or siblings anymore, or old papers, or anything. When
you're a member of the proletariat in the US, you get moved and chased from place to place,
churned essentially, and you lose all of that stuff.
I love the idea of a homeland; of a place where they can't turn you away and they won't let
you starve or die of some easily preventable disease. Jews learned (as if they didn't know it
already) in WWII exactly how much anyone else cares about them, the way at least before the
world turned into a neoliberal hellhole, England cared about an Englishman or France about a
Frenchman etc. And they knew they'd have to *carve out* this homeland if need be, so they did.
I greatly admire this.
Think you're missing out if you're white? Look up "The American Redoubt" that that James
Wesley Rawles guy talks about. All you have to do is move there. Once it's fully set up, you
might have to give up your prettiest daughter to Rawle's harem, but there you go – it's a
homeland. Rawles thinks it will work because it's not easy land to live on, which should keep
lazy types out.
That's what seems to make for solid tribe-hood. Either you follow such a weird lifestyle
that the non-committed won't stick with it, like having to wear an onion on your belt and talk
about the year dickety-two, or you live on land that's so rigorous that "soft" people won't
dream of living there.
I don't even have photos of my parents or siblings anymore, or old papers, or anything.
When you're a member of the proletariat in the US, you get moved and chased from place to
place, churned essentially, and you lose all of that stuff.
How I wound up on house arrest in Russia. I can't even tell you where I was in this or that
year anymore – state, city, country, continent. I have stray memories that well up from
time to time – being on a bus, a train, walking on a road with a backpack, living on
someone's floor, sleeping in a stairwell; the reasons and the details escape me, and I'm
grateful for it. Somehow at eighteen I knew, intuitively, that it was going to be a very steep
downhill ride.
I learned only a few years ago not to hold on to anything, to accept life a la De Niro's
character in Heat . Be ready to jam at any moment: the system will not let you settle,
and if it did, it'd squeeze you mercilessly unto the grave. And here we are, the system forcing
everyone to settle because _______ (redacted to avoid censorship).
That's what seems to make for solid tribe-hood. Either you follow such a weird lifestyle
that the non-committed won't stick with it, like having to wear an onion on your belt and
talk about the year dickety-two, or you live on land that's so rigorous that "soft" people
won't dream of living there.
Yea, the most ethnocentric people are usually the most repugnant or tiresome. Greeks are
still fairly tribal, but as a "rugged individualist", do really you want that big Greek family
and all those obnoxious holidays and celebrations? Most westerners don't want or wouldn't
survive that, and that's a big part of why we're watching ourselves become obsolete. "Shelter
in place" is a rather suitable epitaph for atomized whiteskins; it's no wonder they've taken it
up with such gusto – 'tis the grave they've been leaning toward for a long while.
There is hope. The coronavirus crisis has exposed the relative merits of nations, so the
entire world can see, for example, how broken and corrupt the US is, with no leadership to
speak of. Dawdling, it failed to prevent needless deaths, then shut down much of the
country, bankrupting thousands of businesses and throwing millions out of work. As a fix,
it throws mere crumbs at desperate citizens, while bailing out the big banks, again.
"... Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild once said "I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." ..."
"... Unfortunately that system of control is evident in today's society. Special interests have been behind every US president including Trump. ..."
"... Trump is following his marching orders to big oil interests including his authorized theft of Syrian oil. ..."
"... Trump has given more support to Israel than any of his predecessors, which to the Pentagon is another important agenda. Israel is an important US ally in the Middle East besides Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... Trump first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia to sell more weapons, which is business as usual for the arms industry. ..."
"... "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with" ..."
"... "these events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail." ..."
"... 'War is a Racket.' ..."
"... "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents" ..."
"... "This conjunction, of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognise the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." ..."
"... (who was the emperor's private army by default is similar to Presidents relationship with the Military-Industrial Complex) ..."
"... "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces" ..."
"... "For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. ..."
"... Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match." ..."
"... TruTV's 'Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura' ..."
"... "About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capital to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, they were very formal, there was governor, sir and all that, but they put me in a chair and they were in a big half-moon around me, and I said to them, look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what are you doing here? because in the CIA mission statement, it says that they are not operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that and then I said I want to go around the room and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do, half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre, I'm the governor and these guys wouldn't answer questions from me. Then they started questioning me and it was all about how I got elected. You know what was the most bizarre thing about it was? There was every array of person you could imagine, young people, old people, all nationalities and that's what really got to me. These were people you would see every day. They look like your neighbors." ..."
"... Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change, That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States, we know more or less what's going to happen. And so, in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere ..."
"... Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild once said "I care not what puppet is placed on the
throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls
Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money
supply."
Unfortunately that system of control is evident in today's society. Special interests
have been behind every US president including Trump.
Trump is following his marching orders to big oil interests including his authorized
theft of Syrian oil.
Trump has given more support to Israel than any of his predecessors, which to the
Pentagon is another important agenda. Israel is an important US ally in the Middle East besides
Saudi Arabia.
Trump first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia to sell more weapons, which is
business as usual for the arms industry.
There is a power structure that sets the rules of the game in Washington. The
Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has an agenda and that is war. A US led war in the Middle
East with Iran is increasingly coming close to reality. It would affect Syria, Lebanon and the
Palestinians.
At some point, the war will reach Latin America targeting Venezuela because of its oil
reserves since Trump likes the "oil". As of now, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador are in chaos due to
new US-backed fascistic governments that re-established neoliberal economic policies which will
lead to the impoverishment of the masses.
The U.S. military has over 800 bases ranging from torture sites to drone hubs in over 70
countries. US tensions are more intense that in any period of time with Iran, Syria and
Hezbollah as Trump signed off on a new defense budget worth $738 billion including funds for
his new Space Force. Despite the fact that the Democrats are still angry over their election
defeat to Trump and are still pushing the Russia collusion hoax and now the farcical
impeachment scandal, but when it comes to foreign policy, both Democrats and Republicans are
unified with the same war agenda. The Trump administration continues its regime change
operations despite the fact that Trump said no more regime change wars when he was a candidate
in 2016. "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we
shouldn't be involved with"
Fast-forward to 2019, Trump's CIA and others from his administration such as Eliot Abrams, a
Reagan-era neocon was given the green-light to conduct another regime change operation with a
nobody named Juan Guaido leading the Venezuelan opposition against the Maduro government which
failed. Bolivia on the other hand was a success for Washington which was planned the day Evo
Morales was elected President of Bolivia and was allied with Washington's adversaries in Latin
America including Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Brazil (before Balsonaro of course). Trump
continued the pentagon's agenda when he praised the new fascist Bolivian regime who forced
Morales from power with Washington's approval of course. Trump even threatened Nicaragua and
Venezuela with new attempts of regime change when he said that "these events send a strong
signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of
the people will always prevail." In other words, Trump is not in charge.
US Presidents do have some room to make decisions concerning domestic issues such as taxes
or healthcare, but when it comes to foreign policy, its a different story. It's not a
conspiracy theory.
Many people in power has told the world who is really in charge from politicians, Wall
Street bankers to military generals. In a 1935 speech by a Marine General Smedley titled
'War is a Racket.'
A veteran in the Spanish-American War who rose through the ranks during the course of his
career. From 1898 until his retirement in 1931 he was part of numerous interventions all around
the world. Butler was also the most decorated Marine ever with two Medals of Honor added to his
resume. He said the following:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I
spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and
especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought
light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make
Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it
that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al
Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I
operated on three continents"
He was
correct. General Butler could have given notorious gangsters such as Al Capone a few lessons in
how to run a business empire. Then in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made it clear who
had the real power inside Washington in a farewell address he gave to the American public.
Eisenhower issued a stark warning on the dangers of the MIC posed to humanity.
Here is a part of the speech:
"This conjunction, of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, is
new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even
spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal
government. We recognise the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic
processes."
Eisenhower seemed like he was not in agreement with the deep state's decision to drop the
atomic bombs during World War II, perhaps he was cornered by the growing power of the deep
state. A comparison between the Roman Empire and America today is uncanny. In Rome for example,
choosing an emperor was made difficult by the ruling elite, political debates dominated how new
emperors were selected by old emperors, the senate, those who were influential and the
Praetorian Guard which is today's version of the Military-Industrial Complex.
The political and industrial heavyweights and its intelligence agencies select the best two
candidates from the only two political parties who are bought and paid for by corporate and
political interests make the important decisions. The Praetorian Guard (who was the
emperor's private army by default is similar to Presidents relationship with the
Military-Industrial Complex) had dominated the election process for the next century or so
resulting in targeted assassinations of several emperors they did not want in power before
Rome's collapse. They were assassinations and attempted assassinations on US presidents
resulting in four deaths, the most notable assassination in the 20th century was President John
F. Kennedy who wanted to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces" gave a speech on April
27th, 1961 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, many believe, including myself, that
it was the speech that eventually got him killed:
"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that
relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration
instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free
choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted
vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient
machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political
operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined.
Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed,
no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no
democracy would ever hope or wish to match."
The " tightly knit, highly efficient machine " Kennedy spoke about directs U.S.
presidents to authorize wars or a covert operations to topple foreign governments. Kennedy
exposed that fact and followed that same fate as those emperors in Rome. Even in Domestic
politics, the U.S. government deep state apparatus is in control as the former Governor of
Minnesota Jesse Ventura , who is also a former Navy Seal, actor and professional wrestler who
now has his own show on RT news called 'The World According to Jesse'
admitted on TruTV's 'Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura' on how the CIA interrogated
him shortly after he became governor:
"About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the
capital to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, they
were very formal, there was governor, sir and all that, but they put me in a chair and they
were in a big half-moon around me, and I said to them, look before I answer any of your
questions, I want to know what are you doing here? because in the CIA mission statement, it
says that they are not operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't
really give me an answer on that and then I said I want to go around the room and I want each
one of you to tell me your name and what you do, half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that
bizarre, I'm the governor and these guys wouldn't answer questions from me. Then they started
questioning me and it was all about how I got elected. You know what was the most bizarre
thing about it was? There was every array of person you could imagine, young people, old
people, all nationalities and that's what really got to me. These were people you would see
every day. They look like your neighbors."
The US president including all elected congress members are all bought and paid for by the
arms industry, major corporations, bankers, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the media and a handful of
lobbyists with the Israel lobby being the most powerful. Trump is no exception. He will follow
the road given to him by those who are in charge and he will continue the path to a world war,
an agenda that been long in the making. One of America's favorite enemies, Russian President
Vladimir Putin was interviewed by Megan Kelly of NBC news in 2017 and was asked about
the so-called Russian collusion conspiracy theory and he said the following:
Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political
direction does not change, That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the
head of the United States, we know more or less what's going to happen. And so, in this regard,
even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere
Whether Trump wants war or even peace, it won't matter, he will do the right thing, for the
deep state that is.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
On an honest history of 19th century populism: gotcha covered. The Populist Moment: A
Short History of the Agrarian Revolt , by Lawrence Goodwin. This is a condensed version
of his book Democratic Promise , which is sadly out of print.
"Breaking the Grip of White Grievance" [
The New Republic ]. "With Biden's success in the primaries, lines are drawn. The
presidential election will likely pit the Democratic herald of a younger, more tolerant,
multiracial America against a Republican tribune of white fear and grievance." • Or
would, if the Democrat Establishment hadn't thrown Latins and youth (by which is meant under
50 (!)), under the bus on policy. Just a thought, but if the Liberal Democrats had greeted
the decline of life expectancy in the heartland with anything other than malign neglect, they
might have an easier time on the "grievance" front. Too late for tears! In any case, there
will be plenty of money for the idpol grift, so look forward to a great wave of it.
"What Richard Hofstadter Got Wrong" [
The New Republic ]. "Hofstadter argued that the reformers of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century -- Populist agitators, Progressive social planners, temperance and
suffrage advocates -- were engaged in a panicked bid to reclaim their diminishing status in
public life. As the Protestant guardians of small-town America saw the forces of capitalist
modernity overtake the world they knew, they lashed out, reasserting their waning power and
prestige as defenders of an embattled cultural order. Amid the present academic boomlet in
anti-populist jeremiads, Hofstadter's reading of the American Populist movement as a bigoted,
nativist, and anti-Semitic insurgency, steeped in "status anxiety," is arguably more
influential than ever, half a century after his death in 1970. But as is the case with many
intellectual legacies, a great deal has been lost in translation: Hofstadter envisioned
reform as a prolonged revolt against modernity -- not a particularly useful framework for
understanding today's demagogues, who, instead of trafficking in grievances about the world
they have lost, augur a bold new turn in plutocratic governance. Meanwhile, Hofstadter's
crudest simplifications have endured: His latter-day anti-populist apostles tend to fall back
on his caricatured accounts of the backward masses and their motivations, pointedly ignoring
the social-democratic cast of American Populism of the Gilded Age." • Waiting for Thomas
Frank's book on populism to emerge
Lambert, thank you for the link to the article about Richard Hofstadter and his views on
populists of the early 20th century. A current historian writing about this era and more is
Richard White of Stanford. I'm learning a lot from his recent essays and the YouTube videos
of his presentations, interviews, etc. Here's one worth your time: https://youtu.be/-YM7KE576K0
"The Republic for which It Stands" by Richard White is very good on the Gilded Age.
Lawrence Goodwyn's "The Populist Moment" really shows what a movement is like. It is one of
those history books that are so good that they illuminate vast swaths of history and of now
that would seem unconnected.
One interesting point he makes is that contrary to the conventional notion that the Populists
took over the (disgraced) Democratic Party in 1896, actually the faction of the Democrats
that was backed by the silver mining interests took over the Populists. They did this by
winning all the delegates from the states where the Populists were hopelessly weak. Sound
familiar? Adding silver money to the gold standard was the Public Option of the day. The M4A
of the day was close to modern monetary theory.
The
Roosevelt has been ravaged by the coronavirus. As of Tuesday, 589 cases of COVID-19 were
reported from a crew of 4,800. Four thousand sailors in Guam are in various stages of a 14-day
isolation period in hotels and spare rooms across the island.
But it is not just the Roosevelt. Every U.S. warship -- carriers, cruisers, frigates,
destroyers, subs -- has cramped quarters conducive to the spread of the coronavirus.
How many of these vessels will soon be doubling as hospital ships?
The same question might also be asked of the U.S. Army and Marine barracks in South Korea,
Japan, Australia and Okinawa.
There are allegations that the coronavirus did not originate in the Wuhan "wet market" where
bats are sold for food but instead escaped through a horrible blunder in a Chinese bioweapons
laboratory a few miles away.
Whatever the truth, the Wuhan virus appears to have become the most effective means of
disabling U.S. hard and soft power that we have encountered in many a decade.
Of those 10,000 Peace Corp volunteers, and scores of thousands of other Americans who have
been repatriated home, how many of these "soft power" soldiers will be going back after they
have been out of their host country for 18 months?
Will this pandemic prove the decisive factor in America's retreat from global hegemony?
With the U.S. budget deficit for 2020 originally set at $1 trillion, now triple that, there
is going to be a hard reckoning for the allocation of our diminished resources after the nation
reopens.
And policing the planet is likely to be seen as yesterday's priority, and a primary
candidate for discard.
Well, if the epidemic does lead to a more restrained foreign policy, that would be the
silver lining in this awfully dark cloud. It might well end up saving more lives than are
lost in the epidemic, too.
America is the exceptional indispensable nation. Home of super heros in the movies and their
military. Their TV is full of cop dramas with tough macho cops who always get their man. Many
Americans cannot accept as a nation that they could ever be wrong on anything. After all,
they saved Europe from the Nazis and then the evil ruskies. They see themselves as the
greatest nation to ever exist upon the Earth that seeks only to do good for other countries
(sigh).
Sadly, none of the above is true. The US needs to step down from their pedestal and rejoin
the human race as equals. Belief in your own exceptionalism leads to hubris which leads to
arrogance, leading to an overestimation of your own capabilities and a fatal underestimation
of the capabilities of your adversary. Americans and especially their government are living
in a fantasy with crumbling foundations.
The Coronavirus crisis appears set to herald a new era of much poorer relations between
China and the Western world, with Western countries having borne the brunt of the fallout from
the pandemic and, particularly in the United States, increasingly blaming China at an official
level for the effects.
[1] Looking at the U.S. case in particular, at first responses to the virus were if
anything optimistic – the fallout in China was seen as a 'correction' which would shift
the balance of global economic power back into Western hands. Indeed, U.S. Commerce Secretary
Wilbur Ross stated on January 30 th that the fallout from the virus in China "will
help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America" with millions at the time placed under
lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere.
[2] Western publications from the New York Times to the Guardian widely
hailed the virus as potentially bringing an end to China's decades of rapid economic growth
– with a 'rebalancing' of the global economy towards Western power strongly implied.
[3] ,
[4] Against North Korea, the New York Times described the virus as potentially
functioning as America's "most effective ally" in achieving the outcome Washington had long
sought – "choking the North's economy."
[5]
The result, however, has if anything been strong resilience to the virus across much of East
Asia, with Vietnam and South Korea being prime examples of successful handling alongside Macao,
Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland – in contrast to a very sluggish and often
ineffective response in the West.
[6] From rot filled and broken emergency supplies in the U.S. national reserve
[7] to nurses wearing bin bags due a lack of protective equipment,
[8] the commandeering of supplies heading to other countries,
[9] and the enlistment of prison labour to build mass graves in New York City
[10] – signs have unanimously pointed to chaos. It should be pointed out that
the U.S. reported its first case on the same day as South Korea – which had the virus
fully under control several weeks earlier due to more effective handling and a lack of
complacency.
[11] The U.S. and wider Western world had a major advantage in its warning time over
China in particular, but effectively squandered it.
[12]
The results of the fallout from the Coronavirus in the Western world, and in the U.S. in
particular, could be extremely serious given the context of escalating American pressure on
China in the leadup to the outbreak. Blaming China for the virus across American press and in
the White House itself – despite it having reached America primarily from Europe rather
than Asia
[13] – has heralded mass hate crimes against the Asian American community of
unprecedented seriousness and scale since the targeting of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.
[14] Perhaps even more seriously, however, the official American response as public
opinion is directed against China appears set to place the world's two largest economies on a
potentially catastrophic collision course. On April 14th U.S. Senator Josh Hawley unveiled
highly provocative legislation which would strip China of its sovereign immunity in American
courts and allow Americans to sue China's ruling Communist Party directly for the damages
caused by the coronavirus crisis.
[15] Such legislation relies heavily on growing anti-Chinese sentiments and
depictions of China as directly responsible – and contradicts evidence from the World
Health Organisation among others that China's response effectively stalled the global spread of
the virus at its own expense with its lockdown.
[16]
An unbiased analysts shows that the disproportionate fallout in the Western world relative
to East Asia is overwhelmingly due to poor preparation – and had effective South Korean
style measures been implemented from the outset America would have seen only a small fraction
of the cases it currently suffers from.
[17] Nevertheless, calls from the U.S. and to a lesser extent from within other
Western states
[18] to make China foot the bill are manifold. Scholars from the American Enterprise
Institute and Stanford University's Hoover Institution among others have made direct calls for
Western states to unilaterally "seize the assets of Chinese state-owned companies," cancel
debts to China and expropriate Chinese overseas assets "in compensation for coronavirus
losses."
[19] The Florida based firm the Berman Law Group has already filed two major lawsuits
suing China calling for compensation for the outbreak – and the situation looks set to
worsen considerably with many more suits to follow. Regarding how the crisis could play out,
and how the U.S. could act on its massive claims against China over the virus which are
expected to be in the hundreds of billions at least, there is an important precedent for
American courts providing similar compensation to alleged victims of an East Asian government
and the American state taking action accordingly – that of the Otto Warmbier case in
2018. Assessment of the Warmbier case sets a very important precedent with very considerable
implications for the outcome of a Sino-American dispute.
Otto Warmbier was an American student arrested in North Korea in 2016 for stealing a poster
and violating a restricted high security area in Pyongyang. The student was returned to the
U.S. the following year in a comatose state, with his parents alleging that his teeth had been
artificially rearranged and his body showed signs of torture. This was strongly contradicted by
medical analyses, with the Hamilton County Coroner's Office carrying out an external
examination of Warmbier's body and dismissing the claim by his father that his teeth had been
pulled out and rearranged by the North Koreans. "The teeth are natural and in good repair," the
office concluded, after Warmbier's father had sensationally claimed that "his bottom teeth look
like they [the Koreans] had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them." Coroner Dr. Lakshmi
Kode Sammarco stated addressing the claim of forced rearranging of Otto's teeth: "I felt very
comfortable that there wasn't any evidence of trauma. We were surprised at the [parents']
statement." She said her team, which included a forensic dentist, thoroughly evaluated the body
and assessed various scans of his body.
[20] Medical assessments showed no signs of mistreatment or any trauma to the
student's head or skull, with a blood clot, pneumonia, sepsis, kidney failure, and sleeping
pills were also cited as potential causes of death.
[21] Nevertheless, Warmbier's parents would continue to claim against all available
evidence that their son had been tortured to death – filing a lawsuit against the North
Korean government. Where a full autopsy could have provided data to more completely undermine
their claims, and was strongly recommended by doctors, they were adamant in their refusal and
no autopsy was carried out. Forensic scientists were highly critical of this unusual and
unexpected decision in this critical case.
[22]
In response to the Warmbers' claim against the North Korean state, which amounted to a
staggering $1.05 billion in punitive damages and around $46 million for the family's suffering
in a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in October 2018, Pyongyang was asked to
pay the couple $500 million.
[23] This was despite no evidence for the couple's claims of Korean culpability, but
at a time when public opinion was strongly against North Korea and would have supported the
motion. To seize the Warmbiers' compensation, the United States Navy would later that year
commandeer a North Korean cargo ship, the Wise Honest, and escort it to American territory
where it was subsequently sold at auction. The couple was provided with a part of the ship's
value, and future seizures of Korean merchant shipping to meet the remainder of the American
family's claim remain possible under U.S. law.
[24] The seizure of the ship, one of North Korea's largest, represented a
considerable loss to its fleet and complemented the effects of ongoing Western sanctions to
undermine the country's economy.
The significance of the Warmbier case is that it provides a strong precedent for the U.S.
Military, should China inevitably refuse to pay the hundreds billions expected to be demanded
in compensation, to engage in effective state level piracy against Chinese merchant shipping to
provide funds for its increasingly struggling economy.
[25] With trade war having failed to significantly slow Chinese economic growth and
foreign trade, which had been its primary goal,
[26] more drastic means may be adopted for the same end using the Coronavirus crisis
as a pretext. Other similar recent cases of do exist, including unilateral seizure and sale of
Iranian government owned properties by the Canadian government in 2019 to compensate alleged
victims of terror of conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. This was despite neither of these
being UN recognised terrorist organisations and Iran's support for these non-state actors being
entirely legal under international law.
[27] The fact that these properties were on Canadian soil and governed under Canadian
law however, rather than in international waters, makes this a considerably less provocative
case than the Warmbier case one or than what is being proposed against China.
Further evidence that the U.S. would consider unilateral commandeering of shipping against
China was provided by the U.S. Naval Institute, which in April published an important paper
titled 'Unleash the Privateers' highlighting that it remained legal under American law for U.S.
security firms to be tasked with commandeering and either sinking or capturing and selling
Chinese merchant ships in the event of conflict. It highlighted that China was the largest
trading nation in the world with a merchant fleet several times the size of its American
counterpart – and that this provided a vulnerability the U.S. should be willing to
exploit.
[28] Taken together, the circumstances surrounding claims against China and moves to
strip it of its sovereign immunity, the Warmbier precedent, the well timed and extremely
radical naval institute paper and above all America's need to reverse its losses and undermine
China's growing trade and economic prosperity to perpetuate its own hegemony, between them
point to a high possibility of the U.S. adopting state level piracy against Chinese shipping as
a future policy. While evidence strongly contradicts claims that China is responsible for the
Coronavirus and the massive fallout the U.S. is now experiencing – much as evidence from
American coroners and forensic scientists contradicted the claims of the Warmbier family
– these inconvenient facts are highly unlikely to prevent the U.S. from taking action to
secure its perceived rightful place as the leader of the global economy by seizing what it sees
as its rightful property through attacks on Chinese trading vessels.
It is by no means a certainty that the United States will engage in such an escalatory
course of action, and the nature of the overall Western response beyond the current harsh
rhetoric and unfounded accusations is yet to be seen. It is important at this stage, however,
to highlight the not insignificant possibility such a course will be taken by the U.S. and
other Western parties to reverse the trend towards a decline in their economic positions
relative to China. Repercussions from such seizures will almost certainly be far more severe
than the relatively muted global response to the seizure and sale of a commandeered North
Korean ship two years prior. While China's Navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific and is
poorly placed to defend its trade routes from the global reach of Western warships, Beijing and
its allies have a wide range of means to retaliate which could deter the Western powers from
taking such a course of action.
'Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak,' New York
Times (accessed April 16, 2020).
↑ Staracqualursi, Veronica and Davis, Richard, 'Commerce secretary says coronavirus
will help bring jobs to North America,' CNN, January 30, 2020.
↑ Bradsher, Keith, 'Coronavirus Could End China's Decades-Long Economic Growth
Streak,' New York Times, March 16, 2020.
↑ Davidson, Helen, 'Coronavirus deals China's economy a "bigger blow than global
financial crisis,"' The Guardian, March 16, 2020.
↑ Koettl, Christoph, 'Coronavirus Is Idling North Korea's Ships Achieving What
Sanctions Did Not,' New York Times, March 26, 2020.
↑ Graham-Harrison, Emma, 'Coronavirus: how Asian countries acted while the west
dithered,' The Guardian, March 21, 2020.
Inkster, Ian, 'In the battle against the coronavirus, East Asian societies and cultures have
the edge,' South China Morning Post, April 10, 2020.
↑ Chandler, Kim, 'Some states receive masks with dry rot, broken ventilators,'
Associated Press, April 4, 2020.
↑ Glasser, Susan B., 'How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?,'
The New Yorker, April 9, 2020.
↑ 'US Seizes Ventilators Destined for Barbados,' Telesur, April 5, 2020.
Willsher, Kim and Holmes, Oliver and. McKernan, Bethan and Tondo, Lorenzo, 'US hijacking
mask shipments in rush for coronavirus protection,' The Guardian, April 3, 2020.
Lister, Tim and Shukla, Sebastian and Bobille, Fanny, 'Coronavirus sparks a 'war for masks'
as accusations fly,' CNN, April 3, 2020.
↑ Crane, Emily, 'Workers in full Hazmat suits bury rows of coffins in Hart Island mass
grave as NYC officials confirm coronavirus victims WILL be buried there if their bodies aren't
claimed within two weeks after death toll rises to 4,778,' Daily Mail, April 9, 2020.
↑ 'Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus,'
Reuters, March 18, 2020.
'Once the biggest outbreak outside of China, South Korean city reports zero new coronavirus
cases,' Reuters, April 10, 2020.
↑ Johnson, Ian, 'China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It,' New York
Times, March 13, 2020.
↑ 'New York coronavirus outbreak originated in Europe, studies show,' The Hill
, April 9, 2020.
↑ De Souza, Alison, 'Asian Americans tell harrowing stories of abuse amid coronavirus
outbreak in the US,' Straits Times, April 1, 2020.
Chapman, Ben, 'New York City Sees Rise in Coronavirus Hate Crimes Against Asians,' Wall
Street Journal, April 2, 2020.
↑ Schultz, Maarisa, 'Sen Hawley: Let coronavirus victims sue Chinese Communist Party,'
Fox News, April 14, 2020.
↑ Wang, Yanan, 'New virus cases fall; WHO says China bought the world time,'
Associated Press, February 15, 2020.
Johnson, Ian, 'China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It,' New York Times,
March 13, 2020.
↑ 'Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus,'
Reuters, March 18, 2020.
'Once the biggest outbreak outside of China, South Korean city reports zero new coronavirus
cases,' Reuters, April 10, 2020.
↑ Cole, Harry, 'China owes us £351 billion: Britain should pursue Beijing
through international courts for coronavirus compensation, major study claims as 15 top top
Tories urge "reset" in UK relations with country,' Daily Mail, April 5, 2020.
↑ Stradner, Ivana and Yoo, John, 'How to Make China Pay,' American Enterprise
Institute, April 6, 2020.
↑ Nedelman, Michael, 'Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,'
CNN, September 29, 2017.
↑ Lockett, Jon, 'Tragic student Otto Warmbier 'may have attempted suicide' in North
Korean prison after being sentenced to 15 years for stealing poster,' The Sun , July 28,
2018.
Basu, Zachary, 'What we're reading: What happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea,'
Axios , July 25, 2018.
Tingle, Rory, 'Otto Warmbier's brain damage that led to his death was caused by a SUICIDE
ATTEMPT rather than torture by North Korean prison guards, report claims,' Daily Mail,
July 25, 2018.
Fox, Maggie, 'What killed Otto Warmbier?' NBC News, June 20, 2017.
Tinker, Ben, 'What an autopsy may (or may not) have revealed about Otto Warmbier's death,'
CNN, June 22, 2017.
Nedelman, Michael, 'Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,' CNN,
September 29, 2017.
↑ Tinker, Ben, 'What an autopsy may (or may not) have revealed about Otto Warmbier's
death,' CNN, June 22, 2017.
Nedelman, Michael, 'Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,' CNN,
September 29, 2017.
↑ Brookbank, Sarah, 'Family of Otto Warmbier awarded $500 million in lawsuit against
North Korea,' USA Today, December 24, 2018.
↑ Lee, Christy, 'U.S. Marshals to Sell Seized North Korean Cargo Ship,' VOA,
July 27, 2019.
'Seized North Korean cargo ship sold to compensate parents of Otto Warmbier, others,'
Navy Times, October 9, 2019.
↑ Blyth, Mark, 'The U.S. Economy Is Uniquely Vulnerable to the Coronavirus,'
Foreign Affairs, March 30, 2020.
Schulze, Elizabeth, 'The coronavirus recession is unlike any economic downturn in US
history,' CNBC, April 8, 2020.
Schwartz, Nelson D., 'Coronavirus Recession Looms, Its Course "Unrecognizable,"' New York
Times, April 1, 2020.
Davies, Rob, 'Coronavirus means a bad recession – at least – says JP Morgan
boss,' The Guardian, April 6, 2020.
Lowrey, Annie, 'Millennials Don't Stand a Chance,' The Atlantic , April 13, 2020.
↑ Wei, Liu, 'Trump's Trade War on China Is About More Than Trade,' The
Diplomat, July 20, 2018.
↑ Bell, Stewart, 'Iran's properties in Canada sold, proceeds handed to terror
victims,' Global News, September 12, 2019.
↑ Cancian, Mark and Schwartz, Brandon, 'Unleash the Privateers!,' U.S. Naval
Institute, vol. 146, no. 2, issue 1406, April 2020.
↑
A very interesting assessment. The Warmbier case shows that the ‘rules based
order’ espoused by the US and its Western allies is not so rules based as they claim
– they can ignore evidence from their own medical assessments to put forward a
politicised demonisation case and use this as a pretext to make ridiculous compensation
demands and even engage in state piracy in international waters to claim foreign
nations’ property.
Quite abominable behaviour – the international community should really wake up and
unite against this.
Mexican American War (US Cavalry moved into territory previously agreed by US to be Mexican)
Fenian Raids into Canada (led by a US Military officer on ‘leave’ –
leads to formation of IRA – attempts to initiate revolution in Canada to sunder from
British Empire – fails but could have led to war)
USS Maine incident used to incite the Spanish American War later found to be a coal dust
explosion
Philippine-American war started by US sentry shooting Filipino soldier
US stays out of WWI but secretly supplies Allied forces using civilian Cruise Liner
– Lusitania torpedoed and used to justify entry into WWI by USA (fast forward about 80
years and … the Germans were right, it was carrying munitions
US sells Japan advanced war material, embargoes oil supply, leads to invasion of China
WWII US bankrolls Adolf Hitler (ends better for the USA than it did for Germany or the
Soviet Union, or actually anybody else)
USA enters WWII on Allied side after Pearl Harbour – see McCollum memo
‘inducing Japan to an overt act of war’
Korean war – research this one yourself – wow
Viet Nam War – Gulf of Tonkin false flag
Iraq – “It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were
dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and
east, west, south and north somewhat.” – Sure, you go with Donald Rumsfailed,
have they been found yet???
I’m not sure when I’ve read a sillier article. I had to skip down quite a way, to
see if the author was actually going to say something about ‘Official State
Piracy’. So, the US is going to hijack merchant ships carrying some of the $558B USD
exports coming from China?
The willful decimation of the Western Economies is certainly going to have a gigantic
impact on China. Where are all those exports going, when their customers have stopped buying?
Right now, there are virtually no stores open in the West. Order cancellation from Western
importers has probably just begun, and will be huge. This will accelerate the shift by China
toward domestic consumption, which is a good thing for China, and the rest of the World as
well. On the other side, this will increase policies in the West to repatriate production,
also a good thing.
I disagree. The article does highlight very legitimate points regarding the nature of
Western-led order and the threat posed to peaceful trading nations from seizures based on
false pretexts.
To equate BRI investment with imperialism I think shows a serious lack of understanding of
what imperialism is. Chinese fleets voyaged to East Africa, Oceania and possibly the Americas
long before Europeans knew those places existed. There were no genocides, armed settler
colonies or attempts to impose certain religions or ideologies.
Overseas investment isn’t imperialism. It can be if you carry out assassinations and
coups to force other countries to accept investment on your terms (the French in West Africa
being a prime example), but if simple foreign investment is imperialism then imperialism
really has no meaning. This definition also serves to whitewash the genocidal crimes of
genuine imperialists which wiped out the populations of three continents (Americas and
Oceania) and caused tremendous suffering for two others.
”So, the US is going to hijack merchant ships carrying some of the $558B USD exports
coming from China?”
Given the manifest insanity of the US, I wouldn’t put it past them to demand payment
in addition to the merchandise, accompanied by violent, brute racism. That’s not
particularly ”silly”, only highly repugnant.
I surely doubt the the Indispensiblistan will take two big moves in pirating chinese ships.
Because the second one will trigger a harsh response from Beijing. XI jin knows pretty well
they are not in the opium war circunstances.
They can:
1-build up their second and third naval base in Africa – besides from upgrading the
existent Djibouti facilities and one in Venezuela practically overnight.
2-Stop important and vital exports to US and Canada, and further just select the items that
will hurt the enemy the most.
3- Offer military aid to Syrian government and direct economic assistance to Iran.
Is the United States About to Engage in Official State Piracy Against China?
Is the earth round rather than flat?
Of course.
America and its “democratic” allies are pirate nations from top to bottom. So
they are will instinctively seize upon the COVID-19 pretext to try and extort money from
China.
But it won’t necessarily be through direct naval piracy only.
It will be through the launching of various lawsuits to provide a legal fig leaf for this
piracy and then attempted seizures of Chinese business assets–similar to how America
has seized and stolen the financial assets of Iran and Venezuela–as well as America
repudiating repayment of the US Treasury “debts” that China has purchased.
The Times long ago abandoned journalism the way it's supposed to be. All the news it claims
fit to print isn't fit to read.
Its daily editions feature state-approved managed news misinformation and disinformation --
notably against sovereign independent nations on the US target list for regime change.
Russia notably has been a prime target since its 1917 revolution, ending its czarist
dictatorship.
Except during WW II and Boris Yeltsin's 1990s rule, Times anti-Russia propaganda was and
remains relentless, notably throughout the Vladimir Putin era, the nation's most distinguished
ever political leader.
When Yeltsin died in April 2007, the Times shamefully called him "a Soviet-era reformer the
country's democratic father and later a towering figure of his time as the first freely elected
leader of Russia, presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the
Communist Party (sic)."
He presided over Russia's lost decade. Under him, over half the population became
impoverished.
His adoption of US shock therapy produced economic genocide. GDP plunged 50%. Life
expectancy fell sharply.
Democratic freedoms died. An oligarch class accumulated enormous wealth.
Western interests profited at the expense of millions of exploited Russians.
Yeltsin let corruption and criminality flourish. One scandal followed others. Grand theft
became sport. So did money laundering.
Billions in stolen wealth were secreted in Western banks and offshore tax havens.
A critic reviled him, saying throughout much of his tenure, he "slept, drank, was ill,
relaxed, didn't show his face before the people and simply did nothing," adding:
"Despised by the majority of (Russians, he'll) go down in history as the first president of
Russia, having corrupted (the country) to the breaking point, not by his virtues and or by his
defects, but rather by his dullness, primitiveness, and unbridled power lust of a
hooligan."
He was a Western/establishment media favorite, notably by the Times, mindless of the human
misery and economic wreckage he caused.
Putin is a preeminent world leader, towering over his inferior Western counterparts,
especially in the US, why the Times reviles him.
On Monday, its propaganda machine falsely accused him of waging a long war on US science,
claiming he's promoting disinformation to "encourage the spread of deadly illnesses (sic)."
Not a shred of evidence was presented because none exists. The Times' disinformation report
was slammed in a preceding article.
On Wednesday, the self-styled newspaper of record was at it again -- reactivating the Big
Lie that won't die, saying with no corroborating evidence that "Russia may have sown
disinformation in a dossier used to investigate a former Trump campaign aide (sic),"
adding:
"Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide with numerous links to Russia was probably a
Russian agent (sic)."
Disinformation the Times cited came from former UK intelligence agent Christopher Steele's
dodgy dossier, financed by the DNC and Hillary campaign.
Its spurious accusations were exposed as fake news, notably phony accusations of Russian US
election interference that didn't happened.
Probes by Robert Mueller, House and Senate committees found no credible evidence of an
illegal or improper Trump campaign connection to Russia or election interference by the Kremlin
-- because there was none of either.
According to the Times, Steele's dodgy dossier "was potentially influenced by a 'Russian
disinformation campaign to denigrate US foreign relations,' " citing FBI Big Lies as its
source.
Another article on Russia this week claimed "many people who don't work for the government
or in deep-pocketed state enterprises face economic devastation," adding:
Domestic violence increased because of social distancing and sheltering in place.
Not mentioned in the article is that mass unemployment and other COVID-19 fallout affect
Western and other countries adversely.
Putin was slammed for sending COVID-19 aid to the US, calling it "a propaganda coup for the
Kremlin -- tempered by an intensifying epidemic at home."
Outbreaks in Russia are a small fraction of US numbers, around 21,000 through Wednesday --
compared to nearly 650,000 in the US and over 28,000 deaths.
Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Britain have five-to-eightfold more outbreaks than
Russia.
NYC has over 110,000 cases. In the NY, NJ, CT tristate area, around 300,000 cases were
reported, almost as many COVID-19 deaths as outbreaks in Russia -- through Wednesday.
Putin is dealing with what's going on responsibly, stressing "we certainly must not relax,
as long as outbreaks occur.
A paid holiday is in effect through end of April for Russian workers, likely to be extended
if needed.
Essential workers continue on the job -- at home if able, otherwise operating as before.
National efforts continue to control outbreaks, aid ordinary Russians at a time of duress,
and work to restore more normal conditions.
While dealing with outbreaks at home, Russia supplied Italy, Serbia, and the US with aid to
combat the virus.
Yet Pompeo falsely accused Russia, China, and Iran with spreading disinformation about
COVID-19.
Gratitude and good will aren't US attributes, just the opposite.
This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American
healthcare system was becoming obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their
eyes. "We have Third World countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle,"
noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked
doctor in New York who described
"a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was
happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he
said
. "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my
country."
At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and
confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic"
analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a "
third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been
confined solely to lower income countries).
And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is
absent from any of
these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third
World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world"
scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world
dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the
potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a
country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken
economies and corrupt leaders."
Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or
lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and
political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the
"Third World."
In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations
–
more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases,
listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military
personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and
security apparatus organized into regional commands
that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the
British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.
The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States
stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of
supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300
years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called
the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization.
Since then, the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries,
many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to
nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions
took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to
achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).
In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more
on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our
nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget
and over half of all
discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the
Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.
Trump's claim that Obama had
"hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the
security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the
White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the
overwhelming support of House Democrats.
And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning,
resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to
the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of
this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions.
The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the
deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million
Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who
largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of
International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said
.
Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents
even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area
of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon
exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the
sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.
Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so
long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the
U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.
The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should
automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and
sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy.
And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been
earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that
channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America,
$17.5 billion is
set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace.
To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly
easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in
funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the
coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already
issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget
on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any
actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.
On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own
global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics,
particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans
are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle
East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because
Muslims hate our way of life.
This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life
making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of
the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the
outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus
itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that
country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually
guarantee its spread throughout the region.
Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks
the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition
of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the
Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .
Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now
resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized
nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those
authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a
policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass
incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in
radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.
Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn
that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism
– our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the
population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.
Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should
nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist
rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the
world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World
countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance
of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance,
has responded
to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.
Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive
confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent,
as has been predicted,
millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the
middle of a pandemic.
Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire
referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language
to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their
different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization
boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that
consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and
self-delusion.
Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical
contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things
that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our
imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look
toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic,
and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond
shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and
democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with
the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.
During a conference call with reporters, Lavrov dismissed Western claims that the Kremlin
provided the assistance hoping it would help persuade the European Union to lift sanctions
against Russia.
The U.S. and EU sanctions, imposed in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's
Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, have limited Russia's access
to global financial markets and blocked transfers of Western technologies. Russia responded by
banning imports of most Western agricultural products.
Asked if Moscow would push the EU to lift the restrictions, Lavrov said that Russia wouldn't
ask for it. "If the EU realizes that this method has exhausted itself and renounces the
decisions that were made in 2014, we will be ready to respond in kind," he added.
Lavrov also criticized those in the West who suggested that China should pay compensation
for allegedly failing to provide early enough warnings about the country's virus cases, which
were reported in December.
"The claims that China must pay everyone for the outbreak and the alleged failure to give
timely information about it cross all limits and go beyond any norms of decency," Lavrov said,
emphasizing that China has offered assistance to many nations. "My hair stands on end when I
hear that."
Without mentioning the United States by name, Russia's top diplomat also countered
Washington's criticism of the World Health Organization.
The word socialism is meaningless. A government, by nature is socialistic. Again, following
up on my sociopathy comment, it's on a spectrum. Some governments-- Sweden, Finland, Cuba--
do more, others-- Guatemala, Honduras, now Bolivia-- do less.
"Public sector" would be a more accurate term to describe what the particular government
in question is using public funds. Tennessee, for example, will not put out your house fire
if you have not paid your "fire tax". Most southeastern states have smaller public sectors
than northern states.
Another issue: be honest. Military is public sector. Police, prisons... public sector. you a
cop? your public sector. your money comes from the people. That's socialism. It makes no
sense for right wingers to be against "socialism" and work for the public sector.
Bernie never defined "socialism" accurately which allowed DNC scum and republicans to tar
him with that dirty word since we Americans are so addicted to Fox, CNN and MSNBC.
"... Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com, ..."
"... "Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes." ..."
"... , and that they were the product of RIS (Russian Intelligence Services) ..."
Systemic FBI Effort To Legitimize Steele and Use His Information To Target POTUS
Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General
Michael Horowitz's December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including
members of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy
during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.
Further, the partially declassified footnotes reveal that those senior intelligence
officials were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama
administration's Intelligence Communities Assessment (ICA).
As important, the footnotes reveal that there had been a request to validate information
collected by British spy Christopher
Steele as far back as 2015, and that there was concern among members of the FBI and
intelligence community about his reliability. Those concerns were brushed aside by members of
the Crossfire Hurricane team in their pursuit against the Trump campaign officials, according
to sources who spoke to this reporter and the footnotes.
The explosive footnotes were partially declassified and made public Wednesday, after a
lengthy review by the Director of National Intelligence Richard
Grenell's office. Grenell sent the letter Wednesday releasing the documents to Sen. Chuck
Grassley, R-Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wisconsin, both who requested the
declassification.
"Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant
Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes." Grenell
consulted with DOJ Attorney General William Barr on the declassification of the
documents.
Grassley and Johnson released a statement late Wednesday stating "as we can see from these
now-declassified footnotes in the IG's report, Russian intelligence was aware of the dossier
before the FBI even began its investigation and the FBI had reports in hand that their central
piece of evidence was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation."
"Thanks to Attorney General Barr's and Acting Director Grenell's declassification of the
footnotes, we know the FBI's justification to target an American Citizen was riddled with
significant flaws," the Senator stated. "Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team did
what neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller cared to do: examine and investigate
corruption at the FBI, the sources of the Steele dossier, how it was disseminated, and
reporting that it contained Russian disinformation."
The Footnotes
A U.S. Official familiar with the investigation into the FBI told this reporter that the
footnotes "clearly show that the FBI team was or should have had been aware that the Russian
Intelligence Services was trying to influence Steele's reporting in the summer of 2016, and
that there were some preferences for Hillary; and that this RIS [Russian Intelligence Services]
sourced information being fed to Steele was designed to hurt Trump."
The official noted these new revelations also "undermines the ICA on Russian Interference
and the intent to help Trump. It undermines the FISA warrants and there should not have been a
Mueller investigation."
The footnotes also reveal a startling fact that go against Brennan's assessment that Russia
was vying for Trump, when in fact, the Russians appeared to be hopeful of a Clinton
presidency.
"The FBI received information in June, 2017 which revealed that, among other things, there
were personal and business ties between the sub-source and Steele's Primary Sub-source,
contacts between the sub-source and an individual in the Russian Presidential Administration
in June/July 2016 [redacted] and the sub source voicing strong support for candidate Clinton
in the 2016 U.S. election. The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us that the FBI did not have a
Section 702 vicarage on any other Steele sub-source."
Steele's Lies
The complete four pages of the partially redacted footnotes paint a clear picture of the
alleged malfeasance committed by former FBI Director James Comey, former DNI James Clapper and
former CIA Director John Brennan, who were all aware of the concerns regarding the information
supplied by former British spy Christopher Steele in the dossier. Steele, who was hired by the
private embattled research firm Fusion GPS, was paid for his work through the Hillary Clinton
campaign and Democratic National Committee. The FBI also paid for Steele's work before ending
its confidential source relationship with him but then used Obama DOJ Official Bruce Ohr as a
go between to continue obtaining information from the former spy.
In footnote 205, for instance, payment documents show that Steele lied about not being a
Confidential Human Source.
"During his time as an FBI CHS, Steele received a total of $95,000 from the FBI," the
footnote states. "We reviewed the FBI paperwork for those payments, each of which required
Steele's Signed acknowledgement. On each document, of which there were eight, was the caption
'CHS payment' and 'CHS Payment Name.' A signature page was missing for one of the
payments."
Footnote 350
In footnote 350, Horowitz describes the questionable Russian disinformation and the FBI's
reliance on the information to target the Trump campaign as an attempt to build a narrative
that campaign officials colluded with Russia. Further, the timeline reveals that Comey, Brennan
and Clapper were aware of the disinformation by Russian intelligence when they briefed then
President-elect Trump in January, 2017 on the Steele dossier.
"[redacted] In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's
frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified
reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from [redacted] indicating the potential for
Russian disinformation influencing Steele' election reporting," stated the partially
declassified footnote 350. "A January 12, 2017 report relayed information from [redacted]
outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of
Michael Cohen. The [redacted] stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of
Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian
disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.
A second report from the same [redacted] five days later stated that a person named in the
limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the
[redacted] assessed that the person's denials were truthful. A USIC report dated February 27,
2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia
who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's sexual activities in Moscow
during a trip in 2013 were false , and that they were the product of RIS (Russian
Intelligence Services) 'infiltrate[ing] a source into the network' of a [redacted] who
compiled a dossier of that individual on Trump's activities. The [redacted] noted that it had
no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS activities or
information," according to the partially declassified footnote.
Looming Questions
Another concern regarding Steele's unusual activity is found in footnote 210, which states
"as we discuss in Chapter Six, members of the Crossfire Hurricane Team were unaware of Steele's
connections to Russian Oligarch 1."
The question remains that "Steele's unusual activity with 10 oligarch's led the FBI to seek
a validation review in 2015 but one was not started until 2017," said the U.S. Official to this
reporter. "Why not? Was Crossfire Hurricane aware of these concerns? Was the court made aware
of these concerns? Didn't the numerous notes about sub sources and sources having links or
close ties to Russian intelligence so why didn't this set off alarm bells?"
More alarming, it's clear, Supervisory Intelligence Agent Jonathan Moffa says in June 17,
that he was not aware of reports that Russian Intelligence Services was aware of Steele's
election reporting and influence efforts.
"However, he should have been given the reporting by UCIS" which the U.S. Official says,
goes back to summer 2016.
Footnote 342 makes it clear that "in late January, 2017, a member of the Crossfire Hurricane
team received information [redacted] that RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] may have targeted
Orbis."
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. US Attorney General
Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to
sabotage Trump . All true of course. May we take this as a sign that at last (at last!)
Durham is ready to go with indictments? Or will it prove to be another false alarm? There's
certainly a lot to reveal: A recent
investigation showed that every FISA application (warrant to spy on US citizens) examined
had egregious deficiencies. It's not just Trump.
MEANINGLESSNESS. Remember the Steele dossier? Now it's being spun as Russian
disinformation . So we're now supposed to believe that Putin smeared Trump because he
really wanted Clinton to win? Gosh, that Putin guy is so clever that it's impossible to figure
out what he's doing!
Bernie didn't want a revolution. He wanted the establishment to accept his candidacy. If
they didn't accept it then he was not going to fight. He wasted 3+ years of my time and
energy. Not to mention betraying Waffle House waitresses across the country, who repeatedly
donated money they needed to Bernie's campaign.
The US dodged a bullet with Bernie dropping out "my friend Joe" "Joe can beat Trump" &
not supporting Tulsi from being smeared & erased! Bernie has no balls - the guy endorsed
Hillary & now Biden - slapping Tulsi in the face for quitting, destroying her career for
him!
v> Aaron has made a career over all the false trump hoax's and exposing them. To bad
he's blinded in other ways and is can't be objective about Bernie and the dem establishment.
Unfortunately he part of the problem because at the end of the day he looks the other way.
And excuses those in media who lie cuz they have kids to feed. Never gonna be change with
that attitude...very Bernie like.
Sanders was never a serious candidate. For the second time in his 40ys of public service
he became sort of relevant. He was the joke of the senate all these years. A complete
fraud.
ss="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> "The answer is there is no point," as
cogently analyzed by our ever-faithful Jimmy Dore. "The Young Turks" are not progressive and
neither is Bernie. In 2016, Cenk Uygar surrendered to the Hillary-Killary inevitability
faster than Bernie could say, "Just let me know when it's time to quit." Here is the master
conspiracy theory that resolves all of this. Bernie is paid by the DNC, Russia, and The
Clinton Foundation to excite real Progressives that "the revolution will be televised." Then
he caves. How effective is that plan? It channels and harnesses a critical mass of energy and
momentum in order to throw it over the cliff. In two consecutive presidential elections,
Bernie Sanders led the lemmings to the Pied Piper's house. How dumb are we? The establishment
has framed a political strategy whereby the hopes of the people are continually and
unrelentingly crushed by the smoke-and-mirrors deceptions of their elusive "leader."
Eventually, the poor deluded people simply stop believing in any of it, and the establishment
wins. Can anyone prove me wrong?
"You vote for the whoever is least worst and then you push them in the direction you
can." But you give up all of your leverage to move them as soon as you vote for
them...
Bernie Sanders was a plant, just there to mislead the working class that they have someone
truly fighting for they cause. While robbing us of our money and time.
Bernie was too old in 2016. He's way too old now. He didn't want it. He didn't have the
fight or the drive. He was just going through the motions. Probably for another book
deal.
Sadly it seems Bernie turned out to be representative of "not so obvious establishment."
Bernie has done this to us twice now. He has funneled sincere supporters who want real change
towards establishment. Earlier towards Hillary and this time towards Biden.Bernie with his
endorsement has lost my respect.
The desperation with which The Establishment fought to destroy Corbyn is best understood
in the context of the very mild, moderate policies that he was proposing. It wasn't socialism
that the media and the ruling class were fighting so hard but populism -- their fear was that
democracy might spread and that if it did it would spell the end for their capitalist system.
In a word what frightened the neo-liberals was not the party platform of renationalising
certain industries and resocialising the NHS but the reality that nobody supported Corbyn
except the people.
He came within 2700 votes of winning the 2017 Election- despite the fanatical opposition of
the entire Establishment, including the staff of the Labour Party who were doing everything
that they could to bring about their party's defeat- a fact ignored in most of the media
reports of a recently leaked internal enquiry.
That 'near miss' was unacceptable, in the 2019 Election nothing was left to chance, and the
result was that the Labour Party was returned into the hands of the Blairites. See Realist@8
above
So the War on Populism is finally over. Go ahead, take a wild guess who won.
I'll give you a hint. It wasn't the Russians, or the white supremacists, or the gilets
jaunes, or Jeremy Corbyn's Nazi Death Cult, or the misogynist Bernie Bros, or the MAGA-hat
terrorists, or any of the other real or fictional "populist" forces that global capitalism has
been waging war on for the last four years.
What? You weren't aware that global capitalism was fighting a War on Populism ? That's OK,
most other folks weren't. It wasn't officially announced or anything. It was launched in the
summer of 2016, just as the War on Terror was ending, as a sequel to the War on Terror, or a
variation on the War on Terror, or continuation of the War on Terror, or whatever, it doesn't
really matter anymore, because now we're fighting the War on Death , or the War on
Minor Cold-like Symptoms, depending on your age and general state of health.
That's right, folks, once again, global capitalism (a/k/a "the world") is under attack by an
evil enemy. GloboCap just can't catch a break. From the moment it defeated communism and became
a global ideological hegemon, it has been one evil enemy after another.
No sooner had it celebrated winning the Cold War and started ruthlessly restructuring and
privatizing everything than it was savagely attacked by "Islamic terrorists," and so was forced
to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and kill and torture a lot of people, and destabilize the
entire Middle East, and illegally surveil everybody, and well, you remember the War on
Terror.
Then, just as the War on Terror seemed to be finally winding down, and the only terrorists
left were the "self-radicalized" terrorists (many of whom weren't
even actual terrorists ), and it looked like GloboCap was finally going to be able to
finish privatizing and debt-enslaving everything and everyone in peace, wouldn't you know it,
we were attacked again, this time by the global conspiracy of Russian-backed, neo-fascist
"populists" that caused the Brexit and elected Trump, and tried to elect Corbyn and Bernie
Sanders, and loosed the gilets jaunes on France, and who've been threatening the "fabric of
Western democracy" with dissension-sowing Facebook memes.
Unfortunately, unlike the War on Terror, the War on Populism didn't go that well. After four
years of fighting, GloboCap (a/k/a the neoliberal Resistance) had OK, they had snuffed both
Corbyn and Sanders, but they had totally blown the Russiagate psyop, and so were looking at
four more years of Trump, and Lord knows how many of Johnson in the U.K. (which had actually
left the European Union), and the gilets jaunes weren't going away, and, basically, "populism"
was still on the rise (if not in reality, in hearts and minds).
And so, just as the War on Populism had replaced (or redefined) the War on Terror, the War
on Death has been officially launched to replace (or redefine) the War on Populism which means
(you guessed it), once again, it's time to roll out another "brave new normal."
The character of this brave new normal is, at this point, unmistakably clear so clear that
most people cannot see it, because their minds are not prepared to accept it, so they do not
recognize it, though they are looking right at it. Like Dolores in the Westworld series,
"it doesn't look like anything" to them. To the rest of us, it looks rather totalitarian.
Where I live (Alberta, Canada), there have been 44 deaths from supposed COVID19. Fully half
have been at two long-term care facilities in Calgary (people in their 80s and 90s and
suffering from other ailments). Yet the entire province has been shut down except for
'essential' services (grocery stores, pharmacies, liquor and cannabis stores?). Even though
Alberta isn't a hotbed of protest (unless you talk about PRO oil company and PRO pipelines
protests) our 'leaders' have been told to play ball and scare the populace. Now you have
private citizens ratting out their neighbors who are breaking quarantine rules. Thank you Mr.
Hopkins for an excellent article.
What? You weren't aware that global capitalism was fighting a War on Populism? That's
OK, most other folks weren't.
Those of us who are Populists were aware. Add that to -- The Multiculturalist war on
Christianity.
Hopefully everyone sees that the next DNC candidate (Biden, Cuomo, Hillary ) will put U.S.
boots on the ground to support Globalist self enrichment 'color' revolutions and the
Responsibility To Protect [R2P]. Ukraine 'Orange' Maidan will be the first invasion, but not
the last.
If you are a U.S. citizen, vote *against* the Globalist War Machine being driven by
NeoConDemocrats. You do not have to like Trump . the alternative is WW III. Plus options on
IV, V, and VI
"Sergey Lavrov: Of course, the pandemic has created very serious problems, the most
important of which is saving people's lives, ensuring their security, biomedical safety and
the preservation of the human environment, which should be comfortable and pose no threats to
life and health."
Thanks for the link. Russia has the best leadership in the world right now. I have read
transcripts from lavrov and putin on many occasions, I seem to recall listening to putin
speak a few times in english; these guys are always level headed, competent, rational; and
first and foremost, taking care of their people.
As an american, I am jealous. Just compare them to any of our leaders in my lifetime
(50yrs), and for that matter, I haven't even read about too many of our leaders being real
statesmen, absolutely no comparison.
Lavrov is an artist cloaked in diplomatic disguise. I find him very pleasurable to read.
Yes, he said a great many things in answer to a wide variety of questions. Aside from the
quote cited @38, for me there were two important points. The first was the Outlaw US Empire's
offer to resume discussions on arms control and outer space, although I suspect the upcoming
election is tied to the offer. Second relates to my thesis that nations can be seen as
Nurturing or Parasitic based on their behavior during this crisis. One of the attributes of
Nurturing nations is the collective aspect of their socio-cultural composition:
Question: "However, there is a lack of global unity and joint efforts to fight the
pandemic. In addition, the existing alliances have proven ineffective in these conditions. In
your opinion, how will all this affect the future world order? What will it look like after
the pandemic?
"Sergey Lavrov: In my response to one of the first questions I said that apart from
fighting the pandemic and resolving economic problems at the national and global levels the
third greatest challenge is to understand what lies ahead for multilateral institutions, what
role they will play in the future and whether they will remain relevant. The outcome of the
fight against the coronavirus will show which countries and multilateral structures have
withstood the test of this horrible threat, this crisis. I understand your concern that
the egoistic aspirations we are currently witnessing in the behaviour of some countries could
prevail, leading to future attempts to self-insulate from the outside world . We are
already witnessing anxious debates about Schengen Area countries on their shared future and
neighbourly relations. In the end, I think that a collective approach will prevail. It may
take some time though. It will require meetings and persuasion. However, this is the only
possible way forward ." [My Emphasis]
The unilateral, Rugged Individual, Herd Immunity, Neoliberal approach has failed bigtime
despite frantic efforts to keep them afloat--note that such approaches were opposed by the
publics of those nations whose "leaders" trod that path. I recall the aim of The Man in
the Wilderness was to return to his collective--his family--and the fear that gripped the
collective that abandoned him. (There's a very big lesson there if people think upon it while
watching the film.) The attempt to glorify the Rugged Individual is unique, began in the
1820s with the popular writings of James Fenimore Cooper, and solely belongs to the Outlaw US
Empire and its attempt to cultivate the myth of Manifest Destiny and American
Exceptionalism.
It appears the only collectivism to be allowed within the Outlaw US Empire is that of the
Money Power; all others are to be atomized, restricted in their ability to act together
except when laboring to feed the Money Power. Something like Orwell's description of the
Proles in 1984 --joyfully ignorant and powerless. The only way to thwart the Money
Power's plan for ongoing dominance and pauperization of the Outlaw US Empire's masses is for
those masses to discover how to act collectively. Yes, it's been done before but the effort
was abandoned prior to the final goal being attained in 1900. There was another attempt to
establish a mass collective during the early 1930s, but that too was thwarted and its memory
washed away by War and the pseudo war that followed--do note the concerted attack on
collective effort made from 1946-1964. The one major collective organization that remained in
1972--the draft-based civilian military--was then disbanded, and nothing has arisen to
replace it. Even the mass politicking that had grown during the 1960s withered to where only
a ghost remains.
An ongoing discourse here at MoA deals with the question of how to get people to
again come together as a collective to create the change that's so badly needed to preserve
our own wellbeing, which is in the collective interest of 330+ million people, as well as
that of the planet's populous. IMO, the answer lies in seizing advantage of the obvious
failure of the unilateral go-it-alone, damn the torpedoes, approach to COVID-19 that
deliberately omitted the needs of 330+ million people and directly threatened their
wellbeing.
If there was ever a teachable moment to educate an entire nation, that time is upon us.
Fortunately, part of the message is already there and just needs to be spread further along
with its associated rationale: Not Me, US! The formula for success isn't Top->Down it's
Bottom->Up since it's decentralized and very hard to defuse.
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed
is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness.
For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my
brothers.
And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
"... The recent tale of Israeli-American Michael Kadar, who has been credited with many of early 2017's nearly two thousand bomb scares targeting Jewish community centers and synagogues worldwide, is illustrative. ..."
"... The court in Tel Aviv convicted Kadar on counts including "extortion, disseminating hoaxes in order to spread panic, money laundering and computer hacking over bomb and shooting threats against community centers, schools, shopping malls, police stations, airlines, and airports in North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark." It claimed that "As a result of 142 telephone calls to airports and airlines, in which he said bombs had been planted in passenger planes or they would come under attack, aircraft were forced to make emergency landings and fighter planes were scrambled." ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is ..."
Even though distracted by the havoc resulting from the coronavirus, the United States and
much of Europe is engaged in a frenzied search for anti-Semitism and anti-Semites so that what
the media and chattering class are regarding as the greatest of all crimes and criminals can
finally be extirpated completely. To be sure, there have recently been some horrific instances
of ethnically or religiously motivated attacks on synagogues and individual Jews, but, as is
often the case, however, quite a lot of the story is either pure spin or politically motivated.
A Jewish student walking on a college campus who walks by protesters objecting to Israel's
behavior can claim to feel threatened and the incident is recorded as anti-Semitism, for
example, and slurs written on the sides of buildings or grave stones, not necessarily the work
of Jew-haters, are similarly categorized. In
one case in Israel in 2017, the two street swastika artists were Jews.
Weaponizing one point of view inevitably limits the ability of contrary views to be heard.
The downside is, of course, that the frenzy that has resulted in the criminalization of free
expression relating in any but a positive way to the activity of Jewish groups. It has also
included the acceptance of the dishonest definition that any criticism of Israel is ipso facto
anti-Semitism, giving that nation a carte blanche in terms of its brutal treatment of its
neighbors and even of its non-Jewish citizens.
Jewish dominated Hollywood and the entertainment media have helped to create the
anti-Semitism frenzy and continue to give the public regular doses of the holocaust story.
Currently there are a number of television shows that depict in one form or another the
persecution of Jews. Hunters on Amazon is about Jewish Americans tracking and killing
suspected former Nazis living in New York City in the 1970s. The Plot to Destroy
America on HBO is a retro history tale about how a Charles Lindbergh/Henry Ford regime
installs a fascist government in the 1930s. One critic describes
the televisual revenge feast "as one paranoid Jewish fantasy after another advocating murder as
the solution to what they perceive as the problem of anti-Semitism."
But, as always, nothing is quite so simple as such a black and white portrayal where there
are evil Nazis and Jewish victims who are always justified when they seek revenge. First of
all, as has been demonstrated ,
many recent so-called anti-Semitic attacks on Jews involve easily recognizable Hasidic Jews and
are actually based on community tensions as established neighborhoods are experiencing dramatic
changes with the newcomers using pressure tactics to force out existing residents. And after
the Hasidim take over a town or neighborhood, they defund local schools to support their own
private academies and frequently engage in large scale welfare and other social services fraud
to permit them to spend all their days studying the Talmud, which, inter alia teaches
that gentiles are no better than beasts fit only to serve Jews.
The recent concentration of coronavirus in Orthodox neighborhoods in New York as well as the
eruption of measles cases last year have been attributed to the unwillingness of some
conservative Jews to submit to vaccinations and normal hygienic practices. They also have
persisted in illegal large gatherings at weddings and religious ceremonies, spreading the
coronavirus within their own communities and also to outsiders with whom they have contact.
Regularly exposing anti-Semitism is regarded as a good thing by many Jewish groups because
the state of perpetual victimization that it supports enables them to obtain special benefits
that might otherwise be considered excessive in a pluralistic democracy. Holocaust education in
schools is now mandatory in many jurisdictions and more than 90% of discretionary Department of
Homeland Security funding goes to Jewish organizations. Jewish organizations are
now lining up to get what they choose to believe is their share of Coronavirus emergency
funding.
Claims of increasing anti-Semitism, and the citation of the so-called holocaust, are like
having a perpetual money machine that regularly disgorges reparations from the Europeans as
well as billions of dollars per year from the U.S. Treasury. Holocaust and anti-Semitism
manufactured guilt are undoubtedly contributing factors to the subservient relationship that
the United States enjoys with the state of Israel, most recently manifested in the U.S.
Department of Defense's gift of one million surgical masks
to the Israel Defense Force in spite of there being a shortage of the masks in the United
States (note how the story
was edited after it first appeared by the Jerusalem Post to conceal the U.S. role
but it still has the original email address and the photo cites the Department of Defense).
And then there is the issue of Jewish power, which is discussed regularly by Jews themselves
but is verboten to gentiles. Jews wield hugely disproportionate power in all the Anglophone
states as well as in France and parts of Eastern Europe and even in Latin America. If
anti-Semitism is as rampant as has often been claimed it is odd that there are so many Jews
prominent in politics and the professions, most especially financial services and the media.
Either anti-Semitism is not really "surging" or the actual anti-Semities have proven to be
particularly incompetent in making their case.
Further muddying the waters, there have been a number of instances in which Jews have
themselves been responsible for what have been claimed to be anti-Semitic incidents. There has
also been credible speculation that some of the incidents have been false flags staged by the
Israeli government itself, presumably acting through its intelligence services. The objective
would be to create sympathy among the public in Europe and the U.S. for Israel and to
encourage
diaspora emigration to the Jewish state. The recent tale of Israeli-American Michael
Kadar, who has been credited with many of early 2017's nearly two thousand bomb scares
targeting Jewish community centers and synagogues worldwide, is illustrative.
Kadar, who holds both Israeli and American nationality, was arrested in Ashkelon
Israel on March 2017 by Israeli police in response to the investigation carried out by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Kadar's American address was in New Lenox Illinois but he
actually resided in Israel. Kadar's defense was that he had a brain tumor that caused autism
and was not responsible for his actions, but he was found to be fit for trial and was
sentenced
to 10 years in prison in June 2017. He was apparently subsequently quietly released from
prison and returned to Illinois in
mid-2018. In August 2019 he was
arrested for violation of parole on a firearms and drugs offense.
The court in Tel Aviv convicted Kadar on counts including "extortion, disseminating
hoaxes in order to spread panic, money laundering and computer hacking over bomb and shooting
threats against community centers, schools, shopping malls, police stations, airlines, and
airports in North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark." It claimed
that "As a result of 142 telephone calls to airports and airlines, in which he said bombs had
been planted in passenger planes or they would come under attack, aircraft were forced to make
emergency landings and fighter planes were scrambled."
It was also claimed
by the court that Kadar had gotten involved with the so-called restricted access "dark web"
to make threats for money. He reportedly earned $240,000 equivalent worth of the digital
currency Bitcoin. Kadar has reportedly refused to reveal the password to his Bitcoin wallet and
its value is believed to have increased to more than $1 million.
The tale borders on the bizarre and right from the beginning there were
many inconsistencies in both the Department of Justice case and in terms of Kadar's
biography and vital statistics. After his arrest and conviction, many of his public, private
and social networking records were either deleted or changed, suggesting that a high-level
cover-up was underway.
Most significant, the criminal
complaint against Kadar included details of the phone calls that were not at all consistent
with the case that he had acted alone. The threats were made using what is referred to as
spoofing telephone services, used by marketers to hide the caller's true number and identify,
but the three cell phone numbers identified by the Department of Justice to make the spoofed
calls were all U.S.-based and one of them was linked to a Jewish Chabad religious leader and
one to the Church of Scientology's counter-intelligence chief in California. In addition, some
of the calls were made when Kadar was in transit between Illinois and Israel, suggesting that
he had not initiated the calls.
DOJ's criminal complaint also included information that the threat caller was a woman who
had "a distinct speech impediment." Michael Kadar's mother has a distinct speech impediment.
Oddly enough she has not been identified in any public documents and the Israelis claimed that
Michael was disguising his voice, but she is believed to be Dr. Tamar Kadar, who resided in
Ashkelon at the same address as Michael. Dr. Kadar is a chemical weapons researcher at the
Mossad-linked Israel Institute for Biological Research ("IIBR").
Michael appears to have U.S. birthright citizenship because he was born in Bethesda in 1990
while his mother was a visiting researcher at the U.S. Army Military Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). While Dr. Kadar was at USAMRIID, anthrax went missing from the
Army's lab and may have been subsequently used in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks inside the
U.S., which resulted in the deaths of five people. The FBI subsequently accused two USAMRIID
researchers of the theft, but one was exonerated and the other committed suicide, closing the
investigation.
So, there are some interesting issues raised by the Michael Kadar case. First of all, he
appears to have been the fall guy for what may have been a Mossad directed false-flag operation
actually run by his mother, who is herself an expert on biological weapons and works at an
Israeli intelligence lab. Second, the objective of the operation may have been to create an
impression that anti-Semitism is dramatically increasing, which ipso facto generates a
positive perception of Israel and encourages foreign Jews to emigrate to the Jewish state. And
third, there appears to have been a cover-up orchestrated by the Israeli and U.S. governments,
evident in the disappearance of both official and non-official records, while Michael has been
quietly released from prison and is enjoying his payoff of one million dollars in bitcoins. As
always, whenever something involves promoting the interests of the state of Israel, the deeper
one digs the more sordid the tale becomes.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its
email is[email protected] .
Good piece of work Dr. Giraldi. A few things about this case of the Kadars. Basically Israel
refused to cooperate with the FBI at the beginning and resisted giving up the kid.
Furthermore, the FBI was told to "back off" by higher ups in the agency and let Israel handle
it. So the results are what you would expect with a false flag.
The anthrax case still has legs. Bruce Irvins was the microbiologist at Detrick you are
referring to. He was never charged and they never proved he was involved and the FBI could
not place him in any of the spots they wanted. He had some issues and the FBI gang banged him
looking for a patsy. Dr. Hatfill was the "original" Person of Interest whom the Jewish
controlled media followed around and they ruined his life. He sued the FBI and won a lot of
money.
The FBI appeared to intentionally mess up the anthrax samples. Reviews by the National
Academy of Science rocked the idiots at the FBI and they concluded Irvins was not involved.
The real kicker to all of this is that the FBI leader of the investigation was Robert
Mueller! The same Mueller who spent almost 3 years chasing Russian spies well knowing that it
was lie.
And finally who sealed the files so no one could ever come up with the real perpetrators
..Obama!
Antisemitism is pro-Israel, the Nazis included (shipping jews to Palestine).
For some reason I know exactly what a neonazi looks like, how he behaves, how he talks,
how he thinks and even how he feels. But I never met one. Where does this 'knowledge' come
from?
I happen to remember some television that I have seen as a child. Most people don't and
are living in a fantasy world with fantasy enemies and fantasy friends and take it for
reality.
"Further muddying the waters, there have been a number of instances in which Jews have
themselves been responsible for what have been claimed to be anti-Semitic incidents."
There have been so many such incidents over the years that when a synagogue or cemetery
gets spray-painted with swastikas, the default presumption for any subsequent investigation
is automatically "inside-job".
The stereotypical perpetrator would tend to be a deranged student residing at the campus
Hillel House, majoring in film studies or some other flakey college program.
Years ago there was a case of a San Francisco synagogue on fire. After the arsonist, a
Jew, was caught and confessed, the tenor of the response was that one had to feel sorry for
him because he needed help.
In light of such incidents there has even been a visual meme out there: Hey Rabbi
Watcha Doin'?! (See Google Images)
Getting a patsy to do the dirty work is significantly more effective in provoking outrage
and sympathy. Though last year's attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, during Yom Kippur
services in early October was highly suspicious, media reports managed to suppress those
aspects and instead generated a victimhood-card bonanza that lasted for weeks.
The German population was easily bamboozled. Prominent Jewish representatives publicly
demanded more stringent laws against "anti-semitism", as recently re-defined, and
parliamentarians duly obliged.
News that had not been much reported about, but was circulating at the outset in
alternative media:
• Mentally deranged perpetrator, who had shared his views on an Internet chat group,
expressed his desire to attack Muslims and Antifa.
• Anonymous "handler / minder" in California offered to pay him half a bitcoin to
redirect his attack toward the synagogue instead.
• Synagogue had just recently been equipped with elaborate security system installed
by Israeli company to withstand shooting and bombing attacks.
• Local police, which normally would provide security outside, during holiday
services, were conspicuously absent during that time, and slow to respond (likely stand-down
orders from above).
• Perpetrator filmed his rampage, which he broadcast in real-time as a live stream
video online (wanting to emulate an earlier attack in New Zealand), enabling his handlers to
monitor the shooting spree while in progress.
• After his mission failed, frustrated perpetrator "spilled the beans" in real-time
and cussed out the Californian bitcoin payer, who had apparently set him up to be framed, as
probably being a Jew.
Of course, by design, the securely locked synagogue door easily withstood the shooting
attack with multiple exterior bullet holes into its wooden exterior. Everybody in the world
probably saw that part.
I was born in Argentina, 1950. There was a populist nationalist government then, strongly
disliked by the US. It included a whole spectrum, right to left. It assisted together with
the Vatican the rescuing of Nazi criminals that settled in the country. There was an
antisemitic movement headed by a provocateur, Juan Guillermo Kelly for name. Jews emigrated
to Israel. In the 80s he made public he was a Mossad agent
@vot
tak How can Jews be a 'colonial occupation force' in any nation that is English-speaking
and has not totally rejected the political and cultural heritage of WASP Empire?
Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy. When the Anglo-Saxon Puritans won their
revolution, they cemented Modern English culture as one twined with Jewish ideas and ideals.
Archetypal WASP Oliver Cromwell cemented that doubly by allying with Jewish bankers on the
Continent. From the mid-1600s, Jews have been the defining bankers of English Empire, of WASP
Empire. And bankers are always the opposite of outsiders. Bankers own and eventually come to
control fully.
Anglo-Zionist Empire has existed since at least Oliver Cromwell.
As in the case of the Mossad asset Jeff Epstein, who was running a child-rape assembly line
on his 'Orgy Island' and on his 'Lolita Express,' to ensnare weakling politicians,
video-taping them in the process of raping young girls–and boys–then use that to
blackmail them into becoming an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, the one lead that was never
pursued was, "How many other Epstein's are out there, doing their slimy business for Israel?"
The same could be asked of this 'Mikey' Kadar terrorist, who I'm sure has plenty of
accomplices world-wide, still phoning in threats or maybe spray-painting Jew cemeteries with
the dreaded Nazi Swastika.
This terrorist does about one year in prison, then is set free and off to the USA he runs?
If his name had been Mohammed or he was a skin-headed nationalist, he'd be in prison for the
rest of his life, but since he's from that class of those Chosen by G-d, he gets a
pass.
There was an antisemitic movement headed by a provocateur, Juan Guillermo Kelly
Very interesting information. I did a quick search and the only info I found was this wiki
entry in Spanish.
I used google translate to convert to English.
Do you have any sources that confirm his alleged affiliation with Mossad?
[Hide MORE]
From a young age he was a member of the Nationalist Liberation Alliance. Until then, it
was led by Juan Queraltó and had a clear anti-Semitic profile that Kelly fought
against. The group went on to become a shock force of Peronism.
During the bombing of Plaza de Mayo, when a group of military personnel opposed to the
government of Juan Domingo Perón attempted to assassinate him and carry out a coup
d'état, several squadrons of aircraft belonging to Naval Aviation, bombarded and
machine-gunned them with anti-aircraft ammunition, Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, as well
as the CGT building, Kelly, aided by the Nationalist Liberation Alliance, dueled with the
Marines responsible for the attack. [2]
After the self-proclaimed liberating revolution dictatorship was established, after a
bombardment of the headquarters of his organization, located in San Martín and
Corrientes Avenue in Buenos Aires. On September 21, the coup armed forces received from
Córdoba the order to eliminate that focus of resistance in the heart of the city of
Buenos Aires and advanced on it with cannons and two Sherman tanks, sending an emissary to
surrender. The cannons and tanks fired and some fifty men, led by Guillermo Patricio Kelly,
surrendered. Those who remained inside died under the rubble of the three-story building,
destroyed with gunshots. The number of deaths that some raise to more than 400 is unknown.
[3] After that, he was arrested by the dictatorship and transferred to the Río
Gallegos prison, where one night in 1957 he starred in a film escape along with John William
Cooke, Jorge Antonio and Héctor Cámpora and other political prisoners managed
to escape, after which he applied for political asylum in Chile, but this was denied. When he
was about to be sent to Argentina, he escaped again, this time dressed as a woman, [required
appointment] to Venezuela where Perón was. When he left Chile for Caracas, he used a
new identity: he was "Doctor Vargas, psychoanalyst".
When on January 26, 1958, the newspaper El Nacional titled "Perón led the
repression against the Venezuelan people," he identified him, along with Kelly, as "National
Security torture consultants" and published Perón's fraternal letters to the head of
that body.
When the revolution broke out in Venezuela, Perón was another of the insurgents'
objectives, along with his collaborators, among whom was Kelly, and they had to take refuge
in the Embassy of the Dominican Republic. Outside, more than a thousand people were shaking
the entrance gate. They had already been locked up for two days, and people were still
outside. All the Argentines looked askance at Kelly. "They are going to kill us all because
of this one," they growled. There were several who wanted to kick him out and someone raised
the motion: to vote if he should withdraw. It was not necessary: Kelly decided
to face up. He only asked for two conditions: that he be given a pair of dark glasses and a
hat. He also asked for silver. When he walked out of the embassy and mixed with the crowd, no
one could recognize him. In the midst of the seizure, Kelly made contact with two CIA agents:
-- The Communists are going to enter the embassy and they are going to kill Perón. And
if they kill him, the entire continent is communicated – he warned them. Finally, the
United States prepared to rescue him, interceding with the revolutionary government to clear
the area and facilitate his departure to the Dominican Republic. [4]
Kelly was stoned from the Caracas airport, obtained refuge in Haiti and, after a turbulent
stay in which he was imprisoned, [5] crossed the border to the Dominican Republic, where he
remained for a few days. He returned to Argentina in 1958 with the passport that he stole
from Roberto Galán and after six months he was arrested and transferred again to the
Ushuaia prison. [6]
Throughout his life he was imprisoned for almost eight years. In 1966 he occupied the
headquarters of the PJ National Coordinating Board for a few hours, from where he launched a
violent proclamation against union leader Augusto Vandor. [appointment required]
In 1981, in the midst of a military dictatorship, he denounced the theft of $ 60 million
from Argentina, 10% of that debt belonging to General Suárez Mason, considering him a
"murderer of the people." According to Kelly, Mason is involved in the YPF emptying in the
1980s. He also said that the military man worked as a mercenary training mercenary troops to
fight in the Caribbean, which received money from the Nord high command, who was accused of
murdering the brother and two nephews of former President Arturo Frondizi. Also involved in
this robbery was former judge Pedro Narvaez who fled to Rio de Janeiro and then to Spain. [7]
[8]
In 1983, he gained notoriety after formulating a series of complaints related to the P-2
Lodge, the YPF dismissal and the murder of Fernando Branca, in addition to filing a criminal
complaint against Emilio Massera. Shortly thereafter, in August of that year, Kelly was
kidnapped and severely beaten by a gang led by Aníbal Gordon, who claimed to have
acted on the orders of the last military dictator Reynaldo Bignone and the Army Corps I.
In 1991, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, he was the host of an ATC program called
Sin Concesiones, in which he maintained that it would reveal "where the children of the
´Noble Ladies´ come from", alluding to the children adopted by the director from
the Clarín newspaper, Ernestina Herrera de Noble. After a meeting between Herrera de
Noble, Héctor Magnetto and Carlos Menem held at the Quinta de Olivos on Thursday, May
2, 1991, Clarín and the government agreed on Kelly's air release at ATC in exchange
for the air output of the program of the journalist Liliana López Foresi, Magazine 13,
Journalism with an opinion, in which Menem was severely criticized. [9] [10] [11] [12]
On the subject of Herrera de Noble's children, Kelly wrote a book published by Arkel
Publishing in 1993 titled Noble: Imperio Corrupto. Only 200 copies were published, although
the author gave several of them to public libraries in the United States. [13]
He died on July 1, 2005 at 8:30 am, a victim of terminal cancer at the German Hospital in
the City of Buenos Aires. [14] [15]
Very much so. Because it helps direct our attention to something very important.
Though they're good at infiltration, subversion, betrayal, destruction and death, they're
no good at social-managment.
Who's "they"?
I refer to them as Jewish Supremacy Inc. (JSI).
It's a distinction worth making because it separates them from Jews who don't hate Whites
and aren't obsessed with being Jewish.
They're out there, however small their numbers might be.
After all, Gilad Atzmon's not the only one.
It's also worth pointing out that JSI gets lots of help from three other groups who aren't
Jewish at all. In fact they're White.
1. the cynical, self-centered whores of opportunity who will do anything to protect their
own materialistic, narcissistic trough.
2. the incurably gullible, pathologically naive Whites from Left-wingy Multi-Culties to
Right-wing Christian Zionists.
3. the perfectly indifferent who walk around with that stroked out look on their face from
watching too much ESPN and Pornhub.
The rest of us are freedom-lovers, or TUR readers/commenters or potential TUR
readers/commenters.
Meaning they'd be open to what the actual readers/commenters have to say and won't fly off
the handle with a knee-jerk reaction before springing into fight or flight mode.
In short, this boils down to a battle of
Dogma versus Pragma
.
What's the difference?
Pragma is open to exposing its ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction
for the purpose of improving the quality of its social-management
Excuse me, but this is comical. There is no other group in America and the entire West who
are more protected and more privileged than Jews. While White Gentiles are routinely
attacked, beaten to a pulp, raped, and brutally murdered by Blacks, Hispanics, Pakis, Arabs,
in Europe and America, just for having the temerity to walk outside in countries built by
their White ancestors. How does a painted swastika equate with rape-torture murders of the
Christian-Newsom Knoxville Horror? And if you think the Christian-Newsom murders are a rare
crime in America, you are living under a rock. And lest we forget the Christian-Newsom
Murders nor the Wichita Massacre murders were labeled "hate crimes." Despite thousands upon
thousands of Black on White and other nonwhite on White attacks, rapes, murders in this
country, you can bet the house that no one in Washington has voiced concerns over the
violence being perpetrated on White Gentiles daily in America. America is indeed a racist
country and Whites experience that racism every single day.
Remember a couple years ago when someone was calling bomb threats to Jewish Community
Centers? Remember that they found out it was some Jewish guy in a Tel Aviv basement calling
in the bomb threats. Of course at first the (((media))) went through their spiel about how
anti-Semitism was on the rise in America, and then once we all found out that the perpetrator
was a Jewish guy in Israel, ( I believe a dual citizen at that) the (((media))) dropped this
case quicker than you could claim some NY/NJ rabbis were selling body organs.
Most of these hate crime HOAXES are simply Jews and/or Blacks drawing swastikas, hanging a
nooses in a locker, or some other ridiculous and downright childish act that in no way even
if done by a White racist who hates Jews and Blacks, equates to a Mississippi girl named
Jessica Chambers being burned alive, a 12 year old white male being burned alive with a blow
torch by an adult black female in Texas, etc., etc. The fact of the matter is that "hate
crimes" against nonwhites and Jews are downright rare in America, ( not talking about HOAXES
here) and there is no way that a crayon drawing of a swastika or hanging a noose in someone's
locker can be linked as the same as someone dying a horrific and brutal death like the White
victims I listed. IF we lived in a TRULY just and decent country, EVERYONE out there,
regardless of color, creed or religion would recognize that we need to stop all the hate and
violence directed at White Gentiles before moving on to worrying about crayon drawings.
Remember when Noel Ignatiev the Jewish professor stated we need to "abolish Whiteness?" Now
imagine a White professor stating that we need to "abolish Jewishness in America?" Can you
imagine what would have happened to that guy? Is it possible for a Jew in America/Canada or
Europe to be fired from his or here job for making racist or inflammatory remarks about
Whites?
The story of Michael Kadar is reminiscent of the tale of another criminal young male with
dual Israeli US citizenship, Samuel Sheinbein.
Sheinbein and a colleague murdered, dismembered and burnt a fellow high school classmate,
the hispanic Fredo Enrique Tello, Jr., in September, 1997. Sheinbein fled to Israel and in a
long drawn out court battle, Sheinbein's requested extradition to the State of Maryland to
stand trial was refused by Israel's supreme court.
You can read the whole sordid story in Wikipedia including how Sheinbaum was killed in a
shootout with the guards who were escorting him from one prison to another.
@Jake
Here we go with the WASP thing again. A minority of descendants of the Angles were Puritans,
and even fewer Saxons were Puritans. There were also Norse Puritans, Norman Puritans and
Briton Puritans. All Puritans were minorities. Many "Protestant" Churches, including the
Anglican Church, considered Puritans dissenters, verging on heretics, and not really
Protestants beyond protesting the Church of Rome. Knox's Presbyterians had a lot in common
with Puritans as did Dutch Protestants, and there were a lot of Dutch who moved to East
Anglia. Some became Puritans. It's silly to refer to it at it being "Anglo-Saxon Puritans" as
not all were Angles or Saxons. They were Puritans who happened to be Angles, Saxons and
others. WASP is even sillier. Are there Brown, Yellow, or Red Anglo-Saxons?
Cromwell seized power because the Stuarts were unpopular for many reasons, and as with
every revolution, a minority with zealotry seizes power from an apathetic majority. Sure he
turned to the Jewish Amsterdam bankers, who were already funding the Dutch Empire, including
New Amsterdam, but who else would have helped? The Puritans were vehemently anti Catholic and
would have never turned there. They were also vehemently anti-Muslim, so the Ottomans were
out. The Jews were it by elimination.
As for the culture. The culture of the elite is seldom the culture of the general
population.
The "Anglo-Saxons" were more than happy to restore the Stuarts after Cromwell, as long as
they were Protestants. The installation of King Billy, replacing James, was due to James
having converted to Catholicism and the fear of his imposing it on the country.
It was under William and Mary that the newly, created by Parliament, Bank of England was
taken over by Jewish bankers. The same minority Puritan Parliament that restored the Stuarts
and sponsored the overthrow of James.
A lot of illusions. Democratic Party is a party of neoliberal billionaires and want to remains this way. They will never
reform. They are a part of Pepsi-Cola scam -- the party duopoly in the USA.
In ancient Greek dramas, a deus ex machina would sometimes be enacted; a god, wheeled in on
a mechanical contraption, would appear upon the stage and go on to set an otherwise intractable
situation right.
Notable quotes:
"... The Republican Party was already unspeakably odious before Trump waddled into the scene, but, by giving a large and growing segment of its base – its mainly male, mainly rural, mainly geezerly, poorly educated, socially dislocated and economically stressed component -- permission to give their most noxious impulses free rein, Trump has turned the Republican Party into a personality cult for him to manipulate as he sees fit. ..."
"... Meanwhile, playing on their rank opportunism and mindless disregard of values and principles, he has brought the God Squad, rightwing Christian evangelicals and their Jewish counterparts, into the Trumpian fold, along with many of the most base and shamelessly venal plutocrats and plutocrat wannabes in creation. ..."
"... Biden is a doofus who, even in his prime, could actually make the Clintons look good. That was surely one of the reasons why Barack Obama picked him to be his running mate; the future President Drone and Deporter-in-Chief, anticipating taking up where Bill Clinton left off, wanted to look good too. ..."
"... ["Kakistocracy," for those who still don't know, is an old word that has lately become timely. It means: rule of the worst, the most vile, corrupt, and incompetent.] ..."
"... One would think that mainstream Democrats would have learned something from 2016 about the wisdom of fielding a stalwart of the ancien régime , a "moderate" -- she called herself a "progressive pragmatist" – against a buffoonish, sociopathic liar, a reality TV conman, who promises "to drain the swamp." ..."
"... There is a certain irony in what Democrats are now saying about that prospect, now that, barring a miracle, Biden is the presumptive nominee. They are saying just what people were saying about Trump when his more thoughtful supporters were starting to anticipate and then to experience voters' remorse – that, however awful he may be, however much out of his depth in the Oval Office, "the adults in the room" will be there to keep him in line. ..."
"... By almost any relevant standard, Franken was a far better Senator than Biden or, for that matter, than nearly every other Democratic Senator, Gillibrand included. By almost any relevant standard, Biden, even in his prime, was a dunce. But no matter. Anything for banality's sake; anything not to field a candidate worth supporting. ..."
"... In ancient Greek dramas, a deus ex machina would sometimes be enacted; a god, wheeled in on a mechanical contraption, would appear upon the stage and go on to set an otherwise intractable situation right. ..."
"... Obama's Original Sin, and also Eric Holder's, was to let the war criminals in the upper echelon of the Bush administration off scot-free. I fear that just as Trump takes his cues from Fox News, Biden will be taking his from what Obama did a dozen years ago. ..."
"... Back then, Obama said that he wanted "to look forward," to let bygones be bygone. Because that is precisely what he did, the Bush-Cheney perpetual war regime became his own. It is still with us too, and Biden is no doubt itching to take up where his Best Friend Forever left off. ..."
"... Were that to come to pass, the countless, legally actionable crimes that Trump and his kakistocratic minions have committed, now including the depraved indifference to human life and the menace to public health that Trump has been exhibiting daily since the corvid-19 crisis broke, would go unpunished, setting an even worse precedent than the one set by Obama. ..."
Donald Trump is
a paradoxical creature. On the one hand, he resembles nothing so much as a dumbass teenage boy,
and, on the other, a barfly, long in the tooth and good for nothing but mouthing off.
This from an obese septuagenarian who doesn't drink and who, unlike Richard Nixon, his only
near rival in political depravity, is as unconflicted and intellectually shallow as they
come.
Nixon was good at many things. In politics, Trump is good at only two.
One is using corporate media to his own advantage. To be sure, Trump has Fox News and talk
radio, propaganda assets Nixon could hardly have dreamed of, in his pocket, but they were in
place, dumbing down and otherwise doing harm, long before he came onto the scene. What Trump
has managed to do is to get the ostensibly respectable cable networks, CNN and MSNBC, to offer
him their platforms for free.
This, as much as Hillary Clinton's politics and her failures as a candidate, helped him get
elected in 2016. It is helping him stay afloat now, even as the utter incompetence of his
handling of the on-going covid-19 crisis that he did so much to exacerbate becomes stunningly
clear to anyone not hellbent on denying the obvious.
CNN's and MSNBC's hatred of the Donald is as palpable as it is justified, and yet he plays
them like a fiddle.
The other thing he is good at is turning the GOP into an instrument of his will.
The Republican Party was already unspeakably odious before Trump waddled into the scene,
but, by giving a large and growing segment of its base – its mainly male, mainly rural,
mainly geezerly, poorly educated, socially dislocated and economically stressed component --
permission to give their most noxious impulses free rein, Trump has turned the Republican Party
into a personality cult for him to manipulate as he sees fit.
Meanwhile, playing on their rank opportunism and mindless disregard of values and
principles, he has brought the God Squad, rightwing Christian evangelicals and their Jewish
counterparts, into the Trumpian fold, along with many of the most base and shamelessly venal
plutocrats and plutocrat wannabes in creation.
And what does the other duopoly party offer in response? Joe Biden. Seriously.
Biden is a doofus who, even in his prime, could actually make the Clintons look good. That was surely one of the reasons why Barack Obama picked him to be his running mate; the
future President Drone and Deporter-in-Chief, anticipating taking up where Bill Clinton left
off, wanted to look good too.
Another reason was to reassure Wall Street. They had already vetted him out the wazoo, but
with serious money involved, they were still a tad worried. Team Obama therefore felt it
expedient to set their minds at ease. Biden on the ticket would seal the deal.
In those bygone days of yesteryear, Democratic Party honchos still knew what they had to do
to win elections that weren't handed to them on a silver platter. Where, then, are they now, those savvy Party grandees? And why don't their paymasters
intervene? Why are they being so stupid?
Whatever the answer, it hasn't made them too stupid to hold onto their power.
Sad to say, though, that they were still clever enough to realize that Sanders, and maybe
Elizabeth Warren as well, were everything they didn't want Obama to be. And so, aided and
abetted by CNN and MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and the whole motley
mess of "liberal" corporate media, they quashed their candidacies well.
Sadder still, after the powers that be pulled off the South Carolina and Super Tuesday
fiascos and then promptly got the other "moderates" to throw in the towel all at once, it
became clear that the old régime would win again.
All doubts about that ended when the pandemic made door to door canvassing, rallies and
nearly all the other usual forms of electoral politicking impossible. Almost overnight, the
only two candidates in the Democratic field worth taking seriously had no chance at all of
making the Democratic Party anything more than a lesser evil. The bad guys had won.
But still the question remains: why are the winners being so stupid?
Even if all they want is a colorless stooge whose only virtue is that he is not Trump, or
Pence or any of the other kakistocrats in the Trumpian fold, surely they could at least do
better than taking on the Trumpian juggernaut with a second-rate dodo leading the charge.
["Kakistocracy," for those who still don't know, is an old word that has lately become
timely. It means: rule of the worst, the most vile, corrupt, and incompetent.]
In a saner political environment, or even in the one we knew before Clinton, the Queen of
Ineptitude, blew a sure thing in 2016, Trump and his minions could be counted on to defeat
themselves.
In the actual world, the chances are good that this will still be the case. Corporate media
give Trump precious airtime, but they also display his and his administration's mind-boggling
awfulness day by day.
With the economy collapsing and the corpses piling high, and with rural America about to
feel the pain along with the urban centers, it is hard to imagine that at least some of the
lost souls in the Trump cult won't see the light and defect.
But Democrats these days are born to lose; it might as well be in their genes.
Therefore, like the Wall Street financiers in 2008 whose minds were set at ease when Obama
put Biden on the ticket, voters who get what Trump is about could still use some
reassurance.
Trump may advertise his awfulness with every breath he takes, but with our electoral
institutions being what they are, and with his base still standing by their man, the chances
that Democrats will blow it again can seem greater than trivial.
One would think that mainstream Democrats would have learned something from 2016 about the
wisdom of fielding a stalwart of the ancien régime , a "moderate" -- she called herself
a "progressive pragmatist" – against a buffoonish, sociopathic liar, a reality TV conman,
who promises "to drain the swamp."
But leave it to Democrats and Democratic voters to draw precisely the wrong lesson from that
debacle. Leave it to them to field a candidate who is even worse than Clinton this time
around.
Needless to say, better a President Biden than a President Trump; better by far. But even
befuddled moderates should be able to figure out that a Biden presidency will be a disaster in
its own right.
There is a certain irony in what Democrats are now saying about that prospect, now that,
barring a miracle, Biden is the presumptive nominee. They are saying just what people were
saying about Trump when his more thoughtful supporters were starting to anticipate and then to
experience voters' remorse – that, however awful he may be, however much out of his depth
in the Oval Office, "the adults in the room" will be there to keep him in line.
That by running Biden, they are squandering an historically unprecedent opportunity to make
basic, urgently needed, structural changes in the economy and society, and to transform the
Democratic Party, presently part of the problem, into a force for genuine progressive change,
at least to the extent that it was in the more radical phases of the New Deal and then later
before the Vietnam War undid the Great Society, doesn't seem to matter to a large segment of
the Democratic electorate – not yet, anyway.
If they have qualms, they comfort themselves by telling themselves that, unlike Trump, Biden
will appoint good people to run the show. And when that thought doesn't quite suffice, the
default position seems to be that at least he, like Obama, will be a No Drama president, which
is, they claim, just what the country now needs.
These wrong-headed but cheery bromides are not entirely without merit.
With Trump gone and Democrats eager to take over from the kakistocrats he empowered, the
national government probably will become not exactly "great again," it never was even close to
that, but at least not stunningly abominable.
And although Biden, unlike Sanders and Warren, has hardly comported himself in a way that
suggests competency or, for that matter, a fully functional mind, and although Andrew Cuomo and
other governors have far outshined him since the corvid-19 plague erupted, at least he is not a
narcissist, a sociopath, or a barely constrainable maniac.
But what's wrong with Democrats? Why don't they dump him while they still can?
Even Kirstin Gillibrand, scourge of womanizers who like Al Franken couldn't keep his hands
enough to himself, seems OK with Joe, notwithstanding the fact that he is credibly accused of
having done far worse than Franken ever did.
By almost any relevant standard, Franken was a far better Senator than Biden or, for that
matter, than nearly every other Democratic Senator, Gillibrand included. By almost any relevant
standard, Biden, even in his prime, was a dunce. But no matter. Anything for banality's sake;
anything not to field a candidate worth supporting.
And at a time when "the homeland," as we now call it, is facing a crisis the likes of which
has not been seen on these shores for more than a hundred years, how can it still be that, for
so many Democratic voters, it is practically axiomatic that only a paragon of banality can
defeat the most inept and villainous president that the United States has ever had to
endure?
The Democratic establishment is incapable of redemption. They have demonstrated time and
again that they will do anything to maintain their own power, and the power of the forces they
represent. That would be the obscenely rich; the beneficiaries of an increasingly inegalitarian
distribution of income and wealth that, regardless the intentions of a few kindly billionaires,
puts nearly everything on earth that is worth saving in mortal jeopardy.
But Trump is their enemy too. They could at least stop helping him out to the extent that
they are.
Lately, for whatever it's worth, Democratic Party honchos have been floating the idea of
running Warren for Vice President. I suspect that they are just blowing air, and I would be
surprised and more than a little disappointed in her if she would go along with that; I'd
expect her to have more integrity. But some good come of that possibility.
After all, while there is death and the twenty-fifth amendment there is hope. Not much,
though; not anyway in this "one nation under (Mike Pence's) God."
I, for one, have been waiting for nearly four years for cholesterol and a sedentary
lifestyle to relieve us of the clear and present danger we face. Now there is the corona virus
as well. But here we are. I would say, though, that were the Donald to follow the lead of his
British counterpart and soul-mate, Boris Johnson, and then go one step beyond, I might almost
start believing in that (alleged) divinity.
In ancient Greek dramas, a deus ex machina would sometimes be enacted; a god, wheeled in on
a mechanical contraption, would appear upon the stage and go on to set an otherwise intractable
situation right.
It is too late now for Sanders and probably for Warren as well, even if she does become
Biden's running mate. It probably always was; the fix was in too deep. What those two wanted to
do was obviously better than any of the moderates' nostrums. But the dodos calling the shots
would not abide Democrats doing the right thing or even some pale semblance of it. Those
bastardly dodos won.
But, even if only out of self-interest, and also in order to make the demise of Trump and
Trumpism more likely than it already is, they surely ought to be able to bring themselves to
pull off something like a deus ex machina trick -- by dumping the doofus for another
"moderate," one less retrograde, less risible, and less likely to inspire potential anti-Trump
voters to stay home.
They could put Biden back out to pasture where he so plainly belongs. As Trump might say
"what have they got to lose?" Of course, when Trump says it, the answer is always "everything."
In this case, it would be "nothing at all."
But I wouldn't hold my breath. It is more likely by many orders of magnitude that we will
have a Clintonesque, Obama-inflected, déja vu all over again in our future.
But even with the Forces of Darkness running the Democratic show, the forty or fifty percent
of Democratic voters who favored Sanders or Warren still have leverage over where the
Democratic Party goes.
They could and should use it to push Biden and the Democratic Party establishment as far to
the left as they can.
They should also insist on at least two things.
The first is obviously in the interest of all Democrats, the ones who are, for whatever
reason, still wedded to the status quo. as well as those who understand the need to transform
the lesser evil party fundamentally.
That would be to defeat Republican efforts at voter suppression. It is plain as can be
– so plain that even Trump has said as much – that if the black, brown, and youth
votes are not suppressed, Republicans would have hardly any chance of electing anybody, much
less Trump himself.
Anyone paying attention to the April 7 primary election in Wisconsin, conducted at great
peril to voters in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, could hardly fail to understand how
important this is.
Republican lawmakers in the heavily gerrymandered and therefore Republican led Wisconsin
state legislature, and so-called "conservative" but actually radical rightwing Republican
judges in the Wisconsin and then the U.S. Supreme Courts put peoples', mainly black and brown
peoples', lives at risk in order to secure the electoral victory of one Dan Kelly, a retrograde
state Supreme Court Justice whom they can count on to ease their way.
In light of that, who knows what mischief Trump and the cult around him have in store for
November. The problem is especially acute now that, thanks to the machinations of Mitch
McConnell, arguably the most malign figure in the entire Trumpian firmament, the judicial
system is so profoundly compromised.
Congressional Democrats must therefore, first and foremost, guarantee the right to vote for
everybody eligible to vote. This means, among other things, making voting by mail an option
that even troglodyte Republican judges cannot refuse to honor.
Surely, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the other party leaders can do that much.
If they have the sense they were born with, they will do everything in their power to make
the November election a referendum on Trump. If it is, Trump will surely lose.
On the other hand, if it devolves into a choice between him and Biden, Trump will only just
probably lose, the probability depending on how the corovid-19 virus is doing by then, the
state of the economy, and the extent to which the good citizens of the United States of Amnesia
keep in mind even just a tiny fraction of all the harm that the Trump presidency has done.
In any event, the less Biden is exposed to the public, the more he stays bunkered down in
Wilmington or wherever he has been hiding out, the better. The more voters see him as the only
feasible alternative to Trump, the more electable he will be. The more they reflect on his
merits, the more reason there is for concern.
The other "non-negotiable demand" should be to insist on holding Trump and his factotums
accountable. That will require riding herd over the doofus because, having attached himself to
Obama's "legacy," letting it all go has become his default position.
Obama's Original Sin, and also Eric Holder's, was to let the war criminals in the upper
echelon of the Bush administration off scot-free. I fear that just as Trump takes his cues from
Fox News, Biden will be taking his from what Obama did a dozen years ago.
Back then, Obama said that he wanted "to look forward," to let bygones be bygone. Because
that is precisely what he did, the Bush-Cheney perpetual war regime became his own. It is still
with us too, and Biden is no doubt itching to take up where his Best Friend Forever left
off.
Does anyone doubt that, left to his own devices, a President Biden would repeat Obama's and
Holden's mistake? Banality and the absence of drama are his trump card, after all; letting
bygones be bygone is his thing.
Were that to come to pass, the countless, legally actionable crimes that Trump and his
kakistocratic minions have committed, now including the depraved indifference to human life and
the menace to public health that Trump has been exhibiting daily since the corvid-19 crisis
broke, would go unpunished, setting an even worse precedent than the one set by Obama.
When that comes back to haunt us, as it surely will with Biden continuing the political line
that made Trumpism all but inevitable, it won't be pretty. With the bar now set so low, the
next demagogue in the Trumpian role is likely to be a lot smarter and more capable than Trump,
and therefore a lot more dangerous.
Surely, even the "moderates" in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses could at least
force the dodo they are inflicting upon us to pre-commit, as it were, not to stoop so low as to
give get-out-of-jail-free cards to the likes of Trump, his family and inner circle, and the
most criminal of the base and servile sycophants he has inflicted upon us.
The judgment of history is sure, but it is inevitably slow in coming, and the time for
guarantees that Trump et. al . will be held to account, just as soon as Trump vacates the
premises at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is now.
If a Democratic president isn't good even for that, then, when the judgment of history comes
down on the Democratic Party establishment too, as it surely will, they will have a lot more to
answer for than squandering a chance to make up for the neoliberal turn their party has been on
since the Jimmy Carter days, and for all the many other post-Watergate ways that it has been
making life better for the rich and heinous and worse for the working class.
"...Today, quite a number of alternative media commentators are ready to believe in the
absolute power not of God but of Mammon, of the powers of Wall Street and its partners in
politics, the media and the military. In this view, nothing major happens that hasn't been
planned by earthly powers for their own selfish interest.
"Mammon is wrecking the economy so a few oligarchs will own everything. Or else Mammon
created the hoax Coronavirus 19 in order to lock us all up and deprive us of what little is
left of our freedom. Or finally Mammon is using a virus in order to have a pretext to
vaccinate us all with secret substances and turn us all into zombies.
"Is this credible? In one sense, it is. We know that Mammon is unscrupulous, morally
capable of all crimes. But things do happen that Mammon did not plan, such as earthquakes,
floods and plagues. Dislike of our ruling class combined with dislike of being locked up
leads to the equation: They are simply using this (fake) crisis in order to lock us up!
"But what for? To whom is there any advantage in locking down the population? For the
pleasure of telling themselves, "Aha, we've got them where we want them, all stuck at home!"
Is this intended to suppress popular revolt? What popular revolt? Why repress people who
aren't doing anything that needs to be repressed?...
"What is the use of locking up a population – and I think especially of the United
States – that is disunited, disorganized, profoundly confused by generations of
ideological indoctrination telling them that their country is "the best" in every way, and
thus unable to formulate coherent demands on a system that exploits them ruthlessly? Do you
need to lock up your faithful Labrador so he won't bite you?...
"....Mammon is blinded by its own hubris, often stupid, incompetent, dumbed down by
getting away with so much so easily. Take a look at Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence – are
these all-powerful geniuses? No, they are semi-morons who have been able to crawl up a
corrupt system contemptuous of truth, virtue or intelligence – like the rest of the
gangsters in power in a system devoid of any ethical or intellectual standards.
"The power of creatures like that is merely the reflection of the abdication of social
responsibility by whole populations whose disinterest in politics has allowed the scum to
rise to the top.
The lockdown decreed by our Western governments reveals helplessness rather than power.
They did not rush to lock us down. The lockdown is disastrous for the economy which is their
prime concern. They hesitated and did so only when they had to do something and were
ill-equipped to do anything else. They saw that China had done so with good results. But
smart Asian governments did even more, deploying masks, tests and treatments Western
governments did not possess..."
"... Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World." ..."
"... In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. ..."
"... Since then, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries, many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq). ..."
"... In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit. ..."
This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American healthcare system was becoming
obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. "We have Third World
countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle,"
noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked
doctor in New York who described
"a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was
happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he
said
. "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my
country."
At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and
confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic"
analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a "
third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been
confined solely to lower income countries).
And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is
absent from any of
these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third
World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world"
scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world
dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the
potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a
country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken
economies and corrupt leaders."
Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or
lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and
political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the
"Third World."
In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70
nations –
more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases,
listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military
personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and
security apparatus organized into regional commands
that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the
British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.
The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States
stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of
supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300
years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called
the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization.
Since then, the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries,
many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to
nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions
took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to
achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).
In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more
on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our
nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget
and over half of all
discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the
Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.
Trump's claim that Obama had
"hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the
security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the
White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the
overwhelming support of House Democrats.
And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning,
resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to
the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of
this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions.
The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the
deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million
Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who
largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of
International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said
.
Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents
even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area
of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon
exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the
sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.
Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so
long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the
U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.
The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should
automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and
sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy.
And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been
earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that
channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America,
$17.5 billion is
set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace.
To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly
easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in
funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the
coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already
issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget
on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any
actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.
On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own
global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics,
particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans
are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle
East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because
Muslims hate our way of life.
This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life
making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of
the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the
outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus
itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that
country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually
guarantee its spread throughout the region.
Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks
the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition
of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the
Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .
Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now
resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized
nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those
authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a
policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass
incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in
radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.
Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn
that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism
– our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the
population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.
Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should
nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist
rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the
world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World
countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance
of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance,
has responded
to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.
Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive
confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent,
as has been predicted,
millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the
middle of a pandemic.
Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire
referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language
to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their
different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization
boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that
consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and
self-delusion.
Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical
contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things
that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our
imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look
toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic,
and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond
shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and
democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with
the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.
Being "connected" is a huge part of the cause of this mess, before internet propaganda was
limited to newspapers and magazines, it was much slower and manageable.
I do find it funny how wealthy folks spread the "don't worry WE will all be fine" garbage.
WE....no, tell that to someone who has lost their business and has dependents.
I hate the "We're going to be ok. We're all in this together" ads. All of them
celebrities, pro athletes, and actors. Not one has to worry about whether they'll be able to
buy food next week. Elites telling the little people everything's ok.
It's really sad when Tucker Carlson is the only person who ever admitted he was wrong on
Fox News. Hannity still claims he never called the virus a hoax even though he did it on
TV.
Posted by b on April 8, 2020 at 7:43 UTC | Permalink
The Jpost article that b links to says that a million masks from China (donated by the US
Department of Defense) arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night. But Israel should have already
had two million masks if this report from last weekend is correct: The shipment will include two million masks, landing in Israel on Monday morning, https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-april-4-2020/
So that appears to be three million masks from China, plus those seized from American
hospitals. Or are they fiddling the figures and pretending that those seized masks were
legally purchased in China?
It appears that Mossad and others have recently acquired about two surgical masks per
Israeli:
"5 April 2020,
(...)Last week, the Health Ministry said that security services and government ministries had
managed to obtain 27 ventilators and a hoard of other medical equipment from abroad.
Hebrew media reported that the Mossad intelligence service, which has been tasked with
securing medical equipment from abroad from unspecified countries amid worldwide shortages,
helped obtain 25,000 N95 respiratory masks , 20,000 virus test kits, 10 million
surgical masks , and 700 overalls for ambulance workers who usually carry out the initial
testing for the virus.
One million masks for the IDF.
Eat your heart out US Theodore Roosevelt and Guam.
US sailors right at the bottom of the Pentagon's priorities, thats for sure.
American military?.
Have one duty - die as required for Israel.
Including death by coronavirus by looks of things.....
More fool them.
Bloody hell. The Pentagon procures a million masks from China, then gives them to Israel -
when US doctors are running low in almost every city - not to mention that the military
itself has soaring coronavirus cases it can't handle.
You gotta know some rich Jewish corporate billionaire was behind that crap and Kushner was
just the conduit to get Trump to agree to it - probably in exchange for a big donation to
Trump's campaign.
If there was ever a country that deserved to be on the end of a US bombing campaign - it's
Israel - a racist, fanatical. colonialist, fascist, illegal terrorist state. Zionists - the
biggest scumbags on the planet. But instead the US bombs everyone else Israel doesn't
like.
But cheer up. Israel is a doomed nation. There is no way they can continue their path
forever, historically speaking. I suspect they won't exist within another fifty years.
They'll either be annihilated by their own nuclear weapons, or transformed into a bi-national
state that is no longer primarily Jewish. And I don't particularly care which.
The U.S. government's efforts to clean up Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb
making at federal sites around the country has lumbered along for decades, often at a pace
that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment.
Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the
nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste finished ramping down operations
Wednesday to keep workers safe.
Over more than 20 years, tons of waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that
make up the southern New Mexico site. Until recently, several shipments a week of special
boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with
plutonium and other radioactive elements were being trucked to the remote facility from South
Carolina, Idaho and other spots.
That's all but grinding to a halt.
Shipments to the desert outpost will be limited for the foreseeable future while work at
the country's national laboratories and defense sites shift to only those operations
considered "mission critical."
Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant warned state regulators in a letter Tuesday
that more time would be needed for inspections and audits and that work would be curtailed or
shifts would be staggered to ensure workers keep their distance from one another.
BTW, the Al Quds Post (aka Jerusalem Post to Zionists) has changed the headline on that
article to "Israel brings 1 million masks from China for IDF soldiers" Looks like the "New
York Purchasing and Logistics Division" is part of the Israeli Ministry Of War All The Time.
So the original was a nice story but fake news. Since there was no correction attached to the
new version, it could be that Washington/Tel Aviv reckoned that this was a step to far even
for Trump and the new version is the fake news.
- This news simply confirms again that the US, under Trump, has become more corrupt. But this
is a development that already started years, decades ago before Trump became president.
I think the possibility should be considered that Trump just made preexisting corruption
more visible rather than adding significantly to it. There are elaborate protocols and
circuitous speech that professional politicians learn to use to obfuscate the corruption and
make their own participation in that corruption seem not only acceptable but necessary or
even in the public interest. Trump is either ignorant of these protocols or he just doesn't
care.
Even with all this help (of which most go to the military sector), the Isreali economy can
barely keep itself afloat:
[...] inequality of income and wealth is huge in Israel, the second worst in the 36 nation
OECD group. The relative poverty rate for Haredim and Arabs (25% of the population) is near
50%, and even for other Israelis, it is higher than the OECD average. The gap in median
wage levels from skilled to unskilled; from Haredim/Arabs to others is huge - and yet the
former will constitute 50% of the population by 2060.
And this mask fiasco is the lesser problem for the American working class right now. A
significant portion of its people
is going hungry . That magic USD 1,200 check is not coming soon:
"the checks are not in the mail."
And the problem isn't just in the USA. The periphery of Western Civilization is also going
to suffer:
Germany's economy will shrink almost 10 per cent in the three months to June, according to
the country's top economic research institutes, the sharpest decline since quarterly
national accounts began in 1970 and double the size of the biggest drop in the 2008
financial crisis.
The shutdown of vast swaths of economic activity to contain the spread of the pandemic
is knocking 1.5 percentage points off French growth for every two weeks that it continues,
the Banque de France warned on Wednesday.
After more than three weeks in lockdown, French economic output is expected to have
fallen by the sharpest rate since the second world war, the central bank said, forecasting
that gross domestic product contracted 6 per cent in the first three months of the
year.
Get everyone you know to read "Against Our Better Judgment" by Alison Weir. Absolutely the
best short, supereasy read to open eyes of those who are unaware that they are unaware, I
promise. If you can afford to, buy copies to give away.
Very brief, "b", but one of your best posts. This is an unmitigated outrage. The arrogance of
the ruling class knows no bounds, and they are acting with impunity. Seems the ruling class
doesn't even care anymore how widely known it is that the US has little sovereignty.
After the warlord period of the 15th century, Japan was united by a few families then by a
shogun family. The period is called the Edo period. They disarmed civilians and established a
mild caste system.
The country was closed except for a few ports controlled by the central government, travel
restrictions were put in place and certain technological developments were prohibited.
The period also had an interesting feature called sankinkoutai .
It forced regional leaders to march across the country in formal costumes along with their
armies in order to alternate their residences between their home regions and the capital of the
feudal Japan, Edo. It also forced leaders' wives and family members to remain in Edo at all
time. It was an elaborate system to keep the hierarchical structure intact.
The reign lasted a few centuries with no conflicts within the land until the US forced to
open Japan in order to use its ports for whaling business. I've been suspecting that the aim of
some people among the ruling class circle is to establish such a closed hierarchical system
which can function in a "sustainable" manner. But of course it is not exactly a system of
equality and sharing as it would be advertised.
The notion of "sustainable" is also very much questionable as we see blatant lies hidden
behind carbon trade schemes, nuclear energy, "humanitarian" colonialism rampant in Africa and
other areas and so on.
I mentioned about the special feature, sankinkoutai , since I see an interesting
parallel between it and "representative democracy" within the capitalist West today. Of course,
we don't have such an obvious requirement among us, but similar dynamics occur within our
capitalist framework. Our thoughts and activities are always subservient to the moneyed
transactions guided by the economic networks.
Our economic restrictions can force us to make decisions to do away with our needs -- we
might abandon our skills, interests, friendships, life styles, philosophies, ideologies,
community obligations and so on.
In fact, some of us are forced to live on streets, die of treatable illness, suffer under
heavy debt and so on as we struggle. In a way, we surrender our basic needs as hostages to the
system just as the Japanese regional leaders had to leave their family members under the watch
of the Shogun family. Moreover, the more our thoughts differ from that of neoliberal capitalist
framework, the more we must put our efforts in adjusting to it. Some of us might be labeled as
"dissidents", and such a label can create obstacles in our social activities.
This functions similar to the fact that Japanese feudal regional leaders who were further
away from the capital geographically had to put more efforts in marching across the country,
requiring them to expend more resources. In a capitalist system, this occurs economically as
well -- those who are already oppressed by the economic strife must spend more resources to
conform to the draconian measures to survive.
Now, one might wonder why regional leaders had subjected themselves to such an inhumane
scheme. The march across the country was considered as a show of strength and authority -- it
was a proud moment to put on their costume to show off. The populations across the country were
forced to respect this process with reverence and awe. There were strict regulations regarding
how to treat such marches.
This situation can be compared to our political process -- Presidential election in
particular, in which our powers and interests are put in the corporate political framework to
be shaped, tweaked and distorted. Sanctioned by capitalist mandates and agendas, political
candidates march across the nation while people proudly cheer their favorite ones. The more
complacent to the capitalist framework the candidates are, the more lavish the marches. This
forces the contents of political discourse to remain within the capitalist framework while
excluding candidates and their supporters whose ideas are not subservient to it.
"Representative democracy" within a capitalist framework can be one of the most
strong ways to install values, beliefs and norms of the ruling class into minds of the people
whose interests can be significantly curtailed by those ideas. All this can be achieved in the
name of "democracy", "free election" and so on.
Since people's minds and their collective mode of operations are deeply indoctrinated to be
a part of the capitalist structure, any crisis would strengthen the fundamental integrity of
the structure. I heard a Trump supporter saying that "people should be shaking up a
little" . That's actually a very appropriate description. You shake their ground, people
try to hold onto whatever they think is a solid structure. Some of us might, however, try to
hold onto a Marxist perspective for example.
That, of course, provokes triggering reactions by those who go along with the capitalist
framework, because they are particularly threatened, sensing that their entire belief system
might fall. Examination of facts and contexts during the time of crisis can generate divisions
and opportunities to control and moderate opposing views.
Capitalist institutions are dominated by this mentality which might explain the extremely
quick mobilization of the draconian restrictions and the demand for more restrictions during
the time of "crisis". Economic incentives, as well as self-preservation within the system,
force people to engage actively in unquestioning manner.
For example, we have observed concerted efforts in mobilizing media, government agencies,
legal system and so on to "combat" "drug issues", "inner-city violence" and so on which has led
to mass incarceration, police killings and "gentrification" of primarily minority
communities.
Needless to say, 9/11 has created enormous momentum of colonial wars against middle eastern
countries. No major media outlets or politicians questioned blatant lies surrounding WMD claim
against Iraq for example. As a result, many countries were destroyed while one out of a hundred
people on the planet became refugees. Draconian regulations became normal, racism and
xenophobia among people intensified and the term "global surveillance" became a household
term.
This situation requires further examination since there are a few layers which must be
identified.
First, we must recognize that there is an industry that commodifies "dissenting voices". The
people who engage in this have no intention of examining the exploitive mechanism of capitalist
hierarchy. Some of them typically chose topics of government wrongdoings in contexts of fascist
ideologies (jews are taking over the world, for example), space aliens and so on. The angles
are calibrated to keep serious inquiries away but they nonetheless garner major followings.
When certain topics fall into their hands, discussing them can become tediously unproductive
as it prompts a label "conspiracy". It also contributes in herding dissidents toward fascist
ideology while keeping them away from understanding actual social structure.
The second point is related to the first, when the topic enters the realm of "conspiracy",
and when we lose means to confirm facts, many of us experience cognitive dissonance. The
unspoken fear of the system becomes bigger than any of the topics at hand, and some of us shut
down our thought process. As a result, we are left with hopelessness, cynicism and complacency.
This is a major tool of the system of extortion. It makes some of us say "if there is a
President who tries to overthrow capitalism, he or she will be assassinated".
Such a statement illustrates the fact that understanding of the violent system, fear and
complacency can firmly exist in people's minds without openly admitting to it.
Third, aside from the unspoken fear toward the destructive system, there is also unspoken
recognition that the system is inherently unsustainable to itself and to its environment. The
cultish faith in capitalist framework is upheld by myths of white supremacy, American
exceptionalism and most of all by our structural participation to it.
Any cult with an unsustainable trajectory eventually faces its doomsday phase. It desires a
demise of everything, which allows cultists to avoid facing the nature of the cult. It allows
them to fantasize a rebirth. This, in turn, allows the system to utilize a catastrophic crisis
as a springboard to shift its course while implementing draconian measures to prop itself up.
"The time of survival" normalizes the atrocity of structural violence in reinforcing the
hierarchical order, while those with relative social privilege secretly rejoice the arrival of
"the end".
Any of those three dynamics can be actively utilized by those who are determined to
manipulate and control the population.
Now, there is another interesting coincidence with the Japanese history. The title Shogun
had been a figurehead status given by the imperial family of Japan long before the Edo period.
Shogun is a short version of Seiitaishogun, which can be translated as Commander-in-Chief of
the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians. The title indicates the nature of the
trajectory more bluntly than the US presidency which is also Commander in Chief–which has
engaged in numerous colonial expeditions over the generations.
But as I mentioned above, the Edo period was not a time of fighting "barbarians", it was a
time of a closed feudal system and its hierarchy was strictly controlled by its customs and
regulations. The current trajectory of our time prompts one to suspect that the inevitable path
to be a similar one.
Our thoughts and ideas have been already controlled by capitalist framework for generations.
We knowingly and unknowingly participate in this hostage taking extortion structure. While
shaken by crisis after crisis, we have gone through waves of changes, which have implemented
rigid social restrictions against our ability to see through lies and rise above the feudal
order of money and violence.
I must say that I do understand that above discussion is very much generalized. One can
certainly argue against validity of the parallel based on historical facts and contexts. Some
might also argue that Edo period to be far more humane on some regards, in terms of how people
related to their natural surroundings, or the system being actually sustainable, for instance.
But I believe that my main points still stand as valid and worthy of serious
considerations.
Also, it is not my intention to label, demean and demonize policy makers of our time in
cynical manner. My intention is to put the matter as a topic of discussion among those who are
concerned in a constructive manner. The comparison was used as a device for us to step back
from our time and space in evaluating our species' path today.
Doctortrinate ,
there's no doubt -- the game has many strings to its bow, not helped by the peoples alacrity
of contribution -- notably, when called to Vote.
Generations through generation, used and abused, oppressed and distressed, and still they
returned to the spiders labyrinth to sustain the fabric of its future slaves to it's design,
expanding the web, sanctioning Its cause all the while, to a degeneration of theirs.
Example after example of the corruption, deviance, distortions and exploitation, and again
they return, depersonalized by repetition saturation, caught in a Stockholm syndrome victim
captor beguilement of slavery Is freedom -- and what of this latest attack, the warring virus
-- will the mass of unhinged automotons view it as another rescue -- condemning us "all" to a
big tech digitally enslaved end.
Or, will they finally, Wake Up and see the light ?
Charlotte Russe ,
"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate there's been over 30
million cases of influenza during America's flu season, which began in September 2019, with a
death toll exceeding 20,000." It must be noted, that in 2018 45 million were infected with
the flu in the US, and there were 80,000 deaths. As of this moment, the World-O-Meter cites
338,999 cases of Covid-19 in the US with 9,687 deaths. This mortality rate indicates the
deaths resulting from COVID-19 could be much "lower" than those resulting from the 2018 flu
where the touted vaccine did NOT work.
I think it's safe to say, we'll trully never know the source of Covid-19. We can only
speculate. It could have been transmitted from bats in a Wuhan wet market, or it could have
leaked out of a military lab. What can be definitely said, is that the panic associated with
the pandemic benefitted the rulers of ALL major capitalist dictatorships.
Fascist nation-states like China and Russia are grasping for a chance to make new friends
in high places as a way to replace the numero-uno superpower. And while China and Russia are
attempting to build new alliances the infighting persists within the EU. In the end, it makes
no difference which member of this sinister trio becomes the "big macher"– the
working-class, middle-class, and the working-poor will remain victims of exploitative
leeches.
Simply put, a landlord might sell his property to a new owner, but the occupying tenant
will still be required to pay rent, and might actually see an increase in their monthly fee.
It's like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Worldwide every country is "infected" with a bunch of crumb-bum leaders. A crisis
intensifies their lechery. This is especially the case for those who have very little. We see
this constantly, every time there's an ecological disaster whether it's a flood, hurricane,
earthquake, typhoon, etc Disasters always wipeout the most vulnerable. These populations
possess fewer resources, hence fewer options. This has been the case for time and immemorial.
We're just more cognizant every time a disaster occurs because of surveillance technology and
globalization.
The real question which needs to be explored is why does the human species remain so
flawed. Human nature has not evolved in thousands of years. The same brutish sociopathic
tendencies which existed 10,000 years ago exist today. Perhaps Homo sapiens, are in an
evolutionary quagmire where only the "dung and malarkey" are allowed to rise to the top.
Whatever the case may be, billions are organized by various forms of "muck authority" who
yield significantly more power than 15th Century Edo feudal lords. In addition, if the entire
worldwide capitalist system collapsed 90 percent of the world's population would perish. The
sustenance of billions are too intertwined within the capitalist resource system.
Interestingly enough, primitive societies (if any are left) and survivalists might be the
small remainders of a civilization which became too big for its breaches.
So what are the options you might be thinking, since many of us never bothered to hone
those imperative life saving survival skills. The only answer is "reform." Groups with shared
interests need to organize and mobilize. Peaceful, but tenaciously protests could force
concessions without alienating the remaining population. This could be done. It happened in
the 1930's and the outcome of mass demonstrations lead to the New Deal. It's something to
think about, once the world stops self-isolating. The options are limited -- the path either
leads to neo-feudalism or barbarism. Unless of course, someone can figure out how to
eliminate the sociopathic gene within the human species.
Rhys Jaggar ,
I think I can answer this question: the fact is that when a leader rules by fear, power and
crushing dissent, only those displaying similar characteristics will thrive under them.
Back when the human condition was rather tenuous and being eaten by big predators a
significant possibility, the traits selected for were ruthless killing, hunting and, in the
case of males, winning the right to breed. There were no 11 pluses for selecting breeders,
rather punch ups, elimination of rivals and the like. The females were selected for
childbearing capabilities, since giving birth was one of the most hazardous activities a
female would undertake. They were not selected for religious evolution, nor for philosophical
insight.
As a result, the hierarchies of human society grew around those more primitive traits and,
by and large, remain there, albeit diluted down somewhat.
But thuggery, chicaneries, spying and lying are still the traits most valued in a
dog-eat-dog world. Insight can be stolen, bled dry and then dumped.
Who needs a brain when you can steal someone else's ey?
Charlotte Ruse ,
To put it simply, deviant ruthless behavior is baked into the cake.
VK #2
Yet you are fooled by the phony Socialism of "Red" China, which is really Neoliberalism in
disguise (I highly doubt Marx, Lenin, Stalin, or even the confused, Pro-U$ Mao would believe
Sweatshops, Stock Exchanges, and Billionaires represents the Socialist model of production).
I agree with you that Bernie Sanders is a gutless fraud and faux Socialist (he's merely a
Centre-Left Social Democrat yet he portrayed his movement as some sort of "Revolution", LOL),
who sadly represents the best you would ever get in the White House, in the sense that at
least he wouldn't have started any new wars, wouldn't have given any tax cuts to corporations
and the wealthy, and wouldn't have outsourced any more jobs in new free trade agreements
(these are the reasons I would have held my nose and voted for him if he had been nominated,
despite my much more Leftist beliefs).
However, I believe it smells of intense hypocrisy to call out Bernie Sanders as faux
Socialism (he is), while simultaneously bowing at the alter of Xi Jinping thought, which
along with being yet another form of faux Socialism like Bernies Social Democracy, isn't just
due to the naivety of believing that the phony Liberal Democratic process (in Marxist terms
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie), can actually achieve meaningful reforms for the Working
class and not just pacify them. In reality, it represents something much more devious, a
country that had a Communist Revolution and established a Planned Socialist economic system,
yet decided to sell out its citizens for an alliance with the U$ and massive wealth for the
Communist Party leadership, who proceeded to turn their formerly Socialist country into a
Neoliberal, Neocolonial, Sweatshop, that by giving 15 Trillion dollars in surplus value to
Wall Street is one of the biggest sponsors of U$ Imperialism (remember, according to Lenin
Imperialism is not just launching Wars against small countries, but includes when Western
Corporation exploit third world populations for massive super profits through resource
extraction and cheap labor sweatshops). In reality their are only two countries today (Cuba
and North Korea) that are in the Socialist mode of production according to the
Marxist-Leninist definition, sadly their used to be many more (the USSR, the other Eastern
Bloc countries, Maoist China, etc.) which all succumb to Capitalist counterrevolution (the
USSR and the other Eastern Bloc countries etc.), or the ruling Communist Party embracing such
extreme revisionism that over time they basically restored the Capitalist mode of production
and Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in all but name only. The reason for both of these
tragic events was the fact that due to a long-term revisionist trend after the death of
Stalin and Maos ridiculous Sino-Soviet split, the leadership of these countries became
corrupted by the desire for the U$-style "Good life" of mass consumerism and hedonistic
materialism (not Dialectical Materialism), thus proving that the real threat to Socialism is
the Neoliberal culture of decedent consumerism which corrupt the leadership and enchants the
masses of nations around the world.
Re: Pompeo and his West Point clique and their associates, I have not spent much time on
it, didn't seem like a useful or entertaining thing to do, but my impression is they have
lots of plans and very little grasp of what is required to carry them out. (One thinks of
Modi here.) This has been ongoing since the Iranians shot our fancy drone down there last
year. The first shot across the bow. We are now withdrawing from Syria, Iraq &
Afghanistan, however haltingly, as it has dawned on the commanders on the ground there how
exposed they really are to Iranian fire, and that of their allies. Israel seems to be
struggling with the same problem, how to continue to bully when the bullied can very
effectively shoot back?
Many unseemly things being said about Crozier and the Teddy R. situation too. Lot's of
heat, very little light. Trump says there is light at the end of the tunnel, I seem to
remember that from somewhere in the past. I think that's about where we are again.
"... Modernizing our strategic nuclear forces is a top priority for the @DeptofDefense and the @POTUS to protect the American people and our allies. ..."
"... As a pandemic ravages the nation, a sad illustration of wildly misplaced priorities ..."
You entirely miss the point that the "money" you describe is fiat currency, mostly in
digital form, which is entirely under the control of the Central Banks that have the
ability to create infinite amounts of it . Digital/paper fiat has no intrinsic value, it
is fungible by decree, because governments require that you accept this "legal tender" for
goods and services.
The ability to create infinite money provides those in charge with almost infinite power;
digital fiat currency provides the banksters with the ability to manipulate/rig all markets,
fund endless war (see All Wars are
Bankers Wars ), control the media and educational systems, etc etc. That is the hidden
function of Central Banks. As a famous Rothschild once said, "Give me control of a nation's
money and I care not who makes it's laws"
The COVID-19 pandemic very conveniently happened to come along at a time when the credit
markets were imploding, requiring the exponential growth of the fiat currencies (which had
reached the end of their always limited life-spans and had entered into a crack-up boom).
What a great excuse to openly move into producing trillions and trillions of dollars (much,
much more to come). In the US, the Treasury has essentially merged with the Federal Reserve;
the "bail outs" will be used to provide endless interest free money to the banks, which will
then loan the money to the small businesses (at 5.75% interest) being destroyed by the
shutdowns. See, the system is working!
The banks HAD to move into an exponential growth phase of its currencies in order to
prevent the collapse of the Western financial system. The growth of fiat/debt-based currency
is now similar to the exponential growth of the coronavirus. This is a hyperinflationary
event that will lead to the abandonment of the dollar as the global reserve currency.
US sidestepped OWN SANCTIONS against Russia to save American lives from Covid-19... If only it cared as much about Iranian
lives
Scott Ritter
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General
Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter
@RealScottRitter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer.
He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and
from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
Russian plane with medical aid unloaded at JFK airport, United States, New York City Ruptly Follow RT on
When it comes to saving American lives, sanctions are not an
obstacle to the provision of life-saving medical equipment. Ramping up sanctions on struggling Iran is okay however which goes
to show the US price tag on human life. It was a sight that warmed the heart of even the most cynical American opponent of Vladimir
Putin's Russia -- a giant An-124 aircraft, loaded with boxes of desperately needed medical supplies, being offloaded at JFK Airport.
When President Trump spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart on March 31, he mentioned America's need for life-saving medical
supplies, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. Two days later the AN-124 arrived in New York.
As the aircraft was being unloaded, however, it became clear that at least some of the equipment being offloaded had been delivered
in violation of existing US sanctions. Boxes clearly marked as containing Aventa-M ventilators, produced by the Ural Instrument Engineering
Plant (UPZ), could be seen. For weeks now President Trump has made an issue about the need for ventilators in the US to provide life-saving
care for stricken Americans.
There was just one problem -- the manufacturer of the Aventa-M, UPZ, is a subsidiary of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies
(KRET) which, along with its parent holding company ROSTEC, has been under US sanctions since 2014. Complicating matters further
is the fact that the shipment of medical supplies was paid in part by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Russian sovereign
wealth fund which, like ROSTEC, was placed on the US lending blacklist in 2014 following Russia's intervention in Crimea. Half of
the Russian aid shipment was paid for by the US State Department, and the other half by RDIF.
According to a State Department spokesperson, the sanctions against RDIF do not apply to purchases of medical equipment. KRET,
however, is in the strictest SDN (Specially Designated Persons) sanctions
list , which means US citizens and permanent residents
are prohibited from doing business with it. So while the letter of the sanctions may not have been violated, the spirit certainly
has been.
One only need talk to the embattled Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, to understand the difficulty in trying to purchase
much-needed medical equipment during a global pandemic where everyone else is trying to do the same. New York has been competing
with several other states to purchase much-needed ventilators from China. "It's like being on eBay" , Cuomo recently told
the press, with 50 states bidding against one another, driving the price up. The issue became even more complicated when the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, entered the bidding war. "They big-footed us" , Cuomo said, driving the price per ventilator
up to $25,000. "We're going broke."
Cuomo estimates that New York will need upwards of 40,000 ventilators to be able to handle the influx of stricken patients when
the outbreak hits its peak. At the moment, New York has 17,000 ventilators available -- including 2,500 on order from China -- and
Cuomo doesn't expect any more. "We're on our own." Plans are in place to begin imposing a triage system to prioritize ventilator
availability if and when the current stockpile is exhausted. These plans include the issuance of an emergency waiver that permits
health care providers to take a patient off a ventilator to make it available for another patient deemed to be more "viable"
-- that is, who has a greater expectation of surviving the disease.
Cuomo's predicament is being played out around the world, in places like Italy, Spain -- and Iran, where the outbreak of coronavirus
has hit particularly hard. The difference, however, is that while the US, Italy and Spain are able to scour the global market in
search of life-saving medical supplies, Iran is not. US sanctions targeting the Iranian financial system, ostensibly imposed to prevent
"money laundering" by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, which has been heavily sanctioned by the US over the years,
have made it virtually impossible for Iran to pay for humanitarian supplies needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
As bad as it is for Governor Cuomo, at least he can enter a bidding war for medical supplies. Iran can't even get its foot in
the door, and it is costing lives. Making matters worse, at a time when the international community is pleading for the US to ease
sanctions so Iran can better cope with an outbreak that is taking a life every ten minutes, the US instead doubled down, further
tightening its death grip on the Iranian economy.
The global coronavirus pandemic will eventually end, and when it does there will be an accounting for how nations behaved. Nations
like Russia and China have been repeatedly vilified in the US media for any number of reasons -- even the Russian aid shipment containing
the sanctioned ventilators has been dismissed as a "propaganda ploy." What, then, do you call the US' blatant disregard
for select human lives?
The callous indifference displayed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials to the suffering of the Iranian people
by increasing sanctions at a time when the situation cries out for them to be lifted in order to save lives, when contrasted to the
ease in which US sanctions on Russia are ignored when life-saving medical equipment is needed, drives home the point that, as far
as the US is concerned, human life only matters when it is an American one. That might play well among American voters (it shouldn't),
but for the rest of the world it is a clear sign that hypocrisy, not humanitarianism, is the word that will define the US going forward.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that entering a financial relationship with RDIF is prosecutable
under the US sanctions regime. In reality, RDIF is under sectoral sanctions that only apply to certain interactions, which, according
to a State Department spokesperson, do not include purchases of medical equipment. The article has been changed accordingly.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
"Israel's ultra-Orthodox endanger the public" was the headline of yesterday's Jerusalem
Post opinion piece. The article points to the ultra orthodox community as a menace both to
the general society and itself.
This Anti-Semitic newspaper should be banned. When are the ADL and Antifa going to get on
this?
@Wizard of Oz
There are over one hundred Hassid groups, some of which started recently in America.
Hassidism is one of the direct results of the Shabbatai Zvi movement. Shabbatai Zevi was a
Satanic Messiah born in 1626 died 1676. He was a Spanish Jew born in Izmir Turkey, and out of
him came the Donmeh who ran the Turkish government in the 20th century. Why Satanic? He said
that what was prescribed by law is is now prohibited by him and what is forbidden is made
permissible by him. Mainly this means orgies, and "a doing a-what comes naturally."
Shabbatianism and Hassidism are based on Kabbalah, materialist antinomial Satanism. The
Hassid Rebbi is considered, for all practical intents and purposes to be God Himself. This is
understood only by the elect. For the Lubavitchers this was diluted down -- for the fringe --
to the idea that Schneersohn is Moshiach, and of course half the Lubavitchers are not sure.
The founding Rebbi results in a dynasty of his descendants or the group is taken over by a
successor in a power struggle. Only the Rumanian-Hungarian Satmar group claims to be
anti-Zionist on paper, because of a pet idea of Teitelbaum's. The Satmar march "in protest"
against the Salute to Israel day Parade under special protection of the New York Police. But
their opposition to Israel is only on paper and they go to Israel like everyone else. They
also show solidarity to the Iranians and show up in Teheran as guests of the government.
Another development out of Shabbatai Zevi are the Frankists. Jacob Frank said, besides
orgies and promiscuity, it is perfectly safe to convert: Lightning will not strike you. These
Frankists include Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin (*his grandfather and great grandfather),
Benjamin Disraeli, Heinrich Heine, and thousands, thousands, perhaps millions more. As
Shabbatai Zevi said the forbidden is permitted, Jacob Frank applied this in particular to
conversion to the religion of convenience as the path to success. Frank converted in 1759
with the Polish King as his godfather. 26,000 Polish and Ukrainian Jews followed and received
Polish nobility, and money. The process is still going on. And this must be why Poland and
Ukraine are so screwed up. Frank died calling himself the "Baron of Offenbach."
Frankists who did not convert include Sigmund Freud who started his own religion, and
Louis Brandeis who had a trinity of Zvi, Frank, and Frank's daughter Eva. I think it is
correct to say that Hollywood, where Jews married Shiksas and had Christmas trees, was a
Frankist development. (Irving Berlin and Samuel Goldwyn come to mind. Remember the MGM lion
of Judah lying on a torah?) Frankism Lite is the Reform Judaism of Temple Emmanuel and the
Society for Ethical Culture. Read. There is a lot to learn about the world around you.
@Gilad Atzmon
Gilad I am shocked you can not give a better answer then this.
Judaism from the time of the Temple destruction through out Medieval Europe, and the ME
was Orthodox Judaism and Hassidic dynasties (each having their own customs.) The same for
Mizrahi, Separdic and Ashkenazim Jews.
It's center was the Vilna Goan in Lithuania, not sure about the ME. Jews wore fringes, had
beards and women covered their heads (shaytl, tichal). It was not called Orthodox since those
customs and rules were universal. You were either a practicing Jew or not. The basic rules
were as follows:
Orthodox Judaism:
-Keeping the sabbath
-Keeping Kosher
-Family ritual purity
-Women covering their heads.
-Men covering their heads.
After the enlightenment other sub divisions occurred.
-Reform Judaism
-Conservative Judasim
– Modern Orthodox Judaism.
Modern Orthodox Judaism (I was raised), included keeping the sabbath, keeping kosher,
family purity was optional. Women do not cover their heads and men usually do not cover their
heads outside of the Synagogue or at home. The main difference between Orthodox and
Conservative is in the Synagogue. In Orthodox Synagogue men sit separately from women divided
by a high barrier.
Today those differences are defined by Orthodox (modern) , and Ultra Orthodox
(traditional from the middle ages) ,
Then you have the various Hassidic sects which are family dynasties, the most prominent
being the Lubavitcher Hassids which run the Chabad movement and all the Kabbalah centers.
The orthodox community's complete dismissal of modern medical advice and its negligence
in social distancing and modern hygiene are a health catastrophe in the making.
Well, there is a theory of natural selection, which Orthodox Jews reject. Yet it is
natural selection that is likely to cull those unfit to live in human society.
I realise few will since amerikans are 100% exceptionalist right up to their last breath but
please read the best article by far on masks & respirators cleaning issues esp such ones
as 'steam' cleaning are on this link I posted earlier.
It is written by Dr John Campbell who has been writing on this virus for several months.
My brother the retired journo recommended him to me in early February, so naturally I have
been assiduous in ignoring the bloke for that reason, combined with the fact Campbell is an
englander, but he has put together an excellent piece on masks & respirators, one which
uses y'know those pesky fact things to support his statements about assorted items efficacy,
longevity and ability to be cleaned. With respirators 95% & above he recommends having
several and rotating them so that they cop 4-5 days down time which should be enough time for
the virus to kark it of its own accord.
I don't believe for a moment that will stop the continual spouting of uninformed claptrap,
but I tried.
The religious community is luminous in its spirituality, and you feel it when you are
there.
Orthodox Judaism is bar none the most filthy, evil, disgusting supremacist hate ideology
the world has ever known – nothing whatsoever about it is "spiritual". All you have to
do is read the deplorable Torah and especially the satanic beast this community
"worships".
You are obviously also a worshiper of this dark "prince", the Synagogue of Satan (*as
Jesus aptly described it). That makes you a Jew supremacist, and not just in a symbolic way,
but by dint of real action: it is the duty of Jews, in the Torah (and of course also the
Talmud), to conquer the planet and enslave humanity, except in Greater Israel, where all
non-Jews are to be slaughtered.
It's all stated, most succinctly, in 20 Deut. 10-18. And again in the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, which is just a repeat of 20 Deut. 10-18.
As Karl Marx said, the only way for Jews to escape their satanic life is to assimilate,
i.e., reject Jewish supremacism. Of course someone like you is incapable of that. To you, the
most wretched evil is "spiritual".
I will be blunt. I think it's definitely time for us Jews to recognize our sacred religion
for what it really is – a supermacist cult and to denounce it. The Mosaic Covenant must
be broken. The oh-so awaited promised Moschiah hasn't come for thousands of years and we have
only up until the year 6000 for him to show up and to elevate us as the ultimate leaders of
the World. Fortunately or not, this is not going to happen. All our efforts to prove
otherwise will only reveal the fallacious and highly irrational essence of Judaism to the
critical thinker, a cult that emerged from Ancient Canaanite worship. I am aware that blind
and irrational belief in our traditional religion is what is required from us, but inquiring
one's deepest and most sacred beliefs is what makes one human and not a robot.
@ExRabbi " the
fallacious and highly irrational essence of Judaism".
Thanks, ExRabbi. Well put. And it has terrible side-effects. Because it's fallacious and
highly irrational, Jews in denial of that must resort to lying and deception, so lying and
deception become the mark of the Jew. Simply abandon all Jewish ritual and be proud that,
having abandoned it, you are not a Jew.
Every perplexing narrative about Jewish history (including the birth of Zionism and the
initial rejection of Diaspora/Religious identity) is resolved by this 6 second clip
https://t.co/WvmGrZduji
There is no conspiracy, they didn't make up false documents to start a Russian investigation,
oh wait they did.. I just read that Bloomberg spent north of $500,000,000.00 to become
president and you want me to believe the Russians spent 1% of that and got better results..
You have to be a special kind of stupid.
Given some time and currency, I guess Morocco would offer more value for money if you want
some exotic customs and landscapes. If you have more money, you could spend them on a
carbon-free cruise with stunning vistas and off-the-beaten route: North Pole on board of
nuclear-powered ice breaker! It is wise to have swimming costume (a pool is on board, heated,
I presume) and sensible apparel -- enough for normal winter (in Moscow). The number of places
is below 150, with a little hospital on board too. In the latest ads I read about discounts,
but the deal was that you can pay in rubbles with prices below the rubble plunged by 25%,
still, for 27 k USD you can see John Bolton's relatives in natural environment (like mommy
walrus taking care of youngsters), polar bears, seals, and landscapes of Franz Josef Land.
Helicopter rides included. You can also take a plunge into the arctic water -- with safety
precautions .
In late January we asked whether a prolific Chinese scientist who was experimenting with bat
coronavirus at a level-4 biolab in Wuhan China was responsible for the current outbreak of a
virus which is 96% genetically identical - and which saw an explosion in cases at a wet market
located just down the street .
For suggesting this, we were kicked off Twitter and had the pleasure of several articles
written by MSM hacks regarding our 'conspiracy theory' - none of which addressed the plethora
of hard evidence linked in the post. These are the same people, mind you, who pushed the
outlandish and evidence-free Trump-Russia conspiracy theory for years .
Whether or not the virus was engineered (scientists swear it wasn't) - it shouldn't take
Perry Mason to conclude that a virulent coronavirus outbreak which started near a biolab that
was experimenting with -- coronavirus -- bears scrutiny . Could a lab worker have accidentally
infected themselves - then gone shopping for meat at the market over several days, during the
long, asymptomatic incubation period?
In February, researchers Botao Xial and Lei Xiao published a
quickly-retracted paper titled "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" - which
speculated that the virus came from the Wuhan biolab.
Now, mainstream outlets are catching on - or at least have become brave enough to similarly
connect the dots.
Earlier this week, Fox News ' Tucker Carlson suggested that COVID-19 may have originated in
a lab.
Tucker Carlson is currently citing a report that he openly admits he can't confirm is true
to question if coronavirus was made in a lab pic.twitter.com/CTxrJtw0Sh
And now, the
Washington Times is out with a report titled "Chinese researchers isolated deadly bat
coronaviruses near Wuhan animal market."
Chinese government
researchers isolated more than 2,000 new viruses, including deadly bat coronaviruses, and
carried out scientific work on them just three miles from a wild animal market identified as
the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several Chinese state media outlets in recent months touted the virus research and
lionized in particular a key researcher in Wuhan , Tian Junhua , as a leader in bat
virus work.
The coronavirus strain now infecting hundreds of thousands of people globally mutated from
bats believed to have infected animals and people at a wild animal market in Wuhan . The exact origin of
the virus, however, remains a mystery. -
Washington Times
"This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global
pandemic," said Texas GOP Rep. Michael T. McFoul - a ranking member of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee . McFoul believes China should be held accountable for the outbreak.
Meanwhile, a video from December funded by the Chinese government shows Tian collecting
samples from captured bats and storing them in vials.
"I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people," said Tian, adding "I am not a
soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line."
The mainstream theory behind the virus is that it crossed over to humans after first
infecting an intermediary species - such as a pangolin.
The US government was caught without pants. No supply of masks. Can you imagine that for a country with trillion military budget.
Notable quotes:
"... Take a look around: Unemployment may reach 30%. The poor are starting to protestactually strike! GM, Amazon, Chicago Teacher's
Union, GE, Instacart ..."
"... As jobs were outsourced to slave labor camps in China and elsewhere, the rich and privileged smiled as their portfolios grew,
as CEO raked in the cash and then buried it in off-shore accounts. ..."
"... When the working class complained about jobs being lost, factories being closed, it was told to get a better education, to
make itself valuable to the bosses. What a joke! ..."
"... The DNC always plays footsie with the rich as does the GOPequal plunderers. Universal Health Care is just too expensive! Their
all monsters, crafty grifters. ..."
"... The mass media, now firmly serve the DNC and the GOP, studiously ignore this rot. A rotten building will fall. Times up. Game
is Over. ..."
The Covid-19 pandemic is the physical manifestation of a deeper disease plaguing the West: Class Warfare. The veil has been lifted.
Social distancing, a legitimate response to Covid-19, predominately affects the working class.
Fortunately, Covid-19 is an equal opportunity plague: As the rich and powerful congratulated each other, as they moved among the
rightfully adoring crowds oops, I think I caught something! Just hazards of the games they play. Certainly, it was never contracted
on the factory floor.
Suddenly the rich and privileged claim they are in the same boat. Really? Mega-yachts are handy get-aways, as are well-protected
island boltholes.
And who is supposed to do the nasty work, who has little opportunity to run and hide, who must do the the work that makes actual
existence possible? Not the rich.
Who can work from home and not lose his or her job?
Rich and powerful women now have to cut their own nails! Oh, the shame of it. They have to dye their own haircoif themselves!
What no colorist?
The rich and powerful want the poor to go back to work. Who else will make them money? Who else will save the Stock Market? Meanwhile,
the poor are losing their jobs; they do not have fall-back pensions or able to take advantage of Capital Gains. How will they pay
their rent? Their bills? Their healthcare? Their debts?
Take a look around: Unemployment may reach 30%. The poor are starting to protestactually strike! GM, Amazon, Chicago Teacher's
Union, GE, Instacart
As jobs were outsourced to slave labor camps in China and elsewhere, the rich and privileged smiled as their portfolios grew,
as CEO raked in the cash and then buried it in off-shore accounts.
When the working class complained about jobs being lost, factories being closed, it was told to get a better education, to
make itself valuable to the bosses. What a joke!
When many tried to get an education, they were faced with absurd college costs, incredible debt, and thanks to those in control
an inability to declare bankruptcy! Thanks, Joe.
And now, ever thoughtful Nancy Pelosi wants to reward the rich and privileged with ta ta!.., a lifting of the Salt Cap.
The DNC always plays footsie with the rich as does the GOPequal plunderers. Universal Health Care is just too expensive!
Their all monsters, crafty grifters.
Meanwhile, economists sang the praises of Free Trade. The GOP loved it; the DNC loved it. Neo-liberalism: the goose that always
lays the golden eggs.
The mass media, now firmly serve the DNC and the GOP, studiously ignore this rot. A rotten building will fall. Times up. Game
is Over.
likbez , March 31, 2020 9:27 pm
Thank you Stormy,
A very good analysis. A lot of emotions too ;-)
When the working class complained about jobs being lost, factories being closed, it was told to get a better education,
to make itself valuable to the bosses. What a joke!
Neoliberalism is an ideology make on a set of myths. In other words this is a secular religion.
The DNC always plays footsie with the rich as does the GOPequal plunderers. Universal Health Care is just too expensive!
Their all monsters, crafty grifters.
No question they are. That's by design. The key role of DNC is to squash political forces to the left of Clinton faction, and
to neutralize/coopt politicians which do not support the neoliberal/neocon consensus.
Meanwhile, economists sang the praises of Free Trade. The GOP loved it; the DNC loved it. Neo-liberalism: the goose that
always lays the golden eggs.
Neoliberal revolution which culminated in the election of Reagan (which started under Carter) was a coup d'tat by financial
oligarchy. It signified that the New Deal consensus was broken and countervailing forces were weakened enough to ensure the success
of the coup.
One thing with which I respectfully disagree:
The mass media, now firmly serve the DNC and the GOP, studiously ignore this rot. A rotten building will fall. Times up.
Game is Over.
Not sure the game is over. I do not see powerful enough social forces that can oppose financial oligarchy. The anger does built
up, but it is powerless. And their control of the state is absolute (which also means the control of intelligence agencies).
The population is brainwashed and disunited via identity politics.
In modern USA society that means that any attempt to build such a coalition with be squashed by the national security state.
, Trump
gave his speech on 11 March . It should come as no surprise that Putin's speech framing and
proposals were far superior to Trump's, who employed the Big Lie at the top of his speech:
"Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we
have the greatest economy anywhere in the world, by far.
"Our banks and financial institutions are fully capitalized and incredibly strong. Our
unemployment is at a historic low. This vast economic prosperity gives us flexibility,
reserves, and resources to handle any threat that comes our way.
"This is not a financial crisis, this is just a temporary moment of time that we will
overcome together as a nation and as a world."
Absolutely nothing he said above is true and in many cases he was immediately proved wrong.
In stark contrast, Putin chose the following to begin his speech:
"By taking precautionary measures, we have been largely able to prevent the infection from
rapidly spreading and limit the incidence rate. However, we have to understand that Russia
cannot insulate itself from this threat, simply considering its geography. There are countries
along our borders that have already been seriously affected by the epidemic, which means that
in all objectivity it is impossible to stop it from spilling over into Russia.
"That said, being professional, well organised and proactive is what we can do and are
already doing. The lives and health of our citizens is our top priority .
"We have mobilised all the capabilities and resources for deploying a system of timely
prevention and treatment. I would like to specially address doctors, paramedics, nurses, staff
at hospitals, outpatient clinics, rural paramedic centres, ambulance services, and researchers:
you are at the forefront of dealing with this situation. My heartfelt gratitude to you for your
dedicated efforts." [My Emphasis]
We must also consider the numerous gaffs Trump committed prior to his speech, his earlier
gleeful gloating over China's troubles in January, and his politicizing of the crisis along
with that of Pompeo. Then there's his escalation of the illegal attacks on Iran and Venezuela
specifically, which are crimes against humanity. Yes, I readily admit my anti-Trump bias, but
I'm not blinded like those who applaud him. Putin had immediate proposals for aid to his people
that they can count on, while Trump did next to nothing by comparison. But do please read them
both and make your own determination as to which nation and leader you'd rather have during
this sort of crisis.
I think you have the main danger (some nitwit using a "small nuke") to try to make a point
about right.
Other than that, the impression I get from Pompeo and his ilk is that the main thing is
having someone to threaten and abuse to show "leadership" and "manhood", at least one shitty
little country we can still throw up against the wall and slap around to show we mean
business. Dangerous times for Nicaragua.
Neither he nor his other West Point friends seems to have much clue about military affairs
either, which is strange. I mean we've always had our George Armstrong Custers, but they
didn't run things. Now they seem to have some sort of cult mentality. One is reminded of the
French before WWI: "De L'audace, Encore De L'audace, Et Toujours De L'audace ..." and we know
how that worked out.
As a Russian I don't approve of this aid that Putin sent to Italy. That's Soviet-slyle
showmanship, when our country objectively cannot afford it. Stalin was sending grain to East
Germany, when Russia was starving. Now Putin is doing something similar.
At the very least he should have extracted some payment for it – Italy is a rich
country, has bigger GDP than Russia, and can totally pay.
@Felix Keverich I would have to disagree with you on this, my friend. Italy is famous for
being one of the most communist friendly countries in the western world. During "communism"
Italy's Fiat gave the license to build their cars to many Eastern block countries: Poland,
Yugoslavia, and yes USSR.
The original Lada was nothing else but Fiat 124 model. As a sign of gratitude the Russians
even renamed the city where the Lada was being made into Togliatti – after an Italian
communist. I think the friendship and respect between Italy and Russia goes way back, and now
the Russians are just trying to continue that tradition by helping as much as they can Italy
in these difficult times.
@Felix Keverich Soft power is much. much cheaper than hard power. Russia has been
constantly demonised in the West and a show of compassion of this magnitude reveals the lies
for what they are. It will be much more difficult to garner support for harsh measures
against Russians when people everywhere see them as being "just like us". This is especially
true of Europe whose support is very much needed by the US and it's minions like the UK,
Poland and the usual flunkies.
Why did you label Cyrano's response to you to be trolling? It was polite and sincere, I
thought.
@Felix Keverich If a Russian military gaining experience against an unknown enemy ,
isn't
that a form of payment ?
I am not a Russian , but I am sure your president knows what he is doing.
@Cyrano As a Russian I do support this action, despite it obviously will have no positive
changes in Italy's policy.
Not all Russians are like Felix (if he's really Russian, which I'm not sure).
With a disgusted look on his face, President Trump replied: "You should have let us
know."
Military Exercise meaning (from Wikipedia): "A military exercise or war game
is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring
the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat. This also serves the
purpose of ensuring the combat readiness of garrisoned or deployable forces prior to deployment
from a home base."
What is actually going on here? Does the White House care to explain?
*Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The essence of Trump's psychology is that he likes to dominate people. He accomplishes this
by hiring incompetent psychopaths who make him legitimately look good by comparison. This is
why he's constantly overruling their worst plans. But once every so often, his incompetent
underlings convince him to do something exceptionally stupid. This is because occasionally
going along with them allows him to feel like a wise, discerning ruler who occasionally
follows his advisors' guidance and occasionally overrules them.
Americans are facing "A Spring Unlike Any Before." So warned a front-page headline in the
March 13th New York Times .
That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised
relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities
and afflictions.
According to the poet T.S.
Eliot, "April is the cruelest month." Yet while April has certainly delivered its share of
cataclysms
, March and May haven't lagged far
behind. In fact, cruelty has seldom been a respecter of seasons. The infamous influenza
epidemic of 1918 , frequently cited as a possible
analogue to our current crisis, began in the spring of that year, but lasted well into
1919.
That said, something about the coronavirus pandemic does seem to set this particular spring
apart. At one level, that something is the collective panic now sweeping virtually the entire
country. President Trump's grotesque ineptitude and
tone-deafness have only fed that panic. And in their eagerness to hold Trump himself
responsible for the pandemic, as if he were the bat that first transmitted
the disease to a human being, his critics magnify further a growing sense of events spinning
out of control.
Yet to heap the blame for this crisis on Trump alone (though he certainly deserves plenty of
blame) is to miss its deeper significance. Deferred for far too long, Judgment Day may at long
last have arrived for the national security state.
ORIGINS OF A COLOSSUS
That state within a state's origins date from the early days of the Cold War. Its ostensible
purpose has been to keep Americans safe and so, by extension, to guarantee our freedoms. From
the 1950s through the 1980s, keeping us safe provided a seemingly adequate justification for
maintaining a sprawling military establishment along with a panoply of "intelligence" agencies
-- the CIA, the DIA, the NRO, the NSA -- all engaged in secret activities hidden from public
view. From time to time, the scope, prerogatives, and actions of that conglomeration of
agencies attracted brief critical attention -- the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, the
Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Iran-Contra affair during the presidency of
Ronald Reagan being prime examples. Yet at no time did such failures come anywhere close to
jeopardizing its existence.
Indeed, even when the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War removed the
original justification for its creation, the entire apparatus persisted. With the Soviet Empire
gone, Russia in a state of disarray, and communism having lost its appeal as an alternative to
democratic capitalism, the managers of the national security state wasted no time in
identifying new threats and new missions.
The new threats included autocrats like Panama's Manuel Noriega and Iraq's Saddam Hussein,
once deemed valuable American assets, but now, their usefulness gone, classified as dangers to
be eliminated. Prominent among the new missions was a sudden urge to repair broken places like
the Balkans, Haiti, and Somalia, with American power deployed under the aegis of "humanitarian
intervention" and pursuant to a "responsibility to protect." In this way, in the first decade
of the post-Cold War era, the national security state kept itself busy. While the results
achieved, to put it politely, were mixed at best, the costs incurred appeared tolerable. In
sum, the entire apparatus remained impervious to serious scrutiny.
During that decade, however, both the organs of national security and the American public
began taking increased notice of what was called "anti-American terrorism" -- and not without
reason. In 1993, Islamic fundamentalists detonated a bomb in a parking garage of New York's
World Trade Center
. In 1996, terrorists obliterated an apartment building
used to house US military personnel in Saudi Arabia. Two years later, the US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania were blown
up and, in 2000, suicide bombers nearly sank the USS Cole , a Navy destroyer
making a port call in Aden at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. To each of these increasingly
brazen attacks, all occurring during the administration of President Bill Clinton, the national
security state responded ineffectually .
Then, of course, came September 11, 2001. Orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and carried out by
19 suicidal al-Qaeda operatives, this act of mass murder inflicted incalculable harm on the
United States. In its wake, it became common to say that "9/11 changed everything."
In fact, however, remarkably little changed. Despite its 17 intelligence agencies, the
national security state failed utterly to anticipate and thwart that devastating attack on the
nation's political and financial capitals. Yet apart from minor adjustments -- primarily
expanding surveillance efforts at home and abroad -- those outfits mostly kept doing what they
had been doing, even as their leaders evaded accountability. After Pearl Harbor, at least, one
admiral and one general were fired . After
9/11, no one lost his or her job. At the upper echelons of the national security state, the
wagons were circled and a consensus quickly formed: No one had screwed up.
Once President George W. Bush identified an " Axis of Evil "
(Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), three nations that had had nothing whatsoever to do with the
9/11 attacks, as the primary target for his administration's "Global War on Terrorism," it
became clear that no wholesale reevaluation of national security policy was going to occur. The
Pentagon and the Intelligence Community, along with their sprawling support network of
profit-minded contractors, could breathe easy. All of them would get ever more money. That went
without saying. Meanwhile, the underlying premise of US policy since the immediate aftermath of
World War II -- that projecting hard power globally would keep Americans safe -- remained
sacrosanct.
Viewed from this perspective, the sequence of events that followed was probably
overdetermined. In late 2001, US forces invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban regime, and
set out to install a political order more agreeable to Washington. In early 2003, with the
mission in Afghanistan still anything but complete, US forces set out to do the same in Iraq.
Both of those undertakings have dragged on, in one fashion or another, without coming remotely
close to success. Today, the military undertaking launched in 2001 continues, even if it no
longer has a name or an agreed-upon purpose.
Nonetheless, at the upper echelons of the national security state, the consensus forged
after 9/11 remains firmly in place: No one screws up. In Washington, the conviction that
projecting hard power keeps Americans safe likewise remains sacrosanct.
In the nearly two decades since 9/11, willingness to challenge this paradigm has rarely
extended beyond non-conforming publications like TomDispatch . Until Donald Trump came along, rare was the
ambitious politician of either political party who dared say aloud what Trump himself has
repeatedly said -- that, as he calls them, the "
ridiculous endless wars " launched in response to 9/11 represent the height of folly.
Astonishingly enough, within the political establishment that point has still not sunk in.
So, in 2020, as in 2016, the likely Democratic nominee for president will be someone who vigorously
supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Imagine, if you will, Democrats in 1880 nominating not a
former union general (as they did) but a former confederate who, 20 years before, had advocated
secession. Back then, some sins were unforgivable. Today, politicians of both parties practice
self-absolution and get away with it.
THE REAL THREAT
Note, however, the parallel narrative that has unfolded alongside those post-9/11 wars.
Taken seriously, that narrative exposes the utter irrelevance of the national security state as
currently constituted. The coronavirus pandemic will doubtless prove to be a significant
learning experience. Here is one lesson that Americans cannot afford to overlook.
Presidents now routinely request and Congress routinely appropriates
more than a trillion dollars annually to satisfy the national security state's supposed
needs. Even so, Americans today do not feel safe and, to a degree without precedent, they are
being denied the exercise of basic everyday freedoms. Judged by this standard, the apparatus
created to keep them safe and free has failed. In the face of a pandemic, nature's version of
an act of true terror, that failure, the consequences of which Americans will suffer through
for months to come, should be seen as definitive.
But wait, some will object: Don't we find ourselves in uncharted waters? Is this really the
moment to rush to judgment? In fact, judgment is long overdue.
While the menace posed by the coronavirus may differ in scope, it does not differ
substantively from the myriad other perils that Americans have endured since the national
security state wandered off on its quixotic quest to pacify Afghanistan and Iraq and purge the
planet of terrorists. Since 9/11, a partial
roster of those perils would include: Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Sandy (2012),
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (2017), and massive wildfires that have devastated vast
stretches of the West Coast on virtually an annual basis. The cumulative cost of such events
exceeds a half-trillion dollars. Together, they have taken the lives of several thousand more
people than were lost in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Earlier generations might have written all of these off as acts of God. Today, we know
better. As with blaming Trump, blaming God won't do. Human activities, ranging from the
hubristic
reengineering of rivers like the Mississippi to the effects of climate change stemming from
the use of fossil fuels, have substantially exacerbated such "natural" catastrophes.
And unlike faraway autocrats or terrorist organizations, such phenomena, from
extreme-weather events to pandemics, directly and immediately threaten the safety and wellbeing
of the American people. Don't tell the Central Intelligence Agency or the Joint Chiefs of Staff
but the principal threats to our collective wellbeing are right here where we live.
Apart from modest belated
efforts at mitigation, the existing national security state is about as pertinent to
addressing such threats as President Trump's
cheery expectations that the coronavirus will simply evaporate once warmer weather appears.
Terror has indeed arrived on our shores and it has nothing to do with al-Qaeda or ISIS or
Iranian-backed militias. Americans are terrorized because it has now become apparent that our
government, whether out of negligence or stupidity, has left them exposed to dangers that truly
put life and liberty at risk. As it happens, all these years in which the national security
state has been preoccupied with projecting hard power abroad have left us naked and vulnerable
right here at home.
Protecting Americans where they live ought to be the national security priority of our time.
The existing national security state is incapable of fulfilling that imperative, while its
leaders, fixated on waging distant wars, have yet to even accept that they have a
responsibility to do so.
Worst of all, even in this election year, no one on the national political scene appears to
recognize the danger now fully at hand.
Congress is preparing to vote to spend trillions of dollars Washington doesn't have to keep
afloat an economy staggering under the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Even before Uncle
Sam was hopelessly overdrawn, expecting to run an annual trillion dollar deficit well into the
future.
Yet the bipartisan war lobby continues to promote confrontation and conflict with nations as
diverse as Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and China. Even in good economic times it was
increasingly difficult to underwrite Washington's attempt to run the world. Today the effort is
pure folly.
Last year the Congressional Budget Office published The 2019 Long-Term Budget Outlook
. Among the conclusions of this profoundly depressing read:
Uncle Sam's fiscal collapse has been swift. Noted CBO, at the end of 2007 federal debt was
but 35 percent of GDP (not counting intra-government borrowing tied to Social Security).
However, "By the end of 2012, debt as a share of GDP had doubled, reaching 70 percent. The
upward trajectory has generally continued since then, and debt is projected to be 78 percent of
GDP by the end of this year -- a very high level by historical standards." The average over
the last half century was just 42 percent.
Washington's spendthrift ways when economic growth was strong make more difficult responding
to the latest economic crisis. The long-term prognosis is dismal. The better case, suggested
CBO, was to "Increase the likelihood of less abrupt, but still significant, negative economic
and financial effects, such as expectations of higher rates of inflation and more difficulty
financing public and private activity to international markets."
Worse, however, federal improvidence could "Increase the risk of a fiscal crisis -- that is,
a situation in which the interest rate on federal debt rises abruptly because investors have
lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal position." That is increasingly likely.
Already, figures economic Laurence Kotlikoff at Boston University, the federal government has
unfunded liabilities, or a "fiscal gap," of $239 trillion -- promises made with no money to
meet them.
There is no easy solution. Revenues already are projected to rise as a share of GDP and
above the average over the last half century. Washington is spending ever faster than it is
taxing.
To cut, presidents and Congresses typically focus on domestic discretionary spending, but
that only makes up about 15 percent of federal outlays. Eliminate it -- stop paying federal
employees, close the Washington monument, end all federal grants, and slash everything else --
the deficit remains. Five program areas make up the rest of the budget: Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid, interest, and the military.
America's growing elderly population is unlikely to sacrifice benefits seniors believe they
have paid for. There is no cheap way to fund health care for the poor. Only repudiating the
national debt can lower interest payments by fiat. Draconian cuts are unlikely in any let alone
all of them.
Which leaves military outlays. Much of current spending has nothing to do with "defense."
Today America is constantly at war, but usually to attack rather than defend. Even when
"defense" is theoretically the objective, Washington is protecting other nations, mostly
prosperous, populous allies, rather than the U.S.
The result is extraordinarily high expenditures, since it costs far more to project power to
the far reaches of the globe than to prevent other nations from harming America. Indeed, the
Pentagon budget should be seen as the price of Washington's highly interventionist foreign
policy, which sees every other nations' problems as America's own.
Last year the president requested $718 billion for the military in 2020, a two percent real,
inflation-adjusted increase. Although the administration projected no real rise through 2024,
the real growth rate between 2017 and 2020 had been 3.5 percent. Moreover, observed CBO, "the
cost of DOD's plans would increase by 13 percent from 2024 to 2034, after adjusting for
inflation." Based on historical experience, the agency figured that actual spending likely
"could be about two higher than DOD estimates and about four percent higher from 2020 to
2034."
That likely is the floor. The bipartisan war lobby is constantly pushing to do and spend
more. In 2018 the congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy Commission urged real
increases of between three and five percent annually. Reported CBO, the consequences of such a
hike, "starting from the 2017 budget request, would result in a defense budget of between $822
billion and $958 billion (in 2020 dollars) by 2025, and between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion
(in 2020 dollars) by 2034."
For what would this cash tsunami be used?
The Constitution sets the "common defense" as a core federal responsibility. That actually
is rather easy today. The U.S. is geographically secure, with large oceans east and west and
weak, peaceful neighbors south and north.
The only other state with an equal nuclear force capable of destroying America is Russia,
which has no reason to do so and a good reason not to, since it would be destroyed in response.
No hostile power might is going to dominate Eurasia. Moscow can't. Anyway, its security
objectives appear to be much more mundane, ensuring that the West takes its interests into
account. Europe can't and couldn't imagine doing so.
Which leaves the People's Republic of China. It might become America's military peer, but
even then it won't be able to conquer or cow nuclear-armed Russia or more distant, economically
advanced Europe. Beijing's Asian neighbors are well able to deter aggression, especially if,
someday, they develop nuclear weapons. China's "threat" to the U.S., if it should be called
that, is that the PRC might gain the sort of dominant influence in its neighborhood that
America enjoys in the Western hemisphere. Discomfiting for Washington, yes. Existential threat
to the U.S., no. And probably not worth fighting a largescale conventional and possibly nuclear
war over.
The Middle East has lost its strategic significance as the oil market has diversified.
Israel is able to deter attack, eliminating a heretofore major political issue in Washington.
Africa holds economic promise and raises humanitarian concerns, but rests at the bottom of
America's security list. Latin America will always gain U.S. attention but little that happens
there will matter much to North America's global colossus.
Yet the supposedly isolationist-leaning Trump administration is anything but. The U.S.
recently verged on war with Iran as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other administration
hawks pushed to retaliate against Tehran for attacks by pro-Iran militias in Iraq, which
Washington continues to occupy. The U.S. underwrites Saudi Arabia's brutal, aggressive war
against Yemen and has sent troops to act as the royal family's bodyguards against Iran. The
U.S. has steadily increased its force presence and fiscal outlays to confront Russia in
Europe.
Despite his professed desire to leave Syria, the president ordered the illegal occupation of
Syrian oil fields; his officials hope to use that presence to confront the Damascus government
as well as Iran and Russia. This week Pompeo flew to Afghanistan to revive a "peace" agreement
that, after nearly two decades of combat, can be effectively enforced only with a continued
U.S. military presence.
Under congressional pressure, the administration has temporized over Pentagon proposals to
withdraw forces from numerous conflicts across Africa. Venezuela remains in crisis but in
opposition to America, with military intervention oft proposed as the remedy. Before talking
with North Korea the president threatened "fire and fury." The administration is taking an
increasingly hard line against China, raising military as well as economic and diplomatic
tensions.
Required is a truly America First defense. The U.S. should focus on preventing hostile
threats to this hemisphere, while being ready to sustain critical allies if they face threats
from hegemonic powers potentially dangerous to America. Washington has other interests, but
advancing them normally would be matters of choice, rarely, if ever, warranting military
action.
Washington would reduce its force structure and military outlays accordingly. The biggest
cuts would be made in the army, while placing greater emphasis on the Reserves. The U.S. would
become something much closer to a "normal country."
Today America is following an imperial policy without an empire's resources. Alas, the
federal government is essentially bankrupt, facing nothing but red ink in coming years and
decades. Ultimately domestic outlays must be curbed. But military spending which does not
advance the "common defense" also should be slashed. The U.S. no longer can afford to play-act
as global gendarme.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan and author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's
New Global Empire .
Even before Uncle Sam was hopelessly overdrawn, expecting to run an annual trillion
dollar deficit well into the future.
Donald Trump has been mimicking the Reagan economic policy of "borrow and spend"
Now we are faced with another crash and we have no choice - but we never paid off any of
the debt or closed the budget deficit. I cannot imagine that anyone believes that "Borrow
when things are good and borrow more when they are bad!", is sustainable.
Yes. That has been the economic elephant in the room for decades, especially in the last
twenty years. With every crisis we are less prepared to spend our way out of it than the
last time. We were in a smoking hot economy with a mature bull market and yet running
higher deficits than ever (with continuously low interest rates), while essentially
ignoring our core problems at home (infrastructure, health care) and spending shocking
amounts of money in wars that do us no good. Now things are exponentially worse. It's
inexcusable. Every bit of it.
Yes, the wars and continual low level conflicts represent the absolute worst of our
irresponsible spending. In my view, that is indisputable and therefore ripe for calling out
as you do. And not even the hyper-partisans of either side can find a flaw in your
argument. I would just like to add that the contribution of low level conflicts to the
problem is greatly underrated. They amount to trillions over decades.
Notice how the crises seem to be happening more and more frequently, even though the
emergency measures from the last crisis never get fully phased out? What are we on now, QE
4.0 or is it 5.0?
Two trillion here, three trillion there. The numbers stop meaning anything, especially
since we're putting the debt on the national credit card and our children and grandchildren
will be the ones to suffer under its weight, while we carry on unawares. This ruse can
continue until the creditors turn off the spigot. By then, I suppose our elites will have
wired out their cash, packed up their things, and schlepped off to foreign lands leaving
the dehydrated shell of this nation behind.
Taxes? No where in the article does it recommend the obvious: return to the prior rate of
taxation that existed even two decades ago, let alone three or four. Perhaps having Amazon
pay taxes would be a step in the right direction? Then, mandating that all employers have
to pay for health insurance and benefits for their employees, rather than skirting the
issue by limiting their hours (Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes, McDonalds, CVS, etc),
while raising the minimum hourly wage to a level where a family could live off of. Add in
taxing the wealthy back to prior levels, and restoring the inheritance tax. Put a cap on
executive pay and benefits. Restrict stock market selling, eliminating short selling and
other modern inventions which creates a more volatile market, as well as companies grossly
manipulated and over-valued. Then stop socializing risks, and privatizing profits; either
choose true socialism or true capitalism, or perhaps inverse the concerns for once. Stop
letting private companies mine American assets for their private profit. Support small
businesses as the foundation of our economy, which will instill innovation. Eliminate
incentives to private companies without any return (NY state gave Tesla over $1 Billion to
build a largely automated factory, where is the incentive for the state?). -- The root of
this issue requires transformative change, with a paradigm shift of how American culture
conducts itself. What nation do we wish to be?
Why begin at 2008? let's look at 2000-2020. Afghan and Iraq wars plus the Great Big Cheney
Tax Cuts and the Cheney TARP bailout were significant contributors. Got the ball rolling,
as it were.
Obama was a big disappointment to me, especially with how quickly he folded to the MIC,
but standing next to Bush/Cheney and Trump, he was a pillar of financial and personal
rectitude, IMO. At least he occasionally addressed average Americans as though he thought
some of us might be adults,
Now, standing expectantly in line, we see Joe Biden. It is enough to make me want to
drink heavily, or worse...
No argument there regarding economics. For that matter, we could go back to 1980 if you
like. Or even 1965, when LBJ started running bigger deficits to pay for the War on Vietnam
and The Great Society simultaneously.
I chose 2008 because that was when the purported Great Recovery began, and because the
recovery accelerated the trends we have been seeing since before I was born, throwing them
into even sharper relief.
"I remember when the dems had control of the house, senate, and presidency under Obama.
I remember Obama choosing to fill his cabinet with people not tied in with wall street. I
remember how hard dems fought to get single payer health care and to protect SS, Medicare,
Medicaid, and workers' rights. I remember how they bailed out the people first and then
gave a little help to wall street. I remember how Obama saved 10 million families from
foreclosure and losing their homes and kept small businesses afloat with interest-free
loans. I remember how Obama and Biden put on their comfortable shoes and walked the picket
lines with the teachers in Wisconsin. I remember how obama's justice dept. prosecuted the
wall street gang responsible for the great recession. I remember how Obama protected
whistleblowers like Ed Snowden and Chelsea Manning. I remember that when democrats ran into
obstruction by the republicans, they stood firm on their principles and fought for the
american people. {{{alarm clock}}} Wait, what? (wipes eyes) I had a dream ."
Well, I guess that counts as one person's opinion, doesn't it? But is it supposed to prove
something?
I'm sure I could find plenty of unsympathetic interpretations of Obama, if I took a few
hours to do it. Lord knows I've read many, and I even said he was a disappointment to me.
I'm not even going to comb the internet to prove or disprove any, let alone all, of those
loaded assertions from that website.
Sure, it was very telling that they didn't jail any of the Wall Street bandits.But I
must say, "...walked the picket lines with the teachers in Wisconsin..." is really a
howler. Jesus Christ, what president ever would have done anything like that?! Plus that
was in 2011. i don't know who
nakedcapitalism.com is, but that point would get laughed out of a junior high school
debate. I have no doubt, though, that the writer really hates Obama.
If you're trying to intimate that both parties are the same as to sharing an
overwhelming commitment to global capitalism and the primacy of the military-indiustrial
complex as a vehicle for world hegemony, then I agree with you. If you're making the point
that Obama was the same breed of cat as Bush/Cheney and Trump, I'm sorry, but I must
demur.
Those guys are provable, life-long hustlers, scumbags and underachievers. Obama was a
wide-eyed, idealistic (relatively) guy who found out that winning an election didn't really
make him all that powerful.
If the Obama presidency changed my mind about anything, it was that. That is, at this
point, changing the power structure is beyond the reach of any president. It's a big
system, made up of gangs of very powerful people, many of whose names we don't even know.
We're not going to get out of this until the whole system crashes, which could happen
sooner, than anyone thinks.
This pandemic has shown that no one in the world cares what the U,S. does or thinks
anymore. No one looks to us for "leadership." That's an enormous change from just a few
short years ago, in my opinion...and that's all it is...my opinion.
The difference between Obama and Bush is Barry didn't come up on the WASP country club
circuit. Still, the closest he ever came to real work was his time spent slacking at Baskin
Robbins.
1. It was Obama that claimed that he'd put on his comfortable shoes and walk that picket
line. Foolish to take him seriously.
2. Nobody is arguing in favor of Bush/Cheney here. Nor is anyone suggesting that Trump
is a paragon of leadership. He simply says the quiet parts out loud.
Although, considering the evils that US leadership has wrought since 1991 or so, Team R
and Team D, the world could do with a little less such "leadership".
So anybody that self-identifies (or is otherwise identified) as a conservative can't argue
for financial and fiscal responsibility? Let's put our impulse to label things
"conservative" or "liberal" in the dust bin.
When Bill Clinton left the White House, the Federal government was actually running a small
annual surplus (at least by government accounting standards). For a very short time,
economists wondered how the Fed would conduct monetary policy if all of the Treasury debt
were retired in the coming decade. They need not have worried. Bush 43 reversed that fiscal
improvement with his tax cuts and his very expensive Middle East wars. Even before the
coronavirus pushed the presidential race off of the front page of newspapers and web sites,
the country was wallowing in debt. The latest crisis will make matters that much worse.
We need to stop thinking of ourselves as exceptional and we certainly cannot afford to
continue playing the role of policeman of the world. Westchester County, NY which is home
to some of the wealthiest people in the country, now has more virus cases than all of
Canada, with the former's population being only about 1/35th of our northern neighbor. The
county's property taxes are among the highest in the country. I don't know how New York
state will cope with this fiscal disaster without driving out even more businesses and high
income residents.
This state among others will face a fiscal crisis no later than 2022 and will reorganize at
the point of a gun, because it does not have enough cred in DC to get a bailout, and its
establishment is now viewed as a barrier to any reform.
Change the name of DoD to the Department of War. There is nothing defensive in DoD and in
US general Foreign policy. The National Security issue that drives US Foreign Policy is to
be the No 1 and the Hegemon and extract obedience and profits from every other economy of
the world. Just a protection racket that Russians, Chinese, Iranians, etc. do not want to
pay.
I don't agree with Cato guys on economics, but on foreign policy they are usually dead
right from what I have seen. Defending our country does not mean engaging in endless
destructive and failing interventions overseas.
And I hope everyone realizes at this point that we can't even agree on how to run our
own country, so why would anyone think we could successfully remake another very different
society even if we had the right to do so?
Not that I think our intentions are actually all that noble. But even if they were,
there is no reason to trust our competence.
Sound advice but there is a powerful propaganda machine screaming over the top of you.
Strange thing is that many voters will agree with the idea of reeling in military
adventurism until they get a dose of spin about the next adventure in 'protecting our
freedoms'. One problem is that both America First and the idea of being the worlds
policeman have been anointed with the red white and blue. Also agree with Tom Sadlowski!
I do agree that the US no longer has the money for the vast network of military bases all
over the world nor do we have the money for endless fruitless proxy wars for (so called)
allies. The US must focus strategically on what areas of the world we have a real interest,
we have real allies and where we have real threats. Trump has already started to draw that
map with his trade deals but even Trump can be swayed by the neocons and the lobbyists and
the military industrial complex...and where Trump cannot be swayed the Congress and Senate
can!
However the US must also face the cold hard fact that even a prudent examination of our
defense and homeland security spending will not make much of a dent in our deficits. THE US
MUST TACKLE LYNDON BAYNES JOHNSON'S GREAT SOCIETY AND THAT INCLUDES THE 1965 IMMIGRATION
ACT. I STRONGLY OPPOSE AN ACROSS THE BOARD CUT IS SOCIAL SECURITY OR DISABILITY OR MEDICARE
BENEFITS BECAUSE IT IS NOT FAIR FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE PAID INTO THE SYSTEM THEIR ENTIRE LIVES
TO BE RATIONED BENEFITS BECAUSE THE PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN STUFFED TO THE GILLS WITH
IMMIGRANTS. THESE PROGRAMS NEED TO BE PAIRED BACK TO COVER WHAT THEY WERE INTENDED TO COVER
AND NOT EVERY IMMIGRANT WHO MANAGED TO GET CITIZENSHIP. FURTHER IMMIGRATION LOTTERY, E1B,
H1B VISAS FOR EDUCATION AND WORK, REFUGEE, ASYLUM, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, ETC AND ALL THE
GOVT PROGRAMS FROM WELFARE TO FOOD STAMPS TO MEDICAID NEED TO BE ELIMINATED. THE US WILL
NEVER TACKLE ENTITLEMENT REFORM WITHOUT STANDING UP TO THE BUSINESS LOBBY THAT WANTS CHEAP
IMMIGRANT FOREIGN LABOR. ONE WAY THE US COULD STAND UP TO THE BUSINESS LOBBY IS TO TAX EACH
EMPLOYER OF A FOREIGN WORKER $100,000 FOR THE COST OF IMMIGRANT SOCIAL SERVICES.
THE SAME SHOULD BE SAID FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, DEPARTMENT OF
EDUCATION, GOVT GUARANTEED STUDENT LOANS AND GRANTS WHICH INDENTURE STUDENTS WITH WORTHLESS
GARBAGE DEGREES WHILE ENRICHING COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. ITS THESE WORTHLESS GARBAGE
DEGREES THAT ARE CREATING THE STUDENT FINANCIAL LOAN CRISIS AND JOBLESS RADICAL
ANTI-AMERICAN ANARCHISTS.
Trade with China only feeds Maoist militarists, and fuels the arms race. And who supplies
Xi with submarines, jet engines and space technology? Why Putin of course. Ending his oil
stranglehold would be the most positive short term measure I could think of to reduce the
MIC.
What might help is lifting the cap on FICA contributions and limiting tax exempt status to
truly religious activities. No more "religious" theme parks. This would mean Liberal and
Conservatives would see the value of limiting government expenditures since all would be
paying taxes.
These programs are not gifts nor entitlements from the US government. They are the
fruits of a persons lifetime of labor which are extracted via threats of implied coercion
without the ability for a person to say no thank you and opt-out.
A lot of people paid little or nothing in FICA taxes, especially stay at home spouses
whether they had children or not. Single people are also subject to Medicare premium
surcharges and the Obamacare tax on investment income at much lower income levels than
married couple filing a joint return.
Russia insists the "West takes its interests into account". And a power ignores the core
interests of an opponent at its own peril. Removing existential threat – or the
conditions that might lead to it – is the ultimate aim of any state: but history
warns that foreign policy can create the very dénouement the nation is aiming to
avoid.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
@37
Yesterday I went to Home Depot to buy some water tubing for my ice-maker.
I noticed all doors were blocked with a tape, except one with at least 25 people waiting
to get in and a female employee holding a sign "the line starts here".
I ask the lady what was all about and she said because of the virus etc.
I said to her "You must be kidding" and I start going back to my car.
Some old lady from the line waiting to get in she scream to me something about "we protect
ourselves" and similar nonsense.
I turn around and I said to her: Quit watching TV you idiot. They rob your money on broad
daylight and send your kids to die fighting israels enemies.
The overreaction to the virus makes no sense. Is something being hidden from us? The freak
out over this virus – to the tune of $trillions – is all out of proportion.
2.8 million Americans die every year. Why the obsession with this one virus which may kill
in the thousands?
Something is off. But Trump should have known early if there was some other hidden danger.
If there is some hidden suspicion by the people obsessing over this, please share it!
"... The more I watch these moves by Pompeo the more sympathetic I become to the most sinister theories about COVID-19, its origins and its launch around the world. Read Pepe Escobar's latest to get an idea of how dark and twisted this tale could be . ..."
There are few things in this life that make me more sick to my stomach than watching
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking. He truly is one of the evilest men I've ever had the
displeasure of covering.
Into the insanity of the over-reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, Pompeo wasted no time
ramping up sanctions on firms doing any business with Iran, one of the countries worse-hit by
this virus to date.
It's a seemingly endless refrain, everyday,
more sanctions on Chinese, Swiss and South African firms for having the temerity in these
deflating times to buy oil from someone Pompeo and his gang of heartless psychopaths disapprove
of.
This goes far beyond just the oil industry. Even though I'm well aware that Russia's
crashing the price of oil was itself a hybrid war attack on US capital markets. One that has
had, to date, devastating effect.
While Pompeo mouths the words publicly that humanitarian aid is exempted from sanctions on
Iran, the US is pursuing immense
pressure on companies to not do so anyway while the State Dept. bureaucracy takes its sweet
time processing waiver applications.
Pompeo and his ilk only think in terms of civilizational warfare. They have become so
subsumed by their big war for the moral high ground to prove American exceptionalism that they
have lost any shred of humanity they may have ever had.
Because for Pompeo in times like these to stick to his talking points and for his office to
continue excising Iran from the global economy when we're supposed to be coming together to
fight a global pandemic is the height of soullessness.
And it speaks to the much bigger problem that infects all of our political thinking. There
comes a moment when politics and gaining political advantage have to take a back seat to doing
the right thing.
I've actually seen moments of that impulse from the Democratic leadership in the US Will
wonders never cease?!
Thinking only in Manichean terms of good vs. evil and dehumanizing your opponents is
actually costlier than reversing course right now. Because honey is always better at attracting
flies than vinegar.
But, unfortunately, that is not the character of the Trump administration.
It can only think in terms of direct leverage and opportunity to hold onto what they think
they've achieved. So, until President Trump is no longer consumed with coordinating efforts to
control COVID-19 Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper are in charge of foreign policy.
They will continue the playbook that has been well established.
Maximum pressure on Iran, hurt China any way they can, hold onto what they have in Syria,
stay in Iraq.
To that end Iraqi President Barham Salei nominated Pompeo's best choice to replace Prime
Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi to throw Iraq's future into complete turmoil. According to Elijah
Magnier,
Adnan al-Zarfi is a US asset through and through .
And this looks like Pompeo's Hail Mary to retain US legal presence in Iraq after the Iraqi
parliament adopted a measure to demand withdrawal of US troops from the country. Airstrikes
against US bases in Iraq continue on a near daily basis and there have been reports of US base
closures and redeployments at the same time.
This move looks like desperation by Pompeo et.al. to finally separate the Hashd al-Shaabi
from Iraq's official military. So that airstrikes against them can be carried out under the
definition of 'fighting Iranian terrorism.'
As Magnier points out in the article above if al-Zarfi puts a government together the war in
Iraq will expand just as the US is losing further control in Syria after Turkish President
Erdogan's disastrous attempt to remake the front in Idlib. That ended with his effective
surrender to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It is sad that, to me, I see no reason to doubt Pompeo and his ilk in the US government
wouldn't do something like that to spark political and social upheaval in those places most
targeted by US hybrid war tactics.
But, at the same time, I can see the other side of it, a vicious strike back by China
against its tormentors. And China's government does itself, in my mind, no favors threatening
to withhold drug precursors and having officials run their mouths giving Americans the excuse
they need to validate Trump and Pompeo's divisive rhetoric.
Remaining on the fence about this issue isn't my normal style. But everyone is dirty here
and the reality may well be this is a natural event terrible people on both sides are
exploiting.
And I can only go by what people do rather than what they say to assess the situation. Trump
tries to buy exclusive right to a potential COVID-19 vaccine from a German firm and his
administration slow-walks aid to Iran.
China sends aid to Iran and Italy by the container full. Is that to salve their conscience
over its initial suppression of information about the virus? Good question. But no one covers
themselves in glory by using the confusion and distraction to attempt further regime change and
step up war-footing during a public health crisis, manufactured or otherwise.
While Pompeo unctuously talks the talk of compassion and charity, he cannot bring himself to
actually walk the walk. Because he is a despicable, bile-filled man of uncommon depravity. His
prosecuting a hybrid war during a public health crisis speaks to no other conclusion about
him.
It's clear to me that nothing has changed at the top of Trump's administration. I expect
COVID-19 will not be a disaster for Trump and the US. It can handle this. But the lack of
humanity shown by its diplomatic corps ensures that in the long run the US will be left to fend
for itself when the next crisis hits.
This weaponizing of random indignation is a classic tool of the Western propaganda. In
Romania, we heard for a decade how the national-populists masquerading as socialists are to
blame for the lack of highways. It's been a few years since idiot Romanians gather in random
cities to complain that their city is not yet hooked to the Austro-Hungarian highway system,
despite the lack of traffic between their city and Austro-Hungary.
It is my understanding that, once highway construction will start, there will be protests
about natural or archeological treasures presumably endangered by the construction. It has
been decently working in Russia, with that Khimki forest.
Anything that can be thrown at a government threatening to leave the NWO will be used.
It's even worse for governments that are already one foot out, like Russia / China, or
completely out, like Iran / North Korea. Putin will be blamed for epidemics, earthquakes,
tsunamis, and even eclipses. If an earthquake would kill only a few, we will hear about
"failure to respond". If the earthquake doesn't kill anybody. we will be told that Putin
exploited it for propaganda.
One of the ways that CIA and Soros use, in order to weaponize Romania's presumed lack of
highways, is to pay some useful idiots, who call themselves "The Association for the
Betterment of Highways", "The Pro-Infrastructura Brigade", and so on. Most of these NGOs
consist of a single person, who posts videos of them ranting next to a construction site.
Using the model that BoJo used for the upcoming marriage (three men and one dog), the more
Soros/CIA-resistant types call them "The One-Incel-And-His-Drone Association".
By that same standard, I suspect we call this Doctors' Alliance
"Vasilievna-and-her-thermometer Association". Whatever she says about Moscow hospitals is
probably informed by her thermometer anyway. I doubt you can tell how things are in a
10-million city, especially if you are a marginal clown.
Is she an ophthalmologist, like The Part-Time Virologist Martyr of Wuhan? Dentist,
perhaps?
@Dmitry Can you show me even
ONE article or report from Izvestiya, life, kp. Vz, RBK, vesti, Channel 1 etc that is stupid
about the west? I can't because most of them are extremely well written.
The inverse situation? . I have just read 3 cretinous western lie reports about
Russia/coronavirus in the last half an hour! Each one born out of jealousy or CIA psyops
There is no comparison to make at all. You are doing false equivalence.
Gayropa DOES exist. It is a thing, an ideology
Your premise is absurd-50 % because Russian journalists are a lot more intellectual than
their western counterparts . and the other 50 % is quite naturally because millions of
Russians have closely admired or studied or been influenced by western practises and popular
culture in the last 30 years .. than vice versa.
Kiselyov has had an American wife, speaks English, family in Germany and has done many
excellent reports on western countries.
Brilyev speaks perfect English and is a British citizen.
Solovyov knows Italy and the US very well and on his talk shows he has done many
objective, constructive/positive comments about American business climate and bureaucracy,
for instance.
Can you compare any of those guys to their dumb as f ** k western counterparts trying to
do a report on Russia?
Different matter if you are talking about RT – that is lowest of the low,
anti-russian, garbage.
who cares? Half of Russian articles are 10 times more stupid than US ones
Who cares ? Because the culmination of these deceitful idiot scumbag stories is what
creates the momentum to ban Russia from the Olympics based on "collective" not individual
punishment , pull Ukraine away from Russia, make a friend of mine be too scared to come to
Russia on holiday because "the police will arrest you there for no reason" BS.,dissuade
investors from billions in investment because of PR, not practical reasons. create the
conditions so that self-discrediting freaks like Browder and Rodchenkov can say any BS as a
pretext to sanction russia with zero chance of getting refuted because of the "they will get
killed" by Russian agents if they go into the public (whilst going to the public) theory- a
hypothesis based on other lie reporting.
Russian media will make clear that its a disgrace the number of people the US police shoot
dead each year- but they won't say or imply that Russian tourists will get shot by US police
or dissuade them from going on holiday there.
"These officials "failed us" in the same way that our media "fails us": they serve the
interests of the EMPIRE-FIRST Deep State."
Yuppp. Our error is to assume all 17 intelligence agencies; the presstitudes; and US
"leadership" exist to serve the American people. And so, yes, they "fail" the people. But, from the point of view of the controllers of those agencies and of those "leaders",
they hardly ever fail !!!
While the people argue over virulent minutae, they are once again helping themselves to
the US Treasury.... Trillions of USDs.... LOL
".... was then told to STOP TESTING...... A medical person would not try to suppress testing.
That would be a "management decision" and its the Nation Security Council that was running
the show (and which had classified all discussions related to virus preparations)...."
Thanks for reminding us of Dr Chu's story. What if the US leadership:
Knew the coronavirus was already out in the wild in the US by Sep 2019;
Decided to set up China to be the "origin" to be blamed;
Realized that a "pandemic" can be the cover for kicking the table over to do the Great
Financial Reset;
"... "Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading," ..."
"... "Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks." ..."
"... "stomach churning," ..."
"... "For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this," ..."
"... "Richard Burr had critical information that might have helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself." ..."
"... "If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest," ..."
"... "calling for immediate investigations" ..."
"... "for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading laws." ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
In a rare moment of bipartisanship, commenters from all sides have demanded swift punishment for US
senators who dumped stock after classified Covid-19 briefings. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has called
for criminal prosecution.
As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) has received daily
briefings on the threat posed by Covid-19 since January. Burr insisted to the public that America was
ready to handle the virus, but sold up to $1.5 million in stocks on February 13, less than a week
before the stock market nosedived, according to Senate
filings
. Immediately before the sale, Burr wrote an
op-ed
assuring Americans that their government is
"better prepared than ever
" to handle
the virus.
After the sale, NPR
reported
that he told a closed-door meeting of North Carolina business leaders that the virus
actually posed a threat
"akin to the 1918 pandemic."
Burr does not dispute the NPR report.
In a tweet on Saturday, former 2020 presidential candidate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called for
criminal investigations.
"Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending
coronavirus epidemic should be investigated and prosecuted for insider trading,"
she wrote.
"Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks."
Congress/staff who dumped stocks after private briefings on impending
coronavirus epidemic should be investigated & prosecuted for insider trading (the STOCK Act). It
is illegal & abuse of power. Members of Congress should not be allowed to own stocks.
https://t.co/rbVfJxrk3r
Burr was not the only lawmaker on Capitol Hill to take precautions, it was reported. Fellow
Intelligence Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and her husband sold off more than a
million dollars of shares in a biotech company five days later, while Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe (R) made a
smaller sale around the same time. Both say their sales were routine.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia) attended a Senate Health Committee briefing on the outbreak on
January 24. The very same day, she began offloading stock, dropping between $1.2 and $3.1 million in
shares over the following weeks. The companies whose stock she sold included airlines, retail outlets,
and Chinese tech firm Tencent.
She did, however, invest in cloud technology company Oracle, and Citrix, a teleworking company
whose value has increased by nearly a third last week, as social distancing measures forced more and
more Americans to work from home. All of Loeffler's transactions were made with her husband, Jeff
Sprecher, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) have joined the clamor of
voices demanding punishment. Ocasio-Cortez
described
the sales as
"stomach churning,"
while Omar reached across the aisle to side
with Fox News' Tucker Carlson in calling for Burr's resignation.
"For a public servant it's pretty hard to imagine many things more immoral than doing this,"
Carlson said during a Friday night monolog.
"Richard Burr had critical information that might have
helped the people he is sworn to protect. But he hid that information and helped only himself."
As of Saturday, there are nearly 25,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US, with the death toll heading
towards 300. Now both sides of the political aisle seem united in disgust at the apparent profiteering
of Burr, Loeffler, and Feinstein.
Right-wing news outlet Breitbart
savaged
Burr for voting against the STOCK Act in 2012, a piece of legislation that would have
barred members of Congress from using non-public information to profit on the stock market. At the
same time, a host of Democratic figures - including former presidential candidates
Andrew Yang
and
Kirsten Gillibrand
- weighed in with their own criticism too.
"If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move is to adjust your
stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public interest,"
Yang
tweeted on Friday.
If you find out about a nation-threatening pandemic and your first move
is to adjust your stock portfolio you should probably not be in a job that serves the public
interest.
Watchdog group Common Cause has filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee
"calling for immediate investigations"
of
Burr, Loeffler, Feinstein and Inhofe
"for possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading
laws."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
When reading any article concerning current events (ie. Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, or Coronavirus) consider how the The
Seven Principles of Propaganda may apply. (repost):
Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions. When we think emotionally, we are more prone to be irrational and
less critical in our thinking. I can remember several instances where this has been employed by the US to prepare the public
with a justification of their actions. Here are four examples:
The Invasion of Grenada during the Reagan administration was said to be necessary to rescue American students being held
hostage by Grenadian coup authorities after a coup that overthrew the government. I had a friend in the 82nd airborne division
that participated in the rescue. He told me the students said they were hiding in the school to avoid the fighting by the US
military, and had never been threatened by any Grenadian authority and were only hiding in the school to avoid all the fighting.
Film of the actual rescue broadcast on the mainstream media was taken out of context; the students were never in danger.
The invasion of Panama in the late 80's was supposedly to capture the dictator Manual Noriega for international crimes related
to drugs and weapons. I remember a headline covered by all the media where a Navy lieutenant and his wife were detained by
the police. His wife was sexually assaulted while in custody, according to the story. Unfortunately, it never happened. It
was intended to get the public emotionally involved to support the action.
The invasion of Iraq in the early 90's was preceded by a speech by a girl describing the Iraqi army throwing babies out
of incubators so the equipment could be transferred to Iraq. It turns out the girl was the daughter of one of the Kuwait's
ruling sheiks and the event never occurred. However, it served its purpose by getting the American public involved emotionally
supporting the war.
During the build up to the bombing campaign by NATO against Libya, a woman entered a hotel where reporters were staying
claiming she was raped by several police officers of the Gaddafi security services. The report was carried by most media outlets
as representative of the brutality of the Gaddafi regime. I was not able to verify if this story was true or not, but it fits
the usual method employed to gain public support through propaganda for military interventions.
The greatest emotion in us is fear and fear is used extensively to make us think irrationally. I remember growing up during
the cold war having the fear of nuclear war or 'The Russians are coming!' After the cold war without an obvious enemy, it was
Al Qaeda even before 911, so we had 'Al Qaeda is coming!' Now we have 'ISIS is coming!' with media blasting us with terrorist
fears. Whenever I hear a government promoting an emotional issue or fear mongering, I ignore them knowing there is a hidden
Truth behind the issue.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases. This could be stated more plainly as 'Keep it simple,
stupid!' The most notorious use of this technique recently was the Bush administration. Everyone can remember 'We must fight
them over there rather than over here' or my favourite 'They hate us for our freedoms'. Neither of these phrases made any rational
sense despite 911. The last thing Muslims in the Middle East care about is American's freedoms, maybe it was all the bombs
the US was dropping on them.
Give only one side of the argument and obscure history. Watching mainstream media in the US,
you can see all the news is biased to the American view as an example. This is prevalent within Australian commercial media
and newspapers giving only a western view, but fortunately, we have the SBS and the ABC that are very good, certainly not perfect,
at providing both sides of a story. In addition, any historical perspective is ignored keeping the citizenry focused on the
here and now. Can any of you remember any news organisation giving an in depth history of Ukraine or Palestine? I cannot.
Demonize the enemy or pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification. This is obvious in politics where politicians
continuously criticise their opponents. Of course, demonization is more productively applied to international figures or nations
such as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, the Taliban and just recently Vladimir Putin over
the Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. It establishes a negative emotional view of either a nation (i.e. Iran) or a known figure (i.e.
Putin) making us again think emotionally, rather than rationally, making it easier to promote evil acts upon a nation or a
known figure. Certainly some of these groups or individuals were less than benign, but not necessarily demons as depicted in
the west.
Appear humanitarian in work and motivations. The US has used this technique often to validate foreign interventions
or ongoing conflicts where the term 'Right to Protect' is used for justification. Everyone should remember the many stories
about the abuse of women in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein's supposed brutality toward his people. The recent attack on Syria
by the US, UK, and France was depicted as an Humanitarian intervention by the UK Government, which was far from the truth.
One thing that always amazes me is when the US sends humanitarian aid to a country it is accompanied by the US military. In
Haiti some years back, the US sent troops with no other country doing so. The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa saw US troops
sent to the area. How are troops going to fight a medical outbreak? No doubt, they are there for other reasons.
Obscure one's economic interests. Who believes the invasion of Iraq was for weapons of mass destruction? Or the
constant threats against Iran are for their nuclear program? Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no one has presented
firm evidence Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons. The West has been interfering in the Middle East since the British in
the late 19th century. It is all about oil and the control over the resources. In fact, if one researches the cause of wars
over the last hundred years, you will always find economics was a major component driving the rush to war for most of them.
Monopolize the flow of information. This is the most important principle and mainly entails setting the narrative
by which all subsequent events can be based upon or interpreted in such a way as to reinforce the narrative. The narrative
does not need to be true; in fact, it can be anything that suits the monopoliser as long as it is based loosely on some event.
It is critical to have at least majority control of media and the ability to control the message so the flow of information
is consistent with the narrative. This has been played out on mainstream media concerning the Ukrainian conflict, Syrian conflict,
and the Skirpal affair. Just over the last couple of years, we have all been subjected to propaganda in one form or another.
Remember the US wanting to bomb Syria because of the sarin gas attack, it was later determined to be false (see Seymour Hersh
'Whose Sarin'). The shoot down of MH17 was immediately blamed on Russia by the west without any convincing proof (setting the
narrative). It amazes me just how fast the story died after the initial saturation in the media. When I awoke that morning
in July, I heard on the news PM Tony Abbot blaming Russia for the incident only hours afterward. How could he know Russia shot
down the plane? The investigation into the incident had not even begun, so I suspect he was singing from the West's hymnbook
in a standard setting the narrative scenario.
@SBaker "It's beyond dispute that the novel coronavirus officially known as
COVID-19originated in Wuhan, China."
No, it's being disputed every day. That "beyond dispute" phrase is what retards like Mike
Pompeo use to try to shut down a discussion in which he's getting his fat ass kicked.
The Israeli masterminded 9/11 false flag has been almost consecrated–like the
holocaust–and anyone who dares to question the official lies, stands to lose their
jobs, stature and be endlessly vilified for asking historical questions. Punitive measures
that Mr. Barrett has first-hand knowledge of.
Good to remember that Dr Barrett is unambiguously proven to be right by the immutable laws
of Physics and Engineering:
– A September 2019 University of Alaska PhD thesis, using state-of-the-art civil
engineering design software, proved that WTC7 could have only been destroyed by controlled
demolition.
– Due to the witnesses around, it would have been impossible to bring and install
explosives into WTC7 during the time window after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
– Hence the explosives used to blow up WTC7 were already in place before the
alleged WTC "plane attack" onto the Twin Towers took place.
– Hence the perpetrators are those who had control the WTC7 and were represented by
Larry "Pull It" Silverstein.
... that USA and the West were unprepared because China withheld information about the
virus.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 19 2020 18:20 utc | 106
The "Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19" states that China transparently
reported the identification of virus to the WHO and the international community on January
3rd, and a WHO investigative team was invited to Wuhan a week after that.
From January 3rd, 2020, information on COVID-19 cases has been reported to WHO daily.
On January 7th, full genome sequences of the new virus were shared with WHO and the
international community immediately after the pathogen was identified.
On January 10th, an expert group involving Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwanese technical
experts and a World Health Organization team was invited to visit Wuhan.
@FB I, too, have been disappointed in Tucker Carlson's China bashing. I have thought that
he was the best on FOX News, but now he is getting to be as bad as Sean Hannity.
We may never know the origin of the coronavirus. It is foolish to try and assign blame at
this point.
I don't mean Argentina vs China, or anything like that.
I mean where both sides have a lot of money, or power, or both.
Today's coronavirus black swan, like 9/11, has all the characteristics of a trauma-based
mass-mind-control op.
Not only do I agree, but I think it's so obvious that it's exasperating that, after all
we've been through, it even needs to be pointed out. But it does.
It has already been used to demonize China in the same way 9/11 was used to demonize
Islam: Just as we were supposed to hate the crazy suicidal Muslims yearning for harems of
afterlife virgins, we are now supposed to feel disgust for Chinese slurpers of bat soup.
Here I respectfully disagree.
What Jewish Supremacy Inc. did after September 11th was,
1. Blame Islam
2. Shame Americans* for Blaming Islam
A better example of control through crazy-making would be impossible to imagine.
And it's exactly what they're doing now.
1. Blame China
2. Shame Americans for Blaming China
*or anyone else who refused or refuses to bow before the alter of Politically Correct
Identity Politics (two tools essential to Full Spectrum Dominance).
As we have already seen, the consequences are immense.
Because if that kind of crazy-making is effective it's totally demoralizing. As learned
helplessness sets in people won't even defend themselves. As happened in Italy, and not just
Italy.
But there are other discernible patterns well worth pointing out.
1. Destroy The Evidence
2. Control The Narrative
3. Enforce The Law (on anyone looking for evidence to question the narrative)
Victimize – Blame Victim – Play Victim
Demonize Dissent and Pathologize Opposition
And all ending in what I've come to call the Supremacist Waltz
What makes a supremacist is not just making claims ("Our Superiority Is Absolute", or "We
are the Chosen") or demands. No. It's that they have the power to effectuate the demands that
support their claims.
And what are the demands they have the power to effectuate?
1. to be placed above criticism
2. loved unconditionally
3. blindly obeyed
It's The Rule of Man over The Rule of Law
It's a Culture of Blind Obedience over a Culture of Individual Conscience
It's Tyranny over Freedom
Hence The Great Replacement, accompanied by chants and taunts like "We Will Replace
You!"
In other words, Full Spectrum Dominance.
But, there's a snake in this garden.
The kind of power they're interested in is fundamentally destablizing.
All top down authoritarian power destablizes social-institutions.
From the point of view of cultural history this is exactly why cultures emerged in the
Western world that promoted democratic forms of governance. Because authoritarians cultures are
ultimately so extraordinarily destructive and unsustainable. Like this one is. Isn't it
obvious?
And, from the point of view of the bottom line, prolonged and profound social instability
disrupts and even halts economic activity.
When that happens there's no alternative.
This is why civilization itself was created. Because any civilization's primary objective is
and must be the circumnavigation of the use of force.
This is why what we're really witnessing is nothing less than
The Pyrrhic Victory of Jewish Supremacy Inc.
Because JSI's rise to power has been in direct proportion to the collapse of the very
social-institutions that power controls. Pride Before The Fall, indeed.
And the reason is easy to see and devoid of any complexity or glamour.
JSI is no good at social-management.
And make no mistake about it, social-management is at its core an adaptational strategy, as
are our social-institutions.
So, if we blow this, we're in no position to laugh at the dinosaurs for getting themselves
extinct.
After all, they lasted a lot longer than we have so far.
Assuming the human race has a chance (in itself rather doubtful) perhaps its time to turn
their words against them and say,
Treason Against Jewish Supremacy Inc. Is Loyalty To Humanity
Do we really need to ask them for permission to care about our children's future?
R ussia and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an oil price war that has sent shockwaves around
the world, causing the price of oil to tumble and threatening the financial stability, and even
viability, of major international oil companies.
On the surface, this conflict appears to be a fight between two of the world's largest
producers of oil over market share. This may, in fact, be the motive driving Saudi Arabia,
which reacted to Russia's refusal to reduce its level of oil production by slashing the price
it charged per barrel of oil and threatening to increase its oil production, thereby flooding
the global market with cheap oil in an effort to attract customers away from competitors.
Russia's motives appear to be far different -- its target isn't Saudi Arabia, but rather
American shale oil. After absorbing American sanctions that targeted the Russian energy sector,
and working with global partners (including Saudi Arabia) to keep oil prices stable by reducing
oil production even as the United States increased the amount of shale oil it sold on the world
market, Russia had had enough. The advent of the Coronavirus global pandemic had significantly
reduced the demand for oil around the world, stressing the American shale producers.
Russia had been preparing for the eventuality of oil-based economic warfare with the United
States. With U.S. shale producers knocked back on their heels, Russia viewed the time as being
ripe to strike back. Russia's goal is simple: to make American shale oil producers "
share the pain ".
The United States has been slapping sanctions on Russia for more
than six years, ever since Russia took control (and later annexed) the Crimean Peninsula and
threw its weight behind Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The first sanctions were issued
on March 6, 2014, through Executive
Order 13660 , targeting "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean
region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine that undermine democratic
processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty,
and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets."
The most
recent round of sanctions was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on February 18,
2020, by sanctioning Rosneft Trading S.A., a Swiss-incorporated, Russian-owned oil brokerage
firm, for operating in Venezuela's oil sector. The U.S. also recently targeted the Russian
Nord Stream 2
and
Turk Stream gas pipeline projects.
Russia had been signaling its displeasure over U.S. sanctions from the very beginning. In
July 2014, Russian President Vladimir
Putin warned that U.S. sanctions were "driving into a corner" relations between the two
countries, threatening the "the long-term national interests of the U.S. government and
people." Russia opted to ride out U.S. sanctions, in hopes that there might be a change of
administrations following the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Russian President Vladimir
Putin made it clear that he hoped the U.S. might elect someone whose policies would be more
friendly toward Russia, and that once the field of candidates narrowed down to a choice between
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Putin favored
Trump .
"Yes, I did," Putin remarked after the election, during a joint press conference with
President Trump following a summit in Helsinki in July 2018. "Yes, I did. Because he talked
about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."
Putin's comments only reinforced the opinions of those who embraced allegations of Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as fact and concluded that Putin had some
sort of hold over Trump. Trump's continuous praise of Putin's leadership style only reinforced
these concerns.
Even before he was inaugurated, Trump singled out Putin's refusal to respond in kind to
President Obama's levying of sanctions based upon the assessment of the U.S. intelligence
community that Russia had interfered in the election. "Great move on delay (by V. Putin)
– I always knew he was very smart!"
Trump Tweeted . Trump viewed the Obama sanctions as an effort
to sabotage any chance of a Trump administration repairing relations with Russia, and
interpreted Putin's refusal to engage, despite being pressured to do so by the Russian
Parliament and Foreign Ministry, as a recognition of the same.
This sense of providing political space in the face of domestic pressure worked both ways.
In January 2018, Putin tried to shield his relationship with President Trump by calling the
release of a list containing some 200 names of persons close to the Russian government by the
U.S. Treasury Department as a hostile and "stupid"
move .
"Ordinary Russian citizens, employees and entire industries are behind each of those people
and companies," Putin remarked. "So all 146 million people have essentially been put on this
list. What is the point of this? I don't understand."
From the Russian perspective, the list highlighted the reality that the U.S. viewed the
entire Russian government as an enemy and is a byproduct of the "political paranoia" on the
part of U.S. lawmakers. The consequences of this, senior Russian officials warned, "will be
toxic and undermine prospects for cooperation for years ahead."
While President Trump entered office fully intending to "
get along with Russia ," including the possibility of
relaxing the Obama-era sanctions , the reality of U.S.-Russian relations, especially as
viewed from Congress, has been the strengthening of the Obama sanctions regime. These
sanctions, strengthened over time by new measures signed off by Trump, have had a negative
impact on the Russian economy,
slowing growth and
driving away foreign investment .
While Putin continued to show constraint in the face of these mounting sanctions, the recent
targeting of Russia's energy sector represented a bridge too far. When Saudi pressure to cut
oil production rates coincided with a global reduction in the demand for oil brought on by the
Coronavirus crisis, Russia struck.
The timing of the Russian action is curious, especially given the amount of speculation that
there was some sort of personal relationship between Trump and Putin that the Russian leader
sought to preserve and carry over into a potential second term. But Putin had, for some
time now, been signaling that his patience with Trump had run its course. When speaking to
the press in June 2019 about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, Putin noted that "They
(our relations) are going downhill, they are getting worse and worse," adding that "The current
[i.e., Trump] administration has approved, in my opinion, several dozen decisions on sanctions
against Russia in recent years."
By launching an oil price war on the eve of the American Presidential campaign season, Putin
has sent as strong a signal as possible that he no longer views Trump as an asset, if in fact
he ever did. Putin had hoped Trump could usher in positive change in the trajectory of
relations between the two nations; this clearly had not happened. Instead, in the words of
close Putin ally Igor Sechin , the chief executive of Russian oil giant Rosneft, the U.S.
was using its considerable energy resources as a political weapon, ushering in an era of "power
colonialism" that sought to expand U.S. oil production and market share at the expense of other
nations.
From Russia's perspective, the growth in U.S. oil production -- which doubled in output from
2011 until 2019 -- and the emergence of the U.S. as a net exporter of oil, was directly linked
to the suppression of oil export capability in nations such as Venezuela and Iran through the
imposition of sanctions. While this could be tolerated when the target was a third party, once
the U.S. set its sanctioning practices on Russian energy, the die was cast.
If the goal of the Russian-driven price war is to make U.S. shale companies "share the
pain," they have already succeeded. A similar price war, initiated by Saudi Arabia in 2014 for
the express purpose of suppressing U.S. shale oil production, failed, but only because
investors were willing to prop up the stricken shale producers with massive loans and infusion
of capital. For shale oil producers, who use an expensive methodology of extraction known as
"fracking," to be economically viable, the breakeven price of oil
per barrel needs to be between $40 and $60 dollars. This was the price range the Saudi's
were hoping to sustain when they proposed the cuts in oil production that Russia rejected.
The U.S. shale oil producers, saddled by massive debt and high operational expenses, will
suffer greatly in any sustained oil price war. Already, with the price of oil down to below $35
per barrel,
there is talk of bankruptcy and massive job layoffs -- none of which bode well for Trump in
the coming election.
It's clear that Russia has no intention of backing off anytime soon. According to
the Russian Finance Ministry , said on Russia could weather oil prices of $25-30 per barrel
for between six and ten years. One thing is for certain -- U.S. shale oil companies cannot.
In a sign that the Trump administration might be waking up to the reality of the predicament
it faces, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin quietly met with Russia's Ambassador to the U.S.,
Anatoly Antonov. According to a read out from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the two discussed economic sanctions, the Venezuelan economy, and the potential for "trade
and investment." Mnuchin, the Russians noted, emphasized the "importance of orderly energy
markets."
Russia is unlikely to fold anytime soon. As Admiral Josh Painter, a character in Tom
Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," famously said , "Russians don't take a dump without
a plan."
Russia didn't enter its current course of action on a whim. Its goals are clearly stated --
to defeat U.S. shale oil -- and the costs of this effort, both economically and politically (up
to and including having Trump lose the 2020 Presidential election) have all been calculated and
considered in advance. The Russian Bear can only be toyed with for so long without generating a
response. We now know what that response is; when the Empire strikes back, it hits hard.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former
Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books,
including his forthcoming, Scorpion King:
America's Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).
The neocons trying to control Trump are going to have a hard time this year because of the
election. Trump knows his people voted for him because of his promises to get the troops back
home. Of course the neocons want to build up more and more troops in Iraq or even split Iraq
into 3 different countries. The Iraqi and Iranian leaders with the Syrians to a lesser degree
will try to take advantage of Trump's dilemma. The Kurds are involved also. This is all
explored by Pam Ho
How Much Do You Suck (To lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein)
- The US knows it "influence" is waning and tries to "carve out" a sunni "rump state" in
North-West Iraq. First the US fights ISIS in that same area/region from the year 2014 onwards
and now they are supposed to fight in FAVOUR of the sunnis/ISIS ?
"US seeking to carve out Sunni state as its influence in Iraq wanes"
"If Iraqis were there and if Iraqi military forces were there, I would say it's probably
not a good idea to position yourself with Kataib Hezbollah in the wake of a strike that
killed Americans and coalition members," he told a Pentagon news briefing."
Despite Trump the Iraq policy transcends his administration and will continue in some form in
the future. There will be a continued presence in some form and in some part of the country.
Our beloved ally in the region demands our presence.
They smartly keep the presence small with no draft remembering that is what took them out
of Nam. An angry draft worthy populace, a counter culture disillusioned with the murder of
their liberal anti war leadership by the state, and ample media coverage of the war
carnage.
All of that is long gone, and even with the age of internet reporting the populace has
been bought off with entertainment, amazon, porn, and bullshit.
Parallel is IMO very interesting, Wehrmacht occupying Ukraine and US occupying Iraq. In
both cases there was minority that welcomed occupier with open arms, wanting to oppress
majority of own country folks due to earlier grievances. In both cases, invader didn't want
to bother with using that minority to own goals, as they saw them all as inferior race. And
invader was in both cases more interested in conquering more powerful neighbor to the
east.
Irony is that, if Nazi Germany/US didn't look at Ukraine/Iraq people as inferior race they
could use them for own goal to fight Russia/Iran. But, dumb as they are, they stuck all those
Ukrainians into camps(lot of them sympathizers to Germany/rabidly against Russia)/ disbanding
ex. Saddam's army and made kernel of future anti US force into region, not to mention Kurdish
question.
"Later on January 9, former Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi called on the United
States to dispatch a delegation to Baghdad tasked with formulating a mechanism for the
move.
According to a statement released by his office at the time, Abdul-Mahdi "requested that
delegates be sent to Iraq to set the mechanisms to implement the parliament's decision for
the secure withdrawal of (foreign) forces from Iraq" in a phone call with US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo."
US in response moved to a few bases they intended to occupy and give the two finger salute
to Iraq. Trump threatened sanctions and theft of Iraq's oil money which is in the US.
Pentagon now moving patriots in.
Question to b @53: ... it was a non-binding resolution.
It's "non-binding" on USA only because the Prime Minister conducts foreign policy and
there's no current written basing agreement between Iraq and USA that can be terminated. The
resolution demands that the Prime Minister arrange for the departure of US troops.
The resolution is binding on the Prime Minister because it was a valid vote in
accordance with Iraqi Parliamentary procedure.
USA refused to discuss leaving Iraq and claimed that the Parliamentary vote was
"non-binding" because it was unrepresentative (USA got their Sunni and Kurd sympathizers to
boycott the vote). But Parliament still had a quorum, so the vote is legal and binding.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Is it enforceable?
USA/NATO are very unlikely to leaving willingly. We are seeing the start of a civil war in
Iraq because most Sunnis and Kurds support USA/NATO remaining while Shia want USA/NATO to
leave.
just start with the first lie and go from their... usa / uk lied the world into going to war
on iraq... and from their the lies just keep on getting stacked.. if you can't acknowledge
the first lie, you probably are incapable of recognizing all the other lies that have been
thrown on the same bullshit pile... one big pile of lies and bullshite - a specialty of the
exceptional country..
@ 63 question.. you like this usa style bullshit that buys politicians in iraq and when that
doesn't work, they go on to the next attempt at installing a politician willing to agree to
their bullshite? interesting bullshit concept of democracy if you ask me... everything has a
price tag and honour is something you can pick up at the grocery store... right..
Recently, I was watching the old Looney Tunes Cartoons with my Grandchild and we were
watching, "Duck Dodges in the 21st and a Half Century"
I don't know if you've watched this cartoon starring Daffy Duck. You can view it here https://vimeo.com/76668594
This cartoon was made in 1953 and like many Looney Tune cartoon's, they are an extreme
parody of life. But while watching this cartoon, it dawned on me that this cartoon is an
almost perfect description of US Military policy and action.
I could write an article on this but I think we'll leave it as a note with a snide laugh to
be had by all.
Looks like DNC run a pretty sophisticated smear campaign against Sanders ...
Notable quotes:
"... It really isn't about who the candidates are – hurtful as that may sound to some in our identity-saturated times. It is about what the candidate might try to do once in office. In truth, the very fact that nowadays we are allowed to focus on identity to our heart's content should be warning enough that the establishment is only too keen for us to exhaust our energies in promoting divisions based on those identities ..."
"... The Republican and Democratic leaderships are there to ensure that, before a candidate gets selected to compete in the parties' name, he or she has proven they are power-friendly. Two candidates, each vetted for obedience to power. ..."
The Democratic presidential nomination race is a fascinating case study in how power works
– not least, because the Democratic party leaders are visibly contriving to impose one
candidate, Joe Biden, as the party's nominee, even as it becomes clear that he is no longer
mentally equipped to run a local table tennis club let alone the world's most powerful
nation.
Biden's campaign is a reminder that power is indivisible. Donald Trump or Joe Biden for
president – it doesn't matter to the power-establishment. An egomaniacal man-child
(Trump), representing the billionaires, or an elder suffering rapid neurological degeneration
(Biden), representing the billionaires, are equally useful to power. A woman will do too, or a
person of colour. The establishment is no longer worried about who stands on stage
– so long as that person is not a Bernie Sanders in the US, or a Jeremy Corbyn in the
UK.
It really isn't about who the candidates are – hurtful as that may sound to some in
our identity-saturated times. It is about what the candidate might try to do once in office. In
truth, the very fact that nowadays we are allowed to focus on identity to our heart's content
should be warning enough that the establishment is only too keen for us to exhaust our energies
in promoting divisions based on those identities. What concerns it far more is that we might
overcome those divisions and unify against it, withdrawing our consent from an establishment
committed to endless asset-stripping of our societies and the planet.
Neither Biden nor Trump will obstruct the establishment, because they are at its very heart.
The Republican and Democratic leaderships are there to ensure that, before a candidate gets
selected to compete in the parties' name, he or she has proven they are power-friendly. Two
candidates, each vetted for obedience to power.
Although a pretty face or a way with words are desirable, incapacity and incompetence are no
barrier to qualifying, as the two white men groomed by their respective parties demonstrate.
Both have proved they will favour the establishment, both will pursue near-enough the
same policies , both are committed to the status quo, both have demonstrated their
indifference to the future of life on Earth. What separates the candidates is not real
substance, but presentation styles – the creation of the appearance of difference, of
choice.
Policing the debate
The subtle dynamics of how the Democratic nomination race is being rigged are interesting.
Especially revealing are the ways the Democratic leadership protects establishment power by
policing the terms of debate: what can be said, and what can be thought; who gets to speak and
whose voices are misrepresented or demonised. Manipulation of language is key.
As I pointed out in my previous post , the
establishment's power derives from its invisibility. Scrutiny is kryptonite to
power.
The only way we can interrogate power is through language, and the only way we can
communicate our conclusions to others is through words – as I am doing right now. And
therefore our strength – our ability to awaken ourselves from the trance of power –
must be subverted by the establishment, transformed into our Achilles' heel, a weakness.
The treatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters by the Democratic establishment –
and those who eagerly repeat its talking points – neatly illustrates how this can be done
in manifold ways.
Remember this all started back in 2016, when Sanders committed the unforgivable sin of
challenging the Democratic leadership's right simply to anoint Hillary Clinton as the party's
presidential candidate. In those days, the fault line was obvious and neat: Bernie was a man,
Clinton a woman. She would be the first woman president. The only party members who might wish
to deny her that historic moment, and back Sanders instead, had to be misogynist men. They were
supposedly venting their anti-women grudge against Clinton, who in turn was presented to women
as a symbol of their oppression by men.
And so was born a meme: the "Bernie Bros". It rapidly became shorthand for suggesting
– contrary to all evidence
– that Sanders' candidacy appealed chiefly to angry, entitled white men. In fact, as
Sanders' 2020 run has amply demonstrated, support for him has been more diverse than for the
many other Democratic candidates who sought the nomination.
So important what @ewarren is saying to @maddow about the
dangerous, threatening, ugly faction among the Bernie supporters. Sanders either cannot or
will not control them. pic.twitter.com/LYDXlLJ7bi
How contrived the 2016 identity-fuelled contest was should have been clear, had anyone been
allowed to point that fact out. This wasn't really about the Democratic leadership respecting
Clinton's identity as a woman. It was about them paying lip service to her identity as a
woman, while actually promoting her because she was a reliable warmonger
and
Wall Street functionary . She was useful to power.
If the debate had really been driven by identity politics, Sanders had a winning card too:
he is Jewish. That meant he could be the United States' first Jewish president. In a fair
identity fight, it would have been a draw between the two. The decision about who should
represent the Democratic party would then have had to be decided based on policies, not
identity. But party leaders did not want Clinton's actual policies, or her political history,
being put under the microscope for very obvious reasons.
Weaponisation of identity
The weaponisation of identity politics is even more transparent in 2020. Sanders is still
Jewish, but his main opponent, Joe Biden, really is simply a privileged white man. Were the
Clinton format to be followed again by Democratic officials, Sanders would enjoy an identity
politics trump card. And yet Sanders is still being presented as just another white male
candidate , no different from Biden.
(We could take this argument even further and note that the other candidate who no one,
least of all the Democratic leadership, ever mentions as still in the race is Tulsi
Gabbard, a woman of colour. The Democratic party has worked hard to make her as
invisible as possible in the primaries because, of all the candidates, she is the most
vocal and articulate opponent of foreign wars. That has deprived her of the chance to raise
funds and win delegates.)
. @DanaPerino I'm not quite sure why
you're telling FOX viewers that Elizabeth Warren is the last female candidate in the Dem
primary. Is it because you believe a fake indigenous woman of color is "real" and the real
indigenous woman of color in this race is fake? pic.twitter.com/VKCxy2JzFe
Sanders' Jewish identity isn't celebrated because he isn't useful to the
power-establishment. What's far more important to them – and should be to us too –
are his policies, which might limit their power to wage war, exploit workers and trash the
planet.
But it is not just that Democratic Party leaders are ignoring Sanders' Jewish identity. They
are also again actively using identity politics against him, and in many different
ways.
The 'black' establishment?
Bernie Sanders' supporters have been complaining for some time – based on mounting
evidence – that the Democratic leadership is far from neutral between Sanders and Biden.
Because it has a vested interest in the outcome, and because it is the part of the
power-establishment, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is exercising its influence in
favour of Biden. And because power prefers darkness, the DNC is doing its best to exercise that
power behind the scenes, out of sight – at least, unseen by those who still rely on the
"mainstream" corporate media, which is also part of the power-establishment. As should be clear
to anyone watching, the nomination proceedings are being controlled to give Biden every
advantage and to obstruct Sanders.
But the Democratic leadership is not only dismissing out of hand these very justified
complaints from Bernie Sanders' supporters but also turning these complaints against them, as
further evidence of their – and his – illegitimacy. A new way of doing this emerged
in the immediate wake of Biden winning South Carolina on the back of strong support from older
black voters – Biden's first state win and a launchpad for his Super Tuesday bid a few
days later.
It was given perfect expression from Symone Sanders, who despite her surname is actually a
senior adviser to Biden's campaign. She is also black. This is what she wrote: "People who keep
referring to Black voters as 'the establishment' are tone deaf and have obviously learned
nothing."
People who keep referring to Black voters as "the establishment" are tone deaf and have
obviously learned nothing.
-- Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) March 3,
2020
Her reference to generic "people" was understood precisely by both sides of the debate as
code for those "Bernie Bros". Now, it seems, Bernie Sanders' supporters are not simply
misogynists, they are potential recruits to the Ku Klux Klan.
The tweet went viral, even though in the fiercely contested back-and-forth below her tweet
no one could produce a single example of anyone actually saying anything like the sentiment
ascribed by Symone Sanders to "Bernie Bros". But then, tackling bigotry was not her real goal.
This wasn't meant to be a reflection on a real-world talking-point by Bernie supporters. It was
high-level gaslighting by a senior Democratic party official of the party's own voters.
Survival of the fittest smear
What Symone Sanders was really trying to do was conceal power – the fact that the DNC
is seeking to impose its chosen candidate on party members. As occurred during the confected
women-men, Clinton vs "Bernie Bros" confrontation, Symone Sanders was field-testing a similar
narrative management tool as part of the establishment's efforts to hone it for improved
effect. The establishment has learnt – through a kind of survival of the fittest smear
– that divide-and-rule identity politics is the perfect way to shield its influence as it
favours a status-quo candidate (Biden or Clinton) over a candidate seen as a threat to its
power (Sanders).
In her tweet, Symone Sanders showed exactly how the power elite seeks to obscure its toxic
role in our societies. She neatly conflated "the establishment" – of which she is a very
small, but well-paid component – with ordinary "black voters". Her message is this:
should you try to criticise the establishment (which has inordinate power to damage lives and
destroy the planet) we will demonise you, making it seem that you are really attacking black
people (who in the vast majority of cases – though Symone Sanders is a notable exception
– wield no power at all).
Symone Sanders has recruited her own blackness and South Carolina's "black voters" as a ring
of steel to protect the establishment. Cynically, she has turned poor black people, as well as
the tens of thousands of people (presumably black and white) who liked her tweet, into human
shields for the establishment.
It sounds a lot uglier put like that. But it has rapidly become a Biden talking-point, as we
can see here:
NEW: @JoeBiden responds to @berniesanders
saying the "establishment" is trying to defeat him.
"The establishment are all those hardworking, middle class people, those African Americans
they are the establishment!" @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/43Q2Nci5sS
The DNC's wider strategy is to confer on Biden exclusive rights to speak for black voters
(despite his
inglorious record on
civil rights issues) and, further, to strip Sanders and his senior black advisers of any
right to do so. When Sanders protests about this, or about racist behaviour from the Biden
camp, Biden's supporters come out in force and often abusively, though of course no one is
upbraiding them for their ugly, violent language. Here is the famous former tennis player
Martina Navratilova showing that maybe we should be talking about "Biden Bros":
Sanders is starting to really piss me off. Just shut this kind of crap down and debate the
issues. This is not it.
This kind of special pleading by the establishment for the establishment –
using those sections of it, such as Symone Sanders, that can tap into the identity politics
zeitgeist – is far more common than you might imagine. The approach is being
constantly refined, often using social media as the ultimate focus group. Symone Sanders'
successful conflation of the establishment with "black voters" follows earlier, clumsier
efforts by the establishment to protect its interests against Sanders that proved far less
effective.
Remember how last autumn the billionaire-owned corporate media tried to tell us that it was
unkind to
criticise billionaires – that they had feelings too and that speaking harshly about
them was "dehumanising". Again it was aimed at Sanders, who had just commented that in a
properly ordered world billionaires simply wouldn't exist. It was an obvious point: allowing a
handful of people to control almost all the planet's wealth was not only depriving the rest of
us of that wealth (and harming the planet) but it gave those few billionaires way too much
power. They could buy all the media, our channels of communication, and most of the politicians
to ringfence their financial interests, gradually eroding even the most minimal democratic
protections.
That campaign died a quick death because few of us are actually brainwashed enough to accept
the idea that a handful of billionaires share an identity that needs protecting – from
us! Most of us are still connected enough to the real world to understand that billionaires are
more than capable of looking out for their own interests, without our helping them by imposing
on ourselves a vow of silence.
But one cannot fault the power-establishment for being constantly inventive in the search
for new ways to stifle our criticisms of the way it unilaterally exercises its power. The
Democratic nomination race is testing such ingenuity to the limits. Here's a new rule against
"hateful conduct" on Twitter, where Biden's neurological deficit is being subjected to much
critical scrutiny through the sharing of dozens of
videos of embarrassing Biden "senior moments".
Twitter expanding its hateful conduct rules "to include language that dehumanizes on the
basis of age, disability or disease." https://t.co/KmWGaNAG9Z
Yes, disability and age are identities too. And so, on the pretext of protecting and
respecting those identities, social media can now be scrubbed of anything and anyone trying to
highlight the mental deficiencies of an old man who might soon be given the nuclear codes and
would be responsible for waging wars in the name of Americans. Twitter is full of comments
denouncing as "ableist" anyone who tries to highlight how the Democratic leadership is foisting
a cognitively challenged Biden on to the party.
Maybe the Dem insiders are all wrong, but it's true that they are saying it. Some are
saying it out loud, including Castro at the debate and Booker here: https://t.co/0lbi7RFRqG
None of this is to overlook the fact that another variation of identity politics has been
weaponised against Sanders: that of failing to be an "American" patriot. Again illustrating how
closely the Democratic and Republican leaderships' interests align, the question of who is a
patriot – and who is really working for the "Russians" – has been at the heart of
both parties' campaigns, though for different reasons.
Trump has been subjected to endless, evidence-free claims that he is a secret "Russian
agent" in a concerted effort to control his original isolationist foreign policy impulses that
might have stripped the establishment – and its military-industrial wing – of the
right to wage wars of aggression, and revive the Cold War, wherever it believes a profit can be
made under cover of "humanitarian intervention". Trump partly inoculated himself against these
criticisms, at least among supporters, with his "Make America Great Again" slogan, and partly
by learning – painfully for such an egotist – that his presidential role was to
rubber-stamp decisions made elsewhere about waging wars and projecting US power.
I'm just amazed by this tweet, which has been tweeted plenty. Did @_nalexander and all the people
liking this not know that Mueller laid out in the indictments of a number of Russians and in
his report their help on social media to Sanders and Trump. Help Sanders has acknowledged
https://t.co/vuc0lmvvKP
Bernie Sanders has faced similar smear
efforts by the establishment, including by the DNC's last failed presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton – in his case, painting him as a "Russian asset". ("Asset" is a way to
suggest collusion with the Kremlin based on even more flimsy evidence than is needed to accuse
someone of being an agent.) In fact, in a world where identity politics wasn't simply a tool to
be weaponised by the establishment, there would be real trepidation about engaging in this kind
of invective against a Jewish socialist.
One of the far-right's favourite antisemitic tropes – promoted ever since the
publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion more than 100 years ago – is that
Jewish "Bolsheviks" are involved in an
international conspiracy to subvert the countries they live in. We have reached the point
now that the corporate media are happy to recycle evidence-free claims,
cited by the Washington Post, from anonymous "US officials" and US intelligence agencies
reinventing a US version of the Protocols against Sanders. And these smears have elicited not a
word of criticism from the Democratic leadership nor from the usual antisemitism watchdogs that
are so ready to let rip over the slightest signs of what they claim to be antisemitism on the
left.
But the urgency of dealing with Sanders may be the reason normal conventions have been
discarded. Sanders isn't a loud-mouth egotist like Trump. A vote for Trump is a vote for the
establishment, if for one of its number who pretends to be against the establishment. Trump has
been largely tamed in time for a second term. By contrast, Sanders, like Corbyn in the UK, is
more dangerous because he may resist the efforts to domesticate him, and because if he is
allowed any significant measure of political success – such as becoming a candidate for
president – it may inspire others to follow in his footsteps. The system might start to
throw up more anomalies, more AOCs and more Ilhan Omars.
So Sanders is now being cast, like Trump, as a puppet of the Kremlin, not a true American.
And because he made the serious mistake of indulging the "Russiagate" smears when they were
used against Trump, Sanders now has little defence against their redeployment against him. And
given that, by the impoverished standards of US political culture, he is considered an extreme
leftist, it has been easy to conflate his democratic socialism with Communism, and then
conflate his supposed Communism with acting on behalf of the Kremlin (which, of course, ignores
the fact that Russia long ago abandoned Communism).
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "Let me tell this to Putin -- the American people, whether
Republicans, Democrats, independents are sick and tired of seeing Russia and other countries
interfering in our elections." pic.twitter.com/ejcP7YVFlt
There is a final use of weaponised identity politics that the Democratic establishment would
dearly love to use against Sanders, if they need to and can get away with it. It is the most
toxic brand – and therefore the most effective – of the identity-based smears, and
it has been extensively field-tested in the
UK against Jeremy Corbyn to great success. The DNC would like to denounce Sanders as an
antisemite.
In fact, only one thing has held them back till now: the fact that Sanders is Jewish. That
may not prove an insuperable obstacle, but it does make it much harder to make the accusation
look credible. The other identity-based smears had been a second-best, a make-do until a way
could be found to unleash the antisemitism smear.
The establishment has been
testing the waters with implied accusations of antisemitism against Sanders for a while,
but their chances were given a fillip recently when Sanders refused to participate in the
annual jamboree of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent lobby group
whose primary mission is to ringfence Israel from criticism in the US. Both the Republican and
Democratic establishments turn out in force to the AIPAC conference, and in the past the event
has attracted keynote speeches from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But Sanders has refused to attend for decades and maintained that stance this month, even
though he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination. In the last primaries debate, Sanders
justified his decision by rightly
calling Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "racist" and by describing AIPAC as
providing a platform "for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights".
Trump's Vice-President, Mike Pence,
responded that Sanders supported "Israel's enemies" and, if elected, would be the "most
anti-Israel president in the history of this nation" – all coded suggestions that Sanders
is antisemitic.
But that's Mike Pence. More useful criticism came from billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who is
himself Jewish and was until last week posing as a Democrat to try to win the party's
nomination. Bloomberg accused Sanders of using dehumanising language against a bunch of
inclusive identities that, he improbably suggested, AIPAC represents. He
claimed :
"This is a gathering of 20,000 Israel supporters of every religious denomination,
ethnicity, faith, color, sexual identity and political party. Calling it a racist platform is
an attempt to discredit those voices, intimidate people from coming here, and weaken the
US-Israel relationship."
Where might this head? At the AIPAC conference last week we were given a foretaste. Ephraim
Mirvis, the chief rabbi of the UK and a friend to
Conservative government leader Boris Johnson, was warmly greeted by delegates, including
leading members of the Democratic establishment. He boasted that he and other Jewish leaders in
the UK had managed to damage Jeremy Corbyn's electoral chances by suggesting that he was an
antisemite over his support, like Sanders, for Palestinian rights.
His own treatment of Corbyn, he argued, offered a model for US Jewish organisations to
replicate against any leadership contender who might pose similar trouble for Israel, leaving
it for his audience to pick up the not-so-subtle hint about who needed to be subjected to
character assassination.
WATCH: "Today I issue a call to the Jews of America, please take a leaf out of our book
and please speak with one voice."
The Chief Rabbi speaking to the 18,000 delegates gathered at the @AIPAC General Session at their Policy
Conference in Washington DC pic.twitter.com/BOkan9RA2O
For anyone who isn't wilfully blind, the last few months have exposed the establishment
playbook: it will use identity politics to divide those who might otherwise find a united voice
and a common cause.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating one's identity, especially if it is under threat,
maligned or marginalised. But having an attachment to an identity is no excuse for allowing it
to be coopted by billionaires, by the powerful, by nuclear-armed states oppressing other
people, by political parties or by the corporate media, so that they can weaponise it to
prevent the weak, the poor, the marginalised from being represented.
It is time for us to wake up to the tricks, the deceptions, the manipulations of the strong
that exploit our weaknesses – and make us yet weaker still. It's time to stop being a
patsy for the establishment. Join the debate on
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"... Nonetheless much of this Cold War rivalry played out within a set of rules. Since 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed, those rules have largely evaporated. The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of a new American effort to bring Russia into the Western fold -- to make it, in Washington-speak, a "responsible partner in the rules-based international order." We sought a cooperative Russian leader -- one who would play the pro-Western role once envisioned for Admiral Kolchak. ..."
"... In 1996 President Boris Yeltsin, who had presided over an epic collapse of living standards in Russia, seemed headed for electoral defeat. That threatened America's influence over Russia. President Bill Clinton told his advisers, " I want this guy to win so bad it hurts ." A team of American political consultants flew to Russia, took over Yeltsin's campaign and, using media techniques not previously seen there, steered him to an improbable victory. This direct intervention in Russian politics was hardly clandestine. Time magazine published a gleeful account soon afterward, with a drawing of Yeltsin on the cover waving an American flag over the headline " Yanks to the Rescue ." ..."
Shots rang out beside a frozen Siberian river one century ago, and a famous commander fell
dead. Members of the firing squad dumped his body through a hole in the ice. With that, the
Russian civil war took a decisive turn. Communists consolidated power and set in motion events
that still shape Russia.
Observing the anniversary of this fateful execution helps explain why Russia today feels
besieged by the United States. The victim, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, was recognized by Western
powers as the legitimate ruler of Russia. He and his White Army were waging an epic war to
overthrow Lenin and the Reds. In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson, horrified at the rise of
Bolshevik power, sent 13,000 American soldiers to Russia.
Although Americans have largely forgotten this episode, Russians have not. They know from
their history books that the United States and other powers sent a potent army on an ill-fated
mission deep inside their country. Many see that intervention as the beginning of a century
during which the United States has relentlessly interfered in Russia's internal affairs. This
has created a narrative of encirclement -- a view that the West relentlessly threatens Russia
and does whatever possible to destabilize and weaken it.
Americans are told every day that Russia is interfering in our internal politics. This is
said to be an effort to erode American society and weaken our democracy. Portrayals of Russia
in the American press are unfailingly negative, President Vladimir Putin is presented as
demonic, and any politician who advocates better relations with Moscow risks being accused of
treason. Presidential candidates compete to be more virulently anti-Russian than their rivals,
as if this is a measure of patriotism. Tensions between the two countries are in some ways
higher than during the worst days of the Cold War.
The American and Russian governments have adopted startlingly similar views of each other.
Each believes that the other is systematically and malignantly intervening in its internal
politics. This feeds a spiral of mistrust and anger. We have not yet returned to the extreme of
1919, when the United States sent combat troops to Russia in an attempt to preserve Western
influence there. Yet Russians have reason to suspect that the United States is still trying to
guide the course of their history. We lost Admiral Kolchak 100 years ago but haven't given
up.
Kolchak was a celebrated scientist and polar explorer who rose to high positions in the
Russian Navy. He visited the United States in 1917, and upon his return began marshalling
forces to fight the Bolsheviks. Despite receiving troves of weaponry from the British, his
forces could not win. He fell into Bolshevik hands and, at dawn on February 7, 1920, was
marched toward a tributary of the Angara River. Ever the gentleman, he refused a blindfold and
asked the commander of the firing squad to send a final message of love to his wife and son.
The commander replied, "I will if I don't forget."
With Kolchak gone, the White Army weakened and finally succumbed. Russia remained Communist
for seven decades. During that entire period, with the notable exception of their alliance
against Nazi power in World War II, Moscow and Washington were intense global rivals. Americans
overlaid the worst qualities of our World War II enemies onto Russia: since the Japanese had
attacked us without warning, the Russians probably would too, and since the Nazis had invaded
other countries and brutalized their people, Russians were likely to do the same.
Nonetheless much of this Cold War rivalry played out within a set of rules. Since 1990, when
the Soviet Union collapsed, those rules have largely evaporated. The end of the Cold War marked
the beginning of a new American effort to bring Russia into the Western fold -- to make it, in
Washington-speak, a "responsible partner in the rules-based international order." We sought a
cooperative Russian leader -- one who would play the pro-Western role once envisioned for
Admiral Kolchak.
In 1996 President Boris Yeltsin, who had presided over an epic collapse of living standards
in Russia, seemed headed for electoral defeat. That threatened America's influence over Russia.
President Bill Clinton told his advisers, "
I want this guy to win so bad it hurts ." A team of American political consultants flew to
Russia, took over Yeltsin's campaign and, using media techniques not previously seen there,
steered him to an improbable victory. This direct intervention in Russian politics was hardly
clandestine. Time magazine published a gleeful account soon afterward, with a drawing of
Yeltsin on the cover waving an American flag over the headline " Yanks to the Rescue ."
In the years since Putin's emergence, the United States has returned to its default view of
Russia as a bloodthirsty enemy. We have imposed a maze of sanctions on Russian individuals and
corporations. Our military surrounds Russia just as Russians would surround us if they had
bases across Canada and Mexico. We have renounced treaties that once restrained our rivalry.
Depending on one's point of view, these steps are either aggressive provocations or simply
measured responses to Russian threats and misdeeds. Either way, Russians may be forgiven for
believing that the United States wishes their country neither prosperity nor stability. Admiral
Kolchak's execution one hundred years ago this winter marked an epochal failure of Western
efforts to bend Russia to our will. We're still trying.
Strategy is a plan -- a proposed course of action. Strategy demands the analysis of current
conditions and statements of desired goals. But, the primary focus of strategy is "how." How do
we work the transition between what is and what ought to be?
An effective strategy proposes how existing consciousness, resources, and capacities can
achieve a range of political ends. Strategy tries to answer the hardest questions of all: what
to do next and how to do it?
While strategic thinking often relies on one political theory or other it is not the same
exact thing as theory -- its nothing as orderly or elegant as that.
Inside/Outside Strategy
(IOS) is an approach to organizing and movement building that emphasizes learning from and
coordination with resistance movements that have political positions you do not completely
agree with.
IOS is an inclusive rather than an exclusive approach. A "both/and" attitude can help us
resolve the static binaries and false choices that divide us and waste our energies. IOS is an
alternative to the endless arguments and fragmentation that characterize the conventional
left-wing pursuit of the "correct line." IOS is particularly useful in organizing mass
movements, coalitions, big-tent political parties, and revolutions.
Effective organizations regularly use a strategic planning process. While there are
variations all include an assessment of the various forces in play; yourself, allies and
adversaries; a shortlist of goals; the selection of tactics and demands; and most crucially --
matching the tactics and tasks to the organizational resources already in hand.
In the spirit of experimentation, the results must be evaluated, criticized and the plan
revised. But always, we start from where we are -- not where we'd like to be or hope to be.
Strategy is permanently
provisional . Strategy is a work in progress, an unending discussion open to revision based
on practice and the constantly shifting political context. Strategy does not provide certainty
but is a guide to action. But the sad fact remains that much activism is simply reactive or
willfully avoids strategic work.
The IOS Remains A Coherent Strategic Framework For An Incoherent World
In 2014, when I started writing about IOS, I was hard-pressed to find good sources and
examples -- the discussion was just getting underway. A lot has changed since then. IOS has
become a topic of discussion among strategy-minded activists.
IOS reaches its greatest potential as an overall strategy for social transformation. It can
be applied to a wide variety of situations and movements. Still, most discussions of IOS focus
narrowly on the relationships between social movements or organizing on the one hand and
electoral work on the other.
IOS emphasizes experimentation in practice rather than doctrinal rigor or ideological
clarity as a way of rebalancing a movement drunk on polemics and the hangover of analysis
paralysis. IOS gives priority to engagement with the millions rather than debates between or
within organizations.
Personal experience is the best teacher by far and that is why job #1 is to encourage people
to take action. Real change becomes possible when millions act on the stage of history and not
before. And when the millions move they will burst every comfortable category the "left" prizes
so dearly. Change will not be orderly.
The mixed reaction of the US and French left to the Yellow Vests is just one example of our
inability to deal with the contradictions unfolding before us. It reminds me of Lenin's
observations of the 1916 Irish Revolution .
"To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the
colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie
with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and
semi-proletarian masses against oppression against national oppression, etc.-to imagine all
this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, "We are
for socialism", and another, somewhere else and says, "We are for imperialism", and that will
he a social revolution!
Lenin continues:
Whoever expects a "pure" social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays
lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.
The socialist revolution cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the
part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty
bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it -- without such participation,
mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible ."
Let's start working on the world as we find it not as we wish it to be.[1] That in no way
means we accept the world the way it is. But, it does mean we are working toward a strategy
that is far more effective than moral outrage or ideological precision.
It's not that raising consciousness is a waste of time -- it is vitally important. We need
to bring the empire into view first and foremost because that is where the crisis cooks the
hottest. Yes, we need the ideological struggle but tempered and trained by the complicated
political context we find ourselves in. And, there is nothing more full of contradictions than
revolution -- nothing.
Deal with that or we deal ourselves a losing hand.
Notes.
1. While the concept of "working with the world the way we find it," is most often
associated with Saul Alinsky it is a really just a practical application of the most useful
insight Marx and Engles ever offered: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as
they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances
existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
In an op-ed in the Financial Times on March 4th, he [Soros] urged that "Europe must
stand with Turkey over Putin's war crimes in Syria," an astonishing misreading of the
situation in the region as Turkey is the aggressor while Russia is fighting to eliminate
the last major terrorist enclave in Idlibt.
" Defender 2020" is a "maneuvre of shame"
by Willy Wimmer
former State Secretary at the German Ministry of Defence
"The German Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel, is breaking a taboo by allowing German soldiers to
participate in the biggest NATO manoeuvre since the end of the Cold War against Russia
.
It is therefore no wonder that the German Federal Government in May 2019 did not
commemorate the "Versailles" of one hundred years ago, nor did the German President do so in
a commemoration ceremony for which he can be held accountable. Versailles does not only mean
"the demon of revenge", but also a deliberate inability to strive for peace.
This way of thinking is expressed once again in the NATO major manoeuvre, deliberately
planned for the 9 May, the day the war ended in 1945. As if the fact had needed further
proof that the "NATO West" cannot make peace, it can only make war, be that war cold or
hot.
The American conference in Bratislava in the Slovak Republic in April 2000 made the
American goal for Europe clear: An Iron Curtain between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea,
Russia can stay anywhichwhere, and be divided or broken up into smaller states. The NATO
manoeuvre called "Defender 2020" is a "manoeuvre of shame" that only serves the
warmongers . "
Looks like Trump is already lame duck President. And this will not change with the
elections
Notable quotes:
"... I'm not suggesting that President Trump deserves a second term. He didn't deserve a first one. He's a terrible person and an awful president. What I'm saying is that it is more likely than not that he has already done most of the damage that he can do. ..."
"... An achievement-filled second term would be a major reversal of recent historical precedent. Things may get worse under four more years of this idiot, but not much worse as the Democratic doomsday cult warns. ..."
"... I hope Obama enjoyed all those trips to Martha's Vineyard because that's pretty much all he has to show for term number two. ..."
"... George W. Bush screwed up one thing after another during his second four years in office, which was bookended by his hapless non-response to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and his role in the ineffective and wasteful bailout of Wall Street megabanks during the subprime mortgage financial crisis. What began as an illegal war of aggression against Iraq became, after reelection, a catastrophic quagmire that destroyed America's international reputation. ..."
"... Reagan was both senile and bogged down in Iran Contra. ..."
"... "If Trump wins a second term this November," James Pethokoukis writes in The Week, Trump "might propose more tax cuts, but they are more likely to be payroll tax cuts geared toward middle-class workers instead of income tax cuts for rich people and corporations. ..."
You've heard it so often that you may well believe it's true: Trump's second term would be a
disaster. For the Democratic Party. For the United States. For democracy itself. "The
reelection of Donald Trump," warns Nancy Pelosi, "would do irreparable damage to the United
States."
But would it really?
Exceptions are a normal part of history but the record suggests that Trump would not be one
of the few presidents who get much done during their second terms. There are three reasons for
the sophomore slump:
By definition, political honeymoons expire (well) before the end of a president's first
term. Elections have consequences in the form of policy changes that make good on campaign
promises. But turning a pledge into reality comes at a cost. Capital gets spent, promises are
broken, alliances shatter. Oftentimes, those changes prove disappointing. Recent example:
Obamacare. Voters often express their displeasure by punishing the party that controls the
White House with losses in Congress in midterm elections.
The permanent campaign fed by the 24-7 news cycle makes lame ducks gimpier than ever. Before
a president gets to take his or her second oath of office, news media and future hopefuls are
already looking four years ahead.
Scandals come usually home to roost during second terms. It's tough to push laws through a
Congress that is dragging your top officials through one investigation after another.
I'm not suggesting that President Trump deserves a second term. He didn't deserve a
first one. He's a terrible person and an awful president. What I'm saying is that it is more
likely than not that he has already done most of the damage that he can do.
Pundits and Democratic politicians have been pushing a self-serving narrative that implies
that everything Trump has done so far was merely a warm-up for the main event, that he would
want and be able to go even further if given the chance if November 2020 goes his way.
That doesn't make sense. Who in their right mind thinks Trump has been holding anything
back? Which president has failed to go big within a year or two?
An achievement-filled second term would be a major reversal of recent historical
precedent. Things may get worse under four more years of this idiot, but not much worse as the
Democratic doomsday cult warns.
President Obama didn't get much done during his second term, which began with the bungled
rollout of the federal and state "health exchanges." He signed the Paris climate accord,
renewed diplomatic relations with Cuba and negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran. But the ease
with which his successor canceled those achievements showcased both the ephemerality of
policies pushed through without thorough public propaganda and a general sense that second-term
laws and treaties are easy to annul. I hope Obama enjoyed all those trips to Martha's
Vineyard because that's pretty much all he has to show for term number two.
George W. Bush screwed up one thing after another during his second four years in
office, which was bookended by his hapless non-response to the destruction of New Orleans by
Hurricane Katrina and his role in the ineffective and wasteful bailout of Wall Street megabanks
during the subprime mortgage financial crisis. What began as an illegal war of aggression
against Iraq became, after reelection, a catastrophic quagmire that destroyed America's
international reputation.
Whatever the merits of Bill Clinton's legislative and policy agenda -- welfare reform, NAFTA
and bombing Kosovo would all have happened under a Republican president -- having anything
substantial or positive to point to was well in the rearview mirror by his second term, when he
found himself embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment.
Reagan was both senile and bogged down in Iran Contra.
Even the most productive and prolific president of the 20th century had little to show for
his second term. FDR's legacy would be nearly as impressive today if he'd only served four
years.
Anything could happen. Donald Trump may use his second term to push dramatic changes. If
there were another terrorist attack, for example, he would probably try to exploit national
shock and fear to the political advantage of the right. Another Supreme Court justice could
pass away. On the other hand, Trump is old, clinically obese and out of shape. He might die.
It's doubtful that Mike Pence, a veep chosen for his lack of charisma, would be able to carry
on the Trump tradition as more than the head of a caretaker government.
Analysts differ on what Trump 2.0 might look like. Regardless of their perspective, however,
no one expects anything big.
"If Trump wins a second term this November," James Pethokoukis writes in The Week, Trump
"might propose more tax cuts, but they are more likely to be payroll tax cuts geared toward
middle-class workers instead of income tax cuts for rich people and corporations. He'll
look for a new Federal Reserve chair less worried about inflation than current boss Jerome
Powell, who deserves at least partial credit for the surging stock market and continuing
expansion. Trump will let the national debt soar rather than trimming projected Medicare and
Social Security benefits. And there will be more protectionism, although it may be called
'industrial policy.'"
"The early outlines of the [second-term] agenda are starting to emerge," Andrew Restuccia
reports in The Wall Street Journal. "Among the issues under consideration: continuing the
administration's efforts to lower prescription drug prices, pushing for a broad infrastructure
bill and taking another crack at reforming the country's immigration system, [White House]
officials said." They also want to reduce the deficit.
Under Trump, immigration reform is never a good thing. But it's hard to imagine anything
major happening without Democratic cooperation.
Internationally, many observers expect Trump to continue to nurture his isolationist
tendencies. But President Bernie Sanders would probably have similar impulses to focus on
America First.
By all means, vote against Trump. But don't freak out at the thought of a second term.
Mourn what happened under the first one instead -- and work to reverse it.
"... The consolidation of the Democratic Party behind Biden is a damning exposure, not merely of the politically reactionary character of this organization, but of the contemptible falsification on which the Sanders campaign has been based: that it is possible to transform the Democratic Party, the oldest American capitalist party, into the spearhead of a "political revolution" that will bring about fundamental social change. ..."
"... It is evident that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, as well as the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee, aims to run the 2020 campaign on the exact model of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016: portraying Trump as personally unqualified to be president and as a Russian stooge, while opposing any significant social reform and delivering constant reassurances to the ruling financial aristocracy that a restored Democratic administration will follow in the footsteps of Obama, showering trillions on Wall Street and doing the bidding of the military-intelligence apparatus. ..."
"... One could ask of the nine ex-candidates who have now endorsed Biden, why they were candidates in the first place? Why did they bother to run against the former vice president, clearly the preferred candidate of the party establishment? None of them voices any significant political differences with Biden. All of them hail the right-wing political record of the Obama-Biden administration, even though that administration produced the social and economic devastation that made possible the election of Donald Trump. ..."
"... African American Democratic Party leaders, including Representative James Clyburn in South Carolina and hundreds of others, represent one of the most right-wing and politically corrupt sections of the party. ..."
"... The thinking of this layer was summed up in a column Saturday in the Washington Post ..."
"... What the Washington Post ..."
"... the entire black Democratic Party establishment has lined up behind Biden -- including, most recently, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Senator Kamala Harris. ..."
"... Sanders seeks to counter this all-out Democratic Party campaign for Biden by seeking to woo sections of the trade union bureaucracy with appeals to economic nationalism. ..."
"... More than 13 million people, mainly workers and youth, voted for Sanders in 2016 in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Millions more continue to support him this year, with the same result. Sanders will wrap up his campaign by embracing the right-wing nominee of the Democratic Party and telling his supporters that this is the only alternative to the election, and now re-election of Trump. ..."
The campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is making a last-ditch stand in the
Michigan primary Tuesday, amid mounting indications that the Democratic Party as a whole has
moved decisively into the camp of his main rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders
cancelled rallies in Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois -- all states where he trails Biden
in the polls -- in order to concentrate all his efforts in Michigan, where he won an upset
victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
On Sunday, Senator Kamala Harris endorsed Biden, the latest of nine former presidential
contenders to announce their support for their one-time rival, joining Pete Buttigieg, Amy
Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg, Beto O'Rourke, John Delaney, Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, and Deval
Patrick. Harris is to join Biden for a campaign rally in Detroit Monday.
The consolidation of the Democratic Party behind Biden is a damning exposure, not
merely of the politically reactionary character of this organization, but of the contemptible
falsification on which the Sanders campaign has been based: that it is possible to transform
the Democratic Party, the oldest American capitalist party, into the spearhead of a
"political revolution" that will bring about fundamental social change.
Former Vice President Biden is the personification of the decrepit and right-wing
character of the Democratic Party. In the past 10 days alone, Biden has declared himself a
candidate for the US Senate, rather than president, confused his wife and his sister as they
stood on either side of him, called himself an "Obiden Bama Democrat," and declared that 150
million Americans died in gun violence over the past decade. This is not just a matter of
Biden's declining mental state: it is the Democratic Party, not just its presidential
frontrunner, that is verging on political senility.
It is evident that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, as well as the Biden
campaign and the Democratic National Committee, aims to run the 2020 campaign on the exact
model of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016: portraying Trump as personally unqualified to be
president and as a Russian stooge, while opposing any significant social reform and
delivering constant reassurances to the ruling financial aristocracy that a restored
Democratic administration will follow in the footsteps of Obama, showering trillions on Wall
Street and doing the bidding of the military-intelligence apparatus.
One could ask of the nine ex-candidates who have now endorsed Biden, why they were
candidates in the first place? Why did they bother to run against the former vice president,
clearly the preferred candidate of the party establishment? None of them voices any
significant political differences with Biden. All of them hail the right-wing political
record of the Obama-Biden administration, even though that administration produced the social
and economic devastation that made possible the election of Donald Trump.
Even more revolting, if that is possible, is the embrace of Biden by the black Democratic
politicians. The former senator from Delaware is identified with some of the most repugnant
episodes in the history of race relations in America: the abusive treatment of Anita Hill,
when she testified against the nomination of Clarence Thomas, before Biden's Judiciary
Committee; an alliance with segregationist James Eastland on school integration in the early
1970s, highlighted at a debate by Kamala Harris, eight months before she endorsed Biden; and
the passage of a series of "law-and-order" bills that disproportionately jailed hundreds of
thousands of African Americans, all of them pushed through the Senate by Biden.
How did a politician who boasted of his close relationships with Eastland and Strom
Thurmond become the beneficiary of a virtual racial bloc vote by African Americans in the
Southern states? Because African American Democratic Party leaders, including
Representative James Clyburn in South Carolina and hundreds of others, represent one of the
most right-wing and politically corrupt sections of the party.
The thinking of this layer was summed up in a column Saturday in the
Washington Post by Colbert King, a former State Department official and local
banker, a prominent member of the African American elite in the nation's capital, who wrote
in outrage, "America's black billionaires have no place in a Bernie Sanders
world."
King denounced the suggestion that black CEOs and billionaires are "greedy, corrupt
threats to America's working families or the cause of economic disparities and human misery."
Voicing the fears of his class, he continued, "I know there are those out there who buy the
notion that America consists of a small class of privileged, rapacious super-rich lording
over throngs of oppressed, capitalist-exploited workers. You can see it in poll numbers
showing the share of Americans who prefer socialism to capitalism inching upward."
What the Washington Post columnist reveals is what Bernie Sanders has done
his best to cover up: the Democratic Party is a party of the capitalist class. It can no more
be converted to socialism than the CIA can become an instrument of the struggle against
American imperialism.
True, Sanders can dredge up Jesse Jackson for a last-minute endorsement, proof that
demagogues engaged in diverting mass left-wing sentiment into the graveyard of the Democratic
Party recognize and embrace each other across the decades. But with that exception, the
entire black Democratic Party establishment has lined up behind Biden -- including, most
recently, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Senator Kamala Harris.
Harris's statement is worth quoting. "I have decided that I am with great enthusiasm going
to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States," she said. "I believe in Joe. I
really believe in him, and I have known him for a long time." The senator was no doubt
responding to the incentives dangled in front of her by Biden after she left the race last
December, when he gushed, "She is solid. She can be president someday herself. She can be the
vice president. She can go on to be a Supreme Court justice. She can be an attorney
general."
Sanders seeks to counter this all-out Democratic Party campaign for Biden by seeking
to woo sections of the trade union bureaucracy with appeals to economic nationalism. New
Sanders television ads in Michigan feature a United Auto Workers member declaring that his
state "has been decimated by trade deals," while Sanders declares that Biden backed NAFTA,
drawing the conclusion, "With a record like that, we can't trust him to protect American jobs
or defeat Donald Trump." The Vermont senator will find that very few auto workers follow the
political lead of the corrupt gangsters who head the UAW.
More than 13 million people, mainly workers and youth, voted for Sanders in 2016 in
the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Millions more continue to support him this year, with
the same result. Sanders will wrap up his campaign by embracing the right-wing nominee of the
Democratic Party and telling his supporters that this is the only alternative to the
election, and now re-election of Trump.
Indeed, in appearances on several Sunday television interview programs, Sanders went out
of his way to repeat, as he said on Fox News, "Joe Biden is a friend of mine. Joe Biden is a
decent guy. What Joe has said is if I win the nomination, he'll be there for me, and I have
said if he wins the nomination, I'll be there for him "
"... Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria ..."
"... Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or characteristics." ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Russophobia in the United States has been advanced most insidiously by the nation's foreign policy elite who have envisioned themselves as grand chess-masters seeking to checkmate their Russian adversary in order to control the Eurasian heartland. ..."
"... This view is little different than European colonial strategists who had learned of the importance of molding public opinion through disinformation campaigns that depicted the Russian bear as a menace to Western civilization. ..."
For
the last five years, the American media has been filled with scurrilous articles demonizing
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has been accused of every crime imaginable, from shooting down airplanes, to
assassinating opponents, to invading neighboring countries, to stealing money to manipulating
the U.S. president and helping to rig the 2016 election.
Few of the accusations directed against Putin have ever been substantiated and the quality
of journalism has been at the level of "yellow journalism."
In a desperate attempt to sustain their political careers, centrist Democrats like Joe Biden
and Hillary Clinton accused their adversaries of being Russian agents – again without
proof.
And even the progressive hero Bernie Sanders – himself a victim of red-baiting –
has engaged in Russia bashing and unsubstantiated accusations for which he offers no proof.
Mettan is a Swiss journalist and member of parliament who learned about the corruption of
the media business when his reporting on the world anticommunist league rankled his newspapers'
shareholders, and when he realized that he was serving as a paid stenographer for the Bosnian
Islamist leader Alija Izetbegovic in the early 1990s.
Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that
associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative
character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists
first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or
characteristics."
Like anti-semitism, Mettan writes, "Russophobia is a way of turning specific pseudo-facts
into essential one-dimensional values, barbarity, despotism, and expansionism in the Russian
case in order to justify stigmatization and ostracism."
The origins of Russophobic discourse date back to a schism in the Church during the Middle
Ages when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Roman empire and modified the Christian
liturgy to introduce reforms execrated by the Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine
empire.
Mettan writes that "the Europe of Charlemagne and of the year 1000 was in need of a foil in
the East to rebuild herself, just as the Europe of the 2000s needs Russia to consolidate her
union."
Before the schism, European rulers had no negative opinions of Russia. When Capetian King
Henri I found himself a widower, he turned towards the prestigious Kiev kingdom two thousand
miles away and married Vladimir's granddaughter, Princess Ann.
A main goal of the new liturgy adopted by Charlemagne was to undermine any Byzantine
influence in Italy and Western Europe.
Over the next century, the schism evolved from a religious into a political one.
The Pope and the top Roman administration made documents disappear and truncated others in
order to blame the Easterners.
Byzantium and Russia were in turn rebuked for their "caesaropapism," or "Oriental style
despotism," which could be contrasted which the supposedly enlightened, democratic governing
system in the West.
Russia was particularly hated because it had defied efforts of Western European countries to
submit to their authority and impose Catholicism.
In the 1760s, French diplomats working with a variety of Ukrainian, Hungarian and Polish
political figures produced a forged testament of Peter 1 ["The Great"] purporting to reveal
Russia's 'grand design' to conquer most of Europe.
This document was still taken seriously by governments during the Napoleanic wars; and as
late as the Cold War, President Harry Truman found it helpful in explaining Stalin.
In Britain, the Whigs, who represented the liberal bourgeois opposition to the Tory
government and its program of free-trade imperialism, were the most virulent Russophobes, much
like today's Democrats in the United States.
The British media also enflamed public opinion by taking hysterical positions against Russia
– often on the eve of major military expeditions.
The London Times during the 1820s Greek Independence war editorialized that no
"sane person" could "look with satisfaction at the immense and rapid overgrowth of Russian
power." The same thing was being written in The New York Times in the 2010s.
A great example of the Orientalist stereotype was Bram Stoker's novel Dracula ,
whose main character was modeled after Russian ruler, Ivan the Terrible. As if no English ruler
in history was cruel either.
The Nazis took Russo-phobic discourse to new heights during the 1930s and 1940s, combining
it with a virulent anti-bolshevism and anti-semitism.
A survey of German high school texts in the 1960s found little change in the image of
Russia. The Russians were still depicted as "primitive, simple, very violent, cruel, mean,
inhuman, cupid and very stubborn."
The same stereotypes were displayed in many Hollywood films during the Cold War, where KGB
figures were particularly maligned. No wonder that when a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin,
took power, people went insane. Russophobia in the United States has been advanced most
insidiously by the nation's foreign policy elite who have envisioned themselves as grand
chess-masters seeking to checkmate their Russian adversary in order to control the Eurasian
heartland.
This view is little different than European colonial strategists who had learned of the
importance of molding public opinion through disinformation campaigns that depicted the Russian
bear as a menace to Western civilization.
Guy Mettan has written a thought-provoking book that provides badly needed historical
context for the anti-Russian delirium gripping our society.
Breaking the taboo on Russophobia is of vital importance in laying the groundwork for a more
peaceful world order and genuinely progressive movement in the United States. Unfortunately,
recent developments don't inspire much confidence that history will be transcended. Join the debate
on Facebook More articles by: Jeremy KuzmarovJeremy
Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming,
Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018) and
Obama's Unending Wars: Fronting for the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta:
Clarity Press, 2019).
DNC installing a man with obvious cognitive impairment is a staggering display of arrogance.
While Bush and Obama were empty suits this is completly another level.
In way I think Stupor Tuesday was a huge win for Trump.
The oldest organized political party on the planet is advancing a senile globalist meatpuppet
(with a son known to be a philandering crackhead) to handle nuclear launch codes.
Choosing Biden hands the election to Trump and that's a deal that has already been made. The
DNC don't like Sanders because they are adraid he might win, not because they are afraid he
might loose.
I agree with you that it is not going to be a slam dunk for Trump. Just like Trump wasn't
damaged by the Access Hollywood tapes, Biden's not going to be damaged by his senility,
gaffes and his prior plagiarism, Wall St cronyism and corruption. The vote for the "lesser
evil" mindset will consolidate along traditional lines. The Obama machine will run Biden's
campaign and consolidate the Democrat support. The election will hinge on a few states in
particular Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"Perhaps this will finally burst the out-of-control asset price bubble and drop-kick the
Outlaw US Empire's economy into the sewer as the much lower price will rapidly slow the
recycling of what remains of the petrodollar. Looks like Trump's reelection push just fell
into a massive sinkhole as the economy will tank."
Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 9 2020 1:29 utc | 49
....
Call me crazy- but this Virus provides great cover as to why the economy plummets, the
Murikan sheeple will eat it up. Prepare for the double media blitz on the virus AND the
economy tanking as its result.
Don't worry...just continue to go shopping and take those selfies.
It will be hard for the American people to swallow that one. From day 1 I've read a lot of
"articles" and "papers" from know-it-all Western doctors and researchers from commenters here
in this blog, all of them claiming to have very precise and definitive data on what was
happening. A lot of bombastic conclusions I've read here (including one that claimed R0 was
through the roof - it's funny how the R0 is being played down after it begun to infect the
West; suddenly, it's all just a stronger cold...).
And that's just here, in MoA's comment section. Imagine what was being published in the
Western MSM. I wouldn't be surprised there was a lot of rednecks popping their beers
celebrating the fall of China already.
Since China allegedly had a lot of idle industrial capacity - that is, if we take the
Western MSM theories seriously (including the fabled "ghost towns" stories) - then boosting
production wouldn't be a problem to China.
Disclaimer: it's normal for any kind of economy - socialist or capitalist - to have a
certain percentage of idle capacity. That's necessary in order to insure the economy against
unexpected oscillations in demand and to give space of maneuvre for future technological
progress. Indeed, that was one of the USSR's mistakes with its economy: they instinctly
thought unemployment should be zero, and waste should also be zero, so they planned in a way
all the factories always sought to operate at 100% capacity. That became a problem when
better machines and better methods were invented, since the factory manager wouldn't want to
stop production so that his factory would fall behind the other factories in the five-year
plan's goals. So, yes, China indeed has idle capacity - but it is mainly proposital, not a
failure of its socialist planning.
By the latest count, in addition to yuan loans worth 113 billion U.S. dollars granted by
financial institutions and more than 70 billion U.S. dollars paid out by insurance companies,
the Chinese government has allocated about 13 billion U.S. dollars to counter fallout from
the outbreak.
The numbers could look abstract. However, breaking the data down reveals how the money is
being carefully targeted. The government is allocating the money based on a thorough
evaluation of the system's strengths.
...
Local governments are equipped with more local knowledge that allows them to surgically
support key manufacturers or producers that are struggling.
Together, they have borne the bulk of the financial responsibility with an allocation of
equivalently more than nine billion U.S. dollars. It is carefully targeted, divided into
hundreds of thousands of individual grants that are tailor-made by and for each county, town,
city and business.
This is the mark of a socialist system.
The affected capitalist countries will simply use monetary devices (so the private sector
can offset the losses) and burn their own reserves with non-profitable palliatives such as
masks, tests, other quarantine infrastructure etc.
Sounds like US socialism. Basically corporate socialism. Loans are just dollars created out
of thin air, same as in US. Insurance payouts come from premiums, nothing socialist about
that, pure capitalism. Government hand outs to provinces, cities, state owned
corporations,well all of these are run by the party elite, its called pork. US handed out a
lot of pork during the last financial crisis. None of it trickled down to the little people.
I doubt it does in China either.
All crisis are opportunities for the elite to get richer. Those Biolake firms in Wuhan
will make out like bandits. Chinese firms will double the price of API's sold to India and
US. China will knock out the small farmer in the wake of concurrent chicken and swine flu so
the big enterprises take over, a mimicry of the US practice over the last century. China tech
firms will double up on surveillance apps, censoring tools, surveillance and toughen up
social credit restrictions. 5G will allow China to experiment with nanobots to monitor
citizens health from afar (thanks to Harvards Dr Leiber).
Oh yes, socialism with Chinese characteristics is a technocratic capitalists dream. Thats
why the West has never imposed sanctions on China since welcoming them to the global elites
club. Sanctions are reserved for those with true socialism, especially those who preach
equality and god forbid, democracy.
Call me crazy- but this Virus provides great cover as to why the economy plummets, the
Murikan sheeple will eat it up. Prepare for the double media blitz on the virus AND the
economy tanking as its result.
Don't forget the Russians.. They have to be to blame. See they just kept the price of oil low
so now the rest of the world gets gas cheaper than the USA. The USA motorist now has to bail
out the dopey frackers and shale oil ponzis.
Global envy will eat murica. Maybe they will just pull out all their troops and go home.
;)
by Ellen Taylor At this very moment
thousands of US soldiers are disembarking from troop transports in six European countries and
rushing toward prepositioned munitions around Europe, to deploy weapons as swiftly as possible.
This excitement marks the beginning of "Defender Europe 2020", the largest military
exercises to be staged in Europe in over 25 years. Strategists will record how swiftly our
forces can reach the Russian border, and test our NATO allies.
There has already been a massive US build-up in the countries bordering Russia.
In the words of Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, "The last 18 years of conflict built muscle
memory in counterinsurgency, but with this came atrophy in other areas. We are now engaging
these other muscle groups."
General Tod Wolters, Commander of US forces in Europe and of NATO, has stated, "I'm in favor
of a flexible first-use (nuclear weapon) policy."
The US has withdrawn from the INF treaty.
Most diabolical and chilling of all: the exercises will come to a climax in June, which is
the 75 th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet
Union in 1941, which killed 27 million people. Russians born in 1930 turn 90 this year. They
remember. The heart and soul of Russia remembers as well.
Russian Chief General Gerasimov is convinced the US is preparing for war. All it would take
for an attack is one false-flag operation.
The people of the world lie in helpless ignorance. And the Doomsday clock moves 20 seconds
closer to midnight.
Furthermore, the most highly rated show on Fox, Tucker Carlson is vehemently
anti-imperialist and consistently hurls insults at gay assholes such as Lindsey Graham
What you are hearing is the last vestiges of neocon and neolibs grasping at straws and
trying to drag China through the mud. No one is listening, just as no one really cares about
CNN or MSNBC (ironic, though, that Foxnews is now indeed the most "fair and balanced" of the
major networks) or any political trifles.
I'm going to take my chance while I have it and before having to say "I hate to be that
old Marxist but "
I am 36 years old and therefore the same age as most of those speaking for millenials in
the DSA, writing for Jacobin, and organising for Bernie or those of his satellites on their
respective fool's errands in opposition to the entrenched Democratic Party panjandrums.
Half American and half British, I have also experienced some similar issues with the
Corbyn/Momentum movement and its recent car crash with ruling class reality.
Just as an intro because of course I am going to say, "I hate to say this but "
The DSA and the semi-organised American left are selling their increasingly, justifiably
radical followers a pig in a poke. In a sense, I except Bernie from that condemnation –
running for President, it is what it is. But those who are supposed to be to his left are
performing an invidious game by preventing further political education or raising
consciousness in favour of peddling the myth of reforming the Democratic Party from within
that have been tried, and have failed, so many times in the last 120 years.
The fact that these same groups are doing the same thing when it comes to labour
struggles, endlessly shepherding wildcat momentum behind union leadership and justifying
sell-out deals instead of fostering a realistic preparation for the struggles ahead, suggests
that this is not an accident.
The cognitive dissonance is almost as horrible as that on offer when technocrats like
Obama and Clinton accept the facts of climate change while endlessly sandbagging real
responses to it. Which shouldn't be surprising, since the American and British new left is
engaged in an infernal slow dance with their liberal or corporate beefcakes.
If I sound flippant, I apologise – I don't mean to. I also don't necessarily
disbelieve in the potential for at least some change within existing conditions – but
historically such changes have been won because there was a more radical
extra-electoral/parliamentary movement of workers leveraging their strength, not because it
was all within one cosy political bubble.
And that only happens when workers and students are educated about the struggles involved
in forcing changes in the teeth of ruling class interests, institutions and political heft.
Peddling illusions about the all-encompassing power of the electoral process, or
complaining endlessly about the the latest example of back-stabbing from whichever corporate
liberal stooge last wielded the shank, is increasingly not just useless but something worse
– an expected part of the system itself as it reproduces its frozen dialectics of power
and exploitation.
This is not (at least not entirely) a call for revolution. But I am increasingly certain
that change is impossible without first preparing a broad swathe of people to fight, fight,
fight instead of entrusting the struggle to this or that figurehead (Bernie, AOC), let alone
their clarion-callers in an increasingly cosy upper middle class den of pseudo-leftists.
You might read that Politico article on the DSA. I found it rather encouraging but you
might differ. If so, I'd like to know your opinion of the concrete details.
> peddling the myth of reforming the Democratic Party from within
If the ultimate outcome were to split the Democrats, would you change your mind?
Reading the Politico article now. You're right – it is encouraging, at least in the
sense that it features articulate, radicalised individuals and their early attempts to
organise. It chronicles absolutely necessary early steps in the process. I am very encouraged
with the justified, even pragmatic, way they look beyond presidential politics in a
dialectical way – both the wider context and the more local, direct implications.
So far, so good.
But there are problems. The sudden, total collapse of the International Socialist
Organization is an example of what can happen to a seemingly lively left(ish) group when it
grows on shaky ground. You have chronicled some of the contortions of the DSA in their
regional elections and controversies. Growing pains – or something more
fundamental?
What I'm trying to say is what are they about and how do they reconcile disparate forces
and interests without tearing themselves apart? The DSA has its own particular history in the
wider context of the American left and its sudden expansion doesn't make that go away.
Without adequate theory your praxis will tend to fall apart when it collides with
reality.
To give a concrete example that is suggested in the Politico piece, I'm not sure how they
are discussing and understanding the identity politics education of the (upper)middle class
students drawn to the movement with the different perspectives of the labour movement or,
beyond that, the exciting, potentially revolutionary hinterland of the actual working
class(!!!)
Lenin didn't know what identity politics was but he described it in a different context:
haggling for privileges. I don't want to make this a diatribe on one subject or to suggest
that I'm not sensitive to the discrete forms of oppression facing different groups but
– and I know you write about this brilliantly – without some kind of radical
reckoning with these issues, groups like the DSA are liable to sectarian disasters of exactly
the kind envisioned (I suspect) by those who have most insidiously articulated identity over
class as the most significant feature of our social relations.
I would say similar things about Extinction Rebellion. I have friends who are deeply
involved in it and they are brilliantly committed to its cause. But they struggle when it
comes to connecting the realities they rightly identify with the material pathologies that
produce them. They are not interested in why, for example, the ER leaders ban socialist
sub-groups as "political" while welcoming those for bosses or landlords(?!)
These are, to me, fundamental problems. If you cannot identify your enemy you cannot plan
your campaign. And I worry that the DSA, or ER, dine out on identifying symptoms while
studiously avoiding an uncomfortable meeting with their cause. And that doesn't mean, either,
a schematic link of every social ill with capitalism, nor a demand that everyone be schooled
in the dialectic. Just a plan to educate, to find other forms of solidarity, and gird
ourselves for the struggle to come.
But that's probably more than enough! In answer to your last question -- - I think a
serious split with the Democratic Party is an absolute necessity for anything that follows.
It will come one way or another – even if Bernie wins the nomination, then the
presidency, I fully expect he will be sandbagged by Democrats at every turn. At some point,
it will be necessary to realise that the Democratic Party is not called the graveyard of
social movements for nothing – and that American duopoly is the greatest impediment to
democracy, no different really from the Congress of All-Russian Soviets in its day.
Forget splitting the Democrats. I like the idea I first saw here, of turning to and
leveraging the Republicans as the party of progressive change. Let the Democrat donors hold
their bag of defeated candidates while harnessing progressive populists, like Tucker Carlson,
or Josh Hawley, as an example, to change the country for the better. My vote in November is
for Bernie if he's on the ballot. If not, Tulsi.
The Democrat Establishment may not split (though as I think Taibbi pointed out,
Sanders might have been able to peel off some opportunists with a Texas win).
However, the Democrat base may split. Taking "Bernie Bro" and "He's not a real
Democrat" as a proxies, the Democrat gerontocracy (to use the term for the Breshnev era) is
systematically and openly alienating the Latin vote, youth generally, young blacks, and
younger women. As for the working class, they are not even a mental category for liberals.
That reduces their base to older Blacks and the PMC, especially PMC women. As 2016 showed,
and as the (PMC women) Warren campaign showed, that's barely enough to win an election, and
its certainly not enough to rule.
At some point, the contradictions have to break out into the open, as it becomes obvious
the Democrats have failed to represent -- indeed, have disenfranchised -- too many people. As
Lincoln
wrote to Lyman Trumbull in 1860..
Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.
The Iron Law of Institutions is looking better every day.
Look, no one knows the future and everyone is always flying by the seat of their pants.
This is always true, only more apparent now. I would speculate that at least half of the
newly motivated DSA membership couldn't really articulate a vision of socialism if you asked
them to. In the future that might be a problem but it is certainly not a problem now. I am
much more skeptical of those people now claiming to have "fundamental" answers.
Most of us have a clear if general sense of the enemy (capitalists) and their henchmen
(politicians, "policy advocates," etc.). On the other hand, as Stoller points out, we are
really bereft of people who actually understand production. I would argue that is our biggest
problem, not lack of ideological clarity. Because once we gain power we need to know how to
wield it.
Fair enough but I'm not really talking about ideological clarity or sectarian strife. I
think we agree – I also mean a thorough understanding of how the world works. But that
also means rigorous critique of where things might go wrong – and, for example when it
concerns identity politics (a phrase I hate and apologise for using!) I think we have a good
example. That doesn't mean class above all, by the way – just not ceding intellectual
ground to liberal formulations of who we are and why we are that way!
(I didn't really mean to harp on about identity stuff but I think of it when I think of,
for example, the DSA, and some of the divisive disputes that have bedevilled them)
I attended one DSA meeting. The order of business was something like this:
Each person declared how they chose to be identified.
The group overruled those who didn't want to do anything until some minorities could be
recruited.
Some movers and shakers volunteer to draw up the chapter charter. As they were all men, they
would recuse themselves from further action so the chapter wouldn't be dominated by men. The
group was about 90% men.
The Patriarchy was soundly denounced.
Yes. I don't see this as malevolent; the impulses are good-hearted (which is exactly what
makes "intersectionality" so dangerous). Kimberle Crenshaw endorsed Warren, by the way. OTOH,
one of the Combahee River Collective founders endorsed Sanders. Of course, Crenshaw's a
lawyer. PMC class solidarity is an impressive thing .
> Lenin didn't know what identity politics was but he described it in a different
context: haggling for privileges . I don't want to make this a diatribe on one
subject or to suggest that I'm not sensitive to the discrete forms of oppression facing
different groups but – and I know you write about this brilliantly – without some
kind of radical reckoning with these issues, groups like the DSA are liable to sectarian
disasters of exactly the kind envisioned (I suspect) by those who have most insidiously
articulated identity over class as the most significant feature of our social relations.
"Brilliant" [lambert blushes modestly]. Back at ya for "haggling for privileges."
> At some point, it will be necessary to realise that the Democratic Party is not
called the graveyard of social movements for nothing
History is a hard teacher. And where its lesson has been sadly confined to a small group
of cadres, as it were, this lesson is now going to be taught to millions by the Democrat
Establishment, and with whacks to the knuckles and expulsions, too. That's why I put up that
link to Mike Duncan on the Russian Revolution of 1905 the other day .
And when you answer that, can you make clear which context you are steeped in? I don't
know which side of the pond you live on, but our hallowed Constitution, in hindsight, pretty
much leads us here. It just ratchets everything rightward.
The claim is – and I am not sophisticated enough to either support or deny it, but
others I respect have made it – that our political structure via said Constitution will
only support more than two parties for only an election cycle or two. Lincoln introduced
himself as a Whig, but had to run as a Republican.
Yes, it goes that far back. Given today's sophisticated hold on the media levers by our
Elites, I think an effective third party is less likely than ever. Sure there's things called
the Working Families Party and stuff here and there, but their job is basically wrenching Dem
primaries.
PS: I actually am registered Green. It's my attempt to signal where my vote is. Little
good that seems to have done me.
In America at least, it's easy to be leftist when your personal well-being is not at stake
-- the left in the US has always had an upper-class tint and co-opted by the
professional-managerial class. BUT their well being does not depend on the outcome like it
does for the working classes. The UK and other countries have stronger social safety nets and
that does make a difference in people's politics.
As an older worker ( I could be your father) I know how these fights go -- it takes
decades of sheer intransigence to get anywhere. In a zillion little ways, every day, for
years. I don't know if Millenials understand this, its not a dress rehearsal. It's real. I do
believe the movement needs solid organizers and figureheads though -- most likely AOC will be
next, I hope. There needs to be a clear method of succession, among people who do *not*
compromise. A single stated set of goals, for a decade. And those who get out and volunteer
and vote.
I agree with some of what you write but I have yet to see any really adequate figureheads
of the sort you suggest as necessary. AOC, after her praise for John McCain is not one of
them.
I know this makes me sound intransigent and sectarian but it is and has always been a
problem in the left to fight beyond just nation-based working class interests. I'm not saying
AOC does that but she, like so many before her, have definitely sacrificed critique of
imperialism for a certain amount of mainstream coverage as far as her social democratic
advocacy goes.
AOC praised John McCain, Bernie has played up to Russiagate and the enduring myths about
Castro's Cuba despite making an obvious, uncontroversial point in the first place. This is
how it goes. And that's what I mean – it is a standard thing for Western politicians to
throw foreign affairs over the side when they are pressed – especially because the Borg
is most concerned with matters of Empire and therefore will attack on that above all else
(knowing, too, that the voting public cares much less about such issues than, say, Medicare
for All). Corbyn did the same thing when it came to Trident renewal, then Iraq, and finally
Israel.
(By the way, such capitulation got him nowhere – he was still slandered as an
anti-semite and I just finished an awful book about Oleg Gordievsky in which it is suggested
he was a useful idiot for the Czech intelligence services, along with Michael Foot!)
Socialism does not exist without a critique of imperialist/capitalist wars is what I
mean.
But I'm sorry, I know this isn't what you were talking about. The reason I brought it up,
however, is to illustrate the insidious ways in which freshly elected, occasionally 'radical'
politicians are institutionalised. It doesn't happen with bread and butter domestic issues
but rather foreign affairs, those distant concerns of experts and spooks.
And yet bringing this up gives a kind of window of opportunity and hope. There is no group
with better understanding of the real-world consequences of Empire than the urban and rural
working class. They are the ones providing sons and daughters for endless wars. The
overextension of empire is always going to provide its weakest points.
Sorry, I've rambled – these are just some thoughts as I try and get to grips with
what is to be done!
Well, no, actually its a good thing that you rambled -- I completely agree but from a
different angle perhaps.
The fact that socialism is even in contention in the US I think is a referendum on
imperialism and capitalism.
And the US way has certainly opened itself to criticism.
Frankly it amazes me that it is even happening at all, being that the Overton window has
been dragged so far to the Right in my lifetime.
I remember watching Nixon on TV, stating that he was not a crook. Today, he would be
considered to be an unelectable liberal, too far left.
I am not completely happy with the way that AOC and Sanders have had to toe the line with
the Establishment regarding foreign policy and etc. (and I don't think McCain was any kind of
saint). But I do believe that AOC and Sanders are trying to please multiple Masters. If they
don't do the whole "red-baiting" routine then they lose credibility with the system they are
part of -- and thereby lose influence. The voters are a different issue -- foreign affairs
are just not on the radar at all for most of the working class. The sole exception is those
who have family in the armed services. And yet without those voters, they wouldn't have any
influence to lose.
So basically, its a chess game. Washington DC has never ran on the truth. I'm pretty sure
AOC was just mouthing the words so she can accomplish some of her own left-wing goals. And
maybe Sanders is too --
If I might inject my two cents into this very interesting discussion, I believe
tempestteacup's ultimate point still stands: the Blob/industrialists/parties will suffer no
contest to their claims on power. Sure, they allow the occasional voice in the wilderness
– to do otherwise would lead to more radical activity I imagine – but the power
structures themselves seem quite robust to disturbances from the likes of Sanders and AOC.
While I agree that they are likely mouthing the words (Sanders once discussed abolishing the
CIA and one does not simply reconsider that view once one has reached that point
ideologically), I question whether it even matters It seems to me that a realistic vision of
socialism must be brought about independently of the existing state. After all, the social
groups that dominate the state also control the media, the military, the educational
institutions, and just about every other organ of power. In this framework, hijacking the
state as it exists is a tall order and actually reforming it within the rules of the game is
even more difficult. Isn't it worth considering the idea that left energy is better devoted
to forming alternative institutions and power structures?
The circle of wagons we are seeing around Biden's husk shows that they will fight tooth
and nail to keep from implementing even the most benign and basic social democratic reforms.
I can only see someone like Bernie or AOC winning real power in the face of a massive
economic meltdown and even then, they can win the social democratic reforms (which are
desirable) but why couldn't that same opportunity + working class radicalism be channeled
into actual systemic change; ie destroying the state as it currently exists and replacing it
with a people's democracy? (not the Chinese type please). This would require decades of hard
work, but so would replacing the democratic party with our version of Labour (and look where
they are).
Isn't it worth considering the idea that left energy is better devoted to forming
alternative institutions and power structures?
Very much agree -- I don't think I'm disagreeing with tempestteacup so much as looking
from a different angle.
For any of it to work, I think we will have to establish parallel institutions on a far
greater scale than Sander's campaign. One favorite of mine is worker co-ops, particularly in
the Rust Belt and Midwest.
I dream of being able to unite and organize existing co-ops and strengthen them to the
point that they could replace the old Sears Roebuck. Effectively workers would have to work
two jobs and participate in two different economies, to the extent that they were able -- but
having a fallback via co-op would certainly give them far more autonomy and power than any
existing structure.
The only reason the existing structures have any power at all, is due to their death grip
on the economy, and directly on peoples lives via economic means. Breaking that grip will
also require economic means I think.
Dunford defended the troubled plane and was rewarded with a Lockheed position within months
of leaving the Pentagon. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford. Credit:
Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff/Flickr
In 2015, things weren't looking great for the Marine Corps' F-35B fighter jet. Reports
from the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) and
Department of Defense inspector general had found dozens of problems with the aircraft.
Engine failures, software bugs, supply chain issues, and fundamental design flaws were making
headlines. The program was becoming synonymous in the press with
"boondoggle."
Lockheed Martin, the program's lead contractor, desperately needed a win.
Luckily for Lockheed, it had a powerful ally in the commandant of the Marine Corps, General
Joseph
Dunford . Five years later, Dunford would be out of the service and ready to collect his
first Lockheed Martin paycheck as a member of its board of directors.
Back in 2015, the F-35 program, already years behind schedule, faced a key program
milestone. The goal was to have the F-35B ready for a planned July initial operational
capability (IOC) declaration, a major step for the program, greenlighting the plane to be used
in combat. The declaration is a sign that the aircraft is nearly ready for full deployment,
that things are going well, that the contract, awarded in 2006, was finally producing a usable
product. The ultimate decision was in Dunford's hands.
About a week before the declaration, some in the Pentagon expressed serious doubts about the
aircraft. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) obtained a memo from the Director of
Operational Test and Evaluation that
called foul on the test that was meant to demonstrate the ability of the F-35B to operate
in realistic conditions.
Dunford, however, said he had "
full confidence " in the aircraft's ability to support Marines in combat, despite the
testing office's report stating that if the aircraft encountered enemies, it would need to "
avoid threat engagement " -- in other words, to flee at the first sign of an enemy.
Ignoring the issues raised internally, Dunford signed off on the initial operational
capability. Lockheed Martin was thrilled . "Fifty years
from now, historians will look back on the success of the F-35 Program and point to Marine
Corps IOC as the milestone that ushered in a new era in military aviation," the company said in
a statement.
Lockheed's CEO was apparently elated, declaring it "send a strong message to everyone that
this program is on track."
But problems continued to plague the "combat ready" aircraft in the months afterwards. And
Dunford downplayed cost overruns and sang the aircraft's praises at a press event in 2017. When
the moderator asked routine questions submitted by the audience (Will the aircraft continue as
a program? Is it too expensive to maintain?),
Dunford responded by calling the questions loaded and accusing the audience member of
having an "agenda."
Retirement and a Reward
On September 30, 2019, Dunford, the military's highest ranked official, stepped down from
his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He had served in the Marine Corps since 1977,
working his way up to the highest tier of the armed services over 42 years.
Just four months and 11 days later, he joined the Pentagon's top contractor, Lockheed
Martin, as a director on the board.
In announcing Dunford's hire, a January
press release from Lockheed Martin quotes CEO Marillyn Hewson: "General Dunford's service
to the nation at the highest levels of military leadership will bring valuable insight to our
board."
Dunford's consistent cheerleading of the F-35 and his subsequent hiring at its manufacturer
create the perception of a conflict of interest and raised the eyebrows of at least one former
senior military official.
"Here he is having been an advocate for it, having pressed it, having pushed for it and now
he's going to work for the company that makes the aircraft, that just, to me, stinks to high
heavens," retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as special assistant to Colin Powell
when he led the Joint Chiefs, told POGO.
Dunford's Rolodex of Pentagon decision-makers is valuable to defense contractors, and with
just over four months to "cool off," many of those relationships will likely be intact.
Lockheed Martin was the top recipient of Department of Defense dollars in fiscal year 2019,
taking in over $48
billion , according to government data. The company spent over $13 million
lobbying the federal government in 2019, according to data compiled by the Center for
Responsive Politics.
The Revolving Door Spins On
"I think anybody that gives out these big contracts should never ever, during their
lifetime, be allowed to work for a defense company, for a company that makes that product,"
then-President-elect Donald Trump
said in a December 2016 rally in Louisiana. "I don't know, it makes sense to me."
Fast forward more than three years and the revolving door is spinning right along, defense
stocks are
surging , and Lockheed Martin has arecord backlogof
unfulfilled contracts . While Trump did issue an
ethics executive order for his appointees, it did not include a lifetime ban on lobbying
for contractors.
A POGO analysis of the post-government employment of retired chairs of the Joint Chiefs
found that only four of the 19 people who previously held the position went immediately to work
for a major defense contractor within two years after leaving the government. In addition to
Dunford, Admiral William J. Crowe joined General
Dynamics , General John Shalikashvili joined the boards of
Boeing and L-3, and General Richard Myers joined the boards of Northrop Grumman and United
Technologies Corp.
Former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs have many lucrative career opportunities that don't
create conflicts, actual or implied. Retired General Martin Dempsey, who held the position
before Dunford, went on to teach at Duke University and was elected chairman of USA Basketball.
Admiral Michael Mullen, who preceded Dempsey, joined the board of General Motors and later
telecom giant Sprint.
According to Wilkerson, then-Chairman Powell was conscious of the appearance of conflicts of
interest and instilled in his employees a sensitivity.
Wilkerson recalled a conversation he had with Powell right after his retirement. "What's
next, boss?" Wilkerson asked Powell. "Well, it'll not be some defense contractor or some
beltway bandit. That practice is pernicious," he responded. Powell spoke to various members of
Congress about their responsibility to rein in the practice, and tried to raise awareness of
how widespread it was becoming, according to Wilkerson.
Current ethics laws include cooling off periods that limit a former government employee's
job options. But a POGO study of the revolving door in
2018 found that current ethics regulations are insufficient, rely on self-reporting, and are
full of loopholes. These cooling off periods range from a few years to a lifetime, depending on
how much an individual was personally involved in the decisions to award contracts. This means
top officials actually have fewer restrictions than contracting officers that were directly
involved in the awards, even though they have more influence and likely more valuable
connections. And the restrictions mostly prevent former officials from taking positions that
involve representing or lobbying for a contractor, which is why there was no restriction on
Dunford joining Lockheed's board.
The Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told POGO that Dunford "has certain post-government
employment restrictions," but wouldn't go into more detail. Dunford "at all times complied with
his ethics obligations related to post-government employment," according to the emailed
statement. POGO has filed Freedom of Information Act Requests to learn more about Dunford's
ethical restrictions.
Additionally, enforcement of the regulations is rare, with only four former Pentagon
employees prosecuted for violations in the past 16 years. It is impossible to know if the low
frequency of prosecutions in the current system is due to inadequate enforcement or high
compliance with lax laws.
Loading Boards with Political Influence
Since 2008, POGO found 42 senior
defense officials "revolved" into Lockheed within two years of leaving the government.
The boards of the top five defense contractors all have at least two sitting former
high-ranking military officials. General Dynamics and Raytheon had four each, Lockheed, Boeing
and Northrop Grumman had two each.
The full number of revolvers is difficult to determine. POGO's database currently contains 408
individuals who either went to work directly with defense contractors that were awarded over
$10 million that year or went to work with lobbying firms that list defense industry clients.
The POGO database relies on open source information. Another
study found that between 2009 and 2011, 70% of three and four-star generals and admirals
who retired took gigs with defense contractors or consultancies.
A GAO study found
that in 2006, about 86,000 military and civilian personnel who had left service since 2001 were
employed by 52 major defense contractors. The study also found that 1,581 former senior
officials were employed by just seven contractors. The office estimated that 422 former
officials could have worked on contracts related to their former agencies.
From 25 Hearings in One Year, to None in 60 Years
This issue is far from new. In a 1959 alone, there were 25 hearings before the House Armed
Services Committee's Subcommittee for Special Investigations on the topic of the revolving door
and its malign influences. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous farewell address
warning of the military-industrial complex just two years later.
An analysis by POGO did not find a congressional hearing explicitly on the issue of the
Pentagon revolving door in over 60 years.
There is some hope that the law will soon start to catch up. In May of last year, Senator
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced
legislation that would impose a four-year ban on contactors hiring senior officials who
managed that company's contracts, and extend existing bans. It would also require contractors
to submit annual reports on the employment of former senior officials and would ban senior
officials from owning stock in major defense contractors.
Another bill , passed by the House in March 2019, would broaden ethics rules and expands
prohibitions on former officials receiving compensation from contractors. It is sitting on
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's desk.
The American public should be able to be confident that our top military officials are
making decisions in the interest of national security, not to secure a cushy board
position.
Jason Paladino is the National Security Investigative Reporter for the Straus Military
Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
Stories to fuel your mind. "We rise in power and make a difference in the world due to
what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst."Brain Pickings |
Maria Popova
Art by Shaun Tan for a special edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales .
Thoreau wrote as he contemplated how silence
ennobles speech . In the century and a half since, we have created a culture that equates
loudness with leadership, abrasiveness with authority. We mistake shouting for powerful
speech much as we mistake force for power itself. And yet the real measure of power is more
in the realm of Thoreau's "fine things."
So argues UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner in The
Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence ( public library ) -- the culmination of twenty years of research exploring what
power is, what confers it upon an individual, and how it shapes the structure of a
collective, a community, and a culture. Drawing on a wealth of social science studies and
insights from successful teams ranging from companies like Pixar and Google to restorative
justice programs in San Quentin State Prison, he demonstrates "the surprising and lasting
influence of soft power (culture, ideas, art, and institutions) as compared to hard power
(military might, invasion, and economic sanctions)."
Keltner writes:
Life is made up of patterns. Patterns of eating, thirst, sleep, and fight-or-flight are
crucial to our individual survival; patterns of courtship, sex, attachment, conflict, play,
creativity, family life, and collaboration are crucial to our collective survival. Wisdom
is our ability to perceive these patterns and to shape them into coherent chapters within
the longer narrative of our lives.
Power dynamics, Keltner notes, are among the central patterns that shape our experience of
life, from our romantic relationships to the workplace. But at the heart of power is a
troubling paradox -- a malignant feature of human psychology responsible for John
Dalberg-Acton's oft-cited insight that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely." Keltner explains the psychological machinery of this malfunction and considers
our recourse for resisting its workings:
The power paradox is this: we rise in power and make a difference in the world due to
what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst. We gain a
capacity to make a difference in the world by enhancing the lives of others, but the very
experience of having power and privilege leads us to behave, in our worst moments, like
impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.
How we handle the power paradox guides our personal and work lives and determines,
ultimately, how happy we and the people we care about will be. It determines our empathy,
generosity, civility, innovation, intellectual rigor, and the collaborative strength of our
communities and social networks. Its ripple effects shape the patterns that make up our
families, neighborhoods, and workplaces, as well as the broader patterns of social
organization that define societies and our current political struggles.
[...]
Much of what is most unsettling about human nature -- stigma, greed, arrogance, racial
and sexual violence, and the nonrandom distribution of depression and bad health to the
poor -- follows from how we handle the power paradox.
Art by Olivier Tallec from Louis I, King of the Sheep, an illustrated parable of how
power changes us .
What causes us to mishandle the power paradox, Keltner argues, is our culture's
traditional understanding of power -- a sort of time-capsule that no longer serves us.
Predicated on force, ruthlessness, and strategic coercion, it was shaped by Niccolò
Machiavelli's sixteenth-century book The Prince -- but it is as antiquated today as
the geocentric model of the universe that dominated Machiavelli's day. What governs the
modern world, Keltner demonstrates through two decades of revelatory studies, is a different
kind of power -- softer, more relational, predicated on reputation rather than force,
measured by one's ability to affect the lives of others positively and shift the course of
the world, however slightly, toward the common good. He writes:
Perhaps most critically, thinking of power as coercive force and fraud blinds us to its
pervasiveness in our daily lives and the fact that it shapes our every interaction, from
those between parents and children to those between work colleagues.
[...]
Power defines the waking life of every human being. It is found not only in
extraordinary acts but also in quotidian acts, indeed in every interaction and every
relationship, be it an attempt to get a two-year-old to eat green vegetables or to inspire
a stubborn colleague to do her best work. It lies in providing an opportunity to someone,
or asking a friend the right question to stir creative thought, or calming a colleague's
rattled nerves, or directing resources to a young person trying to make it in society.
Power dynamics, patterns of mutual influence, define the ongoing interactions between fetus
and mother, infant and parent, between romantic partners, childhood friends, teens, people
at work, and groups in conflict. Power is the medium through which we relate to one
another. Power is about making a difference in the world by influencing others.
In a sentiment that parallels Thoreau's wisdom on silence and shouting, Keltner adds:
A new wave of thinking about power reveals that it is given to us by others rather than
grabbed. We gain power by acting in ways that improve the lives of other people in our
social networks.
One key consequence of the fact that power is given to us by others is its reputational
nature -- an insight both disquieting to the ego and comforting to the soul, for we are
inescapably social creatures. Keltner observes:
Our influence, the lasting difference that we make in the world, is ultimately only as
good as what others think of us. Having enduring power is a privilege that depends on other
people continuing to give it to us.
"Enduring" is an operative word in Keltner's premise. The "power paradox" is paradoxical
precisely because those who manage to wrest power forcibly by the Machiavellian model may
have power, or perceived power, for a certain amount of time, but that amount is finite. Its
finitude springs from the attrition of the person's reputation. But the most troubling aspect
of the power paradox is that even if a person rises to power by counter-Machiavellian means
-- kindness, generosity, concern with the common good -- power itself will eventually warp
her priorities and render her less kind, less generous, less concerned with the common good,
which will in turn erode her power as her reputation for these counter-qualities grows.
Keltner cites a number of studies demonstrating these tendencies empirically -- poor
people give to charity a greater portion of their income than rich people, those in positions
of power exhibit more entitled behaviors, people who drive expensive cars are significantly
crueler to pedestrians at crosswalks, and so forth.
But in reading these alarmingly consistent studies, I had to wonder about one crucial
confound that remains unaddressed: People in positions of power also tend to be busier --
that is, they tend to have greater demands on their time. We know from the now-iconic 1970s
Good Samaritan
study that the single greatest predictor of uncaring, unkind, and uncompassionate
behavior, even among people who have devoted their lives to the welfare of others, is a
perceived lack of time -- a feeling of being rushed. The sense of urgency seems to consume
all of our other concerns -- it is the razor's blade that severs our connection to anything
outside ourselves, anything beyond the task at hand, and turns our laser-sharp focus of
concern onto the the immediacy of the self alone.
Art from Anne Sexton's little-known children's book .
We know this empirically, and we know its anecdotal truth intimately -- I doubt I'm alone
in the awareness that despite a deep commitment to kindness, I find myself most likely to,
say, be impatient with a fellow cyclist when I feel pressed for time, when I know I'm running
late. Even Keltner's famous and tragicomical study, which found that drivers of expensive
cars are most inconsiderate to pedestrians, might suffer from the same confound -- those who
can afford expensive cars are typically people we would deem "successful," who also typically
have far greater demands on their time. So could it be that a scarcity of time -- that
inescapable hum of consciousness
-- rather than an excess of power is the true corrupting agent of the psyche?
And so another paradox lives inside the power paradox -- the more powerful a person
becomes, the busier and more rushed she is, which cuts her off from the very qualities that
define the truly powerful. What would the studies Keltner cites look like if we controlled
not only for power, but for time -- for the perception of being rushed and demand-strained
beyond capacity? (Kierkegaard condemned the
corrosive effect of busyness nearly two centuries ago.)
Still, Keltner's central point -- that power in the modern world is "gained and maintained
through a focus on others" -- remains valid and important. He considers the conscious
considerations we can make in order to bypass the perils of the power paradox:
Handling the power paradox depends on finding a balance between the gratification of
your own desires and your focus on other people. As the most social of species, we evolved
several other-focused, universal social practices that bring out the good in others and
that make for strong social collectives. A thoughtful practitioner of these practices will
not be misled by the rush of the experience of power down the path of self-gratification
and abuse, but will choose instead to enjoy the deeper delights of making a lasting
difference in the world. These social practices are fourfold: empathizing, giving,
expressing gratitude, and telling stories. All four of these practices dignify and delight
others. They constitute the basis of strong, mutually empowered ties. You can lean on them
to enhance your power at any moment of the day by stirring others to effective action.
But "power" is one of those words -- like "love" and "happiness" -- to have become
grab-bag terms for a constellation of behaviors, states, emotions, and phenomena. Noting that
"a critical task of science is to provide clear nomenclature -- precise terms that sharpen
our understanding of patterned phenomena in the outside world and inside the mind," Keltner
offers elegant and necessary definitions of the distinct notions comprising the constellation
of power in modern society:
POWER your capacity to make a difference in the world by influencing the states
of other people.
STATUS the respect that you enjoy from other people in your social network; the
esteem they direct to you. Status goes with power often but not always.
CONTROL your capacity to determine the outcomes in your life. You can have
complete control over your life -- think of the reclusive hermit -- but have no
power.
SOCIAL CLASS the mixture of family wealth, educational achievement, and
occupational prestige that you enjoy; alternatively, the subjective sense you have of where
you stand on a class ladder in society, high, middle, or low. Both forms of social class
are societal forms of power.
In the remainder of The
Power Paradox , Keltner goes on to examine, through a robust body of research bridged
with intelligent insight, what we can do both as individuals and as a society to cultivate
the qualities that empower us by empowering others and counter those that feed the most
selfish and small-spirited tendencies of human nature. Complement it with Blaise Pascal's
timeless 17th-century wisdom on the art of
persuasion and philosopher Martha Nussbaum on human
dignity and the nuanced relationship between agency and victimhood .
Well they signed the agreement with the Taliban and two days later the DOD was bombing
them again so who knows what happens there.
Trump has declared all sorts of deals that ultimately turned into puffs of smoke -- the
non-deal with North Korea comes to mind. I consider pulling out of the TPP and tariffs
against China more indicative of bucking the consensus, but those can be reversed by Trump or
any other president whenever they feel like it.
After a community transmitted case of coronavirus was reported in California,
Dr. Drew Pinsky talks about the coronavirus:
PINSKY: I don't know what they're talking about. We used to point at the way Indiana
responded to the opiate and the HIV epidemic as the model for the country. I don't know what
they're talking about. The only reason I felt comfortable with Pence as Vice President was I
was aware of his track record in Indiana in handling these serious problems, and they handled
them better than most states did, almost any other state. So, I don't know what the hell
people are talking about. That is fake news...
We have in the United States 24 million cases of flu-like illness, 180,000
hospitalizations, 16,000 dead from influenza. We have zero deaths from coronavirus. We have
almost no cases. There are people walking around out there with the virus that don't even
know they have it, it's so mild.
So it's going to be much more widespread than we knew. It's
going to be much milder than we knew. The 1.7% fatality rate is going to fall. Where was the
press during the Mediterranean Corona outbreak, where the fatality rate was 41%? Why didn't
they get crazed about MERS or SARS?
This is an overblown press-created hysteria. This thing
is well in hand. President Trump is absolutely correct.
by Helen
Buyniski , RT A notorious hedge-funder who's left a trail of broken companies (and
countries) in his wake has set his sights on ousting Twitter's Jack Dorsey. Users complaining
about new features should know the platform may never be the same. Elliott Management,
euphemistically called an "activist investor" by timid media who fear its legendary
founder Paul Singer, has reportedly snapped up a four percent ($1 billion) stake in Twitter,
nominating four directors to its board as the start of a bid to oust Dorsey. The hedge fund
supposedly resents the CEO dividing his attentions between Twitter, Square, and a six-month
move to Africa, believing Twitter is capable of churning out bigger profits. Like any good
hedge fund – so the narrative goes – they just want the value of the company to
increase (stock jumped seven percent on the news).
What this coverage leaves out – and what makes Twitter's plight more than the usual
business scrap – is Singer's history. A major Republican donor and huge booster for
Israel, he's also a notoriously ruthless businessman who embodies "vulture capitalism,"
leaving a trail of asset-stripped companies and even a few economically-ruined countries in his
wake over his insanely profitable career. Media coverage of Singer's interest in Twitter has
gone to great lengths to present his interest in the platform as "
strictly business-related ," however, and some conservatives have even gotten excited
by the thought that the neocon Singer will end the ideologically-motivated censorship they
claim to experience on the platform – but nothing could be further from
reality.
Here come the vultures
Fox News' Tucker Carlson profiled Elliott Management's strategy in December thus: "Buy a
distressed company, outsource the jobs, liquidate the valuable assets, fire middle management,
and once the smoke has cleared, dump what remains to the highest bidder, often in Asia."
Amid the financial crash of 2008, Elliott, with other hedge funds, acquired distressed US auto
parts supplier Delphi, took billions in bailout money from the Obama government (a transaction
the president's "auto-czar" compared to "extortion" ), then offloaded so many
jobs overseas that 25 factories were forced to close, putting tens of thousands of union and
white-collar workers out on the street, as well as slashing pensions. Elliott Management made
over $1 billion from the deal
.
When Singer's fund sinks its teeth into its prey, it does not let go, and most victims have
learned to give up and hope for a quick death. When Elliott bought an 11 percent stake in
outdoors retailer Cabela's, it began pushing for a sale of what was then a profitable company.
The management so feared Singer that it sold within a year, sending stock prices through the
roof but putting almost 2,000 people out of their jobs, setting off a downward spiral that,
Carlson says, "destroyed" Cabela's hometown of Sidney, Nebraska, whose residents feared
to even speak about the hedge funder on camera four years later. AT&T similarly ran for its
life when Singer's fund bit off a $3.2 billion stake of the company in September, acquiescing
to several demands within a month (and there's still time for the rest).
Those who don't acquiesce are guaranteed to suffer. After Elliott Management bought up a
chunk of its debt, the country of Argentina defaulted, holding out for 15 years on Singer's
attempts to collect. A 13-year legal battle ensued, during which Singer's fund seized an
Argentine naval ship to prove they were serious about getting paid. Then-president Cristina
Fernandez denounced the "Vulture Lord," but her replacement, Mauricio Macri, finally
agreed in 2016 to pay up – just in time for the threat of another
debt default .
Peru and Congo have similarly felt the sting of Elliott Management's tactics, having their
distressed debt snapped up and then weaponized against them in court. And even when Singer
doesn't win, his opponents lose. Korean electronics giant Samsung was able to fight off his
takeover efforts when he tried to block a move by the Lee family to consolidate their holdings,
but the bitter battle ended in a five-year prison sentence for company head Jay Y. Lee on
bribery
charges and the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
the
ideologically-motivated vultures, that is
Singer's corporate interests overseas don't stop at outsourcing to cut costs, however. He
founded an organization called Start-Up Nation Central to facilitate the transfer of huge
chunks of the US tech industry to Israel. The initiative seeks to counter the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement by making Israel essentially boycott-proof, and Singer has
accordingly used his billions to
push American tech firms into Israel – Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple
all have research and development centers there as of 2016. If he gets control of Twitter, the
company's US employees may be surprised to find their replacements speaking Hebrew, not
Chinese.
As for the conservatives who think Singer will defend them from Twitter censorship? Singer
was a hardcore anti-Trumper in 2015, backing Florida Senator Marco Rubio and funding the
prototype of the notorious Steele dossier. Former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon "
declared
war " on the billionaire in 2017 upon learning of his involvement. While Singer
financially backs Trump now, journalist Philip Weiss and others have suggested the hedge funder
"cut a deal with Trump on Israel," offering his support in exchange for Trump going
all-in on "protecting" the Jewish State.
Singer is the second-largest donor to the bloodthirsty think tank Foundation for Defense of
Democracies and also supports JINSA and the American Enterprise Institute – all
dyed-in-the-wool neocon groups cheerleading for war with Iran as they did in Iraq. If Trump's
"America-first" base thinks Singer is going to fight for their free speech on Twitter,
they're about to get a rude awakening. Anti-war voices on both sides of the spectrum will
likely find the censorship intensified to the point where they long for the days of mere shadow
banning.
Battle of the billionaires
Dorsey is prepared to stand and fight – for now. He announced on Thursday he'd put his
plans to live in Africa for six months on hold, supposedly due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Meanwhile, Dorsey's fellow tech tycoon Elon Musk has
pledged to help him fight the takeover, tweeting his support on Monday, and Twitter
employees pledged their support with the #webackjack hashtag.
Twitter users complaining about the "Snapchatization" of their beloved platform
should realize they're looking at something quite a bit more serious than the rollout of an
unpopular feature. Twitter, despite its numerous flaws, remains a vital communication channel
for many. Whatever lies ahead for the platform – a stripped-down MySpace-esque husk, a
megaphone for the never-Trump wing of the GOP, another addition to Israel's Silicon Wadi
– only one thing can be certain: it will be profitable for Elliott Management.
Subscribe to RT newsletter to
get stories the mainstream media won't tell you.
What follows are the unit prices, rounded to the nearest dollar, that the
various branches of the U.S. military expect to pay for various air-launched weapons in the
2021 Fiscal Year as they appear in the official budget documents. Air-to-Air Missiles:
These unit prices are averages for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year orders for
both services, which include lots of AIM-9X-2 Block II and AIM-9X-3 Block II+ missiles,
the latter of which
is specifically for variants F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air To Air Missile (AMRAAM) (Air Force)- $1.095
million
AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air To Air Missile (AMRAAM) (Navy)- $995,018
Air-to-Surface Missiles:
AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER) (Navy) - $6.149
million
This unit price is an average for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year order, which
may include a variety of Hellfire missiles in Air Force service, including, but not
limited to the AGM-114R2, AGM-114R4,
AGM-114R9E , and AGM-114R12.
This is also the unit price for orders in the base budget. The Air Force is also
looking to purchase a much larger number of AGM-114 variants through the supplemental
Overseas Contingency Operations budget at an average unit cost $31,000.
AGM-114 Hellfire (Army) - $213,143
This unit price is an average for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year order, which
may include a variety of Hellfire missiles in Army service, including various different
variants of
the AGM-114R , as well as the millimeter-wave radar-guided
AGM-114L .
This is also the unit price for orders in the base budget. The Army is also looking
to purchase a much larger number of AGM-114R variants through the supplemental Overseas
Contingency Operations budget at an average unit cost $76,461.
AGM-114 Hellfire (Navy) - $45,409
This unit price is an average for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year order, which
may include a variety of Hellfire missiles in
Navy and Marine Corps service, including, but not limited to the AGM-114K/K2,
AGM-114M, AGM-114N, AGM-114P/P2, and AGM-114Q.
This unit price is an average for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year order, which
includes examples of the AGM-158A JASSM and AGM-158B JASSM-Extended Range
(JASSM-ER).
The Air Force also expects the complete 2021 Fiscal Year JASSM order will also
include the purchase of the first batch of low rate initial production AGM-158D
JASSM-Extreme Range (JASSM-XR) missiles.
AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) (Air Force) - $3.960 million
AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) (Navy) - $3.518 million
This unit price is an average for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year order, which
may include the GBU-39A/B Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) variants, which has a special
carbon fiber body intended to reduce the chance of collateral damage, and GBU-39B/B
Laser SDBs.
Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) (Navy) - $22,208
These are the unit prices for orders in the base budget. The Air Force is also
looking to purchase a much smaller number of JDAM kits through the supplemental Overseas
Contingency Operations budget at an average unit cost of $36,000. The Navy is also
looking to purchase a smaller number of JDAM kits through the supplemental Overseas
Contingency Operations budget at an average unit cost of $23,074.
These unit prices are also averages for the entire projected 2021 Fiscal Year orders
for both services and apply to the JDAM guidance kits only for 500, 1,000, and
2,000-pound class bombs.
This unit price average also includes multi-mode
Laser JDAM kits.
The different JDAM guidance kits will work with a
wide variety of
different dumb bomb types within those classes, but some, such as the new
BLU-137/B 2,000-pound class bunker buster, require certain weapon-specific
modifications that impact the specific price point.
Per the Air Force budget, a standard, unguided Mk 82 500-pound class bomb has a unit
price of $4,000, while 2,000-pound class Mk 84 unguided bombs cost $16,000 apiece.
It's important to note that a number of air-launched munitions that are in active service
across the U.S. military, such as the AGM-65E Maverick laser-guided
missiles, AGM-154
Joint Stand Off Weapon (JSOW) glide bombs,
AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, and
Paveway laser and
multi-mode guidance kits for various types of bombs, are not mentioned above. This is
because the services are not planning to buy new stocks of them in the 2021 Fiscal Year or they
are included include broader sections of the budget where their exact unit cost is not readily
apparent. There are requests for funds for sustainment of many of those weapons, as well as
modifications and upgrades, too. The Navy is notably expecting to begin purchasing a powered
derivative of the AGM-154, known as the
JSOW-Extended Range (JSOW-ER), in the 2022 Fiscal Year.
Regardless, now, the next time you see a U.S. military combat aircraft, drone or helicopter,
you'll have a head start figuring out just how much its loadout of bombs and missiles actually
cost.
Without any proof, The New York Times and Washington Post run "Russia
helping Sanders" stories, and Sanders responds by bashing Russia, writes Joe Lauria.
W ith Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders spooking the Democratic establishment, The
Washington Post Friday reported damaging information from intelligence sources against
Sanders by saying that Russia is trying to help his campaign.
If the story is true and if intelligence agencies are truly committed to protecting U.S.
citizens, the Sanders campaign would have been quietly informed and shown evidence to back up
the claims.
Instead the story wound up on the front page of the Post , "according to people
familiar with the matter." Zero evidence was produced to back up the intelligence agencies'
assertion.
"It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken," the Post reported.
That would tell any traditional news editor that there was no story until it is known.
Instead major U.S. media are again playing the role of laundering totally unverified
"information" just because it comes from an intelligence source. Reporting such assertions
without proof amounts to an abdication of journalistic responsibility. It shows total trust in
U.S. intelligence despite decades of deception and skullduggery from these agencies.
Centrist Democratic Party leaders have expressed extreme unease with Sanders leading the
Democratic pack. Politicoreported
Friday that former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's entry into the race is explicitly to stop
Sanders from winning on the first ballot at the party convention.
A day after The New York Times
reported , also without evidence, that Russia is again trying to help Donald Trump win in
November, the Post reports Moscow is trying to help Sanders too, again without
substance. Both candidates whom the establishment loathes were smeared on successive days.
In a Tough Spot
The Times followed the Post report Friday by making it appear that Sanders
himself had chosen to make public the intelligence assessment about "Russian interference" in
his campaign.
But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement after
the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on
anonymous sources.
Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that Russia is trying to
help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even disloyalty to) U.S.
intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin.
So politician that he is, and one who is trying to win the White House, Sanders told the
Post :
"I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear:
Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do. In 2016,
Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that
they are doing it again in 2020."
The Times quoted Sanders as calling Russian President Vladimir Putin an "autocratic
thug." The paper reported Sanders saying in a statement: "Let's be clear, the Russians want to
undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand
firmly against their efforts and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our
election."
Responding to a cacophony of criticism that Sanders' supporters are especially vicious
online, as opposed to the millions of other vicious people online, Sanders attempted to use
Russia as a scapegoat, the way the Clinton campaign did in 2016. He said: "Some of the ugly
stuff on the Internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real
supporters."
But no matter how strong Sander's denunciations of Russia, his opponents will now target him
as being a tool of the Kremlin.
Mission accomplished.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at[email protected]and
followed on Twitter @unjoe .
Let`s face it,even though Bernie is a moderate Social Democrat,at best.He`s the only one
capable of beating "the Orange"version of Hitler.But he sounds as if the DNC,big wigs,decide
to deny him the nomination;he`d go along with it.Just like before;when he even campaigned for
the"Crooked One(Hillary).I guess we`ll see.
Kim Dixon , February 24, 2020 at 04:31
The most-important element missed in this piece is this: Sanders is helping the DNC and
the MIC gin up fear of, and hatred for, the only other nuclear superpower on earth.
If you were around during the McCarthy years, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the '73
Arab/Israeli war, and all the other almost-Armageddon crises of Cold War One, you know that
nothing could be stupider and more-dangerous than that. The missiles still sit in their
silos, waiting for the next early-warning misunderstanding or proxy-war miscalculation to
send them flying.
Sanders lived through it all. He's supposed to be the furthest-Left pol in Congress. So
how can he possibly advocate for anything but detente and disarmament?
SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:18
I would really like to support Bernie, but statements like this make me shake my head.
It's more a reflection of America today I guess. Politicians believe to a man (or woman) that
they must put the hate on Putin and Russia or they have no chance. It doesn't matter that the
Russia garbage is 100% false. And, I don't mean they 'interfered' only a little there was
nothing, nothing at all. Even Trump has to go along with this propaganda. I don't know how
anyone can believe this idiotic (and incredibly dangerous, as you point out) rubbish at this
point. But you can't call your friends blanking morons.
J Gray , February 25, 2020 at 02:55
I think he successfully dodged a bullet but set himself up to offer comprehensive election
reform if he pulls out a victory .
or it is an early sign that he, the DNC & MIC are coming to terms. It doesn't have
that ring to it to me, like when Trump called for regime-change war in Venezuela &
defunding schools to build a space army. That was a clear on-the-record sell-out & got
him off the Impeachment hook the next day. Similar to when the Clinton signed the Telecom Act
to get off his.
They are still coming after Sanders too hard w/their McCarthiast attacks to feel like he
is siding with them. I think he has to do this because they are bundling his movement,
Venezuela and Russia into the new Red Scare.
"#JoeLauria's piece in #ConsortiumNews is excellent. He calmly sets out #Sanders'
political dilemma. The latest line from US intelligence agency stenographer media like
#NYTimes is that #Russians are helping both #Trump and Sanders because they simply want to
sow discord and cynicism about US democracy , they do not care who wins. #CaitlinJohnstone
neatly satirises this by writing a spoof article claiming that US intelligence agencies have
discovered #Bloomberg is being helped by Russians because he has two Russian
grandfathers.
It has reached the point , as Lauria shows, where any criticism of such US MSM nonsense
leaves the speaker open to the allegation that he is soft on/ naive about/complicit in
Russian election meddling. Without being a Trump supporter, one can understand Trump's rage
and contempt for what is going on .
Justin Glyn. Consortium News. Joe Lauria. Tony Kevin"
Tony Kevin , February 23, 2020 at 21:32
Sanders and Trump will survive this Deep State manipulation and attempted blackmail . They
will see off the Clintonistas and Deep State moles, and will go on to fight a tough but fair
election. Americans are sick of Russophobia.
jack , February 24, 2020 at 15:25
agreed – the Russiagate psyop is past its shelf life – BUT Deep State will
carry on – it's a global entity and they're into literally everything – no idea
how any known, normal governing structure can deal with it
Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the
MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the
people
Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the
MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the
people
Dfnslblty , February 23, 2020 at 09:07
Front page drama plus zero evidence began long ago with 'anonymous sources said "!
Complete lack of accountability on the part of the sources and on the part of the
reporters.
Thus we receive a "reality teevee " potus , and we are pleased to be hypnotised and
titillated.
A true revolution would demand CN-quality reportage and reject msm pablum.
JohnDoe , February 23, 2020 at 03:43
It's enough to look at the news on mainstream media to understand who's, as usual,
meddling in the elections. In the latest period for the first time I saw a lot of
enthusiastic comments and articles about Bernie Sanders. It's clear they are pushing him. But
why those who isolated him in during the primaries against Clinton are now supporting him?
It's obvious, that they want to get rid of Elizabeth Warren, first push ahead the weaker
candidates, then they'll switch their support towards another candidate, probably
Bloomberg.
delia ruhe , February 23, 2020 at 00:14
Well, thank you Joe Lauria! I am in trouble in several comment threads for suggesting that
the intel community is at it again, trying to ruin two campaigns by identifying the
candidates with Putin and the Kremlin. Now I can quote you. Excellent piece, as usual.
Deniz , February 22, 2020 at 22:44
Imagine Sanders and Trump, putting their differences aside and declaring war on the deep
state during a debate. They have the same enemies.
The same people who planted Steele's dirty dosier are going to try to steal Sanders
election from him. It wont be Trump and the Republicans who rigs the election against
Sanders.
SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:21
Trump actually seemed to want to help Bernie a bit (well, he keeps calling him 'Crazy
Bernie as well). He put out some tweet calling this latest rubbish, Hoax #7. But Bernie would
rather say something stupid, like 'I'm not a friend of Putin he is' talk about 5-year
olds.
Deniz , February 25, 2020 at 00:49
Its disappointing. Sanders heart seems to be in the right place, but when it comes time to
face the sinister forces that run the country for their own benefit, he will be absolutely
crushed.
This will never end.
No president will ever change anything.
The deep state tentacles will eventually kill us all.
I am going to go and enjoy what's left.
Marko , February 22, 2020 at 20:24
" But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement
after the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on
anonymous sources Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that
Russia is trying to help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even
disloyalty to) U.S. intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin. "
I suspect that Sanders was given a classified briefing a month ago , which he couldn't
disclose to the public. If so , and given that he didn't make this clear immediately after
being accused of withholding this information , he has only himself to blame for the
resulting "bad look".
JWalters , February 22, 2020 at 19:06
The corporate media has revealed itself to be a monopoly behind the scenes, working in
unison to trash Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Even though Gabbard is only at a few
percent in the polls, her message is potentially devastating to the war profiteers who own
America's Vichy MSM.
"Congressman Oscar Callaway lost his Congressional election for opposing US entry into WW
1. Before he left office, he demanded investigation into JP Morgan & Co for purchasing
control over America's leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in
favor of his corporate and banking interests, including profits from US participation in the
war."
war * profiteerstory. * blogspot. * com/p/war-profiteers-and-israels-bank.html
Thankfully, there is still a free American press, of which Consortium News is a stellar
example.
elmerfudzie , February 22, 2020 at 13:25
The CIA and DIA (it has about a dozen agencies under it and is much larger than any other
Intel agency) are supposed to monitor threats to our national security, that originate
abroad. Aside from a few closed door sessions with a select group of congresspersons, our
Intel agencies have practically no real democratic oversight and remain, for all intents and
purposes, a parallel government(s) well hidden from public view. In particular how they are
financed and what their actual annual budgets really are. How these agencies every managed to
seep into any electioneering process what so ever, is beyond me, since they are all
intentionally very surreptitious- by design. We ask questions and these Intel agencies are
quick to tout the usual phrase; that subject area is secret and needs to be addressed in
closed session, blah, blah, blah. Of course "secrecy" translates into, we do what we want
when we want and use information any way we want because our parallel governments represent
the best example(s) of a perpetual motion machine that does not require outside monitoring.
The origins of these "parallel entities" can be traced to the Rockefeller brothers and their
associated international corporations. There's the rub folks. Our citizens at large will
never overtake for the purposes of real monitoring, this empire and elephant in the room,
directly. However we do have one avenue left and it requires a rank and file demand from the
people to their state representatives demanding two long standing issues, they remain
unresolved and until a solution is found, will permit dark powers to side step every level of
democratic governments-anywhere.
The first is true campaign finance reform and the second is assigning, or rather, removing
the status of person-hood to corporate entities. The Rockefeller's used their corporate power
and wealth to influence legislative, judicial and executive bodies. They cannot help but do
as the puppet master commands! Be it some form of, corporatism, fascism, feudalism, monarchy,
oligarchy, even bankster-ism or any other "ism We as citizens at large must make every effort
to again, obtain true campaign finance reform and remove the lobbying presence inside the
beltway. Today, the corporate entity has risen to a level that completely overtakes and
smothers any authentic democratic representation, of and by the people. Originally (circa the
early1800's) American corporations were permitted to exist and papers were drawn based on the
specific duties they were about to perform, this for the benefit of the local community for
example, building a bridge. Once the job was completed, the incorporation was either
liquidated or remanded over to the relevant governing body for the purposes of reevaluating
the necessity of re-certifying the original incorporation papers. Old man Rockefeller changed
the governance and oversight privilege by forcing and promulgating legislation(s) such as
limited liability clauses, strategies to oppose competition, tax evasion schemes and
(eventually) assigning person-hood to corporate entities, thus creating a parallel government
within the government. It all began in Delaware and until we clear our heads and assign names
to the actual problems, as I've itemized here, our citizenry will never experience the
freedom to fashion our destiny. Please visit TUC radio's two part expose' by Richard
Grossman. It will help CONSORTIUMNEWS readers to understand just what a monumental task is
ahead for all of us. Work for a fair and equitable future in America, demand campaign finance
reform and kick the hustling lobbyists out of our government. Voters being choked to death
with senseless debates and useless candidates.
Jeff Harrison , February 22, 2020 at 12:36
The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the craven
politicians in Washington, DC. And, no, Ben, we can't keep our republic because we don't have
a sufficient mass of critical thinkers to run it. If we did, this kind of BS, having been
shot full of holes once, wouldn't get any air.
Alan Ross , February 22, 2020 at 10:37
Sanders may win the nomination and the election but he cannot get a break from some
purists on the left. His reaction may have been quite astute. When Sanders says that we
should station troops on the borders of Russia or arm the Ukrainians, then you can say he
really is anti-Russian. I have not heard all that he has said, but what I have heard sounds
so much like hot air put out by a left politician trying to deal with the ages-old
establishment and right wing smear that he is a pawn of the commies, a fellow traveler, a
pinko, and now an agent of a foreign power, a Russian asset and so on. There is real
criticism of Sanders, but his statements about Putin and Russia do not add up to much.
Skip Scott , February 22, 2020 at 09:51
Anyone who is still under the influence of the MSM hypnosis of RussiaGate, led by Rachel
Madcow, needs to think long and hard about this latest propaganda campaign. The real message
here is unless you support corporate sponsored warmonger from column A or B, you are a tool
of the "evil Rooskies". And the funny thing is, Sanders is "weak tea" when it comes to issues
of war and peace, and the feeding of the war machine at the government trough with no
limits.
The purpose of this BIG LIE of the "Intelligence" agencies is to make it impossible for
someone to be against the Forever War without being tarred as a "Foreign Agent", or at least
a "useful idiot", of the "EVIL ROOSKIES". To simply want peaceful coexistence on its own
merits is impossible.
Imagine if Sanders dared to mention that Putin enjoys substantial majority support inside
Russia, and seeks peaceful coexistence in a multi-polar world, instead of calling him an
"autocratic thug". Often for politicians, speaking the truth is a "bridge too far". I wonder
if Sanders (like Hillary) finds it necessary to hold "private" positions that differ from his
"public" positions? Or does he really believe his own BS?
I had not seen Mr Joe Lauria's article when I commented on Mr Ben Norton's story, but my
reply could fit here as well.
The idiot American public dismays me. To them, the "MSM news" and "celebrity gossip reports"
are equal and both to be wholeheartedly believed.
There is no point in trying to educate a resistant public in the differences between data and
gossip -- public doesn't care.
I weep for what we have lost -- a Constitution, a nation of free thinkers. My heart breaks
for the world's people, and what my country tries to do to them, with only a few resistant
other countries confronting and challenging America.
It is so difficult to know the truth of a situation and yet to know that almost no one
(statistically speaking) believes you.
Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:04
A better distinction might be, concerning the intelligence of the American public, the one
Chomsky has used, rooted in Ancient Greek culture, that between KNOWLEDGE and OPINION.
Americans, of course, have OPINIONS about everything, but little KNOWLEDGE about much of
anything. And it seems their idea of FREEDOM is related to, bound up with, their having
OPINIONS about virtually EVERYTHING.
So much for our being a HIGHER life form.
We're in the process of destroying EVERYTHING, not just HIGHER LIFE FORMS [us], but all
flora and fauna, water and air on the planet–as I said, EVERYTHING. To paraphrase from
memory a citation by Perry Anderson from the work of heterodox Italian Marxist, Sebastiano
Timpanaro, "What we are witnessing is not the triumph of man over history, but the victory of
nature over man."
Tony , February 22, 2020 at 07:40
The Trump administration has pulled out of the INF missile treaty citing totally unproven
claims of Russian violations.
It also looks like allowing the START treaty on strategic nuclear missiles to lapse if we do
not stop it.
And so, in what sense would Putin want Trump to get re-elected?
Van Jones of CNN once described the original allegations of Russian meddling in US
elections as a 'great big nothing burger'.
Sounds right to me.
Sam F , February 22, 2020 at 07:24
When the secret agencies and mass media stop manipulating public opinion, despite their
oligarchy masters' ability to control election results anyway, we will know that they no
longer need deception to control the People. Simple force will do the job, with a few
marketing claims to assist in hiring goons to suppress any popular movement. Democracy is
completely lost, and the pretense of democracy will soon follow.
michael , February 22, 2020 at 07:03
Another foray into domestic politics by the CIA, with anonymous sources and no evidence
shown (as no evidence exists). Perhaps the CIA (which probably works for Putin, or Bloomberg,
or anyone who pays them best, but they are loyal to the US dollar only; and maybe heroin?) is
even now making up another Chris Steele/ Fusion GPS/ CrowdStrike dossier, getting that
Russian caterer to the Kremlin to pump out clickbait and sink both Trump and Sanders. Because
RUSSIANS!!! are "genetically driven" to interfere in American democracy. Next we'll have the
DNC (CIA) pushing Superpredator tropes such as "this enormous cohort of black and Latino
males" who "don't know how to behave in the workplace" and "don't have any prospects." With
this Clintonian (and Biden and Bloomberg) mindset, America will be increasing incarceration
once again. That $500,000 bribe the Clintons took from Putin in 2010 when Hillary was
Secretary of State probably plays a role.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have surprisingly noted that China,
not Russia, is America's #1 concern: "America's concerns about Beijing's commercial and
military expansion should be your concerns as well." Since Bill Clinton's Chinagate fiasco in
1996, Communist China, for a measly $million or so in illegal campaign donations, gained
permanent trade status, took millions of American jobs, and suddenly were allowed access to
advanced, even military technologies. This was the impetus for China's rise to be the
strongest nation in the world. There are no doubt statues of the Clintons all over China, and
soon to Hunter Biden, if his Chinese backed hedge funds do well. There are some rumors that
Bloomberg has transacted business with China, although doubtful he tried to build a hotel in
Beijing or Moscow, or the CIA would be all over it (for a cut)!
Realist , February 24, 2020 at 00:22
Esper is a dangerously deranged man who seems, at least to me, to be telegraphing his
intent, and certainly his desire, to get into a kinetic war with both Russia and China
(Washington already has most of the hybrid war tactics already fully operational), unless
English usage has changed so drastically that insults, overt threats and unrestrained bombast
are now part of calm, rational cordial diplomacy. I would not be surprised if neocon
mouthpieces like Esper are not secretly honing their rhetorical style to emulate the
exaggerated volume and enunciation of der ursprüngliche Führer.
Ma Laoshi , February 22, 2020 at 06:04
"So politician that he is" -- isn't this already on the slippery slope towards double
standards, that is, would say Hillary get a similar pass for making McCarthyite statements
like this? Isn't a dispassionate reading of the situation that Bernie is an inveterate
liar , and moreover specializing in the particular brand of lies that could get us all
into nuclear war? Whether it's character or merely age, haven't we seen enough to conclude
that Mr. Sanders would be much weaker still vis-a-vis the Deep State than Donald Trump turned
out to be?
For those without a dog in this fight, shouldn't it cause great merriment if the various
RussiaGaters devour each other? Mr. Sanders has seen for years that the "muh Putin" hoax will
be turned against him whenever needed. If he nonetheless persists, doesn't that show his
resignation that his role in this election circus is a very temporary one, like in '16? How
was that definition of insanity again?
If you want to fix America, then the Empire and Zionism are your enemies; so is the Dem
party that is inextricably wedded to these forces. Play along with them and–well what
can you expect.
aNanyMouse , February 22, 2020 at 13:29
Yeah, and Bernie sucked up to the Dem brass on the impeachment crap, even tho Tulsi had
the stones to at least abstain. How sad.
GMCasey , February 21, 2020 at 22:33
Dear DNC:
KNOCK IT OFF! The only person I am voting for President is the only one who is capable -- and
that is Bernie Sanders.
And really, with NATO breaking the agreement where they agreed to NOT go up to Russia's
border : it is getting very sad and embarrassing to be an American because the elected ones
make agreements and yet break so many. What with Turkey and Israel and Saudi Arabia trying to
disrupt the area, I am sure that Russia is too busy to bother disrupting America . Lately
America seems to disrupt itself for many ridiculous reasons. I am sorry that the gossip rags,
which used to be important newspapers have failed in supporting their First Amendment right
of Free speech . I just finished reading "ALL the Presidents Men. " What has happened to you,
Washington Post, because as a newspaper, you really used to be somebody. Please review your
past and become what you once were, a real genuine news source.
Sam F , February 23, 2020 at 09:18
Wikipedia: "In October 2013, the paper's longtime controlling family, the Graham family,
sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company established by Jeff Bezos, for $250
million in cash."
Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:37
One of the craziest ongoing media phenomena, prevalent in the Impeachment Hearings, is the
repeated claim that RUSSIA IS AT WAR WITH UKRAINE.
What kind of "Higher Life Form" enthusiastically EATS IT'S OWN SHIT?
Sam F , February 21, 2020 at 22:10
Mass media denouncing politicians based upon "information" from secret agencies are
propaganda operations, and should be sued for proof of their claims. But of course the
judiciary are tools of oligarchy as much as the mass media. No one has constitutional rights
in the US under our utterly corrupt judiciary, only paid party privileges.
Eddie S , February 21, 2020 at 21:55
Hmmm.. so those oh-so-clever Russkies (I mean they MUST-BE if they were able to outwit ALL
the US politicos -- who are immersed in the US political culture 24/7 as well as having
grown-up in this country and having billions of $ to spend -- in 2016 with a mere $100k of
Facebook ads) messed-up this time! They're supporting OPPOSING candidates, effectively
canceling-out their efforts ? Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a
vastly exaggerated distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated
by a sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence
community??
There is NO "intel"; plenty of un-intel, shameless mendacity from these info=dictators
zionazi NYT and Wapoop drivel; hopefully the insouciant public is starting to see what a sham
these rats are. Hearst outdistanced.
Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 10:45
"Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a vastly exaggerated
distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated by a
sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence
community??"
Exactly. Shame on Hillary Clinton and all who view the electorate with such disdain as to
have pushed this propaganda on us for the last three years, and continue to do so, obviously.
If either Hillary Clinton or the "sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic
military & intelligence community" had any integrity at all, they would have beaten Trump
handily in 2016, just as they condescendingly told us they would. They did not, though, and
have been outraged to have been exposed as the frauds they are ever since.
When your political party is nothing more than a marketing scheme designed to fool the
population, that population will turn on you. Imagine that. And no amount of Russia-gating
will save you. Shame on all who would continue this charade.
John Drake , February 21, 2020 at 21:33
Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad
Ruskies are trying to help. One week its Trump, the next it is Sanders. Frankly on the face,
it sounds like bad intel to me.
But fortunately I am a regular reader of this site and Ray McGovern; and know it's all, to
put it politely , disinformation; or less politely a pile of diarrhea invented by Hillarybots
after a really really bad election day three years ago.
The only thing that disturbs me is the way Bernie buys into this Russiagate thing himself.
Maybe you all could send him a trove of articles debunking the whole mess, especially Ray and
Bill's forensics.
Fred Dean , February 23, 2020 at 03:52
When Durham starts indicting people and the story of the Deep State coup against the
President becomes common knowledge, Bernie's statements on Russiagate will be a liability.
Trump's people are digging up whatever videos they can of Bernie talking smack about
Trump/Russia. It is a crack in Bernie's armor and we can expect Trump to exploit. Bernie has
been such a toadie to the DNC. He cowers to the Democratic establishment because he fears
they will pull his credentials to run as a Democrat.
OlyaPola , February 23, 2020 at 08:08
"Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad
Ruskies are trying to help."
Output is a function of framing and consequently the intelligence community/opponents are
helping others including the Russians who encourage such help by doing nothing.
KiwiAntz , February 21, 2020 at 21:26
What a shambolic mess of a Nation that America is! Nothing more than a Billionaire's
Banana Republic? A International laughingstock ruled by a Oligarchy, masquerading as a
Democracy? And if all else fails to get rid of Bernie Saunders by vote rigging or
gerrymandering or other nefarious acts of sabotage with Superdelegates stealing the
nominations then resurrect the bogus Russiagate Conspiracy, a ridiculous failed & faked
experiment to gaslight, spook & confuse the population again? Wouldn't it be delicious if
Russiagate was actually TRUE, it would be payback for the USA, a Nation that meddles in the
affairs & politics of every other Country on Earth, overthrowing & regime changing
everyone who doesn't "bend the knee" to America, the most corrupt & evil Nation on Earth
since Nazi Germany! I've never seen a more propagandised or mindf**ked People on Earth than
the American people! It must be soul destroying to live in this Country & have to put up
with this nonsense, day in, day out?
Ian , February 22, 2020 at 02:47
Yes, it is. Living with the infuriating unreality and militaristic worldview that is so
cultivated here takes a personal emotional and intellectual toll. No place is perfect, but
when I travel to Europe I feel a weight lifted.
Broompilot , February 22, 2020 at 03:50
Kiwi you may have a point.
ML , February 22, 2020 at 09:19
Yep. But for those of us with our critical thinking skills intact, we won't let it be soul
destroying, Kiwi. Still, the daily crapload of bs we are fed in the "legacy" press is
aggravating beyond the beyonds. Cheers, fellow Earthling.
Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 11:09
I hear you, KiwiAntz. It IS soul destroying to withstand this onslaught of disinformation
each and every day. There is a rhythm to it that is undeniable, too. One can almost predict
when the next propaganda hit will come, as here – after their latest would-be savior,
Mike Bloomberg, imploded on live TV, and with Bernie looking more and more inevitable.
Our reality in the US today is that we have to fight against our own media to approach
anything resembling a reasonable discussion about what is important to vast majorities (mean
tweets and fake memes aren't it) or to champion candidates who display even the slightest
integrity. But, of course, it is not 'our' media. It is 'theirs.' And they will continue to
abuse us with it until we reject it completely.
robert e williamson jr , February 23, 2020 at 20:31
I see things pretty clearly for what they are and the billionaire democrats are heading
for a train wreck and I hate to admit I cannot look away.
Trump is just another self serving U.S. president leaving a stain in America's underwear
adding to the humongous pile of America's dirty laundry.
When the demographics finally dictate it change will come and likely not before. On that
note I wold like to reach out here. Justin King, who goes as Beau on the net runs a site
called the Fifth Column News and does a ton of informative and educational videos on many
various topics. .
If you go to youtube, search and watch each of the videos I'm about to list here you stand
to learn quite a lot about how Americans got screwed by the two party system without really
realizing it. Plenty of blame to go around , no doubt though. You will also learn of the
changing demographics in American politics. Many of the poor, minorities and youth of the
country are coming into politics for they stand to lose everything if they don't change the
status quo.
Feb 11 2020 runs 6:21 minutes and seconds- Search terms, Beau Lets talk about the parties
switching and the party of trump
Feb 15 2020 runs 4:11 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about dancing left and dancing
right
Feb 20 2020 runs 10:44 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about misunderstanding Bernie's
supporters
This last video is a long video by Justin's standards. Most of his videos are under 7
minutes.
Much thanks to CN this site and the Fifth Column New site give me strength and bolster my
courage by allowing me to know that there are those of us who know what gong on and know
things must change.
NY Times is citing "people familiar with the situation." How the mighty have fallen. What
about Shadow, and the Iowa caucuses, and Buttigieg? That was real. This is absolute
horseshit.
> Apparent US Intel Meddling in US Election With 'Report' Russia is Aiding Sanders
It looks like the CIA is short of ideas on how to meddle in the elections. Trump had a
very similar briefing on January 6, 2017 -- with Brennan, Clapper, Rogers, and Comey -- on
Russia allegedly aiding his campaign. As well without any evidence.
Charlene Richards , February 22, 2020 at 14:47
Russia couldn't possibly do the damage to Sanders that the DNC and Democrat Establishment
elites are doing out in the open every day with the MSM as their prime propagandists.
As they say in wrestling, it's all "a work".
richard baker , February 22, 2020 at 10:55
Bart Hansen , February 22, 2020 at 18:27
Looking at the comments at the Post and Times, I'd say you are on target. Oh, for the Kool
Aid contract at those organs of misinformation and omission.
The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the craven
politicians in Washington, DC.
And, no, Ben, we can't keep our republic because we don't have a sufficient mass of
critical thinkers to run it. If we did, this kind of BS, having been shot full of holes once,
wouldn't get any air.
Ground Owl Eats Fox , February 22, 2020 at 21:49
I don't think the Democrats have been very coordinated, and they (the establishment in
general) is growing more desperate. They're acting less and less rationally.
My hunch is that Sanders is going to be assassinated. Even if a low chance per industry
(5% for MIC; 5% for Wall Street; 5% for Hillary Clinton, etc ) the sheer number of powerful
enemies and tens of trillions of dollars (and power) potentially at stake IMO makes it likely
that this'll happen, whether coordinated or not. I'm guessing before the convention, if his
lead is looking formidable.
He needs to pick a safety VP to make killing him less attractive, and also needs to wear a
vest, ride around in a Popemobile-style vehicle, and have trustworthy chemists and doctors to
check his food and umbrellas and everything else. And lots of documenters with cameras so if
they do kill him in a violent hit maybe they won't get away with it.
how on earth could any entity, foreign or domestic, create any outcome in our burlesque
electoral process that's worse than any other? the parties are two arguing heads on the
same rapacious beast. or in the case of the primaries, a multi-headed beast.
the political circus can be likened to condi rice's concept of "constructive chaos" in the
middle east. instead of nonfunctional endless war to render malleable a target for
exploitation, we have endless functionless nitpicking blather to render popular leadership
impossible.
"... I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference. ..."
"... Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn. ..."
What you describe is probably why Russiagate spread so easily to so many people. Nothing
happened in previous elections? Everything you describe never happened as you point out. The
American electoral system was and is pristine and virginal.
Until the Russians came and destroyed American democracy through social media themes,
memes, and retweets.
The American electoral system was never brutally corrupted by rigged votes, voter
suppression on the scale of hundreds of thousands, deliberately miscounted votes, voter
fraud, etc. Americans never did to each other anything as bad as what the Russians did to
Americans.
Of course, for me never worked as I worked in primaries of a democratic machine dominated
city. I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for
Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election
interference.
Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that
reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional
mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn.
"... The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing, according to Business Insider . "But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof," Business Insider noted. "A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or conditions." ..."
"... Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise. @tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this is brought up? ..."
"... In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that "the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598 for taking them to the hospital." ..."
"... Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Osmel Martinez Azcue "received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270" after he visited a local hospital fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China. ..."
"... Did anyone expect the unconscionable greed of capitalism to cease when a public health crisis emerges? This is just testing for the virus, wait until a vaccine has been developed so expensive that the majority of the US populace can not afford it at all and people are dropping like flies. Wall Street, never-the-less, will continue to have its heydays ..."
"... The very idea that the defense and "Homeland" security budgets are bloated and additional funding approved year after year but the citizens of this country are not afforded 100% health coverage In a time of global health crisis that could become a pandemic. ..."
"Huge surprise medical bills [are] going to make sure people with symptoms don't get tested. That is bad for everyone." by
Jake Johnson, staff writer Public health
advocates, experts, and others are demanding that the federal government cover coronavirus testing and all related costs after several
reports detailed how Americans in recent weeks have been saddled with exorbitant bills following medical evaluations.
Sarah Kliff of the New York Times
reported Saturday
that Pennsylvania native Frank Wucinski "found a pile of medical bills" totaling $3,918 waiting for him and his three-year-old daughter
after they were released from government-mandated quarantine at Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
"My question is why are we being charged for these stays, if they were mandatory and we had no choice in the matter?" asked Wucinski,
who was evacuated by the U.S. government last month from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
"I assumed it was all being paid for," Wucinski told the Times . "We didn't have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just
a pit in my stomach, like, 'How do I pay for this?'"
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing,
according
to Business Insider . "But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof,"
Business Insider noted. "A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or
conditions."
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told the Times that
"the most important rule of public health is to gain the cooperation of the population."
"There are legal, moral, and public health reasons not to charge the patients,"
Gostin said.
Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care
within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise.
@tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this
is brought up?
In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that "the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598
for taking them to the hospital."
"An additional $90 in charges came from radiologists who read the patients' X-ray scans and do not work for the hospital," Kliff
noted.
The CDC declined to respond when Kliff asked whether the federal government would cover the costs for patients like the Wucinskis.
The Intercept 's Robert Mackey
wrote
last Friday that the Wucinskis' situation spotlights "how the American government's response to a public health emergency, like trying
to contain a potential coronavirus epidemic, could be handicapped by relying on a system built around private hospitals and for-profit
health insurance providers."
We should be doing everything we can to encourage people with
#COVIDー19 symptoms to come forward.
Huge surprise medical bills is going to make sure people with symptoms don't get tested. That is bad for everyone, regardless
of if you are insured. https://t.co/KOUKTSFVzD
Play this tape to the end and you find people not going to the hospital even if they're really sick. The federal government
needs to announce that they'll pay for all of these bills https://t.co/HfyBFBXhja
Last week, the Miami Herald reported
that Osmel Martinez Azcue "received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270" after he visited a local hospital
fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China.
"He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room," according to the Herald . "Nurses
in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff
members told him he'd need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first."
Azcue tested positive for the flu and was discharged. "Azcue's experience shows the potential cost of testing for a disease
that epidemiologists fear may develop into a public health crisis in the U.S.," the Herald noted.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, highlighted Azcue's case in a tweet last Friday.
"The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together," Sanders wrote. "We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor's visits
over outrageous bills. Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet -- as a matter of justice and
public health."
Last week, as Common Dreams
reported , Sanders argued that the coronavirus outbreak demonstrates the urgent need for Medicare for All.
The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together. We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor's visits over outrageous
bills.
Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet -- as a matter of justice and public health.
https://t.co/c4WQMDESHU
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S.
surged by more than two
dozen over the weekend, bringing the total to 89 as the Trump administration continues to
publicly downplay the severity of the outbreak.
Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at NewYorkPresbyterian Hospital,
said
in an appearance on CNBC 's "Squawk Box" Monday morning that testing for the coronavirus is still not widely available.
"Before I came here this morning, I was in the emergency room seeing patients," McCarthy said. "I still do not have a rapid
diagnostic test available to me."
"I'm here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don't have it at my finger tips," added
McCarthy. "I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United
States. There are going to be hundreds by middle of week. There's going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue."
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
Did anyone expect the unconscionable greed of capitalism to cease when a public health crisis emerges? This is just testing
for the virus, wait until a vaccine has been developed so expensive that the majority of the US populace can not afford it at
all and people are dropping like flies. Wall Street, never-the-less, will continue to have its heydays
A wall street bank or private predator may own your emergency room. A surprise bill may await your emergency treatment above
insurance payments or in some instances all of the bill.
An effort was made recently in congress to stop surprise billings but enough dems joined repubs to kill it. More important
to keep campaign dollars flowing than keep people alive.
fernSmerl 12h I know emergency rooms are being purchased by organizations like Tenet (because they are some of
the most expensive levels of care) and M.D.s provided by large agencies. I'm not as up on this as I should be but a friend of
mine tells me that some of this is illegal. I have received bills that were later discharged by challenge. This is worth investigating
further. Atlasoldie 11h Hmmmm A virus that
overwhelmingly kills the elderly and/or those with pre-exisitng conditions.
Sounds like a medical insurance companies wet dream. As well as .gov social security/medicare wet dream.
The very idea that the defense and "Homeland" security budgets are bloated and additional funding approved year after year
but the citizens of this country are not afforded 100% health coverage In a time of global health crisis that could become a pandemic.
And as has been stated, the unconscionable idea suggested that a possible vaccine (a long way away or perhaps not developed at
all) might not be affordable to the workers who pay the taxes that fund the government? That's insane.
Another example of "American Exceptionalism." China doesn't charge its coronavirus patients, neither does South Korea. I guess
they are simply backward countries.
I own my own home after years of hard work paying it off. It's the only thing of value, besides my old truck, that I have.
If I get the virus, I will stay home and try to treat it the best I can. I can't afford to go to the hospital and pay thousands in
medical bills, with the chance that they'll come after my possessions. America, the land of the _______. Fill in the blank. (Hint:
it's no longer free).
There are other ways to protect your home. Homesteading or living trust. I'm not good at this but I know there are ways to
do it. Hopefully, it would never come to that but outcomes are not certain even with treatment in this case.
As someone
who lost a mother at 5 years old I can sympathize with your grief in losing a daughter-in-law and especially seeing her four children
orphaned. However, I think you miss the point here: This is about we becoming a society invested in each others welfare and not a
company town that commodifies everything including the health and well being of us all.
As a revision it is better but flawed. It is a cost containment bill based on the same research as the republican plan with global
budgets and block grants.
Edited: I encourage you to read this: -ttps://www.rand.org/blog/2018/10/misconceptions-about-medicare-for-all.html Giovanna-Lepore10h oldie:
Part D
Higher education is not free but they do need to become free for the students and payed by us as a society.
Part D is a scam, a Republican scam also supported by corporate democrats because of its profit motive and its privatization
Medicare only covers 80% and does not cover eye and dental care and older folks especially need these services. Medicaid helps but there are limits and one cannot necessarily use it where one needs to go.
Expanded, Improved Medicare For All is a vast improvement. because it covers everyone in one big pool and, therefore, much more dignified
than the rob Paul to pay peter system we have.
Social Security too can be improved. Why should it simply be based on the income of the person which means that a person working
in a low paying job in a capitalist system gone wild with greed will often work until they die.
Pell grants can be eliminated when we have what the French have: publicly supported education for everyone.
The demise of unions certainly did not help but it was part of the long strategy of the Right to privatize everything to the enrichment
of the few.
The overall competence that Canada is handling this outbreak, compared to the USA, is stark. First world (Canada) versus third-world
(USA). Testing is practically available for free, to any suspect person, sick or not, as Toronto alone can run 1000 tests a day and
have results in 4 hours. That is far more than all the US's capacity for 330 million people.
I wonder how long before Canada closes its borders to USAns? Me and my wife (both in a vulnerable age/medical group) should seriously
consider fleeing to my brother's place in Toronto as the first announced cases in Pittsburgh are probably only days away. What about
our poor cat though? We could try to smuggle her across the border, but she is a loud and talkative kitty
Don't want to discourage anyone from any protective measures but the
"low down" from my veggie store today was that a lot of health professionals
shop there and they think it's being hyped by media. Did get this from my NJ Sen. Menendez
Center for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC)
There is currently no vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being
exposed to this virus. However, everyday preventive actions can help prevent the spread of respiratory diseases:
Wash your hands often
Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
Stay home when you are sick.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
For more information : htps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html
How it spreads : The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person. It may be possible that a person can get
COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their
eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. [Read more.] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission.html )
Symptoms : For confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, reported illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms to
severe illness and death. Symptoms can include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
Don't want to discourage anyone from any protective measures but the
"low down" from my veggie store today was that a lot of health professionals
shop there and they think it's being hyped by media.
I agree it is being hyped by the media to the point of being fear mongering. At the same time it is being ignored by the administration to such an extent that really little almost nothing is being done. At some point the two together will create an even bigger problem.
It is like the old adage: "Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." Each over/under reach in considering the reality of the situation has its own problem, which multiply when combined. Every morning when I wake up I say a little atheistic prayer to myself before I get out of bed: "Another day and for better or
worse...".
Well, two reported here in Florida tonight. One in my county, one in the county next door. And more of the "we already knew, but told you late". One person checked into the hospital on Wednesday. We hear it Monday night.
Both were ignored far a long time it seems, and 84 in particular are being watched (roommates, friends, hospital workers not alerted
for several days, the usual). But no one knows every place they had been since becoming infected.
Oh, and they have tested a handful of people. No worry?
I can't see anyway that this level of incompetency is an accident. Spring break is just starting usually a 100's of thousand tourist
bonanza.
So the question is do they want to kill us, or just keep us in fear?
I think the later. But the end result is a crap shoot. So once again, it is a gamble with our lives.
The business of America is business. Sometimes that can go too far and this is one of those times. Making money from the loss,
distress, harm and suffering of others is perverse beyond belief.
Non-interventionists are not used to having a seat at the power table. Lacking any amount of
institutional influence, believers in the anti-war cause are used to spending careers tinkering
at the margins of the conversation, living from hand to mouth off of minimal fundraising. No
one ever got rich towing the line for "Big Peace."
This unfortunate situation has, over decades, left a cynicism for anything located in the
beltway of Washington D.C. That's where principles go to die, and good people go to sell out,
don't you know?
This characterization is far from unfounded. There is an endless list of grifters,
double-crossers, and Fausts who have sold their soul for a couple zeros added to their
paychecks. But should past betrayals define our attitudes to the possibilities of the
future?
In the past week, the Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft held its first event since its inaugural launch in December. Named
after former secretary of state John Quincy Adams and founded through big money donations from
billionaires Charles Koch and George Soros (among others), the think tank was established, in
the words of Chairwoman Suzanne DiMaggio, "to bring about a fundamental reorientation in U.S.
foreign policy."
The event ,
titled "A New Vision for America in the World," was pilloried before it even occurred.
Criticism revolved around the speaker's list, which included individuals who had spent
years advocating, defending, and even participating in military adventurism overseas. This is
where a dose of context is important.
The event was pitched as a forum between the Quincy Institute and Foreign Policy ,
whose conception of its eponymous topic is decidedly status quo hegemony. Registration, the
speaker's list, and the day's schedule were available exclusively on Foreign Policy 's
website. Quincy was discernably the junior partner in the conversation.
Each side chose its champion. Foreign Policy originated the idea to host disgraced
former Major General David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since his conviction for sharing state secrets with his mistress as Director of the CIA,
Petraeus has spent years attempting to rehabilitate his image and
spread the gospel of counterinsurgency that failed American forces in the Middle East.
In opposition stood Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California. A self-described
"progressive capitalist," since his election in 2016 Khanna has made a name for himself as a
voice for military restraint in Washington. He's done more legwork to stop American support for
the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen than any other member of congress.
The event's original conception was to have a debate between Petraeus and Khanna on stage,
where the two could challenge each other directly. Petraeus refused to countenance this option,
a Quincy insider revealed to the Libertarian Institute. So instead each man sat down,
back-to-back, with their respective interlocutors; Petraeus with Foreign Policy
Editor-In-Chief Jonathan Tepperman, and Khanna with the Charles Koch Institute's Vice President
for Research and Policy Will Ruger.
Tepperman opened his segment with a joke that fell on deaf ears. "Our next guest will be
immediately recognizable to all of you, I'm sure, unless you've been living under a rock for
the last twenty years," he smiled. "That's 'under a rock,' not 'living in Iraq,' in which case
you would definitely recognize him." Try telling that one-liner to the Iraqi teenagers who have
gone their entire lives without clean drinking water, or the Iraqi men who continue to live
without arms or legs, or the Iraqi mothers who gave birth to babies with abominable birth
defects because of America's use of depleted uranium ammunition. Yes, I'm sure they'd
definitely recognize David Petraeus.
The proceeding twenty-four minutes of dialogue was the
same insipid pablum that Petraeus has used to justify his speaking fees for a decade. The
United States must remain stationed in Afghanistan to keep an Al-Qaeda sanctuary from being
reestablished, he argued. "There is some affinity they have for Eastern Afghanistan," the
former general said, even though the reasoning "was lost on me."
Would Petraeus be open to a reassessment of U.S. strategic interests; the kind of
retrenchment advocated by the Quincy Institute? "I think, to be perfectly honest, the debate
here -- should we be more restrained -- of course we should be more restrained," he answered
coyly. "Until we shouldn't."
When Congressman Khanna began his segment afterwards, he wasted no time in cutting Petraeus
down to size. "I thought the title of this conference is 'A New Vision for American Foreign
Policy,'" Khanna said, "and I was wondering when he was going to say something new that we
haven't heard for the last twenty years."
"If I understood General Petraeus, he's basically saying we need to have a permanent troop
presence around the world, in any place that's a failed state. I mean I thought we were a
republic. I thought that was totally counter to what our founder's envisioned," explained
Khanna.
While he displayed a depth of knowledge on U.S. conduct overseas far exceeding the average
representative, it was Khanna's conception of America's metaphysical place in the world that
stood out most prominently. When foreigners think of the United States, he hopes their first
thoughts are "our culture, our art, our technology, our writings [that] reflect those
values."
"I don't want the first thing when they think about the United States [to be] our military
or bombs," he said resolutely. This sentiment brought to mind that cataloger of American
localism, Bill Kauffman, who lambasted the "sham patriotism" of "the chickenhawk who loves
little of his country beyond its military might."
Ro Khanna holds to that older notion of America, of a republic on a human scale that focuses
on its own betterment, not the siren song of empire. "I think every member of congress should
read John Quincy Adams. He's more eloquent than all of us put together," he counseled.
Unfortunately, Petraeus had already departed out the side door before he could be infected
with anyone else's perspective. He had a better exit strategy from the conference than he ever
did in Iraq or Afghanistan.
So lopsided was the "exchange" that after Khanna concluded Tepperman felt the need to defend
his interviewee. "There was a big mismatch between Petraeus and Khanna. In the sense that, Ro
Khanna is a politician. David Petraeus is not a politician," he said, eliciting an eyeroll from
Ruger. The absurdity to claim that Petraeus, who earned the antagonism of his fellow commanders
by being one of the most outwardly political generals in modern American history, obliged
Tepperman to admit moments later that, "Petraeus is a better politician than most."
Outside the main attraction, the conference also included a discussion between two other
House members, and three theater-focused foreign policy panels. Each panel's membership was
split between people selected by Quincy and those selected by Foreign Policy, allowing a more
open exchange of ideas than usually seen in the beltway. The Quincy Institute's staff,
particularly Managing Director for Research and Policy Sarah Leah Whitson, ably articulated the
concepts of realism and drawing back from our seemingly endless wars.
Some purists will still complain that the Quincy Institute soiled itself by cohosting its
first conference with Foreign Policy , and for allowing the likes of Petraeus to speak.
But the fact is, Quincy created a space where a sitting congressman could publicly clown the
man who lost America's two twenty-first century invasions. It created a space where renowned
Pentagon reporter Mark Perry could rile the audience into a frenzy like a Rockstar performing a
set of his greatest hits. And it created a space where Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin
could be cheered by a crowd for interrogating a panelist
about his financial connections to Saudi Arabia.
This new, freer environment is something to be celebrated. The Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft might have started the forum as the unofficial junior partner to
Foreign Policy , but it closed it by punching above its weight class.
Contrary to the depiction in Western media, the Syria war is not a civil war. This is because the initiators, financiers and
a large part of the anti-government fighters
come from abroad .
Nor is the Syria war a religious war, for Syria was and still is one of the most
secular countries in the region, and the Syrian army – like its direct opponents – is itself mainly composed of Sunnis.
But the Syria war is also not a pipeline war, as some critics suspected,
because the allegedly
competing gas pipeline projects
never
existed to begin with, as even the Syrian president
confirmed .
Instead, the Syria war is a war of conquest and regime change
, which developed into a geopolitical proxy war between NATO states on one side – especially the US, Great Britain and France – and
Russia, Iran, and China on the other side.
In fact, already since the 1940s the US has repeatedly
attempted to install a pro-Western government
in Syria, such as in 1949, 1956, 1957, after 1980 and after 2003, but without success so far. This makes Syria – since the fall of
Libya – the last Mediterranean country independent
of NATO.
Thus, in the course of the „Arab Spring" of 2011, NATO and its allies, especially Israel and the Gulf States,
decided to try again. To this end, politically and economically motivated protests in Syria were used and were quickly
escalated into an armed conflict.
NATO's original strategy of 2011 was based on the Afghanistan
war of the 1980s and aimed at conquering Syria mainly through positively portrayed Islamist militias (so-called „rebels").
This did not succeed, however, because the militias lacked an air force and anti-aircraft missiles.
Hence from 2013 onwards,
various poison gas
attacks were
staged in order to be able to deploy the NATO air force as part of a „humanitarian intervention" similar to the earlier wars
against Libya and Yugoslavia. But this did not succeed either, mainly because Russia and China blocked a UN mandate.
As of 2014, therefore, additional but negatively portrayed Islamist militias („terrorists") were covertly
established in Syria
and Iraq via NATO partners Turkey and Jordan, secretly
supplied
with weapons and vehicles
and indirectly
financed
by oil exports via the Turkish Ceyhan terminal.
ISIS: Supply and export routes through NATO partners Turkey and Jordan (ISW / Atlantic, 2015)
Media-effective
atrocity propaganda and mysterious „terrorist attacks" in Europe and the US then offered the opportunity to intervene in Syria
using the NATO air force even without a UN mandate – ostensibly to fight the „terrorists", but
in reality still to conquer Syria and topple
its government.
This plan failed again, however, as Russia also used the presence of the „terrorists" in autumn 2015 as a justification
for direct military
intervention and was now able to attack both the „terrorists" and parts of NATO's „rebels" while simultaneously securing
the Syrian airspace to a large extent.
By the end of 2016, the Syrian army thus succeeded in
recapturing the city of Aleppo.
From 2016 onwards, NATO therefore switched back to positively portrayed but now Kurdish-ledmilitias (the SDF) in order to still have unassailable
ground forces available and to conquer the Syrian territory held by the previously established „terrorists" before Syria and Russia
could do so themselves.
This led to a kind of
„race"
to conquer cities such as Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in 2017 and to a temporary division of Syria along the Euphrates river into a (largely)
Syrian-controlled West and a Kurdish (or rather American) controlled East (see map below).
This move, however, brought NATO into
conflict
with its key member Turkey, because Turkey did not accept a Kurdish-controlled territory on its southern border. As a result, the
NATO alliance became increasingly divided from 2018 onwards.
Turkey now fought the Kurds in
northern Syria and at the same time supported the remaining Islamists in the north-western province of Idlib against the Syrian army,
while the Americans eventually
withdrew
to the eastern Syrian oil fields in order to retain a political bargaining chip.
While Turkey supported Islamists in northern Syria, Israel more or less covertly
supplied Islamists in southern Syria and at the same time fought Iranian and Lebanese (Hezbollah) units with air strikes, though
without lasting success: the militias in southern Syria had to surrender in 2018.
Ultimately, some NATO members
tried to use a confrontation between the Turkish and Syrian armies in the province of Idlib as a last option to escalate the
war. In addition to the situation in Idlib, the issues of the occupied territories in the north and east of Syria remain to be resolved,
too.
Russia, for its part, has tried to draw Turkey out of the NATO alliance and onto its own side as far as possible. Modern Turkey,
however, is pursuing a rather far-reaching geopolitical
strategy of its own, which is also increasingly clashing with Russian interests in the Middle East and Central Asia.
As part of this geopolitical strategy, Turkey in 2015 and 2020 even used the so-called
"weapon of mass migration" , which may serve to destabilize
both Syria (so-called strategic depopulation
) and Europe, as well as to extort financial, political or military support from the European Union.
Syria: The situation in February 2020
What role did the Western media play in this war?
The task of NATO-compliant media was to portray
the war against Syria as a „civil war", the Islamist „rebels" positively, the Islamist „terrorists" and the Syrian government negatively,
the alleged „poison gas attacks" credibly and the NATO intervention consequently as legitimate.
Since 2019, NATO-compliant media moreover had to conceal or discredit various leaks and whistleblowers that began to prove the
covert Western arms deliveries
to the Islamist „rebels" and „terrorists" as well as the staged
„poison gas attacks"
.
But if even the „terrorists" in Syria were demonstrably established and equipped by NATO states, what role then did the mysterious
„caliph of terror" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi play? He possibly played a similar role as his direct
predecessor , Omar al-Baghdadi – who was a
phantom .
Thanks to new communication technologies and on-site sources, the Syria war was also the first war about which
independent media could report almost in real-time and thus for
the first time significantly influenced the public perception of events – a potentially historic change.
*
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All images in this article are from SPR
Order Mark Taliano's Book "Voices from Syria"
directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis
that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
This guy does not understand (or do not what to understand) what neoliberalism is. Do not buy
this book. It is junk. Look at the idiotic quite beloe. Tha guy is unable to think coherently.
When Hillary called her opponents "deplorable" she clearly means thos who oppose neoliberalism
and neoliberal globalization and who suffered from outsourcing and financialization craziness,
that destroyed the USA manufacturing. She means those who do not belong to the neoliberal elite,
independent of their IQ.
Notable quotes:
"... The tragic flaw of elites is that they fail to see the hypocrisy in their own cries for tolerance and equality. ..."
"... It was the "deplorables" moment that opened my eyes to the current trajectory of America. I fear that intellectual elites, of which I am admittedly one, have not learned from this unfortunate blunder. And time is running out for us. Perhaps all we elites need to start toting Reader's Digest crosses. ..."
The populist revolution succeeded tonight for the same reason it did nearly two centuries
ago. The main reason Trump won wasn't economic anxiety. It wasn't sexism. It wasn't racism. It
was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy
papers, Davos, international treaties, and peo- ple who think they're better than you. People
like me. Trump represented something far more appealing, which is beating up people like me. A
poll taken a month before the 2016 election showed that only 24 percent of voters disagreed
with the statement "The real struggle for America is not between Democrats and Republicans but
between mainstream America and the ruling political elites."
People are foolish to get rid of us. Elites are people who think; populists are people who
believe. Elites de- fer to experts; populists listen to their own guts. Elites value
cooperation; populists are tribal. Elites arc masters at delayed gratification, long-range
planning, and
controlling our emotions...
...We can t afford that. Populists believe our complex society is so secure that disaster is
near impossible no matter who is in charge. Elites know it's not. Most of our work is
calculating risk and planning for contingencies. We invented reinsurance, and if you give us a
few years, we'll come up with rereinsurance. The myth that the elite are selfishly rigging the
system while do- ing nothing useful conveniently ignores the fact that the system we've built
is great. If this were a book about any other group of people besides the elite, this would be
the part where I list all the amazing contributions we've made throughout history. I do not
need to do that because elites created everything that ever existed...
At this first stop on his tour of populist and elite hotspots of America, Stein elucidates a
no-brainer: nobody is always right all the time about everybody else. That includes we
elites.
What is my takeaway from this marvelous book, besides the fact that Stein is completely
hilarious? That elites need a crash course in tolerance. Populists could use a big dose of it
too, but at least when they do not demonstrate this virtue, they don't pretend to possess it.
The tragic flaw of elites is that they fail to see the hypocrisy in their own cries for
tolerance and equality.
It was the "deplorables" moment that opened my eyes to the current trajectory of
America. I fear that intellectual elites, of which I am admittedly one, have not learned from
this unfortunate blunder. And time is running out for us. Perhaps all we elites need to start
toting Reader's Digest crosses.
Joel Stein's new book is both engaging and enlightening. He begins by immersing himself in
the small town culture of rural Miami, Texas, where he mingles with the locals and tries to
understand their customs. He enjoys their hospitality but examines their values with a critical
eye. The rest of the book is mostly a comparison of "elitism" with the ethos of Miami. He
distinguishes between two kinds of elitism: "boat elitism" which worships money and power, and
"intellectual elitism" which elevates reason and intelligence. Stein obviously champions
intellectual elitism which he feels is imperative for a successful democracy: "Democracy is a
government of the nerds, by the nerds and for the nerds. And the Boat Elite do not respect
nerds." Ultimately, Stein concludes, "The elite, with our pesky qualifiers and annoying
exceptions, are the thin line between democracy and tyranny." The great charm of this excellent
book is that these very valid truths are presented with so much humor and insight that the
reader cannot help but agree with Joel Stein's illuminating conclusions.
Chele
Hipp , Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2019
If this book was evaluated like an elite high school debate held on the Stanford campus each
year, Mr. Stein would be winning the debate handily in each round and scoring exceedingly high
speaker points. But, in the end, while he would still get the Top Speaker Award, he would not
win the tournament trophy because he gave up his argument in his closing statement. This book
is written five parts, four of which are hilarious and compelling arguments for finding
connection with every type of elite and populist one can come across. Those four parts make
equally compelling arguments for why having experts and intellectual elites run the world does
the greatest good for society as a whole. Mr. Stein is winning the debate with compassion, good
humor, and style. I'm rooting for him to win the debate! My debate judge objectivity has flown
out the window. And then part five happens. His closing argument. Oh no! Mr. Stein decides to
withdraw from the battle for expert and intellectual elite leadership. He says it's not our
time. It's time to wait out the populists. That we can do that. That we must do that. And then
he says that the need for human connection is greater than anything - that humility is the job
elites need to pursue. Wait. What? You just contradicted your entire case. You surrendered your
position. Your conclusion is the opposite of your thesis! That's it. You lose on technical
failure. Victory awarded to your opponent. If this book were a research project using the
scientific method, it would be entirely possible to have a conclusion that did not match the
hypothesis. But the title of the book, "In Defense of Elitism" is suggestive of a debate or an
argument. And, in such case, the conclusion must necessarily match the opening statement. If I
were to recommend this book to a friend, which I still may very likely do, I would recommend
that my friend read only parts one through four. Or, maybe read all five parts with very low
expectations for intellectual follow-through on part five. Mr. Stein still has my utmost
respect and admiration for both his efforts and his humor. I almost wonder if his editor
insisted on a soft landing for the book and the conclusion was a negotiated settlement.
Flying
Scot , Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2019
In self-deprecating, often hilarious language, Joel Stein gives us a study of the gulf
between the bicoastal United States and the heartland. The socially and politically
conservative, religious citizens of Miami, Texas, vastly different from the author in values,
religion, and background, are profiled with humor and affection. By establishing common ground
with these citizens and shedding light on their beliefs, Stein lets us understand them despite
the different, even foreign ideas compared to those of us who are "elites." By "elites" the
author means reasonably educated, anti-racist, not-very-religious-if-at-all folks who tend to
vote for progressive candidates. The middle of the book puts us back in California, where Stein
lives, and his gimlet eye skewers the elites that surround him, again with humor and insight. I
am somewhat surprised that this impressive work, which has so much to say about the present
divisions and polarization in our country, has not been better promoted by the publisher. A
search in the New York Times fails to find a review or even mention of it, and a full web
search renders scant results. Highly recommended.
Being anti-elite can make sense if you're against the elite due to wealth gained by taking
advantage of people (Stein refers to as the "boat elite"), but being against elite by
intelligence doesn't make sense (the "intellectual elite"). Stein talks with anit-elite Scott
Adams (Dilbert creator) who talks about a medical issue for which he had to go to the most
elite doctor there was to be cured, and Scott somehow concludes that this is why doctors are
useless and he knows better than them. Stein points out Sarah Palin bragging that she will
never claim to know more than anyone else, instead of trying to study and learn more. You read
about people striving to make a difference, and somehow Republican America rejecting
intelligent elite and embracing wealthy elite (which is the opposite of what a democratic
government should do, it should reign in those that gain all the power through wealth). The
jokes make this serious and passionate subject fun to read.
Reviewer
Dr. Beth , Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2019
How can one be both self-deprecating and aggrandizing at the same time? Somehow author Joel
Stein manages this. A long-time humorist writer for TIME (who was eventually fired, as he
points out), Stein offers a book that is as insightful as it is funny. Stein's humor ranges
from cheap to clever, and yet is unfailingly smart and on the mark. The premise of this book
has already been thoroughly covered. Stein seeks to explain the backlash against so-called
elites which led to the election of Trump. He starts by visiting the county in the US which had
the highest percentage of Trump voters in the 2016 election. He finds many things that he
expected to find (religion, guns) and many things he did not. Does he leave Miami, Texas
thinking that the Trump voters were right? No. But he leaves with a better appreciation of
people different from him and less of an us versus them mindset. After spending time with the
populists, Stein visits with his own group, the elites, providing a short and somewhat mocking
look at our country's most privileged...living in ivory towers, maybe, but also doing great
work. Next come the populist elites, a group which includes Stein's "boat elites," or people
like Trump. The section on elite populists is the shortest in the book; obviously elites
generally aren't wining any popularity contests. Finally, in "Saving the Elite," Stein attempts
to figure out how elites can re-emerge on top, where they belong. Solutions include fighting
back, which many liberals seem to be doing to little or no avail; taking the high road, which
appeals to the self-satisfied nature of elitists but which tends to be ultimately frustrating;
and moving towards change, perhaps through greater humility, kindness, and--dare we say
it?--love. Stein himself admits both that he is smug...and also that his smugness is his
downfall. We cannot dismiss those with whom we do not agree. Stein makes this point in a way
that is intelligent, compelling, moving...and also very, very funny.
Ryan
Mease , Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2019
This is a sometimes-humorous, sometimes-serious review of different populist voices in the
Trump era. Klein scored a number of perfect interviews with figureheads in / critics of the
populist movement -- Tucker Carlson, the Dilbert guy and Bill Kristol. It's a shame he couldn't
get Steve Bannon. He's very effective at interviewing opponents. I actually walked away from
the Tucker chapter feeling less confused about Tucker's position on race and immigration. I can
see his journey and his current rhetorical postures seem wrong, but reasonable. He has a point
of view that's well-reasoned. The Dilbert guy is another story. I'm not even sure if he belongs
in this book; he's just a sophist like Ann Coulter or Milo. I'm trying to use that term
precisely, in the elitist Plato's dialogue sense of the term. If you read the book or listen to
an interview with him, you'll understand what I mean. He's a bad faith relativist who enjoys
attention. There's a lot more to this book! I didn't even mention the long opening section
where the author travels to Texas to interview Trump supporters while living with them for an
extended period. There are moments in the book where we're allowed to see how we might heal our
national wounds. The major flaw here is the lack of depth concerning left-wing populism. The
author points to Bernie Sanders and the populist left without really interviewing anyone or
considering those voices too carefully. That's a shame, because they would have made an
excellent companion chapter to the content on Tucker. The author ends up luring elite readers
to a place where they feel comfortable receiving criticism. It would have been nice to hear
that critique from each side. This was a fun read. Definitely recommended.
plubius
tullius , Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2020
I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Joel Stein himself. Even as read by the author,
I can't tell if this book is a joke or supposed to be taken seriously. An honest discussion of
experts vs non-experts would be useful. This is not it. Stein picks points that back his views
up, which extend well beyond expertise, and into entitlement, connection, and general
condescension to the "great unwashed." For example, he interviews cartoonist Scott Adams... why
not Nassim Nicholas Taleb - on the fallacy of expertise. Of course, lots and lots of name
dropping in this book. Figures - thats how those insecure in their elitist claims attempt to
establish their membership.
"... US national politics is gang warfare. The Crips vs. the Bloods. Two criminal enterprises with roughly the same aims and tactics, fighting for turf. With minor differences of style. Trump upsets the leadership of the Bloods in 2016, but it turns out that, outrageous as he is, he is good for business, so all the Bloods but the wimps with a weak stomach fall in behind him. ..."
"... But let's just suppose that the old Crips are not quite as pathetic as they look. Let's imagine that they actually learned something in 2016. It was supposed to be easy for them in 2016, and they were surprised. So they have had four years to hone their election-stealing skills. And most of the traditional election stealing organizations in this country seem largely to hate Trump. ..."
"... So let's posit that the FBI & CIA, or whoever it is manages to prop up Biden, and succeed in stealing the election for him. Who would object to that? ..."
"... Not two gangs but one Deep State political mafia with two families running a protection racket (MIC), prostitution (media propaganda, psyops), drugs (industry incentives), and gambling (overseas adventurism) ..."
The setup: US national politics is gang warfare. The Crips vs. the Bloods. Two criminal
enterprises with roughly the same aims and tactics, fighting for turf. With minor differences
of style. Trump upsets the leadership of the Bloods in 2016, but it turns out that,
outrageous as he is, he is good for business, so all the Bloods but the wimps with a weak
stomach fall in behind him.
The Crips are bloated and in decline. A bunch of naïve, starry eyed nobodies mount a
campaign to take the Crips legit. The old Crips are irritated that they have to take time out
from grifting so as to squash the upstart pests.
That is where I see us today. But let's just suppose that the old Crips are not quite as
pathetic as they look. Let's imagine that they actually learned something in 2016. It was
supposed to be easy for them in 2016, and they were surprised. So they have had four years to
hone their election-stealing skills. And most of the traditional election stealing
organizations in this country seem largely to hate Trump.
So let's posit that the FBI & CIA, or whoever it is manages to prop up Biden, and
succeed in stealing the election for him. Who would object to that?
Yes, exactly – all the Trump die-hards, and 'tribal' gang bangers would object. It
could get really nasty.
And so far, I have not seen any evidence that any of the characters that would be willing
to play such a gambit have any inclination to give a shit for the consequences for us little
people.
Not two gangs but one Deep State political mafia with two families running a protection
racket (MIC), prostitution (media propaganda, psyops), drugs (industry incentives), and
gambling (overseas adventurism)...
The Tammany Society emerged as the center for Democratic-Republican Party politics in
the city in the early 19th century. After 1854, the Society expanded its political control
even further by earning the loyalty of the city's rapidly expanding immigrant community,
which functioned as its base of political capital. The business community appreciated its
readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through red tape and legislative mazes to facilitate
rapid economic growth... Tammany Hall also served as an engine for graft and political
corruption, perhaps most infamously under William M. "Boss" Tweed in the mid-19th
century....
[Tweed's biographer wrote:]
It's hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed's system ... The Tweed ring at its
height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key
power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds
had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing
and organization.
trailertrash @6 --- Americans have been railroaded into endless squabbling about voting and
democracy instead of demanding good governance. How does choosing between two similarly
corrupt parties deliver good governance?
Voting in the lesser evil is still choosing evil.
What does it profit a nation to have voting every 4 years when excrement covers her
sidewalks? and vets suicide themselves daily? and soldiers get raped daily by fellow
soldiers?
All the talk today is of the tensions between globalism and populism, the latter often
nationalistic. The globalists have generally been too optimistic in their rhetoric, wishfully
thinking that the time of nations and states is simply over. In fact, the nation-state remains
an irreducible reality in politics everywhere, even as this entity is undeniably in
decline.
The "national" is in decline in two distinct ways. Firstly, Western nations are
disintegrating everywhere, their respective core ethnies losing ground to rapidly-expanding
Hispanic, Asian, African, and Islamic settlements, notably in the large cities and, in the
United States, across all the southernmost states from west to east.
Many of the major cities are simply lost. London can no longer be said to be part of the
English nation in any meaningful sense. Indeed, London's government under Sadiq Khan has been
at pains to emphasize this fact, arguing that, I quote, "London is anyone, London is everyone." In
the same way, Paris is no longer really part of the French nation, nor can Los Angeles and New
York City be said to be part of the same nation as the American Midwest.
Secondly, Western elites are more and more apatride – nationless –
psychologically. The residents of these same "global cities" simply no longer identify with the
core of their historic nations and, indeed, are possessed by various degrees of fear and
loathing for the rural folk who have the audacity to vote for the (more-or-less insipid)
right-wing parties and not be in tune with the metropolitan classes' latest ideological
fashions. Thus, these elites feel no need to defend the economic, cultural, and demographic
interests of their own citizens – which is at best considered selfish and at worst
"racism," the gravest of sins. Today, many left-wing parties show open contempt for the very
idea of borders and nationhood, let alone national solidarity.
The phenomenon of an apatride elite is part of the reason why many have come to believe the
"statal" part of "nation-state" is also in decline today. But this is quite inaccurate. The
state shows no signs of decline and indeed has become all-encompassing and outright obese. If
the state does not take action today in the face of the winds of globalization – on
immigration, on economics – it is not because it no longer has the means, but simply
because the elites have lost the desire to defend their constituents.
There is no point getting worked into an impotent rage regarding these trends. Rather, we
should reflect on why the nation-state arose and why it is declining.
I think we need to consider the basic facts of human life, namely our psychology, which is
more or less fixed, at least in broad makeup, and our technology, which has enabled spectacular
changes in day-to-day human life over the past thousands of years.
Psychologically, the key issue seems to me to be that of identification. Ethnic
identification appears to be a hard-wired human impulse, much akin to children's aptitude for
adopting languages. This is evident in the fact that even
infants instinctively identify different races and accents , and show a preference for the
race and accent of their parents. If we look at modern history, we find that again and again
societies fail to consolidate into a common ethno-national identity because of the lack of a
common language (Austria-Hungary, Canada, Belgium, the Soviet Union . . .) and/or race (United
States of America, Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia . . .). Of course, additional cultural and
religious factors can further subdivide people into further ethnies but, as a rule, it seems
shared language and continental ancestry are the two basic ingredients for forming an
ethnicity.
Identification seems to stem in large part from socialization. An infant, assuming he or she
is of the same continental race as their parents, will come to identify ethnically with them
through constant contact, seeing their features, and hearing their voices. By contrast,
transracial adoptees – a black child raised by white parents or vice versa – is
likely to develop highly conflicted feelings and not feel wholly part of his adoptive
ethnicity. This can even be the case for multiracial children, such as one Barack Obama , who
despite being exactly half-white and half-black, felt no affinity for Europe. As he explained
in his memoirs: "And by the end of the first week or so [in Europe], I realized that I'd made a
mistake. It wasn't that Europe wasn't beautiful; everything was just as I'd imagined it. It
just wasn't mine."
The family – especially if the two parents are of the same ethnicity – seems to
be a powerful driver of ethnic identity creation. All across Europe, the society may speak one
language, the state may prescribe another, but if enough families speak another language at
home, then we have an autonomous ethnic group and resulting ethnic tensions. See: Catalonia,
Flanders, and indeed most of the Balkans.
Family is obviously one of the chief ways people socialize. But there are others: the
street, school, the workplace, church, as well as through mediating technologies, namely books,
newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet.
It seems to me that the expression and potency of ethnic and religious identity has
fluctuated throughout human history through the emergence of these technologies.
In very ancient times, people seemed to have chiefly identified with their tribe, each one
having their own gods, prescribing loyalty only to their own blood.
With the invention of writing, it became possible to create long-lasting and homogeneous
imperial and religious bureaucracies that went beyond the individual tribe. Hence, in time the
purely particularistic identification of the Greeks and other ancient nations came to be
replaced by the "dual citizenship" of the Roman Empire. Cicero is emblematic in expressing both
the local patriotism of his hometown and imperial Roman patriotism.
Empires and religions (and languages, for that matter) spread much more easily than did
peoples, who tend to be very "viscous" as soon as there is any significant population density.
Great emperors like Constantine and Ashoka appear to have seized upon Christianity and
Buddhism, in part, as means of giving a common identity to their otherwise very diverse
subjects. Throughout the Middle Ages, people had various local identities and a common
Christian identity. Publications were chiefly in Latin rather than the local language, also
encouraging a Christian identity among intellectuals.
Conditions have dramatically changed since the Middle Ages, notably in Europe, with the
steady spread of literacy and of local vernaculars, suddenly promoted to national languages.
National identity is evident among the intellectuals as early as the Renaissance (if not
earlier in some cases, as in the eleventh-century
Song of Roland ). Machiavelli's notorious The Prince concludes with a rousing call to unite
Italy and expel the (French and Spanish) barbarians; Luther exhorted the German nobility in
German to free themselves from the yoke of a decadent Papacy; and Montaigne in his cheeky
Essays is already speaking in stereotyped terms of Frenchmen's Gaulish ancestors.
Thus, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, we observe the steady rise of national
identity as more and more people were socialized in linguistically-discrete memetic networks:
the printing press, mass literacy, newspapers, national schooling . . . The nation marks the
entry of the masses into society and we are not surprised if war, by 1914, reaches a hysterical
nationalistic pitch.
The nation had become everything by then. One's family, one's society, one's state, one's
newspaper, one's books, one's school, one's territory . . . everything was dominated by the
national fact, working in harmony and reinforcing one another, dominating every facet of one's
existence. Thus, when a Frenchman crossed the border to Italy or landed in England, he could
feel to be entering a really different world with wholly different rules. This is certainly no
longer the case today.
The nation was an existential fact within which one lived and died, and potentially
flourished and . . . transcended one's individuality. Thus we cannot be surprised if so many
great men invested their participation and sacrifice for their nation in existential terms.
Hence, Charles de Gaulle felt France was "like a princess in the fairy tales or the madonna of
the frescoes, fated for an eminent and exceptional destiny" while the Romanian Petre
Țuțea – with the same exhilarating and empowering pathos – explained that
"the Balkans are the ass of Europe." Solzhenitsyn, Hitler, etc, etc.
Only religion and business escaped this rule. Yet religion often wrapped itself in the
national flag and business had to adapt to local conditions.
Sociologically, the peak of the nation-state really was achieved in the postwar era: 1950s
America, 1960s France. This was the moment in which our educational and other bureaucracies
became ends in themselves, excuses for wasting time and distributing money. It was the time of
television. This era saw the inception of globalism, which was adopted by elites, thus there
was a French globalism, an American globalism, etc. There was as of yet no unified globalist
class as such.
Today, people spend a greater and greater part of their daily life in front of screens.
Notwithstanding the restrictions of copyright and national ecosystems (Iran, China, Russia), in
the West Internet use is basically deterritorialized. I could be writing these lines from
Paris, Dubai, or Timbuktu. An American in Paris can work in an English-speaking company, inform
himself through American media, and basically live in an Anglo expat bubble. An Arabic
immigrant can similarly live in his own Arabo-Islamic online sphere, wherever he happens to
live, besides frequenting the local Saudi-funding Wahhabite mosque.
These screens enable deterritorialized work – and thus big companies, research
institutes, prestigious – are increasingly detaching from their nations.
The proposed Spencerian Ethnostate, a kind of Transatlantic Roman Empire, seems outlandish
today. However, once the Germans become as functionally Anglophone as the Dutch and the Nordics
– which is perhaps a matter of only 20 years – there will certainly be no
linguistic barriers to Occidental unity.
Why should "champagne" – quality bubbly wine – only be produced in the
geographical region of Champagne? By what law would it be impossible to make good ramen outside
of the territory of Japan?
Thus, we will inevitably see a steady denationalization of our societies, both from below
through Third-World immigration, and from above through "Anglo-globalization." The small,
rootless international clique has given rise to a rather large and growing
Expat Class . The chief problem is our effeminate lifestyle. People spend their entire
amidst the omnipresent fakery of the "education" system, office make-work, and screens. It also
means a pure and simple biological weakening – witness the decline in testosterone levels
– as our comfortable lives make us less and less capable of bearing pain, discomfort, or
sustained effort. This makes us unable to recognize painful truths – and lord knows how
many truths are painful – let alone affirm them and live by them.
To deny these trends, which are in large part technologically determined, is simply wishful
thinking.
"... Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children . ..."
"... What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working Americans are not the points of contention in this race. ..."
"... Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in poll after poll . The only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't enough. ..."
"... Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000 children had been killed. ..."
"... Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite. ..."
"... How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children. ..."
"... The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents a hopeful future for the next generation. ..."
"... The DNC's message is very clear they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. ..."
"... But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marblesit's obviouswe can only guess it's some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee, Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates. ..."
"... I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump. He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years. ..."
"... Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything" ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then. ..."
"... We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy. ..."
"... 'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root. ..."
"... Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns ..."
"... Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken. ..."
"... Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it." ..."
"... Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago, with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. ..."
In 2016, Hillary Clinton deserved to lose, and she did. Her deception, her
cheating in
the primary elections , was well-documented, despicable, dishonest, untrustworthy. Her
money-laundering scheme
at DNC should have been prosecuted under campaign finance laws.
Her record of warmongering and gleefully gloating over death and destruction was also well established. On national TV she
bragged about the mutilation of Moammar Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died!"
Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of
500,000 innocent Iraqi children .
This person was undeserving of anyone's support.
What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common
Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working
Americans are not the points of contention in this race.
His opponents have instead opted for every nonsensical conspiracy theory and McCarthyite smear they can concoct, including the
most ridiculous of all: the
Putin theory , without a single shred of evidence to support it.
Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in
poll after
poll . The
only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't
enough.
Bernie wins, and he has the best overall shot of changing the course of history, steering America away from plutocracy and fascism.
That crucial race is happening right now in the primaries . If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders
have already signaled that they will steal the nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election
for the future of America is on Super Tuesday.
It's either Trump or Bernie. That's your choice. Your only choice.
Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those
sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000
children had been killed.
Bernie also voted for Clinton's 1999 bombing campaign on Kosovo.
All that said, yes, Bernie is the best option.
Rhys Jaggar ,
Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty
to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite.
When they spout bullshit that 20% of UK workers could miss work 'due to coronavirus', when we have had precisely 36 deaths
in a population of 65 million plus, you know that like climate change, they spout the 1% probability as the mainstream narrative
.
It just shows what folks are up against when media is so cravenly serving those who do not pay them.
Charlotte Russe ,
"If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders have already signaled that they will steal the
nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday."
While Bernie spent more than three decades advocating for economic social justice Biden spent those same three decades
promoting social repression."
"The 1990s saw Biden take aim at civil liberties, authoring anti-terror bills that, among other things, "gutted the federal
writ of habeas corpus," as one legal scholar later reflected. It was this earlier legislation that led Biden to brag to anyone
listening that he was effectively the author of the Bush-era PATRIOT ACT, which, in his view, didn't go far enough. He inserted
a provision into the bill that allowed for the militarization of local law enforcement and again suggested deploying the military
within US borders."
How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle
the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday
morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children.
The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote
a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents
a hopeful future for the next generation.
The DNC's message is very clear they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. In fact, they're
saying more than thatif uninvited workers and the marginalized dare to enter they'll be tossed out on their arse
In plain sight the mainstream media news is telling millions that NO one can stop the military/security/surveillance/corporate
state from their stranglehold over the corrupt political duopoly.
I say fight and don't give-up! Be preparedorganize a million people march and head to Milwaukee the future of the next generation
is on the line.
But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marblesit's obviouswe can only guess it's
some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee,
Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates.
But if Biden, makes it to the Oval Office he'll be "less" than a figurehead. Biden, will be as mentally acute as the early
bird diner in a Florida assisted living facility after a recent stroke. The national security state will seize control handing
the "taxidermied Biden" a pen to idiotically sign off on their highly insidious agenda ..
Ken Kenn ,
Pretty straightforward for me ( I don't know about Bernie? ) but if the Super delegates and the DNC hierarchy decide to hand the
nomination over to Biden then Bernie should stand as an independent.
At least even in defeat a left marker would be placed on the US political table away from the Corporate owners and the shills
that hack for them in the media and elsewhere. At least ordinary US people would know that someone is on their side.
Corbyn in the UK was described as a ' Marxist' by the Tories and the unquestioning media. Despite all that ' Marxist ' Labour got 33% of the vote. People will vote for a ' socialist '
Charlotte Ruse ,
Unfortunately, Bernie won't abandon the Democratic Party. However, there's a ton of Bernie supporters who will vote Third Party
if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.
paul ,
I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and
put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump.
He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years.
That's when he hasn't been shilling for regime change wars in Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and elsewhere against "communist
dictators."
Bernie will get shafted again shortly and fall into line behind Epstein's and Weinstein's best mate Bloomberg or Creepy Joe,
or Pocahontas, or whoever.
If by some miracle they can't quite rig it this time and Bernie gets the nomination, the DNC will just fail to support him,
and allow Trump to win. They would rather see Trump than Bernie in the White House.
Just like Starmer, Thornberry, Phillips and all the Blairite Backstabber Friends of Israel were more terrified of seeing Jezza
in Number Ten than any Tory.
Dr. Johnson said that getting remarried represented the triumph of hope over experience.
The same applies to people expecting any positive change from people like Bernie, Tulsi, or Jezza.
The system just doesn't allow it.
pete ,
Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything"
ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then.
We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during
Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy.
clickkid ,
"The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday."
Sorry Joe, but where have you been for the last 50 years" Elections are irrelevant. Events change the world not elections. The only important aspect of an election is the turnout. If you vote in an election, then at some level you still believe in
the system.
Willem ,
Sometimes Chomsky can be useful
'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public
mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient
that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that
independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root.
Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing
character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as
it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds,
thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom
reigns.'
If true, the question is, what are we not allowed to say? Or is Chomsky wrong, and are we allowed to say anything we like since TPTB know that words cannot, ever, change political action
as for that you need power and brutal force, which we do not have and which, btw Chomsky advocates to its readers not to try to
use against the nation state?
So maybe Chomsky is not so useful after all, or only useful for the status quo.
Chomsky's latest book, sold in book stores and at airports, where, apparantly, opinions of dissident writers whose opinions
go beyond the bounds of the consensus of elites, are sold in large amounts to marginalize those opinions out of society, is called
'Optimism over despair', a title stolen from Gramsci who said: 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.'
But every time I follow Chomsky's reasoning, I end in dead end roads of which it is quite hard to find your way out. So perhaps
I should change that title into 'nihilism over despair'. If you follow Chomsky's reasoning
clickkid ,
Your Chomsky Quote:
"'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. .. " Tell that to the Yellow Vests.
ajbsm ,
Despite the deep state stranglehold .on the whole world there seems to be a 'wind' blowing (ref Lenin) of more and more people
turning backs on the secret service candidates not just in America. Power, money and bullying will carry on succeeding eventually
the edifice is blown away this will probably happen, it will be ugly and what emerges might not even be better(!) But the current
controllers seem to have a sell by date.
Ken Kenn ,
I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt.
A revolution can only come about when the Bourgeoisie can no longer continue to govern in the old way. In other words it becomes more than a want more of a necessity of change to the ordinary person.
We have to remember that in general ( it's a bit of a guess but just to illustrate a point ) that a small majority of people
in any western nation are reasonably content to an extent. They are not going to rock the boat that Kennedy tried to make the tide rise for or that Thatcher and her mates copied with
home owner ship and the right to get into serious debt. This depends on whether you had/have a boat in the first place. If not you've always been drowning in the slowly rising tide.
Sanders as I've said before is not Castro. He has many faults but in a highly parameterised p Neo liberal economic loving political and media world he is the best hope. Not great stuff on offer but a significant move away from the 1% and the 3% who work for them ( including Presidents and Prime
Misister ) so even that slight shift is plus for the most powerful country on planet earth.
I have in the past worked alongside various religious groups as an atheist as long as they were on the right( or should that
be left?) side on an issue.
Now is not the time for the American left to play the Prolier than though card.
Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken.
wardropper ,
I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt.
But didn't the Storming of the Bastille happen for that very reason?
I think people are waiting for just one spark to ignite their simmering fury just one more straw to break the patient camel's
back. Understandably, the "elite" (which used to mean exalted above the general level) are in some trepidation about this, but,
like all bullies their addiction to the rush of power goes all the way to the bitter end the bitter end being the point at which
their target stands up and gives them a black eye. It's almost comical how the bully then becomes the wailing victim himself,
and we have all seen often enough the successfully-resisted dictatorial figure of authority resorting to the claim that he is
now being bullied himself. But this is a situation of his own making, and our sympathy for him is limited by our memory of that
fact.
Ken Kenn ,
Where's the simmering fury in the West.
U.S. turnout is pathetically low. Even in the UK the turnout in the most important election since the First World War was 67%. I see the result of the " simmering fury " giving rise to the right not the left. Just that one phrase or paragraph of provocative words will spark the revolution?
... ... ...
wardropper ,
My point, which I thought I made clearly enough, was that the fury is simmering , and waiting for a catalyst. I also think
an important reason for turnout being low is simply that people don't respond well to being treated like idiots by an utterly
corrupt establishment. They just don't want to participate in the farce.
Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."
I'm not trying to be argumentative, and, like you, I am quite happy to back Sanders as by far the best of a pretty rotten bunch.
Perhaps China is indeed leading in many respects right now, but becoming Chinese doesn't seem like a real option for most of us
at the moment . . . Incidentally I have been to China and I found the people there as interesting as people anywhere else, although
I particularly enjoyed the many things which are completely different from our western cultural roots.
Rhisiart Gwilym ,
Speaking of the Clintons' death toll, didn't Sanders too back all USAmerica's mass-murdering, armed-robbery aggressions against
helpless small countries in recent times? And anyway, why are we wasting time discussing the minutiae of the shadow-boxing in
this ridiculous circus of a pretend-democratic 'election'? Watching a coffin warp would be a more useful occupation.
I go with Dmitry Orlov's reckoning of the matter: It doesn't matter who becomes president of the US, since the rule of the
deep state continues unbroken, enacting its own policies, which ignore the wishes of the common citizens, and only follow the
requirements of the mostly hyper-rich gics (gangsters-in-charge) in the controlling positions of this spavined, failing empire.
(My paraphrase of Dmitry.)
USPresidents do what their deep-state handlers want; or they get impeached, or assassinated like the Kennedy brothers. And
they all know this. Bill Hick's famous joke about men in a smoke-filled room showing the newly-'elected' POTUS that piece of film
of Kennedy driving by the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, is almost literally true. All POTUSes understand that perfectly
well before they even take office.
Voting for the policies you prefer, in a genuinely democratic republic, and actually getting them realised, will only happen
for USAmericans when they've risen up and taken genuine popular control of their state-machine; at last!
Meanwhile, of what interest is this ridiculous charade to us in Britain (on another continent entirely; we never see this degree
of attention given to Russian politics, though it has a much greater bearing on our future)? Our business here is to get Britain
out of it's current shameful status, as one of the most grovelling of all the Anglozionist empire's provinces. We have a traitorous-comprador
class of our own to turn out of power. Waste no time on the continuous three-ring distraction-circus in the US where we in Britain
don't even have a vote.
wardropper ,
The upvotes here would seem to show what thinking people appreciate most.
Seeing through the advertising bezazz, the cheerleaders and the ownership of the media is obviously a top priority, and I suspect
a large percentage of people who don't even know about the OffG would agree.
John Ervin ,
Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago,
with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. And that
much still holds true. Game. Set. Match. Any questions?
Antonym ,
What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous.
US deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016: they would love him to become string puppet POTUS in 2020. Trump is more difficult to control so they hate him.
John Ervin ,
Just one more Conspiracy Realist, eh! When will we ever learn?
"The deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016 ." That gives some sense of the ease with which they pull strings, nicely put.
One variation on the theme of your metaphor: "They savored him as one might consume a cocktail olive at an exclusive or entitled
soire."
It is painfully clear by any real connection of dots that he is simply one of their stalking horses for other game. And that Homeland game (still) doesn't know whether a horse has four, or six, legs.
*****
"Puppet Masters, or master puppets?"
Antonym ,
It is painfully clear that US Deep state hates Trump simply by looking at the Russiagate they cooked him up.
Fair dinkum ,
The US voters have surrounded themselves with a sewer, now they have to swim in it.
re ... Your house foreclosed upon by shady bank: naked capitalism, .0001% paid on interest
savings: naked capitalism, poor wages: naked capitalism, dangerous workplace: naked
capitalism, etc. ...
"naked capitalism" is not a clear description. Consider using "predatory capitalism",
which clearly describes what it is.
Here's the Wiki dictionary definition:
Predatory--
1. relating to or denoting an animal or animals preying naturally on others.
synonyms: predacious, carnivorous, hunting, raptorial, ravening;
Example: "predatory birds".
2. seeking to exploit or oppress others.
synonyms: exploitative, wolfish, rapacious, greedy, acquisitive, avaricious
Example: "I could see a predatory gleam in his eyes"
Note where the word comes from:
The Latin "praedator", in English meaning "plunderer".
And "plunderer" helps the reader understand and perhaps recognize what is happening.
An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a
hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style
leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have
been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC
manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.
There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of
information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was
carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as
perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the
Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal
intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone
else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made
its way from there to WikiLeaks.
Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the
media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that
the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of
thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election
by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of
material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used,
meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system.
Someone like Seth Rich.
... ... ...
Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses
only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference,
which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the
Clinton and Podesta emails.
Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the
information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the
Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable
of.
It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National
Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop
Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone's guess, but many of those who pause to
observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.
I don't ascribe to the idea that the intel agencies kill American citizens without a great
deal of thought, but in Rich's case, they probably felt like they had no choice. Think about
it: The DNC had already rigged the primary against Bernie, the Podesta emails had already
been sent to Wikileaks, and if Rich's cover was blown, then he would publicly identify
himself as the culprit (which would undermine the Russiagate narrative) which would split the
Democratic party in two leaving Hillary with no chance to win the election.
I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking
Rich but eventually realizing that there was no other way to deflect responsibility for the
emails while paving the way for an election victory.
If Seth Rich went public, then Hillary would certainly lose.
I imagine this is what they were thinking when they decided there was really only one
option.
"I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story
– blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is
no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption." https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/
@plantman It's more than Hillary losing. It would have been easy to connect the dots of
the entire plot to get Trump. Furthermore, it would have linked Obama and his cohorts in ways
that the country might have exploded. This was the beginning of a Coup De'tat that would have
shown the American political process is a complete joke.
To understand why the DNC mobsters and the Deep State hate him, watch this great 2016
interview where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents
refer to as the "Clinton Crime Family." This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal
agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants
in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang,
otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then
pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
Well, here was my own take on the controversy a couple of years ago, and I really haven't
seen anything to change my mind:
Well, DC is still a pretty dangerous city, but how many middle-class whites were
randomly murdered there that year while innocently walking the streets? I wouldn't be
surprised if Seth Rich was just about the only one.
Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that
cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street
killing not long afterward, isn't that just the most astonishing coincidence in all of
American history?
Consider that the leaks effectively nullified the investment of the $2 billion or so
that her donors had provided, and foreclosed the flood of good jobs and appointments to her
camp-followers, not to mention the oceans of future graft. Seems to me that's a pretty good
motive for murder.
Here's my own plausible speculation from a couple of months ago:
Incidentally, I'd guess that DC is a very easy place to arrange a killing, given that
until the heavy gentrification of the last dozen years or so, it was one of America's
street-murder capitals. It seems perfectly plausible that some junior DNC staffer was at
dinner somewhere, endlessly cursing Seth Rich for having betrayed his party and
endangered Hillary's election, when one of his friends said he knew somebody who'd be
willing to "take care of the problem" for a thousand bucks
Let's say a couple of hundred thousand middle-class whites lived in DC around then, and
Seth Rich was about the only one that year who died in a random street-killing, occurring not
long after the leak.
Wouldn't that seem like a pretty unlikely coincidence?
"If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for
his treachery ."
Heroism is the proper term for what Seth Rich did. He saw the real treachery, against
Bernie Sanders and the democratic faithful who expect at least a modicum of integrity from
their Party leaders (even if that expectation is utterly fanciful, wishful thinking), and he
decided to act. He paid for it with his life. A young, noble life.
In every picture I've seen of him, he looks like a nice guy, a guy who cared. And now he's
dead. And the assholes at the DNC simply gave him a small plaque over a bike rack, as I
understand it.
Seth Rich: American Hero. A Truth-Teller who paid the ultimate price.
Great reporting, Phil. Another home run.
(And thanks to Ron for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. As a Truth-Teller extraordinaire,
please watch your back, Bro. And Phil, too. You both know what these murderous scum are
capable of.)
Because the {real} killers of JFK, MLK and RFK were never detained and jailed/hanged, why
would one expect a lesser known, more ordinary individual's murder [Seth] to be solved?
Seymour Hersh, in a taped phone conversation, claimed to have access to an FBI report on the
murder. According to Hersh, the report indicated tha FBI Cyber Unit examined Rich's computer
and found he had contacted Wikileaks with the intention of selling the emails.
Another reason Assange may not want to reveal it, if Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks,
could be that Seth Rich didn't act alone, and revealing Seth's involvement would compromise
the other(s).
Or it could simply be that Wikileaks has promised to never reveal a source, even after
that source's death, as a promise to future potential sources, who may never want their
identities revealed, to avoid the thought of embarrassment or repercussions to their
associates or families.
Incidentally, they only started really going after Assange after the Vault 7 leaks of the
CIA's active bag of software tricks. I think, for Assange's sake, they should instead have
held on to that, and made it the payload of a dead man's switch.
I'm not sure how credible the source is but Ellen Ratner, the sister of Assange's former
lawyer and a journalist, told Ed Butowsky that Assange told her that it was Seth Rich. She
asked Butowsky to contact Rich's parents. She confirms the Assange meeting in an interview,
link below. Butowsky does not seem to be a credible source but Ratner does. If it was Seth
Rich then I have no doubt that his brother knows the details and the family does not want to
lose another son.
"According to Assange's lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange
were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails to someone other than the Russians."
Not to quibble on semantics but Rohrabacher met with Assange to ask if he would be willing
to reveal the source of the emails then Rohrabacher would contact Trump and try to make deal
for Assange's freedom. Rohrabacher clarified that he never talked to Trump or that he was
authorized by Trump to make any offer.
The MSM has been using the "amnesty if you say it was not the Russians" narrative to hint
at a coverup by Russian agent Trump. Normal for the biased MSM.
Giraldi's link "Assange did not take the offer" has nothing to do with Rohrabacher's
contact. It's just a general piece on Assange acting as a journalist should act.
I'm of the opinion Ron Unz seems to share, that Rich was not a particularly "big hitter" in
the DNC hierarchy and that his murder was more likely the result of a very nasty inter-party
squabble. I seem to recall a LOT of very nasty talk between the Jewish neocons in the Bush
era and the decent, traditional "small-government" style Republicans who greatly resented the
neocons' hijacking of the GOP for their demonic zionist agenda.
Common sense would suggest that the zionist types who have (obviously) hijacked the DNC
are at least as nasty and ruthless as the neocons who destroyed any decency or fair-play
within the GOP. It's not exactly hard to believe that these Murder, Inc. types (also lefties
of their era) wouldn't hesitate to whack someone like Rich for merely uttering a criticism of
Israel, for example.
Hell, Meyer Lansky ordered the hit-job on Bugsy Seigel for forgetting to bring bagels to a
sit-down ! There was a great web-site by a mobster of that era, long since taken down, who
described the story in detail. I forget the names .. but I'll see if I can't find a copy of
some of the pieces posted at least a decade ago .
It's not exactly hard to imagine some very nasty words being exchanged between the Rahm
Emmanuel types and decent Chicago citizens, for example, who genuinely cared for their city
and weren't afraid of The Big Jew and his mobster cronies . to their detriment I'm sure.
We're talking about organized crime, here, folks. The zionists make the so-called (mostly
fictitious) Sicilian Mafia look like newborn puppies. They wouldn't hesitate to whack a guy
like Rich for taking their favorite space in the bicycle rack.
My only trouble with the Seth Rich thing is, it seems a bit extreme, they seem quite callous
in murdering foreigners but US citizens in the US who are their staffers? If they really were
prepared to go out and kill in this way, they're be a lot more suspicious deaths.
What makes the case most compelling is the very quick investigation by police that looks
like they were told by somebody concerned about how the whole thing looked to close up the
case nice and quickly. That and the fact that he was shot in the back, which doesn't make
sense for an attempted robbery turned murder.
However, it may also be that as in so many cities in the US, murder clearance rates for
street shootings (Little forensic evidence, can only go by witness accounts or through poor
alibis from usual suspects and their associates. In this case there is also no connection
between Rich and any possible shooter with no witnesses.) are just so very low that DC police
don't bother and Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some
scrutiny.
But then maybe for the reasons above a place like DC is perfect to just murder somebody on
the street and that's why they were so brazen about it.
Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.
Well, upthread someone posted a recording of a Seymour Hersh phone call that confirmed
Seth Rich was the fellow who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, thereby possibly swinging
the presidential election to Trump and overcoming $2 billion of Democratic campaign
advertising.
Shortly afterwards, he probably became about the only middle-class white in DC who died in
a "random street killing" that year. If you doubt this, see if you can find any other such
cases that year.
I think it is *extraordinarily* unlikely that these two elements are unconnected and
merely happened together by chance.
Is there any other nation state that has 50 separate official elections, mostly run and paid
for by the public, just so a private club masquerading as a political party can select its
leader? To the rest of the world, this must look completely insane, but few people anywhere
even seem to notice how ridiculous it all looks.
In a remarkable statement that has gone virtually unreported in the American media,
Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination,
publicly denounced US intelligence agencies for interfering in the presidential contest and
attempting to sabotage the campaign of Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders.
In an opinion column published February 27 by the Hill , Gabbard attacked the
article published by the Washington Post on February 21, the eve of the Nevada
caucuses, which claimed that Russia was intervening in the US election to support Sanders. She
also criticized the decision of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York
City, to repeat the anti-Russia slander against Sanders during the February 25 Democratic
presidential debate in South Carolina.
Gabbard is a military officer in a National Guard medical unit who has been deployed to Iraq
and Kuwait and has continuing and close contact with the Pentagon. She is obviously familiar
with the machinations of the US military-intelligence apparatus and knows whereof she speaks.
Her harsh and uncompromising language is that much more significant.
She wrote:
Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these
dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by
out-of-control intelligence agencies. A "news article" published last week in the
Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges
that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is
a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who
are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election
process.
We are told the aim of Russia is to "sow division," but the aim of corporate media and
self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own -- by
generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign. It's extremely disingenuous for
"journalists" and rival candidates to publicize a news article that merely asserts, without
presenting any evidence, that Russia is "helping" Bernie Sanders -- but provides no
information as to what that "help" allegedly consists of.
Gabbard continued:
If the CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency is going to tell voters that "Russians"
are interfering in this election to help certain candidates -- or simply "sow discord" --
then it needs to immediately provide us with the details of what exactly it's alleging.
After pointing out that the Democratic Party establishment and the corporate media have had
little interest in measures to actually improve election security, such as requiring paper
ballots or some other form of permanent record of how people vote, Gabbard demanded:
The FBI, CIA or any other intelligence agency should immediately stop smearing
presidential candidates with innuendo and vague, evidence-free assertions. That is
antithetical to the role those agencies play in a free democracy. The American people cannot
have faith in our intelligence agencies if they are pushing an agenda to harm candidates they
dislike.
As socialists, we do not share Gabbard's belief that the intelligence agencies have a
positive role to play or that the American people need to have faith in them. As her military
career demonstrates, she is a supporter of American imperialism and of the capitalist state.
However, her opposition to the "dirty tricks" campaign against Sanders is entirely legitimate
and puts the spotlight on a deeply anti-democratic operation by the military-intelligence
apparatus.
Gabbard denounces this "new McCarthyism" and calls on her fellow candidate to rebuff the CIA
smears and "defend the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution." Not a single one of the
remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination -- including Sanders himself --
has responded to her appeal.
Her statement concludes that the goal of the "mainstream corporate media and the
warmongering political establishment" was either to block Sanders from winning the nomination,
or, if he does become the nominee, to "force him to engage in inflammatory anti-Russia rhetoric
and perpetuate the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, which are existential threats to our
country and the world."
Despite Gabbard's appeal for the Democratic candidates not to be "manipulated and forced
into a corner by overreaching intelligence agencies," the Democratic Party establishment has
been working in lockstep with the intelligence agencies in the anti-Russia campaign against
Trump, which began even before election day in 2016, metastasized into the Mueller
investigation and then the effort to impeach Trump over his delay in the dispatch of military
aid to Ukraine for its war with Russian-backed separatist forces.
Her comments are a complete vindication of what the World Socialist Web Site has
written about the anti-Russia campaign and impeachment: these were efforts by the Democratic
Party, acting as the representative of the military-intelligence apparatus, to block the
emergence of genuine left-wing popular opposition to Trump, and to channel popular hostility to
this administration in a right-wing and pro-imperialist direction.
Gabbard herself was the only House Democrat to abstain on impeachment, although she did not
voice any principled grounds for her vote, such as opposition to the intelligence agencies. She
has based her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination largely on an appeal to
antiwar sentiment, particularly opposing US intervention in Syria. She has also said that if
elected, she would drop all charges against Julian Assange and pardon Edward Snowden.
These views led to a vicious attack by Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic presidential
candidate in 2016, who last October called Gabbard "a Russian asset," claiming that she was
being groomed by Russia to serve as a third-party candidate in 2020 who would take votes away
from the Democratic nominee and help re-elect President Trump. "She's the favorite of the
Russians," Clinton claimed.
Since Clinton's attack, the Democratic National Committee has excluded Gabbard from its
monthly debates, manipulating the eligibility requirements so that billionaire Michael
Bloomberg would qualify even for debates held in states where he was not on the ballot but
Gabbard was, such as Nevada and South Carolina.
The thing to watch today will be the vote stealing by the Democrat oligarchy. They are the
world champions at every sort of electoral malfeasance. Remember in 2016 how Bernie almost
won New York until Brooklyn, his hometown, was counted and more than 20,000 voters
disappeared? Then there was California where millions of votes went uncounted and Hillary was
called the winner.
The Democrats are not really a political party in the sense that europeans understand the
term, more like an agglomeration of electoral machines, controlled by politicians owned by
vested interests, making up the rules as they go along.
With both Biden and Warren desperate for anything that can be portrayed as momentum expect
the unexpected: repeats of the sort of nonsense we saw in Iowa and local precincts in which
110% of the electorate give unanimous support to the candidate most likely to take away their
social security and wave 'bye-bye' as they die untreated of diseases. Or malnutrition.
A
nd the cherry on top of the electoral sundae in today's primaries will be the near unanimity
with which the most glaring irregularities are ignored by the media, and anyone suggesting
that 2+2= anything as predictable as 4 will be called a conspiracy theorist, working for
Putin and the KGB.
Back in January, well before the Democratic primary race had taken on its current
composition, independent journalist
Ruth Ann Oskolkoff reported that a source had heard from high-level Democratic Party
insiders that they were planning to install Joe Biden as the party's nominee, and to smear
Bernie Sanders as a Russian asset.
"On January 20, 2020 at 8:20 p.m. PDT I received a communication from a reliable source,"
Oskolkoff wrote.
"This person had interactions earlier that evening with high level party members and
associates of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who said that they have now selected
Biden as the Democratic Party nominee, with Warren as the VP. They also said the plan is to
smear Bernie as a Russian asset."
Now, immediately before Super Tuesday, we are seeing establishment candidates
Pete Buttigieg and
Amy Klobuchar drop out of the race, both of whom, along with
former candidate Beto O'Rourke , are now suddenly endorsing Biden. Elizabeth Warren, the
only top-level candidate besides Sanders who could be labeled vaguely "left" by any stretch of
the imagination, has meanwhile
outraged progressives by remaining in the race, to the Vermont senator's detriment.
Prior to the South Carolina primary, Russian state media were touting Bernie Sanders as
the most likely Democratic nominee, and it won't be surprising if they do the same after
Super Tuesday https://t.co/mH98PVmcjr
This latter development is becoming a conspicuously common line of attack against Sanders
and, while we're on the subject, also tracks with a prediction made by journalist Max Blumenthal back in
July of 2017. Blumenthal told Fox's Tucker Carlson that "this Russia hysteria will be
re-purposed by the political establishment to attack the left and anyone on the left -- a
Bernie Sanders-like politician who steps out of line on the issues of permanent war or
corporate free trade, things like that -- will be painted as Russia puppets. So this is very
dangerous, and people who are progressive who are falling into it need to know what the
long-term consequences of this cynical narrative are."
So we're seeing things unfold exactly as some have predicted. We're seeing the clear
frontrunner smeared as a tool of Vladimir Putin, accompanied by a deluge of op-eds and think
pieces from all the usual
warmongering mass media narrative managers calling on so-called "moderates" to rally around
the former Vice President on Super Tuesday.
"Whatever the case for either Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren...neither is going to be
the nominee. And...it's not going to be Mike Bloomberg either. So it's Bernie Sanders or Joe
Biden." Tomorrow, if you live in one of 14 states, you can choose Biden. https://t.co/btuPbGtWxG
And the prediction markets have seen a massive surge for Biden and plunge for Bernie...
With Biden now surging into the lead
The only problem? Biden's brain is turning into sauerkraut.
There are two new clips of video footage making the rounds today, one featuring Biden at a
rally telling his supporters that tomorrow is "Super Thursday" ,
and another featuring the former VP saying (and this is a direct quote ),
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created -- by the -- you know, you
know the thing."
And yeah, it's unpleasant to have to keep pointing this out. I'm not loving it myself. I
resent Biden's handlers and the Democratic Party establishment for making it necessary to
continually point out an old man's obvious symptoms of cognitive decline. But it does need to
be pointed to, and it's creepy and weird that they're continuing to prop up this crumbling husk
of a man while pretending that everything's fine.
Not that Biden would be an acceptable leader of the most powerful government on earth even
with a working brain; he's a horrible war hawk
with an
inexcusable track record of advancing right-wing policies. But even rank-and-file Americans
who don't pay attention to that stuff would plainly see a man on the debate stage opposite
Trump who shouldn't be permitted near heavy machinery, much less the nuclear codes. And Trump
will happily point that out.
It's been obvious since 2016 that the Dems were going to once again sabotage the only
candidate with a chance of beating Trump in favor of a scandalously inappropriate candidate,
but wheeling out an actual, literal dementia patient for the role is something not even I would
have imagined.
It took a rabid nationalist like Donald Trump to end the war in Afghanistan , whereas
faithful neoliberal Barack Obama kept the war around because it provided "markets" for weapons
corporations.
This is like a new gangster who takes control of a neighborhood and reduces the required
weekly protection payment. Hurray For Less Extortion!
Hey Bernie, how about throw away the JCPOA, restore normal diplomatic and commercial
relations, and apologize for 40 years of economic warfare?
But that will never happen, because the Dummycrat policy is to destroy Iran for the crime
of existence. How is it the Bernie people don't notice that Bernie always caucuses with the
Dummycrats in Congress and is running on the Dummycrat ticket? We are supposed to believe
that someone elected on the Dummycrat ticket won't follow Dummycrat party polices?
We are supposed to believe that someone elected on the Dummycrat ticket won't follow
Dummycrat party polices?
The way American electoral politics works, Sanders doesn't really have a choice except to
try and steal the Democratic party's ballot line. An independent bid would split the left
vote and make it impossible to win the general election, which is winner take all.
At least that's what his supporters say. I think there's a grain of truth there. If Bernie
wants to win, and not merely be a protest candidate, he has to take the ballot line of the
party with the most left-wing voters, and that's not the Republican party.
In the mid-1980s, Rony Brauman, who, at the time, was the president of the leading
humanitarian organization Médecins sans Frontières, established a new human
rights group called Liberté sans Frontières. For the inaugural colloquium,
Brauman invited a number of speakers, among them Peter Bauer, a recently retired professor from
the London School of Economics. Bauer was an odd choice given that he was a staunch defender of
European colonialism; he had once responded to a student pamphlet that accused the British of
taking "the rubber from Malaya, the tea from India, [and] raw materials from all over the
world," by arguing that actually "the British took the rubber to Malaya and the tea to India."
Far from the West causing Third World poverty, Bauer maintained that "contacts with the West"
had been the primary agents of the colonies' material progress.
Bauer hammered on this point at the colloquium, claiming that indigenous Amazonians were
among the poorest people in the world precisely because they enjoyed the fewest "external
contacts." Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, he continued, showed proof of the
economic benefits such contacts brought. "Whatever one thinks of colonialism it can't be held
responsible for Third World poverty," he argued.
In her illuminating new book, "The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of
Neoliberalism," Jessica Whyte recounts this story only to ask why Brauman, a leading
humanitarian activist, invited Bauer -- whom The Economist had described as being as hostile to
foreign aid as Friedrich Hayek had been to socialism -- to deliver a talk during the opening
event for a new human rights organization. Her response is multifaceted, but, as she traces the
parallel histories of neoliberalism and human rights, it becomes clear that the two projects
are not necessarily antithetical, and actually have more in common than one might think.
Clickhereto read long excerpts from "The Morals of the Market" at Google
Books.
Indeed, Liberté sans Frontières went on to play a central role in
delegitimizing Third World accounts of economic exploitation. The organization incessantly
challenged the accusations that Europe's opulence was based on colonial plunder and that the
world economic system made the rich richer and the poor poorer. And while it may have been more
outspoken in its critique of Third Worldism than more prominent rights groups, it was in no way
an outlier. Whyte reveals that in the eyes of organizations such as Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch, for instance, the major culprit for the woes of postcolonial states was
neither Europe nor the international economic order but rather corrupt and ruthless Third World
dictators who violated the rights of their populations as they undermined the development of a
free economy. This approach coincides neatly with neoliberal thought.
Whyte contends that we cannot understand why human rights and neoliberalism flourished
together if we view neoliberalism as an exclusively economic doctrine that favors
privatization, deregulation, and unfettered free markets over public institutions and
government. Although she strives to distinguish herself from thinkers like Wendy Brown and
Michel Foucault, she ends up following their footsteps by emphasizing the moral dimension of
neoliberal thought: the idea that a competitive market was not "simply a more efficient means
of distributing resources; it was the basic institution of a moral and 'civilised' society, and
a necessary support for individual rights."
She exposes how neoliberal ideas informed the intense struggle over the meaning of "human
rights," and chronicles how Western rights groups and neoliberals ultimately adopted a similar
interpretation, one that emphasizes individual freedoms at the expense of collective and
economic rights. This interpretation was, moreover, in direct opposition to many newly
independent postcolonial leaders.
Whyte describes, for instance, how just prior to the adoption of the two 1966 human rights
covenants -- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -- Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of
independent Ghana, coined the term "neo-colonialism" to refer to a series of mechanisms that
perpetuate colonial patterns of exploitation in the wake of formal independence. Nkrumah
"argued that the achievement of formal sovereignty had neither freed former colonies from the
unequal economic relations of the colonial period nor given them political control over their
own territories," thus preventing these states from securing the basic rights of their
inhabitants. A "state in the grip of neo-colonialism," he wrote, "is not master of its own
destiny."
Nkrumah thought that only when postcolonial states fully controlled their natural resources
would they be able to invest in the population's well-being. In the meantime, neo-colonial
economic arrangements were denying African states the ability to provide adequate education and
health care as well as other economic and social rights to their populations, thus revealing
how these economic arrangements were welded in a Gordian knot with international politics. Any
attempt to understand one without the other provided a distorted picture of reality.
Such combining of the economy with the political, however, was anathema to neoliberal
thought. In 1927, exactly three decades before Ghana's new leader led his country to
independence, Hayek's mentor, economist Ludwig von Mises, had already argued that colonialism
took advantage of the superior weaponry of the "white race" to subjugate, rob, and enslave
weaker peoples. But Mises was careful to distinguish colonial oppression from the economic
goals of a competitive market, noting that Britain was different since its form of colonialism
pursued "grand commercial objectives." Similarly, the British economist Lionel Robbins
separated the benign economic sphere from the merciless political one, writing in the 1930s
that "[n]ot capitalism, but the anarchic political organization of the world is the root
disease of our civilization."
These thinkers set the tone for many neoliberal economists who have since defined colonial
imperialism as a phenomenon of politics, not capitalism, while casting the market as a realm of
mutually beneficial, free, peaceful exchange. In this view, it is the political realm that
engenders violence and coercion, not the economic sphere. Yet, during the period of
decolonization neoliberals also understood that they needed to introduce moral justifications
for the ongoing economic exploitation of former colonies. Realizing that human rights were
rapidly becoming the new lingua franca of global moral speak, Whyte suggests that they, like
Nkrumah, began mobilizing rights talk -- except that neoliberals deployed it as a weapon
against states who tried to gain control over their country's natural resources as well as a
shield from any kind of criticism directed toward their vision of a capitalist market.
Their relation to the state was complicated, but was not really different from the one
espoused by their liberal predecessors. Neoliberal thinkers understood that states are
necessary to enforce labor discipline and to protect corporate interests, embracing states that
served as handmaidens to competitive markets. If, however, a state undermined the separation of
political sovereignty from economic ownership or became attuned to the demands of its people to
nationalize resources, that state would inevitably be perceived as a foe. The solution was to
set limits on the state's exercise of sovereignty. As Friedrich Hayek, the author of "The Road
to Serfdom," put it, the "taming of the savage" must be followed by the "taming of the
state."
Shaping the state so that it advances a neoliberal economic model can, however, be a brutal
undertaking, and the consequences are likely to generate considerable suffering for large
segments of the population. Freed from any commitment to popular sovereignty and economic
self-determination, the language of liberal human rights offered neoliberals a means to
legitimize transformative interventions that would subject states to the dictates of
international markets. This is why a conception of human rights, one very different from the
notion of rights advanced by Nkrumah, was needed.
In Whyte's historical analysis the free-market ideologues accordingly adopted a lexicon of
rights that buttressed the neoliberal state, while simultaneously pathologizing mass politics
as a threat to individual freedoms. In a nutshell, neoliberal economists realized that human
rights could play a vital role in the dissemination of their ideology, providing, in Whyte's
words, "competitive markets with a moral and legal foundation."
At about the same time that neoliberalism became hegemonic, human rights organizations began
sprouting in the international arena. By the early 1970s, Amnesty International and the
International Commission of Jurists were already active in numerous countries around the globe,
and Americas Watch (a precursor to Human Rights Watch) had just been established. According to
Samuel Moyn, a professor of history at Yale and author of the best seller "The Last Utopia," it
was precisely during this period that human rights first achieved global prominence. That
Western human rights organizations gained influence during the period of neoliberal
entrenchment is, Whyte argues, not coincidental.
Although Whyte emphasizes the writings of leading neoliberal thinkers, a slightly more
nuanced approach would have framed these developments as the reflection of a conjunctural
moment, whereby the rise of neoliberalism and of human rights NGOs was itself part of numerous
economic, social, and cultural shifts. Chile serves as a good example of this conjuncture,
revealing how a combination of historical circumstances led neoliberal economics and a certain
conception of human rights to merge.
Notwithstanding the bloody takeover, the extrajudicial executions, the disappearances and
wholesale torture of thousands of dissidents, Hayek's response to Pinochet's 1973 coup was that
"the world shall come to regard the recovery of Chile as one of the great economic miracles of
our time." Milton Friedman, a key figure in the Chicago School, later echoed this assessment,
describing Chile as an economic and political "miracle." The two Nobel Prize winners were not
detached observers, having provided advice to Pinochet on how to privatize state services such
as education, health care, and social security, and it was Friedman's former students, the
"Chicago Boys," who occupied central positions within the authoritarian regime, ensuring that
these ideas became policy.
What is arguably even more surprising is the reaction of human rights organizations to the
bloody coup in Chile. Whyte acknowledges that Naomi Klein covered much of this ground in "The
Shock Doctrine," where she details how Amnesty International obscured the relationship between
neoliberal "shock therapy" and political violence. Characterizing the Southern Cone as a
"laboratory" for both neoliberalism and grassroots human rights activism, Klein argued that, in
its commitment to impartiality, Amnesty occluded the reasons for the torture and killing, and
thereby "helped the Chicago School ideology to escape from its first bloody laboratory
virtually unscathed." While Whyte concurs with Klein's assessment, she has a slightly different
point to make.
To do so, she shows how Samuel Moyn contested Klein's claim that the human rights movement
was complicit in the rise of neoliberalism; he argued that the "chronological coincidence of
human rights and neoliberalism" is "unsubstantiated" and that the so-called "Chilean miracle"
is just as much due to the country's "left's own failures." Moyn's comment, Whyte cogently
observes, "raises the question of why, in the period of neoliberal ascendancy, international
human rights organisations flourished, largely escaping the repression that was pursued so
furiously against leftists, trade unionists, rural organizers and indigenous people in
countries such as Chile."
She points out that the CIA-trained National Intelligence Directorate had instructions to
carry out the "total extermination of Marxism," but in an effort to present Chile as a modern
civilized nation, the junta did not disavow the language of human rights, and at the height of
the repression allowed overseas human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and
the International Commission of Jurists to enter the country, giving them extensive freedom of
movement.
Whyte explains that in focusing their attention on state violence while upholding the market
as a realm of freedom and voluntary cooperation, human rights NGOs strengthened the great
neoliberal dichotomy between coercive politics and free and peaceful markets. Allende's
government had challenged the myth of the market as a realm of voluntary, non-coercive, and
mutually beneficial relations, and the Chilean leader paid for it with his life. By contrast,
the junta with the Chicago Boys' aid sought to uphold this myth, while using the state both to
enhance a neoliberal economic order and to decimate collective political resistance. Whyte
acknowledges that in challenging the junta's torturous means, human rights NGOs arguably helped
restrain the worst of its violence, but they did so at the cost of abandoning the economy as a
site of political contestation.
Whyte's claim is not simply that the human rights NGOs dealt with political violence in
isolation from the country's economic transformations, as Klein had argued. Rather, she shows
that the gap between Amnesty's version of human rights and the version espoused by postcolonial
leaders, like Nkrumah, was wide. Indeed, Amnesty International invoked human rights in a way
that had little in common with Nkrumah's program of economic self-determination, and the
organization was even hostile to the violent anti-colonial struggles promoted by UN diplomats
from postcolonial societies during the same period. The story of human rights and neoliberalism
in Chile is not, as Whyte convincingly shows, simply a story of the massive human rights
violations carried out in order to allow for market reforms, or of the new human rights NGOs
that contested the junta's violence. It is also the story of the institutionalization of a
conservative and market-driven vision of neoliberal human rights, one that highlights
individual rights while preserving the inequalities of capitalism by protecting the market from
the intrusions of "the masses."
Expanding Whyte's analysis to the present moment (the book focuses on the years between 1947
and 1987) while thinking of the relation between neoliberalism and human rights as part of a
historical conjuncture, it becomes manifest that many if not most human rights NGOs operating
today have been shaped by this legacy. One of its expressions is that rights groups rarely
represent "the masses" in any formal or informal capacity. Consider Human Rights Watch, whose
longstanding executive director Kenneth Roth oversees an annual budget of over $75 million and
a staff of roughly 400 people. In four years' time, Roth will outstrip Robert Mugabe's 30-year
tenure in office; while Roth has dedicated most of his adult life struggling against social
wrongs, he has never had to compete in elections to secure his post. Indeed, due to the
corporate structure of his organization the only constituency to which he is accountable are
Human Rights Watch's board members and donors -- those who benefit from neoliberal economic
arrangements -- rather than the people whose rights the NGO defends or, needless to say, the
"masses." Moreover, Human Rights Watch is not exceptional within the rights-world, and even
though rights organizations across the globe say they are interested in what the "people want,"
sovereignty of the people in any meaningful sense, wherein the people can control the decisions
that affect their lives most, is not really on the agenda.
Undoubtedly, Human Rights Watch has shed light on some of the most horrendous state crimes
carried out across the globe over the past several decades. Exposing egregious violations is
not an easy task and is a particularly important endeavor in our post-truth era. However,
truth-telling, in and of itself, is not a political strategy. Even if exposing violations is
conceived of as a component of a broader political mobilization, the truths that NGOs like
Human Rights Watch have been revealing are blinkered. Given that they interpret human rights in
an extremely narrow way, one that aligns quite neatly with neoliberal thought, their strategy
therefore fails to provide tools for those invested in introducing profound and truly
transformative social change.
From the get-go, most Western human rights NGOs had been attuned to Cold War politics and
refrained from advocating for economic and social rights for decades, inventing numerous
reasons to justify this stance: from the claim that the right to education and health care were
not basic human rights like freedom of speech and freedom from torture, to the assertion that
economic and social rights lacked a precise definition, thus rendering them difficult to
campaign for. It took close to a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ongoing
campaigning of Third World activists for the leading human rights organizations to acknowledge
that economic and social rights, such as the right to health care, education, and social
security, were indeed human rights, rights that they should dedicate at least some of its
resources to fight for. But even today, almost 20 years after their integration within Human
Rights Watch's agenda, the resources allocated to the protection of these rights is relatively
small, and the way that the organization strives to secure them is deeply skewed by the
neoliberal view that politics and markets are separate realms and that human rights work should
avoid interference with the capitalist structure of competitive markets. Wittingly or not,
organizations like Human Rights Watch have not only bolstered the neoliberal imagination, but
have produced a specific arsenal of human rights that shapes social struggles in a way that
weakens those who aim to advance a more egalitarian political horizon.
Several years ago, Roth tried to justify Human Rights Watch's approach, claiming that the
issues it deals with are determined by its "methodology," and that the "essence of that
methodology [ ] is not the ability to mobilize people in the streets, to engage in litigation,
to press for broad national plans, or to provide technical assistance. Rather, the core of our
methodology is our ability to investigate, expose, and shame." The hallmark of human rights
work, in his view, is uncovering discrimination, while the unequal arrangement of the local and
international economy leading to discrimination are beyond the organization's purview. Not
unlike the neoliberal thinkers discussed in Whyte's book, Human Rights Watch limits its
activism to formal equality, adopting a form of inquiry that ignores and ultimately disavows
the structural context, which effectively undercuts forms of collective struggle.
Returning to Rony Brauman and the creation of Liberté sans Frontières, toward
the end of the book Whyte recounts how in a 2015 interview he understood things differently
than he had in the mid-1980s. "I see myself and the small group that I brought together as a
kind of symptom of the rise of neoliberalism [ ] We had the conviction that we were a kind of
intellectual vanguard, but no," he laughed, "we were just following the rising tendency."
Whyte suggests that this assessment is, if anything, too modest: rather than being a
symptom, the humanitarians who founded Liberté sans Frontières explicitly
mobilized the language of human rights in order to contest the vision of substantive equality
that defined the Third Worldist project. Brauman and his organization benefited from the
neo-colonial economic arrangements and, she notes,
were not powerless companions of the rising neoliberals, but active, enthusiastic and
influential fellow travellers. Their distinctive contribution was to pioneer a distinctly
neoliberal human rights discourse, for which a competitive market order accompanied by a
liberal institutional structure was truly the last utopia.
The destructive legacy that Whyte so eloquently describes suggests that the convergence
between neoliberals and rights practitioners has defanged human rights from any truly
emancipatory potential. Formal rights without the redistribution of wealth and the
democratization of economic power, as we have learned not only from the ongoing struggles of
postcolonial states but also from the growing inequality in the Global North, simply do not
lead to justice. So if the objectives of a utopian imagination include equitable distribution
of resources and actual sovereignty of the people, we urgently need a new vocabulary of
resistance and novel methods of struggle.
.. GOP strategist and avid Never Trumper Rick Wilson said ... Obama needs to throw his
full weight behind Biden before Super Tuesday in a way that will shake up the race ... Obama
can transform this race in a hot second. ... It's now or never ... Biden beat Sanders like a
rented mule. The exit polls told the tale; it was a crushing defeat across almost every
demographic group ...
Gotta love these Republicans who have our best interests at heart.
Last week in Nevada it was Sanders who beat Biden like a rented mule, inflicting a crushing
defeat across almost every demographic group. But that was then, this is now, and a Republican
stratigist says "It's now or never" to defeat Sanders Trump.
Super Tuesday is ... Tuesday. Biden, as I noted yesterday, hasn't visited any Super Tuesday
state in a month, has almost no money, is not on the air, has little or no ground game. Early
voting is already in progress in several states. What can be done in one day to turn
things around?
Realistically, nothing. Yes, a big endorsement by Obama could have an impact, but how many
voters would even hear about it before voting? Biden will definitely get a bounce from his win
in SC, but how big will it be? How much did Sanders' win in Nevada help him in SC?
Team Biden believes having Klobuchar in the race through Super Tuesday is incredibly
helpful to them.
Why? It blocks Bernie Sanders in the Minnesota primary on Tuesday.
"If Amy gets out, that gives Minnesota to Bernie,"
...
Four years ago, Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton in Minnesota, winning 62% to 38% ...
The Biden campaign wants Warren to be in the race through Super Tuesday, when Massachusetts
voters weigh in.
Not to win. Not to hoard delegates for a convention fight. But just taking every opportunity
to slow Bernie down.
Finally, and I only saw one tweet about this and can't find any confirmation, that Bloomberg
hasn't made any ad buys beyond Super Tuesday. Anyone know anything about this?
Steyer has spent $200 million, got nothing for it, and has dropped out. I'm hoping that's
what we see for Bloomberg as well. Is Bloomberg trying to win? Or just to stop Bernie? Super
Tuesday will tell the tale.
@WoodsDweller -- Biden, Bloomberg, Warren, Klobuchar -- is stepping in to do his or
her part for the overall goal of stopping Bernie. They are 100% loyal to the Dem
establishment which is 100% loyal to the neocon, neoliberal, oligarchic, globalist Deep
State. They know the Dem establishment will reward them -- and you can practically smell the
certainty of that knowledge on Liz. She'll do and say whatever they ask of her.
with anything but a full on assault by the DNC, the media, and their respective
surrogates. What I didn't expect, especially from dubious "progressives" like Warren, was to
hear non-viable candidates openly talking about blunting Bernie's momentum with their only
goal being to collect delegates into the convention. Yes, most of us anticipated this was
going to turn into a contested convention by design, but I don't know how many of us believed
they'd tip their hand so blatantly and so soon into the process. Now that they have, it gives
Bernie time to prepare his own strategy for meeting their threat at the convention. Maybe
someone could refresh his memory on how effective the bus loads of people that GWB arranged
were in shaping the media narrative of "civil disruption vs. accurate counting" in Florida?
Taking a page out of that playbook, Bernie's people really need to start thinking about
organizing an army of supporters in strength that rivals his numbers at his rallys, and
descend onto Wisconsin. And maybe as an added bonus, conjure up the image of the 1968
convention Buttigieg seems to believe Bernie is so nostalgic about resurrecting. If the
Establishment is going to twart the will of the people, let the will of the people be
heard.
First, a wild methodological error. Bernie actually received more votes yesterday than in
2016. Perhaps only people who voted in 2016 were polled.
Second, everyone knows that Bernie is the person most likely to defeat Trump and Biden is
the worst possible candidate. Perhaps thousands of Trump supporters came out pretending to be
Democrats to vote for Biden. This has supposedly happened before.
Third, the quisling Democrats have given up all pretense of being honest and are blatantly
stealing the nomination from Bernie. This is the most likely.
.
In many ways, this race is now the same exact contest that was fought back in 2016. It has
come down to Joe Biden -- The Establishment choice -- despite his obvious Ukraine corruption,
family payoffs, obstruction of justice and abuse of office, etc. -- and despite Biden being
100% wrong on every issue from the Iraq War to NAFTA to the TPP to Syria (more Regime
Change) to Libya to saying China is not an economic threat , etc. -- and despite him
being a bumbling buffoon and gaffe machine who doesn't even know what State he is in, and
constantly mangles sentences, and arrogantly yells at or insults prospective voters -- and
despite him on multiple occasions caught sniffing the hair and fondling young girls in
public.
How is this different from Hillary Clinton .. just without the Cackle ?
Bernie Sanders, as in 2016, is the only other option now that has a multi-state Campaign
support structure. While Mike Bloomberg can buy million dollar Ads and saturate them
everywhere across TV and the Internet .. he has no real voter base, a phony message, and no
charisma.
So it is Sanders .vs. Biden , which is essentially a rematch between Sanders and
Clinton -- or -- essentially a rematch between Sanders and the DNC Establishment (who also
control the rules of the game).
My question is, who in earth would ever want to vote for the doddering and incoherent Joe
Biden under any circumstance? Clearly, Biden just represents the anti-Sanders vote here, and
The Establishment, with Bloomberg, Buttiburger, and Klobachar all failing, has closed ranks
to consolidate around the one dog-faced, pony soldier left standing in the race: Quid Pro
Joe.
Come on man! Get down and do some pushups Jack. I don't want your vote.
Polls and Votes and super delegates and Media narratives will all now be fixed around
Biden from this point on (if they weren't already). So expect a whole lot of Malarkey
upcoming, and this means that Sanders will have to win by big margins, and win a whole lot
more States than he did in 2016, in order to survive.
Mr.
Fish / Truthdig
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the product of ancient ethnic hatreds. It is the tragic clash
between two peoples with claims to the same land. It is a manufactured conflict, the outcome of a
100-year-old colonial occupation by
Zionists
and later Israel, backed by the British, the United States and other major imperial powers. This project
is about the ongoing seizure of Palestinian land by the colonizers. It is about the rendering of the
Palestinians as non-people, writing them out of the historical narrative as if they never existed and
denying them basic human rights. Yet to state these incontrovertible facts of Jewish colonization --
supported by innumerable official reports and public and private communiques and statements, along with
historical records and events -- sees Israel's defenders level charges of anti-Semitism and racism.
Rashid Khalidi
, the
Edward Said
professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, in his book "
The
Hundred Years' War on Palestine
: A History of Settler Colonization and Resistance, 1917-2017" has
meticulously documented this long project of colonization of Palestine. His exhaustive research, which
includes internal, private communications between the early Zionists and Israeli leadership, leaves no
doubt that the Jewish colonizers were acutely aware from the start that the Palestinian people had to be
subjugated and removed to create the Jewish state. The Jewish leadership was also acutely aware that its
intentions had to be masked behind euphemisms, the patina of biblical legitimacy by Jews to a land that
had been Muslim since the seventh century, platitudes about human and democratic rights, the supposed
benefits of colonization to the colonized and a mendacious call for democracy and peaceful co-existence
with those targeted for destruction.
"This is a unique colonialism that we've been subjected to where they have no use for us," Khalidi
quotes Said as having written. "The best Palestinian for them," Said wrote, "is either dead or gone. It's
not that they want to exploit us, or that they need to keep us there in the way of Algeria or South
Africa as a subclass."
Zionism was birthed from the evils of anti-Semitism. It was a response to the discrimination and
violence inflicted on Jews, especially during the savage
pogroms
in Russia and Eastern Europe in the
late 19th century and early 20th century that left thousands dead. The Zionist leader Theodor Herzl in
1896 published "Der Judenstaat," or "The Jewish State," in which he warned that Jews were not safe in
Europe, a warning that within a few decades proved terrifyingly prescient with the rise of German
fascism.
Britain's support of a Jewish homeland was always colored by anti-Semitism. The 1917 decision by the
British Cabinet, as stated in the
Balfour Declaration
, to
support "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" was a principal part of
a misguided endeavor based on anti-Semitic tropes. It was undertaken by the ruling British elites to
unite "international Jewry" -- including officials of Jewish descent in senior positions in the new
Bolshevik state in Russia -- behind Britain's flagging military campaign in World War I. The British
leaders were convinced that Jews secretly controlled the U.S. financial system. American Jews, once
promised a homeland in Palestine, would, they thought, bring the United States into the war and help
finance the war effort. To add to these bizarre anti-Semitic canards, the British believed that Jews and
Dnmes -- or "crypto-Jews" whose ancestors had converted to Christianity but who continued to practice the
rituals of Judaism in secret -- controlled the Turkish government. If the Zionists were given a homeland
in Palestine, the British believed, the Jews and Dnmes would turn on the Turkish regime, which was
allied with Germany in the war, and the Turkish government would collapse. World Jewry, the British were
convinced, was the key to winning the war.
"With 'Great Jewry' against us," warned Britain's Sir
Mark Sykes
, who with the French diplomat Franois
Georges-Picot created the secret treaty that carved up the
Ottoman Empire
between Britain and France,
there would be no possibility of victory. Zionism, Sykes said, was a powerful global subterranean force
that was "atmospheric, international, cosmopolitan, subconscious and unwritten, nay often unspoken."
The British elites, including Foreign Secretary
Arthur Balfour
, also believed that Jews could never be assimilated in British society and it was
better for them to emigrate. It is telling that the only Jewish member of Prime Minister David Lloyd
George's government, Edwin Montagu, vehemently opposed the Balfour Declaration. He argued that it would
encourage states to expel its Jews. "Palestine will become the world's ghetto," he warned.
This turned out to be the case after World War II when hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, many
rendered stateless, had nowhere to go but Palestine. Often, their communities had been destroyed during
the war or their homes and land had been confiscated. Those Jews who returned to countries like Poland
found they had nowhere to live and were often victims of discrimination as well as postwar anti-Semitic
attacks and even massacres.
The European powers dealt with the Jewish refugee crisis by shipping victims of the Holocaust to the
Middle East. So, while leading Zionists understood that they had to uproot and displace Arabs to
establish a homeland, they were also acutely aware that they were not wanted in the countries from which
they had fled or been expelled. The Zionists and their supporters may have mouthed slogans such as "a
land without a people for a people without a land" in speaking of Palestine, but, as the political
philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, European powers were attempting to deal with the crime carried out
against Jews in Europe by committing another crime, one against Palestinians. It was a recipe for endless
conflict, especially since giving the Palestinians under occupation full democratic rights would risk
loss of control of Israel by the Jews.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the godfather of the right-wing ideology that has dominated Israel since 1977, an
ideology openly embraced by Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and
Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote bluntly in 1923: "Every native population in the world resists colonists as
long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is
what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a
solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of 'Palestine' into the 'Land
of Israel.' "
This kind of public honesty, Khalidi notes, was rare among leading Zionists. Most of the Zionist
leaders "protested the innocent purity of their aims and deceived their Western listeners, and perhaps
themselves, with fairy tales about their benign intentions toward the Arab inhabitants of Palestine," he
writes. The Zionists -- in a situation similar to that of today's supporters of Israel -- were aware it
would be fatal to acknowledge that the creation of a Jewish homeland required the expulsion of the Arab
majority. Such an admission would cause the colonizers to lose the world's sympathy. But among themselves
the Zionists clearly understood that the use of armed force against the Arab majority was essential for
the colonial project to succeed. "Zionist colonization can proceed and develop only under the
protection of a power that is independent of the native population -- behind an iron wall, which the
native population cannot breach," Jabotinsky wrote.
The Jewish colonizers knew they needed an imperial patron to succeed and survive. Their first patron
was Britain, which sent 100,000 troops to crush the Palestinian revolt of the 1930s and armed and trained
Jewish militias known as the Haganah. The savage repression of that revolt included wholesale executions
and aerial bombardment and left 10% of the adult male Arab population killed, wounded, imprisoned or
exiled. The Zionists' second patron became the United States, which now, generations later, provides
more than $3 billion a year
to Israel. Israel,
despite the myth of self-reliance it peddles about itself, would not be able to maintain its Palestinian
colonies but for its imperial benefactors. This is why the
boycott, divestment and sanctions movement
frightens Israel. It is also why I support the BDS
movement.
The early Zionists bought up huge tracts of fertile Palestinian land and drove out the indigenous
inhabitants. They subsidized European Jewish settlers sent to Palestine, where 94% of the inhabitants
were Arabs. They created organizations such as the Jewish Colonization Association, later called the
Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, to administer the Zionist project.
But, as Khalidi writes, "once colonialism took on a bad odor in the post-World War II era of
decolonization, the colonial origins and practice of Zionism and Israel were whitewashed and conveniently
forgotten in Israel and the West. In fact, Zionism -- for two decades the coddled step-child of British
colonialism -- rebranded itself as an anticolonial movement."
"Today, the conflict that was engendered by this classic nineteenth-century European colonial venture
in a non-European land, supported from 1917 onward by the greatest Western imperial power of its age, is
rarely described in such unvarnished terms," Khalidi writes. "Indeed, those who analyze not only Israeli
settlement efforts in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, but the entire
Zionist enterprise from the perspective of its colonial settler origins and nature are often vilified.
Many cannot accept the contradiction inherent in the idea that although Zionism undoubtedly succeeded in
creating a thriving national entity in Israel, its roots are as a colonial settler project (as are those
of other modern countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). Nor can they accept
that it would not have succeeded but for the support of the great imperial powers, Britain and later the
United States. Zionism, therefore, could be and was both a national and a colonial settler movement at
one and the same time."
One of the central tenets of the Zionist and Israeli colonization is the denial of an authentic,
independent Palestinian identity. During the British control of Palestine, the population was officially
divided between Jews and "non-Jews." "There were no such thing as Palestinians they did not exist,"
onetime Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir quipped. This erasure, which requires an egregious act of
historical amnesia, is what the Israeli sociologist
Baruch Kimmerling
called the "politicide" of the Palestinian people. Khalidi writes, "The surest way to eradicate a
people's right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it."
The creation of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948, was achieved by the Haganah and other Jewish
groups through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and massacres that spread terror among the
Palestinian population. The Haganah, trained and armed by the British, swiftly seized most of Palestine.
It emptied West Jerusalem and cities such as Haifa and Jaffa, along with numerous towns and villages, of
their Arab inhabitants. Palestinians call this moment in their history the Nakba, or the Catastrophe.
"By the summer of 1949, the Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted,"
Khalidi writes. "Some 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory that at war's end became the new
state of Israel had been forced from their homes and lost their lands and property. At least 720,000 of
the 1.3 million Palestinians were made refugees. Thanks to this violent transformation, Israel controlled
78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian
Arabs who had been able to remain, barely one-fifth of the prewar Arab population."
Since 1948, Palestinians have heroically mounted one resistance effort after another, all unleashing
disproportionate Israeli reprisals and a demonization of the Palestinians as terrorists. But this
resistance has also forced the world to recognize the presence of Palestinians, despite the feverish
efforts of Israel, the United States and many Arab regimes to remove them from historical consciousness.
The repeated revolts, as Said noted, gave the Palestinians the right to tell their own story, the
"permission to narrate."
The colonial project has poisoned Israel, as feared by its most prescient leaders, including Moshe
Dayan and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist in 1995.
Israel is an apartheid state that rivals and often surpasses the onetime savagery and racism of apartheid
South Africa. Its democracy -- which was always exclusively for Jews -- has been hijacked by extremists,
including current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have implemented racial laws that were once
championed mainly by marginalized fanatics such as
Meir Kahane
. The Israeli public is
infected with racism. "Death to Arabs" is a popular chant at Israeli soccer matches. Jewish mobs and
vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such as Im Tirtzu, carry out indiscriminate acts
of vandalism and violence against dissidents, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and the hapless African
immigrants who live crammed into the slums of Tel Aviv. Israel has promulgated a series of discriminatory
laws against non-Jews that eerily resemble the racist
Nuremberg Laws
that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish
towns in Israel's Galilee region to bar applicants for residency on the basis of "suitability to the
community's fundamental outlook." The late Uri Avnery, a left-wing politician and journalist, wrote that
"Israel's very existence is threatened by fascism."
In recent years, up to 1 million Israelis have
left to live in
the United States
, many of them among Israel's most enlightened and educated citizens. Within Israel,
human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists -- Israeli and Palestinian -- have found themselves
vilified as traitors in government-sponsored smear campaigns, placed under state surveillance and
subjected to arbitrary arrests. The Israeli educational system, starting in primary school, is an
indoctrination machine for the military. The Israeli army periodically unleashes massive assaults with
its air force, artillery and mechanized units on the largely defenseless 1.85 million Palestinians in
Gaza, resulting in thousands of Palestinian dead and wounded. Israel runs the
Saharonim detention camp
in the Negev Desert, one of the largest detention centers in the world,
where African immigrants can be held for up to three years without trial.
The great Jewish scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz, whom
Isaiah Berlin
called "the conscience of Israel,"
saw the mortal danger to Israel of its colonial project. He warned that if Israel did not separate church
and state and end its colonial occupation of the Palestinians it would give rise to a corrupt rabbinate
that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult. "Religious nationalism is to religion what National
Socialism was to socialism," said Leibowitz, who died in 1994. He saw that the blind veneration of the
military, especially after the 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, would
result in the degeneration of the Jewish society and the death of democracy.
"Our situation will deteriorate to that of a second Vietnam [a reference to the war waged by the
United States in the 1970s], to a war in constant escalation without prospect of ultimate resolution,"
Leibowitz wrote. He foresaw that "the Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators,
inspectors, officials, and police -- mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5
million to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this
implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every
colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would have to suppress Arab
insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab
Quislings
on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has
been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation,
degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in
other nations."
The Zionists could never have colonized the Palestinians without the backing of Western imperial
powers whose motives were tainted by anti-Semitism. Many of the Jews who fled to Israel would not have
done so but for the virulent European anti-Semitism that by the end of World War II saw 6 million Jews
murdered. Israel was all that many impoverished and stateless survivors, robbed of their national rights,
communities, homes and often most of their relatives, had left. It became the tragic fate of the
Palestinians, who had no role in the European pogroms or the Holocaust, to be sacrificed on the altar of
hate.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rejected on Sunday a Taliban demand for the release of 5,000
prisoners as a condition for talks with Afghanistan's government and civilians –
included in a deal between the United States and the Islamist militants.
"The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners,"
Ghani told reporters in Kabul, a day after the deal was signed in Qatar to start a
political settlement aimed at ending the United States' longest war.[.]
was the Afghan government not a party to the negotiations? Strange!
It was a stalemate, in which Afghan government held power over central towns and mujahidins
over part of provinces. Neither can defeat each other. This stalemate was ruptured by the
collapse of the USSR.
Afghanistan
Now that the Americans have been defeated in Afghanistan perhaps they'll go back with a more
critical eye to look at what happened in the Afghan-Soviet war against the mujaheddin. The
Soviet Union decided to withdraw because it had reached a stalemate but the communist
government managed to soldier on for three more years, and it was the collapse of the Soviet
Union for financial reasons that resulted in funds being cutoff to the communist government
that in turn led to the collapse of the government, so the Soviet Union was not brought
down/defeated by the mujaheddin.
Will coronavirus lead to the collapse of the Washington establishment? I don't know if it
will but the descendants of the mujaheddin will no doubt claim responsibility for the defeat
of the United States if it occurs.
Yet again, Washington demonstrates that it doesn't really understand war.
The article is mostly junk. But it contains some important insights into the rise of Trympism (aka "national neoliberalism") --
nationalist oligarchy. Including the following " the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not
actually pursuing policies that are economically populist."
The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy should
change. The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy
should change.
Notable quotes:
"... Fascism: A Warning ..."
"... Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America ..."
"... the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist. ..."
"... The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy ..."
"... Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority to overthrow them. ..."
"... Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out through ordinary political means. ..."
"... Classical Greek Oligarchy ..."
"... Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different -- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." ..."
"... We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. ..."
"... The view that money is speech under the First Amendment has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy," as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship. ..."
"... The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars ..."
"... The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic ..."
Ever since the 2016 election, foreign policy commentators and practitioners have been engaged in a series of soul-searching exercises
to understand the great transformations taking place in the world -- and to articulate a framework appropriate to the challenges
of our time. Some have looked backwards, arguing that the liberal international order is collapsing, while others question whether
it ever existed. Another group seems to hope the current messiness is simply a blip and that foreign policy will return to normalcy
after it passes. Perhaps the most prominent group has identified today's great threat as the rise of authoritarianism, autocracy,
and illiberal democracy. They fear that constitutional democracy is receding as norms are broken and institutions are under siege.
Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands the nature of the current crisis. The challenge we face today is not one of authoritarianism,
as so many seem inclined to believe, but of nationalist oligarchy. This form of government feeds populism to the people, delivers
special privileges to the rich and well-connected, and rigs politics to sustain its regime.
... ... ..
Authoritarianism or What?
Across the political spectrum, commentators and scholars have identified -- and warned of -- the global rise of autocracies and
authoritarian governments. They cite Russia, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey, among others. Distinguished commentators are increasingly
worried. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently published a book called Fascism: A Warning . Cass Sunstein
gathered a variety of scholars for a collection titled, Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America .
The authoritarian lens is familiar from the heroic narrative of democracy defeating autocracies in the twentieth century. But
as a framework for understanding today's central geopolitical challenges, it is far too narrow. This is mainly because those who
are worried about the rise of authoritarianism and the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics. Their emphasis
is almost exclusively political and constitutional -- free speech, voting rights, equal treatment for minorities, independent courts,
and the like. But politics and economics cannot be dissociated from each other, and neither are autonomous from social and cultural
factors. Statesmen and philosophers used to call this "political economy." Political economy looks at economic and political relationships
in concert, and it is attentive to how power is exercised. If authoritarianism is the future, there must be a story of its political
economy -- how it uses politics and economics to gain and hold power. Yet the rise-of-authoritarianism theorists have less to say
about these dynamics.
To be sure, many commentators have discussed populist movements throughout Europe and America, and there has been no shortage
of debate on the extent to which a generation of widening economic inequality has been a contributing factor in their rise. But whatever
the causes of popular discontent, the policy preferences of the people, and the bloviating rhetoric of leaders, the governments
that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist.
The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of
them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek
to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy , Jeffrey Winters calls it "wealth
defense." Elites engage in "property defense," protecting what they already have, and "income defense," preserving and extending
their ability to hoard more. Importantly, oligarchy as a governing strategy accounts for both politics and economics. Oligarchs use
economic power to gain and hold political power and, in turn, use politics to expand their economic power.
Those who worry about the rise of authoritarianism and fear the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics.
The trouble for oligarchs is that their regime involves rule by a small number of wealthy elites. In even a nominally
democratic society, and most countries around the world today are at least that, it should be possible for the much larger majority
to overthrow the oligarchy with either the ballot or the bullet. So how can oligarchy persist? This is where both nationalism and
authoritarianism come into play. Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics
to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority
to overthrow them.
The divide-and-conquer strategy is an old one, and it works through a combination of coercion and co-optation. Nationalism --
whether statist, ethnic, religious, or racial -- serves both functions. It aligns a portion of ordinary people with the ruling oligarchy,
mobilizing them to support the regime and sacrifice for it. At the same time, it divides society, ensuring that the nationalism-inspired
will not join forces with everyone else to overthrow the oligarchs. We thus see fearmongering about minorities and immigrants, and
claims that the country belongs only to its "true" people, whom the leaders represent. Activating these emotional, cultural, and
political identities makes it harder for citizens in the country to unite across these divides and challenge the regime.
Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political
marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The
common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out
through ordinary political means. Tactics like these are not new. They have existed, as Matthew Simonton shows in his book
Classical Greek Oligarchy , since at least the time of Pericles and Plato. The consequence, then as now, is that nationalist
oligarchies can continue to deliver economic policies to benefit the wealthy and well-connected.
It is worth noting that even the generation that waged war against fascism in Europe understood that the challenge to democracy
in their time was not just political, but economic and social as well. They believed that the rise of Nazism was tied to the concentration
of economic power in Germany, and that cartels and monopolies not only cooperated with and served the Nazi state, but helped its
rise and later sustained it. As New York Congressman Emanuel Celler, one of the authors of the Anti-Merger Act of 1950, said, quoting
a report filed by Secretary of War Kenneth Royall, "Germany under the Nazi set-up built up a great series of industrial monopolies
in steel, rubber, coal and other materials. The monopolies soon got control of Germany, brought Hitler to power, and forced virtually
the whole world into war." After World War II, Marshall Plan experts not only rebuilt Europe but also exported aggressive American
antitrust and competition laws to the continent because they believed political democracy was impossible without economic democracy.
Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different
-- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional
norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy
will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as
Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. Electoral losers in places
like North Carolina seek to entrench their power rather than accept defeat. The view that money is speech under the First Amendment
has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy,"
as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase
their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded
enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship.
Addressing our domestic economic and social crises is critical to defending democracy, and a grand strategy for America's future
must incorporate both domestic and foreign policy. But while many have recognized that reviving America's middle class and re-stitching
our social fabric are essential to saving democracy, less attention has been paid to how American foreign policy should be reformed
in order to defend democracy from the threat of nationalist oligarchy.
The Varieties of Nationalist Oligarchy
Just as there are many variations on liberal democracy -- the Swedish model, the French model, the American model -- there
are many varieties of nationalist oligarchy. The story is different in every country, but the elements of nationalist oligarchy
are trending all over the world.
... ... ...
... the European Union funds Hungary's oligarchy, as Orbán draws on EU money to fund about 60 percent of the state projects
that support "the new Fidesz-linked business elite." Nor do Orbán and his allies do much to hide the country's crony capitalist
model. András Lánczi, president of a Fidesz-affiliated think tank, has boldly stated that "if something is done in the national
interest, then it is not corruption." "The new capitalist ruling class," one Hungarian banker comments, "make their money from
the government."
The commentator Jan-Werner Müller captures Orbán's Hungary this way: "Power is secured through wide-ranging control of the
judiciary and the media; behind much talk of protecting hard-pressed families from multinational corporations, there is crony
capitalism, in which one has to be on the right side politically to get ahead economically."
Crony capitalism, coupled with resurgent nationalism and central government control, is also an issue in China. While some
commentators have emphasized "state capitalism" -- when government has a significant ownership stake in companies -- this phenomenon
is not to be confused with crony capitalism. Some countries with state capitalism, like Norway, are widely seen as extremely non-corrupt
and, indeed, are often held up as models of democracy. State capitalism itself is thus not necessarily a problem. Crony capitalism,
in contrast, is an "instrumental union between capitalists and politicians designed to allow the former to acquire wealth, legally
or otherwise, and the latter to seek and retain power." This is the key difference between state capitalism and oligarchy.
... ... ...
Ganesh Sitaraman is a professor of law
and Chancellor's faculty fellow at Vanderbilt Law School, and the author of The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the
Age of Small Wars and The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic
.
Sanders was shafted in 2016 by the corrupt DNC machine, and he is being shafted again.He will
probably be sidelined in favour of some third rate hack like Buttplug, or some other
synthetic, manufactured nonentity.
If he isn't, and by some miracle does secure the nomination, they will fail to support him
and just allow him to be defeated by Trump. It doesn't matter.
There are millions of decent people who have long been persuaded to play the game of
Lesser Evils. They will be as disenchanted as was Trump's Base by a transparently corrupt,
rigged system, and finally withdraw their support. This has to be seen as a positive
development.
"... The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower, and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump. ..."
"... The whole point of having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA. ..."
"... What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case, in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot. ..."
"... People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially; that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path. ..."
"... The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset. ..."
"... Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were, lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the world to see. This cannot be undone. ..."
First , the whistleblower was ruled out as a possible witness -- this was
essentially done behind the scenes, and in reality can be called a Deep State operation, though
one exposed to some extent by Rand Paul. This has nothing to do with protecting the
whistleblower or upholding the whistleblower statute, but instead with the fact that the
whistleblower was a CIA plant in the White House.
That the whistleblower works for the CIA is a matter of public record, not some conspiracy
theory. Furthermore, for some time before the impeachment proceedings began, the whistleblower
had been coordinating his efforts to undermine Trump with the head of the House Intelligence
Committee, who happens to be Adam Schiff. It is possible that the connections with Schiff go
even further or deeper. Obviously the Democrats do not want these things exposed.
... ... ...
In this regard, there was a very special moment on January 29, when Chief Justice John
Roberts refused to allow the reading of a question from Sen. Rand Paul that identified the
alleged whistleblower. Paul then held a press conference in which he read his question.
The question was directed at Adam Schiff, who claims not to have communicated with the
whistleblower, despite much evidence to the contrary. (Further details can be read at
here
.) A propos of what I was just saying, Paul is described in the Politico article as
"a longtime antagonist of Republican leaders." Excellent, good on you, Rand Paul.
Whether this was a case of unintended consequences or not, one could say that this episode
fed into the case against calling witnesses -- certainly the Democrats should not have been
allowed to call witnesses if the Republicans could not call the whistleblower. But clearly this
point is completely lost on those working in terms of the moving line of bullshit.
One would think that Democrats would be happy with a Republican Senator who antagonizes
leaders of his own party, but of course Rand Paul's effort only led to further "outrage" on the
part of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.
The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower,
and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not
contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump.
However, you see, there is a complementary purpose at work here, too. The whole point of
having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee,
headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious
powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the
CIA.
The only way these machinations can be combatted is to pull the curtain back further -- but
the Republicans do not want this any more than the Democrats do, with a few possible exceptions
such as Rand Paul. (As the Politico article states, Paul was chastised publicly by McConnell
for submitting his question in the first place, and for criticizing Roberts in the press
conference.)
What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a
savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand
Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a
savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case,
in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is
probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot.
... ... ...
Now we are at a moment when "the Left" is recognizing the role that the CIA and the rest of
the "intelligence community" is played in the impeachment nonsense. This "Left" was already on
board for the "impeachment process" itself, perhaps at moments with caveats about "not leaving
everything up to the Democrats," "not just relying on the Democrats," but still accepting their
assigned role as cheerleaders and self-important internet commentators. (And, sure, maybe
that's all I am, too -- but the inability to distinguish form from content is one of the main
problems of the existing Left.)
Now, though, people on the Left are trying to get comfortable with, and trying to explain to
themselves how they can get comfortable with, the obvious role of the "intelligence community"
(with, in my view, the CIA in the leading role, but of course I'm not privy to the inner
workings of this scene) in the impeachment process and other efforts to take down Trump's
presidency.
People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the
impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my
mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially;
that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic
levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path.
They might think about the "help" that the CIA gave to the military in Bolivia to remove Evo
Morales from office. They might think about the picture of Donald Trump that they find
necessary to paint to justify what they are willing to swallow to remove him from office. They
might think about the fact that ordinary Democrats are fine with this role for the CIA, and
that Adam Schiff and others routinely offer the criticism/condemnation of Donald Trump that he
doesn't accept the findings of the CIA or the rest of the intelligence agencies at face
value.
The moment for the Left, what calls itself and thinks of itself as that, to break with this
lunacy has passed some time ago, but let us take this moment, of "accepting the help of the
CIA, because Trump," as truly marking a point of no return.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot
for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his
narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset.
paul ,
Trump, Sanders and Corbyn were all in their own way agents of creative destruction.
Trump tapped into the popular discontent of millions of Americans who realised that the
system no longer even pretended to work in their interests, and were not prepared to be
diverted down the Identity Politics Rabbit Hole.
The Deep State was outraged that he had disrupted their programme by stealing Clinton's seat
in the game of Musical Chairs. Being the most corrupt, dishonest and mendacious political
candidate in all US history (despite some pretty stiff opposition) was supposed to be
outweighed by her having a vagina. The Deplorables failed to sign up for the programme.
Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were,
lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to
the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from
behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid
criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the
world to see. This cannot be undone.
For all his pandering to Adelson and the Zionist Mafia, for all his Gives to Netanyahu, Trump
has failed to deliver on the Big Ticket Items. Syria was supposed to have been invaded by
now, with Hillary cackling demonically over Assad's death as she did over Gaddafi, and
rapidly moving on to the main event with Iran. They will not forgive him for this.
They realise they are under severe time pressure. It took them a century to gain their
stranglehold over America, and this is a wasting asset. America is in terminal decline, and
may soon be unable to fulfil its ordained role as dumb goy muscle serving Zionist interests.
And the parasite will find it difficult to find a replacement host.
George Mc ,
Haven't you just agreed with him here?
He thinks the left died in the 1960s, over a half century ago. It's pretty simple to
identify a leftist: anti-imperialist/ anti-capitalist. The Democrats are imperialists.
People who vote for the Democrats and Republicans are imperialists. This article is a
confused mess, that's my whole point;)
If the Democrats and Republicans (and those who vote for them) are imperialists (which they are) then the left are indeed
dead – at least as far as political representation goes.
Koba ,
He's sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan he staged several coups in Latin America and
wanted to take out the dprk and thier nukes and wants to bomb Iran! Winding down?!
sharon marlowe ,
First, an attempted assassination-by-drone on President Maduro of Venezuela happened. Then
Trump dropped the largest conventional bomb on Afghanistan, with a mile-wide radius. Then
Trump named Juan Guido as the new President of Venezuela in an overt coup. Then he bombed
Syria over a fake chemical weapons claim. He bombed it before even an investigation was
launched. Then the Trump regime orchestrated a military coup in Bolivia. Then he claimed that
he was pulling out of Syria, but instead sent U.S. troops to take over Syrian oil fields.
trump then assassinated Gen. Solemeni. Then he claimed that he will leave Iraq at the request
of the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to leave, and Trump rejected the
request. The Trump regime has tried orchestrating a coup in Iran, and a coup in Hong Kong. He
expelled Russian diplomats en masse for the Skripal incident in England, before an
investigation. He has sanctioned Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and Venezuela. He has
bombed Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those are the things I'm
aware of, but what else Trump has done in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America you
can research if you wish. And now, the claim of leaving Afghanistan is as ridiculous as when
he claimed to be leaving Syria and Iraq.
Dungroanin ,
Yeah yeah and 'he' gave Maduro 7 days to let their kid takeover in Venezuela! And built a
wall. And got rid of obamacare and started a nuke war with Rocketman and and and ...
sharon marlowe ,
There were at least nine people killed when Trump bombed Douma.
Only a psychopath would kill people because one of its spy drones was shot down. You don't
get points for considering killing people for it and then changing your mind.
People should get over Hillary and pay attention to what Trump has been doing. Why even
mention what Hillary would have done in Syria, then proceed to be an apologist for what Trump
has done around the world in just three years? Trump has been quite a prolific imperialist in
such a short time. A second term could well put him above Bush and Obama as the 21st
century's most horrible leaders on earth.
Dungroanin ,
...If you think that the potus is the omnipotent ruler of everything he certainly seems to be
having some problems with his minions in the CIA, NSA, FBI..State Dept etc.
Savorywill ,
Yes, what you say is right. However, he did warn both the Syrian and Russian military of the
attack in the first instance, so no casualties, and in the second attack, he announced that
the missiles had been launched before they hit the target, again resulting in no casualties.
When the US drone was shot down by an Iranian missile, he considered retaliation. But, when
advised of likely casualties, he called it off saying that human lives are more valuable than
the cost of the drone. Yes, he did authorize the assassination of the Iranian general, and
that was very bad. His claims that the general had organized the placement of roadside bombs
that had killed US soldiers rings rather hollow, considering those shouldn't have been in
Iraq in the first place.
I am definitely not stating that he is perfect and doesn't do objectionable things. And he
has authorized US forces to control the oil wells, which is against international law, but at
least US soldiers are not actively engaged in fighting the Syrian government, something
Hillary set in motion. However, the military does comprise a huge percentage of the US
economy and there have to be reasons, and enemies, to justify its existence, so his situation
as president must be very difficult, not a job I would want, that is for sure.
The potus is best described (by Assad actually) as a CEO of a board of directors appointed
by the shareholders who collectively determine their OWN interests.
Your gaslighting ain't succeeding round here – Regime! So desperate, so so sad
🤣
"... It is especially galling to see how the Hollywood Community has embraced the era of red-baiting Joseph McCarthy as the new standard for what is acceptable. There was a time that a few brave souls in Hollywood (I am thinking Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas and Gregory Peck), spoke out against the blacklisting of actors, writers and directors for their past political ties to the Soviet Union. ..."
"... This was an ugly, awful and evil time in America. It was a period of time fed by fear and ignorance. While it is true that there were Americans who identified as Communists and embraced the politics of the Soviet Union, we scared ourselves into believing that communist subversion was everywhere and that America was teetering on the brink of being submerged in a red tide. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a deviation from the norm. Clinton exemplifies the terrifying norm of the political and cultural elite in this country. Accusing political opponents of being controlled by foreign enemies, real or imagined, is an old political tactic. Makes me wonder what Edward R. Murrow or Dalton Trumbo would say if we could bring them back from the dead. ..."
"... "Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a deviation from the norm." ..."
"... Ms. President is the closest facsimile to Lady Macbeth that American politics has been able to produce. She'd have murdered her own husband if she had thought succession would have fallen to her. As it was, the only thing that kept him alive was that she needed him for the run she had in mind for herself. The debris that this woman has left in her wake boggles the mind. That she came within a whisker of the job where she would perhaps have left the country in that debris field is a sobering thought to think about what American presidential politics has become in the 21st c. Alas, what passes for her failure and the Country's good fortune, her loved ones in the Arts are still not over. And so they are left commiserating and caterwauling over the Donald this, and the Donald that, while all this good material and their celebrity goes down the tube. Good riddance to them both. ..."
"... Trump campaigned on Drain the Swamp in 2016. The Swamp attempted to take him down with the Russia Collusion hoax that included Spygate and the Mueller special counsel investigation. ..."
In the wake of the latest Hollywood buffoonery displayed at the Oscars, I think it is time for the American public to denounce
in the strongest possible terms the rampant hypocrisy of sanctimonious cretins who make their living pretending to be someone other
than themselves. Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Barbara Streisand pop to mind as representative examples. All three are eager to
lecture the American public on the need for equality and non-discrimination. Yet, not one of the recipients of the
Oscar
gift bags worth $225,000 spoke out against that extraordinary excess nor demanded that the money spent purchasing these "gifts"
be used to benefit the poor and the homeless. Nope, take the money and run.
It is especially galling to see how the Hollywood Community has embraced the era of red-baiting Joseph McCarthy as the new
standard for what is acceptable. There was a time that a few brave souls in Hollywood (I am thinking Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas and
Gregory Peck), spoke out against the blacklisting of actors, writers and directors for their past political ties to the Soviet Union.
Now I have lived long enough to see the so-called liberals in Hollywood rail against Donald Trump and his supporters as "agents
of Russia." Many in Hollywood, who weep crocodile tears over the abuses of the Hollywood Blacklist, are now doing the same damn thing
without a hint of irony.
If you are a film buff (and I consider myself one) you should be familiar with these great movies that remind the viewer of the
horrors visited upon actors, writers and directors during the Hollywood Blacklist:
The Front -- a 1976 comedy-drama film set against the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s. It was written by Walter Bernstein,
directed by Martin Ritt, and stars Woody Allen and Zero Mostel.
Good Night, and Good Luck -- a 2005 historical drama film directed by George Clooney, tells the story of Edward R.
Murrow fighting back against the hysterical red-baiting of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Trumbo -- a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Jay Roach that follows the life of Hollywood screenwriter
Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted but continued to write award winning movies in alias (e.g. Spartacus).
This was an ugly, awful and evil time in America. It was a period of time fed by fear and ignorance. While it is true that
there were Americans who identified as Communists and embraced the politics of the Soviet Union, we scared ourselves into believing
that communist subversion was everywhere and that America was teetering on the brink of being submerged in a red tide.
Thirty years ago I reflected on this era and wondered how such mass hysteria could happen. Now I know. We have lived with the
same kind of madness since Donald Trump was tagged as a Russian agent in the summer of 2016. And the irony is extraordinary. The
very same Hollywood elite that heaped opprobrium on Director Elia Kazan for naming names in Hollywood in front of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee, are now leading the charge in labeling anyone who dares speak out against the failed coup as "stooges" of the
Kremlin or Putin.
Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a
deviation from the norm. Clinton exemplifies the terrifying norm of the political and cultural elite in this country. Accusing political
opponents of being controlled by foreign enemies, real or imagined, is an old political tactic. Makes me wonder what Edward R. Murrow
or Dalton Trumbo would say if we could bring them back from the dead.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is a vast understatement. You never could have convinced me 4 years ago that virtually all of my liberal
friends would have completely lost touch with reality due to their visceral hatred of one man.
It no longer matters if you agree with people on social policy, entitlements, student loans, homelessness, drug addiction or
even wealth distribution.
If you do not share their irrational hatred of Trump, you're going to be lambasted, shunned and treated like a pariah.
Hillary Clinton has become the poster child for the corruption that has captured and paralyzed our political parties and government
institutions. Why is she above prosecution? Is the corruption complete? Can we look to any individual or group to restore our
Republic? Wake me when the prosecutions begin.
"Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not
a deviation from the norm."
Ms. President is the closest facsimile to Lady Macbeth that American politics has been able to produce. She'd have murdered
her own husband if she had thought succession would have fallen to her. As it was, the only thing that kept him alive was that
she needed him for the run she had in mind for herself. The debris that this woman has left in her wake boggles the mind. That
she came within a whisker of the job where she would perhaps have left the country in that debris field is a sobering thought
to think about what American presidential politics has become in the 21st c. Alas, what passes for her failure and the Country's
good fortune, her loved ones in the Arts are still not over. And so they are left commiserating and caterwauling over the Donald
this, and the Donald that, while all this good material and their celebrity goes down the tube. Good riddance to them both.
I agree that HUAC's conduct was excessive but you really ought to show the other side of the coin as well.
Communism was genuinely awful. To this day we don't know how many people died, murdered by their own governments, in Soviet
Russia and Communist China.
The U. S. government was infiltrated at the very pinnacle of government (as in presidential advisors) by Soviet agents.
We know this from Kremlin documents.
We now know (based on Kremlin documents) that the American Communist Party was run by knowing Soviet agents and was funded
by the Soviet Union.
The motion picture industry had been heavily infiltrated by Communists including some actual Soviet agents (while Reagan
was head of SAG he rooted them out).
We resolved those issues the wrong way but they desperately needed to be resolved.
This is self-righteous baby boomer nonsense. It was a brief and slightly uncomfortable time for a handful of people in Hollywood,
after which the subversion of American culture and institutions chugged along merrily along to the present day.
But this episode has been re-purposed and often reduced to caricature as part of a long ideological project aimed at convincing
generations of otherwise intelligent white people that their past is a shameful parade of villains.
Kirk Douglas bravely defied the blacklist by giving Dalton Trumbo credit on Spartacus under his real name, effectively breaking
the blacklist.
I saw part of the Academy Awards and all I heard over and over again were the words race and gender, no female directors nominated.
On a side note, this being Black History month, teevee is usually filled with the appropriate programing. But because it is
the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz the Jews are stealing the Blacks thunder by hogging the programming. When the
oppressed collide.
Just how big is the carbon footprint on a $225,000 swag bag? So nice to see Hollywood integrity in action. I wonder what the Bernie
Tax will be on them in 2021?
Chills run down my spine that you start your list with 'The Front'.
Woody Allen's 'The Front', a 'film noir' about the beast and about courage in trying to slay it, is an absolute masterpiece,
its end is unmeasurably spectacular and encouraging, and... somehow the movie never got the acclaim it deserves, and lives as
one of those quiet orphans.
But it is highly actual, and that is why you must have come to place it first.
Trump campaigned on Drain the Swamp in 2016. The Swamp attempted to take him down with the Russia Collusion hoax that included
Spygate and the Mueller special counsel investigation.
Rep. Devin Nunes uncovered many of the shenanigans while he investigated the claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He implored Trump to use his prerogative as POTUS to declassify many documents and communications. Trump instead took the advice
of Rod Rosenstein acting as AG who initiated the Mueller investigation and did not declassify. He then passed the buck to AG Barr,
who has yet to declassify.
The question that needs to be asked in light of this: Is Trump a conman who has duped the electorate with Drain the Swamp as
he has not used his exclusive powers of classification to present to the voter all the documents and communications about the
actions of law enforcement and intelligence agencies relating to claims about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election?
Blue Peacock, the question that needs to be asked is do you blow your wad all at once on one play. Or do you drip, drip, drip
it out strategically. I suggest the latter in this endless game of gotcha politics. Yes, Trump is a con man. That is how he made
his billions - selling sizzle. One quality that does translate well into the political arena. No one is surprised - his life has
been on the front pages for decades.
The only newly revealed quality that I find remarkable is his remarkable staying power - the most welcome quality of all. It
takes ego maniacs to play this game. Surprised anyone still thinks politics is an avocation for normal people. It isn't. And we
the people are the ones that demand this to be the case.
I left the american sh*thole a long time ago and my choice never felt better. I look forward to seeing 50% of americans trying
to slaughter the other 50% over socialism. Here we're doing just fine with socialist medecine, and social programs for just about
everyting. The Commons are still viable where common sense resides... Oligarchs love cartels, socialism and piratization: it's
all about privatizing the gains and socializing the losses to the hoi polloi.
I wonder if Hollywood knows how small some of the audiences in actual movie theaters are now. It's always surprising to me that
I am sitting in almost empty theaters now when I decide I want actual movie theater popcorn and so will pay to watch a movie that
I have read about and heard about from friends who have already seen the movie. I don't attend unless I've heard good things from
my friends about the movie.
I am constantly surprised that some people even consider watching the Oscars now. I feel the same about professional sports.
You would be surprised at how good high school plays are and how good high school bands, orchestras, choirs are. The tickets
are cheap, and a person actually gets to greet the performers.
I feel the same about my local university (my Alma Mater). It's Performing Arts departments are excellent. As a student long
ago, my student pass allowed me to attend wonderful performances.
The Glory Days of Hollywood are no more. The actors and directors need to be humbled by having to go to towns across the country
to see how sparse the audience in a movie theater is now. It's not at all as I remember as a child when there were long lines
at the ticket window.
"... the American-led takedown of the post-World War II international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior. ..."
"... The combination of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly disadvantageous to the United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job, there is a need for America's universities to provide the information and analysis of international best practices that the political system does not. ..."
I think this would be very informative for anybody seriously interested in the USA foreign
policy. Listening to him is so sad to realize that instead of person of his caliber we have
Pompous Pompeo, who forever is frozen on the level of a tank repair mechanical engineer, as
the Secretary of State.
Published on Feb 24, 2020
In the United States and other democracies, political and economic systems still work in
theory, but not in practice. Meanwhile, the American-led takedown of the post-World War II
international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior.
The combination of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly
disadvantageous to the United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job,
there is a need for America's universities to provide the information and analysis of
international best practices that the political system does not.
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson
Institute for International and Public Affairs, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of
Defense, ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm),
acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Chargé d'affaires at
both Bangkok and Beijing. He began his diplomatic career in India but specialized in
Chinese affairs. (He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon's visit
to Beijing in 1972.)
Ambassador Freeman is a much sought-after public speaker (see http://chasfreeman.net ) and the author of several
well-received books on statecraft and diplomacy. His most recent book, America's Continuing
Misadventures in the Middle East was published in May 2016. Interesting Times: China,
America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, appeared in March 2013. America's
Misadventures in the Middle East came out in 2010, as did the most recent revision of The
Diplomat's Dictionary, the companion volume to Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy. He
was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy."
Chas Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in
Taiwan, and earned an AB magna cum laude from Yale University as well as a JD from the
Harvard Law School.
He chairs Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that for more than three
decades has helped its American and foreign clients create ventures across borders,
facilitating their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation,
capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions,
joint ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other
countries.
He is the author of several books including the most recent
Interesting times: China, America, and the shifting balance of prestige
(2013)
"... Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA holds no allegiance to any country. And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position to hold the CIA accountable for its past and future crimes ..."
"There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold."
– William Shakespeare
Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to
see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us
by. The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man.
It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives
of just this one person. The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and undeniably an
essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was
meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that
is exactly what we should not do.
In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation unfortunately causes
the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with
what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of 'official
government statements'.
Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must first have an understanding as to what
caused the United States to enter into an endless campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations
for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.
An Internal Shifting of Chess Pieces in the Shadows
It is interesting timing that on Sept 2, 1945, the very day that WWII ended, Ho Chi Minh would announce the independence of Indochina.
That on the very day that one of the most destructive wars to ever occur in history ended, another long war was declared at its doorstep.
Churchill would announce his "Iron Curtain" against communism on March 5th, 1946, and there was no turning back at that point. The
world had a mere 6 months to recover before it would be embroiled in another terrible war, except for the French, who would go to
war against the Viet Minh opponents in French Indochina only days after WWII was over.
In a previous paper I wrote titled
"On Churchill's Sinews
of Peace" , I went over a major re-organisation of the American government and its foreign intelligence bureau on the onset of
Truman's de facto presidency. Recall that there was an attempted military coup d'état, which was
exposed by General Butler in a public address in 1933,
against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year. One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy
corners for how Roosevelt would organise the government.
One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau
that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared
over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the
internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows. In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National
Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as
the President's principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.
" In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations in compliance with National Security Council (NSC)
Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations
and assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions , provided they had been directed to do so
by the NSC, and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces
were directed to "provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA" as an official function . "
What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the
foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the
President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's policies.
An Inheritance of Secret Wars
" There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare. "
– Sun Tzu
On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States. Along with inheriting the responsibility
of the welfare of the country and its people, he was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.
JFK was disliked from the onset by the CIA and certain corridors of the Pentagon, they knew where he stood on foreign matters
and that it would be in direct conflict for what they had been working towards for nearly 15 years. Kennedy would inherit the CIA
secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's
March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000
man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office.
This was a massive change in plans that was determined by neither President Eisenhower, who warned at the end of his term of the
military industrial complex as a loose cannon, nor President Kennedy, but rather the foreign intelligence bureau who has never been
subject to election or judgement by the people. It shows the level of hostility that Kennedy encountered as soon as he entered office,
and the limitations of a President's power when he does not hold support from these intelligence and military quarters.
Within three months into JFK's term, Operation Bay of Pigs (April 17th to 20th 1961) was scheduled. As the popular revisionist
history goes; JFK refused to provide air cover for the exiled Cuban brigade and the land invasion was a calamitous failure and a
decisive victory for Castro's Cuba. It was indeed an embarrassment for President Kennedy who had to take public responsibility for
the failure, however, it was not an embarrassment because of his questionable competence as a leader. It was an embarrassment because,
had he not taken public responsibility, he would have had to explain the real reason why it failed. That the CIA and military were
against him and that he did not have control over them. If Kennedy were to admit such a thing, he would have lost all credibility
as a President in his own country and internationally, and would have put the people of the United States in immediate danger amidst
a Cold War.
What really occurred was that there was a cancellation of the essential pre-dawn airstrike, by the Cuban Exile Brigade bombers
from Nicaragua, to destroy Castro's last three combat jets. This airstrike was ordered by Kennedy himself. Kennedy was always against
an American invasion of Cuba, and striking Castro's last jets by the Cuban Exile Brigade would have limited Castro's threat, without
the U.S. directly supporting a regime change operation within Cuba. This went fully against the CIA's plan for Cuba.
Kennedy's order for the airstrike on Castro's jets would be cancelled by Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge
Bundy, four hours before the Exile Brigade's B-26s were to take off from Nicaragua, Kennedy was not brought into this decision. In
addition, the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation was unbelievably out
of the country on the day of the landings.
Col. Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during this time, elaborates on this situation:
" Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the policy dictated by NSC 5412, positively prohibited
the utilization of active-duty military personnel in covert operations. At no time was an "air cover" position written into the
official invasion plan The "air cover" story that has been created is incorrect. "
As a result, JFK who well understood the source of this fiasco, set up a Cuban Study Group the day after and charged it with the
responsibility of determining the cause for the failure of the operation. The study group, consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell
Taylor, Adm. Arleigh Burke and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the only member JFK could trust), concluded that the failure was
due to Bundy's telephone call to General Cabell (who was also CIA Deputy Director) that cancelled the President's air strike order.
Kennedy had them.
Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because
of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum
#55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Prouty
states,
" When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert
operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin. "
If this was not enough of a slap in the face to the CIA, Kennedy forced the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy
Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell.
In Oct 1962, Kennedy was informed that Cuba had offensive Soviet missiles 90 miles from American shores. Soviet ships with more
missiles were on their way towards Cuba but ended up turning around last minute. Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret
deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms
of JFK being soft on communism began to stir.
NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy, was released on Oct 11th, 1963, and outlined a policy decision " to withdraw 1,000
military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963 " and further stated that " It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of
U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965. " The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S.
TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY '65. Kennedy was winning the game and the American people.
This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin.
Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but,
more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d'état that it was and is . The CIA showed what lengths
it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans
at the time, Jim Garrison's
book . And the excellently
researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK")
Through the Looking Glass
On Nov. 26th 1963, a full four days after Kennedy's murder, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of
Kennedy's policy under #263. And on March 4th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War
and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.
The Vietnam War, or more accurately the Indochina War, would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy's death, lasting a total
of 20 years for Americans.
Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force
on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold
War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia
and China. Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed
by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979.
It had been understood far in advance by the CIA and US military that the toppling of sovereignty in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran
needed to occur before Russia and China could be taken over. Such war tactics were formulaic after 3 decades of counterinsurgency
against the CIA fueled "communist-insurgency" of Indochina. This is how today's terrorist-inspired insurgency functions, as a perfect
CIA formula for an endless bloodbath.
Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign
and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie
Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly
to 'pay the price' .
Therefore, when a drone stroke occurs assassinating an Iranian Maj. Gen., even if the U.S. President takes onus on it, I would
not be so quick as to believe that that is necessarily the case, or the full story. Just as I would not take the statements of President
Rouhani accepting responsibility for the Iranian military shooting down 'by accident' the Boeing 737-800 plane which contained 176
civilians, who were mostly Iranian, as something that can be relegated to criminal negligence, but rather that there is very likely
something else going on here.
I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad
to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a
compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President
alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing.
One could speculate that the President was set up, with the official designation of the IRGC as "terrorist" occurring in April
2019 by the US State Department, a decision that was strongly supported by both Bolton and Pompeo, who were both members of the NSC
at the time. This made it legal for a US military drone strike to occur against Soleimani under the 2001 AUMF, where the US military
can attack any armed group deemed to be a terrorist threat. Both Bolton and Pompeo made no secret that they were overjoyed by Soleimani's
assassination and Bolton went so far as to tweet "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." Bolton has also made it
no secret that he is eager to testify against Trump in his possible impeachment trial.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown
conference recently, but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that
though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was
the very opposite, stating " I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long
pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. "
Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA holds no allegiance to any country.
And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position
to hold the CIA accountable for its past and future crimes .
". . . the CIA holds no allegiance to any country." But they sure kiss the *** of the financial sociopaths who write their
paychecks and finance the black ops.
Fletcher Prouty's book The Secret Team is a must read... he was on the inside and watched the formation of the permanent team
established in the late 50s that assumed the power of the president.
Look at who the OSS recruited - Ivy League Skull and Bones types from rich families that made their fortunes in often questionable
ventures.
If you're the patriarch of some super wealthy family wouldn't you be thrilled to have younger family members working for the
nation's intelligence agencies? Sort of the ultimate in 'inside information'. Plus these families had experience in things like
drug smuggling, human trafficking and anything else you can imagine..... While the Brits started the opium trade with China, Americans
jumped right in bringing opium from Turkey.
Didn't take long before the now CIA became owned by the families whose members staffed it.
One major aspect pertaining American involvment in Veitnam was something like 90% of the rubber produced Globally came from
the region.
It is more diverse now, being 3rd, with the association revealing that in 2017, Vietnam earned US$2.3 billion from export of
1.4 million tonnes of natural rubber, up 36% in value and 11.4% in volume year on year.
Rockfellers formed the OSS then the CIA which is the brute force for the CFR which they also run and own. The bankers run y
our country and bought and blackmailed all your politicians... Only buttplug and pedo's get to be in charge now folks.... and
some 9th circle witches of course...
"... "Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president," ..."
"... "It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was ..."
Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday in an
op-ed for Rare
that he would oppose President-elect Donald Trump's rumored selection of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as Secretary of State.
"Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually
every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president,"
Paul wrote citing U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya that Trump has criticized but that Bolton strongly advocated.
Reports since have indicated that former New York City mayor and loyal Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani is being considered for the post.
The Washington Post's David Weigel
reports , "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a newly reelected member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this morning that
he was inclined to oppose either former U.N. ambassador John Bolton or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani if they were nominated
for secretary of state."
"It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq
War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was a big lesson," Paul told the Post. "Trump
said that a thousand times. It would be a huge mistake for him to give over his foreign policy to someone who [supported the war].
I mean, you could not find more unrepentant advocates of regime change."
One of the most striking features of the working of the U.S. imperial system and media is
the regular inflation of the threat posed by imperial targets-an inflation process that very
often attains the ludicrous and incredible. When the imperial managers want to go after some
hapless small country-Guatemala, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Iraq-that for one reason or another has
been put on the U.S. hit list, the managers issue fearsome warnings of the dire threat posed by
the prospective victim. The media quickly get on this bandwagon and suddenly give enormous
attention to a country previously completely ignored. Critical analyses of the reality of the
"threat" are minimal, and the gullibility quotient of the media escalates in view of the
alleged seriousness of the threat and need for everybody to be "on the team." As soon as the
small target is smashed-with great ease, despite the prior claims of its capability-and as
official attention moves elsewhere, the media drop the subject and allow the target to return
to black hole attention.
A closely related feature of the threat inflation process has been the unwillingness of the
media to allow that the United States poses any threat to the imminent victim. U. S. officials
may even have announced an intention to displace a government, they may have organized a proxy
army to invade, and positioned their own forces in the vicinity, but any actions of the target
to prepare to defend itself are considered sinister and further proof of their menacing
character. In the Cold War era, when targets reached out to the Soviet bloc to get arms, this
added to the proof of a threat, demonstrating that they were part of the larger Soviet threat.
That they sought weapons from the Soviet bloc because they were prevented from buying them from
the United States and its allies, and that forcing them to do this was part of a strategy
making their threat more credible, was outside the orbit of media thought.
Thus, in the official and therefore media view, threats were and remain
unidirectional-democratic Guatemala (1945 -54), Sandinista Nicaragua (1980-90), Iraq today have
allegedly posed threats to the United States, but they themselves are not threatened by it.
This results in part from the media's ideological and patriotic subservience. Just as in a
totalitarian society, the media here take it as a premise that their leaders are good and
pursue decent ends, so that invidious words like "threat" or "aggression" cannot be applied to
their language and behavior. This is helped along by the fact that the targeted leaders are
quickly demonized, so that any apparent threats from our end are a response to evil and quest
for justice (as well as countering a real threat). This exquisitely and comically biased
perspective has helped make it possible to find that no actions by the targets constitute "self
defense," and in effect they do not have any right of self-defense.
Guatemala
Guatemala in the late 1940s and early 1950s offers a model case. Guatemala's democratic
leaders had aroused suspicion by granting labor the right to form unions back in 1947, and when
in 1952 president Jacopo Arbenz proposed taking over idle United Fruit land (with compensation)
in the interest of landless peasants, United Fruit Company and U.S. government officials
escalated the charges of a dire Communist threat. The media, which had previously rarely
mentioned Guatemala, increasingly focused on the official target. The Communists never took
over" Guatemala (see Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit), but United Fruit,
the U.S. government, and the media claimed that they had, and the media became frenetic and
hysterical on the subject. This was a completely fraudulent threat to U. S. national
security.
On the other hand, the United States posed a genuine security threat to Guatemala, openly
menacing it with hostile words and organizing a "contra" army in Nicaragua to invade Guatemala.
The United States also refused to sell arms to Guatemala and got its allies to do the same.
When Guatemala imported a small quantity of arms from Czechoslovakia in 1953 this caused a
media frenzy, and demonstrated for the media the aggressive intent of the U.S. target. In the
U.S. media the notion that Guatemala was threatened and might be acting in self defense in
acquiring arms was outside the realm of permissible thought. After all, could the United States
be planning a proxy aggression against Guatemala? Not for the amazing U.S. media-the tiny
target threatened us.
None of the non-dictatorships in Latin America considered Guatemala a threat, although they
were closer to the U.S. target and less capable of defending themselves from it if the threat
were valid. But they were bribed and bullied by John Foster Dulles into condemning
"international communism" in the hemisphere and the need to confront it. Did the U.S. officials
believe the malarkey about a threat? The NSC Policy Statement on "United States Policy in the
Event of Guatemalan Aggression in Latin America" (May 28, 1954) conveys the impression of
official panic over the Guatemala menace, declaring Guatemala to be increasingly [an]
instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere." This was about a virtually disarmed tiny
country that had not moved one inch outside its borders, in which the Soviet Union had invested
nothing and with which Guatemala didn't even maintain diplomatic relations (out of fear of U.S.
reaction), whose democratic government was shortly to be overthrown by a rag-tag proxy army,
with much U.S. assistance.
After the overthrow of the Guatemalan democracy in 1954 the media once again allowed
Guatemala to disappear from their sights. A very similar process took place following the
victory of the Sandinistas over the authoritarian Somoza regime in Nicaragua in 1980. Here
again it was the democratic government that quickly became a "threat" to the United States,
after the United States had supported dictatorship for 45 years. Here again it organized a
contra army to harass and invade the democracy. Once again it imposed an economic and arms
embargo on the target, forcing it to acquire arms from the Soviet bloc, and then using this to
demonstrate that it was an instrument of that bloc. Once again the nearby small countries were
not frightened by the new menace, and much of their effort was spent trying to settle the
conflict-in opposition to the Reagan administration's preference for the use of force.
Nicaragua, Soviet Threat, etc., etc.
Here again, also, after the Sandinista government was ousted, following a decade of boycott
and U. S. -sponsored international terrorism, the media were enthused over this triumph of
democracy and U.S. "patience" in using means other than a direct invasion to end social
democracy in Nicaragua. Once this "threat" was terminated, the media once again moved away from
Nicaragua to focus on other good deeds by their leaders coping with other threats. As with
Guatemala, and later in the case of NATO-occupied Kosovo, the media carefully averted their
eyes from the results, which were not in keeping with the alleged war aims and claims that
beneficial effects would follow the removal of the threat.
The big threat featured in the Cold War years was that posed by the Soviet Union, which at
least referred to the challenge of a serious rival on the global scene. But even here, the
threat was misread and hugely inflated. The Soviet Union was always a conservative and
defensive-minded regional power, its reach beyond its near neighbors tentative, reactive, and
weak. It never posed a threat to the United States and constantly sought accommodation with the
real (U.S.) superpower-its real threat was that it offered an alternative development model and
supported resistance to the global thrust of U. S. imperialism.
On the other hand, World War II was hardly over when the United States was funding groups
trying to destabilize the Soviet Union and in NSC 68 (1950) U.S. officials laid out an agenda
for destabilization and "regime change" in the Soviet Union as basic U.S. policy. The United
States never accepted the legitimacy of the Soviet Union and from the invasions in 1917 to the
final important assist given Yeltsin and his apparatchiks, its aim has been regime change.
But in the U.S. propaganda system it was an ideological premise that the Soviet Union was
trying to conquer the world and we were on the defensive, "containing" it. This was confirmed
when Khrushchev said, "We are going to bury you," a blustering statement that was hardly on a
par with the neglected NSC 68 policy pronouncement of an intent to bury the Soviet Union. A
prime fact of Cold War history was that the Soviet Union provided a limit to U.S.
expansionism-and it was the end of that real containment that has allowed the United States to
go on its current rampage.
It should be noted that throughout the Cold War U.S. officials proclaimed Soviet advances
and "gaps" that invariably proved to be disinformation, but which the New York Times and its
colleagues invariably passed along as truth. Equally important, when it turned out that the
"missile gap," "warhead gap," or "window of vulnerability" was a lie, the media kept
this under the rug, along with the fact that they had been propaganda and disinformation
agents. In his classic, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (Harper & Row, 1986), Tom
Gervasi showed how the media passed along Reagan administration claims of Soviet superiority in
weapons systems that were refutable from the Pentagon's own information releases, but which the
New York Times and company were too lazy or too complicit with their leaders to examine and
challenge, saying merely that figures "were difficult to pin down" (NYT), which was false. As
Gervasi said, "The frequent assertions of editors...that they must strive for 'balance' and
'objectivity,' were simply an effort to hide the lack of attempt at either, to justify wholly
uncritical acceptance of official views, and to deny that a great deal of information was
missing from public view.
Iraq
In the buildup to the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, U.S. officials and the media
conveyed the impression that Iraq was a mighty power and huge military challenge to the United
States and its "allies," when in fact Iraq was a Third World country exhausted by its brutal
conflict with Iran and hardly able to put up token resistance to the "allied" assault. It was
overwhelmed within a week and forced into de facto surrender. Ironically, Iraq didn't dare to
use any weapons of mass destruction it possessed, but the "allies" blew up a number of Iraq
weapons caches, spewing forth chemicals on allied soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The United
States also used depleted uranium "dirty" munitions, thus making the Persian Gulf war a low
level nuclear war, as it was later to do in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Once again, following
the war-or more properly, slaughter-the media failed to reflect on either the evidence that the
threat had been inflated or the costs of the war in terms of "friendly fire"_or rather
"friendly use of depleted uranium and release of enemy chemicals"-on both allied soldiers and
Iraqi civilians.
In the buildup to the prospective 2003 attack on Iraq, once again there has been a
multi-pronged threat inflation that the mainstream media pass along in their now standard
propaganda agency role.
Most important, there is the pretense that if Iraq possessed WMD it would pose a serious
threat of using them offensively and against the United States in particular. To make this
plausible the officials-media phalanx stress what a bad person Saddam is and the fact that he
used WMD in the 1980s. What the phalanx avoids discussing are: (1) that Saddam only used those
weapons when supplied and supported by the United States and Britain-he did not use them in the
Persian Gulf War; (2) that the sanctions and inspections regime has made him far weaker now
than in 1991 when he failed to use such weapons; (3) that his use of them offensively against
either the United States or any U.S. client state would be suicidal; and (4) that it follows
that if he possessed them they would only be serviceable for defensive purposes.
The idea that he poses a serious threat to the United States, claimed by President George
Bush and his associates, is therefore absurd. But it is reported in the media as real and is
essentially unchallenged. It is certainly never called absurd, as it is. Saddam does pose a
possible threat to U.S. forces if attacked, but only then. We get back to the fact, however,
that a target of U.S. enmity, from Vietnam to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua to Iraq
has no right of self-defense in the media propaganda system.
Further arrows in the war-makers quiver are the facts that Saddam is a cruel dictator and
that he has been less than completely cooperative with the inspections process designed to
assure the elimination of his WMD. The former is true but irrelevant and its use is
hypocritical. The United States and Britain supported this dictator when he served their
interests and it continues to support others who are amenable, as Saddam appeared to be in the
1980s. International law and the UN Charter do not allow "regime change" of dictatorships by
military intervention and actions with such design constitute straightforward aggression.
"Helping" people by warring on them is also profoundly hypocritical and there is every reason
to doubt any humanitarian end in Bush administration war planning.
It is also true that Saddam has not been fully cooperative with the inspections system, but
why should he be when the United States has repeatedly admitted that inspections are a cover
for an intent to dislodge him from power and have been used in the past to locate war targets?
(The same motive of regime change underlies the genocidal sanctions regime that has killed over
a million Iraqi civilians.) Furthermore, the inspections regime is a U.S.-British imposition
that reflects their domination of the Security Council and their political agenda, it has
nothing to do with justice. Israel is allowed to have WMD and ignore UN Security Council
rulings because it is a Western ally and client, but Israel not only threatens its neighbors,
it has repeatedly invaded Lebanon and is currently carrying out a ruthless program of
repression and ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine, in violation of UN rulings and the
Fourth Geneva Convention. But the U.S. mainstream media ignore this, and have gotten on the
bandwagon, proclaiming that
Iraq's lack of full cooperation with the inspections regime is intolerable.
A number of critical writers have stressed that while Iraq poses no threat to the United
States, the attack on Iraq will create a threat in a feedback process. Thus Dan Ellsberg points
out that: (1) "the number of recruits for suicide bombing against the U.S. and its
allies...will increase a hundred-fold;" (2) "regimes with sizeable Muslim populations
(including Indonesia, the Philippines, France and Germany...) will find it politically almost
impossible to be seen collaborating with the US on the anti- terrorism intelligence and police
operations that are essential to lessening the terrorist threat..."; (3) Iraq under attack, and
possibly even segments of the Pakistani army, may finally share WMD with Al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups (Dan Ellsberg on Iraq, Weblog Entry, Jan. 23, 2003, www.ellsberg. net/weblog/
1_23_03. htm).
Once again the mainstream media have cooperated in a ludicrous threat inflation, which has
prepared the ground for their country to wage a war of aggression. That war will not reduce a
threat from Iraq, which was negligible, but it will produce serious threats as a consequence of
the attack. However, this may well be what some of Bush's advisers want, as it will justify
further U.S. militarization and warfare, intensified repression at home, and provide a cover
for further Bush service to his business constituency here and for Sharon's accelerated ethnic
cleansing and transfer in Palestine.
Edward S. Herman is an economist, author, media analyst, and a regular contributor to Z
since 1988.
"... Looking at the responses to the North Korea question over the decades, it is striking how little support there used to be for defending South Korea even during the Cold War. Over the last forty years, there has been a huge increase across the oldest three cohorts in a willingness to fight another war in Korea: ..."
"... Some of this increase might be explained by the demise of the USSR, but it cannot account for the dramatic increase in the last twenty years. There have been double digit increases in support for using U.S. forces to respond to a North Korean invasion since 2002, and in some of the cohorts the increase has been huge. 33% of Gen X respondents favored using U.S. troops in this scenario 18 years ago, and now 56% do. ..."
... there has been an increase since the start of the century. The story is much
the same with the Gen X cohort: in 1998, only 49% agreed with the "active role" option, and
today the number stands at 69%. All of these cohorts tend to become more supportive of an
"active role" as time goes by regardless of how much damage U.S. activist foreign policy
does.
The most troubling result is the broad public support for military action to "stop Iran from
obtaining nuclear weapons":
It is remarkable that there is less support for coming to the defense of a treaty ally when
it is invaded than there is for attacking Iran in an illegal, preventive war. The good news is
that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, so this scenario is not likely to happen, but it is
very worrisome that there is such an unthinking consensus in favor of an unjustified and
aggressive military option. When the cohort that is least supportive of military action still
favors launching an illegal attack on another country by two-to-one, that shows just how much
public opinion has been warped by constant fear-mongering and threat inflation about Iran.
Looking at the responses to the North Korea question over the decades, it is striking how
little support there used to be for defending South Korea even during the Cold War. Over the
last forty years, there has been a huge increase across the oldest three cohorts in a
willingness to fight another war in Korea:
Some of this increase might be explained by the demise of the USSR, but it cannot account
for the dramatic increase in the last twenty years. There have been double digit increases in
support for using U.S. forces to respond to a North Korean invasion since 2002, and in some of
the cohorts the increase has been huge. 33% of Gen X respondents favored using U.S. troops in
this scenario 18 years ago, and now 56% do.
34% of Silent generation respondents gave this
response in 2002, and it is now 76%. 38% of Boomers gave this answer at the start of the
century, and now 65% back using U.S. troops in a new Korean war. The sharpest increases seem to
be related to North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons. This is strange, since one wold
think that North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons would make Americans less likely to want
to get involved in a war on the Peninsula. Once again, it looks like public opinion on this
question has been driven by the steady drumbeat of fear-mongering about a manageable,
deterrable threat from the DPRK. It is interesting that the generation that has grown up with
the most threat inflation about Iran and North Korea is also the generation least inclined to
use force against them. It may be that the generation that came of age with 9/11 and the Iraq
war are understandably more skeptical of official claims and more likely to discount alarmism
about foreign threats. Whatever the reason, it is encouraging that younger Americans are less
supportive of military options, and if they stick with these views that bodes well for the
prospects of a more restrained and peaceful foreign policy in the decades to come.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo
blog . He has been
published in the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World
Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic,
The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter . email
The USA is an imperial country. And wars is how empire is sustained and expanded. Bacevich does not even mention this
fact.
Notable quotes:
"... While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response -- one that would demand accountability, for example -- is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution to the impeachment crisis. ..."
"... This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive and deeply rooted American militarism has become. ..."
"... we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. ..."
"... The impeachment hearings were probably the reason the WaPo published when it did. After all, the article tells us little that any semi-sentient observer hasn't known for over a decade now. ..."
"... Then, today, we have another American trooper killed in Afghanistan, with many Afghans. Then, we have Trump, jutting his jaw out, as usual, to show how tough he is and...by golly, how tough America is. How patriotic! Damn it! Rah rah. He pardons and receives a war criminal at the white house, one of those Seals that murdered Afghans. ..."
"... By military standards, there is supposed to be rules of engagement and punishment for outright breaking of such rules. But no, Trump is one ignorant, cold dude and the misery in numerous US invaded nations means nothing to this bum with a title and money ..."
"... Were our senior government leaders more familiar with military service, especially as front line soldiers, they might have been less inclined to dawdle in these matters, agree with obfuscated results for political reasons, and waste so much effort. ..."
The Afghanistan Papers could have been the start of redemption, but it's all been subsumed
by impeachment and an uninterested public.
....
While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response -- one
that would demand accountability, for example -- is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution
to the impeachment crisis.
This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war
should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive
and deeply rooted American militarism has become.
Take seriously the speechifying heard on the floor of the House of Representatives in recent
days and you'll be reassured that the United States remains a nation of laws, with Democrats
and Republicans alike affirming their determination to defend our democracy and preserve the
Constitution, even while disagreeing on what that might require at present.
Take seriously the contents of the Afghanistan Papers and you'll reach a different
conclusion: we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American
soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. U.S. military expenditures and the Pentagon's
array of foreign bases far exceed those of any other nation on the planet. In our willingness
to use force, we (along with Israel) lead the pack. Putative adversaries such as China and
Russia are models of self-restraint by comparison. And when it comes to cumulative body count,
the United States is in a league of its own.
Yet since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, U.S. forces have rarely
accomplished the purposes for which they are committed, the Pentagon concealing failure by
downsizing its purposes. Afghanistan offers a good example. What began as Operation Enduring
Freedom has become in all but name Operation Decent Interval, the aim being to disengage in a
manner that will appear responsible, if only for a few years until the bottom falls out.
So the real significance of the Post 's Afghanistan Papers is this: t hey invite
Americans to contemplate a particularly vivid example what our misplaced infatuation with
military power produces. Sadly, it appears evident that we will refuse the invitation. Don't
blame Trump for this particular example of Washington's egregious irresponsibility.
Andrew Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new
book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory ,will
be published next month.
The impeachment hearings were probably the reason the WaPo published when it did. After all,
the article tells us little that any semi-sentient observer hasn't known for over a decade
now.
Anyway, nobody likes a bipartisan fiasco that cannot be neatly blamed on Team R (or Team
D).
Then, today, we have another American trooper killed in Afghanistan, with many Afghans.
Then, we have Trump, jutting his jaw out, as usual, to show how tough he is and...by golly,
how tough America is. How patriotic! Damn it! Rah rah.
He pardons and receives a war criminal at the white house, one of those Seals that murdered
Afghans.
By military standards, there is supposed to be rules of engagement and punishment for
outright breaking of such rules. But no, Trump is one ignorant, cold dude and the misery in
numerous US invaded nations means nothing to this bum with a title and money. What a joke
this nations foreign policy is and the ignorant, don't care American people have become. Like
never before. There were years when people actually talked about subjects. Not now, if you
mention the weather they cower and look pained. The old days really were better.
One example aside from the above: compare President Kennedy to Trump. What a riot...
Well, these documents are highly unsurprising. Everybody has known the facts for a long time.
Everybody also knows that the US "government" will not change its ways. Its sole purpose and
mission is to obliterate everything except Israel, and these documents are evidence of
massive SUCCESS in its mission, not evidence of failure.
Were our senior government leaders more familiar with military service, especially as front
line soldiers, they might have been less inclined to dawdle in these matters, agree with
obfuscated results for political reasons, and waste so much effort.
This is also to say that misleading documents and briefings from the military about
progress in Afghanistan, while contemptible, did not cause the strategic failure.
Contemporary reports from the press and other agencies indicated the effort was not working
out plainly to anyone who wanted to pay attention. Our political leaders chose to ignore the
truth for political gain.
A more realistic temperament chastened by experience would have been more inclined to
criticize and make corrections, and summon the courage to cut our losses rather than crow
ignominiously about "cutting and running." Few such temperaments, it seems at least, make it
to the top thee days.
Pompeo has just four terms in the House of Representives befor getting postions of Director of CIA (whichsuggests previous involvement
with CIA) and then paradoxically the head of the State Department, He retired from the alry in the rank of comptain and never participated
in any battles. He serves only in Germany, and this can be classified as a chickenhawk. He never performed any dyplomatic duries in
hs life and a large part of his adult life (1998-2006) was a greddy military contractor.
1. It mentions
that it aimed at "deterring future Iranian attack plans". This however is very vague. Future is not the same as imminent which is
the time based test required under international law. (1)
2. Overall, the statement places far greater emphasis on past activities and violations allegedly commuted by Suleimani. As such
the killing appears far more retaliatory for past acts than anticipatory for imminent self defense.
3. The notion that Suleimani was "actively developing plans" is curious both from a semantic and military standpoint. Is it sufficient
to meet the test of mecessity and proportionality?
I think everybody should listen the initial 47 minutes
Notable quotes:
"... Wanted to add that the malaise that is gripping the U.S. institutions is completely visible, it is not the opaque and obsequies portrait drawn by the punditry, news organizations, and elites. Seems most obvious to those of us outside the beltway that can clearly delineate between the failure of DC and the projections and marketing to the population that passes as wonky prose. Stupidity lacks the clarity, but brings the temerity making the facade not so subtle. ..."
"... Literally the only endorsement I've heard of Tulsi Gabbard - and a strikingly convincing one ..."
"... Isn't it just a question of the profits in the military business? ..."
In the United States and other democracies, political and economic systems still work in
theory, but not in practice. Meanwhile, the American-led takedown of the post-World War II
international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior. The combination
of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly disadvantageous to the
United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job, there is a need for
America's universities to provide the information and analysis of international best practices
that the political system does not.
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute
for International and Public Affairs, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, ambassador
to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), acting Assistant Secretary
of State for African Affairs, and Chargé d'affaires at both Bangkok and Beijing. He
began his diplomatic career in India but specialized in Chinese affairs. (He was the principal
American interpreter during President Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972.)
Ambassador Freeman is a much sought-after public speaker (see
http://chasfreeman.net ) and the author of several well-received books on statecraft and
diplomacy. His most recent book, America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East was
published in May 2016. Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige,
appeared in March 2013. America's Misadventures in the Middle East came out in 2010, as did the
most recent revision of The Diplomat's Dictionary, the companion volume to Arts of Power:
Statecraft and Diplomacy. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on
"diplomacy."
Chas Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in
Taiwan, and earned an AB magna cum laude from Yale University as well as a JD from the Harvard
Law School. He chairs Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that for more than
three decades has helped its American and foreign clients create ventures across borders,
facilitating their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation,
capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions, joint
ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other countries.
Well worth the watch and hope more see it, especially the presentation in the initial 47
minutes. We Americans take our deficits and the $ as the reserve currency far too
lightly.
Wanted to add that the malaise that is gripping the U.S. institutions is completely
visible, it is not the opaque and obsequies portrait drawn by the punditry, news
organizations, and elites. Seems most obvious to those of us outside the beltway that can
clearly delineate between the failure of DC and the projections and marketing to the
population that passes as wonky prose. Stupidity lacks the clarity, but brings the temerity
making the facade not so subtle.
No, not mercenaries, this is a protection racket. The U.N. address in late 2018 by the
President (the laughter spoke volumes) was about as insightful as a "goodfellas" scene where
the shakedown of the little guy is highlighted. It was the speeches by other countries at the
meeting that was most informative.
A definitive pullback from U.S. hegemony was palpable, real, and un-moderated. Large and
small countries all expressed an unwillingness to be held under the thumb of the global
bully. This is the result of having an over abundance of a particle within D.C.; not the
electron, photon, or neutron...but the moron.
"... I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party" ..."
I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern
in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this
Party"
I think everybody should listen the initial 47 minutes
Notable quotes:
"... Wanted to add that the malaise that is gripping the U.S. institutions is completely visible, it is not the opaque and obsequies portrait drawn by the punditry, news organizations, and elites. Seems most obvious to those of us outside the beltway that can clearly delineate between the failure of DC and the projections and marketing to the population that passes as wonky prose. Stupidity lacks the clarity, but brings the temerity making the facade not so subtle. ..."
"... Literally the only endorsement I've heard of Tulsi Gabbard - and a strikingly convincing one ..."
"... Isn't it just a question of the profits in the military business? ..."
In the United States and other democracies, political and economic systems still work in
theory, but not in practice. Meanwhile, the American-led takedown of the post-World War II
international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior. The combination
of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly disadvantageous to the
United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job, there is a need for
America's universities to provide the information and analysis of international best practices
that the political system does not.
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute
for International and Public Affairs, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, ambassador
to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), acting Assistant Secretary
of State for African Affairs, and Chargé d'affaires at both Bangkok and Beijing. He
began his diplomatic career in India but specialized in Chinese affairs. (He was the principal
American interpreter during President Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972.)
Ambassador Freeman is a much sought-after public speaker (see
http://chasfreeman.net ) and the author of several well-received books on statecraft and
diplomacy. His most recent book, America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East was
published in May 2016. Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige,
appeared in March 2013. America's Misadventures in the Middle East came out in 2010, as did the
most recent revision of The Diplomat's Dictionary, the companion volume to Arts of Power:
Statecraft and Diplomacy. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on
"diplomacy."
Chas Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in
Taiwan, and earned an AB magna cum laude from Yale University as well as a JD from the Harvard
Law School. He chairs Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that for more than
three decades has helped its American and foreign clients create ventures across borders,
facilitating their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation,
capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions, joint
ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other countries.
Well worth the watch and hope more see it, especially the presentation in the initial 47
minutes. We Americans take our deficits and the $ as the reserve currency far too
lightly.
Wanted to add that the malaise that is gripping the U.S. institutions is completely
visible, it is not the opaque and obsequies portrait drawn by the punditry, news
organizations, and elites. Seems most obvious to those of us outside the beltway that can
clearly delineate between the failure of DC and the projections and marketing to the
population that passes as wonky prose. Stupidity lacks the clarity, but brings the temerity
making the facade not so subtle.
No, not mercenaries, this is a protection racket. The U.N. address in late 2018 by the
President (the laughter spoke volumes) was about as insightful as a "goodfellas" scene where
the shakedown of the little guy is highlighted. It was the speeches by other countries at the
meeting that was most informative.
A definitive pullback from U.S. hegemony was palpable, real, and un-moderated. Large and
small countries all expressed an unwillingness to be held under the thumb of the global
bully. This is the result of having an over abundance of a particle within D.C.; not the
electron, photon, or neutron...but the moron.
Maybe, the Dulles Brothers had a deeper understanding of the logic of the US-Empire then
Kinzer with their conviction that they could not allow third-world-countries to be
independent.
Russia has closed major border crossings with China across the Far East due to the rapid spread of coronavirus. That constitutes
a significant blow to a trading relationship that had only just begun to fully blossom. The closures come just as new auto and rail
bridges spanning the Amur River are finally
reaching
completion.
The primary line of debate among Russia-China relations analysts is whether the "rapprochement" is robust and tending toward even
a genuine alliance or whether it is weak and has little to show for decades of cooperation other than a few rhetorical flourishes.
After all, the skeptics note, if this bilateral relationship is so robust, then why did it take so long to get those bridges built?
The China-Russia trading relationship does indeed remain underdeveloped and will evidently face additional headwinds in the near
future (along with all of China's trading relationships, so it seems). But
the importance of security ties
can hardly be disputed, especially if one takes the long view. Could China have fought the United States to a stalemate in the Korean
War without Soviet military assistance? Not a chance. More recently, Russia's sale of high-tech air and naval weaponry during the
1990s and 2000s created a solid foundation for today's muscle-bound dragon with both claws (DF-26) and sharp fangs (e.g. YJ-18).
But will it go further?
A tantalizing hint was offered by Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Valdai Conference in early October 2019. During his
remarks, he dropped the following bombshell: "I probably won't open a big secret. It'll become clear anyhow. We are now helping our
Chinese partners to create a missile attack warning system. This is a very serious thing, which will increase the defense capability
of the People's Republic of China in a fundamental way. Because now only the USA and Russia have such a system [Большой тайны, наверно,
не открою. Все равно это станет ясно. Мы сейчас помогаем нашим китайским партнерам создать систему СПРН – систему предупреждения
о ракетном нападении. Это очень серьезная вещь, которая капитальным, кардинальным образом повысит обороноспособность Китайской Народной
Республики. Потому что сейчас такую систему имеют только США и Россия]." This seemingly major step forward in Russia-China military
cooperation demands greater scrutiny. It also provides an interesting opportunity to gauge opinion among Russian strategists regarding
the long-term viability of a close military partnership with the Middle Kingdom.
One impressively comprehensive Russian appraisal begins
by stating that "Russia had to look for various options for answering Washington's actions" to withdraw from the INF Treaty. The
same article notes somewhat ominously that the United States is preparing in case of "accidental nuclear war with Russia." Employing
the Russian acronym "SPRN" literally "warning systems against rocket attack [системы предупреждения о ракетном нападении]" for early
warning system, this assessment also makes the important point that Russia's SPRN has only recently completed a long process of upgrades
meant to fill "gaps [разрывы]" caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, when key facilities for early warning were located in
non-Russian parts of the USSR.
The article quotes one Moscow defense expert, Igor Korotchenko [Игор Коротченко], as offering the following assessment: "This
is really a huge contribution of Russia to strategic stability, since China receives a powerful tool in order not to become a victim
of the first disarming blow from the United States." Another Russian expert, Konstantin Sivkov [Константин Сивков], maintained that
this move would enhance "global stability" but also articulated some concern with respect to Russia's long-term interests. "When
China has at its disposal all the technologies that Russia has at its disposal, or creates similar ones, it will cease to need Russia
as a defender," Sivkov said. "And this could adversely affect Russian-Chinese relations." Korotchenko, however, is more bullish on
the long-term prospects for the defense relationship with Beijing. He underlined the commercial prospects for Russian companies,
and added that the early warning initiative will "contribute to the further rapprochement of Russia and China, building a common
security policy [поспособствует дальнейшему сближению России и Китая, выстраиванию общей политики в области безопасности]."
That's an interesting disagreement among Russian security specialists, for sure, but another rather significant observation regarding
these developments was offered in this same article by the former deputy commander of Russia's air defense command, Alexander Luzan
[Александр Лузан]. He contends that Russia will benefit from the enhanced cooperation with Beijing on an early warning. Luzan explains
that the ground components of Russia's SPRN are comprised of []long range "Voronezh" [Воронеж] radars that can see out four thousand
to six thousand kilometers to detect ICBM launches. Short-range "Sunflower [Подсолнухи]" radars are more suitable for warning of
short-range launches, but also offer ship-detection capabilities. Directly reflecting on operational advantages for the Russian military,
Luzan observes: "Vladivostok and Primorye are protected here, but there is nothing 'in depth.' We once tried to deploy our facilities
in Mongolia, but it didn't work out very well. Therefore, if the Chinese close this 'tongue,' it will be very important for Russia
[Владивосток и Приморье у нас защищены, а 'в глубину' там ничего нет. Мы когда-то в Монголии пытались разместить свои комплексы,
но не очень получилось. Потому если китайцы этот 'язычок' закроют, то для России это будет очень важно]." Again citing this Russian
general, the article states that "a unified information space is created and data is exchanged with Chinese radars, [and therefore]
'the security of our country from the east will be even better.'"
Such interpretations are generally in accord with the analysis
of Vladimir Petrovsky [Владимир Петровский,], a senior fellow and military specialist at Moscow's Institute of the Far East of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. This analyst writes that many believe that Putin's announcement of this strategic cooperation initiative
at Valdai signals that "the military alliance between Russia and China . . . has finally become real." Petrovsky also notes that
other specialists have begun to speculate on the meaning of a "retaliatory strike" under such circumstances, wherein the early warning
is relayed by a third country. He quotes the Russian president (speaking at Valdai) further on the matter of motives for new missile
deployments in the Asia-Pacific region: "we suddenly heard from the American military that the first step in this direction would
be taken just in Asia. But that step also impacts on us, because we need to understand: where in Asia, will Russian territory be
endangered or not? By the way, it's immediately clear what was the root cause of the exit: not Russia and not mythical violations
of the [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty by us. If they are going to put [U.S. missiles] in Asia, then Asia is the primary
reason for withdrawing from this Treaty [вдруг услышали от американских военных, что первый шаг в этом направлении будет сделан как
раз в Азии. Но он и нас затрагивает, потому что надо понять: где в Азии, будет доставать это российскую территорию или нет? Кстати
говоря, сразу понятно, что было первопричиной выхода: не Россия и не мифические нарушения нами Договора. Если они собираются ставить
в Азии, то Азия и является первопричиной выхода из этого Договора]." In other words, Putin's announcement of this initiative to accelerate
military cooperation with China is intended, in part, as a response to the United States' move to exit the INF accord.
Strongly hinting that Beijing might well gain access to Russian early-warning radars based in the Arctic, Petrovsky observes,
"Taking into account geography, it is quite possible to develop protocols for the exchange of data between national SPRN." He further
contends that this early warning cooperation will be "mutually beneficial and not without compensation [эта помощь -- взаимовыгодная
и небезвозмездная]." This military expert explains that China still can learn from Russian radar proficiency, but also implies that
the Russian side may gain some advantages from China's evident prowess in microelectronics, for example. Moreover, he suggests, "a
possible Chinese satellite constellation could be a good addition to Russian orbital facilities." Still, Petrovsky concludes that
Russia and China "are not creating a military-political alliance. It is rather a matter of coordinating the military policies." Playing
down the significance of this new initiative, this specialist also notes that Russia and China have been holding annual ballistic
missile defense command and staff exercises for about a decade already.
If intellectuals replace the current professional politicians as the leaders of society the
situation would become much worse. Because they have neither the sense of reality, nor common
sense. For them, the words and speeches are more important than the actual social laws and the
dominant trends, the dominant social dynamics of the society. The psychological principle of
the intellectuals is that we could organize everything much better, but we are not allowed to
do it.
But the actual situation is as following: they could organize the life of society as they
wish and plan, in the way they view is the best only if under conditions that are not present
now are not feasible in the future. Therefore they are not able to act even at the level of
current leaders of the society, which they despise. The actual leaders are influenced by social
pressures, by the current social situation, but at least they doing something. Intellectuals
are unhappy that the real stream of life they are living in. They consider it wrong. that makes
them very dangerous, because they look really smart, while in reality being sophisticated
professional idiots.
Orchestration of military escalation in 2015 In 2015, Soleimani started to gather
support from various sources in order to combat the newly resurgent ISIL and rebel groups which
were both successful in taking large swathes of territory away from Assad's forces. He was
reportedly the main architect of the joint intervention involving Russia as a new partner with
Assad and Hezbollah. In 2015, Soleimani started to gather support from various sources in order
to combat the newly resurgent ISIL and rebel groups which were both successful in taking large
swathes of territory away from Assad's forces. He was reportedly the main architect of the
joint intervention involving Russia as a new partner with Assad and Hezbollah. [47][48][49][50]
According to
Reuters, at a meeting in Moscow in July, Soleimani unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his
Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into
victory – with Russia's help. Qasem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in
planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new
According to Reuters, at a meeting in Moscow in July, Soleimani unfurled a map of Syria to
explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be
turned into victory – with Russia's help. Qasem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first
step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and
forged a new According to Reuters, at a meeting in Moscow in July, Soleimani unfurled a map of
Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad
could be turned into victory – with Russia's help.
Qasem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was
the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war
and forged a new Iran–Russia
alliance in support of the Syrian (and Iraqi) governments. Iran's supreme leader, Ali
Khamenei also sent a senior envoy to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin. "Putin reportedly
told [a senior Iranian envoy] 'Okay we will intervene. Send Qassem Soleimani.'" General
Soleimani went to explain the map of the theatre and coordinate the strategic escalation of
military forces in Syria. [49]
Soleimani had a decisive impact on the theater of operations, which led to a strong
advance in southern Aleppo with the government and allied forces re-capturing two military
bases and dozens of towns and villages in a matter of weeks. There was also a series of major
advances
towards Kuweiris air-base to the north-east. [57] By mid-November,
the Syrian army and its allies had gained ground in southern areas of Aleppo Governorate,
capturing numerous rebel strongholds. Soleimani was reported to have personally led the drive
deep into the southern Aleppo countryside where many towns and villages fell into government
hands. He reportedly commanded the Syrian Arab Army's 4th Mechanized Division, Hezbollah,
Harakat Al-Nujaba (Iraqi), Kata'ib Hezbollah (Iraqi), Liwaa Abu Fadl Al-Abbas (Iraqi), and
Firqa Fatayyemoun (Afghan/Iranian volunteers). [58]
In early February 2016, backed by Russian and Syrian air force airstrikes, the 4th
Mechanized Division – in close coordination with Hezbollah, the National Defense Forces
(NDF), Kata'eb Hezbollah, and Harakat Al-Nujaba – launched an offensive in Aleppo
Governorate's northern countryside, [59] which eventually
broke the three-year siege of Nubl and Al-Zahraa
and cut off the rebels' main supply route from Turkey. According to a senior, non-Syrian
security source close to Damascus, Iranian fighters played a crucial role in the conflict.
"Qassem Soleimani is there in the same area", he said. [60] In December 2016,
new photos emerged of Soleimani at the Citadel of Aleppo , though the exact
date of the photos is unknown. [61][62]
... ... ...
In 2014, Qasem Soleimani was in the Iraqi city of Amirli , to work with the Iraqi forces to push
back militants from ISIL. [68][69] According to the
Los Angeles
Times , which reported that Amirli was the first town to successfully withstand an
ISIS invasion, it was secured thanks to "an unusual partnership of Iraqi and Kurdish
soldiers, Iranian-backed Shiite militias and U.S. warplanes". The U.S. acted as a force
multiplier for a number of Iranian-backed armed groups – at the same time that was
present on the battlefield. [70][71]
Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani prays in the Syrian desert during
a local pro-government offensive in 2017
A senior Iraqi official told the BBC that when the city of Mosul fell, the rapid reaction
of Iran, rather than American bombing, was what prevented a more widespread collapse.
[11] Qasem
Soleimani also seems to have been instrumental in planning the operation to relieve
Amirli in Saladin
Governorate, where ISIL had laid siege to an important city. [66]
In fact the Quds force operatives under Soleimani's command seem to have been deeply involved
with not only the Iraqi army and Shi'ite militias but also the Kurdish in the Battle of Amirli ,
[72] not only
providing liaisons for intelligence-sharing but also the supply of arms and munitions in
addition to "providing expertise". [73]
In the operation
to liberate Jurf Al Sakhar , he was reportedly "present on the battlefield". Some Shia
militia commanders described Soleimani as "fearless" – one pointing out that the
Iranian general never wears a flak jacket , even on the front lines.
[74]
In November 2014, Shi'ite and Kurdish forces under Soleimani's command pushed ISIS out of
Iraqi villages of Jalawla
and Saadia, in the Diyala Governorate . [67]
Soleimani played an integral role in the organisation and planning of the crucial
operation to retake the city of Tikrit in Iraq
from ISIS. The city of Tikrit rests on the left bank of the Tigris river and is the largest
and most important city between Baghdad and Mosul, giving it a high strategic value. The city
fell to ISIS during 2014 when ISIS made immense gains in northern and central Iraq. After its
capture, ISIL's massacre at Camp Speicher led to
1,600 to 1,700 deaths of Iraqi Army cadets and soldiers. After months of careful preparation
and intelligence gathering an offensive to encircle and capture Tikrit was launched in early
March 2015. [76]
ark Hannah
observes that a bipartisan foreign policy consensus stifles legitimate debate and that it
is antithetical to democratic politics:
In 1948, after bowing out of a bid to defeat Democratic President Harry Truman, Sen.
Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) declared, "We must stop politics at the water's edge." In other
words, we should confine our disagreements to domestic policy and project unity to our
foreign friends and foes. But that unity was merely a product of the geopolitical realities
at the dawn of the Cold War. More often, an elite consensus feeds stale policy, allows bad
ideas to go unchallenged and narrows the range of new proposals welcomed as legitimate.
There's a word that describes a politically powerful person making a high-minded exhortation
to "stop politics." That word is not "democracy."
There is no tradition of -- nor enduring allegiance to -- bipartisan consensus in
America's international relations. Nor should there be.
Americans have always been divided on foreign policy questions, and it is only when there is
a sufficiently grave external threat or there is a concerted effort to impose a particular view
that those divisions recede temporarily. These divisions will always resurface because our
country is too large and too diverse for our population to reach a settled consensus for very
long. When there is a consensus among politicians and foreign policy professionals, it masks
these divisions and frequently fails to represent the views of large numbers of Americans. The
existence of such a consensus is not a case of politics "stopping at the water's edge." It is
the establishment of a particular set of assumptions about U.S. power and its role in the world
that define the boundaries of what is acceptable in foreign policy debate.
The bipartisan consensus that most of our political leaders subscribe to and reinforce is
made first in Washington and then handed down to the country. It has been and continues to be
very much a top-down process in which the public is offered a limited menu of options, and they
are then told that even most of those options are unworkable. Once they are created, consensus
views become excessively rigid, and the policies informed by them lag behind changing
circumstances. That produces inadequate and unrealistic policies because new and unconventional
ideas are discouraged or dismissed out of hand because they do not follow consensus
assumptions. Like any working set of ideas, consensus views may start out being timely and
appropriate for their circumstances, but when they settle and harden into an idol they become
an impediment to informed and effective policymaking.
For example, the goal of North Korea policy across multiple administrations was to prevent
North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons and then to pressure North Korea into giving up the
weapons that it had obtained. Perversely, the first policy contributed directly to its own
failure by driving North Korea to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to test its first
nuclear device, and then the last two administrations have tried in vain to reverse that
outcome. North Korea's denuclearization has been a consistent U.S. goal under presidents from
both parties, but repeated failure has not yet forced our leaders to adapt and try something
else. Everything else related to North Korea has been held hostage to this wild goose chase of
seeking complete denuclearization that will never happen. The bipartisan consensus doesn't just
enshrine mistaken assumptions as wisdom, but it actively fights against those that try to make
the consensus more responsive to contemporary realities.
Defenders of the bipartisan consensus discourage and penalize analysts and writers that
diverge too much from it on the assumption that the consensus is somehow integral to
maintaining U.S. security. Instead of recognizing the rigidity of the consensus as a weakness
that leads to repeated failures, defenders of the consensus see rejection of consensus
assumptions as the real danger. This is what leads to ritual denunciations of "isolationists"
and "appeasement" and "being soft" on this or that government. Adherence to consensus
assumptions also means never having to say you're sorry for any costly policy failures that
they produce. One reason why there is no real accountability in foreign policy is that
adherents of the bipartisan consensus never penalize their own for causing debacles overseas,
so that even the authors of the greatest crimes and blunders are gradually rehabilitated and
feted as wise men and women. When so many of the same people with the same assumptions are
permitted to set policy, we should expect to see one failure after another, and sure enough
that is what we have had for decades.
One of the things that many advocates of restraint have talked about in recent years is
the need to democratize U.S. foreign policy. That not only means holding the government
accountable for what it does and insisting on Congress' role in matters of war, but it also
means accepting a much wider range of views on how the U.S. should be acting in the world. It
would mean actually forging a consensus that is much more representative of what Americans want
our government to be doing in the world.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC,
where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New York
Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox
Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The
Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA.
Follow him on Twitter .
rew Holland Kinney explains
why Morales' removal from power in Bolivia was a coup, and the refusal to call it what it is
impedes our understanding of military interventions in politics:
With these historical patterns in mind, a familiar drama predictably unfolded surrounding
characterizations of last November's coup in La Paz, as opponents of Evo Morales claimed
revolutionary credit for pushing out the leader at the barrel of a gun. Nothing about these
events was unique to coup politics or Bolivia, where there have been 43 instances of regime
change since independence from Spain. Senior military officials typically lead coups during
protests, which tend to initially lack violence. A repressive wake then follows, likely when
"the incentives for restraint disappear," according to Erica De Bruin.
Despite Morales detractors' best efforts to label his ouster as a revolution, it is hard
to deny that this was a banal example of military intervention, not a unique
something-by-another-name. Unfortunately, until we reclaim civilian participation as "normal"
in coup politics, civil-military allies will continue to successfully spin their seizures of
power as revolutionary heroism. Engaging in this post-coup name-game hinders our ability to
recognize coups as such -- and to recognize that the event itself and its justifications are
conceptually distinct but normatively related.
When the military intervenes in politics, it often does so in tandem with civilian protests
and military leaders use those protests as a pretext for their intervention. The involvement of
civilians in the effort to overthrow a leader does not make it any less of a coup. That is a
common feature of many coups around the world. Kinney continues:
This was a typical example of a military coup d'état. Emblematic of military
interventions that are preceded by protests and supported by civilian elites, Morales's
opponents and international observers immediately questioned the coup label. The former
president's critics maintain there was no coup because his election was illegitimate and the
military was merely "playing peacekeeper," even as events after his departure exhibit all the
trademarks of a coup.
There were very few American politicians that correctly characterized Morales' overthrow as
a coup. Bernie Sanders happens to have been one of them, as I mentioned
last month:
Sanders criticized the way that Morales was removed from power and argued that it was a
coup, but it is quite a stretch to say that he "supported" the Bolivian leader. Whatever one
thinks about Morales, it is reasonable to characterize his removal from office as a kind of
coup, and as a general rule we should expect American politicians to disapprove of coups
against elected leaders regardless of their politics.
Sanders' willingness to call the coup in Bolivia by its right name is one of the things that
is so refreshing about his foreign policy views. There was no political advantage to be gained
in criticizing Morales' overthrow, but he said it anyway because he saw it for what it was and
objected to it on principle. Most politicians in the U.S. either shrugged at or approved of the
result of the coup, but Sanders protested because he thought it was wrong.
To appreciate how rare this is in U.S. politics, let's consider how our political leaders
usually respond to coups in other countries. The first question they usually ask is, "Did we
support the leader who was overthrown?" If the leader is perceived to be an adversary or even
non-aligned with the U.S., the coup is often touted as a great victory for democracy. If the
leader was a client ruler, it is judged to be a terrible setback for freedom and humanity. When
the Egyptian military intervened in 2013 and removed Morsi from power, this obvious coup was
spun as something else because it was useful to the post-coup government and to the U.S. to
pretend that it was not a coup. John Kerry absurdly
claimed that the military was "restoring democracy" by removing Egypt's first
democratically elected president. A little over six years later, Egypt is ruled by a
dictatorship that is far more repressive than it was even during Mubarak's dictatorship, and
U.S. support for the dictator in Cairo is as strong as ever. If the U.S. had followed our own
laws, Egypt should have been cut off from all military aid following the coup, but there was
never a complete cutoff and even the limited restrictions that were put in place were lifted
after a short interval. Our government deplores coups, provided that they are directed against
people that we like. The rest of the time, euphemisms and excuse-making are the order of the
day.
We saw this again last year in Venezuela
when the attempted coup there failed . The U.S. government and some major newspapers
clearly wanted there to be a coup, they had wished that it had succeeded, but even then they
pretended that it had not been an attempted coup at all. Coup supporters know that coups are
still considered illegitimate, and so they are careful to describe it as anything but that, but
it doesn't change the reality of what they are trying to do.
Was not the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine another instance of a coup? Was that coup
not aided and abetted by the the Obama Administration? How is Russia' reaction to this coup
any different than that the US when Castro over through Batista?
Well, if those people silly people didn't elect the people they wanted versus people we
don't like then we wouldn't have to support coups, would we? Until then we'll just have
wave the flag and overlook inconveniences like this:
'We came, we saw, he died' -- Hillary Clinton smirked when she said it. She had no idea how many
people that would apply to.
A fighter loyal to the Libyan internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) fires a heavy machine gun.
(MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP via Getty Images)
Libya's ongoing destruction belongs to Hillary Clinton more than anyone else. It was she who pushed President Barack Obama
to launch his splendid little war, backing the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi in the name of protecting Libya's civilians.
When later asked about Gaddafi's death, she cackled and exclaimed: "We came, we saw, he died."
Alas, his was not the last
death in that conflict, which has flared anew, turning Libya into a real-life
Game of Thrones
. An artificial
country already suffering from deep regional divisions, Libya has been further torn apart by political and religious
differences. One commander fighting on behalf of the Government of National Accord (GNA), Salem Bin Ismail, told the BBC:
"We have had chaos since 2011."
Arrayed against the weak unity government is the former Gaddafi general, U.S. citizen, and one-time CIA adjunct Khalifa
Haftar. For years, the two sides have appeared to be in relative military balance, but a who's who of meddlesome outsiders
has turned the conflict into an international affair. The latest playbook features Egypt, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, and Russia supporting Haftar, while Italy, Qatar, and Turkey are with the unity government.
In April, Haftar launched an offensive to seize Tripoli. It faltered until Russian mercenaries made an appearance in
September, bringing Haftar to the gates of Tripoli. He apparently is also employing Sudanese mercenaries, though not with
their nation's backing. Now Turkey plans to introduce troops to bolster the official government.
Washington's position is at best confused. It officially recognizes the GNA. When Haftar started his offensive,
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement urging "the immediate halt to these military operations." However,
President Donald Trump then initiated a friendly phone call to Haftar "to discuss ongoing counterterrorism efforts and the
need to achieve peace and stability in Libya," according to the White House. More incongruously, "The president recognized
Field Marshal Haftar's significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya's oil resources, and the two discussed a
shared vision for Libya's transition to a stable, democratic political system." The State Department recently urged both
sides to step back. However, Haftar continues to advance, and just days ago captured the coastal city of Sirte.
In recent years, Libya had been of little concern to the U.S. It was an oil producer, but Gaddafi had as much incentive
to sell the oil as did King Idris I, whom Gaddafi and other members of the "Free Officers Movement" ousted. Gaddafi
carefully balanced interests in Libya's complex tribal society and kept the military weak over fears of another coup. He
was a geopolitical troublemaker, supporting a variety of insurgent and terrorist groups. But he steadily lost influence,
alienating virtually every African and Middle Eastern government.
Of greatest concern to Washington, Libyan agents organized terrorist attacks against the U.S. -- bombing an American
airliner and a Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers -- leading to economic sanctions and military retaliation.
However, those days were long over by 2011. Eight years before, in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Gaddafi
repudiated terrorism and ended his missile and nuclear programs in a deal with the U.S. and Europe. He was feted in
European capitals. His government served as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council from 2008 to 2009. American
officials congratulated him for his assistance against terrorism and discussed possible assistance in return. All seemed
forgiven.
Then in 2011, the Arab Spring engulfed Libya, as people rose against Gaddafi's rule. He responded with force to
reestablish control. However, Western advocates of regime change warned that genocide was possible and pushed for
intervention under United Nations auspices. In explaining his decision to intervene, Obama stated: "We knew that if we
waited one more day, Benghazi could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the
conscience of the world." Russia and China went along with a resolution authorizing "all necessary measures to prevent the
killing of civilians."
In fact, the fears were fraudulent. Gaddafi was no angel, but he hadn't targeted civilians, and his florid rhetoric,
cited by critics, only attacked those who had taken up arms. He even promised amnesty to those who abandoned their weapons.
With no civilians to protect, NATO, led by the U.S., bombed Libyan government forces and installations and backed the
insurgents' offensive. It was not a humanitarian intervention, but a lengthy, costly, low-tech, regime-change war, mostly
at Libyan expense. Obama claimed: "We had a unique ability to stop the violence." Instead his administration ensured that
the initial civil war would drag on for months -- and the larger struggle ultimately for years.
On October 20, 2011, Gaddafi was discovered hiding in a culvert in Sirte. He was beaten, sodomized with a bayonet, shot,
and killed. That essentially ended the first phase of the extended Libyan civil war. Gaddafi had done much to earn his
fate, but his death led to an entirely new set of problems.
A low level insurgency continued, led by former Gaddafi followers. Proposals either to disband militia forces or
integrate them into the National Transitional Council (NTC) military went unfulfilled, and this developed into the
conflict's second phase. Elections delivered fragmented results, as ideological, religious, and other divisions ran deep.
Militias were accused of misusing government funds, employing violence, and kidnapping and assassinating their opponents.
Islamist groups increasingly attempted to impose religious rule. Violence and insecurity worsened.
In February 2014, Haftar challenged the General National Congress (GNC). Hostilities broadly evolved between the
GNC/GNA, backed by several militias, which controlled Tripoli and much of the country's west, and the Tobruk-based House of
Representatives, which was supported by Haftar and his Libyan National Army. Multiple domestic factions, forces, and
militias also were involved. Among them was the Islamic State, which murdered Egyptian Coptic (Christian) laborers.
The African Union and the United Nations promoted various peace initiatives. However, other governments fueled
hostilities. Most notable now is the potential entry of Turkish troops.
In mid-December, Turkey's parliament approved an agreement to provide equipment, military training, technical aid, and
intelligence. (The Erdogan government also controversially set maritime boundaries with Libya that conflict with other
claims, most notably from Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Israel.) Ankara introduced some members of the dwindling Syrian
insurgents once aligned against the Assad regime to Libya and raised the possibility of adding its "quick reaction force"
to the fight.
At the end of last month, the Erdogan government introduced, and parliament approved, legislation to authorize the
deployment of combat forces. President Erdogan criticized nations that backed a "putschist general" and "warlord" and
promised to support the GNA "much more effectively." While noting that Turkey doesn't "go where we are not invited"
(except, apparently, Syria), Erdogan added that "since now there is an invitation [from the GNA], we will accept it."
But Haftar refused to back down. Last week, he called on "men and women, soldiers and civilians, to defend our land and
our honor." He continued: "We accept the challenge and declare jihad and a call to arms."
Turkish legislator Ismet Yilmaz supported the intervention and warned that the conflict might "spread instability to
Turkey." More likely the intervention is a grab for energy, since Ankara has devoted significant resources of late to
exploring the Eastern Mediterranean for oil and gas. Libya has oil deposits, of course, which could be exploited under a
friendly government. Perhaps most important, Ankara wants to ensure that its interests are respected in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
However, direct intervention is an extraordinarily dangerous step. It puts Turkey in the line of fire, as in Syria.
Ankara's forces could clash with those of Russia, which maintains the merest veneer of deniability over its role in Libya.
And other powers -- Egypt, perhaps, or the UAE -- might ramp up their involvement in an effort to thwart Erdogan's plans.
In response, the U.S. attempted to warn Turkey against intervening. "External military intervention threatens prospects
for resolving the conflict," said State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus with no hint of irony. Congress might go
further: some of its members have already proposed sanctioning Russia for the introduction of mercenaries, and Ankara has
few friends left on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless it is rather late for Washington to cry foul. Its claim to essentially a
monopoly on Mideast meddling can only be seen as risible by other powers.
The Arab League has also criticized "foreign interference." In a resolution passed in late December, the group expressed
"serious concern over the military escalation further aggravating the situation in Libya and which threatens the security
and stability of neighboring countries and the entire region." However, Arab League is no less hypocritical. Egypt, the
UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all deeply involved in the conflict, are members of the league. And no one would be
surprised if some or all of them decided to expand their participation in the fighting. Egyptian president Abdel Fatah
al-Sisi insisted: "We will not allow anyone to control Libya. It is a matter of Egyptian national security."
Although the fighting is less intense than in, say, Syria, combat has gone high-tech. According to the
Washington
Post
: "Eight months into Libya's worst spasm of violence in eight years, the conflict is being fought increasingly by
weaponized drones." ISIS is one of the few beneficiaries of these years of fighting. GNA-allied militias that once
cooperated with the U.S. and other states in counterterrorism are now focused on Haftar, allowing militants to revive, set
up desert camps, and organize attacks. Washington still employs drones, but they rely on accurate intelligence, best
gathered on the ground, and even then well-directed hits are no substitute for local ground operations.
The losers are the Libyan people. The fighting has resulted in thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
Divisions, even among tribes, are growing. The future looks ever dimmer. Fathi Bashagha, the GNA interior minister,
lamented: "Every day we are burying young people who should be helping us build Libya." Absent a major change, many more
will be buried in the future.
Yet the air of unreality surrounding the conflict remains. In late December, President Trump met with al-Sisi and,
according to the White House, the two "rejected foreign exploitation and agreed that parties must take urgent steps to
resolve the conflict before Libyans lose control to foreign actors." However, the latter already happened -- nine years ago
when America first intervened.
The Obama administration did not plan to ruin Libya for a generation. But its decision to take on another people's fight
has resulted in catastrophe. Hillary Clinton's malignant gift keeps on giving. Such is the cost of America's promiscuous
war-making.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan
and the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
In view of event of Jan 7 it looks like Geraldo Rivera had the point. He beautifully cut the
neocon jerk by reminding him the role of the US intelligence agencies in unleashing Iraq war
FOX News correspondent Geraldo Rivera debated "Fox & Friends" hosts Brian Kilmeade and
Steve Doocy Friday about the assassination of Iranian special forces General Qassim al
Soleimani in Iraq, warning of dire consequences if Iran chooses to retaliate and telling
Kilmeade: "You, like Lindsey Graham, have never met a war you didn't like."
"Your arrogance is exactly what's wrong with the region," Geraldo said. "You're not a
front-line fighter that has to go back into Iraq again."
GERALDO RIVERA: We thought that when the de-escalation at the embassy happened a couple of
days ago that was the end of this chapter. The U.S., with it's firmness, had won the victory.
It wasn't going to be Benghazi, it wasn't going to be Tehran from 1980. We won that technical
victory.
Now we have taken this huge military escalation. Now I fear the worst. You're going to see
the U.S. markets go crazy today. You're going to see the price of oil spiking today. This is
a very, very big deal.
BRIAN KILMEADE: I don't know if you heard, this isn't about his resume of blood and death,
it was about what was next. That's what you're missing.
STEVE DOOCY: According to the Secretary of Defense.
GERALDO RIVERA: By what credible source can you predict what the next Iranian move will
be?
BRIAN KILMEADE: Secretary fo State and American intelligence provided that material.
GERALDO RIVERA: They've been excellent. They've been excellent, the U.S. intelligence has
been excellent since 2003 when we invaded Iraq, disrupted the entire region for no real
reason. Don't for a minute start cheering this on, what we have done, what we have unleashed
--
BRIAN KILMEADE: I will cheer it on. I am elated.
GERALDO RIVERA: Then you, like Lindsey Graham, have never met a war you didn't like.
BRIAN KILMEADE: That is not true, and don't even say that.
GERALDO RIVERA: If President Trump wanted a de-escalation --
BRIAN KILMEADE: Let them kill us for another 15 years?
GERALDO RIVERA: If President Trump wanted a de-escalation and to bring our troops
home--
BRIAN KILMEADE: What about the 700 Americans who are dead, should they not be happy?
GERALDO RIVERA: What about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died since 2003? You
have to start seeing. What the hell are we doing in Baghdad in the first place? Why are we
there?
BRIAN KILMEADE: So you're blaming President Bush for the maniacal killing of Saddam
Hussein?
GERALDO RIVERA: I am blaming President Bush in 2003 for the fake weapons of mass
destruction that never existed and the con-job that drove us into that war.
"... Due to the non-stop action in Washington of late, few believe that the present state of affairs between the Democrats and Donald Trump are exclusively due to a telephone call between the US leader and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is only scratching the surface of a story that is practically boundless. ..."
"... In March 2016, the DOJ found that "the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed," as Jeff Carlson reported in The Epoch Times. ..."
"... That sort of foreign access to sensitive data is highly improper and was the result of "deliberate decision-making," according to the findings of an April 2017 FISA court ruling ( footnote 69 ). ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to terminate all FBI outside-contractor access. Later, on Oct. 21, 2016, the FBI and the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), and despite they were aware of Rogers's actions, moved ahead anyways with a request for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The request was approved by the FISA court, which, apparently, was still in the dark about the violations. ..."
"... Now James Comey is back in the spotlight as one of the main characters in the Barr-Durham investigation, which is examining largely out of the spotlight the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that dogged the White House for four long years. ..."
In the time-honored tradition of Machiavellian statecraft, all of the charges being leveled against Donald Trump to remove him
from office namely, 'abuse of power' and 'obstruction of congress' are essentially the same things the Democratic Party has been
guilty of for nearly half a decade : abusing their powers in a non-stop attack on the executive branch. Is the reason because they
desperately need a 'get out of jail free' card?
Due to the non-stop action in Washington of late, few believe that the present state of affairs between the Democrats and Donald
Trump are exclusively due to a telephone call between the US leader and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is only
scratching the surface of a story that is practically boundless.
Back in April 2016, before Trump had become the Republican presidential nominee, talk of impeachment was already in the air.
"Donald Trump isn't even the Republican nominee yet,"
wrote Darren Samuelsohn in Politico. Yet impeachment, he noted, is "already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few
members of Congress."
The timing of Samuelsohn's article is not a little astonishing given what the Department of Justice (DOJ) had discovered just
one month earlier.
In March 2016, the DOJ found that "the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed," as Jeff Carlson
reported in The Epoch Times.
That sort of foreign access to sensitive data is highly improper and was the result of "deliberate decision-making," according
to the findings of an April 2017 FISA court ruling (
footnote
69 ).
On April 18, 2016, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to terminate
all FBI outside-contractor access. Later, on Oct. 21, 2016, the FBI and the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), and despite they
were aware of Rogers's actions, moved ahead anyways with a request for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page. The request was approved by the FISA court, which, apparently, was still in the dark about the violations.
On Oct. 26, following approval of the warrant against Page, Rogers went to the FISA court to inform them of the FBI's non-compliance
with the rules. Was it just a coincidence that at exactly this time, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Defense
Secretary Ashton B. Carter were suddenly
calling for Roger's removal? The request was eventually rejected. The next month, in mid-November 2016 Rogers, without first
notifying his superiors, flew to New York where he had a private meeting with Trump at Trump Towers.
According to the New York Times,
the meeting the details of which were never publicly divulged, but may be guessed at "caused consternation at senior levels
of the administration."
Democratic obstruction of justice?
Then CIA Director John Brennan, dismayed about a few meetings Trump officials had with the Russians, helped to kick-start the
FBI investigation over 'Russian collusion.' Notably, these Trump-Russia meetings occurred in December 2016, as the incoming administration
was in the difficult transition period to enter the White House. The Democrats made sure they made that transition as ugly as possible.
Although it is perfectly normal for an incoming government to meet with foreign heads of state at this critical juncture, a meeting
at Trump Tower between Michael Flynn, Trump's incoming national security adviser and former Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey
Kislyak, was portrayed as some kind of cloak and dagger scene borrowed from a John le Carr thriller.
Brennan questioning the motives behind high-level meetings between the Trump team and some Russians is strange given that the
lame duck Obama administration was in the process of redialing US-Russia relations back to the Cold War days, all based on the debunked
claim that Moscow handed Trump the White House on a silver platter.
In late December 2016, after Trump had already won the election, Obama slapped Russia with punitive sanctions,
expelled
35 Russian diplomats and closed down two Russian facilities. Since part of Trump's campaign platform was to mend relations with
Moscow, would it not seem logical that the incoming administration would be in damage-control, doing whatever necessary to prevent
relations between the world's premier nuclear powers from degrading even more?
So if it wasn't 'Russian collusion' that motivated the Democrats into action, what was it?
From Benghazi to Seth Rich
Here we must pause and remind ourselves about the unenviable situation regarding Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, who
was being grilled daily over her use of a private computer to
communicate
sensitive documents via email. In all likelihood, the incident would have dropped from the radar had it not been for the deadly
2012 Benghazi attacks on a US compound.
In the course of a House Select Committee investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attacks, which resulted in the
death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US personnel, Clinton handed over some 30,000 emails, while reportedly deleting
32,000 deemed to be of a "personal nature". Those emails remain unaccounted for to this day.
I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.
By March 2015, even the traditionally tepid media was baring its baby fangs, relentlessly
pursuing Clinton over the email question. Since Clinton never made a secret of her presidential ambitions, even political allies
were piling on. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example,
said it's time for Clinton "to step up" and explain herself, adding that "silence is going to hurt her."
On July 24, 2015, The New York Times
published a front-page story with the headline "Criminal Inquiry Sought in Clinton's Use of Email." Later, Jennifer Rubin of
the Washington Post candidly
summed up Clinton's rapidly deteriorating status with elections fast approaching: "Democrats still show no sign they are willing
to abandon Clinton. Instead, they seem to be heading into the 2016 election with a deeply flawed candidate schlepping around plenty
of baggage -- the details of which are not yet known."
Moving into 2016, things began to look increasingly complicated for the Democratic front-runner. On March 16, 2016, WikiLeaks
launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails and attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server
while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547-page treasure trove spans the dates from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014.
In May, about one month after Clinton had officially announced her candidacy for the US presidency, the State Department's inspector
general released an 83-page report that was highly critical of Clinton's email practices, concluding that Clinton failed to seek
legal approval for her use of a private server.
"At a minimum," the report determined, "Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business
before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented
in accordance with the Federal Records Act."
The following month brought more bad news for Clinton and her presidential hopes after it was
reported that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had a 30-minute tte--tte with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch,
whose department was leading the Clinton investigations, on the tarmac at Phoenix International Airport. Lynch said Clinton decided
to pay her an impromptu visit where the two discussed "his grandchildren and his travels and things like that." Republicans, however,
certainly weren't buying the story as the encounter came as the FBI was preparing to file its recommendation to the Justice Department.
The summer of 2016, however, was just heating up.
I take @LorettaLynch &
@billclinton at their word that their convo
in Phoenix didn't touch on probe. But foolish to create such optics.
On the early morning of July 10, Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was gunned
down on the street in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC. Rich's murder, said to be the result of a botched robbery,
bucked the homicide trend in the area for that particular period; murders rates
for the first six months of 2016 were down about 50 percent from the same period in the previous year.
In any case, the story gets much stranger. Just five days earlier, on July 5th, the computers at the DNC were compromised, purportedly
by an online persona with the moniker "Guccifer 2.0" at the behest of Russian intelligence. This is where the story of "Russian hacking"
first gained popularity. Not everyone, however, was buying the explanation.
In July 2017, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, who call themselves Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent a memo to President Trump that challenged a January intelligence assessment that expressed "high
confidence" that the Russians had organized an "influence campaign" to harm Hillary Clinton's "electability," as if she wasn't capable
of that without Kremlin support.
"Forensic studies of 'Russian hacking' into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data
was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer," the memo states (The memo's conclusions were based on
analyses of metadata provided by the online persona Guccifer 2.0, who took credit for the alleged hack). "Key among the findings
of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far
exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack."
In other words, according to VIPS, the compromise of the DNC computers was the result of an internal leak, not an external hack.
At this point, however, it needs mentioned that the VIPS memo has sparked dissenting views among its members. Several analysts
within the group have spoken out against its findings, and that internal debate can be read
here . Thus, it would
seem there is no 'smoking gun,' as of yet, to prove that the DNC was not hacked by an external entity. At the same time, the murder
of Seth Rich continues to remain an unsolved "botched robbery," according to investigators. Meanwhile, the one person who may hold
the key to the mystery, Julian Assange, is said to be withering away Belmarsh Prison, a high-security London jail, where he is awaiting
a February court hearing that will decide whether he will be extradited to the United States where he 18 charges.
Here is a question to ponder: If you were Julian Assange, and you knew you were going to be extradited to the United States, who
would you rather be the sitting president in charge of your fate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Think twice before answering.
"Because you'd be in jail"
On October 9, 2016, in the second televised presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump
accused his Democratic opponent of deleting 33,000 emails,
while adding that he would get a "special prosecutor and we're going to look into it " To this, Clinton said "it's just awfully good
that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country," to which Trump deadpanned, without
missing a beat, "because you'd be in jail."
Now if that remark didn't get the attention of high-ranking Democratic officials, perhaps Trump's comments at a Virginia rally
days later, when he promised to "drain the swamp," made folks sit up and take notice.
At this point the leaks, hacks and everything in between were already coming fast and furious. On October 7, John Podesta, Clinton's
presidential campaign manager, had his personal Gmail account hacked, thereby releasing a torrent of inside secrets, including how
Donna Brazile, then a CNN commentator, had fed Clinton debate questions. But of course the crimes did not matter to the mendacious
media, only the identity of the alleged messenger, which of course was 'Russia.'
By now, the only thing more incredible than the dirt being produced on Clinton was the fact that she was still in the presidential
race, and even slated to win by a wide margin. But perhaps her biggest setback came when authorities, investigating
Anthony Weiner's abused laptop into illicit text messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl, stumbled upon thousands of email messages
from Hillary Clinton.
Now Comey had to backpedal on his conclusion in July that although Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of her electronic
devices, no criminal charges would be forthcoming. He announced an 11th hour investigation, just days before the election. Although
Clinton was also cleared in this case, observers never forgave Comey for his actions,
arguing they cost Clinton the White House.
Now James Comey is back in the spotlight as one of the main characters in the Barr-Durham investigation, which is examining largely
out of the spotlight the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that dogged the White House for four long years.
In early December, Justice Department's independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz,
released the 400-page IG report
that revealed a long list of omissions, mistakes and inconsistencies in the FBI's applications for FISA warrants to conduct surveillance
on Carter Page. Although the report was damning, both Barr and Durham noted it did not go far enough because Horowitz did not have
the access that Durham has to intelligence agency sources, as well as overseas contacts that Barr provided to him.
With AG report due for release in early spring, needless to say some Democrats are very nervous as to its finding. So nervous,
in fact, that they might just be willing to go to the extreme of removing a sitting president to avoid its conclusions.
Whatever the verdict, 2020 promises to be one very interesting year.
"... The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. ..."
"... In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813, governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power" or an agent a foreign power. ..."
"... The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this Court's effective operation. ..."
"... On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD ..."
"... which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. ..."
"... Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he ..."
"... seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation? ..."
"... "JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do." ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Do you believe that? ..."
"... BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true. ..."
"... Allegedly, George Papadopoulos said that "Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign" , and Papadopoulos was shocked at Halper's saying this. Probably because so much money at the Pentagon is untraceable, some of the crucial documentation on this investigation might never be found. For example, the Defense Department's Inspector General's 2 July 2019 report to the US Senate said "ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work." ..."
"... very profitable business ..."
"... Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey. In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama). ..."
"... Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. ..."
"... and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama ..."
"... Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.) ..."
"... There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since. ..."
"... Reform is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid a free-fall into oblivion. ..."
"... The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State . ..."
Former US President
Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned
180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs.
The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the
Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers
to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or
her own personal reasons. Either way, it's treason (crime that is intended to, and does,
endanger the continued functioning of the Constitution itself*), and Mr. Obama is now being
actively investigated, as possibly having done this.
The Russiagate investigation, which had
formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the
prior President. Although he, of course, cannot be removed from office (since he is no longer
in office), he is liable under criminal laws, the same as any other American would be, if he
committed any crime while he was in office.
A
December 17th order by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court severely
condemned the performance by the FBI under Obama, for having obtained, on 19 October 2016 (even prior to the US Presidential
election), from that Court, under false pretenses, an authorization for the FBI to commence
investigating Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, as being possibly in collusion with
Russia's Government. The Court's ruling said:
In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is
useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the
government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813,
governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an
order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to
grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it
provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power"
or an agent a foreign power.
The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that
is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on
electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its
heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this
Court's effective operation.
On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions
of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information
to NSD [National Security Division of the Department of Justice] which was unsupported
or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in
which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to
their case for believing that Mr. [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign
power.
On December 18th, Martha McCallum, of Fox News,
interviewed US Attorney General Bill Barr , and asked him (at 7:00 in the video
) how high up in the FBI the blame for this (possible treason) goes:
MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he [Obama's FBI Director James Comey]
seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation?
"JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you
can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career
professionals to do."
MACCALLUM: Do you believe that?
BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely
that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged
by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers
below him is simply not true.
The current (Trump) A.G. there called the former (Obama) FBI Director a liar on that.
If Comey gets heat for this possibly lie-based FBI investigation of the US Presidential
nominee from the opposite Party of the sitting US President (Comey's own boss, Obama), then
protecting himself could become Comey's top motivation; and, in that condition, protecting his
former boss might become only a secondary concern for him.
Though Halper actually did no such studies for the Pentagon,
he instead functioned as a paid FBI informant (and it's not yet clear whether that money came
from the Pentagon, which spends
trillions of dollars that are off-the-books and untraceable ), and at some point Trump's
campaign became a target of Halper's investigation. This investigation was nominally to examine
"The Russia-China Relationship: The impact on US Security interests."
It seems that the Pentagon-contracted work was a cover-story, like
pizza parlors have been for some Mafia operations. But, anyway, this is how America's
'democracy' actually functions .
And, of course, America's
Deep State works not only through governmental agencies but also through
underworld organizations . That's just reality, not at all speculative. It's been this way
for decades, at least since the time of Truman's Presidency (as is documented at that
link).
Furthermore, inasmuch as this operation certainly involved Obama's CIA Director John Brennan
and others, and not only top officials at the FBI, there is no chance that Comey would have
been the only high official who was involved in it. And if Comey was
involved, then he would have been acting in his own interest, and not only in his boss's -- and
here's why: Comey would be expected to have been highly motivated to oppose Mr. Trump,
because Trump publicly questioned whether NATO (the main international selling-arm for
America's 'defense'-contractors) should continue to exist, and also because Comey's entire
career had been in the service of America's Military-Industrial Complex, which is the reason
why Comey's main
lifetime income has been the tens of millions of dollars he has received via the revolving door
between his serving the federal Government and his serving firms such as Lockheed Martin .
For these people, restoring, and intensifying, and keeping up, the Cold War , is a very profitable business . It's called
by some "the Military-Industrial Complex," and by others "the Deep State," but by any name it
is simply agents of the billionaires who own and control US-based international corporations,
such as General Dynamics and Chevron. As a governmental official, making decisions that are in
the long-term interests of those investors is the likeliest way to become wealthy.
Consequently, Comey would have been benefitting himself, and other high officials of the
Obama Administration, by sabotaging Trump's campaign, and by weakening Trump's Presidency in
the event that he would become elected. Plus, of course, Comey would have been benefitting
Obama himself. Not only was Trump constantly condemning Obama, but Obama had appointed to lead
the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 Presidential primaries, Debbie Wasserman Schultz ,
who as early as
20 February 2007 had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in the Democratic Party
primaries, so that Shultz was one of the earliest supporters of Clinton against even Obama
himself. In other words, Obama had appointed Shultz in order to
increase the odds that Clinton -- not Sanders -- would become the nominee in 2016 to
continue on and protect his own Presidential legacy. Furthermore, on 28 July 2016, Schultz
became forced to resign from her leadership of the DNC after WikiLeaks released emails
indicating that Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie
Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which
favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She
was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey.
In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose
Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama).
Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for
them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. He wants Warren to get the
voters who otherwise would go for Sanders, and he wants the Party's billionaires to help her
achieve this (be the Party's allegedly 'progressive' option), so that Sanders won't be able to
become a ballot option in the general election to be held on 3 November 2020.
He is telling
them whom not to help win the Party's nomination. In fact, on November 26th,
Huffington Post headlined
"Obama Said He Would Speak Up To Stop Bernie Sanders Nomination: Report" and indicated that
though he won't actually say this in public (but only to the Party's billionaires), Obama is
determined to do all he can to prevent Sanders from becoming the nominee. In 2016, his
choice was Hillary Clinton; but, today, it's anyone other than Sanders; and, so, in a sense, it
remains what it was four years ago -- anyone but Sanders.
Comey's virtually exclusive concern, at the present stage, would be to protect himself, so
that he won't be imprisoned. This means that he might testify against Obama. At this stage,
he's free of any personal obligation to Obama -- Comey is now on his own, up against Trump, who
clearly is his enemy. Some type of back-room plea-bargain is therefore virtually inevitable --
and not only with Comey, but with other top Obama-appointees, ultimately. Obama is thus clearly
in the cross-hairs, from now on. Congressional Democrats have opted to gun against Trump (by
impeaching him); and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama -- and against the
entire Democratic Party (unless Sanders becomes its nominee, in which case, Sanders will
already have defeated that Democratic Party, and its adherents will then have to choose between
him versus Trump; and, so, too, will independent voters).
But, regardless of what happens, Obama now is in the cross-hairs. That's not just political
cross-hairs (such as an impeachment process); it is, above all, legal cross-hairs (an
actual criminal investigation). Whereas Trump is up against a doomed effort by the Democratic
Party to replace him by Vice President Mike Pence, Obama will be up against virtually
inevitable criminal charges, by the incumbent Trump Administration. Obama played hardball
against Trump, with "Russiagate," and then with "Ukrainegate"; Trump will now play hardball
against Obama, with whatever his Administration and the Republican Party manage to muster
against Obama; and the stakes this time will be considerably bigger than just whether to
replace Trump by Pence.
Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes
the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second
American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's
hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.)
There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly
increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political
realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since.
The US already has a
higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on this planet.
Americans who choose a 'status-quo' option will produce less stability, more violence, not more
stability and a more peaceful nation in a less war-ravaged world. The 2020 election-outcome for
the United States will be a turning-point; there is no way that it will produce reform.
Americans who vote for reform will be only increasing the likelihood of hell-on-Earth. Reform
is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will
be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led
by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the
dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid
a free-fall into oblivion.
The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic
Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the
Deep State .
That's the reality; and the process that got us here started on 26 July 1945 and secretly continued on the American side even after
the Soviet Union ended and Russia promptly ended its side of the Cold War. The US regime's
ceaseless thrust, since 26 July 1945, to rule the entire world, will climax either in a Third
World War, or in a US revolution to overthrow and remove the Deep State and end its
dictatorship-grip over America. Both Parties have been controlled by that
Deep State , and the final stage or climax of this grip is now drawing near. America thus
has been having a string of the worst
Presidents -- and worst Congresses -- in US history. This is today's reality.
Unfortunately, a lot of American voters think that this extremely destabilizing reality, this
longstanding trend toward war, is okay, and ought to be continued, not ended now and replaced
by a new direction for this country -- the path toward world peace, which FDR had accurately
envisioned but which was aborted on 26 July 1945. No matter how many Americans might vote for
mere reform, they are wrong. Sometimes, only a minority are right. Being correct is not a
majority or minority matter; it is a true or false matter. A misinformed public can willingly
participate in its own -- or even the world's -- destruction. That could happen.
Democracy is a
prerequisite to peace, but it can't exist if the public are being systematically misinformed.
Lies and democracy don't mix together any more effectively than do oil and water.
I suspect his open-borders advocacy and Russia-bashing too are lies; these are lines of
defence against internal forces. It makes sense for him to take those positions while he
seeks the nomination. If he gets it, he can betray those positions. A serious politician has
to demonstrate a large capacity for betrayal. At the end of the day, he is a hardened
politician like the rest.
You are right about it being a class war. It is this class war that the neoliberal
establishment does not want us to see, hence creating other divisions such as racial,
gender/trans, religious, etc. so we fight one another instead of uniting and fighting
them.
When the many shades of surveillance are added in to your establishment existential
threat, the Matrix feels really close at hand.
My guess is that your understanding stems from years of paying attention. Do you have any
recommendations for sites that have helped?
I take it that your support of Bernie, with his imperfections, is due to you seeing him as
a possible shift in the neoliberal order. My concern is that his imperfections are also
baggage that is keeping people from supporting him - the woke agenda, panicky human-caused
climate change agenda, supporting most of the MIC agenda. The first two are areas in which
debate has been/is being shut down, which is a real red flag.
Thank you for any reply, or none. I always appreciate the big picture.
I'm a historian by training focusing on the Outlaw US Empire and everything related, which
is a very wide field of inquiry. Yes, I started out paying attention as an adolescent during
the 1960s with 1968 being a very important year for me. I'd read the Warren Commission Report
a year earlier and thus began my real education. I passed out flyers for RFK in 1968 prior to
the California Primary and watched again as the cities burned earlier that Spring. I pursued
a career and tried to find love, but after 20 years I returned to college. Aside from college
libraries, various alt-websites have served well over the years--Z-net, CommonDreams, The Oil
Drum, MoA--along with a mixture of news sites that are nowadays all based in Russia or China.
The one person I've learned more from online is Dr. Michael Hudson, whose Super
Imperialism I bought and read after it was published during my senior high school year.
And Noam Chomsky, not so much from his prose but from all the sources he consulted. Yes, I'm
an end note and bibliography junkie. Solitude and time to study were also important assets.
Knowing I was being lied to by Media and politicos was also helpful and thus made me seek out
an objective historical narrative whereby I discovered I wasn't alone in my quest. Currently,
Hudson's historical big picture is the one in which I believe the most merit lies--4,000+
years of Class War between creditors and debtors frames the West's existence, including its
religions, which are its longest lasting institutions. And I highly value genuine discourse
with associates.
Darn Russians made people pay $1750 to $3200 to attend the debates last night and clap for
Bloomberg. The Russians also aired a long Bloomberg informercial and an anti-Medicare for All
commercial during the ad breaks - to divide us. Putin will stop at nothing.
This article correctly describes how the neoliberal globalists and bankers are engaging in a
massive ripoff of the "99%" (although I think the ratio is more like 80-20% rather than
99-1%). But I don't think Bernie has the solution.
Frankly, the Democratic Party had the solution -- the New Deal, which actually
did create economic security for the white working class.
But they threw it out the window, and sided with the neoliberal oligarchy to finance their
hedonistic post-1960s lifestyle of porn, drugs, miscegenation, integration, and recreational
sex.
They've completely destroyed the culture. I don't think there is any solution at this
point.
It's interesting: Hudson calls Democrat's "the servants' entrance to the Republican Party"
and refers to the republican party's agenda in favor of the one percent.
Meanwhile, also on unz.com this very day,
Boyd Cathey has a column "The Russians are Coming" wherein he calls Republicans "a sordid and
disreputable second cousin of the advancing leftist juggernaut."
Perhaps they are both correct, and each of their own party's ruling apparatus is no better
than the "other" party's ruling apparatus at all.
The motto of both Democrats and Republican Neocons and Republican Country Clubbers: Don't
Think; Don't Ask; Pay Taxes; Vote for Us; Never Doubt 'Our' Filthy Rich; Blame 'Them' for
Everything 'We' Call Bad.
American Democracy, WASP created democracy, is a whore's game. It is con artistry.
@Anon 123 No, there
still is enough money even now to take care of the vast unemployed and underemployed class of
people, WITHOUT further taxing those of us still working full-time and increasingly
struggling.
1. Place natural resources -- oil, gas, and minerals -- under public ownership. Distribute
the proceeds from their extraction and sale as an equal dividend to every US Citizen. (As
part of the grand bargain, make it MUCH harder to gain US Citizenship, e.g. no birthright
citizenship and no chain migration aka "family reunification.") This is a more thorough, more
equitable national version of Alaska's resource-funded permanent fund.
How much do executives and shareholders of energy corporations profit each year off of our
God-given natural resources? That becomes revenue available for all US Citizens as a
universal basic income. (To minimize price/rent inflation, we can start the UBI very low and
phase it in gradually over a period of, say, 8 years.)
2. Stop the us government's constant aggressive wars and occupations far from our borders,
and close the majority of our bases abroad. Bring the troops home from Europe, Japan, and
South Korea -- they can guard our southern border instead, and the new bases will provide a
sustained boost to the hundreds of towns around the new bases here at home.
What if we reduced direct war, occupation, and foreign-base spending by $400 billion per
year. Seems like a conservative figure. Here is a website that still has 2018 fed gov
spending stats -- and seems to undercount military spending -- but a place to start:
Of course, since we are borrowing a large chunk of the fed gov's current spending, we
should not simply re-spend all of the military savings. Allocate part to other spending, but
simply don't spend the rest (thereby borrowing less each year).
3. The current federal "Alternative Minimum (Income) Tax" kicks in at far too low an
income level. Conversely, the AMT rate is far too low for extremely high incomes. What a
coincidence. Apply the AMT only to household annual income above $2 million, amply adjusted
for inflation, but tax the starch out of the oligarchs and billionaires. Yes, they can be
forcibly prevented from moving their assets and themselves out of the country. Bloomberg,
Zuckerberg, Buffet, Trump, the Sacklers, et al., can be confined and their property
confiscated as needed to pay the AMT on their income and a wealth tax.
Even now, the money is there to directly help the American people with no increase in
taxes on 99.5% of us, and with less fed gov borrowing than now.
As Aristotle noted already in the 4th century BC, oligarchies turn themselves into
hereditary aristocracies
Sounds like a reading of the thesis of Piketty, yet hereditary aristocracies must be
endogamous and–if they are to keep wealth in the family–consanguineous, which
does not have much appeal for modern elite, for sound genetic reasons .
Also Water Scheidel show in his Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to
Prosperity, the failure brought about competitive fragmentation and selection. Political,
economic, scientific, and technological breakthroughs followed and allowed Europe to take off
"It wasn't until Europe "escaped" from Rome that it launched an economic transformation that
changed the continent and ultimately the world. What has the Roman Empire ever done for us?
Fall and go away".
Piketty himself was clear in his first book that the two world wars brought about a huge
leveling of wealth. But cities were levelled too. Piketty went on to assert–in his
second and even weightier tome–that a struggle for equality has been the great driver
of human progress. Yet from doorstopper of Walter Scheidel
the Neolithic long before the Bronze Age conquests, the "natural" human condition seems to
have been inequality, while actual change to that condition often came in the aftermath of
war (or plague and famine). Reduction of inequality by ideologically driven political change
was often violent and ultimately at the cost of widespread pauperisation.
Studies of social status within ethnically homogenous groups show that genetics plays a
substantial role in outcomes. Thus if elites and underclasses are drawn from parent
populations by selective recruitment, they will differ genetically from the general
population. It will take many generations for those differences to dissolve. This is not an
"ugly" fact. It is not a "beautiful" fact. It is just a fact. This fact helps explain why
it is so hard for societies using the levers of social policy to eliminate group
disparities in outcomes. It is a fact that we should be aware of in thinking about
inequalities of income and wealth.Studies of social status within ethnically homogenous
groups show that genetics plays a substantial role in outcomes. Thus if elites and
underclasses are drawn from parent populations by selective recruitment, they will differ
genetically from the general population. It will take many generations for those
differences to dissolve. This is not an "ugly" fact. It is not a "beautiful" fact. It is
just a fact. This fact helps explain why it is so hard for societies using the levers of
social policy to eliminate group disparities in outcomes. It is a fact that we should be
aware of in thinking about inequalities of income and wealth.
There is no quandary. The US democracy has long become "one dollar – one vote". Those
who still believe that Dems represent working people should not take IQ test to avoid being
deeply disappointed.
In a struggle between oligarchy and democracy, something must give
America hasn't been a democracy for decades there is no contest oligarchy (Deep State) won
a long time ago. The only struggle is to continue the facade/charade that we are a
democracy/democratic republic.
The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two
parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens
the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
The Deep State consists of the very wealthy who are greedy for more wealth and power.
There are 607 billionaires in the US. There is no reason for the Deep State members to
formally collude they all know what needs to be done and how to do it. They use a relatively
small amount of their money to place their minions in positions of power heads of the movie
industry, the media, the federal government, academia. From then on if the lessers in these
groups want to keep their jobs/lives they will toe the line. It becomes self sustaining from
tax money and the Deep State glories in more wealth and power. Here is an excellent example
of the Deep State in action: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the
First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of a representative democracy. Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v.
Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and
power almost total influence in elections. By gaining control of the SCOTUS the Deep State is
able to further their goals.
There is no quandary. The US democracy has long become "one dollar – one vote". Those
who still believe that Dems represent working people should not take IQ test to avoid being
deeply disappointed.
Bernie is threatening to expose the delusions of the deep state in regards to
multiculturalism.
Prior to Bernie, the deep state's not so deep thinkers believed that the phony socialism
that they invented works on 2 levels. It portrays US as a liberal country and on the second
level it scares those who have no clue about socialism even more away from wanting to have
anything to do with socialism.
The party slogan of the deep state – fake socialism is better than the real one
– was never true, and with Bernie threatening to bring some of the real features of
socialism to US, it will bring into turmoil the "brilliantly" constructed deception by the
deep state.
If US are going to get some real socialist policies, the question will emerge – do
they still need the fake socialism that's destroying them and the rest of the western
world.
"... Unfortunately Bernie's platform is incoherent. He supports identity politics, which is the creation of the Oligarchs to divide and rule the peons. So he is working for the Oligarchy. His 'diversity' is nothing more than a distraction from class and financial exploitation. ..."
"... The Financial Oligarchs' Quandary would be more accurate. The Financial Oligarchs controls US media, finance, and both political parties does the Financial Oligarchs feel secure enough to install one of their own, -- major Bllomberg -- into the White Hooch to replace their useful idiot crypto-jew, Trumpstein? ..."
"... Engineer a stock market douche along with even a mild recession, and you can say hello to President Bernie ..."
"... Hell, let some of that Ft. Detrick corona virus boomerang back into the US and watch the public go nuts with fear and anger. Bernie will be right there promising to cure the face mask shortage and provide free vaccines for everyone as part of his medicare for all plan. Bloomie would be even easier to install as he was a R most his life, just as Trumpstein was a D, and has actual experience running a large organization. ..."
Unfortunately Bernie's platform is incoherent.
He supports identity politics, which is the creation of the Oligarchs to divide and rule the
peons.
So he is working for the Oligarchy.
His 'diversity' is nothing more than a distraction from class and financial exploitation.
These phony liberals work in the null space of the rich's exploitation machine. They NEVER
threaten the rich.
In common parlance such people are called neoliberals.
Bernie and his open border welfare state proves he is either a liar or an idiot. Of course, the whole discussion is pointless since congress has the power and they are all
bought off long ago from every conceivable direction.
The Financial Oligarchs' Quandary would be more accurate. The Financial Oligarchs controls US
media, finance, and both political parties does the Financial Oligarchs feel secure enough to
install one of their own, -- major Bllomberg -- into the White Hooch to replace their useful
idiot crypto-jew, Trumpstein?
Bolshy Bernie and Billions Bloomie are not electable, you say. Oh, really?
Engineer a stock market douche along with even a mild recession, and you can say hello to President Bernie and 300
lb First Lady Jane.
Hell, let some of that Ft. Detrick corona virus boomerang back into the US and watch the
public go nuts with fear and anger. Bernie will be right there promising to cure the face
mask shortage and provide free vaccines for everyone as part of his medicare for all plan.
Bloomie would be even easier to install as he was a R most his life, just as Trumpstein was a
D, and has actual experience running a large organization.
@Mr. Hack Cutting
the MIC sector down to size in order to provide the wherewithal to fund weapons that work in
order to defend the 50 states instead of rule-the-world is both the acid test and the third
rail for a genuine populist. That policy, combined with allowing major financial predators to
dissolve upon the failure of their business model, would fund what it takes to bring the US
in line with life expectancy and health outcomes similar to what is being achieved in other
developed countries.
It's barely thinkable. We are unlikely to hear it from any mainstream candidate. The US
decline will continue until morale improves.
"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year ..."
"... Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor Class trump the voting class? ..."
"... This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the One Percent. ..."
"... But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC. ..."
"... Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again. ..."
"... So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another day. ..."
"... Trump may or may not win. But if he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton. ..."
"... And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops Richie Rich gets uneasy. ..."
"... I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom Perez. ..."
"... I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings? ..."
To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat
Trump. But when Trump's billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into
an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and
Nevada, it's obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party.
Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
in which money votes. (If "corporations are people," so is money in today's political
world.)
Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for
a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class,
the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg
has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great
question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will
the Donor Class trump the voting class?
This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the
DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No
Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the
One Percent.
All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC.
The way Rome's constitution was set up, candidates for the position of consul had to pay their
way through a series of offices. The process started by going deeply into debt to get elected
to the position of aedile, in charge of staging public games and entertainments. Rome's
neoliberal fiscal policy did not tax or spend, and there was little public administrative
bureaucracy, so all such spending had to be made out of the pockets of the oligarchy. That was
a way of keeping decisions about how to spend out of the hands of democratic politics. Julius
Caesar and others borrowed from the richest Bloomberg of their day, Crassus, to pay for staging
games that would demonstrate their public spirit to voters (and also demonstrate their
financial liability to their backers among Rome's One Percent). Keeping election financing
private enabled the leading oligarchs to select who would be able to run as viable candidates.
That was Rome's version of Citizens United.
But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention
would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American
voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting
that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC.
Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times
have been busy spreading their venom against Sanders. On Sunday, February 23, CNN ran a slot,
"Bloomberg needs to take down Sanders, immediately."[1]Given Sanders' heavy national lead, CNN
warned, the race suddenly is almost beyond the vote-fixers' ability to fiddle with the election
returns. That means that challengers to Sanders should focus their attack on him; they will
have a chance to deal with Bloomberg later (by which CNN means, when it is too late to stop
him).
The party's Clinton-Obama recipients of Donor Class largesse pretend to believe that Sanders
is not electable against Donald Trump. This tactic seeks to attack him at his strongest point.
Recent polls show that he is the only candidate who actually would defeat Trump – as they
showed that he would have done in 2016.
The DNC knew that, but preferred to lose to Trump than to win with Bernie. Will history
repeat itself? Or to put it another way, will this year's July convention become a replay of
Chicago in 1968?
A quandary, not a problem . Last year I was asked to write a scenario for what might happen
with a renewed DNC theft of the election's nomination process. To be technical, I realize, it's
not called theft when it's legal. In the aftermath of suits over the 2016 power grab, the
courts ruled that the Democrat Party is indeed controlled by the DNC members, not by the
voters. When it comes to party machinations and decision-making, voters are subsidiary to the
superdelegates in their proverbial smoke-filled room (now replaced by dollar-filled foundation
contracts).
I could not come up with a solution that does not involve dismantling and restructuring the
existing party system. We have passed beyond the point of having a solvable "problem" with the
Democratic National Committee (DNC). That is what a quandary is. A problem has a solution
– by definition. A quandary does not have a solution. There is no way out. The conflict
of interest between the Donor Class and the Voting Class has become too large to contain within
a single party. It must split.
A second-ballot super-delegate scenario would mean that we are once again in for a second
Trump term. That option was supported by five of the six presidential contenders on stage in
Nevada on Wednesday, February 20. When Chuck Todd asked whether Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth
Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar would support the candidate who received
the most votes in the primaries (now obviously Bernie Sanders), or throw the nomination to the
super-delegates held over from the Obama-Clinton neoliberals (75 of whom already are said to
have pledged their support to Bloomberg), each advocated "letting the process play out." That
was a euphemism for leaving the choice to the Tony-Blair style leadership that have made the
Democrats the servants' entrance to the Republican Party. Like the British Labour Party behind
Blair and Gordon Brown, its role is to block any left-wing alternative to the Republican
program on behalf of the One Percent.
This problem would not exist if the United States had a European-style parliamentary system
that would enable a third party to obtain space on the ballots in all 50 states. If this were
Europe, the new party of Bernie Sanders, AOC et al. would exceed 50 percent of the
votes, leaving the Wall Street democrats with about the same 8 percent share that similar
neoliberal democratic parties have in Europe ( e.g ., Germany's hapless neoliberalized
Social Democrats), that is, Klobocop territory as voters moved to the left. The "voting
Democrats," the 99 Percent, would win a majority leaving the Old Neoliberal Democrats in the
dust.
The DNC's role is to prevent any such challenge. The United States has an effective
political duopoly, as both parties have created such burdensome third-party access to the
ballot box in state after state that Bernie Sanders decided long ago that he had little
alternative but to run as a Democrat.
The problem is that the Democrat Party does not seem to be reformable. That means that
voters still may simply abandon it – but that will simply re-elect the Democrats' de
facto 2020 candidate, Donald Trump. The only hope would be to shrink the party into a shell,
enabling the old guard to go way so that the party could be rebuilt from the ground up.
But the two parties have created a legal duopoly reinforced with so many technical barriers
that a repeat of Ross Perot's third party (not to mention the old Socialist Party, or the Whigs
in 1854) would take more than one election cycle to put in place. For the time being, we may
expect another few months of dirty political tricks to rival those of 2016 as Obama appointee
Tom Perez is simply the most recent version of Florida fixer Debbie Schultz-Wasserman (who gave
a new meaning to the Wasserman Test).
So we are in for another four years of Donald Trump. But by 2024, how tightly will the U.S.
economy find itself tied in knots?
The Democrats' Vocabulary of Deception
How I would explain Bernie's program. Every economy is a mixed economy. But to hear Michael
Bloomberg and his fellow rivals to Bernie Sanders explain the coming presidential election, one
would think that an economy must be either capitalist or, as Bloomberg put it, Communist. There
is no middle ground, no recognition that capitalist economies have a government sector, which
typically is called the "socialist" sector – Social Security, Medicare, public schooling,
roads, anti-monopoly regulation, and public infrastructure as an alternative to privatized
monopolies extracting economic rent.
What Mr. Bloomberg means by insisting that it's either capitalism or communism is an absence
of government social spending and regulation. In practice this means oligarchic financial
control, because every economy is planned by some sector. The key is, who will do the planning?
If government refrains from taking the lead in shaping markets, then Wall Street takes over
– or the City in London, Frankfurt in Germany, and the Bourse in France.
Most of all, the aim of the One Percent is to distract attention from the fact that the
economy is polarizing – and is doing so at an accelerating rate. National income
statistics are rigged to show that "the economy" is expanding. The pretense is that everyone is
getting richer and living better, not more strapped. But the reality is that all the growth in
GDP has accrued to the wealthiest 5 Percent since the Obama Recession began in 2008. Obama
bailed out the banks instead of the 10 million victimized junk-mortgage holders. The 95
Percent's share of GDP has shrunk.
The GDP statistics do not show is that "capital gains" – the market price of stocks,
bonds and real estate owned mainly by the One to Five Percent – has soared, thanks to
Obama's $4.6 trillion Quantitative Easing pumped into the financial markets instead of into the
"real" economy in which wage-earners produce goods and services.
How does one "stay the course" in an economy that is polarizing? Staying the course means
continuing the existing trends that are concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the
One Percent, that is, the Donor Class – while loading down the 99 Percent with more debt,
paid to the One Percent (euphemized as the economy's "savers"). All "saving" is at the top of
the pyramid. The 99 Percent can't afford to save much after paying their monthly "nut" to the
One Percent.
If this economic polarization is impoverishing most of the population while sucking wealth
and income and political power up to the One Percent, then to be a centrist is to be the
candidate of oligarchy. It means not challenging the economy's structure.
Language is being crafted to confuse voters into imagining that their interest is the same
as that of the Donor Class of rentiers , creditors and financialized corporate
businesses and rent-extracting monopolies. The aim is to divert attention from voters' their
own economic interest as wage-earners, debtors and consumers. It is to confuse voters not to
recognize that without structural reform, today's "business as usual" leaves the One Percent in
control.
So to call oneself a "centrist" is simply a euphemism for acting as a lobbyist for siphoning
up income and wealth to the One Percent. In an economy that is polarizing, the choice is either
to favor them instead of the 99 Percent.
That certainly is not the same thing as stability. Centrism sustains the polarizing dynamic
of financialization, private equity, and the Biden-sponsored bankruptcy "reform" written by his
backers of the credit-card companies and other financial entities incorporated in his state of
Delaware. He was the senator for the that state's Credit Card industry, much as former
Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman was the senator from Connecticut's Insurance
Industry.
A related centrist demand is that of Buttigieg's and Biden's aim to balance the federal
budget. This turns out to be a euphemism for cutting back Social Security, Medicare and relate
social spending ("socialism") to pay for America's increasing militarization, subsidies and tax
cuts for the One Percent. Sanders rightly calls this "socialism for the rich." The usual word
for this is oligarchy . That seems to be a missing word in today's mainstream
vocabulary.
The alternative to democracy is oligarchy. As Aristotle noted already in the 4 th
Confusion over the word "socialism" may be cleared up by recognizing that every economy
is mixed, and every economy is planned – by someone. If not the government in the public
interest, then by Wall Street and other financial centers in their interest. They
fought against an expanding government sector in every economy today, calling it socialism
– without acknowledging that the alternative, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, is
barbarism.
I think that Sanders is using the red-letter word "socialism" and calling himself a
"democratic socialist" to throw down the ideological gauntlet and plug himself into the long
and powerful tradition of socialist politics. Paul Krugman would like him to call himself a
social democrat. But the European parties of this name have discredited this label as being
centrist and neoliberal. Sanders wants to emphasize that a quantum leap, a phase change is in
order.
If he can be criticized for waving a needlessly red flag, it is his repeated statement
that his program is designed for the "working class." What he means are wage-earners and this
includes the middle class. Even those who make over $100,000 a year are still wage earners, and
typically are being squeezed by a predatory financial sector, a predatory medical insurance
sector, drug companies and other monopolies.
The danger in this terminology is that most workers like to think of themselves as
middle class, because that is what they would like to rise into. That is especially he case for
workers who own their own home (even if mortgage represents most of the value, so that most of
the home's rental value is paid to banks, not to themselves as part of the "landlord class"),
and have an education (even if most of their added income is paid out as student debt service),
and their own car to get to work (involving automobile debt).
The fact is that even $100,000 executives have difficulty living within the limits of
their paycheck, after paying their monthly nut of home mortgage or rent, medical care, student
loan debt, credit-card debt and automobile debt, not to mention 15% FICA paycheck withholding
and state and local tax withholding.
Of course, Sanders' terminology is much more readily accepted by wage-earners as the
voters whom Hillary called "Deplorables" and Obama called "the mob with pitchforks," from whom
he was protecting his Wall Street donors whom he invited to the White House in 2009. But I
think there is a much more appropriate term: the 99 Percent, made popular by Occupy Wall
Street. That is Bernie's natural constituency. It serves to throw down the gauntlet between
democracy and oligarchy, and between socialism and barbarism, by juxtaposing the 99 Percent to
the One Percent.
The Democratic presidential debate on February 25 will set the stage for Super
Tuesday's "beauty contest" to gauge what voters want. The degree of Sanders' win will help
determine whether the byzantine Democrat party apparatus that actually will be able to decide
on the Party's candidate. The expected strong Sanders win is will make the choice stark: either
to accept who the voters choose – namely, Bernie Sanders – or to pick a candidate
whom voters already have rejected, and is certain to lose to Donald Trump in
November.
If that occurs, the Democrat Party will evaporate as its old Clinton-Obama guard is no
longer able to protect its donor class on Wall Street and corporate America. Too many Sanders
voters would stay home or vote for the Greens. That would enable the Republicans to maintain
control of the Senate and perhaps even grab back the House of Representatives.
But it would be dangerous to assume that the DNC will be reasonable. Once again, Roman
history provides a "business as usual" scenario. The liberal German politician Theodor Mommsen
published his History of Rome in 1854-56, warning against letting an aristocracy block
reform by controlling the upper house of government (Rome's Senate, or Britain House of Lords).
The leading families who overthrew the last king in 509 BC created a Senate chronically prone
to being stifled by its leaders' "narrowness of mind and short-sightedness that are the proper
and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism."[2]
These qualities also are the distinguishing features of the DNC. Sanders had better win
big!
I wonder how much of the rot at the top of the Dem party is simple dementia. By
the age of 70, half of people have some level of dementia. Consider Joe Biden – is
anyone in the public sphere going to state the obvious – that he has dementia and as
such is unfit for office?
First, my priors. I voted for Sanders in 2016, will vote for him in 2020, and
expect him to be elected president. Further I believe that where we find ourselves today is
the result of at least 40 years of intentional bi-partisan policies. Both parties are
responsible.
If Sanders, upon being elected, were able to snap his fingers and call into
existence his entire program, it would immediately face a bi-partisan opposition that would
be funded by billions of dollars, which would be willing to take as long as necessary, even
decades, to roll it back.
Just electing Sanders is only the first step. There must be a committed,
determined follow through that must be willing to last decades as well for his program to
stick. And there will be defeats along the way.
Several observations. If Hillary had beaten Trump, Sanders would have trudged
back to Vermont and would never have been heard from again. The MSM would have dismissed his
program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class. But she didn't, so here we are,
which is fantastic.
Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will
win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again
dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would
trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again.
So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least
bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has
far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the
two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another
day.
If he loses to Trump, but closely, which can mean a lot of different things,
his program would live to fight another day. Moreover, if the D's are seen to actively
collude with Trump, this less bad outcome would be even better.
I am an old geezer and don't expect to live long enough to see how all of this
plays out. But I am very optimistic about his program's long term prospects. There is only
one bad outcome, a Trump 48 state sweep, which I consider very unlikely. But most
importantly, the best outcome, his election, and the two least bad outcomes, the D's stealing
the nomination from him or his losing a close general election, all still will require a
decades long commitment to make his program permanent.
Where do people get this? Take a deep breath. Trump may or may not win. But if
he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the
popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton.
And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops
Richie Rich gets uneasy.
Hammered by a 5 star general. The Deplorables kids were raised to look up to
generals, not New Yawk dandys. How does this affect them? And it's still
February.
Just an FYI: The five-volume Mommsen "History of Rome" referenced in the text
is available in English on Project Gutenberg, free and legal to download. Probably everyone
here knows this, but just in case
How about Bernie call himself "Roosevelt Democrat" instead of "Democratic
Socialist". It would give all those in the senior demographic a better understanding of what
Sander's policies mean to them as opposed to the scary prospect of the "Socialist"
label.
The Democrats should have been slowly disarming the word "socialist" for at
least the last decade. In principle, it's not difficult – as Michael Hudson says
– "Every economy is a mixed economy" – and in a very real sense everyone's a
socialist (even if only unconsciously). I'm not saying that bit of rhetorical jujitsu would
magically turn conservative voters progressive but you'll never get to the point where you
can defend socialist programs on the merits if you always dodge that fight. It's just a shame
that Bernie Sanders has to do it all in a single election cycle and I don't think choosing a
different label now would help him much.
He could even compare himself to the earlier Roosevelt: Teddy
Roosevelt.
By 1900 the old bourbon Dem party was deeply split between its old, big
business and banking wing – the bourbons – and the rising progressive/populist
wing. It was GOP pres Roosevelt who first pushed through progressive programs like breaking
up railroad and commodity monopolies, investigating and regulating meat packing and
fraudulent patent medicines, etc. Imagine that.
I just finished Stoller's book Goliath and according to him, Teddy
wasn't quite as progressive as we are often led to believe. He wasn't so much opposed to
those with enormous wealth – he just wanted them to answer to him. He did do the things
you mentioned, but after sending the message to the oligarchs, he then became friendly with
them once he felt he'd brought them to heel. He developed quite the soft spot for JP Morgan,
according to Stoller.
TR wanted to be the Boss, the center of attention with everyone looking up to
him. As one of his relatives said, he wanted to be the baby at every christening and the
corpse at every funeral.
I have a sense that changing his party affiliation label at any point in time
since Sanders began running for president in 2016 would be a godsend to his enemies in both
hands of the Duopoly. They'd tar him loudly as a hypocrite without an ounce of integrity,
using personal politics to distract from the issues.
Meanwhile, we can expect to see the Socialist (and Communist, and
Russia-Russia-Russia) nonsense reiterated as long as Sanders has strong visibility. He's
extremely dangerous to both parties and their owners. I don't' believe the DNC will let him
take the convention, but if he does, I'll bet the Dems give him minimal support and hope he
fails–better the devil you know, etc.
It's time to put your money in reality futures by putting all that you can into
supporting Bernie, AOC, etc. and all your local candidates that support at least democratic
socialism and ourrevolution the DSA Justice Dems or other groups that have people but need
money. I was having a conversation with a friend who was complaining that he was getting too
many emails from Bernie asking for money after he had given the campaign a "modest amount".
My suggestion was in honor of his children and grandchildren he should instead GIVE 'TIL IT
FEELS GOOD. My spouse and I, I told him, gave the max to Bernie and now we don't give upset
when he asks for more. There will likely never be a moment like this in history and there may
not be much of a history if things go the wrong way now. He agreed.
Exactly right. I gave Bernie the max in 2019 and will keep giving throughout
2020. This campaign is about not just me, but all of us. It's now. We must fight for this
change as has always been the historical precedent.
I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and
support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not
to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom
Perez.
I am coming to understand that might have been necessary within the context of
one last desperate attempt to work with the Democratic party. But now I find myself
wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely
clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe
even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street
lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings?
Little as it has been the answer has a lot to do with my willingness to pour
more money into repetitively self-defeating behavior.
I am a somewhat old geezer, too, who caucused for Bernie in 2016 and 2020. This
article is very good and helps me understand why I feel the way I do. I was disappointed in
Obama, who didn't follow through on the things I cared about, and I was devastated when
Clinton was crowned the Democratic nominee well before the Convention, all the while holding
onto a smidgen of hope that somehow Bernie would pull through as the
nominee.
I was ecstatic when Bernie announced his candidacy for 2020. He is our only
hope, and now we have a second chance. But now I am spending half my time screaming at people
on tv and online who can't even hear me, and even if they could, they don't give a s–t
what I think. It's Clinton 2.0–same thing all over again, four years later. Just who do
these people (DNC, MSM, and others with a voice) think they are, to decide for the Democratic
voters which candidate will be the nominee, who won't be the nominee, without regard to what
the voters want? They are a bunch of pompous as–s who have some other motive that I am
not savvy enough to understand. Is it about money in their pockets or what?
It should be as simple as this–Bernie is leading in the polls, if they
are to be believed, and good people of all demographics want him to be our next President. He
is a serious contender for the nomination. Show the man some much-earned respect and put
people on MSM and publish articles by writers who help us understand what the anti-Bernie
panic is about and why we shouldn't panic. Help us to explain his plans if he hasn't
explained it thoroughly enough instead of calling him crazy. But to dismiss him as if he has
the plague is not furthering the truth, and it is a serious injustice to the voting public.
Naked Capitalism can't do it alone.
There is a lot of good analysis out there, mainly on Youtube. I particularly
like The Hill's Rising. A young progressive Democrat and a young progressive Republican (who
even knew there was such a thing!) 'splain a lot of the antipathy. Another good source is
Nomiki Konst, who is working on reforming the Dem party from within. Here she talks to RJ
Eskow about how the DNC is structured and how she hopes to provide tools for rank-and-file
Dems to wrest the levers of power from the establishment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7wm6DCPV4
Private sector cannot operate without same. Harrold
The problem is that the population, including FDR in his time, have been duped
into believing that the private sector REQUIRES government privileges for private depository
institutions, aka "the banks."
So currently we have no truly private sector to speak of but businesses and
industry using the public's credit but for private gain.
Last night's Democracy Now was interesting. Amy seems to be less of a commie
hater than she recently was with her participation in the Russia-Russia-Russia smears against
Trump. She held court last night with Paul Krugman and Richard Wolff discussing just exactly
what "socialism" means. It was a great performance.
Krug seemed a little shellshocked about the whole discussion and he said we
shouldn't even use the term "socialism" at all because all the things Bernie wants are just
as capitalist – that capitalism encompasses socialism. But he stuttered when he
discussed "single-payer" which he claimed he supported – his single payer is like Pete
Buttigieg's single-payer-eventually. He tried to change the subject and Amy brought him
straight back.
Then Wolff, who was in excellent form, informed the table that "socialism" is a
moveable feast because it can be and has been many things for the advancement of societies,
etc. But the term always means the advancement of society. Then Krug dropped a real bomb
– he actually said (this is almost a quote) that recently he had been informed by
Powell that debt isn't really all that important.
Really, Krug said that. And he tried to exetend that thought to the argument
that anybody can provide social benefits – it doesn't require a self-proclaimed
"socialist".
Richard Wolff confronted that slide with pointing out that it hasn't happened
yet – and he left Krug with no excuses. It was quite the showdown. Nice Richard Wolff
is so firmly in Bernie's camp.
Krug looked evasive – and I kept wishing they had invited Steve Keen to
participate.
"... CNN concluded that "America's Russia nightmare is back." Maddow was ecstatic, bleating "Here we go again," recycling her failed conspiracy theories whole. Everybody quoted Adam Schiff firing off that Trump was "again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling." Tying it all to the failed impeachment efforts, another writer said , "'Let the Voters Decide' doesn't work if Trump fires his national security staff so Russia can help him again." The NYT fretted , "Trump is intensifying his efforts to undermine the nation's intelligence agencies." John Brennan (after leaking for a while, most boils dry up and go away) said , "we are now in a full-blown national security crisis." The undead Hillary Clinton tweeted , "Putin's Puppet is at it again." ..."
"... But it's still a miss on Bernie. He did well in Nevada despite the leaks, though Russiagate II has a long way to go. Bernie himself assured us of that. Instead of pooh-poohing the idea that the Russians might be working for him, he instead gave it cred, saying , "Some of the ugly stuff on the internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters." ..."
"... The world's greatest intelligence team can't seem to come up with anything more specific than "interfering" and "meddling," as if pesky Aunt Vladimir is gossiping at the general store again. CBS reports that House members pressed the ODNI for evidence, such as phone intercepts, to back up claims that Russia is trying to help Trump, but briefers had none to offer. Even Jake Tapper , a Deep State loyalty card holder, raised some doubts. WaPo , which hosted one of the leaks, had to admit "It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken." ..."
"... Yes, yes, they have to protect sources and methods, but of course the quickest way to stop Russian influence is to expose it. Instead the ODNI dropped the turd in the punchbowl and walked away. Why not tell the public what media is being bought, which outlets are working, willingly or not, with Putin? Did the Reds implant a radio chip in Biden's skull? Will we be left hanging with the info-free claim "something something social media" again? ..."
"... Because the intel community learned its lesson in Russiagate I. Details can be investigated. That's where the old story fell apart. The dossier wasn't true. Michael Cohen never met the Russians in Prague. The a-ha discovery was that voters don't read much anyway, so just make claims. You'll never really prosecute or impeach anyone, so why bother with evidence (see everything Ukraine)? Just throw out accusations and let the media fill it all in for you. ..."
"... The intel community crossed a line in 2016, albeit clumsily (what was all that with Comey and Hillary?), to play an overt role in the electoral process. When that didn't work out and Trump was elected, they pivoted and drove us to the brink of all hell breaking loose with Russiagate I. The media welcomed and supported them. The Dems welcomed and supported them. Far too many Americans welcomed and supported them in some elaborate version of the ends justifying the means. ..."
"... The good news from 2016 was that the Deep State turned out to be less competent than we originally feared. ..."
The Russians are back, alongside the American intelligence agencies playing deep inside our elections. Who should we fear more?
Hint: not the Russians.
On February 13, the election security czar in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
briefed the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians were meddling again and that they favored Donald Trump. A few weeks
earlier, the ODNI
briefed Bernie Sanders that the Russians were also meddling in the Democratic primaries, this time in his favor. Both briefings
remained secret until this past week, when the former was leaked to the New York Times in time to smear Trump for replacing
his DNI, and the latter leaked to the Washington Post ahead of the Nevada caucuses to try and damage Sanders.
Russiagate is back, baby. Everyone welcome Russiagate II.
You didn't think after 2016 the bad boys of the intel "community" (which makes it sound like they all live together down in Florida
somewhere) weren't going to play their games again, and that they wouldn't learn from their mistakes? Those errors were in retrospect
amateurish. A salacious
dossier
built around a pee tape? Nefarious academics
befriending minor Trump campaign staffers who would tell all to an Aussie ambassador trolling London's pubs looking for young, fit
Americans? Falsified FISA applications when it was all too obvious even Trumpkin greenhorns weren't dumb enough to sleep with FBI
honeypots? You'd think after influencing
85 elections across the globe since World War II, they'd be better at it. But you also knew that after failing to whomp a bumpkin
like Trump once, they would keep trying.
Like any good intel op, you start with a tickle, make it seem like the targets are figuring it out for themselves. Get it out
there that Trump offered
Wikileaks' Julian Assange a pardon if he would state publicly that Russia wasn't involved in the 2016 DNC leaks. The story was all
garbage, not the least of which because Assange has been clear for years that it wasn't the Russians. And there was no offer of a
pardon from the White House. And conveniently Assange is locked in a foreign prison and can't comment.
Whatever. Just make sure you time the Assange story to hit the day after Trump pardoned numerous high-profile, white-collar criminals,
so even the casual reader had Trump = bad, with a side of Russian conspiracy, on their minds. You could almost imagine an announcer's
voice: "Previously, on Russiagate I "
Then, only a day after the Assange story (why be subtle?), the sequel hit the theaters with timed leaks to the NYT and
WaPo . The mainstream media went Code Red (the CIA has a long
history of working with the media to influence elections).
CNN
concluded that "America's Russia nightmare is back." Maddow was ecstatic,
bleating "Here we go again," recycling her failed conspiracy theories whole. Everybody quoted Adam Schiff
firing off that Trump was "again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling." Tying it all to the failed impeachment efforts,
another writer
said , "'Let the Voters Decide' doesn't work if Trump fires his national security staff so Russia can help him again." The
NYT
fretted , "Trump is intensifying his efforts to undermine the nation's intelligence agencies." John Brennan (after leaking for
a while, most boils dry up and go away)
said , "we are now in a
full-blown national security crisis." The undead Hillary Clinton
tweeted , "Putin's Puppet is at it again."
It is clear we'll be hearing breaking and developing reports about this from sources believed to be close to others through November.
Despite the sense of desperation in the recycled memes and the way the media rose on command to the bait, it's intel community 1,
Trump 0.
But it's still a miss on Bernie. He did well in Nevada despite the leaks, though Russiagate II has a long way to go. Bernie himself
assured us of that. Instead of pooh-poohing the idea that the Russians might be working for him, he instead gave it cred,
saying , "Some of the ugly stuff on the internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters."
Sanders handed Russiagate II legs, signaling that he'll use it as cover for the Bros' online shenanigans, which were called out
at the last debate. That's playing with fire: it'll be too easy later on to invoke all this with "Komrade Bernie" memes in the already
wary purple states. "Putin and Trump are picking their opponent,"
opined Rahm Emanuel to get that ball rolling.
Summary to date: everyone is certain the Russians are working to influence the election (adopts cartoon Russian accent) but who
is the cat and who is the mouse?
Is Putin helping Trump get re-elected to remain his asset in place? Or is Putin helping Bernie "I Honeymooned in the Soviet Union"
Sanders to make him look like an asset to help Trump? Or are the Russkies really all in because Bernie is a True Socialist
sleeper
agent, the Emma Goldman of his time (Bernie's old enough to have taken Emma to high school prom)? Or is it not the Russians but the
American intel community helping Bernie to make it look like Putin is helping Bernie to help Trump? Or is it the Deep State saying
the Reds are helping Bernie to hurt Bernie to help their man Bloomberg? Are Russian spies tripping over American spies in caucus
hallways trying to get to the front of the room? Who can tell what is really afoot?
See, the devil is in the details, which is why we don't have any.
The world's greatest intelligence team can't seem to come up with anything more specific than "interfering" and "meddling," as
if pesky Aunt Vladimir is gossiping at the general store again. CBS
reports that House members pressed the ODNI for evidence, such as phone intercepts, to back up claims that Russia is trying to
help Trump, but briefers had none to offer. Even
Jake Tapper , a Deep State loyalty card holder, raised some doubts. WaPo , which hosted one of the leaks, had to admit
"It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken."
Yes, yes, they have to protect sources and methods, but of course the quickest way to stop Russian influence is to expose it.
Instead the ODNI dropped the turd in the punchbowl and walked away. Why not tell the public what media is being bought, which outlets
are working, willingly or not, with Putin? Did the Reds implant a radio chip in Biden's skull? Will we be left hanging with the info-free
claim "something something social media" again?
If you're going to scream that communist zombies with MAGA hats are inside the house , you're obligated to provide a little
bit more information. Why is it when specifics are required, the
response is always something like "Well, the Russians are sowing distrust and turning Americans against themselves in a way that
weakens national unity" as if we're all not eating enough green vegetables? Why leave us exposed to Russian influence for even a
second when it could all be shut down in an instant?
Because the intel community learned its lesson in Russiagate I. Details can be investigated. That's where the old story fell
apart. The dossier wasn't true. Michael
Cohen never met the
Russians in Prague. The a-ha discovery was that voters don't read much anyway, so just make claims. You'll never really prosecute
or impeach anyone, so why bother with evidence (see everything Ukraine)? Just throw out accusations and let the media fill it all
in for you. After all, they managed to convince a large number of Americans Trump's primary purpose in running for president
was to fill vacant hotel rooms at his properties. Let the nature of the source -- the brave lads of the intelligence agencies --
legitimize the accusations this time, not facts.
It will take a while to figure out who is playing whom. Is the goal to help Trump, help Bernie, or defeat both of them to support
Bloomberg? But don't let the challenge of seeing the whole picture obscure the obvious: the American intelligence agencies are once
again inside our election.
The intel community crossed a line in 2016, albeit clumsily (what was all that with Comey and Hillary?), to play an overt
role in the electoral process. When that didn't work out and Trump was elected, they
pivoted and drove us to
the brink of all hell breaking loose with Russiagate I. The media welcomed and supported them. The Dems welcomed and supported them.
Far too many Americans welcomed and supported them in some elaborate version of the ends justifying the means.
The good news from 2016 was that the Deep State turned out to be less competent than we originally feared. But they have
learned much from those mistakes, particularly how deft a tool a compliant MSM is. This election will be a historian's marker for
how a decent nation, fully warned in 2016, fooled itself in 2020 into self-harm. Forget about foreigners influencing our elections
from the outside; the zombies are already inside the house.
Bolton is a typical "Full Spectrum Dominance" hawk, a breed of chickenhawks that recently
proliferated in Washinton corridors of power and which are fed by MIC.
Notable quotes:
"... the way the IRGC came to be designated as an FTO is itself predicated on a lie. ..."
"... The person responsible for this lie is President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who while in that position oversaw National Security Council (NSC) interagency policy coordination meetings at the White House for the purpose of formulating a unified government position on Iran. Bolton had stacked the NSC staff with hardliners who were pushing for a strong stance. But representatives from the Department of Defense often pushed back . During such meetings, the Pentagon officials argued that the IRGC was "a state entity" (albeit a "bad" one), and that if the U.S. were to designate it as a terrorist group, there was nothing to stop Iran from responding by designating U.S. military personnel or CIA officers as terrorists. ..."
"... The memoranda on these meetings, consisting of summaries of the various positions put forward, were doctored by the NSC to make it appear as if the Pentagon agreed with its proposed policy. The Defense Department complained to the NSC that the memoranda produced from these meetings were "largely incorrect and inaccurate" -- "essentially fiction," a former Pentagon official claimed. ..."
"... This was a direct result of the bureaucratic dishonesty of John Bolton. Such dishonesty led to a series of policy decisions that gave a green light to use military force against IRGC targets throughout the Middle East. ..."
President Trump's decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani back in January took the United
States to the brink of war with Iran.
Trump and his advisors contend that Soleimani's death was necessary to protect American
lives, pointing to a continuum of events that began on December 27, when a rocket attack on an
American base in Iraq killed a civilian translator. That in turn prompted U.S. airstrikes
against a pro-Iranian militia, Khati'ab Hezbollah, which America blamed for the attack.
Khati'ab Hezbollah then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in protest. This reportedly
triggered the assassination of Soleimani and a subsequent Iranian retaliatory missile strike on
an American base in Iraq. The logic of this continuum appears consistent except for one
important fact -- it is all predicated on a lie.
On the night of December 27, a pickup truck modified
to carry a launchpad capable of firing 36 107mm Russian-made rockets was used in an attack
on a U.S. military compound located at the K-1 Airbase in Iraq's Kirkuk Province. A total of 20
rockets were loaded onto the vehicle, but only 14 were fired. Some of the rockets struck an
ammunition dump on the base, setting off a series of secondary explosions. When the smoke and
dust cleared, a civilian interpreter was dead and
several other personnel , including four American servicemen and two Iraqi military, were
wounded. The attack appeared timed to
disrupt a major Iraqi military operation targeting insurgents affiliated with ISIS.
The area around K-1 is populated by Sunni Arabs, and has long been considered a bastion of
ISIS ideology, even if the organization itself
was declared defeated inside Iraq back in 2017 by then-prime minister Haider al Abadi. The
Iraqi counterterrorism forces based at K-1 consider the area around the base an ISIS sanctuary
so dangerous that they only enter in large numbers.
For their part, the Iraqis had been warning their U.S. counterparts for more than a month
that ISIS was planning attacks on K-1. One such report, delivered on November 6, using
intelligence dating back to October, was quite specific: "ISIS terrorists have endeavored to
target K-1 base in Kirkuk district by indirect fire (Katyusha rockets)."
Another report, dated December 25, warned that ISIS was attempting to seize territory to the
northeast of K-1. The Iraqis were so concerned that on December 27, the day of the attack, they
requested that the U.S. keep functional its
tethered aerostat-based Persistent Threat Detection System (PTSD) -- a high-tech
reconnaissance balloon equipped with multi-mission sensors to provide long endurance
intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and communications in support of U.S. and
Iraqi forces.
Instead, the U.S. took the PTSD down for maintenance, allowing the attackers to approach
unobserved.
The Iraqi military officials at K-1 immediately suspected ISIS as the culprit behind the
attack. Their logic was twofold. First, ISIS had been engaged in nearly daily attacks in the
area for over a year, launching rockets, firing small arms, and planting roadside bombs.
Second, according
to the Iraqis , "The villages near here are Turkmen and Arab. There is sympathy with Daesh
[i.e., ISIS] there."
As transparent as the Iraqis had been with the U.S. about their belief that ISIS was behind
the attack, the U.S. was equally opaque with the Iraqis regarding whom it believed was the
culprit. The U.S. took custody of the rocket launcher, all surviving ordnance, and all warhead
fragments from the scene.
U.S. intelligence analysts viewed the attack on K-1 as part of a continuum of attacks
against U.S. bases in Iraq since early November 2019. The first attack took place on November
9,
against the joint U.S.-Iraqi base at Qayarrah , and was very similar to the one that
occurred against K-1 -- some 31 107mm rockets were fired from a pickup truck modified to carry
a rocket launchpad. As with K-1, the forces located in Qayarrah were engaged in ongoing
operations targeting ISIS, and the territory around the base was considered sympathetic to
ISIS. The Iraqi government attributed the attack to unspecified "terrorist" groups.
The U.S., however, attributed the attacks to Khati'ab Hezbollah, a Shia militia incorporated
with the Popular Mobilization Organization (PMO), a pro-Iranian umbrella organization that had
been incorporated into the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The PMO
blamed the U.S. for a series of drone strikes against its facilities throughout the summer
of 2019.
The feeling among the American analysts was that the PMO attacked the bases as a form of
retaliation.
The U.S.
launched a series of airstrikes against Khati'ab Hezbollah bases and command posts in Iraq
and Syria on December 29, near the Iraqi city of al-Qaim. These attacks were carried out
unilaterally, without any effort to coordinate with America's Iraqi counterparts or seek
approval from the Iraqi government.
Khati'ab Hezbollah units had seized al-Qaim from ISIS in November 2017, and then crossed
into Syria, where they defeated ISIS fighters dug in around the Syrian town of al-Bukamal. They
were continuing to secure this strategic border crossing when they were bombed on December
29.
Left unsaid by the U.S. was the fact that the al-Bukamal-al Qaim border crossing was seen as
a crucial "land bridge," connecting Iran with Syria via Iraq. Throughout the summer of
2019, the U.S. had been watching as Iranian engineers, working with Khati'ab Hezbollah,
constructed a sprawling base that straddled both Iraq and Syria. It was this base, and not
Khati'ab Hezbollah per se, that was the reason for the American airstrike. The objective in
this attack was to degrade Iranian capability in the region; the K-1 attack was just an excuse,
one based on the lie that Khati'ab Hezbollah, and not ISIS, had carried it out.
The U.S. had long condemned what it called Iran's "malign intentions" when it came to its
activities in Iraq and Syria. But there is a world of difference between employing tools of
diplomacy to counter Iranian regional actions and going kinetic. One of the reasons the U.S.
has been able to justify attacking Iranian-affiliated targets, such as the al-Bukamal-al-Qaim
complex and Qassem Soleimani, is that the Iranian entity associated with both -- the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC -- has been designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist
Organization (FTO), and as such military attacks against it are seen as an extension of the
ongoing war on terror. Yet the way the IRGC came to be designated as an FTO is itself
predicated on a lie.
The person responsible for this lie is President Trump's former national security
adviser John Bolton, who while in that position oversaw National Security Council (NSC)
interagency policy coordination meetings at the White House for the purpose of formulating a
unified government position on Iran. Bolton had stacked the NSC staff with hardliners who were
pushing for a strong stance. But
representatives from the Department of Defense often pushed back . During such meetings,
the Pentagon officials argued that the IRGC was "a state entity" (albeit a "bad" one), and that
if the U.S. were to designate it as a terrorist group, there was nothing to stop Iran from
responding by designating U.S. military personnel or CIA officers as terrorists.
The memoranda on these meetings, consisting of summaries of the various positions put
forward, were doctored by the NSC to make it appear as if the Pentagon agreed with its proposed
policy. The Defense Department complained to the NSC that the memoranda produced from these
meetings were "largely
incorrect and inaccurate" -- "essentially fiction," a former Pentagon official
claimed.
After the Pentagon "informally" requested that the NSC change the memoranda to accurately
reflect its position, and were denied, the issue was bumped up to Undersecretary of Defense
John Rood. He then formally requested that the memoranda be corrected. Such a request was
unprecedented in recent memory, a former official noted. Regardless, the NSC did not budge, and
the original memoranda remained as the official records of the meetings in question.
This was a direct result of the bureaucratic dishonesty of John Bolton. Such dishonesty
led to a series of policy decisions that gave a green light to use military force against IRGC
targets throughout the Middle East. The rocket attack against K-1 was attributed to an
Iranian proxy -- Khati'ab Hezbollah -- even though there was reason to believe the attack was
carried out by ISIS. This was a cover so IRGC-affiliated facilities in al-Bakumal and al-Qaim,
which had nothing to do with the attack, could be bombed. Everything to do with Iran's alleged
"malign intent." The U.S. embassy was then attacked. Soleimani killed. The American base at
al-Assad was bombarded by Iranian missiles. America and Iran were on the brink of war.
All because of a lie.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former
Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most
recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran
Blocked the West's Road to War (2018).
Iran hawks never talk about diplomacy except as a way to discredit it.
Notable quotes:
"... And even if Iran were to accept and proceed comply in good faith, just as Iran complied scrupulously with the JCPOA, what's to prevent any US administration from tearing up that "new deal" and demanding more? ..."
Daniel
Larison Two Iran hawks from the Senate, Bob Menendez and Lindse Graham, are
proposing a "new deal" that is guaranteed to be a non-starter with Iran:
Essentially, their idea is that the United States would offer a new nuclear deal to both
Iran and the gulf states at the same time. The first part would be an agreement to ensure
that Iran and the gulf states have access to nuclear fuel for civilian energy purposes,
guaranteed by the international community in perpetuity. In exchange, both Iran and the gulf
states would swear off nuclear fuel enrichment inside their own countries forever.
Iran is never going to accept any agreement that requires them to give up domestic
enrichment. As far as they are concerned, they are entitled to this under the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, and they regard it as a matter of their national rights that they keep it. Insisting on
"zero enrichment" is what made it impossible to reach an agreement with Iran for the better
part of a decade, and it was only when the Obama administration understood this and compromised
to allow Iran to enrich under tight restrictions that the negotiations could move forward.
Demanding "zero enrichment" today in 2020 amounts to rejecting that compromise and returning to
a bankrupt approach that drove Iran to build tens of thousands of centrifuges. As a proposal
for negotiations, it is dead on arrival, and Menendez and Graham must know that. Iran hawks
never talk about diplomacy except as a way to discredit it. They want to make a bogus offer in
the hopes that it will be rejected so that they can use the rejection to justify more
aggressive measures.
The identity of the authors of the plan is a giveaway that the offer is not a serious
diplomatic proposal. Graham is one of the most incorrigible hard-liners on Iran, and Menendez
is probably the most hawkish Democratic senator in office today. Among other things, Menendez
has been a
booster of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), the deranged cult of Iranian exiles
that has been buying the support of American politicians and officials for years. Graham has
never seen a diplomatic agreement that he didn't want to destroy. When hard-liners talk about
making a "deal," they always mean that they want to demand the other side's surrender.
Another giveaway that this is not a serious proposal is the fact that they want this
imaginary agreement submitted as a treaty:
That final deal would be designated as a treaty, ratified by the U.S. Senate, to give Iran
confidence that a new president won't just pull out (like President Trump did on President
Barack Obama's nuclear deal).
This is silly for many reasons. The Senate doesn't ratify treaties nowadays, so any "new
deal" submitted as a treaty would never be ratified. As the current president has shown, it
doesn't matter if a treaty has been ratified by the Senate. Presidents can and do withdraw from
ratified treaties if they want to, and the fact that it is a ratified treaty doesn't prevent
them from doing this. Bush pulled out of the ABM Treaty, which was ratified
88-2 in 1972. Trump withdrew from the INF Treaty just last year. The INF Treaty had been
ratified with a
93-5 vote. The hawkish complaint that the JCPOA wasn't submitted as a treaty was, as usual,
made in bad faith. There was no chance that the JCPOA would have been ratified, and even if it
had been that ratification would not have protected it from being tossed aside by Trump.
Insisting on making any new agreement a treaty is just another way of announcing that they have
no interest in a diplomatic solution.
Menendez and Graham want to make the obstacles to diplomacy so great that negotiations
between the U.S. and Iran can't resume. It isn't a serious proposal, and it shouldn't be taken
seriously.
And even if Iran were to accept and proceed comply in good faith, just as Iran complied
scrupulously with the JCPOA, what's to prevent any US administration from tearing up that
"new deal" and demanding more?
A little bit off-topic, or very much off-topic but related with Hudson's favourite
theme. This is about potential bankruptcies derived from quarantines almost certainly not
covered by insurance: wouldn't this be an excellent case for debt forgiving?
I dunno. My impression is too much of corporate malfeasance involves the use of
debt. Consolidation, stock buybacks, leveraged everything, hostile
take-everything.
This stacked system is currently confronting two crises it has no good solution to.
One is Covid19 and the other is insurrection. Obama forgave the one percent's debts once
already. No more of that. I'm hoping this is "the great leveling" event.
I can not find a link but a comment here yesterday said China has announced it will
pay all healthcare costs related to Covid for those without insurance. I honestly don't know
if that's true but it lead me to understand that China has a hybrid public/private system
health insurance system. Wikipedia says China provides "basic" healthcare for 95% of the
population which covers roughly 50% of treatment costs. Hmmm I wonder what the treatments
cost
Sadly, promises to cover the cost of treatment are ineffectual without enough
facilities, supplies and healthcare workers.
With regard to the question of "corporate debt", a better way than "forgiveness" IMO
would be "temporary nationalization" by means of some public entity bidding on operating
assets (with, hopefully, the entity still functioning) at a liquidation auction. The senior
creditors (first in line, I think are employees with unpaid back wages due) would get
something; the shareholders -- given the degree of leverage that is customary today -- often
would be wiped out (which they would be in any event under the conditions in
view).
The publicly owned and operated businesses would go private again through conversion
to worker-owned cooperatives. This would take time, which would permit the bugs to be worked
out. I can't imagine that the transition would be smooth.
This kind of conversion from shareholder-owned to worker-owned enterprise has been
proposed previously (don't have links) as something that could be done as ongoing policy
through money creation by the central government and new forms of "eminent domain"
legislation, or simply by purchase of shares in the open markets, New private enterprises
could be created by the former owners using the funds received and, at such time as these
became sufficiently powerful to be problematic, could likewise be converted to cooperatives.
It might be an engine of innovation. Significant regulation would probably be needed to curb
clearly unproductive uses of funds.
Perhaps it's another way that this crisis is creating opportunities that we don't
want to allow to be wasted.
It will be interesting to see what the government of China does, as it will be the
first to face this problem at large scale. Will they turn into a "workers' party"? Hard to
imagine, but the paths out of the current turmoil may contain possibilities that could not be
realistically contemplated just months ago.
How do you prevent this feed-me-seymour financialization-economy from imploding?
Keep feeding it. Biden and his cronies, including little George, knew it. And that has to be
the reason why they passed laws preventing the process of bankruptcy. Like they placed their
bets on winning the war for oil in the middle east at the same time. Why did they think these
bad decisions would keep our economy stable?
"... Although corporations are legally a person (see history below), they are in fact an entity. The sole goal of that entity is
profit. There is no corporate conscience. ..."
"... Perhaps it would be useful to look at the nature of our global expansion. The global expanse of US military bases is well-known,
but its actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history
Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, ' How To Hide An Empire ,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States."
This is worth the 40 minute watch...I learned several new things. One more long clip. However this one is fine to just listen to as
you do things. This is a wonderful interview with Noam Chomsky. The man exudes wisdom. ..."
"... The oligarchy has been with us since perhaps the tribal origins of our species, but the corporation is a newer phenomenon.
A faceless, soulless profit machine. Ironically it is the 14th amendment which is used to justify corporate person-hood. ..."
"... Corporations aren't specifically mentioned in the 14th Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. But going back to the
earliest years of the republic, when the Bank of the United States brought the first corporate rights case before the Supreme Court,
U.S. corporations have sought many of the same rights guaranteed to individuals, including the rights to own property, enter into contracts,
and to sue and be sued just like individuals. ..."
"... But it wasn't until the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the Court appeared to grant a corporation
the same rights as an individual under the 14th Amendment ..."
"... The United States is home to five of the world's 10 largest defense contractors, and American companies account for 57 percent
of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, based on SIPRI data. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest
defense contractor in the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through deals with governments all over
the world. The company drew public scrutiny after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 boys
and 11 adults. Lockheed's revenue from the U.S. government alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and the Environmental
Protection Agency, combined. ..."
"... http://news.nidokidos.org/military-spending-20-companies-profiting-the-m... For a list of the 20 companies profiting most off
war... https://themindunleashed.com/2019/03/20-companies-profiting-war.html ..."
"... Capitalism, militarism and imperialism are disastrously intertwined ..."
"... Corporations are Religions Yes they are. They have ethics, goals, and priests. They have a god who determines everything "The
Invisible Hand". They believe themselves to be superior to the state. They have cult garb, or are we not going to pretend that there's
corporate dress codes, right down to the things you can wear on special days of the week. They determine what you can eat, drink and
read. If you say something wrong, they feel within their rights to punish you because they OWN the medium that you used to spread ideas.
OF course they don't own your thoughts... those belong to the OTHER god. ..."
Chris Hedges often says "The corporate coup is complete". Sadly I think he is correct. So this week I thought it might be interesting
to explore the techniques which are used here at home and abroad. The oligarchs' corporate control is global, but different strategies
are employed in various scenarios. Just thinking about the recent regime changes promoted by the US in this hemisphere...
The current attempts at the Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Cuban, and Iranian coups are primarily conducted
using economic sanctions
.
The US doesn't even lie about past coups. They recently
released a report about the 1953
CIA led coup against Iran detailing the strategies. Here at home it is a compliant media and a new array of corporate laws designed
to protect and further enrich that spell the corporate capture of our culture and society. So let's begin by looking at the nature
of corporations...
The following 2.5 hour documentary from 2004 features commentary from Chris, Noam, Naomi, and many others you know. It has some
great old footage. It is best watched on a television so you have a bigger screen. (This clip is on the encore+ youtube channel and
does have commercials which you can skip after 5 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpQYsk-8dWg
Based on Joel Bakan's bestseller The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power , this 26-award-winning
documentary explores a corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.
One hundred
and fifty years ago, a corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic, and pervasive presence
in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, a corporation is today's dominant
institution.
Charting the rise of such an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals, the documentary also recounts
victories against this apparently invincible force.
Although corporations are legally a person (see history below), they are in fact an entity. The sole goal of that entity is
profit. There is no corporate conscience. Some of the CEO's in the film discuss how all the people in the corporations are against
pollution and so on, but by law stockholder profit must be the objective. Now these entities are global operations with no loyalty
to their country of origin.
Perhaps it would be useful to look at the nature of our global expansion. The global expanse of US military bases is well-known,
but its actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews
history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, ' How To Hide An Empire ,' where he documents the story of our
"Greater United States." This is worth the 40 minute watch...I learned several new things. One more long clip. However this one is
fine to just listen to as you do things. This is a wonderful interview with Noam Chomsky. The man exudes wisdom.
So much of this conversation touches on today's topic of our corporate capture. Amy interviewed Ed Snowden this week... (video or text)
This is a system, the first system in history, that bore witness to everything. Every border you crossed, every purchase you
make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friends you keep, article you write, site you visit and subject line
you type was now in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards were not. And I felt, despite what the
law said, that this was something that the public ought to know.
The oligarchy has been with us since perhaps the tribal origins of our species, but the corporation is a newer phenomenon.
A faceless, soulless profit machine. Ironically it is the 14th amendment which is used to justify corporate person-hood.
Corporations aren't specifically mentioned in the 14th Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. But going back
to the earliest years of the republic, when the Bank of the United States brought the first corporate rights case before the Supreme
Court, U.S. corporations have sought many of the same rights guaranteed to individuals, including the rights to own property,
enter into contracts, and to sue and be sued just like individuals.
But it wasn't until the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the Court appeared to grant a corporation
the same rights as an individual under the 14th Amendment
More recently in 2010 (Citizens United v. FEC): In the run up to the 2008 election, the Federal Elections Commission blocked the
conservative nonprofit Citizens United from airing a film about Hillary Clinton based on a law barring companies from using their
funds for "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The organization sued, arguing
that, because people's campaign donations are a protected form of speech (see Buckley v. Valeo) and corporations and people enjoy
the same legal rights, the government can't limit a corporation's independent political donations. The Supreme Court agreed. The
Citizens United ruling may be the most sweeping expansion of corporate personhood to date.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/how-supreme-court-turned-co...
Do they really believe this is how we think?
More than just using the courts, corporations are knee deep in creating favorable laws, not just by lobbying, but by actually
writing legislation to feed the politicians that they own and control, especially at the state level.
Through ALEC, Global Corporations Are Scheming to Rewrite YOUR Rights and Boost THEIR Revenue. Through the corporate-funded
American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state
laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit
huge corporations.
In ALEC's own words, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state.
DO YOU? Numerous resources to help us expose ALEC are provided below. We have also created links to detailed discussions of key
issues...
There is very little effort to hide the blatant corruption. People seem to accept this behavior as business as usual, after all
it is.
Part of the current ALEC legislative agenda involves stifling protests.
I think it started in Texas...
A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted
murder.
H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for
interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years.
Lawmakers in Wisconsin introduced a bill on September 5 designed to chill protests around oil and gas pipelines and other energy
infrastructure in the state by imposing harsh criminal penalties for trespassing on or damaging the property of a broad range
of "energy providers."
Senate Bill 386 echoes similar "critical infrastructure protection" model bills pushed out by the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) and the Council of State Governments over the last two years to prevent future protests like the one against the
Dakota Access Pipeline.
And Chris was on the evening RT news this week discussing how the US empire is striking back against leaders who help their own
people rather than our global corporations.
Financially, the cost of these wars is immense: more than $6 trillion dollars. The cost of these wars is just one element of
the $1.2 trillion the US government spends annually on wars and war making. Half of each dollar paid in federal income tax
goes towards some form or consequence of war . While the results of such spending are not hard to foresee or understand:
a cyclical and dependent relationship between the Pentagon, weapons industry and Congress, the creation of a whole new class of
worker and wealth distribution is not so understood or noticed, but exists and is especially malignant.
This is a ghastly redistribution of wealth, perhaps unlike any known in modern human history, certainly not in American history.
As taxpayers send trillions to Washington. DC, that money flows to the men and women that remotely oversee, manage and staff the
wars that kill and destroy millions of lives overseas and at home. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and civilian contractors
servicing the wars take home six figure annual salaries allowing them second homes, luxury cars and plastic surgery, while veterans
put guns in their mouths, refugees die in capsized boats and as many as four million nameless souls scream silently in death.
These AUMFs (Authorization for Use of Military Force) and the wars have provided tens of thousands of recruits to international
terror groups; mass profits to the weapons industry and those that service it; promotions to generals and admirals, with
corporate board seats upon retirement ; and a perpetual and endless supply of bloody shirts for politicians to wave via
an unquestioning and obsequious corporate media to stoke compliant anger and malleable fear. What is hard to imagine, impossible
even, is anyone else who has benefited from these wars.
The United States is home to five of the world's 10 largest defense contractors, and American companies account for 57 percent
of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, based on SIPRI data. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest
defense contractor in the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through deals with governments all
over the world. The company drew public scrutiny after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, killing
40 boys and 11 adults. Lockheed's revenue from the U.S. government alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and
the Environmental Protection Agency, combined.
The obvious industry which was not included nor considered is the fossil fuel industry. Here's another example of mutual corporate
interests.
"Capitalism, militarism and imperialism are disastrously intertwined with the fossil fuel economy .A globalized economy
predicated on growth at any social or environmental costs, carbon dependent international trade, the limitless extraction of natural
resources, and a view of citizens as nothing more than consumers cannot be the basis for tackling climate change .Little wonder
then that the elites have nothing to offer beyond continued militarisation and trust in techno-fixes."
The US military is one of the largest consumers and emitters of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in history, according to an
independent analysis of global fuel-buying practices of a "virtually unresearched" government agency.
If the US military were its own country, it would rank 47th between Peru and Portugal in terms of annual fuel purchases, totaling
almost 270,000 barrels of oil bought every day in 2017. In particular, the Air Force is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas
emissions and bought $4.9 billion of fuel in 2017 nearly double that of the Navy ($2.8 billion).
The fossil fuel giants even try to control the climate talks...
Oil and gas groups were accused Saturday of seeking to influence climate talks in Madrid by paying millions in sponsorship
and sending dozens of lobbyists to delay what scientists say is a necessary and rapid cut in fossil fuel use.
The corporations are so entwined that it is difficult to tell where they begin and end. There's the unity of private prisons and
the war machine. And it's a global scheme...this example from the UK.
One thing is clear: the prison industrial complex and the global war machine are intimately connected. This summer's prison
strike that began in the United States and spread to other countries was the largest in history. It shows more than ever that
prisoners are resisting this penal regime, often at great risk to themselves. The battle to end prison slavery continues.
The 2017 tax bill cut taxes for most Americans, including the middle class, but it heavily benefits the wealthy and corporations
. It slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and its treatment of "pass-through" entities -- companies organized
as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations -- will translate to an estimated $17 billion in tax savings for
millionaires this year. American corporations are showering their shareholders with stock buybacks, thanks in part to their tax
savings.
Even Robert Jackson Jr., commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Appointed to the SEC in 2017 by President Donald
Trump. Confirmed in January 2018 sees the corporate cuts as absurd.
"We have been to the movie of tax cuts and buybacks before, in the Republican administration during the George W. Bush era.
We enacted a quite substantial tax cut during that period. And studies after that showed very clearly that most corporations use
the funds from that tax cut for buybacks. And here's the kicker. That particular tax cut actually required that companies deploy
the capital for capital expenditures, wage increases and investments in their people. Yet studies showed that, in fact, the companies
use them for buybacks. So we've been to this movie before. And what you're describing to me, that corporations turned around and
took the Trump tax cut and didn't use it in investing in their people or in infrastructure, but instead for other purposes, shouldn't
surprise anybody at all."
So the corporations grow larger, wealthier, more powerful, buying evermore legislative influence along the way. They have crept
into almost every aspect of our lives. Some doctors are beginning to see the influence of big pharma and other corporate interests
are effecting the current practice of medicine.
Gary Fettke is a doctor from Tasmania who has been targeted for promoting a high fat low carb diet...threatened with losing
his medical qualifications. He doesn't pull punches in this presentation discussing the corporate control of big ag/food and big
pharma on medical practice and education. (27 min)
Corporations are Religions
Yes they are. They have ethics, goals, and priests. They have a god who determines everything "The Invisible Hand". They believe
themselves to be superior to the state. They have cult garb, or are we not going to pretend that there's corporate dress codes,
right down to the things you can wear on special days of the week. They determine what you can eat, drink and read. If you say
something wrong, they feel within their rights to punish you because they OWN the medium that you used to spread ideas. OF course
they don't own your thoughts... those belong to the OTHER god.
At least the crazy made up gods that I listen to don't usually
fuck over other human beings for a goddamn percentage. ON the other hand, if a corporation can make a profit, it's REQUIRED to
fuck you over. To do otherwise would be against it's morals. Which it does have, trust us... OH, and corporations get to make
fun of your beliefs, but you CANNOT make fun of theirs. Because that would be heresy against logic and reason.
In a local newspaper showed a couple coming out of a Wal-Mart with their carts piled high with big boxed foreign junk, then
shown cramming their SUV full of said junk. The headline read "Crazy Busy". It pretty much summed up what is wrong with the American
consumer culture. The next day's big headline spotlighted our senator's picture affixed to a LARGE headline boasting "$22 Billion
Submarine Contract Awarded". A good example of of what is wrong with the american war economy.
Thank you for your compilation Lookout! If we can get beyond the headlines, working at grass root and local solutions, maybe
even underground revolution, there may be hope for us. Barter for a better future.
My buddies always say about their mayor..."There's no way we will trade down after this election...but then we do." Perhaps
it is true for more than just their town.
The line running in my head is..."What if they gave a war and nobody came". I want to expand it to..."What if they made cheap
junk no one really wanted and nobody bought it". Or substitute junk food for cheap junk, or...
My point in today's conclusion is much as I try to walk away from corporate culture/control, I really can't totally escape...but
at least I spend most of my time in the open, breathing clean air, surrounded by forest. We do what we can.
Consumerism in our society is a plague, a disease perpetrated upon us by our corporate lords. It has taken over everything
about being an American.
I think the youth are catching on, as they are thrifting more, but they don't understand about food, and that's the rub. Our
youth will be more unhealthy until they understand what corporations are doing to us through food addictions.
We're expecting rain today for most of the day and actually it's just started. The person who will drill our well came by yesterday
and figured out some details. We are behind two other wells, so it will probably be the holiday week when it happens - we'll see.
I can wait til January and hope we do.
Ideas is that new deal of FDR's day had corporate opponents far different than those of today. Sanders does not seem to understand
that the corporations of yesterday, and what worked against them, will not work against the corporations of today. In the early part of the 20th century, corporations were still primarily domestic and local often with charters from the state
where they conducted their primary business, many times all of their business.
Regulation and unions were reasonable anti-dotes to the abuses of these local and domestic corporations. The state still had
some semblance of control over them.
But today corporations are global. They have no allegiance to, or concern for the domestic economy or local people. They do not fear of any anti-dotes that worked for years against domestic or local corporations. Global corporations just leave
and go elsewhere if they don't like the domestic or local situation if they have not managed to completely take over the government.
There is only one reason to incorporate in the first place. That is for the owner(s) of the business to avoid personal liability
or responsibility. The majority of people never understand this idea. Corporate owners are the people who are the genuine personal
responsibility avoiders. Not the poor. The only antidote to corporations these days is the total demise of the corporation and
its similar business entities that dodge personal responsibility. And the state must refuse to allow any such entities to do business.
It is the only way forward. Otherwise nation states will give way to corporate states. Corporate governance is the new feudalism
from which the old feudalism morphed.
Sanders isn't going to advocate doing away with corporate entities or other similar business entities. Nor will any of the
Democratic contenders. They all require corporations to rail against as the basis for their political policy.
...and I've always wondered just how Bernie would dismantle them. However like the impotence of the impeachment, is the impotence
of the primary process.
When the DNC was sued after 2016, they were
exonerated based on the ruling they were a private entity entitled to make rules as the wanted. The primary is so obviously
rigged I can almost guarantee Bernie will not be allowed the nomination, so the question to how he would change corporate control
is really moot.
@Lookout I probably
could get on board with a Sanders campaign if he would run as an Independent. But it is really hard to get on board with him as
a Democrat. If he loses the nomination, he will probably not run as an Independent once again. Once he bailed on an Independent
run last time, I and many others bailed on him. I would support his Independent candidacy just to screw with the Electoral College.
I thought last time an independent candidacy might have thrown the election to the House of Representatives. I could see a Democratically
controlled House voting for him over Trump in a three way EC split if the Democratic candidate took low EC numbers.
But he is so afraid of being tarred with the Nader moniker.
What I said many times on websites last election is that an EC vote is very similar to a Parliamentary Election. And that would
be an interesting change for sure. It would also be a means of having the popular vote winner restored if there is a big enough
margin in the House. And what would be equally cool is that the Senate picks the VP. So you could have President and VP from different
parties.
if Bernie got the nomination, I would vote for him, especially in this imaginary world, if Tulsi was his running mate. Then there
the question about your vote being counted? We'll just have to see what we see and make judgements based on outcomes, IMO.
#4.1 I probably could get on board with
a Sanders campaign if he would run as an Independent. But it is really hard to get on board with him as a Democrat. If he loses
the nomination, he will probably not run as an Independent once again. Once he bailed on an Independent run last time, I and
many others bailed on him. I would support his Independent candidacy just to screw with the Electoral College. I thought last
time an independent candidacy might have thrown the election to the House of Representatives. I could see a Democratically
controlled House voting for him over Trump in a three way EC split if the Democratic candidate took low EC numbers.
But he is so afraid of being tarred with the Nader moniker.
What I said many times on websites last election is that an EC vote is very similar to a Parliamentary Election. And that
would be an interesting change for sure. It would also be a means of having the popular vote winner restored if there is a
big enough margin in the House. And what would be equally cool is that the Senate picks the VP. So you could have President
and VP from different parties.
@Lookout The only
way the Democrats might beat Trump is to have Sanders run as an Independent and prevent Trump from reaching 270. That is a far
better way to beat Trump than impeachment. Would the house vote for the Democrat or an Independent? I guess it would depend on
how Sanders did in the popular vote and EC against his Democratic rival.
#4.1.1 if Bernie got the nomination, I would vote for him, especially in this imaginary world, if Tulsi was his running mate. Then
there the question about your vote being counted? We'll just have to see what we see and make judgements based on outcomes,
IMO.
If it was Hillary "Dewey Cheatem & Howe" Clinton, all bets are off.
#4.1.1.1 The only way the Democrats
might beat Trump is to have Sanders run as an Independent and prevent Trump from reaching 270. That is a far better way to
beat Trump than impeachment. Would the house vote for the Democrat or an Independent? I guess it would depend on how Sanders
did in the popular vote and EC against his Democratic rival.
Good lord.that she did that is unbelievable. Great point. Boycott Fox News, but go on Stern's show. It's going to be fun to
watch how much lower she falls.
MSNBC invited on two former Hillary Clinton aides to criticize Bernie Sanders for taking a "long time to get out of the
race" and that he didn't do "enough" campaigning for her in 2016. pic.twitter.com/6Vsqo0DKZI
@TheOtherMaven They
have to choose from actual EC vote getters. So if she is not the candidate she could not win.
Having Sanders run as an Independent and Warren or Biden run as a Democrat would be a much better strategy to ensure a Trump
loss in the House. Of course it might take some coordination as in asking the voters to vote for the candidate who has the best
chance of beating Trump in certain states. But voters could probably figure that out.
Or a candidate could just withdraw from a state in which the other candidate had a better chance of beating Trump.
Lookout as usual you have done an excellent job of giving me a lot of articles to read and think about this next week.
Of course I need to be loading my car and shutting this place down as I head to the Texas hill country. Will look for an article
about Kinder Morgan and small communities that are fighting the pipeline through their towns. The read was a little hopeful.
Watching the weather and it looks like sunshine and clear skies as I travel. Thanks for all your work in putting this together.
I like to travel on the old roads
I like the way it makes me feel
No destination just the old roads
Somehow it helps the heart to heal.
I hope your road trip is a good one. The less busy tracks are almost meditative....soaking in scenery as the world passes by.
Have fun and be careful.
Lookout as usual you have done an excellent job of giving me a lot of articles to read and think about this next week.
Of course I need to be loading my car and shutting this place down as I head to the Texas hill country. Will look for an
article about Kinder Morgan and small communities that are fighting the pipeline through their towns. The read was a little
hopeful.
Watching the weather and it looks like sunshine and clear skies as I travel. Thanks for all your work in putting this together.
Here are a couple of links to how free markets
help in the corporate takeover. Amazon a corp that has only made a profit by
never paying taxes and accounting fraud. It
became a trillion dollar corp through the use
of monopoly money(stock) it's nothing but the
perfect example of todays "unicorn" corp, i.e.
worth what it is w/out ever making a penny
Corporations can live far beyond a persons lifespan. Corporations can commit homicide and escape execution and justice. Unfortunately,
unions are just as likely to be on the corporations side to get jobs and wages, and bust heads if anything interferes with that.
If we protest we've seen the police ready to use deadly force at the drop of a hat, and get away with it. We get to vote on
candidates that some political club chose for us, and have little incentive to work for the 99%. The gov. has amassed so much
information on us we can't even fathom its depth. We have nowhere left, no unexplored lands out of reach of the government. We
think we own things, but if you think you own a home, see how long it is before the gov. confiscates it if you don't pay your
property taxes.
If I were younger, or a young person asked what to do, I would say.... learn some skill that would make you attractive for
emigrating to another country, because the US looks like it's over. It's people are only here to be exploited. And if Bernie were
to become president I hope he gets a food taster.
run to. No where to hide. As in the U.K., corporations are seeking to to dismantle the NHS and turn it into a for-profit system
like ours. Even as the gilllet-jaune protesters risk life and limb, Macron seeks to install true neoliberalism in France. And
the beat goes on.
Corporations can live far beyond a persons lifespan. Corporations can commit homicide and escape execution and justice.
Look at what chevron did to people in Borapol. I'm sure I spelled this wrong but hopefully people will know what I'm talking
about. They killed lots of people and poisoned their land for decades and the fight over it is still going on. How many decades
more will chevron get to skirt justice? Banks continue to commit fraud and they only get little fines that don't do jack to keep
them from doing it again. Even cities are screwing people. Owe a few dollars on your property taxes and they will take your home
and sell it for pennies on the dollar. How in hell can it be legal to charge people over 600% interest? What happened to usury
rules if that's the correct term.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled last week that a prior ruling by an Ecuadorean court that fined Chevron
$9.5 billion in 2011 should be upheld, according to teleSUR, a Latin American news agency. Texaco, which is currently a part of
Chevron, is responsible for what is considered one of the world's largest environmental disasters while it drilled for oil in
the Ecuadorian rainforest from 1964 to 1990.
https://www.ecowatch.com/will-chevron-and-exxon-ever-be-held-responsible...
The legal battle has been tied up in the courts for years. Ecuador's highest court finally upheld the ruling in January
2014, but Chevron refused to pay.
This is another thing that corporations get away with. Contaminating land and then just walking away from it. How many superfund
sites have we had to pay for instead of the ones who created the mess. Just declared bankruptcy and walked away. Corporations
are people? Fine then they should be held as accountable as the people in the lower classes. Fat chance though right?
Weren't people killed by a gas cloud released from the plant? I read something recently that said the case is still going
through the courts. How much money have they spent trying not to spend more?
Byedone just needs to pack it in and drop out already. Today he was defending the republican party after someone said something
about them needing to go away. Joe said that we need another party so one does not get more power than the other. Yeah right,
Joe. It's not like the Pubs are already weilding power they don't have and them dems cowering and supporting them.
Newsweek reporter quit after being censored on the OPCW story.
I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient
to US govt was removed, though it was factually correct.
First frustrate us with gridlock. Then pass bills benefiting the corporate overlords. Then leading up
to elections pass bills like the one against animal cruelty (who doesn't love kitties and puppies?), or propose a bill to consider
regulating cosmetics. This second bipartisan effort is glaringly cynical since no one apparently knows what is in beauty products.
Sanders must have politicians worried for them to attempt something which has managed to go unregulated for so long.
All this bipartisanship is not even up to the level of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's more like wiping at
them with a dirty rag while the ship of state continues to sink. While animal cruelty and cosmetic safety are important issues,
they pale in comparison to the systemic ills America suffers. Our fearless leaders will continue to scratch the surface while
corruption and business as usual continue to fester. These bipartisan laws may look good on a politician's resume, but they won't
really help the 99%.
@snoopydawg
the propaganda to give NATO a raison d'tre for a pivot to China. This will be doomed to complete failure just as the Russian
pivot has.
But Putin and Xi Jinping are both much too skilled and intelligent to defeat. American WWE trash talkers are completely outclassed
by an 8th dan in judo paired with a Sun Tzu scholar.
Tomoe nage - use your opponent's weight and aggression against him.
"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent
is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he
is unprepared, appear where you are not expected ."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
@Lookout
What they want is
a controlled collapse. If they can get the US to continue to overspend on war mongering rather than programs of social uplift
the country will rot from the inside.
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
So much more to say really. Had to stop somewhere but as you know the corruption runs deep and is intermixed with the CIA/FBI/MIC
corporate government under which we live.
On we go as best we can!
There is great dignity in the objective truth. Perhaps because it never flows through the contaminated minds of the unworthy.
Corporate charters were initially meant to be for the public good if i'm not mistaken in recall, it was a trade-off for their
privilege to exist. Maybe a movement political leader could highlight this and move the pendulum back to accountability.
Had a conversation with good friend today, a 3M rep, and he was griping about his competitor's shady marketing product practices
apparently lying to manufacturers about the grades and contents of their competing products.
Although Trump decided to call this as "Iran standing down," analysts on both sides can work
the calculus of this test run. I have been suggesting that Iran's cheaper technology is quite
effective and an advantage near their "home court."
The Iranians used a third- or fourth-generation Fateh 110, which was generally given a range
of 300 km. But the Al Assad base is 370 km from the border, so it seems the Iranians squeezed
out some extra range. The fourth generation Fateh 100 carries a 650 kg warhead. Iran certainly
has missiles with more punch. The Quim 1 is essentially a similar missile.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/63ehLAg7mSU
Iran showed that it can put most of Iraq in range of these low-cost missiles should it
become a battleground. The Al Assad base is large and target-rich.
Leaked pictures taken by a Puerto Rican soldier of the damage to the Al-Asad US airbase in
Iraq, after being hit by Iranian missiles.
Meanwhile,
Russia offered Iraq its state-of-the-art S-400 air defense to defend its air space.
Besides the added range, the accuracy looks impressive.
"Some of the locations struck look like the missiles hit dead center," said David Schmerler,
an analyst with the Middlebury Institute.
Numbers and production information relating to the Fateh 110 are currently uncertain, yet
Iranian media sources claim that facilities have been created to mass produce the weapon.
Michael Elleman, director of the Nonproliferation and Nuclear Policy Programme at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, estimates that Iran has numbers "in the high
hundreds" of the Fateh-110.
Our takeaway is that this night demonstration is hardly a dud and will give Americans some
pause. It shows this key base at Al Assad will be vulnerable. If one night Iran threw a hundred
of these missiles up and aimed them at personnel, things could get ugly fast.
Observers are asking "where was the Patriot defense missile?" The problem is economic. The
cost of each missile is $2.75 million.
A Rand study estimated that a Patriot will need three rounds to take down basic short-range
ballistic missiles like the Fateh-110. That's 30 times more than the cost of Fateh. Iran would
hope the Patriot is wasted on Fatehs and Quims, and they would gladly run that kind of
cost-benefit math all over the region.
"For the time being, the Americans have been given a slap, revenge is a different issue,"
Iran's Fars News Agency quotes Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying Wednesday. "Military moves like this are not enough. The
Americans' corruption-stirring presence will come to an end."
Winter Watch Takeaway
U.S. vulnerability at Al Assad has now been well demonstrated. If anything -- especially as
more sanctions are being slapped on -- the War Party in Iran will be emboldened to run with
their advantages and do so well before more American troops and aircraft build up in the
theater.
"... Deanna Spingola's articles are copyrighted but may be republished, reposted, or emailed. However, the person or organization must not charge for subscriptions or advertising. The article must be copied intact and full credit given. Deanna's web site address must also be included. ..."
In 1989 President George H. W. Bush began the multi-billion dollar Project Hammer program using an investment strategy to bring
about the economic destruction of the Soviet Union including the theft of the Soviet treasury, the destabilization of the ruble,
funding a KGB coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 and the seizure of major energy and munitions industries in the Soviet Union.
Those resources would subsequently be turned over to international bankers and corporations. On November 1, 2001, the second operative
in the Bush regime, President George W. Bush, issued Executive Order 13233 on the basis of "national security" and concealed the
records of past presidents, especially his father's spurious activities during 1990 and 1991. Consequently, those records are no
longer accessible to the public. [1] The Russian
coup plot was discussed in June 1991 when Yeltsin visited with Bush in conjunction with his visit to the United States. On that same
visit, Yeltsin met discreetly with Gerald Corrigan, the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve.
[2]
Because of numerous Presidential Executive Orders, the ethically questionable Project Hammer was deemed legal. Many of Reagan's
executive orders were actually authored by Vice President Bush or his legal associates, and it is possible that Project Hammer was
created by Reagan's CIA Director, William Casey, who had directed OSS operations through Alan Dulles in Europe during World War II.
Prior to his OSS affiliation, Casey worked for the Board of Economic Warfare which allegedly targeted "Hitler's economic jugular."
[3] Allen Dulles, brother of John Foster Dulles,
was the Director of the CIA (1953-1961). He was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented
the Rockefeller Empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels.
Project Hammer was staffed with CIA operatives and others associated with the National Security apparatus. Covert channels were
already in place as a result of other illegal Bush activities. Thus, it was a given (1) that the project would use secret, illegal
funds for unapproved covert operations, and (2) that the American public and Congress would not be informed about the illegal actions
perpetrated in foreign countries. The first objective was allegedly to crush Communism, a growing political philosophy and social
movement that was initially funded by the usual group of international bankers who now supported their demise. To this end, the "Vulcans,"
under George H. W. Bush, waged war against the Soviet Union.
[4]
The Return of the Vulcans
In their reincarnation in the administration of George W. Bush, the Vulcans functioned as a supposedly benign group, led by Council
of Foreign Relations (CFR) member Condoleezza Rice, who attempted to augment and compensate for the Bush's lack of experience and
education concerning foreign policy during his presidential campaign. Rice had been President George H. W. Bush's Soviet and East
European Affairs Advisor in the National Security Council during the Soviet Union's dissolution and during the German reunification
(July 1, 1990). The resurrected Vulcan group included Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, Stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Rabbi Dov
S. Zakheim, Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz. Other key campaign figures included Dick Cheney, George P. Shultz and Colin Powell,
all influential but not actually a part of the Vulcan Group. All of these people, associated with the George H. W. Bush administration,
returned to powerful, strategic positions in George W. Bush's administration.
Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz have been accused of being agents for the Israeli government. Investigations by Congress and
the FBI have substantiated those allegations. Zakheim and his family were heavily involved in Yeshivat Sha'alvim, an educational
organization in which students are taught to render absolute commitment to the State of Israel.
[5]
Many of these individuals were also members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which was established in the spring
of 1997 with the intention of promoting American Global leadership at any cost. The chairman and co-founder was William Kristol,
son of Irving Kristol (CFR), considered the godfather of neo-conservatism which promotes the ideas of Max Shachtman and Leo Strauss,
a noted Zionist and professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Kristol's co-founder was Robert W. Kagan (CFR).
Kristol is also the editor and co-founder, along with John Podhoretz, of the Weekly Standard Magazine , established September
17, 1995 and owned by Rupert Murdoch until August 2009. This "conservative" magazine is edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes
and promotes Middle East warfare and a huge military budget, a mentality that infects the most popular "conservative" talk show radio
hosts. Kristol is a trustee for the Manhattan Institute which was founded by CIA Director William Casey and was staffed with former
CIA officers.
The Vulcans had almost limitless financing from a cache known by several names – the Black Eagle Trust, the Marcos gold, Yamashita's
Gold, the Golden Lily Treasure, or the Durham Trust. Japan, under Emperor Hirohito, appointed a brother, Prince Chichibu, to head
Golden Lily, established in November 1937 before Japan's infamous Rape of Nanking , to accompany and follow the military. The Golden
Lily operation carried out massive plunder throughout Asia and included an army of jewelers, financial experts and smelters.
[6] The Japanese were allegedly very organized
and methodical. After the Allied blockade, Golden Lily headquarters were moved from Singapore to Manila where 175 storage sites were
built by slave laborers and POWs. Billions of dollars worth of gold and other plundered treasures were stockpiled in these underground
caverns, some of which were dis covered by the notorious Cold Warrior, Edward G. Lansdale who directed the recovery of some of the
vaults. Truman and subsequent presidents, without congressional knowledge, have used those resources to finance the CIA's chaotic
clandestine activities throughout the world. Much of the Middle East chaos is financed by those pillaged funds. A tiny portion of
that treasure was the source of Ferdinand Marcos' vast wealth. Marcos worked with the CIA for decades using Golden Lily funds to
bribe nations to support the Vietnam War. In return, Marcos was allowed to sell over $1 trillion in gold through Australian brokers.
[7]
In July 1944, the leaders of forty-four nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to plan the post-war economy and to discuss
organizing a global political action fund which would use the Black Eagle Trust ostensibly to fight communism, bribe political leaders,
enhance the treasuries of U.S. allies, and manipulate elections in foreign countries and other unconstitutional covert operations.
Certainly, those politicos who managed the funds also received financial benefits. This trust was headed by Secretary of War Henry
Stimson, assisted by John J. McCloy (later head of the World Bank) and Robert Lovett (later Secretary of Defense) and consultant
Robert B. Anderson (later Secretary of the Treasury).
[8] Anderson later operated the Commercial Exchange
Bank of Anguilla in the British West Indies and was convicted of running illegal offshore banking operations and tax evasion. Investors
lost about $4.4 million. Consequently, he was sent to prison for a token amount of time, one month. He was also under house arrest
for five years. He could have received a ten-year sentence but Judge Palmieri considered Anderson's "distinguished service" to the
country in the "top levels of Government." [9]
Between 1945 and 1947 huge quantities of gold and platinum were deposited in prominent banks throughout the world. These deposits
came to be known as the Black Eagle Trust. Swiss banks, because of their neutrality, were pivotal in maintaining these funds. These
funds were allocated to fighting communism and paying bribes and fixing elections in places like Italy, Greece, and Japan.
[10] Stimson and McCloy, both retired from government
service, continued their involvement in the management of the Black Eagle Trust. Robert B. Anderson, who toured the treasure sites
with Douglas MacArthur, set up the Black Eagle Trust and later became a member of Eisenhower's cabinet.
[11] In order to maintain secrecy about the
Trust, Washington officials insisted that the Japanese did not plunder the countries they invaded. Japanese officials who wanted
to divulge the facts were imprisoned or murdered in a way that made it look like suicide, a common CIA tactic.
[12] The Germans paid reparations to thousands
of victims while the Japanese paid next to nothing. Military leaders who opposed foreign policies that embraced exploitation of third
world countries were suicided or died from mysterious causes, which includes individuals such as George S. Patton, Smedley D. Butler
and James V. Forrestal.
The Vulcan's effort to crush Communism and end the Cold War was largely funded by that Japanese plunder. The Vulcans were resurrected
when George W. Bush was installed as president in 2000, facilitated by election maneuvers, probably lots of payoffs, and Jeb Bush's
purge of Florida voters. They conducted other illegal operations, like securities fraud and money laundering. This entailed murder
and false imprisonment to prevent penitent participants from divulging the activities of the group. During the process of accomplishing
the main objective of destroying the Soviet Union, the operatives made massive profits. In September 1991, George H. W. Bush and
Alan Greenspan, both Pilgrims Society members, financed $240
billion in illegal bonds to economically decimate the Soviet Union and bring Soviet oil and gas resources under the control of Western
investors, backed by the Black Eagle Trust and supported later by Putin who for the right price purged certain oligarchs. The $240
billion in illegal bonds were apparently replaced with Treasury notes backed by U.S. taxpayers.
[13] To conceal the clearance of $240 billion
in securities, the Federal Reserve, within two months, increased the money supply to pre-9/11 numbers which resulted in the American
taxpayer refinancing the $240 billion. [14]
The Takeover of Russia's Oil Industry
BP Amoco became the largest foreign direct investor in Russia in 1997 when it paid a half-billion dollars to buy a 10 percent
stake in the Russian oil conglomerate Sidanko. Then in 1999, Tyumen Oil bought Sidanko's prize unit, Chernogorneft which allegedly
made BP Amoco's investment worthless. Tyumen offered to cooperate with BP Amoco on the development of Chernogorneft but BP Amoco
was not interested. [15] In October 1998, Halliburton
Energy Services had entered into an agreement with Moscow-based Tyumen Oil Company (TNK). Their efforts were focused on the four
western Siberia fields, the first one being the Samotlorskoye field.
[16] TNK has proven oil reserves of 4.3 billion
barrels and possibly as many as 6.1 billion barrels, with crude oil production and refining capabilities of 420,000 barrels/day and
230,000 barrels/day, respectively. TNK markets gasoline through 400 retail outlets.
[17] In 2002 Halliburton and Sibneft, Russia's
fifth largest crude oil producer, signed an agreement. Sibneft will use Halliburton's new technologies to improve well construction
and processing while Halliburton directs all project management.
[18]
Tyumenskaya Neftyanaya Kompaniya (Tyumen Oil Company) was established in 1995 by government decree. It is now TNK-BP, the leading
Russian oil company and ranks among the top ten privately owned oil companies worldwide in terms of crude oil production. The company,
formed in 2003, resulted from the merger of BP's Russian oil and gas assets and the oil and gas assets of Alfa, Access/Renova group
(AAR). BP and AAR each own fifty percent of TNK-BP. The shareholders of TNK-BP own almost fifty percent of Slavneft, a vertically
integrated Russian oil company. [19] This transaction
was the biggest in Russian corporate history and was managed by Vladimir Lechtman, the Moscow partner for Jones Day, a global law
firm with thirty offices and 2,200 lawyers worldwide. TNK-BP, Russia's second-largest oil company employs almost 100,000 people and
operates in Samotlor. [20]
Reportedly, Putin was financially rewarded by the collaborators and was happy to purge some annoying industrialists who stood
in the way. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the manager of Yukos, the company that he built into Russia's second-largest oil company after
acquiring it for $168 million when his Bank MENATEP, the first privately owned but notoriously corrupt bank since 1917 and wiped
out in August 1998, purchased it through a controversial government privatization auction in 1995. MENATEP was named as a defendant
in the Avisma lawsuit which was filed on August 19, 1999.
[21] The bank may have facilitated the large-scale
theft of Soviet Treasury funds before and following the USSR's collapse in 1991.
[22] His company had borrowed hundreds of millions
of dollars from western banks. [23] He was arrested
on October 25, 2003 and sentenced in June 2005 to eight years on fraud and tax evasion charges. He was allegedly targeted as a political
enemy by President Vladimir Putin who went after other big business owners who apparently made money by acquiring states assets.
Yukos was sold piecemeal to pay off $28 billion in back tax charges. Yukos was seized and given to Rosneft.
[24]
When Khodorkovsky was arrested, his secretive business arrangement with the Rothschild family was exposed as Jacob Rothschild
assumed Khodorkovsky's 26% control of Yukos while Khodorkovsky's directorial seat on the Yukos board went to Edgar Ortiz, a former
Halliburton vice president during Dick Cheney's reign as CEO at Halliburton. Cheney, as President and CEO of Halliburton, automatically
had an association with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) .
[25] In November 1997, Dick Cheney, in anticipation
of imminent events, had appointed Edgar Ortiz as president of Halliburton Energy Services, their global division.
[26]
The Yukos Oil Company merged with the smaller Sibneft Oil Company on October 3, 2003 which created Russia's largest oil and gas
business and the world's fourth-largest private oil company.
[27] On May 11, 2007 Halliburton announced they
had made an agreement with the Tyumen State Oil and Gas University to open a new employee-training center in Russia to grow their
business in that country and in the surrounding region. They are currently training students from five countries, Kazakhstan, the
Netherlands, Norway, Russia and the United Kingdom.
[28] Halliburton was awarded a $33 million contract
by TNK-BP to provide oil field services to develop the Ust-Vakh field in Western Siberia.
[29]
September 11 – Black Op Cover-up
Three top securities brokers had offices in the World Trade Center, Cantor Fitzgerald, Euro Brokers and Garbon
Inter Capital. Flight 11 struck just under the floors where Cantor Fitzgerald was located. Cantor Fitzgerald, with possible
connections to the U.S. Intelligence apparatus, was America's biggest securities broker and apparently the main target. Within
minutes, an explosion in the North Tower's vacant 23 rd floor, right under the offices of the FBI and Garbon Inter
Capital on the 25 th floor caused a huge fire from the 22 nd through the 25 th floors. At
the same time, there was an explosion in the basement of the North Tower.
[30] A vault in the North Tower basement
held less than $1 billion in gold, much of which was reportedly moved before 9/11. However, the government had hundreds of
billions of dollars of securities which were summarily destroyed. The Federal Reserve, untouched by the crisis at its downtown
offices (as they had everything backed up to a remote location), assumed emergency powers that afternoon. The $240 billion
in securities were electronically cleared.
[31] Then, at 9:03, Flight 175 slammed into the 78 th floor of the South Tower just below the 84 th
floor where Euro Brokers were located. [32]
Brian Clark, the manager at Euro Brokers, heard numerous explosions, apparently unrelated to what he referred to as the oxygen-starved
fire caused by the plane crash.
The September 11 attacks related to the financial improprieties during the preceding ten years which spurred at least nine federal
investigations which were initiated in 1997-1998, about the same time that Osama bin Laden, after twenty years as a CIA asset, announced
a fatwa against the U.S. The records of many of those investigations were held in the Buildings Six and Seven and on the 23
rd floor of the North Tower. Those investigations were sure to reveal the black Eagle Trust shenanigans.
[33] Building Seven, not hit by a plane, collapsed
at 5:20:33 p.m. but was vacated as early as 9:00 when evacuees claimed to see dead bodies and sporadic fires within the building.
By 2008 and even earlier the covert securities were worth trillions. The securities used to decimate the Soviets
and end the Cold War were stored in certain broker's vaults in the World Trade Center where they were destroyed on September
11, 2001. They would have come due for settlement and clearing on September 12, 2001.
[34] The federal agency investigating
these bonds, the Office of Naval Intelligence was in the section of the Pentagon that was destroyed on September 11. Renovations
at the Pentagon were due to be completed on September 16, 2001. However, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the entity
that often monitors war games, was hurriedly moved. If they were monitoring the simultaneous war games that morning, they would
have realized that the games were used as a distraction from the actual assault. Whatever hit the pentagon struck the Navy
Command Center and the offices of the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot (CNO-IP).
[35] There were 125 fatalities in the
Pentagon, thirty-one percent of them were people who worked in the Naval Command Center, the location of the Office of Naval
Intelligence. Thirty-nine of the forty people who worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence died .
[36]
On September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon couldn't account for $2.3 trillion, "We are, as they say, tangled in
our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.
We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are
inaccessible or incompatible." [37] It was forgotten
the following morning. Accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts who were in the section of the Pentagon being renovated met their
unexpected deaths. The destruction of accounting facts and figures will prevent discovery of where that money went. I am quite certain
someone knows where it is. Certainly this is not merely gross incompetence but private seizure of public funds.
[38] At the time Rabbi Dov Zakheim was chief-financial
officer for the Department of Defense. [39]
In 1993, Zakheim worked for SPS International, part of System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor. His firm's subsidiary,
Tridata Corporation directed the investigation of the first "terrorist" attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
[40]
Certain National Security officials who had participated in the Cold War victory in 1991 thus comprised the collateral damage
of the Cold War. They, along with hundreds of innocent people were in the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Their deaths
were presumably required to conceal the existence of the Black Eagle Trust, along with the numerous illegal activities it had funded
for over 50 years. This massive destruction, and the lost lives, constitutes a massive cover-up and continued lawlessness by the
brotherhood of death, Skull and Bones, and their accomplices, the Enterprise.
[41] The Enterprise was established in the 1980s
as a covert fascist Cold Warriors faction working with other groups like Halliburton's private security forces and the Moonies. Citibank
is connected to the Enterprise, along with all the CIA front banks, Nugen Hand and BCCI.
Double Dipping
Alvin B. "Buzzy" Krongard was elected Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Brown and Sons in 1991 and Chairman of the Board in
1994. Bankers Trust purchased Alexander Brown and Sons in 1997 to form BT Alex Brown. Krongard relinquished his investments in Alex
Brown to Banker's Trust as part of the merger. He became Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust where he personally interacted with wealthy
clients who were intimately linked to drug money laundering. After a year of possible networking, Krongard joined (or as Michael
Ruppert suggests, rejoined ) the CIA in 1998 where his friend, Director George Tenet, concentrated his skills on private banking
ventures within the elite moneyed community. Senate investigations verify that private banking firms frequently engage in money laundering
from illicit drugs and corporate crime operations.
[42] On January 28, 2000 the Reginald Howe and
GATA Lawsuit was filed which accused certain U.S. bullion banks of illegally dumping U.S. Treasury gold on the market. The lawsuit
named Deutsche bank Alex Brown, the U.S. Treasury, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve, and Citibank, Chase, as defendants. Gerald
Corrigan was accused of having private knowledge of the scheme.
[43] Krongard became the Executive Director
of the CIA, essentially the Chief Operating Officer, and the number three man on March 16, 2001. Krongard, while at the CIA, arranged
for Blackwater's Erik Prince to get his first contract with the U.S. government, and later joined its board.
Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert, estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed
through the WTC computers before and during the disaster on September 11, 2001. A Deutsche Bank employee verified that approximately
five minutes before the first plane hit the tower that the Deutsche Bank computer system in their WTC office was seized by an outside,
unknown entity. Every single file was swiftly uploaded to an unidentified locality. This employee escaped from the building, but
lost many of his friends. He knew, from his position in the company, that Alex Brown, the Deutsche Bank subsidiary participated in
insider trading. Senator Carl Levin claimed that Alex Brown was just one of twenty prominent U.S. banks associated with money laundering.
[44]
Andreas von Bülow, a Social Democratic Party member of the German parliament (1969-1994), was on the parliamentary committee on
intelligence services, a group that has access to classified information. Von Bülow was also a member of the Schalck-Golodkowski
investigation committee which investigates white-collar crime. He has estimated that inside trader profits surrounding 9/11 totaled
approximately $15 billion. Von Bülow told The Daily Telegraph "If what I say is right, the whole US government should end
up behind bars." Further, he said, "They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence they invented the story
of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation." He also said,
"I'm convinced that the US apparatus must have played a role and my theory is backed up by the [Washington] government's refusal
to present any proof whatsoever of what happened."
[45]
On September 26, CBS reported that the amount was more than $100 million and that seven countries were investigating the irregular
trades. Two newspapers, Reuters and the New York Times, and other mainstream media reported that the CIA regularly
monitors extraordinary trades and economic irregularities to ascertain possible criminal activities or financial assaults. In fact,
the CIA uses specialized software, PROMIS, to scrutinize trades.
[46]
Numerous researchers believe, with justification, that the transactions in the financial markets are indicative of foreknowledge
of the events of 9/11, the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon. One of the trades, for $2.5 million, a pittance compared
to the total, went unclaimed. Alex Brown, once managed by Krongard, was the firm that placed the put options on United Airlines stock.
President Bush awarded Krongard by appointing him as CIA Executive Director in 2004.
[47]
Between September 6 and 7, 2001, the Chicago Board Options Exchange received purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines
and only 396 call options. If 4,000 of those options were purchased by people with foreknowledge, they would have accrued about $5
million. On September 10, the Chicago exchange received 4,516 put options on American Airlines compared to 748 calls. The implications
are that some insiders might profit by about $4 million. These two incidents were wholly irregular and at least six times higher
than normal. [48]
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company, who occupied floors 43-46, 56, 59-74 of the World Trade Center, Tower 2, saw 2,157 of its
October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday. This compares to an average of 27 contracts per day
before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000
of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at
least $1.2 million. The U.S. government never again mentioned the trade irregularities after October 12, 2001.
[49] Catastrophic events serve two purposes
for the top criminal element in society – the perpetrators seize resources while their legislative accomplices impose burdensome
restrictions on the citizens to make them more submissive and silent.
[1] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E.P. Heidner, pp. 4-5 [2] Ibid, p. 20 [3] Ibid, pp. 4-5 [4] Ibid [5] September 11 Commission Report by E. P.
Heidner, 2008, p. 108 [6] Gold Warriors, America's Secret Recovery
of Yamashita's Gold by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Verso Publishing, 2003, pp. 32-43 [7] Ibid, pp. 318 [8] Ibid, pp. 14-15 [9] Ex-Treasury Chief Gets 1-Month Term in
Bank Fraud Case by Frank J. Prial, New York Times, June 28, 1987 [10] Gold Warriors, America's Secret Recovery
of Yamashita's Gold by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Verso Publishing, 2003, p. 5 [11] Ibid, p. 98 [12] Ibid, p. 102 [13] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E. P. Heidner, pp. 4-6 [14] Ibid, p. 29 [15] Tyumen Oil of Russia Seeks Links to
Old Foes After Winning Fight By Neela Banerjee, New York Times, December 2, 1999 [16] Halliburton Energy Services Enters Into
Alliance Agreement With Tyumen Oil Company, Press Release, October 15, 1998,
http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/1998/hesnws_101598.jsp [17] Ibid [18] Halliburton Press Release, Halliburton
And Russian Oil Company Sibneft Sign Framework Agreement, February 7, 2002,
http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/2002/corpnws_020702.jsp [19] TNK-BP, Our company,
http://www.tnk-bp.com/company/ [20] Russia's largest field is far from depleted
By Jerome R. Corsi, Word Net Daily, November 04, 2005,
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47219 [21] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E.P. Heidner, p. 28 [22] Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, Source Watch,
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mikhail_B._Khodorkovsky [23] Russia's Ruling Robbers by Mark Ames,
Consortium News, March 11, 1999, http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/c031199a.html [24] "Sovest" Group Campaign for Granting
Political Prisoner Status to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, February 7, 2008 [25] Halliburton Man to Sub for Khodorkovsky,
Simon Ostrovsky, Moscow Times, April 30, 2004 as noted in the September 11 Commission Report, p. 233; See also Arrested Oil Tycoon
Passed Shares to Banker, Washington Times, November 2, 2003 [26] Halliburton Press Release, Ortiz Named
President Of Halliburton Energy Services, November 19, 1997,
http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/1997/hesnws_111997.jsp [27] Russia: Yukos-Sibneft union forms world's
No. 4 oil producer, Global Finance, Jun 2003, http://mikhail_khodorkovsky_society.blogspot.com/ [28] Halliburton Opens Russia Training Center,
International Business Times, May 11, 2007,
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070511/halliburton-training.htm [29] Halliburton gets Russia work, Oil Daily,
January 26, 2006, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-5579583_ITM [30] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E. P. Heidner, p. 2 [31] Ibid, p. 29 [32] Ibid, pp. 2 [33] Ibid, p. 28-29 [34] "Sioux City, Iowa, July 25, 2005 TomFlocco.com
, According to leaked documents from an intelligence file obtained through a military source in the Office of Naval Intelligence
(ONI), on or about September 12, 1991 non-performing and unauthorized gold-backed debt instruments were used to purchase ten-year
"Brady" bonds. The bonds in turn were illegally employed as collateral to borrow $240 billion--120 in Japanese Yen and 120 in
Deutsch Marks--exchanged for U.S. currency under false pretenses; or counterfeit and unlawful conversion of collateral against which
an unlimited amount of money could be created in derivatives and debt instruments " from Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to
White House 9/11 finance, Tom Flocco, tomflocco.com [35] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E.P. Heidner, p. 45 [36] Ibid, p. 2 [37] Rumsfeld's comments were on the Department
of defense web site but have been understandably removed,
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010910-secdef.ht [38] The War On Waste Defense Department
Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds -- $2.3 Trillion,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml [39] September 11 Commission Report by E.
P. Heidner, 2008, p. 108 [40] Following Zakheim and Pentagon Trillions
to Israel and 9-11By Jerry Mazza, July 31, 2006, http://www.rense.com/general75/latest.htm [41] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E. P. Heidner, p. 6 [42] Crossing the Rubicon, the Decline of
the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, Canada, 2004, p. 56 [43] Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations
and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 by E. P. Heidner, p. 28 [44] Crossing the Rubicon, the Decline of
the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, Canada, 2004, pp. 243-247 [45] USA staged 9/11 Attacks, German best-seller
by Kate Connolly, National Post & London Telegraph, November 20, 2003 [46] Crossing the Rubicon, the Decline of
the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, Canada, 2004, pp. 243-247 [47] Ibid, pp. 243-247 [48] Ibid, pp. 243-247 [49] Ibid, pp. 243-247
Comments: deannaATspingola.email
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This is not "the reputation for hyperbole". This is attempt to defend the interests of MIC, including the
interests of intelligence agencies themselves in view of deteriorating financial position of the USA. And first of all the level
of the current funding. Like was the case in 2016 elections, the intelligence
agencies and first of all CIA should now be considered as the third party participating in the
2020 election which attempts to be the kingmaker. They are interested in continuing and intensifying the Cold War 2, as it secured
funding for them and MIC (of this they are essential part)
Notable quotes:
"... The official, Shelby Pierson, "appears to have overstated the intelligence community's formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month," according to CNN . ..."
"... " The intelligence doesn't say that ," one senior national security official told CNN. "A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he's a dealmaker." - CNN ..."
"... To recap - Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee a lie , which was promptly leaked to the press - ostensibly by Democrats on the committee, and it's just now getting walked back with far less attention than the original 'bombshell' headline received. ..."
"... No biggie... the media just ran with hysteria for 3 years as gospel accusing people of treason ..."
"... Well guess what? It turns out the media and the DNC were the ones working for Russia, executing their long standing goal to create chaos better than Russia could have ever dreamed of. https://t.co/PhrJiES9ui ..."
The US intelligence community's top election security official who appears to have
overstated Russian interference in the 2020 election has a history of hyperbole - described
by the
Wall Street Journal as "a reputation for being injudicious with her words."
The official, Shelby Pierson, "appears to have overstated the intelligence community's
formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance
during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month," according to
CNN .
The official, Shelby Pierson, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that
Russia is interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump
get reelected .
The US intelligence community has assessed that Russia is interfering in the 2020
election and has separately assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work
with. But the US does not have evidence that Russia's interference this cycle is aimed at
reelecting Trump , the officials said.
" The intelligence doesn't say that ," one senior national security official told CNN.
"A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference,
it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can
work with, he's a dealmaker." -
CNN
Pierson was reportedly peppered with questions from the House Intelligence Committee,
which 'caused her to overstep and assert that Russia has a preference for Trump to be
reelected,' according to the report. CNN notes that one intelligence official said that her
characterization was "misleading," while a national security official said she failed to
provide the "nuance" required to put the US intelligence conclusions in proper context.
To recap - Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee a lie , which was promptly leaked
to the press - ostensibly by Democrats on the committee, and it's just now getting walked
back with far less attention than the original 'bombshell' headline received.
Sound familiar?
No biggie... the media just ran with hysteria for 3 years as gospel accusing people of
treason
Well guess what? It turns out the media and the DNC were the ones working for Russia,
executing their long standing goal to create chaos better than Russia could have ever
dreamed of. https://t.co/PhrJiES9ui
I'm finding it hard to think of examples where the formerly norm-giving group becomes derided or humiliated.
You can probably try to look at the situation in (now independent) republics of the former USSR. Simplifying previously oppressed
group, given a lucky chance, most often strive for dominance and oppression of other groups including and especially former dominant
group. This is an eternal damnation of ethno/cultural nationalism.
And not only it (look at Mutual Help and The State in Shantytowns.) In them ethnic comminutes often own protection markets,
offer services that hire people and replace the state, pay off gang leaders. they also provide some community support for particular
ethnic group, enforce the rules of trade within themselves, etc. In GB the abuse of children by ethnic gangs was sickening (
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/sep/30/abuse-children-asian-communities
)
In many cases of ethnic/cultural nationalism this looks more like a competition for resources with the smoke screen of noble
intentions/human rights/past oppression/ humiliations/etc
Or you can look at the language policy in the USA and the actual situation in some areas/institutions of Florida and California
and how English speakers feel in those areas/institutions. Or in some areas of Quebec in Canada.
That actually suggests another meaning of famous Randolph Bourne quote " War is the health of the state " (said in the midst
of the First World War.) It bring the unity unachievable in peace time or by any other methods, albeit temporarily (from Ch 14.
Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States ):
the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men died in frightful numbers on the
battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of trenches.
In the United States, not yet in the war, there was worry about the health of the state. Socialism was growing. The IWW
seemed to be everywhere. Class conflict was intense. In the summer of 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco,
a bomb exploded, killing nine people; two local radicals, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, were arrested and would spend twenty
years in prison. Shortly after that Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males
to avert the danger that "these people of ours shall be divided into classes." Rather: "We must let our young men know that
they owe some responsibility to this country."
The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20
million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war
brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life. The rhetoric of the socialists, that it was an "imperialist
war," now seems moderate and hardly arguable. The advanced capitalist countries of Europe were fighting over boundaries, colonies,
spheres of influence; they were competing for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East.
Neo-McCarthyism now serves a somewhat similar purpose in the USA. Among other thing (like absolving Hillary from her fiasco
to "deux ex machine" trick instead of real reason -- the crisis and rejection of neoliberalism by the sizable strata of the USA
population) it is an attempt to unify the nation after 2016.
In the language of the American Oligarchy and it's tame and owned presstitutes on the MSM,
any country targeted for destabilisation, destruction and rape – either because it
doesn't do what America tells it do (Russia), because it has rich natural resources or has a
'socialist' state (Venezuela) or because lunatic neo-cons and even more lunatic Christian
Evangelicals (hoping to provoke The End Times ) want it to happen (Syria and Iran) – is
first labelled as a 'regime'.
That's because the word 'regime' is associated with dictatorships and human rights abuses
and establishing a non-compliant country as a 'regime' is the US government's and MSM's first
step at manufacturing public consent for that country's destruction.
Unfortunately if you sit back and talk a cool-headed, factual look at actions and attitudes
that we're told constitute a regime then you have to conclude that America itself is 'a
regime'.
So, here's why America is a regime:
Regimes disobey international law. Like America's habit of blowing up wedding parties
with drones or the illegal presence of its troops in Syria, Iraq and God knows where
else.
Regimes carry out illegal assassination programs – I need say no more here than
Qasem Soleimani.
Regimes use their economic power to bully and impose their will – sanctioning
countries even when they know those sanctions will, for example, be responsible for the death
of 500,000 Iraqi children (the 'price worth paying', remember?).
Regimes renege on international treaties – like Iran nuclear treaty, for
example.
Regimes imprison and hound whistle-blowers – like Chelsea manning and Julian
Assange.
Regimes imprison people. America is the world leader in incarceration. It has 2.2 million
people in its prisons (more than China which has 5 times the US's population), that's 25% of
the world's prison population for 5% of the world's population, Why does America need so many
prisoners? Because it has a massive, prison-based, slave labour business that is hugely
profitable for the oligarchy.
Regimes censor free speech. Just recently, we've seen numerous non-narrative following
journalists and organisations kicked off numerous social media platforms. I didn't see lots
of US senators standing up and saying 'I disagree completely with what you say but I will
fight to the death to preserve your right to say it'. Did you?
Regimes are ruled by cliques. I don't need to tell you that America is kakistocratic
Oligarchy ruled by a tiny group of evil, rich, Old Men, do I?
Regimes keep bad company. Their allies are other 'regimes', and they're often lumped
together by using another favourite presstitute term – 'axis of evil'. America has its
own little axis of evil. It's two main allies are Saudi Arabia – a homophobic, women
hating, head chopping, terrorist financing state currently engaged in a war of genocide
(assisted by the US) in Yemen – and the racist, genocidal undeclared nuclear power
state of Israel.
Regimes commit human rights abuses. Here we could talk about ooh let's think. Last year's
treatment of child refugees from Latin America, the execution of African Americans for
'walking whilst black' by America's militarized, criminal police force or the millions of
dollars in cash and property seized from entirely innocent Americans by that same police
force under 'civil forfeiture' laws or maybe we could mention huge American corporations
getting tax refunds whilst ordinary Americans can't afford decent, effective healthcare.
Regimes finance terrorism. Mmmm .just like America financed terrorists to help destroy
Syria and Libya and invested $5 billion dollars to install another regime – the one of
anti-Semites and Nazis in Ukraine
Yup – America passes the 'sniff test' for Regime status.
If you're sick of being ruled by lying, psychopathic wankers then imagine a world,
much like this one but subtly different where, instead of always getting away with it all
the time, our psychopathic rulers occasionally got what they really, really deserved.
4
hours ago
America's Military is Killing – Americans!
In 2018, Republicans (AND Democrats) voted to cut $23 billion dollars from the budget
for food stamps (42 million Americans currently receive them).
Fats forward to 21 December 2019 and Donald Trump signed off on a US defense budget of a
mind boggling $738 billion dollars.
To put that in context -- the annual US government Education budget is
sround $68 billion dollars.
Did you get that -- $738 billion on defense, $68 billion on education?
That means the government spends more than ten times on preparations to kill people than
it does on preparing children for life in the adult world.
Wow!
How ******* psychotic and death-affirming is that? It gets even worse when you consider
that that $716 billion dollars is only the headline figure – it doesn't include
whatever the Deep State siphons away into black-ops and kick backs. And .America's military
isn't even very good – it's hasn't 'won' a conflict since the second world war, it's
proud (and horrifically expensive) aircraft carriers have been rendered obsolete by Chinese
and Russian hypersonic missiles and its 'cutting edge' weapons are so good (not) that
everyone wants to buy the cheaper and better Russian versions: classic example – the
F-35 jet program will screw $1.5 TRILLION (yes, TRILLION) dollars out of US taxpayers but
but it's a piece of **** plane that doesn't work properly which the Russians laughingly
refer to as 'a flying piano'.
In contrast to America's free money for the military industrial complex defense budget,
China spends $165 billion and Russia spends $61 billion on defense and I don't see anyone
attacking them (well, except America, that is be it only by proxy for now).
Or, put things another way. The United Kingdom spent £110 billion on it's National
Health Service in 2017. That means, if you get sick in England, you can see a doctor for
free. If you need drugs you pay a prescription charge of around $11.50(nothing, if
unemployed, a child or elderly), whatever the market price of the drugs. If you need to see
a consultant or medical specialist, you'll see one for free. If you need an operation,
you'll get one for free. If you need on-going care for a chronic illness, you'll get it for
free.
Fully socialised, free at the point of access, healthcare for all. How good is that?
US citizens could have that, too.
Allowing for the US's larger population, the UK National Health Service transplanted to
America could cost about $650 billion a year. That would still leave $66 billion dollars
left over from the proposed defense budget of $716 billion to finance weapons of death and
destruction -- more than those 'evil Ruskies' spend.
The US has now been at war, somewhere in the world (i.e in someone elses' country where
the US doesn't have any business being) continuously for 28 years. Those 28 years have
coincided with (for the 'ordinary people', anyway) declining living standards, declining
real wages, increased police violence, more repression and surveillance, declining
lifespans, declining educational and health outcomes, more every day misery in other words,
America's military is killing Americans. Oh, and millions of people in far away countries
(although, obviously, those deaths are in far away countries and they are of
brown-skinned people so they don't really count, do they?).
From comments (Is the USA government now a "regime"): In 2018, Republicans (AND Democrats) voted to cut $23 billion dollars from
the budget for food stamps (42 million Americans currently receive them). Regimes disobey international law. Like America's habit of
blowing up wedding parties with drones or the illegal presence of its troops in Syria, Iraq and God knows where else. Regimes carry
out illegal assassination programs I need say no more here than Qasem Soleimani. Regimes use their economic power to bully and
impose their will sanctioning countries even when they know those sanctions will, for example, be responsible for the death of
500,000 Iraqi children (the 'price worth paying', remember?). Regimes renege on international treaties like Iran nuclear treaty,
for example. Regimes imprison and hound whistle-blowers like Chelsea manning and Julian Assange. Regimes imprison people. America
is the world leader in incarceration. It has 2.2 million people in its prisons (more than China which has 5 times the US's
population), that's 25% of the world's prison population for 5% of the world's population, Why does America need so many prisoners?
Because it has a massive, prison-based, slave labour business that is hugely profitable for the oligarchy.
Regimes censor free speech. Just recently, we've seen numerous non-narrative following journalists and organisations kicked off
numerous social media platforms. I didn't see lots of US senators standing up and saying 'I disagree completely with what you say
but I will fight to the death to preserve your right to say it'. Did you?
Regimes are ruled by cliques. I don't need to tell you that America is kakistocratic Oligarchy ruled by a tiny group of evil,
rich, Old Men, do I?
Regimes keep bad company. Their allies are other 'regimes', and they're often lumped together by using another favourite presstitute
term 'axis of evil'. America has its own little axis of evil. It's two main allies are Saudi Arabia a homophobic, women hating,
head chopping, terrorist financing state currently engaged in a war of genocide (assisted by the US) in Yemen and the racist,
genocidal undeclared nuclear power state of Israel.
Regimes commit human rights abuses. Here we could talk aboutoohlet's think. Last year's treatment of child refugees from Latin
America, the execution of African Americans for 'walking whilst black' by America's militarized, criminal police force or the
millions of dollars in cash and property seized from entirely innocent Americans by that same police force under 'civil forfeiture'
laws or maybe we could mention huge American corporations getting tax refunds whilst ordinary Americans can't afford decent,
effective healthcare.
Regimes finance terrorism. Mmmm.just like America financed terrorists to help destroy Syria and Libya and invested $5 billion
dollars to install another regime the one of anti-Semites and Nazis in Ukraine
Highly recommended!
Some comments edited for clarity...
Notable quotes:
"... But after retirement, Smedley Butler changed his tune. ..."
"... "I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers." ..."
"... Smedley Butler's Marine Corps and the military of his day was, in certain ways, a different sort of organization than today's highly professionalized armed forces. History rarely repeats itself, not in a literal sense anyway. Still, there are some disturbing similarities between the careers of Butler and today's generation of forever-war fighters. All of them served repeated tours of duty in (mostly) unsanctioned wars around the world. Butler's conflicts may have stretched west from Haiti across the oceans to China, whereas today's generals mostly lead missions from West Africa east to Central Asia, but both sets of conflicts seemed perpetual in their day and were motivated by barely concealed economic and imperial interests. ..."
"... When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals and admirals currently serving on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone, and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars . As for the most senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War, although the active military is now about half the size it was then. Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public critic of today's failing wars. ..."
"... The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich ; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower , retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis . All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices, and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse, however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques. ..."
"... Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized " surge " in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star. ..."
"... At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with " professionalization " after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an "all-volunteer force." The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America's wars by erasing whatever " skin in the game " most citizens had. ..."
"... One group of generals, however, reportedly now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they're opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald doesn't "listen enough to military advice" on, you know, how to wage war forever and a day. ..."
"... That beast, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now on steroids as American commanders in retirement regularly move directly from the military onto the boards of the giant defense contractors, a reality which only contributes to the dearth of Butlers in the military retiree community. For all the corruption of his time, the Pentagon didn't yet exist and the path from the military to, say, United Fruit Company, Standard Oil, or other typical corporate giants of that moment had yet to be normalized for retiring generals and admirals. Imagine what Butler would have had to say about the modern phenomenon of the " revolving door " in Washington. ..."
"... Today, generals don't seem to have a thought of their own even in retirement. And more's the pity... ..."
"... Am I the only one to notice that Hollywood and it's film distributors have gone full bore on "war" productions, glorifying these historical events while using poetic license to rewrite history. Prepping the numbheads. ..."
"... Forget rank. As Mr Sjursen implies, dissidents are no longer allowed in the higher ranks. "They" made sure to fix this as Mr Butler had too much of a mind of his own (US education system also programmed against creative, charismatic thinkers, btw). ..."
"... Today, the "Masters of the Permawars" refer to the international extortion, MIC, racket as "Defending American Interests"! .....With never any explanation to the public/American taxpayer just what "American Interests" the incredible expenditures of American lives, blood, and treasure are being defended! ..."
"... "The Americans follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Jospeh Goebbels ..."
"... The greatest anti-imperialist of our times is Michael Parenti: ..."
"... The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. ..."
"... If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. ..."
There once lived an odd little man - five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds
sopping wet - who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist
insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to
history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction
of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30
years later, as one of this country's most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist
dissidents.
Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of
an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America's " Banana Wars " from 1898 to
1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would
retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.
A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese
Boxer Rebellion
of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief
of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine
Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might
today be labeled peacekeeping , counterinsurgency , and
advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico,
Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those
imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, " Dollar Diplomacy "
operations -- that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests
-- until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine.
But after retirement, Smedley Butler changed his tune. He began to blast the
imperialist foreign policy and interventionist bullying in which he'd only recently played such
a prominent part. Eventually, in 1935 during the Great Depression, in what became a classic
passage in his memoir, which he
titled "War Is a Racket," he wrote:
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... And during
that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall
Street, and for the Bankers."
Seemingly overnight, the famous war hero transformed himself into an equally acclaimed
antiwar speaker and activist in a politically turbulent era. Those were, admittedly, uncommonly
anti-interventionist years, in which veterans and politicians alike promoted what (for America,
at least) had been fringe ideas. This was, after all, the height of what later pro-war
interventionists would pejoratively label American " isolationism ."
Nonetheless, Butler was unique (for that moment and certainly for our own) in his
unapologetic amenability to left-wing domestic politics and materialist critiques of American
militarism. In the last years of his life, he would face increasing criticism from his former
admirer, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the military establishment, and the interventionist
press. This was particularly true after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded Poland and later
France. Given the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind, hindsight undoubtedly proved Butler's
virulent opposition to U.S. intervention in World War II wrong.
Nevertheless, the long-term erasure of his decade of antiwar and anti-imperialist activism
and the assumption that all his assertions were irrelevant has proven historically deeply
misguided. In the wake of America's brief but bloody entry into the First World War, the
skepticism of Butler (and a significant part of an entire generation of veterans) about
intervention in a new European bloodbath should have been understandable. Above all, however,
his critique of American militarism of an earlier imperial era in the Pacific and in Latin
America remains prescient and all too timely today, especially coming as it did from one of the
most decorated and high-ranking general officers of his time. (In the era of the never-ending
war on terror, such a phenomenon is quite literally inconceivable.)
Smedley Butler's Marine Corps and the military of his day was, in certain ways, a different
sort of organization than today's highly professionalized armed forces. History rarely repeats
itself, not in a literal sense anyway. Still, there are some disturbing similarities between
the careers of Butler and today's generation of
forever-war fighters. All of them served repeated tours of duty in (mostly) unsanctioned
wars around the world. Butler's conflicts may have stretched west from Haiti across the oceans
to China, whereas today's generals mostly lead missions from West Africa east to Central Asia,
but both sets of conflicts seemed perpetual in their day and were motivated by barely concealed
economic and imperial interests.
Nonetheless, whereas this country's imperial campaigns of the first third of the twentieth
century generated a Smedley Butler, the hyper-interventionism of the first decades of this
century hasn't produced a single even faintly comparable figure. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Why that
is matters and illustrates much about the U.S. military establishment and contemporary national
culture, none of it particularly encouraging.
Why No Antiwar Generals
When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps major generals holding
a rank just below that of only the Marine commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with
about 900 generals and admirals currently serving on active duty, including 24 major
generals in the Marine Corps alone, and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a
single one has offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of ill-advised,
remarkably unsuccessful American wars . As for the most senior officers, the 40 four-star
generals and admirals whose vocal antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are
more of them today than
there were even at the height of the Vietnam War, although the active military is now about
half the size it was then. Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a
public critic of today's failing wars.
Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars has come from retired
colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally more junior officers (like me), as well as
enlisted service members. Not that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it
disturbing (and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the retired
military figures who has spoken out against America's forever wars.
The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel
Lawrence Wilkerson ;
Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich ; and Iraq veteran and
Afghan War
whistleblower , retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis . All three have
proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices, and -- on some level -- cherished
personal mentors. For better or worse, however, none carry the potential clout of a retired
senior theater commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.
Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the level of colonel.
Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual officers chose early retirement or didn't
make general or admiral. Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a
few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired commanders. In fact, a
selection committee of top generals and admirals is appointed each year to choose the next
colonels to earn their first star. And perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that, according
to numerous reports , "the
members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated, to seek candidates in their
own image -- officers whose careers look like theirs." At a minimal level, such a system is
hardly built to foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.
Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received
criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the
highly publicized " surge " in Iraq, had to leave that
theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted
to ensure that a twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.
Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the time as if it were a
major scandal, since most of them were convinced that Petraeus and his vaunted
counterinsurgency or " COINdinista "
protégés and their " new " war-fighting doctrine had the
magic touch that would turn around the failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus
tried to apply those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of his
later, and you know the results
of that.
But here's the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by America's most acclaimed
general of that moment to get new stars handed out to prominent colonels who had, until then,
been stonewalled by Cold War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also
strangely familiar) tactics in this country's wars. Imagine, then, how likely it would be for
such a leadership system to produce genuine dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less
a crew of future Smedley Butlers.
At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with "
professionalization
" after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the
citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft,
and create an "all-volunteer force." The elimination of conscription, as predicted
by critics at the time,
created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding
America's wars by erasing whatever " skin in the game " most
citizens had.
More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though, the professionalization
of the military, and of the officer corps in particular, ensured that any future Smedley
Butlers would be left in the dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or
colonel) by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such figures is current
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark Milley. He may speak
gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he's turned out to be
just another yes-man
for another
war-power -hungry president.
One group of generals, however,
reportedly now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they're opposed to
endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald doesn't "listen enough to military
advice" on, you know, how to wage war forever and a day.
What Would Smedley Butler Think
Today?
In his years of retirement, Smedley Butler regularly focused on the economic component of
America's imperial war policies. He saw clearly that the conflicts he had fought in, the
elections he had helped rig, the coups he had supported, and the constabularies he had formed
and empowered in faraway lands had all served the interests of U.S. corporate investors. Though
less overtly the case today, this still remains a reality in America's post-9/11 conflicts,
even on occasion embarrassingly so (as when the Iraqi ministry of oil was essentially the
only public building protected by American troops as looters tore apart the Iraqi capital,
Baghdad, in the post-invasion chaos of April 2003). Mostly, however, such influence plays out
far more
subtly than that, both
abroad and here at home where those wars help maintain the record profits of the top
weapons makers of the military-industrial complex.
That beast, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now on
steroids as American commanders in retirement regularly
move directly from the military onto the boards of the giant defense contractors, a reality
which only contributes to the dearth of Butlers in the military retiree community. For all the
corruption of his time, the Pentagon didn't yet exist and the path from the military to, say,
United Fruit Company, Standard Oil, or other typical corporate giants of that moment had yet to
be normalized for retiring generals and admirals. Imagine what Butler would have had to say
about the modern phenomenon of the "
revolving door " in Washington.
Of course, he served in a very different moment, one in which military funding and troop
levels were still contested in Congress. As a longtime critic of capitalist excesses who wrote
for leftist publications and supported
the Socialist Party candidate in the 1936 presidential elections, Butler would have found
today's
nearly trillion-dollar annual defense budgets beyond belief. What the grizzled former
Marine long ago identified as a treacherous
nexus between warfare and capital "in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses
in lives" seems to have reached its natural end point in the twenty-first century. Case in
point: the record (and still
rising ) "defense" spending of the present moment, including -- to please a president --
the creation of a whole new military service aimed at the full-scale militarization of
space .
Sadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous
polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution Americans still truly
trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be to have a high-ranking, highly
decorated, charismatic retired general in the Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around
those forever wars of ours. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the
military system of our moment.
Of course, Butler didn't exactly end his life triumphantly. In late May 1940, having lost 25
pounds due to illness and exhaustion -- and demonized as a leftist, isolationist crank but
still maintaining a whirlwind speaking schedule -- he checked himself into the Philadelphia
Navy Yard Hospital for a "rest." He died there, probably of some sort of cancer, four weeks
later. Working himself to death in his 10-year retirement and second career as a born-again
antiwar activist, however, might just have constituted the very best service that the two-time
Medal of Honor winner could have given the nation he loved to the very end.
Someone of his credibility, character, and candor is needed more than ever today.
Unfortunately, this military generation is unlikely to produce such a figure. In retirement,
Butler himself boldly
confessed that, "like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of
my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I
obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical..."
Today, generals don't seem to have a thought of their own even in retirement. And more's
the pity...
2 minutes ago
Am I the only one to notice that Hollywood and it's film
distributors have gone full bore on "war" productions, glorifying these historical events while
using poetic license to rewrite history. Prepping the numbheads.
14 minutes ago
TULSI GABBARD.
Forget rank. As Mr Sjursen implies, dissidents are no longer allowed in the higher ranks.
"They" made sure to fix this as Mr Butler had too much of a mind of his own (US education
system also programmed against creative, charismatic thinkers, btw).
The US Space Force has been created as part of a plan to disclose the deep state's Secret
Space Program (SSP), which has been active for decades, and which has utilized, and repressed,
advanced technologies that would provide free, unlimited renewable energy, and thus eliminate
hunger and poverty on a planetary scale.
14 minutes ago
What imperialism?
We are spreading freedumb and dumbocracy.
We are saving the world from socialism and communism.
We are energy independent, with innate exceptionalism and #MAGA# will usher in a new era
of American prosperity.
Any and all accusations of USSA imperialism, are made by the "woke" and those jealous of
the greatest Capitalist system in the world.
The swamp is being drained as I speak, and therefore will continue with unwavering
support for my 5x draft dodging, Zionist supporting, multiple times bankrupt, keeper of
broken promises POTUS.
Smedley Butler's book is not worthy of reading once you have the seminal work known as
"The Art Of The Deal"
Sadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous
polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution
Americans still truly trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be
to have a high-ranking, highly decorated, charismatic retired general in the
Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around those forever wars of ours.
Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the military
system of our moment.
This is why I feel an oath keeping constitutionally oriented American
general is what we need in power, clear out all 545 criminals in office now,
review their finances (and most of them will roll over on the others) and
punish accordingly, then the lobbyist, how many of them worked against the
country? You know what we do with those.
And then, finally, Hollywood, oh yes I long to see that **** hole burn with
everyone in it.
30 minutes ago
Republicrat: the two faces of the moar war whore.
32 minutes ago
Given the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind
Do tell, from what I've read the Nazis were really only a threat to a few
groups, the rest of us didn't need to worry.
35 minutes ago
Today, the "Masters
of the Permawars" refer to the international extortion, MIC, racket as
"Defending American Interests"! .....With never any explanation to the
public/American taxpayer just what "American Interests" the incredible
expenditures of American lives, blood, and treasure are being defended!
Why are we sending our children out into the hellholes of the world to be
maimed and killed in the fauxjew banksters' quest for world domination.
How stupid can we be!
41 minutes ago
(Edited) "Smedley Butler"... The last
time the UCMJ was actually used before being permanently turned into a "door
stop"!
49 minutes ago
He was correct about our staying out of WWII. Which, BTW,
would have never happened if we had stayed out of WWI.
22 minutes ago
(Edited)
Both wars were about the international fauxjew imposition of debt-money central
bankstering.
Both wars were promulgated by the Financial oligarchyof New York. The communist Red Army
of Russia was funded and supplied by the Financial oligarchyof New York. It was American Financial oligarchythat built the Russian Red Army that vexed the world and created the Cold War.
How many hundreds of millions of goyim were sacrificed to create both the
Russian and the Chinese Satanic behemoths.......and the communist horror that
is now embedded in American academia, publishing, American politics, so-called
news, entertainment, The worldwide Catholic religion, the Pentagon, and the
American deep state.......and more!
How stupid can we be. Every generation has the be dragged, kicking and
screaming, out of the eternal maw of historical ignorance to avoid falling back
into the myriad dark hellholes of history. As we all should know, people who
forget their own history are doomed to repeat it.
53 minutes ago
Today's
General is a robot with with a DNA.
54 minutes ago
All the General Staff is a
bunch of #asskissinglittlechickenshits
57 minutes ago
want to stop senseless
Empire wars>>well do this
War = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit.. If we taxed all
war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start? 1 hour ago
Here
is a simple straightforward trading maxim that might apply here: if it works or
is working keep doing it, but if it doesn't work or stops working, then STOP
doing it. There are plenty of people, now poorer, for not adhering to that
simple principle. Where is the Taxpayer's return on investment from the Combat
taking place on their behalf around the globe? 'Nuff said - it isn't working.
It is making a microscopic few richer & all others poorer so STOP doing it.
36 seconds ago We don't have to look far to figure out who they are that are
getting rich off the fauxjew permawars.
How can we be so stupid???
1 hour ago
See also:
TULSI GABBARD
1 hour ago
The main reason you don't see the generals
criticizing is that the current crop have not been in actual long term direct
combat with the enemy and have mostly been bureaucratic paper pushers.
Take the
Marine Major General who is the current commander of CENTCOM. By the time he
got into the Iraq/Afghanistan war he was already a Lieutenant Colonel and far
removed from direct action.
He was only there on and off for a few years. Here
are some of his other career highlights aft as they appear on his official
bio:
2006-07: he served as the Military Secretary to the 33rd and 34th
Commandants of the Marine Corps
2008: he was selected by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be the
Director of the Chairman's New Administration Transition Team (CNATT)
2009: he reported to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Kabul, Afghanistan to serve as the Deputy to the Deputy Chief of Staff (DCOS)
for Stability. ..... Deputy to the Deputy for Stability ???? WTF is that?
2010: he was assigned as the Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J-5) for
the U.S. Central Command
2012: he reported to Headquarters Marine Corps to serve as the Marine Corps
Representative to the Quadrennial Defense Review
In short, these top guys aren't warriors they're bureaucrats so why would we
expect them to be honest brokers of the truth?
51 minutes ago
are U saying
Chesty Puller he's NOT? 1 hour ago
(Edited) The purpose of war is to ensure
that the
Federal Reserve Note remains the world reserve paper currency of choice by
keeping it relevant and in demand across the globe by forcing pesky energy
producing nations to trade with it exclusively.
It is a 49 year old policy created by the private owners of quasi public
institutions called
central banks to ensure they remain the Wizards of Oz
doing gods work conjuring magic paper into existence with a secret
spell known as issuing credit.
How else is a technologically advanced society of billions of people
supposed to function w/out this
divinely inspired paper?
1 hour ago
Goebbels in "Churchill's Lie Factory"
where he said: "The Americans follow the principle that when one lies, one
should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of
looking ridiculous." - Jospeh Goebbels, "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik,"
12. january 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel
1 hour ago
The greatest
anti-imperialist of our times is Michael Parenti:
Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last
four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous
peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any
serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders.
When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so
that empires become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or
"dominions" (or, as in the case of Puerto Rico, "commonwealths" too).
Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense,"
"national security," and maintaining "stability" in one or another region. In
this book I want to look at imperialism for what it really is.
"Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world
history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while
oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is
seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and
political leaders."
Why would it when they who control academia, media and most of our
politicians are our enemies.
1 hour ago
"The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of
staff, retired Colonel
Lawrence
Wilkerson ; ..."
Yep, Wilkerson, who leaked Valerie Plame's name, not that it was a leak, to
Novak, and then stood by to watch the grand jury fry Scooter Libby. Wilkerson,
that paragon of moral rectitude. Wilkerson the silent, that *******.
sheesh,
1 hour ago
(Edited)
" A standing military force, with an overgrown
Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence
against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was
apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of
defending, have enslaved the people."
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a
standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the
rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia,
in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [I Annals
of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789])
A particularly pernicious example of intra-European
imperialism was the Nazi aggression during World War II, which gave the German
business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder the resources and
exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave labor of
concentration camps. - M. PARENTI, Against empire
See Alexander Parvus
1 hour ago
Collapse is the cure. It's
too far gone.
1 hour ago
Russia Wants to 'Jam' F-22 and F-35s in the Middle
East: Report
ZH retards think that the American mic is bad and all other mics are
good or don't exist. That's the power of brainwashing. Humans understand that
war in general is bad, but humans are becoming increasingly rare in this world.
1 hour ago
The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and
in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as
these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people
who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not
those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its
finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in
the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian
way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to
poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never
how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to
deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more
power.
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and
power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million
fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if
we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money
and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are
enthusiastically supporting the war effort.
The swamp is bigger than the military alone. Substitute Bureaucrat,
Statesman, or Beltway Bandit for General and Colonel in your writing above and
you've got a whole new article to post that is just as true.
2 hours ago
(Edited) War = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit..If we taxed
all war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start?
2 hours ago [edited for clarity]
War is a racket. And nobody loves a
racket more than Financial oligarchy. Americans come close though, that's why Financial oligarchy use them to
project their own rackets and provide protection reprisals.
If you fire 70% of the admirals and generals
you will increase the military capabilities of the US military by 40%.
They are incompetent hacks who are better on their knees in front of the MIC and Congress
then they are on any battlefield.
At least during WWII we had less of them and no one was hesitant to fire at least some of
them for incompetence. I say sum of them because many of the war hero generals needed to be
removed including Bradly, Eisenhower, Halsey, Nimitz, and even MacArthur.
But today, no one gets fired for anything.
Literally they have a special class of MBA's being generals and and strategic thinkers and
it has turned out to be a disaster for the military and the US.
An example by way of analogy is look at Boeing. How much better would Boeing be if they
fired all the MBA's and replaced them with engineers who loved air planes. Boeing would make a
lot less profit but its planes would be the best in the world.
"... He is making the USA a laughing stock, very threatening for sure, but he is a laughing stock and he perfectly sets up the scenario to ridicule his mongrel stupid president. ..."
On the big issue though I cant help seeing Pontious Pompeo as hurling himself about the globe
tilting at windmills. He is making the USA a laughing stock, very threatening for sure,
but he is a laughing stock and he perfectly sets up the scenario to ridicule his mongrel
stupid president.
uncle tungsten | Feb 11 2020 22:52 utc | 30
Isn't it a good method? This way, the vassals can comply with a smile.
This is mostly fear mongering as an affective bioengineered virus will create a pandemic, but
the truth is that Anthrax false flag attack after 9/11 was not an accident...
Trump administration beahaves like a completely lawless gang (stealing Syrian oil is one
example. Killing Soleimani is another ) , as for its behaviour on international arena, but I do
not believe they go that far. Even for for such "ruptured" gangster as Pompeo
Notable quotes:
"... Consider that a deadly virus created by the U.S. and used against another country was found out and verified, and in retaliation, that country or others decided to strike back with other toxic agents against America. Where would this end, and over time, how many billions could be affected in such a scenario? ..."
"... "In vast laboratories in the Ministry of Peace, and in experimental stations, teams of experts are indefatigably at work searching for new and deadlier gases; or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents; or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies." ..."
"... Additional notes: here , here , here , here , here and here . ..."
Interestingly, in the past, U.S. universities and NGOs went to China
specifically to do illegal biological experimentation, and this was so egregious to Chinese
officials, that forcible removal of these people was the result. Harvard University, one of the
major players in this scandal, stole the DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of Chinese
citizens, left China with those samples, and continued illegal bio-research in the U.S. It is
thought that the U.S. military, which puts a completely different spin on the conversation, had
commissioned the research in China at the time. This is more than suspicious.
The U.S. has, according to this
article at Global Research ,
had a massive biological warfare program since at least the early 1940s, but has used toxic
agents against this country and others since the 1860s . This is no secret, regardless of the
propaganda spread by the government and its partners in criminal bio-weapon research and
production.
As of 1999, the U.S. government had deployed its Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW)
arsenal against the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, China, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia,
Cuba, Haitian boat people, and our neighbor Canada according to this article at
Counter Punch . Of course, U.S.
citizens have been used as guinea pigs many times as well, and exposed to toxic germ agents and
deadly chemicals by government.
Keep in mind that this is a short list, as the U.S. is well known for also using proxies to
spread its toxic chemicals and germ agents, such as happened in Iraq and Syria. Since 1999
there have been continued incidences of several different viruses, most of which are presumed
to be
manmade , including the current Coronavirus that is affecting China today.
There is also much evidence of the research and development of race-specific bio-warfare
agents. This is very troubling. One would think, given the idiotic race arguments by
post-modern Marxists, that this would consume the mainstream news, and any participants in
these atrocious race-specific poisons would be outed at every level. That is not happening, but
I believe it is due to obvious reasons, including government cover-up, hypocrisy at all levels,
and leftist agenda driven objectives that would not gain ground with the exposure of this
government-funded anti-race science.
I will say that it is not just the U.S. that is developing and producing bio-warfare agents
and viruses, but many developed countries around the globe do so as well. But the United
States, as is the case in every area of war and killing, is by far the world leader in its
inhuman desire to be able to kill entire populations through biological and chemical warfare
means. Because these agents are extremely dangerous and uncontrollable, and can spread wildly,
the risk to not only isolated populations, but also the entire world is evident. Consider
that a deadly virus created by the U.S. and used against another country was found out and
verified, and in retaliation, that country or others decided to strike back with other toxic
agents against America. Where would this end, and over time, how many billions could be
affected in such a scenario?
All indications point to the fact that the most toxic, poisonous, and deadly viruses ever
known are being created in labs around the world. In the U.S. think of Fort Detrick, Maryland,
Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, Horn Island, Mississippi, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, Vigo
Ordinance Plant, Indiana, and many others. Think of the fascist partnerships between this
government and the pharmaceutical industry. Think of the U.S. military installations positioned
all around the globe. Nothing good can come from this, as it is not about finding cures for
disease, or about discovering vaccines, but is done for one reason only, and that is for the
purpose of bio-warfare for mass killing.
The drive to find biological weapons that will sicken and kill millions at a time is not
only a travesty, but is beyond evil. This power is held by the few, but the potential victims
of this madness include everyone on earth. How can such insanity at this level be allowed to
continue? If any issue could ever unite the masses, governments participating in biological and
germ warfare, race-specific killing, and creating viruses with the potential to affect disease
and death worldwide, should cause many to stand together against it. The first step is to
expose that governments, the most likely culprit being the U.S. government, are planting these
viruses purposely to cause great harm. Once that is proven, the unbelievable risk to all will
be known, and then people everywhere should put their divisiveness aside, stand together, and
stop this assault on mankind.
"In vast laboratories in the Ministry of Peace, and in experimental stations, teams of
experts are indefatigably at work searching for new and deadlier gases; or for soluble
poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole
continents; or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies." ~
George Orwell – 1984
"... In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what? We're
trying to build a completely new society.' ..."
"... And there once again you have it one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. ..."
I'd never heard of the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group (EASLG) until today, even though it turns out that one of its members
has the office next door to mine. Its
website says that
it seeks to respond to the challenge of East-West tensions by convening 'former and current officials and experts from a group of
Euro-Atlantic states and the European union to test ideas and develop proposals for improving security in areas of existential common
interest'. It hopes thereby to 'generate trust through dialogue.'
It's hard to object to any of this, but its latest
statement , entitled 'Twelve Steps Toward Greater Security in Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic Region', doesn't inspire a lot of
confidence. The 'twelve steps' the EASLG proposes to improve security in Eastern Ukraine are generally pretty uninspiring, being
largely of the 'set up a working group to explore' variety, or of such a vaguely aspirational nature as to be almost worthless (e.g.
'Advance reconstruction of Donbas An essential first step is to conduct a credible needs assessment for the Donbas region to inform
a strategy for its social-economic recovery.' Sounds nice, but in reality doesn't amount to a hill of beans).
For the most part, these proposals attempt to treat the symptoms of the war in Ukraine without addressing the root causes. In
a sense, that's fine, as symptoms need treating, but it's sticking plaster when the patient needs some invasive surgery. At the end
of its statement, though, the EASLG does go one step further with 'Step 12: Launch a new national dialogue about identity', saying:
A new, inclusive national dialogue across Ukraine is desirable and could be launched as soon as possible. Efforts should be
made to engage with perspectives from Ukraine's neighbors, especially Poland, Hungary, and Russia. This dialogue should address
themes of history and national memory, language, identity, and minority experience. It should include tolerance and respect for
ethnic and religious minorities in order to increase engagement, inclusiveness, and social cohesion.
This is admirably trendy and woke, but in the Ukrainian context somewhat explosive, as it implicitly challenges the identity politics
of the post-Maidan regime. Unsurprisingly, it's gone down like a lead balloon in Kiev. The notorious website Mirotvorets even
went so far as to add former
German ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger to its blacklist of enemies of Ukraine for having had the temerity to sign the EASLG statement
and thus 'taking part in Russia's propaganda events aimed against Ukraine.' Katherine Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group
commented on Twitter, 'As the idea of dialogue
becomes more mainstream, backlash to the concept grows fiercer.' 'In Ukraine, prominent pro-Western politicians, civic activists,
and media, have called Step 12 "a provocation" and "dangerous",' she added
Quinn-Judge comes across as generally sympathetic to the Ukrainian narrative about the war in Donbass, endorsing the idea that
it's largely a product of 'Russian aggression'. But she also recognizes that the war has an internal, social dimension which the
Ukrainian government and its elite-level supporters refuse to acknowledge. Consequently, they also reject any sort of dialogue, either
with Russia or with the rebels in Donbass. As Quinn-Judge notes in another Tweet:
An advisor to one of Ukraine's most powerful pol[itician]s told us recently of his concern about talk of dialogue in international
and domestic circles. 'We have all long ago agreed among ourselves. We need to return our territory, and then work with that sick
sick population.'
This isn't an isolated example. Quinn-Judge follows up with a couple more similar statements:
Social resentments underpin some opposition to disengagement, for example. An activist in [government-controlled] Shchastye
told me recently that she feared disengagement and the reopening of the bridge linking the isolated town to [rebel-held] Luhansk:
'I don't want all that trash coming over here.'
In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what?
We're trying to build a completely new society.'
And there once again you have it one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. You can fiddle with treating Donbass' symptoms as much as you like, la EASLG,
but unless you tackle this fundamental problem, the disease will keep on ravaging the subject for a long time to come. In due course,
I suggest, the only realistic cure will be to remove the patient entirely from the cause of infection.
All that you have described above is very sad, but not very surprising which is itself very sad. I think Patrick Armstrong is
right that a lot of the reason Ukraine is not and has never been a functional polity is because much if not most of the population
cannot accept that the right side won WWII.
Contempt and loathing towards the Donbass is a pretty popular feeling amongst Ukrainian svidomy. E.g., one of the two regular
pro-Ukrainian commenters on my blog.
To his credit, he supports severing the Donbass from Ukraine (as one would a gangrenous limb his metaphor) as opposed to
trying to claw it back. Which is an internally consistent position.
Same guy who doesn't consider Yanukovych as having been overthrown under coup like circumstances, while downplaying Poland's
past subjugation of Rus territory.
In Part I and II we saw how much truth is there in Herr Karlin's claim of being a model of the rrrracially purrrre Rrrrrrrussian
plus some personal views.
Part III (this one) gives a peek into his cultural and upbringing limits, which "qualify" him as an expert of all things Russian,
who speaks on behalf of the People and the Country.
" I left when I was six, in 1994 , so I'm not really the best person to ask this question of it should probably be directed
to my parents, or even better, the Russian government at the time which had for all intents and purposes ceased paying academics
their salaries.
I went to California for higher education and because its beaches and mountains made for a nice change from the bleakness of
Lancashire.
I returned to Russia because if I like Putler so much, why don't I go back there? Okay, less flippancy. I am Russian, I
do not feel like a foreigner here, I like living in Moscow, added bonus is that I get much higher quality of life for the buck
than in California ."
"I never went to school, don't have any experience with writing in Russian, and have been overexposed to Anglo culture ,
so yes, it's no surprise that my texts will sound strange."
The Russian branch of Carnegie Endowment did a piece on this issue. It mostly fits your ideas, but the author suggests it was
a compromise, short-term solution what steps can be taken right now, without crossing red lines of either side but compromise
is unwelcome among both parties. The official Russian reaction was quite cold too.
Upon a quick perusal of the website of the org at issue, Alexey Arbatov and Susan Eisenhower have some kind of affiliation
with it, thus maybe explaining the compromise approach you mention.
This matter brings to mind Trump saying one thing during his presidential bid only to then bring in people in key positions
who don't agree with what he campaigned on.
In terms of credentials and name status, the likes of Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Cohen and Jim Jatras, are needed in
Trump's admin for the purpose of having a more balanced foreign policy approach that conforms with US interests (not to be necessarily
confused with what neocons and neolibs favor).
Instead, Trump has been top heavy with geopolitical thinking opposites. He possibly thought that having them in would take
some of the criticism away from him.
The arguably ideal admin has both sides of an issue well represented, with the president intelligently deciding what's best.
On the BBC and on other media there are films of Ukrainians attacking a bus with people evacuated from China. These people
even wanted to burn down the hospital where the peoplew were taken (along with other unrelated patients)
This is a sign of a degraded society attacking people who may or may not be ill!!!
Ukraine will eventually break up
The nationalist agenda is just degrading the society.
-The economy is failing
-People who can, are leaving
-The elected government has no control over the violent people who take to the streets
It's clear Zelensky is a puppet no different to Poroshenko this destroys the idea that democracy is a good thing.
It's very sad that the EU and the Americans under Obama empowered these decisive elements and then blame Russia.
Crimea did the right thing leaving Ukraine Donbass hopefully will follow.
"And there once again you have it one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass"
[ ]
Only them?
[ ]
Yesterday marks yet another milestone on the Ukrainian glorious шлях перемог and long and arduous return to the Family
of the European Nations. The Civil Society of the Ukraine rose as one in the mighty CoronavirusMaidan, against the jackbooted
goons of the crypto-Napoleon (and agent of Putin) Zelensky. Best people from Poltava oblast' (whose ancestors without doubt, welcomed
Swedish Euro-integrators in 1709) and, most important of all, from the Best (Western) Ukrajina, who 6 years ago made the Revolution
of Dignity in Kiev the reality and whom pan Poroshenko called the best part of the Nation, said their firm "Геть вiд Москви!"
to their fellow Ukrainian citizens, evacuated from Wuhan province in China
The Net is choke full of vivid, memorable videos, showing that 6 years after Maidan, the Ukraine now constitute a unified,
эдiна та соборна country. You all, no doubt, already watched these clips, where a brave middle-aged gentleman from the
Western Ukraine, racially pure Ukr, proves his mental acuity by deducing, that crypto-tyrant (and "не лох") Zelensky wants to
settle evacuees in his pristine oblast out of vengeance, because the Best Ukrajina didn't vote for him during the election. Or
a clip about a brave woman from Poltava oblast, suggesting to relocate the Trojan-horse "fellow countrymen" to Chernobol's Zone.
Or even the witty comments and suggestions by the paragons of the Ukrainian Civil Society, " волонтэры ":
Shy and conscientious members of the Ukrainian (national!) intelligentsia had their instincts aligned rrrrrright. When they
learned about that their hospital will be the one receiving the evacuees from Wuhan, the entire medical personell of that Poltava
oblast medical facility rose to their feet and sang "Shenya vmerla". Democracy and localism proved once again the strongest suit
of the pro-European Ukraine, with Ternopol's oblast regional council voting to accept the official statement to the crypto-tyrant
Zelensky, which calls attempts to place evacuees on their Holy land "an act of Genocide of the Ukrainian People" (c)
That's absolutely "normal", predictable reaction of the "racially pure Ukrainians" to their own fellow citizens. Now, Professor,
are you insisting on seeking or even expecting "compromise" with them ? What to do, if after all these years, there is
no such thing as the united Ukrainian political nation?
"Ukraine's democracy is flourishing like never before due to the tireless efforts of grassroots, pro-democracy, civil-society
groups. Many Ukrainians say their country is now firmly set on an irreversible, pro-Western trajectory. Moreover, the country
has also undertaken a top-to-bottom cultural, economic, and political divorce from its former Soviet overlord.
Today, Ukraine is a democratic success story in the making, despite Russia's best efforts to the contrary."
Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal's foreign
correspondent based in Ukraine
This article fails to mention his most important contribution . He tipped off
Roosevelt that a fascist plot was being prepared to take over the American government "
The Wall Street Putsch, as it's known today, was a plot by a group of right-wing
financiers.
"They thought that they could convince Roosevelt, because he was of their, the patrician
class, they thought that they could convince Roosevelt to relinquish power to basically a
fascist, military-type government," Denton says.
4 hours ago
The US foreign policy was never about Spreading Democracy, it's always about elevating the dictator we can do business
with.
Always.
4 hours ago
Surprisingly, Butlers book The Plot to Seize the White House, where a cabal of bankers sought to use Butler as a front man
to oust FDR getS little to no notice.
She does not use the term neoliberalism but she provide interesting perspective about
connection of neoliberalism and Trotskyism. It is amazing fact that most of them seriously
studied communist ideology at universities.
Trotskyites are never constrained by morality and they are obsessed with raw power
(especially political power) and forceful transformation of the society. They are for global dominance so they were early
adherents of "Full spectrum Dominance" doctirne approporitated later be US neocons. Their Dream -- global run from Washington
neoliberal empire is a mirror of the dream of Trotskyites of global communist empire run from Moscow (Trotsky "Permanent war" till
the total victory of communism idea)
Inability to understand that neoliberal is undermines Diana West thinking, but still she is a good researcher and she managed
to reveal some interesting facts and tendencies. She intuitively understand that both are globalist ideologies, but that
about all she managed to understand. Bad for former DIA specialist on the USSR and former colleague of Colonel Lang (see
Sic Semper Tyrannis)
It is funny that Sanders is being accused of being a 'self-identified' socialist, while neoliberal elite is shoulder-deep in socialism for the 1%
and enjoy almost unlimited access to free Fed funds.
I received my copy just a few days before the Mueller investigation closed shop. There is
an old saying "You can't tell the players without a program." As the aftermath of the Mueller
investigation begins, you need this book. Some pundits and observers of the political scene
have observed that the Mueller investigation didn't come about because of any real concern
about "Trump Russia collusion," it was manufactured to protect the deep state from a
non-political interloper. That's the case Diana West makes and does it with her exceptional
knowledge of the Cold War and the current jihad wars. Not to mention her deadly aim with her
rhetorical darts.
The Red Thread by Diana West
Diana states, "the anti-Trump conspiracy is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is not
about the ebb and flow of political power, lawfully and peacefully transferred. It is about
globalists and nationalists, just as the president says. They are locked in the old and
continuous Communist/anti-Communist struggle, and fighting to the end, whether We, the
anti-Communists, recognize it or not."
Diana traces the Red Thread running through the swamp, she names names and relates the
history of the Red players. She asks the questions, Why? Why so many Soviet-style acts of
deception perpetrated from inside the federal government against the American electoral
process? Why so many uncorroborated dossiers of Russian provenance influencing our politics?
Why such a tangle of communist and socialist roots in the anti-Trump conspiracy?
In this book, these questions will be answered.
If you have read her book "American Betrayal," I'm sure you will have a good idea about
what is going on. I did. I just didn't know the major players and the red history behind each
of them.
The book is very interesting and short, only 104 pages, but it is not finished yet. Easy
to read but very disturbing to know the length and width of the swamp, the depth, we may not
know for a long time. I do feel better knowing that there are people like Diana uncovering
and shining a light into the darkness. Get the book, we all need to know why this is
happening and who the enemies are behind it. Our freedom depends on it.
IMO, all the preceding are being blinded by obsolete beliefs holding over from
the 1950s. First consider that the purpose of government is to ensure the welfare of its
citizens – & that's not protection against just foreign threats but also
against domestic threats (like for-real life, liberty & happiness).
"... The NATO alliance was established to protect war-devastated Western European nations against a possible Soviet threat until they got on their feet economically again. Dwight Eisenhower even said that if American troops remained in Europe too long, NATO would have failed. Yet long after the European economic miracle -- amazing prosperity achieved during a robust recovery in the decade or so after the war -- and long after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO, instead of going away, has expanded its territory and mission. The American military remains in Europe to guarantee the security of nations that have a combined GDP greater than that of the United States. Meanwhile, Russia, the successor "threat" to the Soviet Union, has a GDP equivalent to that of Spain. The overextended United States also has a staggering national debt of $23 trillion and eye-popping unfunded government mandates at all levels that amount to between $150 and $200 trillion. ..."
Bossing, bullying, and nickel-and-diming won't make for an easy divorce. Donald Trump at
NATO Summit, Brussels, in 2018
According to Politico , the American delegation to the
illustrious Munich Security Conference -- the security counterpart to the elite World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland -- was apparently "dumbfounded" by the hostile reaction they
received from European speakers, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier even took aim at the Trump administration's
hallowed "Make America Great Again" slogan, accusing the United States of "rejecting the idea
of the international community." Steinmeier characterized Trump's position this way: "Every
country should fend for itself and put its own interests over all others 'great again' -- even
at the expense of neighbors and partners."
Ironically, Steinmeier's acerbic comments seem to conclude that if the United States becomes
uncomfortable with continuing to effectively subsidize the defense of wealthy European states,
which have long been capable of being at least the first line of defense for themselves, it is
inflicting suffering on its allies and doesn't even believe in the "international community."
Steinmeier's grumbling is akin to that of an entitled young adult still living at home after
being told by his parents to get a job.
The NATO alliance was established to protect war-devastated Western European nations
against a possible Soviet threat until they got on their feet economically again. Dwight
Eisenhower even said that if American troops remained in Europe too long, NATO would have
failed. Yet long after the European economic miracle -- amazing prosperity achieved during a
robust recovery in the decade or so after the war -- and long after the Soviet Union collapsed,
NATO, instead of going away, has expanded its territory and mission. The American military
remains in Europe to guarantee the security of nations that have a combined GDP greater than
that of the United States. Meanwhile, Russia, the successor "threat" to the Soviet Union, has a
GDP equivalent to that of Spain. The overextended United States also has a staggering national
debt of $23 trillion and eye-popping unfunded government mandates at all levels that amount to
between $150 and $200 trillion.
One might conclude from this that Trump's policy of angrily haranguing and belittling his
NATO allies into coughing up a few more dollars for their own defense is the right one. Trump
crudely understands the problem but has come up with the wrong solution. The many Eurocentric
analysts, who dominated the American foreign policy elite during the Cold War and are now
trying to hang on to relevance, keep hyping the general Russia threat by excessively demonizing
its president, Vladimir Putin, who is really just another tin-pot dictator.
A third way is still possible, one that avoids both placating the hand-wringing Eurocentric
establishment and the nickel-and-diming of NATO allies that Trump desires.
The worst fear of the Eurocentrics is that Trump will, before leaving office, withdraw from
the NATO alliance, much as he did with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, the
international agreement on climate change, and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. Yet this
is the proper, though radical, approach. It needs to be done immediately, so that it can't be
reversed by the next president. The problem is that Trump has been rude and obnoxious enough to
the Europeans that the divorce might very well make Britain's exit from the European Union look
like a walk in the park. The ideal would have been to have had a previously cordial
relationship with Europe, followed by a U.S. statement that the European economic miracle has
allowed them to withstand a stagnant Russia and they need to finally take primary
responsibility for their own defense.
This would have allowed the United States rebuild its dissipated power by reducing
government spending and debt and reallocating the remaining military forces to the Pacific to
hedge against a rising China. Such a change is critical, and it remains to be seen whether it
can be achieved.
Ivan Eland is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and director of the
Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty. His new book, War and the Rogue
Presidency: Restoring the Republic After Congressional Failure, was released in May
2019.
"Trump Should Get Out Of NATO Now, But Nicely" is spot on. The Obama Administration pivot to
the Pacific could have be continued in a cordial fashion but that is not the Donald way. The
US needs to make a treaty with Russia and leave Europe with the possible exception of
Ramstein AFB.
These goofy neocon statements won't buy you anything. Stop giving legitimacy to the
establishment's false narrative, it won't make the foreign policy elites accept you, you
can't oppose the elite and at the same time work within the confines of the paradigm they
created. Not only are such statements untrue, it's self defeating.
Is it really false to say that Russia is stagnant though? After all, Russia has a falling
population (population peaked in the early 1990s), a relatively low life-expectancy, an
economy that is smaller than that of Italy's in terms of nominal GDP, and a conventional
military capability that is a mere shadow of what it once was in Soviet times. Other
countries (China, the U.S. etc..) may have a low fertility rate as well, but China has a
massive population to start with, and the U.S. can attract immigrants fairly well. Note: I am
not saying that immigration is necessarily a good thing when it is used as a means of
demographic replacement to make up for a low fertility rate, but it is one way to cope with
the geopolitical and economic implications of a low birth rate, at least for a time.
Certainly, Russia is not doing too badly by Third World standards, and,to be fair, I do
think Putin has utilized a fundamentally weak geopolitical hand rather well. It's also pretty
clear that Putin played a significant role in bringing Russia back from the brink
economically and culturally following the degradation it suffered in the 1990s. For that
matter, I think his popularity is likely genuine among many people in Russia, even if he is a
dictator of sorts. Still, if you look at the fundamental, long-term economic, demographic,
and military trends, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Russia is a declining power.
Over a long enough time frame, it almost certainly is.
Given the fact that Russia has not had an above replacement fertility rate since the fall of
the USSR, and given that it's ability to attract immigrants is rather limited (how many third
world immigrants would choose Russia, over, say, Germany?), I don't see how a falling
population is not inevitable for Russia in the long term. This is especially a problem for
Russia given the vastness of its eastern regions, as well as how few people live in those
regions to begin with.
A consistent theme of Pat Buchanan's columns about Russia is that-- given the vast
population disparities involved--China is likely to start slowly colonizing Siberia at some
point, at least in an implicit, economic sort of way. I do wonder if this is a likely
outcome.
I said that it's doing well by Third World standards, not that it necessarily is itself a
Third World nation. Historically, Russia was considered a Second World country, which makes
sense.
Russia has an excellent education system, its medical services are good, it has a high
literacy rate, it is white and Christian, with conservative values, and it has few gun
massacres.
Leaving NATO is a no-brainer. The US and Russia have a common foe - the Chicoms.
The problem with disbanding NATO is that no one knows what will follow.
Would Europe go back to the intra power politics of the early 20th Century? In which case the
US will likely sucked into their next war.
Or would the EU integrate it's defense and foreign policy and create a Federal Europe? And if
they did, how long would it take Europe to be a peer competitor to the US?
How many European countries have territorial claims on each other? Few to none.
How many European countries are in competition for colonies? Few to none.
You don't need territorial issues for war, the US had no territorial issues with Iraq nor
Afghanistan in 2001, it didn't prevent the US from invading both countries.
I can easily see something like social dumping starting a cascade that takes Europe to
war. That is the main European fear about BREXIT.
I think Russia is more worried about its southern flank than its western one in the long term
especially once the US and its ambition is gone. Russia badly needs to get closer to Europe.
Germany will rule the E.U. just as they would have If Hitler had won the 2cd World war It
will be national socialist which the Muslims will like .. The remaining Jews will have to
leave or die
NATO should have been mothballed after the fall of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. But the
vested interests of the military-industrial-financial complex have kept it expanding,
antagonizing Russia in its sphere of influence, seeking out new monsters (such as the unjust
and illegal war on Serbia), and it mainly exists now to enrich arms producers and to support
bureaucrats in Brussels with sinecures in their fancy headquarters building.
As an anti-war lefty, I just love this destruction of the intelligence community and hope
Trump really does abandon NATO... right before we drag him out of White House in shackles...
or some such thing.
It's curious the complaint about debt in this post... didn't everyone just agree to
increase the defense budget last year... again?
This would have allowed the United States rebuild its dissipated power by reducing
government spending and debt and reallocating the remaining military forces to the Pacific to
hedge against a rising China.
Why must the US hedge against a rising China in the Pacific ?
How is this a realistic plan of action?
China's rise has been through voluntary economic endeavors with other nations not through
force of arms. Asian issues must be solved via Asian nations engaging in dialectical dialogue
not US government gun-boat diplomacy.
The same logic that allows for a reduced US role in NATO (ie defending Europe) clearly
shows that America's allies in the Pacific (eg Japan, S.Korea, Indonesia, etc) have more than
recovered (eg Japan world's 3rd largest economy, S.Korea 12th largest, Indonesia 16th
largest) from the devastation of WWII and the Korea War and are quite capable of defending
themselves.
To paraphrase George Washington - trade with all entangling alliances with none.
The US has been running trillion dollar yearly deficits for over a decade with an
acknowledged 23 trillion dollar debt (as of 2020) along with hundreds of trillions of dollars
in unfunded future liabilities and deteriorating national infrastructure in need of over 3
trillion dollars in upgrades.
In order to meet these pressing issues the US government needs to stop garrisoning (ie
empire) the world under the tissue paper thin veneer of providing global stability and
security (of which it can not even provide in Baltimore Md 50 miles from DC) and return it's
myopic/megalomaniacal gaze to America.
I don't think Trump is really interested in leaving NATO. US has a stable & a dependable
market in Europe. US' presence in Europe prevents China & Russia spreading their wings
there. It will also assist US in containing these major powers along side its efforts in
South China Sea & the Info-Pacific. Internationally US gets the support of 27 Countries
in all international fora. To my mind, the very reason why US continually keeps projecting
Russia as an enemy is to ensure that the European countries remain tied to US.
Even if US is unwilling to let go Europe from the alliance, it is time EU abandons US
& takes responsibility for itself. Europe has the potential to become an important &
a powerful pole in a Multipolar world.
Russia presents more of a danger today than during the height of the Cold War: then the
Kremlin had a proper buffer zone, today it has not. There is the existential threat: the
reason nations to war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
While I agree that NATO is now irrelevant and a significant waste of US tax dollars, shifting
that expenditure to fight China might be an even bigger mistake. The US should withdraw its
military forces from the Western Pacific for the same reason we should leave NATO. Japan,
Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines should be made responsible for making their own
accommodations with China.
"... Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to "assure the integrity" of the 2020 election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that "The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was essential for U.S. national security. He said "As one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia here." ..."
"... Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that "Liberals used to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power." Aaron Mate at The Nation added that "For all the talk about Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering w/ hysterics like this? Let's assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke." ..."
"... On Wednesday, Schiff maintained that "Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again." Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the "United States" for "Russia" and "Kremlin" and changes "Ukraine" to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much more credible. ..."
"... Donald Trump's erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. ..."
"... It is scary, but what else can Schiff say? They have no credible arguments against Trump, or for their own party. They are a bunch of lying scumbags that will kill, cheat, steal, mislead, carpet-bag and anything else unethical to achieve their sleazy goals. ..."
"... Since the US Sociopaths In Charge have totally Effed up the nation, and a significant portion of the world, they have to have SOMEBODY to blame. They certainly won't take the blame they deserve themselves. ..."
"... What the ZOG wants the ZOG gets ..."
"... It is appropriate to recall the words of Joseph Goebbels: "Give me the media, and I will make a herd of pigs from any nation," and pigs are easy to drive to the slaughterhouse. Only Russia can really resist such a situation in the world. Therefore, she is the enemy. ..."
"... The Centrist Democrats and Republicans want to paint the old school God and Country Conservatives Equality and Justice for the USA (Nationalist) into being Russian ..."
One of the more interesting aspects of the nauseating impeachment trial in the Senate was
the repeated vilification of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.
To hate Russia has become dogma on both sides of the political aisle, in part because no
politician has really wanted to confront the lesson of the 2016 election, which was that most
Americans think that the federal government is basically incompetent and staffed by career
politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who should return back home and get real jobs
.
Worse still, it is useless, and much like the one trick pony the only thing it can do is
steal money from the taxpayers and waste it on various types of self-gratification that only
politicians can appreciate. That means that the United States is engaged is fighting multiple
wars against make-believe enemies while the country's infrastructure rots and a host of
officially certified grievance groups control the public space.
It sure doesn't look like Kansas anymore.
The fact that opinion polls in Europe suggest that many Europeans would rather have Vladimir
Putin than their own hopelessly corrupt leaders is suggestive. One can buy a whole range of
favorable t-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin on Ebay , also suggesting that most Americans find
the official Russophobia narrative both mysterious and faintly amusing. They may not really be
into the expressed desire of the huddled masses in D.C. to go to war to bring true U.S. style
democracy to the un-enlightened.
One also must wonder if the Democrats are reading the tea leaves correctly. If they think
that a slogan like "Honest Joe Biden will keep us safe from Moscow" will be a winner in 2020
they might again be missing the bigger picture. Since the focus on Trump's decidedly erratic
behavior will inevitably die down after the impeachment trial is completed, the Democrats will
have to come up with something compelling if they really want to win the presidency and it sure
won't be the largely fictionalized Russian threat.
Nevertheless, someone should tell Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence
Committee, to shut up as he is becoming an international embarrassment. His "closing arguments"
speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety minutes long and were
inevitably praised by the mainstream media as "magisterial," "powerful," and "impressive." The
Washington Post 's resident Zionist extremist Jennifer Rubin
labeled it "a grand slam" while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin
called it "dazzling." Gail Collins of the New York Times dubbed it "a
great job" and added that Schiff is now "a rock star." Daily Beast enthused that
the remarks "will go down in history " and progressive activist Ryan Knight called it "a
closing statement for the ages." Hollywood was also on board with actress Debra Messing
tweeting "I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country."
Actually, a better adjective would have been "scary" and not merely due to its elaboration
of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Trump, much of which was
undeniably true even if not necessarily impeachable. It was scary because it was a warmongers speech, full of allusions to Russia, to Moscow's
"interference" in 2016, and to the
ridiculous proposition that if Trump were to be defeated in 2020 he might not concede and
Russia could even intervene militarily in the United States in support of its puppet.
Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to "assure the integrity" of the 2020
election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that "The president's misconduct cannot be decided
at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for
going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was
essential for U.S. national security. He said "As one witness put it during our impeachment
inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there,
and we don't have to fight Russia here."
Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son
sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if
someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that "Liberals used
to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they
deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power." Aaron Mate at The
Nation added that "For all the talk about
Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering
w/ hysterics like this? Let's assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of
Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke."
Over
at Antiwar Daniel Lazare explains how the Wednesday speech was "a fear-mongering,
sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but
sends a chilling message to [Democratic Party] dissidents at home that if they deviate from
Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they'll be driven from the fold."
The orthodoxy that Lazare was writing about includes the established Nancy Pelosi/Chuck
Schumer narrative that Russia invaded "poor innocent Ukraine" in 2014, that it interfered in
the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Clinton, and that it is currently trying to smear Joe
Biden. One might add to that the growing consensus that Russia can and will interfere again in
2020 to help Trump. Absent from the narrative is the part how the U.S. intervened in Ukraine
first to remove its government and the fact that there is something very unsavory about Joe
Biden's son taking a high-paying sinecure board position from a notably corrupt Ukrainian
oligarch while his father was Vice President and allegedly directing U.S. assistance to a
Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.
On Wednesday,
Schiff maintained that "Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become
the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century
will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the
legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The
Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not
stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will
do so again." Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the "United States" for "Russia" and
"Kremlin" and changes "Ukraine" to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much
more credible.
The compulsion on the part of the Democrats to bring down Trump to avoid having to deal with
their own failings has brought about a shift in their established foreign policy, placing the
neocons and their friends back in charge. For Schiff, who has enthusiastically supported every
failed American military effort since 9/11, today's Russia is the Soviet Union reborn, and
don't you forget it pardner! Newsweek is meanwhile reporting that the U.S. military is reading
the tea leaves and
is gearing up to fight the Russians. Per Schiff, Trump must be stopped as he is part of a
grand Russian conspiracy to overthrow everything the United States stands for. If the Kremlin
is not stopped now, it's first major step, per Schiff, will be to "remake the map of Europe by
dint of military force."
Donald Trump's erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering
nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of
that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is
essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point
of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence
Committee.
If the USA doesn't have a bogey man to be afraid of, the USA might worry more and to
insist on fixing the problems within the Nation.
So many of our politicians are guilty of allowing un constitutional on going act like the
removal of Due Process of law for some people and the on going bailout of Global Markets with
the US Dollar. The Patriot act and FISA Courts should have been gone.
Agreed. He seems as about as close as a leader can get to genuinely liking his country and
people. It seems the ones here only give a **** about carbon, Central and South Americans,
and cutting off my kids genitalia.
It is scary, but what else can Schiff say? They have no credible arguments against Trump,
or for their own party. They are a bunch of lying scumbags that will kill, cheat, steal,
mislead, carpet-bag and anything else unethical to achieve their sleazy goals. When Trump
wins in a landslide in 2020, they will claim it's because the Russians 'fixed' the election,
and the Democratic party will break into pieces arguing about how they failed and what they
did wrong. See www.splittingpennies.com
Since the US Sociopaths In Charge have totally Effed up the nation, and a significant
portion of the world, they have to have SOMEBODY to blame. They certainly won't take the
blame they deserve themselves.
lots of words and no answer to the title question. Giraldi does not see the deep
ideological problems: Russia is not trying to diversify into a PoC country, they do not
worship gays and may be the only white people nation with sustaining birth rate. The US will
go to war there is no way to let this continue.
The smart ppl are doing a lousy job of informing the dumb ones about accepted policy like
"America Always Needs An Enemy". Smart ones understand that, and see the bigger game because
of it.
We fight the dumb ones who believe Russian boogeyman crap, instead of helping them
understand they are being misled on who the enemy really is. The dumb ones then fight back
and further entrench that brainwashing.
It is appropriate to recall the words of Joseph Goebbels: "Give me the media, and I will
make a herd of pigs from any nation," and pigs are easy to drive to the slaughterhouse. Only
Russia can really resist such a situation in the world. Therefore, she is the enemy.
The Centrist Democrats and Republicans want to paint the old school God and Country
Conservatives Equality and Justice for the USA (Nationalist) into being Russian. How dare we
expect enforcement of the Laws on the books against them. They want to be deemed Royalty with
all the Elitist Rights.
The old rally call about Russia was always Communist Russia but, they don't do that
anymore? Why ? They love their Communist China wage slaves. The Centrist love Communist labor
in the name of profits . Human rights be damned it's all about the Global Elitist to them
now.
This article is war porn that assumes controlling oil fields is power. Instead
Russia is playing the White Knight saving nations from marauding hordes. NBC News is twisting
itself into tighter knots over Syria retaking Idlib Province back from the rebels. Turkey is
threatening to send in its Army.
Strategically a full-blown war between a NATO member Turkey and Russian ally Syria
would surpass the adverse effects of the quarantine of China or the rising temperatures that
are sliding huge glaciers off of Western Antarctica into the sea (if the war engulfs Europe).
The USA remains today in Syria and Iraq to control their oil fields since to Donald Trump it
means more money for the USA. Actually, America's position there is militarily untenable.
Both countries want the US gone. Iran's precision conventional ballistic missiles have
mutually assured destruction with Israel and Saudi Arabia and can destroy US bases there at
will.
When the Wuhan coronavirus engulfs the West, killing the elderly and the ill,
for-profit healthcare will be overwhelmed. With nothing to sell, the global economy stops
dead. There will be a glut of oil and natural gas. If they still have money, the trip to the
grocery store will be Russian Roulette for senior citizens hoping there will be food to live
for another month and not get viral pneumonia. The Doomsday Clock will be at midnight.
American troops will have to find their way home. The forever wars and neoliberalism died
with globalism.
This article sounds like the Russians have just started to go into Iraq but they
were there before the invasion nearly twenty years ago. In fact, in 2007 the US tried to get
the Iraqis to void a contract the Iraqis had with Russia for the massive West Qurna oil field
but that failed as the Iraqis would have been on the hook for all $13 billion in debt they
owed Russia and the US would not help. But there is a military aspect to being rich in
resources – there always is – and for Iraq it is particularly acute.
The Middle East is a rough neighbourhood and any country there has to be strong
enough to defend itself or else be vulnerable. After the invasion the Coalition tried to
organize Iraq so that they had no military but the Iraqi resistance put aid to that idea. But
what would make the Iraqis think hard was when ISIS was marching on Baghdad. The US refused
to use its air power to stop them and refused the Iraqis the use of pilots & paid-for
aircraft training in Texas until the government would fulfill a laundry list of demands. It
was the Russians – and the Iranians -that sent military equipment and specialists that
helped stop ISIS before they got to Baghdad.
More recently the Iraqis had to buy Russian tanks to fight ISIS as the American
tanks they had purchased were being deliberately not being serviced until the Iraqis
fulfilled an American demand. There is a shift now to buy Russian equipment because of
American fickleness with military gear. If that was not enough, the US has never gotten Iraqi
electricity production back to pre-war levles in spite of billions spent. To add insult to
injury, Trump demanded recently that Iraq hand over half of Iraqi oil production to repair
the electrical grid with of course no guarantees that they would ever do the work.
So the long and the short is that there is no trust with the US and Russia is seen
as a more reliable partner – as is China – and that there is no net benefit with
going to the US. And you never know if a second-term Trump might not seize the Iraqi oil
fields if he felt he could get away with it. It is a matter of being reliable-capable and it
seems that the Russians are proving themselves that, hence their success here. Reliability is
vital and cannot be replaced.
Russia has been using soft power in Middle East ever since Peter the Great started
fighting the Ottomans. Ever since the western powers (read: great Britain) always came to the
rescue of turks if Russia had military success, so they seriously used the other alternative:
economical, diplomatic and cultural influence in arab countries.
During the cold war they supported any regime in Middle East opposed to US-Israeli influence
(or downright aggression).
After the cold war the Russian foreign minister, later prime minister Primakov, was an
Arabist by training and personally knew almost every principal actor in Middle East. He is
presumed to be the architect of the current Russian policy (which is a continuation of the
old Soviet policy, which was based on the old Russian Empire policy).
It's a long, long history of using culture, diplomacy, economical help and weapon sales to
have influence in an area important to the Russian security in their southern
sphere.
The US pats itself on the back and always talks about being the worlds "policeman".
The American elite also want it both ways too- to bemoan having to do the police work in the
first place, while also endlessly stressing that the world would go to pieces if her armed
forces were not in foreign lands. Make up your mind please.
It would be very ironic if Russia proves to truly be an effective world "policeman"-
as seems more evidently to be the case.
Propaganda aside, who brings more stability and peace.
In one respect, the war profiteers are the least of the problem. If Space Force and
Nuclear rearmament are just more money boondoggles, while tragic, still survivable. If there
is a faction that actually believes in this stuff as a viable national policy for defense-
and offense- then when reality hits the road as the saying goes, the American psyche might
not survive the impact, let alone the rest of the world.
Americans are shielded from the horrors of war to the nations detriment.
You guys are NOT thinking venally nor strategically enough. The US powers that be,
love to put on this news story of foreign powers eating US cake. It's simply not credible
imho. Post Iraq war in 2003, "W" bush played the same "eating our cake" story out about China
taking Iraq oil for example. There are definitely other arrangements in place beneath the
surface we are never told. Iraq is now US piggbank. It can trade that asset as it desires,
sadly. Stories like this are just smoke.
I am struck by the size of the Russian investment ($20 billion) while the USA has
"invested" nearly 6 trillion (300x) as much in war expenditure in the region.
And this has the Russians bettering the USA in Iraq with their relatively small
strategic investment.
Maybe it is long overdue for the USA political class to reassess how it spends its
citizens' resources in the Middle East.
This story claims that it had five (5!) people criminally leaking alleged content from a
classified briefing. And why not, since no one gets prosecuted for these crimes. Still, we
have a serious problem with our supposedly professional "intelligence" and "oversight"
communities. https://t.co/zuAdwXpU2L
Until heads roll and hoaxers are sent to prison, the seditious Russian collusion hoaxers
will never stop. They will lie and leak and fabricate evidence, whatever it takes, to
prevent the American people from taking charge of their own government. https://t.co/wijJ07QKOO
"... We are imperially overstretched and The Blob refuses to see it. Will the next president? ..."
"... The cost of Washington's endless wars fall most heavily on those who suffer under American bombs and drones. Yet the plight of foreigners is rarely mentioned. When asked about a half million Iraqi babies killed by American economic sanctions, then-UN ambassador Madeleine Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it." ..."
"... That was characteristic of Washington's overwhelming hubris. Members of "the Blob," as America's foreign policy elite has been called, believe they are uniquely qualified to run the world. Only they can predict the future, assess humanity's needs, develop solutions. And anyone who resists their dictates deserves his or her terrible fate. ..."
"... The Iraq Body Count has documented between 184,868 and 207,759 deaths in Iraq, but many killings in such a conflict go unreported. IBC suggested doubling its estimate to get a more accurate figure. Even that may be too few. A couple respected though contested surveys figure civilian deaths could top a million. The University of Michigan's Juan Cole defended the methodology: "I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. Not to mention that for substantial periods of time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less to move around with dead bodies." ..."
"... Nor do casualties stop there. On top of those killed directly, noted the Watson Institute, "War deaths from malnutrition, and a damaged health system and environment likely far outnumber deaths from combat." For instance, in Yemen, the number of civilian dead due to famine, 85,000 by one count, vastly exceeds the number killed in the conflict, perhaps 12,000. A million people are thought to have suffered from cholera, resulting from the destruction of the country's commercial, health, social, and transportation infrastructure. Most of the damage has come from airstrikes by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are backed by U.S. intelligence, munitions, and formerly refueling. ..."
We are imperially overstretched and The Blob refuses to see it. Will the next president?
The cost of Washington's endless wars fall most heavily on those who suffer under American
bombs and drones. Yet the plight of foreigners is rarely mentioned. When asked about a half
million Iraqi babies killed by American economic sanctions, then-UN ambassador Madeleine
Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."
That was characteristic of Washington's overwhelming hubris. Members of "the Blob," as
America's foreign policy elite has been called, believe they are uniquely qualified to run the
world. Only they can predict the future, assess humanity's needs, develop solutions. And anyone
who resists their dictates deserves his or her terrible fate.
No doubt, foreign policy sometimes presents difficult choices. For instance, in World War
II, the U.S. backed tyrannical Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union against monstrous Adolf Hitler's
Nazi Germany. During the Cold War, Washington allied with a variety of authoritarian
regimes.
There was a logic to such decisions. However, those choices also left many policymakers with
moral qualms. Such self-doubt seems to be almost completely absent from the Blob today. Who
among advocates of the Iraq War have acknowledged the horrors they loosed upon the people of
Iraq and its surrounding nations? Most resist taking any responsibility.
First, they simply deny that America is at war. President Barack Obama tried to avoid
invoking the War Powers Act in Libya by arguing that the conflict did not qualify since
Americans weren't doing the shooting. However, Defense Secretary Bob Gates admitted that the
Libyans being targeted probably thought Washington was at war. And the consequences of that
conflict were significant: violent chaos that continues to this day. Moreover, the precedent of
taking out a leader who voluntarily surrendered his missile and nuclear programs could
discourage future dictators from disarming.
Today some war enthusiasts deny that Americans are really fighting in the multiple conflicts
in which they are engaged. Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose tenures were defined by the disastrous Iraq War,
denounced the very concept of endless wars as a "canard." Yet casualties, though lower than
before, continue with regularity in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
More importantly, the risks of much larger conflict are real. American troops in Iraq have
to confront Iranian-backed militias, and a recent round of mutual retaliation risked a
full-blown conflict. The Pentagon has maintained forces in Syria for potential use against --
depending on who claims to be directing U.S. policy -- the Islamic State, and, without legal
authority, the Damascus government, Iran, Turkey, and even Moscow. American and Russian troops
recently confronted each other over Syrian oilfields that President Donald Trump ordered seized
-- illegally. The potential for a much broader conflict remains serious.
Second, Washington's permanent War Party dismisses the harm their wars have caused. After
the Obama administration headed to Libya and joined Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, Samantha
Power, perhaps the most visible advocate of supposedly humanitarian war-making, complained that
Americans were discouraged by the Iraqi imbroglio: "I think there is too much of, 'Oh, look,
this is what intervention has wrought' one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons."
The last two decades of war have had catastrophic consequences. The official costs are high
enough, with the Pentagon having spent $1.55 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the
Congressional Research Service. A few billion dollars have gone into the anti-ISIS campaign in
Iraq and Syria. Over $113 billion more has been spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan alone,
though with little success, according to multiple reports from the Special Inspector General
for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
And these figures dramatically underestimate the total financial cost. Noted Brown
University's Watson Institute: "Through Fiscal Year 2020, the United States federal government
has spent or obligated $6.4 trillion dollars on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the
Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget;
interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future
obligations for veterans' care." Not included are macroeconomic costs due to the massive
misallocation of valuable resources.
More important has been the human cost. CRS reported about 7,000 dead and 53,000 wounded
among U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. The split by conflict was 38 percent/62
percent, respectively. Nearly 400 American military members have died elsewhere since 9/11. A
million or more -- the latest available figures are years out of date -- disability claims have
been filed by U.S. personnel. Suicide rates among the 2.7 million who have served in either
Afghanistan or Iran are higher than among the civilian population.
Also significant are casualties among U.S. contractors: 3,400 dead and 39,000 wounded.
However, the Pentagon's figures may be incomplete: the Watson Institute, with its Cost of War
Project, figures the number of contractor deaths to be more than 8,000, higher than the number
of dead uniformed personnel. Reliance on contractors may be controversial, but they essentially
represent the U.S. government. The death of a contractor in Iraq triggered Washington's strike
on an Iranian-backed militia, which almost sparked war between Tehran and Washington. Several
hundred allied military personnel also have died, along with an estimated 110,000 local
military and police.
Worse has been the civilian toll in those nations that Washington purports to be saving.
American policymakers rarely speak of this cost. After all, they believe "the price is worth
it," to quote Albright. As of November, figured the Watson Institute, 335,000 civilians in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen had died in conflicts featuring U.S. military
operations. Unfortunately, these numbers are low, perhaps dramatically so.
The Iraq Body Count has documented between 184,868 and 207,759 deaths in Iraq, but many
killings in such a conflict go unreported. IBC suggested doubling its estimate to get a more
accurate figure. Even that may be too few. A couple respected though contested surveys figure
civilian deaths could top a million. The University of Michigan's Juan Cole defended the
methodology: "I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without
telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is
dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. Not to mention that for substantial periods of
time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less
to move around with dead bodies."
Nor do casualties stop there. On top of those killed directly, noted the Watson Institute,
"War deaths from malnutrition, and a damaged health system and environment likely far outnumber
deaths from combat." For instance, in Yemen, the number of civilian dead due to famine, 85,000
by one count, vastly exceeds the number killed in the conflict, perhaps 12,000. A million
people are thought to have suffered from cholera, resulting from the destruction of the
country's commercial, health, social, and transportation infrastructure. Most of the damage has
come from airstrikes by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are backed by U.S.
intelligence, munitions, and formerly refueling.
Explained the Watson Institute: "People living in the war zones have been killed in their
homes, in markets, and on roadways. They have been killed by bombs, bullets, fire, improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), and drones. Civilians die at checkpoints, as they are run off the
road by military vehicles, when they step on a mine or cluster bomb, as they collect wood or
tend to their fields, and when they are kidnapped and executed for purposes of revenge or
intimidation. They are killed by the United States, by its allies, and by insurgents and
sectarians in the civil wars spawned by the invasions."
War is not always avoidable. But since the end of the Cold War, every conflict started by
the U.S. has been one of choice. America only ever had a serious interest at stake in
Afghanistan -- to destroy al-Qaeda after 9/11 and punish the Taliban government. In that case,
however, the U.S. mission should have ended by early 2002, not carried on for nearly two
decades.
American policymakers should stop treating war as a first resort, a panacea for
international conflict and tragedy. Washington is filled with ivory tower warriors. Their
supposedly best intentions have spread chaos and death around the globe. What think this year's
presidential candidates?
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
. He is currently scholar-in-residence with the Centre for Independent Studies in
Sydney.
The White House has denied rumors that Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates is the author of an anonymous New York
Times op-ed and subsequent book criticizing the Trump administration, after Coates was abruptly moved to the Energy Department.
... ... ...
On Monday, Axios reported that Coates role at the NSC was on the chopping block amid rumors she was the author.
A statement from the NSC also said that Coates' move will help "ensure the continued close alignment of energy policy with
national security objectives," and that her new position in the Energy Department will be as a senior adviser to the secretary.
Her new assignment is effective Monday, they said.
"We are enthusiastic about adding Dr. Coates to DOE, where her expertise on the Middle East and national security policy will
be helpful," said Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette. "She will play an important role on our team."
National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien said that he is "sad to lose an important member of our team," but said Coates "will
be a big asset to Secretary Brouillette as he executes the president's energy security policy priorities." -
Fox News
On Tuesday, President Trump said "I know who it is," after a reporter questioned him on anonymous, adding that he won't reveal
the name publicly. 38 minutes ago What was your haftarah, ****?
1 hour ago
By their very natures, homosexuals, and heterosexual females are security risks.
I would sleep better at night knowing they weren't in positions related to the defense of my country.
By all means, y'all keep on spreading that social engineering ********. Eventually, it will kill a whole bunch of people.
1 hour ago
So she keeps her pay grade and pension? **** That.
1 hour ago
So who's spreading the rumor that Coates is Anonymous and why?
1 hour ago
In corporate America they just let you go. It is time that all bureaucrats get the same treatment that the taxpayers
get. Pensions? What at those?
1 hour ago
and "let you go" is defined as a large Security guard walking you back to your office to get your coat and keys and
then watches you drive off the property. not offers you a no show job in the backoffice with full pension and benefits.
2 hours ago
Not sure that having a queer in charge of intelligence is the right way to go. Plenty of fodder for blackmail. History
shows that homos (or fags if that's the preferred name) have more skeletons in their collective closets than 99.9% of normal people.
Most of them are perverts with dark and sordid pasts.
"... Imagine if we substitute the U.S. for Russia and the country "invaded" was Canada, rather than Ukraine, the government overthrown was in Ottawa and not Kiev, and the provinces embroiled in a foreign-backed civil war have been Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rather the provinces of Eastern Ukraine? This report, written in 2016, may make it easier to understand what has been really going on in Ukraine. Clicking on the links is key to understanding the real story. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Versions of this article first appeared on ..."
The impeachment hearings and trial of Donald Trump were filled with talk of Russian
aggression against Ukraine and threats to the United States. But what would it be like if we
switched the roles of Russia and the U.S.?
Imagine if we substitute the U.S. for Russia and the country "invaded" was Canada,
rather than Ukraine, the government overthrown was in Ottawa and not Kiev, and the provinces
embroiled in a foreign-backed civil war have been Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rather the
provinces of Eastern Ukraine? This report, written in 2016, may make it easier to understand
what has been really going on in Ukraine. Clicking on the links is key to understanding the
real story.
T he United States has "invaded" Canada to support the breakaway Maritime provinces that are
resisting a Moscow-engineered violent coup d'etat against the democratically elected
government in Ottawa.
The U.S. move is to protect separatists in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia after Washington
annexed Prince Edwards Island in a quickly arranged referendum .
The Islanders voted over 90 percent in favor of joining
the United States following the Russian-backed coup. Moscow has condemned the referendum as
illega l.
Hard-liners in the U.S. want
Washington to annex all three Maritime provinces, whose fighters are defying the coup in Ottawa
after Moscow installed an unelected prime minister.
Russian-backed Canadian federal troops have
launched so-called "anti-terrorist" operations in the breakaway region to crush the
rebellion, shelling residential areas and killing hundreds of civilians.
The violent coup.
The Canadian army are joined by Russian-supported neofascist battalions that played a crucial role in the
overthrow of the Canadian government. In Halifax, the extremists have burned alive at least 40
pro-U.S. civilians who had taken refugee in a trade union building.
Proof that Russia was behind the overthrow of the elected Canadian prime minister is
contained in a
leaked conversation between Georgiy Yevgenevich Borisenko, foreign ministry chief of
Moscow's North America department, and Alexander Darchiev, the Russian ambassador to
Canada.
According to a transcript of the leaked conversation,
Borisenko discussed who the new Canadian leaders should be six weeks before the coup took
place.
Russia moved to launch the coup when Canada decided
to take a loan package from the IMF that had fewer strings attached than a loan from
Russia.
Russia's Beijing ally was reluctant to back the coup. But this seemed of little concern to
Borisenko who is heard on the tape saying, "Fuck China."
Minister handing out cookies in the square.
Weeks before the coup Borisenko was filmed visiting protestors who had camped out in
Parliament Square in Ottawa demanding the ouster of the prime minister. Borisenko is seen
giving out cakes to
the demonstrators.
The foreign ministers of Russian-allied Belarus and Cuba also marched with the protestors
through the streets of Ottawa against the government. Russian media has portrayed the
unconstitutional change of government an act of "democracy." Russian senators have met in
public with extreme right-wing Canadian coup leaders,
praising their rebellion.
Borisenko said in a speech that Russia had spent $5 billion
over the past decade to "bring democracy" to Canada.
Senator meeting far-right coup leaders.
The money was spent on training "civil society." The use of non-governmental organizations
to overthrow foreign governments that stand in the way of Russia's economic and geo-strategic
interests is well documented, especially in a 1991 Washington Post column,
"Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups ."
The United States has thus moved to ban
Russian NGOs from operating in the country.
The coup took place as protestors violently clashed with police, breaking through barricades
and killing a number of officers. Snipers fired on the police and the crowd from a nearby
building in Parliament Square in which the Russian embassy had set up offices
just a few floors above, according to Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Son Gets Job After Coup
Russian lawmakers
compared President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler for allegedly sending U.S. troops into the
breakaway provinces and for annexing Prince Edward Island in an act of "American aggression."
The Maritimes have had long ties to the U.S. dating back to the American Revolution.
Russia says it has intelligence proving that U.S. tanks have crossed the Maine border into
New Brunswick, but have failed to make the evidence public. They have revealed no satellite
imagery. Russian news media only reports American-backed rebels fighting in the Maritimes, not
American troops.
Washington denies it has invaded but says some American volunteers have entered the Canadian
province to join the fight.
Russia's puppet prime minister now in charge in Ottawa has only offered as proof six American passports of
U.S. soldiers found in New Brunswick.
Son gets job on energy company board after his father's government backs violent coup.
The Maritime Canadian rebels have secured anti-aircraft weapons enabling them to shoot down
a number of Royal Canadian Air Force transport planes.
A Malaysian airlines passenger jet was also shot down over Nova Scotia killing all on board.
Russia has accused President Obama of being behind the incident, charging that the U.S.
provided the anti-aircraft weapon.
Moscow has refused to release any intelligence to support its claim, other than
statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Canada's economy is near collapse and is dependent on infusions of Russian aid. This comes
despite a former Russian foreign ministry official being installed as
Canada's finance minister, only receiving Canadian citizenship on her first day on the job.
Despite installing a Russian to run Canada's economy, President Putin told the U.N. General
Assembly that Russia had
"few economic interests" in the country. But Russian agribusiness companies have already
taken stakes in Albertan wheat fields. And Ilya Medvedev, son of Russian Prime Minister
Dmitri Medvedev, as well as a Lavrov family friend
joined the board of Canada's largest oil company just weeks after the coup.
Russia's ultimate aim, beginning with the imposition of sanctions on the U.S., appears to be
a color revolution in Washington to overthrow Obama and install a Russian-friendly American
president.
This is clear from numerous statements by Russian officials and academics. A former Russian
national security advisor whom Putin consults on foreign policy said the United States should be
broken into three countries.
He has also
written that Canada is the stepping stone to the United States and that if the U.S. loses
Canada it will fail to control North America.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at[email protected]and
followed on Twitter @unjoe .
mary floyd , February 15, 2020 at 13:20
The most important takeaway in this article for me was that the US should be broken into
three separate entities!
That would work well for most Americans. All in all, this is a great piece, Mr. Lauria!
Dao Gen , February 15, 2020 at 02:28
Joe, you are The Truth. The only thing you left out, no doubt for reasons of space and
time, was the immortal statement made by a leading member of the Russian Duma, who said
during a stirring and well-received speech that, “Canada is our crucial first line of
defense against the US. If Canada weren’t there to stop the Americans, we’d have
to fight them right here on our own doorstep.”
A very creative way of making the point. Still do not understand the depth of what often
appears to be heart felt hate for Russia by very powerful and smart people. Remember reading
a comment by Phil Girardi early in the Trump tour when he remarked at the depth of dislike of
Russia within the spook community. He wrote he was surprised and had, I think, been part of
that community.
Eddie S , February 15, 2020 at 14:51
RE: “…depth of dislike of Russia within the spook community”.
While I have no ‘special knowledge’ of the so-called ‘intelligence
community’, there’s a few reasons for this that come to-mind:
— Job preservation. The most obvious. The US wouldn’t need ~80% of those spooks
if there
weren’t big scary Russians/Chinese/Iranians/N.Koreans constantly plotting against
the
peaceful, benevolent US.
— Spooks believe in what is mainly a distractionary ploy by US oligarchs/plutocrats.
These
wealthy interests don’t want to lose some of their wealth to social reforms, so they
constantly
financially support scare-mongering, which some spooks unquestioningly accept.
— The profession tends to attract some of the more paranoid elements in our society,
so
they’re inclined that way by nature/personality.
robert e williamson jr , February 14, 2020 at 17:51
Well one thing for sure we would not be seeing a female anchor on CNN bemoaning the fact
the because of the coronavirus many popular kids toys might not be available here in the U.S.
for the up coming holidays (?).
Yes it did happen, hell I couldn’t make that up.
DARYL , February 14, 2020 at 15:45
…or better yet, substitute Central America for Ukraine, and Panama(canal) for
Crimea, then you have the makings of an even more salient parallel.
Realist , February 14, 2020 at 15:42
The difference is that under your scenario the world would be a smoking heap of
radioactive ashes already as the exceptional nation, unlike the ever cautious Russians, would
have immediately made bombastic threats and then launched military attacks to protect its
“security interests.” (Warring to “protect” security interests has
replaced invasion and occupation to save souls.) Things would have escalated from there to
its predestined thermonuclear climax, as they will in the real world if Uncle Sam
doesn’t get a grip on his uncontrolled aggression, demanding whatever he wants whenever
he wants it at the point of a gun. The world seems to be circling the drain whether or not
Washington is allowed to micromanage the affairs of Russia, China, Iran and every last duchy,
principality and people’s republic in addition to its own monumental mess it calls
domestic affairs. We’ve only got two political parties in this madhouse and they are
both equally bent on destroying civilisation if they can’t rule it all, which seems to
be the only point they agree on. Each party thinks it preferable to allow an obscenely rich
oligarch (what else should we call Trump or Bloomberg?) from the other side to rule rather
than a “communist” like Bernie Sanders or a “naive peacenik” like
Tulsi Gabbard to be elected president. If the space aliens land tomorrow and start recruiting
colonists to populate newly terraformed planets in other solar systems, sign me up. Yeah,
it’s become that absurd down here.
Simply imperial rot and corruption of power on all sides.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans have an exclusive on those qualities.
Mark Thomason , February 14, 2020 at 12:37
This is a useful approach. It needs added to it the language and culture element: as if
the part that wants out of the Moscow coup shares our own language and culture, while the
rest of Canada does not, and the rest of Canada had gone on a spree to suppress that language
and culture. It is hard to find a parallel in Canada to those facts, but it is what happened
in Ukraine.
It is important to understanding to put oneself in the shoes of the other guys. It was
once called walking a mile in the other guy’s moccasins, and given a Native wisdom
attribution.
These demented human beings are miserable, self seeking failures by any measurement of
dignity. In a way they are possessed with "Full Spectrum Dominance" delution.
tone-deaf, arrogant speech in Munich this
weekend in which he proclaimed that "the West is winning." In the most hypocritical and absurd
section of the speech, Pompeo railed against other states' violations of sovereignty:
Look, this matters. This matters because assaults on sovereignty destabilize. Assaults on
sovereignty impoverish. Assaults on sovereignty enslave. Assaults on sovereignty are, indeed,
assaults on the very freedom that anchors the Western ideal.
Trump administration officials like talking about the importance of sovereignty almost as
much as they enjoy trampling on the sovereignty of other states. The problem with Pompeo's
sovereignty talk is that the U.S. obviously doesn't respect the sovereignty of many countries,
and almost every criticism that he levels against someone else can be turned around against the
U.S. The U.S. daily violates Syrian sovereignty with an illegal military presence. U.S. forces
remain in Iraq against the wishes of the Iraqi government, and our military has repeatedly
carried out attacks inside Iraq over their government's objections in just the last two months.
The Trump administration respects sovereignty and territorial integrity so much that it has
endorsed illegal Israeli annexation of Syrian territory and it has given a green light to more
annexations in the future. It is now supporting an illegal Turkish incursion into Syria.
Pompeo said at one point:
Respect for sovereignty of nations is a secret of and central to our success. The West is
winning.
As we look back on the record of how the U.S. and our allies have behaved over the last 30
years, respect for other nations' sovereignty is not what we see. On the contrary, there has
been a series of unnecessary and sometimes illegal wars that the U.S. and its allies have waged
either to overthrow a foreign government, or to take sides in an internal conflict, or both.
The U.S. and our allies and the other countries certainly would have been better off if that
hadn't happened. Our recent record is nothing to boast about. It is typical of Pompeo that he
celebrates successes where there aren't any. He says that "the West is winning," but what
exactly have we won? The U.S. is still involved in multiple desultory conflicts, and relations
with many of our most important allies are more strained than at any time since the start of
the Iraq war. If "the West is winning," what would repeated failures look like?
Pompeo calls out economic coercion as one of the harmful things that other states do, but he
is part of an administration that has used economic warfare more than anyone else against more
targets than ever before. If the U.S. refrained from using economic coercion as one of its main
tools in trying to compel other states to do what Washington wants, the attacks on other
states' use of economic coercion might carry some weight. As things stand, Pompeo's words are
just so much wind.
The theme of Pompeo's speech is refuting criticism from allies about how the U.S. is
conducting its foreign policy, but I doubt that many Europeans in the audience were reassured
by his hectoring, triumphalist tone. It doesn't help when he is accusing many of our allies of
being fools and dupes:
When so-called Iranian moderates play the victim, remember their assassination and terror
campaigns against innocent Iranian civilians and right here on European soil itself.
When Russia suggests that Nord Stream 2 is purely a commercial endeavor, don't be fooled.
Consider the deprivations caused in the winters of 2006 and 2008 and 2009 and 2015.
When Huawei executives show up at your door, they say you'll lose out if you don't buy in.
Don't believe the hype.
Needless to say, many of our European allies have very different views on all of these
issues, and berating their position isn't going to make them agree with the Trump
administration's unreasonable demands. Pompeo wants to tout the virtues of sovereignty, but as
soon as our allies take decisions that displease him and Trump he castigates them for it.
Respecting the sovereignty and independence of other states includes respecting their right to
make decisions on policy that our government doesn't like. Of course, Pompeo would rather have
our allies behave like vassals and expects other partners to obey as if they are colonies.
Behind all the sovereignty rhetoric is an unmistakable desire to dictate terms and force others
to do the administration's bidding. The countries that are on the receiving end of this
insufferable arrogance can see through Pompeo's words. All three of those issues touch on areas
where the U.S. insists that our allies abandon their own interests because Washington tells
them to. That is exactly the sort of heavy-handed "leadership" that our allies resent, and
Pompeo's speech will just remind them why they hate it.
I posted this on an earlier thread, but it is relevant here.
I have been a working full time in Emergency Medicine for over 20 years. I was a "Flight Surgeon" in the Army. Soldiers are
notorious for playing up any combat related injury in order to qualify for disability and the financial benefits that flow from
being categorized as being disabled. As far as we know, the most serious claimed injuries were "concussions." As a practicing
specialist in Emergency Medicine, I can explain that the diagnosis of "concussion" means, by definition, that no abnormality is
seen on CT scanning of the brain. The diagnosis is made based on the injured person's purely subjective complaints, i.e. whatever
the allegedly injured person says. If the allegedly injured person says the right things, then a physician may call the symptoms
that of a concussion.
So, ultimately, a soldier would be diagnosed with a concussion because the soldier (who has financial benefits to gain) says
so, and a physician does not dispute it.
I have seen hundreds if not thousands of diagnoses of "concussion". That diagnosis does not have to be supported by any specific
findings or even a proper understanding of the diagnosis. It simply has to be entered in the record by a licensed physician. Once
that diagnosis is on the medical record, it is up to subsequent providers to refute that diagnosis if they desire to do so.
This is something subsequent providers are very unlikely to want to dedicate the time and effort required to accomplish. There
is usually no financial or professional incentive to do so – often the opposite. There is no specific test to definitively say
one way or the other if a person had a "concussion". Like PTSD it is a "functional" diagnosis based mainly on subjective symptoms
and not objective test results. This is not to say such things do not exist. They do exist. It is only to say that they can be
faked or misinterpreted and that will happen if there is a financial incentive to do so.
@The Scalpel I'm sure your assessment is accurate, and is symptomatic of a much more general problem affecting the axis of
medicine, insurance, pharma, and state pension systems (military or civilian), not to mention all corporations and agencies to
various degrees.
When doctors' medical opinions are considered sacrosanct and sufficient to secure payouts, excuse time off from work, and add
one's name to the list of medically "made men," they are certain to be pursued like bounty on the high seas. No small number of
doctors are content to play along with this system, as it secures a steady stream of income for them as well. Foreign doctors,
who are often perfectly comfortable with graft and fraud, are especially bad in this regard.
Employers are left with no recourse except to eat the cost of malingering employees and ever swelling pension rolls, which
no employeer can long afford at the micro level and which society itself cannot afford at the macro level.
Another complicating factor is added by the cultural obsession with business efficiency. When the VA scandal broke in 2014,
a lot of people were upset by the thought that veterans were receiving shoddy care and insisted that "more must be done," not
realizing that this very insistance was at the root of the problem. I said at the time that the real lesson here was that the
VA had been "Six-Sigma'ed" by incompetent management who demanded faster claims processing and unrealistic expenditure reductions.
These schizophrenic cultural trends -- viz. , on the one hand, greater and greater demands for doles by an aging and
sickening population; and, on the other hand, the feckless attempts to mitigate the very real unaffordability of this by an oligarchic
business philosophy that knows only how to downsize, offshore, and automate based on a naive reliance on the dubious benefits
of technology -- are going to culminate in an epic breakdown of social functioning over the next decade.
@The Scalpel Perhaps you need to return to medical school for a refresher. A "concussion" may, or may not, be seen as an abnormality,
usually subdural haematoma, on a CT scan. The reason for requesting the CT scan would be from the patient reported complaints,
but also from the objective medical examination for things like pupils and reaction. Radiation is not good for you. If you are
ordering CT scans before examination, you've got it backwards.
There are no causalities you guys over estimate the steadfastness of the US military.
Purple heart = disability cheque.
No one can disprove a concussion.
And that's the real embarrassment that the Pentagon is trying to hide.
These guys (US forces) teach other how to fake PTSD to get on disability. I've seen it countless times in Western armed forces.
Its how I know Iran will never be invaded or even bombed back to the stone age. You have to have balls for that and clearly the
West and Israel have none. (Bush invaded Iraq on the premise of an empty vial; the Iranian counterattack was a legit no-shit missile
attack on US forces and . NOTHING HAPPENED).
As for reality I have colleagues who are so disconnected from international politics that reality (past their 9-5 job) means
nothing. Reality won't kick in until it comes home to bite them in the ass. It's that simple. A programmer who does nothing for
10 years but play games and write software, what does he care about causalities in Iraq? Seriously. For him that was a 20 second
twitter feed which entertained him on his way to work and that's it.
@Curmudgeon Perhaps you have heard the old proverb, "It is best to keep your mouth shut and have people suspect you are ignorant,
than to open it and prove to people that you are ignorant"
A subdural hematoma is (let me say this slowly for you) a sudural hematoma. A concussion is (again slowly) a concussion. They
are two separate diagnoses.
Pretty good chance you don't know what these codes mean. If not, there is this thing called Google. Look it up.
"things like pupils and reaction"
WTF? I think you might be trying to describe testing for pupils being reactive to light (the normal state of affairs.) Abnormally
reactive pupils are not required for the diagnosis of concussion and, in fact, are not usually present.
Radiation is not good for you. If you are ordering CT scans before examination, you've got it backwards.
That, in fact, is all true. What is not true is that I made any sort of suggestion at all to order tests before an exam. You
need to lay off the hash pipe.
FYI:
Concussion: A concussion is a type of brain injury. It is a short loss of normal brain function in response to a head injury.
Concussions are a common type of sports injury. You can also suffer from one if you suffer a blow to the head or hit your head
after a fall. After a concussion, you may have a
headache or neck pain. You may also experience nausea, ringing in your ears, dizziness, or tiredness. You may feel dazed
or not your normal self
All these symptoms are subjective, i.e. they are basically what the patient reports – truthfully or not.
FWIW, I have found the most reliable symptom in diagnosing concussion is short term memory loss. The patient asks the same
question over and over as if he never got an answer.
@The Scalpel I'm well aware of what a CT is, I was doing them more than 40 years ago, likely before you were in med school.
I know what a concussion is, I've had one, and went through the examination. If you actually read my response, I did not say that
every concussion resulted in a subdural haematoma.
Patient reaction includes memory loss. Dizziness is what a patient reports. Of course what patients report is subjective, just
as pain tolerance is, but it doesn't invalidate them.
I never said or implied that you did not know what a CT scan is. I think I get it now. You really are a curmudgeon (as in elderly)
and your cognitive abilities are flagging. I am sorry for being rude earlier. As you may recall, the point being made was that
a simple concussion is not visible on CT scan. A subdural hematoma is visible – as well as many other traumatic brain injuries,
. A concussion is not visible. Subjective complaints are not invalid. They are as honest as the person making the complaint.
@The Scalpel Are you suggesting that The Greatest Fighting Force in the Galaxy in All of History, the military of the world's
Exceptional Nation, is riddled with grifters?
"... However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele dossier should be included in the ICA report. ..."
"... But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of intelligence information" they had. ..."
"... "Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said." ..."
"... Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." ..."
"... Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his probe to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic, is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into the FBI's probe, most notably Carter Page. ..."
"... Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract. ..."
"... Durham's criminal investigation into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel. ..."
"... "Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker. ..."
"... Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin. ..."
"... Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov. ..."
"... However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and "Surkov." ..."
U.S. Attorney John Durham – charged with the criminal probe into the FBI's Russia
investigation of the Trump campaign – has been questioning CIA officials closely involved
with John
Brennan's 2017 intelligence community assessment regarding direct Russian interference in
the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.
In May 2017, Brennan denied during a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence that its agency relied on the now debunked Christopher Steele dossier for the
Intelligence Community Assessment report. He told then Congressman Trey Gowdy "we didn't"
use the Steele dossier.
"It wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had," Brennan
stated.
"It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was
done. It was -- it was not."
However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was
used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in
the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele
dossier should be included in the ICA report.
But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former
FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should
be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan
said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of
intelligence information" they had.
According to a recent report by The New York Times, Durham's probe is specifically looking
at that January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which concluded with "high confidence" that
Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered an influence campaign in 2016."
"Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director
John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular
result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest
they interfere with that goal, the people said."
Sources with knowledge have said CIA officials questioned by Durham's investigative team
"are extremely concerned with the investigation and the direction it's heading."
Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S.
democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her
electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump."
But not everyone agreed with Brennan. The NSA then under retired Adm. Mike Rogers stated it
only had "moderate confidence" that Putin tried to help Trump's election. As stated in the
New York times Durham is investigating whether Brennan was keeping other intelligence
agencies out of the loop to keep his narrative that Putin was helping Trump's campaign
public.
"I wouldn't call it a discrepancy, I'd call it an honest difference of opinion between
three different organizations, and, in the end, I made that call," Rogers
told the Senate in May 2017.
"It didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources."
According to The Times Durham is reviewing emails from the CIA, FBI, and National Security
Agency analysts who worked on the January, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia's
interference in the election.
Durham's office could not be reached for comment. DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec also could
not be reached for comment.
However, Brennan told MSNBC's "Hardball" last week,
that Durham's questioning is dangerous.
"It's kind of silly," he said.
"Is there a criminal investigation now on analytic judgments and the activities of C.I.A.
in terms of trying to protect our national security? I'm certainly willing to talk to Mr.
Durham or anybody else who has any questions about what we did during this period of 2016
."
Durham And FBI Spy Stefan Halper
Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his
probe to the Pentagon's
Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully
scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge
academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic,
is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into
the FBI's probe, most notably Carter
Page.
Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several
sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's
contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract.
Further, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is also
investigating the over $1 million in contracts Halper received from the ONA, as
first reported at SaraACarter.com. It is, of course, a separate investigation from Durham's
but on the same issues.
The Office Of Net Assessment, according to sources with knowledge, is sometimes used as a
front to pay contractors, like Halper, who are conducting work for U.S. intelligence agencies.
It is for this reason, that Durham is investigating the flow of money that Halper received and
whether or not agencies other than the FBI were involved in the investigation into Trump's
campaign and whether or not, the contracts were accurately accounted for in the reports
received by Grassley.
Durham's criminal investigation
into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the
secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed
by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of
questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the
FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.
"Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to
recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked
theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker.
But it is Halper's role overseas and concern that the CIA may have been involved that is
leading to more questions than answers. In 2016, in what appeared to be an unexpected move,
Halper left the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. He
told papers in London – at the time – that it was due to "unacceptable Russian
influence."
Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the
seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on
several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the
course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.
Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had
invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian
Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov.
Moreover, the New York Times recent report suggests that Durham's probe into Brennan is also
looking closely at an alleged secret source said to have direct ties to the Kremlin. It is not
certain if the same secret Kremlin source discussed by Brennan is the same source used by
Halper in his reports.
However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State
Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and
"Surkov."
Interesting, isn't it.
Surkov is Vladislav Surkov, an aide of Vladimir Putin who is on the U.S.'s list of
sanctioned individuals, and Trubnikov is none other than Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Trubnikov was
the First Deputy of Foreign Minister of Russia and he formally served as the Director of
Foreign Intelligence Service. He is also a source of Halper.
It seems that history is about to repeat. The highwater mark in SEAsia was the helicopters
evacuating the last invaders from Saigon. The highwater mark in the ME is going to be similar
scenes in Iraq.
A final warning has been issued to US troops there – 40 days after Soleimanis
assassination – the Resistance is ready to move, an irresistible force about to meet a
not so immovable object.
Along with Idlib and Allepo its been amazing start to 2020. And its not even spring!
hen a crisis in the 17th-century Holy Roman Empire about princely authority and autonomy
spiraled into sectarian warfare, Central Europe was plunged into the Thirty Years War. It was
to be a conflict so
debilitating and deadly that it would prove more proportionally costly in casualties for
what is now Germany than even the Second World War. When the Peace of Westphalia finally brought
the nightmare to a close in 1648, it was clear that domestic politics had to be separated from
diplomacy for any stability to return to Europe. So came an emphasis on the sovereignty of
states to police their own affairs while retaining a standardized system for dealing with each
other as (ostensible) equals in the international realm.
While no system can guarantee peace free from geopolitical upset, The Westphalian Peace was
nonetheless an improvement over the religious wars of the past. Something like it would also be
an improvement over the rampant, American-led liberal hegemony of today. The ideologies of
permanent war have had disproportionate influence over the ruling cliques in Washington, D.C.,
from the Clintonite neoliberals to the Dick Cheney neoconservatives. There are very real
material reasons for this, of course, such as defense contracting and the powerful lobbying
behind it. But it was on purely ideological terms that America's dangerous imperial overstretch
was sold to a domestic audience.
Those like former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power would have us believe that there are
teeming masses of people abroad just yearning to have American bombs rained down upon them as a
solution for their domestic woes. Yet for most of American history, this was not so. The early
and rising United States was a nation of diplomats who had taken the lessons of Westphalia to
heart. From George
Washington and
John Quincy Adams up through the start of the 20th century, the importance of keeping
domestic ideological arrangements out of sober realist diplomacy was usually understood. It was
Woodrow Wilson who departed from this arrangement with his commitment to establishing the
United States as guarantor not only of the rights of its own citizens but also the people of
foreign nations abroad. His unrealistic vision was rejected by both Congress and most of the
world's other great powers. Still, Britain and America were influenced enough by his thinking
to stand aghast when first Japan and then Italy and Germany went about sabotaging the fragile
postwar order. It would take a second, more destructive war, with the United States and the
U.S.S.R. creating a peace out of their victorious power, to undo the damage that had been done.
Two countries that could not have been more internally different became the crux of the most
important wartime alliance of the 20th century. Largely forgotten was that the top crime
pursued by the allies during the Germans' postwar trial was that of " waging aggressive war ."
Since the end of the Cold War, and with the checks on America's ambitions largely removed,
we have seen this Wilsonian messianism return, and stronger than before. America's cultural
history of puritanism and faith in its own (culturally and historically specific) institutions
has merged with an unchecked hubris. Interventions unrelated to the interests of the average
American came in the Balkans and Somalia, and then expanded to nearly the entire Middle East
and large swathes of Africa. The justification is always the 9/11 terror attacks. The Bush
administration in particular merged all of these trends by marrying the images of apocalyptic
religious struggle to the Wilsonian quest for a world order founded on a universal
conception of rights. When weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the invasion
of Iraq, failed to turn up, Bush quickly pivoted to another argument: that we would build a new
and better Iraq Americanized through our concept of civil society. What we got was the rise of
ISIS, sectarian strife, and an
empowered Iran greatly expanding its influence throughout that region. It was an outcome
abundantly obvious to the many experts who were opposed to the war from the outset.
This turn towards militarized humanism became even more overt as the Obama administration
reacted to the Arab Spring. Lacking the WMD excuse and post-9/11 bellicosity, the
administration that was elected in large part to replace and undo the Bush legacy decided to
topple the government of Libya and indirectly try to do the same in Syria. The administration
tapped into a large network of human rights NGOs to fill the media with stories of atrocities,
many of which were exaggerated or even outright false .
What was the result? Libya is a now a Somalia-level failed state with
street-side slave markets that's fueled a European refugee crisis. The Syrian Civil War
continues towards a now inevitable conclusion, heavily extended in length by the interventions
of countries like Turkey
and Saudi Arabia working hand-in-hand with the United States . Those interventions were
sold to the public under the guise of upholding universal standards of government as imagined
by the United States, but have only contributed to global instability and alienation of much of
the world from
Washington .
In order to inoculate the American public, media, and (dare one hope) policymaking class
against future foolhardy adventures, the Westphalian Peace should be reintroduced into the
disussion. The foreign policy establishment is largely controlled by a class of professionals
in love with their own image as upholders of liberal hegemony and oblivious to the results of
their actions. From empowering al-Qaeda in the Middle East to driving Russia and China
together, the consequences have proven catastrophic. It is time to stick up for the concept of
national sovereignty as the core principle of diplomacy once again.
It was the France, the Catholic power willing to ally with Protestants against its greater
Hapsburg foe regardless of domestic politics, that won the most out of the Thirty Years War and
at the lowest cost. Such realism in pursuit of modest goals should inform our diplomatic
thinking today.
Christopher Mott is a research fellow at Defense Priorities and a former academic and
researcher at the State Department. His book on Central Asian geopolitical history, The
Formless Empire , was published by Westholme Publishing in 2015.
"America's cultural history of puritanism and faith in its own (culturally and historically
specific) institutions has merged with an unchecked hubris."
Does America have faith in its culturally and historically specific institutions?
America still supports the Bill of Rights for oneself, but not always for others. Listen to
how "religious freedom" differs when articulated by a liberal and a conservative.
There's a new player since Westphalia, the soldiers without borders known commonly as
terrorists. Arguing about whose fault it is that they exist is as fruitless as "Who lost
China?" The article, alas, deals with them only as epiphenomena of great-power actions. C+.
But if we weren't poking a big old wasp's nest in the Middle East would any of those
terrorists give a hoot about us? We would still have to worry about domestic terrorists, of
course.
Absolutely, about domestic terrorists, who are an old story from the days they were called
"clinic bombers."
"Our enemies are our fault" is an invitation to become extinct. I don't go there.
Soldiers without borders are part of the picture now, and the most persuasive assignment
of responsibility for them may take gold in the 50-Yard Blame Toss, but is still a "should"
non-answer to an "is" problem.
soldiers without borders known commonly as terrorists
Also known as mercenaries, who aren't new at all. In fact, they've enjoyed something of
a revitalization since 2001 with such 'private military contractors" as Blackwater/Xe
Services/Academi and its imitators. Courtesy of the US government.
Many times in history one can point to as the embodiment of "realism" in international
affairs. After Westphalia came the Napoleonic wars and the Congress of Vienna. Some time
later came WW1/WW2/Cold War (really one conflict) and no real settlement (with the USA
presuming a foolish "End of History" and a faux Superpower hegemony.)
I am reminded that Henry Kissinger was supposed to be a master of realpolitik ,
and we saw how well that worked. The last real decent politician who understood things may
have been Otto von Bismarck, and he was cast aside by a neurotic Kaiser who hated his
English grandmother.
The author makes a very good point... That waging aggressive wars is a crime for which
we hung people at Nuremberg. But let us not forget the reality of realism, the Roman maxim
of, "If you have trouble at home, stir up a war abroad." Works like a charm, or always has
before.
High goal in the United States of Amnesia.... remembering something...
If anything, the elites would like to bury as much as possible... so that the conclusion is
always their alternative only...
Unless there are members of Congress who were European history majors, I doubt that any of
them could tell you much about the Peace of Westphalia. I would be satisfied if they could
at least learn some lessons from WWI. One of the best takeaways from that war that I have
read was David Stockman's (Reagan's first Budget Director) observation that if the US had
just stayed out of the war, the major belligerents would eventually have come to a cease
fire and Germany would not have been plunged into chaos after the war. Another takeaway
comes from William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". The German government
paid for its war costs by issuing bonds and when its access to the bond market became
exhausted, it simply resorted to printing money. After the war, it not only did not raise
taxes to pay off its reparations and other war debts but lowered them.
Germany's Weimar constitution which was approved in 1919 looked good on paper and was
very democratic for its time. But it never worked well in practice. The country was beset
by a series of weak coalition governments during the Weimar years, governments which were
incapable of stopping the runaway inflation of the early 1920's and incapable of dealing
with the economic fallout as the Great Depression spread from the US to Europe in the early
1930's.
I doubt our foreign policy "elites" are oblivious to the results of their actions. That
degree of self-imposed ignorance even Washinton's "best" and "brightest" couldn't possibly
achieve.
What they are is immune to the consequences of their actions, never called to account
for the millions of innocent lives they helped to ruin or to completely snuff out.
Baruch says "There's a new player since Westphalia, the soldiers without borders known
commonly as terrorists. "
Terrorism has suffered a lazy and opportunistic amount of definition creep in recent
decades. I go by the old idea that it's about using unforeseen violence against civilians
for political ends.
However to me, the vast bulk of terrorism is state terror and states really hate it when
privateers muscle in on their act. For example the morning after the 9-11 bombings (I live
a long way from the US) I had two immediate thoughts. First and foremost was sadness for
the dead and their families. Second was an awful foreboding for the many thousands of
innocent brown foreign civilians who'd die in misplaced criminal revenge aka state
terror.
"It was the France, the Catholic power willing to ally with Protestants against its greater
Hapsburg foe regardless of domestic politics, that won the most out of the Thirty Years War
and at the lowest cost."
Be reminded, however, France's victory lasted 115 years--ten minutes in historical
terms--coming to an end with the Treaty of Paris in 1763 which ended The Seven Years War
which resulted in bankruptcy for the Bourbon monarchy and eventual domestic upheaval
commencing in 1789. After the defeat of Napoleon (the inevitable result of said upheaval)
and as a result of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 France was pretty much finished off as a
world power. Nothing is ever permanent. Except war.
"Those like former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power would have us believe that there are
teeming masses of people abroad just yearning to have American bombs rained down upon them
as a solution for their domestic woes."
The author is engaging in a bit of hyperbole here. Changing "have American bombs rained
down upon them" to "enjoy the fruits of American-style democracy" would suffice. Same
conclusion. Same results.
Thanks for such an incisive framing of US foreign policy over the last century and, in
particular, the last twenty years. In its crispness and clarity, your piece is on par with
Andrew Bacevich's work. It deserves a wide readership.
Looking at various indices like median household income and average wage, it seems as if living standards in Russia are substantially
below western European levels and even slightly below central Europe. (Estonia and Poland are consistently slightly higher, Hungary
often a bit lower.) Compared to China, going by the same sources and others, Russian wages are roughly twice as high as China's
That creates separatist movements within the country, including Islamist movements in Muslim-dominated regions.
So their posture is strictly defensive, and probably is not much more than a mild defensive reaction to "Full-spectrum Dominance"
doctrine and the aggressive foreign policy conducted by the USA neocons (which totally dominate NSC and the State Department, as
we saw from Ukrainegate testimonies)
The USA coup d'tat in Ukraine actually have a blowback for the USA -- it neutralized influence and political status of Russia
neoliberal fifth column (neoliberal compradors), and if not Putin (who is paradoxically a pro-Western neoliberal; although of "national
neoliberalism" flavor similar to Trumpism ) some of them probably would be now hanging from the lamp posts. They are really hated
by population after hardships, comparable with WWII hardships, imposed on ordinary Russian during Western-enforced neoliberalization
under marionette Yeltsin government and attempt to grab Russian resources for pennies on a dollar. "Marshall plan" for Russia instead
of economic rape would be a much better policy.
I think Obama-Nuland plot to turn Ukraine into the USA vassal state was yet another very dangerous move, which hurts the USA national
security and greatly increased chances of military confrontation with Russia (aka mutual annihilation)
It was worse then a crime, it was a blunder. And now the USA needs to support this vassal with money we do not have.
The role of NSC in militarizing the USA foreign policy is such that it neutralizes any impulses of any US administration (if we
assume they exist) to improve relations with Russia.
Neoliberal Dems now is a second war party which bet on neo-McCarthyism to weaken Trump. They went into the complete status of
psychosis in this area. I view it as a psychotic reaction to the first signs of the collapse of the USA-centered global neoliberal
empire (which will happen anyway independently of Russian moves)
That's actually a very dangerous situation indeed, and I am really afraid that the person who will replace Putin will not have
Putin steel nerves, diplomatic talent, and the affinity with the West. Then what ? another Sarajevo and another war?
With warmongering "raptured" crazies like Mike, "we killed up to 200 Russians" Pompeo, the situation can really become explosive
like before WWI. Again, after Putin leaves the political scene, the Sarajevo incident is easy to stage, especially with such incompetent
marionette of the military-industrial complex like Trump at the helm.
I believe antagonizing Russia was a reckless, very damaging to the USA interest move, the move initiated by Clinton administration
and supported by all subsequent administration as weakening and possibly dismembering Russia is one of the key aspect of Full Spectrum
Dominance doctrine. . And we will pay a huge price for this policy.
See also Professor Stephen Cohen books on the subject.
Why do you pose this as antagonizing either Russsia or Iran? They are somewhat allied, so in fact antagonizing Iran as we are
doing also antagonizes Russia.
Likbez,
The relative economic position of Russia in terms of median income is no different today than it was 30 years ago before Yeltsin,
except for the rise of China. It was behind the European nations to its west, both those that were under its domination and those
that were not, and it still is. So no big deal.
And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian
domination.
f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.
likbez February 16, 2020 10:30 pm
And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian
domination. f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.
I might well be foolish and ignorant (I am far from being the specialist in the region), but I suspect Ukrainians do prefer
the exchange rate ~8.5 hrivnas to a dollar (before the coup) to the current 25 hrivnas to a dollar.
Especially taking into account stagnant salaries and actual parity of prices in dollars for many types of food (especially
meat), industrial products, and services between the USA and Ukraine.
I recently talked with one Ukrainian woman who told me that the "bribe" (unofficial payments due to low salaries for doctors
and nurses in state clinics) for the child delivery was $1000 in Kiev in 2014 and she gave birth exactly at the time when hrivna
jumped from 8.5 to over 20 per dollar. That was a tragedy for her and her family.
And please remember that the average SS pension in Ukraine is around 1500 hrivna a month (~ $60). So to me, it is completely
unclear how pensioners can survive at all while the government is buying super expensive American weapons "to defend the country
from Russian aggression."
"... Imperialism – the highest stage of capitalism ..."
"... Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Moroccans, Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians, found home in the EU thanks to madame Merkel. ..."
At the moment, the United States has great difficulty in retaining its hegemony in the
Middle East. Its troops have been declared unwanted in Iraq; and in Syria, the US and their
foreign legion of terrorists lose terrain and positions every month. The US has responded to
this with a significant escalation, by deploying more troops and by constant threats against
Iran. At the same time, we have seen strong protest movements in Lebanon, Iraq and
Iran.
When millions of Iraqi took to the streets recently, their main slogan was "THE UNITED
STATES OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST!"
How should one analyze this?
Obviously, there are a lot of social tensions in the Middle East – class based,
ethnic, religious and cultural. The region is a patchwork of conflicts and tensions that not
only goes back hundreds of years, but even a few thousand.
There are always many reasons to rebel against a corrupt upper class, anywhere in the world.
But no rebellion can succeed if it is not based on a realistic and thorough analysis of the
specific conditions in the individual country and region.
Just as in Africa, the borders in the Middle East are arbitrarily drawn. They are the
product of the manipulations of imperialist powers, and only to a lesser extent products of
what the peoples themselves have wanted.
During the era of decolonization, there was a strong, secular pan-Arab movement that wanted to create
a unified Arab world. This movement was influenced by the nationalist and socialist ideas that
had strong popular support at the time.
King Abdallah I
of Jordan envisaged a kingdom that would consist of Jordan, Palestine and Syria. Egypt and
Syria briefly established a union called the United Arab Republic . Gaddafi wanted
to unite Libya, Syria and Egypt in a federation of Arab republics
.
In 1958, a quickly dissolved confederation was established between Jordan and Iraq, called
the Arab Federation
. All these efforts were transient. What remains is the Arab League, which is, after all, not a
state federation and not an alliance. And then of course we have the demand for a Kurdish
state, or something similar consisting of one or more Kurdish mini-states.
Still, the most divisive product of the First World War was the establishment of the state
of Israel on Palestinian soil. During the First World War, Britain's Foreign Minister Arthur
Balfour issued what became known as the Balfour Declaration
, which " view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people."
But what is the basis for all these attempts at creating states? What are the prerequisites
for success or failure?
The imperialist powers divide the world according to the power
relations between them
Lenin gave the best and most durable explanation for this, in his essay Imperialism
– the highest stage of capitalism . There, he explained five basic features of
the era of imperialism:
The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a
high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; The
merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this
"finance capital", of a financial oligarchy; The export of capital as distinguished from the
export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; The formation of international
monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves; The territorial
division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
But Lenin also pointed out that capitalist countries are developing unevenly, not least
because of the uneven development of productive forces in the various capitalist countries.
After a while, there arises a discrepancy between how the world is divided and the relative
strength of the imperialist powers. This disparity will eventually force through a
redistribution, a new division of the world based on the new relationship of strength. And, as
Lenin states :
The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the
disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the
one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the
other?"
The two world wars were wars that arose because of unevenness in the power relationships
between the imperialist powers. The British Empire was past its heyday and British capitalism
lagged behind in the competition. The United States and Germany were the great powers that had
the largest industrial and technological growth, and eventually this misalignment exploded. Not
once, but twice.
Versailles and Yalta
The victors of the First World War divided the world between themselves at the expense of
the losers. The main losers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia (the Soviet Union) and the
Ottoman Empire. This division was drawn up in the Versailles treaty and the following minor
treaties.
Europe after the Versailles Treaties (Wikipedia)
This map shows how the Ottoman Empire was partitioned:
At the end of World War II, the victorious superpowers met in the city of Yalta on the
Crimean peninsula in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin made an agreement on how
Europe should be divided following Germany's imminent defeat. This map shows how it was
envisaged and the two blocs that emerged and became the foundation for the Cold War.
Note that Yugoslavia, created after Versailles in 1919, was maintained and consolidated as
"a country between the blocs". So it is a country that carries in itself the heritage of both
the Versailles- and Yalta agreements.
The fateful change of era when the Soviet Union
fell
In the era of imperialism, there has always been a struggle between various great powers.
The battle has been about markets, access to cheap labor, raw materials, energy, transport
routes and military control. And the imperialist countries divide the world between themselves
according to their strength. But the imperialist powers are developing unevenly.
If a power collapses or loses control over some areas, rivals will compete to fill the void.
Imperialism follows the principle that Aristotle in his Physics called horror vacui – the
fear of empty space.
And that was what happened when the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. In 1991, the Soviet
Union ceased to exist, and soon the Eastern bloc was also history. And thus the balance was
broken, the one that had maintained the old order. And now a huge area was available for
re-division. The weakened Russia barely managed to preserve its own territory, and not at all
the area that just before was controlled by the Soviet Union.
Never has a so large area been open for redivision. It was the result of two horrible
world wars that anew was up for grabs. It could not but lead to war." Pål
Steigan, 1999
"Never has a so large area been open for re-division. It was the result of two horrible
world wars that anew was up for grabs. It could not but lead to war." Map: Countries either
part of the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc or non-aligned (Yugoslavia)
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, both the Yalta and Versailles agreements in reality
collapsed, and opened up the way for a fierce race to control this geopolitical empty
space.
This laid the foundation for the American
Geostrategy for Eurasia , which concentrated on securing control over the vast Eurasian
continent. It is this struggle for redistribution in favor of the United States that has been
the basis for most wars since 1990: Somalia, the Iraq wars, the Balkan wars, Libya, Ukraine,
and Syria.
The United States has been aggressively spearheading this, and the process to expand NATO
eastward and create regime changes in the form of so-called "color revolutions" has been part
of this struggle. The coup in Kiev, the transformation of Ukraine into an American colony with
Nazi elements, and the war in Donbass are also part of this picture. This war will not stop
until Russia is conquered and dismembered, or Russia has put an end to the US offensive.
So, to recapitulate: Because the world is already divided between imperialist powers and
there are no new colonies to conquer, the great powers can only fight for redistribution. What
creates the basis and possibilities for a new division is the uneven development of capitalism.
The forces that are developing faster economically and technologically will demand bigger
markets, more raw materials, more strategic control.
The results of two terrible wars are
again up for grabs
World War I caused perhaps 20 million deaths , as well as at least as many
wounded. World War II caused around 72 million deaths . These are
approximate numbers, and there is still controversy around the exact figures, but we are
talking about this order of magnitude.
The two world wars that ended with the Versailles and Yalta treaties thus caused just below
100 million dead, as well as an incredible number of other suffering and losses.
Since 1991, a low-intensity "world war" has been fought, especially by the US, to conquer
"the void". Donald Trump
recently stated that the United States have waged wars based on lies, which have cost $ 8
trillion ($ 8,000 billion) and millions of people's lives. So the United States' new
distribution of the spoils has not happened peacefully.
"The Rebellion against
Sykes-Picot"
In the debate around the situation in the Middle East, certain people that would like to
appear leftist, radical and anti-imperialist say that it is time to rebel against the
artificial boundaries drawn by the Sykes-Picot and Versailles treaties. And certainly these
borders are artificial and imperialist. But how leftist and anti-imperialist is it to fight for
these boundaries to be revised now?
In reality, it is the United States and Israel that are fighting for a redistribution of the
Middle East. This is the basis underlying Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century", which aims to
bury Palestine forever, and it is stated outright in the new US strategy for partitioning
Iraq.
Again, this is just an updated version of the Zionist Yinon plan that aimed to cantonize the
entire Middle East, with the aim that Israel should have no real opponents and would be able to
dominate the entire region and possibly create a Greater Israel.
It is not the anti-imperialists that are leading the way to overhaul the imperialist borders
from 1919. It is the imperialists. To achieve this, they can often exploit movements that are
initially popular or national, but which then only become tools and proxies in a greater
game.
This has happened so many times in history that it can hardly be counted.
Hitler's Germany exploited Croatian nationalism by using the
Ustaša gangs as proxies. From 1929 to 1945, they killed hundreds of thousands of
Serbs, Jews and Roma people. And their ideological and political descendants carried out an
extremely brutal ethnic cleansing of the Krajina area and forced out more than 200,000 Serbs in
their so-called Operation Storm in 1995.
Hitler also used the extreme Ukrainian nationalists of Stepan Bandera's OUN, and after
Bandera's death, the CIA continued to use them as a fifth column against the Soviet Union.
The US low-intensity war against Iraq, from the Gulf War in 1991 to the Iraq War in 2003,
helped divide the country into enclaves. Iraqi Kurdistan achieved autonomy in the oil-rich
north with the help of a US "no-fly zone". The United States thus created a quasi-state that
was their tool in Iraq.
Undoubtedly, the Kurds in Iraq had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. But also
undoubtedly, their Iraqi "Kurdistan" became a client state under the thumb of United States.
And there is also no doubt that the no-fly zones were illegal, as UN Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali
admitted in a conversation with John Pilger .
And now the United States is still using the Kurds in Northern Iraq in its plan to divide
Iraq into three parts. To that end, they are building the world's largest consulate in Erbil.
What they are planning to do, is simply "creating a country".
As is well known, the United States also uses the Kurds in Syria as a pretext to keep 27
percent of the country occupied. It does not help how much the Kurdish militias SDF and PYD
invoke democracy, feminism and communalism; they have ended up pleading for the United States
to maintain the occupation of Northeast Syria.
Preparations for a New World War
Israel and the US are preparing for war against Iran. In this fight, they will develop as
much "progressive" rhetoric as is required to fool people. Real dissatisfaction in the area,
which there is every reason to have, will be magnified and blown out of all proportion. "Social
movements" will be equipped with the latest news in the Israeli and US "riot kits" and receive
training and logistics support, in addition to plenty of cold hard cash.
There may be good reasons to revise the 1919 borders, but in today's situation, such a move
will quickly trigger a major war. Some say that the Kurds are entitled to their own state, and
maybe so. The question is ultimately decided by everyone else, except the Kurds themselves.
The problem is that in today's geopolitical situation, creating a unified Kurdistan will
require that "one" defeats Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It's hard to see how that can happen
without their allies, not least Russia and China, being drawn into the conflict.
And then we have a new world war on our hands. And in that case, we are not talking about
100 million killed, but maybe ten times as much, or the collapse of civilization as we know it.
The Kurdish question is not worth that much.
This does not mean that one should not fight against oppression and injustice, be it social
and national. One certainly should. But you have to realize that revising the map of the Middle
East is a very dangerous plan and that you run the risk of ending up in very dangerous company.
The alternative to this is to support a political struggle that undermines the hegemony of the
United States and Israel and thereby creates better conditions for future struggles.
It is nothing new that small nations rely on geopolitical situations to achieve some form of
national independence. This was the case, for example, for my home country Norway. It was
France's defeat in the Napoleonic War that caused Denmark to lose the province of Norway to
Sweden in 1814, but at the same time it created space for a separate Norwegian constitution and
internal self rule.
All honor to the Norwegian founding fathers of 1814, but this was decided on the
battlefields in Europe. And again, it was Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War that laid
the geopolitical foundation for the dissolution of the forced union with Sweden almost a
hundred years later, in 1905. (This is very schematically presented and there are many more
details, but there is no doubt that Russia's loss of most of its fleet in the Far East had
created a power vacuum in the west, which was exploitable.)
Therefore, the best thing to do now is not to support the fragmentation of states, but to
support a united front to drive the United States out of the Middle East. The Million Man March
in Baghdad got the ball rolling. There is every reason to build up even more strength behind
it. Only when the United States is out, will the peoples and countries in the region be able to
arrive at peaceful agreements between themselves, which will enable a better future to be
developed.
And in this context, it is an advantage that China develops the "Silk Road" (aka Belt and
Road Initiative), not because China is any nobler than other major powers, but because this
project, at least in the current situation, is non-sectarian, non-exclusive and genuinely
multilateral. The alternative to a monopolistic rule by the United States, with a world police
under Washington's control, is a multipolar world. It grows as we speak.
The days of the Empire are numbered. What this will look like in 20 or 50 years, remains to
be seen.
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George Mc ,
Off topic – but there's nowhere else to put this at the moment:
The BBC was taken aback by leftwing attacks on its general election coverage
No idea what they are talking about. They patiently explained that Corbyn was Hitler. What
more could they do?
Dungroanin ,
Ok roll up the sleeves, time to concentrate. I've had enough of being baited as a judae-
phobe.
The 'Balfour Declaration' – he didn't write it and it was a contract published in
the newspapers within hours of it being inveigled.
Ready?
'Balfour and Lloyd George would have been happy with an unvarnished endorsement of
Zionism. The text that the foreign secretary agreed in August was largely written by Weizmann
and his colleagues:
"His Majesty's Government accept the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as
the national home of the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which
the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them."
Got that – AUGUST?
Dungroanin ,
The leading figure in that drama was a charismatic chemistry professor from Manchester, Chaim
Weizmann – with his domed head, goatee beard and fierce intellect. Weizmann had gained
an entrée into political circles thanks to CP Scott, the illustrious editor of the
Manchester Guardian, and had then sold his Zionist project to government leaders, including
David Lloyd George when he was chancellor of the exchequer.
Dungroanin ,
Author(s)
Walter Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, Leo Amery, Lord Milner
Signatories
Arthur James Balfour
Recipient
Walter Rothschild
Dungroanin ,
'In due course the blunt phrase about Palestine being "reconstituted as the national home of
the Jewish people" was toned down into "the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in
Palestine" – a more ambiguous formulation which sidestepped for the moment the idea of
a Jewish state. '
Dungroanin ,
'Edwin Montagu, newly appointed as secretary of state for India, was only the third
practising Jew to hold cabinet office. Whereas his cousin, Herbert Samuel (who in 1920 would
become the first high commissioner of Palestine) was a keen supporter of Zionism, Montagu was
an "assimilationist" – one who believed that being Jewish was a matter of religion not
ethnicity. His position was summed up in the cabinet minutes:
Mr Montagu urged strong objections to any declaration in which it was stated that
Palestine was the "national home" of the Jewish people. He regarded the Jews as a religious
community and himself as a Jewish Englishman '
Dungroanin ,
'Montagu considered the proposed Declaration a blatantly anti-Semitic document and claimed
that "most English-born Jews were opposed to Zionism", which he said was being pushed mainly
by "foreign-born Jews" such as Weizmann, who was born in what is now Belarus.'
Dungroanin ,
The other critic of the proposed Declaration was Lord Curzon, a former viceroy of India, who
therefore viewed Palestine within the geopolitics of Asia. A grandee who traced his lineage
back to the Norman Conquest, Curzon loftily informed colleagues that the Promised Land was
not exactly flowing with milk and honey, but nor was it an empty, uninhabited space.
According to the cabinet minutes, "Lord Curzon urged strong objections upon practical
grounds. He stated, from his recollection of Palestine, that the country was, for the most
part, barren and desolate a less propitious seat for the future Jewish race could not be
imagined."
And, he asked, "how was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman
[Muslim] inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place?"
Dungroanin ,
Sorry for the length of this bit – but it only makes sense in the whole:
'Between them, Curzon and Montagu had temporarily slowed the Zionist bandwagon. Lord
Milner, another member of the war cabinet, hastily added two conditions to the proposed
draft, in order to address the two men's respective concerns. The vague phrase about the
rights of the "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" hints at how little the
government knew or cared about those who constituted roughly 90 per cent of the population of
what they, too, regarded as their homeland.
After trying out the new version on a few eminent Jews, both of Zionist and
accommodationist persuasions, and also securing a firm endorsement from America's President
Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Balfour took the issue back to the war cabinet on 31
October. By now the strident Montagu had left for India, and on this occasion Balfour, who
could often be moody and detached, led from the front, brushing aside the objections that had
been raised and reasserting the propaganda imperative. According to the cabinet minutes, he
stated firmly: "The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the
world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to
such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and
America."
This was standard cabinet tactics: a strong lead from a minister supported by the PM,
daring his colleagues to argue back. And this time Curzon did not, though he did make another
telling comment. He "attached great importance to the necessity of retaining the Christian
and Moslem Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem". If this were done, Curzon added, he "did
not see how the Jewish people could have a political capital in Palestine".'
Dungroanin ,
Dates again crucial and the smoking gun:
'securing a firm endorsement from America's President Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and
Balfour took the issue back to the war cabinet on 31 October.'
Dungroanin ,
The two conditions had bought off the two main critics. That was all that seemed to matter,
even though the reference to the "rights of the existing non-Jewish communities" stood in
potential conflict with the first two clauses about the British supporting and using their
"best endeavours" for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people".
Dungroanin ,
There is MORE but I'll pause and see how many are really interested in FACTS, as opposed to
invented History, Economics and Capital instead of the only real human motivations of the
ages – Money and Power.
George Mc ,
the only real human motivations of the ages – Money and Power.
If this is true then we are all doomed.
Dungroanin ,
Not if we are aware of it George.
Dungroanin ,
Ok a summary fom Brittanica:
'Balfour Declaration Quick Facts
The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum
Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had
asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as "the" Jewish national home. The declaration
specifically stipulated that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The document, however,
said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to
them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and
seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization (see Zionism).
The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially
in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during
World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a
pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in
neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial
possessions in India.
The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in
the British mandate over Palestine, formally approved by the newly created League of Nations
on July 24, 1922.
In May 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a
limit of 75,000 further immigrants and an end to immigration by 1944, unless the resident
Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further immigration.
Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the Arabs. This point was
made moot by the outbreak of World War II (1939–45) and the founding of the State of
Israel in 1948.'
Dungroanin ,
But what about the timing?
Well there are twin tracks, here is the first.
'But talking about the return of the Jews to the land of Israel was only meaningful
because that land seemed up for grabs after the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in 1914.
For Britain, France and Russia – though primarily focused on Europe – war against
a declining power long dubbed the "Sick Man of Europe" opened up the prospect of vast gains
in the Levant and the Middle East.
The Ottoman army, however, proved no walkover. In 1915 it threatened the Suez Canal,
Britain's imperial artery to India, and then repulsed landings by British empire and French
forces on the Dardanelles at Gallipoli. Although Baghdad fell in March 1917, two British
assaults on Gaza that spring were humiliatingly driven back, with heavy losses. Deadlock in
the desert added to Whitehall's list of woes.
In this prescribed narrative of remembrance for 1914-18, what happened outside the Western
Front has been almost entirely obscured. The British army's "Historical Lessons, Warfare
Branch" has published in-house a fascinating volume of essays about what it tellingly
entitles "The Forgotten Fronts of the First World War" – with superb maps and
illustrations. The collection covers not only Palestine and Mesopotamia (roughly modern-day
Iraq and Kuwait), but also Italy, Africa, Russia, Turkey and the Pacific – indeed much
of the world – but sadly it is not currently available to the public. '
Dungroanin ,
The second track is the 'money' track and what everything is about and why we live in such a
miasma of blatant lies.
IT can only make sense by asking questions such as :
Can we follow the money?
When was the Fed set up? Why? By whom?
How much money did it lend &
to whom?
When was the first world war started?
When did US declare war?
When did US troops arrive in numbers to enter that war?
What happened in Russia at the same time?
And in Mesopotamia?
How did it end?
How did it fail to end?
What happened to the contract?
Etc.
I have attempted to research and answer some of these already above.
Next I will attempt to walk the other track but be warned that opens more ancient
tracks.
Dungroanin ,
'On 2 November, Balfour sent his letter to Lord Rothschild.
7 November, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had seized power in Petrograd. ransacked the Tsarist
archives, they published juicy extracts from the "secret treaties" that the Allied powers had
made among themselves in 1915-16 to divide the spoils of victory.
The same day the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies evacuated the town of Gaza
9 November Letter published in Times.
Mid November – The Bolsheviks did not discover that the British were also playing
footsie with the Turks. In the middle of November 1917, secret meetings took place with
Ottoman dissidents in Greece and Switzerland about trying to arrange an armistice in the Near
East. The war cabinet recognised that, as bait, it might have to let the Ottomans keep parts
of their empire in the region, or at least retain some appearance of control. When Curzon got
wind of this, he was incensed: "Almost in the same week that we have pledged ourselves, if
successful, to secure Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, are we to
contemplate leaving the Turkish flag flying over Jerusalem?"
End November. The Manchester Guardian's correspondent in Petrograd, Morgan Philips Price,
was able to examine the key documents overnight, and his scoop was published by the paper at
the end of November. It revealed to the world, among other things, that the British also had
an understanding with the French – the Sykes-Picot agreement of January 1916 – to
carve up the Near East between them once the Ottoman empire had been defeated. In this,
Palestine was slated for some kind of international condominium – not the British
protectorate envisaged in the Balfour Declaration.
11 December Allenby formally entered Jerusalem. '
So just a few loose ends left to tie up anyone actually want to go there?
The paramount goal of the Fed's founders was to eliminate banking panics, but it was not
the only goal. The founders also sought to increase the amount of international trade
financed by US banks and to expand the use of the dollar internationally. By 1913 the United
States had the world's largest economy, but only a small fraction of US exports and imports
were financed by American banks. Instead, most exports and imports were financed by bankers'
acceptances drawn on European banks in foreign currencies. (Bankers' acceptances are a type
of financial contract used for making payments in the future, for example, upon delivery of
goods or services. Bankers' acceptances are drawn on and guaranteed, i.e., "accepted," by a
bank.) The Federal Reserve Act allowed national banks to issue bankers' acceptances and open
foreign branches, which greatly expanded their ability to finance international transactions
Further the Act authorized the Reserve Banks to purchase acceptances in the open market to
ensure a liquid market for them, thereby spurring growth of that market.
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913.
The task of determining the specific number of districts, district boundaries, and which
cities would have Reserve Banks was assigned to a Reserve Bank Organization Committee.
On April 2, 1914, the Committee announced that twelve Federal Reserve districts would be
formed, identified the boundaries of those districts, and named the cities that would have
Reserve Banks.1 The Banks were quickly organized, officers and staff were hired, and boards
of directors appointed. The Banks opened for business on November 16, 1914.
..
The Federal Reserve Act addressed perceived shortcomings by creating a new national
currency -- Federal Reserve notes -- and requiring members of the Federal Reserve System to
hold reserve balances with their local Federal Reserve Banks.
World War I began in Europe in August 1914, before the Federal Reserve Banks had opened
for business. The war had a profound impact on the US banking system and economy, as well as
on the Federal Reserve.
War disrupted European financial markets and reduced the supply of trade credit offered by
European banks, providing US banks with an opening. Low US interest rates, abundant reserves,
and new authority to issue trade acceptances enabled American banks to finance a growing
share of world trade.
Dungroanin ,
So the denouement :
It appears that the 'first world war' was designed to diminish European banks and boost
the US banks.
However the fuller history of the US bankers is worth knowing- the Jekyll Islanders story
is widely publicised.
Into this time track enters the Balfour Declaration addressed to Lord Rothschild, steered
by Milner (heir to Rhodes empire building and the old EIC), approved by the potus Wilson
(another hireling) that finally sent US troops to overwhelm the Germans, while the great
gamers took out the Romanovs and the Ottoman Empire.
-- --
When we try to understand such facts and timelines and are attacked as Judaeo-phobes,
because we identify Bankers and Robber Barons, it becomes even clearer how deep and wide they
have controlled history and it has NOTHING to do with RELIGION (except perhaps Ludism).
Nothing to do with Judaism (except perhaps Old Jewry in the City, but Lombard Street was most
powerful!) and EVERYTHING to do with POWER and it's representation MONEY. The obscuring of
that through various Economic theories including Marxism is the work of the same old bastards
who are responsible for all our current malaises.
Thankyou and good evening, if anyone made it this far!
😉
George Mc ,
Well OK Dunnie, let's say I go along with you and assume that all the shit we are facing has
nothing to do with religion or all that "Marxian porridge" (as Guido Giacomo Preparata called
it). The question is: What do we do about it?
Speaking of GGP , it seems to me that you and him have much in common. He also goes on
about "Power" but seems to be on the verge of referring this "Power" to mystical entities in
a disconcertingly Ickean manoeuvre. Not that I'm attibuting such a thing to yourself. (No
irony intended.)
Dungroanin ,
George – i don't want you or anyone to just go along with me.
I want everyone to make their minds up on FACTS. That is the only way humanity has
actually progressed by inventing the only self correcting philosophical system and method of
the ages that goes beyond 'personal responsibility teligions' – SCIENTIFIC METHOD
– that takes away arbitrary power to rule, from these that inhabit the top of the human
pyramid by virtue of being born there and having control over the money and so the power to
remain in these positions, which does not benefit the totality of humanity or all life on
Earth.
I am not a messiah, I am angry as fuck and I am not going to sit around enjoying whatever
soma has been handed to us to keep compliant and leave this Planet worse than I found it.
That is the scientific conclusion I have reached.
I suppose some proto buddhist / zoroastrianism / animalist / Shinto / Jain & Quakers
seek religious truth in inner experience, and place great reliance on conscience as the basis
of morality.
I suppose Ghandi's non-violence rebellion against Imperialists is a model as are various
peasants revolts – the Russian / Chinese / Korean / Vietnamese couldn't have survived
without the literal grassroots!
..
As for Guido Giacomo Preparata that you have introduced to me – i had nevet heard of
him before this morning – my first take on him is that he seems to have arrived at
similar conclusions by similar methodology. He seems to have a lot of formal education and a
enviable career so far – i'll have to look into him further but the interview that i
just read seems to indicate concurrence with what i said above. I see no Ickean references
– please give a link.
-- -
As a observation do you not find it funny that there is not a single objection to the
verity of the facts which I have presented above?
Good luck George if you are a real seeker of truth. If not insta-karma awaits.
George Mc ,
The Preparata statement I was referring to is in this interview:
Power is a purely human suggestion. Suggested by whom? That is the question. The NSDAP
thus appeared to have been a front for some kind of nebula of Austro-German magi, dark
initiates, and troubling literati (Dietrich Eckhart comes to mind), with very plausible
extra-Teutonic ramifications of which we know next to nothing. Hitler came to be inducted
in a lodge of this network, endowed as he seemed with a supernatural gift of inflaming
oratory.
This is a theme that I am still studying, but from what I gathered, the adepts of the
Thule Gesellschaft communed around the belief of being the blood heirs of a breed that
seeks redemption / salvation / metempsychosis in some kind of eighth realm away from this
earth, which is the shoddy creation of a lesser God -- the archangel of the Hebrews,
Jehovah. It all sounds positively insane to post-modern ears, but it should be taken very
seriously, I think.
Admittedly it isn't quite interdimensional reptiles but there is a distinct metaphysical
flavour there.
I wouldn't go along with everything Preparata says but he is a wonderful writer and I have
bought almost everything I can find by him. His "biggie" is "Conjuring Hitler". It was Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed that brought GGP to my attention via that book.
milosevic ,
images on this website look terrible, with very little colour. the problem seems to be caused
by this rule, from the file "OffGstyle.css":
.content-wrap-spp img {
filter: sepia(20%) saturate(30%);
}
Open ,
This sepia effect usually works well with Off-Guardian articles, but with these maps in
today's article it is definitely terrible. Why have maps if they don't want to show them
clearly?
(any extra steps for the user to see the pictures clearly is not the answer)
Another area neglected on this website is crediting photos. The majority of images carry
no atribution/credit, despite it [crediting photos] is the best ethical practice even for
public domain pictures. I wish Admin gets expert advice on this.
Open ,
Look at the language used by the americans:
On feb. 12 [2020], Coalition forces, conducting a patrol near Qamishli, Syria ,
encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian .. forces .
So, the supremacist unites states' army has found that Syrian forces are occupying Syrian
land .. wow wow wow .. according to this logic, Russian forces are occupying Russian land.
Iranian forces are occupying Iranian land (how dare they?!). But american forces are not
occupying any land, and Israel is not occupying Palestinian and Syrian lands.
This language needs to be known more widely.
Open ,
The americans always use the term 'Coalition forces' when they talk about their illegal
presence in Syria. I tried to search online for what countries are in this coalition. I
recall I was able to find that in the past, but now, it seems this information is being
pushed under wrap.
What are they afraid of? What are they hiding?
Joe ,
Just bring about the end of "Israel" and there'll be peace in the Middle East, and probably
in the wider world, too.
Open ,
Ending the Israeli project is certainly a step in the right direction to improve global
stability. However, alone, it will not bring about peace because the
British/Five-Eyes/Washington's doctrine of spreading disorder and chaos permeates (saturates)
the planet.
In fact, current disorders are the results of convergence of Israeli interests with those
of Western White Supremacy's* resolve to dominate, erh, eveything.
* Western White Supremacy can also be called Western White Idiocy and Bigotry.
Israel manipulates the West's political and military might. The West also uses Israel to
spread Chaos and Disorder.
Antonym ,
Right, back to the good old peace of the graveyard inspired by Mohamed's male sex riot
ideology and plunder legitimization before the Westerners showed up with their superior
(arms) tech legitimization for their plunder.
Before Israel's 1947 creation the world was a bed of roses .
Open ,
"srael's 1947 creation"
Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Ukranians
and Germans, and later South Americans, found home in the Middle East.
How ligitimate is that?
Antonym ,
Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Moroccans,
Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians, found home in the EU thanks to madame Merkel.
How ligitimate is that?
Open ,
"Moroccans, Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians .. etc.."
Do these comments reflect the Zionists' perspective? This is important because they prove
that the whole existence of Israel is based on total fabrication and lies.
Maggie ,
Did you have to practice at being THAT stupid! Or did they lobotomise you in Langley?
Somalis, Afghans, Syrians would not have had any cause to leave their homeland had it not
been for your employers the CIA/MOSSAD facilitating the raping and pillaging of their homes
by the Oil Magnates, leaving them starving and desolate. https://www.hiiraan.com/op2/2007/may/somalia_the_other_hidden_war_for_oil.aspx
and where does our Aid money go?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5OInaYenHkU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
But of course Antonym, if you were in their situation, you would just stick it out?
Shame on you .
To those who care, read "The confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins" to
understand how this corrupt system is conducted.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Its 'creation' in blood, murder, rape and terror, in a great ethnic cleansing-the sign of
things to come, ceaselessly, for seventy years and ongoing.
paul ,
Ask the people in Gaza about the Zionist "peace of the graveyard."
Antonym ,
Gaza before 2005 was relatively peaceful + prosperous. After the Israeli withdrawal the
inhabitants messed up their own economy but kept on making lots of babies just like
before.
Quite the opposite of a graveyard or a Warsaw ghetto or a Dachau.
Despite the disengagement, the United Nations, international human rights organisations
and most legal scholars regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by
Israel, though this is disputed by Israel and other legal scholars. Following the
withdrawal, Israel has continued to maintain direct external control over Gaza and indirect
control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's
seven land crossings, it maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and controls
the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water,
electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.
Interesting definition of "withdrawal". It's amazing those Gazans even managed to have
babies!
Richard Le Sarc ,
You would have made a grand Nazi, Antsie-cripes, you have!
paul ,
Gaza was, and is, a huge Zionist concentration camp hermetically sealed off from the outside
world and blockaded just like the Warsaw Ghetto. With Zionist thugs and kiddie killers
shooting hundreds of kids in the head for the fun of it with British sniper rifles and dum
dum bullets, and periodically dropping 20,000 tons of bombs at a time on it, a higher
explosive yield than Hiroshima. With parties of Jews going along to hold barbecues and
picnics to watch all the fun. Nice people, those chosen folk.
Richard Le Sarc ,
I rather think that Epstein, Weinstein, Moonves and all those orthodox and ultra-orthodox who
are such prolific patrons of the sex industry in Israel, know a bit about 'male sex riot
ideology', Antsie.
Dungroanin ,
Pathetic.
'Nandy won a major boost when members of the Labour affiliate Jewish Labour Movement gave her
their backing after a hustings, saying she understood the need to change the party's
culture.'
From the Groaniad
How many members? How many by denomination?
As for the Balfour Contract there were actual English Jewish establishment figures against
its premise. Actual imperial servants. The declaration was a stitch up by the new banking
powers in the US which then sent in the yanks to stop the Germans in 1917.
History is rewritten daily to memory hole such facts.
Capricornia Man ,
The 'Jewish Labour Movement' is so Jewish that most of its members are not Jewish. And it is
so Labour-affiliated that it did not support Labour in the December general election. But it
has no shortage of money. It exists solely to prosecute the interests of a foreign power.
Much the same could be said for any politician who accepts its endorsement.
Rhys Jaggar ,
Given that Jews are vastly outnumbered by non Jews, the simplest way to stop Jewish
manipulation of politics is to form a party from which Jews are specifically banned.
You will not propose any policies harming Jews in any way, you will just make it clear
that this is a party free from any Jewish influence in its constitution.
If Jews cannot accept that, then they are utterly racist and must be dealt with without
sensibility.
Maggie ,
A better solution Rhys would be to form a party that denies all and any dual citizens
That way all the Zionists would be barred.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Full public financing of political parties would end Zionist control.
paul ,
Thornberry has just thrown in the towel.
She will now have more time to "get down on her hands and knees" and "beg forgiveness" from
the Board of Deputies.
Those good little Shabbos are so easily trained.
Dungroanin ,
BoD's??? Another random organisation!
Who are they? Who do they represent? How many people? Which people? How did they get
elected? How can they be fired?
Richard Le Sarc ,
The next world war has already started, with the bio-warfare atttack on China aka Covid19.
lundiel ,
Why no comment on the government reshuffle? I don't agree with the Indian middle-class
uplifting but totally agree with neutering the ultra-conservative treasury.
Maggie ,
I think it's a case of who gives a fck. We now know that our elections are rigged, and so
there is no point in us being involved. My family and I all realised and voted for the last
time.
They are all bloody crap actors reading their scripts and playing their parts, whilst the
never changing suits in the background pull the strings.
I had to explain to my 10 year old Grandson how politics work, and he said "Why doesn't
anyone know the names of, or see the suits?"
What I want to know is why no-one ever asks this question or demands an answer?
tonyopmoc ,
Completely Brilliant Article, but it is Valentines Day, so as I am 66 years old, and in love
with my wife (nearly 40 years together = LOVE), I wrote this in response to Craig Murray, who
has banned me again.
It may be off topic for him, but it ain't off topic for me. I am still in Love.
"Churchill's mental deterioration from syphilis – which the Eton and Oxford ."
Never had it, and she didn't either. We were young and in love, but we didn't know, if
either of us had sex before, but I had a spotty dick, and went to the VD clinic. I had a
blood test, and they gave me some zinc cream.
She also had the same thing, and showed her Mum.
We were both completely innocent, and had a sexually transmitted disease called Thrush. It
is relatively harmless, but can also give you a sore throat.
We both laughed at each other, and nearly got married.
Natural Yoghurt, is completely brilliant at preventing it.
Far better than Canestan.
Happy Valentines Day, for Everyone still In Love.
Let us all look forwad to a Brighter Day for our Grandchildren.
Tony
Loverat ,
Hey Tony
Dont worry. Craig Murray might not like you but I do. Your stories, here and elsewhere
have entertained me for many years.
Mind you, if I were your other half I would have chucked you years ago.
paul ,
Tell him how much you like haggis and tossing your caber.
Dungroanin ,
Without Stalins say so Poland would not have had its borders at the end of ww2.
Also,
On these maps just off the right hand edges is missing Afghanistan.. which the imperialists
invaded in 2002 as the Taliban wiped out the opium crops. Back to full production immediately
after invasion and 18 years later secret negotiations to hand over to Taliban while leaving
8,000 CUA troops delivering the huge cash crop.
Seeking possession and control – in competition with those you see as seeking to
dispossess and control or deny you – is the identity or belief in 'kill or be
killed'.
This belief overrides and subordinates others – such as to subsume all else to such
private agenda that will seek alliance against common threat but only as a shifting strategy
of possession and control.
One of the things about this 'game' of power struggle, is that it loses any sense of WHY
– and so it is a driven mind or dictate of power or possession for it own sake that
cannot really ENJOY or HAVE and share what it Has. The image of the hungry ghost comes to
mind here. It will never have enough until you are dead – and even then will offer you
torment beyond the grave.
Until this mindset is recognised and released as an 'insanity' it operates as accepted
currency of exchange, and maps our a world of its own conflicting and conflicted
meanings.
The willingness to destroy or kill, deny or undermine and invalidate others in order to
GET for a private agenda set over the whole instead of finding balance within the whole
– is destructive to life, no matter how ingenious the thinking that frames it to seem
to be progressive, protective, or in fact powerful.
But in our collective alignment and allegiance with such a way of thinking and identifying
– we all give power to the destructive – as if to protect the life that it gives
us.
The hungry ghost is also in the mass population when separated from their land and lives
to seek connection or meaning in proffered 'products and services' instead of creating out of
our own lives. Products and services that operate a hidden agenda of possession and control
or market and mind capture under threat of fear of pain of loss in losing even the little
that we have.
Having – on a spiritual level is our being – and not a matter of stuffing a
hole.
Madness that can no longer mask as anything else is all about – and brings a choice to
conscious awareness as to whether to persist in it or decide to find another way of seeing
and being.
This is not to say there is no place to call upon or seek to limit people in positions of
trust from serving an unjust outcome by calling for transparency and accountability –
but not to wait on that or make that the be all and end all.
If there is another way and a better way than war masking in and misusing and thus
corrupting anything and everything, then it has to be lived one to another.
Everyone seeks a better experience – but many seek it in a negative framing.
Negative in the sense of self-lack seeking power in the terms of its current identity. Evils
work their own destruction, but find sustainability in selling destructive agenda or toxic
debt as ingeniously complex instruments of deceit – by which the targeted buyer
believes they have or shall save their 'self' or add to their 'self' rather than growing
hollow to a driven mindset of reactive fear-addiction.
I don't need to 'tell this to those who refuse to listen' – but I share it with any
moment of a willingness to listen. In the final analysis, we are the ones who live the result
of choices in our lives, whatever the times and conditions.
The 'repackaging' of reality to self-deceit, is not new but part of the human mind and
experience throughout history. The evil changes forms – as if the good has and shall
triumph. But truth undoes illusion by being accepted. It doesn't war on illusion and thus
make it real – and remain truth.
Judgement divides to rule.
Discernment arises from the unwillingness to division.
One is set apart from and over life as the invocation of an alien will, dealing death, and
the other as the will of true desire revealed.
The idea of independent autonomy is relative to a limited sphere of responsibilities in
the world.
The idea of living our own life is an alignment within the same for others and the freedom to
do so cannot take from others without becoming possessed by our denials, debts and
transgressions – no less so in the driven mind of ingeniously repackaged and wilfully
defended narrative identity.
In our own experience, this is not a matter of applied analysis, so much as awareness or
space in which to seek and find truth in some willingness of recognition and acceptance or
choice, while the triggering or baiting to madness is loud or compelling as the dictate of
fear seeking protection and grievance seeking retribution – as if these give freedom
and power rather than locking into a fear-framed limitation as substitution for life set in
defiance and refusal to look on or share in truth – and so to such a one, war is truth,
and love is weakness to exploit, use and weaponise for getting.
paul ,
If you look at the proposed new map of the Middle East, it mirrors Kushner's Deal Of The
Century for Palestine – because it has the same Zionist authorship.
The same old dirty Zionist games of divide and rule – break up countries in the region
into tiny defenceless little statelets setting different ethnic and religious groups at each
others' throats, so that they can rule the roost and steal whatever they wish.
You see this in the past and the recent past. The way Lebanon was torn away from Syria. Or
Kuwait from Iraq. Or the Ruritanian petty Gulf dictatorships like Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai.
Trump was being honest for the first time in his miserable life when he said none of these
satellites and satraps would last a fortnight if they were not propped up by the US.
paul ,
George Galloway described the whole region as a flock of sheep surrounded by ravenous wolves.
At the same time, there is more than a grain of truth in the Zionists' contention that the
people of the region are to some extent the authors of their own misfortune.
They always fall for the divide-and-rule games of outside powers, Britain, America,
Israel, who invade, bomb, slaughter, humiliate and exploit them. If they had been united,
Israel would not have been created. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, would not have been destroyed
and bombed back to the Stone Age. These countries would be genuinely independent and at
peace.
When I speak to ordinary moslems, it is surprising and depressing to see how much visceral
hatred they express for Shia moslems. They seem blind to the way they are being manipulated
to serve outside interests.
So we see moslem Saudi Arabia trying to incite America and Israel to destroy Iran, and
offering to pay for the whole cost of the war. Or S. Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE et al, in bed
with Israel, paying billions to bankroll the terrorist head choppers in Syria. Or Egypt,
which does not even protest, let alone lift a finger, when Israeli aircraft use its air space
to carpet bomb Gaza. Or going further back in history, when countries like Egypt and Syria
sent troops to join the 1991 US invasion of Iraq. Even though Iraq had sent its forces to the
Golan Heights in 1973 to fight and die to prevent Syria being overrun by Israel. How
contemptible is all that? Yet those are just a few of many examples of all the backstabbing
that has occurred over the years. If these people don't respect themselves, why should
anybody else?
paul ,
And this has been going on for hundreds of years.
1096 marked the beginning of The Crusades, a disaster for the region on a par with the
creation of Israel.
At that time, London was a little village of 25,000. Baghdad and Alexandria and Cordoba were
sophisticated modern cities with populations of hundreds of thousands. They dismissed the
Crusaders as mere bandits who would do some looting, steal some cattle, and go home. But 3
years later Jerusalem had been conquered and its inhabitants slaughtered, the start of a 200
year disaster for the region. How? Why?
Because the Arabs were so busy fighting a civil war at the time they barely noticed the
foreign invaders. The old, old story. Civil war between Sunnis and Shias.
One day, they will wake up and realise that they have to hang together, or hang
separately.
But I wouldn't hold your breath.
There seems to be an endless supply of quisling stooge dictators ready to do the bidding of
hostile outside powers. The Mubaraks, the Sisis, the King Abdullahs, the Sinioras, the MBS's,
to name but a few.
Conforming to all the worst stereotypes about Arabs and moslems.
You could argue that they deserve all they get, when they are ever ready to bend over and
drop their trousers.
Is it really any surprise that they have been invaded, slaughtered, bombed back to the Stone
Age, robbed, exploited and humiliated from time immemorial.
Maybe one day they will discover an ounce of dignity and self respect. Who knows?
Maggie ,
"1096 marked the beginning of The Crusades, a disaster for the region on a par with the
creation of Israel.
At that time, London was a little village of 25,000. Baghdad and Alexandria and Cordoba were
sophisticated modern cities with populations of hundreds of thousands. They dismissed the
Crusaders as mere bandits who would do some looting, steal some cattle, and go home. But 3
years later Jerusalem had been conquered and its inhabitants slaughtered, the start of a 200
year disaster for the region. How? Why?"
Because despite the mendacious lies that are told about Muslims, they are tolerant and
forgiving. They believe in one God, and live exemplary modest, generous lives in the belief
that they will enter in to the kingdom of heaven.
And these are the people we are being encouraged to hate and fear? To enable the neo cons
to invade and destroy everything in their path to get their oil.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over 'live in democracies' of some shape or
form, from Indonesia to Malaysia to Pakistan to Lebanon to Tunisia to Turkey. Tens of
millions of Muslims' live in -- and participate in' -- Western democratic societies. The
country that is on course to have the biggest Muslim population in the world in the next
couple of decades is India, which also happens to be the world's biggest democracy. Yet a
persistent pernicious narrative exists, particularly in the West, that Islam and democracy
are incompatible. Islam is often associated with dictatorship, totalitarianism, and a lack of
freedom, and many "well paid" analysts and pundits claim that Muslims are philosophically
opposed to the idea of democracy .
Richard Le Sarc ,
'Democracy' as practised in the neo-liberal capitalist West, is a nullity, a fiction, a
smoke-screen behind which the one and only power, that of the rich owners of the economy,
acts alone.
I know. These Zionist morons droning on about how violent Islam is as religion yet ignoring
the fact that the Bible is based on the God of Abraham granting them Canaan (like Trump
giving the Israelis the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) and urging them to
commit complete and utter genocidal annihilation of the inhabitants by not leaving a single
living thing breathing.
No violence there folks. Nope. The book of love my ass!
paul ,
Their God was a demented estate agent, rather like Trump or Kushner.
Personally I believe that the chapters of the bible were written after their genocidal blood
lust simply to justify their despicable acts. Claiming that God made 'em do it.
Loverat ,
My experience of muslims in the UK is many express support for the Palestinians but don't
identify or understand those states which still speak up for their rights, Syria, Iran and a
few others.
Sadly like the general UK population they have been exposed to propaganda which excuses
evil and mass murder carried out by Saudi Arabia and their lackeys and Israel. This is
changing however. People are gradually waking up. Muslims and the general UK public if they
really knew the extent of this would be out demonstrating on the streets.
The realisation these policies have exposed all of us to nuclear wipe out in seconds
should be enough motivation for any normal person.
The wipe out or (preferably) demonstrations will happen. Just a question of when. You can see
why the establishment and people like Higgins, Lucas and York are so active recently. These
idiots, blinded by their pay checks can't see the harm they are causing through their
irresponsible lies even to their own families. Perhaps they all have nuclear shelters in
their back garden.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Saudi Arabia is NOT 'Moslem'. It is Wahhabist, a genocide cult created by doenmeh, ie
crypto-Jewish followers of the failed 17th century Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, which is
homicidally opposed to all Moslems but fellow Wahhabists.
milosevic ,
I thought it was created by the British Empire, in order to provide reliable stooges and
puppet regimes.
Richard Le Sarc ,
What people must realise is that,for the Zionassty secular and Talmudic religious
leaderships, by far the dominant forces in Israel and among many of the Diaspora sayanim, the
drive to create 'Eretz Yisrael', '..from the Nile to the Euphrates' (and some include the
Arabian Peninsula as well), is a real, religious, ambition-indeed an obligation. With the
alliance with the 'Christian Zionist' lunatics in the USA, the fate of humanity is in the
hands of the Evil Brain Dead.
BigB ,
I despair. This is why there is 'No Deal For Nature' because the hegemonic cultural movement
is to extend cultural hegemony over nature. We cannot seem to help it or stop ourselves. Do
we suppose a glossy website will change that? Or empty sloganneering subvertisements? Or
waiving placards outside banks? Or some other futile conscience salving symbolic gesture?
No, we have to subvert the cultural hegemony over nature at every point at every chance.
Which is thankless because cultural normativity is ubiquitous. And it's killing us. And BRI
is the very antithesis of alternative an eternal return into the cultural consumerism and
commodification that is the global hegemony at least at an elite level. And we are among that
elite – in terms of consumption and pollution. We are the problem. If we seek to extend
or preserve our own Eurocentric priviliges and consumptions we can only do so by extracting
evermore global resources and maldeveloping the Rest. Which is also what Samir Amin said:
following Wallerstein's World Systems Theory.
The progressive packaging of all our sins and transferring them to something called
'American Imperialism' is nothing less than mass psychological transference to a Fetish. By
which we maintain autonomy from any blame in the ecological disaster we are co-creating.
Which is why it is a powerful cultural narrative constructivism. 'We' do not have to reform:
the scapegoated Otherised 'they' do. Whilst we all sit smugly in our inauthentic imaginary
autonomy: the ecological destruction caused entirely by our collectivist consumption carries
on. 'They' have to clean up 'their' act – not us. 'We' align with the
'counter-hegemonic alliance': the alternative BRI. 'We' are so bourgeois and progressive in
our invented independence and totally aligned with the destructive forces of capitalist
endocolonised culture because of our own internalised screening discourse. Which is why there
is #NoDealForNature. 'We' don't actually give a flying fuck not beyond some hollow totemic
gestures in transference of our own responsibility.
'We' are pushing for the financialisation of nature: as the teleology of our particular
complicit cultural narratives. It's not just 'them'. Supply and demand are dialectically
exponential. Who is demanding less, more fairly distributed North to South? Exponential
expansionism via BRI is no more alternative than colonising the Moon or Mars. For nature to
have a deal: we have to stop demanding growth. And in doing that: become self-responsible
right through to the narratives we produce. For which every person in the global consumer
bourgeoisie – that's us – will have to change their imperatives from culture to
nature. Which means a new naturalised culture: not just complicitly advocating the 'same old,
same old' exponential expansionism of the extractivist commodification of every last standing
resource. Under the guise of new narrative constructions like this. That's not progress: it's
capitalist propaganda and personal self-propaganda. We are among the consumer elite. Which is
driving the financialisation and commodification of everything. For us.
#NoDealForNature until we take full and honest self-responsibility to create one with our
every enaction including speech-enactivism.
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our
utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed,
and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save
the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has
preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.
Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to
the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of
man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the
degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is
so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of
the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but
subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely
diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration
in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an
operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were
intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit,
with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly
bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at
least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not
marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this
is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from
marriage."
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
BigB ,
Every appraisal from a cultural POV extends the cultural hegemony over nature – with no
exceptions. If we do not address the false dichotomy of culture and nature – and invert
the privileged status of cultural domination over nature – this never changes. If
nothing changes its going to be a very short century the last in the history of culture.
I'm expressing my own private POV with the intention of at least highlighting the issue of
only ever expressing the distorted cultural-centric POV. It would be nice if we could all
agree to do something other than waste our privileged status and access to resources for
other than meaningless sarcasm. It's not like we'd all benefit from a change in POV and the
entailed potential in a change of course that can only happen if we think of nature first, is
it? 😉
The only thing I don't like about the environmentally "woke" is that many are easily
manipulated by the neoliberal elite. Greta is a perfect example.
That is they go after the little guy while the Military and big industry continue to
pollute unhampered.
George Mc ,
I despair.
Well that's what you do.
Dungroanin ,
The M5 highway is secured. Allepo access points too and Idlib is surrounded- where are the US
backed /Saudi paid / Tukish passport holding Uighars and various Turkmen proxy jihadist anti
Chinese / anti Russian, Central asian caliphate establishing mercenaries supposed to go now??
Pompeo is buzzing around Africa now like a blue bottomed cadaverous fly, non-stop buzzing
from piles of shot, trying to find them homes – no Libya doesn't want anymore of them,
nor the UAE and Saudis, or Turks maybe dump them in Canada with all these ex Ukrainian still
nazis? Its a big country nobody will know!
Or bring them to the US and give them a ticker tape parade?
Or let them surrender and have them testify as to how the fuck they let themselves be
bought for $$$$ maybe just fry them with the low yield nuke and blame Assad for it!
Dumbass yanks, fukus, 5+1 eyed gollum and Nutty- 'it's the Belgian airforce bombing
Russian weapons in Syria' -yahoo!
Up-Pompeos farce and buzzing is about to sizzle in the blue light of death for dumbfuck
poison spreading flies.
normal wisdom ,
so much disrespect here hare here.
these takfiri these giants these beards are hero
of the oded yinon plan
they raped murdered and stole
dustified atomised the syriana so
is rael can become real
the red heffers have been cloned the temple will grow
the semites must leave for norway,sweden wales scotland and detroit
already
the khazar ashkanazim need the land returned to it's true owners from the turkic russio
steppe
tonight back to back i watch reality
fiddler on the roof and exodus and schindlers lists.
i watch bbc simon scharmas new rabbi revised history of mighty israel.
every day it grows massive every day hezbollah become weak husk
shirley you can sea more that
my life already
Francis Lee ,
Very interesting and informative article. Lenin's 5 conditions of the imperialism of his time
have been matched by similar conditions in our own time, as listed by the Egyptian Marxist,
Samir Amin. These conditions being as follows.
1. Control of technology.
2. Access to natural resources.
3. Finance.
4. Global media.
5. The means of mass destruction.
Only by overturning these monopolies can real progress be made. Easily said. But a life
and death struggle for humanity.
The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the space for increased penetration of Europe
to the East by the US and its West European allies in NATO. At that time the subaltern US
powers in Europe were the UK and West Germany, as it then was. There was a semblance of
sovereignty in France under De Gaulle, but this has since disappeared. Europe as a whole is
now occupied and controlled by the US which has used EU/NATO bloc to push right up to the
Russian border. Most, if not all, the non-sovereign quasi states, in Europe, particularly
Eastern Europe, are Quisling-Petainist puppet regimes regardless of whether they are inside
our outside of the EU. (I say 'states' but of course if a country is not sovereign it cannot
be a 'state' in the full meaning of the word).
A political, social and economic crisis in Europe seems to be taking taking shape. Perhaps
the key problem, particularly Eastern Europe, has been depopulation. There is not one
European state in which fertility (replacement) rates has reached 2.1 children. Western
European imperial states have to large degree been able to counter-act this tendency by
immigration from their former colonies, particularly the UK and France. But this has not been
possible in states such as Sweden and Germany where the migration of non-christian guest
workers from Turkey to Germany and Islamic refugees
from the middle-east hot-spots have had a free passage to Sweden. This has become a serious
social and economic problem; a problem resulting from a neoliberal open borders policy. The
fact of the matter is that radically different cultures will tend to clash. Thank you Mr
Soros.
British immigration policy was successful in so far as immigrants from the Caribbean were
English speakers, they were also protestant Christians, and the culture was not very
different from the UK. Later immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Indian settled
East Africa were generally professional and middle-class business people. Again English
speakers. Assimilation of these newcomers was not unduly difficult.
However it wouldn't be exaggerating to say that Eastern Europe is facing a demographic
disaster. This particular zone is literally bleeding people. Ukraine for example has lost 10
million people since 1990. Every month it is estimated that 100,000 Ukrainians leave the
country, usually for good. In terms of migration – no-one wants to go to Eastern
Europe, but everyone wants to leave, asap. This process is complemented by low birth rates,
and high death rates. These are un-developing states in an un-developing world. But now we
have new kids on the bloc. A counter-hegemonic alliance. No guesses who.
BigB ,
Rubbish. There is no 'counter-hegemonic alliance' to humanities rapacious demand for fossil
fuels and ecological resources. Where are the material consumption resources for BRI coming
from – the Moon, Mars? Passing asteroids? Or from the Earth?
When its gone: its gone. Russia and China provide absolutely no alternative to this.
China's consumption alone is driving us over the brink. To which the real alternative is a
complicit silence. As we all align with culture-centric capitalist views: there is no
naturalistic 'counter-hegemonic alliance'. Just some hunters in the Amazon we are having shot
right now so we can have the privilige of extending cultural hegemony over nature.
When it's gone: it's gone. And so will we be too. Probably as we are still praising the
wonders of the 'counter-hegemonic alliance' that killed us.
Actually there is a naturalistic alliance forming but it seems you haven't been paying
attention because you seem stuck in some Malthusian mind set. In order to defeat capitalism
you have to defeat Globalism so you first have to eliminate the Anglo-American Hegemony and
get back to a multipolar world.
Ranting on about like Gretchen doesn't do any good.
BigB ,
Resources are finite and thermodynamics exist. These are the ineliminable, indisputable, and
rock solid epistemology of the Earth System. Everything else is metaphysics – literally
'beyond nature; beyond physics'. Or, as it is more commonly known – economics. The
imaginary epistemology of political economics and political theory. 'Theory' is the
non-scientific sense of unfounded opinion and non-sense. A philosophical truth-theory that is
not and cannot ever be true. Hypothetical non-sense.
I get my information from a wide range of sources that realise these foundational
predicates. That is: a foundational set of beliefs that require no underpinning. I can only
paraphrase Eddington on thermodynamics: "if your theory is found to be against the second law
I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
Which is to say all modern political theory and economics – and by extension all
opinions based on its internalisation – is the product of vivid and unfounded
imagination. To which a naturalised epistemology is the only remedy.
There are lots of people working on the problem: but not in the political sphere. Which is
why we are stuck in a hallucinated metaphysical political-economic theatre of the absurd and
absolutised cultural non-sense. Which is not beyond anyone to rectify: if and when we accept
the limitations of the physical-material Earth System. And apply them to our thinking.
#NoDealForNature until we accept that the thermodynamics of depletion naturally limit
growth. Anything anyone says to the contrary should be treated with scepticism and cause a
collapse into deepest humiliation of any rational thinker.
Richard Le Sarc ,
'Depopulation' is only a problem if you believe in the capitalist cancer cult of infinite
growth on a finite planet, ie black magic. If you value Life on Earth, and its continuance,
human depopulation is necessary. Best done slowly and humanely, by redistributing the wealth
stolen by the capitalist parasites. The process seen in the Baltics and Ukraine is the
capitalist way, cruel and inhumane. Even worse is planned for the Africans, south Asians and
Chinese etc.
They don't for a minute believe in "infinite growth". They believe in the "bottom
line","instant gratification" and "primitive accumulation". "Infinite growth" is a sales
pitch that they use to sell the unwary on their rapaciousness. That is all. If they actually
believed in "infinite growth" they've be investing in renewable resources not fracking, strip
mining and other environmentally unfriendly practices.
The problem for Imperialists is that they only know how to plunder, rape and destroy thus all
their weaponry and tactics is used for aggression they know nothing about actual defense
which is their weak point. General George C Custer found this out some time back and so did
Trump just recently when the American were assaulted by a barrage of missiles they couldn't
stop.
Iran, Russia and China have one of the most advanced arsenal of defensive weapons ever
developed such as the S- series of air defense system that can turn a Tomahawk attack into a
turkey shoot. What was it? I think it was 100 Tomahawks fired on Syria after that false flag
chemical attack and only 15 or so got through and this was the earlier version of the S
missile defense S-300. They've already developed 500 which practically makes them impervious
and is a true iron dome compared the iron sieve that the Israelis got for free during GW1 and
then repackaged and sold back to the US Military for 15B with very few improvements except
maybe for a pretty blue bow.
Not only that but they can return fire with hypersonic weapons that are unstoppable and
can turn a base or Aircraft Carrier into a floating pinnate.
Actually the US proudly waving the banner of the East India Company is following in the
footsteps of the deceased British Empire into the boneyard of empires which is Afghanistan.
Iraq, Syria and Ukraine are just side shows. America can not escape history no matter what it
does now since its days of empire are now numbered. Just as they were for the late unlamented
Soviet Union.
The "New American Century" is ending preemptively early like Hitler's "Thousand Year
Reich" and we can all breath a sigh of relief when it does.
Frank ,
The only thing that will get the bastard yanks out of the middle east is dead Americans.
Lots and lots of dead Americans.
Enough dead Americans to make the braindead jingoistic American masses notice.
Enough dead Americans to touch every family that produces grunts that serve their criminal
state by raping and pillaging foreign countries.
Enough dead Americans to make dumbfuck Americans who say, 'Thank you for your service"
squirm in literal pain at the words.
Dungroanin ,
They got brain damage in their bunkers in the best US base in the ME from just a handful of
Kinetic energy missiles.
Their low yield nuke is their response.
The Israelis keep prodding the Bear – they even targeted a Russian Pantir system in
Syria!
I suppose only a downing or infact destroying on the ground of a squadron of useless F35's
with a threat to escalate into a full blown mobilisation is ever going to stop these
imperialist chancers. Or a fully coordinated assassination campaign of the leads and their
heirs as they frolic on their superyachts and space stations and secret Tracey islands.
And they can pay their taxes in full.
The Third world war is already fought – this really is a world war rather than some
Anglo Imperialist bankers playing king of the castle – and they have LOST – the
Empire is dead.
Long live the new Empire – the first not beholden to the bankers.
wardropper ,
Even with a new empire, our godless world would soon enough breed another generation of
bankers to which we would be beholden.
That's what the fundamentally dishonest people in any society do.
Something wrong? Oh, well, we'll form a committee to discuss it, and in future we will look
into creating a banking system which will enable us pay ourselves high wages for our
invaluable contribution to human evolution.
It's MORALITY which is lacking today, not more legislation or a new constitution.
All one has to do is move off the centralized banking system developed and controlled by the
Rothschilds that is totally based on creating finance out of thin air and return to a
commodity based currency (not gold!!) that represents actual value like scrip or wampum or
barter and the bankers will eventually starve.
Actually this system is starting to take hold in the US to a small extend to avoid the
depredations of the IRS since Tax is based mostly on currency.
Stop using fiat currency and the problem's solved.
After WW II the French didn't have a press to press Francs so their standard of exchange
became cigarettes and chocolate. It worked quite well until the presses started churning out
paper again.
wardropper ,
My fear is that without the Rothschilds, some other over-ambitious family would simply step
in and fill their shoes. It's the motivation to be greedy and wicked which needs addressing.
How that would be done, of course, I have no idea.
This is only if you embrace the concept of centralized banking and the "magic" of compound
interest. Current "banking" is all smoke and mirrors that favors the parasite who lives on
the production of others through what is called "unearned income".
Actually the Israelis are going a little slower now that isolated reports indicate that those
flying turkeys AKA F-35s are getting popped out of the skies of Syria by antiquated Soviet
SAMs. Of course there is no mention of this in the Mainstream Press. Just like there wasn't a
word of a IDF General and his staff taken out by a shoulder launched RPG fired by Hezbollah
in retaliation for attacking their media center in Beirut.
Antonym ,
Anybody who believes that the Israeli tail wags the US mil-ind. complex dog is contributing
to the Jewish superiority myth.
Ken ,
They're not superior, but they do wag the US MIC dog in and ebb-and-flow kind of way. That
9/11 thing was quite the wag. Read Christopher Bollyn and study other aspects of the event if
you're not sure of this.
Antonym ,
Langley and Riyadh love you; you fell for their ploy. See: Tel Aviv is much worse them.
The CIA/FBI failure explained.
The Mossad loves you too: for keeping mum on this Entebbe Mach 2.0 on their familiar New
York crap they got huge US support in the ME.
Makes them look invincible too as a bonus .
5 dancing guys was all the proof needed – cheapest op in history.
Ken ,
"5 dancing guys was all the proof needed – cheapest op in history"
Oh please, that was such a minor bit of evidence of any Zionist/Israeli involvement, which
spanned nearly every facet of the event and its aftermath.
The list of false flagging Zionist Jews in love with you is too long to list.
Oh please. What about the close to 200 Israelis who were arrested that day? Not to mention
the helpful warning by Odigo which was only given to citizens of Israel?
Also one has to act who benefitted? Definitely not the Saudis or the Americans leaving
Sharon who was trying to suppress a Palestinian uprising that he arrogantly started.
Speaking of your friendly five doing a fiddler on the roof on top of an Urban Moving Van
that just happened to owned by another Israeli who fled the country. Didn't they say
something stupid when arrested like "we are not your problem. It's the Palestinians who are
your problem!"?
A pathetic frame up attempt but a frame none the less. Speaking of frame ups wasn't Fat
Katz at SiteIntel (propaganda) who posted some stock footage of Palestinians celebrating
which has been proven to be false since the only people who seem to celebrating that day was
your friends the Dancing Israelis which doesn't prove their mental superiority at all but
their arrogant stupidity,
Richard Le Sarc ,
The three, the USA, Saudi Arabia and the USA, are allies in destruction-the Real Axis of
Evil. The dominant force, these days, given the control of the USA by Israel First Fifth
Columnists, in the MSM, political 'contributions', the financial Moloch etc, is most
certainly the Zionassties. Why don't you, like so many other Zionassties, glory in your
power, Antsie. Nobody believes your ritual denials.
They don't really wag the dog by themselves. They have a lot of help from the Stand with
Israel brain dead Christian Zionists who like Israelis consider themselves the chosen ones as
well.
Ken ,
@Gall Yep! I had a long time friend who went Pentecostal and we drifted apart but still kept
in touch. I lost him completely just after telling him that Israelis played a big part in
9/11.
Chuck Baldwin and a few other it seems have seen the light and are now questioning their
colleagues undying support of Israel. Maybe you could show this article to your friend who
seems enthralled by the terrorist snake er I mean state: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/02/13/emperor-trump/
Yes that pretty much sums up how 9/11 was carried on. Both Heinz Pommer and VT have done some
excellent research based on facts not fantasy.
As far as your friend and many Christian Zionists in general. They seem to live in some
alternative universe and dislike being confused by such irrelevant things as facts.
It is a story that can be told in some detail – but when you say myth do you actually
mean fallacy – ie – are you saying that Jewish power doesn't exercise
considerable influence – if not control over US social and political and corporate
development across of broad spectrum of leverages?
Richard Le Sarc ,
Yes-all those addresses of Congress, by Bibi, where the Congress critters compete to display
the most extreme groveling and adulation, are just the natural expression of reverence and
awe at his semi-Divine moral excellence. Denying the undeniable is SOP for Zionassties.
normal wisdom ,
what jews?
i do not see any jews
just a sea of khazar ashkanazim pirates
a kaballa talmudick race trick
a crime syndicate pretending to be semite
jew is just the cover
init
This isn't something new. The American people have been fed propaganda for decades to make
them believe America was exceptional. It was the bed rock of our Imperialism. If you lookout
at measures of well being, America was always down on the list in every category. About the
only thing we led in was military spending. American exceptionalism was used as a tool to
justify our bad behavior all over the planet. Our government is the biggest terror
organization on the planet. We have killed or injured millions of people. All in the name of
spreading democracy, something we actually don't have.
A cynical school of thought holds that one reason America makes borders so unpleasant is to deter US
citizens from traveling so as to preserve our sense of exceptionalism in the face of countervailing
evidence. For instance, one colleague, a former city planner, came back from a vacation in the south of
France and raved about how terrific the roads were. The Gilet Janues would assure him that in rural areas,
they were neglected, but my contact's point was that even in affluent parts of the US, you couldn't find
ones on a par with the ones he drove on his holiday. And I suspect that even the roads that are impediments
to safe, fast driving in the depopulating parts of France
are still better than those in Michigan
.
But America is slipping even further. It used to be that it would come up short in infrastructure and
social well being indicators compared to most European countries. We now have readers who are looking at
what they see in the better parts of the developing world and are finding America coming up short.
Costa Rica has admittedly long been depicted as the Switzerland of Central America. It has become more
and more popular with expats for at least the last 15 years. I visited there briefly on a client project in
1997. While the downtown section of San Jos looked worn, even there, the people on the street were neatly
if modestly dressed. And when you went out to the suburbs, the country looked comfortable to prosperous, and
it seemed as if citizens made an effort to keep their neighborhoods well kept, even in non-tourist sections.
Oh, and the food was terrific, particularly the fish.
A more recent sighting from Eureka Springs:
Just returned from deep southern rural Costa Rica to rural N.W. Arkansas. Peace and quiet almost
everywhere I go now. Unless it's my own noise (music) which could not bother another.
The entire trip was quite the reminder of just how third world we the peeps are nowadays.
Internet was so much better there. No satellite dishes, except as modifications to them for use as
roadside trash receptacles. Still no rural wired net in the U.S.. Cell signals were strong everywhere,
yet I never saw people glued to a phone.
Public trans, brand new buses all up and down the countryside. Even many miles down dirt roads.
Fantastic bus stops. No such thing as public transit in rural U.S.
A lot of people drive efficient 150cc motorcycles. The large bus stops seem intentionally oversized by
design to co-serve as a place to pull under during rain. How civilized.
Grocery stores with real food everywhere. No chain stores best I can tell. Unless in larger cities.
And a shockingly smaller amount of trash packaging. I would say for the same amount of weekly grocery
consumption I generate at least three if not five times more trash in the U.S. Seemingly every few
hundred people, never more than a mile, usually much less, have a store with produce and meats. I'm seven
miles from a dollar store, two more miles to actual groceries. About the same population density in both
places.
And then there is health care for all vs give me all you got, we don't give a fk.
Don't know but would wager their water tests much better across the board as well. Nobody consumes
plastic water bottles. Even very remote beaches had little shards of plastic all along the water line
though. No escaping it.
Schools did not look like prison at all. Kids were kids, with cookie stands, a work ethic, bicycles,
laughter, no apparent phones, lots of soccer, some dirt on their fingers and toes. And laughter.
Poor to middle working class people did not look miserable, unhealthy, guarded and or afraid.
The chickens, dogs and cats were abundant though not overly so, well fed, healthy, roaming free.
Police were calm, not dressed to kill with body language fitting the peace officer description. CR has
no military.
We have a choice and we are making so many bad ones. I feel like so many of my fellow US citizens
don't get this fact. And it's a shortcoming of Sanders types by failing to paint this vision/picture.
Even they are trapped in the downward spiral, knowing no other way from experience.
And Expat2uruguay seems to have adapted well to her big relocation. Ironically her big lament seems to be
the cuisine isn't terribly inspired and fish is hard to come by, but other advantages of living there seem
to more than make up for it. From a recent report:
Since relocating to Uruguay I was diagnosed with Stage 2B breast cancer. There was no bill whatsoever
for the surgery. The entire cost of my entire treatment, including my monthly membership fee of $60 a
month, was under $2,700.
That total includes 16 months of the monthly fee and all of my treatments, including six months of
chemotherapy, 6 weeks of daily radiation, co-pays for medications and tests, $7 co-pays for doctor
visits, and additional testing and consultation for heart damage caused by the chemotherapy. I also had a
couple of problems during the chemotherapy that required visits to the emergency room, a four day
hospital stay because of ultra-low defenses, and consultation in my home a couple times. They did a
really good job, and they're very good at cancer treatment here.
But the very best thing about Uruguay is the peacefulness, the tranquility, the laid-back approach to
life. My stress levels are way down from when I lived in the US.
Several factors are likely at work. One is, as we've pointed out from the very outset of this site, that
unequal societies are unhappy and unhealthy societies. Even those at the top pay a longevity cost due to
having shallower social networks, having a nagging awareness that most if not all of their supposed friends
would dump them if they took a serious income hit (can't mix with the same crowd if you can't fly private
class, can't support the right charities, can't throw posh parties) and having to think about or even
building panic rooms.
Another is the precarity even at high but below top 1% levels: job insecurity, the difficulty of getting
kids into good colleges and then paying for it when they do, along with attempting to save enough for
retirement. Even with steering clear of costly divorces and medical emergencies, the supposed basics of a
middle or upper middle income lifestyle add up in light of escalating medical, education, and housing costs.
And then some feel they are entitled to or need to give their kids perks in line with their self image of
their status, like fancy vacations.
And we don't need to elaborate on how hard it is for people who are struggling to get by. But it's not
hard to see that the status and sometimes money anxiety at the top too readily translates into abuses of
those further down the food chain to buck up their faltering sense of power and self worth. Anglo-style
capitalism is often mean-spirited and that tendency seems particularly strong now.
Specifically, which developing countries that readers know well give the US a lifestyle run for the
money? And I don't mean for for US expats bearing strong dollars but for ordinary people. And where do they
fall short?
You need to be cautious sometimes in interpreting how life is in other countries. I've known people who
moved to very orderly, prosperous countries like Japan, South Korea, Germany, Austria etc., and loved the
first year or so and would rave about it, but would gradually become, if not disenchanted, but a little more
aware as they became familiar of negative undercurrents there always seems to be a price to be paid for
having a very law abiding, neat orderly society. Likewise, moving to poorer, but more cheerful countries
like Thailand or the Philippines, or perhaps Portugal/Greece also (for those people willing to learn the
language and go deeper into the society, there is a downward curve as they discover the downside to the laid
back attitudes and constant sunshine.
There is also the simple advantage of laggards they can learn from other countries mistakes and skip a
generation of technology. I recall foreign visitors to Ireland in the early 1990's raving about how good the
phone system was. There was no magic to it Ireland simply had fallen well behind, but invested in what was
then the most up to date proven digital system in the late 1980's, without having to go through the process
of an incremental upgrade. You find this in a lot of developing countries I remember being amazed when
travelling in Tibet about 15 years ago that there was near perfect mobile phone signals even in very remote
areas. It was simply that it was cheaper for the Chinese to extend mobile masts before land lines, so it
made sense to roll out a remote network, when in other more 'advanced' nations your signal died as soon as
you hit some hills. Sometimes, economically, there is an advantage to just using old established infrastrure
(decades old airports, etc), which function adequately, rather than spending billions on brand new
facilities which can only be built with significant opportunity cost.
Anyway, having said all that, as a regular visitor to the US I've frequently been struck by just how poor
the infrastructure can be, even in high tech places like New York. I don't think the trek out to JFK from
Manhattan would be considered acceptable in any other major world city. And poor areas of the US do have a
sort of shabbiness you don't see even in many countries that are unambiguously much poorer (much of Asia,
for example). J.K Galbraith of course explained the reason for all this many decades ago when he wrote about
private splendour and public squalor.
>and loved the first year or so and would rave about it, but would gradually become, if not
disenchanted, but a little more aware
There's a rule of thumb for this, you must know as any expat will rattle it off for you:
1) The first year you love it beyond all words
2) The second year you hate everything with the heat of a thousand suns.
3) The third year on, it's just where you live.
After WW2, Australia encouraged British people to emigrate out to here. It was called the Ten Pond
Pom scheme as these emigrants would pay ten pounds but if they did not like it could return home while
paying their own fares. But they had to be here a minimum of two years in order to get a ticket home
free.
The British picked up a reputation as whingers as they said that this was not how things were done
in England or that is not what we believe back home. Come the two year mark, many left to go back to
the UK as they thought the place would be just like England but with more sun.
Funny thing was a very large section of them would after returning home start to remember why they
left post-war Britain. Then they would work hard to save up their money to pay the full fare out to
Australia for themselves and their families. The numbers were large enough to be a noticeable
phenomena.
I very much liked Sydney the two years I lived there. But I didn't succeed in getting permanent
residence, so perhaps I had not quite settled psychologically.
Plus Australia and Canada are American-tolerant and require less adaptation than any other
countries.
Not my experience (and I lived in four different countries on average 10 years each, and spent
enough time in a couple of others to know more than a "tourist") for me, it's always "place where
you live" with advantages and disadvantages. Each place I lived in was special in its own way and
had some significant problems (often well hidden from an occasional traveller).
What I did see and considered interesting is that after the fall of communist regimes quite a few
emigrants went home and about half of those emigrated again within few years.
The 'advantage of laggards' is fairly well documented in the history of technology and especially of
telecoms. If something sort of works where you are, you tend to keep using it, while laggards who never
got the last generation of tech might pick up a cheaper-better-faster option that doesn't rely on
existing infrastructure.
Do you remember the transitions from 1G to 2G to 3G cellphones? How that might have affected you
depends on where you were based at the time; basically America did terribly with 2G infrastructure and
adoption (remember when Americans had to pay for inbound calls??) whereas Europe handled it much better
and thus gave birth to the SMS cultural/linguistic explosion, but then America's bad experience with 2G
spurred them to embrace 3G.
Electronic health records are another example the US began adoption a long, long time ago the most
dominant US health records provider (Epic) was founded in the 1970s, and this is part of why the US has
the worst electronic health records in the world. I was at a digital health event a few years ago where
someone explained to the audience how EHR works in Zambia, and that it was stunningly superior to any
American system.
And people get REALLY confused about this. They assume that because a country is 'developed' or 'hi
tech' it must have some kind of first-mover advantage, whereas in many cases existing infrastructure
forms a stultifying status quo that impedes further development. It's really hard to get your average
American to accept that the countries in Asia that they like to look down upon have much better
internet/telecoms and industrial tech than America does. I am forever fascinated to watch this
technological leapfrogging happen, and I live in hope that the renewables boom leads to a wave of tech we
haven't yet dreamed of emerging in Africa & other places that aren't yet choked by an anticompetitive
status quo.
A big reason I've been living in Europe these last 25 years is because of my experience traveling in
Andaluca while living a comfortable life with a well-paying job in Silicon Valley. While not developing
world by any common definition, this area is and was relatively poor and unemployment hovered around 20%
unemployment and yet somehow people were always out enjoying the evening at bars (not to get drunk, but
simply to socialize). Little evidence of homelessness. I lived in Spain for a number of years after/because
of that experience. A friend from the US who frequently travels to Spain for work confirms he's never seen
such road quality even in the poorest regions. I can attest that, for health care, I never saw a bill. The
one time I ventured out of the gov network for a 2nd opinion from a private neurologist, the private expert
confirmed the gov't doctor's diagnosis in fact they knew each other and each respected the other's work.
Just hope you to enjoy it! I can endorse all that you wrote. This is not to say there are of course
lot of problems and things badly done. There is in place a push for privatization like elsewhere in the
EU. I knew the guy that many years ago was responsible for developing infrastructure foe primary
attention in health care in Andalusia and they did a good job.
Perhaps you can confirm this, but a doctor friend who briefly worked in Spain told me that the
reason healthcare in Andalucia is so good is that it is in effect subsidised by northern European
retirees. German and Dutch systems are happy to pay (lower) Andalucian prices for retired people in
the South of Spain, while the local system uses the money to make a better system for everyone. I've
never heard any traveller I know say anything bad about southern Spanish health care.
I don't know about this. In the early 80s, with good old days PSOE governing, is when the
primary attention was designed and it was done quite well. That is what I can say first hand
because I met people involved and heard good critics by outsiders. When you have public servants
who are capable and want to do things correctly
When I'm told "I haven't met my deductible or that a procedure isn't covered" I get down on my knees
and thank God I'm an American.
This is what freedom feels like!
Taiwan. Cost.of living is generally cheap unless you're buying property, which can get pricey. But, rent
is generally low, food is very low and mostly healthy (they dont put much sugar in their stuff compared to
America), healthcare isn't free for non-citz but still stupid cheap compared to America and top quality,
crime is very low (second lowest crime rate in the world after Japan) and you get to experience real Chinese
culture instead of PRC propaganda. I could go on but those are the highlights for me. I view it as a truly
civilized society, although it no doubt has it's own problems. I encourage everyone i know to visit.
I cycled a little around Taiwan 10 years ago it is a very well functioning country, very safe and
friendly with quite a distinct culture somewhere between China and Japan (lots of Japanese retirees go to
Taiwan). Public transport is excellent, the cities have good facilities and there are lovely surf beaches
in the south the mountains are amazing, especially when you have cheap hot spring resorts everywhere.
The only negative is that probably because of their history many Taiwanese are super sensitive of
anything that could be construed as criticism (even jokes). Oh, and that the towns and cities are
incredibly ugly, even by most Asian standards. So much was just thrown up during the years of expansion,
it will take a generation or two to make things a little better.
They do have some infrastructure problems though, mainly because of their location right in the path
of some of the worst storms the Pacific can throw at any island entire main roads get completely washed
away very regularly.
The National Palace Museum is one of the great cultural treasures of the world and better than the
British Museum in my opinion. A must see option for anyone visiting Taipei.
I've been here for 30 years. Your broad strokes are largely correct but leave out a lot of fine
detail. One small point is sugar:
Taiwanese puts TONS of sugar in drinks -- coffee, tea, all the traditional summer drinks, snacks/chips
of any kind. When you go to a 500cc place for a drink, they even have a chart so you can choose how much
sugar you want -- regular (= high), medium, and low (30% of the normal).
Coffee or tea at 7-11 and Family Mart is always powdered and includes powdered creamer and sugar.
As for food, Taiwanese LOVE garlic and leeks and are not averse to throwing in a lot of salt. Not to
mention the cooking oil -- lard or vegetable -- that remains on anything that's been stir fried.
And Taiwanese LOVE deep fried food, traditional as well as MacDonald's.
As for "real Chinese culture," watch out for that since many Taiwanese do NOT consider themselves
Chinese, and many Chinese (PRC) and overseas Chinese look down on Taiwanese as somewhat low class.
This isn't something new. The American people have been fed propaganda for decades to make them believe
America was exceptional. It was the bed rock of our Imperialism. If you lookout at measures of well being,
America was always down on the list in every category. About the only thing we led in was military spending.
American exceptionalism was used as a tool to justify our bad behavior all over the planet. Our government
is the biggest terror organization on the planet. We have killed or injured millions of people. All in the
name of spreading democracy, something we actually don't have.
>America makes borders so unpleasant is to deter US citizens from traveling
And if you do escape, and if you do bring back stories of how much better so many things are in said
other country, you are lectured to as how the US "protects their freedom" and if it wasn't for the fruits of
your labor being mostly directed into trying to get the F35 to work that other country* would certainly have
already been completely overrun by Communists! So shutupshutupshutup.
An American friend and former colleague, now a UK citizen and regulator, amused us with a story of how
she was harangued at JFK for no longer living in the US when she began travelling on her UK passport.
A friend of mine, a business man, has always problems at JFK because his surname coincides with
that of a Colombian drug dealer. He is always directed to a room and stays there for hours until they
let him free (always equals two times to my knowledge).
My wife and I got lectured several years ago coming through Atlanta from Europe to visit family in
the states by the homeland Security agent. My wife hadn't renewed her green card and was travelling on
her Canadian passport. She has Polish/Canadian citizenship. I had to really bite down hard on my lip
during the lecture because I did not want to miss our connecting flight. I told the agent since we
were not planning to move back to the US, there was no need to waste so much money on renewing the
card. Finally, I asked: are Canadian passport holders still allowed to enter the country? And if so,
can we go now?
The worst border crossings are always upon entering the States. The pointless shouting and general
vacuousness of the security certain indications that you're back among the Free are comical to a
point, until one sees how intimidated the Fins or whoever you flew in with are by this uncivilized
chaos. I've apologized more than once on behalf of my country to a nice, non-English speaking
non-terrorist being pointlessly harrassed by 'security'.
US Customs were always terrible. When I was a kid, we'd go down to the recently named JFK
airport and watch the customs lines from the glassed in gallery above. I remember one agent finding
some liqueur chocolates and jumping up and down on them. I didn't know adults did stuff like that.
Alternate experience mine:
While in Lebanon and Syria in 2004, bought a kilo of zatar, had it wrapped in multiple layers of
plastic to preserve it, stuffed it in luggage and forgot about it. Upon returning to the states,
went thru customs in SF. Agent said "what ya got in the bags?" We said "nothin". He said "open
up anyway" so I did. When he got to the bottom and found the (forgotten) spice he pulled it out
and looked at me, and I laughed, and told him what it was. He said "Yeah, whatever", put it back
in the bag and sent us on our way
I grimace when I hear that we are part of a "free world". Ever since 9/11 there have so many curbs on
our freedom and the mass surveillance by the 3 letter agencies and corporations make a mockery of the
term.
Thank you for publishing this delightful article. What a shame that most U.S citizens get their
conceptualization of the rest of the world from MSM. A friend lived and worked in various parts of Africa
for years; he told me that when he announced plans to return *home*, his African companions asked him
"why? its SO DANGEROUS THERE!!!"
My sister's companion-with family in Israel- describes our local ( in upper Northeast U.S.) hospitals as:
like something from a 3rd world country
There is nothing like immersion to generate understanding and appreciation for other places, people, and
lifestyles.
I had drinks with a US professor from Iowa last week and he expressed how surprised and impressed he
was with Canadians' interest in and knowledge of US and world affairs. I gave him a version of Trudeau
pere's line -- "when you are the mouse sleeping alongside an elephant, it behooves you to pay attention to
every twitch "
Many years ago a public radio station here in Hawaii would broadcast a Canadian radio show "As It
Happens". I was struck that the host could (say) mention the name of a politician or government
official and just assume that the audience knew who they were. Of course I don't know who the target
audience in Canada would have been, but very few broadcasts in the U.S. can count on their audience
being that well informed
Other countries have to pay attention to what goes on in the USA, as the saying goes, when the
USA sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. I recall being impressed in Jamaica with how
knowledgeable some local people were about world events, people were pretty up-to-date about
African politics, US politics, etc.
Berlin, Germany not exactly developing world. Met a German woman while backpacking in SE Asia in '95,
came here in '96, been here ever since, got German citizenship (along with US) in 2017.
Berlin is a bit like NYC in that each city is special, and neither is a particularly representative
sample of what the rest of the country is like. So with that caveat: The stress level here seems much lower
than in the US; there's great public transport, perhaps the world's strongest privacy and employee-rights
laws and not much fear of violence (from fellow citizens or police). And there is no reason for anyone to
lack health insurance: everything is covered, with extremely small out-of-pocket expenses and health care is
excellent.
That said, neoliberalism's ravages can be felt here, too: wages have been stagnant for 20+ yrs and German
politicians are obsessed with "das schwarze Null" (literally, "the black zero"; i.e. "being in the black" or
"getting out of the red"). Rents have skyrocketed and not nearly enough affordable/govt housing has been
built in the past 20+ yrs.
Among the people I know/deal with, precarity seems basically non-existent, perhaps as a result of
everyone knowing that govt welfare/etc. from which people can live without fear of homelessness, losing
their health insurance or going hungry is available as a last resort, though the housing situation is
getting quite precarious.
All in all, I'm very happy and grateful to be able to live here. As a freelancer, I don't benefit from
it, but I still think vacation policy here is fantastic: all employees get at least 4 wks off in total
(everyone I know gets at least 5 wks) + each employee is entitled to take a 3-wk-long vacation.
Unfortunately, there is enough misery in Germany to even have a weekly tv-series about it Armut in
Deutschland = Poverty in Germany divided in the all too common categories: Old people poverty, Child
poverty, Working poor etc.
Another thought, when discussing poverty it is really important to consider that the psychology
(seeing that you cannot afford anything) and physiology (not affording good food so you get fat from
salt, fat, sugar-based food from Lidl) of poverty is relative: you compare yourself with the people that
you are surrounded by and purchasing power is relative to the country where you live.
I was in a very non touristy part of Jamaica last year. The roads were pretty poor, with sections washed
out. I would say the overall quality of roads was lower than the USA. In fact they were so bad, bit of
plastic started falling off my rented car.
However, people were much happier. Just for starters, the rental agency was completely fine with a few
bits of plastic that shook loose. No problem!
The food was fantastic, and inexpensive. The market in the local town just sold meat without any
refrigeration. This is Jamaica, it was hot. Yet the market smelled fresh, the meat looked amazing, it was
clean. Everything just moves so quickly there seems to be no time for stuff to go off. The veggies were
amazing and plentiful.
The school children seemed to wear uniforms. They hung out together. They socialized and talked and well
seemed like children. Engaged and full of life.
There was a funeral in a building near by us, and they chanted and sung all night until sun up. That
meant it was a little loud (as out place didn't have any glass in the windows). It was sometime haunting,
sometimes joyful, but people really celebrated the life that had passed.
The younger people, say less than 30, were all very tall. It seems like nutrition and health must have
improved a lot over the last 30-40 years, as the old were much shorter.
So I wouldn't call it first world by any stretch, but you could do much much worse in many parts of the USA.
I witnessed a funeral in Belize and was similar experience. On the other side of the road some guys
having fun playing soccer barefooted. Mosquitoes make Belize the hell if not in the shore where wind
keeps them apart.
I spent a lot of time in Jamaica in the late 80s and early 90s. It was life-changing for me in that I
was not a particularly happy person at that time, and it was the first time I had spent time in a
so-called 3rd world or developing country. I met people in Jamaica who had nothing compared to most
Americans, but they were happier than I was. This even though I was on top of the food chain, being a
white American male. It made me rethink a lot of stuff. I agree about the food there, I loved it, and the
people too.
There is a dark side to Jamaica however, which you will come upon if you stay there for a longer
amount of time. I don't know what part of JA you were in, perhaps a small town or in the countryside? It
can be very pleasant in the country, but I spent a lot of time in Kingston, and there is some of the
worst poverty in the hemisphere there. Better than Haiti and some other places, but still pretty harsh.
Lots of unwed teenage pregnancies (younger teens), with the fathers MIA. A lot of homophobia and macho
attitudes. Politics can become violent. There are also some serious environmental issues, and climate
change will not be kind to the West Indies.
I was vacationing and stayed in the blue mountains away from Kingston or tourists. I have heard
Kingston can be rough, and crime can be a problem in other big cities. The biggest touristy place we
spent any time in was Port Antonio, and I never felt unsafe or threatened there. I didn't even see
that many tourists there but we were off season.
I have a passing familiarity with Colombia of late. Although the minimum wage is low, employers are
required to provide such benefits as vacation, sick leave and payments into the pension system. In addition,
workers are eligible to visit special holiday facilities for recreation and relaxation. Unlike in my US
city, in which public transportation is infrequent and inconvenient, Medellin has an overhead heavy rail
system. There is a public healthcare system, which is good at covering basic needs, and a private one which,
while less affordable for ordinary people, is of European standards of quality. Although admittedly the
country has been wracked by violence in past years and there's still much inequality, people are happy and
friendly.
Note: my Colombian in the family approved this message.
Peru is an amazing country: beautiful scenery, amazing food, inexpensive, and nice people. I
sprained my ankle last year in Lima and deliberately found the most expensive clinic in Lima to treat
it. English-speaking doctor, full x-rays, medication and foot bandage put on by the doctor herself.
Total: $200 US.
Pro tip: get your prescription glasses in Arrequipa. There's at least 500 optical stores in the
historic center. Super cheap.
I have another friend who relocated to Ecuador along with his girlfriend. He's a retired
optometrist and gives away hundreds of reading glasses to the locals, who much appreciate them.
Regarding highway infra, in the PNW at least any new improved road gets tolled so that it is actually
made for the people who can pay the tolls. I'm certain this makes zero tax amazon happy
Oh Look!
https://thetollroads.com/help/faq/469
two tiered society Interstates limited to self driving delivery/important people in 3 2
The interstate toll lanes on I-405 are terribly undemocratic. Regular working commuters who can't
afford the toll passes are forced into three over-crowded lanes, while in the two left toll lanes the BMW
& Lexus drivers zip on by. I'm guessing a bunch of the wealthy tech people east of Lake Washington used
their clout to get that accomplished.
I spent some time in Costa Rica. Everybody seemed quite happy. The impression that I had was its
government actually liked its people and was not afraid of them. The people seemed to return the sentiment.
Costa Rica has the highest level of education and lowest birthrate in Central America; no standing
military since 1948. Not a cheap country to live in anymore, compared to the rest of Central and South
America, and rampant theft problems (probably because of very light penalties for such), but on the
whole, you could do a lot worse.
Mauritius, whence my parents came, is worth considering. The standard of living is good for most people,
especially if qualified or with particular manual skills. The average salary is nearing USD12k pa.
Public services are well funded by the government and free at the point of delivery.
It's interesting to observe how many migrants who are not francophone and do not specialise in the
island's four pillars, financial services, textiles / light manufacturing, tourism and agriculture
(including power generation by sugar mills) are now making the island their home, not just for a secondment
of some years. I have come across Italian jockeys and tilers, doctors and teachers, IT specialists, hotel
managers and other staff from around the world.
There's a good mix of accommodation. One need not live in a gated community. These were in the main
designed to part South Africans and even French from their money, a ploy that appears to be working such is
the amount of construction that would not look out of place in the south of France or US sun belt. The
island is safe.
Myjobs.mu lists vacancies.
The Rev Kev has visited the island and can provide further insight.
Thank you for the shout out Colonel. I must admit that I visited Mauritius during my salad years some
forty years ago so I will try to recreate my impressions from that distant era. After spending several
weeks in the waning apartheid days of South Africa, I found Mauritius exotic to say the least. Whereas
the cultural boundaries of SA were fairly firm, I found Mauritius to have a kaleidoscope of different
cultural elements such as English, French, Indian and Creole and you would never know what part you would
encounter next. The parts I saw in my brief time were of great beauty and I remember thinking that it
would take months to explore all the different parts there.
You should return and compare how things have changed. Also, please visit Rodrigues, the one of the
world's least known islands and a delight.
The island really took off in the 1980s, once the generation that led the island to independence
was turfed out in a landslide and the IMF bitter medicine of 1979 had been overcome.
The island has become more cosmopolitan since. One example is the 10K plus South Africans on the
island. Afrikaans is often spoken on the west coast.
Unfortunately, the environmental decay is also plain for all to see.
Tho easily discernable, I hesitate a bit to name what has become the truest home I've known, as I can
recall what Prague was like 20 years ago compared to the mini-Paris it became after tourists got ahold of it
(major crime increase, higher costs of living, general succumbing to the european monoculture, as has
happened throughout europe).
In any event, life is better (to my taste) outside NATO-aligned countries & the Schengen zone. Glad that
the military jets I hear and see are Russian, as is the base. I was stunned when first arriving to see
children happy, safe, walking the streets of their city without a need for adult accompaniment. In fact, the
children and elderly people here restore my faith in humanity. When the initial newness wears off after a
year or so, it just gets better in terms of comprehending the culture and enjoying the people, along with
seeing the problems more clearly. I lived for extended periods in Germany, Portugal, Denmark too, enjoyed
each place (far and away higher quality of genuine living than in the US), but indeed there is a certain
pretension to false happiness there, no need for that here, as the wheels came off long ago, thus humor,
family, friendship and other pillars for endurance are stronger, softer, more genuine.
On occasion, I've done some teaching here (ain't never been no trust-fund traveler, pshaw!), and students
(good Syrians and Iranians in the mix with the sweet locals) are shocked when I answer their questions
honestly about how America treats its elderly, how much education costs, gun violence, police brutality, the
general state of the family, etc.
There is a difficulty in getting paid fairly, tho that's largely nothing new comparatively. One must
write or edit an article or 2 each month for a company based outside the local economy if one hopes to
sustain oneself; I've been fortunate in this regard. An average person here relies on their family; all work
together to survive. Conditions can be spartan (tho again, compared to what?), but the things that make one
endure and appreciate the substance of life are in no short supply.
And the food is off the charts affordable and healthy, as it should be everywhere.
Literature and traditional music are living currency here, as is respect in general. May it always be so.
I'm curious as to your feelings about Portugal, as we have considered it as a place to live. I've had
a lot of friends visit, but don't know anyone who has lived there for an extended period.
My feelings of profound love for Portugal and the Portuguese are of course difficult to summarize,
but suffice to say I preferred it to Germany or Denmark, tho it didn't quite suit me as well as
Armenia does. The primary ways I relate to a country initially are through its literary and musical
traditions, and the Portuguese soul's expressions are deeply beautiful, poetic, and retained.
I spent two years there, in Sintra and in Porto. Sintra is paradisiacal, Porto a hidden gem
becoming increasingly well-known. Drawbacks for me were the same as in all Europe: a political bent
toward following their NATO masters/western propaganda/Hollywood, and, on the street level, more crime
(tho not too bad) and agressive drug dealers, things you just don't see in Yerevan (and used to not
see in Prague). But on the whole, many friends became like family there, it's less expensive than the
mainstream hubs of Europe, and the Moorish impact, coupled with modern migration from north Africa,
results in a vivacity and a fluid, positive moroseness I'd not experienced before. The microclimates
are dynamically diverse and well worth experiencing. Certain flowers and mountain mists never
evaporate from the mind.
Plenty of retirees from wealthier countries set themselves up there quite comfortably, but those
people are rarely part of my experience.
Having a decent grasp of Spanish, I was surprised it lent itself to a less intuitive grasp of
Portuguese than I imagined it would. Both languages are beautiful, with Portuguese being softer
in an expressively melodic way.
And yes, I agree, the politeness, dignity, ease-in-the-body qualities found in people there
is, in my experience, second only to the grace that operates as the norm for conduct here in
Armenia. Many similarities between the two the unbreakable importance of the family, the style
and role of humor, the rightful place literature and music inhabit in one's soul and
disposition, etc. My Portuguese friends felt at home here, as if meeting heretofore unknown
cousins for the first time.
Nothing against Spain, tho it was my first love and destination. Catalonia. But yes, in
general, interactions were more formal and businesslike there, less relaxed than when inside the
generous, creative calm (including explosive boisterousness!) of Portuguese.
We visited the southern coast of Portugal last year to explore the idea of moving there. It was not
a success: too many Brit expats, more expensive than we'd been told, and the real estate market is
completely crazy. The country itself merits a look.
Indeed, the Alentejo has become overblown, party central, prime strips for the elite, etc. If
one can brave the less glamorous climes, such as Sintra's winters of cold rain and bonechilling
fog, there are delicacies to be enjoyed at half the cost, in the north as well. I look forward to
returning many times.
I'm recalling Jerez, now, up-north mountain-land with its own unique mythology, where local
drivers (on fine if narrow roads) have more frequent trouble encountering a bull or flocks upon
flocks of chickens than oncoming automotive traffic. I think one bull drove us backward for half a
kilometer.
"They hate us for our freedoms"
; to be strip searched at the airport, toasted with the
skin cancer X-ray machine, have our devices downloaded, license plates scanned on the way home, the data
sold to an advertiser, to have to pay mandatory fraudulent medical "insurance," borrow money at 29% to pay
for medical needs, lose our homes to other scams, have to compete in the job market with imported peons,
that we subsidize with tax dollars, then see over half of our tax dollars go to losing wars and to subsidize
billion dollar corporations and then be told it's
to protect us against the "terrorists".
Still a pretty good country and the only one we have, so it's worth fighting for.
I have lived in Uruguay for 4 years now. The things that are much better here than in California are
public transportation, internet service, culture, and small business penetration. I can walk a half a block
to a small store that's open several hours a day. I can walk 4 blocks to a store that's open 12 hours a day.
I can walk ten blocks to a full-on mall with a large grocery store. There's also one or more bakeries,
butchers, vegetable sellers, hardware stores, barbers/hair stylists, and restaurants galore within a
quarter-mile radius. And I live in a quiet neighborhood! Oh, there are also three fantastic beaches within a
20 minute walk of my house. I love my location!
Society here is very laid-back, parents are indulgent of their children and it is legal to drink alcohol
and smoke marijuana in the public places and streets, But don't drink and drive, there is no legal limit,
aka zero tolerance. Yet culture is vibrant here. There's an excellent music scene with lots of low-cost or
free live music. Jazz, blues, and electronica are surprisingly popular. There are people who play music on
the bus for donations, and not just guitar players, but also saxophone players, operatic singers, rappers,
violinists, and accordion players. There are people that meet weekly in the downtown area to dance tango on
the sidewalk. There are almost weekly practices all over the city of Candombe, which involves large groups
of synchronized dancers and drummers parading through the streets for an hour or two. There are so many
beautiful parks large and small all over the city where lovers kiss, families play and groups of friends
drink mate or beer and often smoke marijuana. There are 50 museums in Montevideo, and at least 35 of them
are free. The ones that cost money are less than $10 and usually include a tour. There are ballets,
symphonies and lots of theaters, all of which are very inexpensive. They love sports here and are quite
interested in maintaining physical fitness. Lots of soccer balls getting kicked, volleyball games on the
beach and bicyclist and runners on the Rambla. The Rambla! It's a UNESCO world heritage site that goes for
20 miles along the beach, a wide paved Boardwalk that is very popular when the weather is nice, especially
during sunsets. Full disclosure, the beach is for a river, a really huge river You can't even see the
other side. On the other side of the river is Buenos Aires, just in case you get a hankering for a big city.
Or you could travel a few hours to Punta Del Este, playground of the Rich and Famous.
But Uruguay is relatively expensive, the most expensive country in South America. This is not a place
where you're going to come and live like a king among the peasants. The prices in restaurants and grocery
stores are similar to the prices I paid in Sacramento, California. But the wages here are much less. So this
is a good place if you can get your income from somewhere else As a retired person or a remote teleworker.
But, oddly, even though the locals here struggle with the difference between wages and prices, it's quite
common for them to have second houses along the coast that they go to during their frequent vacations. It's
also typical to employ a house cleaner.
Uruguay is a small country, with three million people and half of them live in the capital city of
Montevideo. Because of this, nearly everyone here knows everyone else. Uruguay is the safest country in
South America with the largest middle class and least income inequality, along with being the most stable
economically and politically. People here enjoy discussing politics, and voting in elections is mandatory.
But what about the downsides? There are some. First off, you're not going to be able to order a bunch of
stuff on Amazon. In fact, you're going to have to give up on finding many of the spices and foods and little
trinkets that you're used to acquiring in the US. Consumers beware! Also, flights back to the US or
destinations outside of South America are very expensive. And, because it's so laid back, it's difficult to
find good workers on household projects or to get good service in a restaurant or at a public counter. You
just have to be really patient. Finally, the sidewalks are a mess! Since each resident is responsible for
the sidewalk in front of their own house or business, sometimes they can get be a bit dangerous if you don't
watch your step. You wouldn't want to scoot around on one of those elderly mobility scooters here! And then
there's the dog poop and the trash Oh, well, no place is perfect!
I'm sorry, this is so long, I usually don't talk much about my life here, especially on Facebook, because
I don't want to cause resentment and look like I'm bragging, but today I'm making an exception, obviously.
(By the way, I'm happy to host visitors, In fact, I let couchsurfers stay in my home for free.)
Central Mxico. Year 4. In spite of the crime I like it here and would not go back to the US. The culture
is rich and deep, and the aesthetic is quite refined. The food! The amazing natural beauty. And the colors!
And the biodiversity! There is a balanced perspective on life, not the despair or rage that increasingly
underly US culture. I live simply and modestly, and find my Social Security can almost pay all of my monthly
expenses. My stress levels have dropped tremendously and my BP is at levels I haven't seen in 40 years.
Quite honestly, I'm ramping up my Spanish so I can pass my citizenship test and may renounce my US
citizenship because I am fed up with having my hard earned $$ underwrite corporate welfare and killing
people. I've embraced Mxico as my home and am grateful to have been welcomed in return. Coming here is far
and away one of the best things I've ever done.
After his famous rant about people coming to the U.S. from "shit-hole" countries in Africa and other
developing countries, Trump asked why more people from, say Norway, were not emigrating to the U.S. I may
have missed it, but I don't remember any politician or anyone with a public voice telling him, "Look, Mr.
President, compared to the other two dozen or so advanced industrial countries the United States is a
shit-hole country".
Bulgaria, observations from one of the two big cities on the Black Sea coast:
excellent bus service across the city, from airport to industrial zone; articulated airconditioned busses,
everyone uses them, young people read books while riding, space for mothers to latch strollers, doors are
wide and steps low so mothers in fact prefer the bus to using personal vehicle
municipal children's kitchen: delivers free to a local distribution booth 2 meals 5 times a week at very
low cost by local standards, or free for families with large number of children 1-3yrs. The meals are
home-cooked level, tasty and healthy, delivered in your own glassware (like used pickle jars for example
simple!) so no throwaway plastic. Ive tried private kitchens, quality was lower and cost 2-3 times higher
a very large city park along the beach starting just off downtown one of the best things in the whole
country actually: it's everyone's family playground old and young, there is a new public pool, carnival
booths, restaurants, fish stands, icecream stands, open air theater, public hall overlooking the beach,
restaurant and club on the beach for the wide public, not exclusive, in the evening young and old dress up
and take walks leasurely and just talk and hang out
the city is dense and everything is walking distance, within a 20 min walk you will pass by every service
that a life needs, from a hospital to police to stadium and trainstation and cobler, not to mention stores
and restaurants
Downsides:
like Uruguay and other similarly positioned countries, incomes of working people are generally low for the
local living costs. However most people own a home (I think ~80% or even more) and with low birthrates
many inherit more than one funcitonal home so that helps a lot. For someone on a US SS check, average I
think ~$1300 a month, is plenty for TWO. Local professionals earning the equivalent of $40-50k a year,
especially a 2 such income households, live a higher and less stressful standard of living than any tech
professional I know in coastal US (not to mention 4 weeks mandatory paid time off).
lots of professionals doctors particularly leave for Western EU countries where they earn more,
particularly specialists; for GP's though, staying can be much better as they still make a decent living and
only refer people for anything more serious than a cold
In general, I think Bulgaria is good for retired expats if you pick a good spot like the city I
described, unless you have a serious health issue which requires specialists, and those may not be available
in Bulgaria. But even for things like stents, even cardiac surgery, MRI scans, those are done now and by
doctors who specialized or were educated in the UK, Germany or the like so the issue is more general
infrastructure and availability, rather than quality (cost is a fraction of US costs, even paying out of
pocket)
Appreciate this account. The 'bus-culture' sounds similar to Yerevan's; it makes public transport
truly a pleasurable part of one's day (tho we do have the dreaded, indefatigable marshrutkas are they
used in Bulgaria?).
The municipal children's kitchen! I wonder why there isn't something comparable here, tho I've seen
scant evidence of anyone going hungry. One always shares with one's neighbors: part of the built-in,
practiced and practical ethic.
I was pretty impressed with the infrastructure I saw in China 20 years ago. Brand-new airports and train
stations, good new highways mostly, although I saw some failed projects on the island of Hainan, where the
roads were like a bad roller coaster, it seemed like a proper bed was not laid down before paving. (I was
told that the guys who built those roads had skimmed off the highway budget to line their own pockets, and
were later shot for doing so.)
Malaysia looked good too when we were there for 10 days, and inexpensive. Most Malaysians speak English
which is nice for visitors, and they have one of the best retirement visa progams.
Thailand's infrastructure is getting better all the time, we were there for more of 2012, and the way you
could cheaply get around Bangkok amazed me. A city of 11,000,000 people, but most of the public transport
was very well integrated airports, buses, elevated rail and subways all connect with each other.
What struck me about most of the "developing" nations I've visited was that the quality of life seemed
higher than the US, as far as access to good food, general happiness of the people, and access to decent
health care, especially in Malaysia and Thailand. I saw some eye specialists in Thailand and was very
impressed with them. We ate from street vendors all the time in Thailand and were never sick from the food,
which was remarkably fresh. The air pollution in Chiang Mai and Bangkok is a problem however.
We are seriously considering leaving the USA should things go badly in the upcoming election, we're
considering Mexico, Ecuador etc and also SE Asia, although the latter is awfully far from friends and
family.
Very interesting topic, but it's also very large so the below comments are brief and therefore
overgeneralized, apols in advance. My own area is Southeast Asia, where I've lived for much of the last 30
years, but I get the sense that the below obtains in much of the world .
1. (Caucasian) expats remain a privileged class, even in Singapore which is now significantly more
advanced than the US across the board, economically and socially. On the other hand, you're a guest in all
these countries, there on sufferance. Any rights of property or residency you may enjoy largely come via
your employer/business, or from a local spouse. While this may seem trite, it's important: an expat life
just isn't that of the locals, even Westernized local elites, and even when you're married in and living
simply as some retirees do.
2. ASEAN countries are all *very* unequal societies by Western standards/ideals. Even Singapore, which
provides excellent public services to all citizens, also relies heavily on a low cost migrant labor force
(on weekends you see Tamil laborers in the parks flirting with Filipina housemaids). These migrants make far
better money than at home and thus remain docile, but also have no path at all to residency status unless
they can marry in. Foreign helpers are also becoming common in Thailand.
3. In the other countries, as a local friend put it, 'either you have servants (5 15%) or you are one
(the rest)'. Having a maid/cook and in trafficky places a driver/errand boy gives a family a fundamentally
different daily life not comparable to the modern West. Labor laws are rarely enforced on locals (expats
need to take care, you are sheep for shearing)
4. Most non-Western societies assume that successful individuals in all classes subsidize their less
successful relatives, via remittance or inheritance. State safety nets consist of primary education and
basic health care, which are basically free but very patchy in covering special needs (that's cash).
5. As in the West, a stable income is as or more important than a high income; it's hard to put down
roots or plan for the future without that. In most of ASEAN, c.USD 3500 a month still buys a comfortable
life for a family: a townhouse with aircon, a number of motorbikes and many of the same Chinese consumer
gadgets Americans have, as well as the aforementioned domestic servants. But, see next .
6. To me, social mobility appears quite low. It's hard for the broad peasant/servant class to ascend to
the middle class, even via police or military. Foreign workers support their extended families and build a
house in their home village; they rarely start their own businesses with savings.
Again, overgeneralizing but it seems most of the ASEAN 'middle class' (the 5-15% PMC) are (grand)children
of:
(a) the officials who took over from the colonialists, or (b) mercantile families, predominantly ethnic
Chinese.
Thus, that 10% also draws on some kind of inherited income / family support on top of their salaries to
maintain their lifestyles, cover emergencies and ensure their own kids can obtain the needed credentials to
keep themselves in the PMC.
Anyway, I hope this is useful context for this rich topic. Again, a broad brush, YMMV.
In most of ASEAN, c.USD 3500 a month still buys a comfortable life for a family
Very comfortable, I'm sure. $42k a year is more that millions of Americans earn. Singapore is probably
the most expensive SE Asian country.
What struck me about living and travelling in SE Asia was realizing how Americans are being ripped off
in comparison to many other parts of the world. In Chiang Mai, we were paying $200 a month for a clean
studio apartment with no real kitchen (rent included decent internet and all utilities), $20 a month for
cell phone service, and about $20 a day on eating out (for two people). Transportation was also
inexpensive. After seven months of living so cheaply, when we came back to the US it felt like we were
hemorrhaging money as soon as we hit the airport.
My wife is refusing to buy anything right now. We got back from staying in Europe and she is
shocked at how expensive everything is here. For us it started at the Hilton in the airport as we had
a very early departure time to flyout. It was a splash of cold water.
Yep. I have a musician friend who did an artist-in-residence gig for 6 months in Germany with
his wife & two kids joining him. He said the same thing (they live in NYC). He also said not only
were groceries cheaper, they were better quality as well.
The article is about developing countries and France is developed, not developing. Weather has huge
impact on roads and comparing roads in south of France to Michigan is not a fair comparison. I have driven
through France extensively and the roads are good but parts of the US and Canada has much better roads. I
would say Arizona or Utah has waaaaaay better roads than any part of France, especially the north.
Operant word: "developing". AKA a region experiencing the upswing. Shiny new industries, new
infrastructure, new institutions. Growth. All nations have a finite socio-political lifespan before
re-configuration; the US is no exception. Idealism's parametric in America-2020 is at a nadir compared to
the fire-eyed certainty of magistrates in Colonial America-1620. The waterwheel of fortune is philosophy's
consolation: rise-up on its spokes if you like but do not complain when you plunge back down into the
depths. The tragedy is also the hope: bad times always pass, as do the good times. Rinse-repeat-return to
the wilderness. -- Answering the question, Ahmedabad, Gujurat has great food but prohibits alcohol.
This country has spent its productive energy producing MBA's who specialize in sucking money from people.
It has a political system based on bribery and is no longer a "nation of laws". Given the non-response to
the 2008 crash, the surprise may be it is not in worse shape.
Costa Rica is the one country in South/Central America that was spared CIA "help", presumably because
they don't have a military. This is what South America would look like if the U.S. left them alone.
The U.S. probably has the solutions to its problems, but people with solutions, such as college
professors, are excluded from government decision making. In my experience, average people tend to be
smarter then the geniuses on the boob tube and in Washington.
I don't know what the big problem is with public colleges. You can get a good education at a public
college.
Is there anyone here who has anything to say about living in Chile ? I visited Chile back in 2007 and
enjoyed myself. I spent most of my time in Santiago
and was impressed by it being clean, a nice subway
and interesting architecture.
I am three years into my escape from the US. 50 countries of wandering in three years. I cannot, for the
life of me, imagine why I would go back to the open-air prison of the US.
Quality of life in places as diverse as Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Penang, Malaysia; Brno, Czechia; Kanazawa,
Japan; Kunming, China; are literally off the charts for half the cost.
The other thing I'd add: the wife and I made $480k per year in our last few years. A decent middle-class
income in Manhattan.
After taxes and various contributions to Fed-pumped Ponzis and 'healthcare' our net take home was around
$240k per year.
All so we could be good goys and pay another 5k a month for a shitty 1-bedroom condo with hollow doors
and ride a piss-smelling subway up to offices we sat in meetings for 6 of our 10 daily hours and then fake
pointless outrage over whatever new political offense the dear leaders had perpetrated over $17 cocktails
and then come home and fall asleep to Netflix and sleeping pills.
Outside the US, we've maxed our income to 220k total (all untaxed), so we're only down 20k or so from our
Manhattan highs. And we can do this from anywhere we have an internet connection. We interact with locals.
We eat staggeringly good food. When we get bored we hop a plane and fly somewhere new.
I'm 40. Maybe at 50 this will all grow tiring, but I doubt it.
I assume Norbert Wiener is your "nom de plume" or are you related to the Norbert Wiener?
This is what we are finding. You can go to almost anywhere out of America and live for much less with
much better food, life style, and people seem much better adjusted. Hell even London seems cheap in many
ways when you consider the quality of what you are getting.
"... Although the memo says one purpose of the action was to "deter Iran from conducting or supporting further attacks against United States forces," it does not cite any specific threats. Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the killing was done to prevent imminent attacks and led on like they had the intelligence to prove it. ..."
"... The New York Times recently reported that Iraqi military and intelligence officials believe the December 27 th rocket attack that killed a US contractor was likely carried out by ISIS, not the Shi'ite militia the US blamed and retaliated against. This attack led to a series of provocations that resulted in the assassination of Soleimani. Iraqi officials do not have proof that ISIS carried out the attack, but this possibility makes the US justification for killing Soleimani even more flimsy. ..."
"... Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) responded to the White House's memo in a statement on Friday, "The administration's explanation in this report makes no mention of any imminent threat and shows that the justification the president offered to the American people was false, plain and simple." ..."
The White House
released a memo on Friday to Congress justifying the assassination of top Iranian general
Qassem Soleimani. Despite earlier claims from the administration of Soleimani and his Quds
Force planning imminent attacks on US personnel in the region, the memo uses past actions as
the justification for the killing.
The memo says President Trump ordered the assassination on January 2nd "in response to an
escalating series of attacks in preceding months by Iran and Iran-backed militias on United
States forces and interests in the Middle East region."
Although the memo says one purpose of the action was to "deter Iran from conducting or
supporting further attacks against United States forces," it does not cite any specific
threats. Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the killing was done to
prevent imminent attacks and led on like they had the intelligence to prove it.
The New York Times recently
reported that Iraqi military and intelligence officials believe the December 27
th rocket attack that killed a US contractor was likely carried out by ISIS, not the
Shi'ite militia the US blamed and retaliated against. This attack led to a series of
provocations that resulted in the assassination of Soleimani. Iraqi officials do not have proof
that ISIS carried out the attack, but this possibility makes the US justification for killing
Soleimani even more flimsy.
Lawmakers from both parties criticized Trump for killing Iran's top general without
congressional approval. The memo argues that Trump had authority to order the attack under
Article II of the US Constitution, and under the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force
Against Iraq (2002 AUMF).
Congress is taking measures to limit Trump's ability to wage war with Iran. The Senate
passed the Iran War Powers Resolution on Thursday, and the House voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF
in January.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) responded to the White House's memo in a statement on Friday, "The
administration's explanation in this report makes no mention of any imminent threat and shows
that the justification the president offered to the American people was false, plain and
simple."
Hillary was asked specifically about the movement of arms from Libya to Syria during
congressional inquiry and she claimed to know nothing of such activities. Lied to congress,
yet still walking around free.
Swallwell is a liar just like the rest of em. He says they don't wake up in the morning
wanting to Impeach him, BS they have wanted to Impeach him since before he was
president....
A considerable spectrum of the liberal West takes the American interpretation of what
civilization consists of to be something like an immutable law of nature. But what if this
interpretation is on the verge of an irreparable breakdown?
Michael Vlahos has argued that the US is
not a mere nation-state but a "system leader" – "a civilizational power like Rome,
Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire." And, we should add, China – which he did not mention.
The system leader is "a universalistic identity framework tied to a state. This vantage is
helpful because the United States clearly owns this identity framework today."
Intel stalwart Alastair Crooke, in a
searing essay, digs deeper into how this "civilizational vision" was "forcefully unfurled
across the globe" as the inevitable, American manifest destiny: not only politically –
including all the accouterments of Western individualism and neo-liberalism, but coupled with
"the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity, too".
Crooke also notes how deeply ingrained the notion that victory in the Cold War
"spectacularly affirmed" the superiority of the US civilizational vision among the US
elite.
Well, the post-modern tragedy – from the point of view of US elites – is that
soon this may not be the case anymore. The vicious civil war engulfing Washington for the past
three years – with the whole world as stunned spectators – has just accelerated the
malaise.
Remember Pax Mongolica
It's sobering to consider that Pax Americana may be destined to a shorter historical
existence than Pax Mongolica – established after Genghis Khan, the head of a nomad
nation, went about conquering the world.
Genghis first invested in a trade offensive to take over the Silk Roads, crushing the
Kara-Kitais in Eastern Turkestan, conquering Islamic Khorezm, and annexing Bukhara, Samarkand,
Bactria, Khorasan and Afghanistan. The Mongols reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241 and the
Adriatic Sea one year after.
The superpower of the time extended from the Pacific to the Adriatic. We can barely imagine
the shock for Western Christendom. Pope Gregory X was itching to know who these conquerors of
the world were, and could be Christianized?
In parallel, only a victory by the Egyptian Mamluks in Galilee in 1260 saved Islam from
being annexed to Pax Mongolica.
Pax Mongolica – a single, organized, efficient, tolerant power – coincided
historically with the Golden Age of the Silk Roads. Kublai Khan – who lorded over Marco
Polo – wanted to be more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. He wanted to prove that
nomad conquerors turned sedentary could learn the rules of administration, commerce, literature
and even navigation.
Yet when Kublai Khan died, the empire fragmented into rival khanates. Islam profited.
Everything changed. A century later, the Mongols from China, Persia, Russia and Central Asia
had nothing to do with their ancestors on horseback.
A jump cut to the young 21st century shows that the initiative, historically, is once again
on the side of China, across the Heartland and lining up the Rimland. World-changing,
game-changing enterprises don't originate in the West anymore – as has been the case from
the 16th century up to the late 20th century.
For all the vicious wishful thinking that coronavirus will derail the "Chinese century",
which will actually be the Eurasian Century, and amid the myopic tsunami of New Silk Roads
demonization, it's always easy to forget that implementation of myriad projects has not even
started.
It should be in 2021 that all those corridors and axes of continental development pick up
speed across Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, Southwest Asia, Russia and Europe,
in parallel with the Maritime Silk Road configuring a true Eurasian string of pearls from
Dalian to Piraeus, Trieste, Venice, Genoa, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
For the first time in two millennia, China is able to combine the dynamism of political and
economic expansion both on the continental and maritime realms, something that the state did
not experience since the short expeditionary stretch led by Admiral Zheng He in the Indian
Ocean in the early 15th century. Eurasia, in the recent past, was under Western and Soviet
colonization. Now it's going all-out multipolar – a series of complex, evolving
permutations led by Russia-China-Iran-Turkey-India-Pakistan-Kazakhstan.
Every player has no illusions about the "system leader" obsessions: to prevent Eurasia from
uniting under one power – or coalition such as the Russia-China strategic partnership;
ensure that Europe remains under US hegemony; prevent Southwest Asia – or the "Greater
Middle East" – from being linked to Eurasian powers; and prevent by all means that
Russia-China have unimpeded access to maritime lanes and trade corridors.
The message
from Iran
In the meantime, a sneaking suspicion creeps in – that Iran's game plan, in an echo of
Donbass in 2014, may be about sucking US neocons into a trademark Russian cauldron in
case the regime-change obsession is turbocharged.
There is a serious possibility that under maximum pressure Tehran might eventually abandon
the JCPOA for good, as well as the NPT, thus openly inviting a US attack.
As it stands, Tehran has sent two very clear messages. The accuracy of the missile attack on
the US Ayn Al-Asad base in Iraq, replying to the targeted assassination of Major General Qassem
Soleimani, means that any branch of the vast US network of bases is now vulnerable.
And the fog of non-denial denials surrounding the downing of the CIA Battlefield Airborne
Communications Node (BACN) – essentially an aerial spook shop – in Ghazni,
Afghanistan also carries a message.
CIA icon Mike d'Andrea, known as 'Ayatollah Mike', The Undertaker, the Dark Prince, or all
of the above, may or may not have been on board. Irrespective of the fact that no US government
source will ever confirm or deny that Ayatollah Mike is dead or alive, or even that he exists
at all, the message remains the same: your soldiers and spooks are also vulnerable.
Since Pearl Harbor, no nation has dared to stare down the system leader so blatantly, as
Iran did in Iraq. Vlahos mentioned something I saw for myself in 2003, how "young American
soldiers referred to Iraqis as 'Indians', as though Mesopotamia were the Wild West".
Mesopotamia was one the crucial cradles of civilization as we know it. Well, in the end, that
$2
trillion spent to bomb Iraq into democracy did no favors to the civilizational vision of
the 'system leader'.
The Sirens and La Dolce Vita
Now let's add aesthetics to our "civilizational" politics. Every time I visit Venice –
which in itself is a living metaphor for both the flimsiness of empires and the Decline of the
West – I retrace selected steps in The Cantos , Ezra Pound's epic masterpiece.
Last December, after many years, I went back to the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, also
known as "The jewel box", which plays a starring role in The Cantos. As I arrived I told the
custodian signora that I had come for "The Sirens". With a knowing smirk, she lighted my way
along the nave to the central staircase. And there they were, sculpted on pillars on both sides
of a balcony: "Crystal columns, acanthus, sirens in the pillar head", as we read in Canto
20.
These sirens were sculpted by Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, sons of Pietro Lombardo, Venetian
masters of the late 15th and early 16th century – "and Tullio Romano carved the sirens,
as the old custode says: so that since then no one has been able to carve them for the jewel
box, Santa Maria dei Miracoli", as we read in Canto 76.
Well, Pound misnamed the creator of the sirens, but, that's not the point. The point is how
Pound saw the sirens as the epitome of a strong culture – "the perception of a whole age,
of whole congeries and sequence of causes, went into an assemblage of detail, whereof it would
be impossible to speak in terms of magnitude", as Pound wrote in Guide to Kulchur .
As much as his beloved masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini and Piero della Francesca, Pound
fully grasped how these sirens were the antithesis of usura – or the "art" of lending
money at exorbitant interest rates, which not only deprives a culture of the best of art, as
Pound describes it, but is also one of the pillars for the total financialization and
marketization of life itself, a process that Pound brilliantly foresaw, when he wrote in Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley that, "all things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry
cheapness, shall reign throughout our days."
La Dolce Vita will turn 60 in 2020. Much as Pound's sirens, Fellini's now mythological tour
de force in Rome is like a black and white celluloid palimpsest of a bygone era, the birth of
the Swingin' Sixties. Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Maddalena (Anouk Aimee), impossibly
cool and chic, are like the Last Woman and the Last Man before the deluge of "tawdry
cheapness". In the end, Fellini shows us Marcello despairing at the ugliness and, yes,
cheapness intruding in his beautiful mini-universe – the lineaments of the trash culture
fabricated and sold by the 'system leader' about to engulf us all.
Pound was a human, all too human American maverick of unbridled classical genius. The
'system leader' misinterpreted him; treated him as a traitor; caged him in Pisa; and dispatched
him to a mental hospital in the US. I still
wonder whether he may have seen and appreciated La Dolce Vita during the 1960s, before he died
in Venice in 1972. After all, there was a little cinema within walking distance of the house in
Calle Querini where he lived with Olga Rudge.
"Marcello!" We're still haunted by Anita Ekberg's iconic siren call, half-immersed in the
Fontana di Trevi. Today, still hostages of the crumbling civilizational vision of the 'system
leader', at best we barely muster, as TS Eliot memorably wrote, a "backward half-look, over the
shoulder, towards the primitive terror."
The Trump administration ordered the January 3 assassination of Major General Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran's most senior officials,
not because he posed some "imminent threat," but rather in a calculated bid to disrupt Tehran's attempts to reach an accommodation
with Washington's allies in the region.
This is the inescapable conclusion flowing from a report published Thursday in the New York Times , citing unnamed senior
officials from the US, Iran and other countries in the Middle East.
It recounts the arrival last September in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, of a plane carrying senior Iranian
officials for talks aimed at achieving a bilateral peace agreement between the two countries.
The trip came in the context of a steady sharpening of US-Iranian tensions as a result of Trump's abrogation of the Iranian nuclear
agreement in 2018 along with the imposition of a punishing sanctions regime tantamount to a state of war. This was followed by a
major escalation of the US military presence in the region a year later.
While the US dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group and a B-52-led bomber task force to the region in May of last year, the
same month saw the use of limpet mines to damage four oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic "chokepoint" through which
20 percent of the world's oil is shipped.
In June of last year, the Iranians downed a US Navy spy drone over the same area, with the Trump White House first ordering and
then calling off retaliatory air strikes against Iran. And in September, Saudi oil installations came under a devastating attack
from drones and cruise missiles.
Washington blamed both the attacks on the oil tankers and the strike against the Saudi oil installations -- for which the Houthi
rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility -- on Iran, charges that Tehran denied.
As early as last August, there were reports indicating concerns within Washington that the UAE was veering away from the anti-Iran
front that the US has attempted to cobble together, based upon Israel and the Gulf oil sheikdoms. The Emirates' coast guard had signed
a maritime security agreement with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the UAE had clashed openly with Saudi Arabia over
the control of southern Yemen's port city of Aden. At the time, the Washington Post warned that the UAE "is breaking ranks
with Washington, calling into question how reliable an ally it would be in the event of a war between the United States and Iran."
According to the Times report, the meeting with the Iranian delegation in Abu Dhabi, which had been kept secret from Washington,
"set off alarms inside the White House ... A united front against Iran -- carefully built by the Trump administration over more than
two years -- seemed to be crumbling."
Both the Emirati monarchy and its counterpart in Saudi Arabia had become increasingly distrustful of Washington's Iran policy
and concerned that they would find themselves on the frontline of any confrontation without any guarantee of the US defending them.
Saudi Arabia also began a secret diplomatic approach to Tehran, using the Iraqi and Pakistani governments as intermediaries. Suleimani
played the central role in organizing the talks with both Gulf kingdoms, the Times reports.
In October, according to the report, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Yossi Cohen, the chief
of Mossad, who warned him that "Iran was achieving its primary goal: to break up the anti-Iran alliance."
Last month's assassination of General Suleimani was initially defended by Trump and administration officials as a preemptive strike
aimed at foiling supposedly "imminent" attacks on US personnel or interests in the Middle East. This pretext soon fell apart, however,
and the US president and his aides fell back to justifying the extra-judicial murder of a senior state official as revenge for his
support for Shia militias that resisted the US occupation of Iraq 15 years earlier and retaliation for a missile strike that killed
an American military contractor last December.
That strike was launched against a military base housing American troops in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk. Iraqi security
officials have since contradicted the US claim that an Iranian-backed Shia militia was responsible for the attack. They have pointed
out that the missiles were launched from a predominantly Sunni area where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is active, and
that Iraqi intelligence had warned US forces in November and December that ISIS was preparing to target the base.
The US responded to the missile strike on the base in Iraq by targeting Iraqi Shia militia positions on the Syria-Iraq border,
killing 25 members of the Kataib Hezbollah militia. The attack provoked an angry demonstration that laid siege to the US embassy
in Baghdad on December 31.
Two days later, a US Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy at Baghdad International Airport, killing Suleimani along with
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a central leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, the coalition of militias that constitutes an arm
of Iraq's security forces, as well as eight others.
In the wake of the drone assassinations, US Secretary of State Pompeo sarcastically told the media: "Is there any history that
would indicate that it was remotely possible that this kind gentleman, this diplomat of great order -- Qassem Suleimani -- had traveled
to Baghdad for the idea of conducting a peace mission? We know that wasn't true."
As the Times report indicates, that was precisely what Suleimani was doing in Baghdad, the US knew it and that is why it
assassinated him. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said at the time that General Suleimani had flown into the country, on a
commercial flight and using his diplomatic passport, for the express purpose of delivering an Iranian response to a message from
Saudi Arabia as part of talks aimed at de-escalating tensions.
The more that emerges about the assassination of Suleimani, the more the abject criminality of his murder becomes clear. It was
carried out neither as a reckless act of revenge nor to ward off unspecified attacks. Rather, it was a calculated act of imperialist
terror designed to disrupt talks aimed at defusing tensions in the Persian Gulf and to convince the wavering Gulf monarchies that
Washington is prepared to go to war against Iran.
This is the policy not merely of the Trump administration. Among the most significant moments in Trump's State of the Union address
earlier this month was the standing ovation by Democratic lawmakers as he gloated over the murder of Suleimani, a war crime.
The resort to such criminal actions is a measure of the extreme crisis of a capitalist system that threatens to drag humanity
into a new world war.
NATO is marketed as providing each member nation with the benefit that the other member
nations are committed to coming to its aid militarily in the event of an attack by another
nation, especially Russia .
However, Pew Research Center poll results released Sunday indicate that the majority or
plurality of people in 11 of 16 NATO countries where individuals were questioned oppose their
respective governments meeting this commitment, at least if the military adversary were
Russia.
These poll results indicate that serious thought should be given to disbanding NATO , an
organization with a primary objective that appears to be at odds with public opinion in many
NATO countries.
When asked if their respective countries' governments should use military force to defend a
NATO ally country neighboring Russia with which "Russia got into a serious military conflict,"
people living in the 16 NATO countries tended to answer in the negative.
"No" was the answer for the majority of polled individuals in eight countries -- France,
Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Turkey.
In three more NATO countries -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland -- a plurality
rejected military intervention.
Only in five countries -- the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,
and Lithuania -- did more people (a majority in each case) support such military intervention
than reject it.
Actually any supremacist ideology produces something like an apartheid regime for other
nationalities.
The current situation looks like a dead end with little chances of reconciliation, especially
after recent killing of protesters by Israel army/snipers. But in general, it is iether a two
state solution of equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in the same state. The elements of
theocratic state should be eliminated and right wing parties outlawed as neofascist parties which
threatens democracy.
Notable quotes:
"... The peace process and the two-state solution failed because America -- the only country on which Israel could count on for generous diplomatic, military and economic support, and therefore the only country that has the necessary leverage to influence Israel's policies -- allowed it to fail. Consequently, most Israelis, including many belonging to the Blue/White party, headed by General Benny Gantz, oppose granting any future Palestinian entity the most basic features of sovereignty, including control of its own borders. Gantz refused to form a unity government with the Likud because of Netanyahu's indictment for multiple crimes, not because of differences over peace policy. What doubts anyone might have had on this subject were removed when Gantz just announced that he embraces Netanyahu's intention to annex the Jordan Valley to Israel. ..."
The threat of a new war with Iran that might have replicated what has been the worst
disaster in the history of America's international misadventures -- George W. Bush's invasion
of Iraq based on fabricated lies -- sucked the air out of all other international diplomatic
activity, not least of what used to be called the Middle East peace process.
Yet the failure of the peace process has not been the consequence of recent mindless and
destructive actions by Donald Trump and of the clownish shenanigans of his son-in-law, Jared
Kushner, who was charged with helping Israeli hardliners in nailing down permanently the
Palestinian occupation. For all the damage they caused (mainly to Palestinians), prospects for
a two-state solution actually ended during President Barack Obama's administration, despite
Secretary of State John Kerry's energetic efforts to renew the stalled negotiations. They were
not resumed because Obama, like his predecessors, failed to take the tough measures that were
necessary to overcome Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to prevent the
emergence of a Palestinian state, notwithstanding his pledge in his Bar-Ilan speech of 2009 to
implement the agreements of the Oslo accords.
Yes, Obama and Kerry did warn that Israel's continued occupation might lead to an Israeli
apartheid regime. But knowing how deeply the accusation of an incipient Israeli apartheid could
anger right-wingers in Israel and in the U.S., they repeatedly followed that warning with the
assurance that "America will always have Israel's back." It was the sequence of this two-part
statement that convinced Netanyahu that AIPAC had succeeded in getting American presidents to
protect Israel's impunity. Had Obama and Kerry reversed that sequence, first noting that
the U.S. had always had Israel's back, and then warning that Israel is now on the verge
of trading its democracy for apartheid, the warning might have had quite different implications
for Israel's government.
The peace process and the two-state solution failed because America -- the only country
on which Israel could count on for generous diplomatic, military and economic support, and
therefore the only country that has the necessary leverage to influence Israel's policies --
allowed it to fail. Consequently, most Israelis, including many belonging to the Blue/White
party, headed by General Benny Gantz, oppose granting any future Palestinian entity the most
basic features of sovereignty, including control of its own borders. Gantz refused to form a
unity government with the Likud because of Netanyahu's indictment for multiple crimes, not
because of differences over peace policy. What doubts anyone might have had on this subject
were removed when Gantz just announced that he embraces Netanyahu's intention to annex the
Jordan Valley to Israel.
For the Palestinians, territory is the most critical of the final status issues. The current
internationally recognized borders that separate Israel and the Occupied Territories reduced
the territory originally assigned to Palestinians in the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 from
roughly half of Palestine to 22 percent. Israel, which was assigned originally roughly the
other half of Palestine, now has 78 percent, not including Palestinian territory Israel has
confiscated for its illegal settlements.
No present or prospective Palestinian leadership will accept any further reduction of
territory from their promised state. Given the territory they already lost in 1947, and again
in 1949, and given Israel's refusal to accept the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, is
it really reasonable to expect Palestinians to give up any further territory? Where else other
than the West Bank could Palestine refugees return to?
The one-state solution that is preferred by many Israelis is essentially a continuation of
the present de facto apartheid. It is not the one-state alternative any Palestinian would
accept. Repeated polling has shown that a majority of Jewish Israelis are unprepared to grant
equal rights to Palestinians in a one-state arrangement. This opposition is unsurprising, for
the inclusion in Israel's body politic of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians would mean the end of
Israel as a Jewish state, for Israel's non-Jewish citizens would then outnumber its Jewish
ones, and may already do so. Of course, Israel could contrive a non-voting status for the West
Bank's Palestinians, something many Jewish Israelis and political parties actually advocate,
but that would not deceive anyone. It would mean the formal end of Israel's democracy.
The foregoing notwithstanding, I have long maintained that if Israel were compelled to
choose between one state that grants full equality to Palestinians now under occupation and two
states that conform substantially to existing agreements and international law, and no other
options were available to it, the majority of Israelis would opt for two states. Why? Because
as noted above, the overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose any arrangement that might produce
a Palestinian majority with the same rights Israeli Jewish citizens enjoy. Of course, Israel
has never been compelled to make such a choice, nor will they be compelled to do so by the
international community.
However, they could be compelled to do so by the Palestinians, but only if Palestinians were
finally to expel their current leadership and choose a more honest and courageous one. That new
leadership would have to shut down the Palestinian Authority, which its present leaders allowed
Israel to portray as an arrangement that places Palestinians on the path to statehood, of
course in some undefined future. Israel has deliberately perpetuated that myth to conceal its
real intention to keep the current occupation unchanged. The new Palestinian leadership would
have to declare that since Israel has denied them their own state and established a one-state
reality, Palestinians will no longer deny that reality. Consequently, the national struggle
will now be for full citizenship in the one state that Israel has forced them into. I have
argued for the past two decades that the one-state option is far more likely to open a path to
a two-state solution, however counter intuitive that may seem to be. Palestinians rejected it
categorically from the outset, but
younger Palestinians have come around to accepting it -- even preferring it to the two-state
model.
Unlike the struggle for a two-state solution, a goal that has so easily been manipulated by
Israel to mean whatever serves their real goal of preventing such an outcome -- and also so
easily allowed international actors to pretend they have not given up their efforts to achieve
that outcome, an anti-apartheid struggle does not lend itself to such deceptions. South Africa
has taught the world too well what apartheid looks like, as well as how the international
community could deal with it. Of course, South Africa has also shown how long and bloody a
struggle against apartheid can be, and the terrible price paid by the victims of such a regime.
But Palestinians already live in such a regime, and have for long been paying a terrible price
for their subjugation.
Yet deeper and more troubling questions are raised by the choices that now face Israel,
including whether the original idea of the Zionist movement of a state that is both Jewish and
democratic is not deeply oxymoronic, a question that not only Israelis but Jews outside of
Israel must address. That question is underscored by the challenges to India's democracy posed
by its prime minister's decision to turn his country into a Hindu nation. It is a question that
did not escape some of the founders of the Zionist movement, who argued that Zionism should
define the state as Jewish only in its ethnic and secular cultural dimensions. But that this is
not how Jewish identity is treated in Israel is undeniable.
Imagine if Israel's laws defining national identity and citizenship, as recently
reformulated by Israel's Knesset, were adopted by the U.S. Congress or by other Western
democratic countries, and if Christianity in its "cultural dimensions" were declared to be
their national identity, with citizenship also granted by conversion to the dominant religion,
as is now the case in Israel, where arrangements for Jewish religious conversions are part of
the Prime Minister's office.
Is this not what America's founders, and the waves of immigrants, including European Jews,
sought to escape from? And how would Jews react today to legislation in the U.S. Congress that
would explicitly seek to maintain the majority status of Christians in the U.S.? Are Jews to
take pride in a Jewish state that adopts citizenship requirements that mirror those advocated
by white Christian supremacists? These supremacists have already proclaimed jubilantly that
Israel's policies vindicate the ones they have long been advocating.
It is true, of course, that for some Jews, aware of the history of anti-Semitism that has
spanned the ages, and especially the Holocaust, Zionism's contradictions with democratic
principles are an unpleasant but inescapable dilemma they can live with. As a survivor of the
Holocaust, I can understand that. But I also understand that the likely consequences of these
contradictions are not benign, and can yield their own terrible outcomes, particularly when
they lead to the dalliances by the prime minister of a Jewish state with right-wing racist and
xenophobic heads of state and of political parties that have fascist and anti-Semitic
parentage.
Legislation proposed in the U.S. Congress and by Trump, and recently celebrated by his
son-in-law Kushner in a New York Times op-ed, proposing that criticism of
Zionism be outlawed as antisemitism , would be laughable, were it not so clearly -- and
outrageously -- intended to deny freedom of speech on this subject. Yet laughable it is, for
its first target would have to be Jews -- not liberal left-wingers but the most Orthodox Jews,
known as Haredim, in Israel and in America.
At the very inception of the Zionist movement 150 years ago, not only the Haredim but the
overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jewry everywhere was opposed to Zionism, which it considered
to be a Jewish heresy, not only because the Zionists were mostly secularists, but because of an
oath taken by Jewish leaders after the destruction of the Second Temple following their exile
from Palestine, that Jews would not reestablish a Jewish kingdom except following the messianic
era. Zionism was also bitterly opposed by much of the world's Jewish Reform movement, many of
whose leaders insisted that Jewishness is a religion, not a political identity.
Much of Orthodox Jewry did not end its opposition to Zionism until after the war of 1967,
but many if not most Haredis continue to oppose Zionism as heresy. Most of its members refuse
to serve in Israel's military, to celebrate Israel's Independence Day, sing its national
anthem, and do not allow prayers in their synagogues for the wellbeing of Israel's political
leaders. Trump, Kushner, and the U.S. Congress would have to arrest them as anti-Semites.
I have no doubt that Trump's rage at the Jewish chairmen of the two Congressional committees
that led the procedures for his impeachment will sooner or later explode in anti-Semitic
expletives. The only reason it has not done so yet is because of Trump's fear of jeopardizing
Evangelical support and Sheldon Adelson's mega bucks. After all, Trump already told us that the
neo-Nazi rioters in Charlottesville declaiming "Jews will not replace us" included "very fine
people." Netanyahu never criticized Trump's statement, for he too does not want to jeopardize
certain relationships, namely the "very fine people" he has embraced -- leaders in Hungary,
Poland, Austria, Italy, Brazil, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.
If Trump's son-in-law is searching for anti-Semites, he should have been told they are far
closer at hand than in America's schools, for they are ensconced in the White House. They are
also to be found in Jerusalem where they are being accorded honors by Netanyahu. The
anti-Semitic dog whistling contained in Trump's attacks on the two Jewish congressmen were not
misunderstood by his hardcore supporters -- who now include the entire leadership of the
Republican party -- who Trump needs to take him to victory in the coming presidential
elections, or to keep him in the White House were he to lose those elections.
If apartheid is coming (or has come) out of Zion, it should not shock that what may come out
of Washington is a repeat by Trump's Republican shock troops of what occurred in Berlin in
1933, when the Bundestag was taken over by the Nazi party and ended Germany's democracy.
You would not ever have seen this on Fox at the last election. Best high voltage spit by
Jimmy Dore I have seen.
Tucker shows a great smirk especially when Jimmy dumps on Guaido.
"... It soon emerged that the Iranian was in fact in Baghdad to discuss with the Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi a plan that might lead to the de-escalation of the ongoing conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a meeting that the White House apparently knew about may even have approved. If that is so, events as they unfolded suggest that the US government might have encouraged Soleimani to make his trip so he could be set up and killed. Donald Trump later dismissed the lack of any corroboration of the tale of "imminent threat" being peddled by Pompeo, stating that it didn't really matter as Soleimani was a terrorist who deserved to die. ..."
"... It now appears that the original death of the American contractor that sparked the tit-for-tat conflict was not carried out by Kata'ib Hezbollah at all. An Iraqi Army investigative team has gathered convincing evidence that it was an attack staged by Islamic State. In fact, the Iraqi government has demonstrated that Kata'ib Hezbollah has had no presence in Kirkuk province, where the attack took place, since 2014. It is a heavily Sunni area where Shi'a are not welcome and is instead relatively hospitable to all-Sunni IS. It was, in fact, one of the original breeding grounds for what was to become ISIS. ..."
Admittedly the news cycle in the United States seldom runs longer than twenty-four hours, but that should not serve as an excuse
when a major story that contradicts what the Trump Administration has been claiming appears and suddenly dies. The public that actually
follows the news might recall a little more than one month ago the United States assassinated a senior Iranian official named Qassem
Soleimani. Openly killing someone in the government of a country with which one is not at war is, to say the least, unusual, particularly
when the crime is carried out in yet another country with which both the perpetrator and the victim have friendly relations. The
justification provided by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking for the administration, was that Soleimani was in Iraq planning
an "imminent" mass killing of Americans, for which no additional evidence was provided at that time or since.
It soon emerged that the Iranian was in fact in Baghdad to discuss with the Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi a plan that
might lead to the de-escalation of the ongoing conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a meeting that the White House apparently
knew about may even have approved. If that is so, events as they unfolded suggest that the US government might have encouraged Soleimani
to make his trip so he could be set up and killed. Donald Trump later dismissed the lack of any corroboration of the tale of "imminent
threat" being peddled by Pompeo, stating that it didn't really matter as Soleimani was a terrorist who deserved to die.
The incident that started the killing cycle
that eventually included Soleimani consisted of a December 27th attack on a US base in Iraq in which four American soldiers and two
Iraqis were wounded while one US contractor, an Iraqi-born translator, was killed. The United States immediately blamed Iran, claiming
that it had been carried out by an Iranian supported Shi'ite militia called Kata'ib Hezbollah. It provided no evidence for that claim
and retaliated by striking a Kata'ib base, killing 25 Iraqis who were in the field fighting the remnants of Islamic State (IS). The
militiamen had been incorporated into the Iraqi Army and this disproportionate response led to riots outside the US Embassy in Baghdad,
which were also blamed on Iran by the US There then followed the assassinations of Soleimani and nine senior Iraqi militia officers.
Iran retaliated when it fired missiles
at American forces , injuring more than one hundred soldiers, and then mistakenly
shot down a passenger
jet , killing an additional 176 people. As a consequence due to the killing by the US of 34 Iraqis in the two incidents, the
Iraqi Parliament also
voted to expel
all American troops.
It now appears that the original death of the American contractor that sparked the tit-for-tat conflict was not carried out
by Kata'ib Hezbollah at all. An Iraqi Army investigative team has gathered convincing evidence that it was an attack staged by Islamic
State. In fact, the Iraqi government has demonstrated that Kata'ib Hezbollah has had no presence in Kirkuk province, where the attack
took place, since 2014. It is a heavily Sunni area where Shi'a are not welcome and is instead relatively hospitable to all-Sunni
IS. It was, in fact, one of the original breeding grounds for what was to become ISIS.
This new development was reported in the New York Times in
an article that was
headlined "Was US Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran? Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised
doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events." In spite of the sensational nature of the report it
generally was ignored in television news and in other mainstream media outlets, letting the Trump administration get away with yet
another big lie, one that could easily have led to a war with Iran.
Iraqi investigators found and identified the abandoned white Kia pickup with an improvised Katyusha rocket launcher in the vehicle's
bed that was used to stage the attack. It was discovered down a desert road within range of the K-1 joint Iraqi-American base that
was hit by at least ten missiles in December, most of which struck the American area.
There is no direct evidence tying the attack to any particular party and the improvised KIA truck is used by all sides in the
regional fighting, but the Iraqi officials point to the undisputed fact that it was the Islamic State that had carried out three
separate attacks near the base over the 10 days preceding December 27th. And there are reports that IS has been increasingly active
in Kirkuk Province during the past year, carrying out near daily attacks with improvised roadside bombs and ambushes using small
arms. There had, in fact, been reports from Iraqi intelligence that were shared with the American command warning that there might
be an IS attack on K-1 itself, which is an Iraqi air base in that is shared with US forces.
The intelligence on the attack has been shared with American investigators, who have also examined the pick-up truck. The Times
reports that the US command in Iraq continue to insist that the attack was carried out by Kata'ib based on information, including
claimed communications intercepts, that it refuses to make public. The US forces may not have shared the intelligence they have with
the Iraqis due to concerns that it would be leaked to Iran, but senior Iraqi military officers are nevertheless perplexed by the
reticence to confide in an ally.
If the Iraqi investigation of the facts around the December attack on K-1 is reliable, the Donald Trump administration's reckless
actions in Iraq in late December and early January cannot be justified. Worse still, it would appear that the White House was looking
for an excuse to attack and kill a senior Iranian official to send some kind of message, a provocation that could easily have resulted
in a war that would benefit no one. To be sure, the Trump administration has lied about developments in the Middle East so many times
that it can no longer be trusted. Unfortunately, demanding any accountability from the Trump team would require a Congress that is
willing to shoulder its responsibility for truth in government backed up by
a media that is willing to take on an administration that regularly punishes anyone or any entity that dares to challenge it
Well, the 9/11 Commission lied about Israeli involvement, Israeli neocons lied America into Iraq, and Netanyahu lied about Iranian
nukes, so this latest news is just par for the course.
Pompeo had evidence of immediate catastrophic attack. That turned out to be a lie and plain BS.
Why should we believe Pompeo or White House or intelligence about the situation developing around 27-29 Dec ? Is it because it's
USA who is saying so?
[it would appear that the White House was looking for an excuse to attack and kill a senior Iranian official to send some kind
of message, a provocation that could easily have resulted in a war that would benefit no one.]
The Jewish mafia stooge and fifth column, Trump, is a war criminal and an ASSASSIN.
Worse still, it would appear that the White House was looking for an excuse to attack and kill a senior Iranian official
to send some kind of message, a provocation that could easily have resulted in a war that would benefit no one.
Soleimani was a soldier involved in covert operations, Iran's most celebrated hero, and had been featured in the Iraq media
as the target of multiple Western assassination attempts. He did not have diplomatic status.
As it happens Iran did not declare war on America and America did not declare war on Iran. If Americans soldiers killed in
Iraq should not have been there in the first place, then the same goes for an Iranian soldier killed there too.
@04398436986 There is western assertion and western assertion only that Iran influences Iraqi administration and intelligence
. It can be a projection from a failing America . It can be also a valid possibility .
But lying is America's alter ego . It comes easily and as default explanation even when admitting truth would do a better job
.
Now let's focus on ISIS 's claims . Why is Ametica not taking it ( claim of ISIS) as truth and fact when USA has for last 19
years has jailed , bombed, attacked mentally retarded , caves and countries because somebody has pledged allegiance to Al Quida
or to ISIS!!!
It seems neither truth nor lies , but what suits a particular psychopath at a particular time – that becomes USA's report (
kind of unassigned sex – neither truth nor lies – take your pick and find the toilet to flush it down memory hole) – so Pompeo
lies to nation hoping no one in administration will ask . When administrative staff gets interested to know the truth , Pompeo
tells them to suck it up , move on and get ready to explain the next batch of reality manufactured by a regime and well trained
by philosopher Karl Rove
To what "conspiracy" are you referring? It's a well established fact that your ilk was, at the very least, aware that the 9/11
attacks would occur and celebrated them in broad daylight. No conspiracy theory needed. Mossad ordnance experts were living practically
next door to the hijackers. Well established fact.
It's also undeniable that the 9/11 Commission airbrushed Israeli involvement from their report. No conspiracy theory there,
either.
Same goes for Israeli neocons and their media mandarins using "faulty intel" to get their war in Iraq. "Clean Break"? "Rebuilding
America's Defenses"? Openly written and published. Judith Miller's lies? Also no conspiracy.
And Israel's own intelligence directors were undermining Netanyahu's lies on Iran. Not a conspiracy in sight.
contemplating the outcome of normal everyday competition, influenced by good & bad luck, is just too much truth for some
psychological makeups
That's one of the lamest attempts at deflection I've seen thus far, and I've seen quite a few here.
Those who deny the official version of 9/11 are in the majority now:
We've reached critical mass. Clearly, that's just too much truth for your psychological makeup. Were we really that worthy
of ignoring, your people wouldn't be working 24/7/365 to peddle your malarkey in fora of this variety.
I have thought that Trump's true impeachable crime was the illegal assassination of a foreign general who was not in combat. Pence
should also be impeached for the botched coup in Venezuela. That was true embarrassment bringing that "El Presidente" that no
one recognizes to the SOTU.
USA is basically JU-S-A now, Jews own and run this country from top to bottom, side to side, and because of it, pretty much
run the world. China-Russia-Iran form their new "Axis of Evil" to be brought in line. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the Covid-19
is a bioweapon, except not one created by China. Israel has been working on an ethnic based bioweapon for years. US sent 172 military
"athletes" to the Military World Games in Wuhan in October, 2019, two weeks before the first case of coronavirus appeared. Almost
too coincidental.
@Sean He wasn't there as a soldier -- he was there in a diplomatic role. (regardless of his official "status"). It
also appears he was lured there with intent to assaninate.
Your last para is not only terrible logic but ignores the point of the article. Iran likely was not responsible for the US deaths.
Even had it been responsible it would still not legitimate such a baldly criminal action.
[I]illegal assassination of a foreign general who was not in combat
Lawful combat according to the Geneva Convention in which war is openly declared and fought between two countries each of which
have regular uniformed forces that do all the actual fighting is an extremely rare thing. It is all proxy forces, deniability
and asymmetric warfare in which one side (the stronger) is attacked by phantom combatants.
The Israeli PM publically alluded to the fact that Soleimani had almost been killed in the Mossad operation to kill
Imad Mughniyeh a decade ago. The
Iranian public knew that Soleimani had narrowly escaped death from Israeli drones, because Soleimani appeared on Iranian TV in
October and told the story. A plot kill him by at a memorial service in Iran was supposedly foiled. He came from Lebanon by way
of Syria into Iraq as if none of this had happened. Trump had sacked Bolton and failed to react to the drone attack on Saudi oil.
Iran seems to have thought that refusal to actually fight in the type of war that the international conventions were designed
to regulate is a licence to exert pressure by launch attacks without being targeted oneself. Now do they understand.
@Sean American troops invaded Iraq under false pretenses, killed thousands, and caused great destruction. Chaos and vengeful
Sunnis spilled over into Syria where the US proceeded to grovel before the terrorists we fret about. Soleimani was effective in
organizing resistance in Iraq and Syria and was in both countries with the blessing of their governments.
How you get Soleimani shouldn't be there out of that I have no idea.
@04398436986 Yet you ignore that the Neocons have lied about virtually every cause if war ever. Lied about Iraq, North Korea
and Iran nuclear info actions, about chem weapons in Syria, lied about Kosovo, lied about Libya, lied about Benghazi, lied about
Venezuela. So Whom I gonna believe, no government, but a Neocon led one least of all
It is common knowledge that ISIS is a US/Israeli creation. ISIS is the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. Thus, the US/Israel
staged the attack on the US base on 12.27.2019.
ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #2: ISIS Never Attacks Israel
It is more than highly strange and suspicious that ISIS never attacks Israel – it is another indication that ISIS is controlled
by Israel. If ISIS were a genuine and independent uprising that was not covertly orchestrated by the US and Israel, why would
they not try to attack the Zionist regime, which has attacked almost of all of its Muslim neighbors ever since its inception
in 1948? Israel has attacked Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and of course has decimated Palestine. It has systemically tried to
divide and conquer its Arab neighbors. It continually complains of Islamic terrorism. Yet, when ISIS comes on the scene as
the bloody and barbaric king of Islamic terrorism, it finds no fault with Israel and sees no reason to target a regime which
has perpetrated massive injustice against Muslims? This stretches credibility to a snapping point.
ISIS and Israel don't attack each other – they help each other. Israel was treating ISIS soldiers and other anti-Assad rebels
in its hospitals! Mortal enemies or best of friends?
The MQ-9 pilot and sensor operator will be looking over their shoulders for a long time. They're as famous as Soleimani. Their
command chain is well known too, hide though they might far away.
And who briefed the president that terror Tuesday? The murder program isn't Air Force.
@anonymous The kind of crap Trump pulled in the assassination of Soleimani is what he should be impeached about–not the piss-ant
stuff about Hunter Biden's job in the Ukaranian gas company and his pappy's role in it.
Iraq an ally of the United States! Is it some kind of a joke? How can a master and slave be equal? We, the big dog want their
oil and the tail that wags us, Israel, want all Muslims pacified and the Congress, which is us wether we like or not, compliant
out of financial fears. Unless we curb our own greedy appetite for fossil fuels and at the same time tell an ally, which Israel
is by being equal in a sense that it can get away with murder and not a pip is raised, to limit its ambition, nothing is going
to be done to improve the situation. Until then it's an exercise in futility, at best!
Iran has NO choice but to defend itself from the savages. It has not been Iran that invaded US, but US with a plan that design
years before 9/11 invaded many countries. Remember: seven countries in five years. Soleimani was a wise man working towards peace
by creating options for Iran to defend itself. Iran is not the aggressor, but US -Israel-UK are the aggressor for centuries now.
Is this so difficult to understand. 9/11 was staged by US/Israel killing 3000 Christians to implement their criminal plan.
Soleimani, was on a peace mission, where was assassinated by Trump, an Israeli firster and a fifth column and the baby killer
Netanyahu. Is this difficult to understand by the Trump worshiper, a traitor.
Now, Khamenie is saying the same thing: "Iran should be strong in military warfare and sciences to prevent war and maintain
PEACE.
Only ignorant, arrogant, and racists don't understand this fact and refuse to understand how the victims have been pushed to
defend themselves.
The Assassin at the black house should receive the same fate in order to bring the peace.
When does Amerikastan *not* lie about anything? If an Amerikastani tells you the sun rises in the east, you're probably on Venus,
where it rises in the west.
I think this article is getting close to the truth, that this whole operation was and is an ISIS (meaning Israeli Secret Intelligence
Service) affair designed to pit America against the zionists' most formidable enemy thus far, Iran.
I'm of the opinion that Trump did not order the hit on Soleimani, but was forced to take credit for it, if he didn't want to
forfeit any chance of being reelected this year. The same ISIS (Israeli) forces that did the hit also orchestrated the "retaliation"
that Mr. Giraldi so heroically documents in this piece.
As usual, this is looking more and more like a zionist /jewish false flag attack on the Muslim world, with the real dirty-work
to be done by the American military.
It soon emerged that the Iranian was in fact in Baghdad to discuss with the Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi a plan
that might lead to the de-escalation of the ongoing conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a meeting that the White House
apparently knew about may even have approved.
It's now obvious that the slumlord son-in-law Jared Kushner is really running the USA's ME policy.
Kushner is not only a dear friend of at-large war criminal Bibi Nuttyahoo, he also belongs to the Judaic religious cult of Chabad
Lubavitcher, whom make the war-loving Christian Evangelicals almost look sane. Chabad also prays for some kind of Armageddon to
bring forth their Messiah, just like the Evangelicals.
One can tell by Kushner's nasty comments he makes about Arabs/Persians and Palestinians in particular, that he loathes and
despises those people and has an idiotic ear to cry into in the malignant form of Zion Don, AKA President Trump.
It's been said that Kushner is also a Mossad agent or asset, which is a good guess, since that agency has been placing their
agents into the WH since at least the days of Clinton, who had Rahm Emmanuel to whisper hate into his ear.
That the Iranian General Soleimani was lured into Iraq so the WH could murder the man probably most responsible for halting
the terrorist activities of the heart-eating, head-chopping US/Israel/KSA creation ISIS brings to mind the motto of the Israeli
version of the CIA, the Mossad.
"By way of deception thou shalt make war."
Between Trump's incompetence, his vanity–and yes, his stupidity– and his appointing Swamp creatures into his cabinet and
allowing Jared to run the ME show, Trump is showing himself to be a worse choice than Hillary.
If that maniac gets another 4 years, humanity is doomed. Or at least the USA for sure will perish.
He's just a stupid old man with an entitlement arrogance, so just like Clinton but male,
Pelosi and so many others being the exact same and this is on both sides of the coin.
Search
Feb 15, 2020
3
Fascism in Ukraine: the conspiracy of silence
Kit Knightly
Joseph Altham
The rise of the far right in Ukraine is one of the most disturbing trends in 21st century Europe. But it's a
story you rarely get to read about in the British press.
These days, the mainstream media does not have much to say about Ukraine. And when Ukraine is
mentioned, the main focus tends to be on Ukraine as it relates to the latest American political scandal, rather than
on Ukraine itself. Six years ago, the revolt in Kyiv put Ukraine at the top of the news agenda, but now the papers
have gone quiet.
This lack of interest in Ukraine is surprising, because Ukraine has some big stories that you would expert
journalists to be reporting. The country has been going through a violent upheaval, and the fighting in Ukraine's
eastern region still continues.
Supposedly, the reason for all the bloodshed was to secure Ukraine's European future? So how's that project going
today? Not well. Ukraine is still a long way from full membership of the European Union, and remains one of Europe's
poorest countries.
The ruins of Donetsk airport, December 2014 (Photo: Wikipedia)
Clearly, Ukraine is not working out. Of course, the nationalist uprising in Kyiv did achieve one of its core
objectives: the termination of the old partnership with Moscow. But the uprising also aimed to end corruption in
Ukraine and curb the power of the oligarchs. On both counts, Ukraine's political elite has performed badly. Ukraine's
corruption rating is still poor, while Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's current president, was helped into power by the
influential billionaire, Ihor Kolomoisky.
All in all, Ukraine's "bright future" seems further away than ever, and the biggest losers from Ukraine's
pro-Western course have been the Ukrainian people. But the Western press long ago settled on the story that Vladimir
Putin is the big bully, and Ukraine has been cast in the role of his victim.
Because Vladimir Putin is labelled as the bad guy, and criticism of the Ukrainian government is thought to serve
his agenda, Ukraine has become a no-go area. The powers that be don't want to admit how bad things are inside
Ukraine, so The Guardian's "fearless investigative journalists" don't get to write about it.
Mikhail Bulgakov. During his lifetime, his work was censored by the Soviets. In 2014, the new Ukrainian government
banned a TV dramatization of his novel, The White Guard. (Photo: Wikipedia)
Instead, the truth is being swept under the carpet. And the truth is that the nationalist forces that took control
of Ukraine are bringing shame on their country. Ukraine has given way to crude nationalistic resentment, to the
extent of vandalizing Soviet war memorials and banning books, TV dramas and films. And in its search for new national
heroes to replace the Soviet heroes it is rejecting, Ukraine is glorifying the most despicable characters from its
fascist past.
The Lviv pogrom, 1941 (Photo: Wikipedia)
The historical background is complicated. In the 1930s, Ukraine was oppressed by the Bolsheviks and millions died
of famine. Then, during World War II, the German invasion of the USSR gave Ukrainian nationalists the opportunity to
push for independence, in an uneasy alliance with Nazi Germany. By collaborating with Nazi Germany, the Ukrainian
nationalists hoped that they would be rewarded with their own Ukrainian state.
As Ukraine fashions a new identity for itself, Ukrainians have been seeking inspiration from Stepan Bandera, Roman
Shukhevych and the other Nazi collaborators who piggy-backed on German military victories to advance the Ukrainian
nationalist cause.
Torchlit procession of Ukrainian nationalists (Photo: Wikipedia)
The trouble is that these Ukrainian nationalists, who proclaimed statehood in Lviv in 1941, were committed to more
than just a tactical alliance with Nazi Germany. Their organization sympathized with Nazi ideas, too.
The Nazis regarded Jews, Poles and Russians as subhuman, and so did Stepan Bandera. The Ukrainian nationalists
massacred Poles, perpetrated pogroms and were willing participants in the Holocaust. They even had their own division
in the SS, the SS Galicia.
A photo of Stepan Bandera displayed during the Maidan uprising, January 2014 (Photo: Wikipedia)
The dark side of Ukraine's wartime history has become a point of reference for the new, post-Maidan regime. As
monuments to Soviet commanders are demolished, new monuments to Ukrainian fascists are going up.
The Ukrainian government has designated 1st January, Stepan Bandera's birthday, as a national holiday. Statues of
Bandera and Shukhevych have appeared in many cities, and streets are being named after war criminals.
Ultranationalist organizations are invited to schools to give children a "patriotic" education. Nazi symbols are
openly displayed at concerts and football matches, and antisemitic literature is sold on market stalls.
Meanwhile, monuments commemorating the Holocaust have been desecrated, and synagogues have been attacked.
"Death to the Yids": graffiti beside a synagogue in Odessa. The sign is a Wolfsangel, a common Nazi symbol.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Old poisons are rising to the surface. The figures openly praised by Ukrainian leaders are the scoundrels and
fanatics who threw in their lot with Hitler. The new Ukraine is obsessed with its own national grievances, but it
shows little respect for any of the non-Ukrainian victims of history. With its sickly blend of romanticism and
self-pity, Ukraine is now a breeding ground for racism and extremism. But this is something the Western press is not
yet ready to admit.
Instead, the press has been colluding in a conspiracy of silence and shutting its eyes to the danger. By putting
up statues of fascists from the past, Ukraine is giving a green light to fascism today.
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Hey according to two faced Shifty Schiff Ukraine is "fighting the Russians so we don't have to". I mean
another "great ally" like Israel who has been selling them arms hand over first despite the fact that the
Ukrainians are truly "antisemitic" who unlike American "antisemites" that are always bellyaching about
Israel's genocidal policies Ukrainians excel in their antisemitism by burning down synagogs and
threatening the Jewish population er I mean offer them a one way train excursion all expenses paid.
I
mean what greater "ally" does Israel need to convince more Jews to come the "promised land"and kill a few
Palestinians and steal their land. I mean things haven't been as good since ol' Uncle 'Dolph signed the
Transfer Agreement.
Aside from a some occasional burbling about antisemitism by NuttenYahoo like the Americans they
continue to sell them arms so they can launch genocidal campaigns against Dombass and other ethnic
Russian areas that aren't as Ukofriendly as Washington and Tel Aviv using their reconstituted Bandera
Brigade AKA SS Galicia of inveterate Iron Guard. I mean these guys aren't just a bunch Neo-nazis skin
heads but qualify as the real animal.
Thanks to Obama, Nuland and Clinton with the help of Soros deep pockets to fund color revolutions whom
if you remember according to 60 Minute interview a ways back reveled in turning over Jewish property and
Jews to the tender mercies of the 3rd Reich. I mean what a guy.
Well the reason you probably haven't heard anything is because the American government is just too
modest about show casing yet another example of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the benighted who
haven't experienced the joys of austerity, privatization and giving all their money to help those poor
needy kleptocrats who are just millionaires and are striving to be another Jeff Bezos.
Loverat
,
Ukraine is almost identical to the rise of fascism in 1990s Croatia. I wonder when the Pope will visit
and grant saint hood to these appalling monsters.
Jen
,
It must be said that the western parts of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian ultranationalist movement arose
under people like Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yuri Stetsko, were actually under Polish rule and
were subjected to forced Polonisation under an increasingly nationalist and fascist Polish government
during the 1920s and 1930s. This explains why ethnic Polish people were fair game for torture and
lynching by Ukrainian followers of Bandera & Co during Nazi rule in the 1940s. Western Ukraine mostly
escaped the famines that affected Soviet Ukraine and other parts of the USSR in the 1930s.
It's not just the White House that is doing serious damage to U.S. interests abroad during
this year's election campaign. Of even greater consequence (absent a new Middle East war) is
the U.S. relationship with Russia. It's currently unthinkable that Washington will try to move
beyond the status quo, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin were prepared to do so. Even
before Trump was inaugurated, many Democrats began calling for his
impeachment . Leading Democrats
laid Hillary Clinton ' s defeat at the feet of Russian interference in the U.S. election --
a claim that stretched credulity past the breaking point. Further, as Democrats looked for
grounds to impeach Trump (or at least terminally to reduce his reelection chances), the "
Russia factor" was the best cudgel available. Charges included the notion that " Putin has something on
Trump," which presumes he would sell out the nation ' s security for a mess of pottage.
All this domestic politicking ignores a geopolitical fact: while the Soviet Union lost the
Cold War and, for some time thereafter, Russia could be dismissed, it was always certain that
it would again become a significant power, at least in Europe. Thus, even before the Berlin
Wall fell, President George H. W. Bush proposed creating a " Europe whole and
free" and at peace. Bill Clinton built on what Bush began. Both understood that a renascent
Russia could embrace revanchism, and for several years their efforts seemed to have a chance of
succeeding.
Then the effort went off the rails. Putin took power in Russia, which made cooperation with
the West difficult if not impossible. He worked to consolidate his domestic position, in part
by alleging that the West was " disrespecting" Russia and trying to encircle it. For its part,
the U.S. played into the Putin narrative by abandoning the Bush-Clinton vision of taking
legitimate Russian interests into account in fashioning European security arrangements. The
breaking point came in 2014, when Russia seized
Crimea and sent " little green men" to fight in some other parts of Ukraine. The West
necessarily responded, with economic sanctions
and NATO's
buildup of " trip wire" forces in Central Europe.
But despite the ensuing standoff, the critical requirement remains: the United States has to
acknowledge Russia's inevitable rise as a major power while also impressing on Putin the need
to trim his ambitions, if he is to avoid a new era of Russian isolation. There is also serious
business that the two countries need to pursue, including strategic arms control, the Middle
East (especially Iran), and climate change. Despite deep disagreements, including over Ukraine
and parts of Central Europe, the U.S. needs to engage in serious discussions with Russia, which
means the renewal of diplomacy which has been in the deep freeze for years.
All of this has been put in pawn by the role that the "Russia factor" has been permitted to
play in American presidential politics, especially by Democrats. Longer-term U.S. interests are
suffering, along with those of the European allies and Middle East partners. The task has been
made even more difficult by those U.S. politicians,
think tanks , and journalists
who prefer to resurrect the term "cold war" rather than clearly examining the nation's
strategic needs because of the blinkers imposed by domestic politics. Open discussion about
alternatives in dealing with Russia is thus stifled, at serious cost to the United States and
others.
In all three of these areas, the U.S. is paying a high price in terms of its national
interests to the games political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, are playing. Great
efforts will be needed to dig out of this mess, beginning with U.S. willingness to do so.
Leaders elsewhere must also be prepared to join in -- far from a sure thing! Unfortunately,
there is currently little hope that, at least in the three critical areas discussed above,
pursuit of U.S. interests abroad will prevail over today's parochial domestic politics.
"... Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to journalist and side-piece Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes. ..."
"... What's next on the real-life House of Cards? ..."
A
week of two-tiered
legal shenanigans was capped off on Friday with a
New York
Times report that Attorney General William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to
scrutinize the government's case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn,
which the Times suggested was " highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political
interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors."
Notably, the FBI excluded
crucial information from a '302' form documenting an interview with Flynn in January, 2017.
While Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to misleading agents over his contacts with the former
Russian ambassador regarding the Trump administration's efforts to oppose a UN resolution
related to Israel, the original draft of Flynn's 302 reveals that agents thought
he was being honest with them - evidence which Flynn's prior attorneys never pursued.
His new attorney, Sidney Powell, took over Flynn's defense in June 2019 - while Flynn
withdrew his guilty plea in January , accusing the government of "bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
In addition to a review of the Flynn case, Barr has hired a handful of outside prosecutors
to broadly review several other politically sensitive national-security cases in the US
attorney's office in Washington , according to the Times sources.
Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC,
Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and
others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to
journalist and side-piece
Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at
former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.
Earlier this week, Barr overruled the DC prosecutors recommendation for Stone, resulting in
their resignations. The result was the predictable triggering of Democrats across the spectrum
.
According to the Times , "Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun
grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases -- some public, some not
-- including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to
the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal
deliberations."
The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what
career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader
turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr's recent
installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea , as interim United States attorney in the
District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top
prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu.
Mr.
Flynn's case was first brought by the special counsel's office, who agreed to a plea deal
on a charge of lying to investigators in exchange for his cooperation, before the Washington
office took over the case when the special counsel shut down after concluding its
investigation into Russia's election interference.
-New
York Times
"... Until recently, President Donald Trump's pro-Israel policy was centered on taking steps related to fulfilling campaign promises and strengthening his standing domestically with his evangelical base. Chief among these steps was his decision to pull out of the nuclear accord with Iran, and the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (and at the same time announcing moving the American embassy to Jerusalem). Trump also signed a presidential proclamation recognizing "Israeli sovereignty" over the Golan Heights. ..."
"... By deciding to carry out this assassination operation, Trump has brought his pro-Israel policy to an entirely new, and dangerous level. ..."
"... Israel may have found in the Trump administration the perfect ally when it comes to the demonization of Iran and the groups it supports. ..."
Until recently, President Donald Trump's pro-Israel policy was centered on taking steps
related to fulfilling campaign promises and strengthening his standing domestically with his
evangelical base. Chief among these steps was his decision to pull out of the nuclear accord
with Iran, and the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (and at the same time
announcing moving the American embassy to Jerusalem). Trump also signed a presidential
proclamation recognizing "Israeli sovereignty" over the Golan Heights.
All of this has changed, however, with the assassination of the commander of the Quds Force
in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Qassem Soleimani and the deputy head
of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Abu Mehdi Al-Muhandis.
By deciding to carry out this assassination operation, Trump has brought his pro-Israel
policy to an entirely new, and dangerous level.
Targeting the IRGC and PMF: An Israeli policy
It is worth remembering that Israel set the precedent for carrying out lethal operations in
Iraq by targeting elements of the IRGC and the PMF.
Israel began these operations last year, with the first taking place on July 19 near the
Iraqi town of Amerli. Iranian media later reported that senior IRGC commander Abu Alfazl
Sarabian had died in the attack.
Another Israeli attack on August 25 led to the death of a senior PMF commander in the Iraqi
town of Al-Qaim near the border with Syria, while 21 PMF members were killed in an Israeli
operation near the city of Hit in Iraq's Anbar province on September 20.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even admitted that Israel was behind
these attacks.
"We are working against Iranian consolidation in Iraq as well [as in Syria]" remarked
Netanyahu on August 22.
Trump administration officials adopt the Israel line of demonizing Iran
The Israeli fingerprints on U.S. policy could also be seen in the apparent stances taken by
U.S. officials following the assassination of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis.
According to the New York
Times , Trump administration officials have compared the assassination of Soleimani to the
killing of former ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Such a comparison is no doubt to Israel's
liking.
Not only has Israel long sought to equate the IRGC and its allies, including the Lebanese
Hezbollah and the Iraqi PMF, with terrorist groups like al-Qaida and ISIS, it has even
described the latter groups as being the lesser of the two evils.
According to sources in Washington, one of the most common complaints made by visiting
Israeli officials over the past years was that the U.S. was focusing too much on fighting Sunni
Jihadist groups (al-Qaida, ISIS, etc.) and not enough on fighting Iran and its network of
allies.
Israel's former ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren referred to this dynamic in an
interview with the Jerusalem Post back in September 2013, where he summed up the Israeli
policy regarding Syria. "The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted
(President) Bashar Assad to go" he stated, further adding; "we always preferred the bad guys
who weren't back by Iran (al-Qaida affiliates) to the bad guys who were backed by Iran".
For his part, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon referred to an "
axis of evil ' comprising Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.
Yaalon made those remarks during a meeting with former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey in August 2013, underscoring that this "axis of evil" must not
emerge victorious in Syria.
Israel may have found in the Trump administration the perfect ally when it comes to the
demonization of Iran and the groups it supports.
Hard-core evangelicals like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence
have a strong ideological affinity for Israel and its anti-Iranian agenda.
During a Senate hearing last April, Pompeo
repeated the long-debunked claim that Iran and al-Qaida have cooperated for years. "There
is no doubt there is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and al-Qaida. Period,
full stop," Pompeo asserted.
Pence, meanwhile, has even gone so far as to claim that
Soleimani was involved with 9/11 . Following the assassination, Pence tweeted that
Soleimani had "assisted in the clandestine travel of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out
the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States."
American troops in danger as a result of the Israeli evangelical agenda
With the assassination of Soleimani and Al-Muhandes, Israel and its Christian evangelical
allies in Washington appear to have succeeded more than any time before in steering Trump's
foreign policy. Their success, however, may have placed U.S. troops in the region in grave
danger.
In a speech
commemorating the death of Soleimani and Al-Muhandes, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah
Hassan Nasrallah warned that retaliation would be aimed at U.S. military assets.
In remarks which brought back the memories of the 1983 attacks on the Marine Barracks in
Beirut, Nasrallah suggested that the U.S. military presence in the region would become a target
for suicide bombers.
"The suicide attackers who forced the Americans to leave our region in the past are still
here today and in far greater numbers," Nasrallah asserted.
Are we? NSC hijecked functions of the Department of State and is a clear parallel structure,
that functions in a way completely different from its initial role. They no longer serve they
serve as the president's personal staff. NSC clearly strives to control foreign policy and thus
control the President in this area.
And with people like Pompeo at the helm what are the benefits of expelling Vindmans
National Security Adviser told a room full of Atlantic Council
attendees on Tuesday that significant cuts were under way at the leak-prone White House
National Security Council, confirming a Monday report in the Washington Examiner that up to 70
positions would be cut.
Robert O'Brien says the NSC will be down between 115 to 120 staffers by the end of this
week. pic.twitter.com/FpleaBFh85
While O'Brien pitched it as a return to "a manageable size," he didn't mention what the
Examiner reported - namely, that most of the cuts would be Obama-era holdovers such as
anti-Trump impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, 44, and his twin brother Yevgeny,
who were
fired from the NSC last week and escorted out of the White House by security.
O'Brian noted that the Vindmans "weren't fired," according to the
Epoch Times , rather "Their services were no longer needed."
"It's really a privilege to work in the White House. It's not a right," he continued. "At
the end of the day, the president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policy, that
he has confidence in, and I think every president's entitled to that."
" We're not a banana republic where a group of Lt. Colonels get together and decide what the
policy is or should be ," he added.
The reorganization was consistent with the "Scowcroft model" used by Brent Scowcroft, who
served as national security adviser for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush,
according to O'Brien. The model emphasizes that the national security adviser shouldn't "be
an advocate for one policy or another." Instead, the adviser should "ensure that the
president is well served by the cabinet, departments, and agencies in obtaining counsel and
formulating his policies."
The policies are then decided on by the president and the adviser makes sure they're
carried out.
Most of the staff on the council actually work for other departments and agencies and are
part of the council for a certain length of time. O'Brien suggested that some might not be
serving in the way that top officials think they should. -
Epoch Times
" When they come to the White House, they serve as the president's personal staff and it is
our view that while they are at the National Security Council, they should not represent the
views of their parent agencies or departments," said O'Brien. " They're not there as liaison
officers, and they certainly shouldn't represent their own personal views. "
"The president has to have confidence in the folks on his National Security Council staff to
ensure that they are committed to executing the agenda that he was elected by the American
people to deliver," not a "mini State Department, a mini Pentagon, a mini Department of
Homeland Security."
However, according to some reports, the United States and the Taliban have recently managed
to define the main terms of a future peace deal:
- The Taliban guarantee that they will not allow international terrorist groups such as
al-Qaeda (banned in Russia) to use Afghanistan as a training ground for attacks abroad;
– The US must withdraw its troops from the country. In particular, the terms
include the following:
About 5,000 US soldiers are expected to be withdrawn immediately after the peace deal is
signed, and the remaining troops will leave the country within the next two years;
– Against the backdrop of an indefinite truce in Afghanistan, the conflicting
parties should begin an internal political dialogue.
The Taliban must be naive not to insist on a total cessation to military air assaults and
reconnaissance. There is no way the USA will stop bombing Afghanistan into the stone age -
because it can AND good live training for its murderous home pilots.
And then the predictable USA treachery and ingredient to walk back the treaty:
The Kabul government, however, is not taking part in those talks at the insistence of the
Taliban, which considers the current official government to be a puppet. But the US is in
favor of Kabul reaffirming its commitment to the peace terms, because otherwise the last
condition of the agreement will not be fulfilled.
I guess most of these open threads are going to gravitate to electoral politics--tis the
season--but before it gets lost I did want to share what I thought was an unusually well
written piece on the US leaving Afghanistan.
The author doesn't just go on a diatribe of criticism of the US, although obviously he
feels the US needs to be leaving--the sooner the better, and likely will eventually be
leaving whether it wants to or not. But he points out several "tells" related to just how
serious the US might be any time it starts talking about leaving, or indeed starts leaving. I
would highly recommend reading this article. Really thought provoking.
A very hard-hitting exposé of the US combination of criminality and blundering in
Afghanistan, and what seems to be a comprehensive and completely rational plan for getting
out of that country under the best possible terms for the people of that country, and for the
people of the US.
Not so good for the US military and civilian satraps who are tearing things up, and raking
it in.
In a key piece of actual extensive, on-the-ground reporting
, the New York Times's Alissa Rubin has raised serious questions about the official US
account of who it was that attacked the K-1 base near Kirkuk, in eastern Iraq, on December 27.
The United States almost immediately accused the Iran-backed Ketaib Hizbullah (KH) militia of
responsibility. But Rubin quotes by name Brig. General Ahmed Adnan, the chief of intelligence
for the Iraqi federal police at the same base, as saying, "All the indications are that it was
Daesh" -- that is, ISIS.
She also presents considerable further detailed reporting on the matter. And she notes that
though U.S. investigators claim to have evidence about KH's responsibility for the attack, they
have presented none of it publicly. Nor have they shared it with the Iraqi government.
KH is a paramilitary organization that operates under the command of the Iraqi military and
has been deeply involved in the anti-ISIS campaigns throughout the country.
The December 27 attack killed one Iraqi-American contractor and was cited by the Trump
administration as reason to launch a large-scale attack on five KH bases some 400 miles to the
west which killed around 50 KH fighters. Outraged KH fighters then mobbed the US embassy in
Baghdad, breaking through an outside perimeter on its large campus, but causing no casualties.
On January 2, Pres. Trump decided to escalate again, ordering the assassination of Iran's Gen.
Qasem Soleimani and bringing the region and the world close to a massive shooting war.
The new evidence presented by Rubin makes it look as if Trump and his advisors had
previously decided on a broad-scale plan to attack Iran's very influential allies in Iraq and
were waiting for a triggering event– any triggering event!– to use as a pretext to
launch it. The attack against the K-1 base presented them with that trigger, even though they
have not been able to present any evidence that it was KH that undertook it.
This playbook looks very similar to the one that Ariel Sharon, who was Israel's Defense
Minister in summer 1982, used to launch his wide attack against the PLO's presence in Lebanon
in June that year. The "trigger" Sharon used to launch his long-prepared attack was the serious
(but not fatal) wounding
of Israel's ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov, which the Israeli government immediately
blamed on the PLO.
Regarding London in 1982, as regarding K-1 last December, the actual identity of the
assailant(s) was misreported by the government that used it as a trigger for escalation. In
London, the police fairly speedily established that it was not the PLO but operatives of an
anti-PLO group headed by a man called Abu Nidal who had attacked Argov. But by the
time they had discovered and publicized that fact, Israeli tanks were already deep inside
Lebanon.
The parallels and connections between the two cases go further. If, as now seems likely, the
authors of the K-1 attack were indeed Da'esh, then they succeeded brilliantly in triggering a
bitter fight between two substantial forces in the coalition that had been fighting against
them in Iraq. Regarding the 1982 London attack, its authors also succeeded brilliantly in
triggering a lethal conflict between two forces (one substantial, one far less so) that were
both engaged in bitter combat against Abu Nidal's networks.
Worth noting: Abu Nidal's main backer, throughout his whole campaign against the PLO, was
Saddam Hussein's brutal government in Iraq. (The London assailants deposited their weapons in
the Iraqi embassy after completing the attack.) Many senior strategists and planners for ISIS
in Iraq were diehard remnants of Saddam's formerly intimidating security forces.
Also worth noting: Three months in to Sharon's massive 1982 invasion of Lebanon, it seemed
to have successfully reached its goals of expelling the PLO's fighting forces from Lebanon and
installing a strongly pro-Israeli government there. But over the longer haul, the invasion
looked much less successful. The lengthy Israeli occupation of south Lebanon that followed 1982
served to incubate the birth and growth of the (pro-Iranian) Hizbullah there. Today, Hizbullah is a strong
political movement inside Lebanon that commands a very capable fighting force that expelled
Israel's last presence from Lebanon in 2000, rebuffed a subsequent Israeli invasion of the
country six years later, and still exerts considerable deterrent power against
Israel today
Very few people in Israel today judge the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to have been a wise move.
How will the historians of the future view Trump's decision to launch his big escalation
against Iran's allies in Iraq, presumably as part of his "maximum pressure" campaign against
Tehran?
This article has been republished with permission from
Just World News .
I've heard and read about a claim that Trump actually called PM Abdul Mahdi and demanded that
Iraq hand over 50 percent of their proceeds from selling their oil to the USA, and then
threatened Mahdi that he would unleash false flag attacks against the Iraqi government and
its people if he did not submit to this act of Mafia-like criminal extortion. Mahdi told
Trump to kiss his buttocks and that he wasn't going to turn over half of the profits from oil
sales.
This makes Trump sound exactly like a criminal mob boss, especially in light of the fact
that the USA is now the world's #1 exporter of oil – a fact that the arrogant Orange
Man has even boasted about in recent months. Can anyone confirm that this claim is accurate?
If so, then the more I learn about Trump the more sleazy and gangster like he becomes.
I mean, think about it. Bush and Cheney and mostly jewish neocons LIED us into Iraq based
on bald faced lies, fabricated evidence, and exaggerated threats that they KNEW did not
exist. We destroyed that country, captured and killed it's leader – who used to be a
big buddy of the USA when we had a use for him – and Bush's crime gang killed close to
2 million innocent Iraqis and wrecked their economy and destroyed their infrastructure. And,
now, after all that death, destruction and carnage – which Trump claimed in 2016 he did
not approve of – but, now that Trump is sitting on the throne in the Oval office
– he has the audacity and the gall to demand that Iraq owes the USA 50 percent of their
oil profits? And, that he won't honor and respect their demand to pull our troops out of
their sovereign nation unless they PAY US back for the gigantic waste of tax payers money
that was spent building permanent bases inside their country?
Not one Iraqi politician voted for the appropriations bill that financed the construction
of those military bases; that was our mistake, the mistake of our US congress whichever POTUS
signed off on it.
...Trump learned the power of the purse on the streets of NYC, he survived by playing ball
with the Jewish and Italian Mafia. Now he has become the ultimate Godfather, and the world
must listen to his commands. Watch and listen as the powerful and mighty crumble under US
Hegemony.
Right TG, traditionally, as you said up there first, and legally too, under the supreme law
of the land. Economic sanctions are subject to the same UNSC supervision as forcible
coercion.
UN Charter Article 41: "The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the
use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon
the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or
partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio,
and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations."
US "sanctions" require UNSC authorization. Unilateral sanctions are nothing but illegal
coercive intervention, as the non-intervention principle is customary international law,
which is US federal common law.
The G-192, that is, the entire world, has affirmed this law. That's why the US is trying
to defund UNCTAD as redundant with the WTO (UNCTAD is the G-192's primary forum.) In any
case, now that the SCO is in a position to enforce this law at gunpoint with its
overwhelmingly superior missile technology, the US is going to get stomped and tased until it
complies and stops resisting.
In 2018 total US petroleum production was under 18 million barrels per day, total
consumption north of 20 mmb/d. What does it matter if the US exports a bunch of super light
fracked product the US itself can't refine if it turns around and imports it all back in
again and then some.
The myths we tell ourselves, like a roaring economy that nevertheless generates a $1
trillion annual deficit, will someday come back to bite us. Denying reality is not a winning
game plan for the long run.
I long tought that US foreign policies were mainly zionist agenda – driven, but the
Venezuelan affair and the statements of Trump himself about the syrian oil (ta be "kept"
(stolen)) make you think twice.
Oil seems to be at least very important even if it's not the main cause of middle east
problems
So maybe it's the cause of illegal and cruel sanctions against Iran : Get rid of
competitor to sell shale oil everywhere ?( think also of Norstream 2 here)
Watch out US of A. in the end there is something sometimes referred to as the oil's
curse . some poor black Nigerians call oil "the shit of the devil", because it's such a
problem – related asset Have you heard of it ? You get your revenues from oil easily,
so you don't have to make effort by yourself. And in the end you don't keep pace with China
on 5G ? Education fails ? Hmm
Becommig a primary sector extraction nation sad destiny indeed, like africans growing cafe,
bananas and cacao for others. Not to mention environmental problems
What has happened to the superb Nation that send the first man on the moon and invented
modern computers ?
Disapointment
Money for space or money for war following the Zio. Choose Uncle Sam !
Difficult to have both
Everyone seems to forget how we avoided war with Syria all those years ago It was when John
Kerry of all people gaffed, and said "if Assad gives up all his chemical weapons." That was
in response to a reporter who asked "is there anything that can stop the war?" A intrepid
Russian ambassador chimed in loud enough for the press core to hear his "OK" and history was
averted. Thinking restricting the power of the President will stop brown children from dying
at the hands of insane US foreign policy is a cope. "Bi-partisanship" voted to keep troops in
Syria, that was only a few months ago, have you already forgotten? Dubya started the drone
program, and the magical African everyone fawns over, literally doubled the remote controlled
death. We are way past pretending any elected official from either side is actually against
more ME war, or even that one side is worse than the other.
The problem with the supporters Trump has left is they so desperately want to believe in
something bigger than themselves. They have been fed propaganda for their whole lives, and as
a result can only see the world in either "this is good" or "this is bad." The problem with
the opposition is that they are insane. and will say or do anything regardless of the truth.
Trump could be impeached for assassinating Sulimani, yet they keep proceeding with fake and
retarded nonsense. Just like keeping troops in Syria, even the most insane rabid leftoids are
just fine with US imperialism, so long as it's promoting Starbucks, Marvel and homosex, just
like we see with support for HK. That is foreign meddling no matter how you try to justify
it, and it's not even any different messaging than the hoax "bring
democracyhumanrightsfreedom TM to the poor Arabs" justification that was used in Iraq. They
don't even have to come up with a new play to run, it's really quite incredible.
@OverCommenter
A lot of right-wingers also see military action in the Middle East as a way for America to
flex its muscles and bomb some Arabs. It also serves to justify the insane defence budget
that could be used to build a wall and increase funding to ICE.
US politics has become incredibly bi-partisan, criticising Trump will get you branded a
'Leftist' in many circles. This extreme bipartisanship started with the Obama birth
certificate nonsense which was being peddled by Jews like Orly Taitz, Philip J. Berg, Robert
L. Shulz, Larry Klayman and Breitbart news – most likely because Obama was pursuing the
JCPOA and not going hard enough on Iran – and continued with the Trump Russian agent
angle.
Now many Americans cannot really think critically, they stick to their side like a fan
sticks to their sports team.
The first person I ever heard say sanctions are acts of war was Ron Paul. The repulsive
Madeleine Albright infamously said the deaths of 500,000 Iranian children due to US sanctions
was worth it. She ought to be tried as a war criminal. Ron Paul ought to be Secretary of
State.
Looks like the end of Full Spectrum Dominance the the USA enjoyed since 1991. Alliance of Iran, Russia and China (with Turkey
and Pakistan as two possible members) is serious military competitor and while the USA has its set of trump cards, the military
victory against such an alliance no longer guaranteed.
Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is
coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani's
assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi
Arabia and China as well the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency .
The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with
Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani's assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament.
He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him
and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in
false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the
situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in
2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.
Here is the reconstruction of the story:
[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary
session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had
learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent
Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and
then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together
with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being
recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast:
Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused
to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil
revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.
The complete (translated)
words of Abdul-Mahdi's speech to parliament:
This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the
construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement.
When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my
premiership.
Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that
if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings
target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.
I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us
rescinding our deal with the Chinese.
After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting
both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I
received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we
kept on talking about this "third party".
Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult
for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist
attack.
I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to
deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from
the Saudis.
We can surmise, judging by Saudi Arabia's reaction , that some kind of
negotiation was going on between Tehran and Riyadh:
The Kingdom's statement regarding the events in Iraq stresses the Kingdom's view of the
importance of de-escalation to save the countries of the region and their people from the
risks of any escalation.
Above all, the Saudi
Royal family wanted to let people know immediately that they had not been informed of the
US operation:
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the US strike. In light of the
rapid developments, the Kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard
against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences.
And to emphasize his reluctance for war, Mohammad bin Salman
sent a delegation to the United States.
Liz Sly , the Washington Post Beirut bureau chief, tweated:
Saudi Arabia is sending a delegation to Washington to urge restraint with Iran on behalf
of [Persian] Gulf states. The message will be: 'Please spare us the pain of going through
another war'.
What clearly emerges is that the success of the operation against Soleimani had nothing to
do with the intelligence gathering of the US or Israel. It was known to all and sundry that
Soleimani was heading to Baghdad in a diplomatic capacity that acknowledged Iraq's efforts to
mediate a solution to the regional crisis with Saudi Arabia.
It would seem that the Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis were well on the way towards averting a
regional conflict involving Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Riyadh's reaction to the American strike
evinced no public joy or celebration. Qatar, while not seeing eye to eye with Riyadh on many
issues, also immediately expressed solidarity with Tehran, hosting a meeting at a senior
government level with Mohammad Zarif Jarif, the Iranian foreign minister. Even Turkey
and
Egypt , when commenting on the asassination, employed moderating language.
This could reflect a fear of being on the receiving end of Iran's retaliation. Qatar, the
country from which the drone that killed Soleimani took off, is only a stone's throw away from
Iran, situated on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Tehran's
regional enemies, both know that a military conflict with Iran would mean the end of the Saudi
royal family.
When the words of the Iraqi prime minister are linked back to the geopolitical and energy
agreements in the region, then the worrying picture starts to emerge of a desperate US lashing
out at a world turning its back on a unipolar world order in favor of the emerging multipolar
about which
I have long written .
The US, now considering itself a net energy exporter as a result of the shale-oil revolution
(on which the jury is still out), no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East. However,
this does not mean that oil can now be traded in any other currency other than the US
dollar.
The petrodollar is what ensures that the US dollar retains its status as the global reserve
currency, granting the US a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from
playing the role of regional hegemon.
This privileged position of holding the global reserve currency also ensures that the US can
easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its
treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable
arrangement is to threaten Washington's global power.
Even so, the geopolitical and economic trend is inexorably towards a multipolar world order,
with China increasingly playing a leading role, especially in the Middle East and South
America.
Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia together make up the overwhelming
majority of oil and gas reserves in the world. The first three have an elevated relationship
with Beijing and are very much in the multipolar camp, something that China and Russia are keen
to further consolidate in order to ensure the future growth for the Eurasian supercontinent
without war and conflict.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is pro-US but could gravitate towards the Sino-Russian camp
both militarily and in terms of energy. The same process is going on with Iraq and Qatar thanks
to Washington's numerous strategic errors in the region starting from Iraq in 2003, Libya in
2011 and Syria and Yemen in recent years.
The agreement between Iraq and China is a prime example of how Beijing intends to use the
Iraq-Iran-Syria troika to revive the Middle East and and link it to the Chinese Belt and Road
Initiative.
While Doha and Riyadh would be the first to suffer economically from such an agreement,
Beijing's economic power is such that, with its win-win approach, there is room for
everyone.
Saudi Arabia provides China with most of its oil and Qatar, together with the Russian
Federation, supply China with most of its LNG needs, which lines up with Xi Jinping's 2030
vision that aims to greatly reduce polluting emissions.
The US is absent in this picture, with little ability to influence events or offer any
appealing economic alternatives.
Washington would like to prevent any Eurasian integration by unleashing chaos and
destruction in the region, and killing Soleimani served this purpose. The US cannot contemplate
the idea of the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Trump is engaging in a
desperate gamble that could have disastrous consequences.
The region, in a worst-case scenario, could be engulfed in a devastating war involving
multiple countries. Oil refineries could be destroyed all across the region, a quarter of the
world's oil transit could be blocked, oil prices would skyrocket ($200-$300 a barrel) and
dozens of countries would be plunged into a global financial crisis. The blame would be laid
squarely at Trump's feet, ending his chances for re-election.
To try and keep everyone in line, Washington is left to resort to terrorism, lies and
unspecified threats of visiting destruction on friends and enemies alike.
Trump has evidently been convinced by someone that the US can do without the Middle East,
that it can do without allies in the region, and that nobody would ever dare to sell oil in any
other currency than the US dollar.
Soleimani's death is the result of a convergence of US and Israeli interests. With no other
way of halting Eurasian integration, Washington can only throw the region into chaos by
targeting countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria that are central to the Eurasian project. While
Israel has never had the ability or audacity to carry out such an assassination itself, the
importance of the Israel Lobby to Trump's electoral success would have influenced his decision,
all the more so in an election year .
Trump believed his drone attack could solve all his problems by frightening his opponents,
winning the support of his voters (by equating Soleimani's assassination to Osama bin Laden's),
and sending a warning to Arab countries of the dangers of deepening their ties with China.
The assassination of Soleimani is the US lashing out at its steady loss of influence in the
region. The Iraqi attempt to mediate a lasting peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been
scuppered by the US and Israel's determination to prevent peace in the region and instead
increase chaos and instability.
Washington has not achieved its hegemonic status through a preference for diplomacy and calm
dialogue, and Trump has no intention of departing from this approach.
Washington's friends and enemies alike must acknowledge this reality and implement the
countermeasures necessary to contain the madness.
Very good article, straight to the point. In fact its much worse. I know is hard to
swallow for my US american brother and sisters.
But as sooner you wake up and see the reality as it is, as better chances the US has to
survive with honor. Stop the wars around the globe and do not look for excuses. Isnt it
already obvious what is going on with the US war machine? How many more examples some people
need to wake up?
Not all said in video above is accurate but the recent events in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Africa are all related to prevent China from overtaking the zionist hegemonic world and to
recolonize China (at least the parasite is trying to hop to China as new host).
Trade war, Huawei, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet ..... the concerted efforts from all zionist
controlled media (ZeroHedge included) to slander, smearing, fake news against China should
tell you what the Zionists agenda are :)
The American President's threatened the Iraqi Prime Minister to liquidate him directly
with the Minister of Defense. The Marines are the third party that sniped the demonstrators
and the security men:
Abdul Mahdi continued:
"After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I
also refused, and he threatened me with massive demonstrations that would topple me. Indeed,
the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of
non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, so that the third party (Marines snipers) would
target the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from the highest structures and
the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China
agreement, so I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist
to this day on canceling the China agreement and when the defense minister said that who
kills the demonstrators is a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically
threatened me and defense minister in the event of talk about the third party."
.........
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission found George W. Bush guilty of war crimes in absentia
for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Bush, **** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers
Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in
absentia in Malaysia.
Unfortunately, this article makes a lot of sense. The US is losing influence and lashing
out carelessly. I hope the rest of the world realizes how detached majority of the citizens
within the states are from the federal government. The Federal government brings no good to
our nation. None. From the mis management of our once tax revenues to the corrupt Congress
who accepts bribes from the highest bidder, it's a rats best that is not only harmful to its
own people, but the world at large. USD won't go down without a fight it seems... All empires
end with a bang. Be ready
"... The following article by professor Eric Waddell was first published more than 16 years ago by Global Research in December 2003 in the immediate wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by US and British forces, with a postscript added in 2007. ..."
"... The article provides an incisive historical perspective on America's "long war" against humanity, which is being carried out under a fake humanitarian mandate. ..."
"... Let us be under no illusions as to the intent of the US and its allies. ..."
"... We are dealing with World Conquest under the disguise of a "Global War on Terrorism". ..."
"... Eric Waddell is a distinguished author and professor of Geography based in Quebec City ..."
The following article by professor Eric Waddell was first published more than 16 years
ago by Global Research in December 2003 in the immediate wake of the invasion and occupation of
Iraq by US and British forces, with a postscript added in 2007.
The article provides an incisive historical perspective on America's "long war" against
humanity, which is being carried out under a fake humanitarian mandate.
Let us be under no illusions as to the intent of the US and its allies.
We are dealing with World Conquest under the disguise of a "Global War on
Terrorism".
Michel Chossudovsky, January 2020
World Conquest: The United States' Global Military Crusade (1945-)
by Prof. Eric Waddell
The United States has attacked, directly or indirectly, some 44 countries throughout the
world since August 1945, a number of them many times. The avowed objective of these military
interventions has been to effect "regime change". The cloaks of "human rights" and of
"democracy" were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts.
The aim of the United States is to protect and reinforce national interests rather than to
create a better world for all humankind. It is an "imperial grand strategy" of global
dimensions designed to ensure unlimited and uninhibited access, notably to strategic resources,
notably energy, and to markets. Rather than to establish a direct colonial presence, the
preferred strategy is to create satellite states, and this requires constant, and often
repeated, military interventions in countries around the world, irrespective of their political
regime.
Democratically elected governments are as much at risk as dictatorships. In recent years,
the tendency has been for such direct interference to increase since less of these countries
are prepared to act as willing allies. Indeed, events of 2003 would suggest that the number of
unconditional and powerful U.S. allies is now reduced to three: Great Britain, Australia and
Israel. The US strategy is characterised, wherever possible, by invasion and the setting up of
friendly (puppet) governments. Attention is focussed, by preference, on relatively small and
weak countries, the aim being to achieve rapid victory.
Historically, this process of US domination of the World has been characterized by:
(i ) direct military intervention with nuclear or conventional bombs and missiles ,
(ii) direct military intervention with naval or ground forces ,
(iii) indirect military intervention through command operations and
(iv) the threat of recourse to nuclear weapons .
Broadly speaking, three historical phases can be identified:
– 1945-49 : The U.S.-Soviet struggle for European domination , terminating with the
stabilisation of the frontier between the two blocs and the creation of NATO;
– 1950-89 : The Cold War proper and, in the context of it, the emergence of the
non-aligned group of nations;
The first period was characterized by a significant degree of US military intervention in
Europe, the second by a concern to confine the Communist bloc within its frontiers and to
prevent the emergence of pro-communist regimes elsewhere in the world, and the third, focused
on gaining control over the former Soviet republics and in the oil-rich Middle East. The Middle
East, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean/Central America reveal themselves to be Regional
Theaters of concern throughout the post-2nd World War period.
The non-negotiable defense and promotion of "the American way of life" through global
military interventions took form in the closing months of the 2nd World War and it came at
great cost to much of the rest of the World's population. Although Germany capitulated in May
1945 and the United Nations was created in the following month, the U.S. nevertheless chose to
use nuclear weapons to bring Japan to its feet.
The dropping of two atomic bombs, respectively on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that
year resulted in some 150,000 immediate deaths and tens of thousands of wounded. Such nuclear
terrorism was quickly denounced by the international scientific community and no other nation
has resorted to the use of such weapons of mass destruction. However the U.S.A. regularly
brandishes the threat of recourse to them, while under Bush they have been reinstated as an
integral part of national discourse. But the story does not end with nuclear weapons, for the
U.S.A. has also, over the past half century, used chemical and biological weapons in its quest
for global domination with, for example, recourse to Agent Orange in Viet Nam and blue mold,
cane smut, African swine fever, etc. in Cuba. All such weapons of mass destruction are an
integral part of the country's arsenal.
In this context, the map of U.S. Military Interventions since 1945 only tells a part of the
story. While the country's global reach is apparent, the scale of military violence is not
fully revealed. Up to 1,000,000 people were killed in the CIA command operation in Indonesia
in1967, in what was, according to the New York Times, "one of the most savage mass slayings of
modern political history". Another 100,000 were killed in Guatemala, in the CIA-organized coup.
And the map makes no mention of military interventions where the U.S. played a support (e.g.
Rwanda and the Congo in the 1990s) as distinct from a lead role, or where U.S. arms were used
by national military forces, as in East Timor where, in the hands of the Indonesian military,
they were responsible for the death of some 200,000 people from 1967 on.
Interestingly, with regards to the international arms trade, it was President Reagan who
announced, in 1981, that "The U.S. views the transfer of conventional weapons as an essential
element of its global defence posture and an indispensable component of its foreign
policy."
The U.S. Empire knows no limits. Its aim is political and military domination of the world.
Under the US system of global capitalism, the demand for energy and other vital resources is
unlimited.
America's "Road Map to Empire" was not formulated by the Bush administration as some critics
are suggesting. In fact, there is little that is "new" about the "Project for a New American
Century". It is just that the post-war rhetoric of human rights and social and economic
development has diminished, to be replaced by the primary concern with global supremacy through
military force. The imperial project was outlined in the immediate wake of the 2nd World War.
It was part of the "Truman Doctrine" formulated in 1948 by George Kennan, Director of Policy
and Planning at the U.S. State Department:
"We have 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population . In this
situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming
period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position
of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of living standards, human rights and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
Postscript 2007
In one sense little has changed since 2003. The next target for military intervention has
already been clearly identified. It is Iran which so happens, according to the most recent US
Government official energy statistics, to rank third among the world's oil-rich nations, and to
be the one with the largest increase in proven oil reserve estimates over the period
2005-2006.
In another sense however a new portrait is beginning to emerge, where a war-weary and
increasingly vulnerable United States is moving to the creation of a Fortress North America
which embraces its northern neighbour. Once again the logic is clear. Canada now ranks second,
ahead of Iran and Iraq but behind Saudi Arabia, in terms of world oil reserves, thanks notably
to the tar sands of Alberta. A minority government in Ottawa, dominated by Albertan interests,
is consciously taking Canada into both the US energy and the military and strategic fold. In so
doing, the country is joining the ranks of the United Kingdom and Australia as an unflinching
US ally.
If global reach is becoming a too costly and hazardous endeavour then fortress North America
becomes an increasingly attractive alternative, particularly when the minor partner is
consenting and docile.
Eric Waddell is a distinguished author and professor of Geography based in Quebec
City
ANNEX: MAP, for larger view click link below and enlarge
The essential facts are these. In April 1898, the United States went to war with Spain. The war's nominal purpose was to liberate
Cuba from oppressive colonial rule. The war's subsequent conduct found the United States not only invading and occupying Cuba, but
also seizing Puerto Rico, completing a deferred annexation of Hawaii, scarfing up various other small properties in the Pacific,
and, not least of all, replacing Spain as colonial masters of the Philippine Archipelago, located across the Pacific.
That the true theme of the war with Spain turned out to be not liberation but expansion should not come as a terrible surprise.
From the very founding of the first British colonies in North America, expansion has constituted an enduring theme of the American
project. Separation from the British Empire after 1776 only reinforced the urge to grow. Yet prior to 1898, that project had been
a continental one. The events of that year signaled the transition from continental to extra-continental expansion. American leaders
were no longer content to preside over a republic stretching from sea to shining sea.
In that regard, the decision to annex the Philippines stands out as especially instructive. If you try hard enough -- and some
politicians at the time did -- you can talk yourself into believing that U.S. actions in the Caribbean in 1898 represented something
other than naked European-style imperialism with all its brute force to keep the natives in line. After all, the United States did
refrain from converting Cuba into a formal colony and by 1902 had even granted Cubans a sort of ersatz independence. Moreover, both
Cuba and Puerto Rico fell within "our backyard," as did various other Caribbean republics soon to undergo U.S. military occupation.
Geographically, all were located within the American orbit.
Yet the Philippines represented an altogether different case. By no stretch of the imagination did the archipelago fall within
"our backyard." Furthermore, the Filipinos had no desire to trade Spanish rule for American rule and violently resisted occupation
by U.S. forces. The notably dirty Philippine-American War that followed from 1899 to 1902 -- a conflict almost entirely expunged
from American memory today -- resulted in something like 200,000 Filipino deaths and ended in a U.S. victory not yet memorialized
on the National Mall in Washington.
So the Philippine Archipelago had become ours. In short order, however, authorities in Washington changed their mind about the
wisdom of accepting responsibility for several thousand islands located nearly 7,000 miles from San Francisco.
The sprawling American colony turned out to be the ultimate impulse purchase. And as with most impulse purchases, enthusiasm soon
enough gave way to second thoughts and even regret. By 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt was privately referring to the Philippines
as America's "Achilles heel." The United States had paid Spain $20 million for an acquisition that didn't turn a profit and couldn't
be defended given the limited capabilities of the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. To complicate matters further, from Tokyo's perspective,
the Philippines fell within its backyard. So far as Imperial Japan was concerned, imperial America was intruding on its turf.
Thus was the sequence of events leading to the Pacific War of 1941-1945 set in motion. I am not suggesting that Pearl Harbor was
an inevitable consequence of the United States annexing the Philippines. I am suggesting that it put two rival imperial powers on
a collision course.
One can, of course, find in the ensuing sequence of events matters worth celebrating -- great military victories at places like
Midway, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, culminating after 1945 in a period of American dominion. But the legacy of our flirtation with empire
in the Western Pacific also includes much that is lamentable -- the wars in Korea and Vietnam, for example, and now an intensifying
rivalry with China destined to lead we know not where.
If history could be reduced to a balance sheet, the U.S. purchase of the Philippines would rate as a pretty bad bargain. That
first $20 million turned out to be only a down payment.
No. Absolutely not. We would have been much better off had the US not violently dismantled the first Republic of the Philippines.
The canard that our greatest generation of Filipinos (Generation of 1898) was not fit to govern us was a product of US Assimilation
Schools designed to rid the Philippines of Filipinos- by wiring them to automatically think anything non-Filipino will always
be better (intenalized racism) and to train the primarily to leave and work abroad and blend -in as Americans (objectification)
and never stand out as self-respecting Filipinos who aspire to be the best they can be propelled by the Filipino story.
Our multiple Golden Ages only occurred prior to US invasion and colonization.
YES, the USA owes us. We are every American's 2nd original sin.
We do not owe US anything. The USA owes us a great big deal, More than any other country on earth.
THEY (USA) owes us:
1) For violently dismantling the first Republic of the Philippines at the cost of over a million martyrs from the greatest generation
of Filipinos.
2) For US Assimilation Schools denying us the intensity of our golden ages prior to their invasion as our drivers for PH civilization,
turning us into a country that trains its people to leave and assimilate in US culture and become workers for Americans and foreigners
abroad. This results in a Philippines WITHOUT Filipinos.
3) For US bombs turning Intramuros into dust- the centerpiece of the Paris of the East, with treasures, publications and art
much older that the US- without consent from any Filipino leader. And for dismantling our train system from La Union to Bicol.
4) For the US Rescission Act which denied Filipino veterans due recognition, dignity and honor- vets who fought THEIR war against
Japan on our soil.
5) For the canard that Aguinaldo, our 29-year old father and liberator of the Republic of the Philippines, is a villain and
a traitor, even inventing the heroism of Andres Bonifacio which ultimately resulted in "Toxic Nationalism" which Rizal warned
us about in the persona of Simoun in El Filibusterismo who will drive our nation to self-destruction and turn a paradise into
a desert by being automatically wired to think anything non-Filipino will and always be better.
The core of colonial mentality is the misguided belief that we cannot have been a greater country had the US not destroyed
the first Republic of the Philippines- a lie that was embedded in our minds by the US discrediting Aguinaldo and the Generation
of 1896/1898- the greatest generation of Filipinos.
It does seem to me that every country which was able and could afford to expand its territory did so. In Europe, exceptions to
that a wish were Switzerland, Slovakia, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Ukraine, ?Romania and Chechia.
So, US had company!
President William McKinley defends his decision to support the annexation of the Philippines in the wake of the U.S. war in that
country:
"When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them. . . And
one night late it came to me this way. . .1) That we could not give them back to Spain- that would be cowardly and dishonorable;
2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable;
3) that we not leave them to themselves-they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there
worse than Spain's wars; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and
uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ
also died."
Making Christians of a country that had its first Catholic diocese 9 years before the Spanish Armada sailed for England, with
4 dioceses in place years before the English sailed for Jamestown.
Dan Carlin did an outstanding podcast on the choices America faced after acquiring the Philippines. McKinley was anti-empire,
but the industrialists in his administration hungered to thwart the British, French and Dutch empires in the Pacific by establishing
a colony all of our own.
As someone born in Latin America, we never saw the US as anything but a brutal predator, whose honeyed words were belied by their
deeds. I wonder if it began with the Philippines. There was the Mexican war first, which wrested a lot of territory from Mexico.
And then there was the invasion of Canada to bring the blessings of democracy to Canadians (it ended with the White House in flames).
I suspect that the beliefe that you are exceptional and blessed by God can lead to want to straighten up other people "for their
own good", and make a profit besides - a LOT of profit.
"... In our late-imperial phase, we seem to have reached that moment when, whatever high officials say in matters of the empire's foreign policy, we must consider whether the opposite is in fact the case. So we have it now. ..."
"... Lawlessness begets lawlessness is the operative (and obvious) principle. In a remarkable speech at the Hoover Institution last week, Pompeo termed the Soleimani assassination "the restoration of deterrence" and appeared to promise other such operations against other nations Washington considers adversaries. Ominously enough, Pompeo singled out China and Russia. ..."
"... Against the background of the events noted above, it is clear from this speech alone that our secretary of state is a dangerously incompetent figure when it comes to judging global events, the proper responses to them, and the probable consequences of a given response. If we are going to think about costs, the heaviest will fall on Americans in months to come. ..."
"... Immediately after the U.S. drone that killed Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport, Mohammad Javad Zarif sent out a message whose importance should not be missed. "End of US's malign presence in West Asia has begun," Iran's foreign minister wrote. These few words, rendered in Twitterese, bear careful consideration given they come from an official whose nation had just sustained a critical blow. ..."
"... Gradually but rather certainly now, the community of nations is losing its patience with late-phase imperial America. With exceptions such as Japan and Israel, the Baltics and Saudi Arabia, this is so across both oceans and more or less across the nonWestern world. In the Middle East, the American presence will remain for the time being, but we are now in the beginning-of-the-end phase. This was Zarif's meaning. And we now know the end will come neither peaceably nor lawfully. ..."
"... Amazing how the US government is bringing back the old days: "Slave markets" See: reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-rights/executions-torture-and-slave-markets-persist-in-libya-u-n-idUSKBN1GX1JY "Pillage", as pointed out in this article. ..."
"... To have such a person as the top diplomat in the USA shows how low the USA has sunk. For him to pretend to be some sort of Christian is sinister and extremely dangerous for everyone. There is NO reason for the US animosity towards Iran except subservience to Israel, which, again without real justification, claims to be terrified of Iran, which unlike Israel is NOT attacking others and has not for centuries. ..."
"... SecStae's remarks about deterrence befit a military commander, NOT a diplomat. Paranoia, grandiosity and violence begin with potus and cascade downward and about. Congress does its part in investing in machinery of war. ..."
"... Pompeo reminds me of the pigs in Animal Farm. He is a grotesque figure, steely-eyed, cold-blooded, fanatical, and hateful. "We lied, cheated, and stole" Pompous Maximus will get his comeuppance one of these days ..."
"... Pillage as policy. The Empire has fully embraced gangster capitalism for its modus operandi. ..."
"... Here is an interesting article that explains how governments have changed the rules so that they can justify killing anyone who they believe may at some point in time have the potential to be involved in a terrorist plot: viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-bethlehem-doctrine-and-new.html ..."
"... This rather Orwellian move gives governments the justification that they to kill any of us just because they feel that we might pose a threat and that is a very, very scary prospect. It is very reminiscent of the movie Minority Report where crimes of the future are punished in the present. ..."
Of all the preposterous assertions made since the drone assassination of Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3, the prize for
bottomless ignorance must go to the bottomlessly ignorant Mike Pompeo.
Speaking after the influential Iranian general's death, our frightening secretary of state declaimed on
CBS's Face the Nation
, "There was sound and just and legal reason for the actions the President took, and the world is safer as a result." In
appearances on
five
news programs on the same Sunday morning, the evangelical paranoid who now runs American foreign policy was a singer with a one-note
tune. "It's very clear the world's a safer place today," Pompeo said on ABC's Jan. 5 edition of This
Week.
In our late-imperial phase, we seem to have reached that moment when, whatever high officials say in matters of the empire's
foreign policy, we must consider whether the opposite is in fact the case. So we have it now.
We are not safer now that Soleimani, a revered figure across much of the Middle East, has been murdered. The planet has just become
significantly more dangerous, especially but not only for Americans, and this is so for one simple reason: The Trump administration,
Pompeo bearing the standard, has just tipped American conduct abroad into a zone of probably unprecedented lawlessness, Pompeo's
nonsensical claim to legality notwithstanding .
This is a very consequential line to cross.
Hardly does it hold that Washington's foreign policy cliques customarily keep international law uppermost in their minds and that
recent events are aberrations. Nothing suggests policy planners even consider legalities except when it makes useful propaganda to
charge others with violating international statutes and conventions.
Neither can the Soleimani assassination be understood in isolation: This was only the most reckless of numerous policy decisions
recently taken in the Middle East. Since late last year, to consider merely the immediate past, the Trump administration has acted
ever more flagrantly in violation of all international legal authorities and documents -- the UN Charter, the International Criminal
Court, and the International Court of Justice in the Hague chief among them.
Washington is into full-frontal lawlessness now.
'Keeping the Oil'
Shortly after Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria last October, the president reversed course --
probably under Pentagon and State Department pressure -- and said some troops would remain to protect Syria's oilfields. "We want
to keep the oil," Trump declared in
the course of a Twitter storm. It soon emerged that the administration's true intent was to prevent the Assad government in Damascus
from reasserting sovereign control over Syrian oilfields.
The Russians had the honesty to call this for what it was. "Washington's attempt to put oilfields there under [its] control is
illegal,"
Sergei Lavrov said at the time. "In fact, it's tantamount to robbery," the Russian foreign minister added. (John Kiriakou, writing
for Consortium News, pointed out
that it is a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention. It is call pillage.)
Few outside the Trump administration, and possibly no one, has argued that Soleimani's murder was legitimate under international
law. Not only was the Iranian general from a country with which the U.S. is not at war, which means the crime is murder; the drone
attack was also a clear violation of Iraqi sovereignty, as has been widely reported.
In response to Baghdad's subsequent demand that all foreign troops withdraw from Iraqi soil,
Pompeo flatly refused even to discuss
the matter with Iraqi officials -- yet another openly contemptuous violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
It gets worse. In his own response to Baghdad's decision to evict foreign troops,
Trump threatened sanctions -- "sanctions like they've never seen before" -- and said Iraq would have to pay the U.S. the cost
of the bases the Pentagon has built there despite binding agreements that all fixed installations the U.S. has built in Iraq are
Iraqi government-owned.
At Baghdad's Throat
Trump, who seems to have oil eternally on his mind, has been at Baghdad's throat for some time. Twice since taking office three
years ago, he has
tried
to intimidate the Iraqis into "repaying" the U.S. for its 2003 invasion with access to Iraqi oil. "We did a lot, we did a lot
over there, we spent trillions over there, and a lot of people have been talking about the oil," he said on the second of these occasions.
Baghdad rebuffed Trump both times, but he has been at it since, according to Adil AbdulMahdi, Iraq's interim prime minister.
Last year the U.S. administration
asked Baghdad for 50 percent of the nation's oil output -- in total roughly 4.5 million barrels daily -- in exchange for various
promised reconstruction projects.
Rejecting the offer, AbdulMahdi
signed an "oil
for reconstruction" agreement with China last autumn -- whereupon Trump threatened to instigate widespread demonstrations in
Baghdad if AbdulMahdi did not cancel the China deal. (He did not do so and, coincidentally or otherwise, civil unrest ensued.)
U.S. Army forces operating in southern Iraq, April. 2, 2003. (U.S. Navy)
Blueprints for Reprisal
If American lawlessness is nothing new, the brazenly imperious character of all the events noted in this brief rsum has nonetheless
pushed U.S. foreign policy beyond a tipping point.
No American -- and certainly no American official or military personnel -- can any longer travel in the Middle East with an assurance
of safety. All American diplomats, all military officers, and all embassies and bases in the region are now vulnerable to reprisals.
The Associated Press reported after the Jan. 3 drone strike that
Iran has developed 13 blueprints for reprisals
against the U.S.
Lawlessness begets lawlessness is the operative (and obvious) principle. In a remarkable speech
at the Hoover Institution last week, Pompeo termed the Soleimani assassination "the restoration of deterrence" and appeared to promise
other such operations against other nations Washington considers adversaries. Ominously enough, Pompeo singled out China and Russia.
Here is a snippet from Pompeo's remarks:
"In strategic terms, deterrence simply means persuading the other party that the costs of a specific behavior exceed its benefits.
It requires credibility; indeed, it depends on it. Your adversary must understand not only do you have the capacity to impose
costs but that you are, in fact, willing to do so . In all cases we have to do this."
Against the background of the events noted above, it is clear from this speech alone that our secretary of state is a dangerously
incompetent figure when it comes to judging global events, the proper responses to them, and the probable consequences of a given
response. If we are going to think about costs, the heaviest will fall on Americans in months to come.
Immediately after the U.S. drone that killed Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport, Mohammad Javad Zarif
sent out a message
whose importance should not be missed. "End of US's malign presence in West Asia has begun," Iran's foreign minister wrote. These
few words, rendered in Twitterese, bear careful consideration given they come from an official whose nation had just sustained a
critical blow.
24 hrs ago, an arrogant clown -- masquerading as a diplomat -- claimed people were dancing in the cities of Iraq.
Today, hundreds of thousands of our proud Iraqi brothers and sisters offered him their response across their soil.
Gradually but rather certainly now, the community of nations is losing its patience with late-phase imperial America. With exceptions
such as Japan and Israel, the Baltics and Saudi Arabia, this is so across both oceans and more or less across the nonWestern world.
In the Middle East, the American presence will remain for the time being, but we are now in the beginning-of-the-end phase. This
was Zarif's meaning. And we now know the end will come neither peaceably nor lawfully.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune , is a columnist,
essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him
on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is
Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via
his Patreon site .
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Well, there's two relevant bits here. Bullshit walks and money talks. Our money stopped talking $23T ago.
What goes around, comes around. Whenever, however it comes down, it's gonna hurt.
Antiwar7 , January 21, 2020 at 13:46
Amazing how the US government is bringing back the old days: "Slave markets"
See: reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-rights/executions-torture-and-slave-markets-persist-in-libya-u-n-idUSKBN1GX1JY "Pillage", as pointed out in this article.
rosemerry , January 21, 2020 at 13:28
To have such a person as the top diplomat in the USA shows how low the USA has sunk. For him to pretend to be some sort of
Christian is sinister and extremely dangerous for everyone. There is NO reason for the US animosity towards Iran except subservience
to Israel, which, again without real justification, claims to be terrified of Iran, which unlike Israel is NOT attacking others
and has not for centuries.
Even if the USA hates Iran, it has already done inestimable damage to the Islamic Republic before this disgraceful action. Cruelty
to 80 million people who have never harmed, even really threatened, the mighty USA, by tossing out a working JCPOA and installing
economic "sanctions", should not be accepted by the rest of the world-giving in to blackmail encourages worse behavior, as we
have already seen.
"It requires credibility; indeed, it depends on it. " This is exactly what should be rejected by us all. These "leaders" will
not change their behavior without solidarity among "allies" like the European Union, which has already caved in and blamed Iran
for the changes -Iran has explained clearly why it made- to the JCPOA which the USA has left.
Abby , January 21, 2020 at 20:15
The only difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump doesn't hide the US naked aggression as well as Obama did. So far
Trump hasn't started any new wars. By this time in Obama's tenure we had started bombing more countries and accepted one coup.
dfnslblty , January 21, 2020 at 12:43
SecStae's remarks about deterrence befit a military commander, NOT a diplomat.
Paranoia, grandiosity and violence begin with potus and cascade downward and about.
Congress does its part in investing in machinery of war.
Cheyenne , January 21, 2020 at 11:49
The above comment shows exactly why bellicose adventurism for oil etc. is so stupid and dangerous. If we continually prance
around robbing people, they're gonna unite to slap us down.
Hardly seems like anyone should need that pointed out but if anybody mentioned it to Trump or any other gung ho warhawk, he
must not have been listening.
Trump and Pompeo seem to have entered the Wild West stage of recent American history. I think they watch too many western movies,
without understanding the underrlying plot of 100% of them. It is the bad guys take over a town, where they impose their will
on the population, terrorizing everyone into obediance. They steal everything in sight and any who oppose them are summarily killed
off. In the end a good guy ( In American parlance, " a good guy with a gun" shows up . The town`s people approach him and beg
him to oppose the bad guys. He then proceeds to kill off the bad guys after the general population joins him in his crusade. it
looks as though we are at the stage in the movie where the general population is ready to take up arms against the bad guys.
The moral of the story the bad guys, the bullies, Pompeo and Trump, are either killed or chased out of town. But perhaps the
problem is that this plot is too difficult for Trump and Pompeo to understand. So they don`t quite get the peril that there gunmen
and killers are now in. They don`t see the writing on the wall.
Caveman , January 21, 2020 at 11:30
It seems the only US considerations in the assassination were will it weaken Iran, will it strengthen the American position?
On that perspective, the answer is probably yes on both counts. Legal considerations do not seem to have carried any weight. In
the UK we recently saw a chilling interview with Brian Hook, U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Senior Policy Advisor to
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It was clear that he saw the assassination as another nail in the coffin of the Iranian regime,
simply furthering a policy objective.
Vera Gottlieb , January 21, 2020 at 11:19
What is even sadder is the world's lack of gonads to stand up to this bully nation that has caused so much grief and still
does.
Michael McNulty , January 21, 2020 at 11:01
The US government became a crime syndicate. Today its bootleg liquor is oil, the boys they send round to steal it are armies
and their drive-by shootings are Warthog strafings using DU ammunition. Their drug rackets in the back streets are high-grade
reefer, heroin and amphetamines, with pharmaceutical-grade chemicals on Main Street. They still print banknotes just as before;
but this time it's legal but still doesn't make them enough, so to make up the shortfalls they've taken armed robbery abroad.
paul easton , January 21, 2020 at 12:55
The US Government is running a protection racket, literally. In return for US protection of their sources of oil, the NATO
countries provide international support for US war crimes. But now that the (figurative) Don is visibly out of his mind, they
are likely to turn to other protectors.
One need not step back very far in order to look at the bigger longer range picture. What immediately comes into focus is that
this is simply the current moment in what is now 500 plus years of Western colonialism/neocolonialism. When has the law EVER had
anything to do with any of this?
ML , January 21, 2020 at 10:31
Pompeo reminds me of the pigs in Animal Farm. He is a grotesque figure, steely-eyed, cold-blooded, fanatical, and hateful.
"We lied, cheated, and stole" Pompous Maximus will get his comeuppance one of these days. I hope he plans more overseas trips
for himself. He is a vile person, a psychopath proud of his psychopathy. He alone would make anyone considering conversion to
Christianity, his brand of it, run screaming into the night. Repulsive man.
Michael Crockett , January 21, 2020 at 09:40
Pillage as policy. The Empire has fully embraced gangster capitalism for its modus operandi. That said, IMO, the axis of resistance
has the military capability and the resolve to fight back and win. Combining China and Russia into a greater axis of resistance
could further shrink the Outlaw US Empire presence in West Asia. Thank you Patrick for your keen insight and observations. The
Empires days are numbered.
Sally Snyder , January 21, 2020 at 07:28
Here is an interesting article that explains how governments have changed the rules so that they can justify killing anyone
who they believe may at some point in time have the potential to be involved in a terrorist plot: viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-bethlehem-doctrine-and-new.html
This rather Orwellian move gives governments the justification that they to kill any of us just because they feel that we might
pose a threat and that is a very, very scary prospect. It is very reminiscent of the movie Minority Report where crimes of the
future are punished in the present.
Many of these crimes grew out of shortcomings in the military's management of the deployments that
experts say are still present: a heavy dependence on cash transactions, a hasty award process for high-value
contracts, loose and harried oversight within the ranks, and a regional culture of corruption that
proved seductive to the Americans troops transplanted there.
Notable quotes:
"... "this thing going on" ..."
"... a regional culture of corruption that proved seductive to the Americans troops transplanted there. ..."
The Fraud of War: U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have stolen tens of millions through
bribery, theft, and rigged contracts.
U.S. Army Specialist Stephanie Charboneau sat at the center of a complex trucking network in Forward
Operating Base Fenty near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that distributed daily tens of thousands
of gallons of what troops called "liquid gold": the refined petroleum that fueled the international
coalition's vehicles, planes, and generators.
A prominent sign in the base read: "The Army Won't Go If The Fuel Don't Flow." But Charboneau,
31, a mother of two from Washington state, felt alienated after a supervisor's harsh rebuke. Her
work was a dreary routine of recording fuel deliveries in a computer and escorting trucks past a
gate. But it was soon to take a dark turn into high-value crime.
Troops were selling the U.S. military's fuel to Afghan locals on the side, and pocketing the proceeds.
She began an affair with a civilian, Jonathan Hightower, who worked for a Pentagon contractor that
distributed fuel from Fenty, and one day in March 2010 he told her about "this thing going on"
at other U.S. military bases around Afghanistan, she recalled in a recent telephone interview.
Troops were selling the U.S. military's fuel to Afghan locals on the side, and pocketing the proceeds.
When Hightower suggested they start doing the same, Charboneau said, she agreed.
In so doing, Charboneau contributed to thefts by U.S. military personnel of at least $15 million
worth of fuel since the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And eventually she became one of at
least 115 enlisted personnel and military officers convicted since 2005 of committing theft, bribery,
and contract-rigging crimes valued at $52 million during their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq,
according to a comprehensive tally of court records by
the Center for Public Integrity.
Many of these crimes grew out of shortcomings in the military's management of the deployments that
experts say are still present: a heavy dependence on cash transactions, a hasty award process for
high-value contracts, loose and harried oversight within the ranks, and a regional culture of
corruption that proved seductive to the Americans troops transplanted there.
Charboneau, whose Facebook posts reveal a bright-eyed woman with a shoulder tattoo and a huge grin,
snuggling with pets and celebrating the 2015 New Year with her children in Seattle Seahawks jerseys,
now sits in Carswell federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, serving a seven-year sentence for her crime.
"... Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel. ..."
"... Soon more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns. ..."
"... Attack on the Liberty ..."
"... Attack on the Liberty ..."
"... Dangerous Liaison, ..."
"... In January 1968, the arms embargo on Israel was lifted and the sale of American weapons began to flow. By 1971, Israel was buying $600 million of American-made weapons a year. Two years later the purchases topped $3 billion. Almost overnight, Israel had become the largest buyer of US-made arms and aircraft. ..."
"... Perversely, then, the IDF's strike on the Liberty served to weld the US and Israel together, in a kind of political and military embrace. Now, every time the IDF attacks defenseless villages in Gaza and the West Bank with F-16s and Apache helicopters, the Palestinians quite rightly see the bloody assaults as a joint operation, with the Pentagon as a hidden partner. ..."
In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters
off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel's attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance
ship.
Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify
the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable
as an American vessel.
Soon more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed
on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.
A few minutes later a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which not only pelted the ship with
gunfire but also with napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire and dozens were wounded
and killed, excluding several of the ship's top officers.
The Liberty's radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes
with what one communications specialist called "a buzzsaw sound." Finally, an open channel was found and the Liberty got out a message
it was under attack to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet's large aircraft carrier.
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty's aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached
the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. "Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft
back immediately," he barked. McNamara's injunction was reiterated in saltier terms by Admiral David L. McDonald, the chief of Naval
Operations: "You get those fucking airplanes back on deck, and you get them back down." The planes turned around. And the attack
on the Liberty continued.
After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes
were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than
a dozen American sailors.
As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle
the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli
attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gun fire. No body was going to get out alive that way.
After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached
the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: "Do you need any help?"
The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: "Fuck you."
The Israeli boat turned and left.
A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and
had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered
his aid, but the Liberty's conning officer refused.
Finally, 16 hours after the attack two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 injured,
many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk
about their ordeal with the press.
The following morning Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control
of the Golan Heights.
Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and
that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair
should be forgotten. "These errors do occur," McNamara concluded.
***
In Assault on the Liberty
, a harrowing first-hand account by James Ennes Jr., McNamara's version of events is proven to be as big a sham as his concurrent
lies about Vietnam. Ennes's book created a media storm when it was first published by Random House in 1980, including (predictably)
charges that Ennes was a liar and an anti-Semite. Still, the book sold more than 40,000 copies, but was eventually allowed to go
out of print. Now Ennes has published an updated version, which incorporates much new evidence that the Israeli attack was deliberate
and that the US government went to extraordinary lengths to disguise the truth.
It's a story of Israel aggression, Pentagon incompetence, official lies, and a cover-up that persists to this day. The book gains
much of its power from the immediacy of Ennes's first-hand account of the attack and the lies that followed.
Now, decades later, Ennes warns that the bloodbath on board the Liberty and its aftermath should serve as a tragic cautionary
tale about the continuing ties between the US government and the government of Israel.
The Attack on the Liberty is the kind of book that makes your blood seethe. Ennes skillfully documents the life of the
average sailor on one of the more peculiar vessels in the US Navy, with an attention for detail that reminds one of Dana or O'Brien.
After all, the year was 1967 and most of the men on the Liberty were certainly glad to be on a non-combat ship in the middle of the
Mediterranean, rather than in the Gulf of Tonkin or Mekong Delta.
But this isn't Two Years Before the Mast. In fact, Ennes's tour on the Liberty last only a few short weeks. He had scarcely settled
into a routine before his new ship was shattered before his eyes.
Ennes joined the Liberty in May of 1967, as an Electronics Material Officer. Serving on a "spook ship", as the Liberty was known
to Navy wives, was supposed to be a sure path to career enhancement. The Liberty's normal routine was to ply the African coast, tuning
in its eavesdropping equipment on the electronic traffic in the region.
The Liberty had barely reached Africa when it received a flash message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sail from the Ivory Coast
to the Mediterranean, where it was to re-deploy off the coast of the Sinai to monitor the Israeli attack on Egypt and the allied
Arab nations.
As the war intensified, the Liberty sent a request to the fleet headquarters requesting an escort. It was denied by Admiral William
Martin. The Liberty moved alone to a position in international waters about 13 miles from the shore at El Arish, then under furious
siege by the IDF.
On June 6, the Joint Chiefs sent Admiral McCain, father of the senator from Arizona, an urgent message instructing him to move
the Liberty out of the war zone to a position at least 100 miles off the Gaza Coast. McCain never forwarded the message to the ship.
A little after seven in the morning on June 8, Ennes entered the bridge of the Liberty to take the morning watch. Ennes was told
that an hour earlier a "flying boxcar" (later identified as a twin-engine Nord 2501 Noratlas) had flown over the ship at a low level.
Ennes says he noticed that the ship's American flag had become stained with soot and ordered a new flag run up the mast. The morning
was clear and calm, with a light breeze.
At 9 am, Ennes spotted another reconnaissance plane, which circled the Liberty. An hour later two Israeli fighter jets buzzed
the ship. Over the next four hours, Israeli planes flew over the Liberty five more times.
When the first fighter jet struck, a little before two in the afternoon, Ennes was scanning the skies from the starboard side
of the bridge, binoculars in his hands. A rocket hit the ship just below where Ennes was standing, the fragments shredded the men
closest to him.
After the explosion, Ennes noticed that he was the only man left standing. But he also had been hit by more than 20 shards of
shrapnel and the force of the blast had shattered his left leg. As he crawled into the pilothouse, a second fighter jet streaked
above them and unleashed its payload on the hobbled Liberty.
At that point, Ennes says the crew of the Liberty had no idea who was attacking them or why. For a few moments, they suspected
it might be the Soviets, after an officer mistakenly identified the fighters as MIG-15s. They knew that the Egyptian air force already
had been decimated by the Israelis. The idea that the Israelis might be attacking them didn't occur to them until one of the crew
spotted a Star of David on the wing of one of the French-built Mystere jets.
Ennes was finally taken below deck to a makeshift dressing station, with other wounded men. It was hardly a safe harbor. As Ennes
worried that his fractured leg might slice through his femoral artery leaving him to bleed to death, the Liberty was pummeled by
rockets, machine-gun fire and an Italian-made torpedo packed with 1,000-pounds of explosive.
After the attack ended, Ennes was approached by his friend Pat O'Malley, a junior officer, who had just sent a list of killed
and wounded to the Bureau of Naval Personnel. He got an immediate message back. "They said, 'Wounded in what action? Killed in what
action?'," O'Malley told Ennes. "They said it wasn't an 'action,' it was an accident. I'd like for them to come out here and see
the difference between an action and an accident. Stupid bastards."
The cover-up had begun.
***
The Pentagon lied to the public about the attack on the Liberty from the very beginning. In a decision personally approved by
the loathsome McNamara, the Pentagon denied to the press that the Liberty was an intelligence ship, referring to it instead as a
Technical Research ship, as if it were little more than a military version of Jacques Cousteau's Calypso.
The military press corps on the USS America, where most of the wounded sailors had been taken, were placed under extreme restrictions.
All of the stories filed from the carrier were first routed through the Pentagon for security clearance, objectionable material was
removed with barely a bleat of protest from the reporters or their publications.
Predictably, Israel's first response was to blame the victim, a tactic that has served them so well in the Palestinian situation.
First, the IDF alleged that it had asked the State Department and the Pentagon to identify any US ships in the area and was told
that there were none. Then the Israeli government charged that the Liberty failed to fly its flag and didn't respond to calls for
it to identify itself. The Israelis contended that they assumed the Liberty was an Egyptian supply ship called El Quseir, which,
even though it was a rusting transport ship then docked in Alexandria, the IDF said it suspected of shelling Israeli troops from
the sea. Under these circumstances, the Israeli's said they were justified in opening fire on the Liberty. The Israelis said that
they halted the attack almost immediately, when they realized their mistake.
"The Liberty contributed decisively toward its identification as an enemy ship," the IDF report concluded. This was a blatant
falsehood, since the Israelis had identified the Liberty at least six hours prior to the attack on the ship.
Even though the Pentagon knew better, it gave credence to the Israeli account by saying that perhaps the Liberty's flag had lain
limp on the flagpole in a windless sea. The Pentagon also suggested that the attack might have lasted less than 20 minutes.
After the initial battery of misinformation, the Pentagon imposed a news blackout on the Liberty disaster until after the completion
of a Court of Inquiry investigation.
The inquiry was headed by Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd. Kidd didn't have a free hand. He'd been instructed by Vice-Admiral McCain
to limit the damage to the Pentagon and to protect the reputation of Israel.
The Kidd interviewed the crew on June 14 and 15. The questioning was extremely circumscribed. According to Ennes, the investigators
"asked nothing that might be embarrassing to Israeland testimony that tended to embarrass Israel was covered with a 'Top Secret'
label, if it was accepted at all."
Ennes notes that even testimony by the Liberty's communications officers about the jamming of the ship's radios was classified
as "Top Secret." The reason? It proved that Israel knew it was attacking an American ship. "Here was strong evidence that the attack
was planned in advance and that our ship's identity was known to the attackers (for it its practically impossible to jam the radio
of a stranger), but this information was hushed up and no conclusions were drawn from it," Ennes writes.
Similarly, the Court of Inquiry deep-sixed testimony and affidavits regarding the flag-Ennes had ordered a crisp new one deployed
early on the morning of the attack. The investigators buried intercepts of conversations between IDF pilots identifying the ship
as flying an American flag.
It also refused to accept evidence about the IDF's use of napalm during the attacks and choose not to hear testimony regarding
the duration of the attacks and the fact that the US Navy failed to send planes to defend the ship.
"No one came to help us," said Dr. Richard F. Kiepfer, the Liberty's physician. "We were promised help, but no help came. The
Russians arrived before our own ships did. We asked for an escort before we ever came to the war zone and we were turned down."
None of this made its way into the 700-page Court of Inquiry report, which was completed within a couple of weeks and sent to
Admiral McCain in London for review.
McCain approved the report over the objections of Captain Merlin Staring, the Navy legal officer assigned to the inquiry, who
found the report to be flawed, incomplete and contrary to the evidence.
Staring sent a letter to the Judge Advocate General of the Navy disavowing himself from the report. The JAG seemed to take Staring's
objections to heart. It prepared a summary for the Chief of Naval Operations that almost completely ignored the Kidd/McCain report.
Instead, it concluded:
that the Liberty was easily recognizable as an American naval vessel; that it's flag was fully deployed and flying in a moderate
breeze; that Israeli planes made at least eight reconnaissance flights at close range; the ship came under a prolonged attack from
Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats.
This succinct and largely accurate report was stamped Top Secret by Navy brass and stayed locked up for many years. But it was
seen by many in the Pentagon and some in the Oval Office. But here was enough grumbling about the way the Liberty incident had been
handled that LBJ summoned that old Washington fixer Clark Clifford to do damage control. It didn't take Clifford long to come up
with the official line: the Israelis simply had made a tragic mistake.
It turns out that the Admiral Kidd and Captain Ward Boston, the two investigating officers who prepared the original report for
Admiral McCain, both believed that the Israeli attack was intentional and sustained. In other words, the IDF knew that they were
striking an American spy ship and they wanted to sink it and kill as many sailors as possible. Why then did the Navy investigators
produce a sham report that concluded it was an accident?
Twenty-five years later we finally found out. In June of 2002, Captain Boston told the Navy Times: "Officers follow orders."
It gets worse. There's plenty of evidence that US intelligence agencies learned on June 7 that Israel intended to attack the Liberty
on the following day and that the strike had been personally ordered by Moshe Dayan.
As the attacks were going on, conversations between Israeli pilots were overheard by US Air Force officers in an EC121 surveillance
plane overhead. The spy plane was spotted by Israeli jets, which were given orders to shoot it down. The American plane narrowly
avoided the IDF missiles.
Initial reports on the incident prepared by the CIA, Office of Naval Intelligence and the National Security Agency all reached
similar conclusions.
A particularly damning report compiled by a CIA informant suggests that Israeli Defense minister Moshe Dayan personally ordered
the attack and wanted it to proceed until the Liberty was sunk and all on board killed. A heavily redacted version of the report
was released in 1977. It reads in part:
"[The source] said that Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the
action and said, 'This is pure murder.' One of the admirals who was present also disapproved of the action, and it was he who
ordered it stopped and not Dayan."
This amazing document generated little attention from the press and Dayan was never publicly questioned about his role in the
attack.
The analyses by the intelligence agencies are collected in a 1967 investigation by the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations.
Two and half decades later that report remains classified. Why? A former committee staffer said: "So as not to embarrass Israel."
More proof came to light from the Israeli side. A few years after Attack on the Liberty was originally published, Ennes
got a call from Evan Toni, an Israeli pilot. Toni told Ennes that he had just read his book and wanted to tell him his story. Toni
said that he was the pilot in the first Israeli Mirage fighter to reach the Liberty. He immediately recognized the ship to be a US
Navy vessel. He radioed Israeli air command with this information and asked for instructions. Toni said he was ordered to "attack."
He refused and flew back to the air base at Ashdod. When he arrived he was summarily arrested for disobeying orders.
***
How tightly does the Israeli lobby control the Hill? For the first time in history, an attack on an America ship was not subjected
to a public investigation by Congress. In 1980, Adlai Stevenson and Barry Goldwater planned to open a senate hearing into the Liberty
affair. Then Jimmy Carter intervened by brokering a deal with Menachem Begin, where Israel agreed to pony up $6 million to pay for
damages to the ship. A State Department press release announced the payment said, "The book is now closed on the USS Liberty."
It certainly was the last chapter for Adlai Stevenson. He ran for governor of Illinois the following year, where his less than
perfect record on Israel, and his unsettling questions about the Liberty affair, became an issue in the campaign. Big money flowed
into the coffers of his Republican opponent, Big Jim Thompson, and Stevenson went down to a narrow defeat.
But the book wasn't closed for the sailors either, of course. After a Newsweek story exposed the gist of what really happened
on that day in the Mediterranean, an enraged Admiral McCain placed all the sailors under a gag order. When one sailor told an officer
that he was having problems living with the cover-up, he was told: "Forget about it, that's an order."
The Navy went to bizarre lengths to keep the crew of the Liberty from telling what they knew. When gag orders didn't work, they
threatened sanctions. Ennes tells of the confinement and interrogation of two Liberty sailors that sounds like something right out
of the CIA's MK-Ultra program.
"In an incredible abuse of authority, military officers held two young Liberty sailors against their will in a locked and heavily
guarded psychiatric ward of the base hospital," Ennes writes. "For days these men were drugged and questioned about their recollections
of the attack by a 'therapist' who admitted to being untrained in either psychiatry or psychology. At one point, they avoided electroshock
only by bolting from the room and demanding to see the commanding officer."
Since coming home, the veterans who have tried to tell of their ordeal have been harassed relentlessly. They've been branded as
drunks, bigots, liars and frauds. Often, it turns out, these slurs have been leaked by the Pentagon. And, oh yeah, they've also been
painted as anti-Semites.
In a recent column, Charley Reese describes just how mean-spirited and petty this campaign became. "When a small town in Wisconsin
decided to name its library in honor of the USS Liberty crewmen, a campaign claiming it was anti-Semitic was launched," writes Reese.
"And when the town went ahead, the U.S. government ordered no Navy personnel to attend, and sent no messages. This little library
was the first, and at the time the only, memorial to the men who died on the Liberty."
***
So why then did the Israelis attack the Liberty?
A few days before the Six Days War, Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban visited Washington to inform LBJ about the forthcoming
invasion. Johnson cautioned Eban that the US could not support such an attack.
It's possible, then, that the IDF assumed that the Liberty was spying on the Israeli war plans. Possible, but not likely. Despite
the official denials, as Andrew and Leslie Cockburn demonstrate in
Dangerous Liaison, at the
time of the Six Days War the US and Israel had developed a warm covert relationship. So closely were the two sides working that US
intelligence aid certainly helped secure Israel's devastating and swift victory. In fact, it's possible that the Liberty had been
sent to the region to spy for the IDF.
A somewhat more likely scenario holds that Moshe Dayan wanted to keep the lid on Israel's plan to breach the new cease-fire and
invade into Syria to seize the Golan.
It has also been suggested that Dayan ordered the attack on the Liberty with the intent of pinning the blame on the Egyptians
and thus swinging public and political opinion in the United States solidly behind the Israelis. Of course, for this plan to work,
the Liberty had to be destroyed and its crew killed.
There's another factor. The Liberty was positioned just off the coast from the town of El Arish. In fact, Ennes and others had
used town's mosque tower to fix the location of the ship along the otherwise featureless desert shoreline. The IDF had seized El
Arish and had used the airport there as a prisoner of war camp. On the very day the Liberty was attacked, the IDF was in the process
of executing as many as 1,000 Palestinian and Egyptian POWs, a war crime that they surely wanted to conceal from prying eyes. According
to Gabriel Bron, now an Israeli reporter, who witnessed part of the massacre as a soldier: "The Egyptian prisoners of war were ordered
to dig pits and then army police shot them to death."
The bigger question is why the US government would participate so enthusiastically in the cover-up of a war crime against its
own sailors. Well, the Pentagon has never been slow to hide its own incompetence. And there's plenty of that in the Liberty affair:
bungled communications, refusal to provide an escort, situating the defenseless Liberty too close to a raging battle, the inability
to intervene in the attack and the inexcusably long time it took to reach the battered ship and its wounded.
That's but par for the course. But something else was going on that would only come to light later. Through most of the 1960s,
the US congress had imposed a ban on the sale of arms to both Israel and Jordan. But at the time of the Liberty attack, the Pentagon
(and its allies in the White House and on the Hill) was seeking to have this proscription overturned. The top brass certainly knew
that any evidence of a deliberate attack on a US Navy ship by the IDF would scuttle their plans. So they hushed it up.
In January 1968, the arms embargo on Israel was lifted and the sale of American weapons began to flow. By 1971, Israel was buying
$600 million of American-made weapons a year. Two years later the purchases topped $3 billion. Almost overnight, Israel had become
the largest buyer of US-made arms and aircraft.
Perversely, then, the IDF's strike on the Liberty served to weld the US and Israel together, in a kind of political and military
embrace. Now, every time the IDF attacks defenseless villages in Gaza and the West Bank with F-16s and Apache helicopters, the Palestinians
quite rightly see the bloody assaults as a joint operation, with the Pentagon as a hidden partner.
Thus, does the legacy of Liberty live on, one raid after another.
Bush older was the first president from CIA. He was already a senior CIA official at the time
of JFK assassination and might participate in the plot to kill JFK. At least he was in Dallas at
the day of assassination. .
That Iraq is to say the least unstable is attributable to the ill-advised U.S. invasion
of 2003.
Nothing to do with 9 years of sanctions on Iraq that killed a million Iraqis, "half of
them children," and US control of Iraqi air space, after having killed Iraqi military in a
turkey-shoot, for no really good reason other than George H W Bush seized the "unipolar
moment" to become king of the world?
Maybe it's just stubbornness: I think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot,"
in the Persian Gulf war aka Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17,
1991.
According to Jeffrey Engel, Bush's biographer and director of the Bush library at Southern
Methodist University, Gorbachev harassed Bush with phone calls, pleading with him not to go
to war over Kuwait
(It's worth noting that Dennis Ross was relatively new in his role on Jim Baker's staff
when Baker, Brent Skowcroft, Larry Eagleburger & like minded urged Bush to take the
Imperial Pivot.)
According to Vernon Loeb, who completed the writing of King's Counsel after Jack
O'Connell died, Jordan's King Hussein, in consultation with retired CIA station chief
O'Connell, parlayed with Arab leaders to resolve the conflict on their own, i.e. Arab-to-Arab
terms, and also pleaded with Bush to stay out, and to let the Arabs solve their own problems.
Bush refused. https://www.c-span.org/video/?301361-6/kings-counsel
See above: Bush was determined to "seize the unipolar moment."
Once again insist on entering into the record: George H Bush was present at the creation
of the Global War on Terror, July 4, 1979, the Jerusalem Conference hosted by Benzion and
Benjamin Netanyahu and heavily populated with Trotskyites – neocons.
I think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot," in the Persian Gulf war aka
Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17, 1991.
Yes I remember it well. I came back from a long trip & memorable vacation, alas I was
a young man, to the television drama that was unfolding with Arthur Kent 'The Scud
Stud' and others reporting from the safety of their hotel balconies filming aircaft and
cruise missiles. It was surreal.
You are correct of course.
"... Trump's threats of auto tariffs to gain trade concessions with the Europeans is certainly nothing new, but using the same to dictate foreign policy is, notes WaPo's diplomatic correspondent John Hudson. ..."
"... Interestingly, in Wednesday's joint statement the European signatories attempted to distance their drastic action away from Washington's so-called "maximum pressure" campaign. "Our three countries are not joining a campaign to implement maximum pressure against Iran," they said . ..."
"... The statement also underscored Europe hopes to use the mechanism "to bring Iran back into full compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA" and in the words of one official quoted in The Guardian to prevent nuclear advancement to the point that the Iranians "learn something that it is not possible for them to unlearn" . ..."
A bombshell revelation from The Washington Post a day after France, Britain and Germany took unprecedented action against Iran
by
formally triggering the dispute resolution mechanism regulating conformity to the deal, seen as the harshest measure taken by
the European signatories thus far. The European powers officially see Iran as in breach of the deal which means UN and EU punitive
sanctions are now on the table.
But according to The Post , how things quickly escalated
to this point is real story : " Days before Europeans warned Iran of nuclear deal violations, Trump secretly threatened to impose
25% tariff on European autos if they didn't," says the report.
This came as a "shock" to all three countries, with one top European official
calling it essentially "extortion" and a new level of hardball tactics from the Trump administration.
After the US leveraged the new tariffs threat according to the report, European capitals moved quick to trigger the mechanism,
which involved the individual European states formally notifying the agreement's guarantor, the European Union, that Iran is in breach
of the nuclear deal.
This followed the Jan.6 declaration of Tehran's leadership to no longer be beholden to uranium enrichment limits. And that's where
things got interesting as Washington's pressure campaign dramatically turned up the heat on Europe.
"Within days, the three countries would formally accuse Iran of violating the deal, triggering a recourse provision that could
reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran and unravel the last remaining vestiges of the Obama-era agreement," the report
continues .
However, the report notes France, the UK, and Germany were already in deep discussion on moving forward with triggering the mechanism.
"We didn't want to look weak, so we agreed to keep the existence of the threat a secret," a European official cited by WaPo claims.
Trump's threats of auto tariffs to gain trade concessions with the Europeans is certainly nothing new, but using the same to dictate
foreign policy is, notes WaPo's diplomatic correspondent John Hudson.
Interestingly, in Wednesday's joint statement the European signatories attempted to distance their drastic action away from Washington's
so-called "maximum pressure" campaign. "Our three countries are not joining a campaign to implement maximum pressure against Iran,"
they said .
The statement also underscored Europe hopes to use the mechanism "to bring Iran back into full compliance with its commitments
under the JCPOA" and in the words of one official quoted in
The Guardian to prevent nuclear advancement to the point that the Iranians "learn something that it is not possible for them
to unlearn" .
Now that the mechanism has been enacted, the clock starts on 65 days of intensive negotiations before UN sanctions would be reimposed
if no resolution is reached. Specifically a blanket arms embargo would be imposed among other measures, and certainly it would mark
the deal's final demise, given the Europeans are Iran's last hope for being equal partners in the deal.
Also interesting is that in the hours before The Washington Post report was published, Iranian FM Zarif charged that the EU investigation
into Iran's alleged non-compliance meant Europe is allowing itself to be bulled by the United States .
Indeed the new revelation of the secret threats attempting to dictate Europe's course appear to confirm precisely Zarif's words
to reporters
earlier on Wednesday : "They say 'We are not responsible for what the United States did.' OK, but you are independent" he began.
And then added a stinging rebuke: "Europe, EU, is the largest global economy. So why do you allow the United States to bully you
around?"
"... The Iraq war was about oil. Recently declassified US government documents confirm this ( 1 ), however much US president George W Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their ally, the British prime minister Tony Blair, denied it at the time. ..."
The Iraq war was about oil. Recently declassified US government documents confirm this (
1 ), however much US
president George W Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
their ally, the British prime minister Tony Blair, denied it at the time.
When Bush moved into the White House in January 2001, he faced the familiar problem of the
imbalance between oil supply and demand. Supply was unable to keep up with demand, which was
increasing rapidly because of the growth of emerging economies such as China and India. The
only possible solution lay in the Gulf, where the giant oil-producing countries of Saudi
Arabia, Iran and Iraq, and the lesser producing states of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, commanded 60%
of the world's reserves.
For financial or political reasons, production growth was slow. In Saudi Arabia, the
ultra-rich ruling families of the Al-Saud, the Al-Sabah and the Zayed Al-Nayan were content
with a comfortable level of income, given their small populations, and preferred to leave their
oil underground. Iran and Iraq hold around 25% of the world's hydrocarbon reserves and could
have filled the gap, but were subject to sanctions -- imposed solely by the US on Iran,
internationally on Iraq -- that deprived them of essential oil equipment and services.
Washington saw them as rogue states and was unwilling to end the sanctions.
How could the US get more oil from the Gulf without endangering its supremacy in the region?
Influential US neoconservatives, led by Paul Wolfowitz, who had gone over to uninhibited
imperialism after the fall of the Soviet Union, thought they had found a solution. They had
never understood George Bush senior's decision not to overthrow Saddam Hussein in the first
Gulf war in 1991. An open letter to President Bill Clinton, inspired by the Statement of
Principles of the Project for the New American Century, a non-profit organisation founded by
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, had called for a regime change in Iraq as early as 1998:
Saddam must be ousted and big US oil companies must gain access to Iraq. Several signatories to
the Statement of Principles became members of the new Republican administration in 2001.
In 2002, one of them, Douglas Feith, a lawyer who was undersecretary of defense to Rumsfeld,
supervised the work of experts planning the future of Iraq's oil industry. His first decision
was to entrust its management after the expected US victory to Kellog, Brown & Root, a
subsidiary of US oil giant Halliburton, of which Cheney had been chairman and CEO. Feith's
plan, formulated at the start of 2003, was to keep Iraq's oil production at its current level
of 2,840 mbpd (million barrels per day), to avoid a collapse that would cause chaos in the
world market.
Privatising oil
Experts were divided on the privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry. The Iraqi government
had excluded foreign companies and successfully managed the sector itself since 1972. By 2003,
despite wars with Iran (1980-88) and in Kuwait (1990-91) and more than 15 years of sanctions,
Iraq had managed to equal the record production levels achieved in 1979-1980.
The experts had a choice -- bring back the concession regime that had operated before
nationalisation in 1972, or sell shares in the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) on the Russian
model, issuing transferrable vouchers to the Iraqi population. In Russia, this approach had
very quickly led to the oil sector falling into the hands of a few super-rich oligarchs.
Bush approved the plan drawn up by the Pentagon and State Department in January 2003. The
much-decorated retired lieutenant general Jay Gardner, was appointed director of the Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the military administration set up to govern
post-Saddam Iraq. Out of his depth, he stuck to short-term measures and avoided choosing
between the options put forward by his technical advisers.
Reassuring the oil giants
The international oil companies were not idle. Lee Raymond, CEO of America's biggest oil
company ExxonMobil, was an old friend of Dick Cheney. But where the politicians were daring, he
was cautious. The project was a tempting opportunity to replenish the company's reserves, which
had been stagnant for several years, but Raymond had doubts: would Bush really be able to
assure conditions that would allow the company to operate safely in Iraq? Nobody at ExxonMobil
was willing to die for oil. (Its well-paid engineers do not dream of life in a blockhouse in
Iraq.) The company would also have to be sure of its legal position: what would contracts
signed by a de facto authority be worth when it would be investing billions of dollars that
would take years to recover?
In the UK, BP was anxious to secure its own share of the spoils. As early as 2002 the
company had confided in the UK Department of Trade and Industry its fears that the US might
give away too much to French, Russian and Chinese oil companies in return for their governments
agreeing not to use their veto at the UN Security Council ( 2 ). In February 2003 those fears were removed:
France's president Jacques Chirac vetoed a resolution put forward by the US, and the third Iraq
war began without UN backing. There was no longer any question of respecting the agreements
Saddam had signed with Total and other companies (which had never been put into practice
because of sanctions).
To reassure the British and US oil giants, the US government appointed to the management
team Gary Vogler of ExxonMobil and Philip J Carrol of Shell. They were replaced in October 2003
by Rob McKee of ConocoPhilips and Terry Adams of BP. The idea was to counter the dominance of
the Pentagon, and the influential neocon approach (which faced opposition from within the
administration). The neocon ideologues, still on the scene, had bizarre ideas: they wanted to
build a pipeline to transport Iraq's crude oil to Israel, dismantle OPEC (Organisation of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries) and even use "liberated" Iraq as a guinea pig for a new oil
business model to be applied to all of the Middle East. The engineers and businessmen, whose
priorities were profits and results, were more down-to-earth.
In any event, the invasion had a devastating impact on Iraq's oil production, less because
of the bombing by the US air force than because of the widespread looting of government
agencies, schools, universities, archives, libraries, banks, hospitals, museums and state-owned
enterprises. Drilling rigs were dismantled for the copper parts they were believed to contain.
The looting continued from March to May 2003. Only a third of the damage to the oil industry
was caused during the invasion; the rest happened after the fighting was over, despite the
presence of the RIO Task Force and the US Corps of Engineers with its 500 contractors,
specially prepared and trained to protect oil installations. Saddam's supporters were prevented
from blowing up the oil wells by the speed of the invasion, but the saboteurs set to work in
June 2003.
Iraq's one real asset
The only buildings protected were the gigantic oil ministry, where 15,000 civil servants
managed 22 subsidiaries of the Iraq National Oil Company. The State Oil Marketing Organisation
and the infrastructure were abandoned. The occupiers regarded the oil under the ground as
Iraq's one real asset. They were not interested in installations or personnel. The oil ministry
was only saved at the last minute because it housed geological and seismic data on Iraq's 80
known deposits, estimated to contain 115bn barrels of crude oil. The rest could always be
replaced with more modern US-made equipment and the knowhow of the international oil companies,
made indispensible by the sabotage.
Thamir Abbas Ghadban, director-general of planning at the oil ministry, turned up at the
office three days after the invasion was over, and, in the absence of a minister for oil (since
Iraq had no government), was appointed second in command under Micheal Mobbs, a neocon who
enjoyed the confidence of the Pentagon. Paul Bremer, the US proconsul who headed Iraq's
provisional government from May 2003 to June 2004, presided over the worst 12 months in the oil
sector in 70 years. Production fell by 1 mbpd -- more than $13bn of lost income.
The oil installations, watched over by 3,500 underequipped guards, suffered 140 sabotage
attacks between May 2003 and September 2004, estimated to have caused $7bn of damage. "There
was widespread looting," said Ghadban. "Equipment was stolen and in most cases the buildings
were set on fire." The Daura refinery, near Baghdad, only received oil intermittently, because
of damage to the pipeline network. "We had to let all the oil in the damaged sections of the
pipeline burn before we could repair them." Yet the refinery continued to operate, no mean
achievement considering that the workers were no longer being paid.
The senior management of the national oil company also suffered. Until 1952 almost all
senior managers of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) were foreigners, who occupied villas in
gated and guarded compounds while the local workforce lived in shantytowns. In 1952 tension
between Iraq and Muhammad Mossadegh's Iran led the IPC to review its relations with Baghdad,
and a clause of the new treaty concerned the training of Iraqi managers. By 1972, 75% of the
thousand skilled jobs were filled by Iraqis, which helped to ensure the success of the IPC's
nationalisation. The new Iraq National Oil Company gained control of the oilfields and
production reached unprecedented levels.
Purge of the Ba'ath
After the invasion, the US purged Ba'athist elements from INOC's management. Simply
belonging to the Ba'ath, Iraq's single political party, which had been in power since 1968, was
grounds for dismissal, compulsory retirement or worse. Seventeen of INOC's 24 directors were
forced out, along with several hundred engineers, who had kept production high through wars and
foreign sanctions. The founding fathers of INOC were ousted by the Deba'athification
Commission, led by former exiles including Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who replaced
them with his own supporters, as incompetent as they were partisan.
Rob McKee, who succeeded Philip J Carrol as oil adviser to the US proconsul, observed in
autumn 2003: "The people themselves are patently unqualified and are apparently being placed in
the ministry for religious, political or personal reasons... the people who nursed the industry
through Saddam's years and who brought it back to life after the liberation, as well as many
trained professionals, are all systematically being pushed to the sidelines" ( 3 ).
This purge opened the door to advisers, mostly from the US, who bombarded the oil ministry
with notes, circulars and reports directly inspired by the practices of the international oil
industry, without much concern for their applicability to Iraq.
The drafting of Iraq's new constitution and an oil law provided an opportunity to change the
rules. Washington had decided in advance to do away with the centralised state, partly because
of its crimes against the Kurds under Saddam and partly because centralisation favours
totalitarianism. The new federal, or even confederal, regime was decentralised to the point of
being de-structured. A two-thirds majority in one of the three provinces allows opposition to
veto central government decisions.
Baghdad-Irbil rivalry
Only Kurdistan had the means and the motivation to do so. Where oil was concerned, power was
effectively divided between Baghdad and Irbil, seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),
which imposed its own interpretation of the constitution: deposits already being exploited
would remain under federal government control, but new licenses would be granted by the
provincial governments. A fierce dispute arose between the two capitals, partly because the KRG
granted licenses to foreign oil companies under far more favourable conditions than those
offered by Baghdad.
The quarrel related to the production sharing agreements. The usual practice is for foreign
companies that provide financial backing to get a share of the oil produced, which can be very
significant in the first few years. This was the formula US politicians and oil companies
wanted to impose. They were unable to do so.
Iraq's parliament, so often criticised in other matters, opposed this system; it was
supported by public opinion, which had not forgotten the former IPC. Tariq Shafiq, founding
father of the INOC, explained to the US Congress the technical reasons for the refusal (
4 ). Iraq's oil deposits
were known and mapped out. There was therefore little risk to foreign companies: there would be
no prospecting costs and exploitation costs would be among the lowest in the world. From 2008
onwards, Baghdad started offering major oil companies far less attractive contracts --
$2/barrel for the bigger oilfields, and no rights to the deposits.
ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Total, and Russian, Chinese, Angolan, Pakistani and Turkish oil
companies nevertheless rushed to accept, hoping that things would turn to their advantage.
Newsweek (24 May 2010) claimed Iraq had the potential to become "the next Saudi Arabia."
But although production is up (over 3 mbpd in 2012), the oil companies are irritated by the
conditions imposed on them: investment costs are high, profits are mediocre and the oil still
underground is not counted as part of their reserves, which affects their share price.
ExxonMobil and Total disregarded the federal government edict that threatened to strip
rights from oil companies that signed production-sharing agreements relating to oilfields in
Kurdistan. Worse, ExxonMobil sold its services contract relating to Iraq's largest oilfield,
West Qurna, where it had been due to invest $50bn and double the country's current production.
Baghdad is now under pressure: if it continues to refuse the conditions requested by the
foreign oil companies, it will lose out to Irbil, even if Kurdistan's deposits are only a third
of the size of those in the south. Meanwhile, Turkey has done nothing to improve its relations
with Iraq by offering to build a direct pipeline from Kurdistan to the Mediterranean. Without
the war, would the oil companies have been able to make the Iraqis and Kurds compete? One thing
is certain: the US is far from achieving its goals in the oil sector, and in this sense the war
was a failure.
Alan Greenspan, who as chairman of the US Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 was well placed
to understand the importance of oil, came up with the best summary of the conflict: "I am
saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war
is largely about oil" ( 5
).
"... Like most lefty journalists, I assumed that George Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq to buy up its oil fields, cheap and at gun-point, and cart off the oil. We thought we knew the neo-cons true casus belli ..."
"... But the truth in the Options for Iraqi Oil Industry was worse than "Blood for Oil". Much, much worse. The key was in the flow chart on page 15, Iraq Oil Regime Timeline & Scenario Analysis: "...A single state-owned company ...enhances a government's relationship with OPEC." ..."
Because it was marked "confidential" on each page, the oil industry stooge couldn't believe
the US State Department had given me a complete copy of their secret plans for the oil fields
of Iraq.
Actually, the State Department had done no such thing. But my line of bullshit had been so
well-practiced and the set-up on my mark had so thoroughly established my fake identity, that I
almost began to believe my own lies.
I closed in. I said I wanted to make sure she and I were working from the same State
Department draft. Could she tell me the official name, date and number of pages? She did.
Bingo! I'd just beaten the Military-Petroleum Complex in a lying contest, so I had a right
to be chuffed.
After phoning numbers from California to Kazakhstan to trick my mark, my next calls were to
the State Department and Pentagon. Now that I had the specs on the scheme for Iraq's oil --
that State and Defense Department swore, in writing, did not exist -- I told them I'd
appreciate their handing over a copy (no expurgations, please) or there would be a very
embarrassing story on BBC Newsnight .
Within days, our chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, delivered to my shack in the woods
outside New York a 323-page, three-volume programme for Iraq's oil crafted by George Bush's
State Department and petroleum insiders meeting secretly in Houston, Texas.
I cracked open the pile of paper -- and I was blown away.
Like most lefty journalists, I assumed that George Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq to
buy up its oil fields, cheap and at gun-point, and cart off the oil. We thought we knew the
neo-cons true casus belli : Blood for oil.
But the truth in the Options for Iraqi Oil Industry was worse than "Blood for Oil".
Much, much worse. The key was in the flow chart on page 15, Iraq Oil Regime Timeline &
Scenario Analysis: "...A single state-owned company ...enhances a government's relationship
with OPEC."
NSC Russia expert freshly appointed Andrew Peek, who was walked out like Vindman,
with him only freshly appointed after Fiona Hill and the Tim Morrioson resigned.
There is a big problems with "experts" in NSC -- often they represent interests of the
particular agency, or a think tank, not that of the country.
Look at former NSC staffer Fiona Hill. She can be called "threat inflation"
specialist.
NSC tries to usurp the role of the State Department and overly militarize the USA
foreign policy, while having much lower class specialists. It is a kind of CIA backdoor
into defining the USA foreign policy.
I would advocate creating "shadow NSC" by the party who is in opposition, so that it
can somehow provide countervailing opinions. But with both parties being now war parties,
this is no that effective.
Cutting NSC staff to the bones, so that such second rate personalities like Fiona Hill
and Vindman are automatically excluded might also help a little bit.
One common explanation is that the NSC mission creep results from the NSC staff
growing too large and the easy solution is to limit the size of the staff. I am
sympathetic to that feeling because we don't want it to
be too large and we don't want it to be usurping things that the State Department or
the Agency should do.
"... Speaking of Trump's donors, we wrote Trump a blank check in the 2016 election to deliver on the MAGA agenda that he had sold us. We voted for big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas of "nationalism" and "populism." He has been a disappointment on all fronts. ..."
"... Orthodox Jews hit the jackpot with the King of Israel and Zionists have been on an unprecedented winning streak. In just the last three months, Trump has issued an executive order to ban anti-Semitism on college campuses, assassinated Qasem Soleimani and has given Bibi Netanyahu the green light to annex large swathes of the West Bank. Trump is even considering allowing Jonathan Pollard to return to Israel. Is it any wonder then that a recent Gallup poll found that Israelis support his "America First" foreign policy over Americans by a whopping 18-point margin? ..."
"... Trump's Chumps have demonstrated in the last two election cycles how easy they are to manipulate. They can be relied on to vote and shill for the GOP no matter what it does. Donald Trump isn't under any pressure from these people to change. He knows his mark better than they know themselves. They are so desperate for acceptance and to participate in elections and to feel like they are "winning" that they will delude themselves like the rest of his cult into believing almost anything. Give a drowning man enough rope and he will hang himself. ..."
I spent months making the case for Trump on
this website. I will be the first to admit that I was wrong and that those who were skeptical of Trump in our
community were right in 2016. In that election, I drank the koolaid and was one of Trump's Chumps. Unlike
AmNats, I have tried to learn something from that experience.
I hate getting fooled by Republicans.
In 2020, we have a far better sense of
Donald Trump. The Trump administration has a record now. Donald Trump's first term is mostly history. We can
now look back with the benefit of hindsight and evaluate our standing after the last three years without being
drunk on Trump koolaid. No one drank the Trump koolaid in our community more deeply than the AmNats. Some of
them remained drunk on the Trump koolaid even after the 2018 midterms. A handful of his most faithful
cheerleaders have never given up faith in their GOD EMPEROR and succumbed to reality.
What is the reality of the Trump presidency?
1.) Those who feared that the Trump
administration would lull the conservative base into a false sense of complacency and put all the normies back
to sleep were right.
Donald Trump has told his base that they are "winning." They wear Q shirts and
"Trust The Plan" at his rallies. They are Making America Great Again simply by having a Republican in the White
House. They are content to go on believing that
even as illegal immigration DOUBLED in FY 2019
and became a far worse problem than it ever was under the
Obama administration. As we saw after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, they are also ready to swallow
Trump's war propaganda against Iran and believe anything their dear leader tells them. It was Julian Assange
and Roger Stone who went to prison under Trump, not Hillary Clinton. Normies are content to have conservatism
in power and
are less willing
to give us an audience with a Republican in the White House.
2.) Those who feared that the Trump
administration would suck all of the energy out of the Alt-Right were right . In the final two years of
the Obama administration (2015 and 2016), the Alt-Right was thriving on social media and was brimming with
energy. Four years later, the country has only gotten worse, but the brand has been destroyed and all the
energy it had back then as an online subculture has been sucked out of the room by Trump and channeled into
pushing the standard conservative policy agenda. The movement has been in disarray and has been divided and
demoralized ever since Trump won the 2016 election. The last few years have been terrible. As soon as Trump won
the 2016 election, conservatives shifted their attention back to policing their right flank. They are far more
successful at policing their right flank when they are in power.
3.) Those who rationalized voting
for Donald Trump on the basis of immigration and changing demographics were proven wrong about that too.
He has refurbished the George W. Bush era fence. Since he has been president, Donald Trump
has built all of three new miles of fence
, which is actually less than W. and Obama. He didn't do anything
about sanctuary cities or pass E-Verify. He has
actually increased
guest worker programs
. There has been no cuts to legal immigration. Instead, Jared Kushner's legal
immigration plan
only proposes to reconfigure the composition of it for big business
so that more high skilled workers and
fewer peons are imported from the Third World. Illegal immigration has remained steady and has surged past the
worst highs of the Obama years. It has recently
fallen back to 2015 levels after peaking in FY 2019
. Trump has vowed to pass an amnesty to save DACA. The
Muslim ban
became an ineffective travel ban
. The only area where he has had any real success is refugee resettlement,
but overall the bottom line is that after four years of Trump there are millions of more illegal aliens and
legal immigrants here. Donald Trump hasn't even
deported as many illegal aliens as Obama
.
AmNats have been purged from Turning Point
USA, banned from its events and reduced to haranguing Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk from the sidewalk. They have
been banned from even attending CPAC. Those who thought that they could work within the system to reform
conservatism were grossly mistaken. Steve King was
condemned by Congress, stripped of his committee assignments and has been treated as a pariah within the
Republican Party
. Michelle Malkin
was deplatformed by Mar-a-Lago
and excommunicated from the synagogue of mainstream conservatism. Ann
Coulter was marginalized in the Trump administration. Jeff Sessions and Steve Bannon were both fired. Donald
Trump hired conservatives and staffed his administration with his enemies. While I won't name any names, I will
just point to all the people who actually worked within the conservative movement who have all been purged and
fired in the Trump era by Conservatism, Inc. as proof that working within the system doesn't work and is a bad
idea and those people would have had more job security doing almost anything else.
5.) What about Antifa and Big Tech
censorship? Aren't those good reasons to vote for Donald Trump in 2020? Neither of these issues were on our
radar screen BEFORE Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
Both of those problems became dramatically
worse
as a result of electing the boogeyman as president
. Far from being a victory for the Dissident
Right, we became identified with Donald Trump and were caught in the backlash while he delivered Jeb Bush's
agenda (the boogeyman wasn't real). Before Trump was elected president, Antifa was a tiny nuisance that
protested Amren conferences and there was still a great deal of free speech on the internet. We could also hold
rallies all over the South without serial harassment from these people. Now, everything from harassment and
doxxing by "journalists" to chronic Antifa violence to police stand down orders to deplatforming to FBI
counterextremism witch hunts has became part of the scenery of life under the Trump administration which is
only interested in these new grievances insofar as they can be milked and exploited to elect more Republicans.
In hindsight, it would have been better NOT to have identified ourselves with the boogeyman in 2016.
6.) Isn't having Donald Trump in
the White House a huge victory for "identitarianism" and big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." President
Donald Trump's signature policy victories have been passing a huge corporate tax cut, criminal justice reform
and renegotiating and rebranding NAFTA.
Trump is a "populist" in the sense that he has DEEPENED
neoliberalism. When you look at his policies, he has continued and further extended the status quo of the last
forty years which has been tax cuts, deregulation, entitlement cuts, free trade agreements and huge increases
in military spending. Trump's economic agenda has been no different from the last three Republican presidents.
He has been all bark and no bite.
Donald Trump is pointedly NOT a
nationalist, populist or identitarian. He carefully avoids ever mentioning the word "White." Instead, he talks
incessantly about the black, Hispanic, Asian-American, LGBTQ and female unemployment rate. He holds events at
the White House for blacks and Hispanics. He delivers policies for blacks and Hispanics too like criminal
justice reform. The "forgotten man" couldn't be further from Donald Trump's mind when he is schmoozing with the
likes of Steve Schwarzman and boasting about the stock market. Trump is a demagogue who recognized that
nationalist and populist sentiments were growing in the American electorate and he has harnessed and
manipulated and exploited those forces for his donors.
7.) Speaking of Trump's donors, we
wrote Trump a blank check in the 2016 election to deliver on the MAGA agenda that he had sold us.
We
voted for big ideas like "nationalism" and "populism." The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were
immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas
of "nationalism" and "populism." He has been a disappointment on all fronts.
Those of us who were duped into believing
that Donald Trump had a team of Jews who were going to craft all of these policies which were going to
stabilize America's demographics should reflect on what has actually happened during the Trump presidency.
Orthodox Jews hit the jackpot with the King of Israel and Zionists have been on an unprecedented winning
streak. In just the last three months, Trump has issued an executive order to ban anti-Semitism on college
campuses, assassinated Qasem Soleimani and has given Bibi Netanyahu the green light to annex large swathes of
the West Bank. Trump is even considering allowing Jonathan Pollard to return to Israel. Is it any wonder then
that a recent Gallup poll found that Israelis support his "America First" foreign policy over Americans by a
whopping 18-point margin?
Trump's Chumps haven't been deterred by any
of this. They want us to write Donald Trump a second political blank check in 2020, which his Jewish donors
intend to cash at the White House,
only this time he won't be restrained by fear of losing his reelection
.
In light of everything he has delivered for them so far, what is Donald Trump going to do in his second term
for his Jewish donors who fund the GOP? Do we trust Trump not to start a war with Iran?
8.) In the last two elections,
Donald Trump has pulled a bait-and-switch and Trump's Chumps are gullible enough to fall for it a third time.
While I was wrong about the 2016 election, I was one of the first voices in our community to wise up to what
was going on. By the 2018 midterms, I saw the bait-and-switch coming and warned our readers about it.
As you might recall, the 2018 midterms were
about tax cuts and the roaring economy, deregulation and putting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. It
was also full of dire warnings about scary Antifa groups, Big Tech censorship and caravans from Central America
to stir up the base. Trump vowed to issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship. The GOP knows what
its base cares about and shamelessly manipulates its base during election season.
After the 2018 election was over, you
might recall how Trump banned bump stocks and passed criminal justice reform for Van Jones and the Koch
Brothers during the lame duck session of Congress. As we entered 2019, the Republican agenda changed to
overthrowing the government of Venezuela to install Juan Guaid in power and passing anti-BDS legislation. The
GOP spent the whole year accusing the Democrats of anti-Semitism and promoting Jexodus. Virtually nothing else
was talked about for a whole year in Congress but anti-Semitism until Trump issued his executive order on
anti-Semitism on college campuses after the House and Senate had failed to reach agreement on anti-BDS
legislation. The White House
held its Social Media Summit in July and nothing came out of it
. Antifa disappeared from the agenda and was
replaced by a government crackdown on White Nationalists after El Paso. Ending birthright citizenship was
forgotten about. Illegal immigration soared to its highest level in over a decade last May.
Don't forget how Trump's Chumps told us how
"Chad" it was in 2018 to elect more Republicans to stop Antifa, the caravans and Big Tech censorship and how
those same Republicans once elected to office preferred to fight anti-Semitism for AIPAC.
10.) Trump's Chumps have
demonstrated in the last two election cycles how easy they are to manipulate. They can be relied on to vote and
shill for the GOP no matter what it does.
Donald Trump isn't under any pressure from these people to
change. He knows his mark better than they know themselves. They are so desperate for acceptance and to
participate in elections and to feel like they are "winning" that they will delude themselves like the rest of
his cult into believing almost anything. Give a drowning man enough rope and he will hang himself.
Four years later, Trump's Chumps are still
sitting by the phone waiting for the Donald to call back while he huddles with Steve Schwarzman and Bibi
Netanyahu. They can't see what is front of their own eyes. By going ALL IN for Trump, they wrecked, divided and
demoralized their own movement in order to advance the standard conservative policy agenda. They have been
pushed off the internet and in some cases even to the dark web. In virtually every way, they are worse off than
they were four years ago and have nothing to show for it. Insofar as they are getting more web traffic, it is
because America has only continued to deteriorate under Trump, which would have happened anyway regardless who
won in 2016.
It's not too late for Trump's Chumps to
reclaim one thing that they have lost over the past four years. They can still reclaim their self respect. They
don't have to participate in this charade a second time and mislead people who are less informed because they
now know full well that Sheldon Adelson has bought Donald Trump and the lickspittle GOP Congress.
Note:
Imagine thinking a
New York City billionaire is a "populist." LMAO what were we thinking? He told us what we wanted to hear and we
believed it.
My understanding is that net foreign immigration has gone down in the last few years. Hardly a triumph, I
agree.
There are quite literally hordes of foreigners living here. Even a president who was a combination of
Jesus and Superman would find it excrutiatingly difficult to eliminate immigration under these circumstances.
All this seemed painfully obvious to me in 2016. We all know who Trump had been the first 70 years of his life
a braggart, a reprobate and a real estate developer who loved celebrities and organized crime figures. He is
married to a high class escort from Slovenia who speaks English worse than a Mexican immigrant. This man is
going to be the savior of Western Civilization? He has always been a fraud.
@MattinLA
Trump has not even made a sincere effort. Where is the effort to stop birth right citizenship? To punish
employers who hire illegals? He doesn't try to build a coalition to stop immigration, he is clearly using it as
political issue to keep his low info base revved up, but Trump doesn't actually want it resolved. It is the
same with abortion, where both Parties are perfectly happy with the status quo because it allows each to fund
raise by pointing at the threat coming from the other side. And at the end of the day it is all about find
raising.
Pretty much an accurate article, but what Democratic Presidential Contender would have been a better choice?
The answer is none. The modern day Democratic Party, and most everyone who identifies with it, is as morally
disgusting and filthy of a political party as has ever existed on this planet. Whatever grievances you have
with DT, wait until the next Democrat gets elected President. The trifecta of Diversity (aka hate and blame
Whitey for everything), LGBTQ insanity, and Climate Change hysteria will be shoved down the throats of this
country like never before. The Obama years were just a warm-up for the cultural destruction that will happen to
this country when the next Dem gets elected.
Actually, just bring the Civil War on. Whites will either get some self-respect and stand up for themselves
before it is too late, or surrender to living in a ghetto trash culture and being ruled over by Jews and their
white hating 'POC' puppets. It's an easy choice in my book.
I started college in 1982 with nothing but high hopes for the future, by 1990 I knew something was terribly
going wrong with this country, and now I know the destruction of this country is virtually guaranteed. No good
choices, indeed, as stated above. WTF happened?
I voted for this executive. I am not ashamed of my vote. However, as someone who voted on agendas and policies,
I disappointed with the results. I knew going in there wasn't much in store for me personally by supporting the
candidate. it was a diversion at the time from the standard fare. The problem with the standard fare is that
they offered more of what were the problems. candidate Trump, actually responded to the issues echoing the same
concerns, even if in a less than civil tenor. He gave as good as he got or better. I would that had been more
substantive, but it was what it was.
There are some things that need to be cleared up in your article, most prominant of which is the fairly
loose use of straw men positions. Just a few:
the president did not run as a conservative despite comments he made about some conservative aspects of his
own views.
he never ever abandoned his position on same sex relations and marriage -- both of which are neither
conservative or something he campaigned on, so it was clear from the get go, he had no intention of changing
that game. What he did contend is that religious people have the same protections and they should not be cowed
the overton window that would permit any president to openly support a condition in which skin color is the
primary or a primary point of view would violate the principles and foundation of the country. but regardless
most of the country sees that as an anathema to the what they want to country to be -- even far right
conservatives are not arguing a white nationalist perspective -- trying to weigh him down with an overton window
position that was never in play, at least not as you suggest it. The president started with a definitive lean
in that direction of sorts, but it probably did not take him, long to figure out -- he was surrounded by whites
in control of the country -- whites are not being pushed around by non-whites, inspite of having elected a
non-white executive. But still he has knee jerk responses to dismantle the nonwhites policies. He remains as
prowhite as any candidate in office. his references to how he claims to have aided nonwhites as pushback
against accusations of being "racist" makes perfect sense. That does not make him "anti-white".
your bait and switch assail is a tad convoluted. Antifa big tech and tax cuts . . . big tech and antifa
initially responded with the same shock and vitriol as all his opposition when he was elected -- but as time has
worn big tech has moved on seeing the current exec as a nonthreat -- tax cuts proceed unimpeded. The president's
position on Jews and Israel were clear from the start and remain as they were -- one can contend he is
overboard, but there was no bait and switch. The president did not say I was not for Israel and pro limiting
immigration, he made clear he opposed illegal immigration and was proIsrael they are not competing issues . He
has simply abided by one and dragged his feet on the other, if not abandoned it all together.
There are some other issues that need addressing, not the least of which is that many of us who supported
the current executive before and now, have done so calling him out on issues where he has failed or is failing
and have done so from the start -- -
@Priss Factor
the scary part about that is blumpf and the (((deep state))) would do that to you or me too
it was sickening
to see that he seemed to have regained his self confidence from the assassination of Soleimani and was
blathering on at the SOTU as though everything was just fine, better than ever
One good thing Trump did was save us from that shrieking Valkyrie warmongering Hildabeast. If she had been
elected she would have taken it as a mandate to start a war with Russia and/or Iran. Personally I was never
voting for Trump but against Hillary.
Now that the demoncrats no longer have someone like Hillary running it would be pretty safe to vote a third
party which I plan to do this election. Screw King Cyr-ass and his Zionist claque of losers.
@MattinLA
The US economy alone (not to mention the suckiness of the culture and people) has been bad enough going back to
a year or so before the crash that net immigration, I believe, has been outward. Stupid Orange Man yelling at
people "Get outta here! You're fired!" means less when they calmly retort, "I was leaving anyway".
Happened to be in the Emerald city on Wednesday and wandered through the Seattle Convention Center .there were
so many hindoos milling about thought it was some kind of curry cooking convention.
But no .it was something
called Microsoft Ready which is Microsoft's internal marketing, technical, and sales event bringing together
over 21,000 Microsoft staff.
Had to be at least 75% dotheads with a sprinkling of turbanized Sikhs, and maybe
25% whites and asians. Asked one of the dotheads if Paul Allen would be attending this year, but just drew a
quizzical stare.
Noted in the Mr. Softie handouts that these legions of imported cut rate code scribblers are
referred to as "scientists". Trumpstein actually did something about the H1B visa program .he increased it
claiming we need more of these half priced "brainiacs". Can't find enough discount American code scribblers,
you know.
Trump first got my attention when he made those initial comments against the illegal invasion. But later, when
he said that Mexico was going to pay for the wall and talked about putting a "big beautiful door" in it, I
figured he was probably full of it. When he attended AIPAC, I was done.
Congress has actually condemned White Nationalism at least two or three times since Donald Trump has been
president. Far more White Nationalists have gone to prison under Donald Trump than Barack Obama. Trump has
appointed "conservative judges" like Thomas Cullen who put RAM in prison.
After the last 3 years of seditious behavior of lying politicians like Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi and the
traitorous schemes of deep state actors like Weismann, Vindman, Sondland and Yovanovitch I would still vote for
Trump in the hopes that some of these traitors and others in the DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA would be prosecuted.
Hopefully, Durham will do his job before the election and we will see some of the coup plotters going to jail.
Even if that doesn't happen, a final payback to the treacherous Democrats and their propagandists in the MSM
will be another conservative judge on the Supreme Court; a change that will impact the next 30+ years. That
alone will be enough for me.
I agree with much of the analysis I've read here, but let me offer a somewhat different perspective. The author
notes that, "Donald Trump is pointedly NOT a nationalist, populist or identitarian." This is probably true, but
it's also not necessarily a bad thing at this point if you're a contrarian of this sort.
My read of the
situation is that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to lose the general election, despite the confident
predictions of an incoming Trumpslide by deluded supporters. In his defeat, he'll take the last vestiges of
Reagan conservatism down with him. Even if he doesn't, Trump will almost certainly be the last republican
president due to demographic change, so it doesn't matter either way. It would make sense in that light to let
Mr. Trump run and lose on a platform of standard fare conservatism than have him be closely associated with
populism and discredit that ideology on his way out.
People forget that Donald Trump was only made possible by Mitt Romney's failure in 2012. Romney ran a
standard conservative, milquetoast campaign and lost; he was nevertheless called all manner of vile names by
the left but responded like a gentlemen. His defeat came as quite a shock to many rank and file GOPers. Fox
News had convinced them leading up to election day that they were going to win. How could they not? Romney said
all the same things Ronald Regan did and he won; he talked up the military, he repeated economic platitudes and
denounced socialism, he self-immolated over racial issues and claimed democrats were the real racists. So,
obviously, Mitt Romney should by all rights win just as Reagan did. Lost on them was the demographic
situation, among other things. 2012 America was not 1980 America. When Reagan won California in 1980, Los
Angeles was majority white; California had two million more white Caucasians than it does now (Trump and Reagan
received almost exactly the same number of white votes in California but with different results); the economy
for blue collar voters was better, so there was less opposition to Reaganomics.
When Romney ran as a traditional, non-offensive republican and lost, he discredited that ideology and made a
louder, more combative alternative possible. That was Donald Trump. In the minds of many republicans,
conservatism could no longer win elections, so why not go all in with a contrarian radical? I expect that
mentality to return sometime after Trump loses this November. Radical sentiment has been quieted as of late
only because normies sheepishly think they are winning. That's probably why the establishment is freaking out:
they know that won't last. You occasionally see moderate democrats asking for peace and quiet, perhaps
realizing this, but it's unfortunately not a message well-received by the fringe left who control social media
and these divisive late night network shows.
My prediction: on election night 2020, there will be a lot of shell-shocked republican normies. Either the
despised socialist is elected or a man who stokes racial animus for personal gain Pete Buttigieg will
become president-elect. In the minds of conservative Boomers, that wasn't supposed to happen; it's as if
someone said they could see inside the event horizon of a black hole total violation of established physical
reality.
Impossible
or so they thought. Republican operatives are already trying to help Bernie
Sanders in both Iowa and South Carolina. They foolishly think Sanders can't win, but that's not true. I've seen
the polls. On election night, Donald Trump will have to deliver a heart-wrenching speech to his deluded
followers conceding defeat to someone they thought couldn't win.
But the Trumpslide. Qanon said to trust the plan*. We're winning. The wall. MAGA.
All exposed as lies. The sort of lies a defeated people tell themselves. Cerebral comfort food for the
weak-minded.
In the process, Donald Trump will discredit Conservatism Inc. just like Mitt Romney did in 2012. Contrarians
will escape the judgment of history and live to fight another day. Most likely, there are yet more dissident
stars on the right to be made. Some older ones may also return in the aftermath.
Considering circumstances, the best path forward (speaking as devil's advocate) is to critique the man
without vocally supporting his defeat. Let him go down fair and square. Starting in November, there will many
republicans in Trump's former base looking for an alternative. They will seek out dissidents they heard about
but dismissed as blackpillers; MAGA supporters will be sidelined. Third Way Alternatives should consider laying
out a well-reasoned, practical and achievable alternative in the present with the anticipation they will be
called upon in the near future.
However, I wouldn't count on that considering the lack of organization and drive I see on the dissident
right. Mr. Griffith's essay, for example, is filled with a strange defeated tone. It sounds as if he just wants
to go back to business as usual before Trump: do his contrarian thing without being harassed. Certainly, life
would be easier. But you would be no closer to any kind of victory, either. As the author notes, dissidents
were tolerated before Trump. But why? I think laying the full blame on Trump is not warranted. Yes, he failed
to protect his followers that's one big reason why dissent is now being crushed. There is another reason,
however: you were winning. You were only tolerated before because you were on the wrong side of history. The
establishment didn't fear you because you couldn't challenge them. With Trump's surprise victory, the situation
changed. With that in mind, what's the point of going back to business as usual while being on a certain path
to defeat? unless you want to lose (or don't care), unless you simply want the freedom to be a contrarian
without accomplishing anything. Sounds like a grift to me, pardon the rudeness.
If you want to ineffectually complain about the ruling class on Twitter while being free of harassment, then
supporting the democrat is probably your best bet. They'll tolerate you because you don't threaten them. I
think that's what a lot of guys on the right really want, which is why they went so heavily into Yang's UBI. It
was a sort of early retirement option for them, regardless of how they justified it get free money and cash
out, let the world burn.
*Well, that and to drink bleach to ward off the wuhan coronavirus. Do NOT trust that plan.
Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a neutral third party who was never involved in any of this stuff.
Idiotic article. Yeah, Trump is a Trojan horse who is making. Israel great again. Yeah, he's a fragile,
narcissistic buffoon. The only unabashed positive I can really offer is that he is in 2020, as he was in 2016,
the least bad option.
The author doesn't seem to quite get numbers. God, as they say, tends to favor the side with the biggest
battalions. Perhaps he should take a look at a demographic plot of the map of the United States circa 2020. The
truth is that, if a hyper-competent, charismatic candidate had formed a consensus around Trump's 2016 platform
in maybe 1975, the demographic trajectory of the country could have been changed. It's way, way too late for
that.
If you were stupid enough to think in 2016 that demographic realities were going to be unwound, or even that
there could consensus to address the issue in a serious unapologetic way, I really don't know what to tell you.
You're probably too stupid to be operating heavy machinery, much less posting articles on Unz. Trump's election
is Prop 187, circa 1980's. Far too little, far too late. But still the least bad option.
All there really is at this point is a rearguard action, and maybe win a skirmish here and there. In terms
of the Long War, we don't have the numbers or the consensus. Grow the fuck up.
I'm often asked by people in the US who learn I've lived outside the US the better part of three decades when I
might return to the US, to which I lightly reply, "When the Republic is restored. I guess that means never."
At the end of the day, who better than Trump can you get behind? I guess it is game over. The only problem is
that the rest of the developed world is going in the same problemmatic direction, and places like Uruguay still
have their occasionally lurches into insanity.
2.) Those who feared that the Trump administration would suck all of the energy out of the Alt-Right were
right.
This is very typical. In the waning days of G.W. Bush there was a very strong hard left anti-war movement in
place, and doing well on the internet, and also had a home on some cable stations. Once Obama was elected it
faded into obscurity with-in hours, and never resurrected even as Obama become more hawkish than Bush both
expanding the War on Terror, and codifying the Bush Doctrine.
1. Trump was a con man as a businessman. How did anyone imagine he wouldn't be a con man as
president?
2. Trump knows which side his bread is buttered. How long do you imagine he would've lasted if he actually
did the things he promised, especially ending the Amerikastani Empire, before ending like Kennedy? Six weeks?
3. Whether the author of this article, with whom I sympathise, changes any minds with it is irrelevant.
Trump is the Wall Street/military industrial complex/zionist candidate for re election, and his return to power
is being arranged even as I write this. The shambolic Daymockratic Party impeachment circus and the bad jokes
posing as candidates in their primaries have one purpose alone: to ensure a second term for Donald Trump. What
any normal person votes for is irrelevant.
A common trope on the right is that the left gets what it wants. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just
witness the shenanigans the DNC is pulling in the current primaries. When Pelosi theatrically ripped up Trump's
speech in the SOTU, she shortly thereafter voted to support the efforts to destabilise Venezuela and support
the CIA-handpicked Juan Guaido.
Pro-Israel PACs have flooded the primaries attacking Bernie. CIA puppet Pete Buttigieg is against medicare
for all. Democrats do not get what they want. The only thing they get is woke rhetoric but the neoliberal
economic system and the imperialist foreign policy remains the same.
Jimmy Dore's reference to the "uniparty" is apt here. So while Mr Griffin's catalogue of Trump's various
betrayals is useful, keep in mind that the disease is bipartisan. The US is in many ways a sham democracy where
the actors perform kabuki theater. You will never get an honest say on the core principles of the system.
Regardless if you're coming from the right or the left. And the media is in on the charade.
He is so duplicitous it's mind boggling. Nancy Pelosi is right when she calls him a liar,
although she's no angel herself.
The Jewish Power structure is in total control. Trump WILL BE the final nail in USA coffin, because he is
dictating for Israel, now. Israel will make even bigger moves after he is re-elected, for sure. No doubt to
further the Yinon plan along.
I voted for him too; but will not be voting at all this year. I refuse to play into their twisted game.
They purposely caused all this Chaos to keep people distracted while Big Tech companies consolidate their
power over the internet and the Military Industrial Complex plans the next false flag to kick off the next
invasion (Iran & Syria).
My guess is that Jewish Democrats like Schiff, Nader, and proxy Nancy have all been part of this horrible
PsyOp that has been going down the last 3 years.
It doesn't matter which "side" you are on anymore because there is really only ONE SIDE.
I wouldn't feel bad about being a "Trump Chump" there are millions of you, after all.
As someone who would
be in the Bernie/Tulsi camp if I lived in the USA (but would also be furiously opposed to being swamped by
Somalis), here's a little advice, free of charge:
You will never get anywhere being attached to a Party of Capital. They will always want to bring cheap
labour into your country, and they don't care what those immigrants do to your family. Money rules. Forget the
GOP, and start your own party.
Imagine thinking a New York City billionaire is a "populist." LMAO what were we thinking? He told us what
we wanted to hear and we believed it.
Not just a NY billionaire, but one who profited from (a) mega-banks, and (b) the ZioNazi media.
His first two reality TV stunts were WWE, and then The Apprentice. The third is his crown achievement.
You call them Trump's Chumps, I've called them TrumpTARDs, because they are fucking useless, mindlessly
idiotic fools/rednecks/inbred losers.
Fact is the country doesn't stand a chance, the "resistance" is more pathetic than the globlalists. If the
last three years has taught the world anything, it's not just how mindlessly stupid TrumpTARDs are, but how
uncivil, rude, aggressive, and downright despicable.
Nobody has harmed the conservative cause more than the Orange Satan.
All, of course, by design. What still gets me is that conservatives are to utterly stupid to fall for it. At
least the Liberals caught on that Obama was a fake early on the TrumpTARDs just can't get enough of sucking
that Orange ZioNazi's dick.
this who thing looks related to me.. .. the Cornoavirus, the pipeline, the bombings in Syria, the libya-turkey
GNA thing, the recent airliner crash in Turkey, I feel something is surfacing
Trump proved that the nation state system is disastrous for those humans governed by it. The nation state
system is great for those few who are the puppet governors of the few that rule the world.
The problem Mr. Griffin is that the article does not recognize that USA citizens who not part of the
electoral college cannot vote for either the President or the Vice President. Amendment 12 read it.
We should Trumpet Trump because if we don't we might be next..
There are quite literally hordes of foreigners living here.
Fact is none of the fake conservatives, from the Orange Satan to the Governor of Texas, is against illegal
immigration. It would be easy enough to prosecute employers who hire illegals, but neither the Orange Satan,
nor any State, be it Wyoming or Texas, so-called "Red" (Communist) states, does anything about it.
But yet the idiot TrumpTARDs wail on and on about how the Orange Satan is their savior and how Republicans
are better than Democrats.
It's amazing how unbelievably, astoundingly stupid Americans are.
You are either stupid or lying, I believe lying. I say this because in each of your substantive attacks, you
blatantly misstate facts, even obvious ones.
Personally I am honestly and eyes open clinging to the hope that
Trump is sincerely doing his best for us, because the alternative is civil war, and if it comes to that, it
will come to that. Trump is the last possible peaceful salvation for America.
Here are your lies, which tell me you are not genuine:
> He has refurbished the George W. Bush era fence. Since he has been president, Donald Trump has built all of
three new miles of fence,
A blatant and obvious lie to anyone who is tracking the wall progress "refurbished" means replaced
completely ineffective fence, including vehicle barriers which you can literally walk around, with 18-30ft high
steel fence. You may jerk off to the technicality that it isn't "new", but we all see through you. Over 100
miles so far with 350 more planned, and he has done it with congress kicking and screaming. He even diverted
defense spending for this purpose, against all of Washington's whining and complaining. These are the actions
of someone who is sincere.
>there have been no cuts to legal immigration
Bull shit. Blatant lie. 2017 saw a 10% decrease in net migration from 1046 million to 930 million. 2018 down
another 25% to 700 million, and 2019 15% to 600 million. That's God damn good work for a man with an entire
bureaucracy and 2 parties fighting him. He didn't even get a law to sign and he still cut legal immigration by
almost HALF. I can hardly believe it myself it's too good to be true. Why lie?
>Donald Trump hasn't even deported as many illegal aliens as Obama.
You know as well as I do that Obama changed the reporting of deportations to include 'voluntary returns'.
Obama deported virtually no one from the interior. Regardless, more importantly, we both know how aggressively
both parties and the bureaucracy have fought to prevent Trump from taking action, and yet against all odds he
secured agreements with Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala to deport "Asylum seekers" there, making an end run
around the legal labyrinth that was keeping them here. That is HUGE and you completely omit it.
You also omitted
Starting a trade war with China
Supporting the break up of the EU
Demanding funds from allies under our umbrella
Not starting a war in Syria or Iran, both of which they desperately tried to force him into
But most of all, you ignored the fact that the entire intelligence apparatus, the entire media, the entire
establishment has sacrificed their credibility in the attack on Trump.
That is the main reason I still have hope. Your lies bald face lies are why I do not believe you are
sincere.
I love it that the jew and the fag won in Iowa. Of course, I don't love that Trump will probably win in Nov.
but the options to him are dismal to say the least. No matter what, once he's out of office the days of this
"republic"/empire are surely numbered.
I disagree that voting for Mr Trump was a mistake. American elections are always a choice of evils, but in this
case it was more a choice between rapid extinction of our species and run-of-the-mill evil, killing only the
odd million people now and then.
I personally take this cartoon very seriously indeed:
If Hillary Clinton had become President, I believe she would have found a way to start a war with Russia.
And that would have resulted in the death of all human beings, plus many other species.
Mr Trump is execrable, it is true. But he has one enormous virtue: for whatever reason, he is extremely open
and candid. Whereas US presidents going back to the 19th century did frightful things while smiling genially
and pretending to be kind, Mr Trump openly admits how frightful he and his deeds are.
That is hastening the demise of the US empire, which is in the interests of all human beings.
@MattinLA
There are certainly no easy choices. As a foreigner I am hardly in a position to criticize, let alone to
encourage US citizens. But perhaps I could remind you of an early President during whose 8 years in power not a
single American or foreigner was killed by the US government?
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years
without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be
discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such
misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. What country before ever
existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are
not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The
remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or
two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its
natural manure".
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On
Democracy
@MattinLA
IOW, you're going to vote again? For Mr. Trump?
"In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will
hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our
ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex.
Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for
liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing
Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be
blamed on bipartisan politics."
Linh Dinh, "Orlando Shooting Means Trump for President," June 12, 2016, @ The Unz Review.
All the system needs is for you to pick Red or Blue, accepting the results until the next Most Important
Election Ever.
As a first time voter in 2016, Trump's relative inaction on all that he promised has made me more aware than
ever of the rot that has set in our political system. I was skeptical that political change could be
accomplished prior to 2016 but optimistic. Now I cannot be anymore pessimistic about the future.
@Chet Roman
" another conservative judge on the Supreme Court; a change that will impact the next 30+ years. That alone
will be enough for me."
Yeah, Right.
Like the impact of all the Republican appointees who issued the ruling in Roe v Wade?
Like the impact of Mr. Kennedy, a Republican choice who helped rewrite the legal definition of marriage?
Like the impact of Mr. Roberts, a Republican choice who nailed down Big Sickness for the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries?
What impact do you honestly expect from Mr. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump's choice who earned his first robe by
helping President Cheney with the Patriot Act?
Like the "federal" elections held every November in even-numbered years and the 5-4 decrees of the Court,
the partisan judicial nominations and nailbiting confirmation hearings are another part of the RedBlue puppet
show that keeps people like Chet Roman voting in the next Most Important Election Ever.
Your disappointment is the inverse of your expectations. Perhaps you should curb your enthusiasm? So what's
next? Join the Communists? Boycott the system? That will teach them! Trump is the best looking horse in the
glue factory. Do you see a candidate you like better?
The effort to remove Trump from office began before he was even sworn in. In terms of intensity the effort has
been unlike anything any of us have ever seen. And that effort has come relentlessly, from all sides. The
media, the late night comics, the intelligence services, the kritarchy, the bureaucracy they have been united
in thwarting Trump's every move, united in flogging an entirely bogus Russian collusion investigation from his
first day in office. And they IMPEACHED the man over nonsense, for crying out loud.
The most powerful elements in this country have thrown, and continue to throw, everything they've got at
him. They have brought this country to the brink of a cataclysm for their hatred of Donald Trump and their
overriding desire to see him removed from power and his voters punished. Their hatred alone is reason enough to
continue to support Trump.
It was a miracle Donald Trump won the presidency. It is a miracle he is still in office. And a miracle is
the only thing that can save us.
Do you not remember how utterly hopeless things seemed in 2015? How completely we'd been beaten? There was
zero chance the immigration tide could be stopped, for one thing. Do you not realize that it is a miracle that
things are slightly less hopeless now? A miracle that, in 2020, we aren't beaten quite so completely? That, by
some miracle, the chance of achieving an immigration time-out within the next four years is now greater than
zero?
Any Trump supporter who turns on Trump because he disapproves of the job Trump has done as president just
shows his own fractiousness, because, in truth, Trump has not yet had a chance to be president. And
politically, turning on Trump is particularly boneheaded given there is absolutely no alternative and we are
out of miracles.
@Divine Right
The GOP donors would never allow a fully-fledged White populist candidate to slip through the net, Trump was
never such a thing which is why he managed to win the primaries.
By the time the boomers die off, it will be too late and even a White Rights candidate would never won as
the demographics will have shifted so much, and this is assuming Whites start skewing towards GOP on the same
way Blacks skew towards Democrats. In reality the younger Whites still have the virus of individuality in their
minds, thinking that politics is about high-minded ideas instead of group interests.
Poor Brad. I spent all that same time trying desperately to show you how far off you were in the support of an
obvious jew water carrier. Twitter (until they dumped me) and then even signing up for your blog.
I left
comment after comment with valuable information, obvious and thorough.
You ignored it all, even in the face of its blatant OBVIOUSNESS. You were a Drumpfter and with Trump saying
just the right thing, you could probably go back.
It is why I left your site and won't go back. You spent years being totally WRONG.
Reading this is like reading the words of a guilty man who was too stupid to see what was truly right in
front of your face. Or one that knew all along but had a different agenda.
Either way, you have zero credibility or discernment when it comes to politics, so why don't you just keep
it to yourself.
Me, a dumb ole redneck, called it in Aug 2015 and didn't stop trying to warn the world of this OBVIOUSNESS.
You know it and I know it.
Some strong points here, not all of them, but a number.
"He has been a disappointment on all fronts."
No statement could be more accurate.
Trump is a failure, but one with a very loud mouth and a rather twisted psychology that magically converts
all failures into successes. Nothing factual ever fazes him.
And the ability to just keep going is a great asset in politics, even if it means you keep going to do
destructive things. You actions communicate strength and purpose and determination to ordinary people.
After all, much of the ordinary public literally has no idea what is going on, abroad or at home, so poorly
informed are they by the mainline press and the political establishment.
He does a daily war dance of self-praise, finding new phrases to whoop and chant, describing his almost
complete failure in the opposite terms.
But because he is doing overall the power establishment's work against China, against Iran, against
Russia, for Israel, and in Latin America they not only do not oppose him, they support him.
He does his work rudely and utterly without grace.
He is a man who wears his ignorance as though it were a finely-tailored suit.
But the power establishment is okay with the grotesque style, so long as they get the results they want. And
they do.
The desired results are mainly negative, not positive, achievements.
But that is the essence of imperial America today, to do harm to others in order to improve its own relative
standing. It does almost nothing positive anymore anywhere. It threatens friends and foes alike. It destroys
international organizations and order. It supports the creation of chaos, as in Syria or Libya or Yemen.
The contrast of America's now-constant threats and hostilities with China's great Belt and Rail Initiative
couldn't be starker. Or with Putin's pragmatic "live and let live" philosophy. We see destruction versus
creation. Coercion versus cooperation. Ignorance versus information. Darkness versus light.
So, Trump, with all of grotesqueries and lies, provides almost the perfect President.
Sorry, America, but that is a very great, if ugly, truth.
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and
the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two
parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election
without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy .Then it should be possible to replace it, every
four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new
vigor, approximately the same basic policies." Carroll Quigley
And so it goes ..at least until enough people
start to understand/believe that the government is their enemy, never their friend , and that a completely
unlimited government [i.e. what we currently endure], regardless of who is president, will continue to take
more of their money and freedom away on a daily basis because:
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting
[central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams
which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
Sadly, it doesn't matter who we vote for as the jewing will continue unabated.
Proof of this is to always
ask, "Who benefits?"
And the answer is ALWAYS the jews, and the answer is NEVER white people.
Once you understand what the jews want, what their interests are, and you see that everything that happens
seems to be good for the jews, you realize that this awful system is anti-white to the core and it's been
engineered by the nose for the nose. There is no other way to explain the fact that the interests of white
people are NEVER honored. In fact, the interests of white people are not even given a passing thought.
I knew it was going south in a hurry when he moved into the white house and turned it into something resembling
a synagogue.
As an outsider, watching media reporting on American politics, I find myself wondering if I'm
not actually viewing Israeli political news. How do Americans not notice this?
Trump's supposed conflict with congress to get funding for the border wall is just a kosher psyop designed to
give off the illusion that he is fighting to uphold his campaign promises, when in reality he's just carrying
out the jews white genocidal program. He's no different than Obama. Black or white, they take orders from the
same political class: the Jews who control the money, the policies, and the media.
But what's most sickening
about all this is that the same congress that unanimously votes to give untold billions to Israel in foreign
military aid is now telling the American people that there is just not enough money to fund a border wall !
Israel first, America last, that's how congress works.
Why don't the Jews want a strong US border wall built ? Because the JEWS want to genocide White Christian
Americans through mass illegal immigration. Why ? Because non-white third world people have lower-iq's and are
easier for the Jews to control and make slaves out of.
( Destabilizing society for political gains- Offering stupid people free everything will always get votes, and
they know this. )
Funding for the US border wall could be solved overnight by removing Jewish control over the monetary system
and cancelling all foreign aid to Israel, but don't except that to happen anytime soon. Nothing has changed
since Trump has become president and nothing will. Illegal immigration, poverty, unemployment and wars will
accelerate under Trump because those are the natural consequences of following the orders of America hating
Jews. Trump isn't playing some 4d chess strategy and all those who still say this are blind, deaf and dumb. The
Jews are still in full control of the Federal Reserve and by extension the media, government, courts, law
enforcement, education etc. Stop living in a fantasy land and face the facts.
As it was with Bush,Clinton and Obama, the United States is still a vassal state of Israel and controlled by
the Jews. We cannot vote ourselves out of this situation. Democracy means Jewish control that breaks down to
which political candidate gets the most jewish money and jewish media coverage. The Jews pick our presidents,
it doesn't matter if a republican or democrat gets elected, each party is only concerned with advancing the
Jewish world government agenda.
@Priss Factor
Regarding Gen. Soleimani, a true martyr, you should have seen how insultingly the moronic ABC World News anchor
David Muir brought up the name of Gen. Soleimani at last night's DNC debate. And none of the candidates
bothered to correct Muir.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Keep wallowing in hate and ignorance. Muslims are the only people outside of Christians who revere Jesus,
albeit not as god jr. but as as a mighty prophet.
For sure, Trump has been less than impressive on all fronts. At least he hasn't committed the US to an all-out
war with Iran, but I strongly suspect he will do so after he is re-elected.
As far as
actual
unemployment, January 2020 remains at a stable 21% and all the bs about 3.5% is the usual smoke-and-mirrors:
I think the establishment is once again giving the American voter no real alternatives (but isn't that the
point?). Do you want Trump or a Jewish communist, Trump or Indiana's little Peewee Buttfudge? Whatever. The
final result will always be "X" is president in a White House filled with zionists. Everything American
crumbles while the Israelis continue the dance they started on 9/11.
Machiavelli wrote that the best people to take power are not the best people to run the government. The
implication is precisely that: use the chumps and then discard them.
Despite all the technology, some things
haven't changed.
@Divine Right
" My read of the situation is that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to lose the general election, despite
the confident predictions of an incoming Trumpslide by deluded supporters. In his defeat, he'll take the last
vestiges of Reagan conservatism down with him "
Your comment is very interesting. While I didn't like it
emotionally. Intellectually it was excellent.
I have all of the same complaints as Brad Griffin. I have to admit my perfidy as I have at times believed in
Q and other times I haven't. Right now I'm at the, we'll see, stage as I have no idea what is going to happen
and if he so wished Trump could fall on the deep State like a bear trap. If he is going to do this then the
delay til he can get in a more honest set of judges and push out some the worst of the actors makes sense. Even
his wishy washy staffing the place to the gills with Jews and inconsistent policies. He has several times
stated positions and done things that have put his enemies in very awkward positions that are difficult to
weasel out of. He could still take down portions of the deep State. We'll have to see but I admit it doesn't
look good.
Former CIA head William Casey once said, and it is verified, something like that when no one knows what the
truth is the CIA had done it's job. I think we are at that stage now.
If Trump does not reign in the deep State, meaning the Jews for all practical purposes, or even if he loses
the election I suspect strongly that a vast tsunami of Whites will instantly lose faith in government. I think
it likely that if Trump loses it will be a psychic shock.
If Trump has no plan to take on the deep State and Q is just a deep State actor to delay the day of
reckoning I hope Trump does lose.
There's a path, a very scary one, that may be what Q is all about if he is a deep State actor. Computer
power has continued to increase combined with neural nets computing. The time line for a $1,000 computer chip
with the computing power of a human is 2025. It may be off by a little but it will happen. If when this happens
and the Jews are still in control they could, combined with 5G, build what ever robot army they wished for
around 10 or 20 thousand dollars a piece and murder us all. Elon Musk global network in space would also allow
them global dominance. I've always been suspicious of Elon being a Jew while supporting what he is doing as
being good for the country. When he immigrated to Canada from South Africa he first had a job at a bank
supposedly with one of this relatives. He also has been extremely capable in raising vast sums of capital. Jews
are much more able to do this due to nepotism. He denies being a Jew.
Trump is very much a chump and a liar, as pretty much every president has been from the beginning. This will
include supposed great presidents like Lincoln, Wilson, Teddy and FD Roosevelt, Reagan, Obama, and yes, even
the vaunted JFK.
The problem is and always has been "Murkans" find themselves a political party and basically sign up for
life. They never seem to learn no matter who is put into office, the slow slide to a full blown Marxist type
Oligarchy marches on. I cannot fathom why people go to political rallies and wave and cheer for known liars and
charlatans, hanging on their every promise as if it came from God himself.
Nothing is ever going to change in this country until the corporate money is eliminated from politics, until
lobbying for political favors is made illegal, until BOTH corrupt political parties currently running America
are shown the ash heap of history, AND until people realize there is more politics than marking a ballot.
This country will only be made well when the citizens start attending city, county, and state government
meetings and demand the constitution be upheld. Without our involvement at every level of government, it is
easy for the shysters and crooks to grow fat through graft and corruption.
The choice is ours and ours alone, but if history is any indicator of what will be, I say we be in deep
shit.
Bull shit. Blatant lie. 2017 saw a 10% decrease in net migration from 1046 million to 930 million. 2018
down another 25% to 700 million, and 2019 15% to 600 million. That's God damn good work for a man with an
entire bureaucracy and 2 parties fighting him
Where's the link for this claim? At the 2019 SOTU Trump bragged that immigrants would be coming to the USA
in "the largest numbers ever" under his administration.
Candidate Trump vowed to end H1B visas but president Trump now supports expanding the program. Candidate
Trump vowed to deport Dreamers and all other illegal aliens. Candidate Trump says he'll work with Congress to
allow Dreamers to stay in the U.S. and avoid deportation.
But most of all, you ignored the fact that the entire intelligence apparatus, the entire media, the
entire establishment has sacrificed their credibility in the attack on Trump.
Outside of a few of exceptions like Comey, Strzok and McCabe there's been almost no consequences for any
crazy leftists or deep state operatives for attacking Trump. At most, some (((MSM))) talking heads have
suffered decreased viewership, but that hasn't slowed them down one iota while the FBI has viciously retaliated
against high profile Trump supporters like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone.
I thought Trump was going to go after Hillary if elected and "lock her up?" That was just one of his many
lies and dog whistles.
Yes, Trump is an idiot I know well. I spent a day with him.
The real problem has been, when we have a
candidate that would be good for America, the Jews and the Jewish controlled media destroy him, and the people
do not react appropriately.
Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader all offered their talents for the job. See what happened?
Trump is not the problem. He's the symptom.
Go after the root.
Gerhard Menuhin understood this well enough he named his book accordingly.
Because life is relatively short, the people adapt a "go along to get along" mentality. They fear losing
their rice bowl (job) so they act like coolies (slaves).
People need to change the essential failing thinking only of themselves.
Better to be a martyr once than a slave 10,000 times.
Since both parties are hopelessly corrupt enemies of the people, I vote third party if I can, so I didn't vote
for Trump but I was glad he beat Hillary, because Hillary was a known evil, and Trump? I liked his campaign
promises, to make friends with Russia, to get out of NATO, to stop the "stupid" Mideast wars, to echo Lindbergh
by his motto "America First", which promised a kind of paleo-conservative "isolationism", i.e., stay home, mind
our own business, stop policing the world with regime-change wars. I wrote off his Border Fence as unworkable.
And he started off well. He called most TV news Fake News. He said Media was "the enemy of the people". Wow!
What other politician told such a truth? He met with Putin in Helsinki and believed Putin's word over his own
"Intelligence", and Wow!, again. But it didn't last. His enemies were after him (Russia! Russia! Russia!) from
Day One, and after the Putin meeting FBI and CIA and Media all called him a TRAITOR! Media bad-mouthed him 24/7
for months, and I believe Trump finally caved, joined our enemies in the Swamp he had promised to drain,
because he didn't have the balls to stand up to the constant, unrelenting pressure on him. His first choices
for Secty of State,of Defense, were okay, but then he hired the awful Bolton and then the noxious Pompeo, he
surrounded himself with the loyal-to-Israel Neocons, and now Netanyahu is our President, not Trump.
So he has
become just another enemy of the people. If Bernie is screwed out of the Dem nomination, as he was last time, I
hope he starts a Third Party, with Ron Paul as his Vice, and Tulsi Gabbard as Secty of State.
@Gizmo880
Add to that, who would champion any of these changes in either chamber of Congress? This article perfectly
reflects the adolescent whining that permeates the unz site that everything is not going exactly as I want.
You deserve to be drunk on the junk offered by the Drumpf a narcissistic hedonist from Manhattan in real
estate business (where 9 out of 10 largest real estate enterprises are owned by Jews), who was desperate at
times to hold on to that thing which is most dear to him, the title of unmitigated billionaire, and which could
not be hold on to without the blessings of the Central Park "rabbis" and one who had married non-native white
women of dubious origin (possibly Jewish), at least 2 out of 3 times and a man who wasn't known for his
christian (assuming he is one) piety or charity was suddenly the savior of the White nationalists.
You're
right about one thing: give a drowning (White nationalist) man enough rope and he will hang himself!
@nsa
Trumpstein actually did something about the H1B visa program .he increased it claiming we need more of
these half priced "brainiacs". Can't find enough discount American code scribblers, you know.
Bingo.
BTW, back in the mid 00s when I had certifications in C# programming and SQL, my phone was literally ringing
off the hook with job offers and I never went more than 1 week without a contract job. In the following years
working for a large company in the industry, I gained even more experience in other things in IT that
interested me such as machine learning, parallel programming and cloud computing.
When that company went south in 2016 I lost my job. Furiously searching for a job, it took NINE months
before I landed another. When I talked with all the local head-hunting contractor firms and IT placement
companies, they all told me the same story: all the local companies are pretty much only hiring H1B's now in
their IT departments.
Absolutely disgusting.
That along with many other things that I've seen since 2016 have convinced me that my children have no
future here in this shithole country.
In the final two years of the Obama administration (2015 and 2016), the Alt-Right was thriving on social
media and was brimming with energy.
Yes, in service to Hillary and the Democrats. Not all who called themselves alt-right, but beyond question
it was a "movement" that was and still is wholly compromised. I know it's hard for you to hear, and despite
whatever else he peddled, Freud was on to something when it came to Projection.
It doesn't surprise me that this author has memory-holed his movement's high water mark -- Hillary's
alt-right speech. Throughout the 2016 campaign, while little went Hillary's way, she consistently drew royal
straight flushes, with David Duke, Richard Spencer and various other agents-provocateur, going on CNN and MSNBC
declaring their support for Trump.
Here's your buddy Richard Spencer days after Trump won the election:
A word to the wise, anyone who didn't know to whom this character belongs, and long before this moment,
should assiduously avoid the word 'chump.'
I won't paint with a broad brush. To the extent that anyone cares, it was and remains rather easy to figure
out which in the so-called alt-right can't be trusted. Whether because the FBI or someone else has them by the
short-hairs, or they're Leninist/Stalinist filth doing their part for the cause.
That includes those writing articles like this, lamenting that Trump betrayed you after you voted for him by
being a great president for African Americans too.
Timing is rarely coincidental. Thus this jibber jabber comes just after Trump defeated the latest coup
attempt and even Democrat allied-media is finally forced to begin to concede that he'll win reelection.
Trump will do so with historic support from blacks and Hispanics (for a Republican). Which is why Democrats
and their allied-media are again feverishly pushing their "white nationalist" button again.
Any day now the "GOD EMPEROR (!!!)" is going to "UNLEASH THE STORM!!!"
Oh, yeah, sure some Jews get beat up in midtown Manhattan and Trump swings into action quicker than whale
shit thru an ice floe passing EOs that end up practically paving the way to make it illegal to criticize Jews
Um, OK he sure was quick and decisive for them.
But surely he will get around to doing something for the goys too!!!
The reasons why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 were immigration, trade, foreign policy, political
correctness and campaign finance and furthering these big ideas of "nationalism" and "populism."
Well then you
are
a chump. The only tactical reason to have voted for Trump was
to deny Hillary
Clinton executive power
. That was the sole reason any conservative or rightist had to participate in Our
National Sham. To believe that he was going to reintroduce "nigger" to the national lexicon by 2018 was
head-in-the-clouds foolishness.
Thwarting Soros/Hillary remains his major contribution* to American politics: under Trump, the masks on the
other side have all come off. There is no longer any subterfuge about the Unholy Trinity of the Far Left,
meaning the Democratic Party, the mainstream media and the hostage institutions such as academia and
local/state government. The rabid doubling-down of the anti-white Deep State unthinkable with a nabob like
McConnell or Romney in the Oval Office is another plus to the Trump Administration: what the talking heads
all nervously refer to as the "deep divisions" in our country is one of the few signs of mental health and
vitality America has experienced in a half-century's worth of decline.
Nobody was going to reverse that half-century in three or four years it was a physical impossibility; just
as no one was going to pry off Team Shmuel's death-grip without at least pretending not to. Ten
years
would be insufficient for such tasks. But it doesn't mean you petulantly vow to starve yourself because half a
loaf is an insult.
*= it's rarely brought up but his quietly appointing centrist/conservative judges to the bench, boring as it
may seem to tiki-torch revolutionaries, still represents an important step in the right direction and is
probably his
second
major contribution to the struggle,
Trump is the reincarnation of the Roman emperor Caligula and the present government of the ZUS is a
reincarnation of the later days of the Roman empire, in every way!
@MattinLA
America has faced problem like this in the past It will solve the problem in similar or identical terms . Thats
what it does It provides a ruse . Now the ruse is not covering the corners of the lying lips even before next
set of problems emerge straight from the solution.
Trump isn't a god and there's so much to criticize about his track record, all true. But at minimum, Trump did
delay the socialist takeover of the federal judiciary. As disgusting as his kowtowing has been of the neocons
that control the Deep State, the invasion of Iran has still yet to materialize. How would a Hillary presidency
have fared with Scalia's replacement and a no-fly zone over Syria? Good bye First and Second Amendment. The
alternative to Trump is grim.
@Tom Welsh
As bad as Trumpstein is, and make no mistake, the cuckold for Coco-Zionists is bad, Clinton and company would
have been even worse. In 2020 we have anti-White demsheviks like Butt-Plug, the first openly homosexual
candidate for Prez, Warren, Biden and flat out commie Jew, Sanders, and Jew Bloomberg. I guess the Jew is ready
to come out of the shadows and openly run for Prez just like homosexual Butt-Plug. Of course it could be said
that we have a Jew as POTUS right now, President Baby Nut&Yahoo and his VP Jared Kushner.
The biggest thing
Trumpstein has done as Prez is expose how fake the Jew media is, but lets not kid ourselves, with the exception
of Tucker Carlson ( even Tucker doesn't tell the total truth and he won't touch the JQ) even the neocons at FOX
and OAN don't tell the complete truth, and sometimes they do more harm by telling 90% truth and 10% lies than
commie anti-White networks like CNN, MSNBC and all the rest.
Trumpstein is a native New Yorker, what did you really expect?? The guy has been around criminal Jews all
his life, he has Jew lawyers, his daughter has converted to Judaism and she married an orthodox Jew. As bad as
our past Presidents were, some claim LBJ, FDR, and even Eisenhower might have been Jews or had Jewish blood
flowing through their shabbos goy veins, Trump might be the biggest cuckold yet when it comes to the biggest
shabbos goy Prez of all time.
Until a UNITED STATES PRESIDENT OR OFFICIAL GOES AFTER GEORGE SOROS AND THE LIKE AND SERIOUSLY SEEKS TO
IMPRISON HIM AND OTHERS FOR FLOODING OUR COUNTRY WITH ILLEGAL INVADERS, WE DON'T HAVE A LEGIT PRESIDENT.
Do you think Hitler would have stood by and allowed non-Germans or traitorous Germans to flood Germany with
Turks or Pakis and then went out and told throngs of people how he is keeping Germany first? Come on, man.
Trump is better than the alternative, BUT the new boss isn't much different than the old boss. Just another
cuckold influenced by his Jewish masters and Jewish money.
@Priss Factor
It's amusing to read the rabid Trump haters on the right. They have a better option?
Some of the Trump haters
say we should just let the whole thing burn down and that Trump is controlled opposition delaying the
inevitable and preferred civil war. These are people that won't give up their Netflix, won't give up whatever
outlet Game of Thrones is on and won't even put down their IPhone. It's absurd.
Trump is a fat-assed, baby boomer politician whore for the evil and immoral globalizer treasonites in the
JEW/WASP ruling class of the American Empire.
Trump has been screaming like a three dollar whore politician
about flooding the USA with mass legal immigration "in the largest numbers ever."
Trump has refused to deport the upwards of 30 million illegal alien invaders in the USA.
Trump has kept the American Empire garrisons and bases forward deployed and stuck in muck hole regions of
the globe.
Trump has put the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of the American Empire.
Trump is a bought and paid for three dollar whore politician for Jew billionaires Shelly Adelson and Paul
Singer and Bernie Marcus and other billionaire bastards.
Trump has kept his fat mouth shut about the Fed-created and monetary policy induced asset bubbles in stocks,
bonds and real estate. In 2016, fat ass baby boomer bastard Trumpy was calling these same damn asset bubbles
nothing but "fat, ugly bubbles." In 2016 Trump said "we are in a big, fat, ugly bubble" and the asset bubbles
in stocks, bonds and real estate are only bigger and uglier and fatter now.
I hereby challenge baby boomer fat ass Trumpy -- and Teddy Cruz, Marco Rubio, Dan Crenshaw, Tom Cotton and
any other GOP puke who wants to show up -- to a debate on mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration,
tax policy, trade policy, foreign policy, monetary policy, American national identity, multicultural mayhem,
White Genocide and any other damn thing.
Vote for CHARLES PEWITT as a Write-In candidate for president in New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina
and every other state presidential primary.
Charles Pewitt Immigration Pledge:
IMMIGRATION MORATORIUM NOW!
DEPORT ALL ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS NOW!
REMOVE THE FOREIGNERS NOW!
REMOVE ALL WHITES OR OTHERS THAT ARE HOSTILE TO THE EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN ANCESTRAL CORE OF THE USA
Ban The Bat Soup Fever People Now!
The Charles Pewitt write-in campaign for president of the USA has called for the immediate implementation of
a BAT SOUP FEVER BAN which will quarantine the rest of the world, including Canada and Mexico. All foreigners
currently occupying US territory will be immediately removed and they will be put on barges with baloney
sandwiches for sustenance on their long voyage back to wherever the Hell they came from. Those who have
deliberately shredded their identification -- like Pelosi shredding Trumpy's speech -- shall be put in a baloney
sandwich camp in sub-Saharan Africa and kept there indefinitely.
The Charles Pewitt write-in campaign for president has stated numerous times that open borders mass legal
immigration and open borders mass illegal immigration brings infectious diseases to the USA and this new
fangled BAT SOUP FEVER is just EBOLA with more sniffles and the walking pneumonia and the boogie woogie bat
soup fever blues.
The Charles Pewitt ban on the Bat Soup Fever People, plus all the other foreigners for good measure, will
bring massive benefits to the American people.
The Charles Pewitt ban on all foreigners in combination with a massive removal of all foreigners in the USA
will boost wages, lower housing costs, reduce income inequality, lower class sizes, protect the environment,
restore cultural cohesion, give US workers more bargaining power, reduce belly fat, reduce commuting times,
provide relief for overwhelmed hospitals and be good for regular Americans and bad for globalizer banker
money-grubbing nasty people.
The Charles Pewitt presidency will extinguish all student loan debt and pay back all student loan debt ever
paid plus 6 percent interest accrued yearly.
The Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion will grant each American citizen with all blood ancestors born in colonial
America or in the USA before 1924 the sum of ten thousand dollars a month -- tax free.
The Pewitt Tax Pledge will abolish the payroll tax and reduce federal income taxes substantially for all
Americans making below 300, 000 dollars a year. Billionaires will be declared illegal and they will be
financially liquidated and the federal corporate tax rate shall be 80 percent and 100 percent for all
corporations that have gone offshore.
God Bless America And Ban The Bat Soup Fever People Now!
Write In CHARLES PEWITT For President On Your Ballot -- God Bless The USA!
@Divine Right
If the Democrats have Pete steal the nominatin, then you can be sure they want to give Trump the election. I
dont think they control Bliombverg, more likely, he controls them so I would call him a wild card. Sanders
would win the election, but as you can see in Iowa, the criminals running the DNC, aka Hillary, are a much
bigger threat to him then Trump.
@Charles Pewitt
And you actually think that guy has a legit shot at winning? And you actually think he will be able to keep all
of his promises? The more I learn about what Hitler had to overcome to become Chancellor of Germany, you
realize that men like Hitler are rare and only come along once every couple hundreds of years. And Germany
wasn't mixed with every kind of brown and yellow race under the Sun either, America is a different animal
altogether. I am not sure if even a man like Hitler could turn America around in 2020. It will take A LOT OF
WORK TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, odds are unless we do a 180% turn, America is going out with a whimper and
sooner rather than later.
@alex in San Jose AKA Digital
Detroit
Net immigration has definitely NOT been outward. Both legal and illegal migration into the USA are still
massive, larger than the outflow from all appearances. The net result, and this is without reference to the
race or color or religion of the wave of immigrants:
a more crowded, more polluted, more expensive, less
trusting society where tens of millions of people cannot communicate effectively with each other in English and
US citizens whose families have been here for generations or even a couple centuries have a harder and harder
time finding full-time jobs with decent pay, benefits, and HAHA a pension.
@Chet Roman
After the last 3 years of seditious behavior of lying politicians like
Schiff
,
Nadler
and
Pelosi and the traitorous schemes of deep state actors like
Weismann, Vindman, Sondland
and
Yovanovitch
While I agree with your main point, what are you going to do? Vote for lil' Mike Bloomberg? Mayor Pete? LOL.
These clowns are completely controlled. Yes this system has boxed us in but Trump at least gives the illusion
of revolt, and he still isn't 100% controlled, only 99%.(Grin) Others will have to pick up the mantle of revolt
against the 'Deep State' when he is gone.
For the time being thankfully Tucker Carlson, Rand Paul and other America First types will be pushing Trump to
follow his campaign promises, however little he actually does. Because the alternative, Biden, Bloomberg, the
mayor Pete & company, is considerably worse.
The main strikes against Trump are 1. His even more fawning than
anticipated towards the Zionist beast. But most of that was predictable however regrettable. 2. His
acquiescence to the Republi'tard tax cuts which has only benefited the rich. The Republicans lost big in the
mid terms because of those cuts but 'lo and behold' Trump was still there. 3. All the other shit-lib policies
that Trump ignored or even supported, like increases in 'legal' immigration. That's the fault of his dopey
daughter and her weird Zionist/Orthodox Jew husband. With the son-in-law's one sided
'Deal of the Century'
falling flat on its face, hopefully this will hasten the moving of said weird son-in-law and dopey daughter
back to NYC 'one'. Then hopefully Trump will turn to advice from the likes of Carlson and Paul who will appeal
to his inner America First soul.
@Ragno
Thwarting Soros/Hillary remains his major contribution* to American politics: under Trump, the masks on the
other side have all ""
How has he exactly ?
Soros and Hillary occupy certain positions . Now they are gone but taken over by some other guys and gals .
It's a job . New employees still haven't been awarded the best employee award yet . That will come at the
retirement for the next set of people to carry on with the same anonymity.
We all know PNAC. How many will bother to know what the new letter head organizations the same crazy bunch
are heading now with new faces ?
Whether it is the openly anti-White demshevik candidate who wins or Trump, it is a win-win for the Jew. And our
demshevik buddies have already hinted at locking up any White who might have the temerity to whine about his or
her countries being flooded with browns, yellows and other hues of hostile third world biological weapons of
mass destruction or God any White who blasphemes the self avowed "masters of the universe" who control
America's media, much of our judicial system, and apparently own all of our serious candidates for POTUS should
face imprisonment according to some of these certifiable cuckold nutjobs. As I commented earlier, Hitler wasn't
some mentally disturbed madman who munched on carpet when enraged, he was a brilliant and brave man, but even
Hitler didn't have to overcome the odds that anyone elected as the American President has to overcome. The
Jewish dream of making America a polyglot of every kind of race under the sun with more colors than a rainbow
has become true. Hitler only had the Jew to worry about for the most part, while the American President has to
tackle not only Jewish power and influence, he has a country full of Chinese, Arabs, East Indians, Africans,
Hispanics of all sorts, just your common everyday African American with a chip on his shoulder the size of a
boulder, and all other assorted groups of malcontents demanding handouts while at the same time cursing our
nation and thinking Whitey owes them something for nothing.
Jan 20, 2017 Here's how much debt the US government added under President Obama
Based on quarterly data released by the US Treasury, the debt at the end of 2008 just before Obama took
office stood at roughly $10,699,805,000,000. As of the third quarter of 2016, the most recent data available,
the debt as Obama is set to leave office stood at $19,573,445,000,000.
@Trinity
The USA will thrive like never before after doing two simple things:
3 measly little hikes to the federal
funds rate and remove all the foreigners and the spawn of the foreigners.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank to raise
the federal funds rate from the current level below 2 percent to 6 percent and then to 10 percent and then to
20 percent. This whole series of asset bubbles the last 40 years can be traced back to 1981 when the federal
funds rate was 20 percent. Deliberate asset bubble implosions now!
Implode the asset bubbles and financially liquidate the greedy White nation wreckers born before 1965.
Young White Core Americans must be free of the DEBT BOMB MILLSTONE destroying their future and their
country.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the Fed to begin contracting the Fed's balance sheet and
there will be a complete halt to dollar swaps and liquidity injections and all the other monetary extremism
crud that keeps the asset bubbles in stocks and bonds and real estate inflated.
The Pewitt presidential administration shall order the immediate implementation of an immigration moratorium
and will begin the immediate deportation of all 30 million illegal alien invaders in the USA. All foreigners
and their spawn shall be immediately removed from the USA and the members of the Deportation Force that puts
this policy into action will get 1 million dollars a year for their patriotic efforts.
Politics in the USA Distilled For My Fellow Americans:
DEBT and DEMOGRAPHY
Monetary Policy
Immigration Policy
The USA must get back to a population of 220 million like it was in 1978.
After Iowa, i'm unclear why anyone still thinks the DNC is interested in making any sort of meaningful change
to our system towards socialism; rest assured they are not. They blatantly committed election fraud to support
the mayor from the CIA, Pete. If he fails, they will put their full support behind Bloomberg, the very
definition of a right wing candidate. The threat to our ruling class is not Trump, its Sanders.
Trump
supports Israel, billionaires, Big Corporations, wars for Oil, Wall Street and so will the DNC candidates Pete
and Bloomberg. The rest are just wedge issues to give the masses the illusion of choice.
"... Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans, but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon. ..."
"... This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception." ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no one really wanted. ..."
"... When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. ..."
"... Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war." ..."
"... The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam. ..."
"... Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. ..."
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It
was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of
mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience:
us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR
flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where
politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.
Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad
student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House
of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who
looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely
through the tempest. Why?
Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no
interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real
effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were disposable nuggets that could be
discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls
and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next.
When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fall back position became the
mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war where the U.S.A. backed Iraq) proving that Saddam was
an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush PR machine was: Move on. Don't
explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back.
Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey
Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion
palatable, not to justify it.
The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair
of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. The same techniques (and
often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps
were deployed to retail the Iraq war. To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State
Department. These spinmeisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should
be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit
the script, it was shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers whom Powell picked as undersecretary of state in the post-9/11 world.
Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was a grand diva of spin, known on
the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two
advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff
shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses:
Ogilvy and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
At the State Department Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board
of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell's words, "the branding of U.S. foreign policy." She
extracted more than $500 million from Congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely
focused on beaming U.S. propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.
"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers.
"All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves,
but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of
perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of U.S. policy.
Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a
conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange
nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way
street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and
international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.
The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The
American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to
oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise
missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation
to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles
battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of
shock and awe were all after play.
Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Victoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of
public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Before becoming Rumsfeld's
mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world's great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and
Knowlton's D.C. office.
Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig, Clarke convened regular meetings with a
select group of Washington's top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing
plan for the Pentagon's forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and
was strikingly bipartisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR
executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Lowry, and Republican political consultant Rich
Galen.
The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR's Cokie
Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana. At the very time Boggs was
conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working
feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR
firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press
coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed
all the well-placed help it could buy. They seem to have gotten their money's worth. Boggs'
felicitous influence-peddling may help to explain why the references to Saudi funding of
al-Qaeda were dropped from the recent congressional report on the investigation into
intelligence failures and 9/11.
According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to
the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to
buy into the war on terrorism, they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just
nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the
military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They
suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld's mind) of playing up the notion of
so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which,
of course, wasn't an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq, hated each other,
and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.
Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms
working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi
dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many
of these PR executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush
inner sanctum. Indeed, they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against
Iraq, another engagement that was more spin than combat .
At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the D.C. firm, the Rendon Group. Rendon is
one of Washington's heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand
in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for Michael Dukakis and Jimmy
Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he
offered his services at a price. During Desert Storm, Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from
the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to
produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.
As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped
his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.
Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public
relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning
and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon
refuse to disclose the details of the group's work there.
But it's not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war's
signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by U.S. troops and Chalabi
associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled
by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags
to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they
got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."
The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has
now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported
that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi
and his associates to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.
So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf PSYOPs , the privatization
of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said
Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or
corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception
manager."
What exactly, is perception management? The Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey
and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their
emotions, motives and objective reasoning." In other words, lying about the intentions of the
U.S. government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan
(developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for
perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many
missions was to plant false stories in the press.
Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official
government memo bragging about how the media are manipulated for political objectives. So the
New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic
Influence; the Pentagon shut down the operation, and the press gloated with satisfaction on its
victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that while he was killing the office, the
same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the
name. But I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."
At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was
lost. It failed to convince even America's most fervent allies and dependent client states that
Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the U.N. and even NATO, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing
consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even
so, the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the U.S.A. overwhelmingly opposed the
war.
Domestically, it was a different story. A population traumatized by terror threats and
shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was
a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on
America with weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of
threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans,
but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the
American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was
behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.
Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried
for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn't have any
functional chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn't even possess any SCUD missiles,
despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon PR flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into
Kuwait.
This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps.
Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few
weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent
shape public perception."
During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized
opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the
Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no
one really wanted.
What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of
mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a
large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions,
Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the
troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter
for a national network trembled on camera that the U.S. Army functioned as "our protectors."
The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and
everything they can ask of us."
When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the
war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a
fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain
death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. Of course,
nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any
made-for-TV-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a
week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to
look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.
The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the
Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video
clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present
the Pentagon's montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster
bombs, dead children and U.S. soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.
"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue,
director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter
occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about
installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the
flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then
the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign TV news crews banished from
Baghdad.
Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the
Post's pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3-to-1 margin.
Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington
Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of
war."
The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly
attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam.
Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself
was sent as President Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Baghdad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold
message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States."
This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie
McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense
snapped, "Where'd you get that? Iraqi television?"
The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura
Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times' Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the
ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
How times have changed! In 1987, Mylroie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She wrote an
article for the New Republic titled "Back Iraq: Time for a U.S. Tilt in the Mideast," arguing
that the U.S. should publicly embrace Saddam's secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than
Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation's most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq
could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and
counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider
upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."
In the rollout for the war, Mylroie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq.
She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter
manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs
Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative
career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the
Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist white paper mill. Her clients include some of the
nation's most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot,
Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador's assignment was to
embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows, and op-ed
pages.
Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the theme and made sure they all stayed
on message. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a
slightly different way," said Benador. "If not, people get scared." Scared of intentions of
their own government.
It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration's gossamer case
for war were right there for the mainstream press to expose. Instead, the U.S. press, just like
the oil companies, sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They
didn't want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.
Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk
show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a
running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired
generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network's executives
blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted
more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike
on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the
memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war. He seems to delight in
presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's
motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home
for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every
opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot
and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
There's a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no
returns.
"... By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at The Conversation ..."
Yves here. I wish Sanders would use even more pointed
messaging, like "socialism for the rich". But for those who complain about Sanders not going
after important targets, this slap back at Dimon, who criticized Sanders and socialism at
Davos, shows that the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.
And banks are much bigger welfare queens than the public realizes. They get all sorts of
subsidies, from underpriced deposit insurance to Federal guaranteed for most home mortgages to
the Fed operating and backstopping the essential Fedwire system. These subsidies are so great
that banks should not be considered to be private sector entities, yet we let them privatize
their profits and socialize their train wrecks.
As we wrote in 2010 :
More support comes from Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England, who in a March 2010 paper compared the banking
industry to the auto industry, in that they both produced pollutants: for cars, exhaust
fumes; for bank, systemic risk. While economists were claiming that the losses to the US
government on various rescues would be $100 billion (ahem, must have left out Freddie and
Fannie in that tally), it ignores the broader costs (unemployment, business failures, reduced
government services, particularly at the state and municipal level). His calculation of the
world wide costs:
.these losses are multiples of the static costs, lying anywhere between one and five
times annual GDP. Put in money terms, that is an output loss equivalent to between $60
trillion and $200 trillion for the world economy and between £1.8 trillion and
£7.4 trillion for the UK. As Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed,
to call these numbers "astronomical" would be to do astronomy a disservice: there are only
hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. "Economical" might be a better
description.
It is clear that banks would not have deep enough pockets to foot this bill. Assuming
that a crisis occurs every 20 years, the systemic levy needed to recoup these crisis costs
would be in excess of $1.5 trillion per year. The total market capitalisation of the
largest global banks is currently only around $1.2 trillion. Fully internalising the output
costs of financial crises would risk putting banks on the same trajectory as the dinosaurs,
with the levy playing the role of the meteorite.
Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a
societal standpoint. It is purely extractive . Even though we have described its
activities as looting (as in paying themselves so much that they bankrupt the business), the
wider consequences are vastly worse than in textbook looting.
Back to the current post. As to JP Morgan's socialism versus the old USSR's planned economy,
one recent study which I cannot readily find due to the sorry state of Google offered an
important correction to conventional wisdom.
Recall that Soviet Russia initially did perform extremely well, freaking out the capitalist
world by industrializing in a generation. There was ample hand-wringing as to whether a less
disciplined free enterprise system could compete with a command and control economy. Economists
got a seat at the policy table out of the concern that capitalist economies needed expert
guidance to assure that they could produce both guns and butter.
The study concluded that central planning had worked well in Soviet Russia initially, until
the lower-level apparatchiks started gaming the system by feeding bad information so as to make
their performance look better (for instance, setting way too forgiving production targets, or
demanding more resources than they needed). The paper contended that the increasingly poor
information about what was actually happening on the ground considerably undermined the central
planning process. That is not to say there weren't also likely problems with motivation and
overly rigid bureaucracies. But the evolution of modern corporations, of devaluing and ignoring
worker input and treating them like machines that are scored against narrow metrics, looks as
demotivating as the stereotypical Soviet factory.
Finally, this post conflates socialism, which includes New Deal-ish European style social
democracy, with capitalist systems alongside strong social safety nets, which the public
ownership and provision of goods and services. It should be noted that public ownership has
regularly provided services like utilities very effectively.
By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental
Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at
The Conversation
With his Dimon ad, Sanders is referring specifically to the bailouts JPMorgan
and other banks took from the government during the 2008 financial crisis. But accepting
government bailouts and corporate welfare is not the only way I believe American companies
behave like closet socialists despite their professed love of free markets.
In reality, most big U.S.
companies operate internally in ways Karl Marx would applaud as remarkably close to
socialist-style central planning. Not only that, corporate America has arguably become a
laboratory of innovation in socialist governance, as I show in
my own research .
Closet Socialists
In public, CEOs like
Dimon attack socialist planning while defending free markets.
But inside JPMorgan and most other big corporations, market competition is subordinated to
planning. These big companies often contain dozens of business units and sometimes thousands.
Instead of letting these units compete among themselves, CEOs typically direct a strategic
planning process to ensure they cooperate to achieve the best outcomes for the corporation
as
a whole .
This is just how a socialist economy is intended to operate. The government would conduct
economy-wide planning and set goals for each industry and enterprise, aiming to achieve the
best outcome for society as a whole.
And just as companies rely internally on planned cooperation to meet goals and overcome
challenges, the U.S. economy could use this harmony to overcome the existential crisis of our
age – climate change. It's a challenge so massive and urgent that it will require
every part of the economy to work together with government in order to address it.
Overcoming Socialism's Past Problems
But, of course, socialism doesn't have a good track record.
One of the reasons socialist planning failed in the old Soviet Union, for example, was that
it was so top-down
that it lacked the kind of popular legitimacy that democracy grants a government. As a result,
bureaucrats overseeing the planning process could not get reliable information about the real
opportunities and challenges experienced by enterprises or citizens.
Moreover, enterprises had little incentive to strive to meet their assigned objectives,
especially when they had so little involvement in formulating them.
A second reason the USSR didn't survive was that its authoritarian system
failed to motivate either workers or entrepreneurs. As a result, even though the government
funded basic science generously, Soviet industry was a laggard in
innovation .
Ironically, corporations – those singular products of capitalism – are showing
how these and other problems of socialist planning can be surmounted.
Take the problem of democratic legitimacy. Some companies, such as
General Electric , Kaiser Permanente
and General Motors ,
have developed innovative ways to avoid the dysfunctions of autocratic planning by using
techniques that enable
lower-level personnel to participate actively in the strategy process.
Although profit pressures often force top managers to short-circuit the promised
participation, when successfully integrated it not only provides top management with more
reliable bottom-up
input for strategic planning but also makes all employees more reliable partners in carrying it out.
So here we have centralization – not in the more familiar, autocratic model, but
rather in a form I call "participative centralization." In a socialist system, this approach
could be adopted, adapted and scaled up to support economy-wide planning, ensuring that it was
both democratic and effective.
As for motivating innovation, America's big businesses face a challenge similar to that of
socialism. They need employees to be collectivist, so they willingly comply with policies and
procedures. But they need them to be simultaneously individualistic, to fuel divergent thinking
and creativity.
One common solution in much of corporate America, as in the old Soviet Union, is to
specialize those roles ,
with most people relegated to routine tasks while the privileged few work on innovation tasks.
That approach, however, overlooks the creative capacities of the vast majority and leads
to widespread employee disengagement and sub-par business performance.
Smarter businesses have found ways to overcome this dilemma by creating cultures and reward
systems that support a synthesis of individualism and collectivism that I call "interdependent
individualism." In my research, I have found this kind of motivation in settings as diverse as
Kaiser Permanent
physicians , assembly-line workers at Toyota's NUMMI
plant and software
developers at Computer Sciences Corp . These companies do this, in part, by rewarding both
individual contributions to the organization's goals as well as collaboration in achieving
them.
While socialists have often recoiled
against the idea individual performance-based rewards, these more sophisticated policies could
be scaled up to the entire economy to help meet socialism's innovation and motivation
challenge.
Big Problems Require Big Government
The idea of such a socialist transformation in the U.S. may seem remote today.
But this can change, particularly as more Americans, especially young ones,
embrace socialism . One reason they are doing so is because the current capitalist system
has so manifestly failed to deal with climate change.
Looking inside these companies suggests a better way forward – and hope for society's
ability to avert catastrophe.
Just to add, as a former bank and buy side lobbyist, the industry is not always opposed to
regulation. It's a barrier to entry.
This post is on the money. Banksters and their clients love corporate welfare and
socialism for the rich, especially when so much of, for example, UK QE "leaked" into asset
bubbles in emerging markets, commodities and real estate.
You are right to say that Sanders should use more pointed language. Like Nina Turner, he
should call out oligarchs. That term is used for Russians and Ukrainians, but never for the
likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Dimon, Blankfein, Schmidt, Branson, Dyson, Arnault et al. The term
regime should also be used. If it's good enough to delegitimise certain governments, it's
good enough to describe the Trump and Johnson administrations. After all, William Hague in
talks with the US government called the British government the Brown regime.
Feynman and Haldane are mentioned above. It emerged this week that Dominic Cummings,
Johnson's main adviser, is an admirer of both, regarding them as free thinkers and
technicians of substance, and championed Haldane's candidacy to be Bank of England governor.
Johnson sided with Chancellor Sajid Javid.
Sanders should use more pointed language or may be not for the moment. May be after the
Super Tuesday. He is being careful and that is good IMO. He doesn't want to give excuses for
easy attacks. I would say, instead of "socialism for the rich", "socialism for the 1%" or the
0,1% even better. Sounds more neutral. A comment yesterday linked an article comparing
Sanders with Gandhi and others and I think it was well pointed. The quiet and careful
revolution!
Sanders understands (as does Trump), that the 2020 battle is *not* for the 35-40% whose
minds are basically made up at each end. Trying to win those over in any numbers (especially
by shrieking invective at them) is a pathetic waste of time and effort.
The winning message must move the 20-30% of voters who either:
(a) voted Obama (hope, for something more than soothing patter) and then Trump (a giant
stubby middle finger to the establishment).
(b) voted Obama in 2008 but have stayed at home since (what's the point? they're all lying
scum)
Sanders simply doesn't bring socialism to America, because he doesn't have a New Deal
(i.e. SocDem) party. That kind of movement will take time (and the upcoming global
climatolo-economic crisis) to build up, under savage attack from the propertied unterests and
continuously subverted by credentialed PMC weasels and Idpol misleadership grifters.
This last is vitally important, but must also be approached prudently lest the entire
movement lose focus, overextend and fall prey to the next Trump .
IMHO, it must focus ruthlessly on delivering:
(a) single payer health care, to starve (if not incinerate) the bloated ticks gorging on
the US health/elder 'care' . cesspool, I can't bring myself to call it a 'system'. This above
all: without it, Americans simply can't compete in any world, walls and tariffs or not.
(b) *real* infrastructure, for the 80%. That's water and sewerage, cross-class public
housing, and busways and light rail to coax Americans out of their cars and suburbs. It's not
5G, vanity EVs and high speed Acelas. And sorry Keynesians, shovel ready is a side benefit,
not the primary purpose. There's a lot to do.
(c) an overhaul of American higher education (still rooted in 17th century divinity
schools). Teaching (and medicine) must again become honored occupations in the country;
administrators must give way to front line practitioners.
. Only then can Bernie move on to the more deeply embedded and multinational targets:
(a) big finance,
(b) extractive industries
(c) the MIC
These behemoths can really only be attacked during a time of crisis. Or they will simply
crush their opponents like insects, or buy them off.
In the case of the MIC, Berniecrats will likely need to be content with strong reassertion
of Federal oversight (more stick, less carrot), and disengagement from doing our 'allies'
dirty work (Trump is already on that road, with one huge Ixception .)
Total dismantlement sounds very nice, but consider: whatever's left of US industrial power
is concentrated in the MIC. America doesn't need to 'buy prosperity down at the armoury', but
like FDR, Bernie and (Tulsi) will also need to have the keels laid down against whatever
whirlwind we have reaped. Baring our breast and saying 'we deserve destruction for our sins'
is a fatuous open invitation to fascism. FDR knew better.
Paul Adler's post here reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's New Industrial State, except
Professor Adler was referring to the financial (i.e. parasitical) sector of the economy. Am I
off the mark in thinking this?
You're right on. Galbraith showed that planning comes naturally from very large projects.
Soviets went to planning because they couldn't bet the entire national economy on some gut
feeling -- they needed to know what would happen. Ditto the gigantic industries in what JKG
called the Planning Sector in the west. Projects spending millions or billions of dollars
over many years couldn't be left to chance. Eliminating chance meant imposing control, which
the gigantic industries could try to do, helped by their access to gigantic capital, and
which the Soviets had done with State power.
IMHO the modern FIRE sector arose from the old Planning Sector. They eliminated the
uncertainties that complicated their planning; they cut their ties with physical processes
that brought those uncertainties; they dumped physical industries onto throwaway economies
overseas (that could be abandoned if they failed); they finally became pure businesses that
dealt only with nice, clean contracts. No muss, no fuss, no bother.
So planning is a tool of any organization, yet is required more the larger it becomes?
While planning may make sense for a company with a single product such as automobiles, does
it make sense for a conglomerate? I mean I think the purpose of a conglomerate is to contain
many diverse product sectors to reduce risk of the conglomerate as a whole to any one sector.
In that way each sector does its own planning, but the conglomerate as a whole does not,
apart from choosing which companies to buy and sell, which can be considered a different type
of planning? In that way are the goals of society planning are different from the goals of
conglomerate planning or that of smaller single product sector companies? Yet in spite of
these differences the techniques of planning are the same? Is that the main point of Alder's
article? Can someone explain please.
If you surf around a bit you can find links to Bernie's views and support of worker
co-ops. There is nothing on his website. In light the burgeoning Socialist smear tsunami, it
is probably not something he wants to emphasize right now. Imagine someone getting up at a
CNN Town Hall and asking him about his attitude towards worker cooperatives. (corporate heads
explode on golf-courses all over America)
Modern theses about leadership, expertise and management underline agile learning and self
leadership to everyone himself and within team and then within larger entities. While I'm
somewhat pessimistic about these corporate trends they still look like they would work much
better with worker co-ops than in traditional top down owned corporations. Basically they are
asking higher dedication from workers, but this only works really well if the profits are
shared with workers in somewhat equitable manner in my opinion.
Also it seems common nowadays that many coding/programming companies, especially the
highly productive ones seem to act more akin to co-ops than monolithically led traditional
companies. The programmers are often engaged more to the company by giving or selling them
shares, and if this happens in large scale the company ownership structure can skew more
towards worker owned 'co-op'-like entity than more hierarchical traditional company, where
owners and workers are usually clearly separated.
Be nice if one could have posted the Forbes 400 but, listed next to each entry, is the
amount of money that they receive from the Federal government both directly and
indirectly.
Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added
from a societal standpoint. It is purely extractive. [bold in the original]
Which leads to this obvious question: Why should banks be privileged, explicitly or
implicitly, in any way then?
E.g. why should we have only a SINGLE payment system (besides grubby physical fiat, paper
bills and coins) that recklessly combines what should be inherently risk-free deposits with
the inherently at-risk deposits the banks themselves create? I.e. why should a government
privileged usury cartel hold the entire economy hostage?
If you mean "why" in the moral sense, which I believe you do, there is no answer.
If you mean why in the technical sense, examine this sentence:
>why should a government privileged usury cartel
It's not "government privileged", it owns the government. Anything the government is
allowed to do outside of making Jamie Dimon et al richer are considered the actual privileges
by this group, and can, will and have been retracted at will.
If the banks cognitively "own" the government, it's because almost everyone believes TINA
to government privileges for them.
This is disgracefully true of the big names of MMT, who should be working on HOW to
abolish those privileges, not ignore or, in the case of Warren Mosler at least, INCREASE*
them.
*e.g. unlimited, unsecured loans from the Central Bank to banks at ZERO percent.
That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works, and that what is best for human
society is some middle ground between the two is a very important message. So I'm very glad
for this post. I realize that a black and white way of perceiving the world is an easy one.
Yet as Alder points out, humans are both individuals and social beings. If people in this
world could get back to thinking more like Ancient Greece in its appreciation for the golden
mean, we would have a much better chance of surviving. Dispensing with all these useless
socialism vs capitalism discussions would be a great time saver. I realize most people
believe in some middle ground, yet making it explicit would simplify things quite a bit. As
for the rest of the article, I need to think about it more. The corporate socialism idea does
tie in with the link yesterday about limited liability.
>That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works,
Exactly! Because: There. Is. No. Economic. Equilibrium. Never was, never will be, anywhere
and everywhere. Heck for billions of years, before humans existed let alone learned to talk,
the world changed. Things developed, other things went extinct (although not in the
heart-wrenching way of the Anthropocene, I personally am happy never to have met a T. Rex in
truth), the way the world works even without us is continual change.
So adjust as necessary. Our healthcare system sucks, bring full bore socialism on it. Our
corporate overlords suck, bring full bore free markets (kill patents to start) on them.
You might want to re-think the "kill patents" idea. Our Founders liked them. I just had a
patent "killed" by an examiner who "killed" 42 of 43 patents he examined. It was for a device
which could be saving Corona/Flu victims Right Now. I am going to try to Donate the idea to
Society, but preventing people from profiting from valid Novel ideas is not the solution. I
realize Corporations abuse the Patent System, like every other thing they touch. But I am a
low level individual who is trying to "innovate" and reduce illness. My main motivation was
not monetary but it is always a factor.
I believe you have the wrong target on this issue.
My first rejection on a related patent was just received 2.5 years after initial filing. It
took this long because the Govt. takes money from USPTO (which runs a surplus) and sends it
to the General Fund. USA innovation friendly? Not the way I see it.
"But for those who complain about Sanders not going after important targets "
Consider the wisdom of Susan Webber:
"Wisdom of the CEO is comprimised work. These CEOs "know" that too much candor,
either individually or institutionally, is not a pro-survival strategy."
I think the comparison of banks to welfare queens is quite unfair.
To welfare queens, that is.
Assuming they exist outside of the sweaty PR fantasies of those of a certain political
stripe, presumably even a welfare queen is not living 100% off of the munificence of the
state, whereas the implied value of the "Too Big To Fail" guaranty subsidy was determined to
be very nearly in the same amount as the annual profits of the recipient banks. In other
words, they're complete wards of the state. Doesn't get much more socialistic than that.
Thank you, Yves for this post. Alder has very logical and accessible ideas.
"Interdependent Individualism" is a good way to begin. When he says "socialists recoil
against individual performance-based rewards" I can't help but think the rewards should be
gifted from the workers to the bosses. Because that would be very change-promoting. Top down
has a tendency to stagnate motivation – even offensively – like tossing them a
few crumbs to keep them quiet. imo. This also really does sound Japanese. I'm not sure I can
relate to the way they cooperate; from them there is not so much as a polite argument;
certainly no sarcastic barbs. Americans are the exact opposite – we cooperate
competitively in a sense. But Climate Change will dictate our direction regardless of
decorum. My own sense of our dilemma is that "free market" corporations make their profits by
extracting from labor and the exploitation of the environment, and by externalizing costs to
society. Big disconnect. Huge, in fact. This is why "capitalism" has failed to address
climate change. Anybody else notice that China has forbidden short selling as we speak? Just
like the Fed did in 2009 with QE, etc. That's probably because if the economy crashes
(regardless of how illogical it has become) it will take way too long to put back together.
And there's work to be done. I remember Randy Wray dryly responding to Jacobin's criticism
(of MMT) that the ideological socialists would rather see a bloody Marxist uprising than a
peaceful evolution. I do think Wray is right on ideological blinders on both sides. One
quibble I have with this very wise post is that it assumes (I think) that we cannot change
our ways fast enough to mobilize adequately to address climate change. I think we've been
doing it pretty aggressively since 2009. Literally a world war to control oil and maintain
financial supremacy; serious consideration of our options by the political class (turning to
MMT, etc.); slamming the breaks on trade and manufacturing; subsidizing essential industries.
I'm sure there are other things going on under the radar. So I wouldn't discount our ability
to mobilize – just our inability to admit it. Clearly we want to do things
selectively.
>the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.
Yes, as Objective Function laid out nicely (funny word for this mess, but whatever) above
– this isn't gonna be easy. If you hope to beat Mike Tyson in his prime, you don't
start by trading heavy blows. Defeat him with small but continuous cuts from multiple
directions.
" senior leaders of three of the largest and most elite U.S. banks were serial criminals
whose frauds are (we pray) without equal." -- William K. Black
Wallstreet on parade website does great job laying out JPM's crime spree. They (JPM) just
came off parole(?) in January on some Felony charges. Someone (Eliz. Warren?) might start a
movement to prohibit public pensions / State and local Govts. from conducting business with
any banks convicted of felonies or entering plea agreements more than, let's say, ten per
year.
A convicted felon can not get a job at a bank run by a 22 times loser- Jamie Dimon, a fellow
felon who should have some empathy.
Wallstreet on parade is one of few sites who discuss Citi's crimes, and the fact that the
Federal Reserve tried to cover up (and succeeded until about 2012) the secret 2.5 TRILLIION
in revolving loans provided to a bankrupt Citibank around 2009. This in addition to the
hundreds of billions we did know about.
I do tend to harp on this because the felon Robert Rubin cost me about 500K in expired Put
options on shittybank because of his blatant, felonious (per FCIC) lies right before the
implosion. His referral for prosecution by the Financial Crises Inquiry Commission
mysteriously withered away
Yes pft, the favored candidate of the DNC is clearly Trump.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Feb 6 2020 19:25 utc | 58
Only if the ungrateful commoners who identify as Democrats or moderates can't be brought to
heel and give their full throated support for the DNC's favoured Cookie Cutter candidate who
might as well be one of those dolls with a string and a recording you hear when you pull the
string.
Then yes, they would prefer 'fore moar years!!' of the Ugliest American ever to be
installed as President of the United States.
One of things I respect about Tulsi Gabbard is she ain't no Doll with a string attached.
When she made the comment about cleaning out the rot in the Democratic Party, she left no
doubt her intent and goals. And to take on hillary, the Red Queen to boot, why that was
simply delicious.
Alas, the View, the DNC, it's web of evil rich and the media will never forgive her for
Soldiering for her Country.
The democratic party must be thee only political party in all world history that actively
suppresses people who want to vote for them.
Looks like the democrats are set to lose the same way they did in 2016. Basically as Matt
Bruenig wrote in his article "The Boring Story
of the 2016 Election
Donald Trump did not win because of a surge of white support. Indeed he got less white
support than Romney got in 2012. Nor did Trump win because he got a surge from other
race+gender groups. The exit polls show him doing slightly better with black men, black
women, and latino women than Romney did, but basically he just hovered around Romney's
numbers with every race+gender group, doing slightly worse than Romney overall.
However, support for Hillary was way below Obama's 2012 levels, with defectors turning
to a third party. Clinton did worse with every single race+gender combo except white women,
where she improved Obama's outcome by a single point. Clinton did not lose all this
support to Donald. She lost it into the abyss. Voters didn't like her but they weren't
wooed by Trump .
The Third Wave neocons pointed out an interesting fact. Clinton won bigly CA, NY, and MA
which gave her something like 7 million votes. However, Trump won the remaining 47 states by
four million.
Bezos held a party in DC recently at his place attended by top officials from the Trump
Administration. Jared Kushner was there before. They hang out together.
How odd that Bezos is somehow portrayed as some anti-Trump owner of WaPo. Bezos serves his
role in Beltway...
"... How can they change? The owners are the warmongering monopoly capitalist ruling class. Are you imagining that any decision can ever be made by the lowly peons, the rank and file? ..."
Unless They Change The Democrats Deserve To LoseTrisha , Feb 6 2020 16:12 utc
|
6
The Democratic Party seems to intend to lose the 2020 elections.
The idiotic impeachment attempt against Trump ended just
as we predicted at its beginning:
After two years of falsely accusing Trump of having colluded with Russia [the Democrats]
now allege that he colludes with Ukraine. That will make it much more difficult for the
Democrats to hide the dirty hands they had in creating Russiagate. Their currently
preferred candidate Joe Biden will get damaged.
...
Trump should be impeached for his crimes against Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
But the Democrats will surely not touch on those issues. They are committing themselves
to political theater that will end without any result. Instead of attacking Trump's
policies and proposing better legislation they will pollute the airwaves with noise about
'crimes' that do not exist.
There is no case for impeachment. Even if the House would vote for one the Senate would
never act on it. No one wants to see a President Pence.
The Democrats are giving Trump the best campaign aid he could have wished for. Trump
will again present himself as the victim of a witch hunt. He will again argue that he is
the only one on the side of the people. That he alone stands with them against the bad
politicians in Washington DC. Millions will believe him and support him on this. It will
motivate them to vote for him.
The Senate acquitted Trump of all the nonsense the Democrats have thrown against him.
The state party is now being forced to walk back their error of giving @BernieSanders
delegates to @DevalPatrick who received zero votes in Black Hawk County. Press can dm
me.
We have known for over 24 hours as verified by our county party that @BernieSanders won
the #iacaucuses in Black Hawk County with 2,149 votes, 155 County Delegates. #NotMeUs
#IowaCaucuses
The whole manipulation was intended to enable Buttigieg to claim that he led in Iowa even
though it is clear that Bernie Sanders won the race. It worked:
If a progressive is about to win #IowaCaucuses:
- remove final polls
- use mysterious app created by former Clinton staffers
- Funnel results thru untested app
- Claim app fails
- Hold results
- Reveal only 62% to give false impression of who won
- Refuse to reveal final results
But the cost of such open manipulations is the
loss of trust in the Democratic Party and in elections in general:
In sum: We are 24 hours into the 2020 campaign, and Democrats have already humiliated their
party on national television, alienated their least reliable progressive supporters,
demoralized their most earnest activists, and handed Trump's campaign a variety of potent
lines of attack.
The other leading candidates are not much better. Sanders might have a progressive agenda
in domestic policies, but his foreign policies are fully in line with his party. Matt Duss,
Sanders' foreign policy advisor, is the son of a lifelong key front man for CIA
proxy organizations. He spills out mainstream imperial blabber:
The only thing that Trump's Venezuela regime change policy achieved is giving Russia an
opportunity to screw with the US in our own hemisphere. That's what they were
applauding.
Giving a standing ovation to Trump's SOTU remarks on Venezuela were of course the
Democratic "resistance" and Nancy Pelosi . That was before she theatrically ripped up her
copy of Trump's speech, the show act of a 5 year old and one which
she had trained for . She should be fired.
Impeachment, the Iowa disaster and petty show acts will not win an election against Donald
Trump. While they do not drive away core Democratic voters, they do make it difficult to get
the additional votes that are needed to win. Many on the left and the right who dislike Trump
will rather abstain or vote for a third party than for a party which is indistinguishable
from the currently ruling one.
Either the Democrats change their whole course of action or they will lose in November to
an extend that will be breathtaking. It would be well deserved.
Posted by b on February 6, 2020 at 15:57 UTC |
Permalink The donor class owners of the "Democratic" party have every incentive to
support Trump, who has cut their taxes, hugely inflated the value of their assets, and
mis-directed attention away from substantial issues that might degrade either their assets or
their power, by focusing on identity politics.
It's obvious to me that the two war parties function as one. The Democrats have been winning
since Trump took office--they get their money and they get their wars. If Trump wins, the
Democrats win as billionaires flood more money into the DNC. If Trump loses, the Republicans
win for the same reasons.
The behavior of a five year old is an appropriate reference point for most of the people
working in DC, albeit engaged parents expect more of their children. This vaudeville routine
is giving satisfaction to Republicans, Trump supporters, and those who have been looking for
a clearer opportunity to say "I told you so" to diehard Democratic believers (who will
continue to refuse to listen).
For an American, even one who has always been somewhat cynical regarding cultural notions of
democracy and the "American Way," the show has become patently and abusively vulgar and
revulsive. It does not appear to be anywhere near "hitting bottom." There can be no recovery
without emotional maturity, and the leaders in Washington exhibit nothing of the kind. The
level of maturity and wisdom of the individuals involved is determinative of the political
result, not the alleged quality of the politics they purport to sell. Right now we don't have
that.
"Unless They Change The Democrats Deserve To Lose"
Aren't there 2 levels of "change"?
1. How can they change? The owners are the warmongering monopoly capitalist ruling
class. Are you imagining that any decision can ever be made by the lowly peons, the rank and
file? If you thought anything like that, you should try to find one single instance, in
all history, of this "party" ever having done anything at all out of line with the express
policy of the owners of the country (the high level of people-friendly noise, intended for
the voting peons, never translates into any action of that sort.)
2. If you mean change the electoral policy to win this election, how could they
conceivably manage to change this late? Like a supertanker launched at full speed trying to
make a sharp turn a few seconds before hitting the shore, you mean?
Anyway, in both cases forget what it "deserves", it should be destroyed and buried under,
not only lose.
It would take extreme mental contortions to take U.S. "democracy" seriously at this
point.
I would like to believe that it makes some difference who is elected, but increasingly
doubtful.
How different would it really have been had Hillary been elected (much as it pains me to
consider such a scenario)?
Trump was elected (aside from interference from AIPAC) partly because he was republican
candidate and for some that's all it takes but aside from that because;
- end pointless wars
- improve healthcare
- control immigration
- jobs for coal miners
- somehow address corruption and non-performance of government
- improve US competitiveness, bring back jobs, promote business, improve economy
He claims having improved the economy but more likely is done juice from the FED.
So really, what grade does he deserve?
And yet people are rallying to his side.
Personally I think that the entrenched interests have moulded Trump to meet their
requirements and now it is inconvenient to have to start work on a new president, unless it
would be one of their approved choices.
I voted for Trump because of Hillary.
Now I would not vote for Trump given a decent choice. Fortunately there is an excellent
alternative.
All who count have known for a long time that Trump will have a second term. Baked in. (1)
The Dems agitate and raucously screech and try to impeach to distract or whatever to show
da base that they hate Trump and hope to slaughter! him! a rapist! mysoginist! racist!
liar ! He is horrors! in touch with the malignant criminal authoritarian ex-KGB Putin! Russia
Russia Russia - and remember Stormy Daniels! ( :) ! )
The top corp. Dems prefer to lose to Trump, I have said this for years, as have many
others. In rivalry of the Mafia type, it is often better to submit to have a share of the
pie. Keep the plebs on board with BS etc. Victim status, underdog pretense, becomes ever more
popular.
1. Trump might fall ill / dead / take Melania's advice and wishes into account, or just
quit.
People still talk like democracy really exists in USA.
They channel their anger toward Party and personality.
If only the democrats would ... If only Sanders would ... If only people would see that
...
A few understand the way things really are, but most are still hoping that
somehow that the bed-time stories and entertaining kayfabe are a sort of
democracy that they can live with.
But the is just normalcy bias. A Kool-Aid hang-over. This is not democracy. It is a soft
tyranny encouraged by Empire stooges, lackeys, and enabled by ignorance.
The lies are as pervasive as they are subtle: half-truths; misdirection; omitting facts
like candidate/party affiliations with the Zionist/Empire Death Cult.
The REAL divide among people in the West is who benefits from an EMPIRE/ZIONIST FIRST
orientation that has polluted our politics and our culture and the rest of us.
Wake up. War is on the horizon. And Central Banks can't print money forever.
After watching Pelosi it reminded me that during the Geo. W. Bush era the Democrats were
always claiming to be the adults in the room. It's odd that Mayo Pete's 'husband' is never
seen or heard from. I wonder why? Biden's toast and Epstein didn't kill himself. AND Seth
Rich leaked Hillary's emails to Wikileaks.
-- --
The Clinton-Obama administration had scores of corrupt officials and associates (the
Podestas, for instance). It was necessary to create a firewall once Trump won the nomination.
As so, they attacked his campaign manager, his national security adviser, his family,
himself, using all the means of FISA, wire tapping done by NSA and CIA and Mi6 and probably
Mossad.
Red Ryder | Feb 6 2020 16:56 utc | 14
-- --
Trump is an installment of The Mossad via blackmail and media manipulation, check "Black
Cube Intelligence", a Mossad front operating from City of London. It would make sense the
establishment in the US would eavesdrop on him. Mossad on the other hand would wiretap the
wiretapers and give feedback on Trump. The Podesta you mentioned once threatened the factions
with "disclosure" possibly to keep the runaway black projects crazies in check not that I
wish to play advocate of these people.
-- --
After they lose again in November, they will unleash their street thugs, Antifa, to terrorize
the winners. Meanwhile for the purists of the Liberal Cult there will be many real suicides.
So, bloodshed and death will become reality.
Red Ryder | Feb 6 2020 16:56 utc | 14
-- --
Yes, what we need is just a nazi party in the US to keep communism in check, right? We are
half way there with Trump already aren't we? "Black Sun" technologies (which a part off I
described above) already there, leaking to anyone interested enough that would aid in the
great outsourcing for the Yinon project, so why not? "Go Trump 2020"! (sarcasm)
For whatever reason the only thing the Dems seem to find more terrible than a loss to Trump
is a win with Bernie. I'm no fan of Bernie but it's clear they're out to sabotage the one guy
that would actually beat Trump in an election
While I have no illusions that a Sanders administration will have good foreign policy
objectives, is there not something to be said for shifting money away from the
military-industrial complex in the US? In general Sanders gives me the impression that he
wants to reduce US intervention in foreign affairs in favor of spending more money on
domestic issues. Even a slight reduction in pressure is helpful for giving other countries
the ability to expand their spheres of influence and becoming more legitimate powers in
opposition to the US and EU. Based on this I still see voting for Sanders as helpful even if
he won't bring about any meaningful change in the US's foreign policy.
it's not an actual Stalin quote, but often used as such
he did say something in the same vein, though.
it IS absolutely spot on here:
"It's not who vote that counts, it's who counts the votes"
congratulations, DNC, you're on a par with Joseph Stalin; the most ruthless chairman the
Sovyets have ever had.
so here is your real Russia Gate.
oh, come and smell the Irony. In fake wrestling the producers determine the winner in advance
and the wrestlers ate given their script to follow. The Dems have no intention to win this,
look at the clowns they have running the show not to mention the flawed candidates . The
script calls for the king of fake wrestling, Trump himself, to win yet again. Only a
concerted effort by the Dems and Deep State media, along with some tech help from Bibis crew
can engineer this result, but they are all on board. Dems willing to wait for 2024 when the
producers will write them in for a big Win over somebody not named Trump. The world will be
ready for a Green change by then, and Soros/Gates boys will have their chance to step up to
the plate again.
Enjoy the show if you wish, I'm changing the channel.
When emotion rules the day facts do not matter. Sadly, that is the reality we confront when
it comes to talking about Iran and terrorism. The U.S. Government and almost all of the media
continue to declare that Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism. That is not true. That is a
lie. I realize that calling this assertion a lie opens me to accusations of being an apologist
for Iran. But simply look at the facts.
Iran remains the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has spent nearly one
billion dollars per year to support terrorist groups that serve as its proxies and expand its
malign influence across the globe. Tehran has funded international terrorist groups such as
Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It also has engaged in its own terrorist
plotting around the world, particularly in Europe. In January, German authorities investigated
10 suspected Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force operatives. In the summer,
authorities in Belgium, France, and Germany thwarted an Iranian plot to bomb a political rally
near Paris, France. In October, an Iranian operative was arrested for planning an assassination
in Denmark, and in December, Albania expelled two Iranian officials for plotting terrorist
attacks. Furthermore, Tehran continued to allow an AQ facilitation network to operate in Iran,
which sends fighters and money to conflict zones in Afghanistan and Syria, and it has extended
sanctuary to AQ members residing in the country.
You notice what is absent? A list of specific attacks that caused actual casualties. Plans
and plots are not the same as actions. If Iran's malevolent influence was so powerful, we
should be able to point to specific attacks and specific casualties. But you will not find
those facts in the U.S. State Department report because they do not exist. The statistical
annex that details the attacks and the groups responsible reports the following:
The Taliban was responsible for 8,509 deaths and 4,943 injuries, about 25 percent of the
total casualties attributed to terrorism globally in 2018. With 647 terrorist attacks, ISIS was
the next-most-active terrorist organization, responsible for 3,585 fatalities and 1,761
injuries. Having conducted 535 attacks, al-Shabaab was responsible for 2,062 deaths and 1,278
injuries. Boko Haram was among the top-five terrorist perpetrators, with 220 incidents, 1,311
deaths, and 927 injuries. It should be noted that local sources do not always differentiate
between Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa.
Not a single group linked to Iran or supported by Iran is identified. Look at the this table
from the statistical annex:
No Hezbollah and no Hamas. If a country is going to "sponsor" terrorism then we should
expect to see terrorist attacks. The attacks that are taking place are predominantly from Sunni
affiliated groups that have ties to Saudi Arabia, not Iran.
The State Department's explanation about Iranian support for terrorism exposes what the real
issue is (I am quoting the 2016 report but, if you
read the 2017 or 2018
versions there is no significant difference):
Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984, Iran continued its terrorist-related
activity in 2016, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and
various groups in Syria, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East. Iran used the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps‑Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to implement foreign policy goals, provide
cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. Iran has
acknowledged the involvement of the IRGC-QF in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the IRGC-QF
is Iran's primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.
In 2016, Iran supported various Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata'ib Hizballah, as
part of an effort to fight ISIS in Iraq and bolster the Assad regime in Syria. Iran views the
Assad regime in Syria as a crucial ally and Syria and Iraq as crucial routes to supply weapons
to Hizballah, Iran's primary terrorist partner. Iran has facilitated and coerced, through
financial or residency enticements, primarily Shia fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to
participate in the Assad regime's brutal crackdown in Syria. Iranian-supported Shia militias in
Iraq have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians and Iranian
forces have directly backed militia operations in Syria with armored vehicles, artillery, and
drones.
The United States is upset with Iran because it has thwarted the U.S. covert action in
Syria. It was the United States, along with the U.K., Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that helped
ignite and escalate the civil war in Syria. Why? The Saudis and the Israelis were growing
increasingly concerned in 2011 about Iran's spreading influence in the region. And what enabled
Iran to do that? We did. When the United States removed Saddam Hussein and destroyed the
Baathist movement in Iraq, the Bush Administration thought it was a dandy idea to install Iraqi
Shia in positions of leadership. Not one of the key policymakers on the U.S. side of the
equation expressed any qualms about the fact that these Iraqi politicians and military
personnel had longstanding relationships with Iran, which included financial support.
Iran also had a longstanding relationship with Syria. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
decided that if we could eliminate Bashir Assad, the Syrian leader, then we would weaken Iran.
This was a policy that many Republicans, most notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham,
supported. But the scheme to weaken Iran backfired. Iran, along with Russia, came to the aid of
the Government of Syria in full blown counter-insurgency campaign. Iran, the Russians and the
Syrian Government were fighting radical Sunni islamists, many of whom were funded by the
Western alliance.
Iran's military support for the Government of Syria clearly rankles U.S. policymakers, but
it is not "terrorism." It is pure counter insurgency.
Wikipedia offers additional evidence about the true nature of international terrorism. I
have reviewed the lists of incidents, which includes the description of the attacks, the
perpetrators and the number of casualties for 2016-2018. I have only been able to put the 2016
incidents into a spreadsheet. Here are the actual facts.
In 2016 there were seven terrorist attacks that caused at least 100 casualties. All were
attributed to ISIL aka the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Not one was linked to Iran
or any group receiving financial support from Iran. There were a total of 1753 terrorist
attacks and at least 15,993 deaths during 2016.
Here is the monthly breakdown for 2016:
January -- 105
terrorist attacks that caused the deaths of at least 1,351 people. There were no attacks linked
to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah. The seven attacks in Israel that left 7 dead were
ascribed to a "Palestinian" lone-wolf.
February -- 72
attacks that left 1075 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah. There were seven attacks and 3 dead attributed to "lone-wolf" Palestinians.
March -- 112
attacks leaving at least 778 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah. There were 13 attacks in Israel identified as "lone-wolf" Palestinian. No
significant Israeli casualties.
April -- 152
attacks that caused at least 1012 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib
Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
May -- 202 attacks
leaving at least 1600 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah.
June -- 187
attacks and at least 1693 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas
or Hezbollah.
July -- 187
attacks with at least 1684 deaths. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah.
August -- 139
terrorist attacks resulting in 1224 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah,
Hamas or Hezbollah.
September --
128 terrorist attacks, which caused at least 849 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to
Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
October -- 166
terrorist attacks and at least 2139 deaths. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah,
Hamas or Hezbollah.
November --
153 terrorist attacks that killed at least 1446. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib
Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
December --
147 terrorist attacks, which resulted in at least 930 deaths. There were no attacks linked to
Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
The U.S. State Department continues to insist that Iran is providing indirect support to Al
Qaeda. That is pure nonsense. Iran is fighting and killing Al Qaeda forces inside Syria. They
have no ideological affinity with Al Qaeda.
I wish the American people would take the time to be educated about the actual nature and
extent of "international terrorism." There was a time in the 1980s when Iran was very active in
using terrorism as weapon to attack U.S. military and diplomatic targets. But even those
attacks were focused in areas where Iran's perceived national interests were at stake. I am not
excusing nor endorsing their actions. But I do think we need to understand that terrorism
usually has a context. It is not the actions of a mentally ill person who is angry and lashing
out at the nearest available target. Those attacks were planned and very calculated.
The real issue that we should be focused on is whether or not we can halt the expansion of
Iran's influence in the Middle East. This remains a major concern for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. policymakers are betting that isolating Iran diplomatically, ratcheting up economic
pressure and using some military power will somehow energize the regime opposition and lead to
the overthrow of the Mullahs. We tried that same policy with Cuba. It did not work there and
will not likely work now in Iran.
Iran has options and is pursuing them aggressively. China and Russia, who are facing their
own bullying from the United States, already are helping Iran tweak the the nose of the Trump
Administration. In late December 2019, Iran, Russia and China carried out a joint military
exercise . The Iranians were very clear about their view of this cooperation:
"The most important achievement of these drills . . . is this
message that the Islamic republic of Iran cannot be isolated," vice-admiral Gholamreza Tahani,
a deputy naval commander, said. "These exercises show that relations between Iran, Russia and
China have reached a new high level while this trend will continue in the coming years."
The Trump Administration needs to stop with its infantile ranting and railing about Iran and
terrorism. The actual issues surrounding Iran's growing influence in the region have little to
do with terrorism. Our policies and actions towards Iran are accelerating their cooperation
with China and Russia, not diminishing it. I do not think that serves the longterm interests of
the United States or our allies in the Middle East.
Iraq & Russia Look To Boost Military Ties While US Threatens Sanctions by
Tyler Durden Fri,
02/07/2020 - 19:45 0 SHARES In more continuing fallout over the Jan.3 assassination by drone of
the IRGC's Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iraq and Russia are preparing for deepening military
coordination , reports the AP .
Iraq's Defense Ministry announced Thursday that increased "cooperation and coordination" is
being discussed with Moscow amid worsened relations with Washington, which even last month
included President Trump issuing brazen
threats of "very big" sanctions on Baghdad if American troops are kicked out of the
country.
This week Iraqi army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Othman Al-Ghanimi and Russian Ambassador Maksim
Maksimov met to discuss future military cooperation. Crucially, Gen. Ghanimi highlighted
Russia's successful anti-ISIS operations over the past years , especially in Syria where the
Russian military has supported Assad since being invited there in 2015.
On Russia's role in Iraq, Ghanimi said Moscow had provided "our armed forces with
advanced and effective equipment and weapons that had a major role in resolving many battles,"
according to the ministry statement.
It's been long rumored that since late summer Baghdad and Moscow have been in talks to
deliver either Russia's advanced S-400 or S-300 anti-air missile defense systems - a prospect
which US officials have condemned.
Like other areas of the Middle East, as US adventurism heightens pressure for a US
withdrawal, Russia appears to be seizing the opportunity to move in. This much was affirmed in
AP's reporting, via at least one anonymous senior official :
A senior Iraqi military intelligence official told The Associated Press that Russia, among
other countries, has come forward to offer military support in the wake of fraught US.-Iraq
relations following Soleimani's killing .
"Iraq still needs aerial reconnaissance planes. There are countries that have given
signals to Iraq to support us or equip us with reconnaissance planes such as Russia and
Iran," said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the
information.
Many military analysts have of late noted that the "blowback" from the incredibly risky
operation which killed Soleimani will be a hastening of American forces' exit from the
region.
It could also actually serve to increase Baghdad's dependency on Iran - something which
appears to be already in the works. And now we have confirmation that Moscow will seek to
benefit as well from the worsened US-Iraq relations, certainly now at the lowest point since
the 2003 invasion and US attempt to build a new government. Tags Politics War Conflict
At last! After a full week of playing coy... about delivering any further bad newz from
the muddled east which might further demolish the spirits of our local lovers of spirit
cookin, 'death to amerika' shoutin jihadi huggin regimes
our fearless ferret newz aggregator have delivered us something to chew on.. and spit out!
What febrile gems of crude agitprop await the wondering gaze of the gallery? How bout...
Russia, among other countries, has come forward to offer military support in the wake of
fraught US.-Iraq relations following Soleimani's killing .
as a clear example of the genre of laughable attacks upon common sense and truth in
media... faculties which - when employed - direct our attention to some simple facts curious
scrubbed from this whitewash with which "white hat" superhero Russkies... trundle around the
globe delivering toyz that made loud noise... to downtrodden 'strongman' regimes
as mere tokens of friendly 'solidarity fo'ever or whatever. Simple facts... such as...
due to an unfortunate episode in fellow neo-Bolshevik statecapitalist paradise Sinostan...
the neo-Bolshie paradise on the Muscovy is facing a collapse of its bread earner gas n oil
sales... such that the only thing tween it and yet abother state bankruptcy... is the
burgeoning Russian armaments industry! Selling guns and munitions to downtrodden strongman
regimes is the last best hope it seems... for a Russia foiled at every turn by Urusalems
steady burnnnn
and with a neo-mercantilist flourish which it has clearly learned... from watching the
chinks perform their 'resource extractive' shakedown ... of shaky regimes around the
world.... Moscow now seeks to extract from cash poor states which need guns with which to
threaten either their own citizens, or those of neighboring states..
UUUGE concessions in the form of .... diamonds, metals, petroleum resources... or
strategic real estate... in return for its deadly 'product line!' All of which is 'totally
fine'... if you read tween lines...
so that ...WHEN EVIL CHABADDY talmudic GANGSTERS living in the wester world... peddle
their wares of weaponry to weirdo regimes.... THAT IS .... A BAD THANG!
BUT butt... when evil chabbaddy talmudic oilygarch GANGTAS WITH RUSSKY PASSPORTS do the
peddlin.... with the approval of the Kremlin puppet regime...
its all GOOD!
HE HE HEH... WHO really buys into this ******** anyhoo? Only an echo chamber o tiresome
russo-talmudic trolls workin the board nite n day!
America is far from a Christian nation. No nation that murders babies for body parts is a
Christian nation (yes abortion funded by the government and the part being sold). America
will feel the rather of God for that.
Those helicopters just look like junk--total pieces of ****. I know two guys who saw them
up close and personal--not even as advanced inside as US gear in the late '60s.
Too bad your state of da art militrary couldn't take down goat herders in Afghanistan
after 20 years. The Russians at least pulled out after 10 years. Does that mean America is
doubly stoopid?
Don't kid yourself. Putin is smart, probably the smartest leader out there. But what
motivates him are the best interests of Russia. He doesn't care much about Friendships, not
with Iran, not with Syria or Israel...
...certainly now at the lowest point since the 2003 invasion and US attempt to build a
new government.
U.S meddling and regime change- nothing new.
Besides- anyone buying Russian military equipment will get much more 'bang for their buck'
compared to over-priced, failure ridden U.S (((M.I.C))) crap.
Baghdad and Moscow have been in talks to deliver either Russia's advanced S-400 or S-300
anti-air missile defense systems
I don't think those systems are that advanced. Both are quite old. I'm sure US (and
Israel) have the means to jam and neutralize both those system, about the same as the
Israelis evade the whole Syrian air defense system.
"Lowest point since the 2003 invasion and US attempt to build a new government."
There's the problem right there, the JUSA thinks "their type of Government" has to be
accepted by Iraqi's. This is why amongst countless other thing Iraqi's have had it with the
JUSA.
Russia can't sail past or through Turkey while also being at war with them, which is what
they are going to have to do if they want to stop Turkey from taking Syrian (then Iraqi, then
Kuwaiti, then Saudi) oil fields, in the absence of a US presence in the region.
Putin suks as much Netanyahu dik as Trump. And the dum arz Christians in Russia, much like
US Christians dont give a faq!! Christians have been ignorant sheep to dictators for 2000
years!
...except the Russians are not complete morons to let themselves get screwed like the US.
Just ask the people of Venezuela how Russia has 'saved' their country.
no single military in the world can beat the usa military but a coalition of many of them
will kick zionazi ***. putin is building a real coalition of the willing to counter the dying
zionazi empire.
A great many awakening people continue to be in thrall to the cult of personality that's
been built around Vladimir Putin. They have passively and uncritically accepted the endless
barrage of Putin-worshiping propaganda put out by sellouts in the alternative media, and they
have not bothered to look into things for themselves. If you are one of these people, take a
moment to set down emotionally-held beliefs and open your mind.
1. Russia, unlike the U.S, is building a lot of civilian industries and Putin recently
asked his military factories to adjust to other civilian industries and requirements- The U.S
is going in the opposite direction.
2. This is already happening- other countries have seen how loyal Russia has been to their
promises to the Assad government. The U.S turns on a dime as is convenient in any given
week.
3. To the frustration of the axis of evil (US-Saudi-Occupied Palestine) this has been
Russians biggest success to date.
I have always wondered why the world that is being sanctioned does not hack and attack the
US financial system more. Maybe just a matter of time. You cant tell me that Malta, The
Caymans, Panama and others are not vulnerable!
That's coming. First they had to build their own system. Destroying the Anglo-American
financial system without an alternative is like cutting off your air supply while 200 feet
underwater.
Yes, indeed. Why WOULDN'T the Iraqis seek relations with ANY country outside the sphere of
their destroyers to bond with? The Iraqi people, though "primitive" by our standards, are
still human beings with as much right to grow, develop and live as we zombies of Zionism in
the once noble West. We, of course, will be propagandized to the contrary. They will be shown
as "terrorists" or "Russiaphiles" if they dare to resist the mantle of tyranny imposed on
them by the Israeli/U.S. forces.
If USA imposes sanctions on too many countries, then USA will end up sanctioning
itself.
Iraq is now producing close to 5 million barrels of oil a day, most of which is for
export. If USA sanctions this oil production and sale, then some countries will need to
choose between paying sky high prices for oil, or pay for Iraqi oil in alternative currencies
and ignore US sanctions.
5 million barrels of oil a day even Saudi Arabia doesn't have the capacity to replace.
And if alternative currencies become popular for buying and selling oil, then US ability
to run trade deficits and budget deficits will be curtailed by declining US dollar and higher
interest rates for borrowing in US dollars in international markets.
It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise
of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and
are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what
they're doing.
I honestly can't see Sanders getting the nomination with all the corruption openly being
displayed. I would be pleasantly surprised if Sanders did manage to get it, but he still have
to deal with the ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC). The Electors have the final say. Yes, one can point
out that some States have laws forcing Electors to vote what the populace wants, but that is
being challenged in court. The debate on whether such laws are unconstitutional or not,
remains to be seen. It's too late now to deal with the EC for this election, but people need
to be more active in politics at the State level as that's where Electors are (s)elected.
IF Sanders is genuine then he should prepare to run as an independent just to get the EC
attention.
RR @ 14;
Everything in the U$A today, is driven by the unofficial Party of $, and it's reach
transcends both Dems & repubs. It's cadre is the majority of the D.C. "rule makers", so
we get what they want, not what "we the people" want or need.
They own the banks, MSM media, and even our voting systems.
IMO, to assume one party is to blame for conditions in the U$A is a bit naive.
Question is, can anything the masses do, change the system? Or is rank and file America
just along for the ride?
I'm assuming us peons will get what the party of $ wants this November also.
P.S. If any blame is given, it needs to go to the American public, because " you get the
kind of Gov. you deserve" through your inactions...
It's a lot like living, death is certain, but until that occurs, I'll move forward trying
to mitigate current paradigms.
There is a real danger for foreign policy advisors and analysts – and especially those
they serve – when they are in a bubble, an echo chamber, and all of their conclusions are
based on faulty inputs. Needless to say it's even worse when they believe they can
create their own reality and invent outcomes out of whole cloth.
Things seldom go as planned in these circumstances.
President Trump was sold a bill of goods on the assassination of Iran's
revered military leader, Qassim Soleimani, likely by a cabal around Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo and the
long-discredited neocon David Wurmser. A former Netanyahu advisor and Iraq war
propagandist, Wurmser reportedly sent memos to his mentor, John Bolton, while Bolton was
Trump's National Security Advisor (now, of course, he's the hero of the #resistance for having
turned on his former boss) promising that killing Soleimani would be a cost-free operation that
would catalyze the Iranian people against their government and bring about the long-awaited
regime change in that country. The murder of Soleimani – the architect of the defeat of
ISIS – would "rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them
upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival," wrote Wurmser.
As is most often the case with neocons, he was dead wrong.
The operation was not cost-free. On the contrary. Assassinating Soleimani on Iraqi soil
resulted in the Iraqi parliament – itself the product of our "bringing democracy" to the
country – voting to expel US forces even as the vote by the people's representatives was
roundly rejected by the people who brought the people the people's representatives. In a manner
of speaking.
Trump's move had an effect opposite to the one promised by neocons. It did not bring
Iranians out to the street to overthrow their government – it catalyzed opposition across
Iraq's various political and religious factions to the continued US military presence and
further tightened Iraq's relationship with Iran. And short of what would be a catastrophic war
initiated by the US (with little or no support from allies), there is not a thing Trump can do
about it.
Iran's retaliatory attack on two US bases in Iraq was initially sold by President Trump as
merely a pin-prick. No harm, no foul, no injuries. This despite the fact that he must have
known about US personnel injured in the attack. The reason for the lie was that Trump likely
understands how devastating it would be to his presidency to escalate with Iran. So the truth
began to trickle out slowly – 11 US military members were injured, but it was just "like
a headache." Now we know that 50 US troops were treated for traumatic brain injury after the
attack. This may not be the last of it – but don't count on the mainstream media to do
any reporting.
The Iranian FARS news agency reported at the time of the attack that US personnel had been
injured and the response by the US government was to completely take that media outlet off the
Internet
by order of the US Treasury !
Last week the US House
voted to cancel the 2002 authorization for war on Iraq and to prohibit the use of funds for
war on Iran without Congressional authorization. It is a significant, if largely symbolic, move
to rein in the oft-used excuse of the Iraq war authorization for blatantly unrelated actions
like the assassination of Soleimani and Obama's
thousands of airstrikes on Syria and Iraq .
President Trump has argued that prohibiting funds for military action against Iran actually
makes war more likely, as he would be restricted from the kinds of
military-strikes-short-of-war like his attack on Syria after the alleged chemical attack in
Douma in 2018 (claims which have recently
fallen apart ). The logic is faulty and reflects again the danger of believing one's own
propaganda. As we have seen from the Iranian military response to the Soleimani assassination,
Trump's military-strikes-short-of-war are having a ratchet-like effect rather than a
pressure-release or deterrent effect.
As the financial and current events analysis site ZeroHedge
put it recently:
[S]ince last summer's "tanker wars", Trump has painted himself into a corner on Iran,
jumping from escalation to escalation (to this latest "point of no return big one" in the
form of the ordered Soleimani assassination) -- yet all the while hoping to avoid a major
direct war. The situation reached a climax where there were "no outs" (Trump was left with
two 'bad options' of either back down or go to war).
The Iranians have little to lose at this point and America's European allies are, even if
impotent, fed up with the US obsession with Saudi Arabia and Israel as a basis for its Middle
East policy.
So why open this essay with a photo of Trump celebrating his dead-on-arrival "Deal of The
Century" for Israel and Palestine? Because this is once again a gullible and weak President
Trump being led by the nose into the coming Middle East conflagration. Left without even a
semblance of US sympathy for their plight, the Palestinians after the roll-out of this "peace"
plan will again see that they have no friends outside Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. As Israel
continues to flirt with the idea of simply annexing large parts of the West Bank, it is
clear that the brakes are off of any Israeli reticence to push for maximum control over
Palestinian territory. So what is there to lose?
Trump believes he's advancing peace in the Middle East, while the excellent Mondoweiss
website rightly
observes that a main architect of the "peace plan," Trump's own son-in-law Jared Kushner,
"taunts Palestinians because he wants them to reject his 'peace plan.'" Rejection of the plan
is a green light to a war of annihilation on the Palestinians.
It appears that the center may not hold, that the self-referential echo chamber that passes
for Beltway "expert" analysis will again be caught off guard in the consequence-free profession
that is neocon foreign policy analysis. "Gosh we didn't see that coming!" But the next day they
are back on the teevee stations as great experts.
It is hard to believe that Trump has any confidence in Jared Kushner. Yet, he does enough
to go public with a one-sided plan developed without Palestinian input.
a real danger for foreign policy advisors and analysts – and especially those they
serve – when they are in a bubble, an echo chamber, and all of their conclusions are
based on faulty inputs.
The same is true of the economists and financial analysts who live in the bubble of the
NSYE and the echo chamber of Manhattan. All of their conclusions are based on faulty
inputs.
If Trump continues to be 'dumb' enough to consistently hire these people and
consistently listen to them, and if his supporters continue to be dumb enough to
consistently believe all the lies and excuses, then Trump and his supporters are 100%
involved in the neoCON.
"It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn's immediate removal from the
Administration was essential to undermining Trump's entire foreign policy initiatives
including no new interventionist wars, peace with Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and
Afghanistan."
I always get a chuckle out of the notion that Trump and the neocons are mortal enemies. Do
you know who co-wrote Michael Flynn's "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War
Against Radical Islam and Its Allies"? Does the name Michael Ledeen ring a bell? A profile on
Flynn in the New Yorker Magazine revealed that much of the book is practically plagiarized
from Ledeen's sorry body of books and articles. Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies. This is about as neocon as you can get with founder
Clifford D. May now serving as President, who is also a member of the Henry Jackson Society,
an outfit that is infamous for supporting the war in Iraq. Here is Ledeen on the countries
posing the greatest threat to the USA:
It's no coincidence. Russia, Iran and North Korea are in active cahoots. They are
pooling resources, including banking systems (the better to bust sanctions), intelligence
and military technology, as part of an ongoing war against the West, of which the most
melodramatic battlefields are in Syria/Iraq and Ukraine.
To judge by their language, the leaders of the three countries think the tide of world
events is flowing in their favor. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered an
ultimatum to the West, saying that Iran's war against "evil" would only end with the
removal of America. Russian President Vladimir Putin marches on in Ukraine, blaming the
West for all the trouble, and the North Koreans are similarly bellicose.
They are singing from the same hymnal. And they aim to do us in.
Right, they aim to do us in. So it turns out that the guy that Flynn is most closely
allied to ideologically is ten times scarier than Hillary Clinton. If you still have doubts
about Flynn's close ties to Ledeen, I recommend The New Yorker profile linked to above. It
states:
Flynn and Ledeen became close friends; in their shared view of the world, Ledeen
supplied an intellectual and historical perspective, Flynn a tactical one. "I've spent my
professional life studying evil," Ledeen told me. Flynn said, in a recent speech, "I've sat
down with really, really evil people" -- he cited Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Russians, Chinese
generals -- "and all I want to do is punch the guy in the nose."
Get that, people? Flynn said he'd like to punch a Russian in the nose. People get confused
over Flynn's ideological core beliefs by missing that his interest in Russia is solely based
on its usefulness against ISIS. Just because he favored a united military front against ISIS,
it does not mean that he has the same affinity for the Kremlin that someone like Stephen F.
Cohen has. Just remember that the USA and Stalin were allied against Hitler. You know how far
that went.
lundiel ,
Funny you should bring up Ledeen, just after I posted a comment about him, eh Louis?
For whatever reason, Flynn decided to work with Trump and his removal, by his compatriots, is
testament to his problematic policy shift. Who knows if he had a paradigm shift or thought he
knew which side his bread was buttered. The thing is, as Renee says, the FBI are very much
involved in internal politics.
Thank you for another good article. What strikes me is that so many automatically go to, or
refer to, Mr Putin as the voice of reason these days and not Washington DC or any NATO
country. I never thought that I will live to see the US become less trusted than our old
enemy, the commies. BUT, as I say in my books, the Russia of today is not the USSR at all.
Anyway, for those interested in interesting military history, I recently discovered this
myself, see https://www.georgemjames.com/blog/the-fuhrers-commando-order-origins.
I wanted to post on the open thread but got busy and forgot. GMJ.
OK, baby steps. The FBI is the secret police force of the authoritarian (aching to be
totalitarian) govt hidden behind "Truth, Justice & the American Way". The "democratic"
facade of the US politics is, in fact, close to the Greek original: A cabal of oligarchs who
decide distribution of power without daggers, and naturally exclude slaves (workers),
landless peons (minorities), women (grudgingly later included, once indoctrinated) to
maintain the status quo.
The "vote" the oligarchs advertise as proof of their democratic credentials in allowing
the hoi polloi to have a say is insultingly quaint and blatantly futile. All elections are
rigged. Of course! The outcome is preordained. Would you let some naive do-gooder wreck your
decades of building an empire? Never!
If a "ringer" sneaks through the gauntlet of oligarchic vetting and slips the leash, he
(always HE) is put down and the Electoral College is invoked to re-establish the status quo
with an acceptable front man.
Foreign policy? Long ago decided and continued regardless of who inhabits the White House
this season. He follows the script, is handsomely paid and retires famous and breathing. Go
off-script and doom is certain, the funeral subdued.
In closing the class, we can conclude that the FBI is not rogue; it is functioning as
intended and professionally considering the gangly amateurs it has to herd along path.
I was obvious that Flynn was targeted for elimination by what ludicrously calls itself the
"resistance" right from the beginning using Hoover's G-boys and girls who have by the way
been heavily infiltrated by CIA to get him.
Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. In fact the connections are so incestuous that many of the
FBI's "agents" are sheep dipped Agency officers.
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
Why? Probably because they are working on the same team as CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and the
other alphabet soup agencies who gain their power from what could be correctly called the War
of Terror. Flynn being a threat because he was in agreement with Trump's proposed
noninterventionist foreign policy.
The same one he promised his voters but has currently reneged on. Remember the
"resistance" as they call themselves but are really the same ol' shit faction want America
constantly embroiled in Foreign conflicts and the operation known as the "Purple
Revolution"by the same group who likes to color code their regime changes was not only to
take down Flynn but Trump as well. A soft coup in other words.
Now that Trump's playing ball they can go after his base and those on the left who oppose
the usual that the so called "resistance' offers.
Seamus Padraig ,
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
The FBI does have a counter-intelligence function, so that would give them some legitimate
interest in the activities of foreign intelligence services, at least; but I suspect their
obsession with Trump and Flynn goes far, far beyond any legitimate legal mandate.
True they've always had a CI function but it was more like a total Keystone Kops' operation.
Still is probably when you consider that Hannssen worked in their CI for over two decades
without being detected.
Of there's CIA with James Jesus Angleton who was a good friend of Kim Philby who wrecked
any CI capability both FBI and CIA had by being suspicious of any Russiaphile.
In fact this whole Russiaphobia and hoax is probably the resurrection of the ghost of
Angleton.
True Hoover spent more time chasing Commie and creating the Red Scare than he did cross
dressing and hanging out a Mob hangouts which he assured us didn't exist.
"Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. "
Fusion Centers. Created and run by the very same Andrew McCabe at the centre of Crossfire
Hurricane and subsequently fired for malfeasance and abuse of public office.
The same Fusion centers were behind America's biggest "terror" attacks, in the same way
MI5 tend to be behind (or at least have very good knowledge of prior to) our own
"attacks"
(just to let the admins know, I had Seamus Padraig's details pre-filled in my text
box)
This book sheds some light into the story of how Administrative assistants to Present became
independent heavily influenced by CIA body controlling the USA foreign policy and to a large
extent controlling the President. Recent revolt of NSC (Aka Ukrainegate) shows that the servant
became the master
The books contains some interesting information about forming NSC by Truman --- the father of
the US National Security State. And bureaucratic turf war the preceded it. It wwas actually
Eisenhower who created forma position of a "special assistant to the president for national
security affairs"
The author also cover a little bit disastrous decision to launch a "surge" (ironically by the
female chickenhawk Meghan O'Sullivan), -- which attests neocon nature of current NSC and level of
indoctrination of staffers in "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine quite clearly. That's why a
faction of NSC launched a coup d'état against Trump in t he form of Ukrainegate and
probably was instrumental in Russiagate as well.
Notable quotes:
"... Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis, intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September 11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington. ..."
"... Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars. ..."
"... Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course. ..."
"... The NSC common law's kept the peace in Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the bureaucracy and military. ..."
"... ...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches. 13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government policy without accountability. ..."
"... it is no wonder some Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants. ..."
"... Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. ..."
"... ... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government. ..."
"... The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars ahead. ..."
The men and women walking the hushed corridors of the Executive Office Building do not look
like warriors. Most are middle-aged professionals with penchants for dark business suits and
prestigious graduate degrees, who have spent their lives serving their country in windowless
offices, on far-off battle-fields, or at embassies abroad. Before arriving at the NSC, many
joined the military or the nation's diplomatic corps, some dedicated themselves to teaching and
writing about national security, and others spent their days working for the types of
politicians who become presidents. By the time they joined the staff, each had shown the pluck
-- and the good fortune -- required to end up staffing a president.
When each NSC staffer first walks up the steps to the Executive Office Building, he or she
joins an institution like no other in government. Compared to the Pentagon and other
bureaucracies, the staff is small, hierarchically flat with only a few titles like directors
and senior directors reporting to the national security advisor and his or her deputies.
Compared to all those at the agencies, even most cabinet secretaries, the staff are also given
unparalleled access to the president and the discussions about the biggest decisions in
national security.
Yet despite their access, the NSC staff was created as a political, legal, and bureaucratic
afterthought. The National Security Council was established both
to better coordinate foreign policy after World War II and as part of a deal to create what
became known as the Defense Department. Since the army and navy only agreed to be unified under
a single department and a civilian cabinet secretary if each still had a seat at the table
where decisions about war were expected to be made, establishing the National Security Council
was critical to ensuring passage of the National Security Act of 1947. The law, as well as its
amendments two years later, unified the armed forces while also establishing the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as the CIA.
... ... ...
Fans of television's the West Wing would be forgiven for expecting that once in the Oval
Office, all a staffer needs to do to change policy is to deliver a well-timed whisper in the
president's car or a rousing speech in his company. It is not that such dramatic moments never
occur, but real change in government requires not just speaking up but the grinding policy work
required to have something new to say.
A staffer, alone or with NSC and agency colleagues, must develop an idea until feasible and
defend it from opposition driven by personal pique, bureaucratic jealousy, or substantive
disagreement, and often all three.
Granted none of these fights are over particularly new ideas, as few proposals in war are
truly novel. If anything, the staffs history is a reminder of how little new there is under the
guise of national security. Alter all, escalations, ultimatums, and counterinsurgency are only
innovative in the context of the latest conflicts. The NSC staff is usually proposing old
ideas, some as old as war itself like a surge of troops, to new circumstances and a critical
moment.
Yet even an old idea can have real power in the right hands at the right time, so it is
worth considering how much more influence the NSC brings to its fights today.
... ... ...
A larger staff can do even more thanks to technology. With the establishment of the
Situation Room in 1961 and its subsequent upgrades, as well as the widespread adoption of email
in the 1980s, the classified email system during the 2000s, and desktop video teleconferencing
systems in the 2010s, White House technology upgrades have been justified because the president
deserves the latest and the fastest. These same advances give each member of the staff global
reach, including to war zones half a world away, from the safety of the Executive Office
Building.
The NSC has also grown more powerful along with the presidency it serves. The White House,
even in the hands of an inexperienced and disorganized president like Trump, drives the
government's agenda, the news media's coverage, and the American public's attention. The NSC
staff can, if skilled enough, leverage the office's influence for their own ideas and purposes.
Presidents have also explicitly empowered the staff in big ways -- like putting them in the
middle of the policymaking process -- and small -- like granting them ranks that put them on
the same level as other agency officials.
Recent staffers have also had the president's ear nearly every day, and sometimes more
often, while secretaries of state and defense rarely have that much face time in the Oval
Office. Each has a department with tens of thousands (and in the Pentagon's case millions) of
employees to manage. Most significantly, both also answer not just to the president but to
Congress, which has oversight authority for their departments and an expectation for regular
updates. There are few more consequential power differences between the NSC and the departments
than to whom each must answer.
Even more, the NSC staff get to work and fight in anonymity. Members of Congress,
journalists, and historians are usually too busy keeping track of the National Security Council
principals to focus on the guys and gals behind the national security advisors, who are
themselves behind the president. Few in Washington, and fewer still across the country, know
the names of the staff advising the president let alone what they arc saying in their memos and
moments with him.
Today, there arc too many unnamed NSC staffers for anyone's good, including their own. Even
with the recent congressional limit on policy staffers, the NSC is too big to be thoroughly
managed or effective. National security advisors and their deputies are so busy during their
days that it is hard to keep up with all their own emails, calls, and reading, let alone ensure
each member of the staff is doing their own work or doing it well. The common law and a de
tacto honor system has also struggled to keep staff in check as they try to handle every issue
from war to women's rights and every to-do list item from drafting talking points to doing
secret diplomacy.
Although many factors contribute to the NSC's success, history suggests they do best with
the right-size job. The answer to better national security policy and process is not a bigger
staff but smaller writs. The NSC should focus on fewer issues, and then only on the smaller
stuff, like what the president needs for calls and meetings, and the big, what some call grand
strategic, questions about the nation's interests, ambitions, and capacities that should be
asked and answered before any major decision.
... ... ...
Along the way, the staff has taken on greater responsibilities from agencies like the
departments of state and defense as each has grown more bureaucratic and sclerotic.
Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis,
intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September
11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the
military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to
reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington.
As a result, today the NSC has, regretfully, become the strategic engine of the government's
national security policymaking. The staff, along with the national security advisor, determine
which issues -- large and small -- require attention, develop the plans for most of them, and
try to manage day-to-day the implementation of each strategy. That is too sweeping a remit for
a couple hundred unaccountable staffers sitting at the Executive Office Building thousands of
miles from war zones and foreign capitals. Such immense responsibility also docs not make the
best use of talent in government, leaving the military and the nation's diplomats fighting with
the White House over policies while trying to execute plans they have less and less ownership
over.
... ... ...
Although protocol still requires members of the NSC to sit on the backbench in National
Security Council meetings, the staff s voice and advice can carry as much weight as those of
the principals sitting at the table, just as the staff has taken on more of each department's
responsibilities, the NSC arc expected to be advisors to the president, even on military
strategy. With that charge, the staff has taken to spending more time and effort developing
their own policy ideas -- and fighting for them.
Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands
of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they
come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and
visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC
staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars.
The American way of war, developed over decades of thinking and fighting, informs how and
why the nation goes to battle. Over the course of American history and, most relevantly, since
the end of World War II, the US military and other national security professionals have
developed, often through great turmoil, strategic preferences and habits, like deploying the
latest technology possible instead of the largest number of troops. Despite the tremendous
planning that goes into these most serious of undertakings, each new conflict tests the
prevailing way of war and often finds it wanting.
Even knowing how dangerous it is to relight the last war, it is still not easy to find the
right course for a new one. Government in general and national security specifically are
risk-averse enterprises where it is often simpler to rely on standard operating procedures and
stay on a chosen course, regardless of whether progress is slow and the sense of drift is
severe. Even then, many in the military, who often react to even the mildest of suggestions and
inquiries as unnecessary or even dangerous micromanagement, defend the prevailing approach with
its defining doctrine and syndrome.
As Machiavelli recommended long ago, there is a need for hard questions in government and
war in particular. He wrote that a leader "ought to be a great askcr, and a patient hearer of
the truth." 7 From the Executive Office Building, the NSC staff, who are more
distanced from the action as well as the fog of war, have tried to fill this role for a busy
and often distracted president. They are, however, not nearly as patient as Machiavelli
recommended: they have proven more willing, indeed too willing at times, to ask about what is
working and what is not.
Warfighters are not alone in being frustrated by questions: everyone from architects to
zookeepers believes they know how best to do their job and that with a bit more time, they will
get it right. Without any of the responsibility for the doing, the NSC staff not only asks hard
questions but, by avoiding implementation bias, is willing to admit, often long before those in
the field, that the current plan is failing. A more technologically advanced NSC, with the
ability to reach deep into the chain of command and war zones for updates, has also given the
staff the intelligence to back up its impatience.
Most times in history, the NSC staff has correctly predicted that time is running against a
chosen strategy. Halperin. and others on the Nixon NSC, were accurate in their assessments of
Vietnam. Dur and his Reagan NSC colleagues were right to worry that diplomacy was moving too
slowly in Lebanon. Haass and Vershbow were correct when they were concerned with how windows of
opportunity for action were shrinking in the Gulf and Balkans respectively, just as O'Sullivan
was right that things needed to change relatively soon in Iraq.
Yet an impatient NSC staff has a worse track record giving the president answers to what
should come next. The NSC staff naturally have opinions and ideas about what can be done when
events and war feel out of control, but ideas about what can be done when events and war feel
out of control, but the very distance and disengagement that allow' the NSC to be so effective
at measuring progress make its ideas less grounded in operational realities and more clouded by
the fog of Washington. The NSC, often stridently, wants to do something more, to "go big when
wc can," as one recent staffer encouraged his president, to fix a failing policy or win a w
r ar, but that is not a strategy, nor does that ambition make the staff the best
equipped to figure out the next steps."
With their proposals for a new plan, deployment, or initiative, the staff has made more bad
recommendations than good. The Diem coup and the Beirut mission are two examples, and
particularly tragic ones at that, of NSC staff recommendations gone awry. The Iraq surge was
certainly a courageous decision, but by committing so many troops to that country, the manpower
w r as not available for a war in Afghanistan that was falling off track. Even the
more successful NSC recommendations for changes in US strategy in the Gulf War and in Bosnia
did not end up exactly as planned, in part because even good ideas in war rarely do.
Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC
staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In
conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way
of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the
frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive
Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to
accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course.
And it is characterized by more frequent and counterproductive friction between the civilian
and military leaders.
... ... ...
Through it all, as the NSC's voice has grown louder in the nation's war rooms, the staff has
transformed how Washington works, and more often does not work. The NSC's fights to change
course have had another casualty: the ugly collapse of the common law' that has governed
Washington policymaking for more than a generation. The result today is a government that
trusts less, fights more, and decides much slower.
National security policy- and decision-making was never supposed to be a fair fight. Eliot
Cohen, a civil-military scholar with high-level government experience, has called the
give-and-take of the interagency process an "unequal" dialogue -- one in which presidents are
entitled to not just make the ultimate decision but also to ask questions, often with the NSC's
help, at any time and about any topic.* Everyone else, from the secretaries of state and
defense in Washington dow r n to the commanders and ambassadors abroad, has to
expect and tolerate such presidential interventions and then carry out his orders.
Even an unfair fight can have rules, however. The NSC common law's kept the peace in
Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized
operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the
agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed
the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after
September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and
occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more
responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the
bureaucracy and military.
... ... ...
...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New
York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid
Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches.
13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll
found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government
policy without accountability.
In an era when Americans can see on reality television how their fish are caught, meals arc
cooked, and businesses are financed, it is strange that few have ever heard the voice of an NSC
staffer. The Executive Office Building is not the only building out of reach: most of the
government taxpayers' fund is hard, and getting harder, to see. With bigger security blockades,
longer waits on declassification, and more severe crackdowns on leaks, it is no wonder some
Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants.
The American people need to know the NSC's war stories if for no other reason than each
makes clear that there is no organized deep state in Washington. If one existed, there would be
little need for the NSC to fight so hard to coordinate the government's various players and
parts. However, this history also makes plain that though the United States can overcome bad
decisions and survive military disasters, a belief in a deep state is a threat to the NSC and
so much more.
... ... ...
Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power
has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives
up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what
they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. Shortcuts and squabbles may make
sense when every second feels like it counts, but the best public servants do what is necessary
for the president even as they protect, for years to come, the health of the institutions and
the very democracy in which they serve. As hard as that can be to remember when the clock in
the Oval Office is ticking, doing things the right way is even more important than the latest
crises, war, or meeting with the president.
... ... ...
... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten
that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC
has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its
members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more
fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government.
Centuries ago, Plato argued that civilians must hope for warriors who could be trusted to be
both "gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies." At a time when many doubt government and
those who serve in it, the NSC staff s history demonstrates just what White House warriors arc
capable of. The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars
ahead.
... ... ...
The legendary British double agent Kim Philby wrote: "just because a document is a document
it has a glamour which tempts the reader to give it more weight than it deserves An hour of a
serious discussion with a trustworthy informant is often more valuable than any number of
original documents. Of course, it is best to have both."
A must-read for anyone interested in history or foreign policy. Gans pulls back the
curtain on arguably the most powerful yet opaque body in foreign policy decision-making,
the National Security Council. Each chapter recounts a different administration -- as told
through the work of an NSC staffer. Through these beautifully-written portraits of largely
unknown staffers, Gans reveals the chilling, outsized influence of this small, unelected
institution on American war and peace. From this perspective, even the policy success
stories seem more luck than skill -- leaving readers concerned about the NSC's continued
unchecked power.
"... The IG Report confirms that, after the election, top FBI officials discussed 'interview strategies' regarding how to set Flynn up in an ostensibly innocent conversation. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe arranged the meeting with the goal to walk Flynn into a well-laid trap without informing him that there was a criminal investigation underway or that he was a target. ..."
"... On January 24, 2017, four days after the Inaugural, Peter Strzok, former FBI Chief of counterespionage and the same unnamed SSA1 (Supervisory Special Agent) who led the August briefing met with Flynn for a friendly chat, more popularly referred to as the Ambush Interview. ..."
"... What does that tell you? Powell believes, based on sworn witness testimony, that the final 302 is not an accurate reflection of the 302 notes or Flynn's statements of January 24th. ..."
"... It is curious that an SSA1 whose identity remained cloaked in secrecy throughout the entire IG FISA Report continues to be mentioned as a significant participant in the Bureau's Crossfire Hurricane while his name remains redacted on official documents. Disguising his identity may simply be attributed to activities worth concealing. ..."
"... In an unexpected turn, it was Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who outed the SSA1 as agent Joe Pientka in his May 11, 2018 letter to the Bureau . ..."
"... Grassley's May 11th letter confirms that Comey was aware that Flynn had not lied regarding the Kislyak conversation and further points out the stunning revelation that Pientka was 'on detail' as staff on the Judiciary Committee, presumably with the Democrats. For all his persistence, the FBI continues to rebuff Grassley's assertions for a transcript of the Kislyak conversation as well as demanding Pientka's presence "for a transcribed interview with Committee staff." ..."
We now know that, before Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017, the FBI had the ouster
of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the President's National Security Adviser, in its sights. By February 13th, Flynn
was out the door
.
Think about it. Why was Flynn's removal of the utmost importance to the FBI, more vital than removal of any other
cabinet officer like the Pentagon or State Department?
So crucial was it that they created a specific strategy willing to embrace prosecutorial misconduct and agency
malfeasance to take Flynn down. Prosecutorial misdeeds are nothing new to the FBI as they have a well-founded
history of corruption
over the
years with its warts now publicly displayed.
It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn's immediate removal from the Administration was
essential to undermining Trump's entire foreign policy initiatives including no new interventionist wars, peace with
Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.
In retrospect, the entire fraudulent Russiagate conspiracy makes sense when viewed from the perspective of an
effort to rein in Trump's foreign policy goals of which Flynn would have been a necessary, integral part.
The question is where did the first glimmer of setting up Flynn originate? Who had the most to gain by disrupting
Trump's foreign policy agenda? A number of suspects come to mind including the evil Brennan/Clapper twins, a
bureaucratically well-placed neocon, an interested foreign entity like Israel or somewhere deep within the dark
bowels of the FBI, all of which are in sync with the Democratic leadership and its corporate media minions.
At the time, the Washington Post, a favorite CIA organ, was reporting that Flynn had 'hinted' to Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that Trump might be willing to 'relax' sanctions against Russia. It was then claimed that
Flynn had 'misled' VP Pence by denying that he had had a conversation regarding sanctions with Kislyak. None of it
was true.
With Flynn removed, Trump never regained his footing on foreign policy which no doubt was exactly as intended;
thereby opening the door for the likes of Jared Kushner to assume the role of 'trusted adviser."
Let's examine how the FBI eliminated Flynn:
In August, 2016, an FBI 'strategic intelligence briefing' was conducted for candidate Trump with Flynn as his
national security adviser in attendance. The briefing, which was not a traditional
'defensive' briefing
in which a presidential candidate is alerted of a foreign government's effort to intercede
in their campaign, was led by an anonymous "experienced FBI counter intelligence agent." According to the IG Report
on FISA abuses, at that time Flynn was already a "subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation."
The IG Report confirms that, after the election, top FBI officials discussed 'interview strategies' regarding how
to set Flynn up in an ostensibly innocent conversation. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe arranged the meeting
with the goal to walk Flynn into a well-laid trap without informing him that there was a criminal investigation
underway or that he was a target.
Such a procedure is called 'entrapment' and considered illegal. (See Clint Eastwood's new film Richard Jewell for
details on the FBI's entrapment techniques).
On January 24, 2017, four days after the Inaugural, Peter Strzok, former FBI Chief of counterespionage and the
same unnamed SSA1 (Supervisory Special Agent) who led the August briefing met with Flynn for a friendly chat, more
popularly referred to as the Ambush Interview.
At that time, either one or both agents took handwritten notes while neither provided the usual heads-up about
penalties for making a false statement since that would have tipped their hand. Since Flynn believed this was an
informal visit, he did not feel the need to have an attorney present or inquire why, if this was a friendly
get-to-know chat, the need to take notes.
That conversation led to Flynn being charged with 'lying to the FBI' regarding his conversation with Kislyak.
After the interview, preparation of a 302 form is normal procedure. A 302 is a summary of and a formalizing of
those notes taken during the conversation. It is those original 302 notes which are in dispute and which the FBI
refuses to provide to
either the Senate Judiciary Committee
or to Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell.
What does that tell you? Powell believes, based on sworn witness testimony, that the final 302 is
not an accurate reflection
of the 302 notes or Flynn's statements of January 24th.
It is curious that an SSA1 whose identity remained cloaked in secrecy throughout the entire IG FISA Report
continues to be mentioned as a significant participant in the
Bureau's
Crossfire Hurricane
while his name remains redacted on official documents.
Disguising his identity
may simply be attributed to activities worth concealing.
According to Strzok, Pientka was
"primarily responsible"
as the 'note taker' and prepared the 302 report
of the interview on which Flynn's prosecution is based. Powell has challenged authorship since the final 302 version
contains falsified statements never made in the original interview that are now being criminalized.
In a message to his paramour Lisa Page, Strzok thanked Page for her 'edits' on the 302 regarding the Flynn-Kislyak
conversation on sanctions
that never occurred while Strzok suggested that, at some future time, they discuss a
'media leak strategy.'
Soon after Flynn's resignation, a skeptical Grassley requested unredacted transcripts of the Flynn Kislyak
conversation with the FBI repeatedly refusing to comply.
Grassley's
May 11th letter confirms
that Comey was aware that Flynn had not lied regarding the Kislyak conversation and
further points out the stunning revelation that Pientka was 'on detail' as staff on the Judiciary Committee,
presumably with the Democrats. For all his persistence, the FBI continues to rebuff Grassley's assertions for a
transcript of the Kislyak conversation as well as demanding Pientka's presence
"for a transcribed interview with
Committee staff."
In response to an 'insufficient' FBI reply, Grassley then let loose with a
June 6th zinger
detailing a compilation of FBI lies, failures and hypocrisies too numerous to be articulated (but
worth reading)
here
.
While a review of the FBI's entire prosecution of Flynn raises considerable legal and ethical questions, the
Bureau's consistent refusal to turnover evidentiary material is indicative of a deceitful agency protecting its own
criminal behavior.
Why is the FBI embedding an SSA1 with the Senate Committee that has legislative jurisdiction over its mission?
Does this strike anyone else like the tactic of a totalitarian state?
How does Flynn's case move forward without the FBI providing the necessary exculpatory documents legally
required for every defendant?
How does a Congressional Committee provide effective oversight and accountability if they are continually
stonewalled by the very agency within their legal authority?
How can the FBI ever be rehabilitated if Congress, fearful of a constitutional crisis, has no political will
to assert its proper authority and issue a Contempt of Congress subpoena?
With the FBI out of control, Is this any way to run a country?
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and President of
the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with
Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is also a student
of the Quantum Field and may be reached at @reneedove31.
Antonym
,
Better ask: did Trump sabotage the foreign policy of the FBI CIA FED hydra?
When it comes to US foreign policy, the names in the news usually include our President,
Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and a couple big name
generals depending on the war. Of course, there are many more people involved, and the entire
process is supposed to run through the National Security Council. Hence I bought this book
with the intention of learning more about the decision making process from someone who has
served in government and dealt with the NSC. The book is a chronological history of the NSC
from its inception to the administration of George W. Bush post 9/11. It focuses on the major
personalities that have served on the NSC, and how its functioning have changed with each
administration under the guidance or negligence of the President. Some Presidents, like
Eisenhower, made sure the NSC ran like a well-oiled machine that harnessed the wisdom, skills
and opinions of all its members and their agencies. Other Presidents, like Nixon and W. Bush
used it essentially as a committee to bottleneck ideas while they worked with their favorites
on major decisions. The book does a great job showing how individuals as disparate as Henry
Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice have utilized the NSC.
However, what I found lacking in this book is its complete minimization of the role of big
corporations in affecting US foreign policy. A quick google search will show that every
member of the NSC has sat on the boards of multiple corporations prior to joining the NSC. It
is safe to assume that these corporations chose these board members due in large part to
their ability to influence US foreign policy. And so the book covers very little in terms of
tariffs and economic treaties. The biggest economic item covered by the book are trade
sanctions, and even then focuses mainly on the sanctions applied to Iraq after the first Gulf
War.
Also lacking in the book was any significant discussion on US efforts in combating the
international trade in narcotics, weapons and slaves. Wars are a big issue, but I doubt they
take up all the time of the NSC. Looking up the NSC in Wikipedia, one sees that it includes
members tasked with fighting America's drug wars; and our drug wars are probably the big
ticket item in dealing with Latin America. Yet narcotics, heroine, and cocaine do not even
show up in the book's index. Overall, I consider this book an interesting read for those new
to foreign policy, but it misses out on a lot.
Why the rush? There are a surprising number of little mistakes that should have been
picked up in the editing process. Granted, the topic is timely and important, but would the
world have collapsed if the publishers held on to the book for an extra month for another
round of read-throughs? Also, there is just too much writing. Editors should have crossed out
a lot of unnecessary stuff.
There are two reasons I point out one factual error I came across. First, it makes me feel
smarter. That is less important to everyone else, but it makes me feel good. Second, if I
found one error, people who specialize in other areas may have noticed other errors, and
those should be pointed out. Anyway, on pages 218-219, Rothkopf describes Reagan's National
Security Planning Group (NSPG) as having been "chaired by Bush and [it] ended up dealing with
issues like the spate of terrorist attacks and other crises that confronted the
administration." The NSPG did indeed deal with important issues, and in some sense it
probably dealt with the issues he pointed out, but Rothkopf is confusing the NSPG with the
Crisis Management Team, which later became the Special Situations Group, both of which were
chaired by VP Bush. The NSPG, however, was more accurately described by Bush's VP chief of
staff, Craig Fuller: "The [NSPG] is the most restricted national security council meeting
that is called. It is usually confined to the principals, meaning the Secretaries of State,
Defense, Vice President, ... the Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, the President's Chief of Staff, [the National Security Adviser and deputy NSA] and
... usually the Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury, but it can be expanded
depending on the topic." No more than a dozen people usually attended, and only the President
and Vice President brought their chiefs of staff (p. 923). There were usually two NSPG
meetings per month. The Tower Commission report noted that the NSC meetings were becoming a
bit too big for productive discussions among the principals, so the President turned to the
NSPG. And from everything I have read, Reagan was at most of the meetings. This is not a
major error, but at the same time, the NSPG was an incredibly important component of Reagan
Administration foreign/national security policy. Perhaps there are other errors.
One of the funnier errors: the Washington Post Book World review pointed out that the
picture on the cover is more likely from a Cabinet meeting. Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor,
who is not on the NSC, is clearly visible in the picture. Was it really that difficult to
come up with a better, more accurate picture? If people do judge books by the cover, this one
has not put its best foot forward.
The good stuff: Rothkopf's description of policy viewpoints is interesting. Rather than
the constant chatter about the personal spats between major members of foreign policy
(although those are included in the book too), we should hear more about what these people
think. This important stuff is shaping the world. Another great aspect of the book is that
Rothkopf got an amazing amount of access to the key players through interviews. These are the
people who have shaped the world over the past four or so decades. The quotations, although a
bit long, are practically a primary source of data for other researchers. Hopefully someday
Rothkopf will make his interview transcripts available to other researchers. Great stuff
there.
David J. Rothkopf was a junior member of the Clinton administration. In this fascinating
book, he studies the post-1947 record of the American foreign policy élite, the
National Security Council and its staff, about 200 people. This exclusive establishment,
which he actually calls an `aristocracy', is the part of the US ruling class that runs
national policy across Republican and Democrat administrations.
He contrasts 1947 with post-2001, finding `a stunningly different set of conclusions about
what to do with American power and prestige'. He supports the multilateralism of NATO, the
Marshall Plan, the IMF, the World Bank and the UN, under the slogan of globalisation, and
argues against Bush's unilateralism, which puts the USA `above and beyond the influence of
global institutions or the rule of law'. He agrees with Carter's national security advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, that terrorism is a tactic not an enemy.
He notes `the debacle in Iraq', yet misunderstands the region completely when he writes,
"it is the decay of Middle Eastern civilisation that is the threat to us." Not the US state's
unpopular alliances with the Saudi and Israeli states then!
He describes the USA's whole political system as suffering "an irresponsible separation
between the will of the majority of America and the will of the representatives of the
American people." But if the people's supposed representatives do not represent them, how can
this be a democracy?
Finally, Rothkopf warns, "The real strategic threats come from those who would offer an
alternative to our leadership." These "will argue that our system has exacerbated rather than
resolved basic problems of inequity in the world." With some justice, since, as he admits,
"the majority of the world's population are today effectively disenfranchised from reaping
the benefit of the world we have been leading." If this US leadership, exercised through the
institutions which he so admires, has not benefited the majority of the world's people, what
good is it?
David J Rothkopf has written a valuable book about a government agency that one hears very
little about in the daily news. "Running the World" is an insider's account of the inner
workings of the National Security Council (created by the National Security Act of 1947). The
National Security Council is an executive body within the White House that includes cabinet
level officials involved in diplomacy and defense. Rothkopf's account is about the key
players that were responsible for the successes and failures of the National Security
Council's management of America's foreign policy since the end of World War II.
Rothkopf's insider credentials are impressive: he is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, he was under-secretary of commerce during the Clinton Administration, he served as
managing director of Kissinger and Associates, he also served as Chairman and CEO of
Intellibridge, and he is currently visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
There is an interesting section in this book called "Two Degrees of Henry Kissinger,"
which shows that the 13 national security advisors (NSAs) that followed Kissinger have either
worked with him, for him, or worked with or for one of the members of his staff.
After Nixon was elected President, Kissinger was appointed NSA. Kissinger not only
assembled one of the most talented teams in the history of the NSC (Lawrence Eagleberger,
Anthony Lake, Alexander Haig, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert MacFarlane), he also took control,
either directly or indirectly, of all the interagency policy groups. Kissinger was Nixon's
entire inner circle in matters of foreign policy.
When the Watergate scandel broke, Nixon became distracted and virtually left Kissinger to
his own devices. As a result, Kissinger may have been the most powerful non-elected official
in American history and certainly every NSA since has operated in his shadow.
The title of this book "Running the World" is more than a little pretentious. As has been
noted by other reviewers, it is an account of the old boys network written by an old boy and
tends toward self-importance. A more accurate and humble title would have been the one I
chose for this review: "Global Crisis Management." The NSC does not run the world. The NSC,
which consists of the senior cabinet members and White House staff members, is more than
likely trying to control crises as they occur than trying to direct the course of events. And
as Rothkopf makes clear, the response to a given crisis depends very much on the
personalities of the members who are in the president's favor at the given moment.
Rothkopf is very critical of the current Bush Administration's track record. He argues
that they have lost sight of the liberal internationalist values set forth by Truman at the
end of World War II when the council was founded. At the time, the US enjoyed a position of
power that was not unlike its position after 9/11. The Truman Adminsistration established
international institutions that deferred America's power to the good of international system.
The Bush Administration, under the sway of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other neoconservatives,
decided to reassert American national interest through the use of military force, the
consequences of which we are still suffering today.
Critics of this book have called Rothkopf an apologist for the Clinton administration. Far
from it, Rothkopf has enumerated the foreign policy disasters that occured during Clinton's
watch: namely, the failures in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Rwanda. The picture that Rothkopf
paints of the NSC is not one that runs the world but rather one that tries to maintain the
status quo in the face of an ever-changing world.
I read the reviews of this book and made the mistake of buying it based upon them, but
this is really a very superficial book. From a historical point of view, it shows us how the
NSC was created by Truman, primarily because he was so out of the loop while Vice President
that he didn't even know about the Manhattan project to build the atom bomb, but as the book
moves into more current events, political slants take over the turn the book into a very
one-sided view of the US options available in today's world. Rothkopf is a "pragmatist" in
the Kissinger mold, which I guess he would have to be since he ran Kissinger's shop, but his
opinions really show very little depth, and really no historical perspective of options
available in dealing with bin Laden and terrorism back when it could have been much more
easily dealt with. There are some insights about how Clinton seldom attended NSC meetings
when tectonic changes were taking place as he dallied with Monica, but this book isn't really
a very sophisticated examination of the world today and how we got here, other than to
criticize W Bush for the state of the world today without looking at the limited hand he was
dealt by his predecessors when it came to Islamic terrorism. I would have given the book one
star but the book's history of the NSC gives it some redeeming social value, but the last
half of the book is really pretty worthless because it is so unbalanced and political.
Flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but no Palestinian leader, President
Donald Trump unveiled “a vision for peace” in the Middle East on Tuesday which
permits Israel to annex much of the occupied West Bank immediately, offering the Palestinians
only local control in isolated Bantustans surrounded by Israeli territory.
As many Israeli political observers noted, the timing of the announcement, just hours after
Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges in Jerusalem, looked like an effort to boost the
prime minister’s bid to win reelection in March, his best hope for avoiding prison.
A US President facing impeachment and an Israeli Prime Minister indicted for corruption,
leading an interim minority government, are about to announce a plan to solve the conflict with
the Palestinians, without any Palestinian present. Unbelievable farce. — Anshel Pfeffer
(@AnshelPfeffer) January 28, 2020
The release of the 180-page plan — which was drafted by aides to Jared Kushner,
Trump’s son-in-law and an old family friend of Netanyahu — was staged as a
celebration, and acted as a dual campaign rally, with the American president and the Israeli
prime minister boasting of all they had achieved for Israel to a room filled with far-right
supporters of the Jewish state, including business magnate Sheldon Adelson, the Republican and
Likud megadonor who spent millions of dollars to elect both leaders.
Trump, who intervened in a previous Israeli election campaign on Netanyahu’s behalf
— by recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights last year — gave
the embattled prime minister a podium at the White House to detail conditions imposed on the
Palestinians which sounded like terms of surrender.
To start with, Netanyahu said, the Palestinians would be required to recognize Israel as a
Jewish state, cede the entire Jordan Valley, disarm Hamas, and abandon hope for both the return
of refugees who fled homes in what is now Israel and for a capital in Jerusalem’s Old
City.
pic.twitter.com/RmKVVWh9F2 — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) January 28, 2020
“Your peace plan offers the Palestinians a pathway to a future state,” Netanyahu
told Trump. “I know that it may take them a very long time to reach the end of that path;
it may even take them a very long time to get to the beginning of that path,” he
added.
In fact, as Crisis Group analyst Tareq Baconi observed, “The plan sets out parameters
that are impossible for Palestinians to accept, and effectively provides Israel with a
blueprint to sustain the one-state reality that exists on the ground.”
That sentiment was echoed by Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of B’Tselem, an
Israeli rights group that monitors the occupation. “What the Palestinians are being
‘offered’ now is not rights or a state, but a permanent state of Apartheid. No
amount of marketing can erase this disgrace or blur the facts,” El-Ad wrote. “The
reality on the ground is already one of full Israeli control over the entire area between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and everyone living in it. It is a reality of one,
inherently undemocratic, state.”
The plan was rejected by Palestinian rights activists in the region and abroad.
Netanyahu logic: If Palestinians agree to land theft, annexation, no refugee return,
subjugation and no means of defense, Israel will negotiate with us. — Diana Buttu
(@dianabuttu) January 28, 2020
They want to put us in permanent, high-tech cages and call it peace. #DealOfTheCentury
#ApartheidDeal #Palestine #PalestinianFreedom — Noura Erakat (@4noura) January 28,
2020
CNN interviews Palestinian human rights attorney on the Trump plan. "This is not a deal,
this is a plan to consolidate Israel's colonial takings." @4noura https://t.co/dFfNuKnH08
— Mairav Zonszein ??? ??????? (@MairavZ) January 29, 2020
The US is a colonial state trying to broker a "solution" which favors another
settler-colonial state. The only message is, commit enough massacres, create enough judicial
procedures, create enough diplomatic jargon, and all is allowed. #Palestine #TrumpDeal —
???? ???????? (@MariamBarghouti) January 28, 2020
#Palestinian refugees in Lebanon's Ein El-Helweh camp who have been deprived of a homeland
for years protest and say NO to the so-called #DealOfTheCentury and tell Trump: Our fate is not
for you to decide. pic.twitter.com/Y7We93iIRA — We Are Not Numbers #Gaza
(@WeAreNotNumbers) January 28, 2020
“An impeached and bigoted President works in tandem with a criminally indicted and
racist Prime Minister to perpetuate the reality of apartheid and subjugation,” Jamil
Dakwar, a Palestinian American who was born in Haifa and now leads the ACLU’s human
rights program, wrote on Twitter. “Palestinians will not be coerced to give up their
human rights to live as free and equal human beings.”
Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, described the
plan delivered by Kushner to Trump as “100 percent the ideas I personally heard many
times from Netanyahu and his negotiators. I can assure you that the American so-called peace
team have only copied and pasted Netanyahu’s and the settlers’ councils
plan.”
Amid accusations that his plan was largely based on concepts and details dictated by
Netanyahu, Kushner cast himself as an independent expert on the conflict in an interview with
Sky News Arabia on Tuesday. “I’ve been studying this now for three years,” he
told Sky News Arabia, “I’ve read 25 books on the subject.”
At least one of those books appears to have been written by Netanyahu, however. As Dylan
Williams of the liberal, pro-Israel group J Street pointed out, Kushner’s plan appeared
at one point to borrow language from one of the Israeli prime minister’s books.
On the left, an excerpt from Netanyahu’s book “A Durable Peace.”
On the right, the Trump/Kushner “peace” proposal.
I don’t know an academic integrity panel at any university that would let this fly.
pic.twitter.com/NvgzWOsL2r — Dylan Williams (@dylanotes) January 29, 2020
In a subsequent interview, Kushner even seemed unaware of the length of the proposal
released by his team, referring to the 181-page document as “an over 80-page
proposal.” He appeared to be echoing an error made by Trump during his prepared remarks
the White House ceremony when he said, “our plan is 80 pages.”
Speaking in Ramallah, at a rare gathering of leaders of the major Palestinian factions,
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the proposal was not “the deal of the
century,” as Trump and the Israelis described it, but “the slap of the
century.”
“Trump, Jerusalem is not for sale. Our rights are not for sale. Your conspiracy deal
will not pass,” Abbas said, in comments reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
While Trump said that Palestinians could eventually have a capital in Jerusalem, the plan
suggested that this would be outside of the city, in a neighborhood close to, but not in the
city, as Telegraph correspondent Raf Sanchez pointed out.
IMPORTANT: the detail plan of the plan confirms that Palestinians will not get any part of
Jerusalem inside the security barrier.
That means they get a few far-flung eastern neighbourhoods as their capital but none of the
Old City or areas where most East Jerusalemites live. pic.twitter.com/ZL6AJVJ565 — Raf
Sanchez (@rafsanchez) January 28, 2020
Within hours of the plan’s release, Netanyahu said that his government would move on
Sunday to formally annex the 131 Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of
which are illegal under international law, as well as the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead
Sea. The plan’s map of the newly expanded Greater Israel, and the fragmented Palestinian
enclaves, were shared on Twitter by Trump.
??? ?? ?? ???? ???? ???? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ?? ????? ?? ????? ???????.
pic.twitter.com/CFuYwwjSso — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020
In his remarks, Trump said that Netanyahu had “authorized the release of a conceptual
map” showing the contours of the land to be annexed, and their two governments would soon
form a joint committee “to convert the conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated
rendering so that recognition can be immediately achieved.”
Because the Israeli settlement blocs, which are home to more than 400,000 settlers, are
stitched together with a network of roads and checkpoints that restrict the freedom of movement
of Palestinians, the territory Trump said his plan “allocated” for a future
Palestinian state would exist only as a series of enclaves inside Israel.
As Ben Silverstein of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington,
explained, the “conceptual map” included in the plan gave an “appearance of
contiguity” that facts on the ground would make impossible.
This map is verrrrry generously shaded to give appearance of contiguity.
100% final map will appear closer to archipelago map on the right.
pic.twitter.com/pLcaWak4R2 — Ben Silverstein (@bensilverstein) January 28, 2020
Yousef Munayyer, who directs the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, noted on Twitter that
the reality would look a lot more like what the French illustrator Julien Bousac sketched out
more than a decade ago for Le Monde Diplomatique to show the impossibility of a functioning
state compromised of enclaves.
The West Bank Archipelago pic.twitter.com/FBIeOKmnUd — (((YousefMunayyer)))
(@YousefMunayyer) January 28, 2020
Daniel Seidemann, director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, pointed out that previous
administrations had privately accepted the erosion of Palestinian hopes for a contiguous
state.
Perspective, for those who think this started with Trump.
This is a slide/map, I presented to a senior official in the Obama White House. His chilling
response: you’re probably right, but the sun still will rise, birds sing, and life will
go on.
Sound familiar? Look familiar? pic.twitter.com/mJ2ZQPzgef — Daniel Seidemann
(@DanielSeidemann) January 28, 2020
Shibley Telhami, a scholar of the region at the University of Maryland, pointed to another
disturbing detail of the plan: a provision to further ethnically cleanse Israel by revoking the
citizenship of Palestinians living in one section of the state, and forcing that region to
merge with those parts of the West Bank not annexed by Israel.
One shocking feature of Trump's "American" plan is that Israel would carve out Israeli-Arab
towns in the "Triangle" region, strip them of Israeli citizenship, and place them under
Palestinian jurisdiction -- something majorities oppose. Un-American Plan.
https://t.co/eQNFzRLvdG pic.twitter.com/bn143hVSRr — Shibley Telhami (@ShibleyTelhami)
January 28, 2020
Trump’s plan was denounced by both Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among
the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump for the presidency.
While Sanders called the plan “unacceptable,” Warren went further, promising to
“oppose unilateral annexation in any form — and reverse any policy that supports
it.”
Trump's "peace plan" is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real
Palestinian state. Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn't diplomacy, it's
a sham. I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that
supports it. — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 28, 2020
It must end the Israeli occupation and enable Palestinian self-determination in an
independent state of their own alongside a secure Israel. Trump's so-called 'peace deal'
doesn't come close, and will only perpetuate the conflict. It is unacceptable. — Bernie
Sanders (@SenSanders) January 28, 2020
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a staunch defender of Netanyahu who reportedly frustrated
Obama administration efforts to confront him over the occupation, did not immediately comment
on the plan.
Politico reported on Tuesday that the Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel super PAC
led by the Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, plans to run an attack ad in Iowa this week
“that raises concerns about Bernie Sanders’ 2019 heart attack and calls him too
liberal to beat President Donald Trump.”
As I reported earlier this year, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the
conservative pro-Israel lobbying group known as AIPAC, paid for a pressure campaign on Facebook
targeting Sanders, who would be the first Jewish president of the United States — one who
has expressed concern for Palestinian rights and described Netanyahu as “a
racist.”
"... Currently they can wrap themselves into constitution defenders flag and be pretty safe from any criticism. Because charges that Schiff brought to the floor are bogus, and probably were created out of thin air by NSC plotters. Senators on both sides understand this, creating a classic Kabuki theater environment. ..."
"... In any case, it is clear that Trump is just a marionette of more powerful forces behind him, and his impeachment does not means much, if those forces are untouchable. Impeachment Kabuki theatre is an attempt of restoration of NSC (read neocons) favored foreign policy from which Trump slightly deviated. ..."
As for "evil republican senators", they would be viewed as evil by electorate if and only only if actual crimes of Trump regime
like Douma false flag, Suleimani assassination (actually here Trump was set up By Bolton and Pompeo) and other were discussed.
Currently they can wrap themselves into constitution defenders flag and be pretty safe from any criticism. Because charges
that Schiff brought to the floor are bogus, and probably were created out of thin air by NSC plotters. Senators on both sides
understand this, creating a classic Kabuki theater environment.
Both sides are afraid to discuss real issues, real Trump regime crimes.
Schiff proved to be patently inept in this whole story even taking into account limitations put by Kabuki theater on him, and
in case of Trump acquittal *which is "highly probable" borrowing May government terminology in Skripals case :-) to resign would be a honest thing
for him to
do.
Assuming that he has some honestly left. Which is highly doubtful with statements like:
"The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there so we don't have to fight Russia here."
And
"More than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies. 15,000."
Actually it was the USA interference in Ukraine (aka Nulandgate) that killed 15K Ukrainians, mainly Donbas residents
and badly trained recruits of the Ukrainian army sent to fight them, as well as volunteers of paramilitary "death squads" like Asov
battalion financed by oligarch Igor Kolomyskiy
In any case, it is clear that Trump is just a marionette of more powerful forces behind him, and his impeachment does not means
much, if those forces are untouchable. Impeachment Kabuki theatre is an attempt of restoration of NSC (read neocons) favored foreign policy from which Trump
slightly deviated.
Then Trump ordered the drone strike on Soleimani, drastically escalating a simmering
conflict between Iran and the United States. All of a sudden the roles were reversed, with
Bolton praising the president and asserting that Soleimani's death was "
the first step to regime change in Tehran ." A chorus of neocons rushed to second his
praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's
intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's "decisive action." It
was Carlson who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with
Iran for decades," Carlson
said . "They still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it."
"... One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows. ..."
"... In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President's principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies. ..."
"... What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's policies. ..."
"... Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office. ..."
"... Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ..."
"... As Prouty states, "When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin." ..."
"... Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir. ..."
"... This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin. ..."
"... Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d'état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison's book . And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK") ..."
"... Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia and China. ..."
"... Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979. ..."
"... Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to 'pay the price' . ..."
"... I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing. ..."
"... Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently , but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating: ..."
"... "Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979." Ahem. Somehow I doubt the CIA had to do with THAT regime change 🙂 Try 1953? ..."
"... Reminiscent of Karl Rove's :"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort out." ..."
"... It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency . For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas." ..."
"... The entire bureaucratic leadership of the Nazis. And it proved to be a smashing success – transforming the U.S. into the fourth Reich. ..."
"... You see the same price gouging in the drug and insurance monopolies. A gigantic slush fund to buy foreign and domestic politicians and journalists like so many street corner whores. ..."
"... There is also a $100 billion "Intelligence" empire. ..."
"... That is why Oceania will always be at war with Eastasia, and why that war will never be won. Wars are not intended to be won, just to carry on for ever, making more and more money and providing more and more opportunities for graft for the people who matter. Weapons are not intended to work, just to make money. ..."
"... That's why flying turkeys like the F22 and F35 are produced. Like the cargo planes full of pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills that were flown into Iraq that promptly disappeared. ..."
"... But JFK was not shot down like a dog in broad daylight with millions of people watching because he challenged these interests. It was because he was trying to stop the nuclear weapons programme of the Zionist Regime. That was what cost him his life. ..."
"... JFK also wanted to end the control of the US economy of the Federal Reserve, a coalition of private banks, nearly all controlled by Jewish interests. He really wanted to be hit, that fella. ..."
There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully
unfold."
William Shakespeare
Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its
breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst
us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by.
The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters
back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of
crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this
one person.
The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and
undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible
crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it
was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that is
exactly what we should not do.
In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous
indignation, unfortunately, causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and
narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in
front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the
doublespeak of 'official government statements'.
Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must
first have an understanding as to what caused the United States to enter into an endless
campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations for the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.
An Internal
Shifting of Chess Pieces in the Shadows
It is interesting timing that on Sept 2, 1945, the very day that WWII ended, Ho Chi Minh
would announce the independence of Indochina. That on the very day that one of the most
destructive wars to ever occur in history ended, another long war was declared at its
doorstep.
Churchill would announce his "Iron Curtain" against communism on March 5th, 1946, and there
was no turning back at that point. The world had a mere 6 months to recover before it would be
embroiled in another terrible war, except for the French, who would go to war against the Viet
Minh opponents in French Indochina only days after WWII was over.
In a previous paper I wrote titled "On
Churchill's Sinews of Peace" , I went over a major re-organisation of the American
government and its foreign intelligence bureau on the onset of Truman's de facto
presidency.
Recall that there was an attempted military coup d'état, which was exposed by
General Butler in a
public address in 1933 , against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year.
One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy corners for how Roosevelt
would organise the government.
One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously
existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be
replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence
purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows.
In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security
Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended
function was to serve as the President's principal arm for coordinating national security,
foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.
In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations
in compliance with National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC
Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations and
assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions, provided they
had been directed to do so by the NSC , and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel
to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces were directed to "provide the
military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA" as an official function .
What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence
bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the
relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we
will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's
policies.
An Inheritance of Secret Wars
There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare."
Sun Tzu
On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States.
Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, he was
to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.
JFK was disliked from the onset by the CIA and certain corridors of the Pentagon, they knew
where he stood on foreign matters and that it would be in direct conflict for what they had
been working towards for nearly 15 years.
Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his
book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's March 1960 approval
of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach
operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office.
This was a massive change in plans that was determined by neither President Eisenhower, who
warned at the end of his term of the military industrial complex as a loose cannon, nor
President Kennedy, but rather the foreign intelligence bureau who has never been subject to
election or judgement by the people.
It shows the level of hostility that Kennedy encountered as soon as he entered office, and
the limitations of a President's power when he does not hold support from these intelligence
and military quarters.
Within three months into JFK's term, Operation Bay of Pigs (April 17th to 20th 1961) was
scheduled. As the popular revisionist history goes; JFK refused to provide air cover for the
exiled Cuban brigade and the land invasion was a calamitous failure and a decisive victory for
Castro's Cuba.
It was indeed an embarrassment for President Kennedy who had to take public responsibility
for the failure, however, it was not an embarrassment because of his questionable competence as
a leader. It was an embarrassment because, had he not taken public responsibility, he would
have had to explain the real reason why it failed.
That the CIA and military were against him and that he did not have control over them.
If Kennedy were to admit such a thing, he would have lost all credibility as a President in
his own country and internationally, and would have put the people of the United States in
immediate danger amidst a Cold War.
What really occurred was that there was a cancellation of the essential pre-dawn airstrike,
by the Cuban Exile Brigade bombers from Nicaragua, to destroy Castro's last three combat jets.
This airstrike was ordered by Kennedy himself.
Kennedy was always against an American invasion of Cuba, and striking Castro's last jets by
the Cuban Exile Brigade would have limited Castro's threat, without the U.S. directly
supporting a regime change operation within Cuba. This went fully against the CIA's plan for
Cuba.
Kennedy's order for the airstrike on Castro's jets would be cancelled by Special Assistant
for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, four hours before the Exile Brigade's B-26s were
to take off from Nicaragua, Kennedy was not brought into this decision.
In addition, the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of the Bay
of Pigs operation was unbelievably out of the country on the day of the landings.
Col. Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during this time, elaborates on this
situation:
Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the policy
dictated by NSC 5412, positively prohibited the utilization of active-duty military personnel
in covert operations. At no time was an "air cover" position written into the official
invasion plan The "air cover" story that has been created is incorrect."
As a result, JFK who well understood the source of this fiasco, set up a Cuban Study Group
the day after and charged it with the responsibility of determining the cause for the failure
of the operation. The study group, consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Adm.
Arleigh Burke and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the only member JFK could trust), concluded
that the failure was due to Bundy's telephone call to General Cabell (who was also CIA Deputy
Director) that cancelled the President's air strike order.
Kennedy had them.
Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay
of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This
allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961,
which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
As Prouty states, "When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection
in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be
one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin."
If this was not enough of a slap in the face to the CIA, Kennedy forced the resignation of
CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and CIA Deputy
Director Charles Cabell.
In Oct 1962, Kennedy was informed that Cuba had offensive Soviet missiles 90 miles from
American shores. Soviet ships with more missiles were on their way towards Cuba but ended up
turning around last minute.
Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev,
which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles.
Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir.
NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy, was released on Oct 11th, 1963, and outlined a
policy decision "to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963" and
further stated that "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including
the CIA and military] by 1965." The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the
headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY '65. Kennedy was winning the game and the American
people.
This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin.
Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not
just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful
military coup d'état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go
to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District
Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison's
book . And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK")
Through the Looking
Glass
On Nov. 26th 1963, a full four days after Kennedy's murder, de facto President Johnson
signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of Kennedy's policy under #263. And on March 4th, 1964,
Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved
2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed
Forces during this period.
The Vietnam War, or more accurately the Indochina War, would continue for another 12 years
after Kennedy's death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans.
Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would
involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on
Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war
that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees
the toppling of Russia and China.
Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam
Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already
suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979.
It had been understood far in advance by the CIA and US military that the toppling of
sovereignty in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran needed to occur before Russia and China could be
taken over. Such war tactics were formulaic after 3 decades of counterinsurgency against the
CIA fueled "communist-insurgency" of Indochina.
This is how today's terrorist-inspired insurgency functions, as a perfect CIA formula for an
endless bloodbath.
Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton
during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he
claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that
Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to 'pay the price' .
Therefore, when a drone stroke occurs assassinating an Iranian Maj. Gen., even if the U.S.
President takes onus on it, I would not be so quick as to believe that that is necessarily the
case, or the full story.
Just as I would not take the statements of President Rouhani accepting responsibility for
the Iranian military shooting down 'by accident' the Boeing 737-800 plane which contained 176
civilians, who were mostly Iranian, as something that can be relegated to criminal negligence,
but rather that there is very likely something else going on here.
I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked,
draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of
American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised
situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a
simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after
reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing.
One could speculate that the President was set up, with the official designation of the IRGC
as "terrorist" occurring in April 2019 by the US State Department, a decision that was strongly
supported by both Bolton and Pompeo, who were both members of the NSC at the time.
This made it legal for a US military drone strike to occur against Soleimani under the 2001
AUMF, where the US military can attack any armed group deemed to be a terrorist threat. Both
Bolton and Pompeo made no secret that they were overjoyed by Soleimani's assassination and
Bolton went so far as to tweet "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." Bolton
has also made it no secret that he is eager to testify against Trump in his possible
impeachment trial.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently ,
but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he
admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate
those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating:
I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training
courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."
Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA
holds no allegiance to any country. And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is
actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position to hold the CIA
accountable for its past and future crimes.
Originally published at Strategic Culture
Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation
(Montreal, Canada).
Gerda Halvorsen ,
"Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979." Ahem. Somehow I doubt the CIA had
to do with THAT regime change 🙂 Try 1953?
Doctortrinate ,
Is just another work of Theatre ..for all the world, a Staged play – along with legion
of dramatic action to arouse spectator participation – its a merge inducing show
– and each time the curtain falls, the crowd screams "more" so, extending its run.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Reminiscent of Karl Rove's :"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort
out."
George Cornell ,
Ah yes, the Roveing Lunatic.
Doctortrinate ,
" We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do "
Suskind/Rove.
and so it continues .. 🙂
Vierotchka ,
The actual quote:
The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based
community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your
judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about
enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world
really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll
act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what
we do."
Charlotte Russe ,
It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the
Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take
another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency .
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original
assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.
This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."
Well, NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, the
Genie has taken total control and has mushroomed into thousands of bottles planted throughout
the planet hatching multiple schemes designed to undermine and overthrow numerous
nation-states.
What many don't know is that "decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United
States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants (this was
known as Operation Paperclip) ..At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement
and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A.
aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet "assets,"
declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis' intelligence value against the
Russians outweighed what one official called "moral lapses" in their service to the Third
Reich. The CIA hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after
concluding he was probably guilty of minor war crimes.
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an
ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis' massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in
Lithuania, according to a government official."
Is there no wonder, the CIA is so proficient at torture techniques, they learned from the
very best–the Nazis.
They 'hired' Klaus Barbie, a in no ways 'minor' war criminal. The US took over the surviving
Nazi terror apparatus, lock, stock and barrel.
nottheonly1 ,
The entire bureaucratic leadership of the Nazis. And it proved to be a smashing success
– transforming the U.S. into the fourth Reich.
paul ,
You just have to look at existing realities. There is a military budget of $1,134 billion, greater than the rest of the world combined.
This is the true figure, not the bogus official one.
There is a secret black budget of over $50 billion, with zero accountability to anyone.
$21 trillion, $21,000,000,000,000, has officially "gone missing" from the military budget.
This sum is nearly as large as the official National Debt.
This represents a cornucopia of waste, graft, theft, corruption, and wholesale looting on an
unimaginable scale.
A single screw can cost $500.
You see the same price gouging in the drug and insurance monopolies.
A gigantic slush fund to buy foreign and domestic politicians and journalists like so many
street corner whores.
There is also a $100 billion "Intelligence" empire.
That is why Oceania will always be at war with Eastasia, and why that war will never be
won.
Wars are not intended to be won, just to carry on for ever, making more and more money and
providing more and more opportunities for graft for the people who matter.
Weapons are not intended to work, just to make money.
That's why flying turkeys like the F22 and F35 are produced.
Like the cargo planes full of pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills that were flown into Iraq
that promptly disappeared.
Even with the best will in the world, even if all the people involved were persons of
outstanding integrity, it would probably simply be impossible to control this vast sprawling
octopus of mega arms corporations and competing military and spook and administrative
fiefdoms. So you get different players and actors who are a law unto themselves, beyond any
real control, pursuing their own agendas with little regard for their own government and its
policies, and often blatantly opposing it.
Obama and Trump tried to make limited agreements with Russia over what was happening on
the ground in Syria. These agreements were deliberately sabotaged by people like Ashton
Carter in less than 24 hours. With complete impunity. Sensitive negotiations with North Korea
were deliberately sabotaged by Bolton.
A great deal of the economic and military power of America is dissipated in this way. The
same destructive turf wars between competing agencies were a characteristic feature of the
Third Reich. A model of waste, corruption, muddle and inefficiency.
But JFK was not shot down like a dog in broad daylight with millions of people watching
because he challenged these interests. It was because he was trying to stop the nuclear
weapons programme of the Zionist Regime. That was what cost him his life.
Richard Le Sarc ,
JFK also wanted to end the control of the US economy of the Federal Reserve, a coalition of
private banks, nearly all controlled by Jewish interests. He really wanted to be hit, that
fella.
paul ,
Yes, any goys who threaten Chosen interests would do well to steer clear of grassy
knolls.
JFK, Bernadotte, Arafat, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Chavez, Soleimani, it's all the same
story.
Corbyn could well have gone the same way if rigging the election against him had failed.
Antonym ,
Nice example of Richard Le Sarc's non-sensical anti Israelism: Here he writes that Lower
Manhattan is run by Jews, while scrolling one page up he is telling that the US (=Fairfax
county) took over the Nazi terror apparatus. Some combination!
Both places are run mainly by ex-Christian/ secular Americans, with only money/power as
their God.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Leading Zionassties like Jabotinsky ('We'll kill anyone who gets in our way')were outright
fascists, an, in his case, admirers of Mussolini. Yitzhak Shamir (I have an image of Shamir
in my mind when I read your contributions)offered Jewish 'fighters' to work with the Nazis.
German Zionists actively worked with the Nazis to transfer Jews and German investment to
Palestine. And the similarities hardly end there. The Zionassties and the German Nazis both
see themselves as Herrenvolk. They both desire lebensraum for their people, at the expense of
Slavic or Palestinian and other Arab untermenschen. Both hold International Law in open
contempt. However, the Zionassties have far more political power than the German Nazis ever
dreamed of. And the German Nazis never had nukes, or only very primitive ones.
Harry Stotle ,
"The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that THERE IS NO SECRET. Principally, one
must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which
end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the
apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades
away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end
of World War II the United States has:
1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were
democratically elected;
2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries;
3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders;
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries;
5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries."
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US
Foreign Policy and Everything Else
Brian Harry ,
The older I get, the more I believe that it was the USA/CIA?MIC who made Australia's Prime
Minister, Harold Holt, "disappear" in heavy surf off a Victorian beach on 17th, December
1967. His body was never found. I think he was getting "cold feet" about the "American War"
in Vietnam as it was getting going, and possibly wanted 'out'.
It was said that a Chinese submarine took him, but, I don't think submarines are designed to
operate in relatively shallow water and heavy surf.
Another Australian PM(Gough Whitlam) was "removed" in a Coup in 1975 which was heavily
influenced by the British and American secret services
Richard Le Sarc ,
And Kevin Rudd was offed by a gang of hard Right Labor rats, led by US 'protected source' (as
outlined in the Wikileaks from Manning)Bill Shorten. Principal among Rudd's crimes was a lack
of enthusiasm for the anti-China campaign (his successor, the Clinton-loving Julia Gillard,
was very happy to join the Crusade)and changes to Australia's votes re. Occupied Palestine in
the UN. And he expelled a MOSSAD agent from the Israeli 'Embassy', after the MOSSAD stole
Australian passport identities for operations like the ritual killing of a Hamas operative in
Dubai. They had done it before, and 'promised' not to do it again. Rudd was advised by our
'intelligence', stooges of the USA one and all, to do this, which I suspect was a set-up to
mobilise the local Sabbat Goyim.
Who is in control is the idea of Notional Security within a world of 'Threat' that is
pre-emptively struck before it can speak – and analysed and engineered in all it is,
does or says, for assets, allies, ammunition and narrative reinforcement. (Possession and
control as marketising and weaponising – as the drive rising from fear of pain of
loss).
Insanity is given 'control' by the fear-threat of an unowned projected mind of intention.
The devil is cast out in illusion that is then underpinned by shadow forces that operate
'negatively' as the illusion of victory in subjugation or eradication of evils – that
simply change form within a limiting and limited narrative account. This short term override
has become set as our long term default consciousness and given allegiance and identity as
our source of self-protection.
Imagination is Creative – and fear-framed imagination is the attempt to control an
'evil' imagination CAST OUTSIDE a notional self exceptionalism.
There is a pattern here that CAN be recognised but that the invested identity under fear
of pain of loss does NOT WANT to allow and so refuses and includes the revealing of
heart-felt truth as THREAT to established or surviving order – hence its association
and demonisation with fear, treachery, heresy and evil power that must be denied Voice at ANY
cost – because 'survival' depends on NOT hearing the Voice for truth – when
survival is equated with separated or split minds – set apart from the living and over
them – while struggling within a hateful world that fails the judging imagination of a
private self-gratification.
Fascination with evil and the 'dynamic' of conflict is the willing investment of identity
in its frame – as if THIS TIME – a meaningful result will follow from insane
premises. And THIS TIME is repeated over and over – through millennia.
The 'dynamic' of conflict is the device by which Peace or Wholeness of being is denied
awareness. A polarised play of shifting mutually exclusive and contradictory 'meanings' as a
'doublethink' by which to COVER over lack of substance and SEEM to be in control. Reactive
resistance and opposition provides 'proof' or reinforcement to the narrative frame of the
control. Such is the manipulative power struggle for dominance over the other' subjection or
loss.
A world of sock puppets enacts the script given them.
The living dead willingly give themselves to the specialness that excepts them from feared
lack and loss of validity as the claim to moral outrage or alignment in compliance with its
dictate.
The realm of a phishing ruse is that of a mis-taken identity. At this level a simple error
can set in motion the most complex deceit. Its signature is in the pride or self-inflation
that sets up the 'fall' – and the fool.
Problems are set in forms that persist through apparent resolving. To truly resolve, heal
or undo a problem, we have to go upstream to the level in which it was set up as a
conflict-block – perhaps as an unseen consequence of a false sense of possession or
attempt to control. At some point there will be no other option BUT to yield to truth –
because there is a limit to our tolerance for pain of conflict, protected and worshipped as
power over Life, and sustained as a bubble reality of exclusive and inverted 'meanings' while
Infinity is all about you.
If a mistaken identity is the 'stealing of the mind of the king, and the realm and all it
oversees, then the 'Naked Emperor' story is speaking to your ongoing and persistent loss of
Sovereign will to a fear of being exposed invalid, revealed as without substance, and utterly
undone of not only your self-presentations – but your right to be. IN the story it was
visiting courtiers who insinuated a sense of lack in the Emperor's thought to then offer the
means to cover over it with special and impressive presentation – as a masking that
demanded sacrifice of truth in order to seem to be real.
This inversion operates from lack-based thinking that splits or disconnects from currently
felt and shared presence to seek OUTSIDE itself for what it's thought frames it in being
denied or deprived of.
How does one deal with a dissociated madman massively armed and beset with fears,
grievance, betrayal, and a deep sense of being cornered with no where else to go?
This is our human predicament at this time.
For every instance of its manifestation will be a fear-framed narrative of struggle in
ancient hate.
Willingness to open to that we may be wrong, is the release of the assertion of belief as
'knowing' and the opportunity to re-evaluate the belief in the light of a current relational
honesty. 'Acceptance of 'not knowing' is the condition in which an innocence of being
spontaneously moves us to recognise and release error from its presenting as true.
A false idea of power is being played out as a world of the corruption of the true.
I met this on a random find for a search yesterday:
FIRST RAY:
Pure qualities:
Traditionally as the ray of power and will, yet from a deeper understanding the first ray
represents the creative drive. This is the desire for self-expression, a willingness to
experiment, even when the outcome of the experiment cannot be known ahead of time. Also a
willingness to flow with life and learn from every experience. The first ray gives rise to
the sense that everything matters, that life is exciting and that the individual truly can
make a positive difference. The first ray is also the key to your willingness to work for
raising the whole, instead of raising only yourself.
Perversions:
The perversion of the creative will is a fear of the unknown, which is expressed as an
ability to abuse power in order to control one's circumstances, including other people.
There is a fear of engaging in activities where the outcome cannot be predicted or
guaranteed, which obviously stifles creativity. People with perverted first ray qualities
are often engaged in a variety of power games with other people, all based on the desire to
control the outcome. This is an attempt to quell the very life force itself, which always
points towards self-transcendence, and instead protect the separate self and what it thinks
it can own in this world. This can lead to a sense of ownership over other people, which is
one of the major sources of conflict on this planet. In milder cases, people have a fear of
being creative and a sense of powerlessness, feeling that nothing really matters and that
an individual cannot make a difference -- thus, why even bother trying.
Everything you do is done with the energy of one or several of the spiritual rays. The
entire material world is made from the seven rays.
• Every limitation you face is created out of a perversion of one or more of the seven
spiritual rays.
• The ONLY way to transcend a given limitation is to free yourself from a): the belief
that created the limitation and b): the low-frequency energy that has been generated.
• The ONLY way to transform the low-frequency energy that is created by perverting a
given ray is to invoke the pure energy of that ray. Any ray is the anti-dote to the
perverted energy from that ray.
George Cornell ,
Pompeo's epic statement "we lied we cheated we stole" will be be an American catchphrase or
hashtag for the ages.
In most of the world it would be a confession. In the US it is a boast.
wardropper ,
And after a short while it will no longer be considered to be worth a second thought.
Came, saw, conquered . . . might as well add lied, cheated, stole
Morality is stone dead in Washington. Might as well face it, then perhaps a serious search
for ways of bringing it back to life can begin.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Lying is now the lingua franca of all Western kakistocracies. Here in Australia, not long
ago, to be caught lying ended a political career. Now it is ubiquitous, inescapable and
attended by a smug arrogance that says, 'You can do NOTHING about my personal and group moral
insanity. WE have the power, and we will use it ANY way we, and our Masters in Washington and
Tel Aviv wish to!' It is best and most suicidally seen in this denialist regime's utter
contempt for science and facts, as the country alternatively burns down, or is pummeled by
giant hail-stones and violent tempests, or inundated by record, unprecedented, deluges.
George Cornell ,
Sad but true
Antonym ,
Hear, hear!
An expert on lying opens his mouth again, and again, and again, and again, ..
lundiel ,
Very interesting article.
Hugh O'Neill ,
"Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently, but judging
from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits
that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those
who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating: I was the CIA Director.
We lied, we cheated, we stole".
Cynthia. The "unknown conference" you refer to was an address to Texas A&M University,
which had former CIA director Robert Gates as President. Another former CIA spook teaches
espionage for wannabe spooks. These are scoundrel patriots, devoid of any moral compass, self
awareness or intelligence. Academics need not apply but liars, thieves, cheats, torturers and
assassins are welcome.
The CIA has a stranglehold upon the American psyche. The oft quoted Bill Casey "Our work
will be complete when everything Americans believe is false" cannot bode well for the glory
of the American Experiment. If fat mafiosi thugs like Pompeo and ghouls devoid of any
humanity like Bolton, Clinton, Allbright run the show, then the question must be asked: how
can such amoral stupidity hold the world to ransom? That the CIA were able to assassinate
JFK, MLK, RFK in broad daylight, aided and abetted by the MSM, means their masks have long
fallen and demons boldly walk among us.
"Who is in charge of the US Military?" Well it certainly isn't the president. There is no
doubt that both the military and the CIA are controlled by unelected faceless money men,
which presumably is the MIC that Eisenhower warned about (as did Teddy Roosevelt). Perhaps
"skull and bones" is indeed a satanic cult?
Yes the National Security Act sent the nation to hell from purgatory. The most insidious and
Orwellian bill ever passed until the oxymoronic "Patriot Act" that is.
George Cornell ,
The West Point oath should be modified to " we will not lie, cheat or steal . as long as we
have the CIA, the FBI, the Secretary of State, Congress, the MSM, and the DNC to do it for
us. We're not stoopid."
George Mc ,
The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters
back and forth at the whim of one man.
Yes this magical thinking is still pretty widespread – although it's difficult to
figure out how many think this way. The MSM project this magical view themselves and thereby
project the notion that everyone believes it. Nevertheless, going by the talk I have with
others, a lot do swallow this. It's a bit like the world fundamentalist Bible believers live
in.
Richard Le Sarc ,
The really salient feature of the murder of Soliemani was the sheer treachery of inviting him
to Iraq on a peace mission, only to set him up for butchery. It has the Zionasties
blood-soaked paw-prints all over it.
Mike Ellwood ,
Ironically, it's the sort of stunt the Nazi's might have pulled, back in their day.
Brian Harry ,
I have asked the same question on other platforms and no one seems to know the Answer. "Who
are the CIA, and the Pentagon answerable to?" They seem to operate outside of the control of
the American Government. The CIA seemingly involved in "False Flags" at any point around the
globe, like the attack on the American Warship, in the gulf of Tonkin which was the excuse
for "The American War, in Vietnam(as it is known to the Vietnamese).
And, of course, the attack on Iraq, because Sadam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction,
which, to this day have never been found(whilst Hussein was hung) after being found guilty of
'something' by an American "military Court'.
The Pentagon has "lost TRILLIONS of dollars which it cannot account for, and nobody is even
investigating the matter, seemingly the American President cannot demand it.
And, of course, the Israeli Airforce attack on the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean Sea in
1967, killing and wounding over 200 sailors, brought NO response whatsoever from the American
Military.
President Eisenhower warned the USA(and the World) about the Military Industrial Complex when
he left office, and it has been completely ignored.
It seems that Mossad("By deception, we will make War") are heavily involved in the CIA(and
the MIC of course), so, WHO is in control of the USA?
Antonym ,
Follow the money. The CIA – military have unlimited funds -> the FED can print
unlimited paper dollars -> oil and gas are traded in US dollars only via the New York FED
-> Sunni Arab royals own a lot of oil and gas reserves but need body guards ->
Anglo- Arab oil dollar protection pact made long ago.
A similar deal was not possible with the USSR before or with Iran now. Canada is the US back
garden as is Venezuela.
The Israelis hitched on after 1974 and their job is to be punch ball to distract from the
above in exchange for US & hidden Arab royals support.
So who are in charge of the US? A few dozen characters in Fairfax county, lower Manhattan
and Riyadh with inputs from Caribbean tax heavens.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Silly stuff. The Zionasties and Judeofascists have taken charge in the USA since they
bank-rolled Truman, got away with the USS Liberty atrocity and took over US politics through
straight bribery. US Congress critters don't throw themselves to the floor in ecstasies of
subservience, as they do for Bibi, when any Saudi potentate addresses the Congress. Come to
think of it-has any Saudi ever had that 'honour'? Come to think of it, we'd better go back to
1913 when a coalition of private banks, nearly all Jewish-controlled took over the US economy
as the so-called Federal Reserve.
Antonym ,
Israeli sand vs Saudi/ Kuwaiti/ UAE oil & gas: easy choice for American predators.
Richard Le Sarc ,
You keep forgetting the 'Binyamins', Antsie. What would you rather control-an inevitably
diminishing pool of hydrocarbons, or the Federal Reserve that creates US dollars, ex nihilo,
by the trillions?
Richard Le Sarc ,
The CIA is the US ruling class, armed and in love with murder and destruction. The nature and
extent of US global power is the pre-eminent cause of the global Holocaust that is about to
consume humanity.
What Fletcher Prouty mentioned in the above article called "Capitalism's Invisible Army".
Norn ,
Here is a list of what the CIA include: The FIVE-EYES branches operate as CIA branches (I
think this is undisputable). The FIVE-EYES is a White Christian Fundementalist organisation,
and they share their intelligence (surveillance data) with the Israelis. Their Israelis set
many actions on the FIVE-EYES agenda.
Murdoch's press operate as a CIA shopfront, and so many of (maybe all of them?) the NGOs
scattered around third world countries. Evangelists fully support the CIA agenda. What is the
hell South Korean Evangelists doing in Syria as the war rages on?
Many Jihadist groups as well as unhinged Muslim preachers/Imams serve the CIA agenda very
very well and receive considerable support from both Saudi Arabia and the US. Remember, the
first Jihadist posters were printed by the CIA?. Of course, now the posters would have their
brainwashing digital equivalent. And of course, there are full-timers and part-timers.
That's what we know from just reading the news. There are definitely large amounts of unkowns
to humble folks. Who else would you think, make part of the list? 50% of politicians in
Western so-called Democracies?
Outside the government? Are you that naive? This is a fantasy that was promoted as long ago
as the time of Iran-Contra; the idea that the CIA is composed of a bunch of 'loose cannons',
operating beyond the control of the capitalist state. Whilst it is true that the US security
state has different tactics from different elements within it, the objectives are unvarying,
achieving hegemony. What differs is the route chosen to achieve that end. Of course,
competence (or otherwise) is involved, they're not omnipotent and quite obviously have no
long term vision. I think the correct word is HUBRIS that leads them astray. We saw this in
Vietnam; we see it Afghanistan; we see it in Syria.
The US empire is no British Empire of yore. When the leaders of the two dominant
Imperialist powers of the 19th century, the UK and the US met in the 1890s, they drew up a
plan for the next 100 years, that between them they could conquer the world for capitalism
using the UK's control of the oceans and the industrial might of the US economy.
Surely the fact that the US is now 'led' by an ignoramus reveals the bankrupt nature of
late capitalism?
milosevic ,
WHO is in control of the USA?
here's an informative article about that question:
The 'Deep State' IS the State. The surface pantomime is a puppet play, perhaps a shadow play,
where the real rulers manipulate the political marionettes to do their bidding, NOT that of
the 'useless eaters'. Under capitalism politics is the shadow cast on society by Big
Business, as John Dewey observed.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United
States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you. Not
only do they hold allegiance for their country but they most assuredly hold allegiance to
their government paycheques too. Without their paycheques they would likely constitute
further troubles systemically.
Governments hire skilled personnel in Intel. They are by & large likely normal people
that work for bad governance. The CIA is headed by Bloody Gina Haspel. Read Jane Mayer's _The
Dark Side_ to get Haspel's role.
Haspel epitomizes allegiance to CIA secrecy.
She is a bot.
MOU
Brian Harry ,
"Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United
States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you".
You sound very naïve. How can you be so sure. There's no real evidence to back up
your assurance. How can the Pentagon be allowed to get away with "losing" TRILLIONS of
dollars, and no one's head has rolled? It is a ludicrous situation, and there's no
investigation .WTF!
milosevic ,
How can you be so sure.
personal experience?
Authoritative pronouncements of this sort are typical of the disinfo troll personae.
Apparently, they're supposed to impress the audience, as evidence of direct knowledge and
expertise, to preclude any further doubts or questions about the Official Story.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I'm an unemployed Social Assistance recipient and have not had a full time job since 1985. If
I had two nickels to scrape together I would not even be on Internet, frankly.
If I worked Intel I would not be on Off-G at all.
I guess life is more interesting for you when you fantasize about losers like moi being
Intel operatives but I can assure you that I have never worked government Intel for even one
hour in my lifetime.
When I applied to work Intel upon graduation I was flatly denied & turned down back in
the late 90s. Today, I would have to get false teeth to be presentable for employment and as
a welfare recipient I cannot afford dental work at all.
Stop being an accusatory jerk off, Milosevic.
MOU
George Cornell ,
Well I for one am saddened to hear of your circumstances. Your mind certainly seems sharp.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I am a Marxist by circumstance. In CANADA Marxist proponents are marginalized by the state
& corporatocracy to the extent of abject poverty.
My professors at university made sure I was blacklisted so that I would never get any money
or employment because of my political ethos & cosmology. Instead of promoting my career
advancement they chose to excommunicate my membership in the cartel.
Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason why
the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career
opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism.
The end game is Zero Sum.
MOU
John Thatcher ,
Or in MoUs case ,a common or garden nutter.
George Cornell ,
He sounds like he is down on his luck and you find it in your heart to call him crazy? Is
this what they call subhuman empathy?
milosevic ,
yes, down on his luck, and controlling the world:
Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason
why the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career
opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism. -- MASTER OF
UNIVE
common nutter, or disinfo persona?
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I was raised by a Chartered Accountant Civil Servant. The Pentagon accountants were
assassinated by their bosses in the Pentagon as a warning to any & all that want to
forensically investigate their double sets of books. The GAO-General Accountability Office
gets to do the forensic accounting from a distance now.
No investigation is forthcoming because Congress has not initiated discovery yet.
MOU
Fair dinkum ,
'Who's in charge of the US military?'
C'mon Cynthia, you know the answer to that.
It's the owners, shareholders, directors and CEOs of the MIC.
Nothing or no one, will stand in their way.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The 08 Great Financial Crisis not only stood in the way of the USA MIC & NATO but it
forced BREXIT, TARP, & end to the Fractional Reserve Banking empire of the Western world.
Empiricism destroyed the USA & Capitalism hands down to leave it insolvent, destitute,
& poised for global bankruptcy as the third world banana republic it really is helmed by
a tin pot dictator like Trump stumping for Deutsche Bank so that his loans don't get
called.
It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the
Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take
another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency .
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original
assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.
This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."
Well, NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, the
Genie has taken total control and has mushroomed into thousands of bottles planted throughout
the planet hatching multiple schemes designed to undermine and overthrow numerous
nation-states.
What many don't know is that "decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United
States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants (this was
known as Operation Paperclip) ..At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement
and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A.
aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet "assets,"
declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis' intelligence value against the
Russians outweighed what one official called "moral lapses" in their service to the Third
Reich. The CIA hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after
concluding he was probably guilty of minor war crimes.
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an
ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis' massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in
Lithuania, according to a government official."
Is there no wonder, the CIA is so proficient at torture techniques, they learned from the
very best–the Nazis.
The US calls for apartheid and ethnic cleansing in its primary ME protectorate. Global powers
supposedly concerned with uphholding international law smile knowingly and applaud gently.
Yes it was always going to end this way. Mmmmmm. Might Makes Right. Mmmmmmm. That alone is
international law. Mmmmmmm. More champagne? More vodka?
"The Arab League rejected Trump's plan, saying in a communique it would not lead to a just
peace deal and adding it will not cooperate with the United States to execute the plan.
The ministers affirmed Palestinian rights to create a future state based on the land captured
and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as capital, the final
communique said.
Israeli officials expressed hope Saturday that the League's rejection could bring the U.S.
closer to green-lighting unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, in light of the fact
that Jared Kushner opposed immediate steps toward annexation because he thought the Arab League
might support the plan. " Haaretz
----------
Well, pilgrims, the truth is that nobody in the States who matters gives a damn about what
happens to the Palestinians and it was always thus. Kushner's "peace plan" is just another real
estate scam. pl
King Salman called Abbas to reassure him of Saudi support on the agreed upon outline drawn
up long ago. MbS thinks otherwise, and he is the one who really runs Saudi policy.
Opinion Every Time Palestinians Say 'No,' They Lose Things rarely go well for those who try
to live history backward.
By Bret Stephens SimonEsposito 2 days ago ( Edited ) Functionally, this proposition makes no
sense. The imbalance of power is so great that Palestinians couldn't stop any amount
more of encroachment on the occupied territories. So why would the encroachment stop at
this arbitrary point?
It's absurd to think that the settler movement is going to be stopped by the proposed
four-year freeze. (I view that as a booby-trap planted by Likud - and they surely must
be expecting a fair chance of defeat - to make the next government quickly use up its political
capital fighting media-savvy settlers.) Max21c 3 days ago If these things are decided on the
basis of "might makes right" then the position of the PRC to take sea-space in the South China
Sea is acceptable to Washington and its supporters? Similar per a variety of other territorial
disputes around the globe? Max21c 3 days ago ( Edited ) Prior UN Resolutions hold precedent
until such times as the parties themselves agree upon a mutually agreed solution.
Modus Vivendi not Modus Dictatum! Max21c 3 days ago The United States Senate ratified the
United Nations Charter on July 28, 1945. Article 6 of the Constitution of the United States
maintains that "all treaties made...under the authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme law of the land..." The United States is a signatory to the UN Charter and it has
passed the US Senate. There is no Treaty which transfers the Golan Heights to the State of
Israel. There is no Treaty which transfers Palestinian lands to the State of Israel. The
Constitution of the United States of America does not construct, create, convey, or confer the
power or authority to the President of the United States of America to change the borders of
other peoples, lands, or countries. An American President can say whatever they want as to
policy. The United States is not necessarily bound by such situ per statements, proclamations,
declarations, pronouncements, announcements, dictatum, et cetera. There is a well known and
existing mechanism for the exchange of lands and territories between nation states via
diplomacy, diplomatic negotiations, resolution of the dispute by treaty, or genuine
negotiations & diplomacy and resolution in accordance with International law, et cetera. An
American President holds exclusive authority over foreign policy and diplomacy with the
exception of passage of a treaty by the US Senate. The existing mechanisms and ways of
International Law and diplomacy are brought into American Constitutionality by way of the
Supremacy Clause, thus, there exists a potential exclusive instance of an exclusion to a
President's authority per differentiation between the "policy" of an Administration or
pronouncements thereof and the "laws of the land." Thus one could well surmise that the United
States is on an ongoing basis bound by the laws of the land rather than the pro tempore policy
statements in this instance. An American President is neither a Global Sovereign nor King of
the World. Border disputes generally remain the domain between the corresponding sovereigns,
sovereign nations, or bordering parties. The role of the United States as a third party is
generally limited to diplomacy. The United States can assist, facilitate, or provide guidance
on the potential resolution of the dispute. The United States can propose solutions, fanciful
or not, well meaning or not, realistic or reasonable or not, reasoned or not, genuine or not,
bonne foi or not, yet it cannot impose such solutions unless the agreement of the parties be
gained according to the fashion, manner, and mechanisms that are well know and existing under
International law and well recognized within the realm of the community of nations and the
diplomacy therein. zbarski 3 days ago ( Edited ) UN resolutions are not treaties. The former
are generic opinions or recommendations, which have no legal effect, unless accepted by a
sovereign.
Treaties, unlike UN resolutions, become laws of the land once ratified by a sovereign's
parliament.
So, all your UN resolutions on Israel and fake Palestinians are pieces of toilet paper.
Max21c 3 days ago It's none of Washington's business. They should let the parties themselves
work out an agreement if they can. It's not up to Washingtonians to impose a solution.
If the parties cannot come to a settlement at this time then the status quo prior borders
remain. Washington should abide by the existing regimen and provisions thereof until or if the
parties themselves alter such by mutual agreement. The borders can only be changed by agreement
between the parties.
There are long established, longstanding, and well know mechanisms for discussing and
possibly resolving territorial disputes and those pathways and methods should be followed by
both sides.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag zbarski 3 days ago ( Edited )
First, you come up with bogus definitions. Next, when I take apart those, you respond: it's
none of Washington's business. LOL.
The fact stands: UN resolutions are generic/advisory/opinions. The have no legal
significance, unless accepted by a sovereign. Last time I checked, Israel has not accepted
any... .
Having said that, I agree with you that Washington should leave the issue to the parties. It
is the US, which has been preventing Israel from resolving the territorial dispute. Any other
country would have resolved the issue long time ago. That Israel can't or won't do it, is a
crime against the Jews.
Think of this: what would the US do, if let's say, Quebec had separated from the rest of
Canada and then started launching rockets at Vermont? Hint: Quebec would have been nuked...
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Max21c 3 days ago Washington
should abide by International law and respect the existing UN resolution per lands/borders
until such time as the parties themselves resolve the situ.
The US should not become a party to the dispute.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag GLA 3 days ago you are right.
the United States is not a world government. Our government can make recommendations and offer
support. that is it.
The United Nations is an organization formed to promote peace among nations. It is not a
world government, it is not a legislative body, and it has no lawmaking authority.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report GLA 3 days ago Palestinian leadership should develop and
present their own peace plan. That is their right. Palestinian leadership should hold town hall
meetings in Gaza and the West Bank on their peace plan and give voice to every Palestinian.
That is their right. Respect 2 Reply reply Share link
Copy Report flag Mike_71 2 days ago But the
Palestinian leaderships of both Hamas and Fatah have never done that, as allowing the average
Palestinian to participate in nominating and electing their own candidates and publicly voicing
their own opinions, particularly when they contradict those of the leadership, is no more
tolerated in the Palestinian Territories, than it is in the Peoples' Republic of China. The
leadership of the soon to be dissolved "Palestinian Authority" will be by "President for Life"
Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 16th year of the four year term to which he was elected in 2005.
Likewise, Ismael Haniyeh, Yoyo Sinwar and others in Hamas, have never faced a Palestinian
electorate at the ballot box.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Orville 3 days ago One thing
Mr. Mackey leaves out is the US's treating the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, rather than
occupied Syrian territory. Mike_71 2 days ago While International Law unequivocally condemns
initiating wars of aggression for the purpose of acquiring territory, it is silent when the
victim of that aggression retains land captured in a "defensive war of necessity." Thus, like
the Soviet Union retaining land captured in the "Great Patriotic War" until 1991, Israel's
retaining the Golan Heights, likewise captured in a "defensive war of necessity," the 1967 "Six
Day War," does not violate International Law. As the victorious belligerent in a "defensive war
of necessity," Israel may retain the Golan Heights until such time as possession is modified by
treaty. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uti_possidetis
(Latin: As you possess, you may possess henceforth) Note that the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula,
likewise captured by Israel in the "Six Day War," was returned to Egyptian sovereignty after an
agreement was negotiated and after a withdrawal period, pursuant to the terms of the
Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement. As in the instance of the Egyptian Sinai, the Golan Heights
could be returned to Syria, were the Syrians willing to negotiate a peace agreement with
Israel.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag xochtl 3 days ago
Settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the "special relationship" between the U.S.
and Israel 10 March 2015
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions/From our Staff and Members/Voices of JVP February 24, 2015
talk by JVP Deputy Director Cecilie Surasky at Portland State University from Environmental
Destruction and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement: a panel on international
resistance
1. The 'special relationship' between Israel and the United States is rooted in our common
national narratives and founding mythology. 2. Settler colonialism and white supremacy is the
right, holistic frame with which to understand Israel and Palestine, as well as the U.S. --
it helps us understand what we're really struggling against, and holds us accountable to ways
we may inadvertently be serving the status quo. 3. If the basis of the special relationship
is a common narrative of 'manifest destiny', and the feelings of superiority over others that
it engenders, then to resist we must counter that narrative. One question we often ask
ourselves is why Americans so easily accept the dominant Israeli narrative without question,
and I think the answer is obvious. We have literally been primed, for generations, by our own
national narrative ttler colonialism, white supremacy, and the "special relationship" between
the U.S. and Israel We all are well versed with language about the "special relationship"
between Israel and the United States. And in fact, it is real. Over time, no other country in
the world has been the recipient of more economic and military aid from the U.S., or from any
other country for that matter. Furthermore, many of us hold a power analysis which says that
the key to ending Israel's ongoing occupation and oppression of Palestinians is ending that
unconditional special relationship -- so understanding the roots of this relationship is not
idle curiosity. It's essential if we are to ever achieve a just and durable peace, for both
peoples. There are many reasons for this so-called special relationship, and it has evolved
over time, but I think the foundational aspects of it relate to remarkably similar national
narratives which shape, in an ongoing way, how we see and understand ourselves and our
actions as representatives of a collective national identity -- how we justify killing,
extraction, land theft, and so on, in transcendent moral terms. We have mythical national
narratives of two settler colonial peoples, who both believe that we have a divine mandate,
to settle a so-called empty or savage land, and make it into a kind of heaven on earth.
Ethnic cleansing, even genocide -- these are all divinely justified. Israel is to be a light
unto nations. What would become the United States, a kind of heaven on earth. Both peoples
believe ourselves to be somehow specially chosen by God. As Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth
literary critic wrote about this land, in The New American Exceptionalism: "Virgin Land"
depopulated the landscape in the imaginary register so that it might be perceived as
unoccupied territory in actuality. The metaphor turned the landscape into a blank page,
understood to be the ideal surface onto which to inscribe the history of the nation's
Manifest Destiny". "Virgin Land narratives placed the movement of the national people across
the continent in opposition to the savagery attributed to the wilderness as well as the
native peoples who figured as indistinguishable from the wilderness, and, later, it fostered
an understanding of the campaign of Indian removal as nature's beneficent choice of the
Anglo-American settlers over the native inhabitants for its cultivation " Sounds familiar
doesn't it? The Zionist version is the famous slogan -- a Land with No People for a People
with No Land. And Israel's "miraculous" military victories have always been seen as signs of
God the adjudicator's hand. Of course, that notion of heaven on earth, or A Light Unto
Nations, is predicated on a system of racial and ethnic superiority -- who gets to be human
and "civilized", and who is subhuman. Who exists, and who is invisible or must be
disappeared. Who can claim the land, and who has no rights to it. And the fundamental root of
all that we like to call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is this essential fact -- it was a
land with people. And specifically, the wrong people who by definition could not be part of
an ethnic exclusivist state. Remember that the original violence of the Nakba, the ethnic
cleansing of the land of Palestinians, continues on a daily basis to this day. The process of
colonization never stopped. Although today we call them "facts on the ground", and
Palestinians are talked about, not as equal human beings with the same hopes aspirations and
rights to freedom, but rather as a "demographic threat."
European Colonialism and White Supremacy What makes this issue so complex and deeply
challenging is that early European Zionists, who first started coming to Palestine in the
late 1800s, had themselves suffered from a profoundly long history of fierce Christian
European anti-Jewish oppression -- forced conversions, ghettoes, pogroms, institutional
repression and discrimination and so on, which as we know, culminated in the horrific
genocide during World War II, the Holocaust or Shoah. They believed the only solution to this
history was for Jews to have a state of their own. But while all genocides and acts of
violence have their unique features, and they must be studied and understood, I believe it is
critical to situate the genocide of Jews, in a broader context -- and not as an exceptional,
metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also
targeted for annihilation because they were considered less than human, including the Roma
people, gays, Poles, Ukrainians and so on, totaling 11 million. In Poland alone, Nazis
murdered 3 million ethnic Poles and 3 million Polish Jews. Had they not been stopped, those
numbers would have been infinitely higher in their march to the East. Further, to state the
obvious, the Holocaust did not mark the sudden and inexplicable birth of the white European
capacity to commit genocide. No one knows this better than the indigenous people of this
continent, or the descendants of enslaved Africans. Or the people of the Congo, where 10
million died under the rule of King Leopold of Belgium. I could go on. I could also go on
about U.S. Empire. In Europe, while the specifics looked different, one could be Jewish or a
colonized subject and be called an insect, vermin, an animal -- subhuman. In other words, it
is important that we situate what is happening in Israel and Palestine today, and the work we
must do in the US for justice, as part of a lengthy historical cascade of impacts rooted in
European colonialism, white racism, US Empire, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish oppression,
corporate greed and so on. I'm underscoring this because similarly, even though we understand
that historic Palestine was colonized by the British, there is a tendency to also remove the
story of Israel and Palestine from broader historical contexts and the sweep of history and
to see it as somehow utterly unique, beyond time, and as saying something essential about
Jews and the Arab world especially. The extreme and bigoted versions of this essentializing
view is: -- you either believe that the only story that matters is that the world and
especially Muslims hate Jews and always will, that the hatred of Jews is an essential part of
humanity -- or you believe that Jews are exceptionally powerful and devious, and have managed
to manipulate an otherwise beneficent and inherently just and reasonable U.S. foreign policy
establishment into doing wrong by the Palestinians. Talk about divide and conquer. If we
believe either of these stories, all of us who are natural allies in the struggle against
corporate greed, the destruction of our world, systemic racism and settler colonialism and so
on -- we remain divided from each other. We literally can't build a unified and strong
movement. We create a circular firing range, and we unwittingly become the agents of that
which we should be fighting against. Which is why understanding our struggles as connected --
which is what's happening on campuses throughout the U.S. and world today -- is so
unbelievably powerful, and threatening. I have seen these views manifest in the movement for
Palestinian liberation: sometimes people chant "2-4-6-8 Israel is a racist state", or decry
the disappearance 400 Palestinian villages when Israel was created, without even a hint of
irony or self-reflection that one is literally standing on land built on slavery and the
(still happening) genocide of indigenous peoples. In some cases, we have seen Israeli human
rights advocates try to emphasize the growth of Israeli racism by comparing it unfavorably to
racism here, where presumably, they suggest we have mostly won the battle. All of that said,
what is also absolutely clear is that Early Zionist leaders were simultaneously both the
victims of, and willing agents of white supremacist colonialism. In fact, they made their
case quite explicitly to British colonizers who they knew did not want Jews at home but who
did want to maintain colonial designs on the Middle East. As the Israeli analyst Tom Segev
reports in One Palestine Complete: "The Jewish state in Palestine, Theodor Herzl wrote, would
be Europe's bulwark against Asia. "We can be the vanguard of culture against barbarianism."
And about early Zionist leader and writer Max Nordau: "..Max Nordau believed the Jews would
not lose their European culture in Palestine and adopt Asia's inferior culture, just as the
British had not become Indians in America, Hottentots in Africa, or Papuans in Australia. "We
will endeavor to do in the Near East what the English did in India. It is our intention to
come to Palestine as the representatives of culture and to take the moral borders of Europe
to the Euphrates River." Early Zionist leaders actually appealed to the anti-Jewish hatred of
European colonizers, making the case that helping to create a Jewish state elsewhere was a
win-win because it would help them get rid of the Jews. Theodore Herzl wrote, "the
anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies"
And they internalized the same white supremacist hierarchy which had been used against them.
The "new Jew" was blond, blue eyed, healthy and muscular, vs. the shtetl Jew who was small,
dark, hunched over, religious, an embarrassment. I want to recognize there is sensitivity
about even raising this issue- but this has nothing to do with Jews specifically and
everything to do with human beings. Virtually every colonized or oppressed group internalizes
the eyes, in some way, of their oppressors, as Frantz Fanon wrote about so eloquently. Women
can be the agents of the patriarchy, blacks can internalize white supremacy, LGBT people can
internalize transphobia and homo-phobia. In a sense, we're all colonized in some way. This
shouldn't be a controversial observation, it's just fact about what it means to be human. The
fact remains that many early European Zionist leaders' disdain for the local Arab populations
was only matched by their disdain for other Jews from the Middle East. The founder of Zionist
Revisionism, precursor to Likud, Zev Jabotinsky wrote: "We Jews have nothing in common with
what is called the 'Orient,' thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses have ancient
spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and
this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with
great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, [second] to
sweep out thoroughly all traces of the 'Oriental soul.' As for the [Palestinians] Arabs in
Palestine, what they do is their business; but if we can do them a favor, it is to help them
liberate themselves from the Orient.'" (One Palestine Complete, Tom Segev) And the effort was
"successful". As Arab Jewish scholar Ella Shohat has written, "in a generation or two,
millennia of rooted Oriental civilization, unified even in its diversity," had been wiped
out. Jews from Arab countries were forced to choose between being either Arab or Jewish, but
they could not be both. ( Ella Shohat, "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of
its Jewish Victims," Social Text, No.19/20 (1988)) Of course those Jews who survived had the
right to their homes after they were ripped from their homes, and their world literally
obliterated -- but it wasn't Palestinians or the Arab world that owed them reparations or a
homeland. It was Europe. But thanks to settler colonialism, it has been Palestinians who have
been forced to pay the price ever since.
The Manipulation of Jewish Trauma I can't underscore enough the extent to which the profound
Jewish trauma over genocide and oppression has been manipulated and deliberately retriggered
over and over by people and institutions who have instrumentalized Jewish suffering to
justify Israeli expansionism and repression. Everyone from Abraham Foxman and the
Anti-Defamation League to the Simon Wiesenthal Center perform this role effectively through a
steady-drip of "the world hates us" iconography, statements, and Boy-Cries-Wolf overwrought
hysteria, which of course cheapens the charge of anti-Semitism. I grew up with a tante who
would literally shake with rage when she described her childhood in Poland. My father didn't
talk about his family story, so as kids we didn't understand. But later we learned the horror
stories, realized it was our own extended families in those pictures of pogroms and prisoner
camps, and we internalized the sense of perpetual fear. After the war, Jews did not talk
about the Holocaust, there was much shame. But it eventually became our central access to our
identity, thanks in no small part to efforts to give the young nation of Israel a perpetual
free pass. And in the process, it was given a kind of mystical exceptionalism. Rather than
teaching us lessons about systems of oppression, it became the horror to end all horrors,
which cast a shadow over history's other horrors. Many children would be taught to ask, not
Why throughout history groups of people hated other groups? or Why do governments oppress
people? We were taught to ask instead, "Why does everyone hate the Jews? " Further, from a
U.S. Empire perspective, it makes sense that the Shoah is commemorated in a massive museum on
the Mall in DC, while there is still no national slavery museum or indigenous genocide
museum. Better to point the finger elsewhere, while shoring up our sense of collective
superiority as heroic Americans. To this day, Jews and our aspirations for freedom have been
unwittingly made a tool of Empire- the struggle against anti-Jewish hatred has been coopted
into the effort to demonize the Arab and Muslim world in order to justify US wars and
intervention- for profit. And of course, to justify Israeli expansionism. When Netanyahu
encourages Danish or French Jews to mass migrate to Israel -- he's cynically exploiting real
fear and trauma to push his expansionist agenda -- new immigrants will be sent to
settlements, not inside 67 borders. Similarly, classic anti-Semitism itself is a tool of
Empire– Jews are scapegoated as a 'secret cabal' that controls the world's finances,
conveniently distracting potential resistance movements from the actual corporate, government
and military sources of global economic exploitation and control. In the end, if we don't
fight this, we all lose. Rather than joining together to resist power, we instead end up
fighting each other over manufactured hatreds and bigotries. Narrative If the root of this
special relationship is not as much AIPAC and money, as much as it is our national narrative
and the feelings it engenders -- and an unquestioning belief that Israel has an infinite
right to expand onto other people's land, then it is narrative that holds unconditional
support in place, and our resistance must also be at the level of narrative. So let's start
with ourselves. All of us in this movement have to decolonize our minds -- and it is a
constant process, we stumble all the time -- because we are fighting the very air we breathe.
But here is our work: We must insist that Israel does not get a free pass, and nor do I as a
white Jew, or anyone else, only because of a personal or collective history of oppression. We
all have to be held accountable to the power we hold when we hold it, like anyone else, like
any other country. Because it is not only possible but likely that many of us will hold
multiple positions at one time- marginalized in some ways and possessing power and privilege
in others. We have to be mindful of Orientialism on the left: just as the left has projected
on, fetishized, related transactionally to many native peoples, it happens in this movement.
There is a tendency to want all Palestinians to either be helpless grandmothers waiting for a
Great White Hope (heroic in the streets activists) -- or Che Guevera. Well , Palestinians in
Gaza and the West Bank are also sports fans, software developers, and capitalists. Freedom is
freedom. The Palestinian struggle is not simply an excuse for us to reflect on how moral the
Jewish or Christian or leftist or (fill in the blank) people are. It is not the surface on
which we write our own story, or a mirror that interests us only because it shows us our own
reflection. We have to simply be allies who love, yes love, our Palestinian friends and
colleagues enough to simply say: Tell me how I can support you? Knowing, also, with humility,
that in the past, present or future–we too need support in our struggles. And for those
of us given a platform because we are "safe" because we are white or Jewish, for example, we
have to know when to shut up, and cede the platform to our Palestinian friends. Most
important, rather than framing the story of Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice in a
historical and political vacuum -- as many do -- and as a unique and exceptional story, for
example, about a reasonable US foreign policy hijacked by an all-powerful Jewish lobby, we
should understand it as part of a much longer unfolding of Christian European Colonialism,
greed, and white supremacy -- that continues to this day and operates everywhere. Narrative's
power is not just about knowing facts, it is a means to exert psychological control, and to
dampen the will to resist. Palestinian American scholar Steven Salaita wrote in The Holy Land
in Transit, Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan: Ethnic cleansing is the removal of humans
in order that narratives will disappear .a blinding of the national imagination so colonial
history will be removed along with the dispossessed. It is only through ethnic cleansing that
the average American can accept without nagging guilt the history of her nation, which is
known to all but decontextualized from its present " The same is true for the Jewish settler,
living in a home that once belonged to a Palestinian family. Salaita goes on: "It is a
mistake to conceptualize ethnic cleansing simply as a physical act. It's importance lies in
its psychological power." Which is why in the US, we are waging this struggle at the level of
narrative. And why universities are on the very front line of this battle. As even Zev
Jabotinsky wrote about years ago, this is war of attrition. Boycott Divestment Sanctions
(BDS) campaigns create a moral crisis, and replace either a conspiracy of total silence, or
the monologue of the Israeli narrative masquerading as a dialogue -- and it places the
Palestinian story right where it belongs -- up front. One of the beautiful elements of the
BDS movement is the way that is has challenged the engineered invisibility of the Palestinian
narrative and analysis -- divestment and boycott votes demand real communication, revealing
that what often passes for dialogue, is monologue. We have to reprogram our neural pathways
-- through social media, through BDS campaigns, through reinterpreting, re-covering and
re-writing our own religious and cultural language. Campuses are the front line, but so are
artists and religious practitioners and community-builders. And we must rewrite our own
language. We began with a slogan -- a land with no people for a people with no land. But now
I'll leave with a new slogan to help us tell a new story -- a rewriting we have embraced in
my community of Jews -- all of us unwavering in our belief that never again means never again
for all people, unwavering in our pursuit of justice and freedom unwavering in our belief
that Jewish liberation and Palestinian liberation are not opposed, but intertwined That new
slogan is: All people are chosen, All land is holy. NationalismSettler-Colonialism Jewish
Voice for Peace is a national member-driven organization dedicated to a U.S. foreign policy
based on peace, human rights, and respect for international law.
Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Wnt 3 days ago I still would like to
see an actual graph: Palestinian land area as a function of time, number of Palestinians as a
function of time. We should be able to extrapolate not if but when a final
solution to the crisis becomes inevitable.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag lchabin 3 days ago Stop
whining. The Palestinians haven't accepted any offers of peace. They could have had their own
state a long time ago. Wake up folks; a number of Arab states seem just fine with this peace
proposal. Israel isn't going anywhere, and they get it.
@Richard Pierce - so much bile and ignorance. Yes, Israel is a democracy, and Iran not a
democracy. It takes a lot of hate and/or ignorance not to understand that. Seeing a few of your
posts, my money is on hate. Respect 3 Reply reply Share link
Copy Report flag zbarski 3 days ago
It takes a lot of hate and/or ignorance not to understand that
It also takes a few missing chromosomes.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Richard_Pearce 3 days ago No,
just takes being old enough to remember when folks used your sort of 'reasoning' to call the
White State in South Africa an 'island of civilisation amongst savages', the Shah the 'beloved
leader' of Iran, Saddam Hussein AND Osama bin Laden good guys, Nelson Mandela a radical
terrorist, and spent a few years dealing with guys who's survival often came down to their
ability to lie to others convincingly, and who's ability to look in the mirror and see
something they didn't hate came down to their ability to reject reality even more fervently
than supporters of the Israeli regime have to, street addicts.
That results in a finely honed male cow patty detector, as well as robust immunity to bullying
and peer pressure.
Respect 4 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Richard_Pearce 4 days ago If you
present the American population a choice between the 'one state solution' (one country 'between
the river and the sea' with equal rights for all) and the 'two state solution' (which requires
voiding the Geneva Conventions, the UN charter, close to a dozen human rights laws, barring the
ICC and ICJ from exerting jurisdiction, and the rewriting of the International Convention on
the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and 2002 Rome Statute of the ICC)
they're about equally split.
Guess what happens if you tell them the truth, that the 'two state solution' is a fraud that
will never be accepted and therefore is not an option.
If you guessed that the vast majority of the American population chooses to support the same
solution that the 'terrorist' Hamas and the 'genocidal' Iranian government support.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Mike_71 2 days ago If you prefer
the "one state solution" with equal rights for all citizens living between the river and the
sea, then Israel has been that "single state" since June 10, 1967, when it prevailed in a
"defensive war of necessity" against Palestinian and Arab invaders. Since that time, the
Palestinians have rejected all Israeli offers for negotiating for peace and a state of their
own, which Palestinians rejected in 1967, 2000, 2008 and more recently. There is no
"Apartheid," or "ethnic cleansing" in Israel, despite Palestinian efforts to impose them there.
In an "Orwellian Inversion (war is peace, poverty is plenty and ignorance is strength),"
Palestinians seek to impose a 20% minority "Arab Supremacist Apartheid Regime," over a 75 %
Israeli Jewish majority population. How that would differ from the former "Apartheid South
Africa," once ruled by a 10% minority "White Supremacist Apartheid Regime" over a 90% Black and
Mixed Race African majority, they refuse to explain, or justify. Just as South Africans are
entitled to democratic and majority rule in their nation, Israelis are entitled to those same
rights in theirs.
Have you ever studied the founding documents of both the P.L.O. and Hamas? Both call for the
"ethic cleansing"of Jews from their ancestral homeland in which they were indigenous for over
3,000 years. Read them here:
In rejecting the two state solution, as provided under UNGAR 181 in 1947 and numerous
Israeli offers since, the Palestinians have forfeited all rights to statehood, thus by default
making Israel the "one state" solution, with equal rights for all Israeli citizens, Arabs,
Christians, Druze and Jews. Preferring to remaining stateless to having a state of their own,
Palestinians have sealed their fate. There is no "two state" solution, as Palestinians never
wanted it.
Palestinian "rejectionists" seek to accomplish by propaganda that which they are unable to
achieve through war and terrorism. The Palestinians violated the 1949 Geneva Conventions during
the "Second Intifada" in deliberately targeting and killing over 1,000 Israeli civilians in bus
and cafe bombings in acts defined as "War Crimes, " violating the human rights of Israeli
citizens. The I.C.C has no jurisdiction, as Israel was never a party to the Rome Statute
creating the Court, and "Palestine" is not a "state," as required to become a signatory to the
Rome Statute. Having failed in all other means, including war and terrorism, Palestinians are
grasping at straws to try to achieve statehood, which they can only obtain through direct
negotiation with Israel. The conflict will continue until such time as Palestinians adopt the
requirements of UNSCR 242 and 338, which require:
"Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of
the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every state in the area
and the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from fear or acts
of force."
The Palestinian demand for a "one state" solution has backfired on them, making Israel the
"one state" solution, while making themselves stateless, impoverished and isolated in a rapidly
changing Middle-East.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Richard_Pearce 4 days ago If
the propasals the US has put forward are 'peace plans', then this https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/79/278375333_dfc587574c.jpg
is brain surgery. Dysnomia 4 days ago The U.S. itself is a settler-colonial state that only
exists because of its genocide of Native Americans. U.S. victory over the native population,
and U.S. control from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is now a fait accompli, and that's exactly
what they want for Israel. Max21c 4 days ago ( Edited )
Lebensraum. Definition: the territory that a state or nation believes is needed for its
natural development. The German concept of Lebensraum comprises policies and practices of
settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s.
Strikingly ironic that they seeks lands in the East!
Irredentism: a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly
belonging to it.
Both sides are wrong. Both sides yield to or harbor irredentist notions,
practices, policies, factions, groups, and beliefs. Some Israelis want to practice irredentist
beliefs and restore the lands of ancient Israel or its Kingdoms. Other Israelis want to harken
back to their heyday when they had freshly captured Gaza and the West Bank and return to or
retain some form of the status quo that prevailed from winning battles. There are various other
groups that want some degree or flavor of irredentism. Some Palestinians want the Israelis gone
entirely and an end to the Israeli state. Some want a return to earlier borders. The "right of
return" is in itself a form of irredentism as those seeking are essentially seeking political
power and control within Israel.
Trump plan is dead. It's DOA DEAD. It's double DOA dead! Hopefully, it won't lead to too many
deaths or be the cause of future warfare or wars.
There are alternatives. There are alternate paths. Peace can be built in the region. Just not
this way and likely not now. There are good and better pathways that can at some point be
explored in the search for peace! mgr 4 days ago Sounds not unlike the way the neocons of the
Bush admin plunged headlong and chest out into the briar patch, er, Iraq, where grateful
citizens waited eagerly to throw flowers on these conquering heroes as they marched on to Iran.
Castles made of sand... Toots 4 days ago OK, we know how the Palestinians will feel about this,
but what cards do they hold? 4 days ago The only card the Palestinians hold is resistance.
Maybe it's time for the PLO to withdraw from the Oslo Accords, and the PA to be dissolved.
Everyone knows that the PA/Fatah is a collaborationist organization. The illusion of
Palestinian sovereignty in PA-"controlled" areas is too useful to Israel. It lets them pretend
they don't really exercise full control from the river to the sea and deny they're running an
apartheid system. Let there be no illusions.
Respect 4 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Richard_Pearce 4 days ago The
same one that the Bantus held.
It's only one card, undervalued, dismissed, at least when genuine (The forgeries, ironically,
are over valued and loudly proclaimed, but their fake nature causes them to turn to dust) but
durable enough to wear all the others to dust over time.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag REALITYCHECK 4 days ago They did
the experiment on giving land back to Islamists in Gaza and Lebanon. They wont be making that
mistake again. Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag TheManj 4 days ago Spare us your
tired lies. Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Krasny 4 days ago Women and
homosexuals are protected in Israel...if you care about them.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag PerfunctoryUsername 4 days ago
Pfft. Just yell "SQUIRREL" and save everyone some time. Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Art 4 days ago
They did the experiment on giving land back to Islamists in Gaza and Lebanon.
Gaza? The world's largest open-air prison?! HA! Some "give back," with thousands
of innocents assassinated while peacefully protesting their captivity.
You condone murder and assassination.
Respect 5 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag REALITYCHECK 4 days ago Progs
and other useful idiots, you are going to have to learn to live with Islamist control of only
99.8% of the land area of the Middle East and 51 Islamic Apartheid nations. Need a hankey?
Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag TheManj 4 days ago 'Hankey' is
the Hebrew spelling, I suppose. Respect 1 Reply reply Share
link Copy Report flag Orville 3 days ago Fortunately, the
Islamists only control Saudi Arabia, portions of Libya, chunks of Afghanistan and Pakistan,
various segments of Africa, and (thanks to Syria, Iran, and Russia) a declining amount of
Syria. Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag ljg500 4 days ago Disgusting. It is
tragic that a nation forged under the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust, should now bow to
virulent racism- obliterating its legitimacy in exchange for puerile and cynical politics.
Respect 7 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Alex 3 days ago NOW??
LEGITIMACY??
It's time to wake up and realize that Zionism has always been an extremely racist,
supremacist, violent form of European settler-colonialism which is exactly the reason this
creation never had any legitimacy at all.
The Zionist plans for the violent colonisation and ethnical cleansing of Palestine from it's
native population have been made decades before Hitler even appeared on the political stage.
Actually the reason that Zionists and Nazis cooperated so well, were their common believe that
members of a self-declared master race are free to steal and murder sub-humans.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Mike_71 2 days ago Zionism is the
National Liberation Movement of the Jewish people. Like the Vietnamese National Liberation
Front, it has had to fight racist, colonialist, supremacist, bigoted and Imperialist forces to
win national independence. In the pre-state periods of their respective national struggles, in
1946 David Ben Gurion and Ho Chi Minh met in Paris, where the two founders of their respective
nations developed an affinity, with Ho offering Ben Gurion a Jewish homeland in Vietnam. Ben
Gurion declined Ho's offer, as the indigenous Jewish homeland was in the Middle-East, not
Vietnam. In 1975, Vietnam finally won its national struggle and since a border clash with China
in 1979, Vietnam has not engaged in war since. For Israel, however, the "armed struggle"
continues!
Don't believe this historic meeting of two revolutionary founders? Google Israeli-Vietnamese
relations and learn about the Gallil (assault rifle) factory Israel built in Vietnam and
negotiations for joint Israeli-Vietnamese army training and operations. You will be amazed and
educated!
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag CraigPurcell 4 days ago Do I
detect foreign influence (like Trump) in the campaign against Sanders ? With Facebook ads and
all the rest. No doubt business would pay many to get rid of Sanders. Respect 1 Reply
reply Share link Copy Report flag SimonEsposito 4 days ago One point
that maybe isn't being brought out adequately is that this deal won't satisfy Jewish
nationalists either. This is one of those situations where everything you need to assess the
situation is obvious from just one wide-scale map. Nationalists will still see this as a
territorial threat at the heart of Israel, and the use of settlements as an unofficial security
strategy will continue.
And, in any case, the allocated Palestinian territories are not just broken into dozens of
islands, they will be subject to years of being negotiated down even further. No-one will stop
the settler movement continuing to encroach in the meantime, especially because the territories
shown have no stable logic or legal viability to them. (The last remotely viable territorial
unit is 1967.)
So it's actually a plan to formalize and stabilize the gains made so far in the making of
one single territorial state in Palestine. Rinse and repeat.
I like that Elizabeth Warren is emphatically supporting the legitimate status quo - for the
purposes of the two-state solution - of international law and traditional US policy. It should
not be for outsiders to impose the one-state solution, which is what Western far-right
politicians know they are doing. This is opening Israel-Palestine up to the hazards of
historic struggle, and the potential for great suffering, to decide the character of its one
state. What they are unleashing is no more likely to end in ethno-religious apartheid (as some
on the far right explicitly want) than it is in an inclusive constitutional democracy.
For all practical purposes, by this plan, there will soon be two equal and coterminous
sovereignties in the lands from the Jordan River to the sea (including Gaza and Golan). No
involuntary shrinking of Palestinian sovereignty beyond 1967 borders has moral force, and in
fact the unilateral abrogation of 1967 leaves the entire territory constitutionally up for
grabs.
Progressive politics in the US can at least start articulating the characteristics of
a state that deserves a continuing security guarantee from the US, or at least continuing aid.
For me it's common rights for all the inhabitants of Israel-Palestine, under a constitution
built on the spirit of Israel's declaration of independence, based on a belief that the best
friends the Jews and non-Jews of Palestine could ever have in the world are each other.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag SimonEsposito 4 days ago One
of the most difficult problems in a dignified constitutional settlement, where international
help would be needed (for Jordan and Lebanon as well as Israel-Palestine) - and where
international aid needs to be directed - is to agree on some form of negotiated-down right of
return, with just compensation. The Kushner-Netanyahu plan appears to simply cancel the right
altogether, unilaterally. Respect 2 Reply reply Share link
Copy Report flag Art 4 days ago
What they are unleashing is no more likely to end in ethno-religious apartheid...
I hate to have to break it to you but unfortunately Israel is already an Apartheid
state.
Respect 4 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag SimonEsposito 2 days ago I
guess, to be really precise about it, what it is now is "proto-apartheid". It's a piecemeal
collection of segregationist measures, failures to administer existing law justly, and the
perverse outcomes of repeated decisions by the US to veto efforts to uphold the 1967 "reference
standard". The Kushner-Netanyahu plan is a scheme to break 1967 forever, legitimize
settlements, and create a permanent apartheid structure embedded in international law.
The only way two states can work is on the basis of 1967. And actually I don't see why a
Palestine on pre-1967 borders couldn't include a large Jewish minority, in a mirror image of
Israel. So when Elizabeth Warren re-affirmed the "reference standard" without equivocation,
there's an subtle radicalism there. The settler movement can't finally extinguish 1967, as a
theoretical option at least, unless it forms a Jewish majority in the occupied
territories.
To be generous to the administrations that used the veto, I think it was originally intended
to protect the ability of the Zionist left to win the case for two states in friendship. The
veto protection should really have been ended before 2000. On the other hand, it was always
likely that the Israeli far right would win the political contest.
So, however this works out, the best anyone can do is allow Israel-Palestine's future to be
the result of self-determination by its inhabitants. That doesn't exclude boycotts and
sanctions, though, or the suspension of various forms of aid, because that is the sovereign
decision of other polities about who is "fit and proper" to deal with. (Conciliation within the
South African system was still fundamentally self determined, despite the steady pressure of
boycotts.)
It remains the case that Jewish nationalists are the ones with the deep choice to make:
accept the unalterable reality of 1967 for the foundation of two states, or open up a long
struggle to determine the character (and level of isolation) of one state with its competing
sovereignties. Respect Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Mike_71 2 days ago But, the
Palestinians seek to impose a minority dominated "Arab Supremacist Apartheid Regime," over a
conquered and subjugated Jewish majority population, which would then be subjected to "ethnic
cleansing." As the Palestinians have unequivocally rejected the concept of "two states for two
peoples," in favor of a "single state," the question thus becomes will it become a "majority
ruled" state, as 75% of the Israeli population is Jewish, or a "minority ruled" state, like the
former "White Supremacist Apartheid Regime" of South Africa, as only 20% of the Israeli
population is Arab. It becomes more an issue of minority rule vs majority rule, as opposed to
"Apartheid vs "Non-Apartheid." Minority ruled racist regimes, such as the former "White
Supremacist Apartheid Regime" of South Africa, tend to be unstable and subject to violent
internal revolts, such as those led by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, as
would a minority ruled "Arab Supremacist Apartheid Regime. Minority ruled racist "Apartheid
Regimes," like that of South Africa, cannot last when subjected to repeated popular revolt!
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Art 2 days ago It's the
zionist Jewish colonialists who have - or should have - no rights to the place
whatsoever.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Mike_71 22 hours ago Even the
United Nations, today hardly a rampant pro-Zionist organization, recognized the rights of the
Jews to a significant part of their ancestral homeland in 1947, pursuant to UNGAR 181, the UN
partitioned the former British Mandate into two proposed states, "one Arab and one Jewish." The
Israelis accepted the proposal, while the Palestinians, joined by the Arab League member
nations, rejected it by declaring war on Israel. They lost that war, as well as the subsequent
1967 "Six Day War," resulting in the capture of all West Bank land, for which the Palestinians
refused to negotiate peace to obtain its return. See my discussion concerning about the
difference between "wars of aggression" for the purpose of territorial expansion and territory
captured in the course of "defensive wars of necessity" and the comparison of land captured by
the U.S.S.R. in the "Great Patriotic War" and Israel in the 1967 "Six Day War." If the
Palestinian - Israeli Conflict is strictly a "one to the exclusion of the other" proposition,
and a compromise through direct negotiations is not an option, as specified in the founding
documents of both the P.L.O. and Hamas, then Israel is entitled to the entirety of the land
captured in the 1967 "Six Day War," a "defensive war of necessity." One does not "colonize," or
"occupy" one's ancestral homeland of over 3,000 years. "From the river to the sea, Palestine
will never be!"
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Art 59 minutes ago Ardent Zionists
like you will never acknowledge anything like justice for Palestinians.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag The_Wolf 4 days ago Wow, only
7 comments. Guess there are other things going on. Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Toots 4 days ago You're smart. You
think just like me. Respect Reply reply Share link
Copy Report flag Art 4 days ago I guess the zionists
are busy on other comment boards. But don't worry, they'll come back here in a day or so.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Mona 4 days ago "How I How
Israel exploits Holocaust Remembrance Day"
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-israel-exploits-holocaust-remembrance-day
Surviving Auschwitz
Esther Bejarano, now in her nineties, was sent to Auschwitz as a girl. There she played in
the women's orchestra – as long as the camp commanders were happy, she and her fellow
musicians avoided being murdered. She is still a performing musician today. Her parents
Rudolf and Margarethe Loewy did not survive. They were murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania in
1941. After the war, Bejarano emigrated to Palestine, but eventually returned to her native
Germany, disgusted at how Palestinians were being treated. She says that even she – an
Auschwitz survivor – has been labeled an anti-Semite for speaking out for Palestinian
rights. Yet she is not deterred. Refusing to be silent, she told The Electronic Intifada in
2018 that Israel's government is "fascist" and that she supports BDS – boycott,
divestment and sanctions – if it helps challenge Israel's persecution of Palestinians.
Jacques Bude, a retired professor from Belgium, survived the Nazi genocide because he was
saved by farmers who hid him as a child. His parents were deported and murdered in Auschwitz.
After the war, he was sent to Palestine against his will as a Zionist settler. "I really felt
in exile," Bude told The Electronic Intifada in 2017. "I was destroyed by German militarism
and I came to Israel and again encountered militarism." He returned home to Belgium. The Nazi
ideology "led to the genocide of the Jews, the Roma, the Sinti, homosexuals and the mentally
disabled," Bude said. "It is the worst dehumanization that happened until today. It was
industrial and they went all the way. They dehumanized them completely, to a pile of hair and
gold." "So the duty of memory is to say never more dehumanization," Bude added. "If we say
'never again,' we have to decide where we stand and condemn it." And that includes condemning
Israel's crimes: "I am against ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which is a form of
dehumanization." Hajo Meyer was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. After surviving the war, he
returned to the Netherlands where he had a long career as a physicist. He was also a fierce
anti-Zionist and staunch supporter of Palestinian rights. That made him a target of
relentless smears from Israel's supporters, even after his death in 2014. But he too was
never silenced by such attacks. In his last interview, which was with The Electronic
Intifada, Meyer urged Palestinians "not to give up their fight," even if that meant armed
struggle. The lesson Israel wants us to take from the Holocaust is that it has the right to
do whatever it wants to Palestinians with impunity in the name of protecting Jews. But the
right lesson to take – and it is more urgent than ever – is that all of us must
stand together against racial and religious hatred and oppression, no matter who its victims
are.
Respect 14 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Art 4 days ago Good excerpt.
Respect Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag AtheistInChief 4 days ago The
control over Palestinians is SO complete, that Palestinians don't have rights not only to the
water under their feet, but also to the earth's magnetic field that passes through the air
(lest they make electricity out of it). But you'd have to read Max Blumenthal to find that kind
of stuff out, definitely not the apartheid complicit NYTimes.
Respect 4 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Andrew_Nichols 4 days ago The
Euros will mumble some indignation ...and then pursue business as usual...beating up on
Palestinian rights like BDS , selling Irrael more weapons anmd inviting them to join NATO
training. ...all to be expected from cowardly vassals. Respect 6 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag photosymbiosis 4 days ago If
anything demonstrates the sheer scale of propagandistic media control in the United States and
around the world, it's the Israel story. It's just the same old tedious boilerplate narrative,
from the 'left' to the 'right'. The glaring issues just are not allowed to get any air. These
issues are:
1) Israel has a 'covert' nuclear weapons program, and under the terms of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, it's a violation of the treaty to for a nuclear signatory to that
treaty to assist another country with their nuclear weapons program ; the USA's NNSA (DOE
division) has close relations with the Israeli nuclear weapons program. There are other treaty
violations with other countries relating to the Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons programs
as well, but the silence on Israel is pretty hilarious. They've got over 100 ballistic-weapon
capable boosted fission-fusion nukes with working delivery systems! Yes, they're not going to
give them up, fine, but at least make them admit to it in international forums. And about that
$4 billion a year in U.S. taxpayer money... why do they need that, again?
2) Israel and Saudi Arabia, the closest US Empire allies, are not democracies. You cannot
claim to be a democracy while giving special rights to one religious or ethnic group , and
the only way Israel would become a real democracy is to grant the Arab Muslim population the
same rights as the European Jewish population has, on immigration, land ownership, and yes,
that means giving all the human beings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip voting rights in the
Israeli national elections, I mean that's just common sense. Okay, you then have parity between
Jews and Muslims, who cares, it's like the Protestants vs. the Catholics in medieval Europe,
and ditto for the Sunnis and Shias in Saudi Arabia. Why are we involved with these backwards
feudal assholes anyway? We don't need the oil, we don't need the money, we don't need the
entangling relationships with dictators and crooks, just get out already.
Even from the whole imperial perspective, I mean, the whole rationale for being involved in
the region was control of the oil and the money from the oil, and since the world is getting
off oil, the Middle East will soon become as economically attractive as sub-Saharan Africa, so
why not just limit involvement to arms-length diplomacy and let the maniacs try to solve their
own problems themselves?
As far as all the anti-Semitism claims, how about a proposal to spend oh, $2 billion year
rebuilding all the synagogues the Nazis destroyed across Europe instead, and cut off all aid to
Israel? Now, that would really piss off the real anti-Semites, wouldn't it?
Respect 13 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Art 4 days ago Yep, good
post.
Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Wnt 4 days ago A cute idea,
but technically rebuilding synagogues would be establishment of religion, whether inside or
outside the U.S., and therefore unconstitutional. But our politicians don't seem to have any
problem with not being racist against blacks while not giving them money, and they were
impoverished by our version of nazis, not nazis from europe.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag The_Wolf 4 days ago ( Edited )
Establishment of religion is an American constitutional precept. Not sure about European
countries in which the Nazis destroyed synagogues.
Good points otherwise, and in fact the Nazis from Europe actually looked to the segregated
American south and Jim Crow as a model for how to impose their racist ideology on the people of
Germany and the countries they were to conquer in Europe.
Bill Moyers: You begin the book with a meeting of Nazi Germany's leading lawyers on June 5,
1934, which happens, coincidentally, to be the day I was born. James Whitman: Oh boy, you
were born under a dark star.
[...snip...]
Moyers: A stenographer was present to record a verbatim transcript of that meeting.
Reading that transcript you discovered a startling fact. Whitman: Yes -- the fact is that
they began by discussing American law. The minister of justice presented a memorandum on
American race law that included a great deal of detailed discussion of the laws of American
states. American law continued to be a principle topic throughout that meeting and beyond.
It's also a startling fact that the most radical lawyers in that meeting -- the most vicious
among the lawyers present -- were the most enthusiastic for the American example.
Respect 3 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag mgr 4 days ago ( Edited ) photo:
Well put. Slightly related, I understand that Tom Perez, in addition to lobbyists, added a
number of Israeli-firsters to the DNC nomination council for the 2020 election.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Wnt 4 days ago I think the
acid test of any such plan would be an airport. I mean, in theory "Palestine", the nation, can
have an international airport, right? Somebody can get on board a plane in Russia, land in
"Palestine", walk through Customs & Immigration, make a claim for asylum or citizenship at
the courthouse, right?
I think it would be interesting if the Palestinians would try this, just to see whether the
Israelis have the courage to shoot down civilian airplanes on regular flights in the name of
stopping terrorism. I have little doubt they would disappoint ... my expectations, that is.
Any word on whether the "peace" plan explicitly would ban this?
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag zbarski 4 days ago ( Edited )
If they do, you can take all commenters above with you (take Mackey + Electronik Intifada too)
and go on that flight. If the plane doesn't get shut down, you could walk through the customs
and ask for polutical asylum.
Indeed, it'll be interesting to see...
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Wnt 4 days ago With millions
of their own citizens locked on the wrong side of a border for almost a century simply because
they fled to avoid a war zone for a little while, I think Palestine's immigration agency, if
they ever get one, is going to have quite a backlog to clear before they get around to any
actual foreigners.
Respect 1 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag zbarski 3 days ago
if they ever get one, is going to have quite a backlog to clear before they get around to any
actual foreigners.
Ahh. What a pity. Such a deserving crowd above.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag Alex 3 days ago What happened
to Gaza Airport? Donor nations invested millions, it operated about 2 years under israeli
control and then the Judeonazis bombed it....
There is absolutely no reason to believe, that anything invested/built in Kushner's
"Palestinian State" would meet a better fate.
Respect 2 Reply reply Share link Copy Report flag zbarski 3 days ago Still recovering
from your:
The story that Iran shut down the Ukranian airliner is BS. Iran is perfectly capable of
distinguishing between civilian and military objects.
US Vice President Mike Pence used his speech at the Holocaust memorial last week to bang a
war drum at Iran. It revealed a deplorable lack of dignity and understanding of the event,
despite Pence's efforts to appear solemn. But not only that. It showed too how out of touch the
United States – at least its political leadership – is with the rest of the world
and a growing collective concern among others to ensure international peace.
Maybe that's why Britain's Prince Charles appeared to snub Pence, declining to shake his
hand while attending the commemoration of the Holocaust and 75th anniversary of the liberation
of Auschwitz. Charles warmly greeted other dignitaries, including Russian President Vladimir
Putin and France's Emmanuel Macron. It was curious how he blanked Pence.
But there again, maybe not that curious.
Pence and the Trump administration seem to be hellbent on starting a war with Iran. A war
that would engulf the entire Middle East and possibly ignite a world conflagration.
Washington's wanton threats of violence against Iran and its recent assassination of one of
Iran's top military leaders stands as a shocking repudiation of international law and the UN
Charter. It's the kind of conduct more akin to an organized crime syndicate rather than a
supposedly democratic state.
The UN Charter was created in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War precisely to
prevent repetition of the worst conflagration in history and all its barbaric crimes, including
the Nazi Holocaust. Over 5o million people died in that war, and nearly half of them belonged
to the Soviet Union.
The prevention of war is surely the most onerous responsibility of the UN Security Council.
Yet the United States is the one power that routinely ignores international law and the UN
Charter to unilaterally launch wars or military interventions. Washington's threats against
Iran are, unfortunately, nothing new. This is standard American practice.
Putin, Macron, Prince Charles and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier all invoked the
need for collective commitment to international law and peace. They implied that such a
commitment was the best way to honour those who were killed in the Holocaust and the Second
World War; the surest way to prevent the barbarity of fascist ideology and persecution ever to
be repeated.
Those speakers one after another denounced the ideology of demonizing others which fuels
hatred and wars. How pertinent is that to the way Washington routinely demonizes other nations
and foreign leaders?
In sharp contrast, when the American vice president made his address, his apparent solemnity
was contradicted by a
blood-curdling call to arms against Iran , which he accused of being the "leading state
purveyor of anti-semitism". Pence urged the whole world "to stand strong against the Islamic
Republic of Iran", spoken as if he was spitting out the words like venom.
There is little doubt that Pence was formulating a rationale for military confrontation with
Iran. That has been the consistent policy of the Trump administration over the past three
years.
It was no surprise that Pence's speech was in sync with the usual bellicose rhetoric from
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu towards Iran. But what was arresting was just how out of sync
Pence and the Trump administration are with the rest the world.
That's what is perplexing about many American politicians. They seem ignorant of history
(Pence gave no acknowledgement to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz and other death
camps); they are consumed by self-righteousness and arrogance like a puritan preacher without
an ounce of humanity.
Anyone who reflects on the horror of war would surely be advocating the respect of and
adherence to international law, commitment to peace, and the earnest pursuit of dialogue and
partnership among nations.
Russia's Putin has repeatedly called for the members of the UN Security Council to urgently
get together in order to guarantee a multilateral commitment to peace. Putin has also
repeatedly appealed to the United States to get serious about negotiating renewed arms control
treaties. Washington has ignored those latter calls.
Mike Pence's menacing words and attitude at the Holocaust memorial showed a disturbing and
pernicious disconnect with the need for preventing war and genocide. It was a disgraceful
dishonouring of victims.
Out of sync with the world, the US has returned to the ashes and lawlessness of 1945.
"... Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in 2001. ..."
It isn't enough for the corporate media to praise John Bolton for his timely manuscript that
confirms Donald Trump's explicit linkage between military aid to Ukraine and investigations
into his political foe Joe Biden. As a result, the media have made John Bolton a "man of
principle," according to the Washington Post, and a fearless infighter for the
"sovereignty of the United States." Writing in the Post , Kathleen Parker notes that
Bolton isn't motivated by the money he will earn from his book (in the neighborhood of $2
million), but that he is far more interested in "saving his legacy." Perhaps this is a good
time to examine that legacy.
Bolton, who used student deferments and service in the Maryland National Guard to avoid
serving in Vietnam, is a classic Chicken Hawk. He supported the Vietnam War and continues to
support the war in Iraq. Bolton endorsed preemptive military strikes in North Korea and Iran in
recent years, and lobbied for regime change in Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria,
Venezuela, and Yemen. When George W. Bush declared an "axis of evil" in 2002 consisting of
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, Bolton added an equally bizarre axis of Cuba, Libya, and
Syria.
When Bolton occupied official positions at the Department of State and the United Nations,
he regularly ignored assessments of the intelligence community in order to make false arguments
regarding weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Cuba and Syria in order to promote the
use of force. When serving as President Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
Disarmament, Bolton ran his own intelligence program, issuing white papers on WMD that lacked
support within the intelligence community. He used his own reports to testify to congressional
committees in 2002 in effort to justify the use of military force against Iraq.
Bolton presented misinformation to the Congress on a Cuban biological weapons program. When
the Central Intelligence Agency challenged the accuracy of Bolton's information in 2003, he was
forced to cancel a similar briefing on Syria. In a briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in 2005, the former chief of intelligence at the Department of State, Carl Ford,
referred to Bolton as a "serial abuser" in his efforts to pressure intelligence analysts. Ford
testified that he had "never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton in terms of the way he
abuses his power and authority with little people."
The hearings in 2005 included a statement from a whistleblower, a former contractor at the
Agency for International Development, who accused Bolton of using inflammatory language and
even throwing objects at her. The whistleblower told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staff that Bolton made derogatory remarks about her sexual orientation and weight among other
improprieties. The critical testimony against Bolton meant that the Republican-led Foreign
Relations Committee couldn't confirm his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
President Bush made Bolton a recess appointment, which he later regretted.
The United Nations, after all, was an ironic assignment for Bolton, who has been a strong
critic of the UN and most international organizations throughout his career because they
infringed on the "sovereignty of the United States." In 1994, he stated there was no such thing
as the United Nations, but there is an international community that "can be led by the only
real power left in the world," the United States. Bolton stated that the "Secretariat Building
in New York has 38 stories," and that if it "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make any
difference."
Bolton said the "happiest moment" in his political career was when the United States pulled
out of the International Criminal Court. Years later, he told the Federalist Society that
Bush's withdrawal from the UN's Rome Statute, which created the ICC, was "one of my proudest
achievements."
Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several
decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms
control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went
after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the
Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former
Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well
as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in
2001.
U.S. efforts at diplomatic reconciliation have drawn Bolton's ire. The two-state solution
for the Israeli-Palestinian situation as well as Richard Nixon's one-China policy have been
particular targets. He is also a frequent critic of the European Union, and a passionate
supporter of Brexit. From 2013 to 2018, he was the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a
well-known anti-Muslim organization. He was the director of the Project for the New American
Century, which led the campaign for the use of force against Iraq. The fact that he was a
protege of former senator Jesse Helms should come as no surprise.
It is useful to have Bolton's testimony at the climactic moment in the current impeachment
trial, but it should't blind us to his deceit and disinformation over his thirty years of
opposition to U.S. international diplomacy. As an assistant attorney general in the Reagan
administration, he fought against reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been held in
internment camps during World War II. Two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condi Rice,
have accused Bolton with holding back important information on important international issues,
and Bolton did his best to sabotage Powell's efforts to pursue negotiations with North Korea.
Bolton had a hand in the disinformation campaign against Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.
invasion of 2003. The legacy of John Bolton is well established; his manuscript will not alter
this legacy. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Melvin GoodmanMelvin A. Goodman is a
senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns
Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence:
The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The
Cost of American Militarism . and A Whistleblower at the
CIA . His most recent book is "American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump" (Opus
Publishing), and he is the author of the forthcoming "The Dangerous National Security State"
(2020)." Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org .
Even After the Afghanistan Papers, the Washington 'Blob' Still Embraces Staying Forever
January 30, 2020 Written by Mark Perry
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James Clad, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia, remembers the exact
moment, back in 2001, when he learned that the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan. As chance would
have it, he was in a meeting with a dozen or so South Asia experts at the Council on Foreign
Relations. "It was in early October of 2001," he recalls, "and word came that U.S. warplanes
had attacked three Afghan cities. Well, you could have heard a pin drop. I looked around the
room and everyone was studying their shoes. And I thought, 'well, this isn't going to work.'
And we all knew it. All of us. This was going to be a morass."
Clad wasn't alone in his thinking. In the wake of the December 9 publication of the
Afghanistan Papers in the Washington Post, retired CIA officer Robert Grenier, who ran
covert operations in support of the 2001 U.S. intervention, reflected on the papers' key
finding – that U.S. officials lied about the 18-year campaign, hiding "unmistakable
evidence" that the Afghan war had become unwinnable. "Frankly, it strikes me as weird that
people should only be waking up to this now," he told me. "The Washington Post series doesn't
convey anything which those who've been watching with even moderate attention should long since
have understood."
Which may be why the papers, comprising some 2000-plus pages of interviews with generals,
diplomats, aid workers and Afghan officials conducted by SIGAR, the Pentagon's Office of the
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, landed with a thud – "a
bombshell that has yet to explode," as one commenter described it
. For good reason: celebrated as a second Pentagon Papers (the 1971 documents that bared the
lies of the Vietnam War) the Afghanistan revelations didn't actually reveal anything that
foreign policy officials, or the American people, didn't already know: that the U.S. was not
winning and could not win in Afghanistan, that senior U.S. diplomats and U.S. military
commanders knew this soon after the 2001 intervention, that the hundreds of billions of dollars
spent to build a responsive Afghan government was squandered, misspent, diverted or stolen, and
that officials consistently misled the American people about the prospects for victory in the
war – promoting optimistic assessments in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary.
"In news conferences and other public appearances," the Post report noted, "those in charge
of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going
– and especially when it is going badly – they emphasized how they are making
progress." Among the most outspoken critics quoted by the papers is retired Lt. Gen. Douglas
Lute, who served as the Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama years. "We were devoid of a
fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn't know what we were doing," Lute told
SIGAR officials in an
oft-quoted judgment . "What are we trying to do here? We didn't have the foggiest notion of
what we were undertaking."
In truth, the big "reveal" of the Afghanistan Papers came after their release, when most of
official Washington reacted to their publication with a collective shrug. Despite this, though
not surprisingly, while the State Department and White House remained silent on the
revelations, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley
rejected the claim that officials had purposely misled the public about the war. "I know
there's an assertion out there of some sort of coordinated lie over the course of 18 years,"
Milley
told reporters . "I find that a bit of a stretch. More than a bit of a stretch, I find that
a mischaracterization." Optimistic reports on the war in Afghanistan, he argued, were "honest
assessments" that were "never intended to deceive the Congress or the American people." While
Milley's response was unusually strident, it was not a surprise for most Pentagon reporters,
many of whom knew that senior military officers and Pentagon policy makers were carefully
studying proposals that would keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan for at least the next five years
– if not longer.
Among these is a paper authored by Michael O'Hanlon, the high profile Foreign Policy
Director of Research at the influential Brookings Institution. Entitled "5,000 Troops for 5
Years," O'Hanlon's offering was previewed in an op-ed in The Hill in late October, presented
formally by Brookings officials on the same day as the Post published the Afghanistan Papers,
then circulated to a wider audience in an O'Hanlon-authored
op-ed in USA Today on January 3. O'Hanlon provides a less outspoken critique of the Post
story than Milley (calling it "badly misleading" and arguing that U.S. officials "have been
consistently and publicly realistic about the difficulty of making progress" in the war), while
acknowledging the "limits of the possible" in a "beleaguered and weak country." Even so,
O'Hanlon says in taking issue with the Post report, the Afghanistan mission "has not been an
abject failure" because, as he argues, the Afghan government "continues to hold all major and
midsize cities" and the U.S. has "not again been attacked by a group that plotted or organized
its aggression from within Afghan borders."
O'Hanlon concedes that while these are modest accomplishments, they are sustainable "at a
far lower cost in blood and treasure than before." Here then, is O'Hanlon's payoff: "The United
States needs a policy that recognizes Afghanistan for what it is – a significant, but not
a top-tier, U.S. strategic interest – and builds a plan accordingly. That overall
strategy should still seek peace, but its modest military element should be steady and stable,
and not set to a calendar. Roughly 5,000 troops for at least five years could be the crude
mantra."
O'Hanlon's proposal has gained traction among a number of senior military officers who are
frustrated with a war that drains military assets and erodes readiness, but who are loathe to
concede Afghanistan to the Taliban – an outcome they believe is certain to follow a full
U.S. withdrawal. Then too, O'Hanlon confirms, his proposal reflects the thinking of a large
swath of Washington's foreign policy community. "I think I am codifying and encapsulating and
distilling the wisdom of a lot of people here, with a couple of my own twists," he told me in
response to a series of questions I posed to him in an email exchange. "I think the chances of
something like this [being adopted] are therefore pretty good."
Indeed, the O'Hanlon proposal seems to have something for everyone: it foregoes the large
nation building expenditures that have characterized the U.S. intervention ($7 billion to $8
billion each year – "not trivial, but only 1 percent of the defense budget"), it
maintains enough military capacity to check the growth of ISIS or al-Qaeda (the U.S. would
maintain "two or three major airfields and hubs of operations" in the country), it allows time
for the U.S. to put in place a more effective Afghan military presence (O'Hanlon provides five
specific recommendations on how this can be done), it signals the Taliban that the U.S. will
not leave the country out of frustration (that they cannot simply "stall for time"), and
perhaps most crucially, it gelds the controversy surrounding the conflict by taking it out of
public view: "By laying out a plan designed to last for several years," O'Hanlon writes,
"Washington would be avoiding the drama and the huge consumption of policy bandwidth associated
with annual Afghanistan policy reviews that have typified the late Obama and early Trump
years." Which is to say:
maintaining a presence in Afghanistan at 5,000 troops ("I'd rather see 5,000 as a rough goal
not a formal or legislated ceiling or floor," O'Hanlon says) over an extended period takes the
war off the nation's front pages – it regularizes the U.S. deployment at an acceptable
cost (that's what sustainable means) and it makes the war in Afghanistan publicly
palatable.
If any of this sounds familiar, it's because it is. "5,000 Troops for 5 Years" seemingly
institutionalizes what then-Afghan commander General David Petraeus called "Afghanistan Good
Enough" in August of 2010: "This isn't to say that there's any kind of objective of turning
Afghanistan into Switzerland in three to five years or less," he said at the time. "Afghan good
enough is good enough." At the time, any number of pundits predicted that the Petraeus
statement would come back to haunt him, but his mantra has been adopted by senior military
officers who cite the O'Hanlon paper as a means of, if not exactly winning the Afghanistan war,
at least not losing it – if victory isn't possible, they argue, then "good enough" is
next best. Or, as one senior military officer told me, the O'Hanlon proposal recasts the
political calculus of Vermont Senator George Aiken on Vietnam, who said that the U.S. should
"declare victory and get out." In this case, the officer said, O'Hanlon is proposing that "the
U.S. declare a stalemate and stay in."
The O'Hanlon proposal details what has been quietly talked about in military circles for the
last decade, but was given credence in a monograph written by retired Army Colonel David
Johnson ("Doing What You Know") published in 2017. Johnson, whose paper circulated widely in
Army circles, argues that "good enough" might well be the most appropriate model for fighting
counter-insurgencies – a form of warfare that has traditionally been outside of the U.S.
military's "strategic culture." In these conflicts, what Johnson calls a "least bad outcome"
might be all that the U.S. military should expect. In Afghanistan, this means accepting limits
to success. "In Afghanistan, what is good enough is a government that can successfully protect
itself and take the fight to the Taliban with minimal U.S. support," Johnson wrote. "Whether
the Kabul government is corrupt or not representative is secondary to its ability to prevent
Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist haven. That would be good enough."
That this model might well be adopted in Afghanistan (and in Iraq), and in any of the other
"grey zone" conflicts of the Middle East, is no longer at issue. The model is already in place,
while O'Hanlon's 5000 Troops for 5 Years is fast becoming a reality. But the adoption of the
program has come at a price – in Afghan lives. While the U.S. has continued to withdraw
troops from Afghanistan, it has escalated its air campaign against the Taliban (U.S. aircraft
dropped 7423 bombs on Afghanistan in 2019 – more than any other year), thereby embracing
a strategy that allows U.S. deployments to remain in place, but without the consequent
escalation in U.S. casualties. ("More U.S. troops die in training accidents than in Afghanistan
so, you know, there's that," a senior military officer told me.) Meanwhile, Afghan civilian
casualties have spiked, reaching unprecedented levels in the period of July to September of
2019. That trend is likely to continue.
And so, the results of the Washington Post's publication of the Afghanistan Papers
"bombshell" in December have now come sharply into focus: Afghanistan is off the nation's front
pages, American casualties are "sustainable," the war continues – and, ironically, the
chances for ending it are now even more remote than before the Post published its
revelations.
"We can't beat him so we have to impeach him" no truer words were ever spoken. Too bad
they couldn't come up with a reason. I think November will be a Democrat Slaughter.
In other news, the Houthis have imposed a massive defeat on the Saudis at Marib - 3500 Saudi
forces killed, wounded or captured, along with 400 trophies. It is bigger than the earlier
massive defeat at Najran.
I perfectly understand why Westerners still love capitalism (and will continue to do so for
the forseeable future): capitalism represents (and will forever represent) the first and only
time in human history the so-called western culture became universal and the center of
humanity. In fact, I would be surprised if the opposite case was true.
The clash of civilizations doctrine makes sense both to Americans and Europeans, but in
different ways.
For the Americans, it creates a legitimizing narrative for the masses to draw capitalist
Russia to its sphere of influence, divide Eurasia again and then essentially kill two birds
with one stone: the destruction of China and socialism.
For the Europeans, it creates a narrative where Europe, somehow, reborns from the ashes
and make a spectacular comeback to the center stage of the imperialist game. That is the case
because it fantasizes about some kind of western culture solidarity where the USA, by magic,
begins to treat Europe as equals, and not as vassals (because they have "the same culture").
The USA then self-dissolves in order for a "Westernia" to rise in the North Atlantic, with a
foothold in the Pacific thanks to Australia. Socialism in the form of Western European
welfare state will be allowed to exist because what matters is not capitalism vs socialism,
but western culture vs eastern culture. USA and Western Europe then make amends, and fuse
together in a Western Paradise (Eden).
I must say, this is a very inventive - even ingenious doctrine. Shame the Europeans waste
their creativity with such useless garbage.
P.S.: nobody was complaining on "being raped" when it was the First World countries
benefitting from globalization during the "golden age of capitalism" (post-war miracle). The
narrative was completely different: the Third World was the uncivilized and corrupt monkeys,
who were being blessed by the charity of the First World, and should be forever thankful for
that. It's not funny when you're on the receiving end, it seems.
When/where did he ever talk about reducing the Federal government to its original
constitutional functions? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about re-enforcing the Bill of Rights on the Feds? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about getting rid of the income tax and the IRS? Never.
When/where did he ever talk about getting rid of the FBI, the CIA, the Federal Reserve,
the NSA, the FDA, the CDC, the EPA [all unconstitutional] etc.etc. etc. ad infinitum? Never,
that's when.
He's just another in a long line of big-mouthed, self-important scam artists –
always, was, and always will be.
I feel sorry for the naive individuals who were fooled, and those who continue to be
fooled. Maybe at least some of them have now learned a valuable lesson.
@TG I said over a
year ago, around the time this Orange Cuck Master gave that SOTU speech and reversed almost
every policy promise he made to his 63 million supporters on his #1 most important issue,
i.e., the border wall, deporting illegals, ending DACA on day one, drastically reducing legal
immigration – which is even more destructive to the future of the GOP to win any more
elections than is illegal immigration, the whole package that got people off their sofas and
down to the polls to vote for him – that it was obvious to me that the globalist deep
state had finally gotten their hands on some kind of leverage over him and had finally put
their dog collar around his Orange lying neck.
Was it related to Jeffrey Epstein? Who knows. I'm sure it is possible, with the way
degenerate behavior seems to now run amok within the super rich and elitist circles. Heck,
the morals of the entire country have pretty much descended into the sewer these days.
I think we are in the last days of this empire's history. I see no White knight waiting in
the wings who will ride to the rescue, and if one did emerge – only half of the country
would support them and the other half of totalitarian, sexual and moral degenerates would
want to kill him.
What we need is a collapse and breakup of America.
In what is happening right now around the Bernie Sanders camp and the Elizabeth Warren camp,
there is an opportunity for these supposed ResistanceTM-people to step up their game
significantly.
After all, in this moment, the anti-Berners are certainly stepping up their own game. The
problem is that there is a large asymmetry here: it is a lot easier to take someone like Bernie
down than it is to build him up, in part because the former can rely on every aspect of the
system, from call-out culture and Title IX-type methods to the most nefarious elements of the
Deep State, while the latter has to actually confront these elements for a change.
... ... ... 1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the
beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing
that in 2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no
mystery.
The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support
the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie
down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will
Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just say, "Oh
well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?
I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the
impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff
because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren
first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based
on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her
family so much." (Of course, with only a very few exceptions, I find the Democratic
Party–and the Republican Party–completely unacceptable anyway. They are both
steering media for capitalist power and money. However, unlike my leftist friends who presently
justify supporting the Democrats, in impeachment and in re-taking the White House, "because
they are the lesser evil," I argue that the Democrats are the greater evil, the "best
representatives" of the current form of capitalism, that the Republicans are in at least some
cases the lesser evil, and that Trump is something different from either one.)
2. Accordingly, I think a Trump/Sanders election would be a very good thing. You may know
that I have been writing a long series of articles I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders
can get the nomination and that there could be a Trump/Sanders election: i. For Sanders to get
the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will
essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants
to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State.
Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders
and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than
Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and
we're seeing major moves in this effort toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has
passed since I started writing this. However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much
further) and lead the movement to seriously address these power structures,
ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit too desperate to think,
Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least thematically -- and a lot of my
arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of these themes being out there, in a
way that they never would have been with any other Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the
other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any of the other media with the very important
exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps
Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they
hate it so much that they can't even think about it.
That is, Trump and Sanders have in
common that they 1) profess that they want to do things that improve the lives of ordinary
working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back militarism.
What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump
-- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can
only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.
Rhys Jaggar ,
The thing you are failing to see here is that Trump did nothing particularly special last
time: the Deplorables had simply had enough shit over enough years that their bullshitometers
were fully sensitised.
So they listened to all the Deep State crap and said: 'Screw You! We're all gonna vote
Trump and piss on your friggin' parade!'
They did not think all that deeply, they just were absolutely adamant about what they DID
NOT WANT.
And Trump just said: 'I understand!'
The words 'I understand' are dynamite in politics. They are even more dynamite if it is
said in a roundabout way, but the meaning is crystal clear to the target audience.
If Sanders wants to win, he has to prove to Main Street America that 'HE UNDERSTANDS!'
He will not win speaking down to them, telling them he knows what is best for them.
They have had two generations of that and are absolutely sick and tired of it.
The way to victory for any US Presidential candidate in 2020 is showing that they
understand, they care enough to DO SOMETHING TO HELP and they have the savvy NOT TO GET PUT
ON A SPIKE BY THE DEEP STATE!
Seamus Padraig ,
Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with
Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more
compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it
can happen
I agree. For one thing, Bernie is no Trump; he's just not a fighter. Bernie is weak. They
already defrauded him once back in 2016, and he didn't care. He went ahead and endorsed the
woman who cheated him, and he even spent months criss-crossing the country stumping for her!
Have we seen the merest scrap of evidence this year that Bernie finally plans to take the
gloves off? No, we haven't. He's a lot like Jeremy Corbyn in that regard, and just like
Jeremy Corbyn, I predict he will be defeated–not so much by the voters as by 'his own'
party.
but does anyone think there is a shortage of obnoxious jerks around Warren and
Biden?
Just one little word should suffice: Hunter!
I think you'll find that this work is not going to be nearly so easy as what has passed
for "resistance" among the anti-Trump crowd thus far.
What has passed for "resistance" since 2016 is this:
1.) Working for the government for a while to sabotage Trump.
2.) Then, when you get found out and fired by him, getting a multi-million dollar contract
to write some 'tell-all' book about how evil/stupid (take your pick) your ex-boss was.
3.) Then getting invited onto The View to promote it and prattle on about how you
answer to some "higher calling" so that your serial violations of the law don't
matter–as opposed to, say, Trump's serial violations of decorum, which obviously merit
impeachment.
That's exactly what "resistance" means to these wankers, and that's one reason I am proud
to say that I am not a part of it.
lundiel ,
America's most dangerous president was, imo, Obama. Trump has nothing on him, apart from his
delusions over Israel, Trump has tried, and failed, to exercise control over the security
state. Obama worked with the state while he mesmerised us with stunning speeches about
equality and democracy as he signied off on regime change and assassinations.
Should she ever run, Michelle would be at least as dangerous. The Obamas can make people
believe that they are 'on their side'.
Antonym ,
Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county,
Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved
this.
The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all
Establishments against her.
wardropper ,
I'd go further and say that the Americans can't win, whoever is leading them.
The pool from which they make their selections was poisoned long ago.
And it makes me very sad to say that.
Our godless society is overflowing with people who long for moral leadership, but who can't
find it in today's Washminster.
Personal pursuit of a decent inner life is always an option, but Washington and Westminster
are addicted to the other kind – the moneyed surface of life.
The way things are right now, it's extremely hard to say how a bridge from one kind to the
other could possibly be built, but I keep looking
paul ,
Sanders is just another irrelevant mediocrity.
Fair dinkum ,
Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.
I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who
got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after
being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a
force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which
I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too
long.
Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always
comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking
the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following
the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.
Charlotte Ruse ,
The day FDR dumped Henry Wallace in favor of Harry Truman the US was f–ked.
Seamus Padraig ,
That phase is over. Now that the Titanic's going down, it's no longer about rearranging any
deck chairs, but about fighting over the life boats!
Charlotte Russe ,
It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he
interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted
Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez
didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing
committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit
quite nicely in the Republican Party.
milosevic ,
threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third Party
actually doing so, would accomplish vastly more than just "threatening", unless anybody is
really hoping for a remake of Hope and Change, which would change nothing except the specific
flavour of Identity Politics secret sauce disguising the foul taste of neoliberal
fascism.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft warned the
Palestinians on Friday that bringing their displeasure with the U.S. peace plan to the world
body would only "repeat the failed pattern of the last seven decades."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will speak in the U.N. Security Council in the next two
weeks about the plan, Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said on Wednesday, adding that he
hoped the 15-member council would also vote on a draft resolution on the issue.
However, the United States is certain to veto any such resolution, diplomats said. That
would allow the Palestinians to take the draft text to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly,
where a vote would publicly show how the Trump administration's peace plan has been received
internationally.
Craft said that while the Palestinians' initial reaction to the plan was anticipated, "why
not instead take that displeasure and channel it into negotiations?"
"Bringing that displeasure to the United Nations does nothing but repeat the failed pattern
of the last seven decades. Let's avoid those traps and instead take a chance on peace," she
told Reuters.
Craft said the United States was ready to facilitate talks and that she was "happy to play
any role" that contributes to the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled by U.S. President
Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Mansour said on Thursday: "There is not a single Palestinian official (who) will meet with
American officials now after they submitted an earthquake, the essence of it the destruction of
the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. This is unacceptable."
Israel's U.N. mission signaled on Tuesday that it was preparing for the Palestinians to
pursue U.N. action, saying in a statement that it was "working to thwart these efforts, and
will lead a concerted diplomatic campaign with the U.S."
Bolton is a war mongering narcissist that wanted his war, didn't get it, & is now
acting like a spoilt child that didn't get his way & is laying on the floor kicking &
screaming!
Trump excoriates Bolton in tweets this morning:
"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get
approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him
despite many saying 'Don't do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V.,
and ... many more mistakes of judgement [sic], gets fired because frankly, if I listened to
him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty &
untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"
IMO, Trump is a fantastic POTUS for this day and age, but he wasn't on his A game when he
brought Bolton onboard. He should have known better and, was, apparently, warned. Maybe Trump
thought he could control him and use him as a threatening pit bull. Mistake. Bolton is greedy
as well as vindictive.
1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of
sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in
2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.
The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support
the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie
down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will
Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just
say,
"Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?
I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the
impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff
because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren
first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based
on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her
family so much." Indeed, Hillary's intervention in the following days was very likely intended
to take attention away from Warren's attack on Sanders, as well as, of course, to once again
put HRC out there as the potential savior at the convention.
It seems to me that the lesson here is that, if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, no other
candidate (from among the frontrunners) is acceptable, especially because of the role they will
have played in taking down Bernie and his movement.
I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a
Trump/Sanders election:
i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very
strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the
powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of
power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump
did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be
up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much
harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort
toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this.
However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to
seriously address these power structures, and even beat them in some significant ways, then
something tremendous will have been accomplished -- "the harder they come, the harder they
fall," or at least I hope so. ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit
too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least
thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of
these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other
Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any
of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and
perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something
that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about
it.
That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things
that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back
militarism.
What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump
-- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can
only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.
A lot of blowback against my articles has been against my argument that getting these terms
and the discourse around them on the table is very important, a real breakthrough, and a
breakthrough that both clarifies the larger terms of things and disrupts the "smooth
functioning" (I take this from Marcuse) of the neoliberal-neoconservative compact around
economics and military intervention.
Okay, maybe I'm right about this importance, maybe I'm not -- that's an argument I've dealt
with extensively in my articles and that I'll try to deal with definitively in further writing
-- but certainly a very important part of not letting Sanders be taken down by the other
frontrunners (and HRC, and other nefarious forces, with Warren playing a special "feminist" and
Identity Politics role here -- a role that does nothing to help, and indeed does much to hurt,
ordinary working people of all colors, genders, etc.) will be to further sharpen the general
understanding of the importance of these themes.
Significantly, there is a third theme which has emerged since the unexpected election of
Donald Trump -- unexpected at least by the establishment and the nefarious powers (though they
were thinking of an "insurance policy"); on this theme, I don't know that Sanders can do much
-- working with the Democratic Party, he is too implicated in this issue, and he does not have
whatever "protection" Trump has here.
What I am referring to are those nefarious powers behind the establishment and the ruling
class, and that have taken on a life of their own -- I don't mind calling this the Deep State,
but one can just think about the "intelligence community" and especially the CIA.
Whatever -- the point is that Trump has had to call them out and expose them in ways that
they obviously do not like, and also his agenda of a world where the U.S. gets along
well-enough with China and Russia at least not to risk WWIII, or, perhaps more realistically,
not to tip the balance of things such that Russia goes completely over to a full alliance with
China, a "Eurasian Union," which both Putin and Xi have spoken about, is not to their
liking.
Whether Sanders would call out these nefarious factors if he were in a position to do so, I
don't know -- I don't have great confidence that he would -- but it is also the case that he is
not in a position to do so, these powers can easily dispose of Sanders in ways that they
haven't been able to, so far, with Trump.
If one does think these themes are important, especially the first two (with further
discussion reserved regarding the powers-behind-the-powers), then I wish that Trump-haters
would open their minds for a moment and think about what it apparently takes in our social
system to even begin to get these themes on the table.
In any case, regarding Sanders, the movement he is building will have to go even further
with the first two themes if Sanders is nominated, and at least go some distance in taking on
the third theme. This applies even more if Sanders were to be elected. (This is where you might
take a look at the 1988 mini-series, A Very British Coup -- except that how things go down in
the U.S. will not be so "British.") Here again, though, if Sanders is to build a movement that
can openly address these questions, this will be tremendous, a great thing.
So this is it in a nutshell: If Sanders were to be nominated, then there is the possibility,
which everyone ought to work to make a reality, that we could have an election based around the
questions, What can be done to improve the lives of ordinary working people?, and, What can be
done to curb militarism and end the endless interventions and wars?
Antonym ,
Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county,
Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved
this.
The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all
Establishments against her.
Fair dinkum ,
Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.
I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who
got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after
being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a
force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which
I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too
long.
Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always
comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking
the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following
the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.
Charlotte Russe ,
It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he
interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted
Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez
didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing
committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit
quite nicely in the Republican Party.
Bernie a FDR Democrat, is considered too radical by the wealthy who enjoy their Trumpian
tax cuts and phony baloney stock market profits. If Trump, was just a bit less crude and not
so overtly racist he'd be perfectly acceptable. Bernie, who thinks the working-poor are
entitled to a living wage, healthcare, a college education, and clean drinking water is
anathema to the affluent liberals who like everything just the way it is. They long for the
Obama days when two wars were quietly expanded to seven, when the Wall Street crooks got a
pass, and when health insurance lobbyists had their way with the federal government–the
CIA was absolutely ecstatic with Obama. Trump was a bit of a speed bump for the security
state, but nothing really threatening as he stuffed the pockets of the arms industry and the
surveillance state with billions of working-class tax dollars. The Orangeman is having a few
internecine battles with the intelligence agencies, but in the end they thoroughly had their
way with the buffoon.
Bernie on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He can't be as easily attacked. Of
course, the mainstream media news has all the usual Corbyn tricks in their bag, and Bernie
could fall to the wayside like Corbyn if he's incapable of unapologetically fighting back.
Bernie's working-class supporters want to see him give his attackers the one-two-punch and
knock them out before the DNC Convention.
If Bernie manages to win numerous primaries the threat won't come from Warren or Hillary
that's so 2016. The new insidious "Bernie enemy" is billionaire Bloomberg. Who is waiting in
the wings If Biden takes a deep dive, Daddy Warbucks will make a play to cause a brokered
convention. And that's when Perez and his Republican/Dems will takedown Bernie. Bernie's
followers MUST come out swinging and not capitulate like they did last time. They have to
force the issue, create a stir and threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third
Party. Young progressives have this one big shot at making a difference, and they can't allow
themselves to be sheepdogged into voting for another neoliberal who's
intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, if you don't move forward you're actually
moving backward into planetary ecocide.
Here's one from Whitney implying that they needn't worry because plans are in the works to
install King Cyrus II as the permanent ruler with the help of his Zionist friends in the
Department of Hebrew Security:
Even so it looks like Trump has decided to get rid of us noninterventionist and antiwar
naysayers by fully bringing in the Dispensationalist Armageddon rapture embracing nut jobs
who stand with the Talmudic genocidal racists in Israel who believe that Jesus Christ is
boiling for an eternity in excrement and that his mother Mary was a whore:
we have witnessed in the UK the defamation of Corbyn the ' Left Disrupter ' as he wanted
to throw back the normal state of political play.
He and the well meaning Labour Party was headed off at the pass.
We have to remember that the Ruling Class have to have fall back positions and that Biden
is better than Bernie as is Warren and so on.
It appears to me that the DNC also has its fallback positions too and Bernie will be
chopped by the Super Delegates once again on the altar of ' electabilty ' ( read any form of
Socialism – American or British is not acceptatble to the PTB ) and that is how it may
end.
The battle at the moment in the UK Labour Party is which leader will back up and support
extra Parliamentary action in resistance to this very right wing Tory government?
In the US the thing is the same if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.
Personally I would think that he would be a plus ( despite his foreign policy views ) but
remember that Trump was a maverick Republican yet I'm not sure that Sanders would veer over
to that position.
If he did then the " action " part of the steep learning curve would have to kick in to
defend him and more to the point his genuinely progressive policies.
In the UK now Corbyn as the personification of ' Socialist ' threat is no longer
doorstepped by the British media.
Instead the installation of a Leftish Centrist by the media ( i.e. a person that is -no
threat to the existing order ) is a requirement.
This is all under the guise of a " Strong Opposition " to the right wing government.
Warren – not Biden seems to be that kind of favourite for the Ruling Class should
Trump fall.
We had Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair – you in the US will get Warren.
I wish Bernie and his backers weel but I don't see it happening.
Maybe Tulsi Gabbard in another 4 years?
She and AOC are very good But this is not their time.
Not yet.
Richard Le Sarc ,
When I think of how Corbyn refused to fight back against ENTIRELY mendacious and filthy
vilification as an 'antisemite', I think it might be possible that the MOSSAD told him that
if he resisted he might end up, dead in his bath, like John Smith.
bevin ,
Where the world weary gather to tell us how they have been let down.
Bill nails it here:
" i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and
focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic
Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the
establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party
in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which
he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder ."
Anyone who believes that elections, as such, lead to great changes needs a keeper. And one
who can read the US Constitution aloud for preference.
But this is not to say that at a time like this-and there have been very few of them in US
history- when there is the possibility of a major candidate challenging some of the bases of
the ruling ideology-albeit by doing little more than running on a platform of refurbished
Progressivism- there is really no excuse for not insisting that the challenge be made and the
election played out.
Sanders is not just challenging the verities of neo-liberalism but, implicitly undermining
the political consensus that has supported the Warfare State since 1948.
The thing about Bernie is that he is authenticated by the enemies that he has enrolled
against him and the dramatic measures that they are taking against him. Among those enemies
are the Black Misleadership Class, and the various other faux progressives who are revealing
themselves to be last ditch defenders of the MIC, Israel- AIPAC is now 'all in' in Iowa and
New Hampshire- and the Insurance industry. It is an indication of the simplicity of Bernie's
political task that no section of Congress gives more support to the Healthcare scammers than
the representatives of the community most deprived by the current system. If he manages to
get through to the people and persuade them that he will fight for Free Healthcare for all
and other basic and long overdue social and economic reforms he can break the hold that the
political parties have over a system everyone understands is designed to make the rich-who
own both parties- richer and the great majority poorer. That has been the way that things
have been going in the USA for at least 45 years.
Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the
Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two
parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super
Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.
Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote
until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this
undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a
psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her
nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.
There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called
"Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the
primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC
which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a
"Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".
Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy
Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying
to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the
greater of the two evils.
Yeah right.
Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can
both go to hell. I've already made my choice:
He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more
Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American
Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political
spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left".
Greg Bacon ,
After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and
mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.
If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked
Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another
racket in 2021.
Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them
sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.
But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie
your ass off until you get elected at least.
Willem ,
Much magical thinking here.
If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?
I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.
And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?
Don't think so.
Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look
what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French
yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see
demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations
everywhere.
The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing
burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped
(and will be stopped).
I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have
voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction
that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for,
except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians
say
It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful
in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.
"nice" Americans: .. Here is a sample of nice Americans who want to control our breath:
Pompeo , Fri 24 Jan 2020: "You Think Americans Really Give A F**k About Ukraine?"
Michael Richard Pompeo (57 y.o.) is the United States secretary of state. He is a former
United States Army officer and was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January
2017 until April 2018
Nuland , earlier than Feb 2014: "Fuck the EU."
Victoria Jane Nuland (59 y.o) is the former Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State. She held the rank of Career
Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United States Foreign Service. She is the
former CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and is also a Member of the
Board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
This is just a part of the "Swamp" President Trump has talked about. Funneling money to
family members of elected officials is so prevalent that they don't even see a problem, it's
just business as usual.
"My instincts tell me the Democrats don't want to get rid of Plugs (Biden) on the
corruption angle because then they're all exposed to it." - Rush Limbaugh
Colonel Sanders : " Joe Biden is a very decent man" !!! Comming from the mouth of the
Communist who wants to put YOU in Goulags...It makes perfect sense !
Joe Biden is a friend of mine and he's a really nice guy ... I love my husband or wife
he/she's a really nice person as the ER staff bandages their wounds ... hmm got it
What 9/11 wasn't:
-- The work of 19 terrorists armed with boxcutters
What 9/11 was (in effect):
A massive Full-Scale Anti-Terrorist Exercise pushed out as real
George Mc ,
The 9/11 Commission Report is so obviously a crass fraud
Mike Ellwood ,
The 9/11 Commission Report is so obviously a crass fraud
Thus continuing in that fine tradition established by the Warren Commission Report of
1964.
WTC7 is, I believe, the key to it all, or much of it. Really establish the truth of what
went on there, and much else may be revealed. ("And they made that decision to pull and then
we watched the building collapse". Larry Silverstein )
It's the "dog that didn't bark in the night". It's Jack Ruby being able to walk into
Dallas Police Headquarters and shoot Oswald at point blank range. It's the "three tramps".
It's the fake Secret Service agents with authentic looking ID on the grassy knoll. And much
else. All the things that just don't add up, and which make the official story look even
shakier than it was to begin with.
paul ,
Very true. Most people soon accept 9/11 was a hoax when WTC7 is pointed out to them.
milosevic ,
assertions that the Deep State make their bullshit deliberately blatant because they are
having a laugh at us all
An alternative hypothesis would be that it was produced by vulgar, stupid people, who
assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the target audience was even more vulgar and stupid than
themselves.
"... Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents. From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the propaganda disseminated from the West gets. ..."
"... In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: "President Trump, Please Liberate Us!" Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force. ..."
"... So, let us see, how the United States really "liberates" countries, in various pockets of the world. ..."
"... Let us visit Iran, a country which (you'd never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the "highest human development index bracket" (UNDP). How is it possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name just a few. ..."
"... Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world. It also pays more and more for collaboration. And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental organizations. Hong Kong is no exception. ..."
"... Thank god the US is heading, quite unmistakably now, down the same flush which swallowed the USSR! ..."
"... Yep. America bringing "freedom and democracy" to the world one bomb and bullet at a time. Pretty soon they'll be nobody left to freedomize and democratize. ..."
"... The Democrats deplore humanitarian reasons prior to invading a sovereign nation-state, while Republicans says militarism will keep us safe, however, in actuality the objectives of the political duopoly as reflected in the military/security/surveillance corporate state is rather consistent they're interested in usurping precious resources by acquiring hegemony over significant geostrategic territories. ..."
"... Orwellian speech aside, everything currently boils down to genuine freedom in all its forms not just physical slavery (like in the neoliberal/neocon/zionist wars and its outcomes) but also the mental slavery that leads us to physical slavery. Unfortunately we do not live at the best of times currently, the net of complete neo- slavery is almost upon us and we only have a small window of opportunity to try to stop it. The Smart Grid/IoT system is almost on top of us. Let's fight it with sharing info; and hopefully as a very large population make the establishment listen to us through sustained, strategic non-violent civil disobedience.
"... After 500+ years of Western colonial & now neocolonial plunder and mayhem, maybe it's time to look a bit deeper into how Western cultural narratives have shaped a way of seeing ourselves, others and the world not shared by literally most of the human family. The WEIRD research is an illuminating and interesting examination of some of these differences and how they challenge the very concept of "human nature" associated with Western societies. ..."
"... "Closely related to the depoliticising practices of neoliberalism, the politics of social atomisation and a failed sociality is the existence of a survival of the fittest ethos that drives oppressive narratives used to define both agency and our relationship to others. Mimicking the logic of a war culture, neoliberal pedadogy creates a predatory culture in which the demand of hyper competitiveness pits individuals against each other through a market based logic in which compassion and caring for the other is replaced by a culture of winners and losers" ..."
"... Neo-liberalism ends in neo-feudalism, with 99.9% of humanity serfs and villeins, and a tiny ruling elite controlling EVERYTHING. The project proceeds apace, with road-kill like Corbyn and the 500,000 'antisemites' who joined Labour littering the road to Hell on Earth. ..."
There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest
of the world. Essential terms like "freedom", "democracy", "liberation", even "terrorism", are all mixed up and
confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.
Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United
States, as well as other Western nations, have been spreading colonialist terror to basically all corners of the
world.
And in the process, they developed effective terminology and propaganda, which has been justifying, even
glorifying acts such as looting, torture, rape and genocides. Basically, first Europe, and later North America
literally "got away with everything, including mass murder".
The native people of Americas, Africa and Asia have been massacred, their voices silenced. Slaves were imported
from Africa. Great Asian nations, such as China, what is now "India" and Indonesia, got occupied, divided and
thoroughly plundered.
And all was done in the name of spreading religion, "liberating" people from themselves, as well as "civilizing
them".
Nothing has really changed.
To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants; humiliated, and as
if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think.
Sometimes if they "misbehave", they get slapped. Periodically they get slapped so hard, that it takes them
decades, even centuries, to get back to their feet. It took China decades to recover from the period of
"humiliation". India and Indonesia are presently trying to recuperate, from the colonial barbarity, and from, in the
case of Indonesia, the 1965 U.S.-administered fascist coup.
But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of colonialism, are
justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always "fighting for justice"; they are "enlightening" and "liberating".
No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always correct!
Like now; precisely as it is these days.
Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents.
From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more
successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the
tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the
propaganda disseminated from the West gets.
*
In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: "President Trump,
Please Liberate Us!" Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They
beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force.
So, let us see, how the United States really "liberates" countries, in various pockets of the world.
Let us visit Iran, a country which (you'd never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the
vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the "highest human development index bracket" (UNDP). How is it
possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an
internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on
our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to
name just a few.
So, what is the West doing? It is trying to ruin it, by all means; ruin all good will and progress. It is starving
Iran through sanctions, it finances and encourages its "opposition", as it does in China, Russia and Latin America.
It is trying to destroy it.
Then, it just bombs their convoy in neighboring Iraq, killing its brave commander, General Soleimani. And, as if
it was not horrid enough, it turns the tables around, and starts threatening Teheran with more sanctions, more
attacks, and even with the destruction of its cultural sites.
Iran, under attack, confused, shot down, by mistake, a Ukrainian passenger jet. It immediately apologized, in
horror, offering compensation. The U.S. straightway began digging into the wound. It started to provoke (like in Hong
Kong) young people. The British ambassador, too, got involved!
As if Iran and the rest of the world should suddenly forget that during its attack on Iraq, more than 3 decades
ago, Washington actually shot down an Iranian wide-body passenger plane (Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus-300), on a
routine flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In an "accident", 290 people, among them 66 children, lost their lives.
That was considered "war collateral".
Iranian leaders then did not demand "regime change" in Washington. They were not paying for riots in New York or
Chicago.
As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.
The "Liberation" of Iraq (in fact, brutal sanctions, bombing, invasion and occupation) took more than a million
Iraqi lives, most of them, those of women and children. Presently, Iraq has been plundered, broken into pieces, and
on its knees.
Is this the kind of "liberation" that some of the Hong Kong youngsters really want?
No? But if not, is there any other performed by the West, in modern history?
*
Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world.
It also pays more and more for collaboration.
And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental
organizations. Hong Kong is no exception.
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, but also many other countries, should be carefully watching and
analyzing each and every move made by the United States. The West is perfecting tactics on how to liquidate all
opposition to its dictates.
It is not called a "war", yet. But it is. People are dying. The lives of millions are being ruined.
Rhisiart Gwilym
,
Thank god the US is heading, quite unmistakably now, down the same flush which swallowed the USSR!
Yep. America bringing "freedom and democracy" to the world one bomb and bullet at a time. Pretty soon
they'll be nobody left to freedomize and democratize.
Hey we voted against all this BS but what does
that matter in what they call "democracy" or even "republicanism" in the land of the free fire zone?
Charlotte Russe
,
The Democrats deplore humanitarian reasons prior to invading a sovereign nation-state, while
Republicans says militarism will keep us safe, however, in actuality the objectives of the political
duopoly as reflected in the military/security/surveillance corporate state is rather consistent
they're interested in usurping precious resources by acquiring hegemony over significant geostrategic
territories.
Norn
,
150 years ago, The US saw Korea as too isolationist and decided to [what else?] '
liberate
'
the Koreans.
Western Disturbance in the Shinmi 1871 year Korea
On 10 June 1871, about 650 American invaders landed [on korean shores] and captured several forts,
killing over 200 Korean troops with a loss of only three American dead.
Tallis Marsh
,
Orwellian speech aside, everything currently boils down to genuine freedom in all its forms not just
physical slavery (like in the neoliberal/neocon/zionist wars and its outcomes) but also the mental
slavery that leads us to physical slavery. Unfortunately we do not live at the best of times
currently, the net of complete neo- slavery is almost upon us and we only have a small window of
opportunity to try to stop it. The Smart Grid/IoT system is almost on top of us. Let's fight it with
sharing info; and hopefully as a very large population make the establishment listen to us through
sustained, strategic non-violent civil disobedience.
To make a start: are you as confused as I
am/was about why too many of the general public are just not informed, not 'awake? Why they do not
seem to know the reality about the lies & corruption by a small global-establishment; how our world is
really run; who is running it; and what their plans and ultimate agenda is? The following video so
precisely pin-points how & why; it would be a terrible shame if people did not watch it and share it.
Thank you to a leader who did share it so much appreciated!
Tallis Marsh, Great video, and I agree with a lot of it, but I think the numerology stuff is
bollocks, as is the idea that "the elite" have this secret very advanced technology, and can
perform "magic powers", beyond the basic principles of physics and maths.
However, the Truth is
quite horrendous. I personally felt, I had been physically kicked very hard in my guts, and to the
depths of my soul, when in a moment, I became personally convinced that the Official US Government
story of 9/11 was impossible, because it did not comply with the basic principles of physics and
maths.
I understood all the implications in that moment in February 2003. It was not an alien culture,
that I did not understand, that did this atrocity, it was my culture, and I knew almost exactly
what was going to happen.
Most people, don't want to know, and won't even look, because they are not mentally capable of
tolerating the horror. The truth will send many such people mad. They are better off not knowing,
carrying on their lives as best they can. Most people are good, and not guilty of anything. It's
just that they won't be able to cope with the truth, that it is our culture, our governments, our
institutions, and our religions, which are so evil.
Why isn't Tony Blair on trial for War Crimes Against Humanity?
Its because the entire system is rotten to the core, and will eventually collapse.
Tony
Tallis Marsh
,
I have a few questions (that imo are vital). How would you define magic/magick?
What about magic/magick being the manipulation of sound and vision to influence/control
others?
Observe our industries like the publishing industry newspapers, academic books, brands,
logos, internet; tv, film internet video industry; music industry Who founded and instituted
all these industries using the particular system of 'words', numerals, symbols, music and sounds
these are now all-pervasive in our world; who is using them to manipulate us and for what
purposes? What are the meanings of these sounds and symbols, etc? E.g. What are the hidden
meanings of words/parts of words e.g. el as in elder, elite, election, elevate ? Traditionally
'el' was Saturn.
What is the real history of our world, country, local area (and who is in charge of academia,
publishing of all kinds are they the ones who have rewritten history in order to keep almost
all of us in the dark)? How can we find out the true history of our world and know its accuracy?
E.g. Why are the worshipers of El/Saturn; and all their Saturnalian symbols around us in the
world? e.gs: black gowns worn by the judiciary, priests, graduates; black cubes/squares found on
hats of religious leaders, graduates' hats and black cubes found as monuments in such
culturally-different places around the world like Saudi Arabia, NYC, Denmark, Australia?
Note: I do not have the answers (I'm still researching) but are these not good questions to
explore because the more you look/hear, the more you see that many of the things mentioned above
seem to be related; and some would call this magic/magick. To be clear, I am not superstitious
and I do not believe in or practice these things myself but as far as I know, a group with
immense power do seem to believe these things described.
Tallis Marsh
,
For symbols, a good place to start for research is geometry and alchemy. Traditionally, a
major part of elite education studied/studies geometry (including 'sacred geometry') and
ancient education studied alchemy/chemistry and subjects like astrology/astronomy? Part of
the Seven Liberal Arts (the trivium and quadrivium combined), I think.
For history, it is
good to research the ancient places and cultures of Phoenicia, Canaan, Ur, Sumeria and
Babylon (apparently all of which were brought together into a hidden eclectic culture through
the elites which moved into ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and then moved into/by Celtic/Druidic
culture in Central and Northern Europe and now practised in various forms (some hidden but
apparent in symbols) in major religions, the freemasons and modern royalty?
Tallis Marsh
,
Re: Saturnalian symbols. Forgot to mention almost all, if not
all
corporate brand logos (which companies buy for
extortionate prices?! Who and why gives out the ideas for brand logos?) seem to be a
variation of Saturnalian symbols like the planet's rings, the colour black, cubes, hexagrams;
and parts of these things like XX, swish, etc
Not confused, frankly. The ruling classses must always devote massive resources to promoting the
dominant ideology that underpins their rule or else they are finished. The hight priests who pump
out this ideology have always had high status look at Rupert Murdoch.
nottheonly1
,
Just remember one 'thing(k)':
EVERYTHING you know was told to you by another human.
Everything human believes in was made up by human to suit his needs.
Human makes stuff up as it goes.
God/religion/the unknown is all evidence for 'not knowing'.
For it is the one who sees and hears 'thinks' the way they are.
That everything is and human has absolutely no clue as to why.
No whatsoever clue. But lots of all kinds of stories.
There is only one veil the veil of delusion. To be deluded enough not
to understand that 'The Universe' is an Organism (with all kinds of organs)
that lives and grows.
On Earth, this Organism has cancer. Mankind is that cancer on The Universe.
Mankind is Earth's cancer.
Those who have the porential to look through it all already do.
Those who don't have the potential to look through it all never will.
One day, the 'history' of mankind will also become just another story.
With no one to listen to.
Gary Weglarz
,
After 500+ years of Western colonial & now neocolonial plunder and mayhem, maybe it's time to look a
bit deeper into how Western cultural narratives have shaped a way of seeing ourselves, others and the
world not shared by literally most of the human family. The WEIRD research is an illuminating and
interesting examination of some of these differences and how they challenge the very concept of "human
nature" associated with Western societies.
"To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants;
humiliated, and as if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think."
As
happenned right HERE in the UK last month at the polls when they were offered the first REAL hope of
lifting the yoke of the ancient imperialist forces for over half a century- the election of a GENUINE
social democratic Labour government.
"..the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different
continents." confirms Vltchek.
As the West (the ancient imperialists to be exact) DID overthrow what should be the current UK
government BEFORE it could take office a Advance Coup avoiding all the nastiness of having actual
military parking its tanks in Whitehall and having Betty supporting it as beardy gets dragged off for
crucifixion.
Achieved by the dirtiest election EVER in UK history using the combined forces of the 5+1 eyed
Empire ordered into action, by Up Pompeo Caesar General, who visits his latest victorious battlefield
today. Here to collect his tributes for delivering his Gauntlet to stop the Corbynite Labour
government taking office by vote rigging using the favourite DS big data Canadian company CGI and
its monopoly, of the privatised postal vote system of the UK.
Here to celebrate a brexit so long planned and also to deliver the final final solution victory for
a Israeli APARTHEID state which like a lightning rod is doomed to be struck by such forces.
A coup. A junta. At the heart of a diseased, decrepit, shrinking Empire doomed just like Rome.
Morbidly persuing a 'last ditch' master plan to reverse the decline from ever deeper bunker
mentality and hoping to form a Singapore on Thames to keep its ancient City home.
Huzzah! the crowds lining the grand avenues sceam as he arrives to claim his triumph.
In his dreams.
UP POMPEO! UP YOURS!
Francis Lee
,
"As happenned right HERE in the UK last month at the polls when they were offered the first REAL
hope of lifting the yoke of the ancient imperialist forces for over half a century- the election of
a GENUINE social democratic Labour government."
Errrm the Labour party is not a genuine
social-democratic formation. It is a pantomime horse consisting of the party in the country and the
Parliamentary party a parliamentary party that is thoroughly Blairite and shows no signs of
becoming anything other. Moreover, there is the 'Labour Friends of Israel' a zionist-front
organisation consisting of a majority in the Parliamentary party which takes its its foreign policy
cue from Tel Aviv. In this respect it has accepted the IHRA definition of anti-semitism. Jewish
members of the Labour have been expelled for alleged anti-semitism. Bizarre or what.
You see the problem with the Labour party is that it wants to be thought of as being
respectable, moderate, non-threatening and so forth. Therefore, it is Pro monarchy, pro-NATO,
pro-Trident, pro-FTTP, pro-Remainer and consists of a Shadow cabinet key positions of inter alia,
Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer, John MacDonnell, who seems to have had a Damascene conversion. The
position left vacant by the departure of Tom Watson is still unfilled. Is this the team that is
going to lead us to the social democratic society. In short it is a thoroughly conservative (small
c)political party and organization being pulled in several different directions at the same time.
It has only gained office (I say office rather than power) by detaching itself from its radicalism
and then sucking up to a new constituency of the professional and managerial middle class, which is
precisely where its leadership is drawn from.
But socialism or even social-democracy if it wants to be taken seriously as a movement which
fundamentally change the landscape of British politics must cease this sucking up to the PTB and
playing their game and stop being nice, cuddly and respectable. Unfortunately I do not see any sign
of this happening, now or in at any time in the future.
Dungroanin
,
Ah Francis "Errrm the Labour party is not a genuine social-democratic formation."
I would
guess you would say the same of the 1945 Labour party too.
You 'Marxist' tools of the bankers since the C19th have like a religious order been insistent
on promoting nationalist rebellion against a social democratic world.
Thats why you sell not just brexit but a HARD brexit while incantating Marxsist creed for
your Banker masters if two centuries.
Enjoy your damp squib celebrations in two days 11 pm,not midnight, because the bankers
don't even control time anymore!
As the FartAgers embarrassed us all with their willy waving union jocks the rest of the EU
held hands and sang Auld lang syne to us.
Lol.
paul
,
Labour is a waste of space and a waste of a man's rations. The sooner it consigns itself to
oblivion the better.
nottheonly1
,
There are obviously two Andre Vitschek.
But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of
colonialism, are justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always "fighting for justice"; they
are "enlightening" and "liberating". No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always
correct!
It is much worse. The fascists rewrite history as we type. Everywhere. Soon, WWII was started by
Russia and brave American murderers taught the Bolsheviks a lesson: Get Nukes!!!
Here is the Holy Grail of fascism. The God of fascism. The real 'uniter'. All the lies about how
bad Hitler was are Bolshevik propaganda and character defamation against which a dead person cannot
protest.
Some say that not all humans are like that. Like those who recklessly and generously dispose off
the well being of others, including their lives. Someone, however, must have told them that it is okay
to perpetrate crimes against humanity when you call them 'collateral damages'. But there is truth to
that.
Humanity will experience the collateral damages of the religious freaks that are see above
ready to follow the worst dictator ever or others into ruins. Based on the story that there is an
'Afterlife'. People who seriously believe in someone standing there at a gate in the sky dtermining if
you are allowed to eternally be with virgins, or do whatever is now worthless, because there are no
one-sided situations in a world of action and reaction.
Homo Sapiens is dead. He was replaced by Homo Consumos, Homo Gullibilitens, Homo Terroristicus,
Homo Greediensis, Homo Friocorazoniens and Homo Networkiens Isolatiens et insane al.
This is not working. Because close to eight billion people are helpless, because it would take one
billion to remove the one million that have hijacked the evolution of Homo Sapiens into a being that
better goes extinct before it can further spread.
All ya gotta do is read Mein Kampt to realize that uncle 'Dolf was nuttier than a fruit cake and a
total loony tune and that he should have been transferred from Landsberg to the nearest sanitarium
but then they took him seriously and as they say the rest is history
Millions upon millions of fellow human beings dead due to the direct consequences of imperialism, neo
colonialism, sanctions and rampant neoliberal economic policies that destroy people's lives and the
notions of solidarity and compassion.
Today, one of my mag customers said to me: "people have become disposable and forgotten about now,
especially those struggling to survive".
I couldn't have said it better myself.
It's all like a dog eat dog race to the bottom for most of us.
So many human beings just disposable and thrown on the scrap heap to die while the billionaires gorge
themselves from the rank exploitation and deaths of so many people.
How many of them would have shares in the merchants of death like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin or the
Big Banks?
Such dizzying levels of vast wealth and opulence next to grinding poverty, despair and chasms of
inequality.
Here's a quote from an article called 'Depoliticization Is A Deadly Weapon of Neoliberal Fascism' by
Henry Giroux:
"Closely related to the depoliticising practices of neoliberalism, the politics of
social atomisation and a failed sociality is the existence of a survival of the fittest ethos that
drives oppressive narratives used to define both agency and our relationship to others.
Mimicking the logic of a war culture, neoliberal pedadogy creates a predatory culture in which the
demand of hyper competitiveness pits individuals against each other through a market based logic in
which compassion and caring for the other is replaced by a culture of winners and losers"
And meanwhile, most of us stare, trance like, at our digital screens or we shop shop shop till we
drop, or sadly, the more sensitive souls fully lose themselves in drugs or gambling or alcohol to
deaden the gnawing pain of living in a dystopic, cruel, neoliberal society.
Or as Thatcher said: 'there is no such thing as society'. Bitch.
And things are only going to get worse.
I really really get your anger and frustration Andre.
nottheonly1
,
Or as Thatcher said: 'there is no such thing as society'. Bitch.
There is a song (electronic music) by Haldolium that uses a Thatcher impersonator to repeat
throughout the song:
"Yes, I am with You all the way to the end of the government."
We are witnessing the transfer of governance into private hands. The hands of the owner class.
Let's see how they see the problems of the many, the masses. Oh? They're not even looking?
Yes, this is a Dead End.
lundiel
,
Don't rely on music. Stormsy & Co won't liberate you. They are supporting the establishment. I
who love R&B, the music of struggle, know corporate bursaries to enter the class system when I
see them.
N probably already told you, but there's a huge site called Neoliberalism Softpanorama with
many hundreds of linked articles (if you have lots and lots of spare time!). Every subject
imaginable related to this warped cancer, espec the role of the media presstitutes.
Will check out that song later. Music helps keep me sane, as well as venting my spleen here and
elsewhere!
Bands such as Hammock, Whale Fall, Maiak, Hiva Oa, Yndi Halda. Six Organs Of Admittance to name
just a handful in my collection.
Highly contemplative and soothing.
Especially knowing how things are and what's coming, what most of us see.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Neo-liberalism ends in neo-feudalism, with 99.9% of humanity serfs and villeins, and a tiny ruling
elite controlling EVERYTHING. The project proceeds apace, with road-kill like Corbyn and the
500,000 'antisemites' who joined Labour littering the road to Hell on Earth.
Yes it does. You see where all this is heading. I see where all this is heading (tho can be a
bit naive at times) and except for our pet trolls who visit here, nearly everyone else at OffG
can see where all this is heading.
It's bloody frustrating that the large majority refuse to open their eyes, even when you explain
what is happening, and direct them to sites like here or The Saker or The Grayzone, etc.
Things are going to get really ugly and brutal, tho they already are for the tens of millions
just discarded like a bit of flotsam, all the homeless, and those living in grinding poverty,
those one or two paychecks away from losing their homes .
Society has become very callous and judgemental and atomised.
Just how the 0.01% planned it.
Richard Le Sarc
,
It's like the Protocols. Whether a 'forgery' by the Russians, or created as a pre-emptive
fabrication by certain Jewish figures (in order for the truth to be distorted and denied)it
describes behaviour that we do see. Just as all the 'antisemitic conspiracy theories' that
are denounced, concerning the attempts by Jewish and Zionist elites to control the West, are
attested by evidence that is impossible to deny. Except it MUST be denied. It is like the
JFK, RFK hits, the 9/11 fiasco and countless other examples. The truth is out there, and it
does NOT come anywhere near the Official Version. Meanwhile the Sabbat Goy Trump, and the
Zionist terrorist thug, simply eviscerate International Law in Occupied Palestinians, and NOT
ONE Western MSM presstitute scum-bag dares to say so. That is power.
Yes, the much heralded, deal of the century, Peace Plan, another stinking pile of lies and
garbage to further (if that's possible) screw the Palestinians into the dirt and rob them
of everything.
With scores more dead kiddies blown up or shot in the head or burned alive by the settler
fascists, and the World's most moral army. Kiddie killers.
I'll have a look at Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada shortly.
This outrage, decade after decade, is another main reason I boycott the whore filth
masquerading as . 'journalists'.
paul
,
People talk about the Protocols either as a genuine document or a forgery.
I think it is more likely to have been something of a dystopian piece of writing, like
Orwell's 1984.
This is what lies in store for you if you don't watch out, etc.
Looking at the Zionist
stranglehold over the world today, the author would probably say, "You can't say I didn't
warn you."
Seriously, how do we get the "woke" generation to stop dicking around with identity and "social media
influencers" and see just what they've bought into? It's not like it's even hard to understand, there
seems to be a miasma over Britain with the old seeking solace in social conservatism and the young
resigned to neoliberalism, debt, multiple careers, impossible targets, performance evaluation,
micromanagement,
Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic and Time
specified goals (SMART)
for your "stakeholders and customers". It's all so Disney. No wonder
people are going mad.
Fair dinkum
,
Just when I thought business jargon couldn't get any slimier.
'SMART' sounds like an MBA having a wet dream.
Harry Stotle
,
When working men and women were sent off to die in the trenches during WWI most, I suspect, would
have known virtually nothing about the geopolitics driving the conflict.
Now we have boundless
information streams yet the public is more outraged by some dickhead sounding off on Twitter than
they are about cruelty and trauma arising from brutal regime change wars.
Surely it is glaringly obvious that this kind of carnage is orchestrated by amoral politicians
acting at the behest of rapacious corporations and a crazed military?
What has gone wrong: unlike earlier generations they do not have the excuse of saying we didn't
know what has happening?
They do, or should know, for example, that around 3 million Vietnamese were killed because of a
childish theory (the domino theory), yet to them Twitter etiquette seems the more pressing issue.
Twatter's useless. Jack and his team of imperial censors shadowban anything that might upset the
comfortable applecart of consumerism. This is why you don't see anything relevant other than the
latest football, basket ball and baseball scores. If I was into sports betting I'd be on twatter
otherwise it's a waste of time.
nottheonly1
,
You should stop dicking around with identity.
Fair dinkum
,
The history of (mainly) white men and their religions, whether they be Christian or Mammon, is a
history of exploitation, human and ecological.
As a white western male I am ashamed.
Extinction will be too good for us.
Jasper
,
As a brown western male, I can say that you should not be ashamed. You are also one of the
exploited, the 'cannon fodder' during the wars contained high proportions of white western males
and we can see the contempt with which white working class communities are treated in the west
today.
True what they call "white trash" are beat up multiculturally as well as by the self righteous
white limousine liberal elitists. I'd say they are the most oppressed group in the country right
now.
Some of their trailer parks have worse poverty than Pine Ridge and that's saying
something. Many of them go to the city looking for gainful employment end up living on the
streets or in their cars even when they have job because the cost of living exceeds their
income.
San Francisco is a perfect example.
Peter Charles
,
Not
"The history of (mainly) white men
"
People only think that because that is the modern (edited at that) history we
are familiar with. Look a little deeper and we can see it is the history of Man, period, throughout
our existence. Man, black, white, yellow or anything in-between is and always has been greedy,
acquisitive, violent and jealous, it is our innate nature, likely the exact reason we are the most
successful animal species on the planet. Probably because we developed our intelligence during the
drastic changes that drove our predecessors from the trees to the plains and then out of Africa.
Civilisation and a satisfactory quality of life somewhat tempers these natural urges but as soon as
things get difficult we revert.
At the same time we have a small proportion of people that make these characteristics the
bedrock of their lives and for the majority of people they are the pack alphas they all too
willingly look up to and follow.
Fair dinkum
,
Most successful?
Reckon the cockroach family might prove that wrong.
Peter Charles
,
Hence the reason I included 'animal' in the phrase, or do you maintain that there has been
another animal more successful than Man?
Fair dinkum
,
Point taken Peter.
Rhisiart Gwilym
,
"Successful", Peter? "Man"? Really?
anonymous bosch
,
"Throughout our existence, Man, black, white, yellow or anything in-between is and always has
been greedy, acquisitive, violent and jealous, it is our innate nature, likely the exact reason
we are the most successful animal species on the planet."
Firstly, so that is our 'innate
nature' ? I wonder how many would agree with that assertion ? Secondly, in respect of "we are
the most successful animal species on the planet", I must question the use of the word
"successful" here for what have "succeeded" in doing right up until now has actually brought
us to the brink of extinction are you suggesting that our "innate nature" is to bring an end
to everything ?
Ramdan
,
greedy, acquisitive, violent and jealous, it is our innate nature
,
To be closer to truth this is just one side of the "innate nature". We are not black OR white
(inside) we are BOTH. that means we are also loving, compassionate, collaborative creatures.
Like in that native american tale: there are two wolves (black&white) the one you feed is the
one that prevails.
Unfortunately, humanity-from the very beggening- fed the black wolf : the rapacious predator and
elevated the most egregious of all beigns to positions of leadership. They were made kings,
presidents, prime ministers.
Meanwhile, the white wolfs were given a cross and placed at an almost unreachable
distance venerated with our tongue, desacrated with our actions.
This behaviour has reached its peak and today, competition, killing, betrayal, economical
success, hedonism have been elevated to the level of virtues.
Interestingly, those characteristic you mention (greedy, acquisitive, violent and jealous)
Buddha calls them: poisons of the mind, the defining symptom of a deranged mind ..but well, that
was another white wolf: Buddha, a MAN not a HU-man.
We'll do well and not wrong, if we took some time for internal exporation . To continue to
postpone our internal growth means postponing humanity's survival.
Not true. Some cultures are more willing to share with others. What you're are talking about are
those who have embraced the Social Darwinist "philosophy" of survival of the fittest which is
dominated mainly by whites but there are also other races who embrace this twisted 'philosophy"
then there are those who consider themselves the "chosen ones" 'cause the bible or torah or
talmud tells them so.
Antonym
,
As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.
Who is hiding behind bully no.1, the CIA/FED US?
Bully no.2, Xi / CCP-China.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Coming from an apologist for the planet's Number Two bully-boy, Israel, with its hatred of others,
belligerence, aggression, utter hateful contempt for International Law, dominance of industries of
exploitation like arms trafficking, surveillance methodologies and equipment, 'blood diamonds',
human organs trafficking,sex trafficking, pornography, 'binary options', online gambling, pay-day
lending etc,that takes real CHUTZPAH.
Antonym
,
All that with just 6.5 million Israeli Jews in total; Compare that to 1.3 billion Chinese in
China or 1.4 billions Sunnis.
Dyscalculia much?
Fair dinkum
,
The Chinese do not claim to be perfect, but then they also make no claim to be the chosen.
Antonym
,
No, China just calls itself modestly "Zhongguo" Central or Middle Kingdom, while for
Sunnis
all
others are
infidel
s.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Chinese civilization aims for harmony within society and between societies. Talmudic
Judaism sees all non-Jews as inferior, barely above animals, and enemies. Chalk and
cheese.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Yes, you really are busy little beavers, aren't you. With perhaps 40% of Israeli Jews
actually opposed to Israeli State fascism and terror, the numbers become even more stark. But
what counts is the money, the 'Binyamins' as they say in Brooklyn, and the CONTROL that they
purchase.
Antonym
,
Sure, plenty of Jews are not happy with Netanyahu's hard line. Your number reduces the
supporting Israelis to 3.9 million, even less. One big city size in the ME.
Money /
control: Ali Baba's cave with gold and treasure is not in Lower Manhattan -paper dollars +
little gold- but along the Arabian West coast-
real
oil and gas. The Anglo American and Brit 0.1% know that, but you don't
apparently.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Very poor quality hasbara. The Sauds are rich, the petro-dollar vital to US economic
dominance, but compared to Jewish elite control of Western finances, of US politics, of
US MSM, of the commanding heights of US Government and of the Ivy League colleges, it
is PEANUTS. And, in any case, the Sauds are doenmeh.
Richard Le Sarc
,
Jewish control of the West is mediated by the number of 'Binyamins' dispensed to the
political Sabbat Goyim, not the numbers of Jewish people. You know that-why dissemble? Can't
help yourself, can you.
paul
,
Olga Guerin at the state controlled, Zionist BBC, is apparently the latest Corbyn style
rabid anti-semite to be unmasked by the Board of Deputies.
In her coverage of the
Holocaust Industry's Auschwitz Jamboree, she made a very brief passing reference to
Palestinians living under occupation, and apparently that is unpardonable anti Semitism.
Capricornia Man
,
Rich. you forgot to mention gross, systematic interference in the politics of the UK, US,
Australia and who knows how many other countries.
paul
,
There are some grounds for optimism despite the utter undisguised barbarism of the US, Israel
and their satellites.
These vile regimes are having their last hurrah.
The US is on the brink of imploding. It will collapse politically, financially, economically,
socially, culturally, morally and spiritually.
When it does, its many satraps and satellites in the EU, the Gulf dictatorships, Israel, will go
down with it. It will be like eastern Europe in 1989.
All it takes is for the front door to be kicked in and the whole rotten structure will come
crashing down. Some sudden crisis or unforeseen event will bring this about. A sudden unwinding
of the Debt and Derivatives time bombs. Another war or crisis in any one of a number of
destabilised regions, Iran being an obvious favourite. There are many possibilities.
And the blueprint for a better world already exists. In fact, it is already being implemented.
Russia, China and Iran have survived the aggression directed against them. They have been left
with few illusions about the nature of the US regime and the implacable hatred and violence they
can expect from it.
These are the key players in the Belt And Road, which provides a new template for development
and mutual prosperity throughout the planet.
China has built infrastructure and industry in Africa and elsewhere in a single generation which
colonial powers neglected to provide in centuries of genocide, slaughter, slavery and rapacious
exploitation. It is not surprising that these achievements have been denigrated and traduced by
western regimes, who seek to ascribe and transfer their own dismal record of behaviour to China.
The Zio Empire is lashing out like a wounded beast. It is even attacking its own most servile
satellites and satraps. It just has to be fended off and left to die like a mad dog. Then a
better world will emerge.
George Cornell
,
Taiwan has been a US vassal for a very long time and its location next to China, its history as a
part of China and its lack of recognition should not be ignored. Its people are ethnically Chinese,
speak Chinese and follow most Chinese customs. For you to equate this to the presence of American
bases all over the world, meddling in hundreds of elections, assassinating elected leaders who
won't kowtow, invading country after country and causing millions of deaths for "regime changes" is
absolutely ridiculous.
paul
,
Taiwan is just another part of China that was brutally hacked off its body by rapacious western
imperial powers. Like Hong Kong, Tsingtao and Manchuria.
paul
,
Or Shanghai. No self respecting nation would accept this, but China has been a model of
restraint in not using force, but patient diplomacy, to rectify this imperial plunder.
Antonym
,
Or the Tibet, Aksai Chin, the Shaksgam Valley or the South China Sea. What's next,
Siberia?
paul
,
Tibet was Chinese before the United Snakes or Kosherstan even existed.
The South China Sea was recognised as Chinese until 1949, when the US puppet Chiang Kai
Shek was booted out and skulked around on Taiwan.
Then suddenly the SC Sea was no longer Chinese. Lord Neptune in Washington decreed
otherwise.
Martin Usher
,
I remember the downing of flight 655 because it was on the evening news in the US. Literally. The
Vincennes, the ship that shot down the airliner, had a news crew on board and they recorded the entire
incident, the excitement of the incoming threat, the firing of a couple of Standard missiles at the
threat, the cheering when the threat was neutralized followed by the "Oh, shit!" moment when they
realized what they had done. This was in the pre-youTube days and the footage was only shown once to
the best of my recollection so its probably long gone and buried. The lessons learned from that
incident was that the crew needed better training -- they appeared to be near panic -- and you shouldn't
really have those sorts of weapons near civilian airspace. Another lesson that's worth remembering is
that this was 30 years ago, far enough in the past that the state of the art missile carrier has long
been scrapped as obsolete (broken up in 2011). Put another way, we (the US) have effectively been in a
state of war with Iran for over 40 years. Its expensive and pointless but I suppose the real goal is
to keep our aerospace companies supplied with work.
johny conspiranoid
,
Yes, I remember that news clip as well. It was shown in the UK. There was one young 'dude' on a
swivel seat working the aiming device and a bunch of people cheering him on, then "oh shit!" as you
say. I also wonder if the whole thing was staged latter though, for damage limitation.
I remember seeing clips at the time, but this documentary is excellent, thanks for sharing. The
Capt of the USS Vincennes should have been put behind bars.
Richard Le Sarc
,
But he got a medal! The Vincennes returned to the USA to a 'heroes' welcome'. 'Warriors' one
and all.
No surprise. Many of the low life cretins that were responsible for the Wounded Knee
Massacre received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Ironic that many of the post humous
awards and the Purple Hearts received were those wounded or killed by the 7th's own
"friendly fire".
"... A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's "decisive action." It was Carlson who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades," Carlson said . "They still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it." ..."
"... Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals in the region -- a central part of his 2020 reelection bid . ..."
"... The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien, Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protg who soaked up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? -- regime change. ..."
"... The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle. ..."
"... the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant of the Oval Office. ..."
"... The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outr. ..."
"... But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen stated , "Creative destruction is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day." ..."
"... Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the movement. ..."
"... And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian, and Iraq Warera figures like David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser, the Bolton protg Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't care less if they negotiate," he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review , rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is a myth." ..."
"... One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away" from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has popped up to warn Trump against trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000. ..."
"... Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world ..."
"... At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad. ..."
There was a time not so long ago, before President Donald Trump's surprise decision early this year to liquidate the Iranian commander
Qassem Soleimani, when it appeared that America's neoconservatives were floundering. The president was itching to withdraw U.S. forces
from Afghanistan. He was staging exuberant photo-ops with a beaming Kim Jong Un. He was reportedly willing to hold talks with the
president of Iran, while clearly preferring trade wars to hot ones.
Indeed, this past summer, Trump's anti-interventionist supporters in the conservative media were riding high. When he refrained
from attacking Iran in June after it shot down an American drone, Fox News host Tucker Carlson
declared , "Donald Trump was elected president precisely to keep us out of disaster like war with Iran." Carlson went on to condemn
the hawks in Trump's Cabinet and their allies, who he claimed were egging the president on -- familiar names to anyone who has followed
the decades-long neoconservative project of aggressively using military force to topple unfriendly regimes and project American power
over the globe. "So how did we get so close to starting [a war]?"
he asked. "One of [the hawks'] key allies is the national security adviser of the United States. John Bolton is an old friend
of Bill Kristol's. Together they helped plan the Iraq War."
By the time Trump met with Kim in late June, becoming the first sitting president to set foot on North Korean soil, Bolton was
on the outs. Carlson was on the president's North Korean junket, while Trump's national security adviser was in Mongolia. "John Bolton
is absolutely a hawk,"
Trump
told NBC in June. "If it was up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, OK?" In September, Bolton was fired.
The standard-bearer of the Republican Party had made clear his distaste for the neocons' belligerent approach to global affairs,
much to the neocons' own entitled chagrin. As recently as December, Bolton, now outside the tent pissing in, was hammering Trump
for "bluffing" through an announcement that the administration wanted North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. "The
idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,"
Bolton told Axios . Then Trump ordered the drone
strike on Soleimani, drastically escalating a simmering conflict between Iran and the United States. All of a sudden the roles were
reversed, with Bolton praising the president and asserting that Soleimani's death was "
the first step to regime change in Tehran ." A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former
CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's
"decisive action." It was Carlson
who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades,"
Carlson said . "They
still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it."
Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles
in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the
national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet
another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals
in the region -- a central part of his
2020 reelection bid
.
The anti-interventionist right is freaking out. Writing in American Greatness, Matthew Boose
declared , "[T]he Trump movement, which was generated out of opposition to the foreign policy blob and its endless wars, was
revealed this week to have been co-opted to a great extent by neoconservatives seeking regime change." James Antle, the editor of
The American Conservative, a publication founded in 2002 to oppose the Iraq War,
asked , "Did
Trump betray the anti-war right?"
In the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation.
Their concerns are not unmerited. The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign
policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien,
Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian
Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators
Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protg who soaked
up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with
Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In
June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian
opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? --
regime change.
The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind
Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of
war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by
causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle.
Donald Trump has not dragged us into war with Iran (yet). But the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual
complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its
hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in
the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even
if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant
of the Oval Office.
But there was a time when the neoconservative coalition was not so entrenched -- and what has turned out to be its provisional
state of exile lends some critical insight into how it managed to hang around respectable policymaking circles in recent years, and
how it may continue to shape American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. When the neoconservatives came on the scene in the
late 1960s, the Republican old guard viewed them as interlopers. The neocons, former Trotskyists turned liberals who broke with the
Democratic Party over its perceived weakness on the Cold War, stormed the citadel of Republican ideology by emphasizing the relationship
between ideas and political reality. Irving Kristol, one of the original neoconservatives,
mused in 1985 that " what communists call the theoretical organs always end up through a filtering process influencing a lot
of people who don't even know they're being influenced. In the end, ideas rule the world because even interests are defined by ideas."
At pivotal moments in modern American foreign policy, the neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies
that might once have seemed outr. Jeane Kirkpatrick's seminal 1979 essay in Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards,"
essentially set forth the lineaments of the Reagan doctrine. She assailed Jimmy Carter for attacking friendly authoritarian leaders
such as the shah of Iran and Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza. She contended that authoritarian regimes might molt into democracies,
while totalitarian regimes would remain impregnable to outside influence, American or otherwise. Ronald Reagan read the essay and
liked it. He named Kirkpatrick his ambassador to the United Nations, where she became the most influential neocon of the era for
her denunciations of Arab regimes and defenses of Israel. Her tenure was also defined by the notion that it was perfectly acceptable
for America to cozy up to noxious regimes, from apartheid South Africa to the shah's Iran, as part of the greater mission to oppose
the red menace.
The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outr.
There was always tension between Reagan's affinity for authoritarian regimes and his hard-line opposition to Communist ones. His
sunny persona never quite gelled with Kirkpatrick's more gelid view that communism was an immutable force, and in 1982, in a major
speech to the British Parliament at Westminster emphasizing the power of democracy and free speech, he declared his intent to end
the Cold War on American terms. As Reagan's second term progressed and democracy and free speech actually took hold in the waning
days of the Soviet Union, many hawks declared that it was all a sham. Indeed, not a few neocons were livid, claiming that Reagan
was appeasing the Soviet Union. But after the USSR collapsed, they retroactively blessed him as the anti-Communist warrior par excellence
and the model for the future. The right was now a font of happy talk about the dawn of a new age of liberty based on free-market
economics and American firepower.
The fall of communism, in other words, set the stage for a new neoconservative paradigm. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History
appeared a decade after Kirkpatrick's essay in Commentary and just before the Berlin Wall was breached on November 9,
1989. Here was a sharp break with the saturnine, realpolitik approach that Kirkpatrick had championed. Irving Kristol regarded it
as hopelessly utopian -- "I don't believe a word of it," he wrote in a response to Fukuyama. But a younger generation of neocons,
led by Irving's son, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan, embraced it. Fukuyama argued that Western, liberal democracy, far from being
menaced, was now the destination point of the train of world history. With communism vanquished, the neocons, bearing the good word
from Fukuyama, formulated a new goal: democracy promotion, by force if necessary, as a way to hasten history and secure the global
order with the U.S. at its head. The first Gulf War in 1991, precipitated by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, tested the neocons'
resolve and led to a break in the GOP -- one that would presage the rise of Donald Trump. For decades, Patrick Buchanan had been
regularly inveighing against what he came to call the neocon "
amen corner" in and around the
Washington centers of power, including A.M. Rosenthal and Charles Krauthammer, both of whom endorsed the '91 Gulf War. The neocons
were frustrated by the measured approach taken by George H.W. Bush. He refused to crow about the fall of the Berlin Wall and kicked
the Iraqis out of Kuwait but declined to invade Iraq and "finish the job," as his hawkish critics would later put it. Buchanan then
ran for the presidency in 1992 on an America First platform, reviving a paleoconservative tradition that would partly inform Trump's
dark horse run in 2016.
But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy
wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert
Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently
pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian
fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In
his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen
stated , "Creative destruction
is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day."
We all know the painful consequences of the neocons' obsession with creative destruction. In his second inaugural address, three
and a half years after 9/11, George W. Bush cemented
neoconservative ideology into presidential doctrine: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The neocons'
hubris had already turned into nemesis in Iraq, paving the way for an anti-war candidate in Barack Obama.
But it was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell. He announced
his Buchananesque policy of "America First" in a speech at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in 2016, signaling that he would not adhere
to the long-standing Reaganite principles that had animated the party establishment.
The pooh-bahs of the GOP openly declared their disdain and revulsion for Trump, leading directly to the rise of the Never Trump
movement, which was dominated by neocons. The Never Trumpers ended up functioning as an informal blacklist for Trump once he became
president. Elliott Abrams, for example, who was being touted for deputy secretary of state in February 2017, was rejected when Steve
Bannon alerted Trump to his earlier heresies (though he later reemerged, in January 2019, as Trump's special envoy to Venezuela,
where he has pushed for regime change). Not a few other members of the Republican foreign policy establishment suffered similar fates.
Kristol's The Weekly Standard, which had held the neoconservative line through the Bush years and beyond , folded
in 2018. Even the office building that used to house the American Enterprise Institute and the Standard, on the corner of
17th and M streets in Washington, has been torn down, leaving an empty, boarded-up site whose symbolism speaks for itself.
Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued
to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers
in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have
done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the
movement.
It was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell.
But other neocons -- the ones who want to wield positions of influence and might -- have, more often than not, been able to hold
their noses. Stephen Wertheim, writing in The New York Review of Books, has perceptively dubbed this faction the anti-globalist
neocons. Led by John Bolton, they believe Trump performed a godsend by elevating the term globalism "from a marginal slur
to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics,"
Wertheim argued . The U.S. need not
bother with pesky multilateral institutions or international agreements or the entire postwar order, for that matter -- it's now
America's way or the highway.
And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian,
and Iraq Warera figures like
David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser,
the Bolton protg Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't
care less if they negotiate,"
he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize
the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former
editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review ,
rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle
for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding
from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White
House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is
a myth."
In other words, whether the neocons themselves are occupying top positions in the Trump administration is almost irrelevant. The
ideology itself has reemerged to a degree that even Trump himself seems hard pressed to resist it -- if he even wants to.
How were the neocons able to influence another Republican presidency, one that was ostensibly dedicated to curbing their sway?
One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the
tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of
gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for
example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away"
from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. The event was hosted by Michael Doran, a
former senior director on George W. Bush's National Security Council and a senior fellow at the institute, who
wrote in
The New York Times on January 3, "The United States has no choice, if it seeks to stay in the Middle East, but to check
Iran's military power on the ground." Then there's Jamie M. Fly, a former staffer to Senator Marco Rubio who was appointed this past
August to head Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; he previously co-authored an essay in Foreign Affairs contending that it isn't enough to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities: "If the United States seriously considers military action,
it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially
resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all."
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has
popped up to warn Trump against
trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle
East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any
others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War
and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000.
But there are plenty of institutions in Washington, and neoconservatism's seemingly inescapable influence cannot be chalked up
to the swamp alone. Some etiolated form of what might be called Ledeenism lingered on before taking on new life at the outset of
the Trump administration. Trump's overt animus toward Muslims, for example, meant that figures such as Frank Gaffney, who opposed
arms-control treaties with Moscow as a member of the Reagan administration and resigned in protest of the 1987 Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty, achieved a new prominence. During the Obama administration, Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy,
claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the White House and National Security Agency.
Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a
creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world: "We're in a world
war against a messianic mass movement of evil people." It was one of many signs that Trump was susceptible to ideas of a civilizational
battle against
"Islamo-fascism,"
which Norman Podhoretz and other neocons argued, in the wake of 9/11, would lead to World War III. In their millenarian ardor
and inflexible support for Israel, the neocons find themselves in a position precisely cognate to evangelical Christians -- both
groups of true believers trying to enact their vision through an apostate. But perhaps the neoconservatives' greatest strength lies
in the realm of ideas that Irving Kristol identified more than three decades ago. The neocons remain the winners of that battle,
not because their policies have made the world or the U.S. more secure, but by default -- because there are so few genuinely alternative
ideas that are championed with equal zeal. The foreign policy discussion surrounding Soleimani's killing -- which accelerated Iran's
nuclear weapons program, diminished America's influence in the Middle East, and entrenched Iran's theocratic regime -- has largely
occurred on a spectrum of the neocons' making. It is a discussion that accepts premises of the beneficence of American military might
and hegemony -- Hobbes's "ill game" -- and naturally bends the universe toward more war.
At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the
two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which
is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that
his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly
is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad.
As Trump takes an extreme hard line against Iran, the neoconservatives may ultimately get their long-held wish of a war with the
ayatollahs. When it ends in a fresh disaster, they can always argue that it only failed because it wasn't prosecuted vigorously enough
-- and the shuffle will begin again.
Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of The National Interest and the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.
@ JacobHeilbrunn
They are not helping Ukraine citizen of which after 2014 live in abject poverty. So in now
way this an aid. They are arming Ukraine to kill Russians and maintain a hot spot on Russian
border.
The USA, specifically Brennan, Nuland and Biden create civil war out of nothing pushing far
right nationalist to suppress eastern population by brute forces (they burned alive 200 hundred
or more people on Odessa and killed people in Mariupol before Donbass flared up)
They are despicable MIC bottomfeeders. Neocon calculation is that Russia will not respond to
this provocation, because it is too weak after the economic rape of 1991-2000. While Putin is a
very patient politician they might be wrong.
Notable quotes:
"... Authored by James Bovard via JimBovard.com, ..."
"... "corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States." ..."
"... "I think it makes no sense to give aid money to countries that are corrupt." ..."
"... " remains skeptical after a history of broken promises [from the Ukraine govt]. Kiev hasn't successfully completed any of a series of IMF bailout packages over the past two decades, with systemic corruption at the heart of much of that failure." ..."
"... "Most foreign aid winds up with outside consultants, the local military, corrupt bureaucrats, the new NGO [nongovernmental organizations] administrators, and Mercedes dealers." ..."
"... James Bovard is the author of " ..."
"... Attention Deficit Democracy ..."
"... The Bush Betrayal ..."
"... Terrorism and Tyranny ..."
"... ," and other books. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at ..."
The campaign to convict and remove President Donald Trump in the Senate hinges on delays in
disbursing U.S. aid to Ukraine. Ukraine was supposedly on the verge of great progress until
Trump pulled the rug out from under the heroic salvation effort by U.S. government bureaucrats.
Unfortunately, Congress has devoted a hundred times more attention to the timing of aid to
Ukraine than to its effectiveness. And most of the media coverage has ignored the biggest
absurdity of the impeachment fight.
The temporary postponement of the Ukrainian aid was practically irrelevant considering that
U.S. assistance efforts have long fueled the poxes they promised to eradicate –
especially
kleptocracy, or government by thieves .
A 2002 American Economic Review analysis concluded that
"increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption" and
that "corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United
States."
Then-President George W. Bush promised to reform foreign aid that year,
declaring , "I think it makes no sense to give aid money to countries that are
corrupt." Regardless, the Bush administration continued delivering billions of dollars in
handouts to
many of the world's most corrupt regimes .
Then-President Barack Obama, recognizing the failure
of past U.S. aid efforts, proclaimed at the United Nations in 2010 that the U.S. government
is "
leading a global effort to combat corruption ." The following year, congressional
Republicans sought to restrict foreign aid to fraud-ridden foreign regimes. Then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton wailed that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption
tests "has
the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients."
The Obama administration continued pouring tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars into
sinkholes such as Afghanistan, which even its president, Ashraf Ghani, admitted in 2016 was
"one of the
most corrupt countries on earth ." John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan
Reconstruction (SIGAR), declared that "U.S.
policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption" in Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has provided more than $6 billion in aid to
Ukraine. At the House impeachment hearings, a key anti-Trump witness was acting U.S. ambassador
to the Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr. The Washington Post hailed Taylor as someone who "
spent much of the 1990s telling Ukrainian politicians that nothing was more critical to
their long-term prosperity than rooting out corruption and bolstering the rule of law, in his
role as the head of U.S. development assistance for post-Soviet countries." A New York Times
editorial
lauded Taylor and State Department deputy assistant secretary George Kent as witnesses who
"came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted
their lives to serving their country."
After their testimony spurred criticism, a Washington Post headline
captured the capital city's reaction: "The diplomatic corps has been wounded. The State
Department needs to heal." But not nearly as much as the foreigners supposedly rescued by U.S.
bureaucrats.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 31 that the International Monetary Fund, which has
provided more than $20
billion in loans to Ukraine, " remains
skeptical after a history of broken promises [from the Ukraine govt]. Kiev hasn't
successfully completed any of a series of IMF bailout packages over the past two decades, with
systemic corruption at the heart of much of that failure."
The IMF concluded that Ukraine continued to be vexed by " shortcomings
in the legal framework, pervasive corruption, and large parts of the economy dominated by
inefficient state-owned enterprises or by oligarchs." That last item is damning for the U.S.
benevolent pretensions. If a former Soviet republic cannot even terminate its government-owned
boondoggles, then why in hell was the U.S. government bankrolling them?
Transparency International, which publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, shows
that corruption
surged in Ukraine in the late 1990s (after the U.S. decided to rescue them) and remains at
abysmal levels. Ukraine is now ranked as the 120th most
corrupt nation in the world -- a lower ranking than received by Egypt and Pakistan, two
other major U.S. aid recipients also notorious for corruption.
Actually, the best gauge of Ukrainian corruption is the near-total collapse of its citizens'
trust in government or in their own future. Since 1991, the nation
has lost almost 20% of its population as citizens flee abroad like passengers leaping off a
sinking ship.
And yet, the House impeachment hearings and much of the media gushed over career U.S.
government officials despite their strikeouts. It was akin to a congressional committee
resurrecting Col. George S. Custer in 1877 and fawning as he offered personal insights in
dealing with uprisings by Sioux Indians (while carefully avoiding awkward questions about the
previous year at
the Little Big Horn ).
Foreign aid is virtue signaling with other people's money. As long the aid spawns press
releases and photo opportunities for presidents and members of Congress and campaign donations
from corporate and other beneficiaries, little else matters. Congress almost never conducts
thorough investigations into the failure of aid programs despite their legendary pratfalls. The
Agency for International Development ludicrously evaluated its programs in Afghanistan based
on their "burn rate" – whether they were spending money as quickly as possible,
almost regardless of the results. SIGAR's John Sopko "found a USAID lessons-learned report from
1980s on Afghan reconstruction but nobody at AID had read it
."
After driving around the world, investment guru Jim Rogers declared: "Most foreign
aid winds up with outside consultants, the local military, corrupt bureaucrats, the new NGO
[nongovernmental organizations] administrators, and Mercedes dealers." After the Obama
administration promised massive aid to Ukraine in 2014,
Hunter Biden jumped on the gravy train – as did legions of well-connected
Washingtonians and other hustlers around the nation. Similar largesse assures that there will
never be a shortage of overpaid individuals and hired think tanks ready to write op-eds or
letters to the editor of the Washington Post whooping up the moral greatness of foreign aid or
some such hokum.
When it comes to the failure of U.S. aid to Ukraine, almost all of Trump's congressional
critics are like the "
dog that didn't bark " in the Sherlock Holmes story. The real outrage is that Trump and
prior presidents, with Congress cheering all the way, delivered so many U.S. tax dollars to
Kiev that any reasonable person knew would be wasted. If Washington truly wants to curtail
foreign corruption, ending U.S. foreign aid is the best first step.
paying billions to corrupt Jewish Ukranians is just another way to support Israel.
Christian Zionists understand and approve of this. So what's the big deal? It's free money.
Money that grows on trees. What does it cost to print billions of free money by a few
electronic entries? Nothing. We should print more. Free **** is a beautiful thing.
We can postpone judgment day for at least another decade or so. By then, all the smart
Harvard educated guys and gals at Goldman Sachs and Wall Street will figure out how to kick
the can down the road for another decade or so.
When it all collapses, half of India and Africa and central America will already have
replaced what used to be the American population. The few remaining Americans aside from the
immigrants will be unrecognizable anyway. many will have left. Many more will have been
reduced by failure to procreate and replace themselves. Christians will be a despised,(even
the idiotic Zio-Christians who looked the other way on important issues as long as we were
bombing and killing for their beloved Israel) We will have a dying population as many will
have chosen the gay LGBTQ lifestyle and we are replaced by subservient obedient, uneducated
immigrants who are happy to work for $8 an hour and live in a single room apartment they
share with other immigrant families.
Ukraine was a failed state since day one and it got much worse since US/EU instigated
coup. I don't see any light at the end of tunnel. Zielensky is a more friendly face, but
that's it. He obviously doesn't have power to change the course. He can promise anything
while abroad, but he has to appease the nazis at home or they will get rid of him. In other
words Ukraine is doomed.
Zielensky is more than friendly face...he signed many deals with Putin and behave as
responsible politician who wanna bring normalization and peace. Same forces overthrow
Yanukovitch will try it with Zielensky, because they not wanna peace, but their interest is
war....so Zielensky is in danger.
Ukraine has biggest potential of all countries. Has richest on a planet soil, educated
European population, is poor so money go long way. And of course bridge to forcing Russia
being our ally, and adhere to nationalism, vs being corrupted by globalists.
No ****, it's absurd. The Wretched City was practically unanimous in the screeching about
sending weapons to Ukraine because Crimea voted to join Russia, something they describe up
there as being "annexed". Especially so now because since then Iraq voted to kick the US out
of their country and has been ignored, themselves being "annexed".
This is something that is accepted to a certain degree as a result of Bob Mueller.
Crimea is military important for their security...that why they had naval base there..they
cant afford lose this point and Black Sea....
Soviets were not willing to colonize these satelites like Poland, Czechoslovakia etc. they
were relevant after ww2 and Russians were scared of another war...day they become irrelevant
thanks of new weapons they abandon these states.
I know they are corrupted one...but USA is careless toward Ukraine fortunes...they use
them to provoke conditions to create cold war two...military industry need big enemies for
sake of hundreds bilions usd profits...how would you explain your citizens you pay one third
of budget and no enemies??? so Deep state want cold war two.
More than milion Ukrainians left to Russia...while EU has closed Ukrainian borders...so
who care more of Ukrainian people?
Russians were victims of all of this...red line was Crimea...and Putin did
right...otherwise Russian nuclear security would be doomed if you allow NATO troops to
Crimea.
US politicians not do it first time...did you know most wealthy Kosovian is Magdalene All
Bright?? i live in postcommunist state and whole my life witness western proxies stealing all
valuable stakes here....Communism created state ownership of big industries...domestic
politicians alongside western snakes steal it very ugly way.IN SO CALLED PRIVATIZATION..wheather it is Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania etc. even information networks are owed by westeners....we are absolutely
blackmailed.
Russians and partly Ukrainians did not allow foreigers to entry ...they tried it..here and
there something got, whole 90s was going on this big fight among Russians and plus western
snakes for stakes....Putin created order in it alongside Russian oligarchy and
normalization....that why Russians like him.
Are these idiotic Democrats and Russia haters crazy?
Russia has a population and GDP roughly the same as Mexico and they're on the other side
of the planet (unless you're in Alaska). There is exactly zero chance Russia will invade or
attack Western Europe or the USA.
The USA should be concerned with the USA, and not whether Russia will act to safeguard its
border.
When Soviet Union left...military industry for sake of their profits needed to create big
enemy....they created terrorism and islamic wars......now as it failing apart they need new
enemies..big one to explain you why is necessary to give one third of your taxes into
military toys...so they create conflicts around China and Russia with hope to dig in into
cold war two.
Russians and Chinese have not big corporate bussines behind their military...their
spending is tiny compared to US military industry profits....so they have no interest in
wars...while US seek them.
Be aware Americans...your military is not only milking you, but risking of whole humanity
throwing into military disasters even as an accidents . Putin explained it many
times...computer supersystems can be activated so easily if some misteps happen...
If Quid Pro Que is legal, then the swamp is drained. The swamp isn't doing anything wrong.
They have been following the law all this time. Ask the president.
The misconduct for which Donald Trump has been impeached centers on an attempt to drag a
foreign government into a U.S. election campaign. That caper has increased public attention
to the problem of foreign interference in U.S. politics, but the problem is more extensive
than discourse about the impeachment process would suggest.
Words matter, they can be as precise as scalpels or as blunt as a sledgehammer. In skilled
hands, a word-tool can be either be a scalpel or a sledgehammer.
Jewish ethnonationalism (Zionism) was well underway from the mid-1800s, and well-supported
(at least in terms of "solving the Jewish problem") in some elite circles in the early 1900s
as the Balfour Declaration proves. The Nazis erred in thinking it was the Jewish population
was the "problem", when the problem resided in the Jewish/banking and intellectual elites
(e.g. Rothchilds).
AIPAC etc. shows this malignant ideology continues to grow in scope and influence.
We here at MoA should adopt Florin's more correct terms and use them here at MoA AND
ANYWHERE ELSE WE POST... From and acorn of an idea, a mighty oak of understanding may grow.
But it won't grow if we don't nurture it.
Semitism refers to speakers of Semitic languages, of which Hebrew-speakers are but one
part... most of the rest are Arabic speakers. The term antisemitism was hijacked in the early
1800's.
"... also antisemitism, 1881, from German Antisemitismus, first used by Wilhelm Marr
(1819-1904) German radical, nationalist and race-agitator, who founded the Antisemiten-Liga
in 1879; see anti- + Semite.
Not etymologically restricted to anti-Jewish theories, actions, or policies, but almost
always used in this sense. Those who object to the inaccuracy of the term might try Hermann
Adler's Judaeophobia (1881). Anti-Semitic (also antisemitic) and anti-Semite (also
antisemite) also are from 1881, like anti-Semitism they appear first in English in an article
in the "Athenaeum" of Sept. 31, in reference to German literature. Jew-hatred is attested
from 1881. As an adjective, anti-Jewish is from 1817."
---------
Words matter as the Israel Project's "Global Language Dictionary"(IP-GLG) demonstrates,
the Jewish ethnonationalists (Zionists) use words to hide their intentions. Why not call the
IP-GLD "Propaganda Language to support the theft of, and genocide in, Palestine"? It's a far
more accurate description of the contents and intents... but being honest and transparent is
not what the international Jew/Israel Lobby/elite is all about. https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/08/global-language-dictionary/
Trump and his Israeli partners are betting on Palestine's Arab friends to recognize the
finality of the window of opportunity that has presented itself and prevail upon the
Palestinian people to act accordingly.
For Israel, a rejection of this ultimatum benefits them far more than any Palestinian
acceptance. This fact, more than anything else, opens the door to the possibility that the
Palestinians can be dissuaded from their current hardline position rejecting the deal.
Most see this deal as cover for Israel's annexation of Occupied Palestine. The deal was
made public yesterday. Bibi rushed home today for the vote on Sunday to annex the Jordan
Valley and West Bank Settlements. This agreement was constructed for the occupiers and
negotiations did not include proprietors of the land.
Read on it is for the sole benefit of Israel.
Why the rush?
Kushner said not so soon...wait a month. but in Israel ......
"We have been working on this for three years, hundreds of hours, to bring the best
agreement in Israel," the source noted, adding that Trump's move to recognize the
application of Israeli law to the Jordan Valley, the Northern Dead Sea, Judea and Samaria
was "a huge thing" and an undeniable success for Israel.
The source clarified that the US side had preferred an Israeli annexation of these
territories "all at once" instead of a slice-by-slice approach, calling this a "technical
problem" but emphasizing that there was "no argument about the essence" of the
matter.[.]
Well, King Donald Trump giveth. The same king who abrogates international treaties has no
respect for the rights of others.
Ok btw. Mike Bloomberg is not really running a campaign to be president. He said, "I am
spending my money to get rid of Trump." Thing is whoever comes after must be approved by
the landlords.
"... I think they were trying to start a war when they killed Soleimani, and the Iranians decided to use it against them instead. Which is smart. Neocons talk a lot but they are not smart. They are bullies and cowards. ..."
Posted by: Patroklos | Jan 30 2020 23:02 utc | 124
I think they were trying to start a war when they killed Soleimani, and the Iranians
decided to use it against them instead. Which is smart. Neocons talk a lot but they are not
smart. They are bullies and cowards.
At present what I notice is what you do, there is a lot going on, but you won't find it in
the MSM. They are busy reducing their audience share with propaganda.
They kicked the jams out when they droned Soleiman. No more "deals".
But I expect Iran to do these things while this is going on:
1.) Annoy Trump and his minions and USG political class as much as possible, stay in their
face.
2.) Watch, and help their "proxies" work on making life unbearable in the Middle East for
us.
The Houthis seem to have just kicked the shit out of the Saudi coalition again. Quite a
few damaged ships and down aircraft reports too, not just Afghanistan.
The House voted 236 to 166 to kill the 2002 Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) on
Iraq. The law was drafted during the presidency of George W. Bush to authorize the 2003
invasion of Iraq, and has been used by subsequent administrations to continue military
activity in the country – most recently to justify the US drone assassination of
Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad earlier this month.[.]
The bill was one of two pieces of legislation passed by the House on Thursday aimed at
curbing Trump's warmaking powers. Prior to its passage, a bill prohibiting Trump from using
federal funds for "unauthorized military force against Iran" cleared the House floor, again
along party lines, with a vote of 228-175.[.]
"... Some know that the Puritans of Plymouth saw themselves as establishing a new Zion and entertained a vision very similar to Zionism. As ought to be clear, the concept of Exceptionalism is very much Old Testament. ..."
"... Better question, what are Americans drinking? Trump brand Kosher Whine or Schumer "Guardian of Israel" brand Spirits? "Schumer: I'm on a Mission From God (to Be Israel's Guardian in Senate)" ..."
"... He concluded that God, himself, deputized him to be Israel's man in the Senate:" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/schumer-im-on-a-mission-f_b_560091 ..."
"... I consider the simple equation of Zionism with Nazism lazy thinking. I do not expect you to understand, but: Without the Nazis there wouldn't have been Israel, as we have it today. ..."
"... The State, the Nation, and the Jews is a study of Germany's late nineteenth-century antisemitism dispute and of the liberal tradition that engendered it. The Berlin Antisemitism Dispute began in 1879 when a leading German liberal, Heinrich von Treitschke, wrote an article supporting anti-Jewish activities that seemed at the time to gel into an antisemitic "movement." Treitschke's comments immediately provoked a debate within the German intellectual community. Responses from supporters and critics alike argued the relevance, meaning, and origins of this "new" antisemitism. Ultimately the Disput. ..."
Jewish Law is very strict as in zero deviations are allowed, but the quest for material
goods always seems to trump Law. IMO, one must be very dedicated to be a genuine Jew; same
with a genuine Moslem. Christians on the other hand are muddleheaded and very few are
genuine, meaning a strict adherence to Jesus's path and morality. IMO, to Jesus, the
conception of a Super Church/Synagogue/Mosque is blasphemous as massive amounts of wealth are
squandered on a material object that does nothing to advance the wellbeing of genuine
worshipers. (Yes, I did say Jesus would likely find the idea of his being the son of god
heretical and blasphemous.)
Bubbles @113--
Thanks for your reply and complements. The one close friend I had during college called me
the walking bibliography. As it is now, I take too much time here and not enough in
continuing my studies, although I certainly learn from the interactions and need to provide
informed discourse. You'll have noted I tried to change the direction of the vision under
discussion but failed.
Some know that the Puritans of Plymouth saw themselves as establishing
a new Zion and entertained a vision very similar to Zionism. As ought to be clear, the
concept of Exceptionalism is very much Old Testament.
Posted by: Philosophical Realis | Jan 30 2020 23:12 utc | 125
Better question, what are Americans drinking? Trump brand Kosher Whine or Schumer "Guardian of Israel" brand Spirits?
"Schumer: I'm on a Mission From God (to Be Israel's Guardian in Senate)"
"Sen. Chuck Schumer told a New York radio station last week that after the Obama
administration hit Israel hard on its settlement policy, "I called up Rahm Emanuel and I
called up the White House and I said, 'If you don't retract that statement you are going to
hear me publicly blast you on this.'"
He added that there were two groups within the White House. One would give Israel the
usual pass and the other wants the US to put pressure on Israel (and Palestinians).
"We're pushing hard to make sure the right side wins and if not we'll have to take it to
the next step," he said.
So for Vig to suggest that it be preposterous to suppose that modern extreme political
Zionism could not have (nor has not) metamorphosed into an ideology that rhymes with Nazism
is disingenuous.
I consider the simple equation of Zionism with Nazism lazy thinking. I do not expect you
to understand, but: Without the Nazis there wouldn't have been Israel, as we have it
today.
True I find people like Herzl or his friend Max Nordau pretty hard to read. Extreme
reactionary nationalism. I have to admit that reading articles in diverse Zionist magazine
from the same period similarly irritating. But I do look back, and only partly grasp the
time. Rarely are there voices I can connect with easily even today. There surely were
different strand in Zionism. Not everyone was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Nordau
But neither am I very fond of some Germans, like national liberal reactionary Heinrich von
Treitschke, historian and politician. You have to understand that Germany only became a
nation state in 1871. That's important, once you have a nation apparently some feel that one
has to discuss, who is a German and who isn't. Now there is one only recently emancipated
group that sticks out. It's not that long ago they got equal rights to start with.
Heinrich von Treitschke - Political Carrier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Treitschke#Political_career
Eight years after Germany was united von Treitschke triggered the "Berlin Antisemitism
Debate". Now that Germany was united the question arose who was and who wasn't a German.
Maybe some didn't want to integrate?
Von Treitschke really hated an orthodox German Jewish colleague. Historian Heinrich Graetz
wrote the first (i think) History of the Jews in 11 Volumes. Imagine, that's a real scandal.
At a time when history with still solidly concentrated on the mighty, the kings, generals and
influential clergy, the not quite to be trusted Roman Pope from a Protestant perspective, the
man had the nerve to write a 11 volumes history of the least important people on Earth one
could imagine? That's outrageous, isn't it?
Now am I fond of Graetz' polemics against the Jewish Reform as Orthodox, no not either, I
guess.
Anyway with von Treitschke maybe more then Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term antisemitism, is
were it started and with a king without a sane person like Bismarck to stop him WWI, debts,
the Great Depression, right and police fighting left added the necessary context for the rise
of the Nazis. ... I wish it had been different. Treitschke
https://tinyurl.com/Nation-the-State-the-Jews>The
State, the Nation, and the Jews: Liberalism and the Antisemitism Dispute in Bismarck's
Germany,
Marcel Stoetzler, U of Nebraska Press, 2008 - 541 Seiten
The State, the Nation, and the Jews is a study of Germany's late nineteenth-century
antisemitism dispute and of the liberal tradition that engendered it. The Berlin Antisemitism
Dispute began in 1879 when a leading German liberal, Heinrich von Treitschke, wrote an
article supporting anti-Jewish activities that seemed at the time to gel into an antisemitic
"movement." Treitschke's comments immediately provoked a debate within the German
intellectual community. Responses from supporters and critics alike argued the relevance,
meaning, and origins of this "new" antisemitism. Ultimately the Disput.
...In point of fact, of course, the zionist program to get lebensraum by liquidation or
enslaving the Semitic native populations is telling, definitive.
... ... ...
(The Quakers say "tell the truth and shame the devil"... With the idea implied that truth
saying is a duty under god, whatever it costs. The Quakers used to be significant in US
history, but like CPUSA, are under reliable and useful control as agents of X. (ask Ruth
Paine, of the curator group for Oswald operation))
Putin is nothing if not a pragmatist. A nationalist as well. See where Russia was when he
began his first term as President and where it is now which is even more impressive when
resistance from the US and 'friends' is taken into account.
Being pragmatic doesn't always satisfy everyone. He doesn't have the same political system
as the US and Western Democracies either, so there's that. I think a large part of his appeal
to those who see him objectively is his attempts to be a broker rather than a hot head
reactionary and that would apply to the nasties in Israel. Capt Obvious says Israel isn't a
standalone problem.
Putin and Netanyahu's relationship is too close for comfort.
Posted by: SharonM | Jan 30 2020 13:01 utc | 6
Name one national leader to whom Putin displays a lack of respect?
He's not a big-mouthed AmeriKKKan or a sleazy Pom. It's Russian (and Chinese) policy to keep
the door to the path of diplomacy open at all times.
I'm surprised that everyone is pretending not to notice that Trump hasn't finished helping
the "Israelis" to outsmart themselves. He's made several of their criminally psychotic dreams
come true and they've lapped them up without any apparent reservations about the legal and
moral ramifications.
He'll keep 'giving' them increasingly ridiculous concessions because he's probably as curious
as everyone else to discover if there's a practical limit to the quality and quantity of
asinine bullshit the "Israelis" will believe.
Thank you for the informative article by Sharon Tennison, about Putin.
Those who find it interesting and/or informative will also be interested in this much
earlier, much more detailed article that she wrote six years ago, about her initial and
considerable interactions with him when he was a civil-servant bureaucrat in St Petersbug in
the 90s. http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2014/04/russia-report-putin-.html
I wholeheartedly recommend this linked article (along with the one from Moe, above), and
am sure that anyone reading it will find it informative and a very helpful tool with regard
to understanding Putin's actions in today's world.
Sharon Tennison's rather in-depth account of the Vladimir Putin that she knew and dealt
with when he was a civil-servant bureaucrat in St Petersburg in the 90s will shed a lot of
light on the actions of today's Putin.
The first alteration in the global balance of power enabled by Russia-China cooperation
took place during the 1950s, of course. In that period, the PRC went from being a military
"basket case," with no defense industry to speak of, to possessing a reasonably modern force
within a span of just a decade. That super-energized process was inspired by the hard school
of war against a vastly better-armed opponent in the bloody Korean conflict, as is well
known. But the massive progress in Chinese military capabilities also could not have taken
place without enormous Soviet assistance. With respect to naval-related arms transfers,
Moscow had already given ten torpedo boats and eighty-three aircraft by the beginning of
1953, according to the scholarly journal. The process accelerated during 1953–55 with a
total of eight-one additional vessels transferred (amounting to 27,234 tons) and 148
aircraft. Among these ships were four destroyers, four frigates, and thirteen submarines.
Additionally, the Russians provided the Chinese with more than five hundred torpedoes and
over fifteen hundred sea mines, as well as coastal artillery pieces, radar and communications
equipment. A third batch of naval transfers was comprised of sixty-three vessels and
seventy-eight aircraft. Added to these very substantial allocations, five Chinese shipyards
apparently produced another 116 naval vessels, relying heavily on advisors, designs and
technology purchased from the USSR, during the period up until 1957. Finally, several
transfers agreed to in early 1959 "caused China's Navy to enter into the missile age."
Notably, these transfers included the R-11 , a primitive submarine-launched
ballistic missile (SLBM), and also the P-15 , one of the
earliest anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM). Yes, these are the earliest progenitors of today's
JL-3 and YJ-12 missiles that now present quite credible threats.
In keeping with the presently jovial mood surrounding current Russia-China relations, very
little is said in this Chinese article regarding the Sino-Soviet conflict that brought the
two Eurasian giants to the brink of war in the late 1960s. The authors imply that the break
was really between the two respective Communist parties, rather than between the two navies,
but it is noted that the Kremlin's stated objective to form a "joint fleet" was viewed in
China as an encroachment on Chinese sovereignty. Nevertheless, this substantial military
cooperation between Moscow and Beijing during the 1950s is evaluated in this Chinese
appraisal to have had "major historical impact
[重要历史作用]." These authors contend that it
"effectively decreased the threat of American imperialism
[有效抵制美帝国主义的军事威胁].
They additionally conclude regarding this period: "The achievements of building up the
Chinese Navy cannot be separated from the assistance of Soviet experts
[中国海军建设的成绩是与苏联专家的帮助分不开的]."
For a long time, "Soviet revisionists" were not given such favorable treatment by Chinese
scholars, but now evidently the "east wind" is blowing once more. If the USSR very
substantially helped boost PRC military prospects during the 1950s, this paper by two Chinese
naval analysts argues cogently that a similarly ambitious and fateful program of Russia-China
military cooperation has had an analogous effect, starting in 1991. When seen in aggregate,
the numbers are indeed quite impressive. Russia has sold China, according to this Chinese
accounting, more than five hundred military aircraft, including Su-27, Su-30, Su-35, and
Il-76 variants. Almost as significant, Russia provided China with more than two hundred
Mi-171 helicopters. Just as these pivotal purchases launched China's air and land forces into
a new era, so the Chinese acquisition of four Sovremeny destroyers, along with twelve
Kilo -class submarines helped to provide the PLA Navy with the technological
wherewithal to enter the twenty-first century on a robust footing. That shortlist here,
moreover, does not even catalog other vital systems transferred, such as advanced air defense
systems, which have formed a bedrock of Chinese purchases from Russia.
Citing a Russian source, these Chinese authors claim that China spent $13 billion on
Russian weapons between 2000–05. That amounts to a decently hefty sum of cash,
especially by rather penurious post-Soviet standards. In fact, this raft of deals was not
only intended to rescue the PLA from obsolescence but simultaneously aimed to "resolve . . .
the survival and development problems [解决 . . .
生存和发展问题]"of the post-Soviet Russian
military-industrial complex too. Just as important as these technical transfers, however,
have been the human capital investments in cooperation. Here, this study points out that two
thousand intermediate and high-level Chinese officers have already graduated from Russian
military academies. The upper ranks of the PLA Navy, in particular, are said to be full of
these graduates, as reported in this study. Perhaps most critically for the future of the
Chinese armed forces, cooperation with Russia has entailed "in particular, promoting the
development of domestic weapons development levels and concepts.
[尤其带动了国内武器研制水平和理念的提升]."
Take, for example, the YJ-18 ASCM, which seems to be superior to any U.S. variants, is a
derivative of the Russian SSN-27 missile and is now becoming pervasive throughout the Chinese
fleet, with both surface and sub-launched variants.
For all the major results on the regional balance of power wrought by these two major
periods of Russian-Chinese security collaboration, however, there are very real reasons to
doubt that such a partnership will truly alter global politics. After all, the Chinese
analysis points out that arms sales from Russia to China have declined substantially from the
peak in 2005. Joint military exercises, moreover, are now quite regular, but they actually do
not seem to exhibit a bellicose trend toward larger and larger demonstrations of military
might. These tendencies may reflect new confidence in Beijing regarding its own abilities to
produce advanced weapons, of course, but also might reflect a certain degree of restraint --
a realization that too close a Russia-China military alignment could provide ample fuel for a
new Cold War that might be in the offing.
Still, American defense analysts must evaluate the possible results of a significantly
closer Russia-China security relationship, whether it is formalized into an actual "alliance"
or not. China and Russia currently have numerous joint development projects underway,
including both a large commercial airliner, as well as a heavy-lift helicopter. In the
future, will cooperative endeavors encompass frigates and VSTOL fighters, or nuclear
submarines and stealth bombers, or even aircraft carriers? Will Moscow and Beijing begin to
launch joint exercises of a large scale that have major strategic implications in highly
sensitive areas? Are third countries, such as Iran, set for "junior associate" status in the
so-called "quasi-alliance? And will China and Russia strive to coordinate strategic
initiatives to bring about common favorable strategic circumstances in the coming
decades?
Such a future is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. The combination of Russian
weapons design genius with Chinese organizational and production prowess could be formidable,
indeed. That will be another reason for states comprising the West to now exercise restraint,
embrace multi-polarity, and seek to avoid a return to the 1950s "with Chinese
characteristics."
Lyle
J. Goldsteinis Associate Professor at theChina
Maritime Studies Institute(CMSI) at theU.S. Naval War Collegein Newport, RI. The opinions expressed
in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy
or any other agency of the U.S. Government.
"... Yet the U.S. has little real insight into what happens in hostile regimes like Maduro's, and "Pompeo is probably the least reliable person in the world when it comes to information about Iran or its proxies," said Abrahms. "He has a terrible track record; he is an ideologue. He is the opposite of an impartial empiricist. I would never accept anything he says without corroborating sources." ..."
"... According to what we know, a Hezbollah agent conducted years of surveillance on potential targets , and alleged sleeper agents within U.S. cities have so far not been activated, even in the wake of Iranian Quds force General Soleimani's death and the series of crippling sanctions the Trump administration has put on Iran. ..."
Why is Pompeo suddenly directing increasingly heated rhetoric towards Iran and its proxies
in South America?
"Anti-Iran hawks like Pompeo like to emphasize that Iran is not a defensively-minded
international actor, but rather that it is offensively-minded and poses a direct threat to the
United States," said Max Abrahms, associate professor of political science at Northeastern and
fellow of the Quincy Institute said in an interview with The American Conservative. "And
so for obvious reasons, underscoring Hezbollah's international tentacles helps to sell their
argument that Iran needs to be dealt with in a military way, and that the key to dealing with
Iran is through confrontation and pressure."
Stories highlighting the role of Hezbollah in America's backyard "are almost always peddled
by anti-Iran hawks," he said.
Like Clare Lopez, vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security
Policy, who aligns with the argument that Hezbollah has been populating South America since the
days of the Islamic revolution.
"From at least the 1980s, many Lebanese fled to South America, and among that flow Hezbollah
embedded themselves," she told The American Conservative in a recent interview. Their
activity "really expanded throughout the continent" during the presidencies of Iran's Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
During that time, Lopez added, "there was a really strong relationship that developed
Iranians established diplomatic facilities, enormous embassies and consulates, embedded IRGC
cover positions and MOIS (intelligence services) within commercial companies and mosques and
Islamic centers. This took place in Brazil in particular but Venezuela also."
Iran and Hezbollah intensified their involvement throughout the region in technical services
like tunneling, money laundering, and drug trafficking. Venezuela offered Iran an international
banking work-around during the period of sanctions, said Lopez.
Obviously security analysts like Lopez and even Pompeo, have been following this for years.
But the timing here, as the Senate impeachment inquiry heats up, looks suspicious.
Last week, just as it looks increasingly likely that former national security advisor John
Bolton and Pompeo himself will be hauled before the Senate as witnesses about the foreign aid
hold-up to Ukraine, Pompeo praised Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala for designating
"Iran-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization," and slammed Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro for embracing the terrorist group.
Hezbollah "has found a home in Venezuela under Maduro. This is unacceptable," Pompeo said
when he met with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido last week.
Asked by Bloomberg News how significant a role Hezbollah plays in the region, Pompeo
responded, "too much."
From the interview:
Pompeo : " I mentioned it in Venezuela, but in the Tri-Border Area as well. This
is again an area where Iranian influence – we talk about them as the world's largest
state sponsor of terror. We do that intentionally. It's the world's largest; it's not just a
Middle East phenomenon. So while – when folks think of Hezbollah, they typically think
of Syria and Lebanon, but Hezbollah has now put down roots throughout the globe and in South
America, and it's great to see now multiple countries now having designated Hezbollah as a
terrorist organization. It means we can work together to stamp out the security threat in the
region."
Question: "I'm struck by this, because even hearing you – what you're
saying, right, now – I mean, to take a step back, an Iranian-backed terrorist
organization has found a home in America's backyard."
Pompeo: "It's – it's something that we've been talking about for some
time. When you see the scope and reach of what the Islamic Republic of Iran's regime has
done, you can't forget they tried to kill someone in the United States of America. They've
conducted assassination campaigns in Europe. This is a global phenomenon. When we say that
Iran is the leading destabilizing force in the Middle East and throughout the world, it's
because of this terror activity that they have now spread as a cancer all across the globe.
"
Pompeo has also been publicly floating increasing sanctions on Venezuela. He called the
behavior of Maduro's government "cartel-like" and "terror-like," intensifying the sense that
there is a real security "threat" in our hemisphere.
Yet the U.S. has little real insight into what happens in hostile regimes like Maduro's, and
"Pompeo is probably the least reliable person in the world when it comes to information about
Iran or its proxies," said Abrahms. "He has a terrible track record; he is an ideologue. He is
the opposite of an impartial empiricist. I would never accept anything he says without
corroborating sources."
There's no question that Hezbollah has a presence in South America, said Abrahms, "but the
nature of its presence has been politicized."
"What this underscores is that Iran could pull the trigger, it could bloody
the U.S., including the U.S. homeland, but tends to avoid such violence. I think the question
that needs to be asked isn't just, 'where in the world could Iran commit an attack?' but
whether Iran is a rational actor that can be deterred," said Abrahms. "Interestingly, this
administration as well as its hawkish supporters tend to emphasize their belief that Iran can
in fact be deterred," since that is the logic behind "maximum pressure" against Iran, after
all. "The main causal mechanism according to advocates of maximum pressure, is that it will
force Iran as a rational actor to reconsider whether it wants to irritate the U.S By applying
economic pressure through sanctions, [they hope to] succeed in coaxing Iran to restructure the
nuclear deal and making additional concessions to the west and reigning in its activities in
the Persian Gulf and the Levant. At least on a rhetorical level, the hawks say they believe
Iran can be deterred," he said.
It would not be the first time that a president reacted to an intensifying impeachment
inquiry by redirecting national focus to threats abroad. In December 1998, as the impeachment
inquiry into then-President Bill Clinton heated up, Clinton launched airstrikes against Iraq.
We should therefore apply some caution when we see decades-old threats amplified by
administration officials.
Barbara Boland is TAC's foreign policy and national security
reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She
is the author of Patton Uncovered, a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her
work has appeared on Fox News, The Hill, UK Spectator, and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from
Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his
guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm's
'conflict of interest in his case' regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed
on his behalf, and by doing so "betrayed Mr. Flynn," stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion
to the court.
Flynn's case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan.
28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came
after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major
reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge
Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his
case would more than likely would head to trial.
Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution
into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with
former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the
accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn's son into the investigation, who also
worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.
In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,
"I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the
plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel's office]
would no longer be pursuing my son."
He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI
Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to
Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions
during the Russia investigation.
Flynn stated:
"When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I
believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don't
remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember
if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel."
Powell Targets Flynn's Former Legal Team
Powell noted in Wednesday's motion that Flynn's former defense team at Covington &
Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had
made "some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration
process and filings." She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government
prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.
A spokesperson with Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to
SaraACarter.com that "Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly
even to allegations of this nature, absent the client's consent or a court order."
In Powell's motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a
'conflict of interest' in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion
it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that "it recognized
Covington's conflict of interest from the FARA registration." Moreover, the government had
asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in
the motion.
"Mr. Flynn's former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were
misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby
creating an 'underlying work' conflict of interest between the firm and its client," stated
Powell in the motion.
"Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn's liability for 'false statements' in the FARA
registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn," states the motion.
"This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn."
Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling
between his former attorney's Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the
Special Counsel's then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign
manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with 'multiple criminal
violations, including FARA violations."
Internal Email From the motion:
In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort
order was unsealed.
I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with
regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard
to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to]
Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers
theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of
the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers
impenetrable.
In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn's
lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was
fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and
Burling office "to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately," according to the
motion.
Laufman's push for Flynn's FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn's company 'Flynn Intel
Group' had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan
Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for
the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign
government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian's trial Kelly testified that he
advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act
and suggested they didn't need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this
instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim
Alptekin.
Flynn's former Partner's Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion
In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern
District of Virginia Rafiekian's conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy
acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the "jury was not
adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government's in-court
judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of
evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy "
An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN
and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.
These despicable remarks reflect contempt for democracy and government accountability, and
constitute further evidence of the President's unfitness to lead our great nation. Republican
Members of Congress, stand up and fulfill your oaths. https://t.co/a8BwWkLTkv
Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for
Flynn in early January because she said, her client "refused to lie for the prosecution" in the
Rafiekian case.
do yourselves a favor and read her brief...Covington and the FBI are EVIL
BASTARDS......god help any of us who find ourselves in the govt crosshairs..I don't give a
rat's *** how much you despise Trump...these bastards in DC would cut your heads off if they
could profit from it.
Worse than that in this case. He had a deal that if he plead guilty they wouldn't go after
his son and they wouldn't recommend prison time for him. He did what they asked. Then they
recommended prison time in the end anyway.
How that isn't legal malpractice, I'm sure I don't know.
He may as well try suing the Queen of England. Federal prosecutors and federal law
enforcement agents have almost complete immunity from civil causes of action arising from the
performance of their duties, even if they acted maliciously, lied, etc. It's good to be the
King (or Queen, or a federal prosecutor). People generally have no idea how badly the deck is
stacked against them if they end up in the cross hairs of these people.
No problem, Putin will happily sell them superior fighter/bombers that can actually fly in
the rain and not succumb to small arms fire from the ground. He'll also equip them with the
S-400 anti-aircraft missile system that can easily knock that flying barrel of pig ****,
better known as the F-35, out of the sky with one shot..
Correction. Sadam was 'supported by the U.$. (so U.$ didn't really have to invade, except
U.$. stabbed him in the back, and Iraqi's had MUCH higher standard of living under Sadam...
until U.$. put sanctions on them and KILLED a half million Iraqi children because the 'PRICE
WAS WORTH IT' (according to *** Princess Madeleine Albright)
the trump card is not playing 6million d chess. he is playing the jewlander card of
killing the top dog over and over again as just a bloody murderous act that achieves nothing.
hamas is stronger than ever. trump is a stable genius among horses not humans.
the murder of soulmani is just another jewlander directed clusterfuck move of many
clusterfuck moves since shrub avenged the death threat to his father and the wmds that were
found to be degraded chemical weapons sold to saddam during the war with iran.
2010-2020 Was the Stalingrad for the world. The decade the empire and their americunt
fodder capitulated on all fronts. The decade that'd serve to fully turn the tie of history in
favor of those God has deemed worthy of him. The following decade is the mass decline of the
empire and its parasites till they reach the end of the precipice to feel in full the misery
they've seethed onto their victims.
They deserve to be bombed because they asked the US to leave, after destroying their
country based on a lie and then occupying it for 20 years? You are a complete *******
idiot.
Been sayin that for years bro. With the world pretty much filled up except for the tundra,
I think a good old fashioned dose of self-determination is in order. No more immigration. No
more refugees. Let every country fix their own goddamned problems and let the bodies fall
where they may. Period.
Oh yeah..? Scorched Earth??? What the **** for? Iraq never harmed the U.$. Russia never
harmed the U.$. North Korea never harmed the U.$. Iran never harmed the U.$. Venezuela never
harmed the U.$. Bolivia never harmed the U.$.!! Libya, Somalia, Vietnam etc etc etc... What
did they ever do to the U.$. And look what the **** you are doing to them. You're a *******
hypocrite. U.$. needs a good SCORCHED EARTH Policy imposed on it. And hardly a country on the
planet will shed a tear... Not even IsraHell...
This is how American Foreign Policy alienated Venezuela, Venezuela was one of the first
export customers for the F16 but sbsequently GHW Bush refused to sell Venezuela spare parts
unless they acquiesced to American pressure on oil royalties.
Venezuela shifted to Russia and has spent more than $40 Billion modernizing their
military, none of the weapons were purchased from the USA.
Funny that the locals are not happy with our gift-bearing. human pyramid-building saviors.
How so utterly ungrateful. We brought them democracy, human rights and genocide, and they now
want us out. Shame!
We should immediately send them Madeleine Albright to explain to them that the deaths of
600,000 Iraqi babies was actually a good thing and "God's work". That'll do!
Good, now the Iraqi's can get missile defense systems from Russia instead, that aren't
designed to turn off when Israel ends up attacking them. But then again, they will need no
missile defenses systems, since they have become closer allies to their former enemies, Iran
and the Saudi's, thanks to us. Winning!
We should bomb the **** out of Iraq again, destroy their military equipment, raid their
banks, blow up their refineries and then leave, because they want us to.
We should bomb the **** out of Iraq again, destroy their military equipment, raid their
banks, blow up their refineries and then leave, because they want us to.
Another Iranian journalist who writes for Mashregh newspaper, described as having
close links to IRGC, tweeted not long after the
news broke out: "We will attack them on the same level as they are attacking us."
The world weeps a hero against you parasitic scum.
Now you just need to follow it up with a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq. You can
abandon that 100 acre military compound, disguised as an embassy.
The Iraqi government want US troops out. The Iraqi people want US troops out of their
country. Shucks, even the American people want US troops out of Iraq, so they can come home
and defend our southern border.
Let the Iraqis and Iranians sort out their own differences.
If you think the isrhll held companies that own those wells give a **** about china
showing, your crazy, they own china, they funded the communist party out of jewyork.... Who
do you think got all those oil wells in syria, iraq, libya.... Genie oil and some other
inclusive board member oils companies.... They run china so they care not a bit either way,
probably thank them for the good cheap labor that knows how to read and write..
Us soldiers did not die for victory..they died for the rich! As a well known line that
often gets tossed around says...War is not meant to be won....it's meant to be continued
We will stay there so long as AIPAC, Israel, and the MIC demand that we stay there. The
dumbed down US populace won't do **** all about it as we bleed our treasure, resources, and
lives for American Corporate Imperialism and Greater Israel. Don't you Trumptards love your
Messiah delivering the greatest Middle East Piece plan of all time?
"Turkey: The goal of American peace is to destroy and plunder Palestine."
"Turkish Foreign Ministry:
The fake US plan for peace in the Middle East was born 'dead'.
We will not allow actions to legitimize Israeli occupation and oppression."
Yet another cord in the knot tying Turkey to the West is severed. Word is the Turkish convoy
has turned around and will not be constructing another OP near Saraqib.
"Denouncing Trump Plan as 'Unacceptable,' Sanders Declares It Is Time to 'End the Israeli
Occupation:'
"'Trump's so-called 'peace deal,' warned the White House hopeful, 'will only perpetuate the
conflict, and undermine the security interests of Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians.'"
But isn't that exactly what the plan's supposed to do?
"Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba Statement on Peace Plan:
"The United Arab Emirates appreciates continued US efforts to reach a Palestine-Israel
peace agreement. This plan is a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over
the years. (1/3)"
From what I've read, Egypt also favors the plan, although I've yet to read anything
official from Egypt's government. But Hezbollah's correct, IMO.
"The only way to guarantee a lasting solution is to reach an agreement between all
concerned parties. The UAE believes that Palestinians and Israelis can achieve lasting
peace and genuine coexistence with the support of the international community. (2/3)"
"The plan announced today offers an important starting point for a return to
negotiations within a US-led international framework. (3/3)"
"This deal would not have taken place without the collusion and treason of a number of
Arab regimes, both secret and public. The peoples of our nation will never forgive those
rulers who forsook resistance to maintain their fragile thrones."
"Trump greenlights Netanyahu to annex at least 1/3 of the West Bank.
"Never forget that Oman, Bahrain and the UAE were present in that room [where the
speech was made]."
I'm very surprised at Oman. This indicates to me both the Iranian and Russian
collective security proposals are now dead and the situation will now escalate
further.
But isn't that exactly what the plan's supposed to do?
Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 28 2020 21:12 utc | 33
"In the remaining weeks before the March 2 Israeli elections, and the few months left
until elections in the United States, Trump's peace plan will primarily serve the goal
for which it was designed: election propaganda for Israel's right-wing."
+Bonus prize = Stay out of jail card for Netanyahu if he remains Prime Minister.
"In the near term, the 80-page plan is most likely to stir up Israeli and American
politics. Mr. Trump is sure to cite the plan's pro-Israel slant on the 2020 campaign
trail to win support from conservative Jewish Americans in Florida and other key states,
along with the Evangelical Christians who are some of his strongest backers and support
Israeli expansion in the Holy Land."
Let's not forget the far right Zionist money men AIPAC members who lavish millions on
trump and GOP campaigns. ie Sheldon Adelson was seated in the front row when trump and
netanyahu made their announcement. I would say these are the things it's intended to
do.
Via RT.com Jan. 27, ' Iran slams Trump's 'delusional' Middle East peace plan, calls on US to
accept Tehran's proposal instead'
Instead of a delusional "Deal of the Century" -- which will be D.O.A. -- self-described
"champions of democracy" would do better to accept Iran's democratic solution proposed by
Ayatollah @khamenei_ir :A referendum whereby
ALL Palestinians -- Muslim, Jew or Christian -- decide their future .
"In anticipation of a strongly pro-Israeli plan, Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and Gaza
have also condemned the upcoming deal and called for a "day of rage" on Tuesday. They
urged Palestinians to boycott American goods, and remove all US symbols remaining in the West
Bank."
'Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu of the State of Israel Upon
Arrival',
January 27, 2020 , whitehouse.gov (a stomach-churning read, but not as much as the joint
presser in the Rose Garden above)
The jerusalem post has some very partial transcripts:
'Deal of Century establishes Palestinian state, Jewish control of Jerusalem; "I have to do a
lot for the Palestinians or it just wouldn't be fair.",
Jan 28, 202O
"US President Donald Trump unveiled his "Deal of the Century" together with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House on Tuesday.
The peace plan, which Trump said was already supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and his main rival Blue and White head Benny Gantz, would give Israel full control of the
settlements and its undivided capital in Jerusalem.
"If they are genuinely prepared to make peace with the Jewish state," Netanyahu said,
"Israel will be there. Israel will be prepared to negotiate peace right away."
Trump said that the United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over any land that "my
vision provides to to be part of the State of Israel" and will require the Palestinians to
recognize Israel as the Jewish state and to agree to solve the refugee problem outside of
Israel.
The plan also establishes a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem .
As part of the plan, Trump will reveal a map delineating Israeli and Palestinian state
borders. He said the map will make clear the "territorial sacrifices that Israel is willing to
make for peace."
Trump said the plan will "more than double Palestinian territory No Palestinians will be
uprooted from their homes."
Moreover, he said that although Israel will maintain control of Jerusalem, the status quo
will remain on the Temple Mount and Israel will work with Jordan to ensure that all Muslims who
want to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque will be able to do so.
The president said that if the Palestinians choose to accept the plan, some $50 billion will
be infused into this new Palestinian state.
"There are many countries that want to partake in this," he said. "The Palestinian poverty
rate will be cut in half and their GDP will double and triple." He then called for "peace and
prosperity for the Palestinian people."
But Trump noted that the transition to the two-state solution will present "no incremental
security risk to the State of Israel whatsoever.
But Trump noted that the transition to the two-state solution will present "no incremental
security risk to the State of Israel whatsoever.
"Peace requires compromise, but we will never require Israel to compromise on it security,"
he continued.
Netanyahu in his speech said that he has agreed to negotiate peace with the Palestinians on
the basis of Trump's peace plan. The prime minister noted several key reasons, but namely that
rather than "pay lip service to Israel's security," the president "recognizes that Israel must
have sovereignty in places that enable Israel to defend itself by itself.
"For too long, the heart of Israel has been outrageously branded as illegally occupied
territory," Netanyahu continued . "Today, Mr. President, you are puncturing this big lie. You
are recognizing Israel's sovereignty over all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria –
large and small alike."
However, Israel agreed that it will maintain the status quo in all areas that the peace plan
does not designate as Jewish for four years to allow for an opportunity for negotiation. At the
same time, as per the plan, Israel will immediately apply sovereignty over the Jordan Valley
and other areas that the plan does recognize as Israeli .
'The 'Deal of the Century': What are its key points?', jpost.com,
Jan. 28, 2020
Borders: Trump's plan features a map of what Israel's new borders will be should it enact
the plan fully. Israel retains 20% of the West Bank, and will lose a small amount of land in
the Negev, near the Gaza-Egypt border. The Palestinians will have a pathway to a state on 80%
of the West Bank. Israel will maintain control of all borders. This is the first time a US
president has provided a detailed map of this kind.
Jerusalem: The Palestinians will have a capital in Jerusalem based on northern and eastern
neighborhoods that are outside the Israeli security fence – Kfar Aqab, Abu Dis and half
of Shuafat.
Settlements: Israel would retain the Jordan Valley and all Israeli settlements in the West
Bank, in the broadest definition possible, meaning not the municipal borders of each
settlement, but their security perimeters. This also includes 15 isolated
settlements , which will be enclaves within an eventual Palestinian state, unable to expand
for four years. The IDF will have access to the isolated settlements . In order for the
settlement part of the plan to go into effect, Israel will have to take action to apply
sovereignty to the settlements.
Security: Israel will be in control of security from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean
Sea. The IDF will not have to leave the West Bank. No change to Israel's approach to Judea and
Samaria would be needed.
Palestinian State: The plan does not include immediate recognition of a Palestinian state;
rather, it expects a willingness on Israel's part to create a pathway towards Palestinian
statehood based on specific territory, which is 80% of Judea and Samaria, including areas A and
B and half of Area C. The state will only come into existence in four years if the Palestinians
accept the plan, if the Palestinian Authority stops paying terrorists and inciting terror, and
Hamas and Islamic Jihad put down its weapons . In addition, the American plan calls on the
Palestinians to give up corruption, respect human rights, freedom of religion and a free press,
so that they don't have a failed state. If those conditions are met, the US will recognize a
Palestinian state and implement a massive economic plan to assist it.
Refugees: A limited number of Palestinian refugees and their descendants will be allowed
into the Palestinian state. None will enter Israel ."
On the other hand, from mondoweiss.net: ' The 'Deal of the Century' is Apartheid, Sheena
Anne Arackal January 28, 2020
(some outtakes)
"With great fanfare, President Trump finally unveiled his long-anticipated Middle East peace
proposal. The proposal was labeled 'The Deal of the Century' because it was supposed to offer
an even-handed and just solution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts. Instead it
does something very different. The 'Deal of the Century' resurrects and restores grand
apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.
Under President Trump's newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited
autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves
scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security
control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders,
airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum . Israel will be allowed to
annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be
allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel
, the state that actually rules over them."
'Trump unveils peace plan, promising more land and control for Israel', Yumna Patel,
January 28, 2020 , mondowiess.net (a few snippets)
"The room was filled with familiar faces -- Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Jason
Greenblatt, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sara Netanyahu, and US Ambassador to Israel David
Friedman, Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer -- and dozens of Israel's supporters, who
clapped and cheered throughout the announcement.
..
"After the press conference, reports surfaced saying that Netanyahu would be announcing
Israel's full annexation of the settlements in the West Bank on Sunday, and that Ambassador
Friedman expressed that Israel was "free to annex settlements in the West Bank at any time
"
While Trump boasted that his plan would promise a contiguous Palestinian state, doubled in
size from its current form, the "conceptual map" released by his administration shows a
fragmented and dwindling territory, connected by a series of proposed bridges and tunnels."
..
"We are asking the Palestinians to meet the challenges of peaceful coexistence," Trump
said.
"This includes adopting basic laws enshrining human rights, protecting against political and
financial corruption ending incitement of hatred against Israel, and ending financial
compensation to terrorists," he said, referring to pensions paid by the Palestinian Authority
to the families of prisoners and martyrs.
In his speech, Netanyahu demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish State ,
and that Israel will maintain military control of the entire Jordan Valley to establish a
permanent eastern border in the area."
..
"Throughout his speech, Trump repeatedly praised Israel for "wanting peace badly," and praised
Netanyahu for "willing to endorse the plan as the basis for direct negotiations."
He boasted about everything he has done for Israel, listing off the recognition of Jerusalem
as its capital, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over
the occupied Golan Heights."
"Over the next 10 years, 1 million great new Palestinian jobs will be created," he said,
adding that the poverty rate will be cut in half, and the Palestinian GDP will "double and
triple."
"Our vision will end the cycle of Palestinian dependency on charity and financial aid. They
will do fine by themselves. They are a very capable people ," he said."
What none of the above coverage had included was that in the video Bibi had high-fived Trump
for ridding the Middle East of the greatest terrorist in the world (or close to that, meaning
the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. Bibi'd also laughed and said 'It takes someone
[like Trump] who knows real estate'.
The White House is pleased to share President @realDonaldTrump 's Vision for
a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. https://t.co/7o3jPHpcLv
The
Palestinian leadership has entirely rejected what is known of the Trump plan for Israel and
Palestine, and warned that they see it as destroying the Oslo Peace accords. The Trump
administration did not consult the Palestinians in drawing up the plan, which gives away East
Jerusalem and 30% of the Palestinian West Bank to Israel. The Palestinians may as well,
Palestine foreign minister Saeb Erekat said, just withdraw from the 1995 Interim Agreement on
Oslo.
Trump appears to have decided to unveil the Israel-Palestine plan on Tuesday to take the
pressure off from his Senate impeachment trial and to shore up his support from the Jewish and
evangelical communities. A majority of Americans in polls say they want Trump impeached and
removed from office.
Trump's plan may also bolster beleaguered Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu , who
has been indicted for corruption and is fighting for his political life as Israel's third
election in a year approaches. Rushing the details of an important policy like Israel and
Palestine for the sake of politics, however, could backfire big time.
Erekat also warned that the plan virtually assures that Israel will ultimately have to
absorb the Palestinians, and give them the vote inside Israel. Mr. Erekat may, however, be
overly optimistic, since it is much more likely that the Palestinians will be kept in a Warsaw
Ghetto type of situation and simply denied a meaningful vote entirely.
Al-Quds al-`Arabi reports that Donald Trump attempted to call Palestine president Mahmoud
Abbas during the past few days and that Mr. Abbas refused to take the call.
The plan, according to details leaked to the Israeli press, will propose a Palestinian
statelet on 70% of the West Bank, to be established in four years. The hope is apparently that
Mahmoud Abbas will no longer be president of Palestine in four years, and his successor will be
more pliable.
This so-called state, however, will be demilitarized and will lack control over borders and
airspace, and will be denied the authority to make treaties with other states. In other words,
it will be a Bantustan
of the sort the racist, Apartheid South African government created to denaturalize its
Black African citizens.
Netanyahu has pledged that there will be no Palestinian state as long as he is prime
minister.
Palestinians are under Israeli military rule and are being deprived of basic human rights,
including the right to have citizenship in a state. They do not have passports but only
laissez-passer certificates that are rejected for travel purposes by most states. Israeli
squatters continually steal their land and property and water, and Palestinians have no
recourse, being without a state to protect them.
*
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Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee have formerly requested that Attorney General William Barr declassify four footnotes
in Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's FISA abuse
investigation. The letter states that the classified footnotes contradict information in
Horowitz's report that appears to have misled the public.
U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the classified letter
Tuesday evening and questioned the contradiction between the footnotes and what was made public
by Horowitz's team regarding the bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
However, the Senator's did not disclose what section of the December FISA report contradicts
the footnotes in their findings.
The Senator's state in their letter to Barr that certain sections of Horowitz's report on
the FBI are misleading the public.
Part of the classified letter, which was obtained by SaraACarter.com states:
"We have reviewed the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to
the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and we are deeply concerned about certain
information that remains classified ," the letter states.
"Specifically, we are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report
are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information
redacted in four footnotes.
This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements
in a section of the report , but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate
evaluation of the entire investigation.
The American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes
and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation. "
Johnson and Grassley's office noted that "for maximum public transparency, the senators
wrote a separate unclassified cover letter to describe their request."
Full text of the unclassified letter to Barr below:
I wonder what kind of back room deals are going on right now that got the establishment
working so hard to make sure the people are distracted from?
The impeachment is a giant nothing burger considering democrats lack the votes and any
reasonable person knows that Barr was destined to return a giant nothing burger from the
beginning so there must be something important the establishment wants to keep hidden by
keeping these nothing burgers alive and in our faces.
Didn't NeoCon puppet Trump order Barr to declass the Russia hoax docs?? Then deep
state/CIA Barr and dirty corrupt DOJ turned everything around on Trump, and said Barr was
ordered to determine IF anything needed to be declassified, which means, it will NEVER
HAPPEN!!!
Trump had leverage over the domestic/global swamp when he held the thread of
declassification over their heads, but once he ordered Barr to do it, and Barr turned it
around on him, he lost all of his leverage/power. More here on leverage and
declassification:
.Horowitz discredited himself in an earlier report and Congress testimony when he said
"there was no bias in the FBI's efforts to surveil Trump"
He's a Democrat. Wanna know why some businesses fail? They let 'qualified' but sabotaging
people stay around.
Governments can fail too. Looks like Horowitz has proven once again he's not neutral. I
actually emailed the White House, I believe after he testifyied in that hearing, to get rid
of him. Barr is likewise useless in terms of protecting the government and citizens from the
deep state.
The US government is for the US government. The system protects the system! It does not
matter who it looks like is running it because the system is running the system and the
system is covering for everyone in the system that needs to be protected to protect the
system.
Yves here. Hopefully readers who understand Canada's libel and defamation laws can pipe up. Presumably most of
you already know about Consortium News' libel suit.
From its site
:
Consortium News has sent libel notices to the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's
version of the U.S. National Security Agency, and to a major Canadian television network, Global News, for a
report that said Consortium News was "part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia."
Consortium News promoted a story that was widely picked up and deservedly embarrassing to Chyrstia Freeland,
then Canada's foreign minister, more recently its deputy prime minister. Freeland is of Ukrainian descent and
is rabidly anti-Russian. She has falsely and knowingly depicted her family as victims of the Nazis who fled
persecution, when her grandfather was a prominent Nazi propagandist operating out of Krakow.
Mind you, this is all factually accurate. But Consortium News may not be on solid ground in challenging the
Canadian accounts of its story.
A Helmer describes, Consortium News may have badly undermined its position via its attribution.
Helmer himself originated the story
, as the Consortium News story linked to above acknowledges .but
Consortium News didn't in its piece on
l'affaire Freeland
a month later.
Instead, its story came from "journalist Arina Tsukanova exclusively for CN". The problem is that no such
person appears to exist; it looks to be a handle created by the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow. Helmer
points out that there is speculation that the Strategic Culture Foundation gets funding from the Russian
Orthodox Church; the Canadian government believes the Russian government supports it. Regardless, it appears to
have an explicit mission of promoting Russian nationalism.
So Consortium News has undermined its case, perhaps fatally, by not making clear when it ran its Freeland
piece that it was re-reporting Helmer's work. Helmer is in hot water with the Russian government and was even
barred from entering Russia at the time the Freeland story ran. Helmer also knew Freeland from his days at the
Financial Times, when she was his editor for a bit. To put it politely, he found her to be ideological and
sloppy. So it would be well nigh impossible to depict Consortium News as a Russian stooge for relying on
Helmer. But apparently fabricated personas created by a shadowy Russian foundation?
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, particularly since we were falsely smeared for being Russian stooges,
apparently for sins like questioning rising inequality and other failings of our purported leaders. But if you
are going to attack government officials even in a small country like Canada for misrepresentations about their
backgrounds, as opposed to garden variety incompetence and mendacity, you need to have your ducks in a row.
Going to court similarly requires you to be able to defend your bona fides. Consortium News looks to have set
itself up to be vulnerable. I sincerely hope they prevail, but I would not bet on it.
By
John Helmer
,
the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his
own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political
science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only
member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published
at
Dances with Bears
The truth is that
Consortium News
trusted a Russian entity named the Strategic Culture Foundation
and a Ukrainian reporter called Arina Tsukanova for a story published on February 27, 2017, about Chrystia
Freeland's grandfather Mikhail Chomiak, a propagandist and spy for the German Army who advocated and assisted
in the murder of the Jews, Poles and Russians during World War II, and took his reward by stealing Jewish
property publishing company, office, apartment, antique furniture, and limousine.
The story about Freeland and the ethnic cleansing of Ukraine on which Freeland agrees, still, with Chomiak,
was the truth. It's also a truth she tries to escape by blaming the Russian state or Kremlin propaganda for
repeating. Repeating doesn't turn the truth into a lie, though as Joseph Goebbels advised, repeating the lie
helps.
The point isn't that Freeland is culpable in her grandfather's sins. Her sin is hiding them, and her reason
for doing so. She agrees with Chomiak on turning Ukraine into the Greater Galicia it was Adolf Hitler's
objective to achieve between 1939 to 1945: that's to say, cleanse the territory of Jews, Poles and Russians by
killing them all. Chomiak succeeded with the first two; he was then employed by the US Army on the third.
Freeland is keeping the plan in the family; they now have the Canadian government behind them. Demonizing
Russians is part of the same plan as it was in Chomiak's day.
The irony is that the Freeland-Chomiak story was plagiarized from an American reporter who first published
the details on January 19, 2017. At the time, and still, he was banned from entering Russia by the Kremlin
because, according to a senior official in Moscow, "he writes bad things about our country"; no western
journalist has been banned for as long since September 27, 2010. The reporter was me.
There's another truth wrapped in an irony. Arina Tsukanova, the byline writer of the Strategic Culture
Foundation story and the
Consortium News
story, cannot be found; isn't known at the media of Kiev and
Crimea where her published pieces claim she works; and doesn't reply to emails and Facebook communications. She
is a ghost -- a byline invented by the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow.
The Galician state plan, the genocide which went with it, and the current campaign of lies against Russia
didn't start with Chomiak or end with Freeland. In Canada they have been continued by many officials; among
them Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk, commander of the Canadian Army, then Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff,
2016-2019, and now a minister in the Alberta provincial government; and Roman Waschuk, Canada's ambassador to
Kiev, 2014-2019; for their details,
click
.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the German death camp whose liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945,
is celebrated last week and
this
, was part
of the Galician territory under German occupation. It was seventy kilometres west of Chomiak's office in
Cracow, within his killing range. Opponents and critics of the Galician plan, and researchers of the war
crimes committed by Chomiak and others include many Canadians of Ukrainian origin, including John-Paul Himka, a
professor of history now retired from the University of Alberta in Edmonton; he and they have been the target
of ostracism and worse from the Ukrainian-Canadian community;
read more
.
According to Himka (right) there is "a blank spot in the collective memory of the Ukrainian diaspora", and a
"double standard in discussing war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Ukrainians as opposed to
those perpetrated against Ukrainians. Memoirs and eyewitness accounts, for example, are considered
untrustworthy evidence for the former, but trustworthy for the latter; that is, Jewish or Polish first-hand
accounts of Ukrainian war crimes are dismissed as biased, while an important Ukrainian victimization narrative,
the famine of 1932-33, has relied primarily on just such eyewitness accounts."
The lying by the promoters of the Galician plan for Ukraine has been promoted by the Canadian mass media,
almost without exception. They don't respond to correction for the truth;
click to follow their record
.
With the collaboration of her former employer, the
Financial Times
, Freeland continues to lie by
omission and commission, In the past weekend's "
Lunch
with the FT
", Freeland was questioned by a reporter called Edward Luce. "I struggle to rustle up some
professional scepticism," he admitted towards the end of listening to Freeland. "I cannot help nodding in
agreement."
Luce also couldn't help omitting the extent of the story of Freeland and Galicia. Instead, he repeated
Freeland's lie that her mother had been "born to Ukrainian refugees in a US displaced person's camp in postwar
Germany." In fact, they weren't refugees from Ukraine. They were Nazi war criminals on the run. The "camp" was
a luxury Bavarian spa town, Bad Worishofen, which the US Army had taken over, in part to develop Ukrainian
espionage and infiltration agents to run against the Soviet Union. Chomiak was an early recruit, switching his
loyalty from the German Army to the US Army for money, and for the same murderous ideology.
The US Army, OSS and CIA files on Chomiak, dating from 1945 to at least 1948, are stored at the National
Archives in Washington. No researcher has opened them yet. Recovering the full story of Chomiak started with
Ukrainian and Canadian researchers working through Chomiak's papers in Alberta, and with Polish police
investigations in Warsaw; they were opened and reported
here
.
The Russian contribution to this research and reporting has been negligible. Ditto
Consortium News
(CN).
In an announcement last week, Joe Lauria, the editor of CN since founder Robert Parry died in 2018, said he
had instructed Toronto lawyers to send libel notices to the Canadian signals intelligence agency,
Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and to a local broadcaster called Global News. The notices asked
for retractions and apologies.
Lauria said CN had been defamed for a publication in February 27, 2017, when Chomiak's wartime record was
reported for the first time. Except it wasn't for the first time and the original CN article wasn't quite what
it purported to be.
The CSE had produced a secret analysis, Global News reported, on Russian info-war against Freeland. "Cyber
influence activity to cause reputational damage" was the technical Canadian spy agency term quoted. "The
Grandfather Nazi narrative" was another of the terms. The secret Canadian intelligence was: "In early spring
2017 and spring 2018, sources linked to Russia popularized MFA Freeland's family history, very likely intended
to cause personal reputational damage in order to discredit the Government of Canada's ongoing diplomatic and
military support of Ukraine, to delegitimize Canada's decision to enact the Justice for Victims of Corrupt
Foreign Offices Act, and the expulsion of several Russian diplomats." The Global News report can be read
here
.
Sources linked to Russia were reportedly tracked down by CSE. "The first attack," claimed Global News,
citing the CSE report, "was a February 2017 report in the 'online Consortium News' followed 'in quick
succession' by pro-Russian English language and Russian-language online media, the CSE report says."
Lauria charged last week that this was libellous. Aside, he didn't dispute Parry's claims at the time that
he had been first or that Freeland's counter-attack with her Russia lie was aimed at Parry and CN.
Here
is Parry's original publication, bylined Arina Tsukanova, and tagged "exclusive".
According to CN's original publication, Tsukanova "is a Russian Ukrainian journalist from Kiev currently
living in Crimea. Before the Euromaidan she used to work for several Ukrainian newspapers, now closed."
In the English language, Tsukanova's stories started to appear in mid-2016 and then stopped in
April 2017
.
When her story on the Freeland-Chomiak case appeared in CN, she had reported nothing on the idea, the topic,
or the subject details before; there was no sequel or related report by her afterwards.
In the Russian language Tsukanova's
reporting
record began on January 18, 2016, and is still
current
. Her two outlets are the Strategic Culture Foundation (FSK in Russian) and
KM.ru,
both in
Moscow. The reports specialize on Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. She has reported only once on Freeland and
Chomiak. The story which appeared in Russian on
March 2, 2017
, is not the same story as had appeared under her byline in CN three days earlier. The
Russian version of the story has 23 paragraphs. The first 11 paragraphs of the CN story, a third of the
publication, weren't written by Tsukanova and do not appear in the Russian version. They were written by Parry;
"I personally edited and fact-checked [it]", Parry wrote later. It was
Parry's English version
which was reprinted by Strategic Culture Foundation on March 2, 2017, and then
Parry's lone bylined story which ran in the same place on
March 12, 2017
.
"Knowing Bob as I did," Lauria said last week, "I'm certain he would not have published the article if he
knew any of it had been plagiarized. He must have not been aware of your earlier story as I wasn't as I was
preparing my story this week." Lauria then compared what Tsukanova and Parry had written with two reports I had
published five weeks earlier.
Lauria now says: "I carefully went through your two stories and compared it to Consortium News of Feb. 27,
2017. There is no doubt that it is based on your earlier story. That should have been mentioned in the
Consortium article. I did not find whole sentences or paragraphs that were taken directly from your article.
The fact remains that the story of Freeland's grandfather is true and that cannot be disputed. I have updated
the article I wrote on Tuesday to include this line in the body of the text: The story was first reported by
John Helmer a month earlier In her version, Tuskanova reported; and I put a note at the end of the story
saying: This article has been updated to show that the story of Freeland's grandfather was first reported by
John Helmer."
The revised version of the CN report looks like
this
. Lauria is making amends.
Parry, who can't, made a habit of lifting material without giving credit and then promoting himself as the
originator. In March 2015, for example, he produced a piece on Igor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian oligarch; the
Burisma scandal involving the Biden family, and Natalie Jaresko, the State Department official who became the
Ukrainian minister of finance.
Here's
Parry's story.
This material started with two stories of mine which had appeared a month earlier. Parry helped himself to
the topic and the material, but omitted to mention their origin. He also forgot that he had written to me to
say: "John, thanks. Good piece."
Here
is where Parry started and also
here
.
As for Parry's reporting on Jaresko, which appeared on
February 19, 2015
-- -- that started with a story I had published on Jaresko on
December 3, 2014
. After reworking the material and sources, Parry gave a mention of the origin in my work.
He placed that at the 43
rd
paragraph of his 52-paragraph piece.
Lauria was asked to verify Parry's source, Tsukanova. He says he wrote Tsukanova by email, but she hasn't
replied. Independently, checks of the Crimea and Kiev media last week reveal that she is not known to the
press in either place where she claims to have worked for years. I attempted to contact her at her Facebook
page; she did not reply. In the Facebook gallery of her photographs, there are none of Tsukanova on location
acting as a journalist.
Left: the header for Arina Tsukanova's story archive published by the Strategic Culture Foundation;
source --
https://www.fondsk.ru/authors/
Right: the only photograph of Tsukanova found on the Russian internet. This
identifies Tsukanova, not only as journalist, but also as a "publicist". Source:
https://www.infox.ru/blog/168
On the evidence gathered to date, Tsukanova is a ghost a byline invented by her Russian publishers for
their purposes, but made to look credible for other purposes. Lauria refused to provide evidence of the
original correspondence with Parry, the terms of exclusivity he reported with Tsukanova, or a record of payment
for her article in 2017. He concludes: "I'm not anticipating any evidence [of her communication]."
Lauria also says that "not being able to reach her only proves that she's not reachable I do not think
there is any evidence to say she is a ghost for someone else. It seems pure speculation at this point In the
end of the day, the story is true so does it really matter? A source or a sources' [sic] motives become
irrelevant if the information they provide is true."
The problem for Lauria and CN is that if Tsukanova was an invention of the Strategic Culture Foundation in
2017 when Parry picked up the Freeland-Chomiak story, and if the Moscow entity was receiving money from Russian
state media agencies, then the link between Parry and the Russian side was one which is an embarrassment now
for CN in its claims against CSE and Global News.
Tsukanova may be a ghost; the Strategic Culture Foundation is not. It may be suspected in Ottawa of taking
money from state organs; in Moscow it is suspected of taking money from the Russian Orthodox Church. But there
is no evidence of either. What there is is a record of the foundation's registration on February 21, 2005, at a
room in the Polyanka district of Moscow. The president was listed as Yury Prokofiev; the general director,
Vladimir Maksimenko. The "main activity" on the
registration forms
is
"research and development in the field of social sciences and humanities". Tax inspection is also confirmed,
but no details of income or expenditures.
Left, Yury Prokofiev, founding president of the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow; right,
Vladimir Maksimenko, the general director.
About Prokofiev, now about 81 years of age, there is a detailed history of his evolution from Communist
Party apparatchik in 1990-91 to Orthodox Christian monarchist a decade later. The profile, with extensive
quotes and references, was published by Valery Lebedev in March 2007; read the Russian
here
. Lebedev titles his story
after the Russian story of the puppeteer Karabas Barabas, the villain in a Russian fairy tale. According to
Lebedev's account, the Strategic Culture Foundation was designed as a platform for the promotion of Russian
nationalism. He doesn't know where Prokofiev got his money to publish.
About Maksimenko, the Russian record indicates that he studied history to doctoral level at MGIMO and was
(may still be) an employee of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His earlier
academic publications were on the Maghreb (Arab North Africa); his later ones on Orthodox monarchism appear
here
. About both Prokofiev and
Maksimenko, Lebedev says they have been shopping from one cause to another for years; he implies they have
never managed to draw much money or audience.
Maksimenko does not reply to emails at the contact address given for the
Strategic Culture Foundation
.
The foundation has published only one article by Maksimenko under his byline in English; it is about French
politics
. There is no article in English by Prokofiev in the archive.
With them Freeland shares the same combination of ethnic nationalism and God in Freeland's case, she
told
the FT, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
"I'm very patriotic," Freeland told the FT. "'Be good Ukrainians, and by being good Ukrainians, you will be
even better Canadians'," Freeland recounts. 'I happen to be Ukrainian-Canadian. When I moved to Toronto I had
an instant community of Canadian-Ukrainians. There's a culture there that my kids can immediately experience in
Edmonton or Saskatoon She then embarks on a passionate disquisition about the robustness of Ukraine's
democracy. An aide halts her to say they are late for another meeting a few blocks away.'"
Pricking Freeland's vanity is a bigger job than the FT can handle; or Parry's vanity for Lauria. The vanity
of the Canadian espionage establishment will be safe in a Toronto court. But pricked the CSE file most
certainly it is. That's because the record of Canadian spying for influence over Russian journalism long
precedes this affair.
It started, in fact, with a woman called Janice Cowan, a Canadian of English origin who was the wife of the
Canadian military attach in the Moscow embassy in the early 1990s. Cowan was trained to penetrate Russian
media circles and report back to Ottawa. "It was a good time to be a spy", Cowan wrote in a
memoir
she published called A Spy's Wife; it was issued in 2006 by a Toronto publisher called James
Lorimer with a grant from the Canadian Government. "Quality Canadian books you'll want to read" is Lorimer's
motto except that without cash from Ottawa, Lorimer might have judged that no one would have wanted to read
about Cowan's espionage. In Moscow she took diplomatic immunity from her husband; her spy cover was as an
editor at the English language paper,
The Moscow Tribune.
(The competing English-language paper,
The Moscow Times
, had Cowan's counterparts from the CIA.) Cowan's targets for espionage included the
son-in-law of Marshal Georgy Zhukov and me.
In its
review
of Cowan's book, the Toronto
Globe & Mail
said: "Her account of her pre-assignment
operational training, and of her various intelligence-gathering tours to Soviet hot spots is convincing. But
what threatens to drop this otherwise charming little book into the trivia basket is Cowan's incurable and
self-confessed romanticism about intelligence."
The files of the Communications Security Establishment must include Cowan's reports; they remain classified
even after she broke cover with her book. They can't be mentioned now because that would reveal the topmost
secret of all that when it comes to info-war between Russia and Canada, penetration of the media, and what
the CSE calls "cyber influence activity to cause reputational damage", it was the Canadians who started against
the Russians first.
It's been catch-up, tit-for-tat, not to mention plagiarism, ever since.
No, we're (UK) the 51st state. We got here first. And these things matter. Canada is the 52nd. Well,
possibly. I think Japan is actually the 52nd. Canada can be 53rd, if you like. Although Australians will
need to correct me if that one's already been nabbed by them.
LOL. We welcome you all to our ever expanding republic.
As for the above
It may be suspected in Ottawa of taking money from state organs; in Moscow it is suspected of
taking money from the Russian Orthodox Church. But there is no evidence of either.
And many past US journalists have been suspectedno wait provento have taken money and favors from
the CIA. While Parry may have done wrong by not crediting Helmer and CN may not get the apology and
retraction it seeks, surely the main point is that the story is true. If we were scoring this propaganda
war over "fake news" according to truth then it's likely that stories about the west coming out of
Russiafake byline or notprobably score better on the truth meter than stories about Russia found in our
MSM. As they used to say in Soviet times, everything they told us about Russia was a lie and everything
they told us about America was the truth.
More to the point, this is an interesting and unfortunate turn for this case. Dances with Bears is a site
I forget to read regularly. It's a shame that CN might be setting themselves up for embarassment vs the
Canadian establishment.
I read all three among many others like TruthDig, Craig Murray, Jacobin Mag, Counterpunch, Antiwar, Der
Spiegel, Intercept, MoA, Grayzone Project, Asia Times etc. etc. on a regular basis, and I do not care how
Strategic Culture gets its funding as long as it does not turn it into an obvious or subtle propaganda outlet.
From what I see and read this is an aggregator with editorials sometimes and publishes or republishes a
wide spectrum from left to right, like Zuesse, Cloughly, Lazare, Crook, Cunningham, Madsen, Bridge, Madsen,
Luongo and also LaRouchians like Ehret. A fairly wide Range and therefore obviously quite balanced.
I cannot see any evidence in this range of different contributors to what Helmer describes:
"the Strategic Culture Foundation was designed as a platform for the promotion of Russian nationalism"
Maybe that statement reflects more his troubles with Russian officials, also I do not know how Helmer claims
on one hand he
" At the time, and still, he was banned from entering Russia by the Kremlin The reporter was me."
is not allowed to enter the RF but states on the top of his articles: by John Helmer, Moscow what is it
now? Who is economical with the truth?
As to Consortium News yes, they should have been more careful with checking their sources, but for me it is
important as an expat Canadian that someone like Freeland is permitted to actually represent Canada, which just
shows how pernicious the influence of right wing to Fascist Ukrainians is, especially in a province like
Alberta stretching into Ottawa.
With all due respect, you are completely missing the point or choosing to misconstrue it.
The attacks in Canada on the Consortium News report are based on its reliance on Russian sources that are
alleged to be connected to the Russian government. Strategic Culture Foundation promotes Russian nationalism
and is so hidden about its funding sources that that charge will likely stick. That means that the
Consortium News will have difficulty in court disproving that it was amplifying a Russian campaign,
particularly if Helmer's other contention is correct, that the supposed author isn't bona fide.
I must also point out, without naming names (because I don't want to waste time and energy documenting
the point) that some of the authors from Strategic Culture Foundation that you mention approvingly are ones
we would never link to, and are even loath to allow links to their works in comments because they have
serious and regular problems with accuracy (either actual facts or greatly overstating the implications of
their findings). And accordingly, we have not linked to Strategic Culture Foundation because it features too
many dodgy writers and we do not want to lead readers to view it as a reliable source.
In addition, you promote the fiction that anyone in Russia must be an official stooge. Help me. Helmer is
regularly writing pieces that embarrass the Russian government and its allies; he's been barred entry as
retribution. Had Consortium News written a piece that acknowledged Helmer as the source of the account, it
would have been extremely difficult to depict them as manipulated by Russian government allies.
I agree that if they had simply cited Helmer in the first place they would have a lot better libel
case. I also find it surprising that CN didn't even seem aware of Helmer's reporting on the subject.
You'd think that the thorough fact checking of the piece prior to publication would have turned that up.
Even without the citation though, it seems a quite a stretch to say that the entire CN organization is
"part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia." That "part of" is what will cause problems for
CN I suspect. Could be another argument trying to determine what the meaning of "is" is. Perhaps CN
doesn't even care of they win the case as long as the publicity lets it be more widely known that the
facts of their story are accurate.
I also picked up the same thing Peter did though. I'd always assumed Helmer was resident in Russia
based on his byline and was a little surprised to find out that he was barred from the country.
The maddening thing is the corporate media can misreport stories, and deliberately so, and continue to
get away with it and they will tar and feather an alternative media outlet for a relatively minor mistake
that doesn't affect the true facts of the story at all. It would be nice if Helmer and CN could let
bygones be bygones and cooperate here to get the facts out before people like Freeland who do play fast
and loose with the truth are allowed to squash it and rise through the ranks even higher.
Ive only been reading it for a couple years, but I always felt Strategic Culture Foundation has good
articles from time to time. They're anti-imperial for sure, and have an occasional weird take on history (the
French Revolution was hijacked by the British Oligarchy, and that's when it got bloody), but overall it doesn't
have that pure propaganda feel.
I check it every day. Many of the writers whose articles are picked up do indeed have secure reputations
and articles that are widely republished throughout the leftysphere. And isn't that how the web works? The
opposite version would be the NYT where all those Judy Millers reign but are supposed to have credibility
because of their newspaper's (onetime) exalted reputation. The journalistic world has changed.
"The point isn't that Freeland is culpable in her grandfather's sins. Her sin is hiding them, and her reason
for doing so.
She agrees with Chomiak on turning Ukraine into the Greater Galicia it was Adolf Hitler's
objective to achieve between 1939 to 1945: that's to say, cleanse the territory of Jews, Poles and Russians by
killing them all
. Chomiak succeeded with the first two; he was then employed by the US Army on the third.
Freeland is keeping the plan in the family; they now have the Canadian government behind them"
Ever think that the Consortium News trusted a Russian entity named the Strategic Culture Foundation and a
Ukrainian reporter called Arina Tsukanova on purpose KNOWING that they could be discredited? NOw the narrative
can be changed and Allows them to cover up the truth -- the big story is now not about Freeland knowing lying
about her grandfather and his Nazi connections -- but about a fake news outlet trying to defame her? This sounds
more like what is really going on here -- FYI when ever I see someone has been a Rhodes Scholar and they are in
politics or media -- it can only means one thing -- they are LIARS.
when did parry ever do something like that? never as far as i know, and at any rate freeland's past is
too well known to make this plausible, whether cn wins the libel suit or not.
Consortium News may come a cropper for not practicing due diligence with their sources but they might have
fun embarrassing Canadian outlets in court with quoting Canadian sources. The thing that bothers me is these
'patriots' like Chyrstia Freeland who are patriotic for another country but not where they live. You see the
same in America with all those Cubans in Florida who have helped warp American foreign policy to Cuba for
decade after decade.
With the Ukraine, it seems to be more intense. If you do not believe me, reflect on those Ukrainian-born
people like the Vindman brothers who are at the heart of the impeachment campaign against Trump. And they are
no the only ones. Think Marie Yovanovitch as another example. The Ukraine Diaspora in Canad is even more
extensive and some 1,359,655 Canadians have Ukrainian ancestry. And that is how you get a Chyrstia Freeland who
would literally accept a neo-nazi Ukraine with all that that implies-
It may help explain the bewildering popularity of the loathsome Freeland to point out that Canada has two
quite distinct groups of "Ukrainian" emigrants. One of the largest is Galician, not really Ukrainian. In the
midwest especially (for instance, Winnipeg) there is a Galician Ukrainian church. Other Ukrainians tend to be a
distinct community. I've found quite a disparity in what each group thinks of Freeland.
My issue with all this is the copying and reprinting without attribution to original source. It seems many
of our so-called "leftist" organs and web publishers are too ego-involved to stop promoting their own
"originality", the alternative being to cooperate and share sources and information while researching with
their pooled abilities and assets. The infighting over bona-fides has always been detrimental to the
achievement of goals which are (supposedly) shared and of common good for "the people". So, why this??
I'm sure a well-researched and sourced piece or two, coupled with a strong demand and pressure on the
National Archives to produce its information could well put both Canada and the US on a defensive to either
deny access (a poor PR choice) or produce embarrassing content. This requires far less ego, it seems to me.
John Helmer knows more about what is going on in Russia than any other
correspondent who writes in english. Originally from Australia, he went to grad school at Harvard and worked
for the Carter White House under Brzezinski. He has lived in Moscow for over 30 years and reads/speaks Russian.
He comprehends who the oligarchs and politicians are, and how their businesses and interests intersect and
collide. He has lived in the mideast. He is a teller of truth, and that definitely includes MH17, the Skripals,
the coup in Crimea, and the alleged gas poisonings in Syria.
A word about Strategic Culture.
I read it every day in the hope that I will see an article by Alastair Crooke.
Crooke is a former UK diplo and MI6 spy. His expertise is the mideast, and he is probably the best informed
english speaking person on this planet. E.g., knows more about Hezbollah
than any other writer. And he "tells it like it is". He is not a gossiper of FUKUS imperialism.
I think Crooke publishes at Strategic Culture because he not welcome as contributor in "western" media. If you
attempt to google his name for his latest article, you will not find it.
I have no real idea who supports the S C site, and I do not really care.
Leaving aside the bits about Helmer and attribution, this does raise an interesting point. Suppose I receive
an explosive story about a high elected official from Fresno Dan, who claims to have received it directly from
bare-chested Vladimir Putin via messages from the secret Kremlin antennae in his bunny slippers. But it turns
out to be well-supported with evidence that is independently and easily verifiable (i.e., true).
Do I (a) publish the story; (b) credit Fresno Dan as the source; (c ) mention bare-chested Vladimir and the
bunny slippers; or (d) any or all of the above?
It would seem rather silly not to publish if I think it's important and the story checks out. But will the
bit about Putin and the bunny slippers reduce my credibility if I mention it? And if I don't, what if somebody
else finds out and publishes that?
Technically the fact that the story is true does not preclude it from being part of an influence campaign on
the part of Russia. There are a great many true stories out there and media have broad discretion over which
ones they choose to give air time to. What if somebody alleges that Putin ordered the story shared because he
wanted attention drawn to it in Western media?
As Yves notes, the fact that CN had a more credible source available for the story (Helmer) and chose not to
cite him, which would have avoided most of these issues, would seem to be the own goal here.
Well, it looks like I'll need to start contributing to NPR again. They are a little too
woke for my tastes, but Pompeo is a liar, and frankly beyond the pale. A perfect
representative of the current administration by the way. Kudos to NPR for standing up to
him.
Much like U.S. foreign policy, it seems that Mike Pompeo is going to ignore the facts and
keep recklessly escalating the conflict. Surely he's aware that
The Washington Post
published the
email correspondence
between Ms. Kelley and press aide. This just makes him look like
a coward.
From the Trump voter perspective, this journalist should feel lucky that she wasn't sent
to Guantanamo Bay. All Trump voters think this way, there is no exception.
"... It would be highly ironic if these American military aircraft were shot down with the (in)famous US Stinger missiles that America gave to Afghan jihadists against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. ..."
"... Uncle Sam has declared War on the World, thinking it is just a bunching bag. Now he is finding out that sometimes punching bags can punch back... ..."
If the $1.6 trillion cost of the US military being in Afghanistan is correct, then the loss
of 4 helicopters and even the E11 won't significantly increase US overall spend there. $1.6
trillion over 18 years is a tad under $250 million per day
...I recall a quotation from that good man, Winston C, who wrote long ago about
Afghanistan...{populated by} "poverty-stricken illiterate tribesmen possessed of the finest
Martini-Henry Rifles..."
That was over 100 years ago...
Now, it seem, "possessed of the finest surface to air missiles."
It would be highly ironic if these American military aircraft were shot down with the
(in)famous US Stinger missiles that America gave to Afghan jihadists against the Soviet Union
in the 1980s.
Yves here. Hopefully readers who understand Canada's libel and defamation laws can pipe up. Presumably most of
you already know about Consortium News' libel suit.
From its site
:
Consortium News has sent libel notices to the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's
version of the U.S. National Security Agency, and to a major Canadian television network, Global News, for a
report that said Consortium News was "part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia."
Consortium News promoted a story that was widely picked up and deservedly embarrassing to Chyrstia Freeland,
then Canada's foreign minister, more recently its deputy prime minister. Freeland is of Ukrainian descent and
is rabidly anti-Russian. She has falsely and knowingly depicted her family as victims of the Nazis who fled
persecution, when her grandfather was a prominent Nazi propagandist operating out of Krakow.
Mind you, this is all factually accurate. But Consortium News may not be on solid ground in challenging the
Canadian accounts of its story.
A Helmer describes, Consortium News may have badly undermined its position via its attribution.
Helmer himself originated the story
, as the Consortium News story linked to above acknowledges .but
Consortium News didn't in its piece on
l'affaire Freeland
a month later.
Instead, its story came from "journalist Arina Tsukanova exclusively for CN". The problem is that no such
person appears to exist; it looks to be a handle created by the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow. Helmer
points out that there is speculation that the Strategic Culture Foundation gets funding from the Russian
Orthodox Church; the Canadian government believes the Russian government supports it. Regardless, it appears to
have an explicit mission of promoting Russian nationalism.
So Consortium News has undermined its case, perhaps fatally, by not making clear when it ran its Freeland
piece that it was re-reporting Helmer's work. Helmer is in hot water with the Russian government and was even
barred from entering Russia at the time the Freeland story ran. Helmer also knew Freeland from his days at the
Financial Times, when she was his editor for a bit. To put it politely, he found her to be ideological and
sloppy. So it would be well nigh impossible to depict Consortium News as a Russian stooge for relying on
Helmer. But apparently fabricated personas created by a shadowy Russian foundation?
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, particularly since we were falsely smeared for being Russian stooges,
apparently for sins like questioning rising inequality and other failings of our purported leaders. But if you
are going to attack government officials even in a small country like Canada for misrepresentations about their
backgrounds, as opposed to garden variety incompetence and mendacity, you need to have your ducks in a row.
Going to court similarly requires you to be able to defend your bona fides. Consortium News looks to have set
itself up to be vulnerable. I sincerely hope they prevail, but I would not bet on it.
By
John Helmer
,
the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his
own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political
science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only
member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published
at
Dances with Bears
The truth is that
Consortium News
trusted a Russian entity named the Strategic Culture Foundation
and a Ukrainian reporter called Arina Tsukanova for a story published on February 27, 2017, about Chrystia
Freeland's grandfather Mikhail Chomiak, a propagandist and spy for the German Army who advocated and assisted
in the murder of the Jews, Poles and Russians during World War II, and took his reward by stealing Jewish
property publishing company, office, apartment, antique furniture, and limousine.
The story about Freeland and the ethnic cleansing of Ukraine on which Freeland agrees, still, with Chomiak,
was the truth. It's also a truth she tries to escape by blaming the Russian state or Kremlin propaganda for
repeating. Repeating doesn't turn the truth into a lie, though as Joseph Goebbels advised, repeating the lie
helps.
The point isn't that Freeland is culpable in her grandfather's sins. Her sin is hiding them, and her reason
for doing so. She agrees with Chomiak on turning Ukraine into the Greater Galicia it was Adolf Hitler's
objective to achieve between 1939 to 1945: that's to say, cleanse the territory of Jews, Poles and Russians by
killing them all. Chomiak succeeded with the first two; he was then employed by the US Army on the third.
Freeland is keeping the plan in the family; they now have the Canadian government behind them. Demonizing
Russians is part of the same plan as it was in Chomiak's day.
The irony is that the Freeland-Chomiak story was plagiarized from an American reporter who first published
the details on January 19, 2017. At the time, and still, he was banned from entering Russia by the Kremlin
because, according to a senior official in Moscow, "he writes bad things about our country"; no western
journalist has been banned for as long since September 27, 2010. The reporter was me.
There's another truth wrapped in an irony. Arina Tsukanova, the byline writer of the Strategic Culture
Foundation story and the
Consortium News
story, cannot be found; isn't known at the media of Kiev and
Crimea where her published pieces claim she works; and doesn't reply to emails and Facebook communications. She
is a ghost -- a byline invented by the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow.
The Galician state plan, the genocide which went with it, and the current campaign of lies against Russia
didn't start with Chomiak or end with Freeland. In Canada they have been continued by many officials; among
them Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk, commander of the Canadian Army, then Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff,
2016-2019, and now a minister in the Alberta provincial government; and Roman Waschuk, Canada's ambassador to
Kiev, 2014-2019; for their details,
click
.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the German death camp whose liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945,
is celebrated last week and
this
, was part
of the Galician territory under German occupation. It was seventy kilometres west of Chomiak's office in
Cracow, within his killing range. Opponents and critics of the Galician plan, and researchers of the war
crimes committed by Chomiak and others include many Canadians of Ukrainian origin, including John-Paul Himka, a
professor of history now retired from the University of Alberta in Edmonton; he and they have been the target
of ostracism and worse from the Ukrainian-Canadian community;
read more
.
According to Himka (right) there is "a blank spot in the collective memory of the Ukrainian diaspora", and a
"double standard in discussing war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Ukrainians as opposed to
those perpetrated against Ukrainians. Memoirs and eyewitness accounts, for example, are considered
untrustworthy evidence for the former, but trustworthy for the latter; that is, Jewish or Polish first-hand
accounts of Ukrainian war crimes are dismissed as biased, while an important Ukrainian victimization narrative,
the famine of 1932-33, has relied primarily on just such eyewitness accounts."
The lying by the promoters of the Galician plan for Ukraine has been promoted by the Canadian mass media,
almost without exception. They don't respond to correction for the truth;
click to follow their record
.
With the collaboration of her former employer, the
Financial Times
, Freeland continues to lie by
omission and commission, In the past weekend's "
Lunch
with the FT
", Freeland was questioned by a reporter called Edward Luce. "I struggle to rustle up some
professional scepticism," he admitted towards the end of listening to Freeland. "I cannot help nodding in
agreement."
Luce also couldn't help omitting the extent of the story of Freeland and Galicia. Instead, he repeated
Freeland's lie that her mother had been "born to Ukrainian refugees in a US displaced person's camp in postwar
Germany." In fact, they weren't refugees from Ukraine. They were Nazi war criminals on the run. The "camp" was
a luxury Bavarian spa town, Bad Worishofen, which the US Army had taken over, in part to develop Ukrainian
espionage and infiltration agents to run against the Soviet Union. Chomiak was an early recruit, switching his
loyalty from the German Army to the US Army for money, and for the same murderous ideology.
The US Army, OSS and CIA files on Chomiak, dating from 1945 to at least 1948, are stored at the National
Archives in Washington. No researcher has opened them yet. Recovering the full story of Chomiak started with
Ukrainian and Canadian researchers working through Chomiak's papers in Alberta, and with Polish police
investigations in Warsaw; they were opened and reported
here
.
The Russian contribution to this research and reporting has been negligible. Ditto
Consortium News
(CN).
In an announcement last week, Joe Lauria, the editor of CN since founder Robert Parry died in 2018, said he
had instructed Toronto lawyers to send libel notices to the Canadian signals intelligence agency,
Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and to a local broadcaster called Global News. The notices asked
for retractions and apologies.
Lauria said CN had been defamed for a publication in February 27, 2017, when Chomiak's wartime record was
reported for the first time. Except it wasn't for the first time and the original CN article wasn't quite what
it purported to be.
The CSE had produced a secret analysis, Global News reported, on Russian info-war against Freeland. "Cyber
influence activity to cause reputational damage" was the technical Canadian spy agency term quoted. "The
Grandfather Nazi narrative" was another of the terms. The secret Canadian intelligence was: "In early spring
2017 and spring 2018, sources linked to Russia popularized MFA Freeland's family history, very likely intended
to cause personal reputational damage in order to discredit the Government of Canada's ongoing diplomatic and
military support of Ukraine, to delegitimize Canada's decision to enact the Justice for Victims of Corrupt
Foreign Offices Act, and the expulsion of several Russian diplomats." The Global News report can be read
here
.
Sources linked to Russia were reportedly tracked down by CSE. "The first attack," claimed Global News,
citing the CSE report, "was a February 2017 report in the 'online Consortium News' followed 'in quick
succession' by pro-Russian English language and Russian-language online media, the CSE report says."
Lauria charged last week that this was libellous. Aside, he didn't dispute Parry's claims at the time that
he had been first or that Freeland's counter-attack with her Russia lie was aimed at Parry and CN.
Here
is Parry's original publication, bylined Arina Tsukanova, and tagged "exclusive".
According to CN's original publication, Tsukanova "is a Russian Ukrainian journalist from Kiev currently
living in Crimea. Before the Euromaidan she used to work for several Ukrainian newspapers, now closed."
In the English language, Tsukanova's stories started to appear in mid-2016 and then stopped in
April 2017
.
When her story on the Freeland-Chomiak case appeared in CN, she had reported nothing on the idea, the topic,
or the subject details before; there was no sequel or related report by her afterwards.
In the Russian language Tsukanova's
reporting
record began on January 18, 2016, and is still
current
. Her two outlets are the Strategic Culture Foundation (FSK in Russian) and
KM.ru,
both in
Moscow. The reports specialize on Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. She has reported only once on Freeland and
Chomiak. The story which appeared in Russian on
March 2, 2017
, is not the same story as had appeared under her byline in CN three days earlier. The
Russian version of the story has 23 paragraphs. The first 11 paragraphs of the CN story, a third of the
publication, weren't written by Tsukanova and do not appear in the Russian version. They were written by Parry;
"I personally edited and fact-checked [it]", Parry wrote later. It was
Parry's English version
which was reprinted by Strategic Culture Foundation on March 2, 2017, and then
Parry's lone bylined story which ran in the same place on
March 12, 2017
.
"Knowing Bob as I did," Lauria said last week, "I'm certain he would not have published the article if he
knew any of it had been plagiarized. He must have not been aware of your earlier story as I wasn't as I was
preparing my story this week." Lauria then compared what Tsukanova and Parry had written with two reports I had
published five weeks earlier.
Lauria now says: "I carefully went through your two stories and compared it to Consortium News of Feb. 27,
2017. There is no doubt that it is based on your earlier story. That should have been mentioned in the
Consortium article. I did not find whole sentences or paragraphs that were taken directly from your article.
The fact remains that the story of Freeland's grandfather is true and that cannot be disputed. I have updated
the article I wrote on Tuesday to include this line in the body of the text: The story was first reported by
John Helmer a month earlier In her version, Tuskanova reported; and I put a note at the end of the story
saying: This article has been updated to show that the story of Freeland's grandfather was first reported by
John Helmer."
The revised version of the CN report looks like
this
. Lauria is making amends.
Parry, who can't, made a habit of lifting material without giving credit and then promoting himself as the
originator. In March 2015, for example, he produced a piece on Igor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian oligarch; the
Burisma scandal involving the Biden family, and Natalie Jaresko, the State Department official who became the
Ukrainian minister of finance.
Here's
Parry's story.
This material started with two stories of mine which had appeared a month earlier. Parry helped himself to
the topic and the material, but omitted to mention their origin. He also forgot that he had written to me to
say: "John, thanks. Good piece."
Here
is where Parry started and also
here
.
As for Parry's reporting on Jaresko, which appeared on
February 19, 2015
-- -- that started with a story I had published on Jaresko on
December 3, 2014
. After reworking the material and sources, Parry gave a mention of the origin in my work.
He placed that at the 43
rd
paragraph of his 52-paragraph piece.
Lauria was asked to verify Parry's source, Tsukanova. He says he wrote Tsukanova by email, but she hasn't
replied. Independently, checks of the Crimea and Kiev media last week reveal that she is not known to the
press in either place where she claims to have worked for years. I attempted to contact her at her Facebook
page; she did not reply. In the Facebook gallery of her photographs, there are none of Tsukanova on location
acting as a journalist.
Left: the header for Arina Tsukanova's story archive published by the Strategic Culture Foundation;
source --
https://www.fondsk.ru/authors/
Right: the only photograph of Tsukanova found on the Russian internet. This
identifies Tsukanova, not only as journalist, but also as a "publicist". Source:
https://www.infox.ru/blog/168
On the evidence gathered to date, Tsukanova is a ghost a byline invented by her Russian publishers for
their purposes, but made to look credible for other purposes. Lauria refused to provide evidence of the
original correspondence with Parry, the terms of exclusivity he reported with Tsukanova, or a record of payment
for her article in 2017. He concludes: "I'm not anticipating any evidence [of her communication]."
Lauria also says that "not being able to reach her only proves that she's not reachable I do not think
there is any evidence to say she is a ghost for someone else. It seems pure speculation at this point In the
end of the day, the story is true so does it really matter? A source or a sources' [sic] motives become
irrelevant if the information they provide is true."
The problem for Lauria and CN is that if Tsukanova was an invention of the Strategic Culture Foundation in
2017 when Parry picked up the Freeland-Chomiak story, and if the Moscow entity was receiving money from Russian
state media agencies, then the link between Parry and the Russian side was one which is an embarrassment now
for CN in its claims against CSE and Global News.
Tsukanova may be a ghost; the Strategic Culture Foundation is not. It may be suspected in Ottawa of taking
money from state organs; in Moscow it is suspected of taking money from the Russian Orthodox Church. But there
is no evidence of either. What there is is a record of the foundation's registration on February 21, 2005, at a
room in the Polyanka district of Moscow. The president was listed as Yury Prokofiev; the general director,
Vladimir Maksimenko. The "main activity" on the
registration forms
is
"research and development in the field of social sciences and humanities". Tax inspection is also confirmed,
but no details of income or expenditures.
Left, Yury Prokofiev, founding president of the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow; right,
Vladimir Maksimenko, the general director.
About Prokofiev, now about 81 years of age, there is a detailed history of his evolution from Communist
Party apparatchik in 1990-91 to Orthodox Christian monarchist a decade later. The profile, with extensive
quotes and references, was published by Valery Lebedev in March 2007; read the Russian
here
. Lebedev titles his story
after the Russian story of the puppeteer Karabas Barabas, the villain in a Russian fairy tale. According to
Lebedev's account, the Strategic Culture Foundation was designed as a platform for the promotion of Russian
nationalism. He doesn't know where Prokofiev got his money to publish.
About Maksimenko, the Russian record indicates that he studied history to doctoral level at MGIMO and was
(may still be) an employee of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His earlier
academic publications were on the Maghreb (Arab North Africa); his later ones on Orthodox monarchism appear
here
. About both Prokofiev and
Maksimenko, Lebedev says they have been shopping from one cause to another for years; he implies they have
never managed to draw much money or audience.
Maksimenko does not reply to emails at the contact address given for the
Strategic Culture Foundation
.
The foundation has published only one article by Maksimenko under his byline in English; it is about French
politics
. There is no article in English by Prokofiev in the archive.
With them Freeland shares the same combination of ethnic nationalism and God in Freeland's case, she
told
the FT, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
"I'm very patriotic," Freeland told the FT. "'Be good Ukrainians, and by being good Ukrainians, you will be
even better Canadians'," Freeland recounts. 'I happen to be Ukrainian-Canadian. When I moved to Toronto I had
an instant community of Canadian-Ukrainians. There's a culture there that my kids can immediately experience in
Edmonton or Saskatoon She then embarks on a passionate disquisition about the robustness of Ukraine's
democracy. An aide halts her to say they are late for another meeting a few blocks away.'"
Pricking Freeland's vanity is a bigger job than the FT can handle; or Parry's vanity for Lauria. The vanity
of the Canadian espionage establishment will be safe in a Toronto court. But pricked the CSE file most
certainly it is. That's because the record of Canadian spying for influence over Russian journalism long
precedes this affair.
It started, in fact, with a woman called Janice Cowan, a Canadian of English origin who was the wife of the
Canadian military attach in the Moscow embassy in the early 1990s. Cowan was trained to penetrate Russian
media circles and report back to Ottawa. "It was a good time to be a spy", Cowan wrote in a
memoir
she published called A Spy's Wife; it was issued in 2006 by a Toronto publisher called James
Lorimer with a grant from the Canadian Government. "Quality Canadian books you'll want to read" is Lorimer's
motto except that without cash from Ottawa, Lorimer might have judged that no one would have wanted to read
about Cowan's espionage. In Moscow she took diplomatic immunity from her husband; her spy cover was as an
editor at the English language paper,
The Moscow Tribune.
(The competing English-language paper,
The Moscow Times
, had Cowan's counterparts from the CIA.) Cowan's targets for espionage included the
son-in-law of Marshal Georgy Zhukov and me.
In its
review
of Cowan's book, the Toronto
Globe & Mail
said: "Her account of her pre-assignment
operational training, and of her various intelligence-gathering tours to Soviet hot spots is convincing. But
what threatens to drop this otherwise charming little book into the trivia basket is Cowan's incurable and
self-confessed romanticism about intelligence."
The files of the Communications Security Establishment must include Cowan's reports; they remain classified
even after she broke cover with her book. They can't be mentioned now because that would reveal the topmost
secret of all that when it comes to info-war between Russia and Canada, penetration of the media, and what
the CSE calls "cyber influence activity to cause reputational damage", it was the Canadians who started against
the Russians first.
It's been catch-up, tit-for-tat, not to mention plagiarism, ever since.
No, we're (UK) the 51st state. We got here first. And these things matter. Canada is the 52nd. Well,
possibly. I think Japan is actually the 52nd. Canada can be 53rd, if you like. Although Australians will
need to correct me if that one's already been nabbed by them.
LOL. We welcome you all to our ever expanding republic.
As for the above
It may be suspected in Ottawa of taking money from state organs; in Moscow it is suspected of
taking money from the Russian Orthodox Church. But there is no evidence of either.
And many past US journalists have been suspectedno wait provento have taken money and favors from
the CIA. While Parry may have done wrong by not crediting Helmer and CN may not get the apology and
retraction it seeks, surely the main point is that the story is true. If we were scoring this propaganda
war over "fake news" according to truth then it's likely that stories about the west coming out of
Russiafake byline or notprobably score better on the truth meter than stories about Russia found in our
MSM. As they used to say in Soviet times, everything they told us about Russia was a lie and everything
they told us about America was the truth.
More to the point, this is an interesting and unfortunate turn for this case. Dances with Bears is a site
I forget to read regularly. It's a shame that CN might be setting themselves up for embarassment vs the
Canadian establishment.
I read all three among many others like TruthDig, Craig Murray, Jacobin Mag, Counterpunch, Antiwar, Der
Spiegel, Intercept, MoA, Grayzone Project, Asia Times etc. etc. on a regular basis, and I do not care how
Strategic Culture gets its funding as long as it does not turn it into an obvious or subtle propaganda outlet.
From what I see and read this is an aggregator with editorials sometimes and publishes or republishes a
wide spectrum from left to right, like Zuesse, Cloughly, Lazare, Crook, Cunningham, Madsen, Bridge, Madsen,
Luongo and also LaRouchians like Ehret. A fairly wide Range and therefore obviously quite balanced.
I cannot see any evidence in this range of different contributors to what Helmer describes:
"the Strategic Culture Foundation was designed as a platform for the promotion of Russian nationalism"
Maybe that statement reflects more his troubles with Russian officials, also I do not know how Helmer claims
on one hand he
" At the time, and still, he was banned from entering Russia by the Kremlin The reporter was me."
is not allowed to enter the RF but states on the top of his articles: by John Helmer, Moscow what is it
now? Who is economical with the truth?
As to Consortium News yes, they should have been more careful with checking their sources, but for me it is
important as an expat Canadian that someone like Freeland is permitted to actually represent Canada, which just
shows how pernicious the influence of right wing to Fascist Ukrainians is, especially in a province like
Alberta stretching into Ottawa.
With all due respect, you are completely missing the point or choosing to misconstrue it.
The attacks in Canada on the Consortium News report are based on its reliance on Russian sources that are
alleged to be connected to the Russian government. Strategic Culture Foundation promotes Russian nationalism
and is so hidden about its funding sources that that charge will likely stick. That means that the
Consortium News will have difficulty in court disproving that it was amplifying a Russian campaign,
particularly if Helmer's other contention is correct, that the supposed author isn't bona fide.
I must also point out, without naming names (because I don't want to waste time and energy documenting
the point) that some of the authors from Strategic Culture Foundation that you mention approvingly are ones
we would never link to, and are even loath to allow links to their works in comments because they have
serious and regular problems with accuracy (either actual facts or greatly overstating the implications of
their findings). And accordingly, we have not linked to Strategic Culture Foundation because it features too
many dodgy writers and we do not want to lead readers to view it as a reliable source.
In addition, you promote the fiction that anyone in Russia must be an official stooge. Help me. Helmer is
regularly writing pieces that embarrass the Russian government and its allies; he's been barred entry as
retribution. Had Consortium News written a piece that acknowledged Helmer as the source of the account, it
would have been extremely difficult to depict them as manipulated by Russian government allies.
I agree that if they had simply cited Helmer in the first place they would have a lot better libel
case. I also find it surprising that CN didn't even seem aware of Helmer's reporting on the subject.
You'd think that the thorough fact checking of the piece prior to publication would have turned that up.
Even without the citation though, it seems a quite a stretch to say that the entire CN organization is
"part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia." That "part of" is what will cause problems for
CN I suspect. Could be another argument trying to determine what the meaning of "is" is. Perhaps CN
doesn't even care of they win the case as long as the publicity lets it be more widely known that the
facts of their story are accurate.
I also picked up the same thing Peter did though. I'd always assumed Helmer was resident in Russia
based on his byline and was a little surprised to find out that he was barred from the country.
The maddening thing is the corporate media can misreport stories, and deliberately so, and continue to
get away with it and they will tar and feather an alternative media outlet for a relatively minor mistake
that doesn't affect the true facts of the story at all. It would be nice if Helmer and CN could let
bygones be bygones and cooperate here to get the facts out before people like Freeland who do play fast
and loose with the truth are allowed to squash it and rise through the ranks even higher.
Ive only been reading it for a couple years, but I always felt Strategic Culture Foundation has good
articles from time to time. They're anti-imperial for sure, and have an occasional weird take on history (the
French Revolution was hijacked by the British Oligarchy, and that's when it got bloody), but overall it doesn't
have that pure propaganda feel.
I check it every day. Many of the writers whose articles are picked up do indeed have secure reputations
and articles that are widely republished throughout the leftysphere. And isn't that how the web works? The
opposite version would be the NYT where all those Judy Millers reign but are supposed to have credibility
because of their newspaper's (onetime) exalted reputation. The journalistic world has changed.
"The point isn't that Freeland is culpable in her grandfather's sins. Her sin is hiding them, and her reason
for doing so.
She agrees with Chomiak on turning Ukraine into the Greater Galicia it was Adolf Hitler's
objective to achieve between 1939 to 1945: that's to say, cleanse the territory of Jews, Poles and Russians by
killing them all
. Chomiak succeeded with the first two; he was then employed by the US Army on the third.
Freeland is keeping the plan in the family; they now have the Canadian government behind them"
Ever think that the Consortium News trusted a Russian entity named the Strategic Culture Foundation and a
Ukrainian reporter called Arina Tsukanova on purpose KNOWING that they could be discredited? NOw the narrative
can be changed and Allows them to cover up the truth -- the big story is now not about Freeland knowing lying
about her grandfather and his Nazi connections -- but about a fake news outlet trying to defame her? This sounds
more like what is really going on here -- FYI when ever I see someone has been a Rhodes Scholar and they are in
politics or media -- it can only means one thing -- they are LIARS.
when did parry ever do something like that? never as far as i know, and at any rate freeland's past is
too well known to make this plausible, whether cn wins the libel suit or not.
Consortium News may come a cropper for not practicing due diligence with their sources but they might have
fun embarrassing Canadian outlets in court with quoting Canadian sources. The thing that bothers me is these
'patriots' like Chyrstia Freeland who are patriotic for another country but not where they live. You see the
same in America with all those Cubans in Florida who have helped warp American foreign policy to Cuba for
decade after decade.
With the Ukraine, it seems to be more intense. If you do not believe me, reflect on those Ukrainian-born
people like the Vindman brothers who are at the heart of the impeachment campaign against Trump. And they are
no the only ones. Think Marie Yovanovitch as another example. The Ukraine Diaspora in Canad is even more
extensive and some 1,359,655 Canadians have Ukrainian ancestry. And that is how you get a Chyrstia Freeland who
would literally accept a neo-nazi Ukraine with all that that implies-
It may help explain the bewildering popularity of the loathsome Freeland to point out that Canada has two
quite distinct groups of "Ukrainian" emigrants. One of the largest is Galician, not really Ukrainian. In the
midwest especially (for instance, Winnipeg) there is a Galician Ukrainian church. Other Ukrainians tend to be a
distinct community. I've found quite a disparity in what each group thinks of Freeland.
My issue with all this is the copying and reprinting without attribution to original source. It seems many
of our so-called "leftist" organs and web publishers are too ego-involved to stop promoting their own
"originality", the alternative being to cooperate and share sources and information while researching with
their pooled abilities and assets. The infighting over bona-fides has always been detrimental to the
achievement of goals which are (supposedly) shared and of common good for "the people". So, why this??
I'm sure a well-researched and sourced piece or two, coupled with a strong demand and pressure on the
National Archives to produce its information could well put both Canada and the US on a defensive to either
deny access (a poor PR choice) or produce embarrassing content. This requires far less ego, it seems to me.
John Helmer knows more about what is going on in Russia than any other
correspondent who writes in english. Originally from Australia, he went to grad school at Harvard and worked
for the Carter White House under Brzezinski. He has lived in Moscow for over 30 years and reads/speaks Russian.
He comprehends who the oligarchs and politicians are, and how their businesses and interests intersect and
collide. He has lived in the mideast. He is a teller of truth, and that definitely includes MH17, the Skripals,
the coup in Crimea, and the alleged gas poisonings in Syria.
A word about Strategic Culture.
I read it every day in the hope that I will see an article by Alastair Crooke.
Crooke is a former UK diplo and MI6 spy. His expertise is the mideast, and he is probably the best informed
english speaking person on this planet. E.g., knows more about Hezbollah
than any other writer. And he "tells it like it is". He is not a gossiper of FUKUS imperialism.
I think Crooke publishes at Strategic Culture because he not welcome as contributor in "western" media. If you
attempt to google his name for his latest article, you will not find it.
I have no real idea who supports the S C site, and I do not really care.
Leaving aside the bits about Helmer and attribution, this does raise an interesting point. Suppose I receive
an explosive story about a high elected official from Fresno Dan, who claims to have received it directly from
bare-chested Vladimir Putin via messages from the secret Kremlin antennae in his bunny slippers. But it turns
out to be well-supported with evidence that is independently and easily verifiable (i.e., true).
Do I (a) publish the story; (b) credit Fresno Dan as the source; (c ) mention bare-chested Vladimir and the
bunny slippers; or (d) any or all of the above?
It would seem rather silly not to publish if I think it's important and the story checks out. But will the
bit about Putin and the bunny slippers reduce my credibility if I mention it? And if I don't, what if somebody
else finds out and publishes that?
Technically the fact that the story is true does not preclude it from being part of an influence campaign on
the part of Russia. There are a great many true stories out there and media have broad discretion over which
ones they choose to give air time to. What if somebody alleges that Putin ordered the story shared because he
wanted attention drawn to it in Western media?
As Yves notes, the fact that CN had a more credible source available for the story (Helmer) and chose not to
cite him, which would have avoided most of these issues, would seem to be the own goal here.
Terrorism to Turkey means the PKK/YPG Kurds in Syria which also fight Turkish forces
within Turkey and Iraq. In east Syria the Kurds are cooperating with U.S. troops who occupy
the Syrian oil resources. Turkey wants Syria to at least disarm the Kurds. The Kurds though
use their U.S. relations to demand autonomy and to prevent any agreement with the Syrian
government.
Neither Ankara nor Damascus seem yet ready to make peace. But both countries have economic
problems and will have to come to some solution. There are still ten thousand of Jihadis in
Idleb governorate that need to be cleaned out. Neither country wants to keep these people.
The export of these Jihadis to Libya which Turkey initiated points to a rather unconventional
solution to that problem.
The U.S. has still
not given up its efforts to overthrow the Syrian government through further economic
sanctions. It also
pressures Iraq to keep its troops in the country.
After the U.S. murder of the Iranian general Soleimani and the Iraqi PMU leader
al-Muhandis its position in Iraq is
under severe threat . If the U.S. were forced to leave Iraq it would also have to remove
its hold on Syria's oil. To prevent that the U.S. has reactivated its old plan to
split Iraq into three statelets :
At the height of the war in Iraq Joe Biden publicly
supported it. The original plan failed when in 2006 Hizbullah defeated Israel's attack on
Lebanon and when the Iraqi resistance overwhelmed the U.S. occupation forces.
It is doubtful that the plan can be achieved as long as the government in Baghdad is
supported by a majorities of Shia. Baghdad as well as Tehran will throw everything they have
against the plan.
After the U.S. murder of Soleimani Iran fired well aimed ballistic missiles against U.S.
forces at the Ain al Assad airbase west of Ramadi in Anbar province and against the airport
of Erbil in the Kurdish region. This because those are exactly the bases the U.S. wants to
keep control of. The missiles demonstrated that the U.S. would have to fight a whole new war
to implement and protect its plan.
From the perspective of the
resistance the new plan is just another U.S. attempt to rule the region after its many
previous attempts have failed.
Posted by b on January 28, 2020 at 16:28 UTC |
Permalink
Nine months ago, a group of Iraqi politicians and businessmen from Anbar, Salah al-Din and
Nineveh provinces were invited to the private residence of the Saudi ambassador to Jordan
in Amman.
Their host was the Saudi minister for Gulf affairs, Thamer bin Sabhan al-Sabhan, Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman's point man for the region.
It is not known whether Mohammed al-Halbousi, the speaker of parliament with ties to
both Iran and Saudi Arabia, attended the secret Amman conference, but it is said that he
was informed of the details.
On the agenda was a plan to push for a Sunni autonomous region, akin to Iraqi
Kurdistan.
The plan is not new. But now an idea which has long been toyed with by the US, as it
battles to keep Iraq within its sphere of influence, has found a new lease of life as Saudi
Arabia and Iran compete for influence and dominance.
Anbar comprises 31 percent of the Iraqi state's landmass. It has significant untapped
oil, gas and mineral reserves. It borders Syria.
If US troops were indeed to be forced by the next Iraqi government to quit the country,
they would have to leave the oil fields of northern Syria as well because it is from Anbar
that this operation is supplied. Anbar has four US military bases.
The western province is largely desert, with a population of just over two million. As
an autonomous region, it would need a workforce. This, the meeting was told, could come
from Palestinian refugees and thus neatly fit into Donald Trump's so-called "Deal of the
Century" plans to rid Israel of its Palestinian refugee problem.
Anbar is almost wholly Sunni, but Salah al-Din and Nineveh aren't. If the idea worked in
Anbar, other Sunni-dominated provinces would be next.
At least three large meetings have
already been held over the plan, the last one in the United Arab Emirates. The timing
indicates that the plan was initiated when John Bolton as Trump's national security
advisor.
Canada also has troops in the Kurdish/Erbil region. One wonders if/when Iraq will demand
they go as well, since they are part of the US-led coalition and reflect US/Israeli
geostrategic objectives there
It seems to me that in the Idlib pocket we are seeing an emerging Russian form of
offensive/deterrence military strategy when up against proxies backed by the overwhelming
force of empire.
By using proxies the empire forfeits much of its military mass advantage.
The repeated strike and ceasefire combined with continual negotiation approach negates the
hybrid/media warfare of the empire which requires a period of time to mobilize public
opinion. The empire cannot maintain more than three foci for that dis-information campaign
due to the social engineered response it has manufactured
By constantly maneuvering, especially in coordinating with friends like Xi, opportunities
of attack open up
Choosing moments of maximum empire distraction is also part of the process
This is a far cry from the classic mass formation attack strategy that most present
warfare strategists endlessly debate.
Let the empire wear out it's own heart through an abuse of the hybrid/media warfare til
it's own people vomit up the diet of fear
"... Trump was adamant that Palestinians would be forced to accept his plan in the end. "We have the support of the prime minister, we have the support of the other parties, and we think we will ultimately have the support of the Palestinians, but we're going to see," he said on Monday. ..."
"... Trump has largely outsourced the creation of the plan to his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The initial idea was to publish it after the April 2019 election in Israel, but the uncertainty hanging over the Knesset over the past year has delayed the announcement. ..."
The announcement comes after Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
main political rival Benjamin 'Benny' Gantz. The Palestinian authorities have repeatedly
objected to the plan, as its details were trickling out, and mass protests are expected in the
Palestinian territories as Israel tightens security measures. US President Donald
Trump has unveiled his long-anticipated Middle East plan – effectively his
administration's vision for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump said that under his plan Jerusalem will remain Israel's 'undivided' capital.
Israel's West Bank settlements would be recognised by the United States.
However, Israel would freeze the construction of new settlements on Palestinian territories
for four years while Palestinian statehood is negotiated. Trump said that the US will open an
embassy to Palestine in East Jerusalem.
The US president said that his Palestine-Israel map would "more than double" the Palestinian
territory.
"I want this deal to be a great deal for the Palestinians, it has to be. Today's agreement is
a historic opportunity for the Palestinians to finally achieve an independent state of their
own," Trump said. "These maps will more than double Palestinian territory and provide a
Palestinian capital in Eastern Jerusalem where America will proudly open its embassy."
He added that the US and Israel would create a committee to implement the proposed peace
plan.
"My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that
resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel's security," Trump said during a press
conference.
On Monday, Donald Trump held separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and
opposition leader Benny Gantz. Neither of the two managed to achieve a decisive victory in
general elections in April or September last year, and a third vote is scheduled for March to
break the impasse.
Benny Gantz, the leader of the centre-right Blue and White alliance, praised Trump's plan
following Monday's meeting in Washington and promised to put it into practice if he wins the
March election. Netanyahu has not commented publicly on it yet.
There has been some speculation in the media that Trump wants Netanyahu and Gantz to work
together toward implementing the plan.
No Palestinians at the table
Trump had not met with any Palestinian representatives prior to the announcement;
Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had reportedly turned down several
offers to discuss the proposal.
Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza have called for mass protests against the
peace plan, prompting the Israeli military to reinforce troops in the Jordan Valley.
President Abbas reportedly greenlighted a "Day of Rage" over
the Trump plan on Wednesday, paving the way for violent clashes between protesters and Israeli
forces. He is currently holding an emergency meeting of the executive bodies of the Palestine
Liberation Organisation and the Fatah party.
Palestinians have also floated the possibility of quitting the Oslo accords, which created
the Palestinian Authority and regulate its relations with the state of Israel.
The Oslo accords, signed in the 1990s, officially created the Palestinian Authority as a
structure tasked with exercising self-governance over the territories of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip.
A long path behind
Trump was adamant that Palestinians would be forced to accept his plan in the end. "We have
the support of the prime minister, we have the support of the other parties, and we think we
will ultimately have the support of the Palestinians, but we're going to see," he said on
Monday.
Trump has largely outsourced the creation of the plan to his adviser and son-in-law Jared
Kushner. The initial idea was to publish it after the April 2019 election in Israel, but the
uncertainty hanging over the Knesset over the past year has delayed the announcement.
Jared Kushner unveiled the economic portion of the plan this past summer at a conference in
Bahrain, but failed to shore up support from Palestinians and faced widespread condemnation
instead.
Israelis and Palestinians have been embroiled in a conflict ever since the State of Israel
came into existence. Previous American administrations, in line with the United Nations's
approach, had long favoured an arrangement that envisaged an independent Palestinian state in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with its capital in East Jerusalem.
The Trump administration reversed that policy and made a series of decidedly pro-Israel
moves in the past three years. Those included moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
and recognising the Golan
Heights (which it annexed illegally from Syria) and Israeli settlements in the West Bank
(illegal under international law) as parts of Israel.
Unless the operatives on the US spy plane were carrying ID the Taliban can find, we'll never
know who they really were. As if we could trust that either. (remember Colonel Flagg from
MASH? New fake/cover ID every time he showed up) And funny how those "soldiers" with brain
damage from the Iranian missile strikes have disappeared of the MSM news cycle... And the
"American" interpreter's death that triggered the Soleimani assassination was a dual US/Iraqi
citizen... doesn't the US often offer citizenship to useful locals in return for betraying
their home country? Sometimes treason doesn't pay.
One of the main Taliban Twitter accounts, @Zabehulah_M33 , has posted the following tweets
(machine translated):
US invasion plane crashes in Ghazni, killing scores of officers
Following a raid today in Sadukhel district of Dehik district of Ghazni province, a US
special aircraft carrier was flying over an intelligence mission in the area.
The aircraft was destroyed with all its crew and crew, including the major US
intelligence officers (CIA).
It is noteworthy that recently, in the provinces of Helmand, Balkh and some other parts
of the country, large numbers of enemy aircraft and helicopters have fallen and fallen.
# Important News:
A Ghazni helicopter crashed in the area near Sharana, the capital of Paktika province, this
evening after the Ghazni incident.
The helicopter crew and the soldiers were all destroyed.
So Taliban has not taken responsibility for the E-11A crash (although many news
outlets are reporting it, including Russian ones). Meanwhile, yet another helicopter crashed
after the E-11A crash, so it's two crashes in one day.
If the $1.6 trillion cost of the US military being in Afghanistan is correct, then the loss
of 4 helicopters and even the E11 won't significantly increase US overall spend there. $1.6
trillion over 18 years is a tad under $250 million per day
When a colonial war goes wrong, one salient question was: who sold guns to the savages?
Among more recent examples, who explained technologically inept Iraqis how to make
IEDs?
In the case of smaller weapons, the usual suspect is responsible. NYT By C. J. Chivers
Aug. 24, 2016
... In all, Overton found, the Pentagon provided more than 1.45 million firearms to
various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, including more than 978,000 assault rifles,
266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns. These transfers formed a collage of firearms
of mixed vintage and type: Kalashnikov assault rifles left over from the Cold War; recently
manufactured NATO-standard M16s and M4s from American factories; machine guns of Russian and
Western lineage; and sniper rifles, shotguns and pistols of varied provenance and caliber,
including a large order of Glock semiautomatic pistols, a type of weapon also regularly
offered for sale online in Iraq.
----
That said, one needs something more sophisticated against helicopters and planes. I
suspect that even if Iran were inclined to provide them to Taliban, it would not give them
their own products, and, for sure, they cannot purchase Western missiles on regular markets.
However, as valiant freedom fighters in Syria are provided with such weapons while being
woefully underpaid...
Daniel
Larison
We saw how Mike Pompeo
made a
fool of himself
on Friday with his angry tirade against Mary Louise Kelly, a reporter for NPR. That outburst came
after an interview that he cut short in which he was asked legitimate questions that he could not answer. His response
to the report about this was to malign the reporter with bizarre lies in what could be the most unhinged statement ever
sent out by an American Secretary of State:
Official response from Pompeo about his NPR interview. Haven't seen anything like this before
with a State Department seal on it:
pic.twitter.com/Hi1P18ZS0A
Pompeo's accusatory statement confirmed the substance of what Kelly had reported, and absolutely no one believes him
when he says that she lied to him. All of the available evidence
supports
Kelly's account, and nothing supports Pompeo's:
On the program, Ms. Kelly said Katie Martin, an aide to Mr. Pompeo who has worked in press relations, never asked
for that conversation to be kept off the record, nor would she have agreed to do that.
Mr. Pompeo's statement did not deny Ms. Kelly's account of obscenities and shouting. NPR said Saturday that Ms.
Kelly "has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report." On Sunday, The New
York Times obtained emails between Ms. Kelly and Ms. Martin that showed Ms. Kelly explicitly said the day before the
interview that she would start with Iran and then ask about Ukraine. "I never agree to take anything off the table,"
she wrote.
It is the new definition of chutzpah for Pompeo to accuse someone else of lying and lack of integrity, since he has
been daily
shredding his
credibility
by
making things up
about non-existent U.S. policy successes and telling
easily refuted
lies
about
North
Korea
,
Iran
,
Yemen
, and
Saudi Arabia
. We have
good reason to believe
that the
recent claim that there was an "imminent attack" from Iran earlier this month was
another one of those lies
.
For her part, Kelly has a reputation for solid and reliable reporting, and no one thinks that she would do the things he
accuses her of doing. Pompeo's dig at the end is meant to imply that she misidentified Ukraine on the blank map that he
had brought in to test her. No one believes that claim, either. This is another preposterous lie that tells us that his
version of events can't be true. Pompeo has been
waging a war on the truth
for
the last year and a half, and this is just the most recent assault. The Secretary's meltdown this weekend has been
useful in making it impossible to ignore this any longer.
Literally nobody thinks Mike Pompeo is telling the truth about this, or anything. He works for
Donald Trump, who also lies about everything, always.
https://t.co/yTzZDZl5Gw
All of this is appalling, unprofessional behavior from any government official, and in a sane administration this
conduct along with his other false and misleading statements would be grounds for resignation. When Pompeo publicly
attacks a journalist for doing her job and impugns her integrity to cover up for the fact that he doesn't have any, he
is attacking the press and undermining public accountability. He is also undermining the department's advocacy for
freedom of the press when he tries to intimidate journalists with his obnoxious outbursts. Pompeo already alienated and
disgusted people in his department with his failure to come to the defense of officials that were being publicly
attacked and smeared, and this latest display has further embarrassed them. We need a Secretary of State who isn't a
serial liar, and right now we don't have one.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC
, where he also keeps a solo
blog
. He has been published in the
New York Times
Book Review
,
Dallas Morning News
,
World Politics Review
,
Politico Magazine
,
Orthodox Life
, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for
The Week
.
He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on
Twitter
.
email
"... This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a point where i seriously fear what his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring the world in 4 more years. ..."
"... besides much talk and showmastery, he has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously change the course. ..."
"... So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons and ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his intentions. ..."
Thank you Colonel; I have been waiting for your take on this. And thank you for opening the
comments again. If there is a problem with my post, please point them out to me.
And i agree. This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump
to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a point where i seriously fear what
his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring the world in 4 more
years.
Still, immigration is another important issue, but besides much talk and showmastery,
he has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously
change the course.
So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons
and ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his
intentions.
And China? He may have changed some small to medium problems for the better, but nothing
is changed in the overall trend of the US continuing to loose while China emerges as the next
global superpower.
It may have been slowed for some years; It may even have been accelerated, now that China
has been waken up to the extend of the threat posed by the US.
North Korea? They surely will never denuclearize. Even less after how Trump showed the
world how he treats international law and even allies.
With Trump its all photo ops and showmanship. And while he senses what issues are
important, it is worth a damn if he butchers the execution, or values photo ops more than
substantial progress.
Not that i would see a democratic alternative. No. But at least now everyone who wants to
know can see, that he is neither one.
4 years ago, democracy was corrupted, but at least there was someone who presented himself
as an alternative to that rotten establishment.
Now, even that small ray of light is as dark as it gets.
And that is the saddest thing. What worth is democracy, when one does not even have a true
alternative, besides Tulsi on endless wars, and Bernie for the socialist ;) ?
I just have watched again the Ken Burns documentary of the civil war. I know it is not
perfect (Though i love Shelby Foote's parts), but the sense of the divided 2 Americas there,
is still the same today. Today, America seems to break apart culturally, socially and
economically on the fault lines that have sucked it into the civil war over 150 years
ago.
And just like with seeing no real way out politically, i sadly can see no way to heal and
unite this country, as it never was truly united after the civil war, if not ever before. As
you Colonel said some weeks ago, the US were never a nation.
And looking at other countries, only a major national crisis may change this.
A most sad realization. But this hold true also for other western countries, including my
own.
"... They look so great only because the Empire and its sidekicks have morons at the helm (I don't mean disposable figureheads, "presidents", "chancellors", and "PMs", but real powers behind the throne). ..."
I think President Putin is a great leader and the greatest in the world today.
Putin is just a man with normal quite ordinary intelligence, like Xi. They look so great
only because the Empire and its sidekicks have morons at the helm (I don't mean disposable
figureheads, "presidents", "chancellors", and "PMs", but real powers behind the throne).
"... How did they do it? Reading the reports and contemporary press (1924), plus the "Western" governments plots now with the Germans also part of the gang, everyone predicted the Soviets' experiment – who could not run a chicken raffle, let alone a huge country – would collapse by itself and the Russian wealthy emigres in Paris were preparing their return home on the back of the Great Powers armies under the command of Gen. Hoffmann. ..."
"... How did they do it? Perhaps the answer is revealed if we ask: what is different now? And the answer is that the Russian people were building a new country from the ruins of the old for themselves. In the process they were building Socialism. For the many detractors of the USSR here, that is the greatest sin. In their view, people should work as slaves for their masters: the capitalist class, coincidentally mostly Jewish, to rub salt into the wound. ..."
@FB What I find most surprising (and revolting) is the virulent rancour of many
commenters towards the Revolutionary and WWII Russians for (and I can't see any other
plausible explanation) having deposed Tsarism and Nazism respectively and, subsequently,
constructing a successful competitor to the economic orthodoxy of Capitalism.
All that done
from scratch within a short span of time on their own by their own efforts, a feat unequal in
human history.
How they did it? After all, Russia had long been the butt of jokes by other Europeans
about its backwardness, "Asiatic" crudeness and atavistic religiosity and when news of the
Japanese victory over the Russians in 1905 reached Europe they expressed openly their
schadenfreude and glee for Russia's distress in hard times, especially for "dishonouring"
European arms for being defeated by an Asiatic nation. Not only that, by 1917 Russia was
literally on its knees, the people starving, the soldiers at the front neglected, the
countryside devastated, the German armies outside Petrograd and the Kerensky government
making plans to leave the capital. Then the foreign invasions at Murmansk, Archangel, Baku,
Manchuria and Vladivostok by Entente powers, Finland, Poland, US and Japan all ganged up in
support of the Whites in the civil war that further devastated the countryside to the point
that it ceased to function as a country without money and the economy ran on "war Communism"
(the state had to provided all the basic needs to everyone). Famine ensued.
From that disaster that Russia was, gradually emerged a nation licking its wounds and
grieving its ten million plus dead (perhaps then the greatest calamity visiting a nation
ever) by putting its back to the wall and rebuilding itself, on their own and facing the
hostility of all the Great Powers through sanctions and blockades.
How did they do it? Reading the reports and contemporary press (1924), plus the "Western"
governments plots now with the Germans also part of the gang, everyone predicted the Soviets'
experiment – who could not run a chicken raffle, let alone a huge country – would
collapse by itself and the Russian wealthy emigres in Paris were preparing their return home
on the back of the Great Powers armies under the command of Gen. Hoffmann.
How did they do it? Perhaps the answer is revealed if we ask: what is different now? And
the answer is that the Russian people were building a new country from the ruins of the old
for themselves. In the process they were building Socialism. For the many detractors of the
USSR here, that is the greatest sin. In their view, people should work as slaves for their
masters: the capitalist class, coincidentally mostly Jewish, to rub salt into the wound.
"... Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship with a weak partner government like this? ..."
"... The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up making the Ukrainian government's argument for them ..."
"... To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do. ..."
"... These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the problem. ..."
"... Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S. security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course, our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security. ..."
ormer ambassador William Taylor wrote an op-ed on Ukraine in
an attempt to answer Pompeo's question about whether Americans care about Ukraine. It is not
very persuasive. For one thing, he starts off by exaggerating the importance of the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine to make it seem as if the U.S. has a major stake in the outcome:
Here's why the answer should be yes: Ukraine is defending itself and the West against
Russian attack. If Ukraine succeeds, we succeed. The relationship between the United States
and Ukraine is key to our national security, and Americans should care about Ukraine.
Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the
West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in
this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with
Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to
our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to
our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if
that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about
our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship
with a weak partner government like this?
The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up
making the Ukrainian government's argument for them. The danger of exaggerating U.S. interests
and conflating them with Ukraine's is that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are acting
out of necessity and in our own defense when we are really choosing to take sides in a conflict
that does not affect our security. This is the kind of thinking that encourages people to spout
nonsense about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." If we view
Ukraine as "the front line" of a larger struggle, that will also make it more difficult to
resolve the conflict. When a local conflict is turned into a proxy fight between great powers,
the local people will be the ones made to suffer to serve the ambitions of the patrons. Once
the U.S. insists that its own security is bound up with the outcome of this conflict, there is
an incentive to be considered the "winner," but the reality is that Ukraine will always matter
less to the U.S. than it does to Russia.
If this relationship were so important to U.S. security, how is it that the U.S. managed to
get along just fine for decades after the end of the Cold War when that relationship was not
particularly strong? As recently as the Obama administration, our government did not consider
Ukraine to be important enough to supply with weapons. Ukraine was viewed correctly as
being of
peripheral interest to the U.S., and nothing has changed in the years since then to make it
more important.
Taylor keeps repeating that "Ukraine is the front line" in a larger conflict between Russia
and the West, but that becomes true only if Western governments choose to treat it as one. He
concludes his op-ed with a series of ideological assertions:
To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major
powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy.
It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do.
These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers
awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a
particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric
like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject
illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the
problem.
Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but
the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the
U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of
arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S.
security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course,
our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that
the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security.
The January 2nd American assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran was an event of
enormous moment.
Gen. Soleimani had been the highest-ranking military figure in his nation of 80 million, and
with a storied career of 30 years, one of the most universally popular and highly regarded.
Most analysts ranked him second in influence only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's elderly
Supreme Leader, and there were widespread reports that he was being urged to run for the
presidency in the 2021 elections.
The circumstances of his peacetime death were also quite remarkable. His vehicle was
incinerated by the missile of an American Reaper drone near Iraq's Baghdad international
airport just after he had arrived there on a regular commercial flight for peace negotiations
originally suggested by the American government.
Our major media hardly ignored the gravity of this sudden, unexpected killing of so
high-ranking a political and military figure, and gave it enormous attention. A day or so
later, the front page of my morning New York Times was almost entirely filled with
coverage of the event and its implications, along with several inside pages devoted to the same
topic. Later that same week, America's national newspaper of record allocated more than
one-third of all the pages of its front section to the same shocking story.
But even such copious coverage by teams of veteran journalists failed to provide the
incident with its proper context and implications. Last year, the Trump Administration
had declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard "a terrorist organization," drawing widespread
criticism and even ridicule from national security experts appalled at the notion of
classifying a major branch of Iran's armed forces as "terrorists." Gen. Soleimani was a top
commander in that body, and this apparently provided the legal figleaf for his assassination in
broad daylight while on a diplomatic peace mission.
But consider that Congress has been considering
legislation declaring Russia an official state sponsor of terrorism , and Stephen Cohen,
the eminent Russia scholar, has argued that no foreign leader since the end of World War II has
been so massively demonized by the American media as Russian President Vladimir Putin. For
years, numerous agitated pundits have denounced
Putin as "the new Hitler," and some prominent figures have even called for his
overthrow or death. So we are now only a step or two removed from undertaking a public
campaign to assassinate the leader of a country whose nuclear arsenal could quickly annihilate
the bulk of the American population. Cohen has repeatedly warned that the current danger of
global nuclear war may exceed that which we faced during the days of the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis, and can we entirely dismiss such concerns?
Even if we focus solely upon Gen. Solemaini's killing and entirely disregard its dangerous
implications, there seem few modern precedents for the official public assassination of a
top-ranking political figure by the forces of another major country. In groping for past
examples, the only ones that come to mind occurred almost three generations ago during World
War II, when Czech agents assisted by the Allies assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in
1941 and the US military later shot down the plane of Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in
1943. But these events occurred in the heat of a brutal global war, and the Allied leadership
hardly portrayed them as official government assassinations. Historian David Irving reveals
that when one of Adolf Hitler's aides suggested that an attempt be made to assassinate Soviet
leaders in that same conflict, the German Fuhrer immediately forbade such practices as obvious
violations of the laws of war.
The 1914 terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, was certainly organized by fanatical elements of Serbian Intelligence, but the
Serbian government fiercely denied its own complicity, and no major European power was ever
directly implicated in the plot. The aftermath of the killing soon led to the outbreak of World
War I, and although many millions died in the trenches over the next few years, it would have
been completely unthinkable for one of the major belligerents to consider assassinating the
leadership of another.
A century earlier, the Napoleonic Wars had raged across the entire continent of Europe for
most of a generation, but I don't recall reading of any governmental assassination plots during
that era, let alone in the quite gentlemanly wars of the preceding 18th century when Frederick
the Great and Maria Theresa disputed ownership of the wealthy province of Silesia by military
means. I am hardly a specialist in modern European history, but after the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and regularized the rules of warfare, no assassination as
high-profile as that of Gen. Soleimani comes to mind.
The bloody Wars of Religion of previous centuries did see their share of assassination
schemes. For example, I think that Philip II of Spain supposedly encouraged various plots to
assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England on grounds that she was a murderous heretic, and their
repeated failure helped persuade him to launch the ill-fated Spanish Armada; but being a pious
Catholic, he probably would have balked at using the ruse of peace-negotiations to lure
Elizabeth to her doom. In any event, that was more than four centuries ago, so America has now
placed itself in rather uncharted waters.
Different peoples possess different political traditions, and this may play a major role in
influencing the behavior of the countries they establish. Bolivia and Paraguay were created in
the early 18th century as shards from the decaying Spanish Empire, and according to Wikipedia
they have experienced nearly three dozen successful coups in their history, the bulk of these
prior to 1950, while Mexico has had a half-dozen. By contrast, the U.S. and Canada were founded
as Anglo-Saxon settler colonies, and neither history records even a failed attempt.
During our Revolutionary War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other Founding
Fathers fully recognized that if their effort failed, they would all be hanged by the British
as rebels. However, I have never heard that they feared falling to an assassin's blade, nor
that King George III ever considered such an underhanded means of attack. During the first
century and more of our nation's history, nearly all our presidents and other top political
leaders traced their ancestry back to the British Isles, and political assassinations were
exceptionally rare, with Abraham Lincoln's death being one of the very few that come to
mind.
At the height of the Cold War, our CIA did involve itself in various secret assassination
plots against Cuba's Communist dictator Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders considered
hostile to US interests. But when these facts later came out in the 1970s, they evoked such
enormous outrage from the public and the media, that three consecutive American presidents --
Gerald R.
Ford , Jimmy
Carter , and Ronald Reagan -- issued successive
Executive Orders absolutely prohibiting assassinations by the CIA or any other agent of the US
government.
Although some cynics might claim that these public declarations represented mere
window-dressing, a
March 2018 book review in the New York Times strongly suggests otherwise. Kenneth M.
Pollack spent years as a CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, then went on to
publish a number of influential books on foreign policy and military strategy over the last two
decades. He had originally joined the CIA in 1988, and opens his review by declaring:
One of the very first things I was taught when I joined the CIA was that we do not conduct
assassinations. It was drilled into new recruits over and over again.
Yet Pollack notes with dismay that over the last quarter-century, these once solid
prohibitions have been steadily eaten away, with the process rapidly accelerating after the
9/11 attacks of 2001. The laws on our books may not have changed, but
Today, it seems that all that is left of this policy is a euphemism.
We don't call them assassinations anymore. Now, they are "targeted killings," most often
performed by drone strike, and they have become America's go-to weapon in the war on
terror.
The Bush Administration had conducted 47 of these assassinations-by-another-name, while his
successor Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, had raised his
own total to 542. Not without justification, Pollack wonders whether assassination has become
"a very effective drug, but [one that] treats only the symptom and so offers no cure."
Thus over the last couple of decades American policy has followed a very disturbing
trajectory in its use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy, first restricting its use
to only the most extreme circumstances, next targeting small numbers of high-profile
"terrorists" hiding in rough terrain, then escalating those same such killings to the many
hundreds. And now under President Trump, the fateful step has been taken of America claiming
the right to assassinate any world leader not to our liking whom we unilaterally declare worthy
of death.
Pollack had made his career as a Clinton Democrat, and is best known for his 2002 book
The Threatening Storm that strongly endorsed President Bush's proposed invasion of Iraq
and was enormously
influential in producing bipartisan support for that ill-fated policy. I have no doubt that
he is a committed supporter of Israel, and he probably falls into a category that I would
loosely describe as "Left Neocon."
But while reviewing a history of Israel's own long use of assassination as a mainstay of its
national security policy, he seems deeply disturbed that America might be following along that
same terrible path. Less than two years later, our sudden assassination of a top Iranian leader
demonstrates that his fears may have been greatly understated.
The book being reviewed was Rise and Kill First by New York Times reporter
Ronen Bergman, a weighty study of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, together
with its sister agencies. The author devoted six years of research to the project, which was
based upon a thousand personal interviews and access to some official documents previously
unavailable. As suggested by the title, his primary focus was Israel's long history of
assassinations, and across his 750 pages and thousand-odd source references he recounts the
details of an enormous number of such incidents.
That sort of topic is obviously fraught with controversy, but Bergman's volume carries
glowing cover-blurbs from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors on espionage matters, and the official
cooperation he received is indicated by similar endorsements from both a former Mossad chief
and Ehud Barak, a past Prime Minister of Israel who himself had once led assassination squads.
Over the last couple of decades, former CIA officer Robert Baer has become one of our most
prominent authors in this same field, and he praises the book as "hands down" the best he has
ever read on intelligence, Israel, or the Middle East. The reviews across our elite media were
equally laudatory.
Although I had seen some discussions of the book when it appeared, I only got around to
reading it a few months ago. And while I was deeply impressed by the thorough and meticulous
journalism, I found the pages rather grim and depressing reading, with their endless accounts
of Israeli agents killing their real or perceived enemies, with the operations sometimes
involving kidnappings and brutal torture, or resulting in considerable loss of life to innocent
bystanders. Although the overwhelming majority of the attacks described took place in the
various countries of the Middle East or the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank
and Gaza, others ranged across the world, including Europe. The narrative history began in the
1920s, decades before the actual creation of the Jewish Israel or its Mossad organization, and
ranged up to the present day.
The sheer quantity of such foreign assassinations was really quite remarkable, with the
knowledgeable reviewer in the New York Times suggesting that the Israeli total over the
last half-century or so seemed far greater than that of any other country. I might even go
farther: if we excluded domestic killings, I wouldn't be surprised if the body-count exceeded
the combined total for that of all other major countries in the world. I think all the lurid
revelations of lethal CIA or KGB Cold War assassination plots that I have seen discussed in
newspaper stories might fit comfortably into just a chapter or two of Bergman's extremely long
book.
Trump outlived his shelf life. Money quote: "This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a
point where i seriously fear what his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring
the world in 4 more years."
Notable quotes:
"... Some combination of the disasters that may emerge from these ME factors might well turn Trump's base against him and this result would be entirely of his own making ..."
"... This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a point where i seriously fear what his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring the world in 4 more years. ..."
"... besides much talk and showmastery, he has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously change the course. ..."
"... So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons and ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his intentions. ..."
"... Trump stands no chance if things get hot with Iran. He didn't win by enough to sacrifice the antiwar vote. ..."
"... Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo have got themselves in a no-win situation. NATO cannot occupy both Syria and Iraq, illegally. There are way too few troops. The bases in these nations are sitting ducks for the next precision ballistic missile attack. Any buildup would be contested. Ground travel curtailed. A Peace Treaty and Withdrawal is the only safe way out. ..."
"... Donald Trump is blessed with his opponents. Democrats who restarted the Cold War with Russia in 2014 are now using it to justify his Impeachment. If leaders cannot see reality clearly, they will keep making incredibly stupid mistakes. If Joe Biden is his opponent, I can't vote for either. Both spread chaos. ..."
"... President Trump controls part of the White House -- definitely not the NSC ..."
"... His hold elsewhere in the DC bureaucracy may be 5 - 15%. When the President decided to pull US troops out of Syria, his NSC Director flew to Egypt and Turkey to countermand the order. Facing the opposition of a united DC SWAMP, the President caved, and thereby delayed his formal impeachment by a year. ..."
"... Going out on a limb, President Trump continues to play a very weak hand and may survive to fight another day. Fortunately for the US, his tax and regulatory policies, as well as his economic negotiations with China, Japan, Korea and Mexico seem to be on target and successful. ..."
President Trump will easily be acquitted in the senate trial. This may occur this week and
there will probably be no witnesses called. That will be an additional victory for him and will
add to the effect of his trade deal victories and the general state of the US economy. These
factors should point to a solid victory in November for him and the GOP in Congress.
Ah! Not so fast the cognoscenti may cry out. Not so fast. The Middle East is a graveyard of
dreams:
1. Iraq. Street demonstrations in Iraq against a US alliance are growing more
intense. There may well have been a million people in Muqtada al-Sadr's extravaganza. Shia
fury over the death of Soleimani is quite real. Trump's belief that in a contest of the will he
will prevail over the Iraqi Shia is a delusion, a delusion born of his narcissistic personality
and his unwillingness to listen to people who do not share his delusions. A hostile Iraqi
government and street mobs would make life unbearable for US forces there.
2. Syria. The handful of American troops east and north of the Euphrates "guarding"
Syrian oil from the Syrian government are in a precarious position with the Shia Iraqis at
their backs across the border and a hostile array of SAA, Turks, jihadis and potentially
Russians to their front and on their flanks.
3. Palestine. The "Deal of the Century" is approaching announcement. From what is
known of its contours, the deal will kill any remaining prospects for Palestinian statehood and
will relegate all Palestinians (both Israeli citizens and the merely occupied) to the status of
helots forever . Look it up. In return the deal will offer the helotry substantial bribes in
economic aid money. Trump evidently continues to believe that Palestinians are
untermenschen . He believe they will sell their freedom. The Palestinian Authority has
already rejected this deal. IMO their reaction to the imposition of this regime is likely to be
another intifada.
Some combination of the disasters that may emerge from these ME factors might well turn
Trump's base against him and this result would be entirely of his own making . pl
Could it be true? If that is the case, it´s more scary than Elora thought when that of Soleimani
happened....This starts to look as a frenopatic...isn´t it?
With Iran and her allies holding the figurative Trump Card on escalation, will they ramp up
the pressure to topple him? They could end up with a Dem who couldn't afford to "lose" Syria
or Iraq.
I submit to you, Colonel, that the biggest threat to Trump is a Bernie/Tulsi ticket. Bernie
is leading in the Iowa and NH polls, and the recent spat with Warren (in my opinion) leaves
Bernie with no viable choice for VP other than Tulsi.
Thank you Colonel; I have been waiting for your take on this.
And thank you for opening the comments again. If there is a problem with my post, please
point them out to me.
And i agree. This may well be a fatal mistake of his. And while i have thought Trump to be the lesser evil compared to Clinton, i am now at a
point where i seriously fear what his ignorance and slavery to the neocon doctrine may bring
the world in 4 more years.
Still, immigration is another important issue, but besides much talk and showmastery, he
has not really changed anything substantial in this regard; Nothing that could seriously
change the course.
So he stripped himself of any true argument to vote for him, besides for ultra neocons and
ultra fundamental evangelical Christians. And even they don't seem to trust in his
intentions.
And China? He may have changed some small to medium problems for the better, but nothing
is changed in the overall trend of the US continuing to loose while China emerges as the next
global superpower.
It may have been slowed for some years; It may even have been accelerated, now that China
has been waken up to the extend of the threat posed by the US.
North Korea? They surely will never denuclearize. Even less after how Trump showed the
world how he treats international law and even allies.
With Trump its all photo ops and showmanship. And while he senses what issues are
important, it is worth a damn if he butchers the execution, or values photo ops more than
substantial progress.
Not that i would see a democratic alternative. No. But at least now everyone who wants to
know can see, that he is neither one.
4 years ago, democracy was corrupted, but at least there was someone who presented himself
as an alternative to that rotten establishment.
Now, even that small ray of light is as dark as it gets.
And that is the saddest thing. What worth is democracy, when one does not even have a true
alternative, besides Tulsi on endless wars, and Bernie for the socialist ;) ?
I just have watched again the Ken Burns documentary of the civil war. I know it is not
perfect (Though i love Shelby Foote's parts), but the sense of the divided 2 Americas there,
is still the same today. Today, America seems to break apart culturally, socially and
economically on the fault lines that have sucked it into the civil war over 150 years
ago.
And just like with seeing no real way out politically, i sadly can see no way to heal and
unite this country, as it never was truly united after the civil war, if not ever before. As
you Colonel said some weeks ago, the US were never a nation.
And looking at other countries, only a major national crisis may change this.
A most sad realization. But this hold true also for other western countries, including my
own.
The economy is actually quite good and he is NOT "a dictator." Dictators are not put on
trial by the legislature. He is extremely ignorant and suffers from a life in which only
money mattered.
Once Bernie wins the nomination, it's going to be escalation time. Trump stands no chance if
things get hot with Iran. He didn't win by enough to sacrifice the antiwar vote.
I'm starting to think that Trumps weakness is believing that everyone and everything has a
monetary price. I think perhaps his dealings with China may reinforce his perception, as,
also, his alleged success in bullying the Europeans over Iran -- with the threat of tariffs on
European car imports. His almost weekly references to Iraqi and Syrian oil, allies "not
paying their way", financial threats to the Iraq Government, all suggest a fixation on
finance that has served him well in business.
The trouble is that one day President Trump is going to discover there is something money
can't buy, to the detriment of America.
Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo have got themselves in a no-win situation. NATO cannot occupy
both Syria and Iraq, illegally. There are way too few troops. The bases in these nations are
sitting ducks for the next precision ballistic missile attack. Any buildup would be
contested. Ground travel curtailed. A Peace Treaty and Withdrawal is the only safe way
out.
Donald Trump is blessed with his opponents. Democrats who restarted the Cold War with
Russia in 2014 are now using it to justify his Impeachment. If leaders cannot see reality
clearly, they will keep making incredibly stupid mistakes. If Joe Biden is his opponent, I
can't vote for either. Both spread chaos.
My subconscious is again acting out. The mini-WWIII with Iran could shut off Middle
Eastern oil at any time. The Fed is back to injecting digital money into the market. China
has quarantined 44 million people. Global trade is fragile. Today there are four cases of
Wuhan Coronavirus in the USA.
If confirmed that the virus is contagious without symptoms and
an infected person transmits the virus to 2 to 3 people and with a 3% mortality rate and a
higher 15% rate for the infirmed, the resupply trip to Safeway this summer could be both
futile and dangerous.
It's an old story. Mr X is elected POTUS; going to do this and that; something happens in the
MENA. That's all anyone remembers.
Maybe time to kiss Israel goodbye, tell SA to sell in whatever currency it wants, and realise that oil producers have to sell
the stuff -- it's no good to them in the ground...
President Trump controls part of the White House -- definitely not the NSC -- and much of the
Department of Commerce & Treasury. His hold elsewhere in the DC bureaucracy may be 5 -
15%. When the President decided to pull US troops out of Syria, his NSC Director flew to
Egypt and Turkey to countermand the order. Facing the opposition of a united DC SWAMP, the
President caved, and thereby delayed his formal impeachment by a year.
Going out on a limb, President Trump continues to play a very weak hand and may survive to
fight another day. Fortunately for the US, his tax and regulatory policies, as well as his
economic negotiations with China, Japan, Korea and Mexico seem to be on target and
successful.
Carthage must be destroyed! I don't know if Trump is going to war with Iran willingly or with
a Neocon gun to his head, but if he's impeached I expect Pence to go on a holy crusade.
9K38-Igla-M
MANPADS represent a large leap in the 'death by 1000 cuts' equation.
The stinger missile made a huge difference in the battle dynamics when the Soviets were in
Afganistan. 2000 Iglas trickled into Afganistan would be a huge headache for occupying
forces. No more close air support, very dangerous take-off and landings along with possible
higher altitude interceptions.
In regard to the financing of the ongoing operations, war profiteers are happy to continue
that ad infinitum. The American war in Viet-Nam was a test run of sorts, how to keep things
running for maximum profit and burn. Weapons in and commodities (hmmmm...)out makes for quite
a killing.
The sense I get is that the escalation cause by the various air strikes and assassinations
was designed as a last ditch effort to keep things escalating lest peace and stability break
out. Granted that is a distant horizon, but if Iran and the KSA found some common ground,
Syria was mopped up and Lebanon was able to shake off the elements that continually throw
spanners in the works USA/isreal interests would definitely be less likely to prosper. Given
the pattern of provocation by the USA trying to get Iran to do something extreme in order to
justify all out war, the murder of the highly prized generals seems not to have worked as
intended. Rather than striking out impulsively, the Resistance appears to have engaged in a
broad spectrum highly controlled campaign to do just what it has promised. Expel the USA from
the MidEast.
We live in world of countermeasures and gone are the days of total domination by the usual
suspects. Anti aircraft missile defense is the current keystone to this balance. As with many
things MANPADS are very much a double edged sword, so one must be judicious with sales and
distribution. There is nothing stopping them from biting the manufacturer in the arse.
Not long ago such missiles would be easier to trace, but given the amount of exports and
knock-offs they could filter into the Afgan theater from anywhere. If there are in fact a
quantity of them in play, then the occupiers are going to have a very bad day(s) indeed.
"WHAT are the Americans actually bombing?
Let me suggest - nothing, just an opportunity to use up the existing arsenal."
Posted by: Alex_Gorsky | Jan 27 2020 17:14 utc | 12
No, they are bombing homes and trying to genocide the Pashtuns that live on/over a fortune in
minerals and whatnot,.-
Try to research how many Pashtun children the united states of terrorist and nato terrorists
have raped and killed, ALL just to steal Afghanistans wealth.
To Ant 10, Per/Norway 18: Afghanistan is a vast source of mineral wealth, and has valuable
potential oil/gas pipeline routes. As usual, US/ZATO wants to "protect" these for their pet
corporate thieves. That the CIA/Mossad runs the opium industry is just a cash-cow to pay-off
the local drug kingpins/warlords.
The Taliban had decimated the opium industry a couple times, but the CIA/Mossad always
pushes back in and keeps the country in chaos.
The Taliban are no angels, but at least they eradicate the opium industry. If the US/ZATO
and CIA/Mossad got out of Afghanistan, it wouldn't take long for the locals to throw out the
Taliban. The locals put up with the Taliban because they are slightly less destructive than
the US/ZATO/CIA/Mossad thugs.
Ukies got Javelin anti-tank weapons. (though the US controls them or half of them would be
sold off).
Then, there was a counter-move. Not in Donbass. Elsewhere.
Taliban have MANPADS.
Soon, the Iraqi PMF will have MANPADS.
It's a weapons war that the US cannot win.
Too many people want the Hegemon out of their country.
We see this weapons war in Africa. Russia and China are there to teach the weapons'
use.
You don't need big nukes and aircraft to win a war.
Vietnam won with artillery, sappers and AK-47s.
Houthis are winning with homemade missiles and drones.
Taliban will force out the US. Russia and China will do whatever they can to see that will
be the outcome.
There must be some Iranian special Quods force operating deep inside Afghanistan using their
own SAM, not giving them to the Taliban, who are their longtgerm enemies.
The Iranians will choose how, when and where they are going to kill US soldiers and CIA
opertatives with total deniability if required; probably in this plane there were some CIA
dudes involved in dirty operations in the ME affecting Iran, now they have reaped what they
sown
If I wanted to attack the US I would do it in Afghanistan. Hostile territory, hostile
population, impossible lines of communication. If it isn't Taliban, then it probably someone
in alliance with them. China? Shares a border with Afghanistan (even if a bit inaccessible).
Pakistan? Iraq? Iran? Russia (I doubt it but you never know). There must be so much general
ordnance kicking around in the Middle East, most of it supplied or sourced by the US. I'm
surprised it hasn't been done before. Certainly, if whoever it is has a regular supply of
surface to air missiles, Bhagram, and the US are toast.
The afghans canteach the iraqi how to bring down those planes, then the NATO would be a
sitting duck in Iraq and the only option to get out alive would be a peacedeal the israeli
can not refuse.
I tend to agree with that thinking. The Outlaw US Empire will need to be ousted from
wherever it occupies as with 'Nam, although there's still the question of the Current
Oligarchy's domestic viability and ability to retain control over the federal government.
What's promising in the latter regard is the very strong pushback aimed at
DNC Chair Perez's committee appointments , which is being called Trump's Re-election
Campaign Committee for good reasons. However IMO, people need to look beyond Trump and the
Duopoly at those pulling the strings. And the easiest way to cut the strings is to elect
people without any.
Hard to say just what the Iranian-Taliban relationship is at this juncture. Tehran
continues to deny supplying them, but it's clear Taliban are the only force capable to
defeating the Outlaw US Empire's Terrorist Foreign Legion it imported into the Afghan
theatre. Iran's watched the Taliban up close and personal for 24+ years now, so I'd be very
surprised if there wasn't at least a strong backchannel com between them. IIRC, Iran okayed
Taliban's inclusion in the Moscow talks and has suggested they become a part of any future
Afghan government.
@ 38 Quixotic 1
Guarantee you- "the Empire is not going to cede its position anywhere on the globe. It's
not going to leave Syria, it's not going to leave Iraq, and it certainly is not going to
leave it's foothold in the underbelly of Eurasia.
Because to do so would mean the end of the Hegemonic project.
I have 1st dibs on that Guarantee
by 2025. Be ready to deliver in gold.
Here is how. Watch KSA and that old 1973 deal to price oil in USD$; follows then ALL
countries need USD to buy oil. Fast Forward. KSA wants in on their share of oil to China AND
the price will be paid in Yuan. Ask Qatar.
See the historical Timeline of currencies at link.
The USD is losing its appeal because Uncle Sam foolishly weaponized its currency. A review
of history: Bullies have a limited
life as do Reserve Currencies all things end. And sanctions are wearing thin.
The epitaph reads "US$, aka the greenback, met its demise by sanctions."
Well may be the Iranians could supply the Taliban with weapons, or may be they supply them
to the Hazara, that are much more close to them and are the real allies in Afghanistan, and
it is a way to protect them un a post-US future. So may be the Hazara could become the new
Houthies in Afghanistan
Johan Galtung predicted, in the year 2000, the end of the US Empire in 2020, he also
predicted, in the year 1980, the end of the Soviet Empire before the end of that decade, and
he nailed.
This is an interview in 2010, but the book with his predictions is much old:
He said:
"It's an empire against a wall; an empire in despair; an empire, I would say, in its last
phase. My prediction in the book that is here, that you mentioned, The Fall of the US
Empire–And Then What?, is that it cannot last longer than 'til about 2020. In 1980, I
predicted for the Soviet empire that it will crack at its weakest point, the wall of Berlin,
within ten years, and it happened in November 1989, and the Soviet empire followed. So my
prediction is a similar one for the US empire"
In another interview he said that after the cracks in the Empire and the loss of the
Imperial Wealth Pump:
"The most dangerous variable is the definitive end of the American dream, due to domestic
hardship. This would lead to the functional breakdown of the establishment and Treaty of the
Union, which would be the political end of the North American multi-state entity. At this
point, Galtung says, the empire would be split into a confederation of states, more or less
powerful, that would seek an independent solution to the external and internal crisis."
Can someone explain to mean what 'ZATO' (as in 'US/ZATO') means on this site?
As for China being a possible source for the anti-aircraft missiles, I doubt it is via the
Xinjiang/Afghanistan border and must instead be using established smuggling routes and
intermediaries groups.
I've heard it said that the missiles fired by Houthis on the Abqaiq oil facility are based
on Iran designs, some of which are in turn copies or reverse-engineered from Chinese designs.
If the Afghanistan situation is like that, then the Chinese connection is mediated instead of
immediate, such as via Iran. The missiles doesn't even need to be reverse-engineered --- just
swap out some parts for generic ones. For various reasons, such as plausible deniability, I
doubt that China would directly supply Taliban with such equipment.
Native people were classified as militarily apt and militarily inept, and recruitment to
colonial armies was guided by that principle. Arabs were typically classified as inept,
unlike Gurkhas and the Sikh. Persians were not recruited, but they were known to colonial
leaders who had education in classics."
iotr Berman@48
This is Raj History 101 bullshit recycled. Far from being classified as inept- Arabs,
particularly Sunni
desert Arabs were very highly regarded by the British for their military prowess. Hence the
entrusting to
the current Gulf rulers of the British protectorates handed back in the 1960s.
The Arab Legion in 1948 came out of the war with its reputation intact.
So far as their educational achievements are concerned: it was the Arabs who brought Europe
the Renaissance.
Anyone who really believes that Arabs are incapable of developing IEDs is likely to be
part of that unfortunate portion of humanity that holds them to be 'sand niggers' etc. And
likely to suffer
the fate of racist fools throughout history.
I continue to see Twitter reports, like this one that the
Prince of Darkness aka Mike de Andrea was killed in that shootdown. As with the commander at
the base Iran attacked in Iraq who is now rumored to have died, the easiest refutation would
be for them to appear in public.
2) The Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, they were invited in in by then sovereign
UN-recognised Gov of Afghan (golly wonder why)
Posted by: Ant. | Jan 27 2020 17:03 utc | 10
Wiki (quite accurate): Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of
the PDPA -- the dominant Khalq and the more moderate Parcham -- resulted (in
July–August 1979) in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of
Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup.[62]
In September 1979, President Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA
orchestrated by fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency. The
situation in the country deteriorated under Amin and thousands of people went missing.[63]
The Soviet Union was displeased with Amin's government and decided to intervene and invade
the country on 27 December 1979, killing Amin that same day.[64]
A Soviet-organized regime, led by Parcham's Babrak Karmal but inclusive of both factions
(Parcham and Khalq), filled the vacuum.
------
Perhaps Taraki invited Soviets just as he was beset by assassins, or Amin did it for
reasons he never got a chance to explain. Honestly, left to their own devices, PDPA, the
Afghan Communists, were making royal mess. In any case, the western supported anti-progress
guerilla, fighting horrors like schools for girls, predated Soviet "invasion".
Easiest route for Afghan Taliban to obtain weapons is from Pakistani Taliban, with ISI
permission.
Remember Pakistani ISI ran Al-Qaeda back in the day.
It is also forgotten that the Tallys prevent the muj warlords from raping the country's
teenagers, of both genders, their favorite sport. Thus they are forgiven for suppressing the
poppy farming.
"The US govt seems to be actively hiding this information from the public, but the Taliban
has verified this to the Iranians, who in turn passed the message to the GCC states. There is
a gruesome photograph of one of the passengers who died, & he has the same profile as
D'Andrea."
And:
"The CIA's Michael D'Andrea, who was in charge of the CIA's anti-Iran operations, was in
fact killed yesterday in a plane crash in Afghanistan, which the Iranian-backed Taliban
claims to have downed. He was killed alongside 4 other people, including 2 USAF pilots &
2 CIA figures."
Not equivalent in stature to Soleimani but important nonetheless. I'll add a small caveat
that this still isn't 100% confirmed.
@ S (club) 7 and karlofi 93
Yes I'm hearing Ayatollah Mike was one of the several CIA officers among the dead. BIG loss
for US and good retaliatory strike (if true) for Iran. The Dark Prince Mike was indeed head
of CIA anti-Iran operations and likely played a big part in the Soleimani assassination. We
may never know for sure, but the premature departure of CIA officers is always good for the
rest of humankind.
I have long wondered why the Russians have not paid back the US for their aid to the Afghan
guerrilla in the 1980's. The US supplied stinger missiles and other anti-aircraft systems and
at one point they were knocking down one Russian aircraft a day. Maybe the Russians smell
Western blood on the water and have chosen this as the time to pay them back with select arms
deliveries to the Taliban.
It was this loss of aviation support that hastened their departure and it would certainly
hasten a US departure. I do not think the US has it in them to ramp it up at this
point...
"... They look so great only because the Empire and its sidekicks have morons at the helm (I don't mean disposable figureheads, "presidents", "chancellors", and "PMs", but real powers behind the throne). ..."
I think President Putin is a great leader and the greatest in the world today.
Putin is just a man with normal quite ordinary intelligence, like Xi. They look so great
only because the Empire and its sidekicks have morons at the helm (I don't mean disposable
figureheads, "presidents", "chancellors", and "PMs", but real powers behind the throne).
Western Democracies have fallen to the secretive Zionist Death Cult.
We need Movement(s) to restore democracy.
"Democracy Works!" propagandists will tell you that you only need YOUR VOTE. That is
false. They ask for unilateral disarmament. We will never restore democracy by voting in
rigged elections.
Zionist Death Cult? is no exaggeration. IMO The Zionist Movement has been
hijacked by those who see ANY opposition as an existential threat. Thus, they MUST smash
countries in the Middle East, and they MUST rule the world, even if that means conflict
with Russia and China.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
I see Zionism not as a bad expression.... Zion and Zionism is, in my view, only a
necessary expression of an oppressed people ...
Massaging Zionist egos with happy talk is counter-productive. (Yeah, I know you qualify
your happy talk later, but still ...) THEY DON'T CARE. They are only interested in POWER
and keeping it.
Whatever it started out as, Zionism has morphed into a Movement that has brought misery
to millions and threatens the extinction of humanity via WWIII. The Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to
midnight .
Just imagine if your culture, your tribe, was abolished and persecuted for
centuries ...
Whatever was learned from that persecution seems to have been co-opted by ruthless
Zionists who don't just want a homeland but the defeat of everyone that might
restrict or restain them in any way - thus, the alliance with USA Empire-builders that to
rule the world (NWO).
Just imagine if ... : your country has been subverted by a secretive
Movement that bypasses Democratic process and corrupts your leaders via money and
relentless organizing - including illegal blackmail operations that subvert anyone that
doesn't approve of their goals and means of achieving them. At some point, they get to a
point where their undermining is essentially more than paid for by grants from the
government that they now control.
= That the state of Israel is oppressing other people today, and is secured by the
'empire' and the holocaust emblem, is certainly a sad period of history.
You're forgetting the Christian Zionists, MIC, and others that have a financial interest
in continuing the farce.
USA and Western political elites are virtually ALL corrupted by Zionist influence.
= It inverted the role play entirely, even perverted it. There is some hope in the
citizens of Israel and the Jews that live abroad to find a way to end this
insanity.
We should not rely upon that faint hope. The people in the West need to take back their
democracies via MOVEMENTS.
They we might see a quick rush by Israel embrace those "simple solutions" that you
talked about and to be less like the belligerent rogue State that they are today.
= [Jews are] ... a people that is suffering from finding a place to be, to find a home.
Palestine is somehow their home, but it must be shared with the Arab people who also call
Palestine their home. Of course there is no simple solution to that question.
Well, the "simple solutions" that have been rejected by Zionist Death Cult.
The Zionist Death Cult decided that if they gain political control of USA, then they
don't need to agree to "simple solutions". And "Zionist" Empire-builders in USA decided
that they could use Israel to control the region and increase MIC profits. And the Zionist
Death Cult mentality applies not just to Middle East but the World.
= We, as a global community, have to bring separated tribes together. We have no other
choice. Else, there is war. Constant war. Which is of course the plan for a certain
elevated upper realm that is playing the part of the bad guy.
Yeah, well hoping for the best is not a plan.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Laguerre @40:
[Phil @35] Jews are a separate identity ... If they wish to remain a separate
identity, then there are consequences.
As I see it, the problem is not Jews but Zionists, neocons, and other warmongers.
Too often, criticism of Israel or Zionism is wrongly translated into criticism of
Jews.
The above is from Thierry Meyssan's most recent essay. In it, he examines what he considers
a kind of unique "problem" for Iran; the lack of a constitutional separation of religious and
state powers (the one thing the US Founding Aristocrats got right).
Upon reading one might feel (as I did) a reflexive tendency toward defensive sympathy for
Iran, especially in the face of constant threat from the US and the zionist entity in
Palestine.
But the admirable thing about Meyssan is that he is consistently an advocate for peace,
fairness, and above all truth. Anyways, it's a great read; highly recommended.
Thanks for all you do for us, b; peace and Happy Lunar New Year, barflies.
Posted by: robjira | Jan 26 2020 18:42 utc |
23 Ps.
Quadrant is sponsored by the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom (the Australian arm
of the Congress for Cultural Freedom - a CIA-funded anti-communist group from Yankistan), who
later changed their name to the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom.
Such an independent source of information, not. They are basically a mouthpiece for the
Trilateral Commission goons, and all of their apparatchiks, and are aligned with Murdoch stable
neo-con/lib dogma. Sorry, but I'd rather listen to people with experience, qualifications, or
"skin in the game", than right-wing propaganda.
@ robjira | Jan 26 2020 18:42 utc | 23 ( Thierry Meyssan's most recent essay)
Yes, it is a good essay. However I think his understanding of International Law is only one
of several, there are at least two views as to what is the basis of Law.
You'll have to look for it I'm afraid>
Title: ABOVE AND BEYOND INTERNATIONAL LAW: GEORGE W. BUSH AS THE AUSTINIAN SOVEREIGN
Professor Ali Khan
Washburn University School of Law
JURIST
a fragment, you'll see that TM bases his idea on an altogether different foundation, I
think.
"For centuries, international law has been anchored in the theory of contracts. Treaties are
explicit contracts among states, but even customary international law, at least in its
formative stages, is founded on consent and is derived from voluntary state practices.
All along, powerful nations have influenced international law. Yet in modern times no single
state - no single sovereign - has claimed the authority to make laws for the rest of the world.
International law has, since the Second World War, admittedly developed some coercive elements
in its genetic structure, but it nonetheless remains, both in its essence and legitimacy, the
law of partnership.
This jurisprudence might change, however, if George Walker Bush is successful in crowning
himself as the Austinian Sovereign. "
"... imperialism is an integral part of the capitalist world-economy. It is not a special phenomenon. It has always been there. It always will be there as long as we have a capitalist world economy. Two, we are experiencing at the moment a particularly aggressive and egregious form of imperialism, which is now even ready to claim that it is being imperialist. ..."
"... We have to start in 1945, when the United States became hegemonic, really hegemonic. What does hegemony in this context mean? It means that the U.S. nation-state was so much the strongest, it had an economic capability so far ahead of anybody else in the world as of 1945, that it could undersell anyone in their own home markets. The United States had a military strength that was unparalleled. As a consequence, it had an ability to create formidable alliances, NATO, the U.S.-Japan Defense Pact, and so on. At the same time, the United States, as the hegemonic power, became culturally the center of the world. New York became the center of high culture and American popular culture went on its march throughout the world. ..."
"... It is true that there was the Soviet Union, which posed a military difficulty for the United States. Nonetheless, the United States handled that very simply by an agreement. It is called Yalta, which encompasses more than just what happened at Yalta itself. I think the left has underestimated historically the reality and the importance of the Yalta agreement that made the Cold War a choreographed arrangement in which nothing ever really happened for forty years. That was the important thing about the Cold War. It divided up the world into the Soviet zone that was about a third of the world, and the U.S. zone that was two-thirds. It kept the zones economically separate and allowed them to shout at each other loudly in order to keep their own side in order, but never to make any truly substantial changes in the arrangement. The United States was therefore sitting on top of the world. ..."
"... The third thing that happened is that there were people who didn't agree with Yalta. They were located in the third world and there were at least four significant defeats of imperialism that occurred in the third world. The first was China, where the Communist Party defied Stalin and marched on Kuomintang-controlled Shanghai in 1948, thus getting China out from under U.S. influence on the mainland. That was a central defeat in the U.S. attempt to control the periphery. Secondly, there was Algeria and all its implications as a role model for other colonial territories. There was Cuba, in the backyard of the United States. And finally, there was Vietnam, which both France and then the United States were incapable of defeating. It was a military defeat for the United States that has structured world geopolitics ever since. ..."
"... How could the rulers of the United States handle the loss of hegemony? That has been the problem ever since. There were two dominant modes of handling this loss of hegemony. One is that pursued from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton, including Ronald Reagan, including George Bush Sr. All these U.S . presidents handled it the same way, basically a variant of the velvet glove hiding the mailed fist. ..."
"... They sought to persuade Western Europe and Japan and others that the United States could be cooperative; that the others could have an alliance of semi-equals, though with the United States exerting "leadership." That's the Trilateral Commission and the G7. And, of course, they were using all this time the unifying force of opposition to the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Secondly, there was the so-called Washington Consensus that coalesced in the 1980s. What was the Washington Consensus about? I remind you that the 1970s was the era when the United Nations proclaimed the decade of development. Developmentalism was the name of the game from the 1950s through the 1970s. Everybody proclaimed that countries could develop. The United States proclaimed it. The Soviet Union proclaimed it, and everybody in the third world proclaimed it -- if only a state were organized properly. Of course, people disagreed about how to organize a state properly, but if only it were organized properly and did the right things, it could develop. This was the basic ideology; development was to be achieved by some kind of control over what went on within sovereign national states. ..."
"... The second objective was to deal with the military threat. The real threat to U.S. military power, and they say it all the time, so let's believe them, is nuclear proliferation; because if every little country has nuclear weapons it becomes very tricky for the United States to engage in military action. That is what North Korea is demonstrating at this moment. North Korea only has two nuclear bombs, if what the newspapers say is correct. But that is enough to shake things up. ..."
"... Second, there was Saddam. Saddam Hussein started the first Gulf War. He did it deliberately. He did it deliberately to challenge the United States. He could not have done that if the Soviet Union had still been an active power. They would have stopped him from doing it because it would have been too dangerous in terms of the Yalta agreement. And he got away with it. That is to say, at the end of the war, all he lost was what he had gained. He was back at the starting point. That is what has stuck in the craw for ten years. That war was a draw. It was not a victory for the United States. ..."
"... Enter the hawks. The hawks do not see themselves as the triumphant continuation of U.S. capitalism or U.S. power or anything else. They see themselves as a group of frustrated outsiders who for fifty years did not get their way even with Reagan, even with Bush Sr., even with George Bush Jr. before 9/11. They are still worried that Bush Jr. will chicken out on them. They think that the policy that went from Nixon to Clinton to the first year of George W. Bush, of trying to handle this situation, diplomatically, multilaterally -- I call it the velvet glove -- was an utter failure. They think it just accelerated the decline of the United States and they think that had to be changed radically by engaging in an egregious, overt, imperial action -- war for the sake of war. They did not go to war on Iraq or Saddam Hussein because he was a dictator. They did not go to war on Iraq even for oil. I will not argue that point here, but they did not need the war on Iraq for oil. They needed it to show the United States could do it, and they needed that demonstration in order to intimidate two groups of people: (1) anybody in the third world who thinks that they should engage in nuclear proliferation; and (2) Europe. This was an attack on Europe, and that is why Europe responded the way it did. ..."
"... Second, look at North East Asia. This is harder but I think China, a reunited Korea, and Japan will begin to move together politically and economically. Now, this will not be easy. The reunification of Korea will be a tremendously difficult thing to achieve. The reunification of China as well will be a difficult thing to achieve, and those countries have all sorts of reasons for hating one another and tensions with deep historical roots, but the pressure is on them. If, realistically, they are going to survive as independent forces in the world, they will move in this direction. ..."
Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) was the
director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and
Civilizations; the editor of Review ; and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. He
was the author of numerous books, including Transforming the
Revolution: Social Movements and the World-System , cowritten with Andre Gunder
Frank, Giovanni Arrighi, and Samir Amin (Monthly Review Press, 1990).
Wallerstein was also a frequent contributor to Monthly Review . "
U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for
Hegemony " was first published in Monthly Review 55, no. 3 (July–August
2003).
I am going to start with two things with which I think nearly all MR readers will
probably agree. One, imperialism is an integral part of the capitalist world-economy. It is not
a special phenomenon. It has always been there. It always will be there as long as we have a
capitalist world economy. Two, we are experiencing at the moment a particularly aggressive and
egregious form of imperialism, which is now even ready to claim that it is being
imperialist.
Now, I ask you to reflect upon that anomaly. How do we explain that, at the moment, we are
living through a particularly aggressive and egregious form of imperialism, which for the first
time in over a hundred years has been ready to use the words imperial and
imperialism ? Why should they do that? Now, the answer most people give in one word is
U.S. strength . And the answer I will give in one word is U.S. weakness .
We have to start in 1945, when the United States became hegemonic, really hegemonic. What
does hegemony in this context mean? It means that the U.S. nation-state was so much the
strongest, it had an economic capability so far ahead of anybody else in the world as of 1945,
that it could undersell anyone in their own home markets. The United States had a military
strength that was unparalleled. As a consequence, it had an ability to create formidable
alliances, NATO, the U.S.-Japan Defense Pact, and so on. At the same time, the United States,
as the hegemonic power, became culturally the center of the world. New York became the center
of high culture and American popular culture went on its march throughout the world.
The first time I was in the Soviet Union, in the Brezhnev era, my host took me to a
nightclub in Leningrad. The one thing that startled me in the Soviet Union, the whole time I
was there, was that in this nightclub one heard American popular music sung in English. And, of
course, ideologically, I think we underestimate the degree to which the theme of the "free
world" has had legitimacy among wide segments of the world population.
So the United States was really on top of the world for about twenty-five years, and it got
its way in whatever it wanted to do.
It is true that there was the Soviet Union, which posed a military difficulty for the United
States. Nonetheless, the United States handled that very simply by an agreement. It is called
Yalta, which encompasses more than just what happened at Yalta itself. I think the left has
underestimated historically the reality and the importance of the Yalta agreement that made the
Cold War a choreographed arrangement in which nothing ever really happened for forty years.
That was the important thing about the Cold War. It divided up the world into the Soviet zone
that was about a third of the world, and the U.S. zone that was two-thirds. It kept the zones
economically separate and allowed them to shout at each other loudly in order to keep their own
side in order, but never to make any truly substantial changes in the arrangement. The United
States was therefore sitting on top of the world.
This lasted only about twenty-five years. The United States ran into difficulty somewhere
between 1967 and 1973 because of three things. One, it lost its economic edge. Western Europe
and Japan became sufficiently strong to defend their own markets. They even began to invade
U.S. markets. They were then about as strong and as competitive as the United States
economically and that, of course, had political implications.
Secondly, there was the world revolution of 1968 in which many MR readers were
involved, in one way or another. Think of what happened in 1968. In 1968, there were two themes
that were repeated everywhere throughout the world in one version or another. One, we don't
like the U.S. hegemony and dominance of the world, and we don't like Soviet collusion with it.
That was a theme everywhere. That was not only the Chinese stance on the two superpowers but
that of most of the rest of the world as well.
The second thing that 1968 made clear was that the Old Left, which had come to power
everywhere -- Communist parties, social-democratic parties, and national liberation movements
-- had not changed the world and something had to be done about it. We were not sure we trusted
them anymore. That undermined the ideological basis of the Yalta agreement, and that was very
important.
The third thing that happened is that there were people who didn't agree with Yalta. They
were located in the third world and there were at least four significant defeats of imperialism
that occurred in the third world. The first was China, where the Communist Party defied Stalin
and marched on Kuomintang-controlled Shanghai in 1948, thus getting China out from under U.S.
influence on the mainland. That was a central defeat in the U.S. attempt to control the
periphery. Secondly, there was Algeria and all its implications as a role model for other
colonial territories. There was Cuba, in the backyard of the United States. And finally, there
was Vietnam, which both France and then the United States were incapable of defeating. It was a
military defeat for the United States that has structured world geopolitics ever since.
The threefold fact of the rise of economic rivals, the world revolution of 1968 and its
impact on mentalities across the world, and Vietnam's defeat of the United States, all taken
together, mark the beginning of the decline of the United States.
How could the rulers of the United States handle the loss of hegemony? That has been the
problem ever since. There were two dominant modes of handling this loss of hegemony. One is
that pursued from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton, including Ronald Reagan, including George
Bush Sr. All these U.S . presidents handled it the same way, basically a variant of the velvet
glove hiding the mailed fist.
They sought to persuade Western Europe and Japan and others that the United States could be
cooperative; that the others could have an alliance of semi-equals, though with the United
States exerting "leadership." That's the Trilateral Commission and the G7. And, of course, they
were using all this time the unifying force of opposition to the Soviet Union.
Secondly, there was the so-called Washington Consensus that coalesced in the 1980s. What was
the Washington Consensus about? I remind you that the 1970s was the era when the United Nations
proclaimed the decade of development. Developmentalism was the name of the game from the 1950s
through the 1970s. Everybody proclaimed that countries could develop. The United States
proclaimed it. The Soviet Union proclaimed it, and everybody in the third world proclaimed it
-- if only a state were organized properly. Of course, people disagreed about how to organize a
state properly, but if only it were organized properly and did the right things, it could
develop. This was the basic ideology; development was to be achieved by some kind of control
over what went on within sovereign national states.
Now, the Washington Consensus was the abandonment and the denigration of developmentalism,
which had visibily failed by the late 1980s, and, therefore, everybody was ready to abandon.
They substituted for developmentalism what they called globalization , which simply
meant opening up all the frontiers, breaking down all the barriers for: (a) the movement of
goods and, more importantly, (b) capital, but not (c) labor. And the United States set out to
impose this on the world.
The third thing they did along this line of "cooperation" was an ideological
consensus-building process at Davos. Davos is not unimportant. Davos was an attempt to create a
meeting ground of the world's elites, including elites from the third world, and constantly
bring together and blend their political activity.
At the same time, the objectives of the United States during this period took three forms.
One was to launch a counteroffensive. It was a counteroffensive of neoliberalism on three
levels to: (1) reduce wages worldwide; (2) reduce costs for (and end ecological constraints on)
corporations, permitting the total externalization and socialization of such costs; and (3)
reduce taxation, which was subsidizing social welfare (that is to say, subsidizing education,
health care, and lifelong guarantees of income).
On all these three levels they were only partially successful. None of these three succeeded
totally, but they all succeeded a little. However, cost curves were not brought down to
anything like the 1945 level. The cost curves had gone way up and they are down now, but they
are not down below the 1945 level, and they will go up again.
The second objective was to deal with the military threat. The real threat to U.S. military
power, and they say it all the time, so let's believe them, is nuclear proliferation; because
if every little country has nuclear weapons it becomes very tricky for the United States to
engage in military action. That is what North Korea is demonstrating at this moment. North
Korea only has two nuclear bombs, if what the newspapers say is correct. But that is enough to
shake things up.
The third objective -- and this was very crucial and they've been working at it since the
1970s -- was to stop the European Union. The United States was for the European Union in the
1950s and 1960s, when it was a means of getting France to agree to have Germany rearm. But once
it became serious it was viewed as an attempt to create a European state of one variety or
another, and the United States was of course strongly opposed to it.
What happened? First, we had the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was a disaster for the
United States; it removed the most important political weapon they had in relation to Western
Europe and East Asia.
Second, there was Saddam. Saddam Hussein started the first Gulf War. He did it deliberately.
He did it deliberately to challenge the United States. He could not have done that if the
Soviet Union had still been an active power. They would have stopped him from doing it because
it would have been too dangerous in terms of the Yalta agreement. And he got away with it. That
is to say, at the end of the war, all he lost was what he had gained. He was back at the
starting point. That is what has stuck in the craw for ten years. That war was a draw. It was
not a victory for the United States.
Third, we saw in the 1990s, to be sure, a momentary spurt of the U.S. economy, but not of
the world-economy as a whole and a spurt that is now over. But we now have a weakening of the
dollar, and the dollar has been a crucial lever of the United States, enabling it to have the
kind of economy it has and the dominance it has over the rest of the world. And finally, we had
9/11 that showed that the United States was vulnerable.
Enter the hawks. The hawks do not see themselves as the triumphant continuation of U.S.
capitalism or U.S. power or anything else. They see themselves as a group of frustrated
outsiders who for fifty years did not get their way even with Reagan, even with Bush Sr., even
with George Bush Jr. before 9/11. They are still worried that Bush Jr. will chicken out on
them. They think that the policy that went from Nixon to Clinton to the first year of George W.
Bush, of trying to handle this situation, diplomatically, multilaterally -- I call it the
velvet glove -- was an utter failure. They think it just accelerated the decline of the United
States and they think that had to be changed radically by engaging in an egregious, overt,
imperial action -- war for the sake of war. They did not go to war on Iraq or Saddam Hussein
because he was a dictator. They did not go to war on Iraq even for oil. I will not argue that
point here, but they did not need the war on Iraq for oil. They needed it to show the United
States could do it, and they needed that demonstration in order to intimidate two groups of
people: (1) anybody in the third world who thinks that they should engage in nuclear
proliferation; and (2) Europe. This was an attack on Europe, and that is why Europe responded
the way it did.
I wrote an article in 1980 in which I said, "It is geopolitically inevitable that over the
next period, there will emerge a Paris/Berlin/Moscow alliance." I said this when the Soviet
Union was still in existence and I have repeated it ever since. Now, everybody talks about it.
There is actually a website now, paris-berlin-moscou.info, which reprints what people are
writing in French, German, Russian, and English throughout Europe about the virtues of a
Paris/Berlin/Moscow linkup.
We must not underestimate the second Security Council nonvote in March of this year. It is
the first time since the United Nations was founded that the United States, on an issue that
mattered to it, could not get a majority on the Security Council. Of course, they have had to
veto various resolutions in the past but on no issue that was truly crucial to them. But in
March 2003 they withdrew the resolution because they could not get more than four votes
for it. It was a political humiliation and it was universally regarded as such. The United
States has lost legitimacy, and that is why you cannot call it hegemonic anymore. Whatever you
want to call it, there is no legitimacy now and that's crucial.
So, what should we look for in the next ten years? First, there is the question of how
Europe will construct itself. It will be very difficult, but they will construct themselves and
they will construct an army. Maybe not all of Europe, but the core. The United States is really
worried about it, and that army will sooner or later link up with the Russian army.
Second, look at North East Asia. This is harder but I think China, a reunited Korea, and
Japan will begin to move together politically and economically. Now, this will not be easy. The
reunification of Korea will be a tremendously difficult thing to achieve. The reunification of
China as well will be a difficult thing to achieve, and those countries have all sorts of
reasons for hating one another and tensions with deep historical roots, but the pressure is on
them. If, realistically, they are going to survive as independent forces in the world, they
will move in this direction.
Thirdly, you should watch the World Social Forum. I think that is where the action is. It is
the most important social movement now on the face of the earth and the only one that has a
chance of playing a really significant role. It has blossomed very fast. It has a wealth of
internal contradictions that we should not underestimate and it will run through all sorts of
difficult periods, and it may not make it. It may not survive as a movement that is a movement
of movements, that has no hierarchical center, is tolerant of all the varieties within it and
yet stands for something. This is not an easy game, but it is where the best hope lies.
Finally, I would think you ought to look at the internal contradictions among capitalists.
The basic political contradiction of capitalism throughout its history has been that all
capitalists have a common political interest insofar as there is a world class struggle going
on. At the same time, all capitalists are rivals of all other capitalists. Now that is a
fundamental contradiction of the system and it's going to be very explosive.
I don't think we should underestimate the fact that in April 2003 Lawrence Eagleberger, the
secretary of state under the first President Bush, and still a close adviser of the current
president's father, said in print that if the United States were now to invade Syria, he,
Eagleberger, would be for impeaching George W. Bush. Now, that is not a very light thing for a
person of that sort to say. So there is a message being sent, and who is the message coming
from? I think it is coming from the father for one thing. And beyond that, it is coming from an
important segment of U.S. capital and of world capital. They are not all happy about the hawks.
The hawks have not won the game. They have grabbed hold of the U.S. state machinery; 9/11 made
that possible. And the hawks know it is now or never and they will continue to push, because if
they don't push forward, they will fall back. But they have no guarantee of success, and some
of their biggest enemies are other capitalists who do not like the line with Europe and Japan
because they basically do believe in the unity of capital; who don't think that the way
you handle these things is by smashing all opposition, but would prefer to co-opt it. They are
extremely worried that this is Samson pulling down the house.
We have entered a chaotic world. It has to do with the crisis of capitalism as a system, but
I will not argue that now. What I will say is that this chaotic world situation will now go on
for the next twenty or thirty years. No one controls it, least of all the U.S. government. The
U.S. government is adrift in a situation that it is trying to manage all over the place and
that it will be incapable of managing. This is neither good nor bad, but we should not
overestimate these people nor the strength on which they rely.
In case you have missed this. Here is an excellent interview of Elijah Magnier on a broad
range of issues related to Iran, Iraq and US policy. This link was previously posted by
another commenter but I am reposting it because it is so informative. I apologize for not I
remembering the name of the original poster was.
U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths sounded relieved in a briefing to the Security
Council this week,
noting that even after the American airstrike that killed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, "the immediate crisis seems to be over Yemen
has been kept safe."
Griffiths may have spoken too soon.
Yemen has been an increasingly important and tragic theater in the confrontation between
Iran, the United States, and their respective clients in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates at the head of an intervening coalition on one side and the Houthis
backed by Iran on the other. What will happen in Yemen following the killing of Soleimani and
the escalation in tensions between the United States and Iran? And how can Yemen's civil war be
insulated from the regional fallout?
News
emerged late last week that the United States also targeted Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior
Quds commander, in Yemen. Had the strike succeeded, the Houthis or other Iranian-aligned forces
in Yemen would almost certainly have had to respond, threatening an unruly escalation spiral.
Instead, the operation was unsuccessful, and Iran's measured reaction was limited to Iraq.
Nevertheless, the airstrike is unlikely to have put Houthi leadership in a conciliatory
mood.
Ismaeil Ghaani, who served as Soleimani's deputy for decades, was quickly named Soleimani's
replacement as head of the Quds Force. Following decades of leadership of the Quds Force,
Ghaani is unlikely to deviate from Iran's approach of using proxies to push
against opponents in the retaliation for Soleimani's killing.
At the same time, there is reason to hope that Yemen can avoid Iranian-backed escalation.
But avoiding another round of escalation in Yemen's civil war will
require the active participation of the United States and regional actors.
Yemen's Fragile Status Quo
One year after representatives of the Houthis and of Yemen's internationally-recognized
government agreed to a limited ceasefire as part of the Stockholm Agreement, little concrete progress to implement the
agreement has been made: Hodeidah, the port area at the center of the agreement, is still the
most dangerous place in the country for civilians. Likewise, the Riyadh Agreement, which
sought to
patch a split between the official government and southern separatists supported by the
United Arab Emirates, is
faltering and
in danger of total collapse.
Nevertheless, just a few weeks ago there were
reasons to be cautiously optimistic that, after years of failed negotiations, the Saudi-led
coalition's intervention in Yemen may have been winding down. Soleimani's assassination
threatens to undo this fragile and halting progress. While Iraq remains the most likely arena
for Iranian retaliation against the United States and its partners, Iranian officials also see
their relationship with the Houthis as a mechanism for dialing pressure on its opponents up or
down while maintaining plausible deniability for any particular attack. Yemen may therefore be
a site of Iranian escalation in the coming weeks and months. Indeed, the Houthis expressed
support for Iran and
promised to respond "promptly and swiftly" to the airstrike. Whatever its form, public
retaliation risks upsetting the nascent negotiations over Yemen's forgotten war.
What Will Happen Now in Yemen?
Iran is well aware that it would be badly overmatched in a conventional conflict, and is
therefore
likely to avoid all-out war with the United States. Rather, Iran's leadership is likely to
retaliate via the asymmetric resources that Tehran -- in an effort led by Soleimani and the
Quds Force -- has successfully cultivated in the region.
The Houthis have assumed greater importance in Tehran's regional strategy in recent years.
Their geographic proximity to Saudi Arabia (and decades-long history of antagonistic
relations) provides Iran with a convenient way to antagonize a long-time rival on its
southern
border and to retaliate horizontally for attacks on its partners in Syria. The relationship
confers what Austin Carson calls escalation control
: By maintaining plausible deniability, Tehran can signal its displeasure at American policies
while giving opponents a face-saving way to avoid further reprisals, thereby dampening the risk
of further escalation. Indeed, the recent strike on Saudi Aramco facilities claimed by the
Houthis (but
likely perpetrated by Iran) is indicative of this dynamic. The attack allowed Tehran to
push back against the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign while affording both
sides an off-ramp.
There are a few reasons to expect that Tehran could turn to Yemen as it formulates its
response to Soleimani's assassination. While Iran's leadership signaled that its retaliation
would end after the missile strikes on bases in Iraq, analysts note that
Iran is likely to return to its "
forward defense " strategy of working through proxies to push back against what its
leadership sees as American aggression in the region.
Ramping up Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would allow Iran to
signal its displeasure with Washington while attempting to avoid escalation that could lead to
a conventional war. This would be consistent with the forward defense strategy and Tehran's
past behavior in the region. Additionally, by coalescing domestic support, the American strike
may empower
hardliners in the Iranian regime who favor regional escalation.
And although the Houthis certainly receive significant support from Iran in the form of
material support, as well as advice and training from Hizballah operatives on the ground, they
are not as strategically close to Iran as other proxies like Hizballah are thought to be. As a
recent
New America report notes, "there is little evidence of firm Iranian command and control.
Iran's reported provision of missiles and drones shapes the conflict, but its roots are local
and would not disappear were Iran to fully abandon the Houthis." Even
U.S. officials have sought to draw a distinction between Iranian and Houthi leadership in
recent months.
Yet there are cautious signs that Houthi leadership could be willing to play along by
following Iran's lead in this instance: Just a few days before the assassination of Soleimani,
Houthi officials cautioned that targets within Saudi and Emirati territory remain on their
list of potential military targets, suggesting a willingness to escalate. And, after the
strike, Houthi leadership called for reprisals
against the United States.
But the region's reaction to the Aramco attack -- which saw the Emiratis pursuing quiet
talks with Iran and Saudi Arabia negotiating with the Houthis -- also provides reason to hope
that regional actors may work together to head off Iranian escalation in Yemen.
First, the Houthis' relative autonomy from Iranian command-and-control gives them some
leeway to resist pressure to escalate, although the failed U.S. strike in Yemen may affect this
calculus. Confronted with the choice of either retaliating on Tehran's behalf, at the risk of
inciting Saudi re-entry into the war, or resisting the external pressure, thereby preserving
the odds of a favorable settlement, the Houthi leadership may decide to bet on the latter.
Second, while Saudi commentators delighted in the blow to their regional opponent, the
Kingdom has publicly cautioned against
escalation and
reportedly urged the Trump administration to exercise restraint. This signals that the Arab
Gulf states may continue in the more cautiously de-escalatory approach that they have taken on
Yemen over the past several months, as the United Arab
Emirates and
Sudan began to withdraw troops from Yemen, Saudi Arabia
negotiated with the Houthis, and the tempo of Saudi airstrikes declined precipitously.
As much as they vehemently oppose Iranian influence in the region, both Saudi and Emirati
leadership want to avoid a direct confrontation with Iran, especially after the Trump
administration's erratic policies have made it clear that they may not get American backing in
such a confrontation. In other words, the factors that contributed to the intervening
coalition's de-escalatory tendencies a few months ago are still relevant, even after the
escalation in tensions between the United States and Iran.
The United States is well-positioned to reinforce de-escalatory dynamics in Yemen and
support the nascent peace process there. The recent de-escalation in Yemen has shown that
pressure works: Although both the Obama and Trump administrations initially supported the
Saudi-led intervention, Congressional threats to leverage
arms sales and invoke the War Powers Act to
end American material support for the intervention in 2019 subdued Abu Dhabi and Riyadh and
opened a new juncture in the conflict. The U.S. military
ended its provision of aerial refueling to the Saudi-led coalition following the murder of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly
pressured Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to negotiate a political settlement to the
war in the lead-up to the Stockholm Agreement. While some of this de-escalatory behavior is
attributable to a gradual acknowledgement that this war cannot be won, much can be attributed
to U.S. pressure as well. Washington therefore can -- and should -- continue to pressure its
regional partners to reach a negotiated agreement. The recent House vote
invoking the War Powers Act with regards to Iran -- and supportive
statements from a cross-party range of senators -- indicates that Congress is willing to
maintain pressure on the administration to avoid escalation in the region, even in the midst of
ongoing presidential impeachment proceedings.
Players in the region will also continue to play a critical role in Yemen in the weeks and
months ahead. Saudi and Emirati leaders are tired of the resource and reputational drain of a
war that appears increasingly unwinnable, leading to their willingness to draw down the
coalition's intervention. With international support, regional actors like Oman and even the
Gulf Cooperation Council can
act as mediators and guarantors to deter potential spoilers and help implement any
agreement.
Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said's untimely death this past weekend is another potentially
complicating factor here. Under Qaboos, Oman has played an important behind-the-scenes role in
the negotiations that led to the nuclear agreement, and brokered negotiations between the Saudi
Arabia and the Houthis beginning this past fall. Qaboos cut a unique figure in the
region, acting as a mediator who had both the stature and credibility to broker agreements
between warring parties in the region. His death and the drama around succession
created some doubt about whether anyone would be able to take his place. Yet the new sultan
Haitham bin Tariq, who was quickly sworn in, has pledged to continue Qaboos' diplomatic path.
Leaders from across the region traveled to Muscat to
pay their condolences to the new sultan, cementing the peaceful transition. This continuity is
a hopeful sign that Oman can continue to play a productive role as regional mediator.
Finally, policymakers shouldn't forget about Yemeni actors themselves. While most western
analysis of the conflict in Yemen focuses on the third-party intervention, this perspective
neglects the indigenous dynamics that led to the outbreak of the civil war in the first place.
The focus on external intervention is not without good reason, since regional actors
dramatically exacerbated the conflict and prevented an earlier resolution. Yet the civil war in
Yemen began over
local issues around governance and resource-sharing, and it will not end without solving
these underlying issues, thus undercutting potential
spoilers .
Additionally, years of fighting has created a patchwork of
splintered militia groups and local governance institutions that will prove very difficult to
knit back together into a coherent, functioning polity. A resumption of local fighting could
act as an invitation for external actors to intervene again, leading to a resumption of
conflict. It is therefore essential for mediation efforts to take these local issues into
account.
Over the past century, Yemen has often been a site for actors in the region to play out
their own conflicts. A relapse in fighting in Yemen could provide future grounds for
intervention and will act as a driver of regional instability. By contrast, ending the war in
Yemen will eliminate a critical source of Iranian leverage in the Gulf.
Dr. Alexandra Stark is asenior researcherat New
America. She was previously a research fellow at the Middle East Initiative, Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and a USIP-Minerva Peace and Security
Scholar.
"... But U.S. adversaries were watching closely. As advanced technologies inexorably became cheaper and more widely available, the U.S. monopoly on these capabilities started to erode. By 2016, for example, eight countries other than the United States had conducted armed drone attacks , including Iran, Pakistan, and Nigeria. By 2019, Russia and two other countries joined this exclusive club. And at least one non-state actor has already used an armed drone for a targeted killing. According to one estimate, 27 other countries currently possess armed drones while dozens of states and non-state actors have unarmed drones . These capabilities can now be used against specific individuals even in the absence of large intelligence networks, thanks to the constant streams of personal information flowing from personal phones , fitness trackers , and other devices. ..."
The fiery explosions from the recent U.S. drone attack that killed
Iranian general Qassem Soleimani have sent shock waves reverberating across the Middle East.
Those same shocks should now be rippling through the American national security establishment
too. The strike against the man widely considered the second-most powerful leader of a
long-standing U.S. adversary was unprecedented, and its ultimate effects remain unknown. But
regardless of what happens next, one thing is certain: The United States has now made it even
more likely that American military and civilian leaders will be targeted by future U.S. foes.
As a result, the United States will have to dramatically improve the ways in which it protects
those leaders and rethink how it commands its forces on the battlefield.
Over the last 20 years, the United States has been able to target and kill specific
individuals almost anywhere around the world, by matching an increasingly advanced array of
precision weapons with a strikingly effective intelligence system. It has employed this
capability
frequently , especially across the greater Middle East ,
as it has sought to eliminate senior leaders of the Taliban insurgency or highly placed
terrorists directing jihadist cells. And it has been able to pursue this decapitation strategy
with impunity, because it has held a monopoly on this bespoke use of force. Not even the most
powerful states could attempt the types of complex targeted strikes that the U.S. military and
CIA conducted so routinely.
But U.S. adversaries were watching closely. As advanced technologies inexorably became
cheaper and more widely available, the U.S. monopoly on these capabilities started to erode. By
2016, for example, eight countries other than the United States had
conducted armed drone attacks , including Iran, Pakistan, and Nigeria. By 2019, Russia and
two other countries joined this exclusive club. And at least one
non-state actor has already used an armed drone for a targeted killing. According to one
estimate, 27 other countries currently possess
armed drones while dozens of states and non-state actors have unarmed
drones . These capabilities can now be used against specific individuals even in the
absence of large intelligence networks, thanks to the constant streams of personal information
flowing from personal
phones , fitness
trackers , and other devices.
The Soleimani strike has given potential U.S. adversaries every reason to accelerate their
efforts to develop similar capabilities. Moreover, these same adversaries can now justify their
own future targeted killings by invoking this U.S. precedent. Sooner or later -- and probably
sooner -- senior U.S. civilian and military leaders will become vulnerable to the same types of
decapitation strikes that the United States has inflicted on others. Enemies will almost
certainly attempt to target and kill U.S. officials during any future major war, and such
attacks will likely become a part of future irregular conflicts as well. Though such strikes
would dangerously escalate any conflict, committed adversaries of the United States may still
find that the advantages outweigh the costs, especially if they can plausibly deny
responsibility or if the strength of their resolve makes them willing to accept any resulting
consequences.
In the face of this growing threat, what does the United States need to do in order to
protect its key military and civilian leaders from a potential decapitation strike? Here are
some potential first steps.
Improve personal protection for senior leaders. The president and the vice president are
well protected against a myriad of threats by the Secret Service, but levels of protection
quickly diminish for those who work beneath them. A number of senior officials, including
cabinet officials and the chiefs of the military services, have their own security details,
but those focus primarily on providing traditional physical security. They typically offer
little if any protection against newly emerging threats such as a targeted missile attack or
swarming suicide drones. Most senior military and civilian leaders have no security at all,
and they and their family members (like most other Americans) are constantly emitting
electronic signals that give away their location. Improving their protection will require
rethinking nearly every aspect of their daily lives, especially their extensive
vulnerabilities when traveling. For example, the obtrusive motorcades and conspicuous convoys
of black SUVs currently favored by many senior U.S. officials may need to be replaced with
lower visibility alternatives, to include employing decoys that travel along multiple routes
in high risk situations.
Harden key meeting locations, headquarters, and transition points. U.S. adversaries will
be particularly interested in targeting locations where numbers of senior military and
civilian leaders gather. Many such locations today in the United States and overseas are not
sufficiently hardened against attack. The locations of most offices and meeting spaces are
either publicly available or easily found, and few are protected from any sort of aerial
attack. (At a minimum, senior officials should stop having their photos taken in front of
their offices where the room number is
clearly visible .) And even hardened command centers usually have key vulnerabilities at
entrances and exits, and at exposed transition points between different modes of
transportation (such as airfield aprons). Ironically, current U.S. military security measures
can unintentionally make leaders more vulnerable in other ways. Shortly after the
Soleimani strike, for example, many U.S. military bases imposed
stricter security measures at their entry points, including extensive identification
checks and reducing the number of open gates. These reflexive measures caused
long traffic backups that spilled
onto local roads and highways -- which made everyone entering the bases far more
vulnerable as they sat in these traffic jams. Any senior leader stuck in those lines would
have become a remarkably easy target with no clear avenues of escape.
Exercise wartime succession in the U.S. military chain of command. Combatant commanders
and other senior military officers often use high-level wargames to validate key war plans
and operational concepts. Yet most exercises and simulations deliberately avoid removing
senior commanders from the battlefield, which reinforces the flawed notion that they will
always be in charge. This problem also extends to the tactical level, where commanders of
brigades, divisions, and corps are rarely assessed as casualties. Exercises at all levels
need to regularly include scenarios where one or more senior commanders are killed or
incapacitated, to test succession plans and to ensure that subordinates gain valuable
leadership experience.
Further decentralize battlefield command and control. The military chain of command
necessarily relies upon centralized control, with commanders directing the actions of their
subordinates. The U.S. military does decentralize some authority through concepts like
mission command , which
empower subordinates to make independent decisions about the best ways to achieve the
commander's overall intent. Yet as we've
written
extensively elsewhere , the military's growing culture of compliance and risk aversion
already undermines this critical principle, and modern command and control systems make it
far
too easy for senior commanders to intervene in routine tactical operations. In an
environment where senior commanders can be individually targeted and killed, truly
decentralized authority becomes absolutely vital -- and even efforts to
reinvigorate mission command may no longer be sufficient. One recent article, for
example, called for an entirely new,
bottom-up approach to command and control that would build resilience and speed by
reducing the reliance on a small number of increasingly vulnerable senior leaders.
The U.S. government needs to acknowledge that its senior leaders are becoming more
vulnerable to targeted attacks, and that the Soleimani attack will only accelerate the
determination of U.S. adversaries to be able to conduct similar attacks themselves. Yet threats
like this are too easily discounted or ignored until it is too late. The
U.S. government must recognize the grave dangers of this threat before it occurs. It needs to
protect its senior officials more effectively, and ensure that the military chain of command
will continue to function effectively after one or more commanders are killed by a targeted
strike.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, U.S. Army (ret.) and Dr. Nora Bensahel are visiting professors
of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior
fellows at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. They are also contributing editors
at War on the Rocks , where their column appears monthly.Sign up for Barno and Bensahel's Strategic Outpost
newsletterto track their articles as well as their public events.
Editor's Note: Due to an internal error, we published the near-final version of this
article rather than the final version. While the differences between the two drafts are minor,
we apologize for the error and have fixed our mistake. The final version of this article is now
published below.
In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, John Gans, director of communications and research at
Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, gives a talk at the University of Texas at
Austin to discusses his book, White House
Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War . In
this talk, Gans focuses on the career and the accomplishments of a single NSC staffer, who
ultimately perished during his duties in Bosnia. He uses the story of Nelson Drew as a way to
illustrate both the power and the process that exists within the NSC. This talk took place at
the University of Texas at Austin and was sponsored by the Clements Center.
In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an
alternative way to code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February
2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique.
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and
Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
1
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk
and signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics
within nuclear crises implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional
statistical analysis. If crises are not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects
have a murkier meaning.
2
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results.
Nevertheless, the article also highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent
findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics: Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of
resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors
and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two variables identified as critical by Bell and
Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the controllability of escalation --
are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises are prone to
ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence
between fact and theory.
3
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution
is to employ the best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide
best practices for coding the nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of
the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that, following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make
interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the history that underlies their coding of the nuclear
balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the United States had no military incentives
to use nuclear weapons first in 1962.
Below, we analyze their interpretation of the Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to
establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of both sides and the perceptions of key U.S.
policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis for their conceptual
framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives
for deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and
Soviet strategic forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the
Soviet warheads were located, and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully
target the Soviet arsenal."
4
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the
military balance. This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a
concept of operations of a first strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The
available evidence on operational capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to
eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize
briefly below.
Any concept of operations for a U.S. first strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even
primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an
attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Harry
Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber force rather than
with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so U.S.
nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber
attack could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a
successful surprise attack.
5
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton
warheads, could also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
6
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear
operations. In terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet
nuclear warheads were, it had detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This
intelligence came from a host of sources, including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S.
intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear forces.
7
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that
there were only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers,
they were in a very low state of alert."
8
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no
longer true a year later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew
Marshall, who had access to the closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the
Soviet nuclear force, particularly its bombers, as "sitting ducks."
9
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years,
because of nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
10
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of
highly classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A
well-timed U.S. first strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM
[submarine-launched ballistic missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the
survival of most of the Soviet Union's own intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the
distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could have denied the Soviet Union the ability to
inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
11
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they
would have had to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as
1959, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated
submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine
warfare capabilities.
12
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were
detected and some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their
description of an attack on a Soviet submarine during the crisis.
13
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive
meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis. First, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that nuclear superiority did
not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
14
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated
Operational Plan (SIOP) -- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that
Soviet retaliation should be expected under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
15
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
16
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy
administration alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were
all highly motivated political actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear
policy debates on which they had taken highly public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a
footnote.
17
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and
Macdonald acknowledge,
18
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea
of American nuclear superiority.
19
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's
interpretation, of American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution
that "Under any circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the
Soviet long-range nuclear force would strike the United States."
20
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage
limitation" capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political
meaning is a perfectly disarming strike.
21
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer
some unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront
absolutely massive destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
22
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum
to McNamara commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 196468. This memorandum,
sent shortly after the crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate
Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike
capability is both feasible and desirable, although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment
and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet capability."
23
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike
capability in 1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future.
As for Kennedy's personal views, it is important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban
crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in opposite directions.
24
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the
Soviets over the future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built
Western policy during the Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that
nuclear weapons would ultimately be used, and probably on a massive scale.
25
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first
with nuclear weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S.
could not afford to wait to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical
point is to be able to use nuclear weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962,
expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near future, he stressed the importance of operational military
planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of making decisions that might lead to nuclear war."
As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is sufficient to hold our present
positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground does not match what
the communists can bring to bear."
26
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet
nuclear forces meant that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy
thought it important to bring the Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still
possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he
argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all, "the military balance was more favorable to us than it
would be later on."
27
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air
Command during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these
complexities [about the precise state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course
the President had not reacted with any such comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt
that way."
28
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct, requires some friendly
amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis.
Our discussion of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis
underscores that Bell and Macdonald's first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first
in a crisis"
29
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and
political bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during
1962, the United States was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is
thrown into especially bold relief once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was
basically the climax of the superpower confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and
planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the
fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over discussions within the Executive
Committee of the National Security Council.
30
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk
category for deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if
only against military targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone
seriously awry on the battlefield. In short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort
looking for military first-strike incentives, which add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue
that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more
common than generally credited.
So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have
different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their framework. We suggest that there are three
types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those
with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political
risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C).
Type A crises essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and
are relatively low risk.
31
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in
response to some enemy transgression."
32
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position
at stake. Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and
Macdonald's argument that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis,
since any conventional victory stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the
lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large
and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially, larger conventional and nuclear operations.
Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
33
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled
escalation in addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but
signaling is easier and can be much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for
uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply many more things a state can do at much lower levels of
actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For instance, alerting nuclear forces will often
not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional collapse), since there is no way
things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain of events where
states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given
military move will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous.
Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "firestorm" model.
34
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as
political and non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear
balance: either could give states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and
the finest-grained of any type of crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the
time in which states can bargain may be short.
35
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by
delineating different types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate
the importance of American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems
highlight some conceptual issues with their framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us
relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and
other scholars, will continue to build on these findings.
Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment of our work and for
engaging with our argument so constructively.
36
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we
stated in our article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of
nuclear crises, and we are delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to
continue to think in more detail about the ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their
arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of interesting and important arguments and
suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our argument.
In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile
Crisis and their proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
37
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is
disagreement on what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one
another in consequential ways. In particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for
nuclear first use and the extent to which escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to
fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables generate four possible "ideal type" models of
nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives and high controllability),
"brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability" crises (low
first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability).
Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important questions,
such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined
with low crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all
four models in terms of likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except
under the direst circumstances or for the highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of
nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk
of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use are low and crisis controllability is also low
-- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis controllability is also high -- the
staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite different processes. For
the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for nuclear first use
mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability
combined with high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that
escalation would more likely occur through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. In short, they argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike
first during the crisis and that these were understood and appreciated by American leaders.
38
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was
briefer than we would have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over
the Soviet Union during the crisis.
39
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we
(more or less) agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear
first use, and whether it was perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different
interpretations of how much weight to assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the
retrospective assessment of key participants does have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in
our article) the biases of such assessments in this case. Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place
less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to the crisis than on those he made during
the crisis itself,
40
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when
the stakes were at their highest.
41
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about
whether his report had much of an effect on operational planning.
42
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in
support of their argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear
forces -- thus highlighting the dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force
planning in the aftermath of the crisis.
We would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not
obviously translate into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard
interpretations of this case, including among scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for
example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in
American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
43
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's
assessment that only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
44
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof)
associated with nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual
one: where to draw the threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to
limit retaliatory damage) should be deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer
incentives for first use. This is a topic about which there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement.
"Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and Long's broader argument that "nuclear
crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
45
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful,
since they argue that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and
potentially more), even in the aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military
incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this,
though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position: We do not, in fact, think that the
relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike."
Part of our motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it
increases the utility of the typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial
number of empirical cases exist on either side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more
satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a
crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example -- would both be classified on
the same side of the threshold.
46
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as
exhibiting strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that
rarely shows rain because the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is
nothing fundamentally incorrect about making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach
to shedding light on the empirical variation we observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
Green and Long argue that there are three types of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for
selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation
(Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first
strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental objections to their typology.
47
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for
different purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for
their typology, and we would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its
merits. Their initial discussion of the different types of signals that states can send within different types
of crises is especially productive and goes beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of
signaling that we included in our article. We offer two critiques that might be helpful as they (and others)
continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and build upon them.
First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify
using our two variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing
two of our quadrants (stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B
crises are similar to our brinkmanship crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so,
their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but
merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the conceptual space we identify. The key
question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether there is important
variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are
relatively controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled
escalation," they have very different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises
and higher in staircase crises. The factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily
the conventional military balance due to the very low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine
success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may matter. As a result, we think that collapsing
these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move.
Second, to the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily
helpful in shedding light on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating
incentives for first use into "political bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing
proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits. Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to
increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they acknowledge the difficulties of coding the
nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide incentives for first use into
two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts. Moreover, given
Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a
source of interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it
is worth noting that it also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that
their three types of crises all exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then
political incentives for nuclear first use simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political
incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out by definition. This analytic move renders portions of
their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the conventional balance cannot "ever determine the
outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that there are always political incentives
to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint of the losing side's
unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and
then discover that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk
discovering later that such crises have, in fact, taken place.
In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely grateful for their
insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work on
these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear
crises differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics.
Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
Endnotes
1
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security
Review
2, no. 2 (February 2019): 4064,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
2
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
3
For an excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1976), 15472.
4
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
5
See Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept.
5, 1961, from National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
7
Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence,
Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 12 (2015): 4446,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
9
Quoted in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
10
James R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
11
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms
Competition 19451972
, v.1 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
12
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
13
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Cot,
The Third Battle: Innovation in
the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003),
42.
14
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
15
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
16
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
24
For example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well,
everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying
massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R.
May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
25
For excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw
upon heavily, see Marc Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement,
1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear
Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012),
chaps. 23.
26
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
28
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National
Defense University, Taylor Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
29
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
30
See, e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
31
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4749.
32
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
33
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
34
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4950.
36
This work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions,
findings, views, conclusions or recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be
interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied,
of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
38
One minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole
empirical example" in our article of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the
article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis between India and China lacked strong incentives for first
use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in the historical record. Bell and Macdonald,
"How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 6061.
39
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
40
The quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and
Long state: "consider [Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well,
everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying
massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use." In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess
is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons. The decision to
use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it getting out of control
so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who states,
"But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of
any sort of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over
Cuba, rather than making any sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive
pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
41
For a recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he
was deeply skeptical of the benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The
Double Game: The Demise of America's First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 2937.
42
For example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which
echoes Marc Trachtenberg's earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's
analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational
terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in
America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc Trachtenberg,
History
and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
43
Marc Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International
Security
10, no. 1 (Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
44
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
45
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the
stakes of the crisis: Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically
relevant when the stakes are higher than they are when the stakes involved are lower.
46
For discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 6162.
Azita Raji
Former ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, proposes a way forward for a renewed and sustainable American
foreign policy. This would require a re-examination of America's interests, institutional reforms, and a
revival of American ideals. To wit: reflection,
Top
Hello
From Texas!
In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 196468. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics. Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
[post_title] => Contrasting Views on How to Code a Nuclear
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[lead] => In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an alternative way to
code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February 2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and
Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique. [pubinfo] => [issue] => Vol 2, Iss 4 [quotes] => [style]
=> framing [type] => Framing [style_label] => The Foundation [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => 2442 )
[authors] => Array ( [0] => 279 [1] => 138 [2] => 258 [3] => 259 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] =>
[1]
Mark S.
Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 4064,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
[2]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
[3]
For an
excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and
Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 15472.
[4]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[5]
See
Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept. 5, 1961, from National
Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
[6]
Marc
Trachtenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, "An Interview with Carl Kaysen," MIT Security Studies Program (1988),
9,
http://web.mit.edu/SSP/publications/working_papers/Kaysen%20working%20paper.pdf
.
[7]
Austin
Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 12 (2015): 4446,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
[8]
"An
Interview with Carl Kaysen," 9.
[9]
Quoted
in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
[10]
James
R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
[11]
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition 19451972
, v.1
(Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
[12]
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12,
no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
[13]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic
Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Cot,
The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003), 42.
[14]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
[15]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[16]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[17]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 59, fn 96. For more on Bundy, see, e.g., McGeorge Bundy et al., "Nuclear
Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,"
Foreign Affairs
60, no. 4 (Spring 1982): 75368,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1982-03-01/nuclear-weapons-and-atlantic-alliance
.
[18]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[19]
Matthew Kroenig,
The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters
(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018), 88.
[20]
Sagan, "SIOP-62," 50.
[21]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[22]
Sagan,
"SIOP-62," 36, and esp. n. 49.
[23]
Joint
Chiefs of Staff Memorandum 907-62 to McNamara, Nov. 20, 1962,
in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 38789, quotation on 388,
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d109
.
[24]
For
example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in
extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to
tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[25]
For
excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw upon heavily, see Marc
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), chaps. 23.
[26]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
[27]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, 351.
[28]
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National Defense University, Taylor
Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS 1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
[29]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
[30]
See,
e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
[31]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4749.
[32]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[33]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
[34]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4950.
[35]
Schelling,
Arms and Influence
, 102.
[36]
This
work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Project on Advanced Systems
and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions, findings, views, conclusions or
recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the
official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
[37]
Mark
S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40-64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
. For additional
applications of our framework, see Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence: The Upside of the Trump-Kim
Summit,"
War on the Rocks
, June 15, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/toward-deterrence-the-upside-of-the-trump-kim-summit/
; Mark S. Bell and Julia
Macdonald, "How Dangerous Was Kargil? Nuclear Crises in Comparative Perspective,"
Washington Quarterly
42, no. 2
(Summer 2019): 13548,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1626691
.
[38]
One
minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole empirical example" in our article
of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis
between India and China lacked strong incentives for first use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in
the historical record. Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 6061.
[39]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[40]
The
quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and Long state: "consider
[Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis,
everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use."
In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use
nuclear weapons. The decision to use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it
getting out of control so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who
states, "But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of any sort
of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over Cuba, rather than making any
sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May
and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[41]
For a
recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he was deeply skeptical of the
benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The Double Game: The Demise of America's First
Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 2937.
[42]
For
example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which echoes Marc Trachtenberg's
earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the
end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc
Trachtenberg,
History and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
[43]
Marc
Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International Security
10, no. 1
(Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
[44]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[45]
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the stakes of the crisis:
Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically relevant when the stakes are higher than
they are when the stakes involved are lower.
[46]
For
discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think
About Nuclear Crises," 6162.
[47]
We
do, however, suggest that our labels offer somewhat more
joie de vivre
than the alphabetic labels that Green and
Long offer. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => [contents] => ) ) [queried_object_id] => 1948 [request] => SELECT wp_posts.*
FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND ( ( YEAR( wp_posts.post_date ) = 2019 AND MONTH( wp_posts.post_date ) = 10 ) ) AND
wp_posts.post_name = 'contrasting-views-on-how-to-code-a-nuclear-crisis' AND wp_posts.post_type = 'post' ORDER BY
wp_posts.post_date DESC [posts] => Array ( [0] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1948 [post_author] => 279 [post_date] =>
2019-10-03 05:00:03 [post_date_gmt] => 2019-10-03 09:00:03 [post_content] =>
In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 196468. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics. Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
[post_title] => Contrasting Views on How to Code a Nuclear
Crisis [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => closed [post_password] =>
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[lead] => In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an alternative way to
code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February 2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and
Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique. [pubinfo] => [issue] => Vol 2, Iss 4 [quotes] => [style]
=> framing [type] => Framing [style_label] => The Foundation [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => 2442 )
[authors] => Array ( [0] => 279 [1] => 138 [2] => 258 [3] => 259 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] =>
[1]
Mark S.
Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 4064,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
[2]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
[3]
For an
excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and
Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 15472.
[4]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[5]
See
Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept. 5, 1961, from National
Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
[6]
Marc
Trachtenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, "An Interview with Carl Kaysen," MIT Security Studies Program (1988),
9,
http://web.mit.edu/SSP/publications/working_papers/Kaysen%20working%20paper.pdf
.
[7]
Austin
Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 12 (2015): 4446,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
[8]
"An
Interview with Carl Kaysen," 9.
[9]
Quoted
in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
[10]
James
R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
[11]
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition 19451972
, v.1
(Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
[12]
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12,
no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
[13]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic
Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Cot,
The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003), 42.
[14]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
[15]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[16]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[17]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 59, fn 96. For more on Bundy, see, e.g., McGeorge Bundy et al., "Nuclear
Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,"
Foreign Affairs
60, no. 4 (Spring 1982): 75368,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1982-03-01/nuclear-weapons-and-atlantic-alliance
.
[18]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[19]
Matthew Kroenig,
The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters
(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018), 88.
[20]
Sagan, "SIOP-62," 50.
[21]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[22]
Sagan,
"SIOP-62," 36, and esp. n. 49.
[23]
Joint
Chiefs of Staff Memorandum 907-62 to McNamara, Nov. 20, 1962,
in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 38789, quotation on 388,
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d109
.
[24]
For
example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in
extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to
tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[25]
For
excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw upon heavily, see Marc
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), chaps. 23.
[26]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
[27]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, 351.
[28]
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National Defense University, Taylor
Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS 1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
[29]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
[30]
See,
e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
[31]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4749.
[32]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[33]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
[34]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 4950.
[35]
Schelling,
Arms and Influence
, 102.
[36]
This
work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Project on Advanced Systems
and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions, findings, views, conclusions or
recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the
official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
[37]
Mark
S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40-64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
. For additional
applications of our framework, see Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence: The Upside of the Trump-Kim
Summit,"
War on the Rocks
, June 15, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/toward-deterrence-the-upside-of-the-trump-kim-summit/
; Mark S. Bell and Julia
Macdonald, "How Dangerous Was Kargil? Nuclear Crises in Comparative Perspective,"
Washington Quarterly
42, no. 2
(Summer 2019): 13548,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1626691
.
[38]
One
minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole empirical example" in our article
of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis
between India and China lacked strong incentives for first use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in
the historical record. Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 6061.
[39]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[40]
The
quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and Long state: "consider
[Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis,
everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use."
In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use
nuclear weapons. The decision to use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it
getting out of control so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who
states, "But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of any sort
of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over Cuba, rather than making any
sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May
and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[41]
For a
recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he was deeply skeptical of the
benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The Double Game: The Demise of America's First
Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 2937.
[42]
For
example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which echoes Marc Trachtenberg's
earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the
end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc
Trachtenberg,
History and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
[43]
Marc
Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International Security
10, no. 1
(Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
[44]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[45]
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the stakes of the crisis:
Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically relevant when the stakes are higher than
they are when the stakes involved are lower.
[46]
For
discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think
About Nuclear Crises," 6162.
[47]
We
do, however, suggest that our labels offer somewhat more
joie de vivre
than the alphabetic labels that Green and
Long offer. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => [contents] => ) ) ) [post_count] => 1 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] =>
[post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1948 [post_author] => 279 [post_date] => 2019-10-03 05:00:03 [post_date_gmt] =>
2019-10-03 09:00:03 [post_content] =>
In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources.
U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on.
As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 196468. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics.
Western elites and their lackeys in the media despise Russian president Vladimir Putin and
they make no bones about it. The reasons for this should be fairly obvious. Putin has rolled
back US ambitions in Syria and Ukraine, aligned himself with Washington's biggest strategic
rival in Asia, China, and is currently strengthening his economic ties with Europe which poses
a long-term threat to US dominance in Central Asia. Putin has also updated his nuclear arsenal
which makes it impossible for Washington to use the same bullyboy tactics it's used on other,
more vulnerable countries. So it's understandable that the media would want to demonize Putin
and disparage him as cold-blooded "KGB thug". That, of course, is not true, but it fits with
the bogus narrative that Putin is maniacally conducting a clandestine war against the United
States for purely evil purposes. In any event, the media's deep-seated Russophobia has grown so
extreme that they're unable to cover even simple events without veering wildly into
fantasy-land. Take, for example, the New York Times coverage of Putin's recent Address to the
Federal Assembly, which took place on January 15. The Times screwball analysis shows that their
journalists have no interest in conveying what Putin actually said, but would rather use every
means available to persuade their readers that Putin is a calculating tyrant driven by his
insatiable lust for power. Check out this excerpt from the article in the Times:
"Nobody knows what's going on inside the Kremlin right now. And perhaps that's precisely
the point. President Vladimir V. Putin announced constitutional changes last week that could
create new avenues for him to rule Russia for the rest of his life .(wrong)
The fine print of the legislation showed that the prime minister's powers would not be
expanded as much as first advertised, while members of the State Council would still appear
to serve at the pleasure of the president. So maybe Mr. Putin's plan is to stay president,
after all? .(wrong again)
A journalist, Yury Saprykin, offered a similar sentiment on Facebook, but in verse:
We'll be debating over how he won't leave, We'll be guessing, will he leave or won't he. And then -- lo! -- he won't be leaving. That is, before the elections he won't leave, And after that, he definitely won't leave." (wrong, a third time)
This is really terrible analysis. Yes, "Putin announced constitutional changes last week",
but they have absolutely nothing to do with some sinister plan to stay in power, and anyone who
read the speech would know that. Unfortunately, most of the other 100-or-so "cookie cutter"
articles on the topic, draw the same absurd conclusion as the Times , that is, that the
changes Putin announced in his speech merely conceal his real intention which is to extend his
time in office for as long as possible. Once again, there's nothing in the speech itself to
support these claims, it's just another attempt to smear Putin.
So what did Putin actually say in his annual Address to the Federal Assembly?
Well, that's where it gets interesting. He announced changes to the social safety net, more
financial assistance for young families, improvements to the health care system, higher wages
for teachers, more money for education, hospitals, schools, libraries. He promised to launch a
system of "social contracts" that commit the state to reducing poverty and raising standards of
living. He pledged to provide healthier meals to schoolchildren, lower interest rates for
first-time home buyers, greater economic support for working families, higher payouts to
pensioners, raises to the minimum wage, additional funding for a "network of extracurricular
technology and engineering centers". Putin also added this gem:
"It is very important that children who are in preschool and primary school adopt the true
values of a large family – that family is love, happiness, the joy of
motherhood and fatherhood, that family is a strong bond of several generations, united by
respect for the elderly and care for children, giving everyone a sense of confidence,
security, and reliability. If the younger generations accept this situation as natural, as a
moral and an integral part and reliable background support for their adult life, then we will
be able to meet the historical challenge of guaranteeing Russia's development as a large and
successful country."
Naturally, heartfelt statements like this never appear on the pages of the Times or any of
the other western media for that matter. Instead, Americans are deluged with more of the same
relentless Putin-psychobabble that's become a staple of cable news. The torrent of lies, libels
and fabrications about Putin are so constant and so overwhelming, that the only thing of which
one can be absolutely certain, is that nothing that is written about Putin in the MSM can be
trusted. Of that, there is no doubt.
That said, Putin is a politician which means he might not deliver on his promises at all.
That is a very real possibility. But if that's the case, then why did his former-Prime
Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, resign immediately after the speech? Medvedev and his entire cabinet
resigned because they realized that Putin has abandoned the western model of capitalism and is
moving in a different direction altogether. Putin is now focused on strengthening welfare state
programs that lift people out of poverty, raise living standards, and narrow the widening
inequality gap. And he wants a new team to help him implement his vision, which is why Medvedev
and crew got their walking papers. Here's how The Saker summed it up in a recent article at the
Unz Review :
"The new government clearly indicates that, especially with the nominations of Prime
Minister Mishustin and his First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov: these are both on
record as very much proponents of what is called "state capitalism" in Russia: meaning an
economic philosophy in which the states does not stifle private entrepreneurship, but one in
which the state is directly and heavily involved in creating the correct economic conditions
for the government and private sector to grow. Most crucially, "state capitalism" also
subordinates the sole goal of the corporate world (making profits) to the interests of the
state and, therefore, to the interests of the people. In other words, goodbye
turbo-capitalism à la Atlantic Integrationists!" ( "The New Russian Government" ,
The Saker)
This is precisely what is taking place in Russia right now. Putin is breaking away from
Washington's parasitic model of capitalism and replacing it with a more benign version that
better addresses the needs of the people. This new version of 'managed capitalism' places
elected officials at the head of the system to protect the public from the savagery of market
forces and from perennial-grinding austerity. It's a system aimed at helping ordinary people
not Wall Street or the global bank Mafia.
But while the changes to Russia's economic model are significant, it's Putin's political
changes that have drawn the most attention. Here's what he said:
(The) "requirements of international law and treaties as well as decisions of
international bodies can be valid on the Russian territory only to the point that they do not
restrict the rights and freedoms of our people and citizens and do not contradict our
Constitution ."
What does this mean? Does it mean that Putin will not respect international law or the
treaties it has signed with its neighbors? No, it doesn't, in fact, Putin has been an
enthusiastic proponent of international law and the UN Security Council. He strongly believes
that these institutions play a crucial role in maintaining global security, an issue that is
very close to his heart. What the Russian president appears to be saying is that the rights of
the Russian people and of the sovereign Russian government take precedent over foreign
corporations, treaties or free trade agreements. Russia will not allow the powerful and
insidious globalist multinationals to take control of the political and economic levers of
state power as they've done in countries around the world. Putin further clarified this point
saying:
"Russia can remain Russia only as a sovereign state. Our nation's sovereignty must be
unconditional. We have done a great deal to achieve this. We restored our state's unity and
overcome the situation when certain powers in the government were essentially usurped by
oligarch clans. We created powerful reserves, which increases our country's stability and
capability to protect (us) from any attempts of foreign pressure."
For Putin sovereignty, which is the supreme power of a state to govern itself, is the
bedrock principle which legitimizes the state provided the state faithfully represents the will
of the people. He elaborates on this point later in his speech saying:
"The opinion of people, our citizens as the bearers of sovereignty and the main source of
power must be decisive. In the final analysis everything is decided by the people, both today
and in the future."
So while there may be significant differences between Russian and US democracy, the basic
principle remains the same, the primary responsibility of the government is to carry out the
"will of the people". In this respect, Putin's political philosophy is not much different from
that of the framers of the US Constitution. What is different, however, is Putin's approach to
free trade. Unlike the US, Putin does not believe that free trade deals should diminish the
authority of the state. Most Americans don't realize that trade agreements like NAFTA often
include provisions that prevent the government from acting in the best interests of their
people. Globalist trade laws prevent governments from providing incentives to companies to slow
the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, they undermine environmental regulations and food safety
laws. Some of these agreements even shield sweatshop owners and other human rights abusers from
penalty or prosecution.
Is it any wonder why Putin does not want to participate in this unethical swindle? Is it any
wonder why he feels the need to clearly state that Russia will only comply with those laws and
treaties that "do not restrict the rights and freedoms of our people and citizens and do not
contradict our Constitution"? Here's Putin again:
"Please, do not forget what happened to our country after 1991. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, .there were also threats, dangers of a magnitude no one could have imagined
ever before. .Therefore We must create a solid, reliable and invulnerable system that will be
absolutely stable in terms of the external contour and will securely guarantee Russia's
independence and sovereignty."
So what happened following the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
The United States dispatched a cabal of cutthroat economists to Moscow to assist in the
"shock therapy" campaign that collapsed the social safety net, savaged pensions, increased
unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and alcoholism by many orders of magnitude, accelerated
the slide to privatization that fueled a generation of voracious oligarchs, and sent the real
economy plunging into an excruciating long-term depression.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz followed events closely in Russia at the time and summed it up
like this:
"In Russia, the people were told that capitalism was going to bring new, unprecedented
prosperity. In fact, it brought unprecedented poverty, indicated not only by a fall in living
standards, not only by falling GDP, but by decreasing life spans and enormous other social
indicators showing a deterioration in the quality of life ..
The number of people in poverty in Russia, for instance, increased from 2 percent to
somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, with more than one out of two children living in
families below poverty. The market economy was a worse enemy for most of these people than
the Communists had said it would be. In some (parts) of the former Soviet Union, the GDP, the
national income, fell by over 70 percent. And with that smaller pie it was more and more
unequally divided, so a few people got bigger and bigger slices, and the majority of people
wound up with less and less and less . (PBS interview with Joseph Stiglitz, Commanding
Heights)
At the same time Washington's agents were busy looting Moscow, NATO was moving its troops,
armored divisions and missile sites closer to Russia's border in clear violation of promises
that were made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to move its military "one inch east". At present, there
are more combat troops and weaponry on Russia's western flank than at any time since the German
buildup for operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Naturally, Russia feels threatened by this
flagrantly hostile force on its border. (BTW, this week, "The US is carrying out its biggest
and most provocative deployment to Europe since the Cold War-era. According to the US Military
in Europe Website: "Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size
combat-credible force from the United States to Europe .The Pentagon and its NATO allies are
recklessly simulating a full-blown war with Russia to prevent Moscow from strengthening its
economic ties with Europe.) Here's more from Putin:
"I am convinced that it is high time for a serious and direct discussion about the basic
principles of a stable world order and the most acute problems that humanity is facing. It is
necessary to show political will, wisdom and courage. The time demands an awareness of our
shared responsibility and real actions."
This is a theme that Putin has reiterated many times since his groundbreaking speech at
Munich in 2007 where he said:
"We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international
law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one
state's legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has
overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political,
cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is
happy about this? ." ("Wars not diminishing': Putin's iconic 2007 Munich speech, you
tube)
What Putin objects to is the US acting unilaterally whenever it chooses. It's Washington's
capricious disregard for international law that has destabilized vast regions across the Middle
East and Central Asia and has put world leaders on edge never knowing where the next crisis
will pop up or how many millions of people will be impacted. As Putin said in Munich, "No one
feels safe." No one feels like they can count on the protection of international law or UN
Security Council resolutions.
Putin:
"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing
about reforms, aggressive intervention destroyed government institutions and the local way of
life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and
total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life
The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously
resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy, which were quickly filled with extremists and
terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting for it,
including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many
recruits come from Libya whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN
Security Council Resolution 1973 ."
Is Putin overstating Washington's role in decimating Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan or
is this a fair assessment of America's pernicious and destabilizing role in the region? Entire
civilizations have been laid to waste, millions have been killed or scattered across the region
to achieve some nebulous strategic advantage or to help Israel eliminate its perceived enemies.
And all this military adventurism can be traced back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and
the triumphalist response from US powerbrokers who saw Russia's collapse as a green light for
their New World Order.
Washington reveled in its victory and embraced its ability to dominate global
decision-making and intervene unilaterally wherever it saw fit. The indispensable nation no
longer had to bother with formalities like the UN Security Council or international law. Even
sovereignty was dismissed as an archaic notion that had no place in the new borderless
corporate empire. What really mattered was spreading western-style capitalism to the four
corners of the earth particularly those areas that contained vital resources (ME) or explosive
growth potential. (Eurasia) Those regions were the real prize.
But then something unexpected happened. Washington's wars dragged on ad infinitum while
newer centers of power gradually emerged. Suddenly, the globalist utopia was no longer within
reach, the American Century had ended before it had even begun. Meanwhile Russia and China were
growing more powerful all the time. They demanded an end to unilateralism and a return to
international law, but their demands were flatly rejected. The wars and interventions dragged
on even though the prospects for victory grew more and more remote. Here's Putin again:
"We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of
international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and
stability both at the national and international levels First of all, there must be equal and
indivisible security for all states." (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, "
The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, From the Office of the President of
Russia)
Indeed, sovereignty is the foundational principle upon which global security rests, and yet,
it is sovereignty that western elites are so eager to extinguish. Powerhouse multinationals
want to erase existing borders to facilitate the unfettered, tariff-free flow of goods and
people in one giant, interconnected free trade zone that spans the entire planet. And while
their plan has been derailed by Putin in Syria and Ukraine, they have made gains in Africa,
South America and Southeast Asia. The virus cannot be contained, it can only be eradicated.
Here's Putin:
"Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we
know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed. I think this situation
is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices
made by some countries' elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early
1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalization process but also to give
it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature.
But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves
this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and
economic order to fit their own interests.
In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other
actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and
attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organizations,
norms and rules. They chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved
selves, for the select few, and not for all." (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion
Club)
As Putin says, there was an opportunity to "make globalization more harmonious and
sustainable", (perhaps, China's Belt and Road initiative will do just that.) but Washington
elites rejected that idea choosing instead to impose its own self-aggrandizing vision on the
world. As a result, demonstrations and riots have cropped up across Europe, right-wing populist
parties are on the rise, and a majority of the population no longer have confidence in basic
democratic institutions. The west's version of globalization has been roundly repudiated as a
scam that showers wealth on scheming billionaires while hanging ordinary working people out to
dry. Here's Putin again:
"It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the
erosion of the middle class (but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a
direct impact on the public mood.
Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries
and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The
future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real
opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy."
(Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)
True, life is harder now and it looks to get harder still, but what is Putin's remedy or
does he have one? Is he going to stem the tide and reverse the effects of globalization? Is he
going to sabotage Washington's plan to control vital resources in the Middle East, become the
the main player in Central Asia, and tighten its grip on global power?
No, Putin is not nearly that ambitious. As he indicates in his speech, his immediate goal is
to reform the economy so that poverty is eliminated and wealth is more equally distributed.
These are practical remedies that help to soften capitalism and decrease the probability of
social unrest. He also wants to fend off potential threats to the state by shoring up Russian
sovereignty. That's why he is adding amendments to the Constitution. The objective is to
protect Russia from pernicious foreign agents or fifth columnists operating within the state.
Bottom line: Putin sees what's going on in the world and has charted a course that best serves
the interests of the Russian people. Americans would be lucky to have a leader who did the
same.
He is now granted $40 billion in tax breaks to the biggest fossil fuel
oligarchs–Rosneft and Gazprom. These are privatised companies that were formerly
state companies in the former USSR. Instead of reversing the trend Putin has escalated
privatization.
It seems you were misinformed. Rosneft and Gazprom are still state-owned, the latter
mostly and the former entirely. So if indeed Putin did grant them these tax breaks, it's just
one branch of the government transferring money to another branch of government–sort of
like when the Social Security Administration here in the US buy bonds from the Treasury
Department. It's just an accounting gimmick, not gift to 'oligarchs'. (BTW, why is it that
the media never refer to Soros, Bezos or the Rockefellers as 'oligarchs'? Why only
Russians?)
For Putin sovereignty, which is the supreme power of a state to govern itself, is the
bedrock principle which legitimizes the state provided the state faithfully represents the
will of the people. He elaborates on this point later in his speech saying:
"The opinion of people, our citizens as the bearers of sovereignty and the main source
of power must be decisive. In the final analysis everything is decided by the people,
both today and in the future."
This is what has been missing from so called US Democracy for a while now.
The present day US is a hegemony of Special Interests busy looting the place under cover
their propaganda department (US MSM).
Great article, Mike Whitney. So far it's the only one I've seen that reveals a coherent hard
core in what Putin seeks to achieve with a seemingly bureaucratic rejiggering of the
constitution and ruling echelon. Maybe he's finally ending the humiliating indecision that
has stymied Russia the past three decades: Will the country keep trying to be yet another
pale copy of the financialized U.S. economic sphere, powered by dollar hegemony? Or, will it
free itself from predatory corporate domination in order to duplicate the obvious success of
sovereign next-door China? If your analysis is on the mark, Putin may have now found the
answer to Russia's debilitating post-Soviet identity crisis.
Trump's unexpected election and the parallel rise of nationalism in docile Europe suggests
that much the same crisis has now emerged within the Western empire. Will it be borderless
neofeudal corporatism for the benefit of those at the top of the social pyramid or will
working people regain a voice in their own government? Reading those troubled tea leaves,
Putin may have picked the right moment to launch Russia on the more promising path.
Is Putin overstating Washington's role in decimating Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan
or is this a fair assessment of America's pernicious and destabilizing role in the region?
Entire civilizations have been laid to waste, millions have been killed or scattered across
the region to achieve some nebulous strategic advantage or to help Israel eliminate
its perceived enemies.
No need to qualify the cause of this nefarious plan by referencing some nebulous
objective. There was nothing nebulous about it. The plan to Remake the Middle East was
clearly articulated by Richard Perle, well before the GWOT was launched, in A Clean Break,
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm .
Sooner or later, every Bully will push the wrong opponent and wind up getting his ass
stomped in the dirt.
Sad, but true. I think everyone hopes that the US pulls off some sort of last minute
transformation and repentance, because the takedown would be very ugly for everyone
@geokat62 Don't forget to mention the Oded Yinon Plan, the plan to shatter all Israel's
neighbors into small, dysfunctional, quarrelling statelets. See, Global Research : "Greater
Israel" : The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.
God bless Putin and Russia for saving Syria from the terrorists created by the ZUS and Israel
and ZBritain and ZNATO , these terrorists AL CIADA aka ISIS and all offshoots thereof were
created and armed and funded to destroy the middle east for the zionist greater Israel
project and all of this was brought on by the joint Israeli and ZUS attack on the WTC on 911
and blamed on the arabs.
Who is the greater terrorist, the terrorists or the ones who created them.
@Sean Russia will do very well they are moving in the right direction, they are putting
regulations on those that need it, and better programs for the people.
I once read that you can start out with a strong generation and from that strong
generation ever generation after will become weaker and weaker, until you end up with a
generation like the U.S. has that's like clay in the hands of a master, they can't think nor
even act they just follow the dictates of the master.!!!
@Old and grumpy In regards to sanctions Russia for the last 3 years has been the greatest
producer and exporter of grain, and since food is the most important thing, the ZUS is
pissing into the wind with sanctions on Russia.
"This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people
see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping
policy." (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)"
Jeez ain't that the truth. I live in Virginia and it seems that no matter how I vote it
just never changes anything. We just had big demonstrations against the stupid new gun laws
our despotic governor wants to enact and from where I'm sitting it didn't make one iota of
difference. The rank and file have zero to say in how they are governed But we sure get to
finance it with our taxes.
@Anonymous You are delusional and have obviously spent no time in Russia. When the Pussy
Riot grrrls desecrated the altar at St. Savior, Russians went ballistic, from the Patriarchs
down to the blue collar diesel mechanics.
Your so-called "faith" in the US and Europe has already sold out to Globohomo completely.
Most priests are gay and have been buggering the altar boys for decades. Protestant sects
have lesbian bishops. Your "faithful" have not only totally surrendered to the Globohomo
takeover, they now EMBRACE it proudly. "All are welcome." There is now no difference between
Vatican II Catholicism and Unitarian Universalism. Western Europe is so far gone, so
anti-life, there's hardly a white child left. Muslims are sharpening their machetes.
So you think there's no substance behind Orthodoxy. You are mistaken. (I'm Latin Mass
Catholic, BTW)
It's only consistent with his past behavior of reining in post-Soviet Russian
Oligarchs.
And there is the real reason why the "west" hates him. Because who controls the west? Who
owns all of the media, owns the politicians, and controls the narrative? Our very own
Oligarchs, indistinguishable from the Russian version and in fact interchangeable (borders
mean nothing to them). So of course they are pissed if Putin is rolling them back over in
Russia. How dare he.
Also, have you ever noticed that the word "Oligarch" is only every applied in the same
sentence as "Russian?"
Fascism is the most extreme form of counterrevolution. Counterrevolution itself only
emerges as a response to revolution. Nazism, for example, didn't arrive because the
German people all of a sudden lost their bearings from an overdose of Wagner's operas and
Nietzsche's aphorisms. It arrived at a time when massive worker's parties threatened
bourgeois rule during a period of terrible economic hardship. Big capital backed Hitler
as a last resort. The Nazis represented reactionary politics gone berserk. Not only could
Nazism attack worker's parties, it could also attack powerful institutions of the ruling
class, including its churches, media, intellectuals, parties and individual families and
individuals. Fascism is not a scalpel. It is a very explosive, uncontrollable weapon that
can also inflict some harm on its wielder.
Fascism emerges in the period following the great post-World War I revolutionary
upsurge in Europe. The Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia, but communists mounted challenges
to capitalism in Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. These revolutions receded but but their
embers burned. The world-wide depression of 1929 added new fuel to the glowing embers of
proletarian revolution. Socialism grew powerful everywhere because of the powerful
example of the USSR and the suffering capitalist unemployment brought.
Proletarian revolutions do not break out every year or so, like new car models. They
appear infrequently since working-people prefer to accomodate themselves to capitalism if
at all possible. They tend to be last-ditch defensive reactions to the mounting violence
and insecurity brought on by capitalist war and depression.
The proletarian revolution first emerges within the context of the bourgeois
revolutions of 1848. Even though the revolutions in Germany, France and Italy on the
surface appeared to be a continuation of the revolutions of the 1780's and 90's, they
contain within them anticapitalist dynamics. The working-class at this point in its
history has neither the numbers, nor the organization, nor the self- consciousness to
take power in its own name. Its own cause tends to get blurred with the cause of of other
classes in the struggle against feudal vestiges.
Marx was able to distinguish the contradictory class aspects of the 1848 revolutionary
upsurge with tremendous alacrity, however. Some of his most important contributions to
historical materialism emerge out of this period and again in 1871 when the proletariat
rises up in its own name during the Paris Commune. The 18th Brumaire was written in the
aftermath of the failure of the revolution in France in 1848 to consolidate its gains.
Louis Bonaparte emerges as a counterrevolutionary dictator who seems to suppress all
classes, including the bourgeoisie. Marx is able to show that Bonapartism, like Fascism,
is not a dictatorship that stands above all classes. The Bonapartist regime, whose social
base may be middle-class, acts in the interest of the big bourgeoisie.
Robert Tucker's notes in his preface to the 18th Brumaire that, "Since Louis
Bonaparte's rise and rule have been seen as a forerunner of the phenomenon that was to
become known in the twentieth century as fascim, Marx's interpretation of it is of
interest, among other ways, as a sort of a prologue to later Marxist thought on the
nature and meaning of fascism."
The 18th Brumaire was written by Marx in late 1851 and early 1852, and appeared first
in a NY magazine called "Die Revolution". This was a time of great difficulty for Marx.
He was in financial difficulty and poor health. The triumph of the counterrevolution in
France deepened his misery. In a letter to his friend Weydemeyer, Marx confides, "For
years nothing has pulled me down as much as this cursed hemorrhoidal trouble, not even
the worst French failure."
In section one of the 18th Brumaire, Marx draws a clear distinction between the
bourgeois and proletarian revolution.
"Bourgeois revolutions like those of the eighteenth century storm more swiftly from
success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in
sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day- but they are short-lived, soon they
have reached their zenith, and a long Katzenjammer [crapulence] takes hold of society
before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period soberly. On the
other hand, proletarian revolutions like those of the nineteenth century constantly
criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the
apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the
half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down
their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before
them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of
their own goals -- until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible,
and the conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta! "
Proletarian revolutions, Marx correctly points out, emerge from a position of weakness
and uncertainty. The bourgeoisie emerges over hundreds of years within the framework of
feudalism. At the time it is ready to seize power, it has already conquered major
institutions in civil society. The bourgeoisie is not an exploited class and therefore is
able to rule society long before its political revolution is effected. When it delivers
the coup de grace to the monarchy, it does so from a position of overwhelming
strength.
The workers are in a completely different position, however. They lack an independent
economic base and suffer economic and cultural exploitation. Prior to its revolution, the
working-class remains backward and therefore, unlike the bourgeoisie, is unable to
prepare itself in advance for ruling all of society. It often comes to power in coalition
with other classes, such as the peasantry.
Since it is in a position of weakness, it is often beaten back by the bourgeoise. But
the bourgeoisie itself is small in numbers. It also has its own class interests which set
it apart from the rest of society. Therefore, it must strike back against the workers by
utilizing the social power of intermediate classes such as the peasantry or the
middle-classes in general. It will also draw from strata beneath the working-class, from
the so-called "lumpen proletariat". Louis Bonaparte drew from these social layers in
order to strike back against the workers, so did Hitler.
Bonaparte appears as a dictator whose rule constrains all of society. In section seven
of the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx characterized Bonapartist rule in the following
manner:
"The French bourgeoisie balked at the domination of the working proletariat; it has
brought the lumpen proletariat to domination, with the Chief of the Society of December
10 at the head. The bourgeoisie kept France in breathless fear of the future terrors of
red anarchy- Bonaparte discounted this future for it when, on December 4, he had the
eminent bourgeois of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens shot down at
their windows by the drunken army of law and order. The bourgeoisie apotheosized the
sword; the sword rules it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; its own press is
destroyed. It placed popular meetings under police surveillance; its salons are placed
under police supervision. It disbanded the democratic National Guard, its own National
Guard is disbanded. It imposed a state of siege; a state of siege is imposed upon it. It
supplanted the juries by military commissions; its juries are supplanted by military
commissions. It subjected public education to the sway of the priests; the priests
subject it to their own education. It jailed people without trial, it is being jailed
without trial. It suppressed every stirring in society by means of state power; every
stirring in its society is suppressed by means of state power. Out of enthusiasm for its
moneybags it rebelled against its own politicians and literary men; its politicians and
literary men are swept aside, but its moneybag is being plundered now that its mouth has
been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie never tired of crying out to the
revolution what St. Arsenius cried out to the Christians: 'Fuge, tace, quiesce!' ['Flee,
be silent, keep still!'] Bonaparte cries to the bourgeoisie: 'Fuge, tace, quiesce!'"
At first blush, Bonaparte seems to be oppressing worker and capitalist alike.
Supported by the bourgeoisie at first, he drowns the Parisian working-class in its own
blood in the early stages of the counterrevolution. He then turns his attention to the
bourgeoisie itself and "jails", "gags" and imposes a "state of siege" upon it. By all
appearances, the dictatorship of Bonaparte is a personal dictatorship and all social
classes suffer. The Hitler and Mussolini regimes gave the same appearance. This led many
to conclude that fascism is simply a totalitarian system in which every citizen is
subordinated to the industrial-military-state machinery. There is the fascism of Hitler
and there is the fascism of Stalin. A class analysis of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia
would produce different political conclusions, however. Hitler's rule rested on
capitalist property relations and Stalin's on collectivized property relations.
Bonaparte's rule, while seeming to stand above all social classes, really served to
protect capitalist property relations. Bonaparte represents the executive branch of
government and liquidates the parliamentary branch. The parliament contains parties from
every social class, so a superficial view of Bonapartist rule would conclude that all
classes have been curtailed. In actuality, the bourgeoisie maintains power behind the
scenes.
In order to maintain rule, Bonapartism must give concessions to the lower-classes. It
can not manifest itself openly as an instrument of the ruling-classes. It is constantly
on the attack against both exploiter and exploited. It acts against exploited because it
is ultimately interested in the preservation of the status quo. It acts against the
exploiters, because it must maintain the appearance of "neutrality" above all
classes.
Marx describes this contradictory situtation as follows:
"Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time,
like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon's
successor, by springing constant surprises -- that is to say, under the necessity of
arranging a coup d'etat in miniature every day -- Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois
economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to the Revolution of
1848, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it, and produces
anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery
of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous. The cult of the
Holy Tunic of Trier, he duplicates in Paris in the cult of the Napoleonic imperial
mantle. But when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte,
the bronze statue of Napoleon will come crashing down from the top of the Vendome
Column."
Bonaparte throws the bourgeois economy into a confusion, violates it, produces anarchy
in the name of order. This is exactly the way fascism in power operates. Fascism in power
is a variant of Bonapartism. It eventually stabilizes into a more normal dictatorship of
capital, but in its early stages has the same careening, out-of-control behavior.
Bonapartism does not rest on the power of an individual dictator. It is not Louis
Napoleon's or Adolph Hitler's power of oratory that explains their mastery over a whole
society. They have a social base which they manipulate to remain in power. Even though a
Bonapartist figure is ultimately loyal to the most powerful industrialists and
financiers, he relies on a mass movement of the middle-class to gain power.
Louis Bonaparte drew from the peasantry. The peasantry was in conflict with the big
bourgeoisie but was tricked into lending support to someone who appeared to act in its
own behalf. The peasantry was unable to articulate its own social and political interests
since the mode of production it relied on was an isolating one. Marx commented:
"The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar
conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of
production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual
intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France's poor means of communication and the
poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no
division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no
multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social
relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly
produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an
exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and
his family; beside it another small holding, another peasant and another family. A few
score of these constitute a village, and a few score villages constitute a department.
Thus the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homonymous
magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. Insofar as millions of
families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their
interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile
opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local
interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests
forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do
not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in
their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent
themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear
as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which
protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The
political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression
in the executive power which subordinates society to itself. "
Intermediate layers such as the peasantry are susceptible to Bonapartist and Fascist
politicians. They resent both big capital and the working- class. They resent the banks
who own their mortgage. They also resent the teamsters and railroad workers whose strikes
disrupts their own private economic interests. They turn to politicians whose rhetoric
seems to be both anti-capitalist and anti-working class. Such politicians are often
masters of demagoguery such as Hitler and Mussolini who often employ the stock phrases of
socialism.
The peasantry backed Bonaparte. It was also an important pillar of Hitler's regime. In
the final analysis, the peasants suffered under both because the banks remained powerful
and exploitative. The populism of Bonaparte and the "socialism" of Hitler were simply
deceptive mechanisms by which the executive was able to rule on behalf of big
capital.
Bonapartism, populism and fascism overlap to a striking degree. We see elements of
fascism, populism and Bonapartism in the politics of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan rails against
African-Americans and immigrants, both documented and undocumented. He also rails against
Wall St. which is "selling out" the working man. Is he a fascist, however? Ross Perot
employs a number of the same themes. Is he?
The problem in trying to answer these questions solely on the basis of someone's
speeches or writings is that it ignores historical and class dynamics. Bonaparte and
Hitler emerged as a response to powerful proletrian revolutionary attacks on capital.
What are the objective conditions in American society today? Hitler based their power on
large-scale social movements that could put tens of thousands of people into the streets
at a moment's notice. These movements were not creatures of capitalist cabals. They had
their own logic and their own warped integrity. Many were drawn to Hitler in the deluded
hope that he would bring some kind of "all-German" socialism into existence. These
followers were not Marxists, but they certainly hated the capitalist class. Are the
people who attend Buchanan, Perot and Farrakhan rallies also in such a frenzied,
revolutionary state of mind?
At what point are we in American society today?
I would argue that rather than being in a prerevolutionary situation, that rather we
are in a period which has typified capitalism for the better part of a hundred and fifty
years.We are in a period of capitalist "normalcy". Capitalism is a system which is prone
to economic crisis and war. The unemployment and "downsizing" going on today are typical
of capitalism in its normal functioning. We have to stop thinking as if the period of
prosperity following WWII as normal. It is not. It is an anomaly in the history of
capitalism. When industrial workers found themselves in a position to buy houses, send
children through college, etc., this was only because of a number of exceptional
circumstances which will almost certainly never arise again.
We are in a period more like the late 1800's or the early 1900's. It is a period of
both expansion and retrenchment. It is a period of terrible reaction which can give birth
to the Ku Klux Klan and the skinheads and other neo-Nazis. It is also a period which can
give birth to something like Eugene V. Debs socialist party.
But if we don't recognize at which point we stand, we will never be able to build a
socialist party. We will also not be in a position to resist fascism when it makes its
appearance.
In my next report, I will take a look at the American Populist movement led by Tom
Watson at the turn of the century. It is a highly contradictory social movement. In some
respects it is fascist-like, in other respects it is highly progressive. If we understand
American Populism, we will in a much better position to understand the populism of
today.
These are the types of questions that we should be considering in the weeks to
come:
1) Why did fascism emerge when it did? Could there have been fascism in the
1890's?
2) Is fascism limited to imperialist nations? Could there be fascism in third-world
countries? Did Pinochet represent fascism in Chile?
3) What is the class base of the Nation of Islam? Can there be fascism emerging out of
oppressed nationalities? Can a Turkish or Algerian fascism develop as a response to
neo-fascism in Europe today?
4) The Italian government includes a "fascist" party that openly celebrates Mussolini.
What should we make of this?
5) What is the difference between fascism and ultrarightism? Ultrarightism is a
permanent feature of US and world politics. Was George Wallace a fascist? What would a
European equivalent be?
6) Is fascism emerging in the former Soviet Union? Does Zherinovsky represent fascism?
Is the cause of the civil war in former Yugoslavia Serbian or Croatian fascism?
7) Can there be a fascism which does not incorporate powerful anticapitalist themes
and demagoguery? Joe McCarthy was regarded as a fascist-like figure, but had no use for
radical left-wing verbiage or actions. What should we make of him?
8) If fascism emerged as a reaction to the powerful proletarian revolutionary
movements of the 1920's and 30's, what types of conditions can we see in the foreseeable
future that would provoke new fascist movements? If socialism is no longer objectively
possible because of the ability of capitalism to "deliver the goods", what would the need
for fascism be? Why would the capitalist class support a new Hitler when the
working-class is so quiescient? Should we be thinking about a new definition of
fascism?
9) Fascism has a deeply expansionist and bellicose dynamics. In the age of nuclear
weaponry, can we expect imperialism to opt for a fascist solution? Would the Rockefellers
et al allow a trigger-happy figure like "Mark from Michigan" in control of our nuclear
weapons?
10) What tools are necessary to analyze fascism? Should we be looking at the speeches
of Farrakhan or Mark from Michigan? Was this Marx's approach to Bonapartism?
2. TROTSKY ON BONAPARTISM AND FASCISM
Trotsky, like Lenin, was a revolutionary politician and not an economist or political
scientist. Every article or book the two wrote was tied to solving specific political
problems. When Lenin wrote "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism", he was trying
to define the theoretical basis for the Zimmerwald opposition to W.W.I. Similarly, when
Trotsky wrote about German fascism, his purpose was to confront and defeat it.
Trotsky's understanding of how fascism came to power is very much grounded in the
definition of "Bonapartism" contained in Marx's "18th Brumaire", a classic study of
dictatorship in the 19th century. Marx was trying to explain how dictatorships of "men on
horseback" such as Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew, can appear to stand suspended
above all classes and to act as impartial arbitrator between opposing classes, even
though they carry out the wishes of the capitalist ruling class. The capitalist class is
small in number and periods of revolutionary crisis depend on these types of seemingly
neutral strong men.
A true Bonapartist figure is somebody who emerges out of the military or state
apparatus. In order to properly bamboozle the masses, he should have charismatic
qualities. War heroes tend to move to the front of the pack when a Bonapartist solution
is required. Charles DeGaulle is the quintessential Bonapartist figure of the modern age.
If the US labor movement and the left had been much more powerful than it had been during
the Korean war and had mounted a serious resistance to the war and to capitalist rule, it
is not hard to imagine a figure such as General Douglas MacCarthur striving to impose a
Bonapartist dictatorship. Since there was no such left-wing, it was possible for US
capitalism to rule democratically. Democracy is a less expensive and more stable
system.
Germany started out after W.W.I as a bourgeois democracy-- the Weimar Republic. The
republic was besieged by a whole number of insurmountable problems: unemployment,
hyperinflation, and resentment over territory lost to the allies.
The workers had attempted to make a socialist revolution immediately after W.W.I, but
their leadership made a number of mistakes that resulted in defeat. The defeat was not so
profound as to crush all future revolutionary possibilities. As the desperate 20's wore
on, the working- class movement did regain its confidence and went on the offensive
again. The two major parties of the working class, the CP and the SP, both grew.
In the late 1920's, Stalin had embarked on an ultraleft course in the USSR and CP's
tended to reflect this ultraleftism in their own strategy and tactics. In Germany, this
meant attacking the Socialist Party as "social fascist". The Socialist Party was not
revolutionary, but it was not fascist. A united SP and CP could have defeated fascism and
prevented WWII and the slaughter of millions. It was Stalin's inability to size up
fascism correctly that lead to this horrible outcome.
Hitler's seizure of power was preceded by a series of rightward drifting governments,
all of which paved the way for him. The SP found reasons to back each and every one of
these governments in the name of the "lesser evil". (This is an argument we have heard
from some leftists in the United States: "Clinton is not as bad as Bush"; "Johnson is not
as bad as Goldwater, etc." The problem with this strategy is that allows the ruling class
to limit the options available to the oppressed. The lesser evil is still evil.)
The last "lesser evil" candidate the German Social Democracy urged support for was
Paul Von Hindenburg, a top general in W.W.I.. The results were disastrous. Hindenburg
took office on April 10 of 1932 and basically paved the way for Adolph Hitler. Hindenburg
allowed the Nazi street thugs to rule the streets, but enforced the letter of the law
against the working-class parties. Elections may have been taking place according to the
Weimar constitution, but real politics was being shaped in the streets through the
demonstrations and riots of Nazi storm-troopers.
As these Nazi street actions grew more violent and massive, Hindenburg reacted on May
31 by making Franz Von Papen chancellor and instructed him to pick a cabinet "above the
parties", a clear Bonapartist move. Such a cabinet wouldn't placate the Nazis. All they
wanted to do was smash bourgeois democracy. As the civil war in the streets continued,
Papen dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections on July 31, 1932.
On July 17, the Nazis held a march through Altona, a working class neighborhood, under
police protection. The provocation resulted in fighting that left 19 dead and 285
wounded. The SP and CP were not able to mount a significant counteroffensive and the
right-wing forces gathered self-confidence and support from "centrist" voters. When
elections were finally held on July 31, the Nazi party received the most votes and took
power.
In his article "German Bonapartism", Trotsky tries to explain the underlying
connections between the Bonapartist Hindenburg government and the gathering Nazi
storm:
"Present-day German Bonapartism has a very complex and, so to speak, combined
character. The government of Papen would have been impossible without fascism. But
fascism is not in power. And the government of Papen is not fascism. On the other hand,
the government of Papen, at any rate in the present form, would have been impossible
without Hindenburg who, in spite of the final prostration of Germany in the war, stands
for the great victories of Germany and symbolizes the army in the memory of the popular
masses. The second election of Hindenburg had all the characteristics of a plebiscite.
Many millions of workers, petty bourgeois, and peasants (Social Democracy and Center)
voted for Hindenburg. They did not see in him any one political program. They did not see
in him any one political program. They wanted first of all to avoid civil war, and raised
Hindenburg on their shoulders as a superarbiter, as an arbitration judge of the nation.
But precisely this is the most important function of Bonapartism: raising itself over the
two struggling camps in order to preserve property and order."
The victory of Hitler represents a break with Bonapartism, since it represents the
naked rule of finance capital and heavy industry. Fascism in Germany breaks the tension
between classes by imposing a reign of terror on the working class. Once in power,
however, fascism breaks its ties with the petty-bourgeois mass movement that ensured its
victory and assumes a more traditional Bonapartist character. Hitler in office becomes
much more like the Bonapartist figures who preceded him and seeks to act as a
"superarbiter". In order to make this work, he launches an ambitious publics works
program, invests in military spending and tries to coopt the proletariat. Those in the
working-class who resist him are jailed or murdered.
In "Bonapartism and Fascism", written on July 15, 1934, a year after Hitler's rise to
power, Trotsky clarifies the relationship between the two tendencies:
"What has been said sufficiently demonstrates how important it is to distinguish the
Bonapartist form of power from the fascist form. Yet, it would be unpardonable to fall
into the opposite extreme, that is, to convert Bonapartism and fascism into two logically
incompatible categories. Just as Bonapartism begins by combining the parliamentary regime
with fascism, so triumphant fascism finds itself forced not only to enter a bloc with the
Bonapartists, but what is more, to draw closer internally to the Bonapartist system. The
prolonged domination of finance capital by means of reactionary social demagogy and
petty- bourgeois terror is impossible. Having arrived in power, the fascist chiefs are
forced to muzzle the masses who follow them by means of the state apparatus. By the same
token, they lose the support of broad masses of the petty bourgeoisie."
3. MICHAEL MANN ON FASCISM
Michael Mann believes that 20th century Marxism has made a mistake by describing
fascism as a petty-bourgeois mass movement. He does not argue that the leaders were not
bourgeois, or that the bourgeoisie behind the scenes was financing the fascists. He
develops these points at some length in an article "Source of Variation in Working-Class
Movements in Twentieth-Century Movement" which appeared in the New Left Review of
July/August 1995.
If he is correct, then there is something basically wrong with the Marxist approach,
isn't there? If the Nazis attracted the working-class, then wouldn't we have to
reevaluate the revolutionary role of the working-class? Perhaps it would be necessary to
find some other class to lead the struggle for socialism, if this struggle has any basis
in reality to begin with.
Mann relies heavily on statistical data, especially that which can be found in M.
Kater's "The Nazi Party" and D. Muhlberger "Hitler's Followers". The data, Mann reports,
shows that "Combined, the party and paramilitaries had relatively as many workers as in
the general population, almost as many worker militants as the socialists and many more
than the communists".
Pretty scary stuff, if it's true. It is true, but, as it turns out, there are workers
and there are workers. More specifically, Mann acknowledges that "Most fascist
workers...came not from the main manufacturing industries but from agriculture, the
service and public sectors and from handicrafts and small workshops." Let's consider the
political implications of the class composition of this fascist strata." He adds that,
"The proletarian macro-community was resisting fascism, but not the entire
working-class." Translating this infelicitous expression into ordinary language, Mann is
saying that as a whole the workers were opposed to fascism, but there were
exceptions.
Let's consider who these fascist workers were. Agricultural workers in Germany: were
they like the followers of Caesar Chavez, one has to wonder? Germany did not have
large-scale agribusiness in the early 1920's. Most farms produced for the internal market
and were either family farms or employed a relatively small number of workers. Generally,
workers on smaller farms tend to have a more filial relationship to the patron than they
do on massive enterprises. The politics of the patron will be followed more closely by
his workers. This is the culture of small, private agriculture. It was no secret that
many of the contra foot-soldiers in Nicaragua came from this milieu.
Turning to "service" workers, this means that many fascists were white-collar workers
in banking and insurance. This layer has been going through profound changes throughout
the twentieth century, so a closer examination is needed. In the chapter "Clerical
Workers" in Harry Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital", he notes that clerical work
in its earlier stages was like a craft. The clerk was a highly skilled employee who kept
current the records of the financial and operating condition of the enterprise, as well
as its relations with the external world. The whole history of this job category in the
twentieth century, however, has been one of de-skilling. All sorts of machines, including
the modern-day, computer have taken over many of the decision-making responsibilities of
the clerk. Furthermore, "Taylorism" has been introduced into the office, forcing clerks
to function more like assembly-line workers than elite professionals.
We must assume, however, that the white-collar worker in Germany in the 1920's was
still relatively high up in the class hierarchy since his or her work had not been
mechanized or routinized to the extent it is today. Therefore, a clerk in an insurance
company or bank would tend to identify more with management than with workers in a
steel-mill. Even under today's changed economic conditions, this tends to be true. A bank
teller in NY probably resents a striking transit worker, despite the fact that they have
much in common in class terms. This must have been an even more pronounced tendency in
the 1920's when white-collar workers occupied an even more elite position in society.
Mann includes workers in the "public sector". This should come as no surprise at all.
Socialist revolutions were defeated throughout Europe in the early 1920's and right-wing
governments came to power everywhere. These right-wing governments kept shifting to the
right as the mass working-class movements of the early 1920's recovered and began to
reassert themselves. Government workers, who are hired to work in offices run by
right-wingers, will tend to be right-wing themselves. There was no civil-service and no
unions in this sector in the 1920's. Today, this sector is one of the major supporters of
progressive politics internationally. They, in fact, spearheaded the recent strikes in
France. In the United States, where their composition tends to be heavily Black or
Latino, also back progressive politics. But in Germany in the 1920's, it should come as
no major surprise that some public sector workers joined Hitler or Mussolini's cause.
When Trotsky or E.J. Hobsbawm refer to the working-class resistance to Hitler or
Mussolini, they have something specific in mind. They are referring to the traditional
bastions of the industrial working-class: steel, auto, transportation, mining, etc. Mann
concurs that these blue- collar workers backed the SP or CP.
There is a good reason why this was no accident. In Daniel Guerin's "Fascism and Big
Business", he makes the point that the capitalists from heavy industry were the main
backers of Hitler. The reason they backed Hitler was that they had huge investments in
fixed capital (machines, plants, etc.) that were financed through huge debt. When
capitalism collapsed after the stock-market crash, the owners of heavy industry were more
pressed than those of light industry. The costs involved in making a steel or chemical
plant profitable during a depression are much heavier. Steel has to be sold in dwindling
markets to pay for the cost of leased machinery or machinery that is financed by bank
loans When the price of steel has dropped on a world scale, it is all the more necessary
to enforce strict labor discipline..
Strikes are met by violence. When the boss calls for speed-up because of increased
competition, goons within a plant will attack workers who defend decent working
conditions. This explains blue-collar support for socialism. It has a class basis.
These are the sorts of issues that Marxists should be exploring. Michael Mann is a
"neo-Weberian" supposedly who also finds Marx useful. Max Weber tried to explain the
growth of capitalism as a consequence of the "Protestant ethic". Now Mann tries to
explain the growth of fascism as a consequence of working-class support for "national
identity". That is to say, the workers backed Hitler because Hitler backed a strong
Germany. This is anti-Marxist. Being determines consciousness, not the other way around.
When you try to blend Marx with anti-Marxists like Weber or Lyotard or A.J. Ayer, it is
very easy to get in trouble. I prefer my Marx straight, with no chaser.
4. NICOS POULANTZAS ON FASCISM
Nicos Poulantzas tried to carve out a political space for revolutionaries outside of
the framework of the CP, especially the French Communist Party. Poulantzas wrote "Fascism
and Dictatorship, The Third International and the Problem of Fascism" in 1968 when he was
in the grips of a rather severe case of Maoism.
This put him in an obviously antagonistic position vis a vis Trotsky. Trotsky was the
author of a number of books that tried to explain the victory of Hitler, Mussolini and
Franco in terms of the failure of the Comintern to provide revolutionary leadership.
Poulantzas's Maoism put him at odds with this analysis. His Maoist "revolutionary
heritage" goes back through Dmitrov to Stalin and Lenin. In this line of pedigrees,
Trotsky remains the mutt.
Poulantzas could not accept the idea that the Comintern was the gravedigger of
revolutions, since the current he identified with put this very same Comintern on a
pedestal. Yet the evidence of Comintern failure in the age of fascism is just too
egregious for him to ignore. He explains this failure not in terms of bureaucratic
misleadership, but rather in terms of "economism". This Althusserian critique targets the
Comintern not only of the 1930s when Hitler was marching toward power, but to the
Comintern of the early 1920s, before Stalin had consolidated his power. All the
Bolsheviks to one extent or another suffered from this ideological deviation: Stalin and
Trotsky had a bad case of it, so did Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev.
What form did this "economism" take? Poulantzas argues that the Third International
suffered in its infancy from "economic catastrophism", a particularly virulent form of
this ideological deviation. What happened, you see, is that the Communists relied too
heavily on Lenin's "Imperialism, the Latest Stage of Capitalism". Lenin's pamphlet
portrayed capitalism as being on its last legs, a moribund, exhausted economic system
that was hanging on the ropes like a beaten prize-fighter. All the proletariat had to do
was give the capitalist system one last sharp punch in the nose and it would fall to the
canvas.
If capitalism was in its death-agony, then fascism was the expression of the weakness
of the system in its terminal stages. Poulantzas observes:
"The blindness of both the PCI and KPD leaders in this respect is staggering. Fascism,
according to them, would only be a 'passing episode' in the revolutionary process.
Umberto Terracini wrote in Inprekorr, just after the march on Rome, that fascism was at
most a passing 'ministerial crisis'. Amadeo Bordiga, introducing the resolution on
fascism at the Fifth Congress, declared that all hat had happened in Italy was 'a change
in the governmental team of the bourgeoisie'. The presidium of the Comintern executive
committee noted, just after Hitler's accession to power: 'Hitler's Germany is heading for
ever more inevitable economic catastrophe...The momentary calm after the victory of
fascism is only a passing phenomenon. The wave of revolution will rise inescapably
Germany despite the fascist terror..."
Now Poulantzas is correct to point out this aspect of the Comintern's inability to
challenge and defeat fascism. Yes, it is "economic catastrophism" that clouded its
vision. We must ask is this all there is to the problem? If Lenin's pamphlet had not
swept the Communists off their feet, could they have gotten a better handle on the
situation?
Unfortunately, the failure of the Comintern to provide an adequate explanation of
fascism and a strategy to defeat it goes much deeper than this. The problem is that
Stalin was rapidly in the process of rooting out Marxism from the Communist Party in the
*very early* stages of the Comintern. Stalin's supporters were already intimidating and
silencing Marxists in 1924, the year of the Fifth Congress of the Comintern.
>From around that time forward, the debate in the Comintern was not between a wide
range of Marxist opinion. The debate only included the rightist followers of Bukharin and
Stalin, the cagey spokesman for the emerging bureaucracy. The Soviet secret police and
Stalin's goons were suppressing the Left Opposition. Shortly, Stalin would jail or kill
its members. So when Poulantzas refers to the "Comintern", he is referring to a rump
formation that bore faint resemblance to the Communist International of the heroic, early
days of the Russian Revolution.
When Stalin took power, the Comintern became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy
and Communist Parties tried to emulate the internal shifts of the Soviet party. The
ultraleft, third period of the German Communist Party mirrored the extreme turn taken by
Stalin against Bukharin and the right Communists in the late 1920s. Bukharin was for
appeasement of the kulaks and, by the same token, class-collaborationist alliances with
the national bourgeoisie of various countries. Stalin had embraced this policy when it
was convenient.
When Stalin broke with Bukharin, he turned sharply to the ultraleft and dumped the
rightist leadership of the Comintern. He replaced it with his lackeys who were all to
happy to march in lock-step to the lunatic left. The German CP went to the head of the
pack during this period by attacking the social democrats as being "social fascists".
Poulantzas maintains that the Kremlin did not have a master-puppet relationship to the
Communist Parties internationally. Since the evidence to the contrary is rather
mountainous, his explanations take on a labored academic cast that are in sharp
contradistinction to his usually lucid prose. It also brings out the worst of his Maoist
mumbo- jumbo:
"To sum up: the general line which was progressively dominant in the USSR and in the
Comintern can allow us to make a relatively clear [!] periodization of the Comintern, a
periodization which can also be very useful for the history of the USSR. But this is
insufficient. For example, we have seen how the Comintern's Sixth (1928) and Seventh
(1935) Congresses cannot be interpreted on the model of a pendulum (left
opportunism/right opportunism), but that there is no simple continuity between them
either. That corroborates the view that the turn in Soviet policy in relationship to the
peasantry as a whole was not a simple, internal, 'ultra-left' turn. But it will be
impossible to make a deeper analysis of this problem in relation to the Comintern until
we have exactly established what was the real process involving the Soviet bourgeoisie
[Don't forget, gang, this is 1968] during the period of the class struggle in the USSR --
which was considerably more than a simple struggle of the proletariat and poor peasants
against the kulaks."
As Marxists, we should always avoid the temptation to resort to "deterministic" types
of analysis. Poulantzas, the Althusserian, would never yield to such temptation. That is
why refuses to make a connection between the ultraleft attack on the peasantry within the
Soviet Union and the ultraleft turn internationally. I am afraid, however, that no other
analysis makes any sense. Sometimes, a cigar is simply a cigar. Stalin, the
quintessential bureaucrat seems only capable of lurching either to the extreme left or
extreme right. His errors reflect an inability to project working-class, i.e., Marxist,
solutions to political problems. By concentrating such enormous power in his hands, he
guaranteed that every shift he took, the Communist Parties internationally would
follow.
Ideology plays much too much of a role in the Poulantzas scheme of things. The
Comintern messed up because it put Lenin on a pedestal. He also says that the bourgeoisie
supported fascism because it too was in a deep ideological crisis. What does Poulantzas
have to say about the German working-class? What does he say about the parties of the
working-class? Could ideological confusion explain their weakness in face of the Nazi
threat? You bet.
Poulantzas alleges that the rise of fascism in Germany corresponds to an ideological
crisis of the revolutionary organizations, which in turn coincided with an ideological
crisis within the working class. He says:
"Marxist-Leninist ideology was profoundly shaken within the working class: not only
did it fail to conquer the broad masses, but it was also forced back where it managed to
root itself. It is clear enough what happens when revolutionary organizations fail in
their ideological role of giving leadership on a mass line: particular forms of bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois ideology invade the void left by the retreat of Marxist- Leninist
ideology.
The influence of bourgeois ideology over the working class, in this situation of
ideological crisis, took the classic form of trade unionism and reformism. It can be
recognized not only in the survival, but also in the extending influence of social
democracy over the working class, through both the party and trade unions, all through
the rise of fascism. The advancing influence of social-democratic ideology was felt even
in those sections of the working class supporting the communist party."
Comrades, this is not what Lenin said! Lenin said that socialist consciousness has to
be brought into the working-class from the outside, from intellectuals who have mastered
Marxism. Not is it only what Lenin said, it is happily what makes sense. Workers *never*
rise above simple trade union consciousness.
When Poulantzas says that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology "invades" the
working-class, he is mixing things up hopelessly. This type of ideology has no need to
invade, it is *always* there. It is socialist ideas that are the anomaly, the
exception.
Workers have no privileged status in class society. The ruling ideas of any society
are the ideas of the ruling class. When Jon the railroad worker reports to this l*st
about the numbers of his co-workers who are for Perot, he is conveying the same truth
that is found in What is to be Done. The ideas that he supports are being "imported" into
the rail yards. That's the way it goes.
This also explains the murderous fanaticism of the Shining Path. When they witness the
"bourgeois" ideas of ordinary Peruvian workers, it is very tempting for them to put a
bullet in the brain of any of them who stand in their way. If Maoism posits ideology as
the enemy, no wonder they conceive of the class struggle as a struggle against impure
thoughts. The answer to impure thoughts, of course, is patient explanation. This is the
method of Marxism, the political philosophy of the working-class. Marxists try to resolve
contradictions by reaching a higher level of understanding. Sometimes, it can be
frustrating to put up with and work through these contradictions, but the alternative
only leads down the blind alley to sectarianism and fanaticism.
5. DELEUZE/GUATTARI ON FASCISM
In the translator's foreword to "A Thousand Plateaus", Brian Massumi tells us that the
philosopher Gilles Deleuze was prompted by the French worker-student revolt of 1968 to
question the role of the intellectual in society. Felix Guattari, his writing partner,
was a psychoanalyst who identified with R.D. Laing's antipsychiatry movement of the
1960's. Laing created group homes where schizophrenics were treated identically to the
sane, sort of like the Marxism list. Guattari also embraced the protests of 1968 and
discovered an intellectual kinship with Deleuze. Their first collaboration was the 1972
"Anti-Oedipus". Massumi interprets this work as a polemic against "State-happy or
pro-party versions of Marxism". "A Thousand Plateaus", written in 1987, is basically part
two of the earlier work. Deleuze and Guattari state that the two books make up a grand
opus they call "Capitalism and Schizophrenia".
I read the chapter "1933" in "A Thousand Plateaus" with as much concentration as I can
muster. Stylistically, it has a lot in common with philosophers inspired by Nietzsche. I
am reminded of some of the reading I did in Wyndham Lewis and Oswald Spengler in a
previous lifetime. These sorts of authors pride themselves in being able to weave
together strands from many different disciplines and hate being categorized. Within a few
pages you will see references to Kafka, American movies, Andre Gorz's theory of work and
Clausewitz's military writings.
Their approach to fascism is totally at odds with the approach we have been developing
in our cyberseminar. Thinkers such as Marx and Trotsky focus on the class dynamics of
bourgeois society. Bonapartism is rooted in the attempt of the French bourgeoisie in 1848
to stave off proletarian revolution. Trotsky explains fascism as a totalitarian last-
ditch measure to preserve private property when bourgeois democracy or the Bonapartist
state are failing.
Deleuze and Guattari see fascism as a permanent feature of social life. Class is not
so important to them. They are concerned with what they call "microfascism", the fascism
that lurks in heart of each and every one of us. When they talk about societies that were
swept by fascism, such as Germany, they totally ignore the objective social and economic
framework: depression, hyperinflation, loss of territory, etc.
This is wrong. Fascism is a product of objective historical factors, not shortcomings
in the human psyche or imperfections in the way society is structured. The way to prevent
fascism is not to have unfascist attitudes or live in unfascist communities, like the
hippies did in the 1960's. It is to confront the capitalist class during periods of
mounting crisis and win a socialist victory.
In a key description of the problem, they say, "The concept of the totalitarian State
applies only at the macropolitical level, to a rigid segmentarity and a particular mode
of totalization and centralization. But fascism is inseparable from a proliferation of
molecular focuses in interaction, which skip from point to point, before beginning to
resonate together in the National Socialist State. Rural fascism and city or neighborhood
fascism, youth fascism and war veteran's fascism, fascism of the Left and fascism of the
Right, fascism of the couple, family, school, and office: every fascism is defined by a
micro-black hole that stands on its own and communicates with the others, before
resonating in a great, generalized central black hole."
This is a totally superficial understanding of how fascism came about. What is Left
fascism? It is true that the Communist Party employed thuggish behavior on occasion
during the ultraleft "Third Period". They broke up meetings of small Trotskyist groups
while the Nazis were breaking up the meetings of trade unions or Communists. Does this
behavior equal left Fascism? Fascism is a class term. It describes a mass movement of the
petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to destroy all vestiges of the working-class movement. This
at least is the Marxist definition.
Fascism is not intolerance, bad attitudes, meanness or insensitivity. It is a violent,
procapitalist mass movement of the middle-class that employs socialist
phrase-mongering.
I want to conclude with a few words about Felix Guattari and Toni Negri's "Communists
like Us". Unlike Deleuze/Guattari's collaborations, this is a perfectly straightforward
political manifesto that puts forward a basic challenge to Marxism. It is deeply inspired
by a reading of the 1968 struggle in France as a mass movement for personal liberation.
Students and other peripheral sectors move into the foreground while workers become
secondary. It is as dated as Herbert Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man".
The pamphlet was written in 1985 but has the redolence of tie-dyed paisley, patchouli
oil and granny glasses. Get a whiff of this:
"Since the 1960's, new collective subjectivities have been affirmed in the dramas of
social transformation. We have noted what they owe to modifications in the organization
of work and to developments in socialization; we have tried to establish that the
antagonisms which they contain are no longer recuperable within the traditional horizon
of the political. But it remains to be demonstrated that the innovations of the '60s
should above all be understood within the universe of consciousnesses, of desires, and of
modes of behaviour."
I have some trouble understanding why Deleuze and Guattari are such big favorites with
some of my younger friends. My friend Catherine who works in the Dean of Studies office
at Barnard was wild about Derrida when I first met her four years ago. She started
showing more of an interest in Marxism after Derrida did. But she is not reading the 18th
Brumaire. She is reading Bataille, Deleuze/Guattari and Simone Weil. My guess is that a
lot of people from her milieu feel a certain nostalgia for the counterculture of the
1960's and in a funny sort of way, Deleuza/Guattari take that nostalgia and cater to it
but in an ultrasophisticated manner. They wouldn't bother with Paul Goodman and Charles
Reich, this crowd. But French and Italian theorists who write in a highly allusive and
self-referential manner: Like wow, man!
6. TOM WATSON
Tom Watson was born in Thompson, Georgia on September 5, 1856. His father owned 45
slaves and 1,372 acres of land on which he grew cotton. These assets put the Watson
family in the top third of the Georgian land-owning class, but not at the very top of the
slaveocracy.
The slave-owning class hated the Northern industrial class which had won the civil
war. The northerners brought an end to the old agrarian ways at the point of the bayonet
during reconstruction. The Yankee industrial capitalist sought free land and free labor.
This would allow him to commercially exploit the south and break up the older semi-
feudal relations.
Young Tom Watson hated what was happening to the south and joined the Democratic Party
soon after graduating college and starting a law profession. The Democrats in the south
formed the political resistance to the northern based Republicans. The "white man's
party" and the Democratic Party were terms used interchangeably.
Some of the southern capitalists aligned with the Democratic Party realized that the
future belonged to the northern capitalist class and joined forces with them. They became
avid partners in the commercial development of agriculture and the expansion of the
railroads throughout the south. Most of these southerners were connected with a newly
emerging finance capital, especially in the more forward- looking cities like Atlanta,
Georgia. Atlanta has always seen itself as representative of a "new south". It was to be
the first to end Jim Crow and it was the first to develop an intensive financial and
services-based infrastructure after WWII.
The intensive commercialization of the south impoverished many of the small and
mid-sized farmers who found themselves caught between the hammer and anvil of railroad,
retail store and bank. The banks charged exorbitant mortgages for land while the
railroads exacted steep fees for transporting grain and cotton. It often cost a farmer a
bushel of wheat just to bring a bushel of wheat to market. The retail stores charged high
prices for manufactured goods and were often owned behind the scenes by bank or
railroad.
Tom Watson identified with the exploited farmers who had begun to organize themselves
into a group called the Farmer's Alliance, which started in Texas but soon spread
throughout the south in the 1880's. The Alliance was determined to defend the interests
of small farmers against the juggernaut of bank, railroad and retail entrepreneur. The
Alliance evolved into the People's Party, the original version of the populists, a term
that is much overused today.
In this emerging class conflict, what side would a Marxist support? After all, didn't
Marx support the Yankees in the Civil War? Didn't the north represent industrialization,
progress and modernization? Wasn't the Alliance simply a continuation of the old
agricultural system?
When Tom Watson joined the Alliance cause, his words would not give a modernizer much
encouragement. He said, "Let there come once more to Southern heart and Southern brain
the Resolve--waste places built up. In the rude shock of civil war that dream perished.
Like victims of some horrid nightmare, we have moved ever since--
powerless--oppressed--shackled--".
The Alliance, like the Democratic Party in the south, was for white people only. The
leader of the Alliance in Texas, Charles Macune, was an outspoken racist.
A preliminary Marxist judgment on the Populists would be negative, wouldn't it, since
their nostalgia for the old south is reactionary. Their roots in the Democratic Party,
the "white man's party" would also make them suspect. Finally, why would Marxists support
the antiquated agrarian life-style of small farmers against the northern capitalist class
and their "new south" allies?
This snap judgment would fail to take into account the brutal transformations that
were turning class relations upside down in the south. As farmers became pauperized by
the commercial interests, many became share-croppers who had everything in common with
the impoverished Okies depicted by John Steinbeck in the "Grapes of Wrath". Others became
wage laborers on plantations, while others entered the industrial proletariat itself in
the towns and cities of the "new south". The class interests of these current and former
petty- bourgeois layers were arrayed against the big bourgeoisie of the south and
north.
This impoverished white farmers found itself joined in dire economic circumstances
with black farmers who had recently been freed from slavery, but who remained
share-croppers for the most part. Those with a pessimistic view of human nature might
assume that white and black farmer remained divided and weak. After all, doesn't racial
solidarity supersede class interest again and again in American history?
The Populists defied expectations, however. They united black and white farmers and
fought valiantly against Wall St. and their southern partners throughout the 1890's and
nearly succeeded in becoming a permanent third party.
At their founding convention, the delegates to the People's Party adopted a program
which included the following demands:
"The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation; we meet in the midst
of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption
dominates the ballot-box, the legislature, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of
the bench. The people are demoralized...
We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great
political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon
the suffering people...
The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people,
and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land
should be prohibited.
All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs,
and all lands owned by aliens [i.e., absentee landlords] should be reclaimed by the
government and held for actual settlers only."
This program galvanized millions of farmers into action. They joined the People's
Party and elected local, state and federal politicians including Tom Watson himself who
went to Congress and spoke forcefully for the interests of small farmers.
Watson also was one of the Populist leaders who saw most clearly the need for
black-white unity. Watson framed his appeal this way:
"Now the People's Party says to these two men, 'You are kept apart that you may be
separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that
hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.
You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a
monetary system which beggars both.'"
Watson spoke out forcefully against lynching, nominated a black man to his state
executive committee and often spoke from the same platform with black populists to mixed
audiences.
The Populists were a real threat to the capitalist system. While they did not advocate
socialist solutions, they objectively defended the interests of both poor farmer and
working-class. In many states in the west and north, populist farmers began to form ties
with the newly emerging Knights of Labor. Both populist farmer and northern worker saw
Wall St. as the enemy.
How and why did the populists disappear?
Watson became the Vice Presidential running-mate of the Democratic nominee William
Jennings Bryan in 1896. Bryan had the reputation of being some kind of populist radical,
but nothing could be further from the truth. He was the first in a long line of
Democratic Party "progressives" who fooled the mass movement into thinking that the party
could accommodate their needs.
Bryan did support the adoption of the silver standard (this was favored by farmers who
sought more plentiful currency in expectation that this would bring down prices), but was
cool to the rest of the populist demands. He had no use especially for any anti-corporate
measures.
The populists were fooled into supporting Bryan, but the Democrats knew who their
class-enemy was. Throughout the south, armed thugs destroyed populist party headquarters
and terrorized party members. The combination of Bryan's co-optation and violence at the
street level took the momentum out of this movement.
In a few short years, other factors served to dampen farmer radicalism. There was a
European crop failure and American farmers were able to sell their goods at a higher
price. Also, the United States started to develop as an imperial power through its
conquest of the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The material and psychological
benefits of these new colonies tended to mute class-consciousness among worker and farmer
alike.
The populists dissolved slowly as the twentieth century approached. Some activists
became members of the Progressive Party, while others joined Deb's Socialist Party. The
working-class began to emerge as more of a self-aware, insurgent force in its own right,
especially in its drive to form unions.
What lessons can be drawn about the People's Party? At the very least, it should teach
us that politics can often be unpredictable. Who would imagine that the son of a
slave-owner would end up as a defender of black rights nearly a century before the civil
rights movement?
As we move forward in our study of fascism, and especially as we come close to the
period when Black Nationalism and the militias show up, let us take care to look at a
movement's class dynamics rather than the words of one or another leader. Marxism is
suited to analysis of social forces in formation and development. It is ideally suited to
understanding the types of rapid changes that are beginning to appear on the American
political landscape.
7. PAT BUCHANAN AND AMERICAN FASCISM
The United States in the 1930s became a battleground between industrial workers and
the capitalist class over whether workers would be able to form industrial unions. There
had been craft unions for decades, but only industrial unions could fight for all of the
workers in a given plant or industry. This fight had powerful revolutionary implications
since the captains of heavy industry required a poorly paid, docile work-force in order
to maximize profits in the shattered capitalist economy. There were demonstrations,
sit-down strikes and even gun-fights led by the Communist Party and other left groups to
establish this basic democratic right.
Within this political context, fascist groups began to emerge. They drew their
inspiration from Mussolini's fascists or Hitler's brown- shirts. In a time of severe
social crisis, groups of petty-bourgeois and lumpen elements begin to coalesce around
demagogic leaders. They employ "radical" sounding rhetoric but in practice seek out
working- class organizations to intimidate and destroy. One such fascist group was the
Silver Shirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In chapter eleven of "Teamster Politics", SWP leader Farrell Dobbs recounts "How the
Silver Shirts Lost Their Shrine in Minneapolis". It is the story of how Local 544 of the
Teamsters union, led by Trotskyists, defended itself successfully from a fascist
expedition into the city. Elements of the Twin Cities ruling-class, alarmed over the
growth of industrial unionism in the city, called in Silver Shirt organizer Roy Zachary.
Zachary hosted two closed door meetings on July 29 and August 2 of 1938. Teamster "moles"
discovered that Zachary intended to launch a vigilante attack against Local 544
headquarters. They also discovered that Zachary planned to work with one F.L. Taylor to
set up an "Associated Council of Independent Unions", a union-busting operation. Taylor
had ties to a vigilante outfit called the "Minnesota Minute Men".
Local 544 took serious measures to defend itself. It formed a union defense guard in
August 1938 open to any active union member. Many of the people who joined had military
experience, including Ray Rainbolt the elected commander of the guard. Rank-and-filers
were former sharpshooters, machine gunners and tank operators in the US Army. The guard
also included one former German officer with WWI experience. While the guard itself did
not purchase arms except for target practice, nearly every member had hunting rifles at
home that they could use in the circumstance of a Silver Shirt attack.
Events reached a climax when Pelley came to speak at a rally in the wealthy section of
Minneapolis.
Ray Rainbolt organized a large contingent of defense guard members to pay a visit to
Calhoun Hall where Pelley was to make his appearance. The powerful sight of disciplined
but determined unionists persuaded the audience to go home and Pelley to cancel his
speech.
This was the type of conflict taking place in 1938. A capitalist class bent on taming
workers; fascist groups with a documented violent, anti-labor record; industrial workers
in motion: these were the primary actors in that period. It was characteristic of the
type of class conflict that characterized the entire 1930s. It is useful to keep this in
mind when we speak about McCarthyism.
WWII abolished a number of major contradictions in global capital while introducing
others. The United States emerged as the world's leading capitalist power and took
control economically and politically of many of the former colonies of the exhausted
European powers. Inter-imperialist rivalries and contradictions seemed to be a thing of
the past. England was the U.S.'s junior partner. The defeated Axis powers, Germany and
Japan, were under Washington's thumb. France retained some independence. (To this day
France continues to act as if it were an equal partner of the US, detonating nuclear
weapons in the Pacific or talking back to NATO over policies in Bosnia.)
Meanwhile the USSR survived the war bloodied but unbowed. In a series of negotiations
with the US and its allies, Stalin won the right to create "buffer" states to his West. A
whole number of socialist countries then came into being. China and Yugoslavia had
deep-going proletarian revolutions that, joined with the buffer states, would soon
account for more than 1/4 of the world's population.
World imperialism took an aggressive stance toward the socialist bloc before the smoke
had cleared from the WWII battlegrounds. Churchill made his "cold war" speech and
contradictions between the socialist states and world capitalism grew very sharp.
Imperialism began using the same type of rhetoric and propaganda against the USSR that it
had used against the Nazis. Newreels of the early fifties would depict a spreading red
blot across the European continent. This time the symbol superimposed on the blot was a
hammer-and-sickle instead of a swastika. The idea was the same: to line up the American
people against the enemy overseas that was trying to gobble up the "free world".
A witch-hunt in the United States, sometimes called McCarthyism, emerged in the United
States from nearly the very moment the cold war started. The witch-hunt would serve to
eradicate domestic opposition to the anti-Communist crusade overseas. The witch-hunters
wanted to root up and eradicate all sympathy to the USSR. President Harry Truman, a
Democrat and New Dealer, started the anticommunist crusade. He introduced the first
witch-hunt legislation, a bill that prevented federal employees from belonging to
"subversive" organizations. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower took office, he simply kept
the witch-hunt going. The McCarthy movement per se emerges out of a reactionary climate
created by successive White House administrations, Democrat and Republican alike.
I will argue that a similar dynamic has existed in US politics over the past twenty
years. Instead of having a "cold war" against the socialist countries, we have had a
"cold war" on the working-class and its allies. James Carter, a Democrat, set into motion
the attack on working people and minorities, while successive Republican and Democratic
administrations have continued to stoke the fire. Reaganism is Carterism raised to a
higher level. All Buchanan represents is the emergence of a particularly reactionary
tendency within this overall tendency toward the right.
Attacks on the working-class and minorities have nothing to do with "bad faith" on the
part of people like William Clinton. We are dealing with a global restructuring of
capital that will be as deep-going in its impact on class relations internationally as
the cold war was in its time. The cold war facilitated the removal of the Soviet Union as
a rival. Analogously, the class war on working people in the advanced capitalist
countries that began in the Carter years facilitates capital's next new expansion.
Capitalism is a dynamic system. This dynamism includes not only war and "downsizing", it
also includes fabulous growth in places like the East Coast of China. To not see this is
to not understand capitalism.
"The United States, the most powerful capitalist country in history, is a component
part of the world capitalist system and is subject to the same general laws. It suffers
from the same incurable diseases and is destined to share the same fate. The overwhelming
preponderance of American imperialism does not exempt it from the decay of world
capitalism, but, on the contrary, acts to involve it even more deeply, inextricably and
hopelessly. US capitalism can no more escape from the revolutionary consequences of world
capitalist decay than the older European capitalist powers. The blind alley in which
world capitalism has arrived, and the US with it, excludes a new organic era of
capitalist stabilization. The dominant world position of American imperialism now
accentuates and aggravates the death agony of capitalism as a whole."
This appears in an article in the April 5, 1954 Militant titled "First Principles in
the Struggle Against Fascism". It is of course based on a totally inaccurate
misunderstanding of the state of global capital. Capitalism was not in a "blind alley" in
1954. The truth is that from approximately 1946 on capitalism went through the most
sustained expansion in its entire history. To have spoken about the "death agony" of
capitalism in 1954 was utter nonsense. This "catastrophism" could only serve to misorient
the left since it did not put McCarthyism in proper context.
One of the great contributions made by Nicos Poulantzas in his "Fascism and the Third
International" was his diagnosis of the problem of "catastrophism". According to
Poulantzas, the belief that capitalism has reached a "blind alley" first appeared in the
Comintern of the early 1920's. He blames this on a dogmatic approach to Lenin's
"Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism" that existed in a communist movement that
was all too eager to deify the dead revolutionist.
Lenin's theory of imperialism owed much to Hilferding and Bukharin who believed that
capitalism was moribund and incapable of generating new technical and industrial growth.
Moreover, this capitalist system was in a perpetual crisis and wars were inevitable. The
Comintern latched onto this interpretation and adapted it to the phenomenon of fascism.
Fascism, in addition to war, was also a permanent feature of the decaying capitalist
system. A system that had reached such an impasse was a system that was in a permanent
catastrophic mode. The Comintern said that it was five minutes to midnight.
The SWP's version of catastrophism did not allow it to see McCarthy's true mission.
This mission was not to destroy the unions and turn the United States into a totalitarian
state. It was rather a mission to eliminate radical dissent against the stepped-up attack
on the USSR, its allies and revolutionary movements in the third world. The witch- hunt
targeted radicals in the unions, the schools, the State Department, the media and
elsewhere. After the witch-hunt had eradicated all traces of radical opinion, the US
military could fight its imperialist wars without interference from the left. This is
exactly what took place during the Korean War. There were no visible signs of dissent
except in the socialist press and in some liberal publications like I.F. Stone's
Newsletter. This clamp-down on dissent lasted until the Vietnam war when a newly
developing radicalization turned the witch-hunt back for good.
In the view of the SWP, nothing basically had changed since the 1930's. The target of
McCarthyite "fascism" was the working-class and its unions. The Militant stated on
January 18, 1954:
"If the workers' organizations don't have the answer, the fascists will utilize the
rising discontent of the middle class, its disgust with the blundering labor leadership,
and its frenzy at being ruined economically, to build a mass fascist movement with armed
detachments and hurl them at the unions. While spouting a lot of radical-sounding
demagogy they will deflect the anti-capitalist wrath of the middle class and deploy it
against labor, and establish the iron- heel dictatorship of Big Capital on the smoking
ruins of union halls."
One wonders if the party leadership in 1954 actually knew any middle- class people,
since party life consisted of a "faux proletarian" subculture with tenuous ties to
American society. Certainly they could have found out about the middle-class on the newly
emerging TV situation comedies like "Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver". Rather
than expressing "rising discontent" or "frenzy", the middle- class was taking advantage
of dramatic increases in personal wealth. Rather than plotting attacks on union halls
like the Silver Shirts did in 1938, they were moving to suburbia, buying televisions and
station wagons, and taking vacations in Miami Beach or Europe. This was not only
objectively possible for the average middle-class family, it was also becoming possible
for the worker in basic industry. For the very same reason the working-class was not
gravitating toward socialism, the middle-class was not gravitating toward fascism. This
reason, of course, is that prosperity had become general.
The other day Ryan Daum posted news of the death of Pablo, a leader of the Trotskyist
movement in the 1950s. European Trotskyism is generally much less dogmatic than its
American and English cousins. While the party leadership in the United States hated Pablo
with a passion, rank and filers often found themselves being persuaded by some ideas put
forward by the Europeans.
One of these differences revolved around how to assess McCarthy. The party leadership
viewed McCarthy as a fascist while a minority grouping led by Dennis Vern and Samuel Ryan
based in Los Angeles challenged this view. Unfortunately I was not able to locate
articles in which the minority defends its view. What I will try to do is reconstruct
this view through remarks directed against them by Joseph Hansen, a party leader. This is
a risky method, but the only one available to me.
Vern and Ryan criticize the Militant's narrow focus on the McCarthyite threat. They
say, "The net effect of this campaign is not to hurt McCarthy, or the bourgeois state,
but to excuse the bourgeois state for the indisputable evidences of its bourgeois
character, and thus hinder the proletariat in its understanding that the bourgeois-
democratic state is an 'executive committee' of the capitalist class, and that only a
workers state can offer an appropriate objective for the class struggle."
I tend to discount statements like "only a workers state" since they function more as
a mantra than anything else ("only socialism can end racism"; "only socialism can end
sexism"-- you get the picture.) However, there is something interesting being said here.
By singling out McCarthy, didn't the SWP "personalize" the problems the left was facing?
A Democratic president initiated the witch-hunt, not a fascist minded politician. Both
capitalist parties created the reactionary movement out of which McCarthy emerges. By the
same token, doesn't the narrow focus on Buchanan today tend to lift some of the pressure
on William Clinton. After all, if our problem is Buchanan, then perhaps it makes sense to
throw all of our weight behind Clinton.
Vern and Ryan also offer the interesting observation that McCarthy has been less
anti-union than many bourgeois politicians to his left. The liberal politicians railed
against McCarthy's assault on civil liberties, but meanwhile endorsed all sorts of
measures that would have weakened the power of the American trade union movement.
This was an interesting perception that has some implications I will attempt to
elucidate. McCarthy did not target the labor movement as such because the post WWII
social contract between labor and big business was essentially class-collaborationist.
The union movement would keep its mouth shut about foreign interventions in exchange for
higher wages, job security, etc. Social peace at home accompanied and eased the way of US
capitalist expansionism overseas. The only obstacle to this social contract was the
ideological left, those members of the union movement, the media, etc. They were all
possible supporters of the Vietminh and other liberation movements. McCarthy wanted to
purge the union movement of these elements, but not destroy the union movement itself.
Turning our clock forward to 1996, does anybody think that Buchanan intends to break the
power of the US working-class? Does big business need Buchanan when the Arkansas
labor-hater is doing such a great job?
The SWP has had a tremendous attraction toward "catastrophism". Turning the clock
forward from 1954 to 1988, we discover resident genius Jack Barnes telling a gathering of
the faithful that capitalism finally is in the eleventh hour. In a speech on "What the
1987 Stock Market Crash Foretold", he says:
"Neither past sources of rapid capital accumulation nor other options can enable the
imperialist ruling classes to restore the long-term accelerating accumulation of world
capitalism and avert an international depression and general social crisis....
"The period in the history of capitalist development that we are living through today
is heading toward intensified class battles on a national and international scale,
including wars and revolutionary situations. In order to squeeze out more wealth from the
labor of exploited producers....
"Before the exploiters can unleash a victorious reign of reaction [i.e., fascism],
however, the workers will have the first chance. The mightiest class battles of human
history will provide the workers and exploited farmers in the United States and many
other countries the opportunity to place revolutionary situations on the order of the
day."
Someone should have thrown a glass of cold water in the face of this guru before he
made this speech. He predicted depression, but the financial markets ignored him. The
stock market recovered from the 1987 crash and has now shot up to over 5000 points. His
statement that nothing could have averted an international depression shows that he much
better qualified at plotting purges than plotting out the development of capital
accumulation.
His statement that the "period in the history of capitalist development that we are
living through" is heading toward wars and revolution takes the word "period" and strips
it of all meaning. Nine years have passed and there is neither depression nor general
social crisis. Is a decade sufficient to define a period? I think all of us can benefit
from Jack Barnes' catastrophism if we simply redefine what a period is. Let us define it
as a hundred years, then predictions of our Nostradamus might begin to make sense.
Unfortunately, the art of politics consists of knowing what to do next and predictions of
such a sweeping nature are worthless.
Sally Ryan posted an article from the Militant newspaper the other day. It states that
Buchanan is a fascist:
"Buchanan is not primarily out to win votes, nor was he four years ago. He has set out
to build a cadre of those committed to his program and willing to act in the streets to
carry it out. He dubs his supporters the 'Buchanan Brigades'....
"Commenting on the tone of a recent speech Buchanan gave to the New Hampshire
legislature, Republican state representative Julie Brown, said, 'It's just mean - like a
little Mussolini.'....
"While he is not about to get the Republican nomination, Buchanan is serious in his
campaign. The week before his Louisiana win, he came in first in a straw poll of Alaska
Republicans and placed third in polls in New Hampshire, where the first primary election
will be held. He is building a base regardless of how the vote totals continue to fall.
And he poses the only real alternative that can be put forward within the capitalist
system to the like-sounding Clinton and Dole - a fascist alternative."
These quotations tend to speak for a rather wide-spread analysis of Buchanan that a
majority of the left supports, including my comrades on this list.
I want to offer a counter-analysis:
1) We are in a period of quiescence, not class confrontation.
Comrades, this is the good news and the bad news. It is good news because there is no
threat of a fascist movement coming to power. It is bad news because it reflects how
depoliticized the US working-class remains.
There is no fascist movement in the United States of any size or significance. It is
time to stop talking about the militias of Montana. Let us speak instead of New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. Has there been any growth of fascism? Of course
not. In New York, my home town, there is no equivalent of the German- American bund, the
fascists of the 1930s who had a base on New York's upper east side, my neighborhood.
There are no attacks on socialist or trade union meetings. There are not even attacks
on movements of allies of the working-class. The women's movement, the black movement,
the Central American movement organize peacefully and without interference for the simple
reason that there are no violent gangs to subdue them.
The reason there are no violent gangs of fascists is the same as it was in the 1950s.
We are not in a period of general social crisis. There are no frenzied elements of the
petty-bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat being drawn into motion by demagogic and
charismatic leaders like Mussolini or Hitler. There are no Silver Shirts that the labor
or socialist movement needs protection from.
There is another key difference from the 1930s that we must consider. Capital and
labor battled over the rights of labor within the prevailing factory system. Capitalism
has transformed that factory system. Workers who remain in basic industry are not
fighting for union representation. They simply want to keep their jobs. Those who remain
employed will not tend to enter into confrontations with capital as long as wages and
benefits retain a modicum of acceptability. That is the main reason industrial workers
tend to be quiescent and will remain so for some time to come.
In the 1930s, workers occupied huge factories and battled the bosses over the right to
a union. The bosses wanted to keep these factories open and strikes tended to take on a
militant character in these showdowns. Strike actions tended to draw the working-class
together and make it easier for socialists to get a hearing. This was because strikes
were much more like mass actions and gave workers a sense of their power. The logical
next step, according to the socialists, was trade union activity on a political level
and, ultimately, rule by the workers themselves.
The brunt of the attack today has been downsizing and runaway capital. This means that
working people have a fear of being unemployed more than anything else. This fear grips
the nation. When a worker loses a job today, he or she tends to look for personal
solutions: a move to another city, signing up for computer programming classes, etc.
Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" vividly illustrated this type of personal approach Every
unemployed auto worker in this film was trying to figure out a way to solve their
problems on their own.
In the face of the atomization of the US working class, it is no surprise that many
workers seem to vote for Buchanan. He offers them a variant on the personal solution. A
worker may say to himself or herself, "Ah, this Buchanan's a racist bigot, but he's the
only one who seems to care about what's happening to me. I'll take a gamble and give him
my vote." Voting is not politics. It is the opposite of politics. It is the capitalist
system's mechanism for preventing political action.
2) Buchanan is a bourgeois politician.
Pat Buchanan represents the thinking of an element of the US ruling class, and views
the problems of the United States from within that perspective. Buchanan's nationalism
relates very closely to the nationalism of Ross Perot, another ruling class
politician.
A consensus exists among the ruling class that US capital must take a global route.
The capitalist state must eliminate trade barriers and capital must flow to where there
is greatest possibility for profit. Buchanan articulates the resentments of a section of
the bourgeoisie that wants to resist this consensus. It would be an interesting project
to discover where Buchanan gets his money. This would be a more useful of one's time than
comparing his speeches to Father Coughlin or Benito Mussolini's.
There are no parties in the United States in the European sense. In Europe, where
there is a parliamentary system, people speak for clearly defined programs and are
responsible to clearly defined constituencies. In the United States, politics revolves
around "winner take all" campaigns. This tends to put a spotlight on presidential
elections and magnify the statements of candidates all out of proportion.
Today we have minute textual analysis of what Buchanan is saying. His words take on a
heightened, almost ultra-real quality. Since he is in a horse race, the press tends to
worry over each and every inflammatory statement he makes. This tends to give his
campaign a more threatening quality than is supported by the current state of class
relations in the United States.
3) The way to fight Buchanan is by developing a class alternative.
The left needs a candidate who is as effective as Buchanan in drawing class lines.
The left has not been able to present an alternative to Buchanan. It has been making
the same kinds of mistakes that hampered the German left in the 1920s: ultraleft
sectarianism and opportunism. Our "Marxist-Leninist" groups, all 119 of them, offer
themselves individually as the answer to Pat Buchanan. Meanwhile, social democrats and
left-liberals at the Nation magazine and elsewhere are preparing all the reasons one can
think of to vote for the "lesser evil".
What the left needs to do is coalesce around a class-based, militant program. The left
has not yet written this program, despite many assurances to the contrary we can hear on
this list every day. It will have to be in the language of the American people, not in
Marxist- Leninist jargon. Some people know how speak effectively to working people. I
include Michael Moore the film-maker. I also include people like our own Doug Henwood,
and Alex Cockburn and his co-editor Ken Silverstein who put out a newsletter called
"Counterpunch".
Most of all, the model we need is like Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Party of the
turn of the century, minus the right-wing. Study the speeches of Debs and you get an idea
of the kind of language we need to speak. Our mission today remains the same as it was in
turn of the century Russia: to build a socialist party where none exists.
So what happened following the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
The United States dispatched a cabal of cutthroat economists to Moscow to assist in the
"shock therapy" campaign that collapsed the social safety net, savaged pensions, increased
unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and alcoholism by many orders of magnitude,
accelerated the slide to privatization that fueled a generation of voracious oligarchs, and
sent the real economy plunging into an excruciating long-term depression.
Basically the NWO mafia saw that there was an opportunity to loot the place and they did
it – gaining ownership – and stripping everything of value out of the place.
If the US public had the sense to realize it, it's the same as is currently happening to
them.
At the same time Washington's agents were busy looting Moscow, NATO was moving its
troops, armored divisions and missile sites closer to Russia's border in clear violation of
promises that were made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to move its military "one inch east".
Yeah, yeah . . . This reminds me of that line from Animal House: "Face it Kent, you fucked
up. You trusted us."
This was small beer in term's of betrayals the Russians have endured. What I've always
liked about them is that they aren't bellyachers, like the Iranians are at the moment.
Ignore Western Media on Putin. He remains The Indispensable Man for Russia so he isn't
going anywhere for the moment. I'm sure he'd love to become the Russian version of Deng but
that's going to take a lot of preparatory work for him to get there.
@Huxley Very true and this idea that man sets himself at the top of the creation is
exactly the philosophy of "Human Rights", the Masonic model imposed through the UN to the
whole world.
This ideology was launched by Freemasonry during the "Enlightenment", in the 18th century. It
produced the Masonic French Revolution, the Masonic US republic and later the concept of
"democracy".
Published in 1899 by Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany: Liberalism is a sin. This is from a Catholic
priest, but we all share the same enemy. http://www.liberalismisasin.com/
@9/11 Inside job What cult of personality? There isn't one. People mostly like the
decisions he makes, not because he makes them, but because they agree with them.
As to Chabad Lubavitch, Putin is a politician – he mingles with Christians, Jews and
Muslims. As evil as Chabad Lubavitch is, Putin also mingles with the Saudi Barbarians. It's
hardly proof they control him.
Go find something real, you are making a fool of yourself spreading baseless propaganda.
Next you will tell us about the $583 trillion he has stashed away, so he can use it,
secretly, after he retires from his life-long dictatorship.
Where Judis is on more solid ground, it seems to me, is in his reminder that liberals should
not be too dismissive of nationalism, since nationalism, "by itself, is neither good nor evil,
liberal nor conservative."
You wouldn't know it from the way the term is tossed about in
popular discourse, but as a historical matter this is more or less incontestable: The
nationalism of Donald Trump is only one of many varieties.
It's not the nationalism that
emerged amidst the French Revolution, as part of an attempt to make sense of the revolutionary
doctrine of popular sovereignty. Neither is it the anti-colonial nationalism marshaled to
support a range of twentieth-century independence movements. Nor is it rooted in philosophical
ruminations on the identity-shaping role played by language, or culture, or history -- any one
of which could be associated with a range of thinkers who would be appalled by the MAGA-hat
crowd.
Recognizing nationalism's protean nature is, in fact, a first step toward what might be a
productive exercise for anybody hoping to revitalize the left at this moment in history. Assume
that, at least over the short and medium term, the current global system of bordered
nation-states is not going to disappear (even if it is undergoing transformation). And assume
that, for many people, everyday thought and behavior will adhere to (largely unconscious)
scripts that serve to locate them in particular settings, communities, associations, and so
on.
Given these realities, what kind of collective self-understandings would it be useful
to promote? American history doesn't lack for precedents; there are left-nationalist themes in
texts like the Gettysburg Address, in FDR's 1936 nomination speech (the one featuring his
denunciation of "economic royalists"), and in Martin Luther King Jr.'s metaphor of a
promissory note .
Samuel H. Beer, one of the twentieth century's leading scholars of
American politics, once described the great moments of American reform as responses to
crises of
nationhood : "[T]he crisis of sectionalism, culminating in the Civil War; the crisis of
industrialism, culminating in the Great Depression and the New Deal; and the crisis of racism,
which continues to rack our country."
In Beer's view, these moments of active reform
counteracted destructive centrifugal forces; they made the nation "
more of a nation ." This emphasis on "making" a nation through
politics is a good reminder that nations were not found, but invented; they are not immune to
political refashioning. And if they're unlikely to disappear anytime soon, it might be a good
idea to start thinking about which kinds we can live with.
"... Yet it took until 1860 for the UK to fully embrace free trade, and even then the unpalatable historical record is that during this 'golden age', the British: Destroyed the Indian textile industry to benefit their own cloth manufacturers; Started the Opium Wars to balance UK-China trade by selling China addictive drugs; Ignored the Irish Potato Famine and continued to allow Irish wheat exports; Forced Siam (Thailand) to open up its economy to trade with gunboats (as the US did with Japan); and Colonized much of Africa and Asia. ..."
"... Regardless, the first flowering of free trade collapsed back into nationalism and protectionism - bloodily so in 1914. Free trade was tried again from 1919 - but burned-out even more bloodily in the 1930s and 1940s. After WW2, most developed countries had moderately free trade - but most developing countries did not. We only started to re-embrace global free trade from the 1990s onwards when the Cold War ended and here it is under stress again. In short, only around 100 years in a total of 5,000 years of civilization has seen real global free trade, it has failed twice already, and it is once again coming under pressure. ..."
"... Of course, this doesn't mean liked-minded groups of countries with similar-enough or sympathetic-enough economies and politics should avoid free trade: clearly for some states it can work out nicely - even if within the EU one could argue there are also underlying strains. However, it is a huge stretch to assume a one-size-fits-all free trade policy will always work best for all countries, as some would have it. That is a fairy tale. History shows it wasn't the case; national security concerns show it can never always be the case; and Ricardo argues this logically won't be the case. ..."
"When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!" (Alice
in Wonderland, Chapter 4, The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill)
Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank
2020 starts with markets feeling optimistic due to a US-China trade deal and a reworked NAFTA in the form of the USMCA. However,
the tide towards protectionism may still be coming in, not going out.
The intellectual appeal of the basis for free trade, Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, where Portugal specializes in
wine, and the UK in cloth, is still clearly there. Moreover, trade has always been a beneficial and enriching part of human culture.
Yet the fact is that for the majority of the last 5,000 years global trade has been highly-politicized and heavily-regulated . Indeed,
global free-trade only began following the abolition of the UK Corn Laws in 1846, which reduced British agricultural tariffs, brought
in European wheat and corn, and allowed the UK to maximize its comparative advantage in industry.
Yet it took until 1860 for the UK to fully embrace free trade, and even then the unpalatable historical record is that during
this 'golden age', the British:
Destroyed the Indian textile industry to benefit their own cloth manufacturers;
Started the Opium Wars to balance UK-China trade by selling China addictive drugs;
Ignored the Irish Potato Famine and continued to allow Irish wheat exports;
Forced Siam (Thailand) to open up its economy to trade with gunboats (as the US did with Japan); and
Colonized much of Africa and Asia.
As we showed back in '
Currency
and Wars ', after an initial embrace of free trade, the major European powers and Japan saw that their relative comparative advantage
meant they remained at the bottom of the development ladder as agricultural producers, an area where prices were also being depressed
by huge US output; meanwhile, the UK sold industrial goods, ran a huge trade surplus, and ruled the waves militarily. This was politically
unsustainable even though the UK vigorously backed the intellectual concept of free trade given it was such a winner from it.
Regardless, the first flowering of free trade collapsed back into nationalism and protectionism - bloodily so in 1914. Free
trade was tried again from 1919 - but burned-out even more bloodily in the 1930s and 1940s. After WW2, most developed countries had
moderately free trade - but most developing countries did not. We only started to re-embrace global free trade from the 1990s onwards
when the Cold War ended and here it is under stress again. In short, only around 100 years in a total of 5,000 years of civilization
has seen real global free trade, it has failed twice already, and it is once again coming under pressure.
What are we getting wrong? Perhaps that Ricardo's theory has major flaws that don't get included in our textbooks, as summarized
in this overlooked quote
"It would undoubtedly be advantageous to the capitalists of England [that] the wine and cloth should both be made in Portugal
[and that] the capital and labour of England employed in making cloth should be removed to Portugal for that purpose." Which is pretty
much what happens today! However, Ricardo adds that this won't happen because "Most men of property [will be] satisfied with a low
rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations," which
is simply not true at all! In other words, his premise is flawed in that:
It is atemporal in assuming countries move to their comparative advantage painlessly and instantly;
It assumes full employment when if there is unemployment a country is better off producing at home to reduce it, regardless
of higher cost;
It assumes capital between countries is immobile , i.e., investors don't shift money and technology abroad. (Which Adam Smith's
'Wealth of Nations', Book IV, Chapter II also assumes doesn't happen, as an "invisible hand" keeps money invested in one's home
country's industry and not abroad: we don't read him correctly either.);
It assumes trade balances under free trade - but since when has this been true? Rather we see large deficits and inverse capital
flows, and so debts steadily increasing in deficit countries;
It assumes all goods are equal as in Ricardo's example, cloth produced in the UK and wine produced in Portugal are equivalent.
Yet some sectors provide well-paid and others badly-paid employment: why only produce the latter?
As Ricardo's theory requires key conditions that are not met in reality most of the time, why are we surprised that most of reality
fails to produce idealised free trade most of the time? Several past US presidents before Donald Trump made exactly that point. Munroe
(1817-25) argued: " The conditions necessary for Free Trade's success - reciprocity and international peace - have never occurred
and cannot be expected ". Grant (1869-77) noted "Within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer,
it too will adopt free trade".
Yet arguably we are better, not worse, off regardless of these sentiments so hooray! How so? Well, did you know that Adam Smith,
who we equate with free markets, and who created the term "mercantile system" to describe the national-protectionist policies opposed
to it, argued the US should remain an agricultural producer and buy its industrial goods from the UK? It was Founding Father Alexander
Hamilton who rejected this approach, and his "infant industry" policy of industrialization and infrastructure spending saw the US
emerge as the world's leading economy instead. That was the same development model that, with tweaks, was then adopted by pre-WW1
Japan, France, and Germany to successfully rival the UK; and then post-WW2 by Japan (again) and South Korea; and then more recently
by China, that key global growth driver. Would we really be better off if the US was still mainly growing cotton and wheat, China
rice and apples, and the UK was making most of the world's consumer goods? Thank the lack of free trade if you think otherwise!
Yet look at the examples above and there is a further argument for more protectionism ahead. Ricardo assumes a benign global political
environment for free trade . Yet what if the UK and Portugal are rivals or enemies? What if the choice is between steel and wine?
You can't invade neighbours armed with wine as you can with steel! A large part of the trade tension between China and the US, just
as between pre-WW1 Germany and the UK, is not about trade per se: for both sides, it is about who produces key inputs with national
security implications - and hence is about relative power . This is why we hear US hawks underlining that they don't want to export
their highest technology to China, or to specialize only in agricultural exports to it as China moves up the value-chain. It also
helps underline why for most of the past 5,000 years trade has not been free. Indeed, this argument also holds true for the other
claimed benefit of free trade: the cross-flow of ideas and technology. That is great for friends, but not for those less trusted.
Of course, this doesn't mean liked-minded groups of countries with similar-enough or sympathetic-enough economies and politics
should avoid free trade: clearly for some states it can work out nicely - even if within the EU one could argue there are also underlying
strains. However, it is a huge stretch to assume a one-size-fits-all free trade policy will always work best for all countries, as
some would have it. That is a fairy tale. History shows it wasn't the case; national security concerns show it can never always be
the case; and Ricardo argues this logically won't be the case.
Yet we need not despair. The track record also shows that global growth can continue even despite protectionism, and in some cases
can benefit from it. That being said, should the US resort to more Hamiltonian policies versus everyone, not just China, then we
are in for real financial market turbulence ahead given the role the US Dollar plays today compared to the role gold played for Smith
and Ricardo! But that is a whole different fairy tale...
How tank maintenance mechanical engineer and military contractor who got into congress
pretending to belong to tea party can became the Secretary of state? Only in America ;-)
"You Think Americans Really Give A F**k About Ukraine?" - Pompeo
Flips Out On NPR Reporter by Tyler Durden Sat, 01/25/2020 - 15:05 0
SHARES
Democrats' impeachment proceedings were completely overshadowed this week by the panic over
the Wuhan coronavirus. Still, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is clearly tired of having his
character repeatedly impugned by the Dems and the press claiming he hung one of his ambassadors
out to dry after she purportedly resisted the administration's attempts to pressure
Ukraine.
That frustration came to a head this week when, during a moment of pique, Secretary Pompeo
launched into a rant and swore at NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly after she wheedled him about
whether he had taken concrete steps to protect former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie
Yovanovitch.
House Democrats last week released a trove of messages between Giuliani associate Lev Parnas
and Connecticut Republican Congressional candidate Robert Hyde. The messages suggested that
Yovanovitch might have been under surveillance before President Trump recalled her to
Washington. One of the messages seems to reference a shadowy character able to "help" with
Yovanovitch for "a price."
Kelly recounted the incident to her listeners (she is the host of "All Things
Considered")
After Kelly asked Pompeo to specify exactly what he had done or said to defend Yovanovitch,
whom Pompeo's boss President Trump fired last year, Pompeo simply insisted that he had "done
what's right" with regard to Yovanovitch, while becoming visibly annoyed.
Once the interview was over, Pompeo glared at Kelly for a minute, then left the room,
telling an aide to bring Kelly into another room at the State Department without her recorder,
so they could have more privacy.
Once inside, Pompeo launched into what Kelly described as an "expletive-laden rant",
repeatedly using the "f-word." Pompeo complained about the questions about Ukraine, arguing
that the interview was supposed to be about Iran.
"Do you think Americans give a f--k about Ukraine?" Pompeo allegedly said.
The outburst was followed by a ridiculous stunt: one of Pompeo's staffers pulled out a blank
map and asked the reporter to identify Ukraine, which she did.
"People will hear about this," Pompeo vaguely warned.
Ironically, Pompeo is planning to travel to Kiev this week.
The questions came after Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Pompeo, told Congress
that he resigned after the secretary apparently ignored his pleas for the department to show
some support for Yovanovitch.
Listen to the interview here. A transcript can be found
here .
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly says the following happened after the interview in which she asked
some tough questions to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. pic.twitter.com/cRTb71fZvX
He's right. American don't give a **** about Ukraine. But why did Clinton and Obama and
now Trump and Pompeo? Why are they spending our money there instead of either taking care of
problems here or paying off the national debt?
The best thing that could happen to the Ukraine is for Russia to take it back.. they would
clean up that train wreck of a country... they've proven themselves as to being the scumbags
they are gypsies and grifters...
But why are Trump and Pompeo continuing the policy of Obama and Clinton there? Remember
Trump said he would pay off the national debt in 8 years? How about stop spending our money
on the War Party's foreign interventions for a starter.
I wish the same level of questioning was directed at Pompeo regarding Syria and Iran. You
may like his response because of the particular topic, but it doesn't change the fact that
he's a psycho neo-con fucktard who should be shot for treason.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo participates in a press conference with U.S. President Donald J. Trump during the
NATO Foreign Ministerial in Brussels on July 12, 2018. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)
January 24, 2020
|
9:21 pm
Daniel Larison
Mike Pompeo has proven to be a
blowhard and a bully
in his role as Secretary of State, and nothing seems to bother him more than challenging questions
from professional journalists. All of those flaws and more were on display during and after his interview with NPR's Mary
Louise Kelly today. After abruptly ending the
interview
when pressed on his failure to defend members of the Foreign Service, Pompeo then threw a fit and berated the
reporter who asked him the questions:
Immediately after the questions on Ukraine, the interview concluded. Pompeo stood, leaned in and silently glared at
Kelly for several seconds before leaving the room.
A few moments later, an aide asked Kelly to follow her into Pompeo's private living room at the State Department
without a recorder. The aide did not say the ensuing exchange would be off the record.
Inside the room, Pompeo shouted his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine. He used repeated expletives,
according to Kelly, and asked, "Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?" He then said, "People will hear about this."
People are certainly hearing about it, and their unanimous judgment is that it confirms Pompeo's reputation as an
obnoxious, thin-skinned excuse for a Secretary of State. Kelly's questions were all reasonable and fair, but Pompeo is not
used to being pressed so hard to give real answers. We have seen his short temper and condescension before when other
journalists have asked him tough questions, and he seems particularly annoyed when the journalists calling him out are
women. Pompeo probably has the worst working relationship with the press of any Secretary of State in decades, and this
episode will make it worse.
When Pompeo realized he wouldn't be able to get away with his standard set of vacuous talking points and lies, he ended
the conversation. The
entire
interview
is worth reading to appreciate how poorly Pompeo performs when he is forced to explain how failing
administration policies are "working." When pressed on his untrue claims that "maximum pressure" on Iran is "working," all
that he could do was repeat himself robotically:
QUESTION: My question, again: How do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
SECRETARY POMPEO: We'll stop them.
QUESTION: How?
SECRETARY POMPEO: We'll stop them.
QUESTION: Sanctions?
SECRETARY POMPEO: We'll stop them.
Kelly refused to accept pat, meaningless responses, and she kept insisting that Pompeo provide something, anything, to
back up his assertions. This is how administration officials should always be interviewed, and it is no surprise that the
Secretary of State couldn't handle being challenged to back up his claims. The questions wouldn't have been that hard to
answer if Pompeo were willing to be honest or the least bit humble, but that isn't how he operates. He sees every interview
as an opportunity to snow the interviewer under with nonsense and to score points with the president, and giving honest
answers would get in the way of both.
The section at the end concerned Pompeo's failure to stand up for State Department officials, especially Marie
Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine. Since Pompeo's support for these officials has been abysmal, there was
nothing substantive that he could say about it and tried to filibuster his way out of it. To her credit, Kelly was
persistent in trying to pin him down and make him address the issue. He had every chance to explain himself, but instead he
fell back on defensive denials that persuade no one:
QUESTION: Sir, respectfully, where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?
SECRETARY POMPEO: I've defended every single person on this team. I've done what's right for every single person on
this team.
QUESTION: Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?
SECRETARY POMPEO: I've said all I'm going to say today. Thank you. Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do so; I
appreciate that.
Pompeo could have defended Yovanovitch and other officials that have come under attack, but to do that would be to risk
Trump's ire and it would require him to show the slightest bit of courage. In the end, his "swagger" is all talk and his
rhetoric about supporting his "team" at State is meaningless. Pompeo made a fool of himself in this interview, and it is
perfectly in keeping with his angry, brittle personality that he took out his frustrations by yelling at the reporter who
exposed him as the vacuous blowhard that he is.
about the author
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at
TAC
, where he also keeps a solo
blog
. He has been published in the
New York Times
Book Review
,
Dallas Morning News
,
World Politics Review
,
Politico Magazine
,
Orthodox
Life
, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for
The Week
. He
holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on
Twitter
.
email
Left out was the part when pompeo had one of his minions bring out a blank world map and challenged her to
find the Ukraine which she immediately did - i wonder if trump could find it
Apparently, Pompeo has suggested Kelly had pointed to Bangladesh, not Ukraine, on the map, and
commented "It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine."
I don't suppose we are ever likely to
see conclusive evidence that will establish for certain where she pointed.
It's probably just a matter of looking at their respective records of lying, cheating, and
stealing, and making a guess based on that.
My God, can he get any worse. I suppose so since his boss always falls to a lower level. There is no bottom.
Just admit that everyday brings a new low. Only thing surprising is that we get surprised at their
despicable behavior.
That's the problem with Trump henchmen: they can
always
get worse. There is no bottom, for to
have a limit below which the henchmen will not go would embarrass the
Capo di Tutti Capi
for
blowing through it on the way down. Henchmen have bills to pay, too, you know, just like people.
I'm sorry, is the "conservative" in the name of this blog some kind of parody? You all sure sound like
liberal democrats. Never been here before, won't be coming back.
Oh, and you forgot about the part where
Pompeo came ready to discuss one topic, which was agreed to beforehand, and the interviewer transitioned to
a new topic. And the way she did so was to ask Pompeo if he owed Marie Yanokovich an apology. Yes, riveting
journalism devoid of partisan bias. Lol! But it was Pompeo. Right.
To the person who down voted me, I don't care. Honestly I'm glad you butthurt whiners have a place to
share your hurt feelings. Maybe if you're lucky Joe Biden will be President soon and you can all
rejoice that "decency" is back, or something.
Apparently Pompeo can only keep so many talking points in his head. One topic only. Are we to believe
the Secretary of State can't expound on more than a single subject? It must be true, otherwise he
wouldn't go around insisting he will only talk about one subject during an interview. I expect he
won't be getting many invites for interviews outside of FOX. Just as well, he's a bag of hot air
anyway.
I think there are many conservatives writing and commenting on this site. But perhaps you are
confusing "conservative" with "republican". There is little conservatism left in the republican party.
"...Pompeo came ready to discuss one topic, which was agreed to beforehand, and the interviewer
transitioned to a new topic."
Oh, the humanity!
Secretary Pompous couldn't just give a little chuckle and say something like "Now, now. You know we
agreed to talk only on one topic, so let's get together on another day to discuss other topics". ?
Just another guy in power who is too full of himself.
QUESTION: My question, again: How do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
Italicized/bold
text was excerpted from the website
www.dni.gov
within a US National Intelligence Estimate published in Nov2007 titled:
Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities
ANSWER:
Key Judgements
A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we
also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop
nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran's announcement of its decision to
suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing
international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work.
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from the website
fas.org
a report published (updated 20Dec2019) by the Congressional Research Service titled:
Page 53, 2nd paragraph -
Iran's Nuclear Program: Status
Director of National Intelligence Coats reiterated the last sentence in May 2017 testimony.330He
testified in January 2019 that the U.S. intelligence community "continue[s] to assess that Iran is not
currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear
device." Subsequent statements from U.S. officials indicate that Iran has not resumed its nuclear weapons
program. According to an August 2019 State Department report, the "U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that
Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities judged necessary to produce
a nuclear device." Any decision to produce nuclear weapons "will be made by the Supreme Leader," Clapper
stated in April 2013.
Our Intel community and Think Tanks are totally incompetent when it comes to analyzing other
countries but they are geniuses when it comes to manipulating the U.S. public. Claiming that
we are the victims of information warfare must be an inside joke to them. How do they keep a
straight face when they say, 'we are seeing increased Iranian activity in cyberspace'.
Obviously Iran isn't the greatest threat to "U.S. security," but the truth is that no foreign
state (not even a hypothetical Sino-Slavic alliance) poses a real threat to U.S. security,
properly defined. In short, the terms of "threat" and "security" are flawed."U.S. security"
just means "U.S. ability to project military power in other parts of the world." A "threat"
to U.S. security is just some other country which threatens that projection of military
power. Americans who watch the news hear "Iran is a threat to U.S. security" from the Trump
Administration and assume that it means that Iran is about to attack the homeland, when what
the Trump Administration means is that Iran is defending its own national security against
U.S. threats. This language is how Democrats (and Republicans) can pretend that U.S. military
aid to Ukraine is critical to "U.S. security" against the "threat" of Russia, even though
before Pres. Trump there was no such aid.
"... But even I was flabbergasted by what Trump did. Absolutely gobsmacked. Killing Qassem Soleimani, Iranian general, leader of the Quds forces, and the most respected military leader in the Middle East? And ..."
"... The first thing, the thing that is so sad and so infuriating and so centrally symptomatic of everything wrong with American political culture, is that, with painfully few exceptions, Americans have no idea of what their government has done. They have no idea who Qassem Soleimani was, what he has accomplished, the web of relationships, action, and respect he has built, what his assassination means and will bring. The last person who has any clue about this, of course, is Donald Trump, who called Soleimani " a total monster ." His act of killing Soleimani is the apotheosis of the abysmal, arrogant ignorance of U.S. political culture. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Whatever their elected governments say, we'll will keep our army in Syria to "take the oil," and in Iraq to well, to do whatever the hell we want. ..."
"... Sure, we make the rules and you follow our orders. ..."
I've been writing and speaking for months about the looming danger of war with Iran, often to
considerable skepticism.
In June, in an essay entitled "
Eve of
Destruction: Iran Strikes Back ," after the U.S. initiated its "maximum pressure" blockade of
Iranian oil exports, I pointed out that "Iran considers that it is already at war," and that the
downing of the U.S. drone was a sign that "Iran is calling the U.S. bluff on escalation
dominance."
In an October
essay , I pointed out that Trump's last-minute calling off of the U.S. attack on Iran in
June, his demurral again after the Houthi attack on Saudi oil facilities, and his announced
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria were seen as "catastrophic" and "a big win for Iran" by the
Iran hawks in Israel and America whose efforts New York Times (NYT) detailed in an
important article, " The Secret History
of the Push to Strike Iran ." I said, with emphasis, " It always goes to Iran ," and
underlined that Trump's restraint was particularly galling to hard-line zionist Republican
Senators, and might have opened a path to impeachment. I cited the reported
statement
of a "veteran political consultant" that "The price of [Lindsey] Graham's support would be an
eventual military strike on Iran."
And in the middle of December, I went way out on a limb, in
an essay suggesting
a possible relation between preparations for war in Iran and the impeachment process. I pointed
out that the strategic balance of forces between Israel and Iran had reached the point where
Israel thinks it's "necessary to take Iran down now ," in "the next six months," before
the Iranian-supported Axis of Resistance accrues even more power. I speculated that the need to
have a more reliable and internationally-respected U.S. President fronting a conflict with Iran
might be the unseen reason -- behind the flimsy Articles of Impeachment -- that explains why
Pelosi and Schumer "find it so urgent to replace Trump before the election and why they
think they can succeed in doing that."
So, I was the guy chicken-littling about impending war with Iran.
But even I was flabbergasted by what Trump did. Absolutely gobsmacked. Killing Qassem
Soleimani, Iranian general, leader of the Quds forces, and the most respected military leader in
the Middle East? And Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, Iraqi commander of the Popular Mobilization
Forces (PMF) unit, Kataib Hezbollah? Did not see that coming. Rage. Fear. Sadness.
Anxiety. A few days just to register that it really happened. To see the millions of people
bearing witness to it. Yes, that happened.
Then there was the anxious anticipation about the Iranian response, which came surprisingly
quickly, and with admirable military and political precision, avoiding a large-scale war in the
region, for the moment.
That was the week that was.
But, as the man said: "It ain't over 'til it's over." And it ain't over. Recognizing the
radical uncertainty of the world we now live in, and recognizing that its future will be
determined by actors and actions far away from the American leftist commentariat, here's what I
need to say about the war we are now in.
The first thing, the thing that is so sad and so infuriating and so centrally symptomatic
of everything wrong with American political culture, is that, with painfully few exceptions,
Americans have no idea of what their government has done. They have no idea who Qassem Soleimani
was, what he has accomplished, the web of relationships, action, and respect he has built, what
his assassination means and will bring. The last person who has any clue about this, of course,
is Donald Trump, who called Soleimani "
a total monster ." His act of killing Soleimani is the apotheosis of the abysmal, arrogant
ignorance of U.S. political culture.
It's virtually impossible to explain to Americans because there is no one of comparable
stature in the U.S. or in the West today. As Iran cleric Shahab Mohadi
said , when talking about what a "proportional response" might be: "[W]ho should we consider
to take out in the context of America? 'Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man
and SpongeBob? 'All of their heroes are cartoon characters -- they're all fictional." Trump?
Lebanese Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah said what many throughout the world familiar with both of
them would agree with: "the shoe of Qassem Soleimani is worth the head of Trump and all American
leaders."
To understand the respect Soleimani has earned, not only in Iran (where his popularity was
around
80% ) but throughout the region and across political and sectarian lines, you have to know
how he led and organized the forces that helped save
Christians ,
Kurds , Yazidis and others from being
slaughtered by ISIS, while Barack Obama and John Kerry were still "
watching " ISIS advance and using it as a tool
to "manage" their war against Assad.
In an informative
interview
with Aaron Maté, Former Marine Intelligence Officer and weapons inspector, Scott Ritter,
explains how Soleimani is honored in Iraq for organizing the resistance that saved Baghdad from
being overrun by ISIS -- and the same could be said of Syria, Damascus, or Ebril:
He's a legend in Iran, in Iraq, and in Syria. And anywhere where, frankly speaking, he's
operated, the people he's worked with view him as one of the greatest leaders, thinkers, most
humane men of all time. I know in America we demonize him as a terrorist but the fact is he
wasn't, and neither is Mr. Mohandes.
When ISIS [was] driving down on the city of Baghdad, the U.S. armed and trained Iraqi Army had
literally thrown down their weapons and ran away, and there was nothing standing between ISIS and
Baghdad
[Soleimani] came in from Iran and led the creation of the PMF [Popular Mobilization Forces] as
a viable fighting force and then motivated them to confront Isis in ferocious hand-to-hand combat
in villages and towns outside of Baghdad, driving Isis back and stabilizing the situation that
allowed the United States to come in and get involved in the Isis fight. But if it weren't for
Qassem Soleimani and Mohandes and Kataib Hezbollah, Baghdad might have had the black flag of ISIS
flying over it. So the Iraqi people haven't forgotten who stood up and defended Baghdad from the
scourge of ISIS.
So, to understand Soleimani in Western terms, you'd have to evoke someone like World War II
Eisenhower (or Marshall Zhukov, but that gets another blank stare from Americans.) Think I'm
exaggerating? Take it from the family of the Shah
:
Beyond his leadership of the fight against ISIS, you also have to understand Soleimani's
strategic acumen in building the Axis of Resistance -- the network of armed local groups like
Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the PMF in Iraq, that Soleimani helped organize and provide with
growing military capability. Soleimani meant standing up; he helped people throughout the region
stand up to the shit the Americans, Israelis, and Saudis were constantly dumping on them
More apt than Eisenhower and De Gaulle, in world-historical terms, try something like Saladin
meets Che. What a tragedy, and travesty, it is that legend-in-his-own-mind Donald Trump killed
this man.
Dressed to Kill
But it is not just Trump, and not just the assassination of Soleimani, that we should focus
on. These are actors and events within an ongoing conflict with Iran, which was ratcheted up when
the U.S. renounced the nuclear deal (JCPOA – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and
instituted a "maximum pressure" campaign of economic and financial sanctions on Iran and
third countries, designed to drive Iran's oil exports to zero.
The purpose of this blockade is to create enough social misery to force Iran into compliance,
or provoke Iran into military action that would elicit a "justifiable" full-scale,
regime-change -- actually state-destroying -- military attack on the country.
From its inception, Iran has correctly understood this blockade as an act of war, and has
rightfully expressed its determination to fight back. Though it does not want a wider war, and
has so far carefully calibrated its actions to avoid making it necessary, Iran will
fight back however it deems necessary.
The powers-that-be in Iran and the U.S. know they are at war, and that the Soleimani
assassination ratcheted that state of war up another significant notch; only Panglossian American
pundits think the "w" state is yet to be avoided. Sorry, but the United States drone-bombed an
Iranian state official accompanied by an Iraqi state official, in Iraq at the invitation of the
Iraqi Prime Minister, on a conflict-resolution mission requested by Donald Trump himself. In
anybody's book, that is an act of war -- and extraordinary treachery, even in wartime, the
equivalent of shooting someone who came to parley under a white flag.
Indeed, we now know that the assassination of Soleimani was only one of two known
assassination attempts against senior Iranian officers that day. There was also an unsuccessful
strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, another key commander in Iran's Quds Force who has been
active in Yemen. According to the
Washington Post , this marked a "departure for the Pentagon's mission in Yemen,
which has sought to avoid direct involvement" or make "any publicly acknowledged attacks on
Houthi or Iranian leaders in Yemen."
Of course, because it's known as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis," the Pentagon wants
to avoid "publicly" bloodying its hands in the Saudi war in Yemen. Through two presidential
administrations, it has been trying to minimize attention to its indispensable support of, and
presence in, Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen with
drone strikes ,
special
forces operations , refueling of aircraft, and intelligence and targeting. It's such a nasty
business that even the U.S. Congress
passed a bipartisan
resolution to end U.S. military involvement in that war, which was vetoed by Trump.
According to the ethic and logic of American exceptionalism, Iran is forbidden from helping
the Houthis, but the U.S. is allowed to assassinate their advisors and help the Saudis bomb the
crap out of them.
So, the Trump administration is clearly engaged in an organized campaign to take out senior
Iranian leaders, part of what it considers a war against Iran. In this war, the Trump
administration no longer pretends to give a damn about any fig leaf of law or ethics. Nobody
takes seriously the phony "imminence" excuse for killing Soleimani, which even
Trump say s "doesn't matter," or the "bloody hands" justification, which could apply to any
military commander. And let's not forget: Soleimani was "
talking about bad stuff ."
The U.S. is demonstrating outright contempt for any framework of respectful international
relations, let alone international law. National sovereignty? Democracy? Whatever their
elected governments say, we'll will keep our army in Syria to "take the oil," and in Iraq to
well, to do whatever the hell we want. "Rules-based international order"? Sure, we make
the rules and you follow our orders.
The U.S.'s determination to stay in Iraq, in defiance of the
explicit, unequivocal
demand of the friendly democratic government that the U.S. itself supposedly invaded the
country to install, is particularly significant. It draws the circle nicely. It demonstrates that
the Iraq war isn't over. Because it, and the wars in Libya and Syria, and the war that's
ratcheting up against Iran are all the same war that the U.S. has been waging in the
Middle East since 2003. In the end is the beginning, and all that.
We're now in the endgame of the serial offensive that
Wesley Clark described in
2007, starting with Iraq and "finishing off" with Iran. Since the U.S. has attacked, weakened,
divided, or destroyed every other un-coopted polity in the region (Iraq, Syria, Libya) that could
pose any serious resistance to the predations of U.S. imperialism and Israel colonialism, it has
fallen to Iran to be the last and best source of material and military support which allows that
resistance to persist.
And Iran has taken up the task, through the work of the Quds Force under leaders like
Soleimani and Shahlai, the work of building a new Axis of Resistance with the capacity to resist
the dictates of Israel and the U.S. throughout the region. It's work that is part of a
war and will result in casualties among U.S. and U.S.-allied forces and damage to their
"interests."
What the U.S. (and its wards, Israel and Saudi Arabia) fears most is precisely the kind of
material, technical, and combat support and training that allows the Houthis to beat back the
Saudis and Americans in Yemen, and retaliate with stunningly accurate blows on crucial oil
facilities in Saudi Arabia itself. The same kind of help that Soleimani gave to the armed forces
of Syria and the PMF in Iraq to prevent those countries from being overrun and torn apart by the
U.S. army and its sponsored jihadis, and to Hezbollah in Lebanon to deter Israel from demolishing
and dividing that country at will.
It's that one big "endless" war that's been waged by every president since 2003, which
American politicians and pundits have been scratching their heads and squeezing their brains to
figure out how to explain, justify (if it's their party's President in charge), denounce (if it's
the other party's POTUS), or just bemoan as "senseless." But to the neocons who are driving it
and their victims -- it makes perfect sense and is understood to have been largely a
success. Only the befuddled U.S. media and the deliberately-deceived U.S. public think it's
"senseless," and remain enmired in the
cock-up theory
of U.S. foreign policy, which is a blindfold we had better shed before being led to the next very
big slaughter.
The one big war makes perfect sense when one understands that the United States has thoroughly
internalized Israel's interests as its own. That this conflation has been successfully driven by
a particular neocon faction, and that it is excessive, unnecessary and perhaps disruptive to
other effective U.S. imperial possibilities, is demonstrated precisely by the constant plaint
from non-neocon, including imperialist, quarters that it's all so "senseless."
The result is that the primary object of U.S. policy (its internalized zionist
imperative) in this war is to enforce that Israel must be able, without any threat of serious
retaliation, to carry out any military attack on any country in the region at any time, to seize
any territory and resources (especially water) it needs, and, of course, to impose any level of
colonial violence against Palestinians -- from home demolitions, to siege and sniper killings
(Gaza), to de jure as well as de facto apartheid and eventual further mass
expulsions, if deems necessary.
That has required, above all, removing -- by co-option, regime change, or chaotogenic
sectarian warfare and state destruction -- any strong central governments that have provided
political, diplomatic, financial, material, and military support for the Palestinian resistance
to Israeli colonialism. Iran is the last of those, has been growing in strength and influence,
and is therefore the next mandatory target.
For all the talk of "Iranian proxies," I'd say, if anything, that the U.S., with its
internalized zionist imperative, is effectively acting as Israel's proxy.
It's also important, I think, to clarify the role of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in this policy. KSA is
absolutely a very important player in this project, which has been consistent with its interests.
But its (and its oil's) influence on the U.S. is subsidiary to Israel's, and depends entirely on
KSA's complicity with the Israeli agenda. The U.S. political establishment is not overwhelmingly
committed to Saudi/Wahhabi policy imperatives -- as a matter, they think, of virtue -- as they
are to Israeli/Zionist ones. It is inconceivable that a U.S. Vice-President would
declare "I am a
Wahhabi," or a U.S. President
say
"I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die" for Saudi Arabia -- with
nobody even noticing . The U.S. will turn on a dime against KSA if Israel wants it; the
reverse would never happen. We have to confront the primary driver of this policy if we are to
defeat it, and too many otherwise superb analysts, like Craig Murray, are mistaken and
diversionary, I think, in saying things like the assassination of Soleimani and the drive for war
on Iran represent the U.S. "
doubling
down on its Saudi allegiance ." So, sure, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Batman
and Robin.
Iran has quite clearly seen and understood what's unfolding, and has prepared itself for the
finale that is coming its way.
The final offensive against Iran was supposed to follow the definitive destruction of the
Syrian Baathist state, but that project was interrupted (though not yet abandoned) by the
intervention of Syria's allies, Russia and Iran -- the latter precisely via the work of Soleimani
and the Quds Force.
Current radical actions like the two assassination strikes against Iranian Quds Force
commanders signal the Trump administration jumping right to the endgame, as that neocon hawks
have been " agitating for
." The idea -- borrowed, perhaps from Israel's campaign of
assassinating Iranian scientists -- is that killing off the key leaders who have supplied and
trained the Iranian-allied networks of resistance throughout the region will hobble any strike
from those networks if/when the direct attack on Iran comes.
Per Patrick
Lawrence , the Soleimani assassination "was neither defensive nor retaliatory: It reflected
the planning of the administration's Iran hawks, who were merely awaiting the right occasion to
take their next, most daring step toward dragging the U.S. into war with Iran." It means that war
is on and it will get worse fast.
It is crucial to understand that Iran is not going to passively submit to any such bullying.
It will not be scared off by some "bloody nose" strike, followed by chest-thumping from Trump,
Netanyahu, or Hillary about how they will "
obliterate " Iran. Iran knows all that. It also knows, as I've said
before , how little damage -- especially in terms of casualties -- Israel and the U.S. can
take. It will strike back. In ways that will be calibrated as much as possible to avoid a larger
war, but it will strike back.
Iran's strike on Ain al-Asad base in Iraq was a case in point. It was preceded by a warning
through Iraq that did not specify the target but allowed U.S. personnel in the country to hunker
down. It also demonstrated deadly precision and determination, hitting specific buildings where
U.S. troops work, and, we now know, causing at least eleven acknowledged casualties.
Those casualties were minor, but you can bet they would have been the excuse for a large-scale
attack, if the U.S. had been entirely unafraid of the response. In fact, Trump did
launch that attack over the downing of a single unmanned drone -- and Pompeo and the neocon crew,
including Republican Senators, were "
stunned " that he
called it off in literally the last
ten minutes . It's
to the eternal shame of what's called the "left" in this country that we may have
Tucker
Carlson to thank for Trump's bouts of restraint.
There Will Be Blood
But this is going to get worse, Pompeo is now
threatening Iran's leaders that "any attacks by them, or their proxies of any identity, that
harm Americans, our allies, or our interests will be answered with a decisive U.S. response."
Since Iran has ties of some kind with most armed groups in the region and the U.S. decides what
"proxy" and "interests" means, that means that any act of resistance to the U.S., Israel, or
other "ally" by anybody -- including, for example, the Iraqi PMF forces who are likely to
retaliate against the U.S. for killing their leader -- will be an excuse for attacking Iran.
Any anything. Call it an omnibus threat.
The groundwork for a final aggressive push against Iran began back in June, 2017, when, under
then-Director Pompeo, the CIA set up a stand-alone
Iran
Mission Center . That Center
replaced
a group of "Iran specialists who had no special focus on regime change in Iran," because "Trump's
people wanted a much more focused and belligerent group." The purpose of this -- as of any --
Mission Center was to "elevate" the country as a target and "bring to bear the range of the
agency's capabilities, including covert action" against Iran. This one is especially concerned
with Iran's "increased capacity to deliver missile systems" to Hezbollah or the Houthis that
could be used against Israel or Saudi Arabia, and Iran's increased strength among the Shia
militia forces in Iraq. The Mission Center is headed by Michael D'Andrea, who is perceived as
having an "aggressive stance toward Iran." D'Andrea, known as "the undertaker" and "
Ayatollah Mike ," is himself a
convert to Islam, and
notorious for his "central role in the agency's torture and targeted killing programs."
This was followed in December, 2017, by the signing of a
pact with Israel "to
take on Iran," which took place, according to Israeli television, at a "secret" meeting at the
White House. This pact was designed to coordinate "steps on the ground" against "Tehran and its
proxies." The biggest threats: "Iran's ballistic missile program and its efforts to build
accurate missile systems in Syria and Lebanon," and its activity in Syria and support for
Hezbollah. The Israelis considered that these secret "dramatic understandings" would have "far
greater impact" on Israel than Trump's more public and notorious recognition of Jerusalem as
Israeli's capital.
The Iran Mission Center is a war room. The pact with Israel is a war pact.
The U.S. and Israeli governments are out to "take on" Iran. Their major concerns, repeated
everywhere, are Iran's growing military power, which underlies its growing political influence --
specifically its precision ballistic missile and drone capabilities, which it is sharing with its
allies throughout the region, and its organization of those armed resistance allies, which is
labelled "Iranian aggression."
These developments must be stopped because they provide Iran and other actors the ability to
inflict serious damage on Israel. They create the unacceptable situation where Israel cannot
attack anything it wants without fear of retaliation. For some time, Israel has been reluctant to
take on Hezbollah in Lebanon, having already been driven back by them once because the Israelis
couldn't take the casualties in the field. Now Israel has to worry about an even more
battle-hardened Hezbollah, other well-trained and supplied armed groups, and those damn
precision missiles . One cannot overstress how important those are, and how adamant the U.S.
and Israel are that Iran get rid of them. As another Revolutionary Guard commander
says :
"Iran has encircled Israel from all four sides if only one missile hits the occupied lands,
Israeli airports will be filled with people trying to run away from the country."
This campaign is overseen in the U.S. by the likes of "
praying
for war with Iran " Christian Zionists Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, who together "
urged " Trump to approve the killing of Soleimani. Pence, whom the Democrats are trying to
make President, is associated with Christians United For Israel (CUFI), which paid for his and
his wife's pilgrimage to Israel in 2014, and is run by lunatic televangelist John Hagee, whom
even John
McCain couldn't stomach. Pompeo,
characterized
as the "brainchild" of the assassination, thinks Trump was sent by God to save
Israel from Iran. (Patrick Lawrence
argues
the not-implausible case that Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper ordered the assassination and
stuck Trump with it.) No Zionists are more fanatical than Christian Zionists. These guys are not
going to stop.
And Iran is not going to surrender. Iran is no longer afraid of the escalation dominance game.
Do not be fooled by peace-loving illusions -- propagated mainly now by mealy-mouthed European and
Democratic politicians -- that Iran will return to what's described as "unconditional"
negotiations, which really means negotiating under the absolutely unacceptable condition of
economic blockade, until the U.S. gets what it wants. Not gonna happen. Iran's absolutely correct
condition for any negotiation with the U.S. is that the U.S. return to the JCPOA and lift all
sanctions.
Also not gonna happen, though any real peace-loving Democratic candidate would specifically
and unequivocally commit to doing just that if elected. The phony peace-loving poodles of
Britain, France, and Germany (the EU3) have already
cast their lot with the aggressive American policy, triggering a dispute mechanism that will
almost certainly result in a " snapback " of full UN
sanctions on Iran within 65 days, and destroy the JCPOA once and for all. Because, they, too,
know Iran's nuclear weapons program is a fake issue and have "always searched for ways to put
more
restrictions on Iran, especially on its ballistic missile program." Israel can have all the
nuclear weapons it wants, but Iran must give up those conventional ballistic missiles. Cannot
overstate their importance.
Iran is not going to submit to any of this. The only way Iran is going to part with its
ballistic missiles is by using them. The EU3 maneuver will not only end the JCPOA, it may
drive
Iran out of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As Moon of Alabama says, the
EU3 gambit is "not designed to reach an agreement but to lead to a deeper conflict" and ratchet
the war up yet another notch. The Trump administration and its European allies are -- as FDR did
to Japan -- imposing a complete economic blockade that Iran will have to find a way to break out
of. It's deliberately provocative, and makes the outbreak of a regional/world war more likely.
Which is its purpose.
This certainly marks the Trump administration as having crossed a war threshold the Obama
administration avoided. Credit due to Obama for forging ahead with the JCPOA in the face of
fierce resistance from Netanyahu and his Republican and Democratic acolytes, like Chuck Schumer.
But that deal itself was built upon false premises and extraordinary conditions and procedures
that -- as the current actions of the EU3 demonstrate -- made it a trap for Iran.
With his Iran policy, as with Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, what Trump is doing -- and can
easily demonstrate -- is taking to its logical and deadly conclusion the entire
imperialist-zionist conception of the Middle East, which all major U.S. politicians and media
have embraced and promulgated over decades, and cannot abandon.
With the Soleimani assassination, Trump both allayed some of the fears of Iran war hawks in
Israel and the
U.S. about his "reluctance to flex U.S. military muscle" and re-stoked all their fears
about his impulsiveness, unreliability, ignorance, and crassness. As the the
Christian Science Monitor reports, Israel leaders are both "quick to praise" his
action and "having a crisis of confidence" over Trump's ability to "manage" a conflict
with Iran -- an ambivalence echoed in every U.S. politician's "Soleimani was a terrorist, but "
statement.
Trump does exactly what the narrative they all promote demands, but he makes it look and sound
all thuggish and scary. They want someone whose rhetorical finesse will talk us into war on Iran
as a humanitarian and liberating project. But we should be scared and repelled by it.
The problem isn't the discrepancy in Trump between actions and attitudes, but the duplicity in
the fundamental imperialist-zionist narrative. There is no "good" -- non-thuggish, non-repellent
way -- way to do the catastrophic violence it demands. Too many people discover that only after
it's done.
Trump, in other words, has just started a war that the U.S. political elite constantly brought
us to the brink of, and some now seem desperate to avoid, under Trump's leadership . But
not a one will abandon the zionist and American-exceptionalist premises that make it inevitable
-- about, you know, dictating what weapons which countries can "never" have. Hoisted on their own
petard. As are we all.
To be clear: Iran will try its best to avoid all-out war. The U.S. will not. This is the war
that, as the NYTreports ,
"Hawks in Israel and America have spent more than a decade agitating for." It will start, upon
some pretext, with a full-scale U.S. air attack on Iran, followed by Iranian and allied attacks
on U.S. forces and allies in the region, including Israel, and then an Israeli nuclear attack on
Iran -- which they think will end it. It is an incomprehensible disaster. And it's becoming
almost impossible to avoid.
The best prospect for stopping it would be for Iran and Russia to enter into a mutual defense
treaty right now. But that's not going to happen. Neither Russia nor China is going to fight for
Iran. Why would they? They will sit back and watch the war destroy Iran, Israel, and the United
States.
There are massive street demonstrations in Baghdad today calling for the exit of U.S.
troops from the country. The demonstrations are in response to call for protests from Muqtada
al-Sadr. Estimates of the crowd size vary, but it is a huge turnout of Iraqis that wants us
gone:
100's of thousands protest in Baghdad, calling for all US troops to leave Iraq, close all
bases & embassies, if they don't they will be considered an occupying force. pic.twitter.com/C3CqBqpxyD
Some more photos of the march by Sadrists today in Baghdad, the turnout is huge by any
measure, perhaps the largest in #Baghdad so far,
and perhaps the most noticeable aspect is the lack of violence and troubles despite the scale
of it #IraqProtests
#Iraq #US pic.twitter.com/2xXGk2dSVY
The Trump administration has violated Iraqi sovereignty earlier this month by taking
military action inside Iraq against both Iraqis militias and the Iranian government without
Baghdad's consent, and their government wants our forces out of the country. Sadr has
considerable influence in Iraqi politics, and he has wanted U.S. forces out for a long time.
When opponents of our military presence can organize such huge popular demonstrations, it is
time for us to go. The U.S. should have withdrawn from Iraq years ago, and it would have been
better to leave on our own terms. Now the U.S. cannot stay without provoking armed opposition
from Iraqis to our continued presence.
So far the administration position has been to threaten Iraq with punishment for upholding
its own sovereignty. That's a disgraceful and imperialist position to take, and it is also an
untenable one. There have been enough American wars in Iraq. Trump should yield to the Iraqi
government's wishes and bring these troops home before any more Americans are injured or killed
as a result of his destructive Iran policy.
Daniel Larison is a
senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New
York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review ,
Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and
Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter . email
AP tried to downplay the protests, reporting only 'hundreds. There must be close to a
million people out there (as reported by the Baghdad Chief of Police) and the fact that
Sadr and the other Iraqi Shia militias can organize this massive demonstrations proves that
the assassination of Soleimani, the protector of Syria and Iraq's Christians, did
absolutely nothing to drive a wedge between the various Iraqi Shia militia groups, the vast
majority of which are not Iranian sponsored but true Iraqi national patriots.
There is never a bad time to leave a country that we never should have invaded and
occupied. Not that I expect wisdom, common sense,or basic morality from a foreign policy
establishment that formulated a strategy for the Middle East, saw that it would entail the
genocide of Christians, Yezidis, and other minorities, and decided, "That's a price worth
paying."
In 1958, U.S. leaders stood at the threshold of an American era in the Middle East, conflicted about whether it was
worth the trouble to usher in.
... ... ...
More than half a century later, the future of the United States' military presence in the Middle East is once again up
for discussion, as Iraq
calls on
the U.S. to end its roughly 5,000-strong troop presence in the country and Trump struggles to remove American
forces from
Syria
and
Afghanistan
as well. U.S. politicians are now grappling with the possibility of a post-American period in the region.
... ... ..
And even if Trump doesn't get his way entirely, he will undoubtedly seize on additional opportunities to reduce the
American military presence in the Middle East, as
fed-up Americans
and progressive
presidential candidates
push in the same direction. When Eisenhower
elected
to open that "Pandora's Box" back in 1958, his justification was that it would be "disastrous" if "we don't."
Perhaps nothing signals the coming post-American era in the Middle East more than the fact that so many U.S. leaders these
days fear the disastrous consequences of leaving the box open.
On January 25, 1995, the Russian military mistook a Black Brant XII missile launched by a
group of scientists from Norway and the United States to study the Northern lights over
Svalbard for a nuclear attack by the US Navy with a Trident ballistic missile. It was the first
case when the Russian leader brought the nuclear suitcase in a state of combat readiness.
The rocket, which was equipped to study the Northern lights, was launched from the island's
Andøya Rocket Range, located off the North-West coast of Norway. It was moving along the
same trajectory that US Intercontinental nuclear missiles could fly towards Moscow. Alarm
sirens sounded in the Russian radar center, where technical specialists recorded the flight of
the missile, and where the message about the us missile attack came from.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin summoned the generals and military advisers, and a "nuclear
suitcase" "Cheget"was delivered to him. He had less than ten minutes to decide whether the
Russian military would strike back. "I really used my" little black box "with a button for the
first time yesterday, which is always with me," Yeltsin told the press the next day, after
narrowly avoiding a nuclear disaster. -- I immediately contacted the Ministry of defense and
all the military commanders I needed, and we tracked the movement of this missile from start to
finish."
A few years later, Spiegel Online noted that Yeltsin left Russian nuclear missiles in his
mines at the time, probably "because relations between Russia and the United States in 1995
were relatively trusting."
The scientists who conducted the study, starting in 1962, launched more than 600 missiles,
but the Black Brant XII rocket was larger than the previous ones and more like an American
ballistic missile. A month before this launch, a team of researchers instructed the Norwegian
foreign Ministry to notify neighboring countries of their experiment. Russian officials
received such a notification from Oslo three weeks before the launch, but it was apparently
ignored by them. The radar crews of the Russian missile warning system (SPRn) were also not
informed and reported that it was a potentially nuclear missile moving towards Russia.
Peter Pry, a former CIA officer, wrote that although there were other false alarms in the
nuclear age, none of them went as far as the Norwegian missile incident, "the single most
dangerous moment of the nuclear missile era."
"... Today Israel's IDF faces a combat hardened army in Syria, a combat hardened irregular military force in Lebanon, and increasingly hardened resistance in its own backyard with Hamas. And Iranian ground forces are not pushovers. ..."
Martin Indyk: An Important Neoliberal Defects From the Blob
Let's hope the former ambassador's heresy about withdrawing from the Middle East catches
fire and spreads. Then-VP of Brookings Martin Indyk in 2017. (Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks)
January 22, 2020
|
12:01 am
Andrew
J. Bacevich Within the inner precincts of the American foreign policy establishment, last
names are redundant. At a Washington cocktail party, when some half-sloshed AEI fellow
whispers, "Apparently, Henry is back in Beijing to see Xi," there's no need to ask, "Which
Henry?" In that world, there is only one Henry, at least only one who counts.
Similarly, there is only one Martin. While Martin Indyk may not equal Henry Kissinger in
star power, he has for several decades been a major player in U.S. policy regarding Israel and
the Middle East more broadly. Founder of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, senior
director on the National Security Council, twice U.S. ambassador to Israel, assistant secretary
of state for Near East affairs, presidential envoy -- not a bad resume for someone who was born
in London, raised in Australia, and became a U.S. citizen only in his 40s.
Throughout his career, Martin has been deeply invested in the Israeli-Palestinian "peace
process" and in the proposition that the United States has a vital interest in pursuing that
process to a successful conclusion. More broadly, he has subscribed to the view that the United
States has vital interests at stake in the Middle East more generally, with regional stability
and the well-being of the people living there dependent on the United States exercising what
people in Washington call "leadership." In this context, of course, leadership tends to be a
euphemism for the use or threatened use of military power.
These are, of course, establishment notions, to which all members of the "Blob" necessarily
declare their fealty. Indeed, at least until Trump came along, to dissent from such views was
to become ineligible for appointment to even a mid-level post in the State Department, the
Pentagon, or the White House.
Yet Martin has now publicly recanted.
In an extraordinary op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal (of all places), he
asserts that "few vital interests of the US continue to be at stake in the Middle East."
Policies centered on ensuring the free flow of Persian Gulf oil and the survival of Israel have
become superfluous. "The US economy no longer relies on imported petroleum," he correctly
notes. "Fracking has turned the US into a net oil and natural-gas exporter." As a consequence,
Persian Gulf oil "is no longer a vital interest -- that is, one worth fighting for. Difficult
as it might be to get our heads around the idea, China and India need to be protecting the sea
lanes between the Gulf and their ports, not the US Navy."
As for the Jewish State, Martin notes, again correctly, that today Israel has the capacity
"to defend itself by itself." Notwithstanding the blustering threats regularly issued by
Tehran, "it is today's nuclear-armed Israel that has the means to crush Iran, not the other way
around."
Furthermore, Martin has had his fill of the peace process. "A two-state solution to the
Palestinian problem is a vital Israeli interest, not a vital American one," he writes,
insisting that "it's time to end the farce of putting forward American peace plans only to have
one or both sides reject them."
Martin does identify one vital U.S. interest in the Middle East: averting a nuclear arms
race. Yet "we should be wary of those who would rush to battle stations," he cautions. "Curbing
Iran's nuclear aspirations and ambitions for regional dominance will require assiduous American
diplomacy, not war."
That last sentence captures the essence of Martin's overall conclusion: he proposes not
disengaging from the Middle East but demilitarizing U.S. policy. "After the sacrifice of so
many American lives, the waste of so much energy and money in quixotic efforts that ended up
doing more harm than good," he writes, "it is time for the US to find a way to escape the
costly, demoralising cycle of crusades and retreats."
Now such sentiments appear regularly in the pages of The American Conservative and on
the website of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft . Yet in establishment
circles, a willingness to describe U.S. policy in the Middle East as quixotic is rare indeed.
As for acknowledging that we have done more harm than good, such commonsense views are usually
regarded as beyond the pale.
Martin deserves our congratulations. We must hope that his heresy catches fire and spreads
throughout the Blob. In the meantime, if he's in need of office space, the Quincy Institute
stands ready to help.
Welcome to the ranks of the truth tellers, comrade.
Andrew Bacevich is TAC's writer-at-large and president of the Quincy Institute. His new
book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory ,has
just been published.
"Martin has been deeply invested in the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" and in the
proposition that the United States has a vital interest in pursuing that process to a
successful conclusion. More broadly, he has subscribed to the view that the United States has
vital interests at stake in the Middle East more generally, with regional stability and the
well-being of the people living there"
No. The only use he ever had for the peace process was as cover for what Israel was really
doing.
The only interest he ever cared about was Israel, not the stability or well-being of any
other people but the hawks among Israelis.
He perverted US policy from the inside, in pursuit of those ends of those Lobby partisans.
He has never been anything else.
And is about to pervert it AGAIN. One must be a total ignoramus not to notice American
public's changing attitude towards Israel, as well as Israel's high powered lobbyists.
Before the change turns into an outright hostility, the apologists of the Empire are defusing
the nascent rage. So, HE is the one to be PRAISED for being so wise, and deserving our
support?
This leopard will keep on changing spots, but never his nature.
He is and will remain ardent apologist of American Empire -- for as long as this Empire
serves his primary interest. And that interest is clear -- interest of Israel AND all of its
citizens around the globe.
It is disheartening to read Bacevich praise Indyk-who was, after all, one of the architects
of our disastrous Middle East "policy". I guess the Quincy Institute wants to hew a path
closer to the mainstream narrative. What will be next? An apologia for Doug Feith and Richard
Perle?
Indyk's comments read like a neo-con who's lost favor and power. This is not a good sign.
This points to the internecine warfare within the halls of conceptual power being closer to
decided. With the diplomats out, it leaves the apocalypse cult as the de-facto winner.
Expect more ludicrous demands of US vassals and more effort to attack Iran. They're not
going to stop. Where the oil comes from doesn't matter, what currency is used to conduct
trade does.
It is exactly so -- internecine warfare. But I do not see them loosing power. They are losing
NARRATIVE both internationally and domestically. This is a beginning of crafting a new
narrative to stem the rising hostility against Israel centric militaristic foreign policy
orientation.
Thus switching to "diplomacy", as military posturing just brings about dead ends to
defend.
He wants results, So, change the narrative, diffuse anti-Israeli tide, and become a beacon of
reason and wholesomeness. Who can resist these new spots?
There was never anything Quixotic about US foreign policy in the ME. As for Israel/Palestine,
the policy, and "Martin" was central to it, was to pretend to negotiate in good faith while
Israel occupied "the land from the river to the sea." In Iraq, except for Cheney's oil lust,
it was to carry out the neo-con chant of "the road to Iran is through Iraq." As for Iran, it
has been to barely resist Israel's, and US Israel-firster's, pressure for war, though it may
still happen.
You mean to say that some establishment guy finally got fed up with all the bullshit?
In any event, Indyk is wrong to believe that Israel can defeat Iran in a conflict. Israeli
nuclear weapons are really of little consequence in such a situation as the majority of them
must be delivered by aircraft which Iran will simply shoot down. Those that are siloed will
most likely meet the same fate. But in either case Russia will not allow any such conflict to
go nuclear.
In terms of conventional capabailities, the IDF has never been a very good military unit
since it basically has only entered engagements with less than equally capable opponents.
However, that has all been changing since Hezbollah's defeat of the IDF in 2006.
Today Israel's IDF faces a combat hardened army in Syria, a combat hardened irregular
military force in Lebanon, and increasingly hardened resistance in its own backyard with
Hamas. And Iranian ground forces are not pushovers.
The Israeli navy is meaningless in this situation so it is only in the air that Israel now
has any claim to fame. However, instead of increasing its Air Force with modernized F15x
models, Israel has opted to acquire the F35, which no amount of avionics can make the
air-frame fly better. Iran still uses the F14 as a heavy fighter, which Israel also requires
for her situation making the acquisition of the F35 rather odd.
In the end, it will be Iranian missile development that places that nation in a position
to deal a death blow to the Israeli state.
"... The US President Donald Trump assassinated the commander of the "Axis of the Resistance", the (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) IRGC – Quds Brigade Major General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport with little consideration of the consequences of this targeted killing. It is not to be excluded that the US administration considered the assassination would reflect positively on its Middle Eastern policy. Or perhaps the US officials believed the killing of Sardar Soleimani would weaken the "Axis of the Resistance": once deprived of their leader, Iran's partners' capabilities in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen would be reduced. Is this assessment accurate? ..."
The US President Donald Trump assassinated the commander of the "Axis of the
Resistance", the (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) IRGC – Quds Brigade Major General
Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport with little consideration of the consequences of this
targeted killing. It is not to be excluded that the US administration considered the
assassination would reflect positively on its Middle Eastern policy. Or perhaps the US
officials believed the killing of Sardar Soleimani would weaken the "Axis of the Resistance":
once deprived of their leader, Iran's partners' capabilities in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq
and Yemen would be reduced. Is this assessment accurate?
A high-ranking source within this "Axis of the Resistance" said " Sardar Soleimani was the direct and fast track link
between the partners of Iran and the Leader of the Revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei. However, the
command on the ground belonged to the national leaders in every single separate country. These
leaders have their leadership and practices, but common strategic objectives to fight against
the US hegemony, stand up to the oppressors and to resist illegitimate foreign intervention in
their affairs. These objectives have been in place for many years and will remain, with or
without Sardar Soleimani".
"In Lebanon, Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah leads Lebanon and is
the one with a direct link to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He supports Gaza, Syria,
Iraq and Yemen and has a heavy involvement in these fronts. However, he leads a large number
of advisors and officers in charge of running all military, social and relationship affairs
domestically and regionally. Many Iranian IRGC officers are also present on many of these
fronts to support the needs of the "Axis of the Resistance" members in logistics, training
and finance," said the source.
In Syria, IRGC officers coordinate with Russia, the Syrian Army, the Syrian political
leadership and all Iran's allies fighting for the liberation of the country and for the defeat
of the jihadists who flocked to Syria from all continents via Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. These
officers have worked side by side with Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian and other nationals who are part
of the "Axis of the Resistance". They have offered the Syrian government the needed support to
defeat the "Islamic State" (ISIS/IS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda and other jihadists or those of similar
ideologies in most of the country – with the exception of north-east Syria, which is
under US occupation forces. These IRGC officers have their objectives and the means to achieve
a target already agreed and in place for years. The absence of Sardar Soleimani will hardly
affect these forces and their plans.
In Iraq, over 100 Iranian IRGC officers have been operating in the country at the official
request of the Iraqi government, to defeat ISIS. They served jointly with the Iraqi forces and
were involved in supplying the country with weapons, intelligence and training after the fall
of a third of Iraq into the hands of ISIS in mid-2014. It was striking and shocking to see the
Iraqi Army, armed and trained by US forces for over ten years, abandoning its positions and
fleeing the northern Iraqi cities. Iranian support with its robust ideology (with one of its
allies, motivating them to fight ISIS) was efficient in Syria; thus, it was necessary to
transmit this to the Iraqis so they could stand, fight, and defeat ISIS.
The Lebanese Hezbollah is present in Syria and Yemen, and also in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked Sayyed Nasrallah to provide his country with officers to stand
against ISIS. Dozens of Hezbollah officers operate in Iraq and will be ready to support the
Iraqis if the US forces refuse to leave the country. They will abide by and enforce the
decision of the Parliament that the US must leave by end January 2021. Hezbollah's long warfare
experience has resulted in painful experiences with the US forces in Lebanon and Iraq
throughout several decades and has not been forgotten.
Sayyed Nasrallah, in his latest speech, revealed the presence in mid-2014 of Hezbollah
officials in Kurdistan to support the Iraqi Kurds against ISIS. This was when the same Kurdish
Leader Masoud Barzani announced that it was due to Iran that the Kurds received weapons to
defend themselves when the US refused to help Iraq for many months after ISIS expanded its
control in northern Iraq.
The Hezbollah leaders did not disclose the continuous visits of Kurdish representatives to
Lebanon to meet Hezbollah officials. In fact, Iraqi Sunni and Shia officials, ministers and
political leaders regularly visit Lebanon to meet Hezbollah officials and its leader.
Hezbollah, like Iran, plays an essential role in easing the dialogue between Iraqis when these
find it difficult to overcome their differences together.
The reason why Sayyed Nasrallah revealed the presence of his officers in Kurdistan when
meeting Masoud Barzani is a clear message to the world that the "Axis of the Resistance"
doesn't depend on one single person. Indeed, Sayyed Nasrallah is showing the unity which reigns
among this front, with or without Sardar Soleimani. Barzani is part of Iraq, and Kurdistan
expressed its readiness to abide by the decision of the Iraqi Parliament to seek the US forces'
departure from the country because the Kurds are not detached from the central government but
part of it.
Prior to his assassination, Sardar Soleimani prepared the ground to be followed (if killed
on the battlefield, for example) and asked Iranian officials to nominate General Ismail Qaani
as his replacement. The Leader of the revolution Sayyed Ali Khamenei ordered Soleimani's wish
to be fulfilled and to keep the plans and objectives already in place as they were. Sayyed
Khamenei, according to the source, ordered an "increase in support for the Palestinians and, in
particular, to all allies where US forces are present."
Sardar Soleimani was looking for his death by his enemies and got what he wished for. He was
aware that the "Axis of the Resistance" is highly aware of its objectives. Those among the
"Axis of the Resistance" who have a robust internal front are well-established and on track.
The problem was mainly in Iraq. But it seems the actions of the US have managed to bring Iraqi
factions together- by assassinating the two commanders. Sardar Soleimani could have never
expected a rapid achievement of this kind. Anti-US Iraqis are preparing this coming Friday to
express their rejection of the US forces present in their country.
Sayyed Ali Khamenei , in his Friday prayers last week, the first for eight years, set up a
road map for the "Axis of the Resistance": push the US forces out of the Middle East and
support Palestine.
All Palestinian groups, including Hamas, were present at Sardar Soleimani's funeral in Iran
and met with General Qaani who promised, "not only to continue support but to increase it
according to Sayyed Khamenei's request," said the source. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas Leader, said
from Tehran: "Soleimani is the martyr of Jerusalem".
Many Iraqi commanders were present at the meeting with General Qaani. Most of these have a
long record of hostility towards US forces in Iraq during the occupation period (2003-2011).
Their commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, was assassinated with Sardar Soleimani and they are
seeking revenge. Those leaders have enough motivation to attack the US forces, who have
violated the Iraq-US training, cultural and armament agreement. At no time was the US
administration given a license to kill in Iraq by the government of Baghdad.
The Iraqi Parliament has spoken: and the assassination of Sardar Soleimani has indeed fallen
within the ultimate objectives of the "Axis of the Resistance". The Iraqi caretaker Prime
Minister has officially informed all members of the Coalition Forces in Iraq that "their
presence, including that of NATO, is now no longer required in Iraq". They have one year to
leave. But that absolutely does not exclude the Iraqi need to avenge their commanders.
Palestine constitutes the second objective, as quoted by Sayyed Khamenei. We cannot exclude
a considerable boost of support for the Palestinians, much more than the actually existing one.
Iran is determined to support the Sunni Palestinians in their objective to have a state of
their own in Palestine. The man – Soleimani – is gone and is replaceable like any
other man: but the level of commitment to goals has increased. It is hard to imagine the "Axis
of the Resistance" remaining idle without engaging themselves somehow in the US Presidential
campaign. So, the remainder of 2020 is expected to be hot.
*
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"... Wilkerson provided a harsh critique of US foreign policy over the last two decades. Wilkerson states: ..."
"... America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It's part of who we are. It's part of what the American Empire is. ..."
"... We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as [US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] is doing right now, as [President Donald Trump] is doing right now, as [Secretary of Defense Mark Esper] is doing right now, as [Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)] is doing right now, as [Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR)] is doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party -- the Republicans -- are doing right now. We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That's the truth of it, and that's the agony of it. ..."
"... That base voted for Donald Trump because he promised to end these endless wars, he promised to drain the swamp. Well, as I said, an alligator from that swamp jumped out and bit him. And, when he ordered the killing of Qassim Suleimani, he was a member of the national security state in good standing, and all that state knows how to do is make war. ..."
Lawrence Wilkerson, a College of William & Mary professor who was chief of staff for
Secretary of State Colin Powel in the George W. Bush administration, powerfully summed up the
vile nature of the US national security state in a recent interview with host Amy Goodman at
Democracy Now.
Asked by Goodman about the escalation of US conflict with Iran and how it compares with the
prior run-up to the Iraq War, Wilkerson provided a harsh critique of US foreign policy over the
last two decades. Wilkerson states:
Ever since 9/11, the beast of the national security state, the beast of endless wars, the
beast of the alligator that came out of the swamp, for example, and bit Donald Trump just a
few days ago, is alive and well.
America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no
end in sight? It's part of who we are. It's part of what the American Empire is.
We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as [US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] is doing
right now, as [President Donald Trump] is doing right now, as [Secretary of Defense Mark
Esper] is doing right now, as [Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)] is doing right now, as [Senator
Tom Cotton (R-AR)] is doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party --
the Republicans -- are doing right now. We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is
we have to do to continue this war complex. That's the truth of it, and that's the agony of
it.
What we saw President Trump do was not in President Trump's character, really. Those boys
and girls who were getting on those planes at Fort Bragg to augment forces in Iraq, if you
looked at their faces, and, even more importantly, if you looked at the faces of the families
assembled along the line that they were traversing to get onto the airplanes, you saw a lot
of Donald Trump's base. That base voted for Donald Trump because he promised to end these
endless wars, he promised to drain the swamp. Well, as I said, an alligator from that swamp
jumped out and bit him. And, when he ordered the killing of Qassim Suleimani, he was a member
of the national security state in good standing, and all that state knows how to do is make
war.
Wilkerson, over the remainder of the two-part interview provides many more
insightful comments regarding US foreign policy, including recent developments concerning Iran.
Watch Wilkerson's interview here:
It's amazing all the money in the State Department and other intelligence agencies should be
attracting the best minds. Yet a bunch of us sitting here watching this from our boring
office jobs realize how genuinely stupid US foreign policy has been.
A separate Sunni state in West Iraq would be doomed. We need to leave these people alone,
we've made enough foolish mistakes and this will get a lot of people killed. That's along
with US troops being put in harms way for ridiculous reasons like stealing Syrian oil and now
occupying Iraq against their parliaments wishes.
Back in the day you told someone you were American and they wanted to shake your hand and
ask you about this place or that. Now they want to spit in our faces
Just when you thought that Washington could not sink any lower in the international
diplomacy game, the Trump White House compounds its previous misdeed by issuing a public death
threat against the successor of assassinated Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.
Presidential US Special Envoy to Iran, Brian Hook, gave a statement to the Arabic language
newspaper,
Asharq al-Awsat , where he warned new General of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), Esmail Ghaani, that he will end up like Soleimani should he be accused of killing any
Americans, remarking that, "follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the
same fate."
Hook continued saying,"We will hold the regime and its agents responsible for any attack on
Americans or American interests in the region."
Hook also went on to boast that Washington's state-sponsored assassination of Soleimani has
made the Middle East a safer place because it has "create a vacuum that the Regime will not be
able to fill," inferring that Ghaani will not be able to marshal "Iran's agents in the
region".
Hook also repeated the common talking point that Soleimani was the 'world's most dangerous
terrorist' – a label which hardly corresponds with facts which clearly demonstrate that
the Iranian military leader was leading the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq and
Syria.
In the interview, Hook also used the opportunity to reinforce another State Department
narrative which still claims that Iran somehow launched the September attack on Saudi Arabia's
Aramco oil facilities – even though the likely culprit, Yemen's Houthi rebel forces,
had already taken credit for the attack.
Backed into a corner and influence waning, the United States has in recent weeks been
promoting a plan to create an autonomous Sunni region in western Iraq, officials from both
countries told Middle East Eye.
The US efforts, the officials say, come in response to Shia Iraqi parties' attempts to
expel American troops from their country.
Iraq represents a strategic land bridge between Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon and
Palestine.
Establishing a US-controlled Sunni buffer zone in western Iraq would deprive Iran of using
land routes into Syria and prevent it from reaching the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean.
For Washington, the idea of carving out a Sunni region dates back to a 2007 proposition by
Joe Biden, who is now vying to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.
Biden's plan was actually an attempt to ethnically cleanse Iraq into three distinct
enclaves (because an integrated, multicultural Iraq is anathema to the US colonial divide and
conquer strategy).
Across racial and religious boundaries, Iraqi politicians on Saturday bemoaned Democratic
presidential contender Barack Obama's choice of running mate, known in Iraq as the author of
a 2006 plan to divide the country into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.
"This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing
Iraq," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in
parliament, told Reuters.
"We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the
communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over
resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep
the problems alive for a long time."
For all his brazen denials about his Iraq involvement, one wonders whether, if Joe Biden
hadn't been selected Obama's Vice President, he might have eventually been named Iraq
Viceroy.
Now Trump is adopting Biden's plan.
Same as it ever was.... up 12 users have voted. --
Tom Steyer is my favorite billionaire. Let's eat him last.
Backed into a corner and influence waning, the United States has in recent weeks
been promoting a plan to create an autonomous Sunni region in western Iraq, officials
from both countries told Middle East Eye.
The US efforts, the officials say, come in response to Shia Iraqi parties' attempts
to expel American troops from their country.
Iraq represents a strategic land bridge between Iran and its allies in Syria,
Lebanon and Palestine.
Establishing a US-controlled Sunni buffer zone in western Iraq would deprive Iran of
using land routes into Syria and prevent it from reaching the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean.
For Washington, the idea of carving out a Sunni region dates back to a 2007
proposition by Joe Biden, who is now vying to be the Democratic Party's presidential
candidate.
Biden's plan was actually an attempt to ethnically cleanse Iraq into three distinct
enclaves (because an integrated, multicultural Iraq is anathema to the US colonial divide
and conquer strategy).
Across racial and religious boundaries, Iraqi politicians on Saturday bemoaned
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama's choice of running mate, known in Iraq
as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into ethnic and sectarian
enclaves.
"This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of
dividing Iraq," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab
blocs in parliament, told Reuters.
"We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the
communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over
resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would
keep the problems alive for a long time."
For all his brazen denials about his Iraq involvement, one wonders whether, if Joe
Biden hadn't been selected Obama's Vice President, he might have eventually been named
Iraq Viceroy.
Trump needs to claim victory over ISIS and get the hell out. Those one million peaceful
protesters will turn into something really ugly, probably joined by parts or all of the Iraqi
military. That will be far worse for him, with scenes of US diplomats being airlifted out of
the embassy by helicopter. up 10 users have voted. --
Capitalism has always been the rule by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate
them or restrict their power.
B - AP isn't the only outlet falsely reporting the protest. Please get screen shots from the
other "reports" (like Bloomberg) and add them to this post to document the media
manipulation.
Around Baghdad's Hurriyah Square, the streets were a sea of black, white and red, as
protesters clutched Iraqi flags and wore shrouds around their shoulders to evoke the
country's dead.
White shrouds around their shoulders do not "evoke the country's dead" but a a sign of
willingness for martyrdom. Those guys ( vid ) are ready to
fight and die for their aim.
Yes, I was thinking about something along those lines, and was about to write a comment.
There are conservative tribal leaders, who were at one point relatively favourable to the US,
and who might be susceptible to this manoeuvre, and to Saudi persuasion. I was thinking in
particular of Abu Risheh. However, unfortunately, their peoples along the Euphrates got
flattened by the fighting during the Surge (after the period you're citing), so I don't know
how enthusiastic they're going to be. It's a conventional problem, if the US makes a deal
with a chief, indeed MbS is an example, they presume that they've got the whole people. They
haven't.
div> please, do not try to search for US policy sense in the whole ME. all
the moves there are done by the Israel firsters: destroy first then invent "senses". even the
first Gulf War was lacking any policy consideration. I hope one day before she dies, to listen
to what US Ambassador at that time, April Gillepsie, has to say about "her" entrapment of
Saddam Hussein, a sort of McNamara hour of acknowledging.
Posted by: nietzsche1510 , Jan 24 2020 18:59 utc |
54
please, do not try to search for US policy sense in the whole ME. all the moves there are
done by the Israel firsters: destroy first then invent "senses". even the first Gulf War was
lacking any policy consideration. I hope one day before she dies, to listen to what US
Ambassador at that time, April Gillepsie, has to say about "her" entrapment of Saddam
Hussein, a sort of McNamara hour of acknowledging.
Posted by: nietzsche1510 | Jan 24 2020 18:59 utc |
54
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Thirty-four US service members have been diagnosed with concussions
and traumatic brain injuries after Iran conducted ballistic missile strikes on two bases in
Iraq with half of them still undergoing medical treatment, Department of Defence spokesman
Jonathan Hoffman said in a press briefing on 24 January.
"With regard to the number of recent injuries here is the latest update 34 total members have
diagnosed with concussions and TBI [traumatic brain injury]", Hoffman told reporters.
Concussions or Headaches.? When it's serious we have to lie -
Paging Dr. Donald J. Trump
Paging any available Dr. or resident at Mayo Clinic
I wouldn't deny the US is capable of creating an Iraqi al-Tanf. The US is always capable of
air-supporting isolated bases, as long as there is the determination to do so. It's been
shown many times, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. More, I don't see. The Sunnis have seen the
way the Syrian Kurds were abandoned, so nobody's going to be enthused. And the surge has not
been forgotten.
"The Shi'a can certainly get their people out - which by the way is why they have such
effective militias. The Sunnis don't have similarly effective militias (though such would
probably also be politically difficult)."
Wondering why ? Because the don't want to live as minorities any more, specially where
they are the majority. There is need for a collective security across the Shia community
throughout the Western Asia and has nothing to do with US. Because US and UK, historically
and continually have supported and inspired Sunni clients against Shia uprisings
For equal rights, US and UK and their clients have become a common threat to Shia resistance.
This resistance and sense of common security within Shia communities is so strong and
imbedded that killing one leader here one commander there will not change the outcome. As an
example Abbas Mussavie was assassinated by IDF in 1992 who replaced him that became more
dangerous and kicked Israel out of Lebanon, one Hassan Nassrollah
US will end up leaving like in VM No matter what she does
I was thinking along the lines of Saudi intermediaries doing deals with tribes as Mcgurk
pulled off in the Raqqa meeting when he brought in a Saudi intermediary or envoy to do a deal
with the tribes of Deir Ezzor. I see the tribe break down into clans, so suppose it would or
may be the heads of clans that deals would have to be done with.
What strikes me about this though is that US are looking at retreating into the area ISIS
have retreated to and where they arose - the Iraq Syria border regions.
- Muqtada Al Sadr is an iraqi nationalist. As long as he can get help from Iran he will
take it. But when that help is no longer needed then he will try to reduce the "influence" of
the iranians as much as possible. Prehaps the words "boot them out" is a bit "over the
top".
- But the relationship will Always remain friendly. But he is "his own man".
- In this regard this a re-run of what happened in the year 2003 & 2004. Back then the US
wanted to pick their own sock puppet but the shiites out-witted the US.
Interesting that the number of US troops suffering concussive injuries from the Iran
retaliatory strikes has been quietly reassessed to 44 persons. That seems significant in
light of the extensive threats beforehand that any injury to a US person would ignite
thunderous reprisal. It seems, then, the Americans have no plan, the Soleimaini hit was not
thought through, and they are not in any way prepared for a necessary readjustment of their
position in the region. Trump at Davos dismissed the protests and again threatened sanctions
on Iraq - the fulcrum of US power has now visibly shifted from the military to the dominance
of the reserve currency in the form of economic reprisals (sanctions). Reduced to imposing or
threatening economic blockades on adversary populations is not a winning long-term
strategy.
It is not only the MSM coordinated blackout on the important events developing in Iraq,
notice also the scarce half hundred comments here in this thread on the same events by the
usual and otherwise prolific regulars, who preferred to comment on so used Boeing or whatever
old topic instead...
Meanwhile, those of us who wished to comment got banned, as they seemed to be some other
who wanted to comment by other media, like Pepe Escobar in Facebook...
Elijah Magnier says,
Someone should write an article on how Main Stream Media and most reputable agencies either
ignored what happened in #Baghdad #Iraq today or deliberately downplayed it because it
calls for the #US to leave.
News is strikingly manipulated s since the war in #Syria 2011.
Incredible, isn't it? A policy of parcellisation which has already failed twice, in Iraq
and then again in Syria. And now Trump is going to do it again, according to reports which
could well be right. They're sufficiently stupid. They're actually expecting the poor
suffering Fallujans, who suffered through more than a month of being tortured by US troops,
are going to stand up and fight for the US.
It's a complete misappreciation of the situation, not unusual in the US. It is of course
true that the Sunnis suffer from the unthinking policies of the Shi'a, and are treated like
an occupied country. But that doesn't mean that the Sunnis think they can stand up an
independent state. They don't, particularly if the US only stations a handful of troops
there.
The US could of course militarily occupy the area, but that's not Trump's plan, as it
would be too politically intrusive back home.
By the way I hear we're about to receive Trump's overall peace plan for the Middle East.
Given that the first rollouts fell totally flat, I wouldn't be too optimistic about its new
reception in the Middle East.
- Carving out a state in North-Western Iraq is part of "The Biden plan" of 2006 (/2007 ?).
The Biden plan was to divide Iraq into 3 parts: Kurdistan, "Sumnnistan" and "Shia-stan".
- Was this the reason why the US "created" ISIS (in 2014) ??
The Shi'a can certainly get their people out - which by the way is why they have such
effective militias. The Sunnis don't have similarly effective militias (though such would
probably also be politically difficult).
The US certainly doesn't have much idea how to tackle such a movement. The renewal of the
plan for parcellisation just shows up the bankruptcy of US policy, nothing spoke to me so
strongly of the failure of US thinking. For all the number of Washington think-tanks
concentrating on the ME, they can't come up with workable ideas.
Posted by: Ernesto Che | Jan 24 2020 12:32 utc | 6
Al-Sadr is indeed an Iraqi nationalist, and not particularly pro-Iranian, others are more.
He more profited from Iran's safe haven, than became pro-Iranian.
On the other hand, he's unlikely to become Prime Minister, as too extreme. The US, if it
gets a say in the choice of the next PM, will veto. And he's a sort who is in permanent
opposition to everything, rather than in government, much like Corbyn in Britain.
On January 18, Houthi rebels targeted the al Estiqbal military training camp, used by the
Saudi-led coalition and forces loyal to Yemen's UN-recognised government. The strikes
resulted in at least 116 deaths and dozens (if not hundreds) of injuries. Those struck had
reportedly just finished praying at the base's mosque. According to Saudi media, the
Houthis used a combination of ballistic missiles and drones.
The fake media are trying to trasvesticize these protests as antigovernment protests in the
eyes of the Waestern and American population, fortunately, the images are worth thousands
words:
During the first of the various criminal attacks on Fallujah, Sadr famously promised to
deploy the Mahdi Army there to defend the largely sunni community.
The US fears nothing more than nationalism in the middle east- all its policies are aimed at
atomising communities and fostering sectarian division. It is a tactic that has worked well
in the United States for centuries- preserving the absolute power of the capitalist oligarchy
by setting black against white, catholic against protestant, settler against indigenous,
migrant against native.
It is difficult to conceive of a more evil policy than that of encouraging shi'ites to bully
sunnis and vice versa, while dissecting society into shreds of ethnic and sectarian entities
, which are then armed and trained to fight and kill one another.
This was the basis of the surge under Petraus. Of course the British had established the
practice themselves. Among other things they employed christian Assyrians as police.
Al Mayadeen is reporting testimonies from all confesional sides on that this is an united
clamor coming from the whole Iraqi society, who sees a clear link between occupation and
corruption, in spite of their internal political differences, seeing no future while the US
remains in the country corrupting and compromising Iraqi reconstruction and progress.
They are saying that the numbers seen demonstrating today in Iraq, in the anniversary of
the other historical 1920 anticolonial demonstration, equates a popular referendum on the US
illegal and forced presence in the country.
The representatives of the protesters are stating that there are being stablished
diplomatic means for the US to go out, but, in case it refuses doing it by these means, the
resistance will come into action. Thus a way of no return for the US is being delineated
here...
Since the assassination drones cannot fly all the way from US territory to their intended
targets,
any country that harbors the drones is actually complicit to the crimes of the US of A.
They must be made to understand that these assassinations will cost them eventually as
accessories
to these crimes.
Possibly the most potent leverage Iraq can have on the US is for the Iraqi parliament to
decree that all legal previously agreed immunity for US military guilty of crimes in Iraq is
null and void. All US war criminals immediately liable to be tried in Iraq under Iraq law,
unless the US commit to a prompt and orderly withdrawal. Right to prosecute still reserved in
case of US non-compliance with any such commitment.
Whether or to what extent this could be made retrospective to the beginning of the current
agreement (on the grounds that the agreement has been violated) I don't know. Maybe it might
be possible to apply retrospectively at least to the first verifiable breech of the agreement
by the US, I have no idea. Or maybe the agreement can only be deemed void with effect from a
statement by the parliament, I have no idea. In any case, the US is now there illegally:
any US soldier can legally be arrested and imprisoned at any time; and any US
soldier from now on killing or injuring any person in Iraq is automatically a war
criminal.
If it can so some extent legally be made retrospective, the US would automatically face a
terrifying situation.
(Any prisons containing US prisoners in Iraq need full military protection though - I
recall previously the US destroyed a prison with a tank where some soldiers were
arrested).
The link from Al Mayadeen includes live stream with commentary in Arabic of the crowds
gathering who seem in the sizes of Arbaeen pilgrimage...or more.....since
multiconfessional...
"... Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment -- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading a communist takeover of the United States. ..."
"... State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations. ..."
"... Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security. ..."
"... After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defense contractors and sub-contractors. ..."
"... That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate. ..."
Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment
-- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading
a communist takeover of the United States.
This occurred during the Cold War, when Americans were made to believe that there was a gigantic international communist conspiracy
to take over the United States and the rest of the world. The conspiracy, they said, was centered in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!
That was, in fact, the justification for converting the federal government to a national-security state type of governmental structure
after the end of World War II. The argument was that a limited-government republic type of governmental structure, which was the
national's founding governmental system, was insufficient to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. To prevail over the
communists in what was being called a cold War, a it would be necessary for the federal government, they said, to become a national-security
state so that it could wield the same type of sordid, dark-side, totalitarian-like practices that the communists themselves wielded
and exercised.
The conviction that the communists were coming to get us became so predominant, primarily through official propaganda and indoctrination,
especially in the national's public (i.e., government) schools, that the matter evolved into mass paranoia. Millions of Americans
became convinced that there were communists everywhere. Americans were exhorted to keep a careful watch on everyone else, including
their neighbors, and report any suspicious activity, much as Americans today are exhorted to do the same thing with respect to terrorists.
Some Americans would even look under their beds for communists. Others searched for communists in Congress and within the federal
bureaucracies, even the Army, and Hollywood as well. One rightwing group became convinced that even President Eisenhower was an agent
of the Soviet government.
In the midst of all this national paranoia, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA became convinced that King was a communist agent.
When King began criticizing U.S. interventionism in Vietnam, that solidified their belief that he was a communist agent. After all,
they maintained, wouldn't any true-blue American patriot rally to his government in time of war, not criticize or condemn it? Only
a communist, they believed, would oppose his government when it was committed to killing communists in Vietnam.
Moreover, when King began advocating for civil rights, especially in the South, that constituted additional evidence, as far as
the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were concerned, that he was, in fact, a communist agent, one whose mission was to foment civil strife
in America as a prelude to a communist takeover of America . How else to explain why a black man would be fighting for equal rights
for blacks in nation that purported to be free?
The website kingcenter.org points out:
After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous
verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as a result of a
conspiracy. Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict saying, there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in
the assassination of my husband Martin Luther King Jr. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented
during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal governments were deeply
involved in the assassination of my husband.”
And why not? Isn't it the duty of the U.S. national-security state to eradicate threats to national security? What bigger threat
to national security than a person who is supposedly serving as an agent for the communists and also as a spearhead for an international
communist conspiracy to take over the United States?
State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after
the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal
assassination manual that trained its agents
in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations.
In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out
to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba,
the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security. In the early 1960s, the CIA , in partnership
with the Mafia, the world's premier criminal organization, conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, a country
that never attacked or invaded the United States. In 1973, the U.S. national-security state orchestrated a coup in Chile, where its
counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment conspired to assassinate the democratically elected president of the
country, Salvador Allende, by firing missiles at his position in the national palace.
The mountain of circumstantial evidence that has accumulated since November 1963 has established that foreign officials weren't
the only ones who got targeted as threats to national security. As James W. Douglas documents so well in his remarkable and profound
book
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters , the U.S. national-security establishment also targeted President John
F. Kennedy for a state-sponsored assassination as well.
Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded
that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national
security.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one
great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defense contractors and sub-contractors.
That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace,
friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's
Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations
with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate.
But what many people often forget is that one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a
major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.
What better proof of a threat to national security than that " reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and
then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist
takeover of the United States?
The loss of both Kennedy and King constituted conclusive confirmation that the worst mistake in U.S. history was to abandon a
limited-government republic type of governmental system in favor of a totalitarian governmental structure known as a national-security
state. A free nation does not fight communism with communist tactics and an omnipotent government. A free nation fights communism
with freedom and limited government.
There is no doubt what both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about a type of totalitarian-like governmental
structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression,
coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction,
not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.
Behind the façade of the impeachment spectacle – Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz
are now on Trump's legal team – is a ruling class consensus that trumps partisan
differences. As political economist Rob Urie perceptively observed
:
The American obsession with electoral politics is odd in that 'the people' have so little
say in electoral outcomes and that the outcomes only dance around the edges of most people's
lives. It isn't so much that the actions of elected leaders are inconsequential as that other
factors -- economic, historical, structural and institutional, do more to determine
'politics.'
In the highly contested 2016 presidential contest, nearly half the eligible US voters opted out, not
finding enough difference among the contenders to leave home. 2020 may be an opportunity; an
opening for an alternative to neoliberal austerity at home and imperial wars abroad lurching to
an increasingly oppressive national security state. The campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi
Gabbord and before them Occupy point to a popular insurgency. Mass protests of the dispossessed
are rocking
France , India ,
Colombia
, Chile , and
perhaps here soon.
(CARTOON) The "Pax americana", in an image
"They made a desert and called it peace"
Tacit, in reference to "Pax Romana" after the destruction of Carthage.
Posted by: Sasha | Jan 24 2020 14:37 utc | 23
The Spanish-written twit is inaccurate.
Wikiquote: Calgacus, according to Tacitus, was a chieftain of the Caledonian Confederacy who
fought the Roman army of Gnaeus Julius Agricola at the Battle of Mons Graupius in northern
Scotland in AD 83 or 84.
Quotes
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem
appellant.
Attributed by Tacitus in Agricola (c. 98)
Translation: To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and
where they make a desert, they call it peace. -- Oxford Revised
Anyone looking with sober eyes upon today's world and the feeble economic and geopolitical
underpinnings holding the system together must accept the fact that a new system WILL be created.
This is not an opinion, but a fact. We are moving towards eight billion lives on this globe and the means of
productive powers to sustain that growing population (at least in the west) has been permitted to decay terribly over
the recent half century while monetary values have grown like a hyperinflationary cancer to unimaginable proportions.
Derivatives speculation alone under the deregulated "too big to fail" banking system has resulted in over $1.5
quadrillion in nominal values which have ZERO connection to the real world (GDP globally barely accounts for $80
trillion). Over the past 5 months
$415 billion of QE bailouts have been released into the bankrupt banks
to prevent a collapse. So, economically
it's foundation of sand.
Militarily, the west has followed the earlier Roman empire of yesteryear by overextending itself beyond capacity
creating situations of global turmoil, death and unbounded resentment at the dominant Anglo American powers
controlling NATO and the Military-industrial complex.
The recent near-war with Iran at the start of 2020 put the world on a fast track towards a nuclear war with Iran's
allies Russia and China.
Culturally, the disconnection from the traditional values that gave western civilization it's moral fitness to
survive and grow has resulted in a post-truth age now spanning over three generations (from the baby boomers to
today's young adults) who have become the most confused class of people in modern history losing all discrimination
of "needs" vs "wants", "right" vs "wrong", "beauty" vs "ugliness" or even "male" and "female".
Without ranting on anymore, it suffices to say that this thing is not sustainable.
So the question is not "will we get a new system?" but rather "whom will this new system serve?"
Will this new system serve an oligarchical agenda at the expense of the nations and people of the earth or will it
serve the interests of the nations and people of the earth at the expense of the oligarchy?
Putin Revives a Forgotten Vision
President Putin's January 15 State of the Union was a breath of fresh air for this reason, as the world leader who
has closely allied his nation's destiny to China's Belt and Road Initiative, laid out a call for a new system to be
created by the five largest nuclear powers as common allies under a multi-polar paradigm.
After speaking about Russia's vision for internal improvements, Putin shifted towards the international arena
saying:
I am convinced that it is high time for a serious and direct discussion about the basic principles of a stable
world order and the most acute problems that humanity is facing. It is necessary to show political will, wisdom
and courage. The time demands an awareness of our shared responsibility and real actions."
Calling for Russia, the USA, UK, China and France to organize a new architecture that goes far beyond merely
military affairs, Putin stated:
The founding countries of the United Nations should set an example. It is the five nuclear powers that bear a
special responsibility for the conservation and sustainable development of humankind. These five nations should
first of all start with measures to remove the prerequisites for a global war and develop updated approaches to
ensuring stability on the planet that would fully take into account the political, economic and military aspects
of modern international relations."
Putin's emphasis that "the United Nations should set an example" is not nave fantasy, nor "crypto globalist
rhetoric" as some of his critics have stated.
Putin knows that the UN has been misused by anti-nation state ideologues for a very long time. He also knows his
history better than his critics and is aware that the original mandate of the United Nations was premised upon the
defense of the sovereign nation state. Article 2.1 of the charter clearly says:
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members."
For readers who are perhaps rightfully cynical that such organizations as the UN could ever play a truly positive
role in world affairs, it is important to recall that the UN was never intended to have any unilateral authority over
nation-states, or military power unto itself when was created in 1945.
Its purpose was intended to provide a platform for dialogue where sovereign nation-states could harmonize their
policies and overcome misunderstanding with the aim of protecting the general welfare of the people of the earth.
Articles 1.3-4 state clearly that the UN's is designed
"to achieve international co-operation in solving
international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging
respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or
religion and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends."
If the United Nations principles as enunciated
in
its pre-amble
and core articles were to ever be followed (just like America's own admirable constitution): then
wars of aggression and regime change would not be possible.
Article 2.4 directly addresses this saying:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state".
These principles stand in stark contrast to the earlier 1919 Round Table/RIIA-orchestrated attempt at a
post-national world order under the failed League of Nations which was rightfully
put out of its misery
by nationalists of the 1920s.
FDR's 1944 vision, as Putin is well aware, was based not on "world government", but rather upon the concept of a
community of sovereign nations collaborating on vast development and infrastructure projects which were intended to
be the effect of an "internationalization" of the New Deal that transformed America in the years following the Great
Depression.
Thousands of Asian, African and South American engineers and statesmen were invited to visit the USA during the
1930s and early 1940s to study the Tennessee Valley Authority and other great New Deal water, agriculture and energy
projects in order to bring those ideas back to their countries as a driver to break out of the shackles of
colonialism both politically, culturally and economically.
In opposition to FDR, Churchill the unrepentant racist was okay with offering political independence, but never
the cultural or economic means to achieve it.
Although the world devolved into an Anglo-American alliance with FDR's death in 1945, the other Bretton Woods
Institutions which were
meant to provide
international productive credit to those large scale infrastructure projects to end colonialism
were taken over by FDR's enemies who purged the IMF and World Bank of all loyalists to FDR's international New Deal
vision throughout the years of the red scare.
Whether these corrupt financing institutions can be brought back to their original intention or whether they must
simply be replaced with new lending mechanisms such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS New Development
Bank or Silk Road Investment Fund remains to be seen.
What is vital to keep in mind is that Putin (just like FDR before him) knows that neither Britain nor Britain's
Deep State loyalists in America can trusted.
Yet, in spite of their mistrust, they both knew that a durable world order could only be accomplished if these
forces were reined in under a higher law imposed by the authority of truly sovereign nations, and this is why FDR's
post-war plans involved a USA-Russia-China-UK partnership to provide the impetus to global development initiatives
and achieve the goals of the Atlantic Charter.
This partnership was sabotaged over FDR's dead body as the Cold War and Truman Doctrine broke that alliance. The
goal of ending colonialism had to wait another 80 years.
At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin had already laid his insight into history clearly on the table when
he said:
This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that "security for one is
security for all."
As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out:
When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger I consider that the
unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world. And this is not only because if
there was individual leadership in today's and precisely in today's world, then the military, political and
economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at
its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation."
Putin is not nave to call for the United Nations charter to serve as the guiding light of a new military,
political, economic architecture.
Nor is he nave to think that such untrustworthy nations as the USA, UK and France should serve in partnership
with Russia and China since Putin knows that it will be Russia and China shaping the terms of the new system and not
the collapsing basket-cases of the west whose excess bluff and bluster betrays a losing hand, which is why certain
forces have been so desperate to overthrow the poker table over the past few years.
The fact that Putin, Xi and their growing allies have not permitted this chaos agenda to unfold has not only
driven "end of history" imperialists into rage fits but also gives FDR's vision for a community of sovereign
nation-states a second chance at life.
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The big mistake was giving France, UK and the US or FUKU or FUKUS, USSR NKA Russia and China any veto
over the other independent Nations on the planet. Especially since the first two were responsible for
hobbling together the Frankenstein monster known as the United States of America that was created by
rapacious theft and genocide of the indigenous population followed by almost total ecocide and now has
been loosed upon the world it seems to accomplish the same thing under the cover of bringing it
"freedom and democracy".
Paul
,
It's a pity the experience of the League of Nations isn't examined any longer because it is
instructive. OK Congress declined to approve it so the Pilot Wilson was missing but more serious was
the problem of totally partisan and self serving decisions that made its provisions a mockery. Italy
was 'allowed' to keep on occupying Ethiopia and sanctions eg on oil were simply declined, partly
because the US supplied the oil and wasn't going to stop selling it, especially to Mussolini who was
rapidly becoming a client state of America in enormous debt.
BigB
,
Someone said it was "banal" of me to oppose 'The Western Intellectual Tradition' (TWIT). Well, here is
its vision *in extremis*. If you do not recognise it: this is 'Platonic Humanism' in all its glory.
It reads well. It is sensible and intelligible in its clearly written propositions. It has meaning and
clearly denotes real world events right? And yet it is ultimately unintelligible and non-sensical
in an early Wittgensteinian sense of its underlying logic. If you did not immediately recognise the
subtextual vision of Lyndon LaRouche: you might want to read it again?
The underlying logic is one of economic infinity: completely decoupled from the neo-Malthusian
sustainable 'green iron cage' that prohibits the *productive* economy growing forever as per the
deluded LaRouchian proscription. Which is utterly banal: if not actually exceedingly dangerous.
This fact of life is the essential proof that not only mankind but the universe is unbounded in
its potential for constant self-perfectibility and thus ANTI-ENTROPIC in its essence.
To illustrate my point: this is from an earlier text. I never actually know where I stand: because
"anti-entropy" is laced through much of the commentary here. Which is why this text may appeal on a
superficial reading? It ticks a lot of boxes: including perpetual capitalist growth; expansion of the
SCO/BRI/BRICS/EAEU/CPEC colonisation of the Eurasian 'supercontinent'; and development of an
anti-hegemonic sovereigntist bloc. All of which seem as a fashionable vogue for the internet
progressive about town. But in multipolar alliance with Donald Trump! Infinite anti-entropic
capitalistic growth guided by the UN Charter with Putin, Xi AND Trump at the helm in an "alliance
for a new just economic order"? Sounds like hell to me.
My point is that perhaps we should learn to read more deeply? Perhaps at the underlying
paradigmatic logic of the text? Power is transmitted in mysterious ways. Everyone is paranoid about
"mind-control" and "hidden agendas". Well, Matthew's is a prime exemplar of hidden context perhaps
not to be uncritically assimilated? Unless, perhaps you share the vision of unlimited
self-perfectibility; infinite nuclear fusion powered bourgeois ecumenical consumerism decoupled from
ecological neo-Malthusian 'limits-to-growth'; and ANTI-ENTROPY? In which case you may be a banal
Platonist TWIT too? 🙂
LaRouche was a cultic delusionist who took cherrypicked ideas to assemble an intelligible and
sensible montage of beliefs that did not hang together. Which makes his writing absurd nonsense and a
philosophical non-entity. Any putative logical link to the real world is severed by its premises. This
piece is reduced to a mere a Trojan Horse for gibberish. It is a meaning-less 'language game'.
As unfortunate as it may seem: entropy exists as a fundamental property of the ecosphere. Resources
deplete and growth is thermodynamically limited. We need a new system: one which actually addresses
the extinction level ecological crisis we are in the midst of. Something we need to understand and
embrace: not illogically deny. This text subverts that strategic denial to its own ends. Let the
reader be aware of the paradigmatic subtext.
paul
,
Russia and China have always been status quo powers, more concerned with their own internal
development than implementing insane Neocon/ James Bond Villain-style fantasies of world domination.
This was true even during the period of communist rule. Their growth and influence in the world can
only be viewed as a positive development.
China built the infrastructure in the Third World that was
neglected during centuries of colonialism.
China builds things.
America (and its cringing satellites like Britain and France) bomb things.
Most people in Africa and elsewhere prefer building things to bombing things.
Dungroanin
,
A good piece The UN is not fit for purpose.
The SCO already operates under a 'charter' which goes past religion and cultural hagemony by any one
nation or peoples. Since it already represents more than half the worlds population and the majority
of its land mass it is only a matter of time that the defunct UN is upgraded to these standards and
absorbed into it OR crashes and burns.
Today there were hundreds of thousands of Iraqis maybe over million, in showing the US and its
allies that they really are serious about their national sovereignty and demand that the foreign
forces fuck off!
The US response? To revive the old divide and rule option. Break up Iraq into religion and
sectarian areas using the 'never learning Charlie Brown' proxy Kurds by offering them tet another
football to kick!
While the world accelerates towards a new order which puts economic security and mutual defence at
its core, the US and its gunfighter professional gamblers resort to poker terminology 'we are ALL
IN' in keeping the Iranians and Syrians (and Turkey?) out of the SCO to stop a nonstop link from the
Med to the Pacific and Artic to the Southern Seas.
All in! Lol. They going to lose their shirts and be overturning the table and demanding a shootout
to keep from paying up their bet.
It's a bluff and sitting with pocket rockets a simple CALL by the new, new world order.
Excellent. Worthy of wide dissemination for its first nine paragraphs alone.
BigB
,
Phillip, my friend this is not a personal attack, but have you heard of Lyndon LaRouche? I
suggest you might want to read up on his agenda then re-read the text in its wider context? The
subtleties are not explicit: but if you are aware of LaRouche or read some of the authors other
texts they are obvious in the subtext.
The basic premise unstated herein is for Trump,
Putin, and Xi to form a wider multipolar alliance against the British economic empire (the British
Deep State infiltrators) for untrammeled infinite global economic growth with maximum penetration
of nuclear power (eventually nuclear fission) into every economy of the world. To the ends of a
global bourgeois consumer culture serviced by the BRI intitiative. Unrestricted by neo-Malthusian
ecologists like me, who say this is impossible.
We may not always see eye to eye: but I'm pretty sure you do not envisage a hypothetically-
infinite ecumenical consumerism as humanities apex culture? Not least as I assume that you would
agree that this is actual ecological fantasy the world is finite, as are resources which means
this text needs to be shredded not further disseminated?
UN Charter .. "sustainable development of humankind"
One of the top priorities
must be:
Swift actions to STOP poisoning our food.
Seamus Padraig
,
A very sanguine view of FDR. To be sure, it's impossible to say with 100% certainty what he
would have done
had he survived the war, but it boggles the mind to
think that he was going to be forever cool with the idea of sharing the world with Russia and China,
when he abjectly refused to share it with Germany and Japan in his own lifetime.
And please don't believe that old canard about the Japanese wanting to take over America; it was
actually Roosevelt who precipitated the whole war with Japan, with his oil embargo and what not. He
even had advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor from multiple sources, but deliberately withheld that
intelligence from his own navy. FDR clearly wanted the attack on Pearl Harbor to be as devastating as
possible, so as to drag his recalcitrant countrymen to war, and it worked. In fact, eighty years
later, we're still at war. That's the
real
legacy of FDR, not the
long-gone New Deal, of which only Social Security survives (for now). All the other 'alphabet soup'
programs he initiated are gone.
I will always wonder wistfully how our history would have turned out had
Huey Long
become president instead.
seriouslyman
,
Everything Putin says is perfect. There is nothing bad that can be said about Russia on offguardian.
Anyone with any mild criticism of russia is a pro imperialist bastard and cannot be engaged with.
Offguardian has rightly attacked almost every significant political figure on earth from corbyn to
trump. Putin is the only person who can save us. There is no flaw in his character or politics and
anyone who suggests otherwise is a conspiracy theorist. Good on Offguardian for never publishing any
negative stories about this brilliant intelligent fair play hero who will save us all from hell.
paul
,
No, Little Greta is going to save us.
Vlad isn't going to do that, but he has done quite a good job so far of stopping the Exceptional
And Indispensable People from blowing up the planet.
This gives Greta the chance to save us all from the global warming and the polar bears.
Andy
,
Sarcasm can be an effective tool for making a point. This is an example of it not being.
Francis Lee
,
I am trying hard to assess your contribution but couldn't find anything either interesting or
relevant to say about it, other than it is little more than sarcastic rant. How does it, or is it
even meant to, increase our understanding of international relations? Who exactly makes those
claims about Putin?
What I would say about Putin is that he is simply talking like a foreign
policy realist. More power to his elbow I say; we could do with some more realism. His political
position is very similar to American foreign policy realists such John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
who to their credit put the Zionist noses (AIPAC, JINSA, ADL, AEI) out of joint with the
publication of "The Israel Lobby". Putin's views could have come straight out of the Treaty of
Westphalia (1648) which brought an end to the Wars of the Reformation could have come straight from
the Treaty, which were based on the following precepts which of course support a multipolar not a
unipolar system. Liberal imperialism, humanitarian intervention, call it what you will is a deadly
threat to the future of mankind. In contrast multipolarism as an alternative. See below.
1. States existed within recognised borders.
2. Each states sovereignty was recognised by the others
3. Principles of non-interference were agreed.
4. Religious differences between states were tolerated.
5. States might be monarchies, republics, democracies, as was their wont
6. Permanent state interests or
raison d'etat
was the organizing
principle of interntional relations.
7. War was not entirely eliminated, yet it was mitigated by diplomacy and balance-of-power
politics.
9. The object of the balance of power was to prevent one state from becoming so powerful that it
could conquer others and destroy world order.
Sounds like straight common sense to me.
BigB
,
seriouslyman has a point. The progressive world is extremely slow to recognise the capitalist
colonisation of 70% of the Eurasian globe as an existential threat to humanity. As I have been
pointing out: capitalism does not transform to a benign humanist alternative as it travels West
to East. Russia and China's economic expansionist extractivisim is inimical to all life on
Earth. Especially as China has taken a coal-fired 'Great Leap Backwards' to maintain growth in
the face of the secular synchronised global economic slowdown.
When the very real extinction
level threat of industrialised financialised capitalism is reduced to a personification and
represented as the personality of one man VVP this is nothing more than a masking discourse
that conceals the globalised extinctionism of fossil fuel capitalism. Perhaps the time to
reflect on the superior personality of VVP will come when we are all gasping for our last breath
breathing in petrol?
Capitalism thrives on such personal Fetishism. Power is the invisibilising of capitalism's
truly destructive force. No one even wants to open the discourse into what underlies Russia's
welfare capitalism. Which is infinite market mechanism extraction and quasi-eternal expansionism
of fossil fueled growth. Which will kill us all just as soon as America's big guns and bombs.
George Mc
,
You know BigB I can't help but get the feeling that behind all that polysyllabic
pontificating, everything you say comes down to a kind of masked reactionary claptrap. You
call yourself "neo-Malthusian". Well that's comparatively candid. Malthus being the most
obvious case of a capitalist apologist of the most brutal sort. And how interesting that you
are having a go at Putin here as if to suggest that even some kind of socialist
transformation isn't going to save us. So what then? Some kind of reaching back to some
healthy sparsely populated savannah filled with Conan the barbarian types?
And this:
"Perhaps the time to reflect on the superior personality of VVP will come when we are
all gasping for our last breath breathing in petrol?"
Seems to me you are secretly longing for that moment of last breath when you can finally
gleefully shout, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah Told you so!" before croaking.
Frank
,
Sorry, but this doesn't sound much like satire.
It sounds like an 8-year-old taught you everything you know about geopolitics, and unfortunately
it all went a bit over your head.
George Mc
,
Two points:
First, I fail to see the point of pillorying Putin when the entire Western media is
already doing so.
Second, to pillory Putin on the pretence of "a plague on all their houses" takes us nicely into
that pleasant non-committal "higher sphere" where all-is-one-and-one-is-all. The old con trick of
"being reasonable" in order to sit on an all-facing fence and basically have no opinion at all.
Estaugh
,
So far, Vlad has being doing a very good job, (saving us all from Hell), and it seems, most of the
world is increasingly backing him up. That's tough on 'pro-imperialist bastards' but that's
cricket.
Adam Schiff, the liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
military-industrial complex and a fervent exponent of permanent war.
o some Democrats and journalists, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is a hero. All over the
internet, people are thanking him for defending the Constitution, hoping he'll run for
president someday. After his performance during this week's impeachment hearing, the worship
was especially intense; a letter writer to the New York Times called it
"brilliant" and a "tour de force," while the conservative Washington Times made
fun of all the blue-checked Twitter accounts losing their objectivity in ecstatic praise. As
the face of the impeachment effort, especially for liberals disengaged from the election
process, Schiff represents a glimmer of hope for domestic regime change.
We'd like to be on his side. After all, he's working hard to take down Donald Trump, one of
the worst presidents in American history. But let's not get carried away in fandom. Schiff is a
dangerous warmonger, and his efforts to fuel paranoia about Russia only serve to feed that
agenda. It would be admirable if Schiff's impeachment crusade was limited to Trump's
corruption. But something else drives him: he wants a proxy war in Ukraine with Russia, and he
has for some time.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a prosperity preacher. That is to say, he looks like a
classic dodgy American salesman, but with a beatific glow of righteousness. This creepily
wholesome look lends a corny Cold War ambiance to his constant fulmination about "the
Russians." It's hard not to listen to him without thinking of Allen Ginsberg's 1956 poem
"America":
America, it's them bad Russians
Them Russians, them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
Assuring us that he is aware, actually, of what century this is, Schiff
said in 2015 , "Now, we're not seeing the same bipolar world we had between communism and
capitalism." (Phew!) He then added, "But we are seeing a new bipolar world, I think, where you
have democracy versus authoritarianism." Schiff has not viewed this as a mere contest of ideas:
he constantly advocated for Obama to impose tougher sanctions on Russia and give more weapons
to Ukraine.
Although delicately opposed to violence in some contexts -- he's a vegan! -- this isn't the
only war Schiff has championed. He supported the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya wars, greater US
intervention in Syria, as well as the Saudi war with Yemen (although he has, in the past year,
turned against the latter adventure, seeming to draw the line at sawing up journalists with
bonesaws -- he is a moderate after all, plus very popular with the media), and he has
voted for nearly every possible increase in the defense budget.
As Jacobin
's own Branko Marcetic observed two years ago , Schiff's bellicosity is extensively funded
by arms manufacturers and military contractors. A Ukrainian arms dealer named Igor Pasternak
held a $2,500 per head fundraiser for Schiff in 2013, as the late Justin Raimondo reported
in a terrific analysis on Antiwar.com in 2017, at a time when Ukraine was desperately trying to
counter the Obama administration's disinterest in funding its war with Russia. Despite that
disinterest, the State Department approved some very profitable dealings for Pasternak in
Ukraine after that fundraiser.
And that's only one example. In the current cycle, donations from the war industry have
continued to flood his coffers. Many come from employees of firms with extensive Department of
Defense contracts, including Radiance Technologies and Raytheon. PACs representing the defense
industry also make a robust showing among Schiff's contributors, according to data on Open
Secrets.org; companies funneling money to Schiff -- sorry, contributing to those PACs
-- include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Radiance, and others, including
L3Harris Technologies (which
got in big trouble with the State Department in September and had to pay $13 million in
penalties for illegal arms dealing).
Guess what these companies want? War with Ukraine. Why wouldn't they? Last
October, the United States approved a $39 million sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, a
joint contract between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The previous year, Ukraine bought $37
million worth of missiles from the same two companies. As a missile-maker, Zacks Equity
Research has noted, Northrop Grumman also benefits richly from conflict in Ukraine, as missiles
are heavily used in cross-border wars.
Despite his enthusiastic support for state violence and cozy ties to the makers of deadly
weaponry, Schiff, an Alexander Hamilton–quoting windbag, doesn't have much crossover
appeal to the sort of people who put "These Colors Don't Run" stickers on their trucks. His
impeachment crusade only seems to reinforce Trump's support among the faithful; at this
writing, 93 percent of Republicans oppose the president's removal from office.
Welcome to the #Resistance.
Liza Featherstone is a columnist forJacobin, a freelance journalist,
and the author ofSelling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at
Wal-Mart.
This article was originally published by "Jacobin" -
A new poll shows a plurality of Americans approve of President Trump's decision to order
the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Forty-one percent of Americans agreed with the decision, according to the Associated Press
and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Friday. Thirty percent disapproved
and the remaining 30 percent were indifferent.
On Jan. 3 the U.S. killed Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. The move raised tensions in
the Middle East and fears of a new war. Iran launched rocket attacks on two bases with U.S.
personnel in Iraq days later.
You are likely confusing the US with the UK. I tried to look up the tale of the "Basra
bombers" again, but it appears to be pretty well scrubbed from the web.. Here's some of what
I could scramble to find:
A Thursday article by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone discusses Dennis Kucinich's work in
politics, from Kucinich's eight terms in the United Sates House of Representatives to his two
presidential campaigns to his activities since leaving political office. Taibbi, in the article
focused much on Kucinich's long-term devotion to advancing the case for peace, describes
Kucinich as "antiwar to his core."
The deep state clearly is running the show (with some people unexpected imput -- see Trump
;-)
Elections now serve mainly for the legitimizing of the deep state rule; election of a
particular individual can change little, although there is some space of change due to the power
of executive branch. If the individual stray too much form the elite "forign policy consensus" he
ether will be JFKed or Russiagated (with the Special Prosecutor as the fist act and impeachment
as the second act of the same Russiagate drama)
But a talented (or reckless) individual can speed up some process that are already under way.
For example, Trump managed to speed up the process of destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal
empire considerably. Especially by launching the trade war with China. He also managed to
discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36
Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it
that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of
murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive
policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the
growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are
easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him
whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose
name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to
pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially
change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able
to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming
into view...
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to
war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the
rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and
traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves
to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and
treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better
and independent instead.
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <-
Norway
Of course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are
upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some
actions.
But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the
nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires
the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage
takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was
nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority
regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy
vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.
Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the
situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after
Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window,
together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".
From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some
problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.
Vanessa Beeley provides a short, incomplete, list.
I look at the pictures of today's refugees and see the faces of yesterday's. I see the
conditions they inhabit, the squalor and filth, and I see the same in pictures from the past.
I read the words of hatred directed at those innocents and recall the same words being said
of their predecessors.
And the source of the words and plight of the innocents both present
and past come from the same portals or power--The Imperialist West and its Zionist progeny.
How many millions have died to enrich their purse, to increase the size of the estates, to
serve as their slaves? How many more in the future will share their fate?
Will humans ever
evolve to become peaceful animals and save themselves?
Elections now serve mainly the legitimizing of the deep state rule function; election of a
partuclar induvudual can change little, althouth there is some space of change due to the power
of executive branch.
For example, Trump managed to speed up the process od destruction of the USA-centered
neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by lauching the trade war with China. He also
managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush
II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36
Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it
that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of
murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive
policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the
growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are
easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him
whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose
name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to
pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially
change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able
to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming
into view...
In a day like yesterday....US merits to remain in Iraq getting 50% oil revenues while
contributing zero to rebuilt the country they previosuly destroyed and funding and spreading
chaos, unrest and terrorism...
On this day in 1991, the US bombed an infant formula production plant in Iraq as part of
Operation Desert Storm. The US lied, calling it a biological weapons facility, but in
actuality, "it was the only source of infant formula food for children one year and younger
in Iraq."
If the U.S. can do it or rather, have been assassinating other countries Officials, so can
others and eventually, they will retaliate. No U.S. official will be safe, even in the
mainland U.S. An old saying applies here. You sew the wind and reap the whirlwind.
The world is rapidly tiring of the classless thuggery of the U.S.A.
Excellent point... and furthermore, if Russia & others are capable of clandestine hits
(as per the accusations against them, i.e. Skripal, MH17, Litvinenko) then why on earth would
US invite such operations against themselves?
I'm sure if they (Russia/Iran/others) really wanted to, unfortunate mishaps, like
traceless, self-inflected, nail-gun accidents are easily possible
Just when you think ZATO couldn't get any stupider...
"The Iraqi Shia, 66% of the 40 million Iraqi population, are expressing their hatred towards
US forces in particular and all foreign forces in general. Iraq would like to see these
forces depart for good, putting an end to US influence in Mesopotamia and West Asia. A
massive protest has been organised for this Friday 24th January, led by Sayyed Moqtada
al-Sadr, who is warning the US of the consequences of ignoring this Parliamentary decision.
It is expected to be the most massive protest in the history of Iraq. But this protest is
only the beginning."
https://ejmagnier.com/2020/01/22/immediate-us-withdrawal-due-to-its-violation-of-the-agreement-and-iraq-sovereignty/
The murder of Soleimani was not a one-off: it will be the policy to take out leaders and US
vassals dare not speak up: Murder and Sanctions (aka "Financial Warfare" ) is what they do.
The US will assassinate Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani if he targets
Americans, US special representative for Iran Brian Hook has warned.
"If Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,"
Hook said, speaking to Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in an interview
published Thursday.
According to the US diplomat, President Trump has made it very "clear that any attack on
Americans or American interests will be met with a decisive response, which the president
demonstrated on January 2".
Hook also said he believed that "the Iranian regime" now "understands that they cannot
attack America and get away with it".
Yes and soon.
Europe needs new instruments to be able to defend itself from licentious
extraterritorial sanctions.
USA has just but a bulls-eye on every American in Iraq and Syria.
Every anti-Iranian ideologue (starting with Netanyahu) will now start planning false-flag
attacks.
Just another dog whistle like Obama's "red-line" farce.
PS Did any media confirm the death of the US translator that caused USA to bomb the
Iraqi PMU? His name wasn't even released for a couple of week AFTER he was killed and AFAIK
no one really knows who killed him.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Probably little happens until UN sanctions "snap-back". That will light the fuse and the
fireworks start a number of weeks later but certainly before July (somebody wrote about
Russia's being able to sell arms to Iran on the 5th-year anniversary of the JCPOA on July
14th).
Sadly, the false-flag needed to energize the masses with "war fever" (like after 9-11) is
likely to require that many Americans are killed. And possibly not just military but
civilians.
Aside:
The cover of the 2015 Economist comes to mind. Two arrows on the lower right contain the
numbers "11.5" and "11.3". The sand behind the arrows might represent the middle east. Do the
two arrows represent a date range (European-like dates) of March 11th to May 11th? FYI:
Persian New Year is March 21st, UN sanctions are likely to "snap-back" by mid-March.
The eleventh of the month has gained significance due to 9-11 and 7-11 (in England). Thus,
3-11, 4-11, and 5-11 would have symbolic value as for a "terrorist" incident.
How could the Economist have predicted such a date range? I've said many times that I
thought that the JCPOA was a delaying tactic that was needed simply because Syrian regime
change was taking longer than expected. From such a point of view, it's reasonable to assume
that steps are taken to end the agreement and/or prompt strikes (symbolized by the arrows on
the Economist's cover) prior to the end of the agreement or important anniversary milestones
(like Ruissia's being able to sell arms after 5 years).
While some might say that such musings are irrational "conspiracy theory", I bring it up
because neocons and other bad actors engage in long-term planning to achieve their goals. We
are not suppose to notice such planning and then when things happen (like 9-11 and the
2008 Global Financial Crisis) it is quickly claimed that "no one could've foreseen"
such things - which becomes an excuse for the bad actors to go unpunished.
!!
Jackrabbit , Jan 23 2020 18:36 utc | 46
3.11.2004 Madrid Atocha train station attacks happened...allegedly AQ autorship...
1.7.2015 Charlie Hebdo attack...IS/AQ autorship...allegedly...
The murder of Soleimani was not a one-off: it will be the policy to take out leaders and US
vassals dare not speak up: Murder and Sanctions (aka "Financial Warfare" ) is what they do.
The US will assassinate Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani if he targets
Americans, US special representative for Iran Brian Hook has warned.
"If Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,"
Hook said, speaking to Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in an interview
published Thursday.
According to the US diplomat, President Trump has made it very "clear that any attack on
Americans or American interests will be met with a decisive response, which the president
demonstrated on January 2".
Hook also said he believed that "the Iranian regime" now "understands that they cannot
attack America and get away with it".
Yes and soon.
Europe needs new instruments to be able to defend itself from licentious
extraterritorial sanctions.
by William Walter Kay Posted on
January
23, 2020 January 22, 2020 Katyushas are short-range, unguided artillery rockets typically
fired in salvos from truck-mounted launch-tubes. Iraq's insurgents deploy three types.
The smallest is 107 millimeters in diameter and 1 meter long. Its 19 kilogram weight
includes an 8 kg high-explosive, shrapnel-bearing warhead. The 107mm is often fired from a
12-tube launcher, however, infantry-portable single-tube tripods are common. An experienced
crew with a standardized weapon can hit a 400 X 400 meter target from 8 kilometers away.
During the Vietnam War the US Army considered the 107mm to be their adversaries' most
formidable weapon.
The 122mm 'Grad' Katyusha is 3 meters long and weighs 75 kg. Its warhead spans a third of
its length and weighs 18 kg. It has a 20-kilometer range and a 30-meter lethal radius.
220mm Katyushas hurl 100 kg warheads 30 kilometers.
Katyushas have advantages over mortars. They deliver the same payload twice the distance
and they fire multiple ordnance more rapidly. The globally ubiquitous BM-21 Grad fires forty
122mm rockets in three minutes. Reloading takes 10 minutes. Thus, Katyushas excel at
"shoot-and-scoot" operations. As well, Katyushas' flat trajectories permit line-of-sight
attacks and their 700 meter-per-second velocities provide unique anti-building potential.
After helping suppress the ISIS-led insurgency (2014-17) US forces defaulted to their
previous occupation plan. Central to this program are segregated compounds situated inside
Iraqi Armed Forces bases. These installations, always near airstrips, contain mere hundreds
(not thousands) of US and Coalition troops who ride herd over the Iraqi Army whilst grooming
and directing Iraq's 15,000-strong Special Forces.
Embassies and consulates are integral to the occupation. The sprawling US Embassy compound
dominates Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" which also houses Coalition partners' embassies,
and the headquarters of the many NGOs insinuated throughout Iraqi society.
The occupation facilitates local activities of American and European businesses. These
require office blocks, oil-field infrastructure; and, gated communities for imported
talent.
Pre-2011 Americans relied on bases containing thousands of troops. These were remotely
located and allocated substantial resources to thwart indirect (mortar and rocket) attacks
through: counter-artillery, drone surveillance, and fighting patrols. Despite this, indirect
fire inflicted 3,000 casualties (including 211 fatalities) on American forces; many occurring
inside 'secure' bases.
The US-led Coalition's current archipelago of military, diplomatic, intelligence, business
and NGO installations are ill-equipped to defend themselves against indirect fire. Proximity
to cities makes them sitting ducks.
In September 2018 persons unknown began targeting US installations with Katyushas. This
list chronicles these attacks. *
(A dozen mortar attacks are not listed; Katyushas being the weapon of choice.)
September 8, 2018 – four rockets (three 107mms and one 122mm) fall near the Green
Zone.
September 8, 2018 – two salvos of 107mms land near the US Consulate beside Basra
Airport.
September 28, 2018 – three 107mms are fired at the Basra Consulate; two land on
site.
December 27, 2018 – two 107mms are fired at Al-Asad Airbase (160 kilometers west
of Baghdad) during Trump's visit.
February 2, 2019 – an attack on Al-Asad Airbase is aborted. Three ready-to-launch
122mms are captured.
February 12, 2019 – three 107mms hit Q-West Airfield (an off-the-books base south
of Mosul).
May 1, 2019 – two 107mms hit Camp Al-Taji: a 'training' institute, 40 kilometers
north of Baghdad.
May 19, 2019 – two rockets land near the US Embassy.
June 10, 2019 – rocket attack on Camp Al-Taji.
June 12, 2019 – rocket attack on a "northern air base" starts a fire.
June 13, 2019 – rocket attack on Nineveh Command Headquarters (Mosul Presidential
Palace).
June 14, 2019 – a rocket lands near the US Embassy.
June 17, 2019 – three rockets hit Camp Al-Taji.
June 18, 2019 – Nineveh HQ is attacked by two 122mms; one hits, one misses.
June 19, 2019 – rockets strike a gated community outside Basra (home to Exxon
staff).
September 23, 2019 – two rockets hit the Green Zone; one lands near the US
Embassy.
October 30, 2019 – two rockets hit the Green Zone, killing an Iraqi soldier.
November 8, 2019 – seventeen rockets target Q-West Airfield.
November 17, 2019 – rockets hit the Green Zone.
November 29, 2019 – a rocket hits the Green Zone.
December 3, 2019 – Al-Asad Airbase is "rocked" by five 122mms.
December 5, 2019 – five 107mms hit Balad Airbase (80 kilometers north of
Baghdad).
December 6, 2019 – a 240mm rocket lands near Baghdad Airport (then housing a US
base).
December 9, 2019 – four 240mms strike Baghdad Airport killing 2, and wounding 5,
Iraqi soldiers.
December 11, 2019 – two 240mms land outside Baghdad Airport.
December 27, 2019 – thirty-six 107mms hammer K1 Base (15 kilometers northwest of
Kirkuk); killing an American translator and wounding several US troops.
December 29, 2019 – four rockets hit Camp Al-Taji.
December 29, 2019 – five rockets hit Al-Asad Airbase.
January 4, 2020 – two rockets hit Balad Airbase.
January 4, 2020 – several rockets hit the Green Zone. One lands near the US
Embassy; another closes a major street.
January 5, 2020 – six rockets are fired at the Green Zone; three hit the
target.
January 8, 2020 – two rockets hit the Green Zone.
January 12, 2020 – eight rockets hit Balad Airbase, wounding several Iraqi
soldiers.
January 14, 2020 – a five-rocket attack on Camp Al-Taji.
January 20, 2020 – three rockets hit Green Zone. They were fired from Al
Zafraniya (15 kilometers away).
Attacks are becoming more frequent and are trending toward bigger rockets and higher
volume salvos.
The insurgents' strategy is working. Katyusha attacks shuttered the US Basra Consulate in
September 2018. Attacks in May and June 2019 forced Exxon to evacuate much of its foreign
staff. Throughout 2019 the US State Department extracted personnel and the Defense Department
consolidated bases into more secure facilities. By late 2019 US authorities were begging
Iraqis for help whilst threatening retaliation.
The last straw came December 27 when the barrage onto K1 Base killed an American
translator. The US responded with airstrikes on five Kata'ib Hezbollah bases (90 casualties)
and with the January 3 assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. (The decision to
assassinate Soleimani – in the event of an American fatality – was made June 24,
2019 following a week of near daily Katyusha attacks.)
While Iran and Iran's Iraqi allies are blamed for these attacks; this is dubious.
Reportage following attacks invariably drops the phrase " no one claimed
responsibility " – which is notable because perpetrators often boast of such
achievements. Ten years ago, when Kata'ib Hezbollah targeted US facilities with "lob bombs"
(improvised rockets), they posted videos of their handiwork. They deny involvement in these
recent attacks as do other Iranian-linked militias.
The reportage often describes the attacks as " mysterious " or as a "
whodunit. " Authors relay US intelligence theories of Iranian involvement without
evidence.
On several occasions insurgents abandoned launchers and/or launch vehicles after the
attack, often with fail-to-launch rockets inside. Investigators also possess fragments of
successfully fired rockets. Tellingly, US officials, renowned for straining at gnats for
evidence of Iranian complicity, do not utilize this material to incriminate Tehran.
The launchers themselves are obviously manufactured by local artisans. Moreover, an
article from Kurdistan – 24 describes the rockets as " locally
made ." Even globalist-militarist instrumentalities like the Washington Institute, Long
War Journal, and Center for Strategic and International Studies concede some Katyushas are
manufactured in Iraq.
Iraq has a burgeoning steel industry and, due to the calamities of the past 20 years, an
enormous scrap metal industry. Katyushas' cardinal virtue is their simplicity.
Circa 2014 twelve countries hosted non-state armed groups that deployed Katyushas.
(Post-2014 Yemen's Houthis joined this list, then outdid the pack in innovation and
output.)
During the 2003-11 era Iraqi insurgents looted Katyushas from local arsenals. Other
Katyushas came from Iran (officially or via the black market) and possibly from any of 32
other countries manufacturing them. Experts bemoan the difficulty of determining a rocket's
origin.
Circa 2008 Iraqi artisans manufactured a variety of launchers. A 2009 raid in Maysan
Governorate discovered 107mm, 122mm and 220mm rail launchers; and 1,700 carjacks. (Jacks were
affixed to the bottoms of stationary tripods to permit changes in launch angle.) Insurgents
developed creative mobile launch platforms i.e. inside ice cream trucks or towed behind
motorcycles etc. They debuted remote control triggers and GPS reconnaissance.
Circa 2011 poor quality of locally acquired rockets compelled insurgents to continue to
rely on imports. The insurgents were, however, manufacturing "lob bomb" rockets and
anti-armor mines; although Iran stood accused of being their sole supplier.
Post-2011 insurgents honed their craft. Remember: Hamas, operating inside Gaza with a tiny
fraction of the resources of Iraq's insurgents, manufactures crude Katyushas.
Prime suspects in the Katyusha campaign are not pro-Iranian militias; but rather the
milieu around Mahdi Army successor, the Promise Day Brigades (PDB). This political tendency,
nominally led by Moqtada al-Sadr, is concentrated in Iraq's densely populated central and
southern regions, but boasts a militant contingent in Mosul. This milieu overlaps the Saairun
Alliance which includes Iraq's far left; who carry their own legacy of armed struggle.
The insurgency's Von Braun might be Jawad al-Tulaybani. An Iran-Iraq War veteran,
al-Tulaybani possesses 40 years of combat rocketry experience. A war wound left him partially
disabled. He appeared on US radar in 2008 after masterminding a barrage that wounded 15 US
soldiers.
The org-chart of the Saairun/PDB/al-Sadr movement remains obscured. Notably, on January 8,
2020 al-Sadr counseled refrain from military actions. Four Katyusha attacks happened
since.
What is clear is that this general political tendency is not particularly beholden to
Iran. They appear nonsectarian, if not secularist, and they advance a left-nationalist
agenda. Prior to the 2018 election (wherein Saairun emerged as the most popular bloc) Iran's
Foreign Minister warned Iran would never tolerate an Iraq run by " liberals and
communists " – meaning Saairun.
Then again, Trump's thrill kill of Soleimani (and Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units'
Deputy Commander) completely reshuffled the deck, creating unprecedented unity amongst
hitherto rivals.
As Katyushas veto pacification efforts, US forces return to square one. They must retreat
to sprawling, remotely situated camps equipped to suppress indirect fire. This, however,
means surrendering Iraq's political theater to adversaries who will marshal Iraqi Government
resources against them.
Katyushas are driving the Trump Administration's Iraq policy. Prisoners of groupthink they
react by doubling-down on the Big Lie that Iraq's national liberation movement consists only
of "Iranian terrorists." In reality, their most effective opponents are as indigenous and
legitimate as the French Resistance.
*Note on Sources
Data came from scanning 1,000 articles then parsing several dozen of them. Preference went
to state media: i.e. Voice of America, Al Jazeera, Xinhua et al; although Military Times and
Kurdistan-24 proved germane. Rogue Rocketeers: Artillery
Rockets and Armed Groups (Small Arms Survey, Geneva Switzerland, 2014) is a
must-read. Data on the first 7 Katyusha attacks was lifted without corroboration from Michael
Knights'
Responding to Iranian Harassment of U.S. Facilities in Iraq (Washington Institute,
May 21, 2019). As Knights is the only analyst to grasp the seriousness of the Katyusha
attacks. His reports are a trove. Being intimately connected to US and Israeli intelligence,
he slavishly relays the anti-Iran party line.
Major attacks generate scores of reports. Lesser attacks are mentioned only in passing.
Some articles tally the attacks but the numbers do not jibe. Certain attacks go unreported.
Probably, 50+ mortar and Katyusha attacks hit US facilities between September 8, 2018 and
January 14, 2020.
William Walter Kay is a researcher and writer from Canada. His most recent book is
From Malthus to Mifepristone: A Primer on the Population Control Movement.
BAGHDAD, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iraq's paramilitary force Hashd Shaabi said on Thursday that
it opened fire at an unidentified drone flying over its bases near the border with Syria in
the western province of Anbar.
On Dec. 29, the Hashd Shaabi's 45th and 46th brigades belonging to Kata'ib Hezbollah in
Iraq were attacked by U.S. airstrikes, leaving more than 25 Hashd Shaabi members killed and
51 others injured.
Joe Biden's statement that "President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a
tinderbox" by assassinating Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was not inaccurate. But
it skirts an all-important question: who created the tinderbox in the first place?
The answer, of course, is the United States.
In the long history of imperial folly and recklessness, nothing compares to U.S. policy in
the Persian Gulf. Yes, the British shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan in 1838, and, yes, JFK
shouldn't have backed the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in November
1963. If they had thought things through more carefully, one wouldn't have lost an entire army
in the retreat from Kabul while the other wouldn't have stumbled into a dozen-year-long
quagmire that would leave the U.S. military depleted and demoralized – not to mention
killing more than a million or more Vietnamese.
But those were momentary miscalculations compared to the slow-motion disaster in the gulf.
For nearly half a century, every U.S. president – liberal, conservative, or whatever
– has pumped up a regional arms race that has set the stage for ever more destructive
wars. The death and destruction have been incalculable. Yet not once throughout the long sorry
saga have Americans paused for even a moment to consider where it was all going.
The process began in 1973 when Arab oil exporters quadrupled prices after Richard Nixon
provided Israel with $2.2 billion in emergency aid in the midst of the nineteen-day Yom Kippur
War. America
considered seizing Saudi oil fields in retaliation. But once passions cooled, it opted for
a pragmatic policy of mutual accommodation in which Arab oil producers and western consumers
would accept Israeli victory and higher energy prices alike as faits accomplis and forge
a workable settlement out of the rubble.
The result from a U.S. point of view was a win-win situation if ever there was one. At a
stroke, it acquired a powerful military ally in the Jewish state, a valuable export market in
the gulf, and a much-needed conservative Muslim ally at a time when secular Arab radicalism was
shooting through the roof. The big payoff came in 1989 when a US-backed Saudi-organized jihad
drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, causing the entire Soviet bloc to unravel just two years
later.
Washington was dizzy with success. "What is more important in world history," exulted Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the architect of the Afghanistan plan, in 1998. "The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?" A top CIA strategist named Graham Fuller added
a year later:
"The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries
worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be
used to destabilize what remains of Russian power and especially to counter the Chinese
influence in Central Asia."
What could go wrong? Plenty, as it turned out: the emergence of jihad as a global
phenomenon, the birth of hyper-sectarian Sunni terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and a cycle
of violence that has since proved unstoppable. Since Carter declared unilateral U.S. military
jurisdiction over the Persian Gulf in January 1980, the region has seen no fewer than seven
major wars:
The Afghan jihad (1979-89).
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
The gulf war (1990-91).
The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (2001-03).
The US-Saudi assault on Syria (starting in late 2011).
And the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen (beginning in March 2015 and still ongoing).
Toss in such "minor" incidents as the Saudi-UAE invasion of Bahrain in order to crush
democratic protests in March 2011 or the Saudi economic blockade of Qatar in June 2017, and the
list grows to nine, surely a record for American "peacekeepers."
Yet the United States, the world's leading military exporter, has piled up the tinder ever
higher by accelerating military exports to absolutist states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that,
as even Hillary Clinton has admitted , "are providing
clandestine financial and logical support to ISIL [i.e. Islamic State] and other radical Sunni
groups in the region."
Never has imperialism been more nihilistic. Yet Donald Trump has dialed up the craziness
even more by abrogating the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and imposing a trade embargo that has
brought the Iranian economy to its knees. Not content with economic warfare, he's now advancing
to physical warfare by "droning" Soleimani and threatening massive retaliation against both
military and cultural targets if Iran dares raise a hand in response.
The effect is to propel himself into the front ranks of international war criminals. But
Trump could never have done it on his own if a long line of American militarists hadn't paved
the way.
Daniel Lazare January 8, 2020 | Security Who Created the Persian Gulf Tinderbox? Joe Biden's
statement that "President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox" by
assassinating Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was not inaccurate. But it skirts an
all-important question: who created the tinderbox in the first place?
The answer, of course, is the United States.
In the long history of imperial folly and recklessness, nothing compares to U.S. policy in
the Persian Gulf. Yes, the British shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan in 1838, and, yes, JFK
shouldn't have backed the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in November
1963. If they had thought things through more carefully, one wouldn't have lost an entire army
in the retreat from Kabul while the other wouldn't have stumbled into a dozen-year-long
quagmire that would leave the U.S. military depleted and demoralized – not to mention
killing more than a million or more Vietnamese.
But those were momentary miscalculations compared to the slow-motion disaster in the gulf.
For nearly half a century, every U.S. president – liberal, conservative, or whatever
– has pumped up a regional arms race that has set the stage for ever more destructive
wars. The death and destruction have been incalculable. Yet not once throughout the long sorry
saga have Americans paused for even a moment to consider where it was all going.
The process began in 1973 when Arab oil exporters quadrupled prices after Richard Nixon
provided Israel with $2.2 billion in emergency aid in the midst of the nineteen-day Yom Kippur
War. America
considered seizing Saudi oil fields in retaliation. But once passions cooled, it opted for
a pragmatic policy of mutual accommodation in which Arab oil producers and western consumers
would accept Israeli victory and higher energy prices alike as faits accomplis and forge
a workable settlement out of the rubble.
The result from a U.S. point of view was a win-win situation if ever there was one. At a
stroke, it acquired a powerful military ally in the Jewish state, a valuable export market in
the gulf, and a much-needed conservative Muslim ally at a time when secular Arab radicalism was
shooting through the roof. The big payoff came in 1989 when a US-backed Saudi-organized jihad
drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, causing the entire Soviet bloc to unravel just two years
later.
Washington was dizzy with success. "What is more important in world history," exulted Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the architect of the Afghanistan plan, in 1998. "The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?" A top CIA strategist named Graham Fuller added
a year later:
"The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries
worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be
used to destabilize what remains of Russian power and especially to counter the Chinese
influence in Central Asia."
What could go wrong? Plenty, as it turned out: the emergence of jihad as a global
phenomenon, the birth of hyper-sectarian Sunni terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and a cycle
of violence that has since proved unstoppable. Since Carter declared unilateral U.S. military
jurisdiction over the Persian Gulf in January 1980, the region has seen no fewer than seven
major wars:
The Afghan jihad (1979-89).
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
The gulf war (1990-91).
The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (2001-03).
The US-Saudi assault on Syria (starting in late 2011).
And the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen (beginning in March 2015 and still ongoing).
Toss in such "minor" incidents as the Saudi-UAE invasion of Bahrain in order to crush
democratic protests in March 2011 or the Saudi economic blockade of Qatar in June 2017, and the
list grows to nine, surely a record for American "peacekeepers."
Yet the United States, the world's leading military exporter, has piled up the tinder ever
higher by accelerating military exports to absolutist states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that,
as even Hillary Clinton has admitted , "are providing
clandestine financial and logical support to ISIL [i.e. Islamic State] and other radical Sunni
groups in the region."
Never has imperialism been more nihilistic. Yet Donald Trump has dialed up the craziness
even more by abrogating the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and imposing a trade embargo that has
brought the Iranian economy to its knees. Not content with economic warfare, he's now advancing
to physical warfare by "droning" Soleimani and threatening massive retaliation against both
military and cultural targets if Iran dares raise a hand in response.
The effect is to propel himself into the front ranks of international war criminals. But
Trump could never have done it on his own if a long line of American militarists hadn't paved
the way.
In the long history of imperial folly and recklessness, nothing compares to U.S. policy in
the Persian Gulf. Yes, the British shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan in 1838, and, yes, JFK
shouldn't have backed the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in November
1963. If they had thought things through more carefully, one wouldn't have lost an entire army
in the retreat from Kabul while the other wouldn't have stumbled into a dozen-year-long
quagmire that would leave the U.S. military depleted and demoralized – not to mention
killing more than a million or more Vietnamese.
But those were momentary miscalculations compared to the slow-motion disaster in the gulf.
For nearly half a century, every U.S. president – liberal, conservative, or whatever
– has pumped up a regional arms race that has set the stage for ever more destructive
wars. The death and destruction have been incalculable. Yet not once throughout the long sorry
saga have Americans paused for even a moment to consider where it was all going.
The process began in 1973 when Arab oil exporters quadrupled prices after Richard Nixon
provided Israel with $2.2 billion in emergency aid in the midst of the nineteen-day Yom Kippur
War. America
considered seizing Saudi oil fields in retaliation. But once passions cooled, it opted for
a pragmatic policy of mutual accommodation in which Arab oil producers and western consumers
would accept Israeli victory and higher energy prices alike as faits accomplis and forge
a workable settlement out of the rubble.
The result from a U.S. point of view was a win-win situation if ever there was one. At a
stroke, it acquired a powerful military ally in the Jewish state, a valuable export market in
the gulf, and a much-needed conservative Muslim ally at a time when secular Arab radicalism was
shooting through the roof. The big payoff came in 1989 when a US-backed Saudi-organized jihad
drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, causing the entire Soviet bloc to unravel just two years
later.
Washington was dizzy with success. "What is more important in world history," exulted Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the architect of the Afghanistan plan, in 1998. "The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?" A top CIA strategist named Graham Fuller added
a year later:
"The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries
worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be
used to destabilize what remains of Russian power and especially to counter the Chinese
influence in Central Asia."
What could go wrong? Plenty, as it turned out: the emergence of jihad as a global
phenomenon, the birth of hyper-sectarian Sunni terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and a cycle
of violence that has since proved unstoppable. Since Carter declared unilateral U.S. military
jurisdiction over the Persian Gulf in January 1980, the region has seen no fewer than seven
major wars:
The Afghan jihad (1979-89).
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
The gulf war (1990-91).
The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (2001-03).
The US-Saudi assault on Syria (starting in late 2011).
And the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen (beginning in March 2015 and still ongoing).
Toss in such "minor" incidents as the Saudi-UAE invasion of Bahrain in order to crush
democratic protests in March 2011 or the Saudi economic blockade of Qatar in June 2017, and the
list grows to nine, surely a record for American "peacekeepers."
Yet the United States, the world's leading military exporter, has piled up the tinder ever
higher by accelerating military exports to absolutist states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that,
as even Hillary Clinton has admitted , "are providing
clandestine financial and logical support to ISIL [i.e. Islamic State] and other radical Sunni
groups in the region."
Never has imperialism been more nihilistic. Yet Donald Trump has dialed up the craziness
even more by abrogating the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and imposing a trade embargo that has
brought the Iranian economy to its knees. Not content with economic warfare, he's now advancing
to physical warfare by "droning" Soleimani and threatening massive retaliation against both
military and cultural targets if Iran dares raise a hand in response.
"... A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America ..."
"... But it was and is true. Indeed, when I visited Afghanistan back when U.S. troop levels were near their highest, "off camera," so to speak, military folks were quite skeptical of the war. So were Afghans, who had little good to say about their Washington-created and -supported government unless they were collecting a paycheck from it. An incoming president could be forgiven for suspecting that his predecessor had poured more troops into the conflict only to put off its failure until after he'd left office. ..."
"... Accounts like that from Rucker and Leonnig are beloved by the Blob. America's role is to dominate the globe, irrespective of cost. Those officials pursuing this objective, no matter how poorly, are lauded. Any politician challenging Washington's global mission is derided. ..."
"... President Trump has done much wrong. However, he deserves credit for challenging a failed foreign policy that's been paid for by so many while benefiting so few. It is "crazy" and "stupid," as he reportedly said. Why should Americans keep dying for causes that their leaders cannot adequately explain, let alone justify? Let us hope that one day Americans elect a president who will act and not just talk. ..."
fter three years of the Trump presidency, the Washington Post is breathlessly
reporting that Donald Trump is a boor who insults everyone, including generals used to respect
and even veneration. He's had the impertinence to ask critical questions of his military
briefers. For shame!
President Trump's limitations have been long evident. The Post 's discussion,
adapted by Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker from their upcoming book, A Very Stable
Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America , adds color, not substance, to this concern.
It seems that in the summer of 2017, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, and others were concerned about the president's international ignorance and
organized a briefing at the Pentagon to enlighten him.
Was that a worthwhile mission? Sure. Everyone in the policy world marvels at the president's
lack of curiosity, absent knowledge, bizarre assumptions, and perverse conclusions. He doesn't
get trade, bizarrely celebrates dictatorship, fixates on Iran, doesn't understand agreements,
acts on impulse, and exudes absolute certainty. Yet he also captures the essence of issues and
shares a set of inchoate beliefs held by millions of Americans, especially those who feel
ignored, insulted, disparaged, and dismissed. Most important, he was elected with a mandate to
move policy away from the bipartisan globalist conventional wisdom.
The latter was evidently the main concern of these briefers. The presentation as described
by the article exuded condescension. That attitude very likely was evident to Trump. The
briefing was intended to inform, but even more so to establish his aides' control over him.
While they bridled at Trump's manners, they were even more opposed to his substantive opinions.
And that made the briefing sound like a carefully choreographed attack on his worldview.
For instance, Mattis used charts with lots of dollar signs "to impress upon [the president]
the value of U.S. investments abroad. [Mattis] sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed
in so many regions and why America's safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances,
and bases across the globe." Notably, Mattis "then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of
the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe."
No doubt Secretary Mattis sincerely believed all that. However, it was an argument more
appropriately made in 1950 or 1960. The world has since changed dramatically.
Of course, this is also the position of the Blob, Ben Rhodes' wonderful label for the
Washington foreign policymaking community. What has ever been must ever be, is the Blob's
informal mantra. America's lot in life, no matter how many average folks must die, is to litter
the globe with bases, ships, planes, and troops to fight endless wars, some big, some small, to
make the world safe for democracy, sometimes, and autocracy, otherwise. If America ever stops
fulfilling what seems to be the modern equivalent of Rudyard Kipling's infamous "white man's
burden," order will collapse, authoritarianism will advance, trade will disappear, conflict
will multiply, countries will be conquered, friends will become enemies, allies will defect,
terrorists will strike, liberal values will be discarded, all that is good and wonderful will
disappear, and a new dark age will envelope the earth.
Trump is remarkably ignorant of the facts, but he does possess a commonsensical skepticism
of the utter nonsense that gets promoted as unchallengeable conventional wisdom. As a result,
he understood that this weltanschauung, a word he would never use, was an absolute fantasy. And
he showed it by the questions he asked.
For instance, he challenged the defense guarantee for South Korea. "We should charge them
rent," he blurted out. "We should make them pay for our soldiers." Although treating American
military personnel like mercenaries is the wrong approach, he is right that there is no need to
protect the Republic of Korea. The Korean War ended 67 years ago. The South has twice the
population and, by the latest estimate, 54 times the economy of the North. Why is Seoul still
dependent on America?
If the Blob has its way, the U.S. will pay to defend the ROK forever. Analysts speak of the
need for Americans to stick around even after reunification. It seems there is no circumstance
under which they imagine Washington not garrisoning the peninsula. Why is America, born of
revolution, now acting like an imperial power that must impose its military might
everywhere?
Even more forcefully, it appeared, did Trump express his hostile views of Europe and NATO.
Sure, he appeared to mistakenly believe that there was an alliance budget that European
governments had failed to fund. But World War II ended 70 years ago. The Europeans recovered,
the Soviet Union collapsed, and Eastern Europeans joined NATO. Why is Washington expected to
subsidize a continent with a larger population than, and economy equivalent to, America's, and
far larger than Russia's? Mattis apparently offered the standard bromides, such as "This is
what keeps us safe."
How? Does he imagine that without Washington's European presence, Russia would roll its
tanks and march to the Atlantic Ocean? And from there launch a global pincer movement to invade
North America? How does adding such behemoths as Montenegro keep the U.S. "safe"? What does
initiating a military confrontation with Moscow over Ukraine, historically part of the Russian
Empire and Soviet Union, have to do with keeping Americans "safe"? The argument is
self-evidently not just false but ridiculous.
Justifying endless wars is even tougher. Rucker and Leonnig do not report what the president
said about Syria, which apparently was part of Mattis's brief. However, Trump's skepticism is
evident from his later policy gyrations. Why would any sane Washington policymaker insist that
America intervene militarily in a multi-sided civil war in a country of no significant security
interest to the U.S. on the side of jihadists and affiliates of al-Qaeda? And stick around
illegally as the conflict wound down? To call this policy stupid is too polite.
Even more explosive was the question of Afghanistan, to which the president did speak,
apparently quite dismissively. Unsurprisingly, he asked why the U.S. had not won after 16 years
-- which is longer than the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War combined. He
also termed Afghanistan a "loser war." By Rucker's and Leonnig's telling, this did not go over
well: "That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military men and women in uniform
sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their
commander in chief's commands, and here he was calling the way they had been fighting a loser
war."
But it was and is true. Indeed, when I visited Afghanistan back when U.S. troop levels were
near their highest, "off camera," so to speak, military folks were quite skeptical of the war.
So were Afghans, who had little good to say about their Washington-created and -supported
government unless they were collecting a paycheck from it. An incoming president could be
forgiven for suspecting that his predecessor had poured more troops into the conflict only to
put off its failure until after he'd left office.
The fault does not belong to combat personnel, but to political leaders and complicit
generals, who have misled if not lied in presenting a fairy tale perspective on the conflict's
progress and prognosis. And for what? Central Asia is not and never will be a vital issue of
American security. Afghanistan has nothing to do with terrorism other than its having hosting
al-Qaeda two decades ago. Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. In recent years, it's Yemen
that's hosted the most dangerous national affiliate of al-Qaeda. So why are U.S. troops still
in Afghanistan?
Accounts like that from Rucker and Leonnig are beloved by the Blob. America's role is to
dominate the globe, irrespective of cost. Those officials pursuing this objective, no matter
how poorly, are lauded. Any politician challenging Washington's global mission is
derided.
President Trump has done much wrong. However, he deserves credit for challenging a
failed foreign policy that's been paid for by so many while benefiting so few. It is "crazy"
and "stupid," as he reportedly said. Why should Americans keep dying for causes that their
leaders cannot adequately explain, let alone justify? Let us hope that one day Americans elect
a president who will act and not just talk.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant
to President Ronald Reagan and author of several books, including Foreign Follies:
America's New Global Empire .
As the structure and form of institutions continue to breakdown offering new perspectives and unexpected
revelations, it is fitting that former FBI Director James Comey continues to be scrutinized regarding his behavior on
multiple aspects of the HRC email scandal, Russiagate and other adjacent activities.
Still under a dark cloud is the lack of a satisfactory explanation for Comey's unprecedented decision to usurp the
announcement (away from AG Loretta Lynch) that HRC would not be prosecuted for her mishandling of classified material
as Secretary of State. Related to that decision, the DOJ is currently reported to be investigating whether Comey, who
has a history of leaking 'sensitive' data, also leaked a classified Russian intel document to reporters in 2017.
Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information
obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action,
Comey set a dangerous example "
And:
We have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with Department policy. Comey's
unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar
criticism."
The Report's conclusions were forwarded to the DOJ which declined to prosecute Comey.
Fast forward to the current DOJ investigation which again questions Comey's penchant for the disclosure of
"sensitive" information while opening a Pandora Box of unexpected proportions.
According to the Washington Post, in 2016, the Dutch secret services
obtained a Russian
intel document
which contained a copy of an email in which then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz assured
Leonard Bernardo of the Soros Open Society Foundation that Attorney General Loretta Lynch would not prosecute HRC for
use of her personal server for classified government documents.
In the email, DWS also informed Benardo that Amanda Renteria, Clinton's National Political Director, had spoken
with Lynch who offered further assurance that the FBI investigation
"would not go too far."
While the document was forwarded to the FBI, it was dismissed as an unreliable Russian propaganda effort to
influence the outcome of the HRC investigation.
As the FBI claimed the Russian document had no "investigative value," the Washington Post found that
Comey's defenders still insist that there is reason to believe the document is legitimate and that it rightly
played a major role in the director's thinking."
Even in denial of its veracity, the document was taken seriously enough for Comey to use its existence as an
excuse for making his extraordinary announcement, according to the Washington Post,
"on his own, without Justice
Department involvement"
or informing the Attorney General that he was closing the case and that HRC would not be
criminally prosecuted.
June 29th Lynch Bill Clinton meeting on tarmac in Phoenix;
July 2nd FBI interview with HRC;
July 5th Comey announced 'no prosecution'
Existence of the email provided the perfect foil for Lynch to avoid having to make and announce the decision as if
it were on her own volition.
Allegedly, Comey decided to move forward with the announcement which was intended to prove that the no-prosecution
decision had been made without any bias or interference.
If, so the thinking goes, Lynch had made and announced the decision after her meeting with Bill, she would have
been accused of corruption or having been compromised and that a deal had been cut in HRCs favor. IG Horowitz found
that Comey displayed a
"troubling lack of direct substantive communication with AG Lorretta Lynch."
In other words, it was Lynch's responsibility, as Attorney General, to retain sole authority over a decision of
such national significance and be willing take the heat, whatever the outcome. One wonders if Lynch ever protested to
Comey that, without her approval, he usurped her job and made a highly controversial decision that the entire country
was watching.
Where were the women libbers when a man on a lower rung of the totem pole, seized a significant function away from
its rightful superior authority which, in this case, was a black female.
In other words, Comey saved Lynch's butt from charges of corruption by skillfully appropriating the announcement
which otherwise would have been problematic for her to defend after having been caught publicly meeting with the
defendant's husband.
Does anything about this strike you as credible?
Not surprisingly as the email was dismissed, the Bureau never pursued routine investigative tools that would have
been second-nature in any such top-level investigation.
The FBI, as it dismissed the email as a fake, did not conduct a forensic exam to verify the document's origin just
as the FBI never subpoenaed the DNC server to conduct a forensic exam to determine the source of the Wikileaks
emails.
While all the parties involved denied that any of them ever knew each other, the Bureau apparently never confirmed
that or pursued obtaining a copy of the email from any of the parties and, most importantly,
the Bureau never
interviewed any of the parties
In May, 2017, President Trump fired Comey as
"no longer able to effectively lead the Bureau."
Here's one version of how this scam could have played out. It's called plausible deniability and is used routinely
to shield a high level public office from public accountability. It is an old political trick and most of the public
remains blind to how easy it is to manipulate public opinion.
Here's how it works: public official #1 is protected from 'knowing' the truth about a certain political reality
and since #1 is never informed, they can honestly say "I didn't know" "No one told me" "We never talked about it" "it
came as a surprise to me."
The invocation of plausible deniability is intentionally set up to allow an event to occur and yet prevent #1 from
'knowing' the facts thereby being publicly and legally immune from accountability since no hard evidence exists
proving that #1 had any foreknowledge of the matter at hand.
Since The Big Bottom Line was protecting HRC from prosecution and Comey alleged that he had not discussed the
matter with Lynch, he did the AG a huge favor and she owes Comey a Big One as does HRC. After Comey bit the bullet
and saved Lynch from criticism that might have ruined her career, Lynch was free to play the plausible deniability
game:
Golly Gee, since I might be accused of favoritism toward HRC after the meeting with Bill which coincidentally
led to a favorable decision for his wife, it was best for Comey to announce the decision thereby avoiding any claim
of bias or favoritism. I had no idea the charges against HRC would be dismissed.
See how that works?
To sum up: with the FBI blowing off the DWS email as a fraud and without Comey stepping up and bailing out the AG
and HRC, it would have looked bad, the deal would have been questioned, everyone wondering but this way, with
plausible deniability in play, everyone is cool..right?
Renee Parsons is a student of the Quantum Field. She has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State
Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in
Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in
Washington, DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31.
"... The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while declaring an "axis of evil" to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant strategic problems besetting the U.S.. ..."
"... The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. ..."
"... As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin , the deployment of such offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the Russian Federation's nuclear-deterrence capability . Obama and Trump faithfully followed in the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia's borders, including in Romania and Poland. ..."
"... There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this "balance of terror" exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for Washington's vaunted ABM systems. ..."
"... In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all options. Although the country's leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to follow Pyongyang's example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S. aggression. ..."
"... Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended. Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA, has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation. ..."
"... Trump's short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W. Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and Tehran, Washington's actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain critical areas relative to its competitors. ..."
Starting from the presidency of George W. Bush to that of Trump, the U.S. has made some
missteps that not only reduce its influence in strategic regions of the world but also its
ability to project power and thus impose its will on those unwilling to genuflect appropriately
.
Some examples from the recent past will suffice to show how a series of strategic errors
have only accelerated the U.S.'s hegemonic decline.
ABM + INF = Hypersonic Supremacy
The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while
declaring an "axis of evil" to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and
budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant
strategic problems besetting the U.S..
The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on
supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.'s withdrawal from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both
sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the
purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. This
argument held little water as the Iranians had neither the capability nor intent to launch such
missiles.
As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin , the deployment of such
offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the
Russian Federation's nuclear-deterrence capability . Obama and Trump faithfully followed in
the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia's borders, including in Romania
and Poland.
Following from Trump's momentous decision to
withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), it is also likely
that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) will also be abandoned, creating more
global insecurity with regard to nuclear proliferation.
Moscow was forced to pull out all stops to develop new weapons that would restore the
strategic balance, Putin revealing to the world in a speech in 2018 the introduction of
hypersonic weapons and other technological breakthroughs that would serve to disabuse
Washington of its first-strike fantasies.
Even as Washington's propaganda refuses to acknowledge the tectonic shifts on the global
chessboard occasioned by these technological breakthroughs, sober
military assessments acknowledge that the game has fundamentally changed.
There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide
vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD),
which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this
"balance of terror" exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing
that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for
Washington's vaunted ABM systems.
In addition to ensuring its nuclear second-strike capability, Russia has been forced to
develop the most advanced ABM system in the world to fend off Washington's aggression. This ABM
system is integrated into a defensive network that includes the Pantsir, Tor, Buk, S-400 and
shortly the devastating S-500 and A-235 missile systems. This combined system is designed to
intercept ICBMs as well as any future U.S. hypersonic weapons
The wars of aggression prosecuted by George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only ended up
leaving the U.S. in a position of nuclear inferiority vis-a-vis Russia and China. Moscow has
obviously shared some of its technological innovations with its strategic partner, allowing
Beijing to also have hypersonic weapons together with ABM systems like the Russian S-400.
No
JCPOA? Here Comes Nuclear Iran
In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the
most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all
options. Although the country's leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do
not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is
prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to
follow Pyongyang's example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S.
aggression.
While this suggestion of mine may not correspond with the intentions of leaders of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, the protection North Korea enjoys from U.S. aggression as a result of
its deterrence capacity may oblige the Iranian leadership to carefully consider the pros and
cons of following suit, perhaps choosing to adopt the Israeli stance of nuclear ambiguity or
nuclear opacity, where the possession of nuclear weapons is neither confirmed nor denied. While
a world free of nuclear weapons would be ideal, their deterrence value cannot be denied, as
North Korea's experience attests.
While Iran does not want war, any pursuit of a nuclear arsenal may guarantee a conflagration
in the Middle East. But I have long maintained that the risk of a nuclear war (once nuclear
weapons have been acquired)
does not exist , with them having a
stabilizing rather than destabilizing effect, particularly in a multipolar environment.
Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently
encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended.
Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA,
has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation.
Trump's short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W.
Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and
Tehran, Washington's actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain
critical areas relative to its competitors.
The death of Soleimani punctures the myth
of the U.S. invincibility
I wrote a couple of articles in the wake of General Soleimani's death that
examined the incident and then
considered the profound ramifications of the event in the region.
What seems evident is that Washington appears incapable of appreciating the consequences of
its reckless actions. Killing Soleimani was bound to invite an Iranian response; and even if we
assume that Trump was not looking for war (I
explained why some months ago), it was obvious to any observer that there would be a
response from Iran to the U.S.'s terrorist actions.
The response came a few nights later where, for the first time since the Second World War, a
U.S. military base was subjected to a rain of missiles (22 missiles each with a 700kg payload).
Tehran thereby showed that it possessed the necessary technical, operational and strategic
means to obliterate thousands of U.S. and allied personnel within the space of a few minutes if
it so wished, with the U.S. would be powerless to stop it.
U.S. Patriot air-defense systems yet again failed to do their job, reprising their failure
to defend Saudi oil and gas facilities against a missile attack conducted by Houthis a few
months ago.
We thus have confirmation, within the space of a few months, of the inability of the U.S. to
protect its troops or allies from Houthi, Hezbollah and Iranian missiles. Trump and his
generals would have been reluctant to respond to the Iranian missile attack knowing that any
Iranian response would bring about uncontrollable regional conflagration that would devastate
U.S. bases as well as oil infrastructure and such cities of U.S. allies as Tel Aviv, Haifa and
Dubai.
After demonstrating to the world that U.S. allies in the region are defenseless against
missile attacks from even the likes of the Houthis, Iran drove home the point by conducting
surgical strikes on two U.S. bases that only highlights the disconnect between the perception
of U.S. military invincibility and the reality that would come in the form of a multilayered
missile conflict.
Conclusion
Washington's diplomatic and military decisions in recent years have only brought about a
world world that is more hostile to Washington and less inclined to accept its diktats, often
being driven instead to acquire the military means to counter Washington's bullying. Even as
the U.S. remains the paramount military power, its ineptitude has resulted in Russia and China
surpassing it in some critical areas, such that the U.S. has no chance of defending itself
against a nuclear second strike, with even Iran having the means to successfully retaliate
against the U.S. in the region.
As I continue to say, Washington's power largely rests on perception management helped by
the make-believe world of Hollywood. The recent missile attacks by Houthis on Saudi Arabia's
oil facilities and the Iranian missile attack a few days ago on U.S. military bases in Iraq
(none of which were intercepted) are like Toto drawing back the curtain to reveal Washington's
military vulnerability. No amount of entreaties by Washington to pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain will help.
The more aggressive the U.S. becomes, the more it reveals its tactical, operational and
strategic limits, which in turn only serves to accelerate its loss of hegemony.
If the U.S. could deliver a nuclear first strike without having to worry about a retaliatory
second strike thanks to its ABM systems, then its quest for perpetual unipolarity could
possibly be realistic. But Washington's peer competitors have shown that they have the means to
defend themselves against a nuclear first strike by being able to deliver an unstoppable second
strike, thereby communicating that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is here
to stay. With that, Washington's efforts to maintain its status as uncontested global hegemon
are futile.
In a region
vital to U.S. interests , Washington does not have the operational capacity to stand in the
way of Syria's liberation. When it has attempted to directly impose its will militarily, it has
seen as many as 80% of its cruise missiles
knocked down or deflected , once again highlighting the divergence between Washington's
Hollywood propaganda and the harsh military reality.
The actions of George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only served to inadvertently accelerate
the world's transition away from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. As Trump follows in the
steps of his predecessors by being aggressive towards Iran, he only serves to weaken the U.S.
global position and strengthen that of his opponents.
Up to the election of our current President, I agree that we were bullying for the
personal gain of a few and our military was being used as a mercenary force. The current
administration is working on getting us out of long term conflicts. What do you think "drain
the swamp" means? It is a huge undertaking and need to understand what the "deep state" is
all about and their goals.
The death of Soleimani was needed and made the world a safer place. Dr. Janda / Freedom
Operation has had several very intriguing presentations on this issue. It is my firm belief
that there is a worldwide coalition to make the world a better and safer place. If you want
to know about the "deep state" try watching: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cYZ8dUgPuU
All mostly true, but the constant drone of this type of article gets old, as the comments
below attest. We really don't need more forensic analysis by the SCF, what we need is an
answer to America's dollar Imperialism problem. But we'll never get it, just as England never
got an answer to it's pound Imperialism problem.
I like Tulsi Gabbard, but she can never truly reveal the magnitude of the dollar
Imperialism behind her "stop these endless wars" sloganism. Besides, she doesn't have the
billions required to mount any real successful campaign. Only billionaires like Bloomberg
need apply these days.
The Truth is that NO ONE will stand up to Wall Street and it's system of global dollar
corporatism (from which Bloomberg acquired his billions, and to which the USG is bound). It's
suicide to speak the truth to the masses. The dollar must die of its own disease.
Trump is America's Chemo. The cure nearly as bad as the cancer, but the makers of it have
a vested interest in its acceptance.
General Bonespur murders a genuine military man from the comfort of his golf course.
America is still dangerous, Pinky might be tired but the (((Brain))) is working feverishly on
solutions for the jaded .
There has been a perception in the last 25 years that the US could win a nuclear war. This
perception is extremely dangerous as it invites the US armed forces to commit atrocities and
think they can get away with it (they are for now). The world opinion has turned, but the
citizens of the United States of America are not listening.
If the US keeps going down the path they are currently on, they are ensuring that war will
eventually reach its coast.
To challenge the US Empire the new Multipolar World is focused on a two-pronged
strategy:
1. Nullifying the US nuclear first strike (at will) as part of the current US military
doctrine - accomplished (for a decade maybe).
2. Outmaneuvering the US petrodollar in trade, the tool to control the global fossil fuel
resources on the planet - in progress.
What makes 2.) decisive is that the petrodollar as reserve currency is the key to recycle
the US federal budget deficit via foreign investment in U.S. Treasury Bonds (IOUs) by the
central banks, thus enabling the global military presence and power projection of the US
military empire.
All their little plots and schemes failed, as corrupt arsehole after corrupt arsehole
stole the funding from those plots and schemes to fill their own pockets. They also put the
most corrupt individuals they could find into power, so as much as possible could be stolen
and voila, everywhere they went, everything collapsed, every single time.
Totally and utterly ludicrous decades, of not punishing failure after failure has resulted
in nothing but more failure, like, surprise, surprise, surprise.
Routine failures have forced other nation to go multipolar or just rush straight to global
economic collapse as a result of out of control US corruption. Russia and China did not
outsmart the USA, the USA did it entirely to itself by not prosecuting corruption at high
levels, even when it failed time and time again, focusing more on how much they could steal,
then on bringing what ever plot or scheme to a successful conclusion.
The use of the terms "Unintended Consequences", shortsightedness, mistakes, stupidity, or
ignorance provides the avenue to transfer or divert the blame. It excuses it away as bad
decisions so that the truth and those responsible are never really exposed and held
accountable. The fact is, these actions were not mistakes or acts of shortsightedness...they
were deliberate and planned and the so-called "unintended consequences" were actually
intended and part of their plan. Looking back and linking the elites favorite process to
drive change (problem, reaction, solution)...one can quickly make the connection to many of
the so-called "unintended consequences" as they are very predictable results their actions.
It becomes very clear that much of what has occurred over the last few decades has been
deliberate with planned/intended outcomes.
I think the biggest advantage USA used to have was that they claimed to stand for Freedom
and Democracy. And for a time, many people believed them. That's partly why the USSR fell
apart, and for a time USA had a lot of goodwill among ordinary Russians.
But US political leaders squandered this goodwill when they used NATO to attack Yugoslavia
against Russia's objections and expanded NATO towards Russia's borders. This has been long
forgotten in USA. But many ordinary Russians still seethe about these events. This was the
turning point for them that motivated them to support Putin and his rebuilding of Russia's
military.
When you have goodwill among your potential competitors, then they don't have much
motivation to increase their capabilities against you. This was the situation USA was in
after the USSR fell apart. But USA squandered all of this goodwill and motivated the Russians
to do what they did.
And now, USA under Trump has done something like this with China. USA used to have a lot
of goodwill among the ordinary Chinese. But now this is gone as a result of US tariffs,
sanctions, and its support for separatism in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Now, the Chinese will be
as motivated as the Russians to do their best at promoting their interests at the expense of
USA. And together with Russia, they have enough people and enough natural resources to do
more than well against USA and its allies.
I think USA could've maintained a lot more influence around the world through goodwill
with ordinary people, than through sanctions, threats, and military attacks. If USA had left
Iraq under Saddam Hussein alone, then Iran wouldn't have had much influence in there. And if
USA had left Iran alone, then the young people there might've already rebelled against their
strict Islamic rule and made their government more friendly with USA.
Doing nothing, except business and trade, would've left USA in a much better position,
than the one USA is in now.
Now USA is bankrupting itself with unsustainable military spending and still falling
behind its competitors. USA might still have the biggest economy in the world in US Dollar
terms. But this doesn't take into account the cost of living and purchasing parity. With
purchasing parity taken into account, China now has a bigger economy than that of USA.
Because internally, they can manufacture and buy a lot more for the same amount of money than
USA can. A lot of US military spending is on salaries, pensions, and healthcare of its
personnel. While such costs in Russia and China are comparatively small. They are spending
most of their money on improving and building their military technology. That's why in the
long run, USA will probably fall behind even more.
The Anglos in the U.S. are not from there and are imposters who are claiming
characteristics and a culture that doesn't belong to them. They're using it as a way
to hide from scrutiny, so you blame "Americans", when its really them. That's why
there's such a huge disconnect between stated values and actions. The values belong to
another group of people, TRUE Americans, while the actions belong to Anglos, who have a
history of aggressive and forced, irrational violence upon innocents.
It's true that ordinary people are often different from their government, including in
Russia, in China, in Iran, in USA, and even in Nazi Germany in the past.
But the people in such a situation are usually powerless and unable to influence their
government. So, their difference is irrelevant in the way their government behaves and
alienates people around the world.
USA is nominally a democracy, where the government is controlled by the people. But in
reality, the people are only a ceremonial figurehead, and the real power is a small minority
of rich companies and individuals, who fund election campaigns of politicians.
That's why for example most Americans want to have universal healthcare, just like all
other developed countries have. But most elected politicians from both major parties won't
even consider this idea, because their financial donors are against it. And if the people are
powerless even within their own country, then outside with foreigners, they have even less
influence.
1. Nation Building? It worked with Germany and Japan, rinse and repeat. So what if it's
comparing apples to antimatter?
2. US won the Cold War? So make the same types of moves made during Reagan adm? The real
reason the Soviet Empire collapsed was because it was a money losing empire while the US was
a money making empire. Just review the money pits they invested in.
3. Corruption? That was your grandfather's time. The US has been restructured. Crime
Syndicate and Feudal templates are the closest. Stagnation and decline economically and
technologically are inevitable.
4. Evaluating the competition is problematic. However perhaps the most backward and
regressive elements in this society are branding themselves as progressive and getting away
with it. That can't work.
Unprecedented hubris is drawing a global blowback that will leave America in a very
dangerous place.
Sorin Alb/Shutterstock
January 2, 2020
|
12:01 am
Doug
Bandow Economic sanctions are an important foreign policy tool going back to America's founding.
President Thomas Jefferson banned trade with Great Britain and France, which left U.S. seamen
unemployed while failing to prevent military conflict with both.
Economic warfare tends to be equally ineffective today. The Trump administration made Cuba,
Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and North Korea special sanctions targets. So this strategy has failed
in every case. In fact, "maximum pressure" on both Iran, which has become more threatening, and
North Korea, which appears to be preparing a tougher military response, has dramatically
backfired.
The big difference between then and now is Washington's shift from primary to secondary
sanctions. Trade embargoes, such as first applied to Cuba in 1960, once only prevented
Americans from dealing with the target state. Today Washington attempts to conscript the entire
world to fight its economic wars.
This shift was heralded by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which extended Cuban penalties to
foreign companies, a highly controversial move at the time. Sudan was another early target of
secondary sanctions, which barred anyone who used the U.S. financial system from dealing with
Khartoum. Europeans and others grumbled about Washington's arrogance, but were not willing to
confront the globe's unipower over such minor markets.
However, sanctions have become much bigger business in Washington. One form is a mix of
legislative and executive initiatives applied against governments in disfavor. There were five
countries under sanction when George W. Bush took office in 2001. The Office of Foreign Assets
Control currently lists penalties against the Balkans, Belarus, Burundi, Central African
Republic, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua,
North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine-Russia, Venezuela, Yemen, and
Zimbabwe. In addition are special programs: countering America's adversaries,
counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, cyber warfare, foreign election interference, Global
Magnitsky, Magnitsky, proliferation, diamond trade, and transnational crime.
Among today's more notable targets are Cuba for being communist, Venezuela for being crazy
communist, Iran for having once sought nuclear weapons and currently challenging Saudi and U.S.
regional hegemony, Russia for beating up on Ukraine and meddling in America's 2016 election,
Syria for opposing Israel and brutally suppressing U.S.-supported insurgents, and North Korea
for developing nuclear weapons. Once on Washington's naughty list, countries rarely get
off.
The second penalty tier affects agencies, companies, and people who have offended someone in
Washington for doing something considered evil, inappropriate, or simply inconvenient.
Individual miscreants often are easy to dislike. Penalizing a few dubious characters or
enterprises creates less opposition than sanctioning a country.
However, some targets merely offended congressional priorities. For instance, as part of the
National Defense Authorization Act Congress authorized sanctions against Western companies,
most notably the Swiss-Dutch pipe-laying venture Allseas Group, involved in the Nord Stream 2
natural gas pipeline project. GOP Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson threatened Allseas:
"continuing to do the work -- for even a single day after the president signs the sanctions
legislation -- would expose your company to crushing and potentially fatal legal and economic
sanctions."
Penalizing what OFAC calls "Specially Designated Nationals" and "blocked persons" has become
Washington sport. Their number hit 8000 last year. The Economist noted that the Trump
administration alone added 3100 names during its first three years, almost as many as George W.
Bush included in eight years. Today's target list runs an incredible 1358 pages.
The process has run wildly out of control. Policymakers' first response to a person,
organization, or government doing something of which they disapprove now seems to be to impose
sanctions -- on anyone or anything on earth dealing with the target. Unfortunately, reliance on
economic warfare, and sanctions traditionally are treated as an act of war, has greatly
inflated U.S. officials' geopolitical ambitions. Once they accepted that the world was a messy,
imperfect place. Today they intervene in the slightest foreign controversy. Even allies and
friends, most notably Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India, are threatened with economic
warfare unless they accept Washington's self-serving priorities and mind-numbing fantasies.
At the same time the utility of sanctions is falling. Unilateral penalties usually fail,
which enrages advocates, who respond by escalating sanctions, again without success. Of course,
embargoes and bans often inflict substantial economic pain, which sometimes lead proponents to
claim victory. However, the cost is supposed to be the means to another end. Yet the
Trump administration has failed everywhere: Cuba maintains communist party rule, Iran has grown
more truculent, North Korea has refused to disarm, Russia has not given back Crimea, and
Venezuela has not defenestrated Nicolas Maduro.
Much the same goes for penalties applied to individuals, firms, and other entities. Those
targeted often are hurt, and most of them deserve to be hurt. But they usually persist in their
behavior or others replace them. What dictator has been deposed, policy has been changed,
threat has been countered, or wrong has been righted as a result of economic warfare? There is
little evidence that U.S. sanctions achieve much of anything, other than encourage
sanctimonious moral preening.
Noted the Economist , "If they do not change behavior, sanctions risk becoming less a
tool of coercion than an expensive and rather arbitrary extraterritorial form of punishment."
One that some day might be turned against Americans.
Contra apparent assumptions in Washington, it is not easy to turn countries into America's
image. Raw nationalism usually triumphs. Americans should reflect on how they would react if
the situation was reversed. No one wants to comply with unpopular foreign dictates.
In fact, economic warfare often exacerbates underlying conflicts. Rather than negotiate with
Washington from a position of weakness, Iran has threatened maritime traffic in the Persian
Gulf, shut down Saudi oil exports, and loosed affiliates and irregulars on American and allied
forces. Russia has challenged against multiple Washington policy priorities. Cuba has shifted
power to the post-revolutionary generation and extended its authority private businesses as the
Trump administration's policies have stymied growth and undermined entrepreneurs.
The almost endless expansion of sanctions also punishes American firms and foreign companies
active in America. Compliance is costly. Violating one rule, even inadvertently, is even more
so. Chary companies preemptively forego legal business in a process called "de-risking."
Even humanitarian traffic suffers: Who wants to risk an expensive mistake in handling
relatively low value transactions? Such effects might not bother smug U.S. policymakers, but
should weigh heavily on the rest of us.
Perhaps most important, Washington's overreliance on secondary sanctions is building
resistance to American financial dominance. Warned Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in 2016: "The
more we condition use of the dollar and our financial system on adherence to U.S. foreign
policy, the more the risk of migration to other currencies and other financial systems in the
medium-term grows."
Overthrowing the almighty dollar will be no mean feat. Nevertheless, arrogant U.S. attempts
to regulate the globe have united much of the world, including Europe, Russia, and China,
against American extraterritoriality. Noted attorney Bruce Zagaris, Washington is
"inadvertently mobilizing a club of countries and international organizations, including U.S.
allies, to develop ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions."
Merchant ships and oil tankers turn off transponders. Vessels transfer cargoes at sea. Firms
arrange cash and barter deals. Major powers such as China aid and abet violations and dare
Washington to wreck much larger bilateral economic relationships. The European Union passed
"Blocking Legislation" to allow recovery of damages from U.S. sanctions and limit Europeans'
compliance with such rules. The EU also developed a barter facility, known as Instex, to allow
trade with Iran without reliance on U.S. financial institution.
Russia has pushed to de-dollarize international payments and worked with China to settle
bilateral trade in rubles and renminbi. Foreign central banks have increased their purchases of
gold. At the recent Islamic summit Malaysia proposed using gold and barter for trade to thwart
future sanctions. Venezuela has been selling gold for euros. These measures do not as yet
threaten America's predominant financial role but foreshadow likely future changes.
Indeed, Washington's attack on plans by Germany to import natural gas from Russia might
ignite something much greater. Berlin is not just an incidental victim of U.S. policy. Rather,
Germany is the target. Complained Foreign Minister Heiko Maas "European energy policy is
decided in Europe, not in the U.S." Alas, Congress thinks differently.
However, Europeans are ever less willing to accept this kind of indignity. Washington is
penalizing even close allies for no obvious purpose other than demonstrating its power. In Nord
Stream 2's case, Gazprom likely will complete the project if necessary. Germany's Deputy
Foreign Minister Niels Annen argued that "Europe needs new instruments to be able to defend
itself from licentious extraterritorial sanctions."
Commercial penalties have a role to play in foreign policy, but economic warfare is warfare.
It can trigger real conflicts -- consider Imperial Japan's response to the Roosevelt
administration's cut-off of oil exports. And economic warfare can kill innocents. When UN
Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked about the deaths of a half million Iraqi babies from
U.S. sanctions, her response was chilling: "We think the price is worth it." Yet most of the
time economic war fails, especially if a unilateral effort by one power applied against the
rest of the world.
Washington policymakers need to relearn the meaning of humility. Incompetent and arrogant
sanctions policies hurt Americans as well as others. Unfortunately, the resulting blowback will
only increase.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global
Empire.
Under the official Full Spectrum Dominance policy of national security, the goal is that
all other nations will be satrapies under U.S. jurisdiction. There are both punishments for
using the U.S. dollar, and punishments for not using it.
I'm afraid it will be the U.S. that suffers. Other countries will no longer subordinate
their interests to those of the U.S. I think the U.S. will have to fight all future wars,
and accept all blow-back, on her own.
It's a waste of time trying to appeal to the commonsense of the Washington Elites. They are
too arrogant and sociopathic to care, and lack anything that remotely resembles a moral
compass.
Sanctions are ineffective because the effects don't fall on those making decisions that are
adverse to the US. After fifty years of sanctions, Fidel died in bed in great comfort.
Sanctions on top of the crazy Juche policies make life hard for the ordinary North Korean,
but Kim doesn't appear to have lost any weight. Our officials pat themselves on the back
for their militancy without checking for effectiveness.
Would it be correct to say that the US embargo on oil exports to Japan in August 1941 led
to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a few months later (Dec. 7)? Was FDR trying to
provoke a war with Japan at the time?
Discuss 10021. Yes. I used to study East Asia and even reading standard collections of
articles, on the article announcing the embargo of steel and oil, and from British
controlled territories in East Asia, one's reaction would be, "This means war." (In like,
Pres. Carter said if Saudi Arabia refused to sell oil to the US we would invade and take
over oil fields.) Se our reaction was similar to that of Japan, though we would blame them
and us doing the same would be good. The US military assessment was, I have forgotten
exactly, but that Japan would be without heat, power, lighting, factories closed (no oil or
steel) and they would be on the point of starvation within, I have forgotten, 9 months to 1
1/2 years. So they "had to do something".. Their war plan was not to invade the US but
start a surprise war and strike quickly hoping to get forward bases in the Pacific and we
would need to negotiate and turn on the spigot. Japanese assessment was if they did not
achieve this by the end of 1942 they were finished. Interestingly, Hitler's assessment of
Germany's war was if they had not defeated USSR and gone after United Kingdom by the end of
1942, they, also, were finished. If I recall the report, Eleanor Roosevelt had told on US
writer the day the attack occurred, something like, "We thought they were going to attack,
but we thought it would be in the Philippines, not Hawaii."
The hubris is overwhelming. All empires fall, and the USA certainly seems headed for a
fall. However, we still have a choice. We could reject empire, stop all our illegal foreign
wars, close all our foreign military bases, drastically reduce our military budget (it is
NOT a "defense" budget; it is an offense military budget), end our campaigns of economic
sanctions, and stop being the Big Bully of the world. The result would be to free enormous
resources for our own country which ranks behind almost all other affluent nations - and
sometimes many not-so-affluent nations - in almost all indicators of ecnomic and social
well being. Replacing the military sector of our economy with civilian alternatives would
be a big boon. Weapons are notable for not continuing in the economic cycle as civilian
products do. There are many more jobs per dollars spent in the civilian sector than the
military sector. Empire is killing our country even as it is killing other countries.
Agreed, but the elites make BILLIONS from Empire & the associated militarism.
Psychopaths don't care about the damage they inflict on others, even their own countrymen,
and they won't willingly surrender the machinery that generates their wealth and privilege.
That's right. I used to know the guys at Gannet in a major US city. Nice people, but not
technically aware, and politically-philosophically innocent. Naifs. Put on nice parties where
they chatted about their pasts in foreign places entirely unaware of the objective and
obvious exploitation going on right before their eyes.
I might add that the engineering students dread, as a rule, English 1-A, and do,
generally, quite poorly. (My wife used to teach that class)
The result is a nice antipodal bar-bell shaped arrangement whereby neither group sees
reality, but only a simulacrum of one part or another.
In this regard, Yasha Levine > " Weaponizing Fascism for Democracy: The Beginning "
Begins in the DP camps...
I've said before that the plans to nuke USSR were being drawn prior to the Trinity test.
Levine's essay buttresses this quite well, though essentially in background...he says nothing
about the bomb. He doen't have to...
Maybe we should put sanctions on Pompeo. He could use the diet. Maybe raiding his pantry
would feed Iraqi for a couple months. He is truly perfect spokesman American empire.
Sadistic, bloated, and corrupt.
"... with little more than a month before the extradition hearing for imprisoned ..."
"... publisher Julian Assange begins. This is the sixth in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring ..."
"... work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange's personality. It is ..."
"... uncovering of governments' crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange, ultimately leading to his arrest on April 11 last year and indictment under the U.S. Espionage Act. ..."
"... Special to Consortium News ..."
"... Der Spiegel ..."
"... to the Winter Fund Drive. ..."
"... World Socialist Website ..."
"... Foreign Policy ..."
"... The Guardian ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Green Left ..."
"... The Green Left Weekly ..."
"... The Guardian ..."
"... CORRECTION: CableDrum is an independent Twitter feed and is not associated with ..."
WikiLeaks ' publication of "Cablegate" in late 2010 dwarfed previous releases in both
size and impact and helped cause what one news outlet called a political meltdown for United
States foreign policy.
Today we resume our series The Revelations of WikiLeaks with little more than a
month before the extradition hearing for imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange
begins. This is the sixth in a series that is looking back on the major works of the
publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to
counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks' work, and is instead
focusing on Julian Assange's personality. It is WikiLeaks' uncovering of governments'
crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange, ultimately leading to his arrest on
April 11 last year and indictment under the U.S. Espionage Act.
O f all WikiLeaks' releases, probably the most globally significant have been the
more than a quarter of a million U.S. State Department diplomatic cables leaked in 2010, the
publication of which helped spark a revolt in Tunisia that spread into the so-called Arab
Spring, revealed Saudi intentions towards Iran and exposed spying on the UN secretary general
and other diplomats.
The releases were surrounded by a significant controversy (to be covered in a separate
installment of this series) alleging that WikiLeaks purposely endangered U.S.
informants by deliberately revealing their names. That allegation formed a major part of the
U.S. indictment on May 23 of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under the Espionage
Act, though revealing informants' names is not a crime, nor is there evidence that any of them
were ever harmed.
WikiLeaks ' publication of "Cablegate," beginning on Nov. 28, 2010, dwarfed
previous WikiLeaks releases, in both size and impact. The publication amounted to 251,287 leaked
American diplomatic cables that, at the time of publication, Der Spiegel described
as"no less than a political meltdown for United States foreign policy."
Cablegate revealed a previously unknown history of diplomatic relations between the United
States and the rest of the world, and in doing so, exposed U.S. views of both allies and
adversaries. As a result of such revelations, Cablegate's release was widely condemned by the
U.S. political class and especially by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Twitter handle Cable Drum, called it,
" The largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public
domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into U.S.
Government foreign activities. The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February
2010, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the
world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified
Secret."
Among the historic documents that
were grouped with Cablegate in WikiLeaks ' Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy are 1.7
million that involve Henry Kissinger, national security adviser and secretary of state under
President Richard Nixon; and 1.4 million related to the Jimmy Carter administration.
Der
Spiegel reported that the majority were "composed by ambassadors, consuls or their
staff. Most contain assessments of the political situation in the individual countries,
interview protocols and background information about personnel decisions and events. In many
cases, they also provide political and personal profiles of individual politicians and
leaders."
Cablegate rounded out WikiLeaks' output in 2010, which had seen the explosive
publication of previous leaks also from Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning including "
Collateral Murder ," the "
Afghan War Diaries " and "
Iraq War Logs ," the subject of earlier installments in this series. As in the case of the
two prior releases, WikiLeaks published Cablegate in partnerships with establishment
media outlets.
The impact of "Cablegate" is impossible to fully encapsulate, and should be the subject of
historical study for decades to come. In September 2015 Verso published " The WikiLeaks Files: The World
According to U.S. Empire ," with a foreword by Assange. It is a compendium of chapters
written by various regional experts and historians giving a broader and more in-depth
geopolitical analysis of U.S. foreign policy as revealed by the cables.
"The internal communications of the US Department of State are the logistical by-product of
its activities: their publication is the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance
flowed from which state organ and when. Only by approaching this corpus holistically –
over and above the documentation of each individual abuse, each localized atrocity – does
the true human cost of empire heave into view," Assange wrote in the foreword.
' WikiLeaks Revolt' in Tunisia
The release of "Cablegate" provided the spark that many argue
heralded the Arab Spring, earning the late-November publication the moniker of the " WikiLeaks Winter
."
Eventually, many would also
creditWikiLeaks' publication of the diplomatic cables with initiating a
chain-reaction that spread from the Middle East ( specifically
from Egypt) to the global Occupy Wall Street movement by late 2011.
The first of the Arab uprisings was Tunisia's 28-day so-called Jasmine Revolution,
stretching from Dec. 17, 2010, to Jan. 14, 2011, described as the "first WikiLeaks
revolution."
Cables published by WikiLeaks revealed the extent of the Tunisian ruling family's
corruption, and were widely accessible in Tunisia thanks to the advent of social media
platforms like Twitter. Then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had been in power for over two
decades at the time of the cables' publication.
"President Ben Ali's extended family is often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption.
Often referred to as a quasi-mafia, an oblique mention of 'the Family' is enough to indicate
which family you mean. Seemingly half of the Tunisian business community can claim a Ben Ali
connection through marriage, and many of these relations are reported to have made the most of
their lineage."
A June 2008 cable said: "Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your
yacht, President [Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets
what it wants."
Symbolic middle finger gesture representing the Tunisian Revolution and its influences in
the Arab world. From left to right, fingers are painted as flags of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia,
Sudan and Algeria. (Khalid from Doha, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The cables revealed that Ben Ali's extended family controlled nearly the entire Tunisian
economy, from banking to media to property development, while 30 percent of Tunisians were
unemployed. They showed that state-owned property was expropriated to be passed on to private
ownership by family members.
"Lax oversight makes the banking sector an excellent target of opportunity, with multiple
stories of 'First Family' schemes," one cable read. ""With real estate development booming and
land prices on the rise, owning property or land in the right location can either be a windfall
or a one-way ticket to expropriation," said another.
The revolt was facilitated once the U.S. abandoned Ali. Counterpunch reported that:
"The U.S. campaign of unwavering public support for President Ali led to a widespread belief
among the Tunisian people that it would be very difficult to dislodge the autocratic regime
from power. This view was shattered when leaked cables exposed the U.S. government's private
assessment: that the U.S. would not support the regime in the event of a popular uprising."
The internet and large social media platforms played a crucial role in the spread of public
awareness of the cables and their content amongst the Tunisian public. "Thousands of home-made
videos of police repression and popular resistance have been posted on the web. The Tunisian
people have used Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to organize and direct the
mobilizations against the regime," the World Socialist Website
wrote.
"WikiLeaks acted as a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for political outcry. Which is
probably the best compliment one could give the whistle-blower site." The magazine added:
"The people of Tunisia shouldn't have had to wait for Wikileaks to learn that the U.S. saw
their country just as they did. It's time that the gulf between what American diplomats know
and what they say got smaller."
The
Guardian published an account in January 2011 by a young Tunisian, Sami Ben Hassine,
who wrote: "The internet is blocked, and censored pages are referred to as pages "not found"
– as if they had never existed. And then, WikiLeaks reveals what everyone was whispering.
And then, a young man [Mohamed Bouazizi] immolates himself. And then, 20 Tunisians are killed
in one day. And for the first time, we see the opportunity to rebel, to take revenge on the
'royal' family who has taken everything, to overturn the established order that has accompanied
our youth."
Protester in Tunis, Jan. 14, 2011, holding sign. Translation from French: "Ben Ali out."
(Skotch 79, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
On the first day of Chelsea Manning's pretrial in December 2011, Daniel Ellsberg told Democracy Now:
"The combination of the WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning exposures in Tunis and the
exemplification of that by Mohamed Bouazizi led to the protests, the nonviolent protests,
that drove Ben Ali out of power, our ally there who we supported up 'til that moment, and in
turn sparked the uprising in Egypt, in Tahrir Square occupation, which immediately stimulated
the Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations in the Middle East and elsewhere. I hope
[Manning and Assange] will have the effect in liberating us from the lawlessness that we have
seen and the corruption -- the corruption -- that we have seen in this country in the last 10
years and more, which has been no less than that of Tunis and Egypt."
Clinton Told US Diplomats to Spy at UN
The cables' revelation that the U.S. State Department under then-Secretary-of-State Clinton
had demanded officials act as spies on officials at the United Nations -- including the
Secretary General -- was particularly embarrassing for the United States.
El Pais summarized the
bombshell: "The State Department sent officials of 38 embassies and diplomatic missions a
detailed account of the personal and other information they must obtain about the United
Nations, including its secretary general, and especially about officials and representatives
linked to Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and North Korea.
El
Pais continued: "Several dispatches, signed 'Clinton' and probably made by the office
of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, contain precise instructions about the myriad of
inquiries to be developed in conflict zones, in the world of deserters and asylum seekers, in
the engine room of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or about the United Kingdom, France,
Germany, Russia and China to know their plans regarding the nuclear threat in Tehran."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton & UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in 2012.
(Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Flickr)
CNN
described the information diplomats were ordered to gather: "In the July 2009 document, Clinton
directs her envoys at the United Nations and embassies around the world to collect information
ranging from basic biographical data on foreign diplomats to their frequent flyer and credit
card numbers and even 'biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats.' Typical
biometric information can include fingerprints, signatures and iris recognition data."
Der Spiegel reported that
Clinton justified the espionage orders by emphasizing that "a large share of the information
that the US intelligence agencies works with comes from the reports put together by State
Department staff around the world."
Der Spiegel added: "The US State Department also wanted to obtain information on
the plans and intentions of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his secretariat relating to
issues like Iran, according to the detailed wish list in the directive. The instructions were
sent to 30 US embassies around the world, including the one in Berlin."
Philip J. Crowley as assistant secretary of state for public affairs in 2010. (State
Department)
The State Department responded to the revelations, with then- State-Department-spokesman
P.J. Crowley reportedly disputing that American
diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.
"Our diplomats are just that, diplomats," he said. "They represent our country around the
world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of foreign governments and civil
society. Through this process, they collect information that shapes our policies and actions.
This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of
years."
In December 2010, just after the cables' publication, Assange told Time : "She should resign if it can be shown that she
was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United
Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up."
Saudis & Iran
A diplomatic cable dated April 20, 2008, made
clear Saudi Arabia's pressure on the United States to take action against its enemy Iran,
including not ruling out military action against Teheran:
"[Then Saudi ambassador to the US Abbdel] Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent
exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. 'He
told you to cut off the head of the snake,' he recalled to the Charge', adding that working
with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and
his government. 11. (S) The Foreign Minister, on the other hand, called instead for much more
severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further
restrictions on bank lending. Prince Muqrin echoed these views, emphasizing that some
sanctions could be implemented without UN approval. The Foreign Minister also stated that the
use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out."
Dyncorp & the 'Dancing Boys' of Afghanistan
The cables indicate that Afghan authorities asked the United States government to quash U.S. reporting on a scandal stemming from the
actions of Dyncorp employees in Afghanistan in 2009.
Employees of Dyncorp, a paramilitary group with an infamous track-record of alleged involvement in sex trafficking
and other human rights abuses in multiple countries, were revealed by Cablegate to have been
involved with illegal drug use and hiring the services of a "bacha bazi," or underage dancing
boy.
A 2009 cable published by WikiLeaks described an event where Dyncorp had purchased
the service of a "bacha bazi." The writer of the cable does not specify what happened during
the event, describing it only as "purchasing a service from a child," and he tries to convince
a journalist not to cover the story in order to not "risk lives."
Although Dyncorp was no stranger to controversy by the time of the cables' publication, the
revelation of the mercenary force's continued involvement in bacha bazi provoked further
questions as to why the company continued to receive tax-payer funded contracts from the United
States.
Sexual abuse allegations were not the only issue haunting Dyncorp. The State Department
admitted in 2017 that it "could not account for" more than $1 billion paid to the company, as
reported by Foreign Policy .
The New York Times later
reported that U.S. soldiers had been told to turn a blind eye to the abuse of minors by those
in positions of power: "Soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of
weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as
the commanders of villages -- and doing little when they began abusing children."
Australia Lied About Troop Withdrawal
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, left, with U.S. President Barack Obama, in the Oval
Office, Nov. 30, 2009, to discuss a range of issues including Afghanistan and climate change.
(White House/Pete Souza)
The Green
Left related that the cables exposed Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's double
talk about withdrawing troops. "Despite government spin about withdrawing all 'combat forces,'
the cables said some of these forces could be deployed in combat roles. One cable said,
"[d]espite the withdrawal of combat forces, Rudd agreed to allow Australian forces embedded or
seconded to units of other countries including the U.S. to deploy to Iraq in combat and combat
support roles with those units."
US Meddling in Latin America
Cables revealed that U.S. ambassadors to Ecuador had opposed the presidential candidacy of
Raphael Correa despite their pretense of neutrality, as observed by The Green Left Weekly .
Additional cables revealed the Vatican attempted to increase its
influence in Latin America with the aid of the U.S. Further cables illustrated the history of Pope Francis while he was a cardinal
in Argentina, with the U.S. appearing to have a positive outlook on the future
pontiff.
Illegal Dealings Between US & Sweden
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote in his affidavit :
"Through the diplomatic cables I also learned of secret, informal arrangements between
Sweden and the United States. The cables revealed that Swedish intelligence services have a
pattern of lawless conduct where US interests are concerned. The US diplomatic cables
revealed that the Swedish Justice Department had deliberately hidden particular intelligence
information exchanges with the United States from the Parliament of Sweden because the
exchanges were likely unlawful."
Military Reaction
On Nov. 30, 2010, the State Department declared it would remove the diplomatic cables from
its secure network in order to prevent additional leaks. Antiwar.com added: "The cables had previously been
accessible through SIPRNet, an ostensibly secure network which is accessible by millions of
officials and soldiers. It is presumably through this network that the cables were obtained and
leaked to WikiLeaks ."
The
Guardian described SIPRNet as a "worldwide US military internet system, kept separate
from the ordinary civilian internet and run by the Defence Department in Washington."
Political Fury
On Nov. 29, 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of the "Cablegate" release:
"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy; it is an attack on the
international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations
that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."
The next day, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called for Chelsea Manning's execution,
according to Politico .
Some political figures did express support for Assange, including U.K. Labor leader Jeremy
Corbyn, who wrote via Twitter days after
Cablegate was published: "USA and others don't like any scrutiny via wikileaks and they are
leaning on everybody to pillory Assange. What happened to free speech?"
Other notable revelations from the diplomatic cables included multiple instances of U.S.
meddling in Latin America, the demand by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that
diplomatic staff act as spies , the
documentation of misconduct by U.S. paramilitary forces, the fallout of the 2008 financial
crisis in Iceland, the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany and other European
countries, that the Vatican attempted to increase its
influence in Latin America with the aid of the U.S. , that U.S. diplomats had essentially spied on German Chancellor Angele
Merkel, and much more.
Der Spiegel reported on
Hillary Clinton's demand that U.S. diplomats act as spies:
"As justification for the espionage orders, Clinton emphasized that a large share of the
information that the U.S. intelligence agencies works with comes from the reports put together
by State Department staff around the world. The information to be collected included personal
credit card information, frequent flyer customer numbers, as well as e-mail and telephone
accounts. In many cases the State Department also requested 'biometric information,'
'passwords' and 'personal encryption keys.' "
Der Spiegel added: "The U.S. State Department also wanted to obtain information on
the plans and intentions of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his secretariat relating to
issues like Iran, according to the detailed wish list in the directive. The instructions were
sent to 30 U.S. embassies around the world, including the one in Berlin."
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and co-host of CN Live.
CORRECTION: CableDrum is an independent Twitter feed and is not associated with
WikiLeaks as was incorrectly reported here.
jmg , January 15, 2020 at 09:53
A truly great series, thank you.
The Revelations of WikiLeaks -- Consortium News Series
1. The Video that Put Assange in US Crosshairs -- April 23, 2019
2. The Leak That 'Exposed the True Afghan War' -- May 9, 2019
3. The Most Extensive Classified Leak in History -- May 16, 2019
4. The Haunting Case of a Belgian Child Killer and How WikiLeaks Helped Crack It -- July 11,
2019
5. Busting the Myth WikiLeaks Never Published Damaging Material on Russia -- September 23,
2019
6. US Diplomatic Cables Spark 'Arab Spring,' Expose Spying at UN & Elsewhere -- January
14, 2020
For an updated list with links to the articles, a Google search is:
"The Revelations of WikiLeaks" site:consortiumnews.com For an updated list with links to
the articles, a Google search is:
"The Revelations of WikiLeaks" site:consortiumnews.com
– – –
Consortium News wrote:
> Today we resume our series The Revelations of WikiLeaks with little more than a month
before the extradition hearing for imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange begins.
Yes and, shockingly, Julian has been allowed only 2 hours with his lawyers in the last
month, crucial to prepare the extradition hearings. See:
Summary from Assange hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning -- Tareq Haddad
-- Thread Reader -- Jan 13th 2020
"... The Americans are the ones who destroyed the country and wreaked havoc on it. They have refused to finish building the electrical system and infrastructure projects. They have bargained for the reconstruction of Iraq in exchange for Iraq giving up 50% of oil imports. So, I refused and decided to go to China and concluded an important and strategic agreement with it. Today, Trump is trying to cancel this important agreement. ..."
"... After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened [that there would be] massive demonstrations to topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, whereby a third party [presumed to be mercenaries or U.S. soldiers] would target both the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from atop the highest buildings and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement." ..."
"... It could also explain why President Trump is so concerned about China's growing foothold in Iraq, since it risks causing not only the end of the U.S. military hegemony in the country but could also lead to major trouble for the petrodollar system and the U.S.' position as a global financial power. Trump's policy aimed at stopping China and Iraq's growing ties is clearly having the opposite effect, showing that this administration's "gangster diplomacy" only serves to make the alternatives offered by countries like China and Russia all the more attractive. ..."
After the feed was cut, MPs who were present wrote down Abdul-Mahdi's remarks, which were
then given to the Arabic news outlet Ida'at .
Per that transcript , Abdul-Mahdi stated that:
The Americans are the ones who destroyed the country and wreaked havoc on it. They
have refused to finish building the electrical system and infrastructure projects. They have
bargained for the reconstruction of Iraq in exchange for Iraq giving up 50% of oil imports.
So, I refused and decided to go to China and concluded an important and strategic agreement
with it. Today, Trump is trying to cancel this important agreement. "
Abdul-Mahdi continued his remarks, noting that pressure from the Trump administration over
his negotiations and subsequent dealings with China grew substantially over time, even
resulting in death threats to himself and his defense minister:
After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I
also refused, and he threatened [that there would be] massive demonstrations to topple me.
Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the
event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, whereby a third party [presumed to be
mercenaries or U.S. soldiers] would target both the demonstrators and security forces and
kill them from atop the highest buildings and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and
submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement."
"I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist to this day
on canceling the China agreement. When the defense minister said that those killing the
demonstrators was a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically threatened myself
and the defense minister in the event that there was more talk about this third party."
Very few English language outlets
reported on Abdul-Mahdi's comments. Tom Luongo, a Florida-based Independent Analyst and publisher of The Gold
Goats 'n Guns Newsletter, told MintPress that the likely reasons for the "surprising"
media silence over Abdul-Mahdi's claims were because "It never really made it out into official
channels " due to the cutting of the video feed during Iraq's Parliamentary session and due to
the fact that "it's very inconvenient and the media -- since Trump is doing what they want him
to do, be belligerent with Iran, protected Israel's interests there."
"They aren't going to contradict him on that if he's playing ball," Luongo added, before
continuing that the media would nonetheless "hold onto it for future reference .If this comes
out for real, they'll use it against him later if he tries to leave Iraq." "Everything in
Washington is used as leverage," he added.
Given the lack of media coverage and the cutting of the video feed of Abdul-Mahdi's full
remarks, it is worth pointing out that the narrative he laid out in his censored speech not
only fits with the timeline of recent events he discusses but also the tactics known to have
been employed behind closed doors by the Trump administration, particularly after Mike Pompeo
left the CIA to become Secretary of State.
For instance, Abdul-Mahdi's delegation to China ended on September 24, with the protests
against his government that Trump reportedly threatened to start on October 1. Reports of a
"third side" firing on Iraqi protesters were picked up by major media outlets at the time, such
as in this
BBC report which stated:
Reports say the security forces opened fire, but another account says unknown gunmen
were responsible .a source in Karbala told the BBC that one of the dead was a guard at a
nearby Shia shrine who happened to be passing by. The source also said the origin of the
gunfire was unknown and it had targeted both the protesters and security forces .
(emphasis added)"
U.S.-backed protests in other countries, such as in Ukraine in 2014, also saw evidence of a
"
third side " shooting both protesters and security forces alike.
After six weeks of intense protests , Abdul-Mahdi
submitted
his resignation on November 29, just a few days after Iraq's
Foreign Minister praised the new deals, including the "oil for reconstruction" deal, that had
been signed with China. Abdul-Mahdi has since stayed on as Prime Minister in a caretaker role
until Parliament decides on his replacement.
Abdul-Mahdi's claims of the covert pressure by the Trump administration are buttressed by
the use of similar tactics against Ecuador, where, in July 2018, a U.S. delegation at the
United Nations
threatened the nation with punitive trade measures and the withdrawal of military aid if
Ecuador moved forward with the introduction of a UN resolution to "protect, promote and support
breastfeeding."
The New York Times reported at the time that the U.S. delegation was seeking to
promote the interests of infant formula manufacturers. If the U.S. delegation is willing to use
such pressure on nations for promoting breastfeeding over infant formula, it goes without
saying that such behind-closed-doors pressure would be significantly more intense if a much
more lucrative resource, e.g. oil, were involved.
Regarding Abdul-Mahdi's claims, Luongo told MintPress that it is also worth
considering that it could have been anyone in the Trump administration making threats to
Abdul-Mahdi, not necessarily Trump himself. "What I won't say directly is that I don't know it
was Trump at the other end of the phone calls. Mahdi, it is to his best advantage politically
to blame everything on Trump. It could have been Mike Pompeo or Gina Haspel talking to
Abdul-Mahdi It could have been anyone, it most likely would be someone with plausible
deniability .This [Mahdi's claims] sounds credible I firmly believe Trump is capable of making
these threats but I don't think Trump would make those threats directly like that, but it would
absolutely be consistent with U.S. policy."
Luongo also argued that the current tensions between U.S. and Iraqi leadership preceded the
oil deal between Iraq and China by several weeks, "All of this starts with Prime Minister Mahdi
starting the process of opening up the Iraq-Syria border crossing and that was announced in
August. Then, the Israeli air attacks happened in September to try and stop that from
happening, attacks on PMU forces on the border crossing along with the ammo dump attacks near
Baghdad This drew the Iraqis' ire Mahdi then tried to close the air space over Iraq, but how
much of that he can enforce is a big question."
As to why it would be to Mahdi's advantage to blame Trump, Luongo stated that Mahdi "can
make edicts all day long, but, in reality, how much can he actually restrain the U.S. or the
Israelis from doing anything? Except for shame, diplomatic shame To me, it [Mahdi's claims]
seems perfectly credible because, during all of this, Trump is probably or someone else is
shaking him [Mahdi] down for the reconstruction of the oil fields [in Iraq] Trump has
explicitly stated "we want the oil."'
As Luongo noted, Trump's interest in the U.S. obtaining a significant share of Iraqi oil
revenue is hardly a secret. Just last March, Trump
asked Abdul-Mahdi "How about the oil?" at the end of a meeting at the White House,
prompting Abdul-Mahdi to ask "What do you mean?" To which Trump responded "Well, we did a lot,
we did a lot over there, we spent trillions over there, and a lot of people have been talking
about the oil," which was widely interpreted as Trump asking for part of Iraq's oil revenue in
exchange for the steep costs of the U.S.' continuing its now unwelcome military presence in
Iraq.
With Abdul-Mahdi having rejected Trump's "oil for reconstruction" proposal in favor of
China's, it seems likely that the Trump administration would default to so-called "gangster
diplomacy" tactics to pressure Iraq's government into accepting Trump's deal, especially given
the fact that China's deal was a much better offer. While Trump demanded half of Iraq's oil
revenue in exchange for completing reconstruction projects (according to Abdul-Mahdi), the deal
that was signed between Iraq and China would see around
20 percen t of Iraq's oil revenue go to China in exchange for reconstruction. Aside from
the potential loss in Iraq's oil revenue, there are many reasons for the Trump administration
to feel threatened by China's recent dealings in Iraq.
The Iraq-China oil deal – a prelude to something more?
When Abdul-Mahdi's delegation traveled to Beijing last September, the "oil for
reconstruction" deal was only
one of eight total agreements that were established. These agreements cover a range of
areas, including financial, commercial, security, reconstruction, communication, culture,
education and foreign affairs in addition to oil. Yet, the oil deal is by far the most
significant.
Per the agreement, Chinese firms will work on various reconstruction projects in exchange
for roughly 20 percent of Iraq's oil exports, approximately 100,00 barrels per day, for a
period of 20 years. According to Al-Monitor
, Abdul-Mahdi had the following to say about the deal: "We agreed [with Beijing] to set up a
joint investment fund, which the oil money will finance," adding that the agreement prohibits
China from monopolizing projects inside Iraq, forcing Bejing to work in cooperation with
international firms.
The agreement is similar to one negotiated
between Iraq and China in 2015 when Abdul-Mahdi was serving as Iraq's oil minister. That
year, Iraq joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in a deal that also involved exchanging oil
for investment, development and construction projects and saw China awarded several projects as
a result. In a notable similarity to recent events, that deal was put on hold due to "political
and security tensions" caused by unrest and the surge of ISIS in Iraq, that is until
Abdul-Mahdi saw Iraq rejoin the
initiative again late last year through the agreements his government signed with China
last September.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, center left, meet with Iraqi Prime Minister
Adil Abdul-Mahdi, center right, in Beijing, Sept. 23, 2019. Lintao Zhang | AP
Notably, after recent tensions between the U.S. and Iraq over the assassination of Soleimani
and the U.S.' subsequent refusal to remove its troops from Iraq despite parliament's demands,
Iraq quietly announced that it would dramatically increase its oil exports to China to
triple the
amount established in the deal signed in September. Given Abdul-Mahdi's recent claims about
the true forces behind Iraq's recent protests and Trump's threats against him being directly
related to his dealings with China, the move appears to be a not-so-veiled signal from
Abdul-Mahdi to Washington that he plans to deepen Iraq's partnership with China, at least for
as long as he remains in his caretaker role.
Iraq's decision to dramatically increase its oil exports to China came just one day after
the U.S. government
threatened to cut off Iraq's access to its central bank account, currently held at the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an account that
currently holds $35 billion in Iraqi oil revenue. The account was
set up after the U.S. invaded and began occupying Iraq in 2003 and Iraq currently removes
between $1-2 billion per month to cover essential government expenses. Losing access to its oil
revenue stored in that account would lead to the "
collapse " of Iraq's government, according to Iraqi government officials who spoke to
AFP .
Though Trump publicly promised to rebuke Iraq for the expulsion of U.S. troops via
sanctions, the threat to cut off Iraq's access to its account at the NY Federal Reserve Bank
was delivered privately and directly to the Prime Minister, adding further credibility to
Abdul-Mahdi's claims that Trump's most aggressive attempts at pressuring Iraq's government are
made in private and directed towards the country's Prime Minister.
Though Trump's push this time was about preventing the expulsion of U.S. troops from Iraq,
his reasons for doing so may also be related to concerns about China's growing foothold in the
region. Indeed, while Trump has now lost his desired share of Iraqi oil revenue (50 percent) to
China's counteroffer of 20 percent, the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq may see American
troops replaced with their Chinese counterparts as well, according to Tom Luongo.
"All of this is about the U.S. maintaining the fiction that it needs to stay in Iraq So,
China moving in there is the moment where they get their toe hold for the Belt and Road
[Initiative]," Luongo argued. "That helps to strengthen the economic relationship between Iraq,
Iran and China and obviating the need for the Americans to stay there. At some point, China
will have assets on the ground that they are going to want to defend militarily in the event of
any major crisis. This brings us to the next thing we know, that Mahdi and the Chinese
ambassador discussed that very thing in the wake of the Soleimani killing."
Indeed, according to news reports, Zhang Yao -- China's ambassador to Iraq -- " conveyed
Beijing's readiness to provide military assistance" should Iraq's government request it
soon after Soleimani's assassination. Yao made the offer a day after Iraq's parliament voted to
expel American troops from the country. Though it is currently unknown how Abdul-Mahdi
responded to the offer, the timing likely caused no shortage of concern among the Trump
administration about its rapidly waning influence in Iraq. "You can see what's coming here,"
Luongo told MintPress of the recent Chinese offer to Iraq, "China, Russia and Iran are
trying to cleave Iraq away from the United States and the U.S. is feeling very threatened by
this."
Russia is also playing a role in the current scenario as Iraq initiated talks with Moscow
regarding the
possible purchase of one of its air defense systems last September, the same month that
Iraq signed eight deals, including the oil deal with China. Then, in the wake of Soleimani's
death, Russia
again offered the air defense systems to Iraq to allow them to better defend their air
space. In the past, the U.S.
has threatened allied countries with sanctions and other measures if they purchase Russian
air defense systems as opposed to those manufactured by U.S. companies.
The U.S.' efforts to curb China's growing influence and presence in Iraq amid these new
strategic partnerships and agreements are limited, however, as the U.S. is increasingly relying on China
as part of its Iran policy, specifically in its goal of reducing Iranian oil export to zero.
China remains Iran's main crude oil and condensate importer, even after it reduced its imports
of Iranian oil significantly following U.S. pressure last year. Yet, the U.S. is now attempting to
pressure China to stop buying Iranian oil completely or face sanctions while also
attempting to privately sabotage the China-Iraq oil deal. It is highly unlikely China will
concede to the U.S. on both, if any, of those fronts, meaning the U.S. may be forced to choose
which policy front (Iran "containment" vs. Iraq's oil dealings with China) it values more in
the coming weeks and months.
Furthermore, the recent signing of the "phase one" trade deal with China revealed another
potential facet of the U.S.' increasingly complicated relationship with Iraq's oil sector given
that the trade deal
involves selling U.S. oil and gas to China at very low cost , suggesting that the Trump
administration may also see the Iraq-China oil deal result in Iraq emerging as a potential
competitor for the U.S. in selling cheap oil to China, the world's top oil importer.
The Petrodollar and the Phantom of the Petroyuan
In his televised statements last week following Iran's military response to the U.S.
assassination of General Soleimani, Trump insisted that the U.S.' Middle East policy is no
longer being directed by America's vast oil requirements. He
stated specifically that:
Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before
and America has achieved energy independence. These historic accomplishments changed our
strategic priorities. These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible. And
options in the Middle East became available. We are now the number-one producer of oil and
natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent, and we do not need Middle East
oil . (emphasis added)"
Yet, given the centrality of the recent Iraq-China oil deal in guiding some of the Trump
administration's recent Middle East policy moves, this appears not to be the case. The
distinction may lie in the fact that, while the U.S. may now be less dependent on oil imports
from the Middle East, it still very much needs to continue to dominate how oil is traded and
sold on international markets in order to maintain its status as both a global military
and financial superpower.
Indeed, even if the U.S. is importing less Middle Eastern oil, the petrodollar system --
first forged in the 1970s -- requires that the U.S. maintains enough control over the global
oil trade so that the world's largest oil exporters, Iraq among them, continue to sell their
oil in dollars. Were Iraq to sell oil in another currency, or trade oil for services, as it
plans to do with China per the recently inked deal, a significant portion of Iraqi oil would
cease to generate a demand for dollars, violating the key tenet of the petrodollar
system.
Chinese representatives speak to defense personnel during a weapons expo organized
by the Iraqi defense ministry in Baghdad, March, 2017. Karim Kadim | AP
The takeaway from the petrodollar phenomenon is that as long as countries need oil, they
will need the dollar. As long as countries demand dollars, the U.S. can continue to go into
massive amounts of debt to fund its network of global military bases, Wall Street bailouts,
nuclear missiles, and tax cuts for the rich."
Thus, the use of the petrodollar has created a system whereby U.S. control of oil sales of
the largest oil exporters is necessary, not just to buttress the dollar, but also to support
its global military presence. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the issue of the U.S. troop
presence in Iraq and the issue of Iraq's push for oil independence against U.S. wishes have
become intertwined. Notably, one of the architects of the petrodollar system and the man who
infamously described U.S. soldiers as "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign
policy", former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has been advising
Trump and informing his China policy since 2016.
This take was also expressed by economist Michael Hudson,
who recently noted that U.S. access to oil, dollarization and U.S. military strategy are
intricately interwoven and that Trump's recent Iraq policy is intended "to escalate America's
presence in Iraq to keep control of the region's oil reserves," and, as Hudson says, "to back
Saudi Arabia's Wahabi troops (ISIS, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are
actually America's foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of
the U.S. dollar."
Hudson further asserts that it was Qassem Soleimani's efforts to promote Iraq's oil
independence at the expense of U.S. imperial ambitions that served one of the key motives
behind his assassination.
America opposed General Suleimani above all because he was fighting against ISIS and other
U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria and replace Assad's regime with a
set of U.S.-compliant local leaders – the old British "divide and conquer" ploy. On
occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got "out of
line" meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work
with that government seeking to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has
bragged so loudly about grabbing. (emphasis added)"
Hudson adds that " U.S. neocons feared Suleimani's plan to help Iraq assert control of its
oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S. and Saudi's on Iraq. That is what
made his assassination an immediate drive."
While other factors -- such as pressure
from U.S. allies such as Israel -- also played a factor in the decision to kill Soleimani,
the decision to assassinate him on Iraqi soil just hours before he was set to meet with
Abdul-Mahdi in a diplomatic role suggests that the underlying tensions caused by Iraq's push
for oil independence and its oil deal with China did play a factor in the timing of his
assassination. It also served as a threat to Abdul-Mahdi, who has claimed that the U.S.
threatened to kill both him and his defense minister just weeks prior over tensions directly
related to the push for independence of Iraq's oil sector from the U.S.
It appears that the ever-present role of the petrodollar in guiding U.S. policy in the
Middle East remains unchanged. The petrodollar has long been a driving factor behind the U.S.'
policy towards Iraq specifically, as one of the key triggers for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was
Saddam Hussein's decision to sell Iraqi oil in Euros opposed to dollars beginning in the year
2000. Just weeks before the invasion began, Hussein boasted that Iraq's Euro-based oil revenue
account was earning a higher interest rate than
it would have been if it had continued to sell its oil in dollars, an apparent signal to other
oil exporters that the petrodollar system was only really benefiting the United States at their
own expense.
Beyond current efforts to stave off Iraq's oil independence and keep its oil trade aligned
with the U.S., the fact that the U.S. is now seeking to limit China's ever-growing role in
Iraq's oil sector is also directly related to China's publicly known efforts to create its own
direct competitor to the petrodollar, the petroyuan.
Since 2017, China has made its plans for the petroyuan -- a direct competitor to the
petrodollar -- no secret, particularly after China eclipsed the U.S. as the world's largest
importer of oil.
The new strategy is to enlist the energy markets' help: Beijing may introduce a new way to
price oil in coming months -- but unlike the contracts based on the U.S. dollar that currently dominate global
markets, this benchmark would use China's own currency. If there's widespread adoption, as the
Chinese hope, then that will mark a step toward challenging the greenback's status as the
world's most powerful currency .The plan is to price oil in yuan using a gold-backed futures contract in
Shanghai, but the road will be long and arduous."
If the U.S. continues on its current path and pushes Iraq further into the arms of China and
other U.S. rival states, it goes without saying that Iraq -- now a part of China's Belt and Road
Initiative -- may soon favor a petroyuan system over a petrodollar system, particularly as the
current U.S. administration threatens to hold Iraq's central bank account hostage for pursuing
policies Washington finds unfavorable.
It could also explain why President Trump is so concerned about China's growing foothold
in Iraq, since it risks causing not only the end of the U.S. military hegemony in the country but
could also lead to major trouble for the petrodollar system and the U.S.' position as a global
financial power. Trump's policy aimed at stopping China and Iraq's growing ties is clearly having
the opposite effect, showing that this administration's "gangster diplomacy" only serves to make
the alternatives offered by countries like China and Russia all the more attractive.
One can see how all these recent wars and military actions have a financial motive at their
core. Yet the mass of gullible Americans actually believe the reasons given, to "spread
democracy" and other wonderful things. Only a small number can see things for what they really
are. It's very frustrating to deal with the stupidity of the average person on a daily basis.
This is not Trump's policy, it is American policy and the variation is in how he implements
it. Any other person would have fallen in line with it as well. US policy has it's own inner
momentum that can't change course. The US depends upon continuation of the dollar as the
world's reserve currency. Were that to be lost the US likely would descend into chaos without
end. When the USSR came apart it was eventually able to downsize into the Russian state. We
don't have that here; there is no core ethnicity with it's own territory left anymore, it's
just a jumble. For the US it's a matter of survival.
There were brutal sanctions against Iraq in the 90s. After that the country was devastated by
the invasion of 2003. Hostility against Iran has been continuous. It's no suprise that things
are not going well in the region and that American politics failed. But this was to be
expected.
Good relations with Iran were possible. Even recently Iran thought that the nuclear
agreement could lead to better relations with the West. Iran should be our best ally in the
region because the middle classes there feel close to the West and are very friendly with
Westerners who visit the country. We could have had better results if we had tryed a more
reasonable politics. But it seems that there were other forces that wanted conflict with Iran
and the destruction of Iraq independently of the interests of the US which would have gained
from a more reasonable position. We can say the same about Russia.
After wars and sanctions the only way to hold everything together is through military
means. There was as doctrine which promoted unbridled militarism and the use of force (wasn't
there a saying that "Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus"?). Everybody who didn't
submit to our rules and interests was viewed as an enemy, military force was seen as the
solution to everything.
This is not functioning well. Americans have been decieved by this militaristic doctrine,
this is not going to work. Russia has challenged this, a part of Europe isn't very happy, in
South America you can only run the system ressorting to radical politicians like Bolsonaro
who destroy the environment and create more poverty, in other places this politics created
instability and enemies. I think it should be the time for the American elites to discuss
seriously the ways that the country has been following simply because there are better ways
to have better results.
@anonymous Yes, for the American Empire to exist (and expand) it needs the Petro-dollar,
because only if it is widely used in the world can its collapse be prevented. But why is the
dollar so shaky? Because it is no real money, based on real value, but created out of thin
air as debt and it can only function in an ever expanding pyramid scheme.
The origin of this fraud is the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. And yes that
was mainly a Jewish creation. Nobody, not even Ron Paul, dares to mention that.
Iraq's decision to dramatically increase its oil exports to China came just one day
after the U.S. government threatened to cut off Iraq's access to its central bank account,
currently held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an account that currently holds $35
billion in Iraqi oil revenue. The account was set up after the U.S. invaded and began
occupying Iraq in 2003 and Iraq currently removes between $1-2 billion per month to cover
essential government expenses. Losing access to its oil revenue stored in that account
would lead to the "collapse" of Iraq's government, according to Iraqi government officials
who spoke to AFP.
A very revealing article.
It doesn't make sense for any country to hold reserves in the US. The Zio-Glob CIA
gangsters are ready to defraud or smash up any country that challenges their petrodollar
system. Witness Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Iran and their hostility to Russia and China.
You don't need to twist yourself into a pretzel to figure out why Trump whacked
–the Mafia term–Soleimani.
Jared the Snake's Tel Aviv masters told him they wanted Zion Don to pull the trigger and
their will was done.
I voted for a President Trump and instead, got President Shecky, beholden to Jew and
Israeli interests who has bent over backwards to please the Israeli terrorists, but who will
now go back to his old shtick; pretending to be MAGA or KAG until he gets re-elected, then it
will be gloves off and most likely, another War for Israel and Wall Street in 2021.
Having an Israeli-Firster in the WH isn't unusual, but when you have a vain simpleton who
doesn't understand foreign policy or is so damned lazy, he lets a slumlord take care of it is
a prescription for a major disaster.
"... In my last post, I said it was time to close down this blog, mostly due to its ineffectiveness, short reach, and choir preaching. I wrote that I might as well pound sand for all the good it did. ..."
"... The US began targeting Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This included "freezing" -- polite-speak for theft -- around $12 billion in Iranian assets, including gold, property, and bank holdings. After Obama agreed to return this filched property and money as part of the nuke deal (minus any real nukes), neocons said he gave away US taxpayer money to international terrorists. This warped lie became part of the narrative, yet another state-orchestrated fake news "alternative fact." ..."
In my last post, I said it was time to close down this blog, mostly due to its
ineffectiveness, short reach, and choir preaching. I wrote that I might as well pound sand for
all the good it did.
A few days later, Trump killed a high level Iranian military leader and I have decided a
post is in order, never mind that a round of tiddlywinks will have about the same influence as
a post here. The wars just keep on coming, no matter what we do.
Let's turn to social media where dimwits, neocon partisans, and clueless Democrats are
running wild after corporate Mafia boss and numero uno Israeli cheerleader Donald Trump ordered
a hit on Gen. Qasem Soleimani and others near Baghdad's international airport on Thursday.
Let's begin with this teleprompter reader and "presenter" from Al Jazeera:
"This is what happens when you put a narcissistic, megalomaniacal, former reality TV star
with a thin skin and a very large temper in charge of the world's most powerful military You
know who else attacks cultural sites? ISIS. The Taliban." – me on Trump/Iran on MSNBC
today: pic.twitter.com/YCRARB2anv
It is interesting how the memory of such people only goes back to the election of Donald
Trump.
The US began targeting Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This included "freezing"
-- polite-speak for theft -- around $12 billion in Iranian assets, including gold, property,
and bank holdings. After Obama agreed to return this filched property and money as part of the
nuke deal (minus any real nukes), neocons said he gave away US taxpayer money to international
terrorists. This warped lie became part of the narrative, yet another state-orchestrated fake
news "alternative fact."
Here's another idiot. He was the boss of the DNC for a while and unsuccessfully ran for
president.
Nice job trump and Pompeo you dimwits. You've completed the neocon move to have Iraq
become a satellite of Iran. You have to be the dumbest people ever to run the US government.
You can add that to being the most corrupt. Get these guys out of here. https://t.co/gQHhHSeiJQ
Once again, history is lost in a tangle of lies and omission. Centuries before John Dean
thought it might be a good idea to run for president, Persians and Shias in what is now Iraq
and Iran were crossing the border -- later drawn up by invading Brits and French -- in
pilgrimages to the shrines of Imam Husayn and Abbas in Karbala. We can't expect an arrogant
sociopath like Mr. Dean to know about Ashura, Shia pilgrimages, the Remembrance of Muharram,
and events dating back to 680 AD.
Shias from Iran pilgrimage to other Iraqi cities as well, including An-Najaf, Samarra,
Mashhad, and Baghdad (although the latter is more important to Sunnis).
Corporate fake news teleprompter reader Stephanopoulos said the Geneva Conventions
(including United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347) outlaw the targeting of cultural
sites, which Trump said he will bomb.
Trump said there are 52 different sites; the number is not arbitrary, it is based on the 52
hostages, many of them CIA officers, taken hostage during Iran's revolution against the
US-installed Shah and his brutal secret police sadists.
Pompeo said Trump won't destroy Iran's cultural and heritage sites. Pompeo, as a dedicated
Zionist operative, knows damn well the US will destroy EVERYTHING of value in Iran, same as it
did in Iraq and later Libya and Syria. This includes not only cultural sites, but civilian
infrastructure -- hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, and mosques.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Geneva Conventions outlaws attacks on cultural objects & places of
worship. Why is Trump threatening Iran w/ war crimes?
POMPEO: We'll behave lawfully
S: So to be clear, Trump's threat wasn't accurate?
Although I believe Jill Stein is living in a Marxian fantasy world, I agree with her tweet
in regard to the Zionist hit on Soleimani:
Now THIS is grounds for #impeachment
– treachery unleashing the unthinkable for Americans & people the world over: Trump
asked Iraqi prime minister to mediate with #Iran then
assassinated Soleimani – on a mediation mission. https://t.co/f0F9FEMALD
Trump should be impeached -- tried and imprisoned -- not in response to some dreamed-up and
ludicrous Russian plot or even concern about the opportunist Hunter Biden using his father's
position to make millions in uber-corrupt Ukraine, but because he is a war criminal responsible
for killing women and children.
As for the planned forever military occupation of Iraq,
USA Today reports:
Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told lawmakers that a timetable for the withdrawal
of all foreign troops, including U.S. ones, was required "for the sake of our national
sovereignty." About 5,000 American troops are in various parts of Iraq.
The latest:
-- Iraqi lawmakers voted to oust U.S. troops
-- U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS has paused operations
-- Hundreds of thousands mourned General Suleimani in Iran
-- President Trump said the U.S. has 52 possible targets in Iran in case of retaliation
https://t.co/pmUuAQdKlc
No way in hell will Sec. State Pompeo and his Zionist neocon handlers allow this to happen
without a fight. However, it shouldn't be too difficult for the Iraqis to expel 5,000
brainwashed American soldiers from the country, bombed to smithereens almost twenty years ago
by Bush the Neocon Idiot Savant.
Never mind Schumer's pretend concern about another war. This friend of Israel from New York
didn't go on national television and excoriate Obama and his cutthroat Sec. of State Hillary
Clinton for killing 30,000 Libyans.
I'm concerned President Trump's impulsive foreign policy is dragging America into another
endless war in the Middle East that will make us less safe.
Meanwhile, it looks like social media is burning the midnight oil in order to prevent their
platforms being used to argue against Trump's latest Zionist-directed insanity.
It is absolutely crazy that Twitter is auto-locking the accounts of anyone who posts this
"No war on Iran" image, and forcing them to delete the anti-war tweet in order to unlock
their account.
This is complete and utter bullshit, but I'm sure the American people will gobble it down
without question. Trump's advisers are neocons and they are seriously experienced in the art of
promoting and engineering assassination, cyber-attacks, invasions, and mass murder.
Newsmax scribbler John Cardillo thinks he has it all figure out.
"In mid-October Soleimani instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and
other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country using
sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran "
Imagine this, however improbable and ludicrous: Iran invades America and assassinates
General Hyten or General McConville, both top members of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now
imagine the response by the "exceptional nation."
We can't leave out the Christian Zionist from Indiana, Mike Pence. Mike wants you to believe
Iran was responsible for 9/11, thus stirring up the appropriate animosity and consensus for
mass murder.
Neither Iran nor Soleimani were linked to the terror attack in the "9/11 Commission
Report." Pence didn't even get the number of hijackers right. https://t.co/QtQZm2Yyh9
Finally, here is the crown jewel of propaganda -- in part responsible for the death of well
over a million Iraqis -- The New York Times showing off its rampant hypocrisy.
In Opinion
The editorial board writes, "It is crucial that influential Republican senators like
Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell remind President Trump of his promise to keep
America out of foreign quagmires" https://t.co/2swusvBWbg
Never mind Judith Miller, the Queen of NYT pro-war propaganda back in the day, spreading
neocon fabricated lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. America -- or
rather the United States (the government) -- is addicted to quagmires and never-ending war.
This is simply more anti-Trump bullshit by the NYT editorial board. The newspaper loves war
waged in the name of Israel, but only if jumpstarted by Democrats.
Trump the fool, the fact-free reality TV president will eventually unleash the dogs of war
against Iran, much to the satisfaction of Israel, its racist Zionists, Israel-first neocons in
America, and the chattering pro-war class of "journalists," and "foreign policy experts" (most
former Pentagon employees).
Expect more nonsense like that dispensed by the robot Mike Pence, the former tank commander
now serving as Sec. of State, and any number of neocon fellow travelers, many with coveted blue
checkmarks on Twitter while the truth-tellers are expelled from the conversation and exiled to
the political wilderness.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this
article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea, war in the 21st
century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the
forces driving world events towards an all-out war of "Mutually Assured Annihilation" are
anything but sane.
While I'm obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a
particularly virulent strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled "neo-conservative" and
while many of these disturbing figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a
risk worth taking in order to achieve their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to
make one subtle yet very important distinction which is often overlooked.
What is this distinction?
Under the broad umbrella of "neo-conservative" one should properly differentiate those who
really believe in their ideology and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined
assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology
from the top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called Origins of the Deep State
and Myth
of the Jewish Conspiracy .
To re-state my meaning: This group doesn't necessarily believe in the ideological group they
manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to
achieve certain behavioral patterns in their children.
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic
neocon worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the
point.
Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia
and Rome who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout
the ages. It is well documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome's control, as
long as said cult denied any claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic
monotheistic faiths more than a little antagonistic to empire.
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?
Hell no.
Was it politically necessary to create them?
Of course.
Why?
Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts but since they
deny any principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc) , empires are merely a sum of
parts and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum. Each cultish group may
coexist as an echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish
without judgement of moral right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group's
beliefs- but nothing universal about justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise
permitted. Here the a-moral "peace" of "equilibrium" can be achieved by an oligarchy which
wishes to lord over the slaves. Whether we are dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich's
Congress of Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger, or Leo
Strauss (father of modern neo-conservativism), "Peace" can never be anything more than a
mathematical "balancing of parts".
Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?
To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit
more personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.
Smith at Her Majesty's
Service
Do Smith's modern followers sincerely believe in the "self-regulating forces of the free
market"?
Sure they do.
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?
Whether he did or not, according
to recent research conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission
to compose his seminal book Wealth of Nations
(published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from Edinburgh to
London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who
essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised
all colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or channel said
credit towards internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his 1729 Necessity
of Paper Currency and Colonial Script.
Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new "Law" of "absolute advantage" demanded that
everyone just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land,
so they should stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry
(don't ask how that happened because it wasn't through free trade), so they should stick with
that! India had advanced textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then
have a lot of opium fields so she could do that which China could then smoke to death under the
watch of British Gunships. "Free Trade" demanded it so.
Let's look at another example: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection
A
Not-too-Natural Selection
Darwin's theory published in his Origins of Species (1859) was based on the assumption that
all changes in the biosphere are driven by "laws" of "survival of the fittest" within an
assumed closed ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an "invisible
hand" brought creative order to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin
asserted that creative order on the large scale evolution of species could be explained by
chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that no power of reason, free will or God
could pass.
Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.
But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: "Darwin's Bulldog") whose efforts to destroy all competing
theories which included "purpose", "meaning", or "design" were crushed and ridiculed into
obscurity? Huxley himself was on record
saying he did not believe in Darwin's system. So why was this theory promoted by forces
(like
Huxley's X Club ) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to
Darwin's own account of his discovery from his
autobiography where he wrote:
"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to
read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals
and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would
tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the
formation of a new species. Here then, I had at last got a theory by which to work".
Malthus's 'Dismal Science'
And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted "Man of God" who taught
economics at the British East India Company's Haileybury College) provided the very foundation
upon which Darwin's system stood! Thomas Huxley
and the other "high priests" of Huxley's X Club were always Malthusian (even before there
was Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources
of an age, rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring
new resources into being- overcoming nature's "limits to growth" (a dis-equilibrium not to be
tolerated). Whether Malthus actually believed in the system which bears his name, as
generations of his adherents sincerely do, remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the
needed extermination of the "unfit" by the Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded
Social Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called for the encouragement of the plague
and other "natural forms of destruction" to cull the herd of the unfit in his Essay on the
Principle of Population ( 1799):
"We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the
operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation
of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction,
which we compel nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more
people into the houses, and court the return of the plague."
A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of
low value to society when he said:
"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage
taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate
child born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance The
infant is, comparatively speaking, of little value to society, as others will immediately
supply its place."
The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley's
own grandson Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity
today called the Green New Deal were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect
of this worldview upon races deemed "unfit" in the global south should also not be ignored. It
is no coincidence that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund,
1001 Nature Trust and Club of Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world
over the bodies of countless statesmen during the Cold War.
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire
Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious
and ethnic groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity
increases its capacity to sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to
parasitically drain their host. In Lincoln's great 1859 speech ,
the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the British Empire
when he said:
"All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon
it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature,
and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first,
was to dig out his destiny Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who
improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions."
Lincoln's economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal
improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben
Franklin.
Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the
leaders of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking
the post-truth neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics. The
folly of America's new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump's disastrous
foreign policy agenda is tied to the oligarchy's absolute fear of losing America to a new
Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted repeatedly since entering office in 2017.
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an
alternative system of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological
progress but they have also managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen
have demonstrated a clear recognition that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to
neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable, and defeatable (but not militarily) . Xi expressed this
insight most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to
be woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them
from their own hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without
understanding that those who fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed
in them.
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss, Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir Bernard
Lewis absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or
Kristol have adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called
humanity must ultimately be governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman
Empire), and that Leviathan could only be created in response to an intolerably painful period
of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would usher into this world.
As'ad AbuKhalil analyzes the Trump administration's decision
to escalate hostilities with Iran and its regional allies.
By As`ad AbuKhalil
January 21, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - S omething big
and unprecedented has happened in the Middle East after the assassination of one of Iran's
top commanders, Qasim Suleimani.
The U.S. has long assumed that assassinations of major figures in the Iranian
"resistance-axis" in the Middle East would bring risk to the U.S. military-intelligence
presence in the Middle East. Western and Arab media reported that the U.S. had prevented
Israel in the past from killing Suleimani. But with the top commander's death, the Trump
administration seems to think a key barrier to U.S. military operations in the Middle East
has been removed.
The U.S. and Israel had noticed that Hizbullah and Iran did not retaliate against previous
assassinations by Israel (or the U.S.) that took place in Syria (of Imad Mughniyyah, Jihad
Mughniyyah, Samir Quntar); or for other attacks on Palestinian and Lebanese commanders in
Syria.
The U.S. thus assumed that this assassination would not bring repercussions or harm to
U.S. interests. Iranian reluctance to retaliate has only increased the willingness of Israel
and the U.S. to violate the unspoken rules of engagement with Iran in the Arab East.
For many years Israel did perpetrate various assassinations against Iranian scientists and
officers in Syria during the on-going war. But Israel and the U.S. avoided targeting leaders
or commanders of Iran. During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the U.S. and Iran collided
directly and indirectly, but avoided engaging in assassinations for fear that this would
unleash a series of tit-for-tat.
But the Trump administration has become known for not playing by the book, and for
operating often according to the whims and impulses of President Donald Trump.
Different Level of Escalation
The decision to strike at Baghdad airport, however, was a different level of escalation.
In addition to killing Suleimani it also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a key leader of Hashd
forces in Iraq. Like Suleimani, al-Muhandis was known for waging the long fight against ISIS.
(Despite this, the U.S. media only give credit to the U.S. and its clients who barely lifted
a finger in the fight against ISIS.)
On the surface of it, the strike was uncharacteristic of Trump. Here is a man who pledged
to pull the U.S. out of the Middle East turmoil -- turmoil for which the U.S and Israel bear
the primary responsibility. And yet he seems willing to order a strike that will guarantee
intensification of the conflict in the region, and even the deployment of more U.S.
forces.
Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda?
The first term of the Trump administration has revealed the extent to which the U.S. war
empire is run by the military-intelligence apparatus. There is not much a president -- even a
popular president like Barack Obama in his second term -- can do to change the course of
empire. It is not that Obama wanted to end U.S. wars in the region, but Trump has tried to
retreat from Middle East conflicts and yet he has been unable due to pressures not only from
the military-intelligence apparatus but also from their war advocates in the U.S. Congress
and Western media, D.C. think tanks and the human-rights industry. The pressures to preserve
the war agenda is too powerful on a U.S. president for it to cease in the foreseeable future.
But Trump has managed to start fewer new wars than his predecessors -- until this strike.
Trump's Obama Obsession
Trump in his foreign policy is obsessed with the legacy and image of Obama. He decided to
violate the Iran nuclear agreement (which carried the weight of international law after its
adoption by the UN Security Council) largely because he wanted to prove that he is tougher
than Obama, and also because he wanted an international agreement that carries his imprint.
Just as Trump relishes putting his name on buildings, hotels, and casinos he wants to put his
name on international agreements. His decision, to strike at a convoy carrying perhaps the
second most important person in Iran was presumably attached to an intelligence assessment
that calculated that Iran is too weakened and too fatigued to strike back directly at the
U.S.
Iran faced difficult choices in response to the assassination of Suleimani. On the one
hand, Iran would appear weak and vulnerable if it did not retaliate and that would only
invite more direct U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian targets.
On the other hand, the decision to respond in a large-scale attack on U.S. military or
diplomatic targets in the Middle East would invite an immediate massive U.S. strike inside
Iran. Such an attack has been on the books; the U.S military (and Israel, of course) have
been waiting for the right moment for the U.S. to destroy key strategic sites inside
Iran.
Furthermore, there is no question that the cruel U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran have made
life difficult for the Iranian people and have limited the choices of the government, and
weakened its political legitimacy, especially in the face of vast Gulf-Western attempts to
exploit internal dissent and divisions inside Iran. (Not that dissent inside Iran is not
real, and not that repression by the regime is not real).
Nonetheless, if the Iranian regime were to open an all-out war against the U.S., this
would certainly cause great harm and damage to U.S. and Israeli interests.
Iran Sending Messages
In the last year, however, Iran successfully sent messages to Gulf regimes (through
attacks on oil shipping in the Gulf, for which Iran did not claim responsibility, nor did it
take responsibility for the pin-point attack on ARAMCO oil installations) that any future
conflict would not spare their territories.
That quickly reversed the policy orientations of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which
suddenly became weary of confrontation with Iran, and both are now negotiating (openly and
secretively) with the Iranian government. Ironically, both the UAE and Saudi regimes -- which
constituted a lobby for war against Iran in Western capitals -- are also eager to distance
themselves from U.S. military action against
Iran . And Kuwait quickly
denied that the U.S. used its territory in the U.S. attack on Baghdad airport, while
Qatar dispatched its foreign minister to Iran (officially to offer condolences over the death
of Suleimani, but presumably also to distance itself and its territory from the U.S.
attack).
The Iranian response was very measured and very specific. It was purposefully intended to
avoid causing U.S. casualties; it was intended more as a message of Iranian missile
capabilities and their pin point accuracy. And that message was not lost on Israel.
Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, sent a more strident message. He basically
implied that it would be left to Iran's allies to engineer military responses. He also
declared a war on the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, although he was at pains to
stress that U.S. civilians are to be spared in any attack or retaliation.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/6yyC897UliI
Supporters of the Iran resistance axis have been quite angry in the wake of the
assassination. The status of Suleimani in his camp is similar to the status of Nasrallah
although Nasrallah -- due to his charisma and to his performance and the performance of his
party in the July 2006 war -- may have attained a higher status.
It would be easy for the Trump administration to ignite a Middle East war by provoking
Iran once again, and wrongly assuming that there are no limits to Iranian caution and
self-restraint. But if the U.S. (and Israel with it or behind it) were to start a Middle East
war, it will spread far wider and last far longer than the last war in Iraq, which the U.S.
is yet to complete.
As'ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California
State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the "Historical Dictionary of Lebanon"
(1998), "Bin Laden, Islam and America's New War on Terrorism (2002), and "The Battle for
Saudi Arabia" (2004). He tweets as @asadabukhal
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with his Iranian
counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif over the phone on Friday to discuss the killing of Iran's
military chief Qassem Soleimani, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
"Lavrov expressed his condolences over the killing," the statement said. "The ministers
stressed that such actions by the United States grossly violate the norms of international
law."
Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said that Tehran
continues to adhere to the 2015 nuclear deal, adding that the European powers' claims about
Iran violating the deal were unfounded.
Moscow warns Tehran against making 'reckless steps' to quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said. He added that Russia urges
Iran to comply with its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, giving those who oppose the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) further reasons for escalation is
"counterproductive".
Is there a friend anywhere? Kim or Khan of Pakistan to ship one in.
Alternative, Moscow could declare its nuclear capabilities are extended to Iran. Just can't
leave Iran hanging on a twig.
Posted by: Likklemore | Jan 20 2020 21:41 utc | 36
Maybe it's because trump has a history with Russian mobsters and money laundering?
Or maybe it's just smart to say that? What's to be gained by setting off man child trump and
spurring yet another temper tantrum via twitter?
trump did lotsa bidnezz with the International cabal that plundered Russia after the
disillusion of the USSR. They stole from the Russian people, and laundered their ill begotten
gains with chumps, like trump.
The president base is clarly more narrow then in 2016: he used anti-war repiblicansand
independents aswell as "Anybody but Hillary" voters (large part of Sanders votrs). Part of
military is now Tulsi supported and probalywill not vote at all, at least they will not vote
for Trump.
Fox News 's Tucker Carlson on Monday warned Republicans not to get complacent, and
that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) could wind up taking "many thousands " of votes from President
Trump if he is able to secure the Democratic nomination, according to The Hill 's Joe Concha.
"A year from today, we'll be hosting this show from the National Mall as the next president
of the United States takes the oath of office," said Carlson, adding "Will that president be
Donald Trump? As of tonight, Republicans in Washington feel confident it will be."
"The official economic
numbers are strong. The Democratic primaries are a freak show -- elderly socialists accusing
each other of thoughtcrimes. Republicans are starting to think victory is assured. That's a
mistake ," said Carlson. "America remains as divided as it was three years ago. No matter what
happens, nobody's going to win this election in a national landslide. Those don't happen
anymore. Trump could lose. Will he? That depends on what he runs on. "
Carlson then showed numbers for Trump on the economy that show while the main indicators
are strong, there are some other numbers that should concern the president. He pointed to a
Pew Research study that shows just 31 percent of Americans say the economy is helping them
and their families, and just 32 percent say they believe the current economy helps the middle
class.
Carlson then pivoted to Sanders's potential appeal to certain voter groups and said
Republicans need a plan to battle that appeal.
" Bernie Sanders may get the Democratic nomination ," Carlson said. " If he does, every
Republican in Washington will spend the next 10 months reminding you that socialism doesn't
work , and never has. They'll be right, obviously," Carlson explained. - The Hill
So what's Bernie's appeal?
Recall that a not-insignificant Sanders supporters voted for Trump out of disgust following
revelations that Hillary Clinton and the DNC conspirted to rig the 2016 primary against
him.
According to Carlson, however, "if Sanders pledges to forgive student loans, he'll still win
many thousands of voters who went for Donald Trump last time. Debt is crushing an entire
generation of Americans. Republicans need a plan to make it better, or they'll be left
behind."
"They're conservative in the most basic sense: They love their families above all," the host
concluded. "They distrust radical theories of anything because they know that when the world
turns upside down, ordinary people get hurt. They don't want to burn it down. They just want
things to get better. The candidate who promises to make them better -- incrementally, but
tangibly -- will be inaugurated president a year from today."
According to a RealClearPolitics average of seven (oh so reliable) polls, Sanders would take
Trump if he gets the nomination. Tags Politics
Carlson is right. The overwhelming majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck with
many working two jobs to make ends meet. The economy sucks for the working and middle class.
Facts are stubborn things.
"... "We work with technological companies to help free flow of information and provide circumvention tools that helped in [last week's] protest ," ..."
"... they were actively assisting in organizing recent protests ..."
US Officials Admit Covert Tech Program Is Fueling Iran Protests by Tyler Durden Mon, 01/20/2020 - 21:55 0
SHARES
After major protests hit multiple cities across Iran in November following a drastic
government slash in gasoline subsidies which quickly turned anti-regime, broad internet outages
were reported -- some lasting as long as a week or more nationwide --
following Tehran authorities ordering the blockage of external access.
And during smaller January protests over downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752,
more widespread internet outages were reported recently, likely as Iranian security
services fear protest "crackdown" videos would fuel outrage in western media , and after months
ago Mike Pompeo
expressly urged Iranians in the streets to send the State Department damning videos that
would implicate Tehran's leaders and police.
But now Washington appears to have initiated the
"Syria option" inside Iran: covertly fueling and driving "popular protests " to eventually
create conditions for large-scale confrontation on the ground geared toward regime
change.
Financial Times reports Washington's 'covert' efforts are now increasing, and are
more out in the open :
US government-funded technology companies have recorded an increase in the use of
circumvention software in Iran in recent weeks after boosting efforts to help Iranian
anti-regime protesters thwart internet censorship and use secure mobile messaging .
The outreach is part of a US government program dedicated to internet freedom that
supports dissident pressure inside Iran and complements America's policy of "maximum
pressure" over the regime. A US state department official told the Financial Times that since
protests in Iran in 2018 -- at the time the largest in almost a decade -- Washington had
accelerated efforts to provide Iranians more options on how they communicate with each other
and the outside world .
Similar efforts had long been in place with anti-Assad groups prior to the outbreak of
conflict in Syria in 2011,
WikiLeaks cables previously revealed.
The US State Department is now openly boasting it's enacted this program for Iran , which
includes "providing apps, servers and other technology to help people communicate, visit banned
websites, install anti-tracking software and navigate data shutdowns," according to FT .
Confirmed: Drop in internet connectivity registered at #Sharif University,
Tehran from 11:50 UTC where students are protesting for colleagues and alumni killed on
flight #PS752 ; national
connectivity remains stable despite sporadic disruptions on third day of #Iran
protests📉 pic.twitter.com/LjaNNd4Ut2
And dangerously, many Iranians may not even realize they could be in some instances relying
on such US-funded countermeasures to circumvent domestic internet blockages:
"Many Iranians rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) that receive US funding or are
beamed in with US support , not knowing they are relying on Washington-backed tools."
Iran is on occasion
known to round of citizen-journalists and accuse them of being CIA assets -- thus
the State Department's open boasting about its program, which is further connected to a broader
$65.5 million "Internet Freedom program" in troubled spots throughout the world --
could only serve to increase this trend.
"We work with technological companies to help free flow of information and provide
circumvention tools that helped in [last week's] protest ," one US state department
official told the FT. "We are able to sponsor VPNs -- and that allows Iranians to use the
internet."
So there it is: US officials explicitly admitting they were actively assisting in
organizing recent protests which followed Soleimani's killing and the Ukrainian airliner
shoot down.
I have asked the Iranian protestors to send us their videos, photos, and information
documenting the regime's crackdown on protestors. The U.S. will expose and sanction the
abuses. https://t.co/korr5p0woA
At least one circumvention software is actually identified in the report as being produced
by Canada-based Psiphon, which receives American government funds. Of course the company sees
its role more as facilitating "free flow of information" and less as essentially a willing
asset in pursuing covert regime change in Tehran.
Interestingly, the revelation comes just as other US-funded propaganda campaigns related to
Iran are coming to light:
One of the most viral videos about Iran last week -- and a reason #IraniansDetestSoleimani
was trending -- was made by a lobbyist who had worked for a militia group in Libya https://t.co/fN7v6Vztyo
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public
believes is false" - Wm. Casey, former Director of the CIA under President (and Iranian arms
dealer) Ronald Reagan(R).
So, when does Trump send ISIS to Iran? Oh, MEK is already there.
I remember when Trump supporters pointed out how Hillary supported a coup in Honduras.
Well, Trump has Bolivia.
Then Obama created ISIS. Well, ISIS has been around since about 2000. And Trump signed
NDAA's that sent money to "freedom fighters" in Syria.. .guess who...
Obama is a loser in Afghanistan and so are the Generals. Well, there was Bush. And now?
Trump... going on 4 years of losing in Afghanistan with his own Generals.
Hillary and Libya. Trump and Libya.
Obama and NK? Trump and NK.
Obama and Venezuela? Trump and Venezuela. And what threat does Venezuela pose to The US?
No one can answer that question.
Trump says "no more wars", is engaged in wars and trying to start one with Iran.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME.
"The outreach is part of a US government program dedicated to internet freedom that
supports dissident pressure inside Iran and complements America's policy of "maximum
pressure" over the regime. A US state department official told the Financial Times that since
protests in Iran in 2018 -- at the time the largest in almost a decade -- Washington had
accelerated efforts to provide Iranians more options on how they communicate with each other
and the outside world ."...
VOA LIVE$...
Sure wish somebody in our government could have alerted Bobby McIIlvaine ( https://www.ae911truth.org/get-involved/bobby-mcilvaine-act
) with "emergency" internet services to his phone nearly 18 1/2 years ago to what his own
government was about to do to him before he went into the office that day along with the
other 2,976 victims?!!!
One thing I'll say for the American government since the banker bailouts, they "don't hide
what they are doing" when it comes to subverting governments for looting purposes (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o
)!... At least the Iranian leadership knows what is coming before it happens these
days!...
The Iranian people are not stupid to commit suicide , they have seen the us handy work in
1953 when Iran had the first democracy in the middle east to be bamboozled by the cia who
removed their elected prime minister and installed the shah.
of course some university students want a sexual revolution like in the us are revolting
but they are a handful and they are being subdued .
The Iranian people lived through CIA/MOSSAD style "Democracy" from 1953-1980 and will
fight "Tooth and nail" not to return to those Horrific days of the Shah!
How naive do you have to be to think the US is just giving out free internet for the sake
of the Iranian people? even after they've done the same thing all throughout the middle east
to cause mass riots and civil unrest.
The last thing you will ever get from the US government is the truth.
"The accidental and most regrettable downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight
PS-752, may involve more than human error under incredibly tense conditions. With the plane's
IFF transponder switched off, the Tor missile defense system, which had reverted to manual
operation because of an unknown source jamming communications, would have automatically
identified the plane as "hostile". The Iranian missile operator, unable to contact higher-ups
for verification due to the disrupted communications and given the high level of alert, had
little basis to question the hostile tag applied by Tor to the aircraft.
Given that the US military has known capabilities to alter or mask IFF transponder
signals, as does the Israeli regime, it is entirely possible that this tragedy, which led
some protesters to blame the Iranian government, may have been deliberately caused by the US
in collusion with its Zionist ally in hopes of triggering their goal of regime change.
While no clear evidence of tampering with the transponder has surfaced as yet, it is known
that the 737-800, whose registration or "tail number" was UR-PSR, was photographed at the
Israeli entity's Ben Gurion Airport five times since March of 2017, the last time being on
October 18, 2019 at approximately 2:40 in the afternoon."
Smith@36 - PressTV: "..With the plane's IFF transponder switched off,..."
Civilian aircraft have ATC SSR radar transponders, not military IFF
transponders.
IFF aircraft interrogations are ALWAYS military only and ALWAYS encrypted. Their only job,
if used by the TOR, is to confirm that a radar target was an Iranian military aircraft. PS752
1) couldn't understand encrypted TOR IFF interrogations, 2) wouldn't be able to provide
encrypted replies to any TOR IFF interrogations, and 3) would still be considered "not an
Iranian military aircraft" by the TOR. PS752's transponder would need a military IFF
encoder/decoder which it does not have.
Likewise, TORs and their acquisition radars DO NOT have civilian ATC SSR radar
capabilities to identify civilian aircraft. They do NOT interrogate civilian aircraft for ID,
altitude, GPS or any other information, nor do they listen for civilian aircraft ADS-B
broadcasts which also provide that information.
Surveillance radars higher up in the air defense network may have civilian aircraft ID
capability and can assign appropriate IDs to radar targets BEFORE they appear on the TORs
radar screen, but that requires a good data link to the network. That encrypted data link
(also used for voice communications) was down at the time, and any ID information that may
have been assigned by higher layers of the Iranian AD network wouldn't have appeared on the
TOR or been considered by its classification and targeting software.
Sorry - I don't know how else to explain this. PressTV doesn't understand the distinction,
nor does it understand the TORs capabilities.
She made a blunder. That's for sure. but still Warren is a better candidate then Trump.
The shell game between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders has transmogrified. The brutal,
post-debate exchange between the duo has the progressive left fearing repeat business from '04:
it happened at just the wrong time, only weeks ahead of the first primaries.
sounds very much like it, in a kind of
ham-fisted, virtue-signaling way -- "Sometimes I fear the American people are still too bigoted
to vote for a woman," or something like that. Yet every Clinton staffer was muttering the same
thing under her breath at 3 a.m. on November 9, 2016.
What's more, Mrs. Warren never denied that Mr. Sanders only ran in the last election cycle
because she declined to do so. Nor can anyone forget how vigorously he campaigned for Mrs.
Clinton, even after she and the DNC rigged the primary against him. If Mrs. Warren and her
surrogates at CNN are claiming that Bernie meant that a person with two X chromosomes is
biologically incapable of serving as president, they're lying through their teeth.
This is how Liz treats her "friend" Bernie -- and when he denies that absurd smear, she
refuses to shake his hand and accuses him of calling her a liar on national television. Then,
of course, the #MeToo brigades line up to castigate him for having the temerity to defend
himself -- further evidence, of course, of his sexism. I mean, like, Bernie is, like,
literally Weinstein.
Then there's the "Latinx" thing, which is the absolute summit of progressive elites'
disconnect with ordinary Americans. In case you didn't know, Mrs. Warren has been roundly
panned for referring to Hispanics by this weird neologism, which was invented by her comrades
in the ivory tower as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina . The
thing is, Spanish is a gendered language. What's more, a poll by the left-wing market research
group Think Now found that just 2 percent of Hispanics call themselves "Latinx." (In fact, most
prefer the conventional "Hispanic," which is now verboten on the Left because it hearkens back
to Christopher Columbus's discovery of La Española .)
So here comes Professor Warren -- white as Wonder Bread, the mattress in her Cambridge
townhouse stuffed with 12 million big ones -- trying to rewrite the Spanish language because
she thinks it's sexist. How she's made it this far in the primary is absolutely mind-boggling.
She doesn't care about Hispanics, much less their culture. Like every employee of the modern
education system, she's only interested in processing American citizens into gluten-free offal
tubes of political correctness.
Of course, if one of her primary opponents or a cable news "Democratic strategist" (whatever
that is) dared to say as much, they'd be hung, drawn, and quartered. Partisan Democrats have
trained themselves not to think in such terms. That might not matter much if Mrs. Warren was
facing Mitt Romney or John McCain in the general. But she's not. If she wins the primary,
she'll be up against Donald Trump. And if you don't think he'll say all of this -- and a
whole lot more -- you should apply for a job at CNN.
... running against Mrs. Warren would be a walk in the park
Your imaginary Trump anti-Warren schtick might have worked in 2016, but boy does it come
off as unfunny and stale in 2020. He's done too much damage. Not funny anymore. I voted for
Trump. After all his betrayals, Warren could rip him to pieces just by standing next to him
without saying a word. Her WASP reserve and Okie roots might even seem refreshing after our
four-year long cesspool shower with this New York City creep.
Didn't vote for Trump, or Clinton for that matter, cast a protest Libertarian vote. In my
red state it hardly matters, but the electoral college is another story. But observed long
ago that indeed Warren is just what the author says, a too politically correct north east
liberal who would be demolished in the presidential election against Trump. Only Biden or
Klobuchar has a chance to unseat the orange man, or maybe better yet a Biden - Klobuchar
ticket.
I've sometimes voted red and sometimes blue, but a Trump Vs Biden contest might well make
me bored and disappointed enough to join you going libertarian.
If the Dems want to lose, Biden and Klobuchar would be a quick ticket to doing so. Warren
would get the job done not much slower, unless she pivoted away from social issues.
To quote Phyllis Schlafly's advice to conservatives and the GOP, what the Dems need is
"A choice, not an echo." Sanders is the closest the Dems have of offering the voters a real
choice, and is the best option to defeat Trump. The D establishment will still pull out all
the stops to try to block him, of course, because even they and their big donors would
prefer a second Trump term over a New Deal liberal with a socialist gloss, but they may not
succeed this time.
Bernie and Tulsi are the most honest and interesting of the Democratic field, even though
their politics generally aren't mine. Nonetheless, I wish them well, because they appear to
say what they actually think, as opposed to whatever their operatives have focus-group
tested.
Biden's corruption will come out in the general. We could write up articles of impeachment
now. After all, Biden, did actually bribe the Ukraine. He said so himself. On video.
I think Trump's unfortunately stronger now than he was in 2016. Clinton's attacks on him
were painting him as an apocalyptic candidate who would bring America crashing down. By
serving as president for 4 years with a mostly booming economy, Trump's proven them wrong.
The corporate media will continue their hysterical attacks on him though, and that will
boost his support. I think Hillary Clinton was more dislikeable back then than Warren is
now, but Warren is probably even more out of touch. The others might also lose, but she
really as a terrible candidate.
What damage has Trump done, as opposed to the damage the media/Dems/deepstate's RESPONSE to
Trump has done?
Trump has reduced illegal immigration with the expected subsequent increases in employment
and wages, saved taxpayer 1 TRILLION dollars by withdrawing from the Paris accord, killed 2
leading terrorists (finally showing Iran that we aren't their bakshi boys), cut taxes,
stood up for gun rights, reduced harmful governmental regulation, and appointed judges that
will follow the law instead of feelings and popular culture.
He is also exposing the deep underbelly of the corrupt government in Washington, especially
the coup organized between Obama, Hillary, the DNC, Brennan, Comey, Clapper and the
hyperpartisan acts of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, IRS and now the GAO (unless you believe that the
"non-partisan" GAO released their report which claimed Trump violated the law by holding up
Ukranian funds for a few months within the same fiscal year on the same day Nancy
forwarded the articles of impeachment by some amazing coincidence).
The problem isn't Trump. The problem is the liars opposing the existential threat Trump
poses to the elitists who despise America.
"For all my reservations about Mr. Trump -- his lagging commitment to
protectionism, his shafting of Amy Coney Barrett, his deportation of
Iraqi Christians, his burgeoning hawkishness, his total lack of
decorum -- he's infinitely preferable to anyone the Democrats could
nominate."
You gloss over a few dozen other failures, most of them bigger than anything you mention
here (immigration, infrastructure, more mass surveillance and privacy violations by govt
and corporations than even Obama).
You realize that the progress Trump has made on immigration is why unemployment is down and
wages are up, right?
Most Americans think that's a good thing.
Democrats, not so much.
I think I disliked the last thing I saw by Davis. Whatever. This one is better. Not perfect
-- some of it is out of touch -- but he makes a case. And, sad to say,
I concur with his prediction for the election, with or without Warren.
I'm starting to like her. I thought she handled herself well at the last debate.
"Presidential". It's been quite a while since we had a real president. Too long.
Forgive me, but Democratic voters put way too much store in presidents being Presidential.
And they spent way too much time talking about Bush's verbal gaffes and Trump's disgusting
personality to get Gore, Kerry or H. Clinton elected.
As the author wrote, it was invented by academics. One problem with the Democrat Party is
that it is teeming with Professor Kingsfield types who are as much connected with the rest
of the population as I am with aborigines.
Finally someone said what most people think. Love the imagined Trump comments to
Warren..."Relax. Put on a nice sweater, have a cup of tea, grade some papers." As i read
those I heard Trump's unique way of speech and was laughing out loud. BTW...Tulsi Gabbard
is such an attractive candidate...heard her interviewed on Tucker Carlson and I think could
present a real challenge to Trump if she ever rose up to face him in a debate. It's curious
someone like Warren shoots to the top, while she remains in the back of the line.
The media deliberately shut her down, just like they are shutting down Bernie. The DNC also
doesn't like her (possibly because she resigned as cochair and is critical of Hillary) and
seems to have chosen their debate criteria -which surveys they accept-in order to shut her
out. I liked her up until she objected to taking out Soleimani-a known terrorist in the
middle of a war zone planning attacks on US assets.
Sorry, Trump was spot on in this attack. Tulsi was completely wrong. However, she is
honest, experienced, knowledgeable and not psychotic, a refreshing change from the other
Dem Presidential candidates. If you haven't figured out yet that CNN is basically the media
arm of Warren's campaign, you haven't been paying attention. That is how Warren continues
to poll reasonably well.
These arguments amaze me. "Since your candidate is too school marmy, or elitist, or (insert
usual democrat insult here), you're giving the electorate no choice but to vote for the
most corrupt, openly racist, sexist, psychologically lying, dangerously mentally deranged
imbecile in the country".
Because rather than an educated person who maybe comes off as an elitist, we'd rather
have a disgusting deplorable who no sane parent would allow in the same room with their
daughter.
Lol, and yet writers like this don't even realize the insanity of what they're saying,
which is basically "that bagel is 2 days old, so I have choice but to eat this steaming
pile of dog crap instead".
"Because rather than an educated person who maybe comes off as an elitist, we'd rather have
a disgusting deplorable who no sane parent would allow in the same room with their
daughter."
No need for the ad hominem, you are overstating your case. Remember, Trump is "educated"
too. And a card-carrying member of the elite. Leave us not kid ourselves, they're all
"elites" of one stripe or another. It only matters which stripe we prefer, meaning of
course whether they are saying what we want to hear. Of all of the candidates, the only one
who does not come off as an "elite" is Tulsi Gabbard, an intelligent woman who is arguably
the most interesting of all the candidates--in part because of her active military service.
I'd even throw in Andrew Yang, a friendly, engaging person who didn't seem to have an ax to
grind. It matters not. Yang is out of the picture and Gabbard has as much of a crack at the
Democratic nomination in 2020 as Rand Paul had at the Republican nomination in
2016--essentially zero.
Lol trump is educated too? You've lose all credibility with such comical false
equivalencies.
Trump is an absolute imbecile who has failed up his entire life thanks to daddy's
endless fortune. If he we born Donald Smith he'd be pumping gas in Jersey, or in jail as a
low life con man.
While I find myself shocked to be found defending anything Trumpean, in all fairness, he is
a college grad-u-ate (shades of Lily Tomlin). The value, depth, or scope of his degree may
be in question, but he does possess a sheep-skin, and hence must be considered "educated".
If one wants to demean his "education" because of his personality, one must also demean a
rather broad segment of college grad-u-ates as well.
He graduated from Penn's Wharton School of Business, ergo he is educated. Because a person
doesn't hold the same political beliefs as another doesn't mean they can't be "educated."
Liz Warren may not hold the same political beliefs as I, but I cannot argue that she isn't
educated.
Lol wow, well I'd say it's hilarious that anyone can be so naive to actually think a
compete imbecile like trump, who so clearly has never read a book in his life, actually
earned his way into college; let alone actually studied and earned a degree.....but then I
remember this country is obviously filled with people this remarkable gullible and stupid,
as this walking SNL sketch is actually President.
I actually think you are spot on in your assessment of what Trump would have become if he
wasn't born to money, but you really are behaving like exactly that kind of Democratic
voter who gets more exorcised by Trump's personal faults than by his policy ones, the kind
of Democrats who couldn't get Al Gore, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton elected.
Really. You think someone that managed to become President of the United States with no
political or military experience would have failed at life if he hadn't had a wealthy
father. You really believe that. You don't think any of Trump's success and accomplishments
are due to his ambition, drive, energy, determination, executive skills, ruthlessness or
media savvy. It was all due to his having a rich father.
Fascinating.
Trump has had no success. He's failed at everything he's ever done. You obviously just know
nothing about his actual life, and believe the made up reality TV bullshit.
The only thing he's good at is playing a rich successful man on TV to really, really,
stupid, unread, unworldly, naive people....well that and giving racists white nationalists,
the billionaire owner class, sexists, bigots, and deplorables, a political home.
I think Trump is and would have been, sans his father's wealth, one hell of a con man. And
I hope to God that he would have ended up in jail for it rather than running a private
equity fund, but the latter would have been just as likely.
However, I should have made that distinction in my original comment. No, I do not think
that Trump would have ended up a gas station attendant.
It's very hard for me to understand how anyone could be so, shall we say sheltered, that
they couldn't see him coming a mile away and laugh their ass off.
He's so bad, so transparent with his obvious lies and self aggrandizing, so clearly
ignorant and unread and trying to fake it, he's literally like a cartoon's funny over the
top version of an idiot con man. I'll never understand how anyone could ever be fooled by
it.
In fact sometimes I think 90% of his base isn't fooled, they know he's a joke, but they
just don't care. He gives them the white nationalist hate and rhetoric they want, makes
"liberals cry", and that all they care about.
It's a lot easier for me to believe THAT then so many people can actually be so stupid
and gullible.
Say what? What policies? The trillion dollar hand out to the richest corporations in the
world, double the deficit? His mind blowing disastrous foreign policy decisions that have
done nothing but empowered Russia, Iran and North Korea while destabilizing western
alliances? The trade wars that have cost fairness and others billions (forcing taxpayers to
bail them out with tens of millions of dollars)? The xenophobia, separating and caging
children? Stoking violence and hate and anger among his white nationalist base? His attacks
on women reproductive rights? His attacks on all of our democratic institutions, from our
free press to our intelligence agencies and congressional oversights?
A pathologically lying racist sexist self serving criminal is enough to disqualify this
miscreant from being dog catcher, let alone president. But his policies are even worse.
You don't seem to know that the University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, or what
the Wharton School of Business actually is. Imbeciles do not graduate from the Wharton
School.
Lol, trump is an imbecile, that's not even debatable. What amazes the rest of the entire
civilized world outside of the batshit fringe 20% of Americans who make up the Republican
voting base is how anyone could possible be conned by such a cartoonish idiot wanna be con
man.
It's truly something sane people can't even begin to wrap their heads around.
The Dowager Countess (Downton Abbey, for the un-initiated) nailed her type. In referring to
her do-gooder cousin Mrs. Isobel Crawley, she said: "Some people run on greed, lust, even
love. She runs on indignation." That sums up Warren perfectly.
I'll take it one step further. I bought one of her books, on the 'two-income trap' and how
middle-class families go to the wall to get into good school districts for their children.
She and her co-author make some valid points, but the book is replete with cliches about
men abandoning their families and similar leftist tropes. If that's the best Harvard Law
Warren has to offer, she's not as sharp as she thinks she is, and a bully like Trump will
school her fast.
Evidently Mr Davis dislikes Warren because of her personal style - but all of Trump's
substantive (or even, substance...) issues are acceptable. How shallow of him.
I can't say the two of us exactly line up on everything. But, like Wow: "gluten-free offal
tubes of political correctness." Now that's funny! Wish I'd thought of it.
I liked Warren until this attempt to stab Bernie in the back plus that childish refusal to
shake his hand on national TV. I still don't dislike her, but that was embarrassing. She
definitely has character flaws.
But this piece goes over the top. It's Trumpian. Warren certainly has flaws but if you
are going to judge a politician by their character, in what universe would Trump come out
on top?
Better than Warren.
The problem with affirmative action is when you abuse it, as Warren did, you actually rob a
genuine minority from a genuine disadvantaged background of their chance.
Warren deliberately misrepresented herself as a Native American, solely for career
advancement, and then abandoned her fake identity once she got tenure at Harvard. There was
another woman who was an actual minority that had a teaching appointment at Harvard, but
Warren beat her out, using her false claims of minority heritage to overcome her
competition's actual minority status.
Trump competes on his own.
There what's funny about these arguments. They're basically saying, "your candidate has
some flaws, she's very school marmy, and thinks she knows everything."
"Therefore, OBVIOUSLY people have no choice but to instead vote for the raging imbecile,
the pathologically lying, corrupt to his core, racist, morally bankrupt, sexist imbecile
with the literal temperament of of an emotionally troubled 10 year old."
What unpleasant memories Mister Davis has elicited - - - i once had a schoolmarm like that.
(Shudder)
It is, however, disturbing that Davis has almost captured the style of Trumptweets. The
give-away is a shade more literacy and better grammar in Davis' offerings.
But what of the possibility, as suggested above, that Trump loses to Biden or (Generic
Democratic candidate)?
As I tell my liberal friends, the country survived eight years of Priapic Bill, eight
years of Dubya and Dubyaer, eight years of BHO, and after four years of Trump is yet
standing, however drunkenly.
I think, contra many alarmists, the Republic is much stronger than the average pundit or
combox warrior gives it credit.
And, who knows? Maybe the outrage pornography we get from Tweeting birdies will grow
stale and passe, and people will yearn for more civil discourse? (Not likely, but one never
knows.)
I refuse to use "Bay Stater" for the same reason I dislike being called "Mike": nicknames
are irritating, unless they're outlandish, like "Beanie" or "Boko" or "Buttigieg."
Massachusetts is a beautiful name -- slow and smooth, like the Merrimack.
"Massachusettsian" adds a little skip at the end, as the river crashes into the Atlantic at
Newburyport. It's the perfect demonym.
Speaking of, I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life in Massachusetts --
about 10 minutes outside Newburyport, where my great-great-something grandparents lived
when the Revolution broke out. I don't know how much further back the family tree goes in
Mass., but probably further than yours.
Good luck with that utter nonsense word, then. Bay Stater is not a nickname - it's the
longstanding term (and, for some reason, the Massachusetts General Court also blessed it
legislatively), from long before my folk lived in New England since the mid-19th century
(Connecticut and Massachusetts - hence my reference to Nutmeggers, as my parents made quite
clear to us that there were no such things as Connecticutters or Massachusetters or the
like and not to go around sounding like fools using the like.)
Of course, I'd like to recover the old usage of the Eastern States to refer to New
England. Right now, its sole prominent residue is the Big E in Springfield....
"... In the larger global picture, if the U.S. is to find its own balance in the contemporary world, Friedman argues that the seemingly-endless instability in the Middle East is the first and foremost problem that must be solved. Iran is a major problem here, but so is Israel, and Friedman argues that the US must find the path toward "quietly distanc[ing] itself from Israel" (p.6). ..."
"... This course of action regarding Iran and Israel (and other actors in the Muslim world, including Pakistan and Turkey) is, in Friedman's geopolitical perspective, not so much a matter of supporting U.S. global hegemony as it is recognizing the larger course that the U.S. will be compelled to take. ..."
"... So, it's back to Plan A for the Democrats and the "Left" that would be laughably absurd if it wasn't so reactionary, to get the neoliberal/ neoconservative endless-war agenda back on track, so that the march toward Iran can continue sooner rather than later. For now, the more spectacular the failure of this impeachment nonsense, the better! ..."
Let's be clear, there is a difference between substituting geopolitical power calculations
for a universal perspective on the good of humanity, and, on the other hand, recognizing that
the existing layout of the world has to be taken into account in attempts to open up a true
politics. (My larger perspective on the problem of "opening" is presented in the long essay,
"The Fourth Hypothesis," at counterpunch.org.)
Personally, I find the geopolitical analyses of George Friedman very much worthwhile to
consider, especially when he is looking at things long-range, as in his books The Next 100
Years and The Next Decade. The latter was published at the beginning of 2012, and so we are
coming to the close of the ten-year period that Friedman discusses.
One of the major arguments that Friedman makes in The Next Decade is that the
United States will have to reach some sort of accommodation with Iran and its regional
ambitions. The key to this, Friedman argues, is to bring about some kind of balance of power
again, such as existed before Iraq was torn apart.
This is the key in general to continued U.S. hegemony in the world, in Friedman's view --
regional balances that keep regional powers tied up and unable to rise on the world stage. (An
especially interesting example here is that Friedman says that Poland will be built up as a
bulwark between Russia and Germany.)
In the larger global picture, if the U.S. is to find its own balance in the contemporary
world, Friedman argues that the seemingly-endless instability in the Middle East is the first
and foremost problem that must be solved. Iran is a major problem here, but so is Israel, and
Friedman argues that the US must find the path toward "quietly distanc[ing] itself from
Israel" (p.6).
This course of action regarding Iran and Israel (and other actors in the Muslim world,
including Pakistan and Turkey) is, in Friedman's geopolitical perspective, not so much a matter
of supporting U.S. global hegemony as it is recognizing the larger course that the U.S. will be
compelled to take.
(As the founder, CEO, and "Chief Intelligence Officer" of Stratfor, Friedman aimed to
provide "non-ideological" strategic intelligence. My understanding of "non-ideological" is that
the analysis was not formulated to suit the agendas of the two mainstream political parties in
the U.S. However, my sense is that Friedman does believe that U.S. global hegemony is on the
whole good for the world.)
In his book that came out before The Next Decade (2011), The Next 100
Years (2009), Friedman makes the case that the U.S. will not be seriously challenged
globally for decades to come -- in fact, all the way until about 2080!
Just to give a different spin to something I said earlier, and that I've tried to emphasize
in my articles since March 2016: questions of mere power are not questions of politics.
Geopolitics is not politics, either -- in my terminology, it is "anti-politics."
For my part, I am not interested in supporting U.S. hegemony, not in the present and not in
the future, and for the most part not in the past, either.
For the moment, let us simply say that the historical periods of the U.S. that are more
supportable -- because they make some contribution, however flawed, to the greater, universal,
human project -- are either from before the U.S. entered the road of seeking to compete with
other "great powers" on the world stage, or quite apart from this road.
In my view, the end of U.S. global hegemony and, for that matter, the end of any "great
nation-state" global hegemony, is a condition sine qua non of a human future that is just and
sustainable. So, again, the brilliance that George Friedman often brings to geopolitical
analysis is to be understood in terms of a coldly-realistic perspective, not a warmly-normative
one.)
Of course, this continued U.S. hegemony depends on certain "wise" courses of action being
taken by U.S. leaders (Friedman doesn't really get into the question of what might be behind
these leaders), including a "subtle" approach to the aforementioned questions of Israel and
Iran.
Obviously, anything associated with Donald Trump is not going to be overly subtle! On the
other hand, here we are almost at the end of Friedman's decade, so perhaps the time for
subtlety has passed, and the U.S. is compelled to be a bit heavy-handed if there is to be any
chance of extricating itself from the endless quagmire.
However, there's a certain fly, a rather large one, in the ointment that seems to have
eluded Friedman's calculations: "the rise of China."
It isn't that Friedman avoids the China question, not at all; Friedman argues, however, that
by 2020 China will not only not be contending with the United States to have the largest
economy in the world, but instead that China will fragment, perhaps even devolve into civil
war, because of deep inequalities between the relatively prosperous coastal urban areas, and
the rural interior.
Certainly I know from study, and many conversations with people in China, this was a real
concern going into the 2010s and in the first half of the decade.
The chapter dealing with all this in The Next 100 Years (Ch. 5) is titled, "China
2020: Paper Tiger," the latter term being one that Chairman Mao used regarding U.S.
imperialism. Friedman writes of another "figure like Mao emerg[ing] to close the country
off from the outside, [to] equalize the wealth -- or poverty " (p.7).
Being an anti-necessitarian in philosophy, I certainly believe anything can happen in social
matters, but it seems as though President Xi Jinping and the current leadership of the
Communist Party of China have, at least for the time being, managed to head off fragmentation
at the pass, so to speak.
Friedman argued that the "pass" that China especially had to deal with is unsustainable
growth rates; but it appears that China has accomplished this, by purposely slowing its economy
down.
One of the things that Friedman is especially helpful with, in his larger geopolitical
analysis, is understanding the role that naval power plays in sustaining U.S. hegemony. (In
global terms, such power is what keeps the neoliberal "free market" running, and this power is
far from free.)
*
... ... ...
Two of the best supporters of Trump's stated agenda are Tucker Carlson and Steve Hilton.
Neither of them pull any punches on this issue when it comes to Republicans, and both of them
go some distance beyond Trump in stating an explicitly anti-war agenda.
They perhaps do not entirely fit the mold of leftist anti-imperialism as it existed from the
1890s through the Sixties (as in the political decade, perhaps 1964-1974 or so) and 1970s, but
they do in fact fit this mold vastly better than almost any major figure of the Democratic
Party, with the possible exceptions of Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Andrew Yang. (But
none of them has gone as far as Trump on this question!)
Certainly Elizabeth Warren is no exception, and at the moment of this writing she has made
the crucial turn toward sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. That is her job, in my
view, and part of it is to seem close to Bernie's positions (whatever their defects, which I'll
discuss elsewhere), at least the ones that are more directly "economic," while winking at the
ruling class.
There are a few things Carlson and Hilton say on the Iran situation and the Middle East in
general that I don't agree with. But in the main I think both are right on where these issues
are concerned.
As I've quoted Carlson a number of times previously, and as I also want to put forward
Hilton as an important voice for a politics subservient to neither the liberal nor the
conservative establishments, here let me quote what Hilton said in the midst of the Iran
crisis, on January 5, 2020:
The best thing America can do to put the Middle East on a path
that leads to more democracy, less terrorism, human rights and economic growth is to get the
hell out of there while showing an absolute crystal clear determination to defend American
interests with force whenever they are threatened.
That doesn't mean not doing anything, it means intervening only in ways that help
America.
It means responding only to attacks on Americans disproportionately as a deterrent, just as
we saw this week and it means finally accepting that it's not our job to fix the Middle East
from afar.
The only part of this I take exception to is the "intervening only in ways that help
America"-bit -- that opens the door to exactly the kinds of problems that Hilton wants the U.S.
to avoid, besides the (to me, more important) fact that it is just morally wrong to think it is
acceptable to intervene if it is in one's "interests."
My guess is that Hilton thinks that there is some built-in utilitarian or pragmatic calculus
that means the morally-problematic interventions will not occur. I do not see where this has
ever worked, but more importantly, this is where philosophy is important, theoretical work and
abstract thinking are important.
It used to be that the Left was pretty good at this sort of thing, and there were some
thoughtful conservatives who weren't bad, either. (A decent number of the latter,
significantly, come from the Catholic intellectual tradition.) Now there are still a few of the
latter, and there are ordinary people who are "thoughtful conservatives" in their "unschooled
way" -- which is often better! -- but the Left has sold its intellectual soul along with its
political soul.
That's a story for elsewhere (I have told parts of it in previous articles in this series);
the point here is that the utilitarianism and "pragmatism" of merely calculating interests is
not nearly going to cut it. (I have partly gone into this here because Hilton also advocates
"pragmatism" in his very worthwhile book, Positive Populism -- it is the "affirmative" other
side to Tucker Carlson's critical, "negative" expose, Ship of Fools.)
The wonderful philosophical pragmatism of William James is another matter; this is important
because James, along with his friend Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), were leading figures of the
Anti-Imperialist League back in the 1890s, when the U.S. establishment was beating the drums
loudly to get into the race with Europeans for colonies.
They were for never getting "in" -- and of course they were not successful, which is why
"get the hell out" is as important as anything people can say today.
What an insane world when the U.S. president says this and the political establishment
opposes him, and "progressives" and "the Left" join in with the denunciations!
It has often been argued that the major utilitarian philosophers, from Bentham and Mill to
Peter Singer, have implicit principles that go beyond the utilitarian calculus; I agree with
this, and I think this is true of Steve Hilton as well.
In this light, allow me to quote a little more from the important statement he made on his
Fox News Channel program, "The Next Revolution," on January 5; all of this is stuff I entirely
agree with, and that expresses some very good principles:
The West's involvement in the
Middle East has been a disaster from the start and finally, with President Trump, America is in
a position to bring it to an end. We don't need their oil and we don't need their problems.
Finally, we have a U.S. president who gets that and wants to get out. There are no prospects
for Middle East peace as long as we are there.
We're never going to defeat the ideology of Islamist terror as long as these countries are
basket cases and one of the reasons they are basket cases is that our preposterous foreign
policy establishment with monumental arrogance have treated the middle east like some chess
game played out in the board rooms in Washington and London.
– [foxnews.com, transcribed by Yael Halon]
So then there is the usual tittering about this and that regarding Carlson and Hilton from
liberal and progressive Democrats and leftists who support the Democrats, and it seems to me
that there is one major reason why there is this foolish tittering: It is because these
liberals and leftists really don't care about, for example, the destruction of Libya, or the
murder of Berta Caceres.
Or, maybe they do care, but they have convinced themselves that these things have to swept
under the rug in the name of defeating the pure evil of Trump. What this amounts to, in the
"nationalist" discourse, is that Trump is some kind of nationalist (as he has said numerous
times), perhaps of an "isolationist" sort, while the Democrats are in fact what can be called
"nationalists of the neoliberal/neoconservative compact."
My liberal and leftist friends (some of them Maoists and post-Maoists and Trotskyists or
some other kinds of Marxists or purported radicals -- feminists or antifa or whatever) just
cannot see, it simply appears to be completely beyond the realm of their imaginations, that the
latter kind of nationalism is much worse and qualitatively worse than what Trump represents,
and it completely lacks the substantial good elements of Trump's agenda.
But hey, don't worry my liberal and leftist friends, it is hard to imagine that Joe Biden's
"return to normalcy" won't happen at some point -- it will take not only an immense movement to
even have a chance of things working out otherwise, but a movement that likes of which is
beyond everyone's imagination at this point -- a movement of a revolutionary politics that
remains to be invented, as all real politics are, by the masses.
Liberals and leftists have little to worry about here, they're okay with a Deep State
society with a bullshit-democratic veneer and a neoliberal world order; this set-up doesn't
really affect them all that much, not negatively at any rate, and the deplorables can just go
to hell.
*
The Left I grew up with was the Sixties Left, and they used to be a great source of
historical memory, and of anti-imperialism, civil rights, and ordinary working-people
empowerment.
The current Left, and whatever array of Democratic-Party supporters, have received their
marching orders, finally, from commander Pelosi (in reality, something more like a lieutenant),
so the two weeks or so of "immense concern" about Iran has given way again to the
extraordinarily-important and solemn work of impeachment.
But then, impeachment is about derailing the three main aspects of Trump's agenda, so you
see how that works. Indeed, perhaps the way this is working is that Trump did in fact head off,
whatever one thinks of the methods, a war with Iran (at this time! – and I do think this
is but a temporary respite), or more accurately, a war between Iran and Israel that the U.S.
would almost certainly be sucked into immediately.
So, it's back to Plan A for the Democrats and the "Left" that would be laughably absurd if
it wasn't so reactionary, to get the neoliberal/ neoconservative endless-war agenda back on
track, so that the march toward Iran can continue sooner rather than later. For now, the more
spectacular the failure of this impeachment nonsense, the better!
Bill Martin is a
philosopher and musician, retired from DePaul University. He is completing a book with the
title, "The Trump Clarification: Disruption at the Edge of the System (toward a theory)." His
most recent albums are "Raga Chaturanga" (Bill Martin + Zugzwang; Avant-Bass 3) and "Emptiness,
Garden: String Quartets nos. 1 and 2 (Ryokucha Bass Guitar Quartet; Avant-Bass 4). He lives in
Salina, Kansas, and plays bass guitar with The Radicles.
Dungroanin ,
I have read through finally. And comments too.
My opinion is Bill Martin is on the ball except for one personage- Hilton. If he is
Camerons Hilton and architect of the Brexit referendum – for which he is rewarded with
a 'seat at the table' of the crumbling Empire. The Strafor man too is just as complicit in
the Empires wickedness.
But I'll let Bill off with that because he mentioned the Anti-Imperialist Mark Twain
– always a joy to be reminded of Americas Dickens.
On Trump – he didn't use the Nuclear codes 10 minutes after getting them as warned
by EVERYONE. Nor start a war with RocketMan, or Russia in Syria, or in Ukraine or with the
Chinese using the proxy Uighars, or push through with attempted Bay of Pigs in Venezuela or
just now Hong Kong. The Wall is not built and the ineffectual ripoff Obamacare version of a
NHS is still there.
Judge by deeds not words.
Soleimani aside – He may have stopped the drive for war. Trumps direct contact with
fellow world leaders HAS largely bypassed the war mongering State Department and also the
Trillion dollar tax free Foundations set up last century to deliver the world Empire, that
has so abused the American peoples and environment. He probably wasn't able to stop
Bolivia.
The appointments of various players were not necessarily in his hands as Assad identified-
the modern potus is merely a CEO/Chair of a board of directors who are put into place by the
special interests who pour billions, 10's of billions into getting their politicians elected.
They determine 'National Interests'. All he can do is accept their appointment and give them
enough rope to hang themselves – which most have done!
These are that fight clubs rules.
On the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – after 20 full years of working towards
cohesion- they have succeeded. Iran is due to become a full member – once it is free of
UN sanctions, which is why Trump was forced into pulling the treaty with them, so that
technicality could stop that membership. China is not having it nor is Russia – Putins
clear statement re the 'international rules' not being mandatory for them dovetails with the
US position of Exceptionality. Checkmate.
As for the Old Robber Baron Banker Pirates idea that they should be allowed a Maritime
Empire as consolation- ha ha ha, pull the other one.
The ancient sea trading routes from Africa to China were active for thousands of years
before the Europeans turned up and used unequal power to disrupt and pillage at their hearts
content.
What made that possible was of course explained in the brilliant Guns, Germs and
Steel.
These ancients have ALL these and are equal or advanced in all else including Space, Comms
and AI. A navy is not so vital when even nuclear subs are visible from low orbit satellites
except in the deepest trenches – not a safe place to hide for months and also pretty
crowded with all the other subs trying to hide there. As for Aircraft carrier groups –
just build an island! Diego Garcia has a rival.
Double Checkmate.
The Empire is Dead. Long live the Empire.
Dungroanin ,
And this is hilarious about potus turning the tables on the brass who tried to drag him into
the 'tank'.
'Grab the damn fainting couch. Trump told the assembled military leaders who had presided
over a military stalemate in Afghanistan and the rise of ISIS as "losers." Not a one of them
had the balls to stand up, tell him to his face he was wrong and offer their resignation.
Nope. They preferred to endure such abuse in order to keep their jobs. Pathetic.
This excerpt in the Washington Post tells the reader more about the corruption of the Deep
State and their mindset than it does about Trump's so-called mental state. Trump acted no
differently in front of these senior officers and diplomats than he did on the campaign
trail. He was honest. That is something the liars in Washington cannot stomach. '
Rhys Jaggar ,
I am not an expert on US Constitutional Law, but is there any legal mechanism for a US
President to hold a Referendum in the way that the UK held a 'Brexit Referendum' and Scotland
held an 'Independence Referendum'?
How would a US Referendum in 'Getting the hell out of the Middle East, bringing our boys
and girls home before the year is out' play out, I wonder?
That takes the argument away from arch hawks like Bolton et al and puts it firmly in the
ambit of Joe Schmo of Main Street, Oshkosh
wardropper ,
Great idea.
Main problem is that most Americans are brought up to think their government is separate from
themselves, and should not be seriously criticized.
By "criticized", I mean, taken to task in a way which actually puts them on a playing field
where they are confronted by real people.
Shouting insults at the government from the rooftops is simply greeted with indulgent smiles
from the guilty elite.
Richard Le Sarc ,
George Friedman is a bog standard Zionist, therefore, out of fear, a virulent Sinophobe,
because the Zionists will never control China as they do the Western slave regimes. China
surpassed the USA as the world' s largest economy in 2014, on the PPP calculus that the
CIA,IMF and just about everyone uses. It' s growing three times as fast as the USA, too. The
chance of China fragmenting by 2020 is minuscule, certainly far less than that of the USA.
The Chinese have almost totally eliminated poverty, and will raise the living standard of all
to a ' middle income' by 2049. It is, however, the genocidal policy of the USA, on which it
expend billions EVERY year, to do its diabolical worst to attempt to foment and foster such a
hideous fate inside China, by supporting vermin like the Hong Kong fascist thugs, the Uighur
salafist terrorist butchers, the medieval theocrats of the Dalai clique and separatist
movements in Inner Mongolia, ' Manchuria', Taiwan, even Guandong and Guangxi. It takes a real
Western thug to look forward to the ghastly suffering that these villainous ambitions would
unleash.
Antonym ,
In RlS's nut shell: China can annex area but Israel: no way!
Dungroanin ,
Which area is China looking to annex?
Richard Le Sarc ,
Ant is a pathological Zionist liar, but you can see his loyalty to ' Eretz Yisrael' , '
..from the Nile to the Euphrates', and ' cleansed' of non-Jews, can' t you.
alsdkjf ,
I'm surprised that this author can even remember the counter culture of the 60s given his
Trump love.
Yet more Trumpism from Off Guardian. One doesn't have to buy into the politics of post DLC
corporate owned DNC to know Trump for what he is. A fascist.
It's just amazing this Trump "left". Pathetic.
Antonym ,
Trump .. better than HRC but the guy is totally hypnotized by the level of the New York stock
exchanges: even his foreign policy is improvised around that. He simply thinks higher is
a proof of better forgetting that 90% of Americans don't own serious quantity of stock
and that levels are manipulated by big players and the FED. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.html
Look at his dealing with China: tough as much as the US stock market stays benign in the
short term. Same for Iran etc.
Sure, he is crippled by Pelosi & the FBI / CIA, but he is also by his own stock
dependent mind. Might be the reason he is still alive ???
alsdkjf ,
Trump crippled by the CIA? Trump?
I mean the fascist jerk appointed ex CIA torture loving Pompeo to replace swamp creature
oil tycoon as Secretary of State, no?
He appointed torture queen within the CIA to become CIA Director, no?
He went to the CIA headquarters on day one of his Administration to lavish praise, no?
He took on ex CIA Director Woolsey as advisor on foreign policy during his campaign,
no?
I tell ya that Trump is a real adversary of the CIA!
Roger that. Trump appoints a dominatrix as DCI. Only a masochist or a sadist would Dream of
Gina..you know the head of the torture squad under Bush. Otherwise nice girl. PompAss is a
total clown but a dangerous one who even makes John Bolton look sane. Now that's scary!
This guy is Hilary Clinton in drag. The only thing missing is the evil triumphalist cackle
after whacking Soleimani. Maybe it wasn't recorded.
So much for "draining the swamp". The Whitehouse has become an even bigger swamp.
my take from this article:
There are, among the murderers and assassins in Washington, a couple of characters who appear
to have 2% of human DNA.
They author may confirm.
two ,
"israel is right in the cen "
sorry, the muderous regime israel has repeatedly proven, it's never never right . please
avoid this usage.
three ,
There are 53 or 54 'I's in the article, including his partner's Is. The author may confirm.
Dungroanin ,
Phew!
That is a lot of words mate. Fingers must be sore. I won't comment more until trying to
re-read again except quote this:
"Being an anti-necessitarian in philosophy,.."
I must say i had a wtf moment at that point see ya later.
paul ,
The idea that Trump's recent actions in the Middle East were part of some incredibly cunning
plan to avoid war with Iran, strikes me as somewhat implausible, to put it (very) charitably.
Even Hitler didn't want war. He wanted to achieve his objectives without fighting. When
that didn't work, war was Plan B. Trump probably has very little actual control over foreign
policy. He is surrounded by people who have been plotting and scheming against him from long
before he was elected. He heads a chaotic and dysfunctional administration of billionaires,
chancers, grifters, conmen, superannuated generals, religious nut jobs, swamp creatures,
halfwits and outright criminals, lurching from one crisis and one fiasco to the next. Some of
these people like Bolton were foisted upon him by Adelson and various other backers and wire
pullers, but that is not to absolve Trump of personal responsibility.
Competing agencies which are a law unto themselves have been free to pursue their own turf
wars at the expense of anything remotely resembling a rational and coherent strategy. So have
quite low level bureaucrats, formulating and implementing their own policies with little
regard for the White House. In Syria, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department went
their own way, each supporting competing and mutually antagonistic factions and terrorist
groups. Agreements that were reached with Russia over Syria, for example, were deliberately
sabotaged by Ashton Carter in 24 hours. Likewise, Bolton did everything he could to wreck
Trump's delicate negotiations with N. Korea.
paul ,
Seen in this light, US policy (or the absence of any coherent policy) is more understandable.
What passes for US leadership is the worst in its history, even given a very low bar.
Arrogant, venal, corrupt, delusional, irredeemably ignorant, and ideologically driven. The
only positive thing that can be said is that the alternative (Clinton) would probably have
been even worse, if that is possible.
That may also be the key to understanding the current situation. For all his pandering to
Israel, Trump is more of a self serving unprincipled opportunist than a true Neocon/ Zionist
believer in the mould of Pence, Bolton and Pompeo. For that reason he is not trusted by the
Zionist Power Elite. He is too much of a loose cannon. They will take all his Gives, like
Jerusalem and the JCPOA, but without any gratitude.
It has taken them a century of plotting, scheming and manoeuvring to achieve their
political, financial, and media stranglehold over the US. but America is a wasting asset and
they are under time pressure. It is visibly declining and losing its influence. And the
parasite will find it difficult to find a similar host. Who else is going to give Israel
billions a year in tribute, unlimited free weaponry and diplomatic cover? Russia? Are Chinese
troops "happy to die for Israel" asUS ones are (according to their general)?
paul ,
And they are way behind schedule. Assad was supposed to be dead by now, and Syria another
defenceless failed state, broken up into feuding little cantons, with Israel expanding into
the south of the country. The main event, the war with Iran, should have started lond ago.
That is the reason for the impeachment circus. This is not intended to be resolved one way
or the other. It is intended to drag on indefinitely, for months and years, to distract and
weaken Trump and make it possible to extract what they want. One of the reasons Trump agreed
to the murder of Soleimani and his Iraqi opposite number was to appease some Republican
senators like Graham whose support is essential to survive impeachment. They were the ones
who wanted it, along with Bolton and Netanyahu.
paul ,
It is instructive that all the main players in the impeachment circus are Jews, under
Sanhedrin Chief Priests Schiff and Nadler, apart from a few token goys thrown in to make up
the numbers. That even goes for those defending Trump.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Don' t forget that Lebanon up to the Litani is the patrimony of the Jewish tribes of Asher
and Naphtali, and, as Smotrich, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, said on Israeli TV a few years
ago, ' Damascus belongs to the Jews'.
bevin ,
" China will fragment, perhaps even devolve into civil war, because of deep inequalities
between the relatively prosperous coastal urban areas, and the rural interior."
This is not Bill, but Bill's mate the Stratcor geopolitical theorist for hire.
What is happening in the world is that the only empire the globe, as a whole, has ever
seen- the pirate kingdom that the Dutch, then the British and finally the US, leveraged out
of the plunder and conquest of America -the maritime empire, of sea routes and navies is
under challenge by a revival of the Eurasian proto-empires that preceded it and drove its
merchants and princes on the Atlantic coast, to sea.
We know who the neo-liberals are the current iteration of the gloomy philosophies of the
Scots Enlightenment, (Cobbett's 'Scotch Feelosophy') utilitarianism in its crudest form and
the principles of necessary inequalities, from the Austrian School back to the various crude
racisms which became characteristic of the C19th.
The neo-cons are the latest expression of the maritime powers' fear of Eurasia and its
interior lines of communication. Besides which the importance of navies and of maritime
agility crumble.
Bill mentions that China has not got much of a navy. I'm not so sure about that, but isn't it
becoming clear that navies-except to shipyards, prostitutes and arms contractors- are no
longer of sovereign importance? There must be missile commanders in China drooling over the
prospect of catching a US Fleet in all its glory within 500 miles of the mainland. Not to
mention on the east coast of the Persian Gulf.
The neo-cons are the last in a long line of strategists, ideologists and, for the most part,
mercenary publicists defying the logic of Halford Mackinder's geo-strategy for a lot more
than a penny a line. And what they urge, is all that they can without crossing the line from
deceitfulness to complete dishonesty: chaos and destabilisation within Eurasia, surrounding
Russia, subverting Sinkiang and Tibet, employing sectarian guerrillas, fabricating
nationalists and nationalisms.. recreate the land piracy, the raiding and the ethnic
explosions that drove trade from the land to the sea and crippled the Qing empire.
The clash is between war, necessary to the Maritime Empire and Peace, vital to the
consolidation and flowering of Eurasia.
As to Israel, and perhaps we can go into this later: it looms much larger in the US
imagination (and the imaginations the 'west' borrows from the US) than anywhere else. It is a
tiny sliver of a country. Far from being an elephant in any room, it is simply a highly
perfumed lapdog which also serves as its master's ventriloquist's dummy. Its danger lies in
the fact that after decades of neglect by its idiotic self indulgent masters, it has become
an openly fascist regime, which was definitely not meant to happen, and, misled by its own
exotic theories of race, has come to believe that it can do what it wants. It can't-and this
is one reason why Bill misjudges the reasoning behind the Soleimani killing- but it likes to
act, or rather threaten to act, as if it could.
(By the way-note to morons across the web-Bill's partner quotes Adorno and writes about
him too: cue rants about Cultural Marxism.)
Hugh O'Neill ,
Thanks, Bevin. The article was so long, I had quite forgotten that he laid too much emphasis
on the Stratcor Unspeakable. Clever he may be, but not much use without a moral compass.
Talking of geo-strategists, you will doubtless be aware of the work of A.T. Mahan whose
blueprint for acquisition of inspired Teddy Roosevelt and leaders throughout Europe, Russia,
Japan.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Friedman is a snake oil peddler. He tells the ruling psychopaths what they want to hear, like
' China crumbling', their favourite wet-dream.
bevin ,
I agree about Mahan's importance. He understood what lay behind the Empire on which the sun
never set but he had enough brains to have been able to realise that current conditions make
those fleets obsolete. In fact the Germans in the last War realised that too- their strategy
was Eurasian, it broke down over the small matter of devouring the USSR. The expiry date on
the tin of Empire has been obvious for a long time- there is simply too much money to be made
by ignoring it.
Russia has always been the problem, either real (very occasionally) or latent for the
Dutch/British/US Empire because it is just so clear that the quickest and most efficient
communications between Shanghai and Lisbon do not go through the Straits of Malacca, the Suez
Canal, or round the cape . Russia never had to do a thing to earn the enmity of the Empire,
simply existing was a challenge. And that remains the case- for centuries the Empire
denounced the Russians because of the Autocracy, then it was the anarchism of the Bolsheviks,
then it was the autocracy again, this time featuring Stalin, then it was the chaos of the
oligarchs and now we are back with the Tsar/Stalin Putin.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Phenomenal diagnosis, Bevin. However, one suspects that there is still too much profit to be
made by the MIC in pursuing useless strategies. I imagine Mahan turning in his grave in his
final geo-strategic twist.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Yes-Zionist hubris will get Israel into a whole world of sorrow.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
More USA Deep State conspiracy theorizing which makes the author American paternalism posing
as authorship that is revenue neutral when it ain't.
Any article with mention of mother-'Tucker' Carlson is one that is pure propagandistic
tripe in the extreme. Off-G is a UK blog yet this Americanism & worn out aged propaganda
still prevails in the minds of US centric myopics writ large across all states in the
disunity equally divided from cities to rural towns all.
MOU
johny conspiranoid ,
"More USA Deep State conspiracy theorizing which makes the author American paternalism posing
as authorship that is revenue neutral when it ain'"
Is this even a sentence?
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
It was a sentence when I was smoking marijuana yesterday, Johnny C. Today it is still a
sentence IMHO, but you transcribed it incorrectly, and forgot the end of the sentence.
NOTE: When I smoke marijuana I am allowed to write uncoordinated sentences. These are the
rules in CANADA. If you don't like it write to your local politician and complain
bitterly.
MOU
Charlotte Russe ,
Bush, Obama, and Clinton are despicable. In fact, they're particularly disgusting, inasmuch,
as they were much more "cognizant" than Trump of how their actions would lead to very
specific insidious consequences. In addition, they were more able to cleverly conceal their
malevolent deeds from the public. And that's why Trump is now sitting in the Oval
Office–he won because of public disgust for lying politicians.
However, Trump is "dangerous" because he's a "misinformed idiot," and as such is extremely
malleable. Of course, ignorance is no excuse when the future of humanity is on the line
In any event, Trump is often not aware of the outcome of his actions. And when you're
surrounded and misinformed by warmongering neoconservative nutcases, especially ones who
donated to your campaign chances are you'll do stupid things. And that's what they're
counting on.
alsdkfj ,
Trump is some virtuous example of a truth teller? Trump?
The biggest liar to every occupy the White House and that is saying a lot.
Swamp Monster fascist Trump. So much to love, right?
He could murder one of your friends and you'd still apologize for him, is my guess.
Hugh O'Neill ,
It was a long read, but I got there. In essence, I agreed with 99%, but I hesitate to share
too much praise for Trump's qualities as a Human Being – though he may be marginally
more Human than the entire US body politic. I was walking our new puppy yesterday when he did
his usual attempt to leap all over other walkers. I pleaded their forgiveness and explained
that his big heart was in inverse proportion to his small brain. It occurred to me later that
the opposite would be pure evil i.e. a small heart but big brain. Capitalism as is now
infects the Human Experiment, has reduced both brains and hearts: propagandists believe their
own lies, and too few trust their own instincts and innate compassion, ground down by the
relentless distractions of lies and 'entertainment' (at least the Romas gave you free
bread!).
I get the impression that Trump's world view hasn't altered much since he was about 11 years
old. I do not intend to insult all eleven-year-olds, but his naivety is not a redeeming
feature of his spoilt brat bully personality. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker every
John Wayne cowboy movie and thinks the world can be divided into good guys and bad guys
depending on what colour hat they wear. In the days of Black & White TV, it was either
black or white. The world seemed so much simpler aged 11 .(1966).
Dungroanin ,
Yet I have yet to see one photo of Trump with a gun or in uniform.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The Duck learned to dress appropriately for business, I'll give him that. As a New York Real
Estate scion you will never see him dress otherwise. Protocol in business is a contemporary
business suit. No other manner of dress is allowed for the executive class in North America
or UK.
The U.S. was having some success with turning protest messaging against Iran – until,
that is – its killing and wounding of so many Iraqi security force members last week
(Ketaib Hizbullah is a part of Iraq's armed forces).
Escalation of maximum-pressure was one thing (Iran was confident of weathering that); but
assassinating such a senior official on his state duties, was quite something else. We have not
observed a state assassinating a most senior official of another state before.
And the manner of its doing, was unprecedented too. Soleimani was officially visiting Iraq.
He arrived openly as a VIP guest from Syria, and was met on the tarmac by an equally senior
Iraqi official, Al-Muhandis, who was assassinated also, (together with seven others). It was
all open. General Soleimani regularly used his mobile phone as he argued that as a senior state
official, if he were to be assassinated by another state, it would only be as an act of
war.
This act, performed at the international airport of Baghdad, constitutes not just the
sundering of red lines, but a humiliation inflicted on Iraq – its government and people.
It will upend Iraq's strategic positioning. The erstwhile Iraqi attempt at balancing between
Washington and Iran will be swept away by Trump's hubristic trampling on the country's
sovereignty. It may well mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. presence in Iraq (and
therefore Syria, too), and ultimately, of America's footprint in the Middle East.
Trump may earn easy plaudits now for his "We're America, Bitch!", as one senior White House
official defined the Trump foreign policy doctrine; but the doubts – and unforeseen
consequences soon may come home to roost.
Why did he do it? If no one really wanted 'war', why did Trump escalate and smash up all the
crockery? He has had an easy run (so far) towards re-election, so why play the always
unpredictable 'wild card' of a yet another Mid-East conflict?
Was it that he wanted to show 'no Benghazi'; no U.S. embassy siege 'on my watch' –
unlike Obama's handling of that situation? Was he persuaded that these assassinations would
play well to his constituency (Israeli and Evangelical)? Or was he offered this option baldly
by the Netanyahu faction in Washington? Maybe.
Some in Israel are worried about a three or four front war reaching Israel. Senior Israeli
officials recently have been speculating about the likelihood of regional conflict occurring
within the coming months. Israel's PM however, is fighting for his political life, and has
requested immunity from prosecution on three indictments – pleading that this was his
legal right, and that it was needed for him to "continue to lead Israel" for the sake of its
future. Effectively, Netanyahu has nothing to lose from escalating tensions with Iran -- but
much to gain.
Opposition Israeli political and military leaders have warned that the PM needs 'war' with
Iran -- effectively to underscore the country's 'need' for his continued leadership. And for
technical reasons in the Israeli parliament, his plea is unlikely to be settled before the
March general elections. Netanyahu thus may still have some time to wind up the case for his
continued tenure of the premiership.
One prime factor in the Israeli caution towards Iran rests not so much on the waywardness of
Netanyahu, but on the inconstancy of President Trump: Can it be guaranteed that the U.S. will
back Israel unreservedly -- were it to again to become enmeshed in a Mid-East war? The Israeli
and Gulf answer seemingly is 'no'. The import of this assessment is significant. Trump now is
seen by some in Israel – and by some insiders in Washington – as a threat to
Israel's future security vis à vis Iran. Was Trump aware of this? Was this act a gamble
to guarantee no slippage in that vital constituency in the lead up to the U.S. elections? We do
not know.
So we arrive at three final questions: How far will Iran absorb this new escalation? Will
Iran confine its retaliation to within Iraq? Or will the U.S. cross another 'red line' by
striking inside Iran itself, in any subsequent tit for tat?
Is it deliberate (or is it political autism) that makes Secretary Pompeo term all the Iraqi
Hash'd a-Sha'abi forces – whether or not part of official Iraqi forces – as
"Iran-led"? The term seems to be used as a laissez-passer to attack all the many Hash'd
a-Sha'abi units on the grounds that, being "Iran-linked", they therefore count as 'terrorist
forces'. This formulation gives rise to the false sequitur that all other Iraqis would somehow
approve of the killings. This would be laughable, if it were not so serious. The Hash'd forces
led the war against ISIS and are esteemed by the vast majority of Iraqis. And Soleimani was on
the ground at the front line, with those Iraqi forces.
These forces are not Iranian 'proxies'. They are Iraqi nationalists who share a common Shi'a
identity with their co-religionists in Iran, and across the region. They share a common
zeitgeist, they see politics similarly, but they are no puppets (we write from direct
experience).
But what this formulation does do is to invite a widening conflict: Many Iraqis will be
outraged by the U.S. attacks on fellow Iraqis and will revenge them. Pompeo (falsely) will then
blame Iran. Is that Pompeo's purpose: casus belli?
But where is the off-ramp? Iran will respond Is this affair simply set to escalate from
limited military exchanges and from thence, to escalate until what? We understand that this was
not addressed in Washington before the President's decision was made. There are no real U.S.
channels of communication (other than low level) with Iran; nor is there a plan for the next
days. Nor an obvious exit. Is Trump relying on gut instinct again?
"... "Since President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed [Soleimani – justified in terms of deterrence, and allegedly halting an attack] a handful of Trump's advisers, however, [espied another] strategic benefit to killing Soleimani: Call it regime disruption ..."
"... "The case for disruption is outlined in a series of unclassified memos sent to [John Bolton]in May and June 2019 their author, David Wurmser, is a longtime adviser to Bolton who then served as a consultant to the National Security Council. Wurmser argues that Iran is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. Its leadership, he writes, is divided between camps that seek an apocalyptic return of the Hidden Imam, and those that favour of the preservation of the Islamic Republic. All the while, many Iranians have grown disgusted with the regime's incompetence and corruption. ..."
"... "Wurmser's crucial insight [is that] – were unexpected, rule-changing actions taken against Iran, it would confuse the regime. It would need to scramble," he writes. Such a U.S. attack would "rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the regime depends for stability and survival." Such a moment of confusion, Wurmser writes, will create momentary paralysis -- and the perception among the Iranian public that its leaders are weak. ..."
"... "Wurmser's memos show that the Trump administration has been debating the blow against Soleimani since the current crisis began, some seven months ago After Iran downed a U.S. drone [in June], Wurmser advised Bolton that the U.S. response should be overt and designed to send a message that the U.S. holds the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, responsible. "This could even involve something as a targeted strike on someone like Soleimani or his top deputies," Wurmser wrote in a June 22 memo. ..."
"... In these memos, Wurmser is careful to counsel against a ground invasion of Iran. He says the U.S. response "does not need to be boots on the ground (in fact, it should not be)." Rather, he stresses that the U.S. response should be calibrated to exacerbate the regime's domestic legitimacy crisis. ..."
That was how the English protestant leader saw Catholic Spain in 1656. And it is very close
to how key orientations in the U.S. sees Iran today : The evil of religion – of
Shi'ism – subjecting (they believe) Iranians to repression, and to serfdom. In Europe,
this ideological struggle against the 'evil' of an imposed religious community (the Holy
'Roman' Axis, then) brought Europe to 'near-Armageddon', with the worst affected parts of
Europe seeing their population decimated by up to 60% during the conflict.
Is this faction in the U.S. now intent on invoking a new, near-Armageddon – on this
occasion, in the Middle East – in order, like Cromwell, to destroy the religious
'community known' as the Shi'a Resistance Axis, seen to stretch across the region, in order to
preserve the Jewish "peoples' desire for simple liberties"?
Of course, today's leaders of this ideological faction are no longer Puritan Protestants
(though the Christian Evangelicals are at one with Cromwell's 'Old Testament' literalism and
prophesy). No, its lead ideologues are the neo-conservatives, who have leveraged Karl Popper's
hugely influential The Open Society and its Enemies – a seminal treatise, which
to a large extent, has shaped how many Americans imagine their 'world'. Popper's was history
understood as a series of attempts, by the forces of reaction, to smother an open society with
the weapons of traditional religion and traditional culture:
Marx and Russia were cast as the archetypal reactionary threat to open societies. This
construct was taken up by Reagan, and re-connected to the Christian apocalyptic tradition
(hence the neo-conservative coalition with Evangelists yearning for
Redemption , and with liberal interventionists, yearning for a secular millenarianism). All
concur that Iran is reactionary, and furthermore, the posit, poses a grave threat to Israel's
self-proclaimed 'open society'.
The point here is that there is little point in arguing with these people that Iran poses no
threat to the U.S. (which is obvious) – for the 'project' is ideological through and
through. It has to be understood by these lights. Popper's purpose was to propose that only
liberal globalism would bring about a "growing measure of humane and enlightened life" and a
free and open society – period.
All this is but the outer Matryoshka – a suitable public rhetoric, a painted image
– that can be used to encase the secret, inner dolls. Eli Lake,
writing in Bloomberg , however, gives away the next doll:
"Since President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed [Soleimani –
justified in terms of deterrence, and allegedly halting an attack] a handful of Trump's
advisers, however, [espied another] strategic benefit to killing Soleimani: Call it regime
disruption
"The case for disruption is outlined in a series of unclassified memos sent to [John
Bolton]in May and June 2019 their author, David Wurmser, is a longtime adviser to Bolton who
then served as a consultant to the National Security Council. Wurmser argues that Iran is in
the midst of a legitimacy crisis. Its leadership, he writes, is divided between camps that seek
an apocalyptic return of the Hidden Imam, and those that favour of the preservation of the
Islamic Republic. All the while, many Iranians have grown disgusted with the regime's
incompetence and corruption.
"Wurmser's crucial insight [is that] – were unexpected, rule-changing actions
taken against Iran, it would confuse the regime. It would need to scramble," he writes. Such a
U.S. attack would "rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them
upon which the regime depends for stability and survival." Such a moment of confusion, Wurmser
writes, will create momentary paralysis -- and the perception among the Iranian public that its
leaders are weak.
"Wurmser's memos show that the Trump administration has been debating the blow against
Soleimani since the current crisis began, some seven months ago After Iran downed a U.S. drone
[in June], Wurmser advised Bolton that the U.S. response should be overt and designed to send a
message that the U.S. holds the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, responsible. "This
could even involve something as a targeted strike on someone like Soleimani or his top
deputies," Wurmser wrote in a June 22 memo.
In these memos, Wurmser is careful to counsel against a ground invasion of Iran. He says
the U.S. response "does not need to be boots on the ground (in fact, it should not be)."
Rather, he stresses that the U.S. response should be calibrated to exacerbate the regime's
domestic legitimacy crisis.
So there it is – David Wurmser is the 'doll' within: no military invasion, but just a
strategy to blow apart the Iranian Republic. Wurmser, Eli Lake reveals, has quietly been
advising Bolton and the Trump Administration all along. This was the neo-con, who in 1996,
compiled Coping with Crumbling States (which flowed on from the infamous Clean
Break policy strategy paper, written for Netanyahu, as a blueprint for destructing
Israel's enemies). Both these papers advocated the overthrow of the Secular-Arab nationalist
states – excoriated both as "crumbling relics of the 'evil' USSR" (using Popperian
language, of course) – and inherently hostile to Israel (the real message).
Well (
big surprise ), Wurmser has now been at work as the author of how to 'implode' and destroy
Iran. And his insight? "A targeted strike on someone like Soleimani"; split the Iranian
leadership into warring factions; cut an open wound into the flesh of Iran's domestic
legitimacy; put a finger into that open wound, and twist it; disrupt – and pretend that
the U.S. sides with the Iranian people, against its government.
Eli Lake seems, in his Bloomberg piece, to think that the Wurmser strategy has
worked. Really? The problem here is that narratives in Washington are so far apart from the
reality that exists on the ground – they simply do not touch at any point. Millions
attended Soleimani's cortege. His killing gave a renewed cohesion to Iran. Little more
than a dribble have protested.
Now let us unpack the next 'doll': Trump bought into Wurmser's 'play', albeit, with Trump
subsequently admitting that he did the assassination under
intense pressure from Republican Senators. Maybe he believed the patently absurd narrative
that Iranians would 'be dancing in the street' at Soleimani's killing. In any event, Trump is
not known, exactly, for admitting his mistakes. Rather, when something is portrayed as his
error, the President adopts the full 'salesman' persona: trying to convince his base that the
murder was no error, but a great strategic success – "They like us", Trump claimed of
protestors in Iran.
Tom Luongo has
observed : "Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate begins next week, and it's clear that
this will not be a walk in the park for the President. Anyone dismissing this because the
Republicans hold the Senate, simply do not understand why this impeachment exists in the first
place. It is [occurring because it offers] the ultimate form of leverage over a President whose
desire to end the wars in the Middle East is anathema to the entrenched powers in the D.C.
Swamp." Ah, so here we arrive at another inner Matryoshka.
This is Luongo's point: Impeachment was the leverage to drive open a wedge between
Republican neo-conservatives in the Senate – and Trump. And now the Pelosi pressure on
Republican Senators is
escalating . The Establishment threw cold water over Trump's assertion of imminent
attack, as justification for murdering Soleimani, and Trump responds by painting himself
further into a corner on Iran – by going the full salesman 'monte'.
On the campaign trail, the President goes way over-the-top, calling Soleimani
a "son of a b -- -", who killed 'thousands' and furthermore was responsible for every U.S.
veteran who lost a limb in Iraq. And he then conjures up a fantasy picture of protesters
pouring onto the streets of Tehran, tearing down images of Soleimani, and screaming abuse at
the Iranian leadership.
It is nonsense. There are
no mass protests (there have been a few hundred students protesting at one main Tehran
University). But Trump has dived in pretty deep, now
threatening the Euro-Three signatories to the JCPOA, that unless they brand Iran as having
defaulted on JCPOA at the UNSC disputes mechanism, he will slap an eye-watering 25% tariff on
their automobiles.
So, how will Trump avoid plunging in even deeper to conflict if – and when –
Americans die in Iraq or Syria at the hands of militia – and when Pompeo or Lindsay
Graham will claim, baldly, 'Iran's proxies did it'? Sending emollient faxes to the Swiss to
pass to Tehran will not do. Tehran will not read them, or believe them, even if they did.
It all reeks of stage-management; a set up: a very clever stage-management, designed to end
with the U.S. crossing Iran's 'red line', by striking at a target within Iranian
territory. Here, finally, we arrive at the innermost doll.
Cui bono ? Some Senators who never liked Trump, and would prefer Pence as
President; the Democrats, who would prefer to run their candidate against Pence in November,
rather than Trump. But also, as someone who once worked with Wurmser observed tartly: when you
hear that name (Wurmser), immediately you think Netanyahu, his intimate associate.
Neoliberals are mostly neocons and neocons are mostly neoliberals. They can't understand the
importance of Brexit and the first real crack in neoliberal globalization facade.
She really was on the wrong side of history: a tragedy for a politician. EU crumles with the
end of her political career which was devoted to straightening EU and neoliberalism, as well as
serving as the USA vassal. While she was sucessful in extracting benefits for Germany
multinationals she increased Germany dependency (and subservience) on the USA. She also will be
remembered for her handing of Greece crisis.
Notable quotes:
"... The UK's departure will continue to hang over Brussels and Berlin -- the countdown for a trade deal will coincide with Germany's presidency of the EU in the second half of this year. ..."
"... Brexit is a "wake-up call" for the EU. Europe must, she says, respond by upping its game, becoming "attractive, innovative, creative, a good place for research and education . . . Competition can then be very productive." This is why the EU must continue to reform, completing the digital single market, progressing with banking union -- a plan to centralise the supervision and crisis management of European banks -- and advancing capital markets union to integrate Europe's fragmented equity and debt markets. ..."
"... its defence budget has increased by 40 per cent since 2015, which is "a huge step from Germany's perspective". ..."
"... Ms Merkel will doubtless be remembered for two bold moves that changed Germany -- ordering the closure of its nuclear power stations after the Fukushima disaster of 2011, and keeping the country's borders open at the height of the 2015 refugee crisis. That decision was her most controversial, and there are some in Germany who still won't forgive her for it. But officials say Germany survived the influx, and has integrated the more than 1m migrants who arrived in 2015-16. ..."
It's a grim winter's day in Berlin, and the political climate matches the weather.
Everywhere Angela Merkel looks there are storm clouds, as the values she has upheld all her
career come under sustained attack. At the start of a new decade, Europe's premier stateswoman
suddenly seems to be on the wrong side of history.Shortly, the UK will leave the EU. A volatile
US president is snubbing allies and going it alone in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is
changing the Russian constitution and meddling in Libya and sub-Saharan Africa. Trade tensions
continue, threatening the open borders and globalised value chains that are the cornerstones of
Germany's prosperity.
Ms Merkel, a former physicist renowned for her imperturbable, rational manner is a
politician programmed for compromise. But today she faces an uncompromising world where liberal
principles have been shoved aside by the law of the jungle.
Her solution is to double down on Europe, Germany's anchor. "I see the European Union as our
life insurance," she says. "Germany is far too small to exert geopolitical influence on its
own, and that's why we need to make use of all the benefits of the single market."
Speaking in the chancellery's Small Cabinet Room, an imposing wood-panelled hall overlooking
Berlin's Tiergarten park, Ms Merkel does not come across as under pressure. She is calm, if
somewhat cagey, weighing every word and seldom displaying emotion.
But the message she conveys in a rare interview is nonetheless urgent. In the twilight of
her career -- her fourth and final term ends in 2021 -- Ms Merkel is determined to preserve and
defend multilateralism, a concept that in the age of Trump, Brexit and a resurgent Russia has
never seemed so embattled. This is the "firm conviction" that guides her: the pursuit of "the
best win-win situations . . . when partnerships of benefit to both
sides are put into practice worldwide". She admits that this idea is coming "under increasing
pressure". The system of supranational institutions like the EU and United Nations were, she
says, "essentially a lesson learnt from the second world war, and the preceding decades". Now,
with so few witnesses of the war still alive, the importance of that lesson is fading.
Of course President Donald Trump is right that bodies like the World Trade Organization and
the UN require reform. "There is no doubt whatsoever about any of that," she says. "But I do
not call the world's multilateral structure into question. "Germany has been the great
beneficiary of Nato, an enlarged EU and globalisation. Free trade has opened up vast new
markets for its world-class cars, machines and chemicals. Sheltered under the US nuclear
umbrella, Germany has barely spared a thought for its own security. But the rise of "Me First"
nationalism threatens to leave it economically and politically unmoored. In this sense, Europe
is existential for German interests, as well as its identity.
Ms Merkel therefore wants to strengthen the EU -- an institution that she, perhaps more than
any other living politician, has come to personify. She steered Europe through the eurozone
debt crisis, albeit somewhat tardily: she held Europe together as it imposed sanctions on
Russia over the annexation of Crimea; she maintained unity in response to the trauma of
Brexit.
The UK's departure will continue to hang over Brussels and Berlin -- the countdown for a
trade deal will coincide with Germany's presidency of the EU in the second half of this
year. Berlin worries a post-Brexit UK that reserves the right to diverge from EU rules on
goods, workers' rights, taxes and environmental standards could create a serious economic
competitor on its doorstep. But Ms Merkel remains a cautious optimist. Brexit is a "wake-up
call" for the EU. Europe must, she says, respond by upping its game, becoming "attractive,
innovative, creative, a good place for research and
education . . . Competition can then be very productive." This is
why the EU must continue to reform, completing the digital single market, progressing with
banking union -- a plan to centralise the supervision and crisis management of European banks
-- and advancing capital markets union to integrate Europe's fragmented equity and debt
markets.
In what sounds like a new European industrial policy, Ms Merkel also says the EU should
identify the technological capabilities it lacks and move fast to fill in the gaps. "I believe
that chips should be manufactured in the European Union, that Europe should have its own
hyperscalers and that it should be possible to produce battery cells," she says. It must also
have the confidence to set the new global digital standards. She cites the example of the
General Data Protection Regulation, which supporters see as a gold standard for privacy and
proof that the EU can become a rulemaker, rather than a rule taker, when it comes to the
digital economy. Europe can offer an alternative to the US and Chinese approach to data. "I
firmly believe that personal data does not belong to the state or to companies," she says. "It
must be ensured that the individual has sovereignty over their own data and can decide with
whom and for what purpose they share it."
The continent's scale and diversity also make it hard to reach a consensus on reform. Europe
is deeply split: the migration crisis of 2015 opened up a chasm between the liberal west and
countries like Viktor Orban's Hungary which has not healed. Even close allies like Germany and
France have occasionally locked horns: Berlin's cool response to Emmanuel Macron's reform
initiatives back in 2017 triggered anger in Paris, while the French president's unilateral
overture to Mr Putin last year provoked irritation in Berlin. And when it comes to reform of
the eurozone, divisions still exist between fiscally challenged southern Europeans and the
fiscally orthodox new Hanseatic League of northern countries.
Ms Merkel remains to a degree hostage to German public opinion. Germany, she admits, is
still "slightly hesitant" on banking union, "because our principle is that everyone first needs
to reduce the risks in their own country today before we can mutualise the risks". And capital
markets union might require member states to seek closer alignment on things like insolvency
law. These divisions pale in comparison to the gulf between Europe and the US under president
Donald Trump. Germany has become the administration's favourite punching bag, lambasted for its
relatively low defence spending, big current account surplus and imports of Russian gas. German
business dreads Mr Trump making good on his threat to impose tariffs on European cars.
It is painful for Ms Merkel, whose career took off after unification. In an interview last
year she described how, while coming of age in communist East Germany, she yearned to make a
classic American road trip: "See the Rocky Mountains, drive around and listen to Bruce
Springsteen -- that was my dream," she told Der Spiegel.
The poor chemistry between Ms Merkel and Mr Trump has been widely reported. But are the
latest tensions in the German-US relationship just personal -- or is there more to it? "I think
it has structural causes," she says. For years now, Europe and Germany have been slipping down
the US's list of priorities.
"There's been a shift," she says. "President Obama already spoke about the Asian century, as
seen from the US perspective. This also means that Europe is no longer, so to say, at the
centre of world events."She adds: "The United States' focus on Europe is declining -- that will
be the case under any president."The answer? "We in Europe, and especially in Germany, need to
take on more responsibility."
Germany has vowed to meet the Nato target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence by the
start of the 2030s. Ms Merkel admits that for those alliance members which have already reached
the 2 per cent goal, "naturally this is not enough". But there's no denying Germany has made
substantial progress on the issue: its defence budget has increased by 40 per cent since
2015, which is "a huge step from Germany's perspective".
Ms Merkel insists the transatlantic relationship "remains crucial for me, particularly as
regards fundamental questions concerning values and interests in the world". Yet Europe should
also develop its own military capability. There may be regions outside Nato's primary focus
where "Europe must -- if necessary -- be prepared to get involved. I see Africa as one
example," she says.
Defence is hardly the sole bone of contention with the US. Trade is a constant irritation.
Berlin watched with alarm as the US and China descended into a bitter trade war in 2018: it
still fears becoming collateral damage.
"Can the European Union come under pressure between America and China? That can happen, but
we can also try to prevent it. "Germany has few illusions about China. German officials and
businesspeople are just as incensed as their US counterparts by China's theft of intellectual
property, its unfair investment practices, state-sponsored cyber-hacking and human rights
abuses in regions like Xinjiang.
Once seen as a strategic partner, China is increasingly viewed in Berlin as a systemic
rival. But Berlin has no intention of emulating the US policy of "decoupling" -- cutting its
diplomatic, commercial and financial ties with China. Instead, Ms Merkel has staunchly defended
Berlin's close relationship with Beijing. She says she would "advise against regarding China as
a threat simply because it is economically successful".
"As was the case in Germany, [China's] rise is largely based on hard work, creativity and
technical skills," she says. Of course there is a need to "ensure that trade relations are
fair". China's economic strength and geopolitical ambitions mean it is a rival to the US and
Europe. But the question is: "Do we in Germany and Europe want to dismantle all interconnected
global supply chains . . . because of this economic competition?"
She adds: "In my opinion, complete isolation from China cannot be the answer."Her plea for
dialogue and co-operation has set her on a collision course with some in her own party.
China hawks in her Christian Democratic Union share US mistrust of Huawei, the Chinese
telecoms equipment group, fearing it could be used by Beijing to conduct cyber espionage or
sabotage. Ms Merkel has pursued a more conciliatory line. Germany should tighten its security
requirements towards all telecoms providers and diversify suppliers "so that we never make
ourselves dependent on one firm" in 5G. But "I think it is wrong to simply exclude someone per
se," she says.
The rise of China has triggered concern over Germany's future competitiveness. And that
economic "angst" finds echoes in the febrile politics of Ms Merkel's fourth term. Her "grand
coalition" with the Social Democrats is wracked by squabbling. The populist Alternative for
Germany is now established in all 16 of the country's regional parliaments. A battle has broken
out for the post-Merkel succession, with a crop of CDU heavy-hitters auditioning for the top
job.
Many in the political elite worry about waning international influence in the final months
of the Merkel era.While she remains one of the country's most popular politicians, Germans are
asking what her legacy will be. For many of her predecessors, that question is easy to answer:
Konrad Adenauer anchored postwar Germany in the west; Willy Brandt ushered in detente with the
Soviet Union; Helmut Kohl was the architect of German reunification. So how will Ms Merkel be
remembered?
She brushes away the question. "I don't think about my role in history -- I do my job." But
what about critics who say the Merkel era was mere durchwurschteln -- muddling through? That
word, she says, in a rare flash of irritation, "isn't part of my vocabulary". Despite her
reputation for gradualism and caution, Ms Merkel will doubtless be remembered for two bold
moves that changed Germany -- ordering the closure of its nuclear power stations after the
Fukushima disaster of 2011, and keeping the country's borders open at the height of the 2015
refugee crisis. That decision was her most controversial, and there are some in Germany who
still won't forgive her for it. But officials say Germany survived the influx, and has
integrated the more than 1m migrants who arrived in 2015-16.
She prefers to single out less visible changes. Germany is much more engaged in the world:
just look, she says, at the Bundeswehr missions in Africa and Afghanistan. During the Kohl era,
even the idea of dispatching a ship to the Adriatic to observe the war in Yugoslavia was
controversial. She also mentions efforts to end the war in Ukraine, its role in the Iran
nuclear deal, its assumption of ever more "diplomatic, and increasingly also military
responsibility". "It may become more in future, but we are certainly on the right path," she
says.
The Merkel era has been defined by crisis but thanks to her stewardship most Germans have
rarely had it so good. The problem is the world expects even more of a powerful, prosperous
Germany and its next chancellor.Letter in response to this article:At last, I understand
Brexit's real purpose / From John Beadsmoore, Great Wilbraham, Cambs, UK
"... For starters, don't be surprised if his "fortification" of ISIS means Donald Trump can't pull out of Syria after all. Or maybe if ISIS attacks on Iraqi civilians/militias result in the Iraqi parliament revoking their request for the US to remove their troops from Iraqi soil. ..."
"... There's the possibility that ISIS will start a resurgence in Libya, meaning that NATO has to get in there and sort things out. Maybe some furious ISIS fighters will be the ones who assassinate Iranian generals in future. It's much less messy that way. ..."
For starters, don't be surprised if his "fortification" of ISIS means Donald Trump can't
pull out of Syria after all. Or maybe if ISIS attacks on Iraqi civilians/militias result in the Iraqi parliament revoking
their request for the US to remove their troops from Iraqi soil.
There's the possibility that ISIS will start a resurgence in Libya, meaning that NATO has to
get in there and sort things out. Maybe some furious ISIS fighters will be the ones who assassinate Iranian generals in
future. It's much less messy that way.
Or, hell, maybe we'll return to the hits of the 90s and early 2000s, and Islamic jihadists
will get back to work in Chechnya.
Whatever happens, ISIS are back baby. And that means that some way, somehow, Mr al-Salbi is
about to make the foreign policy goals of the United States much easier.
That's what Goldsteins are for.
harry law ,
.... The US have used Islamic state against both Syria and Iraq, [the enemy of my enemy is my
friend].
There can be no doubt that the US are going to use Islamic state to disrupt Iraq, just as
they had no qualms about watching [from satellites and spotter aircraft] Islamic state travel
100's of kilometres from Syria to Northern Iraq [Mosul] across the desert, whipping up tons
of dust in their Toyota jeeps to put pressure on the Iraqi government. Also as they watched
on with equanimity when the Islamic state transported thousands of tanker loads of oil from
Syria to Turkey, that is until the Russians bombed those convoys, the US must think everyone
is as stupid as they are. If the Iraqis don't drive the US out using all means including
violence, they deserve to be slaves.
"Sergey Lavrov earlier called the US-led coalition's refusal to combat al-Nusra
"absolutely unacceptable."
The US depends upon continuation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Were
that to be lost the US likely would descend into chaos without end. When the USSR came
apart it was eventually able to downsize into the Russian state. We don't have that here;
there is no core ethnicity with it's own territory left anymore, it's just a jumble. For
the US it's a matter of survival.
Possession of a core ethnicity doesn't invariably guarantee stability or even constitute a
nation and I don't believe this is why Russia survives as a nation today. Russia itself is a
country with a great many nationalities, and there are almost as many Asian as European faces
in the country. Furthermore, the Ukraine was part of the USSR, has what you term a core
ethnicity, and yet has descended into chaos without end since the collapse of the USSR.
Clearly, a nation consists of something other than ethnic identity, language or even
religion.
The 19th century French historian Ernest Renan in a famous lecture at the time "What is a
Nation" stated: "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle A nation is therefore a
large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the
past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is
summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly
expressed desire to continue a common life .
"Man is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the
course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains. A large aggregate of men,
healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral conscience which we call a
nation."
A nation is an organic entity not dependent on a common language, religion or bounded by
geography. Whether or not a nation or nations survive the collapse of the American Empire
will depend on the willingness of the people to live together with a shared collective memory
of the past. Renan makes the point that national traumas are more unifying than national
triumphs. The chaos that will surely follow the Empire's collapse will become part of the
shared trauma, out of which a new nation or nations will arise, if the people so will.
"I see you have successfully internalized The Cuck's Credo."
I won;t speak to the explication of what nationhood is as described. But clearly skin
color is not a cohesive enough glue. The white colonists comprised of varying ethnic cultures
went to war against whites in great britain. And by all indications of history the whites in
Europe spent more than 1800 years killing each other in country and out --
So any claim that whiteness is a cohesive glue or embodies a cohesive glue cementing
nationality is thoroughly rejected by history. That anyone contends it against the evidence
is peculiar.
@Daniel.I Oh, are you ever missing the point. What Renan wrote elsewhere, "that which
makes a nation is the willingness of its members to live together," (ce qui fait une nation
c'est la volunté de ses membres de vivre ensemble) cuts both ways. It not only expains
why Russia successfully transitioned the fall of the USSR, while the Ukraine has not yet: the
Russians chose to live together. It also explains why nationalists like you continue to
choose by your own volition to identify as American despite your pissing and moaning. You and
the Russians and the Ukrainians are making your own volitional choices about the nation you
choose to be a member of. Those choices multiplied by the millions of inhabitants demonstrate
how this is an organic process. Furthermore, Renan wrote well before the current idea of
globalism had developed any traction, and he is writing from observation of history as a
historian. He had no globalist agenda to promote. I have read quite a lot of what the hard
right nationalists have had to say in their comments on the Unz Review, and frankly, the
arguments are unconvincing. I would suggest reading the Renan lecture I posted the link to,
it clears up the mess and shows a third way between you and the globalists, the way of how
things really come down. It shows reality.
So any claim that whiteness is a cohesive glue or embodies a cohesive glue cementing
nationality is thoroughly rejected by history. That anyone contends it against the evidence
is peculiar.
No matter what the core identity of a society, there will be at least episodic internal
violence. But that doesn't mean that people don't need identity.
What identity, in your view, should the people focusing on whiteness as symbolic of their
sense of belonging, be adopting?
It's obvious that being "an American" is becoming less and less psychologically
satisfying. So what is the answer?
@EliteCommInc. You have no idea how satisfying it is to watch the Anglo – after
having forced liberalism down the throat of everyone else – finding himself on the
receiving end of it.
@Polemos The nation in Renan's thinking transcends consideration of the one and the many
through a kind of political metaphysic: the nation is spiritual, the nation is a
mystery. The national myth of shared trauma creates a past while organic human volition
results in a spiritual recognition of both the individual and others as participants in this
mystery, this nation, this Gestalt . Charles de Gaulle touched this in his benediction
"vive la France eternelle," as did Ronald Reagan with the metaphor from the Gospels, "a city
on a hill."
@Daniel.I I get the general use by Americans to use "liberal" for what the rest of the
Anglophone countries would probably call "left wing" (although I think Americans also say
"neo liberalism" mraning something quite different). But I struggle to understand what you
mean by "liberalism". Derived from which lot of Anglos? Thrust down throats by which lot of
Anglos? I would like to learn more from you about the ideology or philosophy or political
movement you are referring to.
As a prompt to leap out of a narrowly based view I note that the main conservative right
of centre party which often forms Australian governments is the Liberal Party.
@Weston Waroda "A nation is an organic entity not dependent on a common language,
religion or bounded by geography."
Is it to say that the German, the English, the Swede, the Polish, the Norwegians, the
Danes, the Czech, the Slovak, the Italian, the Greek, the Hungarian, the Romanian, the
Bulgarian, the Portuguese, the Irish, the various nations that emerged from the former
Yugoslavia or the USSR are not organic entities but only the Belgian are? Is it to say that
African states with borders drawn across ethnicities by colonial powers are nations? Today's
France is proof of the contrary to your statement and Renan's theory. You are the one
disconnected from reality as your idea of what constitutes a nation is a pure abstract
disproven by empirical evidence.
Renan makes the point that national traumas are more unifying than national
triumphs.
It's interesting that the places that the Empire has been unable to control are often
ex-Communist (Russia, China, Eastern Europe) which experienced national trauma, but were also
outside of the Zio-Glob Empire in its critical post 1945 growth period (the map of US
overseas bases).
Also, Imperial institutions like NATO are looking irrelevant. European leaders may well
wonder why they're necessary. In 1945, the US was the world's leading industrial economy/
international creditor with a legitimate reserve currency – now not so much –
with the US clinging onto power using violence, threats and sanctions and generally
alienating everyone.
Israel is a very successful example of a strongly ethnocentric state that has its endless
internal squabbles between the various groups within that identity, but yet remain fairly
united against potential threats from outsiders (i.e., the"others"). This most definitely
applies to the critical matter of immigration.
Wisely, they do not easily accept immigrants, except those who are proven to be of their
own ilk, and they are currently exploring, via internal public dialog, whether their already
relatively stringent standards are not restrictive enough. (See here: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/6-out-of-7-immigrants-to-Israel-not-Jewish-611842
)
They know they will be internally weakened, displaced, and ultimately, replaced if they do
otherwise. They 'see the writing on the wall'.
Jews are not stupid people. It would seem equally wise for the US, Canada, and the
European states to emulate their example, preserving their shared heritages and
commonalities, which provide strength and unity in the face of adversities and against
foreign enemies, both abroad and domestically.
What is sauce for the (jewish) goose is sauce for the (goyim) ganders .
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for
the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new
in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is
felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize
the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure
of our society."
General Dwight D Eisenhower
Farewell address 1961
Congress just passed a near trillion dollar military budget at a time when the United States
faces no evident state threats at home or abroad. Ike was right.
Illustrating Ike's prescient warning, Brown University's respected Watson Institute just
released a major study which found that the so-called 'wars on terror' in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria and Pakistan have cost US taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001.
The extensive study found that over 800,000 people have died as a result of these military
operations, a third of them civilians. An additional 21 million civilians have been displaced
by US military operations. According to the Pentagon, these US wars have so far cost each
American taxpayer $7,623 – and that's a very conservative estimate.
Most of this money has been quietly added to the US national debt of over $23 trillion. Wars
on credit hide the true cost and pain from the public.
As General Eisenhower warned, military spending has engulfed the nation.
A trillion annual military budget represents just about half the world's military
expenditures. The Pentagon, which I've visited numerous times, is bustling with activity as if
the nation was on a permanent war footing.
The combined US intelligence budget of some $80 billion is larger than Russia's total
military budget of $63 billion. US troops, warplanes and naval vessels are stationed around the
globe, including, most lately, across Africa. And yet every day the media trumpets new
'threats' to the US. Trump is sending more troops to the Mideast while claiming he wants to
reduce America's powerful military footprint there. Our military is always in search of new
missions. These operations generate promotions and pay raises, new equipment and a reason for
being.
Back in the day, the Republican Party of General Eisenhower was a centrist conservative's
party with a broad world view, dedicated to lower taxes and somewhat smaller government. It was
led by the Rockefellers and educated Easterners with a broad world view and respect for
tradition.
Today's Republican Party is a collection of rural interests from flyover country,
handmaidens of the military industrial complex and, most important, militant evangelical
Christians who see the world through the spectrum of the Old Testament. Israel's far right has
come to dominate American evangelists by selling them a bill of goods about the End of Days and
the Messiah's return. Many of these rubes see Trump as a quasi-religious figure.
Mix the religious cultists – about 25% of the US population – with the farm and
Israel lobbies and the mighty military industrial complex and no wonder the United States has
veered off into the deep waters of irrationality and crusading ardor. The US can still afford
such bizarre behavior thanks to its riches, magic green dollar, endless supply of credit and a
poorly educated, apathetic public too besotted by sports and TV sitcoms to understand what's
going on abroad.
All the war party needs is a steady supply of foreign villains (preferably Muslims) who can
be occasionally bombed back to the early Islamic age. Americans have largely forgotten George
W. Bush's lurid claims that Iraqi drones of death were poised to shower poisons on the sleeping
nation. Even the Soviets never ventured so deep into the sea of absurdity.
The military industrial complex does not care to endanger its gold-plated F-35 stealth
aircraft and $13 billion apiece aircraft carriers in a real war against real powers. Instead,
the war party likes little wars against weak opponents who can barely shoot back. State-run TV
networks thrill to such minor scraps with fancy headlines and martial music. Think of the
glorious little wars against Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. Iran
looks next.
The more I listen to his words, the more I like Ike.
But the article was flimsy even by Russiagate standards, and so certain questions inevitably
arise. What was it really about? Who's behind it? Who's the real target?
Here's a quick answer. It was about boosting Joe Biden, and its real target was his chief
rival, Bernie Sanders. And poor, inept Bernie walked straight into the trap.
The article was flimsy because rather than saying straight out that Russian intelligence
hacked Burisma, the company notorious for hiring Biden's son, Hunter, for $50,000 a month job,
reporters Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg had to rely on unnamed "security experts" to
say it for them. While suggesting that the hackers were looking for dirt, they didn't quite say
that as well. Instead, they admitted that "it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or
precisely what they were searching for."
So we have no idea what they were up to, if anything at all. But the Times then quoted
"experts" to the effect that "the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians
could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of
information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the
Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment." Since Trump and
the Russians are seeking the same information, they must be in cahoots, which is what Democrats
have been saying from the moment Trump took office. Given the lack of evidence, this was
meaningless as well.
But then came the kicker: two full paragraphs in which a Biden campaign spokesman was
permitted to expound on the notion that the Russians hacked Burisma because Biden is the
candidate that they and Trump fear the most.
"Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan,
international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can't beat the vice
president," the spokesman, Andrew Bates, said. "Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe
Biden as a threat. Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign
interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our
elections."
If Biden is the number-one threat, then Sanders is not, presumably because the Times sees
him as soft on Moscow. If so, it means that he could be in for the same neo-McCarthyism that
antiwar candidate Tulsi Gabbard encountered last October when Hillary Clinton blasted her as
"the favorite of the Russians." Gabbard had the good sense to
blast her right back.
"Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and
personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally
come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a
concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know
– it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and
war machine ."
If only Sanders did the same. But instead he put out a statement filled with the usual
anti-Russian clichés:
"The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American
history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas
company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia's plans to once again meddle
in our elections and in our democracy. After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that
Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the
New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddle
in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting
systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn [sic] by Donald Trump ."
And so on for another 250 words. Not only did the statement put him in bed with the
intelligence agencies, but it makes him party to the big lie that the Kremlin was responsible
for putting Trump over the top in 2016.
Let's get one thing straight. Yes, Russian intelligence may have hacked the Democratic
National Committee. But cybersecurity was so lax that others may have been rummaging about as
well. (CrowdStrike, the company called in to investigate the hack, says it found not one but
two cyber-intruders.) Notwithstanding the Mueller report, all the available evidence
indicates
that Russia did not then pass along thousands of DNC emails that Wikileaks published in July
2016. (Julian Assange's statement six months later that "our source
is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" remains uncontroverted.) Similarly,
there's no evidence that the Kremlin had anything to do with the $45,000 worth of Facebook ads
purchased by a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency – Robert
Mueller's 2018 indictment of the IRA was completely silent
on the subject of a Kremlin connection – and no evidence that the ads, which were
politically all over the map, had a remotely significant impact on the 2016 election.
All the rest is a classic CIA disinformation campaign aimed at drumming up anti-Russian
hysteria and delegitimizing anyone who fails to go along. And now Bernie Sanders is trying to
cover his derrière by hopping on board.
It won't work. Sanders will find himself having to take one loyalty oath after another as
the anti-Russia campaign flares anew. But it will never be enough, and he'll only wind up
looking tired and weak. Voters will opt for the supposedly more formidable Biden, who will end
up as a bug splat on the windshield of Donald Trump's speeding election campaign. With
impeachment no longer an issue, he'll be free to behave as dictatorially as he wishes as he
settles into his second term.
After inveighing against billionaire's wars, he'll find himself ensnared by the same
billionaire war machine. The trouble with Sanders is that he thinks he can win by playing by
the rules. But he can't because the rules are stacked against him. He'd know that if his
outlook was more radical. His problem is not that he's too much of a socialist. Rather, it's
that he's not enough.
U.S. President Donald Trump wants to destroy the nuclear agreement with Iran. He has
threatened the EU-3 poodles in Germany, Britain and France
with a 25% tariff on their car exports to the U.S. unless they end their role in the
JCPOA deal.
In their usual gutlessness the Europeans gave in to the blackmail. They
triggered the Dispute Resolution Mechanism of the deal. The mechanism foresees two 15
day periods of negotiations and a five day decision period after which any of the involved
countries can escalate the issues to the UN Security Council. The reference to the UNSC
would then lead to an automatic reactivation or "snapback" of those UN sanction against
Iran that existed before the nuclear deal was signed.
Iran is now countering the European move. Its Foreign Minister Javad Zarif
announced that Iran may leave the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT) if any of the European countries escalates the issue to the UNSC:
Zarif said that Iran is following up the late decision by European states to trigger the
Dispute Resolution Mechanism in the context of the JCPOA, adding that Tehran officially
started the discussion on the mechanism on May 8, 2018 when the US withdrew from the
deal.
He underlined that Iran sent three letters dated May 10, August 26 and November 2018
to the then EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, announcing in the latter that
Iran had officially triggered and ended the dispute resolution mechanism and thus would
begin reducing its commitments to the JCPOA.
However, Iran gave a seven-month opportunity to the European Union before it began
reducing its commitments in May 8, 2019 which had operational effects two months later,
according to Zarif.
Iran's top diplomat said that the country's five steps in compliance reduction would
have no similar follow-ups, but Europeans' measure to refer the case to the United
Nations Security Council may be followed by Tehran's decision to leave NPT as stated in
President Hassan Rouhani's May 2018 letter to other parties to the deal.
He stressed that all the steps are reversible if the European parties to the JCPOA
restore their obligations under the deal.
The Europeans certainly do not want Iran to leave the NPT. But as they are cowards and
likely to continue to submit themselves to Trump's blackmail that is what they will end up
with. Britain is the most likely country to move the issue to the UNSC as it is in urgent
need of a trade deal with the U.S. after leaving the EU. Cooke has piece at Strategic
Culture on Wurmser who may be the strategist behind Trump admin moves on Iran. Adds to this
piece by b.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/20/many-matryoska-dolls-america-way-imagining-iran/
"Well (big surprise), Wurmser has now been at work as the author of how to 'implode' and
destroy Iran. And his insight? "A targeted strike on someone like Soleimani"; split the
Iranian leadership into warring factions; cut an open wound into the flesh of Iran's
domestic legitimacy; put a finger into that open wound, and twist it; disrupt – and
pretend that the U.S. sides with the Iranian people, against its government."
Overall, the strategy looks to be aimed at weakening and disrupting Iran and removing
its allies in the region from the game before US strikes begin.
The downing of the Uki plane and Trump Pompeo immediately saying they were with the
Iranian people would fit very well into this strategy though it is not mentioned by
Crooke.
The Europeans certainly do not want Iran to leave the NPT. But as they are cowards and
likely to continue to submit themselves to Trump's blackmail that is what they will end
up with. Britain is the most likely country to move the issue to the UNSC as it is in
urgent need of a trade deal with the U.S. after leaving the EU.
We shouldn't humanize entire nations when analyzing geopolitics.
The Europeans are simply aware of the objective fact they are de facto occupied
countries thanks to the many de facto American bases scattered around Western and Central
Europe (Germany being the country with the most American bases in the world). They obey the
USA for the simple fact they are occupied by the USA.
That's why some neocarolingians/European nationalists mainly from Germany, France and
the Benelux (e.g. Macron, Juncker) avidly defend the creation of an European Army. You
don't need to be a geopolitics genius to infer the grave consequences such move would have
to the European peoples' welfare.
As long as NATO exists, Western Europe will remain firmly in American hands.
Besides, there's also the ideological factor.
Many Europeans still see today the USA as their "most illustrious child", their
continuation as the Western Civilization's center. New York is the new Paris+London. They
see themselves as the dwarf countries they really are and rationalize that, ultimately, it
is better to live under the hegemony of another Western nation than under the hegemony of
the "yellows" (i.e. Chinese) or the "slavics" (i.e. Russia). They really see themselves as
a true North Atlantic family, which share the same race and the same cultural values.
These Atlanticists are specially numerous in the UK, which is not surprising, given its
geographic location and the fact that it was indeed the country that founded the USA.
Of course Iran and what happens in Iraq are joined at the hip...
Professor Maranadi>
"Seyed Mohammad Marandi
@s_m_marandi
·
10m
Many believe an economic crisis lies ahead of the US & the timing of the crash will
determine the fate of Trump's re-election bid. However, another threat looms. If the US
fails to swiftly comply with Iraqi demands to end the occupation, the resistance will
become very violent."
and in Germany?
USA warnen: "Unmittelbar bevorstehender Angriff auf US-Militärs in Deutschland".
RT/D
"Pulling back" may suit the Clowns, but agreement requires more than that if there's to
be no child.
The Clowns are not contract capable. The only "deal" is for the imperial forces to leave
the ME... the only deal is action....Of one sort or another. The clowns imagine a glorious
victory over smoking ruins.
Fatwa or not, Iran must have the bomb, for the same reason NoKo had to build it. It's the
only way to lance the boil and move on from under the incessant threats from the United
States. We won't let up, even if it takes 100 years, and they have to know this. They do
have the engineering know how to do it; now they must, but they will have to be discrete
and stockpile enough 90% U235, then fiddle around with the details involved in assembling a
staged device with enough yield so it's understood by all. I expect this whole process will
now move forward.
One is reminded of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia in 1914: "As the German ambassador
to Vienna reported to his government on July 14, the [note] to Serbia is being composed so
that the possibility of its being accepted is practically excluded." As Churchill wrote at
the time: "it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world could accept it, or
that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor."
Many people refer to the European countries as 'occupied' (vk) and that is the reason they
submit to American policy. I don't believe that is the case. The number of troops is far
too small to 'occupy' a country that was resisting an occupation. Those troops were there
as a 'trigger' to initiate a conflict with the Soviet Union if it invaded Europe. These
days they are just there as some kind of vestigial legacy, and don't really mean anything.
The US exercises its control over the EU and elsewhere through its control of international
finance and trade. This system benefits the elite of those countries that are part of the
'empire', so has substantial support from influential people inside those countries. Unless
and until there is some groundswell of support among the peoples of those countries to
change that system, they will continue to be an obedient part of the US empire.
It's not even clear that resistance isn't futile. Those countries that want to maintain
independence like Russia, China, Iran, Turkey (?), India (?) also have a strong internal
attraction to Western 'culture'. As much as some denigrate that culture as shallow,
materialistic, and worthless, it seems to have a very universal attraction around the
World, particularly among the young. There are a lot of people everywhere that would like
to be a part of a global empire, with a hedonistic Western-style culture. Sad, but
true.
I tend to agree with comments here saying Iran needs to make bomb.
North Korea proved that truth 100%. No amount of agreements or "guarantees" with usual
lying suspects will provide security to Iran - only hard cold nuclear deterrence will.
This time, now, Iran has enough conventional & asymmetrical firepower to deter its
enemies long enough for it to develop nukes (few years?).
It already has proven means to deliver warheads, now it needs them.
I strongly concur with several other commentators here. Iran should immediately commence
enriching uranium to weapons grade levels and assemble at least 10-20 nuclear warheads ASAP
if they ever hope to remain an intact, non-US/Israeli dominated country.
The US understands ONLY raw power and who it perceives has it (Israel, North
Korea..etc.), and who doesn't (Libya, Syria, Iraq..etc.).
The NPT "Treaty" is nothing more than a cabal of nuclear armed countries attempting to
cartel who's allowed to posses a nuclear weapons arsenal and all the rest of the world
countries that's ultimately at their mercy.
"So, what does Iran actually gain by leaving the NPT?"
For one thing, it means they won't have to violate that treaty and international law if
they decide to take steps that wouldn't be allowed under the NPT terms. It's easy to look
at the lawless rogue US regime and forget this, but: some countries actually do try to have
some semblance of abiding by and respecting treaties and the rule of law.
I am always taken aback when people compare unsavory characters to members of the
primate family. Please do not engage in "zoomorphism." And I am dead fucking serious.
Animals do not deserve to be denigrated in such a way. Keep your insults grounded in the
human sphere.
The U.S. has already used that tactic of insisting on concessions known to be unacceptable
to the other side with the intention of causing war at least twice: to Japan in 1941 and to
Yugoslavia before the Kosovo War.
Does Iran really need a nuke? They have proven they can hit a US base and Saudi oil
infrastructure. It is believed they already have.... or at least have the capability of
mining the Strait of Hormuz. If the global financial elite can't get oil out of the gulf...
what happens to the global economy? My guess is it would implode. Isn't this the real and
only reason the US hasn't bombed Iran back to the stone age yet? They already have
deterrence. The US claims about restoring deterrence was just the projection of sociopaths
and psychopaths.
re:Cornelius von Hamb | Jan 20 2020 19:59 utc | 14
"For one thing, it means they won't have to violate that treaty and international law if
they decide to take steps that wouldn't be allowed under the NPT terms."
Iran says it won't develop nuclear weapons (anti Islamic), so what steps could they
possibly be not wanting to rule out?
The state of the JCPOA today bears a lot on Trump's negotiations with North Korea.
Kim Un Jung has be spooked by Bolton comparing North Korea's fate to Libya and by the ease
with which US withdrew from the JCPOA. Negotiations have halted.
Trump needs to show that he is serious with deals that he guaranties will be binding the
partners more seriously than the flawed JCPOA.
Iran has only one choice: Press Europe to take a stand against the USA, (which will
probably not happen) then pull out officially from the JCPOA that has become a liability
with no advantages and calls for re-negotiation. Trump will certainly jump in and will try
to get the best deal possible by squeezing Iran on its regional role. Yet he can't have too
excessive demands as he wants to make a similar deal with North Korea.
Iran could ask for withholding sanctions during negotiations. It could take years to
finalize the deal. In the meantime the regional situation could change greatly
That seems to be the only path for Iran.
According to what is said here, the US is still afraid of attacking Iran, and is going for
internal disruption, and sanctions. So what's new? It's been the same policy for forty
years. The fact that Trump doesn't like long-term wars, and will only go for a big bang
without consequences, is neither here nor there.
Rouhani and his team, including Zarif, seem to me pretty bright, and capable of coping
with the politics. Relighting nuclear refinement is essentially a political move.
Again, find it hard to believe that they are in fact such quisling sycophants to the
US.
Suspect they rely on Trump to provide cover for the fact that they (like him) are beholden
to higher powers.
The USE of WMDs is haram.
Words mean things B, much as the PC police have twisted their meanings,and even fatwas can
be reversed.
The frantic efforts to corral the USSRs nukes were never anything like 100% effective,500+
warheads and tonnes of
plutonium were NEVER accounted for from the KNOWN inventory,who knows what the unknown
inventory was ?
Generals of Rocket Forces had to eat,and there were willing buyers for their only
wares.
A CIA assessment I was made privy to,the old boys network for an opinion from outside,
claimed the Iranians did not have the ability to keep those warheads in working order,which
begs a question,how many ?
I told my old schoolmate they were wrong in their assessment, they've had the capability
since the Shahs nuclear program.I know Iran very well,worked and lived there ,during the
Shah times.
Money quote: "The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these
fraudulent investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance."
Notable quotes:
"... For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others are tenaciously withholding evidence. ..."
"... When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over 340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was incriminating. No rational person would believe that. ..."
"... The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a defender of FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court. They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want. ..."
"... Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, " there is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election ..."
"... Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story. Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing. ..."
Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that
power. In their minds, they have a right to control our lives as they see fit, with complete
indifference to our wishes. To avoid rebellion, they need to hide this fact as much as
possible. They want the citizens to believe the lie that we are a nation of laws with equal
justice under the law. To advance this lie, they have staged many theatrical productions that
they call "investigations". They try to give us the impression that they want to expose the
facts and punish wrongdoing.
Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they
pretended to be. The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or
Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's
whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.
There are
three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.
The first type is the rare honest investigation . Examples would be the attempt to find
the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's
gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's
weaponizing of government). In response to real investigations, the criminals do two
things lie and hide evidence. Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears.
In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the
scheme was just "lost". The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives
had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could
not be provided.
For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating
procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end
of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my
memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others
are tenaciously
withholding evidence.
The second type of 'investigation' is when the Deep State pretends to investigate the
Deep State . In these 'investigations' the outcome is known in advance, but the script calls
for pretending, sometimes for years, that it an honest investigation is underway.
There was nothing about the Hillary investigations that had anything to do with finding
facts. The purpose from the beginning was exoneration. Key witnesses were given immunity
and many were allowed to attend each other's interviews. There were no early morning swat
team raids to gather evidence. Evidence was destroyed with no consequences.
When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over
340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about
finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York
agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very
quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was
incriminating. No rational person would believe that.
The dirty cops are so comfortable about getting away with lies like this that Huber can
announce that he found no corruption, when it is readily apparent that he did not interview
key witnesses . He even turned away whistleblowers
who wanted to submit evidence. A real investigator, Charles Ortel, could have given Huber a
long list of Clinton Foundation crimes
. Like the Weiner laptop fake investigation, you don't find crimes if you don't really look
for them.
The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they
just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a
defender of
FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court.
They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want.
IG
investigations have proven to be flimsy exonerations of Deep State criminality. Any
honest observer can see that there was a carefully organized plan by top officials to
control the outcome of the Presidential election. This corrupt plan involved lying to the
FISA court, illegal surveillance and unmasking of citizens and conspiring with media
partners to make sure lies were widely circulated to voters. The government conspirators
and the majority of the media were functioning as nothing more than a branch of Hillary's
campaign. That's a lot of power aimed at destroying Trump.
To an IG investigator, this monumental scandal was presented to us as nothing to be very
concerned about. Yes, a few minor rules were inadvertently broken and there did appear to
be some bias, but there was no reason at all to think that bias effected any actions. If
the agencies involved make a training video and set aside a day for a training meeting,
then that should satisfy us completely.
The third type of investigation involves investigating an imaginary crime for political
reasons . The Mueller investigation and the impeachment investigation are two examples of
this. Probably as a justification for illegal surveillance they were already doing, the
conspirators pretended that there was powerful evidence that Trump was colluding with Putin
to win the election. Lies about this issue propelled the country into 3 years of stories
about nothing stories and investigations about something that never happened. Never in the
history of nothing has nothing been so thoroughly covered.
Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, "
there
is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to
prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media
partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat
team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very
un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian
troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the
desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to
favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election .
Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort
failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority
in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary
crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that
allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story.
Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing.
The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these fraudulent
investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance.
We are increasingly angry that there is a double standard of justice in this country. There
is a protected class of people who are not prosecuted for their crimes. This needs to end.
The sheeple are easily led including the opposition sheeple. Two quick examples:
1. In the email scandal, Hillary was guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of violating the
FOIA by conducting all State Department business via a personal email She was guilty. Yet her
team, listen up sheeple, her team made it about whether or not classified information was
transmitted. This is a gray area which could be defended. She knew she was guilty of the FOIA
violation because it was the whole reason the server was set up in the first place. Yet she
got away with it because everyone focused on the classifications of emails which was a gray
area.
2. In the Weiner / Abedin laptop matter, it is and was illegal for any of these emails to
be on a personal computer. Again, guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet again everyone
focused on what was in the emails and not the fact that just possessing the emails was
illegal. So the FBI was able to say nothing new here and let it drop. If another group such
as the US Marshals was in charge of this investigation, Weiner / Abedin would have been fully
charged with possessing these emails. They would have been pressured to reveal why it was
named Insurance and have been asked to cut a deal.
The purpose of show trials is to fool those that don't pay attention. There are millions
of US citizens that get their news from their neighbor or a narrow set of information that is
disseminated by media that parrot their providers verbatim without challenge. Such people are
quite regularly fooled and some vote.
The double standard justice system in America is appalling and even worse than communists.
Americans really don’t have any credit to criticize communist countries. The ruling
class is no better than them.
The media and ruling classes have tried decades to brainwashed the mass to believe that
the less or even not corrupted.
They could have never pulled off the JFK assassination had the internet existed back in
1963. Time for the Epstein *********** to be posted on the internet. Even the asleep would
realize the unimaginable evil that has been controlling this world for millenia.
I am not sure about that,,we have the net now,,and although there are many of us that pay
attention and figure out their crimes and hoax's,,,,they still get away with them,,,,,,NASA
still gets 59 million a day to fake the space program,,,
Why not? They pulled off 9/11. And what do we have? The same as with the JFK murder.
People still arguing over how it was done, and ignoring the obvious, historically established
now, of who benefited and why. Grassy knoll, 2nd shooter, or directed energy weapons or
explosives, internet or not, still chasing the tail.
American interests are to protect oil companies, and fight the inevtible douche (british
definition) American's will feel once the dollar is deflated. In a lesser way, wars and
interventions are indeed to protect americans – from a massive, sudden, econimic
depression of the likes the world has never seen. China and the rest of the world no American
empire is going to retract. I only hope we have a sensible leader who can parlay Ameria's
role in the world to become a partner in the BRI – ion some way.
The Asia Pivot was never destined to be anything but bluster. Asia is lost, the Asian
nations will satellite around China. Southeast Asia is even more lost, Cambodia mioght as
well fly the Chinese flag, Thailand will pretend, as it always has, to never have been
colonized. Well, Thailand was/is a dog of a nation that's laid down on its back for every
nation advancing on it's border.
Myanmar just signed on to the BRI and has given China its derired dams. It's already full
of Chinese. The only thing holding China back in Myanmar is the amount of money it has to
give spoon to the military, generals, cronies,etc. China already owns almost all of Manadaly
and thousands of square milies surrounding Mandalay. It has gas and oil fields in a warm
water where those pesky Bengali Jihadis once tried to dominate.
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-china-sign-dozens-deals-bri-projects-cooperation-xis-visit.html
So, it's no wonder Iraq is the last stop of the retreat from the Middle East. The Chinese
are moving forward with only the Saudis standing in the way. And who the hell really likes
the House of Saud? They're doomed soon, and good riddence. The Iraqis want American out, and
one day American will leave.
"During the Iran-Iraq war Iraq's Saddam Hussein ordered the use of chemical weapons
against Iranian front lines and cities. Ten thousand Iranians died of those and many more
were wounded by them"
Nope, in fact the estimate body count is much higher:
"According to a 2002 article in the Star-Ledger, 20,000 Iranian combatants and combat
medics were killed on the spot by nerve gas." (this was only a part, there were also many
civilians killed)
"In a declassified 1991 report, the CIA estimated that Iran had suffered more than 50,000
casualties from Iraq's use of several chemical weapons,[10] though current estimates are more
than 100,000"
"Reporter Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post stated that Reagan's administration was
well aware that the materials sold to Iraq would be used to manufacture chemical weapons for
use in the war against Iran"
"According to Reagan's foreign policy, every attempt to save Iraq was necessary and
legal.[4]"
All of this is in the wikipedia, hardly a "hardcore iranian trolls" web:
Some people, in the US, still do not understand why Iranian people do not "love"
America...If you had around 100.000 casualties by nerve gas that was sold by the US and his
poodles (forget other western countries, you know who is "the boss" in the game) full aligned
with Iraq, and then you attack Iran with sanctions and threats again and again, and at the
peak of hypocrisy in 2003 USA invaded Iraq "to counter the threat of WMD" (sold by the
US)...What do you think of the US if you are an Iranian were living all your live under the
"Damocles sword" of the threats and sactions of the Empire?
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Jan 20 2020 21:48 utc | 38
Let me see if I understand your point:
First US give permissions in September 1980 (if not encouraged) to Saddam to invade Iran,
to finish the new Islamic regime that was seen as an enemy by Washington; and then when
Iranians, at a huge costs, retaliates and turn the tide, then the US thought it was justified
to supply Iraq with the chemicals (the "dual-use" technology) to make huge amounts of nerve
gases and support the use against Iranian soldiers (with some unavoidable thousands of
"collateral damages"), and also helping them with intelligence, satellite imagery and
etc...Is that your point?
Do you think US would have permitted Iraq attacks Iran if the Shah was governing Iran? Do
you think all the US did is justified? Do you think the people of Iran has no reasons for not
"loving" America?
The US has turned into such a fake bullshit nation that nothing the people say who run the
place can be trusted. It is totally a Masonic land where money is God and the decent people
are exploited and oppressed. Free speech and democracy are only kosher if the issue is
something like Pooper-Scooper Enforcement Officer with no real money or power involved,
unless of course there is an impressive uniform which goes with the position.
The brainwashed masses are presently transfixed to their TV's watching the theatre of the
fake-impeachment pageant unfold, dutifully believing it is all real. All the performers strut
about keeping to their carefully-scripted lines. Like the establishment-hatched fake
Russia-bashing campaign, it is all theater. With the impeachment drama intended the polarize
the entire nation, the people are once-again being caresully herded into their red and blue
stalls in ensure nothing really populist, and not controlled by the establishment cabal
running things, gets off of the ground. the entire performance will be so carefully
choreographed, on a pro and anti Trump basis that it will also ensure that whomever the
ruling cabal anoints will be chosen for the top puppet job.
Like in the US midterm elections in 2018, issues involving US foreign policy were mum. In
the coming presidential election, Americans will see no real difference in the leading
contenders' position regarding foreign affairs, which most Americans in any case now believe
should be left to the military and the agencies who know best how to protect and advance
their interests. Once again, any real discussion or debate on foreign policy during the
coming election campaign will be taboo, and with the careful censorship of the alternate
media, and with no real protest from the American people, who in fact become willing
accomplices to any further unjust wars and atrocities their so-called "free" nation
commits.
Americans are brought up on Hollywood imagery, life-styles and fantasy. The corporate
media and entertainment industry is so pervasive that most of the people cannot discern the
difference between fantasy and reality, and as result of their constantly-fed addiction, they
now demand more and more theatre and even wars to satisfy their cravings. A false-flag
attack, 9/11, on their own people coming from their diabolical "owners", results in being no
more than a thrilling performance to make life seem more real. If there was any reality to
the people they would long ago have arrested the thousands of insider perps involved,
(especially deep-state ones in and out of the US), and long ago they would hung everyone of
them.
I would put it a bit differently. Trump's erraticness is a strong signal he fits to a pattern the Russians have used to depict
the US: "not agreement capable". That's what I meant by he selects for weak partners. His negotiating style signals that he is
a bad faith actor. Who would put up with that unless you had to, or you could somehow build that into your price?
I have no idea who your mythical Russians are. I know two people who did business in Russia before things got stupid and they
never had problems with getting paid. Did you also miss that "Russians" have bought so much real estate in London that they mainly
don't live in that you could drop a neutron bomb in the better parts of Chelsea and South Kensington and not kill anyone?
Pray tell, how could they acquire high end property if they are such cheats?
"It is politically important: Russia has paid off the USSR's debt to a country that no longer exists," said Mr Yuri Yudenkov,
a professor at the Russian University of Economics and Public Administration. "This is very important in terms of reputation:
the ability to repay on time, the responsibility," he told AFP.
It would have been very easy for Russia to say it cannot be held responsible for USSR's debts, especially in this case where
debt is to a non-existent entity.
In Syria, the Department of Defense was supporting one group of pet jihadis. The CIA was supporting a different group of pet
jihadis.
At times the two groups of pet jihadis were actively fighting each other. I am not sure how the DoD and CIA felt about their
respective pet jihadis fighting each other. However they felt, they kept right on arming and supporting their respective
groups ...
Looks like Trump engaged his chances for reelection by killing Soleimani: he lost part of military votes and all anti-war-republican
votes in one broad stroke. The core voters will remain but the question is whether there are enough of them. Please remember that part
of sunders supports also voted for Trump. This will never happen again. Add to this desgrunted famers and Trump chances are considerably
lower then in 2016, when his victory was a big surprise.
Due to impeachment his chances will increase, as impeachment definitely mobilize his base and he might even manage to
get back some anti-war republican s and independents, but still his situation is rather complex. The impartment charged produced
by the Schiff-Pelosi gang are fake and people understand that. The real impeachment ground -- killing high level Iran military
officer on diplomatic mission as well as Douma false flag bombing of Syrian objects -- exists, but Dems are too complicit to use it.
"... Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between Germany's behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and externally. ..."
"... The argument is correct. (Although the mafia label bespeaks a limited frame of reference and it's inappropriate in any event -- crime families do not have the reach or power of state assassination squads.) ..."
"... The truth of it is Trump murdered General Soleimani because the general was very effective in defeating ISIS - the U.S. created and funded - terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The neocons were none too pleased. ..."
"... In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as gangsternomics in directing the course of Iraq's future economic and political development.[/] ..."
"... Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S. It is the fulcrum now on which the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests. The entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S. ..."
"... Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in Syria cannot be hidden behind the false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/] ..."
"... Gangsternomics seems a good term for Trump's vision of US world power. Trump is pragmatic or realist in that he knows there is no court or authority to hold the US to account. ..."
"... This demonstrates that US attacks in Iraq over the last 30-40 years was mostly about the control (including transportation routes) and than profiting from its oil and gas reserves. ..."
"... A secondary reason is to put troop on the border with Iran to further destabilize it via state terrorism to overthrow the government and then take its oil and gas too. ..."
"... The Kurdish President of Iraq has stated that "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and preserve civil peace, I apologize for not naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued. "I am ready to submit my resignation to parliament." ..."
"... "Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that Iraqis stage a "million-man march" against the continued US military presence in the country" ..."
"... I believe Trump needs to be thought of as a CEO brought in to pull a company back from the edge of bankruptcy. I think that is the way he sees himself, and as I have put in previous comments, there are no rules. ..."
"... Basically, the value of the dollar that is low enough to re-industrialize America is far below the tipping point that would trigger a global sell-off of dollars. How could that mass sell-off be prevented? Threatening to nuke any country whose central bank sells their dollar reserves? ..."
"... the Gangsternomics have been going on for some time as chronicled in 'Shock Doctrine' and 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman'. ..."
"... the assassination plans and techniques by the exceptionalists... just ask the Cuban aides of Fidel Castro. Most of them alive today. They have a a helluva expertise on this business having foiled them for over 45 years. Against all odds cause at 90 miles from the enemy, the logistics were vastly against the cubans. ..."
Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between Germany's behaviour under Hitler
and the current behaviour of the US both internally and externally. Is it just me, or have other's noted the similarity of
Pompeo to Herman Goering in looks and behaviour?
"This is not a Warning, it is a Threat," Trump declared in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, adding that Iran will "pay a very
BIG PRICE" for the embassy siege earlier in the day."
They sure did. So who is next? Yesterday Trump warned the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khameni:
US President Donald Trump has warned the supreme leader of Iran to watch his language, following a heated sermon in which Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei slammed American leaders as "clowns."
Leading a prayer in Tehran on Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boasted that
Iran had the "spirit to slap an arrogant, aggressive global power" in its retaliation to the assassination of Quds Force commander
Qassem Soleimani, which he said struck a "serious blow" to Washington's "dignity" – triggering a response from the US president.
"The so-called 'Supreme Leader' of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United
States and Europe," Trump tweeted. "Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with
his words!"
In his sermon, Khamenei blasted "American clowns," who he said "lie in utter viciousness that they stand with the Iranian
people," referring to recent comments by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Lets face it, assassinations are not a new thing. It became more organized with Lord Palmerstons gangs of thugs in the mid 19th
century (one of which took out Lincoln) . Since the end of WWII the global mafia jumped across the pond and assassinations have
been covert actions arranged by the CIA , with operations having a high degree of plausible deniability. But most higher ups had
a pretty good idea who was behind it . Trumps just continued this but like Bush and Obama have made clear its their right to do
so against terrorists . Of course the definition of terrorist has become rather broad. Trump recently said he authorized the hit
because he said bad things about America. Maybe saying bad things about Trump can get you labelled the same. Watch out for those
drones barflies.
So basically the main change is they no longer care about plausible deniability . They are proud to admit it. And nobody seems
to care enough to express any outrage. Name any countries leader who has except in muted terms. Europe, Russia, China, etc everyone
quiet as a mouse. China so outraged they signed a trade deal giving them nothing. UN? Might as well move it to Cuba , Iran or
Venezuela for all the clout it has.
So you know, maybe the deterrence is working. Terrorism works both ways. The world seems terrorized and hardly anyone in the
US dares criticize Trumps action without saying the general was evil and deserved it. Its not just drones they fear as financial
terrorism (sanctions, denied access to USD) works quite well also (except in Irans case).
The argument is correct. (Although the mafia label bespeaks a limited frame of reference and it's inappropriate in any
event -- crime families do not have the reach or power of state assassination squads.)
Ferencz does not have the moral standing to make the argument. It's like granting Ted Bundy credibility for criticizing
police brutality.
The truth of it is Trump murdered General Soleimani because the general was very effective in defeating ISIS - the U.S. created
and funded - terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The neocons were none too pleased.
Release Jan.18 2020 21st centurywire audio Interview with Dr. Mohammad Marandi, Tehran University
@ ChasMark 7 - not an ounce of integrity! Trump or Ferencz?
How is it I posted days ago that link to Ferencz's letter to New York Times and not a pips. Are you defending Trump's war crimes
as against bringing the Nazis to justice?
How about the U.S. waterboarding and torturing Muslims at Gitmo? 19 years on with NO TRIALS!!! That's OK, right?
As far as b's premise goes, he's proven it IMO. Looks like the CIA made the next move in Lebanon. IMO, Asia plus Russia & Belarus
hold the geoeconomic and geopolitical deterrence cards. The Financial Parasite continues hollowing out what remains of US industry
and retail helped along by Trump's Trade War. I presented the fundamental economic info and arguments on the prior threads, so
I don't have anything to add.
the price of fake freedom is remaining ever vigilant to prevent peace breaking out. trump's as much a warmonger as any of them
(which is to say impeachment won't make a bit of difference).
[Before] the US assassination of Soleimani, there were numerous back-channel efforts for détente in the costly wars that
have raged across the region since the US-instigated Arab Spring between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran and Iraq. Russia and
China have both in different ways been playing a key role in changing the geopolitical tensions. At this juncture the credibility
of Washington as any honest partner is effectively zero if not minus.
[.] The US president just tweeted his support for renewed anti-government Iran protests, in Farsi. We are clearly in for
some very nasty trouble in the Middle East as Washington tries to deal with the unintended consequences of its recent Middle
East actions.[.]
Run home as fast as you can. In this election year, an observation; 10% of companies are losing money but thanks to the Feds,
the Markets are making ATH ...all time highs. On main street Joe and Jane are in a well of hurt "it's the economy, stupid."
There is nothing ambiguous about Pompeo's statement. It is evidence of a profound psychotic break. It is a megalomaniac delusion
of godlike power, a deterance not attainable on a human scale. "In all cases, we have to do this."
The masters of the universe will kill those who do not comply. The projection of their psychic power to intimidate the world
goes well beyond Iraq and Iran, brushing aside all the little insubstantial nations that are constantly underfoot. Russia and
China are to take heed now, it is they too who must sleep with one eye open. The deterrence necessary to keep us all safe means
to go ahead and challenge those islands China built in the South China Sea.
The smiling villains do not accept that Crimea is part of Russia. Pompeo compares Soleimani to bin Laden. There are so many
departures from reality in the speech amidst all the levity that it seems like someone has opened the doors of the Asylum.
In the Orwellian value system of America, Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really NewSpeak for America's brazen war crimes,
wars of aggression, and shredding of international law.
America is a mafia nation masquerading as a democracy.
And Donald Trump is a two-bit New York mafioso don in charge of this America Mafia state.
Trump recounts minute by minute details of Soleimani assassination at a fundraiser held at his Florida resort. Cause that's what
normal people do; brag about murdering someone. I'll bet his fat cat Zionist friends emptied their coffers. SICK.
ak74 @62: Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really NewSpeak ...
Exactly. And we might add:
"America First" means America is the Empire's Fist;
"Stand with the people of " is 'New World Order' psyop;
"Economic sanctions" is the economic part of hybrid warfare;
"War on terror" is the war on ALL enemies of the empire via terrorist destabilization;
"Russiagate" is McCarthyist war on dissent;
"Trump" is the latest dear leader whose flaws are blessings and whose 'gut instinct' is God's will. We know this
because his fake enemies (like the Democrats, "fake news", and ISIS) always fail when they confront him.
!!
tjfxh , Jan 19 2020 3:54 utc |
76 Why does anyone gives either the president or US officials credence regarding what they say, especially Secretary Pompeo,
not to mention POTUS? Taking Pompeo at this word and responding to it strikes me as a waste of time. These people are never going
to say publicly what they are up to, which is world domination. Nor is it their own ideal. This has been the policy of the US
elite at least since WWII, which was simply a transfer of the seat of power from London to Washington as the British Empire morphed
into the Anglo-American Empire. Global domination through sea power was British policy for centuries and the US just recently
joining the game, especially when the game expanded to air power as well. Arguably, this goes back to the end of WWI, if not the
Spanish-American war that embarked the US on empire.
Deterrence, I guess is the politically correct term for what Trump is doing. He sees that the Dollar hegemonic empire was crumbling
same as most who don't rely on MSM for their news. Trump believes US can hold its position in the world through pure military
power, or the threat of military power.
He wants to regain what he calls importance from early 90s when US was sole undisputed superpower. Iran though, he believes
is a blot on USA's past that needs erasing. Throughout the election campaign, Trump's big thing was rebuilding US military. He
believes this will restore US power in the world. Ruling through the world fear rather than soft power and blackmail.
The basis of the American Empire and its parasitic economy and Way of Life(TM) itself are premised on what should be called America's
Dollar Dictatorship.
Because of the US Dollar, America is able to wage economic siege warfare (aka economic sanctions) on multiple nations around
the planet--all in order to impose the Land of the Free's imperial dictates on them.
This is American global gangsterism in everything but name--and disguised behind the founding American deceptions of "Freedom
and Democracy."
The vast majority Americans--including some fake "alternative media" shills--will attempt to spindoctor this issue by avoiding
such blunt description of this system.
Instead, they prefer to employ Orwellian euphemisms about the "US PetroDollar" or the "US Dollar Reserve Currency" or how America's
superpower status is dependent on this dollar syistem.
But former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accurately calls out this system for what it is: America's global dictatorship
of the Dollar.
This is another reason why America has such hatred for Iran:
Tom Luongo, who frequently cites b, has coined a new word for Trump's and his minions tactics. Tom asks:
Does Gangsternomics Meet its End in the Iraqi Desert?
In the aftermath of the killing of Iranian IRGC General Qassem Soleimani a lot of questions hung in the air. The big one was,
in my mind, "Why now?"
There are a lot of angles to answer that question. Many of them were supplied by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi
who tried to let the world know through official (and unofficial) channels of the extent of the pressure he was under by the
U.S.
In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as gangsternomics in directing the course
of Iraq's future economic and political development.[/]
Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S. It is the fulcrum now on which
the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests. The entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S.
And this started with Russia moving into Syria in 2015 successfully. We are downstream of this as it has blown open the
playbook and revealed it for how ugly it is.
Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in Syria cannot be hidden behind the
false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/]
What began in Syria with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China standing up together and saying, "No," continues today in Iraq.
To this point Iran has been the major actor. Tomorrow it will be Russia, China and India.
And that is what is ultimately at stake here, the ability of the U.S. to employ gangsternomics in the Middle East and make
it stick.[.]
By the time Trump is done threatening people over S-400's and pipelines the entire world will be happy to trade in yuan
and/or rubles rather than dollars.[.]
Thanks. Gangsternomics seems a good term for Trump's vision of US world power. Trump is pragmatic or realist in that he
knows there is no court or authority to hold the US to account.
As to US holding power purely through military power, that can only happen long term if he gets hold of a good chunk of the
worlds energy reserves (as in Persian gulf and Venezuela oil). If he doesn't achieve that, then the US goes down. Iran needs to
ensure it stays under Russia's nuclear umbrella as there are no rules.
Sickening series of Trump interviews and speeches demanding that Iraq pay America and its allies over a trillion dollars for liberating
Iraq (time stamp 8:20 to 12:00).
This demonstrates that US attacks in Iraq over the last 30-40 years was mostly about the control (including transportation
routes) and than profiting from its oil and gas reserves.
A secondary reason is to put troop on the border with Iran to further destabilize it via state terrorism to overthrow the
government and then take its oil and gas too.
It will get interesting when a pro Iranian new Prime minister takes office and China offers Iraq a line of credit equivalent
to the funds that would be frozen in Western bank accounts if Iraq actually demands the troops to leave.
"The Iran-linked Binaa parliamentary voting bloc has nominated Asaad al-Edani, a former minister and governor of oil-rich Basra
province. Binaa's bloc is mostly made up of the Fatah party led by militia leader turned politician Hadi al-Ameri, who is close
to Tehran."
The Kurdish President of Iraq has stated that "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and preserve civil peace, I apologize
for not naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued. "I am ready to submit my resignation to parliament."
Currently, the rival Sairoon bloc, headed by populist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said it would not participate in the process
of nominating a new premier."
However, "Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that Iraqis stage a "million-man march" against the continued US military
presence in the country"
I close with a visionary French rock opera Starmania "story of an alternate reality where a fascist millionaire (read Trump)
famous for building skyscrapers is running for president on an anti-immigration policy, and where the poor are getting more and
more desperate for their voices to be heard."
2. Lebensraum was indeed a specific war aim of Hitler;
3. Under the Shah Anglo-American (not mention Dutch, French and other) interests skimmed all Iranian energy resources, kept the
USSR under pressure on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and provided a key friendly power in the most important region of
central Asia. Petro-dollar supremacy could not have been established without control of the Persian Gulf. The Persian elite
were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know what the rest get.
The Persian elite were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know what the rest get.
Not just the elite. Persian middle class was pretty well off too. Spending vacation in Europe was easy, quite affordable. Not
any more. I know I know, those dang sanctions... well that is what you get when you piss off the big dawg.
psychedelicatessen "Thinking he's successfully rebuilt the U.S. military could be the single most critical failure of his presidency."
I would be in agreement on the overall gist of your reply, but on Trump thinking he's successfully rebuilt the US military,
I'm not so sure. He is a pragmatic gangster when it comes to world affairs which is why his Nuclear Posture Review lowered the
threshold of first use of nukes. b's previous post on 'How Trump rebelled against the generals' also fits in with this line of
thought.
I believe Trump needs to be thought of as a CEO brought in to pull a company back from the edge of bankruptcy. I think
that is the way he sees himself, and as I have put in previous comments, there are no rules.
I had thought Trump may be adverse to pure terrorism but depending on what comes of the Ukie airliner shootdown in Iran, there
may be absolutely no rules as far as Trump is concerned.
The attack on Solemani had little or nothing to do with policy, it was an attempt to distract from the other scandals coming to
light with the opening of his Senate trial by provoking hostilities with Iran.
Peter AU1 @103: "Monetary collapse as in low US$ but not US economic collapse"
I wonder how that could be arranged? There are far more US$ sitting in bank vaults as reserves and investment hedges than there
are in circulation. If the dollar goes low enough to bring manufacturing home then it will also be low enough to no longer be
a sound or wise investment in and of itself. Wise bankers and investors will attempt to realign their portfolios if the dollar
shows signs of dropping like that.
Basically, the value of the dollar that is low enough to re-industrialize America is far below the tipping point that would
trigger a global sell-off of dollars. How could that mass sell-off be prevented? Threatening to nuke any country whose central
bank sells their dollar reserves?
As I see it, the dollar's value stays high or it tanks totally. I don't see how there could be a moderate balance point in
between these extremes. There are just too many dollars in the world.
Likklemore @ 83. thanks for the great article by Tom Luongo.
Of course the Gangsternomics have been going on for some time as chronicled in 'Shock Doctrine' and 'Confessions of an
Economic Hitman'.
But as Trump has often done, probably mostly by mistake, he has brought these actions more clearly into the public eye.
This in combination with the new power dominance of Russia, China and Iran is definitely leading to a new reality.
---------
I like this quote from Perkins' 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman'
""Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990s we entered a period of remarkable transition. At monasteries
in the Himalayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and the indigenous reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon
to the peaks of the Andes and into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment
in human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.
The titles and words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third Millennium, the Age
of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and the commencement of new ones. Despite the varying
terminologies, however; they have a great deal in common, and "The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" is typical. It states
that back in the mists of history; human societies divided and took two different paths: that of the condor (representing the
heart, intuitive and mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain, rational and material). In the 1490s, the prophecy
said, the two paths would converge and the eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years
later, in the 1990s, a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and the eagle will have the opportunity to reunite and
fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept this opportunity, they will create a most
remarkable offspring, unlike any ever seen before.
"The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" can be taken at many levels - the standard interpretation is that it foretells the
sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of science, the balancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern
and southern cultures. However, most powerful is the message if offers about consciousness; it says that we have entered a
time when we can benefit from the many diverse ways of seeing ourselves and the world, and that we can use these as a springboard
to higher levels of awareness. As human beings, we can truly wake up and evolve into a more conscious species.
The condor people of the Amazon make it seem so obvious that if we are to address questions about the nature of what it
is to be human in this new millennium, and about our commitment to evaluating our intentions for the next several decades,
then we need to open our eyes and see the consequences of our actions - the actions of the eagle - in places like Iraq and
Ecuador. We must shake ourselves awake. We who live in the most powerful nation history has ever known must stop worrying so
much about the outcome of soap operas, quarterly balance sheets, and the daily Dow Jones average, and must instead reevaluate
who we are and where we want our children to end up. The alternative to stopping to ask ourselves the important questions is
simply too dangerous.""
---------------------
Now that Trump has, probably inadvertently, helped open our eyes I see Tulsi Gabbard as the best person to help us fit in to
a more multipolar world in a more responsible manner.
Damascene, as to the assassination plans and techniques by the exceptionalists... just ask the Cuban aides of Fidel Castro.
Most of them alive today. They have a a helluva expertise on this business having foiled them for over 45 years. Against all odds
cause at 90 miles from the enemy, the logistics were vastly against the cubans.
As to the purposeful intent of bringing more pressure to foes in the future... just recall what happened to Muammar Khadafi.
After the attempt to blow up his family tent in the desert he fairly but surely managed to build up FRIENDSHIP with the bosses
of France, Italy and UK.
To no avail, since the rest if history. The lesson has been learned.
Condoleeza Rice on the 2006 War on Lebanon ( quoted by Qassem Soleimani in the interview posted above..): "These are the "birth
pangs" of the Middle East"....
Trump has been a kind of part deranged, part clever political monkey wrench thrown into the
works of the USA military machine
Notable quotes:
"... I begin with the premise that the United States is a longstanding cultural catastrophe, and is far along the way in the process of destroying itself, after having destroyed or damaged the prospects of much of the planet. ..."
"... Within the context of the attack on Indochina, on the ground and taking place within the spaces left alive after the B52 bombers et al, there was the 'Phoenix Program'. euphemism for the CIA's ambitious program of technocratic torture, assassination, bribery, corruption, and so on, with tens of thousands of murdered victims. And the military destroyed uncounted villages, a la My Lai. ..."
"... Note then that Trump has almost patented the 'fake news' meme. The idea that the msm is lying about and hiding the truth, non-stop propaganda, is an idea that Trump has pushed repeatedly. Most people on the MofA etc are well aware of that. But for many 'normies', that's not quite as obvious. ..."
"... And yes, he himself could be described as the liar in chief. But doesn't deflect from the great collapse in the status of the msm propaganda machine. And that propaganda machine has been very much associated with the CIA via operation Mockingbird and its generations long progeny. ..."
"... So the attack on the media via fake news is a direct attack on the basic indispensable control mechanism of the deep state, and CIA. ..."
"... Note too that after three Years of Trump, the long standing criminality and corruption of the FBI has never looked as obvious. Again, we don't have to give Trump credit. But it happened on his 'watch'. ..."
"... We're not talking miracle cures here. But Trump has been a kind of part deranged, part clever political monkey wrench thrown into the works. As to whether his disruptive arrival has provided openings for more sensible political and cultural innovations remains to be seen. ..."
"... Many of the internal difficulties that the US faces are distinct from militarism, but related to militarism in the sense that a police state keeping control via surveillance and bs, etc, and spending its money on empire, is not going to prioritize clear honest discourse. In the end, one overarching question for the US like the rest of us is: can we achieve honesty and common sense? ..."
Previously, most discussions of the Trump presidency reflexively proceeded to either visceral
disgust etc or accolades of some species. Trumps words and manners dominated. As things
developed, and actual results were recorded, a body of more sober second thought developed.
And a variation on these more experience/reality based assessments is what b has delivered
above.
Some of my points that follow are repeats, some are new. On the whole I see Trump as a
helpful and positive-result really bad President.
I begin with the premise that the United States is a longstanding cultural
catastrophe, and is far along the way in the process of destroying itself, after having
destroyed or damaged the prospects of much of the planet.
As one aspect of this cultural catastrophe, let's refer back to the United States attack
on Indochina, which accomplished millions of dead and millions of wounded people, and birth
defects still in uncounted numbers as a legacy of dioxin etc laden chemical warfare. The
millions of dead included some tens of thousands of American soldiers, and even more wounded
physically, and even more wounded 'mentally'.
Within the context of the attack on Indochina, on the ground and taking place within
the spaces left alive after the B52 bombers et al, there was the 'Phoenix Program'. euphemism
for the CIA's ambitious program of technocratic torture, assassination, bribery, corruption,
and so on, with tens of thousands of murdered victims. And the military destroyed uncounted
villages, a la My Lai.
When asked what it was all about, Kissinger lied in an inadvertently illuminating way:
"basically nothing" was how he put it, if memory serves.
During and after the attack on Indochina, the US trained, aided, financed, etc active
death squads in Central and South America, demonstrating that the United States was an equal
opportunity death dealer.
Now this was a bit of a meander away from the Trump topic, but note that Trump came to
power within the above cultural context and much more pathology besides, talking about ending
the warfare state. Again, this is not an attempt to portray Trump as either sincere or
insincere in that policy. In terms of ideas, it was roughly speaking a good idea.
Another main part of the Trump message was 'let's rebuild America'. And along with the
de-militarization and national program of rejuvenation there was the 'drain the swamp' meme,
which again resonated. And once again, I am not arguing that Trump was sincere, or for that
matter insincere. That's irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make: which could essentially
by reduced to: what will be the actual meaning and potential impact of Trump?
Note then that Trump has almost patented the 'fake news' meme. The idea that the msm
is lying about and hiding the truth, non-stop propaganda, is an idea that Trump has pushed
repeatedly. Most people on the MofA etc are well aware of that. But for many 'normies',
that's not quite as obvious.
And yes, he himself could be described as the liar in chief. But doesn't deflect from
the great collapse in the status of the msm propaganda machine. And that propaganda machine
has been very much associated with the CIA via operation Mockingbird and its generations long
progeny.
So the attack on the media via fake news is a direct attack on the basic indispensable
control mechanism of the deep state, and CIA.
Note too that after three Years of Trump, the long standing criminality and corruption
of the FBI has never looked as obvious. Again, we don't have to give Trump credit. But it
happened on his 'watch'.
Now the deep cultural, including political, pathology in the United States, in its many
manifestations remain. We're not talking miracle cures here. But Trump has been a kind of
part deranged, part clever political monkey wrench thrown into the works. As to whether his
disruptive arrival has provided openings for more sensible political and cultural innovations
remains to be seen.
The frantic attempt to deflect attention from and give mainly derisive media coverage to
Tulsi Gabbard is a case in point. Is she the harbinger of a growing political movement aiming
to dismantle the military empire project?
Many of the internal difficulties that the US faces are distinct from militarism, but
related to militarism in the sense that a police state keeping control via surveillance and
bs, etc, and spending its money on empire, is not going to prioritize clear honest discourse.
In the end, one overarching question for the US like the rest of us is: can we achieve
honesty and common sense?
"... They have promoted dishonest claims about the JCPOA and made unfounded claims about Iran's so-called "nuclear ambitions" in order to make it seem as if the Iranian government is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. They have done this to justify their hard-line policies and to lay the groundwork for pursuing regime change and war. Every time that someone repeats false claims about a non-existent "nuclear weapons program" in Iran, it creates unnecessary fear and plays into the administration's hands. ..."
"... The administration is already working overtime to propagandize the public and scare Americans into supporting aggressive and destructive policies against Iran, and no one should be giving them extra help. ..."
"... "Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue." ..."
"... Friedman isn't usually thought of as a devotee of Truth, and the chance of him correcting even the most egregious falsehoods you point out is approximately zero. At heart he's a propaganda guy, not a fact-based analyst. ..."
"... Friedman does it for Israel. It is their line, their constant foreign policy push. The NYT lets him, seems to encourage it, due to its own complex ties to Israel. ..."
"... The Israel Lobby is behind vast wars, killing, and waste. It has become an endless evil. ..."
"... Friedman seems to forget that Iran is a signatory of the NPT and inspectors come and monitor activities, all outside JPCOA. But hey, Iraq had WMD at the time the international inspectors were saying that it didn't and their message and activities were obstructed and blocked by the US. Same as with the alleged gas attacks in Syria and the OPCW "mishandling" the reporting... US has learned since Iraq and wanted compliance from these types of organizations. ..."
Friedman's
latest column obviously wasn't
fact-checked before it was published:
And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the
region and tell Iraqis that we're not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted
Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action. And then, a few
weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell
Iraqis that we're not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart
its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action.
Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did,
and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and it hasn't had anything like
that for more than sixteen years. The Iranian government took another step in reducing its compliance with the JCPOA in the days
following the assassination, but contrary to other misleading headlines their government did not abandon the nuclear deal. Iran has
not repudiated its commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful, and it doesn't help in reducing tensions to suggest that they
have. Trump's recent actions are reckless and dangerous, but it is wrong to say that those actions have caused Iran to start up a
nuclear weapons program. That isn't the case, and engaging in more threat inflation when tensions are already so high is foolish.
Friedman is not the only one to make this blunder, but it is the sort of sloppy mistake we expect from him. If this were just
another error from Friedman, it would be annoying but it wouldn't matter very much. This has to do with the nature of our debate
over Iran policy and the nuclear issue in particular. This matters because there is a great deal of confusion in this country about
Iran's nuclear program that the Trump administration has deliberately encouraged. They have promoted dishonest claims about the JCPOA
and made unfounded claims about Iran's so-called "nuclear ambitions" in order to make it seem as if the Iranian government is trying
to acquire nuclear weapons. They have done this to justify their hard-line policies and to lay the groundwork for pursuing regime
change and war. Every time that someone repeats false claims about a non-existent "nuclear weapons program" in Iran, it creates unnecessary
fear and plays into the administration's hands.
The administration is already working overtime to propagandize the public and scare
Americans into supporting aggressive and destructive policies against Iran, and no one should be giving them extra help. The second
part of Friedman's sentence is also quite dangerous, because it encourages his readers to think that the U.S. would somehow be justified
in attacking Iran in the unlikely event that they started developing a nuclear weapon. He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons
program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances would be illegal and a war of choice
just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman seems to be skeptical of something
that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to the idea of preventive war.
Friedman's
claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is
irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and it hasn't had anything like that for
more than sixteen years. The Iranian government took another step in reducing its compliance with the JCPOA in the days following
the assassination, but contrary to other misleading headlines their government did not abandon the nuclear deal. Iran has not repudiated
its commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful, and it doesn't help in reducing tensions to suggest that they have. Trump's
recent actions are reckless and dangerous, but it is wrong to say that those actions have caused Iran to start up a nuclear weapons
program. That isn't the case, and engaging in more threat inflation when tensions are already so high is foolish.
... ... ...
He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances
would be illegal and a war of choice just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman
seems to be skeptical of something that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to
the idea of preventive war. The second part of Friedman's sentence is also quite dangerous, because it encourages his readers to
think that the U.S. would somehow be justified in attacking Iran in the unlikely event that they started developing a nuclear weapon.
He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances
would be illegal and a war of choice just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman
seems to be skeptical of something that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to
the idea of preventive war.
"Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is
completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is
irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue."
Friedman isn't usually thought of as a devotee of Truth, and the chance of him correcting even the most egregious falsehoods
you point out is approximately zero. At heart he's a propaganda guy, not a fact-based analyst.
Friedman does it for Israel. It is their line, their constant foreign policy push. The NYT lets him, seems to encourage it, due
to its own complex ties to Israel.
The Israel Lobby is behind vast wars, killing, and waste. It has become an endless evil.
Friedman's readers are the choir, and he's just singing to them. People who have seen through his fabrications stopped reading
him years ago. Friedman will always have his little clique of deluded pseudo-intellectuals, but truly intelligent people don't
waste their time with him.
I think the picture of Friedman that accompanies this article tells a big part of the story. His furrowed brow, the intensity
of his studied gaze, his penetrating and knowing look into the the complexities that only someone of his intelligence can unravel.
It is really the picture of a stuffed shirt.
Friedman represents something really wrong with our society and culture: The incompetent, the ignorant, and the arrogant ones
are given positions of power and influence, and the wise and knowledgeable are marginalized.
It is difficult to name a more odious shill for Israel war mongering than friedman but than he does have competition in the NYT
staff. NYT is a bugle for Israel.
Mr. Friedman recently called Gen. Soleimani "the dumbest man in Iran" for sponsoring terrorist forces in Lebanon, Syria, and
Yemen backing paramilitary forces fighting terrorism in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.
Mr. Friedman is one of the dumbest pundits
in the media class and almost certainly the dumbest ever to work for The New York Times. He just can't help himself...
Friedman seems to forget that Iran is a signatory of the NPT and inspectors come and monitor activities, all outside JPCOA. But
hey, Iraq had WMD at the time the international inspectors were saying that it didn't and their message and activities were obstructed
and blocked by the US. Same as with the alleged gas attacks in Syria and the OPCW "mishandling" the reporting... US has learned
since Iraq and wanted compliance from these types of organizations.
In accordance with the agreement closed between the Tunisian and Turkish presidents,
Kaïs Saïed and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Christmas Day, the migration of
jihadists from Syria via Tunisia to Libya has begun. [ 1 ]
The pendulum has swung back, when considering that the Free Syrian Army was created by the
jihadists of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), who had joined the ranks of Al-Qaeda in
Iraq, then served as NATO's footsoldiers in Libya. [ 2 ]
According to Middle East Eye , the Sultan Murad Division, the Suqour al-Sham Brigades
(Hawks of the Levant) and especially the Faylaq al-Sham (Legion of the Levant) (photo) are
already on the move. [ 3 ] The SOHR, a British association
linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, has confirmed the arrival in Tripoli of the first 300
combatants.
The Sultan Murad division is made up of Syrian Turkmen. The Hawks of the Levant comprise
numerous French fighters and the Legion of the Levant is an imposing army of at least 4,000
men. The latter group is directly affiliated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Turkey has urged several other jihadist groups to follow suit and to flee ahead of the
liberation of the Idlib governorate by the Syrian Arab Army.
The jihadists sent to Libya are expected to balance out the forces present in the country by
supporting the government installed by the UN, while elements of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces
and the Russian mercenaries have lined up with the Bengazi-based government.
In 22 December 2019, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, Conservative lawyer Nikos Dendias,
travelled to Benghazi to meet the ministers designated by the Tobruk House of Representatives
and their military leader, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. He then moved on to Cairo and
Cyprus.
Simultaneously, during a ceremony at the Gölcük Naval shipyard, President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan announced the decision to expedite Turkey's submarine construction program.
The 6 New Type 214 submarines which Turkey is building with German Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft
(HDW) should be near completion.
Under the agreement signed with the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Fayez
Al-Sarraj, in addition to military ports in occupied Cyprus, Turkey could have access to a home
port in Libya, from where it could extend its influence over the entire eastern
Mediterranean.
After the delivery of Turkish military equipment to Tripoli flown in by a civilian Boeing
747-412, Field Marshal Haftar proclaimed that he would not hesitate to shoot down any civilian
aircraft carrying weapons for the GNA.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has entered into a military alliance with the
Libyan "government of national accord" (GNA), chaired by Fayez Al-Sarraj, based in Tripoli and
backed by the United Nations. Erdoğan has already arranged for the delivery of armored
vehicles and drones, but has yet to deploy regular troops.
In Ankara, the Grand National Assembly is expected imminently to authorize the Turkish army
to send regular soldiers to Libya.
At the same time, however, the Turkish army is keeping out of Idlib (Syria) where the
jihadists are under attack by the Syrian Arab army, in coordination with the Russian air force,
and where two Turkish observation posts have been hemmed in by the Syrian Arab army. Tens of
thousands of jihadists have been moving into Turkey.
On 25 December 2019, President Erdoğan paid a spur-of-the-moment visit to Tunisia. He
was notably flanked by Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's national intelligence (Millî
İstihbarat Teşkilatı), as well as by his Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers.
The delegation was received by Tunisia's President Kaïs Saïed, a jurist, who is
supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. He gave his Turkish counterpart the green light to use the
airport and the port of Djerba for the mass transfer of jihadists to Tripoli and Misrata.
Ellie Geranmayeh is a senior policy fellow and deputy head of the Middle East and North
Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She specializes in European
foreign policy in relation to Iran, particularly on the nuclear and regional dossiers and
sanctions policy.
... ... ...
The response from Tehran could be immediate or more long term, ranging from military action
in the region to cyber attacks inside the U.S. and heavy political pushback. Iranian Supreme
Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly warned that there would not be war with the U.S. and
Iran has so far acted in a calculated and rational fashion to Trump's "maximum pressure"
campaign. If this position holds, Tehran will attempt to manage the risk of direct conflict,
continuing to deploy asymmetric tactics to undermine U.S. interests, albeit with the red lines
now redrawn.
The gravity and scale of Iranian compliance will be influenced by the recent escalation
with the U.S.
The extensive U.S. military presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan means the U.S. is
likely to bear the brunt of retaliation. Iran has deep ties to both state and non-state actors
across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Yemen that can be utilized to inflict pain on
America. Soleimani's death has already triggered a new decline in the Trump administration's
relations with Baghdad that may extend to Kabul, and is also likely to heat up the long debate
inside Tehran over how far to push U.S. military forces out of neighboring Iraq and
Afghanistan.
... ... ...
If Tehran takes drastic steps on the nuclear file, it could mark the total collapse of the
agreement.
... ... ...
In the space of six months, the U.S. and Iran have gone from targeting drones, oil
installations and bases, to killing personnel. It is still unclear how and when Iran will
choose to respond to Soleimani's assassination. But the new commander of the Quds Force --
appointed within 12 hours of Soleimani's death -- will no doubt be eager to demonstrate his
willingness to exact revenge against America.
When that happens, neither the Middle East nor Europe will be isolated from the
blowback.
The murder of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis will resonate hugely throughout Iraq.
Trump in so many ways represents the bad ruler Gilgamesh who is poorly advised in his
conquest by Enkidu (Pompeo) and they brutally slay the guardian of the forest to steal the
precious timber. Then they murder the sacred bull of heaven (Soleimani and al-Muhandis) for
prowess and nothing more. This slaughter of the sacred bull enrages the gods and they slay
Enkidu which breaks Gilgamesh heart. etc etc. (drastically simplified and likely contested).
This tale is deeply known throughout the lands of the Middle East in all manner of old and
modern iterations.
Trump is so unwise and devoid of subtlety that he has ended any chance of salvation in
that land and has started every chance of retribution on a scale he could not conceive. His
assault on all culture and sacred leaders is bonded to the deepest sense of existential being
that any further aggression will simply escalate the payback. The USA urgently needs some
cooler heads to intervene but they are not yet impacting on him. Indeed Trump is so eager to
pat himself on the back with his adrenalin rush of murdering other leaders that it is
disgusting.
Almost all of the "terrorism" affecting the West has been Wahabbi Salafist Sunni driven.
Iran, despite their religious head, is a more modern sectarian nation than Saudi Arabia. ISIS
had become a proxy army of the CIA; that's likely why Soleimani had to be killed. It is time
to align with Iran and the Shia for a change. They also have oil! Would send a nice message
to our "allies" Israel and Saudi Arabia as well.
After only a week or so after this heinous crime, we are assisting already to a new
campaign on whitewashing Trump at each of the US military blogs...SST at the head...as
always...but following the rest...be it a editorial level, be it at commentariat level...
What part of Trump admitting he personally ordered the murder you have not understood?
What part of Soleimani and Al Muhandis being the main strategic heads of real anti-IS
front have you not understood?
What manner of nation does these things? What manner of man? Why are these criminals not
facing arrest and trial at this very moment? Is it because they all had their magical 'I'm a
special guy' hats on? Justice will come to us all.
I don't think what Pompeo was saying is vague, it is really just a way to con the US media
into believing that what they did was anything other than what it really was. They are trying
to couch their violent threatening behavior aimed at Iraqi leaders to keep them out of the
China-Iran orbit, as part of "The Patriotic Duty of Team America World Police". It is like a
mafioso saying to the police about their protection racket: "I'm doing you'se a favor by
keeping everyone in the neighborhood safe from criminals."
"It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a
mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless
they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name."
It's odd to see Reuters get the name of the Hoover Institution wrong, and also be wrong about
the Institution's association with Stanford University. The Institution is on the Stanford
campus but has a separate board of directors.
Okay, Reuters is making typically sloppy errors about the name and the amount of control
Stanford has over the rightwing "Institute" on its campus. Stanford, the university, has
plenty of US military intelligence (and actual black world) ties, but almost no one working
at Stanford would think killing Soleimani a good idea. Though plenty of the "thinkers" at The
Hoover Institution would.
Right, Pompeo is delusional. Murdering Soleimani will deter no one. Nor of course do the
Iranian missile strikes on US bases in Iraq mean the end of Iran's response to the act of
war.
I am surprised at how many establishment media have actually labelled this murder as
"assassination" instead of the usual euphemisms. I think nearly everyone in the world
understands that bragging about international murder completely changes international
relations. Except for Pompous and Trumpet, of course.
Everyone will be filing their hair-triggers. There seems to be a general world-wide
mobilization but no one is calling it that. It is all "war games" and such. At some point
before the 2003 Iraq invasion it was clear to me that the decision for open war had been
made. It is now clear to me that there will be an invasion of Iran, starting with Iraq. I
think the B-52s sent to the area are for killing Iraqis, since they have no air defense.
At the same time, the US asset bubbles are nearly "priced to perfection". That means they
have no where to go except down. Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. All it takes is a
break in the chain of payments and the next financial panic is ON! Can Uncle Sam greatly
expand his War on the World in the middle of financial chaos? I think he will probably
try.
I speculate that Uncle Sam believes Iran and Iraq will simply cower and wait for the next
blow. I predict they will not. Soleimani's assassination and the subsequent Iranian attack
have not substantially changed the strategic situation, except to tie down the boiler relief
valve and turn up the heat. God, if there is one, help us all. We're sure gonna need it.
Does this idiot Pompeo not realize the door swing both ways? Unless he plans to live his
remaining days bunkered in NORAD, he's just as vulnerable as the rest.
Pompeo is the spokesman for the rules based Western empire mafia don, Trump.
The event is now being turned into a US media event (real time movie making here) by Trump
letting out text versions of the backroom chatter around the murder. This will not sit well
with the ME, IMO.
What late empire keeps pushing for is some event that can be blown into global support for
war escalation....but it hasn't happened, yet
And all this over public/private global control of value sharing in the social human
contract....what a way to run a railroad/species......
Not only will it not deter anyone, it is loudly signaling that third rate neocons are the
only decision makers left in the room.
You're likely to see more provocations, since it's now such an easy button to push. i.e.
for any regional or global powers who need US forces to be diverted for a while. Any bullshit
they manage to sell to the young Bolton's in the bureaucracy will do.
While not exactly unprecedented, the change is how much the mask is off now.
The part of Pompeo's speech quoted by b above is American to the core: every sentence or
short paragraph contains at minimum one outright lie; the entire quote selected is also both
palpably delusional and stupid.
But having said that, there is something uniquely refreshing about the Trump/Pompeo tag
team's capacity for blurting out lies and inanities, and furthermore, they do it with gusto.
Guile is not Pompeo's strong suit.
One might say that the criminality of the 'new deterrence' is as American as apple pie,
except that apple pie in my experience is innocent of all that, unless I suppose it contains
a deadly poison, and is fed to a political or ideological foe.
What is new about the 'new deterrence' that will surely make life far more dangerous for
Americans, is that it publicly declares itself as a policy with no bounds, no ethical, or
logical, or legal constraints. So what the Americans have been doing for generations, often
but not by any means always with 'plausible denial', and sometimes quite brazenly, is now
explicitly underlined policy.
Previously, the fight was 'against communism', or 'for democracy', or for 'national
security'.
So for example, when Nicaragua during the "Reagan Revolution' was sanctioned, attacked,
vilified, subjected to uncounted atrocities, because those dastardly Nicaraguans had replaced
their loathsome monster dictator with a government trying to do the right thing for the
people, the war against that country was under the rubric of protecting American 'national
security', with bits of domino theory and communist hordes concerns thrown in.
So what is the difference between deploying tens of thousands of maniacal murderous
'contras' as 'deterrence' against a small country's attempts at making a decent life for its
people, and a drone attack on Soleimani and his companions?
I think one main difference is that the 'world has changed' around the perpetrators, but
they are still living the delusions of brainwashed childhood, the wild west, white hat
un-self conscious monstrosities riding into town, gonna clean the place up. Pathetic and
extremely dangerous.
There's another logical flaw in Pompeo's argument.
The USA is a nuclear power. If you claim to assassinate other countries' generals as a
deterrent, then that signals America's true enemies - Russia and China - that it will
vacilate in using its own nuclear deterrent if an American target is to be neutralized. That
would bring more, not less, instability to the world order.
But maybe that's the American aim with this: to shake the already existing international
order with the objective to try to destroy Eurasia with its massive war machine and,
therefore, initiate another cycle of accumulation of American capitalism.
Another potential unintended blowback of Soleimani's assassination lies in the fact that
the USA is not officially at war with Iran. Iran was being sanctioned by the UN. That poses a
threat in the corners of the American Empire, since it sends a message that the USA doesn't
need to be at war with a nation in order to gratuitously attack it; it also sends the message
that it is not enough to play by the rules and accept the UN's sanctions - you could still do
all of that and submit yourself and still be attacked by the Americans.
The endgame of this is that there's a clear message to the American "allies" (i.e.
vassals, provinces): stay in line and obey without questioning, even if that goes directly
against your national interests. This will leave the Empire even more unstable at its
frontier because, inevitably, there'll come a time where the USA will directly command its
vassals/provinces to literally hurt their own economies just to keep the American one afloat
(or not sinking too fast). Gramsci's "Law of Hegemony" states that, the more coercion and the
less consensus, the more unstable is one's hegemony.
>Tottering as it appears to be, the U.S. looks to be
> ready to burn the world; its "adversaries" aren't yet
> strong enough to avoid the flamethrower.
> Posted by: Zee | Jan 18 2020 21:30 utc | 27
Indeed. But the longer Iran can delay the inevitable, the stronger and better prepared it
becomes, while Uncle Sam is busy burning the furniture and getting financially more
precarious. US planners seem to think that one can build an economy around poor people giving
each other haircuts while rich people keep trading the exact same assets back and forth while
steady driving asset prices higher.
Somewhere in the economic cycle someone has to actually make stuff and grow food. But
planners have allowed the manufacturing (and associated engineering, etc.) to leave while
driving farmers into bankruptcy. They are mortgaged to the hilt. When land prices quit
rising, there is no additional collateral and no new credit. With no additional credit, no
one will sell them seeds and equipment. So they are out of business. It's scary to think how
few people actually grow all the food to feed millions and millions.
Asset bubbles have real consequences, such as millions can not afford rent anymore while
millions of housing units remain empty because their value still goes up even without rental
income. Scenes from Soylent Green come to mind, thinking about how more and more people are
crammed into fewer living quarters.
Our brain-dead leaders have created a situation where they must continue to inflate
bubbles to keep increasing collateral to back more debt. But the bubbles impoverish the rest
of us. And bubbles always pop. Always.
I'm not sure how much the next financial crisis will affect the US killing machine, but I
doubt it would make the war machine stronger.
>The GOP criticized Obama for Libya but only because they
> wanted to be able to say they were the tough guys. The
> media was oh-so-happy to harp on the Iraq after Bush's
> destruction of Iraq but very quiet on the aftermath of Libya.
> Posted by: Curtis | Jan 18 2020 21:37 utc | 29
Yes to this. There is no disagreement in DC on the goals, just fussing over the tactics
and who takes credit. Two right wings on the war bird. Maybe that is why it is on a downward
spiral.
Describing that the drone strike took out "two for the price of one" -- in reference to
slain Iraqi Shia paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, who had been at the airport to
greet Soleimani, Trump gave a more detailed accounting than ever before of proceedings in the
'situation room' (which had been set up at Mar-a-Lago) that night.
He went on to recount listening to military officials as they watched the strike from
"cameras that are miles in the sky."
"They're together sir," Trump recalled the military officials saying. "Sir, they have two
minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. '2 minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the
car, they're in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. 30
seconds. 10, 9, 8 ...' "
"Then all of a sudden, boom," he went on. "'They're gone, sir. Cutting off.' "
"I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him."
"We put together a campaign of diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and military
deterrence."
"diplomatic isolation" - when I read this I thought of the Ukrainian plane and the demand
for an "investigation according to international guidelines" (well, Syria got that
investigation according to international guidelines with the OPCW and we know how that went)
- it may lead to diplomatic isolation. Watch it. As such, Pompeo might have laid out a motive
for a potential US involvement.
"economic pressure" - while the E3 did not sanction Iran, with their lack of action in
regards to find working mechanisms and their depending on the US, that goal has been
achieved.
"military deterrence" - Pompeo thinks in CIA terms which can be seen as a covert weapons
trafficking organization (Timber Sycamore) and something like a secret military organization.
The murder of Suleimani is a war crime and as such a criminal act; it can hardly be
considered a military deterrence - although the murder was carried out by the US military
(maybe by CIA embedded in base?).
I don't know. It's a lot of speculation. Iran may have a reason to not state their systems
got hacked. But in the current context it may be advisable to do so, turn a potential
cyberattack back to its place of origin.
Pompeo and Trump have no concept of personal honour as they come from a sub-culture that has
none.
In the rest of the world, honour-integrity is very important. Throughout MENA to Pakistan,
the US was viewed as treacherous for using Sadaam to fight Iran then turning on him in
service of Israel's goals. Bush 2 contributed, through his blatant financial criminality
(much of this remains unknown to average Americans), to the perception that the US is
incapable of honouring ANY agreement (re:oil and other sub-rosa deals the US made).
The decimation of Syria, Iraq and Libya was not enough; criminal elites in the US have now
completely exposed themselves to the Muslim world. I am firmly convinced that the Arab
'street' has concluded the US and Israel are inseparable in their policy of murder and
mayhem. I am betting the elites view reconciliation within the Arab and Islamic world as the
way forward with input from Russia, China when and if needed. Turning away from US-Israeli
meddling and treachery will be a primary concern for the 20's.
I don't believe Pompeo or Trump have the foresight to understand killing Soleimani has sealed
how the US is perceived: Indonesia, Malaysia, Muslim India (all 250+million), Afghanistan and
Pakistan will accelarate the turning away.
This 'decision' to murder Soleimani will be cited by future non_court historians as seminal.
The US murdered the 2nd most important person in Iranian politics. This has to be one of THE
STUPIDEST DECISIONS I have seen come out of the Washington, D.C--Tel Aviv--London axis. I
really cannot think of any other official action by the US that compares in stupidity.
Unofficially, 911 was the stupidest act of the last 2 decades but as for official I believe
this takes the cakes.
In essence, screaming to the world that you are a gangster is not a very graceful way to wind
down an Empire. Pompeo-Trump-BoBo should have looked at a map. I see a hemisphere that is
geographically isolated that has to make a case for why anyone should interact with it.
Currently, all they have is the petrodollar system that supports 1, 000 military bases.
Problem: they have just given many of the (often unwilling) participants in that system a big
reason to leave it. I believe this is referred to as 'suicide'?
Correct me if I'm wrong. I would be happy to be.
Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between
Germany's behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and
externally. Is it just me, or have other's noted the similarity of Pompeo to Herman Goering
in looks and behaviour?
The leadership in the US need to stop thinking that they are impervious to revenge. Very
small drones can fly autonomously and each can carry 2 Kg of cargo which can be explosives,
chemical or bioweapons or a combination. They are cheap, easy to build and can operate
autonomously. With only using relatively simple algorithms they can be made to fly in groups
and track using already extant facial recognition software. I can envision a scenario where
drones are flown to the top of a semi-trailer somewhere south to hitch a ride north on I-95
until they get into DC near Fort Belvoir or Andrews AFB. They could then lift off and loiter
perched on transmission lines where they can easily recharge using rf energy and wait. Once a
target arrives, say a President on the golf course or perhaps Air Force 1 taxiing on the
runway or even perhaps perch outside a window, they can then lift off and conduct an attack
either directly or as limpet mines. With swarming you can send a mass of drones all flying
autonomously with varied patterns. It would be impossible to stop them. Because they are
autonomous jamming won't work. They would be impossible to trace back to their origin and
most could be 3D printed and use off the shelf parts. If I can think this way, I am certain
others are as well. Snake drones would be particularly difficult to stop.
Old hippe @128.yes, but these were being guided remotely from a US Navy aircraft and somewhat
controllable from remote which is what happened. I think inside the US they don't think that
far ahead and jamming would interfere with wifi etc. so not palatable. I Ave in mind they
would be sitting in the grass or on a nearby telephone pole waiting for the target and travel
less than 100 meters to hit. Autonomous means flying without any external controls and would
be committed once set out. One perched on a window with 2kg of C4 waiting for whatever
executive to sit down next to it would be another scenario. A snake drone could navigate in
the sewers up to an executive toilet. The possibilities are endless. It is just a matter of
time.
The Trump administration sees the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani as a form of
deterrence not only with regards to Iran but also towards Russia, China and others. That view
is wrong.
The claim that the murder of Soleimani was necessary because of an 'imminent threat' has
been
debunked by Trump himself when he tweeted that 'it
doesn't really matter' if there was such a threat or not.
In a speech at the Hoover Institute Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the
assassination was part of a new deterrence strategy. As Reuters
reported:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said Qassem Soleimani was killed as part of a
broader strategy of deterring challenges by U.S. foes that also applies to China and Russia,
further diluting the assertion that the top Iranian general was struck because he was
plotting imminent attacks on U.S. targets.
In his speech at Stanford University's Hoover Institute, Pompeo made no mention of the
threat of imminent attacks planned by Soleimani.
On the 3rd of this month, we took one of the world's deadliest terrorists off the battlefield
for good.
...
But I want to lay this out in context of what we've been trying to do. There is a bigger
strategy to this.
President Trump and those of us in his national security team are re-establishing
deterrence – real deterrence ‒ against the Islamic Republic. In strategic terms,
deterrence simply means persuading the other party that the costs of a specific behavior
exceed its benefits. It requires credibility; indeed, it depends on it. Your adversary must
understand not only do you have the capacity to impose costs but that you are, in fact,
willing to do so.
...
And let's be honest. For decades, U.S. administrations of both political parties never did
enough against Iran to get the deterrence that is necessary to keep us all safe.
...
So what did we do? We put together a campaign of diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and
military deterrence.
...
Qasem Soleimani discovered our resolve to defend American lives.
...
We have re-established deterrence, but we know it's not everlasting, that risk remains. We
are determined not to lose that deterrence. In all cases, we have to do this.
...
We saw, not just in Iran, but in other places, too, where American deterrence was weak. We
watched Russia's 2014 occupation of the Crimea and support for aggression against Ukraine
because deterrence had been undermined. We have resumed lethal support to the Ukrainian
military.
China's island building, too, in the South China Sea, and its brazen attempts to coerce
American allies undermined deterrence. The Trump administration has ramped up naval exercises
in the South China Sea, alongside our allies and friends and partners throughout the
region.
You saw, too, Russia ignored a treaty. We withdrew from the INF with the unanimous support
of our NATO allies because there was only one party complying with a two-party agreement. We
think this, again, restores credibility and deterrence to protect America.
This understanding of 'deterrence' seems to be vague and incomplete. A longer piece I am
working on will further delve deeper into that issue. But an important point is that deterrence
works in both directions.
Iran responded with a missile strike on U.S. bases in Iraq. The missiles hit the targets they were
aimed at . This was a warning that any further U.S. action would cause serious U.S.
casualties. That strike, which was only the first part of Iran's response to the murdering of
Soleimani, deterred the U.S. from further action. Iran also declared that it will expel the
U.S. from the Middle East. How is Iran deterred when it openly declares that it will take on
such a project?
Reuters makes it seem that the U.S. would not even shy away from killing a Russian or
Chinese high officer on a visit in a third country. That is, for now, still out of bounds as
China and Russia deter the U.S. from such acts with their own might.
Russia and China already had no doubts that the U.S. is immoral and willing to commit war
crimes. And while 'western' media avoid that characterization for the assassination of
Soleimani there is no doubt that it was one.
In a letter to the New York Times the now 100 years old chief prosecutor of the
Nuremberg trials, Benjamin B. Ferencz, warned of the larger effects of such deeds when he
writes :
The administration recently announced that, on orders of the president, the United States had
"taken out" (which really means "murdered") an important military leader of a country with
which we were not at war. As a Harvard Law School graduate who has written extensively on the
subject, I view such immoral action as a clear violation of national and international law.
The public is entitled to know the truth. The United Nations Charter, the International
Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague are all being bypassed. In
this cyberspace world, young people everywhere are in mortal danger unless we change the
hearts and minds of those who seem to prefer war to law.
The killing of a Soleimani will also only have a short term effect when it comes to general
deterrence. It was a onetime shot to which others will react. Groups and people who work
against 'U.S. interests' will now do so less publicly. Countries will seek asymmetric
advantages to prevent such U.S. action against themselves. By committing the crime the U.S. and
Trump made the global situation for themselves more complicated.
Posted by b on January 18, 2020 at 19:28 UTC | Permalink
next page " "And let's be honest." anyone who starts off with those words - run the
other way when they say that.. pomparse is a real embarrassment to the usa on the world stage
at this point... there is no international law that the usa will not completely bypass / lie
/ or obfuscate to push its uni-polar exceptional agenda at this point.. anyone paying any
attention can see this clearly.
If push comes to shove, the Iranians are well aware that the US would, by its bombing and
missiles that the Iranians cannot completely withstand, cause many deaths and massive
destruction to its cities and infrastructure ... BUT the Americans are very much aware that
the Iranian response would be devastating -- all US ME military assets would come under
massive fire resulting in many deaths; all Gulf State oil infrastructure would be destroyed;
Tel Aviv and Riyadh would be attacked; the Strait of Hormuz would be blocked, and on and on.
It seems highly unlikely that the US would take such a risk -- let us call it Mutual
Assured Destructiveness
It is interesting that the commentary closes with a letter by Benjamin Ferencz, perhaps the
last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor. As he indicates, the assassination is a war crime, and,
in my view, even the threat of such an assassination is a serious breach of international
law. Regimes following such a policy have gone rogue, and cabinet ministers making such a
pronouncement that the assassination was carried out as a deterrent are, in effect,
confessing to war crimes. In future the reach of the offending regime may be much less than
it is now, and, if that occurs, the rogue minister better be careful if he travels outside of
his home country.
Thanks B, for your continued articles that are never mentioned elsewhere. I completely agree
with your assessment. War used to have rules. Any american army brass or higher ups in USA,
Britain, Israel and allies will have to keep looking over their shoulder when they leave
their own country. Israel already cancelled trips to Saudi Arabia over security concerns. The
gloves are off and targeted assignation will hit allies of USA. The president family are fair
game, People who sponsor the the orange prophet of misery, Pompous Pompeoo, Esper or any
general will have a very paranoid time knowing that the rules of war that once protected them
from targeted assignation no longer apply. After all if america can do this, what's stopping
their adversaries from doing the same.
Benjamin B. Ferencz, his touted Harvard Law School pedigree Nuremberg Trial experience have
precisely ZERO persuasive value.
Ferencz was one of the most vicious and manipulative of the Nuremberg prosecutors. In a
BBC interview he stated boldly that he threatened to kill detainees or their families unless
they confessed:
Interviewer: "In previous interviews you've described how in gathering testimonies you did
resort to duress, for instance, lining up villagers and threatening to shoot them if they
lied. Such methods now would amount to witness harassment of the most extreme order.
Ferencz: Perhaps it would. but it's only because the people who make allegations don't
understand what war is about -- bring a room of 20 people together -- this is an actual
case -- and say I want you all to write out what happened, what your role was, what others
did. Anybody who lies will be shot.
"Oh, how can you do a thing like that!" You're threatening them, it's torture! What am I
going to tell 'em? That you won't get your patty-cake tonight? ' Please be honest, please
confess that you're a murderer. Please do that, I don't want to have to ____ you of
anything.'
What are you talking about? There's a war going on! They will kill you if they could. They
were killing some of their buddies before. So what am I going to do? I didn't shoot them.
But I threatened to , and that's the only weapon I had. And if that be torture, then call
me a torturer."
Moreover, Rabbi Stephen Wise, one of the key instigators of World War II and US
involvement in it, recorded a Personal Letter he sent to his wife / daughter (probably)
shortly after Germany's surrender. The Rabbi wrote that he and Nahum Goldmann had lunch with
Justice Robert Jackson, and that
"Justice [Robert] Jackson. . . .has grand and spacious ideas on the Nuremberg trials in
mid-October, with Weizmann, Goldmann or S.S.W. [Stephen S. Wise] as Jewish witnesses to
present the Jewish Case –not permitted as Amicus Curiae!
In itself it becomes the greatest trial in history, with what Jackson calls its broad
departure from Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.
Retroactively "aggressive war-making" becomes criminally punishable–with membership
in the Gestapo prima facie proof of criminal participation."
If Ferencz has an ounce of integrity, he will condemn as "aggressive war-making" every
person who voted for an illegal war against Iraq, and every person involved in imposing
sanctions on Iran -- themselves acts of "aggressive war."
"By committing the crime the U.S. and Trump made the global situation for themselves more
complicate."
USA is not exactly the sole economic superpower, but as long as the allies, EU, NATO,
major allies in Asia and Latin America, behave like poodles, USA pretty much controls what is
"normal". After Obama campaigns of murder by drone, now Trump raises it to a higher level,
and Europe, the most critical link in the web of alliances, applauds (UK) or accepts and
cooperates. That can be a useful clarification for US establishment.
So the bottom line is that while it is hard to show constructive goals achieved by raising
murder policies to a more brazen level, nothing changes for the worse. Allies tolerate
irrationality, cruelty etc. and to some extend, join the fun.
IMO, from what I understand of Shia mentality, after immoral assassination of general
Soleimani the only thing can prevent a violent revenge against US military or political staff
would be a Fatwa by a grand ayatollah to nullify a fatwa by any junior Ayatollah authorizing
(sanctioning) specific action. It was an incalculably caster F* mistake that can last for a
generation at least.
"t̶h̶e̶ U̶.̶S̶.̶ Israel and Trump made the global
situation for themselves more complicate"
Not if the purpose was more pressure by complication. The goal then to create a pretext: a
pressure cooker which will cause military exchange or, especially after some limited violent
exchange, increasing internal strife inside Iran which can't afford more war.
The conditions for this tactic would be clear: containing all the likely fall-out of the
above unraveling, namely:
- contain China with the trade war no one can win but will make it near impossible for
China to deal with Iran, Iraq and Syria.
- increased containment Palestine and Lebanon by Israel. Make very move there seem way too
expensive for especially Hezbollah.
- prevent any kind of weapon transport or technology transfer to Lebanon which could break
above containment.
- vastly improved border security and travel limitations
- increasing War on T̶e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶ Blow Back related powers for
Homeland Security, NSA etc.
Russia is seen as less of a problem as any potential military support would be simply too
costly and too little gain for Putin.
And make no mistake, Trump is fully ready to display nuclear might the moment Iran would
demonstrate their own remarkable advances. And he would make it very clear that the US is
willing. The new policy of deterrence is very simple and yet horrible: examples have to be
made to demonstrate that "all options are still on the table". If he wants to keep declining
America great but not have expensive wars and yet force others to still follow American lead:
there's only one cold logical solution to that.
The glaring fact of the matter is that the us president and his accomplices useld false
allegations as an excuse to murder these men. They also did so in a cowardly manner, under a
false invitation to negotiate (and, Yes I do believe that).
In my country, when a person orders someone to murder someone else in exchange for
compensation (in this case salaries), the police call it murder for hire.
Idle speculation on my part, but I am not alone in wondering if the Soleimani
assassination accelerated Putin's restructuring agenda. (I'm not suggesting it was generated
or even influenced in substance by the strike, just that the timing may have been.) Given the
power of the President in Russia, as the CIA itself very well understands, there is perhaps
no more tempting target for an overt military assassination strike than President Putin.
Of course, deterrence of rational actors is precisely what would prevent this, but I
imagine Russian strategic thinkers have wondered whether or for how long the US remains a
rational actor. Moreover, this would be the sort of thing that a fanatical faction could pull
off. In some Strangelovean bunker somewhere, there may be those who would actually welcome a
last gasp of large-scale warfare before the Eurasian Heartland is lost and the
Petrodollar-fueled global finance empire, nominally sheltered in the US, dies away.
Creative destruction ... a last chance to shuffle the cards, and perhaps reset a losing
game to zero.
What manner of nation does these things? What manner of man? Why are these criminals not
facing arrest and trial at this very moment? Is it because they all had their magical 'I'm a
special guy' hats on? Justice will come to us all.
I don't think what Pompeo was saying is vague, it is really just a way to con the US media
into believing that what they did was anything other than what it really was. They are trying
to couch their violent threatening behavior aimed at Iraqi leaders to keep them out of the
China-Iran orbit, as part of "The Patriotic Duty of Team America World Police". It is like a
mafioso saying to the police about their protection racket: "I'm doing you'se a favor by
keeping everyone in the neighborhood safe from criminals."
"It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a
mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless
they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name."
"This second Beast worked magical signs, dazzling people by making fire come down from
Heaven. It used the magic it got from the Beast to dupe earth dwellers, getting them to make
an image of the Beast that received the deathblow and lived. It was able to animate the image
of the Beast so that it talked, and then arrange that anyone not worshiping the Beast would
be killed. It forced all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to have a
mark on the right hand or forehead. Without the mark of the name of the Beast or the number
of its name, it was impossible to buy or sell anything."
yeah - mafia tactics as offered by trump /pompeo and etc is exactly what it is... and when
Benjamin B. Ferencz calls it what it is, apologists show up to can ferencz @ 7.. so what will
persuade you chasmark?? do i need to send a hit man over to your place?
It's odd to see Reuters get the name of the Hoover Institution wrong, and also be wrong about
the Institution's association with Stanford University. The Institution is on the Stanford
campus but has a separate board of directors.
Okay, Reuters is making typically sloppy errors about the name and the amount of control
Stanford has over the rightwing "Institute" on its campus. Stanford, the university, has
plenty of US military intelligence (and actual black world) ties, but almost no one working
at Stanford would think killing Soleimani a good idea. Though plenty of the "thinkers" at The
Hoover Institution would.
Right, Pompeo is delusional. Murdering Soleimani will deter no one. Nor of course do the
Iranian missile strikes on US bases in Iraq mean the end of Iran's response to the act of
war.
all this rhetoric says the obvious: the USA wants to destroy physically the Near East (Iran,
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, etc). either he destroys the whole region or he cannot be
reelected or better he gets impeached in the Senate.
I am surprised at how many establishment media have actually labelled this murder as
"assassination" instead of the usual euphemisms. I think nearly everyone in the world
understands that bragging about international murder completely changes international
relations. Except for Pompous and Trumpet, of course.
Everyone will be filing their hair-triggers. There seems to be a general world-wide
mobilization but no one is calling it that. It is all "war games" and such. At some point
before the 2003 Iraq invasion it was clear to me that the decision for open war had been
made. It is now clear to me that there will be an invasion of Iran, starting with Iraq. I
think the B-52s sent to the area are for killing Iraqis, since they have no air defense.
At the same time, the US asset bubbles are nearly "priced to perfection". That means they
have no where to go except down. Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. All it takes is a
break in the chain of payments and the next financial panic is ON! Can Uncle Sam greatly
expand his War on the World in the middle of financial chaos? I think he will probably
try.
I speculate that Uncle Sam believes Iran and Iraq will simply cower and wait for the next
blow. I predict they will not. Soleimani's assassination and the subsequent Iranian attack
have not substantially changed the strategic situation, except to tie down the boiler relief
valve and turn up the heat. God, if there is one, help us all. We're sure gonna need it.
Does this idiot Pompeo not realize the door swing both ways? Unless he plans to live his
remaining days bunkered in NORAD, he's just as vulnerable as the rest.
Should have add to my earlier comment (10) , the missile attack on American bases on Iraq was
Iran's military/ government response for killing General Soleimani, by no means was the Shia'
response since that would need a Fatwa and not necessary by an Iranian cleric or even by
Iranian Shia. Is now a religious matter for all believers.
Sooner or later, Saudi Arabia will make peace with Iran. It will improve relations with
Russia and China, and will reduce ties with Israel. Soon, Turkey will be completely out of
Syria, and Idlib will be entirely liberated. The US, in Iraq, will slowly be drained of
vitality with a death of a thousand cuts. Medium range missile production in conjunction with
Russian S-300 air defense will will spread throughout the Middle East, and Israel's air force
will be neutralized. Then the pipeline from Iran to Syria will be completed.
- I think that EVERYONE who is involved in the Middle East will think twice before one makes
a (provocative) move. Tensions will remain high. But some people may (and will) do
(deliberately) something (provocative) that will ratchet up tensions even more. With the
intent of ratcheting tensions higher.
- There was someone who said that in 2020 World War III would start. For a long time I
thought this person was nuts. But now I am not so sure anymore that this person was nuts.
- There were also people who said that we were "sleepwalking" into WW III, something along
the lines of what happened before WW I. These persons were talking about a war between the US
(+ NATO) and Russia. But now I think that if a war would break out that then not only Russia
but also China and Iran are going to be part of that war. No, I am not sure anymore that this
going to end well.
- I also think that everyone haas become (more) cautious. And that an act of A-symmetric
warfare has become (more) unlikely.
Pompeo is the spokesman for the rules based Western empire mafia don, Trump.
The event is now being turned into a US media event (real time movie making here) by Trump
letting out text versions of the backroom chatter around the murder. This will not sit well
with the ME, IMO.
What late empire keeps pushing for is some event that can be blown into global support for
war escalation....but it hasn't happened, yet
And all this over public/private global control of value sharing in the social human
contract....what a way to run a railroad/species......
The most depressing thing about the assassination's aftermath is that Western Europe's
leaders are as bad as America's - "It's the economy, stupid!" So, a threat to their auto
manufacturers is a threat to jobs, and one has to consider the next election. They were
already controlled thanks to the NSA's eavesdropping on their cell phones, a threat to
individual politicians - no need for them to worry about physical elimination, then; Trump
threatened via economics their parties' chances of reelection, meaning they have support for
knuckling under. China, Russia and Iran are on their own - China was still working on its
economic might, Russia was still working on building a strong political foundation, and Iran
already has its hands full with internal and external threats. The fence-sitters (India,
smaller Asian and African countries) will sit on the sidelines, working to improve their own
economies and waiting to see who looks more powerful before joining one side or the other to
break down or uphold the international norms and laws it took centuries to build. Tottering
as it appears to be, the U.S. looks to be ready to burn the world; its "adversaries" aren't
yet strong enough to avoid the flamethrower.
Trailer Trash 20
The only reason I wouldn't be surprised at big media calling Soleimani's murder an
"assassination" is how the media politics is played by party. Since the media tends to lean
left, they want to be thorns in Trump's side. Neither party is against war; they want to be
the instigators to get the glory (while shifting/limiting blame). Amid the media's stories on
this were the talking points of Trump going too far by DEMs in congress.
Recall Libya. The GOP criticized Obama for Libya but only because they wanted to be able to
say they were the tough guys. The media was oh-so-happy to harp on the Iraq after Bush's
destruction of Iraq but very quiet on the aftermath of Libya.
Trump is simply a third-rate Godfather type gangster, with a touch of the charm and a lot
of the baggage. I think his murder of General Qassem Soleimani was not something he would
have done if he had any choice. It was a very stupid move, and Trump is just not that stupid.
I really think this was demanded by the 'churnitalists'. These churnitalists are probably the
psychos of the predatory arm of the CIA, and their billionaire allies.
See, it all works like this:
These churnitalists (who supposedly provide us with 'protection', or 'security') are the
real rulers (because everybody who defies them ends up dead). Now just ask your self: How
does rulership actually really work? It's really kind of simple. The only actual way to
establish rulership over other people is to prove, again and again, that you can force them
to do stupid things, for absolutely no reason. This is called 'people-churning', and all you
have to do is just keep churning out low-class 'history' by constantly forcing the weaker
ones to do stupid things. Again and again. This happens constantly in a churnitalist gangster
society. Even in schools and legislatures, and so on. Haven't you noticed it yet?
@ 24 willy2... i have been talking about war in 2020 for some time based off the astrology..i
have mentioned it in passing here at moa a few times in the past couple of years.. see my
comments in this skyscript link from june
2015..
Not only will it not deter anyone, it is loudly signaling that third rate neocons are the
only decision makers left in the room.
You're likely to see more provocations, since it's now such an easy button to push. i.e.
for any regional or global powers who need US forces to be diverted for a while. Any bullshit
they manage to sell to the young Bolton's in the bureaucracy will do.
While not exactly unprecedented, the change is how much the mask is off now.
The part of Pompeo's speech quoted by b above is American to the core: every sentence or
short paragraph contains at minimum one outright lie; the entire quote selected is also both
palpably delusional and stupid.
But having said that, there is something uniquely refreshing about the Trump/Pompeo tag
team's capacity for blurting out lies and inanities, and furthermore, they do it with gusto.
Guile is not Pompeo's strong suit.
One might say that the criminality of the 'new deterrence' is as American as apple pie,
except that apple pie in my experience is innocent of all that, unless I suppose it contains
a deadly poison, and is fed to a political or ideological foe.
What is new about the 'new deterrence' that will surely make life far more dangerous for
Americans, is that it publicly declares itself as a policy with no bounds, no ethical, or
logical, or legal constraints. So what the Americans have been doing for generations, often
but not by any means always with 'plausible denial', and sometimes quite brazenly, is now
explicitly underlined policy.
Previously, the fight was 'against communism', or 'for democracy', or for 'national
security'.
So for example, when Nicaragua during the "Reagan Revolution' was sanctioned, attacked,
vilified, subjected to uncounted atrocities, because those dastardly Nicaraguans had replaced
their loathsome monster dictator with a government trying to do the right thing for the
people, the war against that country was under the rubric of protecting American 'national
security', with bits of domino theory and communist hordes concerns thrown in.
So what is the difference between deploying tens of thousands of maniacal murderous
'contras' as 'deterrence' against a small country's attempts at making a decent life for its
people, and a drone attack on Soleimani and his companions?
I think one main difference is that the 'world has changed' around the perpetrators, but
they are still living the delusions of brainwashed childhood, the wild west, white hat
un-self conscious monstrosities riding into town, gonna clean the place up. Pathetic and
extremely dangerous.
There are 2 beasts, the first is either America or NATO, or basically "The Empire" or The
Neocon Oligarchy--all work well but America is a bit too broad since there are many good
people in America. The second beast whose number is 666, is Trump. Search: Trump 666 and be
amazed.
There's another logical flaw in Pompeo's argument.
The USA is a nuclear power. If you claim to assassinate other countries' generals as a
deterrent, then that signals America's true enemies - Russia and China - that it will
vacilate in using its own nuclear deterrent if an American target is to be neutralized. That
would bring more, not less, instability to the world order.
But maybe that's the American aim with this: to shake the already existing international
order with the objective to try to destroy Eurasia with its massive war machine and,
therefore, initiate another cycle of accumulation of American capitalism.
Another potential unintended blowback of Soleimani's assassination lies in the fact that
the USA is not officially at war with Iran. Iran was being sanctioned by the UN. That poses a
threat in the corners of the American Empire, since it sends a message that the USA doesn't
need to be at war with a nation in order to gratuitously attack it; it also sends the message
that it is not enough to play by the rules and accept the UN's sanctions - you could still do
all of that and submit yourself and still be attacked by the Americans.
The endgame of this is that there's a clear message to the American "allies" (i.e.
vassals, provinces): stay in line and obey without questioning, even if that goes directly
against your national interests. This will leave the Empire even more unstable at its
frontier because, inevitably, there'll come a time where the USA will directly command its
vassals/provinces to literally hurt their own economies just to keep the American one afloat
(or not sinking too fast). Gramsci's "Law of Hegemony" states that, the more coercion and the
less consensus, the more unstable is one's hegemony.
>Tottering as it appears to be, the U.S. looks to be
> ready to burn the world; its "adversaries" aren't yet
> strong enough to avoid the flamethrower.
> Posted by: Zee | Jan 18 2020 21:30 utc | 27
Indeed. But the longer Iran can delay the inevitable, the stronger and better prepared it
becomes, while Uncle Sam is busy burning the furniture and getting financially more
precarious. US planners seem to think that one can build an economy around poor people giving
each other haircuts while rich people keep trading the exact same assets back and forth while
steady driving asset prices higher.
Somewhere in the economic cycle someone has to actually make stuff and grow food. But
planners have allowed the manufacturing (and associated engineering, etc.) to leave while
driving farmers into bankruptcy. They are mortgaged to the hilt. When land prices quit
rising, there is no additional collateral and no new credit. With no additional credit, no
one will sell them seeds and equipment. So they are out of business. It's scary to think how
few people actually grow all the food to feed millions and millions.
Asset bubbles have real consequences, such as millions can not afford rent anymore while
millions of housing units remain empty because their value still goes up even without rental
income. Scenes from Soylent Green come to mind, thinking about how more and more people are
crammed into fewer living quarters.
Our brain-dead leaders have created a situation where they must continue to inflate
bubbles to keep increasing collateral to back more debt. But the bubbles impoverish the rest
of us. And bubbles always pop. Always.
I'm not sure how much the next financial crisis will affect the US killing machine, but I
doubt it would make the war machine stronger.
>The GOP criticized Obama for Libya but only because they
> wanted to be able to say they were the tough guys. The
> media was oh-so-happy to harp on the Iraq after Bush's
> destruction of Iraq but very quiet on the aftermath of Libya.
> Posted by: Curtis | Jan 18 2020 21:37 utc | 29
Yes to this. There is no disagreement in DC on the goals, just fussing over the tactics
and who takes credit. Two right wings on the war bird. Maybe that is why it is on a downward
spiral.
Describing that the drone strike took out "two for the price of one" -- in reference to
slain Iraqi Shia paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, who had been at the airport to
greet Soleimani, Trump gave a more detailed accounting than ever before of proceedings in the
'situation room' (which had been set up at Mar-a-Lago) that night.
He went on to recount listening to military officials as they watched the strike from
"cameras that are miles in the sky."
"They're together sir," Trump recalled the military officials saying. "Sir, they have two
minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. '2 minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the
car, they're in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. 30
seconds. 10, 9, 8 ...' "
"Then all of a sudden, boom," he went on. "'They're gone, sir. Cutting off.' "
"I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him."
b: Usage or typo alert - about 2/3 of the way through your piece.
Reuters makes it seem that the U.S. would not even shy away from killing a Russian or
Chinese high officer on a visit in a third country. That is, for now, still out of
bounce as China and Russia deter the U.S. from such acts with their own might...
The English language expression is "out of bounds" as in, of course, outside the bounding
lines defining a field of play.
"We put together a campaign of diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and military
deterrence."
"diplomatic isolation" - when I read this I thought of the Ukrainian plane and the demand
for an "investigation according to international guidelines" (well, Syria got that
investigation according to international guidelines with the OPCW and we know how that went)
- it may lead to diplomatic isolation. Watch it. As such, Pompeo might have laid out a motive
for a potential US involvement.
"economic pressure" - while the E3 did not sanction Iran, with their lack of action in
regards to find working mechanisms and their depending on the US, that goal has been
achieved.
"military deterrence" - Pompeo thinks in CIA terms which can be seen as a covert weapons
trafficking organization (Timber Sycamore) and something like a secret military organization.
The murder of Suleimani is a war crime and as such a criminal act; it can hardly be
considered a military deterrence - although the murder was carried out by the US military
(maybe by CIA embedded in base?).
I don't know. It's a lot of speculation. Iran may have a reason to not state their systems
got hacked. But in the current context it may be advisable to do so, turn a potential
cyberattack back to its place of origin.
Pompeo and Trump have no concept of personal honour as they come from a sub-culture that has
none.
In the rest of the world, honour-integrity is very important. Throughout MENA to Pakistan,
the US was viewed as treacherous for using Sadaam to fight Iran then turning on him in
service of Israel's goals. Bush 2 contributed, through his blatant financial criminality
(much of this remains unknown to average Americans), to the perception that the US is
incapable of honouring ANY agreement (re:oil and other sub-rosa deals the US made).
The decimation of Syria, Iraq and Libya was not enough; criminal elites in the US have now
completely exposed themselves to the Muslim world. I am firmly convinced that the Arab
'street' has concluded the US and Israel are inseparable in their policy of murder and
mayhem. I am betting the elites view reconciliation within the Arab and Islamic world as the
way forward with input from Russia, China when and if needed. Turning away from US-Israeli
meddling and treachery will be a primary concern for the 20's.
I don't believe Pompeo or Trump have the foresight to understand killing Soleimani has sealed
how the US is perceived: Indonesia, Malaysia, Muslim India (all 250+million), Afghanistan and
Pakistan will accelarate the turning away.
This 'decision' to murder Soleimani will be cited by future non_court historians as seminal.
The US murdered the 2nd most important person in Iranian politics. This has to be one of THE
STUPIDEST DECISIONS I have seen come out of the Washington, D.C--Tel Aviv--London axis. I
really cannot think of any other official action by the US that compares in stupidity.
Unofficially, 911 was the stupidest act of the last 2 decades but as for official I believe
this takes the cakes.
In essence, screaming to the world that you are a gangster is not a very graceful way to wind
down an Empire. Pompeo-Trump-BoBo should have looked at a map. I see a hemisphere that is
geographically isolated that has to make a case for why anyone should interact with it.
Currently, all they have is the petrodollar system that supports 1, 000 military bases.
Problem: they have just given many of the (often unwilling) participants in that system a big
reason to leave it. I believe this is referred to as 'suicide'?
Correct me if I'm wrong. I would be happy to be.
Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between
Germany's behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and
externally. Is it just me, or have other's noted the similarity of Pompeo to Herman Goering
in looks and behaviour?
That's one of the good aspect of Trump administration, in the long run. With these psychos
openly plagiarizing Grand Moff Tarkin ("Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of
this battle station."), it will be pretty had for any sane and sensible observer not to come
to the conclusion that, deep down, the USA *is* an Evil Empire that has to be fought and
brought down - and thankfully, this time, one saner Obama-like presidency, if it ever happens
after Trump, won't be enough to change that perception.
I can only guess what Toynbee would think of the US now, it certainly looks like suicide to
me and if the US actually had any friends left they would be busy trying to talk the US out
of it. From this point of view the relative silence speaks loudly and says something quite
different than at least some people think.
US NATO "allies" haven't exactly been enthusiastic. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking the UK
came closest with Johnson's "not crying" remark, everything else seems to be tortured
statements walking on eggshells. 2nd biggest NATO member Turkey cooperates with Iran and
plenty of others in NATO have wanted and worked towards normal relations despite differences,
some more publicly than others. It might not have amounted to anything but that's my
impression at least.
Any support for war against Iran is microscopic. Against Russia? Except for the rarest of
the worst of fools not a chance. Against China? People would have trouble comprehending the
question itself due to how absurd the notion is.
"Is it just me" who makes the argument reductio ad Hitlerum?
No, it's you and every other moron who gets his history from teevee and Hollywood.
If the compulsion to resort to WWII analogies is too compelling to overcome, flip the
script:
US and Britain 'won' the war in Germany by deliberately firebombing civilian targets, over
and over and over and over again.
United States Dept. of Interior records in detail how Standard Oil engineers, USAF, Jewish
architects, and Jewish Hollywood studio set designers constructed and practiced creating
firestorms with the stated goal of killing working class German civilians, including "infants
in cribs."
In a discussion of his book, The Fire, Jörg Friedrich emphasized that Allied bombers
dropped leaflets telling the Germans they were about to kill that their only recourse was to
overthrow their government -- to topple or kill Hitler: the "greatest generation" killed
civilians as "deterrents" to Wehrmacht's defensive actions against Allied invasion.
Since at least 1995 US tactics against Iran have been similar: Ed Royce spelled them out:
US will sanction Iranian citizens in an effort to make life so miserable for them that they
will riot and overthrow their government.
So yes, it IS "just like the Nazis" -- US-zionists are running a similar playbook as that
used to prostrate Germany.
And Iraq.
And Libya.
And Syria.
Notice that wrt Syria, having reduced that ancient place to rubble, much like Allies
reduced Germany's cultural heritage to rubble, US 'diplomats' are steadfastly refusing to
allow Syria access to resources with which to finance its reconstruction, and are also
blocking any other country's attempt to aid Syria in reconstruction: Destroying Syria was
'hi-tech eminent domain,' and now USA intends to be the only entity to finance and rebuild
Syria -- or else US will continue the destruction of Syria.
Most Americans think Marshall plan was an act more generous than Jesus Christ on the
cross, but in fact it was a cynical strategy to completely dominate Germany in saecula
saeculorum. (US LOANED the money, and far more-- about 2.5 X more-- was committed to
England -- relatively undamaged -- than to Germany, where 70% of infrastructure was
rubble.)
You won't learn that from the Hollywood version of WWII.
"This is not a Warning, it is a Threat," Trump declared in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon,
adding that Iran will "pay a very BIG PRICE" for the embassy siege earlier in the day."
They sure did. So who is next?
Yesterday Trump warned the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khameni:
US President Donald Trump has warned the supreme leader of Iran to watch his language,
following a heated sermon in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed American leaders as
"clowns."
Leading a prayer in Tehran on Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boasted that Iran had the
"spirit to slap an arrogant, aggressive global power" in its retaliation to the
assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, which he said struck a "serious
blow" to Washington's "dignity" – triggering a response from the US president.
"The so-called 'Supreme Leader' of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some
nasty things to say about the United States and Europe," Trump tweeted. "Their economy is
crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!"
In his sermon, Khamenei blasted "American clowns," who he said "lie in utter viciousness
that they stand with the Iranian people," referring to recent comments by Trump and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Lets face it, assassinations are not a new thing. It became more organized with Lord
Palmerstons gangs of thugs in the mid 19th century (one of which took out Lincoln) . Since
the end of WWII the global mafia jumped across the pond and assassinations have been covert
actions arranged by the CIA , with operations having a high degree of plausible deniability.
But most higher ups had a pretty good idea who was behind it . Trumps just continued this but
like Bush and Obama have made clear its their right to do so against terrorists . Of course
the definition of terrorist has become rather broad. Trump recently said he authorized the
hit because he said bad things about America. Maybe saying bad things about Trump can get you
labelled the same. Watch out for those drones barflies.
So basically the main change is they no longer care about plausible deniability . They are
proud to admit it. And nobody seems to care enough to express any outrage. Name any countries
leader who has except in muted terms. Europe, Russia, China, etc everyone quiet as a mouse.
China so outraged they signed a trade deal giving them nothing. UN? Might as well move it to
Cuba , Iran or Venezuela for all the clout it has.
So you know, maybe the deterrence is working. Terrorism works both ways. The world seems
terrorized and hardly anyone in the US dares criticize Trumps action without saying the
general was evil and deserved it. Its not just drones they fear as financial terrorism
(sanctions, denied access to USD) works quite well also (except in Irans case).
The argument is correct.
(Although the mafia label bespeaks a limited frame of reference and it's inappropriate in any
event -- crime families do not have the reach or power of state assassination squads.)
Ferencz does not have the moral standing to make the argument.
It's like granting Ted Bundy credibility for criticizing police brutality.
The beast rises from the bottomless pit, it is written in the book you quoted!
How do you suggest a mere mortal and retard like trump does that?
The murcanized xtianity eschatology you have been reading is stupid and in NO WAY SHAPE OR
FORM Orthodox(Orthodox=Christian)
"ORTHODOXESCHATOLOGYdotBLOGSPOTdotCOM"
"orthodoxinfoDOTcom"
"preteristarchiveDOTcom"
You will find info that is not xtian but Christian @ those blogs..
The last one is a library with ancient and old texts about Christianity!
If you search "THEOSIS THE TRUE PURPOSE OF HUMAN LIFE" on orthodoxinfo you will also find a
book WELL worth reading if you are/want to be Christian.
Per
Russian Orthodox
Norway
"And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the
bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them."
Kali @35
i messed up and hit post b4 i pasted this..
"'The beast that thou didst see: it was, and it is not; and it is about to come up out of the
abyss, and to go away to destruction, and wonder shall those dwelling upon the earth, whose
names have not been written upon the scroll of the life from the foundation of the world,
beholding the beast that was, and is not, although it is."
Per
Russian Orthodox
Norway
first speculation. however it happened, "deep state" power or factions now have a
jacket
on Trump. he can't disown what happened. Brennan and Stephen Schwarzman are safe.
the Money and the MIC get what they want. Trump's agenda of converting the common good
to corporate profit is acceptable. they can use Trump to defeat Sanders.
and lastly this outlier from ibm.com. a new, more powerful battery made from sea
water.
charges in 5 min. in California this means electricity off your roof for everything
including
your car plus a surplus for export. how soon? doesn't say. oil dependent economies
want to know. and we won't need the "petro" for the petrodollar. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/12/heavy-metal-free-battery/
The truth of it is Trump murdered General Soleimani because the general was very effective in
defeating ISIS - the U.S. created and funded - terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The neocons were
none too pleased.
Release Jan.18 2020 21st centurywire audio Interview with Dr. Mohammad Marandi, Tehran
University
@ ChasMark 7 - not an ounce of integrity! Trump or Ferencz?
How is it I posted days ago that link to Ferencz's letter to New York Times and not a
pips. Are you defending Trump's war crimes as against bringing the Nazis to justice?
How about the U.S. waterboarding and torturing Muslims at Gitmo? 19 years on with NO
TRIALS!!! That's OK, right?
As far as b's premise goes, he's proven it IMO. Looks like the CIA made the next move in
Lebanon. IMO, Asia plus Russia & Belarus hold the geoeconomic and geopolitical deterrence
cards. The Financial Parasite continues hollowing out what remains of US industry and retail
helped along by Trump's Trade War. I presented the fundamental economic info and arguments on
the prior threads, so I don't have anything to add.
the price of fake freedom is remaining ever vigilant to prevent peace breaking out. trump's
as much a warmonger as any of them (which is to say impeachment won't make a bit of
difference).
[Before] the US assassination of Soleimani, there were numerous back-channel efforts for
détente in the costly wars that have raged across the region since the US-instigated
Arab Spring between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran and Iraq. Russia and China have both in
different ways been playing a key role in changing the geopolitical tensions. At this
juncture the credibility of Washington as any honest partner is effectively zero if not
minus.
[.] The US president just tweeted his support for renewed anti-government Iran protests,
in Farsi. We are clearly in for some very nasty trouble in the Middle East as Washington
tries to deal with the unintended consequences of its recent Middle East actions.[.]
Run home as fast as you can. In this election year, an observation; 10% of companies are
losing money but thanks to the Feds, the Markets are making ATH ...all time highs. On main
street Joe and Jane are in a well of hurt "it's the economy, stupid."
There is nothing ambiguous about Pompeo's statement. It is evidence of a profound psychotic
break. It is a megalomaniac delusion of godlike power, a deterance not attainable on a human
scale. "In all cases, we have to do this."
The masters of the universe will kill those who do not comply. The projection of their
psychic power to intimidate the world goes well beyond Iraq and Iran, brushing aside all the
little insubstantial nations that are constantly underfoot. Russia and China are to take heed
now, it is they too who must sleep with one eye open. The deterrence necessary to keep us all
safe means to go ahead and challenge those islands China built in the South China Sea.
The smiling villains do not accept that Crimea is part of Russia. Pompeo compares
Soleimani to bin Laden. There are so many departures from reality in the speech amidst all
the levity that it seems like someone has opened the doors of the Asylum.
Your retorts don't make sense relative to anything I've posted.
"not an ounce of integrity! Trump or Ferencz?"
Neither.
"How is it I posted days ago that link to Ferencz's letter to New York Times and not a
pips."
U can't fool all of the people all of the time. I wasn't fooled by Ferencz's claim to
righteousness based on Harvard when his Nuremberg activities were outrageous and the
Nuremberg set-up itself was that of a kangaroo court.
"Are you defending Trump's war crimes as against bringing the Nazis to
justice?"
Trump's war crimes are indefensible; the Nuremberg trials were not about "bringing Nazis
to justice," they involved, as Rabbi Wise said, a largely Jewish exercise in revenge. If
Nuremberg were about "justice," Wise himself would have been in the dock along with FDR (post
mortem), Churchill, Stalin, and Truman + + +
If Congress were just, it would be impeaching Trump, Pompeo, Pence etc. for war crimes.
But that does not make the Nuremberg trials the model of justice: they were not: as Rabbi
Stephen Wise wrote to his family, months before the trials began, they were set up by FDR's
man Robert Jackson as a
" broad departure from Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. [in which]
Retroactively "aggressive war-making" becomes criminally punishable–with membership
in the Gestapo prima facie proof of criminal participation."
Ferencz's co-ethnics participated in the creation of the kangaroo court that Ferencz
himself utilized more to vent his spleen than to establish international models of
justice.
That is why the so-called Nuremberg principles have not and cannot be properly applied to
the war crimes committed by Bush (I and II), by Clinton (Bill & Hill), Obama, Trump --
not to mention FDR, Truman & Churchill.
Further, as Ferencz surely realizes, "The United Nations Charter, the International
Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague" are toothless: if
they were effective bodies for meting justice, even the sanctions on Iran would be subject to
judgment under United Nations Charter, along with Victoria Kagan Nuland's subversion of
Ukraine and every other 'color revolution' US has engaged in: the UN Charter proscribes
interference in the internal affairs of member states.
In the Orwellian value system of America, Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really
NewSpeak for America's brazen war crimes, wars of aggression, and shredding of international
law.
America is a mafia nation masquerading as a democracy.
And Donald Trump is a two-bit New York mafioso don in charge of this America Mafia
state.
Trump recounts minute by minute details of Soleimani assassination at a fundraiser held at
his Florida resort. Cause that's what normal people do; brag about murdering someone. I'll
bet his fat cat Zionist friends emptied their coffers. SICK.
ak74 @62: Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really NewSpeak ...
Exactly. And we might add:
"America First" means America is the Empire's Fist;
"Stand with the people of " is 'New World Order' psyop;
"Economic sanctions" is the economic part of hybrid warfare;
"War on terror" is the war on ALL enemies of the empire via terrorist
destabilization;
"Russiagate" is McCarthyist war on dissent;
"Trump" is the latest dear leader whose flaws are blessings and whose 'gut
instinct' is God's will. We know this because his fake enemies (like the Democrats, "fake
news", and ISIS) always fail when they confront him.
!!
V , Jan 19 2020 3:12 utc |
69 Dr. George W Oprisko | Jan 19 2020 2:46 utc | 65
You are a CIA/NSA TROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You condone pre-meditated MURDER!!!
Are you sure you actually read Chasmark @ 61?
Nowhere does he; You condone pre-meditated MURDER!!!
What Chasmark did, was to post the truth of the Nuremberg Trials.
They were an out and out sham...
You definitely need to up your reading comprehension and or, your knowledge of history...
And the other countries of the world whine, but do nothing. I'm afraid they've become as
shallow and self-absorbed as most Americans, afraid to confront the world's bully.
Torches and pitchforks are needed, and we get marches. I'm afraid the depravity has to get
worse before direct action is taken.
I only hope to live long enough to see the debacle that is inevitable, even if takes me
with it.
Justice and truth demand a reckoning..
Sounds dark, I know, but these are very dark days.
Among some of very good points you made, I take issue:
"Your retorts don't make sense relative to anything I've posted."
Perhaps you should re-read my comment vs what you posited. Look to Gitmo; is it any
different to your critique of Nuremberg where there was a trial, albeit with deficiencies, vs
holding and torturing prisoners over 18 years without a trial? that was my point.
You continue to offer up Rabbi Wise who proffered the Nuremberg trials were [.] "a
largely Jewish exercise in revenge"
I may add, they are also continuing to take out their revenge on Palestinians who had
nothing to do with events in Germany. The once oppressed have become oppressors.
If Congress were just, it would be impeaching Trump, Pompeo, Pence etc. for war
crimes.
Don't expect justice from Congress they are all too busy at the money trough to recognize
war crimes.
War crimes are prosecuted by the ICC which the US and Israel do not recognize. US is not a
state party; have threatened,
denied visas and barred entry to ICC investigators of war crimes
Further, as Ferencz surely realizes, "The United Nations Charter, the International
Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague" are toothless:
Toothless! Perhaps but Don't tell that to
Africans or Slobodan Milosevic while ELITES residing on that sliver of the "occupied
lands of Palestine" continue to roam free. Oh wait, they are the chosen ones who rule the
world!
Pompeo's speech may just be an attempt to reduce the cost of a future false flag
assassination that could be blamed on one of the enemies. If the enemy does what we do, no
need for an all out war. There will be a range of response options including just firing a
few missiles. Cost of war with the chosen enemy may be too high or the timing just not right.
William Gruff @ 9 Expressions of <=reality-disconnected human behavior=> describes
victim response to rules, enforcement behaviors and media products that bathe the
differentiation space that allows to produce human automatons. An examination of the forces
at work inside of the nation state container (differentiation space) will likely reveal
private and external forces that produce in these public containers, reality-disconnected
human responders (human behavior is a function of its environment; all learning is a result
of personal experience). No one can learn from another, but everyone can learn from the
behaviors of that other.
The physical environment is nature's doing, but the non physical environment is man's
doing. We can organize content as a product of the physical environment ( we build a home) or
as a product of the virtual environment (we produce a movie).
Conscious physical man is a highly differentiated product of both environments. A person
growing up in the jungles of Belize, will not learn to operate a sled designed to operate in
snow, and a person in the cold north will not learn to survive in the topical jungles of the
Amazon. Experience is the only teacher, human expression is the experience modified product
of sets of expressed genes. Experience in both the physical environment and the virtual
environment contribute to the human response to the challenges of life. The virtual
environment is about knowledge, habit, privilege, opportunity and a host of other non
physical components. see Law, Moral attitudes, and behavioral change, p. 243 ref and to be
clear behavior has three components. ref 7
What is this virtual space (environment) that allows differentiated humans to be
manufactured from genetic material in to adult automatons. How are these automatons
programmed? Since is it rarely possible to modify the physical space; most human
differentiation occurs in virtual space. How many such digital spaces are there? virtual
content means<= the verbal and non verbal (ref.12) discourse that engages interactively
with the mind (conscious and unconsciousness). Environments can be natural or manufactured.
Environment then is the container space. The contents of the manufactured environment are
psycho-econo-socio-metically designed, media engineered, sets of media products. Each nation
state supports a different set of contents within its container space. The order, arrangement
and time of environments presented controls the mental behaviors of the media connected
humans who reside within the container space environment.
The content of each nation state in the system is a set of environment variables operative
in each human container. Two hundred and six different container spaces (the global nation
state system=NSS) divides and separates the 8 billion humans in the world. Human
differentiation is a product of the 206 different container environments. Your observation
that "Pompeo is a psycho"; expresses the real problem for humanity; its leaders are the
products of the physical and virtual content of the host nation state within the system of
nation states. Each nation state is led by a few. I say to solve this always war condition it
is necessary to control the humans that occupy the positions in the nation states or to
eliminate the nation state system, and find some better way to address human need for
governance.
That strike, which was only the first part of Iran's response to the murdering of
Soleimani, deterred the U.S. from further action.
Is USA really 'deterred' or just didn't want war at this time? USA is 'deterred' if the
Iranian response actually stopped them in some way.
But they took Iran's 'slap' and RESPONDED (though not militarily) with more sanctions and
even tried to turn the attack to their advantage by saying (initially) that Iran missed on
purpose (
as I explained here ) and conducting Electronic Warfare/Info War that may have
contributed to Iran's mistaken downing of a commercial airliner.
And, as bar patrons know only too well, Pompeo has refused to negotiate a USA exit from
Iraq, saying that "USA is a force for good in the Middle East".
IMO USA wants to put on UN sanctions (now in progress) and, when war comes, USA will
portray it as entirely Iran's fault. The claim will be that Iran is "lashing out" due
to "sanctions imposed by the world community" .
Why does anyone gives either the president or US officials credence regarding what they say,
especially Secretary Pompeo, not to mention POTUS? Taking Pompeo at this word and responding
to it strikes me as a waste of time. These people are never going to say publicly what they
are up to, which is world domination. Nor is it their own ideal. This has been the policy of
the US elite at least since WWII, which was simply a transfer of the seat of power from
London to Washington as the British Empire morphed into the Anglo-American Empire. Global
domination through sea power was British policy for centuries and the US just recently
joining the game, especially when the game expanded to air power as well. Arguably, this goes
back to the end of WWI, if not the Spanish-American war that embarked the US on empire.
Deterrence, I guess is the politically correct term for what Trump is doing.
He sees that the Dollar hegemonic empire was crumbling same as most who don't rely on MSM for
their news.
Trump believes US can hold its position in the world through pure military power, or the
threat of military power.
He wants to regain what he calls importance from early 90s when US was sole undisputed
superpower.
Iran though, he believes is a blot on USA's past that needs erasing.
Throughout the election campaign, Trump's big thing was rebuilding US military. He believes
this will restore US power in the world. Ruling through the world fear rather than soft power
and blackmail.
Today is Theophany in the Orthodox Christian Church, the baptism of Christ in the River
Jordan:
Today Thou hast appeared to the universe
and Thy light, O Lord, hast shone on us,
who with understanding praise Thee:
Thou hast come and revealed Thyself
O Light Unapproachable!
The 2000 page report about Afganistan sums up USA's criminal insanity. Further, Trump says
the response attack from Iran did not harm troops nor do anything of significant damage.
Indeed Iran's missiles are far superior than the USA's and the counter attack for the
General's assassination. I have mused, that, perhaps the USA was/is set up in this scenario
via Iran, Et Al.
The basis of the American Empire and its parasitic economy and Way of Life(TM) itself are
premised on what should be called America's Dollar Dictatorship.
Because of the US Dollar, America is able to wage economic siege warfare (aka economic
sanctions) on multiple nations around the planet--all in order to impose the Land of the
Free's imperial dictates on them.
This is American global gangsterism in everything but name--and disguised behind the
founding American deceptions of "Freedom and Democracy."
The vast majority Americans--including some fake "alternative media" shills--will attempt
to spindoctor this issue by avoiding such blunt description of this system.
Instead, they prefer to employ Orwellian euphemisms about the "US PetroDollar" or the "US
Dollar Reserve Currency" or how America's superpower status is dependent on this dollar
syistem.
But former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accurately calls out this system for what
it is: America's global dictatorship of the Dollar.
This is another reason why America has such hatred for Iran:
Best explanation I've seen yet of the 752 jet takedown. It was a false flag attack by the US
or its allies intended to frame Iran. The Iranian missile hit second after the plane had
already been hit by the Stinger and was several seconds from crashing anyway. The rich kids
of Tehran were in the housing complex at 6 AM to film the Stinger shootdown by their
terrorist buddies. They have properly been arrested. There have been other arrests too. I
wonder what they will come up with.
This makes more sense than any other theory I have seen.
Tom Luongo, who frequently cites b, has coined a new word for Trump's and his minions
tactics. Tom asks:
Does Gangsternomics Meet its End in the Iraqi Desert?
In the aftermath of the killing of Iranian IRGC General Qassem Soleimani a lot of questions
hung in the air. The big one was, in my mind, "Why now?"
There are a lot of angles to answer that question. Many of them were supplied by
caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi who tried to let the world know through
official (and unofficial) channels of the extent of the pressure he was under by the
U.S.
In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as
gangsternomics in directing the course of Iraq's future economic and political
development.[/]
Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S. It
is the fulcrum now on which the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests. The
entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S.
And this started with Russia moving into Syria in 2015 successfully. We are downstream of
this as it has blown open the playbook and revealed it for how ugly it is.
Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in
Syria cannot be hidden behind the false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about
bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/]
What began in Syria with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China standing up together and
saying, "No," continues today in Iraq. To this point Iran has been the major actor.
Tomorrow it will be Russia, China and India.
And that is what is ultimately at stake here, the ability of the U.S. to employ
gangsternomics in the Middle East and make it stick.[.]
By the time Trump is done threatening people over S-400's and pipelines the entire world
will be happy to trade in yuan and/or rubles rather than dollars.[.]
Pompeo omitted a crucial part of this sentence: "deterrence to protect [the financial and
energy hegemony of] America".
While this might be obvious to us, the narrative that US foreign policy is about
protecting citizens, values and apple pie from 'bad guys' -- and indeed that the militaries
of all Western countries are benign police forces preventing ISIS from burning your old
Eagles albums and other violations of 'freedom' -- is such a regular part of the MSM/cinema
diet masticated by the general public that we have completely forgotten that the basic
function of the armed forces is the pursuit of vested interests through superior violence. It
always seemed strange to me that the post-ww2 cinematic template for war-movies, and by
extension the basic plot of all reporting of western military activity in the media, always
represented the enemy as evil precisely because they use militaries in an instrumental
way (i.e for the purpose they were designed). The Germans, or for that matter the
Persians in 300 , or any baddies in war films, seek to extend and protect their
interests (real or imagined) by deploying armed forces. The good guys are always identifiable
through this idea of 'deterrence': "hey man, all we want is just to live and let live, but
you pushed us so we pushed back." Then one stirs in a little 'preemptive deterrence': you
looked like you were going to push so we acted. If we 'accidentally' go too far, it's because
there is a deranged C-in-C: Hitler, or Xerxes, or some other naughty boy who can be the
fall-guy, scapegoat, etc. To get serious we need to go back a very long way, to, say, the
Iliad , which, like all Greek (and Roman) literature, assumes as a premise (and it's
tragedy) that the warrior's basic function is to kill, pillage, rape and occasionally protect
others from the same. But mostly take by force . No qualms or BS 'deterrence', armies
are for taking other people's stuff by force (land-grabs, etc). I would respect Pompeo a
whole lot more (but not much more...) if he just once came out and said: "Iran is run by
people who don't want us to take their stuff; we want to undermine them and replace them with
paid yes-men who will let us take Iran's stuff. We will use violence and armed force to make
this happen. But we have no intention of distributing this loot evenly among our citizens.
Instead it will be paid as dividends to select shareholders and spent retooling the military
for next poor bastards who stand up to us."
Patroklos 84
Xerxes wanted water from Spartans, Hitler wanted land from "subhumans", but I don't see what
kind of stuff Americans want from Iranians. When they had Iran under control during Pahlavi
rule, what stuff did they take from Iran? They were giving Iran lots of money - didn't give
them USD printing press machine too?
Mike Javaras @82: The Iranian missile hit second after the plane had already been hit by
the Stinger ...
MANPADs like Stingers are heat-seeking. They go after ENGINES. On a big plane like PS732,
a MANPADs is unlikely to have stopped the transponder and communications.
Philip Giraldi points a finger at US/Israeli Electronic Warfare:
Giraldi thinks the transponder was hacked. But the article he cites also talks about a device
on board that would've allowed for EW. And he notes that Israel probably ALSO has the
capability to have been responsible for the EW and/or device on board.
Thanks. Gangsternomics seems a good term for Trump's vision of US world power. Trump is
pragmatic or realist in that he knows there is no court or authority to hold the US to
account.
As to US holding power purely through military power, that can only happen long term if he
gets hold of a good chunk of the worlds energy reserves (as in Persian gulf and Venezuela
oil). If he doesn't achieve that, then the US goes down. Iran needs to ensure it stays under
Russia's nuclear umbrella as there are no rules.
MOSCOW – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated there is unverified information
that at least six American F-35 jets were in the Iranian border area at the time when Tehran
accidentally downed Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 last week.
Sickening series of Trump interviews and speeches demanding that Iraq pay America and its
allies over a trillion dollars for liberating Iraq (time stamp 8:20 to 12:00). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZfDJerI0o
This demonstrates that US attacks in Iraq over the last 30-40 years was mostly about the
control (including transportation routes) and than profiting from its oil and gas
reserves.
A secondary reason is to put troop on the border with Iran to further destabilize it via
state terrorism to overthrow the government and then take its oil and gas too.
It will get interesting when a pro Iranian new Prime minister takes office and China
offers Iraq a line of credit equivalent to the funds that would be frozen in Western bank
accounts if Iraq actually demands the troops to leave.
"The Iran-linked Binaa parliamentary voting bloc has nominated Asaad al-Edani, a former
minister and governor of oil-rich Basra province. Binaa's bloc is mostly made up of the Fatah
party led by militia leader turned politician Hadi al-Ameri, who is close to Tehran."
The Kurdish President of Iraq has stated that "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and
preserve civil peace, I apologize for not naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued.
"I am ready to submit my resignation to parliament." https://time.com/5755588/iraq-president-resignation/
I close with a visionary French rock opera Starmania "story of an alternate reality where
a fascist millionaire (read Trump) famous for building skyscrapers is running for president
on an anti-immigration policy, and where the poor are getting more and more desperate for
their voices to be heard." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LytR-6Xmk
Xerxes wanted water from Spartans, Hitler wanted land from "subhumans", but I don't see
what kind of stuff Americans want from Iranians. When they had Iran under control during
Pahlavi rule, what stuff did they take from Iran? They were giving Iran lots of money -
didn't give them USD printing press machine too?
Assuming that your post was serious...
1. Water from the Spartans? That makes absolutely no sense as a glance at any historical
map of the Achaemenid Empire will show;
2. Lebensraum was indeed a specific war aim of Hitler;
3. Under the Shah Anglo-American (not mention Dutch, French and other) interests skimmed all
Iranian energy resources, kept the USSR under pressure on the southern coast of the Caspian
Sea and provided a key friendly power in the most important region of central Asia.
Petro-dollar supremacy could not have been established without control of the Persian
Gulf. The Persian elite were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know
what the rest get.
@ krollchem #90 with the Starmania link that is not working
I get the following error from Oregon, USA
"
Video unavailable
This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright
grounds.
"
Thanks for the rest of the comment and agree with the sickness of demanding Iraq pay for
being invaded.
1. Water from the Spartans? That makes absolutely no sense as a glance at any
historical map of the Achaemenid Empire will show;
That was in the movie 300. I guess you did not watch it. :-)
The Persian elite were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know
what the rest get.
Not just the elite. Persian middle class was pretty well off too. Spending vacation in
Europe was easy, quite affordable. Not any more. I know I know, those dang sanctions... well
that is what you get when you piss off the big dawg.
Anybody know what's up with Andrew Peek getting sacked from the NSC Russia desk tonight?
Odd that, and he seemed like such a trustworthy chap as indicated in his twitter feed.
Perhaps he has some Ciaramella connections that would make Trump uncomfortable. Or Trump is
taking absolutely no more chances with any insider he has no control over when attending high
level meetings.
Are you talking about 'earth and water' ? The symbolic gesture
of submission to the Great King? That's a very different thing altogether. You make it sound
like 'water rights'... I did indeed watch the film I'm sad to say, but Xerxes was not after
water.
I'd like to know what proportion of the pre-1979 population of Iran qualified as
'middle-class' and what that meant in real terms. Outside of Tehran, Shiraz, etc there
probably weren't a lot of Iranians skiing in St Moritz.
There are certain signs that nations exhibit when they slide into becoming
'regimes'...targeted, illegal assassinations of opponents is one of these; America's recent
political trajectory has been from oligarchy to kakistocracy and now, it seems, to regime -
banana republic next, perhaps?...
Soleimani had delivered an speech on 2 August 2018 in Hamadan, in his speech he read 5 verses
poems from Rumi the famous Persian poet lived on 13 century. You can watch and listen minute
35:45 of the film ,
if you know Farsi. He said let enemy pay attention to these poems.
He has selected 5 verses from two locations from Book3 of Masnavi.
V-96 : Men dance and whirl on the battle-field // They dance in their own blood.
V-97 : They clap a hand when they are freed from the hand of ego // They make a dance when
they jump out from their own imperfection,
V-98: The inner musicians strike the tambourine // The Oceans burst into foam from their
ecstasy
I think Soleimani selected last 3 verses from this story of baby elephant killer, and
revenge of the mother elephant, without intending the content of story. But the coincidence
is striking.
No fault in your reasoning, particularly when expressing this from Trump's point of view.
I'd go a bit further and suggest he understands Iran, North Korea and Cuba are the only
remaining nations without a Rothschild central bank. Thinking he's successfully rebuilt the
U.S. military could be the single most critical failure of his presidency. Upgrading hardware
with a tactical nuclear weapon preference, isn't synonymous with rebuilding. What's neglected
are the people operating any apparatus. As an example, there is no timely military action to
counter mining of the Strait of Hormuz as illustrated by
Death and Neglect in the 7th Fleet . A firsthand account from a U.S. Naval officer is eye
opening (emphasis mine).
He'd seen his ship, one of the Navy's fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and
maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its
crew was only able to conduct its most essential training -- how to identify and defuse
underwater mines -- for fewer than 10 days the entire next year . During those
training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship's faulty
navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000.
Sonar which identifies dishwashers, crab traps and cars as possible mines, can hardly be
considered a rebuilt military. The Navy's eleven minesweepers built more than 25 years ago,
have had their decommissioning continually delayed because no replacement plan was
implemented. I'll await the deeper understanding of 'deterrence' from b, even as I consider
willingness to commit and brag about war crimes as beyond the point of no return.
psychedelicatessen "Thinking he's successfully rebuilt the U.S. military could be the single
most critical failure of his presidency."
I would be in agreement on the overall gist of your reply, but on Trump thinking he's
successfully rebuilt the US military, I'm not so sure. He is a pragmatic gangster when it
comes to world affairs which is why his Nuclear Posture Review lowered the threshold of first
use of nukes. b's previous post on 'How Trump rebelled against the generals' also fits in
with this line of thought.
I believe Trump needs to be thought of as a CEO brought in to pull a company back from the
edge of bankruptcy. I think that is the way he sees himself, and as I have put in previous
comments, there are no rules. I had thought Trump may be adverse to pure terrorism but
depending on what comes of the Ukie airliner shootdown in Iran, there may be absolutely no
rules as far as Trump is concerned.
The article linked by Mike Jarvis @86 makes observational comments about the behavior of
the first missile strike in PS752 and that it must have been a stinger/manpad (and not a
Tor). The same article also concludes that EW must also have been involved. Everything I have
read indicates that the first missile strike behaved like a stinger/manpad - until this can
be disproved it must remain a valid theory.
"... The "movement conservatives" leader was Barry Goldwater who Trump's dad was a big supporter of, and Trump was raised in and among AND represents that faction of elite power. ..."
"... The LIEO or Rules Based Order is based on being closely allied with European elites against Russia to contain the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard theory. ..."
"... The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that led to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and run by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level technocrat but no politician. ..."
"... The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations to make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine. The conflicts are not meant to be won. ..."
"... He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone. ..."
"... Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's Will and necessary for his Ascension. ..."
"... The power triangle theory is less in line with the facts than a simple duality: Wall Street & the MIC, you have to advance interests of both or you're out. ..."
"... Second, the 'meeting in the Tank' sounds like complete b.s. designed to sell books ..."
"... And the 'rules-based international order' rings very false as something that would be said with a straight face by real MIC insiders, which those generals are. ..."
"... Not only sick of wars, his mobster approach to foreign policy and allies is an embarrassment to RINO and Independents. ..."
"... Humanity is in a civilization war about public/private finance being fought by proxies and character actors like Trump. Maybe after this war is over, and if we survive, we can all communicate about the social contract directly instead of through proxy fronts. Do you want to live in a sharing/caring world or a selfish/competitive one?....socialism or barbarism? ..."
That Power Elite theory which was written in the 50s by C.W. Mills is incomplete for today
because in the 60s there was a split among the power elite between the new "movement
conservatives" and the old eastern bank establishment. The conservatives were more focused on
the pacific region and containing China, and the liberal establishment were more focused on
Europe and containing Russia.
The "movement conservatives" leader was Barry Goldwater who Trump's dad was a big supporter
of, and Trump was raised in and among AND represents that faction of elite power. In fact he
is the 1st president from that faction of the elites to hold the oval office, many people
thought Reagan was, but he was brought under the control of George Bush and the liberal
elites after taking office after he was injured by a Bush related person. The different
agendas of the the two factions are out in the open today with one being focused on
anti-Russia and the other being focused on anti-China. It has been like that since the
1960s.
The anti-China conservative faction which Trump represents (and which unleashed the VietNam
War) is screwing up the "rules based order" aka "Liberal International
Economic Order" aka Pax Americana which was set up after WWII at Bretton Woods and then
altered in the 1970s with the creation of the petrodollar and petrodollar recycling into
Treasury Bonds, by destroying the monetary scam they set up to control the world
It needed
the cooperation of the elites of Europe and elsewhere, which Trump and his faction doesn't
care about -- they only care about short term profits on Wall St.
The LIEO or Rules Based Order is based on being closely allied with European elites
against Russia to contain the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) based on
Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard theory. China trade is important for them, Russia is
their main enemy. ( War of the Worlds:
The New Class ). Trump and his movement conservative faction is ruining their world order
for their own short term gain on Wall St.
The 1950's triangle of power was superseded by the oligarch's counter revolution that led
to supranational trade institutions. Democracies were relegated to a secondary status and run
by technocrats for the benefit of oligarchs until Donald Trump. He is a nationalist
plutocrat; admittedly a lower level one, a NY casino owner who went bankrupt. Mike Bloomberg
represents the other side, a globalist billionaire. Elizabeth Warren is a top level
technocrat but no politician.
The endless wars are fought to make a profit for the plutocracy and destabilize nations to
make foreign corporate exploitation possible. That was why Hunter Biden was in Ukraine. The
conflicts are not meant to be won.
Donald Trump is way for over his head and getting old. His competent staff are in jail or
fired. Apparently no one told him about the thousands of ballistic missiles that can destroy
the Gulf States' oil facilities at will and make the buildup for the invasion of Iran
impossible. He makes stupid mistakes. Through the barrage of propaganda, reports of shell
shocked troops, destroyed buildings and 11 concussion causalities from Iran's missile attack
made it into the news. The military must be pissed. The aura of invincibility is gone.
Donald Trump should be removed by the 25th amendment before he mistakenly triggers the
Apocalypse. Except the 1% politician VP, Mike Pence, believes that the End of Time is God's
Will and necessary for his Ascension.
The power triangle theory is less in line with the facts than a simple duality: Wall Street
& the MIC, you have to advance interests of both or you're out.
Second, the 'meeting in the Tank' sounds like complete b.s. designed to sell books, with
an obvious sales strategy, as b said, of pleasuring both the pro/anti Trump sides of the
book-buying bourgeoisie.
And the 'rules-based international order' rings very false as
something that would be said with a straight face by real MIC insiders, which those generals
are.
Finally, whether Trump ridiculed the generals or not, that's a sideshow to entertain the
rubes. Trump's always been on side with the big picture Neocon approach essential to the MIC.
Their global dominance or chaos approach is essential to keeping military budgets gigantic
until 'forever'. True that Trump whined about endless wars as a 2016 campaign strategy, but
he was either b.s.-ing or at the time didn't get that they are part of the overall Neocon
approach he backs.
Not a very good analysis by b because this does not explain why 90 % of US corporate media
is hostile to Trump. This does not happen without significant elite support.
That Trump is backed by the military faction is something i have been saying often. But
there are forces within the government faction that dislike him, for example the CIA.
As for the corporate faction, it is not true that free money made them supportive of
Trump. Rather the faction is divided - between the globalist corporate faction, relying on
globalisation, including most tech companies, and US nationalist faction, such as local US
businesses, big oil, shale gas, etc.
Another point - jews have large influence within the US, and 80 % voted against Trump
regardless of his Israeli support. They again voted 80 % Dem in 2018. Having 80 % of US jews
against you means encountering significant resistance.
Demographically speaking, most women, jews, muslims, latinos, asians, afroamericans, lgbt
people, young people, etc. are strongly against him so i think that he will lose. Unless for
some reason they do not vote.
Even if he somehow wins again, this will lead to civil war like situation and extreme
polarisation in the US.
The US military, the various factions within the Deep State, political and corporate
cabals has the attitude of a spoiled 3-year-old: If I can't have it, I'll break it so it is
of little use to others.
Unfortunately, breaking other countries is just fine for the MIC... arms sales all around
and chaos to impede non-military commerce with other major power centers like Russia or
China.
Trump is the product of a dysfunctional family, a "greed is good" trust-fund social circle
and a sociopathic US bully/gun culture.
The fact "bone spurs" Trump weaseled out of the draft will also not play well with the
generals, let alone the grunts who suffer most from endless POTUS idiocy (not limited to
Trump, see Prince Bush/Bandar the 2nd)
All the more proof that most Western "democracies" would be better served with a lottery
to choose their Congressional and POTUS chair-warmers. Joe Sixpack could do a better job. A
200-lb sack of flour would do better than any POTUS since Kennedy.
your: "Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the
wars if the rulers veto it."
May be, I think is, true in one sense. But Trump is far from the sole agent capable of
starting a war. War, as opposed to simple murder, involve 2 or more parties. Whatever the
intentions, the recent murders by drone in Baghdad hav,e it seems, brought Iran to consider
war exists now...and they have a nifty MAGA policy. On Press TV today they hosted an expert
who called for the execution of several exceptional American leaders...sounds like war to
me.
(Make America Go Away)
The system is so screwy and peopled by such uneducated and delusional people that it's
quite simple that they would do some stupid that that caused a war. Looks like war to me. I
await the horrors.
Decaying empires usually start wars that bring about their rapid ruin. Does it matter how
they do this?
............
The thesis of the triangle of elite factions is fascinating.
Walter recalls that JFK got the reports from Vietnam that said we were winning, while at
the same time Johnson got the true story. And also what happened then with the "correction"
of 1963 (their words) and the immediate change of war policy. Can't help an old guy from
remembering old folly. And noting that history repeats as farce.
The Iran affair is liable to coordinate with NATO. Lavrov spoke to the NATO preparations
today @ TASS...
Some say Trumpie screwed up the schedule, which goes hot in April as a showdown with the
Roooskies. I take that with a grain of salt. But I think the sources I've seen might be
right. They say that if Barbarossa had not been delayed, the nazis woulda won in Russia.
Screwups can be very important.
I can't see any way the US won't use atomic bangers. But maybe...
I agree with wagelaborer in comment #3 and worth a repeat of most of it
"Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the wars if
the rulers veto it.
US foreign policy is not run by White House puppets.
The US trash-talked Saddam Hussein and starved Iraqis for 14 years, but didn't actually
invade until he started trading oil in Euros.
The US trash-talked Ghaddafi for decades, and even launched missiles which killed his
child in the 80s, but didn't destroy Libya until Ghaddafi decided to sell oil in dinars.
The US has trash-talked and sanctioned Iran for decades, but it was the threat of Iran and
Saudi Arabia making peace that pushed them to assassinate General Soleimani, as he arrived at
the airport on that diplomatic mission.
If Iran and Saudi Arabia make peace, and the Saudis drop the petro-dollar, the US Empire
crumbles.
It doesn't matter at all who is in the White House at the time, the Empire will never allow
that."
Humanity is in a civilization war about public/private finance being fought by proxies and
character actors like Trump. Maybe after this war is over, and if we survive, we can all
communicate about the social contract directly instead of through proxy fronts. Do you want
to live in a sharing/caring world or a selfish/competitive one?....socialism or
barbarism?
"... Pompeo omitted a crucial part of this sentence: "deterrence to protect [the financial and energy hegemony of] America". ..."
"... a regular part of the MSM/cinema diet masticated by the general public that we have completely forgotten that the basic function of the armed forces is the pursuit of vested interests through superior violence. ..."
"... No qualms or BS 'deterrence', armies are for taking other people's stuff by force (land-grabs, etc). I would respect Pompeo a whole lot more (but not much more...) if he just once came out and said: "Iran is run by people who don't want us to take their stuff; we want to undermine them and replace them with paid yes-men who will let us take Iran's stuff. We will use violence and armed force to make this happen. ..."
"... But we have no intention of distributing this loot evenly among our citizens. Instead it will be paid as dividends to select shareholders and spent retooling the military for next poor bastards who stand up to us." ..."
Pompeo omitted a crucial part of this sentence: "deterrence to protect [the financial
and energy hegemony of] America".
While this might be obvious to us, the narrative that US foreign policy is about
protecting citizens, values and apple pie from 'bad guys' -- and indeed that the militaries
of all Western countries are benign police forces preventing ISIS from burning your old
Eagles albums and other violations of 'freedom' -- is such a regular part of the
MSM/cinema diet masticated by the general public that we have completely forgotten that the
basic function of the armed forces is the pursuit of vested interests through superior
violence.
It always seemed strange to me that the post-ww2 cinematic template for war-movies, and by
extension the basic plot of all reporting of western military activity in the media, always
represented the enemy as evil precisely because they use militaries in an instrumental
way (i.e for the purpose they were designed). The Germans, or for that matter the
Persians in 300 , or any baddies in war films, seek to extend and protect their
interests (real or imagined) by deploying armed forces.
The good guys are always identifiable through this idea of 'deterrence': "hey man, all we
want is just to live and let live, but you pushed us so we pushed back." Then one stirs in a
little 'preemptive deterrence': you looked like you were going to push so we acted. If we
'accidentally' go too far, it's because there is a deranged C-in-C: Hitler, or Xerxes, or
some other naughty boy who can be the fall-guy, scapegoat, etc.
To get serious we need to go back a very long way, to, say, the Iliad , which, like
all Greek (and Roman) literature, assumes as a premise (and it's tragedy) that the warrior's
basic function is to kill, pillage, rape and occasionally protect others from the same. But
mostly take by force .
No qualms or BS 'deterrence', armies are for taking other people's stuff by force
(land-grabs, etc). I would respect Pompeo a whole lot more (but not much more...) if he just
once came out and said: "Iran is run by people who don't want us to take their stuff; we want
to undermine them and replace them with paid yes-men who will let us take Iran's stuff. We
will use violence and armed force to make this happen.
But we have no intention of distributing this loot evenly among our citizens. Instead
it will be paid as dividends to select shareholders and spent retooling the military for next
poor bastards who stand up to us."
If you wonder what the post-Trump Republican Party will look like,
take a glimpse at Tom Cotton, one of the US senators from Arkansas (where I live). Cotton has
waged a
relentless campaign for war against Iran and has supported every horror produced by the US
foreign-policy establishment for the last 20 years. He makes other American hawks look like
pacifists. Cotton once said that his only criticism of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
where people are held indefinitely without charge or trial, is that too many beds are empty.
Typical of take-no-prisoners warmongers, Cotton savages critics of the pro-war policy that
has characterized US foreign policy in the 21st century. No baseless charge is beneath him. He
recently attacked the Quincy Institute in the course of remarks about anti-Semitism. (You can
see what's coming.) According to Jewish Insider , Cotton
said that anti-Semitism "festers in Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an
isolationist blame America first money pit for so-called 'scholars' who've written that
American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish
money."
This is worse than a series of malicious lies – every word is false. In fact, it's an
attempt to incite hostility toward and even disruption of one of the bright spots on the mostly
desolate foreign-policy-analysis landscape.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft (QI) started last year with money from, among others, the Charles Koch
Foundation and George Soros's Open Society Foundations. Its officers and staff include
respected and sober foreign-policy analysts and journalists such as Andrew Bacevich, Trita
Parsi, Jim Lobe, and Eli Clifton. Also associated with the institute are the well-credentialed
foreign-policy authorities John
Mearsheimer, Paul Pillar, Gary Sick, Stephen Walt, and Lawrence Wilkerson. This is indeed a
distinguished team of foreign-policy "realists" who are heroically resisting America's
endless-war-as-first-resort policy.
Named for John Quincy Adams – who as secretary of state famously declared that
"America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy" – QI "promotes ideas that
move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of
international peace." The QI website goes on to state:
The US military exists to defend the people and territory of the United States, not to
act as a global police force. The United States should reject preventive wars and military
intervention to overthrow regimes that do not threaten the United States. Wars of these kinds
not only are counterproductive; they are wrong in principle.
It then goes on to indict the current foreign-policy establishment:
The foreign policy of the United States has become detached from any defensible
conception of US interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind.
Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and
indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in
itself.
Moreover, much of the foreign policy community in Washington has succumbed to
intellectual lethargy and dysfunction. It suppresses or avoids serious debate and fails to hold
policymakers and commentators accountable for disastrous policies. It has forfeited the
confidence of the American public. The result is a foreign policy that undermines American
interests and tramples on American values while sacrificing the stores of influence that the
United States had earned.
This may not be pure libertarian foreign policy ("US interests" is too slippery a term for
my taste), but compared to what passes for foreign-policy thinking these days, it's pretty damn
good.
So why is Tom Cotton so upset? It should be obvious. QI opposes the easy-war policy of the
last 20 years. Of course Cotton is upset. Take away war, and he's got nothing in his toolbox.
He certainly doesn't want to see the public turn antiwar before he's had a shot at high office,
say, secretary of state, secretary of defense, CIA director, or even the presidency.
Cotton's charges against QI are wrong on every count.
QI is not isolationist as long as it supports trade with the world and diplomacy as the
preferred method of resolving conflicts.
It's not a blame-America-first outfit because the object of its critique is not America or
Americans, but the imperial war-loving elite of the American political establishment. Cotton is
part of that elite, but that does not entitle him to identify the mass of Americans with his
lethal policy preferences.
It's not a money pit. As you can see, QI boasts an eminent lineup thinkers and writers. So
the money is obviously well-spent on badly needed analysis. QI should have been set up long
ago. Cotton shows his pettiness by putting the word scholars in sarcasm quotes. He
should aspire to such scholarship as Bacevich, Parsi, et al. have produced.
But where Cotton really shows his agenda is his absurd claim that anti-Semitism "festers" in
QI (and other think tanks – which ones?).
Cotton here is performing that worn-out trick that, alas, still has some life in it:
conflating criticism of Israel and its American lobby with people who are Jewish (and who may
well oppose how the Israeli state mistreats the Palestinians). I'm sure he knows better: this
is demagogy and not ignorance.
On its face, the proposition that virtually anyone who criticizes Israel's conduct toward
the Palestinians and its Arab and Iranian neighbors probably hates Jews as Jews is patently
ridiculous. Any clear-thinking person dismisses that claim out of hand.
Undoubtedly Cotton has in mind primarily Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of
The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy , published in 2008. (It began as an essay
in The London Review of Books .) In that work, Walt and Mearsheimer reasonably attribute
the lion's share of influence on US policy in the Middle East to the Israel lobby, "a loose
coalition of individuals and organizations that actively works to move US foreign policy in a
pro-Israel direction." They add, "[I]t is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that 'controls'
US foreign policy. It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles,
whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel's case within the United States and influence
American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state."
This is hardly controversial stuff, although reasonable people can disagree over whether the
lobby was decisive in any given case.
But does anyone doubt that American champions of Israel work overtime and spend a lot of
money to advance what they see as Israel's interests? If so, see this and my book
Coming to Palestine . (Many non-Zionist Jews disagree with them about those
interests.) Organizations like AIPAC often boast about their influence. That they sincerely
believe Israel's interests coincide with America's interests is beside the point. (I won't
address that dubious contention here.) That influence, which supports massive annual military
aid to Israel, has helped to facilitate the oppression of the Palestinians, wars against
Lebanon, and attacks on Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It has also provoked hostility to America and
vengeful terrorism against Americans. (For example, the 9/11
attacks as acknowledged by the
government's commission .) Pro-Israel American political and military officials acknowledge
this.
Cotton need not wonder why the lobby has succeeded so often since he himself is using the
anti-Semitism canard to inhibit Israel's critics. No one wants to be condemned as anti-Semite
(or as any other kind of bigot), so we can easily imagine prominent people in the past
withholding criticism of Israel for fear of being thought anti-Jewish. (It's Israel and its
champions, not Israel's critics, who insist that Israel is the state of all Jews, no
matter where else they may be citizens.) Thankfully, despite the efforts of Cotton, Kenneth
Marcus, Bari Weiss , Bret Stephens, and others, the invidious conflation has lost much of
its force. More than ever, people understand that to oppose the entangling alliance with Israel
and to express solidarity with the long-suffering Palestinians do not constitute bigotry
against Jews.
Can Cotton produce any evidence that anyone at QI believes that pro-Israel Jewish Americans
should be barred from lobbying and making political donations or that such an obvious violation
of liberty would fix American foreign policy? Of course not. There is no evidence. Moreover,
I'm sure the QI realists understand that other interests also propel the pro-war US foreign
policy, including glory-seeking politicians and generals and the profit-craving
military-industrial complex.
Those who reflexively and slanderously tar Israel's critics as anti-Semites seem not to
realize that the worthy effort to eliminate real anti-Semitism is undermined by their efforts
to immunize Israel and its American champions from good-faith criticism.
Tom Luongo, who frequently cites b, has coined a new word for Trump's and his minions
tactics. Tom asks:
Does Gangsternomics Meet its End in the Iraqi Desert?
In the aftermath of the killing of Iranian IRGC General Qassem Soleimani a lot of questions
hung in the air. The big one was, in my mind, "Why now?"
There are a lot of angles to answer that question. Many of them were supplied by
caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi who tried to let the world know through
official (and unofficial) channels of the extent of the pressure he was under by the
U.S.
In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as
gangsternomics in directing the course of Iraq's future economic and political
development.[/]
Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S.
It is the fulcrum now on which the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests.
The entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S.
And this started with Russia moving into Syria in 2015 successfully. We are downstream
of this as it has blown open the playbook and revealed it for how ugly it is.
Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in
Syria cannot be hidden behind the false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about
bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/]
What began in Syria with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China standing up together and
saying, "No," continues today in Iraq. To this point Iran has been the major actor.
Tomorrow it will be Russia, China and India.
And that is what is ultimately at stake here, the ability of the U.S. to employ
gangsternomics in the Middle East and make it stick.[.]
By the time Trump is done threatening people over S-400's and pipelines the entire world
will be happy to trade in yuan and/or rubles rather than dollars.[.]
The general gist of this article is on target, but I feel some of the details are off.
First off, Iran does want to be a region hegemon, they have wanted that for 5,000 years.
But they only succeeded, and then only temporarily, when the opposition was weak. Today they
are opposed by Israel, which is far stronger them Iran militarily, and by the Saudis, who are
far richer. Those two can contain Iran by themselves with little US support.
Secondly, Iran getting nuclear weapons is a problem. If they do, next will be the Turks
and Saudis, then the Egyptians and then who know who else. Having several nuclear powers in
an unstable part of the world is a bad thing in general, and when (not if, but when) one of
those state collapses like Iran did in 1979 or the USSR did in 1989, the risk of loose nukes
floating around is far too real. Better nobody has them (I am not a particular friend or foe
of Israel, but I trust them more than the Arab states on this score).
But our aggressive policy and troop deployments give the Iranians every incentive to build
nukes. Their previous incentive was to counter Saddam Hussien's Iraq, but we graciously
eliminated threat. But then we provided them with our own incentive to nuclearize. Very
dumb.
I don't fully agree that Iran having nuclear weapons would be a problem for us. To the extent
that any country's having them is a problem, sure. But Iran lacks the means to deliver such a
weapon to US territory, and their regime, which has, for better or for worse, been rather
stable over 40 years, has, notwithstanding aggressive rhetoric, been pragmatic: they know the
awful consequences that would come from unleashing a nuclear attack on us. They wouldn't even
think of it. Even attacking Israel, something within their capabilities, would certainly
unleash nuclear retaliation and mutually assured destruction. The mullahs are not into that.
I think that nuclear non-proliferation became a dead letter when Pakistan and India
acquired nuclear weapons and the world shrugged. Pakistan has one of the least stable
governments around, having frequent coups, an intelligence service brimming with religious
and ideological fanatics, and a history of repeated wars with neighboring India. If ever a
red line should have been drawn, that was it. But nothing was done, barely anything was even
said. From that point on, nobody really has any basis to complain if Iran (or any of the
other countries you mention) goes nuclear.
Worse, US foreign policy is almost perfectly designed to maximize nuclear proliferation
around the world. We have clearly and repeatedly sent the message to all nations that nuclear
weapons are the only deterrent to US aggression, and that giving up your nuclear weapons (or
agreeing not to make them, as Iran did) is suicidal. The world already knows that the US is a
lawless, rogue nation, and that its treaty promises are not worth the paper they are written
on. You really have to question the sanity of any government that has the resources to
develop nukes and isn't doing that.
to the extent that any country's having them is a problem, sure.
This is a pretty big "but", though? Nuclear proliferation is a huge danger and it's
why a country like Germany without a huge middle east presence or danger of getting attacked
with Iranian nuclear weapons would so forcefully back the JCPOA.
The existence and success of the JCPOA should be indictivative of the correct method to
fight proliferation and the importance of doing so. To the degree that the US should be
involved with the affairs of the Middle East, it should be done through the State Department
(or what's left of it when the Republicans are finished with it).
As for Pakistan's nukes means "nobody really has any basis to complain if Iran (or any of
the other countries you mention) goes nuclear." IR doesn't run on moral consitency. We should
complain about countries that start up nuclear programs, but we should also complain about
how the US's action have made nuclear proliferation more likely and not less. I'd rather not
the US give up on non-proliferation just because Pakistan has the bomb. We just need to
pretending our military can find solutions to political problems.
It's not relevant that they can't strike America. They have the means to deliver a nuclear
warhead to Israel, which is all that matters to the people in charge of this country.
And Iran does not even need nuclear weapons to completely destroy the Israeli state. They
have more than enough conventional missiles to do the job. And such anti-missile defense
systems such as the Patriot and Iron Dome implementations have both been shown to be
completely
inadequate against the type of missile onslaught Iran could deliver against Israel...
Yes, Iran could strike Israel with a nuke. Or, as Steve Naidamast has pointed out in his
response to you, they could obliterate Israel with conventional ballistics as well. In 40
years, they haven't done that. And they know that Israel would respond in kind, or with
nuclear weapons, and they would be destroyed. So they will not do that.
In any case, while it is true that the people running the country view the defense of
Israel as our responsibility, even as a top priority. In my opinion, and I think many readers
here agree, that is precisely the problem. There is no reason we should commit to the
defense of Israel: its existence and well being is not relevant to the defense of the United
States. In fact, our unconditional support of everything Israel does, no matter how blatantly
wrong it may be, is one of the things that fuels anti-American hatred around the world and
motivates terrorists. Pulling away from our connection to Israel would be one of the best
things we could do to enhance our national security.
The US is in the Mid East for Israel's interests and Israel's interests only. This article
completely ignores this reality and tries to obfuscate it with a lot of air over how another
analyst views the situation there.
Had the US not recognized partition in 1947/1948 and then the subsequent state of Israel,
much of the violence in the Mid East would have never occurred in the first place. This
combined with assassination of the Iranian head of state in 1953 (over the move to
nationalize Iranian oil and thus pushing out the British and Dutch oil industry) by
Eisenhower only served to seriously complicate the matters in this region.
Iran would have most likely never had felt the need to develop nuclear weapons if the
United States had simply just left well enough alone.
Unfortunately, the United States with few exception has never had anything but dim light
bulbs in the presidency. Even Truman's senior military leaders, Mid East Foreign Service
policy experts, and Secretary of State Marshall all warned him of the consequences of
recognizing an Israel state and they were all correct...
You know it, I know it, and pretty much everyone lurking around knows it: The US is in the
ME for very basic things that insure its primacy:
- the control of the oil flow;
- the control of the way that oil is being transaction-ed, must be US dollars. The flow of
dollars, especially the excess dollars needs to be controlled and be returned back to fund US
deficit - which of course US has no intention of repaying (external creditors only), and the
Feds, which are private bodies of financiers which benefit tremendously from controlling the
world's reserve currency, understand this;
- Oiled ME countries must be run by autocracies in fear of revolutions so they need US
support;
- Nationalist movements and republicanism are to be killed and persecuted;
- While a nuclear Iran might pose a threat to Israel, like India/Pakistan, US/Russia, it
would be all MAD, so not much to worry about.
US will stay in the ME as long as it will take to insure its primacy. And they will kill
any external or internal threats to this primacy.
Furthermore, there is a stirred appetite in the US and what its elites stand for. Look at
TPP, at the proposed treaty on services, etc. The intention is to privatize everything in the
world and have it in the hands of some, few. Thus State Owned Enterprises are to be shunned
and ultimately appropriated. This is all what TPP was about, this is all what the trade war
with China is about, and this is all the upset with Russia and Putin is about.
It is a very simple equation, that had the US population (military/intelligence) harnessed
to be the slave drivers of the rest of the world, while they themselves think they are free,
and liberators. This is the content of the red pill.
Not much different than the story told in the "Against the Grain A Deep History of Earlier
States" by James C. Scott
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lse...
And how can it be the other way if there are only two parties making decisions, and both of
them are committed as hell to staying bogged down in the Middle East whatever the cost
even to American troops and America's own economy , not to even mention the poor
peoples of that region? Just the latest example: Democrats received a totally free and
unprovoked electoral gift from Trump in the form of his administration committing an
unmitigated idiocy regarding Iran (which, probably, resulted in dead American
soldiers, not only wounded ones, given that even those wounded were concealed in the
beginning). A real, not clownish cause for an impeachment investigation, against which
Republican senators would have a very hard time looking honest and non-partisan in defending
the president. A dream for any half-literate opposition political strategist in an election
year. Their actions? They didn't think even for a minute that maybe - just maybe - they
should not squander that gift. Instead they threw it - a real (and their last)
opportunity to look solid in trying to impeach Trump - down the drain, industriously flushed
the closet and kept on digging some clownish personalities from Ukraine, who are not even
Ukrainian residents due to living in the US for years. You know how it looks like? The
Democratic Party's neolib bosses (also known as the Republican Party's neocon bosses) called
the DNC and said: keep on playing in your political sandbox, babies, but don't even dare to
pester the POTUS on those issues that further our policies.
To say that I'm eager to read a reply from that miserable partisan hack which shall have a
cheek to claim that either of the American institutional parties is not controlled by
neocons/neolibs after all this is to say nothing.
There are too many Jews and Christian Zionists involved with America's foreign policy, who
are happy to sacrifice America's well being for the sake of israel.
Until that changes, which I can't see how it will while America exists in its current form,
we are doomed to continue wasting blood and treasure in the region. It's tragic really, that
this nations elite doesn't care much for America, but only what America can do to further
their interests abroad.
ZOG is considered to be a conspiracy theory. These days, I'm not so sure it is.
At least part of the blame should go to the religious conservatives on the US Supreme Court
which, with its Citizens United decision in 2010, opened the floodgates for large scale
campaign contributions in Federal elections. The five Catholic conservatives voted in favor
of Citizens United. The three Jewish members of the court along with the sole liberal
Catholic (a woman) voted against it.
If you happened to watch candidate Trump's address to the 2016 AIPAC convention on TV
(which I did), you might recall that he promised to be the best president that Israel ever
had. It reminds me of that old Chinese proverb "Be careful what you wish for." Trump appears
to be more popular in Israel than in the US.
Being on the Supreme Court means that you never have to say that you are sorry.
I couldn't read the article because I don't subscribe to the WSJ, but I was wondering what he
meant by solving the Israel- Palestine conflict. I don't think we should " solve" it by
supplying the Israelis with weapons and almost unlimited support. We have been pretending to
be an honest broker for decades and we aren't. I doubt we could be. A President Sanders might
try, but I doubt he would succeed. He would have enough battles to fight on both domestic
policy and ( hopefully) pulling back from our endless interventions to put too much effort
into the I- P conflict. Most of the other possible Presidents would probably just be Israel's
lapdog, as usual.
I think the US government should pull back from Israel. Have relations, but don't treat
them like they are the 51st state. In theory I wish we could be an honest broker, but it
hasn't happened so far.
I have to say that the style of comments being posted as they regard Israel demonstrate that
a tide may be changing. I have noticed a slow but increasing negative response by serious
commenters on several sites not only toward the US commitment to Israel also to Israeli
policies and military capabilities as not being what everyone has promoted them to being.
This could be indicative of a sea change in US opinion, isolating most US
politicians...
@ Posted by: psychedelicatessen | Jan 19 2020 9:14 utc | 98
You are right one of the pillars of the Iranian asymmetric strategy to counter the USN is
using thousands of mines in the Strait of Hormuz and beyond, and probably also around the US
bases inside the Persian Gulf.
Back in the day when Iran was a pariah state in 1988 (under full embargo from USA and the
USSR), they almost sunk the frigate Samuel B Roberts with a very old WWI mine:
But forget it, they have now thousands of modern mines of Russian, Chinese, north Koreans
origin and inverse engineered Iranian mines, even better than those.
To try to clear the mines with wooden minesweepers in the Strait of Hormuz is a joke; to
clear the mines they have to move sloooowly and they will be sitting ducks to the Iranian
coastal defenses in this narrow pass; good luck using slow moving helicopters also, and using
hi-tech subs drones taking one by one will take months or years to clear them, if not
detected and destroyed before.
As in the case of the missiles threat, USN has no good solutions to the massive minelaying
in the Strait of Hormuz, and without massive resupply of the troops inside the Persian Gulf
by sea (of weapons, men, spare parts, evacuate wounded, etc...) they do not have a good
prospect to continue the war after few weeks; remember that the Iranians missiles have the
capacity to destroy all the airstrips of the US air bases in ME and cut dry the use of them
for bombing Iran and re-supply (trying to re-suppy a complete army only with helicopters is
not an option)
The iranians even do not need high-tech supersonic anti-ship missiles to close the Strait
of Hormuz, but they need them to maintain the US air carriers far enough from the iranians
eastern shores that their air wings will sit iddle inside the carriers (the operational range
of the F15, F16, F18 is around 700-800 Km), so they cannot support the troops in the opposite
side of the Persian Gulf, and even the SCG cannot use their cruise missiles (range 1700 Km)
against the western part of Iran where their missile force is allocated pounding the US bases
all around the Gulf
For US the only remained option would be to use long range bombers and cruise missiles
from subs, but they do not have enough of them to stop the rain of missiles and really
destroy the command and control centers, especially if they have not destroyed the huge
multilayered aerial defense Iran has (that seems to be much better than the american one)
The US then could think to use nukes, and then call a draft, but I do not recommend it, it
is better to ask for a truce
Once they delved into "Conquest and Exploitation", the Military were OverScoped and Few
People thought of rebuilding/modernizing Civil Infrastructure and Economy of the
Conquered.
Also, IMHO, every Govt-Job that affect the Military and Veterans' Lives should be held by
Veterans. Need them to be where the Rubber Meets the Road before sending others into harm's
way. I'd go as far to require WH, Congress, Supremes to be Previously Assigned to Combat
Units/Hot Zones (FatBoy Pompeo Fails here) - and have Combat Eligible Family be in Active
Duty or Drilling Reserves - ready to be sent to the Front Lines should they call for War
while running the Republic-turned-Hegemon.
That would include BoneShards' Adult Children and Spouses.
WH have been on a PetroUSD/MIC/PNAC7/AIPAC Bandwagon - which drive down Non-Yielding
Nation-States with Sanctions.
Now BoneShards Opened the Pandora's Box of Open State Level Assassinations using
Diplomatic Peace Missions as Venues. Worse? Against a Nation-State which can Respond in Kind
- AND Develop+Deploy Nuclear WMDs. Not Ethical - Inhumane and Imbecilic, really. That's why I
am voting for Gabbard this Time. A 2nd Gen Navy Vet. Been to War Zones in the Gulf.
I agree with everyone that doesn't believe the political farce/headfake/psyop.
The fact is, it's impossible to elect a real "populist outsider" as US President.
The system is set up to ensure that NEVER happens.
I used to get very frustrated by b's failure to understand US politics but it's now clear
to me that anti-USA/anti-Empire folks LOVE to talk up Trump because they think they can
exploit a rift in USA power elite - a rift that doesn't really exist .
The standard push-back response to someone like me saying that Trump was selected as
President is: bu..but Trump is not a puppet! LOL. That's right! He's a faux populistteam player . Just like Obama.
Triangle of power ... corporate, executive government, and military
factions
This is naive. It's an outdated theory. Anyone that knows American society knows that
power has become concentrated since this theory was first proposed. And that concentration
has put EMPIRE FIRST warmongers/neocons at the top of heap.
Furthermore, Russia's willingness to confront USA in 2013 and 2014 had a profound effect
on the pampered Empire-builders that thought that they and their progeny would rule the
world. The Trump psy-op is their answer to the challenge from Russia and China.
= Afghanistan and Trump's "lecture" to the Generals
Well, Trump is STILL THERE (in Afghanistan), isn't he?
And I'd be very skeptical of anything WaPo had to say about Trump.
IMO Trump isn't looking to withdraw from Afghanistan, or NATO, or North Korea, or
Syria, or anywhere else. He's looking for Generals that have a will to fight. And that's a
very scary prospect.
= the military faction did not concur with his 'America first' isolationist
tendencies.
Sorry, virtually everybody that matters in USA ("the 1%") is EMPIRE FIRST. Trump's
'America First' is just a bullshit slogan to fool the masses. Just as much as Obama's
"Change You Can Believe In" was.
Trump is NOT an isolationist. Why does this false narrative still persist? Trump's many
acts of war attest to his belligerent interventionist nature:
> seizing Venezuelan government assets;
> seizing Syrian oil fields;
> the assassination of an Iranian General;
> reneging on peace terms with North Korean (IMO reneging on a peace deal with a
country that you're still technically at war with is an act of war);
> Pulling out of Cold War I arms treaties with Russia and militarizing space;
> taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - going against UN resolutions
to do so;
> recognizing Golan Heights as Israeli - going against UN resolutions to do
so;
> support for the Saudi war against Yemen - which includes arms sales, training,
and even targeting.
These countries haven't declared war only because it's impractical to do so.
Why can't people see what charlatans Obama and Trump are? What has Trump done to
demonstrate that he will be true to his campaign rhetoric? Nothing! Trump:
- didn't prosecute Hillary;
- didn't "end Obamacare on day one";
- didn't exit from NATO;
- didn't exit from the Middle-east;
- hasn't ended the threat from North Korea;
- hasn't brought jobs back (we just have more low-end jobs);
- hasn't "drained the swamp".
= Most of the 'dopes and babies' who were in that room have since been fired or
retired.
b's oversight highlights how the focus on TRUMP!! obscures what the Deep State has really
been up to. And how even smart people like b are drawn into false narratives.
= ... Trump seems to have a good chance to win the next election.
Many moa commenters have been saying much the same. But the reasoning that three power
centers are lined up for Trump is a red-herring.
Plus, whether Trump wins the next election or not, USA is on a path to war.
Totally agree with Daniel: "Trump is president and commander in chief. The buck stops with
him. If he is too weak or stupid to prevent himself from getting manipulated by his creepy
cadaverous son-in-law and the bunch of fanatics he hired and surrounds himself with he is
unfit for the job. But given his many transgressions and war mongering ways, it's more likely
he's just another fraud like every other POTUS."
American hubris and bully-ism in the international arena has steadily grown since the end of
the Cold War, since they somehow believe their system won. With Trump, the mask is off. "I'm
taking the oil". In fact, he's taking the oil even though he can't do much with it (can't
develop it, limited selling options, etc). Pure child-like "it's mine, i'd rather break it
than give it back".
I have decreasing confidence that there will not be a nuclear war. It seems to be
increasingly likely that an overstretched American army will, at some point somewhere, be so
outmaneuvered that they will hit the panic button. The world is currently counting on the
Russians, Iranians, Chinese to be the sober ones, the cooler heads, the ones who hurriedly
clear the roads for the drunk adolescent American roaming the streets.
The U.S. has occasionally exerted pressure on democratic allies, but never treated them like
servile pawns. Until now. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (C) and his wife Susan (R) wait to
board a helicopter to the US embassy at the terminal at Baghdad International Airport on
January 9, 2019.(ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
January 17, 2020
|
12:01 am
Ted
Galen Carpenter A policy statement that the State Department issued on January 10 asserts that "America is a
force for good in the Middle East." It adds, "We want to be a friend and partner to a
sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq." Yet the Trump administration's recent conduct toward
Iraq indicates a very different (and much uglier) policy. Washington is behaving like an
impatient, imperial power that has concluded that an obstreperous colony requires a dose of
corrective discipline.
Washington's
late December airstrikes on Iraqi militia targets, in retaliation for the killing of an
American civilian contractor working at a base in northern Iraq, greatly provoked the Iraqi
government and population. Massive anti-American demonstrations erupted in several cities, and
an assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad forced diplomats to take refuge in a special "
safe room ."
The drone strike on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani outside Baghdad a few days later was an
even more brazen violation of Iraq's sovereignty. Carrying out the assassination on Iraqi
territory when Soleimani was there at the invitation of Prime Minister Adel Abdull Mahdi to
discuss
a new peace feeler from Saudi Arabia was especially clumsy and arrogant. It created
suspicions that the United States was deliberately seeking to maintain turmoil in the Middle
East to justify its continued military presence there. The killing of Soleimani (as well as two
influential Iraqi militia leaders) led Iraq's government to pass a resolution calling on Mahdi
to expel U.S. forces stationed in the country, and he promptly began to prepare legislation
to implement that goal.
Trump's initial reaction to the prospect that Baghdad might order U.S. troops to leave was
akin to a foreign policy temper tantrum. He threatened America's democratic ally with harsh economic
sanctions if it dared to take that step. As Trump put it, "we will charge them sanctions
like they've never seen before, ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."
Over the following days, it became apparent that the sanctions threat was not just a
spontaneous, intemperate outburst on the part of President Trump. Compelling Iraq to continue
hosting U.S. forces was official administration policy. Senior officials from the Treasury
Department and other agencies began
drafting specific sanctions that could be imposed. Washington explicitly warned the Iraqi
government that it
could lose access to its account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Such a
freeze would amount to financial strangulation of the country's already fragile economy.
U.S. arrogance towards Baghdad seems almost boundless. When Mahdi asked the administration
to "
prepare a mechanism " for the exit of American forces and commence negotiations towards
that transition, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flatly
refused . Indeed, the State Department's January 10 statement made it clear that there
would be no such discussions: "At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to
discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership -- not to discuss troop
withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East."
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. leaders proudly proclaimed that NATO and other American-led
alliances were voluntary associations of free nations. Conversely, the Warsaw Pact alliance of
Eastern European countries formed in response to NATO was a blatantly imperial enterprise of
puppet regimes under the Kremlin's total domination. Moscow's brutal suppression of even modest
political deviations within its satellite empire helped confirm the difference. Soviet tanks
rolled into East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush reform
factions and solidify a Soviet military occupation. Even when the USSR did not resort to such
heavy-handed measures, it was clear that the "allies" were on a very short leash.
Although the United States has occasionally exerted pressure on its allies when they've
opposed its objectives, it has not attempted to treat democratic partners as servile pawns.
That is why the Trump administration's current behavior towards Iraq is so troubling and
exhibits such unprecedented levels of crudeness. America is in danger of becoming the
geopolitical equivalent of a middle school bully.
If Washington refuses to withdraw its forces from Iraq, defying the Baghdad government's
calls to leave, those troops will no longer be guests or allies. They would constitute a
hostile army of occupation, however elaborate the rhetorical facade.
At that point, America would no longer be a moral "force for good" in the Middle East or
anywhere else. The United States would be behaving as an amoral imperial power imposing its
authority on weaker democratic countries that dare adopt measures contrary to Washington's
policy preferences. America might not yet have replaced the Soviet Union as (in Ronald Reagan's
words) the "evil empire," but it will be disturbingly far along the path to that status.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative , is the author of 12
books and more than 850 articles on international affairs.
"America is in danger of becoming the geopolitical equivalent of a middle school bully"?
Its not a mere prospect, its history. The US has been a bully for many years, at least
for the last 20 years, if not more.
It is 100% irrelevant what American think of their "moral standing" in the world. In
terms of foreign policy, it only matter what OTHER countries think, right or wrong. The
rest of the world already think the US govt is a bully. The fact that Trump, became
president is simply the icing on the big reveal cake. Yes, foreign powers helped Trump win
the election, but that was simply an effect on the margin. The majority of Trump supporters
do not need Russian interference to be swayed by him. Trump action embodies that which his
supports wanted for many many years.
What Trump has done is give foreign allies something tangible, indisputable proof to
point to, every time the US come knocking on their door ask for help on "this", "that" and
the "other thing". From now on, they will make sure the get favorable terms in writing,
rather than verbal agreements.
Upvoted, even though you repeat the BS allegations of Russian "interference". Social media
traffic mining by a privately-owned clickbait operation and an email leak to Wikileaks from
the DNC by a disgruntled insider is not "Russian interference". A handful of FB ads taken
out both before and after the elections, and slamming BOTH trump and Shrillary is likewise
evidence of nothing.
"Russiagate" is a hoax, a monumental LIE foisted onto the US public by a vengeful
Democrat party, their political-appointees within government agencies, the corporate media
and the Deep State reptiles who need eternal hostility to Russia to justify the $1T per
annum gravy train that so enriches them.
Russiagate and other forms of Anti-Russian yapping are but an effort for a risingly
dysfunctional society to blame outsiders for failure and dysfunction.
Iran has long been viewed as central for securing US hegemony over Eurasia and the US/UK have
not recovered from the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran has: 1) large reserves of oil and
natural gas, 2) key Geo-strategic position- near the convergence of three continents,
straddling the Middle East and Central Asia, and abutting the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of
Oman, a strategic "choke point" through which circa 25% of the world's energy transits. As
summarized by Dan Glazebrook- "The reason for this obsession with destroying Iran –
shared by all factions of the Western ruling class, despite their differences over means
– is obvious: Iran's very existence as an independent state threatens imperial control
of the region – which in turn underpins both US military power and the global role of
the dollar."
During the 2016 campaign, then candidate Trump constantly railed against the JCPOA ('Iran
nuclear deal'), as the 'worst' treaty the US ever signed. After becoming President, Trump
withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and immediately imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran,
vowing to reduce energy exports to zero, effectively declaring economic war on Iran. I
suspect Trump represents a faction in the US ruling establishment committed to regime change
in Iran. Trump may have believed that Iran would buckle under the weight of US economic
sanctions and capitulate to US demands. These include instillation of a US- friendly
government that will: 1) stop supporting Hezbollah, Bashar Assad in Syria and the
Houthi-Ansarullah movement in Yemen, and 2) allow US energy firms to loot Iran's energy
reserves. As this approach has not worked, Trump is now aggressively pursuing the military
arm of this policy.
The New Year started with a proverbial 'bang' with Trump giving the go ahead for the targeted
assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi General Abu Madhi al-Muhandis,
which had been long in planning. As pointed out by Pepe Escobar- 'It does not matter where
the green light for the assassination.... came from....This is an act of war. Unilateral,
unprovoked and illegal.' Not surprisingly, Trump's actions have been generally well received
by Congress and corporate media. We are now seeing US vassals- UK, France and Germany line up
behind Trump to enact the dispute resolution mechanism (DRM) and sanctions snapback
provision, resulting in the re-imposition of UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Apparently, this action was prodded by Trump's threats to apply 25% tariffs to EU auto
exports to the US.
It appears Pentagon war plans for Iran are being put in place. As per a recent piece by
William Arkin in Newsweek- prior to Trump's inauguration, the US military carried out an
exercise "Global Thunder 17", simulating a nuclear response against Iran in retaliation for
the sinking of an American aircraft carrier and use of chemical weapons against US troops.
This war scenario was chosen because it "allowed the greatest integration of nuclear weapons,
conventional military, missile defense, cyber, and space into what nuclear strategists call
'21st Century deterrence.'" The Pentagon now has a 'low yield' nuclear warhead- W76–2,
apparently developed for an Iran-type of scenario. These weapons are deliverable by
submarine-launched Trident II missiles.
So where do we stand?
It is doubtful that Trump will be convicted by the Republican- controlled Senate. This will
only embolden him more. US vassals- UK, France and Germany are lining up behind Trump to
enact the dispute resolution mechanism (DRM) and sanctions snapback provision, resulting in
the re-imposition of UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Apparently, this action was
prodded by Trump's threats to apply 25% tariffs to EU auto exports to the US. Canada,
Australia and New Zealand have also expressed support for Trump's position. France is
deploying her only aircraft carrier to the ME to 'fight ISIS'.
Corporate media is largely on board with Trump's plan.
Over the last two decades, the US has expended (squandered) astronomical sums of taxpayer
money (>$6 Trillion) and lives of thousands of troops on ME wars. After committing such
large amounts of financial and human capital, the Pentagon has no intention of admitting
their mistakes or changing their behavior. Doing so is an acknowledgement of failure and by
extension military weakness. Further, the strength and stability of the dollar and more
broadly US global power, is contingent on maintaining control of ME energy reserves. The
financial elite/directors of US foreign policy are well aware of continuing US economic
decline and looming strategic debacles confronting the Pentagon in Afghanistan (longest war
in US history), Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Logic dictates that the US cannot 'win' a war
with Iran, but this assumes one is dealing with rational thinking. By exiting the JCPOA,
Trump put the US on a collision course with Iran. Alea iacta est (l. 'The die is cast').
Links of potential interest follow.
Notes
1. With a New Weapon in Donald Trump's Hands, the Iran Crisis Risks Going NuclearBy William
Arkin Jan 13, 2020; Link:
www.newsweek.com/trump-iran-new-nuclear-weapon-increases-risk-crisis-nuclear-1481752
2. Washington continues war buildup against Iran By Bill Van Auken Jan 17, 2020; Link:
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/17/iran-j17.html
Jim Webb: The Iran crisis isn't a failure of the executive branch alone - When did it become acceptable to kill a top leader of a country we aren't even at war with?
Visitors walk around the stairs inside of the Rotunda to the top of the
Capitol dome last month in Washington. (Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images)
By
Jim Webb
January 9
Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, served in the U.S. Senate from 2007 to 2013
and was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1988.
Strongly held views are unlikely to change regarding the morality and tactical wisdom
of President Trump's decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as he traveled on a road outside
the Baghdad airport after having arrived on a
commercial flight
. But the debate regarding the long-term impact of this act on America's place in
the world, and the potential vulnerability of U.S. government officials to similar reprisals, has just
begun.
How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a
country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no
opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable
conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong
disagreement short of actual war -- or for their future actions toward our own people?
With respect to Iran, unfortunately, this is hardly a new issue.
In 2007, the Senate
passed a
non-binding resolution
calling on the George W. Bush administration to categorize Iran's
Revolutionary Guard Corps as an international terrorist organization. I opposed this proposal based on
the irrefutable fact that the organization was an inseparable arm of the Iranian government. The
Revolutionary Guards are not independent actors like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are part of the
Iranian government's formal military structure, with an estimated strength of
more than 150,000 members
. It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national
government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire
government.
Definitions define conduct. If terrorist organizations are actively involved against
us, we attack them. But a terrorist organization is by definition a nongovernmental entity that operates
along the creases of national sovereignties and international law. The Revolutionary Guards are a part of
the Iranian government. If they are attacking us, they are not a terrorist organization. They're an
attacking army.
The 2007 proposal did not succeed. But last April
the State
Department unilaterally designated
the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist entity.
Although more than 60 organizations are listed in this category, this is the only time our government has
ever identified an element of a nation-state as a terrorist organization. And the designation was by many
accounts made despite the opposition of the CIA and the Defense Department.
Which leads us to Soleimani.
The assassination of the most well-known military commander of a country with which
we are not formally at war during his visit to a third country that had not opposed his presence invites
a lax moral justification for a plethora of retaliatory measures -- and not only from Iran. It also holds
the possibility of more deeply entrenching the U.S. military in a region that most Americans would very
much prefer to deal with from a more maneuverable distance.
No thinking American would support Soleimani's conduct. But it is also indisputable
that his activities were carried out as part of his military duties. His harm to American military units
was through his role as an enabler and adviser to third-country forces. This, frankly, is a reality of
war.
I fought as a Marine in Vietnam. We had similar problems throughout the Vietnam War
because of Vietnam's propinquity to China, which along with the Soviet Union provided continuous support
to the North Vietnamese, including most of the weapons used against us on the battlefield. China was then
a rogue state with nuclear weapons. Its leaders continually spouted anti-U.S. rhetoric. Yet we did not
assassinate its military leaders for rendering tactical advice or logistical assistance. We fought the
war that was in front of us, and we created the conditions in which we engaged China aggressively through
diplomatic, economic and other means.
Now, despite Trump's previous assertions that he wants to dramatically reduce the
United States' footprint in the Middle East, it seems clear that he has been seduced into making unwise
announcements similar to the rhetoric used by his immediate predecessors of both parties. Their blunders
-- in Iraq, Libya and Syria -- destabilized the region and distracted the United States from its greatest
long-term challenge: China's military and economic expansion throughout the world.
At a time when our political debates have come to resemble Kardashian-like ego
squabbles, the United States desperately needs common-sense leadership in its foreign policy. This is not
a failure of the executive branch alone; it is the result of a breakdown in our entire foreign policy
establishment, from the executive branch to the legislative branch and even to many of our once-revered
think tanks. If partisanship in foreign policy should end at the water's edge, then such policies should
be forged through respectful, bipartisan debate.
The first such debate should focus on the administration's unilateral decision to
label an entire element of a foreign government an international terrorist organization. If Congress
wishes to hold Iran to such a standard, it should then formally authorize the use of force against Iran's
government. The failure of congressional leadership to make these kinds of decisions is an example of why
our foreign policy has become so militarized, and of how weak and even irrelevant Congress has allowed
itself to become in the eyes of our citizens.
"... In diplomatic terms, the US drive to force Iran into neo-colonial subjugation is expressed in Trump and Pompeo's demand that Tehran negotiate a replacement to the "flawed" Iran nuclear deal -- a "Trump deal" that would severely limit Iran's military, "roll back" its influence across the Middle East, and permanently bar it from a civil nuclear program. ..."
"... it is animated by the calculation that a "grand bargain" more favorable to US imperialism can be extorted from the crisis-ridden and deeply divided Iranian bourgeoisie, under conditions where it is facing not only ever-escalating external pressure, but also massive social opposition, above all from the working class. ..."
"... The Iranian regime was shaken by an explosion of popular anger against austerity and social inequality at the beginning of 2018. Last November, when massive gas price hikes sparked demonstrations in more than 100 cities, some of them violent, the Iranian government again responded with brutal repression, reportedly killing scores of protesters ..."
"... The assassination of Suleimani was itself clearly targeted at more than "just" threatening and destabilizing the Islamic Republic. It was aimed at shifting the internal dynamics of the Iranian regime. ..."
As with any sudden turn in world geopolitics, the true purpose and full implications of
Washington's criminal assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Suleimani
are emerging only with the passage of time.
The Trump administration's claims that the assassination was in response to an imminent
threat to American lives have been exposed as blatant lies. Suleimani's murder was months in
the planning and long advocated by key figures in the US military-foreign policy
establishment, including CIA head Gina Haspel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former
Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton.
The killing of the military leader, who was widely viewed as second only to Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran's power structure, constitutes a dramatic escalation of the Trump
administration's campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran. This campaign combines unrelenting
diplomatic and military pressure with devastating economic sanctions -- that are themselves
tantamount to an act of war -- cyber-warfare and other "special ops."
It is aimed at "turning" Iran and bringing to power -- whether through the reconfiguration or
outright overthrow of Iran's Shia clergy-led bourgeois nationalist regime -- a government in
Tehran, akin to the Shah's bloody quarter-century-long dictatorship, that will be at American
imperialism's beck and call.
Iran has long been viewed by US imperialist strategists as central to its drive to secure
hegemony over all Eurasia. This is because of its vast oil wealth and its geo-strategic
position, near the convergence of three continents and straddling the Middle East and Central
Asia, the world's two most important oil exporting regions.
In diplomatic terms, the US drive to force Iran into neo-colonial subjugation is
expressed in Trump and Pompeo's demand that Tehran negotiate a replacement to the "flawed"
Iran nuclear deal -- a "Trump deal" that would severely limit Iran's military, "roll back"
its influence across the Middle East, and permanently bar it from a civil nuclear
program.
Washington's maximum pressure campaign against Iran is predicated on the "credible" threat
of all-out war, and is intimately bound up with its preparations for "strategic conflict"
with Russia and China. It could rapidly cascade into a catastrophic war with Iran that would
engulf the entire Mideast and draw in the other great powers.
But it is animated by the calculation that a "grand bargain" more favorable to US
imperialism can be extorted from the crisis-ridden and deeply divided Iranian bourgeoisie,
under conditions where it is facing not only ever-escalating external pressure, but also
massive social opposition, above all from the working class.
The Iranian regime was shaken by an explosion of popular anger against austerity and
social inequality at the beginning of 2018. Last November, when massive gas price hikes
sparked demonstrations in more than 100 cities, some of them violent, the Iranian government
again responded with brutal repression, reportedly killing scores of protesters .
The assassination of Suleimani was itself clearly targeted at more than "just"
threatening and destabilizing the Islamic Republic. It was aimed at shifting the internal
dynamics of the Iranian regime. It removed the military leader responsible for
overseeing Iran's attempts to counteract US pressure through a network of foreign militia
groups, most of them based on Shia populism. Suleimani, moreover, was a leader, as the
subsequent mass demonstrations protesting his murder and the US war threats attested, who had
a broad base of popular support.
Given the manner in which Suleimani died, including his evident lack of security, it is
legitimate to ask whether factional opponents within the Iranian state facilitated his
murder.
What is incontrovertible is that in the wake of his assassination and the tumultuous
events it precipitated, the factional warfare has intensified, culminating in last week's
inadvertent downing of a Ukrainian International Airlines plane by an Iranian Revolutionary
Guard missile, its cover-up, and the outbreak of student demonstrations denouncing government
negligence and repression.
Yesterday, President Hassan Rouhani, who spearheaded the push for the rapprochement with
the European imperialist powers and Washington that resulted in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal, denounced the military for failing to "apologize" for
the downing of the passenger jet. He also criticized the recent decision of the Guardian
Council to exclude many sitting parliamentarians from standing in the coming elections. He
called for "national reconciliation" -- a slogan long raised by supporters of the Greens, a
movement based in dissident sections of the bourgeoisie and upper-middle class, which, with
imperialist backing, disputed the outcome of the 2009 presidential election.
Meanwhile, on a visit to New Delhi in which he met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, Iranian Foreign Minister Javed Zarif declared that the Indian government, a key US
ally, could play an important "role in de-escalating tensions in the Gulf."
A major element in the Trump administration's drive to leverage the crisis of the Iranian
regime and the longstanding cleavages within it has been the effort to cajole the European
imperialist powers -- Germany, France and Britain -- into joining Washington in repudiating
the Iran nuclear accord.
On Tuesday, the so-called E-3 took a giant step in this direction by initiating the
accord's disputes resolution mechanism, thereby placing themselves on a fast track to join
Washington in imposing and policing the sanctions that are strangling Iran's economy.
It is Washington that trashed the nuclear accord and is pursuing "maximum aggression"
against Iran. Through its dominance of the world financial system, it has successfully shut
down the world's trade with Iran, thereby making the quid pro quo underlying the nuclear
accord -- the removal of sanctions in exchange for the dismantling of much of Iran's civil
nuclear program -- null and void.
Yet, in what could only be music to Trump and Pompeo's ears, France, Germany and Britain
are blaming Iran for violating the agreement, cynically citing Tehran's attempts to gain
leverage by exceeding various JCPOA stipulations and accusing it of seeking nuclear
weapons.
The European imperialist powers have been rattled by provocative and unilateral US actions
that cut across their interests. Suleimani's assassination was just the latest rude
shock.
Britain and the EU powers fear Washington's ever-escalating aggression against Iran will
spark an all-out war that will redound against their own imperialist interests, even if it
doesn't immediately draw in Russia and China. A war would send oil prices soaring, roil the
European economy, spark another massive refugee crisis and further radicalize a growing
working class counter-offensive.
No doubt Pompeo and others have told the Europeans that if they want to restrain Trump,
avert a major conflagration and retain influence in the Middle East, they must rally behind
Washington and its maximum pressure campaign.
To these dubious incentives, the Trump administration added a trade war threat, according
to a report published yesterday by the Washington Post under the title, "Days before
Europeans warned Iran of nuclear deal violations, Trump secretly threatened to impose 25
percent tariff on European autos if they didn't."
That said, as in the case of Washington, a key factor in the Europeans' calculations is
the character of Iran's bourgeois regime and its manifest crisis.
The European imperialist powers have clearly been emboldened by the Iranian regime's
response to Suleimani's assassination, which was limited to missile strikes of which the
Pentagon was given advance warning and which resulted in no casualties, and by its ham-fisted
attempt to cover up its responsibility for the downing of Ukraine Air Flight 752.
For all its anti-American bluster, the Iranian regime is a bourgeois national regime. In
so far as it has come into conflict with Washington, it has always been from the standpoint
of increasing its own possibilities for exploiting the working class and boosting its
regional influence.
The growing opposition from the working class impels Iran to intensify what has been a
decades-long attempt to effect a rapprochement with every US administration, dating back at
least to that of George H.W. Bush.
If it can, the Islamic Republic's elite, or sections of it, will strike a deal with
imperialism at the expense of the masses. Even before Rouhani came to power in 2014 on a
program that coupled overtures toward Washington and Europe with further privatizations,
subsidy cuts and other anti-working class measures, the Iranian regime was involved in
behind-the-scenes talks with the Obama administration on removing the sanctions.
Similar talks could happen in the future or even be underway though back channels now.
Trump has shown in his dealings with North Korea that he is capable of pursuing such a
two-track policy.
As for the so-called Iranian "hardliners," they are no less hostile to the working class
than their factional opponents, as evidenced by the implementation of neo-liberal "reform"
measures by every Iranian government since the late 1980s, and their readiness to unite with
their factional opponents to suppress any challenge from below.
Ultimately, the "hardliners" supported the nuclear deal and the pursuit of closer
relations with the US and the EU. Even more importantly, their strategy for opposing
Washington--based on seeking close military-strategic ties with Russia and China and the use
of Shia populism and religious sectarianism to rally support across the Middle East--is a
blind alley that risks plunging the region and the world into a conflagration.
Read wagelaborer (3) because what he says is the core to the understanding US Foreign
policy, everything else is unimportant, a side dish, a noise. One possible thing missing is
that in Europe the prime objective for the US is to prevent Russia and Germany coupling up,
keeping the two tribes separate is the goal, at whatever cost.
The pricing of oil (and oil derivatives) in dollars is a replacement for the gold-backed
dollar scrapped by Nixon in early 70s. The pricing is a must, losing it would undermine the
dollar as a reserve currency. Each year, those who need to buy oil plus oil derivates have to
find trillions for the buy the black gold.
Consider: Each day some 100ml barrels are produced, that's 36bn barrels a year, at a cost
of $75 per barrel it's some $2.7tr needed to buy the stuff. And that's just the crude. Add
the derivatives (per barrel more expensive than crude), and one's talking some $5-7tr to be
found. That's what allows the US to print either IOU's i.e. the Treasuries or actual cash
without any worry whatever the IOU's will ever be brought back to the mainland US in haunting
inflation.
The time the pricing of oil in dollars goes, the US hegemony gets a fatal knock, from
which it would be near impossible to recover bar staring a war.
It's clear that Trump does not understand - or has not understood until recently - the true
goals of US foreign policy (maintaining the dollar hegemony first, promoting US business
interests second). His notion of winning a war is apparently being able to send the troops
home. This is at odds with the "deep state", which has no problem spending money that it sees
as coming from others, as long as that money keeps coming in and it's being spent in the
furtherance of geopolitical goals. Hence the continued US military presence in Afghanistan
must be furthering, if not fulfilling, one or more geopolitical goals. Those goals most
likely do not include "defeating terrorism". Trump may well not be aware of what the goals
are.
It may be useful to draw a comparison between the US military presence in Afghanistan and
its presence in Vietnam. Like Afghanistan, Vietnam seems to have been a near-pointless
expenditure of resources and people - on the surface. From the "deep state's" point of view,
however, Vietnam served as a bulwark against encroachment by the non-dollar-aligned part of
the world. Vietnam was only abandoned once a much bigger prize became available - China.
Given Afghanistan's location, it stands to reason that it too is serving as a bulwark and
that its importance in the "deep state's" eyes will diminish (if not disappear) once Iran
and/or Russia experiences a "change of heart".
"The Marxist political parties, including the Social Democrats and their followers, had
fourteen years to prove their abilities. The result is a heap of ruins. All around us are
symptoms portending this breakdown. With an unparalleled effort of will and of brute force the
Communist method of madness is trying as a last resort to poison and undermine an inwardly
shaken and uprooted nation.
In fourteen years the November parties have ruined the German farmer. In fourteen years they
created an army of millions of unemployed. The National Government will carry out the following
plan with iron resolution and dogged perseverance. Within four years the German farmer must be
saved from pauperism. Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome.
Our concern to provide daily bread will be equally a concern for the fulfillment of the
responsibilities of society to those who are old and sick. The best safeguard against any
experiment which might endanger the currency lies in economical administration, the promotion
of work, and the preservation of agriculture, as well as in the use of individual
initiative."
Adolf Hitler, Radio Appeal to the German People, February 1, 1933
"Both religion and socialism thus glorify weakness and need. Both recoil from the world as
it is: tough, unequal, harsh. Both flee to an imaginary future realm where they can feel safe.
Both say to you. Be a nice boy. Be a good little girl. Share. Feel sorry for the little people.
And both desperately seek someone to look after them -- whether it be God or the State.
A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings,
who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to
instruments... One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid
blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to
erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"At a certain point in their historical cycles, social classes become detached from their
traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties, in their particular
organisational bias, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no
longer recognised by their class as their own, and representing their interests. When such
crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open
for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic 'men of
destiny' [demagogues].
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of
monsters."
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1930-35
"Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.
You agree? Good. Then go with my blessing. But I warn you, do not expect to make many friends.
One of the awful facts of our age is the evidence that it is stricken indeed, stricken to the
very core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable."
Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable
"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and
desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and
domestic subjects."
R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since
1900
"This is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin. It is the power of the darkness of the world,
and of spiritual wickedness in high places. The only difference is that it is not happening in
the past, or in a book, or in some vaguely frightening prophecy -- it is happening here and
now."
Jesse
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power
as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others
only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Plunder, rape, and murder they
falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus
"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in
America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and
humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as
bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage.
And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid
enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream
turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with
gas, went bang in the noonday sun."
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
"Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw
together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught
them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns
which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them
from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter
entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political
democracy. By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into
infinite misery."
Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the
need without ever reaching satisfaction."
Erich Fromm
"We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way
and pray another.
If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what
you have chosen instead."
North Korea's cavalier rejection of its NPT membership in 2003 is
a prime example , but many saw it as a case not applicable to most member states. However,
more recently,
Saudi Arabia , and
Turkey and
Iran (which, after the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, is looking for new ways to
upset Washington), have gone so far as ti layout terms under which they would leave the treaty
and even obtain nuclear weapons, statements without precedent in the treaty's history.
A number of otherwise respectable member countries, such as South Korea , also have
political parties in their legislatures that advocate treaty withdrawal and acquisition of
nuclear weapons.
We have to take seriously the possibility that -- without international action to arrest
this tendency -- the already frayed bonds that tie countries to the NPT and the pledge not to
acquire nuclear weapons may not hold. This would presage a world with many more nuclear states
and a vastly increased risk of nuclear use.
Victor Gilinsky is program advisor for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
(NPEC) in Arlington, Virginia. He served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Presidents
Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Henry Sokolski is executive director of NPEC and the author of
Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear
Future (second edition 2019). He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office
of the U.S. secretary of defense in the Cheney Pentagon.
Britain and the EU powers fear Washington's ever-escalating aggression against Iran will
spark an all-out war that will redound against their own imperialist interests, even if it
doesn't immediately draw in Russia and China. A war would send oil prices soaring, roil the
European economy, spark another massive refugee crisis and further radicalize a growing working
class counter-offensive.
No doubt Pompeo and others have told the Europeans that if they want to restrain Trump,
avert a major conflagration and retain influence in the Middle East, they must rally behind
Washington and its maximum pressure campaign.
To these dubious incentives, the Trump administration added a trade war threat, according to
a report published yesterday by the Washington Post under the title, "Days before
Europeans warned Iran of nuclear deal violations, Trump secretly threatened to impose 25
percent tariff on European autos if they didn't."
Why, after so many assurances to the contrary, have the three European Iran's Nuclear Deal
Partner's – Germany, France, the UK – decided to go after Iran, to follow the US
dictate again?
The short answer is because the cowards. They have zero backbone to stand up against the US
hegemony, because they are afraid to be sanctioned – as Trump indicated if they were to
honor the" Nuclear Deal". Iran is absolutely in their right to progressively increase uranium
enrichment, especially since the US dropped out unilaterally, without any specific reasons,
other than on Netanyahu's orders – of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),
also called Iran's Nuclear Deal.
Just a few days ago Ms. Angela Merkel met with President Putin in Moscow, and BOTH pledged
in front of a huge press crowd that the Nuclear Deal must stay, must be maintained and
validated.
And now, because of Trump's Barbarian threats, trade threats on Europe – an increase
of up to 25% import taxes on European cars – and wanting a new deal with Iran, whatever
that means, they, the Europeans – the three Nuclear Deal partners, back down. Why not
call Trump's bluff? As China did. This Barbarian Kingpin is lashing around his deathbed with
tariffs and sanctions, it is only a sign of weakness, a sign of slowly but surely disappearing
in the – hopefully – bottomless abyss.
This threesome is a bunch of shameless and hopeless cowards. They have not realized yet that
the west, starting with the US empire, is passé. It's a sinking ship. It's high time for
Iran to orient herself towards the east. Iran is already a Middle-Eastern key hub for the
Chinese Belt and Road initiative (BRI), or the New Silk road. Iran can do without Europe; and
the US needs Europe more than vice-versa. But the 'chickens' haven't noticed that yet.
On the behest of Washington, the Trump clown, they, Germany, France and the UK, want to
start an official dispute process, bringing Iran back to where it was before the Nuclear Deal,
and reinstating all the UN sanctions of before the signature of the deal in July 2015. And this
despite the fact that Iran has adhered to their part of the deal by 100%, as several times
attested to by the Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna. Can you imagine what these abhorrent
Europeans are about to do?
This reminds of how Europe pilfered, robbed and raped Africa and the rest of the now called
developing world, for hundreds of years. No ethics, no qualms, just sheer egocentricity and
cowardice. The European Barbarians and those on the other side of the Atlantic deserve each
other. And they deserve disappearing in the same bottomless pit.
Iran may consider three ideas:
1) Call the European bluff. Let them start the dispute process – and let them drive it
all the way to the UN Security Council. Their spineless British Brother in Crime, BoJo, also
called the British Prime-Minister, Boris Johnson, will do the job for them, bringing the case
"Iran Nuclear Deal – and Sanctions" to the UN Security Council – where it will
fail, because Russia and China will not approve the motion.
2) Much more important, Dear Friends in Iran – do not trust the Europeans for even
one iota ! – They have proven time and again that they are not trustworthy. They
buckle under every time Trump is breaking wind – and
3) Dedollarize your economy even faster – move as far as possible away from the west
– join the Eastern economy, that controls at least one third of the world's GDP. You are
doing already a lot in this direction – but faster. Join the SCO – the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, comprising half of Mother Earth's population; ditch the dollar and
the SWIFT payment system, join instead the Chinese Interbank Payment System (CIPS) – and
be free of the sanction-prone western monetary system. Eastern monetary transactions are
blocking out western dollar-based sanctions. Already your hydrocarbon trades with China,
Russia, India and others are not carried out in US dollars, but in local currencies, Chinese
yuans, Russian rubles and Indian rupees.
True – Iran will have to confront Iran-internally the western (NATO) and CIA trained,
funded and bought Atlantists, the Fifth Columnists. They are the ones that create constant
virulently violent unrest in the cities of Iran; they are trained – and paid for –
to bring about Regime Change. That's what Russia and China and Venezuela and Cuba are also
confronted with. They, the Fifth Columnists have to be eradicated. It's a challenge, but it
should be doable.
Follow the Ayatollah's route. He is on the right track – looking East.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. After working for over 30 years
with the World Bank he penned Implosion
, an economic thriller, based on his first-hand experience. Exclusively for the online magazine
" New Eastern Outlook. "
In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more
disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a senior adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev , had warned:
"We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an
enemy."
...Winning the cold war brought Americans face-to-face with a predicament comparable to that
confronting the lucky person who wins the lottery: hidden within a windfall is the potential
for monumental disaster.
I don't think it will be long before we see Congress in the US calling for invasion of Russia
on the grounds of a lack of diversity, lack of respect for LGBTP and so forth.
The question on everyone's mind: When will the trumpet blare and the walls come tumbling
down? And second to that, when will Iran take the next action in its avenging Soleimani's
murder?
1. The interests of these countries may be aligned.
2. Even if the immigrant may be mistaken, if his belief is sincere he may still
provide valuable contact, intelligence, etc.
This is a very naive idea of how perceived "national interests" form. In real life,
highly-motivated groups of immigrants will have an outsized influence on how their host
country thinks of its interests in their regions of birth. This is basically a geopolitical
example of Nassim Taleb's minority rule .
United States is especially vulnerable to such subversion since much of its conception
of itself and its place in the world centers on elastic and easily abused ideas like
freedom and human rights .
That too. Ukraine is a split country on pro/anti-Russian attitudes
Rather strong and somewhat anachronistic statement. Ukraine was split prior to 2014.
There are still pro-Russian areas but being free of Crimea and Donbas means Ukraine can no
longer be characterized as "split." Probably 1/4 of the population can be considered to be
politically friendly to Russia. Given, say, Latvia's ethnic Russian population, that country is
nowadays probably more "split" than Ukraine.
@AP d in
a frozen conflict zone. After they were fucked by industrial collapse and job loss. Before
that they were fucked by wars, famines and the Bolsheviks. They really can't seem to catch a
break.
Europeans seem to be on the precipice of disaster everywhere. It would be nice to band
together, rather than die while getting hung up on the narcissism of small differences.
Probably just wishful thinking on my part though. I guess Americans can't understand how
important it is for Ukrainians on one side of the Dniepr to show how different they are from
Ukrainians on the other or how different they are from Russians for that matter.
Yankistan most potent weapon isn't military, it's economic, and through it the US government
controls the world. That weapon is the US Dollar and ever since Nixon took it off the gold
standard it has been used to further the Empire's imperial hold on the global economy.
"While the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani was an act of international barbarity,
emblematic of the thuggish nature of US foreign policy, it was neither the only de facto act
of war the United States has undertaken against Iran, nor the most harmful. Indeed, against
the total embargo Washington has imposed on Iran with the intention of starving Iranians into
submission or inducing them to overthrow their government, the killing of Soleimani is a act
of little consequence, even if its significance in provoking widespread outrage and
galvanizing opposition to US aggression is undoubted."
Significantly, events appear to have escalated from the 25 December killing of five
PMF guys on the Syria-Iraq border by an unattributed drone or missile strike. Our media
is doing its best to obscure this event as the probable starting point. Two days later on
27 December, the rocket fire near Kirkuk killed the US contractor. Then came the strike
on KH troops back out in the West and now the assassination of Soleimani et al.
[ ]
So the trigger was the 25 December attack, and all the timing flows from that, not
from any great real estate developer savvy. Frankly, in my view, you give Trump way to
much credit for systematic thought. I don't think he really does that at all.
This is also the view of the Middle-East veterans over at Patrick Lang's blog:
Last weekend, in response to a rocket attack on a base outside Kirkuk that left one US
contractor dead and four US servicemen wounded, we launched drone strikes on five Iraqi
PMU outposts in Iraq and Syria near Abukamal killing 25 members and wounding scores more
of the Kata'ib Hezbollah brigades of the PMU.
We blamed Iran and the Kata'ib Hezbollah for the rocket attack near Kirkuk. That may
be true, but the Kata'ib Hezbollah is not some rogue militia controlled out of Teheran.
It is an integral part of the PMU, its 46th and 47th brigades and has been for years. The
PMU is an integral part of the Iraqi military and has been for years. The PMU played a
major role in defeating IS in both Iraq and Syria. Our attack on the Kata'ib Hezbollah
outposts was an attack on the Iraqi military and government. We informed PM
Abdul-Mahdi of our intended attacks. Abdul-Mahadi warned us not to do it, but, of course,
we conducted the attacks despite his warning. We were proud of the attacks. The Pentagon
even released footage of the attacks. It was supposed to be a clear message to
Teheran.
Unfortunately for us, the message was also heard by Iraqis. After the funerals of
many of the victims of our attacks on the PMU outposts, a large crowd of protestors
headed for the US Embassy in the Green Zone. For weeks prior to this, Iraqi security
forces kept protestors from entering the Green Zone and approaching the US Embassy. Not
this time. The crowds, including mourners fresh from the funerals of their family
members and many PMU soldiers, unarmed but in uniform, poured into the Green Zone right
to the gates of the Embassy itself. A reception area was entered and burned. Iraqi
security forces of the PrimeMinister's Counter Terrorism Command were among the
protestors. I surmise that PM Abdul-Mahdi was sending his own message back to the US.
The protests at the American embassy, then, were over Iraqi servicemen murdered in
American drone strikes
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian soldier. He lived by the sword and died by the sword.
He met a soldier's destiny. It is being said that he was a BAD MAN. Absurd! To say that
he was a BAD MAN because he fought us as well as the Sunni jihadis is simply infantile.
Were all those who fought the US BAD MEN? How about Gentleman Johhny Burgoyne? Was he a
BAD MAN? How about Sitting Bull? Was he a BAD MAN? How about Aguinaldo? Another BAD MAN?
Let us not be juvenile.
The Iraqi PMU commander who died with Soleimani was Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. He was a
member of a Shia militia that had been integrated into the Iraqi armed forces. IOW, we
killed an Iraqi general. We killed him without the authorization of the supposedly
sovereign state of Iraq.
We created the present government of Iraq through the farcical "purple thumb"
elections. That government holds a seat in the UN General Assembly and is a sovereign
entity in international law in spite of Trump's tweet today that said among other things
that we have "paid" Iraq billions of US dollars. To the Arabs, this statement that brands
them as hirelings of the US is close to the ultimate in insult.
Major announcements in this State of the Nation speech on Jan 15, 2020.
Here is a very brief summary to get the conversation started.
Immediate politics :
who reduced uncollected VAT from 20% to 1%.
Source tells me FM Sergey Lavrov rumored to be permanently retiring.
Constitutional changes :
Demographics :
continued fall in Russia's
fertility rates to 1.5 children per woman this year (up from post-Soviet peak of close to 1.8
in mid-2000s), setting 1.7 children per woman as the new target for 2024. Reaffirmed
demographics as the first national priority. Maternity capital to be increased by further
150,000 rubles and constitute 616,617 rubles (≈$10,000) for a family with two children,
to be annually indexed.
***
Some very tentative thoughts :
(1) I have long thought now that Putin's end game is to transition into an overseeing "elder
statesman" role, along the model of Lee Kuan Yew/PAP in Singapore [see 1 , 2 , 3 ]. This appears to be
the final confirmation that this is happening.
(2) Questions about the succession revolved around (a) The Belarus variant, in which it
effectively constitutes a new state with Russia, allowing Putin to become the supreme head of
that state; (b) A constitutional reshuffle such as the one we're seeing here. This question has
also been answered.
" Putin's end game is to transition into an overseeing "elder statesman" role" –
Not always does it work: King Lear, Benedict 16.
"Lear gave up a God-given duty and right to rule his people. His tragic flaw 'hamartia' is
presumptuousness. He presumes that he can divest himself of what God invested him with (the
Elizabethan idea of the divine rights of the ruler), he grows in tragic stature as the play
progresses." – found on google.
Putin's end game is to transition into an overseeing "elder statesman" role
Looks more like he plans to become a powerful Prime Minister after 2024, rather than elder
statesman. Might be good in the medium term: politicians of his caliber are rare. Still, in
the longer term Russia needs a real successor: rule by committee never works, even in smaller
and simpler countries.
@AnonFromTN
I think (and it's already been said for years) that's he too tired for the role of PM, which
is more intensive than the Presidency and involved dealing with boring domestic crap whereas
the Presidency, at least, offers more in the way of Grand Strategy, diplomacy, etc.
I think the likeliest game plan is for him to chair a much more empowered State Council
after 2024. (This is what Nazarbayev did with the Security Council after retiring last
year).
Presidential candidates should have been resident in Russia for 25 years (previously 10
years) and never had a foreign citizenship. (This rules out a large proportion of
Atlanticists and crypto-Atlanticists).
Does this imply, that they'll allow an actual election in 2024? I'm getting excited
Speaking of constitutional changes, they should just get rid of the entire Yeltsin's text,
and write a new one. Yeltsin's constitution is a mishmash of French and American
constitutions, completely detached from the country's realities and tradition.
So union with Belarus is still on the table right? But if that happens it would be
Belarus joining a continuous RF, under the newly modified constitution?
My take on this is that Lukashenka told Putin to piss off, and he did. So no union.
Reaffirmed demographics as the first national priority.
How about not importing all of Central Asia, so that wages aren't depressed. Higher wages
might boost that low TFR.
Maternity capital to be increased by further 150,000 rubles and constitute 616,617
rubles (≈$10,000) for a family with two children, to be annually indexed.
Will that will help subsidize the Chechens, Avars, Laks etc. the most relative to their
population size because Russia is a "Multinational" state with equality for all of its
"constituent" nations?
Speaking of which will Uzbek and Tajik guests be able to get in on that too? A future
Russian Duma might need to grant more rights to them because Russia will need more workers to
support its aging population. They speak Russian after all, and there is a shared history.
So, they will integrate well into society. I feel like that is what a future Russian PM will
be arguing a few years down the line.
@Boswald
Bollocksworth s everything that is going to befall it.
Second, Lukashenko himself is a problem. He might be qualified to run a small agrobusiness,
but certainly nothing greater than that. Yet his outsized ego (common among morons, think
Bush Jr) won't let him fade away peacefully.
Third, Belarus is subsidized by Russia, and many Russian citizens believe that the money
would be much better spent inside Russia or helping countries that deserve this aid, like
Syria.
Maybe Putin thinks differently, but he does a lot to remain popular. So, after pension reform
hit to his support I don't think he is going to do something most people disapprove of.
@JPM
Fortunately, there's very little Central Asian breeding going on it Russia – the
pattern is for them to make their money (5-10x what they can make at home) and raise families
at home.
Chechens, Avars, etc. will benefit disproportionately, but the program is after all
primarily intended as an incentive. Personally, I think a childlessness tax will be much more
effective, since people react better to penalties than rewards – plus it will rake in a
net profit – but I don't suppose its politically feasible in the modern age.
Seems like a good balance between a liberal direction – limiting any one president to
two absolute terms while substantially increasing the say of the parliament – and some
common sense requirements (like on citizenship).
Putting it to a referendum is also welcome. The will of the people should not only be
heard but increased.
Putin bemoaned continued fall in Russia's fertility rates to 1.5 children per woman this
year (up from post-Soviet peak of close to 1.8 in mid-2000s), setting 1.7 children per
woman as the new target for 2024.
Reaffirmed demographics as the first national priority.
Maternity capital to be increased by further 150,000 rubles and constitute 616,617 rubles
(≈$10,000) for a family with two children, to be annually indexed.
I doubt this will work.
The biggest problem for fertility all over the world is housing. As long as the housing
sector is neoliberalised, it will be a major impediment. Affordable housing is per definition
low-margin and hence not interesting to private developers. For them, a perpetual housing
shortage pushes up the profit margin. All firms are constantly seeking to maximise profits,
so their behaviour is rational from a purely market fundamentalist point of view. That's why
market fundamentalism need to be overthrown. There has to be a massive building spree to
lower the cost of housing to no more than 4-5 years of annual (net) wages for a median worker
to buy without debt. That would be the real game changer. Import the churkas and get it
done.
The second problem is ideology and religiosity. If you look at Israel, a major component
of their high fertility is the massively increasing Haredi sector. Even outside the Haredis,
they have a high share of genuinely religious jews. For the seculars, TFR is still a
respectable 2.5, which is likely explained by nationalism. Whatever Russian nationalism is,
it isn't very fecund. Russians aren't very religious either, though Putin seems to be. Church
attendence in Russia is quite low. At this stage, I don't believe high fertility can be
solved without going into artificial wombs and more exotic solutions. A cultural revolution
doesn't seem to be on the cards.
(2) Questions about the succession revolved around (a) The Belarus variant, in which it
effectively constitutes a new state with Russia, allowing Putin to become the supreme head
of that state; (b) A constitutional reshuffle such as the one we're seeing here. This
question has also been answered.
I still think Belarus will be swallowed by Russia within this decade.
The State Council includes the following members: the Speaker of the Federation Council of
the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Speaker of the State Duma of the Federal
Assembly of the Russian Federation, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoys to the federal
districts, senior officials (heads of the highest executive agencies of state power) in
Russia's federal constituent entities, and the heads of the political parties in the State
Duma.
Mishustin is a genius at reforming bureaucracies with IT systems. He is also an economist who
thinks Russia should be less autarkic. He is in the Kudrin camp. For example, he is still
scheduled to speak at the Gaidar forum. Shoigu seems to have fallen back. M is associated
witht he Union of Right Forces.
There has been a huge Twitter storm of people/trolls posting this a Putin's effort to stay
in power.
@nickels
Exactly . Kudrin and his friends want parliament to have more power so that the russian
people have less of it. They know they have 0 legitimacy , that the people hate them and that
they would never survive at the top of the political elite if a real and intelligent
nationalist comes to power in Russia one day ( Putin is a half-disapointment whose main merit
is to have benefited from the work of Primakov ). They want the presidency to be paralysed .
I hope they wont succeed and that there will always be a strong statesman on their way in
Russia.
@nickels
control away from oligarchs, but that is more due to his own force of personality rather than
the system itself.
In brief, whether a country will be beholden to oligarchs is less due to the governance
structure and more about the general culture. Some countries have a very corrupt
citizenry/culture and that will produce bad outcomes in most situations in the long run
regardless of the political system. This can only be suspended temporarily by a very strong
leader – but you only get them infrequently.
The only hope to reduce power of oligarchs when Putin leaves power is to attack corruption
in society, at both high levels and ground levels.
@Thulean
Friend 'The only institution ever devised by men for mastering the money powers in the
state is the Monarchy.'
Napolean.
Belloc, for one, writes over and over on this theme.
Most European histories are Whig histories, and, hence, worthless on this topic. Which is
not to discount your valid point about princes becoming indebted to jews. Aristocracy had
this problem to a greater extent.
@nickels
advantage. Contrary to Thulean, I believe that universal rule of law actually weakens the
state and its ability to control merchantile factions. Of course, casual acceptance of "rule
of power" is a form of corruption and if it isn't limited to the strongman himself, results
in wasteful factionalism.
However, this essential snubbing of the merchantile factions has the very obvious result
of them working against the state, for "rule of law"(which benefits them), and of course, not
helping their rivals in the warrior factions. In the long run, lack of access to liquidity
can severely cripple governments that don't play well with potential creditors.
I believe that universal rule of law actually weakens the state and its ability to
control merchantile factions.
Yes, I think this is the key factor. Government by committee is no government, which means
the parasites will rise to take over.
Additionally, the western stupidity of tying everything to high flown abstractions, i.e.
universal law and principles, is both idiotic and impossible. History demands the
intervention of the intellect, i.e. the mind of the monarch or the autocrat.
@nickels
e was not particularly involved in planning the conquest and the company self-financed much
of the early stages of the conquest itself, ironically enough often from wealthy Indians who
were given attractive financing options. The company innovated many things we take for
granted today, such as the joint stock company. Of course, the British state did step in
eventually but by that time much of the groundwork had already been set. Adjusted for
inflation, the EIC was many times larger than either Google or Apple is today at its peak,
closer to 4+ trillion USD.
Too much of history blindly focuses on kings and rulers while ignoring many non-state
actors.
@Thulean
Friend Sounds interesting, thx.
'Why War' by Frederic Clemson Howe had a similar theme about how the 'flag followed the
dollar' in the lead up to WWI.
@Thulean
Friend money from private trading as company employees were allowed to do. The less rich
one commanded three regiments of cavalry at the 3rd siege of Seringapatam. He was elected
Prize Officer and thus had an extra share.
They returned and with other East India men built a canal to a coal mine they opened on
the hill above an iron works eventually connecting Clydach Gorge to the sea thus launching
the industrial revolution in South Wales. So there are very direct links between profits from
trade and the industrial revolution. They fed off each other. South Wales at one time
produced most of the world's copper. This was in great demand in India for making brass.
The unreformable Soviet Union of the
1980s which turned into a "cake" of sorts for the Soviet " Nomenklatura " which, when it realized
that it would lose control of the country, decided to break up the Soviet Union into 15
different countries (including quite a few totally fictional ones) and re-branded itself from
"defenders of the Party and the USSR" into "fervent nationalists". That was just about as fake
a rebranding as ever but there was nothing the majority of the people ( who wanted to maintained the
Soviet Union ) could do about it.
Then came the horrors of the 1990s during which
Russia (and the rest of the newly minted republics) were drowned into an orgy of lawlessness,
violence, corruption and total, absolute, subservience to the AngloZionist Empire.
Finally,
during the 2000s we saw a period of shared power between the Atlantic Integrationists lead by
Medvedev and the Eurasian Sovereignist lead by Putin. This was an uneasy partnership in which
the Atlantic Integrationists were in control of the "economic block" while the Eurasian
Sovereignists were tasked with Russia's foreign affairs and defense.
In fact it is classified information..highly classified according to news reports. And so
we're likely to never see it. Flynn was forced out for some reason, presumably good ones.
It's hard to say anything for certain because the White House was in disarray in Feb2017.
DJT's inexperience in government was glaringly obvious in the first couple of months of his
administration. He mishandled several issues badly, paticularly the Flynn episode and James
Comey. I said then that he should have replaced Comey on Day 1. Had he done so none of the
mess of "Russian collusion" would likely have ever come about. Although he usually gets
things right, eventually, his (early) tendencies toward delayed action cost him.
They always claim something is highly classified when they want to conceal something that
will incriminate or embarrass them before the American people.
Trump came into office without an army of bureaucrats to fill all the jobs in the
government behemoth. He had to put in people that had been vehemently opposed to him in
order to get confirmations. That's why the expression, "The new boss, same as the old
boss." And it has certainly been true of Trump regarding foreign policy.
Well, since it was under Obama that they intercepted Flynn's calls, that's where the
classification came from. The USG grows and maintains its power through myriad levels of
secrecy. (I was in the game as a CIA communications specialist for 8 years). The game is
thoroughly bipartisan.
The White House said on Friday that it was the Obama administration that authorized
former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak during President Trump's transition, according to CNN.
"... The full spectrum support for the murder shows that the Establishment is firmly on board with it, which proves that it was not simply a whim of Trump's, or an action taken because a few neo-cons talked him into ordering it. Again, he can order military actions all he wants, (like the withdrawal of troops from Syria), but he isn't allowed to do anything that our rulers don't want done. ..."
"... There is no major FUNCTIONAL difference between the Rep/Dem when it comes to military/covert activities. So whether Trump or any of the Dem puppets fill the Oval Office. ..."
"... The "differences" are purely for domestic consumption, no foreign politician or diplomat with two functioning neurons is fooled by the quadrennial, prearranged "election" BS. ..."
Trump can't start a war without ruling class backing any more than he can end the wars if the
rulers veto it.
US foreign policy is not run by White House puppets.
The US trash-talked Saddam Hussein and starved Iraqis for 14 years, but didn't actually
invade until he started trading oil in Euros.
The US trash-talked Ghaddafi for decades, and even launched missiles which killed his
child in the 80s, but didn't destroy Libya until Ghaddafi decided to sell oil in dinars.
The US has trash-talked and sanctioned Iran for decades, but it was the threat of Iran and
Saudi Arabia making peace that pushed them to assassinate General Soleimani, as he arrived at
the airport on that diplomatic mission.
If Iran and Saudi Arabia make peace, and the Saudis drop the petro-dollar, the US Empire
crumbles.
It doesn't matter at all who is in the White House at the time, the Empire will never
allow that.
The elections are a farce, by the way. We have no way to know how people vote, because
they put in electronic voting machines after the 2000 election was stolen by the Supreme
Court. We no longer have any idea how people voted, the talking heads on the TV just give us
the name of the selected on, on Election Night.
As Lavrov frequently points out, the "rules-based order" is the US attempt to overthrow
established international law, and replace it with "rules" invented by the US and changed to
suit US goals, i.e. total spectrum dominance.
Note that although Trump has been attacked by the Deep State, the Democrats and the media
24/7 since 2016, the only complaint they have about his blatantly illegal assassination of
Soleimani is that "he didn't tell us first". There is NO mention of international or national
laws which outlaw such assassinations.
The full spectrum support for the murder shows that the Establishment is firmly on
board with it, which proves that it was not simply a whim of Trump's, or an action taken
because a few neo-cons talked him into ordering it. Again, he can order military actions all
he wants, (like the withdrawal of troops from Syria), but he isn't allowed to do anything
that our rulers don't want done.
@juliania: There is no major FUNCTIONAL difference between the Rep/Dem when it comes to
military/covert activities. So whether Trump or any of the Dem puppets fill the Oval
Office.
The "differences" are purely for domestic consumption, no foreign politician or
diplomat with two functioning neurons is fooled by the quadrennial, prearranged "election"
BS.
Americans may be sick of the US' forever war policy, but not as sick of it as the rest of
the world is. And USicans aren't sick enough of it to turf out both parties and start
again...
st
century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the forces
driving world events towards an all-out war of "Mutually Assured Annihilation" are anything but sane.
While I'm obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a particularly virulent
strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled "neo-conservative" and while many of these disturbing
figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a risk worth taking in order to achieve
their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to make one subtle yet very important distinction
which is often overlooked.
What is this distinction?
Under the broad umbrella of "neo-conservative" one should properly differentiate
those who
really believe in their ideology
and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined
assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology from the
top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called
Origins of the Deep State
and
Myth of
the Jewish Conspiracy
.
To re-state my meaning: This group doesn't necessarily
believe in
the ideological group they
manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to achieve certain
behavioral patterns in their children.
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic neocon
worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the point.
Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia and Rome
who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages. It is well
documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome's control, as long as said cult denied any
claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths more than a little
antagonistic to empire.
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?
Hell no.
Was it politically necessary to create them?
Of course.
Why?
Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts but since they deny any
principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc)
, empires are merely a sum of parts
and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum (1). Each cultish group may coexist as an
echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish without judgement of moral
right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group's beliefs- but nothing universal about
justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise permitted. Here the a-moral "peace" of
"equilibrium" can be achieved by an oligarchy which wishes to lord over the slaves. Whether we are
dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich's Congress of Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger,
or
Leo Strauss
(father of modern neo-conservativism), "Peace" can never be anything more than a
mathematical "balancing of parts".
Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?
To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit more
personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.
Smith at Her Majesty's Service
Do Smith's modern followers sincerely believe in the "self-regulating forces of the free market"?
Sure they do.
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?
Whether he did or not, according
to recent research
conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission to compose
his seminal book
Wealth of
Nations
(published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from
Edinburgh to London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who
essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised all
colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or channel said credit towards
internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his
1729 Necessity of Paper Currency
and Colonial Script.
Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new "Law" of "absolute advantage" demanded that everyone
just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land, so they should
stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry (don't ask how that
happened because it wasn't through free trade), so they should stick with that! India had advanced
textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium fields so she
could do that which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British Gunships. "Free Trade"
demanded it so.
Let's look at another example: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection
A Not-too-Natural Selection
Darwin's theory published in his
Origins of Species
(1859) was based on the assumption that
all changes in the biosphere are driven by "laws" of "survival of the fittest" within an assumed closed
ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an "invisible hand" brought creative order
to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin asserted that
creative order
on the large scale
evolution of species could be explained by
chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that no power of reason, free will or God could pass
(2)
.
Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.
But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: "Darwin's Bulldog") whose efforts to destroy all competing theories
which included "purpose", "meaning", or "design" were crushed and ridiculed into obscurity? Huxley
himself
was on record saying
he did not believe in Darwin's system. So why was this theory promoted by forces
(like
Huxley's X Club
) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to Darwin's own
account of his discovery from
his autobiography
where he wrote:
"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for
amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which
everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once
struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and
unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then, I had
at last got a theory by which to work".
Malthus's 'Dismal Science'
And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted "Man of God" who taught economics at
the British East India Company's Haileybury College) provided the very foundation upon which Darwin's
system stood! Thomas Huxley
and the other "high priests" of Huxley's X Club
were always Malthusian (even before there was
Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an age,
rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new resources into
being- overcoming nature's "limits to growth" (a dis-equilibrium not to be tolerated). Whether Malthus
actually believed in the system which bears his name, as generations of his adherents sincerely do,
remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the needed extermination of the "unfit" by the
Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called
for the encouragement of the plague and other "natural forms of destruction" to cull the herd of the
unfit in his
Essay on the Principle of Population (
1799):
"We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of
nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of
famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In
our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of
the plague."
A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low value
to society when he said:
"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage taking
place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years
from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance The infant is, comparatively speaking,
of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place."
The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley's own grandson
Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity
today called the Green New Deal
were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect of this
worldview upon races deemed "unfit" in the global south should also not be ignored. It is no coincidence
that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund, 1001 Nature Trust and Club of
Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world over the bodies of countless statesmen
during the Cold War.
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire
Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious and ethnic
groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its capacity to
sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their host. In Lincoln's
great 1859 speech
, the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the
British Empire when he said:
"All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and
all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual
nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was
to dig out his destiny Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his
workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions."
Lincoln's economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal
improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin.
Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the leaders
of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the post-truth
neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics (3). The folly of America's
new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump's disastrous foreign policy agenda is tied
to the oligarchy's absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted
repeatedly since entering office in 2017.
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative system
of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they have also
managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen have demonstrated a clear recognition
that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable, and
defeatable (but not
militarily)
.
Xi
expressed this insight
most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to be
woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them from their own
hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without understanding that those who
fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them.
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss, Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir Bernard Lewis
absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or Kristol have
adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must ultimately be
governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman Empire), and that Leviathan could only be
created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would
usher into this world.
Matthew Ehret
January 18, 2020 |
Featured Story
The Geopolitics of Epistemological Warfare: From Babylon to Neocon
I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea, war in the 21
st
century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the forces
driving world events towards an all-out war of "Mutually Assured Annihilation" are anything but
sane.
While I'm obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a
particularly virulent strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled "neo-conservative" and
while many of these disturbing figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a risk
worth taking in order to achieve their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to make one
subtle yet very important distinction which is often overlooked.
What is this distinction?
Under the broad umbrella of "neo-conservative" one should properly differentiate
those who really believe in their ideology
and are trapped under the invisible cage
of its unexamined assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages
the ideology from the top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called
Origins of the Deep State
and
Myth of the Jewish Conspiracy
.
To re-state my meaning: This group doesn't necessarily
believe in
the ideological group
they manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to
achieve certain behavioral patterns in their children.
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic
neocon worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the point.
Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia and
Rome who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages.
It is well documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome's control, as long as said
cult denied any claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths
more than a little antagonistic to empire.
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?
Hell no.
Was it politically necessary to create them?
Of course.
Why?
Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts but since they
deny any principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc)
, empires are merely a
sum of parts
and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum (1). Each
cultish group may coexist as an echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity
they wish without judgement of moral right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their
group's beliefs- but nothing universal about justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise
permitted. Here the a-moral "peace" of "equilibrium" can be achieved by an oligarchy which wishes
to lord over the slaves. Whether we are dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich's Congress of
Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger, or
Leo Strauss
(father of modern neo-conservativism), "Peace" can never be anything more than a
mathematical "balancing of parts".
Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?
To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit more
personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.
Smith at Her Majesty's Service
Do Smith's modern followers sincerely believe in the "self-regulating forces of the free
market"?
Sure they do.
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?
Whether he did or not, according
to recent research
conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission to
compose his seminal book
Wealth of Nations
(published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a
carriage ride from Edinburgh to London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the
same Lord Shelburne who essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and
who always despised all colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or
channel said credit towards internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his
1729 Necessity of Paper
Currency and Colonial Script.
Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new "Law" of "absolute advantage" demanded that
everyone just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land, so
they should stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry (don't
ask how that happened because it wasn't through free trade), so they should stick with that! India
had advanced textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium
fields so she could do that which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British
Gunships. "Free Trade" demanded it so.
Let's look at another example: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection
A Not-too-Natural Selection
Darwin's theory published in his
Origins of Species
(1859) was based on the assumption
that all changes in the biosphere are driven by "laws" of "survival of the fittest" within an
assumed closed ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an "invisible hand"
brought creative order to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin asserted that
creative order
on the large scale
evolution of
species could be explained by
chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that
no power of reason, free will or God could pass
(2)
.
Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.
But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: "Darwin's Bulldog") whose efforts to destroy all competing
theories which included "purpose", "meaning", or "design" were crushed and ridiculed into
obscurity? Huxley himself
was on record saying
he did not believe in Darwin's system. So why was this theory promoted by
forces (like
Huxley's X Club
) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to Darwin's
own account of his discovery from
his autobiography
where he wrote:
"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read
for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence
which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it
at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved,
and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here
then, I had at last got a theory by which to work".
Malthus's 'Dismal Science'
And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted "Man of God" who taught economics
at the British East India Company's Haileybury College) provided the very foundation upon which
Darwin's system stood! Thomas Huxley
and the other "high priests" of Huxley's X Club
were always Malthusian (even before there was
Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an
age, rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new
resources into being- overcoming nature's "limits to growth" (a dis-equilibrium not to be
tolerated). Whether Malthus actually believed in the system which bears his name, as generations of
his adherents sincerely do, remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the needed
extermination of the "unfit" by the Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social
Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called for the encouragement of the plague and other
"natural forms of destruction" to cull the herd of the unfit in his
Essay on the Principle of Population (
1799):
"We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations
of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid
form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel
nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses,
and court the return of the plague."
A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low
value to society when he said:
"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage
taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child
born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance The infant is,
comparatively speaking, of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place."
The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley's own
grandson Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity
today called the Green New Deal
were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect of
this worldview upon races deemed "unfit" in the global south should also not be ignored. It is no
coincidence that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund, 1001 Nature
Trust and Club of Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world over the bodies
of countless statesmen during the Cold War.
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire
Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious and
ethnic groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its
capacity to sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their
host. In Lincoln's
great 1859 speech
, the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the
British Empire when he said:
"All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth,
and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and
intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man,
from the first, was to dig out his destiny Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the
only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and
Inventions."
Lincoln's economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal
improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin.
Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the
leaders of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the
post-truth neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics (3). The
folly of America's new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump's disastrous
foreign policy agenda is tied to the oligarchy's absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian
partnership which Trump has promoted repeatedly since entering office in 2017.
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative
system of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they
have also managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen have demonstrated a
clear recognition that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are
entirely unsustainable, and defeatable (but not
militarily)
.
Xi expressed this insight
most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to be
woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them from
their own hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without understanding that
those who fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them.
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss, Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir Bernard Lewis
absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or Kristol
have adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must
ultimately be governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman Empire), and that
Leviathan could only be created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their
twisted tooth fairies would usher into this world.
(1) From this standpoint, it is worth reviewing the character of Calicles in
Plato's Gorgias dialogue
or Thrasymachus in
book one of the Republic
both of whom exemplify the oligarchical world view by denying the
existence of moral principles- relegating them to merely useful tools by which the "wise" may lord
over the "slaves" born into lower classes.
Neoconservative founding fathers like Leo Strauss or Alan Bloom
who call themselves
"neo-Platonist" merely take a literal reading of chosen selections from the Republic and then
assert without evidence that Plato really believed in Thrasymacus and Calicles' worldview.
(2) For those interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic, the author delivered a lecture in
2010 titled
The Matter Over Darwin's Missing Mind
.
(3) Throughout the post JFK years, America's clearest representative of this anti-oligarchical
tradition was found consistently in the efforts of the late economist and
Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche
.- a selection of whose works
can be
reviewed here
.
2010 - 2020 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to
Strategic Culture online journal
www.strategic-culture.org
.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture
Foundation.
I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea, war in the 21
st
century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the forces
driving world events towards an all-out war of "Mutually Assured Annihilation" are anything but sane.
While I'm obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a particularly virulent
strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled "neo-conservative" and while many of these disturbing
figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a risk worth taking in order to achieve
their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to make one subtle yet very important distinction
which is often overlooked.
What is this distinction?
Under the broad umbrella of "neo-conservative" one should properly differentiate
those who
really believe in their ideology
and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined
assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology from the
top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called
Origins of the Deep State
and
Myth of
the Jewish Conspiracy
.
To re-state my meaning: This group doesn't necessarily
believe in
the ideological group they
manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to achieve certain
behavioral patterns in their children.
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic neocon
worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the point.
Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia and Rome
who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages. It is well
documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome's control, as long as said cult denied any
claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths more than a little
antagonistic to empire.
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?
Hell no.
Was it politically necessary to create them?
Of course.
Why?
Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts but since they deny any
principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc)
, empires are merely a sum of parts
and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum (1). Each cultish group may coexist as an
echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish without judgement of moral
right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group's beliefs- but nothing universal about
justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise permitted. Here the a-moral "peace" of
"equilibrium" can be achieved by an oligarchy which wishes to lord over the slaves. Whether we are
dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich's Congress of Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger,
or
Leo Strauss
(father of modern neo-conservativism), "Peace" can never be anything more than a
mathematical "balancing of parts".
Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?
To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit more
personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.
Smith at Her Majesty's Service
Do Smith's modern followers sincerely believe in the "self-regulating forces of the free market"?
Sure they do.
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?
Whether he did or not, according
to recent research
conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission to compose
his seminal book
Wealth of
Nations
(published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from
Edinburgh to London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who
essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised all
colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or channel said credit towards
internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his
1729 Necessity of Paper Currency
and Colonial Script.
Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new "Law" of "absolute advantage" demanded that everyone
just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land, so they should
stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry (don't ask how that
happened because it wasn't through free trade), so they should stick with that! India had advanced
textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium fields so she
could do that which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British Gunships. "Free Trade"
demanded it so.
Let's look at another example: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection
A Not-too-Natural Selection
Darwin's theory published in his
Origins of Species
(1859) was based on the assumption that
all changes in the biosphere are driven by "laws" of "survival of the fittest" within an assumed closed
ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an "invisible hand" brought creative order
to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin asserted that
creative order
on the large scale
evolution of species could be explained by
chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that no power of reason, free will or God could pass
(2)
.
Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.
But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: "Darwin's Bulldog") whose efforts to destroy all competing theories
which included "purpose", "meaning", or "design" were crushed and ridiculed into obscurity? Huxley
himself
was on record saying
he did not believe in Darwin's system. So why was this theory promoted by forces
(like
Huxley's X Club
) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to Darwin's own
account of his discovery from
his autobiography
where he wrote:
"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for
amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which
everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once
struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and
unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then, I had
at last got a theory by which to work".
Malthus's 'Dismal Science'
And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted "Man of God" who taught economics at
the British East India Company's Haileybury College) provided the very foundation upon which Darwin's
system stood! Thomas Huxley
and the other "high priests" of Huxley's X Club
were always Malthusian (even before there was
Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an age,
rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new resources into
being- overcoming nature's "limits to growth" (a dis-equilibrium not to be tolerated). Whether Malthus
actually believed in the system which bears his name, as generations of his adherents sincerely do,
remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the needed extermination of the "unfit" by the
Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called
for the encouragement of the plague and other "natural forms of destruction" to cull the herd of the
unfit in his
Essay on the Principle of Population (
1799):
"We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of
nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of
famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In
our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of
the plague."
A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low value
to society when he said:
"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage taking
place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years
from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance The infant is, comparatively speaking,
of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place."
The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley's own grandson
Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity
today called the Green New Deal
were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect of this
worldview upon races deemed "unfit" in the global south should also not be ignored. It is no coincidence
that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund, 1001 Nature Trust and Club of
Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world over the bodies of countless statesmen
during the Cold War.
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire
Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious and ethnic
groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its capacity to
sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their host. In Lincoln's
great 1859 speech
, the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the
British Empire when he said:
"All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and
all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual
nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was
to dig out his destiny Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his
workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions."
Lincoln's economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal
improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin.
Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the leaders
of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the post-truth
neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics (3). The folly of America's
new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump's disastrous foreign policy agenda is tied
to the oligarchy's absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted
repeatedly since entering office in 2017.
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative system
of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they have also
managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen have demonstrated a clear recognition
that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable, and
defeatable (but not
militarily)
.
Xi
expressed this insight
most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to be
woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them from their own
hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without understanding that those who
fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them.
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss, Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir Bernard Lewis
absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or Kristol have
adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must ultimately be
governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman Empire), and that Leviathan could only be
created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would
usher into this world.
(1) From this standpoint, it is worth reviewing the character of Calicles in
Plato's
Gorgias dialogue
or Thrasymachus in
book
one of the Republic
both of whom exemplify the oligarchical world view by denying the existence of
moral principles- relegating them to merely useful tools by which the "wise" may lord over the "slaves"
born into lower classes.
Neoconservative founding fathers like Leo Strauss or Alan Bloom
who call themselves "neo-Platonist"
merely take a literal reading of chosen selections from the Republic and then assert without evidence
that Plato really believed in Thrasymacus and Calicles' worldview.
(2) For those interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic, the author delivered a lecture in 2010
titled
The Matter
Over Darwin's Missing Mind
.
(3) Throughout the post JFK years, America's clearest representative of this anti-oligarchical tradition
was found consistently in the efforts of the late economist and
Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche
.- a selection of whose works
can be
reviewed here
.
(1) From this standpoint, it is worth
reviewing the character of Calicles in
Plato's
Gorgias dialogue
or Thrasymachus in
book
one of the Republic
both of whom exemplify the oligarchical world view by denying the existence of
moral principles- relegating them to merely useful tools by which the "wise" may lord over the "slaves"
born into lower classes.
Neoconservative founding fathers like Leo Strauss or Alan Bloom
who call themselves "neo-Platonist"
merely take a literal reading of chosen selections from the Republic and then assert without evidence
that Plato really believed in Thrasymacus and Calicles' worldview.
(2) For those interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic, the author delivered a lecture in 2010
titled
The Matter
Over Darwin's Missing Mind
.
(3) Throughout the post JFK years, America's clearest representative of this anti-oligarchical tradition
was found consistently in the efforts of the late economist and
Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche
.- a selection of whose works
can be
reviewed here
.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture
Foundation.
Tags:
Colonialism
Imperialism
Neocons
United
States
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2010 - 2020 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture
online journal
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<div><img src="https://mc.yandex.ru/watch/10970266" alt=""/></div>
Trump doesn't give a crap about wars killing people. He's about the bottom line. The
business of the US is business. Further consider the Belt And Road Initiative (karlof1
briefly mentioned this). There's an underlying strategy of the empire. Only thing is a
difference in how to make sure that it achieves it's goal: domination of world currency and
business. The strategy is how to break the Russia-China coalition. Some believe that making
friends with Russia could have caused them to detach from China (with the target being to
tamp down China [again, think Belt and Road Initiative]). I cannot say for sure, but I do
kind of think that this was the position that Trump had/has. This suspicion has legs if you
consider the Russia-gate crap. And, the wars in the ME that Trump has vocalized against don't
necessarily line up with being on the strategy path of using Russia to smack down China.
Others believe it's better to go directly against China (and allow Russia to just kind of be
isolated). The ME wars are, essentially, taking out the Road in Belt and Road. Having the
area in a perpetual war makes business really difficult. This go-after-China-directly
approach is seen in the Uyghur and Hong Kong battle fronts. Iran is made common to both
strategy paths because, well, because of Israel (its overarching influence over US
policies).
It's a left wing or a right wing of the same bird. The mechanism (bird) isn't the issue,
it's the strategy (which wing). Chomsky really spells this out:
Perhaps the US doesn't want China to perfect the same authoritarian system the US is
looking to achieve? The attempt to block Huawei from international markets is about who
controls information (information flow).
"I want to win," he said. "We don't win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7
trillion, everybody else got the oil and we're not winning anymore."
These wars where never intended to be won. If you win a war you have to go home. It's
pretty difficult to exploit natural resources and threaten other countries geopolitically
without military and covert agency bases all over the region.
I'm not sure Trump even understands this strategy. As disgusting as it may be, the thought
of someone actually believing we entered these wars for any other reason than to cripple and
control them for the interest of our (not so)leader elite class is astonishing.
But, at the same time we are left with few alternatives due to the coup de 'etat
perpetrated by the elite who stack the slate we vote from and use the legacy media to
propagandize as many as possible into supporting this sociopathic/psychopathic foreign policy
agenda.
All we are ever offered is slight changes in tactics while maintaining the original goal
of world domination and total control of everyone in order to keep those on top, on top.
Nothing will change until the enforcers begin to fight back against the people showering
them with unlimited budgets and propagandize adoration to the point of military/police
worship.
"the US is already and has been for the longest time at war with Iran. "
Add to that the fact that in 1946 (or maybe '47?) Truman specifically threatened the Red
Army in Northern Iran with the atom bomb. They withdrew. But the point is that Iran was the
first defined target after Japan nuked in a display of "Overwhelming Power" (Stimson)
deliberately to bring USSR to obey the US, or at least to intimidate Stalin.
Threatening Russians is just plain stupid. Threats are almost always stupid, unless you're
trying to force an opponent into an attack-trap. Which "attack-trap" is what the Imperial
Wizards are doing. The assumption, a chauvinist and incorrect assumption, is that the
opponent is stupider than the attacker. Don't bet on that...it's a sucker bet.
joeo: " It is past time for the US to to withdraw from Iraq, Europe, Japan and South
Korea. "
Agreed.
joeo: " They are more than capable of defending themselves. "
That's more debatable. Thd US presence has allowed countries like Germany & the UK
to keep their armed forces smaller than they otherwise might. If the US pulls out they will
probably have to enlarge their armed forces, which in turn would likely provoke others to
enlarge their own in response.
An arms race would not be good.
There is also a danger that if America (and its nuclear umbrella) was no longer around
in East Asia South Korea in particular (and maybe also Japan) might seek to acquire nuclear
weapons to balance China and North Korea (both of which do have them). That would not be
good.
Has the author been in a coma? No longer a moral force for good? When
has the US ever been a force for good? The US may have the best PR in
the world based in Hollywood but in the real world it is a very
different story. From the slaughter of the indigenous population to the
times you were sailing war ships on the Yangtze River to contol the
lives of those "chinks" there. When you were in Vietnam slaughtering the
people to keep the "gooks" from living the way they wanted to live.
How about the 4+ billion dollars a year you give to Israel to ethnically
cleans the Palestinian people? Maybe when you were running death squads
in South America was your shining moment of good. Bolton told us last
year the current attempt to over throw the Venezuelan government is to
steal the countries oil. Maybe it was when the CIA was selling heroin
into black neighbourhoods in the US that the US was doing good.
What kind of delusional sick twisted people are you to think any thing you
do is good. The US has decided it wants to fight the entire world at
once and if it doesn't back off that is exactly what it will finally
get.
Unfortunately both Neocons and Woke Imperialists (oh sorry, I mean progressives) are
yapping that Murica is the light of social justice by taking on the dastardly Putin (who
hates the gays). The progs have given up pretending they had any principled opposition to
war and accept waging war around the world as long as America flies rainbow flags and has a
womyn president.
The above's helped by America's propaganda when it comes to its history (denial that the
Founding Fathers were ultimately White Supremacists, denial of imperialism before WW2,
pretending that Roosevelt's presidency didn't already engage in hostilites with Japan
before Pearl Harbor, pretending that the troops on the ground and leaders fought to protect
Jews even though few to none of them opposed segregation, pretending both atomic bombings
were needed, pretending there was no race hatred directed at Japanese...).
OT
One thing I never understood was the colloquial name for the USA: "America".
Shouldn't that name normally refer to the landmasses that consist of the continents North
and South America?
Does
the term 'American' include anything pertaining to Canada, Mexico,
Brazil, Argentina, etc., or does it refer to just anything pertaining to
the USA?
Aside from the fact that the USA was the first
independent nation in the Americas, why didn't the Founding Fathers come
up with an original name like with other new-world countries such as
Canada, Mexico and Brazil? I've seen allegations claiming that the choice of the name
'United States of America' was deliberately chosen to reflect a 'Manifest Destiny',
something in the lines of the USA covering the entirety of the Americas (ranging from the
northernmost point of Nunavut to the southernmost point of Chile), but the jury is out on
the veracity of these allegations. Anyone have a better answer?
Let's ignore the attack on the US embassy- no thanks. We should get out of Iraq but let's
not pretend that the Ba'ath regime was minding its own business post Gulf War 1.
US is engaged on near full scale economic warfare all over the world:
- Huawei
- ASML
- NordStream
- Iran, Cuba, Venezuela. Argentine
- Swift
- Android
The US regime has terrorized the world for decades with ultimatums, sanctions, aggressive
wars, coups, sponsorship of Jihadi terrorists, and other evils. At least Trump's honest
brutality spares us (some of) the sickening hypocritical cant of his predecessors.
So in retrospect Ike was one of the founding fathers of military industrial complex and the
politics of Full Spectrum Dominance
Notable quotes:
"... Yet on January 17, 1961, Ike said: "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea." He continued: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government." ..."
"... In addition, Ike's America maintained substantial garrisons in Western Europe and Japan. At the same time, and more precariously, U.S. troops, advisers, and operatives fanned out across the globe, including to Lebanon, South Vietnam, and Iran. ..."
"... Then came the money sentences: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." ..."
"... In fact, we all need a phrase that captures the immensity of the military establishment. The budget of the Department of Defense (DoD) for fiscal year 2020 will be about $718 billion ; DoD directly employs 1.3 million men and women in active duty, as well as more than 700,000 civilian employees. (Another 800,000 serve in the National Guard and reserves.) ..."
"... Indeed, the huge Pentagon budget doesn't fully capture the true scale of the military-industrial complex. To get a better measure, we should also include portions of other agencies harboring substantial military elements, including the CIA, NASA, and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Energy (the last of which manages the nuclear stockpile). ..."
"... Six decades later, we must ask ourselves: is the Great Equation still in place? As a nation, are we maintaining all the components of power -- military, economic, and spiritual -- in proper balance? And as we search for the right answer, we might pause over one subtlety in the Eisenhower equation: per the rules of multiplication, if any one of the three components falls to zero, then the product is zero, regardless of the size of the other two components. ..."
"... Many argue that, in fact, U.S. policy has been reduced to just one component -- the military. That is, whom can we threaten, bomb, or occupy? ..."
"... This over-militarization of policy was ably chronicled in Dana Priest's 2003 ..."
"... , The Mission Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military ..."
"... . The author describes a Pentagon that had grown so powerful bureaucratically that it had overwhelmed the State Department -- and nowhere more so than in the Middle East. ..."
"... Gosh, but we still have to privatize, several economies (China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc.) for the benefit of Wall Street et. comp. How can we do that without DoD...? ..."
January 17 marks the 59th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech to
the nation. After eight years in the White House, just three days before John F. Kennedy would
be sworn in as his successor, Ike went on national television and touched on many topics, from
promoting the economy to working with Congress.
Yet the heart of his speech was a finely chiseled critique of what he dubbed the
"military-industrial complex." This criticism was all the more remarkable, of course, because
Eisenhower had been a career military man. Having graduated from West Point in 1915, he had
served in the U.S. Army for more than three decades, through two world wars, ultimately rising
to the rank of five-star general.
Yet on January 17, 1961, Ike said: "Our military organization today bears little
relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of
World War II or Korea." He continued: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment
and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic,
political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the
federal government."
By then 70 years old, Ike was no born-again pacifist. He quickly added of the military's
enlarging, "We recognize the imperative need for this development." That imperative, of course,
was the Cold War, the seemingly permanent eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation of two countries,
the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., each glaring at the other with ideological hostility tipped with
nuclear technology.
In response to the Soviet threat, Ike had maintained the Cold War structures he had
inherited from his predecessor in the Oval Office, Harry Truman. In fact, throughout the 1950s,
defense spending hovered around 10 percent of GDP (by comparison, the current percentage is
less than four).
In addition, Ike's America maintained substantial garrisons in Western Europe and Japan.
At the same time, and more precariously, U.S. troops, advisers, and operatives fanned out
across the globe, including to Lebanon, South Vietnam, and Iran.
In his speech, Eisenhower made no apology for his role in the further freezing of the Cold
War. Yet he still urged caution as to the potential ill effects of cold warring on the home
front: "We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and
livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."
Then came the money sentences: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will
persist."
Those three key words, "military-industrial complex," rocketed through the national
consciousness. Eisenhower had long been a popular figure on the center-right; in addition to
his leadership role in World War II, he had written a best-selling memoir and had won two
national landslides in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections -- even as the left had
dismissed him. Yet now, with those three words, Eisenhower gained the proverbial "strange new
respect" among intellectuals, who mostly leaned left. Indeed, the phrase "military-industrial
complex" has become a favored catchphrase for leftists, anti-militarists, and anyone else
looking for evocative shorthand.
In fact, we all need a phrase that captures the immensity of the military establishment.
The budget of the Department of Defense (DoD) for fiscal year 2020 will be about $718
billion ; DoD directly employs 1.3 million men and women in active duty, as well as more
than 700,000 civilian employees. (Another 800,000 serve in the National Guard and
reserves.)
In addition, millions more work for the DoD as private-sector vendors, from those who build
ships and airplanes to the contractor who was killed near Kirkuk, Iraq, on December
27.
Indeed, the huge Pentagon budget doesn't fully capture the true scale of the
military-industrial complex. To get a better measure, we should also include portions of other
agencies harboring substantial military elements, including the CIA, NASA, and the departments
of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Energy (the last of which manages the nuclear
stockpile).
As Eisenhower cautioned in his speech, "We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes." So yes, Eisenhower was a vigorous leader in
the Cold War competition, yet at the same time he was a citizen before he was a soldier,
rightfully concerned with protecting our small-r republican institutions from "unwarranted
influence."
During his time in the White House, the 34th president demonstrated his prudence. As
historian Walter M. Hudson recently noted in The American Interest , after the
Russians launched their Sputnik satellite in 1957 -- thus opening up a newer and higher
frontier to geopolitical competition -- Ike did not respond with a big defense buildup.
He boosted NASA, of course, yet skipping past the Pentagon, he also pushed for a substantial
increase in federal aid to education.
In other words, the old Army man was thinking about the future, when struggles, and perhaps
wars, would be waged with spaceships and computers, as opposed to infantrymen and tanks. Hudson
explains Ike's thoughtful budget priorities as follows: "Ike's decision was consistent with his
'Great Equation' strategy that long predated Sputnik's blips. Running for the presidency in
1952, he set forth the formula to his friend Lucius Clay: 'Spiritual force multiplied by
economic force multiplied by military force is roughly equivalent to security. If any one of
those factors fell to zero, or nearly so, the resulting product does likewise.'"
In Eisenhower's "Great Equation," we can see a strategic mind at work: American strength
must rely on more than just weaponry; the nation needed to maintain as well its economic and
spiritual health. Long before the term was coined, Ike was a believer in "soft power" -- as
well as, of course, the "hard power" of firepower.
Six decades later, we must ask ourselves: is the Great Equation still in place? As a
nation, are we maintaining all the components of power -- military, economic, and spiritual --
in proper balance? And as we search for the right answer, we might pause over one subtlety in
the Eisenhower equation: per the rules of multiplication, if any one of the three components
falls to zero, then the product is zero, regardless of the size of the other two
components.
So today, as we think about the Greater Middle East, where the U.S. is involved in a
half-dozen conflicts, are we satisfied that all of our equation components -- including the
meta-component of wisdom -- are being properly understood and utilized?
Many argue that, in fact, U.S. policy has been reduced to just one component --
the military. That is, whom can we threaten, bomb, or occupy?
This over-militarization of policy was ably chronicled in Dana Priest's 2003 book
, The Mission
Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military. The author describes a
Pentagon that had grown so powerful bureaucratically that it had overwhelmed the State
Department -- and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.
This disparity starts with visuals: the generals arrive in style, swooping in on military
aircraft, resplendent in their uniforms, greeted by the pomp and circumstance of salutes and
reviews, bearing PowerPoints of cool new weapons systems to buy and perhaps use. By contrast,
unadorned Foreign Service officers tend to plunk along on civilian flights, typically talking
only of caution and mediation.
As a result, the center of policy gravity for the Middle East has shifted from Foggy Bottom
to the five-sided building across the Potomac, and from there to Central Command
headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and from there to myriad Centcom
outposts 7,000 miles distant. As they say, if you're a hammer, the whole world looks like a
nail -- and the Pentagon is one big hammer.
We can observe that this militarization had been building up long prior to the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars, which began two presidencies ago. Indeed, the militarizing process has been both
deep-rooted and bipartisan. And this, of course, is the sort of long-term transformation that
Eisenhower warned against.
The argument here is not for a cut in the Pentagon's budget or for an increase in the State
Department's budget. Instead, we need something more fundamental -- a national conversation
about true national security. As Ike said in that fabled address, "Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
prosper together."
Assuring that security and liberty "may prosper together" -- Eisenhower's message is as
important today as it was then. about the author
James P. Pinkerton is a contributor to the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on
the Fox "News Watch" show, the highest-rated media-critique show on television. He is a former
columnist for Newsday, and is the editor of SeriousMedicineStrategy.org. He has written for
publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Fortune, The
Huffington Post , and The Jerusalem Post . He is the author of What Comes Next: The End of Big
Government--and the New Paradigm Ahead (Hyperion: 1995). He worked in the White House domestic
policy offices of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and in the 1980, 1984, 1988 and
1992 presidential campaigns. In 2008 he served as a senior adviser to the Mike Huckabee for
President Campaign. Married to the former Elizabeth Dial, he is a graduate of Stanford
University.
Gosh, but we still have to privatize, several economies (China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela,
etc.) for the benefit of Wall Street et. comp. How can we do that without DoD...?
Just to be clear, it's documented that Ike's first draft had
Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex; aides convinced him to cut that out, which is
sad because it's key. Defense contractors always spread out their facilities to different
states and
Congressional districts. Jobs!
Always did, even as I recall when he was in the White House. In his time, the Right
gnashed their teeth at his "liberalism", and the Left gnashed their teeth art his
"conservatism".
His equation anchored on "spiritual". In Ike's view, America was an agency for Good, or
at least aspired to be. Today, all of our "leaders" echo the words of Templeton (the Rat)
in Charlotte's Web -- "What's in it for me?" And goodness is not even given the
homage of hypocrisy.
"... Unfortunately, the book does little more to move into an analysis of US foreign policy decision making beyond the military's impact nor does it make recommendations for changes to better the current situation. The book seemed to be more of a compilation of "reports from the field" than an analysis of foreign policy decision making and the military's role in it. I suppose the author's goals and my expectations were decidedly different but I expected more from this book. ..."
I read David Halberstam's `War in a Time of Peace' and this seemed like a good
continuation. Halbersam covers the Bush 1, Clinton period, in retrospect an idyllic period.
This book transitions through 9/11, but really covers the development of the Combatant
Commander for the US Military in the various areas of the world - Pacific Command, Central
Command etc. It does cover the successful invasion of Afghanistan, it covers conflicts in
Kosova, Columbia and relationships in the Middle East and Asia. It doesn't cover the Iraq
invasion or subsequent failures.
I was particularly struck by the contrast between the resources available for the military
commanders in various countries, and the US ambassadors to the same countries. The commanders
can have transport and material resources which are an order of magnitude away from the
civilians, and therefore the local politicians/dictators get the message that the US
relationship is mainly a military one. Priest gives a good overview, especially in the
Kosovo, of the power and limitations of the military-only relationship. She also concludes
that even the military must take some part in peace-making and low level nation-building, but
the bigger story in that the US, by virtue of its size and power, must take a
nation-development role if it hopes to avoid having a low-level war with the developing world
for generations to come. In fact the situation has probably got clearly since, and the
current debate about leaving Afghanistan and non-intervention in Syria, makes this book
appear prophetic.
Lastly there are remarkable portraits of Generals Zinni and Blair who were combatant
commanders in the Central and Pacific commands during this time period. The contrast between
their power and status when in the military and their post-military career is significant
(though not mentioned in the book), Zinni was messed about when proposed but eventually not
selected as ambassador to Saudia Arabia, Blair was later director of National Intelligence in
the Obama White House, but was could not get along in that particular fishbowl and was fired
in mid 2010.
Overall, this book is a basic overview of the structure and operation of the US armed
forces theater commands in the final days of their power and prestige, before the Bush
administration centralized control, power, prestige, decision- and policy-making to
Washington, DC. It is a view of the last great days of the regional Commanders-in-Chief, the
CINCs, and their geographically-oriented theater commands of immense space, scope, power and
influence.
My criticism of this book is straightforward and simple, yet speaks directly to the
overall character and accuracy of this work: Dana Priest is grossly incorrect in her
statements, and therefore in the conclusions she makes, specifically in Chapter Ten, "The
Indonesian Handshake." I was intimately and directly involved in the entire episode, and it
did not unfold as she describes.
I quote from page 230: "Meanwhile, since January 1998, seven intelligence analysts at the
'Joint Intelligence Center Pacific' (JIC), the world largest military-intelligence center, in
a windowless concrete building near (US Pacific Command CINC, Admiral Dennis) Blair's
headquarters in Hawaii, had tracked the movements of Indonesian military and militia forces
in East Timor and Indonesia. The Indonesia desk in the JIC had grown from one to nine persons
and maintained a round-the-clock 'crisis action' mode. Over the preceding year, the analysts
had received a tenfold increase in imagery and a fivefold increase in electronic collection.
It was actually too much to process."
First of all, Priest blows the name of the institution she's describing. It's the Joint
Intelligence Center Pacific, or JICPAC (now Joint Intelligence Operations Center, Pacific, or
JIOC-PAC). Second, the "Indonesia desk" implies a single person monitoring this country. That
was never the case, as a team of at least five analysts had always been assigned to maritime
Southeast Asia. Suharto's 1998 fall had ramped up both Pacific Command's and JICPAC's
attention to Indonesia, and the scheduled elections of mid-1999 and following East Timor
referendum were anticipated months in advance, with commensurate analytical adjustments and
assignments. Newly assigned to the Pacific Command intelligence directorate, I was detailed
to JICPAC personally by the Pacific Command Director for Intelligence, Rear Admiral Rick
Porterfield to assist in this effort.
I was one of two US Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) assigned to this issue. I had just
completed five years of training in Southeast Asia, with an International Studies masters
degree, both Indonesian and Malaysian language training, and attendance at the 1998 class of
the Malaysian Armed Forces Staff College. My partner was an Indonesian staff college
graduate. We two Southeast Asia FAOs, both senior US Army majors, were the officers in
charge. I was the Chief of the East Timor Crisis Cell for the entire period of the East Timor
crisis, and I take immense pride in the work that I and especially my analysts performed
during this period. This was the best analytical team I've ever worked with, experienced,
highly intellectual, eager, motivated, and thoroughly familiar with the issue at hand, as
well as all of the related regional and functional issues. They performed brilliantly in an
extended crisis mode.
At no time was the information we were requesting and receiving "too much to process."
Early on, Admiral Blair and Rear Admiral Porterfield recognized the potential for unrest and
crisis, and supported all command activities to prepare for all possible outcomes, which we
explored and analyzed continuously. I and my people updated both leaders daily with
briefings, papers, and direct consultation, which increased in frequency, intensity and scope
as events unfolded. We aggressively worked with all relevant and engaged national-level
agencies and elements for our intelligence collection requirements, and based upon
national-level reconciliation we were given what was available and appropriate to the
situation. Yes, we were receiving increased collection and reporting, through all
intelligence disciplines and channels, not merely the ones Priest cites. At no time was
anything we were doing or being asked to do too much for us to process. At no time was the
information that we were requesting from national-level intelligence collection too much for
us to process. The support we received from the commanding officer of JICPAC, now Marine
Major General Mike Ennis, was outstanding in every possible way. He supported our needs and
actions personally and fully, a consummate professional and directly engaged commanding
officer. Whatever resources and assets we requested, he personally attended to those needs,
immediately.
I challenge Ms. Priest to name the source(s) who provided such grossly incorrect
information. I was present in Hawaii as she did her research there, and at no time were
either my FAO partner or I contacted to discuss our roles in the crisis.
I offer a highly telling anecdote which illustrates Ms. Priest's qualifications to write
on this specific issue: Upon entering JICPAC for the very first time, Ms. Priest asked
informally and good-naturedly of her escorts, "Why is the Australian flag flying outside?"
Well, yes, both Pacific Command and JICPAC work very closely with our Australian partners,
always have, and enjoy doing so immensely. But JICPAC does not fly a foreign flag from its
quarterdeck. Of course, Ms. Priest had mistaken the Hawaiian flag with its Union Jack in the
upper left corner as the Australian flag, telling the JICPAC intelligence specialists,
researchers, and analysts more than enough about her familiarity with Pacific Command,
showing a small yet true measure of the depth of expertise and background knowledge she
brought to her work in the US Pacific Command theater.
Bottom Line: Take this book as a historical account of the now-gone days of the power and
prestige of the theater commands, a late 90s snapshot. That being said, the book is
fundamentally flawed and factually incorrect, at least as far as Chapter Ten reads. I cannot
speak for the remainder of the work, but my direct and intimate experience with the events
she grossly incorrectly describes here is more than enough for me to dismiss this book in its
entirety.
Eric Johnson December 12, 2003
Mission Accomplished?
Format: Hardcover
Dana Priest is a well-respected journalist with the Washington Post and a frequent guest on NBC's "Meet the Press." She
specializes on military and intelligence topics, so it was with great interest that I read her book "The Mission". Her
thesis, that the US military is playing an ever increasing role in US foreign policy matters and that the nation is becoming
dependent on the military's presence in foreign affairs, could not be more timely.
She presents her argument via a series of vignettes which cover senior military leaders as well as a broad spectrum of recent
military operations. She primarily writes from the military's perspective and its impact on foreign policy. The profiles of
the four, 4-star commanders provide the reader with a sense of the situation each commander faced in 1999 and how their
ideals influenced not only their area of responsibility but also our foreign affairs. Priest chronicles our military
activities with examples that range from major operations in Afghanistan and the Balkans, our covert drug war in South
America, and the relatively unnoticed actions in Nigeria and Indonesia. Her stories capture the military's struggle to
achieve success across the entire spectrum of operations.
She does a good job of stating her argument and offers varied examples of where the military is setting the foreign policy
agenda. Unfortunately, the book does little more to move into an analysis of US foreign policy decision making beyond the
military's impact nor does it make recommendations for changes to better the current situation. The book seemed to be more of
a compilation of "reports from the field" than an analysis of foreign policy decision making and the military's role in it. I
suppose the author's goals and my expectations were decidedly different but I expected more from this book.
I feel her point would have benefited from a comparison of the State Dept's and the DoD's role in US foreign policy
making. She also needed to consider the contributions of non-governmental organizations to the foreign policy equation.
Additionally, if the author thinks we are becoming reliant on the military to conduct foreign policy, she should include
recommendations to counter that reliance. I enjoyed reading the well-written vignettes, thought this is a great introduction
on the topic of political-military relations as it impacts foreign affairs, but would like to see more analysis and less
story-telling.
For some years Washington, an implacable enemy of Moscow, has been getting less and less
predictable. Lavrov and Kerry spend hours
locked up negotiating a deal in Syria ;
within a week the US military attacks a Syrian Army unit; "by mistake" . Who's in charge?
Now with the murder of Soleimani, possibly on a Washington-approved peace mission, Washington
has moved to another level of lawlessness and is exploring the next depth as it defies
Baghdad's order to get out. A pirate power. The outside problems for Moscow aren't getting
smaller, are they? Washington is certainly
недоговороспособны
– it's impossible to make an agreement with it and, if you should think you have done so,
it will break it. A dangerous, uncontrollable madman, staggering around blowing everything up
– is any foreign leader now to be assumed to be on Washington's murder list? Surviving
its decay is a big job indeed. The problems are getting bigger in the Final Days of the
Imperium Americanum.
However, it is hard to miss Trump's style over the past three years, a consistently
unconventional approach to problems that often seems illogical and rushed at the first
glance, but upon a closer examination, his approaches usually have their own logic and
underlying motivation that, on occasions, could be construed as the result of a broader
strategic and tactical consideration.
I once believed this, but Michael Wolff's books quickly dispelled that fantasy. Here's
what strategy meant during the campaign:
It was during Trump's early intelligence briefings, held soon after he captured the
nomination, that alarm signals first went off among his new campaign staff: he seemed to
lack the ability to take in third-party information. Or maybe he lacked the interest;
whichever, he seemed almost phobic about having formal demands on his attention. He
stonewalled every written page and balked at every explanation. "He's a guy who really
hated school," said Bannon. "And he's not going to start liking it now."
[ ]
One of the ways to establish what Trump wanted and where he stood and what his
underlying policy intentions were -- or at least the intentions that you could convince
him were his -- came to involve an improbably close textual analysis of his largely
off-the-cuff speeches, random remarks, and reflexive tweets during the campaign.
Bannon doggedly went through the Trump oeuvre highlighting possible insights and
policy proscriptions. Part of Bannon's authority in the new White House was as keeper of
the Trump promises, meticulously logged onto the white board in his office. Some of these
promises Trump enthusiastically remembered making, others he had little memory of, but
was happy to accept that he had said it. Bannon acted as disciple and promoted Trump to
guru -- or inscrutable God.
Fire and Fury (Michael Wolff, 2018)
And here's Trump readying himself for the notorious Helsinki summit with Putin back in
2018:
On Friday, July 13, three days before the Helsinki summit, the president and his team
arrived late in the day at Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, after passing on
their way from the airport cow pastures and cheering citizens -- but no protesters.
Mike Pompeo and John Bolton were carrying copious briefing books. This was meant to
be a weekend of preparation interspersed with golf. John Kelly, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, Bill Shine, and several other aides had come along, too.
Saturday was sunny and in the mid-seventies, with nothing on the agenda except golf.
But by now a few protesters had made their way to Turnberry. "No Trump, No KKK, No Racist
USA," shouted a small group of them during the president's afternoon golf game.
Trump, energized by his NATO and UK meetings -- "we roughed them up" -- was in no mood
to prepare for his Putin meeting. Even his typical, exceedingly casual level of
preparation -- prep masked as gossip -- wasn't happening. Pompeo and Bolton reduced the
boxed briefing binders to a one-pager. The president wouldn't focus on it.
He was fine. And why shouldn't he be? He had walked into his meeting with Kim unable
to pick out North Korea on a map, but it didn't matter. He was in charge, a strong man
making peace.
Don't box me in , he told his advisers. I need to be open , he kept
repeating, as though this was a therapeutic process. Pompeo and Bolton urgently pressed
him about the basic talking points for the summit, now just hours away -- but nothing
doing.
The next morning he played golf, and then it started to rain.
@JimDandy Hpw did the instruction to "Fly direct" prove fatal to MH 17
MUMBAI: The ministry of civil aviation's claim that there was no Air India flight near the
ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 when it was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday appears
misleading.
An Air India Dreamliner flight going from Delhi to Birmingham was in fact less than 25km away
from the Malaysian aircraft,
Minutes before the crash caused by a missile strike, the AI pilots had also heard the
controller give the Malaysian aircraft MH17 what is called "a direct routing". This permits
an aircraft to fly straight, instead of tracking the regular route which is generally a
zig-zag track that goes from one ground-based navigation aid or way point to another. "Direct
routing saves fuel and time and is preferred by pilots. In this case, it proved fatal," said
an airline source.
1 Was India pressurized to deny the close proximity and 2 was it under pressure to deny
that it heard the controller giving the instruction to MH 17????
What seems to have been a case of bad judgments and human error does, however, include some
elements that have yet to be explained. The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced
considerable "jamming" and the planes transponder switched
off and stopped transmitting
several minutes before the missiles were launched .
There were also problems with
the communication network of the air defense command, which may have been related.
The electronic jamming coming from an unknown source meant that the air defense system was
placed on manual operation, relying on human intervention to launch. The human role meant that
an operator had to make a quick judgment in a pressure situation in which he had only moments
to react. The shutdown of the transponder, which would have automatically signaled to the
operator and Tor electronics that the plane was civilian, instead automatically indicated that
it was hostile. The operator, having been particularly briefed on the possibility of incoming
American cruise missiles, then fired.
The two missiles that brought the plane down came from a Russian-made system designated
SA-15 by NATO and called Tor by the Russians. Its eight missiles are normally mounted on a
tracked vehicle. The system includes both radar to detect and track targets as well as an
independent launch system, which includes an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system
functionality capable of reading call signs and transponder signals to prevent accidents. Given
what happened on that morning in Tehran, it is plausible to assume that something or someone
deliberately interfered with both the Iranian air defenses and with the transponder on the
airplane, possibly as part of an attempt to create an aviation accident that would be
attributed to the Iranian government.
The SA-15 Tor defense system used by Iran has one major vulnerability. It can be
hacked or "spoofed," permitting an intruder to impersonate a legitimate user and take
control. The United States Navy and Air Force reportedly have developed technologies "that can
fool enemy radar systems with false and deceptively moving targets." Fooling the system also
means fooling the operator. The Guardian has also
reported independently how the United States military has long been developing systems that
can from a distance alter the electronics and targeting of Iran's available missiles.
The same technology can, of course, be used to alter or even mask the transponder on a
civilian airliner in such a fashion as to send false information about identity and location.
The United States has the cyber and electronic warfare capability to both jam and alter signals
relating to both airliner transponders and to the Iranian air defenses. Israel presumably has
the same ability. Joe Quinn at Sott.net
also notes an interested back story to those photos
and video footage that have appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere showing the
Iranian missile launch, the impact with the plane and the remains after the crash, to include
the missile remains. They appeared on January 9 th , in an Instagram account called
' Rich Kids of
Tehran '. Quinn asks how the Rich Kids happened to be in "a low-income housing estate on
the city's outskirts [near the airport] at 6 a.m. on the morning of January 8 th
with cameras pointed at the right part of the sky in time to capture a missile hitting a
Ukrainian passenger plane ?"
Put together the Rich Kids and the possibility of electronic warfare and it all suggests a
premeditated and carefully planned event of which
the Soleimani assassination was only a part. There have been riots in Iran subsequent to
the shooting down of the plane, blaming the government for its ineptitude. Some of the people
in the street are clearly calling for the goal long sought by the United States and Israel,
i.e. "regime change." If nothing else, Iran, which was widely seen as the victim in the killing
of Soleimani, is being depicted in much of the international media as little more than another
unprincipled actor with blood on its hands. There is much still to explain about the downing of
Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Given this news, any impartial observer would at least entertain the possibility of
its truth, particularly given the lengthy track record of the United States/Israel in
perpetrating such crimes.
It's a good litmus test for determining where one's sentiment lies. Even "alternative
media" aren't likely to touch this story.
The Iranian Ambassador to Britain, Hamid Baeidinejad said in an interview on the UK Channel 4
news hours ago that although Iran had needed time to determine what had happened, it had now
accepted responsibility, would pay compensation, and the people who fired on the jet will be
put on trial.
If nothing else, Iran, which was widely seen as the victim in the killing of Soleimani,
is being depicted in much of the international media as little more than another
unprincipled actor with blood on its hands.
Both Trump and the Iranian regime have good domestic disquiet reason to rethink the
confrontational policy each are pursuing. Iran and the US could get closer over this. I think
the predictable unpredictability of assassination and catastrophic loss of life events
makes false flagging them of dubious value.
Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was
inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it
so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the
money was the chips, that's all.
(Sutton W, Linn E: Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber. Viking Press
(1976), p. 160)
I suppose it is possible there are people who get addicted to false flagging others'
deaths. If half of what is said in this site is true, Mossad really needs to set up a 12 step
program.
" .the big question which many people on social media are asking is: why was this
"videographer" standing in a derelict industrial area outside Tehran at around six o'clock in
the morning with a mobile phone camera training on a fixed angle to the darkened sky? The
airliner is barely visible, yet the sky-watching person has the camera pointed and ready to
film a most dramatic event, seconds before it happened. That strongly suggests,
foreknowledge."
The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable "jamming" and the
planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the
missiles were launched.
I vaguely recall reports of transponder issues arising during the shootdown of
MH-17.
Civilian passenger flights were still departing and arriving in Tehran, almost certainly
an error in judgment on the part of the airport authorities. Inexplicably, civilian
aircraft continued to take off and land even after Flight 752 was shot down.
The Iranian government is blameworthy for keeping planes in the air either because of
diabolical reasons (delays a counter attack) or economic (nearly $1 billion a year in
overflight fees).
However, the pilots of the airliners that took over during the morning between the first
missile hitting Iraq and the downing of the Ukrainian airliner were dumb and
irresponsible.
The system includes both radar to detect and track targets as well as an independent
launch system, which includes an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system
functionality capable of reading call signs and transponder signals to prevent
accidents.
Clearly you have no clue how an IFF operates and that no commercial airliner even has an
IFF on board. Every commercial aircraft looks like the enemy to this SAM
operator.
Also, you need to explain how spoofing a RADAR which creates a false track would cause the
shoot down. The missile would simply target the false track instead of the real aircraft.
You also need to explain how an old SAM missile site can be hacked or spoofed to shoot
down a civilian airliner. Especially this old one which has no Mode-S or ADS-B capability and
only radio communication capability.
As Mark Twain said, it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are an
idiot rather than open it and remove all doubt.
Even if this was a clear mistake on Iran's part, the US and Israel still have blood on their
hands for the downing of this plane. The missiles were launched in response to a targeted
killing of an Iranian general. If that didn't happen, these missiles never would've been
launched.
Trump-Pence-Pompeo-Kushner-Netanyahu are ultimately responsible for these 176 lives lost.
I suspect MBS is also part of the scheme. It was his fake peace offering that lured Soleimani
to Iraq in the first place. I'm with Trudeau on this.
@Anon Before calling someone an idiot it is better to follow Mark Twain's advice
yourself. A more careful reading reveals no claim that IFF was onstalled on the airliner. The
commenter does speculate that possible spoofing involved a false attribution of a real
airliner not the creation of a false airliner and radar track. Perhaps you are familiar with
"old" electronic countermeasures and not with the "new", "top secret" and spiffy versions
hinted at by the U.S. military?
@Quartermaster /An Airliner can not legally launch with deadlined transponder, so the
claim that it quit transmitting "several" minutes earlier would have placed it on the ground
when it quit./
As it climbed and reached 4,600ft above ground level, the plane's transponder suddenly
stopped working at about 6.14am, 2 minutes or so after take off . [emphasis
added]
The plane was already airborne when the transponder stopped working.
@Onlooker Less than twenty replies into the thread and we've already got two individuals
attempting to distort the facts. Here's the key link that readers should visit:
The airliner had not been in the air long at all when it was shot down. An Airliner can
not legally launch with deadlined transponder, so the claim that it quit transmitting
"several" minutes earlier would have placed it on the ground when it quit.
The flight departed Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at 02:42 UTC ( 06:12
local time ) and the last ADS-B signal was received by the Flightradar24 network at 02:44
UTC( 06:14 local time) . According to the report the aircraft climbed to 8000 feet and
turned right back toward the airport and crashed at 02:48 UTC ( 06:18 local time ) --
four minutes after the last ADS-B signal was received by the Flightradar24 network. –
Source
Flight Radar 24
Mr. Giraldi's original claim:
The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable "jamming" and the
planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the
missiles were launched. There were also problems with the communication network of the
air defense command, which may have been related.
4 minutes after the transponders were switches off, the plane crashed .
Without [proper] access to the FDR and CVR, it's impossible to determine when the plane
was hit and how long it took to crash, exactly.
The plane was only flying at 8,000 feet [its normal {flight} ceiling is 30,000 feet and
above], so it's speed relatively low [cruise speed is between about 400 and 500 knots (460
– 575 mph / 740 – 930 kph), but the Ukrainian plane was still climbing] and the
fall back to Earth relatively quick.
On the clip where the plane is on fire and finally crashes, the downward angle looked to
be about 25 to 30 %, which is relatively steep. Time of downfall can be calculated when the
relative data is available.
Therefore, Mr Giraldi's claim " several minutes before the missiles were launched "
is technically correct , until proven wrong by data from the FDR and CVR,
The Tor system is too primitive to be hacked. It is a stand alone, autonomous and mostly
analog system. The radar signals it generates are shown on analog tube-screens.
Interesting theory by P. Giraldi. However, I am very surprised that Israel/Mossad role in
these acts of terrorism never mentioned. We know that Trump is a Zionist servant and acts on
instructions from his jewish fananciers. We know, Trump is incapable of serious thinking.
The Iranians took the hit because their missiles took out the airliner. And then, they could
stop the Western media crying for the next 6 mos. and this gave them time to bring in other
neutral investigators to look at the evidence and come up with logical scenarios. There is a
reason the black boxes weren't given to any one else to own – because they still
remember the scam investigation of MH 17. I f lew planes for over 20 yrs – Every
controlled/radared airport would ask me to turn on my transponder if it wasn't on –
Everyone of them. This plane not only came from Ukraine but was an easy target for a hack
from any of the big Intel countries. The BIG STORY here is that most every plane flying today
– can have the same type consequences!!! because of the Western War Machine.
Trump-Pence-Pompeo-Kushner-Netanyahu are ultimately responsible for these 176 lives
lost. I suspect MBS is also part of the scheme. It was his fake peace offering that lured
Soleimani to Iraq in the first place. I'm with Trudeau on this.
Trudeau showed some real courage criticizing Trump and his terrible decisions.
More Western allies have to stand up to the Zionist stooge and call him out on his
treachery and stupidity.
@bobhammer Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Turn off Fox News now.
We are not always the good guys and we are up to our necks in deceit, plunder, and evil.
Our actions have harmed millions of people around the world and it has to stop.
It is time for more self-reflection as individuals and as a nation; and it is long past
time for us to be comfortable with lies.
@bobhammer The "uninterruptible" autopilot can be activated – either by pilots or
by on-board sensors, or by radio or satellite link<= connected to controls at the remote
end. Government agencies, quasi government agencies, military brats and probably the entire
group of privately operated NGOs and private party mobsters (bankers, corporations and
private military armies and privateers) at the remote end, can take over control of in-flight
Aircraft, and fly it, land it, take it off, whatever, even if the pilot sitting in the
cockpit objects. and does all he can to retrieve control from the remote operator.
Several comments report says interrupt able remote control, allows, persons on the ground,
to take from the pilot in a flying airplane, control of the airplane the pilot is suppose to
be flying, in situations for example when terrorist are in the cockpit. I have not read the
manufacture's literature nor do I have personal knowledge abut the equipment list of any of
these aircraft, the list suggest they are all aircraft, not only equipped with the UAP but
that they were all aircraft made by the same manufacturer. I am merely repeating what was on
stated as fact on a website I visited.
Many are looking for proof that remotely equipped uninterruptible autopilots are being
used as Remote Control weaponized drones . Imagine an pilot, located on the ground in
London or somewhere parks his /her remote ground to air control vehicle and takes over flight
control including turns on/off the transponder [<=which tells everyone where the plane is
during its flight] on a plane that is flying, landing or taking off from say the Tehran
airport in Iran?
My personal experience is that it generally takes less than 2 minutes after a transponder
is turned off during a planes flight, before fighter jets arrive to escort the transponder
disabled plane; so the whole system that protects civilian aircraft, and allows the military
to know the aircraft is civilian, is dependent on the Transponder, installed in the airplane,
to continuously squawk during flight, its exact position so that everyone can identify the
flight, and track the aircraft during its flight. Every land based control tower, ATC control
system center and military installation depends on that airborne squawking transponder to
track the en-route progress of commercial and private aircraft flights from take off to
landing.
Another comment made on that list referred to above claimed Uninterruptible Auto Pilot
[UAP] equipped aircraft have been involved in unexplained flight accident/disappearance
events (I have no personal knowledge about the equipment in these aircraft, I just repeated
here what someone else said elsewhere, please verify these claims yourself or provide
verification ) .
(4 @911) <=UAP allows pilot-less flights, no pilot need board the plane for its
flight.
(PS752) (transponder turned off, destroyed by confused ground defense crews)
MH370 (vanished into thin air)
MH17 (had its flight path altered.)
Eyes focus on Uninterruptible Auto Pilot (UAP) .. to explain recent Tehran 160 person
disaster?
This is really something to think about? Always the question has been how did four
military officers from Iran, trained a few weeks in Florida to fly jets, manage to get
through four differently located pilot screening TSA gates to fly the aircraft and passenger
into the 9/11 events. Conspiracy theories suggest since no pilot is needed, there were no
pilots for TSA to screening. Remote control on the ground flew the aircraft to their
destinations.
Just about says it all doesn't it? What kind of people are we dealing with here? Of course
only the morons out there are still being fooled by these kind of false flags. Even in the
year 2020 these same morons still believe ZOG's 9-11 fairy tale and label any other theory as
a "conspiracy." Speaking of conspiracies the biggest idiots out there, even bigger than the
ones who believe ZOG's narrative or those type who believe the total wacktard stuff put out
by ZIO controlled disinfo puppets like Alex Jones.
Ukrainian commercial airline? What other nation besides Iran does ZOG have it in for? Is
it Russia?
War by deception? HARDLY to anyone with two brain cells left. These fools have been caught
before, they aren't that clever. What they are is protected by a syndicate of bought and paid
for politicians. They were caught attacking the USS Liberty, they were caught bombing
American and British installations in Egypt, the Rosenbergs and Pollard were nailed, but of
course despite all of this, America and her leaders continued the value Israel as a friend
and an ally. With a friend like Israel, who needs enemies. Then of course we have the story
of our 5 little dancing Israelis apprehended in NYC after being observed dancing and
celebrating the WTC towers collapsing. So you mean a group of Israelis from Israel, nation
that is ALLEGEDLY "friends" with America and America think it is hilarious and worth
celebrating when America is attacked and thousands are burned alive or jump to their death
from hundreds of feet above the street?? Of course "our" media quickly exonerated the
celebrating Israelis and buried that story faster than your average house cat buries his own
turds.
ZOG really thinks the average American has the IQ of a monkey. Even after the WMD caca
they still think you people will believe anything they tell you to believe. The sad part is
they are right about that with the majority of the population.
Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is a radar-based identification system designed for
command and control. It uses a transponder that listens for an interrogation signal and then
sends a response that identifies the broadcaster. It enables military and civilian air
traffic control interrogation systems to identify aircraft, vehicles or forces as friendly
and to determine their bearing and range from the interrogator. IFF may be used by both
military and civilian aircraft.
If such a capability exists would the US reveal and use it in such a minor circumstance.
Occam's razor suggests this was just another case of 'better safe than sorry' during a time
of military tensions. Not a whole lot different than the Vincennes shootdown of an Iranian
airliner that came too close during a military confrontation in the Gulf.
I would hate to know how many 'friendly' aircraft were shot down by over zealous AAA
gunners in WW2 but it wasn't just a handful.
Anybody who thinks that US-Israel wouldn't have been capable of staging such a horrific event
as the shooting down of the airliner by Iran hasn't been following Whitney Webb's continuing
articles which are available right here on UNZ. Israel seems to have insinuated itself into
about every computer security program worldwide.
Webb's article mentions large scale defense contractor Dell Computer's close connection to
the Israeli government. Dell computer head Michael Dell has personally made large
contributions to that curious "charity" called The Friends of The Israeli Defense Forces as
has Larry Ellison, head or Oracle Software. Interestingly enough, neither of them have made
correspondingly large contributions to American veterans however.
Michael Dell is probably one of the biggest (or the biggest) single contributors to the
Republicans from Texas, home of Dell computer. Larry Ellison (also a large government
computer contractor) is also one of the Republican Party's biggest contributors.
Ellison's $5.5 million dollar contribution to the Republican is dwarfed however, by his
recent contributions to The Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces which seem to total (as of
today) $31 million (or more).
Are both men and their companies security risks? Is there any doubt of this or are
contribution to charity connected to a foreign army now simply to be considered as being
benign and innocent.
Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is a radar-based identification system designed for
command and control. It uses a transponder that listens for an interrogation signal and
then sends a response that identifies the broadcaster. It enables military and civilian
air traffic control interrogation systems to identify aircraft, vehicles or forces as
friendly and to determine their bearing and range from the interrogator. IFF may be used by
both military and civilian aircraft.
Your Wikipedia snippet is absolutely incorrect . IFF is only used for Military
Aircraft. If you want to prove me wrong:
Provide a link to any civilian transponder with IFF capability
Provide a link to any civilian aircraft Minimum Equipment List
that requires an IFF
Vincennes shootdown of an Iranian airliner that came too close during a military
confrontation in the Gulf.
Doesn't it rile you, as a U.S. veteran, that American soldiers are dying in treasonous
service to an enemy nation?
Doesn't it bother you in the least, that Americans are on the hook for untold trillions of
dollars, so they can slaughter innocent people, thousands of miles away, whose only "crime"
is that a certain shitty little country, wants to see them all sent reeling into the stone
age, (which is exactly what they want for you too).
Have y0u ever bothered to notice just exactly whom it is that is driving all the
liberal-progressive shit we all see daily, with the ubiquitous homomania and Hollywood sewage
force-injected into America's culture?
I see you occasionally speak against that stuff, but then when it comes to American
soldiers dying on behalf of those rats, there you are, defending the narrative of Iran as bad
guys.
How many Iranians do you see pumping Hollywood sewage into America's veins?
How many Iranians do you see on Capital Hill, demanding Trump and all his Deplorables are
irredeemably racists? And need to have their guns taken away?
How many Iranians do you see at Goldman Sachs, (and the other 'Too big to fail Banksters)
looting the country dry?
How many Iranians do you see in our universities, force-feeding America's youth the
progressive-liberal monkey shit, they're paying to consume daily?
You'd have to be very myopic not to notice who it is behind America's depraved descent
into cultural and spiritual guano. (not to mention the Eternal Wars, that only an imbecile
could pretend not to notice ((who)) are behind them).
And I have a clue for you, it isn't the Iranians. In fact, they had a nice good taste of
((Western)) culture under the Shah, and they decided they'd rather not see their women whored
out, and their children spiritually dead husks.
It'd be good if people could lift the veils they willfully allow to cover their own eyes,
in some kind of misguided machismo about how tough "our" military are, as they're killing and
dying on behalf of their worst enemy.
@JimDandy Hpw did the instruction to "Fly direct" prove fatal to MH 17
MUMBAI: The ministry of civil aviation's claim that there was no Air India flight near the
ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 when it was shot down over Ukraine on Thursday appears
misleading.
An Air India Dreamliner flight going from Delhi to Birmingham was in fact less than 25km away
from the Malaysian aircraft,
Minutes before the crash caused by a missile strike, the AI pilots had also heard the
controller give the Malaysian aircraft MH17 what is called "a direct routing". This permits
an aircraft to fly straight, instead of tracking the regular route which is generally a
zig-zag track that goes from one ground-based navigation aid or way point to another. "Direct
routing saves fuel and time and is preferred by pilots. In this case, it proved fatal," said
an airline source.
1 Was India pressurized to deny the close proximity and 2 was it under pressure to deny
that it heard the controller giving the instruction to MH 17????
FAA regulations require that all aircraft, military or civilian, flying at an altitude
of 10,000 feet or higher in U.S. controlled airspace, must be equipped with an operating
IFF transponder system capable of automatic altitude reporting (this is the reason that two
of the modes are used by both military and civilian aircraft).
So, did the Ukrainian plane have an IFF transponder or not? Ref?
what Giraldi has published doesn't even rise to the level of the most idiotic conspiracy
theory one can concoct.
It happened only a few months ago that an Israeli jet violated Syria's airspace and
deliberately sheltered behind a Russian Iliouchine IL-20 to get it shot down by Syrian
air defence.
It was so very clearly and simply explained by the Russian Chief of Staff than any
imbecile could understand it; the idiot is definitely you.
A civilian transponder will respond to almost any inquiry (or even a non-coded radar
pulse):
-- Standard civilian transponder code = USA military Mode 3.
-- Standard civilian transponder altitude reporting = USA military Mode C.
To reduce detectability in combat, the pilot can change the setting on a Military IFF
system to only squawk when a correctly coded interrogation signal is recieved.
Transponders are turned on and off with switches in the cockpit. Is Giraldi suggesting that
this transponder was equipped to be controlled from outside? Source of assertion that
transponder was turned off? Can he name any commercial transponder with this feature? Does he
know anythng about elctroic warfare? This sounds like the birthing of a conspiracy theory.
@DaveE The hilarious thing in Britain is that many people on the comments sections of MSM
will talk about 'Asian' or more specifically 'Muslim' child rape gangs, because these gangs
were heavily Muslim they can be referred to using the adjective 'Muslim'.
But when you point out that the ones beating the drums for war in Iran and who
successfully plunged America and UK into a long a protracted war in the Middle East are
mostly Jewish, as evidenced by this article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
they start getting all pissy, because of the Holocaust legend, Jews are now above scrutiny
and Jewish power cannot be talked about. It is the slipperly slope fallacy, what is merely
being advocated for here is not to trust a single thing that comes out of the mouth of a Jew
regarding the Middle East as there is a clear conflict of interest, not genocide.
I also suspect that peoples understandable antagonism towards Muslims has somehow made
them more sympathetic to Israel. Tommy Robinson is for example funded by rich Jews like Ezra
Levant of Rebel Media and Robert J. Shillman – who sits on the board of Friends of
Israel Defence Forces – shills for Israel. Now the Western goyim start frothing at
the mouth when they hear Muslim and so think countries like Iran are evil and out to destory
the West, a laughable claim.
You don't have to apologise. Christian Zionists are no Christians; they are uncultured,
criminal country-bumpkins utilised by their Zionist handlers to justify the destruction of
the twice-millenary Christian Arab community.
Here is what real Christians think:
Mor Maurice Amsih, Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Euphrates, demonstrating against the murder of
General Soleimani, calling Soleimani and his companions " martyrs " who are now
" Saints in the Heavenly Kingdom" for their blood shed freeing the Syrian
people from Zio-sponsored terrorists. [@ 0:25]
The Boeing jet broadcast the usual civil ADS-B signal but one has to expect that a
U.S. cruise missile can and would do the same.
although 'one can expect ' seems like one hell of an assumption.
This is absolutely irrelevant since the Iranian SAM missile launcher is so old it
can not even detect and decode ADS-B signals. Note that the requirement for ADS-B transponders
only came into effect this year .
By the account of Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh:
1. Prior to the downing of the aircraft, Americans had threatened to hit 52 sites in
Iran.
2. These threats placed Iran's air defense systems on the highest alert level.
3. There were reports that cruise missles had been fired at Iran.
4. In spite of IRGC requests that airspace be cleared of commercial flights, those requests
were not met.
5. The air defense unit recognized Flight 752 as a cruise missle from a distance of 19
kilometers, but is still required to get approval to fire upon it.
6. When the operator attempts to get approval, he can not do so due to "disruption" of his
communication system.
7. The operator is forced to make an independent decision in a 10 second window of time and
fires upon the plane.
1. the SA-15 system has an IFF interrogator built into its radar system,
2. Boeing 737 aircraft are equipped with two IFF transponders, which are set and activated
prior to take off, and
3. it is possible for a plane to take off without an IFF transponder operating.
4. In spite of all this, the flight's recording on FLIGHTRADAR24.COM , proves that the transponder was on and
working.
5. Even if there was no IFF signal, a SA-15/TOR M-1 operator could still determine the
location, bearing, speed and size of the potential target.
6. The SA-15 also has an automatic all weather day/night NV/IR Electro Optical Targeting
System (EOTS) used for target engagement and fire control by which the plane would have been
easily identified.
7. Flight 752 should have been identifiable as a commercial airliner by its external lights
alone.
From this information, he concludes that either there are traitors within Iran seeking to
facilitate regime change or that the downing of Flight 752 was a false flag operation
perpetrated by the usual suspects.
I'd like to see more information about this topic from those qualified to speak about
it.
2. These threats placed Iran's air defense systems on the highest alert level
7. The operator is forced to make an independent decision in a 10 second window of time and
fires upon the plane.
How long were the operators on alert? Tension and sleep deprivation are a bad mix. This
looks like the crew on the ground had seconds to make a decision, and in the rush got it
wrong.
I'm not sure how anyone on the outside could tell if the operator made the launch by
mistake or from ill intent. No doubt the crew will be given the Richard Jewell treatment in
an attempt to deflect blame from the religious hierarchy.
1. the SA-15 system has an IFF interrogator built into its radar system,
Correct
2. Boeing 737 aircraft are equipped with two IFF transponders, which are set and
activated prior to take off, and
Incorrect The Boeing 737 aircrfat has two ATC Transponders only one of which is
activated prior to takeoff. The second ATC transponder is only activated if the first one
fails. An ATC Transponder is NOT an IFF transponder.
3. it is possible for a plane to take off without an IFF transponder operating.
Incorrect . A functioning ATC transponder is part the Boeing 737 Minimum Equipment
List which is available here . The only way the Ukraine Air crew could have gotten
around this requirement was to get prior permission from the Iranian Civil Aviation Authority
and EVERY other country's Cicil Aviation Authority in its flight path which I can guarantee
you would not be forthcoming.
5. Even if there was no IFF signal, a SA-15/TOR M-1 operator could still determine the
location, bearing, speed and size of the potential target.
Incorrect The operator could determine range, range rate. and bearing if the
transponder was not function.
6. The SA-15 also has an automatic all weather day/night NV/IR Electro Optical
Targeting System (EOTS) used for target engagement and fire control by which the plane
would have been easily identified.
The plane was at least 1.5 miles away (8000 ft altitude). You go get yourself a pair of
Night Vision/Infra Red scopes and see how well you do identifying different aircraft from
that distance
@Ron Unz One good article to show people in relation to the Israel Lobby's influence on
America's decision to go to war in Iraq is an article in Israeli newspaper Haaretz titled
White Man's Burden which carries the following subheading;
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish,
who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists
William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas
Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical.
This comes from a reputable newspaper from Israel so cannot be dismissed as the ravings of
some neo-Nazis. I have found this to have the most success in getting people online to think
about the Iraq War more, it is impossible for detractors to label a link to an Israeli
newspaper article as "anti-Semitic" without looking absurd.
I would find the UN's review kind of hard to recommend to people in real life simple
because of the provocative nature of the stories it runs. The American Pravda series
is of course very informative but the articles require quite a bit of time to read through
and check the hyperlinks within the article itself. Without sounding like someone with a
superiority complex, most people cannot read this much information and grasp it. Many will
not touch articles relating to Holocaust Denial or race.
But anyway, you sir are doing great work with the maintenance and story selection on this
website and I wish you the best of luck in the future. It certainly has armed me with lots of
information that I can use to counter mainstream narratives in a whole host of issues.
Although my efforts in real life have not been very successful, I do seem to be getting some
success in my cyber-activism on mainstream news websites, where I am able to provide a clear
and cogent narrative with links to reputable websites and not come across as a nutjob who
raves about da jooz .
@Anon Sharpen your reading skills. Civilian aircraft have different frequency
transponders than military aircraft. Flight plans are filed, and the transponder signals
correspond to filed flight plans. When attacking, military craft turn off their transponders.
No transponder signal = no corresponding flight plan = unfriendly aircraft.
There is no need to "spoof" anything, once the transponder stops signalling. That aside, I
found it curious that this particular airplane was on its first flight after major
maintenance. Who knows what was done in servicing. If the computer in the car you drive can
be hijacked to cause sudden acceleration or brake failurs, an airplane's certainly can.
Yalensis, earlier you said that Russia should restore communism to remove poverty.
How did that work the last time in 1917-1991? The Soviet Union collapsed and historical
Russia was split into many different parts.
I expect that if Russia would experiment communism the second time the outcome would be
another split of Russia. This time it would be the North Caucasus, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan
and possible Siberia and the Far East breaking away from Moscow.
And why is that? Because communism doesn't work, period. It has been tried several times
in many different parts of the world, and it has always failed.
The basics are simple. Once private ownership is banned people stop caring. Motivation to
work hard is gone If you are deprived of the possibility to make money and own private
property.
Say what you want about America but there is a good reason why basically all the greatest
companies in the world are American, or at least from countries that have practiced
capitalism for centuries: Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, Shell, Amazon, Intel, Ford, Mercedez Benz,
Toyota, Samsung etc.
You can compare how a middle class American and a middle class Soviet citizen lived in the
1980s. While a typical middle class American lived in a big house in a suburb with two cars
in the household, a typical Soviet middle class citizen lived in a "kommunalka" apartment
where many families had to share the same bathroom and kitchen and a Soviet citizen had to
work a certain amount of years before being allowed a right to own his or her own car,
usually a Soviet made Lada. Most of the Soviet citizens never had a chance to get their own
car but instead of to rely on public transport.
I know you are going to say that China is a good example that communism can work. But
there is one problem: China is not really a communist country anymore. Actually the rise of
China began at the same moment when Deng Xiaoping allowed private property and private
enterprise. The horrendous communist policies of Mao Tse Tung killed tens of millions of
Chinese people before that. Allowing people to work for their own well being was that made
China what it is today (China is still a poor country compared to the West, but at least
hundreds of millions of people are not starving anymore as was the case during Mao's
rule).
If Russia ever restored communism again it would be the end of Russia.
a typical Soviet middle class citizen lived in a "kommunalka" apartment
Really?
I lived in a modern, built in the 1970s block in Voronezh in 1989.: 3 large rooms, largish
kitchen, bathroom and toilet, 2 balconies , 11th floor.
I live in a similar flat now, but on the 3rd floor, built 1976, central Administrative
District, Taganskiy precinct, Moskva.
The only thing communal about those 2 dwellings is the central heating, which is turned on
in October and turned off in May.
In England, during my childhood I lived in a slum street built in the 1850s: no central
heating, no hot water, no bathroom, no toilet. The toilet was in the yard at the back. The
dewelling had 2 downstairs rooms and 2 upstairs room, a so-called "two-up, two-down". I lived
there until 1960.
Wilson St. in my home town, 1969
My hometown is situated in the first capitalist country in the world.
God that picture brings back memories – we lived in similar property in Birmingham
until 1978. My family came over from Ireland in the 1960s and these type of houses were
common place for working class families.
You can still find them in the midlands and the north, although they have been modernised
to include bathrooms.
Capitalism and economic Nirvana are known to be one in the same in the minds of morons.
"Indications of this failure of capitalism are everywhere. Stagnation of investment
punctuated by bubbles of financial expansion, which then inevitably burst, now characterizes
the so-called free market.4 Soaring inequality in income and wealth has its counterpart in
the declining material circumstances of a majority of the population. Real wages for most
workers in the United States have barely budged in forty years despite steadily rising
productivity.5 Work intensity has increased, while work and safety protections on the job
have been systematically jettisoned. Unemployment data has become more and more meaningless
due to a new institutionalized underemployment in the form of contract labor in the gig
economy.6 Unions have been reduced to mere shadows of their former glory as capitalism has
asserted totalitarian control over workplaces. With the demise of Soviet-type societies,
social democracy in Europe has perished in the new atmosphere of "liberated capitalism."7
The capture of the surplus value produced by overexploited populations in the poorest
regions of the world, via the global labor arbitrage instituted by multinational
corporations, is leading to an unprecedented amassing of financial wealth at the center of
the world economy and relative poverty in the periphery.8 Around $21 trillion of offshore
funds are currently lodged in tax havens on islands mostly in the Caribbean, constituting
"the fortified refuge of Big Finance."9 Technologically driven monopolies resulting from the
global-communications revolution, together with the rise to dominance of Wall Street-based
financial capital geared to speculative asset creation, have further contributed to the
riches of today's "1 percent." Forty-two billionaires now enjoy as much wealth as half the
world's population, while the three richest men in the United States -- Jeff Bezos, Bill
Gates, and Warren Buffett -- have more wealth than half the U.S. population.10 In every
region of the world, inequality has increased sharply in recent decades.11 The gap in per
capita income and wealth between the richest and poorest nations, which has been the dominant
trend for centuries, is rapidly widening once again.12 More than 60 percent of the world's
employed population, some two billion people, now work in the impoverished informal sector,
forming a massive global proletariat. The global reserve army of labor is some 70 percent
larger than the active labor army of formally employed workers.
Adequate health care, housing, education, and clean water and air are increasingly out of
reach for large sections of the population, even in wealthy countries in North America and
Europe, while transportation is becoming more difficult in the United States and many other
countries due to irrationally high levels of dependency on the automobile and disinvestment
in public transportation. Urban structures are more and more characterized by gentrification
and segregation, with cities becoming the playthings of the well-to-do while marginalized
populations are shunted aside. About half a million people, most of them children, are
homeless on any given night in the United States.14 New York City is experiencing a major rat
infestation, attributed to warming temperatures, mirroring trends around the world."
Comrade Karl, the vast majority of poverty in this world is in capitalist countries. Latin
America and Africa will toss your silly assertions in the trash bin of history.
And saying China is not communist is equivalent to saying the US is not capitalist. I
leave it to your to figure out what the foregoing means.
@Shitposter
him some fighter planes for free and he will build an airbase of the Belarus army.
6. Belarus makes gasoline and other products from Russian oils and resells them at a huge
profit. Besides, he wants to export it all via Baltic statelets, providing their ports
business that Putin is taking away from them by building Russian deep-sea ports, like
Ust-Luga.
7. Not to mention that he talks about 10 times more than is wise, saying mostly BS (the
latter is natural for a moron).
There are many more, but these are enough to explain how most Russians feel about him.
Belarus either gets rid of that idiot, or suffers because of his stupidity.
About this whole Ukraine-Russia gas transit thing that Felix is panicking about. It seems
Germany had a key role in facilitating
the deal.
However, that risk receded this week after Moscow and Kyiv concluded a landmark agreement
that will ensure Russian gas continues to transit through Ukraine even after Nord Stream 2 is
completed. Germany played a critical role in brokering the agreement and pressuring Russia
to maintain Ukraine's transit status.
Why would Germany spend all this time and resources to construct these pipelines and then
suddenly pressure Russia to maintain the transit fees? That makes zero sense unless you believe
that Germany was acting as a proxy on behalf of a greater power. My pet theory: Germany most
likely caved to US pressure and tried to triangulate at the last minute in a bid to stave off a
larger German-US conflict.
What Germany wants, it seems to me, is (1) cheap energy for German industry, (2) a
maximally weak Russian hand visavi Ukraine (which is now in effect a NATO/EU dependency), and
(3) good enough relations with the Kremlin for Russia not to go rogue. Goals (1) and (3)
obviously sit uneasily with goal (2), which is why we see so much back and forth.
I agree with (1) and (3) but I'd disagree over (2). I am not convinced Germany cares much
about Ukraine's well-being. It is a very small economy (barely over 100 billion USD) and
Germany's trade exposure to Ukraine is minimal. It isn't part of NATO, EU or any other major
Western framework.
If Ukraine collapsed it would create significant refugee streams but Ukrainians are very
easily assimilated into Western European countries, unlike Syrians or Turks, so even in a
worse-case scenario the fallout would not be a major problem. If Croats or Serbs can mix into
Germany easily, I don't see why Ukrainians would be a problem. Germany's shrinking work force
would in fact even need such an influx. The only kink would be Russia's expanding borders if
both Belarus+Ukraine was swallowed up but Germany probably would calculate that Russia wouldn't
attack a NATO ally (and they wouldn't be wrong). I'm not saying Germany would want such an
outcome, only that the worst-case scenario wouldn't be a big problem for them.
I think this has the fingerprints of the US all over it. Trump personally hates Ukraine,
which has been documented in leaked documents during the impeachment process and major
personalities of the Trumpist movement like Tucker Carlson openly cheers for Russia. So it
wasn't Trump or his people who pushed for this but rather the permanent national-security state
that was behind it and they are obsessed with keeping Russia down, or inventing fake
Russiagate hoaxes to justify their paranoia. Germany made a 180 and suddenly pressured Russia
to do something which Germany itself had no interest in keeping for the longest time. That
suggests Germany caved to US pressure and tried to do a compromise. The US interest would be
for NS2 to be scrapped completely. This was a German attempt at triangulating.
Either way, Ukraine got a big win purely because of Great Power politics over which they had
no direct control.
"... The infrastructure they inherited from the USSR mostly is now fully amortized. For example railway park in in complete ruin. Central heating pipeline communications in cities like Kiev are in ruins too. In the USSR they tried to reuse the heat from electric stations and have elaborate hot water delivery networks from each, which provided heat to a large city blocks. Now pipes are completely rusted (which in 30 years is no surprise) and are in the state of constant repair. ..."
"... But when the standard of living dropped to such extent as it dropped after 2014 sentiments toward even slightly different ethnic groups turn hostile too. This is the case in Ukraine. In this sense you are wrong. There is no more unity now then existed before 2014. I would say there is less unity now. ..."
"... Sentiments turned against both Donbass dwellers and Ukrainians from Western Ukraine. In Kiev the derogatory term for both categories is "ponaekhali" ("come to overcrowd the place and displace us", or something along those lines; it's difficult to translate, but the term carries strong derogatory meaning) ..."
"... The nationalistic hysteria of 2014-2017 now mostly changed into deep depression: how a tiny group of far right nationalist and football hooligan gangs managed to get to power against the will of the majority of the country and destroy its economy. That's why Zelensky was elected and most far right parliamentarians lost their seats. Most of Western Ukraine voted for him, which is telling you something. ..."
"... The problem for Ukraine is that with the cut of economic ties with Russia the natural path for economics is probably down. De-industrialization, Baltic style, is raining supreme. Many enterprises survived the period from 1991 to 2014 only due to orders from Russia. Especially remnants of military industrial complex and manufacturing industry. Now what? Selling land (like Zelensky is trying to do) ? ..."
I feel like robber barons in Kyiv have harmed you more through their looting of the country than impoverished Eastern Ukrainians,
who were the biggest losers in the post-Soviet deindustrilization, have harmed you by existing and dying of diseases of poverty
and despair.
It reminds me of how coastal shit-libs in America talk about "fly-over" country and want all the poor whites in Appalachia
to die. I'm living in a country whose soul is totally poisoned. A country that is dying. While all this is happening, whites have
split themselves into little factions focused on political point scoring.
I doubt people like Zelensky, Kolomoisky, Poroshenko and all the rest are going to turn Ukraine into an earthly paradise. They're
more likely to be Neros playing harps, while Ukraine burns.
Looks like your understanding of Ukraine is mostly based of a short trip to Lvov and reading neoliberal MSM and forums. That's
not enough, unless you want to be the next Max Boot.
Ukraine is a deeply sick patient, which surprisingly still stands despite all hardships (Ukrainians demonstrated amazing, superhuman
resilience in the crisis that hit them, which greatly surprised all experts).
The infrastructure they inherited from the USSR mostly is now fully amortized. For example railway park in in complete ruin. Central
heating pipeline communications in cities like Kiev are in ruins too. In the USSR they tried to reuse the heat from electric stations
and have elaborate hot water delivery networks from each, which provided heat to a large city blocks. Now pipes are completely rusted
(which in 30 years is no surprise) and are in the state of constant repair.
And, what is really tragic Ukraine now it is a debt state. Usually the latter is the capital sentence for the county. Few managed
to escape even in more favorable conditions (South Korea is one.) So chances of economic recovery are slim: with such level of parasitic
rent to the West the natural path is down and down. Don't cry for me Argentina.
And there is no money to replace already destroyed due to bad maintenance infrastructure, but surprisingly large parts of Soviets
era infrastructure still somehow hold. For example, electrical networks, subway cars. But other part are already crumbling.
For example, in Kiev that means in some buildings you have winter without central heating, you have elevators in 16-storey buildings
that work one or two weeks in month, you have no hot water, sometimes you have no water at all for a week or more, etc). Pensioners
have problem with paying heating bills, so some of them are forced to live in non-heated apartments.
And that's in Kiev/Kyiv (Western Ukrainians love to change established names, much like communists) . In provincial cities it
is a real horror show when even electricity supply became a problem. The countryside dwellers at least has its own food, but the
situation for them is also very very difficult.
Other big problem -- few jobs and almost no well paid job, unless you are young, know English and have a university education
(and are lucky). Before 2014 approximately 70% of Ukrainian labor migrants (in total a couple of million) came from the western part
of the country, in which migration had become a widespread method of coping with poverty, the absence of jobs and low salaries.
Now this practice spread to the whole county. That destroyed many families.
The USA plays its usual games selling vassals crap at inflated prices (arms, uranium rods, coal, locomotives, cars, etc) , which
Ukrainians can't refuse. Trump is simply a typical gangster in this respect, running a protection racket.
The rate of emigration and shrinking population is another fundamental problem. Mass emigration (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
) is continuing even after Zelensky election. Looting by the West also continues unabated. This is disaster capitalism in action.
Add to those problems inflated military expenses to fight the civil war in Donbass which deprives other sectors of necessary funds
(with the main affect of completely alienating Russia) and "Huston, we have a problem."
May be this is a natural path for xUSSR countries after the dissolution of the USSR, I don't know.
But the destiny of ordinary Ukrainians is deeply tragic: they wanted better life and got a really harsh one. Especially pensioners
(typical pension is something like $60-$70) a month in Kiev, much less outside of Kiev. How they physically survive I do not fully
understand.
There are still pro-Russian areas but being free of Crimea and Donbass means Ukraine can no longer be characterized as "split."
I agree that there is a substantial growth of anti-Russian sentiments. It is really noticeable. As well as growth of the usage
of the Ukrainian language (previously Kiev, unlike Lvov was completely Russian-language city).
And in Western Ukraine Russiphobia was actually always a part of "national identity". The negative definition of national identity,
if you wish. See popular slogan "Hto ne skache toi moskal" ("those who do not jump are Moskal" -- where Moskal is the derogatory
name for a Russian). Here is this slogan in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rfqr9afMc
;-)
But when the standard of living dropped to such extent as it dropped after 2014 sentiments toward even slightly different
ethnic groups turn hostile too. This is the case in Ukraine. In this sense you are wrong. There is no more unity now then existed
before 2014. I would say there is less unity now.
Sentiments turned against both Donbass dwellers and Ukrainians from Western Ukraine. In Kiev the derogatory term for both
categories is "ponaekhali" ("come to overcrowd the place and displace us", or something along those lines; it's difficult to translate,
but the term carries strong derogatory meaning) .
"Donetskie" (former Donbass dwellers, often displaced by the war) are generally strongly resented and luxury cars, villas, etc
and other excesses of neoliberal elite are attributed mostly to them (Donbass neoliberal elite did moved to Kiev, not Moscow)
, while "zapadentsi" are also, albeit less strongly, resented because they often use clan politics within institutions, and often
do not put enough effort (or are outright incompetent), as they rely on its own clan ties for survival.
This sentiment is stronger to the south of Kiev where the resentment is directed mainly against Western Ukrainians, not against
"Donetskie" like in Kiev. And I am talking not only about Odessa. Western Ukrainians are now strongly associated with corrupt ways
of getting lucrative positions (via family, clan or political connections), being incompetent and doing nothing useful.
What surprise me is that this resentment against "zapadentsi" and "Poloshenko clan" is shared by many people from Western Ukraine.
The target is often slightly more narrow, for example Hutsuls in Lviv (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutsuls )
The nationalistic hysteria of 2014-2017 now mostly changed into deep depression: how a tiny group of far right nationalist
and football hooligan gangs managed to get to power against the will of the majority of the country and destroy its economy. That's
why Zelensky was elected and most far right parliamentarians lost their seats. Most of Western Ukraine voted for him, which is telling
you something.
The problem for Ukraine is that with the cut of economic ties with Russia the natural path for economics is probably down.
De-industrialization, Baltic style, is raining supreme. Many enterprises survived the period from 1991 to 2014 only due to orders
from Russia. Especially remnants of military industrial complex and manufacturing industry. Now what? Selling land (like Zelensky
is trying to do) ?
Ukraine will probably eventually lose a large part of its chemical industry because without subsidies for gas it just can't complete
even taking into account low labor costs. And manufacturing because without Russian market it is difficult to find a place for their
production in already established markets, competing only in price and suffering in quality (I remember something about Iraq returning
Ukrainians all ordered armored carriers due to defect is the the armor
https://sputniknews.com/military/201705221053859853-armored-vehicles-defects-extent
/). Although at least for the Ukrainian arm industry there is place on the market in countries which are used to old Soviet armaments,
because those are rehashed Soviet products.
Add to this corrupt and greedy diaspora (all those Jaresko, Chalupas, Freelands, Vindmans, etc ) from the USA and Canada (and
not only diaspora -- look at Biden, Kerry, etc) who want their piece of the pie after 2014 "Revolution of dignity" (what a sad joke)
and you will see the problems more clearly. Not that much changed from the period 1991-2014 where Ukraine was also royally fleeced
by own oligarchs allied with Western banksers, simply now this leads to quicker deterioration of the standard of living.
None of Eastern European countries benefited from a color revolution staged by the USA. This is about opening the country not
only to multinationals (while they loot the county they at least behave within a certain legal bounds, demonstrating at least decency
of gangsters like in Godfather), but to petty foreign criminals from diaspora and outside of it who allies with the local oligarchs
and smallernouveau riche and are siphoning all the county wealth to western banks as soon as possible. Greed of the disapora is simply unbounded.
https://neweasterneurope.eu/2016/08/26/the-ukrainian-diaspora-as-a-recipient-of-oligarchic-cash/
Of course, Ukrainian diaspora is not uniform. Still, outside well-know types from the tiny Mid-Eastern country, the most dangerous
people for Ukraine are probably Ukrainians from diaspora with dual citizenship
Ban PMs, Ministers, governors, some mayors and judges, from having second citizenships of
foreign residencies; moreover, Presidential candidates should have been resident in Russia
for 25 years (previously 10 years) and never had a foreign citizenship.
I knew that if you kept it up, Putler would get around to targeting you.
says: January 15,
2020 at 6:42 pm GMT 200 Words @Shitposter
Just a few off the top of my head:
1. Lukashenko wants the prices for oil and natural gas for Belarus to be the same as for
Russian regions, but refuses to behave like a Russian region.
2. He got many loans from Russia and Russian semi-commercial entities (like Sberbank), but
behaves as if his country is living within its means.
3. He prevented Russian companies from acquiring Minsk automotive plant (MAZ). In response,
Russia switched the trucks for its mobile rockets from MAZ to domestic KaMAZ.
4. He never recognized South Ossetia and Abkhasia.
5. He refused Russian request for an airbase, suggesting that Russia gives him some fighter
planes for free and he will build an airbase of the Belarus army.
6. Belarus makes gasoline and other products from Russian oils and resells them at a huge
profit. Besides, he wants to export it all via Baltic statelets, providing their ports business
that Putin is taking away from them by building Russian deep-sea ports, like Ust-Luga.
7. Not to mention that he talks about 10 times more than is wise, saying mostly BS (the latter
is natural for a moron).
There are many more, but these are enough to explain how most Russians feel about him. Belarus
either gets rid of that idiot, or suffers because of his stupidity.
Of course the USA do not care, but the trend ofter 2014 color revolution financed and
organized by the USA (with Germany Poland and Sweden in supporting roles) is devastating...
@Anatoly
Karlin Donbass people ran with the territories. In addition, half a million Ukrainian
citizens got Russian citizenship in 2019. Optimists put Ukrainian population at 35 million,
pessimists at 22-24 million, but half a million in a single year is a huge number in either
case.
Finally, my interest in the opinions of me (or anything else, for that matter) of various
"svidomy" and "svyadomy" personages is about the same as my interest in the opinions of
cockroaches or ants. In one case, what they fought for has already befallen them, in the
other – the same thing is likely to happen. In both cases Russia should not burden
itself with unnecessary dead weight.
A report by a research unit of the German Bundestag, just released in Berlin, has defied the
narrative of the European Union, NATO and the US, with the conclusion that since the Ukraine
civil war began in early 2014, there has been no reliable evidence of Russian troop invasion or
intervention by regular Russian military forces in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
After a review of the press, official public releases and reports, as well as European court
rulings, the Bundestag's experts have described the outcome with the German phrase, ohne
belastbares Faktenmaterial – "without reliable fact material."
The Bundestag report, which runs to 17 pages and was completed on December 9, has been noted
in the German-language media. To date, however, it has been ignored by the Anglo-American
press, including the alt-media.
The new German report is entitled "Intervention in civil war zones: The role of Russia
during the east Ukraine conflict". It was prepared by the foreign, international law and
defence department (WD-2) of the Scientific Services Bureau of the Bundestag.
In a preface to the report, the authors say they "support the members of the German
Bundestag with mandate-related activity. Their works do not express the view of the German
Bundestag, its individual organs, or the management of the Bundestag." Responsibility for the
research reporting is "the technical responsibility of the authors as well as the department
management." No authors have been identified by name.
The full German report can be read at the
official website link. No official English translation is available.
For five years Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists have been fighting against
each other in the Donbass/Donets Basin," the report says. " The territorial conflict shows
classical identifiers of a non-international (internal) armed conflict. About the extent,
quality and magnitude of the military involvement of Russia during the Ukraine conflict, there
are few reliable facts and analyses aside from the numerous speculations, part-contradictory
reports and press announcements, and denials from different sources. Altogether, however, the
picture of the situation is not unequivocal."
"Also, the Federal [German] Government holds no reliable knowledge, according to its own
information apparently, on how much influence today Russia actually exercises on the
separatists in the East Ukraine that can be described as credible."
The report summarizes western media reports, social media posts, as well as NATO press
releases in order to cast doubt on their veracity. "Reliable information about the parts of the
region of the Ukrainian-Russian border not controlled by Kiev is rare." The German researchers
are also sceptical of claims published by the monitoring mission of the area from the
Organization for Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which "has, in spite of its
comprehensive mandate, only limited access to this area."
For background details of the anti-Russian leadership of the OSCE's special monitoring
mission (SMM) in Ukraine, read
this .
"The question of whether pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region are currently under
control and directed from Moscow, or whether regular Russian troops still remain on Ukrainian
territory cannot be answered without reliable factual material, in particular without the
appropriate and reliable secret service intelligence."
When the Vindman story broke last week, we were pathetically reminded that there is a
conspiracy against Ukraine and the Diaspora in America. Conspiracy theorists labeled the
Ukrainian government integral nationalists plotting against the current President of the United
States even before the final ballots were tallied 2016.
Although this article will contain many of the elements of the still-developing Vindman
story that have been reported on, the focus shifts over to the bigger question- Why? I propose
we take a walk into the back of Vindman's mind, which easier done than said. As will be shown,
this in part is due to the fact that his thought pattern about Ukraine is reflexive.
There is no need to question his military service before this juncture because it posed no
conflict for him. Although the US Army is backing his right as a whistleblower now, his
motivations in this situation could end up
with Vindman receiving a court-martial . It's all about his motivation.
Alexander Vindman's ties to Ukraine should have made him disclose a few large conflicts of
interest before being assigned in the capacity he has.
Vindman had business interests in
Ukraine which would suffer if the relationship between both countries was jeopardized. Was it
Vindman's American patriotism or Diaspora nationalism that led him to share the Oval Office
transcript with Ukraine's president?
According to the Gateway Pundit , "Colonel Vindman may have violated the federal leaking
statute 18 USC 798 when he leaked the president's classified call to several other
operatives."
As the in-house expert, Vindman would have known this and yet he still conducted himself in
the service of Ukraine. In Vindman's world view it must be acceptable behavior for a foreign
government official to threaten his own country's Commander-in-Chief.
What are his motivations? In his own words, Vindman lays out his priorities.
I
was concerned by the call,"Vindman said, according to his testimony obtained by the
Associated Press. "Idid not think it was properto demand that a foreign
government investigate a U.S. citizen, andI was worried about the implicationsfor the U.S. government's support of Ukraine."-Vindman
Vindman's real concern is the implications of US foreign policy toward Ukraine and keeping
it on track with what he thought it should be. I'm sure every Lt Colonel that has a concern
intercedes in foreign policy everywhere across the US army.
"In this situation, a strong
and independent Ukraine is critical to U. S. national security interests because Ukraine is a
frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression. In spite of beingunder
assault from Russia for more than five years, Ukrainehas taken major steps towards
integrating with the West." When I joined the NSC in July 2018, I began implementing the
administration's policy on Ukraine. In the Spring of 2019,I became aware of outside
influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the
interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency
colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine's prospects,this
alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.-Vindman
" Once Ukraine determined that the RF (Russian Federation) was not going to attack and
Russia was not a credible threat, they launched their Anti-Terrorist Operations against the
rebels (p 65)." Russia's Hybrid War in Ukraine: Breaking the Enemy's Ability to Resist Finnish
Institute of International Studies by András Rácz
What false narrative was Vindman talking about? It was the fact there was no Russian
aggression, assaults or invasions going on. Where did this "false narrative" originate?
In 2014, Ukrainian-American Mark Paslawsky joined Ukraine's Donbas battalion. He was the
nephew of one of WWII's most sadistic torturers, Mikola Lebed. Lebed was 3 rd in the
Bandera OUN command chain.
Paslawsky was reported to be an officer in the 75 th Ranger Battalion during the
1990s which puts him on the same pedestal as Alexander Vindman in terms of patriotic duty in
the US military.
The volunteer battalions like Ukraine's Donbas are police and cleansing battalions.
Paslawsky was true to his Ukrainian Diaspora upbringing and family heritage. As soon as it was
opportune, he forgot about honor, service, and codes of conduct when he entered Ukraine.
By July 2014, one month before Paslawsky was killed, Oleg Dube, 2 nd in command
of the battalion complained on Twitter that the battalion was full of cowards shooting
everything that moved and throwing grenades into the houses, cellars, and every structure
killing everyone and everything they came across.
These were civilians they murdered. But Paslawsky, who tweeted his adventures under the
handle "bruce springnote" made one thing abundantly clear- There were no Russian troops or
invasion going on as of August 2, 2014.
This means Vindman's tale saying there as five years of Russian aggression is getting
sketchy.
November 6 th , 2015
In an interview with Gromadske.TV , Markian Lubkivsky, the adviser to the head of the SBU
(the Ukrainian version of the CIA) stated there are NO RUSSIAN TROOPS ON UKRANIAN SOIL! This
unexpected announcement came as he fumbled with reporters' questions on the subject. According
to his statement, he said the SBU counted about 5000 Russian nationals, but not Russian
soldiers in Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics. During a briefing with General Muzenko he announced that "To
date, we have only the involvement of some members of the Armed Forces of the Russian
Federation and Russian citizens that are part of illegal armed groups involved in the fighting.
We are not fighting with the regular Russian Army. We have enough forces and means in order to
inflict a final defeat even with illegal armed formation present. " – Ukrainian Armed
Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Muzenko said. Is
Russia About to Invade Ukraine? UkraineAlert by Alexander J. Motyl published at the
Atlantic Council December 13, 2018
These are primary sources that LTC (Lieutenant Colonel) Vindman and the Wall Street
Journal's Pulitzer Prize winner Scott Shane call conspiracy theorists. The Ukrainian government
from Torchinov to Poroshenko to Zelenskiy has kept Russia as their primary trade partner this
entire time. This is a bit unusual for a country that says another is committing aggression
against it. Furthermore, where are the international court cases if this is happening?
If the White House Ukraine expert isn't fact-checking, what is he basing his position on?
Hate, just pure unadulterated hate.
"The second reason I mention Paslawsky is that he was, after all, a Ukrainian American.
In killing him -- and make no mistake about it: Putin killed him -- Putin has taken on, in
addition to the entire world, the Ukrainian American Diaspora. He probably thinks it's a joke.
But in killing a Ukrainian American, he's made the war in Ukraine personal for Ukrainian
Americans. Their intellectual, material, and political resources are far greater than Putin can
imagine. Be forewarned, Vlad: diasporas have long memories.And this one will give you
and your apologists in Russia and the West no rest.-Alexander Motyl Loose Cannons and Ukrainian Casualties
The Diaspora's hatred for Russia is hardwired into their culture in America. It was here the
concept was fleshed out, not in Ukraine.
Lonhyn Tsehelsky was Secretary of Internal Affairs and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs for
the government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in 1917-18. When the almost formed
republic collapsed, he immigrated to America. Tsehelsky formed the Ukrainian Congressional
Committee of America (UCCA) and brought W. Ukrainian nationalism to America. He is the great
uncle to Ukraine's ultra-nationalist Rada minister, Oleh Tyanhybok.
According to Wikipedia In 1902 Tsehelsky published Rus'-Ukraïna but
Moskovshchyna-Rossia (Rus-Ukraine but Moscow-Russia) which had a significant impact on
Ukrainian ideas in both Galicia and in Russian-ruled Ukraine. In this book, he highlighted
differences that he claimed existed between Ukrainians and Russians in order to show that any
union between the two peoples was impossible. Tsehelsky claimed that Ukrainians historically
wanted self-rule, while Russians historically sought servitude. Tsehelsky wrote that Ukrainians
who opposed Ivan Mazepa were traitors and that Ukrainian history consisted of a constant
struggle of Ukrainian attempts at autonomy in opposition to Russian attempts to impose
centralization.
Because the formation of the UCCA is based in this thought and OUNb Bandera lead the
Ukrainian-American Diaspora, the politics of hate is what drives them, nothing
else.
According
to LTC Jim Hickman who served on a combined US-Russian exercise with Vindman, "At that
point, I verbally reprimanded him for his actions, & I'll leave it at that, so as not to be
unprofessional myself. The bottom-line is LTC Vindman was a partisan Democrat at least as far
back as 2012. So much so, junior officers & soldiers felt uncomfortable around him. This is
not your professional, field-grade officer, who has the character & integrity to do the
right thing. Do not let the uniform fool you he is a political activist in uniform. I pray our
nation will drop this hate, vitriol & division, & unite as our founding fathers
intended!" and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic
prosperity .-Vindman
US military officers are not in the business of vibrant economies or democracy. Ukraine
can't realize Vindman's dream of a vibrant democracy because Ukraine has a nationalism built on
Italian fascist philosopher Julius Evola.
"We are not speaking, of course,
of Nationalist ideology, which a radical fringe (or, if you prefer, a leading
elite) of Western Ukrainian society adopted in the 1930s and pursued through violent means.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky condemned it at the time, contrasting it with Christian
patriotism.
Some see the result as a defeat for nationalism. Certainly, it looks like a repudiation
of the traditional type of nationalism based on ethnicity, language, history, culture, and
religion.
That is the "old" nationalism of President Poroshenko – and most of our
diaspora"-The Ukrainian Weekly May 11, 2019
Poroshenko made W. Ukraine the model for Ukrainian society today, but what about the
Diaspora? That radical fringe was the OUN political model that the Diaspora stayed immersed in
and is trying to change the United States into.
In their own words- " Unity to act when required has been the diaspora's mantra –
this cannot be disputed. As time moves on, we see that things take a natural course. We see
that two wings of the OUN – Banderivtsi, and Melnykivtsi – are working actively on
the international level, working in partnership and currently are in strong negotiations about
becoming a single entity again".-Ukraine Weekly Aug 26, 2016
Ukraine's Zelenskiy was able to run for president based on how he negotiated through these
two groups. Poroshenko was OUNb Banderivtsi's candidate. Zelenskiy was OUNm Melnykivtsi's
candidate. The difference between the two is nominal. They both have a history built on torture
and murder.
For a background this shows what's going on in Ukrainian politics in 2019.
The Ukrainian Diaspora openly claims not just the violent legacy of Stepan Bandera but also
the mantle and mandate to attack anything they see threatening their power in Ukraine and
influence on the US government. LTC Vindman is part of this culture.
Why are Ukrainian-Americans at the forefront of every attempt to impeach Donald Trump as
well as the deep-state coup going on? Today, Donald Trump is threatening to remove this rancid
influence from American politics.
Looking at the patriotic image the Ukrainian Diaspora tries to project, let's go back to
their charter statement on American civics.
In 1936 the OUN publication, The Nationalist, stated its position pretty clearly about the
United States to the native groups that revolved around the UCCA after the war as well as the
position they deserved in society.
"Nationalism is the love of country and the willingness to sacrifice for her A person
brought up asa Ukrainian Nationalist will make a one hundred percent better AMERICAN
CITIZEN than one who is not.
Was it Nazis or Fascism that guided Washington, Lincoln, or other statesmen to make the
U.S. a world power? Or was it American Nationalism?"
As you can see, they haven't changed methods or politics since the 1930s. If they don't like
a US president, they try to get rid of him or her in the most convenient way possible. Their
issue with Roosevelt is he would never accept Nationalism. Today, they still call the Democrat
president Roosevelt, a socialist.
But, how far across Ukrainian-American society does this go?
"I do care about social and economic issues affecting every American, but given the war
in Ukraine, there is onlyone issue that we as Ukrainian Americans must focus on:
UkraineThe Central and East European Coalition is a coalition of U.S.-based
organizations that represent their countries of heritage,a voting group of over 20
million people A vote for Trump is a vote against Ukraine!The upcoming presidential
election will be the most important election in which Ukrainian Americans will participate. We
can make a difference with deeds not words.Anybody
but Trump!- Ukrainian Weekly
This linked series documents
how the Diaspora does it and the impact they have. This article shows
why Donald Trump won the 2016 election. If the Democrats are successful removing the
Electoral College, the actual vote will be determined by 15 cities. Your vote, win or lose, no
longer counts if you don't live in one of them. This is the reason all the Diasporas are
strategically located for political impact.
The history and involvement of Alexandra and Andrea Chalupa in both the 2014 Ukraine coup
and the election hacking, as well as Russian interference stories, is well known. These two
Ukrainian Diaspora sisters are the originators of the impeachment movement of Donald Trump
which started just after he declared victory in 2016. Inside the above links, we have another
20 million Diaspora people who think the same way politically and socially.
Although this goes beyond partisan lines in Congress, the Democratic Party is overflowing
with Diaspora operatives today. Adam Parkhomenko is a great example of this. He
describes himself as Democratic Strategist, Consultant, Political Adviser. Dad.
Ukrainian-American. Whatever order, son Cameron's my life.
Parkhomenko works with the
DNC, Atlantic Council groups, and other groups trying to illegally overthrow the presidency.
Members of Congress celebrate this same Ukrainian nationalist brutality in Ukraine and its
sister nationalists ISIS in Syria as well as Ukraine. ISIS also adheres to Julius Evola
politically. If you want to know what Ukrainian nationalism looks like with no one buffering
them, ISIS is ideal to study. This is what they want to do in Donbass. This is what they want
America to become.
"I don't want to dwell on Islamicist ideology; I don't know that much about it. Still, we
should note that recent Islamicist terrorists quote Evola with facility One of the features of
political Tradition has been the search for a school of the transcendent that could serve as
the organizing principle of a new society.
Theoretically, any of the great religious traditions might serve. In practice, though,
Traditionalists have usually chosen a radical version of Islam or some kind of neopaganism;
Tradition can be scary, however. Sometimes this knowledge of the inevitable collapse of the
modern world inspires nothing more than the formation of groups of adepts who hope to manage
the transition when civilization collapses. Sometimes, however, Tradition has sparked the
creation of anarchist political groups that hope to accelerate the collapse." After the Third
Age Eschatological Elements of Postwar International Fascism, presented by Professor John
Reilly at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Center for Millennial Studies, Boston
University, November 2 to 4, 2002
Julius Evola was one of the founders of what became known as the "Tradition" and has
adherents infecting all major religions with a fascist/ nationalist construct. According to the
fascist Evola (esoteric fascism), immortality is attained by the conscious act that ignores the
ramifications of death while plunging headlong into it without a thought. This has nothing to
do with the type of religion an adherent is or its afterlife traditions.-
The Millennial Studies project at Boston University is engaged in the study of groups and
ideology that pose existential threats and will eventually destroy the modern world.
Hence, they named the dangerous time we live in post-modern. It is quite literally the study
of an impending apocalypse. The project reports to the government on the real nature of these
groups and ideologies to give the government a basis for dealing with them.
This takes us back to Alexander Vindman as a just another sample of this rabidly nationalist
community.
A Tale of Two Diasporas
Vindman grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn NY. Its nickname, Little Odessa stems from the
large Russians and Ukrainian enclave that grew big from the 1970s onward. Critiques argue that
because of the dense population of Russian speaking people, it's hardly the place you'd find
Ukrainian nationalists. The statement is false.
In reality, what you had during the 1970s and 80s through the end of the Cold War was a
dense anti-Communist population of which the leading edge was the Ukrainian nationalist
Yaroslav Stetsko. After WWII, the Russian anti-communist émigré's that fought
against the Soviet Union relocated from the Displaced Person camps to the US.
This anti-Communist wave sought to be active in US countermeasures against the Soviet Union
alongside the Ukrainian nationalists. Because the Ukrainians refused to work with Russian
nationals, they were rejected.
This is a slice of the Russian emigration experience. The Russians kept the important
cultural ties but assimilated politically into US democracy politically. Many did maintain a
staunch anti-Communist stance throughout the Cold War which transformed into a strong
anti-Putin stance during the years after the wall came down.
For the Ukrainians, almost 50 years of Cold War intrigue kept them bound inside the politics
of extreme nationalism. For Soviet émigrés from Ukraine, Little Odessa's Russian
speaking Ukrainian community which developed in the 1970s would be the most comfortable place
to live.
The most uncomfortable fact about Ukrainian émigrés to the US is even through
this period, the anti-Communist tag meant they came from one side of the Bandera experience or
the other. Ukrainian anti-Communism is synonymous with Ukrainian nationalism.
In Ukraine during the 1970s, your grandparents either fought for the Soviet Army or they
fought against them. This means you were a victim of Nazi aggression, fought for Nazis, or
fought against Nazism. This in itself isn't a smudge or a smear on Vindman or anyone else.
Growing up in Brighton Beach inside a mixed Ukrainian-Russian population would have buoyed
his family's political beliefs. Little Odessa is part of Brooklyn and isn't an island separated
from the Ukrainian nationalist groups critics are arguing applies to Alexander Vindman.
New York is the headquarters of the Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America (UCCA). If
you take part in public Ukrainian cultural life in New York, you rub shoulders with Bandera's
OUNb.
During and after the Cold War, NGOs formed claiming representation in Congress for entire
Diasporas like the UCCA does for Ukrainian-Americans. Today is no different.
The political makeup of the Russian Diaspora in Brooklyn is much the same as it was when
Vindman's family moved there. The Russian-Ukrainian population is staunchly anti-communist
which translated into anti-Putin Russians for many of them. They want to change the face of the
Russian Federation.
"And so it was on a spring day in 2014 that Gindler, in his deep Russian voice, started
talking about Vladimir Putin and called the leader a "nano-Führer."His
distrust and distaste for Russia's president is shared by many in the community.""You shouldn't talk to any Russian-speaking person here in the West and expect any
positive words about Putin," said Gindler, a registered independent voter who cast his ballot
for Trump in November Gindler immigrated to New York from Ukraine in 1995, a few years after
the fall of the Soviet Union.-Business Insider
These sentiments aren't unique in the Russian-Ukrainian Diasporas. It gives a clear insight
into the environment Vindman grew up in except for one thing. The Russian Diaspora found their
expression through voting and adding to the American experience like many Diasporas. According
to official numbers, about 35% of the Russian Diaspora feels this way.
Even after Vindman's family emigrated to Little Odessa in the 1970s, the Ukrainian Diaspora
were known as political animals, or to be kind, the activists-activist. They still are today.
Not content with the American civic experience, they showed how much they are willing to tilt
the table during election 2016.
What does this mean in 2019 for the Russian Diaspora? It means going forward the only
representation they have in Congress today is provided by Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainian
Diaspora of which Alexander Vindman is a solid part of represents Russian émigré
interests at the Congressional level.
That's tilting the table.
"We represent and coordinate the Russia diaspora. We pay special attention to those who
haverecently left Russia due to the considerable deterioration of the political and
economic situation.
The Free Russia Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental U.S.-based
organization, led by Russians abroad that seeks to be a voice for those who can't speak under
the repression of the current Russian leadership. We represent and coordinate the Russia
diaspora. We pay special attention to those who have recently left Russia due to the
considerable deterioration of the political and economic situation. We are focused on
developing a strategic vision of Russia 'After Putin' and 'Without Putinism' and a concrete
program for the transition period. We will continue to inform international policy-makers, mass
media and opinion leaders on the real situation in Russia We maintain our extensive networks of
key political, business and civil society leaders throughout Russia. This gives us access to
news and events in real-time. In addition, we are a hub for recently transplanted Russians and
experts on every aspect of Russian society."Free Russia Foundation
They U.S.
policymakers on events in Russia in real-time Support the formulation of an effective and
sustainable Russia policy in the U.S.
This is an Atlantic Council production and Michael D. Weiss is on the Board of Directors.
What's notable is they have two locations. One in Washington DC to be close to policymakers and
the other is Free Russia House in Kyiv vul. Kyrylivska, 26/2 Kyiv, Ukraine 04071
Like I said, Ukrainians like Alexander Vindman are trying to represent the Russian Diaspora
and promote Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diaspora's interests.
The basis for understanding why Vindman is clumsily trying to push Donald Trump's
impeachment can be found in the following post. This girl left a mid-west university to relive
the NAZI experience her grandparents had. If they were UPA, her grandparents were involved with
committing the Holocaust and mass murder. This was written just after Maidan ended and months
before the civil war in Ukraine began.
" I have
often thought of my ancestors and how they must have felt during WWII (and earlier
liberation movements) and the partisan struggle to liberate Ukraine from totalitarian powers.
I've always been fascinated by WWII and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), but never in my
life did I think I would feel what they felt, get a taste of war, death, and the fight for
freedom, such uncertainty, and love for Ukraine in a context similar to theirs These sentiments
which were felt by Ukrainians in WWII have been transferred to a new generation of Ukrainians
who are reliving the liberation movement, re-struggling for a free, prosperous, and democratic
Ukraine. Of course, EuroMaidan and Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine . I feel that I was
guided to Ukraine because the love for and attachment to Ukraine was passed down from my
grandparents, and as they couldn't return My grandparents' generation fight for freedom didn't
succeed, there was no independent Ukraine after the war, and so being intelligentsia and having
taken part in the liberation struggle, my relatives would have been persecuted under the
Soviets.
Thus in 1944 when the Soviets were again approaching western Ukraine, my grandparents had to
flee west Eventually sotnias(defense/ military units) were formed during EuroMaidan and I
couldn't help but think that the last time sotnias were formed was during the war by the UPA
The UPA slogan "Glory to Ukraine" and response "Glory to the Heroes" as well as the UPA songs
sounded from maidan's across the country, and the black and red UPA flags flew next to the
yellow and blue ones. There are in fact a lot more parallels between WWII and EuroMaidan/ the
Russian invasion And once we finally had a taste of victory, finally ousted the corrupt
president, finally felt we had a chance to completely reboot the country, root out the Soviet
mentality once and for all."- Areta Kovalsky
To drive it home, long after LTV Vindman's youth was over, NAZI monsters are still to be
emulated in New York and CT.
Can Waffen SS officers and mass murderers like Stepan Bandera be Catholic patron saints in
cities like New York, Philadelphia, Stamford CT, or Boston in the year 2015?
"On October 16, 2011, members
of the 54th branch of CYM "Khersones" in Stamford, CTattended a mass and requiem
service in honor of the great Ukrainian hero and freedom fighter, Stepan Bandera. It was the
first time since its' inception that the branches' members took part in an organized activity
together with the greater Ukrainian community of Stamford.
The SUM members and the faithful present that day enjoyed a beautiful and emotional
homily about the life and achievements of Stepan Bandera delivered by Reverend Bohdan Danylo,
Rector of St. Basil's Seminary in Stamford. He instructed the children on how they can model
their own lives on Bandera's by following his example of self-sacrifice and unwavering
dedication to his country. Following the homily, Father Bohdan distributed candles to each
child which burned brightly during a stirring execution of the prayer "Vichnaya Pam'yat" in
honor of the great hero of the Ukrainian nation."
If you understand the tender emotion expressed watching protesters and police die, you can
understand the mind of a Ukrainian nationalist. Vindman is no exception. His history, heroism,
and sense of duty don't cover him or excuse him. He reported no crimes that were committed by
the sitting President he is trying to impeach. He only said he felt bad for Ukraine. That's not
good enough.
Beckow says: January
15, 2020 at 7:12 pm GMT 200 Words @Anatoly
Karlin All advanced countries need a no-children tax on free-loaders to survive. It is easy
to implement and mostly fair (there are a few corner cases). It is not a penalty since it is a
personal choice to be a parasite on the society and consume instead of raising children.
It can easily be implemented by including a number of children in retirement formula and in
taxes. The no-kids parasites, the assorted barren women and gays, feminists and male scoundrels
who abandon their families, would pay for the long-term support they get from the society
– for the children that they will need to get pensions, medical care, etc Or we can just
cut them off once they no longer work. No kids – no old-age benefits, unless you pay for
them. This would be automatic in a normal society in the past.
Most modern people don't have children because they are lazy and because raising children is
hard. It is a core role of any society to have families, so those who don't participate need to
pay up.
@Philip
Owen opular with the parasites who have to pay, but all taxes are unpopular.
It is fundamentally the most fair way to handle generational issues – those who
choose to be free-loaders, can't expect others' children to take care of them. This will
happen regardless, all the pension obligations are imposed on people who never agreed to
them, they will re-structure them in the future to benefit their own families.
In the West this is complicated by the diversity-migrant issue in the next generation
– why should they pay for people who invited them for cheap labor? There is an
assumption that they will pay, but why should they? This issue is coming.
@Philip
Owen In Stalin's times that tax was imposed an all and gradually reduced with the number
of children, so that only people who had three or more children did not pay "childless" tax.
In Brezhnev's USSR that tax was on childless men and married childless women (on the
assumption that marriage is male's choice, so a woman cannot be penalized when no one marries
her).
@songbird
Frankly, I don't know. I never lived in Stalin's times and never had enough siblings or three
children. What I remember in the 1960s and 1970s, every school child in grade 1 (maybe 1 and
2) received a glass of free milk at school daily, and children from poorer families received
free lunch (I never did).
@AnonFromTN
In the UK we had a small bottle, about a third of a pint, of free milk. The ones who needed
it most never drank it. (My school was in a small town and contained all social classes).
School meals were paid for by most but some had them free.
The Russian government has just introduced free school meals for all for certain years. I
forget which.
Some rather alarming news this morning (here); Pompeo now says the assassination of Soleimani
was deterrence.
Not stopping there, he went on to say that U.S. deterrence also applies to Russia and
China!
I'd say the gauntlet has been thrown down; just how far behind can war be now?
The U.S. has been pushing the limits of international crime for decades; and I think
they're so used to being not challenged, that they forget (or stupidly think they're
invincible) Russia and China will fight rather than cow tow to any U.S. coercion...
IMO, we just entered a new and far more dangerous era...
Coming decade could see the US take on Russia, China and Iran over the New Silk Road
connection
The Raging Twenties started with a bang with the targeted assassination of Iran's General
Qasem Soleimani.
Yet a bigger bang awaits us throughout the decade: the myriad declinations of the New Great
Game in Eurasia, which pits the US against Russia, China and Iran, the three major nodes of
Eurasia integration.
Every game-changing act in geopolitics and geoeconomics in the coming decade will have to be
analyzed in connection to this epic clash.
The Deep State and crucial sectors of the US ruling class are absolutely terrified that
China is already outpacing the "indispensable nation" economically and that Russia has
outpaced
it militarily . The Pentagon officially designates the three Eurasian nodes as
"threats."
Hybrid War techniques – carrying inbuilt 24/7 demonization – will proliferate
with the aim of containing China's "threat," Russian "aggression" and Iran's "sponsorship of
terrorism." The myth of the "free market" will continue to drown under the imposition of a
barrage of illegal sanctions, euphemistically defined as new trade "rules."
Yet that will be hardly enough to derail the Russia-China strategic partnership. To unlock
the deeper meaning of this partnership, we need to understand that Beijing defines it as
rolling towards a "new era." That implies strategic long-term planning – with the key
date being 2049, the centennial of New China.
The horizon for the multiple projects of the Belt and Road Initiative – as in the
China-driven New Silk Roads – is indeed the 2040s, when Beijing expects to have fully
woven a new, multipolar paradigm of sovereign nations/partners across Eurasia and beyond, all
connected by an interlocking maze of belts and roads.
The Russian project – Greater Eurasia –
somewhat mirrors Belt & Road and will be integrated with it. Belt & Road, the Eurasia
Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asia Infrastructure Investment
Bank are all converging towards the same vision.
Realpolitik
So this "new era", as defined by the Chinese, relies heavily on close Russia-China
coordination, in every sector. Made in China 2025 is encompassing a series of techno/scientific
breakthroughs. At the same time, Russia has established itself as an unparalleled technological
resource for weapons and systems that the Chinese still cannot match.
At the latest BRICS summit in Brasilia, President Xi Jinping told Vladimir Putin that "the
current international situation with rising instability and uncertainty urge China and Russia
to establish closer strategic coordination." Putin's response: "Under the current situation,
the two sides should continue to maintain close strategic communication."
Russia is showing China how the West respects realpolitik power in any form, and Beijing is
finally starting to use theirs. The result is that after five centuries of Western domination
– which, incidentally, led to the decline of the Ancient Silk Roads – the Heartland
is back, with a bang, asserting its preeminence.
On a personal note, my travels these past two years, from West Asia to Central Asia, and my
conversations these past two months with analysts in Nur-Sultan, Moscow and Italy, have allowed
me to get deeper into the intricacies of what sharp minds define as the Double Helix. We are
all aware of the immense challenges ahead – while barely managing to track the stunning
re-emergence of the Heartland in real-time.
In soft power terms, the sterling role of Russian diplomacy will become even more paramount
– backed up by a Ministry of Defense led by Sergei Shoigu, a Tuvan from Siberia, and an
intel arm that is capable of constructive dialogue with everybody: India/Pakistan, North/South
Korea, Iran/Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan.
This apparatus does smooth (complex) geopolitical issues over in a manner that still eludes
Beijing.
In parallel, virtually the whole Asia-Pacific – from the Eastern Mediterranean to the
Indian Ocean – now takes into full consideration Russia-China as a counter-force to US
naval and financial overreach.
Stakes in Southwest Asia
The targeted assassination of Soleimani, for all its long-term fallout, is just one move in
the Southwest Asia chessboard. What's ultimately at stake is a macro geoeconomic prize: a
land bridge from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Last summer, an Iran-Iraq-Syria trilateral established that "the goal of negotiations is to
activate the Iranian-Iraqi-Syria load and transport corridor as part of a wider plan for
reviving the Silk Road."
There could not be a more strategic connectivity corridor, capable of simultaneously
interlinking with the International North-South Transportation Corridor; the Iran-Central
Asia-China connection all the way to the Pacific; and projecting Latakia towards the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
What's on the horizon is, in fact, a sub-sect of Belt & Road in Southwest Asia. Iran is
a key node of Belt & Road; China will be heavily involved in the rebuilding of Syria; and
Beijing-Baghdad signed multiple deals and set up an Iraqi-Chinese Reconstruction Fund (income
from 300,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange for Chinese credit for Chinese companies
rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure).
A quick look at the map reveals the "secret" of the US refusing to pack up and leave Iraq,
as demanded by the Iraqi Parliament and Prime Minister: to prevent the emergence of this
corridor by any means necessary. Especially when we see that all the roads that China is
building across Central Asia – I navigated many of them in November and December –
ultimately link China with Iran.
The final objective: to unite Shanghai to the Eastern Mediterranean – overland, across
the Heartland.
As much as Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea is an essential node of the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor, and part of China's multi-pronged "escape from Malacca" strategy, India also
courted Iran to match Gwadar via the port of Chabahar in the Gulf of Oman.
So as much as Beijing wants to connect the Arabian Sea with Xinjiang, via the economic
corridor, India wants to connect with Afghanistan and Central Asia via Iran.
Yet India's investments in Chabahar may come to nothing, with New Delhi still mulling
whether to become an active part of the US "Indo-Pacific" strategy, which would imply dropping
Tehran.
The Russia-China-Iran joint naval exercise in late December, starting exactly from Chabahar,
was a timely wake-up for New Delhi. India simply cannot afford to ignore Iran and end up losing
its key connectivity node, Chabahar.
The immutable fact: everyone needs and wants Iran connectivity. For obvious reasons, since
the Persian empire, this is the privileged hub for all Central Asian trade routes.
On top of it, Iran for China is a matter of national security. China is heavily invested in
Iran's energy industry. All bilateral trade will be settled in yuan or in a basket of
currencies bypassing the US dollar.
US neocons, meanwhile, still dream of what the Cheney regime was aiming at in the past
decade: regime change in Iran leading to the US dominating the Caspian Sea as a springboard to
Central Asia, only one step away from Xinjiang and weaponization of anti-China sentiment. It
could be seen as a New Silk Road in reverse to disrupt the Chinese vision.
Battle of the Ages
A new book, The Impact of China's Belt and Road
Initiativ e , by Jeremy Garlick of the University of Economics in Prague, carries the
merit of admitting that, "making sense" of Belt & Road "is extremely difficult."
This is an extremely serious attempt to theorize Belt & Road's immense complexity
– especially considering China's flexible, syncretic approach to policymaking, quite
bewildering for Westerners. To reach his goal, Garlick gets into Tang Shiping's social
evolution paradigm, delves into neo-Gramscian hegemony, and dissects the concept of "offensive
mercantilism" – all that as part of an effort in "complex eclecticism."
The contrast with the pedestrian Belt & Road demonization narrative emanating from US
"analysts" is glaring. The book tackles in detail the multifaceted nature of Belt & Road's
trans-regionalism as an evolving, organic process.
Imperial policymakers won't bother to understand how and why Belt & Road is setting a
new global paradigm. The NATO summit in London last month offered a few pointers. NATO
uncritically adopted three US priorities: even more aggressive policy towards Russia;
containment of China (including military surveillance); and militarization of space – a
spin-off from the 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.
So NATO will be drawn into the "Indo-Pacific" strategy – which means containment of
China. And as NATO is the EU's weaponized arm, that implies the US interfering on how Europe
does business with China – at every level.
Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2001 to 2005,
cuts to the chase: "America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight
years of war and no end in sight? It's part of who we are. It's part of what the American
Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is
doing right now, as Esper is doing right now and a host of other members of my political party,
the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to lie, cheat and steal to do whatever it is
we have to do to continue this war complex. That's the truth of it. And that's the agony of
it."
Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are fully aware of the stakes. Diplomats and analysts are working
on the trend, for the trio, to evolve a concerted effort to protect one another from all forms
of hybrid war – sanctions included – launched against each of them.
For the US, this is indeed an existential battle – against the whole Eurasia
integration process, the New Silk Roads, the Russia-China strategic partnership, those Russian
hypersonic weapons mixed with supple diplomacy, the profound disgust and revolt against US
policies all across the Global South, the nearly inevitable collapse of the US dollar. What's
certain is that the Empire won't go quietly into the night. We should all be ready for the
battle of the ages.
There is a silver lining to that. If another term of Trump inspires the Europeans to
abrogate NATO and put an end to that alliance and create their own NEATO ( North East
Atlantic Treaty Organization) withOUT America and withOUT Canada and maybe withOUT some of
those no-great-bargain East European countries; then NEATO Europe could reach its own
Separate Peace with Russia and lower that tension point.
And America could bring its hundred thousand hostages ( "soldiers") back home from
not-NATO-anymore Europe.
"... Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute, ..."
"... "Washington is treating the EU as an adversary. It is dealing the same way with Mexico, Canada, and with allies in Asia. This policy will provoke counter-reactions across the world." ..."
"... The National Interest ..."
"... Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare ..."
"... "We must increase Europe's autonomy and sovereignty in trade, economic and financial policies ... It will not be easy, but we have already begun to do it." ..."
When the US places financial sanctions one one country, it de facto sanctions many
other countries as well -- including many of its allies.
This is because not all countries and firms are interested in participating in the US
sanctions-based foreign policy.
Sanctions, after all, have become a favorite go-to strategy for American policymakers who
seek to isolate or punish foreign states that don't cooperate with US international policy
goals.
In recent years, the US has been most active in imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran,
with many consequences for US allies who are still open to doing business with both of those
countries.
The US can retaliate against organizations that violate US sanctions in a variety of ways.
In the past, the US has sued firms such as the Netherlands' ING Groep and Switzerland Credit
Suisse. Both firms have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines in the past. The US has
been known to
go after individuals .
US bureaucrats like to remind firms that penalties await them, should then not buckle under
US sanctions plan. In November 2018, for example, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo
announced :
I promise you that doing business in Iran in defiance of our sanctions will ultimately be
a much more painful business decision than pulling out of Iran.
Fear of sanctions has caused some firms to stop work mid project, such as
when Swiss pipe-laying company Allseas Group abandoned a $10 billion pipeline that was
nearing completion.
Not surprisingly, these firms -- who employ people, pay taxes, and contribute to economic
growth -- have put pressure on their governments to protest the mounting interference from the
US into private trade.
As a result, some European politicians are increasingly looking for ways
to get around US sanctions . In a tweet last week, Germany's deputy foreign minister Niels
Annen wrote "Europe needs new instruments to be able to defend itself from licentious
extraterritorial sanctions."
Another "senior German government official" concluded, "Washington is treating the EU as
an adversary. It is dealing the same way with Mexico, Canada, and with allies in Asia. This
policy will provoke counter-reactions across the world."
But how is the US so easily able to sanction so much of the world, including companies in
huge and influential countries like Germany?
The answer lies in the fact the US dollar and the US economy remain at the center of the
international trade system.
SWIFT: How the US Sanctions the World
By the waning days of the Cold War, the US dollar had become the dominant currency in the
non-communist world, thanks to the Bretton Woods agreement, the petrodollar, and the sheer size
of the US economy.
Once the Communist Bloc collapsed, the dollar was poised to grow even more in importance,
and the world's financial institutions searched for a way to make global trade and investing
even faster and easier.
Henry Farrell at The National Interestdescribes
what came next:
Financial institutions wanted to communicate with other financial institutions so that
they could send and receive money. This led them to abandon inefficient
institution-to-institution communications and to converge on a common solution: the financial
messaging system maintained by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT) consortium, based in Belgium. Similarly, banks wanted to make
transactions in the globally dominant currency, the U.S. dollar. ... In practice, the
physical infrastructure, for a variety of efficiency reasons, tended to channel global flows
through a small number of central data cables and switch points.
At the time, Europe was still years away from creating the euro, and it only seemed natural
that a centralized dollar-transfer system be developed for all the world.
SWIFT personnel have always maintained their organization is apolitical, neutral, and only
interested in providing a service. But geopolitical realities have long intervened. Farrell
continues:
The centralizing tendencies meant that the new infrastructure of global networks was
asymmetric: some nodes and connections were far more important than others. ... What this
meant was that a few states -- most prominently the United States -- had the latent ability
to transform the global economic infrastructures ... into an architecture of global power and
information gathering.
By 2001, the power of this centralized system had become apparent. And in the wake of 9/11,
the US used the "War on Terror" and an opportunity to turn SWIFT into an enormous international
tool for surveillance and financial power.
In his book Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare Juan Zarate shows
how the US Treasury officials pressured SWIFT and its personnel to provide the US government
with the means to use this international financial "plumbing" to deprive the US's enemies of
access to markets.
This started out slow, and SWIFT officials were concerned it would become widely known that
SWIFT was becoming politicized and largely a tool of the US and US allies. Nevertheless, the
American regime pressed its advantage, and by 2012 "for the first time ever, SWIFT unplugged
designated Iranian banks from its system, in accordance with a European directive and under the
threat of possible US legislation."
This only strengthened worries among both world regimes and the world's financial
institutions that the basic technical infrastructure of the international financial system was
really a political tool.
The World Searches for Alternatives
Naturally, Russia and China have been highly motivated to find alternatives to SWIFT. But
even perennial US allies have grown far more wary of leaving the financial system in a place
where it can be so easily dominated by the US regime. If Iranian banks can be "unplugged" so
easily from the global system, what's to stop the US from taking similar steps against German
banks, French banks, or Italian banks?
This, of course, is an implied threat behind US demands that European companies not try to
work around US sanctions or face "punishment." From the US perspective, if Germans refuse to
kowtow to US policy, then there's an easy solution: simply cut the Germans off from the
international banking system.
Consequently, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced
in 2008
"We must increase Europe's autonomy and sovereignty in trade, economic and financial
policies ... It will not be easy, but we have already begun to do it."
By late 2019, the UK, France, and Germany had put together a workaround called "INSTEX"
designed to facilitate continued trade with Iran without using the dollar and the SWIFT system
built upon it. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have joined the
system as well.
As of January 2020, however, the cumbersome system remains unused. But we remain in the very
early stages of European efforts to get a divorce from the dollar-dominated financial system.
The INSTEX system has been devised, for now, for a limited purpose. But there is no reason it
cannot be expanded in the future. The short-term prospects for a functional system are low.
Longer-term, however, things are different. The motivation for a long-term workaround is
growing. The Trump administration has embraced showmanship that looks good in a short-term news
cycle, but which encourages US allies to pull away. Farrell continues:
Unlike Obama, Donald Trump did not use careful diplomacy to build international support
for [new sanctions] against Iran. Instead, he imposed them by fiat, to the consternation of
European allies, who remained committed to the [Iran agreement put in place under Obama]. The
United States now threatened to impose draconian penalties on its allies' firms if they
continued to work inside the terms of an international agreement that the United States
itself had negotiated. The EU invoked a blocking statute, which effectively made it illegal
for European firms to comply with U.S. sanctions, but without any significant consequences.
SWIFT, for example, avoided the statute by never formally stating that it was complying with
U.S. sanctions; instead explaining that it was regrettably suspending relations with Iranian
banks "in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial
system."
All of this is viewed with alarm by not only Europe, but by China and Russia as well. The
near-constant stream of threats by the US administration to impose ever harsher limits and
sanctions on both China and Europe has pushed the rest of the world to accelerate plans to get
around US sanctions. After all, as of mid-2019, the US
had nearly 8,000 sanctions in place against various states and organizations and
individuals. The term now being used in reference to American sanctions is "
overuse ." It was one thing when the US imposed sanctions in some extreme cases. But now
the US appears increasingly fond of using and threatening sanctions regularly, without
consulting allies.
This makes continued US dominance in this regard less likely as allies the world pour more
and more resources into ending the US-SWIFT control of the system. In a 2018 report, "Towards a
Stronger International Role of the Euro," the European Commission described U.S. sanctions as "
wake-up call regarding Europe's economic and monetary sovereignty. "
The effort still has a long way to go, but perhaps not as far as many think.
The dollar remains far ahead of the euro in terms of the dollar's use as a reserve currency,
but the dollar and the euro are move evenly matched
when it comes to international payment transactions.
If the rest of the world remains sufficiently motivated, more can certainly be done to rein
in dollar-based sanctions. Indeed, in 2019, former US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew
admitted :
the plumbing is being built and tested to work around the United States. Over time as
those tools are perfected, if the United States stays on a path where it is seen as going it
alone there will increasingly be alternatives that will chip away at the centrality of the
United States.
If the US finds itself not longer at the center of the global financial system, this will
bring significant disadvantages for the US regime and US residents. A decline in demand for the
dollar would also lead to less demand for US debt. This would put upward pressure on interest
rates and thus bring higher debt-payment obligations for the US regime. This would constrain
defense spending and the ability of the US to project its power to every corner of the globe.
At the same time, central bank efforts to drive interest rates back down would bring a greater
need to monetize the debt. The resulting price inflation in either consumer goods or assets
would be significant.
The fact none of this will become obvious next week or next month
doesn't mean it will never happen . But the US's enthusiasm for sanctions means the world
is already learning the price of doing business with the United States and with the dollar.
Took three months to pass the legislation to seize control of the Gold supply even though
they knew the U.S defaulted on the War debt of first world war and America was only partially
involved.
Better move fast. U.S has not declared War for real since Pearl Harbour.
Best way to avert it is to look at the economic calculations being made and slow what they
need for this extended and probably apocalyptic war to start.
They need man power for what is planned but I have a suspicion this time they are planning
for megadeath on all sides.
Nothing will be destroyed. Situations like this are about chipping away and crumbling.
Rome was not built in a day. People sit in wait to find a weak spot of the hegemon and if you
think that the US is a perfect and perpetual hegemon than you are as delusional as Obama.
He bragged in 2015 that he/they twisted arms of countries when they did not do what he
'needed' them to do. (See y-tube). Every country, every person who had arms twisted is
sitting in wait to hit back. Chisel away, apply needlepricks, obedience can be forced; desire
for revenge never dies.
You need to treat people well on your way up because you are meeting them all again on
your way down.
Will The US Obsession With Sanctions Destroy The Dollar?
Hopefully it will destroy the US BULLY TOO...
This saga of Sanctions all started with the Black Jesus Obama and Russia. It was a
disaster then, harmful to Russian women and children and never affect the oligarchs. It is
Stalingrad stuff.
Then along comes the pile of **** known as the Orange Jesus. Considering Trump's pretend
hatred of Obama, he sure loved the community organizers weaponizing of the Dollar Reserve...
So much so the orange ******* now has 40% of the world population under Dollar Reserve
Sanctions. More Stalingrad ****. And the world hates it.
So there is no question that nations will find ways around sanctions and the mother fking
pencil necked poodles that support this mfkirng ****. They can't comprehend that if TRUMP
does this to some country, he can do it to them.
The Dollar Reserve was intended to be apolitical a means of global commerce. At Bretton
Woods, Maynard Keynes addressed the Reserve Currency to avoid this. He recommended a
synthetic reserve currency composed of five of the world's leading currencies called the
BANCOR. He was voted down by the US delegation that only would accept the Dollar over the
Pound. Britain was too weak after the war to oppose the US. So that set up the Dollar Reserve
by intimidation and bullying. What else is new.
Now the US uses their 800 military bases to enforce their Sanctions and Dollar reserve
weaponizing.
This will come to an end. Europe is a larger economy than the US and Asia is larger than
the US and Europe Combined. So this dollar reserve weaponizing crap will end.
Interesting isn't it that the two most economically illiterate presidents in history, love
sanctions. I promise, the Dollar reserve as the primary currency of exchange is THE DEAD MAN
WALKING.... They are also the most RACIST presidents in US History.
Goldamn did a white paper on this... If the US loses the Dollar Reserve the GDP would tank
30%. So yeah... welcome to the the stone age and fighting in the streets. But to neutralize
the dollar Reserve damage only requires competition to the US Dollar.
So far the Yuan is not printed in enough quantity to compete in a big way. The Euro has
never shown the inclination to be anything but a poodle.
WWII has never ended. Look at NATO... who are they opposing... RUSSIA. Give it a rest.
Russia is not going to attack Europe. So this NATO military facade is about to crumble. Trump
attempting to get NATO to attack Iran and enter the Middle east is laughable and won't
happen. Only the British Poodles are stupid enough for that.
And why is Britain fking with anybody... Doesn't the Queen have enough RYSIST issues now
that Harry and Megan have called her a RYSIST? Love to see Britain go it alone but they are
real pussies and have filled the world with hatred so there will be consequences.
Sanctions use the same philosophy of the the Mafia and having to use it means the days of
the dollar hegemony are gradually ending. What goes around comes around. yin-yang.
YES but for the first time they are present. The Euro is a Reserve Currency but Europe has
never asserted its status. Likely due to Germany. Germany destroys Europe in so many way.
Merkel is pathetic.
Now the Yuan as of 2016 is a reserve currency and they are trading Iron ore from Australia
and Brazil in Yuan. Also China has a 24 Trillion dollar internal commodities market that
trades in Yuan. So the mechanics of massive Trade are already set in place in China and
Asia.
Traditionally the largest trading nation had the reserve currency. The US is no longer the
largest trading nation. They are the largest debtor nation however.
This only Bretton woods post World War II rules. Back in the old days gold was trusted
because people who had it actually hd to produce or trade for it. War economy is always pure
fiat even if it means killing your own soldiers and robbing their families.
If it gets dirty everyone is going to have to play the game. Why do you think they are
still dealing with Afghanistan like its the centre of the universe for the last 20 years.
PTSD and ******** propaganda on young men is enough to push them over the edge. Same thing
for the nasty **** that happens to women.
All these currencies are pure fiat floating against perceived demand and ********
technocrats. People want to die in these situations they are going to monetize human misery.
The opiate epidemics in the 60s pushed the U.S of the Gold standard. Where do you think the
French got all those U.S dollars from straight after the war.
Ever heard of this little thing called cryptocurrency? It can't be weaponized like a CB
currency because there is no centralized authority and no need for a trusted third party. It
can cross international borders at the speed of light and cheaply to boot. It's quite clever.
I imagine it will become all the rage in the next couple years.
I dont think you understand the concept of war. They napalmed kids to heard their parents
into concentration camps. That was the Pentagon. Theyre not going to spare your internet
service provider in the name of free trade and libertarian finance.
Bit coin can be used the same way as the military script just by switching off your
computer and forcing you to adopt another currency. They did it every few months in Vietnam.
IBM ran the analytics with a super computer and they still didnt beat the Tet Offensive which
was just people letting of steam for lunar new year by killing anyone who worked with the
Americans.
Hedge. Iodine for fallout. Water purification tablets. Toilet Paper and Sanitary wipes and
shoes. Batteries. You wont be allowed to grow food when it starts.
Economic sanctions, sanctions of any kind, are like pepper: use cautiously, sparingly, and
only when the recipe calls for it. Don't inhale, either. Massive sneeze attacks can follow
and the dish can be ruined.
signed by Trump in 2017 means we have essentially entered into a world where the American
regime is weaponizing sanctions to dominate the planet.
Of course, karma is a law, which cannot be avoided, and this article is right. It is only a
matter of time. Moreover, he is right in that when we lose this status our ability to wage
endless wars throughout the planet will stop. I hope to see that day.
It is my feeling that the primary reason we are not in a major war at this moment is that
our "adversaries" have noted our decline, as well have many astute and not so astute ZH
members have, and are waiting us out. The other is that our military is not as good as we
claim and some of us know it.
GOLD should be trading currently at least at 4,800 and SILVER should be trading today
at triple digits -- The Federal Reserve and PPT like to manipulate the precious metals, stop
manipulating the PM morons.
Let's take a look at the SILVER chart:
SILVER -- TF = Daily -- SILVER --time frame is daily-- has developed a very well known
technical pattern CUP and HANDLE -- SILVER STRONG BUY -- https://invst.ly/pie5l
"Donny Appleseed" send$ his tiding$ to the American lemming... counting all those "0"s
that are only gettin bigger with each sweep of the EST "second hand".
Still allowed to be "alive" after all that damage and all these years!
I just attended a China - US conference. The chinese fund managers who spoke there said
that China's economy is at a standstill and now is the time for "VULTURE" funds to be active
acquiring heavily discounted firms which are over-leveraged. Not the sounds of a ready for
prime time currency. And the market know as less than 2% of global reserves are Yuan as in
the chart and Chinese dollar reserves are 30% of what they were years ago.
Germany's deputy foreign minister Niels Annen wrote "Europe needs new instruments to be
able to defend itself from licentious extraterritorial sanctions."
The BIG problem with the US dollar is not only the data but it is also the staggering
amounts of printing, printing, printing and QE4ever that totally destroy the purchasing power
of the US Dollar. Only GOLD and SILVER are the real 'store of value'.
Let's take a look at the US Dollar chart:
US DOLLAR Index -- TF = 4H -- ROUNDED TOP suggesting much lower levels ahead -- US DOLLAR
STRONG SELL -- https://invst.ly/pj042
Like how in the 80's everybody assumed flying cars were "near future", people who think
the dollar will lose (or already lost) reserve status are delusional.
It will take a long long time to ween the world off of the entire banking complex,
literally made by and through the dollar.
Multiple reasons, primarily:
1) US gov still a strong presence around the world militarily and financially
2) US dollar still the #1 currency used in transactions between major firms
3) US banking system has, in its pockets, about 80% of the worlds billionaire class, which
conversely, makes most of the major decisions around the world
4) SWIFT system and World Bank both huge institutions that literally hold most 3rd world
countries economics (see Venezuela for examples of a 3rd world country trying to NOT do what
the US wants)
In a static geopolitical environment, your points are valid. After all, it's been this way
for a very long time. You would - and perhaps will be however, amazed at just how fast the
dynamics of your 4 points can change when two near equally (and in some cases superior)
military and economic world powers are geopolitically pushed to a limit they will no longer
accept. And guess what? That's coming a whole lot sooner than most think.
EVERY ******* in Washington needs to go and be replace with people who have an interest in
the well being of the country rather than their personal power plays. The world HATES the
Washington assholes almost as much as the US citizens hate the bastards.
Sanctions are used to force another nation into compliance.
Bombs are used to force another nation into compliance.
Anyone still think the treasury and Fed aren't the biggest warmongers around? They have to
be, otherwise the US dollar would be toast, as there is nothing but a military holding it up.
A nation with 5% of the global population, full of fat walmart shoppers, does not have the
productive means to force their will without the war machine. Ironically, that same war
machine is fully funded by the foreigners the bankers bomb, as using the USD means you must
hold dollar reserves. It is a grand racket.
The Russia and Ukraine scandals leading to impeachment are nonsense but Trump should be
impeached for hastening the demise of our reserve currency. Weaponizing the dollar was the
dumbest strategy he ever came up with. Russia and China are gaining friends and influence
every day while the U.S. is becoming an outcast. They are using the Carrot while all Trump
knows is the Stick.
The US UK Israel petrodollar system collapsed overnight with the US military having no
credible response to having its base bombed. A credible response is for the US to have dealt
death from the skies, destroying and severely deteriorating Iran's ballistic launch
capabilities or at the least a strike on its major oil refineries. That did not happen.
Why?
The US & UK airforce are outdated....in fact any conventional air force that relies on
drones or stealth jets to deliver bomb payloads are outdated!
The purpose of an air-force is to bomb targets from the sky. Iranians have shown you can
do it with ultra-cheap short medium range ballistic missiles which are nothing more than crap
aluminum tubes filled with propellant, a low cost cell phone GPS guidance system and a big
payload. You can make millions for the cost of one stealth jet!
IRAN has all US, Israel and Saudi targets mapped and gave a demo of what they can do. By
the time the shitty F35s start their engines on a runway of a worthless aircraft carrier,
thousands of these missiles will be launched by Iran destroying all targets within minutes of
declaration of TOTAL WAR!
THE PURPOSE OF STEALTH has been defeated. There is no deterrence against ballistic
missiles which are faster then aircraft! So by the time the first wave of stupid burger
planes reach IRAN, all BURGER bases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel and aircraft carriers will
have been destroyed! So the USA cant protect anything without losing everything!
TOTAL WAR even with a weak power like Iran means TOTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE WAR in which case
everybody's base gets destroyed and who ever pushes the button fastest gets to destroy the
targets fastest and everything is over in less than an hour! Since burgers dont have magic
hollywood space lasers, just piece of **** F35s and outdated carriers....burgers cant defend
anything! Burgers have no deterrence for TOTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE WARFARE. There is no time to
start your engines and take off on a runway, the missiles are already on their way and will
hit bases and aircraft carriers within 10 to 20 minutes of declaration of TOTAL WAR.
Trump killed a rook (solemani) in the game of geopolitical chess (which the Persians
invented) and the mullahs in Tehran checkmated the USA and Israel by making redundant the
view that only very very expensive stealth jets can accurately deliver bombs with precision!
No brainer right there...a plane requires life support, complex systems just to support the
idiot who is flying it to the target...a missile requires no stealth technology, its fast,
accurate and deadly with no deterrent! In one stroke the mullahs revealed that the entire US
air-force is obsolete against TOTAL short/ medium range ballistic missile war!
We should have had ballistic missile carriers but we dont because greedy defense
contractor boomers think they are the smartest defense planners when in fact they just loved
to build planes instead of realizing short range ballistic GPS guided precision missiles can
do the same thing! But not much profit in that of course..
US air-force outdated = US ground troops outdated because they rely on US air-force for
back up. So you have to withdraw = NO PETRODOLLAR.
As of today the US cannot defend its bases in Iraq, Israel or Saudi Arabia....
US/UK/Israel/Saudis combined cannot protect anything without losing everything!
That is called check-mate my friends. The petrodollar age has ended and the AGE OF THE
PETROYUAN has begun. China copies everything the US does, they wanted their Saudi Arabia and
they got all of IRAN and IRAQ.
Now Trump has to sign trade deal after trade deal because the world holds a massive amount
of US securities and we have to supply real goods and services...opening up oil fields for
export, everything. Burgers have to become a land of farmers and oil workers to satisfy all
the US dollar holdings out there because TRUMP LOST THE PETRODOLLAR by DESTROYING US CREDIBLE
MILITARY DETERRENCE for the whole world to see...the ability to provide 'SEGURIDY' AS HENRY
KISSINGER would say.
Everybody now knows the US is just another power only burgers have their head up their
asses. A big crash is coming our way and this time we DO NOT HAVE THE PETRODOLLAR FOR
RECOVERY LIKE WE HAD IN 2008!
TRUMP LOST THE WESTERN PETRODOLLAR HEGEMON....HE LITERALLY LOST THE WEST!
THE PETRODOLLAR AGE OF PROSPERITY HAS ENDED! BECAUSE DRUMPF, KUSHNER AND NETANYAHU!
The EVANGELICAL BIBLICAL APOCALYPSE has come and gone! The GREAT SATAN as the mullahs
would call them have been revealed to have no power to price oil in the middle east anymore!
The military humiliation and withdrawal comes next...its a Greek tragedy in modern
times...
Paraphrasing Thucydides
"A society that divides its warriors and scholars will have its wars planned by cowards
and fought by fools"
Trump knocked out a rook and a couple bishops, and ignored opportunities on several pawns.
By not taking the bait, escalations fall onto Iran's shoulders and will be increasingly hard
to justify.
Eventually their retaliation actions blur into the smoke of their terrorist proxies. Then
they fulfill the role thst Trump claims they occupy. Then action on them will be easily
justified. Even now Iran is shredding the JCPOA, that document that they acted like was so
dear to them - thus giving the rest of the world the finger. Hey, you couldn't play their
part worse if you tried...
There is no deterrence against ballistic missiles which are faster then aircraft! So by
the time the first wave of stupid burger planes reach IRAN, all BURGER bases in Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, Israel and aircraft carriers will have been destroyed! So the USA cant
protect anything without losing everything!
That's what Hitler thought, Saddam tried it as well, the theory proved to be wrong.
The purpose of an air-force is to bomb targets from the sky. Iranians have shown you can
do it with ultra-cheap short medium range ballistic missiles which are nothing more than
crap aluminum tubes filled with propellant, a low cost cell phone GPS guidance system and a
big payload. You can make millions for the cost of one stealth jet!
This was particularly hilarious. If that were the case the USA and its allies would be
doing that. Do you not realize the US has had rocket artillery for the past 70 years? The
larger the rocket, and the longer its range, the larger and heavier the transport TEL vehicle
and support base and storage must be. The industrial and technical support base as well. And
the crews to man and employ them get larger as well, as does their training equipping and
paying of them.
That's in fact very expensive, and you run out of rockets real fast.
But stealth jets come back every day, for months, or years, and drop big-*** bombs on your
missile factories, and its industrial support base, it's electricity supply, its fuel supply,
its chemical factories, its bases, bunkers, sensors comms, personnel, ports and the entire
industrial economic infrastructure of the entire country.
then why didnt you boomer? Because Iran's missiles will hit your base anyway..stealth or
no stealth that is the point! The US was supposed to wage such a death match war against
China or Russia...not a 4th rate shithole like IRAN. You boomers literally have your head up
your asses. The 90s is over boomers! The boomer run US armed forces is totally obsolete
because we have been humiliated and the boomers are so shameless they are behaving like
'colored peoples of poor upbringing'.
Hold me back or ill......hold me back or ill.... you will do what? Nothing! No one held
burger boy trump back. Burger boy held himself back because he and his son in law and the
prime brains behind losing the petrodollar, Netanyahu would lose Israel also along with Saudi
Arabia and all burger bases!
oh so I must be a muslim if I said Israel lost the petrodollar because the joke is on you
clowns. Lose the petrodollar boomers lose their 401k and Israel has to negotiate with Iran to
exist...win win if you ask me...cant wait to watch you flip burgers in your 80s.
The fact that you want us to use WWII Japan as comparison completely nullifies your rant.
Furthermore, revisionism and hyped up ability does no good in the real world. We don't need
to ask Hitler or Saddam. Had Saddam moved in on Saudi Arabia rather than allowing forces to
amass it's been a different story. Regarding Hitler, you cinta had little to no hand in the
matter. Case in point.
In this sense Soleimani assassination opened such a huge can of worms that the results can
be judged only in several years.
It exposes Trump and his cronies as one trick ponies who does not think strategically or are
manipulated (for all practical purposes the hypothesis that Trump is a puppet is stronger that
then the hypothesis that he is an independent player)
In some way It might well be that Trump put the final nail into the global, led by the
USA,neoliberal empire and legitimized the existence of two competing economic blocks. That's a
huge change, if true (the fact that China folded contracts that)
He also implicitly acknowledged that the USA no longer can attack on Iran military without
the danger of suffering large losses and profound negative consequences itself. Including
Russia and China support for Iran in such a war, which would make it the second Vietnam. That's
another huge change -- the end of "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine as we know it. .
Now we known that Trump bullied EU threating auto-tariff to support him. That a clear return
to the Wild West in international relations and it another nail into the empire coffin. Esper
recently blabbed that the US has the right under Article II of its Constitution to attack
Iranian territory in response to offensive action by Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. So UN does
not matter, right ? The UN Charter was created to stop WWIII. Under Trump, it again became a
real possibility with the USA taking the central the role in creating the conditions for
unleashing it.
Here is an interesting quote from yesterday (Jan 15, 2020) article by Pepe Escobar in Asia
Times (
Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2001 to
2005, cuts to the chase: "America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19
straight years of war and no end in sight? It's part of who we are. It's part of what the
American Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as
Trump is doing right now, as Esper is doing right now and a host of other members of my
political party, the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to lie, cheat and steal
to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That's the truth of it. And
that's the agony of it."
Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are fully aware of the stakes. Diplomats and analysts are
working on the trend, for the trio, to evolve a concerted effort to protect one another from
all forms of hybrid war – sanctions included – launched against each of them.
For the US, this is indeed an existential battle – against the whole Eurasia
integration process, the New Silk Roads, the Russia-China strategic partnership, those
Russian hypersonic weapons mixed with supple diplomacy, the profound disgust and revolt
against US policies all across the Global South, the nearly inevitable collapse of the US
dollar. What's certain is that the Empire won't go quietly into the night. We should all be
ready for the battle of the ages.
.P.S. To me it looks that Trump lost all antiwar republicans and independents , as well as a
part of military who voted for him in 2016 (and who now are Tulsi supporters)
The Senate trial, if it materializes, now can become the leverage point to drive a wedge
between moderate Republicans and Trump via his Iran policies.
Pakistan should slip one across the border in a rail car of elephants.
We now shift the focus unto the Impeachment Trial. Shifty Schiff leads the prosecution.
Should be interesting spectator sport. Never be too certain of the outcome. Some are positing
Trump could be removed. Many Republicans are uneasy. The guy is unfit to have the nuclear
codes, displays impaired emotion - schizophrenia. Others, Independent and Republican
turncoats consider Trump embarrassing. Over the last days Trump's Sec. of Defense, Esper
threw him under the bus.
The events of the past twelve days since Trump murdered IRGC General Qassem Soleimani
prove this beyond any doubt. Impeachment was the leverage point to drive open a wedge
between Republicans and Trump through Iran.
Pelosi slow-walking the articles of impeachment to the Senate was all part of the
pantomime, folks. She gets what she wants: Congress asserting more power and the Democrats
shoring up their base by taking out an eyesore in Trump.
She waits just long enough for Trump to do something questionable and for it to be made
known publicly.[.]
The Swamp Strikes Back and puts Trump in a no-win situation.
The Wall St. Journal article from this weekend which intimated that Trump made the
decision to kill Soleimani was motivated by shoring up his support in the Israeli Occupied
Senate is further proof.
"Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen.
Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment
trial in the Senate, associates said," the newspaper reported.[.]
"That is why Trump's presidency is a blessing for Iran. "
It's real blessing to the entire world, otherwise how else the world would have come to see
the real ugly face of Americans
@Rd | Jan 15 2020 1:01 utc | 98
This is now beyond government and oligarchy , and laws, this is now about a
national/religious demand for revenge, on killing a true national shia muslim hero away from
any political or difference in opinion.
IMO, the demand for revenge can not be even controlled by military and it's leaders, the
order for revenge can even be sanctioned by a relative unknown cleric in a shia village.
@moon | Jan 15 2020 7:52 utc | 136
Thanks, PL banned me over a year ago , for calling US military (yeman) a mercenary force, Now
Trump is proud he sold 3000 US trops to Bone saw for 1 billion.
I also believe that Iranian military has understood for some time now, that US (Military) is
not willing to enter a war with Iran at this time, which makes me believe that a low
intensity, long, covert attritional war across the western Asia will finally make US to
leave. IMO pre announced without casualty attack on AalA US base by Iran Military was to
allow any future covert low intensity attack by Iranian regional allies on US forces as
non-sanctioned or related by Iranian government or military.
Which makes it hard to fight directly.
Journalism PoliticsFurther Followup
On The Soleimani Assassination I wish to point out some matters not getting a lot of
attention in the US media.
An important one of those was reported two days ago by Juan Cole . It is that
apparently it has not been determined for certain that the initial attack that set off this
current round of deaths when a militia in Iraq attacked an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk in
which an American contractor was killed, almost certainly a matter of collateral damage
although not recognized as such, was actually done by Kata'b Hezbollah, the group reported to
have done it. That group was commanded by al-Mushani, who was also assassinated with Soleimani,
with whom he was allied. But it is not certain that they did it. As it is, the Kirkuk base is
dominated by Kurdish Pesh Merga, with whom it is not at all obvious the pro-Iranian militias
like the Kat'b Hezbollah have hostile differences. This may have been cooked up to create an
excuse for assassinating Soleimani.
Indeed, it has now been reported that seven months ago Trump had approved killing Soleimani
essentially at the first instance there would be a good excuse for doing so. In fact it is now
reported that although Trump had not heard of Soleimani during th 2016 election, within five
minutes of his inauguration he suggested killing Soleimani. SecState Pompeo been encouraging
and pushing this action, but it has been something Trump has been hot to do for some time.
Going up for an impeachment trial looks like a really good time.
We have now seen quite a dance around reasons to justify this. We must keep clear that it is
a matter of both US and international law that this sort of killing of a foreign national
official such as General Soleimani is that there be an "imminent threat." I shall not drag
through the various versions of what was supposedly the imminent threat was here, but it has
finally become clear that there was none. And as of today both Pompeo and AG Barr have now
pivoted to saying that it was done for "deterrence," but that leaves this assassination as
illegal, with US troops in Iraq now declared to be"terrorists."
Now indeed the further followup has become quite a mess, although hopefully the escalation
has stopped and war will not happen, despite getting very close to the brink. So Iran made its
strike on two bases with US troops in Iraq. While it initially looked like the Iranians were
going out of their way to avoid killing any Americans, local US commanders now say that it
appears that the strikes were in fact aimed at killing some Americans, and some were in fact
injured. I do not know if this is true or not, but it is disturbing and shows how close we have
gotten to heightened war.
Then we had this disaster of the Iranians themselves shooting down a commercial Ukrainian
airplane (oh, the irony), killing 176 civilians, mostly Iranians, Canadians, and Ukrainians,
plus some others. With the admission by the regime, anti-government demonstrations have broken
out at universities especially in Tehran where many of the Iranians on the plane were from, and
many of the university students heading to Canada. Those demos have gone on for three days
bringing forth a harsh put down from the government, but with news people quitting their jobs
out of disgust. The government has now arrested some supposedly responsible for the erroneous
shootdown under heightened alert status, which would not have come to pass without the illegal
assassination. It is unclear if these arrests will bring an end to the demonstrations, but it
should be kept in mind that these involve much smaller numbers of people than turned out in the
aftermath of Soleimani's assassination.
Underlying this most recent uprising is the fact that Iran is suffering serious econoimic
problems. Much of this is due to the Trump sanctions, but they also reflect entrenched
corruption and spending on foreign adventures, such as support for foreign militias. These are
difficult times, and let us hope that all sides step back and reduce the heightened
tensions.
Barkley
run75441 , January 15, 2020 12:23 pm
Barkley:
Good post and thanks for the follow-up.
Normally when something happens in the Middle East, I head over to Informed Comment to
see what Juan is saying about the situation. You have added information I was not aware
of as I had not been over to Juan Cole's Informed Comment in several days. Also from a
January 11th column of his:
"Lest the Trumpies imply that only Obama de facto allied with Soleimani and his
Iraqi Shiite militias, it should be pointed out that they played an important role in
the defeat of ISIL at Mosul during Trump's presidency. Although they did not fight
their way into the city, they fanned out to the west and north to prevent ISIL
terrorists from escaping to Raqqa in Syria. That was why Kata'ib Hizbullah had a base
at Qa'im, a checkpoint between Iraq and Syria, where they were preventing ISIL agents
from going back and forth. Trump kicked off the current crisis by bombing his allies at
Qa'im, killing some 26 militiamen. And then he droned his sometime ally Soleimani to
death at Baghdad airport as Soleimani was about to begin covert peace talks with Saudi
Arabia."
I must walk back one speculation I made in this post. It is not the case that the base
attacked near Kirkuk held Kurdish Pesh Merga. It indeed houses US and Iraqi national troops
dedicated to fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Four US service people were injured along with two
national Iraqi troops. The US citizwn killed was naturalized and born in Iraq.
It remains possible that it was IAIA/ISIL/Daesh carried out the attack as they are active in
that area. However, most think it was Kata'b Hezbollah, enocuraged and suppliled by
Soleimani.
run75441 , January 15, 2020 8:21 pm
Barkley:
Ok, so you missed some detail. The drone attack on Soleimani and others did not have to
occur. Furthermore, it appears this was planned months earlier and just never carried through.
To me, it is just another Trump distraction away from his impeachment.
Thanks for the shrewd analysis. The problem is that Trump appears to be morphing from
the mad negotiator into someone who really is mad. I think he knows he screwed up with
Soleimani and there's no taking it back, only doubling down . You can't talk your way out
of some mistakes. Trump is shrewd, but not very smart and like most bullies he's also weak.
He gets by being such an obvious bluffer and blowhard but when you start assassinating people
and expect to be praised for it it's no longer a game.
I'd say the solution is to give Trump the heave ho this November and not play his game of me
me me. Indeed the Iranians seem to be biding their time to see what happens.
Trump was always only tolerable as long as he spent his time shooting off his mouth rather
than playing the imperial chess master. This reality show has gone on long enough.
Not sure he "screwed up" with Suleimani. He now has something to point to when Adelson
and the Israel Firsters ring up. He has red meat for his base ("look what a tough guy I
am"). He can tell the Saudis they now owe him one.
He added slightly to the fund of hatred for America in the hearts of Sunnis but that fund is
already pretty full. If they respond with a terror attack Trump wins because people will rally
around the national leader and partisan differences will be put aside. Notice how fast
de-escalation happened, certainly feels alot like pre-orchestrated kayfabe.
This is about fight with fifth column... The time for those changes is long
overdue.
I truly believe that it is time to introduce certain changes to our country's main law,
changes that will directly guarantee the priority of the Russian Constitution in our legal
framework.
What does it mean? It means literally the following: requirements of international law and
treaties as well as decisions of international bodies can be valid on the Russian territory
only to the point that they do not restrict the rights and freedoms of our people and citizens
and do not contradict our Constitution.
Second, I suggest formalising at the constitutional level the obligatory requirements for
those who hold positions of critical significance for national security and sovereignty. More
precisely, the heads of the constituent entities, members of the Federation Council, State Duma
deputies, the prime minister and his/her deputies, federal ministers, heads of federal agencies
and judges should have no foreign citizenship or residence permit or any other document that
allows them to live permanently in a foreign state.
The goal and mission of state service is to serve the people, and those who enter this path
must know that by doing this they inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian
people without any assumptions and allowances.
Requirements must be even stricter for presidential candidates. I suggest formalising a
requirement under which presidential candidates must have had permanent residence in Russia for
at least 25 years and no foreign citizenship or residence permit and not only during the
election campaign but at any time before it too.
I know that people are discussing the constitutional provision under which one person cannot
hold the post of the President of the Russian Federation for two successive terms. I do not
regard this as a matter of principle, but I nevertheless support and share this view.
I have already said before that our goal is to ensure high living standards and equal
opportunities for all throughout the country. It is towards this goal that our national
projects and development plans are aimed.
Stephen Morrell ,
Putin clearly is the most informed and visionary bourgeois politician in the world today, by
a country mile. He not only is attempting to address the very real real social, demographic
and economic needs of Russia, in his usual comprehensive manner, but also and cannily is
co-opting many of the expectations that the USSR used to fulfil, attempting to neutralise any
socialist political sentiments in the Russian population. Putin is the Bismarck of Russia.
richard le sarc ,
Russia's economic situation, within the global capitalist system, with its large reserves,
much in gold, no exposure to the toilet paper of US Treasuries, and substantial local
self-sufficiency in agriculture (thank-you sanctions)means that when the Western debt Ponzi
Himalaya implodes, the Russians will be pretty much immune to the consequences.
richard le sarc ,
I agree entirely, but Putin has no alternative. Any chink in his armour and the USA will
destroy Russia and break it up into fragments as they did in Yugoslavia, the USSR and wish to
do in China. I rather think that Putin knows full well how dire is the global ecological
situation, but he needs to balance less enlightened forces at home, and the 'Atlanticist'
Quislings.
BigB ,
I don't disagree either: but that is not my point. The Atlanticists are waiting in the wings
for another four years. Last time I checked: they still command 80% of Russian private
property. And were expropriating $25bn pa annum in capital flight which has slowed slightly
in the last few years. I read the Saker too. There is a deadlock and uneasy power sharing
arrangement internally. But you may have missed the time when the Saker admitted "Putin is a
neoliberal"?
It may be difficult to disentangle our vision from the neoliberal-statist-market ontology
we are being repressed by but that is what we must do. We cannot expect neoliberal capitalist
social inclusivity to save us from ecological catastrophe. Nor can we expect to grow
economically into humanism: when exponential growth is what is destroying any lasting chance
of a purely sustainable human-emancipatory freedom. Putin may not have a choice: but we do.
The neoliberal-statist-market ontology is globally self-determined to produce total failure
as its inevitable and only possible outcome. This is known a 'parametric determinism' when we
automatically follow a maladaptive 'rational' self-optimising behaviour pattern long after it
failed as it did in 2007. There is no recovery possible, and technology only speeds total
failure whilst masking the ecological destruction it is accelerating.
States have to think and act in a pre-determined way that is true. But we do not have to
think like that. Not if there is to be any alternative or succession of humanity ex-post the
neoliberal-statist-market ontology which is morally, ecologically, humanistically and most
importantly *actually* bankrupt at this point.
Do we exit a 350 year process of exponentially disproportionate wealth distribution,
deliberate maldevelopment and global dehumanisation with all the wealth in the hands of those
who benefited from the expropriation? Or do we attempt a redistribution and develop a new,
hitherto unknown (and unknowable under capitalist alienation), value set where everyone
globally has equal access to resources and a right to life as a birthright?
The decision is not beyond you or I: but it will take the development of the assessment of
capitalism on other than its own neoliberal-statist-market ontological terms. No state or
state leader can develop humanity on the path of less-is-more it needs to take but the people
can. That's all.
richard le sarc ,
Putin is either a believing neo-liberal, in which case he is part of the problem you
identify, or he is using it through necessity. I could not agree more with your diagnosis of
the omnicidal nature of capitalism, and the inability of so many to visualise the end of
capitalism-they more easily can conceive of the end of humanity. In fact I rather think that
that is the way in which the ruling parasites intend to save their own bacon, by allowing the
ecological Holocaust to cull the 90% of 'useless eaters' that the ruling elites fear and
despise, and who they see only as a threat. Their labour is no longer required in an age of
automation, robotisation and computerisation, and even their consumption is today
superfluous. The ecological Holocaust has passed numerous tipping-points and points of no
return, while the IPCC downplays the extremity of our situation, the Right still denies it is
even happening, and the public is slowly waking up, too late of course. We've just
experienced a fire Holocaust, yet the Pentecostal thug PM, 'Smoko' Morrison, who is surely
seeing it all as God's Will and the sign of the coming End Times that his cult so longs for,
utterly refuses to reduce CO2 emissions beyond a ludicrous 28% by 2030 from 2005 (base-line
creep)levels, 'target', that we will not come close to. And now it is raining, a little, so
the Great Austrayan Mediocracy can go back to their slumber. But they'll 'Wake in Fright',
again, soon.
Hugh O'Neill ,
"It is very important that they adopt the true values of a large family –
that family is love, happiness, the joy of motherhood and fatherhood, that family is a strong
bond of several generations, united by respect for the elderly and care for children, giving
everyone a sense of confidence, security, and reliability. If the younger generations accept
this situation as natural, as a moral and an integral part and reliable background support
for their adult life, then we will be able to meet the historical challenge of guaranteeing
Russia's development as a large and successful country."
I know very little of Russia alas, but the over-riding impression I take from this speech
is President Putin's depth and breadth grasp of detail and concern for every aspect of
Russian society – and his frustration that decisions made at federal level do not
transform into concrete action at regional levels. The curse of bureaucracy and local
fiefdoms jealous of their power and autonomy.
I was fully expecting him to come up a resonating phrase like: "Ask not what your country
can do for you. Ask instead what you can for your country." For Russia to have (seemingly)
escaped the rapacious talons of the vulture capitalists unleashed by the Yeltsin puppet ought
to be a lesson for us all.
Finally, in international politics, he remains impeccably diplomatic, restrained and wise.
Would that there were more world leaders of such calibre.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Leadership and Learning are indispensable to each other. Looking at the calibre of Presidents
since JFK, it seems that all the best candidates were either killed off or scared off. All
the Unspeakable can do is kill in answer to any and all problems.
richard le sarc ,
Imagine the money freed if US military expenditure was not 90% graft and inefficiency.
richard le sarc ,
His manifest virtues are precisely why the vermin of the Western ruling elites hate him so
psychotically.
Tue 7 Jan 2020
01.00 EST
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'W
ithout the Cold War, what's the point of being an
American?" Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the novelist John Updike's late-20th-century everyman, posed that question just as the
"long twilight struggle" was winding down. More than quarter of a century later, the plaintive query still awaits a definitive
answer.
Indeed, the passage of time has only sown confusion about whether there is a point to being an American. Even as the
cold war was ending, Updike's everyman was not alone in feeling at a loss. By the 1980s, the cold war had become more than a
mere situation or circumstance. It was a state of mind.
ss="rich-link tone-news--item rich-link--pillar-news">
Read more
Most Americans had come to take its existence for granted. Like the polar ice cap or baseball's status as the national
pastime, it had acquired an appearance of permanence. So its passing caught citizens unaware. Those charged with managing the
cold war were, if anything, even more surprised. The enterprise to which they had devoted their professional lives had suddenly
vanished. Here was a contingency that the sprawling US national security apparatus, itself a product of the anti-communist
crusade, had failed to anticipate.
On one level, of course, the surprise could not have been more gratifying. In the epic competition pitting west against east,
the god-fearing against the godless and democracy against totalitarianism, "our side" had won. All-out nuclear war had been
averted. The cause of freedom, which Americans felt certain they themselves embodied, had prevailed. Victory was decisive,
sweeping and unequivocal.
In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a
senior adviser to the Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev
, had warned: "We are going to do a terrible thing to you we are going to deprive you of an enemy."
As the Soviet Union passed out of existence, Americans were left not just without that enemy, but without even a framework for
understanding the world and their place in it. However imperfectly, the cold war had, for several decades, offered a semblance of
order and coherence. The collapse of communism shattered that framework. Where there had been purposefulness and predictability,
now there was neither.
Winning the cold war brought Americans face-to-face with a predicament comparable to that confronting the lucky person who
wins the lottery: hidden within a windfall is the potential for monumental disaster. Putting that money to good use while
avoiding the pitfalls inherent in suddenly acquired riches calls for prudence and self-awareness not easily demonstrated when
the big house, luxury car and holiday home you have always wanted are yours for the asking.
Similarly, the end of the cold war might have given Americans pause, especially since the issues at hand were of considerably
greater significance than homes and cars. At least in theory, the moment might have invited reflection on some first-order
questions, such as: what is the meaning of freedom? What does freedom allow? What obligations does it impose? Whom or what does
it exclude?
O
f course, Americans had been wrestling with such questions
since well before
1776
, the answers evolving over time. During the several decades of the cold war, however, the exigencies of the east-west
rivalry had offered a reason to throttle down impulses to explore freedom's furthermost boundaries. Except on the fringes of
American politics, most citizens accepted the word from Washington that their way of life was under grave threat. In the pecking
order of national priorities, addressing that threat defending freedom rather than enlarging it tended to take precedence
over other considerations.
This is not to suggest that cold-war Americans were a compliant lot. They were not. From the 1950s, misleadingly enshrined as
a decade of conformity, through the Ronald Reagan-dominated 80s, domestic crises and controversies were constants. Among the
issues energising or enraging Americans were civil liberties, the nuclear arms race, mismanaged wars of dubious provenance,
challenges to artistic tradition, leftwing and rightwing radicalism, crass materialism that coexisted with widespread poverty and
a host of simmering issues connected to race, sex and gender. Yet through it all, a common outlook, centred on resistance to the
"red threat", endured. For most citizens most of the time, the cold war itself sufficed to explain "the point of being an
American".
The collapse of the Soviet empire between 1989 and 1991 robbed that outlook of its last vestiges of authority. Rarely, if
ever, had the transition from one historical period to another occurred quite so abruptly, with such a precise set of
demarcations, and with such profound implications. As if in an instant, the discipline that the cold war had imposed vanished.
The absurdity of defining reality as an either/or choice red or dead, slave or free, good v evil now became blazingly
apparent. The impact on American ambitions and expectations was akin to removing the speed limiter from an internal combustion
engine. Suddenly the throttle opened up. The future appeared uniquely promising, offering Americans a seemingly endless array of
choices, while confronting them with few evident constraints. Everything seemed possible.
Confident that an era of unprecedented US economic, military and cultural ascendancy now beckoned, members of an intoxicated
elite threw caution to the winds. They devised and promulgated a new consensus consisting of four elements.
Germans on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on 10 November 1989. Photograph: Fabrizio
Bensch/Reuters
The first of these was globalisation or, more precisely, globalised neoliberalism. Stripped to its essence, globalisation was
all about wealth creation: unconstrained corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale in a world open to the movement of
goods, capital, ideas and people would create wealth on a hitherto unimagined scale.
The second element was global leadership, a euphemism for hegemony or, more simply still, for empire. At its core, global
leadership was all about order: unchallengeable military might would enable the US to manage and police a postcolonial yet
implicitly imperial order favourable to American interests and values. Through the exercise of global leadership, the US would
enforce globalisation. Order and abundance would go hand in hand.
The third element of the consensus was freedom, an ancient word now drastically revised. The new conception of freedom
emphasised autonomy, with traditional moral prohibitions declared obsolete and the removal of constraints maximising choice.
Order and abundance together would underwrite freedom, relieving Americans of existential concerns about safety and survival to
which those less privileged were still obliged to attend.
The final element of the consensus was presidential supremacy, with the occupant of the Oval Office accorded quasi-monarchical
prerogatives and status. Implicit in presidential supremacy was a radical revision of the political order. While still treated as
sacred writ, the constitution no longer described
the nation's existing system of governance. Effectively gone,
for example, was the concept of a federal government consisting of three equal branches. Ensuring the nation's prosperity,
keeping Americans safe from harm, and interpreting the meaning of freedom, the president became the centre around which all else
orbited, the subject of great hopes, and the target of equally great scorn should he fail to fulfil the expectations that he
brought into office.
All these elements together constituted a sort of operating system. The purpose of this operating system, unseen but widely
taken for granted, was to cement the primacy of the US in perpetuity, while enshrining the American way of life as the ultimate
destiny of humankind. According to the calendar, the end of the 20th century, frequently referred to as the American century, was
then drawing near. Yet with the cold war concluding on such favourable terms, the stage appeared set for a prolonged American
epoch.
This, however, was not to be.
T
he US wasted little time in squandering the advantages it
had gained by winning the cold war. Events at home and abroad put the post-cold war consensus to the test, unmasking its
contradictions and exposing its premises as delusional. Although globalisation did enable some to acquire great wealth, it left
behind many more, while fostering egregious inequality. The assertion of global leadership provided American soldiers with
plentiful opportunities to explore exotic and unfamiliar lands, but few would mistake the results for even an approximation of
dominion, much less peace and harmony.
Instead, Americans came to accept war as habitual. And while the drive for individual empowerment removed constraints, it did
little to promote the common good. An enlarged conception of freedom brought with it a whiff of nihilism. As for exalting the
chief executive as a visionary leader, it yielded a succession of disappointments, before imploding in November 2016.
The post-cold war moment, dating from the early 90s and spanning the administrations of
Bill Clinton
, George W Bush and Barack Obama, turned out to be remarkably brief. By 2016, large numbers of ordinary Americans
had concluded, not without reason, that the post-cold war consensus was irretrievably defective. Globalised neoliberalism,
militarised hegemony, individual empowerment and presidents elevated to the status of royalty might be working for some, but not
for them. They also discerned, again not without cause, that establishment elites subscribing to that consensus, including the
leaders of both political parties, were deaf to their complaints and oblivious to their plight.
By turning their country over to
Donald Trump
, those Americans signalled their repudiation of that very consensus. That Trump himself did not offer anything
remotely like a reasoned alternative made his elevation to the presidency all the more remarkable. He was a protest candidate
elected by a protest vote. In that regard, the 2016 presidential election marked a historical turning point comparable in
significance to the fall of the Berlin Wall a quarter of a century earlier.
As the cold war had evolved from the late 40s into the 80s, the rhetoric of freedom remained central to American political
discourse. Among members of the intelligentsia, fads came and went, but none displaced freedom as the defining issue of the age.
As the designated "leader of the free world", each US president was in turn expected to talk the talk. From Truman through to
Reagan, with differing levels of eloquence, none failed to do so.
The way it ended with euphoric young Germans dancing on the wall imparted to the entire cold war a retrospective moral
clarity that it did not deserve. The cold war tainted everything it touched. As an episode in world history, it was a tragedy of
towering proportions. So its passing ought to have called for reflection, remorse, repentance, even restitution. Yet the
prevailing mood allowed for none of these, at least as far as most Americans were concerned. Instead, out of an era punctuated
throughout by anxiety and uncertainty came a sense that a dazzling future lay just ahead.
In effect, the passing of the cold war relieved Americans of any further obligation to exhibit more than nominal cohesion.
Except as a matter of personal preference, virtues such as self-discipline and self-denial, once deemed essential to enabling a
nation to stand firm against existential threats, now became pass. The spirit of the post-cold war era prioritised
self-actualisation and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice.
The demise of communism removed the last remaining constraints on the operation of global capitalism. By leaving the US
militarily pre-eminent, the end of the cold war removed any remaining constraints on the use of American coercive power.
Similarly, for many ordinary Americans, particularly those of a progressive bent, the passing of the cold war did away with any
lingering constraints on matters related to "lifestyle". No longer would they defer to the customary arbiters of propriety and
"good taste" in determining what was permissible and what was not. For transcendent authority, progressives looked to the
autonomous self.
'A
t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." So wrote supreme court justice Anthony
Kennedy in a famous decision handed down shortly after the cold war ended.
Kennedy's reformulation of liberty, however grandiose, was well suited to the mood that swept through elite quarters at
the end of history
. By comparison, the inalienable rights specified in the famous Declaration of Independence in 1776 now
seemed cramped, stingy and inadequate. Freedom was in line for a makeover.
The emerging post-cold war conception of freedom was nothing if not expansive. It recognised few limits and imposed fewer
obligations, with one notable exception: compliance was non-negotiable. As always, the American definition of liberty, however
recently revised, was universally applicable, as valid in Bogot and Dakar as it was in Boston and Denver.
What did this signify in practice? Allowing individuals maximum latitude to reach their own conclusions regarding the concepts
of existence, meaning, the universe and the mystery of human life yielded what sort of society? The quarter-century that elapsed
between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Donald Trump's election provided a tentative answer to that question. Part of that answer
came in the form of progress towards eliminating the remaining vestiges of racism, empowering women and reducing discrimination
experienced by LGBTQ+ Americans.
Granted, progress does not imply decisive and irreversible success. Yet during the post-cold war period, American society
became more tolerant, more open, more accepting and less judgmental. Attitudes toward people of colour, women and gays that in
the 50s had been normative and remained widespread in the 60s and 70s had, by 2016, become unacceptable in polite society. Yet
for more than a few Americans, Justice Kennedy's notion of liberty as an opportunity to ponder life's ultimate questions had
little relevance. In practical terms, the exercise of freedom, undertaken in an environment in which consumption and celebrity
had emerged as preeminent values, encouraged conformity rather than independence. At least notionally, Americans now enjoyed more
freedom than ever before. Yet from every direction, but especially from Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, came cues
for how to make the most of the freedom now on offer. And however much you had, you always needed more.
President Ronald Reagan (R) with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington in December 1987. Photograph: Gary
Hershorn/Reuters
So along with freedom came stress, anxiety and a sense of not quite measuring up, or a fear of falling behind as the demands
of daily life seemed to multiply. For some, freedom meant alienation, anomie and despair. It did nothing to prevent, and in some
instances arguably fostered, self-destructive or antisocial behaviour.
So in 2016, as another presidential election approached, Americans were able to claim the following distinctions:
One in six were taking prescription psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety
meds.
More than 16 million adults and more than 3 million adolescents were suffering from significant
depression.
More than 1.9 million Americans were regularly using cocaine, with a half million hooked on
heroin and 700,000 on methamphetamine.
That year opioid overdoses killed 46,000, a new record.
Binge drinking had reached epidemic proportions, with one in six US adults binge drinking
several times a month and consuming seven drinks per binge; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bingeing
was especially common among younger and more affluent Americans.
Nearly 45,000 were taking their own lives annually, the national suicide rate increased by 24%
since 1999; within the previous decade the suicide rate of teenage girls had doubled and of boys had jumped by 40%.
Smartphone addiction was joining more traditional compulsions, with the average person checking
their smartphone 110 times a day, impelled by Fomo a fear of missing out.
Compulsive-buying syndrome, AKA shopping addiction, afflicted an estimated 6% of the population;
a comparable number were compulsive hoarders.
On a daily basis, 11 million Americans, mostly women, struggled with eating disorders such as
anorexia and bulimia, while roughly 40% of adults and nearly 19% of children and adolescents were obese.
Cosmetic surgeons were performing more than 17m procedures annually, with buttock augmentation
and labiaplasty enjoying a particular spike in popularity.
Forty-million Americans were regularly visiting online porn sites.
The number of Americans infected with sexually transmitted diseases in 2016 surpassed 2 million,
according to the CDC, "the highest number ever".
An estimated 24.7 million children were growing up in fatherless households, with such children
substantially more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs and alcohol and kill themselves; girls raised without a father
present were four times more likely to get pregnant as teenagers.
Although difficult to quantify with precision, 676,000 American children in 2016 were victims of
abuse or neglect.
Exercising their right to choose, American women were terminating around 650,000 unwanted
pregnancies each year, despite the widespread availability of contraceptives.
Exercising their right to bear arms, Americans had accumulated more than 40% of the planet's
small arms; the US arsenal in private hands was larger than that of the next 25 countries combined.
Meanwhile, more than 33,000 Americans were being killed in firearms-related incidents annually.
Year in and year out, the US had the world's highest incarceration rate, no other developed
nation coming anywhere close.
Polling data showed that social trust how Americans felt about government institutions and
their fellow citizens had sunk to an all-time low. Perhaps for that reason, when it came to voting, most Americans couldn't be
bothered; voter turnout in the US lagged behind that of most other developed countries.
In an increasingly networked society, with two-thirds of Americans on Facebook, chronic
loneliness afflicted a large portion of the population.
In a phenomenon described as "deaths by despair", the life expectancy of white working-class
American males was dropping, a trend without historical precedent.
The nation's birthrate had fallen below the rate needed to sustain a stable overall population;
America had ceased to reproduce itself.
Not to be overlooked, in their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, Americans were
polluting, wasting food and generating trash with abandon, leading the world in each category.
A
rguably, Americans were enjoying more freedom than ever.
Were they happier as a consequence? Polls suggested otherwise. In the 2007 "world happiness" standings, the US had ranked third
among developed countries. By 2016, its position had plummeted to 13th.
By no means am I suggesting that a single such statistic holds the key to assessing life in the US. It does not. Nor do the
various penchants and pathologies enumerated above. Yet taken together, they suggest a society in which discontent, dysfunction
and sheer perversity were rampant.
As with globalised neoliberalism, some Americans not only coped with seemingly limitless freedom, but also luxuriated in the
opportunities that it offered. For sophisticates inhabiting Brooklyn's Park Slope, radical autonomy could well prove to be a
boon; for those stuck in a ghetto on Chicago's South Side, not so much. As for the accompanying underside, those in possession of
sufficient resources could insulate themselves from its worst effects just as the affluent were able to insulate themselves
from the accumulating post-cold war military misadventures by simply allowing others to shoulder the burden.
What role did Trump play in shaping this US that worked nicely for some while leaving many others adrift and vulnerable? None
at all. Globalisation, the pursuit of militarised hegemony, a conception of freedom conferring rights without duties, and a
political system centred on a quasi-monarchical chief of state each turned out to have a substantial downside. Yet the defects of
each made their appearance well before Trump's entry into politics, even if elites, held in thrall by the post-cold war outlook,
were slow to appreciate their significance. None of those defects can be laid at his feet.
If anything, Trump himself had displayed a considerable aptitude for turning such defects to his own advantage. In the US,
post-cold war, he was prominent among those who enriched themselves, lived large and let others do the dirty work, while also
shielding themselves from the difficulties that made life a trial for many of their fellow citizens. In an era of con artists,
cowards and cynics, Trump became a modern equivalent of showman PT Barnum, parlaying the opportunities at hand into fortune,
celebrity, lots of golf, plenty of sex and eventually the highest office in the land.
Yet for our purposes, the key point is this: Trump did not create the conditions in which the campaign of 2016 was to take
place. Instead, to a far greater extent than any of his political rivals, he demonstrated a knack for translating those
conditions into votes. Here, the moment met the man.
Trump's critics saw him as an abomination. Perhaps he was. Yet he was also very much a man of his time. In the end, what won
him the presidency was his capacity to push the buttons of millions of voters who believed themselves ill-served and left behind
abandoned, even by establishment politicians of both parties.
Implicit in his promise to "make America great again" was an admission that greatness itself, which Americans had long since
come to believe was theirs by right, had been lost, with no one taking responsibility and no one, apart from Trump himself,
venturing to explain how it had even happened. The critical word that imparted to his campaign slogan its formidable persuasive
power was "again". As Tom Engelhardt has written, it represented an acknowledgment that self-congratulatory terms such as
"great", "super", "exceptional" or "indispensable" no longer reflected the actually existing American condition. Millions of
ordinary citizens recognised this as self-evidently true. Arrangements, agreements and advantages that Americans had once prized
had been squandered or thrown away. And yet no politician other than Trump dared to utter that truth aloud.
As a strategic thinker, Trump had no particular talent. Yet as a strategic sensor, he was uniquely gifted, possessing an
intuitive genius for reading the temper of his supporters and stoking their grievances. Yet by no means did Trump create those
grievances they had festered during the quarter-century after the cold war ended. He merely recognised their existence and, in
doing so, made himself the champion of the aggrieved and the one person they came to believe who might respond to their plight.
The post-cold war recipe for renewing the American century has been tried and found wanting. A patently amoral economic system
has produced neither justice nor equality, and will not. Grotesquely expensive and incoherent national security policies have
produced neither peace nor a compliant imperium, and will not. A madcap conception of freedom unmoored from any overarching moral
framework has fostered neither virtue nor nobility nor contentment, and won't anytime soon. Sold by its masterminds as a formula
for creating a prosperous and powerful nation in which all citizens might find opportunities to flourish, it has yielded no such
thing. This, at least, describes the conclusion reached by disenchanted Americans in numbers sufficient to elect as president
someone vowing to run the post-cold war consensus through a shredder.
Donald Trump's detractors charge him with dividing the country when, in fact, it was pervasive division that vaulted him to
the centre of American politics in the first place. The divide is deepest and least reconcilable between those Americans for whom
the trajectory of events since the cold war pointed upward, and those who found in those same events evidence of decline and
decay, and who sensed they had been had. At the most fundamental level, the inhabitants of one camp believe that talent, skills
and connections will enable them to determine their own destiny; they are masters of their own fate. In the other camp are those
who see themselves as victims. As Obama put it while campaigning for the presidency in 2008, "they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations".
Trump did not create this cleavage. He merely turned it to his personal advantage. So, regardless of the date or terms of
Trump's departure from office, the schism that allowed him to become president is likely to persist after he is gone. It's that
schism, rather than the antics of the tycoon/reality TV star/demagogue who exploited it, that merits far more attention than it
has received.
This is an edited extract from The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew Bacevich,
published by Metropolitan Books/Holt
Follow the Long Read on Twitter at
@gdnlongread
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What seems to have been a case of bad judgments and human error does, however, include some
elements that have yet to be explained. The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced
considerable "jamming" and the planes transponder switched
off and stopped transmitting
several minutes before the missiles were launched .
There were also problems with
the communication network of the air defense command, which may have been related.
The electronic jamming coming from an unknown source meant that the air defense system was
placed on manual operation, relying on human intervention to launch. The human role meant that
an operator had to make a quick judgment in a pressure situation in which he had only moments
to react. The shutdown of the transponder, which would have automatically signaled to the
operator and Tor electronics that the plane was civilian, instead automatically indicated that
it was hostile. The operator, having been particularly briefed on the possibility of incoming
American cruise missiles, then fired.
The two missiles that brought the plane down came from a Russian-made system designated
SA-15 by NATO and called Tor by the Russians. Its eight missiles are normally mounted on a
tracked vehicle. The system includes both radar to detect and track targets as well as an
independent launch system, which includes an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system
functionality capable of reading call signs and transponder signals to prevent accidents. Given
what happened on that morning in Tehran, it is plausible to assume that something or someone
deliberately interfered with both the Iranian air defenses and with the transponder on the
airplane, possibly as part of an attempt to create an aviation accident that would be
attributed to the Iranian government.
The SA-15 Tor defense system used by Iran has one major vulnerability. It can be
hacked or "spoofed," permitting an intruder to impersonate a legitimate user and take
control. The United States Navy and Air Force reportedly have developed technologies "that can
fool enemy radar systems with false and deceptively moving targets." Fooling the system also
means fooling the operator. The Guardian has also
reported independently how the United States military has long been developing systems that
can from a distance alter the electronics and targeting of Iran's available missiles.
The same technology can, of course, be used to alter or even mask the transponder on a
civilian airliner in such a fashion as to send false information about identity and location.
The United States has the cyber and electronic warfare capability to both jam and alter signals
relating to both airliner transponders and to the Iranian air defenses. Israel presumably has
the same ability. Joe Quinn at Sott.net
also notes an interested back story to those photos
and video footage that have appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere showing the
Iranian missile launch, the impact with the plane and the remains after the crash, to include
the missile remains. They appeared on January 9 th , in an Instagram account called
' Rich Kids of
Tehran '. Quinn asks how the Rich Kids happened to be in "a low-income housing estate on
the city's outskirts [near the airport] at 6 a.m. on the morning of January 8 th
with cameras pointed at the right part of the sky in time to capture a missile hitting a
Ukrainian passenger plane ?"
Put together the Rich Kids and the possibility of electronic warfare and it all suggests a
premeditated and carefully planned event of which
the Soleimani assassination was only a part. There have been riots in Iran subsequent to
the shooting down of the plane, blaming the government for its ineptitude. Some of the people
in the street are clearly calling for the goal long sought by the United States and Israel,
i.e. "regime change." If nothing else, Iran, which was widely seen as the victim in the killing
of Soleimani, is being depicted in much of the international media as little more than another
unprincipled actor with blood on its hands. There is much still to explain about the downing of
Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Given this news, any impartial observer would at least entertain the possibility of
its truth, particularly given the lengthy track record of the United States/Israel in
perpetrating such crimes.
It's a good litmus test for determining where one's sentiment lies. Even "alternative
media" aren't likely to touch this story.
The Iranian Ambassador to Britain, Hamid Baeidinejad said in an interview on the UK Channel 4
news hours ago that although Iran had needed time to determine what had happened, it had now
accepted responsibility, would pay compensation, and the people who fired on the jet will be
put on trial.
If nothing else, Iran, which was widely seen as the victim in the killing of Soleimani,
is being depicted in much of the international media as little more than another
unprincipled actor with blood on its hands.
Both Trump and the Iranian regime have good domestic disquiet reason to rethink the
confrontational policy each are pursuing. Iran and the US could get closer over this. I think
the predictable unpredictability of assassination and catastrophic loss of life events
makes false flagging them of dubious value.
Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was
inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it
so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the
money was the chips, that's all.
(Sutton W, Linn E: Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber. Viking Press
(1976), p. 160)
I suppose it is possible there are people who get addicted to false flagging others'
deaths. If half of what is said in this site is true, Mossad really needs to set up a 12 step
program.
" .the big question which many people on social media are asking is: why was this
"videographer" standing in a derelict industrial area outside Tehran at around six o'clock in
the morning with a mobile phone camera training on a fixed angle to the darkened sky? The
airliner is barely visible, yet the sky-watching person has the camera pointed and ready to
film a most dramatic event, seconds before it happened. That strongly suggests,
foreknowledge."
The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable "jamming" and the
planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the
missiles were launched.
I vaguely recall reports of transponder issues arising during the shootdown of
MH-17.
Civilian passenger flights were still departing and arriving in Tehran, almost certainly
an error in judgment on the part of the airport authorities. Inexplicably, civilian
aircraft continued to take off and land even after Flight 752 was shot down.
The Iranian government is blameworthy for keeping planes in the air either because of
diabolical reasons (delays a counter attack) or economic (nearly $1 billion a year in
overflight fees).
However, the pilots of the airliners that took over during the morning between the first
missile hitting Iraq and the downing of the Ukrainian airliner were dumb and
irresponsible.
The system includes both radar to detect and track targets as well as an independent
launch system, which includes an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system
functionality capable of reading call signs and transponder signals to prevent
accidents.
Clearly you have no clue how an IFF operates and that no commercial airliner even has an
IFF on board. Every commercial aircraft looks like the enemy to this SAM
operator.
Also, you need to explain how spoofing a RADAR which creates a false track would cause the
shoot down. The missile would simply target the false track instead of the real aircraft.
You also need to explain how an old SAM missile site can be hacked or spoofed to shoot
down a civilian airliner. Especially this old one which has no Mode-S or ADS-B capability and
only radio communication capability.
As Mark Twain said, it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are an
idiot rather than open it and remove all doubt.
Even if this was a clear mistake on Iran's part, the US and Israel still have blood on their
hands for the downing of this plane. The missiles were launched in response to a targeted
killing of an Iranian general. If that didn't happen, these missiles never would've been
launched.
Trump-Pence-Pompeo-Kushner-Netanyahu are ultimately responsible for these 176 lives lost.
I suspect MBS is also part of the scheme. It was his fake peace offering that lured Soleimani
to Iraq in the first place. I'm with Trudeau on this.
@Anon Before calling someone an idiot it is better to follow Mark Twain's advice
yourself. A more careful reading reveals no claim that IFF was onstalled on the airliner. The
commenter does speculate that possible spoofing involved a false attribution of a real
airliner not the creation of a false airliner and radar track. Perhaps you are familiar with
"old" electronic countermeasures and not with the "new", "top secret" and spiffy versions
hinted at by the U.S. military?
@Quartermaster /An Airliner can not legally launch with deadlined transponder, so the
claim that it quit transmitting "several" minutes earlier would have placed it on the ground
when it quit./
As it climbed and reached 4,600ft above ground level, the plane's transponder suddenly
stopped working at about 6.14am, 2 minutes or so after take off . [emphasis
added]
The plane was already airborne when the transponder stopped working.
@Onlooker Less than twenty replies into the thread and we've already got two individuals
attempting to distort the facts. Here's the key link that readers should visit:
The airliner had not been in the air long at all when it was shot down. An Airliner can
not legally launch with deadlined transponder, so the claim that it quit transmitting
"several" minutes earlier would have placed it on the ground when it quit.
The flight departed Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at 02:42 UTC ( 06:12
local time ) and the last ADS-B signal was received by the Flightradar24 network at 02:44
UTC( 06:14 local time) . According to the report the aircraft climbed to 8000 feet and
turned right back toward the airport and crashed at 02:48 UTC ( 06:18 local time ) --
four minutes after the last ADS-B signal was received by the Flightradar24 network. –
Source
Flight Radar 24
Mr. Giraldi's original claim:
The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable "jamming" and the
planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the
missiles were launched. There were also problems with the communication network of the
air defense command, which may have been related.
4 minutes after the transponders were switches off, the plane crashed .
Without [proper] access to the FDR and CVR, it's impossible to determine when the plane
was hit and how long it took to crash, exactly.
The plane was only flying at 8,000 feet [its normal {flight} ceiling is 30,000 feet and
above], so it's speed relatively low [cruise speed is between about 400 and 500 knots (460
– 575 mph / 740 – 930 kph), but the Ukrainian plane was still climbing] and the
fall back to Earth relatively quick.
On the clip where the plane is on fire and finally crashes, the downward angle looked to
be about 25 to 30 %, which is relatively steep. Time of downfall can be calculated when the
relative data is available.
Therefore, Mr Giraldi's claim " several minutes before the missiles were launched "
is technically correct , until proven wrong by data from the FDR and CVR,
The Tor system is too primitive to be hacked. It is a stand alone, autonomous and mostly
analog system. The radar signals it generates are shown on analog tube-screens.
Interesting theory by P. Giraldi. However, I am very surprised that Israel/Mossad role in
these acts of terrorism never mentioned. We know that Trump is a Zionist servant and acts on
instructions from his jewish fananciers. We know, Trump is incapable of serious thinking.
The Iranians took the hit because their missiles took out the airliner. And then, they could
stop the Western media crying for the next 6 mos. and this gave them time to bring in other
neutral investigators to look at the evidence and come up with logical scenarios. There is a
reason the black boxes weren't given to any one else to own – because they still
remember the scam investigation of MH 17. I f lew planes for over 20 yrs – Every
controlled/radared airport would ask me to turn on my transponder if it wasn't on –
Everyone of them. This plane not only came from Ukraine but was an easy target for a hack
from any of the big Intel countries. The BIG STORY here is that most every plane flying today
– can have the same type consequences!!! because of the Western War Machine.
Trump-Pence-Pompeo-Kushner-Netanyahu are ultimately responsible for these 176 lives
lost. I suspect MBS is also part of the scheme. It was his fake peace offering that lured
Soleimani to Iraq in the first place. I'm with Trudeau on this.
Trudeau showed some real courage criticizing Trump and his terrible decisions.
More Western allies have to stand up to the Zionist stooge and call him out on his
treachery and stupidity.
@bobhammer Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Turn off Fox News now.
We are not always the good guys and we are up to our necks in deceit, plunder, and evil.
Our actions have harmed millions of people around the world and it has to stop.
It is time for more self-reflection as individuals and as a nation; and it is long past
time for us to be comfortable with lies.
@bobhammer The "uninterruptible" autopilot can be activated – either by pilots or
by on-board sensors, or by radio or satellite link<= connected to controls at the remote
end. Government agencies, quasi government agencies, military brats and probably the entire
group of privately operated NGOs and private party mobsters (bankers, corporations and
private military armies and privateers) at the remote end, can take over control of in-flight
Aircraft, and fly it, land it, take it off, whatever, even if the pilot sitting in the
cockpit objects. and does all he can to retrieve control from the remote operator.
Several comments report says interrupt able remote control, allows, persons on the ground,
to take from the pilot in a flying airplane, control of the airplane the pilot is suppose to
be flying, in situations for example when terrorist are in the cockpit. I have not read the
manufacture's literature nor do I have personal knowledge abut the equipment list of any of
these aircraft, the list suggest they are all aircraft, not only equipped with the UAP but
that they were all aircraft made by the same manufacturer. I am merely repeating what was on
stated as fact on a website I visited.
Many are looking for proof that remotely equipped uninterruptible autopilots are being
used as Remote Control weaponized drones . Imagine an pilot, located on the ground in
London or somewhere parks his /her remote ground to air control vehicle and takes over flight
control including turns on/off the transponder [<=which tells everyone where the plane is
during its flight] on a plane that is flying, landing or taking off from say the Tehran
airport in Iran?
My personal experience is that it generally takes less than 2 minutes after a transponder
is turned off during a planes flight, before fighter jets arrive to escort the transponder
disabled plane; so the whole system that protects civilian aircraft, and allows the military
to know the aircraft is civilian, is dependent on the Transponder, installed in the airplane,
to continuously squawk during flight, its exact position so that everyone can identify the
flight, and track the aircraft during its flight. Every land based control tower, ATC control
system center and military installation depends on that airborne squawking transponder to
track the en-route progress of commercial and private aircraft flights from take off to
landing.
Another comment made on that list referred to above claimed Uninterruptible Auto Pilot
[UAP] equipped aircraft have been involved in unexplained flight accident/disappearance
events (I have no personal knowledge about the equipment in these aircraft, I just repeated
here what someone else said elsewhere, please verify these claims yourself or provide
verification ) .
(4 @911) <=UAP allows pilot-less flights, no pilot need board the plane for its
flight.
(PS752) (transponder turned off, destroyed by confused ground defense crews)
MH370 (vanished into thin air)
MH17 (had its flight path altered.)
Eyes focus on Uninterruptible Auto Pilot (UAP) .. to explain recent Tehran 160 person
disaster?
This is really something to think about? Always the question has been how did four
military officers from Iran, trained a few weeks in Florida to fly jets, manage to get
through four differently located pilot screening TSA gates to fly the aircraft and passenger
into the 9/11 events. Conspiracy theories suggest since no pilot is needed, there were no
pilots for TSA to screening. Remote control on the ground flew the aircraft to their
destinations.
Just about says it all doesn't it? What kind of people are we dealing with here? Of course
only the morons out there are still being fooled by these kind of false flags. Even in the
year 2020 these same morons still believe ZOG's 9-11 fairy tale and label any other theory as
a "conspiracy." Speaking of conspiracies the biggest idiots out there, even bigger than the
ones who believe ZOG's narrative or those type who believe the total wacktard stuff put out
by ZIO controlled disinfo puppets like Alex Jones.
Ukrainian commercial airline? What other nation besides Iran does ZOG have it in for? Is
it Russia?
War by deception? HARDLY to anyone with two brain cells left. These fools have been caught
before, they aren't that clever. What they are is protected by a syndicate of bought and paid
for politicians. They were caught attacking the USS Liberty, they were caught bombing
American and British installations in Egypt, the Rosenbergs and Pollard were nailed, but of
course despite all of this, America and her leaders continued the value Israel as a friend
and an ally. With a friend like Israel, who needs enemies. Then of course we have the story
of our 5 little dancing Israelis apprehended in NYC after being observed dancing and
celebrating the WTC towers collapsing. So you mean a group of Israelis from Israel, nation
that is ALLEGEDLY "friends" with America and America think it is hilarious and worth
celebrating when America is attacked and thousands are burned alive or jump to their death
from hundreds of feet above the street?? Of course "our" media quickly exonerated the
celebrating Israelis and buried that story faster than your average house cat buries his own
turds.
ZOG really thinks the average American has the IQ of a monkey. Even after the WMD caca
they still think you people will believe anything they tell you to believe. The sad part is
they are right about that with the majority of the population.
One of the strongest predictive sign that you have a sociopathic boss is that he/she is not
agreement capable.
The maintenance of fear, chaos and blowback are exACTLY the desired result. Deliberately
and on purpose.
Notable quotes:
"... I would put it a bit differently. Trump's erraticness is a strong signal he fits to a pattern the Russians have used to depict the US: "not agreement capable". ..."
I would put it a bit differently. Trump's erraticness is a strong signal he fits to a
pattern the Russians have used to depict the US: "not agreement capable". That's what I
meant by he selects for weak partners. His negotiating style signals that he is a bad faith
actor. Who would put up with that unless you had to, or you could somehow build that into
your price?
I have no idea who your mythical Russians are. I know two people who did business in Russia
before things got stupid and they never had problems with getting paid. Did you also miss that
"Russians" have bought so much real estate in London that they mainly don't live in that you
could drop a neutron bomb in the better parts of Chelsea and South Kensington and not kill
anyone?
Pray tell, how could they acquire high end property if they are such cheats?
"It is politically important: Russia has paid off the USSR's debt to a country that no
longer exists," said Mr Yuri Yudenkov, a professor at the Russian University of Economics and
Public Administration. "This is very important in terms of reputation: the ability to repay on
time, the responsibility," he told AFP.
It would have been very easy for Russia to say it cannot be held responsible for USSR's
debts, especially in this case where debt is to a non-existent entity.
(Written on the evening of. So subject to reconsideration/revision/outright denial as we
learn more.)
I didn't expect any of it. Neither did anyone else, whatever the so-called experts
outgassing on the US Garbage Media may be pretending. I don't know what it all means. Neither
does anyone else. (Well Putin & Co do, but they keep their cards close to their chests. As
we've just seen.)
What do we know? Putin gave his annual address to the Federal Council ( Rus ) ( Eng ) and started off with how important
it was that the birthrate should be raised. Fair enough: he wants more Russians on the planet,
the government's programs have ensured that there will be quite a few more but there are still
more to come. Many programs planned; some of which will work: after all,
not everything works out as we hoped does it? He mentioned how dangerous the world is
– especially the MENA – and said at least Russia is pretty secure (as indeed it is
except against lunatics addicted to the
Book of Revelation .)
Then the constitutional stuff. He believes the Constitution needs a few tweaks. Important
officials should really be Russians and not people with a
get-out-of-jail-card/alternate-loyalty-card in their vests. Reasonable enough: they should
"inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian people without any assumptions and
allowances." (Good idea actually. Can we in the West steal the idea? We vote for X but who does
he vote for?) Russian law should take precedence over decrees contaminated by the " Rules-Based
International Order" ("
we make the rules ,
you follow our orders "). The PM should be named by the Duma. (A pretty big change,
actually: let's have more details on the division of labour please. In some countries the head
of state is The Boss – USA, Russia (now), France – in others the head of government
is The Boss – Germany, Canada, Denmark. There is a serious carve up of powers question
here that has to be worked out in detail.) Constitutional changes should be approved in a
referendum. The President either should or should not be bound by the
no-three-terms-in-a-row-rule (I personally can't figure out what "этим"
refers to in "Не считаю, что
этот вопрос
принципиальный,
но согласен с
этим. Не считаю,
что этот вопрос
принципиальный,
но согласен с
этим." But, no doubt we will soon learn.)
So, a somewhat less presidential republic. Details to be decided. Many details. But I'm
confident that it's been worked out and we will learn. Putin & Co have shown us over 20
years that they don't make things up on the fly.
Then we learned that the entire government had resigned – but individuals to stay in
place until replaced. Then we learned – a fast few hours indeed! – that Dmitri
Medvedev was replaced by somebody that no one (other than Russian tax specialists) had ever
heard of: Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin. (
Russian Wiki entry – none in English so far.) Those cheering Medvedev's dismissal
(something predicted and hoped for by a sector of Russianologists) had to then swallow this:
not tossed out into ignominy and shame, as they wanted, but something else. Putin says that
there is a clear distinction between government and presidential concerns; defence and security
are clearly in the latter. But Medvedev has always been closely following
defence and security issues and it is suitable and appropriate that he continue to do so. So a
new position, deputy heard of the security council, will be created for him. So what are we
to make of this? Medvedev has been given the boot and a sinecure? Or he's been given a crucial
job in the new carve-up of responsibilities?
After all, Russia's problems keep getting bigger but nobody is getting any younger.
Especially the problems from outside. For some years Washington, an implacable enemy of Moscow,
has been getting less and less predictable. Lavrov and Kerry spend hours
locked up negotiating a deal in Syria ;
within a week the US military attacks a Syrian Army unit; "by mistake" . Who's in charge?
Now with the murder of Soleimani, possibly on a Washington-approved peace mission, Washington
has moved to another level of lawlessness and is exploring the next depth as it defies
Baghdad's order to get out. A pirate power. The outside problems for Moscow aren't getting
smaller, are they? Washington is certainly
недоговороспособны
– it's impossible to make an agreement with it and, if you should think you have done so,
it will break it. A dangerous, uncontrollable madman, staggering around blowing everything up
– is any foreign leader now to be assumed to be on Washington's murder list? Surviving
its decay is a big job indeed. The problems are getting bigger in the Final Days of the
Imperium Americanum.
So, maybe Moscow needs more people on the job.
So are we looking at a new division of labour in Moscow as part of managing the Transition?
(To say nothing of the – what's the word? – Thucydides trap ? ).
Mishustin looks after the nuts and bolt of Russia's economy and internal management. Medvedev
looks after defence and security – something not likely to get smaller while Putin looks
after the big picture?
But this is only the first step in The Transition and we will learn more soon.
The US is trying to stop Eurasia's economic and political integration in order to delay its
own demise, say international observers, explaining what message the US sent to the
Russia-China-Iran "triumvirate" by killing Quds Commander Qasem Soleimani. The assassination of
Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and
commander of the Quds Force, in a targeted US air strike on 3 January came on the heels of
joint naval exercise launched by Russia, Iran and China in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of
Oman.
The "growing Russia-China-Iran trilateral convergence", as The Diplomat
dubbed it in late December, is seemingly
hitting a raw nerve in Washington :
speaking to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on 2 January, Rear Admiral
Khanzadi, the Iranian navy commander, said that Washington and its allies had held an emergency
meeting aimed at disrupting the drills.
US Opposes Rapprochement of Russia, China and
Iran Amid Policy of 'Maximum Pressure'
"Recent violent US attacks against Iranian allies in Iraq and Syria, culminating in the
killing of Iran's Major General Qasem Soleimani, are, in the wider geopolitical sense, meant
to send signals to the building Eurasian triumvirate to cease their collaborative activities,
let alone longer-term strategic and Belt and Road Initiative-linked designs," says Pye Ian,
an American economic analyst and private equity executive.
According to Ian, the US decision to step up pressure on Tehran might be stemming from
Washington's apparent belief that Iran is "the 'weakest link' in the strengthening Eurasian
alliance".
However, "Russia, China and Iran cannot be attacked overtly, let alone invaded, occupied or
'regime changed'," the economic analyst highlights.
Christopher C. Black, a Toronto-based international criminal lawyer with 20 years of
experience in war crimes and international relations, echoes the American economist.
"It is in response to the close relationship between Russia, Iran and China and it is no
coincidence that this murder took place just as the joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf
came to an end," he said. "Further, it is a threat to Russian strategic interests in Syria
and to Syria itself."
Apart from this, the move indicates that "one of the reasons for US pressure on Iran is to
control the oil supply to China in order to cripple China's development," Black suggests.
Russia and its military successes in the region have become yet another irritant for
Washington, according to Max Parry, an independent American journalist and geopolitical
analyst.
"The US likely feels the need to re-assert itself as a hegemonic power in the region,
considering it is Moscow that emerged as the new honest peace broker in the Middle East with
the Syrian conflict," Parry notes. "Russia completely outmanoeuvred Washington and by the end
of the war, Turkey was practically in Moscow's camp. Trump has reset US foreign policy with
the withdrawal from Syria and the targeting of Iran."
By killing Soleimani, the US "has completely overplayed its hand and this could be the
beginning of the end for Washington because a war with Iran would be no cakewalk", he
emphasises.
According to Ian, in addition to being a thorn in Washington's flesh, Moscow, Beijing and
Tehran have something else in common: the three nations have increasingly been drifting away
from the US dollar.
The trend followed the Trump administration's:
· unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA) in
May 2018;
· trade war waged against the People's Republic of China by Washington since March
2018;
· series of anti-Russian sanctions imposed against Moscow under the pretext of the
latter's interference in the US 2016 presidential elections, something that Russia resolutely
denies.
The economic analyst explains that "the dollar's universal confidence trick requires uniform
adherence, by natural adoption or by force". While the US allies remain obedient to the dollar-
dominated system, those who resisted it such as Iraq under Saddam, Libya under Gaddafi and
Venezuela under Chavez "triggered some Atlanticist force, either overtly or clandestinely, in
order to try and put those nations back on a compliant page."
However, "the current state of dollar printing by the US Fed ad infinitum cannot last
forever," Ian stresses.
"The global East and South are already ahead of Transatlantic banking, in a sense, by
shifting further out of the dollar and Treasury securities into their own, or bilateral,
currency exchanges, gold, and/or domestic or collaborative cryptocurrency endeavours," he
says.
Russia, China, Iran, as well as India and some other Eurasian nations are switching to
trading in local currencies and
continuing to amass gold at a steady pace . Thus, for instance, Russia produced over 185.1
tonnes of gold in the first six months of 2019; the country's bullion reserves reached 72.7
million troy ounces (2,261 tonnes) as of 1 December 2019. For its part, the People's Bank of
China (PBoC) has accumulated 1,948.3 tonnes of the precious metal as of December 2019,
according to World Gold Council.
Ian foresees that if the world's nations continue to shift
out of US Treasury obligations and choose alternative currencies for energy pricing,
trading and reserves recycling, it may "cause US interest rates to fly higher, cratering
consumer, institutional and public debt obligations and re-importing an obscene level of
inflation back into the US".
The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of
Sputnik.
"World War III is not going to happen because World War III already happened and the global
capitalist empire won. [Where is the "capitalism"?] Take a look at these NATO maps (make sure
to explore all the various missions). Then take a look at this Smithsonian map of where the
U.S. military is "combating terrorism." And there are plenty of other maps you can google.
What you will be looking at is the global capitalist empire. Not the American empire, the
global capitalist empire.
If that sounds like a distinction without a difference well, it kind of is, and it kind of
isn't. What I mean by that is that it isn't America (i.e., America the nation-state, which
most Americans still believe they live in) that is militarily occupying much of the planet,
making a mockery of international law, bombing and invading other countries, and
assassinating heads of state and military officers with complete impunity.
Or, rather, sure,
it is America but America is not America."
Does the United States's withdrawal from the JCPOA constitute non-compliance, or not? If so,
does their non-compliance constitute breach of contract, or not?
The U.S. effort to coerce European foreign policy through tariffs, a move one European
official equated to "extortion," represents a new level of hardball tactics with the United
States' oldest allies, underscoring the extraordinary tumult in the transatlantic
relationship.
...
U.S. officials conveyed the threat directly to officials in London, Berlin and Paris rather
than through their embassies in Washington, said a senior European official, who like
others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Yes the US extorted their own "allies" to get them to betray Iran and destroy their own
reputations. I must say the one thing i begrudgingly like about Trump is his honest upfront
thuggist actions. After the backroom betrayals of Obama bush clinton merkel and the rest its
almost refreshingly honest. Also i can think of no quicker way of destroying the US empire
than by threatening your own allies the MIC must be desperate to start a new never ending
war, although perhaps they should be careful of what they wish for
Trumps calculations were (obviously) right. EU would have never risked a massive economic
crisis because of a breakdown in US-EU trade by siding with Iran.
Sadly, they are doing what every other country would do in this position to protect their own
self percieved national interests.
Like China,India and Russia too now more and more totally abiding by sanctions and in case
of China winding down oil trade even more.
In this time of lurking economic crisis, US sanctions could cripple Europe from one day to
the next. With our countries also being on the edge of social unrest, and mass conflict
between elites and people, a massive economic crisis would bring everything tumbling
down.
This is the sad reality. Risking the sure economic meltdown to save an already lost Iran
deal would trade the social and economic welbeing of their voters for Iran. The deal has been
lost ever since Trump annouced his opposition. This is the reality. Triggering a crisis on
the back of its own voters without a real chance to save that deal would have been an empty
gesture anyway.
Realpolitik.
Good thing is Merkel seems to have had a great day with Putin. EU will silently learn from
this and warm ties with Russia. If not for its people, for its business.
The deal was a good idea, but it always was destined to end like this. Iran will go
nuclear, and the US and Isreal will have "no alternative" for shooting war. If they dare
now.
Paragragh 14 of the UNSC resolution is worth thinking about.
"14. Affirms that the application of the provisions of previous resolutions pursuant to
paragraph 12 do not apply with retroactive effect to contracts signed between any party and
Iran or Iranian individuals and entities prior to the date of application, provided that the
activities contemplated under and execution of such contracts are consistent with the JCPOA,
this resolution and the previous resolutions;"
To date, only Russia and China are holding up their ends of the deal. Iran, sticking to
the deal is on the losing side as it has no trade with the EU yet it still must stay within
the provisions of the deal. I believe there were clauses on what Iran could do if other
parties were not upholding their end.
The nuke deal is dead and Iran knows it. Under Paragragh 14, Russia China can sign up to all
deals allowed under the resolution and when snapback provisions occur, Iran Russia china can
still operate contracts it has signed before sanctions reinstated. This way, Iran gets the
benefits of trade and investment with China and Russia that could not have occurred before
the nuke deal, but at the same time, Iran will no longer be bound by the deal.
China signed up a huge oil deal with Iran not long back. Russia have also been signing a good
number of contracts. None of these will be effected by UNSC sanction.
Overall, the nuke deal was a win for Iran. Pity the US and Euro's have reneged, but still,
a win for Iran.
Does the United States's withdrawal from the JCPOA constitute non-compliance, or not? If so,
does their non-compliance constitute breach of contract, or not?
Now Peter, do you really think the Outlaw US Empire or its poodles will abide by contract
law in general and the JCPOA contract law specifically?
IMO, the JCPOA's outcome is becoming similar to the outcome of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
in that it bought time and showed who's the true aggressor. I recall writing the Eurasians
need to behave as if they're at war with the EU-3 and their master--and that includes the
Eurasian nations who so far aren't too much affected by the fallout from the JCPOA's
failure.
What has me curious is the nature of the talks between Iran and Qatar.
Piotr Berman , Jan 15 2020 3:11 utc |
119Jackrabbit , Jan 15 2020
3:12 utc |
120
Peter AU1 @114
= Under Paragragh 14, Russia China can sign up to all deals allowed under the resolution
and when snapback provisions occur, Iran Russia china can still operate contracts it has
signed before sanctions reinstated.
Not sure about that. Paragraph 14 has this constraining language:
... provided that the activities contemplated under and execution of such contracts are
consistent with the JCPOA, this resolution and the previous resolutions.
My reading of this phrase is that he word "and" implies that the contracts must
satisfy provisions of ALL of these.
Put another way: When the snap back occurs, then contracts signed are exempt except
that they must comply with the provisions that are snapped back (AND) the JCPOA, AND this
resolution!?!?
Yes, it seems nonsensical. But how else can one interpret the "and"?
= Overall, the nuke deal was a win for Iran.
It was a 'win' for both sides.
I've always believed that USA entered into the JCPOA to buy time because Syrian "regime
change" was taking longer than expected. I've read many times that neocons and/or neocon
sympathizers believed that "Damascus is on the road" to Tehran."
USA-Israel want to fight Iran before it gets a bomb. Iran bought time to prepare for that
fight.
The EU cannot lead in anything - it is a completely owned and operated US tool. It is a big
zero in providing humanity any help with the big problem of our time: the 'indispensable and
exceptional' supremacist US. by: AriusArmenian @ 15
evilempire @ 74 <= I agree the Iranians probably did not shoot down the 737.. I posted
to MOA a link to a presstv article, headlined no missile hit the passenger liner, and the
link even said --its official.. within a short few minutes after tha, the pressTV link
disappeared and PressTV replaced it with a new story , Iranians admit they had mistakenly
shot down the PS752 taking off from Tehran. This suggest either a military coup in Iran, or
Iraq double crossed Iran. killed in Iraq by Trump were the leaders of the Shia religious arm
(IRCG leaders )
The unusually harsh words and expression in anger by Khomeini, said he would severely
punish those 8 persons responsible for the mistake, <= non characteristic of Khomeini ,
suggesting a trusted friend let him down; the two arms of the Military may be at war with
each other and Trump was helping the Iranian Military (eliminate the upper leadership of the
Revolutionary guard)? Today's JCOPA by the European powers issue suggest insiders have been
at work all weekend. Russia and China silence all fit betrayal. Have the two separate
branches of Iran military been at odds with each?
Imagine the White house wiping out Qaseum Soleimani and other IRCG members drawn on false
pretense into Iraq.?
here is Bs report on the matter
The Iranian Armed Forces General Staff just admitted (in Farsi, English translation) that its
air defenses inadvertently shot down the Ukrainian flight PS 752 shortly after it took off on
January 8 in Tehran :
2- In early hours after the missile attack [on US' Ain al-Assad base in Iraq], the
military flights of the US' terrorist forces had increased around the country. The Iranian
defence units received news of witnessing flying targets moving towards Iran's strategic
centres, and then several targets were observed in some [Iranian] radars, which incited
further sensitivity at the Air Defence units.
3- Under such sensitive and critical circumstances, the Ukrainian airline's Flight PS752 took
off from Imam Khomeini Airport, and when turning around, it approached a sensitive military
site of the IRGC, taking the shape and altitude of a hostile target. In such conditions, due
to human error and in an unintentional move, the airplane was hit [by the Air Defence], which
caused the martyrdom of a number of our compatriots and the deaths of several foreign
nationals.
4- The General Staff of the Armed Forces offers condolences and expresses sympathy with
the bereaved families of the Iranian and foreign victims, and apologizes for the human error.
It also gives full assurances that it will make major revision in the operational procedures
of its armed forces in order to make impossible the recurrence of such errors. It will also
immediately hand over the culprits to the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces for
prosecution.
The Pentagon had claimed that Iran shot down the airliner but the evidence it presented
was flimsy and not sufficient as the U.S. tends to spread disinformation about Iran.
The Associated Press errs when it says that the move was "stoked by the American drone
strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani". The move was stoked five
days earlier when the U.S. killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the
demands by the Iraqi prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when
the U.S. assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the Popular Militia
Forces and a national hero in Iraq.b at 19:09 UTC | Comments (150)
The State Department issued a rather aggressive response to Abdul-Mahdi's request:b at
19:09 UTC | Comments (150)
Very interesting post. something is up Thanks.
Posted by: DontBelieveEitherPr. | Jan 15 2020 2:14 utc | 113
thanks, yes, the US economic power directly and indirectly via economic laws or
extra-territorial sanctions. A company simply cannot make a deal with Iran if it doesn't want
to be ruined by US legal means. Sad, but true.
Iranian frozen assets in international accounts are calculated to be worth between $100
billion[1][2] and $120 billion.[3][4] Almost $1.973 billion of Iran's assets are frozen in
the United States.[5] According to the Congressional Research Service, in addition to the
money locked up in foreign bank accounts, Iran's frozen assets include real estate and other
property. The estimated value of Iran's real estate in the U.S. and their accumulated rent is
$50 million.[1] Besides the assets frozen in the U.S., some parts of Iran's assets are frozen
around the world by the United Nations.[1]
***********
Now I will have to cry myself to sleep. Trump, such a poor man...
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 15 2020 3:11 utc | 119
Yes, I am getting tired of that meme too. The poor helpless king of the world, if only he
could do what he wants ... if only he could "drain the swamp"
He promised to abolish the JCPOA, he suggested he would deal with the increase of Iran's
power in the region and he promised to restore US and military power to it's old (lost) world
domination. A world domination Russia and China would need to deal with too:
He already promised he would abolish JCPOA during his 2016 election campaign. And he
promised to not only make both the American economy and military strong again. So America can
exert at least as much power as it did under the great Ronald Reagan.
Secondly, we have to rebuild our military and our economy. The Russians and Chinese
have rapidly expanded their military capability, but look at what's happened to us. Our
nuclear weapons arsenal, our ultimate deterrent, has been allowed to atrophy and is
desperately in need of modernization and renewal. And it has to happen immediately. Our
active duty armed forces have shrunk from 2 million in 1991 to about 1.3 million today.
The Navy has shrunk from over 500 ships to 272 ships during this same period of time. The Air
Force is about one-third smaller than 1991. Pilots flying B-52s in combat missions today.
These planes are older than virtually everybody in this room.
And what are we doing about this? President Obama has proposed a 2017 defense budget
that in real dollars, cuts nearly 25 percent from what we were spending in 2011. Our military
is depleted and we're asking our generals and military leaders to worry about global
warming.
We will spend what we need to rebuild our military. It is the cheapest, single
investment we can make. We will develop, build and purchase the best equipment known to
mankind. Our military dominance must be unquestioned, and I mean unquestioned, by anybody
and everybody.
Mao | Jan 15 2020 4:19 utc | 124
Current Europe is a selling girl of imperialism.
Indeed! The western band of galoots are captives of their white skin color...
Very unbecoming to the rest of the non-white world = majority.
Fortunately, many of us see past our skin colors, whatever that may be...
We will spend what we need to rebuild our military. It is the cheapest, single investment we
can make. We will develop, build and purchase the best equipment known to mankind. Our
military dominance must be unquestioned, and I mean unquestioned, by anybody and everybody.
Posted by: moon | Jan 15 2020 4:58 utc | 125
Oh, we'll spend the money alright; for more of the inferior, junk, weaponry already in our
arsenals.
Planes that can't fly in the rain, aircraft carriers that can't be commisioned, and battle
rifles (that's a misnomer; the M-14 was the last U.S. battle rifle) (M-4 & M-16) that are
unreliable in intense combat situations. The M-16 should have been replaced during the Viet
Nam war...
But there it still is; almost 60 years later...
Personally I thought the cartoon was pretty good. The artist even thought that the detail
of the dogs' ass holes was important enough to include. Notably none of them have any
external genitalia, hence "bitches" also being accurate. I bet if we could see the rendition
from the other side, Israel's face would be hideous despite the appealing rear view!
This is a repeat of the EU3 negotiations with Iran that ended with a EU3 deal offered to Iran
that experts called "a lot of pretty wrappig around an empty box" because as it turned out,
the EU3 had been promising the US that they would not recognize Iran's right to enrichment
contrary to what they were telling the Iranians as part of the EU3's effort to drag out
Iran's suspension of enrichment.
The result was that Khatami was embarrassed and Ahmadinejad was elected, as Jack Straw said
later:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/us-scuppered-deal-with-iran-in-2005-says-then-british-foreign-minister/
So again the Eu is playing the good cop to the US bad cop, and they keep goalposts
moving
This has been a consistent pattern going back years.
All along Iran has been making better compromise offers than the JCPOA only to see the
goalposts moved because this conflict was never really about nukes just as the invasion of
Iraq was not about WMDs, all that is just a pretext for a policy of imposed
regime-change.
NOTE That the Obama administration itself said that the JCPOA is "non-binding" funny how
Iran is accused of "breaching" or "violating" it yet Trump is only said to have "abandoned"
or even "withdrawn" from the deal
"President Rohani represent's the interests of the bourgeoisie in Tehran and Esfahan,
merchants oriented toward international trade and hard hit by US sanctions. Sheikh Rohani is
a long time friend of the US deep state: he was the first Iranian contact between the Reagan
administration and Israel during the Iran-contra affair in 1985. It was he who introduced
Hashem Rafsanjani to Oliver North's men, allowing him to buy arms, to become
commander-in-chief of the armies and incidentally the richest man in the country, and the
president of the Islamic Republic."
Thierry Meyssan. Voltairenet. org.
Wednesday morning, my first read before b's M. O. A. is Thierry. Really folks, it is
indespensible. One can support the I. R. I.,but still reserve criticism of the domestic
politics of Iran.
Outside the West, people don't see any difference between Europe and the USA. So it is known
that which ever direction the US takes, Europe will follow. Both the USA and Europe are
Israeli colonies. So unless Israel objects whatever the US does would always be the Eurooean
policy.
Annex B, paragraph 5 allows Iran to purchase weapons from Russia (for example...) after 5
years from signing of the Agreement in 2015.
So 2020 for weapons.
This is why Russia is so insistent the agreement holds together for the 5 years, at least.
If it doesn't, due to this action by Germany etc, then they can't sell to Iran as all old
sanctions will 'snap back'.
(Other restrictions are lifted on longer time frames, 8 and 10 years. Also, other matters
remain open forever until security council agrees the nuclear proliferation issue in Iran is
dead and buried.)
V , Jan 15 2020 9:05 utc |
142Russ , Jan 15
2020 11:08 utc |
143
powerandpeople 138 says:
Annex B, paragraph 5 allows Iran to purchase weapons from Russia (for example...) after
5 years from signing of the Agreement in 2015.
So 2020 for weapons.
This is why Russia is so insistent the agreement holds together for the 5 years, at
least. If it doesn't, due to this action by Germany etc, then they can't sell to Iran as all
old sanctions will 'snap back'.
There's an example of how appeasement and idiot-legality are way past their expiration
date. It's clear the UN itself, like all other existing international bodies, has been fully
weaponized with Russia the ultimate target.
In the process of "first they came for Irak, then they came for Libya [with the full
consent of Russia and China]...now they're coming for Irak again and for Iran....", well
obviously Russia is the one they'll ultimately be coming for.
It really is time to hang together or hang separately. Although Russia should remain
cautious about direct military stand-offs, it's definitely way past time to start openly
challenging and flouting war-by-sanctions, and to start constructing international bodies
alternative to the UN and other imperial weapons.
As for fighting within the UN, someone earlier said Russia and China wouldn't be able to
prevent the "snap-back" of UN sanctions on Iran. Why not? I'm not asking for a
technical-legalistic answer, but a power-based answer. Self-evidently the "legality" ship has
sunk, and anyone who still makes a fetish of it is fighting with one hand tied behind one's
back.
I don't say gratuitously flout legality; certainly there's great propaganda value in
seeming to adhere to international law in the face of the open lawlessness of the US. But
where it comes to critical battles like getting Iran out from under the sanctions, in the
process dealing a blow to the alleged impregnability of the sanctions weapon, the most
important thing is the real result.
Trump has in fact done more to ensure that Iran will have a nuclear weapon than any other
president through his abrupt withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA)
and his assassination of Soleimani..
Trump has in fact done more to ensure that Iran will have a nuclear weapon than any other
president through his abrupt withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA)
and his assassination of Soleimani..
Russ
Russia and I think China are working towards a multi-polar world order based on international
law.
Russia is pushing this vision and to pull other countries in, it has to walk the talk.
PR information warfare play a big part in state decisions. As we have seen from the Uki plane
shootdown Euro's beginning the process to trigger snapback, A small anti Iran block sprang to
life (UK, Canada, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Sweden) that will be great PR for the US in its
anti Iran crusade.
As I put in another comment, everyone likes a winner
I also recommend the short piece by Patrick Armstrong posted by moon up there.
I've been of the opinion from the beginning of this that the main reason Russia &
China have not leapt to the aid of Iran is that Iran does not need or want them to, yet at
least. Crooke's mention of the attack on the Saudi oil facilities is a connection that needs
to be made, that was not a fluke.
But it's a very "asymmetric" situation, as Crooke points out. Interesting times.
And each consequence leads to yet another consequence. But world leaders do not recognize
where this path is leading humanity. If they did they might be able to stop – or
perhaps not. They delude themselves to the real destination of the journey. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Indeed they were, and now we know it was just a charade. Triggering the Dispute Resolution
Mechanism on basis intel supplied by Bibi is a ruse to replace the JCPOA. Where have we heard
this before? Oh, Iran is less than a year from getting the nuclear bomb.
On Tuesday, Britain, France and Germany launched the 2015 Iran nuclear deal's dispute
resolution mechanism, which they said was partly prompted by concerns that Tehran might be
less than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected a proposal for a new "Trump deal" to resolve
a nuclear spat as a "strange" offer, pointing the finger at the US President over his
failure to deliver on promises.
"This Mr. Prime Minister in London, I don't know how he thinks. He says let's put
aside the nuclear deal and put the Trump plan in action. If you take the wrong step, it
will be to your detriment. Pick the right path. The right path is to return to the nuclear
deal", Rouhani said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Trump to replace the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with his own
new pact to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The US president responded by
tweeting that he agreed with Johnson on a "Trump deal".
Zarif Says 'It Depends on Europe' if JCPOA Remains After Dispute Resolution Mechanism
Activation. [.]
my apologies if anyone's brought this already, but the plot now thickens. a commenter at the
site at which i cross-post brought this to my attention on my 'iran makes arrests over
accidental downing of Ukrainian airliner'.
it's a tweet leading to new york times coverage of a 'Exclusive: Security camera footage
verified by the New York Times confirms that 2 missiles, fired 30 seconds apart from an
Iranian military site, hit the Ukrainian plane'
i'd used a free click to pull text, including:
"The new video was uploaded to YouTube by an Iranian user around 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
The date visible on the footage is "2019-10-17," not Jan. 8, the day the plane was downed. We
believe this is because the camera system is using a Persian calendar, not a Gregorian one.
Jan. 8 converts to the 18th of Dey, the 10th month in the Persian calendar. Digitally that
would display as 2019-10-18 in the video. One theory is that the discrepancy of one day can
be explained by a difference between Persian and Gregorian leap years or months." "
but it's everywhere already, set in stone, the WSJ news coverage included:
"The video was verified by Storyful, a social-media-intelligence company owned by News
Corp, parent of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones. It raises new questions about how
forthcoming Iranian authorities were when, after three days of denial, they admitted they had
mistakenly struck the Ukraine International Airlines flight without mentioning a second
missile."
the video obviously bring up a dozen more questions, including what it shows, where, when,
etc., but corporate coverage assures us that 'iran has lied about the airliner thrice now:
evil iran'.
wait for even more sanctions, more assassinations.
What bothers me about this entire thread is no one can see either a way to end the
suppression every player on the field has been subjected to by the private mobsters. . War
whether by WMDs or Sanctions. produces the same, millions will die and nothing will alter the
possession of power, and the abuse of the masses, by the few.
The thesis "the nation state system is the structure that allows the mobsters (private
bankers, private corporations, and privateers) to control sufficient authority to rule the
world". Without strength from deadly force, and authority from engineered consent, ruling the
world is difficult.
No one has found a way to pin the maker of wrongdoing chaos button, or convicted criminal
button on the private mobsters. As the private mobsters dance, and side step their positions
between the 206 or so nation states, they avoid being boxed up, and they install their
puppets in every place they land. It is the puppets who deliver to the international arenas
the voting power that allow the private mobsters to control conflict outcomes; and puppets
in-service-to the private mobsters oversee and manage the regional and local political and
economic domains. In such a situation, the law becomes progressively more suppressive; it
produces a hierarchy of relative power and the hierarchy allows to order the nation states
relative to their power in the hierarchy. The world might even be safer without any
government at all than to allow itself to be victimized by the private mobster use of the
nation state system. Clearly the mightier the actor in the system, the less the system can or
will hold the mighty actor to conform to the rule of law. So the rule of law suppresses the
little guy and enhances the big guy.. If there were no nation state system, there would not
be any push button suppression.
There has to be an answer.. that is not war or decimation of more humanity.
The only goal of Europe in sticking to the JPCoA when Trump walks out is to keep Tehran from
developping its nuke while excruciating sanctions hinder all normal life. Regime change is
still the goal, be it at the expense of european trade.
Think of NorthStream, or of the two-state fiction in Palestine where " there's no one to
broke peace with ".
There has to be an answer.. that is not war or decimation of more humanity.
Posted by: snake | Jan 15 2020 14:26 utc | 155
One lesson from history is that it is important that those big shots just beneath the
ultimate societal power be held to the strictest standards: The law applies to you too, big
shot. Clovis effectively adhered to this principle many centuries ago. Putin by reining in
the worst of the oligarchs operated in tune with this principle.
The prevailing principle in the West is that oligarchs, the mighty, etc are above the law,
while in the US for example swat teams kill pets that bark at their door-smashing arrival at
the homes of the little people, and those who invest in private prisons feast financially on
slave labor by millions of plebeians 'plea bargained' into servitude.
Oh, Iran is less than a year from getting the nuclear bomb.
Since Bibi, Trump and the rest of Iran's enemies and their indoctrinated populations have
been saying this for years it's time for Iran to just get on with it and pull out all stops
in putting several together to be used as an option of last resort. But they should make no
public confirmation, like Israel. If the warmongering US wants a war they and their allies
(and their populations would then be aware of the consequences and would force them to
re-assess the situation. IMO this is the only way Iran will survive. If Trump wins another
term I can almost guarantee he will forge ahead with attempting another regime change. Iran
is already a pariah state in their eyes so really nothing much more for Iran to lose.
Tim Horton's has been foreign-owned (now Brazil) since 2014, but the rot started to set in as
expansion, particularly into the US, became a major goal. Once a reasonable quality purveyor
of coffee and made-from-scratch in-store donuts, now just another hawker of industrialized
brown swill and partly-cooked/frozen-then-shipped and finish-baked chemical-laced products.
I only patronize a Timmie's if I don't know of a decent quality local bakery/restaurant in
that particular area. The devil you know...
To William Gruff: Absolutely, Canada is a vassal state of the US.
Example 1: Cretien managed to keep Cdn troops out of Iraq, but dithering Paul Martin got
forced by the US to send non-combat troops into Afghanistan, then
bribery-cash-in-brown-envelopes Harper turned it into combat roles that persist to this
day.
Ex 2, Diefenbaker scrapped the nearly-complete AVRO Arrow project on direct orders from
the US that the total-crap BOMARC missile system was to be implemented instead.
Trudeau sorta confronted the US by legalizing pot, but other than that... the foreign
policy leash is very visible on the Canadian lapdog.
Iran doesn't react like the US psychopaths do..
They follow the letter of the law, as they have done with JCPOA.
But in my opinion, Iran should get its nuke capabilities up to par asap. Why continue to want
to look as though you're following the law of JCPOA by allowing the IAEA in who reports to
the EU/US to continue intrusive inspections when they all plan war against you leaving you
nuke defenseless while Israel and Saudis have or are getting nukes?
If Iran has nukes the US will back off. Nuff said.
In 70 years of illegal and violent occupation of Palestine through deportation,eradication
and no respect for human lives adding what zionist army and services have done through these
years and this is "some nasty stuff"..no israel it's the cancer of middle-east..just it!
The AVRO Arrow fiasco was criminal... "scrapping" doesn't even begin to tell the story...
utter destruction was more like it, with welding torches, right down to the last bolt. That
plane, with it's mach 2 Iroquois engine was en route to completely embarrassing the US
MIC
As well, few people know the AVRO Jetliner story, which preceded the Arrow - the first
North American passenger jet aircraft - years ahead of anything the US produced
This panel discussion explains how Congress is bought by the military industrial (mostly
oil) complex. Then again Eisenhower included Congress in the Cabal several years after he
overthrew the democratic leader of Iran. The dialogue of these panel members links all
Mideast invasions back to the initial destruction of Iranian government in 1953. Apparently,
we cannot have democracy in the Mideast as it is bad for the mafia business.
I recently heard a story on CBC radio about the Arrow. Not only did they destroy the
prototype and all parts, they even destroyed all the drawings, except for one set which was
smuggled out by a draftsman, who kept them secret for decades. But now they are on display at
the "Diefenbaker Canada Centre at the University of Saskatchewan until April 2020" (from
Wiki)
It's interesting to learn that Uncle Sam wanted the program stopped. Why didn't some US
company just buy Avro instead? Buying out the competition is standard operating procedure for
US corporate parasites.
wendy davis @154 Rouhani's tweet when accepting responsibility for the downing of the plane
stated:
Hassan Rouhani
@HassanRouhani
·
Jan 10
Armed Forces' internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to
human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent
people.
Investigations continue to identify & prosecute this great tragedy & unforgivable
mistake. #PS752
As you can see, Rouhani stated 'missiles' as in plural.
Great to run into you again. Indeed by signing on to the JCPOA Iran demonstrated a number
of things. 1) Iran keeps her word. 2) The US never does. 3) Europe's role is to smile while
preparing to stab you in the back. 4) The US will sacrifice her own interests for Israel's
everytime.
I think all of us could have predicted all that. But what I could never have predicted was
the complete in your face nature of American imperialism. It is one thing for there to be
overwhelming evidence against a suspect. It's quite another for him to openly brag about his
crimes and then promise to commit even more. That is why Trump's presidency is a blessing for
Iran. If you happen to be in Iran, please share with us any information about the national
mood and how people are coping in difficult circumstances.
Didn't know that about Merkel; yet another reason she qualifies as a cowardly poodle. It's
also clear, IMO, that Merkel lied to Putin and the press about her position on the JCPOA at
their post-talks
presser :
Putin: "We certainly could not ignore another issue which is vitally important not only
for the region but also for the whole world – the issue of preserving the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's nuclear programme. After the United States withdrew
from this fundamental agreement, the Iranian side declared that they suspended some of their
voluntary commitments under the JCPOA. Let me underscore this – they only suspended
their voluntary commitments while they stress their readiness to go back to full compliance
with the nuclear deal.
"Russia and Germany resolutely stand for the continued implementation of the Joint Plan.
The Iranians are entitled to a support from European nations, which promised to set up a
special financial vehicle separate from the US dollar to be used in trade settlements with
Iran. The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) must finally begin working."
Merkel, statement: "Of course, we also discussed Iran. We agree that everything necessary
must be done to preserve the JCPOA. Germany believes that there should be no nuclear weapons
in Iran, and therefore we will use all the available diplomatic means to preserve this
agreement, even though it is not perfect, but it includes obligations of all the sides."
Merkel answering a question: " I have mentioned an issue on which we do not see eye to eye
with the Americans (JCPOA), even though they are our allies with whom we are working together
on many matters. But when it comes to German and European opinions, we are acting above all
in our own interests, while Russia is upholding its own interests, so we should look for
common interests in this process.
"Despite certain obstacles, we have found common interests in our bilateral relations
regarding the JCPOA with Iran. We have common opinions and different views, but a visit such
as this one is the best thing. It is better to talk with each other rather than about one
another, because it helps one to understand the other side's arguments."
It's very clear from Russia's reaction that the EU-3's action was a complete surprise. I
doubt Merkel will be invited to Moscow again. For Russians and the rest of humanity, there's
no trusting the West. IMO, it must always be treated as hostile regardless the smiles.
"
While it might work in domestic politics, this mad man negotiating tactic erodes trust in
international affairs and it will take decades for the US to recover from the harm done by
Trump's school yard bully approach.
Even the docile Europeans are beginning to tire of this and once they get their balls
stitched back on after being castrated for so long, America will have its work cut out
crossing the chasm from unreliable and untrustworthy partner to being seen as dependable and
worthy of entering into agreements with.
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has become a bit of a living parody of
everything wrong with the detached technocratic neo-liberal order which has driven the world
through 50 years of post-industrial decay. Now, two years into the Trump presidency, and five
years into the growth of a new system shaped by the Russia-China alliance, the world has become
a very different place from the one which Freeland and her controllers wish it to be.
Having been set up as a counterpart to the steely Hillary Clinton who was supposed to
win the 2016 election, Freeland and her ilk have demonstrated their outdated thinking in
everything they have set out to achieve since the 2014 coup in Ukraine. Certainly before that,
everything seemed to be going smoothly enough for End of History disciples
promoting a script that was supposed to culminate in a long-sought for "New World
Order".
The Script up until Now
Things were going especially well since the collapse of the Soviet system in the early
1990s. The collapse ushered in a unipolar world order with the European Union and NAFTA,
followed soon thereafter by the World Trade Organization and the 1999 destruction of
Glass-Steagall (1). The trans-Atlantic at last was converted into a cage of "post-sovereign
nations" that no longer had actual control of their own powers of credit generation. Under
NATO, even national militaries were subject to technocratic control. This cage was perfect for
the governing elite "scientifically managing" from above while the little people bickered over
their diminishing employment and standards of living from below.
Even though the former Soviet bloc nations were in tatters by 1992, their sovereign powers
could only be undone by applying the liberalization process which took 30 years in the west in
a short space of only a decade. This was done under the direction of such monetarist
"reformers" such as Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar under Yeltsin. Similar privatization and
liberalization reforms were applied viciously to Ukraine and other Warsaw pact countries during
the same period. Those pirates that became the "nouveau riche" of the west were joined by such
contemporary modern oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska, Boris Berezovksy, Mikhail Fridman, Roman
Abramovich in Russia, alongside Petro Poroshenko, Rinat Akhmetov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and
Viktor Pinchuk of Ukraine (to name a few). Not to forget their spiritual roots, many of these
oligarchs soon purchased houses in the swank upmarket sections of London which has come to be
known as "Moscow on Thames." (2)
By the end of the 1990s a new phase of this de-nationalization was unleashed with the
unveiling of the Blair doctrine explicitly calling for a "post-Westphalia" world
order which unleashed a wave of hellish regime change wars in the Arab World beginning with
9-11, and with a long term intention to target Libya, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon while expanding
NATO's hegemony against the potential re-emergence of Russia and China.
The Economic
Meltdown Was Always the Intention
Let's be clear: the whole point of the post-1971 world was directed with the intention of
destroying the moral-political and economic foundations for western society. The belief in
scientific progress and industrial growth was the cause of all true progress from the 15
th century Golden Renaissance to the assassinations of the 1960s. The intended
consequences of this post-1971 (zero growth) policy were:
1) The destruction of the productive forces of labor vis a vis outsourcing to "cheap labour
markets" driven by shareholder profit.
2) The consolidation of wealth into an ever smaller array of private multi-billionaire
owners under a logic of Darwinian survival of the fittest.
3) The creation of a vast speculative bubble supported by ever greater rates of unpayable
debt and totally detached from the physically productive forces of reality.
Just like 1929, after years of speculation known as the roaring twenties, the "plug could be
pulled" on the bubble in order to impose a bit of shock therapy onto a sleeping population who
would beg for fascism as a solution if only it would put bread on their tables. Though
this plan failed 80 years ago due to the American rejection of fascism under President
Roosevelt, the belief that the formula could succeed in the 21 st century was
adhered to most closely as long as America was brought firmly under control of the City of
London and their Wall Street lackies (3).
The destruction of the industrial mode of existence with the 1971 floating of the US dollar
unleashed a new system of scarcity within a fixed closed system upon the west. Above: Alexander
King and the Limits to Growth Model justifying depopulation once the system hits an inevitable
crisis
Although the fascist "solution" to their manufactured crisis was put down during WWII, this
new attempt was premised upon the policy that a new system of Global Government managed by
draconian regulation would be imposed under a "Green
New Deal" framework whereby the instruments of banking regulation, state directed capital
and centralized government (not evils unto themselves), would be directed only to green, low
energy flux density forms of energy which inherently lower the population of the earth. This is
very different from the protectionism, bank regulation, state credit and central authority
exerted by America during the 1930s New Deal (or Eurasian New Silk Road policy today). The
difference is that one system empowers sovereign nations, and increases the productive powers
of labor and energy flux density of humanity while increasing quality of life, the other
"Green" agenda has the opposite effect whereby monetary incentives are tied to decreasing the
"carbon footprint" of the earth. The image of a drug addict getting paid heroine as an
incentive to bleed himself to death is useful here.
With the slow collapse of first world economies after the assassination of nationalist
leaders in the 1960s, the plan for depopulation and global government seemed to be unfolding
without serious opposition.
The Role of Chrystia Freeland
Freeland's bizarre role in this whole affair was to do what every good Rhodes Scholar is
conditioned to do upon their completion of their indoctrination at Oxford: facilitate the tough
transition of the "pre-collapse" world economy into a new operating system that was meant to be
the "green post-collapse" world economy. It wasn't going to be easy to tell a new "pirate
class" of billionaires that they would have to accept losing much of their wealth (less
population equals less money), and operate under a strict new global operating system of
regulation necessary to contract the society. The Rhodes Scholarship program begun in 1902 to
advance a re-organized British Empire and had worked alongside the Fabian Society for over a
century producing more than 7000 scholars who have permeated across all fields of society
(media, education, government, military and corporate).
Cecil Rhodes
In his 1877 will, Cecil Rhodes said this group
should be "a society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire
working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and
our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in
every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every
way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the
petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the
rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society
and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed."
After leaving Oxford in 1993, Chrystia Freeland learned the ropes of "perception management"
by working for the London Economist, Washington Post, Financial times and Globe and Mail and
Reuters. After serving a stint as editor-at-large of Reuters, the time had come for her to play
the role of Valery Jarrett to the "Barack Obama" of Canada then being prepped for Prime
Ministership of Justin Trudeau.
She was perfect.
As an asset of the global propaganda system, Freeland had made high level contacts with
those Ukrainian, Russian, and Western oligarchs mentioned above including Viktor Pinchuk and
Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Larry Summers, George Soros and Al Gore, were just a few players in the
west whom she considered her "close friends" and whom she was happy to bring into Canada during
the period of re-organization of the Liberal Party (2011-2014) as it prepared to take power
under the banner of the
Canada 2020 think tank . What made Freeland even more special was that she was bred from a
zealous family of Ukrainian nationalists under the patriarchy of her Nazi
grandfather Michael Chomiak . This network was brought to Canada after WWII by
Anglo-American intelligence and cultivated as a force with ties to pro-Nazi Ukrainian
counterparts ever since.
Freeland's admission into politics was managed by another Rhodes Scholar named Bob Rae who
served as interim controller of the Liberal Party during several of the Harper years and was a
major player in Canada 2020. Rae, who had been the NDP Premier of Ontario from 1990-1995 was
happy to abdicate his seat to Freeland ensuring her entry into Trudeau's inner circle and thus
becoming his official handler (4).
Freeland Promotes the New Global Elite
Freeland has made it clear that she understands well that there is a fundamental difference
in cultural identities of the "new rich" relative to the older oligarchic families which she
serves. In the 2011 Rise of the New Global Elite , she describes it as follows:
To grasp the difference between today's plutocrats and the hereditary elite, who "grow
rich in their sleep" one need merely glance at the events that now fill high-end social
calendars."
Freeland then breaks down the categories of "new plutocrats" into two subcategories: the
good, technocratic friendly plutocrats who are ideologically compatible with the New World
Order of depopulation, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, et al and the "bad"
plutocrats who tend not to conform to the British Empire's program of global governance and
depopulation under the green agenda. In Freeland's world "good oligarchs" are those who adhere
to this agenda, while "bad oligarchs" are those who do not. Trump is a terrible Plutocrat, and
– Viktor Yanukovych was a good plutocrat until he decided to not sacrifice Ukraine on the
altar of the collapsing European Union and chose to throw
Ukraine's destiny into the Eurasian Economic Union in October 2013.
In the same paper, Freeland wrote:
if the plutocrats' opposition to increases in their taxes and tighter regulation of
their economic activities is understandable, it is also a mistake. The real threat facing the
super-elite, at home and abroad, isn't modestly higher taxes, but rather the possibility that
inchoate public rage could cohere into a more concrete populist agenda– that, for
instance, middle-class Americans could conclude that the world economy isn't working for them
and decide that protectionism is preferable to incremental measures." Quoting billionaire
Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of Pimco she wrote: "one of the big surprises of 2010 is that
the protectionist dog didn't bark."
Freeland ended her article with this message:
The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive:
by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth Let us hope the plutocrats aren't already
too isolated to recognize this".
But what does Freeland really think of the technocratic management under a plutocratic
governance of society? In Plutocrats
vs. Populists (Nov. 2013), Freeland lets her pro-plutocratic worldview out of the bag
when she gushes:
At its best, this form of plutocratic political power offers the tantalizing
possibility of policy practiced at the highest professional level with none of the messiness
and deal making and venality of traditional politics a technocratic, data-based, objective
search for solutions to our problems"
Since a technocratic managerial class committed to a common ideology must be solidified for
this system to work, Freeland goes on to make the case to recruit young people to the imperial
civil service:
Smart, publicly minded technocrats go to work for plutocrats whose values they share.
The technocrats get to focus full time on the policy issues they love, without the tedium of
building, rallying– and serving– a permanent mass membership. They can be pretty
well paid to boot."
The End of a Delusion?
Now that Russia and China's new operating system shaped by the Belt and Road Initiative has
created a force of opposition to this British-run Deep State design, nothing which those
would-be gods of Olympus have attempted to achieve has succeeded. Syria stands strong and the
Arab nations are increasingly joining China's Belt and
Road Initiative . Venezuela has failed to fall the way so many regimes have done before
2014 and NAFTA has been seriously challenged by a nationalistic president in the USA who has
also totally rejected the Malthusian agenda with the killing of COP21 and the Green New Deal.
Trudeau's usefulness has withered away quicker than you can say
"SNC Lavalin " and now the decision appears to be seriously humored whether Freeland will
take the reins of Canada after Trudeau is eliminated in order to "preserve the dying British
Empire" and the dream of Cecil Rhodes. While the universe may be organized by a principle of
reason, no one can say the same applies to the mind of an oligarchic. May 11, 2019
(1) The separation of speculative from commercial banking was the bedrock of financial
regulation since its implementation in 1933. Its destruction as Clinton's last act in office
resulted in the creation of the largest bubble in history amounting to a $700 trillion
derivatives time bomb now ready to explode.
(2) When Putin began exiling many of these unrepentant oligarchs, they quickly made their
way to London where many became disposable playthings of the British Empire.
(3) The self-professed "Fabian Society of Canada" was set up in the height of the Depression
by five Rhodes Scholars in order to create a Canadian fascist regime in 1932. This organization
known as the League of Social Reconstruction, set up a political party called the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation (CCF) which later changed its name to the New Democratic Party (NDP) in
1961. While good people have found themselves members of the NDP and Liberals over the years,
it is useful to keep in mind that this rotten core tied to the highest echelons of the British
oligarchy are real.
(4) It is a useful point to make here that as Premier of Ontario Bob Rae brought in
Maurice Strong as
President of Ontario Hydro from 1992-1994 during which time Canada's nuclear sector was
nearly shut down and a prototype for a "green New Deal" was applied. Strong had famously
described a "fiction book he wished to write someday saying: "What if a small group of world
leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the
rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an
agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is
'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the
group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations
collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
"... On Sunday, the Washington Post, citing a senior U.S official, reported that "Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Suleimani months ago but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation." On Thursday, CNN's Nicole Gaouette and Jamie Gangel reported that "Pompeo was a driving force behind President Donald Trump's decision to kill" the Iranian general. The CNN story said that Pompeo, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Trump before he moved to the State Department, viewed Suleimani as the mastermind of myriad operations targeting Americans and U.S interests. It also quoted an unnamed source close to Pompeo, who recalled the Secretary of State telling friends, "I will not retire from public service until Suleimani is off the battlefield." ..."
One of the new bogus explanations that the administration has been offering up is that there was a threat to one or more U.S. embassies
that led to the assassination. Rep. Justin Amash notes this morning that they have presented no evidence to Congress to back up any
of this or their original claim of an "imminent" attack:
The administration didn't present evidence to Congress regarding even one embassy. The four embassies claim seems to be totally
made up. And they have never presented evidence of imminence -- a necessary condition to act without congressional approval --
with respect to any of this. The administration didn't present evidence to Congress regarding even one embassy. The four embassies
claim seems to be totally made up. And they have never presented evidence of imminence -- a necessary condition to act without
congressional approval -- with respect to any of this. https://t.co/Eg0vaCnqFd
-- Justin Amash (@justinamash) -- Justin Amash (@justinamash) -- Justin Amash (@justinamash)
January 12, 2020
The administration's story keeps changing, because they are just making up unconvincing justifications for what they did. The president
invents new excuses for the illegal assassination, and his subordinates feel obliged to follow his lead because they are implicated
in his decision. The strange thing is that this administration still expects to be believed on something as important as this despite
their constant lying to Congress and the public about everything else. The president and Secretary of State have trashed their credibility
long ago, so there is no chance that we would give them the benefit of the doubt now. As a result, there is much more healthy and
appropriate skepticism about the administration's claims since January 2nd than there usually is. We are still piecing together what
happened at the start of this year in the days leading up to the assassination, but the picture we are getting is one of a push by
determined hard-line ideologues to take military action against a government they hate. Pompeo was the leading advocate for doing
this. John Cassidy The administration's story keeps changing, because they are just making up unconvincing justifications for what
they did. The president invents new excuses for the illegal assassination, and his subordinates feel obliged to follow his lead because
they are implicated in his decision. The strange thing is that this administration still expects to be believed on something as important
as this despite their constant lying to Congress and the public about everything else. The president and Secretary of State have
trashed their credibility long ago, so there is no chance that we would give them the benefit of the doubt now. As a result, there
is much more healthy and appropriate skepticism about the administration's claims since January 2nd than there usually is. We are
still piecing together what happened at the start of this year in the days leading up to the assassination, but the picture we are
getting is one of a push by determined hard-line ideologues to take military action against a government they hate. Pompeo was the
leading advocate for doing this. John Cassidy We are still piecing together what happened at the start of this year in the days leading
up to the assassination, but the picture we are getting is one of a push by determined hard-line ideologues to take military action
against a government they hate. Pompeo was the leading advocate for doing this. John Cassidy We are still piecing together what happened
at the start of this year in the days leading up to the assassination, but the picture we are getting is one of a push by determined
hard-line ideologues to take military action against a government they hate. Pompeo was the leading advocate for doing this. John
Cassidy
reports :
On Sunday, the Washington Post, citing a senior U.S official, reported that "Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Suleimani
months ago but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation." On Thursday, CNN's
Nicole Gaouette and Jamie Gangel reported that "Pompeo was a driving force behind President Donald Trump's decision to kill" the
Iranian general. The CNN story said that Pompeo, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Trump before he
moved to the State Department, viewed Suleimani as the mastermind of myriad operations targeting Americans and U.S interests.
It also quoted an unnamed source close to Pompeo, who recalled the Secretary of State telling friends, "I will not retire from
public service until Suleimani is off the battlefield."
Pompeo has Pompeo has
lied constantly
about Iran and the nuclear deal before and after he became Secretary of State, so it is not surprising that he has been the administration's
public face as they lie to Congress and the public about this illegal assassination. No wonder
he doesn't want to appear before Congress to testify.
Add to this the concomitant attempt made in Yemen, where there is no American presence other than the bombs dropping from the
sky, against an Iranian operative, and it shows the push of the administration to go for the kill as the main factor. The US is
becoming more and more like Israel: kill first, no excuses, we are the chosen ones - The "revenge" of Dinah's brothers, Genesis
34:25. This is The US of A's diplomacy nowadays. The world has really been put on notice. And the world will be reacting, see
the visit of Chancellor Merkel to Moscow immediately after that.
The question is what the American citizens are going to do? What are they going to vote for?
Why shouldn't Trump and his Administration's creatures "expect to be believed"? He and his toadies have misstated, misled, BS-ed
and outright lied to the public for three years now; and - despite a "credibility gap" of Vallis Marineris proportions - have
gotten no appreciable pushback from the media.
The right-wing media simply cheerlead him, as usual: and everybody else just sort of nods, grunts, and moves on.
On the one hand he is a creature of the technocratic neo-liberal order which is committed to
unilateralism and "post-nation-statism". On the other hand he is a creature of France – a
nation with strong (though easily forgotten) nationalist traditions stretching back to King
Louis XI, the founder of the first modern nation state, Cardinal Mazarin who organized the
Peace of Westphalia that established modern thoughts on nation states, Jean-Baptiste Colbert
who's economic theories gave meaning to economic sovereignty in the modern era, to Sadi Carnot
who's application of Colbertist economics and resistance to British manipulation got him killed
in 1895, to Charles de Gaulle, who established the 5 th Republic and devoted his
life to resisting the Deep State on the basis of peaceful relations with Russia and China.
Then there is the populist rage of the French which dates back to the colorful days of the
French revolution which established a unique tradition of mass revolts against the established
order when it becomes abusive of the people this provides a "bottom up" factor which any
politician desirous of keeping their heads attached to their necks must keep in mind.
For these two reasons (top down traditions of statecraft and bottom up traditions of freeing
corrupt leaders' of their heads from their bodies), Macron has found himself joining President
Trump's call to re-introduce Russia back into the G8, and has made major maneuvers to re-orient
France towards a pro-China policy becoming the guest of honor at China's International
Expo where $15 billion of deals were signed on energy, aerospace and agricultural
initiatives.
Macron has even enraged Europe's technocratic elite by questioning the foundations of the
European Union's viability while at the same time aptly
criticizing NATO of 'brain death' . The crisis caused by the unravelling of the globalist
vision of a post-nation state world order has resulted in an emergency conference in London to
figure out how NATO can be saved from its total irrelevance. Faced with the anti-NATO sentiment
expressed by Macron and Trump in recent months, and the emergence of the new multipolar order
which is attracting ever more nation states (including NATO members) into its sphere of
influence, Jens Stoltenberg
made the desperate assertion that China must be made a target of the military alliance
saying that China "is coming closer to us, investing heavily in infrastructure. We see them
in Africa, we see them in the Arctic, we see them in cyber space and China now has the
second-largest defense budget in the world."
The NATO Disorder and the Economic
Meltdown
Today, after decades of neoliberal practices have undermined the once powerful
agro-industrial capacities of France under the "post-industrial" Euro, it has become evident
that austerity and increased taxes are the only solutions which the technocrats running the
European Central Bank will permit. Since Euro membership forbids any nation to create a debt
which is greater than 3% of GDP, the means to generate sufficient state credit to build large
scale projects needed for an economic recovery do not exist.
In other words, from the standpoint of the Trans-Atlantic rules of the game, the situation
is hopeless.
For all of his problems, Macron isn't blind to this fact and can see that Russia and China
have successfully transformed the international order with the advent of the Belt and Road
Initiative. He can see that this system uniquely offers western leaders (who wish to keep their
heads in the face of the oncoming economic collapse), the only viable means to provide jobs,
security and long term economic growth to their people since it is rooted in long term, open
system thinking which is not connected to Hobbesian closed system geopolitics. De Gaulle would
be happy to see this shift.
The Revival of de
Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle was among a network of leaders who fought valiantly against the cancerous
deep state that had formerly supported fascism in WWII. While Franklin Roosevelt had to
do battle with such pro-fascist organizations such as the JP Morgan-funded Liberty League
and Council on Foreign Relations from 1933-1945, President De Gaulle had to contend with the
pro-Nazi Petain government whose agents immediately took over controls of France in the wake of
WWII, and didn't go away upon the General's ascension to the Presidency during the near
collapse of the 5 th republic in 1959.
De Gaulle strategically fought tooth and nail against the pro-NATO fascists led by General
Challe who attempted two coup attempts against De Gaulle in
1960 and 1961 and later worked with MI6 and the CIA using private contractors like Permindex to
arrange over
30 assassination attempts from 1961-1969.
De Gaulle was not only successful at taking France out of
the NATO cage in 1966 , but he had organized to ensure Algeria's independence against the
will of the entire deep state of France who often worked with Dulles' State Department to
preserve France's colonial possessions. De Gaulle also recognized the importance of breaking
the bipolar rules of the Cold War by reaching out to Russia calling for a renewed Europe "
from the Atlantic to the Urals " and also an alliance with China with the intent of
resolving the fires lit by western arsonists in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam whose independence
he was committed to guaranteeing. De Gaulle wrote of his plan in his Memoires:
"My aim, then, was to disengage France, not from the Atlantic Alliance, which I intended
to maintain by way of ultimate precaution, but from the integration carried out by NATO under
American command; to establish relations with each of the states of the East bloc, first and
foremost Russia, with the object of bringing about a détente, followed by understanding
and cooperation; to do likewise, when the time was ripe, with China"
After arranging a treaty with China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, India's Prime Minster Nehru
and the leadership of Cambodia in 1963 to create a China led block to resolve the crisis in
Southeast Asia with France's help, De Gaulle became the first western head of state to
recognize China and establish diplomatic relations with the Mainland on January 31, 1964. He
saw that China's growth would become a driving force of world development and saw a friendship
based on scientific and technological progress to be a source of France's renewal. Attacking
the false dichotomy of "Free liberal capitalism" vs "totalitarian communism", De Gaulle
expressed the Colbertist traditions of "dirigisme" which have historically driven France's
progress since the 17 th century when he said "We are not going to commit
ourselves to the empire of liberal capitalism, and nobody can believe that we are ever going to
submit to the crushing totalitarianism of communism."
The De Gaulle-Kennedy
Alliance
De Gaulle had great hopes to find like-minded anti-colonialist leaders and collaborators who
were fighting against the deep state in other countries. In America he was inspired by the
fresh leadership of the young John F. Kennedy whom he first met in Paris in May 1961. Of
Kennedy he wrote "The new President was determined to devote himself to the cause of
freedom, justice, and progress. It is true that, persuaded that it was the duty of the United
States and himself to redress wrongs, he would be drawn into ill-advised interventions. But the
experience of the statesman would no doubt have gradually restrained the impulsiveness of the
idealist. John Kennedy had the ability, and had it not been for the crime which killed him,
might have had the time to leave his mark on our age."
De Gaulle's advice to Kennedy was instrumental in the young President's decision to stay out
of a land war in Vietnam and led to Kennedy's
National Security Action Memorandum 263 to begin a phase out of American military from
Vietnam on October 2, 1963. Kenney and De Gaulle both shared the view (alongside Italian
industrialist Enrico Mattei with whom both collaborated) that Africa, Asia and South America
needed advanced scientific and technological progress, energy sovereignty and sanitation in
order to be fully liberated by the colonial structures of Europe. All three fought openly for
this vision and all three fell in the line of battle (one to a plane crash in 1961, another to
several shooters in Dallas in 1963 and the last to a staged "colour revolution" in 1969.)
[1]
If De Gaulle, Kennedy and Mattei were alive today, it is guaranteed they would recognize in
the Belt and Road Initiative and broader Eurasian alliance, the only viable pathway to a future
worth living in and the only means to save the souls of their own nations. The question is:
Will Macron continue on this Gaullist path and will other nations grow the balls to follow
suite, or will those imperial fascists who overthrew De Gaulle's vision in 1969 succeed once
more?
Footnote
[1] It is noteworthy that thesame
Montreal-based Permindex Corporationwhich was expelled from France for having
orchestrated at least two attempts on De Gaulle's life was found by New Orleans D.A. Jim
Garrison to be at the heart of the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
s the debate over presidential war powers intensifies in Congress, a coterie of key Trump
officials hit the Sunday talk shows last weekend to ratchet up the rhetoric on the "imminence"
of the attack Iranian General Qassem Soleimani had allegedly planned.
"It was this attitude that we don't have to tell Congress, we don't have to include
Congress," said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia. He added that after various scenarios
were presented by senators, the administration refused to provide any "commitment to ever come
to Congress" no matter what the circumstances.
On Friday, Pompeo said the
attacks were justified because there was "a series of imminent attacks that were being
plotted by Qasem Soleimaini, we don't know precisely when and we don't precisely where."
Members of Congress and the media seized upon the quote, charging that it does not sound
like the definition of "imminent."
President Trump himself seemed to grasp the importance of stressing that the attack was
"imminent" when he added details Friday on Fox News, asserting that Soleimani was plotting
attacks on four U.S. embassies.
"I think it would have been four embassies," Trump said. "Could have been military bases,
could have been a lot of other things too. But it was imminent."
"We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy," Trump added. "He was looking
very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad. I can reveal that I
believe it would have been four embassies."
But members of Congress say they were not told that four embassies had been targeted. And
when Trump officials were asked Sunday whether that claim was true, one by one they were left
sputtering.
Pentagon Chief Mark Esper conceded he "didn't see" intelligence indicating that on CBS's
Face the Nation .
"I didn't see one with regard to four embassies," Esper
said . "What I'm saying is I share the president's view."
"What the president said was he believed there probably and could've been attacks against
additional embassies. I shared that view," said Esper.
National Security adviser Robert O'Brien seemed to imply that members of Congress were at
fault for not extracting that information from their intelligence briefing.
"It does seem to be a contradiction. [Trump is] telling Laura Ingraham [about imminent attacks], but in
a 75-minute classified briefing, your top national security people never mentioned this to
members of Congress. Why not?" Chris Wallace asked O'Brien on Fox News Sunday .
"I wasn't at the briefing," O'Brien answered, "and I don't know how the Q&A went back
and forth. Sometimes it depends on the questions that were asked or how they were phrased."
On Meet the Press , O'Brien asserted that "exquisite" intelligence he was privy to
showed that "the threat was imminent."
When pressed by Chuck Todd about what the U.S. did to protect the other three embassies
under alleged imminent threat, O'Brien declined to give details.
"Is 'imminent' months, not weeks? Are people misinterpreting that word?" asked Todd.
"I think imminent, generally, means soon, quickly, you know, in process. So you know, I
think those threats were imminent. And I don't want to get into the definition further than
that," said O'Brien.
Pompeo's claim that an attack could be "imminent" even though the U.S. did not "know where
or when" it would come is "pretty inconsistent," Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky,
replied Sunday on Meet the Press.
"To me there's a bigger question too. This is what really infuriated me about the briefing
[Trump officials] maintain both in private and in public that a vote by Congress in 2003 or
2002 to go after Saddam Hussein was a vote that now allows them to still be in Iraq and do
whatever they want, including killing a foreign general from Iran," said Paul. "And I don't
think that's what Congress meant in 2002. We really need to have a debate about whether we
should still be in Iraq or in Afghanistan. There needs to be authorization from Congress."
Paul argued that presidents from both parties have, for decades, usurped Congress's war
powers, and that it is time for Congress to claw them back.
Said Paul, the founders "wanted to make it difficult to go to war, and I think we've been
drifting away from that for a long time, but that's why I'm willing to stand up, not because I
distrust President Trump -- actually think he has shown remarkable restraint -- but I'm willing
to stand up even against a president of my party because we need to stand up and take back the
power."
While the debate over war powers continues, Trump supporters have counter-attacked by
questioning the patriotism of those who don't fall in line with their narrative.
Former White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee-Sanders
"can't think of anything dumber" than Congress deciding matters of war and peace. Nikki
Haley accused Democrats of "mourning" General Soleimani. Congressman Doug Collins said
Democrats are "
in love with terrorists ." And Lindsey Graham said senators like Lee and Paul are
"empowering the enemy" by trying to rein in Trump's war powers.
On Monday, Trump added on Twitter: "The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are
working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was
'imminent' or not, & was my team in agreement. The answer to both is a strong YES., but it
doesn't really matter because of his horrible past!" If Trump's team was really in agreement,
they sure had a good way of hiding it. about the author Barbara Boland is TAC's
foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the
Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered , a
book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work has appeared on Fox News, The
Hill , UK Spectator , and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University
in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC .
"... Another aspect of Trump's erraticness is making sudden shifts, or what we have called gaslighting. He'll suddenly and radically change his rhetoric, even praise someone he demonized. That if nothing else again is a power play, to try to maintain his position as driving the pacing and content of the negotiations, which again is meant to position his counterparty as in a weaker position, of having to react to his moves, even if that amounts to identifying them as noise. It is a watered-down form of a cult strategy called love bombing (remember that Trump has been described as often being very charming in first meetings, only to cut down the person he met in a matter of days). ..."
"... I would disagree with the "selecting staff" part. I can't really think of any of his appointees to any office while he is president that was a good pick. One worse than the other basically. Maybe in his private dealings he did better, but in public office it's a continuous horror show. Examples like Pence, Haley, "Mad Dog", Bolton, DeVos, his son in law, Pompeo. The list goes on. ..."
"... For me as a foreigner who detests the forever wars and most of the US foreign policy, this is a good thing: the more heavy handed, the more brutal, the more cruel, the more stupid the US policy is, the less is the chance for our euro governments to follow the US in today's war or other policy. ..."
"... They are not inept and incompetent at what they are trying to achieve. The GOP has long sought to privatize government to help the rich get richer and harm anyone who isn't rich by cutting services and making them harder to get. Trumps picks are carrying out that agenda very well. ..."
"... Trump is just a huge crude extension of the usual "exceptional" leaders, much more transparent by not pretending he is any sort of representative of democratic and cooperative values claimed by his predecessors. ..."
"... But what I think is noticeable is that his worst high profile staff picks, while horrible people, are generally those who are under his thumb and so he has control of. ..."
"... He got elected over the dead bodies of just about everyone who counts in the Republican Party. He pretty much did a hostile takeover of the GOP. So his ability to draw on seasoned hands was nil. And on top of that, he is temperamentally not the type to seek the counsel of perceived wise men in and hanging around the party. The people he has kept around are cronies like Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin. ..."
"... The one notably competent person he has attracted and retained is Robert Lightizer, the US Trade Representative ..."
"... oderint, dum metuant ..."
"... Führerprinzip ..."
"... Hitler ran the Third Reich by a system of parallel competition among bureaucratic empire builders of all stripes. Anyone who showed servile loyalty and mouthed his yahoo ideology got all the resources they liked, for any purpose they proposed. But the moment he encountered any form of independence or pushback, he changed horses at once. He left the old group in place, but gave all their resources to a burgeoning new bureaucracy that did things his way. If a State body resisted his will, he had a Party body do it instead. He was continually reaching down 2-3 levels in the org charts, to find some ambitious firecracker willing to suck up to him, and leapfrog to the top. ..."
"... This left behind a complete chaos of rival, duplicated functions, under mainly unfit leaders. And fortunately for the world, how well any of these organizations actually did their jobs was an entirely secondary consideration. Loyalty was all. ..."
"... Hitler sat at the center of all the resource grabbers and played referee. This made everyone dependent on his nod and ensured his continued power. The message was: there are no superiors in the Reich. There is only der Führer, and his favor trumps everything ..."
"... The few over-confident generals he picked, except for Flynn, finally caved when they realized staying was an affront to the honor code they swore to back in OCS or their academy. ..."
"... I don't know how they selected staff in the Reagan years, but lately the POTUS seems to appoint based on who the plutocrats want. As has been noted Bary O took his marching orders from Citigroup if I remember right. I doubt if Trump had even heard of most of the people he appointed prior to becoming president. So at least some of Trump's turnover is due to him firing recommendations from others who didn't turn out how he'd like. That's one reason I didn't get all that upset over the Bolton hiring – I didn't think he'd last a year before Trump canned him. ..."
"... I would say that Trump, not acting in an intelligent way is doing very clever things according to his interests. My opinion is that his actions/negotiations with foreign countries are 100% directed for domestic consumptiom. He does not care at all about international relationships, just his populist "make America great again" and he almost certainly play closest attention to the impact of his actions in US opinion. ..."
"... Classic predatory behaviors: culling the herd and eating the weak. ..."
"... I think Trump understands that one of the basic tactics of negotiation (though forgotten by the Left(tm)) is to set out a maximalist position before the negotiation starts, so that you have room to make compromises later. ..."
"... But in domestic politics, there's no doubt that publicly announcing extreme negotiating positions is a winning tactic. You force the media and other political actors to comment and make counter-proposals, thus dragging the argument more in your direction from the very start. Trump remembers something that his opponents have willfully forgotten: compromise is something you finish with not something you start from . In itself, any given compromise has no particular virtue or value. ..."
"... Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that fate. ..."
"... A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all. ..."
"... The maintenance of fear, chaos and blowback are exACTLY the desired result. Deliberately and on purpose. ..."
"... It also helps him do some things quietly in the background ..."
Trump and
the Mad Negotiator Approach Posted on January
14, 2020 by Yves Smith Trump's numerous character
flaws, such as his grandiosity, his lack of interest in the truth, his impulsiveness, his
habitual lashing out at critics, have elicited boatloads of disapproving commentary. It's
disturbing to see someone so emotional and undisciplined in charge of anything, let alone the
United States.
Rather than offer yet more armchair analysis, it might be productive to ask a different
question: why hasn't Trump been an abject failure? There are plenty of rich heirs who blow
their inheritance or run the family business into the ground pretty quickly and have to knuckle
down to a much more modest lifestyle.
Trump's lack of discipline has arguably cost him. The noise regularly made about his
business bankruptcies is wildly exaggerated. Most of Trump's
bankruptcies were of casinos , and most of those took place in the nasty 1991-1992
recession. He was one of only two major New York City developers not to have to give meaningful
equity in some of their properties in that downturn. He even managed to keep Mar-a-Lago and
persuaded his lenders to let him keep enough cash to preserve a pretty flashy lifestyle because
he was able to persuade them that preserving his brand name was key to the performance of
Trump-branded assets.
The MarketWatch analysis shows a variety of lenders, all big banks or listed specialized
finance companies like Ladder Capital, that have provided lots of money to Trump over the
years in the forms of short-, medium- and long-term loans and at competitive rates, whether
fixed or variable.
"The Treasury yield that matches the term of the loan is the closest starting benchmark
for Trump-sized commercial real estate loans," said Robert Thesman, a certified public
accountant in Washington state who specializes in real estate tax issues. The 10-year
Treasury swap rate is also used and tracks the bonds closely, according to one expert.
Trump's outstanding loans were granted at rates between 2 points over and under the
matching Treasury-yield benchmark at inception. That's despite the well-documented record of
bankruptcy filings that dot Trump's history of casino investment.
The flip side is that it's not hard to make the case that Trump's self-indulgent style has
cost him in monetary terms. His contemporary Steve Ross of The Related Companies who started
out in real estate as a tax lawyer putting together Section 8 housing deals, didn't have a big
stake like Trump did to start his empire. Ross did have industrialist and philanthropist Max
Fisher as his uncle and role model, but there is no evidence that Fisher staked Ross beyond paying for his education .
Ross has an estimated net worth of $7.6 billion versus Trump's $3.1 billion.
Despite Trump's heat-seeking-missile affinity for the limelight, we only get snippets of how
he has managed his business, like his litigiousness and breaking of labor laws. Yet he's kept
his team together and is pretty underleveraged for a real estate owner.
The area where we have a better view of how Trump operates is via his negotiating, where is
astonishingly transgressive. He goes out of his way to be inconsistent, unpredictable, and will
even trash prior commitments, which is usually toxic, since it telegraphs bad faith. How does
this make any sense?
One way to think of it is that Trump is effectively screening for weak negotiating
counterparties. Think of his approach as analogous to the Nigerian scam letters and the many
variants you get in your inbox. They are so patently fake that one wonders why the fraudsters
bother sending them.
Everyone knows that Nigerian scam e-mails, with their exaggerated stories of moneys tied
up in foreign accounts and collapsed national economies, sound totally absurd, but according
to research from Microsoft, that's on purpose .
As a savvy Internet user you probably think you'd never fall for the obvious trickery, but
that's the point. Savvy users are not the scammers' target audience, [Cormac] Herley notes.
Rather, the creators of these e-mails are targeting people who would believe the sort of
tales these scams involve .:
Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since
his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to
reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the
scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive
ratio in his favor.
Who would want to get in a business relationship with a guy who makes clear early on that he
might pull the rug out from under you? Most people would steer clear. So Trump's style, even if
he adopted it out of deep-seated emotional needs, has the effect of pre-selecting for weak,
desperate counterparties. It can also pull in people who think they can out-smart Trump and
shysters who identify with him, as well as those who are prepared to deal with the headaches
(for instance, the the business relationship is circumscribed and a decent contract will limit
the downside).
Mind you, it is more common than you think for businesses to seek out needy business
"partners". For instance, back in the day when General Electric was a significant player in
venture capital, it would draw out its investment commitment process. The point was to
ascertain if the entrepreneurs had any other prospects; they wouldn't tolerate GE's leisurely
process if they did. By the time GE was sure it was the only game in town, it would cram down
the principals on price and other terms. There are many variants of this playbook, such as how
Walmart treats suppliers.
Trump has become so habituated to this mode of operating that he often launches into
negotiations determined to establish that he had the dominant position when that is far from
clear, witness the ongoing China trade row. Trump did in theory hold a powerful weapon in his
ability to impose tariffs on China. But they are a blunt weapon, with significant blowback to
the US. Even though China had a glass jaw in terms of damage to its economy (there were signs
of stress, such as companies greatly stretching out when they paid their bills), Trump could
not tolerate much of a stock market downdraft, nor could he play a long-term game.
Another aspect of Trump's erraticness is making sudden shifts, or what we have called
gaslighting. He'll suddenly and radically change his rhetoric, even praise someone he
demonized. That if nothing else again is a power play, to try to maintain his position as
driving the pacing and content of the negotiations, which again is meant to position his
counterparty as in a weaker position, of having to react to his moves, even if that amounts to
identifying them as noise. It is a watered-down form of a cult strategy called
love bombing (remember that Trump has been described as often being very charming in first
meetings, only to cut down the person he met in a matter of days).
Voters have seen another face of Trump's imperative to find or create weakness: that of his
uncanny ability to hit opponents' weak spots in ways that get them off balance, such as the way
he was able to rope a dope Warren over her Cherokee ancestry claims.
The foregoing isn't to suggest that Trump's approach is optimal. Far from it. But it does
"work" in the sense of achieving certain results that are important to Trump, of having him
appear to be in charge of the action, getting his business counterparts on the back foot. That
means Trump is implicitly seeing these encounters primarily in win-lose terms, rather than
win-win. No wonder he has little appetite for international organizations. You have to give in
order to get.
I think this is pretty astute, thanks Yves. One reason I think Trump has been so
successful for his limited range of skills is precisely that 'smart' people underestimate him
so much. He knows one thing well – how power works. Sometimes that's enough. I've known
quite a few intellectually limited people who have built very successful careers based on a
very simple set of principles (e.g. 'never disagree with anyone more senior than me').
Anecdotally, I've often had the conversation with people about 'taking Trump seriously',
as in, trying to assess what he really wants and how he has been so successful. In my
experience, the 'smarter' and more educated the person I'm talking to is, the less willing
they are to have that conversation. The random guy in the bar will be happy to talk and have
insights. The high paid professional will just mutter about stupid people and racism.
I would also add one more reason for his success – he does appear to be quite good
at selecting staff, and knowing who to delegate to.
There is another figure from recent history who displayed similar astuteness about power
while manifesting generally low intelligence: Chile's Pinochet. He had near failing grades in
school but knew how to consolidate power, dominate the other members of the junta, and weed
out the slightest hint of dissidence within the army.
To the average viewer, Trump's branding extends to the negative brands that he assigns to
opponents. Witness Lyin' Ted , Pocahontas and similar sticky names that
make their way into coverage. He induces free coverage from Fake News as if they
can't resist gawking at a car wreck, even when one of the vehicles is their own. Manipulation
has worked quite a lot on people with different world views, especially when they don't
conceive of any different approaches.
Scott Adams touted that as one of Trump's hidden persuasionological weapons . . . that
ability to craft a fine head-shot nickname for every opponent.
If Sanders were to be nominated, I suppose Trump would keep saying Crazy Bernie. Sanders
will just have to respond in his own true-to-himself way. Maybe he could risk saying
something like . . .
" so Trashy Trump is Trashy. This isn't new."
If certain key bunches of voters still have
fond memories for Crazy Eddie, perhaps Sanders could have some operatives subtly remind
people of that.
Some images of Crazy Eddie, for those who wish to stumble up Nostalgia Alley . . .
I would disagree with the "selecting staff" part. I can't really think of any of his
appointees to any office while he is president that was a good pick. One worse than the other
basically. Maybe in his private dealings he did better, but in public office it's a continuous horror
show.
Examples like Pence, Haley, "Mad Dog", Bolton, DeVos, his son in law, Pompeo. The list goes
on.
Another indication how bad his delegation skills are is how short his picks stay at their
job before they are fired again. Is there any POTUS which had higher staff turnover?
Its a horror show because you don't agree with their values. After the last few
Presidents, too much movement to the right would catastrophic, so there isn't much to do. His
farm bill is a disaster. The new NAFTA is window dressing. He slashed taxes. He's found a way
to make our brutal immigration system even more nefarious. His staff seems to be working out
despite it not having many members of the Bush crime family.
Even if these people were as beloved by the press as John McCain, they would still be
monsters.
It's not their values that make them a horror show, it's their plain inaptitude and
incompetency. E.g. someone like that Exxon CEO is at least somewhat capable, which is why I
didn't mention him. Though he was quite ineffective as long as he lasted and probably quite
corrupt. Pompeo in the same office on the other hand is simply a moron elevated way beyond
his station. Words fail and the Peter principle cannot explain.
The US can paper over this due to their heavy handed application of power for now, but
every day he stays in office, friends are abhorred while trying not to show it, and foes
rejoice at the utter stupidity of the US how it helps their schemes.
For me as a foreigner who detests the forever wars and most of the US foreign policy, this
is a good thing: the more heavy handed, the more brutal, the more cruel, the more stupid the
US policy is, the less is the chance for our euro governments to follow the US in today's war
or other policy. So while I am sort of happy about the outcome, I don't see the current
monsters at the helm worse than the monsters 4 years ago under Obama. In fact I detested them
much more since they had the power to drag my governments into their evil schemes.
Evil and clearly despicable is always better than evil and sort of charismatic.
For me as a foreigner who detests the forever wars and most of the US foreign policy,
this is a good thing: the more heavy handed, the more brutal, the more cruel, the more stupid
the US policy is, the less is the chance for our euro governments to follow the US in today's
war or other policy.
Indeed, if you look at the trendline from the '80's to now, trump is, in some ways, the
less effective evil.
They are not inept and incompetent at what they are trying to achieve. The GOP has long
sought to privatize government to help the rich get richer and harm anyone who isn't rich by
cutting services and making them harder to get. Trumps picks are carrying out that agenda
very well.
I feel exactly the same. Trump is just a huge crude extension of the usual "exceptional"
leaders, much more transparent by not pretending he is any sort of representative of
democratic and cooperative values claimed by his predecessors.
But what I think is noticeable is that his worst high profile staff picks, while horrible
people, are generally those who are under his thumb and so he has control of. But in the
behind the scenes activities, they've been very effective – as an obvious example,
witness how he's put so many conservative Republicans into the judiciary, in contrast with Obamas haplessness.
That is not a Trump thing, getting more judges is a 100% rep party thing and only rep
party thing. Sure, he is the one putting his rubber stamp on it, but the picking and
everything else is a party thing. They stopped the placement for years under Obama before
Trump was ever thought about, and now are filling it as fast as they can. Aren't they having
complicit democrats helping them or how can they get their picks beyond congress? Or am I
getting something wrong and Obama could have picked his judges but didn't?
The people he chooses to run his administration however are all horrible. Not just
horrible people but horrible picks as in incompetent buffoons without a clue. Can you show a
evil, horrible or not but actually competent pick of his in his administration?
The only one I can think of is maybe the new FAA chief Dickson. Who is a crisis manager,
after the FAA is in its worst crisis ever right now. So right now someone competent must have
this post. All the others seem to be chickenhawk blowhards with the IQ of a fruitfly but the
bluster of a texan.
Is she effective? What has she done to make her a spy mastermind?
She is obviously a torturer, but is that a qualification in any way useful to be a
intelligence agency boss?
I have the suspicion Haspel was elevated to their office by threatening "I know where all
the bodies are buried (literally) and if you don't make me boss, I will tell". Blackmail can
helping a career lots if successful.
The outcomes of incompetence and malicious intent are sometimes indistinguishable from one
another. With the people Trump has surrounded himself with, horrible, nasty outcomes are par
for the course because these guys are both incompetent and chock full of malicious intent.
Instead of draining the swamp, he's gone and filled it with psychotic sociopaths.
Some time ago I heard Mulvaney answer the criticism about the Trump budget of the day
cutting so much money from EPA that EPA would have to fire half of its relevant scientists.
He replied that " this is how we drain the swamp".
Citing "corruption" was misdirection. Trump let his supporters believe that the corruption
was The Swamp. What the Trump Group ACTually means by "The Swamp" is all the career
scientists and researchers and etc. who take seriously the analyzing and restraining of Upper
Class Looter misbehavior.
I limited the post to his negotiating approach. One would think someone so erratic would
have trouble attracting people. However, Wall Street and a lot of private businesses are full
of high maintenance prima donnas at the top. Some of those operations live with a lot of
churn in the senior ranks. For others, one way to get them to stay is what amounts to a
combat pay premium, they get paid more than they would in other jobs to put up with a
difficult boss. I have no idea how much turnover there is in the Trump Organization or how
good his key lieutenants are so I can't opine either way on that part.
Regarding his time as POTUS, Trump has a lot of things working against him on top of his
difficult personality and his inability to pay civil servants a hardship premium:
1. He got elected over the dead bodies of just about everyone who counts in the Republican
Party. He pretty much did a hostile takeover of the GOP. So his ability to draw on seasoned
hands was nil. And on top of that, he is temperamentally not the type to seek the counsel of
perceived wise men in and hanging around the party. The people he has kept around are cronies
like Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin.
The one notably competent person he has attracted and retained is Robert Lightizer, the US
Trade Representative
2. Another thing that undermines Trump's effectiveness in running a big bureaucracy is his
hatred for its structure. He likes very lean organizations with few layers. He can't impose
that on his administration. It's trying to put a round peg in a square hole.
I have no idea how much turnover there is in the Trump Organization or how good his key
lieutenants are so I can't opine either way on that part.
Is it just me or does nobody know? Does it seem to anyone else like there has been
virtually no investigation of his organization or how it was run?
Maybe it's buried in the endless screeds against Trump, but any investigations of his
organizations always seem colored by his presidency. I'd love to see one that's strictly
historical.
I am simply saying that I have not bothered investigating that issue. There was a NY Times
Magazine piece on the Trump Organization before his election. That was where I recall the bit
about him hating having a lot of people around him, he regards them as leeches. That piece
probably had some info on how long his top people had worked for him.
Congratulations Yves, on another fine piece, one of your best. I might recommend you
append this comment to it as an update, or else pen a sequel.
While Trump has more in common stylistically with a Borgia prince out of Machiavelli, or a
Roman Emperor ( oderint, dum metuant ) than with a Hitler or a Stalin, your note
still puts me in mind of an insightful comment I pulled off a history board a while ago,
regarding the reductionist essence of Führerprinzip , mass movement or no mass
movement. It's mostly out of Shirer:
Hitler ran the Third Reich by a system of parallel competition among bureaucratic
empire builders of all stripes. Anyone who showed servile loyalty and mouthed his yahoo
ideology got all the resources they liked, for any purpose they proposed. But the moment he
encountered any form of independence or pushback, he changed horses at once. He left the old
group in place, but gave all their resources to a burgeoning new bureaucracy that did things
his way. If a State body resisted his will, he had a Party body do it instead. He was
continually reaching down 2-3 levels in the org charts, to find some ambitious firecracker
willing to suck up to him, and leapfrog to the top.
This left behind a complete chaos of rival, duplicated functions, under mainly unfit
leaders. And fortunately for the world, how well any of these organizations actually did
their jobs was an entirely secondary consideration. Loyalty was all.
Hitler sat at the center of all the resource grabbers and played referee. This made
everyone dependent on his nod and ensured his continued power. The message was: there are no
superiors in the Reich. There is only der Führer, and his favor trumps everything
.
As you note, some of these tools (fortunately) aren't available to Cheeto 45 .
I hope this particular invocation of Godwin's avenger is trenchant, and not OT. Although
Godwin himself blessed the #Trump=Hitler comparison some time ago, thereby shark-jumping his
own meme.
It might be as simple as birds of a feather (blackbirds of course) flocking together.
Trump seems to have radar for corrupt cronies as we have seen his swamp draining into the
federal prison system. The few over-confident generals he picked, except for Flynn, finally
caved when they realized staying was an affront to the honor code they swore to back in OCS
or their academy.
I don't know how they selected staff in the Reagan years, but lately the POTUS seems to
appoint based on who the plutocrats want. As has been noted Bary O took his marching orders
from Citigroup if I remember right. I doubt if Trump had even heard of most of the people he
appointed prior to becoming president. So at least some of Trump's turnover is due to him
firing recommendations from others who didn't turn out how he'd like. That's one reason I
didn't get all that upset over the Bolton hiring – I didn't think he'd last a year
before Trump canned him.
My recollection of the Reagan years was that he had a lot of staff who left to "spend more
time with their families"; in other words they got caught being crooked and we're told to go
lest they besmirch the sterling reputation of St. Ronnie.
He early-on adopted the concept of "dismantle the Administrative State". Some of his
appointees are designed to do that from within. He appoints termites to the Department of
Lumber Integrity because he wants to leave the lumber all destroyed after he leaves the White
House.
His farm bill is only a disaster to those who support Good Farm Bill Governance. His
mission is to destroy as much of the knowledge and programs within the USDA as possible. So
his farm bill is designed to achieve the destruction he wants to achieve. If it works, it was
a good farm bill from his viewpoint. For example.
I would say that Trump, not acting in an intelligent way is doing very clever things
according to his interests. My opinion is that his actions/negotiations with foreign
countries are 100% directed for domestic consumptiom. He does not care at all about
international relationships, just his populist "make America great again" and he almost
certainly play closest attention to the impact of his actions in US opinion.
He calculates
the risks and takes measures that show he is a strong man defending US interests (in a very symplistic and populist way) no matter if someone or many are offended, abused or even killed
as we have recently seen. Then if it is appreciated that a limit has been reached, and the
limit is not set by international reactions but perceived domestic reactions, he may do a
setback showing how sensibly magnanimous can a strongman like him be. In the domestic front,
IMO, he does not give a damn on centrists of all kinds. Particularly, smart centrists are
strictly following Trumps playbook focusing on actions that by no means debilitate his
positioning as strongman in foreign issues and divert attention from the real things that
would worry Trump. The impeachment is exactly that. Trump must be 100% confident that he
would win any contest with any "smart" centrist. Of course he also loves all the noises he
generates with, for instance, the Soleimani killing or Huawei banning that distract from his
giveaways to the oligarchs and further debilitation of remaining welfare programs and
environmental programs. This measures don't pass totally unnoticed but Hate Inc .
and public opinions/debates are not paying the attention his domestic measures deserve.
Trump's populism feeds on oligarch support and despair and his policies are designed to keep
and increase both. Polls on Democrats distract from the most important polls on public
opinion about Trum "surprise" actions.
Trump has the rare gift of being able to drive his enemies insane – just witness
what's become of the Democrats, a once proud American political party.
Democrats have long been (what, 50 plus yrs. – Phil Ochs – Love Me I'm A
Liberal) exuding false pride of not appearing to be or sounding insane. Their place, being
the concern troll of the duopoly. All are mad. If the Obama years didn't prove it, the Dems
during Bush Cheney certainly did.
Yes, 50 years. Nixon played mad to get his Vietnam politics through, Reagan was
certifiable
"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will
outlaw Russia forever." "We begin bombing in five minutes." live on air.
Etc.
I suspect only half of the post was posted? The last para seems to get cut in mid
sentence.
I'd add one more thing (which may be in the second half, assuming there's one). Trump's
massively insane demands are a good anchoring strategy. Even semi-rational player will not
make out-of-this-earth demands – they would be seen as either undermining their
rationality, or clearly meant to only anchor so less effective (but surprisingly, even when
we know it's only an anchor it apparently works, at least a bit). With irrational Trump, one
just doesn't know.
I think Trump understands that one of the basic tactics of negotiation (though forgotten
by the Left(tm)) is to set out a maximalist position before the negotiation starts, so that
you have room to make compromises later.
Sometimes this works better than others – I
don't know how far you can do it with the Chinese, for example. But then Trump may have
inadvertently played, in that case, into the tradition of scripted public utterances combined
with behind-the-scenes real negotiation that tends to characterize bargaining in Asia.
But in
domestic politics, there's no doubt that publicly announcing extreme negotiating positions is
a winning tactic. You force the media and other political actors to comment and make
counter-proposals, thus dragging the argument more in your direction from the very start.
Trump remembers something that his opponents have willfully forgotten: compromise is
something you finish with not something you start from . In itself, any
given compromise has no particular virtue or value.
There is actually two parts to a negotiation I should mention. There is negotiating a
deal. And then there is carrying it out. Not only Trump but the US has shown itself incapable
of upholding deals but they will break them when they see an advantage or an opportunity.
Worse, one part of the government may be fighting another part of the government and will
sabotage that deal in sometimes spectacular fashion.
So what is the point of having all these weird and wonderful negotiating strategies if any
partners that you have on the international stage have learned that Trump's word is merely a
negotiating tactic? And this includes after a deal is signed when he applies some more
pressure to change something in an agreement that he just signed off on? If you can't keep a
deal, then ultimately negotiating a deal is useless.
The incapability of the US to keep their treaties has been a founding principle of the
country. Ask any Indian.
Putin or the russian foreign ministry called the US treaty incapable a few years before
Trump, and they were not wrong. Trump didn't help being erratic as he is, but he didn't
cancel any treaty on his own: JCPOA, INF, etc. He had pretty broad support for all of these.
Only maybe NAFTA was his own idea.
He owes the fact he's President not to any skill he has, but to Democrats being so bad.
Many non establishment types could have beaten Hillary.
And Trump owes the fact that he's not DOA in 2020 re-election again because Democrats are
so bad. There are a handful of extremely popular social programs Democrats could champion
that would win over millions of voters and doom Trump's re-election. But instead, they double
down on issues that energize Trump's base, are not off-limits to there donors while ignoring
what the broad non corporate/rich majority support. For example impeaching him for being the
first recent President not to start a major new war for profit and killing millions and then
saying it's really because something he did in Ukraine that 95% of Americans couldn't care
less about and won't even bother to understand even if they could.
That leaves the fact he is rather rich and must have done something to become that. I
don't know enough about him to evaluate that. But I would never what to know him or have a
friend that acts like him. I've avoided people like that in my life.
Did you read the post as positive? Please read again. Saying that Trump's strategy works
only to the extent that he winds up selecting for weak partners is not praise. First, it is
clinical, and second, it says his strategy has considerable costs.
I find it interesting that the primary foreign entity who has played Trump like a violin
is Kim in North Korea. He has gotten everything he wanted, except sanctions relief over the
past couple of years.
However, Trump's style of negotiating with Iran has made it clear to Kim that North Korea
would be idiots to give up their nuclear weapons and missiles. Meanwhile, Iran has watched
Trump's attitude towards Kim since Kim blew up his first bomb and Trump is forcing them to
develop nuclear weapons to be able to negotiate with Trump and the West.
But other than the minor matter of US 8th Army (cadre) sitting in the line of fire, the
bulk of any risks posed by Li'l Kim are borne by South Korea, Japan and China. So for Trump,
it's still down the list a ways, until the Norks can nuke tip a missile and hit Honolulu. So
what coup has Kim achieved at Trump's expense, again?
Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to
destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime
Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that
fate.
A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence.
And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the
Republicans to destroy them all.
The ClintoBama Pelosicrats have no standing on which to pretend to support some very
popular social programs and hope to be believed any longer. Maybe that is why they feel there
is no point in even pretending any more.
Mind you, there's no reason to think that this negotiation approach wasn't an adaptation
to Trump's emotional volatility, as in finding a way to make what should have been a weakness
a plus. And that he's less able to make that adaptation work well as he's over his head, has
less control than as a private businessman, and generally under way more pressure.
I recall reading that Trump's empire would have collapsed during the casino fiasco were it
not for lending from his father when credit was not available elsewhere. NYT investigative
reporters have turned up evidence of massive financial support from Trump father to son to
the tune of hundreds of millions throughout the son's career. So much for the great
businessman argument.
Trump is nothing more or less than a reflection of the mind set of the US people. The left
wing resorts to the same tactics that Trump uses to gain their ends. Rational thought and
reasonable discussion seems to be absent. Everyone is looking for a cause for the country's
failing infrastructure, declining life expectancy, and loss of opportunity for their children
to have a better life than they were able to achieve.
They each blame the other side. But
there are more than two sides to most folks experience. If ever the USA citizens abolish or
just gets fed up with the two party system maybe things will change. In reality most people
know there is little difference between the two parties so why even vote?
This analysis of Trump reminded me of a story I heard from the founders of a small rural
radio station. Both had been in broadcasting for years at a large station in a major market,
one as a program director and the other in sales. They competed for a broadcasting license
that became available and they won.
With the license in-hand they needed to obtain
investments to get the station on-air within a year or they would lose the license. Even with
their combined savings and as much money as they could obtain from other members of their
families and from friends -- they were short what they needed by several hundred thousand
dollars.
Their collateral was tapped out and banks wouldn't loan on the broadcast license
alone without further backing. They had to find private investors. They located and presented
to several but their project could find no backers. In many cases prospects told them their
project was too small -- needed too little money -- to be of interest. As the deadline for
going on-air loomed they were put in touch with a wealthy local farmer.
After a long evening presenting their business case to this farmer in ever greater detail,
he sat back and told them he would give them the money they needed to get their station
on-air -- but he wanted a larger interest in the business than what they offered him. He
wanted a 51% interest -- a controlling interest -- or he would not give them the money, and
they both had to agree to work for the new radio station for a year after it went on-air.
The
two holders of the soon to be lost broadcast license looked at each other and told the farmer
he could keep his money and left. The next day the farmer called on the phone and gave them
the names and contact information for a few investors, any one of whom should be able and
interested in investing the amounts they needed on their terms. He also told them that had
they accepted his offer he would have driven them out of the new station before the end of
the year it went on-air. He said he wanted to see whether they were 'serious' before putting
them in touch with serious investors.
Sorry, assassination doesn't fit into this scenario. That is a bridge too far. Trump has
lost his effectiveness by boasting about this. It isn't just unpredictability. It is
dangerous unpredictability.
I never once said that Trump was studied in how he operates, in fact, I repeatedly pointed
out that he's highly emotional and undisciplined. I'm simply describing some
implications.
If our corrupt Congress had not ceded their "co-equal" branch of gov't authority over the
last 40 years thereby gradually creating the Imperial Presidency that we have now, we might
comfortably mitigate much of the mad king antics.
Didn't the Founding Fathers try desperately to escape the terrible wars of Europe brought
on by the whims and grievances of inbred kings, generation after generation? Now on a whim
w/out so much as a peep to Congress, presidential murder is committed and the
CongressCritters bleat fruitlessly for crumbs of info about it.
I see no signs of this top-heavy imperialism diminishing. Every decision will vanish into
a black hole marked "classified."
I am profoundly discouraged at 68 who at 18 years old became a conscientious objector,
that the same undeclared BS wars and BS lies are used to justify continuous conflct almost
nonstop these last 50 years as if engaging in such violence can ever be sucessful in
achieving peaceful ends? Unless the maintenance of fear, chaos and blowback are the actual
desired result.
Trump's negotiating style is chaos-inducing deliberately, then eventually a "Big Daddy"
Trump can fix the mess, spin the mess and those of us still in the thrall of big-daddyism can
feel assuaged. It's the relief of the famiy abuser who after the emotional violence
establishes a temporary calm and family members briefly experience respite, yet remain wary
and afraid.
Kim Jong Un uses similar tactics, strategy, perhaps even style. Clinically and
intellectually, it's interesting to watch their interaction. Emotionally, given their
weaponry, it's terrifying.
Great post! The part about selecting for desperate business partners is very insightful,
it makes his cozying up to dictators and pariah states much more understandable. He probably
thinks/feels that these leaders are so desperate for approval from a country like the US
that, when he needs something from them, he will have more leverage and be able to impose
what he wants.
It was not a "request" from Iraq; it was a command from them; and the U.S. and Iraq relate as conqueror and
conquered, not as "partners." Consequently: the U.S. Government, now that it has been so unequivocally ordered to leave,
is back again, unequivocally, to its invader-occupier role in Iraq.
The AP report went on to say that,
"The request from Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi pointed to his determination
to push ahead with demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq."
Again there was that false word "request."
The AP report said that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted, in reply:
"Our mission set there is very clear. We've been there to perform a training mission to help the Iraqi security
forces be successful and to continue the campaign against ISIS, to continue the counter-Daesh campaign."
Though that's the invader-occupier's excuse, the reality is that the US needs Iraq in order to invade Iran, which is
the US Government's objective, though not overtly stated.
Already, America's assassination in Iraq of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani on January 3rd is an enormous act of
war against Iran.
It is intended to obliterate Iran's main strategist, and this successful attack against Iran inside Iraq is a
devastating first strike, by the U.S. Government against Iran.
So: now, the U.S. is at war against both Iraq and Iran.
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Harry Stotle
,
I see Tony is inconsolable after the death of a dictator who failed to hold an election for 50 years?
Britains foremost war criminal said, "I heard the news about His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman
with great sadness. He was a leader of vision and purpose who took over the leadership of his country at
a difficult time and raised it to an entirely new level of development and prosperity. He was a man of
culture, humanity and deep conviction who strove to make his nation and the world better and more
peaceful. He was kind, thoughtful and with a big heart. He had great wisdom and insight from which I
benefited often as did so many others. My deepest sympathy, prayers and condolences are with the people
of Oman. He will be sorely missed. Tony Blair.
https://twitter.com/InstituteGC/status/1215920898966020096
Yes, I'm sure you did 'benefit', Tony blood money I think they call it, you amoral scumbag.
Frank Speaker
,
I'm really disappointed to read yet another article on OffG about Iran. It's getting really boring and
those backward desert dwellers deserve all they get anyway. Let's get it over and done with and takeover
their oilfields and make lots of money. What I really want to see here instead are lots of articles about
Meghan and Harry.
(note to non-British readers, it's called irony)
MASTER OF UNIVE
,
The ever cowardly United States of America is officially at war with everyone in the world except the
uneducated dolts & imbeciles that support the Imbecile-in-Chief narcissist whackjob nutbar effin' retard
run amok.
Fuck America & the Republican Party that lives on forever war with everyone in the world
including American taxpayers.
Screw the imbecile-in-Chief to a wall of his making.
Death to America!
MOU
Harry Stotle
,
Oh, you are a wag, Eric is the US killing machine that just incinerated the Quds foremost military
strategist 'now at War Against Iraq AND Iran' well its hardly an act of peace, is it?
By the way, has
anyone been listening to Raab pontificate about 'international law' apparently the minister for Tory
lies appears to be oblivious to the fact that Soleimani's execution was almost certainly illegal, and was
only possible because Britain and American actions are always placed above the law.
Lets just remind Raab, and murder apologists like him that, "Outside of an on-going armed conflict,
the first use of military force is regulated under the jus ad bellum. The first principle of the jus ad
bellum is the prohibition on the use of force, a peremptory norm codified in United Nations Charter
Article 2(4). The only possible exception to the prohibition applicable in this case is self-defense. The
exception is narrow. Some restrictions are provided in UN Charter Article 51; others in the general
principles of international law. Article 51 permits the use of military force in such as the Hellfire
missiles carried by Reaper drones, if "an armed attack occurs". The International Court of Justice has
emphasized that the attack must be "grave".
https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-killing-of-soleimani-and-international-law/
Neocons want to start killing Iranians (which they already are doing via economic sanctions) time
for the west to grasp this inescapable reality.
nottheonly1
,
What do these countries have in common?
U.S. IR UK FR AUS DE CAN NZ PL UK ES BR COL SA UAR NL SW NOR ET
AL?
They are all
M O ☐ H ☐ R ☐ A R ☐ H ☐ ☐ C K ☐ R ☐
Yes, you may buy an 'F'.
That includes its populations, that do it by default. They are programmed and conditioned from early
on to be in harmony with the Pompeos, the Busches, Obamas, Trumps and whatever their names are that have
this planet in stranglehold.
U.S. MUST PAY for all damages it inflicted over the last ~213 years. The ticket is endless and with
the indiscrininate use of weapons of mass destruction, very expensive.
In a world of justice, the rich people would be given the shittiest places in these countries and the
rest be divided among the victim Nations of these pathetically religiously fascist psychopaths.
Is the use of the term 'religiously fascist psychopath' now reason for a drone strike?
Well, what are you waiting for? You are okay with the above fascist nations to do pre-emptive murders,
but hesitate to do the same?
What an epic Upfuckery.
Because in other words nobody capable to do the one act that is excempt from Karmic retribution?
Rather than doing that, saner beings are actually leaning back in the most fatalistic way. What is it
good for, if the sane let the insane do whatever they please or their mental illness dictates them to
do?
Hitler was a good example. He was not mandated to undergo a psychological evaluation. And I don't care
where you set the red line. Being part of genocide is plenty enough at any given day. And there can be no
more limitations of terms.
Maybe the prevailing opinion about all this is for it to be a joke. But that only appears to be so,
because the populations of the above listed nations et al, are murdering innocent women and children
(future population reduction) in the Nations on the receiving fascist shit end of the stick.
On a side note and only marginally related:
Listening to the early Beatles and their 'depressing' songs, the mind drifted to 'The Man in Black'
(that I adore) and his song about why he is wearing black and likely to do so into his grave, which he
did. The song I have on mind changes the lyrics a bit, but stays true, or emphasizes the new expression.
Well, you wonder why I'm always using 'fuck'.
Why you'll never hear me leaving out the muck.
And why my words have such a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things I'm bringing on.
Oh, and yes, for what its worth: invest yourself in aeroponics. Learn everything about it and start
your own food production using very little, very clean water and clean air, delivering healthy greens.
It will work in an apartment as well as in a large greenhouse. The REAL Foodevolution.
Dungroanin
,
Yes the US has been at war in the ME for a very very long time Eric.
Their advance was halted and is now in retreat, bar a few 'battles of Bulges' false hopes they are
heading back to their bunkers and throwing the kiddy corps into the front lines to take on hardened
campaigners. They have even resorted to assassination of the Generals and leaders opening the way and
hoping for equal retaliation, to sway the public perception.
The Iraqis want the US out and are threatened with economic sanctions and freezing of their US$
accounts!
Just like Venezuela and Iran and Libya and Yemen ..,
The Iraqis are proceeding with their closer ties with the winners the Eurasian conglomerate, the
Belt & Road investments; the superior Russian weapons systems and no doubt the disengagement from the
petrodollar, ball and chain of a slave.
Like an abused woman who wants to remove the 'ex boyfriend' who moved in a decade ago has never paid
any bills, doesn't do housework or maintenance and brings round his mates to wreck the place
Iraq has served a legal order to remove the abusive bastard !
Get the fuck out or the bailiffs will be called to do it and that will mean MORE cost you bully!
If that is MORE war then retreating Empire will see a REAL war on all fronts including for the first
time ever in their own country the bodybags will be required domestically just like the poor
civilians have been dying in theit tens of thousands at the proxy US forces hands for decades.
The people of the US need to get past their daily diet of super sugared Hollywood superiority and
understand THEY are the EVIL EMPIRE and THEY are LOSING as the downtrodden ewoks of the many countried
are fighting back!
GEOFF
,
After the USS Vincennes in 1988 had shot down Iran Air Flight 655 and killed 290 people, including many
children, the U.S. government denied any culpability. George H. W. Bush, the vice president of the United
States at the time, commented: "I will never apologize for the United States I don't care what the
facts are I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." Despite its "error" the crew was given medals
and the captain was even awarded a Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the
performance of outstanding service as commanding officer
GEOFF
,
The above is from moon of Alabama I forgot to mention
Granted that it's not the whole of the USA but it's not just the CIA and it's certainly not
merely "today". Incidentally, Brando said his attraction towards playing the Godfather is that he
thought it was a prefect demonstration of how the American political system really works.
Protect
,
From Zero Hedge / The Strategic Culture Foundation:
"Abdul-Mehdi [The Iraqi prime minister] spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and
now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil
revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.
The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi's speech to parliament:
"This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction
instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he
threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.
"Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not
comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and
security personnel alike in order to pressure me.
"I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal
with the Chinese.
"After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both
protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call
from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this
"third party"."
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/deeper-story-behind-assassination-soleimani
and there is this:
"I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to deliver a
message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis."
lundiel
,
Here's your answer
from the state department, it appears to be both yes and no (depending on
financial incentives).
America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue the
fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting Americans, Iraqis,
and our coalition partners. We have been unambiguous regarding how crucial our D-ISIS mission is in
Iraq. At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit
to our strategic partnership -- not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture
in the Middle East. Today, a NATO delegation is at the State Department to discuss increasing NATO's
role in Iraq, in line with the President's desire for burden sharing in all of our collective defense
efforts. There
does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding
security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership. We want to be a friend and
partner to a sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq.
Typical imperialistic boiler plate. America being a "force for good in the Middle East" or anywhere
else is a lie. Remember Vietnam? As for "continu(ing) the fight against ISIS" the SOS really means to
continue to finance and supply ISIS while pretending to "fight against" them. There whole statement is
a Stygian Stable full of total BS.
The Iraqis should tell them again to get the f-k outta Dodge or they'll go Wyatt Earp on their
sorry lying asses.
Pardonnez-moi, but why do Canada and Australia also UK (Boris) take their 'cue' on foreign policy from
the USA? Sending defence forces to fight Washington's wars and banker's wars for resources?
That assertion by Mike("We lied we cheated we stole" ..)Pompeo is a total lie. The USA invaded Iraq under
a complete pack of lies, about Saddam Hussein's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" back in 2003 and are still
there after having murdered Hussein and now occupy Iraq.
The Elected Leader of Syria has also told the USA to "Get out of Syria", but the USA has not done so.
The USA(and it's 'owners" Israel, are the problem in the Middle East, NOT IRAN or Iraq.
Israel's anaesthetised donkey, The USA, is completely controlled by Israel .It's pathetic. but it's
true.
In the sixties we all knew that "NO" meant "YES" and these guys are from that era.
Brian Harry
,
I think that the World has grown sick and tired of the LIES, spewing out of the Military Industrial
Complex ..In the highest levels of the USA Government, "if their lips are moving, they're LYING .
Yep, with you 100% and the bulk of the 99% are getting the message too.
Yarkob
,
"the bulk of the 99% are getting the message too."
Don't kid yourself, Peter. I'd love to
agree with you, but there is little evidence of that on those sites that allow comment on
this. the masses have drunk the kool aid long and deep. Yes, there's some pearl-clutching
going on but he was "still a trrst" so it's all ok. Back to sleep.
Take your point Yarkob, thank you. I was trying to be optimistic in my world my network
is gradually becoming more aware I hope that my book, due to publish this quarter, will
ride the wave; fingers crossed!
:-))))
Where are you seeing this BTL? Bear in mind that comments in most corporate media sites
are heavily censored these days, and replete with sock puppets manipulating debate &
seeding talking points.
George Mc
,
As I have often said, the MSM not only lies but gives a false image of public opinion.
Granted that it is not easy or even possible to really know what the population is
tending towards in their opinion, I think we can safely say that the MSM always bullshits
about it. I love it especially when they not only bullshit about what "everyone thinks"
abut also about what everyone "WILL" think e.g. the blathering about what party is
"electable".
I am not, by any stretch, a subscriber to David Icke but he did come up with one
wonderful expression when he described what the MSM pump out as "the movie". That is
exactly what it is. And I'd like to believe that less and less people believe it. Of
course the big problem is that even if you reject it, you have to put up with the fact
that, obviously as far as the "mainstream" goes, it's the only show in town. And a lot of
people still regurgitate what they hear. So e.g. a lot of people go along with the
manufactured outrage over Corbyn "refusing to apologise" while these same people have no
idea what he is apologising for other than a vague notion that he must be some kind of
Hitler guy. It all comes down to vibrations set up in the MSM. If you shit enough and
often enough then eventually many will swallow it.
Since when has pax-americana not been at war. The only administration since ww2 that has not been at war
was the Peanut farmer from Georgia The Carter administration and it was his secretary of state Brezinski
that created the Takfiri army to disrupt Afghanistan in 1979.
Post Scriptum: The Iranian missile strike in western Iraq and Erbil was a historical event.
It is the second time in Us military history that pax-americana had not responded to a direct attack on a
military barracks , the first time was in 1982 in Beirut where a suicide bomber killed over 200 people.
Docius in Fondem:Wesley Clarke statement from when he was alluded to the Likudniks plan & countries in 5
years Iran was last on the list.
US have declared war on both Iraq and Iran with the assassination of the IRGC General and the PMU
General. Simple facts tend to allude we the exceptional civilized west
love the Latin:
Caesar ad sum iam forte
Pompei ad erat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Pompei sic in hat
Brian Harry
,
"Don't talk to me about the bloody Romans, what have they ever done for us"?
Try as I may, I cant get Google to translate that .what does it mean, please?
Brian Harry
,
.although, when I read it 'phonetically', it sounds like a "big night out, and lots of vomit
sprayed around but, I'm Australian, and we don't do things like that .much
Monty Python the Greatest .There weren't many Romans in Australia 2000 years ago. Too busy
invading and really irritating Europeans and British people, but, somehow, it all worked out
ok Always look on the bright side of life, huh ?
Yep, and you Brian are in the right place to see the sunny side. We here in old Blighty
are suffering the gloom, doom and damp. I lived in Cape Town for ten years (same latitude
as Sydney and similar climate) and miss it dreadfully the climate that is the rest is
isht; power cuts (load shedding they call it), water shortage (drought they call it),
pollution and infrastructure failure all round, Nuff said! Go well cobber.
Actually Jimbo the Peanut Farmer was involved in a covert war in Angola and also covertly arming the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Not to mention operation Eagle Claw that failed against the Iranians.
GEOFF
,
In 240 years since its inception warmongering yanky land has been at war in the last 224 years with
someone, 50 in the last 10 years, not a bad record.
Barbara Boyd correctly called Kent testimony "obsine" becase it was one grad neocon
gallisination, which has nothing to do with real facts on the ground.
She attributed those dirty games not only to the USA but also to London.
If you want to stop the coup against the President, you must understand how Joe Biden and
Hillary Clinton's State Department carried out a coup against the democratically elected
government of Ukraine in 2014.
In a November 16 webcast, LaRouche PAC's Barbara Boyd presented the real story behind the
present impeachment farce: how the very forces running the attack on President Trump, used
thugs as their enforcers, in order to turn Ukraine into a pawn in the British geopolitical war
drive against Russia.
The
Open Society and Anti-Defamation League have gone ballistic last week demanding for the
unprecedented eternal banning of Joe diGenova from Fox News or else.
DiGenova (former Federal Attorney for the District of Columbia) committed a grievous crime
indeed, calling out the unspeakable "philanthropist" George Soros on Fox News' Lou Dobbs Show
on Nov. 14 as a force controlling a major portion of the American State Department and FBI. To
be specific, DiGenova stated: "no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the
career foreign service of the United States State Department. He also controls the activities
of FBI agents overseas who work for NGOs -- work with NGOs. That was very evident in Ukraine.
And Kent was part of that. He was a very big protector of Soros." DiGenova was here referencing
State Department head George Kent who's testimony is being used to advance President Trump's
impeachment.
Open Society Foundation President Patrick Gaspard denounced Fox ironically calling them
"McCarthyite" before demanding the network impose total censorship on all condemnation of
Soros. Writing to Fox News' CEO, Gaspard stated: "I have written to you in the past about the
pattern of false information regarding George Soros that is routinely blasted over your
network. But even by Fox's standards, last night's episode of Lou Dobbs tonight hit a new low
This is beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous."
Of course, the ADL and Gaspard won't let anyone forget that any attack on George Soros is an
attack on Jews the world over, and so it goes that the ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt jumped
into the mud saying "Invoking Soros as controlling the State Dept, FBI, and Ukraine is
trafficking in some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes." He followed that up by demanding Fox ban
DiGenova saying: "If Mr. DiGenova insists on spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, there
is absolutely no reason for Fox News to give him an open mic to do so. Mainstream news networks
should never give a platform to those who spread hate."
Even though the MSM including the Washington Post, NY Times and other rags, not to mention
countless Soros-affiliated groups have come out on the attack, DiGenova's statements cannot be
put back in the bottle, and their attacks just provoke more people to dig more deeply into the
dark dealings of Soros and the geopolitical masterclass that use this a-moral, former Nazi
speculator as their anti-nation state mercenary.
A Little Background on Soros
As has been extensively documented in many locations , ever since young Soros' talents were
identified as a young boy working for the Nazis during WWII (a time he describes as the best
and most formative of his life), this young sociopath was recruited to the managerial class of
the empire becoming a disciple of the "Open Society" post-nation state theories of Karl Popper
while a student in London. He latter became one of the first hedge fund managers with startup
capital provided by Evelyn Rothschild in 1968 and rose in prominence as a pirate of
globalization, assigned at various times to unleash speculative attacks on nations resisting
the world government agenda pushed by his masters (in some cases even attacking the center of
power- London itself in 1992 which provided an excuse for the London oligarchs to stay out of
the very euro trap that they orchestrated for other European nations to walk into).
After the Y2K bubble, Soros began devoting larger parts of his resources to international
drug legalization, euthanasia lobbying, color revolutions and other regime change programs
under the guise of "Human Rights" organizations which have done a remarkable job destroying the
sovereignty of Sudan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria to name a few. Since the economic crisis of
2008-09 (which his speculation helped create through unbounded currency and derivatives
speculation), Soros has begun to advocate a new world governance system centred on what has
recently been called the
"Green New Deal" which has less to do with saving nature, and everything to do with
depopulation.
So when the ADL, and Open Society attacks someone for being anti-semitic, you know that
whomever they are attacking are probably doing something useful.
"... "positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after Trudeau" ..."
"... Government Operations Committee ..."
"... "All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we confront those challenges." ..."
"... Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian, Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the east-bloc. ..."
"... The author is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation of Canada. He has authored 3 volumes of the series "The Untold History of Canada" and can be reached at [email protected] ..."
editor
/
November 27, 2019
An interesting victory has been won for forces in Canada who have wished to clean up the mess made by the two
disastrous years Chrystia Freeland has spent occupying the position of Foreign Minister of Canada. This victory
has taken the form of a Freeland's removal from the position which she has used to destroy diplomatic relations
with China, Russia and other nations targeted for regime change by her London-based controllers. Taking over the
helm as Minister of Global Affairs is Francois-Philippe Champagne, former Minister of Infrastructure and ally of
"old guard" Liberal elder Jean Chretien- both of whom have advocated positive diplomatic and business relations
with China in opposition to Freeland for years.
As positive of a development as this is, the danger which
Freeland represents to world peace and Canada's role in the New Emerging system led by the Eurasian Alliance
should not be ignored, since she has now been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister, putting her into a position
to easily take over the Party and the nation as 2
nd
in command.
Already the Canadian press machine on all sides of the aisle are raising the prospect of Freeland's takeover of
the Liberal Party as it
"positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after
Trudeau"
as one Globe and Mail reporter stated.
The Strange Case of Deputy Prime Ministers
The very role of Deputy Prime Minister is a strange one which has had many pundits scratching their heads,
since the Privy Council position is highly under-defined, and was only created by Justin's father Pierre in 1977
as part of his
"cybernetics revolution"
which empowered the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister's Office under "scientific management" of a
technocratic elite. Although it is technically the position of 2nd in Command, it is not like the position of
Vice-President whose function has much greater constitutional clarity.
In some cases, the position has been ceremonial, and in others, like the case of Brian Mulroney's Dep. PM Don
Mazankowski (1986-1993) who chaired the
Government Operations Committee
and led in imposing the
nation-stripping NAFTA, the position was very powerful indeed. Some Prime Ministers have chosen not even to have a
Deputy PM, and the last one (Anne McLellan) ended with the downfall of Paul Martin in 2006. McLellan and another
former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley were both leading figures behind the creation of the think tank
Canada2020 in 2003
that soon brought Justin and Obamaton behaviorists into a re-structuring of the Liberal Party of Canada during the
Harper years, shedding it of its pro-China, pro-Russia, anti-NATO influences that had been represented by less
technocratically-minded statesmen like Jean Chretien years earlier.
Personally, as a Canadian-based journalist who has done a fair bit of homework on Canadian history, and the
structures of Canada's government, I honestly don't think the question of Freeland's becoming Prime Minister
matters nearly as much as many believe for the simple reason that Justin is a well-known cardboard cut-out who
simply doesn't know how to do anything terribly important without a teleprompter and experienced handlers. This is
not a secret to other world leaders, and anyone familiar with the mountains of video footage taken from G7 events
featuring the pathetic scene of little Justin chronically ignored by his peers goes far enough to demonstrate the
point.
Freeland's role in Canada has never had much to do with Canada, as much as it has with Canada's role as a
geopolitical chess piece in a turbulent and changing world and her current role as Deputy Prime Minister as well
as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs can only be understood in those global terms.
Unity for the Sake of Greater Division
For Canada to play a useful role in obstructing the Eurasian-led New Silk Road paradigm sweeping across the
globe in recent years, it requires the fragmenting American monarchy be kept in line.
The problem for the British Empire in this regard, is that the recent elections have demonstrated how divided
Canada is with the Liberal Party suffering total losses across the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec
due to the technocratic adherence to the Green New Deal agenda and resistance to actual industrial development
initiatives. The collapse of living standards, and the lack of any policies for rebuilding the industrial base
that 30 years of NAFTA have destroyed, has resulted not only in the rejection of the Liberal Party but has also
awoken a renewed demand for separation in all three provinces.
Referring implicitly to the crisis of such "authoritarian regimes" as China, Russia, Iran and Trump's USA, as
well as the need to decarbonize the world, Freeland put the problem she is assigned to fix
in the following terms
:
"All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me
the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed
to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we
confront those challenges."
To put it simply, if centralized control were to break down at a time when the Belt and Road Initiative (
and
its Polar Silk Road extension
) is redefining the world system OUTSIDE of the control of the western oligarchy,
then it is clearly understood that the Green Agenda will fail, but the dynamics of the BRI will become hegemonic
as Canada realizes (like the Greeks and Italians currently) that the only viable policies for growing the real
economy is coming from China.
Some final words on Freeland, Neo-liberal High Priestess
Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to
her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian
family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news
agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these
positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian,
Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the
east-bloc.
She also became close friends with such golems as George Soros, Larry Summers and Al Gore
embedding their institutions ever more deeply into Canada
since she was brought
into Canada2020
(her move to politics was facilitated by fellow Rhodes Scholar/Canada2020 leader Bob Rae
abdicating his position as MP for Ontario in 2013).
When Foreign Minister Stephane Dion committed the crime of attempting to heal relations with China and called
for a Russia-Canada Summit to deal mutually with
Arctic development, counter-terrorism and space cooperation
, he had to go. After an abrupt firing, Freeland
was given his portfolio and immediately went to work in turning China and Russia into public enemies #1 and #2,
passing the Magnintsky Act in 2017 allowing for the sanctioning of nations for human rights (easily falsified when
Soros' White Helmets and other CIA/MI6-affiliated NGOs are seen as "on-the-ground" authorities documenting said
abuse).
Her role as champion of NAFTA which Trump rightly threatened to scrap in order to re-introduce protective
tariffs elevated her to a technocratic David fighting some orange Goliath, and her advocacy of the Green New Deal
has been behind some of the most extreme energy/arctic anti-development legislation passed in Canada's history.
Whether it is though individual provinces claiming their rights to form independent treaties with Eurasian
powers around cooperation on the BRI, or whether Canada can be returned to a pro-nation state orientation under
the "Chretien faction" in the federal government, the current future of Canada is as under-defined as the role of
"deputy minister". Either way the nation chooses navigate through the storm, it is certain that any commitment to
staying on board the deck of the Titanic known as the "western neoliberal order" has only one cold and tragic
outcome which Freeland and her ilk will drown before admitting to.
In Chrystia Freeland's 2012 book Plutocrats, Canada's leading Rhodes Scholar laid out a
surprisingly clear analysis of the two camps of elites who she explained would, by their very
nature, battle for control of the newly emerging system as the old paradigm collapsed.
In her book and article series, she described the "practical populist politician" which has
tended to be adherent to business interests and personal gain during past decades vs the new
breed of "technocrat" which has an enlightened non-practical (ie: Malthusian) worldview,
willing to make monetary sacrifices for the "greater good".
She further defined the "good Plutocrats" vs "bad Plutocrats". Good Plutocrats included the
likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos who made their billions under
the free-for-all epoch of globalization, but who were willing to adapt to the new rules of the
post-globalization game. This was a game which she defined in an absurd
2013 TED Talk as a "green New Deal" of global regulation under a de-carbonized (and
depopulated) green economy. For those "bad plutocrats" unwilling to play by the new rules (ie:
the Trumps, Putins or any industrialist who refused to commit seppuku on the altar of Gaia),
they would simply go extinct. This threat was re-packaged by Canada's "other" globalist puppet
Mark Carney,
who recently said "If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they
will fail to exist."
Of course, when Freeland formulated these threats in 2011, China's Belt and Road had not yet
existed, nor had the Russia-China alliance which together are now challenging the regime-change
driven world order in remarkably successful strides. The thought that nationalism could
possibly make a comeback in the west was as unthinkable as the failure of free trade deals like
NAFTA or the TPP.
As of November 18, 2019, Freeland has found herself cut down a notch by the "plutocrats"
that she has worked so assiduously to destroy since becoming Canada's Foreign Minister in 2017
when she ousted a Foreign Minister (Stephane Dion) who had called for a renewed cooperation
with Russia on space, counter-terrorism and arctic development with Sergei Lavrov. Freeland's
unrepentant support for Ukrainian Nazis and NATO encirclement of Russia resulted in a total
alienation of Russia. Her alienation of China was so successful that the Chinese government
removed their ambassador in the summer of 2019. Freeland's work in
organizing the failed coup in Venezuela and supporting the MI6-Soros
White Helmets in Syria became so well known that she became known as the Canadian queen of
regime change.
Other pro-Chinese "bad plutocratic" companies which have been targeted for destruction under
Freeland's watch have included the beleaguered construction giant Aecon Inc. who's board voted
in favor of being sold to China in March 2018 in order to play a role in Belt and Road Projects
(
a decision vetoed by the Federal Government in May 2018 ), as well as Quebec-based SNC
Lavalin which has had major deals with both Russia and China on nuclear power and major
infrastructure projects and which
now faces being shut down in Canada for having bribed politicians in Libya when it built
Qadaffi's Great Manmade River (destroyed by NATO in 2011).
Former Liberal Minister of Infrastructure from Shawinigan Quebec, Francois-Philippe
Champagne has taken over Freeland's portfolio and with him it appears a new pro-Eurasian policy
may be emerging in Canada much more conducive to the long term survival (and strategic
relevance) of Canada. This shift has already been noted by China which has responded by sending
a new Ambassador to Ottawa, while a new Canadian Ambassador with a long history of working
towards positive Chinese relations in the private sector (Dominic Barton) has just begun
working in Beijing. Barton was the first Ambassador to China since "old guard" politician John
McCallum
was fired in January 2019 for defending Huawei's Meng Wanzhou to a group of Chinese
journalists.
In opposition to the cacophonic voice of Freeland, Champagne had spoken positively of China
in 2017 saying "In a world of uncertainty, of unpredictability, of questioning about the
rules that have been established to govern our trading relationship, Canada, and I would say
China, stand out as [a] beacon of stability, predictability, a rule-based system, a very
inclusive society."
Champagne is a long-standing protégé of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien
and world travelled businessman who has worked in the European nuclear sector and has promoted
industrial development with China for years. Jean Chretien, who campaigned for Champagne's
recent re-election, represents everything Freeland hates: A "practical" old school politician
who recognizes that World War III and alienating Eurasian nations who are shaping the future is
bad for business. In 2014, Chretien was given the
"Friend of Russia" award and has played a major role in the private sector working with
Quebec-based Power Corporation which runs the Canada-China Business Council (CCBC) and has
brokered major contracts throughout China since ending his term as PM in 2003. Chretien is also
the father in-law of current CCBC chair Paul Desmarais Jr. who is the heir to the PowerCorp
dynasty. While these are not groups that in any way exemplify morality, they are practical
industrialists who know depopulation and world war are bad for business and would prefer to
adapt to a China-led BRI system over a "green technocratic dictatorship".
Since December 2018, Chretien has attacked Freeland's decision to support Meng Wanzhou's
extradiction to the USA, and has volunteered to lead a delegation to China in order to smooth
tensions.
So while the "bad plutocrats" appear to have taken an important step forward though the
debris of the recent near failure of the Liberal Party which narrowly kept a minority
government after the October 21 Federal Elections, the ideologically driven technocrats led by
Queen Freeland shouldn't be discounted, as her new position as Deputy Prime Minister puts her
in a position to possibly take control of Canada as 2 nd in command of a highly
fragmented nation which is now hearing renewed calls for separation in Alberta, and Quebec.
Chrystia Freeland (lead image), appointed last week to be the new Canadian Foreign Minister,
claims that her maternal family were the Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution, who fled
their home in 1939, after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed on a non-aggression pact and the
division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. She claims her mother was born in a
camp for refugees before finding safe haven in Alberta, Canada. Freeland is lying.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's
maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to
the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in
Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job
was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and
other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the
Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak
celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the
German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the
Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time
informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera,
whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in
Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Just before Vienna fell to the Soviet forces in March 1945, Chomiak evacuated with the
German Army into Germany, ending up near Munich at Bad Worishofen. On September 2, 1946, when
Freeland says her mother was born in a refugee camp, she was actually in a well-known spa
resort for wealthy Bavarians. The US Army then controlled that part of Germany; they operated
an Army hospital at Bad Worishofen and accommodated Chomiak at a spa hotel. US Army records
have yet to reveal what the Americans learned about Chomiak's war record, and how he was
employed by US Army Intelligence, after he had switched from the Wehrmacht. It took Chomiak
another two years before the government in Ottawa allowed the family to enter Canada.
The reason the Polish Government is now investigating Freeland is that Chomiak's wartime
record not only victimized Galician Jews, but also the Polish citizens of Cracow. In a salute
to Freeland as a "great friend of Poland" by the Polish Embassy in Ottawa last week, Warsaw
officials now believe a mistake was made.
Last July, Freeland, then trade minister, was in a large delegation of Canadians
accompanying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration
camp in southern Poland. Freeland is not included in the press photographs; Trudeau wept. A
statement
issued by one of the Canadian Jewish organizations in the delegation said: "Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau's visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau signifies the importance of remembering the six
million Jews and countless others who died at hands of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust will
forever stand as the ultimate expression of human hatred. That is why every Canadian should use
this as an opportunity to reflect upon their personal role in combating the forces of
antisemitism, racism and bigotry wherever they are found."
Trudeau (above) and his staff, as well as Foreign Minister at the time Stephane Dion, and
the Jewish representatives appear not to have known this was familiar territory for Freeland
and her family. Michael Chomiak and his wife Alexandra, parents to Freeland's mother Halyna,
spent the war from 1939 to 1945 working and living just 68 kilometres away in Cracow.
According to the autobiographical details Freeland has provided herself to the Canadian
media, Freeland's family were victims of war. "My maternal grandparents," she wrote in May 2015,
"fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939 they saw
themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent
Ukraine." In November 2015 Freeland
told the Toronto Star: "Michael Chomiak was a lawyer and journalist before the Second World
War, but they knew the Soviets would invade western Ukraine (and) fled and, like a lot of
Ukrainians, ended up after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany where my mother was
born."
According to Freeland, "they were also committed to the idea, like most in the (Ukrainian)
diaspora, that Ukraine would one day be independent and that the community had a responsibility
to the country they had been forced to flee to keep that flame alive."
The Edmonton, Alberta, newspaper obituary for Halyna Chomiak Freeland
says she had been "born on September 2, 1946 in Bad Worishofen, Germany in a displaced
person's camp." The Alberta provincial government library reports it holds Michael Chomiak's
papers. He is described as having
"graduated from Lviv University with master's degree in law and political science. In 1928, as
a journalist, he started work in the Ukrainian daily Dilo, and from 1934 to 1939 he served on
the editorial staff. During the Nazi occupation, he was the editor of Krakivski Visti,
published first in Cracow and then in Vienna."
There is much more to the story which Freeland has not revealed. The details can be found in
Polish and Ukrainian sources; from the archived files of Krakivski Visti ("Cracow News");
and from
the evidence of Jewish Holocaust museums around the world. Chomiak was editor in chief of the
newspaper after a Jewish editor was removed. The newspaper itself was set up in January 1940,
publishing three times weekly in Cracow, until October 8, 1944. It was then published in Vienna
from October 16, 1944, until March 29, 1945. The precision of the dates is important. They
coincide with the movement of the German Army into Cracow, and then out of the city and into
Vienna. The newspaper itself was established by the German Army; and supervised by German
intelligence. Chomiak was employed by an officer named Emil Gassner (above). His title in
German indicates he was the German administrator in charge of press in the region. When Gassner
moved from Cracow to Vienna, he took Chomiak with him.
Chomiak's publication was an official one of the German administration in Galicia, known at
the time as the General Gouvernement. The printing press, offices and other assets which
provided Chomiak with his work, salary, and benefits had been confiscated by the Germans from a
Jewish publisher, Moshe Kafner . Kafner was a native of
the region; he and his family were well educated and well known until the Germans arrived, and
replaced Kanfer with Chomiak. Kanfer was forced to flee Cracow for Lviv. From there he was
taken by the Germans to the Belzec concentration, where he was murdered some time in 1942. From Chomiak's office to
Belzec the distance was 300 kilometres.
Left: SS guards at Belzec; right: Ukrainian guards about to kill a Belzec
inmate
Krakivsti Visti was "the most important newspaper to appear in the Ukrainian language under
the German occupation during World War II," according
to this history from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, published in 1998. Chomiak --
reports the Harvard history by John-Paul Hinka from a contemporary source -- "had the ability
to sense what could be written and how in the severe German reality, and he gained some trust
among the German officials, without which the work would have been impossible."
In print, according to this archive
of Krakivsti Visti, when Chomiak was in charge, there were reports of the "success" of the
German Navy in killing 13,000 US Army soldiers, when their transports were torpedoed and sunk
in the Atlantic enroute to England. Chomiak editorialized: "this last German attack [was] a
smashing blow to the solar plexus of the alliance."
Chomiak also reported the US "colonization" of Australia and Canada . "Americans who are now
living in Australia believe that the economic possibilities of Australia are even much better
than those of the USA, and many US soldiers are thinking about staying in Australia after the
war as they feel much better there than in their own Fatherland There are such close relations
between the USA and Canada and Australia that there will be a special trade and tax [agreement]
between these countries after the war. In other words, the United States does not hide the
intention of the US to begin full economic penetration of Canada and Australia."
By the standard of Trudeau at Auschwitz, Freeland's grandfather also produced race hatred to Nazi
order, including antisemitism and racism against several other nationalities, including
Americans, Poles and Russians.
Chomiak not only justified the death camps surrounding Cracow. He attempted to foster
Ukrainian sentiment against the Poles in the region. The German objective was to support the
Ukrainian takeover of Galicia and cleanse it of its Jewish and Polish populations. For this
reason Chomiak and his newspaper were given special favour by the German administration;
Chomiak himself was reportedly held in high esteem by the Nazis. In the Harvard history it is
reported "there can be no doubt that Krakivs'ki visti enjoyed more autonomy than any other
legal Ukrainian-language publication under the German occupation."
Himka, a Ukrainian-Canadian academic, composed his history of Krakivtsi Visti from Chomiak's
personal papers in Alberta. He mentions the newspaper's backing for ethnic cleansing of Poles.
He omits to mention Jews. Chomiak's antisemitic record can be found in the files of the Los
Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. For details, read this .
Chomiak didn't flee from the Ukraine in 1939, as Freeland claims. Five years were to elapse
before he left Cracow; that was when the German Army pulled out in defeat, as the Soviet Army
advanced from the east to liberate the city. Gassner was moving the media operation to his home
town, Vienna.
Chomiak closed down Krakivsti Visti in Vienna in March of 1945 for the same reason. The
Soviet Army was days away, and a new Austrian government replaced the Third Reich in April of
that year. With the retreating Wehrmacht Chomiak then moved westwards into Germany. But a full
year is missing from the official records available publicly. That's between March of 1945 and
April of 1946, when the displaced persons camp was opened in the Bavarian town of Bad
Worishofen, where Freeland says her mother was born.
As the name indicates, Bad Worishofen was (still is) a thermal waters resort for wealthy
Bavarians and day-trippers from Munich. Freeland claims her mother was born as a victim in a
refugee camp. In fact, she was born in a hospital administered by the US Army, while her
parents were living in a spa hotel managed by a US Army intelligence unit.
During the war there had been a Luftwaffe training aerodrome at Bad Worishofen. But it was
so insignificant operationally, it wasn't bombed by the allies . More or less
intact, along with the spa hotels, the town welcomed new paying guests from the US Army when
they arrived in April of 1945.
According to US records, a US Army Intelligence "training unit" was established, as well as
a US Army hospital. The trainees weren't Americans; they were East Europeans, including
Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and others who had been fighting on the German side.
On June 28, 1945, the 2 nd Hospitalization Unit of the 30th Field Hospital left a
forward position at Ebsenee, Austria, where it had been caring for the survivors of the
Ebensee-Matthausen concentration camp.
The war in Europe now over, the hospitalization unit regrouped in the rear at Bad
Wörishofen, where its role was to support the 80th Infantry Division. The unit history
says : "As usual, living quarters proved excellent (buildings), with many conveniences
added to make living conditions very comfortable." Among the people the American Army doctors
now cared for were Mr and Mrs Chomiak.
The camp for displaced persons or refugees at Bad Worishofen was not formally established
for another year, until April 1946. Ukrainians who were there at the time say the camp housed mostly Lithuanians,
and also 490 Ukrainians. The term camp is a misnomer. The records show that many of the
Ukrainians were living in spa hotels when they were subject to the administration of the camp.
Although the subsequent records of the Ukrainians are voluble on what happened there between
1946 and 1948, including testimony from Ukrainians who moved on to the US and Australia, there
is no reference to the Chomiak family at all.
"All the camps in Bad Worishofen were liquidated in May 1948 due to consolidation of the
various camps by IRO (International Relief Organization)," remembers this Ukrainian.
It is not (yet) known when Chomiak presented himself to US Army Intelligence, offering the
same services he had been performing for Gassner and the Wehrmacht. Journalism, however, wasn't
what the US occupation authorities wanted from him. In return, Chomiak received accommodation;
living expenses; and the hospitalization which produced Freeland's mother in September of
1946.
Two years were to elapse before Chomiak left Bad Worishofen for Canada, arriving there in
October 1948. He already had a sister in Canada, but no job of a professional kind to which his
university education and experience qualified him. In Alberta Chomiak worked as a manual
labourer. Why the Americans didn't offer him intelligence and propaganda employment in the US
may be revealed in the Chomiak files in Washington. The Canadian government file on his
admission in 1948 is likely to include some of the details Chomiak revealed about his work with
the Americans. Unless he kept that secret.
Last week the Polish Embassy in Ottawa issued this tweet in celebration of Freeland's
promotion:
This week Polish political analyst and journalist Stanislas Balcerac has opened the dossier
on Freeland and Chomiak. The Polish Foreign Minister, Witold Waszczykowski, has been asked to
investigate, and to decide if, according to Balcerac, "the circumstances and family loyalties
of Mrs Freeland may affect the support that Canada provides the pro-Bandera Government of
Ukraine, so they can have a direct impact on Polish interests."
Regarding Bandera (right), the record of Chomiak's involvement with him when they were under
German, then US
supervision, Freeland did not reveal in the Financial Times when she reported Bandera as one
of the Ukraine's all-time heroes. "Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus,
was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader
Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on
orders from Moscow in 1959 .The Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That
would be a mistake."
Freeland was asked directly to clarify her own claims about Grandfather Chomiak's war
record. Her press spokesman, Chantal Gagnon, asked for more time, but then the two of them
refused to answer.
"The sins of the grandfather can hardly be attributed to the granddaughter," says Polish
investigator Balcerac, " -- except for two, race hatred and lying. Chomiak made a lucrative war
selling hatred of Jews, Poles and Russians. Freeland is doing the same preaching race hatred of
Russians. To mask what she's doing, she has lied about the Nazi record of her family. The
Chomiaks weren't victims; they were aggressors."
A Washington source adds: "Chomiak was recruited by US intelligence to wage war in the
Ukraine against the Russians. Let's see what the US Army and intelligence files reveal about
his role, and let's compare that to the one Freeland is now playing in Canada."
The minister's dismissive attitude about her grandfather's past will inevitably be
taken as evidence that she, too, would have worked with the Nazis
Last week, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland opened a can of worms by dismissing
references to her family's World War II history as Russian disinformation. That wasn't entirely
true, and in the current climate, history is politics.
Freeland was banned from entering Russia for her fiercely pro-Ukraine stand. When she became
foreign minister in January, Moscow refused to lift the ban. Soon, the
story of her maternal grandfather, Michael (Mykhailo) Chomiak, was circulating on
pro-Russian websites.
Broadly, the story is true. The known facts were laid out by
the independent U.S. investigative site Consortium News at the end of February. During World
War II, Chomiak, a Ukrainian nationalist, edited a newspaper called Krakivski Visti -- first in
the Nazi-held Polish city of Krakow, then in Vienna -- that ran articles praising Hitler and
his appointees in occupied Eastern Europe and denouncing Jews. According to family lore,
Chomiak helped anti-Nazi resistance forces by helping their fighters get German papers. When
the war ended, Chomiak was in Germany; it took him some time to move his family to Canada.
Asked about Chomiak last week, Freeland batted away the question, saying "I don't think it's
a secret. American officials have publicly said, and even Angela Merkel has publicly said, that
there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it
shouldn't come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada."
The awkward dodge elicited a spectrum of responses from the Canadian media. "So much for
Russian disinformation," David Pugliese
wrote for the Ottawa Citizen after reviewing the evidence. "No coherent allotment of blame
and absolution is possible," Paul Wells
argued in the Toronto Star, adding that the survival history of Freeland's family did not
detract from her "important work" to prevent history from repeating itself.
The underlying issue, however, is more fundamental than the nature of Russian propaganda
(which can only be effective if it's grounded, to some extent, in truth) or the moral murk of
the terrain Timothy Snyder, a historian sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, called the
Bloodlands. For the Kremlin -- and for many Russians -- the current conflict with Ukraine is,
in a way, an extension of that war. It's more than a propaganda argument: Russia's claim of a
moral right to interfere depends on this interpretation.
Any sign of historic betrayal is fair game. Long before Freeland's grandfather got their
attention, pro-Russian sites alleged that the father of Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting
president after the 2014 "Revolution of Dignity," served as a private in a German army unit.
Stories of the annual torchlit marches in Kiev to commemorate Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian
nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis for a period, play big in the Russian
press.
So do stories featuring the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard, staffed with
ultranationalists and using a Nazi symbol on its emblem. Like Poland, Russia has noted a
Ukrainian
law bestowing hero status on the 1940s nationalist organizations that worked closely with
the Nazis and are known to have unleashed genocide on Poles and Jews.
The parasitic nature of neo-conservatives and their globalist kin has prompted them to
regroup to fight against both Russia and the incoming Russia-friendly and anti-globalist
administration of Donald Trump. With the departure of arch-neocons Victoria Nuland from her
perch in the State Department, Samantha Power from the U.S. mission to the United Nations, and
Susan Rice from the National Security Council, the neocon and globalist establishments, which
have in common their Atlanticist views, have settled on Canada as the ideal place from which to
wage their wars of subterfuge and propaganda.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired his foreign minister Stephane Dion to make way
for a virtual replacement for Nuland, Power, and Rice on the world stage: Chrystia Freeland,
his trade minister. Dion's policy of seeking to engage with Russia is what ultimately cost him
his job as Ottawa prepares to host every anti-Trump instability operation it can manage to draw
to the Canadian capital.
Freeland became a darling of the globalists after she hammered out a free trade agreement
with the European Union last year. Freeland leaned heavily on the one holdout to the deal, the
regional government of Wallonia in Belgium. After the threats from the French-speaking Walloons
were neutered, Freeland reveled in the signing of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement. Freeland also oversaw the signing of the Canada-Ukraine Free
Trade Agreement with the neo-fascist govenrment in Kiev.
With the appointment of Freeland as foreign minister and Somali-born Ahmed Hussen as
Immigration Minister, Trudeau has drawn a red line against both President Trump and Russian
President Vladimir Putin on issues of globalization and open immigration. Ottawa will soon
become a nest for anti-Trump operations that will almost certainly involve the billionaire
global troublemaker George Soros.
Like Power, Freeland is a former journalist who traded in her journalistic credentials to
become a shill for globalization's new world order. A Rhodes scholar, graduate of Harvard, and
alum of the Brookings Institution, she represented the Financial Times in Washington,
New York, and Moscow.
Freeland is also of Ukrainian descent and her anti-Russian stance, including her support for
sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and Crimea, earned her a visa ban by Russia. Having
reported from Moscow for the FT from the mid-1990s to late 2000, Freeland became a major
critic of Putin and later accused him of creating a dictatorship in Russia. Freeland's bias
against Russia was present in her reporting, especially on Chechnya, long before the Ukrainian
civil war and the retrocession of Crimea to Russia. In one of her first statements as foreign
minister, Freeland vowed that Canadian sanctions will not be lifted against Russia. Freeland
also indicated in a speech last week in Ottawa that Canada will serve as a front against rising
global "trade protectionism and xenophobia." In December 2016, Canada hosted a meeting of the
United Nations High Commission on Refugees and Soros's Open Society Foundations that seeks to
expand the movement of refugees from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia to the
industrialized nations of the West. There is little doubt that Russophobes Freeland and Soros
are cooperating on several fronts against Russia, Trump, and anti-Soros leaders like Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orban and French National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
Anti-globalists and anti-neocons have a new "Nuland" to contend with: Freeland.
From Ottawa, Freeland will lead the neocon and globalist charge against any attempt by Trump
to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She will almost certainly try to
salvage the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which includes Canada and which Trump has vowed to
scrap. Freeland will also likely open up Canada's Arctic to a military presence by anti-Russian
NATO countries like Norway, Denmark, and Germany, as well as pro-NATO Sweden and Finland. An
increased NATO presence, without U.S. forces, in the Canadian Arctic will not only militarize
the region but send a warning to Russia about Canadian control over emerging Arctic sea lanes
that are increasingly navigable due to
Trudeau has signaled the world that opposition to the Trump administration on everything
from Russia and NATO to free trade and open borders will be fought from Ottawa, which is just
61 miles from the U.S. border crossing at Ogdensburg, New York. It will be incumbent upon the
Trump administration to pay special attention to anti-U.S. political activities staged from
Ottawa and Trump should think seriously about severing all signals intelligence and human
intelligence links with Canadian intelligence agencies. These agencies, including the
Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence
Service (CSIS) will soon pose a threat to U.S. national security. CSEC and CSIS will likely be
tasked with spying on the Trump administration and be required to pass the intelligence to
their German, French, Dutch, Belgian, and Japanese counterparts.
Freeland is already banned from visiting Russia, a travel ban that the Russian embassy in
Ottawa says will continue. Perhaps that ban on Freeland should be expanded by the Trump
administration to include the United States, with a sole exemption for traveling to and from
United Nations headquarters in New York. Freeland is currently indistinguishable from the
throngs of Hillary Clinton's desperate supporters who are planning to engage in every form of
disruption and resistance with the financial support of Soros.
I see we have reached peak hypocrisy now. Resign Mike. You are an embarrassment to the
people of the United States who you claim to be serving. Every day you read the same script,
and it's a bevy of lies, every time.
"... Deal finishes October 2020 if I remember correctly. All sanctions will be lifted so long as Iran is in compliance at that time. This is a move to prevent this. ..."
"... Obviously, Merkel doesn't have the political strength to nix Nordstream 2. Until she's replaced by someone with greater vision, EU and German policy won't change toward Iran. IMO, the trio don't amount to the level of poodles as they're known to have courage. The Trio proudly display the fact that they're 100% Cowards. ..."
"... The EU cannot lead in anything - it is a completely owned and operated US tool. It is a big zero in providing humanity any help with the big problem of our time: the 'indispensable and exceptional' supremacist US. ..."
Deal finishes October 2020 if I remember correctly. All sanctions will be lifted so long
as Iran is in compliance at that time. This is a move to prevent this.
I always learn some thing here. For example imagine my surprise to learn the EU had a
reputation worth protecting. All you need to know about the EU is bitches will do what
bitches are told. This is just one more step on the road to war with China, is that really
what the citizens of the EU want? Are the people of the EU ready to die for the Trump and the
Republican party?
Think tanks, think tanks, think tanks. In 2009, the Brookings Institute's paper Which Path to
Persia, proposed offering Iran a very good deal and then sabotaging it. Good cop, Obama, bad
cop, Trump. Mission accomplished.
Only a matter of when and how. The warmongers have Trumps balls in a vice, he can't even
resign without making it worse by letting Pence take over. The art of the squeal, very high
pitched is whats happening in DC.
1st of all The UK was always going to side with DC over Iran. 2ndly for France and Germany
they probably aren't ready to put themselves plus their EU partners in the US doghouse for
Iran. When they break it will be a time of their own choosing.
Thanks b, for this detailed coverage of the 3 wimps' efforts to kill JCPOA. You did not
disappoint. Love the image showing mother residing in "occupied Palestine" .. (term coined by
MoA barfly)
I commented in the previous post, Russia warned of unintended consequences
LINK
Moscow is calling on the European parties to the Iran nuclear deal not to escalate tensions
and to abandon their decision to trigger the treaty's Dispute Resolution Mechanism, the
Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
"We strongly urge the Eurotroika [of parties to the JCPOA] not to inflame tensions and
to abandon any steps which call the prospects of the nuclear deal's future into question.
Despite all the challenges it has faced, the JCPOA has not lost its relevance," the
ministry said in a statement.
Ex-US vice-president, Joseph Biden is also suspected of corruption, according to a
member of the Ukrainian parliament
KIEV, January 14. /TASS/. Ukraine's Supreme Anti-Corruption Court has obliged the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) to launch a probe into seizure of government power
and corruption suspicions. The cases mention the names of the United States' 44th
president, Barack Obama, former Ukrainian president, Pyotr Poroshenko and ex-US
vice-president, Joseph Biden, a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the Opposition
Platform - For Life party, Renat Kuzmin, said[.]
"investigate the suspicions over the seizure of government power in Ukraine and of the
embezzlement of state budget money and international financial assistance by members of the
Obama administration"
If it ever was possible to sign a treaty with the US and expect them to abide by it, it
hasn't been possible for a long time. Here as everywhere else, Trump merely openly proclaims
the systemic lawlessness he shares with the rest of the US political class. (His contemptuous
withdrawal from the JCPOA never has been one of the things the establishment and media
criticize him for.)
For as long as US imperial power lasts, anyone who doesn't want to be a poodle (or to get
regime-changed because they foolishly attempt to sit the fence) has to accept that there can
be no legitimate agreements with the US or its poodles. If you sign a treaty with them, you
have to view it exactly the same way you know they do, as nothing but propaganda, otherwise
not worth the paper it's written on. No doubt North Korea, if they were in any doubt before,
registered how Trump and the US media immediately proceeded to systematically lie about the
agreement they'd supposedly just concluded, before the ink was even dry.
Here's hoping that if Iran was in any doubt before, they too are getting the message: As
far as the US and Europe are concerned, the only purpose of the JCPOA is to serve as a weapon
against them.
Face it B, there will be blood. It's a matter of time. It's unavoidable. The empire will
force its own destruction - and perhaps the rest of humanity's. The demons of nihilism will
prevail.
(Sounds like I have been hearing death metal. I swear I did not. And I not under the
influence either.)
The Oct 2020 deadline is important for more than one reason- Irans application to the SCO is
being held up because of it. The SCO membership would obligate support from countries like
India in response to politically motivated sanctions.
Surprised at Germany since Merkel just met with Putin. When I read of this earlier this
morning, that it's based on lies was 100% clear, that the trio are feckless and deserve all
the social instability that will soon come their way. Why did I mention social instability:
"The Fed is considering a plan to allow them to lend cash DIRECTLY TO HEDGE FUNDS in order
to ease the REPO Crisis. [Emphasis original]
"Where is 'bailing out private investment funds' in their alleged 'dual mandate'?"
Which gets us back to the reason Iran's targeted: Because it lies outside the dollar
economy, refuses to engage in petrodollar recycling, and has a quasi-socialist economy with
no private banking. Plus, we now see that Iraq will pursue evicting NATO and Outlaw US Empire
forces and likely join the Arc of Resistance's/Iran's policies which are what the Outlaw US
Empire went to war over to begin with.
Obviously, Merkel doesn't have the political strength to nix Nordstream 2. Until she's
replaced by someone with greater vision, EU and German policy won't change toward Iran. IMO,
the trio don't amount to the level of poodles as they're known to have courage. The Trio
proudly display the fact that they're 100% Cowards.
The EU is a hopeless craven vassal of the US. The US dropping out of the JCPOA was the acid
test which the EU has spectacularly failed. We are in a historical pivot with the rise of the
coalescing multifarious East which is forcing the EU to make a decision: stay under the US
wing, go it alone, or ally with the East. The EU seems to know it at least should get more
distance between itself and the US but every time there is a major geopolitical event it
starts to talk like it is going independent but then always drops back into the US hand. How
many times does this have to happen for us to admit what the EU is about?
The EU cannot lead in anything - it is a completely owned and operated US tool. It is a big
zero in providing humanity any help with the big problem of our time: the 'indispensable and
exceptional' supremacist US.
Posted by: AriusArmenian | Jan 14 2020 19:58 utc |
15
If we accept that EU nations lack sovereignty and go further to suggest that such nations are
more simulations than real, what would an analysis of such events as the fallout from the
demise of the JCPOA look like? How should one talk about international events when corporate
sovereignty and oligarchical decision making are the real? How would we describe this exact
context based not on the simulation but on the real workings of power?
Yes indeed! At least blighty knows the score! The leash is no place for the British bulldog.
When brexit is complete they will be free to crawl straight up muricas bum! Lol!
Haha, great drawing. This pile on the left is incomparable. But the picture is incomplete -
there is not enough proudly walking in front of the masters of a small Polish poodle with a
bone in his teeth.
Agree with Nemo, #1. This is a matter of sovereignty. At the moment, European countries
are not sovereign, and, btw, this is a kind of double non-sovereignty: the submission of a
separate European country to the Americans, plus the submission of the same country to a
Brussels bureaucracy called the EU leadership. What independent, bold decisions can we talk
about? None.
The Trump administration has given various justification for its assassination of Major
General Qassem Soleimani and commander Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. It claimed that there was an
'imminent threat' of an incident, even while not knowing what, where or when it would happen,
that made the assassination necessary. Trump later said the thread was a planned bombing of
four U.S. embassies. His defense secretary denied that.
Soleimani and Muhandis during a battle against ISIS
That has raised the suspicion that the decision to kill Soleimani had little to do with
current events but was a long planned operation. NBC News now
reports that this is exactly the case:
President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven
months ago if Iran's increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to
five current and former senior administration officials.
The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final
signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said.
The idea to kill Soleimani, a regular General in an army with which the U.S. is not war,
came like many other bad ideas from John Bolton.
After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June, John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser at
the time, urged Trump to retaliate by signing off on an operation to kill Soleimani,
officials said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also wanted Trump to authorize the
assassination, officials said.
But Trump rejected the idea, saying he'd take that step only if Iran crossed his red line:
killing an American. The president's message was "that's only on the table if they hit
Americans," according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Then unknown forces fired 30 short range missiles into a U.S. base near Kirkuk. The salvo
was not intended to kill or
wound anyone:
The rockets landed in a place and at a time when American and Iraqi personnel normally were
not there and it was only by unlucky chance that Mr. Hamid was killed, American officials
said.
Without presenting any evidence the U.S. accused Katib Hizbullah, an Iraqi Popular Militia
Unit, of having launched the missiles. It launched airstrikes against a number of Katib
Hizbullah positions near the Syrian border, hundreds of miles away from Kirkuk, and killed over
30 Iraqi security forces.
This led to demonstrations in Baghdad during which a crowd breached the outer wall of the
U.S. embassy but soon retreated. Trump, who had attacked Hillary Clinton over the raid on the
consulate/CIA station in Benghazi, did not want to get embarrassed with a full embassy
breach.
The media claim that it was the embassy breach that the led to the activation of an
operation that had already been planned for a year before Trump signed off on it seven month
ago. As the New York Timesdescribes it :
For the past 18 months, officials said, there had been discussions about whether to target
General Suleimani. Figuring that it would be too difficult to hit him in Iran, officials
contemplated going after him during one of his frequent visits to Syria or Iraq and focused
on developing agents in seven different entities to report on his movements -- the Syrian
Army, the Quds Force in Damascus, Hezbollah in Damascus, the Damascus and Baghdad airports
and the Kataib Hezbollah and Popular Mobilization forces in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper presented a series of response options to the president two
weeks ago, including killing Soleimani. Esper presented the pros and cons of such an
operation but made it clear that he was in favor of taking out Soleimani, officials said.
Trump signed off and it further developed from there.
There was no intelligence of any 'imminent threat' or anything like that.
This was an operation that had been worked on for 18 month. Trump signed off on it more than
half a year ago. Those who had planned it just waited for a chance to execute it.
We can not even be sure that the embassy bombing had caused Trump to give the final go. It
might have been that the CIA and Pentagon were just waiting for a chance to kill Soleimani and
Muhandis, the leader of Katib Hizbullah, at the same time. Their meeting at Baghdad airport was
not secret and provided the convenient opportunity they had been waiting for.
Together Soleimani and Muhandis were the glue that kept the many Shia factions in Iraq
together. The armed ones as well as the political ones. Soleimani's replacement as Quds brigade
leader, Brigadier General Ismail Qaani, is certainly a capable man. But his previous field of
work was mainly east of Iran in Afghanistan and Pakistan and it will be difficult for him to
fill
Soleimani's role in Iraq :
After Soleimani's death, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Soleimani's deputy Ismail Qaani to
succeed him. Qaani does not speak Arabic, does not have an in-depth knowledge of Iraq, nor
the insight of Soleimani and his ability to balance the different positions of Iraq's
factions with the opinions of Ayatollah Khamenei and the religious authorities in Najaf.
The question is how the successor of Soleimani will manage his new responsibility
including the thorny issues in Iraq. The escalation of the Iranian-American conflict is,
according to many, an escalation towards war and the destabilization of the region in which
the rules of engagement have changed. The question remains how, and not whether all of this
will impact the situation in Iraq.
Today the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has his on militia, and Iraqi PMU leaders
met in
Qom , Iran, to discuss how the foreign troops can be expelled from Iraq. Gen. Qaani will
likely be there to give them advice.
Yesterday Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah, gave another speech . In it
he called on the Kurds in Iraq to pay back their debt to Soleimani and Hizbullah, which is
owned for their fight against ISIS, and to help to evict the foreign soldiers from Iraq:
85-Nasrallah: Now, the rest of the path. 1) Iraq: Iraq is the first country concerned
w/responding to this crime, because it happened in Iraq, and because it targeted Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, a great Iraqi commander, and because Soleimani defended Iraq.
86-Nasrallah: I ask Masoud Barazani to thank Soleimani for his efforts in defending Erbil
and Kurdistan Region, because Soleimani was the only one to respond to your call. Soleimani
and with him men from Hezbollah went to Erbil.
87-Nasrallah: Barazani was shaking from fear, but Soleimani and the brothers from
Hezbollah helped you repulse this unprecedented threat; and now you must repay this good by
being part of the effort to expel the Americans from Iraq and the region.
The Barzani family, which governs the Kurdish part of Iraq, has
since long sold out to the Zionists and the United States. It will certainly not support
the resistance effort. But Nasrallah's request is highly embarrassing to the clan and to Masoud
Barzani personally.
So far I only found this rather confusing response from him:
The Kurdistan Regional Government's response to the immoral speech uttered by Hassan
Nasrallah through the anti-terror apparatus is a clear message from the regional government
to those terrorists that the response to the terrorists must be through the anti-terror
apparatus.
As military leader both Soleimani and Muhandis are certainly replaceable. The militia groups
they created and led will continue to function.
But both men also played important political roles in Iraq and it will take some time to
find adequate people to replace them in that. That makes it likely that the already simmering
political situation in Iraq will soon boil over as the Shia factions will start to fight each
other over the selection of a new Prime Minister and government.
The U.S. will welcome that as it will try do install a candidate that will reject the Iraqi
parliament decision to remove the foreign forces from Iraqi grounds.
Posted by b on January 13, 2020 at 17:32 UTC |
Permalink
The United States has truly become a rogue state. John Helmer pointed out that when Putin
visited Damascus recently to meet with Assad, he did so at a Russian military facility as a
safety precaution because you can no longer put it by the USA that it won't target people of
such hierarchy.
Was there not anyone in all of those previous discussions and planning sessions
objecting and explaining the importance of Qassem Suleiman in the Iran hierachy of
government????
Was there not anyone in all of those previous discussions and planning sessions
objecting and explaining the illegality of assassinating such a leader when he was traveling
openly to discuss matters of defense on a mission of diplomacy???????????
Was there not anyone in all of those previous discussions and planning sessions
objecting and resigning or going public to attempt to stop this infamy????????????
So were the Saudis genuine in their "peace attempt" or were they simply working with
CIA/Mossad to lure Soleimani and Muhandis into a situation where they could be droned?
If the Saudis were genuine, they would be much more vocal in their opposition to these
murders, which completely derail any potential Iraq-brokered peace process.
To the best of my recollection, Elijah Magnier, on a recent appearance with Joanne Leon on
the Around the Empire Podcast, says it is erroneous to identify Muhandis as the leader of
Katib Hizbullah. Actually, he was the highest military official of the PMU (excepting only
its nominal head, a civilian), the umbrella organization of the (mainly) Shia militia which
are part of the Iraqi military.
US biz persons in NY RE, in Florida, (etc.) as well as tv 'moguls' - do transactional
power-play interactions, not Int'l diplomacy. (Whatever that is, pretty worthless actually,
but = other topic.)
Obviously, Trump's order to murder Soleimani was partly due to impeachment pressure, as he
has said himself.
Plus, Soleimani insulted him gravely. From tabloids and women's mags, which I read on
occasion.
NK (Kim + spokespersons) called Trump a heedless and erratic old man. Also a dotard iirc,
but all this was in an exchange of insults which could be taken as mimicking that between
equals, Trump calling Kim Rocket Man, etc. (Everyone knew nothing would happen.) There was
also that kerfuffle when Trudeau (sleazy hypocrite) and others were caught open-mick
gossiping about Trump taking too long for his pressers or whatever. No doubt others and Dem
public insults are politically calibrated in a known landscape and Trump of course initiates
and has no problem with riposte.
2018. Soleimani speech. The Sun: vid. eng subs.
Very demeaning: gambler - bartender - casino manager that hits hard.
When much is hung on 'identity politics' and 'personalia' - ppls identity, character,
beliefs, personal interaction with others, etc. take up too much air (like in Hollywood
movies), institutional or other long-worked out arrangements (like Int'l law based on
upholding the existence of Wilsonian Nation-States..) are simply scuttered.
Thanks for the reporting b and I am not surprised about the background behind the
assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis
I would also not be surprised to read that my country was complicit to some degree in the
Ukraine plane shoot down by Iran.
The West is a very sick world run by the dictators that own global private finance. Those
dictators have managed to even brainwash the public into not understanding their illness and
believing it is a good force in our world.
I am glad to read less of the belief that Trump is being played by the system and not an
active actor within it. I continue to hope that other groups of our species continue to stand
up to the anti-humanistic social contract of the West and end its centuries old reign of
terror.
Before Putin left for Damascus he already mentioned something about he wont be so easily
removed without any consequence.. most likely meaning Russia would probably neutralize all US
bases in close proximity and get on the stick to fire strategic nukes for any US response..
But we know the US has hit a lot of Russian assets without seeing any Russian response. So
who knows..
War without limits: using all domains (pol, fin, econ, media, com, legal inst) to subvert
and destroy an enemy, where the objective is to obliterate the state itself as a
political entity
Aside from genocide, what greater crime can there be than the complete annihilation of
the state itself, as we saw happening in the NATO-attack on Libya and the state's total
destruction and re-invention in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the NATO-attack against
Yugoslavia and now Ukraine and Syria.
.. a complete negation of the concept of state sovereignty and self-determination of
peoples enshrined in the UN-Charta. It is a form of aggression of the worst kind and the
type of total war that the Nazis waged against the SU. (obliterate state, people, social
& econ system and culture).
...So the term HW first appears in American military literature and as practised by
NATO means the commission of multiple war-crimes against the people of the targeted
state. In Libya we saw conventional military style ops by NATO (massive bombing over many
months) simultaneous with unconventional operations (local and imported proxy forces,
subversion, assassinations, terrorism against civilians, use of social and mass-media to
distribute false information about the regime, criminal actions, cyberattacks to shut
down communication and the use of quasi legal bodies (ICC) to criminalize the leadersip,
to accuse Gadhafi of being a war-criminal; use of mercenaries, destruction of
infrastructure to break the will of the people to resist.
The subject is one of immediate concern because the Americans have begun using the
term hybrid warfare in their propaganda accusing Russia of engaging in it in Ukraine and
now raising the alarm that (they believe) Russia will engage in HW in the Baltic.
Therefore the Americans argue, they have to react to prepare for this eventuality which
they claim to be inevitable. And that indicates to me where we can expect the next
operations against Russia to take place (and it may explain the exercises NATO has been
running all summer, landing of airborne troops, combined sea-operations, etc.)
But the American claim of Russia using HW is in fact a mirror of their own
image as we see these methods being used by them as a matter of routine.
(... used in the Indian wars, in 19th century, starvation, prop and other techniques
to destroy their cultures, in Mexico, Philipines, Korea and Vietnam, in Central America
(i.e. Nicaragua) and in Ruanda....
All the accusations against Iran ("greatest sponsor of terrorism", aligning Iran with
AQ, etc.) are a projection of their own crimes ..
It was explained by Craig Murray in his blog (replicated in a few websites) that the usage of
"imminent" adjective is created by a certain lawyer who first worked for Netanyahu, then for
Blair etc. The usage does not convey ANY information about the nature of a "danger", but the
attitude, judgement if you will, of the institution that commissioned the opinion.
And "immanent" or "eminent" (Trumpian tweet) would fit equally well, but legalistically,
the confusion raised by "imminent" is more useful.
Noirette @ 6, it is my belief that an irrational US president, under the constant pressure of
attack from the Russiagate and Ukraingate instigators (you know who you are) from the instant
he became president and took on those responsibilities, volatile and insecure as he was from
the getgo, has finally cracked and is now very much in need of retirement from the
highpressure stage of politics in a time of potential war. It would be in the interests of
everyone in the world for his family to ask him, for his doctors to require of him,
that he resign. Certainly the alternatives to his remaining in office are grim, but not as
grim as having a president who is mentally incapacitated.
It would seem that an entire warmaking apparatus of government is similarly dysfunctional.
I don't know how that can be remedied, but it must.
whose militia is "on", active, rather than "off"? In any case, separating this guy from
microphones would require an Amored Personal Carrier or something heavier.
juliania@3
The answer to your questions lies in the reality that for years a sure means of not being
promoted or even being fired from a government job in the US is to know anything about the
Arab or Islamic world. Or to act as if knowing anything about such inferior beings is
necessary for making judgements.
This idea, that ignorance is bliss, has spread from Israel, not because the Israelis practise
it-they don't- but because they want DC to be entirely reliant on them for intelligence and
direction in the Middle East.
Although only one battle in what will be a longer war, Trump has won that round. More
confusion and disarray in Iraq, bad PR for Iran after the Uki plane shootdown. Bad PR allows
western vassals to move closer to the US side of the fence, and also provides fuel for US
regime change operations within Iran.
The two generals that were assassinated - there will be others that can plan military
strategy, but a big part, perhaps more important than strategy, is the personality to be able
to hold disparate groups together so they act as one and all tactics by separate groups fit
into a larger strategy.
Thank you, bevin. That is a sad explanation, though to me it doesn't obviate what should be
inherent in any normal human person, as I myself know very little about the Middle East,
relying indeed upon b's excellent and nearly objective (as objective as any human can be)
reporting on the facts and his interpretation of them. That which ought to be inherent is the
human desire not to inflict pain on another human if that can be avoided. Those who are in
government service ought to have that moral incentive front and center. We see it in the
great leaders, and surely in this country there are some among the elite who haven't lost
this natural instinct? It is very problematic if that has been thoroughly weeded out in those
now occupying powerful positions.
This country has been fortunate in the past to select persons of high moral compass as our
heroes. We the people still want to do that, I am convinced. Perhaps there is still time, and
we can re-order our own hierarchy now that what has been done is this terrible, an enormous
reductio ad absurdum, front and center.
"TEL AVIV: Five days ago, an undisclosed intelligence agency intercepted a telephone call
made by the head of Iran's Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in which he was heard
ordering his proxies in Iraq to attack the US embassy in Baghdad, as well as other Israeli
and American targets, with the aim of taking hostages, Israeli sources say.
It's unclear whether this was a lapse in tradecraft on the part of the usually savvy
Soleimani or whether the notorious Iranian military leader's phone calls were being routinely
intercepted. Nor is it clear whether it was the US or another foe of Iran that made the
intercept. Regardless, the intelligence seems to have led directly to Soleimani's killing
yesterday, which has thrown the Mideast into uproar."
In the chain of cause & effect, the Outlaw US Empire is definitely responsible for the
airliner shootdown; that must be seen as 100% irrefutable. The Outlaw US Empire has executed
numerous high ranking political and military people beginning with Yamamoto in 1943, although
I'll admit he was a legitimate target; yet, the seed was planted then. I recall Diem being
killed with the approval of JFK just weeks prior to his own execution. As I wrote at
Escobar's Facebook over the weekend, the Great Evil in the world resides within the Outlaw US
Empire and must be expunged even if Nukes must be used. Yes, that conclusion was painful to
arrive at and write, but the horrors have lasted for 3,000+ years now. The crop of Current
Oligarchs are the most aggressive ever and won't stop their rampage until they Own
Everything . In the overall scheme of things, getting Imperial forces ousted from
Southwest Asia will be a good thing but only a small portion of what must occur.
What does a single word of Nihad N. Arafat's response even mean? How is Nasrallah's speech
immoral by any stretch of the imagination? Do the Kurd's have no gratitude for Hezbollah and
Qud's laying down their lives to save them from mass rape and genocide? What is the
"anti-terror apparatus", does he mean fighting terrorism in Iraq and Syria must be done only
by US supported forces like the SDF? The Kurds siding with the US occupiers and Israel is one
of the most disgusting developments in recent history, its no wonder these people have been
so distrusted and abused for so long, their power hungry leadership betrays their allies like
snakes.
Russia takes its vengeance cold, often with no flair or notoriety. They often take in
multiples for their losses.
In Syria, a Russian missile into a mountain cave where US, Israeli, Saudi and AQ Intel
leaders were meeting cost over 50 high value lives. It was Russian payback for when some
Colonels and a General were hit by Coalition air strikes. Auslander, on the Saker blog, has
written about this. 2016, as I recall.
In Donbass, there have been many paybacks by Russia for Ukie and NATO acts. Some even
taken inside Russia.
A number of the culprits who killed over a hundred people and set fire to the Trade Union
building in Odessa have met Russian justice. Same with some of the criminal SBU who tortured
Berkut who came from Crimea. And others have been liquidated for murders done by Ukies in
Mariupol.
People who know and need to know are aware that Russia always more than evens the
score.
They just recently eliminated the head Turkmen who was responsible for shooting the pilot
of the jet the Turks shot down as he parachuted. It wasn't enough that when they rescued the
co-pilot navigator of the jet (rescue led by General Soleimani), the Aerospace forces bombed
the hell out of the area the Turkmen populated. They got the names and tracked for years the
commander.
Never assume because you don't know, it hasn't happened. And if it hasn't yet, it
will.
I don't like to say it but b's article doesn't support his headline. And I don't like to
repeat myself, but I've already commented this subject earlier today
@ open thread 55 , but he doesn't seem to have taken it into account. We should not
expect a powerful Iraqi reaction to the events.
Firstly remember that Abd ul-Mahdi is a weak leader, only there because the US agreed to
him. The US has made sure that the Iraqi leadership is not strong. Secondly, there was
always going to be a time necessary for a new militia leader to emerge. Instant reaction
was just about impossible.
However in the long term, the prospects are good. The Shi'a are in power in Iraq without
question. The Sunnis are out of it, the Kurds no longer intervene outside KRG. All the cr*p
about civil war is nonsense. The Shi'a factions all have basically the same interest, and
conflict is only between different leaders of the same grouping. Things could turn around
in an instant.
The anti-US movement is popular sentiment, not govt led. The more the US offends that
sentiment, as will inevitably happen, the stronger the movement will be. We already have
seen the way things will go. US bases are being sprayed with rockets. That will make life
difficult for the US. The more they punish the culprits, the more resentment there will be.
There's no way things can work out well for the US.
b has been reading the instant reaction, breast-beating, woe-is-me, articles
like Salhy in Middle East Eye, without looking further.
US aggression is at the stage of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan around the start of
WWII.
Rather than seeing that their unipolar world is ending, the US is prepared to use military
power to hold its position in the world.
The exceptionalist mindset is not just one small faction in the US hierarchy, it is the
mindset of the hierarchy plus a good proportion of the population.
Throughout history, countries or nations like that always end up destroyed as they fight for
their position until the very end rather than step down.
What does a single word of Nihad N. Arafat's response even mean?
Posted by: Jase | Jan 13 2020 18:53 utc | 19
Upon quick inspection, N.N. Arafat is not a real person. For few months he (it?) only
retweeted, mostly a pro-Kurdish US senator, and now produced a test of his (its?) own. The
text is weird, which may corroborate the purported education -- radiologist who graduated in
Dohuk (the capital of one of the three provinces of Kurdistan autonomous area in Iraq).
Actual on-line Kurdish publication have a rather sketchy English, although not as bad.
>>Although only one battle in what will be a longer war, Trump has won that round.
More confusion and disarray in Iraq, bad PR for Iran after the Uki plane shootdown. Bad PR
allows western vassals to move closer to the US side of the fence, and also provides fuel for
US regime change operations within Iran.
The two generals that were assassinated - there will be others that can plan military
strategy, but a big part, perhaps more important than strategy, is the personality to be able
to hold disparate groups together so they act as one and all tactics by separate groups fit
into a larger strategy.
Yup. Some people like to underestimate the US Empire, because it is easier to wear rose
coloured glasses, rather than face unpleasant reality.
Even b changed from US will leave Iraq to there will be chaos in Iraq and the US will try
to stay.
Although personally i think that the US will be kicked out because most of the Shia
leaders would like to be killed by a US drone for whatever. Especially Sadr, who has the
biggest political block, and whose Mahdi Army killed plenty of americans back then. He knows
that he is a potential target too, so he will work to make this expulsion happen.
There was also an assasination attempt against iranian official in Yemen. This is all part
of a Cold War, a hybrid war against Iran. To break it. There is no isolationism. No one will
leave Iran or Syria unless they are actually kicked out.
And yes, Trump is a willing imperialist. He likes it. He can't do much on the domestic
front but he is allowed to show his violent tendencies on the foreign front. As a zionist and
a military puppet.
Trump loves the sanction weapons and financial-banking weapons the US possesses. He's all
in on using every coercion to strangle, starve and screw everyone, friend, foe, ally,
adversary. A power-hungry guy who has all the power to dominate the globe, yet not his own
country, break sovereignties, ignore laws and trample opponents to get his way.
And he likes it.
Trump has taken on the personification of the Hegemon. It is a form of Wizard of Oz
syndrome. If the Deep State and MIC allows him, he is "powerful". This suits his
dysfunctionality as a man. He has big inadequacies. They manifest in his need to be big,
wealthy, #1, first, triumphant in all deals.
In the Oval Office, he is powerless to get the wall built, infrastructure legislation
passed, health reform, or even announce he will consider pardons for all those entrapped by
Comey and the Russiagate hoax. He's being impeached.
But as the Hegemon, when the handlers around him allow it (advise him), he gets to kill
people. This is heady stuff that captivates him.
I would predict that Assad is on the top of Trump's hit list too.
sponsor of terrorism", aligning Iran with AQ, etc.) are a projection of their own crimes
..by: Pandora @9..<=many Domestic Americans may be at risk for elimination ..If I were an
aspiring Democrat I would wear my anti-drone outfit ?
Americans used to pride themselves that their government promised those accused of
wrongdoing to be treated as "innocent" until guilt was established by a due process procedure
known as a fair open trial. These trials were a source of information that allowed the
governed to keep somewhat honest those who were running the government. many Americans chose
to become American Citizens in order to gain access to the due process procedures. Humanity
in the world has a problem it needs to define and solve because death by drone is not an
acceptable line item in the statistics.
I was quite interested by the remarks of Ayatullah Sistani last Friday, I think it was,
criticising Iran and the US equally for illegal attacks on Iraqi soil.
The context is of course that Sistani is Iranian, but has never taken a pro-Iranian
position. He is aged now, and his view is expressed by his aides, so it can be taken that
this is the view of the Sistani organisation, not so necessarily of the man himself. It is
quite nationalistic, and not subservient to Iran, as everybody is currently claiming. Iraqi
Shi'a independence from Iran has always been the policy, and its being reaffirmed. Iran
remains an ally, naturally.
That doesn't mean that the Iraqi state is strong and can dictate to the US. The
US ensures that doesn't happen. But the positions of Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr and the others
are all pretty similar, and concentrate on Iraqi nationalism, which equals opposition to the
US, and non-dependence on Iran.
Of course Shi'a Iraqi nationalism is a little bit particular, as no concessions are made
to the Sunnis. It's as though they don't exist. For the moment that doesn't matter, as the
Sunnis are thoroughly defeated, and if they have rebels, they join Da'ish, who are
discredited. The Kurds have had their fingers burned, and won't venture outside KRG again. If
the US wants to stir them up, it won't work.
I agree with all of that, though on Trump as trying to make up for inadequacies I would
differ.
More a very aggressive, competitive mindset and very self confidant in his abilities.
He had held no political positions in the past, runs for president of the US and wins.
It looks as though much rides on whether the Shia groups can put aside domestic
differences for the duration and agree on and stick to a common strategy to oust the US.
This tweet by Mike Pompeo has triggered a large response condemning USA hypocrisy.
But the murder of the Iranian General does highlight the difficulty of the militias
throughout the Middle East.
Middle East is tribal, militias, as far as I understand, can be paid by Sheiks, by local
religous leaders, by some arm of the relevant government, by foreign governments. And by
foreign governments, I mean Turkey, USA, Iran, UK and so on.
Or a mix of all the above.
So Pompeo has a point - the sooner Middle East governments bring militias fully into the
armed forces, the clearer the applicable law will be.
What caused this mess?
Lack of a robust governmental process.
Whose problem is it? At base, the national government in question.
If clear lines of control and command and full integration can't happen due to political
divisions and corruption, poor popular control of politicians, then the country (and others
around the region) are doomed to endless trouble, from home, from abroad.
Sad fact, IMO.
Sovereignty starts with responsive, effective, reliable, accountable, transparent, and
widely accepted, clear, principles-based governance.
@ Posted by: Passer by | Jan 13 2020 19:30 utc | 27
with the comment about Trump with which I agree...thanks
Trump is a very hurt human being that is not recognized as such because of a skewed view
of what mental health is.....aggression, bullying, and murder have all been normalized to be
acceptable mental health in top/down world that is never discussed as being the source of the
Trump type of mentality.
I agree with your call out:
"
I would predict that Assad is on the top of Trump's hit list too.
"
and want to add that I expect there are active hit list plans for all world leaders that
conflict with the dictatorship of global private finance.
"...The U.S. will welcome that [the Shia factions will start to fight each other over the
selection of a new Prime Minister and government] as it will try do install a candidate that
will reject the Iraqi parliament decision to remove the foreign forces from Iraqi
grounds."
If the US hopes this will happen to deflect Iraqis from their shock at US assassination on
their soil of their military leader as well as Iran's, surely they are as mistaken as they
were in perpetrating the atrocity. That's not what happens - we saw it first in Russia. There
will be unity against a common enemy, would be my take. As has been happening all along with
less important 'sanctions' than this. They always backfire.
My view is that the iraqi shia will work towards expulsion of the US and will make it happen.
They will also buy capable anti-air defense from Russia, no matter the threats. Because
having US drones over your head is simply unacceptable, and many leaders, including Sadr,
know that they are a potential target for "misbehaving" or past grievances. This lurking
theat is simply too much. That's not to mention the israeli strikes in Iraq. They also do not
want Iraq to turn into US-Iran battlefield. Which will inevitably lead to killings of Shia
leaders and groups.
But there will be lots of bullying coming from Trump and some US companies could get large
deals as a price for the withdrawal, maybe some expensive military equipment will be sold
too.
The middle east, particularly the Arab world have always been susceptible to divide and
conquer.
Clans, Tribes, Religions, Ethic groups and nations - all fault lines that the imperial
countries have and still do, easily drive wedges into and turn one against another.
Putin jokes Assad should invite Trump to visit Damascus. The leaders were referring to the
Straight Street, which leads to Mariamite Cathedral of Damascus, & to Apostle Paul whose
life was transformed after a vision he had as he walked on that road.
Since the attack on Suleimani, Al Muhandis and that officer in Yemen, Reza Shahlai, were the
result of long planning the question is what else is part of the plan, and its possible
opportunistic addons. Trump was very fast in following up with new sanctions. The current
demonstrations in Iran were probably(my guess) planned. I don't understand how they can get
traction so close to the funeral.
Also I wonder to what extent the US/Israel are strenghtening IS near the Syrian border.
Passer by "They also do not want Iraq to turn into US-Iran battlefield."
This is the part that annoys me about the Iraqi's. Trump stated bluntly that US is in Iraq
and will be staying in Iraq to watch Iran. That was at the time of the Syrian pullback and
oilfield grab.
US is using Iraq to attack Iran. It killed and Iran military officer and diplomat on Iraqi
soil. It is constantly striking Iraqi militia groups on Iraqi soil.
By stating Iran violated Iraqi sovereignty with its strike on the US base, Iraq is giving
sanctuary to the US.
Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Jan 13 2020 20:15 utc | 39
>>the question is what else is part of the plan
The plan seems to be israeli one, and it will be about what will benefit Netanyahoo.
This means a continuous near war situation between the US and Iran, but without the actual
large scale war. A covert war involving killings, sabotage, everything other than a large
scale war. The US will be the meat-shield for Israel. Untill the elections. Then we will
see.
I think no one believed that the US will start killing senior iraqis and iranians.
Soleimani was even seen together with US troops in Iraq, and was visiting often. Iran
certainly did not believe that either. But now things changed.
May need to invoke the 25th Amendment. 11 months is a very long time and we may not all be
here. In the previous post I linked to a Tass report Iran has declared their revenge is not
over. More to come.
"Several troops CNN spoke to said the event (al-Assad base) had shifted their view of
warcraft: the US military is rarely on the receiving end of sophisticated weaponry, despite
launching the most advanced attacks in the world.
"You looked around at each other and you think: Where are we going to run? How are you going
to get away from that?" said Ferguson.
"I don't wish anyone to have that level of fear," he said. "No one in the world should ever
have to feel something like that.""
Yeah, the way I see things going, I wouldn't call it a strategy, is that the Iraqi
parliament continues to vote against any proposal the US makes, while at the same time random
militias continue to fire off Katyushas against US bases, making life difficult.
US pressure on Abd ul-Mahdi can't disarm the militias, as he doesn't have the power to do
so. There's no scenario where the US could agree to the appointment of a strong PM, who might
master the militias, and be accepted by the parliament, and yet guarantee to stop militia
attacks. The different elements are contradictory.
Yeah, Peter AU1 is right. Iran lost that round.
With the plane shot down, they fucked it totally up. Trump can (somewhat with a basis in
reality) point to Iran, the "evil Regime" that prefers to shoot down 100+ civilians instead
of closing airspace for "a strategic gain" (Bernards words defending this).
A PR nightmare for Iran. And sadly a deserved one in this case of not closing the airspace.
Had this catastrophe not happend, it would have been a brilliant operation, which would
have turned the US standing upside down militarily.
But with shooting themselves in the foot, they managed to paint themselves as the paraiah
regime that cares not about human life, as Trump and the NeoCons have painted them all
along.
Now i understand why Trump did not respond that night and happily went to bed tweeting
that all is well. The US knew Iran shot it down in that night, and they knew that Iran would
have hurt itself more then they hurt the US from a PR and propaganda standpoint.
And with Soleimani gone, and a replacement that does not even speak Arabic (WTF?!), how
can they even dream of rallying all the tribes in Syria and Iraq behind their game plan??
Personality is key in politics. And when such a person can not even speak the language of the
people he should unite, then this looks futile IMHO.
All in all, a very telling development. Telling about both the US and Iran, but also about
Alt Media and us readers+commenters.
IMO, the sad truth is, that the new 4th Reich owns the globe, because of their grasp of the
reserve currency system, and NO nation, at this point in time, can reverse that fact.
I've been reading people talking about the demise of the empire for years now. Until the
reserve currency issue is changed,
NO NATION on earth can challenge the monstrosity of the new 4th Reich.
The empire will continue to control the world with economic and military terrorism.
To coin an old saying, "It's just business, get over it"....
Suppose that the US wants to stay in Iraq, as they've said. What strategy could they follow
to make it possible? I'm at a bit of a loss there. Full military occupation, with 100,000 US
troops? Unacceptable in the US. Change the Iraqi PM? Would someone else be better? Another PM
would still be subject to parliament votes. Impose a dictator? Dictators aren't in fact
absolute rulers, but still depend on public acquiescence.
"Now i understand why Trump did not respond that night and happily went to bed tweeting that
all is well. The US knew Iran shot it down in that night, and they knew that Iran would have
hurt itself more then they hurt the US from a PR and propaganda standpoint."
Except Trump's stupid tweet came 4 hours BEFORE the plane was downed. Seriously delusional
stuff you are spouting.
We have been talking for about 7 days venting our anger and frustration with US empire and
its puppets. Also, talking about the why's and The Who's and How's.
I think it is time to concentrate on the " now what" question. What can be done to get the
US out of West Asia and keep them away?
The key to all of this and the future of West Asia's peace, IMHO, is Saudi Arabia. Iran
and its allies have to concentrate and preempt in changing the Saudi regime. Time is ripe for
this and they are on the defensive as well. Taking out the Saudis will:
1. Finish the Wahabi- Saud axis and weaken it tremendously (weaken ISIS, AlQueda, etc if
not end them)
2. It will cut off the financial source of much of evil going on in West Asia and beyond
3. No oil, no Americans in the region and a gradual end of petrodollar and hopefully the
empire(of course, easier said than done but it has to start somewhere)
4. That will also have a chain reaction in the gulf monarchies with the majority non-Sunni
population. So it goes for the other West Asian fiefdoms.
5. The end of ERETZ ISRAEL
6. Realignment of North African alliances and shift away from US and the west, especially
Egypt.
7. Bring OPEC under a more democratic control
8. Facilitating Belt and Road and possibly more prosperity for the region as a whole although
China and Russia should be watched and dealt with very carefully. They are not the angels
that they have been made to be in these forums. They are just the lesser evils,
comparatively. Much less.
9. A gradual growth away fanaticism and more toward secularism. Maybe even Iran can restart
the first true democracy in the region, if such a thing exists outside of books and
novels.
I'm sure others can add to this list. It sounds like fantasy but like i said before it has
to start somewhere and Iran is in a position to make this happen and it should be sooner than
later. Once Saudis have been dealt with, comes next, Israel. 1967 lines or get the hell out
of West Asia. No ifs or buts. No negotiations.
It is a nice dream anyway. I truly believe it is the only hope for the region, otherwise
we are looking at 50 more years of this shit if a global war hasn't happened in between.
"...the Great Evil in the world resides within the Outlaw US Empire and must be expunged
even if Nukes must be used. Yes, that conclusion was painful to arrive at and write, but the
horrors have lasted for 3,000+ years now."
Is this the real karlof1? Or his alter ego Major karlof1 Kong riding the bomb.
When you say "...Nukes must be used." Would it be correct to assume you mean on
yourselves? or some innocent third party in the Middle East?
I thought I despised you Americans, but there is a lot of self loathing here.
Guy THORNTON @45 - should be mandatory viewing. The American needs to feel abject fear,
helplessness and loss before anything can even begin to change.
Sorry to confound you with my 18! Cause & Effect in this case began in 1953. If 1953
hadn't occurred and nothing similar in-between, then the dead would be alive. Peter AU 1's 24
explained the middle portion well enough. The 3,000+ years refers to the amount of time an
oligarchy consisting of landed rich, rentiers and such have subjugated humanity in the West
as seen by the numerous proofs offered in the numerous publications by the team Hudson
assembled at the Peabody Museum at the same time the Berlin Wall was falling, which Hudson's
trying to make more accessible via a series beginning with and forgive them their
debts... which I very much encourage you--and everyone reading this comment--to read as
it really is that important. The bits and pieces provided in the related essays at Hudson's
website are not a sufficient substitute for the series of books, although they ought to be
enough to motivate.
Juliania 16
"This country has been fortunate in the past to select persons of high moral compass as our
heroes."
Really?
Who?
Can you be more specific?
I am sure there are a few genuine heroes, but I am curious as to whom you mean
specifically?
Anyone in the Oval Office?
Finally a top Canadian businessman who points the finger for this tragedy to Trump:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51095769.
Of course there's not a single politician who has the guts to speak this truth out loud.
Trump, the narcissist cum laude, demonstrates how the whole world has to count on others
having more common sense than the crazy Americans who bully whoever they don't like, damn the
consequences. Let's not forget that it is this ongoing verbal adolescent barrage and
unnecessary hyping that almost got us into a nuclear holocaust twice (1963 and 1983) - and
both times we were saved by the sound and sober Russians. What if the Russian then would have
been the Iranian now?
I've been reading people talking about the demise of the empire for years now. Until
the reserve currency issue is changed,
NO NATION on earth can challenge the monstrosity of the new 4th Reich.
The USD$ will follow all the others that went before.
just a little more faith ben. The collapse is not one event like an explosion, "boom" it's
a process over time. U.S'. 'perceived prosperity' is built on debt or by another name,
printing fiat which is unsustainable.
Watch the new QE repo fail, also derivatives and prepare.
U.S. Fed is working hard to save the financial system that is leaking like a sieve. One Fed
governor said it [the Repo] was a plumbing exercise. How apt. In 2006 global debt was $125
trillion now stands at $260 trillion.
I mentioned watch derivatives. These banks with the biggest derivative positions - DB,
JPM, Citigroup and GS - list their official position a tad below $200 trillion. When it
blows? could be another 6 years but collapse it will.
Actually, imo we are in the collapse. Why are interest rates in negative territory? It is
a theft of pensioners' savings to keep the casino standing. I suspect the warmongering is a
distraction.
DontBelieveEitherPr. 47 "A PR nightmare for Iran. And sadly a deserved one in this case of
not closing the airspace."
It is not deserved. Decisions are easy to ridicule in hindsight, very difficult to make
make at the time. War is all about deception. Did Iran know US had the ability to spoof what
they were seeing on their radar screens. There is a good chance the US have made some
deliberately failed attempts in the past to set them up for something like this. Iran is in a
fight with an exceptionally dirty fighter that knows all the tricks. They will take more hits
before this is over.
not understanding that and disparaging Iran when it does take hits is part of US
calculations. That is human character. Everyone likes a winner type mindset. Part of human
character.
Thanks b, Elijah's newest article touches on this very subject, the situation will get hot in
Iraq should the Us occupiers do not leave the country. The situation will aggravate, maybe
slowly, then speed up, the US will most likely retaliate with sanctions and other usual
crimes.
I do see China and Russia stepping up in Iraq and Iran, there is a clear alignment forming,
backstage talks must be very busy at the moment, many countries aligning such as Qatar and
Turkey, while the traditional allies of Israel and US continue to drag on their knees, such
as UAE and KSA.
I do expect the war of aggression in Yemen to get hotter, since KSA is kicking the can down
the road instead of true commitment to a peace deal, while in eastern Syria we may see US
mercenaries being most likely killed by Syrian insurgency, lots of mercenaries there vs US
soldiers.
Trump US has had problems getting vassals on board for war against Iran. With the recent
incident, more have moved to Trumps side. Winning the PR war means puppet leaders are free to
do as US tells them as even puppet leaders are keeping an eye on re-election and public
opinion and so forth.
Trumps war on Iran will not be well publicised build up to Iraq shock and awe. It will be
Trident missiles with no warning.
"Something very odd is happening in the past 24 hours and today:
"The Qatari Emir was in Tehran yesterday, long talks with Iranian leadership.
"Also yesterday, basically all top Syrian Gov leaders (except President Assad apparently),
went to Iran as well, a very rare and could say rather risky move of a large group from the
Syrian leadership."
Do you have anything to add or further speculation about those events? And thanks for all
your efforts!!
Almasdarnews had a piece on the Syrian delegation vist.
""Today, a high-level government delegation headed by Prime Minister Imad Khamis, began a
trip to the Iranian capital, Tehran, during which they will discuss with senior officials
there the current bilateral relations between the two countries and work to strengthen them
at all levels, as well as accelerating developments in the regional and international
arenas," Al-Watan reported, quoting a diplomatic source.
The Al-Watan source said that consultation and coordination between the two countries at
this stage is necessary because after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the two allies
need to strengthen their alliance.
I think this is the first time the American military has tasted a pushback like this. A
clear feeling of defeat and demoralization among those interviewed. It is good for them to be
at the receiving end and feel helpless and to know what they have been wreaking on the region
for the past 16 years. Maybe they will start questioning their role in these atrocities and
pass on the word to new recruits: " Don't join in".
Meanwhile, the US Pivot to Asia grand plan seems to be in a state of hiatus. Skirmishes and a
potential uprising in the Provinces have disrupted the once all important thrust to confront
China and curb it's expansion on all fronts.
OBOR strategy continues undeterred, drawing more and more interest and solidifying
influence as the months pass. China quietly gives support to the Empire's targets on 2
continents and expands largely unopposed in a 3rd. The Empire's debts to finance it's
interests and militarism grows at a never b4 seen rate. It's own military industrial complex
robbing it's treasury almost at will, while it's foes grow in size and number.
Looking at it all in Grand Chess Board sort of way, it brings to mind Muhammed Ali's 'Rope
a dope' strategy. Let the big dope punch himself out before taking him down was the essence
of it.
Another of his most memorable quotes, "No Vietcong ever called me n****r".
No Chinese ever called people in the Provinces hadji either. But hey why go to all that
bother of wining hearts and minds and investing in local economies when bribery, corruption
and killing dissenters has worked so well in achieving your goals?
'We have the right to stay as a force of good.' Buffalo Wings Mike Pompeo
In my very most humble opinion, I think this whole 'episode' (starting with the USSA droning
of the very high profile military officers in Iraq) must be all just theater. A very large
crowd of the most knowledgeable experts in (real) economics are quite certain that the USSA
is on the brink of total collapse. So the population is in dire need of distractions. I also
am pretty sure that if the USSA were to attack Iran the result would be 'instant' collapse,
so that won't happen unless 'they' are slightly stupider that I suspect them to be. I think
the 'world' is simply death-watching the USSA. All they have to really do is to avoid being
crushed when the Big Dummy goes full Humpty Dumpty.
@ 63 dh.. thanks.. i guess that is similar to the link @ 45 guy thornton shared? bbc verses
cnn... they are all tied at the hip..
quote from one of the men at the site - ""I don't wish anyone to have that level of fear,"
he said. "No one in the world should ever have to feel something like that." well holy
fuck... welcome to the reality you have been putting on all of the people in middle east in
what seems like forever!! maybe you want to think that thru??
@64 peter au... you're right... this war porn for the kiddies back home is all used for
the same purpose.. keeping all the folks back home as braindead as possible.. and yes - when
the shit hits the fan, it will be without warning.. great place to be in.. thanks trump, usa,
neo con warmongering group.. great place to be here in 2020..
Tehran Plans to Take Trump to International Court for Soleimani's Assassination –
Iran's Top Judge
Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp's Quds Force, died in
Baghdad on January 3 when the vehicle he was traveling in was struck by a missile launched by
a US drone. Soleimani's death brought relations between Iran and the US to a new low.
The Iranian government will seek to prosecute US President Donald Trump for the
assassination of Maj. Gen. Soleimani, Iranian Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi has said
etc
@72 To be fair james the average US servicemen/women are probably pretty decent guys. They
genuinely don't know why anyone would try to kill them. It never occurs to them that they are
being manipulated.
Assad Awarded Qassem Soleimani, the Highest Medal in Syria (Photo + Video)
5 hours ago News 809 visits
Assad awarded Qassem Soleimani, the highest honor in Syria (photo + video)
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad granted the highest honor in the Republic to the
commander of the "Quds Force" Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in an air strike carried
out by the American forces, on January 3, 2020, in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
On Monday, Syrian Prime Minister, Imad Khamis, said that President al-Assad granted the
commander of the "Quds Force" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, the
highest honor in Syria.
"I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region,
those Canadians would be right now home with their families," Trudeau said in the
interview.
Trudeau said Canada did not receive a heads up before the United States killed
Soleimani, and that he "obviously" would have preferred one.
"The U.S. makes its determinations. We attempt to work as an international community on
big issues. But sometimes countries take actions without informing their allies," he
said
@76 dh.. i agree with you and i think the same applies to the average westerner, whether
american, canuck or etc. etc.. people are manipulated without much awareness of it.. however,
thinking something thru would be a good exercise for many, especially those cheering for the
west in it's war on iran.. that is the part i have a hard time comprehending, absent the
constant pr sell... thus the pr becomes a pivotal piece in the war movement.. they have to
sell it to the public.. from reading the cbc comments on the maple leaf foods ceo, it is not
apparent to me that the pr act is working fully here.. in fact, some people seem to be waking
up to where this is all headed and don't like what it looks like..
@ 78 likklemore.. thanks for that.. the maple leaf ceo is getting a lot of airplay, but that
bit from trudeau is a departure from his usual acceptance of the official agenda here.
thanks..
"A very large crowd of the most knowledgeable experts in (real) economics are quite
certain that the USSA is on the brink of total collapse. So the population is in dire need of
distractions. ..."
This crowd of 'economists' and their like have been sprouting this scenario for decades.
Why believe any of these characters? The whole basic premise of std economics is now dated
and largely BS. Obviously, they have not updated on "modern monetary theory"?
There is no market economy in 'equilibrium' run on rational basis. That ideology's shell
cracked with Nixon and completely broke with blow-job Willy Clinton when he had time not
playing with the kids on Epstein's Express (and Island).
It is a political economy now. Hegemony first, second and third. Vassal states
(plantations) and Colony-economic all the way with LBJ (& the Fed) etc. The only place
'normal' economics applies is at the margins for the working class -- like your credit card
and the local hardware store.
However, your general sentiment is on the mark if you change the key phrase from "brink of
total collapse" to " brink of major reset."
He is probably in the hope that someone would retaliate by killing him so as to he becomes
an American hero....but to no avail...in his insignificance...
The current state of affairs in the US and for extension in the resto fo the world is a
byprosuct of at least three men in the WH who feel so littel that they think they need to
produce so much noise to be noticed...
Do you have anything to add or further speculation about those events? And thanks for all
your efforts!!
Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 13 2020 22:13 utc | 66
RT is now reporting on the reason for the assassination. Iran and KSA were about to settle
differences. the empire was not too happy about that. these meeting may well be related to
regional settlements among the regional countries.
JFK did not order the Diem assassinaton. The "cables" that purport to show that were long
ago revealed to have been forged by the infamous EH Hunt. Kennedy's Ambassador Lodge (a
Republican) conspired with CIA station chief Lucien Conein and a small group of administation
officials in Washington to remove Diem when JFK was away on a weekend. I believe Lodge was on
his way back to US where JFK was going to fire him to his face over this when he was himself
assassinated.
Apparently one of the issues for Iraq is that its oil revenue gets directed to an account at
the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and access to that account would be the first order of
any prospective retaliatory sanctions by the U.S., and it was likely that account that Trump
referred to when warning of crippling sanctions if Iraq should attempt to remove US / NATO
forces.
@85, remarkable video. Damage is more extensive than I expected. Grateful none of our troops
was killed or physically injured (if that report is correct). However, those soldiers
certainly experienced trauma and will likely endure long-lasting mental and emotional
effects.
It all makes me angry that our President so cavalierly put our young men and women in
harms way. They should be home with family.
Quite the turn. On Saturday Trudeau wanted "clarity" asked Iran " if it [the downing of
the plane] was a mistake?"
I suspect Trudeau received a lot of emails from Quebec..Trudeau's party lost out to BQ;
understand a majority of Quebecois are not enamoured or impressed by the brain dead D.C.
leadership.
I hope that Iran can get the protests under control peacefully. ISTM that the Iranian
protesters and the Venezuelan protesters both appear to be upper class. I don't see peasants
protesting; I see a privileged class that probably stand to gain in the event there is a
regime change.
Soraya Sepahpour and Finian Cunningham has a very interesting take on this. Their hypothesis
fits remarkably well, in regard to motive, means, and opportunity.
Thanks but props go to Canthama, vid purloined from his twitter feed. Recommend bookmarking
his twitter, Link to Canthama's
twitter feed he is one of those extraordinary persons. No twitter account necessary.
@90 likklemore... i think its true what you say about quebec.. ask lozion, lol! either way i
commend him for putting some space in our position from the usas!
Jen
Not all are cartoon characters. Would be well worth Iran taking a look at who receives medals
and awards in the US. Captain of a certain ship comes to mind. But forget the heroes. Pompeo
would make a good 'eye for an eye'. Secretary of state and a nasty one at that. His job is
somewhat similar to Soleimani's.
If Trump is not reelected, I don't give much of his head. Thousands are ready to make him pay
for his crimes. He and his advisors will remain the targets of revenge for years to come
Writer Kim Sengupta from The Independent explains this incredible twist in the story:
Iraq's prime minister revealed that he was due to be meeting the Iranian commander to discuss
moves being made to ease the confrontation between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia –
the crux of so much of strife in the Middle East and beyond.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi was quite clear: "I was supposed to meet him in the morning the day he
was killed, he came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had
delivered from the Saudis to Iran."
The prime minister also disclosed that Donald Trump had called him to ask him to
mediate following the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad. According to Iraqi officials
contact was made with a number of militias as well as figures in Tehran. The siege of the
embassy was lifted and the US president personally thanked Abdul-Mahdi for his help.
There was nothing to suggest to the Iraqis that it was unsafe for Soleimani to travel
to Baghdad – quite the contrary. This suggests that Trump helped lure the Iranian
commander to a place where he could be killed.
I posted what I believe might be a translated version of the document you linked to above,
but I as well do not speak the language.
This may be a related Twitter stream on the Iranians ruling out human error and pointing
the finger at U.S. electronic warfare malfeasance being used to trick the Iranians or their
systems into making the shoot down.
On the matter of the Ukrainian plane accident in Iran, the role of human error has been
ruled out [as it has been discovered that] deception operations were carried out on the air
control & command system.
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Donald Trump occasionally utters unspeakable truths. In March 2018 he called Bush Jr.'s
decision to invade Iraq "the worst single mistake in US history." Earlier, Trump had said that
Bush should have been impeached for launching that disastrous war.
Yet on January 2 2020 Trump made a much bigger mistake: He launched all-out war with Iran --
a war that will be joined by millions of anti-US non-Iranians, including Iraqis -- by murdering
Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the legendary hero who defeated ISIS, alongside the popular Iraqi
commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Gen. Soleimani was by far the most popular figure in Iran,
where he polled over 80% popularity, and throughout much of the Middle East. He was also adored
by millions even outside that region, non-Muslims as well as Muslims. Many Christians
throughout the world loved Gen. Soleimani, whose campaign against ISIS saved the lives of
thousands of their co-religionists. Even Sunni Muslims (the people, not the billionaire playboy
sheikhs) generally loved and admired the Shia Muslim Gen. Soleimani, a saintly warrior-monk who
was uncommonly spiritual, morally impeccable, and the most accomplished military genius of this
young century.
The strategic stupidity of Trump's order to murder Soleimani cannot be exaggerated. This
shocking, dastardly murder, committed while Soleimani was on an American-encouraged peace
mission, has unleashed a "Pearl Harbor effect" that will galvanize not just the nation of Iran,
but other forces in the region and around the world. Just as the shock effect of Pearl Harbor
helped the American war party overcome domestic political divisions and unite the nation in its
resolve for vengeance, so has the Soleimani murder galvanized regional groups, led by Islamic
Iran and Iraq, in their dedication to obliterate every last trace of any US-Israeli presence in
the region, no matter how long it takes, by any means necessary.
Most Americans still don't understand the towering stature of Soleimani. Perhaps some
comparisons will be helpful.
To understand the effect on Iran and the region, imagine that Stalin had succeeded in
murdering George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur, all on the same day, in
1946. These US generals, like Soleimani, were very popular, in part because they had just won a
huge war against an enemy viewed as an embodiment of pure evil. How would Americans have
reacted to such a crime? They would have united to destroy Stalin and the Soviet Union, no
matter how long it took, no matter what sacrifices were necessary. That is how hundreds of
millions of people will react to the martyrdom of Gen. Soleimani.
But even that comparison does not do justice to the situation. Patton, Eisenhower, and
MacArthur were secular figures in an increasingly secular culture. Had Stalin murdered them,
their deaths would not have risen to the level of religious martyrdom. Americans' motivation to
avenge their deaths would not have been as deep and long-lasting, nor as charged with the avid
desire to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the goal, in comparison with the millions of
future avengers of the death of Gen. Soleimani.
The tragedy, from the US point of view, is that this didn't need to happen. Iran, a
medium-sized player in a tough neighborhood, is a natural ally of the United States. As
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in The Grand Chessboard , "Iran provides stabilizing support
for the new political diversity of Central Asia. Its independence acts as a barrier to any
long-term Russian threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf region." (p. 47) Obama,
guided by Brzezinski and his acolytes, set the US on a sensible path toward cordial relations
with Iran -- only to see his foreign policy triumph sabotaged by the pro-Zionist Deep State and
finally shredded by Netanyahu's puppets Trump and Pompeo. Iran, dominated by principled
anti-Zionists, is a thorn in the side of Israel, so the unstable Iranophobe Trump was inserted
into the presidency to undo Obama's handiwork and reassert total Israeli control over US policy
-- the same total control initially cemented by the 9/11 false flag.
If the murder of Soleimani bears comparison to Pearl Harbor, it also echoes the October 1914
killing of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the first domino in a series that ended in a world
war. The dominos are lined up the same way today, though it may take longer for all of them to
fall. Due to the enormity of its psychological effect, the Soleimani assassination irreversibly
sets the US at permanent war with Iran and the rest of the Axis of Resistance. That war can end
in only two ways: The destruction of Islamic Iran, or the complete elimination of the US
military presence in the region. The first alternative is unacceptable not only to Iran, its
regional friends, and the conscience of the world, but also to Russia and China, who would be
next in line for destruction if Iran is annihilated. The second alternative is probably
unacceptable to the permanent National Security State that governs the US no matter who is in
office, and to Israel and its global network (and its agents in the "US" National Security
State). So the irresistible force will soon be meeting the immovable object. It is difficult to
see how this could possibly end well.
Ironically, given Trump's well-justified scorn for Bush's invasion of Iraq, the first front
of the world war unleashed by Soleimani's killing will be in that long-suffering nation, whose
government has just ordered US troops to depart posthaste. If Trump wants to keep US forces in
Iraq he is going to have to re-invade that nation, attack and destroy its government and
military, fight a long-term counterinsurgency (this time against the vast majority of the
population) and take far more casualties than Bush Jr. did.
Trump's decision to martyr the great Iranian general and the celebrated Iraqi commander was
perfectly timed to unite Iraq against the American occupation. Prior to the murder, Iraq was in
the midst of color-revolution chaos, as demonstrators protested against not just the US and
Israel, the real culprits in the destruction of their country, but also Iran, Iraqi
politicians, and other targets. Those demonstrations, and the murders that marred them, were
orchestrated by Gladio style covert US forces. As Iraqi Prime Minster Abdul Mahdi
explained :
" I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the
construction instead (of an American company). Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to
reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against
me that would end my premiership.
"Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that
if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings
target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me. I refused again and
handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the
Chinese.
"After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting
both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened, he would do), I
received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we
kept on talking about this 'third party'.
"I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came
to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians
from the Saudis (as part of a peace initiative)."
So Trump lured Soleimani to Tehran with a peace initiative, then ambushed him. That's why
Soleimani was traveling openly on a commercial flight to Baghdad International Airport. He
thought he was under US protection.
Abdul Mahdi's explanation rings true. It reflects the views of most Iraqis, who will be
galvanized by Trump's atrocious actions to resume their insurgency against US occupation.
As Iraqis continue to attack the hated US presence in their country, Trump will undoubtedly
blame Iran, whatever its actual role. So this time the Iranians will have no motivation to
avoid helping the Iraqi liberation struggle -- they would be blamed even if they didn't. Though
Soleimani was a relatively America-friendly stabilizing force after the US invasions of Iraq
and Afghanistan -- the claim that he was behind IEDs that killed US troops is a ridiculous lie
-- in the wake of his death Iran will respond positively to Iraqi requests for help in its
national liberation struggle against the hated US occupier.
A rekindled anti-US insurgency in Iraq, and various forms of ambiguous/deniable retaliation
for the murder of Gen. Soleimani throughout the region and the world, will force Trump up the
escalation ladder. Iran, and the larger eject-the-US-from-the-Mideast project, will not back
down, though they may occasionally stage tactical retreats for appearance's sake. The only way
Trump could "win" would be by completely destroying Iran. Even if Russia and China allowed
that, an unlikely prospect, Trump or any US president who "won" that kind of war would be
remembered as the worst war criminal in world history, and the US would lose all its soft power
and with it its empire.
Russia now faces the same kind of decision it had to make when the Zionist-dominated US
tried to destroy Syria: stand by and let Tehran be annihilated, with Moscow next in line; or
use its considerable military power to save its ally. Putin will have no choice but to support
Iran, just as he supported Syria. China, too, will need to ensure that the USA loses its
Zionist-driven war on Iran. Otherwise Beijing would risk facing the same fate as Tehran.
Even if the only help it gets from Russia and China is covert, Iran is in a strong position
to wage asymmetric war against the US presence in the Middle East. Almost two decades ago, the
$250 million war game Millennium Challenge 2002 blew up in the neocons' faces, as Lt. Gen. Paul
Van Riper commanded Iranian forces against the US and steered them to victory. Though some
technological developments since then may favor the US, as Dr. Alan Sabrosky recently
pointed out on my radio show , others favor Iran, which now has missiles of sufficient
quality and quantity to rain down hell on US bases, annihilate much of if not all of Israel,
and send every US ship anywhere near the Persian Gulf to the bottom of the ocean. (Anti-ship
missiles have far outstripped naval defenses, and Iran has concealed immense reserves of them
deep in the Zagros Mountains overlooking the Persian Gulf.)
So Trump or whoever follows him will eventually face a choice: Accept defeat and withdraw
all American bases and forces in the region; or continue up an escalation ladder that
inexorably leads to World War III. The higher up the ladder he goes, the harder it will be to
jump off.
The apocalyptic scenario may not be accidental. Mike Pompeo, who is widely believed to have
duped Trump into ordering the killing of Gen. Soleimani, may have done so not only on behalf of
the extremist Netanyahu faction in Israel, but also in service to an apocalyptic
Christian Zionist program that yearns for planetary nuclear destruction . Pompeo is
ardently awaiting "the rapture," the culmination of Christian Zionist history, when a global
nuclear war begins at Megiddo Hill in Occupied Palestine and consumes the planet, sending
everyone to hell except the Christian Zionists themselves, who are "beamed up" Star Trek
fashion by none other than Jesus himself.
Whether it goes down in radioactive flames or in a kinder and gentler way, the US empire, as
unstable as its leaders, is nearing the final stages of collapse. "Very stable genius" Trump
and Armageddonite Pompeo may have hastened the inevitable when they ordered the fateful killing
of Gen. Soleimani.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777
Trump
First OK'd Killing Soleimani 7 Months Ago "If Americans Killed"
by
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/13/2020 - 13:05
0
SHARES
There's been a number of theories to emerge surrounding President Trump's incredibly risky
decision to assassinate IRGC Guds Force chief Qasem Soleimani, including that it was
all the
brainchild
of hawkish Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
But an emerging reporting consensus does indicate that the public justification for the strike
--
that
Soleimani posed an "imminent" threat as he was orchestrating an attack against American troops and
sites in the region
--
was manufactured based on flimsy intelligence. The
evolving and contradictory statements
within the administration itself demonstrates at least
this much.
And now according to the latest NBC bombshell it's becoming clear that the top IRGC general's
killing was
actually months in the works
:
President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen.
Qassem
Soleimani seven months ago
if Iran's increased aggression resulted in the death of an
American, according to five current and former senior administration officials.
Apparently the "option" to take him out was already on the "menu" of Pentagon contingencies long
before Soleimani's fateful Jan.3 early morning passage through Baghdad International Airport.
Reports NBC based on
multiple officials
,
"The presidential directive in June came with the condition that
Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said."
The Dec.27 Kataeb Hezbollah rocket attack on a US base in Kirkuk then became a core element of
the official rationale, given it killed an American contractor
later identified
as 33-year old Sacramento resident
Nawres Waleed Hamid, who
had been assisting the Army as a linguist.
The new report confirms further that it was both National Security Advisor at the time
John Bolton as well as Mike Pompeo that had Trump's ear on the subject
.
"There have been a number of options presented to the president over the course of time" related
to bold steps to curtail Iranian aggression, a senior administration official told NBC, which
reports further:
The president's message was "that's only on the table if they hit Americans,"
according to a person briefed on the discussion.
The origins of the plan to assassinate the top IRGC elite force general and popular "national
hero" inside Iran actually evolved initially out of 2017 discussions involving Trump's national
security adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The idea of killing Soleimani came up in discussions in 2017 that Trump's national security
adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, was having with other administration
officials about the president's broader national security strategy, officials said. But it was
just one of a host of possible elements of Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran and
"was not something that was thought of as a first move,"
said a former senior
administration official involved in the discussions.
The idea did become more serious after McMaster was replaced in April 2018 by Bolton
,
a longtime Iran hawk and advocate for regime change in Tehran. Bolton left the White House in
September -- he said he resigned, while
Trump
said he fired him
-- following policy disagreements on Iran and other issues.
So there it is: Bolton's ultra-hawkish influence is still in effect at the White House.
Congratulations to all involved in eliminating
Qassem Soleimani. Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force
activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.
And the torch is being carried further by Mike Pompeo.
But again while none of this should come as a surprise, it's yet further proof on top of a
growing body of evidence that Washington is yet again telling bald-faced lies to the public about a
major event that could lead America straight back into another disastrous Middle East quagmire.
Tags
Politics
Notice on Racial Discrimination
.
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January 4, 2020 2,300 Words
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In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of
Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning
"Imminent attacks" on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically
referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence .
Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu's government and then
Blair's, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of "pre-emptive self-defence"
against "imminent" attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts
and judges, would accept. Including me.
What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the
Bethlehem Doctrine – that here "Imminent" – the word used so carefully by Pompeo
– does not need to have its normal meanings of either "soon" or "about to happen". An
attack may be deemed "imminent", according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no
details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike
– and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes – because of
"intelligence" you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is
nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged
in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.
I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for
drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade.
Here it is in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government service
(the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli Governments is
classified information ).
So when Pompeo says attacks by Soleimani were "imminent" he is not using the word in the
normal sense in the English language. It is no use asking him what, where or when these
"imminent" attacks were planned to be. He is referencing the Bethlehem Doctrine under which you
can kill people on the basis of a feeling that they may have been about to do something.
The idea that killing an individual who you have received information is going to attack
you, but you do not know when, where or how, can be justified as self-defence, has not gained
widespread acceptance – or indeed virtually any acceptance – in legal circles
outside the ranks of the most extreme devoted neo-conservatives and zionists. Daniel Bethlehem
became the FCO's Chief Legal Adviser, brought in by Jack Straw, precisely because every single
one of the FCO's existing Legal Advisers believed the Iraq War to be illegal. In 2004, when the
House of Commons was considering the legality of the war on Iraq, Bethlehem produced a
remarkable paper for consideration which said that it was legal
because the courts and existing law were wrong , a defence which has seldom succeeded in
court.
(b) following this line, I am also of the view that the wider principles of the law on
self-defence also require closer scrutiny. I am not persuaded that the approach of doctrinal
purity reflected in the Judgments of the International Court of Justice in this area provide
a helpful edifice on which a coherent legal regime, able to address the exigencies of
contemporary international life and discourage resort to unilateral action, is easily
crafted;
The key was that the concept of "imminent" was to change:
The concept of what constitutes an "imminent" armed attack will develop to meet new
circumstances and new threats
In the absence of a respectable international lawyer willing to argue this kind of tosh,
Blair brought in Bethlehem as Chief Legal Adviser, the man who advised Netanyahu on Israel's
security wall and who was willing to say that attacking Iraq was legal on the basis of Saddam's
"imminent threat" to the UK, which proved to be non-existent. It says everything about
Bethlehem's eagerness for killing that the formulation of the Bethlehem Doctrine on
extrajudicial execution by drone came after the Iraq War, and he still gave not one second's
thought to the fact that the intelligence on the "imminent threat" can be wrong. Assassinating
people on the basis of faulty intelligence is not addressed by Bethlehem in setting out his
doctrine. The bloodlust is strong in this one.
There are literally scores of academic articles, in every respected journal of international
law, taking down the Bethlehem Doctrine for its obvious absurdities and revolting special
pleading. My favourite is this one by
Bethlehem's predecessor as the FCO Chief Legal Adviser, Sir Michael Wood and his ex-Deputy
Elizabeth Wilmshurst.
I addressed the Bethlehem Doctrine as part of my contribution to
a book reflecting on Chomsky 's essay "On the Responsibility of Intellectuals"
In the UK recently, the Attorney General gave a
speech in defence of the UK's drone policy, the assassination of people – including
British nationals – abroad. This execution without a hearing is based on several
criteria, he reassured us. His speech was repeated slavishly in the British media. In fact,
the Guardian newspaper simply republished the government press release absolutely verbatim,
and stuck a reporter's byline at the top.
The media have no interest in a critical appraisal of the process by which the British
government regularly executes without trial. Yet in fact it is extremely interesting. The
genesis of the policy lay in the appointment of Daniel Bethlehem as the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office's Chief Legal Adviser. Jack Straw made the appointment, and for the first
time ever it was external, and not from the Foreign Office's own large team of world-renowned
international lawyers. The reason for that is not in dispute. Every single one of the FCO's
legal advisers had advised that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, and Straw wished to find a
new head of the department more in tune with the neo-conservative world view. Straw went to
extremes. He appointed Daniel Bethlehem, the legal 'expert' who provided the legal advice to
Benjamin Netanyahu on the 'legality' of building the great wall hemming in the Palestinians
away from their land and water resources. Bethlehem was an enthusiastic proponent of the
invasion of Iraq. He was also the most enthusiastic proponent in the world of drone
strikes.
Bethlehem provided an opinion on the legality of drone strikes which is, to say the least,
controversial. To give one example, Bethlehem accepts that established principles of
international law dictate that lethal force may be used only to prevent an attack which is
'imminent'. Bethlehem argues that for an attack to be 'imminent' does not require it to be
'soon'. Indeed you can kill to avert an 'imminent attack' even if you have no information on
when and where it will be. You can instead rely on your target's 'pattern of behaviour'; that
is, if he has attacked before, it is reasonable to assume he will attack again and that such
an attack is 'imminent'.
There is a much deeper problem: that the evidence against the target is often extremely
dubious. Yet even allowing the evidence to be perfect, it is beyond me that the state can
kill in such circumstances without it being considered a death penalty imposed without trial
for past crimes, rather than to frustrate another 'imminent' one. You would think that
background would make an interesting story. Yet the entire 'serious' British media published
the government line, without a single journalist, not one, writing about the fact that
Bethlehem's proposed definition of 'imminent' has been widely rejected by the international
law community. The public knows none of this. They just 'know' that drone strikes are keeping
us safe from deadly attack by terrorists, because the government says so, and nobody has
attempted to give them other information
Remember, this is not just academic argument, the Bethlehem Doctrine is the formal policy
position on assassination of Israel, the US and UK governments. So that is lie one. When Pompeo
says Soleimani was planning "imminent" attacks, he is using the Bethlehem definition under
which "imminent" is a "concept" which means neither "soon" nor "definitely going to happen". To
twist a word that far from its normal English usage is to lie. To do so to justify killing
people is obscene. That is why, if I finish up in the bottom-most pit of hell, the worst thing
about the experience will be the company of Daniel Bethlehem.
Let us now move on to the next lie, which is being widely repeated, this time originated by
Donald Trump, that Soleimani was responsible for the "deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of
Americans". This lie has been parroted by everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike.
Really? Who were they? When and where? While the Bethlehem Doctrine allows you to kill
somebody because they might be going to attack someone, sometime, but you don't know who or
when, there is a reasonable expectation that if you are claiming people have already been
killed you should be able to say who and when.
The truth of the matter is that if you take every American killed including and since 9/11,
in the resultant Middle East related wars, conflicts and terrorist acts, well over 90% of them
have been killed by Sunni Muslims financed and supported out of Saudi Arabia and its gulf
satellites, and less than 10% of those Americans have been killed by Shia Muslims tied to
Iran.
This is a horribly inconvenient fact for US administrations which, regardless of party, are
beholden to Saudi Arabia and its money. It is, the USA affirms, the Sunnis who are the allies
and the Shias who are the enemy. Yet every journalist or aid worker hostage who has been
horribly beheaded or otherwise executed has been murdered by a Sunni, every jihadist terrorist
attack in the USA itself, including 9/11, has been exclusively Sunni, the Benghazi attack was
by Sunnis, Isil are Sunni, Al Nusra are Sunni, the Taliban are Sunni and the vast majority of
US troops killed in the region are killed by Sunnis.
Precisely which are these hundreds of deaths for which the Shia forces of Soleimani were
responsible? Is there a list? It is of course a simple lie. Its tenuous connection with truth
relates to the Pentagon's estimate –
suspiciously upped repeatedly since Iran became the designated enemy – that back
during the invasion of Iraq itself , 83% of US troop deaths were at the hands of Sunni
resistance and 17% of of US troop deaths were at the hands of Shia resistance, that is 603
troops. All the latter are now lain at the door of Soleimani, remarkably.
Those were US troops killed in combat during an invasion. The Iraqi Shia militias –
whether Iran backed or not – had every legal right to fight the US invasion. The idea
that the killing of invading American troops was somehow illegal or illegitimate is risible.
Plainly the US propaganda that Soleimani was "responsible for hundreds of American deaths" is
intended, as part of the justification for his murder, to give the impression he was involved
in terrorism, not legitimate combat against invading forces. The idea that the US has the right
to execute those who fight it when it invades is an absolutely stinking abnegation of the laws
of war.
As I understand it, there is very little evidence that Soleimani had active operational
command of Shia militias during the invasion, and in any case to credit him personally with
every American soldier killed is plainly a nonsense. But even if Soleimani had personally
supervised every combat success, these were legitimate acts of war. You cannot simply
assassinate opposing generals who fought you, years after you invade.
The final, and perhaps silliest lie, is Vice President Mike Pence's attempt to link
Soleimani to 9/11. There is absolutely no link between Soleimani and 9/11, and the most
strenuous efforts by the Bush regime to find evidence that would link either Iran or Iraq to
9/11 (and thus take the heat off their pals the al-Saud who were actually responsible) failed.
Yes, it is true that some of the hijackers at one point transited Iran to Afghanistan. But
there is zero evidence, as the 9/11 report specifically stated, that the Iranians knew what
they were planning, or that Soleimani personally was involved. This is total bullshit. 9/11 was
Sunni and Saudi led, nothing to do with Iran.
Soleimani actually was involved in intelligence and logistical cooperation with the United
States in Afghanistan post 9/11 (the Taliban were his enemies too, the shia Tajiks being a key
part of the US aligned Northern Alliance). He was in Iraq to fight ISIL.
The final aggravating factor in the Soleimani murder is that he was an accredited combatant
general of a foreign state which the world – including the USA – recognises. The
Bethlehem Doctrine specifically applies to "non-state actors". Unlike all of the foregoing,
this next is speculation, but I suspect that the legal argument in the Pentagon ran that
Soleimani is a non-state actor when in Iraq, where the Shia militias have a semi-official
status.
But that does not wash. Soleimani is a high official in Iran who was present in Iraq as a
guest of the Iraqi government, to which the US government is allied. This greatly exacerbates
the illegality of his assassination still further.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British
Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of
Dundee from 2007 to 2010. (Republished from
CraigMurray.org by permission of author or representative)
We know Israel does this all the time but to non state actors. I dont think in recent history
anyone has openly target a state actor in such a criminal fashion because it is an act of war
and not only that but considered barbaric. To ask for mediation and then to assassinate the
messengers is an act that not even the mongols took part in and they considered it enough to
wipe out any such parties..
Good expose about the creative criminal minds twisting language and decency to justify murder
and war crimes...
A new legal doctrine to justify crimes in an industrial scale for the good of
UK-USrael.
However they might be right in claiming that Gen. Soleimani had killed or was about to
kill many "Americans" – not strictly US citizens – but the honorary American
terrorist foot soldiers fighting American wars in the Middle East.
Do terrorists act legally? The U.S. is a terrorist organisation. It is misleading to call the
US a nation or a country. Soleimani is widely-acknowledged as the architect of the successful
campaign to defeat the U.S.-Israel sponsored terrorists (ISIS and al-Qaeda) in Syria and
Iraq. The sad irony is that Iran was a major U.S. "ally" during the U.S. aggression against
Afghanistan and more importantly against Iraq. Without Iran (the Eastern front) the U.S.
would not have invaded Iraq. Iran played a major military role helping the U.S. against the
Iraqi Resistance.
How hideous that this is named Bethlehem, "The place of healing; place of birth of the Prince
of Peace.'
More appropriate to call it the ESTHER doctrine, or PURIM doctrine.
The Hebrew text provides no solid evidence that Haman sought to kill Jews: the notion is
based on Mordecha the Spy and self-serving Snitch.
Netanyahu has made public statements linking today's Iran to the Purim doctrine that Jews
celebrate to this day.
In other words, Jews demonstrate a clear patter of "imminent threat" to kill those who
resist Zionist – Anglo dominence.
Under this Purim (Bethlehem) doctrine, therefore, it is not only legitimate, it is
necessary -- a Constitutional obligation -- that the American government Kill Jews who pose
an Imminent Threat to the American -- and Iranian -- people.
As a retired international lawyer I am of the opinion Mr. Murray sets out fact and law
impressively . He says everything that is needed to be said
Good for the FCO legal team in resisting the invasion of Iraq. I do know at least one
British regiment sought independent legal advice before accepting orders.
Great article Mr. Murray, very needed in these times of almost universal deceit.
Mr. Bethlehem displays the famous Jewish quality of chutzpah – the quality of a bit
who has killed his parents in cold blood but begs the judge for mercy because he is an orphan
– when he decided to simply change the law.
I wish I had some of that Jewish privilege, that way I too could go around robbing and
killing and then simply change the law to get away Scot free.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani attended Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland,
graduating in 1995 with an M.Phil. degree in Law. Rouhani is close to Jack Straw and Straw is
very close to Lord Levy. And Lord Levy is very close to Lord Rothschild. Jack Straw says "in
Hassan Rouhani's Iran, you can feel the winds change." "Winds changing" is an understatement.
They are gust winds blowing at high velocity directly from the City of London and from
Israel's direction. All very high level British intrigue going on here in Iran. It was Jack
Straw who appointed Daniel Bethlehem who developed the "Bethlehem Doctrine" used in
justifying the assassination of General Soleinami under false pretenses Pompeo probably knew
about when he informed President Trump. From 1979 to 2013, Rouhani held a number of important
positions in the Velayat-e Faqih's key institutions, as "the man in power but in the
shadows." Hassan Rouhani's job it appears considering his education and position is through
Shia law is to continue to perpetuate the spread of the "revolution." The "revolution" is
designed to keep confrontation in place. Why not gradually move from "revolutionary Shia" to
a more conciliatory peaceful religious position? Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif who is now an
Iranian career diplomat, spent 20 years from the age of 17 studying in the United States.
Kind of makes us look harder at John Kerry and whether or not his connections to Mohammad
Javad Zarif have anything to do with all that is unfolding here?
They all have fake names. Netanyahu is really Mileikowski. Ben Gurion was really Gruen. But
for a British Jew to grab the name Bethlehem is a real attack on Christianity.
The sad irony is that Iran was a major U.S. "ally" during the U.S. aggression against
Afghanistan and more importantly against Iraq. Without Iran (the Eastern front) the U.S.
would not have invaded Iraq. Iran played a major military role helping the U.S. against the
Iraqi Resistance.
Well, what can one say? First, there is the official narrative; then there are the
alternative narratives in their many fashions and narrations; and then there is the oddball
narrative that defies logic and reason. Iran allied with Usrael?
It may look (and is) an exorbitant stretch of imagination to come to such a view. But it
is not unique; it is not much different from the often-heard impossible claim here at UR that
Nazi Germany was allied with the Soviet Union in 1939!
Can I be the only person to think that from the moment Hitler transported his
first shipment of Haavara Agreement Jews to Palestine there has not been a moments piece in
that corner of the globe.
Can you be the only person . . .?
Possibly.
"There has not been a moment's piece [sic] in that corner of the globe" since Herzl began
attempting to co-opt the Ottoman Empire in ~1895.
Balfour ramped it up a notch in 1917; at the urging of Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson
endorsed Balfour's plan.
@Wally Note here that Wally fails to condemn Trump's illegal act of war on a national of
a nation which Congress has not declared war upon.
Yes Wally, Obama was a war criminal who deserves to hang for his crimes, but if you are to
retain any credibility with which to continue your mission to expose the Holohoax, you should
also acknowledge that Trump is a war criminal too who, based on precedent, also deserves to
hang. Your loyalty is clearly misplaced.
@Dube I believe that what he actually said was that, "Israel would disappear from the
pages of history". The usual liars reported this as "Iran would wipe Israel off the map".
If the West is to fight back and survive then the first battle should surely be against
the lying media organs that bear so much responsibility for the shit-storm that is on the
way.
@Parfois1 Hillary Mann Leverett negotiated with Iranian counterparts at United Nations
and gained Iranian assistance in finding partners to defeat Taliban
March 31, 2015
"Unlike Mr. Dubowitz and many in Washington, I have actually negotiated with current
Iranian officials, and it was an effective negotiation. [it resulted] in a state enormously
not only overthrow the Taliban, but set up a proper government in Afghanistan. There is
just no evidence whatsoever that continuing to bludgeon them and pressure them is going to
do anything to give us concessions."
Leverett participated in a 'round-table discussion' with Mark Dubowitz of Foundation for
Defense of Democracy (FDD).
Dubowitz's spiel was boilerplate: "Saddam killed 200,000 of his own people, he is pursuing
nuclear weapons," blah blah blah.
On Jan 12 2020 on C Span, https://www.c-span.org/event/?467915/washington-journal-01122020
first Ilan Goldenberg of Center for New American Security (George Soros, major funder), then
Michael Rubin of American Enterprise Institute * recited the same talking points: only the
names were changed, a tacit acknowledgement that the original, Iraqi-based set of names were
dead.
*AEI Board of Trustees:
AEI is governed by a Board of Trustees, composed of leading business and financial
executives.
Daniel A. D'Aniello, Chairman
Cofounder and Chairman The Carlyle Group
Clifford S. Asness
Managing and Founding Principal
AQR Capital Management, LLC
The Honorable Richard B. Cheney
Peter H. Coors
Vice Chairman of the Board
Molson Coors Brewing Company
Harlan Crow
Chairman
Crow Holdings
Ravenel B. Curry III
Chief Investment Officer
Eagle Capital Management, LLC
-- also interesting comments from the audience @ 11 min
Leverett has also repeated, on numerous occasions, that sanctions –" a weapon of
war" -- are counterproductive and, in the case of Iraq, "killed a million Iraqis, half of
them children."
@Dube Indeed, the Jews cunningly arranged for the Arab states to look like they might
attack them in 1967. Then they swooped like a prescient eagle and blew up all the Egyptian
planes on the ground before this attack, which might not have happened otherwise, actually
happened. Its definitely a winning philosophy, but only if you are sure you are going to win
in the first place.
Leave it to a Jew and his Bethlehem Doctrine, to crush the four centuries old Treaty of
Westphalia where the principle of national sovereignty was instituted. Killing the leaders of
a sovereign nation breaks the treaty.
Assassination is a Jew tool. Killing is the Jew way.
@RouterAl"Jew Jack Straw was everything you would expect from Jew"
I seem to recall a piece in an Israeli paper saying he wasn't Jewish. It was quite witty,
saying IIRC that although he looked like a shul trustee and his career trajectory (student
politics then law then media) was classically Jewish, he has (as wiki says) only one Jewish
great-grandparent.
From wiki
"In 2013, at a round table event of the Global Diplomatic Forum at the UK's House of
Commons, Straw (who has Jewish heritage) was quoted by Israeli politician Einat Wilf, one of
the panelists at the forum, as having said that among the main obstacles to peace was the
amount of money available to Jewish organizations in the US, which controlled US foreign
policy, and also Germany's "obsession" with defending Israel."
@dimples"Its definitely a winning philosophy, but only if you are sure you are going
to win in the first place."
Yes, it didn't do the losers much good at Nuremberg, although Germany had explained the
attack of June 22 as a pre-emptive strike – " Therefore Russia has broken its
treaties and is about to attack Germany. I have ordered the German armed forces to oppose
this threat with all their strength ".
"The Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of "pre-emptive self-defence"
against "imminent" attack. That is something most people, and most international law
experts and judges, would accept."
Additionally, 400,000 of the Waffen SS were non-Germanic, yet wiki prefaces its
description of Barbarossa as "The operation put into action Nazi Germany's ideological
goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans." .
The more things change, the more the lies stay the same. Like Hitler, Soleimani was a
"bad, hateful terrorist" who they smear by claiming "he deserved to die". In the end this is
really about the mother of all modern jewish lies, the "holocaust".
#1 – "When Pompeo says Soleimani was planning "imminent" attacks, he is using the
Bethlehem definition under which "imminent" is a "concept" which means neither "soon" nor
"definitely going to happen". To twist a word that far from its normal English usage is to
lie. To do so to justify killing people is obscene. That is why, if I finish up in the
bottom-most pit of hell, the worst thing about the experience will be the company of Daniel
Bethlehem."
#2 – [1] Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which
the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should
not eat of every tree of paradise? [2] And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of
the trees that are in paradise we do eat: [3] But of the fruit of the tree which is in the
midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch
it, lest perhaps we die. [4] And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the
death. [5] For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall
be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.
What do we get when we add #1 and #2?
#3 – The CIA, the Mossad, and the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency are all
offshoots from, are all in origin product of, Brit WASP secret service.
When we add the answer to the above question to #3, what then is the sum?
@Biff Agree that 9/11 had " nothing to do with Iran" but to say that "9/11 was Sunni and
Saudi led " is disinformation . Is Craig Murray , a former British Diplomat , a 9/11
gatekeeper? Murray has written
"I do not believe that the US government or any of its agencies were responsible for 9/11."
Like Noam Chomsky , Murray fails the 9/11 "litmus test ".
Trump is continuing the state terrorism by drone as carried out by Bush and Obama : "Why is
Obama still killing children [by drome] ?" cato.org :
.".. thousands of civilians , including hundreds of children , have fallen victim to his
preemptive drone strikes over the last seven years 'America's actions are legal ', Obama said
,'we were attacked on 9/11′"
So Obama had the chutzpah to blame his murder of civilians on 9/11. The Democratic and
Republican parties are truly wings which belong to the same bird of prey .
Historically, nations act in what serves their interests. Western involvement in the Middle
East has been primarily about energy security and commerce. They seek to justify it through
different means, including legalistic sophistry. The real danger of the US-Iran confrontation
is consequences that lead to no alternative but escalation. One scenario, a Tehran 79 type
hostage stand-off in Baghdad where President Trump (in an election year) could find himself
with no choice but up the ante. The spector of humiliation and defeat convincing him the only
hope is to persevere. But that could be an illusion, moving deeper into a sequence of events
leading unstoppably to the real danger in the Middle East – confrontation with Russia.
Many say it couldn't happen. History suggests otherwise. Living by the law might be the
future: learning from history the way to create that future. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Sunni this, Sunni that !@# You, Craig Murray, you whitrash piece of shit!!
If this scum was a career diplomat of that pissant island, which has never been up to any
good, then he must fundamentally be an evil scumbag, working for the pleasure of that old
thieving witch.
Just various masks of controlled opposition. Mofers all!!
Yet another mixed bag. Invoking an official government lie, thus poisoning the well.
" Yes, it is true that some of the hijackers at one point transited Iran to
Afghanistan. "
" The hijackers "?
I suppose this is an inserted reference to the alleged "hijackers" that were not even on the
airline flight manifests yet became central to the phony 9/11 story that no serious person
believes.
Israel and its colony the ZUS are the most dangerous countries in the world because of their
total disregard of international law as evidenced by their joint attack on the WTC on 911 and
their using this as the excuse to destroy the middle east for Israel, which has killed
millions and kept America at war for Israel for decades!
The ZUS and Israel are in the same league as Stalin and Hitler and are a blight on
humanity!
The ZUS and Israel are in the same league as Stalin and Hitler and are a blight on
humanity!
What is your criterion for comparison, Desert Fox?
I don't know much about Stalin, so can't deal with that.
Hitler was defending Germany: he told Herbert Hoover that his three " idees fixes "
were:
"to unify Germany from its fragmentation by the Treaty of Versailles;
to expand its physical resources by moving into Russia or the Balkan States . . .[to
prevent a recurrence of] the famine;
to destroy the Russian Communist government . . .[consequent to] the brutalities of the
Communist uprisings in German cities during the Armistice period." ( Freedom
Betrayed, by Herbert Hoover).
ZUS and Israel are aggressing, invading, occupying, displacing and ethnically cleansing
forces; they are not acting defensively, as NSDAP was, by any application of logic.
This is total bullshit. 9/11 was Sunni and Saudi led, nothing to do with Iran.
The Saudis may have enabled the creation of the legends of the hijackers, but had little
or nothing to do with the execution of the operation. 9/11 certainly was carried out
preponderantly by Israeli operatives for the economic benefit of Zionist Jews and their
criminal co-conspirators in the world of finance and the councils of government.
The sentence ought to be reordered thus:
'9/11 was Sunni and Saudi led. ' That is total bullshit. In any case, it had nothing to
do with Iran.
Sean promptly serves up the CIA line, more slogans for people who are not too bright. Today
it's a little pun to muddle up the law and give CIA a desperately-sought loophole for the
crime of aggression, for which there is no justification. Sean is thinking fast as he can to
try and distract you from the necessity and proportionality tests which accompany any use of
force and govern the status of the act as countermeasure, internationally wrongful act, or
crime. Sean's indoctrination has protected his stationary hamster-wheel mind from the black
letter law of Chapter VII, including Articles 47 and 51, which place self-defense forces at
the disposal of the UNSC under direction of the Military Staff Committee. Sean also seizes up
with Orwellian CIA CRIMESTOP when he hears anything about the case law governing use of
force, such as the minimal indicative examples below.
CIA has been running from the law for 85 years now, but despite their wholesale corruption
of the Secretariat, they're losing control of the UN charter bodies and treaty bodies. Some
SIS scapegoats are going to be faking palsy in the dock to get a break. Brennan first.
@SolontoCroesus Recommend you do the research, Hitler was put into power by the zionist
banking kabal, the same kabal that rules the ZUS, read the book Wall Street and the Rise of
Hitler, and they wanted Hitler and Stalin to destroy each other, that was the zionist plan
and they used the ZUS and Britain to do it, just as they have destroyed the mideast for
Israels greater Israel agenda.
The ZUS is just like Hitler invading and destroying the mideast for Israel using the
attack on WTC as an excuse, which was a joint attack on the WTC on 911 by traitors in the ZUS
and Israel, the whole deal is a zionist driven holocaust on the people of the middle
east.
By the way Israel is perpetrating a holocaust of the people of Palestine and this
holocaust is backed by the ZUS, which is Israels military arm ie a subsidiary of the IDF.
Recommend the archives section on henrymakow.com on Hitler and Stalin.
@Jake There were no hijackers , there were no planes , they were likely CGI's in videos
produced in a "Holywood production" prior to 9/11 , see septemberclues. info "The central
role of the news media on 9/11" .
@Wally I am sure, if asked, he would condemn Obama's war crimes as well (and Bush I, Bush
II, Clinton, etc. probably going back to Lincoln at least). But the subject was about
Soleimani's assassination, which, as much as I am sure you would like to do, cannot be pinned
on Obama.
@Igor Bundy Right. The Mongols rolled the murderers of their emissaries or ambassadors in
carpets and had them trampled to death by horses. This was followed by razing the city/state.
I'm told Nuttyyahoo of Israel provided the info and encouraged it.
1) Elizabeth Warren has lied about her ethnicity and has benefited from it thus lying can
be natural for her she would most likely give a lap dance to Bibi if demanded to get
elected,
2) Arabs are being absolved of 9/11 by their Ashkenazi cousins who mistakenly believe that
they are semites despite having overwhelmingly slavic blood there must be trace amounts of
meshuggah genes mixed up with the Indo-European and thus the hatred of Iranians,
3) Jesus came once before, therefore it must reason that he is coming back the second time
and now the arrival is imminent so Daniel Bethlehem must become Christian now or go to
hell
@Jake 20 Hijackers. One, a black Moroccan Muslim, chickened out and is in jail somewhere
in the USA. The leader, Atta, was from Egypt. The lead guy to the flight that only had four
hijackers because of the Moroccan, which crashed in PA, was from Lebanon and could pass for
an American/Jew. Two were from the United Arab Emirates and the rest, 15 , were
Saudis.
Mafia-style assassination of Soleimani was undoubtedly an act of state terrorism. What's
more, it was an act of war against Iran. It was a crime committed by the US military on
orders of Trump, who publicly confessed that he gave that criminal order.
Limited Iranian response just shows that Iran government is sane, in sharp contrast to the
US government.
"to unify Germany from its fragmentation by the Treaty of Versailles;
to expand its physical resources by moving into Russia or the Balkan States . . .[to
prevent a recurrence of] the famine;
to destroy the Russian Communist government . . .[consequent to] the brutalities of the
Communist uprisings in German cities during the Armistice period." (Freedom Betrayed, by
Herbert Hoover).
Your #2 and #3 are naked aggression. Exactly as Soleimani murder.
May 8, 2019 Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War. The Role of Osama bin Laden and Zbigniew
Brzezinski
The original "moderate rebel"
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against
Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful
family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal
family.
@Been_there_done_that While I am sure that the official story of the September 11th 2001
'attack' is false, I frequently wonder why the 'truthers' seem never to be able to get all
their ducks in a row. Many claim that the film footage of the aircraft strikes were
pre-manufactured CGIs, issued to the media in order to mask the real culprits which they
allege were cruise missiles. But a cruise missile doesn't have a flight manifest. Either
those four flights that the official story says were hijacked took off that day, or they did
not. The CGI theory rests, of course, on there being no such flights. Yet you claim that 'the
hijackers' were not on flight manifests for those flights. This is surely the craziest
interpretion: either the flights were fictional (as in the CGI theory) and thus there were no
manifests, or they really did take place, and therefore had manifests, and were hijacked. If,
as you claim, the flights actually took place, but no hijackers boarded them, how on earth
did they fly into the twin towers? It makes no sense at all I fear.
Americans are now as gods. asserting their inherent right to kill anyone, anytime, anywhere,
for any reason.
"Did we just kill a kid?" In 2012 a USAF drone operator named Bryant reported he was "flying"
drones out of New Mexico and painted a 6000 mile away Afghan shack with his laser, and with
permission released a Hellfire missile. During the time the missile took to arrive, he saw on
his screen a child toddle from behind the shack. Mesmerized, in slow motion, he saw the shack
explode and the child disappear. Having killed hundreds remotely, he still wasn't ready for
this and asked his copilot: "Did we just kill a kid?". The operator answered: "I guess so".
Suddenly on the screen appeared the words of some unknown anonymous supervisor: "No, it was a
dog". Bryant responded: "A dog on two legs?"
Even the resident boomer Nam hero, Rich, might have trouble justifying this kind of activity
.but then again in a jewed out society ..maybe not.
@Desert Fox 'The ZUS and Israel are in the same league as Stalin and Hitler and are a
blight on humanity!'
Ah. I see that you are still drinking the Kool Aid regarding Herr Hitler. I used to
believe it all too. You'll learn in time, as will enough people. Only then will the gigantic
criminal enterprise fomented by 'the International Race' that we call World War II be seen
for the monstrous crime against humanity that it was. Perhaps – just perhaps –
that same sick and depraved race will then finally be so deservedly called to account for its
foul deeds.
Make no mistake: understanding just who and what Adolf Hitler really was, and especially
his role in saving at least part of the West from Communism, is absolutely central to an
appreciation of this awful world in which we now live.
@GeeBee I am under no illusions about Hitler or Stalin as both were funded by the
international zionist banking kabal, read the book Hitlers Secret Bankers by Sidney Warburg
and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler and Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,by
Anthony Sutton, zionists were behind the whole deal.
Recommend henrymakow.com and his
archive section on Hitler and Stalin.
@AnonFromTNLimited Iranian response just shows that Iran government is sane, in sharp
contrast to the US government.
There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy
and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions.
What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?"
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
What's ironic is that Pompeo and his fellow Americans would cry like the little girls they
are if the rest of the world starting assassinating Americans based on the same grounds. Lol
There is no such thing as international law or legality. Might makes right as shown by the US
doing as it pleases and thumbing it's nose at everyone. Some person with legal credentials
gets trotted out to declare whatever has been done is legal, just rubber-stamping it. It's
too bad but that's the reality.
@Z-man With all due respect which is 0. How pray tell did the those "hijackers" manage to
plant the explosives in the 3 World Trade towers buildings with which to imploded them? Of
course they didn't. Israel and Jews have their fingerprints all over the 911 attack.
911 was an Israeli/ Jew false flag attack that resulted in the murder of 3000 innocent
goyim before noon that day. It's purpose was to create hatred towards Arabs, Muslims and
Persians so that stupid Americans would send their children to die for the squatter colony of
Israel.
Folks the Jew controlled US government is saying that those 3 sky-scrapers collapsed into
their own footprint at free fall speed due to one cause: office furniture fires. Not the
impact of the "plane" and not the fuel carried by the "planes". This has never happened
before or since in the history of the world. It is complete bullshit. The JewSA's story is
totally impossible and defies the laws of physics. Namely the Law of the conservation of
energy.
As anyone who observers the fall of all 3 towers can see those building fall at free fall
speed. For this to happen it means that the underlying structure is offering NO resistance to
the above falling structure. How can this be? The many floors below the impact zone were in
no way effected by the fire. Yet we see them vaporized into dust as the buildings collapse
into their own footprint.
No folks this is impossible. Therefore the entire government's story is suspect and I
would suggest total bullshit.
I'll admit that in the heat of the moment I fell for this lie. But what really got my
attention was when I found out about the collapse of Building 7. A 57 story that was not hit
by any "plane". And yet it followed the same script as the Twin Towers. Use critical thinking
Americans.
I realize for many the truth about 911 is going to blow up their entire world view
regarding the exceptionalness of the US and our good buddy Israel. But it is vital for the
survival of our nation that the real criminals behind 911 be held accountable.
@AnonFromTN If so, AnonFromTn, while begging pardon for a Whataboutery argument, How does
#2 differ from the activities of Israelis, that are supported by American taxpayers; and how
does #3 differ from the activities of Americans toward Iran, whose government US / Israel has
been seeking to topple and re-form to "western" preferences, since at least 1979? *
Moreover, Desert Fox is partly (but only minimally-partly) correct in that zionist Jews
and Allies set-up or duped or manipulated or otherwise used Germany to attempt to destroy
Bolshevism in Russia, similar to the way that US used Saddam against Iran, then killed
Saddam; used Soleimani against ISIS in Iraq, then killed Soleimani.
So are the actions of USA / ZUSA excusable, unaccountable, but those of Germany were
demonstrably not?
Or should the American people remain warily alert for the next shoe to drop, when that
"arc of justice" bends inexorably their way?
* I still, perhaps stubbornly, maintain that Germany had far more justification for its
actions in seeking to vanquish a political regime that was observably committing mass murder
with the "imminent" danger of carrying out the same against the German people -- as, in fact,
was done; and that seeking to protect its people from starvation, of which 800,000 people had
died within the present memory of surviving Germans, is an obligation of the state, a far
more compelling obligation than that of "protecting American interests" 7000 miles from the
homeland, when the homeland has more than adequate capacity to provide for its people, and
when the interests being protected are those of a very few very rich individuals or
corporations.
Competing and trading fairly is far less costly than waging war, and not nearly so
ignoble.
@SolontoCroesus I am not trying to whitewash the Empire. Many of its actions are clearly
criminal, including bombing of Serbia, the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
assisting murderous Saudis in Yemen, etc. Assassination of Soleimani is yet another similarly
criminal action, not the first and likely not the last.
However, the criminality of the Empire does not justify Hitler in any way. His troops
behaved in a totally barbaric manner in the former Soviet Union. I know that not from
propaganda, but from the accounts of real people who lived through German occupation in
1941-44.
The Empire being a criminal enterprise does not make the Third Reich any less criminal.
FYI, bandits often clash with each other, and both sides in those clashes remain bandits.
Jan 13, 2020 Assassination-gate! Trump Officials Say No 'Imminent Threat.' With Guest Phil
Giraldi
Trump officials – including Trump himself today – have been steadily pulling
back from initial claims after the January 3rd assassination of Iranian top general Soleimani
that he was killed because of "imminent threats" of attack led by the Iranian.
@Paul "Noam Chomsky and the gatekeepers of the left " is a chapter in Barrie Zwicker's
book "Towers of Deception ", this chapter is available in pdf format at 9/11conspiracy.tv
.
Zwicker argues that Chomsky " In supporting the official story is at one with the right-wing
gatekeepers such as Judith Miller of the New York Times Chomsky's function is identical to
Miller's: support the official story Chomsky systematically engages in deceptive discourse on
certain key topics such as 9/11 , the Kennedy assassination and with regard to the CIA . ..A
study of Chomsky's stands show him to be a de facto defender of the status quo's most
egregious outrages and their covert agency engines To the New World Order he is worth 50
armored divisions ."
As filmmaker Roy Harvey has stated " the single greatest obstacle to the spread of 9/11 truth
is the Left media ."
"If, as you claim, the flights actually took place, but no hijackers boarded them,
how on earth did they fly into the twin towers?"
Remote control – a proven and trusted technology.
It could have been possible that some of the airline planes were electronically "switched"
in mid-air, remotely flown with their beacons turned off, to simply disappear into the South
Atlantic Ocean once their fuel ran out, while replaced by a fuel tanker in one case, to
create a bigger fireball upon impact in Manhattan, or a much smaller plane to penetrate into
the Pentagon.
The public ought to demand a thorough investigation resulting in concrete answers and
prosecutions.
Some of the alleged hijackers were actually alive after the event and outraged to have had
their identities stolen and misused.
@Biff Great article, but Craig is taking the easy way out on 9/11. Of course, the Arabs
were Sunnis, but were bit players only, and no way was 9/11 Saudi led.
One week after federal prosecutors
changed their tune
in the Michael Flynn case - recommending he serve up to
six months
in prison
for lying to investigators regarding his contacts with a Russian diplomat, the
former National Security Adviser
withdrew his guilty plea
Tuesday
afternoon
.
In a
24-page court filing
, Flynn accuses the government of "bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of
the plea agreement," and has asked his January 28th sentencing date to be postponed for 30 days.
General Flynn has moved to withdraw his guilty plea due to the "government's bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
pic.twitter.com/Qp5JcQjXmB
According to Flynn's counsel,
prosecutors "concocted" Flynn's alleged "false statements
by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
"It is beyond ironic and completely outrageous that the prosecutors have persecuted Mr. Flynn,
virtually bankrupted him, and put his entire family through unimaginable stress for three years,"
the filing continues.
"The prosecutors concocted the alleged 'false
statements' (relating to FARA filing) by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
pic.twitter.com/o47WO8qClX
Prosecutors initially recommended no jail time over Flynn's cooperation in the Russiagate
probes, however they flipped negative on him after he "sought to thwart the efforts of the
government to hold other individuals, principally Bijan Rafiekian, accountable for criminal
wrongdoing."
The 67-year-old Rafiekian, an Iranian-American and Flynn's former business partner, was charged
with illegally acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors accused Flynn
of failing to accept responsibility and "complete his cooperation" - as well as "affirmative
efforts to undermine" the prosecution of Rafiekian."
More on this from attorney and researcher @Techno Fog:
After Flynn refused to lie for prosecutors (Van
Grack), they retaliated by:
1) Reversing course and labeling Flynn a co-conspirator
2) Improperly contacted Flynn's son
3) Put Flynn's son on the witness list for intimidation purposes (never called as a witness)
pic.twitter.com/fP4hpVXfGY
"The govt's tactics in relation for Mr. Flynn's
refusal to 'compose' for the prosecution is a due process violation that can and should be
stopped dead in its tracks by this Court"
pic.twitter.com/ttcFGmyPv7
Most of this prosecution of Flynn has been under TRUMP'S Justice
Department! Isn't there ANYBODY in charge in this government?
Lyndon Johnson would have literally knocked out an Attorney
General that didn't do his bidding. He did, in fact, assault the
head of the Federal Reserve back in the day - when America was
America!
Chrystia Freeland (lead image), appointed last week to be the new Canadian Foreign Minister,
claims that her maternal family were the Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution, who fled
their home in 1939, after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed on a non-aggression pact and the
division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. She claims her mother was born in a
camp for refugees before finding safe haven in Alberta, Canada. Freeland is lying.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's
maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to
the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in
Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job
was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and
other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the
Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak
celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the
German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the
Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time
informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera,
whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in
Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Just before Vienna fell to the Soviet forces in March 1945, Chomiak evacuated with the
German Army into Germany, ending up near Munich at Bad Worishofen. On September 2, 1946, when
Freeland says her mother was born in a refugee camp, she was actually in a well-known spa
resort for wealthy Bavarians. The US Army then controlled that part of Germany; they operated
an Army hospital at Bad Worishofen and accommodated Chomiak at a spa hotel. US Army records
have yet to reveal what the Americans learned about Chomiak's war record, and how he was
employed by US Army Intelligence, after he had switched from the Wehrmacht. It took Chomiak
another two years before the government in Ottawa allowed the family to enter Canada.
The reason the Polish Government is now investigating Freeland is that Chomiak's wartime
record not only victimized Galician Jews, but also the Polish citizens of Cracow. In a salute
to Freeland as a "great friend of Poland" by the Polish Embassy in Ottawa last week, Warsaw
officials now believe a mistake was made.
Last July, Freeland, then trade minister, was in a large delegation of Canadians
accompanying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration
camp in southern Poland. Freeland is not included in the press photographs; Trudeau wept. A
statement
issued by one of the Canadian Jewish organizations in the delegation said: "Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau's visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau signifies the importance of remembering the six
million Jews and countless others who died at hands of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust will
forever stand as the ultimate expression of human hatred. That is why every Canadian should use
this as an opportunity to reflect upon their personal role in combating the forces of
antisemitism, racism and bigotry wherever they are found."
Trudeau (above) and his staff, as well as Foreign Minister at the time Stephane Dion, and
the Jewish representatives appear not to have known this was familiar territory for Freeland
and her family. Michael Chomiak and his wife Alexandra, parents to Freeland's mother Halyna,
spent the war from 1939 to 1945 working and living just 68 kilometres away in Cracow.
According to the autobiographical details Freeland has provided herself to the Canadian
media, Freeland's family were victims of war. "My maternal grandparents," she wrote in May 2015,
"fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939 they saw
themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent
Ukraine." In November 2015 Freeland
told the Toronto Star: "Michael Chomiak was a lawyer and journalist before the Second World
War, but they knew the Soviets would invade western Ukraine (and) fled and, like a lot of
Ukrainians, ended up after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany where my mother was
born."
According to Freeland, "they were also committed to the idea, like most in the (Ukrainian)
diaspora, that Ukraine would one day be independent and that the community had a responsibility
to the country they had been forced to flee to keep that flame alive."
The Edmonton, Alberta, newspaper obituary for Halyna Chomiak Freeland
says she had been "born on September 2, 1946 in Bad Worishofen, Germany in a displaced
person's camp." The Alberta provincial government library reports it holds Michael Chomiak's
papers. He is described as having
"graduated from Lviv University with master's degree in law and political science. In 1928, as
a journalist, he started work in the Ukrainian daily Dilo, and from 1934 to 1939 he served on
the editorial staff. During the Nazi occupation, he was the editor of Krakivski Visti,
published first in Cracow and then in Vienna."
There is much more to the story which Freeland has not revealed. The details can be found in
Polish and Ukrainian sources; from the archived files of Krakivski Visti ("Cracow News");
and from
the evidence of Jewish Holocaust museums around the world. Chomiak was editor in chief of the
newspaper after a Jewish editor was removed. The newspaper itself was set up in January 1940,
publishing three times weekly in Cracow, until October 8, 1944. It was then published in Vienna
from October 16, 1944, until March 29, 1945. The precision of the dates is important. They
coincide with the movement of the German Army into Cracow, and then out of the city and into
Vienna. The newspaper itself was established by the German Army; and supervised by German
intelligence. Chomiak was employed by an officer named Emil Gassner (above). His title in
German indicates he was the German administrator in charge of press in the region. When Gassner
moved from Cracow to Vienna, he took Chomiak with him.
Chomiak's publication was an official one of the German administration in Galicia, known at
the time as the General Gouvernement. The printing press, offices and other assets which
provided Chomiak with his work, salary, and benefits had been confiscated by the Germans from a
Jewish publisher, Moshe Kafner . Kafner was a native of
the region; he and his family were well educated and well known until the Germans arrived, and
replaced Kanfer with Chomiak. Kanfer was forced to flee Cracow for Lviv. From there he was
taken by the Germans to the Belzec concentration, where he was murdered some time in 1942. From Chomiak's office to
Belzec the distance was 300 kilometres.
Left: SS guards at Belzec; right: Ukrainian guards about to kill a Belzec
inmate
Krakivsti Visti was "the most important newspaper to appear in the Ukrainian language under
the German occupation during World War II," according
to this history from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, published in 1998. Chomiak --
reports the Harvard history by John-Paul Hinka from a contemporary source -- "had the ability
to sense what could be written and how in the severe German reality, and he gained some trust
among the German officials, without which the work would have been impossible."
In print, according to this archive
of Krakivsti Visti, when Chomiak was in charge, there were reports of the "success" of the
German Navy in killing 13,000 US Army soldiers, when their transports were torpedoed and sunk
in the Atlantic enroute to England. Chomiak editorialized: "this last German attack [was] a
smashing blow to the solar plexus of the alliance."
Chomiak also reported the US "colonization" of Australia and Canada . "Americans who are now
living in Australia believe that the economic possibilities of Australia are even much better
than those of the USA, and many US soldiers are thinking about staying in Australia after the
war as they feel much better there than in their own Fatherland There are such close relations
between the USA and Canada and Australia that there will be a special trade and tax [agreement]
between these countries after the war. In other words, the United States does not hide the
intention of the US to begin full economic penetration of Canada and Australia."
By the standard of Trudeau at Auschwitz, Freeland's grandfather also produced race hatred to Nazi
order, including antisemitism and racism against several other nationalities, including
Americans, Poles and Russians.
Chomiak not only justified the death camps surrounding Cracow. He attempted to foster
Ukrainian sentiment against the Poles in the region. The German objective was to support the
Ukrainian takeover of Galicia and cleanse it of its Jewish and Polish populations. For this
reason Chomiak and his newspaper were given special favour by the German administration;
Chomiak himself was reportedly held in high esteem by the Nazis. In the Harvard history it is
reported "there can be no doubt that Krakivs'ki visti enjoyed more autonomy than any other
legal Ukrainian-language publication under the German occupation."
Himka, a Ukrainian-Canadian academic, composed his history of Krakivtsi Visti from Chomiak's
personal papers in Alberta. He mentions the newspaper's backing for ethnic cleansing of Poles.
He omits to mention Jews. Chomiak's antisemitic record can be found in the files of the Los
Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. For details, read this .
Chomiak didn't flee from the Ukraine in 1939, as Freeland claims. Five years were to elapse
before he left Cracow; that was when the German Army pulled out in defeat, as the Soviet Army
advanced from the east to liberate the city. Gassner was moving the media operation to his home
town, Vienna.
Chomiak closed down Krakivsti Visti in Vienna in March of 1945 for the same reason. The
Soviet Army was days away, and a new Austrian government replaced the Third Reich in April of
that year. With the retreating Wehrmacht Chomiak then moved westwards into Germany. But a full
year is missing from the official records available publicly. That's between March of 1945 and
April of 1946, when the displaced persons camp was opened in the Bavarian town of Bad
Worishofen, where Freeland says her mother was born.
As the name indicates, Bad Worishofen was (still is) a thermal waters resort for wealthy
Bavarians and day-trippers from Munich. Freeland claims her mother was born as a victim in a
refugee camp. In fact, she was born in a hospital administered by the US Army, while her
parents were living in a spa hotel managed by a US Army intelligence unit.
During the war there had been a Luftwaffe training aerodrome at Bad Worishofen. But it was
so insignificant operationally, it wasn't bombed by the allies . More or less
intact, along with the spa hotels, the town welcomed new paying guests from the US Army when
they arrived in April of 1945.
According to US records, a US Army Intelligence "training unit" was established, as well as
a US Army hospital. The trainees weren't Americans; they were East Europeans, including
Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and others who had been fighting on the German side.
On June 28, 1945, the 2 nd Hospitalization Unit of the 30th Field Hospital left a
forward position at Ebsenee, Austria, where it had been caring for the survivors of the
Ebensee-Matthausen concentration camp.
The war in Europe now over, the hospitalization unit regrouped in the rear at Bad
Wörishofen, where its role was to support the 80th Infantry Division. The unit history
says : "As usual, living quarters proved excellent (buildings), with many conveniences
added to make living conditions very comfortable." Among the people the American Army doctors
now cared for were Mr and Mrs Chomiak.
The camp for displaced persons or refugees at Bad Worishofen was not formally established
for another year, until April 1946. Ukrainians who were there at the time say the camp housed mostly Lithuanians,
and also 490 Ukrainians. The term camp is a misnomer. The records show that many of the
Ukrainians were living in spa hotels when they were subject to the administration of the camp.
Although the subsequent records of the Ukrainians are voluble on what happened there between
1946 and 1948, including testimony from Ukrainians who moved on to the US and Australia, there
is no reference to the Chomiak family at all.
"All the camps in Bad Worishofen were liquidated in May 1948 due to consolidation of the
various camps by IRO (International Relief Organization)," remembers this Ukrainian.
It is not (yet) known when Chomiak presented himself to US Army Intelligence, offering the
same services he had been performing for Gassner and the Wehrmacht. Journalism, however, wasn't
what the US occupation authorities wanted from him. In return, Chomiak received accommodation;
living expenses; and the hospitalization which produced Freeland's mother in September of
1946.
Two years were to elapse before Chomiak left Bad Worishofen for Canada, arriving there in
October 1948. He already had a sister in Canada, but no job of a professional kind to which his
university education and experience qualified him. In Alberta Chomiak worked as a manual
labourer. Why the Americans didn't offer him intelligence and propaganda employment in the US
may be revealed in the Chomiak files in Washington. The Canadian government file on his
admission in 1948 is likely to include some of the details Chomiak revealed about his work with
the Americans. Unless he kept that secret.
Last week the Polish Embassy in Ottawa issued this tweet in celebration of Freeland's
promotion:
This week Polish political analyst and journalist Stanislas Balcerac has opened the dossier
on Freeland and Chomiak. The Polish Foreign Minister, Witold Waszczykowski, has been asked to
investigate, and to decide if, according to Balcerac, "the circumstances and family loyalties
of Mrs Freeland may affect the support that Canada provides the pro-Bandera Government of
Ukraine, so they can have a direct impact on Polish interests."
Regarding Bandera (right), the record of Chomiak's involvement with him when they were under
German, then US
supervision, Freeland did not reveal in the Financial Times when she reported Bandera as one
of the Ukraine's all-time heroes. "Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus,
was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader
Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on
orders from Moscow in 1959 .The Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That
would be a mistake."
Freeland was asked directly to clarify her own claims about Grandfather Chomiak's war
record. Her press spokesman, Chantal Gagnon, asked for more time, but then the two of them
refused to answer.
"The sins of the grandfather can hardly be attributed to the granddaughter," says Polish
investigator Balcerac, " -- except for two, race hatred and lying. Chomiak made a lucrative war
selling hatred of Jews, Poles and Russians. Freeland is doing the same preaching race hatred of
Russians. To mask what she's doing, she has lied about the Nazi record of her family. The
Chomiaks weren't victims; they were aggressors."
A Washington source adds: "Chomiak was recruited by US intelligence to wage war in the
Ukraine against the Russians. Let's see what the US Army and intelligence files reveal about
his role, and let's compare that to the one Freeland is now playing in Canada."
"... "positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after Trudeau" ..."
"... Government Operations Committee ..."
"... "All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we confront those challenges." ..."
"... Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian, Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the east-bloc. ..."
"... The author is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation of Canada. He has authored 3 volumes of the series "The Untold History of Canada" and can be reached at [email protected] ..."
editor
/
November 27, 2019
An interesting victory has been won for forces in Canada who have wished to clean up the mess made by the two
disastrous years Chrystia Freeland has spent occupying the position of Foreign Minister of Canada. This victory
has taken the form of a Freeland's removal from the position which she has used to destroy diplomatic relations
with China, Russia and other nations targeted for regime change by her London-based controllers. Taking over the
helm as Minister of Global Affairs is Francois-Philippe Champagne, former Minister of Infrastructure and ally of
"old guard" Liberal elder Jean Chretien- both of whom have advocated positive diplomatic and business relations
with China in opposition to Freeland for years.
As positive of a development as this is, the danger which
Freeland represents to world peace and Canada's role in the New Emerging system led by the Eurasian Alliance
should not be ignored, since she has now been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister, putting her into a position
to easily take over the Party and the nation as 2
nd
in command.
Already the Canadian press machine on all sides of the aisle are raising the prospect of Freeland's takeover of
the Liberal Party as it
"positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after
Trudeau"
as one Globe and Mail reporter stated.
The Strange Case of Deputy Prime Ministers
The very role of Deputy Prime Minister is a strange one which has had many pundits scratching their heads,
since the Privy Council position is highly under-defined, and was only created by Justin's father Pierre in 1977
as part of his
"cybernetics revolution"
which empowered the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister's Office under "scientific management" of a
technocratic elite. Although it is technically the position of 2nd in Command, it is not like the position of
Vice-President whose function has much greater constitutional clarity.
In some cases, the position has been ceremonial, and in others, like the case of Brian Mulroney's Dep. PM Don
Mazankowski (1986-1993) who chaired the
Government Operations Committee
and led in imposing the
nation-stripping NAFTA, the position was very powerful indeed. Some Prime Ministers have chosen not even to have a
Deputy PM, and the last one (Anne McLellan) ended with the downfall of Paul Martin in 2006. McLellan and another
former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley were both leading figures behind the creation of the think tank
Canada2020 in 2003
that soon brought Justin and Obamaton behaviorists into a re-structuring of the Liberal Party of Canada during the
Harper years, shedding it of its pro-China, pro-Russia, anti-NATO influences that had been represented by less
technocratically-minded statesmen like Jean Chretien years earlier.
Personally, as a Canadian-based journalist who has done a fair bit of homework on Canadian history, and the
structures of Canada's government, I honestly don't think the question of Freeland's becoming Prime Minister
matters nearly as much as many believe for the simple reason that Justin is a well-known cardboard cut-out who
simply doesn't know how to do anything terribly important without a teleprompter and experienced handlers. This is
not a secret to other world leaders, and anyone familiar with the mountains of video footage taken from G7 events
featuring the pathetic scene of little Justin chronically ignored by his peers goes far enough to demonstrate the
point.
Freeland's role in Canada has never had much to do with Canada, as much as it has with Canada's role as a
geopolitical chess piece in a turbulent and changing world and her current role as Deputy Prime Minister as well
as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs can only be understood in those global terms.
Unity for the Sake of Greater Division
For Canada to play a useful role in obstructing the Eurasian-led New Silk Road paradigm sweeping across the
globe in recent years, it requires the fragmenting American monarchy be kept in line.
The problem for the British Empire in this regard, is that the recent elections have demonstrated how divided
Canada is with the Liberal Party suffering total losses across the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec
due to the technocratic adherence to the Green New Deal agenda and resistance to actual industrial development
initiatives. The collapse of living standards, and the lack of any policies for rebuilding the industrial base
that 30 years of NAFTA have destroyed, has resulted not only in the rejection of the Liberal Party but has also
awoken a renewed demand for separation in all three provinces.
Referring implicitly to the crisis of such "authoritarian regimes" as China, Russia, Iran and Trump's USA, as
well as the need to decarbonize the world, Freeland put the problem she is assigned to fix
in the following terms
:
"All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me
the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed
to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we
confront those challenges."
To put it simply, if centralized control were to break down at a time when the Belt and Road Initiative (
and
its Polar Silk Road extension
) is redefining the world system OUTSIDE of the control of the western oligarchy,
then it is clearly understood that the Green Agenda will fail, but the dynamics of the BRI will become hegemonic
as Canada realizes (like the Greeks and Italians currently) that the only viable policies for growing the real
economy is coming from China.
Some final words on Freeland, Neo-liberal High Priestess
Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to
her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian
family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news
agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these
positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian,
Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the
east-bloc.
She also became close friends with such golems as George Soros, Larry Summers and Al Gore
embedding their institutions ever more deeply into Canada
since she was brought
into Canada2020
(her move to politics was facilitated by fellow Rhodes Scholar/Canada2020 leader Bob Rae
abdicating his position as MP for Ontario in 2013).
When Foreign Minister Stephane Dion committed the crime of attempting to heal relations with China and called
for a Russia-Canada Summit to deal mutually with
Arctic development, counter-terrorism and space cooperation
, he had to go. After an abrupt firing, Freeland
was given his portfolio and immediately went to work in turning China and Russia into public enemies #1 and #2,
passing the Magnintsky Act in 2017 allowing for the sanctioning of nations for human rights (easily falsified when
Soros' White Helmets and other CIA/MI6-affiliated NGOs are seen as "on-the-ground" authorities documenting said
abuse).
Her role as champion of NAFTA which Trump rightly threatened to scrap in order to re-introduce protective
tariffs elevated her to a technocratic David fighting some orange Goliath, and her advocacy of the Green New Deal
has been behind some of the most extreme energy/arctic anti-development legislation passed in Canada's history.
Whether it is though individual provinces claiming their rights to form independent treaties with Eurasian
powers around cooperation on the BRI, or whether Canada can be returned to a pro-nation state orientation under
the "Chretien faction" in the federal government, the current future of Canada is as under-defined as the role of
"deputy minister". Either way the nation chooses navigate through the storm, it is certain that any commitment to
staying on board the deck of the Titanic known as the "western neoliberal order" has only one cold and tragic
outcome which Freeland and her ilk will drown before admitting to.
Everyone keeps dancing around it: Iraqi PM Abdul-Mahdi has reported that Soleimani
was on the way to see him with a reply to a Saudi peace proposal. Who profits from
Peace? Who does not?
The killing of Soleimani, while a tragic even with far reaching consequences, is just
an illustration of the general rule: MIC does not profit from peace. And MIC dominates
any national security state, into which the USA was transformed by the technological
revolution on computers and communications, as well as the events of 9/11.
The USA government can be viewed as just a public relations center for MIC. That's why
Trump/Pompeo/Esper/Pence gang position themselves as rabid neocons, which means MIC
lobbyists in order to hold their respective positions. There is no way out of this
situation. This is a classic Catch 22 trap.
The fact that a couple of them are also "Rapture" obsessed religious bigots means that
the principle of separation of church and state does no matter when MIC interests are
involved.
The health of MIC requires maintaining an inflated defense budget at all costs. Which,
in turn, drives foreign wars and the drive to capture other nations' resources to
compensate for MIC appetite. The drive which is of course closely allied with Wall Street
interests (disaster capitalism.)
In such conditions fake "imminent threat" assassinations necessarily start happening.
Although the personality of Pompeo and the fact that he is a big friend of the current
head of Mossad probably played some role.
It's really funny that Trump (probably with the help of his "reference group," which
includes Adelson and Kushner), managed to appoint as the top US diplomat a person who was
trained as a mechanic engineer and specialized as a tank repair mechanic. And who was a
long-time military contractor. So it is quite natural that he represents interests of
MIC.
IMHO under Trump/Pompeo/Esper trio some kind of additional skirmishes with Iran are a
real possibility: they are necessary to maintain the current inflated level of defense
spending.
State of the US infrastructure, the actual level of unemployment (U6 is ~7% which some
neolibs call full employment ;-), and the level of poverty of the bottom 33% of the USA
population be damned. Essentially the bottom 33% is the third world country within the
USA.
"If you make more than $15,000 (roughly the annual salary of a minimum-wage employee
working 40 hours per week), you earn more than 32.2% of Americans
The 894 people that earn more than $20 million make more than 99.99989% of
Americans, and are compensated a cumulative $37,009,979,568 per year. "
Little u.s. has been preaching human rights while mounting wars and lying. Albright
thought the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth it. !!! it was worth killings and
maiming.
Over $7 trillion spent while homelessness is rampant. Healthcare is unaffordable for
the 99% of the population.
The u.s. will leave Iraq and Syria aka Saigon 1975 or horizontal. It's over.
Searching for friends. Now, after Russiagate here is little pompous: "we want to be
friends with Russia." Sanctions much excepting we need RD180 engines, seizure of diplomatic
properties. Who are you kidding?
The future of the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East is in Iraq. The exchange of
hostilities between the U.S. and Iran occurred wholly on Iraqi soil and it has become the site
on which that war will continue.
Israel continues to up the ante on Iran, following President Trump's lead by bombing Shia
militias stationed near the Al Bukumai border crossing between Syria and Iraq.
The U.S. and Israel are determined this border crossing remains closed and have demonstrated
just how far they are willing to go to prevent the free flow of goods and people across this
border.
The regional allies of Iran are to be kept weak, divided and constantly under
harassment.
Iraq is the battleground because the U.S. lost in Syria. Despite the presence of U.S. troops
squatting on Syrian oil fields in Deir Ezzor province or the troops sitting in the desert
protecting the Syrian border with Jordan, the Russians, Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds forces
continue to reclaim territory previously lost to the Syrian government.
Now with Turkey redeploying its pet Salafist head-choppers from Idlib to Libya to fight
General Haftar's forces there to legitimize its claim to eastern Mediterannean gas deposits,
the restoration of Syria's territorial integrity west of the Euphrates River is nearly
complete.
The defenders of Syria can soon transition into the rebuilders thereof, if allowed. And they
didn't do this alone, they had a silent partner in China the entire time.
And, if I look at this situation honestly, it was China stepping out from behind the shadows
into the light that is your inciting incident for this chapter in Iraq's story.
China moving in to sign a $10.1 billion deal with the Iraqi government to begin the
reconstruction of its ruined oil and gas industry in exchange for oil is of vital
importance.
It doubles China's investment in Iraq while denying the U.S. that money and influence.
This happened after a massive $53 billion deal between Exxon-Mobil and Petrochina was put on
hold after the incident involving Iran shooting down a U.S. Global Hawk drone in June.
With the U.S balking over the Exxon/Petrochina big deal, Iraqi Prime Minster Adel Abdul
Mahdi signed the new one with China in October. Mahdi brought up the circumstances surrounding
that in Iraqi parliaments during the session in which it passed the resolution recommending
removal of all foreign forces from Iraq.
Did Trump openly threaten Mahdi over this deal as I covered in my
podcast on this? Did the U.S. gin up protests in Baghdad, amplifying unrest over growing
Iranian influence in the country?
And, if not, were these threats simply implied or carried by a minion (Pompeo, Esper, a
diplomat)? Because the U.S.'s history of regime change operations is well documented. Well
understood color revolution
tactics used successfully in
places like Ukraine , where snipers were deployed to shoot protesters and police alike to
foment violence between them at the opportune time were on display in Baghdad.
Mahdi openly accused Trump of threatening him, but that sounds more like Mahdi using the
current impeachment script to invoke the sinister side of Trump and sell his case.
It's not that I don't think Trump capable of that kind of threat, I just don't think he's
stupid enough to voice it on an open call. Donald Trump is capable of many impulsive things,
openly threatening to remove an elected Prime Minister on a recorded line is not one of
them.
Mahdi has been under the U.S.'s fire since he came to power in late 2018. He was the man who
refused Trump during
Trump's impromptu Christmas visit to Iraq in 2018 , refusing to be summoned to a
clandestine meeting at the U.S. embassy rather than Trump visit him as a head of state, an
equal.
He was the man who declared the Iraqi air space closed after Israeli air attacks on Popular
Mobilization Force (PMF) positions in September.
And he's the person, at the same time, being asked by Trump to act as a mediator between
Saudi Arabia and Iran in peace talks for Yemen.
So, the more we look at this situation the more it is clear that Abdul Madhi, the first
Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 U.S. invasion push for more Iraqi sovereignty, is emerging
as the pivotal figure in what led up to the attack on General Soleimani and what comes after
Iran's subsequent retaliation.
It's clear that Trump doesn't want to fight a war with Iran in Iran. He wants them to
acquiesce to his unreasonable demands and begin negotiating a new nuclear deal which
definitively stops the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, and as P
atrick Henningsen at 21st Century Wire thinks ,
Trump now wants a new deal which features a prohibition on Iran's medium range missiles ,
and after events this week, it's obvious why. Wednesday's missile strike by Iran demonstrates
that the US can no longer operate in the region so long as Iran has the ability to extend its
own deterrence envelope westwards to Syria, Israel, and southwards to the Arabian Peninsula,
and that includes all US military installations located within that radius.
Iraq doesn't want to be that battlefield. And Iran sent the message with those two missile
strikes that the U.S. presence in Iraq is unsustainable and that any thought of retreating to
the autonomous Kurdish region around the air base at Erbil is also a non-starter.
The big question, after this attack, is whether U.S. air defenses around the Ain al Assad
airbase west of Ramadi were active or not. If they were then Trump's standing down after the
air strikes signals what Patrick suggests, a new Middle East in the making.
If they were not turned on then the next question is why? To allow Iran to save face after
Trump screwed up murdering Soleimani?
I'm not capable of believing such Q-tard drivel at this point. It's far more likely that the
spectre of Russian electronics warfare and radar evasion is lurking in the subtext of this
story and the U.S. truly now finds itself after a second example of Iranian missile technology
in a nascent 360 degree war in the region.
It means that Iran's threats against the cities of Haifa and Dubai were real.
In short, it means the future of the U.S. presence in Iraq now measures in months not
years.
Because both China and Russia stand to gain ground with a newly-united Shi'ite Iraqi
population. Mahdi is now courting Russia to sell him S-300 missile defense systems to allow him
to enforce his demands about Iraqi airspace.
Moqtada al-Sadr is mobilizing his Madhi Army to oust the U.S. from Iraq. Iraq is key to the
U.S. presence in the region. Without Iraq the U.S. position in Syria is unsustainable.
If the U.S. tries to retreat to Kurdish territory and push again for Masoud Barzani and his
Peshmerga forces to declare independence Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will go
ballistic.
And you can expect him to make good on his threat to close the Incerlik airbase, another
critical logistical juncture for U.S. force projection in the region.
But it all starts with Mahdi's and Iraq's moves in the coming weeks. But, with Trump rightly
backing down from escalating things further and not following through on his outlandish threats
against Iran, it may be we're nearing the end of this intractable standoff.
Back in June I told you
that Iran had the ability to fight asymmetrically against the U.S., not through direct
military confrontation but through the after-effects of a brief, yet violent period of war in
which all U.S., Israeli and Arab assets in the Middle East come under fire from all
directions.
It sent this same message then that by attacking oil tankers it could make the transport of
oil untenable and not insurable. We got a taste of it back then and Trump, then, backed
down.
And the resultant upheaval in the financial markets creating an abyss of losses, cross-asset
defaults, bank failures and government collapses.
Trump has no real option now but to negotiate while Iraq puts domestic pressure on him to
leave and Russia/China come in to provide critical economic and military support to assist
Mahdi rally his country back towards some semblance of sovereignty
How about "what is the goal?" There is none of course. The assholes in the Washington/MIC
just need war to keep them relevant. What if the US were to closed down all those wars and
foreign bases? THEN the taxpayer could demand some accounting for the trillions that are
wasted on complete CRAP. There are too many old leftovers from the cold war who seem to think
there is benefit to fighting wars in shithole places just because those wars are the only
ones going on right now. The stupidity of the ****** in the US military/MIC/Washington is
beyond belief. JUST LEAVE you ******* idiots.
Sometimes, in treading thru the opaque, sandstorm o ******** swept wastes of the '
desert of the really real '...
one must rely upon a marking... some kind of guidepost, however tenuous, to show you to be
still... on the trail, not lost in the vast haunted reaches of post-reality. And you know,
Tommy is that sort of guide; the sort of guy who you take to the fairgrounds, set him up with
the 'THROW THE BALL THRU THE HOOP... GUARANTEED PRIZE TO SCOOP' kiosk...
and he misses every time. Just by watching Tom run through his paces here... zeroing in on
the exact WRONG interpretation of events ... every dawg gone time... one resets their compass
to tru course and relaxes into the flow agin! Thanks Tom! Let's break down ... the Schlitzy
shopping list of sloppy errors:
Despite the presence of U.S. troops squatting on Syrian oil fields in Deir Ezzor
province or the troops sitting in the desert protecting the Syrian border with Jordan, the
Russians, Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds forces continue to reclaim territory previously
lost to the Syrian government. / umm Tom... the Russkies just ONCE AGIN... at Ankaras
request .. imposed a stop on the IDLIB CAMPAIGN. Which by the way... is being conducted
chiefly by the SAA. Or was that's to say. To the east... the Russkies have likewise become
the guarantors of .... STATIS... that is a term implying no changes on the map. Remember
that word Tom... "map" ... I recommend you to find one... and learn how to use it!
Now with Turkey redeploying its pet Salafist head-choppers from Idlib to Libya to fight
General Haftar's forces there to legitimize its claim to eastern Mediterannean gas
deposits, the restoration of Syria's territorial integrity west of the Euphrates River is
nearly complete. See above... with gravy Tom. Two hundred jihadists moving to Libya has not
changed the status quo... except in dreamland.
Israel continues to up the ante on Iran, f ollowing President Trump's lead by bombing
Shia militias stationed near the Al Bukumai border crossing between Syria and Iraq.
Urusalem.. and its pathetically obedient dogsbody USSA ... are busy setting up RIMFISTAN
Tom.. you really need to start expanding your reading list; On both sides of that border
you mention .. they will be running - and guarding - pipeline running to the mothership.
Shia miitias and that project just don't mix. Nobody gives a frying fluck bout your
imaginary 'land bridge to the Med'... except you and the gomers. And you and they aren't
ANYWHERES near to here.
Abdul Madhi, the first Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 U.S. invasion push for
more Iraqi sovereignty, is emerging as the pivotal figure in what led up to the attack on
General Soleimani and what comes after Iran's subsequent retaliation.
Ok... this is getting completely embarrassing. The man is a 'caretaker' Tom...
that's similar to a 'janitor' - he's on the way out. If you really think thats' being
pivotal... I'm gonna suggest that you've 'pivoted' on one of your goats too many
times.
Look, Tom... I did sincerely undertake to hold your arm, and guide you through this to a
happier place. But you... are underwater my man. And that's quite an accomplishment, since we
be traveling through the deserts of the really real. You've enumerated a list of things which
has helped me to understand just how completely distorted is the picture of the situation
here in mudded east.. is... in the minds of the myriad victims of your alt-media madness. And
I thank you for that. But its time we part company.
These whirring klaidescope glasses I put on, in order to help me see how you see things,
have given me a bit of a headache. Time to return to seeing the world... as it really
works!
The whole *target and destroy* Iran (and Iraq) clusterfuck has always been about creating
new profit scenarios, profit theaters, for the MIC.
If the US govt was suddenly forced to stop making and selling **** designed to kill
people... if the govt were forced to stopping selling **** to other people so
they can kill people... if the govt were forced to stop stockpiling **** designed to
kill people just so other people would stop building and stockpiling **** designed to kill
people... first the US then the world would collapse... everyone would finally see... the US
is a nation of people that allows itself to be propped up by the worst sort of people... an
infinitesimally small group of gangsters who legally make insane amounts of money... by
creating in perpetuity... forever new scenarios that allow them to kill other people.
Jesus ******* Christ ZeroHedge software ******* sucks.
Why has Trump no real option? What do you believe are the limits of Trump's options that
assure he must negotiate? Perhaps all out war is not yet possible politically in the US, but
public sentiment has been manipulated before. Why not now?
One must not yet reject the idea that the road to Moscow and Beijing does not run through
Iran. Throwing the US out of the Middle East would be a grievous failure for the deep state
which has demonstrated itself to be absolutely ruthless. It is hard to believe the US will
leave without a much more serious war forcing the issue.
So far Trump has appeared artless and that may continue but that artlessness may well
bring a day when Trump will not back down.
The motivation behind Trump pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action wasn't
because, after careful analytical study of the plan, he decided it was a bad deal. It was
because Israel demanded it as it didn't fit into their best interests and, as with the
refreezing of relationships with Cuba, it was a easier way to undo Obama policy rather than
tackling Obamacare. Hardly sound judgement.
The war will continue in Iraq as the Shia majority mobilize against an occupying force
that has been asked to leave, but refuse. What will quickly become apparent is that this war
is about to become far more multifaceted with Iraqi and Iranian proxies targeting American
interests across numerous fronts.
Trump is the head of a business empire; Downsizing is not a strategy that he's ever
employed; His business history is a case study in go big or go bust.
trump's zionist overlords have demanded he destroy iran.
as a simple lackey, he agreed, but he does need political cover to do so.
thus the equating of any attack or threat of attack by any group of any political
persuasion as originating from iran.
any resistance by the shia in iraq will be considered as being directed from iran, thus an
attack on iran is warranted.
any resistance by the currect governement of iraq will be considered as being directed
from iran, thus an attack on iran is warranted.
any resistance by the sunni in iraq will be considered subversion by iran, or a false flag
by iran, thus an attack on iran is warranted.
trump's refusal to follow the SOFA agreement, and heed the call of the democratic
government we claim to have gone in to install, is specifically designed to lead to more
violence, which in turn can be blamed on iran's "malign" influence, which gives the entity
lackeys cover to spread more democracy.
I'm more positive that Iraq can resolve its issues without starting a Global War.
The information
shared by the Iraqi Prime Minister goes part way to awakening the population as to what
is happening and why.
Once more information starts to leak out (and it will from those individuals who want to
avoid extinction) the broad mass of the global population can take action to protect
themselves from the psychopaths.
China moving in to sign a $10.1 billion deal with the Iraqi government to begin the
reconstruction of its ruined oil and gas industry in exchange for oil is of vital
importance.
Come on Tom, you should know better than that: the U.S will destroy any agreements between
China and the people of Iraq.
The oil will continue to be stolen and sent to Occupied Palestine to administer and the
people of Iraq will be in constant revolt, protest mode and subjugation- but they will never
know they are being manipulated by the thieving zionists in D.C and Tel aviv.
Agreed. It will take nothing short of a miracle to stop this. Time isnt on their side
though so they better get on it. They will do something big to get it going.
This isn't "humanity." Few people are psychopathic killers. It is being run by a small
cliche of Satanists who are well on their way to enslaving humanity in a dystopia even George
Orwell could not imagine. They control most of the levers of power and influence and have
done so for centuries.
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to
risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one
piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor
for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in
any country.
- Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's testimony before the Nuremberg tribunal on crimes
against humanity
Chrystia Freeland, the Ukrainian-Canadian who is Foreign Minister of Canada, was at a loss for words at the outcome of the
Ukrainian presidential election on Sunday. Instead, she re-tweeted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's statement.
"Canada and Ukraine are united by a strong relationship, rooted in close people-to-people ties," Trudeau declared, referring to
the western Ukrainians now numbering three million, ten percent of Canada's population. They had sided with Adolph Hitler and the
German Army in World War II; after their defeat they were accepted by Canada as refugees. Freeland's maternal grandfather, Michael
Chomiak from a village near Lviv, had served in the German Army as a spy and as press editor and propagandist for the administration
of Galicia, which then included both Ukrainian and Polish territory, headed by Governor-General Hans Frank (lead image, left).
"We are unwavering in our support of Ukraine's sovereignty and our enduring commitment to the rules-based international order,"
Trudeau announced, and Freeland re-tweeted in a formula broad enough to accept terms with Russia to end the five-year war in the
east of Ukraine. "I look forward to working with President-elect Zelenskiy to deepen our relationship and build a more secure, more
prosperous future for people in both our countries."
The only region of Ukraine in which the majority did not vote for Vladimir Zelensky was Lviv region and adjoining areas of old
Galicia. There, if Freeland, who has tried but failed to challenge Trudeau for the Canadian prime ministry, were to run for
election, she would be the favourite to be President of Galicia.
Countrywide, Zelensky defeated the incumbent president Petro Poroshenko by 73% to 24%, with a turnout averaging 62%. The only
exception was the city of Lviv and the Lviv region, where Poroshenko scored 63% to Zelensky's 34%, with turnout of more than 67%.
In the east of the country, Zelensky won with more than 80% of the votes 87% in Donestk, 89% in Lugansk, and 87% in Odessa. The
New York Times reported this geographic distribution as Zelensky's "triumph in every region, except for the area around the city of
Lviv, a center of Ukrainian culture and nationalism in the west of the country."
Dangerous Neocon & Soros Puppet Chrystia Freeland Replaced as Canada's Foreign
Minister Posted on December 2,
2019 by State of the
NationA Sea Change for Canada Foreign Policy as Freeland Is Replaced by a Pro-Chinese
Politico
Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture Foundation
In Chrystia Freeland's 2012 book Plutocrats, Canada's leading Rhodes Scholar laid out a
surprisingly clear analysis of the two camps of elites who she explained would, by their very
nature, battle for control of the newly emerging system as the old paradigm collapsed.
In her book and article series, she described the "practical populist politician" which has
tended to be adherent to business interests and personal gain during past decades vs the new
breed of "technocrat" which has an enlightened non-practical (ie: Malthusian) worldview,
willing to make monetary sacrifices for the "greater good".
She further defined the "good Plutocrats" vs "bad Plutocrats". Good Plutocrats included the
likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos who made their billions under
the free-for-all epoch of globalization, but who were willing to adapt to the new rules of the
post-globalization game. This was a game which she defined in an absurd
2013 TED Talk as a "green New Deal" of global regulation under a de-carbonized (and
depopulated) green economy. For those "bad plutocrats" unwilling to play by the new rules (ie:
the Trumps, Putins or any industrialist who refused to commit seppuku on the altar of Gaia),
they would simply go extinct. This threat was re-packaged by Canada's "other" globalist puppet
Mark Carney,
who recently said "If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they
will fail to exist."
Of course, when Freeland formulated these threats in 2011, China's Belt and Road had not yet
existed, nor had the Russia-China alliance which together are now challenging the regime-change
driven world order in remarkably successful strides. The thought that nationalism could
possibly make a comeback in the west was as unthinkable as the failure of free trade deals like
NAFTA or the TPP.
As of November 18, 2019, Freeland has found herself cut down a notch by the "plutocrats"
that she has worked so assiduously to destroy since becoming Canada's Foreign Minister in 2017
when she ousted a Foreign Minister (Stephane Dion) who had called for a renewed cooperation
with Russia on space, counter-terrorism and arctic development with Sergei Lavrov. Freeland's
unrepentant support for Ukrainian Nazis and NATO encirclement of Russia resulted in a total
alienation of Russia. Her alienation of China was so successful that the Chinese government
removed their ambassador in the summer of 2019. Freeland's work in
organizing the failed coup in Venezuela and supporting the MI6-Soros
White Helmets in Syria became so well known that she became known as the Canadian queen of
regime change.
Other pro-Chinese "bad plutocratic" companies which have been targeted for destruction under
Freeland's watch have included the beleaguered construction giant Aecon Inc. who's board voted
in favor of being sold to China in March 2018 in order to play a role in Belt and Road Projects
(
a decision vetoed by the Federal Government in May 2018 ), as well as Quebec-based SNC
Lavalin which has had major deals with both Russia and China on nuclear power and major
infrastructure projects and which
now faces being shut down in Canada for having bribed politicians in Libya when it built
Qadaffi's Great Manmade River (destroyed by NATO in 2011).
Former Liberal Minister of Infrastructure from Shawinigan Quebec, Francois-Philippe
Champagne has taken over Freeland's portfolio and with him it appears a new pro-Eurasian policy
may be emerging in Canada much more conducive to the long term survival (and strategic
relevance) of Canada. This shift has already been noted by China which has responded by sending
a new Ambassador to Ottawa, while a new Canadian Ambassador with a long history of working
towards positive Chinese relations in the private sector (Dominic Barton) has just begun
working in Beijing. Barton was the first Ambassador to China since "old guard" politician John
McCallum
was fired in January 2019 for defending Huawei's Meng Wanzhou to a group of Chinese
journalists.
In opposition to the cacophonic voice of Freeland, Champagne had spoken positively of China
in 2017 saying "In a world of uncertainty, of unpredictability, of questioning about the
rules that have been established to govern our trading relationship, Canada, and I would say
China, stand out as [a] beacon of stability, predictability, a rule-based system, a very
inclusive society."
Champagne is a long-standing protégé of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien
and world travelled businessman who has worked in the European nuclear sector and has promoted
industrial development with China for years. Jean Chretien, who campaigned for Champagne's
recent re-election, represents everything Freeland hates: A "practical" old school politician
who recognizes that World War III and alienating Eurasian nations who are shaping the future is
bad for business. In 2014, Chretien was given the
"Friend of Russia" award and has played a major role in the private sector working with
Quebec-based Power Corporation which runs the Canada-China Business Council (CCBC) and has
brokered major contracts throughout China since ending his term as PM in 2003. Chretien is also
the father in-law of current CCBC chair Paul Desmarais Jr. who is the heir to the PowerCorp
dynasty. While these are not groups that in any way exemplify morality, they are practical
industrialists who know depopulation and world war are bad for business and would prefer to
adapt to a China-led BRI system over a "green technocratic dictatorship".
Since December 2018, Chretien has attacked Freeland's decision to support Meng Wanzhou's
extradiction to the USA, and has volunteered to lead a delegation to China in order to smooth
tensions.
So while the "bad plutocrats" appear to have taken an important step forward though the
debris of the recent near failure of the Liberal Party which narrowly kept a minority
government after the October 21 Federal Elections, the ideologically driven technocrats led by
Queen Freeland shouldn't be discounted, as her new position as Deputy Prime Minister puts her
in a position to possibly take control of Canada as 2 nd in command of a highly
fragmented nation which is now hearing renewed calls for separation in Alberta, and Quebec.
I immigrated to Canada in 1967, not quite fifty-one years ago. At the time I was young,
naïve and did not know much. Well, I knew a little since I was caught up in 1960s America,
then roiled with opposition to segregation and Jim Crow and to the US war of aggression in
Southeast Asia. Americans did not call it that of course; for them it was the "Vietnam War". I
walked on the last day of the march from Selma to Montgomery , Alabama
in 1965. We travelled in a train from Washington, DC to Montgomery and back, with the shades
drawn, so crackers would not have good targets to shoot at. It was the year after Ku Klux
Klansmen murdered Chaney, Goodman, and
Schwerner in Mississippi. It was dangerous to be black in America, and it still is. It was
dangerous too for naïve young whites to stick their nose into business that did not
concern them. But of course when you are young, you don't see the danger, or think that it
could come looking for you. Death was still a rather abstract thing. Then we "graduated", so to
speak, to opposition to "the Vietnam War". That was more personal because you had to decide
whether -- and I put this politely -- you were going to fight in a war in which you did not
believe.
I headed to Canada. At the time it was a pretty quiet place compared to the United States.
Sure, there was Expo '67, and there were demonstrations and campus sit-ins for this and against
that. Many Canadians opposed the US war of aggression in Southeast Asia, and I remember there
was an underground railway to help deserters and "resisters", or "draft dodgers" (if you did
not like them), get into Canada.
Anyway, I went to graduate school, adapted to being in Canada, assimilated, eventually swore
allegiance to the Queen. The way I spoke English changed. I started to pronounce "out and
about" and other words like an English Canadian from the Empire Loyalist parts of eastern
Canada. "Eh" crept into the sing-song of my spoken English. I emphasise English because I also
speak French, though a few of my students at the Université de Montréal object to
my "Parisian" accent. I don't mind..
A year after I got to Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau
became Liberal prime minister. He was an interesting man and politician. Eccentric,
intellectual, a man of his times, different in some ways from your average Canadian politician.
People liked, or loved him, or didn't. One thing he had which most North American politicians
do not have, was a backbone. You could like it or not, but he had it. He stood up to
Québec separatists in 1970, who hated him for it. "Well, just watch me", he famously
replied to journalists, when asked what he would do to deal with " the October crisis " in
Québec.
Toward the United States, he had to take a softer line. What could a Canadian prime minister
do in face of the Yankee Hegemon? Sleeping next to an elephant used to be the nice way to put
it. Maybe we should have paid more attention to how Finland managed to remain independent next
to its giant neighbour. Trudeau tried unsuccessfully to establish an independent Canadian
energy policy but succeeded in keeping some distance from the United States on Vietnam. In
fact, it was his government which effectively opened the doors to American deserters and
resisters. Believe it or not, they were a good source of new immigrants, or so the Canadian
government used to say.
During the 1960s, English Canadian intellectuals worried about Canada's loss of independence
vis-à-vis the United States. In 1965 Canadian philosopher George Grant wrote Lament for
a Nation where he criticised the Liberals for caving in to Washington on defence policy.
Previous Liberal governments developed a bad reputation for failing to control US investment
and the takeover of Canadian industries and natural resources. If you don't pay attention to
these essentials, and diversify trade and investment, you will lose your political
independence. This is what happened to Canada. You learn these things in university, if you
have good professors, but it is hard to go up against entrenched, powerful economic interests,
who don't care a pin about Canadian independence.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
Pretty soon, the Conservatives became as negligent as the Liberals (I make an exception for
Trudeau) in protecting Canadian independence. Under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Canada opted
for free trade with the United States. If you didn't care so much about independence, free
trade would open markets, create jobs, so the argument went: it was the only way.
"Canada Let's not Trade it Away," became the political slogan of the Council of Canadians,
an organisation of English Canadian intellectuals, founded by the late Mel Hurtig . Québec
"nationalists" were asleep at the wheel on this issue. Their idea was to embrace the United
States to get clear of English Canada. That was a really bad idea; it was jumping from the
frying pan into the fire. By that time, I had become more catholic than the pope, or more
Canadian, say, than Sir John
A. , and I supported the campaign against free trade. We lost that fight.
Is there anything left now of Canadian independence? The Liberal Prime Minister, Jean
Chrétien, kept Canada out of the US-British war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.
About that war, I call a spade, a spade. Chrétien maintained tolerable relations with
the Russian Federation, though that was before the present wave of anti-Russian hysteria.
Russian diplomats look back to the Chrétien period as the good ol' days. They are long
gone.
No thanks to the far right Conservatives led by Stephen Harper, a crude right-wing
politician, and wannabe American, who dreamed of leading a Canadian-style "Reagan Revolution"
in Canada. He was an American Trojan horse, uncritically following US foreign policy and
damaging Canadian relations with the Russian Federation. For any Canadian with a sense of
pride, myself included, it was painful to watch the conduct of the Harper government. His
minister for external affairs, John Baird, reminded me of a clown, backing US policies, inter
alia, in favour of Apartheid Israel and the fascist coup d'état in Kiev, and against
Iran and the Russian Federation. The Russian ambassador in Ottawa could not get a meeting with
top Canadian diplomats, let alone with the minister. "Check with Washington," was Harper's
foreign policy.
Stéphane Dion, Canadian Minister for External Affairs was sacked in 2017
Then came a brief glimmer
of hope at least for me. Justin Trudeau, the son of Pierre Elliot, became prime minister in
late 2015, defeating the by then widely hated Mr. Harper. The Liberals campaigned amongst other
items on better relations with the Russian Federation. Stéphane Dion, a sensible
intellectual, former leader of the Liberal party and former professor of political science at
the Université de Montréal, became minister for external affairs. He indicated
his intention to improve relations with Russia, but nothing came of it, and he was
sacked in January 2017.
Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian-Canadian and former journalist with a long list of
anti-Russian articles under her by-line, succeeded Dion. Freeland's grandfather was a mid-level
Nazi collaborator in German occupied Poland, whose life Freeland celebrates. Sins of the
fathers, or grandfathers, should not of course be visited upon their descendants, unless they
want to boast of them. Ms. Freeland's Ukrainian "nationalism" leads her to turn a blind-eye to
her grandfather's Nazi collaboration, and to the fascist torchlight parades in putschist Kiev.
I sarcastically referred to her as the
Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs in Ottawa .
Freeland's Russophobia makes her persona non grata in the Russian Federation. Trudeau
appointed her to External Affairs, surely knowing of her background and her hatred of Russia
and its president Vladimir Putin. One can only conclude that Trudeau decided to abandon his
campaign promise to improve relations with Russia, and to revert to Harper's foreign
policy.
In October 2017 the Canadian Parliament, mimicking the United States, passed a so-called
Magnitsky bill which allows the Canadian government to sanction Russian or other citizens for
so-called "human rights violations". Everyone knows or should know that the United States uses
"human rights" or R2P (responsibility to protect) as a pretext for military intervention
anywhere it chooses, against governments it does not like. What section of international law
gives Washington that right? The Magnitsky narrative, used as a pretext for the original US
law, is built upon bogus allegations disseminated by one William Browder, an apparently
slippery businessman. He claimed that his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was the victim of Russian
abuse in the cover-up of
embezzlement and massive tax fraud of which Browder in fact, and Magnitsky, his accountant,
appear to have been the perpetrators. Monsieur Dion opposed a Magnitsky-type bill because it
would pointlessly provoke the Russian government. It demonstrates how anti-Russian hysteria has
spread from the United States to Canada.
Trudeau fils is certainly not a chip off the old block
I voted for the Liberal candidate in my riding at the last election, but I am not going to
vote in the next federal election. What's the point? Vote for tweedle dee and get tweedle dum,
or vice versa. Foolishly, I actually hoped Trudeau fils might be a chip off the old block. He
is nothing of the
sort . He likes to appear in gay parades and to tout identity politics to show how
"progressive" he is, but it's just showboating. Canada has voted against
anti-Nazism resolutions in the UN , along with the United States and the Ukraine. What a
trio. Trudeau fils backs US policy in the Ukraine and has Canadian military "advisors" there
training "nationalist" militias for war against the Donbass resistance.
On January 16 Freeland and Rex Tillerson held a one-day conference of most of the
participants of the last war against North Korea
Even more dangerous, the Trudeau government apes US policy on North Korea (DPRK), flirting
with the idea of a maritime blockade, which would be an act of war, in a US-led war of
aggression against a sovereign state with every right to defend itself. Canadians may have
forgotten the Korean War, but people in the DPRK have not forgotten US atrocities accounting
for the deaths of
an estimated 20% of the civilian population . On 16 January
in Vancouver Freeland and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a one-day conference of
most of the participants of the last war against North Korea. The Russian Federation and China,
which have borders on the DPRK, were not invited. Obviously, the United States, with Canadian
complicity, is alluding to a new alliance of the old alliance partners to launch a new Korean
war even as North and South Koreans were talking about reducing tensions. It is a tacit threat
of war against the DPRK. The
Canadian chief of staff says the Canadian navy is ready, if asked, for blockade duty. If
who asks? The UN has not authorised the use of force against the DPRK. Nor will it, China and
the Russian Federation would veto such a resolution in the UN Security Council. Is the Canadian
navy prepared to commit acts of war against China or Russia by stopping their ships on the high
seas? China has
warned the United States not to launch a "pre-emptive" war against the DPRK. Did anyone in
Ottawa read the Chinese statement? Washington affects not to notice the Chinese position, but
Canada should notice before it is too late.
The Trudeau government will claim to have won US concessions to make it possible to
"save" NAFTA, because Canada has no choice but to capitulate
Admittedly, young Mr. Trudeau is in a tight spot. The United States has forced Canada and
Mexico into a renegotiation of the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA). 75% of Canadian
trade goes to the United States, but not the other way around, so that Washington has the
Canadian government by the throat. Freeland is the chief negotiator. She says
upcoming negotiations "are going to be fun and I hope really useful and productive." If you
were Canadian, would you have confidence in Freeland? Already there are stories in the
Mainstream Media about the possible negative effects of the US abrogation of NAFTA on the
Canadian loonie (the dollar) and the perennially anaemic Toronto Stock Exchange. You can see
where this is leading. The Trudeau government will claim to have won US concessions to make it
possible to "save" NAFTA, because Canada has no choice but to capitulate. Trudeau went to
Davos, Switzerland last week to meet various American notables to explain why it is in US
interests to stay in NAFTA. Isn't the American elite, the celebrated 1%, capable of
understanding and defending its own interests? Next week Trudeau is going
to tour the United States without seeing US President Donald Trump "in an effort to
'further strengthen the deep bonds that unite Canada and the United States'." That is a sure
sign of weakness. Is it really in Canadian national interests to have "deeper bonds" with
Hegemon?
I used to be fiercely proud of being Canadian. I have travelled to all the provinces from
Victoria, British Columbia to St. John's, Newfoundland. I have hiked in the Fraser River
Country and watched from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains as a thunder storm moved across
the prairies below me. I have marvelled at the clear waters of Lake Superior and smelled the
salt air of the sea on the Canadian east coast. Now, however, I am not so proud, watching one
Canadian government after another go to its knees before Hegemon. It does not matter what
political party holds power, even the so-called "left"
New Democratic Party pursues the same servile policies toward the United States. What
options do critically minded Canadians now have?
The US Secretary of War, General "Mad Dog" Mattis, gave a recent
speech where he said basically it's our way or the highway. "To those who would threaten
America's experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day."
You have to wonder what dystopian, upside down world General Mattis lives in, and what
"democracy" he is talking about when US electoral choices are between tweedle dee and tweedle
dum who fund their campaigns with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Abroad. the United
States has supported and continues to support dictators in Latin America and absolutist kings
and princes in the Middle East, fascists in the Ukraine, and Islamist terrorists of every
stripe and description in the Middle East and Central Asia, not to mention Apartheid Israel. It
has overthrown democratically elected governments in Syria, Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador,
Indonesia, Greece and Chile, to mention only a few examples, but the list is endless.
The CIA was involved in the hunting down and murder of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba. It tried
to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its late leader Fidel Castro, more than six
hundred times by some estimates, and it is attempting to topple the popular Venezuelan leader,
Nicolás Maduro. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen are amongst other
victims. Is the US government capable of dealing with other countries without brandishing a gun
in their faces? Work with our diplomats or deal with our military, "Mad Dog" said in
effect.
The US Secretary of War, General "Mad Dog" Mattis, gave a recent
speech where he said basically it's our way or the highway
So what does a Canadian do faced with the uninspiring conduct of the Harpers and the young
Mr. Trudeau? I don't know. There seems to be no satisfactory answer. One can only imagine with
pleasure how Trudeau père, if he were still with us, might berate his son for craven,
fatuous behaviour. Pierre Elliot is long gone, however, and we are on our own. The views of
individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.
Tags: Canada Chrystia
Freeland
NYT posted editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (nincompoop, Arkansas) lauding the murder of
Suleimani. This is one of the readers' comments:
Bill
Nova ScotiaJan. 10
Times Pick I don't understand how the USA can kill a military leader of a country we are not at war
with in a third country no less and claim it was legal. The resulting high-pressure in the
aftermath has left 63 Canadian citizens dead. Yes, at the hands of an Iranian missile - but
many of those dead were dual Iranian Canadians. The blood is not just on Iran's hands, it is
on the USA and on trump.
The United States has murdered one of Iran's top personalities who was officially visiting
a friendly country on a diplomatic mission.
The message of the assassination of Gasem Soleimani is the persistence of Washington in
the effort to keep the world's first energy region revolt and prevent any distension
between Iran and Saudi Arabia...
(...)Soleimani was a great strategist who achieved three notable victories in the last
seventeen years: He was one of the organizers of the armed resistance to the American
occupier in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, played a great role in the expulsion of the
Islamic State from Iraq and defeated then the jihadist conglomerate in Syria (Islamic
State, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, etc.) financed and supported by the CIA and the Gulf oil
monarchies. It was Soleimani who in 2015 convinced Vladimir Putin of the advisability of
helping the Syrian government militarily, which has ended up restoring its control of the
country by thwarting a new regime change operation that has resulted in another huge
slaughter.
(...)Since Friday, January 3, all commentators announced an Iranian response to this
"declaration of war" by Trump, or his generals, does not matter. It is forgotten that this
war has been a fact for many years. Historically it began with the coup d'etat against
Mossadeq, the Iranian prime minister who nationalized oil, and continued with the reaction
to the Khomeinist Revolution of 1979, which induced the West to provoke the bloody war
between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s with hundreds of thousands of dead.
(...)The unilateral withdrawal of the United States, in May 2018, from the nuclear
agreement reached with Iran, as well as the sanctions suffered by that country, the murders
of Iranian scientists and the attacks, sanctions and the financial and oil blockade that
suffocates the Iranian economy, form Part of that war. For 19 months, Iranian oil exports,
which in 2017 were 2.5 million barrels per day, have fallen to a few hundred thousand as a
result of Trump's sanctions.
(...)And in the meantime in Europe ...
On Sunday, January 5, 48 hours after the murder in Baghdad, the leaders of the three
main European powers, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johson, released their joint
statement. In it the murder of Soleimani is not even mentioned. "We have denounced the
recent attacks on coalition troops in Iraq and are deeply concerned about the negative role
played by Iran in the region, especially through the guards of the revolution and of the
al-Quds unit under the command of General Soleimani", says the statement. "We especially
call on Iran to refrain from more violence", it continues. In other personal statements
Johnson told Trump that Soleimani "posed a threat to all our interests" and that "we do not
regret his death". Macron expressed concern about the destabilizing role of the forces led
by the assassinated general and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stated that the General
"had left a trail of devastation and blood in the Middle East" and that "the European Union
had good reasons to have him on its list of terrorists". This statement prompted Tehran to
summon the German ambassador and censor him for his support of the "terrorist attack by the
United States". For its part, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der
Leyen, has held Iran alone responsible for escalating tensions in the Middle East and has
justified the murder as a reaction to the provocations suffered by the Americans in Iraq.
Once again the "European foreign policy" is portrayed.
It is in Germany, at the base of Ramstein, where the command and control point of
drone attacks by US forces is located. An anonymous German citizen has filed a complaint in
the town of Zweibrücken to be elucidated if the murder was piloted from Ramstein. Such
action being a violation of international law and German law, it has filed a complaint
"against all suspects of such crime in Germany and the United States." Those who still
believe in the European "rule of law" for international purposes, can hold on to this
symbolic gesture without the slightest future.
... He was viewed as crucial to the victory over ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in
Iraq, much feared by Iranians. Shia take martyrdom seriously, and he is viewed as a martyr. It
appears that even Trump took notice of the massive outpouring of mourning and praise for
Soleimani there up to the point of people dying in a stampede in a mourning crowd in his
hometown. But, hey, obviously these people simply do not understand that he was The World's
Number One Terrorist! Heck, I saw one commenter on Marginal Revolution claiming Soleimani was
responsible killing "hundreds of thousands." Yes, this sort of claim is floating around out
there.
A basic problem here is that while indeed Soleimani commanded the IGRC al Quds force that
supported and supplied various Shia militias in several Middle Eastern nations, these all were
(and are) ultimately independent. Soleimani may have advised them, but he was never in a
position to order any of them to do anything. Al Quds itself has never carried out any of the
various attacks outside of Iran that Soleimani is supposedly personally responsible for.
Let us consider the specific case that gets pushed most emphatically, the 603 Americans dead
in Iraq, without doubt a hot button item here in the US. First of all, even if Soleimani really
was personally responsible for their deaths, there is the technical matter that their deaths
cannot be labeled "terrorism." That is about killing non-combatant civilians, not military
personnel involved in combat. I do not support the killing of those American soldiers, most of
whom were done in by IEDs, which also horribly injured many more. But indeed this awful stuff
happened. But in fact this was all done by Iraqi -based Shia militias. Yes, they were supported
by Soleimani, but while some have charged al Quds suppplied the IEDs, this turns out not to be
the case. These were apparently made in Iraq by these local militias. Soleimani's al Quds are
not totally innocent in all this, reportedly providing some training and some inputs. But the
IEDs were made by the militias themselves and planted by them.
It is also the case that when the militias and Americans were working together against
ISIS/IISIL/Daesh, none of this happened, and indeed that was still the case up until this most
recent set of events, with the death setting off all this an American civilian contractor
caught on a base where several Iraqis were killed by a rocket from the Kat'b Hezbollah Iraqi
group. Of course with Trump having Soleimani assassinated, this cooperation has ceased, with
the US military no longer either fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh nor training the Iraqi military.
Indeed, the Iraqi parliament has demanded that US troops leave entirely, although Trump
threatened Iraq with economic sanctions if that is followed through on.
As it is, the US dating back to the Obama administration has been supplying Saudi Arabia
with both arms and intelligence that has been used to kill thousands of Yemeni civilians.
Frankly, US leaders look more like terrorists than Soleimani.
I shall close by noting the major changes in opinion in both Iran and Iraq regarding the US
as a result of this assassination. In Iran as many have noted there were major demonstrations
against the regime going on, protesting bad economic conditions, even as those substantially
were the result of the illegal US economic sanctions imposed after the US withdrew from the
JCPOA nuclear deal, to which Iran was adhering. Now those demonstrations have stopped and been
replaced by the mass demonstrations against the US over Soleimani's assassination. And we also
have Iran further withdrawing from that deal and moving to more highly enrich uranium.
In Iraq, there had been major anti-Iran demonstrations going on, with these supported to
some degree by the highest religious authority in the nation, Ayatollah Ali Sistani. However,
when Soleimani's body was being transferred to Iran, Sistani's son accompanied his body. It
really is hard to see anything that justifies this assassination.
Barkley Rosser
JDM , January 10, 2020 12:32 pm
I think this quote is apropos in this situation: "It was worse than wrong. It was a
mistake."
Bert Schlitz , January 10, 2020 3:46 pm
They had a handshake agreement, which was why Solemiani wasn't under protection. The
Solemiani killed Americans stuff cracks me up. He was a military advisor for the Shia militia's
who were attacked by US forces during a unsanctioned war in 2003 .uh derp derp. There have been
many other generals that have committed "death of american" crimes that the Trump Admin seems
to love.
As my father used to say "homosexuals make great commie fighters"(homosexuals like Joe
McCarthy of Wisconsin agree lol). The zionists so badly want this war in the Trump
administration, but Trump doesn't have the guts to just invade like Iraq.
it appears i had a comment on this same post removed from Naked Capitalism
i asked "was his assassination due to the impeachment proceedings, and should the Democrats
in Congress be held responsible for the deaths on Ukrainian flight 752?"
sure, that's off the wall, but i still think it addresses a legitimate question i don't
think one can separate the personal situation a megalomaniac president like Trump finds himself
in from his behavior .i was a news junky back during the Iraq war era, & what i remember
most about the runup was that the big story in all the news mags the week before the war
started was that Neil Bush, George's son, had lost millions of depositor's money playing poker
in the back offices of Silverado Savings and Loan in Denver, and that you then could't find a
word about that story anywhere the next week cause George & Saddam had all the coverage .so
i have always felt that Bush might have pushed that war forward to take the media heat off his
kid
run75441 , January 10, 2020 5:38 pm
No surprise, when I preempt their article on healthcare with commentary; my comments
disappear. Get used to it when you can say more than they can.
well, here you go, Trump actually admitting to what i've been banned for suggesting via
Jonathan Chait:
Report: Trump Cited Impeachment Pressure to Kill Soleimani – Deep inside a long,
detailed Wall Street Journal
report about President Trump's foreign policy advisers is an explosive nugget: "Mr. Trump,
after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP
senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate,
associates said." This is a slightly stronger iteration of a fact the New York Timesreported
three days ago, to wit, "pointed out to one person who spoke to him on the phone last week that
he had been pressured to take a harder line on Iran by some Republican senators whose support
he needs now more than ever amid an impeachment battle."This would not mean Trump ordered the
strike entirely, or even primarily, in order to placate Senate Republicans. But it does
constitute an admission that domestic political considerations influenced his decision.
That would, of course, constitute a grave dereliction of duty. Trump is so cynical he wouldn't
even recognize that making foreign policy decisions influenced by impeachment is
the kind of thing he shouldn't say out loud. Of course, using his foreign policy authority for
domestic political gain is the offense Trump is being impeached for. It would be
characteristically Trumpian to compound the offense as part of his efforts to avoid
accountability for it. What kind of pressure could Trump have in mind? It seems highly doubtful
that he is worried 20 Republican senators would vote to remove him from office. He could be
concerned that one or two of them would defect, denying him the chance to present impeachment
as totally partisan (as he did following the House vote.) More plausibly, Trump might be
worried a handful of Republicans would join Democrats to allow testimony from witnesses, like
John Bolton, Trump has managed to block.
likbez , January 11, 2020 10:24 pm
@JDM, January 10, 2020 12:32 pm
I think this quote is apropos in this situation: "It was worse than wrong. It was a
mistake."
This is a very deep observation. Thank you. BTW the original quote is attributed to
Talleyrand and is more biting:
C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute.
It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.
Reaction to the 1804 drumhead trial and execution of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of
Enghien, on orders of Napoleon. Actually said by either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe,
legislative deputy from Meurthe (according to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) or
Joseph Fouché, Napoleon's chief of police (according to John Bartlett, Familiar
Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), http://www.bartleby.com/100/758.1.html ).
Rephrasing Kissinger: " Assassination is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of
one".
Dangerous Neocon & Soros Puppet Chrystia Freeland Replaced as Canada's Foreign
Minister Posted on December 2,
2019 by State of the
NationA Sea Change for Canada Foreign Policy as Freeland Is Replaced by a Pro-Chinese
Politico
Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture Foundation
In Chrystia Freeland's 2012 book Plutocrats, Canada's leading Rhodes Scholar laid out a
surprisingly clear analysis of the two camps of elites who she explained would, by their very
nature, battle for control of the newly emerging system as the old paradigm collapsed.
In her book and article series, she described the "practical populist politician" which has
tended to be adherent to business interests and personal gain during past decades vs the new
breed of "technocrat" which has an enlightened non-practical (ie: Malthusian) worldview,
willing to make monetary sacrifices for the "greater good".
She further defined the "good Plutocrats" vs "bad Plutocrats". Good Plutocrats included the
likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos who made their billions under
the free-for-all epoch of globalization, but who were willing to adapt to the new rules of the
post-globalization game. This was a game which she defined in an absurd
2013 TED Talk as a "green New Deal" of global regulation under a de-carbonized (and
depopulated) green economy. For those "bad plutocrats" unwilling to play by the new rules (ie:
the Trumps, Putins or any industrialist who refused to commit seppuku on the altar of Gaia),
they would simply go extinct. This threat was re-packaged by Canada's "other" globalist puppet
Mark Carney,
who recently said "If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they
will fail to exist."
Of course, when Freeland formulated these threats in 2011, China's Belt and Road had not yet
existed, nor had the Russia-China alliance which together are now challenging the regime-change
driven world order in remarkably successful strides. The thought that nationalism could
possibly make a comeback in the west was as unthinkable as the failure of free trade deals like
NAFTA or the TPP.
As of November 18, 2019, Freeland has found herself cut down a notch by the "plutocrats"
that she has worked so assiduously to destroy since becoming Canada's Foreign Minister in 2017
when she ousted a Foreign Minister (Stephane Dion) who had called for a renewed cooperation
with Russia on space, counter-terrorism and arctic development with Sergei Lavrov. Freeland's
unrepentant support for Ukrainian Nazis and NATO encirclement of Russia resulted in a total
alienation of Russia. Her alienation of China was so successful that the Chinese government
removed their ambassador in the summer of 2019. Freeland's work in
organizing the failed coup in Venezuela and supporting the MI6-Soros
White Helmets in Syria became so well known that she became known as the Canadian queen of
regime change.
Other pro-Chinese "bad plutocratic" companies which have been targeted for destruction under
Freeland's watch have included the beleaguered construction giant Aecon Inc. who's board voted
in favor of being sold to China in March 2018 in order to play a role in Belt and Road Projects
(
a decision vetoed by the Federal Government in May 2018 ), as well as Quebec-based SNC
Lavalin which has had major deals with both Russia and China on nuclear power and major
infrastructure projects and which
now faces being shut down in Canada for having bribed politicians in Libya when it built
Qadaffi's Great Manmade River (destroyed by NATO in 2011).
Former Liberal Minister of Infrastructure from Shawinigan Quebec, Francois-Philippe
Champagne has taken over Freeland's portfolio and with him it appears a new pro-Eurasian policy
may be emerging in Canada much more conducive to the long term survival (and strategic
relevance) of Canada. This shift has already been noted by China which has responded by sending
a new Ambassador to Ottawa, while a new Canadian Ambassador with a long history of working
towards positive Chinese relations in the private sector (Dominic Barton) has just begun
working in Beijing. Barton was the first Ambassador to China since "old guard" politician John
McCallum
was fired in January 2019 for defending Huawei's Meng Wanzhou to a group of Chinese
journalists.
In opposition to the cacophonic voice of Freeland, Champagne had spoken positively of China
in 2017 saying "In a world of uncertainty, of unpredictability, of questioning about the
rules that have been established to govern our trading relationship, Canada, and I would say
China, stand out as [a] beacon of stability, predictability, a rule-based system, a very
inclusive society."
Champagne is a long-standing protégé of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien
and world travelled businessman who has worked in the European nuclear sector and has promoted
industrial development with China for years. Jean Chretien, who campaigned for Champagne's
recent re-election, represents everything Freeland hates: A "practical" old school politician
who recognizes that World War III and alienating Eurasian nations who are shaping the future is
bad for business. In 2014, Chretien was given the
"Friend of Russia" award and has played a major role in the private sector working with
Quebec-based Power Corporation which runs the Canada-China Business Council (CCBC) and has
brokered major contracts throughout China since ending his term as PM in 2003. Chretien is also
the father in-law of current CCBC chair Paul Desmarais Jr. who is the heir to the PowerCorp
dynasty. While these are not groups that in any way exemplify morality, they are practical
industrialists who know depopulation and world war are bad for business and would prefer to
adapt to a China-led BRI system over a "green technocratic dictatorship".
Since December 2018, Chretien has attacked Freeland's decision to support Meng Wanzhou's
extradiction to the USA, and has volunteered to lead a delegation to China in order to smooth
tensions.
So while the "bad plutocrats" appear to have taken an important step forward though the
debris of the recent near failure of the Liberal Party which narrowly kept a minority
government after the October 21 Federal Elections, the ideologically driven technocrats led by
Queen Freeland shouldn't be discounted, as her new position as Deputy Prime Minister puts her
in a position to possibly take control of Canada as 2 nd in command of a highly
fragmented nation which is now hearing renewed calls for separation in Alberta, and Quebec.
Canada has a reputation for
being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social
benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States.
It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a
neutral "peace keeper", pursuing a so-called policy of "multilateralism" and attempting from time to
time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of
respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian
independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left. Police
repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War I was
widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism,
especially in Qubec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The
Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf
Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in
appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a
greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite -- Liberal or Conservative did
not matter -- was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Qubec French public opinion under the
influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a
Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet
offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory
over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such
thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman's club or kept more discrete
by people who did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.
The Liberal prime minister,
William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his
British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany
Even after the Nazi invasion of
the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis, there was strong
reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was a shotgun marriage, a
momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the over-riding threat of the Nazi
Wehrmacht. "If Hitler invaded Hell," Winston Churchill famously remarked, "I would make at least a
favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would
be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a "truce", as some of my students have proposed
to me, in a longer cold war between the west and the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when
the
Bolsheviks
seized power
in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the "truce", or if you like, the Grand
Alliance, came to a sudden end.
This was no more evident than
in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown commodity and not simply an American
imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after 1945 the Canadian government -- Mackenzie King
was still prime minister -- should open its doors to the immigration of approximately 34,000 "displaced
persons", including thousands of
Ukrainian
fascists and Nazi collaborators
, responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and Poland.
These were
veterans
of
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Chrystia Freeland,
the current Canadian minister for external affairs
The most notorious of the Nazi
collaborators who immigrated to Canada was
Mykhailo
Chomiak
, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of the war
and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured by the Red
Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In Canada however he
prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the "Ukrainian-Canadian" Chrystia Freeland, the present
minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe,
persona non grata
in the
Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a "victim" of World War II. Her claims to
this effect have been demonstrated to be
untrue
by
the Australian born journalist
John
Helmer
, amongst many others.
In 1940 the Liberal government
facilitated the creation of the
Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in
Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the
Ukrainian-Canadian
community
. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian
descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada; well more than
half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the Ukraine. It
is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in Ottawa.
The Canadian Ukrainian
Congress (UCC) president Paul Grod
After the coup d'tat in Kiev
in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to support the
Ukrainian "regime change" operation which had been conducted by the United States and European Union.
The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages from the Harper
government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only through massive EU and
US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed backing from fascist militias who
repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims that Russia is pursuing a policy of
"aggression" against the Ukraine. If that were true, the putschists in Kiev would have long ago
disappeared. The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded "charitable status" to
one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent military "advisors" to
train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The Trudeau government has
continued that policy. "Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to destabilize its democracy,"
according
to Minister Freeland
: "Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to
support its efforts for democracy and economic growth." For a regime that celebrates violence and
anti-Russian racism, represses political opposition, burns books, and outlaws the Russian language,
"democracy" is an Orwellian portrayal of actual realities in the Ukraine. Nevertheless, late last year
the Canadian government approved the sale of arms to Kiev and a so-called
Magnitsky
law
imposing sanctions on Russian nationals.
The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group
There is no political
opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New Democratic Party (NDP), that burnt
out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper government, at the behest of Mr. Grod, a
Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In 2015 the UCC put a list of questions to party
leaders, one of which was the following: "Does your party support listing the Luhansk People's
Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic as terrorist organizations?" The Lugansk and Donetsk
republics are of course anti-fascist resistance movements that emerged in reaction to the violent coup
d'tat in Kiev. They are most certainly
not
"terrorist" organisations, although they are
subjected to daily bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev putschist forces. Nevertheless, the
then NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to almost anything to win power, answered in
the affirmative. This must have been a moment of dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions
about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could it
support a US/EU installed putschist regime which governs by intimidation and violence? In fact, it was
a Conservative electoral strategy to obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and East European descent
by backing putschist Kiev and denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to outflank Harper on his right,
but that did not work for he himself was outflanked on his left.
Some Canadians harboured
illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties
In the 2015 federal elections
the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair and won the elections. The NDP suffered
heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who had made a Faustian bargain for nothing in
return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader. The Liberals campaigned on re-establishing better
relations with the Russian Federation, but that promise did not hold up. The minister for external
affairs, Stphane Dion, tried to move forward on that line, but appears to have been stabbed in the
back by Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland guiding his hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017
Dion
was sacked
and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to improve relations
with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian relations have worsened.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There are photographs of him side by side
with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been a great
success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional Ukrainian fascist
salute,
"SlavaUkraini!"
,
to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great believer in
identity politics.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket
The latest gesture of the
Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year grant to promote a "Holodomor National
Awareness Tour". Ukrainian "nationalists" summon up the memory of the "Holodomor", a famine in the
Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by Stalin, they say, in order to emphasise their
victimisation by Russia. According to the latest Stalin biographer, Steven Kotkin, there was indeed a
famine in the USSR that affected various parts of the country, the Ukraine amongst other regions.
Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered most. Between five and seven million people died. Ten millions
starved. "Nonetheless, the famine was not intentional. It resulted from Stalin's policies of forced
collectivization ,"Kotkin writes, himself no advocate of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant
rebellion, bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to
the catastrophe. "Similarly, there was no 'Ukrainian' famine," according to Kotkin, "the famine was
[a] Soviet[-wide disaster]" (
Stalin
,
2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29). So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a
politically motivated myth to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.
Identity politics and
Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of
Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and
collaboration during World War II
The Canadian government also
recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 "advisors" to train Ukrainian militias, along with
twenty-three
million dollars
-- it is true a pittance by
American
standards
-- for "non-lethal" military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian
"democracy". Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism is
democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now
invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and
fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II.
"
Any country sending representatives to Russia's celebration of the 70th anniversary of their
victory against Adolf Hitler,"
warned
putschist Kiev
in April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine."
"The further a society drifts
from the truth," George Orwell once said, "the more it will hate those that speak it." Well, here is
one truth that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland will not want to hear, hate it or not: 42,000 Canadian
soldiers, not to mention 27 million Soviet citizens, died during the war against the Axis. Memories
must be fading, for now we have come to this pass, where our government is supporting a violent,
racist regime in Kiev directly descended from that very enemy against which Canada and its allies
fought during World War II.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture
Foundation.
Tags:
Canada
Chrystia Freeland
Print this article
Michael Jabara Carley
March 9, 2018 |
History
Why Canada Defends Ukrainian Fascism
Canada has a reputation
for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other
social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the
United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq,
portrayed itself as a neutral "peace keeper", pursuing a so-called policy of "multilateralism"
and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of
respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian
independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left.
Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War
I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for
fascism, especially in Qubec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during
the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables
including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not
gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian
elite saw communism as a greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian
elite -- Liberal or Conservative did not matter -- was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939).
In Qubec French public opinion under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist
victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare
amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against
Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance
with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either
openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman's club or kept more discrete by people who
did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.
The Liberal prime
minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and
thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing
Hitlerite Germany
Even after the Nazi
invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis,
there was strong reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was
a shotgun marriage, a momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the
over-riding threat of the Nazi Wehrmacht. "If Hitler invaded Hell," Winston Churchill famously
remarked, "I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a
"truce", as some of my students have proposed to me, in a longer cold war between the west and
the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when the
Bolsheviks
seized power
in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the "truce", or if you like, the Grand
Alliance, came to a sudden end.
This was no more evident
than in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown commodity and not simply an
American imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after 1945 the Canadian
government -- Mackenzie King was still prime minister -- should open its doors to the immigration of
approximately 34,000 "displaced persons", including thousands of
Ukrainian
fascists and Nazi collaborators
, responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and
Poland. These were
veterans
of
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Chrystia Freeland,
the current Canadian minister for external affairs
The most notorious of the
Nazi collaborators who immigrated to Canada was
Mykhailo
Chomiak
, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of
the war and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured
by the Red Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In
Canada however he prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the "Ukrainian-Canadian" Chrystia
Freeland, the present minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe,
persona
non grata
in the Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a "victim" of
World War II. Her claims to this effect have been demonstrated to be
untrue
by
the Australian born journalist
John
Helmer
, amongst many others.
In 1940 the Liberal
government facilitated the creation of the
Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in
Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to
dominate the
Ukrainian-Canadian
community
. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian
descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada; well more
than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the
Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in
Ottawa.
The Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC) president Paul Grod
After the coup d'tat in
Kiev in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to
support the Ukrainian "regime change" operation which had been conducted by the United States
and European Union. The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages
from the Harper government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only
through massive EU and US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed
backing from fascist militias who repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims
that Russia is pursuing a policy of "aggression" against the Ukraine. If that were true, the
putschists in Kiev would have long ago disappeared. The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded "charitable
status" to one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent
military "advisors" to train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The
Trudeau government has continued that policy. "Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to
destabilize its democracy,"
according
to Minister Freeland
: "Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to
support its efforts for democracy and economic growth." For a regime that celebrates violence
and anti-Russian racism, represses political opposition, burns books, and outlaws the Russian
language, "democracy" is an Orwellian portrayal of actual realities in the Ukraine.
Nevertheless, late last year the Canadian government approved the sale of arms to Kiev and a
so-called
Magnitsky
law
imposing sanctions on Russian nationals.
The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group
There is no political
opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New Democratic Party (NDP), that
burnt out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper government, at the behest of
Mr. Grod, a Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In 2015 the UCC put a list of
questions to party leaders, one of which was the following: "Does your party support listing the
Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic as terrorist organizations?" The
Lugansk and Donetsk republics are of course anti-fascist resistance movements that emerged in
reaction to the violent coup d'tat in Kiev. They are most certainly
not
"terrorist"
organisations, although they are subjected to daily bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev
putschist forces. Nevertheless, the then NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to
almost anything to win power, answered in the affirmative. This must have been a moment of
dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to
the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could it support a US/EU installed putschist regime
which governs by intimidation and violence? In fact, it was a Conservative electoral strategy to
obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and East European descent by backing putschist Kiev and
denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to outflank Harper on his right, but that did not work for
he himself was outflanked on his left.
Some Canadians
harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative
parties
In the 2015 federal
elections the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair and won the elections.
The NDP suffered heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who had made a Faustian
bargain for nothing in return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader. The Liberals
campaigned on re-establishing better relations with the Russian Federation, but that promise did
not hold up. The minister for external affairs, Stphane Dion, tried to move forward on that
line, but appears to have been stabbed in the back by Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland guiding his
hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017
Dion
was sacked
and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to improve
relations with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian relations
have worsened.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There are photographs of him side by
side with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been
a great success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional
Ukrainian fascist salute,
"SlavaUkraini!"
,
to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great believer
in identity politics.
The influential Mr.
Grod appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket
The latest gesture of the
Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year grant to promote a "Holodomor
National Awareness Tour". Ukrainian "nationalists" summon up the memory of the "Holodomor", a
famine in the Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by Stalin, they say, in order to
emphasise their victimisation by Russia. According to the latest Stalin biographer, Steven
Kotkin, there was indeed a famine in the USSR that affected various parts of the country, the
Ukraine amongst other regions. Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered most. Between five and seven
million people died. Ten millions starved. "Nonetheless, the famine was not intentional. It
resulted from Stalin's policies of forced collectivization ,"Kotkin writes, himself no advocate
of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant rebellion, bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust
infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to the catastrophe. "Similarly, there was no
'Ukrainian' famine," according to Kotkin, "the famine was [a] Soviet[-wide disaster]" (
Stalin
,
2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29). So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a
politically motivated myth to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.
Identity politics and
Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets
of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi
collaborators and collaboration during World War II
The Canadian government
also recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 "advisors" to train Ukrainian militias,
along with
twenty-three
million dollars
-- it is true a pittance by
American
standards
-- for "non-lethal" military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian
"democracy". Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism is
democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism
are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight
parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration
during World War II. "
Any country sending representatives to Russia's celebration of the
70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler,"
warned
putschist Kiev
in April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine."
"The further a society
drifts from the truth," George Orwell once said, "the more it will hate those that speak it."
Well, here is one truth that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland will not want to hear, hate it or not:
42,000 Canadian soldiers, not to mention 27 million Soviet citizens, died during the war against
the Axis. Memories must be fading, for now we have come to this pass, where our government is
supporting a violent, racist regime in Kiev directly descended from that very enemy against
which Canada and its allies fought during World War II.
2010 - 2020 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to
Strategic Culture online journal
www.strategic-culture.org
.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic
Culture Foundation.
Also by this author
Michael Jabara Carley
Professor of history at the Universit de Montral. He has published widely on Soviet relations
with the West
What Poland Has to Hide About the Origins of World War II
The Canadian Prime Minister Needs a History Lesson
The Russian V-Day Story (Or the History of World War II Not Often Heard in the West)
The Skripal Affair: A Lie Too Far?
Lament for Canada
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Culture Foundation
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To the top
2010 - 2020 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic
Culture online journal
www.strategic-culture.org
.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture
Foundation.
<div><img src="https://mc.yandex.ru/watch/10970266" alt=""/></div>
The downplaying of Russian participation at Pyeongchang, is seemingly done to spin the image
of many Russian cheats being kept out. At the suggestion of the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) closely vetted Russians for competition at
the 2018 Winter Olympics. In actuality, the 2018 Russian Winter Olympic participation wasn't so
off the mark, when compared to past Winter Olympiads – something which (among other
things) puts a dent into the faulty notion that Russia should be especially singled out for
sports doping.
At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Russia had its largest ever Winter Olympic contingent of
232 , on account of the host nation being allowed a greater number of participants. The
168 Russian Winter Olympians at Pyeongchang is
9 less than the Russians who competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Going back further,
Russian Winter Olympic participation in 2006 was at
190 , with its 2002 contingent at
151 , 1998 having
122 and 1994 (Russia's first formal Winter Olympic appearance as Russia)
113 .
The aforementioned Reuters piece references a " historian ", Bill Mallon, who is keen
on using the 1992 Summer Olympic banning of Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and
Montenegro) as a legitimate basis to ban Russia from the upcoming Summer Olympics.
In this instance, Alan Dershowitz's periodic reference to the " if the shoe is on the other
foot " test is quite applicable . Regarding Mallon, " historian " is put in
quotes because his historically premised advocacy is very much incomplete and overly
propagandistic.
For consistency sake and contrary to Mallon, Yugoslavia should've formally participated at
the 1992 Summer Olympics. The Olympic banning of Yugoslavia was bogus, given that the IOC and
the IOC affiliated sports federations didn't ban the US and USSR for their respective role in
wars, which caused a greater number of deaths than what happened in 1990s Bosnia. The Reuters
article at issue references a United Nations resolution for sanctions against Yugoslavia,
without any second guessing, in support of the preference (at least by some) to keep politics
out of sports as much as possible.
Mallon casually notes that Yugoslav team sports were banned from the 1992 Summer Olympics,
unlike individual Yugoslav athletes, who participated as independents. At least two of the
banned Yugoslav teams were predicted to be lead medal contenders.
Croatia was allowed to compete at the 1992 Summer Olympics, despite that nation's military
involvement in the Bosnian Civil War. During the 1992 Summer and Winter Olympics, the former
USSR participated in individual and team sports as the Unified Team (with the exception of the
three former Soviet Baltic republics, who competed under their respective nation). With all
this in mind, the ban on team sports from Yugoslavia at the 1992 Summer Olympics, under a
neutral name, appears to be hypocritical and ethically challenged.
BS aside, the reality is that geopolitical clout (in the form of might making right), is
what compels the banning of Yugoslavia, unlike superpowers engaged in behavior which isn't less
egregious. Although a major world power, contemporary Russia lacks the overall geopolitical
influence of the USSR. Historian Stephen Cohen and some others, have noted that post-Soviet
Russia doesn't get the same (for lack of a better word) respect accorded to the USSR. This
aspect underscores how becoming freer, less militaristic and more market oriented doesn't (by
default) bring added goodwill from a good number of Western establishment politicos and the
organizations which are greatly influenced by them.
On the subject of banning Russia from the Olympics, Canadian sports legal politico Dick
Pound, continues to rehash an inaccurate likening with no critical follow-up. (
An exception being yours truly .) Between
2016 and
2019 , Pound references the Olympic banning of South Africa, as a basis for excluding
Russia. South Africa was banned when it had apartheid policies, which prevented that country's
Black majority from competing in organized sports. Russia has a vast multiethnic participation
in sports and other sectors.
As previously noted , the factual premise to formally ban Russia from the Olympics remains
suspect. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is set to review Russia's appeal to have the
recommended WADA ban against Russia overturned, as Western mass media at large and sports
politicos like Pound continue to push for a CAS decision against Russia.
"... What no one is mentioning is: the US airstrikes on Iraqi military bases, and Soleimani's murder contributed greatly to the hair trigger response of Iran's air defense forces. If Washington did not turn the heat up on both Iraq and Iran there would have been no need for Iran's retaliation, and thus the level of Iran's domestic defense forces would not have been so nervous as to pull the trigger downing the airliner. ..."
"... Former CIA high-ranking official accidentally reveals the type of the false flag operation that the US imperialists will orchestrate to start a war with Iran https://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2020/01/former-cia-high-ranking-official.html ..."
"... It reminds me too much of MH-17, which was not hit with a BUK but with bullets. Iran should have closed its airspace because such tricks are to be expected, irrespective of the cause of the current accident. ..."
When the Pentagon confirmed the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, U.S.
President Donald Trump took to social media to post a single image of the American flag to the
adulation of his followers. Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the other flag
synonymous with U.S. foreign policy, that of the 'false flag' utilized to deceive the public
and stir up support for endless war abroad. While the chicken hawk defenders of Trump's
reckless decision to murder one of the biggest contributors in the defeat of ISIS salivated
over possible war with Iran, their appetite was spoiled by Tehran's retaliatory precision
strikes of two U.S. bases in Iraq that deliberately avoided casualties while in accordance with
the Islamic Republic's right to self defense under Article 51 of the United Nations charter.
The reprisal successfully deescalated the crisis but sent a clear message Iran was willing to
stand up to the U.S. with the backing of Russia and China, while Washington underestimated
Tehran which forewarned the Iraqi government of its impending counterattack so U.S. personnel
could evacuate.
In the hours following the ballistic missile strikes, reports came in that a Boeing 737
international passenger flight scheduled from Tehran to Kiev, Ukraine had crashed shortly after
takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 passengers and flight crew on
board. Initial video of the crash of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 (PS752) showed
that the aircraft was already in flames while descending to the ground, leading to speculation
it was shot down amid the heightened political crisis between Iran and Washington. In the days
following, a second obscure video surfaced which only increased this suspicion. Meanwhile,
Western governments quickly concluded that an anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile brought
PS752 down and were eager to point the finger at Iran before any formal investigation. Many
people, including this author, were admittedly skeptical as to how a plane taking off from
Tehran could have been mistaken five hours after the strikes in Iraq.
Nevertheless, those with reservations turned out to be wrong when days later the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) came clean that its aerospace forces made a "human error" and
accidentally shot the passenger plane down after mistaking it for a incoming cruise missile
when it flew close to a military base during a heightened state of alert in anticipation of
U.S. attack. Many have noted that Iran's honorable decision to take responsibility for the
catastrophe is in sharp contrast with Washington's response in 1988 when the U.S. Navy shot
down Iran Air Flight 655 scheduled from Tehran to Dubai over the Strait of Hormuz in the
Persian Gulf, killing all 290 occupants, after failing to cover it up. Just a month later, Vice
President George H.W. Bush would notoriously state he would " never apologize for the United
States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are ." Although he was not directly
referring to the incident, one can only imagine what the reaction would be if Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani were to say the same weeks after shooting down the Ukrainian plane, let alone an
American one. Predictably, Tehran's transparency has gone mostly unappreciated while the Trump
administration is already trying to use the disaster to further demonize Iran.
Oddly enough, Ukrainian International Airlines is partly owned by the infamous
Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch, politician and energy tycoon Igor Kolomoisky, who was notably one
of the biggest financiers of the anti-Russian, pro-EU coup d'etat which overthrew the
democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Kolomoisky is also a principal
backer of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky whose dubious phone call with Trump
resulted in the 45th U.S. president's impeachment last month. In another astounding
coincidence, Kolomoisky's Privat Group is believed to control Burisma Holdings, the
Cypress-based company whose executive board 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter
was appointed to following the Maidan junta. The former Vice President admitted that he bribed
Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor who was looking into his son's corruption by threatening
to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
Kolomoisky, AKA "the Chameleon", is one of the wealthiest people in the ex-Soviet country
and was formerly appointed as governor of an administrative region bordering Donbass in eastern
Ukraine following the 2014 putsch. He has also funded a battalion of volunteer neo-Nazi
mercenaries fighting alongside the Ukrainian army in the War in Donbass against
Russian-speaking separatists which the military aid temporarily withheld by the Trump
administration that was disputably contingent upon an investigation of Biden and his son goes
to. In 2014, another infamous plane shootdown made international headlines when Malaysian
Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) scheduled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over the
breakaway Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and
crew.
From the get-go, the Obama administration was adamant that the missile which shot down the
Boeing 777 came from separatist rebel territory. However, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin
Mohamad denounced the charges brought against the Russian and Ukrainian nationals indicted in
the NATO-led investigation, dismissing the entire probe as a politically motivated effort
predetermined to scapegoat Moscow and exclude Malaysian participation in the inquiry from the
very beginning. Mohamad is featured in the excellent documentaryMH17: Call for Justice
made by a team of independent journalists which contests the NATO-scripted narrative and
reveals that the Buk missile was more likely launched from Ukrainian Army-controlled territory
than the DPR. One of Kolomoisky's hired guns could also have been responsible.
Shamefully, Iran's admission of guilt in the PS752 downing is already being used by
establishment propagandists to discredit skeptics and conflated with similar contested past
events like MH17 in order to intimidate dissenting voices from speaking up in the future. The
Bellingcat 'investigative journalism' collective which made its name incriminating Moscow for
the MH17 tragedy are the principle offenders. Bellingcat bills itself as an 'independent'
citizen journalism group even though its founder Eliot Higgins is employed by the Atlantic
Council think tank which receives funding from NATO, the U.S. State Department, the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), George Soros' Open Society Foundation NGO, and numerous other
regime change factories. Despite its enormous conflict of interest, Bellingcat remains highly
cited by corporate media as a supposedly reputable source. At the outset, nearly everything
about the PS752 tragedy gave one déjà vu of the MH17 disaster, including the rush
to judgement by Western governments, so it was only natural for many to distrust the official
narrative until more facts came out.
None of this changes that the use of commercial passenger jets as false flag targets for
U.S. national security subterfuge is a verifiable historical fact, not a 'conspiracy theory.'
In 1997, the U.S. National Archives declassified a 1962 memo proposed by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and Department of Defense for then-Secretary of State Robert McNamara entitled
" Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba ." The document outlined a series
of 'false flag' terrorist attacks, codenamed Operation Northwoods, to be carried out on a range
of targets and blamed on the Cuban government to give grounds for an invasion of Havana in
order to depose Fidel Castro. These scenarios included targets within the U.S., in particular
Miami, Florida, which had become a haven of right-wing émigrés and defectors
following the Cuban Revolution. In addition to the sinking of a Cuban refugee boat, one
Northwoods plan included the staging of attacks on a civilian jet airliner and a U.S. Air Force
plane to be pinned on Castro's government:
"8. It is possible to create and incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban
aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States
to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the
flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a
holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a
non-scheduled flight.
9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban
MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack."
Although Operation Northwoods was rejected by then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy which many
believe was a factor in his subsequent assassination, Cuban exiles with the support of U.S.
intelligence would later be implicated in such an attack the following decade with the bombing
of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 in 1976 which killed all 73 passengers and crew on board. In
2005, documents released by the
National Security Archive showed that the CIA under then-director George H.W. Bush had advanced
knowledge of the plans of a Dominican Republic-based Cuban exile terrorist organization, the
Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), at the direction of former CIA
operative Luis Posada Carriles to blow up the airliner. The U.S. later refused to extradite
Carriles to Cuba to face charges and although he never admitted to masterminding the bombing of
the jet, he publicly confessed to other attacks on tourist hotels in Cuba during the 1990s and
was later arrested in 2000 for attempting to blow up an auditorium in Panama trying to
assassinate Castro.
In 1962, the planners of Operation Northwoods concluded that such deceptive operations would
shift U.S. public opinion unanimously against Cuba.
"World opinion and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the
international image of Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and
unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."
The same talking points are used by the U.S. government to demonize Iran today. Initially,
some Western intelligence sources also
concluded that it was a malfunction or overheated engine that brought PS752 down in
corroboration with the Iranian government's original explanation until the narrative abruptly
shifted the following day. That they were so quick to hold Iran accountable without any
investigation gave the apparent likelihood that PS752 could have fallen prey to a
Northwoods-style false flag operation designed to further isolate Iran and defame its leaders
after they took precautions to avoid U.S. casualties in their retaliatory strikes for the
killing of Soleimani. Maintaining the image of Iran as a nefarious regime is crucial in
justifying hawkish U.S. policies toward the country and Iran's noted restraint in its
retaliation put a dent in that impression, so many were suspicious and rightly so.
It was also entirely plausible that U.S. special operations planners could have consulted
the Northwoods playbook replacing Cuba with Iran and the right-wing gusanos who were to assist
the staged attacks in Miami with the Iranian opposition group known as Mujahedin e-Khalq
(MEK/People's Mujahedin of Iran) to do the same in Tehran. In July of last year, Trump's
personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave a paid speech at the
cult-like group's compound in Albania where he not only referred to the group as Iran's
"government-in-exile" but stated
the U.S's explicit intentions to use them for regime change in Iran. The MEK enjoys high level
contacts in the Trump administration and the group was elated at his decision to murder
Soleimani in Baghdad.
From 1997 until 2012, the MEK was on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations
until it was removed by the Obama administration after its expulsion from Iraq in order to
relocate the group to fortified bases in Albania and the NATO protectorate of Kosovo. The
latter disputed territory is a perfect fit for the rebranded group having been founded by
another deregistered foreign terrorist organization, the al-Qaeda linked Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), whose leader, Hashim Thaçi, presides over the partially-recognized state. The MEK
are no longer designated as such despite the State Department's own account of its
bloody history:
"During the 1970s, the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran to destabilize and
embarrass the Shah's regime; the group killed several US military personnel and civilians
working on defense projects in Tehran. The group also supported the takeover in 1979 of the
US Embassy in Tehran. In April 1992 the MEK carried out attacks on Iranian embassies in 13
different countries, demonstrating the group's ability to mount large-scale operations
overseas."
Declassified documents revealing the sinister plans in Operation Northwoods which shockingly
made it all the way to the desk of the president of the United States and the foreknowledge of
Cubana Airlines Flight 455 are just two examples of solid proof that false flag attacks against
civilian passenger planes are a part of the Pentagon's modus operandi as disclosed in its own
archives and there is no reason to believe that such practices have been discontinued. That the
U.S. is still cozy with "former" terror groups like MEK seeking to repatriate is good reason to
believe its use of militant exiles for covert operations like those from Havana has not been
retired. If there were jumps to conclusions that proven serial liars could be looking for an
excuse to stage an attack to lay the blame on Iran, it is only because the distinct probability
was overwhelming. Even so, a stopped clock strikes the right time twice per day and that is
all Iran's acknowledgment of its liability proves -- that even the world's most
unreliable and criminal sources in Washington and Langley can be accurate sometimes
What no one is mentioning is: the US airstrikes on Iraqi military bases, and Soleimani's
murder contributed greatly to the hair trigger response of Iran's air defense forces. If
Washington did not turn the heat up on both Iraq and Iran there would have been no need for
Iran's retaliation, and thus the level of Iran's domestic defense forces would not have been
so nervous as to pull the trigger downing the airliner.
But, if's a huge word.
Israel has had control of Iran's Russian middle systems for years. Russia gave them the
codes.
I think Israel blew up the aircraft. I can't find a link but I heard a huge number of
Soleimani loyalists were arrested in Iran. Someone should have a link to that from Twitter or
somewhere.
I think that there was some kind of collaboration between Khamenei, Israel and the US to
remove Soleimani who had designs on a coup.
I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.
I also don't know who was on that plane. So it's unclear if it was good or bad it was
destroyed. Who knows who those 176 dual Iranian Nationals were.
I just know that if Israel had control of those missile units and it would embarrass Iran
for that to be revealed it makes sense for Iran to claim the lesser of two deep shames.
Particularly if there has been some kind of tacit acceptance of a status as a vassal state
to either the US or Israel behind the scenes to preserve the regime.
Perhaps the MEK or a different vassal ruler who is really crypto Jewish will be appointed
in Solemeinis place, and Iran will hence offer a symbolic enemy to justify the continuation
of the military industrial complex in both Israel and the US.
Even a blind squirrel, even a broken clock twice a day.. The Empire's statements and blind
accusations could have been for any tragedy in a country they were psyopsing, only a matter
of chance for them to be right at some time. In any case, it wasn't intentional on Iran's
part.
Only if accidental means a joint Russian/Iranian hit on a Ukrainian plane carrying fleeing
cia/mossad agents.
This whole situation has once again displayed how easy it is for the zio-media to control
what we see and hear and believe. Disturbingly, that means that things like metoo and
"believe all women" are operations too.
@the grand wazoo I wouldn't be surprised it the FDR shows that the plane strayed off its
registered Flightpath and was involved in a covert recon mission that went bad.
It reminds me too much of MH-17, which was not hit with a BUK but with bullets. Iran should have closed its airspace
because such tricks are to be expected, irrespective of the cause of the current accident. There is no immediate reason
for Iranians to fly to Ukraine, or anywhere else. It may sound silly but flying is still a special and dangerous thing and
should not be taken for granted.
For someone who doesn't watch television or read Iranian newspapers it was only reported
on Twitter and then repeated by PressTV and others on internet. Which parts of the story are
real?
Of course, it was a huge and most regrettable mistake. Doubtless, the Iranians will
compensate the victims for what that is worth. Most of the passengers were Iranians. I
suspect that many of the "Canadians" Trudeau is on about are of Iranian descent. They would
certainly be considered to be Iranians in Iran.
The series of coincidences highlighted in this article are remarkable. It has
synchronicity splashed all over it.
I worked at Tehran airport for some years prior to the Revolution. After the Revolution, I
volunteered to return on behalf of Raytheon (of all companies) to get some money owing. No
one else was prepared to go there. Iran Air personnel were delighted to meet me again and
they promptly paid the bill. I took a holiday to the Caspian with my ex-girlfriend.
A further piece of synchronicity is that I am currently visiting Kiev. The world is a
truly incestuous place.
Set aside the beatup of two operations that neither the CIA or any American agency carried
out the author has apparently failed to see the obvious. That is that the Iranians had no
possibility of covering up the missile strike. Or did he imagine that everyone who might tell
the truth could be kept permanently separated from plane parts and bodies which would have
shown unmistakeable and undeniable evidences of the strike.
If the concerns of ordinary people were not overlooked, if their interests were not
neglected and their desires not betrayed, there would be no opportunity for anyone to come
along and finally give them the acknowledgement and representation that they deserve since
they would already be satisfied.
But their voice is ignored, there trust constantly abused and their hopes ultimately
forsaken.
If the public was cared for at all, what reason would there be for them to feel
indignation or disappointment? How could there be anything to appeal to at all? How could
there be any unspoken sentiment to tap into and arouse? Those who pledge to pull the rug out
from under the feet of the establishment criminals that call themselves politicians are
smeared and threatened. There cannot be a restoration of positive values and policies, and
the public most definitely cannot have their needs not just insincerely addressed, but
positively fulfilled. In what kind of world is someone who sympathizes with popular opinion
fervently attacked? What does it say about a society that condemns a truly popular leader who
is confided in and adored? A leader that vows to give the people their pride and dignity
back? To reinstate a semblance of order? To persecute the traitors that have sacrificed their
future on the alter of usury and greed? No. The clique must not be held to account for their
crimes, and the concept of justice must remain theoretical. The term populist is perceived
negatively. But why? I will tell you why. Because the charlatans that call themselves leaders
today fear their milk and honey being wrested from their grimy little paws.
"... The 16-month study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) called Iran's Networks of Influence claims that the networks, including Shia militias fighting in what it says is a "grey zone", for instance, are something Iran heavily relies on, even to a greater extent than conventional military forces. ..."
"... Although the report concedes that overall military balance is still in favor of the US and allies, the balance of effective forces has shifted towards Iran and is currently in the Islamic Republic's favour. The study goes on to claim that "Iran is fighting and winning wars 'fought amongst the people', not wars between states". ..."
"... The study has also come up with a number of calculations: the extraterritorial al-Quds force and various militias reportedly amount to 200,000 fighters. Meanwhile, the total cost of Iran's activities in Iraq and Yemen was $16 billion, and Lebanon's Hezbollah reportedly receives $700 million in grants from the Islamic Republic. ..."
A fresh in-depth study of Iran's military capabilities and balance of power in the embattled
Middle East has assumed that regional wars are being waged on two layers - between states and
in a so-called "grey zone", where no conventional force can counterbalance Iran's sovereign
dominance. As one of the most detailed assessments of Iran's military strategy suggests, the
Islamic Republic's "third party capability" has becomes Tehran's most prominent weapon of
choice.
The 16-month study by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) called Iran's Networks of Influence claims that the
networks, including Shia militias fighting in what it says is a "grey zone", for instance, are
something Iran heavily relies on, even to a greater extent than conventional military
forces.
The network is said to be operating differently in most countries, having been designed by
Tehran as a key means of countering regional instability and international pressure alike, with
the policy "having consistently delivered Iran advantage without the cost or risk of direct
confrontation with adversaries".
Although the report concedes that overall military balance is still in favor of the US and
allies, the balance of effective forces has shifted towards Iran and is currently in the
Islamic Republic's favour. The study goes on to claim that "Iran is fighting and winning wars
'fought amongst the people', not wars between states".
The report details at length the balance of power in the region painting it as "complex and
congested battle spaces involving no rule of law or accountability, low visibility and
multiple players who represent a mosaic of local and regional interests".
The study has also come up with a number of calculations: the extraterritorial al-Quds force
and various militias reportedly amount to 200,000 fighters. Meanwhile, the total cost of Iran's
activities in Iraq and Yemen was $16 billion, and Lebanon's Hezbollah reportedly receives $700
million in grants from the Islamic Republic.
The report comes as Iran continues to battle US-imposed economic sanctions, which closely
followed Washington's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in
May 2018.
On 8 May, the first anniversary of the move, Tehran announced that it would start
scrapping its nuclear obligations stipulated by the JCPOA every 60 days unless European
signatories did their best to save the agreement, safeguarding Iran's interests amid
Washington's re-imposed sanctions.
"... What i find truly amazing is that American Zionists still believe crushing Iran is easy enough. Israel, with 8 million jews stuffed in a small country, is nothing more than a carrier battle group marooned on land ..."
The tramp & nutNyahoo machismo show continues to be fun to watch. Both
show off their penis worms as they arrogantly claim they can crush iran. Both the usa and
israel keep banging on the doors and walls of their pissed-off neighbors' houses. That
eventually gets you murdered whether in baltimore or baghdad.
A crushable iran is true if and only if they can mount a full-on nuclear war on Iran.
But such horrendous cheating means all bets are off, and iran's allies will provide the
nukes required to melt down the American homeland too. Nobody, not even Russia and china,
can afford to stay in the sidelines in a nuclear war in the 2020s.
What i find truly amazing is that American Zionists still believe crushing Iran is easy
enough. Israel, with 8 million jews stuffed in a small country, is nothing more than a
carrier battle group marooned on land. Sitting ducks, with nice armor, nukes and all, are
... still sitting ducks. nutNyahoo should ask his technical crew just how few megatons are
needed, or just a few thousand modern missiles are required to transform sitting ducks into
nicely roasted peking ducks.
So a conventional war it is. The usa and israel has exactly zero, zilch and nada chances
of winning a war with iran. The usa keeps forgetting that it is a dying empire with dying
funding value and mental resources. Just like israel which oddly thinks dozens of f-35s
will give it immunity through air superiority. Proof of this fact that iran will win comes
from simply asking american and israeli war experts to go on cnn or the washington post on
how they intend to win a war with iran.
Im sure these expert bloviators will say that it is as easy as winning a naval war
against china, which is capable of launching only 3 new warships in a week. Or an even
easier time against russia, which can launch only a few thousand hypersonic nuke missiles
because its GDP is no bigger than that of texas.
The Pentagon is super slow to adapt and learn. If you understand that
bureaucracy is an ancient organizational structure and that the organizational culture of
the Pentagon is pathologically dysfunctional you could have predicted the moral and
financial bankruptcy of America 15-20 years ago. The "Why?", finally made sense when I
discovered what a sociopath was.
It's about time the US practices what it preachs and start behaving like a normal
country instead of a spoiled narcissistic brat. see more
US military & strategic thought became lazy during the
late days of the Cold War. It mirrored the decline & fall of the foundations of its
opponent, USSR. Post-Cold War, US military & strategic thinking flushed into the sewer.
It was all about maintaining the military as some sort of a social policy jobs program,
operating legacy tech as the mission. And then came the "world-improvers" -- beginning w
the Clinton Admin -- who worked to turn the world into a global "urban renewal" project;
meaning to mirror the success US Big Govt showed in the slums of American cities from sea
to sea. The past 30 yrs of US strategic thinking and related governance truly disgusts me.
see more
Soviet union fall had very different reasons and Soviet military thought was
doing quite well then along with military. Current russian military wonders is completion
of what was started then and not finished earlier because of the disintegration of the
Soviet state. The soviet fall however is extremely regrettable because there was a new way how things can
be done that Soviet union was showing to the world. USA fall long term is a very good thing
because USA is a paragon of how things should be done the old way and basically a huge
parasite. Many negative trends that are afflicting the world were started by USA. Unlimited
individualism and consumerism would be a couple of those. see more
Why does almost every person on Earth feel the need to force others to
bend the knee to their beliefs?
Religious beliefs are what one thinks should be done to promote survival in an
afterlife, political beliefs are what one thinks should be done to promote survival in this
world.
The world would be a far better, more civilized, of world if such beliefs were only
shared on a voluntary basis.
As for individualism, I would rather be free than live in a modern day egalitarian
hunter-gatherer tribe run by modern day psychopathic alpha-males.
That is certainly not a recipe for success. see more
It also mirrors the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It was Emperor
Augustus that decided the costs to further expand the Empire were too great after losing
one (or two?) legions against the Germanic tribes.
The US has reached its greatest extent. We are living through it. The US didn't go forward
into war with Iran twice. The odds of humanity surviving this immense turn of history is
looking better. see more
Frankly, nothing in common. I read this comparison all the
time.
Yes, Augustus decided not to continue along with expansion into Germany after losing 3
Varus legions due to ambush.
But he famously noted that it does not worth to go fishing with golden hook. Basically
speaking, Germany was not worth fighting for. Poor and remote it had nothing to offer. Just
a drain on resources. As long as conquest was moving smoothly it was ok, but after losses
were inflicted Augustus decided it was not worth it.
Roman expansion under augustus was carried mostly to consolidate previous conquests and
create strategical debth along core and strategical provinces also creating linkage.
When enemy far stronger than germans posed resources which made the whole conquest worthy
no amount of resistance saved Dacians and Parthia also almost died under Trajan attack.
Roman policies were adequate and wise. Treaties were respected, allies supported and
benefited. Empire was build around Mediterranean creating good communication and routes
considering obviously limits of that day technology.
Rome did not behave like crazy and did not deliver threats that she could not follow
through. When war was decided upon thorough preparations were taken. Political goals were
achieved. Wars were won. When Adrian considered that empire was overextended in Parthis, he
simply abandoned all conquered territories. Just like that.
Logical calm thinking USA,is not capable of. Rome truly based upon superior military and
diplomacy dominance lasted many centuries. USA few decades. One hit wonder, lucky fool I
would call it. see more
Yes, this is somewhat puzzling. As I said, let's wait and see where it all
develops to, but as Twisted Genius succinctly observed -- Iran now controls tempo because she
has conventional superiority. Anyone who has precision-guided, stand off weaponry in good
numbers will be on top. see more
The old submarine saying is, "There are two kinds of ships; submarines, and
targets." . The new version for land ops is, "There are two kinds of land-based military assets;
precision-guided missiles, and targets." (And per the photos, those Iranian missiles were
quite precise; bulls-eyes.) . Iran and its missiles demonstrated that the entire strategic foundation for US mil presence
in the Middle East is now obsolete. Everything the US would ever want to do there is now
subject to Iran's version of "steel rain." Every runway, hangar, aircraft parking area;
every supply depot or warehouse; every loading pier, fuel site, naval pier. Everything...
is a target. And really... there's no amount of US "airpower" and "tech" than can mitigate
the Iran missile threat. . Meanwhile, related thinking... Iran's true strategic interest is NOT fighting a near-term
war w/ USA. Iran wants US to exit Middle East; and Iran wants to be able to pursue its
nuclear program. Soleimani or no, Iran appears to have its eyeballs fixed on the long-term
goals. see more
The new version for land ops is, "There are two kinds of land-based military assets;
precision-guided missiles, and targets."
Exactly, and Iran has long-range TLAMs in who knows what numbers, That, in its turn,
brings about the next issue of range for Iranian indigenous anti-ship missiles. Not, of
course, to mention the fact of only select people knowing if Russia transferred P-800 Onyx
to Iran She certainly did it for Syria. If that weapon is there--the Persian Gulf and
Hormuz Strait will be shut completely closed and will push out CBGs far into the Indian
Ocean. see more
It is simply pathetic after decades of talking non stop about developments of
anti missiles and huge amounts wasted and nobody is responsible. This is the way capitalism
works.profits is everything and outcomes secondary. Thankfully russia has got soviet
foundation and things so far are working well. I come to think that in our times no serious
industrial processes should be allowed to stay in private hands. Only services and so.e
other simpler stuff under heavy state control to ensure quality. Otherwise profit
orientation will eventually destroy everything like with Boeing.
I know, i already wrote a full scale war scenario in one of
the comments. Iran can destroy all US bases in 2000 km range. But this does not mean that
it can not be bombed back to the stone age, if the US really wishes so. The problem for the
US is the high cost as well as the high debt levels, but it does have the technical
capability to do that after 2 - 3 years of bombing.
Also low yield tactical nukes are designed to lower the treshold of the use of nukes in
otherwise conventional war, producing less international outrage than the megaton city
buster bombs. Why do you think the US is developing them again? Because they would want to
use them in conventional conflicts.
Here btw is Yurasumy, he also says that the US can technically bomb Iran back to the
stone age, but the cost will be too high.
Again--what's the plan and what's the price? Iran HAS Russia's ISR on her side in case
of such SEAD.
Does the United States want to risk lives of thousands of its personnel (not
to speak of expensive equipment) in Qatar, KSA, Iraq. Does Israel want to "get it"?
There
are numbers which describe such an operation (it was. most likely, already planned as
contingency). Immediate question: when was the last time USAF operated in REAL dense ECM
and ECCM environment? I do not count some brushes with minimal EW in Syria.
Russia there
uses only minimally required option, for now. Iran has a truck load EW systems, including
some funny Russian toys which allowed Iran to take control of US UAVs, as an example. As I
say, this is not Iraq and by a gigantic margin. see more
I already said that debt levels do not allow it and the price
would be too high, but yes, the US does have the military capability to destroy Iran. By
conventional means. It is another question that it is not in good fiscal shape. Anyway, US
ballistic missiles (non nuclear armed) will be hard to stop by EW. Even if Iran gets rid of
50 % of incoming TLAMs, the US will keep sending more and more until most infrastructure,
bridges, oil refineries, power plants, factories, ports etc. are destroyed. This is why i
said it would take 2 - 3 years. see more
but yes, the US does have the military capability to destroy Iran. By conventional
means
That is the whole point: NO, it doesn't. Unless US goes into full mobilization mode and
addresses ALL (plus a million more not listed) requirements for such a war which I listed
in the post. Well, that or nukes. see
more
Yurasumy is a pretty good analist and he thinks that they can. I do not
see it for the US being too hard to produce more TLAMS, ICBMs and IRBMs (conventional) to
sustain the effort for 2 years, by that time most iranian infrastructure will be destroyed.
If the fiscal situation allowes it. see more
I don't know who Yarasumy is and what is his background, but unlike him I
actually write books, including on modern warfare. This is not to show off, but I am sure I
can make basic calculations. This is not to mention the fact that even Sivkov agrees with
my points and Sivkov, unlike Yarsumy, graduated Popov's VVMURE, served at subs, then
graduated Kuznetsov Academy, then Academy of the General Staff and served in Main
Operational Directorate (GOU) until retiring in the rank of Captain 1st Rank from the
billet of Combat Planning group. So, I would rather stick to my opinion.
see more
Why do you think that the US can not destroy Iran with IRBMs? Actually this
is their strategy vs China. If they think its viable vs China, then it should be viable vs
Iran too. see more
Because unlike the US, Russia's Air Defenses have a rather
very impressive history of shifting the balance in wars in favor of those who have them,
when used properly. But then I can quote for you a high ranking intelligence officer:
A friend of mine who has expertise in these matters wrote me:
Any air defense engineer with a securityclearance that isn't lying through his teeth
will admit that Russia'sair defense technology surpassed us in the 1950's and we've never
been able to catch up. The systems thy have in place surrounding Moscow make our Patriot
3's look like fucking nerf guns.
Mathematics is NOT there for the United States for a real combined operations war of
scale with Iran. Unless US political class really wants to see people with pitch-forks.
see more
"Mathematics is not there..." . Neither is the industrial base, including supply lines. Not the mines, mills, factories to
produce any significant levels of warfighting materiel such as we're talking about here.
Not the workforce, either. Meanwhile, where are the basic designs for these weps? The years
of lab work, bench tests, pilot specimens & prototypes, the development pipeline? The
contractors to build them? the Tier 2, 3, 4 suppliers? Where are the universities that
train such people as are needed? Where is the political will? Where is the government
coordination? Where is the money? Indeed, every Democrat and probably half the Republicans
who run for office campaign on controlling military spending; not that USA gets all that
much benefit from the current $800 billion per year. see more
You see, here is the difference--I can calculate approximate required force
for that but I don't want to. It is Friday. You can get some basic intro into operational
theory (and even into Salvo Equations) in my latest book. Granted, my publisher fought me
tooth and nail to remove as much match as possible. But I'll give you a hint--appearance of
S-500 on any theater of operations effectively closes it off effectively for any missile or
aircraft operations when deployed in echeloned (multi-layer) AD. see more
"... Economic growth is more about financialising goods and services that were previously free or are/were social goods. There is no real growth; just taxing the living. ..."
"... So, in my view, the only restraint on destroying Iran is capability, is the cost and the risk of retaliation (not just from Iran) - not the destruction of Iran's capital - better for Iran's capital to be destroyed than for Iran to be independent or a competitor. ..."
My comment @342 should have read: "The petrodollar is the way in which the US gets the
rest of the world to fund its wars,"
---------
Your comment about capitalist accumulation doesn't hold (as a motivator for the US) when
we have a capitalist monopolist situation. Rate of profit is not about growth (of real
goods); it is about reducing competition and scarcity. When you are the monopolist you can
charge what you like but profit becomes meaningless - the monopolist power comes from the
control of resources - the monopolistic capitalist becomes a ruler/monarch. You no longer
need ever-increasing customers so you can dispense with them if you so chose (by reducing the
population). One bottle of water is far more valuable and a lot less trouble to produce that
100 millions bottles of water. There is no point in AI to provide for the needs of "the
many"; AI becomes a means to dispense with "the many" altogether.
Economic growth is more about financialising goods and services that were previously free
or are/were social goods. There is no real growth; just taxing the living.
So, in my view, the only restraint on destroying Iran is capability, is the cost and the risk of
retaliation (not just from Iran) - not the destruction of Iran's capital - better for Iran's
capital to be destroyed than for Iran to be independent or a competitor.
'Brought to Jesus': the evangelical grip on the Trump administration The influence of
evangelical Christianity is likely to become an important question as Trump finds himself
dependent on them for political survival
Fri 11 Jan 2019 02.00 EST Last modified on Fri 18 Jan 2019 16.51 EST
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Donald Trump at
the Republican national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on 18 July 2016. Photograph: Mike
Segar/Reuters I n setting out the Trump administration's Middle East policy, one of the first
things Mike Pompeo made clear to his audience in Cairo is that he had come to the region as "as
an evangelical Christian".
In his speech at the American University in Cairo, Pompeo said that in his state department
office: "I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth."
The secretary of state's primary message in Cairo was that the US was ready once more to
embrace conservative Middle Eastern regimes, no matter how repressive, if they made common
cause against Iran.
His second message was religious. In his visit to Egypt, he came across as much as a
preacher as a diplomat. He talked about "America's innate goodness" and marveled at a newly
built cathedral as "a stunning testament to the Lord's hand".
ss="rich-link"> 'Toxic Christianity': the evangelicals creating champions for
Trump Read more
The desire to erase Barack Obama's legacy, Donald Trump's instinctive embrace of autocrats,
and the private interests of the Trump Organisation have all been analysed as driving forces
behind the administration's foreign policy.
The gravitational pull of white evangelicals has been less visible. But it could have
far-reaching policy consequences. Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo both cite evangelical
theology as a powerful motivating force.
Just as he did in Cairo, Pompeo called on the congregation of a Kansan megachurch three
years ago to join a fight of good against evil.
"We will continue to fight these battles," the then congressman said at the Summit church in Wichita. "It
is a never-ending struggle until the rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight."
For Pompeo's audience, the rapture invoked an apocalyptical Christian vision of the future,
a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus Christ, when the faithful
will ascend to heaven and the rest will go to hell.
For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the
gathering of the world's Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan
River. It is a belief, known as premillenial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism – and
it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy .
It directly colours views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and indirectly, attitudes
towards Iran, broader Middle East geopolitics and the primacy of protecting Christian
minorities. In his Cairo visit, Pompeo heaped praise on Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, for building the
new cathedral, but made no reference to the 60,000
political prisoners the regime is thought to be holding, or its routine use of torture.
Pompeo is an evangelical Presbyterian, who says he was "brought to Jesus" by other cadets at
the West Point military academy in the 1980s.
"He knows best how his faith interacts with his political beliefs and the duties he
undertakes as secretary of state," said Stan van den Berg, senior pastor of Pompeo's church in
Wichita in an email. "Suffice to say, he is a faithful man, he has integrity, he has a
compassionate heart, a humble disposition and a mind for wisdom."
As Donald
Trump finds himself ever more dependent on them for his political survival, the influence
of Pence, Pompeo and the ultra-conservative white Evangelicals who stand behind them is likely
to grow.
"Many of them relish the second coming because for them it means eternal life in heaven,"
Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University said. "There
is a palpable danger that people in high position who subscribe to these beliefs will be
readier to take us into a conflict that brings on Armageddon."
Chesnut argues that Christian Zionism has become the "majority theology" among white US
Evangelicals, who represent about a quarter of the
adult population . In a 2015
poll , 73% of evangelical Christians said events in Israel are prophesied in the Book of
Revelation. Respondents were not asked specifically whether their believed developments in
Israel would actually bring forth the apocalypse.
The relationship between evangelicals and the president himself is complicated.
Trump himself embodies the very opposite of a pious Christian ideal. Trump is not
churchgoer. He is profane, twice divorced, who has boasted of sexually assaulting women. But
white evangelicals have embraced him.
Eighty per cent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016, and his popularity among them
is remains in the 70s. While other white voters have flaked away in the first two years of his
presidency, white evangelicals have become his last solid bastion.
Some leading evangelicals see Trump as a latterday King Cyrus, the sixth-century BC Persian
emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity.
The comparison is made explicitly in
The Trump Prophecy , a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas around the country in
October, depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God's voice, saying: "I've
chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this."
Lance Wallnau , a self-proclaimed
prophet who features in the film, has called Trump "God's Chaos Candidate" and a "modern
Cyrus".
"Cyrus is the model for a nonbeliever appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the
faithful," said Katherine
Stewart , who writes extensively about the Christian right.
She added that they welcome his readiness to break democratic norms to combat perceived
threats to their values and way of life.
"The Christian nationalist movement is characterized by feelings of persecution and, to some
degree, paranoia – a clear example is the idea that there is somehow a 'war on
Christmas'," Stewart said. "People in those positions will often go for authoritarian leaders
who will do whatever is necessary to fight for their cause."
Trump was raised as a Presbyterian, but leaned increasingly towards evangelical preachers as
he began contemplating a run for the presidency.
Trump's choice of Pence as a running mate was a gesture of his commitment, and four of the
six preachers at his inauguration were evangelicals, including White and Franklin Graham, the
eldest son of the preacher Billy Graham, who defended Trump through his many sex scandals,
pointing out: "We are all sinners."
Having lost control of the House of Representatives in November, and under ever closer
scrutiny for his campaign's links to the Kremlin, Trump's instinct has been to cleave ever
closer to his most loyal supporters.
Almost alone among major demographic groups, white evangelicals are overwhelmingly in favour
of Trump's border wall, which some preachers equate with fortifications in the Bible.
Evangelical links have also helped shape US alliances in the Trump presidency. As secretary
of state, Pompeo has been instrumental in forging link with other evangelical leaders in the
hemisphere, including
Guatemala's Jimmy Morales and the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro . Both have undertaken to
follow the US lead in
moving their embassies in Israel to Jerusalem .
Trump's order to move
the US embassy from Tel Aviv – over the objections of his foreign policy and national
security team – is a striking example of evangelical clout.
ss="rich-link"> Sheldon Adelson: the casino mogul driving Trump's Middle East
policy Read more
The move was also pushed by Las Vegas billionaire and Republican mega-donor, Sheldon
Adelson, but the orchestration of the
embassy opening ceremony last May, reflected the audience Trump was trying hardest to
appease.
For many evangelicals, the move cemented Trump's status as the new Cyrus, who oversaw the
Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
The tightening of the evangelical grip on the administration has also been reflected in a
growing hostility to the UN, often portrayed as a sinister and godless organisation.
Since the US ambassador, Nikki Haley, announced her departure in October and Pompeo took
more direct control, the US mission has become increasingly combative, blocking references to
gender and
reproductive health in UN documents.
Some theologians also see an increasingly evangelical tinge to the administration's broader
Middle East policies, in particular its fierce embrace of Binyamin Netanyahu's government, the
lack of balancing sympathy for the Palestinians – and the insistent demonisation of the
Iranian government.
ss="rich-link"> US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo
Read more
Evangelicals, Chesnut said, "now see the United States locked into a holy war against the
forces of evil who they see as embodied by Iran".
This zeal for a defining struggle has thus far found common cause with more secular hawks
such as the national security adviser, John Bolton, and Trump's own drive to eliminate the
legacy of Barack Obama, whose signature foreign policy achievement was the 2015 nuclear deal
with Tehran, which Trump abrogated last May.
In conversations with European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May, Trump has
reportedly insisted he has no intention of going to war with Iran. His desire to extricate US
troops from Syria marks a break with hawks, religious and secular, who want to contain Iranian
influence there.
But the logic of his policy of ever-increasing pressure, coupled with unstinting support for
Israel and Saudi Arabia, makes confrontation with Iran ever more likely.
One of the most momentous foreign policy questions of 2019 is whether Trump can veer away
from the collision course he has helped set in motion – perhaps conjuring up a last
minute deal, as he did with North Korea – or instead welcome conflict as a distraction
from his domestic woes, and sell it to the faithful as a crusade.
"... We know from various Congressional folks that briefers of Congress have failed to produce any evidence of "imminent" plans to kill Americans Soleimani was involved with that would have made this a legal killing rather than an illegal assassination. ..."
"... As Sergey Lavrov and President Putin have stated for a long time (and long before President Trump came along), the USA is 'agreement incapable'. However, now you have to wonder if any country really trusts any agreement they will make with the USA. Without trust on any level, cooperation/trade treaties and so on on are impossible or eminently disposable, i.e., not worth the paper upon which they are written. ..."
"... 603 Americans killed in Iraq, he says Trump supporters claim, but we had millions of Iraqi's, Syrians, Libyans and others killed or their lives uprooted by Bush and Obama and company – yet they were not assassinated. ..."
"... NO. Shockingly bad decision; you can just manage to glimpse around the edges of the war propaganda the embarrassment and backpedaling for having willingly stepped into such a gigantic steaming pile of excrement. The parade of smooth-faced liars on the MSM asserting that the US is now safer (the "war is peace" crowd) is sickening. Some even have the gall to assert that the enormous crowds in Iran are forced to attend by the repressive regime. Of course, there's no evidence of a provocation and they'll never produce any. ..."
"... I find it interesting that Pompeo was "disappointed" – what did he think would happen? For a Secretary of State, he's obviously extremely out of touch with the rest of the world if he didn't have some realistic idea of how this would go down. ..."
"... One other glaring omission from the article – the only reason there was a US military contractor in Iraq available to be killed in the first place is due to the illegal war based on false premises launched almost two decades ago by the US, which continues to occupy the country to this day. ..."
"... Pretty clear who the terrorists are on this case. ..."
"... Fascinating developments on this issue today. Pompeo admits that nothing was "imminent." Given the very specific definitions of Imminence that draw red lines between what is or is not legal in international law, this could get big very quickly. ..."
"... War hawks dressed in red or blue can become mercenaries and create Go Fund Me drives to protect their investments and any particular country which they have a personal affinity or citizenship. ..."
"... Lest we forget: "War is a racket." ..."
"... How does this meet the internationally recognized legal requirement of "imminent" danger to human life required to kill a political or military leader outside of a declared war? All public statements by the U.S. political and military leadership point to a retaliatory killing, at best, with a vague overlay of preemptive action. ..."
"... If you agree that the "Bethlehem Doctrine" has never been recognized by the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, or the legislatures of the three rogue states who have adopted it, the assassination of Suleimani appears to have been a murder. ..."
"... "I cross-checked a Pentagon casualty database with obituaries and not 1 of the 9 American servicemen killed fighting in Iraq since 2011 died at the hands of militias backed by Suleimani. His assassination was about revenge and provocation, not self-defense." ..."
"... The unsuccessful operation may indicate that the Trump administration's killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani last week was part of a broader operation than previously explained, raising questions about whether the mission was designed to cripple the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or solely to prevent an imminent attack on Americans as originally stated. ..."
"... For some "exceptional" reason we don't recognize international law! We are the terrorists not them. ..."
Can The US Assassination Of Qassem Soleimani Be Justified? Posted on
January 10, 2020 by Yves Smith Yves here. Even though the
angst over "what next" with the US/Iran confrontation has fallen a bit, there is still a
depressingly significant amount of mis- and dis-information about the Soleimani assassination.
This post is a nice high level treatment that might be a good candidate for circulating among
friends and colleagues who've gotten a hefty dose of MSM oversimplifications and social media
sloganeering.
Update 6:50 AM: Due to the hour, I neglected to add a quibble, and readers jumped on the
issue in comments. First, it has not been established who launched the attack that killed a the
US contractor. The US quickly asserted it was Kat'ib Hezbollah, but there were plenty of groups
in the area that had arguably better motives, plus Kat'ib Hezbollah has denied it made the
strike. Second, Kat'ib Hezbollah is an Iraqi military unit.
By Barkley Rosser, Professor of Economics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg,
Virginia. Originally published at EconoSpeak
We know from various Congressional folks that briefers of Congress have failed to produce
any evidence of "imminent" plans to kill Americans Soleimani was involved with that would have
made this a legal killing rather than an illegal assassination. The public statements by
administration figures have cited such things as the 1979 hostage crisis, the already dead
contractor, and, oh, the need to "reestablish deterrence" after Trump did not follow through on
previous threats he made. None of this looks remotely like "imminent plans," not to mention
that the Iraqi PM Abdul-Mahdi has reported that Soleimani was on the way to see him with a
reply to a Saudi peace proposal. What a threatening imminent plan!
As it is, despite the apparent lack of "imminent plans" to kill Americans, much of the
supporting rhetoric for this assassination coming out of Trump supporters (with bragging about
it having reportedly been put up on Trump's reelection funding website) involves charges that
Soleimani was "the world's Number One terrorist" and was personally responsible for killing 603
Americans in Iraq. Even as many commentators have noted the lack of any "imminent plans,"
pretty much all American ones have prefaced these questions with assertions that Soleimani was
unquestionable "evil" and "bad" and a generally no good guy who deserved to be offed, if not
right at this time and in this way. He was the central mastermind and boss of a massive
international terror network that obeyed his orders and key to Iran's reputed position as "the
Number One state supporter of terrorism," with Soleimani the key to all of that.
Of course, in Iran it turns out that Soleimani was highly respected, even as many oppose the
hawkish policies he was part of. He was viewed as crucial to the victory over ISIS/ISIL/Daesh
in Iraq, much feared by Iranians. Shia take martyrdom seriously, and he is viewed as a martyr.
It appears that even Trump took notice of the massive outpouring of mourning and praise for
Soleimani there up to the point of people dying in a stampede in a mourning crowd in his
hometown. But, hey, obviously these people simply do not understand that he was The World's
Number One Terrorist! Heck, I saw one commenter on Marginal Revolution claiming Soleimani was
responsible killing "hundreds of thousands." Yes, this sort of claim is floating around out
there.
A basic problem here is that while indeed Soleimani commanded the IGRC al Quds force that
supported and supplied various Shia militias in several Middle Eastern nations, these all were
(and are) ultimately independent. Soleimani may have advised them, but he was never in a
position to order any of them to do anything. Al Quds itself has never carried out any of the
various attacks outside of Iran that Soleimani is supposedly personally responsible for.
Let us consider the specific case that gets pushed most emphatically, the 603 Americans dead
in Iraq, without doubt a hot button item here in the US. First of all, even if Soleimani really
was personally responsible for their deaths, there is the technical matter that their deaths
cannot be labeled "terrorism." That is about killing non-combatant civilians, not military
personnel involved in combat. I do not support the killing of those American soldiers, most of
whom were done in by IEDs, which also horribly injured many more. But indeed this awful stuff
happened. But in fact this was all done by Iraqi -based Shia militias. Yes, they were supported
by Soleimani, but while some have charged al Quds suppplied the IEDs, this turns out not to be
the case. These were apparently made in Iraq by these local militias. Soleimani's al Quds are
not totally innocent in all this, reportedly providing some training and some inputs. But the
IEDs were made by the militias themselves and planted by them.
It is also the case that when the militias and Americans were working together against
ISIS/IISIL/Daesh, none of this happened, and indeed that was still the case up until this most
recent set of events, with the death setting off all this an American civilian contractor
caught on a base where several Iraqis were killed by a rocket from the Kat'b Hezbollah Iraqi
group. Of course with Trump having Soleimani assassinated, this cooperation has ceased, with
the US military no longer either fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh nor training the Iraqi military.
Indeed, the Iraqi parliament has demanded that US troops leave entirely, although Trump
threatened Iraq with economic sanctions if that is followed through on.
As it is, the US datinrg back to the Obama administration has been supplying Saudi Arabia
with both arms and intelligence that has been used to kill thousands of Yemeni civilians.
Frankly, US leaders look more like terrorists than Soleimani.
I shall close by noting the major changes in opinion in both Iran and Iraq regarding the US
as a result of this assassination. In Iran as many have noted there were major demonstrations
against the regime going on, protesting bad economic conditions, even as those substantially
were the result of the illegal US economic sanctions imposed after the US withdrew from the
JCPOA nuclear deal, to which Iran was adhering. Now those demonstrations have stopped and been
replaced by the mass demonstrations against the US over Soleimani's assassination. And we also
have Iran further withdrawing from that deal and moving to more highly enrich uranium.
In Iraq, there had been major anti-Iran demonstrations going on, with these supported to
some degree by the highest religious authority in the nation, Ayatollah Ali Sistani. However,
when Soleimani's body was being transferred to Iran, Sistani's son accompanied his body. It
really is hard to see anything that justifies this assassination.
I guess I should note for the record that I am not a fan of the Iranian regime, much less
the IGRC and its former and new commander. It is theocratic and repressive, with many political
prisoners and a record of killing protestors. However, frankly, it is not clearly all that much
worse than quite a few of its neighboring regimes. While Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei was not
popularly elected, its president, Rouhani, was, who obeyed popular opinion in negotiating the
JCPOA that led to the relaxation of economic sanctions, with his power reduced when Trump
withdrew from the agreement. Its rival Saudi Arabia has no democracy at all, and is also a
religiously reactionary and repressive regime that uses bone saws on opponents and is
slaughtering civilians in a neighboring nation.
with the death setting off all this an American civilian contractor caught on a base
where several Iraqis were killed by a rocket from the Kat'b Hezbollah Iraqi group.
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this, but it appears to be presented here as a fact.
Kat'b Hezbollah have denied responsibility for that rocket attack. To the best of my
knowledge, no proof whatsoever has been presented that it was not an attack by jihadis in the
area, whom Khat'b Hezbollah were fighting, or by others with an interest in stirring the
pot.
They are having a hard time coming up with public evidence to support any justification,
aren't they?
The latest was Pence's "keeping it secret to protect sources and methods" meme. Purely
speculating here, but I immediately thought, "Oh, Israeli intelligence." Gotta protect allies
in the region.
Debka, run by supposedly-former Israeli military intelligence, was enthusing about
upcoming joint operations against Iran and its allies a month or two ago. In contrast,
they've been uncharacteristically quiet, though supportive of the US, regarding recent
developments.
Secretary of State Pompeo claimed that Soleimani was responsible for hundreds of thousands
of deaths in Syria. Basically blaming Iran for all deaths in the Syrian war.
People more commonly do this with Assad. A complicated war with multiple factions fighting
each other, armed by outside sources including the US, most with horrific human rights
records, but almost every pundit and politician in the US talks as though Assad killed
everyone personally.
Once in a while you get a little bit of honesty seeping in, but it never changes the
narrative. Caitlin Johnstone said something about that, not specifically about Syria. The
idea was that you can sometimes find facts reported in the mainstream press that contradict
the narrative put out by pundits and politicians and for that matter most news stories, but
these contradictory facts never seem to change the prevailing narrative.
That sounds suspiciously like sour grapes and another possible motive for the killing
– revenge.
Soleimani led a number of militias that were successful in defeating the Saudi (and CIA)
sponsored Sunni jihadis who failed to implement the empire's "regime change" playbook in
Syria.
No doubt a lot of guys like Pompeo wanted him dead for that reason alone.
The simple answer NO, killing a sitting army general of a sovereign state on a diplomatic
mission resides in the realm of the truly absurd. Twisting the meaning of the word "imminent"
far beyond its ordinary use to justify the murder is even more absurd. And the floating
subtext to all this talk about lost American lives is that the US can invade and occupy
foreign lands, engage in the sanctimonious slaughter of locals and whoever else gets in the
way of feeding the bloodlust of Pompeo and his ilk (to say nothing of feeding the outsized
ego of a lunatic like Trump), and yet expect to suffer no combat casualties from those
defending their lands. It's the most warped form of "exceptional" thinking.
As an aside, I wonder if the msm faithfully pushing the talk about Iran downing that
Ukrainian commercial jet is designed to take the heat off a beleaguered Boeing. The
investigation hasn't even begun but already we have the smoking gun, Iran did it.
Even the question is wrong. The killing was cowardly, outside all international norms
(this from a country that dares to invoke "international order" whenever it is suitable), a
colossal mistake, a strategic blunder, and plain destructive.
The more one learns about QS' activities, the more it seems that he was "disposed of"
precisely because of his unique talent and abilities to bring together the various local
factions (particularly, in Iraq), so that then – unified – they could fight
against the common enemy (guess who?). He was not guilty of killing amrikans – nor was
he planning to – his "sin" was to try and unite locals to push the us out of ME. It was
always going to be an uphill battle, but in death he may – in time – achieve his
wish.
I'm in this camp too. But with a twist. Pure speculation here – and I'm sure it
would never be exposed, but is there even any proof we did it? Was it an apache helicopter or
a drone; whom have we supplied with these things? Who is this bold? Since our military has
been dead-set-against assassinating Soleimani or any other leader it seems highly unlikely
they proposed this to Trump. Mattis flatly refused to even consider such a thing. So I keep
wondering if the usual suspect might be the right one – the Israelis. They have the
proper expertise. And the confusion that followed? If we had done it we'd have had our PSAs
ready to print. Instead we proffered an unsigned letter and other "rough drafts" of the
incident and then retracted them like idiots. As if we were frantic to step in and prevent
the Rapture. We could have taken the blame just to prevent a greater war. Really, that's what
it looks like to me.
Surely the whole point of the strike is that it was illegal: that is to say that it was a
message to the Iraqis that they are NOT allowed to help Iran evade sanctions, NOT allowed to
do oil-for-infrastructure deals with China and NOT allowed to invite senior Iranians around
for talks: i.e. Iraq is not yet sovereign and it is the US that makes the rules around there;
any disobedience will summarily be punished by the de facto rulers even if that violates
agreements and laws applicable in Iraq.
If you disagree, then what should the US do if Iraq does not toe the Western line?
" The killing was cowardly, outside all international norms (this from a country that
dares to invoke "international order" whenever it is suitable), a colossal mistake, a
strategic blunder, and plain destructive "
I think the immediate impact which has long terms implications for how other countries
view USA foreign policy is simply that any high ranking individual from any other country on
earth has got to be aware that essentially no international norms now exist. It's one thing
to 'whack' a bin Laden or dispose of a Gaddafi but another whole kettle of fish to
assassinate a high ranking official going about their business who's no immediate security
threat to the USA and when no state of war exists.
For example, might a EU general now acquiesce to demands about NATO? Not saying this is
going to happen by a long shot, but still a niggling thought might linger. Surely the
individual will be resentful at the very least. I'm also reminded of a story about John
Bolton allegedly telling a negotiator (UN or European?) that Bolton knew where the
negotiator's family resided. These things add up.
As Sergey Lavrov and President Putin have stated for a long time (and long before
President Trump came along), the USA is 'agreement incapable'. However, now you have to
wonder if any country really trusts any agreement they will make with the USA. Without trust
on any level, cooperation/trade treaties and so on on are impossible or eminently disposable,
i.e., not worth the paper upon which they are written.
This is where the middle term ramifications start to kick-in. We know that Russia and
China are making some tentative steps towards superficial integration in limited areas beyond
just cooperation. Will they find more common ground? Will European countries (and by
extension the EU) really start to deliver on an alternative financial clearing system? How
will India and Japan react? Does nationalism of the imperial variety re-emerge as a world
force – for good or bad?
Will regional powers such as Russia, China, India, France or Iran quietly find more common
ground also? But alliances are problematic and sometimes impose limitations that are
exploitable. So, might a different form of cooperation emerge?
Long term its all about advantage and trust. Trust is a busted flush now. (My 2 cents, and
properly priced.)
As Thuto above says, the simple answer is "No". IF S was guilty of all those things
ascribed to him, he'd have been judged and sentenced (yes, I do realise Iran would never
extradite him etc. etc. – but there would have been a process and after the process,
well, some things would be more justifiable). But we have the process because it's important
to have a process – otherwise, anyone can find themselves on a hit list for any reason
whatsoever.
If the US doesn't want to follow and process, then it can't be suprised if others won't.
Ignoring the process works for the strongest, while they are the strongest. And then it
doesn't.
603 Americans killed in Iraq, he says Trump supporters claim, but we had millions of
Iraqi's, Syrians, Libyans and others killed or their lives uprooted by Bush and Obama and
company – yet they were not assassinated.
I think – just a guess – the reason Soleimani was killed can be summed up in
one word:
Netanyahu.
That, and on a broader, bird's eye view level in broad strokes – Michael Hudson's
recent article outlining U.S. policy of preserving USD hegemony at all costs, that has
existed since at least the 1950's, which depicts Soleimani's assassination as not a Trump
qwerk but a logical application of that policy.
You might say the swamp drainers came to drain the swamp and ended filling it up
instead.
The mostest terriblest guy in the history of this or any other universe, but the average
Joe never heard of until they announced they killed him. His epochal terribleness really flew
under the radar.
The swamp drainers are so busy guzzling as much as they can quaff, without drowning;
writhing each others' dead-eyed, bloated feeding frenzy; that obscene media distractions need
to escalate in sadistic, off-hand terror. But, it's so ingrained into our governance, we just
call it democracy?
Hudson's take on USD hegemony is reasonable, but I don't think we'd assassinate Soleimani
in anticipation of losing it. We have dealt with all the sects in the middle east for a long
time and we have come to terms with them, until now. In a time that requires the shutting
down of oil and gas production. I think (Carney, Keen, Murphy, etc.) oil is the basis for our
economy, for productivity, for the world, that's a no brainer. But my second thoughts go more
along the lines that oil and natural gas will be government monopolies directly – no
need to use those resources to make the dollar or other currencies monopolies. Sovereign
currency will still be a sovereign monopoly regardless of the oil industry. That also
explains why we want hands-on control of this resource. And with that in mind, it would seem
Soleimani might have been more of an asset for us.
I hate to tell you but as much as we are fans of Hudson, he's all wet on this one. The
dollar is the reserve currency because the US is willing to run sustained trade deficits,
which is tantamount to exporting jobs. Perhaps more important, my connected economists say
they know of no one who has the ear of the military-intel state who believes this either.
This may indeed have been a line of thought 50 years ago but it isn't now.
much of the supporting rhetoric for this assassination coming out of Trump supporters
(with bragging about it having reportedly been put up on Trump's reelection funding
website)
I thought I had a pretty strong stomach for this stuff, but it's been really nauseating
for me to see the displays of joy and flag waving over the assassination of someone the
overwhelming majority of people were wholly unaware of prior to his death. My guess is that
it's mostly just a sort of schadenfreude at the squirming of Democrats as they (with few
exceptions) fail to articulate any coherent response.
The response should be clear without any caveats, "Trump is a coward who would never
gamble with his life, but will happily gamble with the lives of your kids in uniform." This
should resonate with most people, I don't believe that neocons really have any grassroots
support.
NO. Shockingly bad decision; you can just manage to glimpse around the edges of the war
propaganda the embarrassment and backpedaling for having willingly stepped into such a
gigantic steaming pile of excrement. The parade of smooth-faced liars on the MSM asserting
that the US is now safer (the "war is peace" crowd) is sickening. Some even have the gall to
assert that the enormous crowds in Iran are forced to attend by the repressive regime. Of
course, there's no evidence of a provocation and they'll never produce any.
Politico Europe is
reporting that behind Europes seemingly supine response, officials and politicians are
'seething' over the attack. Its clearly seen around the world as not just illegal, but an
appalling precedent.
So far, American efforts to convince Europeans of the bright side of Soleimani's
killing have been met with dropped jaws .
The silence from other countries on this event has been deafening. And that should tell
Trump and Pompeo something, but I doubt if they are smart enough to figure it out.
I find it interesting that Pompeo was "disappointed" – what did he think would
happen? For a Secretary of State, he's obviously extremely out of touch with the rest of the
world if he didn't have some realistic idea of how this would go down.
On one hand, the life of each and every victim of head-separation and droning is as
precious as that of one Soleimani.
On the other, the general's is more precious and thus, the behind the scene seething by
Europe's politicians and officials. (They and many others are all potential targets now,
versus previously droning wedding guests – time to seethe).
The more I think about it, the more it seemed like the Administration and its allies were
probing to see how far they could go. They bombed PMUs and appeared to get away with it. So
then they upped the ante when the Iraqis complained and finally got some moderate push-back.
Not taking American lives in the missile strike seems to prove they Iranians didn't want to
escalate. Still, I dont know about the Pentagon, but I was impressed with the accuracy.
Yes. From the picture at Vineyard of the Saker, they hit specific buildings. There were
comments after the drone attack on Abqaiq and Khurais oil fields in KSA that they showed
surprising accuracy, but perhaps this time surprised the intelligence agencies. Perhaps that
was why Trump declared victory instead of further escalating. This is speculation, of
course.
There is also a good article giving more detail of these attacks and underlining the fact
that not a single solitary missile was intercepted. What percentage did the Syrians/Russians
manage to intercept of the US/UK/French missiles attack back in 2018? Wasn't it about seventy
percent?
The Iranians are not done retaliating. They have a history of disproportionate
retaliation, but when the right opportunity presents itself, and that routinely takes years.
The limited strike was out of character and appears to have been the result of the amount of
upset internally over the killing.
I have more a lot more respect for the strategic acumen of the Iranian regime than I do
for that of the American regime. Now it's led by a collection of fragile male egos and
superstitious rapture ready religious fanatics. Before them the regime was led by cowardly
corporate suck ups. They all take their cues from the same military intelligence complex.
One other glaring omission from the article – the only reason there was a US
military contractor in Iraq available to be killed in the first place is due to the illegal
war based on false premises launched almost two decades ago by the US, which continues to
occupy the country to this day.
Aye! This!
assume a ladder on a windy day, with a hammer irresponsibly left perched on the edge of the
top rung.
if i blithely walk under that ladder just as the wind gusts and get bonked in the head by the
falling hammer whose fault is it?
we shouldn't be there in the first damned place.
and as soon as the enabling lies were exposed, we should have left, post haste .leaving all
kinds of money and apologies in our wake.
to still be hanging around, unwanted by the locals, all these years later is arrogant and
stupid.
during the Bush Darkness, i was accused to my face(even strangled, once!) of being an
american-hating traitor for being against the war, the Bush Cabal, and the very idea of
American Empire.
almost 20 years later, I'm still absolutely opposed to those things not least out of a care
for the Troops(tm) .and a fervent wish that for once in my 50 years i could be proud to be an
American.
what a gigantic misallocation of resources, in service of rapine and hegemony, while my
fellow americans suffer and wither and scratch around for crumbs.
Another of many questions that remain involve the warped interpretation of "imminent" of
the Bethlehem Doctrine. What institution will put a full stop to that doctrine of terror?
It is a global hazard to continue to let that be adopted as any kind of standard.
Under the Bethlehem Doctrine the entire political class in the USA, and possibly a few
other countries, could be assassinated. What is legal or justified for one is justified for
all.
Rosser is an economist rather than a philosopher or. jurist, and so he doesn't appear to
realize that "justification" in the abstract is meaningless. An act can only be justified or
not according to some ethical or legal principle, and you need to say what that principle is
at the beginning before you start your argument. He doesn't do that, so his argument has no
more validity than that of someone you get into a discussion with in a bar or over coffee at
work.
Legally, of course, there is no justification, because there was no state of armed conflict
between the US and Iran, so the act was an act of state murder. It doesn't matter who the
person was or what we was alleged to have done or be going to do. There's been a dangerous
tendency developing in recent years to claim some kind of right to pre-emptive attacks. There
is no such legal doctrine, and the ultimate source of the misrepresentation – Art 51 of
the UN Charter – simply recognizes that nothing in the Charter stops a state resisting
aggression until help arrives. That's it.
Oh, and of course if this act were "justified" then any similar act in a similar situation
would be justified as well, which might not work out necessarily to America's advantage.
General Jonathan Shaw, former commander of UK forces in Iraq, put it well: Iran's
objectives are political, not military. Their aim is not to destroy any American air base,
but to drive a wedge between the US and its Arab allies -- and the Soleimani assassination
has achieved more to this end than anything that could have been cooked up in Tehran. The
Sunnis are standing down and the US and Israel now once again face being without real
friends in the region. When push came to shove, all Kushner's efforts amounted to nothing.
How elated the Iranians must be, even in the midst of such a setback.
Which if true means that instead of divide and conquer Trump and Pompeo may instead be
practicing unite and be conquered when it comes to US meddling in the Middle East.
I think that I see a danger for Israel here with a very tight pucker factor. I had assumed
that if there was a war between Israel and Hezbollah, that Hezbollah would let loose their
older rockets first to use up the Israeli anti-missile ordinance that they have. After that
would come their modern accurate missiles.
But part of that Iranian attack on those US bases was the use of older missiles that had been
retro-fitted with gear for accurate targeting which obviously worked out spectacularly.
Israel could assume that Iran would have given Hezbollah the same technology and the
implication here is that any first wave of older Hezbollah missiles would just be as accurate
as the following barrages of newer missiles.
I wonder if it is remotely possible that all countries, say at the UN, could design
acceptable language to make oil and natural gas a universal resource with a mandated
conservation – agreed to by all. Those countries which have had oil economies and have
become rich might agree to it because the use of oil and gas will be so restricted in future
that they will not have those profits. But it would at least provide them with some steady
income. It would prevent the oil wars we will otherwise have in our rush to monopolize the
industry for profit; it would conserve the use of oil/gas and extend it farther out into the
future so we can build a sustainable worldwide civilization and mitigate much of the damage
we have done to the planet, etc. How can we all come together and make energy, oil and natgas
access a universal human right (for the correct use)?
Actually Soleimani was guilty of the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Tens of
thousands of ISIS fighters that is. Do they count? The Saudis, Gulf States and the CIA may
shed a tear for them but nobody else will. When Soleimani arrived in Baghdad, he was
traveling in a diplomatic capacity to help try to ease off tensions between the Saudis and
the Iranians. And this was the imminent danger that Trump was talking about. Not an imminent
danger to US troops but a danger that the Saudis and Iranians might negotiate an
accommodation. Michael Hudson has said similar in a recent article.
I think that what became apparent from that attack last year on the Saudi oil
installations was that they were now a hostage. In other words, if the US attacks Iran, then
Iran will take out the entirety of Saudi oil production and perhaps the Saudi Royal family
themselves. There is no scenario in an Iran-US war where the Kingdom come out intact. So it
seems that they have been putting out feelers with the Iranians about coming to an
accommodation. This would explain why when Soleimani was murdered, there was radio silence on
behalf of the Saudis.
Maybe Trump has worked out that all of the Saudi oil facilities becoming toast would be
bad for America too but, more importantly, to himself personally. After all, what is the
point of having the Saudis only sell their oil in US dollars if there is no oil to sell? What
would such a development do to the standing of the US dollar internationally? The financial
crisis would sink his chances for a win this November and that is something that he will
never allow. And I bet that he did not Tucker Carlson to tell him that.
Fascinating developments on this issue today. Pompeo admits that nothing was "imminent."
Given the very specific definitions of Imminence that draw red lines between what is or is
not legal in international law, this could get big very quickly.
What percent of the presumed Trump base, and imperial Big Business and Banksters, not to
mention the sloshing mass of other parts of the electorate subject to "spinning" in the
Bernays Tilt-a-Whirl, would give a rat's aff about "war crimes" charges? Drone murders to
date, the whole stupid of profitable (to a few, externalities ignored) GWOT, all the sh!t the
CIA and CENTCOM and Very Special Ops have done with impunity against brown people and even
people here at home, not anything more than squeaks from a small fraction of us.
And Trump is the Decider, yes, who signed off (as far as we know) on killing Soleimani
that was lined up by the Borg, but really, how personalized to him would any repentance and
disgust or even scapegoat targeting by the Blob really be, in the kayfabe that passes for
"democracy in America?"
I always though de Tocqueville titled his oeuvre on the political economy he limned way
back when as a neat bit of Gallic irony
I don't know. Might Trump benefit from charges of war crimes, spinning them as further
proof that the United Nations, International Criminal Court, etc. are controlled by commies
and muslims out to get the USA?
As for the imminence of the hypothetical attacks, "There is no doubt that there were a
series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qassem Soleimani," Pompeo told the Fox News host.
"We don't know precisely when and we don't know precisely where, but it was real."
Remember that imminent=possible at some time in the near or distant future, and Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind's words, "if
there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction -- and
there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time -- the United States
must now act as if it were a certainty." That doctrine didn't prevent Bush's
re-election. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/books/20kaku.html
Declare victory and bring them all home. Leave behind W's Mission Accomplished banner and
pallets of newly printed $100s with Obama's picture.
Along the lines of Bismarck, not worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Not my
20 year old, not anybody else's in my name, either, especially since this began before they
were born.
And to whom will they sell their oil and natural gas? Who cares – its a fungible
commodity of perhaps only of concern to our "allies" in Western Europe. Not my problem and
great plan to mitigate carbon emissions!
War hawks dressed in red or blue can become mercenaries and create Go Fund Me drives to
protect their investments and any particular country which they have a personal affinity or
citizenship.
The whole episode reminds me of a Martin Scorsese plot line. A disagreement among "Made
Men". The unfortunate symbolism and 'disrespect' of the embassy protest demanded a response,
especially after all the fuss Trump made about Benghazi. Some things cannot be allowed. The
Iranians, Russians and Americans probably decided between themselves what would be sufficient
symbolism to prevent a war, and so Soleimani was sacrificed to die as a hero/martyr. A small
price to prevent things spiraling out of control. The Iranian response seems to add weight to
this hypothesis.
Forgive me for taking this a little more in the direction of theory, but can the rest of
the world justify the assassination of CIA/Pentagon/CENTCOM officials in a similar manner
given the opportunity? Are these organizations not an analog to Quds? That seems to be more
in line with the type of questions we need to be asking ourselves as US citizens in a
multi-polar world. This article, despite its best intentions, still hints at an American
exceptionalism that no longer exists in the international mind. The US could barely get away
with its BS in the 90s, it definitely can't in 2020.
The US no longer has the monopoly on the narrative ("Big Lie") rationalizing its actions,
not to say the other countries have the correct narrative, just that, there are a whole bunch
of narratives ("Lies") out there being told to the world by various powers that are not the
US, and the US is having a difficult time holding on to the mic. The sensible route would be
to figure out how to assert cultural and political values/power in this world without the
mafiosi methods. Maybe some old fashioned (if not icky, cynical) diplomacy. It is better than
spilled blood, or nuclear war.
The US military/intelligence wonks overplayed their hand with Soleimani. I think the
Neo-Cons gave Trump a death warrant for Soleimani, and Trump was too self-involved (stupid)
to know or care who he was offing. His reaction to the blow back betrays that.
Now he is f*****, along with the chicken-hawks, and they all know it. They just have to
sit back and watch Iran bomb US bases because the alternative is a potential big war,
possibly involving China and Russia, that can't be fought by our Islamist foreign legions.
It'll demand the involvement of US troops on the ground and the US electorate won't tolerate
it.
Anyone who has worked in the counter-terrorism field knows that when a credible and
imminent threat is received the first act is to devise a response to counter the threat. It
may involve raising security measures at an airline security checkpoint, it may involve
arrests, if possible, of the would-be terrorist(s). It may involve evacuating a building and
conducting a search for a bomb. It may involve changing a scheduled appearance or route of
travel of a VIP.
The point is to stop the operators behind the threat from completing their terrorist act.
What it certainly does NOT involve is assassinating someone who may have given the order but
is definitely not involved in carrying out the act. Such an assassination would not only be
ineffective in countering the threat but would likely be seen as increasing the motivation
behind the attack. Such was the assassination of Soleimani, even if one believes in the
alleged imminent threat. This was simply a revenge killing due to Soleimani's success at
organizing the opposition to US occupation.
We don't know precisely when and we don't know precisely where, but it was real.
How does this meet the internationally recognized legal requirement of "imminent" danger
to human life required to kill a political or military leader outside of a declared war? All
public statements by the U.S. political and military leadership point to a retaliatory
killing, at best, with a vague overlay of preemptive action.
If you agree that the "Bethlehem Doctrine" has never been recognized by the United
Nations, the International Criminal Court, or the legislatures of the three rogue states who
have adopted it, the assassination of Suleimani appears to have been a murder.
This is absolutely chilling. These "End Times/Armageddon" lunatics want to destroy the
world. Who would Jesus have murdered? They stand the lessons of his state-sanctioned murder
on their heads
My two-pennyworth? The US press and the circles surrounding Trump are already crowing that
he 'won' the exchange. If, as speculated, he went against military advice in ordering this
assassination, his 'victory' will only confirm his illusions that he is a military genius,
which makes him even more dangerous. There are some rather nasty parallels with the rise of
Hitler appearing here.
The claim that Soleimani had killed hundreds of Americans was repeated, word for word, in
many articles in the papers of record (e.g., New York Times, 1/7/20; Washington Post, 1/3/20,
1/3/20) as well as across the media (e.g., Boston Globe, 1/3/20; Fox News, 1/6/20; The Hill,
1/7/20).
These "hundreds of Americans" were US forces killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
during the Iraq War, supposedly made in Iran and planted by Iranian-backed Shia militias. As
professor Stephen Zunes pointed out in the Progressive (1/7/20), the Pentagon provided no
evidence that Iran made the IEDs, other than the far-fetched claim that they were too
sophisticated to be made in Iraq -- even though the US invasion had been justified by claims
that Iraq had an incredibly threatening WMD program. The made-in-Iran claim, in turn, was the
main basis for pinning responsibility for IED attacks on Shia militias -- which were, in any
case, sanctioned by the Iraqi government, making Baghdad more answerable for their actions
than anyone in Tehran. Last year, Gareth Porter reported in Truthout, (7/9/19) that the claim
that Iran was behind the deaths of US troops was part of Vice President Dick Cheney's plan to
build a case for yet another war.
IIRC the "sophistication claim" was made years ago. Apparently the basic technology is
applied in oilfields to pierce oil well lining tubes at the oil layer. So the Iraqis knew all
about the basic technique, only needed some more information.
About those "603 American deaths" that Soleimani is posthumously being charged with .
"I cross-checked a Pentagon casualty database with obituaries and not 1 of the 9 American
servicemen killed fighting in Iraq since 2011 died at the hands of militias backed by
Suleimani. His assassination was about revenge and provocation, not self-defense."
"The U.S. Government and almost all of the media continue to declare that Iran is the
biggest sponsor of terrorism. That is not true. That is a lie. I realize that calling this
assertion a lie opens me to accusations of being an apologist for Iran. But simply look at
the facts."
"The Trump Administration needs to stop with its infantile ranting and railing about Iran and
terrorism. The actual issues surrounding Iran's growing influence in the region have little
to do with terrorism. Our policies and actions towards Iran are accelerating their
cooperation with China and Russia, not diminishing it. I do not think that serves the
longterm interests of the United States or our allies in the Middle East"
The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, a financier and key commander of Iran's elite
Quds Force who has been active in Yemen, did not result in his death, according to four U.S.
officials familiar with the matter.
The unsuccessful operation may indicate that the Trump administration's killing of Maj. Gen.
Qasem Soleimani last week was part of a broader operation than previously explained, raising
questions about whether the mission was designed to cripple the leadership of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps or solely to prevent an imminent attack on Americans as originally
stated.
"Justification"?????
You're kidding right?
"They", those who we firstly "embrace" for our own interests are "for us" until we decide we
are "against them"!
What a farce our foreign policies are!
For some "exceptional" reason we don't recognize international law!
We are the terrorists not them.
Prediction for this stupidest of all worlds: Iraq really does boot us out, T-bone siezes
on this for its obvious popularity among his base, and uses "He Kept Us Out Of War" for
re-election.
Where is my peace dividend after fall of Berlin Wall and Soviet Union?
Poppy and MIC wouldn't have it, hence April Galaspie's "no instructions" response to
Saddam's initial inquiry over the Iraq / Kuwait surveying and mineral rights dispute on
Kuwait's drilling at the border 30 years ago.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defence Secretary Mark Esper, and General Mark Milley,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach, Florida, to brief Trump on
airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored Shiite
militia groups.
"... Pompeo has forged "very close relationships" with Haspel and Esper, alliances that bolstered his ability to make the case to Trump. "They all work together very, very closely," said the former Republican national security official. ..."
As planning got underway, Pompeo worked with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark
Milley and the commander of CENTCOM Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie to assess the profile of
troops in the field. Multiple sources also say that hawkish Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of
Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were kept in the loop and also pushed Trump to
respond.
Trump was not at all reluctant to target Soleimani, multiple sources said, adding that the
President's other senior advisers -- Esper, Milley, CIA Director Gina Haspel and national
security adviser Robert O'Brien -- "were all on board."
Pompeo has forged "very close relationships" with Haspel and Esper, alliances that
bolstered his ability to make the case to Trump. "They all work together very, very closely,"
said the former Republican national security official.
That said, the former official expressed concern about the lack of deep expertise in Trump's
national security team. Several analysts pointed to this as one factor in Pompeo's outsized
influence within the administration.
The government is so compromised by Trump and by all the vacancies and lack of experience,
this former official said, that "everything is being done by a handful of principles -- Pompeo,
Esper, Milley. There are a lot of things being left on the floor."
'Such a low bar'
Pompeo is arguably the most experienced of the national security Cabinet, the former
national security official said, "but it's such a low bar."
"It's such a small group and there's so much that needs to be done," the former official
said. "Everyone in this administration is a level and a half higher than they would be in a
normal administration. They have no bench," they said.
The Trump administration has been handicapped by the President's refusal to hire Republicans
who criticize him. Other Republicans won't work for the administration, for fear of being
"tainted" or summarily fired, the former official said.
As layers of experience have been peeled away at the White House, some analysts say
safeguards have been removed as well. CNN's Peter Bergen has written in his new book, "Trump
and his Generals," that former Defense Secretary James Mattis told his aides not to present the
President with options for confronting Iran militarily.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, argues that since the departure of
Mattis, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and former White House chief of
staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, there are very few voices at the White House to offer
"deeply considered advice."
"We don't have those people who have that experience and could look Trump in the eye and who
have his respect and who could say, 'Hey, hey, hey -- wait!'," Slim said.
For years, "Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him
popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative
Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals,"
the Post explains . "Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship
with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad," and "at the State
Department, he is a voracious consumer of diplomatic notes and reporting on Iran, and he places
the country far above other geopolitical and economic hot spots in the world."
Read more at The Washington Post . Peter Weber
"... These anecdotal stories about Invitation Homes being quick to evict tenants may prove to be the trend rather than the exception, given Blackstone's underlying business model. Securitizing rental payments creates an intense pressure on the company to ensure that the monthly checks keep flowing. For renters, that may mean you either pay on the first of the month every month, or you're out. ..."
Tucker could have done a number on Trump friend Schwarzman too.Mark my words you're gonna have another melt down now that all the people who
lost their home and ended up in rentals stop paying their rent that is now 2 1/2 times what
their mortgage was.
This is another fake bubble being securitized and sold off. Just like putting people into
houses with ARMs who couldnt afford them when the rates went up, Scharzman will fill up his
rentals to 99% occupancy with special deals to sell them to investors, when the special deal
period runs out and the rent goes up people will move out looking for cheaper housing and the
securities wont be worth shit.
Blackstone Group , CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman Buys Houses in Bulk to Profit from Mortgage
Crisis
You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation's
impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has
started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is
brewing.
Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly
amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta,
brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix. In total, these deep-pocketed
investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in cities hardest hit
by the economic meltdown.
Wall Street's foreclosure crisis, which began in late 2007 and forced more than 10 million
people from their homes, has created a paradoxical problem. Millions of evicted Americans
need a safe place to live, even as millions of vacant, bank-owned houses are blighting
neighborhoods and spurring a rise in crime. Lucky for us, Wall Street has devised a solution:
It's going to rent these foreclosed houses back to us. In the process, it's devised a new
form of securitization that could cause this whole plan to blow up -- again.
Since the buying frenzy began, no company has picked up more houses than the Blackstone
Group, a major private equity firm. Using a subsidiary company, Invitation Homes, Blackstone
has grabbed houses at foreclosure auctions, through local brokers, and in bulk purchases
directly from banks the same way a regular person might stock up on toilet paper from
Costco.
In one move, it bought 1,400 houses in Atlanta in a single day. As of November, Blackstone
had spent $7.5 billion to buy 40,000 mostly foreclosed houses across the country. That's a
spending rate of $100 million a week since October 2012. It recently announced plans to take
the business international, beginning in foreclosure-ravaged Spain.
Few outside the finance industry have heard of Blackstone. Yet today, it's the largest
owner of single-family rental homes in the nation -- and of a whole lot of other things, too.
It owns part or all of the Hilton Hotel chain, Southern Cross Healthcare, Houghton Mifflin
publishing house, the Weather Channel, Sea World, the arts and crafts chain Michael's,
Orangina, and dozens of other companies.
Blackstone manages more than $210 billion in assets, according to its 2012 Securities and
Exchange Commission annual filing. It's also a public company with a list of institutional
owners that reads like a who's who of companies recently implicated in lawsuits over the
mortgage crisis, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Bank of America,
Goldman Sachs, and of course JP Morgan Chase, which just settled a lawsuit with the
Department of Justice over its risky and often illegal mortgage practices, agreeing to pay an
unprecedented $13 billion fine.
In other words, if Blackstone makes money by capitalizing on the housing crisis, all these
other Wall Street banks -- generally regarded as the main culprits in creating the conditions
that led to the foreclosure crisis in the first place -- make money too.
An All-Cash Goliath
In neighborhoods across the country, many residents didn't have to know what Blackstone
was to realize that things were going seriously wrong.
Last year, Mark Alston, a real estate broker in Los Angeles, began noticing something
strange happening. Home prices were rising. And they were rising fast -- up 20 percent
between October 2012 and the same month this year. In a normal market, rising home prices
would mean increased demand from homebuyers. But here was the unnerving thing: the
homeownership rate was dropping, the first sign for Alston that the market was somehow out of
whack.
The second sign was the buyers themselves.
"I went two years without selling to a black family, and that wasn't for lack of trying,"
says Alston, whose business is concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods where the majority of
residents are African American and Hispanic. Instead, all his buyers -- every last one of
them -- were besuited businessmen. And weirder yet, they were all paying in cash.
Between 2005 and 2009, the mortgage crisis, fueled by racially discriminatory lending
practices, destroyed 53 percent of African American wealth and 66 percent of Hispanic wealth,
figures that stagger the imagination. As a result, it's safe to say that few blacks or
Hispanics today are buying homes outright, in cash. Blackstone, on the other hand, doesn't
have a problem fronting the money, given its $3.6 billion credit line arranged by Deutsche
Bank. This money has allowed it to outbid families who have to secure traditional financing.
It's also paved the way for the company to purchase a lot of homes very quickly, shocking
local markets and driving prices up in a way that pushes even more families out of the
game.
"You can't compete with a company that's betting on speculative future value when they're
playing with cash," says Alston. "It's almost like they planned this."
In hindsight, it's clear that the Great Recession fueled a terrific wealth and asset
transfer away from ordinary Americans and to financial institutions. During that crisis,
Americans lost trillions of dollars of household wealth when housing prices crashed, while
banks seized about five million homes. But what's just beginning to emerge is how, as in the
recession years, the recovery itself continues to drive the process of transferring wealth
and power from the bottom to the top.
From 2009-2012, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 95 percent of income gains. Now,
as the housing market rebounds, billions of dollars in recovered housing wealth are flowing
straight to Wall Street instead of to families and communities. Since spring 2012, just at
the time when Blackstone began buying foreclosed homes in bulk, an estimated $88 billion of
housing wealth accumulation has gone straight to banks or institutional investors as a result
of their residential property holdings, according to an analysis by TomDispatch. And it's a
number that's likely to just keep growing.
"Institutional investors are siphoning the wealth and the ability for wealth accumulation
out of underserved communities," says Henry Wade, founder of the Arizona Association of Real
Estate Brokers.
But buying homes cheap and then waiting for them to appreciate in value isn't the only way
Blackstone is making money on this deal. It wants your rental payment, too.
Securitizing Rentals
Wall Street's rental empire is entirely new. The single-family rental industry used to be
the bailiwick of small-time mom-and-pop operations. But what makes this moment unprecedented
is the financial alchemy that Blackstone added. In November, after many months of hype,
Blackstone released history's first rated bond backed by securitized rental payments. And
once investors tripped over themselves in a rush to get it, Blackstone's competitors
announced that they, too, would develop similar securities as soon as possible.
Depending on whom you ask, the idea of bundling rental payments and selling them off to
investors is either a natural evolution of the finance industry or a fire-breathing
chimera.
"This is a new frontier," comments Ted Weinstein, a consultant in the real-estate-owned
homes industry for 30 years. "It's something I never really would have dreamt of."
However, to anyone who went through the 2008 mortgage-backed-security crisis, this new
territory will sound strangely familiar.
"It's just like a residential mortgage-backed security," said one hedge-fund investor
whose company does business with Blackstone. When asked why the public should expect these
securities to be safe, given the fact that risky mortgage-backed securities caused the 2008
collapse, he responded, "Trust me."
For Blackstone, at least, the logic is simple. The company wants money upfront to purchase
more cheap, foreclosed homes before prices rise. So it's joined forces with JP Morgan, Credit
Suisse, and Deutsche Bank to bundle the rental payments of 3,207 single-family houses and
sell this bond to investors with mortgages on the underlying houses offered as collateral.
This is, of course, just a test case for what could become a whole new industry of
rental-backed securities.
Many major Wall Street banks are involved in the deal, according to a copy of the private
pitch documents Blackstone sent to potential investors on October 31st, which was reviewed by
TomDispatch. Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and Credit Suisse are helping market the bond. Wells
Fargo is the certificate administrator. Midland Loan Services, a subsidiary of PNC Bank, is
the loan servicer. (By the way, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and PNC Bank are
all members of another clique: the list of banks foreclosing on the most families in
2013.)
According to interviews with economists, industry insiders, and housing activists, people
are more or less holding their collective breath, hoping that what looks like a duck, swims
like a duck, and quacks like a duck won't crash the economy the same way the last flock of
ducks did.
"You kind of just hope they know what they're doing," says Dean Baker, an economist with
the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "That they have provisions for turnover and
vacancies. But have they done that? Have they taken the appropriate care? I certainly
wouldn't count on it." The cash flow analysis in the documents sent to investors assumes that
95 percent of these homes will be rented at all times, at an average monthly rent of $1,312.
It's an occupancy rate that real estate professionals describe as ambitious.
There's one significant way, however, in which this kind of security differs from its
mortgage-backed counterpart. When banks repossess mortgaged homes as collateral, there is at
least the assumption (often incorrect due to botched or falsified paperwork from the banks)
that the homeowner has, indeed, defaulted on her mortgage. In this case, however, if a single
home-rental bond blows up, thousands of families could be evicted, whether or not they ever
missed a single rental payment.
"We could well end up in that situation where you get a lot of people getting evicted not
because the tenants have fallen behind but because the landlords have fallen behind," says
Baker.
Bugs in Blackstone's Housing Dreams
Whether these new securities are safe may boil down to the simple question of whether
Blackstone proves to be a good property manager. Decent management practices will ensure high
occupancy rates, predictable turnover, and increased investor confidence. Bad management will
create complaints, investigations, and vacancies, all of which will increase the likelihood
that Blackstone won't have the cash flow to pay investors back.
If you ask CaDonna Porter, a tenant in one of Blackstone's Invitation Homes properties in
a suburb outside Atlanta, property management is exactly the skill that Blackstone lacks. "If
I could shorten my lease -- I signed a two-year lease -- I definitely would," says
Porter.
The cockroaches and fat water bugs were the first problem in the Invitation Homes rental
that she and her children moved into in September. Porter repeatedly filed online maintenance
requests that were canceled without anyone coming to investigate the infestation. She called
the company's repairs hotline. No one answered.
The second problem arrived in an email with the subject line marked "URGENT." Invitation
Homes had failed to withdraw part of Porter's November payment from her bank account,
prompting the company to demand that she deliver the remaining payment in person, via
certified funds, by five p.m. the following day or incur "the additional legal fee of $200
and dispossessory," according to email correspondences reviewed by TomDispatch.
Porter took off from work to deliver the money order in person, only to receive an email
saying that the payment had been rejected because it didn't include the $200 late fee and an
additional $75 insufficient funds fee. What followed were a maddening string of emails that
recall the fraught and often fraudulent interactions between homeowners and
mortgage-servicing companies. Invitation Homes repeatedly threatened to file for eviction
unless Porter paid various penalty fees. She repeatedly asked the company to simply accept
her month's payment and leave her alone.
"I felt really harassed. I felt it was very unjust," says Porter. She ultimately wrote
that she would seek legal counsel, which caused Invitation Homes to immediately agree to
accept the payment as "a one-time courtesy."
Porter is still frustrated by the experience -- and by the continued presence of the
cockroaches. ("I put in another request today about the bugs, which will probably be canceled
again.")
A recent Huffington Post investigation and dozens of online reviews written by Invitation
Homes tenants echo Porter's frustrations. Many said maintenance requests went unanswered,
while others complained that their spiffed-up houses actually had underlying structural
issues.
There's also at least one documented case of Blackstone moving into murkier legal
territory. This fall, the Orlando, Florida, branch of Invitation Homes appeared to mail
forged eviction notices to a homeowner named Francisco Molina, according to the Orlando
Sentinel. Delivered in letter-sized manila envelopes, the fake notices claimed that an
eviction had been filed against Molina in court, although the city confirmed otherwise. The
kicker is that Invitation Homes didn't even have the right to evict Molina, legally or
otherwise. Blackstone's purchase of the house had been reversed months earlier, but the
company had lost track of that information.
The Great Recession of 2016?
These anecdotal stories about Invitation Homes being quick to evict tenants may prove to
be the trend rather than the exception, given Blackstone's underlying business model.
Securitizing rental payments creates an intense pressure on the company to ensure that the
monthly checks keep flowing. For renters, that may mean you either pay on the first of the
month every month, or you're out.
Although Blackstone has issued only one rental-payment security so far, it already seems
to be putting this strict protocol into place. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, the
company has filed eviction proceedings against a full 10 percent of its renters, according to
a report by the Charlotte Observer.
About 9 percent of Blackstone's properties, approximately 3,600 houses, are located in the
Phoenix metro area. Most are in low- to middle-income neighborhoods.
Forty thousand homes add up to only a small percentage of the total national housing
stock. Yet in the cities Blackstone has targeted most aggressively, the concentration of its
properties is staggering. In Phoenix, Arizona, some neighborhoods have at least one, if not
two or three, Blackstone-owned homes on just about every block.
This inundation has some concerned that the private equity giant, perhaps in conjunction
with other institutional investors, will exercise undue influence over regional markets,
pushing up rental prices because of a lack of competition. The biggest concern among many
ordinary Americans, however, should be that, not too many years from now, this whole rental
empire and its hot new class of securities might fail, sending the economy into an
all-too-familiar tailspin.
"You're allowing Wall Street to control a significant sector of single-family housing,"
said Michael Donley, a resident of Chicago who has been investigating Blackstone's rapidly
expanding presence in his neighborhood. "But is it sustainable?" he wondered. "It could all
collapse in 2016, and you'll be worse off than in 2008."
This is not surprising that this has happened. All of the de-regulation on Wall Street,
lobbied for by Wall Street has allowed this to transpire.
Congress does not even read the bills that they sign into law, let alone write them!
Many are written by ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council, the Chamber of Commerce,
the Realtor's assosiation, the Medical Industrial Complex, public employee unions, and
various other special interest groups!
Why is it a pressing issue to actively promote homosexuality? What is the point? That is
really strange! There is a difference between not actively discriminating and actively
promoting!
Are they trying to worsen the AIDS epidemic or lower the birth rate? It does not make
sense to be actively promoting and encouraging homosexuality.
@Colin
Wright There are many venture capitalist that are not Jewish.. Venture Capitalist don't
always advertise their wealth. Not everybody in Wall Street or the City of London is
Jewish.
I think it is important to separate the Jews from the Zionist , many in that
small group (Zionist) are Jewish and Christian but most Jews and most Christians are
neither Venture Capitalist nor Zionist. Time after time I have asked my Jewish friends are
you are Zionist, and most say they do not really know what Zionism is? Zionism hosts many
races among its members; in the states, Christian Zionism is big, maybe bigger even than
Jewish Zionism.. see Christian Zionism : The Tragedy and the Turning: the cause of our
Conflicts (on DVD) by http://www.Whit.org. .
Zionism is an economic system. Zionism is a winner take all system of Economics .
Zionism is like an adult version of the game called King of the Mountain. In such a game,
no one is allowed to play unless they first have sufficient resources to be counted, and
are then willing to and believe they are personally capable of defeating the then residing
well armed king (Oligarch). IMO, all Jews everywhere, would be well advised to avoid being
labelled a Zionist<=hence the reason ?
Zionism is not the same as Judaism, its not a race, its not a religion, its not even
a culture, it is an economic system with virus like attributes.
@Lot
You are quibbling. You are prevaricating. You are obfuscating.
Joyce has assembled a powerful case against a known cast of financial parasites. This
phenomena is hardly new. It brings to mind another financial scandal of a generation ago
that was chronicled in James B. Stewart's book 'Den of Thieves'.
The mega-wealthy swindlers of that era were also all Jews: Boesky, Siegel, Levine,
Milken, among others. Some twenty years later, another Wall Street Jew, Bernie Madoff,
succeeds in pulling off the biggest fraud in US history. There's a pattern here.
Yet all you can do, Lot, is deflect, denigrate, and deny.
Joyce is giving us more actual names. These are the actual perps as well as institutions
they hide behind. These ruthless predators collude with one another as they exploit the
labor of millions of gentiles worldwide, then shower Jewish causes and philanthropies with
their loot. Their tribal avarice is revolting. And insatiable.
Do you deny this phenomena?
Is it all just another 'anti-Semitic canard'?
You even claim [Joyce] is
"retarded and highly uninformed".
Retarded?
He's brilliant and persuasive.
Uninformed?
He's erudite and scholarly.
You, Lot, are demonstrating again devious tribal dishonesty. It's glaring, it's
shameful, and it's obvious. This is a trait I've observed in virtually all of your
writings. You invariably deflect and deny. But Jewish criminality is real.
Joyce aptly concludes:
[T]he prosperity and influence of Zionist globalism rests to an overwhelming degree on
the predations of the most successful and ruthless Jewish financial parasites.
This is a Jewish conspiracy to make Jews look terrible. Congress should slam the breaks
here. The de-regulation of the powerful combined with the over-regulation of the powerless
is criminally wreckless. Kind of like the friends don't let friends drive drunk approach.
Congress slam the breaks, yeah right, that'll happen! Lol!
@Colin
Wright Andrew Carnegie left behind institutions like Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon
University, and over 2500 Free Libraries from coast to coast, in a time when very little
was done to help what we now call the "underprivileged".
In fact, he gave away 90% of his massive fortune–about $75 Billion in current
dollars. Funding, in the process, many charities, hospitals, museums, foundations and
institutions of learning. He was a major benefactor of negro education.
He was a staunch anti-imperialist who believed America should concentrate its energies
on peaceful endeavors rather than conquering and subduing far-off lands.
Although they are even more keen to put their names on things, today's robber barons
leave behind mainly wreckage.
Jews are destroying the world. Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. Look
at Europe, Africa and the Americas, Jews have left their ugly footprints. Corruption,
prostitution, drugs and human trafficking are their trade.
@anon
A combination of both I would say, although some would like to make it out that
Anglo-Saxons were the epitome of honour, they too resorted to morallly abject tricks and
swindles to acquire their wealth.
WASPs allowed Jews into their lands and both of them struck a sort of implicit contract
to work together to loot the world, when the word had been sucked dry, the conflict between
Jews and WASPs began and Hitler and the National Socialists were a last gasp attempt to
save the WASP side from being beaten, in the end higher Jewish verbal IQ gave them the
upper edge in the ability to trick people.
It is hard to feel sorry for WASPs, they struck a deal with the Jews centuries ago to
work together and were backstabbed, what is happening to these Third World countries will
now happen to WASP countries, it is poetic justice. Luckily the torch of civilisation will
continue by way of East Asia and Eastern Europe, who were true conservatives in that all
they wished was prosperity for their people in their own lands without any aggressive
foreign policy moves.
Basically, WASPs thought that they could win in the end, but they were out Jew'd and now
they are crying.
The one difference you will notice is that certain subsections of WASPs, notable the
British, actually did build infrastructure in the countries they looted, this to me was
borne out of a sense of guilt, so to be fair, WASPs were not as parasitic and ruthless as
Jews.
But in the end, the more ruthless wins. To quote the Joker
@Lot
Kyle Bass's fund is called 'Hayman', maybe because the MSM loathe the Bass family that
fellow Texican Bass is not related to. They are not the only ones aware of the drawbacks of
a name. Elliot is Singer's middle one.
The article bounces back and forth between two completely different fields: private
equity and distressed debt funds
If someone owes you money and you cannot collect, you factor the account, (sell it on)
and then people who are going to be a lot less pleasant about it will pay them a visit and
have a 'talk' with them. While it is good to have a domestic bankruptcy regime in which
innovation and entrepreneurship is encouraged– to the extent that people are not
routinely gaming the system–I don't see why Argentina should benefit. Singer became
notorious for what he did to Argentina after he bought their debt, and he is pretty upfront
about not caring who objects. Puerto Rico is neither foreign or protected by Chapter 9 of
the U.S. Bankruptcy Code so it is a borderline case, which is probably why the people
collecting that debt tried to hide who they were.
The way he took down Jonathan Bush and others led to Bloomberg dubbing Singer 'The
World's Most Feared Investor'. Singer buys into companies where he sees the management as
as failing to deliver maximum value to the shareholders, then applies pressure to raise the
share price (in Bush's case extremely personal pressure) that often leads to the departure
of the CEO and sale of the company. That immediate extra value for the shareholder Singer
creates puts lots of working people out a job. Because of Singer and his imitators, CEO's
are outsourcing and importing replacements for indigenous workers in those services that
cannot be outsourced. All the while loath to foster innovation that could bring about long
term growth, because that would interfere with squeezing out more and more shareholder
value.
Singer is less like a vulture than a rogue elephant that is killing the breeding pair
white rhinos on a game reserve, and they are going extinct. Well it's a good thing! Thanks
to Singer et al (including Warren Buffett) Trump got elected. According to someone in jail
with Epstein, he had an anecdote about Trump being asked by a French girl what 'white
trash' was, and Trump replied 'It's me without the money'.
Trump is now essentially funded by three Jews -- Singer, Bernard Marcus, and
Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250 million in pro-Trump political money.
In return, they want war with Iran.
All to the good. Iran won't leave Saudi Arabia (serious money) alone so Iran is going to
have to be crushed as a threat to the Saud family like Saddam before it anyway. If the Jews
think they are causing it, let 'em think so.
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/trump-creates-a-new-nation/
When the Israelis occupy nearly all of the West Bank with Donald Trump's approval and
start "relocating" the existing population, who will be around to speak up? No one, as by
that time saying nay to Israel will be a full-fledged hate crime and you can go to jail
for doing so
Loudspeaker goes off " All Anti–Zionist Jews to Times Square ".
@Colin
Wright No judeophile, but it's 90% demagogic horsehit.
God forbid anybody should ever have to pay back money they borrow! Why, that's utterly
Jewish!
These so-called "vulture" funds didn't originate the debt. They simply purchased already
existing debt at deeply discounted prices either because the debt was already in default or
was at imminent risk of defaulting, which is why the debt sells at a heavy discount, since
existing debt holders are often happy to sell cheap and get something rather than hold on
and risk getting nothing.
What Joyce zeroes in on is these vulture funds' willingness to use all legal avenues to
force debtors to make good on their debts, including seizing the collateral the debtors
pledged when they borrowed the money. Joyce chooses to characterize this practice as
"Jewish," implying that gentile creditors would instead be overcome with compassion and let
the debtors off the hook and wear the loss themselves.
What Joyce regards as a defect of "vulture" funds, others might regard as an benefit.
The size of these funds, their legal expertise, and their political connections mean that
borrowers can more successfully be held to account. If I owned, say, Puerto Rican debt in
my retirement account, the chances that I could make Puerto Rico honor its obligations are
much slimmer.
None of this is to suggest that finance, as we today know it, is perfect and that it
couldn't be reformed in any way to make its operation more conducive to nationalistic
social values, only that anti-cap ideologues like Joyce weave lurid tales of malfeasance
out of completely humdrum market economics (which is precisely the same market economics
that Tucker Carlson learned about too, btw).
Mr. Joyce
Your obsession with us will prove to be your downfall.
Jewish people have always stood against tyranny against the working class, the poor and
other people of color.
The phrases and catch words that you used to vilify Jews are in many cases pulled from the
age old tropes used to demonize Jews for centuries and are anti-Semitic through and
through. They can't be overlooked nor hidden by claims of legitimate political
disagreements.
We know that it is not only the Jewish community that is at risk from unchecked
antisemitism, but also other communities that white nationalists target.
I find it very offensive that people like you continue to demonize us for no reason.
I dare you to hold a debate with me on this so called "Jewish Influence".
I am not even hiding my name here.
Trump is betraying his voters and threatening millions of lives.
In a full-blown U.S. war
with Iran, up to a million people could die initially.
Hundreds of thousands more could die in the vacuum to follow. Millions would be made
refugees. That's the conclusion of experts surveyed
by Vox reporter Alex Ward . "The worst-case scenarios here are quite serious,"
Middle East scholar Michael Hanna warned.
With the brazen assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq,
President Trump has brought us leaps and bounds closer to that conflagration -- a decision
Trump appears to have made while
golfing at Mar-a-Lago .
Lawmakers need to move before it's too late.
The Iranians may
respond cautiously , perhaps forestalling a full-blown conflict. But there can be no doubt
the White House has been driving in that direction from day one.
In a few short years, Trump has blown up the Iran nuclear deal, put a horrific economic
stranglehold on the country, and sent a stunning
14,000 new troops to the Middle East since just last spring. Some
3,500 more are now on their way.
"Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran," John Bolton
tweeted about the assassination . Bolton may have left the White House, but clearly his
spirit lives on.
What next? Get ready to hear a lot about what a "
bad guy " Soleimani was, and how Iran is a "state sponsor" of terrorism.
No doubt, Soleimani had blood on his hands -- he was a general. Yet after two decades of
U.S. wars in the Middle East, that's the pot calling the kettle black. It was the U.S. who
invaded Iraq, started a civil war, and paved the way for a literal terrorist state, ISIS, to
occupy the country afterward (a force Soleimani himself was instrumental in dismantling).
That senseless war caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, exploded the terrorist threat,
and is destabilizing the region to this day. Yet somehow, war hawks like Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo can go on TV and -- with a straight face -- predict ordinary Iranians will
essentially thank the U.S. for murdering their general.
"People not only in Iraq but in Iran will view the American action last night as giving them
freedom,"
Pompeo said the morning after the assassination. You couldn't caricature a better callback
to Dick Cheney's infamous prediction that Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" if you
tried.
This war-mongering should be as toxic politically as
it is morally . Trump rode into office promising to end America's wars, winning him crucial
votes in swing states with large military and veteran populations. Huge bipartisan majorities,
including 58 percent of Republicans, say they want U.S. troops out of the Middle East.
Trump is betraying them spectacularly.
Yet too many Democrats are
merely objecting to Trump's failure to consult them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained the
strike "was taken without the consultation of the Congress." South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg
offered colorlessly that "there are serious questions about how this decision was made." Others
complained about the apparent lack of a "strategy."
It's illegal for a president to unilaterally launch a war -- that's important. But these
complaints make it sound like if you want to kill a million people for no reason, you just have
to go to the DMV first. As if Trump's base doesn't love it when he cuts the line in
Washington.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who warned that "Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to
another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more
dollars," came closer to communicating the real threat.
Millions of lives are at stake. Trump's aggression demands -- and voters will more likely
reward -- real opposition. Call him on it
before it's too late.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and editor of
Foreign Policy In Focus.
The 2016 presidential elections are proving historic, and not just because of the surprising
success of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, the lively debate among
feminists over whether to support Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump's unorthodox candidacy.
The elections are also groundbreaking because they're revealing more dramatically than ever
the corrosive effect of big money on our decaying democracy.
Following the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and related rulings,
corporations and the wealthiest Americans gained the legal right to raise and spend as much
money as they want on political candidates.
The 2012
elections were consequently the most expensive in U.S. history. And this year's races are predicted to cost even
more. With the general election still six months away, donors have already sunk $1 billion into
the presidential race -- with $619 million raised by candidates and another $412 million by
super PACs.
Big money in politics drives grave inequality in our country. It
also drives war.
After all, war is a profitable industry. While millions of people all over the world are
being killed and traumatized by violence, a small few make a killing from the never-ending war
machine.
During the Iraq War, for example, weapons manufacturers and a cadre of other corporations
made billions on federal contracts.
Most notoriously this included Halliburton, a military contractor previously led by Dick
Cheney. The company made huge profits from George W. Bush's decision to wage a costly,
unjustified, and illegal war while Cheney served as his vice president.
Military-industrial corporations spend heavily on political campaigns. They've given
over $1 million to this year's presidential candidates so far -- over $200,000 of which
went to Hillary Clinton, who leads the pack in industry backing.
These corporations target House and Senate members who sit on the Armed Forces and
Appropriations Committees, who control the purse strings for key defense line items. And
cleverly, they've planted
factories in most congressional districts. Even if they provide just a few dozen
constituent jobs per district, that helps curry favor with each member of Congress.
Thanks to aggressive lobbying efforts, weapons manufacturers have secured the
five largest contracts made by the federal government over the last seven years. In 2014,
the U.S. government awarded over $90 billion worth of contracts to Lockheed Martin, Boeing,
General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman.
Military spending has been one of the top three biggest federal programs every year since
2000, and it's far and away the largest discretionary portion. Year after year, elected
officials spend several times
more on the military than on education, energy, and the environment combined.
Lockheed Martin's problematic F-35 jet illustrates this disturbingly disproportionate use of
funds. The same $1.5 trillion Washington will spend on the jet, journalist Tom Cahill
calculates , could have provided tuition-free public higher education for every student in
the U.S. for the next 23 years. Instead, the Pentagon ordered a fighter plane that
can't even fire its own gun yet.
Given all of this, how can anyone justify war spending?
Some folks will say it's to make
us safer . Yet the aggressive U.S. military response following the 9/11 attacks -- the
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO bombing of Libya, and drone strikes in Pakistan and
Yemen -- has only destabilized the region. "Regime change" foreign policies have collapsed
governments and opened the doors to Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS.
Others may say they support a robust Pentagon budget because of the
jobs the military creates . But dollar for dollar, education spending creates nearly three
times more jobs than military spending.
We need to stop letting politicians and corporations treat violence and death as "business
opportunities." Until politics become about people instead of profits, we'll remain crushed in
the death grip of the war machine.
And that is the real national security threat facing the United States today.
Share this:
"... Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits the IPS publication Inequality.org. Follow her at @SarahDAnderson1. ..."
CEOs of major U.S. military contractors stand to reap huge windfalls from the escalation of conflict with Iran.
This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official last
week. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies' share prices spiked, inflating the value of
their executives' stock-based pay.
I took a look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most
recent SEC information on their stock holdings.
Northrop Grumman executives saw the biggest increase in the value of their stocks after the U.S. airstrike that
killed Qasem Suleimani on January 2. Shares in the B-2 bomber maker rose 5.43 percent by the end of trading the
following day.
Wesley Bush, who turned Northrop Grumman's reins over to Kathy Warden last year, held
251,947 shares
of company stock in various trusts as of his final SEC Form 4 filing in May 2019. (Companies
must submit these reports when top executives and directors buy and sell company stock.) Assuming Bush is still
sitting on that stockpile, he saw the value grow by $4.9 million to a total of $94.5 million last Friday.
New Northrop Grumman CEO Warden saw the
92,894 shares
she'd accumulated as the firm's COO expand in value by more than $2.7 million in just one day of
post-assassination trading.
Lockheed Martin, whose
Hellfire missiles
were reportedly used in the attack at the Baghdad airport, saw a 3.6 percent increase in
price per share on January 3. Marillyn Hewson, CEO of the world's largest weapon maker, may be kicking herself for
selling off a considerable chunk of stock last year when it was trading at around $307. Nevertheless, by the time
Lockheed shares reached $413 at the closing bell, her
remaining stash
had increased in value by about $646,000.
What about the manufacturer of the
MQ-9 Reaper
that carried the Hellfire missiles? That would be General Atomics. Despite raking in
$2.8
billion
in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is not required to disclose executive
compensation information because it is a privately held corporation.
We do know General Atomics CEO Neal Blue is worth an estimated
$4.1 billion
-- and he's a
major
investor
in oil production, a sector that
also stands to profit
from conflict with a major oil-producing country like Iran.
*Resigned 12/22/19. **Resigned 1/1/19 while staying on
as chairman until 7/19. New CEO Kathy Warden accumulated 92,894 shares in her previous position as Northrop
Grumman COO.
Suleimani's killing also inflated the value of General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic's fortune. As the weapon
maker's share price rose about 1 percentage point on January 3, the former CIA official saw her
stock holdings
increase by more than $1.2 million.
Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy saw a single-day increase in his stock of more than half a million dollars, as the
missile and bomb manufacturer's share price increased nearly 1.5 percent. Boeing stock remained flat on Friday.
But Dennis Muilenberg, recently ousted as CEO over the 737 aircraft scandal, appears to be well-positioned to
benefit from any continued upward drift of the defense sector.
As of his final
Form 4
report, Muilenburg was sitting on stock worth about $47.7 million. In his yet to be finalized exit
package, the disgraced former executive could also pocket huge sums of currently unvested stock grants.
Hopefully sanity will soon prevail and the terrifyingly high tensions between the Trump administration and Iran
will de-escalate. But even if the military stock surge of this past Friday turns out to be a market blip, it's a
sobering reminder of who stands to gain the most from a war that could put millions of lives at risk.
We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top
executives excessively. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed
capping CEO pay
at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts at no more than $400,000 (the salary of the U.S.
president). That notion should be extended to companies that receive massive taxpayer-funded contracts.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has
a plan
to deny federal contracts to companies that pay CEOs more than 150 times what their typical worker
makes.
As long as we allow the top executives of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, the profit
motive for war in Iran -- or anywhere -- will persist.
Share this:
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits the IPS
publication Inequality.org. Follow her at @SarahDAnderson1.
The main problem of the United States in the existing political and economic system, which
began to be intensively created by the American banking layer since 1885 and was fixed in
1913. This became possible only thanks to the Civil War of 1861-1865. I will explain. Before
the Civil War, each state had its own banking structure, its own banknotes (there were not so
many states, there were still territories that did not become states yet). Before the
American Civil War, there was no single banking system. Abraham Linkol was a protege of the
banking houses of the cities of New York and Chicago, they rigged the election (bought the
election). It may sound rude to the Americans, but Lincoln was a rogue in the eyes of some US
citizens of that time. And this became the main reason for the desire of some states (not
only southern, and some northern) to withdraw from the United States. Another good reason for
the exit was the persistent attempts of bankers in New York and Chicago to take control of
the banking system of the South. These are two main reasons, as old as the World, the
struggle for control and money. The war (unfortunately) began the South. Under a federal
treaty, South and North were supposed to jointly contain US forts for protection. The
fighting began on April 12, 1861 with an attack by southerners on such a fort Sumter in
Charleston Bay. These are the beginnings of war.
This is important - I advise everyone to read the memoirs of generals, and especially the
memoirs of Ulysses Grant, the future president of the United States. The war was with varying
success, but the emissaries of the banks of New York and Chicago always followed the army of
the North, who, taking advantage of the disastrous situation in the battlefields, bought up
real estate, land and other assets. They were called the "Carpetbagger". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger
They were engaged in the purchase throughout the war and up to 1885.
To make it clear to you, in the history of the USA, the period from 1865 to 1885 is called
the "Great American Depression" (this is the very first great depression and lasted 20
years). During this time, the bankers of New York and Chicago completely subjugated the US
banking system to themselves and their interests, trampled the South (robbed), after which
the submission of the US as a state directly to the banking mafia began. At present (since
1913) in the USA there is not capitalism, but an evil parody of capitalism.
I can call it this: American clan-corporate oligarchic "capitalism" (with the suppression
of free markets, with unfair competition and the creation of barriers to the dissemination of
reliable information). Since such "capitalism" cannot work (like socialism or utopian
communism), constant wars are needed that bring profit to the bankers, owners of the
military-industrial complex, political "service staff", make oligarchs richer, and ordinary
Americans poorer. We are now observing this, since this system has come to its end and
everything has become obvious.
For example, in the early 80s, the middle class of the United States was approximately 70%
of the population employed in production and trade, now it is no more than 15%.
The gap between the oligarchs and ordinary Americans widened. My essay is how I see what
is happening in the USA and why I do not like it. It's my personal opinion. In the end, my
favorite phrase is that Americans are suckers and boobies (but we still love them). Good luck
everyone.
In Iraq The U.S. Is Again An Occupation Force As It Rejects To Leave As Demanded
Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is following
Iraq's Parliament decision to remove all foreign forces from Iraq. But his request for
talks with the U.S. about the U.S. withdrawal process was answered with a big "F*** You":
Iraq's caretaker prime minister asked Washington to start working out a road map for an
American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the
request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to "recommit" to their
partnership.
Thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in the capital and southern Iraq, many
calling on both Iran and America to leave Iraq, reflecting anger and frustration over the two
rivals -- both Baghdad's allies -- trading blows on Iraqi soil.
The request from Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi pointed to his determination to push
ahead with demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq, stoked by the American drone strike on Jan.
3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. In a phone call Thursday night, he told U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that recent U.S. strikes in Iraq were an unacceptable breach
of Iraqi sovereignty and a violation of their security agreements, his office said.
He asked Pompeo to "send delegates to Iraq to prepare a mechanism" to carry out the Iraqi
Parliament's resolution on withdrawing foreign troops, according to the statement.
"The prime minister said American forces had entered Iraq and drones are flying in its
airspace without permission from Iraqi authorities, and this was a violation of the bilateral
agreements," the statement added.
The Associated Press errs when it says that the move was "stoked by the American drone
strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani". The move was stoked five days
earlier when the U.S.
killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the demands by the Iraqi
prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when the U.S.
assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes , the deputy commander of the Popular Militia Forces and
a national hero in Iraq.
The State Department issued a rather aggressive response to
Abdul-Mahdi's request:
By killing Soleimani the USA formally declared war of Iran. So sactions is jus secondary
effect of this decition.
Notable quotes:
"... Since its unilateral exit from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Washington has been mounting pressure on Tehran through a series of sanctions. Iran has maintained a tough stance and scaled back its nuclear commitments in response. ..."
The latest move included sanctions on metal manufacturing and other sectors of the Iranian
economy, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin told reporters at a White House press
briefing, noting that the sanctions are both primary and secondary.
Mnuchin also said the Treasury had designated eight senior Iranian officials, including Ali
Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani,
deputy chief of staff of Iranian armed force, and others.
"The United States is targeting senior Iranian officials for their involvement and
complicity in Tuesday's ballistic missile strikes," Mnuchin claimed in a statement issued by
the Treasury.
Also on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said in a White House statement that the
punishing measures aimed at denying Iran's revenue that "may be used to fund and support its
nuclear program, missile development, terrorism and terrorist proxy networks, and malign
regional influence."
The Pentagon confirmed that Iran had launched 16 ballistic missiles against two military
bases housing U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq earlier this week.
Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had claimed responsibility for the missile
attacks, saying that they were meant to retaliate the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, former
commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC.
Trump said Wednesday in an address to the nation that "the United States will immediately
impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. These powerful sanctions
will remain until Iran changes its behavior."
Since its unilateral exit from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Washington has been
mounting pressure on Tehran through a series of sanctions. Iran has maintained a tough stance
and scaled back its nuclear commitments in response.
When
the United States, the United Kingdom, and the "coalition of the willing" attacked Iraq in
March 2003, millions protested around the world. But the war of "shock and awe" was just the
beginning. The subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority
bankrupted the country and left its infrastructure in shambles.
It's not just a question of security. Although the breathtaking violence that attended
Iraq's descent into sectarian nightmare has been well documented in many retrospectives on the
10-year-old war, what's often overlooked is that by far more mundane standards, the United
States did a spectacularly poor job of governing Iraq.
It's not that Iraq was flourishing before the occupation. From 1990 to 2003, the UN Security
Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq that were the harshest in the history of global
governance. But along with the sanctions, at least, came an elaborate system of oversight and
accountability that drew in the Security Council, nine UN agencies, and General Secretary
himself.
The system was certainly imperfect, and the effects of the sanctions on the Iraqi people
were devastating. But when the United States arrived, all semblance of international oversight
vanished.
Under enormous pressure from Washington, in May 2003 the Security Council formally
recognized the occupation of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Resolution
1483. Among other things, this resolution gave the CPA complete control over all of Iraq's
assets.
At the same time, the Council removed all the forms of monitoring and accountability that
had been in place: there would be no reports on the humanitarian situation by UN agencies, and
there would be no committee of the Security Council charged with monitoring the occupation.
There would be a limited audit of funds, after they were spent, but no one from the UN would
directly oversee oil sales. And no humanitarian agencies would ensure that Iraqi funds were
being spent in ways that benefitted the country.
Humanitarian concerns
In January 2003, the UN prepared a working plan anticipating the impact of
a possible war. Even with only "medium impact" from the invasion, the UN expected that
humanitarian conditions would be severely compromised.
Because the Iraqi population was so heavily reliant on the government's food distribution
system (a consequence of international sanctions), the UN anticipated that overthrowing the
Iraqi regime would also undermine food security. And because the population already suffered
from extensive malnutrition, this disruption would be quite lethal, putting 30 percent of Iraqi
children under five at risk of death. The UN noted that if water and sewage treatment plants
were damaged in the war, or if the electrical system could not operate, Iraqis would lose
access to potable water, which would likely precipitate epidemics of water-borne diseases. And
if electricity, transportation, and medical equipment were compromised, then the medical system
would be unable to respond effectively to these epidemics.
During the occupation, much of this came to pass. A
June 2003 UN report noted that the postwar water and sewage systems for Baghdad and other
central and southern governorates were "in crisis." In Baghdad alone, the report estimated that
40 percent of the city's water distribution network was damaged, leading to a loss of up to
half of the city's potable water through leaks and breaks in the system. And direr still, the
UN reported that neither of Baghdad's two sewage treatment plants was functional, leading to a
massive discharge of raw sewage into the Tigris River.
The food situation was similar. The UN found that farming had collapsed due to "widespread
insecurity and looting, the complete collapse of ministries and state agencies -- the sole
providers of essential farming inputs and services -- together with significant damages to
power supplies."
Likewise, the health system deteriorated dramatically. Less than 50 percent of the Iraqi
population had access to medical care, due in part to the dangers associated with travel.
Additionally, the report estimated that 75 percent of all health-care institutions were
affected by the looting and chaos that occurred in the aftermath of the war. As of June 2003,
the health system as a whole was functioning at 30-50 percent of its pre-war capacity. The
impact was immediate. By early summer, acute malnutrition rates had doubled, dysentery was
widespread, and little medical care was available. In August, when a power outage blacked out
New York, the joke going around Baghdad was "I hope they're not waiting for the Americans to
fix it."
The CPA gave responsibility for humanitarian relief to the U.S. military -- not to agencies
with experience in humanitarian crises -- and marginalized the UN's humanitarian relief
agencies. Over the 14-month course of the CPA's administration, the humanitarian crisis
worsened. Preventable diseases like dysentery and typhoid ran rampant. Malnutrition worsened,
claiming the lives of ever more infants, mothers, and young children. All told, there was an
estimated 100,000
"excess deaths" during the invasion and occupation -- well above and beyond the mortality rate
under Saddam Hussein, even under international sanctions.
The CPA's priorities were clear. After the invasion, during the widespread looting and
robbery, occupation authorities did little to protect water and sewage treatment plants, or
even pediatric hospitals. By contrast, they provided immediate protection for the oil ministry
offices, hired a U.S. company to put out oil field fires, and immediately provided protection
for the oil fields as well.
Corruption
In addition, the U.S.-led CPA was deeply corrupt. Much of Iraq's revenues, from oil sales or
other sources, went to contracts with U.S. companies. Of contracts for more than $5 million, 74
percent went to U.S. companies, with most of the remainder going to U.S. allies. Only 2 percent
went to Iraqi companies.
Over the course of the occupation, huge amounts of money simply disappeared. Kellogg, Brown,
and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, received over 60 percent of all contracts paid for
with Iraqi funds, although it was repeatedly criticized by auditors for issues of honesty and
competence. In the last six weeks of the occupation, the United States shipped $5 billion of
Iraqi funds, in cash, into the country, to be spent before the Iraqi-led government took over.
Auditor reports indicated that Iraqi funds were systematically looted by the CPA officials:
"One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped
bundles of currency," read one
report . "One official was given $6.75 million in cash, and was ordered to spend it one
week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."
U.S. officials were apparently unconcerned about the gross abuses of the funds with which
they were entrusted. In one instance, the CPA transferred some $8.8 billion of Iraqi money
without any documentation as to how the funds were spent. When questioned about how the money
was spent, Admiral David Oliver, the principal deputy for financial matters in the CPA,
replied
that he had "no idea" and didn't think it was particularly important. "Billions of dollars of
their money?" he asked his interlocutor. "What difference does it make?"
In the end, none of this should be terribly surprising -- the corruption, the indifference
to human needs, the singular concern with controlling Iraq's oil wealth. It was obvious from
the moment that the Security Council, under enormous pressure from the United State, passed
Resolution 1483.
By systematically removing nearly every form of oversight from their self-imposed
administration of Iraq, the United States and its allies laid the foundation for the looting of
an entire nation's wealth, abetted by their own wanton indifference to the needs and rights of
Iraqis. Ten years after the start of the war, the CPA's disastrous governance of Iraq stands
alongside the country's horrifying descent into violence as a dark legacy in its own right.
Looks like Iran is Catch22 for the USA: it can destroy it, but only at the cost of losing empire and dollar hegemony...
Notable quotes:
"... The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire. In effect, foreign countries are beginning to respond to the United States what the ten tribes of Israel said when they withdrew from the southern kingdom of Judah, whose king Rehoboam refused to lighten his demands (1 Kings 12). They echoed the cry of Sheba son of Bikri a generation earlier: "Look after your own house, O David!" The message is: What do other countries have to gain by remaining in the US unipolar neoliberalized world, as compared to using their own wealth to build up their own economies? It's an age-old problem. ..."
"... The dollar will still play a role in US trade and investment, but it will be as just another currency, held at arms length until it finally gives up its domineering attempt to strip other countries' wealth for itself. However, its demise may not be a pretty sight. ..."
"... Conflict in the ME has traditionally almost always been about oil [and of course Israel]. This situation is different. It is only partially about oil and Israel, but OVERWHHEMINGLY it is about the BRI. ..."
"... The salient factor as I see it is the Oil for Technology initiative that Iraq signed with China shortly before it slid into this current mess. ..."
"... This was a mechanism whereby China would buy Iraq oil and these funds would be used directly to fund infrastructure and self-sufficiency initiatives and technologies that would help to drag Iraq out of the complete disaster that the US war had created in this country. A key part of this would be that China would also make extra loans available at the same time to speed up this development. ..."
"... "Iraq's Finance Ministry that the country had started exporting 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to China in October as part of the 20-year oil-for-infrastructure deal agreed between the two countries." ..."
"... "For Iraq and Iran, China's plans are particularly far-reaching, OilPrice.com has been told by a senior oil industry figure who works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry and Iraq's Oil Ministry. China will begin with the oil and gas sector and work outwards from that central point. In addition to being granted huge reductions on buying Iranian oil and gas, China is to be given the opportunity to build factories in both Iran and Iraq – and build-out infrastructure, such as railways – overseen by its own management staff from Chinese companies. These are to have the same operational structure and assembly lines as those in China, so that they fit seamlessly into various Chinese companies' assembly lines' process for whatever product a particular company is manufacturing, whilst also being able to use the still-cheap labour available in both Iraq and Iraq." ..."
"... Hudson is so good. He's massively superior to most so called military analysts and alternative bloggers on the net. He can clearly see the over arching picture and how the military is used to protect and project it. The idea that the US is going to leave the middle east until they are forced to is so blind as to be ridiculous. ..."
"... I'd never thought of that "stationary aircraft carrier" comparison between Israel and the British, very apt. ..."
"... Trump et al assassinated someone who was on a diplomatic mission. This action was so far removed from acceptable behavior that it must have been considered to be "by any means and at all costs". ..."
"... This article, published by Strategic Culture, features a translation of Mahdi's speech to the Iraqi parliament in which he states that Trump threatened him with assassination and the US admitted to killing hundreds of demonstrators using Navy SEAL snipers. ..."
"... This description provided by Mr Hudson is no Moore than the financial basis behind the Cebrowski doctrine instituted on 9/11. https://www.voltairenet.org/article ..."
"... "The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States itself. That is Trump's major contribution The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire." ..."
"... The US govt. have long since paid off most every European politician. Thusly, Europe, as separate nations that should be remain still under the yolk of the US Financial/Political/Military power. ..."
"... In any event, it is the same today. Energy underlies, not only the military but, all of world civilization. Oil and gas are overwhelmingly the source of energy for the modern world. Without it, civilization collapses. Thus, he who controls oil (and gas) controls the world. ..."
"... the link between the US $$$ and Saudi Oil, is the absolute means of the American Dollar to reign complete. This payment system FEEDS both the US Military, but WALL STREET, hedge funds, the US/EU oligarchs – to name just a few entities. ..."
Introduction: After posting Michael Hudson's article "America
Escalates its "Democratic" Oil War in the Near East" on the blog, I decided to ask
Michael to reply to a few follow-up questions. Michael very kindly agreed. Please see our
exchange below.
The Saker
-- -- -
The Saker: Trump has been accused of not thinking forward, of not having a long-term
strategy regarding the consequences of assassinating General Suleimani. Does the United States
in fact have a strategy in the Near East, or is it only ad hoc?
Michael Hudson: Of course American strategists will deny that the recent actions do not
reflect a deliberate strategy, because their long-term strategy is so aggressive and
exploitative that it would even strike the American public as being immoral and offensive if
they came right out and said it.
President Trump is just the taxicab driver, taking the passengers he has accepted –
Pompeo, Bolton and the Iran-derangement syndrome neocons – wherever they tell him they
want to be driven. They want to pull a heist, and he's being used as the getaway driver (fully
accepting his role). Their plan is to hold onto the main source of their international revenue:
Saudi Arabia and the surrounding Near Eastern oil-export surpluses and money. They see the US
losing its ability to exploit Russia and China, and look to keep Europe under its control by
monopolizing key sectors so that it has the power to use sanctions to squeeze countries that
resist turning over control of their economies and natural rentier monopolies to US buyers. In
short, US strategists would like to do to Europe and the Near East just what they did to Russia
under Yeltsin: turn over public infrastructure, natural resources and the banking system to
U.S. owners, relying on US dollar credit to fund their domestic government spending and private
investment.
This is basically a resource grab. Suleimani was in the same position as Chile's Allende,
Libya's Qaddafi, Iraq's Saddam. The motto is that of Stalin: "No person, no problem."
The Saker: Your answer raises a question about Israel: In your recent article you only
mention Israel twice, and these are only passing comments. Furthermore, you also clearly say
the US Oil lobby as much more crucial than the Israel Lobby, so here is my follow-up question
to you: On what basis have you come to this conclusion and how powerful do you believe the
Israel Lobby to be compared to, say, the Oil lobby or the US Military-Industrial Complex? To
what degree do their interests coincide and to what degree to they differ?
Michael Hudson: I wrote my article to explain the most basic concerns of U.S. international
diplomacy: the balance of payments (dollarizing the global economy, basing foreign central bank
savings on loans to the U.S. Treasury to finance the military spending mainly responsible for
the international and domestic budget deficit), oil (and the enormous revenue produced by the
international oil trade), and recruitment of foreign fighters (given the impossibility of
drafting domestic U.S. soldiers in sufficient numbers). From the time these concerns became
critical to today, Israel was viewed as a U.S. military base and supporter, but the U.S. policy
was formulated independently of Israel.
I remember one day in 1973 or '74 I was traveling with my Hudson Institute colleague Uzi
Arad (later a head of Mossad and advisor to Netanyahu) to Asia, stopping off in San Francisco.
At a quasi-party, a U.S. general came up to Uzi and clapped him on the shoulder and said,
"You're our landed aircraft carrier in the Near East," and expressed his friendship.
Uzi was rather embarrassed. But that's how the U.S. military thought of Israel back then. By
that time the three planks of U.S. foreign policy strategy that I outlined were already firmly
in place.
Of course Netanyahu has applauded U.S. moves to break up Syria, and Trump's assassination
choice. But the move is a U.S. move, and it's the U.S. that is acting on behalf of the dollar
standard, oil power and mobilizing Saudi Arabia's Wahabi army.
Israel fits into the U.S.-structured global diplomacy much like Turkey does. They and other
countries act opportunistically within the context set by U.S. diplomacy to pursue their own
policies. Obviously Israel wants to secure the Golan Heights; hence its opposition to Syria,
and also its fight with Lebanon; hence, its opposition to Iran as the backer of Assad and
Hezbollah. This dovetails with US policy.
But when it comes to the global and U.S. domestic response, it's the United States that is
the determining active force. And its concern rests above all with protecting its cash cow of
Saudi Arabia, as well as working with the Saudi jihadis to destabilize governments whose
foreign policy is independent of U.S. direction – from Syria to Russia (Wahabis in
Chechnya) to China (Wahabis in the western Uighur region). The Saudis provide the underpinning
for U.S. dollarization (by recycling their oil revenues into U.S. financial investments and
arms purchases), and also by providing and organizing the ISIS terrorists and coordinating
their destruction with U.S. objectives. Both the Oil lobby and the Military-Industrial Complex
obtain huge economic benefits from the Saudis.
Therefore, to focus one-sidedly on Israel is a distraction away from what the US-centered
international order really is all about.
The Saker: In your recent article you wrote: " The assassination was intended to escalate
America's presence in Iraq to keep control the region's oil reserves ." Others believe that
the goal was precisely the opposite, to get a pretext to remove the US forces from both Iraq
and Syria. What are your grounds to believe that your hypothesis is the most likely one?
Michael Hudson: Why would killing Suleimani help remove the U.S. presence? He was the
leader of the fight against ISIS, especially in Syria. US policy was to continue using ISIS to
permanently destabilize Syria and Iraq so as to prevent a Shi'ite crescent reaching from Iran
to Lebanon – which incidentally would serve as part of China's Belt and Road initiative.
So it killed Suleimani to prevent the peace negotiation. He was killed because he had been
invited by Iraq's government to help mediate a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
That was what the United States feared most of all, because it effectively would prevent its
control of the region and Trump's drive to seize Iraqi and Syrian oil.
So using the usual Orwellian doublethink, Suleimani was accused of being a terrorist, and
assassinated under the U.S. 2002 military Authorization Bill giving the President to move
without Congressional approval against Al Qaeda. Trump used it to protect Al Qaeda's
terrorist ISIS offshoots.
Given my three planks of U.S. diplomacy described above, the United States must remain in
the Near East to hold onto Saudi Arabia and try to make Iraq and Syria client states equally
subservient to U.S. balance-of-payments and oil policy.
Certainly the Saudis must realize that as the buttress of U.S. aggression and terrorism in
the Near East, their country (and oil reserves) are the most obvious target to speed the
parting guest. I suspect that this is why they are seeking a rapprochement with Iran. And I
think it is destined to come about, at least to provide breathing room and remove the threat.
The Iranian missiles to Iraq were a demonstration of how easy it would be to aim them at Saudi
oil fields. What then would be Aramco's stock market valuation?
The Saker: In your article you wrote: " The major deficit in the U.S. balance of payments
has long been military spending abroad. The entire payments deficit, beginning with the Korean
War in 1950-51 and extending through the Vietnam War of the 1960s, was responsible for forcing
the dollar off gold in 1971. The problem facing America's military strategists was how to
continue supporting the 800 U.S. military bases around the world and allied troop support
without losing America's financial leverage. " I want to ask a basic, really primitive
question in this regard: how cares about the balance of payments as long as 1) the US continues
to print money 2) most of the world will still want dollars. Does that not give the US an
essentially "infinite" budget? What is the flaw in this logic?
Michael Hudson: The U.S. Treasury can create dollars to spend at home, and the Fed can
increase the banking system's ability to create dollar credit and pay debts denominated in US
dollars. But they cannot create foreign currency to pay other countries, unless they willingly
accept dollars ad infinitum – and that entails bearing the costs of financing the U.S.
balance-of-payments deficit, getting only IOUs in exchange for real resources that they sell to
U.S. buyers.
This is the situation that arose half a century ago. The United States could print dollars
in 1971, but it could not print gold.
In the 1920s, Germany's Reichsbank could print deutsche marks – trillions of them.
When it came to pay Germany's foreign reparations debt, all it could do was to throw these
D-marks onto the foreign exchange market. That crashed the currency's exchange rate, forcing up
the price of imports proportionally and causing the German hyperinflation.
The question is, how many surplus dollars do foreign governments want to hold. Supporting
the dollar standard ends up supporting U.S. foreign diplomacy and military policy. For the
first time since World War II, the most rapidly growing parts of the world are seeking to
de-dollarize their economies by reducing reliance on U.S. exports, U.S. investment, and U.S.
bank loans. This move is creating an alternative to the dollar, likely to replace it with
groups of other currencies and assets in national financial reserves.
The Saker: In the same article you also write: " So maintaining the dollar as the world's
reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. " We often hear people say
that the dollar is about to tank and that as soon as that happens, then the US economy (and,
according to some, the EU economy too) will collapse. In the intelligence community there is
something called tracking the "indicators and warnings". My question to you is: what are the
economic "indicators and warnings" of a possible (probable?) collapse of the US dollar followed
by a collapse of the financial markets most tied to the Dollar? What shall people like myself
(I am an economic ignoramus) keep an eye on and look for?
Michael Hudson: What is most likely is a slow decline, largely from debt deflation
and cutbacks in social spending, in the Eurozone and US economies. Of course, the decline will
force the more highly debt-leveraged companies to miss their bond payments and drive them into
insolvency. That is the fate of Thatcherized economies. But it will be long and painfully drawn
out, largely because there is little left-wing socialist alternative to neoliberalism at
present.
Trump's protectionist policies and sanctions are forcing other countries to become
self-reliant and independent of US suppliers, from farm crops to airplanes and military arms,
against the US threat of a cutoff or sanctions against repairs, spare parts and servicing.
Sanctioning Russian agriculture has helped it become a major crop exporter, and to become much
more independent in vegetables, dairy and cheese products. The US has little to offer
industrially, especially given the fact that its IT communications are stuffed with US
spyware.
Europe therefore is facing increasing pressure from its business sector to choose the non-US
economic alliance that is growing more rapidly and offers a more profitable investment market
and more secure trade supplier. Countries will turn as much as possible (diplomatically as well
as financially and economically) to non-US suppliers because the United States is not reliable,
and because it is being shrunk by the neoliberal policies supported by Trump and the Democrats
alike. A byproduct probably will be a continued move toward gold as an alternative do the
dollar in settling balance-of-payments deficits.
The Saker: Finally, my last question: which country out there do you see as the most capable
foe of the current US-imposed international political and economic world order? whom do you
believe that US Deep State and the Neocons fear most? China? Russia? Iran? some other country?
How would you compare them and on the basis of what criteria?
Michael Hudson: The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States
itself. That is Trump's major contribution. He is uniting the world in a move toward
multi-centrism much more than any ostensibly anti-American could have done. And he is doing it
all in the name of American patriotism and nationalism – the ultimate Orwellian
rhetorical wrapping!
Trump has driven Russia and China together with the other members of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), including Iran as observer. His demand that NATO join in US oil
grabs and its supportive terrorism in the Near East and military confrontation with Russia in
Ukraine and elsewhere probably will lead to European "Ami go home" demonstrations against NATO
and America's threat of World War III.
No single country can counter the U.S. unipolar world order. It takes a critical mass of
countries. This already is taking place among the countries that you list above. They are
simply acting in their own common interest, using their own mutual currencies for trade and
investment. The effect is an alternative multilateral currency and trading area.
The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that other countries sacrifice
their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire. In effect, foreign countries are
beginning to respond to the United States what the ten tribes of Israel said when they withdrew
from the southern kingdom of Judah, whose king Rehoboam refused to lighten his demands (1 Kings
12). They echoed the cry of Sheba son of Bikri a generation earlier: "Look after your own
house, O David!" The message is: What do other countries have to gain by remaining in the US
unipolar neoliberalized world, as compared to using their own wealth to build up their own
economies? It's an age-old problem.
The dollar will still play a role in US trade and investment, but it will be as just another
currency, held at arms length until it finally gives up its domineering attempt to strip other
countries' wealth for itself. However, its demise may not be a pretty sight.
The Saker: I thank you very much for your time and answers!
Another one that absolutely stands for me out is the below link to a recent interview of
Hussein Askary.
As I wrote a few days ago IMO this too is a wonderful insight into the utterly complicated
dynamics of the tinderbox that the situation in Iran and Iraq has become.
Conflict in the ME has traditionally almost always been about oil [and of course Israel].
This situation is different. It is only partially about oil and Israel, but OVERWHHEMINGLY it
is about the BRI.
The salient factor as I see it is the Oil for Technology initiative that Iraq signed with
China shortly before it slid into this current mess.
This was a mechanism whereby China would buy Iraq oil and these funds would be used
directly to fund infrastructure and self-sufficiency initiatives and technologies that would
help to drag Iraq out of the complete disaster that the US war had created in this country. A
key part of this would be that China would also make extra loans available at the same time
to speed up this development.
In essence, this would enable the direct and efficient linking of Iraq into the BRI
project. Going forward the economic gains and the political stability that could come out of
this would be a completely new paradigm in the recovery of Iraq both economically and
politically. Iraq is essential for a major part of the dynamics of the BRI because of its
strategic location and the fact that it could form a major hub in the overall network.
It absolutely goes without saying that the AAA would do everything the could to wreck this
plan. This is their playbook and is exactly what they have done. The moronic and
extraordinarily impulsive Trump subsequently was easily duped into being a willing and
idiotic accomplice in this plan.
The positive in all of this is that this whole scheme will backfire spectacularly for the
perpetrators and will more than likely now speed up the whole process in getting Iraq back on
track and working towards stability and prosperity.
Please don't anyone try to claim that Trump is part of any grand plan nothing could be
further from the truth he is nothing more than a bludgeoning imbecile foundering around,
lashing out impulsively indiscriminately. He is completely oblivious and ignorant as to the
real picture.
I urge everyone involved in this Saker site to put aside an hour and to listen very
carefully to Askary's insights. This is extremely important and could bring more clarity to
understanding the situation than just about everything else you have read put together. There
is hope, and Askary highlights the huge stakes that both Russia and China have in the
region.
This is a no brainer. This is the time for both Russia and China to act and to decisively.
They must cooperate in assisting both Iraq and Iran to extract themselves from the current
quagmire the one that the vicious Hegemon so cruelly and thoughtlessly tossed them into.
Also interesting is what Simon Watkins reports in his recent article entitled "Is Iraq About
To Become A Chinese Client State?"
To quote from the article:
"Iraq's Finance Ministry that the country had started exporting 100,000 barrels per day
(bpd) of crude oil to China in October as part of the 20-year oil-for-infrastructure deal
agreed between the two countries."
and
"For Iraq and Iran, China's plans are particularly far-reaching, OilPrice.com has been
told by a senior oil industry figure who works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry and
Iraq's Oil Ministry. China will begin with the oil and gas sector and work outwards from that
central point. In addition to being granted huge reductions on buying Iranian oil and gas,
China is to be given the opportunity to build factories in both Iran and Iraq – and
build-out infrastructure, such as railways – overseen by its own management staff from
Chinese companies. These are to have the same operational structure and assembly lines as
those in China, so that they fit seamlessly into various Chinese companies' assembly lines'
process for whatever product a particular company is manufacturing, whilst also being able to
use the still-cheap labour available in both Iraq and Iraq."
and
"The second key announcement in this vein made last week from Iraq was that the Oil
Ministry has completed the pre-qualifying process for companies interested in participating
in the Iraqi-Jordanian oil pipeline project. The U$5 billion pipeline is aimed at carrying
oil produced from the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq's Basra Governorate to the Jordanian port of
Aqaba, with the first phase of the project comprising the installation of a
700-kilometre-long pipeline with a capacity of 2.25 million bpd within the Iraqi territories
(Rumaila-Haditha). The second phase includes installing a 900-kilometre pipeline in Jordan
between Haditha and Aqaba with a capacity of 1 million bpd. Iraq's Oil Minister – for
the time being, at least – Thamir Ghadhban added that the Ministry has formed a team to
prepare legal contracts, address financial issues and oversee technical standards for
implementing the project, and that May will be the final month in which offers for the
project from the qualified companies will be accepted and that the winners will be announced
before the end of this year. Around 150,000 barrels of the oil from Iraq would be used for
Jordan's domestic needs, whilst the remainder would be exported through Aqaba to various
destinations, generating about US$3 billion a year in revenues to Jordan, with the rest going
to Iraq. Given that the contractors will be expected to front-load all of the financing for
the projects associated with this pipeline, Baghdad expects that such tender offers will be
dominated by Chinese and Russian companies, according to the Iran and Iraq source."
Hudson is so good. He's massively superior to most so called military analysts and
alternative bloggers on the net. He can clearly see the over arching picture and how the
military is used to protect and project it. The idea that the US is going to leave the middle
east until they are forced to is so blind as to be ridiculous.
They will not sacrifice the
(free) oil until booted out by a coalition of Arab countries threatening to over run them and
that is why the dollar hegemonys death will be slow, long and drawn out and they will do
anything, any dirty trick in the book, to prevent Arab/Persian unity. Unlike many peoples
obsession with Israel and how important they feel themselves to be I think Hudson is correct
again. They are the middle eastern version of the British – a stationary aircraft
carrier who will allow themselves to be used and abused whilst living under the illusion they
are major players. They aren't. They're bit part players in decline, subservient to the great
dollar and oil pyramid scheme that keeps America afloat. If you want to beat America you have
to understand the big scheme, that and the utter insanity that backs it up. It is that
insanity of the leites, the inability to allow themselves to be 'beaten' that will keep
nuclear exchange as a real possibility over the next 10 to 15 years. Unification is the only
thing that can stop it and trying to unite so many disparate countries (as the Russians are
trying to do despite multiple provocations) is where the future lies and why it will take so
long. It is truly breath taking in such a horrific way, as Hudson mentions, that to allow the
world to see its 'masters of the universe' pogram to be revealed:
"Of course American strategists will deny that the recent actions do not reflect a
deliberate strategy, because their long-term strategy is so aggressive and exploitative that
it would even strike the American public as being immoral and offensive if they came right
out and said it."
Would be to allow it to be undermined at home and abroad. God help us all.
Clever would be a better word. Looking at my world globe, I see Italy, Greece, and Turkey on
that end of the Mediterranean. Turkey has been in NATO since 1952. Crete and Cyprus are also
right there. Doesn't Hudson own a globe or regional map?
That a US Admiral would be gushing about the Apartheid state 7 years after the attempted
destruction of the USS Liberty is painful to consider. I'd like to disbelieve the story, but
it's quite likely there were a number of high-ranking ***holes in a Naval Uniform.
The world situation reminds us of the timeless fable by Aesop of The North Wind and the Sun.
Trump et al assassinated someone who was on a diplomatic mission. This action was so far
removed from acceptable behavior that it must have been considered to be "by any means and at
all costs".
Perhaps the most potent weapon Iran or anyone else has at this critical juncture, is not
missiles, but diplomacy.
"Therefore, to focus one-sidedly on Israel is a distraction away from what the US-centered
international order really is all about."
Thank you for saying this sir. In the US and around the world many people become
obsessively fixated in seeing a "jew" or zionist behind every bush. Now the Zionists are
certinly an evil, blood thirsty bunch, and certainly deserve the scorn of the world, but i
feel its a cop out sometimes. A person from the US has a hard time stomaching the actions of
their country, so they just hoist all the unpleasentries on to the zionists. They put it all
on zionisim, and completly fail to mention imperialism. I always switced back and forth on
the topic my self. But i cant see how a beachead like the zionist state, a stationary
carrier, can be bigger than the empire itself. Just look at the major leaders in the
resistance groups, the US was always seen as the ultimate obstruction, while israel was seen
as a regional obstruction. Like sayyed hassan nasrallah said in his recent speech about the
martyrs, that if the US is kicked out, the Israelis might just run away with out even
fighting. I hate it when people say "we are in the middle east for israel" when it can easily
be said that "israel is still in the mid east because of the US." If the US seized to exist
today, israel would fall rather quickly. If israel fell today the US would still continue
being an imperalist, bloodthirsty entity.
The Deeper Story behind the Assassination of Soleimani
This article, published by Strategic Culture, features a translation of Mahdi's speech to
the Iraqi
parliament in which he states that Trump threatened him with assassination and the US
admitted
to killing hundreds of demonstrators using Navy SEAL snipers.
This description provided by Mr Hudson is no Moore than the financial basis behind the
Cebrowski doctrine instituted on 9/11.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article
I wish the Saker had asked Mr Hudson about some crucial recent events to get his opinion
with regards to US foreign policy. Specifically, how does the emergence of cryptocurrency
relate to dollar finance and the US grand strategy? A helpful tool for the hegemon or the
emergence of a new currency that prevents unlimited currency printing? Finally, what is
global warming and the associated carbon credit system? The next planned model of continuing
global domination and balance of payments? Or true organic attempt at fair energy production
and management?
With all due respect, these are huge questions in themselves and perhaps could to be
addressed in separate interviews.
IMO it doesn't always work that well to try to cover too much ground in just one giant
leap.
I have never understood the Cebrowski doctrine. How does the destruction of Middle Eastern state structures allow the US to control Middle
East Oil? The level of chaos generated by such an act would seem to prevent anyone from controlled
the oil.
Dr. Hudson often appears on RT's "Keiser Report" where he covers many contemporary topics
with its host Max Keiser. Many of the shows transcripts are available at Hudson's website . Indeed, after the two Saker items,
you'll find three programs on the first page. Using the search function at his site, you'll
find the two articles he's written that deal with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, although I
think he's been more specific in the TV interviews.
As for this Q&A, its an A+. Hudson's 100% correct to playdown the Zionist influence
given the longstanding nature of the Outlaw US Empire's methods that began well before the
rise of the Zionist Lobby, which in reality is a recycling of aid dollars back to Congress in
the form of bribes.
Nils: Good Article. The spirit of Nihilism.
Quote from Neocon Michael Ladeen.
"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear
down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and
cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and
creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their
inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do
not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very
existence -- our existence, not our politics -- threatens their legitimacy. They must attack
us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."
@NILS As far as crypto currency goes it is a brilliant idea in concept. But since during the
Bush years we have been shown multiple times, who actually owns [and therefore controls] the
internet. Many times now we have also been informed that through the monitoring capability's
of our defense agency's, they are recording every key stroke. IMO, with the flip of a switch,
we can shut down the internet. At the very least, that would stop us from being able to trade
in crypto, but they have e-files on each of us. They know our passwords, or can easily access
them. That does not give me confidence in e=currency during a teotwawki situation.
One thing that troubles me about the petrodollar thesis is that ANNUAL trade in oil is about
2 trillion DAILY trade in $US is 4 trillion. I can well believe the US thinks oil is the
bedrock if dollar hegemony but is it? I see no alternative to US dollar hegemony.
The lines that really got my attention were these:
"The leading country breaking up US hegemony obviously is the United States itself. That
is Trump's major contribution The United States is now turning on the screws demanding that
other countries sacrifice their growth in order to finance the U.S. unipolar empire."
That is so completely true. I have wondered why – to date – there had not been
more movement by Europe away from the United States. But while reading the article the
following occurred to me. Maybe Europe is awaiting the next U.S. election. Maybe they hope
that a new president (someone like Biden) might allow Europe to keep more of the
"spoils."
If that is true, then a re-election of Trump will probably send Europe fleeing for the
exits. The Europeans will be cutting deals with Russia and China like the store is on
fire.
The critical player in forming the EU WAS/IS the US financial Elites. Yes, they had many
ultra powerful Europeans, especially Germany, but it was the US who initiated the EU.
Purpose? For the US Financial Powerhouses & US politicians to "take Europe captive."
Notice the similarities: the EU has its Central Bank who communicates with the private
Banksters of the FED. Much austerity has ensued, especially in Southern nations: Greece,
Italy, etc. Purpose: to smash unions, worker's pay, eliminate unions, and basically allowing
US/EU Financial capital to buy out Italy, most of Greece, and a goodly section of Spain and
Portugal.
The US govt. have long since paid off most every European politician. Thusly, Europe, as
separate nations that should be remain still under the yolk of the US
Financial/Political/Military power.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this but it sounds like he is saying that the U.S.
has a payment deficit problem which is solved by stealing the world's oil supplies. To do
this they must have a powerful, expensive military. But it is primarily this military which
is the main cause of the balance deficit. So it is an eternally fuelled problem and solution.
If I understand this, what it actually means is that we all live on a plantation as slaves
and everything that is happening is for the benefit of the few wealthy billionaires. And they
intend to turn the entire world into their plantation of slaves. They may even let you live
for a while longer.
I didn't know this until I read a history of World War I.
As you know, World War One was irresolvable, murderous, bloody trench warfare. People
would charge out of the trenches trying to overrun enemy positions only to be cutdown by the
super weapon of the day – the machine gun. It was an unending bloody stalemate until
the development of the tank. Tanks were immune to machine gun fire coming from the trenches
and could overrun enemy positions. In the aftermath of that war, it became apparently that
mechanization had become crucial to military supremacy. In turn, fuel was crucial to
mechanization. Accordingly, in the Sykes Picot agreement France and Britain divided a large
amount of Middle Eastern oil between themselves in order to assure military dominance. (The
United States had plenty of their own oil at that time.)
In any event, it is the same today. Energy underlies, not only the military but, all of
world civilization. Oil and gas are overwhelmingly the source of energy for the modern world.
Without it, civilization collapses. Thus, he who controls oil (and gas) controls the
world.
That is one third of the story. The second third is this.
Up till 1971, the United States dollar was the most trusted currency in the world. The
dollar was backed by gold and lots and lots of it. Dollars were in fact redeemable in gold.
However, due to Vietnam War, the United States started running huge balance of payments
deficits. Other countries – most notably France under De Gaulle – started cashing
in dollars in exchange for that gold. Gold started flooding out of the United States. At that
point Nixon took the United States off of the gold standard. Basically stating that the
dollar was no longer backed by gold and dollars could not be redeemed for gold. That caused
an international payments problem. People would no longer accept dollars as payment since the
dollar was not backed up by anything. The American economy was in big trouble since they were
running deficits and people would no longer take dollars on faith.
To fix the problem, Henry Kissinger convinced the Saudis to agree to only accept dollars
in payment for oil – no matter who was the buyer. That meant that nations throughout
the world now needed dollars in order to pay for their energy needs. Due to this, the dollars
was once again the most important currency in the world since – as noted above –
energy underlies everything in modern industrial cultures. Additionally, since dollars were
now needed throughout the world, it became common to make all trades for any product in
highly valued dollars. Everyone needed dollars for every thing, oil or not.
At that point, the United States could go on printing dollars and spending them since a
growing world economy needed more and more dollars to buy oil as well as to trade everything
else.
That leads to the third part of the story. In order to convince the Saudis to accept only
dollars in payments for oil (and to have the Saudis strong arm other oil producers to do the
same) Kissinger promised to protect the brutal Saudi regime's hold on power against a restive
citizenry and also to protect the Saudi's against other nations. Additionally, Kissinger made
an implicit threat that if the Saudi's did not agree, the US would come in and just take
their oil. The Saudis agreed.
Thus, the three keys to dominance in the modern world are thus: oil, dollars and the
military.
Thus, Hudson ties in the three threads in his interview above. Oil, Dollars, Military.
That is what holds the empire together.
Thank you for thinking through this. Yes, the link between the US $$$ and Saudi Oil, is the
absolute means of the American Dollar to reign complete. This payment system FEEDS both the
US Military, but WALL STREET, hedge funds, the US/EU oligarchs – to name just a few
entities.
I should make one note only to this. That "no man, no problem" was Stalin's motto is a myth.
He never said that. It was invented by a writer Alexei Rybnikov and inserted in his book "The
Children of Arbat".
Wow! Absolutely beautiful summation of the ultimate causes that got us where we are and, if
left intact, will get us to where we're going!
So, the dreamer says: If only we could throw-off our us-vs-them BS political-economic
ideology & religious doctrine-faith issues, put them into live-and-let-live mode, and see
that we are all just humans fighting over this oil resource to which our modern economy (way
of life) is addicted, then we might be able to hammer out some new rules for interacting, for
running an earth-resource sustainable and fair global economy We do at least have the
technology to leave behind our oil addiction, but the political-economic will still is
lacking. How much more of the current insanity must we have before we get that will? Will we
get it before it's too late?
Only if we, a sufficient majority from the lowest economic classes to the top elites and
throughout all nations, are able to psychologically-spiritually internalize the two
principles of Common Humanity and Spaceship Earth soon enough, will we stop our current slide
off the cliff into modern economic collapse and avert all the pain and suffering that's
already now with us and that will intensify.
The realist says we're not going to stop that slide and it's the only way we're going to
learn, if we are indeed ever going to learn.
Thank you for this excellent interview. You ask the kind of questions that we would all like
to ask. It's regrettable that Chalmers Johnson isn't still alive. I believe that you and he
would have a lot in common.
Naxos has produced an incredible, unabridged cd audiobook of
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. One of Gibbon's observations really resonates
today: "Assassination is the last resource of cowards". Thanks again.
He's played fast and loose with the facts, undermining his credibility on the world
stage.
Democrats insist the move was hasty and claim there wasn't adequate intelligence to justify
killing Soleimani. Essetually he was murged because Pompeo wanted to show the strength of the USA
in view of the attack on the USA embassy (which did not have any victims)
Pompeo collected more campaign donations from the Kochs and their employees than any
candidate in the country
Notable quotes:
"... In fact, military analysts say Soleimani's assassination by the US is tantamount to a declaration of war against regional superpower Iran. What is certain is that his death marks the beginning of a terrifying new and unpredictable era in an already turbulent region. ..."
"... Indeed, in retrospect it seems nothing short of astonishing that just a day earlier the ayatollah himself had mocked Trump about the violence outside the US embassy in Iraq, which Washington claimed was orchestrated by Iran. 'You can't do anything,' Khamenei said, in what will surely go down in history as one of the most ill-advised tweets ever posted by a country's leader. ..."
"... While most people in the West will not have known much, if anything, about Soleimani before the announcement of his death yesterday, in Iran he was the most revered military leader since the country's 1979 revolution. ..."
Consequences: Donald Trump appears to have no strategy for dealing with the fall-out
In fact, military analysts say Soleimani's assassination by the US is tantamount to a
declaration of war against regional superpower Iran. What is certain is that his death marks
the beginning of a terrifying new and unpredictable era in an already turbulent region.
Unsurprisingly, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned that 'severe consequences'
await the killers of Soleimani, while the country's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif,
denounced the assassination as an 'act of international terrorism'.
Meanwhile in the US, a number of major cities have increased security to protect prominent
landmarks and civilians from possible revenge terrorist attacks.
Whether or not that US reaction is justified, it would be difficult to overstate just how
big a loss Soleimani's death is for the Iranian regime, how seriously we should take its vows
of revenge – or, just as crucially, how humiliatingly off-guard Iran's leaders were when
Trump gave his kill order.
Indeed, in retrospect it seems nothing short of astonishing that just a day earlier the
ayatollah himself had mocked Trump about the violence outside the US embassy in Iraq, which
Washington claimed was orchestrated by Iran. 'You can't do anything,' Khamenei said, in what
will surely go down in history as one of the most ill-advised tweets ever posted by a country's
leader.
Meanwhile, so apparently unconcerned was Soleimani about his own safety that the general
– famed for constantly outsmarting his enemies on the battlefield – did not bother
to keep his travel plans secret.
While most people in the West will not have known much, if anything, about Soleimani before
the announcement of his death yesterday, in Iran he was the most revered military leader since
the country's 1979 revolution.
America's top diplomat does not seem to think his job is to prevent war.
The
Washington Post
dives deeply into what is laughingly called the administration*'s "process" leading up to the decision
to kill Qasem Soleimani with fire last week. In short, all the "imminent threat" palaver was pure moonshine. According to the
Post,
this particular catastrophe was brewed up for a while amid the stalactites in the mind of Mike Pompeo, a Secretary
of State who makes Henry Kissinger look like Gandhi.
The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump's decision to approve
the killing of Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence,
the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after
it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo "morose," according to one U.S. official. But recent changes
to Trump's national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian
aggression created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had been advocating.
Poor Mike was morose. So, in an effort to bring himself out of the dumps, Mike decided to keep feeding the
rats in the president*'s head.
Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But
that mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor
and injuring service members. On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where
the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior
U.S. officials said.
The whole squad got involved on this one.
Alex Wong
Getty Images
Trump's decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon's
long-standing concerns about escalation and the president's aversion to using military force against Iran. One significant
factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the
U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the
decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.
First-in-His-Class Mike Pompeo knows his audience. There's no question that he knows how to get what he wants
from a guy who doesn't know anything about anything, and who may have gone, as George V. Higgins once put it, as soft as church
music. This, I guess, is a skill. Of course, Pompeo's job is easier because the president* is still a raving maniac on the electric
Twitter machine. A handy compilation:
Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader
who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime,
including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits
in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any
Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many
years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE
HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder
than they have ever been hit before!
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!
If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and
without hesitation!
And, this, perhaps my favorite piece of presidentin" yet.
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target,
the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required,
but is given nevertheless!
You have been informed, Congress. You have been informed, Iran.
"... Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been revealed to be the puppet master behind POTUS Trump's motion to liquidate a top Iranian commander, CNN reported citing sources inside and around the White House, with the revelation indicating Pompeo's influential status in the Trump administration. ..."
"... The sources suggested that the Iranian general was Pompeo's fixation, so that he even sought to get a visa to Iran in 2016 when he represented Kansas in Congress, before assuming the role of CIA director and then his current one. ..."
"... Despite winning the moniker of "Trump whisperer" over the ties he has developed with POTUS, Pompeo's ability to sell an aggressive Iran strategy to Trump, who has commonly opposed any military confrontation, has caused a certain sway, the sources implied. ..."
"... "He's the one leading the way", according to the source in Pompeo's inner circle, discussing the showdown with Iran. "It's the president's policy, but Pompeo has been the leading voice in helping the president craft this policy. There is no doubt Mike is the one leading it in the Cabinet". ..."
"... While bragging about Washington's "big and accurate" missiles as well as US achievements during his tenure, he separately praised the "new powerful economic sanctions" aimed at Iran, promising that they would be in place until Tehran "changes its behaviour". Also, he invited NATO to get more deeply involved in what is going on in the Middle East, with the Transatlantic bloc reacting favorably to the suggestion. ..."
Mike Pompeo has reportedly long cherished plans to take the Iranian general off the Middle
East battlefield, as he is said to have for quite a while seen late Commander Soleimani as the
one behind the spiralling tensions with Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been
revealed to be the puppet master behind POTUS Trump's motion to liquidate a top Iranian
commander, CNN
reported citing sources inside and around the White House, with the revelation indicating
Pompeo's influential status in the Trump administration.
According to several sources, taking Iranian General Qasem Soleimani – the leader of
the elite Quds Force, a powerful military group with vast leverage in the region - "off the
battlefield" has been Pompeo's goal for a decade.
Pompeo "was the one who made the case to take out Soleimani, it was him absolutely", a source
said, adding he apparently floated the idea when debating the US Embassy raid over New Year
with Trump.
According to a number of sources close to Pompeo, the secretary of state has at all times
believed that Iran is the root cause of the woes in the Middle East, and Soleimani in
particular - the mastermind of terrorism raging across the region. This point of view is
notably in tune with how Pompeo commented on the commander's assassination:
"We took a bad guy off the battlefield", Pompeo told CNN on 5 January. "We made the right
decision". The same day, Pompeo told ABC that killing Soleimani was important "because this
was a fella who was the glue, who was conducting active plotting against the United States of
America, putting American lives at risk".
The sources suggested that the Iranian general was Pompeo's fixation, so that he even sought
to get a visa to Iran in 2016 when he represented Kansas in Congress, before assuming the role
of CIA director and then his current one.
Despite winning the moniker of "Trump whisperer" over the ties he has developed with POTUS,
Pompeo's ability to sell an aggressive Iran strategy to Trump, who has commonly opposed any
military confrontation, has caused a certain sway, the sources implied.
"He's the one leading the way", according to the source in Pompeo's inner circle, discussing
the showdown with Iran. "It's the president's policy, but Pompeo has been the leading voice in
helping the president craft this policy. There is no doubt Mike is the one leading it in the
Cabinet".
Regardless of who inspired the drone attack that killed Soleimani, the two countries are
indeed going through a stint of severe tensions, but no direct military confrontation. After
Tehran's retaliatory attack, Trump announced a slew of more stringent economic limitations to
be slapped on Iran.
While bragging
about Washington's "big and accurate" missiles as well as US achievements during his
tenure, he separately praised the "new powerful economic sanctions" aimed at Iran, promising
that they would be in place until Tehran "changes its behaviour". Also, he invited NATO to get
more deeply involved in what is going on in the Middle East, with the Transatlantic bloc
reacting favorably to the suggestion.
We're told that getting ahead at work and reorienting our lives around our jobs will make us
happy. So why hasn't it? Many of those who work in the corporate world are constantly peppered
with questions about their " career progression ." The Internet is
saturated with
articles providing tips and tricks on how to develop a never-fail game plan for
professional development. Millions of Americans are engaged in a never-ending cycle of
résumé-padding that mimics the accumulation of Boy Scout merit badges or A's on
report cards except we never seem to get our Eagle Scout certificates or academic diplomas.
We're told to just keep going until we run out of gas or reach retirement, at which point we
fade into the peripheral oblivion of retirement communities, morning tee-times, and long
midweek lunches at beach restaurants.
The idealistic Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer's bestselling book Into the Wild
defiantly declares, "I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one." Anyone
who has spent enough time in the career hamster wheel can relate to this sentiment. Is
21st-century careerism -- with its promotion cycles, yearly feedback, and little wooden plaques
commemorating our accomplishments -- really the summit of human existence, the paramount
paradigm of human flourishing?
Michael J. Noughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St.
Thomas, Minnesota, and board chair for Reel Precision Manufacturing, doesn't think so. In his
Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World , Noughton provides a
sobering statistic: approximately two thirds of employees in the United States are "either
indifferent or hostile to their work." That's not just an indicator of professional
dissatisfaction; it's economically disastrous. The same survey estimates that employee
disengagement is costing the U.S. economy "somewhere between 450-550 billion dollars
annually."
The origin of this problem, says Naughton, is an error in how Americans conceive of work and
leisure. We seem to err in one of two ways. One is to label our work as strictly a job, a
nine-to-five that pays the bills. In this paradigm, leisure is an amusement, an escape from the
drudgery of boring, purposeless labor. The other way is that we label our work as a career that
provides the essential fulfillment in our lives. Through this lens, leisure is a utility,
simply another means to serve our work. Outside of work, we exercise to maintain our health in
order to work harder and longer. We read books that help maximize our utility at work and get
ahead of our competitors. We "continue our education" largely to further our careers.
Whichever error we fall into, we inevitably end up dissatisfied. The more we view work as a
painful, boring chore, the less effective we are at it, and the more complacent and
discouraged. Our leisure activities, in turn, no matter how distracting, only compound our
sadness, because no amount of games can ever satisfy our souls. Or, if we see our meaning in
our work and leisure as only another means of increasing productivity, we inevitably burn out,
wondering, perhaps too late in life, what exactly we were working for . As Augustine
of Hippo noted, our hearts are restless for God. More recently, C.S. Lewis noted that we yearn
to be fulfilled by something that nothing in this world can satisfy. We need both our work and
our leisure to be oriented to the transcendent in order to give our lives meaning and
purpose.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the labor Americans perform
isn't actually good . There are "bad goods" that are detrimental to society and human
flourishing. Naughton suggests some examples: violent video games, pornography, adultery dating
sites, cigarettes, high-octane alcohol, abortifacients, gambling, usury, certain types of
weapons, cheat sheet websites, "gentlemen's clubs," and so on. Though not as clear-cut as the
above, one might also add working for the kinds of businesses that contribute to the
impoverishment or destruction of our communities,
as Tucker Carlson has recently argued .
Why does this matter for professional satisfaction? Because if our work doesn't offer goods
and services that contribute to our communities and the common good -- and especially if we are
unable to perceive how our labor plays into that common good -- then it will fundamentally
undermine our happiness. We will perceive our work primarily in a utilitarian sense, shrugging
our shoulders and saying, "it's just a paycheck," ignoring or disregarding the fact that as
rational animals we need to feel like our efforts matter.
Economic liberalism -- at least in its purest free-market expression -- is based on a
paradigm with nominalist and utilitarian origins that promote "freedom of indifference." In
rudimentary terms, this means that we need not be interested in the moral quality of our
economic output. If we produce goods that satisfy people's wants, increasing their "utils," as
my Econ 101 professor used to say, then we are achieving business success. In this paradigm, we
desire an economy that maximizes access to free choice regardless of the content of that
choice, because the more choices we have, the more we can maximize our utils, or sensory
satisfaction.
The freedom of indifference paradigm is in contrast to a more ancient understanding of
economic and civic engagement: a freedom for excellence. In this worldview, "we are made
for something," and participation in public acts of virtue is essential both to our
own well-being and that of our society. By creating goods and services that objectively benefit
others and contributing to an order beyond the maximization of profit, we bless both ourselves
and the polis . Alternatively, goods that increase "utils" but undermine the common
good are rejected.
Returning to Naughton's distinction between work and leisure, we need to perceive the latter
not as an escape from work or a means of enhancing our work, but as a true time of rest. This
means uniting ourselves with the transcendent reality from which we originate and to which we
will return, through prayer, meditation, and worship. By practicing this kind of true leisure,
well
treated in a book by Josef Pieper , we find ourselves refreshed, and discover renewed
motivation and inspiration to contribute to the common good.
Americans are increasingly aware of the problems with Wall Street conservatism and globalist
economics. We perceive that our post-Cold War policies are hurting our nation. Naughton's
treatise on work and leisure offers the beginnings of a game plan for what might replace
them.
Casey Chalk covers religion and other issues for The American Conservative and is a
senior writer for Crisis Magazine. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University
of Virginia, and a masters in theology from Christendom College.
When people thought in 2016 that they are winning against the National Security state, they
were deceived by the candidate who sounded rational during election campaign, but then became
Hillary II in three months after inauguration and brought Bush II neocons into his
Administration.
So voters were deceived with Clinton, deceived with Bush II, deceived with Obama, deceived
with Trump. You now see the tendency...
With all that is happening in the U.S right now I can't help but think that it's past time
for the people to reassert their power over the National security state, as unrealistic as
that might sound.
The Anti war movement is ideologically divided between progressives and
libertarian/paleoconservatives, so a political party would not likely be the answer.
Instead perhaps we should consider a grassroots movement to amend the constitution to
guarantee U.S neutrality in world affairs (banning both the arming or financing of foreign
belligerents) and to ban the Federal government from having a standing military force except
in times of actual war. I don't know what chance either would have of actually being passed,
but it might at least force a debate on these issues in a way that might resonate better with
the average American. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Peace and Solidarity
"... Shorter Pompeo: "Our troops will stay and you better do what we say." A foreign force that is asked to leave a country and does not do so is an occupation force. It must and will be opposed. ..."
"... The murder of the 31 security forces and the assassination of al-Mahandes have still not been avenged. The PMU will do their moral duty and fight the foreign occupation forces until they leave. ..."
"... After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I still refused, and he threatened me with massive demonstrations that would topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event I did not cooperate and do as he asked ..."
"... Iraq is again negotiating with Russia to acquire S-300 air defense systems. It will need them as the U.S. will have to leave and leave it will. The only choice for its soldiers is between leaving horizontally or vertically, dead or alive. ..."
"... In 2006 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously celebrated Israel's assault on Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." The child she dreamed of was never born. Israel lost that war against Hizbullah and the Resistance Axis has been winning ever since while the U.S. has lost again and again. It is time for the U.S. to end that useless engagement and to withdraw from the Middle East. ..."
Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is following
Iraq's Parliament decision to remove all foreign forces from Iraq. But his request for
talks with the U.S. about the U.S. withdrawal process was answered with a big "F*** You":
Iraq's caretaker prime minister asked Washington to start working out a road map for an
American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the
request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to "recommit" to their
partnership.
Thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in the capital and southern Iraq, many
calling on both Iran and America to leave Iraq, reflecting anger and frustration over the two
rivals -- both Baghdad's allies -- trading blows on Iraqi soil.
The request from Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi pointed to his determination to push
ahead with demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq, stoked by the American drone strike on Jan.
3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. In a phone call Thursday night, he told U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that recent U.S. strikes in Iraq were an unacceptable breach
of Iraqi sovereignty and a violation of their security agreements, his office said.
He asked Pompeo to "send delegates to Iraq to prepare a mechanism" to carry out the Iraqi
Parliament's resolution on withdrawing foreign troops, according to the statement.
"The prime minister said American forces had entered Iraq and drones are flying in its
airspace without permission from Iraqi authorities, and this was a violation of the bilateral
agreements," the statement added.
The Associated Press errs when it says that the move was "stoked by the American
drone strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani". The move was stoked five
days earlier when the U.S.
killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the demands by the Iraqi
prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when the U.S.
assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes , the deputy commander of the Popular Militia Forces and
a national hero in Iraq.
The State Department issued a rather aggressive response to
Abdul-Mahdi's request:
America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue
the fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting
Americans, Iraqis, and our coalition partners. We have been unambiguous regarding how crucial
our D-ISIS mission is in Iraq. At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated
to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership -- not to discuss troop
withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East. Today, a NATO
delegation is at the State Department to discuss increasing NATO's role in Iraq, in line with
the President's desire for burden sharing in all of our collective defense efforts. There
does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just
regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership. We want to
be a friend and partner to a sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq.
Shorter Pompeo: "Our troops will stay and you better do what we say." A foreign force that is asked to leave a country and does not do so is an occupation force.
It must and will be opposed.
The murder of the 31 security forces and the assassination of al-Mahandes have still not
been avenged. The PMU will do their moral duty and fight the foreign occupation forces until
they leave.
The demonstrators in Baghdad will not be able to prevent that from happening. It is
interesting, by the way, that the Washington Post bureau chief in Baghdad thought she
knew what they would demand even before they came together:
Louisa Loveluck @leloveluck - 9:48 UTC · Jan 10,
2020
Activists have called for fresh rallies in Baghdad's Tahrir Square today, and crowds expected
to build after midday prayers. The demonstrators are rejecting parliament's decision to
oppose a US troop presence, fearing repercussions that might follow.
A few hours later Loveluck had to admit that she was, as usual, wrong:
Louisa Loveluck @leloveluck - 11:13 UTC · Jan 10,
2020
"No to Iran, no to America" say signs and chants in Baghdad's Tahrir Square as crowds start
to swell. Protesters say they are fed up of their country being someone else's battlefield.
"We deserve to live in peace," says 21 year old Zahraa.
... Rejecting a narrow
parliamentary vote backed by Shiite political elites is not the same as openly supporting the
US. Chants in Tahrir today reject both the US and Iran.
The U.S. will need to pay better Iraqi 'activists' if it wants them to demand what Donald
Trump wishes.
After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I still
refused, and he threatened me with massive demonstrations that would topple me. Indeed, the
demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event I did not
cooperate and do as he asked
Iraq is again negotiating with
Russia to acquire S-300 air defense systems. It will need them as the U.S. will have to leave
and leave it will. The only choice for its soldiers is between leaving horizontally or
vertically, dead or alive.
The US President – who promised to end the "
endless wars " – killed the Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes and the Iranian
Major General Qassem Soleimani believing he could win control of Iraq and achieve regime
change in Iran. On the brink of triggering a major war, Trump has spectacularly lost Iran and
is about to lose Iraq.
"
Beautiful military equipment doesn't rule the world, people rule the world, and the
people want the US out of the region",
said Iran Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif. President Trump doesn't have many people in the
Middle East on his side, not even among his allies, whose leaders have been repeatedly
insulted . Iran
could not have dreamt of a better President to rejuvenate its position domestically and
regionally. All Iran's allies are jubilant, standing behind the "Islamic Republic" that
fulfilled its promise to bomb the US. A "New Middle East" is about to be born; it will not be
"Made in the USA" but "Made in Iran". Let us hope warmongers' era is over. The time has come
to recognise and rely on intelligent diplomacy in world affairs.
In 2006 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously celebrated Israel's assault on
Lebanon as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." The child she dreamed of was never born.
Israel lost that war against Hizbullah and the Resistance Axis has been winning ever since
while the U.S. has lost again and again. It is time for the U.S. to end that useless engagement
and to withdraw from the Middle East.
Posted by b on January 10, 2020 at 19:09 UTC |
Permalink
The sheer arrogance and wilful blindness expressed in the US State
Department press statement and WaPo staffer Louisa Loveluck's tweets are astounding beyond
belief. It's as if the entire capital city of the US has become a mental asylum / Hotel
California, where one can enter but never leave spiritually and morally, though one can take
many physical trips in and out of the madhouse.
Iraq definitely does need the S-300 missile defence systems. The most pressing issue
though is whether the Iraqis will suffer the delays Syria suffered in acquiring those systems
even after paying for them. Time now is of the essence. Iraqi operators need to be trained in
those systems. Syria may be able to supply some training but at the risk of letting down its
guard in sending some of its operators to Baghdad and exposing them to US drone attacks.
Thanks b, for your continuing coverage and insights.
the u.s'. leadership believes it can do the same thing over, and over, and over with
different results. They will need a very long ladder with the upcoming repeat of Saigon
1975.
They have always underestimated the will and cultures of people they would make
subservient.
How is this working for the Iran Puppet Master:
Pompous one?
Here is the big mighty with world's powerful military; on their bended knees -
[.]The press release further noted that Washington seeks to be "a friend and partner to a
sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq", while stating that the US military presence in the
country will persist in order to fight Daesh* and protect Americans, Iraqis, and US-led
coalition partners.[.]
Yes, some friend and partner eh? Insults and thuggery. Exiting will be horizontal.
Go pound sand.
From the US State Dept's 'aggressive response' link,
"not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle
East. Today, a NATO delegation is at the State Department to discuss increasing NATO's role
in Iraq, in line with the President's desire for burden sharing in all of our collective
defense efforts. "
"BUT OUR RIGHT" ??
...
"President's desire for burden sharing in all of our collective defense efforts."
And with such liars who needs a stick. Narrative changes depending the hour.
Last night: Pompeo told Foxnews-
Pompeo Says US Had No Information on Date, Place of Possible Attack Allegedly Planned
by Soleimani
LINK
US President Donald Trump earlier claimed that Washington had eliminated the top Iranian
military commander to halt Tehran's plans to blow up the US Embassy in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on a national broadcast that the United States
possessed no information about the date and place of an alleged attack planned by
assassinated General Qasem Soleimani.[.]
"We don't know precisely when - and we don't know precisely where. But it was real
...
US President Donald Trump in an interview with Fox News said that top Iranian commander
Qasem Soleimani was plotting attacks on four American embassies in the Middle East region
before being assassinated by US forces.
"I can reveal that I believe it probably would've been four embassies," Trump said when
asked whether large-scale attacks were planned against other embassies.
The House of Fools. Something is out of focus if they have to keep making justifications
for the killing.
Thanks for focus on the Iran front of the civilization war humanity is in. I find the Ukraine
plane crash to be distracting from the bigger picture.
The piece from the US State Department is quite the lie. Bottom line is that Iran is
currently sovereign but would cease to be so is they became the "normal" country that private
finance empire wants. Iran would then live under the dictatorship of global private finance
like the rest of us that mythically believe we are sovereign nations and individuals.
I am pleased to see that humanity is at this juncture in spite of the threat of
extinction. Our species is crippled by the cult that owns global private finance in the West
and even if this process seems quite indirect to me, at least the socialism/barbarism war is
being fought.
Good. Iran will star escalating (via proxy force, or maybe even directly if they are feeling
bold and determined) and US will start to have casualties. Being nice to bully never works.
Iraq, every parliament party, could start themselves showing they want the americans to
leave. They have not done this,
and this is the reason US give not to leave:
US is not willing to withdraw troops from Iraq, says Pompeo
The US argues that the Iraqi parliamentary vote was non-binding, and that its legitimacy
was undermined by neither Iraqi Kurds or Sunnis participating.
New Rome suffers the same maladies as the first. Uprisings in the Provinces.
Lest we forget, Rome's demands;
" "First, Iran must declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of
its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity."
"Second, Iran must stop uranium enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This
includes closing its heavy water reactor."
"Third, Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout
the entire country."
"Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or
development of nuclear-capable missile systems."
"Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each
of them detained on spurious charges."
"Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah
[Hezbollah], Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."
"Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming,
demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias."
"Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a
peaceful political settlement in Yemen."
"Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of
Syria."
"Iran, too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the
region, and cease harboring senior Al Qaida leaders."
"Iran, too, must end the IRG [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Qods Force's [Quds
Force's] support for terrorists and militant partners around the world."
"And too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of
whom are U.S. allies. This certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing
of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to
international shipping and destructive – and destructive cyberattacks."
thanks b... i share jens view on how outrageous usa official words on this are...
"At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best
recommit to our strategic partnership -- not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right,
appropriate force posture in the Middle East." they just don't give a fuck... everyone here
knew that already... as a few of us have been saying - there is no way the usa is going to
leave.. they are intent up the same agenda they have been intent on for what seems like
forever...
@ 4 Likklemore quote - "Something is out of focus if they have to keep making
justifications for the killing." the liar in command saying he was going to cause trouble at
4 embassies.. jesus what a liar and retard trump is if he thinks anyone who has a brain would
believe that b.s.
@ 10 sammy... the sooner washington d.c. is glass the sooner americans can wake the fuck
up..
Who dares to stop them?
Surely no sane country wants to stand against JUSA.
Israel is shaking in its boots so its American poodle must stay to protect them. The
sooner the world gets rid of the Jewish infestation from their governments the safer the
world will be.
We will likely see a rebranding of USA troops to NATO
Some of their NATO vassals still care about the rule of law and international law. Mikey
and Donny might discover that these backward states are "not very helpful" to their cause of
rules based order.
USA runs a serious risk of overplaying its hand and alienating some of their european
allies. Likely not all, but almost certainly some. That would create a rift in NATO and
possibly the EU and compromise USA control over these organizations and their members.
Fernando Martinez@16 - You're misunderstanding the situation. The Iraqi parliament did get
the majority they needed to pass the resolution as specified in their constitution. They will
turn it over to the existing or new PM for implementation. Nothing wishy-washy about it. It's
a done deal despite the terrified Kurds and Sunnis not voting to save their own butts from
reprisal - either by Iraqi Shia or by the US. I would have done the same thing.
It is the US that is claiming the resolution is nonbinding (in their 'legal' opinion)
because the vote wasn't sufficiently representative (in the mind of the US dual-citizen
chickenhawk neocons) - despite the fact that two-thirds of Iraqis are Shia and there was more
than enough votes to pass the resolution despite the Sunni and Kurd representatives' absence.
The US is pouting and will hold its breath until the Iraqis defy their constitution and obey
the will of their American masters. In the meantime, the US has refused to recognize the vote
and will oppose any efforts for implementation by the Iraqi PM. Trump or Pompeo or one of
those idiots stated that clearly and unambiguously - the US has no plans to leave no matter
what.
I guess we'll see. Plan B for the US is probably to agitate for the original plan of
uprisings to partition Iraq into Kurd, Sunni and Shia statelets. The obedient Kurd and Shia
leaders will allow eternal US presence and as many bases as the US wants. It will be enough
territory to block the feared 'Shia Crescent' - the US will insist the Kurd and Sunni
statelets extend from Turkey down the Syrian border to Jordan, blocking any attempts to
connect the Shia statelet to Syria. That's the US plan B for this problem if they can't use
'other means' to stay in present-day Iraq for 'anti-ISIS' operations.
US was hitting Iraqi militias even back when ISIS still held territory and the militias where
driving ISIS back.
Then the recent strike on the militia's formally incorporated into Iraqi military and the
strike that killed the Iraqi and Iranian.... but then the Iraqi's declare Iran's strike on
the US base a breach of sovereignty. Iraqi's that should be allied with Iran for the purpose
of driving the US out. US will be in Iraq and the Syrian oilfields for quite some time.
There was the same talk about militia's and whatever hitting US in Syria but that hasn't
eventuated and I doubt any thing serious against US will happen in Iraq either. US will have
proxies out and about - using its bases as fire support bases with air and artillery to back
up its proxies.
The vote count I saw was unanimous. Clearly, the Evil Outlaw US Empire is throwing as much
bullshit at everything in the hopes that some sticks and clogs peoples's minds. The 737 crash
is similar in pointing over there instead of looking at what's just occurred at your feet.
Now Trump says four embassies were going to be attacked as he further demonstrates he's
losing his mind. Lies and Bluster are the hallmarks of a Paper Tiger.
Meanwhile, what stands for genuine Progressives and the Left are clearly gaining ground as
numerous Anti-war rallies took place yesterday and an article appeared in my local rag saying
the D-Party Establishment is afraid of a Sanders nomination--2016 in play all over again
except no HRC and we know more about the DNC's evilness in not at all being responsive to the
public or voting results. IMO, the Political Fight required for genuine change has finally
begun and will escalate.
Globally, the current battles are a new phase of a 3 millennial-long war between the
Current Oligarchy and the 99% as to who will be the Sovereign--the people collectively or
those who've stolen their wealth. Class War--You Bet! We now have definitive proof of how it
works and how long it's been ongoing. What we've yet to see is if the 99% have enough brains
and solidarity to undo 3,000+ years of Tyranny.
Within
this article is a photo of Iranian general Ali Amir Hajizadeh standing at a podium in
front of a phalanx of 9 flags belonging to the Axis of Resistance. We need to add our own
flags to that Alliance for the enemies of Iran are the enemies of all Earth's people and
employ the likes of sammy and other Terrorists to do their bidding.
The Iranians attacked by the US in this episode was always about Iraq being seen as moving
out of the American-Euro orbit and into the China-Iran-Russia orbit. So of course they will
not voluntarily leave, instead they will either be forced out by attacks or more likely they
will force either a change in leadership of Iraq or threaten the leadership or bribe the
leadership into accepting permanent occupation for "their safety" ala a Mob Protection
Racket. This is exposed here Pax
Americana: Between Iraq and A Hard Place
Couple of small points;
1) 32-35 soldiers (4-5 commanders and their command posts - US dixit) were killed in the
earlier US attacks, which were heavier in Syria and against the Herzbollah, than those
against Iraqian forces on the Syria-Iraqi border. The command posts were eliminated
very accurately. This is possibly because they had previously collectively stated that they
wanted to eliminate the terrorists in the Anbar desert. (Thought; those "terrorists" may have
included embedded "special forces" or mercenaries which the US wanted to protect.)
2) I believe that Iraq was trying to get the S400, (The one that can "see" F35's) rather than
the S300.
3) OT? Just who gets the profits from the Oil stolen from Syria, and would have a kickback
from the oil that was demanded from Iraq (Al-Mahdi statement)? Conventionally we attribute
the money going to the "Pentagon" or "CIA". But I seem to remember that the complete Erdogan
family was benefitting before they were kicked out. Is it possible that the Syrian oil is now
going straight into a slush fund for some Generals or members of the administration? Is that
really why the US doesn't want leave? Profits not geo-politics?
Well, we shall soon see what the Iraqis are made of and where their will lies. I expect
we'll begin getting that answer this weekend. It does appear Iraqi Patriots will need to drag
their fellows along with them, but IMO none will get a better future unless the Outlaw US
Empire is driven from Southwest Asia.
I expect some spineless eastern European countries (Romania, Poland, etc.) will lend
themselves for this. The other members will tacitly accept the NATO branding ...
the sooner Israhell, stripped to its 1948 boundaries, is glass we will have peace on
planet earth. Fighting Israhell's wars have daily cost in blood and treasure. In $ 7
trillions and counting.
Hmm. Why? running scared.
Reuters: but Russia denies. Russian navy ship 'aggressively approached' U.S. destroyer in Arabian Sea: U.S.
Navy
"DUBAI (Reuters) - A Russian navy ship "aggressively approached" a U.S. Navy destroyer in the
North Arabian Sea on Thursday, the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said in a statement
on Friday.
[.]
"The Russian ship initially refused but ultimately altered course and the two ships opened
distance from one another," the statement said."
No one should cheer this. The people of the Middle East have been bleeding way too
long.
The million dollar question is: how tostop a serial killer on the loose, operating in plain
sight, when everyone else is either afraid, in a deal or trying to avoid blowing up the whole
place (world).
It's tough because the serial killer, (together with his partners in crime EU/NATO), have
dismantled the existing world order, however fragile it was. The law is no more.
You would expect that in a situation like this the nations of the world, through the UN,
would say - now you must leave Iraq because the Iraqi parliament has spoken. That's the only
way the weaker can enforce their decisions agains the stronger peacefully, with the support
of the global community. But that doesn't happen because the worst offenders, the serial
killers, are members of the UN Security Council. And, the UN General Assembly almost never
meets to discuss events crucial for world peace, justice, fairness and equality, such as
these.
When all hinges on force, chaos and blood are in store. It is absolutely immoral, unjust
and heinous that the people of Iraq, Iran Syria, Lebanon and others should again fight to
their death to set themselves free from the deadly claws of parasitic states that are
veto-holding members of the UN body entrusted with maintaining world peace, law and order!!!
This entire theatre of the absurd is unbearable and should be a call to action for every
single decent human being on this beautiful planet.
Magnier has a few comments on the Iraqi divides at his twitter thread and is exactly what
I have thought for the last month or so. Those Iraqi groups that are solidly allied with Iran
in the fight against ISIS and US are a small minority and US and Israel have been hitting
them with impunity for several years now. Most Iraqi's including Shia seem tied up in small
time domestic disputes. No Nasrallah's or Kharmenei's in Iraq. Only Muqtada al-Sadr types.
Perhaps Sistani may do something but he also seems very much small time domestic - not
interested or not capable in the big picture.
Yes, you're quite correct, there will be blood, just as there's been blood flowing for the
last 3,000 years. That's why I wrote our flags must join those of the Axis of
Resistance--this War isn't theirs alone; it's every Earthling's War whether they realize it
or not.
What if the government of Iraq asks Russia to assist it in safeguarding its airspace from
unauthorized entry? The Russians will bring the equipment and the operators & they are
already just across in Syria.
Thanks for your reply! The rhetorical counter to the non-Patriot Iraqis will be that the
Evil Outlaw US Empire intends to treat them just like the Zionists treat their Palestinian
slaves and have demonstrated so already. There are essentially three choices: Fight, help
others to fight, pack up and move to another nation as you're no longer an Iraqi.
"Just who gets the profits from the Oil stolen from Syria, "
Best estimates I've seen say the oil fields trump is so bent on denying the Assad
government from accessing are so damaged they produce 31,000 bpd at best. Whatever discount
price comes from that after it's trucked to some market in Turkey or maybe Iraq, it would be
less profitable than trump's Taj mahal casino venture.
But hey, he's the greatest business man ever. Just ask him?
It's not about profit, it's about making a dollar here and there to give to the Kurds and
keep their America is our friend dreams alive and denying Assad that oil.
It would cost a great deal of money to return the fields east of the Euphrates to their
previous production levels.
The Netanyahu plan is to deny the Syrian gov't and it's people the revenue from those
wells they used to access to pay for their needs. Only the needs of trump and his people
matter.
The current regime in the United States seems to believe that people are only able to believe
what the regime tells them to believe. This is not the case. Even the American people want
the US military to withdraw from Iraq, from Syria, from the Middle East.
This has been illustrated repeatedly. But, after every 'election', and after every 'poll',
the regime chews on the results and rolls it over until they come up with a 'storyline' that
says they can do whatever the hell they feel like anyway. More and more people are catching
on to this.
Elijah Magnier in a Tweet today seemed to imply that Al Mahdi didn't stand up to the US
forcefully enough and that there is a split between shia and Sunni as to US presence. Some
want the US to stay. He also said Iraq needs a stronger PM that will implement US kicking out
of Iraq. He also mentioned that Al Mahdi did not give the ok for PMU forces to go up against
US in Iraq.
We will have to see. But if the Iraqi people are demanding US is kicked out then Al Mahdi may
be forced to act.
As in virtual every representative democracy, the Iraqi government carries out the will of
the people as expressed through their representatives. So the vote by the Iraqi Parliament is
binding on the Iraqi government, not a foreign government .. duh!
AFAIK USA is in Iraq at invitation of the Iraqi government but there's no formal agreement
(aka SOFA). So the Iraqi government can ask USA to leave at any time.
Iraq was being nice and diplomatic to invite USA to provide input that helps the Iraqi
government determine the timetable for USA to leave. Since USA has refused, we should expect
the Iraqi government to demand that USA leave immediately.
Of course, USA has already stated their reasons for remaining despite any lawful demand
that they do so.
Thanks james. Give the u.s. uniformed boys and girls some slack. They are running scared,
having to look over their shoulders knowing they are targets and that now things have changed
- U.S. stands alone without friends. It's vassal states waiver. after Soleimani
killing suddenly, except for IL, the U.S. is alone . article from earlier comment posting
is a good read.
"'Power-driven vessel A approaches the port side of power-driven vessel B. Vessel A is
considered the give-way vessel. As the give-way vessel, A must take EARLY and SUBSTANTIAL
action to keep clear and avoid crossing the stand-on vessel B.'
Farragut (A) should have passed behind B."
As b notes, this is almost an exact repeat of what happened last year. The idiots
commenting on the USN's twitter thread are pathetic and clearly don't know squat.
And speaking of the Russian Navy, Putin's business today began with "a
meeting with the Defence Ministry leadership and the Russian Navy commanders to discuss the
key areas of short- and long-term development of the Navy. The meeting was held while the
Supreme Commander-in-Chief was visiting the Nakhimov Black Sea Naval Academy" after
observing/participating in the previous day's naval exercises on the Black Sea. Currently,
the USN is
rated as "weak and marginal" by the Heritage Institute, a patriotic think tank, which is
outwardly displayed by the lack of navigation skills.
And another thing...
Did anybody notice how the 'goodguy badguy show' (impeachment dog & pony show) got shoved
to the back burner all of a sudden? Now I guess they are going to wait and see how this
'breakout' aggression move is going to pan out for them.
ISIS was the means - the Trojan horse - to justify the permanent garrisoning of NATO in Iraq
and Syria. Before Russia's intervention, NATO and politicians from NATO countries were
uniform in proclaiming the "fight" against ISIS would be a "generational struggle" which
would take at least 20-30 years to achieve victory. Even after major fighting has reduced the
organization to almost nothing, this rationale lives on in the guise of a "continuing threat"
represented by ISIS' ideology or aspirations. Permanent NATO garrisons in Iraq and Syria
remains the extant policy (ISIS always just the pretext). If the European NATO members balk
at the Iraq civil war which the US will quietly propose in the interest of supporting this
policy, then it is likely the Kurd regions will suffice as a breakaway NATO protectorate.
January 8, 2020 at 1:37 pm GMT •
Iris responded to:
Now Trump will be able to deescalate and Iran will save its face by claiming 80 or so
American soldiers dead
with:
"It is good to gather facts, information and try to cross-check it before making educated
assumptions on subjects ordinary citizens are not privy to.
Countless insightful American commenters propose very well-supported cases, but come to
opposite conclusions with regard to President Trump's real intentions. How could we then
know Iran's strategic roadmap?
The Iranian reaction was long coming. The writing was on the wall when Hassan Nasrallah,
following one too many Israeli strike on Syria, detailed in his Sept 2019 address that the
"Resistance Axis" had the capability to hit strategic Israeli targets that he
named.
It is not normal that US sources have not communicated any detail of the consequences of
the strikes, so many hours after they took place. The Danes have stated there were "no
casualties amongst them", which hints there were casualties amongst other Western
nationalities.
Your cynicism is justified by how real-politik is actually conducted. However, it is also
very possible that we are living a cornerstone moment in ME's History, a reverse moment of
the 2003 invasion of Iraq."
• Replies: @Erebus
Erebus says:
January 9, 2020 at 10:20 am GMT •
@Iris
"Some of what's come out suggests the US has gone full Mafia in response to the last few
years' developments in the M.E. There's no geo-political strategy. There's only (bad)
gangsterism.
Countless insightful American commenters propose very well-supported cases, but come to
opposite conclusions with regard to President Trump's real intentions.
Russia's textbook demonstration of how to combine diplomatic acumen and military
efficiency in sorting problems has given impetus to a Russian authored, Chinese backed
regional security and development proposal that's been making the rounds through the
region's capitals since late summer (at least). Promoted by Iran (mostly via Oman) as a new
paradigm in M.E. affairs, it's been well received everywhere except Saudi Arabia who've
apparently cited their inability to throw off the American yoke as the primary impediment
to their overt support. Notwithstanding, the Saudis have been talking quietly with all
parties and have reportedly even sent emissaries to Tehran for "informal" talks on the
hush-hush. Soleimani was a significant player in these talks, which were being mediated by
Iraq.
In his speech to the Iraqi parliament subsequent to Soleimani's murder, Iraqi Prime
Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi revealed an astonishing tale of the sort of strongarming tactics
America has employed in response. His speech was to be carried live on Iraqi TV, but the
feed was cut immediately after he started by the Speaker.
Nevertheless, his words have leaked to the public. In it he told that Trump had demanded
50% of Iraq's oil revenues, or the US wouldn't go ahead with promised infrastructure
rebuilding of the country they destroyed. Mahdi refused that proposal and headed to China
where he promptly made a deal to rebuild the country. When the US learned of it, Trump
called him to demand that the deal be rescinded and when Mahdi refused Trump threatened to
unleash violent protests against Mahdi's rule.
Sure enough, violent protests began shortly thereafter. Again Trump called and when
Mahdi again refused to rescind the China deal, Trump threatened him with Maidan-style
snipers. Again Mahdi refused, and Iraq's Minister of Defence spoke publicly of "third
party" provocateurs killing both protestors and police, threatening to drive the country
back into civil war.
Again Trump called, and Mahdi reports that this time he threatened Mahdi and the Defence
Minister with assassination if they didn't shut up about "third party" provocateurs.
Meanwhile, Mahdi continued to mediate Iranian-Saudi talks and Soleimani was carrying Iran's
response to the latest Saudi message. He was to meet Mahdi later the morning of his
assassination.
The upshot of all that is that the intent behind Soleimani's gangland slaying was to
send the US' message to Mahdi specifically, but also to Iran, the Saudis, and anyone else
contemplating M.E. rapprochement that murder awaited them if they continued to work towards
peace in the region.
It is not normal that US sources have not communicated any detail of the consequences of
the strikes, so many hours after they took place.
Details are emerging re the Al Assad Air Base attack, and if you're an American
strategist they ain't pretty. The lack of casualties notwithstanding, satellite photos show
that the Iranian salvo hit targets with a very high level of combat efficiency. Any damage
assessment will reveal that technically, Iran can hit whatever it wants to hit.
Qiam missiles were used. They're a cheap 'n cheerful derivative of the Soviet SCUD, and
Iran has 1,000s of them. Hezbollah likely has 1,000s as well, so the picture is even less
pretty if you're an Israeli strategist. Furthermore
Iran informed the Swiss Embassy in Tehran (who represent American interests in Iran) an
hour or more before the attack. More than enough time to get personnel out of harm's way.
FARS' reports of 80 killed and ~200 injured, frankly look to be a narrative for domestic
consumption. It's hard to believe that with the hour+ warning that that many people were
hanging around in the line of fire.
My guess about the delay is that the US is simply stunned.
However, it is also very possible that we are living a cornerstone moment in ME's
History, a reverse moment of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I believe that's true regardless of what got hit and the number of casualties. This was
a message sending exercise. As unimaginative as it may appear, the salvo sent an
unmistakeable signal that went through the region's capitals and beyond. Here's why they're
all paying attention
1. Iran struck American assets directly, in a brazenly overt manner. No plausible
deniability, proxies or non-state actors involved. It was a State attack on another State's
assets. If there is any doubt that the hit on Suleimani was an act of war, there can be no
doubt about Iran's response. The bully got punched in the nose in front of his entourage
and they're now waiting to see what he'll do. However
2. The IRGC's very high level of confidence in its missiles & missile corps is
obviously warranted. If the US and its satraps expected amateur hour, they got the
diametric opposite – the equivalent of getting your knife shot out of your hand
– and that puts the US in a bad spot.
3. The Qiam salvo was no Kalibrs-from-the-Caspian demonstration of technical prowess,
but so far as I can currently tell, more than half of the missiles targetting Al Assad hit
bull's eyes and American AD failed to intercept any of them. This stands in stark contrast
to Syria's success at knocking down Tomahawks. The Americans claim that the Al Assad
airbase had no missile defence systems installed, which seems incredible, but with the
silence of the Patriot batteries of Abqaiq looming in the background, all of the USM's
regional assets have been exposed as ducks in a barrel. The US simply can't defend
them.
It is clear that with its S300 systems and indigenous air defence in place, Iran can
destroy American assets while minimizing its own losses. What's more, Iran's S300s have
reportedly been networked into Russia's regional air defence systems, and that installing
S400s is being actively considered. With either development, Iran's air space is
effectively closed. Iran's status as the pre-eminent regional power has been cemented into
place, and with the Kremlin's backing there is no way to dislodge it. Every capital must
now run its calculus and begin re-thinking its role in the region, or its relationship with
it.
Without high efficiency air defence, CENTCOM can't defend even itself, never mind the
region's oil infrastructure and perverse allied monarchies. That is now plain as day.
Remaining perceptions of its ability to provide security guarantees to its satraps are now
gone, and so the US' options have been reduced to a choice between escalation, or going
home. There's no there there, and everybody now knows it. The message couldn't be
clearer.
Iran has opened the exit door and we're all waiting to see what heads prevail in
Washington as the facts settle into them. To keep the Americans focussed, one can expect to
see the Iraqi militias begin ratcheting up attacks on American assets in Iraq, and in
collaboration with domestic militia's in Syria as well.
The question now revolves around whether the US needs a thousand cuts to absorb the
message that its dominance of the M.E. is over.
If the US withdraws from the Middle East the Petrodollar will come to an end and the whole US
and the Western financial system collapses. The US and West are trapped by their stupidity in
abusing the financial system to fund their wars and build up a level of debt that can never
and will never be paid. How can the US leave even if they wanted to?
Well, the sun rose in the East again today, so why would anyone be surprised the US wont
leave Iraq and all that black gold. Heck, we never left Germany, Japan and South Korea and
they got nothing but location going for them (as does Iraq)
As for losing. Wars are not fought with an ending as the principle goal, at least not
since WWII. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Welcome to Orwells 1984, sans the boot in
Oceania (thus far). Cold War followed by GWOT. When the GWOT began to fizzle a mini Cold War
with Russia was started by Obama and AQ was replaced with ISIS. Those are fizzling so Trumps
pulled Iran from Obamas dust bin.
Empires need enemies to hold them together so they can keep feed the MIC beast and keep it
from devouring the hand that feeds them. If an enemy does not exist one is created.
It helps that the majority can be made to believe anything. Ignorance and effective
propaganda, the elimination of a free press, and control of education and entertainment make
that possible. Nothing can reverse this. Sure, a few might break out of the matrix but they
are of no consequence unless they become too visible.
27
The S300 can see F35s just fine.Its not at a fixed model,the appellation is a generic, and
denotes a class of missile with a range of 300km.Radars and c&c systems are updated
constantly.
They are not your daddys S300s that Greece never updated, you're in for a rude surprise if
you think so.
Jen @ 1
"The sheer arrogance and wilful blindness expressed in the US State Department press
statement and WaPo staffer Louisa Loveluck's tweets are astounding beyond belief. "
+++++++
One is left gobsmacked and speechless.
An interloper is told to get the hell out of your house and he retorts: "No, we are here to
stay and renew our marriage vows with you!"
This is insane.
Surely the world can see that Pompeo and others at State are deranged, out of touch with
reality.
Honestly, one is at a loss for words.
As ever, more thanks to b for keeping up with all of this.
Referring your observations here concerning DNC may be problematic, instead it might have
better standing to fact if DLC (Democratic Leadership Committee) is used as it is a construct
of the Clintons in their takeover of the D-party for the 1992 election. It is highly unlikely
Hillary replaced that organisation for her attempts at high office. It is also highly
unlikely Obama had the interest or motive to replace the Clinton organisation in his
Presidency, he hardly replaced Bush 43's administration at the end of eight years. All too
much of this information has gone down memory holes and no longer carries sufficient
significance to matter for the public but should definitely matter to those interested in
modern historical developments. Verification may likely be found by analysing the membership
of the D-party's financial committee (membership should be matter of public record) and
determine their political allegiances
YMMV
On completely unrelated note, b, you are aware that your website, as set as it is, gives us
government technical ability to identify each and every one of posters here? Regardless where
you host your website.
You website imports contents from ajax.googleapis.com. It is spyware used for tracking
users across whole internet, every site that uses google api is voluntarily enabling google
to track people so they can build surfing history/profile for everyone.
google shares that info with us government.
government compares timestamps of posts here, and can identify people.
HTTPS website doesn't protects anyone here in this regard.
Just for posters to know there is technical possibility.
Iraq has Trump by the short hairs.
In a few months the election circus will really get underway. If they're smart and
patriottic, the PMF will slowly start hitting US targets, forcing Trump's hand. An increased
campaign of pressure.
Like Tet '68. The Bagdad Olympics.
karlof1 @50
""'Power-driven vessel A approaches the port side of power-driven vessel B. Vessel A is
considered the give-way vessel. As the give-way vessel, A must take EARLY and SUBSTANTIAL
action to keep clear and avoid crossing the stand-on vessel B.'
Farragut (A) should have passed behind B."
Video was taken on the US ship, right (voice? Looks to me like the Russian ship (top left)
was crossing the US ship's bow from port to starboard of US (closer) ship. I.e., from the
port side. Not "approaching the port side." So, as far as I can see, the US vessel had the
right of way; the Russian ship should have given way/changed course.
Cf. "1. If another vessel is approaching you from the port -- or left -- side of your
boat, you have the right of way and should maintain your speed and direction."
I am going to go out on a limb and say the reason for all the western obfuscation is that
Boeing is already in trouble due to the 737MAX issues. Boeing being a major component in USA
economy needs to be protected from the fact they just lost another plane to mechanical/design
error.
There's lots of info to verify in those comments. For the most part, they're all correct.
The exception comes to Iranian air defences, their indigenous designed S-400 equivalent,
overall radar net, EW capabilities, and independent internet communications. The overall
conclusion is Iran is far better prepared and equipped than Outlaw US Empire/NATO knew. It
should also be reiterated that Iran's under Russia's nuclear aegis, which was publicly stated
by Putin and an adjutant and clearly repeated to Pompeo and Trump by both Lavrov and Putin.
Furthermore as publicly stated, China has Iran's back fiscally. In other words, Iran and its
allies have more oomph collectively than the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, many of the
latter actually desire better relations with the CRI troika.
Perhaps the key point made is the supposed inability of Saudi to free itself from the
Empire's shackles, which actually does make sense when one thinks long term. The logic of
Iran's HOPE Proposal is impeccable and is the only genuine route out of the current dilemma.
Clearly, it's been determined the Outlaw US Empire is the sole impediment to implementing
HOPE and thus must be ousted from its ability to impede. I wrote back in September when HOPE
was introduced at the UNGA that Trump would be a fool not to embrace it instead of oppose it
as he could then call the Empire a partner in the project. Clearly, he was advised not to do
so.
@ likklemore and karlof1.. i liked the comment on moa twitter feed - "This was an american
driving school marked with a very big "L" means "learner". Please drive carefully with max.
consideration."
@ 66 really? the other video is better then the one shown in b's twitter feed clip.. check
it out in the first video of
2 shown on the rt link.. cheers..
That's the impression you'd get when the USN is crossing the oncoming RuN path. I run into
those sorts of helmsmen all the time on the ocean outside of Newport, Oregon. Additionally,
with all the incidents of terrible navigation abilities seen over the past 3+ years and the
lies made to cover them, the USN has zero credibility just like its parent organization the
Outlaw US Empire.
It occurs to me that a host country that is no in conflict with an over-staying force can
make their life very challenging without having to actually fight them.
Outlaw any commerce between occupying forces and local businesses. Cut the roads to and
from the bases. Fly unarmed drones in the path of their aircraft. Delay, deny, defy any
requests for cooperation. Divert streams to flood their bases. Get really creative and make
their life hell.
Thanks for your reply! From what I observe, there's a lot of political angst within the
Empire that Trump's actions and subsequent BigLies have enhanced and brought to the surface.
The Act of War was the biggest domestic political error he could have committed, which shows
he has zero sense. Sanders is now the #1 D-Party candidate, and he and Gabbard with a
genuinely Progressive & Anti-war platform ought to win handily if allowed to.
You may have seen these one two links I've previously
posted dealing with the beginnings of the 2020 election season. The first is the initial
episode of a series in which I've seen the second, which is here .
The second of the three is very entertaining, and all are just shy of 30 min.
Sadly and unfortunately, the US will only withdrawal after it has suffered another
catastrophic loss, similar to what befell the soldiers in Lebanon. This is a criminal
enterprise sitting atop the US Military. You would figure people putting their ass on the
line would try and understand what they're really fighting for, but alas, most do not find
out until after they come home.
The US has started the chess game in a very poor position, with the pawns and horses deployed
too forward in the chessboard (only 5.200 soldiers in Iraq and 10.000 in Kuwait), and the USA
military leadership are in a very bad situation, if they try to send massive troops and
equipment reinforcement Iran will not be iddle waiting how US is preparing to destroy them as
the stupid Saddam did in 1991 and again in 2003, no, Iran will start the war with any pretext
before new troops & equipment is deployed in significant amounts.
On the other hand, if Iran escalate, the CENTCOM cannot support the "lost" garrison in
Iraq and Kuwait, they do not have enough forces deployed in the theater, and an airlift
operation of this magnitude under fire is very dangerous and a ride through hundreds of miles
through hostile terrain under harassment from Iranians and PMU troops "Hezbollah style" (as
IDF suffer in 2006), and without heavy armor scort and close air support will be almost
suicidal.
Iranian have been preparing for a war with USA from 1979, but now the situation is better
than ever, I do not give a cent on USA now if they do not retreat quickly from Syria and Iraq
(if Trump is enough intelligent it will order soon, but I am afraid he wants to play poker
once more), and stop to make threats and provocations.
But they "cannot" retreat, you know, is an electoral year and Trump want to be re-elected
above all.
Checkmate!
div> Those oil deals Iraq made with China in exchange for Iraqi electrical
infrastructure projects are something Trump will not allow and has threatened Iraq with the
terrors of the earth. As Karloff1 suggests the Iraqis have few choices, Trumps State department
have been blunt... you are vassals and you will do as you are told or you will be punished.
That's plain and we can all be thankful for Trumps honesty. The ball is now in the Iraqi court,
either refuse to be vassals and fight for your sovereignty or bow your heads and vacate the
field.
Those oil deals Iraq made with China in exchange for Iraqi electrical infrastructure projects
are something Trump will not allow and has threatened Iraq with the terrors of the earth. As
Karloff1 suggests the Iraqis have few choices, Trumps State department have been blunt... you
are vassals and you will do as you are told or you will be punished. That's plain and we can
all be thankful for Trumps honesty. The ball is now in the Iraqi court, either refuse to be
vassals and fight for your sovereignty or bow your heads and vacate the field.
I am seeing the position of Iraq against Iran as being very similar to the position of
Ukraine vis a vis Russia -- as 'younger' to 'elder brother'. Not as lesser to greater, but as
family, the ones nearby. Crimea grabbed onto that lifeline - as well they might!
Now a new element of the multipolar world is at early stages of being born. And this was
put in effect, if we go back and look, immediately up the invasion of Iraq by Bush Jr. But,
clearly, Iraq went through more horror, more destabilization than did Ukraine. The latter had
a governmental coup resulting in internal strife; Iraq had a military invasion. So, hopefully
the Resistance will be patient with it - like Syria, it is in great need of aid, comfort, and
reassurance that no further hegemony will be visited upon it. Sovereignty is the issue and
rightfully so.
There are lessons to be learned, after we finish mourning the murders of men who were
apparently engaged in the diplomatic efforts to establish this new multipolarity, or at least
lay some groundwork for future talks along that line. You don't murder diplomats. Case
closed; invaders out! And that is more difficult, more delicate, if up till now you have only
yourself survived as a nation by clinging to the skirts of the American empire. Difficult but
inevitable.
Iraq now can look toward Ukraine. Has that country done well taking the unipolar path?
Hardly. Did South Vietnam? Hardly. But as spring approaches, how are each changing course?
The dust is settling; you can see better. Travel with Pepe over the great mountains following
real trading routes, of the centuries past. Bring your own unique assets to the fore and let
friends visit and see what it is that makes you you. Another name for the Axis of Resistance
is Peace and Prosperity. Mutual benefit. It's coming.
In this country, the US, long ago there was a mighty empire, the empire of the Anasazis,
in the center of the Southwest. They caused to be built mighty edifices and they suborned the
surrounding farming peoples because they had power to predict the seasonal changes and
supposedly command rain to fall. Everyone believed it and everyone obeyed. For a time. There
was no alternative. Until it didn't rain, and it didn't rain. So, the people left, they went
where there were rivers, they abandoned the great Anasazi centre. It is in ruins today. But
the people have survived.
We are suddenly in another pivotal moment. And it will be difficult for those of us who
willingly or not have benefited from empire. But many of us say with you - invaders out!
Peace and blessings to all!
US destroyer blatantly violated international rules for preventing collisions at sea by
making a manoeuvre to cross the Russian ship's course in the North Arabian Sea -
@MoD_Russia🇷🇺
Bearing in mind that Pravda ain't what it used to be this policy, described bluntly in
article title : "If NATO strikes Kaliningrad, Russia will seize Baltic in 48 hours" if real,
would probably extend to the prevention of similar build-up in the matter of the Iraqi and
Iranian "MAGA" programs now developing.
Quote from Pravda> "As soon as we can see the concentration of American aircraft on
airfields in Europe - they cannot reach us in any other way - we will simply destroy those
airfields by launching our medium-range ballistic missiles at those targets. Afterwards, our
troops will go on offensive in the Baltic direction and take control of the entire Baltic
territory within 48 hours. NATO won't even have time to come to its senses - they will see a
very powerful military buildup on the borders with Poland. Then they will have to think
whether they should continue the war. As a result, all this will end with NATO losing the
Baltic States," Mikhail Alexandrov told Pravda.Ru describing one of the scenarios for a
possible development of events in case of Russia's response to NATO aggression.
Another variant for the breakthrough of the missile defense system in Kaliningrad provides
for a massive cruise missile attack on the Russian territory. According to the expert, Russia
has cruise and ballistic missiles that it can launch on the territory of the United
States.
"If the Americans launch a missile attack on Kaliningrad, then we will strike, say, Seattle,
where largest US aircraft factories are located. Having destroyed those factories we will
deprive the Americans of the possibility to build their aircraft. They will no longer be able
to build up their fleet of military aircraft," said Mikhail Alexandrov.
Russia has efficient air defense systems to intercept cruise missiles. If it goes about a
ballistic missile strike, the expert reminded that Russia has a missile defense area in
Moscow that can intercept at least 100 missiles and maybe even more, since there are no
restrictions associated with the ABM Treaty.
One might assume the same policy would apply for all Ru, and Iran too, as Iran is critical to
the survival of Ru.
On the topic of Iran not waiting for a military build up as a precursor to a US assault on
Iran...
I wonder if an intermediate step for Iran might be, in cooperation with the PMU, to
threaten to attack any new forces coming into Iraq, taking this to be escalation prior to an
invasion, and therefore a threat that must countered before it worsens.
but there is this query: what are the consequences of taunting? A review of the past year
saw the u.s. losing stature and, since 2014, its dollar as world reserve currency being
shunned.
FF
2019: Abqaig - After the Houthis take down of KSA oil facilities, and failure of US defenses
does KSA still feel secure?
Working closely with Russia, Soleimani was instrumental in the battles for Syria, Lebanon
and Yemen.
Trump, the braggart, stunned the world. Even their special relationship Brits!
It is reported when Boris was told of Soleimani's murder he said, O, F**K.
January 3, 2020 everything changed and they know not what they have done on behalf of
Israel.
An exit from Iraq would make the occupation and theft of oil from Syria untenable,and the
land route from Iran to Syria and Lebanon less hazardous. This would be fatal for Israel and
will insist the US stay in Iraq. Unfortunately for the US 5,000 will not cut the mustard, how
many US troops could Trump put into Iraq to quell an uprising in election year? US bases in
the Gulf are extremely vulnerable especially the largest base Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar who
many regard as being located in enemy territory. Trump is gambling and many shrinks think
he's nuts, I agree..... Psychiatrists: Urgent action must be taken against Trump for creating
Iran crisis
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/10/615852/Trump-is-%E2%80%98dangerous-and-incapacitated%E2%80%99-Psychiatrists
The two videos don't look like the same situation.
The first appears to have been shot from the Farragut's port side; the second, from her
starboard side.
And in the first the Russian ship appears to be bearing down on the Farragut off the
Farragut's port bow. In the second the Russian ship appears to be overtaking the Farragut,
coming up from the starboard side. I don't see how the videos can have been taken at the same
time. The rule that seems to apply to the situ in video 1 is:
"Crossing Situation.
When two power-driven vessels are crossing so as to involve risk of collision, the vessel
which has the other on her own starboard side shall keep out of the way and shall, if the
circumstances of the case admit, avoid crossing ahead of the other vessel."
Since the Russian vessel appears to have the Farragut on her starboard side, the Russian
vessel should change course and presumably deflect to starboard. (Once the two vessels were
as close as they were, both should have deflected to starboard.) But instead it looks as
though the Russian vessel at the last minute deflected to port.
However, video 2 looks like a totally different situ. So to me it remains unclear what the
actual disposition of the vessels was. The videos must have been taken at two different
points in the encounter.
Thank you b for these great articles and allowing comments.
I want to nod out to ChasMark | Jan 10 2020 22:21 utc | 55 for a great comment.
For decades the US has controlled the world through petro dollars and counterinsurgency
warfare. They lost every time at this but its more about the money spent and keeping fluidity
within economic circles.
With Iran's missile attack being an eye opener I hope the US is smart enough to know they
have lost. MIC spokes person when asked why the base did not protect itself. He said they did
not have the hardware to do it. No Patriots because they owned the sky up to that point. What
is a Patriot to counterinsurgency. They had a M-901 (TEL) which they got rid of years ago
supposedly. It is loaded with six TOW missiles and would generally be used to disable bomb
laden vehicles approaching the gate. Counterinsurgency again.
Those days are over. It is the day of the missile and belt and road economic plans. No
longer can air craft carriers hang off the coast to control the skies. How will the stunned
US MIC bring in additional troops and equipment. Planes or ships are small targets but highly
valuable ones. It is not always easy to know how things happen. Like the ships struck this
past year in the gulf or KSA oil infrastructure hit, who did it and how is hard to
determine.
I imagine the MIC is burning the mid-night oil with the realization that they are now in a
war they are totally unprepared to fight. They have 15,000 soldiers strung out in Iraq
unprotected from missile attack and no way to protect them. They will talk all BS but it is
empty and they know it. They do have two things. One is fear and the other nukes.
There is much talk of weak knees among the Iraqi people and government. That is with good
reason. The destruction of city after city. Some they find through the birth of deformed
children that some of their cities are radioactive. Of course they are afraid the USA killed
a million of them and turned 24 million into refugees. As time goes on they will realize that
the bully is not what it was and every new strike by Iran will build the confidence to push
the Americans out.
I wonder if the day of the nuke is coming to an end as well. Temper tantrum Trump decides
to nuke either Iran or Iraq the world will speak up. Perhaps strike back as the Russians have
said. If the point is the oil and gas in the area and the control of it then nukes will
destroy that value.
If there was a time that America wet itself it is now. If the 9 flags stand together then
move as one their cries will drive the heathen from their home. I also believe that if it
happens then the USA is done. Played out.
"Iran could not have dreamt of a better President to rejuvenate its position domestically and
regionally."
The problem is that Israel could not have dreamt of a better President to get a war with
Launched. In fact, Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli Minister of Justice (some irony there), once
said as much explicitly, albeit over the issue of the West Bank, not Iran.
In a tweet following a Jerusalem Post conference in New York on Sunday, Ayelet Shaked said
it was time for Israel to "establish facts on the ground".
"There is no better time than now," Shaked, who earlier this month was sacked by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as justice minister, wrote on Twitter.
"Do not miss Trump's reign - that's what I just said at the Jerusalem Post in New York."
End Wuote
This is because Trump is devoted to Israel and devoted to an antipathy to Iran. The more
Iran gains ground in the Middle East, the more Israel will push Trump (and any successor to
Trump) to attack Iran. And he will do it - either deliberately or out of incompetence - and
the difference doesn't matter.
It occurs to me that a host country that is no in conflict with an over-staying force can
make their life very challenging without having to actually fight them.
. . .
Posted by: Figleaf23 | Jan 10 2020 23:53 utc | 72
++++++++++++++
Change all the road and street signs! OK, there are fewer signs in Iraq than there were in
Czechoslovakia, but it would still be worth a shot.
That's the impression you'd get when the USN is crossing the oncoming RuN path. . . .
Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 10 2020 23:48 utc | 71
++++++++++
Well, when two ships are approaching each other at an angle, they are both crossing each
other's path. What counts is, who is going faster and thus will cross the other's bow sooner.
It sure looks to me like when they got close the Ru vessel had the Farragut on her (Ru's)
starboard side. If the two vessels were going opposite directions but on parallel tracks,
they would pass same side to same side (i.e., port to port; starboard to starboard). If they
are approaching at an angle, the relative relationship of the two sides will change with the
speed of the vessels. You must visualize the situ from each vessel, not one, and gauge speed
and relationship when the two courses cross. However, both vessels in proximity have the
obligation to take action to avoid a collision. In that situ I believe the default is for
both to deflect to starboard.
Wait to see who says uncle first at sea is a stupid game of chicken. Basically IMO both
captains broke the rule of avoiding collisions and endangered their crews and their
vessels.
In the video where the Russian ship is in the top left-hand corner, the USS Farragut is
moving away from the Russian ship. In that video, the Russian ship is travelling behind the
US ship and crosses from the
Here is a wonderful and witty must read article by Gary Brecher [the War Nerd] which puts the
US predicament in the Gulf into perspective
"Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack."
That's right: no defense at all. The truth is that they have very feeble defenses against any
attack with anything more modern than cannon. I've argued before no carrier group would
survive a saturation attack by huge numbers of low-value attackers, whether they're Persians
in Cessnas and cigar boats or mass-produced Chinese cruise missiles. But at least you could
look at the missile tubes and Phalanx gatlings and pretend that you were safe. But there is
no defense, none at all, against something as obvious as a ballistic missile. http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carriers-will-die/all/1/
Sorry, accidentally posted too early @ 94 after being interrupted. I meant to say that the
Russian ship, travelling behind the Farragut, crossed from that ship's starboard side to its
portside. This suggests that the Farragut did not give way in the first video when the
Russian ship first approached but steamed on ahead and went in front of the Russian ship.
Medusa-Perseus @ 83: Thanks for the link. Despite the authors speaking, in the first
paragraph, about Iran's "provocations", it's an informative and well written piece.
An excerpt;
"Again, it is high time that Washington get off its high horse and begin to negotiate a
new world order with globe's major powers. The prospects for this, however, appear less
likely than ever. Unfortunately, when there was still an opportunity to use American power to
reshape rather than destabilize the world, the Obama administration chose the latter. With
the opportunity to shift course in a mode more imposed by, rather than imposed on the U.S.
virtually dissipated, the Trump administration is continuing in the Obama mode of
destabilization while falling back on the one-sidedness of the military option–with all
the predictable consequences."
An American (a professor at that, but not of culture) once asked back around 2011 the
following: "Why do people in the Middle East talk so frequently about humiliation and
dignity? Other countries were colonized or lost wars, yet they do not speak about humiliation
and dignity. I assume that an answer to this question will help me understand Middle Eastern
culture."
The differences between shame and guilt based cultures are interesting.
The terminology was popularized by Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword ,
who described American culture as a "guilt culture" and Japanese culture as a "shame
culture." The Islamic Middle East is generally a shame based culture.
In east-west interactions these two distinct worldviews and values systems operate -- i.e.
guilt vs shame. For example:
"Loyalty: All Arabs belong to a group or tribe. Loyalty to the family tribe is considered
paramount to maintaining honor. One does not question the correctness of the elders or tribes
in front of outsiders. It is paramount that the tribe sticks together in order to survive.
Once again, Arab history and folklore are full of stories of heroes who were loyal to the
end."
In the Eastern view (well Islamic anyway), there is a stronger sense that one has 'it'
(honor) by birth and then risks losing it through various shameful actions etc. As distinct
from a work ethic stance where working towards something is the goal.
The main issue at play in the recent Iran-US-Iraqi dynamic from this point of view is not
the surface level simpleton MSM narrative of who was the good & bad guys etc. Leave that
for the childish unsophisticated 'super hero' mentalities raised on comics.
Rather, in this case, it is the fact/perception that the Arab Iraqi 'host' failed to
uphold the accepted ancient honor codes of protecting an invited guest (well at least for
three days). Only barbarians do not understand and play by this value system.
So, the USA, as the said culturally ignorant actors, is actually not really the core issue
in this case. That is just an inconvenient fact of history.
What is more real and politically charged is the fact that the Iraqi Arab nation
(leadership) invited an Iranian (Persian) guest -- allegedly to talk peace deals with the
Wahhabi gang -- and failed to uphold/honor the ancient host-guest codes. Even if there was no
duplicity involved, the fact remains scratched into the historical record that they failed --
ergo, shame must now be dealt with.
Therefore, the future events will more than likely unfold one way or another according to
the honor-shame etiquette process.
Now, of course some in the US hierarchy may well know and understand this dynamic and
apply it -- and Gregory Bateson used the term "Schismogenesis" in the 1930s and played his
part in WW2 within the (then) Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an institutional precursor
to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), against Japanese held territories in the Pacific. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis
)
AP reports: US tried to take out another Iranian leader, but failed
LINK
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military tried, but failed, to take out another senior
Iranian commander on the same day that an American airstrike killed the Revolutionary
Guard's top general, U.S. officials said Friday.
The officials said a military airstrike by special operations forces targeted Abdul Reza
Shahlai, a high-ranking commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but the
mission was not successful. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to
discuss a classified mission.[.]
Officials said both Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Shahlai were on approved military
targeting lists, which indicates a deliberate effort by the U.S. to cripple the leadership
of Iran's Quds force, which has been designated a terror organization by the U.S. Officials
would not say how the mission failed.[.]
There has been a similar incident between US and Russian navies a few months ago.
Same claims from the USN against the Russians.
Guess what? The video clearly showed the Russians on the starboard side of the USN ship.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>Text</BLOCKQUOTE>
< A HREF="http://www.aclu.org/">Headline (not the URL)</A> → Headline (not the URL)
"... Hopefully you are right on the Kurds and Sunnis, but the US ability to enlist proxies has always surprised me. ..."
"... Newspeak: IRAN APPEARS TO BE STANDING DOWN. Imperial words when attacked directly. ..."
"... Iran has been patiently demonstrating its capabilities. The following terms came into the vernacular and are associated with those capabilities: Stena Impero/Adryan Darya, Khurais and Abqaiq, RQ-4A Global Hawk, PMU/PMF and many others, and now, Ain al-Asad. ..."
"... US cannot afford to fight a war with Iran directly. If so, it would have to fight from Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean, so, just be ready for skirmishes here and there. I see RSH is posting here now. He has been predicting a war between the two nations by the end of 2010, end of 2011, end of 2012, and on and on, on other sites. Haven't read enough of his comments to see if it's now by the end of 2020? ..."
"... But I think both Iran and North Korea will keep the pressure on the US high throughout this election year, entirely intentional of course. ..."
"... Damn, I'm late to the party again. It's probably been said already, but Iran's response is pure genius. Early warning to try to avoid casualties, speaks volumes about the differences between the evil empire and the Iranians. ..."
"... Unless one entertains the belief that Iran's missile attacks all misfired and missed their human targets-which appears to be the view that the friends of Israel and those who believe in the indefatigability of the US military, hold- then what Iran has just provided is spectacular confirmation that, short of a nuclear attack, there is nothing that the US can do, but go. ..."
"... Clearly its bases cannot be defended, that is what the craters and smashed buildings are telling them. If the Secretary of Defense wants to wait for a written request to leave the country that is his privilege-he's lucky not to be living there- but there is no way that the US forces can stay there. They have become unwelcome guests. ..."
"... People voted for Trump primarily for two reasons: Obama and the D-Party had stabbed them in the back allowing millions to lose their homes while the fraudulent banksters got away scot-free and with $Trillions too-boot, and they knew Clinton was a deranged warmonger while Trump talked reasonably about the Outlaw US Empire's many Imperial Follies. In short, Trump was seen by many as the lesser of two evils. No, I voted Green. ..."
"... It sounds as though Abdel Mahdi is being forced into the popular opinion. The US is being reduced into its best defended bases. Where from there, when those bases are isolated? ..."
"... The US did not escalate today. Trump's speech was all bluster and falsehood, directed almost exclusively to American audience in the interest of domestic politics. ..."
"... It is also possible that what Pompeo and Esper and Netanyahoo are seeking to accomplish is to maintain the highest level of tension possible without precipitating actual war. This is because all parties recognize that actual war with Iran would entail the destruction of much of Israel's infrastructure and many thousands of Israeli casualties, and these are prices too high to pay for the overthrowing of even the "evil" Iranian "regime". ..."
"... The Iranians have just displayed that they can and will attack targets with precision. No message? Seriously? You've missed the bigger picture. Iran have scored one on the Strategic level. What you're also missing is that Iraq is moving even closer to Iranian and Chinese-Russian orbit. ..."
"... Iran communicated its intent to strike US targets in Iraq directly to the Iraqi Prime Minister a full two hours prior to the missiles being launched; Iraq then shared this information with US military commanders, who were able to ensure all US troops were in hardened shelters at the time of the attack. ..."
Iran told the US they were going to attack and what areas.
Of course the US military is not going to abandon its radar installation is it? Maybe there
were a few others stationed where survival was iffy. If they die then not surprising that their
deaths were covered up because they were told those areas would be hit.
That is the reason we had the Trump presser today that was projection of, we got the
message, don't do any more...stand down.
If the latest about bombs in the Baghdad Green Zone are accurate then either more Iran or
some other factor wanting to trigger US response or ???
We are all still alive so China/Russia is backstopping Iran from nuclear attack seems
clear
With those poor disenfranchised American folks putting all their hope in trump and his
agenda, are they realizing the benefits of their support yet? I've read 71% of young
Americans can't afford to buy a home now the money men have inflated prices to the extreme.
Trump's people, the money men.
Did they vote for him as a show of support for his granting every wish Netanyahu ever
had?
Did they vote for him to support Netanyahu's aggression against his chosen foe, which
clearly was an effort to cast the spear of fear into the hearts of Israeli's?
Demagogues and wannabes set about to rule by making the population afraid.
Walter
Thanks for the explanation.In layman terms and I would guess many professions and trades,
speed and velocity are interchangeable.
Laguerre. Hopefully you are right on the Kurds and Sunnis, but the US ability to
enlist proxies has always surprised me. There always seem to be corruptible people
anywhere, plus others interested in using the US for their small time ends. But Iraq has
changed with the killing of Soleimani. Anti US may end up trumping local grievances for the
majority.
Newspeak: IRAN APPEARS TO BE STANDING DOWN. Imperial words when attacked directly.
What is lost in all this debate whether this was Kabuki or not is that Iran went toe to
toe with the empire -- directly. Pissed on the red lines set by the empire a day earlier.
No need for proxies. No need for false flag from the enemies. Iran has justified legality
under article 51 as Zarif pointed out.
Terror needed re-balancing, and for now, balance of terror has been established.
Iran has been patiently demonstrating its capabilities. The following terms came
into the vernacular and are associated with those capabilities: Stena Impero/Adryan Darya,
Khurais and Abqaiq, RQ-4A Global Hawk, PMU/PMF and many others, and now, Ain
al-Asad.
US cannot afford to fight a war with Iran directly. If so, it would have to fight
from Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean, so, just be ready for skirmishes here and there. I
see RSH is posting here now. He has been predicting a war between the two nations by the
end of 2010, end of 2011, end of 2012, and on and on, on other sites. Haven't read enough
of his comments to see if it's now by the end of 2020?
The stage rigging is on plain display here. This was arranged and calculated well in
advance. Arranged by someone with power to compel obedience, who would expect perfect
compliance to a scheme with many moving parts. So may parts of this might have gone wrong,
with WW3 as the consequence of a mistake.
I completely agree, I think this entire thing is a precursor to something much worse,
such as a massive false-flag that will let this conflict turn hot. Last night was but a
small taste or using Iranian wording 'mosquito bite'. People are quick to dismiss that war
would never be a viable option for the powers that be. When really they have been setting
the stage for global calamity for quite some time. The Iran/US/Israel theater is just the
first of a number of dominoes that have been carefully set up (NK-US; India-Pakistan;
Russia-NATO) to name but a few. Tensions are intentionally being ratcheted up for a major
cascading explosion that will ripple around the globe. The ponzi economy bubble-game they
have created during the last 20 years is part of that plan to trigger even worse panic
among the populace. Having said all of this, it seems to me that they want Trump to still
be re-elected before things really turn sour, so there seems to be some time left, which is
why the current de-escalation.
But I think both Iran and North Korea will keep the pressure on the US high
throughout this election year, entirely intentional of course.
Mao , Jan 8 2020 20:28 utc |
237ben , Jan 8 2020 20:30 utc |
238
Damn, I'm late to the party again. It's probably been said already, but Iran's response
is pure genius. Early warning to try to avoid casualties, speaks volumes about the
differences between the evil empire and the Iranians.
Thanks b, and all. So much better coming here, as opposed to the MSM..
Mao , Jan 8 2020 20:30 utc |
239WJ , Jan 8 2020 20:31 utc |
240
It all depends now on Trump's reelection strategy: Will he run on bringing the troops home
or will he run on another Middle East war.
Posted by: somebody | Jan 8 2020 16:34 utc | 108
Were I a zionist advisor/donor to Trump, I would advise/blackmail him to do the
following: Run a 2020 campaign premised on bringing the troops home, and indeed bring
enough of them home (or to Germany) to make that plausible. Then, after you win the
election, stage some action or invent some pretext (we control the media and can help you
do both) that requires you do go to war against Iran. It will be unpopular and many of your
citizens will die. But you are in your second term, we have given you lots of $$$$, and we
still have that video tape from the late 1990s of you and the 14-year old eastern european
girl.
Unless one entertains the belief that Iran's missile attacks all misfired and missed
their human targets-which appears to be the view that the friends of Israel and those who
believe in the indefatigability of the US military, hold- then what Iran has just provided
is spectacular confirmation that, short of a nuclear attack, there is nothing that the US
can do, but go.
Clearly its bases cannot be defended, that is what the craters and smashed buildings
are telling them. If the Secretary of Defense wants to wait for a written request to leave
the country that is his privilege-he's lucky not to be living there- but there is no way
that the US forces can stay there. They have become unwelcome guests.
Of course there are still those who tell us that Iraqi public opinion is divided and
that the sunni and the Kurds will be willing agents of the imperialists: I don't think so.
What the US has done is to unite Iraqis around nationalist objects and to close the
carefully opened divide between the sects. They have come full circle since 2003 and now
even the Iraqi members of ISIS (who are a small minority in the Foreign Legion of Uighurs,
Bosnians, Albanians, Chechens and wahhabis) will not serve as a wedge to keep Iraqis
fighting each other.
Or Iran: it has taken trillions of dollars and decades for Washington to knock it into
the densest politicians' heads but now everyone understands:
"The US is our enemy, it sees us as untermenschen to be exterminated like vermin. In
order to survive and to rebuild our lives and communities we must expel them. We have no
choice.
First we will ask the Swiss Embassy to tell them to leave, then we will pass resolutions
in Parliament, and put on fireworks displays at their bases. And they will leave."
And next will come the matter of Palestine, and the al quds Soleimani's brigade was
named for. Israel is beginning to look very lonely now in the Levant- a very abusive,
violent and noisy neighbour given to trespassing and larceny.
"Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi -- according to well-informed sources in Baghdad --
answered that "this act may carry devastating results on the Middle East: Iraq refuses to
become the theatre for a US-Iran war".
The Iranian official replied: "Those who began this cycle of violence are the US, not
Iran; the decision has been taken."
Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi informed the US forces of the Iranian decision. US declared a
state of emergency and alerted all US bases in Iraq and the region in advance of the
attack.
Iran bombed the most significant US military base in Iraq, Ayn al-Assad, where just in
the last two days, the US command had gathered the largest number of forces. Many US bases,
particularly in Shia controlled areas and around Baghdad, were evacuated in the last days
for security reason towards Ayn al-Assad, a base that holds anti-nuclear shelters."
Easy to see why the US approved of Mahdi as president. A pissweak appeaser how can do no
more than write letters to the UN. If he doesn't want a US Iran war in Iraq then he should
be booting the yanks out as the Yanks are based there purely on Iran's account. What Mahdi
is doing amounts to providing sanctuary to the US on Iran's border.
Some of us are indeed quite skeptical that there were no casualties reported whatsoever
- by "Western" media outlets. This commenter previously noted that it would be in the US
establishment's interest to downplay the impact of the attack as much as possible.
Furthermore, to those who are wondering how true casualty figures could be prevented from
being leaked, all the US government has to do is declare such information classified, at
which point it becomes a serious felony (think Snowden or Manning) to leak it.
>>b) The fact that Suleimani was a national hero for a nation of 82 million people
and also for 150 million of shia around the world, mourned by millions in the streets, make
a bigger Trump "victory" over the Iranian "regime", and it is a powerful advice to the
others leaders and commanders in the world that try to fight or oppose to USA.
This is not a gain, the US will be hated and sabotaged by the many shia groups across
the world (a young and growing demographic with combat experience), and there will be many
covert activities against it all over the place. An american dying here and there, a US
company sabotaged here and there. The US will be very busy fighting shia groups undercover
just as it needs to compete with Russia and China, not to mention the security costs. They
will probaly give tacit support to some sunni groups already fighting the US. Taliban
getting manpads and targeting info of US presence in Afghainstan? No, this is not good news
for the US. It means having more and more enemies everywhere and dividing resources into
many fronts. Taking on Russia, China and Iran/Iraq/Shia Crescent will to be too much. The
debt clock is ticking.
>>g) The retaliation of the PMU lob some katyusha rockets in the backyard of few
US bases
No, they will simply make it impossible for any american to get out outside of the
Embassy in Iraq. Workers, companies etc. will be driven out by harrassment.
>>h) Trump is defiant about not leaving Iraq, I think at the end they will go but
after they have a very good deal. Of course it is all about the Iraqi oil, in exchange for
the American blood and money wasted in Iraq. Iraq has the biggest oil reserves in the world
and USA want a good chunk of them, they never ever leave "giving" all of them to the
Chinese or Iranians or anybody else. Trump does not want US soldiers in Iraq, but he wants
the oil above anything else (it is condition "sine qua non" to maintain the Empire)
You don't know much about Iraq then. Iraq (including elites) does not want the US there.
It does not want to be a battlefield and it does not want to have Shia leaders attacked in
their own country. This is a Red Line for iraqis. Muqtada Al Sadr, the most influential
person in Iraq, who kicked the arse of the US occupation in 2004-2007 wants the US and even
the Embassy out, embargo on US products, etc. Iraqi shia are not intimidated by the US, far
from it, they have seen far worse in the past and that only angered them even more. Iraq
will move into China-Russia-Iran orbit, this is a done deal. A chinese delegation just
arrived in Iraq to provide security solutions for the country.
>> Trump has now the full enthusiastic support of the AIPAC and all the others
powerful Israeli lobby he will have more money than required for the election. He has
demonstrated he is the best possible POTUS for Israel.
This is debatable, considering that 80 % of US jews voted against Trump. Israel is not
the only issue for US jews. They do not like loud mouthed white racists. US media is an
expression of US jews and US media continues to be highly hostile to Trump. If they really
wanted him, media would be supportive.
j) In the short term USA will leave Syria and in the medium term Iraq, OK, but they
never ever leave "all the region", they need to be there to maintain the "American Way of
Live" (US $ as reserve currency)
There will be less US presence in the Middle East and it won't be just Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan drawdowns. US debt levels point to unsustainable military spending. That is, in
2025 - 2030 the US will be forced to cut military spending significantly. Even now the US
is cutting the number of ships due to lack of money. So in general, there will be less US
presence everywhere, including in the Middle East. Too much debt.
As for Iraq, the US HQ for Iraq was just evacuated to Kuwait, US forces stopped
operations and are confinded to their bases (defacto house arrest), and US workers are
fleeing the country.
>>If nothing dramatically change, I expect a crushing victory of Trump in the
coming US election, he has all the cards now in his hand, and he will not waste them.
And i see people in the US and all over the world deeply disturbed by his behavior.
People want calm, not never ending drama, threats, sexism, racism, vulgarity and
warmongering. Women (majority of voters) do not like such behavior. Women and minorites are
very hostile to Trump due to this. Republicans lost the House and it looks like someone did
not get the message. Even if Trump somehow wins, this will lead to civil war like situation
in the US due to the changing demographics. Minorities DO NOT want Trump and their numbers
will only be increasing far into the future. This means growing division and infighting
within the US.
You look at this through the eyes of an American, that is why you see it as 'kabuki' and
'face saving' weakness, because as an American your answer is wholesale slaughter. Body
count is your metric of success.
America cant retaliate because they know the next blow will bleed. They were unable to
intercept the incoming missiles because US point defenses are mediocre. Once a projectile
gets past the patriots, not a difficult task, they will only face some rail mounted
stingers and 20 mm cannon. Has to be scarry for the dumb grunts.
I won't attack you or your post, but it is no good manners to enter somebody's house and
speak shit. If your family didn't teach you this, and your education didn't manage to
polish the animal in you, then you are a lost case, no need to deal with you. You'll live
on mother earth and then die without having any good impact whatsoever.
People voted for Trump primarily for two reasons: Obama and the D-Party had stabbed
them in the back allowing millions to lose their homes while the fraudulent banksters got
away scot-free and with $Trillions too-boot, and they knew Clinton was a deranged warmonger
while Trump talked reasonably about the Outlaw US Empire's many Imperial Follies. In short,
Trump was seen by many as the lesser of two evils. No, I voted Green.
If you read Dr.
Hudson's analysis and the transcript from this show , you'll
be informed about a great many facts about the Outlaw US Empire that the vast majority of
its citizens are unaware of thanks to BigLie Media. And I could direct you to dozens of
additional examples that provide even more facts about the situation, the core of the
problem and potential solutions.
Many good academics and others have tried to inform the USA's citizenry about the why of
their dilemma and provided suggestions for action, but their voices are drowned out by
what's known as the Establishment Narrative parroted by BigLie Media. IMO, Sanders would
have waxed Trump in 2016, but he was clearly the target of a conspiracy to prevent him from
gaining the D-Party nomination. IMO, the only reason he endorsed Clinton was he knew of the
sort of domestic mayhem Trump and the R-Party would wreck upon his supporters. Please,
before denigrating the masses within the Evil Outlaw US Empire, try to discover why they
behave as they do. Lumping them all together and calling them dumb fuck-wits won't get you
anywhere and only serves to exacerbate things.
It sounds as though Abdel Mahdi is being forced into the popular opinion. The US is
being reduced into its best defended bases. Where from there, when those bases are
isolated?
I am reposting this.
The Iranians care, they sent some of the best gifts, and they're rightly proud of them.
A Hallmark kinna time, the Holidays n all that.
Brother, I have read about the problems involved, I took some calculus long ago, but the
engineering behind what Iran has demonstrated in very complex. They put the clown on the
back foot.
There is a realignment of strategy in the Celestial Heaven of DC... Not a change in
goal, just "whaddwe do now, how r we gunna smash 'em"...
The US did not escalate today. Trump's speech was all bluster and falsehood, directed
almost exclusively to American audience in the interest of domestic politics. If
anything, the call for NATO to step up was an indication the Americans planned to step
back. The Turks will not be pouring troops into Iraq. Trump was referring to the Europeans.
The US corporate media continues to report with subdued tone, with ultra hawkish Fox News
continuing to describe the struck airbases as "Iraqi facilities".
This is true only on the assumption that the "US establishment" is united in seeking to
de-escalate with Iran. But evidence suggests that at least two members of that
establishment--Pompeo and Esper--are clearly not interested in de-escalation
(notwithstanding Pompeo's directive to the embassies). For them, the death of dozens of
American soldiers could only be a good thing, as it would easily be manipulated in the
press to motivate the US populace's desire for retribution.
It is also possible that what Pompeo and Esper and Netanyahoo are seeking to
accomplish is to maintain the highest level of tension possible without precipitating
actual war. This is because all parties recognize that actual war with Iran would entail
the destruction of much of Israel's infrastructure and many thousands of Israeli
casualties, and these are prices too high to pay for the overthrowing of even the "evil"
Iranian "regime".
De-escalation with Iran hurts Netanyahoo; actual war with Iran hurts Netanyahoo. What
helps Netanyahoo is the constant threat of war with Iran along with the public perception
that only he, of all Israeli politicians, has the sufficient resolve to face down the
Persian menace. Because I am of the view that Israel is not just an outpost of the US
empire but in many cases the tail that wags the dog of this empire, I fully expect that the
US will continue to seek to ride the escalation-de-escalation wave with Iran until
Netanyahoo either stabilizes his domestic position in Israel or loses it altogether.
Actually the Hashd Al Shaabi militia, which is part of the Iraqi military, wanted to
take over the US Embassy and Mehdi threatened to resign over that, not over the protests in
general or the harrassment of the US Embassy. This is why iraqi troops stayed out as the
Embassy was besieged. He chose China over the US for reconstruction of Iraq and made very
compromising remarks about Trump (how he threatened to put snipers killing people in Iraq,
how Soleimani was there for diplomatic mission as peace envoy, etc.)
Mehdi is an expression of the majority Shia sentiment in Iraq - it is him who came to
Parliament to demand a resolution for US withdrawal from the country. As for Iraqi Shia
sentiment, numerically speaking, 80 % of Shia MPs and the PM demanded a US withdrawal from
the country.
What is the source for the account that the Swiss embassy received advance warning of the
missile strike?
I haven't seen it elsewhere. I'm not saying that to knock it, but since b doesn't
mention or link to a source, and I don't see it discussed in comments, I'd like to know
where he got that report from.
CNN.com says Iran reached out through various channels, "including through Switzerland
and other countries", but after the strike, to make known there was nothing else on
the way.
If Iran succeeds in forcing the Empire out, then obviously the zionists would be unable
to remain more than briefly. But without zionists Jews and Arabs have always got along
reasonably well... So we may imagine "Israel" going through a "phase change" when Empire
departs...because then the decent people can have a say in things, then justice may prevail
- something all Abrahamic Creeds respect and call for as a basic foundation. Of course
there's nothing pretty about a civil war in Israel, or as it is at present "forward
operating base zion"
"The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil
and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason."
This entire episode has been an absolute disaster for the Iranians. They sent no message
to the US.
Disaster? How so? The Iranians have just displayed that they can and will attack
targets with precision. No message? Seriously? You've missed the bigger picture. Iran have
scored one on the Strategic level. What you're also missing is that Iraq is moving even
closer to Iranian and Chinese-Russian orbit.
The missile strikes is also a message to Iranian regional competitors. I can guarantee
you Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have taken notice.
I'm expecting more small level attacks on US assets in Iraq and it'll likely spread to
other neighboring countries. Death by a thousand cuts. In the end, the US will have no
choice but to leave Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Scott Ritter also says there was advance warning, though via the Iraqi government, not
mentioning the Swiss embassy in Tehran:
Iran communicated its intent to strike US targets in Iraq directly to the Iraqi Prime
Minister a full two hours prior to the missiles being launched; Iraq then shared this
information with US military commanders, who were able to ensure all US troops were in
hardened shelters at the time of the attack.
Ritter doesn't give his sourcing either. Of course the significant thing is that such
advance warning was given at all. I'd just like to know how solid the factual basis is, and
to what extent it is officially confirmed by any of the relevant governments.
If US soldiers were killed by the attack, this can't be hidden forever; sooner or later,
coffins will go back home and families will be informed. Specially if it's as high as 80.
Though for the moment, the Pentagon can stay quiet, and won't publicly acknowledge it, the
bodies will have to come back to the US and be buried - as far as I know, they're not
janissaries but US military, most have relatives, friends and family and can't be
disappeared just like that.
The USS Liberty is a different situation: the US didn't hide for decades that people
were lost in the bombing, it didn't acknowledge that it was a deliberate attack. Pretty
much the opposite case to the present one.
Thank you for this excellent interview. You ask the kind of questions that we would all like
to ask. It's regrettable that Chalmers Johnson isn't still alive. I believe that you and he
would have a lot in common.
Naxos has produced an incredible, unabridged cd audiobook of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire. One of Gibbon's observations really resonates today: "Assassination is the
last resource of cowards". Thanks again.
"... This is not just about how to de-escalate – it's about recognizing that America fundamentally needs to change its disastrous course. Even if de-escalation of the acute tensions is possible, the risks will remain as long as the United States pursues a reckless policy. ..."
This crisis was sparked by Donald Trump. Trump withdrew from the
deal that had stopped Iran's nuclear weapons program, leading Iran to restart its nuclear
program. Trump ramped up economic pressure and sent more US troops to the region, and tensions
grew. Then the US killed
Gen Qassem Suleimani , signaling a significant escalation, to which Iran responded with an
attack on Iraqi bases where US and Iraqi troops are stationed.
ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">
ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">
America is far worse off today towards Iran and in the Middle East than it was when Trump
took office
It is up to Congress and the American people to force Trump to adopt a more pragmatic path.
For too long Congress has ceded to the executive branch its authority to determine when America
goes to war, and the current crisis with Iran is exactly the kind of moment that requires
intense coordination between the legislative and executive branches. The president cannot start
a war without congressional authorization, and with the erratic Trump in office, Congress must
make that clear by cutting off the use of funds for war with Iran.
This is not just about how to de-escalate – it's about recognizing that America
fundamentally needs to change its disastrous course. Even if de-escalation of the acute
tensions is possible, the risks will remain as long as the United States pursues a reckless
policy. America is far worse off today towards Iran and in the Middle East than it was
when Trump took office – even worse off than we were on 1 January 2020. Today, Iran is
advancing its nuclear program, America has suspended its anti-Isis campaign, Iraq's parliament
has voted to evict US troops from the country, and we are in a dangerous military standoff with
Iran.
Digging out of this hole will be difficult and this administration is not capable of it.
Over the long run, future administrations will need to reorient America's goals and policies.
America needs to re-enter the nuclear deal and begin negotiations to strengthen it; work with
partners like Iraq – without a large US troop presence – in countering potential
threats like a resurgence of Isis; and adopt a broader regional policy that focuses on
protecting US interests and standing up for human rights and democracy rather than picking
sides in a regional civil war between dictatorships like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Achieving US goals in the region will not be possible with a mere de-escalation of tensions
– we need to find a new path towards Iran and the Middle East.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777
Paul
Craig Roberts: The Justice Department Is Devoid Of Justice
by
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/09/2020 - 23:05
0
SHARES
In the United States the criminal justice (sic) system is itself not subject to law.
We
see immunity to law continually as police commit felonies against citizens and even murder children
and walk away free. We see it all the time when prosecutors conduct political prosecutions and
when they prosecute the innocent in order to build their conviction record. We see it when judges
fail to prevent prosecutors from withholding exculpatory evidence and bribing witnesses and when
judges accept coerced plea deals that deprive the defendant of a jury trial.
We just saw it again when federal prosecutors recommended a six month prison sentence
for Lt. Gen. Flynn,
the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency accused of lying to
the FBI about nothing of any importance, for being uncooperative in the Justice (sic) Department's
effort to frame President Trump with false "Russiagate" charges. The Justice (sic) Department
prosecutor said:
"The sentence should adequately deter the defendant from violating the law, and to promote
respect for the law. It is clear that the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved
as though the law does not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for his actions."
That is precisely what the Justice (sic) Department itself did for years in their
orchestration of the fake Russiagate charges against Trump.
The prosecutor's hypocrisy is overwhelming.
The Justice (sic) Department is a criminal organization. It has no sense of
justice. Convicting the innocent builds the conviction rate of the prosecutor as effectively as
convicting the guilty.
The Horowitz report of the Justice (sic) Department's lies to
the FISA court did not recommend a six-month prision sentence for those Justice (sic) Deplartment
officials who lied to the government.
Horowitz covered up the crimes by converting
them into "mistakes." Yes, they are embarrassing "mistakes," but mistakes don't bring prison
sentences.
Gen. Flynn, who was President Trump's National Security Advisor for a couple of weeks
before Mueller and Flynn's attorneys manuevered him into a plea bargain, allegedly lied to the FBI
about whether he met with a Russian.
Flynn and his attorneys should never have accepted
the proposition that a National Security Advisor shouldn't meet with Russians. Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Russians all the the time. It was part of their job. Trump
originally intended to normalize the strained relations with Russia. Flynn should have been
meeting with Russians. It was his job.
Ninety-seven percent of felony cases are resolved with plea bargains. In other words,
there is no trial.
The defendant admits to guilt for a lighter sentence, and if he throws
in "cooperation," which generally means giving false evidence against someone else in the
prosecutor's net, no sentence at all. Flynn was expected to help frame Trump and Flynn's former
business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, on an unrelated matter. He didn't, which means he is
"uncooperative" and deserving of a prison sentence.
Plea bargains have replaced trials for three main reasons.
One is that the defense attorney doesn't want the hard work of defending his client.
One is that the majority of defendants cannot afford to pay the cost of defense.
One is that refusing to plea guilty and demanding a trial angers both the prosecutor and
judge.
Trials take time and provide a test of often unreliable police and prosecutorial evidence. They
mean work for the prosecutor. Even if he secures a conviction, during the same time he could have
obtained many more plea bargain convictions. For the judge, trials back up his case
docket. Consequently, a trial means for the defendant very high risks of a much longer and more
severe sentence than he would get in exchange for saving prosecutor and judge time and energy. All
of this is explained to the defendant by his attorney.
It was explained to Gen. Flynn. He agreed to a plea, most likely advised that his
"offense" was so minor, no sentence would be forthcoming. Flynn later tried to revoke his plea,
saying it was coerced, but the Clinton-appointed judge refused to let him out of the trap.
Now that we know the only Russiagate scandal was its orchestration by the CIA, Justice (sic)
Department, and Democrats, failing to cooperate with the special counsel investigation of alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 election is nonsensical as we know for a definite fact that there
was no such interference.
This is how corrupt American law has become. A man is being put in prison for 6
months for not cooperating with an investigation of an event that did not happen!
If Trump doesn't pardon Flynn (and Manafort and Stone), and fire the corrupt prosecutors
who falsely prosecuted Flynn, Trump deserves no one's support.
A president who will not defend his own people from unwarranted prosecution is not worthy of
support.
In Flynn's case, we cannot dismiss the suspicion that revenge against Flynn was the
driving factor.
Gen. Flynn is the official who revealed on television that Obama made the
willful decision to send ISIS or whatever we want to call them into Syria. Of course, the Obama
regime pretended that the jihadists were moderates seeking to overthrow the alleged dictator Assad
and bring democracy to Syria. Washington then pretended that it was fighting the mercenaries it
had sent into Syria.
Even though the presstitutes did their best to ignore Flynn's
information, Flynn gave extreme offense by letting this information out. That bit of truth-telling
was Flynn's real offense.
Tags
Law Crime
Notice on Racial Discrimination
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Then there is the fact that Comey admitted he took advantage of
the the situation by catching Flynn off guard without an
attorney. This is a warning to everyone: never answer questions
by FBI without consulting your attorney first and having him/her
present.
America's top diplomat does not seem to think his job is to prevent war.
The
Washington Post
dives deeply into what is laughingly called the administration*'s "process" leading up to the decision
to kill Qasem Soleimani with fire last week. In short, all the "imminent threat" palaver was pure moonshine. According to the
Post,
this particular catastrophe was brewed up for a while amid the stalactites in the mind of Mike Pompeo, a Secretary
of State who makes Henry Kissinger look like Gandhi.
The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump's decision to approve
the killing of Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence,
the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after
it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo "morose," according to one U.S. official. But recent changes
to Trump's national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian
aggression created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had been advocating.
Poor Mike was morose. So, in an effort to bring himself out of the dumps, Mike decided to keep feeding the
rats in the president*'s head.
Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But
that mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor
and injuring service members. On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where
the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior
U.S. officials said.
The whole squad got involved on this one.
Alex Wong
Getty Images
Trump's decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon's
long-standing concerns about escalation and the president's aversion to using military force against Iran. One significant
factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the
U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the
decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.
First-in-His-Class Mike Pompeo knows his audience. There's no question that he knows how to get what he wants
from a guy who doesn't know anything about anything, and who may have gone, as George V. Higgins once put it, as soft as church
music. This, I guess, is a skill. Of course, Pompeo's job is easier because the president* is still a raving maniac on the electric
Twitter machine. A handy compilation:
Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader
who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime,
including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits
in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any
Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many
years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE
HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder
than they have ever been hit before!
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!
If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and
without hesitation!
And, this, perhaps my favorite piece of presidentin" yet.
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target,
the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required,
but is given nevertheless!
You have been informed, Congress. You have been informed, Iran.
Global dominance means you can "solve" all internal problems with infinite money printing and don't suffer its consequences
(for a while) It does comes for free. You need to pay in blood (which with contractors is cheap; US losses on the battlefields of
colonial wars are less the losses from car crashes or gun-inflicted deaths in the USA by a wide margin ) and outsized MIC,
which is very expensive. Neoliberalism was created by the USA to crush Soviets (or more correctly to buy out
Nomenklatura, including KGB which they achieved with Gorbachov)
" Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to
die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn
away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must
be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of
confidence in ourselves . together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us
from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From
military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America ."
- George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate
I agree wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential candidate
who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I'm sick of old men dreaming up wars for young
men to die in.
It's time to bring our troops home.
Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany,
South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia,
Jordan and Oman . Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey,
the Philippines, and northern Australia.
Don't fall for the propaganda, though: America's military forces aren't being deployed
abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they're being used to guard oil fields,
build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In
fact, the United States military spends about
$81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world .
Already, American military servicepeople are being deployed to far-flung places in the
Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war
drums being sounded over Iran .
Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to
ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense.
Take President Trump, for instance.
Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America's "endless wars," once elected, Trump has
done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up
the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even
refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi
government for us to leave.
Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American
military forces are policing the globe , these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren't making America -- or the rest of the world -- any safer, are
certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into
debt.
War spending is bankrupting America.
Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost
50% of
the world's total military expenditure , spending
more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its
breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent
government officials, America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate
of more than $32 million
per hour .
Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn't have on
a military empire it can't afford.
As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United
States has been fighting
terrorism with a credit card , "essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of
purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local
governments, and by countries like China and Japan."
Unfortunately, the outlook isn't much better for the spending that can be tracked.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging
taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As
the report noted, the American
taxpayer paid :
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a
dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for
another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for
$7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand,
unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price
gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a
sad statement on how little control "we the people" have over our runaway government.
Mind you, this isn't just corrupt behavior. It's deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war
propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to
look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the
blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign
lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.
That needs to change.
The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It's making the world more dangerous.
It is estimated that the U.S. military
drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes . Since 9/11, the United States
government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of
those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.
The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I
fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.
The war hawks' militarization of America -- bringing home the spoils of war (the military
tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering
rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning
America into a battlefield -- is also blowback.
James Madison was right:
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." As Madison
explained, "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from
these proceed debts and taxes known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of
the few."
We are seeing this play out before our eyes.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying
the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer
dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling
.
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing
economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity
largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and
will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome
attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic
and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States
already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
This is the "unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex" that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger
our liberties or democratic processes.
Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War
II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war --
one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
Bottom line, doesn't seem the America people care. They are busy doing min wage jobs.
Perhaps not happy, but hey they don't complain. Not one takes away their freedom.
All true but the problem is we're preaching before the choir here. How do we reach at
least a few percentage of those 1.3 million men on active duty? Asking myself this question a
lot lately.
"... War will allow Trump to claim the mantle of "national" wartime leader, while diverting attention away from his impeachment trial. And in light of the intensification of belligerent rhetoric from this administration, war appears to be increasingly likely. ..."
"... The American people have a moral responsibility to question not only Trump's motives, but to consider the humanitarian disaster that inevitably accompanies war. ..."
"... is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in political communication, and is the author of the newly released: The Politics of Persuasion: Economic Policy and Media Bias in the Modern Era (Paperback, 2018), and Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media , and U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11 (Paperback: 2016). He can be reached at: [email protected] ..."
The U.S. stands at the precipice of war. President Trump's rhetorical efforts to
sell himself as the "anti-war" president have been exposed as a fraud via his assault on Iran.
Most Orwellian of all is Trump's claim that the assassination of Iranian General Qassam
Soleimani was necessary to avert war, following the New Year's Eve attack on the U.S. embassy
in Baghdad. In reality the U.S. hit on Soleimani represents a criminal escalation of the
conflict between these two countries. The general's assassination was rightly seen as an
act of war , so the claim that the strike is a step toward peace is absurd on its face. We
should be perfectly clear about the fundamental threat to peace posed by the Trump
administration. Iran has already
promised "harsh retaliation" following the assassination, and
announced it is pulling out of the 2015 multi-national agreement prohibiting the nation
from developing nuclear weapons. Trump's escalation has dramatically increased the threat of
all-out war. Recognizing this threat, I sketch out an argument here based on my initial
thoughts of this conflict, providing three reasons for why Americans need to oppose war.
#1: No Agreement about an Iranian Threat
Soleimani was the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the Quds Force
– a clandestine military intelligence organization that specializes in paramilitary-style
operations throughout the Middle East, and which is
described as seeking to further Iranian political influence throughout the region. Trump
celebrated the assassination as necessary to bringing Soleimani's "reign of terror" to an
end. The strike, he claimed, was vital after the U.S. caught Iran "in the act" of planning
"imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel."
But Trump's justification for war comes from a country with a long history of distorting and
fabricating evidence of an Iranian threat. American leaders have disingenuously and
propagandistically portrayed Iran as on the brink of developing nuclear weapons for decades.
Presidents Bush and Obama were both rebuked, however, by domestic intelligence
and
international weapons inspectors , which failed to uncover evidence that Iran was
developing these weapons, or that it was a threat to the U.S.
Outside of previous exaggerations, evidence is emerging that the Trump administration and
the intelligence community are not of one mind regarding Iran's alleged threat. Shortly after
Soleimani's assassination, the Department of Homeland Security declared
there was "no specific, credible threat" from Iran within U.S. borders. And U.S. military
officials disagree regarding Trump's military escalation. As the New York Times
reports :
"In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most
powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him -- which they
viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq -- on the menu they
presented to President Trump. They didn't think he would take it. In the wars waged since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents
to make other possibilities appear more palatable."
"Top pentagon officials," the Times
reports , "were stunned" by the President's order. Furthermore, the paper reported that
"the intelligence" supposedly confirming Iranian plans to attack U.S. diplomats was "thin," in
the words of at least one U.S. military official who was privy to the administration's
deliberations. According to that
source , there is no evidence of an "imminent" attack in the foreseeable future against
American targets outside U.S. borders.
U.S. leaders have always obscured facts, distorted intelligence, and fabricated information
to stoke public fears and build support for war. So it should come as no surprise that this
president is politicizing intelligence. He certainly has reason to – in order to draw
attention away from his Senate impeachment trial, and considering Trump's increasingly
desperate efforts to demonstrate that he is a serious President, not a tin-pot authoritarian
who ignores the rule of law, while shamelessly coercing and extorting foreign leaders in
pursuit of domestic electoral advantage.
Independent of the corruption charges against Trump, it is unwise for Americans to take the
President at his word, considering the blatant lies employed in the post-9/11 era to justify
war in the Middle East. Not so long ago the American public was sold a bill of goods regarding
Iraq's alleged WMDs and ties to terrorism. Neither of those claims was remotely true, and
Americans were left footing the bill for a war that cost trillions ,
based on the lies of an opportunistic president who was dead-set on exploiting public fears of
terrorism in a time of crisis. The Bush administration sold war based on intelligence they
knew was fraudulent, manipulating the nation into on a decade-long war that led to the
murder of more than
1 million Iraqis and more than 5,000 American servicemen, resulting in a failed Iraqi
state, and paving the way for the rise of ISIS. All of this is to say that the risks of
beginning another war in the Middle East are incredibly high, and Americans would do well to
seriously consider the consequences of entering a war based (yet again) on questionable
intelligence.
#2: The "War on Terrorism" as a Red Herring
U.S. leaders have long used the rhetoric of terrorism to justify war. But this strategy
represents a serious distortion of reality, via the conflation of terrorism – understood
as premeditated acts of violence to intimidate civilians – with acts of war. Trump fed
into this misrepresentation when he
described Soleimani's "reign of terror" as encompassing not only the alleged targeting of
U.S. diplomats, but attacks on "U.S. military personnel." The effort to link the deaths of U.S.
soldiers in wartime to terrorism echoes the State Department's 2019
statement , which designated Iran's Quds Force a "terrorist" organization, citing its
responsibility "for the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq" from "2003 to
2011" via its support for Iraqi militias that were engaging in attacks on U.S. forces.
As propaganda goes, the attempt to link these acts of war to "terrorism" is quite perverse.
U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq were participating in a criminal, illegal occupation,
which was widely condemned by the international community. The U.S. war in Iraq was a crime of
aggression under the Nuremberg Charter, and it violated the United Nations Charter's
prohibition on the use of force, which is only allowed via Security Council authorization
(which the U.S. did not have), or in the case of military acts undertaken in self-defense
against an ongoing attack (Iraq was not at war with the U.S. prior to the 2003 invasion).
Contrary to Trump's and the State Department's propaganda, there are no grounds to classify the
deaths of military personnel in an illegal war as terrorism. Instead, one could argue that
domestic Iraqi political actors (of which Iraqi militias are included, regardless of their ties
to Iran) were within their legal rights under international law to engage in acts of
self-defense against American troops acting on behalf of a belligerent foreign power, which was
conducting an illegal occupation.
#3: More War = Further Destabilization of the Middle East
The largest takeaway from recent events should be to recognize the tremendous danger that
escalation of war poses to the U.S. and the region. The legacy of U.S. militarism in the Middle
East, North Africa, and Central Asia, is one of death, destruction, and instability. Every
major war involving the U.S. has produced humanitarian devastation and mass destruction, while
fueling instability and terrorism. With the 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. support
for Mujahedeen radicals led to the breakdown of social order, and the rise of the radical
Taliban regime, which housed al Qaeda fundamentalists in the years prior to the September 11,
2001 terror attacks. The 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan contributed to the further
deterioration of Afghan society, and was accompanied by the return of the Taliban, ensuing in a
civil war that has persisted over the last two decades.
With Iraq, the U.S. invasion produced a massive security vacuum following the collapse of
the Iraqi government, which made possible the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. fueled
numerous civil wars, in Iraq during the 2000s and Syria in the 2010s, creating mass
instability, and giving rise to ISIS, which became a mini-state of its own operating across
both countries. And then there was the 2011 U.S.-NATO supported rebellion against Muammar
Gaddafi, which not only resulted in the dictator's overthrow, but in the rise of another ISIS
affiliate within Libya's border. Even Obama, the biggest cheerleader for the war, subsequently
admitted
the intervention was his "worst mistake," due to the civil war that emerged after Gaddafi's
overthrow, which opened the door for the rise of ISIS.
All of these conflicts have one thing in common. They brought tremendous devastation to the
countries under assault, via scorched-earth military campaigns, which left death, misery, and
destruction in their wake. The U.S. is adept at destroying countries, but shows little interest
in, or ability to reconstruct them. These wars provided fertile ground for Islamist radicals,
who took advantage of the resulting chaos and instability.
The primary lesson of the "War on Terror" should be clear to rationally minded observers:
U.S. wars breed not only instability, but desperation, as the people victimized by war become
increasingly tolerant of domestic extremist movements. Repressive states are widely reviled by
the people they subjugate. But the only thing worse than a dictatorship is no order at all,
when societies collapse into civil war, anarchy, and genocide. The story of ISIS's rise is one
of citizens suffering under war and instability, and becoming increasingly tolerant of
extremist political actors, so long as they are able to provide order in times of crisis. This
point is consistently neglected in U.S. political and media discourse – a sign of how
propagandistic "debates" over war have become, nearly 20 years into the U.S. "War on
Terrorism."
Where Do We Go From Here?
Trump followed up the Soleimani assassination with a Twitter announcement
that the U.S. has "targeted" 52 additional "Iranian sites," which will be attacked "if Iran
strikes any Americans or American assets." There's no reason in light of recent events to chalk
this announcement up to typical Trump-Twitter bluster. This President is desperate to begin a
war with Iran, as Trump has courted confrontation with the Islamic republic since the early
days of his presidency.
War will allow Trump to claim the mantle of "national" wartime leader,
while diverting attention away from his impeachment trial. And in light of the intensification
of belligerent rhetoric from this administration, war appears to be increasingly likely.
The American people have a moral responsibility to question not only Trump's motives, but to
consider the humanitarian disaster that inevitably accompanies war. War with Iran will only
make the Middle East more unstable, further fueling anti-American radicalism, and increasing
the terror threat to the U.S. This conclusion isn't based on speculation, but on two decades of
experience with a "War on Terror" that's done little but destroy nations and increase terror
threats. The American people can reduce the dangers of war by protesting Trump's latest
provocation, and by pressuring Congress to pass legislation condemning any future attack on
Iran as a violation of national and international law.
To contact your Representative or Senator, use the following links:
Mike Pompeo is officially the Secretary of State. Apparently, he is also unofficially the
Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the very model of a
modern major bureaucrat. He's running things on war and peace these days because the president* sure as hell isn't.
He's a Dollar Store Kissinger with nobody to restrain him. And he has no compunction whatsoever about lying in
public -- about Barack Obama, and about the definition of the word "imminent," which, to Pompeo, seems to extend back in
time to the Persian Empire and forward into the second term of the Malia Obama administration.
Pompeo met the press on Tuesday and everything he said was completely worthless. For example,
did you know that the Iran nuclear deal hastened the development of Iran's nuclear capacity, but that pulling out of
it, and frying the second-highest official of their government, slowed it down? Mike Pompeo knows that.
President Trump could not be more clear. On our watch, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon and, when we came into
office, Iran was on a pathway that had been provided by the nuclear deal, which clearly gave them the opportunity
to get those nuclear weapons. We won't let that happen...It's not political. The previous administration made a
different choice. They chose to underwrite and appease. We have chose to confront and contain.
But that's not political, you appeasing, underwriting wimps who worked for 11 years to get a
deal with these people. And that goes for all you appeasing, underwriting European bastards as well, who don't think
this president* knows anything about anything. And, as to the whole imminence thing, well, everything is imminent
sometime, and it's five o'clock somewhere.
"We know what happened at the end of last year in December ultimately leading to the death of an American. If
you're looking for imminence, you needn't look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken
against Soleimani. Then you had in addition to that what we could clearly see was continuing efforts on behalf of
this terrorist to build out a network of campaign activities that were going to lead potentially to the death of
many more Americans. It was the right decision, we got it right."
Yeah, they got nothing -- except the power, of course. The last time we had a terrible Republican
president determined to lie us into a war in the Middle East, he and his people at least did not do so by employing
utter and transparent gibberish. Times change.
No Wall has been built in America BUT the U.S. Embassy is in Jerusalem.
No Immigration Solution. Record numbers of f-1's and b1's.
National Debt Level WORSE than in summer 2008 Right Before Financial Meltdown.
No End to the 'Endless' Wars (Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq)
Israel got the Golan Heights. Jews have gotten an E.O. recognizing them as a Nation. All the
big Jew Wall St. Firms have had easy money and tax credits from Trump.
What did America get? How can anyone believe anything other than: 'Israel first, last and
always' from Donald J. Trump? He endlessly blathers about the evils of antisemitism while 80%
of Jews continue to vote Democrat.
I can do nothing except conclude the man's soul has been completely and utterly drained from
him through his never ending fellating of Israel and the incessant pounding BoBo Satanyahoo
gives him.
At this point, it is just an embarrassment to watch Trump. I saw his press conference this
afternoon and I couldn't believe the difference between that monotone, babbling idiot I saw
today and the guy who used to fill Stadiums.
The America government has become the Great Satan.
Israel is it's helper.
Trump is the Great Betrayer.
Mike Pompeo is officially the Secretary of State. Apparently, he is also unofficially the
Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the very model of a
modern major bureaucrat. He's running things on war and peace these days because the president* sure as hell isn't.
He's a Dollar Store Kissinger with nobody to restrain him. And he has no compunction whatsoever about lying in
public -- about Barack Obama, and about the definition of the word "imminent," which, to Pompeo, seems to extend back in
time to the Persian Empire and forward into the second term of the Malia Obama administration.
Pompeo met the press on Tuesday and everything he said was completely worthless. For example,
did you know that the Iran nuclear deal hastened the development of Iran's nuclear capacity, but that pulling out of
it, and frying the second-highest official of their government, slowed it down? Mike Pompeo knows that.
President Trump could not be more clear. On our watch, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon and, when we came into
office, Iran was on a pathway that had been provided by the nuclear deal, which clearly gave them the opportunity
to get those nuclear weapons. We won't let that happen...It's not political. The previous administration made a
different choice. They chose to underwrite and appease. We have chose to confront and contain.
But that's not political, you appeasing, underwriting wimps who worked for 11 years to get a
deal with these people. And that goes for all you appeasing, underwriting European bastards as well, who don't think
this president* knows anything about anything. And, as to the whole imminence thing, well, everything is imminent
sometime, and it's five o'clock somewhere.
"We know what happened at the end of last year in December ultimately leading to the death of an American. If
you're looking for imminence, you needn't look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken
against Soleimani. Then you had in addition to that what we could clearly see was continuing efforts on behalf of
this terrorist to build out a network of campaign activities that were going to lead potentially to the death of
many more Americans. It was the right decision, we got it right."
Yeah, they got nothing -- except the power, of course. The last time we had a terrible Republican
president determined to lie us into a war in the Middle East, he and his people at least did not do so by employing
utter and transparent gibberish. Times change.
I can anticipate no problems arising whatsoever from having an Executive Branch staffed
entirely by people who tell a half-crazy guy what he wants to hear. Unfortunately, back in
1726, the good Dean Swift saw some.
I said, 'there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving,
by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as
they are paid.
This was about lawyers but the description has broadened somewhat in recent days.
The Russian General Staff has reinforced the air defences for Russians at the Iranian
nuclear reactor complex at Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf, according to sources in Moscow. At the
same time, Iran has allowed filming of the movement of several of its mobile S-300 air-defence
missile batteries to the south, covering the Iranian coastline of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf
of Oman. More secretly, elements of Russian military intelligence, electronic warfare, and
command and control advisers for Iran's air defence systems have been mobilized to support Iran
against US and allied attacks.
The range of the new surveillance extends well beyond the S-300 strike distance of 200
kilometres, and covers US drone and aircraft bases on the Arabian peninsula, as well as US
warships in (and under) the Persian Gulf and off the Gulf of Oman. Early warning of US air and
naval-launched attacks has now been cut below the old 4 to 6-minute Iranian threshold.
Counter-firing by the Iranian armed forces has been automated from attack warning and target
location.
This means that if the US is detected launching a swarm of missiles aimed at Iran's
air-defence sites, uranium mines, reactors, and military operations bunkers, Iran will launch
its own swarm of missiles at the US firing platforms, as well as at Saudi and other oil
production sites, refineries, and pipelines, as well tankers in ports and under way in the
Gulf.
"The armed forces of Iran," said a Russian military source requesting anonymity, "have air
defence systems capable of hitting air targets at those heights at which drones of the
Global Hawk series can
fly; this is about 19,000 to 20,000 metres. Iran's means of air defence are both
foreign-purchased systems and systems of Iran's own design; among them, in particular, the old
Soviet system S-75 and the new Russian S-300. Recently, Iran transported some S-300's to the
south, but that happened after the drone was shot down [June 20]. Russian specialists are
working at Bushehr now and this means that the S-300's are also for protection of Bushehr."
Flight distance between Bushehr and Bandar Abbas is about 570 kms. From Bandar Abbas
southeast to Kuhmobarak, the site of the Iranian missile firing against the US drone, is
another 200 kms.
Last Thursday, June 20, just after midnight, a US Global Hawk drone was tracked by Iran from
its launch at an airbase in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), south of Dubai. The take-off and
initial flight route appear to have been more than 300 kms from Iranian tracking radars. Four
hours later, the aircraft was destroyed by an Iranian missile at a point at sea off Kuhmobarak.
Follow the route tracking data published by the Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif
here .
KEY: blue line=drone flight path; yellow line=Iranian Flight Information Region (FIR);
red line=Iranian territorial waters; green line=Iranian internal waters; yellow dots=Iran radio
warnings sent; red square=point of impact. Source: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif:
https://twitter.com/ The US claims
the point of impact was outside the red line.
Additional tracking data on the US drone operation have been published in a simulation by
the Iranian state news agency, Fars. The news agency claims the successful strike was by the
Iran-made Khordad missile, an S-300 copy; the altitude has not been reported
(design ceiling for the aircraft is 18,000 metres). The Russian military source says there is
now active coordination between Russian and Iranian military staffs. "About coordination, of
course there is participation of Russia in intelligence-sharing because of Bushehr and ISIS. We
have a long and successful partnership with Iran, especially in terms of fighting against
international terrorism." Two days after the drone incident, Russian specialist media
published Iranian video footage of the movement of S-300's on trailer trucks. This report
claims that although the S-300's are wheeled and motorized for rapid position changes, the use
of highway transporters was intended to minimize road fatigue on the weapons.
Iranian military sources have told western
reporters they have established "a joint operations room to inform all its allies in Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan of every step it is adopting in confronting the US in case
of all-out war in the Middle East."
Maps published to date in open Russian military sources show the four main anti-air missile
defence groups (PVO) on Iranian territory, and the strike range of their missiles. The 3
rd and 4 th PVOs are now being reinforced to oppose US reinforcements at
sea and on Saudi and Emirati territory.
Key: yellow=units of the main air-defence (PVO) groups; split blue circles=military
bases; blue diamond=nuclear industry sites; red rings=kill range for missiles; solid
red=command-and-control operations centres. Source: Anatoly Gavrilov, "Before the storm",
National
Defence, April 2019
The weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Iranian defences against US air attack are, naturally,
state secrets. The open-source discussion by Russian air-defence expert Anatoly Gavrilov can be
followed here
. According to Gavrilov writing in March, the expected plan of US attack will be the use of
precision missiles and bombs at "primary targets plants for the production and processing of
nuclear fuel, uranium mines, production for its enrichment, refineries, other industrial
centers. But initially [the objective] will be to suppress (completely destroy) the air defense
system. The mass use of cruise missiles for various purposes and guided aircraft bombs will
disable the control system of Iran's troops and suppress the system of reconnaissance and
anti-aircraft missile fire. In this case, the task of the attacking side will be the
destruction in the first two or three days of 70% to 80% of the radar, and after that, up to
90% manned aircraft will begin to bomb only after the complete suppression of the air defense
system. The West protects its professional pilots, and it does not matter that the civilian
population of Iran will also suffer."
The main Iranian vulnerability facing American attack, reports Gavrilov, is less the range,
volume and density of firepower with which the Iranians can respond than the relatively slow
time they have shown to date for processing incoming attack data, fixing targets, and directing
counter-fire. "In today's conditions of organization and conduct of rapid air combat, a high
degree of automation of the processes of collection, processing, transmission and exchange of
radar information, development of solutions for repelling strikes, and conducting anti-aircraft
missile fire is extremely necessary."
RANGE AND ALTITUDE OF MAIN IRANIAN AIR DEFENCE WEAPONS
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Horizontal axis, range in kilometres for each identified weapon; vertical axis, altitude of
interception. Source: Anatoly Gavrilov, National
Defence , April 2019
Gavrilov does not estimate how far the Iranians have been able to solve by themselves, and
with Russian help, the problems of automation and coordination of fire. To offset whatever
weakness may remain, he recommends specific technical contributions the Russians can make.
These include the technology of electronic countermeasures (ECM) to jam or deflect US targeting
signals and ordnance guidance systems.
While Gavrilov believes the Iranian military have already achieved high enough density of
fire against incoming weapons, he isn't sure the range and altitude of Iranian radars will be
good enough to match the attack risks. To neutralize those, he recommends "Russian-made
electronic warfare systems. The complex of EW systems is able to significantly reduce the
ability of attack aircraft to search for, detect and defeat ground targets; disrupt the onboard
equipment of cruise missiles in the GPS satellite navigation system; distort the readings of
radio altimeters of attack aircraft, cruise missiles and UAV's [unmanned aerial vehicle, drone]
"
In briefings for sympathetic western reporters, Iranian commanders are emphasizing the
Armageddon option; that is, however weak or strong their defences may prove to be under
prolonged US attack, the Iranian strategy is not to wait. Their plan, they say, is to
counter-attack against Arab as well as American targets as soon as a US missile attack
commences; that's to say, at launch, not inflight nor at impact.
Left: Kremlin photograph of the Security Council meeting at the Kremlin on the afternoon
of June 21. Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/ Right: Major
General Mohammad Baqeri, Iran's armed forces chief of staff.
The day following the US attack and Iranian success, President Vladimir Putin chaired a
meeting of his regular Security Council members in Moscow. The military were represented by the
Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu. The US attack on Iran was the main issue on the table. "The
participants," reported the Kremlin communiqué, "discussed, in particular, the
developments in the Persian Gulf. They expressed serious concern over the rising tension and
urged the countries involved to show restraint, because unwise actions could have unpredictable
consequences in terms of regional and global stability."
Unpredictable consequences in Russian is being translated in Farsi to mean the cessation of
the oil trade in the Persian Gulf. "As oil and commodities of other countries are passing
through the Strait of Hormuz, ours are also moving through it," Major General Mohammad Baqeri,
the Iranian chief of staff,
said on April 28. "If our crude is not to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, others'
[crude] will not pass either."
With Iraq's airspace being frequently violated by American and even Israeli bombing raids
against the country's paramilitary units backed by Iran of late, Iraq has for the last several
months considered purchasing Russian air defense and missile systems, including both the S-300
and more advanced S-400, however, it has been met with fierce pressure from the US.
And now Russian media is reporting authorities in Baghdad have formally resumed talks to
possibly acquire the S-300 systems. Head of the Iraqi Parliament's Security and Defense
Committee, Mohammad Reza, has indicated negotiations were renewed following the latest attacks
initiated nearly two weeks ago on Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces .
"The issue was supposed to be solved several months ago after attacks on Shiite militia
al-Ḥashd ash-Sha'bi [Popular Mobilization Forces, PMF] bases in Baghdad and other
provinces created the need for such air defenses", the lawmaker was
quoted in Russia's Sputnik as saying.
It was first revealed in September that Baghdad was mulling the purchase of the S-300. This
after a summer in which Israel brazenly launched multiple drone and aerial attacks on PMF bases
which at first had 'mysterious' origins , but
was later confirmed to have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) behind them.
According to Iraqi official sources, those initial purchase talks were quashed when
Washington vehemently objected , also at a moment parliament officials and the public were
increasingly angered over unilateral US bombing raids against PMF sites conducted without the
knowledge or approval of Iraq's government and military.
At the point when talks were initiated with Russia in September, international reports
counted nine strikes in total on Iraq's paramilitary forces -- in some cases while they were
allegedly operating just across the country's western border with Syria.
This had also fueled speculation that the Trump administration had greenlighted stepped up
Israeli attacks on Iranian proxies in the region as an alternative to direct war with Iran.
However, this simultaneously bolstered the ongoing political movement in Iraqi parliament to
have US troops expelled once in for all, especially over charges they had invited in and
cooperated with a foreign power to attack sovereign Iraqi soil.
I agree that, today, protecting the Dollar Standard is the main national security
objective of the USA. That is so because issuing the universal fiat currency is a
conditio sine qua non of keeping the financial superpower status.
I also agree that the Petrodollar is the base that sustains the Dollar Standard.
But I disagree with the rest:
1) the Cold War didn't begin in 1945, but in 1917 - right after the October Revolution.
There's overwhelming documental evidence of that and, in fact, the years of 1943-1945 was the
only break it had. Until Stalingrad, the Western allies were still waiting to see if the USSR
and the Third Reich could still mutually anihilate themselves (yes, it is a myth the Allies
were really allies from 1939, but that's not a very simple demonstration);
2) in the aftermath of WWII, the USA emerged as both the industrial and financial
superpower in the capitalist world (i.e. the West). But this was an accidental - and very
unlikely - alignment of events. The USA always had imperial ambitions from its foundation
(the Manifest Destiny), but there's no evidence it was scheming to dominate the world before
1945. The American ascension was more a fruit of the European imperial superpowers destroying
themselves than by any American (or Jewish, as the far-right likes to speculate) design;
3) the USSR had nothing to do with Bretton Woods. BW was a strictly capitalist affair. And
it could not be any difference: the USSR was a socialist country, therefore, it didn't have
money-capital (money in the capitalist system has three functions: reserve of value, means of
exchange and means of payment). The only way it had to trade with the capitalist half of the
world was to exchange essential commodities (oil) for hard currency, with which it bought
what it needed for its own development (mainly, high technological machines which it could
copy and later develop on). So, the USSR didn't "balk" at BW - it was literally impossible
for it to pertain to the agreement.
Michael Hudson is not the only one who's come to understand that maintaining the
reserve-currency status of the US dollar (the "dollar hegemony") is the primary goal of US
foreign policy. Indeed, it's been the primary goal of US foreign policy since the end of
World War II, when the Bretton Woods agreement was put into effect. Notably, the Soviets
ended up balking at that agreement, and the Cold War did not start until afterwards. This
means that even the Cold War was not really about ideology - it was about money.
It's also important to note that the point of the "petrodollar" is to ensure that
petroleum - one of the most globally traded commodities and a commodity that's fundamental to
the global economy - is traded primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of the US dollar.
Ensuring that as much global/international trade happens in US dollars helps ensure that the
US dollar keeps its reserve-currency status, because it raises the foreign demand for US
dollars.
I agree that, today, protecting the Dollar Standard is the main national security
objective of the USA. That is so because issuing the universal fiat currency is a
conditio sine qua non of keeping the financial superpower status.
I also agree that the Petrodollar is the base that sustains the Dollar Standard.
But I disagree with the rest:
1) the Cold War didn't begin in 1945, but in 1917 - right after the October Revolution.
There's overwhelming documental evidence of that and, in fact, the years of 1943-1945 was the
only break it had. Until Stalingrad, the Western allies were still waiting to see if the USSR
and the Third Reich could still mutually anihilate themselves (yes, it is a myth the Allies
were really allies from 1939, but that's not a very simple demonstration);
2) in the aftermath of WWII, the USA emerged as both the industrial and financial
superpower in the capitalist world (i.e. the West). But this was an accidental - and very
unlikely - alignment of events. The USA always had imperial ambitions from its foundation
(the Manifest Destiny), but there's no evidence it was scheming to dominate the world before
1945. The American ascension was more a fruit of the European imperial superpowers destroying
themselves than by any American (or Jewish, as the far-right likes to speculate) design;
3) the USSR had nothing to do with Bretton Woods. BW was a strictly capitalist affair. And
it could not be any difference: the USSR was a socialist country, therefore, it didn't have
money-capital (money in the capitalist system has three functions: reserve of value, means of
exchange and means of payment). The only way it had to trade with the capitalist half of the
world was to exchange essential commodities (oil) for hard currency, with which it bought
what it needed for its own development (mainly, high technological machines which it could
copy and later develop on). So, the USSR didn't "balk" at BW - it was literally impossible
for it to pertain to the agreement.
Correction: the three functions of money in capitalism are reserve/store of value, means
of exchange and unit of account . I basically wrote "means of exchange" twice in the
original comment.
Hello! Michael Hudson first set forth the methodology of the Outlaw US Empire's financial
control of the world via his book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American
Empire in 1972. In 2003, he issued an updated edition which you can download for free
here .
If you're interested, here's an interview he gave while in China that's autobiographical
. And here's his most recent Resume/CV/Bibliography , although it doesn't
go into as much detail about his recent work as he does in and forgive them their debts:
Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year , which
for me is fascinating.
His most recent TV appearances are here and here .
Bingo! You're the first person here to make that connection aside from myself. You'll note
from Hudson's
assessment of Soleimani's killing he sees the Outlaw US Empire as using the Climate
Crisis as a weapon:
"America's attempt to maintain this buttress explains U.S. opposition to any foreign
government steps to reverse global warming and the extreme weather caused by the world's
U.S.-sponsored dependence on oil. Any such moves by Europe and other countries would reduce
dependence on U.S. oil sales, and hence on the U.S's ability to control the global oil spigot
as a means of control and coercion. These are viewed as hostile acts.
"Oil also explains U.S. opposition to Russian oil exports via Nordstream. U.S. strategists
want to treat energy as a U.S. national monopoly. Other countries can benefit in the way that
Saudi Arabia has done – by sending their surpluses to the U.S. economy – but not
to support their own economic growth and diplomacy. Control of oil thus implies support for
continued global warming as an inherent part of U.S. strategy....
"This strategy will continue, until foreign countries reject it. If Europe and other
regions fail to do so, they will suffer the consequences of this U.S. strategy in the form of
a rising U.S.-sponsored war via terrorism, the flow of refugees, and accelerated global
warming (and extreme weather)."
@Cynica #38
Financially, the US dollar as reserve currency is enormously beneficial to the US
government's ability to spend.
And oil has historically been both a tactical and a strategic necessity; when the US was
importing half its oil, this is a lot of money. 8 million bpd @ $50/barrel = $146B. Add in
secondary value add like transport, refining, downstream industries, etc and it likely
triples the impact or more - but this is only tactical.
Worldwide, the impact is 10X = $1.5 trillion annually. Sure, this is a bit under 10% of the
$17.7T in world trade in 2017, but it serves as an "anchor tenant" to the idea of world
reserve currency. A second anchor is the overall role of US trade, which was $3.6T in 2016
(imports only).
If we treat central bank reserves as a proxy for currency used in trade, this means 60%+ of
the $17.7T in trade is USD. $3.6T is direct, but the $7 trillion in trade that doesn't impact
the US is the freebie. To put this in perspective, the entire monetary float of the USD
domestically is about $3.6T.
USD as world reserve currency literally doubles (at least) the float - from which the US
government can issue debt (money) to fund its activities. In reality, it is likely a lot more
since foreigners using USD to fund trade means at least some USD in Central Banks, plus the
actual USD in the transaction, plus corporate/individual USD reserves/float.
Again, nothing above is formally linked - I just wanted to convey an idea of just how
advantageous the petrodollar/USD as world trade reserve currency really is.
"... The 1933 Marx brothers film Duck Soup was meant to be a satirical look at Benito Mussolini, ruler of Italy. In the film the mythical country of Freedonia , ruled by the effervescent Rufus T. Firefly ( played by Groucho), due to an insult by the ambassador of rival nation Sylvania, declares war. Laughs abound. Well, in our own nation of ' Free markets', ' Free enterprise' and ' Free use of war' whenever it pleases us, we are led by another Firefly, who is as comedic as he is dangerous to peace. ..."
"... Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ' It's the Empire Stupid ' radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected] ..."
The 1933 Marx brothers film Duck Soup was meant to be a satirical look at Benito
Mussolini, ruler of Italy. In the film the mythical country of Freedonia , ruled by the
effervescent Rufus T. Firefly ( played by Groucho), due to an insult by the ambassador of rival
nation Sylvania, declares war. Laughs abound. Well, in our own nation of ' Free markets', '
Free enterprise' and ' Free use of war' whenever it pleases us, we are led by another Firefly,
who is as comedic as he is dangerous to peace.
Of course, the major difference with movie's Freedonia and our own is like night and day. In
the film the leader, Firefly, had full control of every decision needed to be made. In our
Freemerika , Mr. Trump, regardless of the image he portrays as an absolute ruler, has to
dance to the tune of the Military Industrial Empire, just like ALL our previous
presidents. Folks, sorry to say, but presidents are not so much harnessed by our Constitution
or Congress ( or even the Supreme Court) but by the wizards who the empire picks to
advise him. They decide the ' when and if' of such dramatic actions like the other day's
drone missile murder in Iraq of the Iranian general. Unlike when Groucho decides he was
insulted by Trentino, the Sylvanian ambassador, and declares ' This means war!', Mr. Trump gave
the order for the assassination but ONLY after those behind the curtain advised
him.
To believe that our presidents have carte blanche to do the heinous deeds is foolish at best
. LBJ's use of the Gulf of Tonkin phony incident to gung ho in Vietnam was not just one man
making that call.
Or Nixon's Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi, Bush Sr.'s attack on Iraq in 1991 , his son's
ditto against Iraq in 2003, Obama's use of NATO to destroy Libya in 2011, or this latest
arrogance by Trump, were all machinations by this empire's wizards who advised them.
When the late Senator Robert Byrd stood before a near empty Senate chamber in 2003 to warn of
this craziness, that told it all! We are not led by Rufus T. Firefly, rather a
Cabal that most in this government do not even realize who in the hell these people
are!
Of course, the embedded mainstream media does the usual job of demonizing who the
empire chooses to be our enemies. As with this recent illegal act by our government of
crossing into another nation's sovereignty to do the deed, now they all tell us how deadly this
Iranian general was. Yet, how many of the news outlets ever mentioned this guy for what they
now tell us he was, for all these years? Well, here is the kicker. I do not know what this man
was responsible for , regarding acts of insurgency against US forces in Iraq. Maybe he did aid
in the attacks on US personnel. Maybe he also was there to neutralize the fanatical ISIS
terrorists who were killing US and Iraqi personnel in Iraq and Syria. What I do know is that,
in the first place, we had no business ever invading and occupying Iraq period! Thus,
the rest of this Duck Soup becomes postscript.
Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also
frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian
sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn
College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on
the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also
host of the ' It's the Empire Stupid ' radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be
reached at [email protected]
The credo of British politics is the words of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the
Prime Minister of Great Britain, Henry Palmerston, uttered in his speech in the House of
Commons on March 1, 1858: "We do not have eternal allies and we do not have constant enemies;
our interests are eternal and permanent. Our duty is to protect these interests. " And these
interests lie in destroying and robbing other nations and keeping their own people in
fear.
It more accurately than ever describes the current state of the United State
whitehead is clearly antisemitic and should be banned from the internet. Abandoning the only friend the usa has in the mideast will have severe consequences for the usa
empire.
When America put Trump in office many of us were seeking a world where the leadership in
Washington would focus on bringing both jobs and money home rather than squandering it on
foreign wars. Simply put, Trump did not come across as a warmonger during the presidential
campaign. If David Stockman is right it could be that the power of the swamp is too strong
and simply cannot be drained.
Stockman, who served as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan and as
the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, contends
that President Trump has become a hostage of those occupying the very swamp he promised to
drain.
Come Home, America: Stop Policing The Globe And Put An End To Wars-Without-End
NO--we have nowhere to park all of that stuff and nowhere to house all of those troops. It
would help immensely if we just got this over with and started taxing and outright
administering these places we occupy. If we're going to be an empire (which no one ever voted
for) then we need to start acting like it. Rome, Byzantium, England, Spain, France, etc. Just
do it and be done with it.
I wish - not happening yet. Instead they harrass NATO countries to abandon some economic
projects to do more damage to them on top of sanctions. If Iraq sells oil to China it's a
problem for them, even though that could reduce US costs for Iraq. US policies are
cookoo.
All Presidents get turned once in the WH. Maybe it's as simple as threatening to be
kennedy'd.
Frank...Frank-Frank...IT always been about Zionist, Banksters, and the families that run
your world. When will you get it through you little pea size brain you are nothing but
expendable Xenophobe fodder allowed to thrive and be ripped the moment they deem it so.
Maybe if they took the American flag off of every military uniform, plane and embassy and
replaced it with the Rothschild red shield things might become more obvious.
@Authenticjazzman
The US could afford lots of things if we cut the military budget by 99%, as we should have
done after WWII.
The military works for the plutocrats, stealing money from the taxpayers. The ruling class
turned Vietnam from an agricultural nation into a low paid factory nation which took
thousands of textile jobs from Americans – i.e winning the Vietnam war. The problem
lies in the taxpayers not understanding what winning means. Manufacturing havens with super
low wages and homeless veterans begging at every intersection. West Point teaches people they
have the right to drop bombs on civilians and torture them in Guantanamo. Of course these
folks think of themselves as the smartest people who ever lived.
The USA Has Been Bombing Iraq For 29 Years by Tyler Durden Wed, 01/08/2020 - 21:05 0
SHARES
Over the past days while little real debate over the Iran crisis has happened in Washington
or Congress (instead it's merely the default drones and "bombs away" as usual), the American
public has been busy online and in living rooms debating the merits or lack thereof of
escalation and potential war with Iran.
However, like with many other instances of US foreign policy adventurism, this is typically
a "debate" lacking in necessary recent historical context or appreciation for how the domino
effect of disasters now facing American security were often brought on by prior US action in
the first place. As a case in point, it's not recognized often enough in public discourse that
it was the United States under the neocon Bush administration which handed Iraq over to
"Iranian influence" and the Shia clerics in the first place .
It must be remembered that Saddam Hussein was a secular Sunni dictator presiding over a Shia
majority population, and he was enemy #1 of Iran. Team USA's short-sighted and criminal 2003
invasion and overthrow of Saddam based on WMD lies had the immediate benefit to Tehran of
handing the Ayatollah the greatest gift that Iran waged a nearly decade-long war to accomplish,
but couldn't (the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War).
And the neocons within the bowels of the national security state have ever since been
attempting to salvage their failed legacy in Iraq by the futile effort of trying to contain
Iran and roll back Shia dominance in Baghdad, as Seymour Hersh detailed in his famous 2006 New
Yorker piece The Redirection , which
accurately predicted the 'long war' against the Hezbollah-Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran axis which
would unfold, and did indeed unfold, especially in Syria of the past eight years.
To "situate" the past week's dramatic events, it's also crucial to understand, as The
Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton has pointed out , that "The U.S.A.
has been bombing Iraq for 29 years. And it looks like it's not over yet."
Below is an essential timeline compiled by Horton of that nearly three decade long history
where Iraq has been consistently subject to American bombs and intervention -- yet ironically
(and some might say predictably) the situation is still getting worse, more unstable, and more
dangerous.
Iraq War I : January -- February 1991 (aka The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, liberation
of Kuwait)
Iraq War I 1/2 : February 1991 -- March 2003 (The rest of Bush I, Bill Clinton years,
economic blockade and no-fly zone bombings)
Iraq War II : March 2003 -- December 2011 (aka Operation Iraqi Freedom, W. Bush's invasion
and war for the Shi'ite side)
Iraq War III : August 2014 -- December 2017 (aka Operation Inherent Resolve, the war against
the Islamic State, which America had helped to build up in Syria but then launched this war to
destroy, on behalf of the Shi'ite government in Baghdad, after ISIS had seized the
predominately Sunni west of the country in the early summer of 2014 and declared the Islamic
State "Caliphate")
Iraq War III 1/2 : December 2017 -- January 2020 (The "mopping-up" war against the remnants
of ISIS which has had the U.S. still allied with the very same Shi'ite militias they fought
Iraq War II and III for, but are now attacking)
Iraq War IV : Now -- ?
NEW from me: We asked folks to identify Iran on an unlabeled map.
As Scott Horton suggests, the roots of the current crisis lie all the way back in the mid-20th century
:
In 1953, the American CIA overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran in favor of the
Shah Reza Pahlavi who ruled a dictatorship there for 26 years until in 1979 a popular
revolution overthrew his government and installed the Shi'ite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
in power.
So in 1980, President Jimmy Carter's government gave Iraq's Saddam Hussein the green light to
invade Iran, a war which the U.S. continued to support throughout
the Ronald Reagan years, though they also sold weapons
to the Iranian side at times.
But then in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait in a dispute over debts from the recent war with
Iran, with some
encouragement by the U.S. government, leading to America's Iraq War I, aka the first Gulf
War or Operation
Desert Storm at the beginning of 1991.
And that was merely the very beginning.
Read the rest of the story and the excellent brief history of how we got here over at
The
Libertarian Institute .
Yep. And the initial excuse (WMDs) was proven absolutely to have been a contrived hoax.
Yet, all of the people of that decimated country and surrounding nations who have a vendetta
against us are labeled "terrorists". I guess the English language has evolved beyond my
comprehension since the usurpation by the tribe of our media and government.
By the definition of "terrorist" - terrorist | ˈterərəst | noun a person
who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of
political aims: - I see only the United States of Israel as befitting this word.
Qasem Soleimani was assassinated on January 2nd, 2020 in Baghdad by a drone strike ordered
by Israel-first Trump. The Iranian Commander of the 'Quds Force' was murdered alongside the
leader of the Iraqi 'Popular Mobilization Forces', Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, aka Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, in addition to at least 6 other persons.
It was a coward act by a coward President who's no better than a gangbanger on a drive-by
shooting targeting unarmed individuals, who in this case were on a
diplomatic mission .
Who was General Soleimani?
"It was through his leadership that the IRGC greatly assisted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in
its destruction of Daesh (ISIS). He's played a larger role than any individual in defeating
terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and he was widely respected as among one of the most brilliant
unconventional warfare tacticians in recent memory. It was because of his success, however,
that he became a most hated foe He was therefore marked for death,"
wrote Andrew Korybko. By Andrew Korybko Global Research,
January 03, 2020 Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme:
US NATO War
Agenda In-depth Report: IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?
The US carried out a de-facto act of war against Iran after assassinating Major General
Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force in Baghdad last night, but
despite the doomsday scenarios that many in Alt-Media are speculating that this will lead to,
the commencement of World War III is extremely unlikely for several reasons.
***
The "Decapitation Strike" That Shook The World
Trump's approval of
the US' assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force in Baghdad last night amounts to a de-facto act of war against Iran,
but it wasn't the decision of a "madman" or someone whose permanent military, intelligence, and
diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") didn't think this completely through. Rather, it was a
premeditated "decapitation strike" carried out to prove the US' conventional "escalation
dominance" in its regional proxy war with Iran, one which America surely knows will elicit a
kinetic response of some sort from the Islamic Republic but which the Pentagon and its regional
allies are prepared for. Contrary to the narrative bandied about in Alt-Media , the US didn't "surrender"
the Mideast to Russia and Iran in recent years (who, to be clear, are not "allies", but
anti-terrorist "partners of convenience" in Syria) despite some regional setbacks to its grand
strategy, but merely adjusted the nature through which it intends to restore its influence
there.
Background Context
Instead of continuing to waste hundreds of millions of dollars a day funding the
counterproductive 100,000-strong occupation of Iraq and potentially exposing that many troops
("sitting ducks") to retaliatory attacks, it decided to scale down its conventional presence
there and replace it with highly trained Marines and special forces that operate with the
support of targeted missile strikes. It was one such strike earlier in the week against the
Popular Mobilization Units' (PMU) Kataib Hezbollah, which is integrated into the Iraqi Armed
Forces, that provoked the group's supporters (allegedly with the coordination of the IRGC
according to the US) into besieging the American Embassy in Baghdad. Trump responded by
immediately dispatching troops to the world's largest diplomatic facility and bragging on
Twitter that this was his " anti-Benghazi "
moment in a clear swipe at Obama's notorious failure to protect American diplomats back in 2012
when they were in similar circumstances.
Once the unrest died down following the organizers' decision to withdraw after they
declared
that their "message has been heard", US Secretary of Defense
ominously warned that his country could take "preemptive action" if it detects any signals
that Iran is supposedly planning more anti-American attacks in Iraq. The Islamic Republic
denied that it played any role in the recent events unfolding in the neighboring country, but
the US obviously didn't believe it. It therefore set out to
assassinate Maj. Gen. Soleimani in order to send the message that it's serious about
"deterring" any forthcoming allegedly Iranian-connected anti-American attacks seeing as how it
blamed him for being involved in the latest ones. It also wanted to put additional pressure on
Iran to withdraw from Iraq, but probably expected that it could exploit Tehran's response to
this de-facto act of war as a pretext for further intensifying its pressure campaign through
more "decapitation strikes". This attack therefore dangerously escalated tensions with Iran and
made many observers fear the onset of World War III.
Some Words About Maj. Gen. Soleimani
What follows isn't an excuse for America's actions, but simply a cold, hard analysis
explaining why Trump decided to assassinate Solemani and thus carry out a de-facto act of war
against Iran, one which will not lead to World War III despite the fearmongering speculation
that's taken social media by storm ever since. Simply put, Iran misjudged the US' resolve to
regain its lost influence in the region and never thought that it would escalate the situation
to this level, hence why Maj. Gen. Solemani had no fear of being killed in the heart of Baghdad
despite the US' conventional air superiority and explicit warnings that it could take
"preemptive action" against Iran if it believes that it played any role whatsoever in any
forthcoming anti-American attacks. It doesn't matter whether or not the PMU's Kataib Hezbollah
is justified in seeking the removal of US forces from the country through any means possible or
if it coordinates those actions with the IRGC since all that's important is that the US was
looking for a pretext to carry out its calculated "decapitation strike" against Maj. Gen.
Soleimani.
A few words about him are appropriate at this point. It was through his leadership that the
IRGC greatly assisted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in its destruction of Daesh. He's played a
larger role than any individual in defeating terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and he was widely
respected as among one of the most brilliant unconventional warfare tacticians in recent
memory. It was because of his success, however, that he became one of the US' most hated foes
since he contributed to the defeat of Washington's regional proxy forces and thus was partly
responsible for the decline in American influence there lately. He was therefore marked for
death by the US, but Trump knew that killing him without any pretext would be an unnecessary
escalation so he wanted to save that "ace up his sleeve" for later. Iran knows that the US
wants it to withdraw from Syria and Iraq but steadfastly refuses because it has the legal right
to remain there at the request of those countries' internationally recognized governments, but
nevertheless, the US thinks that "might makes right" and is trying to force it out.
The Islamic Republic Won't Commit Suicide
American and "Israeli" strikes against allegedly IRGC-allied PMU forces over the past month
or so were intended to achieve that outcome, which naturally prompted those forces to
kinetically react by targeting a US base earlier in the week that afterwards served as the
pretext for America's latest attack against Kataib Hezbollah which in turn triggered the
embassy siege. There's no doubt that the US is escalating the situation in contravention of
international law and targeting anti-terrorist forces that contributed to the defeat of Daesh,
but polemics -- while having their "perception management" purposes -- are pointless when it
comes to analyzing situations as objectively as possible and forecasting what might come next.
Therefore, they're being excluded from this piece going forward. Having gotten that out of the
way, it's now time to turn the article's attention towards rebutting the fearmongering claims
that World War III is about to start after Maj. Gen. Soleimani's assassination.
Iran has the international legal right to defend itself, and its Supreme Leader already
vowed a " harsh
revenge " to that end, but it's extremely unlikely to take the form of direct attacks
against the US or its allies. As much as the next phrase is going to trigger many Alt-Media
folks, the US military is capable of destroying Iran in minutes so long as it's willing to bear
the regional costs of its actions, both short-term in the sense of casualties and long-term as
it relates to the geopolitical future of the Mideast. After proving his commitment to
overwhelmingly respond to any anti-American attacks that his government alleges (whether
truthfully or not) are carried out with any degree of Iranian coordination, Trump certainly
wouldn't hesitate to bomb Iran itself if missiles were launched from there against his or his
allies' forces. The Islamic Republic knows that it would literally be suicide to do such a
thing, and despite what neoconservatives, Zionists, and Wahhabis claim about the Iranian
authorities, they aren't an "apocalyptic death cult" and thus aren't going to start World War
III.
Several Scenarios
There's no doubt that Iran could inflict very serious damage to its regional foes if it
chooses to "go out with a bang" (whether after being provoked to do so or at its own
prerogative), but it's much more likely that its response to Maj. Gen. Soleimani's
assassination will take the form of intensified Unconventional Warfare against their interests.
The US and its allies must have clearly foreseen this and will likely blame Iran for anything
that happens in the coming days no matter whether it's truly involved or not, using that as a
pretext for more "decapitation strikes" and other similar measures intended to decimate it and
its allies' forces. The nature of conflict between the two sides is therefore asymmetric since
the US has conventional dominance whereas Iran has its unconventional counterpart, and both
might be put to the test in the event of another US Embassy siege in Baghdad, which is very
probable in the coming days seeing as how Iraqi society is seething with rage and can easily
assemble a critical mass of protesters to besiege the compound once again.
For as big of a prize as seizing the world's largest diplomatic facility would be for
whoever can take it (be it Iran, Iranian-allied, or otherwise), there's no way that Trump would
let that happen. Just like the Berlin Airlift of the Old Cold War, the US would carry out a
Baghdad Airlift if it need be, which could entail leveling entire neighborhoods in order to
prevent its enemies from hiding anti-air missiles there for taking down its air assets. One can
only speculate how such a scenario would unfold, but there shouldn't be any question in
anyone's mind about the US backing down, especially not during an election year and definitely
not after Trump proudly boasted that this is his "anti-Benghazi" moment. Another potential
retaliatory scenario is disrupting energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz, but that would
affect more than just the US and surely elicit universal condemnation from everyone except
perhaps allied Syria, just like if Hezbollah or other IRGC-allied forces decide to bomb "
Israel " (in which case it and the US would certainly respond through military means).
Don't Expect Russia Or China To Save Iran
It's "politically inconvenient" for many of Iran's supporters across the world to accept,
but the country doesn't have any state-based military allies willing to go to war alongside it
except perhaps Syria, but the SAA has been utterly devastated over the last 9 years and is now
a shadow of its former self. There is also absolutely no way that Russia would allow Syria to
actively participate in any state-based military hostilities alongside Iran because doing so
would endanger the forces and substantial investments that it has in the Arab Republic
nowadays. Speaking of which, Russia isn't Iran's ally, but
"Israel's" , though it wouldn't go to war alongside the self-professed "Jewish State" but
rather stay out of any potential conflict between the two (which wouldn't last long considering
that the US' conventional dominance could crush the Islamic Republic within days if Trump
authorized it to be unleashed to its fullest extent and he was willing to accept the previously
mentioned costs).
Neither Russia nor China would go to war in support of Iran, though they could be expected
to issue very strong statements of condemnation against the US and anyone else who might
conventionally attack it (whether "preemptively" or as "retaliation"). This objectively
existing and easily verifiable statement of fact will likely take many in Alt-Media by surprise
who have been indoctrinated over the past couple of years with fake news "analyses" alleging
that those two Eurasian Great Powers are "anti-American" and willing to fight the US in order
to "save the world". That will never happen unless one of them is attacked first (though even
in that case, neither would go to war for the other because they've made it clear that they're
not "military
allies" ), which probably won't happen because of the concept of Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD), at least not unless the US is able to surmount that "obstacle" through the
combination of its anti-missile technology and "Space Forces". In any case, nobody should
expect Russia or China to rush to Iran's aid and defend it from the US.
Concluding Thoughts
The most likely outcome of Maj. Gen. Soleimani's assassination is an intensified period of
proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen which stays just below the conventional threshold
given Iran's inability to survive an overwhelming US' "retaliatory" strike if Trump authorized
one in response to the unlikely massive missile strike that some speculate Tehran might be
preparing. The US might also carry out "surgical strikes" against places in Iran where it might
claim other strikes were "organized", such as if Yemen's Ansarullah attempt to repeat their
successful drone strike against Saudi Aramco from last September. "Decapitation strikes" might
therefore become increasingly more frequent and nobody would be safe, not even Hezbollah's
Nasrallah in the worst-case scenario, since the US just signaled that it has the political will
to take out "high-value targets". As all of this unfolds, Russia and China will do their utmost
to stay away from any regional fray and definitely wouldn't intervene to defend Iran. As such,
Iran's expected responses will be purely asymmetrical and not conventional.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
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This article was originally published on OneWorld .
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the
relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China's One Belt One Road global vision
of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
I can't quite understand how gratuitous US piracy and adventurism in places on the globe
beyond the knowledge and reach of most Americans could possibly be compared to Iranian
actions securing their immediate regional borders and interests. You can at least understand
(even if you critique) a US preoccupation with Cuba over the years, or drug cartels in
central America, or economic refugees in Mexico because they are close by and have a more
less direct effect on the stability of the US. But they have no authority beyond that other
than the ability to project violence and force. That's just simple imperialism. But now the
US have whacked a made guy without any real reason (i.e. looking at you the wrong way is not
a reason). Any mafia hood knows that, especially a New Yorker like Trump. So the climax of
The Godfather comes to mind. It is staggeringly naive and frankly moronic to think
that this is about good and evil. I bet Soleimani was no angel, but he wasn't whacked because
he was a bad guy, but because he was extraordinarily effective military organizer. Star Wars
has a lot to answer for in stunting the historical sensibilities of entire generations, but
its underlying narrative is the only MSM playbook now. Even more staggering is the stupendous
arrogance of the US belief in its 'rights' (based on thuggery and avarice), as though it were
the only power in the world capable of establishing a moral order. The lesson in humility to
come will be both long-awaited and go unheeded. Even the mob understand there has to be
rules.
After reading Crooke and Federicci's articles, there is only one way to stop this madness
blowing into a global conflict. Russia and China need to get involved whether they like it or
not. Diplomacy and sideline analysis has run its course. This is their time to stamp their
influence in the region and finish off the empire once and for all. Maybe that way, The
Europeans will grow some minerals and become sovereign again.
Otherwise, China can kiss its Belt and Road goodbye and go into a recession with the loss
of their investments up to this point and become slaves to the Americans again.
And Russia, the enemy du jour of Europe and US will be next and be crushed under economic
sanctions and isolation.
This is the moment that stars are aligned . Russia and China should park their battle
carriers off the Gulf and gives direct warning to Israel and US that any nuclear threat ,
tactical or otherwise, against anyone in the region is a non-starter.
I read so much about these two countries and that they will get involved. I have recited
those lines myself. But after these events and how things are escalating, I cannot see how
they cannot be involved. US is its most vulnerable and weakest with respect to economic,
diplomatic and military conditions.
The time of condemnations, letters of objection to the UN and veto votes in UNSC is over.
There is only one way to deal with a rogue nation and that is by force.
"... Now, he told "Democracy Now!", it will be hard for the Iraqi public to see the bases as anything but "a force that is driving them into a war between Iran and the United States." ..."
"... "Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in Baghdad airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. He took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani was not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He stayed in the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the Americans and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the Iranians would have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, the rules of the game have totally changed," he said. ..."
"The Guardian" journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad says that before the attack on Qassem
Soleimani in Baghdad last week "there was an understanding between the Americans and the
Iranians" that allowed officials from Iran and the U.S. to move freely within Iraq and
maintained relative goodwill toward American bases.
"The killing of Qassem Soleimani ended an era in which both Iran and the United States
coexisted in Iraq," he said.
Now, he told "Democracy Now!", it will be hard for the Iraqi public to see the bases as
anything but "a force that is driving them into a war between Iran and the United States."
"Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in
Baghdad airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in
Iraq. He took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani
was not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He
stayed in the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the
Americans and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the
Iranians would have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, the rules of the
game have totally changed," he said.
AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, can you comment on this new information that's come to light about the
timing of Soleimani's assassination Friday morning? Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Adel
Abdul-Mahdi has revealed he had plans to meet with Soleimani on the day he was killed to
discuss a Saudi proposal to defuse tension in the region. Mahdi said, quote, "He came to
deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to
Iran" -- Saudi Arabia, obviously, a well-known enemy of Iran. Was he set up? Talk about the
significance of this.
GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: Well, it is very significant if it's actually General Qassem Soleimani
came to Iraq to deliver this message, if it was actually there was a process of negotiations in
the region. We know that Abdul-Mahdi and the Iraqi government, in general, over the last year
had been trying to position Iraq as this middle power, as this power where both -- you know, as
a country that has a relationship with both Iran and the United States. In that awkward place
Iraq found itself in, Iraq has tried to maximize on this. So they started back in summer and
fall, when there was an escalation between Iran and the United States, when Iran shot down an
American drone. We've seen Adel Abdul-Mahdi fly to Iran, try to mediate. We've seen Adel
Abdul-Mahdi open channels of communications with the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia.
So, if it actually, the killing of General Soleimani, ended that peace initiative, it will
be kind of disastrous in the region, because, as Narges was saying earlier, it is -- you know,
Pompeo is speaking about Iran being this ultimate evil in the region, as this crescent of
Shias, as if they just arrived in the past 10 years in the region. The fact if we see Iran's
reactions, it's always a reaction to an American provocation. You've seen the occupation of
Iraq in 2003. You've seen Iran declared as an "axis of evil." So, if you see it from an Iranian
perspective, it's always this existential threat coming from the United States. And I don't
think there is a more existential threat than in past year. So, yes, I know -- I mean, I think
Adel Abdul-Mahdi and the Iraqi government were trying to find this middle ground, which I think
is totally lost, because even Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the person who was trying to find this middle
ground, was the person who proposed this law yesterday in the Parliament to expel all American
troops from the country.
And I would like to add like another thing. The killing of Qassem Soleimani ended an era in
which both Iran and the United States coexisted in Iraq. So, from 2013, '14, we, as
journalists, we've seen on the frontlines how the proxies of each power have been helping each
other. So we've seen Iranian advisers helping the American-trained Iraqi Army unit or
counterterrorism unit in the fight against ISIS. In the same sense, we've seen American
airstrikes on threats to these -- kind of to ISIS when it was threatening these militias. That
coexistence, it didn't only come from both having a -- sharing an enemy, which is ISIS, or
Daesh, but also these were the rules of the game. These were the rules in which Qassem
Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in Baghdad
airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. He
took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani was not
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He stayed in
the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the Americans
and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the Iranians would
have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, I think the rules of the game have
totally changed.
So now I think the first victim of the assassination will be the American bases in Iraq. I
don't see any way where the Americans can keep their presence as they did before the
assassination of Soleimani. And even the people in the streets, even the people who opposes
Iran, who opposes the presence of Iranian militias in power and politics, the corruption of
these pro-Iranian parties, even those people would look at these American bases now as not as a
force that came to help them in the fight against ISIS, but a force that's dragging them into a
war between Iran and the United States.
Iran has incentives to increase the chance of a Democrat administration, bearing in mind the
great deal they got from the last one and the lack of anything they can expect from Trump Term
Two.
Notable quotes:
"... Reflection, self criticism or self restraint are not exactly the big strengths of Trump. He prefers solo acts (Emergency! Emergency!) and dislikes advice (especially if longer than 4 pages) and the advice of the sort " You're sure? If you do that the the shit will fly in your face in an hour, Sir ". ..."
"... Trump can order attacks and I don't expect much protest from Mark Esper and it depends on the military (which likely will obey). ..."
"... These so called grownups have been replaced by (then still) happy Bolton (likely, even after being fired, still war happy) and applauders like Pompeo and his buddy Esper. ..."
"... As a thank you to Trump calling the Israel occupied Golan a part of Israel Netanyahu called an (iirc also illegal) new Golan settlement "Ramat Trump" ..."
"... I disagree. Trump maybe the only person who could sell a war with Iran. What he has cultivated is a rabid base that consists of sycophants on one extreme end and desperate nationalists on the other. His base must stick with him...who else do they have? ..."
"... The Left is indifferent to another war. Further depleting the quality stock of our military will aid there agenda of international integration. A weaker US military will force us to collaborate with the world community and not lead it is their thinking. ..."
"... Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ..."
"... Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. ..."
"... We have been so thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that Iran and Russia are intrinsically and immutable evil and hostile that the thought of actual two sided diplomacy does not occur. IMO neither of these countries are what we collectively think them. So, we could actually give it a try rather than trying to beggar them and destroy their economies. If all fails than we have to be prepared to defend our forces. DOL ..."
You have just several thousand soldiers in Iraq and Syria. These countries have large proxy
forces of Iran's allies in the form of Shia militias in Iraq and actual Iranian Quds Force
troops in Syria. These forces will be used to attack and kill our soldiers.
The Iranians have significant numbers of ballistic missiles which they have already said
will be used against our forces
The US Navy has many ships in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The Iranian Navy and the IRGC
Navy will attack our naval vessels until the Iranian forces are utterly destroyed. In that
process the US Navy will loose men and ships.
In direct air attacks on Iran we are bound to lose aircraft and air crew.
The IRGC and its Quds Force will carry out terrorist attacks across the world.
Do you really want to be a one term president? Pompeo can talk big now and then go back to Kansas to run for senator. Where will you be able to take refuge? Don't let the neocons like Pompeo sell you on war.
Make the intelligence people show you the evidence in detail. Make your own judgments.
pl
re " Trump knows that he can't sell a war to the American people "
Are you sure? I am not.
Reflection, self criticism or self restraint are not exactly the big strengths of Trump.
He prefers solo acts (Emergency! Emergency!) and dislikes advice (especially if longer than 4
pages) and the advice of the sort " You're sure? If you do that the the shit will fly in
your face in an hour, Sir ".
A good number of the so called grownups who gave such advice were (gameshow style) fired,
sometimes by twitter.
Trump can order attacks and I don't expect much protest from Mark Esper and it depends on
the military (which likely will obey).
These so called grownups have been replaced by (then still) happy Bolton (likely, even
after being fired, still war happy) and applauders like Pompeo and his buddy Esper.
Israel could, if politically just a tad more insane, bomb Iran and thus invite the
inevitable retaliation. When that happens they'll cry for US aid, weapons and money because
they alone ~~~
(a) cannot defeat Iran (short of going nuclear) and ...
(b) Holocaust! We want weapons and money from Germany, too! ...
(c) they know that ...
(d) which does not lead in any way to Netanyahu showing signgs of self restraint or
reason.
Netanyahu just - it is (tight) election time - announced, in his sldedge hammer style
subtlety, that (he) Israel will annect the palestinian west jordan territory, making the
Plaestines an object in his election campaign.
IMO that idea is simply insane and invites more "troubles". But then, I didn't hear
anything like, say, Trump gvt protests against that (and why expect that from the dudes who
moved the US embassy to Jerusalem).
as for Trump and Netanyahu ... policy debate ... I had that here in mind, which pretty speaks
for itself. And I thought Trumo is just running for office in the US. Alas, it is a Netanyaho
campaign poster from the current election:
I generously assume that things like that only happen because of the hard and hard
ly work of Kushner on his somewhat elusive but of course GIGANTIC and
INCREDIBLE Middle East peace plan.
Kushner is probably getting hard and hard ly supported by Ivanka who just said that
she inherited her moral compass from her father. Well ... congatulations ... I assume.
I disagree. Trump maybe the only person who could sell a war with Iran. What he has
cultivated is a rabid base that consists of sycophants on one extreme end and desperate
nationalists on the other. His base must stick with him...who else do they have?
The Left is indifferent to another war. Further depleting the quality stock of our
military will aid there agenda of international integration. A weaker US military will force
us to collaborate with the world community and not lead it is their thinking.
Need I trot out Goering's statement regarding selling a war once more?
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back
to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor
in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after
all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the
matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can
declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
We have been so thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that Iran and Russia are
intrinsically and immutable evil and hostile that the thought of actual two sided diplomacy
does not occur. IMO neither of these countries are what we collectively think them. So, we
could actually give it a try rather than trying to beggar them and destroy their economies.
If all fails than we have to be prepared to defend our forces. DOL
The 'ivestigations are a formality. The Saudis (with U.S. backing) are already saying that
the missiles were Iranian made and according to them, this proves that Iran fired them. The
Saudis are using the more judicious phrase 'behind the attack' but Pompeo is running with the
fired from Iran narrative.
How can we tell the difference between an actual Iranian manufactured missile vs one that
was manufactured in Yemen based on Iranian designs? We only have a few pictures Iranian
missiles unlike us, the Iranians don't toss them all over the place so we don't have any
physical pieces to compare them to.
Perhaps honest investigators could make a determination but even if they do exist they
will keep quiet while the bible thumping Pompeo brays and shamelessly lies as he is prone to
do.
These kinds of munition will leave hundreds of bits scattered all over their targets. I'm
waiting for the press conference with the best bits laid out on the tables.
I doubt that there will be any stencils saying 'Product of Iran', unless the paint smells
fresh.
1. I am still waiting to read some informed discussion concerning the *accuracy* of the
projectiles hitting their targets with uncanny precision from hundreds of miles away. What
does this say about the achievement of those pesky Eye-rainians? https://www.moonofalabama.org/images9/saudihit2.jpg
2. "The US Navy has many ships in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The Iranian Navy and the
IRGC Navy will attack our naval vessels until the Iranian forces are utterly destroyed.:
Ahem, Which forces are utterly destroyed? With respect colonel, you are not thinking
straight. An army with supersonic land to sea missiles that are highly accurate will make
minced meat of any fool's ship that dare attack it. The lesson of the last few months is that
Iran is deadly serious about its position that if they cannot sell their oil, no one else
will be able to either. And if the likes of the relatively broadminded colonel have not yet
learned that lesson, then this can only mean that the escalation ladder will continue to be
climbed, rung by rung. Next rung: deep sea port of Yanbu, or, less likely, Ra's Tanura.
That's when the price of oil will really go through the roof and the Chinese (and possibly
one or two of the Europoodles) will start crying Uncle Scam. Nuff Sed.
It sounds like you are getting a little "help" with this. You statement about the result
of a naval confrontation in the Gulf reflects the 19th Century conception that "ships can't
fight forts." that has been many times exploded. You have never seen the amount of firepower
that would be unleashed on Iran from the air and sea. Would the US take casualties? Yes, but
you will be destroyed.
We will have to agree to disagree. But unless I am quite mistaken, the majority view if not
the consensus of informed up to date opinion holds that the surest sign that the US is
getting ready to attack Iran is that it is withdrawing all of its naval power out of the
Persian Gulf, where they would be sitting ducks.
Besides, I don't think it will ever come to that. Not to repeat myself, but taking out
either deep sea ports of Ra's Tanura and/ or Yanbu (on the Red Sea side) will render Saudi
oil exports null and void for the next six months. The havoc that will play with the price of
oil and consequently on oil futures and derivatives will be enough for any president and army
to have to worry about. But if the US would still be foolhardy enough to continue to want to
wage war (i.e. continue its strangulation of Iran, which it has been doing more or less for
the past 40 years), then the Yemeni siege would be broken and there would be a two-pronged
attack from the south and the north, whereby al-Qatif, the Shi'a region of Saudi Arabia where
all the oil and gas is located, will be liberated from their barbaric treatment at the hands
of the takfiri Saudi scum, which of course is completely enabled and only made possible by
the War Criminal Uncle Sam.
AFAIK the only "US naval power" currently is the Abraham Lincoln CSG and I haven't seen any
public info that it was in the Persian Gulf. Aside from the actual straits, I'm not sure of
your "sitting ducks" assertion. First they wouldn't be sitting, and second you have the
problem of a large volume of grey shipping that would complicate the targeting problem. Of
course with a reduced time-of-flight, that also reduces target position uncertainty.
Forts are stationary.
Nothing I have read implies that Iran has a lot of investment in stationary forts.
Millennium Challenge 2002, only the game cannot be restarted once the enemy does not behave
as one hopes. Unlike in scripted war simulations, Opfor can win.
I remember the amount of devastation that was unleashed on another "backwards nation"
Linebackers 1 - 20, battleship salvos chemical defoliants, the Phoenix program, napalm for
dessert.
And not to put to fine a point on it, but that benighted nation was oriental; Iran is a
Caucasian nation full of Caucasian type peoples.
Nothing about this situation is of any benefit to the USA.
We do not need Saudi oil, we do not need Israel to come to the defense of the USA here in
North America, we do not need to stick our dick into the hornet's nest and then wonder why
they sting and it hurts. How many times does Dumb have to win?
3. Also, I can't imagine this event as being a very welcome one for Israeli military
observers, the significance of which is not lost on them, unlike their US counterparts. If
Yemen/ Iran can put the Abqaiq processing plant out of commission for a few weeks, then
obviusly Hezbollah can do the same for the giant petrochemical complex at Haifa, as well as
Dimona, and the control tower at Ben Gurion Airport. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/239251
It was late at night when I wrote this. Yeah, Right. the Iranians could send their massive
ground force into Syria where it would be chewed up by US and Israeli air. Alternatively they
could invade Saudi arabia.
Thank you for the reply but actually I was thinking that an invasion of Afghanistan would be
the more sensible ploy.
To my mind if the Iranian Army sits on its backside then the USAF and IAF will ignore it
to roam the length and breadth of Iran destroying whatever ground targets are on their
long-planned target-list.
Or that Iranian Army can launch itself into Afghanistan, at which point all of the USA
plans for a methodical aerial pummelling of Iran's infrastructure goes out the window as the
USAF scrambles to save the American forces in Afghanistan from being overrun.
Isn't that correct?
So what incentive is there for that Iranian Army to sit around doing nothing?
Iran will do what the USAF isn't expecting it to do, if for no other reason that it upsets
the USA's own game-plan.
There seems to be a bit of a hiatus in proceedings - not in these columns but on the ground
in the ME.
Everyone seems to be waiting for something.
Could this "something" be the decisive word fron our commander in chief Binyamin
Netanyahu?
The thing is he has just pretty much lost an election. Likud might form part of the next
government of Israel but most likely not with him at its head.
Does anyone have any ideas on what the future policy of Israel is likely to be under Gantz
or whoever? Will it be the same, worse or better?
The correct US move would be to ignore an Iranian invasion of Afghanistan and continue
leaving the place. The Iranian Shia can then fight the Sunni jihadi tribesmen.
Oh, I completely agree that if the Iranians launch an invasion of Afghanistan then the only
sensible strategy would be for the US troops to pack up and get out as fast as possible.
But that is "cut and run", which many in Washington would view as a humiliation.
Do you really see the beltway warriors agreeing to that?
A flaw in your otherwise sound argument is that the US military has not been seriously
engaged for several years and has been reconstituting itself with the money Trump has given
them.
Re-positioning of forces does not indicate that a presidential decision for war has been
made. The navy will not want to fight you in the narrow, shallow waters of the Gulf.
I would think that Mr. Trump would have a hard time sell a war with Iran over an attack on
Saudi Arabia. The good question about how would that war end will soon be raised and I doubt
there are many good answers.
The US should have gotten out of that part of the world a long time ago, just as they
should have paid more attention to the warnings in President Eisenhower's farewell
address.
The Perfumed Fops in the DOD restarted Millennium Challenge 2002,because Gen Van Riper had
used 19th and early 20th century tactics and shore based firepower to sink the Blue Teams
carrier forces. There was a script, Van Riper did some adlibbing. Does the US DOD think that
Iran will follow the US script? In a unipolar world maybe the USA could enforce a script,
that world was severely wounded in 1975, took a sucking chest wound during operation Cakewalk
in 2003 and died in Syria in 2015. Too many poles too many powers not enough diplomacy. It
will not end well.
We would crush Iran at some cost to ourselves but the political cost to the anti-globalist
coalition would catastrophic. BTW Trump's "base" isn't big enough to elect him so he cannot
afford to alienate independents.
Even if Rouhani and the Iranian Parliament personally designed, assembled, targeted and
launched the missiles (scarier sounding version of "drones"), then they should be
congratulated, for the Saudi tyrant deserves every bad thing that he gets.
prawnik (Sid) in this particular situation goering's glittering generalization does not
apply. Trump needs a lot of doubting suburbanites to win and a war will not incline them to
vote for him.
Looks like President Trump is walking it back, tweet: I have just instructed the Secretary of
the Treasury to substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran!
I doubt there will be armed conflict of any kind.
Everything Trump does from now (including sacking the Bolton millstone) will be directed at
winning 2020, and that will not be aided by entering into some inconclusive low intensity
attrition war.
Iran, on the other hand, will be doing everything it can to increase the chance of a Democrat
administration, bearing in mind the great deal they got from the last one and the lack of
anything they can expect from Trump Term Two.
This may be a useful tool for determining their next move, but the limit of their actions
would be when some Democrats begin making the electorally damaging mistake of critising Trump
for not retaliating against Iranian provocations.
This is truly shocking: Trump assassinates diplomatic envoy he
himself arranged for. . If the U.S. lured Soleimani to Iraq with a promise of negotiations
with the Iraqis as mediators and then proceeded to kill him, surely that would be an impeachable
offense. Particularly in view of the failure to brief Congress. If it was Saudi tricked Soleimani
by getting Iraq to "mediate" (Iraq's prime minister was expecting a message by him on the
mediation when he was assassinated), Saudi will get targeted.
The US changed the rules of engagement. They had decided to assassinate Soleimani when he was
in Syria, having just returned from a short journey to Lebanon, before boarding a commercial
flight from Damascus airport to Baghdad. The US killing machine was waiting for him to land in
Baghdad and monitored his movements when he was picked up at the foot of the plane. The US hit
the two cars, carrying Soleimani and the al-Muhandes protection team, when they were still inside
the airport perimeter and were slowing down at the first check-point.
US forces will no longer be safe in Iraq outside protected areas inside the military bases
where they are deployed. A potential danger or hit-man could be lurking at every corner; this
will limit the free movement of US soldiers. Iran would be delighted were the Iraqi groups to
decide to hit the American forces and hunt them wherever they are. This would rekindle memories
of the first clashes between Jaish al-Mahdi and US forces in Najaf in 2004-2005.
Impeachment with GOP support could be just around the corner. And who lost Iraq??? He would
be a dead man walking in that case. I can't see the evangelical crowd saving him. President
Pence. Might have to get use to that.
Here is a link to a twitter account with a good video of massive crowds on the streets of
Mashhad awaiting the arrival of Qassem Suleimani. Very powerful.
There will be no draining of any swamps. Trump-Kushner just another Bibi lackey.
Posted by: Jerry | Jan 5 2020 15:48 utc | 13
1. Draining swamps was a marker of progress in the past. >>Wiki:But in the late
1960s and early 1970s, researchers found that marshes and swamps "were worth billions
annually in wildlife production, groundwater recharge, and for flood, pollution, and erosion
control." This motivated the passage of the 1972 federal Water Pollution Control
Act.<<
2. To recognize this vital role, parties should adopt more acquatic symbols. Caymans are a
bit too similar to alligators, but, say, Alligators vs Snapping Turtles?
Yes, it might just be that this debacle provides the extra impulse to get him removed.
Can't say I can even imagine what that would look like, but there would seem to be a good
argument now that he must be restrained somehow. Somebody needs to tell Pompeous to stop
digging the hole deeper (shutup) too.
Mike Pompeo was on the TeeVee today scoffing at those who do not agree with him and the
Ziocon inspired "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. It must be a terrible thing for
intelligence analysts of integrity and actual Middle East knowledge and experience to have to
try to brief him and Trump, people who KNOW, KNOW from some superior source of knowledge that
Iran is the worst threat to the world since Nazi Germany, or was it Saddam's Iraq that was the
worst threat since "beautiful Adolf?"
The "maximum pressure" campaign is born of Zionist terrors, terrors deeply felt. It is the
same kind of campaign that has been waged by the Israelis against the Palestinians and all
other enemies great and small. This approach does not seem to have done much for Israel. The
terrors are still there.
Someone sent me the news tape linked below from Aleppo in NW Syria. I have watched it a
number of times. You need some ability in Arabic to understand it. The tape was filmed in
several Christian churches in Aleppo where these two men (Soleimani and al-Muhandis) are
described from the pulpit and in the street as "heroic martyr victims of criminal American
state terrorism." Pompeo likes to describe Soleimani as the instigator of "massacre" and
"genocide" in Syria. Strangely (irony) the Syriac, Armenian Uniate and Presbyterian ministers
of the Gospel in this tape do not see him and al-Muhandis that way. They see them as men who
helped to defend Aleppo and its minority populations from the wrath of Sunni jihadi Salafists
like ISIS and the AQ affiliates in Syria. They see them and Lebanese Hizbullah as having helped
save these Christians by fighting alongside the Syrian Army, Russia and other allies like the
Druze and Christian militias.
It should be remembered that the US was intent on and may still be intent on replacing the
multi-confessional government of Syria with the forces of medieval tyranny. Everyone who really
knows anything about the Syrian Civil War knows that the essential character of the New Syrian
Army, so beloved by McCain, Graham and the other Ziocons was always jihadi and it was always
fully supported by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia as a project in establishing Sunni triumphalism. They
and the self proclaimed jihadis of HTS (AQ) are still supported in Idlib and western Aleppo
provinces both by the Saudis and the present Islamist and neo-Ottoman government of Turkey.
Well pilgrims, there are Christmas trees in the newly re-built Christian churches of Aleppo
and these, my brothers and sisters in Christ remember who stood by them in "the last
ditch."
"Currently there are at least 600 churches and 500,000–1,000,000 Christians in Iran."
wiki below. Are they dhimmis? Yes, but they are there. There are no churches in Saudi
Arabia, not a single one and Christianity is a banned religion. These are our allies?
Mr. Jefferson wrote that "he feared for his country when he remembered that God is just." He
meant Virginia but I fear in the same way for the United States. pl
Yes, as long as Neoco hens and Christian Zionists run our foreign policy we're
screwed.
BTW, Mike Pompeo or as I affectionately call him; Lard face, Plump'eo, crazed CZ-zealot fat
boy, etc., is now a legitimate target of the Iranians. May Allah provide justice to the
family of Soleimani. (Grin) And look, I'm wishing 'ill will' on a zealot 'goy' (gentile)
instead of a typical Neo-cohen snake, how ironic. (Another grin) A positve spin:
With the 'incorrect' memo leaked by the Pentagon about an orderly exit from Iraq this can be
the silver lining in all this mess. This assassination might actually accelerate the exiting
of US forces from Iraq and the surrounding quagmires. Who knows, Trump might be a genius.
Again, NO MORE WARS FOR ZION, BDS NOW, ONE STATE SOLUTION-PALESTINE.
And to really stick it to Neo cohens (My apologies to Prof. Steven Cohen ),
Trump-Putin Axis Da!! Destroy the Deep State and the CABAL .
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, instead of using the opportunity to widen the circle
of U.S. allies or at least non-enemies in the Middle East, the Bush administration declared war
on "all terrorism of global reach," not just on the Sunni terrorists responsible. That meant
not seeking some sort of détente with Shiite Iran -- despite its assistance in
overturning the Taliban in Afghanistan and forming a replacement government -- but putting
Tehran in an "Axis of Evil" with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Some members of the Bush administration went further. John Bolton, then an undersecretary of
state nominally tasked with arms control (he mostly did the reverse), said that Iran should
"take a number," implying it would be the next to experience regime change after Iraq.
Neoconservatives worried about Iran and its expanding stockpile of low-enriched uranium, as
well as its long opposition to Israel, said that "real men go
to Tehran," not Baghdad.
The Bush administration also went back on a promise to trade leaders of the Mujaheddin-e
Khalq -- a militant Iranian group nurtured by Saddam that fought on Iraq's side during the
Iran-Iraq war -- for members of al-Qaeda detained in Iran. Instead the U.S. gave the group
protection and Bolton among others argued that the MEK could be deployed against Iran.
As a result, the U.S. helped turn the Quds Force -- the elite overseas branch of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards -- into a full-fledged enemy even as its removal of Saddam's Baathist
regime opened Iraq fully to Iran-backed militants, many of whom were trained in Iran during the
Iran-Iraq war. Starting with the Badr Brigade, Iran has since helped shape other Iraqi
militias, among them Kataib Hezbollah, whose targeting of Americans in Iraq touched off the
latest escalatory spiral.
Of course, the Trump administration's decision in 2018 to quit the Iran nuclear deal and a
year later to impose an oil embargo on Iran has been the major cause of the mayhem in the
region over the past nine months.
Now, by assassinating Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration has
likely foreclosed any possibility of U.S.-Iran diplomacy and sharply increased the likelihood
of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Iran announced on Sunday that it would no longer
observe the limits set in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and would resume its
nuclear program. That will incentivize Saudi Arabia to get nukes of its own.
It is said that George W. Bush, when he decided to invade Iraq, did not understand the
difference between Sunnis and Shias. Donald Trump seems to dislike all Muslims, except those
who buy American arms or host Trump properties.
In killing Soleimani, Trump has shown his ignorance of the power of martyrdom in Shia
theology. To Iranians and many Arab Shia -- including those who would like to get Iran out of
their countries' affairs -- Soleimani was a bulwark against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State,
defending the interests of a religious minority in the Middle East. Pictures of Soleimani being
embraced by the Imam Hussein -- the revered Shia figure martyred in the year 680 in Karbala,
Iraq, by the forces of the Sunni tyrant Yazid -- are circulating widely on social media. The
U.S., by implication, has become Yazid.
It is not 'Shia' vs. 'Sunni' when referencing the perspective of the U.S. : Middle East
relationship. It is the petro dollar. And every so often we have someone writing from a
'thinktank', i.e., The Atlantic Council, that never touches upon the scenario of the 'petro'
dollar and how it governs U.S. foreign policy in that region. Instead they frame their gripes
with partisan politics. Bush, Obama, and Trump have to kiss the Saudi ass in order to pay for
the enormous 'warfare' and 'welfare' state of Washington D.C. The Petro Dollar ensures that
the printing presses in Washington continue to print those dollars that will support a larger
budget for the Pentagon, and Medicare, and in the very near future if Trump loses the White
House: Medicare for All {including undocumented immigrants}, Reparations, free college for
all, etc. You can add the United State's incredible generosity with tax payer money that
pretty much pays for an 'ungrateful' Western Europe security.
And Trump did not do this to America. But he has to continue it in order to keep those
printing presses rolling at the Treasury: in other words keep the American Dollar the 'top
dog' currency of the world which allows for this $20 trillion + deficit and at the same time
'fantasy island' welfare state promises from the politicians. And politicians have no problem
with this policy - they can just exploit it for partisan politics and at the same time
promise an pseudo 'sustainable' increase in the welfare state to win elections.
That said, the Saudis are Sunnis. They want to increase their power. And in order to keep
them happy {so they will not change currency exchanges for their oil to the 'gold-backed'
yuan}, then the United States must fight messy and horrible wars in Yemen; start wars in
Syria [General Mattis was and is a big time supporter of this] - supporting terrorist groups
who love killing Christians with U.S. weapons, and ultimately regime change in Iran. Why do
you think George W. Bush, etal have to look the other way on 9/11 - shield the Saudis {oh,
and Obama is included on this list also}. All U.S. presidents face this problem. But
especially the Democrats since their big welfare state costs way more to sustain than the
Pentagon.
In conclusion - Obama, a Democrat, oversaw the CIA that supported and aided MBS onto the
throne in Saudi Arabia because, unlike his myriad of family members, he will continue to
exchange oil {along with the Gulf 'Sunni' dominated states' using the Dollar. It is all the
presidents of all political parties beginning with the Nixon administration.
Russia and China are ALREADY seen as more sane and rational powers than USA. That's why we
couldn't let Soleimani negotiate peace between Persia and Saudi. Killing him won't stop the
negotiations; more likely it will speed up Saudi's divorce from US/Israel craziness.
Putin and Xi are more honest and useful brokers than the United States.
That is not a major accomplishment. The United States has demonstrated time and again that
it acts not even in its own interests, but in the interests of its Saudi owners and Israeli
masters.
In theory, the US could be a powerful stabilizing force in the Middle East. We have the
resources and the military might to provide very effective carrots and sticks.
However, over the past decades we have proven that we are so ignorant of the local
cultures and politics, so blinded by our own preconceptions and ideologies, and so unwilling
to learn, that we keep punishing people with carrots and rewarding them with sticks. Time to
admit we can't get it right and go home.
Even worse, we have chosen two particular countries in the region, the Israelis and the
Saudis, as Our Special Friends and we use the carrots and sticks almost entirely in their
interests.
The biggest impediment to that is the frequent change of administrations and their policies.
But since we weren't designed to be doing that sort of thing in the first place it's only
natural that we aren't very good at it. We should get out of foreign entanglements but
Congress (and its lobbyists) fights it tooth and nail, across administrations. They've even
developed a nasty word for it... isolationism .
gjohnsit on Mon,
01/06/2020 - 6:14pm Just a few days ago SoS Mike Pompeo said that we assassinated General Soleimani
to stop an 'imminent attack' on Americans.
No evidence was presented to back up this claim. We are just supposed to believe it.
It turns out that
Pompeo and VP Pence had pushed Trump hard to do this assassination.
"Seven aircraft and three military vehicles were destroyed in the attack," said the
statement, which included photos of aircraft ablaze and an al Shabaab militant standing
nearby. In a tweet, the US Africa Command confirmed an attack on the Manda Bay Airfield had
occurred.
One US military service member and two contractors were killed in an Islamist attack on a
military base in Kenya.
Islamist militant group al-Shabab attacked the base, used by Kenyan and US forces, in the
popular coastal region of Lamu on Sunday.
The US military said in a statement that two others from the Department of Defense were
wounded.
"The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated," the US
military's Africa Command said.
But the response of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu , was particularly striking, as he has been one of Trump's staunchest
supporters on the world stage.
He told a meeting of his security cabinet on Monday: "The assassination of Suleimani
isn't an Israeli event but an American event. We were not involved and should not be
dragged into it."
It was not the US decision to fire missiles against the IRGC commander Brigadier General
Qassem Soleimani that killed the Iranian officer and his companions in Baghdad. Yes, of course,
the order that was given to launch missiles from the two drones (which destroyed the two cars
carrying Sardar Soleimani and his companion the Iraqi commander in al-Hashd al-Shaabi Jamal
Jaafar Al-Tamimi aka Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes and burned their bodies in the vehicle) came from US
command and control.
However, the reason President Donald Trump made this decision derives from the weakness of
the "axis of resistance", which has completely retreated from the level of performance that
Iran believed it was capable of after decades of work to strengthen this "axis".
A close companion of Major General Qassim Soleimani, to whom he spoke hours before boarding
the plane that took him from Damascus to Baghdad, told me:
"The nobleman died. Palestine above all has lost Hajj Qassem (Soleimani). He was the
"King" of the Axis of the Resistance and its leader. He was assassinated and this is exactly
what he was hoping to reach in this life (Martyrdom). However, this axis will live and will
not die. No doubt, the Axis of the Resistance needs to review its policy and regenerate
itself to correct its path. This was what Hajj Qassim was complaining about and planning to
work on and strategizing about in his last hours."
The US struck Iran at the heart of its pride by killing Major General Soleimani. But the
"axis of the Resistance" killed him before that. This is how:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assassinated the deputy head of the Military
Council (the highest authority in the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is headed by its
Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah), Hajj Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria, Hezbollah could
not avenge him until today.
When Trump gave Netanyahu Jerusalem as the "capital of Israel", the "Axis of the Resistance"
did not move except by holding television symposia and conferences verbally rejecting the
decision.
When President Trump offered the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to Israel and the "Axis of
Resistance" did not react, the US President Donald Trump and his team understood that they were
opposed by no effective deterrent. The inaction of the Resistance axis emboldened Trump to do
what he wants.
And when Israel bombed hundreds of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria , the "Axis of the
Resistance" justified its lack of retaliation by the typical sentence: "We do not want to be
dragged along by the timing of the engagement imposed by the enemy," as a senior official in
this axis told me.
In Iraq shortly before his death, Major General Soleimani was complaining about the
weakening of the Iraqi ranks within this "Axis of the Resistance", represented by the Al-Bina'
(Construction) Alliance and other groups close to this alliance like Al-Hikma of Ammar al-Hakim
and Haidar al-Abadi, formerly close to Iran, that have gone over to the US side.
In Iraq, Major General Soleimani was very patient and never lost his temper. He was trying
to reconcile the Iraqis, both his allies and those who had chosen the US camp and disagreed
with him. He used to hug those who shouted at him to lower tensions and continue dialogue to
avoid spoiling the meeting. Anyone who raised his voice during discussions soon found that it
was Soleimani who calmed everyone down.
Hajj Qassem Soleimani was unable to reach a consensus on the new Prime Minister's name among
those he deemed to be allies in the same coalition. He asked Iraqi leaders to select the names
and went through all of these asking questions about the acceptability of these names to the
political groups, to the Marjaiya, to protestors in the street and whether the suggested names
were not provocative or challenging to the US. Notwithstanding the animosity between Iran and
the US, Soleimani encouraged the selection of a personality that would not be boycotted by the
US. Soleimani believed the US capable of damaging Iraq and understood the importance of
maintaining a good relationship with the US for the stability of the country.
Soleimani was shocked by the dissension among Iraqi Shia and believed that the "axis of
resistance" needed a new vision as it was faltering. In the final hours before his death, Major
General Soleimani was ruminating on the profound antagonisms between Iraqis of the same
camp.
When the Iraqi street began to move against the government, the line rejecting American
hegemony was fragmented because it was part of the authority that ruled and governed Iraq. To
make matters worse, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr directed his arrows against his partners in
government, as though the street demonstrations did not target him, the politician controlling
the largest number of Iraqi deputies, ministers and state officials, who had participated in
the government for more than ten years.
Major General Soleimani admonished Moqtada Al-Sadr for his stances, which contributed to
undermining the Iraqi ranks because the Sadrist leader did not offer an alternative solution or
practical project other than the chaos. Moqtada has his own men, the feared Saraya al-Salam,
present in the street.
When US Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on
December 28 and informed him of America's intentions of hitting Iraqi security targets inside
Iraq, including the PMU, Soleimani was very disappointed by Abdul-Mahdi's failure to
effectively oppose Esper. Abdul-Mahdi merely told Esper that the proposed US action was
dangerous. Soleimani knew that the US would not have hit Iraqi targets had Abdul-Mahdi dared to
oppose the US decision. The targeted areas were a common Iranian-Iraqi operational stage to
monitor and control ISIS movements on the borders with Syria and Iraq. The US would have
reversed its decision had the Iraqi Prime Minister threatened the US with retaliation in the
event that Iraqi forces were bombed and killed. After all, the US had no legal right to attack
any objective in Iraq without the agreement of the Iraqi government. This decision was the
moment when Iraq has lost its sovereignty and the US took control of the country.
This effective US control is another reason why President Trump gave the green light to kill
Major General Soleimani. The Iraqi front had demonstrated its weakness and also, it was
necessary to select a strong Iraqi leader with the guts to stand to the US arrogance and
unlawful actions.
Iran has never controlled Iraq, as most analysts mistakenly believe and speculate. For
years, the US has worked hard in the corridors of the Iraqi political leadership lobby for its
own interests. The most energetic of its agents was US Presidential envoy Brett McGurk, who
clearly realised the difficulties of navigating inside Iraqi leaders' corridors during the
search for a prime minister of Iraq before the appointment of Adel Abdel Mahdi, the selection
of President Barham Saleh and other governments in the past. Major General Soleimani and McGurk
shared an understanding of these difficulties. Both understood the nature of the Iraqi
political quagmire.
Soleimani did not give orders to fire missiles at US bases or attack the US Embassy. If it
was in his hands to destroy them with accurate missiles and to remove the entire embassy from
its place without repercussions, he would not have hesitated. But the Iraqis have their own
opinions, methods, modus operandi and selection of targets and missile calibres; they never
relied on Soleimani for such decisions.
Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs was never welcomed by the Marjaiya in Najaf, even if it
agreed to receive Soleimani on a few occasions. They clashed over the reelection of Nuri
al-Maliki, Soleimani's preferred candidate, to the point that the Marjaiya wrote a letter
making its refusal of al-Maliki explicit. This led to the selection of Abadi as prime
minister.
Soleimani's views contradicted the perception of the Marjaiya, that had to write a clear
message, firstly, to reject the re-election of Nori al-Maliki to a third session, despite
Soleimani's insistence.
All of the above is related to the stage that followed the 2011 departure of US forces from
Iraq under President Obama. Prior to that, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis was the link between the
Iraqis and Iran: he had the decision-making power, the vision, the support of various groups,
and effectively served as the representative of Soleimani, who did not interfere in the
details. These Iraqi groups met with Soleimani often in Iran; Soleimani rarely travelled to
Iraq during the period of heavy US military presence.
Soleimani, although he was the leader of the "Axis of the Resistance", was sometimes called
"the king" in some circles because his name evokes Solomon. According to sources within the
"Axis of the Resistance", he "never dictated his own policy but left a margin of movement and
decision to all leaders of the axis without exception. Therefore, he was considered the link
between this axis and the supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was able to contact
Sayyed Khamenei at any time and directly without mediation. The Leader of the revolution
considered Soleimani as his son.
According to sources, in Syria, Soleimani "never hesitated to jump inside a truck, ride an
ordinary car, take the first helicopter, or travel on a transport or cargo plane as needed. He
did not take any security precautions but used his phone (which he called a companion spy)
freely because he believed that when the decision came to assassinate him, he would follow his
destiny. He looked forward to becoming a martyr because he had already lived long."
Was the leader of the "resistance axis" managing and running it?
Sayyed Ali Khamenei told Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: "You are an Arab and the Arabs accept you
more than they accept Iran". Sayyed Nasrallah directed and managed the axis of Lebanon, Syria
and Yemen and had an important role in Iraq. Hajj Soleimani was the liaison between the axis of
the resistance and Iran and he was the financial and logistical officer. According to my
source, "He was a friend of all leaders and officials of all ranks. He was humble and looked
after everyone he had to deal with".
The "Axis of Resistance" indirectly allowed the killing of Qassem Soleimani. If Israel and
the US could know Sayyed Nasrallah's whereabouts, they would not hesitate a moment to
assassinate him. They may be aware: the reaction may be limited to burning flags and holding
conferences and manifesting in front of an embassy. Of course, this kind of reaction does not
deter President Trump who wants to be re-elected with the support of Israel and US public
opinion. He wants to present himself as a warrior and determined leader who loves battle and
killing.
Iran invested 40 years building the "Axis of the Resistance". It cannot remain idle, faced
with the assassination of the Leader of this axis. Would a suitable price be the US exit from
Iraq and condemnation in the Security Council? Would that, together with withdrawal from the
nuclear deal, be enough for Iran to avenge its General? Will the ensuing battle be confined to
the Iraqi stage? Will it be used for the victory of certain Iraqi political players?
The assassination of its leader represents the supreme test for the Axis of Resistance. All
sides, friend and foe, are awaiting its response.
And when Israel bombed hundreds of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria , the "Axis of
the Resistance" justified its lack of retaliation by the typical sentence: "We do not want
to be dragged along by the timing of the engagement imposed by the enemy," as a senior
official in this axis told me.
If the 'source' in this article was so close to Soleimani, then he would also have
mentioned that Russia was dictating terms in Syria.
Soleimani knew this and could not afford to lose Russia as an ally, this would definitely
have happened if another 'player' was brought into the war just because Soleimani decided to
retaliate to Zionist bombing.
Putin, Assad and Soleimani had a long term view of winning in Syria, not making things
worse because of a quick retaliatory strike.
Non-binding resolution asking the prime minister to rescind Iraq's invitation...
The current government is unlikely to push this through. After a new PM is chosen, it
would still take a year or more to move the US troops out by the agreements under which they
set up their base. All of this has to be viewed under the context that the US was
asked to send troops by the Iraqi president.
Yesterday,
Iraqi lawmakers voted to expel foreign troops from the country during an emergency
parliamentary session. Interim Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul Mahdi, stressed during the
session, that while the US government notified the Iraqi military of the planned strike on
Soleimani, his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.
In a meeting Monday, Mahdi, a caretaker prime minister who said in November he would resign,
told US Ambassador Matthew H. Tueller that the US and Iraq needed to cooperate "to implement
the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with the decision of the Iraqi parliament,"
according to a statement from the PM's office that was cited by
the Washington Post .
Though the Iraq war 'officially' ended in 2011, thousands of coalition troops stuck around.
Their numbers increased following the rise of ISIS in the region.
Ending the US troop presence in Iraq has been a longtime goal of non-interventionists like
Ron Paul and his son, Rand.
That said, even without troops in Iraq, the US will still have plenty of capacity to bully
Iran, and other other regional powers.
AP WASHINGTON (AP) -- Having the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force direct Iraqi forces
battling the Islamic State group is complicating the U.S. mission against terrorism and
contributing to destabilization in Iraq, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency
said Sunday.
During more than a half-century of Washington watching we have seen stupidity rise from one
height to yet another. But nothing -- just plain nothing -- compares to the the blithering
stupidity of the Donald's Iran "policy", culminating in the mindless assassination of its top
military leader and hero of the so-called Islamic Revolution, Major General Qassem
Soleimani.
To be sure, we don't give a flying f*ck about the dead man himself. Like most generals of
whatever army (including the US army), he was a cold-blooded, professional killer.
And in this day and age of urban and irregular warfare and drone-based annihilation
delivered by remote joy-stick, generals tend to kill more civilians than combatants. The dead
civilian victims in their millions of U.S. generals reaching back to the 1960s surely attest to
that.
Then again, even the outright belligerents Soleimani did battle with over the decades were
not exactly alms-bearing devotees of Mother Theresa, either. In sequential order, they were the
lethally armed combatants mustered by Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, the Sunni jihadists of
ISIS and the Israeli and Saudi air forces, which at this very moment are raining high tech
bombs and missiles on Iranian allies and proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
The only reason these years of combat are described in the mainstream media as evidence of
Iranian terrorism propagated by its Quds forces is that the neocons have declared it so.
That is, by Washington's lights Iran is not allowed to have a foreign policy and its alliances
with mainly Shiite co-religionists in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are alleged per se to be
schemes of aggression and terror, warranting any and all retaliations including assassination
of its highest officials.
But that's just colossal nonsense and imperialistic arrogance. The Assad government in
Syria, the largest political party in Lebanon (Hezbollah), the dominant population of northern
Yemen (Houthis) and a significant portion of the Iraqi armed forces represented by the Shiite
militias (the PMF or Popular Mobilization Forces) are no less civilized and no more prone to
sectarian violence than anybody else in this woebegone region. And the real head-choppers of
ISIS and its imitators and rivals have all been Sunni jihadist insurrectionists, not
Shiite-based governments and political parties.
The truth is, America has no dog in the Shiite versus Sunni hunt, which has been going on
for 1300 years in the region. And when it comes to spillover of those benighted forces into
Europe or America, recent history is absolutely clear: 100% of all Islamic terrorist incidents
in the US since they began in the 1990s were perpetrated or inspired by Sunni jihadists, not
Iran or its Shiite allies and proxies in the region.
So we needs be direct. The aggression in the Persian Gulf region during the last three
decades has originated in the Washington DC nest of neocon vipers and among Bibi Netanyahu's
proxies, collaborators and assigns who rule the roost in the Imperial City and among both
political parties. And the motivating force has all along been the malicious quest for regime
change -- first in Iraq and then in Syria and Iran.
Needless to say, Washington instigated "regime change" tends to provoke a determined
self-defense and a usually violent counter-reaction among the changees. So the truth is, the
so-called Shiite crescent is not an alliance of terrorists inflicting wanton violence on the
region; it's a league of regime-change resisters and armed combatants who have elected to say
"no" to Washington's imperial schemes for remaking the middle eastern maps.
So in taking out Soleimani, the usually befuddled and increasingly belligerent occupant of
the Oval Office was not striking a blow against "terrorism". He was just dramatically
escalating Washington's long-standing regime-change aggression in the region, thereby risking
an outbreak of even greater violence and possibly a catastrophic conflagration in the Persian
Gulf where one-fifth of the world's oil traverses daily.
And most certainly, the Donald has now crushed his own oft-repeated intent to withdraw
American forces from the middle east and get out of the regime change business -- the very
platform upon which he campaigned in 2016. There are now upwards of 50,000 US military
personnel in the immediate Persian Gulf region and tens of thousands of more contractors,
proxies and mercenaries. After Friday's reckless maneuver, that number can now only go up --
and possibly dramatically.
In joy-sticking Soleimani while lounging in his plush digs at Mar-a-Lago, the Donald was
also not avenging the innocent casualties of Iranian aggression -- Americans or otherwise. He
was just jamming another regime-change stick in the hornets nest of anti-Americanism in the
region that Washington's bloody interventions have spawned over the decades, and which will now
intensify by orders of magnitude.
Sometimes a picture does tell a thousand words, and this one from the funeral procession in
Tehran yesterday surely makes a mockery of Secretary Pompeo's idiotic claim that the middle
east is now safer than before. If there was ever a case that this neocon knucklehead should be
immediately dispatched to his hog and corn farm back in Kansas, this is surely it.
Iranians
carried the coffins of top general Qassem Soleimani and his allies in Kerman, Iran
The larger point here is that Imperial Washington and its mainstream media megaphones have
so egregiously and relentlessly vilified Iran and falsified the middle east narrative that the
Iranian side of the story has been completely lost -- literally airbrushed right off the pages
of contemporary history in Stalineseque fashion.
Not that the benighted, mullah-controlled Iranian regime is comprised of anything which
resembles white hats. One of the great misfortunes of the last four decades is that the
long-suffering people of Iran have not been able to throw-off the cultural and religious
shackles imposed by this theocratic regime or escape the economic backwardness and incompetence
of what is essentially rule by authoritarian clerics.
But that's exactly the crime of Washington's neocon-inspired hostility and threats to the
Iranian regime. It merely rekindles Iranian nationalism and causes the public to rally to the
support of the regime, as is so evident at the current moment.
Worse still, the underlying patriotic foundation of this pro-regime sentiment is completely
lost on Imperial Washington owing to its false narrative about post-1979 history. Yet the fact
is, in the eyes of the Iranian people the Quds forces and Soleimani have plausible claims to
having been valiant defenders of the nation.
In the original instance, of course, Soleimani earned his chops on the battlefield
contending with the chemical weapons-dropping air force of Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. And
Saddam was the invader whose chemical bombs achieved especially deadly accuracy against often
barely armed teenage Iranian soldiers owing to spotting and targeting assistance rendered by
the U.S. air force -- a Washington assisted depredation that a whole generation of Iranians
know all about, even if present day Washington feints ignorance.
Then after Bush the Younger visited uninvited and unrequested Shock & Awe upon Baghdad
and much of the Iraqi countryside, it transpired that the nation's majority Shiite population
didn't cotton much to being "liberated" by Washington. Indeed, the more radical elements of the
Iraqi Shiite community in Sadr City and other towns of central and south Iraq took up arms
during 2003-2011 against what they perceived to be the American "occupiers" because, well, it
was their country.
Needless to say, their Shiite kinsman in Iran were more than ready to give aid and comfort
to the Iraqi Shiite in their struggle against what by then was perceived as Iran's own mortal
enemy. After all, a full year before Bush the Younger launched the utterly folly of the second
gulf war in March 2003, his demented neocon advisors and speechwriters, led by the insufferable
David Frum, had concocted a bogeyman called the Axis of Evil, which included Iran and marked it
as next in line for Shock & Awe.
But the idea that the Iraqi people and especially its majority Shiite population would have
been dancing in the streets to welcome the US military save for the insidious interference of
Iran is just baseless War Party propaganda.
Stated differently, Washington sent 158,000 lethally armed fighters into a country that had
never threatened America's homeland security or harbored its enemies, and had no capacity to do
so in any event. But contrary to the glib assurances of Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest of the
neocon jackals around Bush, these U.S. fighters soon came to be widely viewed as "invaders",
not liberators, and met resistance from a wide variety of Iraqi elements including remnants of
Saddam's government and military, radicalized Sunni jihadists and a motley array of Shiite
politicians, clerics and militias.
Foremost among these was the Sadr clan which emerged as the tribune of the the dispossessed
Shiite communities in the south and Baghdad. They rose to prominence after Bush the Elder urged
the Shiite to rise up against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War, and then left them dangling in
the wind.
No U.S. support materialized as the regime's indiscriminate crackdown on the population
systematically arrested and killed tens of thousands of Shiites and destroyed Shiite shrines,
centers of learning, towns and villages. According to eyewitness accounts, Baathist tanks
were painted with messages like "No Shiites after today," people were hanged from electric
poles, and tanks ran over women and children and towed bodies through the streets.
From this horror and brutality emerged Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, the founder of
the Sadrist movement that today, under the leadership of his son Muqtada, constitutes Iraq's
most powerful political movement. After the collapse of the Baathist regime in 2003, the
Sadrist movement formally established its own militia, known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi, or the
Mahdi Army .
The vast Shiite underclass needed protection, social services and leadership, and the
Sadrist movement stepped into these gaps by reactivating Sadeq al-Sadr's network. In the
course of U.S. occupation, the Mahdi Army's ranks of supporters, members and fighters
swelled, particularly as sectarian conflict intensified and discontent towards the occupation
grew out of frustration with the lack of security and basis services.At one point the Mahdi
Army numbered more than 60,000 fighters, and especially as Iraq degenerated into total
sectarian chaos after 2005, it became a deadly thorn in the side of U.S. forces occupying a
country where they were distinctly unwelcome.
But the Mahdi Army was homegrown; it was Arab, not Persian, and it was fighting for its own
homes and communities, not the Iranians, the Quds or Soleimani. In fact, the Sadrists strongly
opposed the Iranian influence among other Shiite dissident groups including the brutal Badr
Brigade and the Iran-aligned Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI). As the above
study further noted,
I raqis today refer to the Sadrist Movement's Peace Brigades as the "rebellious"
militias, because of their refusal to submit not only to Iran , but also to the federal
government and religious establishment. Muqtada al-Sadr has oriented his organization around
Iraqi nationalistic sentiments and derided the Iran-aligned militias . In line with the true
political outlook of his father and his followers, Muqtada's supporters chanted anti-Iranian
slogans and stormed the offices of the Dawa Party, ISCI and the Badr Brigade when they
protested against the government in May 2016.
As it happened, the overwhelming share of the 603 US servicemen the Pentagon claims to have
been killed by Iranian proxies were actually victims of the Mahdi Army uprisings during
2003-2007. These attacks were led by the above mentioned Iraqi nationalist firebrand and son of
the movements founder, Muqtada al-Sadr.
In fact, however, the surge in U.S. deaths at that time was the direct result of
subsequently disgraced General David Petraeus' infamous "surge" campaign. Among others, it
targeted al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in the hope of weakening it. Beginning in late April 2007, the
U.S. launched dozens of military operations aimed solely at capturing or killing Mahdi Army
officers, causing the Mahdi Army to strongly resist those raids and impose mounting casualties
on U.S. troops.
So amidst the fog of two decades of DOD and neocon propaganda, how did Iran and Soleimani
get tagged over and over with the "killing Americans" charge, as if they were attacking
innocent bystanders in lower Manhattan on 9/11?
It's just the hoary old canard that Iran was the source of the powerful roadside bombs
called Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) that were being used by many of the Shiite
militias, as well as the Sunni jihadists in Anbar province and the west. Yet that claim was
debunked more than a decade ago by evidence that the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias were
getting their weapons not just from the Iranians but from wherever they could, as well as
manufacturing their own.
As the estimable Iran export, Gareth Porter, recently noted:
The command's effort to push its line about Iran and EFPs encountered one embarrassing
revelation after another. In February 2007 a US command briefing
asserted that the EFPs had "characteristics unique to being manufactured in Iran."
However, after NBC correspondent Jane Arraf confronted the deputy commander of coalition
troops, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, with the fact that a senior military official had acknowledged
to her that US troops had been discovering many sites manufacturing EFPs in Iraq, Odierno was
forced to admit that it was true.
Then in late February 2007, US troops found another cache of parts and explosives for
EFPs near Baghdad, which included shipments of PVC tubes for the canisters that contradicted its
claims . They had come not from factories in Iran, but from factories in the UAE and
other Arab countries, including Iraq itself. That evidence clearly suggested that the Shiites
were procuring EFP parts on the commercial market rather than getting them from Iran.
Although the military briefing by the command in February 2007 pointed to cross-border
weapons smuggling, it actually confirmed
in one of its slides that it was being handled by "Iraqi extremist group members" rather
than by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). And as Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the US
commander for southern Iraq, admitted in a July 6
press briefing , his troops had not "captured anybody that we can directly tie back to
Iran."
On the other hand, what the Iranian Quds forces have actually accomplished in Iraq and Syria
has been virtually expunged from the mainstream narrative. To wit, they have been the veritable
tip of the spear in the eradication of the Islamic State.
Indeed, in Iraq it was the wobbly Iraqi national army that Washington stood up at a cost of
billions, which turned tail and ran when ISIS emerged in Anbar province in 2014. So doing, they
left behind thousands of US armored vehicles, mobile artillery and even tanks, as well as
massive troves of guns and ammo, which enabled the Islamic State to briefly thrive and
subjugate several million people across the Euphrates Valley.
It was also Washington that trained, equipped, armed and funded the so-called anti-Assad
rebels in Syria, which so weakened and distracted Damascus that that the Islamic State was
briefly able to fill the power vacuum and impose its barbaric rule on the citizens of Raqqa and
its environs. And again, it did so in large part with weaponry captured from or sold to ISIS by
the so-called moderate rebels.
To the contrary, the panic and unraveling in Iraq during 2014-2015 was stopped and reversed
when the Iranians at the invitation of Baghdad's Shiite government helped organize and mobilize
the Iraqi Shiite militias, which eventually chased ISIS out of Mosul and Anbar.
Likewise, outside of the northern border areas liberated by the Syrian Kurds, it was the
Shiite alliance of Assad, Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds forces that rid Syria of the ISIS
plague.
Yes, the U.S. air force literally incinerated two great cities temporarily occupied by the
Islamic State -- Mosul and Raqqa. But it was the Shiite fighters who were literally fighting
for their lives, homes and hearth who cleared that land of a barbaric infestation that had been
spawned and enabled by the very Washington neocons who are now dripping red in tooth and
claw.
So we revert to the Donald's act of utter stupidity. On the one hand, it is now evident that
the reason Soleimani was in Baghdad was to deliver an official response from Tehran to a recent
Saudi de-escalation offer. And that's by the word of the very prime minister that Washington
has stood up in the rump state of Iraq and who has now joined a majority of the Iraqi
parliament in demanding that Iraq's putative liberators -- after expending trillions in
treasure and blood -- leave the country forthwith:
Before the vote Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that he
was scheduled to meet with Soleimani a day after his arrival to receive a letter from Iran to
Iraq in response to a de-escalation offer Saudi Arabia had made. The U.S. assassinated
Soleimani before the letter could be delivered by him. Abdul-Mahdi also said that Trump had
asked him to mediate between the U.S. and Iran. Did he do that to trap Soleimani? It is no
wonder then that Abdul-Mahdi is fuming.
At the same time, the positive trends that were in motion in the region just days ago --
-ISIS gone, Syria closing in on the remaining jihadists, Saudi Arabia and Iran tentatively
exploring a more peaceful modus vivendi, the Yemen genocide winding to a close -- may now
literally go up in smoke. As the always sagacious Pat Buchanan observed today,
What a difference a presidential decision can make.
Two months ago, crowds were in the streets of Iraq protesting Iran's dominance of their
politics. Crowds were in the streets of Iran cursing that regime for squandering the nation's
resources on imperial adventures in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Things were going America's
way.
Now it is the Americans who are the targets of protests.
Over three days, crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands and even millions have
packed Iraqi and Iranian streets and squares to pay tribute to Soleimani and to curse the
Americans who killed him.
We have long believed that there is nothing stupider in Washington than the neocon policy
mafia that has wrecked such unspeakable havoc on the middle east as well as upon American
"Not that the benighted, mullah-controlled Iranian regime is comprised of anything which
resembles white hats. One of the great misfortunes of the last four decades is that the
long-suffering people of Iran have not been able to throw-off the cultural and religious
shackles imposed by this theocratic regime or escape the economic backwardness and
incompetence of what is essentially rule by authoritarian clerics."
I get it that maybe Iranians don't have a Walmart in every town, and may not have the
privilege of mortgaging their lives on a Visa or MC – but that's not what I call
backwardness, rather progress. If times are tough, is it the backwardness of their system, or
might crippling sanctions play a small role in that? What "cultural and religious shackles"
might these be? Please be more specific, or I might think you mean that they don't have
instant access to Hollywood blockbusters or something. The horror! Finally – if you
want to use the term "regime", please apply it with a broad brush, maybe even broad enough to
touch on the oh-so-democratic West. Let's just call them "governments", OK?
Nice to see the great David Stockman appear at Unz. Watch him teach Fox Business News
blabbers economics and political realities. Then he stuns them by saying the Pentagon's
budget must be cut:
@Sasha Well and truly spoken. American pop and consumerist culture along with pop drinks
and endless fads, crude music and fast foods are being peddled as markers of serious culture.
They are shoved down the throats of unsuspecting minds in asymmetric commerce as part of an
aggressive campaign to turn the planet into a consumerist backyard for American junk and to
consolidate American hegemony.
The larger point here is that Imperial Washington and its mainstream media megaphones
have so egregiously and relentlessly vilified Iran and falsified the middle east narrative
that the Iranian side of the story has been completely lost --
Iran's foreign minister Zarif has been denied entry into the United States to attend a UN
meeting. Speaking of idiocy in denying Iranians their side of the story. That has been the
imperial modus operandi in appropriating narratives with the complicity of our poor excuse
for journalism, the servile MSM.
@Sasha I agree. If Iranians are really that disgusted by the "cultural and religious
shackles imposed by this theocratic regime or the economic backwardness and incompetence of
what is essentially rule by authoritarian clerics", those clerics wouldn't still be in power.
All they have to do is look at the degeneration of the West from drugs, alcohol, money,
power, coarsening pop culture, pornography, all manners of sexual perversion and they know
they are wise to take a different path.
Culturally, economically, politically, even technologically, the US is on a downward
spiral, courtesy of the Jews. This warmongering perpetuated by the same tribe will eventually
finish us off. China, Russia and Iran have existed for thousands of years. They will have the
last laugh.
Before the vote Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that he was
scheduled to meet with Soleimani a day after his arrival to receive a letter from Iran to
Iraq in response to a de-escalation offer Saudi Arabia had made. The U.S. assassinated
Soleimani before the letter could be delivered by him.
So, Iranian de-escalation was based on a sneak attack against the U.S. Embassy? No. Simple
logic shows that Mahdi is lying. Iran *escalated* by attacking the embassy.
-- What does Stockman suggest as a response to the Iranian sneak attack on the U.S.
Embassy?
-- Why are the voices that are always screaming about 'International Law' not outraged by
Iran's violations?
Given the history of such actions from the Carter era, a strong response was necessary and
inevitable. Iran offered war. And, Trump responded prudently and proportionally.
________
Based on tonight's news, Khameni made a 'show' reprisal that had little impact on U.S.
Forces. (1)
Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops,
but preliminary reports suggest there are no U.S. casualties yet, two sources with
direct knowledge of actions on the ground told Military Times Tuesday night.
Khameni's attack on the embassy was a failure that backfired badly. He is now desperately
trying to back down, because he knows that Iran has no effective defense against U.S.
Military options.
Stockman knew Reagan's first budget was a joke. He wrote it: telling the late Bill Greider
–in real time– that it was a 'Trojan Horse.'
Now he's telling Pompeo to go back to the pig farm but word is the Sec.State is now not
running for a Senate seat. But I tend to believe Pompeo is not directing things
it's coming from Trump's inner circle. Kushner strikes me as more of a neocon and he's
obviously down with what they want in Tel Aviv. Which I think is an attack on Iran Nuclear
capabilities before the end of the summer.
I heard Andrea Mitchell praising Stephen Hadley (Bush Neocon) as a "wise man" who called
this an opportunity for negotiation. That's g one Andrea: it went out when Trump got
rid of the deal Iran was adhering to, which the neocons and Israel didn't want.
I was reading earlier today that American Military Contractor company's stock began soaring
right after the assassination; Ratheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, etc etc
Now Asian market defense contracting company stocks are soaring because Iran has fired
missiles at a couple US bases in Iraq.
Insanity. Hitting your head over and over on a brick wall, while thinking you'll start
feeling better.
I'm sorry to say I voted for this moron; and all because I hated the alternative and he
was flapping his jaws about ending the warring in M.E. I had my doubts from the beginning but
I was willing to give him a chance. Won't be voting in this fall's election. There is not one
candidate worth voting for; none.
Geez, by November we might be in full blown WW3 & elections suspended. who the hell
knows at this point.
As stupid as it gets
-- -- -- -- -- -- –
Well, the Iranians really loused up now. Now Trump and his Israeli loving friends can finally
kick their butts really good. Very bad idea attacking us.
After the latest round of shit-slinging, Washington stinks, Tehran stinks, but Israel is
still smelling like a rose even though they are the instigator of the whole affair.
How do they keep getting away with it each and every time?
This is absurd. Don't lump all generals in together as the same. You might as well say Nazi
generals and Russian generals and British generals and American generals and Japanese
generals are all the same – all equally culpable of equal war crimes in WWII.
Unless you truly believe there is no good and bad sides in all these Middle Eastern wars
this can't be true.
The Americans are aggressors and invaders in the Middle East. For the Iraqis to turn on
the Americans it must mean something.
We get closer to the truth when we see Soleimani as a freedom fighter and Americans as
terrorists.
To lump Soleimani with the American lot is devoid of morals and common sense
All they have to do is look at the degeneration of the West from drugs, alcohol, money,
power, coarsening pop culture, pornography, all manners of sexual perversion and they know
they are wise to take a different path.
Yes, although it is interesting to note that the Iran has been one of the top nations for
sex-change surgeries because the regime would rather change tomboys and sissies into "boys"
and "girls" rather than allow homosexuality or even atypical gender affect. They do avoid
having a pernicious and culturally radicalizing gay lobby though.
Anyway, it's none of our business and if we really had to choose sides in the Saudi vs
Iran conflict then Iran would be the rational choice. Maybe neocon stupidity will help bring
that conflict to a truce as they unite against the USA.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the most influential person in Iraq, is now calling the US an enemy and
threatening Trump personally. If Mahdi Army joins the other Shia groups around the world, big
damage will be done to the US via many means and no american will be able to stay in Iraq.
Embassy could be gone too. US companies working on oil and gas will be kicked out. The
country will move strongly towards Russia and China. All US investment in the Iraq adventure
will be totally lost.
Angering iraqi shia is very stupid US move. They are an ascending force, with young combat
ready population and young and expanding demographics. Last time the US angered the iraqi
shia (2004), it lost the war in Iraq even before it knew it.
This is the result of a declining power not recognizing its decline and making enemies
everywhere.
The 2020s will be a turbulent period of power transition where the US and Europe decline
and the rest of the world rises, the end of the superpower moment and the beginning of a
multipolar world.
Excellent article by a man so principled that as a representative from Michigan he voted
against the Chrysler bail-out.
So please forgive me for pointing out this error:
From the interweb:
A feint (noun) is primarily a deceptive move, such as in fencing or military maneuvering.
It can also mean presenting a feigned appearance. Feint can also be a verb, but in that case
it simply means to execute a feint.
To feign (verb) is to deceive; either by acting as if you're something or someone you're not,
or lying.
There is some overlap between particular meanings of the two words (For example, his
ignorance was a feint, he was feigning ignorance), but mostly they are separate.
Both words come from the French feindre, which means to "pretend, represent, imitate,
shirk".
Thanks for this well-written, passionate but nevertheless lucid analysis.
Yet I feel mention should always be made of US corporate and imperial greed as a main
motive for intervention anywhere in the world. It is about the oil and the profits and it is
highly illuminating to turn to works by non-US authors. A good starting point would be Pino
Solanas classic masterpiece La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) from
1968.
Also read Alfons Goldschmidt's eloquent and committed Die dritte Eroberung Amerikas
(1929). And the recent magnificent overview by Matthieu Auzanneau, Or noir. La grande
histoire du pétrole (2015).
Here is the best short analysis of the crime that was the invasion and conquest of
Iraq:
The Trump presidency has been nothing but neoliberalism and Zionism on steroids and
shouldn't be renewed for a second season. Feel free to convince me otherwise
"In the original instance, of course, Soleimani earned his chops on the battlefield
contending with the chemical weapons-dropping air force of Saddam Hussein during the 1980s.
And Saddam was the invader whose chemical bombs achieved especially deadly accuracy against
often barely armed teenage Iranian soldiers owing to spotting and targeting assistance
rendered by the U.S. air force -- a Washington assisted depredation that a whole generation
of Iranians know all about, even if present day Washington feints (sic) ignorance" and a
whole generation (and more) know that this Washington-assisted depredation was carried out by
the U.S. Administration in which Mr.Stockman served, whether or not he prefers now to "feint"
ignorance of that, too. An Administration which also gave us the Nicaraguan Contra
terrorists, the infamous Iran-Contra deal, Central American death squads, Israel's invasion
of Lebanon & much more. Funny how Mr. Stockman was mum on such matters at the time.
Maybe, like Jimmy Carter, he's found his moral compass since leaving government but wish he
had found it a whole lot sooner. Hate to see a good Harvard Divinity School education go to
waste. No matter, the article makes perfect sense even if it comes a little late.
Whenever I see the kind of absurd foul language employed here by Stockman, I simply stop
reading. What on earth is a "flying f ** ck' anyway, other than a supposed macho signal of
just how big and angry a 'BSD' (to use another swaggering obscenity prevalent on his home
turf) he thinks he is. Perhaps he'd care to explain.
The recent and nearly simultaneous crash of the newish Ukranian 737 in Tehran (with the 15
missiles launched from Iran) may be quite significant – indirect way to hurt the US
(Boeing) again and Israel too – owned by Ukraine's most notorious billionaire
Kolomoisky – and the guy who selected the new comedian President – and amazingly
no US or Israeli passengers on board. Was it an accident or an exquisite punishment?
And when it comes to spillover of those benighted forces into Europe or America, recent
history is absolutely clear: 100% of all Islamic terrorist incidents in the US since they
began in the 1990s were perpetrated or inspired by Sunni jihadists, not Iran or its Shiite
allies and proxies in the region.
It is especially hard to overlook that the terrorists and self-radicalized (mass-)murders
who killed hundreds of Europeans, including my own countrymen, were adherents to the
wahhabist ideology, created, funded and often staffed by the very countries which are the
closest allies of the USA and Israel. And whom they sell hundreds of billions of weapons to
as they wage their so called "war on terror" which is mostly the war to take out Israel's and
Saudi-Arabias enemies.
David Stockman may be at the center of the intelligentsia which built the empire that many
in the world looked up to and admired, and which crude figures like Pompeo, Bolton, Shapiro,
Perle and Nuland are tearing down. But the problems and outright evilness of the empire now
are inherent to its system and not merely a question of sophistication versus
brutishness.
@Sabretache Stockman is just guilty and fake thats all..why he uses such language.
there is not a sincere word in all that he wrote above there, save that there is somethng
important in there that Stockman is losing or wants..and is trying to set up to get
Mass murderer and Assassin in Chief is SIMPLY continuing to execute blood lusty and genocidal
policies established by alliance of TERROR which calls itself 5 eyes but Sovereign, FREEDOM
loving people call 5 headed BEAST.
God Bless Axis of Resistance!
Resist Slavery, TERROR and neoNazis!
This is absurd. Don't lump all generals in together as the same. You might as well say
Nazi generals and Russian generals and British generals and American generals and Japanese
generals are all the same – all equally culpable of equal war crimes in WWII.
Yes indeed, all generals are fundamentally the same. War crimes are not the exclusive
realm of any one nationality or political or religious category.
Hollywood says otherwise, but what Hollywood says is little to do with historical fact and
accuracy.
David Stockman blames "neocon stupidity", but Trump's foreign policy has nothing to do with
stupidity it's planned and it's all about Israel ,"endless wars" , arms manufacturing and
sales , and ensuring that the "war on terror" continues . We live in a Pathocracy and are
governed by psychopaths and narcissists who have no compunction about the killing of
civilians (collateral damage ) ,murder by drone , the destruction of cultural sites, the
killing of 500,000 Iraqui children by sanctions (it was worth it – Madeleine Albright)
and the murder of populist leaders such as Allende .
@Sasha How does the mind develop? A boy grows up loving baseball ,because he grew up
watching it since age 3 or 10 . If he watched soccer or Tennis, that would have been his
favorite game . A blank page is ready for description of murder or love in English or Iranian
language .
It is same about religion ,participation in civic rituals ,enjoying certain shows or music or
theaters, food,consumption,and giving into outside demands rather than to self restraint self
reflection and self observation and self evaluation of the imposed needs .
Mind learns to praise hollow words and illegal amoral immoral activities . Because we don't
appreciate the converse and don't reward the opposite. Gradually society eliminates those
thinkers Very soon we have one sort of thinking everywhere . Very soon adult bullying is
copied by kids from TV and from watching the praise heaped on psychopaths.
This also means IQ gets distorted . Capacity to analyze gets impaired .
,American mind is manufactured mind by outside . BUt the process never stops. It doesn't get
that chance to take internal control at any stage . In childhood and adolescence, when the
time is right to inculcate this habit and enforce this angle or build this trait ,it is not
done at all. Other nations try and other cultures do. Here is the difference between self
assured content mind and nervous expectant mind always on a shopping outing . Most of our
problems in society come from this situation,
I enjoyed reading someone with a Washington resume' tearing into the current crew, too.
And it was a relief to see addressed the accusation about the Iranian official being not only
killed for, but set up by feigned US interest in, peace. Those with a public voice --
especially "journalists" -- who won't even mention this are either inept or corrupt.
But note the condescension towards the people of the Middle East and their "regimes" noted
above, starting with comment #1. Read the column carefully, and you'll see that the criticism
from Mr. Stockman is tactical, not principled. That's because he puts himself above all of
those people over there, including the group shown relative sympathy, who "are no less
civilized and no more prone to sectarian violence than anybody else in this woebegone
region." Ask yourself the writer's purpose of those last four words, and in his use of
"sectarian." Would a more concise "are no less civilized and no more prone to violence than
anybody else" be a little too truthful?
I wonder whether this columnist is being brought in to buttress and/or replace the
discredited one who he describes as "the always sagacious Pat Buchanan." (Those who haven't
should read Mr. Paleoconservative's latest "If Baghdad Wants Us Out, Let's Go!" and the
overwhelmingly negative comments it has drawn.) Heretical to their extents, but both remain
devout Exceptionalians.
After more than a decades worth of failed economic prognostications ( that cost anyone who
listened to him dearly) Stockman is now going to give us foreign policy advice? Remember this
guys only official role was as an OMB appointee in the first term of Ronald Reagan.
@Ronnie Interestingly the plane just happened to be Ukrainian. Could this be the casus
belli the West needs to go ham on Iran? More strikes on Iran justified by this plane
crash and perhaps even sanctions on Russa as no doubt they will try an pin it on them as
well?
@Sasha Stockman is notorious for defending cultures and countries (Russia, China,
Iran, Islam) by belittling them. Paraphrasing: It is wrong for the US to confront Russia,
because they have a third rate economy. or it is wrong for the US to confront China
because China can't project power across the world. . He always takes the elitist
position the US should not attack lessers like Russia, China, etc'. It seems he is
trying to cover his ass against the dreaded charge that he is taking 'the enemy's side'.
"What you want to do is just beam in Melrose Place and 90250 into Tehran because that
is subversive stuff. The young kids watch this, they want to have nice clothes, nice
things . . and these internal forces of dissension beamed into Iran which is,
paradoxically, the most open society, a lot more open than Iraq . . . therefore you have
more ability to foment this dynamic against Iran. The question now is, Choose: beam Melrose
Place -- it will take a long time (ha ha).
On the other hand if you take out Saddam I guarantee you it will have ENORMOUS positive
reverberations that people sitting right next door, young people, in Iran, and many others
will say, The time of such despots is gone, it's a new age."
@Haxo Angmark What a trap DJT fell into! The president has proved himself more of a
neocon patsy, as he was as much set up as the Iranian general, whose name will be forgotten
by week's end in America. The neocons feeding the President a straight diet of cooked intel
and their "never Trump" flunkies in the Senate have killed two birds with one stone inasmuch
as the President's boasting he'd take out Iran's main cultural landmarks will be cast as a
threat of genocide, which the Dems will now use to tar DJT as an intemperate megalomaniac in
the minds of independents, probably ending his chances of winning reelection later this year.
The truth is, America has no dog in the Shiite versus Sunni hunt, which has been going
on for 1300 years in the region. [ ] Needless to say, their Shiite kinsman in Iran were
more than ready to give aid and comfort to the Iraqi Shiite in their struggle against what
by then was perceived as Iran's own mortal enemy
The Sunni regime in Riyadh ceaselessly complain about the treatment of the Arab minority
in Iran even though these are Shia Arabs, The Shia in Iraq are likewise Arabs. Iran is
almost as big as Egypt or Turkey. Being a country of 80 million Shia Persians Iran
could not possibly be conquered by the US without a massive effort, even if the deep state
and joint chiefs wanted to, which they do not. The only time Iran runs into trouble is when
it tries to act abroad as a power independent of both the US and Russia.
After the Iranian revolution the US was regarded as an all powerful enemy that would stage
a coup, and so the Embassy staff, thought to be spies, were taken hostage. America was
totally paralyzed and humiliated. Its raid to rescue the hostages was pathetic and exposed a
total lack of special forces capability. the Islamic republic repudiated the Shah's role as
America's cop on the beat, but it wanted to remain the most dominant power in the region
nonetheless. Already worried by the arms given to Iran under the Shah who also supplied the
Kurds fighting in Iraq, the 1974-75 Shatt al-Arab clashes between the Shah and Saddam's
forces that led to led to 1000 KIAs, Saddam was faced with a radical Shia Iran appealing to
his own oppressed Shia majority. After a series of border clashes with the aggressive
Revolutionary Guards, Saddam predictably decided on an all out attack on Iran. The US backed
Saddam and there was massive support for Iraq from the Soviet Union in the final phase of the
war.
The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran made use of suicide squads of schoolboys
to clear minefields and in human wave attacks and by the end the front lines were well within
Iraqi territory and Saddam had to settle for merely surviving. Iran had linked up with
Assad's minority Alawite regime ruling a Sunni majority, and his Shia allies in Lebanon.
Israeli defence minister and former general Ariel Sharon moved Israeli forces into West
beirut then allowed Phalange gunmen let into palestinian refugee camps (PLO fighters had
already left the city) where they slaughtered thousands of non combatants.
Under the influence of Iranian clerics' interpretations from the war with Saddam
justifying suicide if the enemy was killed in the act, Assad's cat's paw Lebanese Shia
suicide bombed the US marines out of Beirut. Then Palestinians learnt how suicide bombing was
a powerful weapon and in the aftermath of the failure of Camp David 2000 embarked a vicious
series of suicide massacres that destroyed Ehud barak and brought Sharon to power. Iran has
gained influence in the region but ti is difficult to see what the Palestinians have got ot
out of the patronage of Iran, which is first and mainly concerned with itself.
Due entirely to side effects of actions the US took against Saddam's Iraq taken to protect
the current regime in Saudi Arabia Iran has went from strength to strength and they seem to
think that run of luck will continue. Unfortunately for Iran, they are now a very real threat
to Saudi Arabia, and the US knows it cannot put an army in Saudi Arabia to guard it with
outraging Islamic nationalist opinion in that country
Instead of poking its nose into Arab affairs why does Iran, which managed to impoverish
its own middle class in the last three decades and recently had to cut fuel subsidies, not
concentrate on its own business? It seems to be calculating that Trump cannot afford to the
bad publicity of starting a war too close to an election, and so they can make hay while the
sun shines. Or perhaps they are pressing their luck like any good gambler on a roll. The
assassination of Soleimani was intended to be taken a sign that Dame Fortune in the shape of
America has grown tired of their insouciance. I think Iran should cut their losses although
such is not human nature. The dictates of realism according to Mearsheimer mandate endless
offence to gain even the slightest advantage, but he also says a good state must know its
limitations.
@Justsaying America's problems don't have anything to do with soda pop or fast food. Nor
is "consumerism" a serious problem that the world needs to worry about. I like having new
smartphones, fast internet, and the convenience of getting things quickly.
Trump is insane as is the ZUS government and its dual citizens who are calling the shots.
Trump is the reincarnation of the Roman emperor Caligula.
All of this was brought on by the joint attack by Israel and traitors in the ZUS
government on the WTC on 911, blamed on the muslims to give the ZUS the excuse to destroy the
middle east for zionist Israel and their greater Israel agenda.
Isn't Stockman the guy pumping a large investment newsletter scam? Is Unz getting a % of the
scam to promote him? And how about these dumbo boomers who support him. Lmao
Nice to see the great David Stockman appear at Unz. Watch him teach Fox Business News
blabbers economics and political realities. Then he stuns them by saying the Pentagon's
budget must be cut:
Yes, I was slightly surprised and gratified by his views.
'Maria' Bartiromo is/was married to a Joo . 'Nuff said.
That other one, the shrill Daegen McDowell, is also married to a Jew but is even more Zionist
than your average 'Likudnik'. She was a regular on 'Imus in the Morning' but then had a
falling out with Imus and was never back. I hope he haunts her until her demise.
(Purple grinning Satan here)
This is absurd. Don't lump all generals in together as the same. You might as well say
Nazi generals and Russian generals and British generals and American generals and Japanese
generals are all the same – all equally culpable of equal war crimes in WWII.
American censorship ensures that Americans only hear of the greatness of American
Generals. American Generals killed far more civilians with weaponry than opposing Generals in
World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam. Few know about mass slaughters they were responsible
for, like:
@Z-man Taking him out would be boring, if we are talking about hypotheticals, then better
to start isolating Israel and sanctioning them. It will be funny watching them kvetch
I remember 2016. I remember many saying they were voting (or had voted) for Trump to get
out of the endless/pointless Forever Wars, and as often as not they would mention Iran (the
need to not go to war with).
Steve Sailer's six-word summary of US guiding policy from ca. the 1990s to 2010s (and
2020s, so far), " Invade the World, Invite the World (to resettle in the US)," was the
core of DJT's campaign (opposition to them, of course); his core supporter base was motivated
by both, some more one than the other, others strongly by both together.
I'd propose the core Trump base in 2016 was:
– 20%: primarily against "Invade the World" (soft, or neutral, or otherwise on
"Invite")
– 40%: primary against "Invite the World" (soft, neutral, or even supportive of
"Invade")
– 40%: against both Invade and Invite, seeing them as a package deal
I count myself in the third category.
(The proprietor of the Unz Review himself has written that he was for Trump primarily
because of foreign policy, putting him in the first category.)
@freedom-cat "he was flapping his jaws about ending the warring in M.E. I had my doubts
from the beginning but I was willing to give him a chance."
To be fair, he was explicit about getting tough with Iran. That's basically the only
foreign pledge he has kept. All the dialing down of hostilities was a lie.
He has at least killed fewer people in drone strikes than Obama and Bush.
@Sean Sean, your propaganda is old and tired and boring.
You're still shopping at F W Woolworth.
After the Iranian revolution the US was regarded as an all powerful enemy that would
stage a coup, and so the Embassy staff, thought to be spies, were taken hostage.
One major precipitant was the information revealed about how US embassy had been spying on
Iran, when Iranian weavers re-assembled massed of documents that embassy staff had
shredded.
the rest of your screed = hasbara boilerplate. skewing information
Larry Johnson posted this more balanced overview of The Whole Offense:
Since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the United States has done a lot of killing of
terrorists, real and imagined. Yet, the threat of terrorism has not been erased.
I submit that " the threat of terrorism has not been erased " because the wrong
terrorists were being killed.
The real terrorists hive in TelAviv and Washington, DC.
@Mr. Allen BS. The Nazi generals were trying to save the western world and civilization
from the jews; the other generals, whether they knew it or not, were working for the jews to
destroy both. The jews won and have largely obtained their desired end. Just look at Europe
today
@Vaterland Do it. Complete Nordstream2. Withdraw from NATO. It was 1907 that Britain
turned Russia from focusing on Asia to Europe and kicked off the new 30-years war. German
organization and Russian spirit and resources would be a fearsome combination.
If you live in a GOLDen cage, eventually you may develop Stockman syndrome.
This Trump Iran policy seems like pure genius to me. He may be able to obliterate Israel,
Hezbollah and Iran, by goading them with one check-mark on the Obama er um Trump Disposition
Matrix.
When I was a young teen I used to like that song, "Storm the Embassy", by the Stray Cats,
before they had any fame in the states. Decades later the Offspring scored a hit called "The
Kid's Aren't Alright", written in a similar key and chord progression. Groovy
This is the all-encompassing delusion, the stickiest residual brainwashing of old big shots.
The Biggest Big Lie. And you old timers play along with it. Every time.
Stupidity. Stupid my ass.
Wartorn countries are ideal arms-trade entrepots. All the unauditable trillions of stuff
that falls off DoD trucks, it's flooding into Syria and Iraq. CIA sells it. And most of it
sits in safe caches until the next war. Then CIA sells it again. This is CIA's second biggest
profit center, after drugs. And you know this is CIA's war, Right? Right? This is dumb
jarheads dumped in there to hold the bag for TIMBER SYCAMORE. Trump has less workplace
discretion than a McDonald's fry cook. He's CIA's puppet ruler. Puppets are not stupid,
they're inert.
If you're CIA and you've got impunity in municipal law, this is not stupid, this is smart.
This is brilliant. Steal arms from the troops, start a war, sell em to wogs, steal em from
the wogs, sell to other wogs. Repeat. This is the policy and vital interest of the CIA
criminal enterprise that runs your country.
You know it. Say what you actually think ffs. What are they gonna do, send you to
Vietnam?
@Anon If I'm not mistaken, Stockman has been forecasting a market collapse since 2010 or
so. I just checked and in 2013 he recommended selling stocks with end-of-the-world fear
mongering. At some point he and the libertarians' advice will coincide with a major
adjustment or collapse and the scam perpetuates itself. I'm no expert in market timing
myself, but my conclusion is that these guys are basically shills for gold and silver trading
interests, using political scare tactics to drive sales, and in the process shamelessly
costing naive investors to miss the market time and again since it's low in late 2008.
@Carlton Meyer God, if there is one, please save us from such shrill, hysterical female
defenders of the military-industrial-complex as Maria Bartiromo and Degan McDowell. I wonder
how screechy-voiced Maria could say with a straight face that we were, prior to Trump,
"starving the military." Such women, and let's include the women of The View, make good
advertisements for why the 19th Amendment should never have been passed.
David Stockman, though I oppose his libertarianism, is worthy of much credit for going
into the den with such venomous vipers.
Yes indeed, all generals are fundamentally the same. War crimes are not the exclusive
realm of any one nationality or political or religious category.
Still, America leads the world when it comes to killing civilians, POWs, and other war
crimes.
I am with Mr. Allen – we shouldn't lump them all together. American generals, and
the prostitute "statesmen" that give their orders, deserve a special place in hell –
with a guest room, of course, for the likes of Winston Churchill and Bomber Harris.
@Hail The earliest sign we were betrayed was when post-election, pre-Inauguration Trump
said he wouldn't go after Cankles. Most people didn't even notice, or still believed he was
playing 32-dimensional underwater quantum chess.
@Vaterland Germany still under American (see Jewish) occupation huh? I still here
Americans tell me that those European countries are begging for American defence. This is an
American trait of arrogance, they think Europeans actually want Americans occupying us and
that they are doing us a favour.
I bet they would hit our countries with sanctions and other punishment if we threatened to
kick them out just like is the case with Trump demanding billions from Iraq to pay for an air
force base that Yankeed built to launch terror raids against Iraqis.
I bet most Germans do not even know about the terrorist occupation of Deutschland by
America where they staved and raped with impunity. Americans are truly sickening and nobody
would care if they got nuked save for a few Anglos
Regardless of our opinion about General Qassem Soleimani, Trump targeted killing him was for
his own personal grudge against Soleimani -- that was independent of the official US policy
toward Iran.
Over the last couple of years, in the heat of twitter exchanges between Trump and
President Rouhani, Trump was using his usual colorful language – street mob style
– he was insulting Rouhani on twitter while president Rouhani kept his cool –
restraining himself to engage at the street level exchange with Trump -- meanwhile, Gen.
Soleimani seized on the occasion and replied to Trump's insults; he taunted Trump, called him
"Bartender, Casino manager, Mobster" etc. and threatened to go after his properties worldwide
-- you can check Online history of Soleimani's tweets about Donald Trump. Here is a sample
that New York Post had published;
As we all know Donald Trump does not appreciate threats, and if he gets the chance he
punch back harder, and that's what has really happened; Donald Trump's personal grudge
against Soleimani had led to his assassination; just the way Street Mobs eliminate their
opponents; surely, that seems trivial, but these days, the world is governed by fake leaders
who won't hesitate to use the power of their office to boost their own ego -- even at their
own nation's expense.
Regardless of our opinion; General Soleimani was a brave soldier, a principled man who has
dedicated his life to his nation, and that deserves respect -- just as Ernesto "Che" Guevara
and Neilson Manddala did.
@Miro23 To perhaps soon be replaced by an even older, and definitely more confused
successor come next January. The only saving grace would be if Biden doesn't know how to
tweet. But he's every much the Zionist as is Trump, and has said so in the past. With a
non-working brain, which is where Trump's lost brain is heading, Biden will believe whatever
bullshit his neoliberal advisors feed him. Who is there to save us?
You bet, I'm happy to see a Washington name on these pages, because I've been convinced
for years a lot of the stuff we talk about here is pretty much mainstream or mainstreamable
thought that's been shoved aside by high-motivation rent-seekers of all sorts.
" . . . [N]ote the condescension towards the people of the Middle East . . .". Yes, I did.
I don't know squat about foreign policy, but people who sense they're being looked down on or
feel they're being used will sometimes want to get back at those who've patronized them when
the opportunity arises. I wish our leaders would take that platitude to heart.
Foolish elitists like Stockman advocate for the failed policies of the past.
From 1979 to 2020, 41 years most of our politically astute appeased Iran. In the early
80's Reagan sunk half of Iran's navy and they quieted down fora few years.
Since 1988 foolish political elites who thought they new better began appeasing again.
Seems only Reagan learned from History how appeasement helped Hitler.
Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama all used appeasement. Iran grew stronger and more
influential.
Obama foolishly tried to buy peace by releasing $150 billion of frozen Iranian assets,
Iran spent it on Missle, Nuclear technologies and funded terrorism.
President Trump is reverting back to the lessons of Historyand trying to clean up Obama's
mess.
I pray we reelect him in 2020 and give him 4 more years to save America from the deluded
academics.
From 1979 to 2020, 41 years most of our politically astute appeased Iran. In the early
80's Reagan sunk half of Iran's navy and they quieted down fora few years.
Since 1988 foolish political elites who thought they new better began appeasing
again.
Why not just save time and write Iran Delenda Est , maybe in all-caps, a few
times?
@TomSchmidt Yes he does. He was married to a German teacher and was stationed in Dresden.
He touched on many of the issues of trust and fear in this speech to the Bundestag. Years
before Merkel took office. Different times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NZQZQLV7tE
The other mandatory ritual incantation of US public Juche is to vilify the official enemy.
Even pseudo-gonzo mavericks like Taibbi find they must do this. Stockman's new tweak of the
government-issue boilerplate is admirable for its subtlety, by comparison with Taibbi's
abject obeisance to the war line.
"Not that the benighted, mullah-controlled Iranian regime is comprised of anything which
resembles white hats. One of the great misfortunes of the last four decades is that the
long-suffering people of Iran have not been able to throw-off the cultural and religious
shackles imposed by this theocratic regime or escape the economic backwardness and
incompetence of what is essentially rule by authoritarian clerics."
As a founding member of the G-77 Iran brought together 80 per cent of the world's
population. When the US took to manifest aggression after the WTC fell down, who did the G-77
choose to lead it? Iran. Iran brokered the Tehran Consensus, which unites more countries and
people than NATO and doesn't blow shit up. The Non-Aligned Movement made Iran their
nuclear/chemical disarmament envoy for peaceful coexistence. Half the world's people and
two-thirds of its countries have made Iran a leader of the world. Why? Because they defend
the UN Charter. They actually know what's in Article 2(4) and Article 39 and Article 41. Do
you?
In objective human rights terms, Iran sucks about as much as the US in terms of three of
the highest-level human rights indicators, outperforms the US in terms of openness to
external human rights scrutiny, and falls short of US in terms of reporting compliance
(although the US got graded very leniently on its delinquent CAT reporting while it ran its
worldwide torture gulag.) So you don't have to do new vocal stylings on BAD BAD DOUBLEPLUSBAD
ENEMY BAD. You can actually consult the facts. Imagine that.
@Just passing through I have very ambivalent feelings towards the USA, in the past and
present. Complex topic. Simple analogy: George C. Marshall looks like the twin-brother of my
grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht. Sons of Europe, at war with Europe; now increasingly
no longer European and a threat to Europe as their empire degrades. I see no reason to hate
the American people as a whole, there's millions of good hearted, compassionate and
reasonable people living in America today. Just look at Tulsi Gabbard's events. But they,
too, are held hostage of this evil Empire. Separate peoples and governments; Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn too lived under the Soviet regime.
I do hate Mike Pompeo though. And I'm not ashamed of it.
President Trump is reverting back to the lessons of Historyand trying to clean up
Obama's mess.
You are correct. Trump inherited problems from the prior Obama and Bush administrations.
Fortunately, Trump is winning.
Khameni's "retaliation" caused no damage. The high visibility launch covered live by FARS
was a PR stunt to placate his domestic audience. (1)
"Optically Quite Dramatic" But Officials Confirm No US Casualties From Iranian
Missile Strike
[Iran launched] missiles and purposely miss their intended targets.
Iran has superior missile technology that can hit whatever they want – this could
be in an attempt to save face as a public relations event for its citizens while attempting
to de-escalate the situation and avoid war.
At time of writing, it is unclear if we're headed to open war with Iran, though it is seeming
more and more likely by the hour.
So, I feel the need to remind everyone that they need to be careful not to commit
sedition.
In wartime, sedition can be a very serious crime.
Largely, we have not had people in the United States going to jail for anti-war protests
since the World Wars, but a war with Iran will be the biggest war the US has been involved in
since World War Two, and there is going to be a lot of opposition to it, so it is probable
that there will be actions done to chill speech by making examples of people who protest the
war too hard.
Stockman is a curious gloom and doomer. He reliably rants about the permanent war economy and
the biggest defense budget in the world but that's as far as he goes. Like Paul Craig
Roberts, his propaganda delivering contemporary, he offers a childish oversimplification of
how things work.
When things fall apart the cops and the troops will shoot the citizens and protect the
rich. Meanwhile, before things fall completely apart, propaganda specialists like Stockman
shoot the unsuspecting citizens with propaganda to protect the rich.
The rich learned long ago to divide the lower classes into the obedient subservient voters
who love them and the rest of the poor who don't matter because their brothers and sisters
protect the rich. What better time to divide, conquer and stage more international tensions
than right now?
@A123 Another fine example of American exceptionalism.
There is zero evidence that the American contractor killed, was killed by Kata'ib Hezbollah.
It fits the classic Israeli false flag.
The US "retaliates" by killing Iraqis who are the Kata'ib Hezbollah.
It is inconceivable to you that Iraqis may be upset that the country who invaded Iraq in
2003, completely destroyed the infrastructure, built a massive fortified Embassy, and sold
off its assets to Jewish interests, primarily, just might be upset that that same country has
just massacred the Iraqis who saved the country from ISIS. It had to be Iran behind it,
because all Iraqis are grateful for the 2003 US invasion and all of the benefits of
occupation that flowed from that. The million Iraqis that died are irrelevant.
Even Stockman doesn't get the Baathists. They don't care about your religious beliefs.
They care that your religious beliefs become politicized. Sure Saddam and Assad were
minorities, but one was a Sunni, the other a Shi'ite, but both Ba'athists. Both kept the lid
on extremists irrespective of religious beliefs. Stockman's reference to Bush 41 incitement
and the subsequent backlash is held up as some sort of proof of bad Sunnis. If the Pope
successfully goaded German Roman Catholics to take up arms against Protestants, do you think
that it just may be, that a Protestant backlash might be severe in places where Protestants
were the majority? Nope, it's got to be Hitler's fault, or maybe even Iran's.
@SolontoCroesus The assassination of was Soleimani was a deliberately stupid and
counterproductive act by America because that is the way to send a message that you are a
force to be reckoned with and mean what you say. Costly signalling is honest signalling. In
this case the US is signalling they are beyond the rhetoric of the last thirty years and
willing to get kinetic .
Iran and their theology of suicide martyrs is the greatest thing that ever happened to the
Israeli right, influenced by Shia suicide bombing driving the US marines out of Lebanon the
Palestinian massacres of Israeli civilians non combatants got a wall built pening them up,
took Sharon to the premiership, and made Israelis turn their back on Ehud Barak. No Israeli
leader would now dream of offering what Barak did while he was PM.
Iran is to big to be occupied and that is a fact. What can they be so worried about except
ceasing to play independent great power in the Arab mainly Sunni Middle East. Well they are
not that powerful. I think the leadership of Iran is taking the free ride they have been
getting getting for granted. They did not overthrow Saddam, America did and Iran gained got a
windfall.
Saddam was overthrown because the threat he represented to Saudi Arabia had to be
neutralised so the US army could be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, where its infidel presence
was causing outrage and resentment. John Bolton got sacked, and a few days later, Iran gets
the bright idea to not just threaten Saudi Arabia, but launch–or at least not forbid
their Houthie protégés to launch–blatant drone attacks on vital Saudi oil
facilities (Sept 2019) thus forcing Trump to send more and more troops there. Iran was
sending a message: we can and we will.
My reading of the American government is that their killing of Soleimani was a sign that
for them Iran has entered the danger zone where something more that rhetoric and sanctions
will be used. Iran can still turn back and be forgiven, but if they choose to go on and take
the consequences of ignoring the costly (and therefore sincere) signal that the US has sent,
so be it.
This was as stupid as it gets so far. Confidently expect even stupider actions of the Empire
in its impotent rage, now that it is losing its grip. Ever since Iraq invasion, the Empire
was undermining itself more efficiently than its worst enemies could have hoped for.
Since it's apparent that Israel is making our MENA foreign policy and that the foaming at the
mouth Zionists want to start a hot shooting war with Iran, using their American mercs, which
US city should be sacrificed to Moloch, the G-d of Israel, to start this war?
New York is the safest bet, since there are tens of thousands loyal Jew sayanim living
there who would gladly give all to start a war against Iran. Using the time-tested technique
of staging a false flag.
Hamid was only recently (2017) handed a (cheap) US-citizenship for services rendered to
the empire, along with a free pass to settle his family in the US (Sacramento).
War-nut, dump-refugees-on-Middle-America-advocate, and empire-pusher John McCain is, I am
sure, saluting the flag of Empire in his grave, a tear in his eye at the perfect alignment of
every aspect of this saga of Nawres Hamid.
@Mr. Allen What about the RAF generals and 8th airforce generals who killed millions of
German women and children in WW2? Were they more civilized than Soleimani?
@Alistair One thing you got right is that the dead Iranian general belongs with murderers
and terrorists like Mandela and Che. He was as much a piece of garbage as them.
Jun 18, 2019 4 Times the US Threatened to Stage an Attack and Blame it on Iran
The US has threatened to stage an attack and blame it on Iran over and over in the last
few years. Don't let a war based on false pretenses happen again.
Mar 27, 2019 The MIC and Wall Street Rule The World: Period!
To dismiss Suleimani as yet another thug, then praise the Shiite militia for driving ISIS
from Iraq without acknowledging that it was Soleimani that organized and led that battle
(from the front) is a little unfair.
@A123 Says the warmonger. The US needs to get the hell out of the Mideast, period. We are
fighting (((someone else's))) war.
@Mark James
Kushner strikes me as more of a neocon and he's obviously down with what they want in
Tel Aviv. Which I think is an attack on Iran Nuclear capabilities before the end of the
summer.
Ya think? The Kushner family from father to son have publicly declared themselves Israel's
most loyal sons. They couldn't have found a better man to be president, a stupid puppet goy
as part of the family so they can continue to pull the puppet strings in the background. It's
the way (((these people))) operate, for thousands of years. Never the front man, always
directing things from the shadow.
@Mike P This stance is very understandable but I believe common sense should tell us
otherwise. There can be little doubt that since its colonial war in the Philippines, the US
has led the pack in terms of numbers of people killed in what used to be called the Third
World.
However, I am quite certain the way many people look at the US today (based on all those
millions of poor devils killed in the colonies), wishing their leaders a special place in
hell, is no different from how one could look at the English a little over a century ago
(Sepoy Mutiny, Sudan, Opium War, etc.). Or, for that matter, how the inhabitants of the
Italian states might look at the French during the late 1400s and early 1500s. And what about
the German Order in the Baltic, the Byzantines, the Romans etc. etc.?
In other words the US can point to a venerable but sad number of precedents to their own
criminal operations abroad. It is impossible to define the worst offender among all those
included in the long list of evildoers.
Anyone who enters another country, carrying arms and without the permission of the local
inhabitants, deserves to be killed. It is that simple. Unfortunately, because since times
immemorial most who do that somehow escape their just fate, one sees the same thing happening
again and again.
As usual, this has been turned into an Israel and Jew demonizing circle jerk, save a few sane
commenters.
Let's examine the imbecility of this site:
A Jewish, gay, open borders advocate multimillionaire selects "chosen ones", the gold star
commenters who are posting wily nilly to dominate the discourse –
who all happen to be Muslim, Latino, foreign born or rabidly Anti- American?
As commenters rage about the take over of the world by Jews, who flood America with --
–
Muslims, Latinos, and foreign borns, and shove the Alphabet Mafia down our throats.
You couldn't sell this as a straight to DVD screenplay. It's that absurd.
Instead of poking its nose into Arab affairs why does Iran, which managed to impoverish
its own middle class in the last three decades and recently had to cut fuel subsidies, not
concentrate on its own business?
Have you been living under a rock?
The US froze (stole) billions in Iranian assets post revolution. The complaints about Obama
"paying" Iran for the JCPOA, were nothing but a partial return of Iranian assets. So, the
Iranians were short billions for 30 years, which could have been used to rebuild. It's kind
of like building a house and finding out a big chunk of the cash in your bank account has
been frozen, illegally, by the bank. It's there, but you have no access to, or benefit of,
it.
Of course all of the sanctions have nothing to do with Iran's problems. In particular, any
country that bought oil from Iran would also be sanctioned, causing a massive drop in
revenue, plays no part in the economic difficulties. Additionally, Iran exercising its rights
under an international treaty – the NPT, which the US repudiates in Iran's case,
thereby removing another large source of revenue, is not a factor either. At least, not to
you.
The best way to prevent more American soldiers being killed is to keep alive the man who
has been killing so many of them for 20 years? [irony]
That's exactly what is being done -- men most responsible for American soldiers being
killed are being kept alive:
David Petraeus -- still alive
Robert Kagan -- -still alive
Benjamin Netanyahu -- still alive
George Bush -- – still alive
A year or so ago Mike Morrell commented that "US needs to send maps and crayons to Iran,
to demonstrate to them where their borders are: 'Iran HERE, Iran, NOT there.' "
I couldn't get over the irony: USA circles Iran, 7000 miles from continental USA, and
somehow Iran is trespassing outside its borders?
Morrell:
"Have the Iranians and the Russians pay a little price. . . . They were supplying
weapons that killed Americans . . . kill them covertly . . . I want to scare Assad . . . I
want to bomb his offices in the middle of the night, I want to destroy his presidential
aircraft . . . I want to destroy his helicopter. . . . I am not advocating assassinating
him – I'm not advocating that: I'm advocating going after what he thinks is his power
base . . ."
@SteveK9 AL CIADA aka ISIS is a creation of the CIA and the Mossad and MI6 and NATO aka
the ZUS and Israel and Britain.
This war in the mideast was brought on by the JOINT Israeli and ZUS attack on the WTC on
911, which was blamed on the muslims to give the ZUS the excuse to destroy the mideast for
Israel.
just as Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Neilson Manddala did.
Would that be the same "Che" Guevara that thought Negroes were inferior, and Nelson
Mandela who was convicted of attempting to blow up a power station that would have killed
dozens of innocent people?
Soleimani rarely targeted civilians. For those who would point to the suicide bombings in
Israel, I would remind you that all Israelis over the age of 18 will be, or have been, in the
armed forces, and are subject to call up even after discharge.
It's all about Israel. Netanyahu has been plotting scheming and demanding that we, that the
U.S. bomb Iran back to the stone ages for nigh onto twenty years. He has even issued coded
and veiled threats to nuke Iran himself.
Trump is a Zionist collaborator and he is Netanyahu's shabbos goy. He has willingly
co-operated in turning over the U.S. military to be Israel's running dog.
America is a Christian majority country, and Bret Stephens is absolutely correct. The Jews
are an intellectually superior people. Us mere Goyim, are by comparison, utterly stupid.
America does not genuinely and honestly support Israel. America has been hornswoggled by
the superior intelligence and guile of the Jewish people to support the Jew state.
When the Jews decided to set up their own country at the turn of the twentieth century,
they knew that they would need the support of Christendom. To that end they initiated a
psy-op, a psychological operation tasked with rewriting Christian theology.
Up until the turn of the twentieth century Christian theology had held that the coming of
Jesus Christ had negated all of God's covenants with the Jews. This was known as, replacement
theology. That, in essence, Christians had become God's chosen people.
As a consequence, down through the ages, Christians and Jews had been at odds. Christ
killer was a common epithet and there were many pogroms.
Jews would have been aware that there was an obscure Christian theology that held, that
God had not revoked his covenants with the Jews. That God's covenants with the Jews remained
intact and were still in force.
This obscure theology was being preached by a ne'er do well preacher named Cyrus Scofield.
What the Jews did, and surely this was, what is known as, "Jew genius", they financed Cyrus
on two trips to Europe.
What the Jews did, was to take this obscure dispensationalist christian theology and write
it into the King James version of the bible as study notes. When Scofield returned from
Europe, he had the manuscript of the Scofield study bible. It is presumed that Rabbi's and
yeshiva students produced it.
It was published, produced and distributed by the very Jewish Oxford University Press,
which still holds the patent on it, and periodically updates it to keep up with changing
times in the Middle East.
There is an ample historical trail that validates this thesis.
There is also an historical trail that reveals that today's Jews, Ashkenazim Jews, are not
descendants of the biblical era Jews, that they are Jewish converts from the land of
Khazar.
More, that the circumstances of their conversion to Judaism was a process that selected
for intelligence and drive and that is why today's Jews are an intellectually superior,
driven and successful, albeit, artificial people.
Artificial, as they are not a people that occurred naturally, over time and in a land of
their own.
" . . . [N]ote the condescension towards the people of the Middle East . . .". Yes, I
did. I don't know squat about foreign policy, but people who sense they're being looked
down on or feel they're being used will sometimes want to get back at those who've
patronized them when the opportunity arises. I wish our leaders would take that platitude
to heart.
This is a product of American exceptionalism, and it is not confined to the Middle East.
The overwhelming majority of Americans refuse to accept that others may be just fine with
their own form of government, economic system, and culture.
@SolontoCroesus Note that it has been the white man, not the jew, not the nigger, and not
the tranny, who has been the principle architect of such death and destruction.
Aug 8, 2016 "I want to scare Assad" Mike Morell on Charlie Rose
Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, discusses the need to put pressure on
Syria and Russia. The full conversation airs on PBS on August 8th, 2016.
@Rich In the super-liberal town where I live, garbage gets separated: plastics here,
paper there, banana peels there.
If Solemeini is "as much a piece of garbage as Mandela, Che," then what category of
garbage were Churchill and Stallin?
FDR -- same piece of garbage as Churchill – Stalin, or more like Solemeini?
How about Arthur "Bomber" Harris -- same garbage, or different?
When Solemeini is coordinating military engagements with US military leaders, is he "as
much a piece of garbage as Mandela, Che" or is he more like Kagan and Lady Lindsey?
@9/11 Inside job You are right, stupidity has nothing to do with it, its well thought out
and dictated by Israel. The 'tail actually wags the dog.' Americans (most) will never get it
as they are trapped in a bubble while the rest of the world has realized it. In Europe the
common folks have while the politicians still have to pretend.
When the hour of awakening arrives, I will have no sympathy for the common Jews as they
remain silent today. And Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself.
What "cultural and religious shackles" might these be? Please be more specific, or I
might think you mean that they don't have instant access to Hollywood blockbusters or
something. The horror!
The Shah was notorious for encouraging young women to emulate the West and wear miniskirts
and such.
At first glance, it seemed like a positive change for the better. (who approves of burkas,
for instance). But as we all know by now, the ((cultural elites)) of the West, are feverishly
using liberalism to transform the societies they dominate into moral and spiritual
sewers.
[insert here photo of Madonna or Miley or some other gutter skank as role model for little
girls)
In a well-known case, the 'brutal' rapist of a ten year old Austrian boy, at a public
swimming pool, had his conviction set aside by the high court, because not enough sympathy
was shown to the rapist's cultural proclivities. This is a society that is spiritually dead.
Contrast that with Iran's equally well-known treatment of men who rape boys, by hanging them
by their necks from cranes, for all to witness.
Iran, clearly has a lot to teach the dying ((murdered)) West.
If headscarves are the price of female dignity and honor, then I suppose it really isn't
all that big of a deal, especially when you consider the alternative in the West.
[I'm not posting a photo of Kardashian or some other skank, because you all know what I
mean]
@Sean bbs.chinadaily.com .cn :"Beirut marine [barracks]bombing was Mossad false flag
operation "
'I reported that Marines had been sent there to become the focus of a major incident . The
Mossad is to arrange for a number of our Marines to be killed in an accident to be blamed on
the Arabs! This will be used to inflame American public opinion to help lead us into war '
Dr. Beter, a Pentagon analyst .
Not possibly as stupid as declaring openly that you want to deliberately commit war crimes on
public record.
Of course, when you have guys cheer leading you that couldn't find Iran on a map if their
life depended on it, you might not notice:
Fox host defends America committing war crimes: "I don't care about Iranian cultural
sites and I'll tell you why. If they could they would destroy every single one of our
cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it" pic.twitter.com/AJolDVtzJR
For everyone who wants a refresher on how this is defined as a war crime, the Red Cross
has a great section on the evolution of these particular protocols in history. I would highly
recommend the section titled:
"Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property"
Which starts:
"Article 1 of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property defines
cultural property, for the purposes of the Convention, irrespective of origin or ownership,
as:
(a) movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every
people, such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular;
archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic
interest; works of art; manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or
archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of books
or archives or of reproductions of the property defined above " https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule38
Note also that the US did not sign until 2009. The reasons given are outlined here –
main one being*:
"The objections raised by DoD at the time were based on the perceived inability to meet the
Convention's obligations in the event of nuclear warfare. With the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War, DoD removed its objection to ratification." http://usicomos.org/hague-convention-and-usicomos/
Peace.
*Note: This is actually a great starting point for those of us who want to prevent
preemptive use of nuclear weapons by our government. The DoD is fully aware that nuclear
strikes against population centers will be in violation of the very treaties that they have
signed onto in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What about the RAF generals and 8th airforce generals who killed millions of German
women and children in WW2? Were they more civilized than Soleimani?
I guess I opened a can of worms I didn't mean to I am an American and understand that
Americans are not as innocent or as magnanimous as our history books may make it.
But I had also assumed most people would agree that in general, American generals (and
Russian generals) would be seen as on the "right side of history" and hence morally
infinitely better as compared to Japanese or Nazi generals.
To the extent that is true, we shouldn't be lumping them morally together as the author
here is trying to lump American and Iranian generals together.
In my world view, Americans are aggressors in the Middle East today, Iranians are not. So
lumping them together is to refuse to see right and wrong .
Back to WWII: most people in the world today are probably happy they are not under
Japanese or German rule. So I assume my statements about Nazis and ally generals were
correct.
As for whether most people in the world today would be happy from American / Western
imperial rule, I would say yes to that. BUT does that REALLY make WWII just another evil war
where evil won and where Nazi generals and American and RAF and Russian generals are the same
as Japanese and Nazi generals???
@Sean bbs.chinadaily.com .cn:" Beirut Marine[barracks]bombing was a Mossad false flag
operation"
" I reported that Marines had been sent there to become the focus of a major incident . The
Mossad is to arrange for a number of our Marines to be killed in an incident to be blamed on
Arabs! This will be used to inflame American public opinion to help us lead into war " Dr.
Beter , a Pentagon analyst
Looks like the Empire decided not to escalate further the war it started with Iran. Optimists
would say that Trump at least shows some wisdom after utter stupidity of engaging in
terrorism. Pessimists would say that the Empire is simply afraid. I am on the fence.
@A123 Thanks for doing your part to introduce some sanity here.
Rather obviously, Iran needs to get it together. I get that it's unhappy that Trump was
elected, and wasn't removed from office as the Democrats promised them, so they could get
back to the Obama giveaway.
But, hands down, Iran wins the competition for the worst handling of relations with the
United States since Trump took the oath.
Now, the ayatollah's train wreck has resulted in the death of his beloved Soleimani.
It's very interesting to learn that Soleimani worked alongside US generals. So far none of
them have resigned their commissions; that tells me they have no balls and are fine with
following orders to go over the cliff with Trump, Pompous, and the rest of the DC Dunces.
The Axis of Resistance will be shouting "MAGA!" as they drive out US killers:
Make
America
Go
Away
I think Trump read the first few chapters of "Dune" and decided he wanted to play Emperor.
Too bad he didn't read to the end where the Emperor's landing party is captured and the
Empire gets kicked hard.
A military delegation from a group of Russian troops in Syria visited the Iranian embassy to
pay tribute and express condolences to the Iranians in connection with the death of General
Suleymani, commander of the Kods IRGC Iran, as a result of the American strike. Wreaths were
laid from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and directly from our group of
forces in Syria.
In the photo from the Iranian embassy as part of the delegation, the commander of the group
of forces (forces) of the Armed forces of the Russian Federation in the Syrian Arab Republic,
General Alexander Chayko.
Foreign Policy (FP): What will Iran do to retaliate?
DP: Right now they are probably doing what anyone does in this situation: considering
the menu of options. There could be actions in the gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz by proxies
in the regional countries, and in other continents where the Quds Force have activities.
There's a very considerable number of potential responses by Iran, and then there's any
number of potential U.S. responses to those actions
Given the state of their economy, I think they have to be very leery, very concerned
that that could actually result in the first real challenge to the regime certainly since the
Iran-Iraq War.
FP: Will the Iraqi government kick the U.S. military out of Iraq?
DP: The prime minister has said that he would put forward legislation to do that,
although I don't think that the majority of Iraqi leaders want to see that given that ISIS is
still a significant threat. They are keenly aware that it was not the Iranian supported
militias that defeated the Islamic State, it was U.S.-enabled Iraqi armed forces and special
forces that really fought the decisive battles.
How credible is this line that Iran has a tottering economy and that the 'regime' is
clinging to power by a thread and so therefore cannot risk the further instability of a
war?
Well, David Petraeus does not seem the most reliable person in this world.
If you take into account that he supported all the lies of his admnistration to unlseashed
Iraqi invasion and alleged WOT when what it was the remodelation of rge ME and looting of its
resources. And I fear he made his fortune vand caree in Iraq...by looting and lying...
Twitter vid of Orthodox
service for Soleimani correlates his Mission with that Of Jesus's Mission. An amazing and
truthful one minute thank you from the Christians of Syria for his efforts:
"'All what Qassem Soleimani did was stand up for Christians against ISIS and Al Qaeda'
"A mass was held in the evangelical church of Aleppo, Syria to honor the martyrdom of
General Soleimani who had an essential role in the liberation battle of Aleppo against
US-backed Jihadists."
Compared to Soleimani, Trump is the town drunk lying in the gutter awaiting the police van
to take him to the drunk tank.
Several barflies have said it's beyond time for China and Russia to arise and collectively
put a stop to this madness. As reported today, China will likely delay the implementation of
the first phase of the Trade Deal and a high level delegation met with Iraq's president and
council today to discuss arms and economic assistance. Russia's already involved with Iraq
through the regional anti-terrorist command post in Baghdad. Putin's been very quiet; not
even the usual notice of condolences sent to Iran was noted or published by the Kremlin.
Tomorrow's Orthodox Christmas, so perhaps in Putin's message to Russia he'll say something
further. But you can be sure that behind the scenes much is happening.
...no coherent plan was behind the Trump administration's cold-blooded murder of Qassem
Soleimani.
It was an act of pure stupid. A dumb 'miscalculation'. Another example of the ignorant
hubris in the US State Department that almost brought them into direct conflict with Russia in
February 2014, when they failed to comprehend the strategic and cultural significance of Crimea
and tried to migrate the Kiev 'Maidan' coup to Sevastopol.
I can pretty much guarantee none of those who advised Trump to assassinate Qassem
Suleimani saw this coming. Suleimani has been elevated in status to a martyr on the level of
Hussein. https://t.co/xUl7Q5x4BG
-- Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) January 4, 2020
This one, while posing a less imminent risk of superpower confrontation, is potentially
disastrous for US interests in the region, and risks monumental loss of life in any resultant
conflict between Iranian and US military forces.
It seems many people are not yet grasping the seismic shifts going on, and are still
thinking in terms of this being the prelude to another imperial regime-change operation like
those in Iraq, Libya and the failed attempt in Syria.
It isn't. Not even slightly. It is a whole new and unknown situation, and where it ends is
currently anyone's guess.
Threats from the ever bombastic fool Trump, like these towards Iran's culture
.targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years
ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those
targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more
threats!
and towards Iraq , might
bolster the impression that the empire has the initiative and many cards to play, but does
it?
What actually can it do against a military far more well-funded and well-supported than
anything it has confronted in recent years? Especially now in a situation where almost the
entire Shia Middle East has become united in wanting US forces out of the region.
Folks, this is the beginning of the end for the Empire. Yes, I know, this sounds
incredible, yet this is exactly what we are seeing happening before our eyes. The very best
which the US can hope for now is a quick and complete withdrawal from the Middle-East.
This is pretty extreme, and I'm not entirely convinced he's correct here, but he shows his
reasoning, and it's fairly compelling, and I urge you to read this linked article and others in
his recent output for a point of view that goes beyond the less than adequate "bloody Americans
doing it again" narrative we are getting from some sources.
Iran must retaliate for this outrage perpetrated against them. The US is compelled by its
own rhetoric and self-perception as invincible to respond to this retaliation with
disproportionate force.
Conflict of some kind seems inevitable, and, as the Saker sees it, this will be a conflict
the US can't ultimately win:
So what next? A major war against Iran and against the entire "Shia crescent"? Not a good
option either. Not only will the US lose, but it would lose both politically and militarily.
Limited strikes? Not good either, since we know that Iran will retaliate massively. A
behind-the-scenes major concession to appease Iran? Nope, ain't gonna happen either since if
the Iranians let the murder of Soleimani go unpunished, then Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar
al-Assad and even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be the next ones to be murdered. A massive air
campaign? Most likely, and initially this will feel good (lots of flagwaving in the USA), but
soon this will turn into a massive disaster.
Trump's threat, however, rings hollow. First, his tweet constitutes de facto evidence of a
war crime (Section 5.16.2 of the US Department of Defense Law of War Manual prohibits threats
to destroy cultural objects for the express purpose of deterring enemy operations), and as
such would likely not be implemented by US military commanders for whom niceties such as the
law of war, which forbids the execution of an unlawful order, are serious business.
Of more relevance, however, is the fact that Trump has been down this road before, when he
threatened massive military retaliation against Iran for shooting down an unarmed drone over
the Strait of Hormuz last May. At that time, he was informed by his military commanders that
the US lacked the military wherewithal to counter what was expected to be a full-spectrum
response by Iran if the US were to attack targets inside Iran.
In short, Iran was able to inflict massive harm on US and allied targets in the Middle
East region, and there was nothing the US could do to prevent this outcome.
Ritter thinks the recent announcement by Iran that it is committed to ending all
restrictions on uranium enrichment might give the US a pretext to attack using the one clear
advantage it has – nuclear weapons.
Trump has hinted that any future war with Iran would not be a drawn-out affair. And while
the law of war might curtail his commanders from executing any retaliation that includes
cultural sites, it does not prohibit the US from using a nuclear weapon against a known
nuclear facility deemed to pose a threat to national security.
This is the worst-case scenario of any tit-for-tat retaliation between Iran and the US, and
it is not as far-fetched as one might believe.
The Saker also considers it quite possible the US or Israel would resort to nuclear weapons,
but thinks this also would be ultimately self-defeating:
US/Israeli nukes: yes, unlike Iran, they have nukes. But what they lack are good targets.
Oh sure, then can (and will) strike at some symbolic, high-visibility, targets and they can
nuke cities. But "can" does not mean that this is a smart thing to do. The truth is that Iran
does not offer any good targets to hit with nukes so using nukes against Iran will only make
the determination of Iranians (and they allies) go from "formidable" to "infinite". Not
smart.
Whether or not we agree this is the beginning of the end of empire, a messy open-ended
conflict seems highly probable as things currently stand. Corporate war profiteers might rub
their hands at this, but if the chaos spreads will even they be able to reap real benefits?
Will this be the cue for them to up sticks from the foundering Exceptional Nation and re-locate
elsewhere in the unending quest for exploitation?
After all it can be argued the British Empire, like the Nazis, didn't die, but just had to
move – somewhere a little further west. Maybe, if we're cynical, the same thing is about
to happen again. Maybe China is about to inherit the earth with the help of some ex-pat
neocons.
But that's speculation for another day.
Another perspective worth reading is that of the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity, whose open
'Memorandum for the President' is published over at Consortium News.
Signed by numerous distinguished intelligence professionals, including Philip Giraldi and
Daniel Ellsberg, it urges the Trump admin to "avoid doubling down on catastrophe".
The drone assassination in Iraq of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani
evokes memory of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to
World War I. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quick to warn of "severe
revenge." That Iran will retaliate at a time and place of its choosing is a near certainty.
And escalation into World War III is no longer just a remote possibility, particularly given
the multitude of vulnerable targets offered by our large military footprint in the region and
in nearby waters.
What your advisers may have avoided telling you is that Iran has not been isolated. Quite
the contrary. One short week ago, for example, Iran launched its first joint naval exercises
with Russia and China in the Gulf of Oman, in an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. in the
region.
Interestingly the corporate media seem currently far from united, or even coherent, in their
response to this latest crisis. Threaded through the usual knee jerk demonising of the monster
du jour , are unusual elements of skepticism toward the pro-war narrative.
With its drone missile assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani and seven others at
Baghdad's international airport in the early morning hours of Friday, the Trump administration
has carried out a criminal act of state terrorism that has stunned the world.
Washington's cold-blooded murder of a general in the Iranian army and a man widely described
as the second most powerful figure in Tehran is unquestionably both a war crime and a direct
act of war against Iran.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on Iran, at his Mar-a-Lago
property, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
It may take some time before Iran responds to the killing. There is no question that Tehran
will, in fact, react, especially in the face of public outrage over the murder of a figure who
had a mass following.
But Iran will no doubt devote far more consideration to its response than Washington gave to
its criminal action. The country's National Security Council met on Friday, and in all
probability Iranian officials will discuss the murder of Suleimani with Moscow, Beijing and,
more likely than not, Europe. US officials and the corporate media seem almost to desire
immediate retaliation for their own purposes, but the Iranians have many options.
It is a political fact that the killing of Soleimani has effectively initiated a war by the
US against Iran, a country four times the size and with more than double the population of
Iraq. Such a war would threaten to spread armed conflict across the region and, indeed, the
entire world, with incalculable consequences.
This crime, driven by increasing US desperation over its position in the Middle East and the
mounting internal crisis within the Trump administration, is staggering in its degree of
recklessness and lawlessness. The resort by the United States to such a heinous act testifies
to the fact that it has failed to achieve any of the strategic objectives that led to the
invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003.
The murder of Soleimani is the culmination of a protracted process of the criminalization of
American foreign policy. "Targeted killings," a term introduced into the lexicon of world
imperialist politics by Israel, have been employed by US imperialism against alleged terrorists
in countries stretching from South Asia to the Middle East and Africa over the course of nearly
two decades. It is unprecedented, however, for the president of the United States to order and
then publicly claim responsibility for the killing of a senior government official who was
legally and openly visiting a third country.
Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's Quds Force, was not an
Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. On the contrary, he played a pivotal role in defeating
the forces of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which those two figures,
both assassinated by US special operations death squads, had led.
Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Tehran and cities across Iran on
Friday in mourning and protest over the slaying of Soleimani, who was seen as an icon of
Iranian nationalism and resistance to US imperialism's decades-long attacks on the country.
In Iraq, the US drone strike has been roundly condemned as a violation of the country's
sovereignty and international law. Its victims included not only Soleimani, but also Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the
100,000-strong coalition of Shia militias that is considered part of the country's armed
forces.
This response makes a mockery of the ignorant and thuggish statements of Trump and his
advisors. The US president, speaking from his vacation resort of Mar-a-Lago in Florida, boasted
of having "killed the number one terrorist anywhere in the world." He went on to claim that
"Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military
personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him."
Trump charged that the Iranian general "has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize
the Middle East for the last 20 years." He declared, "What the United States did yesterday
should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved."
Who does the US president think he is fooling with his Mafia rhetoric? The last 20 years
have seen the Middle East devastated by a series of US imperialist interventions. The illegal
2003 US invasion of Iraq, based on lies about "weapons of mass destruction," claimed the lives
of over a million people, while decimating what had been among the most advanced societies in
the Arab world. Together with Washington's eighteen-year-long war in Afghanistan and the
regime-change wars launched in Libya and Syria, US imperialism has unleashed a regionwide
crisis that has killed millions and forced tens of millions to flee their homes.
Soleimani, whom Trump accused of having "made the death of innocent people his sick passion"
-- an apt self-description -- rose to the leadership of the Iranian military during the
eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, which claimed the lives of some one million Iranians.
He became known to the US military, intelligence and diplomatic apparatus in 2001, when
Tehran provided intelligence to Washington to assist its invasion of Afghanistan. Over the
course of the US war in Iraq, American officials conducted back-channel negotiations with
Soleimani even as his Quds Force was providing aid to Shia militias resisting the American
occupation. He played a central role in picking the Iraqi Shia politicians who led the regimes
installed under the US occupation.
Soleimani went on to play a leading role in organizing the defeat of the Al Qaeda-linked
militias that were unleashed against the government of Bashar al-Assad in the CIA-orchestrated
war for regime change in Syria, and subsequently in rallying Shia militias to defeat Al Qaeda's
offspring, ISIS, after it had overrun roughly one-third of Iraq, routing US-trained security
forces.
To describe such a figure as a "terrorist" only means that any state official or military
commander anywhere in the world who cuts across the interests of Washington and US banks and
corporations can be labeled as such and targeted for murder. The attack at the Baghdad airport
signals that the rules of engagement have changed. All "red lines" have been crossed. In the
future, the target could be a general or even president in Russia, China or, indeed, any of the
capitals of Washington's erstwhile allies.
After this publicly celebrated assassination -- openly claimed by a US president without
even a pretense of deniability -- is there any head of state or prominent military figure in
the world who can meet with US officials without having in the back of his mind that if things
do not go well, he too might be murdered?
The killing of General Soleimani in Baghdad was compared by Die Zeit , one of
Germany's newspapers of record, to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria. As in the prior case, it stated, "the whole world is holding its breath and anxiously
waiting for what may come."
This criminal act carries with it the threat of both world war and dictatorial repression
within the borders of the United States. There is no reason to believe that a government that
has adopted murder as an instrument of foreign policy will refrain from using the same methods
against its domestic enemies.
The assassination of Soleimani is an expression of the extreme crisis and desperation of a
capitalist system that threatens to hurl humanity into the abyss.
The answer to this danger lies in the international growth of the class struggle. The
beginning of the third decade of the 21st century is witnessing not only the drive to war, but
also the upsurge of millions of workers across the Middle East, Europe, the United States,
Latin America, Asia and every corner of the globe in struggle against social inequality and the
attacks on basic social and democratic rights.
This is the only social force upon which a genuine opposition to the war drive of the
capitalist ruling elites can be based. The necessary response to the imperialist war danger is
to unify these growing struggles of the working class through the construction of a united,
international and socialist antiwar movement.
To the silly trolls on this thread, no Iran is not the number one terrorist supporter in the
world. That would be Saudi Arabia, closely followed by Qatar. You know them don't you?
Murica's main regional allies. The same countries that have armed and funded terrorists to
over throw the Syrian state. The same terrorist groups given support by the murican
intelligence community and propaganda outlets like the White helmets. The US is not a knight
in shining armor. It is a vulgar, grasping, dying empire that will use any means at it's
disposal to harm perceived rivals. The US establishment has a long history of using
terrorists to further its goals, like in Afghanistan during the 80's, or in Chechnya...and of
course in Syria. The list is not exhaustive... You know, in fact, Iran should look to execute
the cult leader of the Mek. There is another bizzaro terrorist outfit beloved by fat ass
Pompeo. That would be an outstanding shatter point that the US couldn't even respond to. Let
him "suicide" himself like Le Mesurier...lol!
On the surface, it made not one iota of sense. The murder of a foreign military leader on his way
from Baghdad airport, his diplomatic status assured by the local authorities, evidently deemed a target of
irresistible richness.
"General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and
throughout the region."
The
words from the Pentagon
seemed to resemble the resentment shown by the Romans to barbarian chiefs who dared
resist them.
"This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all
necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world."
The killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in a drone
strike on January 3, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces, or
Hash a-Shaabi
and PMF Kata'ib Hezbollah, was packaged and ribboned as a matter of military necessity.
Soleimani had been, according to the Pentagon,
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and
coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more."
He was behind a series of attacks on coalition
forces in Iraq over the last several months including attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019.
US President Donald J. Trump had thrown caution to the wind,
suggesting in a briefing
at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that an option on the table would be the killing of
Soleimani. The Iran hawks seemed to have his ear; others were caught off guard, preferring to keep matters more
general.
A common thread running through the narrative was the certainty unshakable, it would seem that Soleimani was
on the warpath against US interests.
The increased danger posed by the Quds Force commander were merely presumed, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
was happy to do so
despite not
being able
to
"talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the
President's decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives."
(Pompeo goes on to insist that there was "active plotting" to "take big action" that would have endangered
"hundreds of lives".) How broadly one defines the battlefield becomes relevant; the US imperium has decided that
diplomatic niceties and sovereign protections for officials do not count. The battlefield is everywhere.
Trump was far from convincing in
reiterating the arguments
, insisting that the general had been responsible for killing or badly wounding
"thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill may more but got caught!"
From
his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, he claimed that the attack was executed
"to stop a war. We did not take action
to start a war."
Whatever the views of US officialdom, seismic shifts in the Middle East were being promised.
Iraq's prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi
demanded
an emergency parliamentary session with the aim of taking
"legislative steps and necessary
provisions to safeguard Iraq's dignity, security and sovereignty."
On Sunday, the parliament did something which, ironically enough, has been a cornerstone of Iran's policy in Iraq:
the removal of US troops from Iraq. While being a non-binding resolution, the parliament
urged
the prime minister to rescind the invitation extended to US forces when it was attacked by Islamic State forces in
2014.
Iranian Armed Forces' spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi
promised
setting
"up a plan, patiently, to respond to this terrorist act in a crushing and powerful manner"
.
He also reiterated that it was the US, not Iran, who had "occupied Iraq in violation of all international rules
and regulations without any coordination with the Iraqi government and without the Iraqi people's demands."
While the appeals to international law can seem feeble,
the observation
from the UN Special
Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agns Callamard was hard to impeach.
"The targeted killings of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Humandis are most [likely] unlawful and violate
international human rights law: Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for
targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal."
To
be deemed lawful
, such targeting
with lethal effect
"can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life."
The balance sheet for this action, then, is not a good one.
As US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson
observed
with crisp accuracy, the attack
on Soleimani and his companions had little to do with
"whether [he] was a 'good man' any more than it was about
whether Saddam was a good man. It's about smart versus stupid use of military power."
An intelligent use of military power is not in the offing, with Trump
promising
the targeting of 52 Iranian
sites, each one representing an American hostage held in Iran at the US embassy in Tehran during November 1979.
But Twitter sprays and promises of this sort tend to lack substance and Trump is again proving to be the master of
disruptive distraction rather than tangible action.
Even Israeli outlets such as
Haaretz
, while doffing the cap off to the idea of Soleimani as a shadowy, dangerous figure behind the
slayings of Israelis
"in terrorist attacks, and untold thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese and others
dispatched by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force,"
showed concern.
Daniel B. Shapiro even went so far as to express admiration for the operation, an "impressive" feat of logistics
but found nothing of an evident strategy. Trump's own security advisers were caught off guard. A certain bloodlust
had taken hold.
Within Congress, the scent of a strategy did not seem to come through, despite some ghoulish cheers from the GOP.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and chairman of the House Intelligence panel,
failed to
notice
"some broad strategy at work".
Michigan Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin, previously acting assistant secretary of defence and CIA analyst,
explained
why neither Democratic or Republic
presidents had ventured onto the treacherous terrain of targeting Soleimani.
"Was the strike worth the likely
retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?"
The answer was always a resounding no.
By killing such a high ranking official of a sovereign power, the US has signalled a redrawing of accepted, and
acceptable lines of engagement.
The justification was spurious, suggesting that assassination and killing in combat are not distinctions with any
difference. But perhaps most significantly of all, the killing of Soleimani will usher in the very same attacks that
this decision was meant to avert even as it assists Iranian policy in expelling any vestige of US influence in Iraq
and the broader Middle East.
It also signalled to Iran that abiding by agreements of any sort, including the international nuclear deal of 2015
which the US has repudiated, will be paper tigers worth shredding without sorrow.
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wardropper
,
Today's Washington doesn't even have a grasp of common English usage:
"This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans"
You don't deter plans. You deter
people from
making plans.
A deterrent is something which persuades
people
not to do something.
I know that "corporations are people today", but only in the sense that they are run by a bunch of
people, so you can't deter a corporation either, although you can deter its CEO from doing something.
It's always a question of
deterring people from
, and not deterring
things.
Washington should know better, but I don't know why I'm even addressing this issue concerning a rabid
US government of ignorant basket cases. It must be because I'm a teacher, and some sort of alternative
to chaos seems necessary
"General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service
members in Iraq and throughout the region."
Allegedly. But with no substance provided. Less than with Iraqi WMDs.
But this article takes Pompeo's bait and runs with it.
I have read that Soleimani was invited to a meeting seeking resolution of hostilities in Yemen
and perhaps other things. If that is true it could be that the war is being protected under cover
story of averting war. That would make sense in the backwards mind of today's narrative identity.
(Doublethink).
If that invitation was set up with the Trump administration then that casts a darker light on the
USa's willingness to openly deceive and openly assassinate with apparent impunity. But there are
always consequences.
However, Once such an act is executed, it would be very rare to not receive open support from the
US establishment whatever any private misgivings. And so it leaves me wondering what and who is
involved in oversight and accountability. I don't have a sense of a real government so much as a
captured and corrupted or neutered shell of a government. Perhaps the act was a fait accompli by a
coterie who wanted to provoke open war and are willing to risk everything on getting one.
The 'globalist' idea uses the US as it uses everything. Does it 'use' Israel and the
International Jewish lobby? Or vice verse? Israeli policy is typical in pre-emptive de-personing and
execution and this pattern is spreading through the body politic
I don't know but a lot of apparently 'national' interest is anything but excepting for
corporate cartels of mutual interest that effectively call the shots in a progressive (sic)
deconstruction of the World order to an idea of global possession and control.
Insider dealing applies also to politics. We are not privy to decisions made that are then
'delivered' by all kinds of manipulative appearance.
When Trump threatened disproportionate retaliation linking to the Iran hostage situation the
Iranians could counter with disclosure as the the weapons deal struck by Reagan camp to delay release
until after Carter left office and lost it in no small part to the failure to get the hostages home.
But it just isn't done. Governing politicians as a rule do not bring out such dirty washing.
People might lose faith in them
Charlotte Russe
,
Washington denied Zarif a visa to attend a scheduled meeting of the United Nations Security
Council and Mike Pompeo mocked Zarif's statement that Suleimani had gone to Baghdad on a diplomatic
mission: "Is there any history that would indicate it was remotely possible that this kind gentleman,
this diplomat of great order, Qassem Suleimani, traveled to Baghdad for the idea of conducting a peace
mission?" he said."
Pompeo, the United States Secretary of State, conducts foreign policy by
humiliating, censoring, and promoting lies about sovereign leaders. What's the purpose of the United
Nations if leaders of nation-states are prohibited from speaking and stating their case. If the public
is only permitted to hear "one" side of an issue, isn't that the definition of propaganda. Of course,
Pompeo would deny that Suleimani was on a diplomatic mission, inasmuch, to admit otherwise would
reveal the assassination of Suleimani as an especially despicable war crime.
It's unfortunate, that if a nation-state challenges US imperialism they're characterized as not a
sovereign state but as a terrorist regime. And if military leaders from these nation-states ensure the
stability of their country by destroying ISIS and Al-Qaeda these generals are deemed terrorists. We
live in a world where reality has been turned on its end, and is upside down.
So far, the US is extremely lucky that Iran's retaliation for the murder of Sulaimani has been
limited. Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister stated:
"Iran took and concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter
targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched
Tuesday. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression."
Now the ball is the Buffoon's court of neoconservative screwballslet's see if these warmongers can
refrain from escalating this crisis, or will they continue to lead the US down the road to another
military debacle. One that makes the Iraq War look like child's play.
Below is a link citing the anti-war demonstrations organized and held by Codepink On Thursday,
January 9, at 5 p.m.
https://www.codepink.org/01
Tallis Marsh
,
Some people have touched on this subject in other articles/website forums, but can I ask a
'controversial' question? How many dual-passport military bigwigs occupy
intelligence/foreign-policy/military positions in the USA/UK/France etc as well as Iran, Iraq etc? Is
it anti-semitic now to ask these questions? It is okay to ask about 'Russians' so-called infiltration
and subversion but not Israelis?
People here may have heard of Victor Ostrovsky and his books, By Way of Deception and The Other
side of Deception where he details on many aspects of subversion, co-option etc e.g.how the sayanim
network that aids mossad infiltrates top powerful positions in Embassies, intelligence agencies,
military policy-maker dept and even medicine/charity orgs etc?
David Macilwain
,
I think we may just be playing the Americans' game by discussing the legality of the assassination of
the hero of the Resistance; it's like discussing whether water-boarding is a legitimate interrogation
technique on a six-year old girl.
The point of the killing was nothing to do with what Soleimani had done or was about to do, but
evidently the one thing that Israel and the US knew Iran must respond to, so as to provide a pretext
for an attack on Iranian territory and of course it now has launched such an attack, before another
state does it for them.
We might imagine that the US and other forces illegally occupying bases in Iraq, and everywhere else
in the region, will now feel unable to operate without threat of attack from multiple unidentified
sources. The mere fact that the missiles actually hit the Ain al Asaad base could be a wake-up call,
particularly if there is evidence US forces were hit.
But of course the killing of Soleimani was
neither justifiable nor legitimate, so Iran's designation of the US army as a terrorist organisation
is, and it is now open season.
Leaving religious, organized delusions aside to which I count all major religions, especially
Hypochristianity Iran has excelled in reason and resolve.
Do not fuck around with Iran any longer.
Donald Trump and his sub-cogniscent advisers on the other hand need to go and fuck themselves.
Using the same methods on each other they have used to destroy a free and independent Iran since the
great People of Iran kicked the fascist western regimes out of Iran.
Like Lybia, Syria, Bolivia and Venezuela, the government is FOR the People, not against them.
Anybody, or anyone with better ideas than those Iran has utilized since 1979? Anybody? I thought so.
Because there are assholes among them corrupt, rich Iranian maggots that prefer the Trump model
who complain about how the revolution took away the freedom to exploit and to corrupt, while it is
them that have Julain Assange locked away like a Chimpanzee in a Nazi laboratory.
No, what happened oddly though in conjunction with a prophecy by Edgar Casey is, that the whole
sane world can see that America has become a drug addicted cheap whore who will do anything to get her
fix.
America needs mandatory psychoanalysis and not the reciting of the pledge of allegiance. In
Teheran, millions not one, or two, like in a 'Love Parade' no, five million real Iranian People
filling the streets. What a shame in the face of the fucking Trump regime assholes. Fuck them all.
Impeach the entire heap of shit and bring them before a court of justice. In Teheran.
Iran as the descendant of one of the greatest Empires ever to rule the region proved itself
worthy of its great history. It shlashed the Gordian knot today. The terroristic murder of Lt. General
Soleimani has indeed changed everything. Everything. It is now out in the open that ISIS/Daesh was
created and funded by wetsern fascist regimes under the lead of the U.S., Israel, SA et al. The people
that killed innocent civilians, cut heads off before cameras, putting women and children in cages,
destroying important cultural sites in the region were and still are paid for by the U.S. tax payer
and that makes every U.S. et al citizen an accomplice in the 'WAR OF TERROR'. You paid for the murder
of the one person that defeated the US TERROR GROUPS. He helped Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to fend
off the terroristic assault of the fascist western regimes.
ISIS'R'US.
So, leaving the general religious thing aside, Iran has torn down the wall of hypocrisy the west is
surrounding itself with. Alliances will now be made and others will crumble and vanish. Saudi Arabia
is looking at its last days. The Palestiniancaust and genocide in Yemen will not continue.
Iran has shown that it is capable of defending the truth against the fascist western regimes.
To those who do not want to stop killing innocent women, mothers and children, the elderly and
defenseless:
Cease and desist your murderous activities in order not to get killed.
Long live Iran.
Bless its People who have shown the pathetic public in the west what UNITY really means. (Not to
discredit the work of countless groups to change things to the better.) But the equivalent would be
300 million Americans weeping in the streets over the loss of their most beloved General.
Go Humanity! Now or never!
Frank Speaker
,
You touch on some valid points, but you ignore there's a huge difference between most Iranians and
the fundamentalist nutjobs who rule over them. Similar to the USA in many respects.
andyoldlabour
,
The thing is Frank, I know only too well (from my relatives in Iran) how a lot of ordinary
Iranians still feel about the Shah, about UK/US/French imperialism. They and Iraq have been
attacked quite a few times over the past hundred years by US/UK (along with Russia). There is
still raw evixdence of chemical weapons victims from the Iran Iraq war.
They area very proud people, 98% Shia, and will come together as one if attacked, just as they
did back in 1980, when Saddam Hussein backed by the USA attacked them.
nottheonly1
,
While I am certainly not a friend of any organized religion, to call them 'fundamental nutjobs'
gives away the brainwashing program that has achieved this result.
Pence, Pompeo et
evangelical al are the real 'fundamental nutjobs'. They kill Muslims by the thousands. And have
no regard at all for anybody that does not match their christojudeo-fascist world view.
TFS
,
SpartUSA and its friends in low places, Saudi Arabia, Israel and its Western Allies love giving names
to things when they 'Export Democracy ' around the World, like Operation Enduring Freedom.
Cannot
the alternative Blogosphere come up with a similar banner as a push back to the Rogue State of
SpartUSA?
How About:
1. Operation Jog On!
Harry Stotle
,
One of the avenues Iran could pursue is the legality of the assassination.
It is high time the question of whether or not the US is above international law was finally
confronted.
The extra-judicial murder of General Soleimani brings this issue to the heart of international
affairs: if there is no legal redress for Iran then it more or less makes a mockery of the idea that
justice is possible in a world dominated by terror states.
andyoldlabour
,
Whilst I agree with the core message of your post Harry, I would have to draw the conclusion that
the US has put themselves above and out of the reach of international law.
Drone attacks and civilian deaths all over the World, 80 years of coups, assassinations and wars,
shooting down civilian airliners (USS Vincennes and IranAir flight 655), torture.
Then you only have to Google "Hague Invasion Act"
Andy you're right, but it now needs to be legally formally addressed at the UN and other courts
every time the US violates international law. Time and again. Over years it might make an
impact, at least to isolate the them.
andyoldlabour
,
Frank, unfortunately I believe that the UN is merely a New York based vassal of the US. How
many sanctions have ever been placed on the US or it's little friend Israel for their obvious
war crimes?
I have been saying for many years that the HQ of the UN should not be in the US.
BigB
,
It's a war crime, Harry! I notice Binoy, the UN Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, and you refrain from
calling it out. Pre-crime violates every judicial principle known. There has to be a crime for a
verdict let alone an execution. This is the enactment of "Minority Report" Phildickian criminal
injustice thinking.
Pre-emptive Justice has been American foreign policy since at least Bush the Lesser Evil. Along
with R2P which defecated on Westphalia Peace Treaty principles this violated the London
Agreement (Nuremberg Principles) which are supposedly the foundation of modern IHL.
So, let's take our pick for pre-emptive murder war crime, crime against the peace, or crime
against humanity?
So Trump gets a rap from the Rapporteur: where do we try this most obvious of crimes? The ICC,
ICJ, or a kangaroo UN Tribunal where precisely no American will ever show up because they are
legally exempt and immune. Agnes' rap is not worth waiting for, I'm sorry to say. The UN is
complicit and as toothless as the old imperialist League of Nations that carved up the Middle East
to cause these problems.
On the rare occasion the UN has produced a truthful report ie calling Israel an apartheid
state that report has been recalled and shredded before you can say "Try Netanyahu!". You know
the score.
Iran has exacted the only Justice it can in this lawless Wild West Justice of the Gun
international anti-diplomacy "free"market-power world. I'd love to share your sentiment, but that
world was eclipsed when America turned its back on the ICC circa Nicaragua. If Agnes can pull it
back, I'm with her all the way. Also, I'm not holding my breath!
Everything the Nazis did is now neoliberal foreign policy.
Guy
,
I hear you and I agree with the gist of what you are saying but let me suggest that even though
the UN is toothless and the rogue US establishment continue with their cowboy rampage over any
nation that does not kneel to it's demands ,it is especially important that the criminal actions
of this out of control regime be documented for historical purposes . Lets face it it ,right now
the United Nations is the best and only body of an international politic that we have to do so.
This is what they are so scared about .The truth .
TFS
,
I see two options:
1. Make the relevant International Organisations do their job, although the
UN, OPCW, ICC and the like are soemwhat neutered. And if not, stop paying for them, they are a PR
exercise.
2. Act like a Democracy, where the people hold those in account to power. Boycott SpartUSA would
be my choice.
As a Brexiteer, I partially understand why people jumped ship from Jeremy Corbyn, but Brexit was
never about Brexit, it was about killing Jeremy. The EU feared Jeremy more than anything, and when
we lost him, the country lost a counter to the Imperial machinations of SpartUSA, the EU and NATO
and their friends in low places in the MiddleEast.
I would suggest a third option, Operation Patriot Resolve.
In it, the alternative blogosphere works with ex members of the UK Armed Forces, and forces the
UK government to release all the supporting evidence of Article V (I think), which supported the
invasion of Afghanistan. We can ask Lord Robertson for his substantial input into the evidence he
held. It must be voluminous, given the Offical Report into 9/11; Offical Conspiracy Theory is so
highly regarded.
TFS
,
There is a term for different legal treatment based on status, called Affluenza.
Maybe a new term
needs to be used for the West selective interpreations of various laws. Maybe Rogue State/Regime
will suffice.
noseBag
,
Harry, whilst wholeheartedly agreeing with your sentiment, I fear the definition of being under
threat of 'imminent' attack is so broad and vague that the Yanks will be able to claim legality.
However, The Saker makes for some very interesting reading regarding likely/possible fallout from
this action, none of which looks good for the Yanks, or for that matter, anyone allied to them.
Harry Stotle
,
In answer to my own question, I think Iran has about as much chance of receiving justice for the
murder of Qasem Soleimani as Julian Assange does for revealing war crimes.
In answer to BB
apologies for not being clear yes, I think this is a war crime.
I was just alluding to the fact terror inflicted by Britain and the USA is never defined as such
(in a court of law) quite the opposite, many of the architects, such as Tony Blair grew rich on
the back of the misery they authored.
This profound legal failing is one of the reasons the neocons keep getting away with it.
In theory Iran has a strong case, one that has been already backed up by the UN rapporteur on
extra-judicial killings, but it will be hard for them to escape a sense of futility that pervades
any attempt to investigate the machinations of the US deep state.
For example, and as most of us on Off-G already know, the American authorities have steadfastly
refused to properly investigate what happened on 9/11, presumably because a meaningful
investigation would reveal a long list of uncomfortable truths?
While in Britain we had the long-winded and expensive charade of Chilcot many knew from the
outset that it was a waste of time and money, and that no actor would have be held to account for
the bloodbath that ensued in Iraq, even though the whole thing was built on a pack of lies and led
to the mysterious death of Britains foremost weapons inspector.
GEOFF
,
And these dumbfucks in this country can't wait to be part of the evil empire, I would never knowingly
buy anything from warmongering evil America, or Israel, I see hairy arse Johnson is making it illegal
for councils to boycott the other evil country, Israel , I only wish I was younger , I would get out
of this shithole tomorrow.
Francis Lee
,
The real dumbfucks are the Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Romanians, Estonians who are pro-US and EU
fanatics. Oh and I forgot about another neoliberal EU basket case, Sweden. The US calls the shots
in the EU, primarily through corralling in the Petainist riff-raff into NATO.
Dungroanin
,
And by the way ss we move into a hot war where exactly is our LauraKoftheCIA?
Not a peep since her splurge on 19th December topped of with:
'Right then twitter, that's it from me
til next year Happy Christmas one and all see you on the other side (follow
@BBCPolitics
and
@BBCNews
if you want to keep up, or sit on your sofa and eat Quality Street and come back in 2020)
Laura Kuenssberg
19 Dec 2019
Hard time of year for a lot of folks. Suicide Hotline 116 123 (Samaritans) A simple copy and paste
might save someone's life.
Would 3 Twitter friends please copy this text and post under their own name? Pass it on
Laura Kuenssberg
19 Dec 2019
-- -- -- -
My guess is at the same site as bozo as they were briefed on the next phase.
Their role for the Pathocracy and getting their stories rehearsed I expect her to move into Downing
Street as the official press officer!
Presumably they will have been getting their inoculation flu jab which has just been unleashed as
zillions of chinese take to the air for their new year intermingling with the zillions of westerners
sun seeking crisscrossing the planet.
This world war will not be fought with the outdated nuclear weapons they have better plans to get
rid of us pesky revolters, and shiny multicoloured tellytubby suits as demo'd in Salisbury to clear
away the dead and take all our possessions.
How long before the internet shutdown?
Dungroanin
,
For these dumb yankee doodle yahoos and Brit donkeys who still don't understand the significance
imagine if General Washington had been assassinated by King George for having won in the revolution,
how would the proto yanks have taken that then and still now 200 years later.
US can't claim they couldn't have got to him without using drones.
.
A Ukrainian Boeing Jet appears to have dropped out of the sky on fire after leaving Tehran
.
A new flu type seems to have kicked off in China just as zillions are traveling for newyear.
-- --
As a large percentage of middleclass westerners travel to sunny paradises of SE Asia and Caribbean
at this time of year they may not be traveling back!
TFS
,
People need to be hit the general public with the OPCW chemical evidence whilst this is playing out as
another example of the West lying to bomb another soveriegn country, and make sure people know that
the impartiality of the OPCW and the UN has been neutered.
Of course, the next stage, a step on from
awareness is to hit SpartUSA where it hurts them the most. They are kinda of attached to The
Benjamins, and are fond of Sanctions, ask Madeliene Albright.
The people of Amerika need to remember that when they vote in the up-and-coming Presidential election
they are voting for democracy! Not the kind of democracy that other countries have, such as Iraq who
just voted for Amerika to leave their country. But the kind of democracy that has to be created by
force. The type of none representative democracy which furthers economic exploitation. It comes as no
surprise that Amerika has allies in waiting otherwise known as vassals. Just ask the Eaton Mess and
his Galfriend as Old Blighty soon to be renamed Cor-Blimey is about to be forced to nationalise the
railways (shurely a socialist concept ed?). Also ask Macron as a national strike grips France. "No",
you will hear the media shills shrill, "It's the international rules based democratic order".
MichaelK
,
I heard a journalist stating with some 'authority' that the US attack couldn't be defined as
'terrorism', because it was carried out by a democratic state. Apparently, the actions and leaders of
'democratic states' cannot be guilty of carrying out 'terrorism.'
Normally, after 'real terrorist'
attacks occur, that is, violence directed against us and our interests and allies, if members of the
public raise their fists and express joy and enthusiastic support for the 'evil terrorists', such
feelings and utterances land them in extremly hot water with the authorities as vocal support for
terrorist outrages is illegal and can easily lead to them being prosecuted under anti-terrorism
legislation.
But things are different when 'we' are the ones using 'terrorism' against our enemies, then,
suddenly, the laws are applied, or not applied, in a radicaly different way.
Dungroanin
,
Iran is a democratic state as much as any.
We have seen how our democracy is a sham with the postal vote rigging of the election and the
referendum.
It stopped Corbyn by direct self admitted foreign government gauntlet and is delivering the hard
brexit that ONLY benefits the ancient City and it's masters.
They are on the retreat and like the confederacy they are burning Atlanta
David Macilwain
,
While this is certainly true, it's difficult to think of a case where forces allied to the
Resistance have actually been responsible for a terrorist attack. One might need to return to the
time of the Palestinian Intifada, where suicide bombers certainly terrorised Israelis even for a
just cause. Any suggestions? Not only does the "war on terror" appear to be contrived and
concocted, but its evident acts seem always to be false flags, and always serving the interests of
those that the attacks are supposed to be against.
Guy
,
War on terror is an oxymoron. War is terror David as I am sure you already know . Leave it to
the CIA and or neocons to come up with such a stupid slogan .
Cheers.
Guy
,
The Western media pundits are using mental contortions to rationalize the impossible and looking
extremely foolish for doing so.It's kind of like digging your own grave .
richard le sarc
,
An awful lot of Judeofascists and other Zionist and Talmudic psychopaths seem very happy about this
cowardly murder. But they are, after all, the world champions of cowardly murders of any who dare 'get
in our way'. It is a religious observance, a mitzvah, after all.
George Mc
,
"Judeofascists"? Surely "Zionazis" is more appropriate?
MASTER OF UNIVE
,
Macroeconomic decoupling is occurring and Trump's gambit for irrational war management via threats &
intimidation on an international/geopolitical level is not only an outright act of war but it is
testament to the desperation that Trump finds himself in pre-election. Trump has already indicated
that he will do anything to keep the DOW inflated irrationally at ever increasing nosebleed levels he
can push it to even if it means meddling in Federal Reserve independence and undermining confidence in
the central bank authority.
Trump is a one man central banking Military Industrial Complex war
machine set on autopilot without vision outside of controlling everything from the interest rate
benchmark set by central banks to the G7 trade deals and Russian Federation gas deals, and everything
in between.
Trump has to be the center of attention every single day of the week & twice on Sundays. He
twitterbombed Greta the climate teen to appropriate her limelight as the Davos elite rolled her out
onstage.
Trump bombed strategically for the presidential plaudits that never materialized because he leapt
to an erroneous conclusion & misperceived that everyone else in the world is not viewing it from an
oval office desk like he is. Immediately following the outrage the rationalizations came forth from
the White House that their target was for the good of the nation when in fact everyone knows it was
for Trump's impression management.
Trump likely made the decision unilaterally and the world is just not being made aware of that.
Fortunately, the Democrats see his departure from protocol as a war crime also. Trump is not
experienced enough to stay the course any longer given that he must have acted unilaterally to cause
the bombing assassination without due diligence from his advisers taking place. When the Democrats
press the issue with Congress it will become an issue that Trump used the state to murder for purposes
of leveraged deal making.
MOU
Francis Lee
,
"Trump is a one man central banking Military Industrial Complex war machine set on autopilot."
Pretty good! I like it.
Martin Usher
,
Its interesting to speculate about why these people were murdered. Pompero's explanations have a
distinct yellowcake feel to them -- "We know what we're doing, trust us" sort of thing. The
Administration has zero credibility except among the faithful here in the US. I suspect the real
reason could be a combination of two factors. One is that whenever there's any danger of peace
breaking out in the Middle East it gets spoiled and invariably there something or someone Israeli at
the bottom of it. The leaders killed were particularly dangerous precisely because they're not hot
heads, they develop policies in a rational manner and are instrumental in keeping wayward elements
under control. This is the kind of ME leader that is feared by Israel -- they need a disorganized
rabble without the gates (one that's preferably fighting among itself) so that they can keep their
internal politics under control. The other factor is Trump is susceptible to anything that appeals to
his vanity, especially if its one-up against Obama. There's already been the claim that this was a
proper response, unlike Benghazi. (..and apparently ISIS is an Obama creation .) So I could see a
situation where a back channel suggestion is whispered into an ear, orders are given, people are
killed and we have to deal with the consequences.
I just hope that the Isranians and Iraqis are
sophisticated enough to provide a measured response. I thought the Iraqi lawmakers' response was
perfect -- the US has breached the terms of the agreement by which its supposed to be in that country
so it should leave. (Trump's response is more typical of his responses -- bluster about sanctions and
threaten the Iraqis with a bill for an airbase.)
lundiel
,
Strictly speaking, ISIS is a CIA creation under the Obama administration. I draw your attention to
the shiploads of Libyan weapons delivered to international jihadists in Syria by way of Turkey.
Along with John McCain's close association with Prince Bandar of KSA (Before he was chopped-up
because Saudi finance became common knowledge and the beast got out of control). It's interesting
to note that Obama, a democrat, used McCain, a neocon hawk as his middle east special envoy. Not
that Trump has changed much, he can't, he's not in control.
Antonym
,
Correction:
Strictly speaking, ISIS was a CIA creation under their
Obama fig leaf
Guy
,
You gotta hand it to Trump for coming up with such stupid shit as ,we will not leave until you pay
us for the costs of building a base in your country. LOL I almost busted a gut laughing at the
stupidity of the guy saying this .
Consider that I break into your house and make a mess of things , help myself to the food in the
fridge , not to mention your wife and daughters if I took a liking to them , leave all the dirty
laundry lying around after a week or so and will not leave .In order to accept leaving the premises
, you must pay me .Pay me whatever I ask .
This is how stupid and absurd this charade no minds is descending into .
Somebody stop the world ,I want to get off.
Antonym
,
Even JFK's assassination didn't upset the Anglo military industrial complex's apple cart, and he was
a good guy. QS wasn't and his death won't change much. Donald Trump's might turn out to be more
disrupting
Perp all the same: T-Rex CIA, NOT the mossad mosquito however much Zionphobes wish it
to.
richard le sarc
,
'QS' was a saint compared to the psychopathic butchers who run Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Israeli
colony known as the USA.
andyoldlabour
,
How many deaths were Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Bush x 2, Clinton, Obama and Trump responsible for
compared to QS?
Multiple United States targets hit by missiles in Iraq, including Ayn Asad Airbase and Al Taji
coalition base north of Baghdad.
No news on casualties yet. This response was expected, but the $64 million dollar question is how hard
will the nutters in Washington respond? And what of the 6 B-52 bombers that have just been sent to
Diego Garcia?
And news just in of a second wave of missiles directed at US targets.
Trump, Pompeo, Esper . You are reaping what You sowed. Total wackjobs.
This is deeply disturbing .
richard le sarc
,
Nothing would work better than closing Hormuz, and destroying Saudi oil installations. That would
be a seismic shock to US economic hegemony.
Very unconfirmed reports there may have been up to 80 United States personnel killed in the
missile attacks on Ayn Assad Airbase today.
This could be fake news tho?
That's appeared on Vanessa Beeley's Facebook page as well as a guy called Laith Marouf, and
Press TV has just been reported as 'breaking news' that "there were casualties".
Tellingly, no other independent sites have been reporting this (so far)
And Trumpf is tweeting 'all is well'.
Don't expect the truth from Team USA, or the retarded presstitutes.
Duh What a dumb thing to say. Of course not.
I still believe United States will respond to the Iranian missile strikes. Can you imagine
Pompeo or Esper going 'okay, all good, we're all even now' after today.
I can't.
If things do take off, closing the Straits Of Hormuz would be one of the very first options for
Iran. And then watch the panic in the 'civilised, democratic, freedom loving' West when the
economy starts imploding.
This was the first question of the day, mind you. When asked about specific threats,
they won't say, other to claim the threats were against "American diplomats, American military
personnel, and American – facilities that house Americans" in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria. When
asked if allies had been notified of these attacks, or what is meant by "imminent threats,"
officials said they couldn't elaborate because that would be revealing "sources and methods."
When asked why there had been no information about the dead American contractor in the Dec.27
militia strike on the Iraqi base
that touched this all off, one of the three state department officials said, "I haven't
asked, and I don't know."
Their real imperiousness comes when a reporter presses officials to explain their repeated
suggestions that the Jan. 3 strike against Soleimani was at once well-deserved after Iran's
"violent and expansionist foreign policy," a response to the breach of the U.S. embassy last
week, and a preemptive action to stop Soleimani's planned attacks, for which we still
have no detailed information.
QUESTION: The decision to take him out wasn't necessarily a way of removing this
– [Senior State Department Official One], the threat that you were talking about in
these different countries and these different facilities – but it's a way to mitigate
it in the future? I'm just --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: It slows it down. It makes it less --
QUESTION: Since we don't know what the threat is – okay, that's what I was
--
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: It slows it down. It makes it less likely.
It's shooting down Yamamoto in 1942. Jesus, do we have to explain why we do these things?
(Laughter.)
QUESTION: Ouch.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Go look that up.
QUESTION: Yes, you do.
Most tellingly, the officials pushed back hard not only against the suggestion that this was
an "assassination" of a government official, but that Iran is a legitimate country at all,
protected by any international norms or laws:
We are, again, denying them the fiction that this is some Westphalian country that has,
like, a conventional defense ministry and a standard president and a foreign minister. It's a
regime with clerical and revolutionary oversight that seeks to dominate the Middle East and
beyond. You've heard me say this is a kleptocratic theocracy. And you look at the people of
Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, are all rejecting the Iranian model at the same time.
So if the U.S. does not recognize your form of government -- does this include the Communist
Party of China? -- you are fair game?
In its reporting this weekend, The Daily Beast found that the President was talking about a
"big" response to events on the ground in Iraq with his inner circle at Mar-a-Lago five days
before Soleimani's killing.
Those Mar-a-Lago guests received more warning about Thursday's attack than Senate staff
did, and about as much clarity. A classified briefing on Friday, the first the administration
gave to the Hill, featured broad claims about what the Iranians were planning and little
evidence of planning to bring about the "de-escalation" the administration says it wants.
According to three sources either in the room or told about the discussion, briefers from
the State Department, Pentagon, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
claimed that killing Soleimani was designed to block Iranian plans to kill "hundreds" or even
thousands of Americans in the Mideast. That would be a massive escalation from the recent
attack patterns of Iran and its regional proxies, who tend to kill Americans in small numbers
at a time.
After this display, it is clear that the "trust us" argument is going to prevail until
lawmakers start demanding more, including legal justification for the strikes. There was no
hint of an answer, of course, in the state department briefing:
QUESTION: The Secretary talked about this as being wholly legal. I wonder if you
can just explain the legal justification of the killing.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: You're going to have to talk to the
lawyers.
No one expects satisfaction from these briefings but getting slapped around as the rest
of the country is wondering if we are on the brink of war is the height of audacity, even for a
government that has proven over the last 18 years that it cares nothing about whether the
American people believe them or not.
So, Iran government is illegitimate, same as the Chinese government which is ruled by CCP.
They would all be legitimate targets. Russian government is rather just nationalist and
probably that is bad too.
It is likely that no direct attacks are carried against Chinese or Russian leaders
because of retaliation. It is good that the new hyper-sonic Russian missiles can strike US
in less than 30 minutes with great accuracy, being able to hit particular individuals. Let
us hope that those missiles and Russian defense systems will start flooding the market...
Will then US start using nukes?
Maybe as soon as deployed in Ukraine where they can strike Moscow with only six minutes'
warning, leaving no alternative but a retaliating revenge strike of "launch on warning."
That's the only reason the North Korean government is still in place, because they can
punch back. The Kim family learned that lesson from Iraq and Libya, and Syria has just
reinforced it.
I wonder how many Europeans now realize the folly, the sheer stupidity, of supporting or
just passively accepting US and NATO military intervention in the Middle East and North
Africa, and that whatever refugee crisis has hit Europe originates from those wars of
aggression? Probably the same proportion of Americans who realize that American policies in
Latin America help "push" millions of Latin Americans to migrate to the U.S. illegally: too
damn few.
Brad DeLong had the greatest and shortest comment about the Catholic scandals (and the same
for all other churches): "Don't these people believe in God?".
If the media wish to question the transparency and accountability of government, then they
need to be consistent in their efforts regardless of which party is in power. While
certainly, media political bias has always underlain its motivations and guided its
efforts, never has it so openly dominated their entire focus in the relentless pursuit of
one overarching objective. This, in turn, has led it to be viewed as simply an organ of
political propaganda for one particular political party and it is thereby no longer able to
muster the public support required to demand that government, particularly the federal
bureaucracy, be responsive to inquiries into policy development and implementation. It
should then come as no surprise that the mainstream media has become a tool of manipulation
and obfuscation for the government's continued campaign to dominate and figuratively
disenfranchise the will of the People. The only outlier here is the Trump Administration
and its failure to play the game. Once we have gotten past that, one way or another, it
will be back to business as usual.
I strongly suspect that you need to diversify your assortment of media sources.
If you don't recognize that If Trump had his way, all media everywhere would kiss his butt
and lie for him and sing his praises. That is what he demands of his associates and the
GOP, and they do. Just look objectively at Lindsay Graham's conduct in the perspective of
the past 20 years.
As a commenter on National Review posted yesterday. Be good to Trump, and he will be good
too you. Please remind Michael Cohen, Manafort and the other convects who were good to
Trump, and Trump was not so good to them in return.
The mainstream media has been pro-intervention under Democratic and Republican presidents,
and parrots the lies of the State Departments, no matter the party in the White House (see
Venezuela under Bush, Obama and Trump, Honduras under Obama, and Bolivia under Trump).
In economic policy, the mainstream media is relentlessly pro-establishment, liberal
pundits often as much or more so than conservative ones, from teachers unions (until
rank-and-file teachers fought back, and forced a change in the narrative) to privatization
and deregulation.
Social policy is the only area where the mainstream media is truly liberal, because that
hits many journalists where they live, so to speak. And even there, at least until
recently, they usually preach moderation and going slow, as veterans of the civil rights,
feminist and LGBT movements could recount from the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's (and probably
later, too, but I am less in tune with the modern movements).
The Trump ADMINISTRATION plays the game. The fact that its leader is so...Trumpian is
the only reason his administration is an outlier.
The Yamamoto thing is funny, since he was actually against war with the US (he thought,
correctly, that they couldn't win) and only plotted the Pearl Harbor attack when forced to
by his superiors.
The Yamamoto thing is funny, since the US was actually in a declared state of war at the
time of his "targeted killing". What is not funny is a US "press corpse" constitutionally -
sic - unable to ask that simple question right away:
QUESTION: Are you saying the US is officially at war with Iran at this time?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: No.
QUESTION: You said: 'It's shooting down Yamamoto in 1942'. Is that just bullshit?
What's overriding is the huge profits to be made through expanding wars, along with the
policies being crafted for the United States in a highly influential Mideast country with
collusion by Americans whose loyalties are not primarily American.
What rubbish. It wasn't "our leaders" who launched this assassination -- it was *your* hero
in the endless War Against The Deep State. Before that he trashed the JCPOA, which very
much *was* the creation of some of "our leaders", and was a serious, adult attempt to steer
away from the disaster that we're looking at now.
But it's no fun to look at actual history, actual events. It's much more satisfying to
dabble in sweeping, vacuous claims, eh?
The reality, outside your TDS bubble, is that war with Iran is very much a bipartisan
project. You have to realize that the Deep State's neocons largely defected to the
Democrats last election when Trump was the only one who dared criticize the endless
unwinnable wars. There isn't a President since 1988 who didn't start or expand never ending
wars and who didn't lie knowingly about it. There is a small Mideast nation with outsized
influence over policy in this country, with political leaders here who have dual loyalties
or even primary loyalties to it, along with major billionaire donors to both parties. Both
parties removed any restraint on action against Iran in the recent monster military bill
they passed. All are beholden to the war industries which make unimaginable enormous
profits from never ending warfare. So it appears that whatever war is chosen this year to
be the "good war," as with Obama and Hillary about Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, and which
the "bad", that the trajectory of war profits must increase. It was our leader Obama who
extended the use of drones to execution from afar, "extrajudicial killing," creating the
assassination by drone policy no longer considered controversial or immoral, with his "Kill
Tuesday" sessions. Nor did he actually end torture or close Guantanamo.
Nothing conservative about war. Conservatives have lost every war. Big time. Not just
politically but culturally. There were all sorts of stories about women becoming tramps
during WWII. And look how it was used to advance feminism. We would not be in this
degenerate state if not for US involvement in WWII.
War mongers seem to universally believe that they know how the war that they instigate will
unfold. They are in fact delusional. Starting a war is rolling the dice in profoundly
dangerous and wicked ways. The Iraq invasion and occupation is a great example.
George Bush made the 1st roll of the dice at the neo-cons instigation (Only Buchanan
demurred) and then Barack Obama took his turn at the Middle East table. Now President Trump
has the dice.
The legitimate government argument is one that the Trump administration should maybe not
make. After all, it could be argued that he has not been elected in a democratic way, that
he, his family and associates as well as parts of his cabinet have financially profited
from being in power. Moreover, one could very well claim that the US are seeking to
dominate the Middle East.
"The legitimate government argument is one that the Trump administration should maybe not
make. After all, it could be argued that he has not been elected in a democratic way..."
Is the line of argumentation here to be that the election of a president into office by
the electoral college, without having won the popular vote, should be deemed "not
democratic?" Or, is it to be some allegation that the electoral college itself is "not
democratic," and that only direct consultation of the electorate can be considered "truly"
democratic?
The poor vulnerable US forces are not in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya or anywhere else to
help the populations, and are now targets for any Iranian or Iraqi retaliation.
Seventeen intelligence agencies and these guys can't come up with even one shred of
credible evidence in support of these "threats." Gawd help America.
We are, again, denying them the fiction that this is some Westphalian country that has,
like, a conventional defense ministry and a standard president and a foreign minister. It's
a regime with clerical and revolutionary oversight that seeks to dominate the Middle East
and beyond. You've heard me say this is a kleptocratic theocracy.
Ah, of course, you mean like Saudis and Israel, right?
Re PCR's latest linked article (post 133.
What PCR is insisting Putin do ("The easiest and cleanest way for Putin to do this is to
announce that Iran is under Russia's protection.")Putin has already done so in a landmark
speech last year when he unveiled five or six game-changing weapons, or was it 2018.
He declared back then to the evil empire that a nuclear attack on an ally would be considered
an attack upon Russia. He made this crystal clear. Of course it wouldn't hurt for him to
'gently' remind them of this.
I do have to say, the silence from the Russians is odd. Even when you read the Russian
Foreign Ministry's news releases.
For instance, there's this on January 4th:
" On January 4, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a telephone conversation with Foreign
Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the latter's
initiative. " (italics mine).
So Lavrov talked to an Iranian official only on January 4th, and the call came from Iran
(Zarif), not the other way around. This is odd, and even the explicit
mentioning of Zarif initiating the call --to me-- seems odd.
Hmm...
On Monday, as the meeting ended, several ministers transmitted Netanyahu's declaration
distancing Israel from the Soleimani hit.
"The assassination of Soleimani isn't an Israeli event but an American event. We were
not involved and should not be dragged into it," he said, according to Israeli news
outlets.
Netanyahu backs away from Soleimani assassination, warns ministers to ' stay out' of
purely 'American event
.'
Does the word 'backpedaling' ring a bell, Bibi?
You'll reap what you sow, oh grand Master of Conception. I sincerely hope it'll be an
abundant and infinite harvest. And, of course, mazel tov, ol' boy. You're gonna need it by
the bushel
On the previous thread, jared | Jan 6 2020 12:32 utc | 230, posted:
"Iran is already proclaiming it will proceed with unconstrained uranium enrichment - a act
which is both pointless and counter productive."
A huge amount of Iran's nuclear waste from the years of enriching uranium has been used to
create depleted uranium warheads such as the U.S. uses on its Hellfire and other missiles.
These are typically one-ton warheads, about 99% uranium, and ignite on contact (uranium is
pyrophoric -- it burns) and burn at up to 6,000°C. They can penetrate a good thirty
meters of prestressed concrete in less than a second and incinerate everything in the
vicinity.
The (depleted) uranium anti-tank rounds used in the 1991 war against Iraq were five
kilograms (11 pounds) and could zip through two or three tanks. When the Americans went
inside the tanks later on, they found the Iraqis' bodies turned to black dust. Occasionally,
the bodies were intact, in position, but they crumbled to dust when touched. The American
troops called them "crispy critters".
ALL the American military who entered those tanks or worked on them afterward became sick
with all sorts of horrible illnesses triggered by radiation poisoning.
The one ton of uranium in a bunker buster results in one ton of powder, much of it
microscopic. Inhaled, a single microscopic particle of 2.5 microns deposited in an alveol
cavity of the lung contains come 210 billion uranium atoms. Uranium spits out alpha
particles, which don't travel far (an inch at most, usually), but they are the most powerful
force in our universe. That single particle irradiates, permanently, a sphere of up to 350
lung cells.
The military in Iraq were inhaling millions (billions!) of those particles. Those who
haven't died yet are deathly ill.
Israel's anti-missile defenses are not what they are claimed to be. Just a few of those
bunker busters delivered into Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem would contaminate it
permanently.
Israel cannot afford the loss of such territory. (In the United States, the Jefferson
Proving Ground where most of the testing was done, was offered to the National Park Service
as a wild-life refuge to be off limits in order to protect its biodiversity. The offer was
turned down. The site is now off limits, designated a national sacrifice zone...) And Iran
has the missiles with the accuracy necessary to make such hits.
Thus, every suspected Iranian missile storage location must be hit simultaneously. Israel
does not have the means to do that, hence the need to involve in United States in an all-out
colossal attack. This was openly discussed under the George Walker Bush administration until
the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007 pulled the rung out from under the
warmongers by openly declaring that Iran had no nuclear program.
Israel used such missiles on south Lebanon in August 2006, so, they know all about this.
The bombing of south Lebanon stopped the day that the south-north wind reversed direction.
The United Nations Environment Program that investigated the missile craters in south Lebanon
found low enriched uranium, the result of mixing the depleted uranium with the enriched
uranium from decommissioned Soviet missiles removed from Ukraine, in a failed attempt to
restore the original isotopic ratio and make it pass for "natural" uranium that, if
discovered, could then be claimed to have been in the ground and turned up by the
bombing.
The entire assault on mountains and caves of Tora Bora in southeast Afghanistan in
2001-2002 was a bunker buster testing program. Canadian researchers found uranium-induced
radioactivity all over, but they were silenced by death threats and some roughing up.
So, Iran does not need a nuclear arsenal, for it has developed an equally good deterrent
on the cheap. Israel knows this, the various intelligence services know this, some people in
the corporate media know this, but if one mentions it, one is immediately told that there is
"no proof".
"Iran is warning that if there is retaliation for the two waves of attacks they launched
their 3rd wave will destroy Dubai and Haifa," tweeted NBC News Tehran Bureau chief.
https://t.co/ydzIAfEpzk
thanks b.. it is really unfortunate about the loss of those on the plane.. it is a strange
coincidence of timing and a tie in with ukraine is also rather odd...
here is how i look at this.. usa-israel hasn't faked its squeeze on iran which has been
going on for what feels like forever.. usa-israel didn't fake taking out qassem s... the
sanctions on iran continue.. this war on iran will continue.. how could it stop after all
this time? what has changed? nothing has changed in the minds of these sick neo cons..
i share @ James j's comment which i quote here - "The missiles last night is not the
promised retribution ...rather, Iran is keeping focused on the primary goal ...to get the usa
out..." i don't see that it is going to work though...
It seems to me Iran works quite differently then US-Israel... they have provided a warning
so that action last night looked fake and trumps response 'all is well' was fake as he knew
they had been issued an advance warming... but the message is clear.. 'get the fuck
out'..
i also share @ cynica's position in her earlier posts.. the shit here is real.. the world
needs to find a way out of this mess and it won't come from western countries cowtowing to
usa-israels warmonger agenda either...
i don't know what the doofus in command has said today.. it doesn't matter what he says...
usa-israel will not back down.. they want war.. iran responded very diplomatically... i just
don't believe usa-israel are interested in diplomacy, as opposed to war and prep for war.. as
someone said last night - all that money to be made off prep for war, the MIC and etc. etc..
i wish this would end, but i can't see it..
The blowback from Trump's assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani and PMU leader
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis is increasing. A scandal is developing as one consequence of Trump's
evil deed after Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi revealed the gangster methods U.S.
President Trump used in his attempts to steal Iraq's oil. ...and a very good essay by Michael
Hudson as appeared on the Saker blog, a fine compliment to this work being done here by
B.
"The initial Iranian response to the assassination of the martyred commander Soleimani has
happened. Now it is time for the initial response to the assassination of the martyred
commander Muhandis. And because Iraqis are brave and zealous, their response will not be
any less than that of Iran's. That is a promise", al-Khazali was quoted as saying.
I endorse this view from Shedlock: Trump is caught bluffing again-Fortunately. Iran's measured response puts Trump in a no
win Scenario
It is difficult to do perception management in a globalized world. Neither the US nor Iran
want full out war, but politically they have to convince their people that they "win", to
justify the cost (and unite, though Trump seems to be incapable of this). Actually, Iran has
an advantage here, because martyrdom or victory, psychologically they can win either way.
They have demonstrated this by the huge - unifying - funerals. They also don't have this
stupid Hollywood good guy bad guy thing or if you want to go into protestant religious
psychology that god will make the good guys win in this world. It is a huge problem as the
reverse perception is that if someone is successful he must be good.
Fact is that Iran has been the first country since WWII to challenge the US directly and not
via proxy. They were rational to do it in a way that leaves the US an off ramp. By warning
beforehand and not killing anybody (officially, I have my doubts about this Ukrainian plane),
they also have the moral high ground.
They managed to make the US stop the escalation. It is quite impressive.
La base de los Estados Unidos en Ayn al-Assad en Irak, bombardeada anoche por Irán,
es la base donde despegaron los drones que asesinaron a Qassem Soleimani y Abu Mahdi al
Muhandis. Así lo informó el corresponsal de guerra
MT> The US base at Ayn al-Assad in Iraq, bombed last night by Iran, is the base where
the drones that killed Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al Muhandis took off. This was reported
by the war correspondent
I caution Netiyahoo not to crow. His prison time is on the horizon.
China's Global Times has a piece noting Israel gave assistance.
And this editorial: Has the US lost direction in Middle East?
"US national power is on the wane [;/]now considers China as its primary rival and wants
to use its resources from Europe and the Middle East to contain China. If it is so, its
presence in the Middle East will be surely diminished."[./]
After a US drone strike killed top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, it
was expected that Iran would retaliate. But the way it fought back - launching missiles
against US bases in Iraq - was unexpected. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried
out the mission.
Since Iran did not target US soil, the move cannot be viewed as a declaration of war.
Iran did aim at US troops, but the troops are stationed in Iraq. This showed Tehran is well
aware how far it should go and has left some ground. Iran doesn't want a fierce clash or a
war with the US. As Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif claimed on Wednesday morning after
the attack, the country was taking measures in self-defense. "We do not seek escalation or
war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression," he said. [.]
How should the US react, the White House must be deliberating, because what it does next
may directly determine whether Washington and Tehran would reduce tensions or storm into a
war. Currently, it is the lull before the storm.
US military killed Iran's most powerful military commander on Iraq's soil, which is an act
of state terrorism although the US itself does not think so. [.] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1176167.shtml
The U.S. collapse is not one event. It is a slow, slow process and then the $250 trillion
debt pile goes out with a bang.
/div> The reason the Qiam rocket, a derivation of the nazi A4, is built is
that it is cheap and has the capability to be modified such that the "pay-load" comes in very
fast and within 10 meters of zero-zero-zero. It's not an old rocket. But I assume the Persians
used the oldest first. Inventory managements is vital to logistics and ammunition reliability.
The cheap version is 500 meter accurate at range, but the range was not exteem, so probably
< 500
The reason the Qiam rocket, a derivation of the nazi A4, is built is that it is cheap and has
the capability to be modified such that the "pay-load" comes in very fast and within 10
meters of zero-zero-zero. It's not an old rocket. But I assume the Persians used the oldest
first. Inventory managements is vital to logistics and ammunition reliability. The cheap
version is 500 meter accurate at range, but the range was not exteem, so probably < 500
B, great article. You and Elijah Marnier and a few others are my first go to's for
information as to what is going on on the middle east.
One of my favorite reporters out of Syria said the US abandoned Deir Ezzor oil fields
yesterday leaving the SDF there alone and totally open for Russian and Syrian forces to go in
and to secure. If so this attack would have been well worth it. Obviously, I can't verify it
but do trust the source.
Hezbollah is also well within reach of Israhell and can launch ballistic missiles upon it
should the US attack Iran. People tend to forget that this was not just about Soleimani, but
an entire resistance. His death has just made that resistance much stronger and unified.
The US will have to leave. And soon.
walter@45,ghost_ship@47 believe Iran is using "old stocks".
I respectfully disagree. This is Iran's debut in showing off their technical prowess -
they are trying to scare off the US from escalating the conflict.
IMHO they would make sure the US got the message that they pulled their punches and could
have caused *much* more damage if they wanted to. Using older stock would make sense, but
only after you establish your cred - otherwise, you are sending exactly the wrong message,
the US could read the hit as "gosh, 500m is the best you can do?"
Following up on the end of #78, the point is that it seems very unlikely that the air
defenses would be shut down even if the bases were evacuated. In that case, the success of
the attack (however limited its objectives) shows Iran's ability to penetrate US air defenses
and disable or destroy US air-supremacy infrastructure.
@PavewayIV #75
The US will ALWAYS try to spin this against Iran no matter what. Even if we hear the
captain screaming that he can see the engine is tearing itself apart.
Indeed! If there's one thing the US does all the time, it's spin. But especially with last
night's attack, they're starting to resemble the Talosians of Star Trek, whose seemingly
incredible powers were all, well, illusory.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says Iran's early Wednesday
missile attack on US bases in Iraq following the American assassination of a top general
was just "a slap".
"The talk of revenge and such debates are a different issue. For now, a slap was
delivered on their face last night," Ayatollah Khamenei said in remarks broadcast live on
national television Wednesday.
"What is important about confrontation is that the military action as such is not
sufficient. What is important is that the seditious American presence in the region must
end," he said to chants of "Death to America" by an audience in Tehran.
The threats on how to answer on new US attacks have been issued without a date of
expiry.
It all depends now on Trump's reelection strategy: Will he run on bringing the troups home
or will he run on another Middle East war.
„The Qiam missiles Iran launched are a derivative of the Soviet Scud type. They are
liquid fueled with a warhead of about 700 kilogram. They have a range of some 800 kilometer.
Iran has more capable and precise solid fueled missiles it could have used."
According to Fars news agency 2 of the missiles were of type Fateh313 (solid fueled
– 500km range) the rest were a modified version of Ghiyam (multiple warheads - 800km
range).
„No U.S. air or missile defense against the incoming projectiles was observed."
In spite of public and unofficial announcement by Iran about the attack even short time
ahead, Yankee was not able to repel and defend their modern and costy military base.
According to Fars news agency radar jamming technology were used in this attack.
The attack is over, Trump's reaction is published, but still no one is allowed to enter the
military base.
You are missing the point. An airbase is a huge target with mostly empty space. The fact
that the Iranians were able to target and hit specific buildings in it, is a truly
nightmarish scenario. They actually told US that they have the capability to hit whatever
they want. USA can send a drone and kill a general but US has generals too. It is easy to
find where a general's house in Qatar base is for example and hit it with the same accuracy.
How does that general sleeps at night from now on? How can you plan the typical US bombing
campaign, when your enemy has the ability to strike back at you where it hurts?
Magnier..
"#Iran informed #Iraq Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi of its intention to bomb #US military
bases in #Anbar and #Kurdistan before the attack.
Abdel Mahdi warned the Americans who took their precautions before the attack."
If this is true then there really is no hope for the Iraqi's. This is the clown that
writes letters to the US saying US has been naughty and resigned when Trump puts some
pressure on him, leaving Iraq gov parylized..
Iran was proving the reach and accuracy of their armaments, and the inadequacy of the US
Patriot etc. anti-air-attack systems. Trumps Tomahawks fired at Syria either went wrong
guidance-wise, were hacked or were shot down by Russian-made defenses. No comparison, Iran
wins the "rockets that don't kill anyone" competition. Iran also has Russian-made air defense
systems. Cheaper too... LOL!
I expect that the Iraqi gov't administration will quietly try to back-pedal from the
Parliamentary vote to evict the US. Then the various militias will band together (maybe even
Shia/Sunni alliances, the enemy of my enemy style) and keep US/ZATO troops mostly bottled up
in their bases until the US actually withdraws. The Iraq administration will be forced to
bend to the Parliament's and Iraqi peoples' will that the US/ZATO leaves. Pompeo and Trumpty
Dumbdy won't be able to tap dance around this scenario, even in front of the US/ZATO public.
Iran may not have to lift a finger in Iraq, but will find other ways to hurt the US AND ZATO
that don't meet the threshold for US military retaliation.
The US/ZATO deserves to suffer millions of cuts, hopefully one cut for each person
murdered by the US since 9/11.
MAGA Make America Go Away
omid , Jan 8 2020 18:01 utc |
154Piotr Berman , Jan 8 2020 18:01 utc |
155
"Iran misjudged Trump's response/speech, Trump talked about peace and not escalation (he is
lying of course), if Iran keep attacking US from now on, Iran will be framed as the threat
and that Trump have the right to retaliate.
Aslong as no one was killed on the american side apparently Trump see no reason to use
military means, meanwhile Iran is left with no kills which could make them more
desperate."
Posted by: Zanon | Jan 8 2020 17:12 utc | 125
I typical post that misses the point. The goal is to remove all the NATO trash from Syria
and Iraq. That has to be done by Iraqis, of which the bold ones are clobbered with air
strikes and the timid are intimidated. It is utterly pointless how Americans perceive the
situation, and even less germane what is the opinion of the vassals. The audience that
matters is in Iraq.
So what USA did? Dissed Iraqis quite serially, including the murder at the main airport
with no warning to the legal authorities of the place. Iran tries to be as un-American as
possible, so duly notifies Iraqi PM about the strike, an hour in advance, and perhaps follows
the suggestion to warn Americans directly. Giving the proper recognition of the rights of the
allies takes precedence over expedience, even in the moment of extreme pain and grief. Mind
you that Saudi, American or whoever has stooges in Iraq that villify it as a dominator taking
advantage etc., and that was a major theme in recent riots. It seems that one block of
rouble-risers is reconverted to anti-American solidarity, but those people have to be
humored, not taken for granted.
Taking opinions of others seriously even if there is no perfect agreement, especially if
the other party is not Israel, is the profound lack of Americans, and the rest of the West to
to a lesser degree.
The other aspect is how Shia view religious leaders and how those leaders view themselves.
There are rather high standards. This is not an operation under a local commander. Supreme
Leader is personally engaged. Taking proper account of host country prerogatives is also good
regard for Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other Iraqi marjah etc. Contrast with untrustworthy,
arrogant and cowardly infidels has to be maintained.
US have not been asked to leave by the iraqis so how are they supposed to leave?
Especially since they are not going to leave by themselves?
Esper: Iraqi government has not asked US troops to leave
Iraq's government has made no formal request that American forces leave its country,
despite a nonbinding vote Sunday to expel U.S. and other troops after the Pentagon killed a
top Iranian commander in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday.
Regarding warning the Swiss embassy of the attack. Also very strategic move. If there were
loss of American life due to no warning, it would have been near impossible for Trump to not
counter attack.
Furthermore, the US now thinks their enemy is weak or afraid. I feel kind of disappointed
by you guys who also think that, honestly? Did you see the reaction of the millions who came
to honor Souleimani? Do you really think the Iranian/Iraqi military and population are
wimps?
c'mon! take heart guys!
Iran was definitely involved in organizing, supplying, and even to some extent arming(with
small arms) various Iraqi militias. But the best way we know that it wasn't directly involved
in attacking US patrols, was that so few soldiers died. Iran has no need to improvise
explosive devices, it manufactures landmines on a mass scale which are much more reliable and
orders of magnitude more deadly, and operationally easier to use.
Most of the resistance to the US occupation in the Shia regions of Iraq were in the form
of non violent demonstrations spearheaded by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani(who btw is also
Iranian).
The nonviolent demonstrators were routinely massacred for their trouble, by both the
takfiri resistance and the occupation troops, but eventually succeeded in their demands for a
democratic vote wherein they elected a government that demanded the US leave.
And as Michael Flynn relates in his interview with Mehdi Hassan, once kicked out, the
Obama Administration took steps that they knew would lead to the creation of ISIS in the
region, and fired him as the head of the DIA after he had written them a memo warning them
about this.
Michael Flynn, who btw is rabidly anti Iranian, then became the first victim of the
Russiagaters when Trump was elected into office.
A war with Iran would see it use its Chinese-supplied anti-ship missiles, mines and coastal artillery to
shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20% of the world's oil supply. Oil prices would
double, perhaps triple, devastating the global economy. The retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well
as on American military installations in Iraq, would leave hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead. The Shiites
in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, would see an attack on Iran as a religious war against Shiism.
The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern province, the Shiite majority
in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey would turn in fury on us and our
dwindling allies.
There would be an increase in terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and widespread sabotage of
oil production in the Persian Gulf. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon would renew attacks on northern Israel.
War with Iran would trigger a long and widening regional conflict that, by the time it was done, would
terminate the American Empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins. Let us hope for
a miracle to pull us back from this Dr. Strangelove self-immolation.
Iran, which has vowed "harsh retaliation," is already reeling under the crippling economic sanctions
imposed by the Trump administration when it unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from the Iranian nuclear arms
deal. Tensions in Iraq between the U.S. and the Shiite majority, at the same time, have been escalating. On
Dec. 27 Katyusha rockets were fired at a military base in Kirkuk where U.S. forces are stationed. An
American civilian contractor was killed and several U.S. military personnel were wounded.
The U.S. responded on Dec. 29 by bombing sites belonging to the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia.
Two days later Iranian-backed militias attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, vandalizing and destroying
parts of the building and causing its closure. But this attack will soon look like child's play.
Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation has been destroyed as a unified country. Its once-modern
infrastructure is in ruins. Electrical and water services are, at best, erratic. There is high unemployment
and discontent over widespread government corruption that has led to bloody street protests. Warring
militias and ethnic factions have carved out competing and antagonistic enclaves. At the same time, the war
in Afghanistan is lost, as the Afghanistan Papers published by The Washington Post detail. Libya is a failed
state. Yemen after five years of unrelenting Saudi airstrikes and a blockade is enduring one of the world's
worst humanitarian disasters. The "moderate" rebels we funded and armed in Syria at a cost of $500 million,
after instigating a lawless reign of terror, have been beaten and driven out of the country. The monetary
cost for this military folly, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, is between $5 trillion and
$7 trillion.
So why go to war with Iran? Why walk away from a nuclear agreement that Iran did not violate? Why
demonize a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other jihadist groups, including
al-Qaida and Islamic State? Why shatter the de facto alliance we have with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why
further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?
The generals and politicians who launched and prosecuted these wars are not about to take the blame for
the quagmires they created. They need a scapegoat. It is Iran. The hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed,
including at least 200,000 civilians, and the millions driven from their homes into displacement and refugee
camps cannot, they insist, be the result of our failed and misguided policies. The proliferation of radical
jihadist groups and militias, many of which we initially trained and armed, along with the continued
worldwide terrorist attacks, have to be someone else's fault. The generals, the CIA, the private contractors
and weapons manufacturers who have grown rich off these conflicts, the politicians such as George W. Bush,
Barack Obama and Donald Trump, along with all the "experts" and celebrity pundits who serve as cheerleaders
for endless war, have convinced themselves, and want to convince us, that Iran is responsible for our
catastrophe.
The chaos and instability we unleashed in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, left Iran
as the dominant country in the region. Washington empowered its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse its
mistake other than to attack Iran.
A total of 22
missiles have hit two bases housing US
troops in
Iraq
but there were no Iraqi
casualties, according to Iraq's
military.
The online
statement came hours after Iranian
state television said
Iran
had launched missiles at US
targets in the early hours of Wednesday
in retaliation for the
United States
's killing last week
of top military commander
Qassem Soleimani
.
"Between 1:45am
and 2:15am [22:45 GMT and 23:15 GM]
Iraq was hit by 22 missiles, 17 on the
Ain al-Asad airbase and ... five on the
city of Erbil," the Iraqi military
said.
"There were no victims among the
Iraqi forces," it added, without
mentioning whether or not there were
casualties among foreign troops.
Following the strikes, US President
Donald Trump
said on Twitter that
an "assessment of casualties & damages
taking place now".
More than 5,000 US troops remain in
Iraq along with other foreign forces as
part of a coalition that has trained
and backed up Iraqi security forces in
the fight against the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS)
armed group.
Some 115 German soldiers are
stationed in Erbil and all were fine, a
spokesman for Bundeswehr operations
said.
Denmark, which has about 130
soldiers in Iraq, said no Danish
soldiers were wounded or killed in the
attack on Ain al-Asad, the largest
airbase where US-led coalition troops
are based.
It was the first time Iran directly
hit a US installation with ballistic
missiles.
Soleimani, who headed Iran's Quds
Force, the overseas arm of the elite
Revolutionary Guards Corps, was buried
after the missile attacks, Iranian
state television said.
"His revenge was taken and now he
can rest in peace," it said.
The missiles were launched at the
same time of the day that Soleimani was
killed on Friday near the international
airport in Iraq's capital, Baghdad. He
was buried in the "martyrs section" of
a cemetery in his hometown of Kerman.
Brave but useless, and probably damaging action from Iran. Mullahs became way too exited about this insident.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi labeled the missile strike that killed Soleimani as a "brazen violation of Iraq's sovereignty
and a blatant attack on the nation's dignity".
At least two airbases housing US troops in Iraq have been hit
by more than a dozen ballistic missiles, according to the US Department of Defence.
Iranian state TV says the attack is a retaliation after the country's top commander Qasem
Soleimani was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.
The Pentagon says at least two sites were attacked, in Irbil and Al Asad.
It is unclear if there have been any casualties.
"We are aware of the reports of attacks on US facilities in Iraq. The president has been briefed
and is monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team," White
House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the attack was in retaliation for the death of Soleimani on
Friday.
"We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any
territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted," it said via
a statement carried by Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif later issued a statement on Twitter, claiming the attack
was self-defence and denied seeking to escalate the situation into war.
Image
Copyright @JZarif
@JZarif
Report
<figure> <span> <img alt="Twitter post by @JZarif: Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched.We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression." src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/socialembed/https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1214736614217469953~/news/world-middle-east-51028954" width="465" height="323"> <span>Image Copyright @JZarif</span> <span aria-hidden="true">@JZarif</span> </span> <div><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/contact-us/editorial" aria-label="Report Twitter post by @JZarif">Report</a></div> </figure>
President Trump tweeted shortly afterwards, insisting "all is well", while adding that they had
not yet assessed possible casualties.
Image
Copyright @realDonaldTrump
@realDonaldTrump
Report
<figure> <span> <img alt="Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump: All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning." src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/socialembed/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1214739853025394693~/news/world-middle-east-51028954" width="465" height="279"> <span>Image Copyright @realDonaldTrump</span> <span aria-hidden="true">@realDonaldTrump</span> </span> <div><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/contact-us/editorial" aria-label="Report Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump">Report</a></div> </figure>
The attacks took place hours after the burial of Soleimani. The second attack occurred in Irbil
shortly after the first rockets hit Al Asad, Al Mayadeen TV said.
Earlier in the day, President Trump said a US withdrawal of troops from Iraq would be the worst
thing for the country.
The UK foreign office told the BBC: "We are urgently working to establish the facts on the
ground. Our first priority is the security of British personnel."
The assassination of Soleimani on January 3 was a major escalation in already deteriorating
relations between Iran and the US.
The general - who controlled Iran's proxy forces across the Middle East - was regarded as a
terrorist by the US government, which says he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of
American troops and was plotting "imminent" attacks.
The "severe revenge" Iran promised for the death of Qassem Suleimani was heralded on
Wednesday morning by at least two waves of
short-range missile attacks on bases in Iraq hosting US and coalition personnel.
The attacks will provide an opportunity for hawks inside the Donald Trump administration to
ratchet up the conflict with Iran – but also potentially a pathway out of
the crisis.
The Iranian strikes were heavy on symbolism. The missiles were launched around 1.30am in
Iraq , roughly the same
time as the drone strike that killed Suleimani on Friday morning. Top Iranian advisers and
semi-official media outlets tweeted pictures of the country's flag during the attack, mirroring
Donald Trump's tweet as the first reports of Suleimani's death were emerging. The Revolutionary
Guards dubbed the operation "Martyr Suleimani". Videos of the missiles being launched were
released to Iranian media outlets.
ss="rich-link"> Iran attacks two US airbases in Iraq in wake of Suleimani killing
Read more
But in their immediate aftermath, the attacks appear to have been carefully calibrated to
avoid US casualties – fired at bases that were already on high alert.
Iran's foreign minister has said the strikes have concluded and characterised them as
self-defence within the boundaries of international law – not the first shots in a
war.
Trump, in his first comments after the strikes, also sought to play them down.
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment
of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and
well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow
morning.
If Trump's assessment of the damage holds, Wednesday's strikes might be an opportunity for
both sides to de-escalate without losing face. Iran will be able to say it took violent revenge
for Suleimani's death and pivot to a campaign of proxy warfare – with which it feels more
comfortable, against a vastly more powerful adversary – and diplomatic pressure to eject
American forces from Iraq.
The US can also step back, shrugging off the retaliation as being of no significant
consequence. That is the best-case scenario, but it rests on two risky premises: that more than
a dozen missiles struck bases hosting US military personnel without substantial
damage or casualties; and that the White House will resist any urge to respond.
Not sure whats true at this point. If Iran is indeed behind the missile attacks they will pay
the price. Hoped they could restrain themselves and make it harder on the US to escalate. But
then again, maybe they felt it was inevitable or militant factions from within demanded a
response. Anyways, lesson being if you commit an act of war don't be surprised there is
retaliation. Pretty sure Trump and Bibi are not unhappy about this since that's probably what
they hoped for.
They're Persians. They are the people that invented war. But you're right, the suits are
delusional. Reality can be a real bitxh when one awakens from a delusion. That's a dangerous
moment, when the suspension of disbelief goes "poof!"
Arab armies aren't very good at conducting warfare.
Iranians aren't Arabs, they are a branch of Indo-European/Aryan, who historically have
been very good at conducting warfare.
----------
This ignores history. For example, in recent decades Italians were much less militarily
minded than their Roman ancestors. Similarly, Danes today are not similar to folks who
conquered half of England 1100 years ago and the whole of England decades later, only to
loose it to Frenchified Danes afterwards.
To provide examples from the Syrian war, 100% Arab Lebanese Hezbollah were reputed to be
most effective, and getting less casualties that other units. By the way of contrast, units
of Afghan volunteers assembled by Iran were so-so. And ISIS was most effective if you count
their numbers, although with a lot of casualties. Syrian themselves had good elite units and
many more mediocre units.
a tweet (so not reliable)
#BREAKING: First video showing a Fateh-110 precision guided ballistic missile of #IRGC
hitting the Ain al-Asad Air Base in #Iraq during Operation #Soleimani of #IRGCASF.#IRGC
sources claim they have destroyed several #USArmy helicopters & drones & have killed
80 #US troops there!
Is expecting Iran to de-escalate realistic?
Iran has a number of possible retaliation options following the US killing of an Iranian
commander.
1h ago
Oh, well, whad'ya think.... In just an hour after this BBC masterpiece shit hit the fan.
--------------
NBC Ali Arouzi claims Iran demands USA not to retaliate, quoting Haifa and Dubai for "3rd
wave".
Delicious if true. "Sand niggas" returning the "sole hyperpower" the favour. Didn't Pompeo or
someone demanded "not to retaliate" just a day or two ago.
But i am not sure we can trust NBC or any other western propaganda office about what Iran did
and dis not say.
Intel would not like loosing Haifa, they already loosing market to AMD last year....
---------
Trump got himself his Pearl Harbor 2.0 and "wartime president" status. Maybe will make him
re-elected.
But also IRGC "pulled the hook". Due to American hubris they now just can not evacuate
USArmy Iraqi garrisons to, say, Kuwait. And would have to infringe upon Iraq sovereignty and
to be sitting ducks there. Wagging the dog.
--------
I still wonder about nukes.
I hope Russia and China would prohibit long-range and medium-range vehicles, citing M.A.D.
concerns and protocols, so USA would be limited to short-range nuclear-wielding weapons.
Which they shouls have much less.
I also hope Trump would get his re-election and stop short of using tactical nukes, but
see no rational reasons for such a restrain for today USA.
--------
There was no news yet, however, about US Navy fleeing away from Iran ASMs range. So
hopefully Pentagon does not see real threat of real war, not yet. And maybe it will still be
contained as one more run of the mill American warlette. Hopefully...
Launching a ballistic missile attack against a US base in al-Anbar is smart from a 'limited
escalation' perspective. It prevents the fight from expanding across the region unless
the United States loses its mind completely and unleashes a full out attack on Iran.
Additionally, targeting American occupation troops in Iraq plays well with ordinary Iraqis
sick of American aggression on their soil and such a strike, as opposed to a targeted
assassination or an attack outside of Iraq, gives Iran's enemies very little propaganda
material to work with. It serves the ball back into the US court and makes Washington 100%
responsible if it escalates this conflict into a regional war. Also, not waiting for weeks or
months before retaliating makes it much more difficult for Israel or a US proxy to launch a
false flag and try to blame it on Iran. Well played.
Well, if it was a limited strike that was designed to look big and make some serious material
damage, and not to kill a lot of US troops, then it's quite possible that Trump - assuming he
doesn't go the heavy retaliation way - can soon, and definitely before elections, be able to
order US to leave Iraq not because they don't want the US there but actually in a magnanimous
act, "to make sure that poor country won't be bombed again by evil Iranians" - arguably with
a mutual understanding with Iran that both will stick to a limited direct influence over
Iraq. But that would be the best-case scenario, where Iran boots the US, the US still got
hit, but no more deaths, cycle of reprisals ends, and Iraq is basically free at last.
I'll see how bad it actually is when I wake up...
I am sure the morning awaits us and our chants and meditations. But the morning also
brings a new sun upon the Saudis and if this process is planned as an extensive revenge (and
I believe it is) then the Saudis can awake expecting it to rain stones for some time.
If this struggle to evict the USA is serious then Iran and its Persian army will
emasculate the key arab pawn over the coming weeks and the Houthis will be given reprieve to
bring them to victory in Yemen. My guess is that this way will give stability and a framework
for peace in the region sufficient to counter the belligerence of the occupier of Palestine
lands.
The region is subject to endless provocations and the 'gift of Golan' to Israel is just
one the more recent grievous affronts that are unlikely to end unless there is a profound
military rebuff to the lunacy of western private finance capital scheming.
The illegal occupation of Syrian oilfields could collapse immediately as well if it has
not already commenced.
Each new day will tell but I will always wish for peace. Thank you your insights and may
you and your wife greet the sun in peace each day.
Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of
UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens &
senior officials were launched.
And so, karlof1 , we shall if the red flag comes down. Perhaps this was enough of a
slap? But they must leave, that remains as an imperative that will smolder unceasingly
now.
If Russia has disallowed the use of nukes, then there's not much the US military can do,
no matter how bloodthirsty the Zionists are. As soon as the US hits Iran, Tel Aviv goes up in
smoke. That's all there is to it. It's been this way for months and months now. The Israeli
and US casualties required for a direct attack on Iran are just too high for Zionists to
stomach. The use of nukes was the only viable play from the beginning (and I realize this is
not really "viable" to any sane person, but Pompeo and Netanyahu are not sane.) If nukes are
out, then the US cannot establish dominance over the skies quickly enough to prevent
thousands upon thousands of Israeli and US casualties. It seems to me that everybody must
know this is true, deep down.
In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is
to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a
half-imagined past.
Unless you were catatonic this past couple of weeks, dead drunk from Sunday to Saturday, suffered a debilitating
brain injury or were living in Bognor Regis where the internet cannot reach, you heard about the west slapping a
four-year Olympic ban on Russia. Because it could, it did. And not really for any other reason, despite the indignation
and manufactured outrage. It's a pity now that I come to think on it that you can't use outrage to power a vehicle,
fill a sandwich or knit into socks: because the west has a bottomless supply, and it's just about as renewable a
resource as you could envision.
As I have reiterated elsewhere and often, the United States of America is the cheatingest nation on the planet where
professional sports is concerned, because winning matters to Americans like nowhere else. Successful Olympic
medal-winners and iconic sports figures in the USA are feted like victorious battlefield generals, because the sports
arena is just another battlefield to the United States, and there's no
it's-not-whether-you-win-or-lose-it's-how-you-play-the-game in wartime. Successful American sports figures foster an
appreciation of American culture and lifestyle, and promote an image of America as a purposeful and powerful nation.
Successful sports figures anywhere, really; not so very long ago Olympic gold medalists were merely given an
appreciative parade by a grateful nation, and featured in lucrative advertising contracts if they were photogenic. More
recently, some nations have simply
paid athletes by the medal
for
winning. This
includes most nations
, with the notable exceptions of the UK, Norway and Sweden. So the pressure is on to win, win,
win, by whatever means are necessary.
Since Russia is in second place only to Germany for all-time medal rankings in the Olympics, and since Russia
eventually made it back up to Public Enemy Number One in the USA after a brief hiatus during which it looked like a
combination of Boris Yeltsyn and teams of Harvard economists were going to make a respectful pauper of it while it
became a paradise for international investors the USA spares no effort to beat Russia at everything. On occasions
where it is not particularly successful, as it was not in the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi, it has turned to other
methods screaming that the Russians are all dopers who benefit from a state-sponsored doping scheme, and implementing
bans to prevent as many Russian athletes as possible from competing.
And that's my principal objection. In media matters in the world of sports, just as in other political venues, the
USA relies on a combination of lying and relentless repetition to drive its points home. Thus it is that the
English-speaking world still believes Russia was convicted of having had a state-sponsored doping plan, found guilty and
justly sentenced upon the discovery of mountains of evidence, its accusers vindicated and its dissident whistleblowers
heroes to a grateful world. Huzzah!!
"Russia operated a state-sponsored doping programme for four years across the
"vast majority" of summer and winter Olympic sports, claims a new report.
It was "planned and operated" from late 2011 including the build-up to London 2012 and continued through the
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics until August 2015."
The BBC is Britain's state-funded broadcaster, financed by the British government, and the British government is
second only to the United States in its virulent hatred of Russia and Russians. But that was back then, when the 'doping
scheme' was newly 'discovered', and all the western reporters and government figures were nearly wetting their pants
with excitement. What about now?
"It's the latest twist in a long-running saga of investigations into widespread, state-sponsored doping by the
Kremlin."
My soul, if it isn't the USA's star witness, Doctor Grigory Rodchenkov, in
AFP
;
"Doped athletes do not work alone. There are medical doctors, coaches and managers who provided substances,
advised and protected them. In Russia's state-sponsored doping scheme, there is also a state-sponsored defense of many
cheaters including state officials, witnesses and apparatchiks who are lying under oath and have falsified evidence.
These individuals are clearly criminals," he said.
More about him later; for now, suffice it to say the western media still finds him a credible and compelling witness.
"In 2016, independent investigations confirmed that Russian officials had run a
massive state‑sponsored doping system during the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi, which fed illicit
performance-enhancing drugs to hundreds of athletes and took outlandish measures to pervert national drug-testing
mechanisms.
The evidence was incontrovertible."
I was going to go on, listing examples in the popular press from around the world, published since the latest ban was
announced, all claiming investigation had proved the Russians had a massive state-sponsored doping scheme in place which
let them cheat their way to the podium. But I think you get the picture, and that last lead-in was my cue; it was just
too good to pass up.
Independent investigations confirmed. The evidence was incontrovertible.
Well,
let's take a look at that. Incontrovertible evidence ought to be able to withstand a bit of prying, what?
When the evidence of something being so is both massive and incontrovertible, beyond question and the result
of proof beyond a doubt, then that thing IS. Therefore, the western press is proceeding on the assumption
that western investigations proved the Russians had a doping program in which all or most Russian athletes
took prohibited performance-enhancing drugs, at the instruction of sports-organization officials, who were
in turn directed by state officials to use such methods to permit Russian athletes to win where they would
otherwise likely not have been capable of a winning performance. And there were such allegations by western
figures and officials, together with assurances that there was so much evidence that well, frankly, it was
embarrassing. But the western media and western sports organizations and officials apparently do not
understand what 'evidence' is.
The
Court of Arbitration for Sport
(CAS), established in 1984 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and headquartered at Lausanne,
Switzerland, is recognized by all Olympic international organizations as the highest authority for
sports-related legal issues. An Investigative Commission consisting of Dr. Richard McLaren (Chair), Dick
Pound and Gunter Younger was appointed to look into allegations of widespread and state-supported doping of
athletes of the Russian Olympic team for the 2016 Winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia. The Commission's star
witness was Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, former head of the Moscow laboratory. According to what became known as
the McLaren Report,
more than 1000 Russian athletes across 30 sports
were involved in or benefited from "an institutional
conspiracy" of doping. The Investigative Commission settled on sanctioning 35 Olympic athletes with
Anti-Doping Rules Violations (ARDV), and they were banned from further international sports competitions;
those who had won medals had them confiscated. Nearly all the sanctioned athletes appealed their cases to
the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Sorry to keep hopping back and forth, but I'm trying to stay with two major themes at the same time for
the moment the accusations against the Russian Olympic athletes, which were entirely based on
the revelations of the 'doping mastermind'
, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, and Dr. Rodchenkov himself. Western
organizations and media were bowled over by the affable Rodchenkov, and eager to accept his jaw-dropping
revelations about widespread doping in Russian sport. Sites specializing in sports doping with steroids
feted him as the brilliant mind behind not only doping Russian athletes, but devising a test for common
steroids which increased their detection window from only days to in excess of months. This enabled the
retesting of previously-stored samples from international athletes which had already passed as clean. I
suspect not a lot of followers of the Russian doping scandal are aware of that, and any such results should
be viewed with the utmost suspicion in light of what a colossal fraud he turned out to be. I'd like you to
just keep that in mind as we go further. Dr. Rodchenkov also claimed to be behind the brilliant everything
he does is brilliant formulation of the now-notorious and, at the time of its alleged widespread use,
top-secret "Duchess Cocktail", a steroid-stacker mixed with alcohol which made the presence of the steroids
undetectable. Remember that word; undetectable, because we'll come back to it. Additionally, please keep in
mind that Dr. Rodchenkov's unique testing method was the one used to re-test stored samples from the 2008
Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics.
So, back to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. 39 Russian athletes who had been accused of doping in the
McLaren Report appealed their sentences of lifetime Olympic bans and forfeiture of medals won.
Of those 39 appeals,
28 of the
appeals were completely upheld
, the judgments against the athletes reversed, and any medals forfeited
were reinstated. A further 11 appeals were partially upheld, but the lifetime bans were reduced to have
effect only for the upcoming Olympic Games at Peyongchang, Korea. That makes 39 of 39. Not a single athlete
accused was found to have participated in a state-sponsored doping program administered by Russian sports
officials acting under orders of the Russian government. The appeals of a further 3 Russian athletes were
not heard by the date of release of the statement, and were stayed until a later date.
It is important to note, and was specifically addressed in the release, that the CAS did not examine the
matter of whether there was or was not a state-sponsored or controlled doping program; that was not within
the Court's mandate. So for evidence of evidence, I guess you might say, and for an overall feel for the
credibility of the witness whose revelations underpinned the entirety of the McLaren Report, we turn to Dr.
Rodchenkov's testimony before the CAS.
As we examine his performance on that occasion, I'd like to point out that this likely represents the
first time Rodchenkov was cross-examined by and on behalf of individuals who were not necessarily delighted
to believe everything he said without questioning it further, as the McLaren Commission apparently was.
Because his story fell apart, often in ways that would have been amusing in anything other than the serious
setting which prevailed. That's Rodchenkov in the balaclava, which his handlers evidently thought necessary
to conceal his appearance. Perhaps he's had extensive cosmetic surgery, because his face was all over the
news before that he is in the US Witness Protection Program, after all. In my opinion, it only lent to the
overall sense of unreality, but to each his own. I'll also be jumping back and forth between what Rodchenkov
or his backers confidently claimed prior to the hearing, and during testimony, when I think it is important
to highlight manifest umm inconsistencies. Ready? Let's do it.
Pre-CAS hearing:
"The latest WADA report suggests that Rodchenkov helped as many as 1,000 Russian
athletes get away with doping. Hundreds of those athletes were able to get away with the use of the "Duchess
steroid cocktail" while avoiding detection."
During testimony and under questioning by counsel for the defendants,
Rodchenkov admitted
(a) that he had never personally distributed the 'Duchess cocktail' to any Russian
athlete, (b) that he had never personally seen any Russian athlete take the mixture known as the Duchess
cocktail, (c) that he had never personally witnessed any Russian athlete being directed by a coach to take
the Duchess cocktail, or any coach being directed by any Russian state official to distribute it to his
athletes, and (d) that he had never personally seen any Russian athlete tamper with a doping sample.
Forgive me if I jump to the conclusion that the foregoing rules out a state-sponsored doping program
insofar as it was ever witnessed by the McLaren Report's star and principal witness; McLaren did not
interview any other Russian officials, he claimed he didn't have time.
But
it
gets better
. Or worse, if you are Rodchenkov, or one of those who gleefully relied on his testimony to
put those filthy Russians away forever.
Pre-CAS hearing:
"In 2016, independent investigations confirmed that Russian officials had run a
massive state‑sponsored doping system during the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi, which fed
illicit performance-enhancing drugs to hundreds of athletes and took outlandish measures to pervert national
drug-testing mechanisms The evidence was incontrovertible."
When examined on his statements that he had swapped samples of positive-test athletes urine after 1:00
AM, passing them through a 'mousehole' in the laboratory wall to FSB agents outside and exchanging them for
clean samples, in light of the fact that his meticulously-maintained daily diary recorded him as being at
home in bed by midnight, he claimed he had lied in his diary. What a clever intelligence asset, to have
anticipated questioning years in advance, and added an extra layer of obfuscation! It was not specifically
addressed in testimony to my knowledge, but I would like to highlight here that Dr. Rodchenkov was allegedly
alone at the lab at these alleged times except, of course, for the secret agents waiting outside the
mousehole and could have driven a gurney with a squeaky wheel loaded with conspiratorial piss samples out
into the parking lot, and loaded it into the trunk of his car with nobody the wiser: why all the
John le Carr espionagery through the wall? Comes to that, why would you
contaminate a sample with salt, coffee granules and hilarious incompetence like accidentally getting male
DNA in female samples, when the doping compound only you knew was in the samples was undetectable by anyone
else, because you had specifically engineered it that way?
McLaren claimed in his report that he had seen a method demonstrated, which he presumed was the method
used by the FSB to open the sealed sample bottles and replace the sample inside with clean urine. He further
claimed that scratches found on the glass bottles were proof of tampering. Other analysts suggested the
scratches were probably made when the sample bottle was sealed in accordance with the instructions for its
proper use, and
the manufacturer claimed
the bottle had never successfully been opened, once sealed, without breaking
the cap, which is by design an indication of potential tampering. The alleged secret method of successfully
doing it was never demonstrated by McLaren or any of his operatives for independent verification. For
Rodchenkov's part, he claimed it had been done by 'magicians', and offered no clue as to the alleged method,
and it seems clear to me that McLaren simply proceeded with Rodchenkov's hearsay assurances that it had been
accomplished.
The controversial and pivotal claim by McLaren that Russian Minister for Sport Vitaly Mutko, "directed,
controlled and oversaw the manipulation of athlete's [
sic
] analytical results or sample swapping"
was not supported by anything other than Rodchenkov's diary. You remember the one he admitted to having
embellished with lies so that stories he told years later would make sense. This is absolutely critical,
because the claim to have proven the existence of a state-sponsored doping program rests only on this
Rodchenkov has admitted he never personally saw any Russian state official give orders to coaches or
athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs. McLaren's bombshell allegation appears to have been extracted
from the diary of a proven and admitted liar, and is supported by no other evidence. Yet the western press
still maintains there was a Russian state-sponsored doping program, administered with the knowledge and
facilitation of the state government, and that this was proven. Rodchenkov is still accorded the respect of
a credible witness. Rodchenkov is still speaking authoritatively about the nature of cheating, and
astoundingly describing those who have lied under oath and falsified evidence as criminals, just as if he
had not done both himself. It is as if the CAS hearings which exonerated the majority of the accused Russian
athletes, and sharply reduced the punishments of the rest, had never happened. For all the mainstream media
coverage the event received, it might not have.
Before the CAS hearing, WADA and the IOC regularly dangled reinstatement of the Russian anti-doping
agency (RUSADA) in exchange for the Russian government openly and completely accepting the conclusions of
the McLaren Report, officially admitting to having cheated on a massive scale and with the full knowledge
and support of serving government officials. It never did. The Russian state acknowledged it has a doping
problem, and it has some athletes were found guilty of having taken banned substances, and there are a few
every Olympic competition. But Moscow has never accepted the conclusions of the McLaren Report. And after
the CAS Appeals decision, RUSADA was reinstated anyway.
Which brings us to here; now. The entire focus of the McLaren Report and the bullying by the IOC was
directed toward making Russia admit it was guilty of organized doping, with the drive for momentum seeking a
ban on further competition. Since it never did, the alternative was to prove it without an admission, so
that no doubt existed. Exonerating the few athletes ever charged among the thousand or so said to be guilty
looks like a hell of a funny way of doing that. The McLaren Team's star and main witness fell apart on the
stand and admitted he had either lied about everything or simply made it up. There is no reason at all
outside stubborn western prejudice to imagine Russian athletes are doping any more than any other national
teams.
But then, hackers Russians, of course, it goes without saying calling themselves "Fancy Bear" and
"Cozy Bear" (hint to Russians, do not call yourself "anything Bear" the Bear is synonymous with Russia.
Call yourself "Elon Tesla" or "Mo Money") began to publish stolen medical data revealing the scope of
western athletes who had been granted permission to use banned performance-enhancing drugs by their Olympic
Associations, for perceived medical reasons, through the TUE the Therapeutic Use Exemption. The western
sports industry was outraged that information was
private
, God damn it and it was just
grotesque that the cheating Russians would have the gall to allege
western
athletes were cheaters.
But after it had time to calm down, and after some revelations proved hard to defend, the industry had to
grudgingly
admit the TUE was a problem
.
Iconic American cyclist Lance Armstrong
doped for years
, but was revered by an entire generation of American kids and sports fans as the finest
example of a stoic and selfless sportsman the human race could provide. Teammates and his sports doctor
helped him avoid tests, and in one instance he dropped out of a race after receiving a text message from a
teammate that testers were waiting for him. When he actually tested positive for corticosteroid use in the
1999 Tour de France, his doctors claimed he had received the steroid in a cream used to treat a saddle sore,
and a back-dated prescription was provided.
Retroactive TUE's sound phony right out of the gate, and consequently their use is supposed to be very
rare, since the immediate perception is that the exemption was issued to protect the athlete from the
fallout of a positive test; what could be simpler? Just issue them a prescription to take a banned
substance, because they really, really needed it.
Most of the TUE's issued to tennis world champion Serena Williams were retroactive
, in some cases going
back two weeks or more. A TUE issued during a period that an athlete has withdrawn from competition sounds
understandable, because they cannot be using it to enhance their career or win medals. A retroactive TUE
issued during competition that allows an athlete to use a stimulant which increases drive, or a painkiller
which lets them power through without the limb failing, is hard to see as anything other than a cheat issued
to protect a national sports asset.
TUE's are the vehicle of choice in professional cycling, with both British cyclists who won the Tour de
France Scott Froome and Bradley Wiggins
revealed to have secured TUE's
allowing them to take steroids during the competitions. They claimed to
be suffering from 'sport-induced asthma', which is apparently a documented condition when you try to make
your body process air faster or more efficiently than it is capable of handling. USADA head Travis Tygart,
who is withering in his contempt of and hatred for Russia, loses no opportunity to defend the integrity of
American athletes who are allowed to dope because they have a form that says they need to. I find it hard to
believe Russian athletes who secured a TUE allowing them to take a performance-enhancer during competition
would meet with such hearty approval from him. It's because Americans are inherently honest and are
genetically incapable of cheating, while Russians are just natural-born cheats.
American gymnastics champion Simone Biles quickly became the national face of ADHD by proactively
defending her need for a banned substance. Tygart and American Olympics officials were maudlin in her
defense, like everyone is just picking on a little girl and trying to rob her of hard-earned success. What
effect does her permitted drug have? It permits an enhanced level of concentration and focus, so that no
energy is lost to distractions such a a shouting crowd, bright colours and rapid movements, and she sees
nothing but the target of her efforts. Is that helpful? What do you think?
The
jury seems to be out
on whether corticosteroids would help Biles focus on her routines, although there
seems to be a fairly well-established body of evidence that these are not anabolic steroids, and do not
increase muscle mass that's all her. But the zeal with which WADA went after meldonium just because,
apparently, eastern-European athletes used it extensively, although it has never been demonstrated to
enhance performance speaks volumes about the western bias in favour of therapeutic use of drugs by the
Good Guys. They're just looking after their health. Russians are cheating. How did WADA find out about
meldonium? I'm glad you asked USADA received a 'confidential tip' that east-European athletes were using
it to enhance performance. Despite expert advice that there is
no evidence at all that it enhances performance
, WADA banned it. Because, you know, east-European
athletes might
think
it helps them, and if they think that, then it is.
Just like Simone Biles and her TUE. But that's not only allowed, she's a hero for being so open about her
ADHD.
In the USA,
cheating seems to be focused on Track and Field
, because that's where the USA wins a lot of its medals.
Hence the effort to minimize the Russian participation, and thus cut down the opposition.
"The United States in fact has a lengthy history of doping at the Olympic Games and other
international events, and of turning a blind eye to its own cheating. That's especially true in track and
field, the front porch of the U.S. Olympic program because of track's ability to drive American medal
supremacy.
Nike's track-and-field training program, for example, has been dogged by doping allegations since at
least the 1970s, when its top officials were allegedly aware that athletes used steroids and other
performance enhancing drugs. Since the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games,
every single U.S.
Summer Olympic team has included at least one sprinter who either had previously failed a drug test or would
later do so.
And that's to say nothing of athletes in the other disciplines.
American drug cheats include some of the country's most notable Olympians. Carl Lewis admitted in
2003 that
he had failed three drug tests
prior to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but
avoided a ban with the help
of the U.S. Olympic Committee and won two golds and a silver instead.
Justin Gatlin won the
100-meter dash at the 2004 Athens Games before later failing a drug test. Tyson Gay, the world's fastest man
entering the 2008 Beijing Games, later failed a drug test too.
Gay and Gatlin nevertheless formed
half of the American men's 4100 relay team in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
"
American athletes routinely fail drug tests, but are waved ahead to compete anyway.
"
Eighty-four
American Olympians failed drug tests in the year prior to the 1984 Los Angeles Games but went on to compete
anyway
,
according to author Mark Johnson
. Carl Lewis claimed that "hundreds" of Americans failed tests while
remaining eligible to compete, with the assistance of the U.S. Olympic Committee, in Seoul. The USOC faced
allegations ahead the 2000 Sydney Games that it had
withheld information on 15 positive tests
from international officials; by 2003, it had been accused of
covering
up at least 114 positives
between 1988 and 2000."
Curiously, the latest Russia ban is attributed to allegations that Russia fiddled with the athletes
database it provided to WADA, covering up positive drug tests. But it appears the United States has a
well-known history of fudging and obscuring positive drug-test results, refusing to reveal them to
regulatory bodies, and pushing its doper athletes into international competition. Yet the United States has
a loudly self-awarded reputation as the Defender Of Clean Sport.
Russia's position is that the ubiquitous Grigory Rodchenkov a proven and self-confessed liar, remember,
who claimed to have lied in his diary where he was supposedly only talking to himself
modified the
database from abroad
, after he fled to the United States and made such a Godsend of himself in America's
drive to move up the medal rankings. He apparently retained administrator rights on the database, which was
accessible online, even after fleeing from Russia. His lawyer's defense, curiously, is that he did not and,
significantly, 'could not' access the database. To me, that sounds like he's going out a little bit on a
limb all the Russian side needs to do is prove that he could have to discredit Rodchenkov's story. It
looks like it is headed back to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the spring the same venue which
exonerated the Russian athletes after Rodchenkov's previous epic thundering-in on full afterburner. Will it
happen again? We'll see. Until then the western press appears not to have noticed that Rodchenov lied his
charming face off last time. And still is, through his shyster lawyer
"If WADA or any other agency
needs Grigory to testify, Grigory will uphold his promise to co-operate fully to help atone for his role,"
Walden said.
You know the role he admitted he never played, in that he never saw any Russian athlete
take the Duchess Cocktail he claimed to have devised to make doping undetectable, never heard any Russian
sports official order his players to take it, and in fact could not remember exactly what was in it.
Stay tuned this should be interesting. Count on the Americans to press to the end for a full and
lasting ban, probably for life.
As the Trump Administration continues to
barrel toward a war with Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a press
conference in which he once again claimed that every dubious accusation made by the
administration was true, and the internally inconsistent comments among top officials are all
somehow in agreement.
Pompeo's comments, even the ones that made no sense or were obviously untrue, were echoed
across US media outlets as absolute facts following the briefing. Everyone was clearly more
comfortable just reporting " Pompeo says "
than analyzing it.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
was very critical of some of the worst claims Pompeo made , saying one would have to be
brain-dead to believe them. He noted it made no sense to attack Iran to "preempt" attacks when
the attack just made attacks even more likely.
Pompeo was largely dismissive of questions about the US attack, and rejected claims that
Gen. Qassem Soleimani was working on Saudi diplomacy, saying
nobody believed Soleimani was engaged in diplomacy and that Iranian FM was lying about
that. In reality, Iraq's PM Adel Abdul Mahdi was the one who broke the story of why Soleimani
was in Iraq. Instead of evidence to the contrary, Pompeo just denied.
On the question of the US barring Zarif from the UN in violation of the headquarters
agreement, Pompeo said the US doesn't comment on why they deny people entrance, and insisted
that the US always complies with the headquarters agreement, despite it flat out saying you
can't block officials from speaking at the UN, and the US doing exactly that.
The closest anyone at the briefing came to calling Pompeo on his contradictions was on the
matter of the US attacking cultural sites. President Trump threatened to attack Iranian
cultural sites on Saturday, Pompeo said Trump never said that on Sunday, and Trump said it
again on Sunday evening. Pompeo was asked to address this.
Pompeo said that what he said, that Trump never said there would be attacks on cultural
sites, was "completely consistent with what the President has said," which repeatedly was that
he intends to attack cultural sites. This was a bit too glaring, and one of the press said "No,
but the President has -" before being interrupted by Pompeo.
At this point, Pompeo went off on a tangent claiming that the ayatollah is the "real threat"
to Iranian culture. When asked if that meant US attacks on cultural sites are "ruled out,"
despite Trump's comments, Pompeo promptly ended the briefing and left.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also claimed on Tuesday that Soleimani was planning to
attack Americans "within days" if the US hadn't killed him. As with Pompeo, his claim did not
include any evidence, and ask with Pompeo's claims, the press is echoing it.
Washington (CNN) The increasingly chaotic
aftermath of the US strike against Iran has left President Donald Trump's team scrambling
to keep up with his unpredictable decisions and inflammatory pronouncements, and suggests
dysfunction at the heart of the nation's critical national security process.
"... It is clear to me after watching that extraordinary video of Trump's ignorance and stupidity that he is the idiot piper leading the West into the abyss. There could be no better epitome of the neoliberal sociopathy that drives our collapsing phase of late-capitalism. Putin's wet dream: a narcissist half-wit driving the western bus. ..."
"... As for trying to put the blame on Pentagon staffers, even if they chose such weird options for Trump to choose, at the end of the day, it's the President himself who chose - as another one said decades ago, "the buck stops here" and the guy in the Oval Office has to bear the full responsibility. ..."
The New York Times reported yesterday that Trump picked the 'wrong' item from a list of
possible courses of action that the military had presented him. That sounded like bullshit
invented to take blame away from Trump and to put it onto the military.
To me it looks more like the opposite: the Times's Pentagon sources pinning it
on loose cannon Trump's going with the extreme option that the military hadn't intended him
to. But whatever. The U.S. is facing the same harsh new reality regardless.
The Times in London ran with a front page "We Will Kill UK Troops, warns Iran" (
here's the Guardian summary ). Despite initial reports that the UK and EU were distancing
themselves from the assassination, the MSM have clearly been given their orders to begin
banging the drum for war. The scramble for a casus belli reminds me of WMD, so I think a war
of some scope is strongly desired and Boris Johnson has been brought on board. France will
stay out and Germany will look first at Russia's position.
It is clear to me after watching that extraordinary video of
Trump's ignorance and stupidity that he is the idiot piper leading the West into the abyss.
There could be no better epitome of the neoliberal sociopathy that drives our collapsing
phase of late-capitalism. Putin's wet dream: a narcissist half-wit driving the western
bus.
Trump is probably not stupid enough to launch such a war and certainly not during an
election year.
During his campaign Trump said he wanted the U.S. military out of the Middle East. Iran
and its allies will help him to keep that promise.
Hasnt Trump proved he is stupid enough by now? How much more evidence is needed to drop
him? Trump start wars to get another election win, I think that is obvious? And allies
keeping him back? Which allieshave even remotely criticized his threats and murder? People
need to realize that there is nothing stopping Trump, he and Israel will keep bombing and
unfortunately its not much Iran could do.
Dan: The guy fought the Talibans and ISIS, and has always been opposed to them; that's good
enough for me, and that's definitely more than any of the coward and treacherous Western
leaders that pussy-foot instead of calling out the US for what tantamounts to a declaration
of war on both Iraq and Iran.
As for trying to put the blame on Pentagon staffers, even if they chose such weird
options for Trump to choose, at the end of the day, it's the President himself who chose - as
another one said decades ago, "the buck stops here" and the guy in the Oval Office has to
bear the full responsibility.
Col. Lang is once again warning that Trump trying to keep the troops in Iraq would be a
terrible mistake with bad consequences, and that it's just not realistic. He probably prefers
not to say it that way when stating it's a long road from Kuwait to Baghdad, but if shit hits
the fan and Iraqis decide to go after the US troops, then those who can't evacuate fast
enough will end up in a position similar to that of the British in Kabul, in the very first
days of 1842.
Aghast at your words, dan. I am an aging homemaker from usa midwest and I have yet to stop
weeping for Qassem Soleimani, his poor widow, and the rest of his family. I feel I owe him a
personal debt for fighting zionists/terrorists/imperialists, for if they are not defeated
once and for all, my captive government will continue in perpetuity to serve their
horridmurderousthieving agenda, enslaving my every descendent and robbing humanity of any
chance for peace on this pretty garden harbor planet. May justice be done to give peace a
chance.
What I wonder is who is the genius in the chain of command who brought this "opportunity" to
Trump's attention and who vetted the decision? Trump made a large error when he surrounded
himself with neocons (Abrahams, Bolton, Pompeo, Haspel, Esper). Anyway it's a tangle and it's
pretty clear he (Trump) is in over his head. When he paniks he talks tough and he's making
threats. It's also no wonder he has not received any support on his decision to murder
Soleimani. From anywhere. Not even Israel is publicly supporting the decision. I think that
surprised him. For 350 years there has been an unwritten rule that you don't go after
generals or ambassadors or visiting politicians unless they are actively engaged in a combat
zone. Remember the outrage when the barbarian Libyans killed a mere station chief? How
outraged we were? Well, Trump overtly and with malice of forethought broke the rule. If I
were the Iranian's and I could get to any U.S. generals or high ranking officials (working or
visiting overseas) that's what I would do. Create animus within his own military and cabinet
departments. Get them at the supermarket, speaking engagements, on vacation, at home,
wherever. Doesn't matter. Wherever you can get them. Shitty thing to do no doubt but he
started it and something the American and other populations would instinctively understand.
Blood for blood retribution. No need to explain it to people.
......." Trump is probably not stupid enough to launch such a war and certainly not during an
election year."
b,
you are assuming that you are dealing with someone with a full deck of cards. If He was
stupid enough to kill a sovereign nation's top general, he will be stupid enough to start a
war. In fact that is his biggest wish. Elections be damned. Maybe the military would put on
the breaks but not this stupid sick man.
Few points: (1) Thanks to Trump, Pompeo and Esper every American soldier everywhere now wears
a bulls eye;
(2) Any soldier -including Americans - might find a great deal to admire in Soliemani, a guy
with a humble background who accomplished an extraordinary track record, a legendary
strategist';
(3) Has the US military's 'faith' in the sanity and competence of the civilian authority
been stretched near to some breaking point?
Pence claimed on twitter that Suleimani assisted the 12 9/11 hijackers, for which
he was instantly ridiculed.
Trump wants billions payback for airbases in Iraq that were already fully transferred upon
American withdrawal in december 2011.
BTW, the trolls are obvious trolls. Could be from Tel Aviv, but perhaps from London, too
(Integrity Initiative) Brits must be banging their heads against the wall over orange utan
dropping a monkey wrench into the gears of the imperial machine that they too depend on. You
bet that they need to spin this hard.
"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of
dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it,"
Trump said
Paying us back?
Just ask the Iraqis - here is a reminder of what the bitter reality of economic violence
looks like:
The Crimes of Neoliberal Rule in Occupied Iraq
The clearest statement of intent for the future of the Iraqi economy is contained in Order
39, which permitted full foreign ownership of Iraqi state-owned assets and decreed that
over 200 state-owned enterprises, including electricity, telecommunications and the
pharmaceuticals industry, could be dismantled. Order 39 also permitted 100 per cent foreign
ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowed these firms to move their
profits out of Iraq. It has been argued already in the British courts that Order 39
constitutes an act of ILLEGAL OCCUPATION under the terms of the Hague and Geneva treaties :
The effect of Article 55 is to outlaw privatization of a country's assets whilst it is
under occupation by a hostile military power."
The mandate of the CPA was clear: to meet the 'humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people', to
meet the costs of 'reconstruction and repair of Iraq's infrastructure', to meet the costs
of disarmament and the civil administration of the country and other purposes 'benefiting
the people of Iraq'. The terms of UNSCR 1483 are unequivocal in this regard. It was this
resolution that established the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI)
• DFI revenue, was available to the CPA immediately, in the form of $100,000 bundles
of $100 bills, shrink-wrapped in $1.6 million 'cashpaks'. Pallets of cashpaks were flown
into Baghdad direct from the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Some of this cash was
held by the CPA in the basement of its premises in Baghdad Republican Palace. It has been
reported that Paul Bremer controlled a personal slush fund of $600 million (Harriman 2005).
One advantage of the use of cash payments and transfers was that the CPA transactions left
no paper trail and therefore they remained relatively invisible
• The disbursal of Iraqi oil revenue by the CPA also has had profound implications for
the future structure of the Iraqi economy. ..Spending (in excess of $20 billion, partly
based upon projected income) had to be underwritten by US government loans .. (which) has
effectively deepened the debt that was originally accumulated during the period of
UN-enforced sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War (Alexander 2005).
• The right to self-determination and sovereign decision making over economic, social
and cultural development is in international law a principle of jus cogens In this regard,
the CPA clearly acted beyond its remit in terms of both the spirit and the letter of the
international laws of conflict. It is the anti-democratic and pre-emptive nature of
Anglo-American economic restructuring that most clearly demonstrates that the CPA regime
was in violation of international law.
• Similar violations arise from the CPA's governance of Iraqi oil wealth. Article 49
of the Hague rules notes that 'money contributions' levied in the occupied territory 'shall
only be for the needs of the army or of the administration of the territory in question'.
The political strategy was characteristically neo-liberal (evasion of 'red tape' and any
obstacles that might hinder or limit the reallocation of wealth to the growing armies of
private enterprises). This strategy was given momentum by the granting of formal LEGAL
IMMUNITY to US personnel for activities related to the reconstruction economy. On the same
day that the CPA was created by UNSCR 1483, George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13303, 2
The terms of the exemption provide immunity from prosecution for the theft or embezzlement
of oil revenue, or incidentally, from any safety or environmental violations that might be
committed in the course of producing Iraqi oil. Executive Order 13303 is therefore a
guarantee of IMMUNITY from PROSECUTION for white-collar and corporate crimes that involve
Iraqi oil. Two months later, in June 2003, Paul Bremer issued CPA Order 17. Bremer's decree
guaranteed that members of the coalition military forces, the CPA, foreign missions and
contractors -- and their personnel -- would remain immune from the Iraqi legal process.
This carte blanche provision of immunity was extended again in June 2004.
What we are beginning to trace out here is a US government policy of suspending the
normal rule of law in the US and Iraq (so much for respecting Iraqi sovereigntx...)
The three most important things for doing battle are logistics, logistics and logistics, and
as Pat lang explains, the US forces in Syria are essentially fucked:
We have around 5,500 people there now spread across the country in little groups engaged in
logistics, intelligence and training missions. They are extremely vulnerable. There are
something like 150 marines in the embassy. There are also a small number of US combat
forces in Syria east and north of the Euphrates river. These include a battalion of US Army
National Guard mechanized troops "guarding" Syria's oil from Syria's own army and whatever
devilment the Iranians might be able to arrange.
4. This is an untenable logistical situation. Supply and other functions require a major
airfield close to Baghdad. We have Balad airbase and helicopter supply and air support from
there into Baghdad is possible from there but may become hazardous. Iraq is a big country.
It is a long and lonely drive from Kuwait for re-supply from there or evacuation through
there. The same thing is true of the desert route to Jordan.
Unless it reinvades and reoccupies, the United States will be gone from Syria,
probably just after the election in November so Trump can say he stood up to the Iraqis.
"Unlike with North Korea, it's difficult to imagine any photo op or exchange of love letters
defusing the crisis the president has created. " The only thing that might defuse this crisis
would be the Senate convicting Trump and removing him from office. It would be a good idea if
the House passes another article of impeachment accusing the president of committing an act
of war without Congressional authorization.
Threatening to destroy cultural sites of a country is the sign of a deranged madman. I can't
believe a US president would dare say something like that. It goes against all the principles
America stands for. Nothing will motivate the people of Iran to fight the US more than the
threat of destruction to their cultural sites. If we go to war with Iran, this is a
Republican war. They own it. When are decent Republicans going to stand up and do the right
thing? If they don't, this could be very, very, bad.
The Defense department is already walking back Trump's tweet about bombing Iran culture
sites. Unfortunately, it's too late because the damage to our reputation as the "shining
light on the hill" has already been destroyed. I'm afraid more than now than I have ever been
in my life. Who knows when or where the revenge will occur but I'm fairly certain it will
happen and we'll be more isolated than ever before. It's taken centuries to build goodwill
and our reputation as a beacon of democracy for the world. We gave the keys to the kingdom to
a false prophet and we'll pay for his indiscretions for the rest of my lifetime. God help us
all.
You've sure got it right with "rapture-mad", and the most frightening thing is that the
religious zealotry of Pompeo, Pence, Mulvaney and Barr, inoculates them against any
criticism, because they believe they are serving a "higher"power and any criticism is a
testimony to their faith. In fact, by turning themselves into martyrs, they get to advance in
line for the Rapture. It seems particularly ironic that Evangelicals who support Israel do so
because they see God's plan unfolding there. The Jews, just happen to be sacrificial lambs in
the grand scheme. so they must must be preserved until the time is ripe for their rightful
annihilation, heralding the Second Coming. So, the problem of Pompeo, et al, is not Iran
destroying Israel, it's just that they've determined the timing is off.
As for the "wag the dog" theory, sure, Trump sees no difference between his personal fortunes
and national interests. But worse, the impeachment rests upon evidence that points to a
personal criminality on an international scale, which is the landscape where we find
ourselves. The president pardons convicts like Gallagher and Arpaio because they are cruel or
bloodthirsty. He admires dictators and ignores the law whenever he can, both as a private
individual and a president, and has obstructed a legal investigation into his corruption.
Now, on the international stage, by bypassing Congress, he is ignoring the sovereignty of the
American people, while incoherently threatening war crimes. Trump is fully blossoming into a
man like those he admires, an unrestrained, unprincipled, heavy hitting international tyrant.
I'm so disgusted with those whose job it is to check this man, and have abdicated their
responsibility, because they want to be like him. Reply 230 Recommend Share
I was at a friend's house on election night ready to celebrate Clinton's victory. When the
networks suddenly announced that Trump had won Florida, a professor of international
relations who was with us ominously predicted, "we are going to war with Iran." And here we
are.
America has become a living nightmare. A global power perceived mostly as benevolent by the
world is now a danger to all, including itself. Already having killed the Paris Agreement,
and Iran Nuclear Treaty, not to mention walking away from a nuclear arms treaty with the
Russians, Trump is now ready to wreak real havoc on the world - start a war. Boy will they
forget about impeachment now!
We haven't authorized the assassination of a military leader since the daring mission to kill
Japanese Admiral Yamamoto in 1943. Although he'd been the architect of the Pearl Harbor
attack, and we were at war with Japan, this was a departure so significant that it only
proceeded after lengthy deliberation. And now, this. Your article fills in precisely how this
was so very much not that. But one party is in so cult-deep into this president now that the
lies won't stop. Thousands of Iranian have lost their lives in the past month trying to rid
themselves of this regime. Not only were those deaths rendered in vain by the assassination
of Suleimani, but the Iranian people are also even more yoked to a government they hate. And
wasn't the idea of grassroots-driven change in regime a core strategy behind pulling out of
the nuclear deal? And it's not okay because Suleimani is "evil." That's both subjective and
never a justification for an assassination of a foreign military leader of a nation we're not
at war with. As I noted, it was questionable when it was a military leader of nation we were
at war with. But, most important, what did we gain from this? Following yet another
disasterous military and foreign policy snap decision it only makes the importance of
removing Trump from office more urgent. Come for the Constitutional crime but convict because
the defendant is also manifestly unfit for the office. People are dying because of it and
more will die if he stays. Reply 186 Recommend Share
What, then, for an effective response? Outrage is mere fuel: what is the engine? A full year
seems too long. The Senate seems hopeless. What does that leave? Must we take to the streets
to stop this disaster of a president? All this time spent wondering how this will end makes
me feel like a victim of domestic abuse. What a waste. 1 Reply 180 Recommend Share
After three harrowing years, we've reached the point many of us feared from the moment
Donald Trump was elected. His decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's second most
important official, made at Mar-a-Lago with little discernible
deliberation , has brought the United States to the brink of a devastating new conflict in
the Middle East.
We don't yet know how Iran will retaliate, or whether all-out war will be averted. But
already, NATO has suspended its mission training Iraqi forces to
fight ISIS . Iraq's Parliament has voted to expel American troops -- a longtime Iranian
objective. (On Monday, U.S. forces sent a letter saying they were withdrawing from Iraq in
response, only to then claim that it was a
draft released in error .) On Sunday, Iran said it will no longer be bound by the remaining
restrictions on its nuclear program in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that
Trump abandoned in 2018. Trump has been threatening to commit war crimes by destroying Iran's
cultural sites and tried to use Twitter to notify
Congress of his intention to respond to any Iranian reprisals with military escalation.
The administration has said that the killing of Suleimani was justified by an imminent
threat to American lives, but there is no reason to believe this. One skeptical American
official told The New York Times that the new intelligence indicated nothing but
"a normal Monday in the Middle East," and Democrats briefed on it were
unconvinced by the administration's case. The Washington Post reported that Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo -- who last year agreed with a Christian Broadcasting
Network interviewer that God might have sent Trump to save Israel from the "Iranian menace"
-- has been pushing for a hit on Suleimani for months.
Rather than self-defense, the Suleimani killing seems like the dreadful result of several
intersecting dynamics. There's the influence of rapture-mad Iran hawks like Pompeo and Vice
President Mike Pence. Defense officials who might have stood up to Trump have all left the
administration. According to Peter Bergen's book "Trump and His Generals," James Mattis,
Trump's former secretary of defense, instructed his subordinates not to provide the president
with options for a military showdown with Iran. But with Mattis gone, military officials, The
Times reported, presented Trump with the possibility of killing Suleimani as the "most extreme"
option on a menu of choices, and were "flabbergasted" when he picked it.
Trump likely had mixed motives. He was reportedly upset over TV images of militia supporters
storming the American Embassy in Iraq. According to The Post, he also was frustrated by
"negative coverage" of his decision last year to order and then call off strikes on Iran.
Beyond that, Trump, now impeached and facing trial in the Senate, has laid out his rationale
over years of tweets. The president is a master of projection, and his accusations against
others are a decent guide to howhe
himself will behave . He told us,
over and over again , that he believed Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to "save
face" and because his "poll numbers are in a tailspin" and he needed to "get re-elected." To
Trump, a wag-the-dog war with Iran evidently seemed like a natural move for a president in
trouble.
... ... ...
Even if Iran were to somehow decide not to strike back at the United States, it's still
ramping up its nuclear program, and Trump has obliterated the possibility of a return to
negotiations. "His maximum pressure policy has failed," Nasr said of Trump. "He has only
produced a more dangerous Iran."
... ... ... Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the
author of several books about politics, religion and women's rights, and was part of a team
that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual
harassment issues. @michelleinbklyn
Mike Pompeo was on the TeeVee today scoffing at those who do not agree with him and the
Ziocon inspired "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. It must be a terrible thing for
intelligence analysts of integrity and actual Middle East knowledge and experience to have to
try to brief him and Trump, people who KNOW, KNOW from some superior source of knowledge that
Iran is the worst threat to the world since Nazi Germany, or was it Saddam's Iraq that was the
worst threat since "beautiful Adolf?"
The "maximum pressure" campaign is born of Zionist terrors, terrors deeply felt. It is the
same kind of campaign that has been waged by the Israelis against the Palestinians and all
other enemies great and small. This approach does not seem to have done much for Israel. The
terrors are still there.
Someone sent me the news tape linked below from Aleppo in NW Syria. I have watched it a
number of times. You need some ability in Arabic to understand it. The tape was filmed in
several Christian churches in Aleppo where these two men (Soleimani and al-Muhandis) are
described from the pulpit and in the street as "heroic martyr victims of criminal American
state terrorism." Pompeo likes to describe Soleimani as the instigator of "massacre" and
"genocide" in Syria. Strangely (irony) the Syriac, Armenian Uniate and Presbyterian ministers
of the Gospel in this tape do not see him and al-Muhandis that way. They see them as men who
helped to defend Aleppo and its minority populations from the wrath of Sunni jihadi Salafists
like ISIS and the AQ affiliates in Syria. They see them and Lebanese Hizbullah as having helped
save these Christians by fighting alongside the Syrian Army, Russia and other allies like the
Druze and Christian militias.
It should be remembered that the US was intent on and may still be intent on replacing the
multi-confessional government of Syria with the forces of medieval tyranny. Everyone who really
knows anything about the Syrian Civil War knows that the essential character of the New Syrian
Army, so beloved by McCain, Graham and the other Ziocons was always jihadi and it was always
fully supported by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia as a project in establishing Sunni triumphalism. They
and the self proclaimed jihadis of HTS (AQ) are still supported in Idlib and western Aleppo
provinces both by the Saudis and the present Islamist and neo-Ottoman government of Turkey.
Well pilgrims, there are Christmas trees in the newly re-built Christian churches of Aleppo
and these, my brothers and sisters in Christ remember who stood by them in "the last
ditch."
"Currently there are at least 600 churches and 500,000–1,000,000 Christians in Iran."
wiki below. Are they dhimmis? Yes, but they are there. There are no churches in Saudi
Arabia, not a single one and Christianity is a banned religion. These are our allies?
Mr. Jefferson wrote that "he feared for his country when he remembered that God is just." He
meant Virginia but I fear in the same way for the United States. pl
Yes, as long as Neoco hens and Christian Zionists run our foreign policy we're
screwed.
BTW, Mike Pompeo or as I affectionately call him; Lard face, Plump'eo, crazed CZ-zealot fat
boy, etc., is now a legitimate target of the Iranians. May Allah provide justice to the
family of Soleimani. (Grin) And look, I'm wishing 'ill will' on a zealot 'goy' (gentile)
instead of a typical Neo-cohen snake, how ironic. (Another grin) A positve spin:
With the 'incorrect' memo leaked by the Pentagon about an orderly exit from Iraq this can be
the silver lining in all this mess. This assassination might actually accelerate the exiting
of US forces from Iraq and the surrounding quagmires. Who knows, Trump might be a genius.
Again, NO MORE WARS FOR ZION, BDS NOW, ONE STATE SOLUTION-PALESTINE.
And to really stick it to Neo cohens (My apologies to Prof. Steven Cohen ),
Trump-Putin Axis Da!! Destroy the Deep State and the CABAL .
Netanyahu: The killing of Soleimani is a U.S. event, not an Israeli event, and we
should stay out of it.
-- -- -- --
If Netanyahu got cold feet, that would be very naive of him, completely out of character.
No.
My pov re. Israel is that the US-uk and Isr. are in a symbiotic dependency relationship,
with the US as the controlling party.
Pov. bashed by USA stalwarts who love to blame Israel, Zionazis, Jews, the Mossad, etc..
for "bad stuff" that the US does.
The most powerful country in the world is controlled by some evil hateful figures in a
minuscule, depressing postage-stamp outpost (not..) plus and/or by infiltrating US Gvmt./
Media (more realistic..but was allowed, etc.)
Isr. only exists because of the support, international protection, huge stipends, offered
by the Hegemon.
-- -- -- --
No war with Iran. I have said this for years (and hope I continue to be right) see also
Petri at 21, others.
For the USDoS minion who has asked if the world would be a more secure place were Iran to
have nuclear weapons...
Absolutely yes, if Iran would have nuclear weapons right now, all this mamoneo would
end asap. Definitely it will act as the best deterrent, but that will not happen because that
is anti-Islamic and is forbidden by Ayatollah Khamenei.
I for one do not feel safe at all with the US and Israel having nuclear weapons, all
the more when both countries have currently at the helms both mafia bosses of the caliber of
Trump and Netanyahu.
On the contrary, that DPRK have nuclear weapons, as soon as I know very well that is for
deterrence against US bullying, allows me to sleep a pierna suelta...the same for Russia and
China..
Ritter isn't quite predicting the U.S. will go nuclear against Iran, but he explains how
plausible that outcome is.
What's even more terrifying is that that could be the early, small version of what
the U.S. may do globally as it sees hegemony slipping away, with its nuclear arsenal standing
out ever more starkly as its sole remaining trump card.
"U.S.
Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses" provides numerous methods besides simply
the cessation of dollar use for international commercial transactions. Along with watching
the "Debt Wish 2020" vid linked above, I also suggest reading/watching this program . And lastly, I
suggest reading this analysis
here , although it only tangentially deals with your question.
Trump has from the beginning of his presidential campaign appealed to the worst and most
fascistic elements in American political life. At a time when the US has no credible peer
military rival, he added hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon budget, and the pudgy
old chicken hawk lionized war criminals. Up until now, however, Trump shrewdly calculated that
his base was tired of wasting blood and treasure on fruitless Middle Eastern wars, and he
avoided taking more than symbolic steps. He dropped a big missile on Afghanistan once, and
fired some Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Syria. But he drew back from the brink of more extensive
military engagements.
Now, by murdering Qasem Soleimani , the
head of the Jerusalem (Qods) Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Trump has
brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. Mind you, Iran's leadership is too
shrewd to rush to the battlements at this moment, and will be prepared to play the long game.
My guess is that they will encourage their allies among Iraqi Shiites to get up a massive
protest at the US embassy and at bases housing US troops.
They will be aided in this task of mobilizing Iraqis by the simultaneous US assassination of
Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis , the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces. Al-Muhandis is a senior
military figure in the Iraqi armed forces, not just a civilian militia figure. Moreover, the
Kata'ib Hizbullah that he headed is part of a strong political bloc, al-Fath, which has
48 members in parliament and forms a key coalition partner for the current, caretaker prime
minister, Adil Abdulmahdi. Parliament won't easily be able to let this outrage pass.
The US officer corps is confident that the American troops at the embassy and elsewhere in
Baghdad are sufficient to fight off any militia invasion. I'm not sure they have taken into
account the possibility of tens of thousands of civilian protesters invading the
embassy, who can't simply be taken out and shot.
Trump may be counting on the unpopularity among the youth protesters in downtown Baghdad,
Basra, Nasiriya and other cities of Soleimani and of al-Muhandis to blunt the Iraqi reaction to
the murders. The thousands of youth protesters cheered on hearing the news of their deaths,
since they were accused of plotting a violent repression of the rallies demanding an end to
corruption.
Iraq, however, is a big, complex society, and there are enormous numbers of Iraqi Shiites
who support the Popular Mobilization Forces and who view them as the forces that saved Iraq
from the peril of the ISIL (ISIS) terrorist organization. The Shiite hard liners would not need
all Iraqis to back them in confronting the American presence, only a few hundred thousand for
direct crowd action.
You also have to wonder whether Trump and his coterie aren't planning a coup in Iraq. In the
absence of a coup, the Iraqi parliament will almost certainly be forced, after this violation
of Iraqi national sovereignty, to vote to expel American troops. This is foreseeable. So either
the assassination was a drive-by on the way out, or Trump's war cabinet doesn't plan on having
to leave Iraq.
Although Trump justified the murder of Soleimani by calling him a terrorist, that is
nonsense in the terms of international law. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is the
equivalent of the US National Guard. What Trump did is the equivalent of some foreign country
declaring the US military a terrorist organization (some have) and then assassinating General
Joseph L. Lengyel, the 28th Chief of the National Guard Bureau (God forbid and may he have a
long healthy life).
Yes, as long as Neoco hens and Christian Zionists run our foreign policy we're
screwed.
BTW, Mike Pompeo or as I affectionately call him; Lard face, Plump'eo, crazed CZ-zealot fat
boy, etc., is now a legitimate target of the Iranians. May Allah provide justice to the
family of Soleimani. (Grin) And look, I'm wishing 'ill will' on a zealot 'goy' (gentile)
instead of a typical Neo-cohen snake, how ironic. (Another grin) A positve spin:
With the 'incorrect' memo leaked by the Pentagon about an orderly exit from Iraq this can be
the silver lining in all this mess. This assassination might actually accelerate the exiting
of US forces from Iraq and the surrounding quagmires. Who knows, Trump might be a genius.
Again, NO MORE WARS FOR ZION, BDS NOW, ONE STATE SOLUTION-PALESTINE.
And to really stick it to Neo cohens (My apologies to Prof. Steven Cohen ),
Trump-Putin Axis Da!! Destroy the Deep State and the CABAL .
Yesterday,
Iraqi lawmakers voted to expel foreign troops from the country during an emergency
parliamentary session. Interim Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul Mahdi, stressed during the
session, that while the US government notified the Iraqi military of the planned strike on
Soleimani, his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.
In a meeting Monday, Mahdi, a caretaker prime minister who said in November he would resign,
told US Ambassador Matthew H. Tueller that the US and Iraq needed to cooperate "to implement
the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with the decision of the Iraqi parliament,"
according to a statement from the PM's office that was cited by
the Washington Post .
Though the Iraq war 'officially' ended in 2011, thousands of coalition troops stuck around.
Their numbers increased following the rise of ISIS in the region.
Ending the US troop presence in Iraq has been a longtime goal of non-interventionists like
Ron Paul and his son, Rand.
That said, even without troops in Iraq, the US will still have plenty of capacity to bully
Iran, and other other regional powers.
Finally, in a scenario such as this, chaos is the starring player across the entire region.
The strike on Soleimani makes even more fraught the position of U.S. troops in Iraq, where the
parliament has now voted in favor of a non-binding resolution for the eviction of U.S. forces.
The loss of U.S. presence in Iraq would strengthen Iran's hand there and compound the damage to
our fight against the Islamic State from our abandonment of Kurdish partners last fall. While
the Islamic State has been pushed out of much of the territory it once held, it has melted back
into the population and seeks to capitalize on ungoverned space with insurgent attacks.
Ungoverned space was oxygen for the Islamic State's rise in 2014. Whatever else Soleimani's
death means, it is sure to add to chaos within Iraq and Syria, and that benefits the Islamic
State.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777
Fragmentation In 'The Axis Of Resistance' Led To Soleimani's Death
by
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 - 20:45
0
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It was not the US decision to fire missiles against the IRGC commander Brigadier General
Qassem Soleimani that killed the Iranian officer and his companions in Baghdad.
Yes, of
course, the order that was given to launch missiles from the two drones (which destroyed the two cars
carrying Sardar Soleimani and his companion the Iraqi commander in al-Hashd al-Shaabi Jamal Jaafar
Al-Tamimi aka Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes and burned their bodies in the vehicle) came from US command and
control.
However, the reason President Donald Trump made this decision derives from the weakness of
the "axis of resistance", which has completely retreated from the level of performance that Iran
believed it was capable of
after decades of work to strengthen this "axis".
A close companion of Major General Qassim Soleimani, to whom he spoke hours before boarding the
plane that took him from Damascus to Baghdad, told me:
"The nobleman died. Palestine above all has lost Hajj Qassem (Soleimani).
He was the
"King" of the Axis of the Resistance and its leader.
He was assassinated and this is
exactly what he was hoping to reach in this life (Martyrdom). However, this axis will live and will
not die.
No doubt, the Axis of the Resistance needs to review its policy and regenerate
itself to correct its path.
This was what Hajj Qassim was complaining about and planning
to work on and strategizing about in his last hours."
The US struck Iran at the heart of its pride by killing Major General Soleimani. But
the
"axis of the Resistance" killed him before that. This is how:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assassinated the deputy head of the Military Council
(the highest authority in the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is headed by its Secretary-General, Hassan
Nasrallah), Hajj
Imad Mughniyah
in Damascus, Syria, Hezbollah could not avenge him
until today.
When Trump gave Netanyahu
Jerusalem
as the "capital of Israel", the "Axis of the
Resistance" did not move except by holding television symposia and conferences verbally rejecting the
decision.
When President Trump offered the occupied Syrian
Golan Heights
to Israel and the
"Axis of Resistance" did not react, the US President Donald Trump and his team understood that they
were opposed by no effective deterrent. The inaction of the Resistance axis emboldened Trump to do
what he wants.
And when Israel bombed
hundreds of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria
, the "Axis
of the Resistance" justified its lack of retaliation by the typical sentence: "We do not want to be
dragged along by the timing of the engagement imposed by the enemy," as a senior official in this axis
told me.
In Iraq shortly before his death, Major General Soleimani was complaining about
the
weakening of the Iraqi ranks
within this "Axis of the Resistance", represented by the
Al-Bina' (Construction) Alliance and other groups close to this alliance like Al-Hikma of Ammar
al-Hakim and Haidar al-Abadi, formerly close to Iran, that have gone over to the US side.
In Iraq, Major General Soleimani was very patient and never lost his temper. He was trying to
reconcile the Iraqis, both his allies and those who had chosen the US camp and disagreed with him. He
used to hug those who shouted at him to lower tensions and continue dialogue to avoid spoiling the
meeting. Anyone who raised his voice during discussions soon found that it was Soleimani who calmed
everyone down.
Hajj Qassem Soleimani was unable to reach a consensus on the new Prime Minister's name among those
he deemed to be allies in the same coalition. He asked Iraqi leaders to select the names and went
through all of these asking questions about the acceptability of these names to the political groups,
to the Marjaiya, to protestors in the street and whether the suggested names were not provocative or
challenging to the US.
Notwithstanding the animosity between Iran and the US, Soleimani
encouraged the selection of a personality that would not be boycotted by the US. Soleimani believed
the US capable of damaging Iraq and understood the importance of maintaining a good relationship with
the US for the stability of the country.
Soleimani was shocked by the dissension among Iraqi Shia and believed that the "axis of resistance"
needed a new vision as it was faltering. In the final hours before his death, Major General Soleimani
was ruminating on the profound antagonisms between Iraqis of the same camp.
When the Iraqi street began to move against the government, the line rejecting American hegemony
was fragmented because it was part of the authority that ruled and governed Iraq. To make matters
worse, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr directed his arrows against his partners in government, as though the
street demonstrations did not target him, the politician controlling the largest number of Iraqi
deputies, ministers and state officials, who had participated in the government for more than ten
years.
Major General Soleimani admonished Moqtada Al-Sadr for his stances, which contributed to
undermining the Iraqi ranks because the Sadrist leader did not offer an alternative solution or
practical project other than the chaos. Moqtada has his own men, the feared Saraya al-Salam, present
in the street.
When US Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on December 28
and informed him of America's intentions of hitting Iraqi security targets inside Iraq, including the
PMU, Soleimani was very disappointed by Abdul-Mahdi's failure to effectively oppose Esper. Abdul-Mahdi
merely told Esper that the proposed US action was dangerous. Soleimani knew that the US would not have
hit Iraqi targets had Abdul-Mahdi dared to oppose the US decision.
The targeted areas were a
common Iranian-Iraqi operational stage to monitor and control ISIS movements on the borders with Syria
and Iraq.
The US would have reversed its decision had the Iraqi Prime Minister threatened the
US with retaliation in the event that Iraqi forces were bombed and killed. After all, the US had no
legal right to attack any objective in Iraq without the agreement of the Iraqi government.
This
decision was the moment when Iraq has lost its sovereignty and the US took control of the country.
This effective US control is another reason why President Trump gave the green light to kill Major
General Soleimani. The Iraqi front had demonstrated its weakness and also, it was necessary to select
a strong Iraqi leader with the guts to stand to the US arrogance and unlawful actions.
Iran has never controlled Iraq, as most analysts mistakenly believe and speculate. For years, the
US has worked hard in the corridors of the Iraqi political leadership lobby for its own interests. The
most energetic of its agents was US Presidential envoy Brett McGurk, who clearly realised the
difficulties of navigating inside Iraqi leaders' corridors during the search for a prime minister of
Iraq before the appointment of Adel Abdel Mahdi, the selection of President Barham Saleh and other
governments in the past. Major General Soleimani and McGurk shared an understanding of these
difficulties. Both understood the nature of the Iraqi political quagmire.
Soleimani did not give orders to fire missiles at US bases or attack the US Embassy. If it was in
his hands to destroy them with accurate missiles and to remove the entire embassy from its place
without repercussions, he would not have hesitated. But the Iraqis have their own opinions, methods,
modus operandi and selection of targets and missile calibres; they never relied on Soleimani for such
decisions.
Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs was never welcomed by the Marjaiya in Najaf, even if it agreed
to receive Soleimani on a few occasions. They clashed over the reelection of Nuri al-Maliki,
Soleimani's preferred candidate, to the point that the Marjaiya wrote a letter making its refusal of
al-Maliki explicit. This led to the selection of Abadi as prime minister.
Soleimani's views contradicted the perception of the Marjaiya, that had to write a clear message,
firstly, to reject the re-election of Nori al-Maliki to a third session, despite Soleimani's
insistence.
All of the above is related to the stage that followed the 2011 departure of US forces from Iraq
under President Obama. Prior to that, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis was the link between the Iraqis and Iran:
he had the decision-making power, the vision, the support of various groups, and effectively served as
the representative of Soleimani, who did not interfere in the details. These Iraqi groups met with
Soleimani often in Iran; Soleimani rarely travelled to Iraq during the period of heavy US military
presence.
Soleimani, although he was the leader of the "Axis of the Resistance", was sometimes called "the
king" in some circles because his name evokes Solomon. According to sources within the "Axis of the
Resistance", he "never dictated his own policy but left a margin of movement and decision to all
leaders of the axis without exception. Therefore, he was considered the link between this axis and the
supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was able to contact Sayyed Khamenei at any time and
directly without mediation. The Leader of the revolution considered Soleimani as his son.
According to sources, in Syria, Soleimani "never hesitated to jump inside a truck, ride an ordinary
car, take the first helicopter, or travel on a transport or cargo plane as needed. He did not take any
security precautions but used his phone (which he called a companion spy) freely because he believed
that when the decision came to assassinate him, he would follow his destiny. He looked forward to
becoming a martyr because he had already lived long."
Was the leader of the "resistance axis" managing and running it?
Sayyed Ali Khamenei told Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: "You are an Arab and the Arabs accept you more
than they accept Iran". Sayyed Nasrallah directed and managed the axis of Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and
had an important role in Iraq. Hajj Soleimani was the liaison between the axis of the resistance and
Iran and he was the financial and logistical officer. According to my source, "He was a friend of all
leaders and officials of all ranks. He was humble and looked after everyone he had to deal with".
The "Axis of Resistance" indirectly allowed the killing of Qassem Soleimani. If Israel and the US
could know Sayyed Nasrallah's whereabouts, they would not hesitate a moment to assassinate him. They
may be aware: the reaction may be limited to burning flags and holding conferences and manifesting in
front of an embassy. Of course, this kind of reaction does not deter President Trump who wants to be
re-elected with the support of Israel and US public opinion. He wants to present himself as a warrior
and determined leader who loves battle and killing.
Iran invested 40 years building the "Axis of the Resistance". It cannot remain idle, faced
with the assassination of the Leader of this axis.
Would a suitable price be the US exit from
Iraq and condemnation in the Security Council? Would that, together with withdrawal from the nuclear
deal, be enough for Iran to avenge its General? Will the ensuing battle be confined to the Iraqi
stage? Will it be used for the victory of certain Iraqi political players?
The assassination of its leader represents the supreme test for the Axis of Resistance. All
sides, friend and foe, are awaiting its response.
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Politics
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gjohnsit on Mon,
01/06/2020 - 6:14pm Just a few days ago SoS Mike Pompeo said that we assassinated General Soleimani
to stop an 'imminent attack' on Americans.
No evidence was presented to back up this claim. We are just supposed to believe it.
It turns out that
Pompeo and VP Pence had pushed Trump hard to do this assassination.
Is Trump yet ruing the day he lent his ear to the siren songs of the Iran-obsessed neocons?
One can almost imagine the president, sitting in the makeshift situation room at Mar-a-Lago
just a few days ago surrounded with the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence,
Defense Secretary Esper, and his Pentagon advisors who breathlessly present him an
"opportunity" to kick the Iranian leadership in the face and also dismantle an operation in the
works to attack US military and civilian personnel in the region.
All he had to do was sign off on the assassination of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, a man he likely
had never heard of a couple of years ago but who, he was told, was "responsible for killing
hundreds of Americans" in Iraq.
"Soleimani did 9/11!" - Pence helpfully yet insanely chimed in.
"You're not a wimp like Obama, who refused to assassinate this terrorist," he was probably
told. "You're decisive, a real leader. This one blow will change the entire calculus of the
Middle East," they likely told him. "If you take out Soleimani, I guarantee you that it will
have enormous positive reverberations on the region."
(Actually, that last one was from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to
Congress in 2002 where he promised the US that "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I
guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." Brilliant
forecasting, Bibi.)
As could be expected, the cover story cooked up by the neocons and signed off on by Trump
started taking water the moment it was put to sea.
Soleimani was not traveling like a man plotting a complicated, multi-country assault on US
troops in the region. No false mustaches or James Bond maneuvers - he was flying commercial and
openly disembarked at the terminal of Baghdad International Airport. He was publicly met and
greeted by an Iraqi delegation and traveled relatively unguarded from the airport.
Until a US drone vaporized him and his entire entourage - which included a senior Iraqi
military officer.
The furious Iraqi acting-Prime Minister Mahdi immediately condemned the attack in the
strongest terms, openly calling for the expulsion of the US forces - who remain in Iraq
ostensibly to fight an ISIS that has long been defeated but, de facto , to keep the
beachhead clear for a US attack on Iran.
Arguing for the expulsion of the US in a special parliamentary session held on January 5th,
Mahdi spilled the truth about Soleimani's mission in Iraq: It was not to plot the killing of US
troops: it was to deliver a response from Iran to a peace overture from the Saudis, the result
of talks that were being facilitated by Iraq.
And the US side knew about the mission and had, according to press reports, encouraged Iraq
to facilitate the Iran/Saudi talks.
Did the US neocons and Pentagon warhawks like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Mike Milley knowingly exploit what they anticipated would be relatively lax security for a
peace mission between Iran and Saudi Arabia to assassinate Gen. Soleimani (with collateral
damage being Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization
Units)?
And, to drill a little deeper, which US "allies" would want to blow up any chance of peace
between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Factions within Saudi Arabia, where a fierce power struggle
rages below the surface? No doubt. In Israel, where Netanyahu continues fighting for his
political life (and freedom) with his entire political career built around mayhem and
destruction? Sure. It's not like Trump has ever been able to say "no" to the endless demands of
either Bibi or his Saudi counterpart in crime MBS.
Who knows, maybe Trump knew all along and was in on it. Make war on a peace mission.
Whatever the case, as always happens the neocons have steered things completely off the
rails. The cover story is in tatters, and the Iraqi democracy - for which we've been ostensibly
fighting for 16 years with a loss of US life in the thousands and of Iraqi life in the millions
- voted on Sunday that US forces must leave Iraq.
We destroyed Iraq to "give them democracy," but they had the nerve to exercise that
democracy to ask us to leave!
Iran could not believe its luck in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when it
soon became clear that Iraq would fall into their hands. Likewise, it appears that the
longstanding fervent wish of the Iranian leadership - the end of the US occupation of Iraq (and
Syria) - will soon be fulfilled thanks to Trump's listening to the always toxic advice of the
neocon warmongers.
Can Trump recover from this near-fatal mistake? It is possible. But with Trump's Twitter
finger threatening Iraq with "big big" sanctions and an even bigger bill to cover the cost of
our invasion and destruction of their country, it appears that his ability to learn from his
mistakes is limited. A bit less time on Twitter and a lot less time with the people who hate
his guts - Pompeo, Pence, Graham, etc. - might help.
Meanwhile...will Iran avenge Soleimani's murder directly, or using asymmetrical means?
Trump said of his decision to assassinate a top official from a country with which we are
not technically at war, "We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to
start a war." But it doesn't work that way. When you kill another country's top military
leadership you have definitely started a war.
What remains to be seen is how it will play out.
Sincerely yours,
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
I agree with the first part. Disproportionate and barbarous threat of instant retaliation is
prt of terrorising and unsettling and even freezing the capacity to 'think'.
All thinking proceeds from presumptions, and one of the ways 'power' works deceit is in the
ability to set it up so that the 'controlled' or 'leveraged' believe that their thinking is
free while setting the fame of their perceived self-interest.
I just watched Corbett and Ryan Cristián of The Last American Vagabond on this issue,
that touches on a little of the military political context – a key part of which is the
'Israeli' agenda – and its style of 'politics' by pre-emptive strike under aggressively
defended narrative assertion.
As for what the US(a) CAN execute as all-out war is linked to the will to do so –
along with the costs or consequences of doing so. Meanwhile broad spectrum dominance operates
transnationally by stealth and deceit. The US(a) is wagged by its Corporate tails.
A significant part of masking tyranny under terror is the aggressively defended protection
racket. For some this means believing the narrative they are given and for others it means they
have to be seen to comply and conform to signal 'virtue' of allegiance under an enforced
narrative dictate or lose their jobs, and reputation and incur penalties of social exclusion
for the rest of their lives.
The act of state-endorsed murder without trial or evidences – that also kills others
in the vicinity – aimed anywhere in the world – based in classified 'intelligence'
that is without any oversight, accountability or challenge – is seeking to be as 'gods
over men' – indeed a 'god' jealous of any and all rival as monopoly over life on earth
– such as will survive under such a parasitic and destructive deceit. 7 0 Reply
Soleimani was not feared by U.S. (and Israeli and Saudi) policymakers because primarily he
was a terrorist (though he sometimes used terror tactics) but mostly because he successful.
According to journalist Yossi Mellman, Israeli intelligence assessed him as "a
daring and talented commander , despite the considerable number of mistakes in his
assessments and failed operations in the course of his career."
First, Soleimani played a key role in driving U.S. occupation forces out of Iraq. As Al-Quds
commander he presided over the creation of anti-American militias in 2003 that mounted deadly
attacks on the U.S. forces seeking to establish a pro-American government. One Iraqi militia
leader, Qais
al-Khazali , who debriefed U.S. intelligence officers in 2008, said he had "a few meetings"
with Soleimani and other Iranian officials of similar rank.
According to Khazali, Soleimani did not take part in the operational
activities–providing weapons, training or cash. He left those tasks to deputies or
intermediaries. Under Iranian tutelage, these militias specialized in using improvised
explosive devices (IEDs) to kill upwards of
600 soldiers in the U.S. occupation forces, according to general David Petraeus.
Soleimani's attacks–along with the manifest failure of U.S. goals to reduce terrorism
and spread democracy–contributed to President Obama's politically popular decision to
withdraw of most U.S. troops in 2011. Forcing the U.S. out of Iraq was a priority for the
government in Tehran, and Soleimani helped achieve it.
Nemesis of ISIS
Second, Soleimani played a key role in driving ISIS out of Iraq–a victory in which the
United States ironically helped boost his reputation.
In this battle, Soleimani took advantage of U.S. vulnerability, not hubris. When ISIS leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed an Islamic State in western Iraq six years ago, Tehran was just
as alarmed as Washington. The Sunni fundamentalists of ISIS regard the Shia Muslims of Iran and
Iraq as infidels, almost as contemptible as Americans and Israelis.
After the regular Iraqi armed forces collapsed, Iraqi Ayotollah Ali Sistani blessed the
creation of Shia militias to save the country.
Sistani's fatwa empowered Iran to mobilize and expanded Soleimani's militia network. The
Iranian-sponsored fighters, along with the Kurdish pesh merga, proceeded to do most of the
bloody street fighting that drove ISIS out of Mosul, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities.
As Soleimani moved about openly in Iraq, U.S. commanders did not attack him because he did
not attack them. Sometimes, pro-American and pro-Iranian soldiers even fought side by
side. Thanks to this tacit U.S.-Iranian cooperation that neither country cared to publicly
acknowledge, ISIS was expelled from Iraq into Syria by 2017.
In Iran, Soleimani emerged as a hero in the fight against the deadliest religious fanatics
on the planet, especially after ISIS had carried out a terror attack in Tehran on June 2017
that killed
12 people.
In Iraq, the rout of ISIS enhanced the prestige of Soleimani and the Iranian-backed
militias. Some of their leaders entered politics and business, drawing complaints
about–and
demonstrations against -- heavy-handed Iranian influence. Many Iraqis grew unhappy about
Iran's new influence, but success made Soleimani an indispensable security partner for the
embattled government in Baghdad. That's why he visited Iraq last week.
Besting the CIA
Third, Soleimani helped defeat ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria's civil war. In 2015, President
Bashar al-Assad's armed forces were losing ground to Sunni fundamentalist forces funded by the
CIA and the Persian Gulf oil monarchies. The CIA wanted to overthrow Assad. Iran feared losing
its ally in Damascus to a hostile anti-Shia regime controlled by al-Qaeda. Obama feared another
Iraq and refused to commit U.S. forces.
Soleimani brought in Iranian advisers and fighters from Hezbollah, the Shia militia of
Lebanon which Iran has supported since the 1980s. With help from merciless Russian bombing and
Syrian chemical attacks , the Iranian-trained ground forces helped Syria turn the tide on
the jihadists. The CIA, under directors Leon Panetta, John Brennan and Mike Pompeo, spent
$1
billion dollars to overthrow Assad. They had less influence on the outcome than
Soleimani.
The net effect of Soleimani's three victories -- abetted by U.S. crimes and blunders -- was,
for better or worse, to bolster Iranian influence across the region. From Afghanistan in the
east to the Mediterranean in the West, Iran gained political ground, thanks to Soleimani. He
perfected the art of asymmetric warfare, using local proxies, political alliances, deniable
attacks, and selective terrorism to achieve the government's political goals.
(Soleimani, it is worth noting, had no record of attacking non-uniformed Americans. While
Pompeo said that Soleimani "had inflicted so much suffering on Americans," it is a fact that
not a single
American civilian was killed in an Iranian-backed terror attack between 2001 to 2019.)
Iran's cumulative successes provoked dismay Washington (and Tel Aviv and Riyadh). In the
course of the 21st century, Iran overcome international isolation and to actually gain, not
lose, advantage to its regional rivals. He also became a media personality in the regime using
selfies from the battlefield to promote an image of an accessible general who liked to rub
shoulders with his men.
Along the way, Iran maintained a terrible record on human rights at home, persecuting
journalists, bloggers, and women who spurn the hijab. Iran's
Ministry of Intelligence and Security didn't kill Americans but it did take a number of
hostages, including
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian . Across the region, Iran's ambitions stirred up
widespread opposition from secular, feminist, and nationalist movements that reject the theory
and practice of Iranian theocracy.
These non-violent movements, however, never advocated that the United States attack their
country. They are not welcoming Soleimani's death, and they are unlikely to support the U.S.
(or Israeli) attacks in the coming conflict. Quite the contrary. The anti-Iranian
demonstrations in Iran and Iraq are over for the foreseeable future. Iranians and Iraqis who
publicly supported the United States and opposed the mullahs, have been silenced. In death as
in life, Soleimani had diminished the U.S. influence in the Middle East.
This article first appeared on Jefferson Morley's TheDeepStateBlog .
"... Naturally, we learned soon after from the Iraqi PM himself that Soleimani was in Iraq as part of a diplomatic effort to de-escalate tensions. In other words, he was apparently lured to Baghdad under false pretenses so he'd be a sitting duck for a U.S. strike. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. ..."
"... As you'd expect, some of the most ridiculous propaganda came from Mike Pompeo, a man who genuinely loves deception and considers it his craft.. For example: ..."
"... Moving on to the really big question: what does this assassination mean for the future role of the U.S. in the Middle East and American global hegemony generally? A few important things have already occurred. For starters, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution calling for U.S. troops to leave. Even more important are the comments and actions of Muqtada al-Sadr. ..."
"... Unmentioned in the above tweet, but extremely significant, is the fact al-Sadr has been a vocal critic of both the American and Iranian presence in Iraq. He doesn't want either country meddling in the affairs of Iraqis, but the Soleimani assassination clearly pushed him to focus on the U.S. presence. This is a very big deal and ensures Iraq will be far more dangerous for U.S. troops than it already was. ..."
Before discussing what happens next and the big picture implications, it's worth pointing
out the incredible number of blatant lies and overall clownishness that emerged from U.S.
officials in the assassination's aftermath. It started with
claims from Trump that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans and was caught
in the act. Mass media did its job and uncritically parroted this line, which was quickly
exposed as a complete falsehood.
CNN anchor uncritically repeating government lies.
This is what mass media does to get wars going. https://t.co/QK1JET7TIj
It's incredibly telling that CNN would swallow this fact-free claim with total credulity
within weeks of discovering the extent of the lies told about
Syrian chemical attacks and
the Afghanistan war . Meanwhile, when a reporter asked a state department official for some
clarification on what sorts of attacks were imminent, this is what transpired.
When asked by a reporter for details about what kinds of imminent attacks Soleimani was
planning, the State Dept. responds with:
"Jesus, do we have to explain why we do these things?"
Naturally, we learned soon after from the Iraqi PM himself that Soleimani was in Iraq as
part of a diplomatic effort to de-escalate tensions. In other words, he was apparently lured to
Baghdad under false pretenses so he'd be a sitting duck for a U.S. strike. Never let the truth
get in the way of a good story.
Iraqi Prime Minister AbdulMahdi accuses Trump of deceiving him in order to assassinate
Suleimani. Trump, according to P.M. lied about wanting a diplomatic solution in order to get
Suleimani on a plane to Baghdad in the open, where he was summarily executed. https://t.co/HKjyQqXNqP
As you'd expect, some of the most ridiculous propaganda came from Mike Pompeo, a man who
genuinely loves deception and considers it his craft.. For example:
Pompeo on CNN says US has "every expectation" that people "in Iran will view the American
action last night as giving them freedom."
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Qassem Soleimani's daughter Zeinab were
among the hundreds of thousands mourning Soleimani in Tehran today. Iranian state TV put the
crowd size at 'millions,' though that number could not be verified. https://t.co/R6EbKh6Gow
Moving on to the really big question: what does this assassination mean for the future
role of the U.S. in the Middle East and American global hegemony generally? A few important
things have already occurred. For starters, the Iraqi parliament passed a
resolution calling for U.S. troops to leave. Even more important are the comments and
actions of Muqtada al-Sadr.
WOW,
Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr orders the return of "Mahdi Army" in response the
American strike that killed Suleimani.
Mahdi Army fought against the US troops during the invasion in 2003. Sadr disbanded the
group in 2008.
Unmentioned in the above tweet, but extremely significant, is the fact al-Sadr has been
a vocal critic of both the American and Iranian presence in Iraq. He doesn't want either
country meddling in the affairs of Iraqis, but the Soleimani assassination clearly pushed him
to focus on the U.S. presence. This is a very big deal and ensures Iraq will be far more
dangerous for U.S. troops than it already was.
Going forward, Iran's response will be influenced to a great degree by what's already
transpired. There are three things worth noting. First, although many Trump supporters are
cheering the assassination, Americans are certainly
nowhere near united on this , with many including myself viewing it as a gigantic strategic
blunder. Second, it ratcheted up anti-American sentiment in Iraq to a huge degree without Iran
having to do anything, as highlighted above. Third, hardliners within Iran have been given an
enormous gift. With one drone strike, the situation went from grumblings and protests on the
ground to a scene where any sort of dissent in the air has been extinguished for the time
being.
Exactly right, which is why Iran will go more hardline if anything and more united.
If China admitted to taking out Trump even Maddow wouldn't cheer. https://t.co/zqaEDIoWH1
Iranian leadership will see these developments as important victories in their own right and
will likely craft a response taking stock of this much improved position. This means a total
focus on making the experience of American troops in the region untenable, which will be far
easier to achieve now.
If that's right, you can expect less shock and awe in the near-term, and more consolidation
of the various parties that were on the fence but have since shifted to a more anti-American
stance following Soleimani's death. Iran will start with the easy pickings, which consists of
consolidating its stronger position in Iraq and making dissidents feel shameful at home. That
said, Iran will have to publicly respond with some sort of a counterattack, but that event will
be carefully considered with Iran's primary objective in mind -- getting U.S. troops out of the
region.
This means no attacks on U.S. or European soil, and no attacks targeting civilians either.
Such a move would be as strategically counterproductive as Assad gassing Syrian cities after he
was winning the war (which is why many of us doubted the narrative) since it would merely
inflame American public opinion and give an excuse to attack Iran in Iran. There is no way
Iranian leadership is that stupid, so any such attack must be treated with the utmost
skepticism.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has offered Iraq Tuesday the option to
purchase the world's most advanced missile defense system to protect its airspace, reported
RIA Novosti .
According to the report, the Iraqi Armed Forces could purchase the Russian S-400 Triumf air
defense system, which RIA points out, can "ensure the country's sovereignty and reliable
airspace protection."
"Iraq is a partner of Russia in the field of military-technical cooperation, and the Russian
Federation can supply the necessary funds to ensure the sovereignty of the country and reliable
protection of airspace, including the supply of S-400 missiles and other components of the air
defense system, such as Buk-M3, Tor -M2 "and so on," said Igor Korotchenko, Russian Defense
Ministry's Public Council member.
For the last several months, Iraq has considered purchasing Russian air defense and missile
systems, including the S-400, however, it has been met with fierce pressure from the US.
But with a political crisis between the US and Iraq underway, thanks partly to the US
assassination of Iran's Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Russia could profit as Iraq attempts to
decouple from the US.
Wow! I just suggested it yesterday! 😀 After Iraq kicks the US out, it would need
protection from American/Israeli warplanes. And Russian S-400 can do the job https://t.co/KCz3v705l1
Russia signaling Iraq to continue pushing out foreign troops from their territory with
less fear they gonna be targeted just like exemplified Sulemani when they took out like that
since Iraq can have S-400 and Russian protection if they wanted etc
well well this pesky Russian understands protections will boast their push of the great
satan?
First things first. There are NO legal/formal obligations between
Russia and Iran and last time I checked, no Iranians have volunteered to die for Russia. Next, yes, Iran is an
important ally for Russia. But what most folks are missing is that Iran does not need (or want) a direct Russian
intervention. There are lots of reasons (including historical ones) to this. But what most folks are completely
misunderstanding is that
the Iranians are confident that they can win without any Russian (or other) help
.
I am in touch with a lot of folks from the Middle-East (including Iran) and I can tell you that their mood is one
of not only total determination, but one of quiet confidence. Nobody in the region doubts that it's now over for
Uncle Shmuel. I know, this sounds incredible for folks living in the West, but that is the reality in the
Middle-East.
From 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'
Besides, you can be sure that Russia will help Iran, but behind the scenes. First and foremost with
intelligence: while the Iranian have an extremely sophisticated intelligence community, it is dwarfed by the much
larger Russian one which, on top of being much bigger, also has technical means which Iran can only dream about.
Russia can also help with early warning and targeting. We can't know what is really going behind the scenes, but I
am getting reports that the Russians are on full alert (as they were during the first Gulf war, alas Saddam
Hussein did not listen to the Russian warnings).
6)
Should Russia declare that Iran is now under Russian protection
? Absolutely not! Why? Think
of what is taking place as if you were sitting in the Kremlin: the Empire is about to embark on its last war (yes,
I mean that, see further below) and the Russian specialists all KNOW that the US will lose, and badly. Why in the
world would you intervene when your "main foe" (KGB/SVR/FSB expression for "USA") is about to do something
terminally stupid?
Besides, this is a cultural issue too. In the West, threats are constantly used. Not only to scare the enemy,
but also to feel less terrified yourself. In Asia (and Russia is far more culturally Asian than European) threats
are seen as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve. In this entire career, Putin used a threat only ONCE: to
convince the Urkonazis that attacking during the World Cup would have "severe consequences for the Ukrainian
statehood".
But you have to understand that from a Russian point of view, the Ukraine is militarily so weak as to be
laughable as an enemy and nobody in his right mind will ever doubt the outcome of a Ukie war with Russia. This is
an extreme and exceptional case. But look at the case of the Russian intervention in Syria: unlike their western
counterparts, the Russians did not first spend weeks threatening ISIS or anybody else in Syria. When Putin took
the decision, they simply moved in, so quietly that THE BEST military in the galaxy never detected the Russian
move.
So, IF, and I don't think that this will happen, Russia ever decided to move in to protect Iran, the US will
find out about it when US servicemen will die in large numbers. Until then, Russia will not be issuing threats.
Again, in the West threats are a daily occurrence. In the East, they are a sign of weakness.
Now you know why US threats are totally ineffective.
7)
US force levels in the Middle-East.
The US maintains a large network of bases all around
Iran and throughout the entire planet, really. The real numbers are secret, of course, but let us assume, for
argument sake, that the US has about 100'000 soldiers more or less near Iran. The actual figure does not matter
(and the Iranians know it anyway). What is crucial is this: this does NOT mean that the US has 100'000 soldiers
ready to attack Iran. A lot of that personnel is not really combat capable (the ratio of combat ready vs support
ranges from country to country and from war to war, but let's just say that most of these 100'000 are NOT combat
soldiers). Not only that, but there is a big difference between, say, many companies and battalions in a region
and a real armored division. For example, the 82nd AB is an INFANTRY force, not really mechanized, not capable of
engaging say, an armored brigade.
Here is a historical sidebar: during the first Gulf war, the US also sent in the 82nd AB as the central force
of the operation "Desert Shield". And here is where Saddam Hussein committed his WORST blunder of all. If he had
sent in his armored divisions across the Saudi border he would have made minced meat of the 82nd. The US knew
that. In fact, Cheney was once asked what the US would have done if the Iraqis has destroyed the 82nd. He replied
that the first line of defense was airpower on USN aircraft carriers and cruise missiles. And if that failed, the
US would have had to use tactical nukes to stop the Iraqi divisions. That would be one of those instances were
using nukes WOULD make sense from a purely military point of view (nukes are great to deal with armor!), but from
a political point of view it would have been a PR disaster (
vide supra
). The same is true today.
For the US to engage in any serious ground operation it would need many months to get the force levels high
enough and you can be darn sure that Iran would NEVER allow that. Should Uncle Shmuel try to send in a real, big,
force into the KSA you can be sure that the Iranians will strike with everything they have!
The bottom line is this:
the US has more than enough assets in the region to strike/bomb Iran. The US
has nowhere near the kind of force levels to envision a major ground operation even in Iraq, nevermind Iran!
8)
What about the Strait of Hormuz?
There is no doubt in my mind that Iran can close the
Strait of Hormuz. In fact, all the Iranians need to do to close it is say that they reserve the right to destroy
(by whatever means) any ship attempting passage. That will be enough to stop all traffic. Of course, if that
happens the US will have no other option than to attack the southern cost of Iran and try to deal with that
threat. And yes, I am sorry of I disappoint my Iranian friends, I do believe that the US could probably re-open
the Strait of Hormuz, but that will require "boots on the ground" in southern Iran and that is something which
might yield an initial success, but that will turn into a massive military disaster in the medium to long run
because the Iranians will have not only have time on their side, but they will have a dream come true: finally the
US GIs will be within reach, literally. So, typically, the US will prevail coming in, only to find itself in a
trap.
9)
Do the Iranians seek death?
This is an important one (thanks to Larchmonter 445 for
suggesting this!). The short answer is no. Not at all. Iranians want to live and they do not seek death. HOWEVER,
they also know that death in defense of Islam or in defense of the oppressed is an act of "witness to God", which
is what the Arabic word "
shahid
" is (and why the Greek work μάρτυς "martis" means). What does that mean?
That means that while Muslim soldiers should not seek their death, and while they ought to do everything in their
power to remain alive, they are NOT afraid of death in the least. To fully understand this mindset, you need only
become aware of the most famous and crucial Shia slogan "
Every Day Is Ashura and Every Land Is Karbala
"
(see explanation
here
).
If I had to translate this into a Christian frame of reference I would suggest this "every day is Good/Passion
Friday and every land is the Golgotha". That is to say, "
no matter were you are and no matter what time it is,
you have to be willing to sacrifice your life for God and for the defense of the oppressed
". So no, Iranians
are a joyful people (as are Arabs), and they don't seek death. But neither do they fear it and they accept, with
gratitude, the possibility of having to sacrifice their lives in defense of justice and truth. This is one more
reason why threats by terminal imbeciles like Pompeo or Trump have no effect whatsoever on Muslims.
10)
So what is really happening now?
Folks,
this is the beginning of the end for the
Empire
. Yes, I know, this sounds incredible, yet this is exactly what we are seeing happening before our
eyes. The very best which the US can hope for now is a quick and complete withdrawal from the Middle-East. For a
long list of political reason, that does not seem a realistic scenario right now. So what next? A major war
against Iran and against the entire "Shia crescent" ? Not a good option either. Not only will the US lose, but it
would lose both politically and militarily. Limited strikes? Not good either, since we know that Iran will
retaliate massively. A behind the scenes major concession to appease Iran? Nope, ain't gonna happen either since
if the Iranians let the murder of Soleimani go unpunished, then Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and even
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be the next ones to be murdered. A massive air campaign? Most likely, and initially
this will feel good (lots of flagwaving in the USA), but soon this will turn into a massive disaster. Use nukes?
Sure, and destroy your political image forever and not only in the Middle-East but worldwide.
As a perfect illustration, just check
the
latest stupid threat made by Trump
: "
If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly
basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look
somewhat tame"
. Folk, this is exactly the kind of stupid language which will deeply offend any Iraqi patriot.
This is the kind of language which comes out of an empire in the late stages of agony.
Trump will go down in history as the man who thought he could scare the Iranian and Iraqi people with "tweets".
Pathetic indeed.
CONCLUSION
I hope that these pointers will be useful, especially when you are going to be hit with a massive Tsunami of US
flagwaving propaganda (Trump "we are THE BEST"). Simply put: this is bullshit. Modern wars are first and foremost
propaganda wars, and what you see as the output of US ruling elites are just that "information operations". Let
them wave their (Chinese made) flags, let them declare "United we stand" (for what exactly they stand is never
specified) and let them repeat that the US military is the MOST FORMIDABLE FORCE IN THE GALAXY. These are nothing
but desperate attempts to control the narrative, nothing else.
Oh, and one more irony: while the GOP controlled Senate is most unlikely to ever impeach Trump, is it not
pathetically hilarious that Trump has now, indeed, committed acts ought to have him removed from office? Of
course, in the real world, the US Neocon deep-state controls BOTH parties and BOTH parties fully support a war
against Iran. Still, this is one of those ironies of history which should be mentioned.
I will resume my work tomorrow morning.
Until then, I wish you call a good nite/morning/day.
President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told us the US had to assassinate
Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani last week because he was planning "Imminent attacks" on US citizens.
I don't believe them.
Why not? Because Trump and the neocons – like Pompeo – have been lying about
Iran for the past three years in an effort to whip up enough support for a US attack. From the
phony justification to get out of the Iran nuclear deal, to blaming Yemen on Iran, to blaming
Iran for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, the US Administration has fed us a steady stream of
lies for three years because they are obsessed with Iran.
And before Trump's obsession with attacking Iran, the past four US Administrations lied
ceaselessly to bring about wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Somalia, and the
list goes on.
At some point, when we've been lied to constantly and consistently for decades about a
"threat" that we must "take out" with a military attack, there comes a time where we must
assume they are lying until they provide rock solid, irrefutable proof. Thus far they have
provided nothing. So I don't believe them.
President Trump has warned that his administration has already targeted 52 sites important
to Iran and Iranian culture and the US will attack them if Iran retaliates for the
assassination of Gen. Soleimani. Because Iran has no capacity to attack the United States,
Iran's retaliation if it comes will likely come against US troops or US government officials
stationed or visiting the Middle East. I have a very easy solution for President Trump that
will save the lives of American servicemembers and other US officials: just come home. There is
absolutely no reason for US troops to be stationed throughout the Middle East to face increased
risk of death for nothing.
In our Ron Paul Liberty Report program last week we observed that the US attack on a senior
Iranian military officer on Iraqi soil – over the objection of the Iraq government
– would serve to finally unite the Iraqi factions against the United States. And so it
has: on Sunday the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from Iraqi soil. It may have been
a non-binding resolution, but there is no mistaking the sentiment. US troops are not wanted and
they are increasingly in danger. So why not listen to the Iraqi parliament?
Bring our troops home, close the US Embassy in Baghdad – a symbol of our aggression
– and let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems. Maintain a strong
defense to protect the United States, but end this neocon pipe-dream of ruling the world from
the barrel of a gun. It does not work. It makes us poorer and more vulnerable to attack. It
makes the elites of Washington rich while leaving working and middle class America with the
bill. It engenders hatred and a desire for revenge among those who have fallen victim to US
interventionist foreign policy. And it results in millions of innocents being killed
overseas.
There is no benefit to the United States to trying to run the world. Such a foreign policy
brings only bankruptcy – moral and financial. Tell Congress and the Administration that
for America's sake we demand the return of US troops from the Middle East! (Republished from
The Ron Paul Institute by permission of author or representative)
"Unlike with North Korea, it's difficult to imagine any photo op or exchange of love letters
defusing the crisis the president has created. " The only thing that might defuse this crisis
would be the Senate convicting Trump and removing him from office. It would be a good idea if
the House passes another article of impeachment accusing the president of committing an act
of war without Congressional authorization.
Threatening to destroy cultural sites of a country is the sign of a deranged madman. I can't
believe a US president would dare say something like that. It goes against all the principles
America stands for. Nothing will motivate the people of Iran to fight the US more than the
threat of destruction to their cultural sites. If we go to war with Iran, this is a
Republican war. They own it. When are decent Republicans going to stand up and do the right
thing? If they don't, this could be very, very, bad.
The Defense department is already walking back Trump's tweet about bombing Iran culture
sites. Unfortunately, it's too late because the damage to our reputation as the "shining
light on the hill" has already been destroyed. I'm afraid more than now than I have ever been
in my life. Who knows when or where the revenge will occur but I'm fairly certain it will
happen and we'll be more isolated than ever before. It's taken centuries to build goodwill
and our reputation as a beacon of democracy for the world. We gave the keys to the kingdom to
a false prophet and we'll pay for his indiscretions for the rest of my lifetime. God help us
all.
After three harrowing years, we've reached the point many of us feared from the moment
Donald Trump was elected. His decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's second most
important official, made at Mar-a-Lago with little discernible
deliberation , has brought the United States to the brink of a devastating new conflict in
the Middle East.
We don't yet know how Iran will retaliate, or whether all-out war will be averted. But
already, NATO has suspended its mission training Iraqi forces to
fight ISIS . Iraq's Parliament has voted to expel American troops -- a longtime Iranian
objective. (On Monday, U.S. forces sent a letter saying they were withdrawing from Iraq in
response, only to then claim that it was a
draft released in error .) On Sunday, Iran said it will no longer be bound by the remaining
restrictions on its nuclear program in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that
Trump abandoned in 2018. Trump has been threatening to commit war crimes by destroying Iran's
cultural sites and tried to use Twitter to notify
Congress of his intention to respond to any Iranian reprisals with military escalation.
The administration has said that the killing of Suleimani was justified by an imminent
threat to American lives, but there is no reason to believe this. One skeptical American
official told The New York Times that the new intelligence indicated nothing but
"a normal Monday in the Middle East," and Democrats briefed on it were
unconvinced by the administration's case. The Washington Post reported that Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo -- who last year agreed with a Christian Broadcasting
Network interviewer that God might have sent Trump to save Israel from the "Iranian menace"
-- has been pushing for a hit on Suleimani for months.
MASTER OF UNIVE American corporations will start falling into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Q1 if
the USA MIC cannot find new contracts to profit from via kinetic war. The USA's last war was
Iraq post-911 and the USA MIC made good money & profit from that war. Without forever wars
the USA Ponzi Corporatocracy will deflate. If the USA Ponzi Corporatocracy deflates due to
recession it means the end of USA Imperialism.
If the hawks can generate forever wars the MIC suppliers may have a chance to stay in business,
but if they don't get new contracts for new forever wars they all know implicitly that that is
a Zero Sum game for the entire USA population.
BIG Chief Trump little penis has only one chance to stay in power at this juncture. He has
ordered troupes to Iraq and approximately 2000 marines are on the way right now. In brief, 2000
marines were not ordered to Iraq to escort the base troupes out of Iraq safely. They were sent
on a mission.
Impeachment, DOW Share Price, and no Trade Deal with China will put Trump on the defensive
and he will start threatening everyone in the world if he does not get his way.
Trump is the kind of child leader that will throw temper tantrums in front of the world.
Temper tantrums worked with his parents, and the Real Estate community in New York shitty.
Trump is a child of roughly 6 or 7 mentally & socially. Id impulses are running the
world here and when id impulses run the world from the White House we are certain that whatever
manifests will be destructive beyond imagination for most adults in the world.
Children with anger management issues & rage issues will understand Trump best.
Yes, as long as Neoco hens and Christian Zionists run our foreign policy we're
screwed.
BTW, Mike Pompeo or as I affectionately call him; Lard face, Plump'eo, crazed CZ-zealot fat
boy, etc., is now a legitimate target of the Iranians. May Allah provide justice to the
family of Soleimani. (Grin) And look, I'm wishing 'ill will' on a zealot 'goy' (gentile)
instead of a typical Neo-cohen snake, how ironic. (Another grin) A positve spin:
With the 'incorrect' memo leaked by the Pentagon about an orderly exit from Iraq this can be
the silver lining in all this mess. This assassination might actually accelerate the exiting
of US forces from Iraq and the surrounding quagmires. Who knows, Trump might be a genius.
Again, NO MORE WARS FOR ZION, BDS NOW, ONE STATE SOLUTION-PALESTINE.
And to really stick it to Neo cohens (My apologies to Prof. Steven Cohen ),
Trump-Putin Axis Da!! Destroy the Deep State and the CABAL .
The United States, like Israel, has become a pariah that shreds, violates or absents itself
from international law. We launch preemptive wars, which under international law is defined as
a "crime of aggression," based on fabricated evidence. We, as citizens, must hold our
government accountable for these crimes. If we do not, we will be complicit in the codification
of a new world order, one that would have terrifying consequences. It would be a world without
treaties, statutes and laws. It would be a world where any nation, from a rogue nuclear state
to a great imperial power, would be able to invoke its domestic laws to annul its obligations
to others. Such a new order would undo five decades of international cooperation -- largely put
in place by the United States -- and thrust us into a Hobbesian nightmare. Diplomacy, broad
cooperation, treaties and law, all the mechanisms designed to civilize the global community,
would be replaced by savagery.
Chris Hedges, an Arabic speaker, is a former Middle East bureau chief for The New York
Times. He spent seven years covering the region, including Iran.
It's all about the level of geopolitical control of oil-rich regions. In other words Carter
doctrine.
Notable quotes:
"... Don't expect any American journalists to remind viewers that one of Soleimani's achievements was not only to command the entire Iraqi army's campaign against ISIS, but also to do that in cooperation with U.S. forces. ..."
"... Trump doesn't really read. Or even take solace from history. If he did, he would know that many U.S. presidents actually lost the vote at the crucial moment, because of their bungling in the Middle East and, in particular, in Iran. President Reagan for example won the White House in November 1980 after the failed rescue mission of U.S. hostages in April of that year in Iran went spectacularly wrong which gave a "landslide" victory to the former B-movie actor from Hollywood ..."
"... Trump's strike does ring of a president, struggling with an impeachment campaign gaining momentum, who may feel has nothing to lose other than to repeat history, which has doomed him, like Carter or Reagan (who never survived Iran-Contra). ..."
"... But his reckless folly in the Middle East is also a test of how far relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world can go, before something breaks. The assassination of the Iranian general could drive a huge divide between the U.S. and the EU in the next term, if Trump can secure re-election as it will be Europe which pays the real price when the region boils over. ..."
I personally do not think that the strike was a typically
capricious move by Trump. I am more inclined to believe that it has been in the works for a
long time and his advisers might well have offered it to him as a preferable retaliation option
against the Iranian downing of a U.S. drone in June of last year – where Trump floundered
and finally held back from launching a conventional military attack on Iranian forces, through
fear of civilians being killed, or so he claims.
What we are witnessing is unprecedented in the region. It has caught everyone off guard,
even the democrats in the U.S., who can barely believe the stupidity of the move, which
arguably, is a measured one. Trump believes that he can come out the winner of a pseudo war
– or a proxy one – in the region, even though the Iranians have demonstrated that
they easily have the capability of shutting down Saudi Arabia's oil exports with a relatively
minor salvo of ordinance.
In fact, Saudi Arabia might well, in my view, be part of this latest move. Much has been
made of the petulant twitter goading of Tehran's Supreme leader to Trump directly, which may
well have pushed him over a line. But in reality, there is something much deeper and nefarious
at play which may well be the true basis of why the decision was taken for the assassination:
to destroy any possibilities of Iran and Saudi Arabia patching up their differences and
continuing in dialogue, to avoid further tensions.
There is ample evidence to show that since the oilfield attacks carried out by Iran, Saudi
crown prince Mohamed bin Salman has softened his stance on Iran and was looking at ways,
through intermediaries, to build a working relation. It was early days and progress was
slow.
But the Soleimani hit will blow that idea right out of the water. In one fell swoop, the
strike galvanises and polarises an anti-Iran front from Saudi Arabia and Israel, which, whilst
doing wonders for U.S. arms procurement will cause more tension in the region as it places
countries like Qatar, UAE, Turkey and Oman in a really awkward spot with regards to how it
should continue to work with Tehran. It may well put back the Qatar blockade to its earlier
position as 'rogue state' in the region, prompting it to possibly even go rogue and get more
involved in the battle to take Tripoli (supporting Turkish forces, obviously, who are with the
UN-recognised government).
In fact, there is an entire gamut of consequences to the move, beyond merely Iran seeking to
take revenge against America's allies in the region. It is less about a declaration of war
against Iran but more a declaration of anti-peace towards the entire Arab world, which was
starting to unfold in the last six months since Trump stepped back from the region and stood
down from a retaliation strike against Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. Trump is gambling that he
can sustain Saudi Arabia's oil being disrupted and even body bags of U.S. soldiers in Syria and
Iraq in return for a fresh wave of popularity from people too ignorant to understand or wish to
comprehend the nuances of the Middle East and how so many U.S. presidents use the pretext of a
war, or heightened tensions, as part of their chest-beating, shallow popularity campaign.
Don't expect any American journalists to remind viewers that one of Soleimani's
achievements was not only to command the entire Iraqi army's campaign against ISIS, but also to
do that in cooperation with U.S. forces.
Trump doesn't really read. Or even take solace from history. If he did, he would know
that many U.S. presidents actually lost the vote at the crucial moment, because of their
bungling in the Middle East and, in particular, in Iran. President Reagan for example won the
White House in November 1980 after the failed rescue mission of U.S. hostages in April of that
year in Iran went spectacularly wrong which gave a "landslide" victory to the former B-movie
actor from Hollywood .
Reagan, in turn, carried on the great tradition of Middle East histrionics by his notably
'mad dog' Libya campaign, which ran concurrent to two devastating attacks on U.S. soldiers and
embassy staff in Lebanon, while two different CIA teams worked against each other in trying to
secure the release of U.S. hostages in Beirut – while all along he was selling illegal
arms to the Iranians and using the cash to fund Contras in Nicaragua.
Trump's strike does ring of a president, struggling with an impeachment campaign gaining
momentum, who may feel has nothing to lose other than to repeat history, which has doomed him,
like Carter or Reagan (who never survived Iran-Contra).
But his reckless folly in the Middle East is also a test of how far relations with the
U.S. and the rest of the world can go, before something breaks. The assassination of the
Iranian general could drive a huge divide between the U.S. and the EU in the next term, if
Trump can secure re-election as it will be Europe which pays the real price when the region
boils over.
Martin Jay is an award -winning freelance journalist and political
commentator
Trump has from the beginning of his presidential campaign appealed to the worst and most
fascistic elements in American political life. At a time when the US has no credible peer
military rival, he added hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon budget, and the pudgy
old chicken hawk lionized war criminals. Up until now, however, Trump shrewdly calculated that
his base was tired of wasting blood and treasure on fruitless Middle Eastern wars, and he
avoided taking more than symbolic steps. He dropped a big missile on Afghanistan once, and
fired some Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Syria. But he drew back from the brink of more extensive
military engagements.
Now, by murdering Qasem Soleimani , the
head of the Jerusalem (Qods) Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Trump has
brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. Mind you, Iran's leadership is too
shrewd to rush to the battlements at this moment, and will be prepared to play the long game.
My guess is that they will encourage their allies among Iraqi Shiites to get up a massive
protest at the US embassy and at bases housing US troops.
They will be aided in this task of mobilizing Iraqis by the simultaneous US assassination of
Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis , the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces. Al-Muhandis is a senior
military figure in the Iraqi armed forces, not just a civilian militia figure. Moreover, the
Kata'ib Hizbullah that he headed is part of a strong political bloc, al-Fath, which has
48 members in parliament and forms a key coalition partner for the current, caretaker prime
minister, Adil Abdulmahdi. Parliament won't easily be able to let this outrage pass.
The US officer corps is confident that the American troops at the embassy and elsewhere in
Baghdad are sufficient to fight off any militia invasion. I'm not sure they have taken into
account the possibility of tens of thousands of civilian protesters invading the
embassy, who can't simply be taken out and shot.
Trump may be counting on the unpopularity among the youth protesters in downtown Baghdad,
Basra, Nasiriya and other cities of Soleimani and of al-Muhandis to blunt the Iraqi reaction to
the murders. The thousands of youth protesters cheered on hearing the news of their deaths,
since they were accused of plotting a violent repression of the rallies demanding an end to
corruption.
Iraq, however, is a big, complex society, and there are enormous numbers of Iraqi Shiites
who support the Popular Mobilization Forces and who view them as the forces that saved Iraq
from the peril of the ISIL (ISIS) terrorist organization. The Shiite hard liners would not need
all Iraqis to back them in confronting the American presence, only a few hundred thousand for
direct crowd action.
You also have to wonder whether Trump and his coterie aren't planning a coup in Iraq. In the
absence of a coup, the Iraqi parliament will almost certainly be forced, after this violation
of Iraqi national sovereignty, to vote to expel American troops. This is foreseeable. So either
the assassination was a drive-by on the way out, or Trump's war cabinet doesn't plan on having
to leave Iraq.
"We have learned today from #Iraq Prime Minister AdilAbdl Mahdi how @realDonaldTrump uses
diplomacy:
#US asked #Iraq to mediate with #Iran. Iraq PM asks #QassemSoleimani to come and talk to him
and give him the answer of his mediation, Trump &co assassinate an envoy at the airport."
To some extent it is not relevant if Trump was lying during his campaign, or has been
corrupted/coopted/fooled/pressured/played for a chump by the establishment. He said one thing
and is doing another: that's the bottom line.
However: I note that after Barack Obama got elected, he immediately fired all of his
populist advisors and hired Wall Streeters even before being sworn in. Obama was clearly
lying up front.
Trump, however, initially did start moving in the direction he said he would, he kept his
populist/nationalist advisors, and really did make actual moves to carry out his campaign
promises. And the establishment went total nut job, he was a Russian agent, his populist
advisers were targeted for legal actions, they were replaced with establishment advisors who
hate him Trump was strong on stage berating a political opponent, but against establishment
pressure he has turned out to be weak, caving in to "the Blob" at every turn.
Had she been elected, Hillary would already have started the neocon wet dream of a war
with Iran.
While that may be true, I am tired of giving Trump a free pass, just because Hillary would
have been worse. Being relatively less evil, or a different incarnation of evil, is still
evil.
Frankly, impeachment was just a distraction to divert attention from the real play. The
dagger at his throat is from far more malevolent foes who can wield both blackmail or death
as the circumstances demand to get their way. The jewish mafia is far more dangerous than the
Sicilian boys could ever hope to be. The latter learned from the former.
The Trump administration has assassinated Iran's top military leader, Qassim Suleimani, and with the possibility of a serious escalation
in violent conflict, it's a good time to think about how propaganda works and train ourselves to avoid accidentally swallowing it.
The Iraq War, the bloodiest and costliest U.S. foreign policy calamity of the 21 st century, happened in part because
the population of the United States was insufficiently cynical about its government and got caught up in a wave of nationalistic
fervor. The same thing happened with World War I and the Vietnam War. Since a U.S./Iran war would be a disaster, it is vital that
everyone make sure they do not accidentally end up repeating the kinds of talking points that make war more likely.
Let us bear in mind, then, some of the basic lessons about war propaganda.
Things are not true because a government official says them.
I do not mean to treat you as stupid by making such a basic point, but plenty of journalists and opposition party politicians
do not understand this point's implications, so it needs to be said over and over. What happens in the leadup to war is that government
officials make claims about the enemy, and then those claims appear in newspapers ("U.S. officials say Saddam poses an imminent threat")
and then in the public consciousness, the "U.S. officials say" part disappears, so that the claim is taken for reality without ever
really being scrutinized. This happens because newspapers are incredibly irresponsible and believe that so long as you attach "Experts
say" or "President says" to a claim, you are off the hook when people end up believing it, because all you did was relay the fact
that a person said a thing, you didn't say it was true. This is the approach the New York Times took to Bush administration allegations
in the leadup to the Iraq War, and it meant that false claims could become headline news just because a high-ranking U.S. official
said them. [UPDATE: here's an example
from Vox, today, of a questionable government claim being magically transformed into a certain fact.]
In the context of Iran, let us consider some things Mike Pence tweeted about Qassim Suleimani:
"[Suleimani] assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September
11 terrorist attacks in the United States Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.
The world is a safer place today because Soleimani is gone."
It is possible, given these tweets, to publish the headline: "Suleimani plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats, says
Pence." That headline is technically true. But you should not publish that headline unless Pence provides some supporting evidence,
because what will happen in the discourse is that people will link to your news story to prove that Suleimani was plotting imminent
attacks.
To see how unsubstantiated claims get spread, let's think about the Afghanistan hijackers bit. David Harsanyi of the National
Review defends
Pence's claim about Suleimani helping the hijackers. Harsanyi cites the 9/11 Commission report, saying that the 9/11 commission
report concluded Iran aided the hijackers. The report
does indeed say that Iran allowed free
travel to some of the men who went on to carry out the 9/11 attacks. (The sentence cut off at the bottom of Harsanyi's screenshot,
however, rather crucially
says : "We have no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.") Harsanyi
admits that the report says absolutely nothing about Suleimani. But he argues that Pence was "mostly right," pointing out that Pence
did not say Iran knew these men would be the hijackers, merely that it allowed them passage.
Let's think about what is going on here. Pence is trying to convince us that Suleimani deserved to die, that it was necessary
for the U.S. to kill him, which will also mean that if Iran retaliates violently, that violence will be because Iran is an aggressive
power rather than because the U.S. just committed an unprovoked atrocity against one of its leaders, dropping a bomb on a popular
Iranian leader. So Pence wants to link Suleimani in your mind with 9/11, in order to get you blood boiling the same way you might
have felt in 2001 as you watched the Twin Towers fall.
There is no evidence that either Iran or Suleimani tried to help these men do 9/11. Harsanyi says that Pence does not technically
allege this. But he doesn't have to! What impression are people going to get from helped the hijackers? Pence hopes you'll
conflate Suleimani and Iran as one entity, then assume that if Iran ever aided these men in any way, it basically did 9/11 even if
it didn't have any clue that was what they were going to do.
This brings us to #2:
Do not be bullied into accepting simple-minded sloganeering
Let's say that, long before Ted Kaczynski began sending bombs through the mail, you once rented him an apartment. This was pure
coincidence. Back then he was just a Berkeley professor, you did not know he would turn out to be the Unabomber. It is, however,
possible, for me to say, and claim I am not technically lying, that you "housed and materially aided the Unabomber." (A friend of
mine once sold his house to the guy who turned out to be the Green River Killer, so this kind of situation does happen.)
Of course, it is incredibly dishonest of me to characterize what you did that way. You rented an apartment to a stranger, yet
I'm implying that you intentionally helped the Unabomber knowing he was the Unabomber. In sane times, people would see me as the
duplicitous one. But the leadup to war is often not a sane time, and these distinctions can get lost. In the Pence claim about Afghanistan,
for it to have any relevance to Suleimani, it would be critical to know (assuming the 9/11 commission report is accurate) whether
Iran actually could have known what the men it allowed to pass would ultimately do, and whether Suleimani was involved. But that
would involve thinking, and War Fever thrives on emotion rather than thought.
There are all kinds of ways in which you can bully people into accepting idiocy. Consider, for example, the statement "Nathan
Robinson thinks it's good to help terrorists who murder civilians." There is a way in which this is actually sort of true: I think
lawyers who aid those accused of terrible crimes do important work. If we are simple-minded and manipulative, we can call that "thinking
it's good to help terrorists," and during periods of War Fever, that's exactly what it will be called. There is a kind of cheap sophistry
that becomes ubiquitous:
I don't think Osama bin Laden should have been killed without an attempt to apprehend him. -- > So you think it's good
that Osama bin Laden was alive?
I think Iraqis were justified in resisting the U.S. invasion with force. -- > So you're saying it's good when U.S. soldiers
die?
I do not believe killing other countries' generals during peacetime is acceptable. -- > So you believe terrorists should
be allowed to operate with impunity.
I remember all this bullshit from my high school years. Opposing the invasion of Iraq meant loving Saddam Hussein and hating America.
Thinking 9/11 was the predictable consequence of U.S. actions meant believing 9/11 was justified. Of course, rational discussion
can expose these as completely unfair mischaracterizations, but every time war fever whips up, rational discussion becomes almost
impossible. In World War I, if you opposed the draft you were undermining your country in a time of war. During Vietnam, if you believed
the North Vietnamese had the more just case, you were a Communist traitor who endorsed every atrocity committed in the name of Ho
Chi Minh, and if you thought John McCain shouldn't have been bombing civilians in the first place then clearly you believed he should
have been tortured and you hated America.
"If you oppose assassinating Suleimani you must love terrorists" will be repeated on Fox News (and probably even on MSNBC).
Nationalism advocate Yoram Hazony
says there is something wrong with those who
do not "feel shame when our country is shamed" -- presumably those who do not feel wounded pride when America is emasculated by our
enemies are weak and pitiful. We should refuse to put up with these kind of cheap slurs, or even to let those who deploy them place
the burden of proof on us to refute them. (In 2004, Democrats worried that they did appear unpatriotic, and so they ran a
decorated war veteran, John Kerry, for president. That didn't work.)
Scrutinize the arguments
Here's Mike Pence again:
"[Suleimani] provided advanced deadly explosively formed projectiles, advanced weaponry, training, and guidance to Iraqi
insurgents used to conduct attacks on U.S. and coalition forces; directly responsible for the death of 603 U.S. service members,
along with thousands of wounded."
I am going to say something that is going to sound controversial if you buy into the kind of simple-minded logic we just
discussed: Saying that someone was "responsible for the deaths of U.S. service members" does not, in and of itself, tell us anything
about whether what they did was right or wrong. In order to believe it did, we would have to believe that the United States is
automatically right, and that countries opposing the United States are automatically wrong. That is indeed the logic that many
nationalists in this country follow; remember that when the U.S. shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, causing hundreds of deaths,
George H.W. Bush said
that he would never apologize for America, no matter what the facts were. What if America did something wrong? That was
irrelevant, or rather impossible, because to Bush, a thing was right because America did it, even if that thing was the mass murder
of Iranian civilians.
One of the major justifications for murdering Suleimani is that he "caused the deaths of U.S. soldiers." He was thus an aggressor,
and could/should have been killed. That is where people like Pence want you to end your inquiry. But let us remember where those
soldiers were. Were they in Miami? No. They were in Iraq. Why were they in Iraq? Because we illegally invaded and seized a country.
Now, we can debate whether (1) there is actually sufficient evidence of Suleimani's direct involvement and (2) whether these
acts of violence can be justified, but to say that Suleimani has "American blood on his hands" is to say nothing at all without
an examination of whether the United States was in the right.
We have to think clearly in examining the arguments that are being made.
Here 's the Atlantic 's
George Packer on the execution:
"There was a case for killing Major General Qassem Soleimani. For two decades, as the commander of the Revolutionary Guards'
Quds Force, he executed Iran's long game of strategic depth in the Middle East -- arming and guiding proxy militias in Lebanon
and Iraq that became stronger than either state, giving Bashar al-Assad essential support to win the Syrian civil war at the cost
of half a million lives, waging a proxy war in Yemen against the hated Saudis, and repeatedly testing America and its allies with
military actions around the region for which Iran never seemed to pay a military price."
The article goes on to discuss whether this case is outweighed by the pragmatic case against killing him. But wait. Let's dwell
on this. Does this constitute a case for killing him? He assisted Bashar al-Assad. Okay, but presumably then killing Assad
would have been justified too? Is the rule here that our government is allowed unilaterally to execute the officials of other governments
who are responsible for many deaths? Are we the only ones who can do this? Can any government claim the right?
He assisted Yemen in its fight against "the hated Saudis." But is Saudi Arabia being hated for good reason? It is not enough to
say that someone committed violence without analyzing the underlying justice of the parties' relative claims.
Moreover, assumptions are made that if you can prove somebody committed a heinous act, what Trump did is justified. But that doesn't
follow: Unless we throw all law out the window, and extrajudicial punishment is suddenly acceptable, showing that Suleimani was a
war criminal doesn't prove that you can unilaterally kill him with a drone. Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. So is George W. Bush.
But they should be captured and tried in a court, not bombed from the sky. The argument that Suleimani was planning imminent
attacks is relevant to whether you can stop him with violence (and requires persuasive proof), but mere allegations of murderous
past acts do not show that extrajudicial killings are legitimate.
It's very easy to come up with superficially persuasive arguments that can justify just about anything. The job of an intelligent
populace is to see whether those arguments can actually withstand scrutiny.
Keep the focus on what matters
"The main question about the strike isn't moral or even legal -- it's strategic." --
The Atlantic
"The real question to ask about the American drone attack that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was not whether it was justified,
but whether it was wise" -- The New York Times
"I think that the question that we ought to focus on is why now? Why not a month ago and why not a month from now?" --
Elizabeth Warren
They're going to try to define the debate for you. Leaving aside the moral questions, is this good strategy? And then you
find yourself arguing on those terms: No, it was bad strategy, it will put "our personnel" in harms way, without noticing that you
are implicitly accepting the sociopathic logic that says "America's interests" are the only ones in the world that matters. This
is how debates about Vietnam went: They were rarely about whether our actions were good for Vietnamese people, but about whether
they were good or bad for us , whether we were squandering U.S. resources and troops in a "fruitless" "mistake." The people
of this country still do not understand the kind of carnage we inflicted on Vietnam because our debates tend to be about whether
things we do are "strategically prudent" rather than whether they are just. The Atlantic calls the strike a "blunder," shifting
the discussion to be about the wisdom of the killing rather than whether it is a choice our country is even permitted to make. "Blunder"
essentially assumes that we are allowed to do these things and the only question is whether it's good for us.
There will be plenty of attempts to distract you with irrelevant issues. We will spent more time talking about whether Trump followed
the right process for war, whether he handled the rollout correctly, and less about whether the underlying action itself is
correct. People like Ben Shapiro will say things
like :
"Barack Obama routinely droned terrorists abroad -- including American citizens -- who presented far less of a threat to
Americans and American interests than Soleimani. So spare me the hysterics about 'assassination."
In order for this to have any bearing on anything, you have to be someone who defends what Obama did. If you are, on the other
hand, someone who belives that Obama, too, assassinated people without due process (which he did), then Shapiro has proved exactly
nothing about whether Trump's actions were legitimate. (Note, too, the presumption that threatening "America's interests" can get
you killed, a standard we would not want any other country using but are happy to use ourselves.)
Emphasis matters
Consider three statements:
"The top priority of a Commander-in-Chief must be to protect Americans and our national security interests. There is no
question that Qassim Suleimani was a threat to that safety and security, and that he masterminded threats and attacks on Americans
and our allies, leading to hundreds of deaths. But there are serious questions about how this decision was made and whether we
are prepared for the consequences."
"Suleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless
move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority
must be to avoid another costly war."
"When I voted against the war in Iraq in 2002, I feared it would lead to greater destabilization of the country and the
region. Today, 17 years later, that fear has unfortunately turned out to be true. The United States has lost approximately 4,500
brave troops, tens of thousands have been wounded, and we've spent trillions on this war. Trump's dangerous escalation brings
us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars. Trump promised
to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one."
These are statements made by Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, respectively. Note that each of them is
consistent with believing Trump's decision was the wrong one, but their emphasis is different. Buttigieg says Suleimani was a
"threat" but that there are "questions," Warren says Suleimani was a "murderer" but that this was "reckless," and Sanders says this
was a "dangerous escalation." It could be that none of these three would have done the same thing themselves, but the emphasis is
vastly different. Buttigieg and Warren lead with condemnation of the dead man, in ways that imply that there was nothing that
unjust about what happened. Sanders does not dwell on Suleimani but instead talks about the dangers of new wars.
We have to be clear and emphatic in our messaging, because so much effort is made to make what should be clear issues appear murky.
If, for example, you gave a speech in 2002 opposing the Iraq War, but the first half was simply a discussion of what a bad and threatening
person Saddam Hussein was, people might actually get the opposite of the impression you want them to get. Buttigieg and Warren,
while they appear to question the president, have the effect of making his action seem reasonable. After all, they admit that he
got rid of a threatening murderer! Sanders admits nothing of the kind: The only thing he says is that Trump has made the world worse.
He puts the emphasis where it matters.
I do not fully like Sanders' statement, because it still talks a bit more about what war means for our people ,
but it does mention destabilization and the total number of lives that can be lost. It is a far more morally clear and powerful antiwar
statement. Buttigieg's is exactly what you'd expect of a Consultant President and it should give us absolutely no confidence that
he would be a powerful voice against a war, should one happen. Warren confirms that she is not an effective advocate for peace. In
a time when there will be pressure for a violent conflict, we need to make sure that our statements are not watery and do not make
needless concessions to the hawks' propaganda.
Imagine how everything would sound if the other side said it.
If you're going to understand the world clearly, you have to kill your nationalistic emotions. An excellent way to do this is
to try to imagine if all the facts were reversed. If Iraq had invaded the United States, and U.S. militias violently resisted, would
it constitute "aggression" for those militias to kill Iraqi soldiers? If Britain funded those U.S. militias, and Iraq killed the
head of the British military with a drone strike, would this constitute "stopping a terrorist"? Of course, in that situation, the
Iraqi government would certainly spin it that way, because governments call everyone who opposes them terrorists. But rationality
requires us not just to examine whether violence has been committed (e.g., whether Suleimani ordered attacks) but what the
full historical context of that violence is, and who truly deserves the "terrorist" label.
Is there anything Suleimani did that hasn't also been done by the CIA? Remember that we actually engineered the overthrow of the
Iranian government, within living people's lifetimes . Would an Iranian have been justified in assassinating the head of the
CIA? I doubt there are many Americans who think they would. I think most Americans would consider this terrorism. But this is because
terrorism is a word that, by definition, cannot apply to things we do, and only applies to the things others do. When you start to
actually reverse the situations in your mind, and see how things look from the other side, you start to fully grasp just how crude
and irrational so much propaganda is.
"It was not an assassination." -- Noah Rothman, conservative commentator
"That's an outrageous thing to say. Nobody that I know of would think that we did something wrong in getting the general."
-- Michael Bloomberg, on Bernie Sanders' claim that this was an "assassination"
Our access to much of the world is through language alone. We only see our tiny sliver of the world with our own eyes, much of
the rest of it has to be described in words or shown to us through images. That means it's very easy to manipulate our perceptions.
If you control the flow of information, you can completely alter someone's understanding of the things that they can't see firsthand.
Euphemistic language is always used to cover atrocities. Even the Nazis did not say they were "mass murdering innocent civilians."
They said they were defending themselves from subversive elements, guaranteeing sufficient living space for their people, purifying
their culture, etc. When the United States commits murder, it does not say it is committing murder. It says it is engaging in a stabilization
program and restoring democratic rule. We saw during the recent
Bolivian coup how easy it is
to portray the seizure of power as "democracy" and democracy as tyranny. Euphemistic language has been one of the key tools of murderous
regimes. In fact, many of them probably believe their own language; their specialized vocabulary allows them to inhabit a world of
their own invention where they are good people punishing evil.
Assassination sounds bad. It sounds like something illegitimate, something that would call into question the goodness of the United
States, even if the person being assassinated can be argued to have "deserved it." Thus Rothman and Bloomberg will not even admit
that what the U.S. did here was an assassination, even though we literally targeted a high official from a sovereign country and
dropped a bomb on him. Instead, this is " neutralization
." (Read this fascinatingly feeble attempt
by the Associated Press to explain why it isn't calling an obvious assassination an assassination, just as the media declined to
call torture torture when Bush did it.)
Those of us who want to resist marches to war need to insist on calling things exactly what they are and refuse to allow the country
to slide into the use of language that conceals the reality of our actions.
Remember what people were saying five minutes ago
Five minutes ago, hardly anybody was talking about Suleimani. Now they all speak as if he was Public Enemy #1. Remember how much
you hated that guy? Remember how much damage he did? No, I do not remember, because people like Ben Shapiro only just discovered
their hatred for Suleimani once they had to justify his murder.
During the buildup to a war there is a constant effort to make you forget what things were like a few minutes ago. Before World
War I, Americans lived relatively harmoniously with Germans in their midst. The same thing with Japanese people before World War
II. Then, immediately, they began to hate and fear people who had recently been their neighbors.
Let us say Iran responds to this extrajudicial murder with a colossal act of violent reprisal, after the killing
unifies the country around a demand for vengeance. They kill a high-ranking American official, or wage an attack that kills our
civilians. Perhaps it will attack some of the soldiers that are now being moved into the Middle East. The Trump administration will
then want you to forget that it promised this assassination was to "
stop a war ." It will then
want you to focus solely on Iran's most recent act, to see that as the initial aggression. If the attack is particularly bad,
with family members of victims crying on TV and begging for vengeance, you will be told to look into the face of Iranian evil, and
those of us who are anti-war will be branded as not caring about the victims. Nobody wants you to remember the history of U.S./Iran
relations, the civilians we killed of theirs or the time we destabilized their whole country and got rid of its democracy. They want
you to have a two-second memory, to become a blind and unthinking patriot whose sole thought is the avenging of American blood. Resisting
propaganda requires having a memory, looking back on how things were before and not accepting war as the "new normal."
Listen to the Chomsky on your shoulder.
"It is perfectly insane to suggest the U.S. was the aggressor here." -- Ben Shapiro
They are going to try to convince you that you are insane for asking questions, or for not accepting what the government tells
you. They will put you in topsy-turvy land, where thinking that assassinating foreign officials is "aggression" is not just wrong,
but sheer madness. You will have to try your best to remember what things are, because it is not easy, when everyone says
the emperor has clothes, or that Line A is longer than Line B, or that shocking people to death is fine, to have confidence in your
independent judgment.
This is why I keep a little imaginary Noam
Chomsky sitting on my shoulder at all times. Chomsky helps keep me sane, by cutting through lies and euphemisms and showing things
as they really are. I recommend reading his books, especially during times of war. He never swallowed Johnson's nonsense about Vietnam
or Bush's nonsense about Iraq. And of course they called him insane, anti-American, terrorist-loving, anti-Semitic, blah blah blah.
What I really mean here though is: Listen to the dissidents. They will not appear on television. They will be smeared and treated
as lunatics. But you need them if you are going to be able to resist the absolute barrage of misinformation, or to hear yourself
think over the pounding war drums. Times of War Fever can be wearying, because there is just so much aggression against dissent that
your resistance wears down. This is why a community is so necessary. You may watch people who previously seemed reasonable develop
a pathological bloodlust (mild-mannered moderate types like Thomas Friedman and Brian Williams going suck on our missiles
). Find the people who see clearly and stick close to them.
So Trump instead of draining the swamp brought swamp creatures like Pompeo into his Administration; now he can pay the price.
Notable quotes:
"... The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo ..."
"... "We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision," Pompeo told CNN. "I'm proud of the effort that President Trump undertook." ..."
"... On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said. ..."
"... One significant factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida. ..."
"... Some defense officials said Pompeo's claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations. ..."
"... On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and all opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact. ..."
"... "No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it's hard to get behind this," said the European diplomat. ..."
"... Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani "knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible." ..."
"... At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals. ..."
"... After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering efforts and operations, elevating Iran's importance as an intelligence target. ..."
The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump's decision to approve the
killing of Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence, the officials
said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after
it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo "morose," according to one U.S. official. But recent changes to
Trump's national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian aggression
created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had been advocating.
The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo, but it also carries
multiple serious risks: another protracted regional war in the Middle East; retaliatory assassinations of U.S. personnel stationed
around the world; an
interruption in the battle against the Islamic State; the
closure of diplomatic pathways to containing
Iran's nuclear program; and a major backlash in Iraq, whose parliament
voted on Sunday to expel all U.S. troops from the country.
For Pompeo, whose political ambitions are a source of
constant speculation , the death of U.S. diplomats would be particularly damaging given his unyielding criticisms of former secretary
of state Hillary Clinton following the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and other American personnel in Benghazi in 2012.
But none of those considerations stopped Pompeo from pushing for the targeted strike, U.S. officials said, underscoring a fixation
on Iran that spans 10 years of government service from Congress to the CIA to the State Department.
"We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision," Pompeo told CNN. "I'm proud of the effort that President
Trump undertook."
Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon
officials were willing to countenance such an operation.
For more than a year, defense officials warned that the administration's campaign of economic sanctions against Iran had increased
tensions with Tehran, requiring a bigger and bigger share of military resources in the Middle East when many at the Pentagon wanted
to redeploy their firepower to East Asia.
How the siege of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad unfolded On
Jan. 1, the siege on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad appeared to come to an end after supporters of the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah
militia retreated. (Liz Sly, Joyce Lee, Mustafa Salim/The Washington Post)
Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But that
mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor and
injuring service members.
On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where the two defense officials
presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said.
Trump's decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon's
long-standing concerns about escalation and the president's aversion to using military force against Iran.
One significant factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same
class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed
the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.
"Taking out Soleimani would not have happened under [former secretary of defense Jim] Mattis," said a senior administration official
who argued that the Mattis Pentagon was risk-averse. "Mattis was opposed to all of this. It's not a hit on Mattis, it's just his
predisposition. Milley and Esper are different. Now you've got a cohesive national security team and you've got a secretary of state
and defense secretary who've known each other their whole adult lives."
Mattis declined to comment.
In the days since the strike, Pompeo has become the voice of the administration on the matter, speaking to allies and making the
public case for the operation. Trump chose Pompeo to appear on all of the Sunday news shows because he "sticks to the line" and "never
gives an inch," an administration official said.
But critics inside and outside the administration have questioned Pompeo's justification for the strike based on his claims that
"dozens if not hundreds" of American lives were at risk.
Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat
posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.
When repeatedly pressed on Sunday about the imminent nature of the threats, whether it was days or weeks away, or whether they
had been foiled by the U.S. airstrike, Pompeo dismissed the questions.
"If you're an American in the region, days and weeks -- this is not something that's relevant," Pompeo told CNN.
Some defense officials said Pompeo's claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he
make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.
Critics have also questioned how an imminent attack would be foiled by killing Soleimani, who would not have carried out the strike
himself.
"If the attack was going to take place when Soleimani was alive, it is difficult to comprehend why it wouldn't take place now
that he is dead," said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official.
Following the strike, Pompeo has held back-to-back phone calls with his counterparts around the globe but has received a chilly
reception from European allies, many of whom fear that the attack puts their embassies in Iran and Iraq in jeopardy and has now eliminated
the chance to keep a lid on Iran's nuclear program.
"We have woken up to a more dangerous world," said France's Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin.
Two European diplomats familiar with the calls said Pompeo expected European leaders to champion the U.S. strike publicly even
though they were never consulted on the decision.
"The U.S. has not helped the Iran situation, and now they want everyone to cheerlead this," one diplomat said.
"Our position over the past few years has been about defending the JCPOA," said the diplomat, referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal.
On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research
and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original
signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and all opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact.
"No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it's hard to get behind this," said the European diplomat.
Pompeo has slapped back at U.S. allies, saying "the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did --
what the Americans did -- saved lives in Europe as well," he told Fox News.
Israel has stood out in emphatically cheering the Soleimani operation, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising
Trump for "acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively."
"Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense," he said.
Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence
service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and
the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani "knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible."
Though Democrats have greeted the strike with skepticism, Republican leaders, who have long viewed Pompeo as a reassuring voice
in the administration, uniformly praised the decision as the eradication of a terrorist who directed the killing of U.S. soldiers
in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
"Soleimani made it his life's work to take the Iranian revolutionary call for death to America and death to Israel and turn them
into action," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said.
A critical moment for Pompeo is nearing as he faces growing questions about a potential Senate run, though some GOP insiders say
that decision seems to have stalled. Pompeo has kept in touch with Ward Baker, a political consultant who would probably lead the
operation, and others in McConnell's orbit, about a bid. But Pompeo hasn't committed one way or the other, people familiar with the
conversations said.
Some people close to the secretary say he has mixed feelings about becoming a relatively junior senator from Kansas after leading
the State Department and CIA, but there is little doubt in Pompeo's home state that he could win.
At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular
among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals.
After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering
efforts and operations, elevating Iran's importance as an intelligence target.
At the State Department, he is a voracious consumer of diplomatic notes and reporting on Iran, and he places the country far above
other geopolitical and economic hot spots in the world. "If it's about Iran, he will read it," said one diplomat, referring to the massive flow of paper that crosses Pompeo's desk. "If
it's not, good luck."
Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle
East, but he has now demonstrated very clearly that he is a liar. Instead of seeking detente,
one of his first actions was to end the JCPOA nuclear agreement and re-introduce sanctions
against Iran. In a sense, Iran has from the beginning been the exception to Trump's no-new-war
pledge, a position that might reasonably be directly attributed to his incestuous relationship
with the American Jewish community and in particular derived from his pandering to the
expressed needs of Israel's belligerent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump bears full responsibility for what comes next. The neoconservatives and Israelis are
predictably cheering the result, with Mark Dubowitz of the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of
Democracies
enthusing that it is "bigger than bin Laden a massive blow to the [Iranian] regime."
Dubowitz, whose credentials as an "Iran expert" are dubious at best, is at least somewhat right
in this case. Qassem Suleimani is, to be sure, charismatic and also very popular in Iran. He is
Iran's most powerful military figure in the entire region, being the principal contact for
proxies and allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. But what Dubowitz does not understand is that no
one in a military hierarchy is irreplaceable. Suleimani's aides and high officials in the
intelligence ministry are certainly more than capable of picking up his mantle and continuing
his policies.
In reality, the series of foolish attacks initiated by the United States over the past week
will only hasten the departure of much of the U.S. military from the region. The Pentagon and
White House have been insisting that Iran was behind an alleged Kata'ib Hezbollah attack on a
U.S. installation that then triggered a strike by Washington on claimed militia targets in
Syria and also inside Iraq. Even though the U.S. military presence is as a guest of the Iraqi
government, Washington went ahead with its attack even after the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil
Abdul-Mahdi said "no."
To justify its actions, Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense, went so far as to insist that
"Iran is at war with the whole world," a clear demonstration of just how ignorant the White
House team actually is. The U.S. government characteristically has not provided any evidence
demonstrating either Iranian or Kata'ib involvement in recent developments, but after the
counter-strike killed 26 Iraqi soldiers, the mass demonstrations against the Embassy in Baghdad
became inevitable. The demonstrations were also attributed to Iran by Washington even though
the people in the street were undoubtedly Iraqis.
Now that the U.S. has also killed Suleimani and Muhandis in a drone strike at Baghdad
Airport, clearly accomplished without the approval of the Iraqi government, it is inevitable
that the prime minister will ask American forces to leave. That will in turn make the situation
for the remaining U.S. troops in neighboring Syria untenable. And it will also force other Arab
states in the region to rethink their hosting of U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen due
to the law of unanticipated consequences as it is now clear that Washington has foolishly begun
a war that serves no one's interests.
The blood of the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis who will die in the next few weeks is
clearly on Donald Trump's hands as this war was never inevitable and served no U.S. national
interest. It will surely turn out to be a debacle, as well as devastating for all parties
involved. And it might well, on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, be the long-awaited
beginning of the end of America's imperial ambitions. Let us hope so!
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence
officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA
Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter
Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests
The question – who benefits? – has not been raised.
There was no benefit to Kata'ib Hezbollah or the Iranians to attack an American
installation.
There was no benefit to the Iranians to attack the US Embassy in Iraq.
There was no benefit to anyone in Iraq or Iran in the shooting of "peaceful demonstrators" in
Iraq.
There is only one beneficiary to all of the above – Israel.
Mr. Giraldi is quite correct in laying this at Trump's feet and referring to his
incestuous relationship regarding Israel. After all, it it Trump that pulled out of the
JCPOA, and ultimately gave the order to strike. A previous strike was called off, what has
changed? I understand Mr. Giraldi is a never Trumper, and that is his right. Often it is not
what he says, but what he doesn't say, that is problematic. In this article, two things not
expanded stand out to me. The author proclaims his support for the JCPOA.
What is never explained is that the JCPOA was a voluntary restriction, by Iran, on its rights
as a signatory under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Former Reagan nuclear advisor Dr.
Gordon Prather was writing about the illegality of forcing restrictions on Iran back in the
days when "Bonkers" Bolton was foaming at the mouth for Bush 43 at the UN. Trump cancelling
the deal was not the problem. The problem was maintaining the US's illegal position on Iran's
rights under the NPT. Mr. Giraldi's opposition to the cancelling, without context, means he
finds the US's illegal position on Iran's rights under an international treaty as
acceptable.
The second issue is the intelligence surrounding the "alleged Kata'ib Hezbollah attack on a
U.S. installation". This is an operation straight out of the I sraeli S ecret
I ntelligence S ervice manual. It was acknowledged, by the military, 20 years
ago Israel had the capability to stage an attack and blame it on "Arabs". Who were those
involved in providing the "intelligence to Trump? How many of those people know/knew the
intelligence to be questionable or outright false, but allowed it to pass on anyway without
caveat? It is unknown whether Trump "asked the right questions" about the intelligence, and
if it came from military sources, I suspect none at all, of substance, were asked. Again, yes
Trump will, and should, be blamed, but how much of it involves the traitors within who will
continue with the internal rot?
@Bragadocious
You are one of the supreme a-holes on this site and I wish you would go somewhere else to
spread your pollution. But I will answer your question: Soleimani was not near the embassy.
He had flown into to town to attend the funerals of the 26 Iraqi militiamen that we Americans
had killed earlier in the week!
This is a watershed moment in our enslaved country, and the net is rife with speculations as
to where this will lead to.
Personally, I don't believe that this will erupt in WW3, but the days of casual travel by
high-ranking US officials is probably over in the near term. What follows will be millions of
paper cuts and constant stress for our sons and daughters relegated to foreign lands in the
war for Israel. Did you sign up your children to die for Israel? I didn't.
So what can we expect? A lot of our children are going to come back in body bags in the
weeks ahead. The murder of the Iranian general with no proof of his hand in the recent death
of an American mercenary in Iraq, is a war crime – but who's looking? We have become
imitators of our BFF, Israel. Not only have we militarized our police force under their
auspices, we flout International law and civil rights without even blinking once. Sure, many
Iranians (and Iraqi) innocents will die in the process, but the silver lining is that this
will start the dominoes falling and lead to our Vietnam-like exit from the ME with our tail
between our legs, as we repeat the helicopter exits from the roofs of our embassies.
From all indications, the Iranian general was a revered man inside and outside Iran. He
appears to have arrived in Baghdad to attend the funeral of the people killed in the
airstrike by US/Israel. Killing people headed to funerals and weddings seems to have become
our MO in recent years. No US president in the last few decades has had his hands clean. Out
damned spot!
Meanwhile, who was that "killed" contractor? Is there a name attached to that
speculatively fictitious soul whose alleged death was the rationale for the murder? It is a
sign of the times that our first reaction to anything we hear from the PTB is one of
skepticism and disbelief. This does not bode well for our rulers when the slaves reject
whatever claims they make.
Sadly, the revolution will not begin in Pretoria, but in distant lands, far from the
prying eyes of the sleeping citizenry of this land. As Allison Weir would say, if Americans
knew what is being perpetrated in our name, they would realize that we are all
Palestinians.
Trump has been compromised. Whether you believe that he is or isn't behind this, is
irrelevant. Frankly, it doesn't really matter who the president is – he is a powerless
puppet. I suspect that the deep state initiated this and then informed Trump post-facto. The
absence of an immediate tweets (tweet with a US flag suggests speechlessness), followed by an
announcement from the Pentagon that Trump had personally ordered the attack, instead of Trump
boasting about it, does not fit his usual pattern. My guess is that he knows that going
against the will of the deep state would result in his being JFK'ed.
I expect the following in the days ahead:
– There will be outrage in Iraq and demands for us to go home – which we
won't
– Our children/cannon fodder will be targeted across the ME
– One or more US high officials or Military leaders will be assassinated, perhaps
Graham or Pompeo or Adelson
– Israel will use the distraction to annex more Palestinian territory.
– Every US politician will blame the victims
– Israel and KSA will be walking around in adult diapers for the next shoe to drop
Take heart, the end is nigh. It is the witching hour. It is a replay of history as the
empire shoots itself in the foot. Remember which country invented the game of Chess –
it wasn't us or our European cousins.
I read somewhere that the order for this assassination came from Trump himself. I read this
as meaning that the order came from Israel and Trump's staff advised against it. I hope Iran
takes this into account as they plan their retaliation.
The other interesting dynamic is that common folk are waking up to the ZOG on the one hand,
and the government/media is doing their level best to slow this awakening. I wonder how this
assassination and its aftermath fit into all of it.
The one big fear I have in the near-term is that, with the expected retaliation from Iran, it
is the perfect opportunity for Israel to launch a false flag somewhere and blame it on Iran,
further turning up the heat.
Below are some idea from Below are some idea from
OffGuardian that
clrify TT post...
The Saker took a look yesterday at The Soleimani murder – what
could happen next . He thinks, as he has said before, that Trump is regarded as a disposable
asset by his Deep State handlers and is being used as a front man for risky policy actions that
he can be scapegoated for if/when they go wrong.
war with Iran has been the auto-erotic fixation for the hardcore war nuts in Washington for
years, and imminent confrontation has been predicted regularly since at least 2005
Trump administration from the very beginning has been ramping up the tensions (Adelson money
at work): Trump teared up the nuclear deal, re-imposed sanctions, making provocations, making
threats. But this has all been within the familiar framework that always just stops short of
actual conflict. The murder of Soleimani is orders of magnitude beyond anything they have ever
risked before. the US and Israel now have carte blanche to stage as much false flag 'terrorism'
as they want and blame it on Iranian 'revenge'. Whatever else happens, we can almost certainly
look forward to some of that. The murder of Soleimani is orders of magnitude beyond anything they
have ever risked before. the US and Israel now have carte blanche to stage as much false flag
'terrorism' as they want and blame it on Iranian 'revenge'. Whatever else happens, we can almost
certainly look forward to some of that. The murder of Soleimani is orders of magnitude beyond
anything they have ever risked before. the US and Israel now have carte blanche to stage as much
false flag 'terrorism' as they want and blame it on Iranian 'revenge'. Whatever else happens, we
can almost certainly look forward to some of that.
The major question really though is – will this backtracking and odd claims of wanting
de-escalation actually do anything to de-escalate? Will it persuade Iran not to seek retaliation,
supposing this is now what Pompeo et al want?
It's become a commonplace to describe Trump foreign policy as 'insane', and it's an apposite
description. But the murder of Soleimani takes the evident insanity to new and self-defeating
levels.
Notable quotes:
"... Eric, the embassy attack hurt little more than our pride. Yes, an entrance lobby and it's contents were burned and destroyed but no American was injured or even roughed up. It was the Iraqi government that let the demonstrators approach the embassy walls, not Soleimani. The unarmed PMU soldiers dispersed as soon as the Iraqi government said their point was made. If we are so thin skinned that rude graffiti and gestures induce us to committing assassinations, we deserve to be labeled as international pariahs. ..."
"... Yes, I see Soleimani as a threat, but he was a threat to the jihadis and the continued US dreams of regional hegemony. ..."
"... According to published pictures of the rockets recovered after the K-1 attack, they were the same powerful new weapons that Turkish troops recovered from a YPG ammo depot in Afrin last year: 'Iranian' 107mm rockets Manufactured 2016 Lot 570. I know matching lots isn't proof of anything, but what are the chances? ..."
"... This "imminent" threat of Gen. Soleimani attacking US forces seems eerily reminiscent of the "mushroom cloud" imminent threat that Bush, Cheney and Blair peddled. Now we even have Pence claiming that Soleimani provided support to the Saudi 9/11 terrorists. Laughable if it wasn't so tragic. But of course at one time the talking point was Saddam orchestrated 9/11 and was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. ..."
"... After the Iraq WMD, Gadhaffi threat and Assad the butcher and the incorrigible terrorist loving Taliban posing such imminent threats that we must use our awesome military to bomb, invade, occupy, while spending trillions of dollars borrowed from future generations, and our soldiers on the ground serving multiple tours, and our fellow citizens buy into the latest rationale for killing an Iranian & Iraqi general, without an ounce of skepticism, says a lot! ..."
"... IMO, Craig Murray is pointing in the right direction around the word 'immanent,' by pointing out that it is referring to the legally dubious Bethlehem Doctrine of Self Defense, the Israeli, UK and US standard for assassination, in which immanent is defined as widely as, 'we think they were thinking about it.' The USG managed to run afoul of even these overly permissive guidelines, which are meant only against non-state actors. ..."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States had "clear, unambiguous" intelligence that a top
Iranian general was planning a significant campaign of violence against the United States when
it decided to strike him, the top U.S. general said on Friday, warning Soleimani's plots "might
still happen."
Army General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a small group
of reporters "we fully comprehend the strategic consequences" associated with the strike
against Qassem Soleimani, Tehran's most prominent military commander.
But he said the risk of inaction exceeded the risk that killing him might dramatically
escalate tensions with Tehran. "Is there risk? Damn right, there's risk. But we're working to
mitigate it," Milley said from his Pentagon office. (Reuters)
-- -- -- -- --
This is pretty much in line with Trump's pronouncement that our assassination of Soleimani
along with Iraqi General Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was carried out to prevent a war not start one.
Whatever information was presented to Trump painted a picture of imminent danger in his mind.
What did the Pentagon see that was so imminent?
Well first let's look at the mindset of the Pentagon concerning our presence in Iraq and
Syria. These two recent quotes from Brett McGurk sums up that mindset.
"If we leave Iraq, that will just increase further the running room for Iran and Shia
militia groups and also the vacuum that will see groups like ISIS fill and we'll be right
back to where we were. So that would be a disaster."
"It's always been Soleimani's strategic game... to get us out of the Middle East. He wants
to see us leave Syria, he wants to see us leave Iraq... I think if we leave Iraq after this,
that would just be a real disastrous outcome..."
McGurk played a visible role in US policy in Iraq and Syria under Bush, Obama and Trump. Now
he's an NBC talking head and a lecturer at Stanford. He could be the poster boy for what many
see as a neocon deep state. He's definitely not alone in thinking this way.
So back to the question of what was the imminent threat. Reuters offers an elaborate story
of a secret meeting of PMU commanders with Soleimani on a rooftop terrace on the Tigris with a
grand view of the US Embassy on the far side of the river.
-- -- -- -- --
"In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi'ite
militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy
complex in Baghdad, and instructed them to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the
country"
"Two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters
that Soleimani instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful
militia leaders to step up attacks on US targets using sophisticated new weapons provided by
Iran."
"Soleimani's plans to attack US forces aimed to provoke a military response that would
redirect Iraqis' anger towards Iran to the US, according to the sources briefed on the
gathering, Iraqi Shi'ite politicians and government officials close to Iraq PM Adel Abdul
Mahdi."
"At the Baghdad villa, Soleimani told the assembled commanders to form a new militia
group of low-profile paramilitaries - unknown to the United States - who could carry out rocket
attacks on Americans housed at Iraqi military bases." (Reuters)
-- -- -- -- --
And what were those sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran? They were 1960s Chinese
designed 107mm multiple rocket launcher technology. These simple but effective rocket launchers
were mass produced by the Soviet Union, Iran, Turkey and Sudan in addition to China. They've
been used in every conflict since then. The one captured outside of the K1 military base seems
to be locally fabricated, but used Iranian manufactured rockets.
Since when does the PMU have to form another low profile militia unit? The PMU is already
composed of so many militia units it's difficult to keep track of them. There's also nothing
low profile about the Kata'ib Hizbollah, the rumored perpetrators of the K1 rocket attack.
They're as high profile as they come.
Perhaps there's something to this Reuters story, but to me it sounds like another shithouse
rumor. It would make a great scene in a James Bond movie, but it still sounds like a rumor.
There's another story put out by The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Although it also
sounds like a scene form a James Bond movie, I think it sounds more convincing than the Reuters
story.
-- -- -- -- --
Delegation of Arab tribes met with "Soleimani" at the invitation of "Tehran" to carry out
attacks against U.S. Forces east Euphrates
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned that a delegation of the Arab tribes met
on the 26th of December 2019, with the goal of directing and uniting forces against U.S.
Forces, and according to the Syrian Observatory's sources, that meeting took place with the
commander of the al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassim Soleimani, who was
assassinated this morning in a U.S. raid on his convoy in Iraq. the sources reported that: "the
invitation came at the official invitation of Tehran, where Iran invited Faisal al-al-Aazil,
one of the elders of al-Ma'amra clan, in addition to the representative of al-Bo Asi clan the
commander of NDF headquarters in Qamishli Khatib al-Tieb, and the Sheikh of al-Sharayin, Nawaf
al-Bashar, the Sheikh of Harb clan, Mahmoud Mansour al-Akoub, " adding that: "the meeting
discussed carrying out attacks against the American forces and the Syria Democratic
Forces."
Earlier, the head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, Ali Mamlouk, met with the
security committee and about 20 Arab tribal elders and Sheikhs in al-Hasakah, at Qamishli
Airport Hall on the 5th of December 2019, where he demanded the Arab tribes to withdraw their
sons from the ranks of the Syria Democratic Forces. (SOHR)
-- -- -- -- --
I certainly don't automatically give credence to anything Rami sends out of his house in
Coventry. I give this story more credibility only because that is exactly what I would do if
Syria east of the the Euphrates was my UWOA (unconventional warfare operational area). This is
exactly how I would go about ridding the area of the "Great Satan" invaders and making Syria
whole again. The story also includes a lot of named individuals. This can be checked. This
morning Colonel Lang told me some tribes in that region have a Shia history. Perhaps he can
elaborate on that. I've read in several places that Qassim Soleimani knew the tribes in Syria
and Iraq like the back of his hand. This SOHR story makes sense. If Soleimani was working with
the tribes of eastern Syria like he worked with the tribes and militias of Iraq to create the
al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbi, it no doubt scared the bejeezus out of the Pentagon and
endangered their designs for Iraq and Syria.
So, Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian soldier, the competent and patient Iranian soldier, was a
threat to the Pentagon's designs a serious threat. But he was a long term threat, not an
imminent threat. And he was just one soldier.The threat is systemic and remains. The question
of why, in the minds of Trump and his generals, Soleimani had to die this week is something I
will leave for my next post.
A side note on Milley: Whenever I see a photo of him, I am reminded of my old Brigade
Commander in the 25th Infantry Division, Colonel Nathan Vail. They both have the countenance of
a snapping turtle. One of the rehab transfers in my rifle platoon once referred to him as "that
J. Edgar Hoover looking mutha fuka." I had to bite my tongue to keep from breaking out in
laughter. It would have been unseemly for a second lieutenant to openly enjoy such disrespect
by a PV2 and a troublemaking PV2 at that. God bless PV2 Webster, where ever you are.
Eric, the embassy attack hurt little more than our pride. Yes, an entrance lobby and it's
contents were burned and destroyed but no American was injured or even roughed up. It was the
Iraqi government that let the demonstrators approach the embassy walls, not Soleimani. The
unarmed PMU soldiers dispersed as soon as the Iraqi government said their point was made. If we
are so thin skinned that rude graffiti and gestures induce us to committing assassinations, we
deserve to be labeled as international pariahs.
Yes, I see Soleimani as a threat, but he was a threat to the jihadis and the continued US
dreams of regional hegemony. I was glad we went back into Iraq to take on the threat of IS and
cheered our initial move into Syria to do the same. That was the Sunni-Shia war you worry
about. More accurately, it was a Salafist jihadist-all others war. Unfortunately, we overstayed
the need and our welcome. It's a character flaw that we cannot loosen our grasp on empire no
matter how much it costs us.
Thanks for your post. What it says I buy. We are in the Middle East and have been for a
while to impose regional hegemony. What that has bought us is nebulous at best. Clearly we have
spent trillions and destabilized the region. Millions have been displaced and hundreds of
thousands have been killed and maimed, including thousands of our soldiers. Are we better off
from our invasion of Iraq, toppling Ghaddafi, and attempting to topple Assad using jihadists?
Guys like McGurk, Bolton, Pompeo will say yes. Others like me will say no.
The oil is a canard. We produce more oil than we ever have and it is a fungible commodity.
Will it impact Israel if we pull out our forces? Sure. But it may have a salutary effect that
it may force them to sue for peace. Will the Al Sauds continue to fund jihadi mayhem? Likely
yes, but they'll have to come to some accommodation with the Iranian Shia and recognize their
regional strength.
Our choice is straightforward. Continue down the path of more conflict sinking ever more
trillions that we don't have expecting a different outcome or cut our losses and get out and
let the natural forces of the region assert themselves. I know which path I'll take.
With all due respect, I think you are wrong. I think the protesters swarming the embassy was
exactly the same kind of tactic that US backed protesters used in Ukraine (and are currently
using in Hong Kong) to great effect. The Persians are unique in that they are capable of
studying our methodologies and tactics and appropriating them.
When the US backed protesters took over Maidan square and started taking over various
government building in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovych had two choices - either start shooting
protesters or watch while his authority collapsed. It was and is a difficult choice.
In my
humble opinion, there are few things the stewards of US hegemony fear more than the IRGC
becoming the worlds number one disciple of Gene Sharp.
TTG - "And what were those sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran?"
According to published pictures of the rockets recovered after the K-1 attack, they were the
same powerful new weapons that Turkish troops recovered from a YPG ammo depot in Afrin last
year: 'Iranian' 107mm rockets Manufactured 2016 Lot 570. I know matching lots isn't proof of
anything, but what are the chances?
If the U.S. only had a Dilyana Gaytandzhieva to bird-dog out the rat line. Wait... the MSM
would have fired her by now for weaponizing journalism against the neocons [sigh].
If a goal is to get the heck out of the Middle East since it is an intractable cess pit and
stat protecting our own borders and internal security, will we be better off with Soleimani out
of the picture or left in place.
Knowing of course, more just like him will sprout quickly, like dragon's teeth, in the sands
of the desert.ME is a tar baby. Fracking our own tar sands is the preferable alternative.
Real war war would be a direct attack on Israel. Then they get our full frontal assault. But
this pissy stuff around the edges is an exercise in futility. 2020 was Trump's to
lose.Incapacity to handle asymmetirc warfare is ours to lose.
There is no necessary link between the Iranian support for the Assad regime, to include its
operations in tribal areas of Syria. The Iranian-backed militias and Iranian government
officials have been operating in that area for a long time, supporting the efforts of
Security/Intel Ali Mamlouk. That Suleimani knew the tribes so well is a mark of his
professional competence. Everyone is courting the Syrian tribes, some sides more adeptly than
others. It is also worth noting that in putting together manpower for their various locally
formed Syrian militias, the Iranians took on unemployed Sunnis.
That said, there are small Ismaili communities in Syria and there are apparently a couple of
villages in Deir ez Zor that did convert to Shiism, but no mass religious change. The Iranians
are sensitive to the fact that they could cause a backlash if they tried hard to promote "an
alien culture."
Well, The Donald has turned to Twitter menacing iran with wiping out all of its World Heritage
Sites....which is declared intention to commit a war crime...
For what it seems Iran must sawllow the assasination of its beloved and highjly regarded
general...or else...
Do you really think there is any explanation for this, whatever Soleimani´s history (
he was doing his duty in his country and neighboring zone...you are...well...everywhere...) or
that we can follow this way with you escalating your threats and crimes ever and that everybody
must leave it at that without response or you menace coming with more ?
That somebody or some news agency has any explanation for this is precisely the sign of our
times and our disgrace. That there is a bunch of greedy people who is willing to do whatever is
needed to prevail and keep being obscenely rich...
BTW, would be interesting to know who are the main holders of shares at Reuters...
The same monopolizing almost each and every MSM and news agency at every palce in the world,
big bank, big pharma, big business, big capital ( insurances companies nad hedge funds ) big
real state, and US think tanks...
In Elora´s opinion, Bret MacGurk is making revanche from Soleimani for the predictable
fact that a humble and pious man bred in the region, who worked as bricklayer to help pay his
father´s debt during his youth, and moreover has an innate irresistible charisma, managed
to connect better with the savage tribes of the ME than such exceptionalist posh theoric bred
at such an exceptionalist as well as far away country like the US.
But...what did you expect, that MacGurk would become Lawrence of Arabia versus Soleimani in
his simpleness?
May be because of that that he deserved being dismembered by a misile...
As Pence blamed shamefully and stonefacelly Soleimani for 9/11, MacGurk blames him too for
having fallen from the heights he was...
It seems that Pence was in the team of four who assesed Trump on this hit...along with
Pompeo...
A good response would be that someone would leak the real truth on 9/11 so as to debunk
Pence´s mega-lie...
Two years ago, the public protest theme for Basel's winter carnival Fashnach was the imminent
threat nuclear war as NK and US were sabre rattling, and NK was lobbing missles across Japan
with sights on West Coast US cities.
Then almost the following week, NK and US planned to meet F2F in Singapore. And we could all
breathe again. In the very early spring of 2018.
This "imminent" threat of Gen. Soleimani attacking US forces seems eerily reminiscent of the
"mushroom cloud" imminent threat that Bush, Cheney and Blair peddled. Now we even have Pence
claiming that Soleimani provided support to the Saudi 9/11 terrorists. Laughable if it wasn't
so tragic. But of course at one time the talking point was Saddam orchestrated 9/11 and was in
cahoots with Osama bin Laden.
I find it fascinating watching the media spin and how easily so many Americans buy into the
spin du jour.
After the Iraq WMD, Gadhaffi threat and Assad the butcher and the incorrigible terrorist
loving Taliban posing such imminent threats that we must use our awesome military to bomb,
invade, occupy, while spending trillions of dollars borrowed from future generations, and our
soldiers on the ground serving multiple tours, and our fellow citizens buy into the latest
rationale for killing an Iranian & Iraqi general, without an ounce of skepticism, says a
lot!
Yeah, it will be interesting to see how Trump's re-election will go when we are engaged in a
full scale military conflagration in the Middle East? It sure will give Tulsi & Bernie an
excellent environment to promote their anti-neocon message. You can see it in Trump's
ambivalent tweets. On the one hand, I ordered the assassination of Soleimani to prevent a war
(like we needed to burn the village to save it), while on the other hand, we have 52 sites
locked & loaded if you retaliate. Hmmm!! IMO, he has seriously jeapordized his re-election
by falling into the neocon Deep State trap. They never liked him. The coup by law enforcement
& CIA & DNI failed. The impeachment is on its last legs. Voila! Incite him into another
Middle Eastern quagmire against what he campaigned on and won an election.
I would think that Khamanei has no choice but to retaliate. How is anyone's guess? I doubt
he'll order the sinking of a naval vessel patrolling the Gulf or fire missiles into the US base
in Qatar. But assassination....especially in some far off location in Europe or South America?
A targeted bombing here or there? A cyber attack at a critical point. I mean not indiscriminate
acts like the jihadists but highly calculated targets. All seem extremely feasible in our
highly vulnerable and relatively open societies. And they have both the experience and skills
to accomplish them.
If ever you have the inclination, a speculative post on how the escalation ladder could
potentially be climbed would be a fascinating read.
"I find it fascinating watching the media spin and how easily so many Americans buy into the
spin du jour."
BP,
Yes, indeed. It is a testament to our susceptibility that there is such limited scepticism
by so many people on the pronouncements of our government. Especially considering the decades
long continuous streams of lies and propaganda. The extent and brazenness of the lies have just
gotten worse through my lifetime.
I feel for my grand-children and great-grand children as they now live in society that has
no value for honor. It's all expedience in the search for immediate personal gain.
I am and have been in the minority for decades now. I've always opposed our military
adventurism overseas from Korea to today. I never bought into the domino theory even at the
heights of the Cold War. And I don't buy into the current global hegemony destiny to bring
light to the savages. I've also opposed the build up of the national security surveillance
state as the antithesis of our founding. I am also opposed to the increasing concentration of
market power across every major market segment. It will be the destruction of our
entrepreneurial economy. The partisan duopoly is well past it's sell date. But right now the
majority are still caught up in rancorous battles on the side of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle
Dum.
A question to the committee: what is the source for the claim that Soleimani bears direct
responsibility for the death of over 600 US military personnel?
If that is the case (and it appears to be) then the US govt's claim is nonsense, as it
clearly says " 'During Operation Iraqi Freedom, DoD assessed that at least 603 U.S. personnel
deaths in Iraq were the result of Iran-backed militants,' Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon
spokesman, said in an email."
So those figures represent casualties suffered during the US-led military invasion of Iraq
i.e. casualties suffered during a shooting-war.
If Soleimani is a legitimate target for assassination because of the success of his forces
on the battlefield then wouldn't that make Tommy Franks an equally-legitimate target?
Pulitzer Prize winning author of Caliphate, Romanian-American, Rukmini Callimachi, on the
intelligence on Soleimani "imminent threat" being razor-thin.
You just beat me to her thread, Jack. For the Twitter shy, this is the first of a series of 17
tweets as a teaser:
1. I've had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had
intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what I've learned. According to
them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is
"razor thin".
IMO, Craig Murray is pointing in the right direction around the word 'immanent,' by pointing
out that it is referring to the legally dubious Bethlehem Doctrine of Self Defense, the
Israeli, UK and US standard for assassination, in which immanent is defined as widely as, 'we
think they were thinking about it.' The USG managed to run afoul of even these overly
permissive guidelines, which are meant only against non-state actors.
@gotmituns I
think we all know the Orange One who is in the pockets of Jews and Israel First nationalists*
will not actually pull out troops. I have also heard someone on this comments board says the
agreement between the US and Iraq stipulates that the US has 1 year to withdraw if requested
to do so by Iraq, so he will no doubt cite that reason for staying there as long as possible
– which leaves ample time for more Jewish tricks and swindles à la USS Liberty
or Lavon Affair.
The real question is whether or not his room-temperature IQ support base will pick up on
the fact that their man in the White House is only increasing troop presence despite being
told to piss off by the Iraqis, thus laying waste to the myth that Iraqis are begging the US
to stay there. Will this be the broken promise that will finally deprogram the hordes of
MAGAtards and awaken them from their slumber?
Not only Mossad but probably many others would like to see a suicide bomber blow himself
up somewhere in the US killing alot of people. That makes it difficult to figure out who
did it and maybe impossible to figure it out. It would be a mess.
But they could always find an un-scorched Iranian passport in mint condition among the
debris of the explosion.
Whether he is eating ice cream or not, Trump appears to be on a rampage to recreate the
end of The Godfather.
Less than 24 hours after a US drone shockingly killed the top Iranian military leader,
Qasem Soleimani, resulting in equity markets groaning around the globe in fear over Iranian
reprisals (and potentially, World War III), the US has gone for round two with Reuters and
various other social media sources reporting that US air strikes targeting Iraq's Popular
Mobilization Units umbrella grouping of Iran-backed Shi'ite militias near camp Taji north
of Baghdad, have killed six people and critically wounded three, an Iraqi army source said
late on Friday.
Now would be the perfect time for the Mossad to do its false flag shtick. They wouldn't even
have to try very hard to pin it on Iran. I'll bet that when the news came out that the
Iranian guy had been killed, every neocon on the planet popped a boner that will last for
days. Michael Ledeen is probably mazel tov-ing his ass off.
I don't care about the dead Muslim who got killed, since that's the only kind of "good
Muslim" you're ever going to find, but I would still prefer for the U.S. to get out of the
Middle East altogether. Let those two warring anti-Christ peoples kill each other to their
hearts' content.
"I think there should be open hearings on this subject," Schiff told the
Washington Post in an interview published Monday. "The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That
requires the Congress to fully engage."
Asked for his thoughts on President Trump warning Iran that the U.S. will hit 52 sites, including cultural sites, if Tehran retaliates
the California Democrat said: "None of that could come out of the Pentagon. Absolutely no way."
... ... ...
Schiff 's comments to the Post come after he suggested Secretary of State Mike Pompeo misrepresented intelligence indicating
that killing Soleimani saved American lives.
"It was a reckless decision that increased the risk to America all around the world, not decreased it. When Secretary Pompeo says
that this decision to take out Qasem Soleimani saved American lives, saved European lives, he is expressing a personal opinion, not
an intelligence conclusion," he
told CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper. "I think it will increase the risk to Americans around the world. I have
not seen the intelligence that taking out Soleimani was going to either stop the plotting that is going on or decrease other risks
to the United States."
Now we know the composition of the neocon gang that fooled malleable, jingoistic and incompetent Trump: "Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Pompeo, National Security
Adviser Robert O'Brien and Milley".
Notable quotes:
"... The administration has failed to connect the dots in a way that provides a clear picture of an imminent threat and that argument has been obscured by inconsistent messaging from US officials. ..."
"... Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also told CNN that one of his representatives was at the Friday briefing and said "nothing that came out of the briefing changed my view that this was an unnecessary escalation of the situation in Iraq and Iran." ..."
"... Van Hollen went on to say: "While I can't tell you what was said, I can tell you, I have no additional information to support the administration's claim that this was an imminent attack on Americans." ..."
Washington (CNN) Top US national security officials continue to defend the Trump administration's claim that it
killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in response to an impending threat to American lives, but the lack of evidence
provided to lawmakers and the public has fueled lingering skepticism about whether the strike was justified.
President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and top military officials have offered similar explanations for targeting
Soleimani, citing an "imminent" threat from his plans to carry out what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley called a "significant
campaign of violence" against the US in the coming days, weeks or months.
"If you're an American in the region, days and weeks, this is not something that's relevant," Pompeo told CNN's Jake Tapper on
"State of the Union" Sunday, dodging a question on the imminence of such Iranian attacks. "We have to prepare, we have to be ready,
and we took a bad guy off the battlefield."
But questions have continued to swirl in recent days over the timing, whether the administration fully considered the fallout from
such a strike against Soleimani, and if an
appropriate
legal basis was established for the presidential authorization of lethal force.
... ... ...
When Trump finally gets ready to act, they added, "you can't out escalate him." CNN has previously reported that there was
internal
debate over the decision and work behind the scenes to develop a legal argument before the operation was carried out.
After a meeting Sunday in Mar-a-Lago where President Donald Trump was briefed by senior members of his national security team
on options regarding Iran, some officials emerged surprised the President chose to target Soleimani, according to a source familiar
with the briefing.
The officials who briefed Trump included Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Pompeo, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien and Milley.
The source said that some aides expected Trump to pick a less risky option, but once presented with the choice of targeting Soleimani
he remained intent on going forward.
...The administration has failed to connect the dots in a way that provides a clear picture of an imminent threat and that
argument has been obscured by inconsistent messaging from US officials.
Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also told CNN that one of his representatives was at the Friday briefing and
said "nothing that came out of the briefing changed my view that this was an unnecessary escalation of the situation in Iraq and
Iran."
Van Hollen went on to say: "While I can't tell you what was said, I can tell you, I have no additional information to
support the administration's claim that this was an imminent attack on Americans."
Re PCR's latest linked article (post 133.
What PCR is insisting Putin do ("The easiest and cleanest way for Putin to do this is to
announce that Iran is under Russia's protection.")Putin has already done so in a landmark
speech last year when he unveiled five or six game-changing weapons, or was it 2018.
He declared back then to the evil empire that a nuclear attack on an ally would be considered
an attack upon Russia. He made this crystal clear. Of course it wouldn't hurt for him to
'gently' remind them of this.
I do have to say, the silence from the Russians is odd. Even when you read the Russian
Foreign Ministry's news releases.
For instance, there's this on January 4th:
" On January 4, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a telephone conversation with Foreign
Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the latter's
initiative. " (italics mine).
So Lavrov talked to an Iranian official only on January 4th, and the call came from Iran
(Zarif), not the other way around. This is odd, and even the explicit
mentioning of Zarif initiating the call --to me-- seems odd.
Hmm...
On Sunday's broadcast of CNN's "State of the Union," 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned
if President Donald Trump's reasons for the Qasem Soleimani assassination was to distract from impeachment.
Warren said, "I think that the question that we ought to focus on is why now? Why not a month ago, and why not a month from now?
And the answer from the administration seems to be that they can't keep their story straight on this. They pointed in all different
directions. And you know, the last time that we watched them do this was the summer over Ukraine. As soon as people started asking
about the conversations between Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine and why aid had been held up to Ukraine, the administration
did the same thing. They pointed in all directions of what was going on. And of course, what emerged then is that this is Donald
Trump just trying to advance Donald Trump's own political agenda. Not the agenda of the United States of America. So what happens
right now? Next week, the president of the United States could be facing an impeachment trial in the Senate. We know that he is deeply
upset about that. I think that people are reasonably asking why this moment? Why does he pick now to take this highly inflammatory,
highly dangerous action that moves us closer to war? We have been at war for 20 years in the Middle East, and we need to stop the
war this the Middle East and not expand it."
Tapper asked, "Are you suggesting that President Trump pulled the trigger and had Qasem Soleimani killed as a distraction from
impeachment?"
Warren said, "Look, I think that people are reasonably asking about the timing and why it is that the administration seems to
have all kinds of different answers. In the first 48 hours after this attack, what did we hear? Well, we heard it was for an imminent
attack, and then we heard, no, no, it is to prevent any future attack, and then we heard that it is from the vice president himself
and no, it is related to 9/11, and then we heard from president reports of people in the intelligence community saying that the whole,
that the threat was overblown. You know, when the administration doesn't seem to have a coherent answer for taking a step like this.
They have taken a step that moves us closer to war, a step that puts everyone at risk, and step that puts the military at risk and
puts the diplomats in the region at risk. And we have already paid a huge price for this war. Thousands of American lives lost, and
a cost that we have paid domestically and around the world. At the same time, look at what it has done in the Middle East, millions
of people who have been killed, who have been injured, who have been displaced. So this is not a moment when the president should
be escalating tensions and moving us to war. The job of the president is to keep us safe, and that means move back from the edge."
Tapper pressed, "Do you believe that President Trump pulled the trigger on this operation as a way to distract from impeachment?
Is that what you think?"
Warren said, "I think it is a reasonable question to ask, particularly when the administration immediately after having taken
this decision offers a bunch of contradictory explanations for what is going on."
She continued, "I think it is the right question to ask. We will get more information as we go forward but look at the timing
on this. Look at what Donald Trump has said afterward and his administration. They have pointed in multiple directions. There is
a reason that he chose this moment, not a month ago and not a month from now, not a less aggressive and less dangerous response.
He had a whole range of responses that were presented to him. He didn't pick one of the other ones. He picked the most aggressive
and the one that moves us closer to war. So what does everybody talk about today? Are we going to war? Are we going to have another
five years, tens, ten years of war in the Middle East, and dragged in once again. Are we bringing another generation of young people
into war? That is every bit of the conversation right now. Donald Trump has taken an extraordinarily reckless step, and we have seen
it before, he is using foreign policy and uses whatever he can to advance the interests of Donald Trump."
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First, a quick recap of the
situation
We need to begin by quickly summarizing
what just happened:
General Soleimani was in Baghdad on an official visit to attend the funeral of the Iraqis murdered by
the US on the 29th
The US has now officially claimed responsibility for this murder
The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
has officially declared
that "
However, a severe retaliation awaits the criminals who painted
their corrupt hands with his and his martyred companions' blood last night
"
The US paints itself and Iran
into a corner
The Iranians simply had no other choice
than to declare that there will be a retaliation. There are a few core problems with what happens next.
Let's look at them one by one:
First, it is quite obvious from the flagwaving claptrap in the US that Uncle Shmuel is "locked and
loaded" for even more macho actions and reaction. In fact,
Secretary Esper has basically painted
the US into what I would call an "over-reaction corner" by
declaring that
"
the game has changed
" and that the US will take "
preemptive action
"
whenever it feels threatened
. Thus, the Iranians have to assume that the US will over-react to
anything even remotely looking like an Iranian retaliation.
No less alarming is that this creates the absolutely
perfect conditions for a false flag la
"
USS
Liberty
"
. Right now, the Israelis have become at least as big a danger for US servicemen and
facilities in the entire Middle-East as are the Iranians themselves. How? Simple! Fire a
missile/torpedo/mine at any USN ship and blame Iran. We all know that if that happens the US political
elites will do what they did the last time around: let US servicemen die and protect Israel at all costs
(read up on the USS Liberty if you don't know about it)
There is also a very real risk of "spontaneous retaliations" by
other
parties (not
Iran or Iranian allies)
. In fact, in his message, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has specifically
declared that "
Martyr Suleimani is an international face to the Resistance and all lovers of the
Resistance share a demand in retaliation for his blood. All friends as well as all enemies must know
the path of Fighting and Resistance will continue with double the will and the final victory is decidedly
waiting for those who fight in this path.
" He is right, Soleimani was loved and revered by many
people all over the globe, some of whom might decided to avenge his death. This means that we might well
see some kind of retaliation which, of course, will be blamed on Iran but which might not be the result
of any Iranian actions at all.
Finally,
should the Iranians decide not to retaliate, then we can be absolutely sure that
Uncle Shmuel will see that as a proof of his putative "invincibility" and take that as a license to
engage in even more provocative actions.
A spiritual father kisses his beloved son
If we look at these four factors together
we would have to come to the conclusion that
Iran HAS to retaliate and HAS to do so publicly
.
Why?
Because whether the Iranian do
retaliate or not, they are almost guaranteed another US attack in retaliation for anything looking like a
retaliation, whether Iran is involved or not
.
The dynamics of internal US
politics
Next, let's look at the internal
political dynamics in the US:
I have always claimed that
Donald Trump is a "disposable President" for the Neocons
. What do I mean by that? I mean that the
Neocons have used Trump to do all sorts of truly fantastically dumb things (pretty much ALL his policy
decisions towards Israel and/or Syria) for a very simple reason. If Trump does something extremely dumb and
dangerous, he will either get away with it, in which case the Neocons will be happy, or he will either fail
or the consequences of his decisions will be catastrophic, at which point the Neocons will jettison him and
replace him by an even more subservient individual (say Pence or Pelosi). In other words,
for the
Neocons to have Trump do something both fantastically dangerous and fantastically stupid is a win-win
situation
!
Right now, the Dems (still the party
favored by the Neocons) seem to be dead-set into committing political suicide with that ridiculous (and
treacherous!) impeachment nonsense. Now think about this from the Neocon point of view. They might be able
to get the US goyim to strike Iran AND get rid of Trump. I suppose that their thinking will go something
like this:
Trump looks set to win 2020. We
don't want that. However, we have been doing everything in our power to trigger a US attack on Iran since
pretty much 1979. Let's have Trump do that. If he "wins" (by whatever definition more about that
further below), we win. If he loses, the Iranians will still be in a world of pain and we can always
jettison him like a used condom (used to supposedly safely screw somebody with no risks to yourself).
Furthermore, if the region explodes, this will help our beloved Bibi and unite US Jewry behind Israel.
Finally, if Israel gets attacked, we will immediately demand (and, of course, obtain) a massive US attack
on Iran, supported by the entire US political establishment and media. And, lastly, should Israel be hit
hard, then we can always use our nukes and tell the
goyim
that "Iran wants to gas 6 million Jews
and wipe the only democracy in the Middle-East off the face of the earth" or something equally insipid.
Ever since Trump made it into the White
House, we saw him brown-nose the Israel Lobby with a delectation which is extreme even by US standards. I
suppose that this calculation goes something along the lines of "with the Israel Lobby behind me, I am safe
in the White House". He is obviously too stupidly narcissistic to realize that he has been used all along.
To his (or one of his key advisor's) credit, he did NOT allow the Neocons to start a major war against
Russia, China, the DPRK, Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, etc. However, Iran is a totally different case as it is
the "number one" target the Neocons and Israel wanted strike and destroy. The Neocons even had
this motto
"
boys go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran
". Now that Uncle Shmuel has lost all this
wars of choice, now that the US armed forces have no credibility left, now is the time to restore the
"macho" self-image of Uncle Shmuel and, indeed, "go to Tehran" so to speak.
The
Dems (Biden) are already saying
that Trump just "
tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox
",
as if they cared about anything except their own, petty, political goals and power. Still, I have to admit
that Biden's metaphor is correct that is exactly what Trump (and his real bosses) have done.
If we assume that I am correct in my
evaluation that Trump is the Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable President", then we also have to accept the fact
that the US armed forces the Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable armed forces" and that the US as a nation is
also the Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable nation". This is very bad news indeed, as this means that
from the Neocon/Israeli point of view, there are no real risks into throwing the US into a war with Iran
.
In truth, the position of the Dems is a
masterpiece of hypocrisy which can be summed up as follows:
the assassination of Soleimani is a
wonderful event, but Trump is a monster for making it happen
.
A winner, no?
What would the likely outcome of
a US war on Iran be?
I have written so often about this topic
that I won't go into all the possible scenarios here. All I will say is the following:
For the US, "winning" means achieving regime change or, failing that, destroying the Iranian economy.
For Iran, "winning" simply means to survive the US onslaught.
This is a HUGE asymmetry which basically
means that the US cannot win and Iran can only win.
And, not, the Iranians don't have to
defeat CENTCOM/NATO! They don't need to engage in large scale military operations. All they need to do is:
remain "standing" once the dust settles down.
ORDER IT NOW
Ho Chi Minh once told the French "
You
can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win
".
This is exactly why Iran will eventually prevail, maybe at a huge cost (Amalek must be destroyed, right?),
but that will still be a victory.
Now let's look at the two most
basic types of war scenarios: outside Iran and inside Iran.
The Iranians, including General
Soleimani himself, have publicly declared many times that by trying to surround Iran and the Middle-East
with numerous forces and facilities the US have given Iran a long list of lucrative targets. The most
obvious battlefield for a proxy war is clearly Iraq where there are plenty of pro and anti Iranian forces to
provide the conditions for a long, bloody and protracted conflict (Moqtada al-Sadr has just declared that
the Mahdi Army will be remobilized). But Iraq is far from being the only place where an explosion of
violence can take place: the ENTIRE MIDDLE-EAST is well within Iranian "reach", be it by direct attack or by
attack by sympathetic/allied forces. Next to Iraq, there is also Afghanistan and, potentially, Pakistan. In
terms of a choice of instruments, the Iranian options range from missile attacks, to special forces direct
action strikes, to sabotage and many, many more options. The only limitation here is the imagination of the
Iranians and, believe me, they have plenty of that!
If such a retaliation happens, the US
will have two basic options: strike at Iranian friends and allies outside Iran or, as Esper has now
suggested, strike inside Iran. In the latter case, we can safely assume that any such attack will result in
a massive Iranian retaliation on US forces and facilities all over the region and a closure of the Strait of
Hormuz.
Keep in mind that the Neocon motto "
boys
go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran
" implicitly recognizes the fact that a war against Iran would be
qualitatively (and even quantitatively) different war than a war against Iraq. And, this is true, if the US
seriously plans to strike inside Iran they would be faced with an explosion which would make all the wars
since WWII look minor in comparison. But the temptation to prove to the world that Trump and his minions are
"real men" as opposed to "boys" might be too strong, especially for a president who does not understand that
he is a disposable tool in the hands of the Neocons.
Now, let's quickly look at what
will NOT happen
Russia and/or China will not get
militarily involved in this one. Neither will the US use this crisis as a pretext to attack Russia and/or
China. The Pentagon clearly has no stomach for a war (conventional or nuclear) against Russia and neither
does Russia have any desire for a war against the US. The same goes for China. However, it is important to
remember that Russia and China have other options, political and covert ones, to really hurt the US and help
Iran. There is the UNSC where Russia and China will block any US resolution condemning Iran. Yes, I know,
Uncle Shmuel does not give a damn about the UN or international law, but most of the rest of the world very
much does. This asymmetry is further exacerbated by Uncle Shmuel's attention span (weeks at most) with the
one of Russia and China (decades). Does that matter?
Absolutely!
If the Iraqis officially declare that
the US is an occupation force (which it is), an occupation force which engages in acts of war against Iraq
(which it does) and that the Iraqi people want Uncle Shmuel and his hypocritical talking points about
"democracy" to pack and leave, what can our Uncle Shmuel do? He will try to resist it, of course, but once
the tiny figleaf of "nation building" is gone, replaced by yet another ugly and brutal US occupation, the
political pressure on the US to get the hell out will become extremely hard to manage, both outside and even
inside the US.
In fact,
Iranian state television
called Trump's order to kill Soleimani "
the biggest miscalculation by the
U.S." since World War II. "The people of the region will no longer allow Americans to stay,"
it said.
Next, both Russia and China can help
Iran militarily with intelligence, weapons systems, advisors and economically, in overt and covert ways.
Finally, both Russia and China have the
means to, shall we say, "strongly suggest" to other targets on the US "country hit list" that now is the
perfect time to strike at US interests (say, in Far East Asia).
So Russia and China can and will help,
but they will do so with what the CIA likes to call "plausible deniability".
Back The Big Question: what
can/will Iran do next?
The Iranians are far most sophisticated
players than the mostly clueless Americans. So the first thing I would suggest is that the Iranians are
unlikely to do something the US is expecting them to do. Either they will do something totally different, or
they will act much later, once the US lowers its guard (as it always does after declaring "victory").
I asked a well-informed Iranian friend
whether it was still possible to avoid war. Here is what he replied:
Yes I do believe fullscale war can be
avoided. I believe that Iran can try to use its political influence to unite Iraqi political forces to
officially ask for the removal of US troops in Iraq. Kicking the US out of Iraq will mean that they can
no longer occupy eastern Syria either as their troops will be in danger between two hostile states. If
the Americans leave Syria and Iraq, that will be the ultimate revenge for Iran without having fired a
single shot.
I have to say that I concur with this
idea: one of the most painful things Iran could do next would be to use this truly fantastically reckless
event to kick the US out of Iraq first, and Syria next. That option, if it can be exercised, might also
protect Iranian lives and the Iranian society from a direct US attack. Finally, such an outcome would give
the murder of General Soleimani a very different and beautiful meaning: this martyr's blood liberated the
Middle-East!
Finally, if that is indeed the strategy
chosen by Iran, this does not at all mean that on a tactical level the Iranians will not extract a price
from US forces in the region or even elsewhere on the planet. For example, there are some rather credible
rumors that the destruction of PanAm 103 over Scotland was not a Libyan action, but an Iranian one in direct
retaliation for the deliberate shooting down by the USN of IranAir 655 Airbus over the Persian Gulf. I am
not
saying that I know for a fact that this is what really happened, only that
Iran does have retaliatory options not limited to the Middle-East.
Conclusion: we wait for Iran's
next move
The Iraqi Parliament is scheduled to
debate a resolution demanding the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. I will just say that while I do not
believe that the US will gentlemanly agree to any such demands, it will place the conflict in the political
realm. That is by definition much more desirable than any form of violence, however justified it might
seem. So I strongly suggest to those who want peace that they pray that the Iraqi MPs show some honor and
spine and tell Uncle Shmuel what every country out there always wanted from the US: Yankees, go home!
If that happens this will be a total
victory for Iran and yet another abject defeat (self-defeat, really) by Uncle Shmuel. This is the best of
all possible scenarios.
But if that does not happen, then all
bets are off and the momentum triggered by this latest act of US terrorism will result in many more deaths.
As of right now (19:24 UTC) I still
think that there is a roughly 80% chance of full scale war in the Middle-East and, again, will leave 20% of
"unexpected events" (hopefully good ones).
PS: this is a text I wrote under great
time pressure and it has not be edited for typos or other mistakes. I ask the self-appointed Grammar Gestapo
to take a break and not protest again. Thank you
Scenarios 3 and 4 look the most likely in this no-win scenario for Iran at the moment. It would probably be
advantageous to Iran to let proxies retaliate, although that would further provoke the blatant US aggression
of scenario 4.
The best we can hope for, aside from Russia and China covertly assisting Iran with intelligence and
materiel, is for the latter to possibly trigger a Suez Crisis-style scenario by threatening to dump its
holdings of US sovereign debt. (The former country used to hold something like $160 billion in US bonds, but
has since 2013 sold off all but approximately $15 billion.) However, I doubt the Chinese have the appetite
for that -- they still depend vitally on the US market for their goods. And Japan, which holds about as much of
that debt as China, will never follow suit. They willingly tanked their own economy to prop up the US with
the Plaza Accord; and will likely continue to be a bootlick to American power to the bitter end.
The Iranians could not defeat the ragtag forces of Saddam Hussein, but they can defeat the United States?
Preposterous. The Iranians will do nothing. Their dead general was a member of the military and a legitimate
target. If they are foolish enough to attack the US, or its interests, they will suffer enormous losses. I
understand that reality can sometimes conflict with a person's wishes, but the reality here is that as long
as the US doesn't try to occupy Iran, they can cripple their military and destroy their infrastructure. Iran
will do nothing,.
I have written so often about this topic that I won't go into all the possible scenarios here. All I
will say is the following:
-- For the US, "winning" means achieving regime change or, failing that, destroying the Iranian
economy.
-- For Iran, "winning" simply means to survive the US onslaught.
This is a HUGE asymmetry which basically means that the US cannot win and Iran can only win.
Apparently the author has forgotten what happened a couple months ago. The economic situation is so bad
in Iran, people are rioting against the corrupt Ayatollah. (1). Thousands arrested and over a hundred dead.
All the U.S. has to do to win is hold the line. The situation is indeed assymetrical:
-- By refusing to put boots on the ground in Iran, there are few options open to Iran that will hurt the
U.S.
-- The U.S. can freely strike against government elites like Soleimani if the Ayatollah tries to escalate.
Attacking the embassy was clearly Khameni's desperate effort to shore up personal weakness at home. Not
only did he fail to keep the embassy, he also lost a key terrorist. The weak leader just became much weaker.
How long will the IRGC remain willing to die for a sociopathic Ayatollah?
One has to believe at some point, elements of the IRGC will dispatch Khameni to save their own lives.
Iran under military rule is unlikely to become friendly with the U.S. However, for their own personal goals
they will bring troops home and suspend funding to groups like al'Hezbollah and al'Hamas. These steps would
do much to improve regional stability.
@Rich
The Iranians were not trying to
defeat
the Iraqis, nor will they the US. They aim to survive the
violent onslaught of aggressors, and damage them enough so they won't think to try again.
Soleimani was a
legitimate target if Iran and the US were in a state of declared war. They are not.
Here, I know this is UK law, but it strikes the right tone: this action was pure terrorism.
@Rich
ragtag forces in Afghanistan ( even more rag tag than Iraq) have defeated the US.
The US must bomb and
kill apart from actually encountering another irregular war that they keep losing.
I can think of some Iranian responses. Hostage taking by allied but deniable groups of US personnel.
Build out intercontinental missiles in quantity and shield them. Buy Russian weapons like S-400 in a few
months.
There's a lot of meaningful content in this article. The only problem is that it is one-sided with more of a
dislike of Israel and USA individually than Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen, UAE, Qatar combined.
Where
Saker would lead us is to the same inaction of Ben Rhodes.
The problem is that Ben Rhodes would want to collaborate with Suleimani more than Republicans and
conservatives or allies such as Israel, UK, Poland.
This leaves the Obama galaxy of superstar stateswomen and statesmen with an unrealistic vision of the
world.
This turns into Gaddafi being killed because he is easy to kill, triggering a vacuum and pulling in ISIS
and Iran, as well as turning loose 1M people to run try to sneak into Europe.
This same myopic worldview leads to pushing Russia to the breaking point by working with similar minded
EU leaders to "flip" Ukraine. That turned out badly and now Obama's statesmen want to hide it.
Don't forget that Kerry is married into Iranian diplomats at the top level.
@Rich
Wishful thinking
Thre are many other scenarios and players to consider. America will not be allowed to arbitrarily mass
forces and engage their enemy at free will.
My take is that the timing of death of General Soleimani and the fact that President Trump is pending
impeachment in the US Senate is not a mere coincidence. Part of me thinks that TPTB set Trump up to be
impeached and gave him an ultimatum to facilitate a military conflict with Iran or lose his presidency by
way of impeachment.
What seems more bogus, the pretense for impeachment or the pretense for war with Iran?
There will be a war with Iran if Trump wants a war with Iran.
But its not clear that Trump wants a full-on
war. He could have had one by now if he wanted it. He is more of a business man than a warlord at heart, and
lacks the insecurity of a W. He doesn't need to pose in uniform on an aircraft carrier to feel virile, he
can just bang Melania.
On the other hand, he won't allow himself to look weak, and he will retaliate. In addition, there is lots
of evidence in the public record that Trump has a long-standing antipathy to Iran and its government. And
Trump has many "friends" that would be thrilled by an Iran expedition.
Iran would be crazy to provoke Trump in a way that would likely lead to war. Iraq showed the U.S. can
take down a government and leave the country wrecked. Sure, the U.S. won't "win" in Iraq, but that doesn't
mean Saddam won or the Iraqi people. Iran would be messier, but I lack the Saker's "optimism". The Iranian
government will want to survive, not gamble. [Ho Chi Mihn didn't actively seek an American invasion.] The
question is whether Iran can de-escalate while saving face (and while other forces, who would love to see
the U.S. invade Iran, do everything to escalate affairs).
Leaving aside "winning the war", it would look great on T.V. heading into the 2020 election even if it
ends in disaster, and permit cheap attacks on the Democrats in the climate of jingoism sure to follow the
first bombs. If Trump is any politician worth his salt, he is more interested in winning the next election
than in America winning some long-term ME war.
Let's say the Saudis attack the USA again like they did on 9-11, Iran gets blamed (of course), and Trump
responds by nuking Iran, killing half of the population within a few hours, and 95% within a year.
@Harbinger
Zionism, not Judaism. Two entirely separate things. Compare Romans 2:28-29 versus Revelation 2:9 and 3:9.
Research the reader survey "Defense of True Israel" to identify today's true Israel.
It doesn't matter whether Iran decides to retaliate Israel will retaliate for them. Netanyahu will have
his president-for-life, get-out-of-jail war. This could have been an Israeli strike that Trump was forced,
or manipulated, into taking credit for. Nothing would be surprising, so long as that shabby little grifter
controls U.S. foreign policy.
If Russia and China had any itch to go in, they would have done so in Afghanistan at next to no cost to
themselves (of course this only emboldened the Empire of Evil).
And with the exception of Mohammed Reza Shah (installed by coup in 1941 because his daddy, an old-school
Kurdish brigand, was way too reasonable something that is conveniently forgotten) Iran has always taken
pains to hold both the Anglos and the Russians at arms length.
Not only was the joint Israeli and ZUS attack on the USS Liberty a false flag, but even worse than that was
the false flag joint Israeli and ZUS attack on the WTC on 911 , and since they have gotten away with these
false flags, no doubt, they will do another to get the excuse to finish off Iran.
The only nation standing
in the way of the attack on Iran is Russia, and Russia is not going to let Iran be destroyed as Russia threw
down the gauntlet in Syria and Russia's top generals ie Gerasimov and Shoygu know that Russia is next and
will not stand by and let Iran go down, even if Putin is reluctant to save Iran, which I believe Putin will
also know Russia is next on the list.
Israel and the ZUS want a nuclear war with Russia and I believe they will cause a false flag to have it
and they believe they can ride out a nuclear exchange in their DUMBS ie deep underground military bases
which they have throughout the ZUS and ZEurope and Israel.
Israel and the ZUS are not content with destroying the middle east, they now want to destroy the world.
@Rich
"Their dead general was a member of the military and a legitimate target."
-- Let's name all Israeli
generals, one by one, and call them legitimate targets.
Your puny theocratic state of Israel has been the cause of the ongoing mass slaughter in the Middle East.
Each of Israeli citizens took a bath full of blood of innocent civilians of all ages, figuratively speaking.
Iran has not attacked any country. Israel has. It was the perfidious AIPAC of Israel-firsters that has
been working non-stop on promoting the wars of aggression in the name of Eretz Israel. Iraq, Syria, Libya
have been destroyed in accordance with Oded Yinon subhuman plan. Iran is the next.
The hapless Europeans and Americans are finally learning about the viciousness of Jewish sadists. Instead
of "almost truthful" holobiz stories forged by Eli Wiesel and Anne Frank' dad, the schools should have been
teaching the biographies of Jewish mega-criminals such as Lazar Kaganovich (Stalin's right hand and
organizer of Holodomor in Ukraine), Naftali Frenkel (an inventor of "industrialized" death in the GULAG),
and the despicable mass-murderess Rozalia Zalkind.
The economic situation is so bad in Iran, people are rioting against the corrupt Ayatollah.
The rapists strangle their victim and blame them for their lack of oxygen.
Attacking the embassy was clearly Khameni's desperate effort to shore up personal weakness at home.
Not only did he fail to keep the embassy, he also lost a key terrorist. The weak leader just became much
weaker.
Judaism is a cult, not a religion. It's the self worship of Jews, hatred of non Jews (racism) and
supremacist beliefs over all other peoples on this earth. In effect, Judaism is the Jewish KKK/Black
Panthers. It's perfectly ok to go around saying
"we're god's chosen"
(blatant supremacism and racism)
and yet they go crazy when some white person puts up a poster saying
"it's ok to be white"
? The
former is ignored and worse, accepted by many idiots while the latter is vehemently attacked. Think about
that for a moment?
Don't let the red herrings of "It's not Judaism, it's Zionism" or "it's not the real Jews, but the fake
Ashkenazis" crap lead you astray from the situation. The problem IS what it always has been and always will
be until people wake up and do something about it. That problem is Judaism. It's never changed.
If the Americans leave Syria and Iraq, that will be the ultimate revenge for Iran without having fired a
single shot
Correct.
And that is precisely the real objective of Trump. Trump is greatly underestimated. He gives the Zionists
everything they want which results in outcomes that are very much against their interests.
As imperial forces are defeated in the region but economic war continues, economic integration between
Iran, Iraq and Syria becomes even more necessary, for a decent future.
Sep 11, 2011 General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned Seven Countries In Five Years
"This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with
Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?"
He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You
remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"
@Nicols Palacios Navarro
You missed the boat .! This is about Israel and its control of Trump. Israel wants eternal war..they care
not how many are killed because it will be Americans not Jews. The scenarios presented here are limited and
simplistic. The real scenarios present much greater challenges for the US Intelligence Agencies. These
include false flags by Israel and the Jewish controlled Congress for excuses to bomb Iran. But even a
greater risk would be splinter Muslim groups around the world and especially in the US that will retaliate
against Americans. The estimate of at least 20% of Muslims in the US are terrorists waiting to happen may
come to fruition. Trump the idiot has just thrown a cigar into the punch bowl. Michael Scheuer former CIA
put it this way:
"The crux of my argument is simply that America is in a war with militant Islamists that
it cannot avoid; one that it cannot talk or appease its way out of; one in which our irreconcilable Islamist
foes will have to be killed, an act which unavoidably will lead to innocent deaths; and one that is
motivated in large measure by the impact of U.S. foreign policies in the Islamic world, one of which is
unqualified U.S. support for Israel."
In his second book, Imperial Hubris, a New York Times bestseller, Scheuer writes that the Islamist threat
to the United States is rooted in "how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the six
U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:
U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants
The US will experience the wrath of these people over and over again because we keep doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting a different result.
Trump is nothing more than figure head president under complete control of Israel. Civilization is doomed
if Israel continues complete control of most the US government and most of the world. The American citizenry
are nothing more than blind little animals waiting to be slaughter by Israel.
The gerbils of feeble minds are out in force to show their arrogance and illiteracy t seems. Throughout
time, Iran has emboldened the oppressed to fight the imperialists. Just like the support they show the
people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and to an extent Yemen.. They wont destroy all that they have built unless
the US uses some excuse to attack inside iran at which point all bets are off and so are all places in the
ME with US military.. This blatant act of terrorism is the worst a civilised nation can do and the ultimate
hypocrisy of calling itself run by the rule of law.. Almost all rules and laws were violated and so is the
rules of war itself which is mostly non existent but even in war there are some things you do not do like
taking out the leadership because the men will then have no choice but to keep fighting without anyone to
order them to stand down.. Only imbeciles will do unthinkable things like this and such blatant violations
of international laws in front of the entire world and then take credit for it..
Its pretty clear that the dem's impeachment scam was a collaboration with the neocons to corner Trump into
having to obey McConnell, Graham and the rest of the criminals.
A few months back the great Orange King was going to pull out of Syria, right?
It is almost patently obvious Trump was handed the option of starting war with Iran or having the senate
slowly turn against him (through a well orchestrated media campaign, of course), ending up with him in
prison or worse.
Can't have that. Donny boy serves only Donny boy, and the country's arse isn't worth choosing over his own.
@Harbinger
NPR now : Israel has been pushing America to confront Iran . But Israel doesn't want to be seen as the power
behind the American aggression against Iran .
there are some rather credible rumors that the destruction of PanAm 103 over Scotland was not a Libyan
action, but an Iranian one in direct retaliation for the deliberate shooting down by the USN of IranAir 655
Airbus over the Persian Gulf
This was obviously the case. All the accusations against Libya were
patently false. The Scottish court case was a scam from A to Z. All the "evidence" against Libya could have
been concocted by a 12 year old. "Finding" a bit of clockwork in a field and claiming that someone bought a
certain "suitcase" in Malta is a piece of cake.
Despite the destruction of Libya and access to all their files and bureaucrats, no effort was ever made
to search their records and to substantiate the accusations against Libya. Lockerbie and Pan Am 103 simply
disappeared from the media.
If Libya had been behind the explosion of Pan Am 103, they would have relished producing the evidence and
a lot of Libyans would have been accused and put on trial. It would have helped their accusations that
"Libya was a rogue state"
The only facts that everyone agrees on is that the Americans shot down an Iranian airliner on 3 July 1988
with 290 people on board. And that a US airliner with 259 people was blown up on 21 December 1988. Some
coincidence!
Since PA103, no Iranian civilian aircraft of any sort has been attacked or threatened by the USA or any
other country. I guess that is a strong hint as to what intelligence services believe the true story to be.
Sounds like one of the Christ-killer handles you see over at Hasbara Central (aka,
Free Republic).
FReepers with handles like "ProudMarineMomEagleUSALibertyLoverArmyVetMAGAGalAirborneTexasFreedom" posting
articles on inside baseball of Knesset politics.
It's time for Iran to get insurance in the form of multiple nuclear warheads. I doubt Russia or China will
sell them but Pakistan, a fellow Muslim country, or N. Korea might. All they need is a few nukes that would
be include in a barrage of hundreds of missiles aimed at Tel Aviv. No Iron Dome (which is useless anyway)
would stop the attack. Israel would never allow (since we know they control Congress and the President) an
attack on Iran if there was even the slightest possibility of a nuke on Israel. Let's face it, the Israelis
are only "brave" when they slaughter defenseless Palestinian women and children. They were driven out of
Lebanon by a rag tag civilian militia.
You are naive and poorly educated murican from declining Amerikanistan who lives in the past. The Unipolar
era is over. The Iranians have the capacity to destroy all US bases in 2000km radius (in the Middle East)
with ballistic missile salvos, it and its shia allied groups in the region have plenty of attack drones and
long range cruise missiles too (and US land anti-air capability is poor), all US soldiers in Iraq will be
killed by shia millitias, drones and long range missiles (unless the US would try to invade Iraq again and
restart the occupation with 300 000 soldiers in Iraq, for which it no longer has the money, too much debt
and shaky economy), Russia can supply the country with high tech anti-air systems, Iran can supply manpads
and long range missiles to the Taliban which will lead to siege of US bases in Afghanistan and
bombardment/capture of americans there, (taliban are already winning there without any help). Iran can also
destroy most oil and gas infrastructure in the Middle East.
Estimation:
all US bases in the Middle East will be leveled.
US bases will be besieged in Afghanistan and Taliban will fully take over that country.
The biggest US embassy in the world in Iraq, will be captured, together with the US diplomats in it.
Shia Millitia Proxies will attack and capture/destroy many US embassies in the region.
Oil price will reach 150 200 $ leading to global economic crisis.
Israel will be attacked by Hizbulla and many israeli cities will be damaged, keeping it busy.
No european country will support such attack and this will lead to the EU marginalising NATO and replacing
it with its own independent european military pact, moving away from the US.
Whole world will condemn the US and will start moving away from dependency on that country, as no one wants
such a war in the Gulf.
30 000 americans (almost all in the middle east) killed and all of their objects in the Middle East
destroyed.
US companies infrastructure in the Middle East and in Iraq destroyed.
Big uprising against the US in Iraq.
US economy enters recession.
US is crippled by war debt.
For that large price to pay, the only US option will be US long range attacks via bombers, carriers and
subs, who will not be very effective vs russian anti-air systems. It will take a long time for Iran to be
destroyed if they have modern russian anti-air. Meanwhile the global economy will enter recession until the
war is over. There will be massive anti-US protests all over the world blaming it for the resulting global
economic crisis and recession.
In the long run, the US will be able to destroy most of Iran by conventional means, but the US itself
will be crippled by debt and will lose its superpower status. In other words, it will be the Suez Moment for
the US.
Ultimately though, there will be no large scale war because the US does not have the money for it. It is
crippled by debt. Picture underestimates US debt by 10 % and already estimates hyperinflation by 2050 (10 %
and growing annual budget deficits, which is a disaster).
Then there is the possibility for the US to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran but then the US will be
declared a rogue state by the world and every other state will get nukes too and NPT regime will be dead,
leading to the end of US influence and capacity to wage war in the world.
@Paul holland
That's a good suggestion but I still think they should go after Pompeo. If you really want to keep it 'tit
for tat' with even less retaliation then poor Gen. Milley should be splashed. (Evil grin)
@bruce county
Will not be allowed? then look what they did in this very moment. They already mass their forces in iraq and
surounding bases. Their are considerable more Galaxy C17 traffic in Ramstein/Germany and the whole C17 (as
far as you can identify them)look like a swarm of bees on the way to the middle east.
I have one wish for 2020, and it is this: That everyone stop referring to this group of bastards claiming to
great American patriots and thinkers (both a flagrant lie) as 'neocons', and call them what they are; 99%
are dual citizen Israeli firsters. Fostering the acronym neocon allows them to remain hidden behind a mask
of their own design, and is a great disservice and a threat to every American. These traitors with their
Israel first attitude, have but one job, and it is to dream up fake threats to America's security, (i.e.
Iraq's WMD's), in order to insure America's defense budget remains huge, and US soldiers all over the ME
making Israel feel safe and secure; not so much America. truth is they care nothing of America and have
perfected the art of subterfuge, as evidenced by this quote by self described paleo-neoconservative Norman
Podhertz in his work Breaking Ranks:
"An Israeli within the Jewish community, and an American on the public goy stage".
Netanyahu, aka Benzion Mileikowsky is holed up in that land of his idle, "Hitler's Argentinian Patagonia"?
or,
Brave Sir Robin ran away.
("No!")
Bravely ran away away.
("I didn't!")
When danger reared it's ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
("I never!")
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
("You're lying!")
Swiftly taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
Songwriters: Adam Patrick Devlin / Edward Daniel Chester / Eric Idle / Graham Chapman / John Cleese /
Mark James Morriss / Michael Palin / Neil Innes / Scott Edward Morriss / Terry Gilliam
Brave Sir Robin lyrics Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Artist: Monty Python
Album: The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Released: 1975
@Rich
I think the Iranians have already won on this round ..Iran stepped back and gave notice that when you are up
against a guy bigger than you are, you wait until something happens to even the odds.
The domestic deplorable don't understand bullet in the brain diplomacy.. What is in Iraq or Iran that
Americans want <=nothing. absolutely nothing that I can tell. so for whom is all of this?
Hard to know what Trump's thinking here is. War before an election does not seem a good idea, especially if
you are a candidate who has failed so far to achieve anything of substance around past promises to reduce
America's involvement in Mideast wars.
Remember that a crucial slice of the votes that put the man into office were not from his prime political
base, the "pick-up truck and Jesus" set, but from those concerned with peace and better relations with
Russia.
But prodding Iran to attack could allow Trump to play commander-in-chief defending the country. And
Americans just instinctively support even the worst possible presidents at war. You might call it the George
Bush Effect. The frightened puppy grabbing the nearest pantleg after a loud noise.
Of course, now when it comes to campaign contributions from American Oligarchs whose chief political
concern is what Israel wants, Trump's coffers will be overflowing.
I suspect Iran will take its time and carefully plan a response, and that response may not be clear and
unambiguous, and it might be multi-faceted and done over time.
The men running Iran are careful men, none of them impetuous. Chess players. The United States has more
than forty years of bellowing, open hostility towards the country, and we have not seen Iran's leaders act
foolishly in all that time despite many provocations.
I do not believe Iran will be driven to war that would be playing the Israeli-American game with
Israeli-American rules.
Clandestine and hybrid efforts, that is what Iran is best at. They have serious capabilities these days,
and the United States, with all its bases abroad, has great vulnerabilities.
Of course, there's also the option of Iran's just leaving the nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action, or JCPOA) that Trump idiotically tore-up and proceeding quietly with weapons development.
Iran, despite Israel's dishonest claims, never has pursued weapons development, only efficient use of
nuclear power and legitimate scientific research. Perhaps it is time to reconsider that policy
Iran has substantial deposits of uranium, and the enriched-uranium bomb is simpler to build than the
plutonium bomb. Maybe there is some possibility for covert assistance from North Korea, another country
treated like crap by Trump's Washington Braintrust?
4.Finally, should the Iranians decide not to retaliate, then we can be absolutely sure that Uncle
Shmuel will see that as a proof of his putative "invincibility" and take that as a license to engage in
even more provocative actions.
For what it's worth, I vote for 4.
Gandhi and MLK are household names because they used non-violent protest to bring attention to widespread
injustice.
As long as Iran responds in a non-violent way, they retain the moral high ground. The world is watching,
if Iran puts out a statement to the fact that the US is using assassinations to provoke Iran into an open
(obviously one-sided) war, who on the planet won't sympathize with Iran?
We all know the ZUS is a murderous, war criminal rogue regime under occupation by Zionists. Duh.
We all know the ((neocons)) and Zionists have demanded the destruction of Iran for what, decades now. We
all know of Bibi's unhinged frothing. It's more than obvious to the entire world.
What we don't need is bravado or chest thumping on the part of Iran. That is exactly what the fiend is
hoping for. Praying for. It's hands rubbing together and hissing 'they can't ignore this one, we slaughtered
their beloved general'.
If this were all being contained by the world's media and diplomatic channels, then it might be
different.
But EVERYBODY knows the score. Everybody knows who is the aggressor and who is the victim.
Iran should assume the posture of a victim, and allow all the world's people to watch in disgust as it's
menaced by the world's super-power coward, who NEVER picks on anyone it's own size, but always attacks
nations far weaker than it is.
What an embarrassment to be an American today, in slavish obeisance to the world's most revolting den of
snakes.
God bless and save the people of Iran.
It is with profound shame that I lament my nations depraved servility to a criminal regime.
Please, don't escalate the conflict. That is EXACTLY what ((they)) want you to do.
Funny how even you seems to forget that Trump KNOWN that he is a "tool" and that he have to play like one.
But every play he did on behalf of the Neocons did he in such a worst way that he everytime reaches the
excat opposite of what the neocons wanted to reach. North Stream 2 anyone? It's done, up runnig by now.
2% spending? how have done this yet?
buy exclusiv or also by US MIC company's? Hmm the turks buy now Russian AA.
India is also in shambles about the militray topic.
NOTHING, what the neocons want from him and he allegedly did seems to work really and not because he is a
moron this is ON PURPOSE.
I strongly believe that he known what he does and that he does this exactly like he or the ones behind him
wanted. Trmup isn't a neocon. He is a nationalist and plays a very dangerous doubbleplay with the Deep State
and their neocons/Zionists.
I still think that there is a roughly 80% chance of full scale war in the Middle-East and, again, will leave
20% of "unexpected events"
I believe this estimate is rather correct. Personally, I believe the odds are
100% in favor of WAR. It has taken the Israelis 35 years, since the Iraq Iran war, to get America this
close. They will not allow something as trivial as peace to interfer.
Donald Trump is hardly a "disposable President" for Israel. The sky's the limit for Israel while Trump is in
power and they will never get anyone quite like him again. The Neocons won't go against Israel.
The death
of Soleimani was not long in coming after his masterminding of the successful attack on Saudi Arabian oil
facilities, and him making the fatal error of ordering demonstrators in Baghdad to be shot. I think the
combination of threatening Saudi Arabia at its weakest point and alienating the Shiite community in Iraq is
why the US decided now was the perfect time to target Soleimani.
@Not Raul
Hmmm, nuke Iran . I wonder how US would feel if Russia justifiably nuked the Mexican drug cartels in
Tijuana. Probably take it just as a friendly and helpful gesture in the war on drugs, right? Or Russia nukes
those pesky Quebec secessionists not far from DC?
Obviously, there is no place on the planet with more
cretins per head of population than US, lead by the Cretin in Chief. All itching to use those nukes just
sitting there, collecting dust since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why did cretins spend all that money on them
when they cannot use them?
One totally unrelated question. ISIS has chopped off a large number of non-Sunni Muslim heads and a few
heads of Westerners. Does anyone know even one example where an Israeli's head or head of a Western Jew has
been chopped off?
USrael is like a tradesman who declares war on a screwdriver or hammer in his toolbox.
The purpose of the drone strike false flag was to coronate a new, massive trauma based mind control effort
by the US Government aimed at her own domestic slaves. The CIA opinion makers are out in full force:
Sjursen, Engelhardt, Bacevich, Hedges, Cole, NYT, WaPo, AI you name it, all delivering the message of
peace because they were trained for war. Quickly form all the public opinions to make sure the people are
divided.
The voting class has given us 100% of the war, 100% of the inequality, 100% of the misery that the poor
suffer daily. Accordingly, the CIA has to assassinate wrong thinking in the voting class before it threatens
the status quo of war, inequality and suffering.
The only thing missing is a Pat Tillman character a patriotic zombie athlete, tatted and geared up to
kick ass for the right reasons as a hero until the sham that everyone knew all along except for poor Pat
reveals itself.
@Ignatius
I read this same theme at the VT site. Either Robert David Steel's piece or in a comment. Rather far fetched
idea, but not so far out that the dual citizen cretins in DC wouldn't use.
Thanks Saker!
The officials in Tehran have been and will continue to be calm, calculating, rational and making decisions
collectively! The Two Fat Guys and skinny dip" have been defeated by Iran in their Cold War with Iran for 4
decades! Iranians' mail goal is to force the US to run away from the ME region w/o confronting it! They
would like to achieve their goal as the Vietnamese did in 1973 if anyone remembers that! So far they have
been successful and their actions in the future will show their intentions more clearly!
With all due respect the Chinese and Russians would love to see the US humiliated so she's forced to leave
and they don't mind using Iran as a front to achieve their goal without confronting the US!
I'm just waiting for the usual suspects to come on here denying it had anything to do with Israel and
Judaism.
It's hard to make that claim when every chosenite from Benjamin Shapiro to Israeli citizen and fake
"national conservative" Yoram Hazony is celebrating on Twitter.
Example:
To all the jerks saying Trump did this "for Israel":
1. No American should die for Israel.
2. If you can't feel shame when your country is shamed and want to act when your own people are
killed, your problem isn't Israel. Your problem is you.
-- Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) January 3, 2020
Do these scum ever not lie? No American was killed by Iranians or Iranian-backed proxies before this
incident, not for at least a decade. And Trump totally did this for Israel. His biggest donors have been
demanding he do this for years and suddenly he does it. It's not hard to see the connection, especially amid
all the Jews celebrating on Twitter today.
Further, he goes on to beat his chest as a fake patriotic American (while being an Israeli citizen); it's
clear he's just celebrating an attack on his country's enemy, but wants you to think it has something to do
with America.
You can be darned sure no in the world thinks seizing an American embassy is a genius tactical move
right now. Not in Iran -- and not anywhere else.
-- Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) January 3, 2020
You can be damned sure no on in the world thinks this empire is anything but lawless and dangerous right
now -- headed by an irrational imbecile beholden to the interests of a racist apartheid state. Not in Europe
-- and not anywhere else.
At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect
U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds
Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in
Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of
hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had
orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months including the attack on
December 27th culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General
Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.
This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to
take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.
@Rurik
Gandhi drank his own urine and slept with prepubescent girls, MLK was a whoremonger and sodomite, you can
have them both. Iran won't escalate because they tried, and lost a general. If they try anything else,
they'll pay too steep a price.
"Its pretty clear that the dem's impeachment scam was a collaboration with the neocons to corner Trump
into having to obey McConnell, Graham and the rest of the criminals."
No it's not. It's pretty clear that orange clown is enthusiastic about mass-murdering people and trying
to start wars for his jewish-supremacist handlers.
"A few months back the great Orange King was going to pull out of Syria, right?"
No he wasn't; he was just posturing, as usual.
"It is almost patently obvious Trump was handed the option of starting war with Iran or having the
senate slowly turn against him (through a well orchestrated media campaign, of course), ending up with
him in prison or worse."
Or so you barely assert. But if that's the case why didn't "they" force Obama to start a war with Iran?
For that matter why did "they" allow Obama to enter into the JCPOA agreement with Iran in the first place?
The more likely explanation is that the impeachment scam was an effort to determine whether or not orange
clown had enough support to be re-elected. Perhaps our rulers wanted to see if the peasants would rally
around their embattled MAGA "hero" if they could present him as the hapless victim of the even-more-evil
"democrats." (And if so, his re-election "campaign strategy" could then be crafted around his apparent
"victimhood" since he has nothing else to campaign on).
If this is the case, then the experiment may now have come to an end, with the result that the favorite
son-of-perdition would likely not be re-elected; thus he has one year to start the war on Iran, and he is
wasting no time getting on with it.
Pakistan, a fellow Muslim country, or N. Korea might
Very unlikely that this could occur. Pakistan itself is wary of incurring further unwanted attention from
the US, which regularly violates its sovereignty anyway. If they indeed decided to pursue this route, the
Ziofascists in Washington would simply and very happily open up a new front against Islamabad. (Although
doing so would stand a better -- worse? -- chance of provoking some kind of Chinese reaction than the current US
antagonizing of Tehran.)
The DPRK's stance against Washington is purely defensive and they clearly have no wish to engage in any
action that could trigger the end of the Kim regime. China would also likely not back it up in such a
scenario.
Iran is clearly the victim here, but has been cornered into an unenviable position from which it has no
favorable options. Those hoping that Russia and China will somehow step in to prevent war will find
themselves disappointed. The most likely best scenario is that this new war will seal the eventual financial
bankruptcy of the US. However, the results of that would take years to unfold. But this new war will
undoubtedly be a costly one and, in the not so long run, fiscally untenable.
The Iranians won't do jack. If they try anything, Trump will exterminate the Iranians.
Lol. "Valley Forge Warrior". What an obvious Hasbara troll. He probably has only a vague knowledge of
American history, so he picked something he stereotypically thinks an American patriot would call himself.
Along with A123, these hacks have been clogging up the comments of every article on the subject trying to
gin up the goyim for war on Iran. What "ally" does that kind of thing?
@NTG
When? When the rest of the world was destroyed and US was the only one standing, representing half the
world's economy and industrial capacity? In current conditions this leads to hyperinflation and the rest of
the world, which is growing faster than the US (now down to 15 % of the world economy in PPP) and is already
quite self-sufficient from US industry abandoning the dollar. No one would take something that is printed in
heavy amounts to liquidate 30 + trillions in debt. The end of dollar main reserve currency status, which
leads to feedback loop and even greater hyperinflation in the US.
Forcing the US out of the area seems to be a likely response. Perhaps they'll be able to gin up some popular
riots and demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Undermining the Saudi regime might be a real blow to
the US; who really knows how stable it actually is? As opportunities present themselves the Iranians will
avail themselves of them, avoiding direct confrontations and clashes. Remember, they live there so can drag
this out over time.
No less alarming is that this creates the absolutely perfect conditions for a false flag la "USS
Liberty". Right now, the Israelis have become at least as big a danger for US servicemen and facilities
in the entire Middle-East as are the Iranians themselves.
@Harbinger
The wankers Trump and Netanyahu have been planning this invasion for some time. Actually, given the level
and history of U.S. hubris, the Neocons have not quite gotten over the fact that 50 years ago, the Iranian
people kicked the murderous Shah (U.S. puppet) out of the country. The U.S. will continue to invade and wage
wars against sovereigns who refuse to tow the U.S. line. Please dump Trump in 2020!
The US constantly threatens to overthrow Iran's government, invades and occupies
its neighboring countries, decimates it with sanctions, launches cyber-attacks on its infrastructure, and
now assassinates its national leaders. But the propagandists tell you Iran is the "aggressor"
How can the government on a moment's notice locate and drop a bomb on the head of a veteran military
officer and yet not be able to find a measly whore (jizzlane) hiding out in Israel.
Are you familiar with the name of a Mossad agent "Madam" Ghislaine Maxwell? What about her father R.
Maxwell, a mega-embezzler, thief and Mossad agent?
The fallen Iranian was an honest and honorable man, unlike the Jewish procuress of underage girls for
wealthy pedophiles and the Jewish plunderer of pensions.
While Mirror Group shareholders were wiped out, arguably the biggest losers were the pensioners most
pensioners had to accept a 50% cut in the value of their pensions.
No wonder Maxwell (known as "a great fraud") was feted by other prominent Jewish frauds.
It is very doubtful that Iran retaliates in any way that might lead to all out war with the U.S. unless they
have assurances of total backing from either Russia or China, which I don't see happening at this time.
Neither one of those countries is ready for WW III against the U.S. at the present.
If I were Iran, though, I would use the fact that they sit on some of the largest energy reserves in the
world to help me acquire as many nukes as possible. That might truly be the only deterrent to their
destruction, as Israel and her surrogate the U.S. are never going to give up in there intention of
destroying that country.
@lysias
Yes, but it would piss off the sheople, and Iran doesn't need anymore of the American Bovinus demanding more
belligerence. (for which they personally won't risk a fingernail).
Since then their consolidation over the media and federal government has been consummate. The only cracks
in the iron bubble being the formerly free Internet, and they're very fast sealing off those few remaining
cracks.
Now you'd have to be near brain-dead not to know that they control our foreign policy in absolute terms,
and that Americans have been dying for the greater glory of their enemies in Israel for generations now.
What we need to do is allow the American people to decide if they want to send more of their children to
kill and die for their enemies in Israel.
We all know Iran is nothing more than one more country Israel demands we destroy.
Iran simply needs to allow the rest of the world, to rise up in condemnation with all the nations of the
planet, including the millions of patriotic Americans that are sick to death of our federal government's
slavish fealty to Jewish supremacist shekels.
Don't react to the provocation. Allow all the nations and people of the world to become sympathetic to
your cause. Perhaps, though some miracle even the Sunni nations of the world will side with Iran on this
one.
We all know who the bully is, and who the victim is. Just look at what the ZUS did to Iraq and Libya and
Syria and so many others
It's a global problem for so many, that we can't even count the victims of zio-criminality, from Donbas
to Caracas, to Bolivia..
We need a global outrage, and a global demand to reign in the Zionist fiend.
By doing nothing, but speaking out, Iran's message of victimization is it's more powerful, moral weapon.
Israel Assassinations from 1950's to 2018
[MORE]
1950s
Date Place Country Target Description Action Killer
July 13, 1956 Gaza Strip Egypt Mustafa Hafez Egyptian Army Lieutenant-Colonel, responsible for
recruiting refugees to carry out attacks in Israel. Parcel bomb[12] Israel Defense Forces operation
directed by Yehoshafat Harkabi.
July 14, 1956 Amman Jordan Salah Mustafa Egyptian Military attache
1960s
Date Place Country Target Description Action Killer
September 11, 1962 Munich Germany Heinz Krug West German rocket scientist working for Egypt's missile
program Abducted from his company offices on Munich's Schillerstrasse, his body was never found. Swiss
police later arrested two Mossad agents for threatening the daughter of another scientist and found
that they were responsible for the killing. Part of Operation Damocles. Mossad
November 28, 1962 Heluan Egypt 5 Egyptian factory workers Workers employed at Factory 333, an Egyptian
rocket factory. Letter bomb sent bearing Hamburg post mark. Another such bomb disfigured and blinded a
secretary. Part of Operation Damocles.
February 23, 1965 Montevideo Uruguay Herberts Cukurs Aviator who had been involved in the murders of
Latvian Jews during the Holocaust[18] Lured to and killed in Montevideo by agents under the false
pretense of starting an aviation business.
1970s
Date Place Country Target Description Action Killer
July 8, 1972 Beirut Lebanon Ghassan Kanafani Palestinian writer and a leading member of the PFLP, who
had claimed responsibility for the Lod Airport massacre on behalf of the PFLP.[19] Killed by car bomb.
Mossad[20][21][22][19][23][24][25]
July 25, 1972 Attempted killing of Bassam Abu Sharif Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Information Office. He held a press conference with Ghassan Kanafani during the Dawson's Field
hijackings justifying the PFLP's actions. He lost four fingers, and was left deaf in one ear and blind
in one eye, after a book sent to him that was implanted with a bomb exploded in his hands.
October 16, 1972 Rome Italy Abdel Wael Zwaiter Libyan embassy employee, cousin of Yassir Arafat,[21]
PLO representative, poet and multilingual translator, considered by Israel to be a terrorist for his
alleged role in the Black September group and the Munich massacre,[27] though Aaron Klein states that
'uncorroborated and improperly cross-referenced intelligence information tied him to a support group'
for Black September.[24] Shot 12 times by two Mossad gunmen as he waited for an elevator to his
apartment near Piazza Avellino.[19][21]
December 8, 1972 Paris France Mahmoud Hamshari PLO representative in France and coordinator of the
Munich Olympic Games massacre.[28] Killed by bomb concealed in his telephone.
January 24, 1973 Nicosia Cyprus Hussein Al Bashir a.k.a. Hussein Abu-Khair/Hussein Abad. Fatah
representative in Nicosia, Cyprus and PLO liaison officer with the KGB.[24] Killed by bomb in his
hotel room bed.
April 6, 1973 Paris France Basil Al-Kubaissi PFLP member and American University of Beirut Professor
of International Law Killed on a street in Paris by two Mossad agents.[21]
April 9, 1973 Beirut Lebanon Kamal Adwan Black September commander and member of the Fatah central
committee[29] Killed in his apartment in front of his children during Operation Spring of Youth,
either shot 55 times or killed with a grenadeSayeret Matk al led by Ehud Barak
Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar Black September Operations officer and PLO official Shot dead in his
apartment together with his wife during Operation Spring of Youth.[31] Sayeret Matkal together with
Mossad
Kamal Nasser Palestinian Christian poet, advocate of non-violence and PLO spokesman Shot dead in his
apartment during Operation Spring of Youth. According to Palestinian sources his body was left as if
hanging from a cross. A woman neighbour was shot dead when she opened her door during the operation.
Sayeret Matkal
April 11, 1973 Athens Greece Zaiad Muchasi Fatah representative to Cyprus Killed in hotel room.[21]
Mossad[32][33][34]
June 28, 1973 Paris France Mohammad Boudia Black September operations officer Killed by
pressure-activated mine under his car seat.[21]
July 21, 1973 Lillehammer Norway Attempted killing of Ali Hassan Salameh High-ranked leader in the PLO
and Black September who was behind the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre Shmed Bouchiki, an innocent
waiter believed to be Ali Hassan Salameh, killed by gunmen. Known as the Lillehammer affair.
March 27, 1978 East Berlin East Germany Wadie Haddad PFLP commander, who masterminded several plane
hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s.[36] He apparently died of cancer in an East Berlin hospital,
reportedly untraced by Mossad.[37] Mossad never claimed responsibility. Aaron Klein states that Mossad
passed on through a Palestinian contact a gift of chocolates laced with a slow poison, which
effectively caused his death several months later.[36]
January 22, 1979 Beirut Lebanon Ali Hassan Salameh High-ranked leader in the PLO and Black September
who was behind the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre[35] Killed by remote-controlled car bomb,[21]
along with four bodyguards and four innocent bystanders.
1980s
Date Place Country Target Description Action Executor
June 13, 1980 Paris France Yehia El-Mashad Egyptian nuclear scientist, lecturer at Alexandria
University Killed in his room at the Mridien Hotel in Operation Sphinx.[38][39]:23 Marie-Claude
Magal, prostitute, client of El-Meshad, pushed under a car and killed in the Boulevard Saint-Germain.
Mossad
September 1981 So Paulo Brazil Jos Alberto Albano do Amarante An Air Force lieutenant colonel,
assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service to prevent Brazil from becoming a nuclear nation.He
was contaminated by radioactive material. Samuel Giliad or Guesten Zang, a Mossad agent, an Israeli
born in Poland.
August 21, 1983 Athens Greece Mamoun Meraish Senior PLO official Shot in his car from motorcycle.
Mossad
June 9, 1986 Khalid Nazzal Secretary of the DFLP (Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine) Killed
in Athens by Mossad agents who entered Greece with fake passports, shot Nazzal while leaving his
hotel, and fled the country. Mossad
October 21, 1986 Munther Abu Ghazaleh High-ranked leader in the PLO. Senior member of the National
Palestinian Council, the Revolutionary Council of Al Fatah and the Supreme Military Council of the
Revolutionary Palestinian Forces. Killed by car bomb Mossad
April 16, 1988 Tunis Tunisia Abu Jihad Second-in-command to Yassir Arafat Shot dead in front of his
family in the Tunis Raid by Israeli commandos under the direction of Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya'alon, and
condemned as a political assassination by the United States State Department.[9][44] Israel Defense
Forces
July 14, 1989 Alexandria Egypt Said S. Bedair Egyptian scientist in electrical, electronic and
microwave engineering and a colonel in the Egyptian army Fell to his death from the balcony of his
brother's apartment in Camp Chezar, Alexandria, Egypt. His veins were found cut and a gas leak was
detected in the apartment. Arabic and Egyptian sources claim that the Mossad assassinated him in a way
that appears as a suicide.
1990s
Date Place Country Target Description Action Executor
March 20, 1990
Brussels Belgium Gerald Bull Canadian engineer and designer of the Project
Babylon "supergun" for Saddam Husseins government Shot at door to his apartment Attributed to Mossad
by several sources,[45] and widely believed to be a Mossad operation by intelligence experts,[46]
Gordon Thomas states it was the work of Mossad's director Nahum Admoni.[47] Israel denied involvement
at the time.[46] and several other countries had interests in seeing him dead.
February 16, 1992
Nabatieh Governorate Lebanon Abbas al-Musawi Secretary-General of Hezbollah
After 3 IDF soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants of the PIJ during a training exercise at
Gal'ed in Israel, Israel retaliated by killing Musawi in his car, together with his wife Sihan and
5-year-old child Hussein, with seven missiles launched from two Apache Israeli helicopters.[21]
Hezbollah retaliated by the attacking Israel's embassy in Argentina.[48] Israel Defense Forces[49]
June 8, 1992 Paris
France Atef Bseiso Palestinian official involved in Munich Massacre Shot
several times in the head at point-blank range by 2 gunmen, in his hotel (Aaron Klein's "Striking
Back") Mossad, with French complicity, according to the PLO, but French security sources suggested the
hand of Abu Nidal.[50][51]
October 26, 1995
Sliema Malta Fathi Shaqaqi Head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Shot and killed
in front of Diplomat Hotel.[21] Mossad.[47]
January 6, 1996
Beit Lahia Gaza Strip Yahya Ayyash "The Engineer", Hamas bomb maker Head blown
off by cell phone bomb in Osama Hamad's apartment, responding to a call from his father. Osama's
father, Kamal Hamad, was a known collaborator with Israel, and it was bruited in Israel that he had
betrayed his son's friend for $1 million, a fake passport and a U.S. visa. Covert Israeli
operation[53]
September 25, 1997
Amman Jordan Khaled Mashaal (failed attempt) Hamas political leader
Attempted poisoning. Israel provided antidote, after pressure by Clinton. Canada withdrew Ambassador.
Two Mossad agents with Canadian passports arrested
2000s
2000, September 29-2001,
April 25. According to Palestinian sources, the IDF assassinated 13
political activists in Area A under full Palestinian Authority, with 9 civilian casualties.[54]
2003 (August)
The Israeli government authorized the killing of Hamas's entire political
leadership in Gaza, 'without further notice,' in a method called 'the hunting season' in order to
strengthen the position of moderates and Mahmoud Abbas.
2005 In February Israel announced a suspension of targeted killings, while reserving the right to kill
allegedly 'ticking bombs'.[55]
Date Place Location Target Description Action Executor
November 9, 2000
Beit Sahur West Bank Hussein Mohammed Abayat (37); Abayat was a senior
official of the Fatah faction Tanzim. Killed while driving his Mitsubishi by a Hellfire anti-tank
missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter. Rahma She'ibat, (50); 'Aziza Dannoun Jobran (52), two
local women, were killed by a second missile, and Nazhmi She'ibat and his wife were also injured.
Accused of shooting at the Gilo settlement.[5][54][56] Israel Defense Forces[57]
November 22, 2000
Morag Gaza Strip Jamal Abdel Raziq (39), and Awni Dhuheir (38).[58] Senior
official of the Fatah faction Tanzim Killed on the Rafah-Khan Yunis western road near the junction
leading to Morag settlement while in a Honda Civic with the driver, Awni Dhuheir when their car was
machine-gunned from two tanks at close range. The first version, they were about to attack Morag; the
second version, Raziq was targeted after firing at IDF soldiers. His uncle was later sentenced to
death for collaborating in his nephew's death by furnishing Israel with details.[54] Two bystanders in
a taxi behind them also killed (Sami Abu Laban, 29, baker, and Na'el Shehdeh El-Leddawi, 25,
student).[58][59]
November 23, 2000
Nablus West Bank Ibrahim 'Abd al-Karim Bani 'Odeh (34) Unknown. Had been
jailed for 3 years by the PNA until two weeks before his death. Killed while driving a Subaru near
Al-Salam mosque. Israeli version, he died from his own rudimentary bomb. Palestinian version: his
cousin 'Allan Bani 'Oudeh confessed to collaborating with Israel in an assassination, and was
convicted and shot in Jan 2001.[54] ?[57]
December 11, 2000
Nablus West Bank Anwar Mahmoud Hamran (28) A PIJ bombing suspect. Jailed for
2 years by PNA and released 6 weeks before his death. Targeted on a campus of Al-Quds Open University
while waiting for a taxi-cab. Shot 19 times by a sniper at 500 yards. IDF version shot by soldiers in
self-defence. Palestinian version, he died with books in his hand.Israel Defense Forces
December 12, 2000
al-Khader West Bank Yusef Ahmad Mahmoud Abu Sawi (28) Unknown Targeted and
shot by a sniper at 200 metres, 17 bullets.[57]
December 13, 2000
Hebron West Bank 'Abbas 'Othman El-'Oweiwi(25) Hamas activist Targeted and
shot 3 times in head and chest by a sniper while standing in front of his store in Wadi Al-Tuffah
Street.[54][57]
December 14, 2000
Burin West Bank Saed Ibrahim Taha al-Kharuf (35) Targeted and shot dead.
rowspan=2|Israel Defense Forces.[57]
December 14, 2000
Junction of Salah el-Din near Deir al-Balah Gaza Strip Hani Hussein Abu Bakra
Israeli version. Hamas activist shot as he tried to fire from a pistol. Driver of a Hyundai taxi van.
Palestinian version: shot while reaching for his identity card which he was asked to produce when
stopped. 4 of seven passengers wounded, one of whom, 'Abdullah 'Eissa Gannan, 40, died 10 days
later.[54]
December 17, 2000
Qalandiyya West Bank Samih Malabi Tanzim officer.[60] Mobile phone bomb.
December 31, 2000
Tulkarem West Bank Thabat Ahmad Thabat Classed by Israel as head of Tanzim
cell.[54] Dentist, lecturer on public health at Al Quds University, and Fatah Secretary-General on the
West Bank.[60] Israeli Special Forces sniper shot him as he drove his car from his home in Ramin,
classified as an apparent political assassination.[56] Israel Defense Forces
February 13, 2001
Gaza City[54] Gaza Strip Mas'oud Hussein 'Ayyad (50) Lieutenant-colonel in
Force 17, an aide of Yasser Arafat held responsible for a failed mortar attack on a Jewish settlement
in Gaza. The IDF also alleged, without providing evidence, that he intended to form a Hezbollah cell
in the Gaza Strip.[5][56][61] Killed while driving a Hyundai in Jabalia Camp by a Cobra gunship
launching 3rockets.[62] Israeli Air Force
February 19, 2001
Nablus West Bank Mahmoud Suleiman El-Madani (25) Hamas activist Shot by two
men in plainclothes as he left a mosque. As they fled, according to the Palestinian version, covering
fire was provided by an Israeli unit on Mount Gerizim.[54]
April 2, 2001
Al-Barazil neighborhood of Rafah Gaza Strip Mohammed 'Attwa 'Abdel-'Aal (26) PIJ
Combat helicopters fired three rockets at his Peugeot Thunder, also hitting the taxi behind, whose
occupants survived. Israeli Air Force[54]
April 5, 2001
Jenin West Bank Iyad Mohammed Hardan (26) Head of the PIJ in Jenin. IDF version.
He was involved in the 1997 Mahane Yehuda Market Bombings Blown up in a public phone booth, when,
reportedly, an Israeli helicopter was flying overhead.Baruch Kimmerling classifies it as an apparent
political execution to provoke Palestinians.[60]
April 25, 2001 Rafah West Bank Ramadan Ismail 'Azzam (33); Samir Sabri Zo'rob (34); Sa'di Mohammed
El-Dabbas (32); Yasser Hamdan El-Dabbas (18) Popular Resistance Committees members Blown up while
examining a triangular object with flashing lights that had been reported as lying near the border
earlier that day. Palestinians say the object exploded as an Israeli helicopter passed overhead.[54]
May 5, 2001 Bethlehem West Bank Ahmad Khalil 'Eissa Assad (38) PIJ activist Hit while leaving his
house for work, reportedly from shots (15) fired from the Israeli military outpost at Tel Abu Zaid,
250 metres away. His niece, Ala, was also injured. Israel said the victim intended carrying out armed
operations in the future inside Israel. Israel Defense Forces[63]
May 12, 2001 Jenin West Bank Mutassam Mohammed al-Sabagh (28) Fatah activist In a car with two
Palestinian intelligence officers, who managed to escape on sighting an Apache helicopter, which
struck it with three missiles. The two officers were also wounded. A fourth missile struck a
Palestinian police car killing Sergeant Aalam al-Raziq al-Jaloudi and injuring Lieutenant Tariq
Mohammed Amin al-Haj. Two bystanders also wounded. Israeli Army accused the three of plotting attacks
on nearby settlers.[63] Israeli Air Force[63]
June 24, 2001 Nablus West Bank Osama Fatih al-Jawabra (Jawabiri) (29) al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
militant. His name was on an Israeli wanted list submitted to PNA. Bomb exploded as he picked up a
phone in a public telephone booth. Two brothers, Malik Shabaro (2), and Amar Shabaro (4) injured.
Alleged by PNA to be IDF,.[64] but denied by the Israeli government.[63]
July 17, 2001 Bethlehem West Bank Omar Ahmed Sa'adeh (45) Hamas leader Killed by two wire-guided
missiles fired by two Israeli helicopter gunships at his garden hut, also killing Taha Aal-Arrouj
(37). His brother Izhaq Ahmed Sa'adeh (51), a peace activist, and his cousin Hamad Saleh Sa'adeh (29),
were killed by a further missile as they rushed towards the rubble. A dozen people nearby were
wounded. Israel maintained that it was a preventive attack on a planner of a terrorist attack at the
Maccabiah Games.[63][65] Israeli Air Force
July 23, 2001 'Anin, west of Jenin West Bank Mustafa Yusuf Hussein Yassin (26) ? Released from an
Israeli prison earlier that day. According to his wife, he opened the door on hearing noises outside
their home and was shot at point-blank range in front of his family. Israeli sources say he was
planning to bomb Israeli targets. Israel Defense Forces[63]
July 25, 2001 Nablus West Bank Salah Nour al-Din Khalil Darwouza (38) Hamas Car hit while driving in
Nablus. He evaded two missiles from an Apache helicopter, but the car was hit by a further 4. Israel
claimed he planned bombing attacks on French Hill, and Netanya. Israeli Air Force[63]
July 31, 2001 Nablus West Bank Jamal Mansour (41); Jamal Salim Damouni (42) High-ranking official of
Hamas' West Bank political wing Killed when office struck by helicopter-launched missiles[66] as
Mansour was giving an interview to journalists in the Palestinian Centre for Studies and Media. 4
others killed in the room: Mohammed al-Bishawi (28); Othman Qathnani (25); Omar Mansour (28); Fahim
Dawabsha, (32). Two children, aged 5 and 8, outside were also killed, and three more adults injured by
shrapnel.[63] Eyal Weizman states its purpose was to derail peace talks. Israel Defense Forces[5]
August 5, 2001 Tulkarm West Bank Amer Mansour Habiri/Aamer Mansour al-Hudairy (22) Hamas Missiles
fired at the car.
August 20, 2001 Hebron West Bank Imad Abu Sneneh Leader of Tanzim Shot and killed.[67] Israeli
undercover team
August 27, 2001 Ramallah West Bank Abu Ali Mustafa (63) Head of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine and senior executive leader of the PLO. Killed by laser-guided missiles fired from Apache
helicopters while talking on the phone in his office.Baruch Kimmerling classifies it as an apparent
political execution to provoke Palestinians.[60] Other sources say Shin Bet convinced the Israeli
Cabinet he was connected to terrorism.[68] Israeli Air Force
September 6, 2001 Tulkarm West Bank 'Omar Mahmoud Dib Subuh (22); Mustafa 'Ahed Hassan 'Anbas (19).
Unknown Targeted and killed by a helicopter missile in an attempt to assassinate 4 Palestinians, of
whom 2 died. Israel Defense Forces[57]
October 14, 2001 Qalqiliya West Bank 'Abd a-Rahman Sa'id Hamed (33) Unknown Targeted by a sniper and
shot at the entrance to his house.
October 15, 2001 Nablus West Bank Ahmad Hassan Marshud (29) Unknown Targeted killing by explosion.
?[57]
October 18, 2001 Beit Sahur West Bank Jamal 'Abdallah 'Abayiat (35); 'Issa 'Atef Khatib 'Abayiat (28);
'Atef Ahmad 'Abayiat (25). Unknown The three, all relatives were killed while driving a Jeep. Israel
Defense Forces[57]
October 22, 2001 Nablus West Bank Ayman Halawah (26). Unknown Killed while riding in a car. ?[57]
31 October 2001 Hebron West Bank Jamil Jadallah al-Qawasmeh (25). Unknown Killed by a helicopter
missile which struck his house. Israeli Air Force[57]
2 November 2001 Tulkarm West Bank Fahmi Abu 'Easheh (28); Yasser 'Asira (25) Unknown Killed by gunfire
whole driving in a car. Israel Defense Forces[57]
23 November 2001 Far'a West Bank Mahmoud a-Shuli (Abu Hanud) (33); Maamun 'Awaisa (22); Ayman 'Awaisa
(33). Unknown all three killed while riding in a taxi by a helicopter missile.
December 10, 2001 Hebron West Bank Burhan al-Haymuni (3); Shadi Ahmad 'Arfah (13) None Two brothers
killed in a vehicle hit by a helicopter missile during a targeted killing of a person in a nearby car.
January 14, 2002 Tulkarem West Bank Raed (Muhammad Ra'if ) Karmi (28) Head of the Tanzim in Tulkarem
He had planned the murders of two Israelis in Tulkarem and was behind a failed assassination attempt
on the life of an Israeli Air Force colonel. After surviving an attempt to kill him by helicopter on
September 6, 2001, he was persuaded by Arafat to desist from violence but killed twenty three days
after a ceasefire[69] was in place because the Shin Bet was convinced they would never have the same
operational opportunity to take him out. Killed from a bomb planted in a cemetery wall, set off by a
UAV circling above when he passed by it on a visit to his mistress, to create the impression he had
blown himself up accidentally.[70][71] Baruch Kimmerling classifies it as an apparent political
execution to provoke Palestinians.[60] Eyal Weizman states its purpose was to derail peace talks.
January 22, 2002 Nablus West Bank Yusif Suragji West Bank head of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Three
other Hamas members also killed. Palestinian Authority claims it was an assassination.[72] Killed in a
raid on an alleged explosives factory.[72] Israeli Defence Forces
January 24, 2002 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Adli Hamadan (Bakr Hamdan) Senior Hamas member missile attack
on car.[72] Israeli Air Force
February 4, 2002 Rafah Gaza Strip Ayman Bihdari DFLP member wanted for 25 August 2001 raid in which
three Israeli soldiers were killed. missile attack on car. Four other DFLP members killed.[72]
February 16, 2002 Jenin West Bank Nazih Mahmoud Abu a-Saba' Second ranking Hamas officer in Jenin.[73]
Killed by a bomb planted in his car, in a targeted killing.[74] Israel Defense Forces
March 5, 2002 al-Birah West Bank Mohammad(Diriyah Munir) Abu Halawa (23); Fawzi Murar (32); 'Omar
Hussein Nimer Qadan (27). Wanted AMB member. Missile fired at car from helicopter, Murar and Qadan
according to B'tselem were not combatants at the time.[57][75] Israeli Air Force
March 6, 2002 Gaza City Gaza Strip Abdel Rahman Ghadal Hamas member Missile attack on his home.[21]
March 9, 2002 Ramallah West Bank Samer Wajih Yunes 'Awis (29) Not a participant in hostilities at the
time, according to B'tselem.[57] Killed by missile fired from a helicopter, which struck a car he was
travelling in. Israel Defense Forces
March 14, 2002 Anabta West Bank Mutasen Hamad (Mu'atasem Mahmoud 'Abdallah Hammad) (28); 'Atef Subhi
Balbisi (Balbiti) (25). Hamad was an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade member and bomb maker. 3 missiles fired
from an Israeli attack helicopter at Hamad's car, near a chicken farm. A Palestinian source say a
bystander, a chicken farmer (Maher Balbiti) was also killed. An Israeli sources identify him as a
terrorist.[21][76][77] Israeli Air Force
April 5, 2002 Tubas West Bank Qeis 'Adwan (25); Saed 'Awwad (25); Majdi Balasmeh (26); Ashraf
Daraghmeh (29); Muhammad Kmeil (28); Munqez Sawafta (29) Qeis 'adwan was a Hamas activist and bomb
maker to whom several suicide bomb attacks were attributed. Targeted in a combined drone, tank and
special forces siege during Operation Defensive Shield. Given hospitality in his house by Munqez
Sawafta. After hours of gunfire, and a refusal to surrender, a D-9 armored bulldozer crushed part of
the house and the remaining 3 were shot.[57][78] Israel Defense Forces
April 22, 2002 Hebron West Bank Marwan Zaloum (59) and Samir Abu Rajoub. Tanzim Hebron leader and
Force 17 member Killed by a helicopter missile while driving a car. Zaloum was on an Israeli wanted
list, and thought responsible for shootings, including that Shalhevet Pass. Israeli helicopter
strike.[21][57][79] Israeli Air Force
May 22, 2002 Balata refugee camp, Nablus West Bank Iyad Hamdan (22); 'Imad Khatib (25); Mahmoud
'Abdallah Sa'id Titi (30); Bashir Yaish (30) Unknown, the first three were targeted. All four killed
by a shell shot from an Israeli tank. Yaish was not involved in hostilities at the time. Israel
Defense Forces[57]
June 24, 2002 Rafah Gaza Strip Yasir Raziq, 'Amr Kufa. Izzeddln al-Qassam Brigades leaders. Missiles
fired at two taxis, killing two other passengers (reportedly also Hamas activists),[80] the two
drivers and injuring 13 bystanders.[21][81] Israeli Air Force
June 30, 2002 Nablus West Bank Muhaned Taher, Imad Draoza. Muhaned Taher, nom de guerre "Engineer 4",
was a master Hamas bomber claimed by Israel to be responsible for both the Patt Junction Bus Bombing
and the Dolphinarium discotheque suicide bombing. Died with a deputy in a shoot-out with Israeli
raiding commandos.[21][80] Israel Defense Forces
June 17, 2002 al-Khader West Bank Walid Sbieh| ? Shot by an Israeli sniper in a targeted killing while
in his car.[57]
July 4, 2002 Gaza City Gaza Strip Jihad Amerin/(Aqid) Jihad Amrain Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Colonel.
Killed in a car bomb.[21][82] Israel Security Forces.[83]
July 23, 2002 Gaza City Gaza Strip Salah Shahade (Shehadeh) Leader of Hamas Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades Killed by 2,205-pound explosive dropped by an F-16. The attack also killed fourteen other
Palestinians including his wife and nine children. Yesh Gvul and Gush Shalom tried to have Dan Halutz
indicted, but the case was dropped.[21][84][85][86] Killed on the eve of an announced unilateral
cease-fire by Tanzim and Eyal Weizman states its purpose was to derail peace talks. Israeli Air Force.
27 reserve pilots undersigned a pilots' letter refusing to serve in IAF sorties over the West Bank and
Gaza in protest.
August 6, 2002 Jaba, Jenin West Bank Ali Ajuri, Murad Marshud Classified as people not known to be
involved in the fighting (B'tselem). Ajuri (21) was killed by an air-to-surface missile, during an
attempt to arrest him. Murad Marshud (19) killed as bystander.[74]
August 14, 2002 Tubas West Bank Nassa Jarrar Senior member of Hamas's militant wing. Died crushed by
rubble when an IDF bulldozer demolished his house. The IDF admitted it compelled at gunpoint Nidal Abu
M'khisan (19) to act as a human shield and get the victim out of his house. Jarrar shot the youth,
believing he was an IDF soldier. The victim was wheelchair bound. Israel suspected him of preparing a
bomb an Israeli high-rise building.[87][88] Israel Defense Forces
August 31 Tubas West Bank Bahira Daraghmeh (6); Ousamah Daraghmeh (12); Raafat Daraghmeh (29); Yazid
'Abd al-Razaq Daraghmeh (17); Sari Mahmoud Subuh (17). Five victims who did not participate in
hostilities when killed during a targeted killing, from a helicopter fired missile.[57] An eyewitness
account was later provided by 'Aref Daraghmeh. "The helicopter fired a third missile towards a
silver Mitsubishi, which had four people in it. The missile hit the trunk, and the car spun around its
axle. I saw a man escaping the car and running away. He ran about 25 meters and then fell to the
ground and died. The three other passengers remained inside. I saw an arm and an upper part of a skull
flying out of the car. The car went up in flames, and I could see three bodies burning inside it.
Three minutes later, after the Israeli helicopters left, I went out to the street and began to shout.
I saw people lying on the ground. Among them was six-year-old Bahira . . She was dead . . I also saw
Bahira's cousin, Osama . . I saw Osama's mother running towards Bahira, picking her up and heading
towards the a-Shifa clinic, which is about 500 meters away."
October 13, 2002 Beit Jala West Bank Muhammad Ishteiwi 'Abayat (28) ? Killed in an explosion in a
telephone booth, in a targeted killing.[57]
October 29, 2002 Tubas West Bank Assim Sawafta Age 19 Hamas Izzedine al Qassam military leader. Killed
by an undercover army unit, after failing to surrender.[21][89] Israel Defense Forces
November 4, 2002 Nablus West Bank Hamed 'Omar a-Sader (36); Firas Abu Ghazala (27). Unknown Killed by
a car-bomb. According to B'tselem, Firas Abu Ghazala was not engaged in hostilities at the time.[57]
November 26, 2002 Jenin West Bank Alah Sabbagh (26); Imad Nasrti/'Imad Nasharteh (22); Sabbagh
reportedly an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade member, Nasrti Hamas local leader. Killed in an Israeli
airstrike on a house in the Jenin refugee camp by two missiles fired into a room.[21][90] Israeli Air
Force
December 23, 2002 wadi Burqin near Jenin West Bank Shumann Hassan Subuh (29) and Mustafa Kash (26/30)
Subah was a Hamas commander and bomb maker. Ambushed by IDF unit as Kash drove a tractor between
Burqin and Al-Yamun.[21][57][91] Israel Defense Forces
January 30, 2003 Burqin West Bank Faiz al-Jabber (32) ? Targeted when Israeli forces opened fire at a
Fatah group. He fled, was wounded, then shot dead at close range.[57] Israeli Border Police
March 8, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ibrahim al-Makadmeh Gaza Dentist. Second-in-Command of Hamas's
Military Wing.[21] Hamas political leader. He and three of his aides killed by helicopter-fired
missiles.[92] Israeli Air Force
March 18, 2003 Baqat al-Hatab West Bank Nasser Asida Hamas commander Shot while hiding in a cave, On
Israel's most wanted list as alleged mastermind of attacks on Israeli settlements in the West
Bank.[93] Israel Defense Forces's Kfir Brigade[94]
March 25, 2003 Bethlehem West Bank Mwafaq 'Abd a-Razaq Shhadeh Badawneh (40); 'Alaa Iyad (24); Nader
Salameh Jawarish (25); Christine George S'adeh (11) ? Israeli Defence Forces version, agents were
ambushed and shot dead 2 Palestinian gunmen, and a girl in a car that blundered into the battle, and
was believed to be part of the ambush. The girl's parents and sister were wounded.[95] B'tselem
reports that three of the 4 did not participate in hostilities at the time, but were killed during the
targeted assassination by an undercover team of Nader Gawarish and Nader Salameh Jawarish[57]
April 8, 2003 Zeitoun, Gaza City Gaza Strip Said al-Arabid Hamas Israeli Air Force strike on his car
followed by helicopter missiles. Seven Palestinians, ranging from 6 to 75, were killed, 47 wounded, 8
critically.[21] Israeli Air Force[96]
April 9, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Mahmoud Zatma Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine Senior Commander,
Bomb Maker[21] Apache helicopter hit the car he was driving in Gaza City, 10 bystanders injured.[97]
April 12, 2003 Tulkarm West Bank Jasser Hussein Ahmad 'Alumi (23) ? Killed by gunfire. Object of a
targeted killing.[57] Israel Defense Forces
April 10, 2003 Tulkarm West Bank Yasser Alemi Fatah, Tanzim Shot and killed as a fugitive in Tulkarm.
Israel Border Police[21]
April 29, 2003 Gaza Strip Nidal Salameh PFLP Killed when 4 helicopter missiles struck his car[21]
Israeli Air Force
May 8, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Iyad el-Bek (30) Aide of Salah Shehade, Hamas activist.[21][98]
Killed by three helicopter missiles fired at a car.
June 11, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Tito Massoud (35) and Soffil Abu Nahez (29) Massoud was a senior
member of Hamas's military wing.[21] Retaliatory strike one hour after the Davidka Square bus bombing.
4 bystanders also killed[99]
June 12, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Jihad Srour and Yasser Taha Hamas members[21] Killed by between 4
and 6 helicopter missiles while their car was caught in a traffic jam, near a cemetery where victims
of the June 11 strike the day before were being buried. Collateral damage consisted of 6 other victims
including Taha's wife and child. 25 others were injured by the blasts.[100]
June 12, 2003 Jenin West Bank Fadi Taisir Jaradat (21); Saleh Suliman Jaradat (31) Saleh Suliman
Jaradat was an Islamic Jihad activist Both killed at the entrance of their home, the latter being the
target. Fadi Jaradat did not participate in hostilities at the time, according to B'tselem.[57] Israel
Defense Forces[57]
June 21, 2003 Hebron West Bank 'Abdallah 'Abd al-Qader Husseini al-Qawasmeh (41) Wanted by IDF Shot
dead after getting out of a taxi before a mosque. Three vans approached, with a dozen Israelis
disguised as Palestinian labourers, and he was shot in the leg, perhaps while fleeing to a nearby
field, and then finished off.[101][102]
August 21, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ismail Abu Shanab (48) Engineer and high-ranking Hamas military
commander.[103] High-ranking Hamas official[104] Missile strike, ending a cease-fire.[105][106]
Israeli Air Force[21]
August 24, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Walid el Hams, Ahmed Rashdi Eshtwi (24), Ahmed Abu Halala,
Muhammad Abu Lubda Hamas members. Eshtwi was said by the IDF to be a Hamas liaison officer with West
Bank cells.[107] Twin helicopter missile strike as the five were sitting in a vacant lot near a Force
17 base. Several bystanders were injured, and a further Hamas member critically wounded.[108]
August 26, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Khaled Massoud brother of Tito Massoud, killed 3 months earlier.
Hamas Qassam rocket designer, alleged to be involved in mortar strikes. Attempted assassination of
Massoud, who was with two other Hamas activists, Wa'al Akilan and Massoud Abu Sahila, in a car.
Alerted to the threat, the three men managed to escape from their car as 3 missiles struck it and
killed a passing 65-year-old Jabaliya donkey driver Hassan Hemlawi, who was driving his cart. Two
bystanders were also wounded, including four children.[107][109]
August 28, 2003 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Hamdi Khalaq Izzedine al Qassam 3 missiles struck hit a donkey
cart Khalaq was driving. Three Gazans nearby were wounded. The IDF said he was on his way to a mortar
attack on an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip.[110] Israel Defense Forces[21]
August 30, 2003 On a road linking the Nusseirat and Bureij refugee camps Gaza Strip Abdullah Akel (37)
and Farid Mayet (40) Hamas senior operatives, said to have fired mortar shells and Qassam rocks.
Killed when 4 helicopter missiles struck their pickup truck. Seven others Palestinians were wounded by
the fire.. IDF soldiers machine-gunned an 8-year-old girl Aya Fayad the same day in the Khan Yunis
refugee camp, while, according to IDF reports, shooting at road-bomb militants detonating bombs on a
patrol route.[111] 'Israeli strike kills two militants,'[112] Israeli Air Force[21]
September 1, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Khader Houssre (36) Hamas member Killed when 4 helicopter
missiles struck a car with 3 Hamas members, in a crowded side street. The second was critically
wounded, while the other managed to flee. 25 bystanders were injured in the strike.[113]
October 28, 2003 Tulharm Refugee Camp West Bank Ibrahim 'Aref Ibrahim a-N'anish Wanted by IDF Shot
dead, unarmed, as he drove his car to the entrance of the refugee camp.[57] Israel Defense Forces
December 25, 2003 Gaza City Gaza Strip Mustafa Sabah Senior Hamas bomb maker, thought behind
explosions that blew up 3 Merkava tanks inside the Gaza Strip.[114] Killed when 3 helicopter missiles
destroyed a Palestinian Authority compound where Sabah worked as a part-time guard.[114] Israeli Air
Force[21]
December 25, 2003 Gaza Strip Gaza Strip Mekled Hameid PIJ military commander. Helicopter gunship
attack on car, killing its occupants, including two PIJ members. Two bystanders were also reported
killed and some 25 bystanders injured.[115]
February 2, 2004 Nablus West Bank Hashem Da'ud Ishteiwi Abu Hamdan (2); Muhammad Hasanein Mustafa Abu
Hamdan (24); Nader Mahmoud 'Abd al-Hafiz Abu Leil (24); Na'el Ziad Husseini Hasanein (22). All four
wanted by the IDF Killed in a car struck by a missile fired from a helicopter. Israel Defense
Forces[57]
February 7, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Aziz Mahmoud Shami Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine local
field commander, claimed to be behind a 1995 double suicide bombing in Netanya. Missile strike
incinerated his car while he drove down a crowded street, and a passing 12-year-old boy was killed,
and 10 others wounded.[116] [21]
February 28, 2004 Jabaliya refugee camp Gaza Strip Amin Dahduh, Mahmoud Juda, Aiyman Dahduh. PIJ
military commander Missiles hit his car as it travelled from Gaza city to the refugee camp. Two
passengers are also killed and eleven bystanders wounded.[117][118] Israeli helicopters.
March 3, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Tarad Jamal, Ibrahim Dayri and Ammar Hassan.[5] Senior Hamas
members Missiles from helicopter fired at their car as it drove down a coastal road.[119] Helicopter
strike.[21]
March 16, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Nidal Salfiti and Shadi Muhana Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
Israeli missile strike.[21]
March 22, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ahmed Yassin Co-founder and leader of Hamas The purpose of the
operation was to strengthen the position of Mahmoud Abbas. As Yassin left a mosque at dawn, he, 2
bodyguards, and 7 bystanders killed by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache-fired Hellfire missiles. 17
bystanders were wounded.[120][121] Israeli Air Force[21]
April 17, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi Co-founder and leader of Hamas, and
successor of Ahmed Yassin as leader of Hamas after his death The purpose of the operation was to
strengthen the position of Mahmoud Abbas. al-Rantissi was killed by helicopter-fired missiles, along
with his son and bodyguard. Several bystanders were injured.[122]
April 22, 2004 Talluza West Bank Yasser Ahmed Abu Laimun (32) Lecturer in hospital management at the
Arab-American University in Jenin, mistaken for Imad Mohammed Janajra. IDF initially reported he was a
Hamas member.[123] Initially reported shot after shooting, and then running away from an Israeli
attack dog, trained to seize wanted individuals. His widow testified that he was shot, while in his
garden, from a distance of 200 yards by gunfire from Israeli soldiers behind an oak tree. The IDF
apologized.[124][125][126] Israel Defense Forces
May 5, 2004 Talluza West Bank Imad Mohammed Janajra (31)[21] Hamas leader Ambushed in an olive grove,
after an earlier attempt, mistaking Abu Laimun for him. Said by IDF to be armed and approaching
them.[126] Golani Brigade's elite Egoz unit.
May 30, 2004 Zeitoun Gaza Strip Wael Nassar[21] Hamas mastermind behind the mine that blew up an
Israeli troop carrier raiding Gaza City, on May 11, killing 6 soldier. He was killed on his
motorcycle, together with his aide, by a missile strike which also wounded 7 civilians, including a
woman and two children. A second following missile killed another Hamas member nearby.[127] Helicopter
strike
June 14, 2004 Nablus West Bank Khalil Mahmoud Zuhdi Marshud (24)[21][128]'Awad Hassan Ahmad Abu Zeid
(24). Head of Al-Aqsa Brigades in Nablus Earlier targeted in a Nablus missile attack on a car on May
3, killing 3 Al Aqsa Brigade members. He was in a different vehicle. Killed when a missile hit a car
outside the Balata refugee camp, also killing PIJ members Awad Abu Zeid e Mohammed Al Assi (Israeli
version). Abu Zeid did not engage in hostilities when killed (B'tselem report).[57] Israeli Army radio
said the decision to kill him followed on several failures to arrest him. The same day, an attempt to
kill Zakaria Zubeidi, head of the Jenin al Aqsa Brigades, failed.[128][129] Israel Defense Forces
June 26, 2004 Nablus West Bank Nayef Abu Sharkh (40) Jafer el-Massari Fadi Bagit Sheikh Ibrahim and
the others. Respectively Tanzim Hamas Nablus officer; Islamic Jihad officer.[21] Killed by IDF
paratroopers together with six other men found huddled in a secret tunnel beneath a house in the old
city of Nablus, after trailing a fugitive into the house.[130] Israeli paratroopers.
July 22, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Hazem Rahim[21] Islamic Jihad in Palestine member Helicopter
gunship missile strike on a car, killing Rahim and his deputy, Rauf Abu Asi. According to Israeli
sources, Rahim had been seen on video two months earlier brandishing body parts of ambushed Israeli
soldiers.[131][132] Israel Defense Forces
July 29, 2004 Near Rafah refugee camp Gaza Strip Amr Abu Suta, Zaki Abu Rakha[21] Abu al-Rish Brigades
leader. In a car, together with bodyguard, incinerated by Israeli helicopter fire. Accused of
involvement in the shooting of an IDF officer, and a 1992 killing in a Jewish settlement in the Gaza
Strip.[133]
August 17, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Five dead. Four Unidentified?[21] The target was a Hamas Izz
ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades leader, Ahmed al-Jabari. The five, included al-Jabari's 14-year-old son, his
brother, his nephew and son-in-law, were killed in a drone missile strike on al-Jabari's home. About a
dozen other Palestinians wounded. al-Jabari survived the attempt.[134][135] Israeli Air Force
September 13, 2004 Jenin West Bank Mahmoud Ass'ad Rajab Abu Khalifah (25),[21] Amjad Husseini 'Aref
Abu Hassan, Yamen Feisal 'Abd al-Wahab Ayub Al-Aqsa Brigades leader, deputy to Zakariya Zubeidi.
Killed together with two aides (Israeli version) when a helicopter missile struck his car in the city
centre.[136] Amjad Hassan and Yamen Feisal 'Abd al-Wahab Ayub were not, according to B'tselem,
involved in the fighting.[57]
September 20, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Khaled Abu Shamiyeh (30) Hamas rocketry mechanic.[21][137] Car
hit by missile Israel Defense Forces
September 21, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Nabil al-Saedi (34), Rabah Zaqout[21] Hamas mid-ranking
operatives. Killed when their Jeep was struck by a missile. 8 bystanders including 2 children were
wounded.[138]
September 27, 2004 Damascus Syria Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil (42)[21] Hamas senior official. A
Gazan deported by Israel in 1992. Blown up by a bomb hidden in his SUV when he answered a call on his
mobile phone, triggering the explosion. Israel did not claim responsibility but Ariel Sharon's
spokesman Raanin Gissin said:'Our longstanding policy has been that no terrorist will have any
sanctuary and any immunity,' and Moshe Ya'alon commented that action should be adopted against "terror
headquarters in Damascus" in the wake of the recent Beersheba bus bombings.[139]
September 27, 2004 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Ali al-Shaeir (26)[21] Popular Resistance Committee member
Killed while an Israeli helicopter gunship fired several missiles at a car in Abbassam, believed to
hold their target, Muhammad Abu Nasira. The latter, with two others of the group sustained injuries,
and al-Shair died.[140] Israeli helicopter strike
October 6, 2004 al-Shati refugee camp Gaza Strip Bashir Khalil al-Dabash, (38/42) and Zarif Yousef
al-'Are'ir (30)[21] Head of Islamic Jihad's military wing, al-Quds Brigades. Both killed by helicopter
missile fired at their Subaru in 'Izziddin al-Qassam Street in downtown Gaza. Three passers-by were
wounded. One of three operations in Operation Days of Penitence that killed 5 other Palestinian
militants.[141][142] Israeli Air Force[21]
October 21, 2004 Gaza City Gaza Strip Adnan al-Ghoul Imad al-Baas 2nd in command of Hamas, and Qassem
rocket expert. Killed together with his aide Imad Abbas when their car was destroyed by a missile from
an Apache helicopter. Four bystanders were wounded. .[5]
July 15, 2005 East of Salfit West Bank Samer Abdulhadi Dawhqa, Mohammad Ahmed Salameh Mar'i (20),
Mohammad Yusef 'Abd al-Fatah A'yash (22) Alleged to be 'ticking bombs'.[55] Killed in an olive grove,
or, according to B'tselem, in a cave where two were hiding. The first two died immediately in a
missile and gunfire strike by Apache helicopters. The third was taken to Ramallah in critical
condition, but then seized by Israeli forces and taken off in a military ambulance. He died later, and
neither he nor Mar'i, according to B'tselem, were involved in the fighting.[57][143] Israel Defense
Forces
July 16, 2005 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Saeed Seam (Sayid Isa Jabar Tziam) (31). Hamas commander of
Izzedine al Qassam. Allegedly involved in killing two settlers in 2002 and shooting at an Israeli army
outpost in 2004.[21] Shot dead by Israeli sniper in a targeted killing as he stood outside his Gaza
home, as he was going to water his garden, in Khan Yunis.[144][145]
July 16, 2005 Gaza City .[146] Gaza Strip 'Four Unidentified' (JVL)=Adel Mohammad Haniyya (29); A'asem
Marwan Abu Ras (23); Saber Abu Aasi ( 24); Amjad Anwar Arafat,[147] one reportedly a nephew of Ismail
Haniya.[21][148] Hamas operatives. Apache helicopter struck a van carrying the men and numerous Qassam
rockets in Gaza city. Five civilians, including a child, were wounded in the attack.[144][149][150]
Israeli Air Force[21][21][151][21][152][21][153][154][21][155][156][21][157]
September 25, 2005 Gaza City Gaza Strip Sheikh Mohammed Khalil (32) PIJ Alleged to have been involved
in Hatuel family's murder near the Gush Qatif settlement bloc. Killed when his Mercedes was struck by
5 missiles launched from an Israeli aircraft.[158]
October 27, 2005 Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip Shadi Mehana/Shadi Muhana (25) PIJ Airstrike hitting car with
four Palestinian militants north of Gaza City. Three civilians were also killed, including a
15-year-old boy (Rami Asef) and a 60-year-old man. One source stated 14 other Palestinians were
wounded.[159][160]
November 1, 2005 Gaza City Gaza Strip Hassan Madhoun (33); Fawzi Abu Kara[161] Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades Allegedly planning an operation to strike the Eretz Crossing. Killed when his car was hit by
an Israeli Apache helicopter missile. According to documents in the Palestine Papers Israel's Shaul
Mofaz had proposed to the PA that Fatah execute him.[162]
December 7, 2005 Rafah Gaza Strip Mahmoud Arkan (29). Popular Resistance Committees field operative
Airborne missile strike on a moving car in a residential area. 10 bystanders, including three
children, were injured.[163][164]
December 8, 2005 Gaza Strip Iyad Nagar Ziyad Qaddas Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Missile striking a house.
A third militant, and several Palestinians nearby, including a young girl, suffered injuries.[165]
December 14, 2005 Gaza City Gaza Strip Four Unidentified Popular Resistance Committees Missile strike
on a white sedan near the Karni crossing. Israeli sources say the car was packed with explosives.
Three PRC members killed, a fourth is thought to have been an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades member. One
occupant survived, and two bystanders were injured.[166][167]
January 2, 2006 East of Jabaliya Gaza Strip Sayid Abu-Gadian (45); Akram Gadasas (43), third unknown.
PIJ All three hit by IAF rocket while in a car close to a no-go zone declared by Israel in the
northern Gaza Strip. Collateral damage, two bystanders were wounded.
February 5, 2006 Zeitoun Gaza Strip Adnan Bustan; Jihad al-Sawafiri Islamic Jihad in Palestine.
Believed to have director of their engineering and manufacturing unit. Killed when 2 cars fired on by
an IAF missile, the second en route to a retaliatory attack for an earlier Israeli helicopter strike
that killed three people.
February 6, 2006 North of Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip[168] Hassan 'Asfour (25); Rami Hanouna (27)[169]
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade| Hit and killed when their car was struck by three missiles from an Israeli
drone. Three bystanders also wounded.[168]
February 7, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Mohammed Abu Shariya; Suheil Al Baqir Al Aqsa Brigades Their car
was demolished by a missile.
March 6, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Munir Mahmed Sukhar (30); Iyad Abu Shalouf Islamic Jihad field
operative. Collateral damage, 3-8 passers-by wounded, including 17-year-old Ahmed Sousi, and an
8-year-old boy (Ra'ed al-Batch), both of whom later died.[170]
May 20, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Mohammed Dahdoh PIJ Killed in car, held responsible for firing crude
rockets into southern Israel. Palestinian version stated Muhanned Annen, 5; his mother, Amnah, 25; and
Hannan Annen, 45, Muhanned's aunt, were collateral victims. Dahdoh was alone in the car (IDF version).
May 25, 2006 Sidon Lebanon Mahmoud al-Majzoub (Abu Hamze), Nidal al-Majzoub Commander of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad; the brother was a member also. Critically wounded in car bombing, when he
turned on the ignition of his car, parked near the Abu Bakr mosque in Sidon,. He died the next day.
Islamic Jihad blamed Israel, though Israel denied it.[171] An Israeli government spokesman denied
knowledge of any Israeli involvement. (alleged)
June 5, 2006 Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip[172] Majdi Hamad (25); Imad Assaliya (27) Popular Resistance
Committees Missile struck their car, targeting Hamad. Three bystanders were injured. Israeli Air
Force[21][173][21][21][174][175]
June 8, 2006 Rafah Gaza Strip Jamal Abu Samhadana and three others Founder of the Popular Resistance
Committees militant group, a former Fatah and Tanzim member, and number two on Israel's list of wanted
terrorists. Had survived 4 assassination attempts.[176] Eyal Weizman states its purpose was to derail
peace talks, as it coincided with a referendum vote on a political initiative by Mahmoud Abbas. Killed
by Israeli airstrike on a training camp, along with at least three other PRC members.[177]
June 13, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Hamoud Wadiya; Shawki Sayklia Wadiya was a PIJ rocket expert. Three
militants in a van with a Grad rocket were driving down a main street when a missile struck nearby.
They fled but were killed by a second missile, as people gathered. The second blast killed 11
Palestinian bystanders, including Ashraf Mughrabi (25) his son, Maher (8), and a relative Hisham (14),
4 ambulance drivers and hospital staff rushing to the incident, and three boys. Thirty-nine people
were wounded.[178]
July 4, 2006 Beit Hanoun Gaza Strip Isamail Rateb Al-Masri (30)[179][180] Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades Killed by an IAF rocket.[181]
August 9, 2006 Jenin Gaza Strip Osama Attili (24); Mohammed Atik (26) Described by Israel as leaders
of PIJ Killed when (2) helicopter(s) fired missiles into their house. PIJ leader Hussam Jaradat,
another target escaped the strike, while his deputy Walid Ubeidi abu al-Kassam, was lightly
wounded.[182]
October 12, 2006 'Abasan al-Kabirah neighbourhood Gaza Strip Three unidentified='Abd a-Rahman
'Abdallah Muhammad Qdeih (19); Na'el Fawzi Suliman Qdeih (22); Salah Rashad Shehdeh Qdeih (22); Hamas
All three, armed, killed by a helicopter missile after one of the three fired at an IDF tank
October 12, 2006 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Three militants of Kadiah family. Hamas Five members of Kadiah
family killed, two, Adel Kadiah, 40, and his son, Sohaib, 13, being civilians
October 12, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ashraf Ferwana Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades Ashraf targeted in
his home but he survived the drone missile strike which demolished his house. His brother Ayman
Ferwana and a girl died, and 10 others injured.[174][183][184]
October 14, 2006 Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip Ahmad Hassan 'Abd al-Fatah Abu al-'Anin (19); Sakher Faiz
Muhammad Abu Jabal (19); Rami 'Odeh Salem Abu Rashed (22); Faiz 'Ali Fadel al-'Ur (33); Suliman Hassan
Fadel al-'Ur (30); Muhammad Faiz Mustafa Shaqurah (30); Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades Five killed
while walking armed in the refugee camp, by a helicopter-launched missile.Awad Attatwa (18), not
associated with group, also died.[175][185]
October 14, 2006 One Unidentified Al Aqsa Brigades Died when the car he was in was hit by a missile
fired in an airstrike. A local commander also critically injured, and two bystanders wounded.[185]
November 7, 2006 Al-Yamun West Bank Salim Yousef Mahmoud Abu Al-Haija (24); Ala'a Jamil Khamaisa (24);
Taher Abed Abahra (25); Mahmoud Rajah Abu Hassan (25). Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades The four militants
were shot while sitting near the Al-Yamun bakery (Palestinian version), fled wounded and were killed
in a local house. Aiman Suleiman Mahmoud Mustafa (31), a bakery worker came out to see what was
happening and was shot dead. Salim Ahmed Awad (27), Ibrahim Mahmoud Nawahda (30), Salim Ahmed Awad
(27) and Mohammed Yousef Abu Al-Haija (27) were also shot and taken prisoner.[186] Israel Defense
Forces undercover squad.
November 20, 2006 Gaza City Gaza Strip Bassel Sha'aban Ubeid (22); Abdel Qader Habib (26) Izz ad-Din
al-Qassam Brigades Missile fired at a Mercedes containing both, parked outside the Ubeid family home.
Collateral damage, 5 civilians, members of the Amen family, including Hanan Mohammed Amen, aged 3
months and Mo'men Hamdi Amen (2), injured by shrapnel.[186] Israeli Air Force[21]
May 17, 2007 Gaza City Gaza Strip Imad Muhammad Ahmad Shabaneh (33) Hamas Killed while travelling in a
car hit by an Israeli helicopter missile. Israeli helicopters[21][175]
June 1, 2007 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Fawzi (Fadi) Abu Mustafa PIJ/Al Quds Brigades senior member Killed
by an IAF airforce missile while riding a motor bike. Israeli Air
Force[21][187][21][187][188][188][21][189][21][190][21][191][21][192][21][193][194][21][195][188][21][187][188][21][187][196]
June 24, 2007 Gaza City Gaza Strip Hussein Khalil al-Hur=Hossam Khaled Harb (32) Hussein Harb Peugeot
al-Quds Brigades local leader. Struck by a missile while driving a Peugeot through Gaza City
October 23, 2007 Gaza City (near) Gaza Strip Mubarak al-Hassanat (35) Popular Resistance Committees
head and Director of military affairs in the Hamas Interior Ministry. Israeli airstrike (IAF) on his
car.
December 17, 2007 Gaza City Gaza Strip Majed Harazin (Abu Muamen) PIJ. Senior Commander, West Bank,
overseer of rocket operations. Killed together with two others in his car, reportedly packed with
explosives.
December 17, 2007 Gaza City Gaza Strip Abdelkarim Dahdouh; Iman Al-Illa; Ahmad Dahdooh, Ammar al-Said;
Jihad Zahar; Mohamman Karamsi PIJ. Missile strike from an aircraft on a car, combined with IDF
undercover unit, on a PIJ cell preparing to launch rockets.
December 18, 2007 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Hani Barhoum; Mohammed A-Sharif Hamas Strike on a Hamas
security position.
January 13, 2008 Al-Shati Refugee Camp Gaza Strip Nidal Amudi; Mahir Mabhuh; third man unidentified
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Senior operative The three were killed in a car driving through the refugee
camp, struck by an IAF missile.
January 17, 2008 Beit Lahiya Gaza Strip One unidentified[21] =Raad Abu al-Ful (43) and his wife. PIJ
rocket manufacturer They were killed by an IAF airstrike which fired missiles at their car.
January 20, 2008 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ahmad Abu Sharia Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Commander Hit by an
IAF missile as he walked in the streets. Two other Palestinians wounded.
February 4, 2008 Gaza City Gaza Strip Abu Said Qarmout Popular Resistance Committees member Killed by
an IAF missile that struck his car. Three others were wounded, two seriously.
April 14, 2008 Gaza Strip Ibrahim Abu Olba DFLP Israeli Air Force.[21]
April 30, 2008 Near Shabura refugee camp, Rafah Gaza Strip Nafez Mansour (40) Hamas Killed in an IAF
missile strike. Reportedly involved in Gilad Shalit abduction. Collateral damage. Three bystanders,
one dying of his wounds. A further bystander and young girl also hurt.[21] Israeli Air Force/Shin Bet
joint operation.[197]
June 17, 2008 al-Qararah, Rafah district Gaza Strip Mu'taz Muhammad Jum'ah Dughmosh (27); Musa Fawzi
Salman al-'Adini (35); Mahmoud Muhammad Hassan a-Shanadi (25); Nidal Khaled Sa'id a-Sadudi
(21)Muhammad 'Amer Muhammad 'Asaliyah (20).[175] Army of Islam Killed when their car was struck by an
IAf missile. A further two people were wounded.[198] Israeli Air Force.[21]
August 1, 2008 Tartus Syria Muhammad Suleiman Syrian General. National Security Advisor. Presidential
Advisor for Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons. Killed by sniper fire to the head and neck. Israel
denied responsibility for the killing, but was widely suspected of involvement. According to an NSA
intercept published by wikileaks, the NSA defined it as the 'first known instance of Israel targeting
a legitimate government official." [199][200][201] The U.S. Embassy in Damascus reported that Israelis
were the 'most obvious suspect (alleged).'[202]
January 1, 2009 Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip Nizar Rayan (49) Top level Senior Hamas leader. Professor of
Sharia law, Islamic University of Gaza. Among first 5 top Hamas decision makers, and field operative.
Advocated suicide bombings inside Israel.[203][204] His house destroyed by an IAF bomb. along with his
4 wives and 6 of his 14 children. 30 others in the vicinity were wounded. According to Israel,
secondary explosions from weapons in the building caused collateral damage. Rayan was not the target,
rather, the strike aimed to destroy Hamas' central compound which included several buildings that
served as storage sites for weapons. Israel further stated that phone warnings were delivered to the
residents.[204][205] Israeli Air Force
January 3, 2009 Gaza City Gaza Strip Abu Zakaria al-Jamal Senior Hamas military wing commander of Izz
ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and leader of Gaza City's rocket-launching squads[206] Killed in Israeli
airstrike.[207]
January 15, 2009 Jabalia Gaza Strip Said Seyam Hamas Interior Minister Killed in Israeli airstrike
with his brother, his son, and Hamas general security services officer. Salah Abu Shrakh.[208] Israeli
Air Force
January 26, 2009 Bureij Refugee Camp Gaza Strip Issa Batran (failed. See 30 July 2010) Senior military
commander of the Hamas military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades Targeted at his home. The attempt
to assassinate him failed, but the shell hit the balcony of their home and killed his wife Manal
Sha'rawi, and five of their children: Bilal, Izz Ad-Din, Ihsan, Islam and Eyman. Batran and his child
Abdul-Hadi survived.[209][210] Israel Defense Forces
March 4, 2009 Gaza Strip Khaled Shalan Senior Operative PIJ Killed in Israeli airstrike, together with
2/3 other militants, targeted after alleged involvement in rocket attacks on the Israeli city of
Ashkelon. They jumped from their car but were critically wounded. 5 bystanders were also
wounded.[211][212][213] Israeli Air Force
2010s
Date Place Location Target Description Action Executor
January 11, 2010 Deir al-Balah Gaza Strip Awad Abu Nasir Islamic Jihad Senior Field Commander Had
escaped several assassination attempts. Reportedly involved in attempts to harm Israeli soldiers.
Killed by a missile.[214][215] Israeli Air Force[21]
January 12, 2010 Tehran Iran Masoud Alimohammadi Iranian Physicist Killed in a car bomb. Majid Jamali
Fashi reportedly confessed to an Iranian court he had been recruited by Mossad to carry out the
execution, while the US State Department called the allegation "absurd". Mossad (alleged)[216]
January 19, 2010 Dubai United Arab Emirates Mahmoud al-Mabhouh Hamas senior military commander of Izz
ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, believed to have been involved in smuggling weapons and explosives into
Gaza.[217] Widely reported to have been killed by Israeli intelligence members. Israel stated that
there is no proof of its involvement, and neither confirmed nor denied the allegations of a Mossad
role.[218][219] Dubai police report that Israeli agents used Australian, French, British, Irish, and
Dutch passports.
July 30, 2010 Deserted area in the Nuseirat refugee camp Gaza Strip Issa Abdul-Hadi al-Batran (40)
Hamas Senior military commander of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in central Gaza, who had survived 4
previous attempts on his life (26 Jan.2009). Thought to have been involved in manufacturing rockets.
Killed by a missile in retaliation for earlier rocket attack on city of Ashkelon. A further 13
Palestinians were injured in the strike.[209][210] Israeli Air Force
November 3, 2010 Gaza Strip Mohammed Nimnim Allegedly al-Qaeda affiliated, Army of Islam
commander[220] Car explosion, due to either a bomb planted by Israel or an Israeli airstrike.[221]
Israeli Air Force, with Egyptian intelligence.
November 17, 2010 Gaza Strip Islam Yassin al-Qaeda affiliated, Army of Islam commander[222] Israeli
airstrike on his car, killing him, his brother, and injuring four others.[223] Israeli Air Force
January 11, 2011 Gaza Strip Mohammed A-Najar Islamic Jihad operative. Suspected of planning attacks
against civilians and launching rockets at Israel[224]
Attacked by the Israel Airforce while driving his motorcycle in the Gaza Strip.[224]
Israeli Air Force
April 2, 2011 Ismail Lubbad, Abdullah Lubbad, Muhammad al Dayah Hamas Allegedly aiming to kidnap
Israeli tourists in Sinai over Passover. .[21]
April 9, 2011 Gaza Strip Tayseer Abu Snima Senior Hamas military commander of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades Killed along with 2 of his bodyguards by the Israeli air force during a period of escalated
rocket fire from Gaza. He was the most senior Hamas commander killed since 2009.[225] Israeli Air
Force
July 23, 2011 Tehran Iran Darioush Rezaeinejad Iranian electrical engineer Killed by unknown gunmen on
motorcycle. Rezaeinejad was involved in development of high-voltage switches, which are used in a key
component of nuclear warheads. Such switches may also have civilian scientific applications.[226] The
German Newspaper Der Spiegel claimed Mossad was behind the operation. He is the third Iranian nuclear
scientist killed since 2010.[227] Mossad (alleged)
August 18, 2011 Gaza Strip Abu Oud al-Nirab; Khaled Shaath; Imad Hamed Popular Resistance Committees
Commanders Killed hours after a terrorist attack killed 6 civilians and one soldier in southern
Israel. 4 additional members of the group were killed in the strike.[228] Israeli Air Force, Shin Bet
August 24, 2011 Ismael al-Asmar PIJ Allegedly weapons smuggler and militant in Egypt's Sinai, killed
just before shooting a Qassam rocket. [21]
September 6, 2011 Khaled Sahmoud Popular Resistance Committees Killed after allegedly firing 5 Qassam
into Southern Israel [21]
October 29, 2011 Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil PIJ Munitions expert Killed in retaliation for allegedly
launching rockets into Israel earlier that day. [21]
November 12, 2011 Tehran Iran General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam The main architect of the Iranian
missile system and the founder/father of Iran's deterrent power ballistic missile forces.
He was also the chief of the "self-sufficiency" unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Killed
along with 17 other members of the Revolutionary Guards known as Bid Kaneh explosion.
Those who died are known as the "Shahidan Ghadir".
Iranian officials said that the blast at the missile base was an accident, and ruled out any sabotage
organized by Israel.
AGIR said that the explosion "had taken place in an arms depot when a new kind of munitions was being
tested and moved".
However, TIME magazine cited a "unnamed western intelligence source" as saying that Mossad was behind
the blast.
Israel neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
[229] [230] [231]
Mossad (alleged)
December 9, 2011 Isam Subahi Isamil Batash Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades [21]
January 11, 2012 Tehran Iran Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan Iranian nuclear scientist The bomb that killed
Ahmadi-Roshan at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, and another unidentified person was a
magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and the
" work of the Zionists [Israelis]," deputy Tehran governor Safarali Baratloo said.[232]
[233][234]
Mossad (alleged)
March 9, 2012 Tel al-Hawa Gaza Strip Zuhir al-Qaisi; Mahmud Ahmed Hananni Qaisi was Secretary-General
of the Popular Resistance Committees According to Israeli intelligence, he was planning an imminent
attack in the Sinai.[235] Israeli Air Force
August 5, 2012 Tel al-Sultan Refugee Camp.[236] Gaza Strip Nadi Okhal (19); Ahmad Said Ismail (22)
Popular Resistance Committee, Two senior operatives. IDF sources say they were associated with global
jihadist movement. Killed while riding a motor bike. The other passenger was badly wounded. [21]
September 20, 2012 Gaza Strip Gaza Strip Anis Abu Mahmoud el-Anin (22); Ashraf Mahmoud Salah (38).
Hamas security officers. Salah belonged to the Popular Resistance Committees Their car was shelled by
aircraft overhead.[237] Israeli Air Force[21]
October 13, 2012 Jabaliya Gaza Strip Hisham Al-Saidni (Abu al-Walid al- Maqdisi) (43/47/53);[238]
Ashraf al-Sabah.[239][240] Respectively Salafi-jihadist militant leader of al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad and
the Mujahedeen Shura Council, and head of Ansar Al-Sunna. Israeli and one Salafi source say they had
links with Al-Qaeda.[241][242] Killed by a drone-launched rocket while riding a motor bike in company
with Jazar. Several civilians, including a 12-year-old boy, were wounded.[243]
October 13, 2012 Khan Yunis Gaza Strip Yasser Mohammad al-Atal (23) Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine Rocket strike while he was riding his motor bike. A second man was critically
injured.[240][244]
October 14, 2012 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ezzedine Abu Nasira (23); Ahmad Fatayer (22)[240] Popular
Resistance Committees Struck by a missile while riding in a tuk-tuk after firing rockets into Israel
to avenge deaths resulting from two airstrikes the day before. Two others seriously wounded.[245]
Israeli Air Force[21]
November 14, 2012 Gaza City Gaza Strip Ahmed Jaabari Top level Commander of Hamas' military wing Izz
ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Number 2 to Mohammed Deif. Killed in an airstrike at the start of Operation
Pillar of Cloud. Led Hamas' 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip and, according to Israel, was responsible
for most attacks on Israel originating in Gaza from about 2006 to 2012, including the capture of Gilad
Shalit.[246]
November 1519, 2012 Gaza Strip Hab's Hassan Us Msamch
Ahmed Abu Jalal
Khaled Shaer
Osama Kadi
Muhammad Kalb
Ramz Harb
Yahiyah Abbayah Hab's Hassan Us Msamch, was a senior operative and Hamas Bombmaker.
Ahmed Abu Jalal, was a Senior Hamas commander of the Hamas central military wing in Al-Muazi.
Khaled Shaer, was a senior operative in the anti-tank operations.
Osama Kadi, was a senior operative in anti-tank operations.
Muhammad Kalb, was a senior operative in the aerial defense operations.
Ramz Harb, was an Islamic Jihad senior operative in propaganda in Gaza city.
Yahiyah Abbayah was a senior Hamas expert bomb maker and a military commander in central Gaza. All of
them were killed by IAF airstrike inside their command bunker and weapon storage during Operation
Pillar of Defense.
February 12, 2013 Damascus Syria Hassan Shateri Top IRGC General. Under the pseudonym Hussam
Khoshnevis, He was a Head of Iranian IRGC special reconstruction project for Hezbollah infrastructure
in southern Lebanon.
Israel air strike killed him during his traveling from Damascus to Beirut.
[247]
April 30, 2013 Gaza City Gaza Strip Hithem Ziad Ibrahim Masshal (24/25) and three others, one on
the bike. Al Quds Brigades (Israel). Hamas security guard at Al-Shifa Hospital (Hamas version).[248]
Defined by Israel as a Freelance Terror Consultant" and active in different Jihad Salafi terror
organisations responsible for two rockets fired towards Eilat on 17 April, he was killed when a rocket
hit him on his motorbike. The strike broke a fragile cease-fire agreement.[249]
December 4, 2013 Beirut Lebanon Hassan al-Laqqis Senior Hezbollah Military Commander. Chief of
technology officer and in charge of the Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons for the group. Shot and
Killed by gunmen in the head with a silenced gun outside his home and car.
Israel never took responsibility, but it is widely suspected Mossad committed it.
[231]
Mossad
January 22, 2014 Beit Hanoun Gaza Strip Ahmad Zaanin; Mahmoud Yousef Zaanin PFLP;PIJ The relatives
were held responsible for rocket attacks into southern Israel. Only Ahmed was admitted by PIJ to be a
member. His cousin and he were killed sitting in a pickup truck parked outside their home.[250]
Israeli Air Force[21]
February 9, 2014 Deir al-Balah Gaza Strip Abdullah Kharti Popular Resistance Committees member.
Regarded by IDF as involved with rocket fire episodes. Hit and critically wounded, with a friend,
while riding on a motorcycle.[251]
March 3, 2014 farmland near Beit Hanoun[252] Gaza Strip Mus'ab Musa Za'aneen (21); Sharif Nasser (31)
PIJ (Israeli version):Had just fired homemade rocket landing in a field south of Ashkelon (Palestinian
version): It was not known if either were militants. A child and a fourth person were wounded.[253]
June 11, 2014 Gaza Strip Mohammed Ahmed Alarur/Awar (30/33) of Beit Lahiya; Hamada Hassan, a Beit
Lahia resident (25) was critically wounded.[254] Hamas policeman. Salafist cell leader (Israeli
description) Described by IDF sources as a global jihad-affiliated terrorist planning attacks against
Israel responsible for a rocket salvo on Sderot that interrupted the silence of a Passover holiday.
Alarur was hit by a missile while riding a motorbike. A car nearby was also struck.[255] One report
identifies a further victim, his 7 year old nephew, who was riding in the family care and who died of
wounds on June 14, ascribing to the latter a role of 'human shield.'[256] Israel Air Force, Shin Bet.
June 27, 2014 al-Shati refugee camp Gaza Strip Muhammad al-Fasih and; Usama al-Hassumi Two Senior
operatives. Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades Struck by two helicopter-launched missiles while driving a
black Kia vehicle. Two other people were wounded.[257] Israeli Air Force
July 5, 2014 Damascus Syria Mwafaq Badiyeh Samir Kuntar's right-hand man and the personal liaison
officer between Samir Kuntar and Hezbollah. He was killed by an explosive device planted on his car by
"Mossad agents." While driving on the main road between Quneitra and Damascus. The security source
claim the assassination was a response to rockets fired from Syria to Israel in March, that the Syrian
army and Hezbollah were responsible for. Mossad (alleged)
July 8, 2014 Gaza Strip Muhammad Shaaban Muhammad Shaaban is a head of Hamas Special Forces Naval
Commando Unit in Gaza He was killed along with 2 passengers when his car was hit by IAF air strike
followed by attempted infiltration by 5 Hamas Naval Frogmen inside Israel Beach in Gaza border.
[258]
Israeli Air Force
July 27, 2014 Gaza Strip Salah Abu Hassanein
Hafez Mohammad Hamad
Hussein Abd al-Qader Muheisin
Akram Sha'ar
Mahmoud Ziada
Osama al-Haya
Ahmad Sahmoud
Abdallah Allah'ras
Shaaban Dakhdoukh
Mahmoud Sinwar Salah Abu Hassanein leader and spokesperson of Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
Hafez Mohammad Hamad was Top level Hamas commander for Islamic Jihad in the Beit Hanoun (northern
Gaza) area who is directly responsible for the rocket fire on Sderot during escalation leading up to
Operation Protective Edge.
Hussein Abd al-Qader Muheisin was a Hamas commander for Islamic Jihad in Sheijaya.
Akram Sha'ar is a Hamas commander for Islamic Jihad in Khan Younis, who is directly responsible for
both rocket fire and terror attacks in Israel.
Mahmoud Ziada was a Hamas commander for Islamic Jihad in Jabaliya, responsible for upgrading Hamas
rocket arsenal and directing fighting against Israel during Operation Protective Edge.
Osama al-Hayya A Senior Hamas leader in Sheijaya, whose son is in Hamas's 'political wing' Khalil
al-Hayya.
Ahmad Sahmoud was a Top level Hamas commander in Khan Younis.
Abdallah Allah'ras is a Senior commander in the Hamas's "military wing,""the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Shaaban Dakhdoukh was a commander of the forces in Zeitoun, who worked on burying long-range rockets
and helped to smuggle weapons for his forces.
Mahmoud Sinwar a Hamas Military commander, who was involved in the creation of attack tunnels and the
launching of rocket fire into Israeli territory and the raid in which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was
captured. All of them were killed by IAF airstrike inside of their house along with their comrades and
entire family and also inside their buried Gaza tunnels.
[258][259]
August 3, 2014 Jabalia Camp Gaza Strip Ahmad al-Mabhouh Nephew of slain Hamas commander Mahmoud
al-Mabhouh in charge of engineering and destruction officer in Hamas.
Among other things, he was responsible for hiding rockets before they were launched at Israel,
preparing complex explosive devices and planning armed attacks against Israeli targets. The IDF and
Shin Bet attacked a building in Jabaliya on Saturday night, killing Hamas operative Ahmad al-Mabhouh,
the nephew of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was inside.
[260]
Israeli Armed Forces, Shin Bet
August 19, 2014 Gaza City Gaza Strip Mohammed Deif (failed attempt) Chief of staff and Supreme
Military Commander of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The main architect of Hamas's tunnel system.
Several IAF missiles struck Deif's 6 storey home. His wife Widad (27), 7 month old son Ali and
daughter Sarah (3) were killed in the strike. Three other residents in the building were also killed.
According to Fox News, anonymous Israeli intelligence sources claimed that Deif had been killed in the
strike. Hamas denied the reports that Deif, who has survived five previous Israeli attempts to
assassinate him, had died in the F-16 bombing of his home. In April 2015, Israel confirmed that Deif
survived the assassination attempt.[261][262][263][264][265] Israeli Air Force
August 21, 2014 Rafah Gaza Strip Raed al Atar Rafah Division Senior commander.
Mohammed Abu Shmallah Rafah Division Senior commander.
Mohammed Barhoum Rafah Division Senior commander. 3 Hamas Senior Military commanders Struck by a pair
of F-16 one-ton bombs guided through a window of the building where they had been located.[266][267]
January 18, 2015 al-Amal Farms, Quneitra District Syria Jihad Mughniyah
Mohammed Ahmed Issa
Abu Ali Reza Al Tabatabai
Mohammed Ali Allah Dadi
Ismail Al Ashhab
Abu Abbas Al Hijazi
Mohammed Ali Hassan Abu Al Hassan
Ghazi Ali Dhawi
Ali Hussein Ibrahim
Along with 6 other Iranian and Hezbollah high-ranking officers Jihad Mughniyah was a son of a slain
Hezbollah supreme military commander Imad Mughniyah.
Mohammed Ahmed Issa was Head of Security and Operations. He was also a Senior Hezbollah Military
Commander in Syria.
Ismail Al Ashhab was a Senior Hezbollah military commander and a top liaison officer with Iran in
charge of training Hezbollah forces along the Golan heights frontier.
Abu Ali Reza Al Tabatabai was a Top Iranian IRGC General.
Mohammed Ali Allah Dadi was a Top Iranian IRGC General.
Abu Abbas Al Hijazi was a field commander and officer of Hezbollah in Syria.
Mohammed Ali Hassan Abu Al Hassan was also a field commander and officer of Hezbollah in Syria.
Ghazi Ali Dhawi was also a field commander and officer of Hezbollah in Syria.
Ali Hussein Ibrahim also a field commander and officer of Hezbollah in Syria. Struck and hit by Israel
Air Force Nimrod/Hellfire missile Apache Helicopter during their reconnaissance and inspection mission
along with IsraeliSyrian ceasefire line at the Golan Heights.
According to Israel Intelligence Security, they were planning for massive mega attack, including
infiltration, shooting, assassinations, suicide bombing, anti-tank attack, and missile attack with the
intention of kill and kidnap Israel soldiers and civilians community along with Quneitra and Galilee
border.
And also help to establish the missile base inside Quneitra region.
Israel neither confirmed nor denied an air strike.
December 21, 2015 Damascus Syria Samir Kuntar
Farhan Issam Shaalan
Mohammed Riza Fahemi
Mir Ahmad Ahmadi
along with several high ranking IRGC commanders and Hezbollah members Samir Kuntar was a senior
Hezbollah commander and also a convicted murderer of an Israeli family in 1979, held in Israeli prison
for the next 30 years before released in a prisoner swap in 2008.
Mohammed Riza Fahemi and Mir Ahmad Ahmadi were two Iranian senior military officers of the IRGC
Intelligence division. According to the Israeli defence establishment, they were meeting in order to
plan the next round of Iran-sponsored terrorist operation against Israel from the Golan Heights areas
recently secured by the Syrian military. Two Israeli planes allegedly destroyed a six-story
residential building in Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus. Kuntar's death was confirmed by his
brother and Hezbollah. The explosion also killed eight Syrian nationals, among them Hezbollah
commanders, and injured a number of other people.[268][269]
December 17, 2016 Sfax Tunisia Mohammed Al Zawari Mohammed Al Zawari was a Chief of Hamas drone
program and an Aviation Engineer expert. He also worked on the development and production of Hezbollah
drones. He was shot dead in the head 6 times by using guns equipped with silencer just in front of his
house, who located in Sfax 270 km Southeast of Tunis. Hamas accused Mossad[270]
March 24, 2017 Gaza Strip Palestine Mazen Fuqaha Mazen Fuqaha was a Senior Hamas Operative. He was
also a Senior commander of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas Military wing. According to Hamas, he
was shot dead 4 times in the head and chest by Israeli Special Forces by using silenced weapons guided
by Shin Bet Agents and Gaza operatives. Israeli Special Forces/ Shin Bet[citation needed]
April 21, 2018 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Fadi al-Batsh Batash was a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian engineer
from the Gaza Strip. Shot dead by two people on a motorcycle when he was leaving a mosque after his
morning prayers. Mossad is suspected.[271]
@Rich
Your "most moral" nation of Epstein cannot survive without blackmailing and deceiving, and yet you are
coming on the UNZ forum to lecture the readers about morals? This is ridiculous.
Time to realize that holobiz is over.
@Rich
Spoken like a true Hasbera Clown. The Iranians actually defeated the "ragtag forces of Saddam Hussein" that
were supplied with US biological and Chemical weapons since their objective was purely defensive. Just as
those "ragtag forces" in Vietnam defeated the US by continuing to exist despite the genocidal bombing
campaigns.
You should really improve your literacy level by actually reading a book instead of some
Zionist Agitprop.
@RowBuddy
Are you so naive as to think that dumping Trump in 2020 will change anything? Israel owns both parties
equally, and it is a fact that up to this point in his administration Donald Trump has the least amount of
blood on his hands when compared to each of the last three Presidents.
If you think differently, then ask yourself how the Nobel Peace Prize winning Messiah and the Hilldebeast
destroyed the #1 economic country in Africa and turned it into a total shit hole nightmare. That would be
the country of Libya for those not paying attention or who worship at the feet of the equally corrupt
Democrat party.
@Not Raul
Well lets take this to its conclusion,Trump nukes Iran it drifts over into Russia killing a few hundred or
thousands,now just what do you think Russia would do,do you think that Russia would take that as an act of
war against them, and let those missile's programed to impact the White House and pentagon be on there
way;!!!
Iraqi security official tells @nbcnews there has been anther US airstrike, this one north of Baghdad
targeting Shiite militia leaders. Reports of 6 killed.
This right BEFORE a big Shiite protest tomorrow in Baghdad. It seems certain to provoke an escalation.
The attack has been confirmed by other sources.
It looks like the provocations will continue until Iran responds creating the pretext for a broader war.
@Alfred
US is unique to indict people from opposite spectrums of the same crimes usually after one of the criminals
are dealt with . 911 has been blamed on Iran. It has been approved by American court . Settlements have been
reached without any participation of Iran . After Bin Laden was dealt with for crimes of 911, Saddam was
pointed fi anger at with similar success story . Pakistan has been also accused directly and indirectly of
the same crimes .
Pan Am had checkered history The intercepts of messages that seemingly originated from Libya was
manufactured and relayed by Israeli agents of worst filthy zionist mindset to draw visceral wrath of America
on Libya .
Now then Zio will be the first to blame it on Iran and who knows after that Pakistan.
The fallen Iranian was an honest and honorable man, unlike the Jewish procuress of underage girls for
wealthy pedophiles and the Jewish plunderer of pensions.
I'd like to send this to every US military barracks in the world.
I'd like to see it on every soldier's locker and pasted on every Army recruitment center in America.
Young Americans have been slaughtering honorable Muslim men, women and children, thousands of miles away,
so that repulsive pigs like Epstein or Weinstein
can rape their daughters while they're off fighting and dying.
It's an untenable situation, and one we should all try to stop.
Let's say the Saudis attack the USA again like they did on 9-11
The Unz Review already has some good comedy writers. I would suggest that you start with open mic nights
in bars and coffee shops until you develop some basic skills.
@Rurik
Not to worry the maneuver is too transparent.
1. Strategically, they accomplished zilch.
2. They made a first-rate martyr.
That they had no better idea can only mean:
1. They are losing.
2. They did it in hopes of provoking an overreaction (much like Heydrich had to die because he did more for
the Czech worker than anyone before or after him).
And over the last four decades the Iranians have grown calloused to provocation
By doing nothing, but speaking out, Iran's message of victimization is it's more powerful, moral
weapon.
A noble sentiment, Rurik. Sadly, in the last few decades, morality has taken a back seat, and evil seems
to consistently triumph. Consider the plight of the unarmed Palestinians protesting near the Israeli wall on
their land. They have held the moral upper ground, while the Israelis have consistently mowed them down,
women and children alike, with nary a protest from the rest of the world, least of all from their
bought-and-paid-for Arab neighbors, like Egypt and Jordan (don't get me started on the KSA). Meanwhile,
countries that have protested, like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, are considered terrorists.
I think that "turning the other cheek" was a shrewd jewish trick on christians. The only way to stop a
bully is punch him in the nose.
@annamaria
In my world Epstein and his friends get the death penalty. My people have no semitic or Ashkenazi blood at
all. But just because some deranged general dislikes Israel, doesn't make him a good guy. He was a leader of
an army that engages in terrorism, as well as pursuing an agenda that is antithetical to freedom and basic
human rights. I'm not here lecturing anyone, but if you consider the millionaire mullahs and their lackeys
"heroes", I'd say you're confused, at the least.
@Rurik
I believe a not insignificant amount -- perhaps even the majority -- of pro-war Americans know this to be true:
That they and their progeny are mere cannon fodder for Zionist imperialism. But they simply don't care or
are even proud of dying for so "worthy" a cause. Never underestimate the persistent and deeply-rooted
hysterical adulation that Israel commands -- nor the utter foolishness of your average American.
@JamesinNM
I fully expect Israel to set off a nuke in the US and destroy some Southern or Midwestern city where the
"deplorables" live. Then indisputable evidence will be found pinning it on Iran. Kills two birds with one
stone.
They get the war they want, kill a bunch of those they hate in America. And those they hate in America
clamor for the destruction of others they hate in Iran. The mother of all false flags. The one on 9/11
didn't completely get the 7 nations job done.
@Rich
Soleimani was fighting AL CIADA aka ISIS a creation of the ZUS and Israel and ZBritain and NATO, and so they
killed him as they could not let him continue to kill the terrorists created by the CIA and MOSSAD and MI6.
@Passer by
i said a "Profitable", not a good one. And i didn't mean the US economy as a nation economy.
The whole "western" system right now is driven by some very few (an NO they are NOT Jews, they are only
rich, very rich). And only those will profit from it. Until someone stop them directly.
Those people don't care about live or nation. They only care about money, their own money.
And over the last four decades the Iranians have grown calloused to provocation
I hope so. It's so bloody obvious by now.
Like the way they've been trying to 'rope a dope' Putin into a wider war with Ukraine, but Putin's far
too savvy to take the bait.
Just let the ZUS keep frothing like a rabid dog, (h/t Ron Unz) and the world will eventually tire of its
antics, and put it down, by repudiating the dollar.
If Iran is threatened with an all out war they could easily close the Straight of Homes and destroy the
Saudi oil fields with Chemical weapons that'll render extracting Saudi oil mute. Result would be loss of
Western World economy crashing big time and the USA falling into civil war cause they cannot maintain their
freebies to the population. Not to mention attacking every US base in the ME. After all if Iran was facing
annihilation they would have nothing to lose but to bring everyone down with them.
Iran won't escalate because they tried, and lost a general. If they try anything else, they'll pay too
steep a price.
They might have just killed a foremost general, but the ones who have just proved to the world that they
are losing are the US/Israeli Zionists.
When engaged in a strategic survival fight against a historic, cohesive nation of 80 millions people,
killing one of their generals won't make any difference. It just reveals that you have run out of more
effective, long-term means and have reached a strategic dead-end.
It is like losing a dispute over land with a powerful neighbour, and throwing a stone at one of his
windows to satisfy a tantrum. It won't change anything significant.
This is the end of the road for Zionist long-term strategy in the ME.
Iran will not retaliate militarily, but you will soon understand the law of unintended consequences:
Soleimani was so popular in Iran that Iranians will rally around their government; so much for the social
and economic undermining of the Islamic Republic that was Israel's best card.
Iraqis will also rally around their institutions; the end of the US occupation has now been put on top of
their priorities.
Israel will have to face an even stronger and more cohesive Shia Crescent, as Iraq will join in.
I'm not necessarily a cheerleader for Iran but, were I a leader in Iran, every time the US attacked one of
mine, some Israeli bigshot would bite the dust. Every time. Dual citizens would be my preferred target. It
would be a favor to the world.
@Johnny Walker Read
The murdered peacemaker John Lennon famously asked, "What if there was a war and nobody showed up?" Since
Vietnam, any American who has joined the military is a fool. These fools have not only aided in the
destruction of many non-threatening nations and the deaths of millions of innocents but they have also aided
in the destruction of the USA itself, for the working American people that is.
the Israelis have consistently mowed them down, women and children alike, with nary a protest from the
rest of the world, least of all from their bought-and-paid-for Arab neighbors, like Egypt and Jordan
(don't get me started on the KSA).
yea, or the SJW in the US House or NYT. Where are 'the squad' when it comes to Palestine, or Iran, for
that matter?
Counting shekels, that's where.
I think that "turning the other cheek" was a shrewd jewish trick on christians. The only way to stop a
bully is punch him in the nose.
I wholeheartedly agree, in a fair contest.
But Iran is in no position to fight a war with the ZUS. It would be crushed, and the zios would be just
as giddy over dead American goyim as they would dead Iranians, if not more so.
One thing I just can't understand, is how fellow Muslims can accommodate Zionism, as it's practiced these
days. Like the KSA, as you mention.
So, yea, it's an awful situation, but I'd still counsel a non-violent protest posture, even as the fiend
menaces and slaughters them. But if an Iranian or Iraqi, or God knows how many other people who've been so
terribly wronged, were to strike out, and kill one or two goons in the service of zion, I know I couldn't
begrudge them. Like the Afghans who occasionally kill their ZUS trainers/occupiers. It's perfectly
understandable.
@Rich
I challenge you to show just a single act of terrorism committed by General Soleimani and Iran, and I mean
an act of terror not a retaliation. Iran has done nothing to the West to warrant the aggression against it.
Her only problem is the vast resources it has that the West so desperately wants to control.
@plantman
BAGHDAD --
A United States air strike targeted an Iraqi militia late on Friday on Taji road north of
Baghdad,
state TV said. It did not name the militia or provide further details.
Question #1: Do members of US military have right -- or obligation -- to refuse orders that violate
international rules and conventions on military engagement, US Constitution, or basic morality?
Question #2: Thirty -- fifty -- seventy years from now, will an Iraqi court charge with war crimes and
crimes against humanity the 82nd Airborne soldiers pictured above?
@Passer by
All correct in the medium term just a bit wishful in the here and now
All excellent points why the US MUST hold onto the Gulf, Persian or not, with teeth and fingernails;
losing control over oil the US dont need means they can force no one to trade actual value for green paper,
which not only means cold turkey from all those dandy little wars but also groid uprising back home.
Sure, folding up and going home would be the best for all concerned
but it will never happen :/
@Gizmo880
This is what the Clinton apologist with his head up his Duff "editor" over at Veterans Today thinks as well.
As if O-bomb-em wasn't as bad or even worse than Cheney er I mean Bushwhacker Bush. I mean get real! These
people are so deluded. If we just all close our eyes and vote Democrat and sing kumbaya we'll enter a world
of hope and change.
Never underestimate the persistent and deeply-rooted hysterical adulation that Israel commands -- nor the
utter foolishness of your average American.
I'm somewhat more charitable of the Americanus Bovinus.
I suspect that he either knows of the 'special relationship, in which case he'd be reluctant to kill and
die for his enemies in Israel, or he's just another duped fool.
Pat Tillman started off being a duped fool, but then he figured it out. They solved that 'problem' with
three 5.56mm holes in a 'tight pattern' to Pat's forehead.
@Agent76
Were the neocons also inspired by Deuteronomy 7 which talks about the necessary destruction of 7 (seven!)
nations?
Deuteronomy 7 New International Version (NIV)
Driving Out the Nations
7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before
you many nations -- the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites,
seven nations larger and stronger than you -- 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you
and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show
them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their
daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods,
and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to
them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles[b] and burn their
idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out
of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
Trump is acting out the American Paradox. Jews have such total power that the only way to ease the Jewish
attack on you is to serve them even harder. Jews have done everything to disparage and defame Trump, and
what does the 'tough guy' do? To ease the agony, he sucks up to Zion even more so that 'my Jews' will push
back against the 'Jews who hate me'.
Jews are the gods of America. In the Bible, if the God clobbers you, your only hope of salvation is to
serve Him with greater servitude. In America, if Jews kick your butt, your only option is to hope that they
will kick you less hard by kissing their ass.
@Rurik
Dear Rurik, the tribe is in a self-destruction mode -- they cannot help it. Zionists are consumed by ethnic
hatred and the hatred is blinding and destroying them.
It is tragic that the psychopaths have murdered the great numbers of decent and innocent human beings.
What is truly appalling is the cowardice of American brass. While politicians are the natural persons of
easy morals, the dishonorable and pussy-catting American commanders are a stunning phenomenon. From Rumsfeld
to Brennan to the current "boss" (what's his name which he is busy dishonoring?), the US brass has learned
how to stay comfortable (and profitably) on their knees serving the zionist masters.
@Ilya G Poimandres
Absolutely, couldn't have said it better myself. None of this is legal or acceptable and for a country
that's so obsessed with giving foreigners "constitutional rights", it makes us look like a bunch of
hypocrites. But of course we are. And they don't do it in my name and I want no part of any of it.
@Poco
This is a very real worry of mine. Very plausible and actually, probable. I worry that it will be a
biological weapon. That scares the crap out of me! And I wouldn't put it past them one bit. They love it
when we suffer and die. The Bible was right about them.
Actions like this make us question past US military actions. US paints itself as the good guy fighting the
bad guys, but US has provoked so many nations and forced them to react, whereupon US employed its superior
firepower to kill countless people.
Maybe the US was always evil.
Will the progs and Democrats hit Trump hard on this? Or will their response be muted because their Jewish
masters actually like this side of treacherous Trump doing the bidding of Israel and Zion?
Jewish Power is utterly vile. Sacrifice any number of people for Zion. It's really a new form of human
sacrifice. Jews make a big deal of how their religion forbade human sacrifice, but they sacrifice human
lives by way of US foreign policy.
@TaintedCanker
The reason decent people dislike America and Israel more than Iran et al. is because America and Israel are
the aggressors here. Why is that so hard to understand?
But Iran is in no position to fight a war with the ZUS. It would be crushed, and the zios would be
just as giddy over dead American goyim as they would dead Iranians, if not more so.
Yes, Iran would be crushed in a direct military confrontation, however, an asymmetric war is a different
beast altogether. I referred in an earlier post to "death by a thousand cuts", and that is what Iran should
do directed assassinations by their allies, who are everywhere. What is good for the goose
Start by taking down a few zios like Pompeo, Bolton, Adelson, etc., and suddenly bullying isn't so cheap.
One thing I just can't understand, is how fellow Muslims can accommodate Zionism, as it's practiced
these days. Like the KSA, as you mention.
I don't know that they do tolerate zionists but they have been effectively muzzled by the tyrants we
prop up to control them (e.g. MBS, Sisi, et al.). Look at our cousins in Europe, who are just as muzzled and
jailed for raising a single dissenting voice against jews or Israel. Forget Europe, we, ourselves are on the
threshold of something similar here. Unconstitutional laws go unchallenged. Note the recent laws forbidding
protests against Israel on campus. A flood is imminent.
Where are 'the squad' when it comes to Palestine, or Iran, for that matter?
Like damning with faint praise, the fact that the Palestinian/Iranian cause is represented by the 'squad'
does more damage to their plight than if they had kept their moths shut. The squad is easy to take down and
their position on this issue is easily dismissed, and they fail to gain the support of people like me
because their other issues are so ludicrous. Their flawed character (e.g incest, lies, etc.) hardly makes
them good lawyers for anyone, leave alone Palestinians and Iranians.
@A123
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You take tidbits from the MSM and what the
establishment says and regurgitate. You are a stooge of Natenyahu, the real sociapath. Trump is becoming one
very fast as well.
The regional stability only requires that uncle Sam come home and stop shedding
American blood as well as Middle Eastern blood.
Attacking the embassy was clearly Khameni's desperate effort to shore up personal weakness at home.
Not only did he fail to keep the embassy, he also lost a key terrorist. The weak leader just became much
weaker.
Here is a very good example of your ignorance. You have typical American problem. They think they know
how the Iranian mind works. They don't know a thing about how Iranians think. Iran has ten more Sulemanis
waiting in line to take his place and there are ten more Al-Mohandus in Iraq.
Does anyone remember what an American General said about ISIS? He said it will take 30 to 40 years to
defeat of ISIS in Iraq. It took less three years for the Iraq militias, all volunteer group mobilzed as a
result of a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, to defeat ISIS and ISIS was being supplied arms by the
US. Al-Mohandus was one of that group.
@renfro
Thank you for posting that list. Any just soul in this world should keep a copy of that list as a permanent
reminder of the nature of the Jewish state and its sponsor/protector insane criminals deserving the
harshest of their own gods' revenge: total obliteration from the face of the earth for ever. They are the
scourge of humanity; is anyone with a conscience safe in thie world?
Question #1: Do members of US military have right -- or obligation -- to refuse orders that violate
international rules and conventions on military engagement, US Constitution, or basic morality?
These guys just follow orders. They are not taught to think about the morality of their actions, but to
trust the wisdom of their leaders and the justice of the cause.
No thinking person could honestly serve in the American Military today. Their cause is not defense of any
ideals or their own homeland, but to serve an unjust and evil government in thrall to Jewish supremacists.
The only hope for us sane people is to hunker down and crack open another delightful $1.39 plus tax 8.1%
Hurricane 25 ouncer. Americans like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, when in reality they
are pathetically superstitious and naturally subservient. Half the country every Sunday actually worships a
mythical jew zombie and even routinely mutilates the genitals of their male offspring to demonstrate total
fealty to their cock cutter cult overlords. The other half every Sunday worships giant muscular Africans in
plastic hats and tight spandex groping each other in a simulated homoerotic orgy on their flat screen living
room joo boxes. Oh, and it has been proven that guzzling fully synth swill like Ice House, Steel Reserve,
and Hurricane is actually healthier than counter and designers beers as brews made from actual fermented
real grains all contain the magic ingredient, RoundUp ..providing your liver and brain can withstand a
steady diet of 8%to 10% high octane fuel.
@Harbinger
I keep saying it.
Bomb to dust these maaaa-humpers in that shithole south of Lebanon.
The World major problems will go away with the next 10 years
@Adrian
I am a born again Christian and reader of the Bible but I cannot qoute chapter and versues like yourself and
many more who are able. Thanks for your reply and be blessed!
@Haxo Angmark
I don't think all, or even most, of them are hasbarists. They are mostly brain-addled American boomer
"conservatives" who blindly believe everything the Jews spoon-feed them. And really, 80% of (((ZeroHedge)))
is also Jewish propaganda these days, so why shouldn't their commenters reflect that?
It's not so
different from the moronic commentary found in the Steve Sailer section here at Unz, which seems to
increasingly bleed out to the rest of the site.
January 03, 2020 There can be no justification for this act of murder
"America's lawless arrogance has
gone too far with the assassination of Iran's top military commander. The deadly airstrike against General
Qasem Soleimani was carried out on the order of President Donald Trump.
@Rich
He was a leader of an army that engages in terrorism"
Israel is nation that survives on terrorism It was birthed by terrorism . It gets money everytime some guy
makes threats to a desolate synagogue or storms on the headstones of some graveyard . The money helps the
nation to survive get food water electricity and it uses the change for making bullets to hit at the eyes of
the Palestinian boys.
@Rich
I don't see where anyone is putting forth the idea that Iran can defeat the United States -- and they don't
have to to, essentially, 'win'.
After all, look at the end results for We The People Of The United States
as a result of the (false flag known as) 9/11 -- let's see, we've got the Patriot Act to destroy our
individual rights; we've got the TSA folks to do likewise; we've got the NSA to spy on anyone and everyone;
we've spent Trillion$ chasing phony WMDs (thanks to the 'intelligence' shoved at US by the israelis); we've
spent heaven-only-knows how much modifying the cabins of our commercial aircraft to prevent 'terrorist'
attacks; we've allowed folks to capitalize on the whole Twin Towers insurance scam.
All in all, we've been under the gun since 9/11 -- afraid of our own shadows -- bowing to the israeli
bastards who know no limits to their evil -- and, thanks to President Trump, American blood will be spilled
for them once again and American freedoms will be lost for the once again.
@Nicols Palacios Navarro
America needs interfaith dialogue with Islam but without including the Jewish faith . It is for the
forgiveness that we hope will be showed to and bestowed on our future generations . We need to include
Buddhist as well.
@Alfred
A good summation. However, it gets even darker than this.
Journalist working at the outer limits of the
mainstream (e.g. Robert Fisk) had long suspected an Iranian hand in Pan Am 103. And lawyers for the two
Libyans prosecuted for the bombing identified 11 alleged members of the rather obscure Palestinian Popular
Struggle Front (PPSF) as the men responsible. The Iranians did back this group, BUT numerous sources claim
that the operation took place with the consent of US authorities.
Why would the US allow such an attack upon its citizens? According to former Congressional staffer and
(former) CIA asset Susan Lindauer, the attack was directed at shutting down an investigation into a CIA-run
drug-trafficking ring (codenamed "Operation Khourah") operating from Beirut. In her words:
"The Defence Intelligence Agency had gone into Lebanon and were gathering forensic evidence to prove the
CIA's role in heroin trafficking.
"They boarded Pan Am flight 103 that morning and they were flying back to Washington to deliver their
report, with heroin, cash and banking records."
The UK Guardian summarised the scenario thusly:
//Among the Lockerbie victims was a party of US intelligence specialists, led by Major Charles McKee of
the DIA, returning from an aborted hostage-rescue mission in Lebanon. A variety of sources have claimed that
McKee, who was fiercely anti-drugs, got wind of the CIA's deals and was returning to Washington to blow the
whistle. A few months after Lockerbie, reports emerged from Lebanon that McKee's travel plans had been
leaked to the bombers. The implication was that Flight 103 was targeted, in part, because he was on board.
//
So extensive is the evidence of all this murk that even CNN has acknowledged it:
Do members of US military have right -- or obligation -- to refuse orders that violate international
rules and conventions on military engagement, US Constitution, or basic morality?
Yes, it's not only a right, it's an obligation. Following orders is not a defence for anyone knowingly
involved in crimes of war and against humanity.
However, the plea of obedience to superior orders can be a mitigating circumstance and reduce the
severity of punishment. A private soldier responsibility for a war crime would be the same as that of the
general or commander-in-chief who made the order, but his punishment would be reduced or symbolic.
In this case, a properly constituted court would convict Trump and all others in the chain of command,
down to the operators of the drone, for the assassination of Suleimani.
@JamesinNM
Tell that to Perle,Kristol,Kagan Kaplan Lutti Abrams Feith Wolfowitz and Haim Saban , Sheldon Adeslhon ,
Singer and Marcus . Use loudspeaker to make it reach the settlers occupiers and Likudniks .
Unfortunately it is partial, as it doesn't include Iraqis individually targeted and assassinated from
2003 on. Do you have access to that list as well?
@anon
Okay, I get it, you don't like Israel, but does your dislike of Israel mean the Iranians are hale and hearty
fellows? Most of their leadership are corrupt millionaires who use a medieval religion to justify torturing
and enslaving their populace. The Iranian leadership is full of evil people who are openly hostile to the
United States and its interests. Sorry.
The fact that you, and many others on this site, are strongly hostile to Israel and feel affection for
the defeated Palestinians, doesn't change the fact that Israel acts as an ally to the US in its dealings
with various enemies. The argument over how much, if any, foreign aid should be given to foreign nations has
nothing to do with the fact that Iran has chosen to be an enemy of the US. Had they not killed an American
contractor and coordinated the attack on the US embassy in Iraq (as well as other terrorist attacks),
General Soleimani, might still be alive to torture his enemies and plan terrorist attacks.
'U.S. Airstrike Targets Iraqi Militia North of Baghdad, State TV Reports
Iraqi army sources say at least five killed in attack on Iran-backed militia convoy, which group says was
carrying medical teams '
-- Haaretz
Obviously, we want to make certain Iran feels it necessary to respond.
@Rich
Then I guess he would fit right into Washington with their deranged people that kill wedding parties and
children,would put on illegal no fly zones killing 500,000 children,now just where do you think their
freedoms were .Its people like you that are sick in the head all puffed up with the empire bullshit that
everything on the planet belongs to us and was just put there for our taking,your a perfect example of a
neocon hiding behind patriotism.the sick kind that will destroy the world if we let it.!!
Their perspective on the assassination took several different angles than were presented even here on
Unz. I disagree with their conclusion that Iran has only two options: all out war NOW -- Iran will be
destroyed but so will Israel, and US bases will be eradicated; or sit on their hands and take the repeated
hits that USPisrael intends to send. (the latter seems to be the case: another attack has already taken
place).
But Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart reported two more bits of information:
1. US press spokesman hinted that the PMU that was attacked by USA & lost 32 men, helped plan the attack on
Suleimani; claim was Suleimani was 'going rogue' -- US is offering an "out" to Iran in that Iran Central was
not directing the anti-American operation that Suleimani was planning.
The briefer said: "Iran has only two options: Come to the table and negotiate, or endure more attacks."
Because IRGC Quds force had been declared a terrorist organization, killing Suleimani was hunkey-dorie.
Realize, tho, that Adam Schiff has proposed legislation that hate crimes be prosecuted as domestic
terrorism, and the Monsey incident upped the ante on that, so that domestic terrorism would be prosecuted
the same way as international terrorism. Knocking over a grave marker in a Jewish cemetery could possibly be
turned into an act of international terrorism. Rick Wiles or any of us anonymous keyboard warriors that Fran
Taubman is so eager to doxx could be named as Terrorist, and, presumably, be droned by our own government,
in our own American home, at the behest of Israeli partisans.
2. Israeli newspapers quoted Netanyahu that he knew in advance about the assassination, likely was in on
the planning (with Pompeo).
Also, a New York Times article wrote on Jan. 2 -- before the attack:
"What if the
former commander
of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Suleimani, visits Baghdad
for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to
use hypersonic missiles
will be many."
What's a hypersonic missile? Who has them? How did NYTimes know this stuff?
Did US use hypersonic missiles? Was the NYTimes article, and the assassination of the Quds general, warnings
to other world leaders?
Every time you speak out against western imperialism in a given nation or question western propaganda
narratives about that nation's government, you will inevitably be accused of loving that nation's
government by anyone who argues with you.
When I say "inevitably", I am not exaggerating.
If you speak in any public forum for any length
of time expressing skepticism of what we're told to believe about a nation whose government has been
targeted by the US-centralized empire, you will with absolute certainty eventually run into someone who
accuses you of thinking that that government is awesome and pure and good.
@Rich
"Israel acts as an ally to the US in its dealings with various enemies."
-- This is a really poor joke.
Israel is the worst enemy of the US. Israel is guilty of killing and maiming the servicemen on the USS
Liberty.
Your filthy Pollard has created the worst spying episode in the history of the US (the goodies were sold by
Israel to China).
Mossad and Mossad's deputies Epstein et al have contributed a huge amount of evilness to the US and beyond.
The ongoing mass slaughter for Eretz Israel on the US dime & limb has been the greatest achievement of
sadistic Israel-firsters.
And only God knows the details of the zonists' involvement in 9/11.
If you want to talk about "corrupt millionaires and evil people" who "torture and enslave" and who are
"openly hostile" to the United States -- and all other countries that are not totally zionized (like Russia
and Iran) -- then your talk should be about zionists and the Jewish State.
By the way, were not you among the dancing Israelis celebrating the miraculous (controlled) demolition of
the towers?
"NATO got it right," he said. "In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This
is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward "
@Maiasta
Victor Ostrovsky, a Canadian former intelligence colonel with Israel's Mossad secret service and author of
the bestseller By Way Of Deception (the title comes from the Mossad motto), will testify that it was Mossad
commandos who set up the transmitter in Tripoli that generated a false signal about the "success" of the
Berlin bomb he has already given a detailed description of this daring operation in his second book, The
Other Side Of Deception. Ostrovsky, who will testify by closed-circuit television from somewhere in North
America he fears that, if he comes to Holland, he may be "Vanunu-ed" (ie kidnapped and smuggled back to
Israel) for breaking his secrets oath will state that the Lockerbie intercept so resembles the La Belle
intercept as to have probably the same provenance. This is what US lawyers call the "duck" argument: "If it
looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles, the preponderance of evidence is that it is a duck."
Ostrovsky's evidence would then put the onus on the Lord Advocate to prove that the Lockerbie intercept is
genuine, not disinformation. Ostrovsky believes that, in both bombings, Israel implicated Libya to shield
Iran, thereby encouraging Iran not to persecute its small Jewish community.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/apr/17/lockerbie
I wouldn't be surprised if the idiots "in charge" of this country decide to do a false flag "terrorist"
attack here in America, killing civilians, if this goes further. They're already putting out articles
indicating this. I don't believe the Iranians would target civilians here, but we all know who would.
Operation Gladio
The best thing that the Iranians could do is blurt out the truth for all the world to hear. Especially if
your side is militarily weaker, truth must be the main weapon. The Iranian leader should mock and shame
Donald Trump as a cuck-stooge of not only Zionism but Jewish Supremacism that rules the US. He should point
out how Jewish Zionist Power has been out to destroy Trump from day one, but the orange-man coward remains
most servile to the very group that has done most to undermine his presidency.
[MORE]
The current state of the world is so embarrassing. It's like goyim of all stripes are stuck in some
gladiatorial ring under Jewish orchestration. Jews hate whites and Trump. Jews hate Iranians. Given
that both groups have in common the rabid & virulent hostility of Jewish supremacists, the most
natural thing would be for both sides to unite against the Jews. Whites and Iranians are natural
allies. But what do they do? Trump the so-called 'white nationalist' sucks up to Jews and attacks
Iran. And Iran feels compelled to denounce all of America when the real culprits are the freaking
Jews. Goyim are the gladiators in SPARTACUS -- though slaves of Rome, they slaughter each other for the
amusement of Roman elites. Though Jews are hostile to whites and Iranians, whites are willing to kill
Iranians to win approval from their Jewish masters, and Iranians waste so much time denouncing all of
the US. What the world needs is a Spartacus-like figure. Spartacus united the slaves and made them
fight Rome than each other. Goyim need to unite to fight Jewish Supremacist Power. This is where
China, Russia, and Iran are doing the right thing, but they are still loathe to Name the Jew. Current
US belligerence is the direct outcome of Jewish domination.
Iranians should throw Trump's words right back in his face. In 2016, Trump said the Iraq War was a
total disaster, and that the US should get out of the Middle East. He also said the US should work for
world peace by working with Russia. But since then, Jewish supremacists and its cuck-minions in the
Deep State have done everything to undermine Trump, and the weary beast has succumbed to Jewish
machinations. Trump is more Sparky the running dog than Spartacus. But then, much of the blame must go
to white American Conservatives. Their brand of idiotic Christianity, atomizing libertarianism, and
anti-intellectualism led to all the elite institutions being taken over by Jews, progs, and
cucky-wucks. It could be Putin is mute about Jewish power because the Russian economy is still
substantially in Jewish hands. One might hope China will be bold in stating the truth, but the Chinese
way is strategic than principled. Also, China has been pulled into US market imperialism. It's the US
gambit as the sole superpower with a vast market. If old European Empires suppressed economic growth
in their colonies, US encourages economic growth as dependence on US markets. Thus, all the economies
that grew by selling to the US are deathly afraid of losing market access. As the religion of the US
is now globo-homo-shlomo-afro, they dare not speak the truth that Jewish Power is behind the current
rot of globalist cultural imperialism.
It is about time for Russia, Iran, and all nations to mock the US as a Jewish Supremacist empire,
one where craven white cowards do little but crawl on their knees and pledge undying support for
Jewish supremacists and Zion. Why? Because soulless US is only about one thing: Money and Idolatry.
Jews got the money and idolized themselves as the supreme identity group that ALL other groups must
serve. While Jewish elites rub their hands at the prospect of another Middle East War, it will be
goyim , white American soldiers and countless Persians/Arabs/Muslims, who will do all the killing and
dying. Jewish globalists went from Semites to Supremites, and now, so-called Anti-Semitism is
Anti-Supremitism, which is more necessary than ever. And it's about time Russia addressed the
J-Question. Vladimir Putin has been silent on this for too long, but it is time for truth. It is time
to put down the gauntlet. No, no one one should make crazy neo-nazi talking points. They just need to
speak the truth that Jews control the US, the lone superpower, and that the Jewish modus operandi is
Jewish hegemony at any cost. Also, Zionism has turned into Yinon-ism based on the Yinon Plan.
We've all been duped by Jewish Power. There was a time when Jews assured goyim, "Stick with us, and
you shall have true free speech", "Struggle with us against unfettered capitalist greed", and "Support
our cause to expose the Deep State and to create a more open and transparent society." But Jews
weren't really against Excessive Power & Privilege. They just wanted to bring down the old Wasp elites
so that they, as the new elites, would have the power to curtail free speech, rake in all the profits,
and use deep state apparatus to destroy rivals and critics. Jewish Power is the main source of many
woes around the world, but because of the stigma of 'antisemitism', so many people will blame anyone
but the Jews. When Alex Jones got deplatformed, whom did he blame? The Chinese. Trump is pushed
against the rope, so whom does he shake his fist at? Iranians. John McCain and Mitt Romney were
smeared and slimed by the Jew-run mass media(despite their total cuckery to Zion) in 2008 and 2012,
but whom did they rag on? Trump and his supporters. What a sorry bunch. (Granted, morons like Richard
Spencer and Neo-Nazi crew deserve their share of blame by sinking the promising dissident Alt Right
label with what truly amounts to white supremacism and even neo-Nazism, thereby making it more
difficult for Trump to address legitimate white interests.)
Anyway, imagine a scenario where Nazi Germany attacks Poland, France, Russia, and Great Britain but
all those nations praise Hitler & Nazi Germany while taking their rage and frustration on each other.
Such is the state of the world today. Jews torment and destroy so many nations and peoples, but entire
nations are willing to war with one other while speaking and doing nothing about the Jewish Glob.
Unless people understand the urgency of Naming the Jew, nothing will change. It's like a doctor won't
cure cancer if he does EVERYTHING but name the cancer. If there's a dead rat decaying and stinking up
the apartment, no amount of 'solutions' will fix the problem unless someone names the dead rat and
remove it from the premises. After WWII, Jews got a grace period, well-deserved due to Shoah. But it's
time to face facts about Jews of the Now. Pretending Jews are still Shoah victims is like pretending
current China is still the 'Sick Man of Asia' of the 19th century. Times change, and Jews are the
supreme rulers of the world, and this must be called out. But that worthless pile of shi* Trump only
sucks up to Jews more even as they bugger his ass. And white Americans are truly retarded. Jewish
Power is carrying out White Nakba in US, EU, Canada, and Australia -- as cuck-white elites in media,
academia, and institutions are nothing but mental minions of Jewish Power, as in Jews lead, goyim
follow -- , and whites are being turned into New Palestinians, but all these worthless white
'conservatives' are cheering Trump's anti-BDS law that violates the US constitution. How utterly
pathetic.
@Anonymous
"White American Christians are generally afraid of the Jewish lobby."
-- Agree. The US brass are cowards.
The US government of cowards is for sale. The US media is owned by Israel-firsters who have been propagating
lies upon lies. "Is this good for Jews?" has become the zionists' battle cry that scares Americans into
submission.
The scared Americans need to process the fact of holobiz being over. The Jews are not victims -- the Jews
are shameless aggressors and traitors busy with frightening and corrupting the western governments to the
bones because allegedly "this is good for Jews:"
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/
Let's be clear about what we just didwe assassinated two key military and political leaders on the
sovereign territory of Iraq without the permission of the Iraqi Government. There is no evidence or
valid intelligence that shows Soleimani directing Iraqi Shia militias to attack and kill US troops. None.
But those facts do not matter.
Judging from the media reaction on cable news, there is a lot of whooping and celebrating the death of
Soleimani as a decisive blow against terrorism. Boy we showed those Iranians who is boss. But that is not
how the Iranians see it and that is not how a significant portion of the Iraqi Shia population see it.
From their perspective this is the equivalent of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor.
The zionized cowards in the US government made American servicemen into targets for retaliation in
response to American crimes in Iraq -- crimes that were committed because "this is good for Jews" who want
their Eretz Israel by any means, including a mass slaughter of the innocent in the Middle East.
Boy Jewish intelligence is terribly overrated. The zionists do believe that selecting and promoting cowards
and profiteers on the positions of power in the US is "good for Jews." Idiots.
Iran will explain to Iraq that the US will fight to every last drop of Iraqi blood while Iran will do its
best to support their fellow Shia. The Iraqi parliament, not wanting another war inside Iraq and hating the
US for starting it, will vote to expel the US or maybe to simply refuse the US any air rights.
The US then either retreats out of Iraq or it become an occupying force. If the US retreats, it'll go
down in history as a strategic defeat. If the US decides to occupy, it'll need to disband the Iraqi
parliament (ie a democracy) and replace it with the inevitable transitional government who'll be fed with a
steady stream of suitcases full of $100 bills. At the same time, the US will need to fight a bloody guerilla
war which will ultimately end in a strategic defeat when the US population gets bored by the smart-bomb
video footage.
Their are considerable more Galaxy C17 traffic in Ramstein/Germany and the whole C17 (as far as you
can identify them)look like a swarm of bees on the way to the middle east.
Galaxy was the C-5; C-17 is the Globemaster. In addition to its role in Tactical and Strategic airlift,
it also serves as MedEvac, often to Ramstein/Landstuhl.
That's a good suggestion but I still think they should go after Pompeo. If you really want to keep it
'tit for tat' with even less retaliation then poor Gen. Milley should be splashed. (Evil grin)
Milley's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: his 'same-store sales' equivalent would have been Hossein Salami.
Soleimani wasn't even head of the IRGC that's also Hossein Salami.
If the US had "red-carded" Salami, today they would be cleaning up missile debris and human remains at US
bases all over the Middle East, and "Iron Dome" would get definitive evidence that it's a joke.
Although Soleimani had genuine clout and a high profile, he was only the head of Quds Force, which is
kinda MI (plus a bit of special operations/coordination of irregulars).
So I would guess that the appropriate tit-for-tat splash would be LtGen Scott Berrier (G2 Intel).
Everyone's heard of that guy, right?
Plus, if they splashed Pompous, the resulting fatberg would burn for longer than the Springfield tyre
fire. Nobody wants that.
@Passer by
During the lead-up to the Gulf War, I recall "experts" like you talking about how Hussein's
"battle-hardened" "elite" Republican Guard was going to send those wet-behind-the-ears American soldiers
running home with their tails tucked between their legs. They were all then as prescient as you are now.
Spare me these countless internet military "experts" who always seem to know who can do what, and yet end up
being wrong in every instance.
@Colin Wright
The Quran promotes a supremacist ideology for world domination. It is the Muslim equivalent of the Talmud.
Neither the Muslims nor the zionists will get a moment's restful sleep until they know their place, but
psychopathic anti-Christ peoples are full of the devil, making them a curse on humanity.
Unfortunately it is partial, as it doesn't include Iraqis individually targeted and assassinated from
2003 on. Do you have access to that list as well?
@Colin Wright
I admit I stopped paying attention to beheadings after the first few.
It seemed pretty obvious that it was the worst possible advertisement for a cause. The only people who
would think "
Kewl
!" were people already on their side. Plus it was guaranteed to horrify moderates.
It also guaranteed a full-court hostile press in Western media (SWIDT? two uses of 'press' in the same word
genius!).
It struck me as the sort of thing that (ahem) plays into the hands of those who wanted to give pan-Arab
nationalism a bad name. Almost as if that was the intention.
They should have hired
Hill and Knowlton
and done their PR properly.
.
Also, the aesthetics were
awful
.
The guys doing the beheadings had
very
white forearms whiter than most Anglo military guys.
I'm sensitive like that: I found the beheaders' pasty skin off-putting.
The lack of struggle from the victims was also weird evidence perhaps that they were sedated, which is
good for them I guess.
For example, there are some rather credible rumors that the destruction of PanAm 103 over Scotland was
not a Libyan action, but an Iranian one in direct retaliation for the deliberate shooting down by the USN
of IranAir 655 Airbus over the Persian Gulf.
The crash of the Pan Am 103 was, according to Ari Ben-Menashe, related to a fabricated claim on 5 CIA
agents running drugs via their contacts in Frankfurt under CIA's Bill Casey.
One less known point on the Pan Am 103 is the probable assassination by South Africa's apartheid
government of United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson (according to Patrick Hasseldine).
"Pik Botha and a South African delegation from Johannesburg, who was initially booked to travel to the
Namibian independence ratification ceremony in New York on Pan Am Flight 103 from London. Instead, the
booking was cancelled as he and six delegates took an earlier flight, thereby avoiding the fatal PAN AM 103
bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland" (wiki, Pik Botha).
Robert Mueller's 30-year search for justice on Pan AM 103 led to nothing except the USual platitudes
(unfounded accusations) on Iran and the PLO.
@The Alarmist
Well, yes, every member of every military is a legitimate target. Especially a general. If it sounds logical
to you, that's because not only is it logical, it's common sense. As far as who drew first blood, that's a
little more complicated. Some might argue that the Iranians drew first blood when the present group of
radical medievalists overthrew the Shah and then seized the US embassy in 1979 or a whole load of other
attacks by Iranians and their proxies. I really don't understand the outpouring of sympathy for a general in
a foreign nation that is an outspoken enemy of the US. I get it, you guys hate Israel, but that doesn't
absolve the Iranian mullahs or their henchmen. They are not your friends, they don't like you and their end
game is the same end game they've had since the founding of their "religion", the violent spread of Islam
throughout the world. Read the Koran first, before you throw your support behind these jihadists. If their
own holy book doesn't open your eyes and you still believe the West is the "imperialist", find me
Constantinople on the map.
@barr
Thanks for the reminder. I'm familiar with Ostrovsky, of course, and i found the book you mentioned to be
quite an eye-opener, albeit still written from a basically pro-Israel point-of-view.
re: "Israel
implicated Libya to shield Iran." Yes, this is more than plausible, especially when we consider that Israel
was largely responsible for arming Iran during the long war with Iraq in the 1980s. The latter may seem
counter-intuitive to many, but it actually fell perfectly in line with the Oded Yinon plan for regional
balkanisation. I think that as soon as the Iraqi Resistance movement was crushed back in 2008, Iran was
considered no longer so useful to the Zionists, and they began the next phase of destabilisation. Obviously,
all regional powers are to be taken out one-by-one, and that presents a problem when it comes to a regional
alliance such as the so-called "Shia Crescent" of Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon (or Hezbollah).
I think it likely that the Qassem assassination though, is a significant miscalculation that will cost
Trump and the US dearly.
@Rich
I agree with the notion that Persian capabilities are consistently overstated on
unz.com
They look more capable than Arabs. That's not much. They haven't shown the ability to develop
their own weapons. The rest of their industry sucks (e.g. cars).
Rolling out of Kuwait across a plain is way easier than
rolling up the Zagroz especially when the other guy knows you're coming and has had 50 years to prepare,
and the natives at your back want the other guy to win.
The Zagroz aren't as daunting as trying to go up the sides on AH76 in Parwan, which is some of the most
inhospitable terrain on Earth. Invading Iran via Iraq (which is the US' only option) isn't even as hard
(topographially) as trying to take Zrich by invading Switzerland starting from Milan.
Topography matters.
Safwan to Baghdad is flat freeway (and was, even in 1991); Baghdad to Hamedan, not so much. (Hamedan's
the town on the other side of the Zagroz, on the only non-impossible route to Teheran).
For the average grunt, it would be like "
Restrepo
" from day 1, constantly, for the entire trip
but with no HESCO.
It would guarantee tens of thousands of cases of PTSD.
Armour and artillery really really
really
needs roads (or rail), and aerial reconnaissance is way
easier on a sandy table top, than in mountains.
@renfro
1
The killing of Iraqi Academics: A War to Erase the Future and Culture of Iraqis
List of Iraqi academics assassinated in Iraq during the US-led occupation
Academics assassinated: 324
Updated: November 7, 2013
(Last case registered: No. 125)
Spanish Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq
IraqSolidaridad 2005-2013
[MORE]
The following list of University academics assassinated in Iraq is updated with the information
delivered by the Iraqi CEOSI sources inside Iraq. It presents all the data compiled in the previous
IraqSolidaridad editions. This relation has been collated and completed with that elaborate by the
Belgian organization 'BRussells Tribunal' [1]. This list only refers to the academic, institutional
and research fields from Iraqi Universities, so that it does not include the staff that belongs to
other fields and institutions, who has been targeting since the beginning of the occupation, such as
directors of primary and secondary schools, high schools or health workers [2].
BAGHDAD
Baghdad University
1. Abbas al-Attar: PhD in humanities, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Humanities. Date
unknown.
2. Abdel Hussein Jabuk: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
3. Abdel Salam Saba: PhD in sociology, lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
4. Abdel Razak al-Naas: Lecturer in information and international mass media at Baghdad University's
College of Information Sciences. He was a regular analyst for Arabic satellite TV channels. He was
killed in his car at Baghdad University 28 January 2005. His assassination led to confrontations
between students and police, and journalists went on strike.
5. Ahmed Nassir al-Nassiri: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University, assassinated in February
2005.
6. Ali Abdul-Hussein Kamil: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer in the Department of Physics, Baghdad
University. Date unknown.
7. Amir al-Jazragi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Medicine, and
consultant at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, assassinated on November 17, 2005.
2
8. Basil al-Karji: PhD in chemistry, lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
9. Essam Sharif Mohammed: PhD in history, professor in Department of History and head of the College
of Humanities, Baghdad University. Dead October 25, 2003.
10. Faidhi al-Faidhi: PhD in education sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University and al- Munstansiriya
University. He was also member of the Muslim Scientists Committee. Assassinated in 2005.
11. Fouad Abrahim Mohammed al-Bayaty: PhD in German philology, professor and head of College of
Philology, Baghdad University. Killed Abril 19, 2005.
12. Haifa Alwan al-Hil: PhD in physics, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Science for Women.
Assassinated September 7, 2003.
13. Heikel Mohammed al-Musawi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at al-Kindi College of Medicine, Baghdad
University. Assassinated November 17, 2005.
14. Hassan Abd Ali Dawood al-Rubai: PhD in stomatology, dean of the College of Stomatology, Baghdad
University. Assassinated December 20, 2005.
15. Hazim Abdul Hadi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University.
16. Husain Ali al-Jumaily: Lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Political Sciences. He was
assassinated in Bagdad on 16 July. [Source: BRussells Tribunal's university Iraqi sources, January 17,
2009].
17. Khalid Hassan Mahdi Nasrullah: Lecturer and Secretary of the Faculty of Political Sciences,
Baghdad University. After four days of been kidnapped in Baghdad, his body was found with signs of
torture on Mars 27, 2007. [Source: BRussells Tribunal's university Iraqi sources, January 17, 2009].
18. Khalel Ismail Abd al-Dahri: PhD in physical education, lecturer at the College of Physical
Education, Baghdad University. Date unknown.
19. Khalil Ismail al-Hadithi: Lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Political Sciences. He was
assassinated in Amman [Jordan] on April 23, 2006. [Source: BRussells Tribunal's university Iraqi
sources, January 17, 2009].
20. Kilan Mahmoud Ramez: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
21. Maha Abdel Kadira: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Humanities. Date unknown.
22. Majed Nasser Hussein al-Maamoori: Professor of veterinary medicine at Baghdad University's College
of Veterinary Medicine. Assassinated February 17, 2007.
23. Marwan al-Raawi: PhD in engineering and lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
24. Marwan Galeb Mudhir al-Hetti: PhD in chemical engineering and lecturer at the School of
Engineering, Baghdad University. Killed March 16, 2004.
25. Majeed Hussein Ali: PhD in physical sciences and lecturer at the College of Sciences, Baghdad
University. Date unknown.
3
26. Mehned al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
27. Mohammed Falah al-Dulaimi: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
28. Mohammed Tuki Hussein al-Talakani: PhD in physical sciences, nuclear scientist since 1984, and
lecturer at Baghdad University. Assassinated September 4, 2004.
29. Mohammed al-Kissi: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
30. Mohammed Abdallah al-Rawi: PhD in surgery, former president of Baghdad University, member of the
Arab Council of Medicine and of the Iraqi Council of Medicine, president of the Iraqi Union of
Doctors. Killed July 27, 2003.
31. Mohammed al-Jazairi: PhD in medicine and plastic surgeon, College of Medicine, Baghdad University.
Assassinated 15 November 2005.
32. Mustafa al-Hity: PhD in medicine, pediatrician, College of Medicine, Baghdad University.
Assassinated 14 November 2005.
33. Mustafa al-Mashadani: PhD in religious studies, lecturer in Baghdad University's College of
Humanities. Date unknown.
34. Nafea Mahmmoud Jalaf: PhD in Arabic language, professor in Baghdad University's College of
Humanities. Killed December 13, 2003.
35. Nawfal Ahmad: PhD, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Fine Arts. She was assassinated at
the front door of her house on 25 December 2005.
36. Nazar Abdul Amir al-Ubaidy: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. Date unknown.
37. Raad Shlash: PhD in biological sciences, head of Department of Biology at Baghdad University's
College of Sciences. He was killed at the front door of his house on November 17, 2005.
38. Rafi Sarcisan Vancan: Bachelor of English language, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of
Women's Studies. Assassinated June 9, 2003.
39. Saadi Dagher Morab: PhD in fine arts, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Fine Arts.
Killed July 23, 2004.
40. Sabri Mustafa al-Bayaty: PhD in geography, lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Humanities.
Killed June 13, 2004.
41. Saad Yassin al-Ansari: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. He was killed in al-Saydiya
neighborhood, Baghdad, 17 November 2005.
42. Wannas Abdulah al-Naddawi: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University. Assassinated 18 February
2005.
43. Yassim al-Isawi: PhD in religious studies, Baghdad University's College of Arts. Assassinated 21
June 2005.
44. Zaki Jabar Laftah al-Saedi: Bachelor of veterinary medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University's
College of Veterinary Medicine. Assassinated October 16, 2004.
45. Basem al-Modarres: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Philosophy. [Source:
al-Hayat, 28 February 2006].
46. Jasim Mohamed Achamri: Dean of College of Philosophy, Baghdad University. [Source: al-Hayat, 28
February 2006].
47. Hisham Charif: Head of Department of History and lecturer at Baghdad University. [Source:
al-Hayat, 28 February 2006].
4
48. Qais Hussam al-Den Jumaa: Professor and Dean of College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed
27 March 2006 by US soldiers in downtown Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source].
49. Mohammed Yaakoub al-Abidi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
50. Abdelatif Attai: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of
University Lecturers report, March 2006].
51. Ali al-Maliki: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of
University Lecturers report, March 2006].
52. Nafia Aboud: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi. Association of
University Lecturers report, March 2006].
53. Abbas Kadem Alhachimi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
54. Mouloud Hasan Albardar Aturki: Lecturer in Hanafi Teology at al-Imam al-Aadam College of Theology,
Baghdad University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
55. Riadh Abbas Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University's Centre for International Studies. Killed 11
May 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, 17 May 2006].
56. Abbas al-Amery: Professor and head of Department of Administration and Business, College of
Administration and Economy, Baghdad University. Killed together with his son and one of his relatives
at the main entrance to the College 16 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, May 17, 2006].
57. Muthana Harith Jasim: Lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Engineering. Killed near his
home in al-Mansur, 13 June 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, 13 June 2006].
58. Hani Aref al-Dulaimy: Lecturer in the Department of Computer Engineering, Baghdad University's
College of Engineering. He was killed, together with three of his students, 13 June 2006 on campus.
[Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 13 June 2006].
59. Hussain al-Sharifi: Professor of urinary surgery at Baghdad University's College of Medicine.
Killed in May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 June 2006].
60. Hadi Muhammad Abub al-Obaidi: Lecturer in the Department of Surgery, Baghdad University's College
of Medicine. Killed 19 June 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 20 June 2006].
61. Hamza Shenian: Professor of veterinary surgery at Baghdad University's College of Veterinary
Medicine. Killed by armed men in his garden in a Baghdad neighborhood 21 June 2006. This was the first
known case of a professor executed in the victim's home. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 21
June 2006].
62. Jassim Mohama al-Eesaui: Professor at College of Political Sciences, Baghdad University, and
editor of al-Syada newspaper. He was 61 years old when killed in al-Shuala, 22 June 2006. [Source:
UNAMI report, 1 May-30 June 2006].
5
63. Shukir Mahmoud As-Salam: dental surgeon at al-Yamuk Hospital, Baghdad. Killed near his home by
armed men 6 September 2006. [Source: TV news, As-Sharquia channel, 7 September 2006, and CEOSI Iraqi
sources].
64. Mahdi Nuseif Jasim: Professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Baghdad University.
Killed 13 September 2006 near the university. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source].
65. Adil al-Mansuri: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad
University. Kidnapped by uniformed men near Iban al-Nafis Hospital in Baghdad. He was found dead with
torture signs and mutilation in Sadr City. He was killed during a wave of assassinations in which
seven medical specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006 [Source: Iraqi health
service sources, 24 September 2006].
66. Shukur Arsalan: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad
University. Killed by armed men when leaving his clinic in Harziya neighborhood during a wave of
assassinations in which seven specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006.
[Source: Iraqi Health System sources, 24 September 2006].
67. Issam al-Rawi: Professor of geology at Baghdad University, president of the Association of
University Professors of Iraq. Killed 30 October 2006 during an attack carried out by a group of armed
men in which two more professors were seriously injured. [Sources: CEOSI sources, and Associated
Press].
68. Yaqdan Sadun al-Dhalmi: Professor and lecturer in the College of Education, Baghdad University.
Killed 16 October 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources].
69. Jlid Ibrahim Mousa: Professor and lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Medicine. Killed by
a group of armed men in September 2006. During August and September 2006, 6 professors of medicine
were assassinated in Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources].
70. Mohammed Jassim al-Assadi: Professor and dean of the College of Administration and Economy,
Baghdad University. Killed 2 November 2006 by a group of armed men when he was driving to Baghdad
University. Their son was also killed in the attack. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources and Time Magazine, 2
October 2006].
71. Jassim al-Assadi's wife (name unknown): Lecturer at College of Administration and Economy, Baghdad
University [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources and Time Magazine, 2 October 2006].
72. Mohammed Mehdi Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University (unknown position) and member of the
Association of Muslim Scholars. Imam of Ahl al-Sufa Mosque in al-Shurta al-Jamisa neighborhood. Killed
14 November 2006 while driving in the neighborhood of al-Amal in central Baghdad. [Source: UMA, 14
November 2006].
73. Hedaib Majhol: Lecturer at College of Physical Education, Baghdad University, president of the
Football University Club and member of the Iraqi Football Association. Kidnapped in Baghdad. His body
was found three later in Baghdad morgue 3 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2
December 2006].
74. Al-Hareth Abdul Hamid: Professor of psychiatric medicine and head of the Department of Psychology
at Baghdad University. Former
6
president of the Society of Parapsychological Investigations of Iraq. A renowned scientist, Abdul
Hamid was shot dead in the neighborhood of al-Mansur, Baghdad, 6 December 2006 by unknown men.
[Sources: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 6 December 2006, and Reuters, 30 January 2007].
75. Anwar Abdul Hussain: Lecturer at the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. Killed in Haifa
Street in Baghdad in the third week of January 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23
January 2007].
76. Majed Nasser Hussain: PhD and lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Baghdad University.
He was killed in front of his wife and daughter while leaving home in the third week of January 2007.
Nasser Hussain had been kidnapped two years before and freed after paying a ransom. [Source: CEOSI
Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007].
77. Khaled al-Hassan: Professor and deputy dean of the College of Political Sciences, Baghdad
University. Killed in March 2007. [Source: Association of University Lecturers of Iraq, 7 April 2007].
78. Ali Mohammed Hamza: Professor of Islamic Studies at Baghdad University. Department and college
unknown. Killed 17 April 2007. [Sources: TV channels As-Sharquia and al-Jazeera].
79. Abdulwahab Majed: Lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Education. Department and college
unknown. Killed 2 May 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2007].
80. Sabah al-Taei: Deputy Dean of the College of Education, Baghdad University. Killed 7 May 2007.
[Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources. 8 May 2007].
81. Nihad Mohammed al-Rawi: Professor of Civil Engineering and deputy president of Baghdad University.
Shot dead 26 June 2007 in al-Jadria Bridge, a few meters away from the university campus, when exiting
with his daughter Rana, whom he protected from the shots with his body. [Sources: BRussells Tribunal
and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26-27 June 2007].
82. Muhammad Kasem al-Jaboori: Lecturer at the College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed,
together with his son and his brother-in-law, by paramilitary forces 22 June 2007. [Source: CEOSI
Iraqi university sources, 27 June 2007].
83. Samir [surname unknown]: Lecturer at Baghdad University's College of Administration and Economy.
His body was found shot one day after being kidnapped in Kut where he was visiting family. Professor
Samir lived in the Baghdad district of al-Sidiya. [Source: Voices of Iraq,
http://www.iraqslogger.com
, 29 June 2007].
84. Amin Abdul Aziz Sarhan: Lecturer at Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. He was
kidnapped from his home in Basra by unidentified armed men 13 October 2007 and found dead on the
morning of 15 October. [Source: Voices of Iraq, 15 October 2007].
85. Mohammed Kadhem al-Atabi: Head of Baghdad University's Department of Planning and Evaluation. He
was kidnapped 18 October 2007 from his home in Baghdad by a group of armed men and found dead a few
hours later in the area of Ur, near to Sadr City, which is under the control of Moqtada al-Sadr's
Mahdi Army. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 October 2007].
7
86. Munther Murhej Radhi: Dean of the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. He was found dead in
his car 23 January 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 January 2008].
87. Mundir Marhach: Dean of Faculty of Stomatology, Baghdad University. According to information
provided by the Centre for Human Rights of Baghdad, he was killed in March [exact day unknown].
[Source: al-Basrah reported 12 March 2008].
88. Abdul Sattar Jeid al-Dulaimy, a Microbiologist and lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine
and in other institutions in the University. He was killed in November 2003 by three gunmen in front
of his wife and his four children. His three assassins were waiting the family return to Baghdad after
have been visiting his parents in al-Ramadi city, west Baghdad. His wife was also sot in her head, but
she survived. His 14 year old eldest child died of a heart problem a year later. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university source, 11 June 2008.]
*. Abdulkareem Shenein Mohammad: professor of Arabic Language in the College of Islamic Sciences,
University of Baghdad, killed on 27 May 2010 by an assassin (an student, Baghdad police source
informed) with a silencer gun in his personal office in the University. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university source upon media reports, 27 May 2010.] [Subsequent reports confirm that Professor
Abdulkareem Shenein Mohammad survived the attack.]
89. Mudhafar Mahmoud: associated professor in the Geology Department in the College of Science,
University of Baghdad. Dr Mahmoud was assassinated on 28 November 2010 near his house in Baghdad.
[Source: Iraqi source to BRussells Tribunal on 1st December, 2010.]
90. Ali Shalash: professor of Poultry Diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of
Baghdad, killed by assassins who broke into his house in Al-Khadraa area in Baghdad on 17 February,
2011. [Source: Iraqi source to CEOSI on 18 February, 2011.] 91. Ahmed Shakir was a specialist in
cardio-vascular diseases and professor at the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Baghdad.
According to security reports, Dr. Shakir was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in
Zaafaraniyya, south of Baghdad, last Monday 1 July 2013. The report released by UNESCO can be read
here [Source: UNESCO, July 3, 2013].
Al-Maamoon Faculty [private college, Baghdad]
92. Mohammed al-Miyahi: Dean of al-Maamoun Faculty in Baghdad. He was shot with a silencer-equipped
gun in front of his house in al-Qadisiah district, southern Baghdad, as he stepped out of his car 14
December 2007. [Source CEOSI Iraqi source and Kuwait News Agency, reported 19 December 2007, IPS
reported 19 December 2007, and al-Basrah, reported 12 March 2008].
Al-Mustansiriya University (Baghdad)
8
93. Aalim Abdul Hameed: PhD in preventive medicine, specialist in depleted uranium effects in Basra,
dean of the College of Medicine, al-Mustansiriya University. Date unknown.
94. Abdul Latif al-Mayah: PhD in economics, lecturer and head of Department of Research,
al-Mustansiriya University. Killed January 9, 2004.
95. Aki Thakir Alaany: PhD and lecturer at the College of Literature, al-Mustansiriya University. Date
unknown.
96. Falah al-Dulaimi: PhD, professor and deputy dean of al-Mustansiriya University's College of
Sciences. Date unknown.
97. Falah Ali Hussein: PhD in physics, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Sciences,
al-Mustansiriya University, killed May 2005.
98. Musa Saloum Addas: PhD, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Educational Sciences,
al-Mustansiriya University, killed 27 May 2005.
99. Hussam al-Din Ahmad Mahmmoud: PhD in education
sciences, lecturer and dean at College of Education Sciences, al-Mustansiriya University. Date
unknown.
100. Jasim Abdul Kareem: PhD and lecturer at the College of the Education, al-Mustansiriya University.
Date unknown.
101. Abdul As Satar Sabar al-Khazraji: PhD in history, al-Mustansiriya University, killed 19 June
2005. [A same name and surname lecturer in Engineering at the College of Computer Science Technology,
al-Nahrein University was assassinated in March 2006.]
102. Samir Yield Gerges: PhD and lecturer at the College of Administration and Economy at
al-Mustansiriya University, killed 28 August 2005.
103. Jasim al-Fahaidawi: PhD and lecturer in Arabic literature at the College of Humanities,
al-Mustansiriya University. Assassinated at the university entrance. [Source: BBC News, 15 November
2005].
104. Kadhim Talal Hussein: Deputy Dean of the College of Education, al-Mustansiriya University. Killed
November 23, 2005.
105. Mohammed Nayeb al-Qissi: PhD in geography, lecturer at Department of Research, al-Mustansiriya
University. Assassinated June 20, 2003.
106. Sabah Mahmoud al-Rubaie: PhD in geography, lecturer and dean at College of Educational Sciences,
al-Mustansiriya University. Date unknown.
107. Ali Hasan Muhawish: Dean and lecturer at the College of Engineering, al-Mustansiriya University.
Killed March 12, 2006. [Source: Middle East Online, 13 March 2006].
108. Imad Naser Alfuadi: Lecturer at the College of Political Sciences, al-Mustansiriya University.
[Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
109. Mohammed Ali Jawad Achami: President of the College of Law, al-Mustansiriya University. [Source:
Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
110. Husam Karyakus Tomas: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, al-Mustansiriya University. [Source:
Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
9
111. Basem Habib Salman: Lecturer at the College of Medicine at al-Mustansiriya University. [Source:
Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
112. Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Ani: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the College of Law, al-Mustansiriya
University. Kidnapped, together with his friend Akrem Mehdi, 26 April 2006, at his home in Palestine
Street, Baghdad. Their bodies were found two days later. [CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2006].
113. Jasim Fiadh al-Shammari: Lecturer in psychology at the College of Arts, al-Mustansiriya Baghdad
University. Killed near campus 23 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 30 May 2006].
114. Saad Mehdi Shalash: PhD in history and lecturer in history at the College of Arts,
al-Mustansiriya University, and editor of the newspaper Raya al-Arab. Shot dead at his home with his
wife 26 October 2006. [Source: al-Quds al-Arabi, 27 October 2006].
115. Kamal Nassir: Professor of history and lecturer at al-Mustansiriya and Bufa Universities. Killed
at his home in Baghdad in October 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2 November 2006].
116. Hasseb Aref al-Obaidi: Professor in the College of Political Sciences at al-Mustansiriya
University. Since he was kidnapped 22 October 2006, his whereabouts is unknown. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources].
117. Najeeb [or Nadjat] al-Salihi: Lecturer in the College of Psychology at al-Mustansiriya University
and head of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Higher Education of Iraq. Al-Salihi, 39 years
old, was kidnapped close to campus and his body, shot dead, was found 20 days after his disappearance
in Baghdad morgue. His family was able recover his body only after paying a significant amount of
money, October 1, 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources].
118. Dhia al-Deen Mahdi Hussein: Professor of international criminal law at the College of Law,
al-Mustansiriya University. Missing since kidnapped from his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dhia
in 4 November 2006 by a group of armed men driving police cars. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university
sources, 5 November 2006].
119. Muntather al-Hamdani: Deputy Dean of the College of Law, al-Mustansiriya University. He was
assassinated, together with Ali Hassam, lecturer at the same college, 20 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI
Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean
assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether both
[Muntather al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] are the same case or not].
120. Ali Hassam: Lecturer at the College of Law at al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed together
with Muntather al-Hamdani, deputy dean of the college, 20 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean
assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether both
[Muntather al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] are the same case or not.
121. Dhia al-Mguter: Professor of economy at the College of Administration and Economy of
al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed
10
23 January 2007 in Baghdad while driving. He was a prominent economist and president of the Consumer's
Defense Association and the Iraqi Association of Economists. A commentator at for As-Sharquia
television, he participated in the Maram Committee, being responsible for investigating irregularities
occurring during the elections held in January 2006. Al-Mguter was part of a family with a long
anti-colonialist tradition since the British occupation. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and
Az-Zaman newspaper, 24 January 2007].
122. Ridha Abdul al-Kuraishi: Deputy dean of the University of al-Mustansiriya's College of
administration and economy. He was kidnapped 28 March 2007 and found dead the next day. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007. See the letter sent to CEOSI (Arabic)].
123. Zaid Abdulmonem Ali: professor at the Baghdad Cancer Research Center, institution associated to
the Al-Mustansirya University in Baghdad. Dr. Abdulmomem Ali was killed in March 26, 2011 when an IED
attached to his vehicle went off in al-Nusoor square, west of Baghdad. The explosion also left Ali's
wife and two civilians others wounded. [Source: Aswat al-Iraq news agency, on March 26, 2011.]
124. Mohmamed Al-Alwan: Dean of the College of Medicine, Al-Mustansirya University in Baghdad. Dr
Al-Alwan was assassinated in his clinic in Harithiyah, Baghdad, on April 29, 2011. He had been the
Dean of Medical College for over 4 years. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, March 30, 2011 from
Iraqi media and International Iraqi Medical Society.] 125. Naser Husein al Shahmani, professor at
al-Mustansyria University was shot by some gunmen few days ago. They killed him on the spot. [Source:
Ahmad al Farji's article (in Arabic), October 28, 2013.]
University of Technology [Baghdad]
126. Muhannad [or Mehned] al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at the Baghdad
University of Technology. Date unknown.
127. Muhey Hussein: PhD in aerodynamics, lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the
Baghdad University of Technology. Date unknown.
128. Qahtan Kadhim Hatim: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Engineering of the Baghdad
University of Technology. Assassinated May 30, 2004.
129. Sahira Mohammed Machhadani: Baghdad University of Technology. Department and college unknown.
[Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, March 2006].
130. Ahmed Ali Husein: Lecturer at the Baghdad University of Technology, specialist in applied
mechanics. He was killed by a group of armed men in downtown Baghdad 22 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources, 24 May 2006].
131. Name unknown: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 27 June 2006 by a group of
armed men. They were driving a vehicle in the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Mansur and shot him without
11
stopping. Next day, students and professors staged demonstrations in all universities across the
country opposing the assassination and kidnapping of professors and lecturers. [Source: al-Jazeera and
Jordan Times, 27 June 2006].
132. Ali Kadhim Ali: Professor at Baghdad University of Technology. Shot dead in November 2006 in the
district of al-Yarmuk by a group of armed men. His wife, Dr Baida Obeid -- gynecologist -- was also
killed in the attack. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 16 November 2006].
133. Mayed Jasim al-Janabi: Lecturer in physics at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 23 May
2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, December 2006].
134. Khalel Enjad al-Jumaily: Lecturer at University of Technology. Department and college unknown. He
was killed 22 December 2006 with his son, a physician, after being kidnapped. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources, 24 December 2006].
135. Abdul Sami al-Janabi: Deputy President of the Baghdad University of Technology. Missing after
being kidnapped during the third week of January 2007. In 2004, Abdul Sami al-Janabi was dean of
al-Mustansiriya University's College of Sciences in Baghdad. He resigned from this position after Shia
paramilitary forces threatened to kill him. Such forces began then to occupy university centers in the
capital. Transferred by the Ministry of Higher Education to a new position to preserve his security,
Sami al-Janabi has almost certainly been assassinated. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23
January 2007].
136. Ameer Mekki al-Zihairi: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. He was killed in March
2007. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007. See pdf].
137. Saad Abd Alwahab Al-Shaaban: Former Dean of the College of Computer Engineering and Information
Technology in the University of Technology. Killed on Thursday 14 October 2010 by plastic explosive
implanted to his car in Adhamia district of Baghdad. Saad Abd Alwahab Al-Shaaban left Iraq in 2006 and
returned back to Baghdad. He was lately working in the National Center for Computer Science, Ministry
of Higher Education. (Source: [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources on Alane News Agency, , October
15, 2010.]
138. Saad Abdul Jabar: professor at the Technological University in Bagdad. Assassinated in Al-Siyada
district, Southwest Baghdad, while driving his car by murderers using silenced guns on 26 February,
2011.[Source: Asuat Al-Iraq agency, 26 February, and Yaqen agency, February 27, 2010.]
Al-Nahrein University [Baghdad]
139. Akel Abdel Jabar al-Bahadili: Professor and deputy dean of al-Nahrein University's College of
Medicine. Head of Adhamiya Hospital in Baghdad. He was a specialist in internal medicine, killed 2
December 2005.
140. Mohammed al-Khazairy: Lecturer at University College al-Kadhemiya Hospital, al- Nahrein
University. He was a specialist in plastic surgery.
12
141. Laith Abdel Aziz: PhD and lecturer at the College of Sciences, al-Nahrein University. Date
unknown. [Source: al-Hayat, 28 February 2006].
142. Abdul as-Satar Sabar al-Khazraji: Lecturer in engineering at the College of Computer Science
Technology, al-Nahrein University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March
2006]. [A same name and surname PhD in history, lecturer at Al-Munstansiriya University was killed on
19 June 2005.]
143. Uday al-Beiruti: Professor at al-Nahrein University. Kidnapped in University College al-Kadhemiya
Hospital's parking lot by armed men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms. His body was found with
sigs of torture in Sadr City. Date unknown: July/August 2006. His murder took place during a wave of
assassinations in which seven of his colleagues were killed. [Source: Iraqi health service sources, 24
September 2006].
144. Khalel al-Khumaili: Professor at the College of Medicine, al-Nahrein University. He was found
shot dead in December 2006 [exact date unknown] after being kidnapped at University College
al-Kadhemiya Hospital, together with his son, Dr Anas al-Jomaili, lecturer at the same college.
[Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006].
145. Anas al-Jumaili: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, al-Nahrein University. He was found shot
dead in December [exact date unknown] with his father, Dr Jalil al-Jumaili, professor of medicine,
after being kidnapped at University College al-Kadhemiya Hospital. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university
sources, 24 December 2006].
146. Adnan Mohammed Saleh al-Aabid: Lecturer at the College of Law, al-Nahrein University. He was
found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped from his home 28 January 2007 together with
lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak al-Hashimi and Aamer Kasem al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found
dead in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and al-Quds al-Arabi, 1 February
2007].
147. Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak al-Hashimi: Lecturer at the College of Law, al-Nahrein University. He
was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped 28 January 2007 on his way home, together
with lecturers Adnan Mohammed Saleh al-Aabid and Aamer Kasem al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found
dead in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and al-Quds al-Arabi, 1 February
2007].
148. Aamer Kasem al-Kaisy: Lecturer at the College of Law, al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31
January 2007 after having been kidnapped on his way home 28 January 2007, together with a student and
lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak al-Hashimi and Adnan Mohammed Saleh al-Aabid. All were found dead
in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and al-Quds al-Arabi, 1 February 2007].
149. Khaled al-Naieb: Lecturer in microbiology and deputy dean of al-Nahrein University's College of
Higher Studies in Medicine. Killed 30 March 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Having been
threatened by the Mahdi Army, Moqtada as-Sadr's militia, Dr al- Naieb had moved to work in Irbil.
During a brief visit to his family in Baghdad, and after recently becoming a father, he was killed at
the main entrance
13
to the college on his way to collect some documents. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 4 April
2007. Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report dated April 7, 2007. See pdf].
150. Sami Sitrak: Professor of English and dean of al-Nahrein University's College of Law. Professor
Sitrak was killed 29 March 2007. He had been appointed dean of the College after the former dean's
resignation following an attempt to kill him along with three other College lecturers. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers, April 7, 2007. See pdf].
151. Thair Ahmed Jebr: Lecturer in the Department of Physics, College of Sciences, al- Nahrein
University. Jebr was killed in the attack against satellite TV channel al-Baghdadiya April 5, 2007.
[Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, April 7, 2007. See pdf].
152. Iyad Hamza: PhD in chemistry, Baghdad University. He was the academic assistant of the President
of al-Nahrein University. On May 4, 2008 he was killed near his home in Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
source, May 6, 2008].
153. Khamal Abu Muhie: Professor at the College of Medicine, al-Nahrein University. Killed on 22
November 2009 at his home in the neighborhood of Adamiya, Baghdad. [Source: Al-Sharquia TV, November
22, 2009].
Islamic University [Baghdad]
154. Haizem al-Azawi: Lecturer at Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown. He was
35 years old and married and was killed 13 February 2006 by armed men when he arriving home in the
neighborhood of Habibiya. [Source: Asia Times, March 3, 2006].
155. Saadi Ahmad Zidaan al-Fahdawi: PhD in Islamic science, lecturer at the College of Islamic
Science, Baghdad University. Killed March 26, 2006.
156. Abdel Aziz al-Jazem: Lecturer in Islamic theology at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad
University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
157. Saad Jasim Mohammed: Lecturer at the Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown.
Killed, together with his brother Mohammed Jassim Mohammed, 11 May 2007 in the neighborhood of
al-Mansur. The armed men who committed the crime where identified by the Association of Muslims
Scholars as members of a death squad. [Sources: press release of the Association of Muslims Scholars,
May 12, 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi University sources, May 13, 2007].
158. Qais Sabah al-Jabouri: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group
of armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Alaa Jalel
Essa and Saad Jalifa al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured respectively. [Sources Association
of Muslims Scholars press release, June 7, 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, June 9, 2007].
159. Alaa Jalel Essa: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group of
armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Qais Sabah
al-Jabouri and Saad Jalifa al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured
14
respectively. [Sources: Association of Muslims Scholars press release, June 7, 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi
university sources, June 9, 2007].
Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education [Baghdad]
Academics killed after a massive kidnapping occurred November 13, 2006:
160. Abdul Salam Suaidan al-Mashhadani: Lecturer in political sciences and head of the Scholarship
section of the Ministry of Higher Education. He was kidnapped November13, 2006, in an assault on the
Ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation 24 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI
Iraqi university sources, November 26, 2006.]
161. Abdul Hamed al-Hadizi: Professor [specialty unknown]. He was kidnapped on November 13, 2006 in an
assault on the Ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation, 24 November 2006.
[Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, November 26, 2006].
162. Thamer Kamel Mohamed: Head of the Department of Human Right at the Ministry of Higher Education.
Shot on 22 February 2010 on his way to work in one of main Baghdad streets [al-Qanat Street]. The
assassins used silencers fitted in their guns. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, February 23,
2006 and Alernet].
Al-Mansour University [Baghdad]
163. Amal Maamlaji: IT professor at the al-Mansour University in Baghdad. She was born in Kerbala and
got involved in human rights particularly women's rights. She was shot dead in an ambush while
driving her car [160 bullets were found in her car] according to her husband, Athir Haddad, to whom
France24 interviewed by telephone. [Source: France24, July 4, 2008,].
Baghdad Institutes
164. Izi al-Deen al-Rawi: President of the Arabic University's Institute of Petroleum, Industry and
Minerals. Al-Rawi was kidnapped and found dead November 20, 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university
sources, November 20, 2006].
BABYLON Hilla University
165. Khaled M al-Khanabi: PhD in Islamic history, lecturer in Hilla University's School of Humanities.
Date unknown.
166. Mohsin Suleiman al-Ajeely: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the College of Agronomy, Hilla
University. Killed on December 24, 2005.
167. Fleih al-Gharbawi: Lecturer in the College of Medicine. Killed in Hilla [capital of the province
of Babylon, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad] 20 November 2006 by armed men. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
sources, 20 November 2006].
168. Ali al-Grari [or Garar]. Professor at Hilla University. He was shot dead November 20, 2006 by
armed men in a vehicle on the freeway
15
between Hilla and Baghdad. [Source: Iraqi police sources cited by Reuters, November 20, 2006].
AT-TAMIM Kirkuk University
169. Ahmed Ithaldin Yahya: Lecturer in the College of Engineering, Kirkuk University. Killed by a car
bomb in the vicinity of his home in Kirkuk, February 16, 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university
sources, February 17, 2007].
170. Hussein Qader Omar: professor and Dean of Kirkuk University's College of Education Sciences.
Killed in November 20, 2006 by shots made from a vehicle in the city center. An accompanying colleague
was injured. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, November 21, 2006, and Iraqi Police Sources
cited by Reuters, November 20, 2006].
171. Sabri Abdul Jabar Mohammed: Lecturer at the College of Education Sciences at Kirkuk University.
Found dead November 1, 2007 in a street in Kirkuk one day after being kidnapped by a group of
unidentified armed men [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, November
2, 2007].
172. Abdel Sattar Tahir Sharif: Lecturer at Kirkuk University. Department and college unknown.
75-years-old, he was assassinated March 5, 2008 by armed men in the district of Shoraw, 10 kilometers
northeast of Kirkuk. [Source: Aswat al-Iraq/Voices of Iraq, 5 March 2008].
173. Ibrahim Shaeer Jabbar Al-Jumaili: Pediatrician and professor of Medicine at Kirkuk University.
Dr. Ibrahim S.J. Al-Jumaili, 55 years old, was murdered July 22, 2011, after he resisted attempts by
four people to kidnap him, police said. [Source: AFP, July 22, 2011]. 174. Amer al-Doury: Dr. Amer
al-Douri was the Dean of the Administration and Economic College in Kirkuk. He was first handcuffed
and then executed in Hawija at protesters site, when Maliki's SWAT Security Forces raided the peaceful
protesting site and killed 86, injured hundreds, and arrested more on Tuesday April 23, 2013. [Source
Al Sharquiya TV News 20].
NINEVEH
Mosul University
175. Abdel Jabar al-Naimi: Dean of Mosul University's College of Humanities. Date unknown.
176. Abdul Jabar Mustafa: PhD in political sciences, dean of Mosul University's College of Political
Sciences. Date unknown.
177. Abdul Aziz El-Atrachi: PhD in Plant Protection in the College of Agronomy and Forestry, Mosul
University. He was killed by a loose bullet shot by and American soldier. Date unknown.
178. Eman Abd-Almonaom Yunis: PhD in translation, lecturer in the College of Humanities, Mosul
University. Killed August 30, 2004.
179. Khaled Faisal Hamed al-Sheekho: PhD and lecturer in the College of Physical Education, Mosul
University. Killed April 11, 2003.
180. Leila [or Lyla] Abdu Allah al-Saad: PhD in law, dean of Mosul University's College of Law.
Assassinated in June 22, 2004.
16
181. Mahfud al-Kazzaz: PhD and lecturer at University Mosul. Department and college unknown. Killed
November 20, 2004.
182. Mohammed Yunis Thanoon: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Physical Education,
Mosul University. Killed January 27. 2004.
183. Muneer al-Khiero: PhD in law and lecturer in the College of Law, Mosul University. Married to Dr
Leila Abdu Allah al-Saad, also assassinated. Date unknown.
184. Muwafek Yahya Hamdun: Deputy Dean and professor at the College of Agronomy, Mosul University.
[Source: al-Hayat, February 28, 2006].
185. Omar Miran: Baghdad University bachelor of law [1946]. PhD in history from Paris University
[1952], professor of history at Mosul University, specialist in history of the Middle East. Killed,
along with his wife and three of his sons, by armed men in February 2006 [exact date unknown].
186. Naif Sultan Saleh: Lecturer at the Technical Institute, Mosul University. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
187. Natek Sabri Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Mechanization and head of the
College of Agronomy, Mosul University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report,
March 2006].
188. Noel Petros Shammas Matti: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Mosul University. Married and
father of two daughters, was kidnapped and found dead August 4, 2006.
189. Noel Butrus S. Mathew: PhD, professor at the Health Institute of Mosul University. Date unknown.
190. Ahmad Hamid al-Tai: Professor and head of Department of Medicine, Mosul University. Killed 20
November 2006 when armed men intercepted his vehicle as he was heading home. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources, November 20, 2006].
191. Kamel Abdul Hussain: Lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Law, Mosul University. Killed in
January 11, 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007].
192. Talal Younis: Professor and dean of the College of Political Sciences. Killed on the morning of
April 16, 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Within less than half an hour Professor Jaafer
Hassan Sadeq of the Department of History at Mosul University was assassinated at his home. [Sources:
CEOSI Iraqi university sources and al-Mosul].
193. Jaafer Hassan Sadeq: Professor in the Department of History of Mosul University's College of
Arts. Killed April 16, 2007 at home in the district of al-Kafaaat, northwest of Mosul. Within less
than half an hour, Professor Talal Younis, dean of Mosul University's College of Political Sciences,
was killed at the main entrance to the college. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and
al-Mosul].
194. Ismail Taleb Ahmed: Lecturer in the College of Education, Mosul University. Killed 2 May 2007
while on his way to college. [Source: al-Mosul, May 2, 2007].
195. Nidal al-Asadi: Professor in the Computer Sciences Department of Mosul University's College of
Sciences. Shot dead by armed men in the district of al-Muhandiseen, according to police sources in
Mosul.
17
[Sources: INA, May 2, 2007, and Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, May 3, 2007].
196. Abdul Kader Ali Abdullah: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic, College of Education Sciences,
Mosul University. Found dead 25/26 August 2007 after being kidnapped five days before by a group of
armed men. [Source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI August 26-27, 2007].
197. Unknown: Lecturer at Mosul University killed in the explosion of two car bombs near campus,
October 1, 2007. In this attack, six other people were injured, among them four students. [Source:
KUNA, October 1, 2007].
198. Aziz Suleiman: Lecturer at Mosul University. Department and College are unknown. Killed in Mosul
January 22, 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, January 24, 2008].
199. Jalil Ibrahim Ahmed al-Naimi: Director of the Sharia Department [Islamic Law] at Mosul
University. He was shot dead by armed men when he came back home [in Mosul] from University, 30
January 2008. [Sources: CEOSI and BRussells Tribunal University Iraqi sources, Heytnet and al-Quds
al-Arabi, January 31, 2008].
200. Faris Younis: Lecturer at Agriculture College, Mosul University. Dr. Younis was killed June 2,
2008 as a result of a car bomb put in his car. Different sources reported that dozens of academics and
students from Mosul University were arrested by Badr militias and Kurd pershmergas. These facts
occurred at the end of May, 2008, when the city was taken over by US occupation and Iraqi forces
[Source: CEOSI University Iraqui sources, June 3, 2008].
201. Walid Saad Allah al-Mouli, a university professor [Department unknown] was shot down on Sunday 15
June 2008 by unknown gunmen while he was on his way to work in Mosul's northern neighborhood of
al-Hadbaa, 405 Km northern Baghdad, killing him on the spot. In the attack, two of his sons were
seriously wounded and are in a critical condition. [Source: Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq-[VOI], June
16, 2008].
202. Ahmed Murad Shehab: professor of Mosul University's Faculty of Administration and Economics.
Ahmed Murad Shehab was fatally shot in the neighborhood of al-Nur, on Mosul's left bank. [Source:
Press TV, 21 de abril de 2009].
203. Unidentified female university professor: The professor of law was assassinated in front of her
home in the al-Intissar district of western Mosul by unknown gunmen on Tuesday, the local police said.
They declined to give her name. [Source: PressTV, April 21, 2009].
204. Unknown: lecturer at Mosul University. On May 24, 2009, gunmen ambushed killed a university
teacher near his home in Al Andalus neighborhood, Mosul. [Source: The New York Times May 24, 2009].
205. Ibrahem Al-Kasab: professor in the College of Education, Mosul University. Dr. Al-Kasab was shot
dead on 4th October, 2010. Unknown gang assassinated him in his home at the eastren part of Mosul.
[Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Sabah al-Yadid October 4, 2010].
206. Amer Selbi: professor at College of Islamic Science, Mosul University. Assassinated on his way to
College by murderers using
18
silenced guns on 6th March 2011. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 10 March, 2011].
207. Yasser Ahmed Sheet: assistant Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty of the Mosul University. Gunmen
opened fire on Yasser Ahmed Sheet in front of his house in al-Muthanna neighborhood, eastern Mosul, on
April 9, 2011, a local security source told to Aswat al-Iraq news agency. [Source: Aswat al-Iraq news
agency, on April 9, 2011.]
208. Mohammed Jasem al Jabouri: professor in the Faculty of Imam al-Adham, Mosul, province of Niniveh,
was killed during the night last 2 July, 2012 by gunmen who shot him to death near his house.
[Sources: Association of Muslim Scholars and Safaq News, 3 July, 2012]
QADISIYA
Diwaniya University
209. Hakim Malik al-Zayadi: PhD in Arabic philology, lecturer in Arabic literature at al-Qadisyia
University. Dr al-Zayadi was born in Diwaniya, and was killed in Latifiya when he was traveling from
Baghdad 24 July 2005].
210. Mayid Husein: Physician and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Diwaniya University. [Source:
Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
211. Saleh Abed Hassoun: al-Qadisiyah University's Dean of the School of Law. Salih Abed Hassoun was
shot dead by a group of armed men when driving his car in downtown Baghdad on 7 July 2008.
[Source:McClatchy, 8 July 2008.]
BASRA
Basra University
212. Abdel al-Munim Abdel Mayad: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University. Date unknown.
213. Abdel Gani Assaadun: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University. Date unknown.
214. Abdul Alah [or Abdullah] al-Fadhel: PhD, professor and deputy dean of Basra University's College
of Medicine. Killed January 1, 2006.
215. Abdul-Hussein Nasir Jalaf: PhD in agronomy, lecturer at the College of Agronomy's Center of
Research on Date Palm Trees, Basra University. Killed May 1, 2005.
216. Alaa Daoud: PhD in sciences, professor and chairman of Basra University [also reported as a
lecturer in history]. Killed 20 July 2005.
217. Ali Ghalib Abd Ali: Bachelor of sciences, assistant professor at the School of Engineering, Basra
University. Killed April 12, 2004.
218. Asaad Salem Shrieda: PhD in engineering, professor and dean of Basra University's School of
Engineering. Killed Octobre 15, 2003.
219. Faysal al-Assadi: PhD in agronomy, professor at the College of Agronomy, Basra University. Date
unknown.
220. Ghassab Jabber Attar: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer at the School of Engineering, Basra
University. Assassinated June 8, 2003.
19
221. Haidar al-Baaj: PhD in surgery, head of the University College Basra Hospital. Date unknown.
222. Haidar Taher: PhD and professor at the College of Medicine, Basra University. Date unknown.
223. Hussein Yasin: PhD in physics, lecturer in sciences at Basra University Killed 18 February 2004
at his home and in front of his family.
224. Khaled Shrieda: PhD in engineering, dean of the School of Engineering, Basra University. Date
unknown.
225. Khamhour al-Zargani: PhD in history, head of the Department of History at the College of
Education, Basra University Killed 19 August 2005.
226. Kadim Mashut Awad: visiting professor at the Department of Soils, College of Agriculture, Basra
University. Killed December 2005 [exact date unknown].
227. Karem Hassani: PhD and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Basra University. Date unknown.
228. Kefaia Hussein Saleh: PhD in English philology, lecturer in the College of Education Sciences,
Basra University. Assassinated May 28, 2004.
229. Mohammed al-Hakim: PhD in pharmacy, professor and dean of Basra University's College of Pharmacy.
Date unknown.
230. Mohammed Yassem Badr: PhD, professor and chairman of Basra University. Date unknown.
231. Omar Fakhri: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University. Date
unknown.
232. Saad Alrubaiee: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University. Date
unknown.
233. Yaddab al-Hajjam: PhD in education sciences and lecturer at the College of Education Sciences,
Basra University. Date unknown.
234. Zanubia Abdel Husein: PhD in veterinary medicine, lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine,
Basra University. Date unknown.
235. Jalil Ibrahim Almachari: Lecturer at Basra University. Department and college unknown. Killed 20
March 2006 after criticizing in a public lecture the situation in Iraq. [Arabic Source: al-Kader].
236. Abdullah Hamed al-Fadel: PhD in medicine, lecturer in surgery and deputy dean of the College of
Medicine at Basra University. Killed in January 2006 [exact date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources].
237. Fuad al-Dajan: PhD in medicine, lecturer in gynecology at the College of Medicine, Basra
University. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 [exact date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi
university sources].
238. Saad al-Shahin: PhD in medicine, lecturer in internal medicine at Basra University's College of
Medicine. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 [exact date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university
sources].
239. Jamhoor Karem Khammas: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. [Source: Iraqi
Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
240. Karem Mohsen: PhD and lecturer at Department of Agriculture, College of Agronomy, Basra
University. Killed 10 April 2006. He worked in the field of honeybee production. Lecturers and
students called for a
20
demonstration to protest for his assassination. [Source: al-Basrah, April 11, 2006].
241. Waled Kamel: Lecturer at the College of Arts at Basra University. Killed 8 May 2006. Other two
lecturers were injured during the attack, one of them seriously. [Source: al-Quds al-Arabi, May 9,
2006].
242. Ahmad Abdul Kader Abdullah: Lecturer in the College of Sciences, Basra University. His body was
found June 9, 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, June 10, 2006].
243. Kasem Yusuf Yakub: Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Basra University. Killed 13 June
2006 at the university gate. [Sources: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 14 June 2006 and al-Quds
al-Arabi, June 16, 2006].
244. Ahmad Abdul Wadir Abdullah: Professor of the College of Chemistry, Basra University. Killed 10
June 2006. [Source: UNAMI report, May1 June 30, 2006].
245. Kathum Mashhout: Lecturer in edaphology at the College of Agriculture, Basra University. Killed
in Basra in December 2006 [exact date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 December
2006].
246. Mohammed Aziz Alwan: Lecturer in artistic design at the College of Fine Arts, Basra University.
Killed by armed men 26 May 2007 while walking in the city. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources,
June 1, 2007].
247. Firas Abdul Zahra: Lecturer at the College of Physical Education, Basra University. Killed at
home by armed men July18, 2007. His wife was injured in the attack. [Source: Iraqi university sources
to the BRussells Tribunal, August 26, 2007].
248. Muayad Ahmad Jalaf: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. Kidnapped 10 September
2007 by a group of armed men that was driving three cars, one of them with a government license plate.
He was found dead in a city suburb the next day. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells
Tribunal, September 12, 2007].
249. Khaled Naser al-Miyahi: PhD in medicine, Professor of neurosurgery at Basra University. He was
assassinated in March 2008 [exact date unknown]. His body was found after his being kidnapped by a
group of armed men in the streets of Basra. There were no ransom demands, according to information
provided by Baghdad's Center for Human Rights.[Source: al-Basrah, March 12, 2008].
250. Youssef Salman: PhD engineering professor at Basra University. He was shot dead in 2006 when
driving home from the University with three other colleagues, who were spared, according to the
information provided by her widow to France24, in an phone interview [Source: France24, July 4, 2008].
Technical Institute of Basra
251. Mohammed Kasem: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra. Killed on
January 1, 2004.
252. Sabah Hachim Yaber: Lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra. Date unknown.
21
253. Salah Abdelaziz Hashim: PhD and lecturer in fine arts at the Technical Institute of Basra.
Kidnapped in 4 April 2006. He was found shot dead the next day. According to other sources, Dr Hashim
was machine-gunned from a vehicle, injuring also a number of students. [Sources: CEOSI university
Iraqi sources, April 6, 2006, Az-Zaman, April 6, 2006, and al-Quds al-Arabi, April 7, 2006].
TIKRIT
Tikrit University
254. Basem al-Mudares: PhD in chemical sciences and lecturer in the College of Sciences, Tikrit
University. His body was found mutilated in the city of Samarra 21 July 2004.
255. Fathal Mosa Hussein Al Akili: PhD and professor at the College of Physical Education, Tikrit
University. Assassinated June 27, 2004.
256. Mahmoud Ibrahim Hussein: PhD in biological sciences and lecturer at the College of Education
Sciences, Tikrit University. Killed September 3, 2004.
257. Madloul Albazi Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of
University Lecturers report, March 2006].
258. Mojbil Achaij Issa al-Jabouri: Lecturer in international law at the College of Law, Tikrit
University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
259. Damin Husein al-Abidi: Lecturer in international law at College of Law, Tikrit University.
[Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
260. Harit Abdel Yabar As Samrai: PhD student at the College of Engineering, Tikrit University.
[Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006].
261. Farhan Mahmud: Lecturer at the College of Theology, Tikrit University. Disappeared after being
kidnapped 24 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, November 26, 2006].
262. Mustafa Khudhr Qasim: Professor at Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. His body
was found beheaded in al-Mulawatha, eastern Mosul, 21 November 2007. [Sources: al-Mosul, November 22,
2007, and Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, November 22-25, 2007].
263. Taha AbdulRazak al-Ani: PhD in Islamic Studies, he was professor at Tikrit University. His body
was found shot dead in a car on a highway near al-Adel, a Baghdad suburb. Also, the body of Sheikh
Mahmoud Talb Latif al-Jumaily, member of the Commission of Muslim Scientists, was found dead in the
same car last Thursday afternoon, May 15, 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources May 21, 2008].
264. Aiad Ibrahem Mohamed Al-Jebory: Neurosurgeon specialist at the College of Medicine in Tikrit
University. Picked up with his brother by military raid on his village in Al Haweja on the night of
6th March 2011. His body was delivered the following day to Tikrit Hospital. His brother fate is
unknown. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, March 10, 2011].
DIYALAH
22
Baquba University
265. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher: PhD in physical sciences, professor and dean at the College of Sciences,
Baquba University. Killed December 21, 2004.
266. Lez Mecchan: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April 2006
with his wife and another colleague. [Sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006].
267. Mis Mecchan: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Wife of Professor Lez
Mecchan, also assassinated. Both were killed with another colleague 19 April 2006. [Sources: DPC and
EFE, 19 April 2006].
268. Salam Ali Husein: Taught at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April
2006 with two other colleagues. [Sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006].
269. Meshhin Hardan Madhlom al-Dulaimi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college
unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source:
CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006].
270. Abdul Salam Ali al-Mehdawi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown.
Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI
university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006].
271. Mais Ganem Mahmoud: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the
end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi
sources, 10 May 2006].
272. Satar Jabar Akool: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the
end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi
sources, 10 May 2006].
273. Mohammed Abdual Redah al-Tamemmi: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic Language and head of the
College of Education, Baquba University. Killed 19 August 2006 together with Professor Kreem Slman
al-Hamed al-Sadey, 70 years old, of the same Department. A third lecturer from the same department
escaped the attack carried out by a group of four armed men Students and lecturers demonstrated
against his and other lecturers' deaths. [Source: World Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi
newspaper Az-Zaman, CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006].
274. Karim al-Saadi: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed August
2006. Students and lecturers demonstrated against his and other lecturers' deaths. [Source: World
Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi newspaper Az-Zaman].
275. Kreem Slman al-Hamed al-Sadey: Professor in the Department of Arabic Language at the College of
Education, Baquba University. He was 70 years old when killed 19 August 2006. In the attack Mohammed
Abdual Redah al-Tamemmi, head of Education Department was also killed. A third lecturer from the same
department escaped the attack of a group of four armed men. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources,
25 December 2006].
23
276. Hasan Ahmad: Lecturer in the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed December 8, 2006.
[Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006].
277. Ahmed Mehawish Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic at the College of Education, Baquba
University. Killed in December [exact date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25
December 2006].
278. Walhan Hamid Fares al-Rubai: Dean of the College of Physical Education, Baquba University.
Al-Rubai was shot by a group of armed men in his office 1 February 2007. According to some sources his
son was also killed. [Source: Reuters and Islammemo, 1-3 February 2007 respectively, and CEOSI
university Iraqi sources, 2 February 2007].
279. Abdul Ghabur al-Qasi: Lecturer in history at Baquba University. His body was found by the police
10 April 2007 in Diyalah River, which crosses the city, with 31 other bodies of kidnapped people.
[Source: Az-Zaman, 11 April 2007].
280. Jamal Mustafa: Professor and head of the History Department, College of Education Sciences,
Baquba University. Kidnapped at home in the city of Baquba 29 October 2007 by a group of armed men
driving in three vehicles. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 30 October
2007].
281. Ismail Khalil Al-Mahdawi: professor at Al-Assmai Faculty of Education, Diyalah University. Died
after serious injuries sustained due to exposure to fire arms equipped with silencers on 4 June, 2011,
while he was on his way back home in Katoun area, western Baquba (Diyalah Governorate) according to a
security sources. Dr. Al-Mahdawi was released two months ago after five-year detention at the US
forces in Iraq. He was rushed to Baquba General Hospital. [Sources: Baghdad TV; Aswat Al-Iraq, College
of Education Al-Assmai, Al-Forat TV, on June 4 & 5, 2011.]
282. Abbas Fadhil al-Dulaimi: Pressident of Diyalah University has been injured when targeted by a
landmine near an intersection of roads and bridges in Bakoabah, Diyalah, on Tursday, January 13, 2013.
The explosion killed two and wounded three of his security and body guards [Source: CEOSI's Iraqi
sources]
AL-ANBAR
Ramadi University
283. Abdel Karim Mejlef Saleh: PhD in philology, lecturer at the College of Education Sciences,
al-Anbar University.
284. Abdel Majed Hamed al-Karboli: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 [exact date
unknown].
285. Ahmad Abdl Hadi al-Rawi: PhD in biology, professor in the School of Agronomy, al- Anbar
University. Date unknown.
286. Ahmad Abdul Alrahman Hameid al-Khbissy: PhD in Medicine, Professor of College of Medicine,
al-Anbar University. Date unknown.
287. Ahmed Abbas al-Weis: professor at Ramadi University, al-Anbar. The attackers were dressed in
military outfit when they shot the professor near his home in al- Zeidan district on August 25, 2009.
[Source: Khaleej Times Online, 25 August 2009].
24
288. Ahmed Saadi Zaidan: PhD in education sciences, Ramadi University. Killed February 2005 [exact
date unknown].
289. Hamed Faisal Antar: Lecturer in the College of Law, Ramadi University. Killed December 2005
[exact date unknown].
290. Naser Abdel Karem Mejlef al-Dulaimi: Department of Physics, College of Education, Ramadi
University. Killed December 2005 [exact date unknown].
291. Raad Okhssin al-Binow: PhD in surgery, lecturer at the College of Medicine, al-Anbar University.
Date unknown.
292. Shakir Mahmmoud Jasim: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the School of Agronomy, al- Anbar University.
Date unknown.
293. Nabil Hujazi: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Ramadi University. Killed in June 2006 [exact
date unknown]. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 20 June 2006, confirmed by Iraqi Ministry of
Higher Education].
294. Nasar al-Fahdawi: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Department and college unknown. Killed 16
January 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006].
295. Khaled Jubair al-Dulaimi: Lecturer at the College of Engineering, Ramadi University. Killed 27
April 2007. [Source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 3 May 2007].
Fallujah University
296. Saad al-Mashhadani: University professor in Fallujah [Unknown Department]. Saad al-Mashhadani was
critically wounded on 26 December, 2009 in an attack that killed his brother and wounded two of his
security guards. [Source: The Washington Post, December 27, 2009].
297. Khalil Khalaf Jassim: Dean of Business and Economics College in Anbar University was assassinated
in an armed attack last May 4, in al-Nazizah area, central Fallujah, according to a police source in
Anbar province. Unidentified gunmen attacked his car, killing him on the spot Security forces cordoned
off the crime scene and began an inspection in searching of militants, while the body was transferred
to the Forensic Medicine Department. [Source, Shafaq News, May 4, 2013]
NAJAF
Kufa University
298. Khawla Mohammed Taqi Zwain: PhD in medicine, lecturer at College of Medicine, Kufa University.
Killed May 12, 2006.
299. Shahlaa al-Nasrawi: Lecturer in the College of Law, Kufa University. Assassinated 22 August 2007
by members of a sectarian militia. [Source: CEOSI University Iraqi sources, 27 August 2007].
300. Adel Abdul Hadi: Professor of philosophy, Kufa University's College of Arts. Killed by a group of
armed men 28 October 2007 when returning home from university. [Source: Iraqi University sources to
the BRussells Tribunal, October 30, 2007].
SALAH AL-DEEN
University of Salah al-Deen
25
301. Sabah Bahaa Al-Deen: Dr. Sabah is a faculty member at Salah Aldeen University's College of
Agriculture. He was killed by a car bomb stuck on his car last Wednesday Dec 12 when he was leaving
the College. (Source: Aswat Al- Iraq).
KARBALA
University of Karbala
302. Kasem Mohammed Ad Dayni: Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, College of Pedagogy, Karbala
University. Killed April 17, 2006. [Source:
http://www.albadeeliraq.com]
.
OPEN UNIVERSITY
303. Kareem Ahmed al-Timmi: Head of the Department of Arabic Language in the College of Education at
the Open University. Killed in Baghdad, February 22, 2007.
COMMISSION OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
[CTE is an academic body that belongs to the Higher Education Ministry. Its headquarters are located
in al-Mansur, Baghdad neighborhood. Almost twenty Technical Superior Institutes, booth from the
capital and Central and Southern provinces, are dependent on this body].
304. Aamir Ibrahim Hamza: Bachelor in electronic engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute.
Killed August 17, 2004.
305. Mohammed Abd al-Hussein Wahed: PhD in tourism, lecturer at the Institute of Administration.
Assassinated January 9, 2004.
306. Mohammed Saleh Mahdi: Bachelor in sciences, lecturer at the Cancer Research Centre. Killed
November 2005.
INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONS
307. Emad Sarsam: PhD in surgery and member of the Arab Council of Medicine. Date unknown.
308. Faiz Ghani Aziz: PhD in agronomy, director general of the Iraqi Company of Vegetable Oil. Killed
September 2003.
309. Isam Said Abd al-Halim: Geologic consultant at the Ministry of Construction. Date unknown.
310. Kamal al-Jarrah: Degree in English philology, researcher and writer and director general at the
Ministry of Education. Date unknown.
311. Raad Abdul-Latif al-Saadi: PhD in Arabic language, consultant in higher education and scientific
research at the Ministry of Education. Killed April 28, 2005.
312. Shakier al-Khafayi: PhD in administration, head of the Department of Normalization and Quality at
the Iraq Council. Date unknown.
313. Wajeeh Mahjoub: PhD in physical education, director general of physical education at the Ministry
of Education. Killed Abril 9, 2003.
314. Wissam al-Hashimi: PhD in petrogeology, president of the Arab Union of Geologists, expert in
Iraqi reservoirs, he worked for the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum. Assassinated August 24, 2005.
26
UNIVERSITY AFFILIATION UNKNOWN
315. Amir Mizhir al-Dayni: Professor of telecommunication engineering. Date unknown.
316. Khaled Ibrahim Said: PhD in physics. Date unknown.
317. Mohammed al-Adramli: PhD in chemical sciences. Date unknown.
318. Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly: PhD in chemical sciences. He was tortured and killed by US troops. His
body was sent to the Baghdad morgue. The cause of death was initially registered as ―brainstem
compression‖. Date unknown.
319. Nafi [or Nafia] Aboud: Professor of Arabic literature. Date unknown.
320. Ali Zedan Al-Saigh: PhD in Medicine and lecturer on Oncological Surgery (unknown university). Ali
Zedan Al-Saigh was assassinated at Al-Harthia district (Bagdad) on June 29, 2010 after returning
recently to Iraq. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, June 30, 2010]
321. Adnan Meki: Specialty and University unknown. According to police sources, his corpse was found
on July 13, 2010 with signals of stabbing at his home in Al-Qaddisiya neighborhood, western Baghdad.
[Source: Al-Rafadan website, July14, 2010].
322. Unknown Identity: Specialty and University unknown. On July 14, 2010, unidentified gunmen riding
in a car shot a university professor dead as he was leaving his home in the University District, West
Baghdad, according to the report of an official security source. [Source: AKnews, July 14, 2010].
323. Mohamed Ali El-Din (Al-Diin) Al-Heeti: Professor in Pharmacy, unknown University. Mohamed Ali
El-Din Al-Heeti was killed the afternoon of the 14th August, 2010 in the area of Al-Numaniya (north of
Al-Wasat governorate) in an attack by unknown armed men. The professor came back to Iraq a few months
ago to Iraq after a period of studies in George Washington University in the USA. [Source: Association
of Muslim Scholars, 15 August, 2010.]
OTHER CASES
324. Khalel al-Zahawi [or Khalil al-Zahawi]: Born in 1946, al-Zahawi was considered the most important
calligraphist in Iraq and among the most important in the Arab-Muslim world. He worked as a lecturer
in calligraphy in several Arab countries during the 1990s. He was killed 19 May 2007 in Baghdad by a
group of armed men. He was buried in Diyalah, where he was born. [Source: BBC News, 22 May 2007. His
biography is available on Wikipedia].
Some might argue that the Iranians drew first blood when the present group of radical medievalists
overthrew the Shah and then seized the US embassy in 1979 or a whole load of other attacks by Iranians
and their proxies.
Some
might argue that the overthrow of the Shah was simply the unseating of a brutal US-imposed
tyrant whose regime was about as merciless as that of Pinochet, the Sauds, or any of the other despots that
the US has installed and supported over the years.
The difference between my 'some' and your 'some' is that mine would be closer to the truth.
If the Chinese imposed a brutal and oppressive puppet regime on Australia, I would go so far as to
support the whackballs from the Westboro Baptists if they were the group capable of overthrowing the puppet
regime.
If you wouldn't do the same for your own neck of the woods, I am sure that there is as perfectly good
explanation.
The US does have a puppet regime (albeit one that doesn't register on the brutality scale yet) it's not
Chinese, of course.
@Rich
'Well, yes, every member of every military is a legitimate target. Especially a general. If it sounds
logical to you, that's because not only is it logical, it's common sense '
That's why we were cool
with Pearl Harbor. Just military personnel. No harm, no foul.
So America, how does it feel to be the world's assassin? Gives the "War on Terror" a whole new meaning,
doesn't it? At least you have one last true friend, a great "Haver," who will watch your back.
@Alfred
This assessment of Trump's has been around for a while but how, specifically, would the US ever be made to
leave Iraq and Syria? The only theoretical possibility would consist of a combined effort of the Iraqi
government and people directed against the occupation force in that country. That would probably have to
play out as a popular uprising against the Americans. But what if American troops, cheered on by Zionist
circles back in the US, started to kill large numbers of Iraqis indiscriminately? Would the Iraqis have the
stomach for that? And how could Trump declare victory and leave Iraq under such circumstances?
At the time
of this writing, we have already seen the second round of killings of high-ranking Iranian and Iraqi
commanders in Iraq, all of them Shiah. If the Shiah are said to be calculating, then these Shiah commanders
have not been calculating this time, serving themselves on a platter to the Americans. The remaining
commanders will have to wise up to the new reality quickly and switch over to full Hezbollah mode if they do
not want to be wiped out altogether.
Aspects of the attack against the Aramco facility point to it having been an Israeli false flag at least
in part. Pictures showed several dome-shaped oil tanks, all of them having a big, circular hole punched into
them at zero deflection and precisely the same steep angle from precisely the same direction. This kind of
damage cannot be achieved using GPS guided drones. Either the Iranians possess an unknown stealth
capability, in which case the military equation in the Middle East changes drastically, or a false flag is
left as the only remaining possibility. Israel would be the most likely culprit for that; the objective
consists of duping Trump into war against Iran.
So, Trump may have been led to believe that Iran carried out the attack against the Aramco facility. Then
somebody suggested to him to kill the Iranian general and several other Iranians partly as an act of
revenge. Several Iraqi commanders also get slaughtered. Iraqi popular unrest boils over at the same time as
more American troops are poured into the country, a massacre of Iraqi Shiah ensues and Iran is forced to
react. That may be the calculation behind it all. The threat of impeachment and subsequent imprisonment does
the rest to gird Trump along.
Right now, there are severe strains on the financial system with the Fed bailing out the repo market and
also monetizing US debt at nearly 100%. The US is down to pure money printing; this mode of operation cannot
go on for long before the whole house of card comes crashing down. The powers that be may be reckoning that
the time for war against Iran is now or never.
So, the best course of action that heartland (Iran, Russia, China) may take may be to wait it out by
doing as little as possible.
@Maiasta
It remains to be seen if America will actually suffer a level of retaliation for the assassination that will
surprise them. So far I think evidence suggests the miscalculation was Soleimani's. His Sept 2019 drone
attacks on the main Saudi oil facilities were deliberately not very destructive, being intended as
indication of what Iran can do, but America will not permit anyone to be a threat hanging over Saudi Arabia.
The Wikileaks cables show that US diplomats thought Soleimani was behind or at least supplying lethal
assistance to attacks on US forces, and were willing to quietly negotiate with him. None of those putative
hundreds of American deaths mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things. Masterminding the drone
attack on Saudi oil was completely different, that was what made him a marked man.
@Alfred
Did you say there are credible rumors that Iran brought down PanAm 103 and Israel made it look like Libya in
order to throw off suspicions from Iran? And, you say, the proof is that "Since PA103, no Iranian civilian
aircraft of any sort has been attacked or threatened by the USA or any other country?" Are you some kind of
Intelligence Analyst? This is deep. Or are you really saying there are credible rumors that Israel brought
down PanAm 103 and made it look like Libya? Which, of course, is not so deep. And the proof is that
Andrei, if as you say the Persians have imagination, why not imagine making peace with Israel? you also
quoted before that politics is art of possible. well and good, peace is possible if there is realization and
imagination that Israel is really not going anywhere. an eye for eye will make everyone blind. gandi?
btw, with all the mahdi stuff going on, how much rational are the Persian leaders?
what say the cyber warriors and armchair generals on drone warfare? is it ethical? moral? right? just?
necessary? sane?
We all know perfectly well you haven't read it yourself.
Maybe we can start a go-fund-me page for Rich, and it can pay for his Koranic education, and then he can
be shipped over to Tehran to tell them just how wrong they are in his own kind of way. I'm sure they'll
listen, and drop everything to worship at the holy altar of
((Rich))
. And then he can reply back with
a big fat
"I told you so!"
.
@Kratoklastes
As if Afghanistan isn't inhospitable mountainous terrain? So somehow Iran's topography is worse is it? They
invaded Afghanistan without even controlling any neighbouring countries. Now that they have already invaded
Afghanistan and Iraq in preparation for the war on Iran, they could well roll in after a thorough aerial
pounding. So if they suffer great losses so what? Did they ever care about their own soldiers or citizens
that much anyway? If there's loot to be had they'll go for it.
This incident had one goal in mind and it was successful: Raising the price of crude by stirring up the Mid
East. Raising the oil price will raise the US stock market and re-elect Trump. Expect more of the same prior
to this year's elections. Same old, same old; people die, people win elections. Obama showed the way.
"Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo belong to a doomsday cult and may be trying to bring on the Apocalypse "
richardawkins.net
"Brought to Jesus the evangelical grip on the Trump administration"
theguardian.com
It's scary that a lobbyist for a major arms manufacturer and a true believer in the Apocalypse are both
advising a psychopath on US military action in the Middle East .
@Adrian
Yes, Wesley Clark spilled the beans. Seven nations to destroy is how the first Israel was formed.
Wesley said the nations that would be destroyed:
Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Iran.
Wesley says this is for nine eleven (false flag).
He said it would take 5 years to do so. 5 years was a guess since within 5 years is all it took to do WWI
and WWII.
Iran is the only nation of the seven mentioned that has not been messed up by ZUS, its friends and its
best friend Israel.
Nine eleven combo is a Kabbala theme. Nine is one less and eleven is one more than the Tree of Life
number ten of Yahweh. Thus, this combo represents chaos and destruction.
The 911 number was created in 1968. WTC was being built around that time.
Nine Eleven date in the Jewish calendar is 12.23. 5761. Notice the 12th Jewish month of Elul and the 23th
day of that month. The first Zion century began with the FED on 12. 23. 1913 of the Christian Calendar. This
second Zion Century began on 12.23 on the Jewish Calendar.
12.23 in the Jewish Calendar is the date of the second dove coming back to Noah with an olive branch.
12.25 two days later is the date of the when God (Yahweh) created the world. Six days later man was
created by Yahweh. That is the day of the Jewish New Year which celebrates Yahweh's creation of man. Thus,
the 6 million game comes from that. 6 represents man.
On 12.25. 5761 ( 9.13.2001) all the planes were "allowed" to fly again in the US. It was a creation of
"new" world after the end of the "flood of fear" like Yahweh did on that day in the Tanakh.
@BeenThereDunnit
Beware the false flag attack , if American servicemen or citizens get killed by "Iranians",it won't take
much to get the public behind a "decisive " attack on Iran , the objective would not be to defeat them but
to create another failed state for the benefit of Israel , we are good at that, just look at Syria , Yemen,
Libya , Afghanistan and Iraq .
"Israel made attack on Saudi oil fields"
streetwisereports.com
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Even if you are correct that Iranians do not have the capacity to defend themselves from the zionized US
military (armed on the Fed Reserve banksters' money), the ongoing war in the Middle East will be more
devastating for the US (and the EU) than for the natives who try to defend their families and their culture.
The moral death of the US is within reach.
The Jewish State has been running the famous Milgram experiment (dubbed "Nazi experiment") on
Palestinians for 70 years.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
Whereas the Milgram experiment was terminated (due to its ugliness) in the US, the Milgram experiment has
been at the heart of Israel for 70 years. They, Israelis, have managed to create a new kind of people -- the
amoral hypocrites. Or perhaps, the ongoing Milgram study in Israel has exposed the true nature of Talmudism
("is this good for Jews?" -- then everything goes).
The impeachment proceedings of Trump pushed him to satisfy the deep state by making this idiotic move.
Netanyahu is also under investigation and should have been in jail. A war with IRAN is a nice way out of the
impasse.
@Rich
" the violent spread of Islam throughout the world"
-- Actually, there has been the violent spread of
zioconism throughout the world, including the Wars for Israel in the Middle East (and the flooding of Europe
with the dispossessed refugees and radicalized jihadies), the Jewish assault on the First Amendment in the
US, the physical assault and imprisonment of honest researchers in WWII on behalf of zionists (zionists
cannot tolerate factual information that does not agree with Elie Wiesel's inventions), the zionization of
US military, the blackmailing of persons in a position of power by Mossad (see Epstein-Maxwell saga of
underage prostitution), and a cherry on the top -- the casual attitude of zionist to all non-jews as
subhumans (see Gaza Ghetto, the suicided American veterans of the Wars for Israel, and the murdered
civilians in eastern Ukraine, courtesy the US-supported Banderites).
Who needs reading the Quaran when the Jewish State has been arming Ukrainian neo-Nazi and arming and
saving fanatical jihadi terrorists (including the murderous "white helmets") in Syria? Your quetching tribe
is nothing but a rapacious amoral predator working in cahoots with the worst scum among the mega-banksters
and mega-war-profiteers. At least you have already erected the numerous monuments (the Holobiz Museums) to
remind the non-Jews about Jewish depravity.
Join the Zionist Crusade!
Join the U.S military and fight for Israel.
Seven Islamic countries need to be destroyed for Greater Israel Project.
1.Afghanistan- check
2.Iraq-check
3.Sudan-check
4.Libya-check
5.Somalia-check
6.Syria-In Progress
7.Iran-TBA
@Kratoklastes
Those beheadings are fake, nothing more than cheap Hollywood stunts. All of the ISIS videos come from a
single source, Rita Katz/SITE, who is known to have Mossad connections.
Some might argue that the Iranians drew first blood when the present group of radical medievalists
overthrew the Shah and then seized the US embassy in 1979 or a whole load of other attacks by Iranians
and their proxies.
Of course those would be dumb bastards with no knowledge of history the CIA installed the Shah in a 1953
coup.
@Tulip
Kim Jong Un just called Trump a dotard a few weeks ago is testing more nuclear missiles and is back to
taunting the Trump Administration. That makes Trump look weak but because the N. Koreans have the ability to
massively retaliate against U.S. forces and because they are a nuclear power Trump does nothing but tweet.
If Iran had short range nuclear missiles that could reach Israel and Saudi Arabia they would be getting
far more respect and Trump would be treading lighter like he is with N. Korea.
@Maiasta
The interesting thing about Ostrovsky's book (and probably the real reason it generated controversy) is that
he admits that the Mossad relies on diaspora Jews for intelligence gathering, cover, etc. for running its
operations abroad.
@Colin Wright
Anyone with even a limited knowledge of the laws of war knows that a military base is a legitimate target.
That doesn't mean any nation that is attacked is going to be happy about it. For better or worse Pearl
Harbor was a legitimate target and the US was negligent in its defenses there. Of course, I believe the Nips
were sorry for that move in the end. Should've stuck to fighting poorly armed, divided Asian countries.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
On the other hand, Saddam simply sat on his fat *ss and watched how US built up fighting force of 150 000
men, planes and whatnot.
If Iran has any strategic sense it simply does not allow this to happen. Sometimes pre-emptive strikes are
the correct strategy. And then US is left only with carriers far from iranian shores and airbases in Jordan
or even further away. Of course, it can still destroy most of Iran's infrastructure eventually while
simultaneously watching how his client states in Gulf will be levelled to ground. But bringing land forces
to Iran without relying on friendly ports and airbases will be D-day scale operation much, much larger
than Desert Storm of Iraq Freedom.
"Iran HAS to retaliate and HAS to do so publicly."
That is exactly what zionazia wants Iran to do. Why does saker want the Iranians to do exactly what
israel wants them to do?
"Right now, the Dems (still the party favored by the Neocons)"
Total nonsense. The neocons are overwhelmingly republicans, both leaders and followers. They got their
real start in the republican reagan regime and have increased their influence in each republican regime
since.
"Now think about this from the Neocon point of view. They might be able to get the US goyim to strike
Iran AND get rid of Trump."
LOL, why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? The neocon trump is 100% israel's boy. In fact, he
should be considered an extension of the israeli likud political block, which is who backs and promotes
neoconnery in the usa. The neocon american media such fox and the various conservative talk radio networks
are neocon. They promote trump, demonize the democrats and are fanatical likud israeli loyalists.
"For example, there are some rather credible rumors that the destruction of PanAm 103 over Scotland was
not a Libyan action, but an Iranian one in direct retaliation for the deliberate shooting down by the USN of
IranAir 655 Airbus over the Persian Gulf. I am not saying that I know for a fact that this is what really
happened, only that Iran does have retaliatory options not limited to the Middle-East."
Not credible, propaganda instead. The zionazis blamed Libya, Iran and Syria, depending on which served
their psywar needs of the moment. One saw the same zionazi strategy used after the 9/11 wtc attack. As the
zionazis attacked other countries, they justified it in their psywar as a response to that country's
"involvement" in 9/11. The air liner was likely destroyed through an israeli/western security service
falseflag act, like the later 9/11 falseflag.
This article posits some useful ideas, it also reinforces some zionazi policy goals and propaganda.
@Realist
Somewhat sad that your poor education has misinformed you about the origins of the Shah and the Pahlavi
dynasty. The Pahlavis came to power in 1925 when Reza Khan overthrew the Qajar dynasty who had ruled the
region since the late 18th century. The 1953 incident you refer to is the attempted communist takeover by
Mossadegh which was almost successful but prevented by the US and UK who helped keep the Pahlavis in power.
Is it a coup if there's an attempt to seize control of the government by communists but the king is able to
hold onto power? I don't think so. Shame the Tsar wasn't able to stop the Bolsheviks and their reign of
terror.
@Rich
"Somewhat sad your poor education blah blah blah"
Rich is a joo goblin pretending to be an aging boomerwaffen still fighting the big one from high atop his
barstool lookout down at the VFW lounge. Have another $2 double, Rich, and tell us again how you kicked ass
over there in 'Nam followed by your latest prostate troubles .
@Beefcake the Mighty
"the Mossad relies on diaspora Jews for intelligence gathering, cover, etc. for running its operations
abroad."
-- The ongoing mass slaughter in the Middle East and the triumph of Banderites (neo-Nazis) in
Ukraine are some of the glorious achievements of the Israel-firsters.
This is not the first time when the obnoxious tribe puts a lot of effort to cut a branch on which the
tribe perches. The disloyal treacherous scum of the Mega Group-Epstein-Maxwell kind has been at the ZUSA
wheel for some time already. The ziocons will not stop their bloody treachery until the US citizenry at
large begins taking actions against the dreamers of Eretz Israel.
Russia and Germany are examples of what can happen to a sovereign state when the "most moral and
victimized" are left to their ugly devices. The shameless AIPAC and 52 main Jewish American organizations
bear the principle responsibility for the ongoing wars that are becoming more dangerous with each day.
Is that what you thought when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet?
Look, I'll keep it short because this gaggle is locked into some seriously delusion thinking.
Solemani was commanding an operation to put Trump in the position Carter was in with the hostage crisis.
Do you knuckleheads really think that Trump was going to fall for it?
Especially since it was so obvious. With the Ayatollah shouting that Trump "couldn't do a damn thing."
And Senator Murphy teeing up what was soon to come by declaring the POTUS "impotent."
That is just the latest, most desperate provocation, by Iran in coordination with the Democrats.
So killing Soleimani, along with those in the second airstrike, was anything but an escalation. This is
what Milley was signaling when he said "The ball is in Iran's court." Khamenei stupidly revealed beforehand
that he had sanctioned this plot. That constitutes enormous risk not only to the Iranian regime but the
Democrats colluding with them.
@Rich
Poor "Rich," we guess that you need to make a living, but do your superiors understand that your posts make
more harm to "Jewish cause" than any jihadis' activities?
Though the Jewish State is, of course, one of the main sponsors of fanatical jihad (because this is good
for Jews and bad for Syrians) and of the neo-nazi in Ukraine (because this is good for Jews and bad for
Russians).
Keep posting. The exposure of the sick logic of Israelis is educational.
That is exactly what zionazia wants Iran to do. Why does saker want the Iranians to do exactly what
israel wants them to do?
Iranians are very shrewd and they will never start a war with USA. At appropriate time Iran will
annihilate Israel and USA will be scratching their heads. What will USA do, after the annihilation of
Israel? Commit suicide for the sake of annihilated Israel?
Saker's Quote: "For example, there are some rather credible rumors that the destruction of PanAm 103
over Scotland was not a Libyan action, but an Iranian one in direct retaliation for the deliberate
shooting down by the USN of IranAir 655 Airbus over the Persian Gulf. I am not saying that I know for a
fact that this is what really happened, only that Iran does have retaliatory options not limited to the
Middle-East."
Saker is showing his true colors, that he only cares for mother Russia. How can he post this stuff, while
he very well knows that when Iraq used chemicals, Iran refused to do so in return. Russia like USA will
intentionally kill civilians to achieve their goal, but Iran will NEVER intentionally kill innocent
civilians. Saker has been smoking too much lately, and forgetting that it is NOT spiritual to kill innocent
civilians. No, no and no, everything is not fair in war and love ..
Iran is ethical and has morals where as USSR and Russia seems to lack them .
The 1953 incident you refer to is the attempted communist takeover by Mossadegh which was almost
successful but prevented by the US and UK who helped keep the Pahlavis in power.
The US and UK were after Iranian oil. The Shah was their puppet plain and simple.
@Rich
But Rich, almost all the Communists are Jews and Mossadegh was not Jewish. How could he be a Communist? All
he did was nationalize the oil industry for Iranians instead of for the British. And you call Shiism
Medievalist, but isn't Judaism a stone age religion? Do you put those little boxes with magic amulets on
your head?
@Rich
You're certainly right, Rich, that any true Muslim is obligated to spread Islam by any means necessary,
including violence and intimidation -- our Quality Commenter Talha's eloquent and shrewd apologia to the
contrary notwithstanding. I wouldn't trust the people running Iran or any other Muslim country, and I'd not
let any Muslims settle in our lands.
BUT the us gov does seem to be consistently lying and trying to pick
a fight far from our shores. That dishonesty and belligerence is not obviated by the nature of the contrived
opponent. And they do seem to be doing it at the behest of Israel and its powerful domestic lobby and media,
often with no benefit to the American people, or affirmative harm to us.
Can't we both be realistic and not naive about Islam, AND not aggress or provoke a war?
@Colin Wright
That's a fair point, but there are similar conclusions drawn by long, detailed analyses of the koran by
ex-Muslims who are fluent in Arabic.
These are people who know both the Koran and the subsequent interpretive writings well. Doesn't mean
they're necessarily all correct, just that the very fearful and critical view of Islam that many of us find
persuasive, is NOT based only on selective or ill-informed readings of those texts.
@Robert Magill
I don't doubt that the elites behind the us gov would cause tension, violence, even war to profit from it,
through higher oil prices or otherwise.
As for the us stock market, though, how many of the 100 biggest,
500 biggest, or 5000 biggest publicly traded companies (by capitalization) would benefit from a spike in oil
and nat gas prices?
Wouldn't modt publicly traded US companies be harmed by the higher fuel prices causing higher prices for
groceries, clothes, and other goods that are shipped, flown, or trucked by vehicles burning fossil fuels?
Consumers wouldn't be able to afford to buy as much of those companies' goods and services after shelling
out exorbitant prices to fuel their cars and heat / cool their homes, paying more for non-locally sourced
groceries, etc. When the average American has to pay seven bucks for a gallon of gas, he will cut back on
other spending and/or borrow (charge) more to survive. That means many fewer people spending on luxuries
such as vacations and dining out and entertainment. More people postponing home renovation or repair,
forgoing medical or dental care, and so on.
As for the states and localities of the USA, some might benefit on balance from higher oil and gas
prices, but most definitely suffer from it. Much of Texas would benefit, including any state and local
governments getting extraction taxes, but none of the nine million people in New Jersey, the 20 million
people in Florida, and so on. I would wager that most US states are not net energy exporters but net energy
consumers, but I'll check for stats on that.
@Rich
US troops are only legitimate targets to the extent they are uninvited combatants in another country. Your
reasoning on this is bizarre.
My comment had nothing to do with dissing Israel or defending Iran, but
since you mention both, the US is entirely too subservient to the former since its inception and has been
screwing in the internal affairs of the latter for the better part of a century. When I said the US drew
first blood, I wasn't talking about last week.
@Not Raul
russia monitors all usa nukes, if they see any large scale nuclear attack they can not wait to make sure its
heading just south of their border or just north of it.
any large scale nuclear launch by the usa would trigger mad.
and im sure the nuclear armed muslim power right next door will not particularly enjoy having to deal with
the country smothered in fall out and the dead bodies of 80 million muslims.
Solemani was commanding an operation to put Trump in the position Carter was in with the hostage
crisis.
Trump's actions were proportionate and well considered. Instead of 'recapturing past glory', Khameni has
another massive failure to his name. The weak leader is growing weaker as time goes by.
The strike also impacts the thinking of Iranian military leaders. They now understand that if the
Ayatollah orders an irrational & unwinnable escalation, they may suffer personal consequences.
One thing could end this quickly and bloodlessly for all sides -- The IRGC removing the highly unpopular
Khameni, thus protecting the people of Iran. This will not happen tomorrow, but
Trump just took advantage
of Khameni's errors
to bring that day closer.
______
Of course, the paid Iranian shills posting here will decry this simple and obvious truth. Fortunately, no
one believes them.
@Beefcake the Mighty
The September 2019 attacks occurred in the very special context of Aramco's Initial Public Offering (IPO).
For the first time ever, Aramco, considered the largest company in the world in terms of valuation, was
about to sell 1.5% of its shares on the stock market.
The attacks on the Aramco facilities at the time
caused the total valuation to drop from an initial $2 trillion estimate to only 1,7 $trillion. So the
attacks were extremely convenient for some international financial institutions who wanted to
buy Aramco
shares on the cheap
.
The close relationship between such financial institutions and the Israeli government, who could have
carried the attacks and blame it on Iran, is of course a complete coincidence. Or so we are told.
@Beefcake the Mighty
The only explanation would be that the Israelis got wind of the impending attack. Then they used it as a
cover for their own attack. They may also have put themselves on alert, waiting for an attack having taking
place. Then they struck the same target in near real-time, using ready-made plans. Both possibilities would
certainly be far fetched. But they would not be completely illogical because oil installations being
targeted could be expected after all the prior drone attacks carried out by the Yemenis. OTOH, a quick
search on the Internet shows that GPS guidance has become considerably more precise in recent years. If the
Iranians are able to make use of such technology after all, then a war in the Middle East would become an
interesting proposition to say the least. The Americans can switch off GPS and they can jam GLONASS and the
other GPSes that exist. But that's not possible over the entire Middle East. That would be too costly both
in terms of the jamming itself and the losses incurred in the wider economy. GPS is terribly important in
these days. Everything depends on it from oil tankers navigating to excavators being guided along.
@A123
Thank Yahweh that your average, drooling, red-white-and-duh American is always ready to believe any simple
and obvious lie conjured by paid Israeli shills such as yourself.
Iran is in a no-win situation. If they do nothing and bide their time then I believe the Trump admin will
manufacture a casus belli for additional military action this time possibly striking targets inside Iran.
Trump's window is between now and the November 2020 election and his re-election is far from a lock given
the demographic changes in the electorate since 2016 which is why Iran may decide just wait things out.
The real question is if Russia will get involved to assist Iran or just sit on the sidelines and whine
and wimper about American aggression and violations of international law?
Others saw Donald Trump as a Dr. Strangelove when he was running for president but I thought that was
ridiculous since I saw Trump as more of a showman and entertainer but I now see that they were right and I
was wrong.
@ivegotrythm
I'm a Chrisrened and Confirmed Catholic and if those $99 DNA tests are accurate, I have no ashkenazi or
semitic ancestors. Just Europeans and Neanderthals in my family line. Not sure what I've written that seems
to trigger everyone into thinking I'm Jewish.
I will admit that growing up I did date a couple of secular Jewish gals and I did have a few Jews among
my childhood friends. That being said, I also have secular Muslim associates who are decent enough people. I
try to see things as clearly as I can and also from a patriotic American point of view. Guess that offends
many here who only want to live in an echo chamber where everyone has the same opinions.
@Anthony Aaron
What if Russia started to declassify documents and info they must have in their possession on 9/11?
That would
*really*
cause "dissension" in the US of A.
Also, what if Russia put some kind of screws on Israel?
With the two "countries'" (scare quos meant for the Jewish National State) long and somewhat troubled
association, there must be something the Russkies can do to scare the Zionists.
Actually, any 9/11 info would probably do both tricks at once.
@Biff
By the same token if you criticize those who are currently attacking Trump via the impeachment charade you
will be accused of being a "Trump supporter/lover/apologist/kissing Trump's sphincter (yes, this is at Moon
of Alabama, no less!).
This is the "Trump gotcha" equivalent of the MSM labeling anyone who advances a hypothesis besides the
"official" narrative of events such as Dallas or 9/11 a conspiracy theory.
@Paul holland
Yes, Iran's best move would be to take out Bibi himself or one of Trump's bosses in the US, like Adelson. If
Bibi himself is hit, Israel can't hide behind Trump's skirt any longer but will have to take the war to Iran
itself.
Trump's actions were proportionate and well considered. Instead of 'recapturing past glory', Khameni
has another massive failure to his name. The weak leader is growing weaker as time goes by.
Well, making himself part of the plot against Trump by shooting his mouth off ("You can't do a damn thing
about it.") must be deeply unsettling within the Iranian regime about his leadership.
I've long given the Iranians their resistance due but it's becoming clear they're overrated. The W Bush
and Obama administrations were gifts to Iran. It's impossible to overstate how thoroughly they overplayed
their hand with Obama on JCPOA.
The strike also impacts the thinking of Iranian military leaders. They now understand that if the
Ayatollah orders an irrational & unwinnable escalation, they may suffer personal consequences.
We have two fairly recent related analogues -- when Turkey shot down the Russian fighter and that lame
US-backed coup against Erdogan. In the first case, unsurprisingly because Putin knows what he's doing,
Russia extracted geopolitical gains for itself in return for letting Erdogan climb out of the tree. In the
latter, Obama acted pretty much like the 11 year old girl that he was throughout his figurehead terms. Trump
is still having to deal with the problem, all because Obama wouldn't give up the CIA Islamist living in PA,
an entirely reasonable demand to put a period on things.
No doubt, the Iranians have already been told we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Trump LOVES
making deals, particularly when he has the counter-party by the shorthairs.
The Saker forgets to mention the way this event went down. Trump walked into a room at the Mar-a-Lago where
he was met by a bunch of Neocons including Kuchner. They told him of Soleimani presenting a target of
opportunity and Trump ok'ed the attack. This paints a picture of Trump having lost every bit of control that
might still have been in his hands. He was visibly agitated when he went on TV. Probably he had begun to
realize what he has gotten himself into. The US then doubled down by striking a second time. You have to
pause your breath to take in what has happened. The US have officially killed government officials of a
country where they have stationed troops and that officially is an ally of the US. The US have also
officially killed officials of another country that were on an official, diplomatic visit to their ally.
Lots of uses of the word "official" here. But what it basically means is that all damns have broken. Total
chaos is now the order of the day. The US have resorted to naked violence in their dealings with the rest of
the world. Nobody is safe who cannot hold the US at gunpoint. It's the Wild West with nuclear weapons. It
was true before but now the US have begun acting on it completely overtly. And the US congress is in the
process of passing a bill that declares Russia a supporter of terrorism. You have to wonder what will happen
once this bill has passed and some high-ranking Russian official makes his next visit to Kaliningrad via
plane across the Baltic Sea.
@Kratoklastes
I put as much stock in your "expertise" as I do in that of all the other military geniuses on the internet,
which is to say, none at all.
@RadicalCenter
It is, of course, reasonable to wish to avoid another foreign adventure in a distant land. I'm of two minds
on the prospect. On the one hand, I agree that the US should turn its back on the Middle East, let them
settle their own differences. On the other hand, there is a legitimate argument that the day the US backs
down from these foreign entanglements, we lose the dollar as the world's reserve currency and this results
in extreme economic hardship in the US (as well as much of the rest of the world).
In the meantime, both major parties support our foreign entanglements, both firmly support Israel and no
one who is anti-Israel or anti-MIC is anywhere close to being elected to any high office in the country. So,
observing from that angle, the argument for withdrawal has no chance of winning, and the argument for
preventing the expansion of a loudly anti-US country from increasing its influence is not without merit. If
we're going to be there anyway, we might as well keep winning.
As far as the opinion that the US is acting at the behest of Israel, I think it's more a case of sharing
mutual interests at this time. Jews are a very rich and powerful ethnic group in this country, and will
continue to be for quite some time. Their support for Israel is not unlike the old Anglos who twice dragged
America into unnecessary wars against Germany for the benefit of merry old England. I'd rather all Americans
were more concerned with the future and security of the US, but that's not the way it is.
@Beefcake the Mighty
Because I dated a Jewish girl ? I don't think you know what a cuck is. Ask that fellow who picks up your
wife in the evening, then brings her home in the morning to explain the meaning of the word.
@Passer by
Two hundred and fifty million dollar exercise??? Wow and they got smoked in ten miunutes. Very telling.
Suicide bombers in zodiacs crazy to think of that..
Thanks for that.
I want to see the one where the Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup .My team and maybe our year.
@Z-man
Yup.
Here's the insanity of it all. Here in Scotland and I presume the rest of the UK, there are certain branches
of Christianity who go out at the weekend, going around bars, giving leaflets on Jesus and engaging in
conversation with homosexuals. I've had a few debates with them, but they just make me laugh. I know their
bible better than them. Last time I asked them
"ever heard of the Talmud?"
They looked at me goggle
eyed. I told them, specifically what it stated about their Jesus and Mary and they said I was lying. They
stated that Jews would never do such things.
This is what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an
utterly ignorant Christian following who truly do believe the crap about Jews, because they're utterly
indoctrinated. The biggest problem isn't so much Judaism, it's the morons who wilfully follow the Jews, as
God's chosen, believing they do no wrong. Utterly and completely indoctrinated fools.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Qassem Soleimani was indeed a celebrated Iranian general. He was known as an honorable man and talented
military commander.
As for 'Gleimhart Mantooso' -- never heard of her.
@BeenThereDunnit
Important point. Trump now threatens to hit 52 major Iranian sites if there is any retaliation for the
Soleimani assassination. The Russians will observe this precipitous escalation and factor it into the next
standoff between Russian and American forces. Russia will have to assume that 'Murka will escalate
massively, and will therefore be on a hair-trigger for the use of nuclear weapons. Massive escalation is now
the order of the day, and presages nuclear war.
If Trump is the Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable President", and their goals require him out of
the way, "at which point the Neocons will jettison him and replace him by an even more subservient
individual (say Pence or Pelosi)"
Scary thought: The neocons/Israel/DeepState/MIC/media have been going all out to either control and/or
get rid of Trump through Russiagate and now impeachment. Having succeeded in getting Trump to commit this
huge mistake, could they now decide it's worth going further than just impeachment to get rid of him, in
order to create a horrible false flag to pin on Iran, get Pence/Pelosi into power, and have the US destroy
Iran for Israel with media-orchestrated US public support?
Really wish Trump had had the sense to say no to this when they presented their murderous plan to him.
@Rich
Rich: You imply that "Their dead general was a member of the military and a legitimate target." How on earth
could any s-a-n-e person arrive at your conclusion? Are you nucking futs??
This twisted thinking would imply that any member of a sovereign country's military, while visiting another
country on a peace mission, from your perspective, is a 'legitimate target'? With people like you, it is
little wonder that the world ends up with imbeciles like Trump.
Well help me doG
@Rurik
First comes the vote to expel the US forces, then when they don't leave, the constant pinprick attacks and ,
if available, taking out a high value US target and it all gets blamed on Iraq irregular forces
I try to see things as clearly as I can and also from a patriotic American point of view.
Perhaps you should consider having your eyes and hearing checked by a specialist. Also, some additional
education regarding the history of the United States of America starting with the Declaration of
Independence would appear to be long overdue. (Hint: The clue is in the word independence and the efforts
that patriots made to achieve it)
No less alarming is that this creates the absolutely perfect conditions for a false flag la "USS
Liberty". Right now, the Israelis have become at least as big a danger for US servicemen and facilities
in the entire Middle-East as are the Iranians themselves. How? Simple! Fire a missile/torpedo/mine at any
USN ship and blame Iran. We all know that if that happens the US political elites will do what they did
the last time around: let US servicemen die and protect Israel at all costs (read up on the USS Liberty
if you don't know about it)
I made a remark about the likelihood of a False Flag in another thread and was lumped in as "weak-minded"
and "know-it-all Unz-ite". LOL. (
https://www.unz.com/estriker/the-line-in-the-sand/
).
My comment on how Trump is stupid and a great scapegoat was also targeted because the person said Trump is
"playing a charade" and is all deep state. Well, I don't think so at all. Trump is a walking Ego stick and
an excellent scapegoat if anything goes wrong.
But seriously, how can anyone not see the immense gravity of the situation? My god, they murdered a
General, which is next to killing a President. This is a clear provocation and I agree 100% with the
possibilities that Saker brings up.
I'll take it further as well. There could be a nuke used against Iran in the event a False Flag of
massive proportions directed at civilians gets people onboard for a fight. They don't want to get bogged
down in a long war with Iran. My guess is Israel wants them out of the picture for a long time or for good.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Well, annamaria is a much respected commenter here who often adds better information to those comments
lacking much of anything substantial, such as your own. Consider it a favour to you and bear in mind also
that a great many people read the comments without commenting themselves so they too are the beneficiaries
of her well researched contributions. Have a nice day.
All the options presented by Saker are viable and desirable. They don't even have to be limited to
either/or. The political option of hitting exclusively IsraHell with salvos of missiles would be another
option. Israel is, after all, the culprit behind the scenes.
Last time I asked them "ever heard of the Talmud?" They looked at me goggle eyed.
I too was ignorant of it until my later years.
An anecdotal story: Years ago at my 'office' Christmas party the one Jew in our group shared,
with his
goy coworkers
, that he was struggling with
The Talmud
. You see he was a very secular ok kind of
guy who liked to hang out with the 'un-chosen'. But he was now married to a very 'orthodox' woman and he had
to learn about the Talmud. He confessed that the 'manual' was not too kind to gentiles. He was at a
crossroad. I noticed the struggle he was going thru. I believe he stayed with his wife, I haven't seen him
in years.
Thanks to him I became even more 'woke' to the
truths
of Judaism.
As if Afghanistan isn't inhospitable mountainous terrain? So somehow Iran's topography is worse is it?
They invaded Afghanistan without even controlling any neighbouring countries.
Have you looked at where KOP is? By 2007 that was still a 'forward base'. It's only 100 miles from Kabul.
Also, while the US didn't explicitly 'control' Uzbekistan (which is where the initial force staged),
Karimov was a US ally and there is no love lost between the Uzbeks and the Pashto.
Today, the US controls only those parts of Afghanistan that the Taliban haven't decided to take back yet.
It's not clear why you would consider US strategy in Afghanistan as a good example it's now widely-known
to have been so bad that it required 17 years of official bullshit to cover its failure.
.
You've also missed about fifty key points of difference between Afghanistan and Iran.
The ones that most people don't need reminding about include
① Afghanistan had no organised military to speak of;
② it had absolutely no air defence capabilities and limited airspace monitoring;
③ its disorganised military was having a hard time with Dostum, Massoud and Hekmatyar;
④ the initial US insertion was about 6 SAD guys whose main role was to meet up with the Northern
Alliance; they, and the rest of TF Dagger arrived by helo from K-K in Uzbekistan (the US had always
supported Karimov) the TF Dagger insertion
is now the record for the longest helo insertion in military
history
;
⑤ Kandahar and Kabul had already fallen before FOB Rhino was established in other words, the Northern
Alliance plus US air power had done the job before ISAF even got its shit unpacked;
⑥ Notwithstanding the unseating of the Taliban,
The US lost
. They knew in 2001 that they were
losing, and lied about it for 17 years.
On ⑥: when you're a superpower,
if you fail to impose your Imperial Will on the place that is a LOSS
.
.
Ordinarily, in these sort of situations it's left as an exercise to work out which of those points are
critical in the new game (where the US tries to do the same thing in Iran).
But since most people are imbeciles, I'll put a thumb on the scales.
More below the fold. Read it or don't, but if you think of some counter-argument it's best to assume I've
already thought of it, coz I'm good at this. (The folks at JWAC probably don't know my name any more,
because the Yanks our crew helped train in the 90s have moved on since then).
[MORE]
In the case of Iran:
Re ①: Iran has a well-equipped professional military with an excellent senior staff. (That said:
Afghanistan didn't have much by way of
formal
military, but it did have
millions
of
people with battlefield experience against a technologically superior enemy about half of whom were
on the Taliban side).
Re ⑤: Ain't gonna happen because ④ can't happen.
④ is made orders of magnitude harder by !{②,③} (! is the 'NOT' operator, indicating that {} is
untrue in the Iranian case).
Dealing with !③ first: there is no domestic insurgency worth talking to in Iran certainly not one
that is remotely analogous to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001, which was basically a
full-fledged opponent in a civil war (which the NA won, with the aid of US air power). Whoever crosses
the threshold cannot rely on divided attention of the Iranian military.
OK, now !②. More convoluted requires more space.
Insertion of the whole force by rotor is really hard if the adversary has any significant air
defences. (At the time that the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban couldn't even rely on
regularly-updated satellite imagery to detect movements in US naval assets: now you can do that from
your phone, and if you're a government you have drones).
With a sophisticated enemy it's so hard to insert large numbers of boots by rotor, that it can be
ruled out.
So if you want to get boots on the ground
without
everyone having to traverse a mountain
range (exposing flanks and supply lines), you a need to get reliable control over a big lump of land
that has an airport on it capable of landing troop transports (or being converted to same).
(The passel of land has to be on the 'enemy' side of the mountains I put that in because some
readers went to US schools and geography is not a strong point.)
Controlling an air base would require a battalion on the ground on the bad-guy side of the hills.
You sure as fuck don't want to fight your way over the hills and then try to control an airbase.
Trying to get a battalion-sized presence in by rotorcraft would mean using MH-47s, which are slow
and (
ahem
) not very stealthy (actually, they're
very
not
stealthy) and the US
would require more than a battalion on the ground.
Airdrop? Same problem: if the incoming aircraft is detected, you know everything about manpower
disposition (troop size and position) before the men hit the ground.
Iran has the capability to see airborne things coming; it also has a range of solutions to make
airborne things lose their airborne-ness.
For mobile overwatch, Iran has AWACS 3 old Orions and some retroftted An-140s for maritime, and a
bunch of unarmed drones (they've been cranking out UAVs as fast as possible). They also have JY-14
medium-long range radar, which is handy because their range means that they can be lit up earlier than
short-range AA radar.
And if you don't think that they have an intel-sharing arrangement with Russia, you're not thinking
hard enough.
As far as making flying things stop flying, they have a fuckton of SAMs. A genuine fuckton
especially relative to what the US has faced in any engagement since Korea.
They have a similar fuckton of MANPADs: even primitive RPGs are bad news for helos, and MANPADs are
much more
worser
think of how badly "
Hind
vs
Stinger
" played out in the 80s, and
you are on roughly the right page
They also have a little over 1500 AA batteries (most of those will be dead on first contact, but
they're still a nuisance).
The Iranian Air Force itself forget it, it's irrelevant.
The first sign things are kicking off will be a bunch of TLAMs fucking up every airbase in Iran.
(Plus the obligatory US/NATO SOP war crime of targeting civilian infrastructure for electricity
generation, water treatment, sewage treatment, and telecommunications)
This is why Iran has fuck-all air-superiority assets: and a little over a hundred 1980s-level
offensive aircraft (about 150 of them: F14; Fulcrum; Su22, 24 and 25).
They learned from the experience of Iraq's Air Force in 1991: it was much much larger than Iran's
is now, but a shitload of it was destroyed on the ground due to the regime's appalling lack of
preparedness.
So from all that
⑥ is a foregone conclusion.
Some things that play no part in the conclusion:
ⓐ that I despise US* hypocritical bromides about freedom and 'democracy';
ⓑ that the US military is a bloated set of boondoggles run by grifters,with the mindset of a
20-something NPC who just watched '300';
ⓒ that the US has had its arse kicked by several sets of raggedy-ass peasants from 1968 onwards and
has underperformed in every peer engagement since 1789. (inb4 WWI and WWII they were on the winning
side
, but others e.g., the Soviets did the actual
winning
)
.
"
Topography matters
" doesn't mean that topography is
all
that matters. The gap
between combatants has to be
extremely
wide in order for technology and manpower to overcome
terrain.
In fact it's hard to know how wide the gap needs to be fortech/power to win, because all of the
'invade without properly considering terrain disadvantages
" has resulted in strategic losses for
the superior force at all times since WWII.
We can say that the gap has to be
wider
than "
Viet Cong vs US
" or "
Mujahedin vs
USSR
" or
USC/SNA vs US/UNOSOM
" or "
Taliban vs US/ISAF
".
.
People who are interested in how shit works in modern warfare need to read William Lind, or John
Robb or Arregun-Toft.
Start with the short-ish paper (which is now a book):
@Anonymous
I wonder whether, as you suggest, Trump hasn't just walked into a trap.
And has just figured out that this time, he's the patsy.
If such is the case, his best option might be to address the American people directly as to what has gone
down with this murder and sack Pompeo and Kushner. (Turn the former over to Iran???? Just kidding . . . but
depriving him of security would accomplish the same thing.)
The problem is that the vipers are within his own family: Ivanka and Jared Kushner. Stupidest thing he
could have done, having those two on his "diplomatic" and "advisory" staff.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
Are they treated as Julian Assange is in the UK or as Maria Butina was for a year-and-a-half in a US jail
forced to plead guilty for something she was not guilty of in the first place? Or as Manning is being held
in solitary confinement because he will not lie for a get-out-of-jail card? Are the Koreans subjected to
execution by black murderers while in their cells? Let us know when you have some evidence.
@the grand wazoo
Also, there is a large faction within the Democratic party who will never go to war for Israel, because they
simply don't like Jews. They may be fooled into hating Russia because they are white, but they'll side with
an underdog Iran over a belligerent Israel every time.
If the Democrats get control, they will effectively control the USA indefinitely, because they seem
perfectly happy to import all the Democratic voters they'll require to remain in power
The window for Jews to utilize the American state as their wrecking ball are limited. Trump might be the
best chance they will ever get. America is on such shaky footing on so many levels, they may implode
domestically before they can the job done.
So I would guess that the appropriate tit-for-tat splash would be LtGen Scott Berrier (G2 Intel).
Everyone's heard of that guy, right?
No I didn't know him but now we all do. Ok that would be tit for tat, but I would still go for a 4 Star.
(Grin)
Plus, if they splashed Pompous, the resulting fatberg would burn for longer than the Springfield tyre
fire. Nobody wants that.
LOL!!!
He is the most dispicable NEOCON stooge out there, even worse than 'Linda' Graham. Christian Zionists, the
personification of OXY
MORON
.
Ok, not Plump'eo but we gotta give the Iranians one real Neo-cohen, to scare the be-Jesus out of them (the
Jooz that is). (Grin)
@Desert Fox
"Israel and the ZUS want a nuclear war with Russia "
A few years ago I would have LOL 'd at such a proposition. Today, I scratch my head.
Is the US so completely
insane
as to attack a peer or (indeed) stronger nuclear power such as Russia?
I don't think so but .
@UninformedButCurious
Is Trump "disposable" ? Maybe. But unlikely.
Given that Tel Aviv is in charge (a synonym for "neocon") , & Trump has virtually tripped over his own
tongue in his haste to lick their boots (& other bodily parts) it wouldn't appear that Trump has yet lost
his value.
And in a more domestic sense --
Pence
! OMG, is there a political leader with less charisma? Pence
makes Corbyn look like Ronald Reagan.(People greatly under rate charisma & other subjective leadership
qualities)
So dumping Trump would have severe political repercussions.
@John Chuckman
Iran will "carefully plan a response, and that response may not be clear and unambiguous, and it might be
multi-faceted and done over time."
Agreed.
Hopefully Iran will respond largely through proxies. And also concentrate on non-military responses.
IE, putting maximum pressure on Iraq's parliament to force all US forces out of Iraq -- difficult, but that
would be a
huge
win. Of course, they'll still get the blame -- but should a cat in Patagonia die in
suspicious circumstances Iran would get the blame for that
too
.
As for
any
nuclear response by Iran, that truly would be "acting foolishly". Anything along nuclear
lines would be a perfect provocative to Israel /the US.
@Kratoklastes
I think the Iranian leadership and populace would be more convinced of the effectiveness of the Iranian
military if Soleimani had managed to keep himself alive.
@SeekerofthePresence
Not only that, he has even stated that among them are sites of great cultural importance. Do they want to
attack mosques? Some of those Iranian mosques are not only holy sites as such, they are marvels of
architecture. Attacking them would be a crime against the heritage of all mankind. That would be truly mad
but we will see, sadly. It would enrage Muslims to a degree not seen in living memory. They might "just"
attack sites commemorating the fallen of the war against Iraq. That would be nearly as bad.
Anyways,
refraining from any more threats, as Trump has demanded, is a near impossibility. What is a threat and what
not? Are red flags of revenge on display in Iran already a threat? The probability of war has to reckoned at
near 100% now.
The Iranians should disperse their assets urgently. Nuclear assets that can be dispersed have to be at
the top of the list. They should actually try to avoid making any more threats for now. Trump has
conveniently laid out his strategy to them, allowing them to have the war started by the Americans at a
point of time of their choosing. After a period of restraint, they should gradually start making slight
threats again, placing the ball in the American court. The dust will have settled somewhat by then, world
opinion will have realized how criminally the US have behaved by killing Iraqi and Iranian officials. The
later the war starts, the better for the Iranians. That explains why the US are escalating so heavily right
now.
If Iran really got hold of some Ukrainian nuclear warheads back when the Soviet Union dissolved, then the
time for testing one of them would be now.
The big question has to be how China and Russia position themselves. The Americans and Israelis seem to
think that Putin and Xi are weak enough internally to allow them to go through with it all. The true
battlefield will be Russian and and Chinese public opinion. If Putin and Xi can convince their peoples that
Iran has to be supported, then the equation would shift. They should at least start making weapon
deliveries. Russia could even claim that it has to protect the nuclear site in Busher where Russians work,
deploying S-400s manned by its own personnel. China could claim that war in the Persian Gulf would be too
much of a threat to its economy. Both claims would be true.
Perhaps they'll be able to gin up some popular riots and demonstrations throughout the Muslim world.
That should be the best strategy for Iran to invoke the common heritage of the true monotheist faith we
share, of which there is much.
On a personal level, even if I have reservations about Shi'sm, and what I see as clear deviancy, I, and I
am sure many other true monotheist brothers, are still on the side of Iran, because my suspicion of Shi'sm
is far less than my visceral hatred for Whitey/Joonist Imperialism. May the Almighty One's wrath befall the
satanically evil pagan/godless Whitey/Joonist Imperialists, those avowed enemies of True Monotheism.
Iran should find ways to communicate with the Arab street directly using Whitey/Zionist Imperialist
tools like Twitter and Facebook, as long as it will be allowed. The irony is not lost on me.
Also, there is a large faction within the Democratic party who will never go to war for Israel,
because they simply don't like Jews.
They don't get to decide. The uppermost elites do. Lower-level Democrats are just rubber-stampers. They
may not like Israel but must still serve it. Jewish Money and Media compel them to.
I believe a not insignificant amount -- perhaps even the majority -- of pro-war Americans know this to be
true: That they and their progeny are mere cannon fodder for Zionist imperialism. But they simply don't
care or are even proud of dying for so "worthy" a cause. Never underestimate the persistent and
deeply-rooted hysterical adulation that Israel commands -- nor the utter foolishness of your average
American.
This is so true. American Protestant Christianity Evangelicalism in particular has been warped and
modified by Zionism. Whereas for 1800 years Christians believed and preached that God took on human form and
that Jesus died for the sins of all humanity, the belief now seems to be that God is a real estate agent. I
think that even if Evangelicals were to find out that the Talmud teaches that in the Millennium every Jew is
to have 2,800 goyim as slaves, they would accept it.
@A123
Of course, the paid Iranian shills posting here will decry this simple and obvious truth. Fortunately, no
one believes them.
I was out of work for forty seven years (due to my issues with women, and my
extreme myopia, not to mention my body odour). So I was really happy to be offered a job as a cyber warrior
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command under their blessed leader General Qasem Soleimani at what I
thought was a really good rate of pay.
Imagine my disillusion when I discovered how few pounds I could get for my Rials, thanks to the
continuing US economic sanctions. So, with a heavy heart I realised that I had no alternative other than to
go to work for Mossad to finance my sex offending.
People need to realize that the dynamic has changed completely. For Iran, patience is no longer an option.
Israel/USA will continue to attack. Seriously, look at Trump's 52 target tweet. It sounds like the ranting
of Hitler during his last days in the bunker. Not fighting back is the worst thing Iran can now do.
Regarding the court of public opinion: Iran had the sympathy of the majority of people in the world long
before the new year. It counts for nothing when it comes to avoiding war. All that matters is the western
media and the brainwashed western public. Iran can never win that PR fight. In fact, if you polled Americans
and gave them the option of ending the Iran problem by nuking them that the majority would support this
action. A large number of Canadians would also support this. More importantly, after such a nuclear attack
and 80 million dead Iranians the main thing westerners will care about is getting back to business as usual.
America will resort to a nuclear attack because it believes it can get away with it. What does Iran have to
lose?
I hope the following happens Monday:
1) the Houthis strike and shut down all Saudi oil production.
2) a cyber attack in the USA. Maybe take down the power grid. We know how much Americans love war when
they can sit in front of their tv and cheer on the US military. How much will they love it, or the people
who brought them this war, when they're stuck in their unheated homes in the middle of January?
I also hope they are seriously considering the following:
3) hitting every US military target in the region that could be used to bomb Iran.
4) Hizbollah and Syria launching attacks against Israel. The Israeli's are the real provocateurs. If they
pay no price they will continue to push for further aggression.
No matter what is done by Iran or its allies the retaliation by the US will be greater than what we've
seen so far. Even if nothing is done Israel/USA will create another incident for an excuse to attack again.
The war has started. One sure way for Iran to lose it is to not participate.
@Rich
World War I fought on behalf of ZIONISTS who influenced Jews in Woodrow Wilson's cabinet (the "brain
trust", and a certain Jewish man, STEPHEN WISE, known as the 'Red Rabbi' for his affinity for Communism!).
This deal was in exchange for Britain giving Palestine to the Zionist Jews (even though it wasn't even
Britain's to give at the time)! Surely you have heard of the BALFOUR DECLARATION, right? Quit spinning this
disingenuous pseudo-history!
World War II Franklin Delano Roosevelt's cabinet was ALSO chock-full of
Zionists, and a certain Jewish man, now in his older years but still very influential, STEPHEN WISE yet
again, was also one of his closest advisors. And Churchill, who ALSO was bought and paid for by Zionist
interests, was in on this as well read Pat Buchanan's "Hitler, Churchill, and the Unnecessary War" for a
pretty mainstream take on this subject. But basically World War II was ALSO fought for Zionists, and what
was the result?
Britain: LOST THEIR EMPIRE
Zionists: CREATED THE COLONIALIST SETTLER STATE OF ISRAEL BY EVICTING PALESTINIANS THROUGH TERRORIST GROUPS
LIKE THE IRGUN
So WHO was that really done on behalf of???
You lot really need to quit spinning this nonsense here; it's just not going to work with anyone who's
educated and intelligent enough to research for themselves and it makes you and your cause look very
foolish.
@Rich
Why don't you go to Iran and tell the millions mourning in the streets there for this man who symbolised the
resistance to the evil Zionist World Order how 'wrong' they are
Or are all of them just horribly misguided and confused? Or maybe they're just 'evil' people who ought to be
destroyed? And we need to 'bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran'? How convenient!
For the record, some of those mourning
Soleimani's death the most are the ethnic Christian communities whom he so bravely defended from ISIS (who
we now know were supported by Israel and the 'rebel' forces that Zionists in the West helped fund). But I am
guessing your kind doesn't support the continued existence of some of the oldest Christian communities in
existence that are in the Middle East, because you probably cheered when their homes got bulldozed by the
Zionists in the Naqbamany of them still have the keys to their houses, by the way.
@Gleimhart Mantooso
I'm not a Muslim, nor am I inbred.
I honour Soleimani's sacrifice because he was one of the foremost defenders of Christians from ISIS, and the
ancient Christian communities in the Middle East are some of those grieving his murder the most. Do you not
care about them, or are you just that ignorant?
@animalogic
Part of Trump's plan is to rid Iraq of it's Iranian influence. It will be the Iranians ejected not the US.
He has eliminated Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Iraqi proxy forces and killed, arrested or forced into
hiding many other pro Iranian urgers.
The riots in the south of the country are largely about removing Iranian influence and the artificial
Sunni/Shia sectarian differences. Expect this social movement to be energised in a pro US way.
There will be no all out war in the middle east. No one in the ME is
any position to deal in such a fashion with the US and it would be suicidal to try. Dear leader in Iran has
only bad choices and even using proxies, he places his entire regime on a chopping block. Those 52 targets
were selected in a way that Iran's economy will be crushed quickly.
So let the Imams go ahead and try to get their blood revenge. They are only digging their own graves.
By the by, Soleimani was not murdered. He was a terrorist leader and got what he had coming to him.
@Quartermaster
No, it's not up to Iran if there will be a war, it is up to USA, and it wants the war, and there is nothing
Iran can do to prevent it except make the yanks and their stooges in the region pay the biggest price
possible given their own resources and resourcefulness. Did you people forget Iraq? After sanctions and
years of the USAF bombing targets to enforce those "no fly" zones, one set up in the south specifically to
protect the Shiites they're now turning on, they still went all out and invaded Iraq without Saddam having
done anything to provoke them, and in fact being most cooperative and even allowing inspectors into the
country to confirm that he had no WMDs. Unless of course you think Saddam brought down WTC on 911.
@BeenThereDunnit
Persia, Russia, and China all have a gift for long-term survival (though Russia and China are capable of
immediate and devastating action). As PCR has suggested, Russia will likely counsel Iran to bide it's time;
why attack a dinosaur already frothing at the mouth and collapsing under its own weight?
And as you
mention, there is much preparation Iran can do now. The battlespace has changed: Neocon Crazies (Pence,
Pompeo) are now making command decisions (the Soleimani hit, decision on 52 major follow-up strikes) at the
Pentagon.
Therefore Iran must be doubly cautious before moving. As Sun Tzu would say: If a stronger enemy goads you
to fight, then hold back and wait for the proper moment. Never do what the enemy wants or expects.
@Z-man
I found out about the talmud around 12 years ago now. I have to say I was shocked with what it stated
within, but that was also because I was Jew ignorant. This opened up the door to Judaism and what it was all
about.
I'm not religious. I do believe there was a man named Christ, a revolutionary and I struggle with the 'son
of God' concept. The jury is out on that. However what annoyed me was the fact that this was the major
teaching within Judaism and no one had ever heard about it. Were there anything remotely similar to this,
about Jews or blacks, there'd be a public outcry and heads would roll, yet millions of Christians openly
know about this and still support Judaism and see them as God's chosen. It just beggars belief.
"He confessed that the 'manual' was not too kind to gentiles."
There you go. From the very own horse's mouth. What more needs to be said? As stated, tell people to
forget about the online talmuds. They've been conveniently changed to remove the 'bad parts' within. Jews
doing what Jews do deceive.
@Kratoklastes
I take it as axiomatic that the U.S. Military could not successfully occupy Iran, and is very well aware of
that reality. Nor is there, as far as I can see, any overriding political reason to do so.
IMO, the primary objective of any U.S. attack on Iran would be:
To destroy Iran as a modern country,
and foreclose, if possible, any chance Iran could become a modern country in the foreseeable future.
To that end, look for the destruction of civilian infrastructure and cultural monuments, as others here
have postulated, and as was done in Iraq. The (unstated) aim would be to break the national will and destroy
the cultural identity of the Iranian people, using the specious claim of "fighting terrorism."
Look for the Great Mosque of Isfahan:
to be high on the target list, along with the Iranian parliament building and countless other non-military
objectives.
Is such an attack (by air power alone) likely to succeed?
A1. In the short term, yes.
A2. In the longer term, success is not guaranteed.
If experience in Europe, i.e. Germany, is any guide, I expect Iran could manage to rebuild itself in twenty
years or so.
In the meantime, the U.S. will have completed its transformation to a full-on outlaw nation, having
flagrantly violated the Nuremberg prohibition, which itself established, against "waging aggressive war,"
and become the groveling, depraved toady of a small, and otherwise insignificant, middle eastern "state"
founded upon the theft of land and resources from the indigenous population by a thugocracy of European
interlopers who claim some kind of "divine right of possession," or "land title from God," based on the
assertion that some members of their tribe lived in that area thousands of years ago.
In short, the U.S is now the titular head of an Evil Empire.
Long live the Resistance.
@Harbinger
I too was uninformed of
my
Catholic religion and that's funny because I went to Catholic administered
schools from grammar school to college. (Grin)
Were there anything remotely similar to this (The Talmud), about Jews or blacks, there'd be a public
outcry and heads would roll, yet millions of Christians openly know about this and still support Judaism
and see them as God's chosen.
It just beggars belief.
Vatican II had a lot to do with this 'accepting' of Jews. Christian Zionists are the biggest culprits
today.
forget about the online Talmuds. They've been conveniently changed to remove the 'bad parts' within.
Jews doing what Jews do deceive.
I'm sure.
I do believe there was a man named Christ, a revolutionary and I struggle with the 'son of God'
concept.
You gotta have
faith
.
See Brother Nathaniel, a converted Jew. A bit over the top when you
first see him, on the net, but a man of faith and truth.
@Harbinger
Alternative theory: Trump, like Nixon, is a genius.
Trump tweeted he wanted out of Syria. The military industrial complex said no. So Trump then said OK, I
going to give the military industrial complex what it wants 'good and hard' to quote HL Mencken. This is
kind of like how Nixon ended the US involvement in Vietnam, he forced to US military to confront North
Vietnamese regular army and everybody, including the military industrial complex, involved objected to it,
so the US had to leave.
@Quartermaster
Soleimani was fighting the terrorists who were created by the ZUS and Israel and Z-Britain and Z-NATO, these
being AL CIADA aka ISIS aka ISIL aka Daesh etc..
The middle east wars were brought on by the joint attack
on the WTC by Israel and the ZUS , to be blamed on the muslims , thus giving Israel and ZUS the excuse to
destroy the middle east for the zionists greater Israel project.
@Assad al-islam
Iranians are hardly shrewd. They ripped themselves a permanent asshole with us Americans in 1979 (and no, I
don't need a lecture on the Shah, since that doesn't magically make their actions shrewd). And they have
continued ever since by calling us "the great Satan" and chanting "death to America." They did themselves no
favors by shooting down our drone a few months ago, and they were tempting fate last week when they
arrogantly boasted "You (we Americans) can't do anything." It's like Michael Ledeen is their chief adviser.
None of that is shrewd. It is damned foolish.
And yes, I know that American foreign policy is damned
foolish, too (yet another thing I don't need anyone here to lecture me about). And I know that Israel is the
major cause of Middle East problems. But acknowledging all that doesn't mean that Iran is a noble, virtuous,
innocent party in the entire affair. So many people have the absurd mindset that "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend." Muslims are ever bit as supremacist as Jews are. And as long as that remains the case, people
are not going to be persuaded to pressure the American government to stop reading from the Neocon script.
Venerating Iran and lionizing the dead general is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people, and a big
part of that dynamic is Iran's fault.
@Not Raul
Lol now I didn't know that Russia was hundreds,thousands of mile away from Iran,thank for the heads up those
damnable Iranians have upped and moved their border again,tsk,tsk,tsk.!!!
@Rich
For Gods sake quit posting it only makes you out the fool.Now Iran elected a leader by means that we use
ourselves the ballot box,now what's wrong we that? then the democratic elected president states that Iran's
oil belongs to Iran and its people,you boys are out.
Now Churchill gets his undies in a twist whining but
wait England's industry runs on CHEAP Iranian oil (25 cent a barrel oil),so he calls up the M15 tells them
to join their partners in the C.I.A. and over throw that asshole who thinks that their oil belong to
them,and as they say the rest is history,I trust its the real history not the revised history you spout,!!
@Beefcake the Mighty
They oppose the shooting of Soleimani, and so do you. If I'm a cuck because my support of killing terrorist
Muslims also happens to be the same position as Bibi Netanyahu's , I guess following your logic, your
support of the same position as the commie trio I named, makes you a cuck. In fact I guess you also kneel in
front of AOC and that hijab wearing Ilhan Omar. Following your logic even further, you must be Al Sharpton's
shoe shine boy and Maxine Waters wig washer, since they also opposed the shooting.
Or, could it be that we
just have different viewpoints on an issue, and it's only a coincidence that some others share that opinion
in this case? I don't check with the Israeli embassy before I make my mind up and I'm open to changing my
mind if a convincing argument is made. Do you, since your opinion is exactly the same as theirs, check with
the DNC before forming an opinion?
Epsteinistan murders the general,
Threatens we will pummel you with more strikes.
Pimps himself to glories ephemeral,
World domination the jackboot he licks.
@Quartermaster
You are naive person. The US will have to fight the whole Shia world if it attacks Iran, including Iraq. You
live in the past and never realised the decline of the US in the world. You were just kicked by Iraq.
Legislation was accepted forcing the US to withdraw from Iraq and cease all kind of collaboration.
You can
forget about US companies operating there too, China and Russia will move there instead. Its resources and
arms market are lost to you. Americans are hated in the country and can't even leave the Embassy in safety.
We also learned today officialy from Iraq's Prime Minister Adil Abdul al Mahdi how Donald Trump uses
diplomacy:
US asked Iraq to mediate with Iran. Iraq PM asks Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him
the answer of his mediation, Trump &co assassinate an envoy at the airport.
No options for Iran? Let's hope "someone" doesn't provide manpads to the Taliban. You lost aganist them
too, and soon will be kicked out from Afghanistan in humiliation.
Do you know who Muqtada Al Sadr is? The most influential person in Iraq, a country with huge oil and gas
reserves and young combat ready population rising fast. The man who kicked the arse of the US occupation of
Iraq. Muqtada Al Sadr demands the total removal of not only US troops, but the of US embassy and all US
diplomats in Iraq as well. And an Axis Of Resistance against the US by all Shia groups all around the world.
This will cut off supply lines to your remnants in Syria and put the few US soldiers there under siege,
hated by almost all sides. They won't make it in Syria for long.
Meanwhile, you managed to make the Turks hate you too. Just keep doing that.
Iran's FM said something interesting yeasterday: The end of Malign US Influence in West Asia has begun.
The US will be gradually kicked out from the region.
The 2020s will be a time of great power transition where the rest of the world rises and the US declines,
being kicked out from many places. You made a big mistake, making more and more enemies everywhere in the
world.
Iran, Russia and China should attacked the Achilles Hell of the US which is Gold. China should sell its
US$1.2 Trillion of US Treasury bonds and keep buying Gold. That will send the Gold price soaring to
US$10,000 an oz. Interest rates will spike and Wall St and the US$1.5 quadrillion Derivatives market will
collapse, bankrupting all major US banks.
-- The visceral ethnic hatred of the real bosses and the fabled
American incompetence of the profiteers-incharge do not have a place for any rationality.
"Anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka," wrote Jewish historian Leonard
Schapiro, "stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with, and possibly shot by, a Jewish
investigator."
In Ukraine, "Jews made up nearly 80 percent of the rank-and-file Cheka agents," reports W. Bruce
Lincoln, an American professor of Russian history. Beginning as the Cheka, or Vecheka, the Soviet secret
police was later known as the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD and KGB. [Remember Holodomor in Ukraine? Add to the
Kaganovich fame of mass murderer the fame of Nuland-Kagan, the collaborator with Ukrainian neo-nazi and
promotor of the ongoing civil war in eastern Ukraine].
In light of all this, it should not be surprising that Yakov M. Yurovksy, the leader of the Bolshevik
squad that carried out the murder of the Tsar and his family, was Jewish, as was Sverdlov, the Soviet
chief who co-signed Lenin's execution order.
@Rich
Sadly, Ron Unz has been extremely negligent in omitting the inclusion of a MORON button. I really couldn't
label you a TROLL as that would in fact be complimentary towards you.
@Momus
Tel Aviv is home to zionist cowards who hide behind the US skirt while parasitizing on the body of the US.
Your attempt at presenting yourself as a brave warrior is ridiculous. After shooting the civilians
(including children of all ages) on the occupied territories, Israelis have got a delusional idea of being
the brave soldiers and military geniuses. Relax. Yours is an Epstein nation of Israel.
@BeenThereDunnit
"That explains why the US are escalating so heavily right now. "
The neocons probably want a spring war.
For themselves, and to do Bibi the most good.
Spring is the most convenient time for warmaking.
Nice weather.
If they are planning for this war, they are already well along in putting the logistics in place.
We are probably screwed.
I read somewhere fairly recently an analysis of why a spring war would "work" well for both the Dems and the
Repugs. But I cannot recall the rationales.
So it seems like all sides are angling and wangling to move Trump in the direction of a spring attack on
Iran.
As for ":Some of those Iranian mosques are not only holy sites as such, they are marvels of architecture.
Attacking them would be a crime against the heritage of all mankind. That would be truly mad but we will
see, sadly. It would enrage Muslims to a degree not seen in living memory."
It would make a LOT of people worldwide furious. Not just Muslims.
Bomb Isfahan? Shiraz? Tabriz? Our "leaders" are mad.
@Quartermaster
The gullible "Quartermaster" has sided with Nuland-Kagan and Banderites. Oops.
The gullible "Quartermaster" has sided with "white helmets." Oops.
The gullible "Quartermaster" has sided with Bibi. Ooops.
The gullible "Quartermaster" has been trusting wholeheartedly the presstitutes of MSM and even became the
MSM's deputy on the Unz Forum to deliver the MSM lies. What's wrong with you?
Soleimani was extraordinarily effective when fighting the ISIS; hence the rabid hatred of Israelis and US
war profiteers towards the honorable man.
Too many Oops on your part, gullible "Quartermaster"
If I thought that America was responsible for every dastardly dirty crime in the world, I would applaud the
article. This article was written from the basis that America's involvement began with the death of a
terrorist, where is the history propelling Trump to act?
I smell a coward writing this article. What action would the author have recommended following the death of
a American contractor, send the killers more cash?
When Iran invaded the American embassy, did they not invade America? Are not embassies located of the soil
of the occupying nation? Did any of the embassy employees attack Iran or it's citizens? Does an invasion
constitute an act of war?
@Smith
Too say the "Jews" told him to do something without naming them is suspect. Support your argument with
facts, like names, how communicated, when, and how you came by this info.
@animalogic
The zionists hate Christians more than they hate any other religious group. If by launching a nuclear war,
it is guaranteed that Christians will cease to exist, you can be sure they will start a nuclear war. It's
not just me talking about, it's in their scriptures.
Zionists hate for Russia is purely because it's
predominantly white and Christian nation.
@Skeptikal
A spring war would give Iran plenty of time to prepare. It would also give Putin and Xi time to shore up
public opinion and deploy assistance. The Russians could even send some of their super-quiet Diesel subs to
the Gulf.
If this war goes through, Putin and Xi will come out very weak. Syria on a much grander scale
but without Russia and China doing anything about it.
It's all going to be a cakewalk, the Iranians will welcome the destruction of their country with open arms.
The Iranians won't dare to confront the US or we'll just turn their country into glass. lol
@whattheduck
Good but the Jews won't want complete destruction of the European races because then, no one will protect
them. Ideally they'll destroy Christianity while having a polyglot atheist white race serving them.
As I've said many times before the Jew power structure hates Russia, and specifically Putin, because he
re-established Orthodox Christianity to the
Motherland
which they tried to destroy in the communist
revolution.
PS. When I started reading on these sites, years ago, I found it almost amusing when people attacked
Vatican II. After all, I was indoctrinated as a youth that V-II was the best thing since sliced bread, 'the
Church had to become
modern
.' Needles to say I've become a fan of the SSPX and beyond, like the good
Bishop Williamson who said before he was excommunicated,
"[T]he people who hold world-wide power today
over politics and the media are people who want the godless New World Order, and" "they have fabricated a
hugely false version of World War Two history to go with a complete fabricated religion to replace
Christianity."
@Rich
" The Iranians could not defeat the ragtag forces of Saddam Hussein, but they can defeat the United States?
Preposterous."
Actually, it is the other way around !
And .. Saddam, had the almighty USA behind him; so, I must assume that your initial paragraph and the
entire comment, is pretty much a childish one.
By the way you articulated your comment, I wonder; what the heck are you reading these articles for, if you
do not have neither the knowledge or the understanding of these geopolitical themes.
As a friendly advise, I would suggest, getting a hot water bottle, seat in your armchair and watch
television.
he Iraqi parliament approved a measure that called for an end to the U.S. military presence
in Iraq. The prime minister spoke in favor of a departure of U.S. forces, and it seems very
likely that U.S. forces will be required to leave the country in the near future. The
president's response to this was in keeping with his cartoon imperialist attitudes about other
countries:
Trump threatens Iraq with sanctions if they expel US troops: "If they do ask us to leave,
if we don't do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they've never
seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."
Trump doesn't see other countries as genuinely sovereign, and he doesn't respect their
decisions when they run counter to what he wants, so his first instinct when they choose
something he dislikes is to punish them. Economic war has been his preferred method of
punishment, and he has applied this in the form of tariffs or sanctions depending on the
target. Iraq's government is sick of repeated U.S. violations of Iraqi sovereignty, and the
U.S. strikes over the last week have strengthened the existing movement to remove U.S. forces
from the country. One might think that Trump would jump at the chance to pull U.S. troops out
of Iraq and Syria that the Iraqi parliament's action gives him. It would have been better to
leave of our own accord before destroying the relationship with Baghdad, but it might be the
only good thing to come out of this disaster. It is telling that Trump's reaction to this news
is not to seize the opportunity but to threaten Iraq instead. Needless to say, there is
absolutely no legitimate basis for imposing sanctions on Iraq, and if Trump did this it would
be one more example of how the U.S. is flagrantly abusing its power to bully and attack smaller
states.
In another instance of the president's crude cartoon imperialism, he
repeated his threat to target Iran's cultural heritage sites:
President Trump on Sunday evening doubled down on his claim that he would target Iranian
cultural sites if Iran retaliated for the targeted killing of one of its top generals,
breaking with his secretary of state over the issue.
Aboard Air Force One on his way back from his holiday trip to Florida, Mr. Trump
reiterated to reporters traveling with him the spirit of a Twitter post on Saturday, when he
said that the United States government had identified 52 sites for retaliation against Iran
if there were a response to Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani's death. Some, he tweeted, were of
"cultural" significance.
Such a move could be considered a war crime under international laws, but Mr. Trump
said Sunday that he was undeterred.
When o when will this man leave the stage? Who oh who will stand up against him and save
the world from this man? God have mercy on us all and deliver us from this anti-christ.
Trump really really enjoyed telling his "Black Jack Pershing's bullets dipped in pig's
blood" fairy tales during the campaign, and so did the rallygoers. He loves reveling in the
amoral gutter, and his base loves him unconditionally. Ailes, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity,
and now Trump: their aggresive, barbaric, venal leaders and spokesmen. Whaddayagonnado?
They can't help it. They follow the guy who calls the opposition within his own party
"human scum." Takes one to know one, right? That's right. Trump is a visceral hedonist, so
yes, he likes aggression.
As reactions are emerging around the world, it seems pretty clear that the US will be
almost completely isolated in this situation. Europe may finally be growing a spine.
Most interesting is the reaction from the UK. Dominic Raab initially made some
"balanced" remarks pointing out that Soleimani was a bad actor but counseling restraint.
The next day, presumably under directions from Boris Johnson, he retracted that and said
that the UK is on the same page as the US. This is a portent of things to come. I think
that most people who voted for Brexit did so because they wanted to take back their
sovereignty from Brussels. But this weekend is probably the first step in the UK's march
towards becoming, in practical terms, a US colony. The UK's economy and other influence are
simply not large enough to stand alone against those of the US, the EU, and China. They
will be in something of a beggars can't be choosers position when negotiating trade deals
with these larger entities. They can expect the EU to do them no favors given their chaotic
dealings with them. China will probably take a pragmatic approach to them. Their best hope
for favorable treatment is with the United States, and Johnson has fawned over Trump enough
to have reason to believe it might happen. But it also entails that the UK will not be free
to dissent from US foreign policy in the slightest way. In fact, if we end up in a
conventional war with Iran, I suspect that the UK will be the only nation in the world that
sends troops there with us. (The UAE, Israel and the Saudis will, of course, cheer us on,
even goad us, but will not risk any of their own blood.) I wonder how Brexit supporters
will feel about that. At least Brussels never dragged them into any stupid wars.
Remember this date. It marks the date the UK began its journey from the frying pan into
the fire.
At this point the question is, can Trump have even a vaguely normal conversation about
anything? Certainly not foreign policy. Just how much of this manure can he spew before the
Republican Party responds? My guess is they've gone so far past the point of normal that
there's no coming back This is both sad and frightening.
One common response to Trump's threat to attack Iranian cultural sites is that the
military would not carry out such obviously illegal orders
I wouldn't put any hope in the US military disobeying such orders. It's not what they
are really trained for. They may pay lip service to having respect for laws of war but they
won't actually pay any attention to them. Respect for culture? Remember Dresden? The crude
barbarism of Sherman and Sheridan is the spirit of the US military.
As a conservative (not a Republican, but certainly not a Democrat) who cannot abide
thinking of any of the democratic candidates as President, I would love to see impeachment.
Mike Pence would be infinitely preferable as President to this little psychopathic bully.
Seriously, the last few days should principled non-interventionists know that Trump is
empjatically not one of us. He'd gladly sabotage the future of the United States on the
alter of his own ego.
"He sees war only in the crudest terms of plunder and atrocity."
It's a blunt but true observation. We spend most of our time justifying wars as noble
and moral, using euphemism to disguise the reality to ourselves and others. Two cheers for
being truthful.
I also note that destroying cultural monuments is claimed to be a war crime, while
inevitable civilian deaths are just acceptable collateral damage.
Let's not pretend that the long history of the imperial coveting of either Iraq's or
Iran's resources has ever been much more than plunder, often making use of atrocity. What
doesn't qualify as that, is great game imperialist jockeying for geostrategic advantage
against commercial rivals.
Of course "things" would be sacrosanct, while human lives are not, in the wholly
materialist calculus of warmongering.o
Attacking cultural-heritage sites, Pres. Trump? Like what the Taliban did to the Buddhas of
Bamyan? Or what ISIS did to ancient art, architecture, and artifacts in Mosul, Palmyra,
Raqqa, and more? What a barbarian!
Will Congress dare to eliminate funds for the occupation of Iraq and for attacking Iran?
Will all those that would vote for continuation of funding will be removed from office
through elections, in the very gerrymandered locales, in a FPTP system, with no ability to
leave work early to go to vote, with so many disenfranchised? The system is fully rigged to
be a dictatorship all but in name...
Another thing: Trump's decrying of the Iraqi war was merely a way he could rail at the
other Republican candidates. If the establishment was for it, he was against it. That's how
he works.
Maybe he fools himself into thinking he's got principles. Maybe he even thinks he has a
coherent foreign policy (or policy of any kind). But no, he's just narcissism and id all
the way down.
There's still no border wall. Still troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Planned
Parenthood is still funded.
Oh, but he waves the flag, doesn't he? That makes up for everything...right?
"... How do you think Soleimani organized, sustained and coordinated his Resistance Militias in different countries turning them into a formidable military offensive resistance strategy? With strategic military and diplomatic savvy. Soleimani was sent as an envoy to Russia by Iran's Supreme Leader at a critical time in the Syrian war and also at Putin's request. If Soleimani was lured by the U.S. and Saudis on a pretext of peace to be assassinated by a U.S. drone this proves just how depraved Trump is. This strategy is right out of the Zionist dirty tricks playbook and Trump has proven in every way he is all in with Zionists and is one of them. ..."
"... I take the Iraqi Prime Minister at his word, and reassert the need for Trump and his administration to be impeached on treasonous grounds. ..."
How do you think Soleimani organized, sustained and coordinated his Resistance Militias in different countries turning them
into a formidable military offensive resistance strategy? With strategic military and diplomatic savvy. Soleimani was sent as an envoy to Russia by Iran's Supreme Leader at a critical time in the Syrian war and also at Putin's
request. If Soleimani was lured by the U.S. and Saudis on a pretext of peace to be assassinated by a U.S. drone this proves just how
depraved Trump is. This strategy is right out of the Zionist dirty tricks playbook and Trump has proven in every way he is all
in with Zionists and is one of them.
As reported by krollchem @ 67 and by b in this and the following post, the involvement of Trump directly in premeditated murder
cannot be absolved, and the circumstances are abhorrent to any patriotic American citizen. May God have mercy on the souls of
the peace makers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
I take the Iraqi Prime Minister at his word, and reassert the need for Trump and his administration to be impeached on treasonous
grounds.
Where that will lead in terms of the rest of the US government I cannot say but VP Pence is also impeachable here, so
it is difficult to see who is least culpable in this. It may mean that there is need for a provisional government to be put in
place - not party organized. If impeachment proceeds apace as it should, behind the scenes such a people's approved peaceful
citizens coalition needs to be considered. This cannot stand as official US government policy. It is heinous.
I too, as forward @ 24 has done, sent prayers for the souls of the departed Iran general as well as his friend from Iraq and
their companions this morning in my home chapel. It is the Sunday before Christmas, old calendar. May the Lord bring them and
so many others before them to a place where the just repose.
"... "I think the more people who are prepared to stand up and say it [the assassination] is completely, not only inappropriate, not only illegal, not only unjust, but an act of war to do something like this, the better," said Nicole Rousseau with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which has been planning anti-war protests in D.C. since 2002. ..."
"... This is the moment, as Donald Trump embraces the neoconservative dream of war with Iran, that the Republican base must stand on their hind legs, lock arms with their progressive allies, and say no . ..."
Now is the time for Republicans of conviction to stand together.
t speaks to the state of American politics when for three years the continued defense of
Donald Trump's record has been: "well, he hasn't started any new wars." Last week,
however, that may have finally changed.
In the most flagrant tit-for-tat since the United States initiated its economic war against
Iran in the spring of 2018, the Trump administration assassinated Major General Qasem
Soleimani, who for more than 20 years has led the Iranian Quds Force. The strategic mind behind
Iran's operations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the rest of the Middle East, Soleimani's death
via drone strike outside of Baghdad's airport is nothing short of a declaration of open warfare
between American and Iranian-allied forces in Iraq.
While the world waits for the Islamic Republic's inevitable response, the reaction on the
home front was organized in less than 36 hours. Saturday afternoon, almost 400 people gathered
on the muddy grass outside the White House in Washington, D.C., joined in solidarity by
simultaneous rallies in over 70 other U.S. cities.
The D.C. attendees and their co-demonstrators were expectedly progressive, but the
organizers made clear they were happy to work across political barriers for the cause of
peace.
"I think the more people who are prepared to stand up and say it [the assassination] is
completely, not only inappropriate, not only illegal, not only unjust, but an act of war to do
something like this, the better," said Nicole Rousseau with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which
has been planning anti-war protests in D.C. since 2002.
Code Pink's Leonardo Flores, when asked what politicians he believed were on the side of the
peace movement, named Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Senator Rand Paul. "I
don't think peace should be a left and right issue," he said. "I think it's an issue we can all
rally around. It's very clear too much of our money is going to foreign wars that don't benefit
the American people and we could be using that money in many different ways, giving it back to
the American people, whether it's investing in social spending or giving direct tax cuts."
This is the moment, as Donald Trump embraces the neoconservative dream of war with Iran,
that the Republican base must stand on their hind legs, lock arms with their progressive
allies, and say no .
It's happened before. In 2013, when the Obama administration was ready for regime change in
Syria, Americans, both left and right, made clear they didn't want to see their sons and
daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters die so the American government could
install the likes of Abu Mohammed al-Julani in Damascus.
Of course, it was much easier for Republicans to stand up to a Democratic president going to
war. "It's been really unfortunate that so much of politics now is driven on a partisan basis,"
opined Eric Garris, director and co-founder of Antiwar.com, in an interview with TAC .
"Whether you're for or against war and how strongly you might be against war is driven by
partisan points of view."
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the movement that saw millions march against George
W. Bush's war in Iraq disappeared overnight (excluding a handful of stalwart organizations like
Code Pink). Non-interventionist Republicans can't repeat that mistake. They have to show that
if an American president wants to start an unconstitutional, immoral war, it's the principle
that matters, not the R or D next to their names.
Garris said the reason Antiwar.com was founded in 1995 was to bridge this partisan divide by
putting people like Daniel Ellsberg and Pat Buchanan side by side for the same cause. "These
coalitions are only effective if you try to bring in a broad coalition of people," he said. "I
want to see rallies of thousands of people in Omaha, Nebraska, and things like that, where
they're reaching out to middle America and to the people that are actually going to reach the
unconverted."
The right is in the best position it's been in decades to accomplish this. "I don't know if
you saw Tucker Carlson Tonight , but it was quite amazing to watch that kind of
antiwar sentiment on Fox News," Garris said. "You would not have seen [that] in recent history.
And certainly the emergence of The American Conservative magazine has been a really
strong signal and leader in terms of bringing about the values of the Old Right like
non-interventionism to a conservative audience."
It's the anti-war right, in the Republican tradition of La Follette, Taft, Paul, and
Buchanan, that has the power to stop middle America from following Trump into a conflict with
Iran. But it's both sides, working together as Americans, that can finally end the endless
wars.
Hunter DeRensis is a reporter with The National Interest and a regular contributor to
The American Conservative. Follow him on Twitter @HunterDeRensis .
I also recommend reading the SOFA with Iraq which is a masterpiece of semantic and
legalistic deception- (and they have one year to actually get out after termination of the
"agreement")
Talking about deception, James Corbett did a brilliant exposé of the "difficulties of
crisis initiation" vs. Iran
After watching this enlightening video, reading the transcript of the "special briefing on
Iraq" by the State Dept. is like "stepping thru the looking glass" into a surreal world of
self-delusion, ("believing six impossible things before breakfast"), here is an example: (SSD
stands for senior state department official "One, Two or Three" (whose names apparently have to
be kept secret )
QUESTION: Thank you. Could you take us through the – so you – could you take us
through the diplomatic strategy for DE-ESCALATION? I mean, after the strike, what are the
main elements of our diplomatic plan to --
SSD OFFICIAL ONE: [SSD official Three] can both talk about this.
SSD OFFICIAL THREE: Yeah, first of all, we're stressing that we want to stay on in Iraq.
We have an important mission there, the coalition. We just spoke with most of the key
coalition members this morning, making that message to them. They also took the – well,
you need to de-escalate. We raised the point – and [SSD official One] can talk about
this is more detail – that we are ready to talk with the Iranians. We've tried to do
this in the past. That's on the table.
And again, the point I took with them, and I'll take it again here today: We cannot promise
that we have BROKEN the circle of violence. What I can say from my experience with Qasem
Soleimani is it is less likely that we will see this now than it was before, and if we do see
an increase in violence, it probably will not be as devilishly ingenious. Other than Usama
bin Ladin, he's the only guy – with Cafe Milano – a senior terrorist leader
around the Middle East who has tried to seriously plot in detail a mass casualty event on
American soil. Let him rest in peace.
"We did not wish to re-examine, condemn, and confront the violence in the
extra-constitutional power structure that finally ascended to hegemony over our citizenry and
over much of the world "
„I have never declared the covert actions of the U.S. intelligence agencies to be
incompetent. They are almost invariably and unerringly competent in murdering, individually and
massively, in defense of U.S. military dominance and empire."
(Vincent J. Salandria, author of The JFK Assassination: A False Mystery Concealing State
Crimes )
These days the murdering takes place in "overt" action a barbaric act sold to the world as
"self-defense"
A Final thought:
Is there a more cowardly , dastardly act (by the "best military in the world") than
to tear apart a renowned military commander who fought the real war "on terror" (against
ruthless imperialism), with a drone??
Teevee coverage of the recent events in the ME has been predictable. Those who hated Trump
continue to hate him, etc.
A few observations:
1. I had hoped that Trump's decision to kill an Iranian general engaged in a diplomatic
mission (among other things) while the man was on the soil of a supposed ally of the US was
something Trump pulled out of his fundament either inspired by war movies or on the
recommendation of "our greatest ally" but I am informed that in fact some idiot in the DoD
included this option in the list of possibilities that was briefed to the CinC in Florida. The
decision process in such matters requires that when options are demanded by the CinC the JCS
prepares a list supported for each option by fully formulated documentation that enables the
president to approve one (or none) and then sign the required operational order. Trump himself
chose the death option. I would hold General Milley (CJCS) personally responsible for not
striking this option from the list before it reached the CinC.
2. The Iranians are a subtle people. IMO they will bide their time whilst working out the
"bestest" way to inflict some injury on the US and/or Israel. When the retaliation comes it
will be imaginative and painful.
3. Trump is now threatening the Iraqis with severe sanctions if they try to enforce their
parliamentary decree against the future presence of foreign (US mostly) troops on their soil.
IMO a refusal to leave risks a substantial Shia (at least) uprising against the US forces in
Iraq. We have around 5,500 people there now spread across the country in little groups engaged
in logistics, intelligence and training missions. They are extremely vulnerable. There are
something like 150 marines in the embassy. There are also a small number of US combat forces in
Syria east and north of the Euphrates river. These include a battalion of US Army National
Guard mechanized troops "guarding" Syria's oil from Syria's own army and whatever devilment the
Iranians might be able to arrange.
4. This is an untenable logistical situation. Supply and other functions require a major
airfield close to Baghdad. We have Balad airbase and helicopter supply and air support from
there into Baghdad is possible from there but may become hazardous. Iraq is a big country. It
is a long and lonely drive from Kuwait for re-supply from there or evacuation through there.
The same thing is true of the desert route to Jordan.
5. Trump's strategery appears to be based on the concept that the Iraqis will submit to our
imperial demands. "We will see." pl
Apart from those you mention, what about Kushner, Netanyahu´s agent in Oval Office?
Or what about the siamesian creature Esper-Pompeo? It seems Pompeo was bomabrding he Donald
since months ago on Soleimani...One sees the face of Pompeo when graduating and WP and you
immediately feel a chill in your spine...There it is a guy who will not stop at anything so
as to go up...
Of course, I do not discard a master puppet behind him...but I would look for more in
Herzliya of whatever the name is...I doubt the Rothschilds are beihn Pompeo, otherwise he
would not look so ambitious, he already would show so calm and confident like Macron...
Yes, it's Ben Norton and the Gray Zone providing more in-depth info about
the peace mission Soleimani was conducting. Don't miss the NY Times extract provided at the
linked tweet:
"Iraq's efforts at brokering peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran were going very
smoothly... until the US empire blew it all to pieces by murdering a top Iranian general and
Iraqi commander."
Very clearly to me at least, Iran's Hope proposal was beginning to be acted upon, and as I
wrote two days ago, that couldn't be allowed to stand. Thus, how Iran responds is further
complicated by the initial success of their initiative--provided the Saudi position was
genuine and not a feint. Recall the HOPE proposal allowed for outside participation which
back in September I wrote it would be wise for Trump to applaud and promote--IF--he genuinely
desired Peace. Now the equation's been changed. The goal is now to completely oust the Evil
Outlaw US Empire from the region, but that can still be accomplished through the HOPE
proposal.
Now Zarif's been barred by the usual shitheads from attending the UNSC. IMO, the UNGA must
reconsider Russia's request to relocate numerous UN activities as the Evil Outlaw US Empire
has effectively ceded its position within the UN and clearly doesn't belong there.
US officials
said the majority stood with Washington "in stark contrast to the United Nations Security
Council's silence due to two permanent members – Russia and China – not allowing a
statement to proceed."
This after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a day after Soleimani's death that the US had launched
an "illegal power" move which should instead be based on dialogue with Tehran.
Forbes characterized Russian objections within the context of the UN
further :
He [Lavrov] said that the actions of a UN member state to eliminate officials of another
UN member state on the territory of a third sovereign state "flagrantly violate the
principles of international law and deserve condemnation."
Similarly China has stood against Washington's unilateral military action, with Chinese
Foreign Minister Wang Yi
saying the US must not "abuse force" and instead pursue mutual dialogue.
"The dangerous US military operation violates the basic norms of international relations and
will aggravate regional tensions and turbulence," Wang told Javad Zarif in a phone call days
ago.
Diplomatically speaking, the US faces an uphill battle on the UN National Security Council,
considering its already provoked the ire of two of its formidable members, who increasingly
find themselves in close cooperation blocking US initiatives.
Interesting. Look what Iranian General fought alongside the Americans when fighting the
Taliban. More and more convinced Israel owns the US and our foreign policy.
Hey jerkoff, look who a certain Iranian General fought alongside the US when fighting the
Taliban. Your projection and deception have all the hallmarks of a dirty ***.
Maybe, just maybe, China and Russia blocked the United Nations Security council statement
because it accused Iran of having provoked the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.
Of some reason or another ZH does not tell us what the declaration said.
What part of "We don't have the money to fight endless wars" doesn't the MIC
understand?
Homeless people everywhere, bums outside every big box store parking lot, opiod epidemic
in our towns, low wage "jobs" everywhere, schools where are children are sitting in trailers
to study, tens of millions with no access to proper medication or health care, and the
assholes traitors want to waste BILLIONS on useless chest thumping all over the word.
The situation is like an drunk, impotent man walking around threatening to rape ladies up
and down the street.
Sad what has become of this one truly great nation.
The Neocons are not rational actors in any normal sense of the word. They would destroy
and/or enslave every person on this planet if they thought they could pull it off and it
would be to their benefit.
"... According to the Western media, General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' élite Al-Quods force, was preparing an operation intended to win back Iraqi public opinion ..."
"... The strategy attributed to General Soleimani is in no way consistent with his well-known modus operandi , nor with that of the Iranian secret services. Quite the contrary, it is strangely reminiscent of US Ambassador John Negroponte's rationale: foment an Iraqi civil war as a means of stifling the Iraqi Resistance. ..."
"... Other interpretations of the events are of course possible, starting with a US desire to seize on the mutual paralysis of the Iranian government forces and the Revolutionary Guards. ..."
According to the Western media, General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards' élite Al-Quods force, was preparing an operation intended to win
back Iraqi public opinion. [ 1 ]
In the midst of the Shiite community's escalating protests against Iranian influence over
the Iraqi political class, attacks have been allegedly carried out against US interests,
triggering a US response against Iraqi protesters, which in turn ignited Iraqi nationalism to
the detriment of the ongoing revolt.
It was, purportedly, in order to frustrate this plot that, on 2 January 2020, the United
States assassinated Qasem Soleimani and his loyal supporter Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis. [
2 ] According
to the US, Iran had been forewarned through a statement delivered by US Defense Secretary Mark
Esper. [ 3
]
This narrative, even if logical, is hardly credible. The strategy attributed to General
Soleimani is in no way consistent with his well-known modus operandi , nor with that of
the Iranian secret services. Quite the contrary, it is strangely reminiscent of US Ambassador John Negroponte's
rationale: foment an Iraqi civil war as a means of stifling the Iraqi Resistance.
Other interpretations of the events are of course possible, starting with a US desire to
seize on the mutual paralysis of the Iranian government forces and the Revolutionary
Guards.
In their descriptions of Qassem Soleimani U.S. media fail to mention that Soleimani and the
U.S. fought on the same side. In 2001 Iran supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It
used its good relations with the Hazara Militia and the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which
both the CIA and Iran had supplied for years, to support the U.S. operation. The
Wikipedia entry for the 2001 uprising in Herat lists U.S.
General Tommy Franks and General Qassem Soleimani as allied commanders.
The collaboration ended in 2002 after George W. Bush named Iran as a member of his "
Axis of Evil ".
In 2015 the U.S. and Iran again collaborated. This time to defeat ISIS in Iraq. During the
battle to liberate Tikrit the U.S. air force flew in support of General Soleimani's ground
forces. Newsweek
reported at that time:
While western nations, including the U.S., were slow to react to ISIS's march across
northern Iraq, Soleimani was quick to play a more public role in Tehran's efforts to tackle
the terror group. For example, the commander was seen in pictures with militiamen in the
northern Iraqi town of Amerli when it was recaptured from ISIS last September.
...
Top U.S. general Martin Dempsey has said that the involvement of Iran in the fight against
ISIS in Iraq could be a positive step, as long as the situation does not descend into
sectarianism, because of fears surrounding how Shia militias may treat the remaining Sunni
population of Tikrit if it is recaptured. The military chief also claimed that almost two
thirds of the 30,000 offensive were Iranian-backed militiamen, meaning that without Iranian
assistance and Soleimani's guidance, the offensive on Tikrit may not have been possible.
Iran is not responsible for the
U.S. casualties in Iraq. George W. Bush is. What made Soleimani "bad" in the eyes of the U.S.
was his support for the resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestine. It was Israel
that wanted him 'removed'. The media explanations for Trump's decision fail to explain that
point.
Elias Magnier also reported in his latest tweet that Soleimani encouraged Muqtada
El Sadr to cooperate with the Americans in order to achieve stability in Iraq. And the
Americans (on the orders of the Israelis) kill him in the most violent fashion possible.
On Friday's broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," network contributor Geraldo Rivera clashed with show
co-host Brian Kilmeade over Quds Force Supreme Commander Qasem Soleimani being killed in an airstrike directed by
President Donald Trump.
"I fear the worst," Rivera said. "You're going to see the U.S. markets go crazy today. You're going to see the
price of oil spiking today. This is a very, very big deal."
Kilmeade said, "I don't know if you heard. This isn't about his resum of blood and death. It is about what was
next. We stopped the next attack. That's what I think you're missing."
Rivera replied, "By what credible source can you predict what the next Iranian move would be?"
Kilmeade said, "The Secretary of State and American intelligence provided that material."
Rivera added, "Don't for a minute start cheering this on. What you have done, what we have done, we have unleashed
-- "
Kilmeade insisted, "I will cheer it on. I will cheer it on. I am elated."
Rivera said, "Then you, like Lindsey Graham, have never met a war you didn't like!"
Kilmeade said, "That is not true. And don't even say that!"
Iraq will have to ask another country to provide air support. Iran can't do it. But Russia has those capabilities. I wonder if
relations b/w Iran + Russia will warm in 2020.
Iran has declared it will no longer abide by any of the
restrictions imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal.
In a statement it said it would no longer observe limitations on its capacity for enrichment,
the level of enrichment, the stock of enriched material, or research and development.
The statement came after a meeting of the Iranian cabinet in Tehran.
Tensions have been high over the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by the US in
Baghdad.
Reports from Baghdad say the US embassy compound there was targeted in an attack on Sunday
evening. A source told the BBC that four rounds of "indirect fire " had been launched in the
direction of the embassy. There are no reports of casualties.
Under the 2015 accord, Iran agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities and allow in
international inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.
US President Donald Trump abandoned it in 2018, saying he wanted to force Iran to negotiate a
new deal that would place indefinite curbs on its nuclear programme and also halt its development
of ballistic missiles.
Iran refused and had since been gradually rolling back its commitments under the agreement.
About 5,000 US soldiers are in Iraq as part of the international coalition against the Islamic
State (IS) group. The coalition paused operations against IS in Iraq just before Sunday's vote.
Mr Trump has again threatened Iran that the US will strike back in the event of retaliation for
Soleimani's death, this time saying it could do so "perhaps in a disproportionate manner".
Image
Copyright @realDonaldTrump
@realDonaldTrump
Report
<figure> <span> <img alt="Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump: These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/socialembed/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213919480574812160~/news/world-middle-east-51001167" width="465" height="279"> <span>Image Copyright @realDonaldTrump</span> <span aria-hidden="true">@realDonaldTrump</span> </span> <div><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/contact-us/editorial" aria-label="Report Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump">Report</a></div> </figure>
The 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, on life support ever since the Trump administration abandoned
it in May 2018, may now be in its final death throes.
Donald Trump, throughout his presidential campaign and then as president, has never failed to
rail against what he calls his predecessor President Barack Obama's "bad deal". But all of its
other signatories - the UK, France, Russia, China, Germany and the EU - believe that it still has
merit.
The agreement, known as the JCPOA, constrained Iran's nuclear programme for a set period in a
largely verifiable way but its greatest significance - even more so given the current crisis - is
that it helped to avert an imminent war. Before its signature there was mounting concern about
Tehran's nuclear activities and every chance that Israel (or possibly Israel and the US in tandem)
might attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
Since the US withdrawal, Iran has successively been breaching some of the key constraints of the
JCPOA. Now it appears to be throwing these constraints over altogether. What matters now is
precisely what it decides to do. Will it up its level of uranium enrichment, for example, to 20%?
This would reduce significantly the time it would take Tehran to obtain suitable material for a
bomb. Will it continue to abide by enhanced international inspection measures?
We are now at the destination the Trump administration clearly hoped for in May 2018 but the
major powers, while deeply unhappy about Iran's breaches of the deal, are also shocked at the
controversial decision by Mr Trump to kill the head of Iran's Quds Force, a decision that has again
brought the US and Iran to the brink of war.
What did Iran say?
Iran had been expected to announce its latest stance on the nuclear agreement this weekend,
before news of Soleimani's death.
A statement broadcast on state TV said the country would no longer respect any limits laid down
in the 2015 deal.
"Iran will continue its nuclear enrichment with no limitations and based on its technical
needs," the statement said.
Enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons.
The statement did not, however, say that Iran was withdrawing from the agreement and it added
that Iran would continue to co-operate with the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
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The statement added that Iran was
ready to return to its commitments once it enjoyed the benefits of the agreement.
Correspondents say this is a reference to its inability to sell oil and have access to its
income under US sanctions.
Iran has always insisted that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
Sanctions have caused Iran's oil exports to collapse and the value of its currency to plummet,
and sent its inflation rate soaring.
How has the international community reacted?
The other parties to the 2015 deal - the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia - tried to keep
the agreement alive after the US withdrew in 2018.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has invited Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif,
to visit Brussels to discuss both the nuclear deal and how to defuse the crisis over the Soleimani
assassination.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime
Minister Boris Johnson to work towards de-escalation in the Middle East, a German government
spokesman was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
Much as been made about Soleimani's alleged responsibility for the deaths of 600 American
servicemen but what people forget is that Iranian military personnel would be legitimate
targets if they invaded Mexico or Canada. That 600 figure is probably a drop in the bucket
compared to the number of people Trump has killed with his unprecedented number of drone
strikes since taking office.
Whatever the case Donald Trump is indeed a pathological liar and monumental fraud and it
seems that the vast majority of his deplorables (I'm an ex-deplorable) have tripled down on
their love and support of him despite his broken promise of ending "these stupid wars".
Daniel
Larison Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer
report on the Trump administration's decision to refuse a visa to Iran's foreign minister.
Barring Zarif from the U.S. is a blatant violation of U.S. obligations as the host of U.N.
headquarters:
"Any foreign minister is entitled to address the Security Council at any time and the
United States is obligated to provide access to the U.N. headquarters district," said Larry
Johnson, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general. Under the terms of the U.S. agreement
with the United Nations, "they are absolutely obligated to let him in."
Johnson, who currently serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School,
noted that the U.S. Congress, however, passed legislation in August 1947, the so-called
Public Law 80-357, that granted the U.S. government the authority to bar foreign individuals
invited by the United Nations to attend meetings at its New York City headquarters if they
are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. national security. But Johnson said the U.S. law would
require the individual be "expected to commit some act against the U.S. national security
interest while here in the United States."
Refusing to admit Zarif is another foolish mistake on the administration's part. Preventing
him from coming to the U.N. not only breaches our government's agreement with the U.N., but it
also closes off a possible channel of communication and demonstrates to the world that the U.S.
has no interest in a diplomatic resolution of the current crisis. Far from conveying the
"toughness" that Pompeo imagines he is showing, keeping Zarif out reeks of weakness and
insecurity. Zarif is a capable diplomat, but is the Trump administration really so afraid of
what he would say while he is here that they would ignore U.S. obligations to block him?
By barring Zarif, the Trump administration has given him and his government another
opportunity to score an easy propaganda win. They have squandered an opportunity to reduce
tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S. needs to find an off-ramp to avoid further
conflict following the president's assassination order, but thanks to Pompeo's decision that
off-ramp won't be found in New York.
"... Several days after Efraim Inbar's paper was published, David M. Weinberg, director of public affairs at the BESA Center, wrote a similarly-themed op-ed titled "Should ISIS be wiped out?" in Israel Hayom, a free and widely read right-wing newspaper funded by conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson that strongly favors the agenda of Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu . ..."
"... On his website, Weinberg includes BESA in a list of resources for " hasbara ," or pro-Israel propaganda. It is joined by the ostensible civil rights organization the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel think tanks, such as the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). ..."
"... In the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the CIA and U.S. allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia armed, trained and funded Islamic fundamentalists in their fight against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan's Soviet-backed socialist government. These U.S.-backed rebels, known as the mujahideen, were the predecessors of al-Qaida and the Taliban. ..."
The director of an Israeli think tank backed by the US government and NATO, BESA, wrote that ISIS "can be a
useful tool in undermining" Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, and Russia and should not be defeated.
By Ben Norton /
Salon
According to a US-backed think tank that does contract work for NATO and the Israeli government, the West should
not destroy ISIS, the fascist Islamist extremist group that is committing genocide and ethnically cleansing minority
groups in Syria and Iraq.
Why? The so-called Islamic State "can be a useful tool in undermining" Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Russia, argues
the think tank's director.
"The continuing existence of IS serves a strategic purpose," wrote Efraim Inbar in "The Destruction of Islamic
State Is a Strategic Mistake," a
paper
published
on Aug. 2.
By cooperating with Russia to fight the genocidal extremist group, the United States is committing a "strategic
folly" that will "enhance the power of the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis," Inbar argued, implying that Russia, Iran and
Syria are forming a strategic alliance to dominate the Middle East.
"The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction," he added. "A weak IS is,
counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS."
US government and NATO support for ISIS-whitewashing Israeli think tank
Efraim Inbar, an influential Israeli scholar, is the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a
think tank that says its
mission
is
to advance "a realist, conservative, and Zionist agenda in the search for security and peace for Israel."
The think tank, known by its acronym BESA, is affiliated with Israel's Bar Ilan University and has been
supported
by the U.S. embassy in Israel, the NATO Mediterranean Initiative, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International
Affairs, and the Israeli government itself.
BESA also says it "conducts specialized research on contract to the Israeli foreign affairs and defense
establishment, and for NATO."
In his paper, Inbar suggested that it would be a good idea to prolong the war in Syria, which has destroyed the
country, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing more than half the population.
'Stability is not a value in and of itself. It is desirable only if it serves our interests.'
As for the argument that defeating ISIS would make the Middle East more stable, Efraim Inbar maintained:
"Stability is not a value in and of itself. It is desirable only if it serves our interests."
"Instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change," he added.
Inbar stressed that the West's "main enemy" is not the self-declared Islamic State; it is Iran. He accused the
Obama administration of "inflat[ing] the threat from IS in order to legitimize Iran as a 'responsible' actor that
will, supposedly, fight IS in the Middle East."
Despite Inbar's claims, Iran is a mortal enemy of ISIS, particularly because the Iranian government is founded on
Shia Islam, a branch that the Sunni extremists of ISIS consider a form of apostasy. ISIS and its affiliates have
massacred and ethnically cleansed Shia Muslims in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
Inbar noted that ISIS threatens the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. If the Syrian government
survives, Inbar argued, "Many radical Islamists in the opposition forces, i.e., Al Nusra and its offshoots, might
find other arenas in which to operate closer to Paris and Berlin." Jabhat al-Nusra is Syria's al-Qaida affiliate, and
one of the most powerful rebel groups in the country. (It recently changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.)
Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based militia that receives weapons and support from Iran, is also "being seriously taxed
by the fight against IS, a state of affairs that suits Western interests," Inbar wrote.
"Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the
bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys," Inbar explained.
More Israeli think tankers warn against defeating 'useful idiot' ISIS
Several days after Efraim Inbar's paper was published, David M. Weinberg, director of public affairs at the BESA
Center, wrote a similarly-themed
op-ed
titled "Should ISIS be wiped out?" in Israel Hayom, a free and widely read right-wing newspaper funded by
conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson that
strongly
favors
the agenda of Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu
.
In the piece, Weinberg defended his colleague's argument and referred to ISIS as a "useful idiot." He called the
U.S. nuclear deal with Iran "rotten" and argued that Iran and Russia pose a "far greater threat than the terrorist
nuisance of Islamic State."
Weinberg also described the BESA Center as "a place of intellectual ferment and policy creativity," without
disclosing that he is that think tank's director of public affairs.
After citing responses from two other associates of his think tank who disagree with their colleague, Weinberg
concluded by writing: "The only certain thing is that Ayatollah Khamenei is watching this quintessentially Western
open debate with amusement."
On his website, Weinberg includes BESA in a list of resources for "
hasbara
,"
or pro-Israel propaganda. It is joined by the ostensible civil rights organization the Anti-Defamation League and
other pro-Israel think tanks, such as the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (WINEP).
Weinberg has
worked
extensively
with the Israeli government and served as a spokesman for Bar Ilan University. He also identifies
himself on his website as a "columnist and lobbyist who is a sharp critic of Israel's detractors and of post-Zionist
trends in Israel."
'Stress the "holy war" aspect': Long history of the US and Israel supporting Islamist extremists
Efraim Inbar boasts an array of accolades. He was a member of the political strategic committee for Israel's
National Planning Council, a member of the academic committee of the Israeli military's history department and the
chair of the committee for the national security curriculum at the Ministry of Education.
He also has a prestigious academic record, having taught at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown and lectured at Harvard,
MIT, Columbia, Oxford and Yale. Inbar served as a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and
was appointed as a Manfred Wrner NATO fellow.
The strategy Inbar and Weinberg have proposed, that of indirectly allowing a fascist Islamist group to continue
fighting Western enemies, is not necessarily a new one in American and Israeli foreign policy circles. It is
reminiscent of the U.S. Cold War policy of supporting far-right Islamist extremists in order to fight communists and
left-wing nationalists.
In the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the CIA and U.S. allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia
armed,
trained and funded Islamic fundamentalists
in their fight against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan's
Soviet-backed socialist government. These U.S.-backed rebels, known as the mujahideen, were the predecessors of
al-Qaida and the Taliban.
In the 1980s, Israel adopted a similar policy. It supported right-wing Islamist groups like Hamas in order to
undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, a coalition of various left-wing nationalist and communist
political parties.
"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," Avner Cohen, a retired Israeli official who worked in Gaza for
more than 20 years,
told
The
Wall Street Journal.
As far back as 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower
insisted
to the CIA
that, in order to fight leftist movements in the Middle East, "We should do everything possible to
stress the 'holy war' aspect."
Moscow has a vested interest in the state of affairs in the Persian Gulf; it has tried its best to
contain the impact that the U.S.-Iranian crisis could have on its own national security.
The third area of focus is connected with overlapping humanitarian and economic concerns that impact both Russia and Iran.
These concerns have been footholds in the history of mutual relationships since the time of Russian and Persian empires.
Nowadays both of the countries are trying to compensate for their failures by pursuing policies that promote their own and
unique civilizations. In this situation the humanitarian sphere is one of the strategic ones allowing to pursue long-term
aims. Of note, Russian-Iranian educational and cultural projects have doubled since the Trump administration announced its
strategy for Iran. While the United States has been focused on "bringing Iran to its knees," Russia has been focused on the
future. Economic ties between these two countries have been strengthening over the past few years, with bilateral trade
reaching $2 billion in 2018.
Hopefully, Russia and Iran will maintain a positive relationship despite their differences and past difficulties. For
example, in 2016 Russian forces were pushed off of a military base in Iran that it had used to conduct military operations
in Syria. The strategic shift happened after the Iranians squabbled over whether foreign forces should be allowed to use an
Iranian military base. Also, the two countries have had some disputes over the fate of Syria. Despite these issues, Russia
maintains a positive relationship with Iran, which it further confirmed during a June 25
meeting
between national security advisers John Bolton, Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolai Patrushev. During the meeting,
Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, declared that Russia would continue to accommodate Iran's
interests in the Middle East because it remains "the ally and partner" of choice in Syria. Both countries are focused on
preventing further destabilization in the region, he said.
Nadya Glebova is a fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a MENA
researcher.
Like any state Russia is driven foremost by its own national security interests. Given Iran's
proximity to its own near-abroad it seems impossible it could stand by and watch the Islamic
Republic be destabilized or even overthrown. Moscow has vital interests to protect in the
region, as does China. And it seems Moscow, Beijing and Tehran for all their differences
have a common interest against what they fear as US encroachment. It is interest that
ultimately drives countries to war. A war between the US and this tripartite alliance will be
a world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Like any state Russia is driven foremost by its own national security interests.
You hit the nail on the head. I'm amazed that so many Americans fail to understand this
truism about what motivates Russia's actions in world affairs.
Sadly, too many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that Russia's a US
vassal state, or a banana republic of some sort subject to the West's mandate.
It's plain and simple....our USA government uses TERRORISM to conduct our foreign policy
objectives...for the sake of the corrupt few in power and for our corrupt terrorist allies in
Israel, Saudi, Europe, etc....killing and starving innocent people the world over. We
overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953 to steal its oil and other resources....we need to address
all the terrorism our government and the CIA conducts IN OUR NAME...before we pretend to be
"victims" of other's doings......we have created the vast majority of the world's current
crisis for power and greed.....we do not support democracy....the USA supports TERRORISM
against innocent people all over the world to keep them in line!!!
Putin's Hour Is At Hand was published in the Russian press Monday morning, January 6,
2020.
Putin's Hour Is At Hand
Paul Craig Roberts
Vladimir Putin is the most impressive leader on the world stage. He survived and arose from
a Russia corrupted by Washington and Israel during the Yeltsin years and reestablished Russia
as a world power. He dealt successfully with American/Israeli aggression against South Ossetia
and against Ukraine, incorporating at Crimea's request the Russian province back into Mother
Russia. He has tolerated endless insults and provocations from Washington and its empire
without responding in kind. He is conciliatory and a peacemaker from a position of
strength.
He knows that the American empire based as it is on arrogance and lies is failing
economically, socially, politically, and militarily. He understands that war serves no Russian
interest.
Washington's murder of Qasem Soleimani, a great Iranian leader, indeed, one of the rare
leaders in world history, has dimmed Trump's leadership and placed the limelight on Putin. The
stage is set for Putin and Russia to assume the leadership of the world.
Washington's murder of Soleimani is a criminal act that could start World War 3 just as the
Serbian murder of the Austrian Archduke set World War 1 in motion. Only Putin and Russia with
China's help can stop this war that Washington has set in motion.
Putin understood that the Washington/Israeli intended destabilization of Syria was aimed at
Russia. Without warning Russia intervened, defeated the Washington financed and armed proxy
forces, and restored stability to Syria.
Defeated, Washington and Israel have decided to bypass Syria and take the attack on Russia
directly to Iran. The destabilization of Iran serves both Washington and Israel. For Israel
Iran's demise stops support for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has twice defeated
Israel's army and prevented Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. For Washington Iran's
demise allows CIA-supported jihadists to bring instability into the Russian Federation.
Unless Putin submits to American and Israeli will, he has no choice but to block any
Washington/Israeli attack on Iran.
The easiest and cleanest way for Putin to do this is to announce that Iran is under Russia's
protection. This protection should be formalized in a mutual defense treaty between Russia,
China, and Iran, with perhaps India and Turkey as members. This is hard for Putin to do,
because incompetent historians have convinced Putin that alliances are the cause of war. But an
alliance such as this would prevent war. Not even the insane criminal Netanyahu and the crazed
American neoconservatives would, even when completely drunk or deluded, declare war on Iran,
Russia, China, and if included in the alliance India and Turkey. It would mean the death of
America, Israel and any European country sufficiently stupid to participate.
If Putin is unable to free himself from the influence of incompetent historians, who in
effect are serving Washington, not Russian, interests, he has other options. He can calm down
Iran by giving Iran the best Russian air defense systems with Russian crews to train the
Iranians and whose presence serve as a warning to Washington and Israel that an attack on
Russian forces is an attack on Russia.
This done, Putin can then, not offer, but insist on mediating. This is Putin's role as there
is no other with the power, influence and objectivity to mediate.
Putin's job is not so much to rescue Iran as to get Trump out of a losing war that would
destroy Trump. Putin could set his own price. For example, Putin's price can be the revival of
the INF/START treaty, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the removal of NATO from Russian
borders. In effect, Putin is positioned to demand whatever he wants.
Iranian missiles can sink any American vessels anywhere near Iran. Chinese missiles can sink
any American fleets anywhere near China. Russian missiles can sink American fleets anywhere in
the world. The ability of Washington to project power in the Middle East now that everyone,
Shia and Sunni and Washington's former proxies such as ISIS, hates Americans with a passion is
zero. The State Department has had to order Americans out of the Middle East. How does
Washingon count as a force in the Middle East when no American is safe there?
Of course Washington is stupid in its arrogance, and Putin, China, and Iran must take this
into consideration. A stupid government is capable of bringing ruin not only on itself but on
others.
So there are risks for Putin. But there are also risks for Putin failing to take charge. If
Washington and Israel attack Iran, which Israel will try to provoke by some false flag event as
sinking an American warship and blaming Iran, Russia will be at war anyway. Better for the
initiative to be in Putin's hands. And better for the world and life on Earth for Russia to be
in charge.
The mainstream media are carefully
sidestepping the method behind America's seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general
Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination this was a long-standing application
of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump's impulsive action. His assassination of
Iranian military leader Suleimani was indeed a unilateral act of war in violation of international law, but it
was a logical step in a long-standing U.S. strategy. It was explicitly authorized by the Senate in the funding
bill for the Pentagon that it passed last year.
The assassination was intended to escalate
America's presence in Iraq to keep control the region's oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia's Wahabi troops
(Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America's foreign legion) to
support U.S. control o Near Eastern oil as a buttress o the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding
this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.
I sat in on discussions of this policy as
it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the
White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My
role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen
and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of
American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters
rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.)
The media and public discussion have
diverted attention from this strategy by floundering speculation that President Trump did it, except to counter
the (non-)threat of impeachment with a wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or simply to
surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome. The actual context for the neocon's action was the
balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy.
The balance of payments dimension
The major deficit in the U.S. balance of
payments has long been military spending abroad. The entire payments deficit, beginning with the Korean War in
1950-51 and extending through the Vietnam War of the 1960s, was responsible for forcing the dollar off gold in
1971. The problem facing America's military strategists was how to continue supporting the 800 U.S. military
bases around the world and allied troop support without losing America's financial leverage.
The solution turned out to be to replace
gold with U.S. Treasury securities (IOUs) as the basis of foreign central bank reserves. After 1971, foreign
central banks had little option for what to do with their continuing dollar inflows except to recycle them to
the U.S. economy by buying U.S. Treasury securities. The effect of U.S. foreign military spending thus did not
undercut the dollar's exchange rate, and did not even force the Treasury and Federal Reserve to raise interest
rates to attract foreign exchange to offset the dollar outflows on military account. In fact, U.S. foreign
military spending helped finance the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit.
Saudi Arabia and other Near Eastern OPEC
countries quickly became a buttress of the dollar. After these countries quadrupled the price of oil (in
retaliation for the United States quadrupling the price of its grain exports, a mainstay of the U.S. trade
balance), U.S. banks were swamped with an inflow of much foreign deposits which were lent out to Third World
countries in an explosion of bad loans that blew up in 1972 with Mexico's insolvency, and destroyed Third World
government credit for a decade, forcing it into dependence on the United States via the IMF and World Bank).
To top matters, of course, what Saudi Arabia
does not save in dollarized assets with its oil-export earnings is spent on buying hundreds of billion of
dollars of U.S. arms exports. This locks them into dependence on U.S. supply o replacement parts and repairs,
and enables the United States to turn off Saudi military hardware at any point of time, in the event that the
Saudis may try to act independently of U.S. foreign policy.
So maintaining the dollar as the world's
reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. Foreign countries to not have to pay the Pentagon
directly for this spending. They simply finance the U.S. Treasury and U.S. banking system.
Fear of this development was a major reason
why the United States moved against Libya, whose foreign reserves were held in gold, not dollars, an which was
urging other African countries to follow suit in order to free themselves from "Dollar Diplomacy." Hillary and
Obama invaded, grabbed their gold supplies (we still have no idea who ended up with these billions of dollars
worth of gold) and destroyed Libya's government, its public education system, its public infrastructure and
other non-neoliberal policies.
The great threat to this is dedollarization
as China, Russia and other countries seek to avoid recycling dollars. Without the dollar's function as the
vehicle for world saving in effect, without the Pentagon's role in creating the Treasury debt that is the
vehicle for world central bank reserves the U.S. would find itself constrained militarily and hence
diplomatically constrained, as it was under the gold exchange standard.
That is the same strategy that the U.S. has
followed in Syria and Iraq. Iran was threatening this dollarization strategy and its buttress in U.S. oil
diplomacy.
The oil industry as buttress of the
U.S. balance of payments and foreign diplomacy
ORDER IT NOW
The trade balance is buttressed by oil and
farm surpluses. Oil is the key, because it is imported by U.S. companies at almost no balance-of-payments cost
(the payments end up in the oil industry's head offices here as profits and payments to management), while
profits on U.S. oil company sales to other countries are remitted to the United States (via offshore
tax-avoidance centers, mainly Liberia and Panama for many years). And as noted above, OPEC countries have been
told to keep their official reserves in the form of U.S. securities (stocks and bonds as well as Treasury IOUs,
but not direct purchase of U.S. companies being deemed economically important). Financially, OPEC countries are
client slates of the Dollar Area.
America's attempt to maintain this buttress
explains U.S. opposition to any foreign government steps to reverse global warming and the extreme weather
caused by the world's U.S.-sponsored dependence on oil. Any such moves by Europe and other countries would
reduce dependence on U.S. oil sales, and hence on U.S. ability to control the global oil spigot as a means of
control and coercion, are viewed as hostile acts.
Oil also explains U.S. opposition to
Russian oil exports via Nordstream. U.S. strategists want to treat energy as a U.S. national monopoly. Other
countries can benefit in the way that Saudi Arabia has done by sending their surpluses to the U.S. economy
but not to support their own economic growth and diplomacy. Control of oil thus implies support for continued
global warming as an inherent part of U.S. strategy.
How a "democratic" nation can wage
international war and terrorism
The Vietnam War showed that modern
democracies cannot field armies for any major military conflict, because this would require a draft of its
citizens. That would lead any government attempting such a draft to be voted out of power. And without troops,
it is not possible to invade a country to take it over.
The corollary of this perception is that
democracies have only two choices when it comes to military strategy: They can only wage airpower, bombing
opponents; or they can create a foreign legion, that is, hire mercenaries or back foreign governments that
provide this military service.
Here once again Saudi Arabia plays a
critical role, through its control of Wahabi Sunnis turned into terrorist jihadis willing to sabotage, bomb,
assassinate, blow up and otherwise fight any target designated as an enemy of "Islam," the euphemism for Saudi
Arabia acting as U.S. client state. (Religion really is not the key; I know of no ISIS or similar Wahabi attack
on Israeli targets.) The United States needs the Saudis to supply or finance Wahabi crazies. So in addition to
playing a key role in the U.S. balance of payments by recycling its oil-export earnings are into U.S. stocks,
bonds and other investments, Saudi Arabia provides manpower by supporting the Wahabi members of America's
foreign legion, ISIS and Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda. Terrorism has become the "democratic" mode of today U.S. military
policy.
What makes America's oil war in the Near
East "democratic" is that this is the only kind of war a democracy can fight an air war, followed by a
vicious terrorist army that makes up for the fact that no democracy can field its own army in today's world.
The corollary is that, terrorism has become the "democratic" mode of warfare.
From the U.S. vantage point, what
is
a "democracy"? In today's Orwellian vocabulary, it means any country supporting U.S. foreign policy. Bolivia
and Honduras have become "democracies" since their coups, along with Brazil. Chile under Pinochet was a
Chicago-style free market democracy. So was Iran under the Shah, and Russia under Yeltsin but not since it
elected Vladimir Putin president, any more than is China under President Xi.
The antonym to "democracy" is "terrorist."
That simply means a nation willing to fight to become independent from U.S. neoliberal democracy. It does not
include America's proxy armies.
Iran's role as U.S. nemesis
What stands in the way of U.S.
dollarization, oil and military strategy? Obviously, Russia and China have been targeted as long-term strategic
enemies for seeking their own independent economic policies and diplomacy. But next to them, Iran has been in
America's gun sights for nearly seventy years.
America's hatred of Iran is starts with its
attempt to control its own oil production, exports and earnings. It goes back to 1953, when Mossadegh was
overthrown because he wanted domestic sovereignty over Anglo-Persian oil. The CIA-MI6 coup replaced him with
the pliant Shah, who imposed a police state to prevent Iranian independence from U.S. policy. The only physical
places free from the police were the mosques. That made the Islamic Republic the path of least resistance to
overthrowing the Shah and re-asserting Iranian sovereignty.
The United States came to terms with OPEC
oil independence by 1974, but the antagonism toward Iran extends to demographic and religious considerations.
Iranian support its Shi'ite population an those of Iraq and other countries emphasizing support for the poor
and for quasi-socialist policies instead of neoliberalism has made it the main religious rival to Saudi
Arabia's Sunni sectarianism and its role as America's Wahabi foreign legion.
America opposed General Suleimani above
all because he was fighting against ISIS and other U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria
and replace Assad's regime with a set of U.S.-compliant local leaders the old British "divide and conquer"
ploy. On occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got "out of line"
meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work with that government seeking
to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has bragged so loudly about grabbing.
Trump's idea that America should "get
something" out of its military expenditure in destroying the Iraqi and Syrian economies simply reflects U.S.
policy.
That explains the invasion of Iraq for oil
in 2003, and again this year, as President Trump has said: "Why don't we simply take their oil?" It also
explains the Obama-Hillary attack on Libya not only for its oil, but for its investing its foreign reserves
in gold instead of recycling its oil surplus revenue to the U.S. Treasury and of course, for promoting a
secular socialist state.
It explains why U.S. neocons feared
Suleimani's plan to help Iraq assert control of its oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S.
and Saudi's on Iraq. That is what made his assassination an immediate drive.
American politicians have discredited
themselves by starting off their condemnation of Trump by saying, as Elizabeth Warren did, how "bad" a person
Suleimani was, how he had killed U.S. troops by masterminding the Iraqi defense of roadside bombing and other
policies trying to repel the U.S. invasion to grab its oil. She was simply parroting the U.S. media's depiction
of Suleimani as a monster, diverting attention from the policy issue that explains why he was assassinated
now
.
The counter-strategy to U.S. oil,
and dollar and global-warming diplomacy
This strategy will continue, until foreign
countries reject it. If Europe and other regions fail to do so, they will suffer the consequences of this U.S.
strategy in the form of a rising U.S.-sponsored war via terrorism, the flow of refugees, and accelerated global
warming and extreme weather.
Russia, China and its allies already have
been leading the way to dedollarization as a means to contain the balance-of-payments buttress of U.S. global
military policy. But everyone now is speculating over what Iran's response should be.
The pretense or more accurately, the
diversion by the U.S. news media over the weekend has been to depict the United States as being under
imminent attack. Mayor de Blasio has positioned policemen at conspicuous key intersections to let us know how
imminent Iranian terrorism is as if it were Iran, not Saudi Arabia that mounted 9/11, and as if Iran in fact
has taken any forceful action against the United States. The media and talking heads on television have
saturated the air waves with warnings of Islamic terrorism. Television anchors are suggesting just where the
attacks are most likely to occur.
The message is that the assassination of
General Soleimani was to protect us. As Donald Trump and various military spokesmen have said, he had killed
Americans and now they must be planning an enormous attack that will injure and kill many more innocent
Americans. That stance has become America's posture in the world: weak and threatened, requiring a strong
defense in the form of a strong offense.
But what is Iran's actual interest? If it
is indeed to undercut U.S. dollar and oil strategy, the first policy must be to get U.S. military forces out of
the Near East, including U.S. occupation of its oil fields. It turns out that President Trump's rash act has
acted as a catalyst, bringing about just the opposite of what he wanted. On January 5 the Iraqi parliament met
to insist that the United States leave. General Suleimani was an invited guest, not an Iranian invader. It is
U.S. troops that are in Iraq in violation of international law. If they leave, Trump and the neocons lose
control of oil and also of their ability to interfere with Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian-Lebanese mutual defense.
Beyond Iraq looms Saudi Arabia. It has
become the Great Satan, the supporter of Wahabi extremism, the terrorist legion of U.S. mercenary armies
fighting to maintain control of Near Eastern oil and foreign exchange reserves, the cause of the great exodus
of refugees to Turkey, Europe and wherever else it can flee from the arms and money provided by the U.S.
backers of Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq and their allied Saudi Wahabi legions.
The logical ideal, in principle, would be
to destroy Saudi power. That power lies in its oil fields. They already have fallen under attack by modest
Yemeni bombs. If U.S. neocons seriously threaten Iran, its response would be the wholesale bombing and
destruction of Saudi oil fields, along with those of Kuwait and allied Near Eastern oil sheikhdoms. It would
end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists, as well as for the U.S. dollar.
Such an act no doubt would be coordinated
with a call for the Palestinian and other foreign workers in Saudi Arabia to rise up and drive out the monarchy
and its thousands of family retainers.
ORDER IT NOW
Beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran and other
advocates of a multilateral diplomatic break with U.S. neoliberal and neocon unilateralism should bring
pressure on Europe to withdraw from NATO, inasmuch as that organization functions mainly as a U.S.-centric
military tool of American dollar and oil diplomacy and hence opposing the climate change and military
confrontation policies that threaten to make Europe part of the U.S. maelstrom.
Finally, what can U.S. anti-war opponents
do to resist the neocon attempt to destroy any part of the world that resists U.S. neoliberal autocracy? This
has been the most disappointing response over the weekend. They are flailing. It has not been helpful for
Warren, Buttigieg and others to accuse Trump of acting rashly without thinking through the consequences of his
actions. That approach shies away from recognizing that his action did indeed have a rationale -- do draw a line
in the sand, to say that yes, America WILL go to war, will fight Iran, will do anything at all to defend its
control of Near Eastern oil and to dictate OPEC central bank policy, to defend its ISIS legions as if any
opposition to this policy is an attack on the United States itself.
I can understand the emotional response or
yet new calls for impeachment of Donald Trump. But that is an obvious non-starter, partly because it has been
so obviously a partisan move by the Democratic Party. More important is the false and self-serving accusation
that President Trump has overstepped his constitutional limit by committing an act of war against Iran by
assassinating Soleimani.
Congress endorsed Trump's assassination
and is fully as guilty as he is for having approved the Pentagon's budget with the Senate's removal of the
amendment to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that Bernie Sanders, Tom Udall and Ro Khanna inserted
an amendment in the House of Representatives version, explicitly not authorizing the Pentagon to wage war
against Iran or assassinate its officials. When this budget was sent to the Senate, the White House and
Pentagon (a.k.a. the military-industrial complex and neoconservatives) removed that constraint. That was a red
flag announcing that the Pentagon and White House did indeed intend to wage war against Iran and/or assassinate
its officials. Congress lacked the courage to argue this point at the forefront of public discussion.
Behind all this is the Saudi-inspired 9/11
act taking away Congress's sole power to wage war its 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, pulled
out of the drawer ostensibly against Al Qaeda but actually the first step in America's long support of the very
group that was responsible for 9/11, the Saudi airplane hijackers.
The question is, how to get the world's
politicians U.S., European and Asians to see how America's all-or-nothing policy is threatening new waves
of war, refugees, disruption of the oil trade in the Strait of Hormuz, and ultimately global warming and
neoliberal dollarization imposed on all countries. It is a sign of how little power exists in the United
Nations that no countries are calling for a new Nurenberg-style war crimes trial, no threat to withdraw from
NATO or even to avoid holding reserves in the form of money lent to the U.S. Treasury to fund America's
military budget.
[2]
Michael Crowly, "'Keep the Oil': Trump Revives Charged Slogan for new Syria Troop Mission,"
The New
York Times
, October 26, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/us/politics/trump-syria-oil-fields.html
. The article adds: "'I said
keep the oil,' Mr. Trump recounted. 'If they are going into Iraq, keep the oil. They never did. They never
did.'"
as if it were Iran, not Saudi Arabia that mounted 9/11,
Saudi Arabia mounted 9/11? LOL. As if Michael Hudson is much too smart and well connected to not know that
this is bullshit, so why write it? Oh wait, there's more
Behind all this is the Saudi-inspired 9/11 act taking away Congress's sole power to wage war its 2002
Authorization for Use of Military Force, pulled out of the drawer ostensibly against Al Qaeda but actually
the first step in America's long support of the very group that was responsible for 9/11, the Saudi airplane
hijackers.
This article appears to be a bullshit banquet. I shall have to reassess my thoughts on Hudson. If you aren't
part of the solution you're part of the problem.
So maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending.
The main reason for the U.S. military is dollar protection. Idealogical wars(for Israel) don't get very far
without the money.
Fear of this development was a major reason why the United States moved against Libya, whose foreign
reserves were held in gold, not dollars
, an which was urging other African countries to follow suit in
order to free themselves from "Dollar Diplomacy." Hillary and Obama invaded, grabbed their gold supplies (we
still have no idea who ended up with these billions of dollars worth of gold) and destroyed Libya's
government, its public education system, its public infrastructure and other non-neoliberal policies.
I still don't know why the Libyan war doesn't get the attention it should like Iraq's WMD? The lie of "We
were trying to protect brown people in the middle east/north Africa" still stands with most Americans.
@NoseytheDuke
If Hudson got some minor detail wrong, it ultimately isn't that important as we are all struggling to see
through a glass darkly to find the truth in the daily deluge of lies. None of us have connected all of the dots
perfectly, though Hudson has connected more than most, more than you or I. And there are layers of narrative
about September 11, 2001. The idea that it was Saudi-inspired may not be the deepest level of the story, but
neither is it entirely false. And the Saudis provided the manpower for the attacks on the Twin Towers, just as
they are providing the boots on the ground, the Wahabi crazies, e.g., ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and others, used
by the US/Israeli interests as a proxy army to take out Assad. This is Hudson's larger point.
Hudson gives us
a panoramic economic view of the reasons that neoliberal policies have of necessity become militarized (from
the Empire's point of view), why for instance the attempt to take out Assad had to be made. It is all about
maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency and keeping a steady income stream flowing into the US
Treasury, to fund the Empire's wars as well as domestic expenditures. He also explains why this is a war that
the US ultimately will not win. Michael Hudson is to be lauded for his laying out the big picture in clear,
economic terms. Not only is he not a part of the problem (although you might be, my trollish friend) he is a
national treasure and his writing should be read and discussed by all Americans.
The USA now faces two big problems. Iraqis want American troops out and most Americans agree. Now the
spinmasters (like Trump) must explain why American troops must stay. The US military now faces a tough
logistics problem. Bases in Iraq are supplied via trucks driven by local Iraqis. Most drivers will refuse to
work in sympathy with protestors or fear of them. Resupply by airlift is not practical, so thousands more
American troops will be needed as drivers who will be vulnerable to attack.
Once again, as usual, Michael Hudson comes up aces in his analysis. He gets it. It is always about the
Benjamins! As for the Trumptard, our cowardly, compromised, corrupt Congress Critters should fugeddibout their
farcical trumped up "impeachment" and any ridiculous "trial" in the Senate. It is high time to bring back the
Nuremberg Trials. The bloated, bloviating, narcisisstic, ignorant boob and war criminal is ready for his
closeup! The same goes for the enablers, whisperers and political ventriloquists who manipulate the dummy.
Great analysis with the exception of the bits about the climate warming hoax. One of these daysnot long
nowthis fakery will be completely exposed, and then, a lot of peopleincluding most certainly Mr. Hudsonwill
have a lot of egg on their faces. We can only pray for the decline of Saudi Arabia, the ending of NATO, the
de-dollarization of the world, the withdrawal of all US military from the ME (and most of the rest of the
world), and the final debunking of man-made global warming.
America's hatred of Iran is starts with its attempt to control its own oil production, exports and
earnings. It goes back to 1953, when Mossadegh was overthrown because he wanted domestic sovereignty over
Anglo-Persian oil.
It was the British who wanted Mossadegh overthrown because of their profits in the Anglo Iranian Oil Co..
The US was suckered in by the threat of Iran going communist.
1952: Mosaddeq Nationalization of Iran's Oil Industry Leads to CoupEdit event
Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq moves to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in order to ensure
that more oil profits remain in Iran. His efforts to democratize Iran had already earned him being named Time
Magazine's Man of the Year for 1951. After he nationalizes it, Mosaddeq realizes that Britain may want to
overthrow his government, so he closes the British Embassy and sends all British civilians, including its
intelligence operatives, out of the country.
Britain finds itself with no way to stage the coup it desires, so it approaches the American intelligence
community for help. Their first approach results in abject failure when Harry Truman throws the British
representatives out of his office, stating that "We don't overthrow governments; the United States has never
done this before, and we're not going to start now."
After Eisenhower is elected in November 1952, the British have a much more receptive audience, and plans for
overthrowing Mosaddeq are produced. The British intelligence operative who presents the idea to the Eisenhower
administration later will write in his memoirs, "If I ask the Americans to overthrow Mosaddeq in order to
rescue a British oil company, they are not going to respond. This is not an argument that's going to cut much
mustard in Washington. I've got to have a different argument. I'm going to tell the Americans that Mosaddeq is
leading Iran towards Communism." This argument wins over the Eisenhower administration, who promptly decides to
organize a coup in Iran.
(see August 19, 1953). [STEPHEN KINZER, 7/29/2003]
Entity Tags: Dwight Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, Muhammad Mosaddeq
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, US-Iran (1952-1953
The evolutionary purpose of the human animal is to remove the carbon from the earth's crust and return it to
the atmosphere ..all the while the abundant cheap energy allowing overpopulation, eventually overshoot, and
then extinction. The carbon build up in the atmosphere will then usher in a new golden age of plant
life .eventually returning the carbon to the earth's crust and starting the animal-plant rotation cycle anew.
It's almost poetic ..your houseplant's genes will outlive yours.
Writing such an article without any consideration of the Zionist dimension is quite a feat. Probably it was
done on purpose to muddy the waters. Admit to some part of the story to try and bury another one.
CAGW
(catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is a lie. To the extent that the world is warming, it is mostly
because of natural causes.
The Saudis and others are not American clients. They function in unison and synergeticaly with other
globalist elites. They play the role that is assigned to them, but the same can be said about all other
factions of these elites. These different factions are clients of each other, so to speak. There is a
hierarchy; we know who sits at the top. It's neither the Saudis nor any Anglo-Saxons walking around and making
noises in beltway circles.
Still, the guy is an economist purporting financial knowledge. (OTOH, he is evidently not rich.) He may care
to comment on the present situation in connection with the Fed's repo bailout and its 90% monetization of US
treasury debt.
America's war of terror is not about "oil"; it is about Israel. The ongoing US war in the Middle East is pushed
and promoted by the Israeli regime, the Zionist media (owned by Jews), and wealthy Jews on behalf of Israel.
The US does not need to control the oil. It is already in control of most of it, in Suadi Arbia, Qatar Kuwait,
UAE, etc. The so-called "US war for oil" is an old and rusty thesis fabricated by Zionist Jews and designed to
deflect attention away from Israel.
It's true that the US grip is slipping and it has been acting here and there to douse the fires that pop up.
However, as things become harder to manage-not like the old days-the question becomes how radical will the US
become in trying to hold on? It's a nuclear power with all sorts of military hardware that can inflict a huge
amount of damage and death. How far will it be willing to go to avoid being dislodged? Would it go nuclear? The
US may become a very dangerous country indeed as it throws whatever it has to keep it's position. Scary times
ahead.
Fantastic Article! The wars are always bankers wars. Follow the money
I got into understanding the
financial sector roughly 10 years ago from various economists (Michael included). I've been telling my friends
the same thing for a very long time. The fiat money system is what has enabled all the wrong in the world i.e.
exponential money printing, exponential population growth. With exponential population growth you have the
requirement for food, shelter, water (all natural finite resources).
Bravo, Michael, that was meant as to the one step further. You are the outsider insider with balls today. The
key strategy of what holds up the US is the toxic pollution in thin air.
Putin, Xi, alternatively, second
row Germany France's elites are up for the next move. Unilateralism is over.
Rational and logic dictates pulling in global population counts, migrations, resources, the long term
species survival into the accounting. No US matter, a global essentiality to which should live up local
policies. There are myriad variables as to the outcome, what is predictable, is that a status quo on today's
terms has come apart. Change is upon the power paradigms.
Nothing New here, these type of things go back to our Yangtze Patrol in China for Standard Oil and our Marines
kicking butt in the Caribbean and Central America for United Fruit in the 1920s and before.
@Toxik
Good to see an analysis that goes beyond the usual Trump Derangement- and Israel!- Syndromes. Then again, for
individual actors individual motivations (" wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or
simply to surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome.") reasonably play primary, co-equal or
supporting roles. It is almost as if people can have a number of intersecting motivations and loyalties.
Michael Hudson is an idiot, albeit a useful one. Or possibly he is crypto. In either case instead of naming the
jew, he rants about global warming and anti-semite conspiracies concerning jewish lebensraum.
In order to
seize Iraqi, Libyan or Syrian oil in general it is wise to leave the infrastructure intact so production can
immediately be resumed. In all of Wesley Clark's 7 countries in 5 years the oil production was decimated.
Why destroy the oil infrastructure? Because the primary goal was not oil, but destruction of society,
culture, economy, and ultimately genocide and Palestinian style ethnic cleansing. Hudson simply cannot point
out the obvious racial supremacist motivations of his judeo-masonic communist masters.
One theory behind the assassination is that both victims had become theats to their respective Iraqi and
Iranian leadership, and that both Iran and Iraq were in on the hit. Amadinijad is a crypto-jew and Iran is
chock full of Masonic architecture.
I still don't know why the Libyan war doesn't get the attention it should
The move or not into Lybia by Erdogan is pertinent as to Libia and it's greater realm these days. It is part
of the bargaining as to how Putin and Xi now are part of global decision making. If Erdogan moves, the top
layer of decision making globally can be confirmed
bi-polar
. As in coordinated decision making and the
nexus into the potential to impose coordinated policies that the US
" and you cannot do anything about it"
cannot deflect.
The impotence of it all no player brings something new to the table, the global masses are in for more
suppression (veganism?). Quality populations, managed proportional quotas, migrations based on quality of life,
global asset management, honest accounting, are into the mist of the generational future.
At first glance they seem to have found the perpetuum mobile:
Monopoly extorted petrodollar can be invested
in furthering the monopoly.
At second, its a Ponzi (surprise).
-"[] the Prince who relies on mercenaries will never be safe; (for) they are braggarts among friends and
cowards among the enemy."
Forcing others to undercut you at any cost hollows out the domestic economy,
IOW the "outsourcings" are an inevitable consequence.
When they did it to Germany it caused the Great Depression (that much was "unintended").
This time?
What this translates to is the stakes keep getting higher, the returns diminishing,
and even with good will and I rate (not J. Ed) Hoover as the last one with that claim
there is no halfway palatable way out.
Even if the Orange Golem wanted to do the "right" thing (fat chance), he couldnt;
not with 23T funded debt, ~260T unfunded liabilities (to include pensions) and nothing to export anyone would
want.
Theres nothing we can do either just watch it crash and burn.
I wish there was a LOL option for entire articles.
Leftists never back up claims that US wars are for oil with any facts. For example,
they can never point to oil industry lobbyists lobbying for war. But we do see a huge crossover with Jewish
Zionist ideologues and those that actively plan and promote war policy.
Leftists never back up claims that US wars are for oil with any facts. For example, they can never point
to oil industry lobbyists lobbying for war.
But we do see a huge crossover with Jewish Zionist ideologues
and those that actively plan and promote war policy
.
Another mixed bag; some interesting points made here, yet accompanied by nonsensical premises or statements,
such as:
" reverse global warming and the extreme weather caused by the world's U.S.-sponsored dependence on
oil."
and
" the very group that was responsible for 9/11, the Saudi airplane hijackers."
I have come across this phenomenon numerous times already; experts providing valid but controversial
information in their field of expertise, who feel a need for then embedding self-negating passages alongside
it, as a trade-off; for instance also with gratuitously contrived references to allegedly faked moon landings,
or Hollywood's fantastical holocaust narrative. This is a very similar tactic to that of "poisoning the well".
@whattheduck
Follow the money and you find Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer, Trump's biggest donors. Their
concern is not with oil or keeping the dollar as the reserve currency.
@Weston Waroda
Obscuring the real perpetrators of 9/11 is not a minor detail whether done intentionally or by accident.
Anything and everything that even appears to give credence to the official bullshit narrative about who really
did 9/11 is harmful to the nation and the entire world. Exposing the 9/11 perps is the most powerful key that
is capable of unlocking the grip on the throat and regaining the reins of the USA. He could have written, "as
if were Iran that mounted 9/11" without including, "not Saudi Arabia". The Devil, as always, is in the details.
And then you wrote the following utter nonsense, "And the Saudis provided the manpower for the attacks on the
Twin Towers". Read more, comment less.
This article appears to be a bullshit banquet. I shall have to reassess my thoughts on Hudson.
That's very very far from the truth the article is in fact extremely enlightening as to the mechanics of US
imperialism by way of petrodollar hegemony the Giant Ponzi Scheme inner workings laid bare
It's too bad you are monomaniacally fixated on one single issue that you cannot appreciate good knowledge
that doesn't pander to your hot button
I naturally don't agree with the silly notion about the Saudi 'hijackers' nor do I agree with the equally
silly conclusion that global warming is
definitely
caused by burning hydrocarbons, rather than much more
powerful natural mechanisms and cycles that have been around for eons
Prof Hudson may or may not be on board with these sentiments also,
but he chooses his battles carefully
as
one probably must in order to be taken seriously by a wider and more mainstream [brainwashed] audience
Consider for a moment that all of his
authoritative
explanations about the economic dimension of our
current scam system would be immediately dismissed by the pinheads that control our narratives, as the ravings
of a climate denier and 911 truther what good would that do ?
@nokangaroos
As for Israel, this is not elective either not even for "Eretz Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates".
Its
about the water, plain and simple. The groundwater they have been using since independence is fossil (ice age),
not replenished and good as gone; as is the Jordan river.
They are already stealing water from the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and it isnt anywhere near
enough.
They MUST have Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa, or its game over.
And who is in the way of that? Well Hassan Nasrallah and his merry company!
Ergo, Iran must go. Whats so hard to understand?
(Like "the greatest army in the world" "the most moral army in the world" should take to wearing pink tutus,
methinks)
So there also is no hope for peace from this side.
@restless94110
"Great analysis with the exception of the bits about the climate warming hoax. "plus, "calling for a new
Nurenberg-style [sic] war crimes trial." Nuremberg was a farce, show-trial to give Stalin cover for grabbing
eastern and central Europe. For the U.S. to be in the dock in a "new Nuremberg-style war crimes trial," it's
people and cities will have to have been bombed to smithereens and its women raped by the victor-armies. Whose
armies will have pulled that off?
Saudi Arabia mounted 9/11? LOL. As if Michael Hudson is much too smart and well connected to not know
that this is bullshit, so why write it?
You're the one who's full of shit, pal.
In 2016, several US Senators called on then President Obama to release 28 pages of official 9/11 report that
they claim reveal aspects of Saudi state involvement in the attacks. That is to say, intelligence agencies of
the United States government officially acknowledge this fact. So, yes, it is technically correct to say,
"Saudi Arabia mounted 9/11." And this is before we get to the Dancing Israelis, which, again, is not a
conspiracy theory, but an officially acknowledged reality.
@Weston Waroda
Hudson gets some things right, but he shoots himself in the foot with his "Saudi inspired 9/11" reference. This
is a major flaw and to describe it as minor is simply wrong or worse.
The only role played by the Saudis was
that of patsy and in doing so they gave just a slither of cover to the actual perpetrators. Such cover, as it
was, has long since been blown out of the water. That people can still repeat
the Saudis did it
line is
quite ridiculous, national treasures or not.
We've known for aeons that the US approach to the rest of the world is about oil and its role in keeping the
intrinsically valueless dollar afloat. Hudson isn't needed for that and his article reeks of sophisticated
damage limitation, concentrating as it does on the reasons why the US does the disgusting things it does.
Right now it is much more relevant to dwell on the unjustifiable brutality, immorality and illegality of the
US in its dealings with the rest of the world.
He may care to comment on the present situation in connection with the Fed's repo bailout and its 90%
monetization of US treasury debt.
Yes, I too would be interested in hearing a coherent analysis on the extraordinary money printing going on
now I understand it's up to half a trillion in a single month it sounds like somebody is trying to plug a
massive leak in the dam a la the little Dutch boy
Is the deluge coming ?
I also think you dismiss the professor's article based on minor quibbles I don't agree with man-made climate
change either, but it doesn't take away from the meat of the article, which is a lot of excellent insight into
the inner workings of the imperialist money machine
@eah
This is not a mutually exclusive thing. Why can't it be both a war for Zionism and a war for oil? It's
absolutely both! There is no reason to believe that the Zionist lobby and the petrodollar don't exist together
in one unholy marriage.
Michael Hudson fails the "9/11 litmus test " by making statements such as "the Saudi-inspired
9/11 act " and implying several times in his essay that the Saudis did 9/11.
@NoseytheDuke
This one hurts. My man Hudson proves here he is an active disinformation agent. As you note, he is too smart to
be a dupe. Starting to think that he and PCR are advanced limited hangout. Their role is to shunt us towards
the next prepared phase of the globalist script, which is the collapse of the west and its bogus "salvation" by
the "multipolar" NWO led by Russia and China. They want us to beg for this next turn of the screw. They want us
to beg for Putin and Xi to "liberate" us. Create problem, offer solution. What they have coming down the
pipeline two iterations from now is worse than we can imagine.
Oil and economics are part of the equation governing U.S. ME policy, but so are Israeli geopolitics, religion
and culture. Making economics the sole focus oversimplifies and over-reduces the holistic reality of our
grossly misdirected, hijacked foreign policy.
The synthetic American Second Founding ethos of civic nationalism along with the synthetic mythos of
"Judeo-Christianity" are a major element of why America sides with Israel and not the Arabs, Persians or other
regional powers. The Jewish-exacerbated and inflamed cultural enmity that Westerners feel toward Muslims, in
large part due to mass immigration championed by Jews and false-flag terror from the Dancing Shlomos on 9/11 to
ISIS today, is the other side of this pincer movement of cultural and political influence.
The author isn't wrong, but he's an economist. When all you have is a hammer
Although the shale resource estimates presented in this report will likely change over time as additional
information becomes available,
it is evident that shale resources that were until recently not included
in technically recoverable resources constitute a substantial share of overall global technically
recoverable oil and natural gas resources
.
Canada has a series of large hydrocarbon basins with thick, organic-rich shales that are assessed by this
resource study.
The claim that the US has an urgent need to secure oil supplies in the Middle East is not really supported
by the evidence vis-a-vis oil production and reserves.
Reminder the same people who want you to fight Iran also want you to live in a pod and eat bugs. Even in the
best case where you actually manage to get back alive, minus a limb or three, what awaits you is a glorified
drawer and maggot patties
@9/11 Inside job
However , Michael Hudson does write of " Saudi Arabia's Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq , Al
Nusra) and other divisions of what are actually America's foreign legion " .
But it wasn't. There was no live TV coverage of the first WTC attack.
Pres. Bush lied about his initial knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, presumably to give them more time to
succeed. ABC News reported that Bush had been informed about the first WTC attack even before he left his
resort hotel that morning.
You are free to think, however, that it was the Saudis who paid for the glue on Bush's chair in that Florida
classroom on 9/11. Maybe they even paid Ari Fleischer to hold up that sign for Bush while the WTC was burning:
DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET
Why was his Press Secretary telling President Bush to keep his mouth shut for the time being? How did
Fleischer even know what Card had whispered in Bush's ear unless he was in on the plot?
All the talk about the Israelis, Jews, or the Saudis -- and now the dead Iranian general Soleimani -- being
responsible for 9/11, but nobody wants to talk about the Americans who were on duty that day, all of whom
dropped the ball in one way or another, starting with Pres. Bush, who sat in his chair rather than taking
immediate action to defend the United States against ongoing terrorist attacks.
Allowing an enemy or false flag attack to succeed is treason.
9/11 was the treasonous event that opened up this entire ugly can of worms in the Middle East, and
elsewhere, Mr. Gettysburg Partisan.
@Toxik
That is true. Just like the Brit WASP Empire. It was always about more money for the 1 to 5%, and if the white
trash the vast, vast majority of the natives of the British Isles got hammered over and over, so be it.
@John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
It is not some of the folks who say that 9/11 is an Israeli false flag, it is all of the folks except for the
Israeli trolls. (And there are a lot of those!)
@NoseytheDuke
In the course of several threads Ron Unz has referred to the Twin Towers coming down at free fall speed into
their own footprints as key evidence against the official story. My recollection is that you have said much the
same. Correct?
So I ask what you make of this link provided by LK, one of the chosen for elephant stamps,
"FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, performed the first technical review of what brought down
the Twin Towers and WTC 7. Even in its report, FEMA acknowledges (inconveniently for the official story, which
cannot account for this fine destruction of the Twin Towers) that roughly 90% of the Twin Towers' mass fell
outside their footprints. Indeed, the entire plaza was covered with steel pieces and assemblies. Some of the
structural steel was thrown as far away as the Winter Gardens -- 600 feet"
You clearly care a great deal about 9/11 truth, and Ron's language is that of one convinced that the
official story is wrong in ways that matter so I seek to know whether you are given pause and reason to doubt
your own certainties by that evidence by the 3000.
Economic hit man Hudson reminds us of how many people Chase Manhattan killed in Vietnam
but somehow claims he doesn't know how the US stole Gaddafi's 44 tons of gold.
The poverty draft works in the US because we let the poor fight the wars for the rich and corporations. Tell
me who started the Iraq war, the Mullahs in Iran or the Mullahs in DC?
Hudson works the alternative media to disable dissent. The Democrats and Republicans will send internet
dissenters to psychiatric hospitals if they complain too much on the internet. The Iran war really means that
everyone needs to go along with the party line or get banned total agreement between right wingers and left
wingers.
The wars in the mideast are not for oil, they are for Israel and Israels greater Israel agenda, and since
zionists control the FED and IRS the wars for Israel, which were instigated the last time by the joint Israeli
and ZUS attack on WTC and blamed on the Arabs to give the ZUS the excuse to destroy the mideast for Israel.
@Fluesterwitz
Perceptive as many of Dr Hudson's remarks are, the article is itself a wag-the-dog story inasmuch as, were it
not for US support for Israel, oil production in the ME would have remained under Western control at low prices
indefinitely.
It is not the case that oil prices quadrupled in early '74 because of the US quadrupling the cost of wheat,
which, if I recall correctly, had mainly to do with crop shortages in the USSR, as f.o.b. USGulf prices were
bid up dramatically from around $1.65 a bushel to nearly $7, and not by the US government or its proxies, but
by grain traders. The price of oil quadrupled independently and because of the US yet again backing of Israel
in its wars of aggression against the Arab nations.
There's also Dr Hudson's conspicuous misdirection about 9/11, blaming it on the absurd, fairytale narrative
for childish minds about nineteen Arabs who couldn't handle a Cessna 150 magically flying jetliners into
buildings magically exempted from the laws of physics during 9/11, making it clear he takes readers here for
morons. There are several dozen lines of relevant and substantial evidence overwhelmingly disproving the
official narrative and implicating Israel. If anything, Dr Hudson's participation in these elaborate efforts at
concealing the truth about 9/11 provide powerful evidence that he's a disinformation agent poisoning the well
by cognitive infiltration of sites opposing the ME wars.
We don't blame everyday Jews for any of this any more than we blame Italians for crimes of the Mafia, so
let's not hear hateful lies that we want these wars ended because we're the haters.
@John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
I agree JB Its a multi faceted MOnkey F that has as many end games, as the number of Think tanks " Thinking
of every angle in the quest for Rule." Nokangaroo has it down with water also. The US isn't just happy owning
the America's they want Europe too, as they play the strong arm game for Israel. Whereas Russia , seems like
it just wants Russia , the Slavs, and wishes to trade its goods in mostly Peace. Wanna be -Israel wants the
whole Mid East and the natural resources to itself and China wants a whole lot of the Worlds natural resources
through trade and loans that can't be paid back, or it seems to be. They are all the NWO players, but they have
different ideas on Splitting the booty.
@Haxo Angmark
Tend to agree and I can see Mr Hudson's logic, which explains why the US wants to control (by allies or
proxies) Middle East oil despite being self-sufficient but if that was the only reason, why aren't they
flattening wind farms and solar plants all over the world? I assume the Danes don't pay for their offshore
electricity in dollars.
I'm aware though that oil is still pretty unique in that it's the most portable form
of energy. No one is going to build a battery-powered aircraft carrier.
Maybe it's 50/50 between 'defending Israel' by attacking any functioning unfriendly ME state and keeping the
petrodollar, which would explain the attack on Libya, surely no threat to Israel.
Two little quibbles. Climate has always been changing. The desire to fill banks and government coffers for
essentially the air you breathe is what is new.
The second thing is the Democrats are not anti war. Think of the two parties as participants in a scripted
WWE wrestling match. To make matters worse most anti war groups have financially back by a non profit, who is
backed by more non profits. Wouldn't be that surprising is end of the donor road leads to the likes of the
Atlantic Council and its members. We're living in a matrix.
M. Hudson says : "The assassination was intended to escalate America's presence in Iraq to keep control the
region's oil reserves,"
Well, that's one "expert" opinion.
Here's
another :
" ..More than 13 years after Saddam's last hurrah on a Baghdad gallows, the US still has upwards of 30,000
troops and contractors in the immediate vicinity of the Persian Gulf. But why?
..it should be obvious by now that it's not the oil, either. At the moment the US is producing nearly 13
million barrels per day and is the world's leading oil producer well ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia; and is
now actually a net exporter of crude for the first time in three-quarters of a century.
Besides, the Fifth Fleet has never been the solution to oil security. The cure for high prices is high
prices as the great US shale oil and Canadian heavy oil booms so cogently demonstrate, among others.
And the route to global oil industry stability is peaceful commerce because virtually every regime
regardless of politics and ideology needs all the oil revenue it can muster to fund its own rule and keep its
population reasonably pacified.
Surely, there is no better case for the latter than that of Iran itself with an economy burdened by
decades of war, sanctions and mis-rule and an 80-million population that aspires to a western standard of
living.
So left to its own devices, Tehran would produce 5 million barrels per day from its abundant reserves.
That's barely one-tenth of its present meager output, which is owing to Washington's vicious sanctions against
any and all customers for its oil and potential investors in modernizing and expanding it production
capacity "
@BuelahMan
It is with some trepidation that I enter into this discussion.
But my take is the article was about the reason for the recent assassination, not the reason for the
invasion of SW Asia, the Middle East, SE Europe, and N Africa, which began in 1978, BTW.
The article did contain a few throw-away lines which were contentious and not necessary for his point.
All in all, I thought it was great. Thanks Michael.
@Wizard of Oz
Wizard of Oz says : ""FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, performed the first technical review of
what brought down the Twin Towers and WTC 7. Even in its report, FEMA acknowledges (inconveniently for the
official story, which cannot account for this fine destruction of the Twin Towers) that roughly 90% of the Twin
Towers' mass fell outside their footprints"
Riddle me this: why in god's name would you believe
anything
that FEMA, or, for that matter, any other government agency [e.g. N.I.S.T.] says did or did not happen on 9/11?
Do you also believe
anything
Trump/ Pompeo etc. are claiming as reasons for the [alleged]
assassination?
@John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
This is true, it seems unlikely these wars are
purely
for the benfit of Zionism and Israel, granted they
are a major component but there are also Gentile interests here.
The only difference is that these wars
benefit Israel as a whole, its people and all. They only serve to beenfit a small handful of Gentiles though
and the rest of us goyim are seeing nothing but losses, this is why there is often a tendency to place the
blame solely on the Jews and push the Gentiles aside as simply
shabbos goyim
, these Gentiles are
actually benefiting but at the expense of their own people.
Michael Hudson has a lot to say about economics. I wish he would stick to that. I can't believe that anyone
with his IQ and interest in politics could be so deluded about 9/11. It's almost like running into a
field-theorist who happens to be a flat-earther.
I know many people have a great deal of difficulty
comprehending just how many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks onto
nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US Government is mired in so many wars
against so many foreign nations. There is ample precedent for this.
In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan
Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, and which wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing
for the allied forces during World War I pushed Wilson out of neutrality sooner than he might have done,
because of their desire to be involved on one side of the war.
@Carlton Meyer
Trump has already threatened Iraqis with crippling sanctions if they insist American forces leave Iraq. And in
a bizarre twist to this blackmail, Iraq will be forced to "compensate" the Americans for their "investment".
Any sane individual would think it is Iraq that's owed compensation after a criminal war based on lies
destroyed a once prosperous and secular country. The American criminal gangster protection racket is about to
go full throttle.
@ Ron Unz: When I want to forward this article, or other articles on this site, and i click on emailnothing
happens. Two days ago, and years before, I'd click on email, give my name, email, type in Capcha, and get a
notice, Mail Sent. Now, nothing.
@YetAnotherAnon
It has been argued that Col. Muammar al-Gaddafis "Great Man-Made River" (a 40-year irrigation project) was of
no minor concern, as the Jews could have sat on their produce until it hatched
The reason behind the oil increase has nothing to do with the US (undocumented) quadrupling of the price of its
grain exports. It is rather linked to the blind (like today) support of ZioAmerica and the West for Israel in
the 1973 war. After the oil price quadrupling, the OAPEC countries threatened that they would cut their
production an additional 5 per cent per month, 'until Israeli withdrawal is completed from the whole Arab
territories occupied in June 1967 and "the legal rights of the Palestinian people are restored".
The 1973 oil shock was not a shock for everyone. While it had a devastating impact on world industrial growth,
it brought enormous benefits to major US and European banks and above all it was a godsend for oil majors, the
so-called seven sisters.These oil companies were able to invest in the north sea oil fields only when the oil
price quadrupled.
In early 1973, the bilderberg group discussed an imminent "400 per cent future rise in OPEC's price". At
bilderberg they knew beforehand the oil price was going to be quadrupled.
@Wizard of Oz
'Cause when you blow up a four hundred meter high building you can't get it to fall exactly in its own
footprint, no matter how hard you try. The firemen were told "another plane is coming" as the order to get out
when they finished evacuating the employees from buildings which were already 60% vacant. (And the buildings
had been vacant for some time which is why Silverstein bought them on the cheap, and why they were sold,
essentially for scrap.)
Without the dollar's function as the vehicle for world saving in effect, without the Pentagon's role in
creating the Treasury debt that is the vehicle for world central bank reserves the U.S. would find itself
constrained militarily and hence diplomatically constrained, as it was under the gold exchange standard.
Fascinating as it always is with this author, I wish Professor Hudson had enlarged on the block quoted
snippet above, or given a link to where he had explained it thoroughly for those of us less quick on the
uptake. He obviously has a great deal of knowledge about these things and the promise of unique insights
motivates me to concentrate. I could be quite negative if I held him to the fire for the absolute truth of
everything he has written in the piece, but such dogmatism would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Most of what Prof, Hudson says is basically correct if you pull back from the detailed allegations he makes.
My criticisms would be he does have a tendency to write as if conscious intention is at work in the way America
acts, and the elite thus understands all the implications of what they are doing. If one is looking at
international politics the debt can be important, but in the final analysis (loans to Germany and its debts
before WW2 were from losing WW1) some nation states view others as a potential threat to be neutralised.
Moreover, countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, or rather the Persian and Arabs, have a very long history of
enmity. Both are heavily dependant on oil prices for their ability to keep funding proxy wars. Saudi Arabia
tried to put the frackers of the United States Of Americanow the world's largest exporter of petroleumout of
business and failed. It would be silly to say the low interest rates in the US were intended to stop the
fighting in Syria, but they might have had that effect. Bethany McLean says fracking is afloat on a tsunami of
free money that cannot last.
[MORE]
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-02-04/venezuelas-collapse-is-a-window-into-how-the-oil-age-will-unravel/
The shift can be best understood through the concept of Energy Return on Investment (EROI), pioneered
principally by the State University of New York environmental scientist Professor Charles Hall, a
ratio which measures how much energy is used to extract a particular quantity of energy from any
resource. Hall has shown that as we are consuming ever larger quantities of energy, we are using more
and more energy to do so, leaving less 'surplus energy' at the end to underpin social and economic
activity. As the surplus energy available to sustain economic growth is squeezed, in real terms the
biophysical capacity of the economy to continue buying the very oil being produced reduces leading
the market price to collapse.
That in turn renders the most expensive unconventional oil and gas projects potentially
unprofitable, unless they can find ways to cover their losses through external subsidies of some kind,
such as government grants or extended lines of credit.
My understanding of ME geopolitics is that Britain created states to separate (gerrymander) the Arab
masses from the oil wealth of the region. Hence Kuwait ect. In 1953 a threadbare Britain told America
that without the income from Iranian Oil the financial status of the UK would be desperate. The US, which
had originally opposed a coup, went along with and funded one. America then deciding that Iran could be
Uncle Sam;s cop on the ME beat
gave
the Shah so much weaponry that the Arab nations became
extremely alarmed. The Shah's second (first was half German) wife told a story about how when she went to
tell their cook what she wanted for dinner her would turn his eyes away because she was wearing a bikini.
He also secretly prayed. It was a very religious country and yet the Shah's father had banned the veil in
1936.
Saudi Arabia gave 40 billion dollars to Saddam's Iraq to fight the Iran Iraq war against the Islamic
regime in Tehran. After a good start Saddam's army was halted and then turned back by the Iranians
ruthless use of their relatively huge population of young men as cannon fodder. The debts Saddam incurred
fighting against the Persians gave him a grudge against the family dictatorship oil wealthy countries and
that was a major reason he invaded Kuwait. If Iraq has so much oil of its own, then why would Saddam have
needed to invade a tiny neighbour?
On loan guarantees and the settlements issue Bush sent the Lobby packing with a flick of his eyebrow
and brought Israel to Madrid only having to give Israel revocation of UN Resolution 3379 (Zionism is
racism). All great stuff. It started the process that led to the Camp David 2000 Summit and Barak making
an offer for a final settlement that was if very hard to accept for the Palestinian side, still a serious
offer that they might have taken and successfully built on.
Bush the Elder and Scowcroft saw the problem of a US army in Iraq, so the just evicted Saddam from
Kuwait, but the US army in Saudi Arabia they did not seem to worry about even though it would have to be
there as long as Saddam ran Iraq, and the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure showed there was a strong dislike of
the Saud regime's westernisation. Bush the Elder sent the Lobby packing with a flick of his eyebrow and
brought Israel to Madrid only having to give Israel revocation of UN Resolution 3379. Down the line there
was the Camp David 2000 Summit and Barak making an offer for a final settlement that was serious.
The Saudi ambassador at the time of 9/11 lobbied hard for an invasion to overthrow Saddam. American
strategists regard Saudi Arabia as a the richest prize in the world and a client state so they had to
invade Iraq and neutralize it as a threat Saudi Arabia in order to be able to withdraw their army (that
had been there since Saddam had been kicked out of Kuwait, but left in power in Iraq) from Saudi Arabia.
Osama bin Laden's main complaint and the cause of domestic unrest in Saudi Arabia was disgust with the
Saud regime's decision to allow the U.S. military into the country in 1990 to deter an attack by Saddam
Hussein. To retain Saudi Arabia within the US's orbit, it was necessary to overthrow Saddam. Yes Iraq has
oil, but not that much. As already mentioned the Middle East was drawn up so the oil is where the Arab
masses cannot get at it without an invasion of another country.
Recently, researchers and academics have revisited the attack on the USS Liberty and have uncovered credible
evidence that the vicious murderous onslaught was a false flag perpetrated by Iranian jets disguised with the
markings of America's best friend in a diabolical attempt to drive a wedge between bosom buddies and shatter
all of judeo-christian civilization. Furthermore, very credible witnesses who can't be named at this time to
insure their safety overheard the swarthy men with rifles on the grassy knoll overlooking Dealy Plaza speaking
Farzi back in 1963. What more evidence could anyone possibly need as to exactly who is threatening world peace
and stability? As to 9/11, everyone knows it was perpetrated by those sneaky Iranians impersonating Saudis and
then trying to promote the event as an inside job perpetrated by our best friend and ally.
This one hurts. My man Hudson proves here he is an active disinformation agent.
No, he cannot touch the third rail!
Hudson is a balance of payments specialist, and he knows full
well how the Petrodollar system works. He has exposed it.
He did good work on Panama papers episode. It is up to us to carefully parse what Hudson is saying, and the
fact that we have to do this implies just how dangerous ZOG has become.
The Saudi's are PART OF ZOG. I have had to repeat this ad-nauseum. You can follow the money. MI6 abets Saudi
Coup at the behest of oil interests e.g. BP/Shell. Compliant Saudi Kingdom is installed and later America takes
over security guarantees via 73 Kissinger agreement. The Petrodollar/Tbill economy is born Hudson has
explicitly described this mechanism, it is up to you to peer through the veil. Super Imperialism is his first
work on this balance of payment charade that forms our world.
Wahabbism is part of the construct as it enshrines Saudi Kingdom as the leader of Islam (their brand) and
Mecca. Zion/Globo-homo is actually State Sponsored Usury, and their real god is Moloch and Mammon.
I get it that people are tired of the Saudi's did 911, when instead it was a matrix of ZOG, including Mossad
and Sayanim in America along with "international globo-homo interests, including the deep-state."
The common denominator is that all of these players are tethered to international federal reserves notes
(international corporate banking), or finance capital that won WW2.
If the globo-homo cabal can maneuver the polity to win WW2, then it can maneuver to have Hudson
disappeared/executed or however you want to put it.
Hudson is very smart, and is using code language for us to follow, while still exposing the truth of things.
The Saudi's did 911 wink wink nudge nudge.
It would be nice if we could get the truth in one sitting without having to sift through BS, but that is not
the way the world works today.
With regards to PCR, he pretty much has larger stones than Hudson, and does not couch his language as
carefully. PCR will call out the Jew and his usury and you know these two men talk to each other.
Hudson knows full well what is going on. What do you think his important career would look like if he named
the Jew?
Michael Hudson, with whom I often disagree, provides an excellent analysis of one reason behind Suleimani's
assassination, the USA establishment's determination to effectively control the world's energy no matter what
the cost,
Unfortunately Hudson fails to consider the role of Israel. The Israelis cannot establish the local
regional hegemony they want as long as Iran, a traditional regional power, is a functioning nation. Israel is
desperate to destroy Iran. Therefore, Israel's traitorous, Zionist fifth-column in the USA will do everything
in its power to encourage and defend any politician who promotes aggression against Iran and to attack any
politician who stands against this insanely immoral and counterproductive policy. Zionist's in this country
currently have a stranglehold on the USA's policy in North Africa, the Levant, the Near East. And Southwest
Asia. I don't see how this can change unless the people of the United States are brutally forced to deal with
the consequences of this policy and finally become aware of the espionage and lobbying groups responsible for
it.
Wow. I am usually a big fan of Hudson's but this analysis is just an effort to conceal the truth. While it's
true that "dollar hegemony" and and the 'control of oil' factor large in washington's geopolitical
considerations, those considerations could have been adequately addressed by simply observing the "nuke's deal"
which would have allowed Iran to sell oil and gas to Europe in dollars, as was intended.
So why did Trump blow up the deal???
He blew it up for the same reason he made Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and the same reason why he gave
Israel the green light to settle the west Bank. He blew up the nukes deal because that is what is main
deep-pocket constituents wanted him to do and because he believes that his best path to greater personal power
is by placating his zionist constituents. This is the choice Trump has made. and he is one false flag away
from realizing his dream of nearly absolute power.
Hudson's article is a diversion from the ugly truth that is unfolding before our eyes
If people want to know about money and the maneuverings of the cabal, then E Michael Jones serves that role.
Jones has decided to name the Jew, and of course they are doing their best to demonetize and demonize him.
Hudson won't go there -- get over it. Others have also complained about Hudson in this regards. If you look
very carefully you can see that Hudson is not being disingenuous.. he is not a disinfo agent, he is dropping
clues.
People like PCR and myself can still admire the man and we can also admit Hudson is not as much of an Alpha
male as we are.
The world is made up of different kinds of people, including some men who are more girly, reticent and
careful.
@bjondo
I have no idea I have an open mind and just look at facts not religion or place of birth.
December 2, 2018
Bush Family Links to Nazi Germany: "A Famous American Family" Made its Fortune from the Nazis
The Bush family links to Nazi Germany's war economy were first brought to light at the Nuremberg trials in
the testimony of Nazi Germany's steel magnate Fritz Thyssen.
Jan 2, 2012 Bush & Rockefeller family's funded NAZI war effort and laundered NAZI money
IG Farban which is the German company that held the patent for Zyklon B was being funded by Rockefeller
owned Standard Oil. Union Banking Corp whose Director and Vice president was Prescott Bush (father of George)
was money laundering for the Nazis and after the war ended its assets were seized for trading with the enemy.
Recently, researchers and academics have revisited the attack on the USS Liberty and have uncovered
credible evidence that the vicious murderous onslaught was a false flag perpetrated by
Iranian
jets
disguised with the markings of America's best friend in a diabolical attempt to drive a wedge between bosom
buddies and shatter all of judeo-christian civilization.
LoL.
It was Israeli Jets, and sneaky Mossad wanted U.S. to bomb Egypt, so "greater Israel" the Zion project could
come into effect. LBJ was in on the charade. By this point in history, the U.S. was fully infiltrated at the
highest levels.
Through deception do war -- is that what you are doing, being deceptive? The Iranians have never been our
enemy.
Also, there is no such thing as JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY. That is a made up term so Jews can dupe Christian Goyim.
It takes lots of usury to fund deception of this magnitude.
The New TESTAMENT supersedes the old. Christian doctrine of super-session IS OPERATIVE, and means that any
sect emphasizing old testament is a Judaiser, and hence should be shunned.
If you catch yourself saying the words Judeo-Christianity, then do a face-palm and realize you have been
hoaxed and are repeating deception.
@plantman
To me it seems the US and it's lackeys are continually and repeatedly provoking Iran by committing actions
which are acts of war or merit strong retaliation, which could cascade and escalate into causes of war. This
recent assassination is similar to the hijacking of Iranian oil tankers earlier this year. This pattern has
been present and escalating in intensity since immediately after the Iraq war. There was a partial hiatus under
Obama because he personally disliked the zionists so much. We will be at war with Iran sooner or later, just as
with Iraq, if republicans keep the White House.
Hudson is obviously avoiding talking about the Zionist angle,
probably for his own security -- I'll wager he doesn't have tenure yet. He talks about the OPEC embargo of the 70s
without mentioning Israel. It's openly known that this was in retaliation for western support of Israel during
the Yom Kippur war. There's no way he could be that uninformed.
@sarz
Sara says: "Michael Hudson has a lot to say about economics. I wish he would stick to that. I can't believe
that anyone with his IQ and interest in politics could be so deluded about 9/11"
Well, if it's any
consolation, his "government knows best", grandiose economic "theories"are no less delusional than his. 9/11
theories
This essay provides a glimpse of the satanic levels of Greed and Psychopathy of the whitrash civilisation
(previously it was the British, and now the baton is with the AmeriKKKans). This spiritually and morally cursed
cesspool's "success" in this world has been predicated on such unabashed Evil. Surely it will not be worth it
as they will find themselves writhing in a Fiery torment, soon enough.
I think what this world desperately
needs is whitey "genocide." The quotes signify the fact that since I am a true monotheist, I can never ever
condone that level of bloodshed. So, what is required is reducing the number of whiteys in the world, so as to
curtail their demonic Evil.
@eah
No disrespect, but the EIA report is not entirely correct.
First, While the US is a large producer of hydrocarbons this is not the same as oil. For example, the
Permian Basin produces about 98% condensates which must be blended with overseas oil the produce products in US
oil refineries. As a result the US must import heavy oil, such as Urals heavy for blending purposes. See the
Peak Prosperity website for details.
Second, globalism is not just about ownership of products but also about the control of their rates of
production and the control of the transport routes. America is trying to selectively stop production and if
this fails stop transport from those countries that are not part of the US$/Zionist economy.
Third, technically recoverable oil is not the same as economically recoverable oil. As the Our Finite World
website points out, recoverable oil is limited by what the population can pay for it or products produced or
delivered using that oil. Remember the strong correlation between energy use and GDP.
Fourth, Production of primarily condensates and gas from most fracking operations is overall an economic
loss for most investors and poses external economic and environmental costs not factored into the cost/benefit
analysis of the corporations.
Fifth, the EIA and US DOE are greatly overestimating the lifetime of the fracking boom which will start
declining in the 2022-2025 time-frame.
I will admit that the US needs to export excess natural gas (Freedom gas) from the fracking operations.
Currently, the Permian producers have to pay for the gas to be taken away or flare it at a rate of about
3bcm/year. The dramatic 100% drop in the price of natural gas in Western Europe has derailed the grand plan for
LNG export, or at least caused the countries that entered into long term contracts, such as Poland and Ukraine,
for delivery to pay much more for gas than those that rely on pipeline transported gas.
Currently, natural gas sells for $146/100 cm. In contrast, Cheniere gas prices are 115% of Henry Hub price +
liquefaction fee of around $3 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). This corresponds to as LNG price of
about $320/1000cm. To compete against Russian and Norge natural gas the US government is indirectly subsidizing
those countries receiving "Freedom Gas" via foreign aid to take the gas!
The solution turned out to be to replace gold with U.S. Treasury securities (IOUs) as the basis of
foreign central bank reserves. After 1971, foreign central banks had little option for what to do with their
continuing dollar inflows except to recycle them to the U.S. economy by buying U.S. Treasury securities.
Correct Nixon goes off of international trading gold standard in 1971. This forces dollar accumulation in
central banks to recycle back to the U.S. to buy TBills (debt). Foreign economies can no longer buy gold to
balance international trade.
Saudi Arabia and other Near Eastern OPEC countries quickly became a buttress of the dollar. After these
countries quadrupled the price of oil (in retaliation for the United States quadrupling the price of its
grain exports, a mainstay of the U.S. trade balance),
In 1971, OPEC negotiated a higher posted price and a 55% minimum profit share in the Tehran Agreement.
But the dollar's falling purchasing power after the 1971 Nixon shock had already put a big strain on the
Agreement's fixed posted prices. US support for Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War was the final
straw. A resulting embargo lasted until March 1974, but after it was removed low and stable posted prices
failed to return.
U.S. banks were swamped with an inflow of much foreign deposits which were lent out to Third World
countries in an explosion of bad loans that blew up in 1972 with Mexico's insolvency, and destroyed Third
World government credit for a decade, forcing it into dependence on the United States via the IMF and World
Bank).
Foreign deposits of surplus dollars were flowing into "private banks' and these private banks then agitated
to have Mexico redefined as "emerging market" instead of third world. This then allowed predatory
"international" loans to go forth. See Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Part of Mexinvasion of
Mestizo's into the U.S. can be tracked to this event. Our finance class is an internal enemy and a parasite.
(Never allow your debt to be denominated in a foreign currency this is an Iron Law of Economics, not
taught in Skools.)
To top matters, of course, what Saudi Arabia does not save in dollarized assets with its oil-export
earnings is spent on buying hundreds of billion of dollars of U.S. arms exports. This locks them into
dependence on U.S. supply o replacement parts and repairs, and enables the United States to turn off Saudi
military hardware at any point of time, in the event that the Saudis may try to act independently of U.S.
foreign policy.
The Saudis are not going against their MI6 masters, and besides are dependent on foreign technology to
extract their oil, and get said oil to dollarized markets. By the time Kissinger shows up in 1973, the pattern
is already in place. The oil shock in 1974 is due to Kissinger Saudi 1973 agreement, which legitimated OPEC
cartel (monopoly). The 1973 Agreement codified the petrodollar Tbill economy that MIC and "liberalism"
globo-homo now depends on.
So maintaining the dollar as the reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. Foreign
countries to not have to pay the Pentagon directly for this spending. They simply finance the U.S. Treasury
and U.S. banking system.
Returning petrodollars fund some 800 U.S. overseas military bases. The return path is through purchasing of
TBills, and then said TBills are held in offshore accounts. Dollars then spin out of TBill and spent to enter
into dollarized economies worldwide. This is a form of inflation tax on the world. When U.S. deficit spends new
TBills, then they find returning petrodollars dollars, or said TBill can be monetized by the FED (which has
been happening in recent years.) U.S. government then spends new deficit dollars on MIC. Saudi also recycles
dollars through CIA to buy from MIC. Is it any wonder that China and Russia are working diligently to
de-dollarize their trading affairs?
That is the same strategy that the U.S. has followed in Syria and Iraq. Iran was threatening this
dollarization strategy and its buttress in U.S. oil diplomacy.
Iran is part of Russia/China axis that is de-dollarizing and hence is threatening globo homo deep state
finance capitalism (ZOG). Iran is in the way of Greater Zion, and is central to Belt and Road, and will not bow
down to Globo Homo.
The U.S. is on the wrong side of history, especially after it got brain infected and parasitized in 1912 by
the (((usual suspects))).
The poverty draft works in the US because we let the poor fight the wars for the rich and corporations.
Tell me who started the Iraq war, the Mullahs in Iran or the Mullahs in DC?
More accurate question would be
The poverty draft works in the US because we let the poor fight the wars for the rich and corporations.
Tell me who started the Iraq war, the Mullahs in Iran or the Rabbis in DC
?
That's a brazen hardLeft lie . and the central dynamic isn't oil per se; it's the petrodollar.
1) It's not a hard Left lie, it's a globalist lie. It is the justification for further de-industralization
of the "bad 1st world" who do "all the polluting" and ship it to the 3rd world where peoople are paid slave
wages.
2) If you control the oil, you control the currency/petrodollar.
I do agree that it is indirect, but at the end of the day, it's the same thing. Iraq was invaded because its
oil was primarily going to the EU, and Saddam wanted Euros for it, not US dollars.
More than a decade ago, Iran opened its oil bourse. It was prepared to take any currency for oil sales. It has,
in fact, taken gold from India as payment.
Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution was to trade oil for a different product. Doctors from Cuba, beef and other
foodstuffs from Brazil and Argentina, for example.
All of the above are examples of de-dollarization, and will never be tollerated. They all link to another facet
of the program: all opponents are the new Hitler. In some respects, this is correct. The German economy was
turned around using its version of Lincoln's greenbacks and trading commodity for commodity, often raw material
for manufactured goods. The (((banks))) were nowhere in that equation, therefore, Hitler had to be demonized,
just as Israel began demonizing Saddam in the early 1980s with the fictitious Saddam's WMD, before a nuclear
reactor was even commissioned. It's all about currency control, or as the vile Congresswoman Omar would put it
"the Benjamins".
CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is a lie.
No, it's not a lie, it's a hypothesis.
To quote the UN International Panel on Climate Change, Third Report, Chapter 14, Section 14.2.2.2, (2001):
In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
@NoseytheDuke
I suspect that Prof. Hudson is exaggerating on it being Saudi inspired, however, there is more than a break
even chance they were involved. What you, and others are missing is the reference to legislation. I am
acquainted with a lawyer who worked for the city at the tome of 9/11. When the Patriot Act came out of nowhere
to be passed less than 3 months after 9/11, a controversial city by-law had been proposed. I casually asked,
how long it took to produce a draft by-law, and the response was, typically 4-6 months, as the proposed by-law
had to be cross referenced with all other by-laws to ensure that it neither conflicted with, nor used terms
that would cause confusion in interpretation of the by-law or any court decision.
So, if it takes 4-6 months for a city by-law, how long do you think it might take to cross-reference the
Patriot Act and/or the Authorization for Use of Military Force legislation to check against the Constitution,
all other laws, and all court rulings that would touch on the matter? Hence, the author's "pulled out of the
drawer ostensibly against Al Qaeda ", which is the whole point of his article the fix is in.
Well, if it's any consolation, his "government knows best", grandiose economic "theories"are no less
delusional than his. 9/11 theories
There goes the Lol-bertarian one born free-dumb again.
If you ignore gravity, you fall down and bump your head.
Human relations are NOT PURELY TWO WAY. This is as axiomatic as gravity. You have to make pretend to be a
lolbertarian, and only little girls and the deluded make pretend about things.
The plain fact of the matter is that human relations include three parties. When you get into trouble, you
will be one of the first to go whining to a sheriff, or some authority (the king) to help.
Civilization is impossible without an honest third party interlocutor. Did I say IMPOSSIBLE.
How this third party interlocutor is controlled or placed into our governing hierarchy is an entirely
different subject.
Everybody's eyes should focus on good government, not some sort of lolbertarian fantasy of a world with only
two way relations and some sort of nebulous laughable "human action," or making gold as a god.
Hudson is doing a good job of showing how the god of money, MOLOCH has infested the mind of man, and has
become our "king."
It will actually take some sort of facism or king to overcome the democrap/finance capital construct which
lolbertarans make excuses for. Dupes.
@Wally
Don't forget BLM land grabs in Nevada and Oregon, and the Soleimani style assassination of Levoy Finicum.
Here is a recent comment I made that b blocked at MofA:
Now we need for Trump to assassinate Lavrov in Berlin and create another Russian martyr that would cause
Germany to end the SOFA and throw the US occupation out after 75 years!
These latest revelations that Soleimani had been invited on behalf of the USA to Bahgdad shows how
deprave the USA has become. The latest Douma "chemical weapons" revelations and the following Trump cruise
missile retaliation illustrates how entire chains of fake action/retaliation chains are created. I think we
have to assume that the entire Katayusha rocket attack and the "dead contractor" are fake/staged. The
retaliation bombing was true, but its justification was faked. The attack on the US Embassy was clearly
staged by US agents provocatuer who were allowed into the green zone.
These plausibly deniable war provocations have an long history. In Germany's case in 1939 it was Polish
atrocities like
Bromberg
.
Germany, like Iraq, still has a constitution crafted by the usual suspects during occupation. Iraq, like
Germany, will never get rid of the Yankee parasites without a fight.
Since then, and upon further consideration, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy and most of the planet would
love to expel the US occupation and free themselves. Many would do well to completely destroy their old
Judeo-Masonic constitutions and write something free of talmudic mind control.
Tim Kelly and Joe Atwill have a
recent podcast
where they discuss the occupation of Japan by 33 degree Douglas MacAuthur. It turns out that
MacAurthur hired a 22 year old jewess to write the Feminist Civil Rights clauses into the still valid
occupation constitution. The demographic collapse of Japan, Germany and all the occupied countries was a
deliberate multi-generational conspiracy, just like the one against Iran.
@Smith
Indirectly. All wars are economic wars, only the bankers, and what they own, benefits. The Rothschilds are the
kings of banking, and bankrollers/owners of Israel. The Greater Israel/Rothschild project is to control all of
the oil in the ME. Ignore all of the "tribes of Israel" and "historic homeland" nonsense. It's about wealth and
power.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/greater-israel-maps.htm
@FB
Hudson's account of the way the US Empire funds its occupation of the world is correct. The World accepts newly
printed US dollars -- ink money as it is sometimes known, in exchange for oil and other goods and assets, and
then hands those dollars back to the US Fed in exchange for bonds yielding a below-inflation rate of interest.
What, depending on you point of view, is a nice side benefit of this arrangement is that corporations, their
share holders and other financially astute investors get to borrow money (directly or indirectly) at what are
near zero or even below zero real interest rates. In that circumstance, naturally, an ever increasing
proportion of all wealth accumulates in the hands the great corporations, investors, and others astute enough
to understand and take advantage of the ongoing scam.
Overall, one would not object too much to American global hegemony, even an American hegemony funded by the
debasement of currency, destruction of savings, and the obscene wealth of the plutocratic few, provided that
said hegemony was exercised in the interests of the people of what the US used to call "The Free World."
But clearly American hegemonists don't give a damn for the American people, let alone the people of the
tributary nations. On the contrary, they seem intent on destroying not only the peoples of subject nations but
their own people too, both culturally and literally, racial genocide being effected by a combination of
repressed fertility and mass replacement immigration.
@Krollchem
I'm aware there are different kinds/grades of crude.
Third, technically recoverable oil is not the same as
economically recoverable oil.
Yes, the lives of young men are so much cheaper, right? -- I guess that's where the term "cannon fodder"
comes from -- anyway, technically vs economically can also be seen as
a matter of national energy policy
,
like e.g. the strategic petroleum reserve -- does the US really need to spend more on its military than all
other countries combined?
Simple question: what is the proximate cause of the tension with Iran? -- answer: it's Iran's nuclear
program, specifically the allegation they intend to produce weapons grade enriched uranium (or plutonium) and
then make a bomb -- another question: how is this a threat to the US, a nation with > 10k nuclear weapons, and
more importantly,
the means to deliver them
? -- answer: it's not -- Israel sees it as a threat -- and re
that, I'll say what I've said before: if MAD (mutually assured destruction) was good enough for the US and the
USSR during the Cold War, it's good enough for the Jews and Iranians today --
it's time to out Israel as a
nuclear power
.
The US has no urgent need for Middle East oil; that's not what this is about.
The oil producing states in the USA -- such as Alaska, Texas, North Dakota, New Mexico and
others -- will be happy to see hostilities between the American Empire and Iran, and the
Russians and Mexicans and Brazilians and Canadians and other oil producing nations will be
similarly pleased to see the price of oil jump way over a hundred dollars a barrel.
The Saudi Arabians are most likely trying to bribe the Iranians so that the Iranians don't
bomb the living Hell out of Saudi Arabian oil installations but maybe the bribe won't be big
enough or the Iranian strategists want to pop the price of oil before they do anything else.
The Iranians might be enticed by Saudi Arabian offers of dollars or other hard currencies in
large quantities and the Iranians might hold off on pulverizing the Hell out of any and all
oil facility targets in Saudi Arabia. The bribery negotiations might be highly civilized with
the Iranians and Saudi Arabians sitting around eating figs and caviar and mulling over
bribery figures.
Meanwhile, the greedy oil interests in the USA and globally are licking their frigging
chops at the thought of oil jumping to 150 dollars a barrel and staying there. The human
factor must be considered without considerations of whether or not the niceties of proper
behaviour are in play. The oil money grubber people want more loot and they don't give a damn
how they get it.
The Iranians might split the difference and take half the bribe money from the Saudi
Arabians and then bomb the Hell out of half the targets they originally planned to hit. The
Saudi Arabians could helpfully point out some aging oil installations that were due for
refurbishment anyhow and tell the Iranians they could hit them. I guess the oil business is
murderous up to a point, and then the negotiations kick in.
If the Iranians don't partially pop the Saudi Arabian oil installations, then maybe the
Iranians and Saudi Arabians have a sneaky prior deal on that.
The Iranians have to play the public relations game and the best way to do that would be
to jump up the price of oil while telling the Iranian people that they will get their revenge
but not just yet, and the Iranians will tell their people that the long game is the way to
go.
Don't tell me that the oil people money grubbers ain't licking their chops like ravenous
wolves at the thought of the Iranians pounding all kinds of Hell out of Saudi Arabian oil
installations!
More people at Mara Lago knew that General Suliemeni was going to be hit than congressmen and congresswomen? That tells me
trump was bragging about how much power he has. He's so insecure and feeble that he has no business holding the most power office
in the land!
The main beneficiaries of Solimanies death are his arch enemies, Isis. Trump turned on both his field allies against Isis,
the Kurds and Solimani's militia. Who are America's allies in the field, now?
Let me tally this up for the wonderful viewers, an American backed coupe of a democratically elected prime minister who wanted
to nationalize the oil fields of Iran which at time was owned by Britain. The shooting down of a plane with 290 people in it by
an American Naval vessel. The backing of Saddam with chemical weapons and millions of dollars, to go to war with Iran leaving
half a million dead. The installation of a dictator whose secret police force imprisoned, tortured and killed political dissidence.
Learn your history.
All jokes aside but everyone this isnt a joke anymore becuase of our wreckless president making dumb distractions ive ever
heard of trump is a sociopath he makes the rich richer, the poor poorer. Just remember this guy and his family are banned from
having fun raisers in the state of new york becuase trump held a big fundraiser to help fight kids cancer he stole money from
kids to search to find a cure for cancer. He nearly shut down the gouverment becuase Congress refused to give him the money for
him to build the wall but not most of all 5 general from the us resigned becuase they didnt agree with his intensions. He doesnt
care about anyone but himself and anyone with common sense can sse that and im done with the US government and this isnt the American
that i grew up loving. All the hatred for eachother is disgusting and disturbing
The Iranian fiasco started in 1953 when America overthrew Iran's democratically elected government, so we could get their oil.
The autocrat we installed had a nasty habit of torturing and murdering any who opposed him, but he did sell us oil. In 1979 the
Iranians, united by their clergy, threw him out. We keep stirring the hornets nest we created and are surprised when we get stung?
Now you too can have a front row seat at this foreign policy debacle! War? We don't need no stinking war. Trump is desperate to
distract the American people from seeing how incompetent and stupid he really is.
"... If the plan is/was to leave Syria and Iraq, it was not. In this case it was a screwed, albeit mafia-style, tactical move killing two birds with one stone. ..."
Most
of the attention in this recent attack by a US drone at the Baghdad Airport has been on it
killing Iranian Quds Force commander, Qasim (Qassem) Solmaini (Suleimani), supposedly plotting
an “imminent” attack on Americans as he flew a commercial airliner to Iraq at the
invitation of its government and passed through passport control. But much less attention has
been paid to the killing in that attack of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of the Popular
Mobilization Forces in Iraq and reportedly an officer in the Iraqi military, as well as being,
according to Juan Cole, a Yazidi Kurd, although the PMF is identified as being a Shia militia
allied with Iran.
The problem here is that supposedly US leaders approved this strike because there were no
Iraqi officials in this group; it was supposedly “clean.” But there was
al-Muhandis, with his PMF also allied to a political faction, the Fath, who hold 48 seats in
the Iraqi parliament. The often anti-Iranian Shia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, has now joined with
Fath and other groups to demand a vote in the parliament to order a withdrawal of American
troops from Iraq.
... ... ...
There is much more that can be said about this, but among less noticed responses I note that
although Israeli PM Netanyahu made a strong statement supporting the attack, apparently he has
ordered his aides not to talk about it further, and the Israelis are worried about possible
escalation of this In KSA, “Bone-Saw” MbS has said nothing, although supposedly the
Saudi had sought to kill Solemaini themselves.
Oh, and of course Mike Pompeo announced that this move has made Americans “safe”
in the region, even as Americans have been urged to leave Iraq immediately. So, yeah, they will
be more safe by getting the heck out.
likbez , January 6, 2020 3:22 am
@Terry, January 5, 2020 10:37 pm
it is not clear to me that killing Solemaini was a mistake.
If the plan is/was to leave Syria and Iraq, it was not. In this case it was a screwed,
albeit mafia-style, tactical move killing two birds with one stone.
But a more plausible hypothesis is that it was spontaneous Trump-style overreaction on
siege of the US embassy which now start backfiring in a spectacular and very dangerous way,
because Iran views this as the declaration of war (and not without reasons, see below)
"Before the vote Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that he was
scheduled to meet with Soleimani a day after his arrival to receive a letter from Iran to
Iraq in response to a de-escalation offer Saudi Arabia had made. The U.S. assassinated
Soleimani before the letter could be delivered by him. Abdul-Mahdi also said that Trump had
asked him to mediate between the U.S. and Iran. Did he do that to trap Soleimani? It is no
wonder then that Abdul-Mahdi is fuming."
Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop
presence in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups
to unite . I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized .
He called for closure of the US embassy and forming united Shia paramilitary groups to
fight occupation which he named "Resistance legions"
More specifically, Sadr issues a statement with demands:
• close the US embassy
• end security deal immediately
• close US bases in a humiliating way
• protection of Iraq should be handed to the Resistance militias
• boycott of US products
Tucker Carlson is livid with anger and frustration at Trump's actions .
Death to America is a rallying point for Iran to emphasize the same aspect of American
status .
They talk in future . Carlson is reminding that we are already there .
If people woke up with anger at Iran., they would find that the dead horse isn't able to
do much but only can attract a lot of attention from far .
The reason Taliban didn't inform Mulla Omar's death was to let the rank and file continues
to remain engaged without getting into internal feuding fight .
A trues state of US won't be televised until the horse starts rotting but then that would be
quite late .
I don't recall any dissent until this assassination . Now 70 cities are witnessing
protests and a few in Media are not happy at all .
There is a big unknown if and when Iran would strike back and at who. Persian is not like
khasaogi murderer or Harri kidnapper .
"... In other blowbacks from the murder of Soleimani the Qatar leaders are fuming over the use of a Qatar based reaper drone to launch the missiles and were controlled remotely by operators at the US Air Force base in Creech, Nevada. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1608386/middle-east ..."
"... The picture of the meeting between the Qatar FM and the Iranian FM showed the Qatar flag with the red replaced by black in respect. https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/04/01/2020/Qatar-Foreign-Minister-meets-Iranian-counterpart-in-Tehran ..."
"... It should be noted that Qatar owes a debt of honor to Iran for supplying need food goods to survive a blockade by KSA and the UAE. Likewise, Qatar has close ties with Turkey due to the presence of a couple thousand Turkish troops that prevented a KSA invasion and has been supplying a lot of LGN fuel to Turkey. ..."
Wow the iraq PM office just stated that The US government had asked Iraq to invite Soleimani
to iraq for face to face deescalation talks with the US then murdered in the airport. Even by
outlaw empire standards this was insane they murdered a diplomat on talks they invited him
to. US diplomacy has been on decline for decades but this is reckless terrorist diplomacy,
with a single action the US has lost the middle east and killed the value of US assurances
and diplomacy
The Soliemani assassination now looks even more abhorent. Now it looks like one of the oldest
and most abhorent types of war acts: a fake parley turned into a murder zone. What the people
who seem to have arranged this - presumably the US and Israel and maybe Saudi Arabia -
apparently did not expect was that Soleimani was to become a martyr in the eyes of his
people.
Mercouris suggests that Soleimani expected and planned on exactly this: that he would become
a martyr and a unifying symbol in the end. Presumably he did not know when it would happen
exactly, or perhaps he did have a sense. Several people here suggested as much and it doesn't
seem so farfetched now. I'm reminded of Martin Luther King's death, though of course
Soleimani was far from being a man of peace as MLK was. MLK seemed to know that he was soon
to become a martyr and he seemed to accept this as a necessary thing, even as perhaps the
best way for him to continue his work. Obi Wan Kenobi lol! ,
But there is a correlating thought I don't see anyone picking up on yet. If this was indeed
an ambush, possibly, then it was preplanned. Trump's reported veiled references to people at
his resort ('something huge is coming') also seem to point to this. In that case it seems
even more likely that the initial rocket attack was itself a false flag operation.
They invited all the Tibetan leaders to attend the peace conference.. As a gesture of
respect, everyone removed a single shot from their rifle which left the Tibetan security
guards single shot muskets defenceless when the British opened fire and ended the tibetan
political power and started drawing the new borders.. After a while the communists took over
when the british left and a leaderless tibetan homeland as their own.. China is one third the
Tibetan empire.. It was taken without any resistance at all.. China in 5000 years was never
able to conquer Tibet.. But like the US helping exterminate christians world wide.. The
british helps other cultures get destroyed..
3. If Saudi tricked Suleimani by getting Iraq to "mediate" (Iraq's prime minister was
expecting a message by him on the mediation when he was assassinated), Saudi will get
targeted.
Posted by: somebody | Jan 5 2020 16:52 utc | 44
More likely, Saudi will be pissed off at Israel enough to have a serious impact on their
relations! All the more reason to patch up with Iran and go for the HOPE plan.
All the attention is focussed on how Trump has messed up so badly, which he has - but
Israel has messed itself up even more badly.
Posted by Naijaa_Man at the Saker site on January 05, 2020 · at 9:58 am EST/EDT
"From Iraq Prime Minister's speech in Parliament, I gathered that:
(1) Trump told the Prime Minister that he will attack Iraqi PMU Militias, The Prime Minister
objected and Trump ignored him
(2) After the US Embassy protests ended, Trump called the Prime Minister and thanked him for
successfully persuading Iraqi PMU Militias to withdraw from Embassy grounds and Green Zone.
Trump refused to apologize for defying the Prime Minister's request to respect Iraq
Sovereignty and strike the PMU militias
(3) Trump asked Iraq to be a mediator between USA/Saudi axis and the Iranians. The Prime
Minister agreed and communicated the message to Iran. The Prime Minister asked Americans to
stop conducting helicopter overflights above PMU military bases, Trump ignored him
(4) With respect to the mediation issue, Qassem Solemani was in Iraq to deliver a personal
message from Ayatollah Khamenei to the Prime Minister when the Americans assassinated
him."
So technically, The Iraqi parliament voted to "ask" the Iraqi government to end the
security agreement with the US, end the presence of foreign troops & the international
coalition's mandate against ISIS, even in Iraqi air space "for whatever reason."
The surge in US forces only occurred following the 2014 defeat of ISIS in the battle for
Latakia, Syria where the Obama Administration backed islamists (many imported from Libya)
were relocated into Iraq and joined former Saddam military forces to roll back Iraqi Shia
forces. http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS_Governance.pdf
As discussed in the latest Grayzone 2 hour discussion it was Qassem Soleimani who was key
to the defeat of the US/Israeli/KSA/UAE backed ISIS forces.
As reported in RT, "Iraqi parliament has voted to have foreign troops removed from the
country, heeding to a call from its caretaker prime minister. The move comes after US
assassination of a top Iranian general and a commander of Iraqi militia The resolution, which
was passed anonymously, instructs the government to cancel a request for military assistance
to the US-led coalition, which was issued in response to the rise of Islamic State (IS,
formerly ISIS). With IS supposedly defeated, Iraq will not need foreign troops to fight the
jihadists and can close its airspace to coalition aircraft."
According to Press TV, some
Western military presence may remain for training purposes. The resolution says Iraqi
military leadership has to report the number of foreign instructors that are necessary for
Iraqi national security At the same time, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had
turned to the UN Security Council with complaints about US violations of its sovereignty The
interim prime minister said after the incident that it was clear it was in the interest of
both the US and Iraq to end the presence of foreign forces on Iraqi soil
More specifically, Sadr issues a statement saying the partial end proposal was weak
anyway, with demands:
• close the US embassy
• end security deal immediately
• close US bases in a humiliating way
• protection of Iraq should be handed to the Resistance militias
• boycott of US products
Meanwhile, "Iraq's (Kurdish) President Barham Salih has threatened to step down rather
than approve a candidate for prime minister put forward by Iran-linked political parties,
pushing Baghdad deeper into political turmoil after nearly three months of anti-government
protests."
"Protesters have demanded that the next prime minister be someone unconnected to political
parties they accuse of corruption. Yet the Iran-linked Binaa parliamentary voting bloc has
nominated Asaad al-Edani, a former minister and governor of oil-rich Basra province. Binaa's
bloc is mostly made up of the Fatah party led by militia leader turned politician Hadi
al-Ameri, who is close to Tehran. The rival Sairoon bloc, headed by populist Shia cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr, said it would not participate in the process of nominating a new
premier." https://www.ft.com/content/50f09fe4-27f4-11ea-9a4f-963f0ec7e134
However, "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and preserve civil peace, I apologize for not
naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued. "I am ready to submit my resignation to
parliament." https://time.com/5755588/iraq-president-resignation/
My take is that the best way to minimize further violence would for the US to accept
Muqtada al-Sadr demands.
In other blowbacks from the murder of Soleimani the Qatar leaders are fuming over the use
of a Qatar based reaper drone to launch the missiles and were controlled remotely by
operators at the US Air Force base in Creech, Nevada. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1608386/middle-east
It should be noted that Qatar owes a debt of honor to Iran for supplying need food goods
to survive a blockade by KSA and the UAE. Likewise, Qatar has close ties with Turkey due to
the presence of a couple thousand Turkish troops that prevented a KSA invasion and has been
supplying a lot of LGN fuel to Turkey.
Today, the first blowback came as Al Shabab (backed by Qatar and the UAE) attacked for the
first time a US base in Kenya which came a few hours after the Qatari FM visited Teheran.
Link:
On a related note, Putin is scheduled to visit Turkey on January 8, 2020 to "officially"
open the Turkstream pipeline. Putin had better have extra security given the many murders
conducted for geopolitical gain by Western powers and their agents!
I close with a visionary French rock opera Starmania "story of an alternate reality where
a fascist millionaire famous for building skyscrapers is running for president on an
anti-immigration policy, and where the poor are getting more and more desperate for their
voices to be heard." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LytR-6Xmk
Well that didnt take too long Marco Rubio (little Marco) is already calling on the US to
ignore the parliament's resolution and support a break away kurdistan in northern iraq
Trump is real clear. He has a target list of 52 sites. They will be hit if Iran does anything
at all. Or if Iran does nothing they will be hit. Paranoids invent slights and offenses. So
the bombs will fly, soon.
The only questions are what delivery systems, what armaments, how good are Iran's air
defences? I suspect Iran's air defences are quite good and plenty gets through anyway. So is
it nukes or "only" mini-nukes on the first round? Any way you look at it there will be a
second round. And then the next question. Can anyone or anything put the brakes on this
sequence of events?
Trump is just a second string gangster. The gangsters who are firmly in his camp are also
second string. The big boys have largely been absent, they don't much care who is US
President or how the little squabbles go. Wondering here if Rockefellers and Rothschilds and
the older families have good means for quickly getting a Hollywood rewrite on all these
antics or if the avalanche is now unstoppable.
As for the new information that Soleimani was lured and ambushed --- why would anyone do
diplomacy with US again? Even Lavrov has to wonder if he is safe anywhere. Ordinary diplomats
and functionaries at UN have to wonder if they are safe. Who would want to be so much as a
consular assistant?
Well that didnt take too long Marco Rubio (little Marco) is already calling on the US to
ignore the parliament's resolution and support a break away kurdistan in northern iraq
Forward @24. I believe yours is the correct interpretation. Israeli fingerprints are all over
this. Its the only thing that makes sense. Trump may have averted all hell by claiming
credit, but the truth will soon be out. And you can bet the farm that Iran already knows the
truth. This has already backfired spectacularly in uniting Sunni and Shia against the
US/Israel/Saudi. And we are still in the period of mourning. It hasn't begun yet.
@ oldhippie # 71 who wrote
"
Trump is just a second string gangster. The gangsters who are firmly in his camp are also
second string. The big boys have largely been absent, they don't much care who is US
President or how the little squabbles go. Wondering here if Rockefellers and Rothschilds and
the older families have good means for quickly getting a Hollywood rewrite on all these
antics or if the avalanche is now unstoppable.
"
I am of the opinion that what is going on is part of the elite script for our world and
only would be proven wrong if they go nuclear. This circus we have been seeing is the throw
America under the bus ploy while global private finance get to cull the heard and stay in
charge of human finance.....I hope they fail but having read The Shock Doctrine, I have had
this scenarion in my head for quite some time. Look at this forum and how many are of
faith....If the faith leaders back the God of Mammon core then think about how hard it would
be to eliminate......in spite of China's growing example.
It doesn't slow down from here, IMO, so we should have a pretty good read of what is
playing out in 6 months or so
Especially in times like these, people should remember what drives US foreign policy more
than anything else: maintaining the reserve-currency status of the US dollar. It's no
coincidence at all that the countries that the US establishment considers its biggest
adversaries are those countries which are resisting the dollar hegemony the most. The US
establishment may stop at nothing to maintain the dollar hegemony. Certainly it won't shy
away from such underhanded tactics as those employed in the assassination of Soleimani.
It's entirely predictable that the Iraqi parliament would order the withdrawal of US
forces from Iraq. And it's entirely predictable that the US will ignore that order. Likewise,
it's predictable that Iran will respond in some way against US military targets in the Middle
East, which will trigger US airstrikes against targets in Iran (as Trump has already
promised). At that point, it's war, plain and simple. Iran will most likely declare war on
the US after the airstrikes and then launch an all-out missile attack against as many US and
allied targets in the Middle East as possible. What happens beyond that is more difficult to
see. It may well become a case of "Apres nous, le deluge."
"Before the vote Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that he was scheduled to
meet with Soleimani a day after his arrival to receive a letter from Iran to Iraq in response
to a de-escalation offer Saudi Arabia had made. The U.S. assassinated Soleimani before the
letter could be delivered by him. "
So if this report is correct, is there any word on whether the Saudi regime still stands
by this offer, and has Mahdi received it yet by another channel?
As for the vote, I've predicted in the last several threads that the US clearly is
throwing down the mask completely, will never abide by legal demands to leave, and will
resort to straight brute violence in an attempt to hold onto the country as a staging ground
for war. They'll try to force regime change if they can (though now that such a coup would be
directly engineered by the abominable occupier, it's hard to see what significant number of
Irakis would support it and serve in a puppet government. It would be like the fake,
zero-supported Mussolini retread regime the Germans installed after invading Italy in
1943.
Failing that, the US will try to wreck the place completely, turn it into total chaos.
Of course USA has threatened many times to nuke many contries, North Korea and China were
threatened many many times from the Mc Arthur times (1950) to just recently; of course North
Vietnam was repeatedly threatened with devastating nuclear attacks, and many others have been
subject to the same bully tactics that never ever worked and could have medium term
consequences, in the american citicens, difficult to predict.
Any nuclear unprovoked first strike attack of the USA to another country, to put it on their
kness, will be follow for a complete nuclear proliferation of nuclear weapons and delivery
systems all around the world by nations and terrorist groups, and I think in few years it is
nos unthinkable some nuclear devices could explode in some american cities (by unknown
people).
China and Russia will prepare themselves all their allies for that eventuality bigly
Why do they think nuclear threats will work now with people with a martyrdom mentality
like Iran if it did not work in the past? why do the american military thinks the iranians
are so easy to scare? what do they think Iran and every Shia group in the world will do next
in the case of a nuke attack on Iran soil?
The world will be x1000 more dangerous for the american people.
Even nuking failed made Japan surrender, in fact was Zhukov crushing defeat of the
japanese Manchuria army and the fear that would be the Soviet Union who invades Japan and put
a red flag in the emperor's palace (you know uncle Joe was less fearful of soldiers' losses
than the americans counterpart).
The statement by the Iranian government regarding the measure reads:
"The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the fifth step in reducing its commitments, discards the
last key component of its limitations in the JCPOA, which is the "limit on the number of
centrifuges."
As such, the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program no longer faces any operational
restrictions, including enrichment capacity, percentage of enrichment, amount of enriched
material, and research and development.
From here on, Iran's nuclear program will be developed solely based on its technical
needs.
If the sanctions are lifted and Iran benefits from its interests enshrined in the JCPOA,
the Islamic Republic is ready to return to its commitments.
Iran's cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.
With reference to Iran's defense capability, it has been noted elsewhere that Iran purchased
the Russian S500 system which is currently being rolled out. Inquiring minds would predict
that delivery is accelerated. Also, Iraq was considering the S 400 system and, again this
could be predicted to be an unpublished immediate decision. Looks like Erdogan was right to
stand his ground regarding the S400s.
Discussions appear to assume that Iran is relatively isolated politically. Perhaps
forgetting that they are allied in a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China, are an
applicant for the Shanghai Cooperative Association and a dialogue partner with the BRICS.
This covers considerable ground geostratically with players who are reflective, disciplined
and play a long game in attaining their goals. More probably than not engaged in dialogues
which are never revealed in media voices. Retaliation and revenge will be international,
ranging far beyond the middle east.
Posted by: Jose Garcia | Jan 5 2020 18:56 utc | 84
An election campaign with US soldiers getting killed by Iranian proxies with a
decentralized command structure? With a big explosion in October? Considering a "surge"
AGAIN?
As reported by krollchem @ 67 and by b in this and the following post, the involvement of
Trump directly in premeditated murder cannot be absolved, and the circumstances are abhorrent
to any patriotic American citizen. May God have mercy on the souls of the peace makers, for
they shall be called the sons of God.
I take the Iraqi Prime Minister at his word, and reassert the need for Trump and his
administration to be impeached on treasonous grounds. Where that will lead in terms of the
rest of the US government I cannot say but VP Pence is also impeachable here, so it is
difficult to see who is least culpable in this. It may mean that there is need for a
provisional government to be put in place - not party organized. If impeachment proceeds
apace as it should, behind the scenes such a people's approved peaceful citizens
coalition needs to be considered. This cannot stand as official US government policy. It is
heinous.
I too, as forward @ 24 has done, sent prayers for the souls of the departed Iran general
as well as his friend from Iraq and their companions this morning in my home chapel. It is
the Sunday before Christmas, old calendar. May the Lord bring them and so many others before
them to a place where the just repose.
The empire feeling it necessary to burn its assets like our resident bunny's credibility by
forcing the spin control beyond its limit is an indication of desperation (thank you bevin
@89 for bringing attention to that)
We can take pleasure from circumstances spinning out of the evil empire's control, but
keep in mind that means the empire's behavior will become more desperate and irrational the
further control slips from its grasp. More irrational and psychotic behavior from the empire
puts all of humanity in danger. It also makes analysis of that behavior more of a
challenge.
I fear oldhippie @71 might be correct. Even if Iran does nothing, the empire's psychotic
delusions are now so intense that America may lash out spastically anyway.
This is an interesting post which outlines the complexity of such situation and unpredictable
development of events after the initial crime
Notable quotes:
"... America's naive belief in the miracle of the assassination fantasy, especially when applied in the Middle East, reminds me of an Alzheimer's patient who believes in magic beans but fails to remember that the beans never sprout. We keep on planting the same seed and look anxiously for a beanstalk that never sprouts. ..."
"... We were no longer "peacekeepers." We chose sides and were fighting against Palestinians and Shia and, indirectly, Iran. A hotbed of military activity was the Hezbollah bases in the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The recently deceased Soleimani, along with the members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), trained and equipped Hezbollah to battle the Christian controlled government in Beirut. ..."
"... We justify/excuse our act because Suleimani was really, really bad. Of course, we have trouble precisely defining the line that someone must cross in order to be "really, really bad." There are many instances in our history where we embraced really, really bad people (Joseph Stalin comes to mind) in order to pursue a goal important to us. Kim Jong Un, who also is responsible for the death of at least one innocent American, is another suspected bad guy who has gotten the pass to sit with President Trump rather than take a Hell Fire up the caboose. ..."
"... This latest strike is likely to come back to haunt us. We should not be surprised in the future if other countries, such as Russia and China, embrace our new doctrine of assassinating people we say are "imminent" threats. I used to believe that our moral authority counted for something. I no longer believe that to be true. I remain eager to be proven wrong, but if history is any guide, we have not learned the lessons we need to in order to create a better future. ..."
America's naive belief in the
miracle of the assassination fantasy, especially when applied in the Middle East, reminds me of
an Alzheimer's patient who believes in magic beans but fails to remember that the beans never
sprout. We keep on planting the same seed and look anxiously for a beanstalk that never
sprouts.
Killing Qassem Soleimani is the latest meaningless chapter in this blood soaked narrative of
revenge and retribution against a "bad" guy. Killing a "bad" guy makes us feel proud and
provides the emotional equivalent of a sugar rush. But there is no compelling evidence that
these killings actually advance the cause of peace or coerce the other bad guys into hiding in
a cave and praying that we go away.
Let me take you for a walk down memory lane. Let's start in Beirut in 1982--that's 38 years
ago. In other words, if you are younger than 45 this is likely to be new to you. The United
States during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan decided to send troops to Lebanon in late 1982 in
order to help "calm" a civil war. In June 1982, the Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon with
the intention of rooting out the PLO. The next two months witnessed furious battles in West
Beirut. Despite the raging civil war, the Lebanese held a Presidential election in August 1982
and Bachir Gemayel emerged the victor. Gemayel was famous in Lebanon for leading the most
powerful militia in Lebanon, which ferociously and successfully battled the Palestine
Liberation Organization and the Syrian Army. But his victory was short-lived. On 14 September a
bomb exploded in his Beirut
Phalange headquarters, killing Gemayel along with 26 others.
Two days later, Gemayel's party took revenge in the in the Sabra neighborhood and the
adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, where several thousand Palestinians and
Lebanese Shiites lived. That massacre left between 500 and 3500 dead. The killing took place as
Israeli forces stood by and observed. The Israelis did nothing to stop the murder of women and
children.
That event created a deep thirst among both Palestinian and Shia leaders for revenge and the
war in Lebanon intensified. About a week after the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, the U.S. 32nd
Marine Amphibious Unit arrived in Beirut as part of a multinational "peacekeeping" force. But
instead of keeping the peace, U.S. troops fought on the side of Gemayel's Phalange party.
One of the targets for U.S. naval gunfire were Syrian backed forces fighting on behalf of
Palestinians and Shias .
Two United States Navy ships off Beirut fired dozens of shells today in support of Lebanese
Army units defending the town of Suk al Gharb on a ridge overlooking Beirut. It was the first
direct military support of the Lebanese Army by United States forces.
The cruiser Virginia and the destroyer John Rodgers, both guided missile warships, moved to
within nearly a mile of shore to fire five-inch shells at Syrian-backed Druse militiamen and
Palestinian guerrillas who were attacking army positions.
We were no longer "peacekeepers." We chose sides and were fighting against Palestinians and
Shia and, indirectly, Iran. A hotbed of military activity was the Hezbollah bases in the
Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The recently deceased Soleimani, along with the
members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), trained and equipped Hezbollah to
battle the Christian controlled government in Beirut.
Reagan's decision to fight against the Iranian supported forces had tragic consequences.
In April of 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was virtually destroyed by a truck bomb.
On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber detonated a one-half-ton pickup truck laden with
2,000 pounds of TNT near the front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people,
including 17 Americans. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission to date, and
changed the way the U.S. Department of State secured its resources and executed its missions
overseas.
At 6:22 on Sunday morning Oct. 23, 1983, a 19-ton yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck entered
a public parking lot at the heart of Beirut International Airport. The lot was adjacent to the
headquarters of the U.S. 8th Marine Regiment's 1st Battalion, where some 350 American service
members lay asleep in a four-story concrete aviation administration building that had been
successively occupied by various combatants in the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. . . .
Sergeant of the guard Stephen Russell was alone at his sandbag-and-plywood post at the
front of the building but facing inside. Hearing a revving engine, he turned to see the
Mercedes truck barreling straight toward him. He instinctively bolted through the lobby toward
the building's rear entrance, repeatedly yelling, "Hit the deck! Hit the deck!" It was futile
gesture, given that nearly everyone was still asleep. As Russell dashed out the rear entrance,
he looked over his shoulder and saw the truck slam through his post, smash through the entrance
and come to a halt in the midst of the lobby. After an ominous pause of a second or two, the
truck erupted in a massive explosion -- so powerful that it lifted the building in the air,
shearing off its steel-reinforced concrete support columns (each 15 feet in circumference) and
collapsing the structure. Crushed to death within the resulting mountain of rubble were 241
U.S. military personnel -- 220 Marines, 18 Navy sailors and three Army soldiers. More than 100
others were injured. It was worst single-day death toll for the Marines since the World War II
Battle of Iwo Jima.
Looking back at these events with the benefit of 37 years of experience, we can see that
assassinations by both sides (U.S. and Iran) did little to create an unambiguous victory or
achieve peace.
Hezbollah also employed another tactic that limited the military response of the United
States--hostage taking. Between 1982 and 1992, elements of Hezbollah in direct contact with
Iran's Revolutionary Guard kidnapped 104 foreign hostages . The most
notable of these were the CIA Chief of Station in Beirut, William Buckley, and Marine Lt
Colonel Rich Higgins (Higgins was later promoted to Colonel while in captivity). Buckley was
nabbed on 16 March 1984 and Higgins on February 17, 1988, while serving as the Chief, Observer
Group Lebanon and Senior Military Observer, United Nations Military Observer Group, United
Nations Truce Supervision Organization. Both men were executed by their Hezbollah captors.
None of this stopped the cycle of violence. In February 1992, Israeli forces launched a raid
into southern Lebanon and "assassinated" Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, Hezbollah's secretary general,
had led a commemoration marking the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Sheikh Ragheb
Harb. (Nicholas Blanford. "Warriors of God."
https://books.apple.com/us/book/warriors-of-god/id422547646)
Then we have Imad Mughniyeh, the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and
number two in Hezbollah's leadership. He was believed to be responsible for bombing the Marine
barracks in Beirut, two US embassy bombings, and the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in
Lebanon in the 1982-1992 period. He also was indicted in Argentina for his alleged role in the
1992 Israeli embassy attack in Buenos Aires.
In February 2008, Mughniyeh was killed on the night of the 12th by a car bomb in Damascus,
Syria, which was planned in a joint operation by the CIA and Mossad.
It is worth nothing that Hezbollah and Iran dramatically shifted after 1995 from the
retaliatory terrorist strikes that were their calling card during the 1980s. As the Shias
carried out fewer terrorist attacks, Sunnis, principally Osama Bin Laden, ratcheted up
attacks--the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the coordinated bombings of U.S Embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. There is
controversy surrounding who to blame for the bombing of the US military based in Dharan, Saudi
Arabia in 1995. The FBI concluded it was Hezbollah and blamed Mugniyeh. But other intelligence
pointed to Al Qaeda.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the United States has done a lot of killing of
terrorists, real and imagined. Yet, the threat of terrorism has not been erased.
Before we get too excited about the effectiveness of assassination, it would be useful to
recall the dismal record of this method during the last 38 years. It has not made the world
safer or more stable.
The killing of Suleimani is likely to put Iran back in the business of attacking our
embassies and military installations. I also believe kidnapping of Americans will be back in
vogue. And these actions, as in the past, will be met with further U.S. retaliation and the
cycle of violence will continue to spin furiously.
There is another effect now that the United States has openly embraced the "Jamal Khashoggi
solution." The Saudis decreed Khashoggi a "bad" man and a terrorist threat. To their way of
thinking that gave them the excuse to chop him up on the sovereign soil of another country. In
this case, Turkey. We have now basically done the very thing that we condemned the Saudis for.
Yes, I know, Khashoggi was a journalist and Soleimani was a "terrorist." But the Saudis saw a
terrorist. Consider this as a corollary to the saying, "beauty is in the eye of the
beholder."
We justify/excuse our act because Suleimani was really, really bad. Of course, we have
trouble precisely defining the line that someone must cross in order to be "really, really
bad." There are many instances in our history where we embraced really, really bad people
(Joseph Stalin comes to mind) in order to pursue a goal important to us. Kim Jong Un, who also
is responsible for the death of at least one innocent American, is another suspected bad guy
who has gotten the pass to sit with President Trump rather than take a Hell Fire up the
caboose.
This latest strike is likely to come back to haunt us. We should not be surprised in the
future if other countries, such as Russia and China, embrace our new doctrine of assassinating
people we say are "imminent" threats. I used to believe that our moral authority counted for
something. I no longer believe that to be true. I remain eager to be proven wrong, but if
history is any guide, we have not learned the lessons we need to in order to create a better
future.
The number 52 refers to the hostages in Iran at the beginning of the revolution. Trump has
always used that to rally his idiotic base and sell any lemon he can think of in that
context. How dare they take "Americans" as hostages, is the attitude of this moron? And in
his childish brain he wants revenge for what happened 40 hears ago.
When the Iranian students took them hostage, it was a tense and chaotic time and nobody
knew who was in charge, including "the people in charge". But they kept them, they housed
them and fed them in a house arrest setting. Pretty much treated them as a guests, albeit
unwanted guests. Youtube is full of videos of ordinary Iranians bringing them food and books
and pleading with the guards to treat them well.
Unlike us, who we have a different take on hostages and "guests". We send them to the
Caribbean, give them orange jump suits, water board them, play loud heavy metal music 16
hours a day and keep them without food., without charge and without trial.
And in the end, these so called 52 hostages were used as a political pun by Jim Baker and
his team for the election of Reagan and he made sure they were not released until Carter had
been defeated and released on the day of inauguration. How convenient and coincidental.
Unfortunately, the sheep who comprise the bulk of the 30% Trump base, and perhaps many
more on the democratic side, will always buy this lemon with their warped sense of
patriotism.
This
summary by sputniknews (RIA novosti) of the US in Iraq since about 2011 is very concise
but decent and could be perfect for anyone in the US and elsewhere who doesn't know or
understand the situation.
So the Sunni's are going to be ticked off Trump took on Iran?
The Sunni man-in-the-street is much more likely to set aside his differences with the
Shi'a, than to takes sides with the kufar .
Think of it this way: if China invaded the US, which side would most Canadians
support?
Also, think about close-to-theatre demographics.
Iraq will be the US military 'boots on the ground' staging area in any conventional war
against Iran. Shi'a opinion will make all the difference.
Land warfare is significantly harder if your primary staging area is knee-deep in people
who are very sympathetic to the other side.
So consider
2/3rds of the Iraqi Muslim population are Shi'ite . They are concentrated in the
South-East of Iraq. Shi'a are a majority of the population of Baghdad, where the decent-sized
airports are (ignore USAB Ayn Al Asad: landing US forces in the middle of Iraq and driving
all the way to the Iranian border would be retarded).
So Baghdad would become a very (ahem) problematic staging area – especially
if Sistani and Sadr start to rile up the Shia (and Sadr has been doing that since Soleimani's
assassination).
The Sunni are split roughly 50/50 between Arabs and Kurds; the Kurds have no strong
affection for the Arabs, Sunni or otherwise.
So the only place the US has a relatively high proportion of friendlies (even assuming no
fraternity-of-convenience between Iraqiyyun and Jazirani ) is in Iraqi
Kurdistan.
Iraqi Kurdistan borders Iran sounds like a plan!
Well
You might look at a Google Map and think – " Well, all the Kurds are in the
North-East, so the US could just stage from Erbil or Kirkuk and have a straight shot to
TeheranU!S!A!!U!S!A! ".
Meanwhile there are people who have DEMs of the region (so can say things about
topography), and who understand how hard it is to transport men, WATER, artillery and armour
over mountains – even if you own the airspace outright (which the US won't, in any
engagement with Iran).
Think " Korengal ", but with an opponent with 21st century weapons and near-peer
air defences.
The effect of the latter on air-cav alone, should make people think really hard:
helicopters are critical in infil/exfil, medevac, resupply and operational overwatch –
and they are as slow as fuck and have pissweak countermeasures. 1Cav hasn't gone up against a
peer opponent since Korea.
.
Topologically The US has one logistically (almost-)non-suicidal option for 'boots on the
ground' invasion of Iran: everybody knows that.
That is why the US will resort to Hermann Göring fag-tardery, i.e., trying to rely on
air superiority to win a ground war.
For these reasons, the US will either lose or will use nuclear weapons – which will
hand Russia and China a moral victory, because it will permanently destroy US
self-hagiography about freedom and so forth.
.
And if the US attacks Iran, how long do you think it would take for a supertanker to be
sunk in the Straits?
Trick question – the correct response is " Which Straits? Hormuz or
Malacca ?"
The US has shown it can't protect Malacca without crashing into shipping: in a recent
display of historic comedic irony, the USS John McCain (named after Hanoi
Songbird 's Dad), showed itself to be as incompetent as the Songbird hisself, who
killed more US seamen than the Viet Cong.
And it might well, on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, be the long-awaited
beginning of the end of America's imperial ambitions.
One must ask; Is the US presence in the ME really because of imperial ambition? At least
if it is I can understand. I mean, it's bad but that's what nations have done for centuries.
Or is America in the ME at Israel's insistence? Hers's the roll: Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq
2003, Libya in 2011, Syria shortly after that; not one of these countries threatened America,
not one. Yet we invaded these nations, and brutally murdered Qadhaffi and Hussain, and we did
it all based on lies dreamed up by Jewish dual citizens who call themselves American patriots
but who are really agents of Israel.
I'm not using the term neocons any longer, as the term is a lie, a mask. They are just a
large group of powerful dual citizen Jews many descended from Trotskyites that immigrated
from Russia in the 1930s. They hide their real intentions. And what are those intentions? To
protect Israel by scaring the American public through their propaganda organ known as the
MSM, scaring us into allowing a Trillion dollar military budget, and these forever wars. And
anyone who questions them is an anti-Semite. And, that's right from the mouth of Nathan
Perlmutter in his essay; "The Real Anti-Semite In America"
These parasitic dual citizen Jews and their Washington Think Tanks have to go. They are
liars and cowards who will fight for Israel to the last drop of blood spills from the last
American soldier. Trump knowingly, or not, is being used by these bastards. Today he's a
traitor and a liar too. Iran poses no threat to America. None Zilch
Rome was imperialist, Spain, England yes, but the US doesn't fit the definition. What does
fit is 'hired gun'. Right? So, who hired the USA? And, are they paying, or are they somehow
threatening us or blackmailing us?
"... After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US used the Northern Alliance to establish a foothold in Afghanistan and eventually drive the Taliban from power. Soleimani played a major role behind the scenes helping make the US-Northern Alliance partnership viable, including providing operational and intelligence support. ..."
"... "an Axis of Evil" ..."
"... The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 created another opportunity for Iranian-American cooperation, which the US promptly fumbled. While Iran had no desire for increased American military presence in the region, it found common cause with the US in removing its archenemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. ..."
"... Likewise, when the Islamic State erupted on the scene in 2014, it was Soleimani, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, who helped organize and equip various Shi'a militias under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Force. Soleimani went on to direct the PMF in a series of bloody battles that helped turn the tide against the Islamic State well before the US became decisively engaged in the fighting. Soleimani played a defining role in shaping the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11, positioning Iran to become a major power in the region, if not the major power. ..."
"... Soleimani's actions in accomplishing this outcome, however, were not part of a master Iranian plan for regional domination, but rather part and parcel of Iran's ability to react effectively to the mistakes made by the United States ..."
"... "maximum pressure" ..."
"... Murdered, Soleimani is transformed into a martyr-hero whose exploits will motivate those who seek to replicate them against an American foe void of the kind of self-constraint and wisdom born of experience. ..."
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union
as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf
War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. The US is unprepared for the consequences of
its assassination of Qassem Soleimani, if only because it knows nothing about the reality of
the man it murdered, and can't gauge the impact of his death on Iran or the Middle East. Qassem
Soleimani, an Iranian military commander whose paramilitary organization, known as the Quds
Force, helped position Iran as a modern regional power, was assassinated on January 3, 2020, on
order of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. American political leaders of both
major parties have been united in their description of Soleimani as an evil man whose death
should be celebrated, even while the consequences of his demise remain unknown.
The celebration of Soleimani's death, however, is born of an ignorance regarding the events
and actions that shaped the work he directed, and which defined the world in which he operated.
While the US has cast Soleimani as a byproduct of Iran's malign intent in the Middle East, the
reality is much starker: Soleimani is the direct result of America's irresponsibly aggressive
policies. In a world defined by cause-effect relationships, the link between Soleimani and the
United States is undeniable.
... ... ...
While senior Iranian military leadership advocated a massive punitive
expedition into western Afghanistan, Soleimani advised a more constrained response, with his
Quds Force providing training and material support to the Northern Alliance, an umbrella group
of forces opposed to the Taliban. Soleimani personally directed this effort, transforming the
Northern Alliance into an effective fighting force.
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US used the Northern Alliance to establish a
foothold in Afghanistan and eventually drive the Taliban from power. Soleimani played a major
role behind the scenes helping make the US-Northern Alliance partnership viable, including
providing operational and intelligence support.
The US-Iranian cooperation was short-lived; President Bush's designation of Iran as being
part of "an Axis of Evil" caused Iran to terminate its cooperation with the
Americans.
Training the anti-US Iraq rebels
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 created another opportunity for Iranian-American
cooperation, which the US promptly fumbled. While Iran had no desire for increased American
military presence in the region, it found common cause with the US in removing its archenemy,
Saddam Hussein, from power.
... ... ...
Likewise, when the Islamic State erupted on the scene in 2014, it was
Soleimani, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, who helped organize and equip various
Shi'a militias under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Force. Soleimani went on to
direct the PMF in a series of bloody battles that helped turn the tide against the Islamic
State well before the US became decisively engaged in the fighting. Soleimani played a defining
role in shaping the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11, positioning Iran to become a major
power in the region, if not the major power.
Soleimani's actions in accomplishing this outcome, however, were not part of a master
Iranian plan for regional domination, but rather part and parcel of Iran's ability to react
effectively to the mistakes made by the United States and its allies in implementing
policies of aggression in the region.
In the aftermath of the US withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Agreement in 2018, and the
subsequent implementation of the so-called "maximum pressure" campaign of economic
sanctions and geo-political containment undertaken by the United States, Soleimani cautioned
President Trump against embarking down a path toward confrontation.
... ... ...
Murdered, Soleimani is transformed into a martyr-hero whose exploits will motivate those
who seek to replicate them against an American foe void of the kind of self-constraint and
wisdom born of experience.
Far from making the Middle East and the world a safer place to live and work, President
Trump's precipitous assassination of Qassem Soleimani has condemned yet another generation to
suffer the tragic consequences of American overreach in the post-9/11 era.
"... Iraq's parliament passed a resolution, urged by its caretaker prime minister, calling for the removal of foreign troops from the country, after the US' assassination of a top Iranian general and a commander of an Iraqi militia. The non-binding resolution instructs the government to cancel a request for military assistance from the US-led coalition, which was issued in response to the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). With IS supposedly defeated, Iraq will not need foreign troops to fight the jihadists and can close its airspace to coalition aircraft. ..."
"... Speaking at an emergency parliament session on Sunday, Iraq's caretaker PM Adil Abdul Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation. ..."
"... Influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stated in a letter that Iraq should go further and shut down the US embassy. ..."
Iraq's parliament passed a resolution, urged by its caretaker prime minister, calling for
the removal of foreign troops from the country, after the US' assassination of a top Iranian
general and a commander of an Iraqi militia. The non-binding resolution instructs the
government to cancel a request for military assistance from the US-led coalition, which was
issued in response to the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). With IS supposedly
defeated, Iraq will not need foreign troops to fight the jihadists and can close its airspace
to coalition aircraft.
The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil
and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.
According to Press TV, some Western military presence may remain for training purposes. The
resolution says Iraqi military leadership has to report the number of foreign instructors that
are necessary for Iraqi national security.
At the same time, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had turned to the UN Security
Council with complaints about US violations of its sovereignty.
Speaking at an emergency parliament session on Sunday, Iraq's caretaker PM Adil Abdul
Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes
before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to
continue with the operation.
... ... ...
Influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stated in a letter that Iraq should
go further and shut down the US embassy.
Some wondeer whether Isreal will exist in 25-50 year and it might be better emigrants from
Ukraine to move back.
Notable quotes:
"... John Kashis on CNN speaking from Ohio today reminded the host Wolf Blitzer that US under Trump scuttled and undermined a potential thaw in relations between US and Iran with Japan 's Abe mediating the contacts and subsequent meeting despite initially agreeing . Not unbelievable given what was done to NK. by Bolton gang . ..."
"... As for the murder of the late Solaimani, which I have no doubt was primarily driven by Israeli agenda, ..."
@BLJohn
Kashis on CNN speaking from Ohio today reminded the host Wolf Blitzer that US under Trump
scuttled and undermined a potential thaw in relations between US and Iran with Japan 's Abe
mediating the contacts and subsequent meeting despite initially agreeing . Not unbelievable
given what was done to NK. by Bolton gang .
No Trump was not serious He thought he could billow smoke and scare Iranian like he
thought he could Venezuela and NK . Around this time last year this mean man bought and
raised by Zionists was exactly doing same thing to NK hoping they would fold.
Guess what Iran may not have nukes But it wont fold. Trump is psychopath a bully otherwise
he would have raised hell against Israel and against the overt bribing of him by Adelshon.
That is his character . He puffs and huffs . He knows sometimes those puffs might sway a reed
but he doesn't know it won't break or uproot them .
Trump is not honest even by his own standard .Patriotism or White nationalism is the cloak
he wears to hide this defect.
As for the murder of the late Solaimani, which I have no doubt was primarily driven
by Israeli agenda,
In fact, this crime and prompt approval of it by Bibi hurt Israeli interests a lot. This
was Bibi's agenda. Bibi hopes that a war with Iran would save him from a well-deserved prison
sentence. I hope not. He deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life.
"... So far we have aggression by sending of armed bands and irregulars; armed attack on the civilian population; a sneak attack in breach of the Convention relative to the Opening of Hostilities; illegal war propaganda, to wit, fabricated chemical weapons attacks; and murder, a war crime in universal jurisdiction. ..."
"... Now we have one more compounding war crime: perfidy. Using the pretext of parley for ambush. ..."
Add one more war crime to the pile for when the SCO pulls Gina out of the fake rock and puts
her in the glass cage at Nuremberg II.
So far we have aggression by sending of armed bands and irregulars; armed attack on the
civilian population; a sneak attack in breach of the Convention relative to the Opening of
Hostilities; illegal war propaganda, to wit, fabricated chemical weapons attacks; and murder,
a war crime in universal jurisdiction.
Now we have one more compounding war crime: perfidy. Using the pretext of parley for
ambush.
When it's time to decapitate the CIA regime, the victors can really clean house. The US
used the purported Pearl Harbor sneak attack as legal justification for nuking Japan. That's
a handy precedent to have. No doubt there are some decent human beings inside the beltway,
but if Russia or China turn it into a sinkhole of molten basalt, no one will complain. The
USG's a cancer on the world. They've got to be put down like rabid dogs.
Most of the attention in this recent attack by a US drone at the Baghdad Airport has been on
it killing Iranian Quds Force commander, Qasim (Qassem) Solmaini (Suleimani), supposedly
plotting an "imminent" attack on Americans as he flew a commercial airliner to Iraq at the
invitation of its government and passed through passport control.
But much less attention has been paid to the killing in that attack of Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and reportedly an officer in
the Iraqi military, as well as being, according to Juan Cole, a Yazidi Kurd, although the PMF
is identified as being a Shia militia allied with Iran.
The problem here is that supposedly US leaders approved this strike because there were no
Iraqi officials in this group; it was supposedly "clean." But there was al-Muhandis, with his
PMF also allied to a political faction, the Fath, who hold 48 seats in the Iraqi parliament.
The often anti-Iranian Shia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, has now joined with Fath and other groups
to demand a vote in the parliament to order a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
It might be good for them to go, although Trump has just sent in 3,500 more Marines to
protect the US embassy that came under attack and protests after an earlier US attack on
pro-Iranian militias.
As an American who lives abroad, this is just a repainting of the target I've had on my back
for decades, compliments of people who live behind big defence perimeters and are surrounded
by teams of bodyguards.
Many lies (of course) and disinformation, but also clear policy.
Example: "Frankly, this war kicked off – people talk about the war. This war kicked
off when the JCPOA was entered into. It told the Iranians that they had free rein to develop
a Shia crescent that extended from Yemen to Iraq to Syria and into Lebanon, surrounding our
ally, Israel, and threatening American lives as well."
Pompeo refers to being at war with Iran. There has been no declaration of war by either
side.
The so-called Shia crescent is a major regional country developing regional allies,
regardless of the religous makeup of the various countries referred to. The implication is
that USA government will dictate the foreign policy of Middle East countries from Romes
headquarters 7,000 miles away.
It underscore that the policy is based on fear that Israel will be under military pressure
once regional countries have advanced missile systems, presuming that the foreign policy of
Iran is to militarily attack Israel.
USA knows this won't happen, but the occupied territories may well be sent arms by Iran.
Taking, in other words, a page from the USA government playbook, as it does exactly the same
thing. Evidence exhibit #1 = arms to so-called 'opposition' and to religous criminals in
Syria.
Israel is reaching a demographic (and water) crisis. It has no choice but to obey
International law and settle with the Arab population. It has been intransigent,
confrontational and obstructive for years. Now, it will be forcede to negotiate by the
realities of passing time.
Israel would do well to play fair and enter a genuine negotiation on fair terms (not a
one-sided diktat).
Iran would do well to abandon its 'maximum pressure' policy on Israel, recognize its right
to exist behind the Security Council agreed borders, and actively work diplomatically to
arrive at a fair solution.
Another example:
"In October of this year, George, the JCPOA, that nuclear deal, will permit arms trade with
Iran. That's crazy. That's crazy – have missiles and systems – high-end systems,
from China and Russia in Iran lawfully in October."
Pompeo is playing the definition game: 'our missiles = good. Your missiles = bad'.
Every country has a right to defend itself, no exceptions.
Which country has illegally invaded a sovereign country in the Middle East?
Which country illegally bombed the most developed country of the Middle East to a state of
infrastructural destitution?
So the USA foreign policy, it seems, is to prohibit sovereign Iran from developing any
means of defending itself with modern weaponry. Perhaps they will be 'allowed' to have
slingshots to defend themselves against USA government aggression.
The USA will have to change its foreign policy to accomodate new realities in the Middle
East. It's so-called allies, its Middle East NATO is a big fail. No suprise.
If it doesn't want to embrace the Iranian plan for all Gulf members to unites to police
the Gulf, maybe it should join the long-standing Russian effort for a multi-sided
consensus-driven Gulf peace plan.
"... Iran had every right not to renegotiate with US . Deal was deal. Trump could have left and followed the agreements . Instead his masters donors and his Jewish advisers made it sure that they could do through him what they all along wanted -- - ,strangling Iran through more sanctions. . ..."
@BLIran had
every right not to renegotiate with US . Deal was deal. Trump could have left and followed
the agreements . Instead his masters donors and his Jewish advisers made it sure that they
could do through him what they all along wanted -- - ,strangling Iran through more sanctions.
.
Iran didn't provoke unless killing the rebels and ISIS supported by Israel US Saud are
considered as acts of provocations . Unless Iran demanding implementation of JOPA was act of
defiance .
The lies about Iran killing 600 have been laid bare by Scott Horton in http://www.antiwar.com
CNN William Cohen is saying false flag and blamed enough Iran
Most probably Pompeo was cheating and deceived Trump to get the approval of this asssasination. now with his head on the block he
is trying to avoid the responsibility.
Notable quotes:
"... Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said public assurances from the Trump administration that such a threat was "imminent" were simply not enough. ..."
"... Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said on CNN's "State of the Union" that until the administration provides answers on "how this decision was reached ... then this move is questionable , to say the least." ..."
"... "I still worry about whether this president really understands that this is not a show, this is not a game," he said. "Lives are at stake right now." ..."
"... the administration has yet to make public its evidence that Soleimani was acting out of step in comparison with his years of similar planning as a leader in Iran's proxy wars and other covert operations, which have led to U.S. deaths . ..."
Democrats on Sunday demanded answers about the
killing of top Iranian
Gen.
Qassem Soleimani as tensions mounted with Iran and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that the United States had faced an
imminent threat.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on ABC's "This Week" that he worried that President Donald Trump's decision
"will get us into what he calls
another
endless war in the Middle East ." He called for Congress to "assert" its authority and prevent Trump from "either bumbling or
impulsively getting us into a major war."
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said public assurances from the Trump administration that such
a threat was "imminent" were simply not enough.
"I think we learned the hard way ... in the Iraq War that administrations sometimes
manipulate
and cherry-pick intelligence to further their political goals," he said.
"That's what got us into the Iraq War. There was no WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. "I'm saying that they have
an obligation to present the evidence."
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said on CNN's "State of the Union" that until the administration provides
answers on "how this decision was reached ... then
this move is questionable
, to say the least."
"I still worry about whether this president really understands that this is not a show, this is not a game," he said. "Lives
are at stake right now."
The fraught relationship with Iran has significantly deteriorated in the days since Soleimani's death, which came days after rioters
sought to storm the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad and a U.S. contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base
in Kirkuk.
The Defense Department said Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran's secretive Quds Force, who was accused of controlling
Iranian-linked proxy militias across the Middle East, orchestrated the attacks on bases in Iraq of the U.S.-led coalition fighting
the Islamic State militant group, including the strike that killed the U.S. contractor. In addition, the Defense Department said
Soleimani approved attacks on the embassy compound in Baghdad.
"
We
took action last night to stop a war ," Trump said Friday in a televised address, referring to the airstrike that killed Soleimani.
"We did not take action to start a war."
But the administration has yet to make public its evidence that Soleimani was acting out of step in comparison with his years
of similar planning as a leader in Iran's proxy wars and other covert operations,
which have led to U.S. deaths .
Iran and its allies vowed to retaliate for the general's death, and Trump has since escalated his language in response.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
Rival Shi'ite political leaders on Friday called for American troops to be expelled from Iraq
after a U.S. air strike in Baghdad killed a senior Iranian general, in an unusual show of
unity among factions that have squabbled for months.
How can the neocons and chickenhawks justify results like this No, Russia nd China are not
next Because they have nukes ad the means to deliver them. Trump can't even stop
groveling to North Korea.
"... As for the murder of the late Solaimani, which I have no doubt was primarily driven by Israeli agenda, it is creating popular unity in Iran despite all the recent socio-economic turmoil, political unity in Iraq despite the faction fractures, provides the framework for expelling US forces from Iraq, strengthens the Shia Crescent, brings together Shia and Sunni in all of the Muslim world, will provide the opportunity for some traditional US allies (Germany, France) to devise a more independent foreign policy, and the list of unintended consequences goes on. ..."
"... Iran is not like the US, who let Israel murder its citizens in total impunity during 9/11; they will use this adverse event to re-shape the region at their advantage. ..."
@Colin Wright
The way President Trump's ME policy is seen by the people of the region (as summarised by
Hassan Nasrallah) is that his strategies led to utter and complete failure.
– He repudiated the JCPOA and applied sanctions, requiring Iran to beg for
negotiations; they completely ignored him.
– Lebanon's Hezbollah has tremendously improved their military capabilities against the
demented racist state North of Gaza.
– Iraq is breaking free.
– The US-led coalition has lost the war on Syria.
– President Trump has recently made a political somersault and was obliged to initiate
talks with the Talibans, talks he initially repudiated.
– He just further lost credibility by abandoning the US Kurd allies to be slaughtered
by Erdogan.
– The wretched, impoverished, powerless Palestinians have superbly ignored his "Deal of
the Century"; they did not even attend the meetings.
If this is success, I wonder how failure looks like.
As for the murder of the late Solaimani, which I have no doubt was primarily driven by
Israeli agenda, it is creating popular unity in Iran despite all the recent socio-economic
turmoil, political unity in Iraq despite the faction fractures, provides the framework for
expelling US forces from Iraq, strengthens the Shia Crescent, brings together Shia and Sunni
in all of the Muslim world, will provide the opportunity for some traditional US allies
(Germany, France) to devise a more independent foreign policy, and the list of unintended
consequences goes on.
Only short-sighted Hasbara trolsl can think that the Solaimani murder is a success.
Iran is not like the US, who let Israel murder its citizens in total impunity during 9/11;
they will use this adverse event to re-shape the region at their advantage.
Israel is a short-sighted, greedy poker player; Iran is a profound, sophisticated chess
player who will win the long game.
@gotmituns I
think we all know the Orange One who is in the pockets of Jews and Israel First nationalists*
will not actually pull out troops. I have also heard someone on this comments board says the
agreement between the US and Iraq stipulates that the US has 1 year to withdraw if requested
to do so by Iraq, so he will no doubt cite that reason for staying there as long as possible
– which leaves ample time for more Jewish tricks and swindles à la USS Liberty
or Lavon Affair.
The real question is whether or not his room-temperature IQ support base will pick up on
the fact that their man in the White House is only increasing troop presence despite being
told to piss off by the Iraqis, thus laying waste to the myth that Iraqis are begging the US
to stay there. Will this be the broken promise that will finally deprogram the hordes of
MAGAtards and awaken them from their slumber?
Not only Mossad but probably many others would like to see a suicide bomber blow himself
up somewhere in the US killing alot of people. That makes it difficult to figure out who
did it and maybe impossible to figure it out. It would be a mess.
But they could always find an un-scorched Iranian passport in mint condition among the
debris of the explosion.
@ChuckOrloski
At the time I thought that it might be justified, if Al Qaida actually did 9/11. Now I know
that Al Qaida was and is a CIA operation and have my doubts regarding its involvement in
9/11.
Even if it was, that was on direct orders of its American handlers.
What's more, now I
know for sure that the US government spreads shameless lies, so you can't believe anything it
says. In fact, you can safely assume that everything it says is a lie and be right 99.9% of
the time.
So, I did not see it as a war crime back then, but I do now.
"... work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason ..."
"... Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite . I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized . ..."
"... The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation! ..."
First, let’s begin by a quick summary of what has taken place (note: this info is still coming in, so there might be corrections
once the official sources make their official statements).
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran
and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was
on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA .
The Iraqi Parliament has now voted on a resolution requiring the government to press Washington and its allies to withdraw
their troops from Iraq.
Iraq’s caretaker PM Adil Abdul Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes
before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.
The Iraqi Parliament has also demanded that the Iraqi government must “ work to end the presence of any foreign troops
on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason “
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had turned to the UN Security Council with complaints about US violations of
its sovereignty .
Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go
far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite . I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized
.
The Pentagon brass is now laying the responsibility for this monumental disaster on Trump (see
here ). The are now slowly waking up to this immense clusterbleep and don’t want to be held responsible for what is coming
next.
For the first time in the history of Iran, a Red Flag was hoisted over the Holy Dome Of Jamkaran Mosque , Iran. This indicates
that the blood of martyrs has been spilled and that a major battle will now happen . The text in the flag say s “ Oh Hussein we
ask for your help ” (u nofficial translation 1) or “ Rise up and avenge al-Husayn ” (unofficial translation 2)
The US has announced the deployment of 3’000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne to Kuwait .
Finally, the Idiot-in-Chief tweeted the following message , probably to try to reassure his freaked out supporters: “
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!
If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and
without hesitation! “. Apparently, he still thinks that criminally overspending for 2nd rate military hardware is going to
yield victory…
Analysis
Well, my first though when reading these bullet points is that General Qasem Soleimani has already struck out at Uncle Shmuel
from beyond his grave . What we see here is an immense political disaster unfolding like a slow motion train wreck. Make no mistake,
this is not just a tactical "oopsie", but a major STRATEGIC disaster . Why?
For one thing, the US will now become an official and totally illegal military presence in Iraq. This means that whatever SOFA
(Status Of Forces Agreement) the US and Iraq had until now is void.
Second, the US now has two options:
Fight and sink deep into a catastrophic quagmire or Withdraw from Iraq and lose any possibility to keep forces in Syria
Both of these are very bad because whatever option Uncle Shmuel chooses, he will lost whatever tiny level of credibility he has
left, even amongst his putative "allies" (like the KSA which will now be left nose to nose with a much more powerful Iran than ever
before).
The main problem with the current (and very provisional) outcome is that both the Israel Lobby and the Oil Lobby will now be absolutely
outraged and will demand that the US try to use military power to regime change both Iraq and Iran.
Needless to say, that ain't happening (only ignorant and incurable flag-wavers believe the silly claptrap about the US armed forces
being "THE BEST").
Furthermore, it is clear that by it's latest terrorist action the USA has now declared war on BOTH Iraq and Iran.
This is so important that I need to repeat it again:
The USA is now at war, de-facto and de-jure , with BOTH Iraq and Iran.
I hasten to add that the US is also at war with most of the Muslim world (and most definitely all Shias, including Hezbollah and
the Yemeni Houthis).
Next, I want to mention the increase in US troop numbers in the Middle-East. An additional 3'000 soldiers from the 82nd AB is
what would be needed to support evacuations and to provide a reserve force for the Marines already sent in. This is NOWHERE NEAR
the kind of troop numbers the US would need to fight a war with either Iraq or Iran.
Finally, there are some who think that the US will try to invade Iran. Well, with a commander in chief as narcissistically delusional
as Trump, I would never say "never" but, frankly, I don't think that anybody at the Pentagon would be willing to obey such an order.
So no, a ground invasion is not in the cards and, if it ever becomes an realistic option we would first see a massive increase in
the US troop levels, we are talking several tens of thousands, if not more (depending on the actual plan).
No, what the US will do if/when they attack Iran is what Israel did to Lebanon in 2006, but at a much larger scale. They will
begin by a huge number of airstrikes (missiles and aircraft) to hit:
Iranian air defenses Iranian command posts and Iranian civilian and military leaders Symbolic targets (like nuclear installations
and high visibility units like the IRGC) Iranian navy and coastal defenses Crucial civilian infrastructure (power plants, bridges,
hospitals, radio/TV stations, food storage, pharmaceutical installations, schools, historical monuments and, let's not forget that
one, foreign embassies of countries who support Iran). The way this will be justified will be the same as what was done to Serbia:
a "destruction of critical regime infrastructure" (what else is new?!)
Then, within about 24-48 hours the US President will go on air an announce to the world that it is "mission accomplished" and
that "THE BEST" military forces in the galaxy have taught a lesson to the "Mollahs". There will be dances in the streets of Tel Aviv
and Jerusalem (right until the moment the Iranian missiles will start dropping from the sky. At which point the dances will be replaced
by screams about a "2nd Hitler" and the "Holocaust").
Then all hell will break loose (I have discussed that so often in the past that I won't go into details here).
In conclusion, I want to mention something more personal about the people of the US.
Roughly speaking, there are two main groups which I observed during my many years of life in the USA.
Group one : is the TV-watching imbeciles who think that the talking heads on the idiot box actually share real knowledge and expertise.
As a result, their thinking goes along the following lines: " yeah, yeah, say what you want, but if the mollahs make a wrong move,
we will simply nuke them; a few neutron bombs will take care of these sand niggers ". And if asked about the ethics of this stance,
the usual answer is a " f**k them! they messed with the wrong guys, now they will get their asses kicked ".
Group two : is a much quieter group. It includes both people who see themselves as liberals and conservatives. They are totally
horrified and they feel a silent rage against the US political elites. Friends, there are A LOT of US Americans out there who are
truly horrified by what is done in their name and who feel absolutely powerless to do anything about it. I don't know about the young
soldiers who are now being sent to the Middle-East, but I know a lot of former servicemen who know the truth about war and about
THE BEST military in the history of the galaxy and they are also absolutely horrified.
I can't say which group is bigger, but my gut feeling is that Group Two is much bigger than Group One. I might be wrong.
I am now signing off but I will try to update you here as soon as any important info comes in.
The Saker
UPDATE1 : according to the Russian website Colonel
Cassad , Moqtada al-Sadr has officially made the following demands to the Iraqi government:
Immediately break the cooperation agreement with the United States. Close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Close all U.S. military bases
in Iraq. Criminalize any cooperation with the United States. To ensure the protection of Iraqi embassies. Officially boycott American
products.
Cassad (aka Boris Rozhin) also posted this excellent caricature:
UPDATE3 : al-Manar reports that two rockets have landed near the US embassy in Baghdad.
UPDATE4 :
Zerohedge
is reporting that Iranian state TV broadcasted an appeal made during the funeral procession in which a speaker said that each
Iranian ought to send one dollar per person (total 80'000'000 dollars) as a bounty for the killing of Donald Trump. I am trying to
get a confirmation from Iran about this.
UPDATE5 : Russian sources claim that all Iranian rocket forces have been put on combat alert.
UPDATE6 : the Russian heavy rocket cruiser "Marshal Ustinov" has cross the Bosphorus and has entered the Mediterranean.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran
and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was
on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA.
If this is true, it makes America's murder of General Soleimani even more outrageous. This would be like the USA sending an
American regime official to some other country for a negotiation only to have him/her drone striked in the process!
America reveals its malign character as even more sick that even its opponents have thought possible.
Perhaps, Iran should request that Mike Pompeo come to Baghdad for a negotiation about General Soleimani 's murder and then
"bug splat" Pompeo's fat ass from a drone!
"For one thing, the US will now become an official and totally illegal military presence in Iraq. This means that whatever SOFA
(Status Of Forces Agreement) the US and Iraq had until now is void."
-I actually read somewhere that the Iraqi government is just a caretaker government and even thought it voted to remove foreign
forces, it is not actually legally binding.
I'm no lawyer. I don't see why that would matter. If a caretaker government is presented with a crisis, why would it not have
the authority to act?
That said, It could be the line the US government chooses to use to insist its presence is still legal. If course the MSM will
repeat and repeat and make it seem real.
Couldn't agree more. When I read that my jaw dropped and I'm sure my eyes went huge. I just couldn't believe they could be that
stupid, or that immoral, that sunk in utter utter depravity. They truly are those who have not one shred of decency, and thus
have no way of recognising or understanding what decency is. Pure psychopath – an inability to grasp the emotions, values, and
world view of those who are normal. This truly is beyond the pale, and this above everything else will ensure the revenge the
heartbroken people of Iran are seeking. May God bless them.
The US Armed Forces do not need to be 'THE BEST". All they need is mountains of second rate ordinance to re-bury Iraq bury Iran
under rubble. They can then keep their forces in tightly fortified compounds and bomb the c**p out of any one who wants to 'steal
their oil', or any one who wants to 'steal the land promised by God to the Chosen People'. The U.S. has always previously been
limited in their avarice for destruction by their desire to be viewed as the 'good guy'. This limitation has now been stripped
away. There is now nothing to stop the AngloZionist entity except naked force in return.
"realistic option we would first see a massive increase in the US troop levels, we are talking several tens of thousands, if not
more (depending on the actual plan)."
Yes, but these are not part of a single force, many of these are more a target than a threat. Besides, they need to be concentrated
into a a few single forces to actually participate in an invasion.
The Saker
To understand troop size and relevance think along these lines. For every US front line soldier there will be 5 others in support
roles, logistics etc. So for every front line fighting Marine there will be 5 others who got him there and who support him in
his work. 10,000 front line fighting troops means 50,000 troops shipping out to the borders of Iran. I think perhaps you would
need 100,000 US front line troops for an invasion AND occupation (because we all know if they go in they aren't going to leave
quickly) We're talking about half a million US troops, this simply isn't going to happen for multiple reasons, not least they
need to amass at some form of base (probably Iraq – yeah right) maybe Kuwait? They'd just be a constant sitting target. Saker
is correct in that if this goes down it's going to be an air campaign (will the Iranians use the S300s they have?) and possibly
Navy supported. the Israelis will help out but in turn make themselves targets at home for rocket attacks. Again I can't see it
happening, it would take too long to arrange plus from the moment it kicks off every US base, individual is just a target to the
majority of anti US forces spread across the whole middle east. I expect back door diplomacy, probably to little effect, and a
ham fisted token blitz of cruise missiles and drone bombs at Iranian infrastructure, sadly this will not work for the Americans,
we will have a long running campaign on ME ground but also mass terrorist activity across the US and some of its allies. Its a
best guess scenario but if that plays out whatever happens to Iran this war will be another long running death by a 1000 cuts
for the US and will guarantee Trump does not get re-elected.
Whoever sold this to Trump (Bolton via Pompeo? Bibi?) has really lit the touch paper of ruin. Yes it stinks of Netanyahoo but
it also reaks of full strength neocon, Bolton style. Trump is dumb enough to fall for it and obviously did.
1. To read the Colonel Cassad website in English or any other language, just go to
https://translate.yandex.com/ and then paste in the Cassad URL, which
is given above but again, it's https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/
The really nice thing is that when you click on links, Yandex Translate automatically translates those links. Two problems, though.
1. For some unknown reason, Yandex always first translates Cassad as English-to-Russian, and then you have to click on a little
window near the top left, to again request Russian-to-English and then it translates everything fine. I do not experience this
problem when using Yandex on any other website. 2. Unlike what Benders-Lee intended when he invented the web browser, the "back
button" almost doesn't work on Yandex Translate. So always right-click to open links in a new tab.
2. The US could probably carry out a large number of air attacks, but the Iranian response would be to destroy all the Gulf
oil facilities AND everything worth bombing in Israel. This potential for offense is Iran's best defense, and, I think, the main
reason why there hasn't been a war. Iran's air defense missiles are probably more effective than the lying MSM will admit, and
might shoot down a large percentage of the humans and aluminum the US would throw at Iran, but it's a matter of attrition, and
Iran would suffer grave damage. We can't rule out that that might be the plan since the Empire is run by psychopaths. A US Army
elite training manual, from 2012 in Kansas, implied that by 2020, Europe would not be a major power. Perhaps they were thinking
that Europe would go out of business from a lack of Persian Gulf oil.
3. As for a ground war against Iran, I don't think the US or even the US with the former NATO coalition, would have any hope
and they know it. A real invasion force would require at least 250,000 troops, probably 500,000, maybe more. 80 million very determined
and united Iranians, many of whom who don't fear martyrdom, would make the Vietnam War look like a bad picnic with fire ants
. Yes, Vietnam had jungle for guerillas to hide behind, but South Vietnamese society was divided and many supported the Americans.
Iran has no such division. Even the Arab province of Khuzestan would stand united, knowing how the Shiite Arabs are mistreated
in the Eastern Province and in Kuwait.
Count me in as part of group two. As a former U.S. Army service member I can assure anyone reading this that this action is an
historic strategic mistake. What the Saker has outlined above is very likely. There is most probably no way to walk back now.
Who in the ME would negotiate with the U.S. Government? Their perfidy is well known. Many citizen in this country feel like they
are held hostage by a government that doesn't represent their interests or feelings. I hope the people in the ME know this.
Since the folks in the ME know that the US is a "pretend democracy" they also realize that the people of the USA are just as oppressed
by the AngloZionist regime as the people abroad. Frankly, I have traveled on a lot of countries and I have never come across anything
like real hostility towards the US American people. The very same people who hate Uncle Shmuel very much enjoy US music, literature,
movies, novel ideas, etc. I believe that the Empire is truly hated across the globe, but not the people of the USA.
Kind regards
The Saker
As long as people of the USA tolerate their government criminal activities around the world, and this is happening for last 70
years, I don't agree with your comment. These crimes are commited in the name of people of the USA, who are doing nothing to prevent
them. As for movies coming from US, most of them are propaganda about 'exceptional nation'. No thanks.
The United States of America is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. That being said, the fall elections are going
to be of significant interest.
Couldn't agree with you less Saker. They share the spoils of war, generation after generation. From the killing of indigenous
population to neocolonial resource extraction today, they get their cut. You cannot have it both ways, enjoying the spoils of
war and hiding behind invalid rationalizations, pretending you have no-thingz to do with that.
Russian TV says that there were anti-war demonstrations in 80 (!) US cities.
I don't have the time to check whether this is true, but it sure sounds credible to me.
The Saker
This information is true. I personally took part in the march in Denver, Colorado. I would estimate we had about 500 people,
which is a lot more than most anti-war protests have ever gotten in recent memory.
Do not count out the possibility of a sudden large and massive anti-war movement suddenly springing out of nowhere.
Unfortunately, I do not see how "peaceful" protests will accomplish anything on their own. Rioting may be necessary. The system
needs to be shut down and commerce slow to a crawl so that nobody may ignore this.
I agree that there will first be a period of violent confusion, followed by -- well, what sane person even wants to think about
what possible horrors lie ahead?
The threat of one or more spectacular false flag attacks to further fan the flames would also appear to be a possibility.
Real evil has been unleashed, that is clear. The empire has decided to fight, and to fight very dirty.
Wasn't the Saker working in the employ of the US or NATO when they attacked Srbija without cause? Because that was my understanding.
Actually, no. I was working at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.
But thanks for showing everybody how ugly, petty and clueless ad hominem using trolls can be!
The Saker
"I can't say which group is bigger, but my gut feeling is that Group Two is much bigger than Group One. I might be wrong."
My personal observation is unfortunately the opposite. I think the population that is over 40 is probably leans 80% toward
the TV-watching imbecile category with zero critical thinking abilities and exposure to four plus decades of propaganda. The population
under 40 is largely too apathetic to have an opinion and unwilling to engage in research.
History will most likely play out in disaster resulting from a corrupt ruling class, systemic institutional rot, and brain-washed
public not realizing what's happened.
I will hazard a guess and say there are far more men than women in Group 1, and many more draft-age young adults of both sexes
in Group 2.
But by and large a disturbing number of people in America regard world events as being akin to a football game, with Team A
and Team B and a score to be kept. If things don't appear to be going well for their "team," they speak and behave irrationally,
with crass statements like "nuke the whole place and turn it into a glass parking lot." Impressive, isn't it? Grown adults, comporting
themselves like overindulged little children, always accustomed to getting their way – and displaying a terrifying willingness
to set the whole house on fire when they don't.
It is a spiritual illness which pollutes the USA. Terrible things will have to happen before the society can become well, again
Even if only 20% of the population join us, that will be enough. Because guess what? The TV-watching imbeciles are fat, lazy,
and they won't do anything to support the government either, and they definitely aren't brave enough to get in the way of an angry
mob
It's interesting to me, this comment of Sakers'. I have been thinking, with these revelations of the utter depravity and total
lack of what was once called "honour " and treating the enemy with respect, of a few instances which seemed to show me that not
all of America was like this.
There is a scene in the much loved but short lived** TV series "Firefly" in which the rebel "outsider" spaceship Captain offers
a doctor on the run a berth with them. The Doctor says "but you dont like me. You could kill me in my sleep" to which the Captain
replies "Son, you dont know me yet, So let me tell you know, If i ever try to kill you, you will be awake, you will be facing
me, and you will be armed"
Exactly I thought. There is a Code of Honour by which battles used to be fought. This latest by US has shown how low it's Ruling
Regime is, that is doesn't not see that. But from examples like the above, I gathered that there are people in America who still
hold to it closely – and that's good to know.
** Short lived because it showed as it's heroes a group of people who lived outside the Ruling Tyrannical Regime, who had fought
for Independence and lost, and now lived "by their wits" and not always according to law. Not surprising that the rulers of US
weren't going to allow that to go to air!!
Unfortunately I believe the largest group in the USA is the "nuke 'em group". All of my friends watch Fox and none have an understanding
of the empire.
Sake thank you as always for your excellent work. What do you think Iran will attack first?
Thanks Saker for this discussion/information space you provide when nothing is very trustworthy and on what is a holiday week
end for you.
Two points:
Never underestimate the perfidy of the Kurds. They held back on the censure/withdrawal vote in the Iraqi\
parliament and are probably offering withdrawal airport space for US military.
And Agreed, about most Americans being absolutely horrified and ashamed.Even Alex Jones had to put Syrian Girl on and to post
her on video.banned. One of his callers demanded that Alex apologize to his listening audience on "bended knee" for his support
of Trump's attack on Iran. When Alex tried to schmooze
the irate caller -- The man started yelling -- "Who cares, Alex, who cares about Iran my neighbors have no jobs
and are dying from drug overdoses. who cares about Israel? Let them take care of themselves."
Trump has sealed his own fate on many levels and ours her in looneylandia. It is said that a nation gets the leadership it
deserves. We are about to become a nation of the yard-sale.
Whew, this is something to chew on and try to digest. That first point jumped right off the page. General Soleimani was on an
official diplomatic mission, requested by the U.S.! They set him up and were waiting for him to get in his car at the airport
and go onto the road.
The entire world will know there is no way to justify this. It is just as ugly as the public murder of JFK. They have zero credibility
in all they say and do. It will be interesting to see who supports what is coming and who have gotten the message from this murder
and have decided they cannot support this beast.
How many missiles does the us have in the middle east?
How many air defense missiles does have iran?
Does iran have the ability to destroy us airbases to prevent aircraft from attacking iranian territory? That would be my first
move: destroying the ennemy s fighter jets while they are still on the ground.
How many missiles does iran can launch ? How far can they hit?
I think these are important questions if we want to make a good assessment of the situation
Thank you for the continuing courageous, fact-based reporting.
All as-yet-unenslaved-minds of the oppressed people living under the auspices of the empire share the horror of what has happened,
made worse so, for I personally, learning the evil duplicity of the 'fake' diplomacy of the masters of the U.S.A. administration.
If there had been any credibility whatsoever, left for the U.S.A. diplomatic integrity, it is now completely murdered.
I should like to point out, yet again, the perverse obviousness of the utter subordination of the utterly testiclesless
america n ' leadership ' by the affiliates, dually loyal extra-nationals, aligned to the quasi-nation of
pychopathic hatred against humanity.
In spite of, and now increasingly because of, the absurd perception management/propaganda agencies, completely controlled by
this aforementioned affiliation, and their ongoing absurd efforts, people are becoming aware of the ultimate source of the hatred
and agenda we re witnessing in the ME, and indeed, in ever country under the auspices of the empire.
It is becoming impossible to cover, even for the most timid followers of the citizens of empire-controlled nation states.
The war continues against the non-subliminated citizens, and will certainly escalate as the traction of the perception-management
techniques have been pushed way over their best-before date.
Even not wanting to know this, people are becoming aware of it.
I urge all those self-identifying with this affiliation of secretive hatred against humanity to disavow either publicly, or
privately, this collective of hatred.
The recusement of the fifth-column will undermine these machinations.
It is now the time to realize that no promise of superior upward mobility, in exchange for activities supporting the affiliation,
is worth the stark prospect of complete destruction of the biosphere.
Saker: what makes you think it will just be a couple of days of bombing? I would have thought they would set up a no fly zone
then fly over that country permanently blowing the shit out of any military thing on the ground until the gov collapses.
Iran doesn't have the ability to prevent this & running a country under these conditions is impossible.
Set up a no-fly zone over Iran? Iran is well aware of American air-power. They have a multi-layer air defense. And I wouldn't
be surprised that the Iranian's are capable of taking out U.S. satellites.
Iran knows their enemy. They have been preparing for conflict with the U.S. for 40 years. This is a sophisticated, and highly
advanced nation, with brilliant leadership. They understand what their weaknesses are, and what their strengths are.
The wild cards are threefold: Russia. China. North Korea. If one wants to think about the possible asymmetrical capabilities
of those three, let alone the pure power their militaries, it boggles the mind.
Prediction: The U.S. stands down on orders of their own military. People like John Bolton quietly pass away in their sleep.
The only no fly zone to be implemented will be on all american warplanes over Iran and Iraq. Do you remember the multimillion
drone that went down? Multipliy it by hundreds of manned planes. God, how delusional can you be?!!!
You have a fighting force that is a disgrace composed by little girls that start screeming once they get bullets flying over their
heads. You have aircraft battle groups that are sitting ducks waitng to go to the bottom of the sea. Wake up and get your pills,
man!
Paul23, from where will the aircraft take off to implement your "no-fly zone"? Any air base within 2,000 km would be destroyed
by a shower of cruise missiles and possibly drones.
It is Group 1 -- loud, reactionary, extremely vulgar, militant parasites -- which defines the US national character. Exceptional
and indispensable simply mean "entitled to other peoples' natural resources and labour output". Trying to reason with these lowlives
is a waste of time. Putin understands this; hence the new Russian weapons. The latter will be needed very soon.
Americans are a good people but America is one of the most heavily propagandized nations in the world. The media is corrupt.
The educational systems teach a sanitized version of history. But that is only a part of it.
Pro-Military propaganda is everywhere. Even before the Superbowl, jet bombers fly over the stadium – as if Militarism constituted
a basic American value. At Airports, "Military Personnel" are given preferential boarding. At retail stores customers are asked
to make donations to "military families." College football games are dedicated to "Military Appreciation Day." High Schools work
in unison with Military Recruiters to steer students into the Military. Even playground facilities for children that have video
displays display pro military messages. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of this propaganda is paid for out of the obscene military budget. The average citizen doesn't have a chance.
Americans are a good people, if they really knew what was being done in their name, they would put a stop to it.
Militant parasites do live in a world of total lies, deception, and delusion but never at the expense of their survival
instincts. US imperial coercion, mayhem, and murder globally are absolutely crucial to the American way of life, and the 99% know
it. Their living standards would drop enormously without the imperial loot. Thus, they dearly yearn for all the repression, war,
and chauvinism they vote for and more.
One thing is telling, at least for me. Who the f in the right state of mind kills other state's official and then admits of doing
it?!? The common sense sense tells me that you do something and to avoid bigger consequences you stay quet and deny everything.
Just like CIA is doing. Trump just put US military personnel in grave danger. We know how they accused Manning for showing the
to the world US war crimes. They put him in the jail for what Trump just did. But, I cannot believe that they are that much stupid.
If US does not want war, as Trump is saying, they could have done this and then blame someone else because now it has been shown
that they wanted to "talk" to Iran, as Iraqis PM said. At least, US brought new meaning to the word "talk"
The most damaging, no most devestating, assymetrical attack on the US would be a 'non violent' attack.
Let me quickly explain.
It has been well known since the exposure of the man behind the curtain during the great financial crisis of 2007-08 that all
Human operations – all Human life in fact – is financialised in some way.
Some ways being so sophisticated or 'subtle' that barely 1 person in 1000 is even aware, much less capable of understanding
them, much less the financial control grid (and state / deepstate power base) which empoverishs them and enslaves them to an endless
cycle of aquiring and spending 'money'.
Look deeply and the wise will see how 'Human resources' (as opposed to Human Beings) are herded like cattle to be worked on
the farm, 'fleeced', or slaughtered as appropriate to the money masters.
We have been programmed, trained, and conditioned to call 'currency units' (dollar/euro/pound/yuan, etc) 'money', when they
are actually nothing of the sort, they are state or bank issued money substitutes.
In the middle east and north africa some leaders recognised this determined how to escape slavery and subjegation. They attempted
to field this knowledge like an economic-nuke, but without the massive protection required, and they were destroyed by the empire
– Sadam Hussain with his oil for Gold (and oil for Euros) program, and Col. Gadaffi of Libya with his North African 'Gold Dinar'
and 'Silver Durham' Islamic money program.
To cut a very long story short – the evil empire depends upon all nations and peoples excepting thier pieces of paper currency
units as 'real' money – which the empire print / create in unlimited quantities to fund thier war machine and global progrram
of domination.
All financial markets are either denominated or settled in US Dollars (or are at least convertable).
All Nations Central Banks (except Irans I believe) are linked via various US Dollar exchange / liquidity mechanisms, and all
'settle' in US Dollars.
Currently all nations use US controlled electronic banking communications / exchange / tranfer systems (swift being the most
well known).
Would it therefore not make sence to go for the very beating heart of the Beast – the US financial system?
The most powerful attack against the empire would therefore be against this power base – the global reserve currency – the
US dollar – and the US ability to print any quantity of it (or create digits on a screen and call them 'Dollar Units').
It would be pointless trying to fight an emnemy capable of printing for free enough currency to buy every resource (including
peoples lives) – unless that super ability was destroyed or disrupted.
Example of a massive nuclear equivilent attack on the beast would be an internal and major disrruption of interbank electronic
communications (at all levels from cash machine operation and card payment readers up to interbank transfers and federal banking
operations).
Shut down the US banking system and you shut down the US war machine.
Not only that you shut down the US ability to buy resources and bribe powerful leaders – which means they wont be able to recover
from such a blow quickly.
Shutting down banking and electronic payments of all kinds would cause the US people – particularly those currently enjoying
bread and circus distraction and pacification – to tear appart thier own communities, and each other, as the spoiled and gready
fight for the remaining resources, including food and fuel.
The 'grid' has been studied in great depth by both Russia and China (and Israel as part of thier neo-sampson option) and we
can therefore deduce that Iran has some knowledge of how it works and where the weak links are (and not just the undersea optical
cables and wireless nodes).
I, and a thousand other people have always said, the best, perhaps only way to defeat the US and end its reign of terror on
this Earth is to take away its ability to create out of thin air the Worlds global reserve currency – the US Dollar.
Reducing the US to an empoverished 3rd world state by taking its check book away would be a worthy and lasting revenge and
humiliation.
" I, and a thousand other people have always said, the best, perhaps only way to defeat the US and end its reign of terror on
this Earth is to take away its ability to create out of thin air the Worlds global reserve currency – the US Dollar. "
No, the best way would be for each nation to ditch the intertwined, privately ( Rothschild ) controlled central banks, and
to return to printing their own money. Anything, short of that will just perpetuate the same system from a different home base
( nation ), most likely China next. This virus can jump hosts and it will given a chance.
Who knows what will happen, but an actual boots on the ground invasion of Iran will not happen. Iran is not Irak and things have
changed since that war.
US does not have 6 to 12 months to gather it's forces and logistics for an invasion (remember, the election is coming), plus
US no longer has the heavy lift assets to do this. Toss in the fact that Iran is now on a war footing and has allies in the general
AO, hired RoRo's and other logistics and supply assets will be targets before they get anywhere near the ports or beaches to off
load. Plus, you can kiss oil goodbye, Iran will close the straights a nanosecond after the first bomb is in the air.
An air assault such as Serbia will be very expensive, Iran will fight back from the first bomb if not before, and Iran has
a pretty viable air defense system and the missiles to make life miserable for any cluster of troops and logistics within roughly
300 kilometers of the borders if not longer. Look at a map. There is a long border between Iran and Irak, but as such and considering
the terrain, any viable ground attack has to come from Irak territory. With millions of Iraki's seething at what Uncle Sugar just
did and millions of Iranians seething at what Uncle Sugar just did, any invading troops will not be greeted with showers spring
blossoms. To paraphrase a quote, 'You will be safe nowhere, our land will be your grave.'
Toss in the fact that an invasion of Irak, if even half successful, will put American troops on a war footing perilously close
to Russian territory and possibly directly on the Russian Lake, aka Caspian Sea, and sovereign territory of Russia. Won't happen,
VVP will not allow it.
Ergo, in spite of all the bluster and chest beating, at best all Foggy Bottom can do is bomb, bomb some more and bomb again.
The cost in airframes and captured pilots will be a disaster and if RoRo's and other logistic heavy lift assets or bases are hit,
the body bags coming back to Dover will be of numbers that can not be hidden as they are today with explanations that the dead
are victims of training accidents or air accidents.
Foggy Bottom, and Five Points with Langley, have painted themselves in to a corner and unfortunately for them, (and it's within
the realm of possibility that Five Points egged Trump on for this deal regardless of their protestations of innocence and surprise)
they are now in a case of put up or shut up. As a point of honor they will continue down the spiral path of open warfare and war
is like a cow voiding it's watery bowels, it splatters far beyond the intended target.
As my friend said a few years ago, damn you, damn your eyes, damn your souls, damn you back to Satan whose spawn you are. Go
back to your fetid master and leave us in peace.
Never The Last One, paper back edition. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1521849056
A deep look in to Russia, her culture and her Armed Forces, in essence a look at the emergence of Russian Federation.
"UPDATE2: RT is reporting that "One US service member, two contractors killed in Al-Shabaab attack in Kenya, two DoD personnel
injured". Which just goes to prove my point that spontaneous attacks are what we will be seeing first and that the retaliation
promised by Iran will only come later."
Saker, Some of us might be curious to know what your experience with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research informs you about
the imminent Virginia gun bans and confiscations planned for this year and next. Can Empire afford to fight an actual shooting
war on two fronts, one externally against Iraq/Iran and the second internally against its own people, some of whom will paradoxically
be called away to fight on the first front? Perhaps the two conflicts could become conjoined as Uncle Shmuel mislabels every peaceful
gun owner who just wants to be left alone as a foreign enemy-sympathizer and combatant by default, thereby turning brother against
brother in a bloody prolonged hell in the regions immediately around Washington DC? Could the Empire *truly* be that suicidal?
'Mr. Trump, the Gambler! Know that we are near you, in places that don't come to your mind. We are near you in places that you
can't even imagine. We are a nation of martyrdom. We are the nation of Imam Hussein You are well aware of our power and capabilities
in the region. You know how powerful we are in asymmetrical warfare You know that a war would mean the loss of all your capabilities.
You may start the war, but we will be the ones to determine its end '
Gen. Soleimani (2018)
Hello Saker,
I would like to ask you a question.
According to the Russian nuclear doctrine "The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the
use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against itself or its allies and also in response to large-scale aggression
involving conventional weapons in situations that are critical for the national security of the Russian Federation and its allies."
In your opinion does Russia consider Iran such an ally? Will Russia shield Iran against USAn / Israeli nuclear strikes? In case
of an imminent nuclear strike on Iran is Russia (and possibly others) going to issue a nuclear ultimatum to the would-be aggressor?
And in case an actual nuclear attack on Iran happens is Russia going to retaliate / deter further attacks with its own nukes?
What is your opinion?
One thing: please do not start explaining why the above scenario is completely unthinkable, unrealistic and why it would never
ever happen. I need your opinion on the possible events if such an attack does take place or it is about to happen. I do not need
reasons why it would not happen; I need your opinion what might take place if it does happen. If you cannot answer my question,
have no opinion or simply do not want to answer it please let me know it.
In case there is a formal commitment by Russia – one I know not of – when, where was it made?
Thanks in advance.
I think USA still has nuclear option.
They will not hesitate to use it on Iran if Israel is in danger.
So, I think Iran shall be defeated anyway, as USA is much stronger.
Wrong. If the US uses nukes, then this will secure the total victory of Iran.
The Saker
How does this secure a total victory, dear Saker? Please help my to understand this: Nukes on every major city, industrial site,
infrastructure with pos. millions dead – how is this a victory?
I think that if Iran were to launch some devastating missiles into Israel, either a US ship/submarine or Israel will launch a
nuclear bomb into Iran. The US knows there is nothing to be gained by a ground invasion. If we [the US] were to start launching
missiles into Iran, Iran would rightfully be launching sophisticated arms back toward US ships and Israel and the US can't stand
for that. We are good at dishing it out, but lousy at receiving it.
I can only believe we assassinated Solieman [apologies] because it is the writhing of a dying petrodollar. The US is desperate.
But I don't understand how going to war is supposed to help?
"Beijing's ties with Tehran are crucial to its energy and geopolitical strategies, and with Moscow also in the mix, a broader
conflagration is a real possibility"
Last but not least, Happy Nativity to all Orthodox Christians (thanks for the beautifully illustrated Orthodox calendar, The
Saker.)
Let us all pray for peace.
Trump is the King of the South. Killing under a flag of parley is a rare thing these days and is the reason why Trump will end
up going to war with no allies by his side just like the path mapped oit for him in Daniel.
It's not a blunder.
Trump's goals pre-assassination:
1) withdraw US troops from the ME ("Fortress America") and
2) placate Israel
This is how it is done. Not a direct "hey guys, we have to bring the boys home." Trump tried that and got smashed by the Deep
State and Israel. Instead, he is going to force the Islamic world to do the talking for him by refusing to host our pariah army
(that's all they have to do, not destroy a major US base or two). Then even the Deep State will admit it's a lost cause. He can
say he did all he could while achieving his goals.
As The Saker pointed out, the troops being sent now are to evacuate, not to conquer Tehran. Next time this year the US will have
its troops home and Trump will be reelected
Looks like Trump administration buried the Treaty of non-proliferation once and for all. From now on only a country with
nuclear weapons can be viewed as a sovereign country.
Notable quotes:
"... To remind the reader once more, however, none of this would be happening had Iran not abandoned its "nuclear ambiguity" by agreeing to the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal, with that event in hindsight being the tripwire that provoked the American military into wantonly escalating tensions with Iran ..."
"... Because they realized that the maximum costs that the Islamic Republic could inflict on it in response to their actions could be "manageable". ..."
"... The lesson to be learned from all of this is that the possession of nuclear weapons safeguards a country's sovereignty by enabling it to inflict "unmanageable"/"unacceptable" costs on its foes and thus deter their aggression, failing which leaders on both sides can be manipulated into a serious crisis. ..."
Trump is wholly responsible for his own actions, but he -- just like the Ayatollah -- is
being pushed in a direction where it's impossible to back down and still "save face". Neither
men can afford to do so, which makes it likely that a lot more people than just Maj. Gen.
Soleimani might be about to die.
To remind the reader once more, however, none of this would be happening had Iran not
abandoned its "nuclear ambiguity" by agreeing to the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal, with that event
in hindsight being the tripwire that provoked the American military into wantonly escalating
tensions with Iran (despite believing that they're doing so in "self-defense)
Because they realized that the maximum costs that the Islamic Republic could inflict
on it in response to their actions could be "manageable".
The lesson to be learned from all of this is that the possession of nuclear weapons
safeguards a country's sovereignty by enabling it to inflict "unmanageable"/"unacceptable"
costs on its foes and thus deter their aggression, failing which leaders on both sides can be
manipulated into a serious crisis.
"... Bruce E. Levine , a practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, writes and speaks about how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His most recent book is Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person's Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian―Strategies, Tools, and Models (AK Press, September, 2018). His Web site is brucelevine.net ..."
Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously "shit-life syndrome" -- and its resulting
misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.
My state of Ohio is home to many shit-life syndrome sufferers. In the 2016 presidential election ,
Hillary Clinton lost Ohio's 18 electoral votes to Trump. She got clobbered by over 400,000
votes (more than 8%). She lost 80 of Ohio's 88 counties. Trump won rural poorer counties,
several by whopping margins. Trump got the shit-life syndrome vote.
Will Hutton in his 2018 Guardian piece, "
The Bad News is We're Dying Early in Britain – and It's All Down to 'Shit-Life
Syndrome '" describes shit-life syndrome in both Britain and the United States: "Poor
working-age Americans of all races are locked in a cycle of poverty and neglect, amid wider
affluence. They are ill educated and ill trained. The jobs available are drudge work paying the
minimum wage, with minimal or no job security."
The Brookings Institution, in November 2019,
reported : "53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64 -- accounting for 44% of all
workers -- qualify as 'low-wage.' Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual
earnings are about $18,000."
For most of these low-wage workers, Hutton notes: "Finding meaning in life is close to
impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources. Yet turn
on the TV or visit a middle-class shopping mall and a very different and unattainable world
presents itself. Knowing that you are valueless, you resort to drugs, antidepressants and
booze. You eat junk food and watch your ill-treated body balloon. It is not just poverty, but
growing relative poverty in an era of rising inequality, with all its psychological
side-effects, that is the killer."
Shit-life syndrome is not another fictitious illness conjured up by the
psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex to sell psychotropic drugs. It is a reality
created by corporatist rulers and their lackey politicians -- pretending to care about their
minimum-wage-slave constituents, who are trying to survive on 99¢ boxed macaroni and
cheese prepared in carcinogenic water, courtesy of DuPont or some other such low-life
leviathan.
The Cincinnati Enquirer , in November 2019, ran the story: "
Suicide Rate Up 45% in Ohio in Last 11 Years, With a Sharper Spike among the Young ." In
Ohio between 2007 and 2018, the rate of suicide among people 10 to 24 has risen by 56%. The
Ohio Department of Health
reported that suicide is the leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 10‐14 and the
second leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 15‐34, with the suicide rate higher in
poorer, rural counties.
Overall in the United States, "Suicides have increased most sharply in rural communities,
where loss of farming and manufacturing jobs has led to economic declines over the past quarter
century," reports the American Psychological
Association. The U.S. suicide rate has risen 33% from 1999 through 2017 (from 10.5 to 14
suicides per 100,000 people).
In addition to an increasing rate of suicide, drug overdose
deaths rose in the United States from 16,849 in 1999 to 70,237 in 2017, more sharply
increasing in recent years . The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently
reported
that opioids -- mainly synthetic opioids -- were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017
(67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).
Among all states in 2017, Ohio had the second highest rate of drug overdose death (46.3 per
100,000). West Virginia had the highest rate (57.8 per 100,000).
The NPR story was about a study published in JAMA Network Open titled " Association of Chronic
Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016 ," lead authored by
physician James Goodwin. In counties with high rates of opioid use, Trump received 60% of the
vote; but Trump received only 39% of the vote in counties with low opioid use. Opioid use is
prevalent in poor rural counties, as Goodwin reports in his study: "Approximately two-thirds of
the association between opioid rates and presidential voting was explained by socioeconomic
variables."
Goodwin told NPR: "It very well may be that if you're in a county that is dissolving because
of opioids, you're looking around and you're seeing ruin. That can lead to a sense of despair .
. . . You want something different. You want radical change."
Shit-life syndrome sufferers are looking for immediate change, and are receptive to
unconventional politicians.
In 2016, Trump understood that being unconventional, including unconventional obnoxiousness,
can help ratings. So he began his campaign with unconventional serial humiliations of his
fellow Republican candidates to get the nomination; and since then, his unconventionality has
been limited only by his lack of creativity -- relying mostly on the Roy Cohn modeled "Punch
them harder than they punch you" for anyone who disagrees with him.
I talked to Trump voters in 2016, and many of them felt that Trump was not a nice person,
even a jerk, but their fantasy was that he was one of those rich guys with a big ego who needed
to be a hero. Progressives who merely mock this way of thinking rather than create a strategy
to deal with it are going to get four more years of Trump.
The Dems' problem in getting the shit-life syndrome vote in 2020 is that none of their
potential nominees for president are unconventional. In 2016, Bernie Sanders achieved some
degree of unconventionality. His young Sandernistas loved the idea of a curmudgeon
grandfather/eccentric uncle who boldly proclaimed in Brooklynese that he was a "socialist," and
his fans marveled that he was no loser, having in fact charmed Vermonters into electing him to
the U.S. Senate. Moreover, during the 2016 primaries, there were folks here in Ohio who
ultimately voted for Trump but who told me that they liked Bernie -- both Sanders and Trump
appeared unconventional to them.
While Bernie still has fans in 2020, he has done major damage to his "unconventionality
brand." By backing Hillary Clinton in 2016, he resembled every other cowardly politician. I
felt sorry for his Sandernistas, heartbroken after their hero Bernie -- who for most of his
political life had self-identified as an "independent" and a "socialist" -- became a compliant
team player for the corporatist Blue Team that he had spent a career claiming independence
from. If Bernie was terrified in 2016 of risking Ralph Nader's fate of ostracism for defying
the corporatist Blue Team, would he really risk assassination for defying the rich bastards who
own the United States?
So in 2020, this leaves realistic Dems with one strategy. While the Dems cannot provide a
candidate who can viscerally connect with shit-life syndrome sufferers, the Dems can show these
victims that they have been used and betrayed by Trump.
Here in Ohio in counties dominated by shit-life syndrome, the Dems would be wise
not to focus on their candidate but instead pour money into negative advertising,
shaming Trump for making promises that he knew he wouldn't deliver on: Hillary has not been
prosecuted; Mexico has paid for no wall; great manufacturing jobs are not going
to Ohioans ; and most importantly, in their communities, there are now even more suicides,
drug overdose deaths, and grieving families.
You would think a Hollywood Dem could viscerally communicate in 30 seconds: "You fantasized
that this braggart would be your hero, but you discovered he's just another rich asshole
politician out for himself." This strategy will not necessarily get Dems the shit-life syndrome
vote, but will increase the likelihood that these folks stay home on Election Day and not vote
for Trump.
The question is just how clueless are the Dems? Will they convince themselves that shit-life
syndrome sufferers give a shit about Trump's impeachment? Will they convince themselves that
Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg or Warren are so wonderful that shit-life syndrome sufferers will
take them and their campaign promises seriously? Then Trump probably wins again, thanks to both
shit-life syndrome and shit-Dems syndrome. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Bruce E. Levine
"... This switch in US foreign policy was known in the White House of 2007 as "the redirection". It meant that Sunni jihadists like Al-Qaida and later al-Nusra were able to switch back to being valued allies of the United States. It redoubled the slavish tying of US foreign policy to Saudi interests. The axis was completed once Mohammad Bin Salman took control of Saudi Arabia. His predecessors had been coy about their de facto alliance with Israel. MBS felt no shyness about openly promoting Israeli interests, under the cloak of mutual alliance against Iran, calculating quite correctly that Arab street hatred of the Shia outweighed any solidarity with the Palestinians. Common enemies were easy for the USA/Saudi/Israeli alliance to identify; Iran, the Houthi, Assad and of course the Shia Hezbollah, the only military force to have given the Israelis a bloody nose. The Palestinians themselves are predominantly Sunni and their own Hamas was left friendless and isolated. ..."
"... Such precarious balance as there ever was in Iraq was upset this last two months when the US and Israelis transported more of their ISIL Sunni jihadists into Iraq, to escape the pincer of the Turkish, Russian and Syrian government forces. The Iranians were naturally not going to stand for this and Iranian militias were successfully destroying the ISIL remnants, which is why General Qassem Suleimani was in Iraq, why a US mercenary assisting ISIL was killed in an Iranian militia rocket attack, and why Syrian military representatives were being welcomed at Baghdad airport. ..."
"... Nevertheless, Tel Aviv and Riyadh will also be celebrating today at the idea that their dream of the USA destroying their regional rival Iran, as Iraq and Libya were destroyed, is coming closer. The USA could do this. The impact of technology on modern warfare should not be underestimated. There is a great deal of wishful thinking that fantasizes about US military defeat, but it is simply unrealistic if the USA actually opted for full scale invasion. ..."
"... Technology is a far greater factor in warfare than it was in the 1960s. The USA could destroy Iran, but the cost and the ramifications would be enormous, and not only the entire Middle East but much of South Asia would be destabilized, including of course Pakistan. My reading of Trump remains that he is not a crazed Clinton-type war hawk and it will not happen. We all have to pray it does not. ..."
For the United States to abandon proxy warfare
and directly kill one of Iran's most senior political figures has changed international
politics in a fundamental way. It is a massive error. Its ramifications are profound and
complex.
There is also a lesson to be learned here in that this morning there will be excitement and
satisfaction in the palaces of Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Tehran. All of the political
elites will see prospects for gain from the new fluidity. While for ordinary people in all
those countries there is only the certainty of more conflict, death and economic loss, for the
political elite, the arms manufacturers, the military and security services and allied
interests, the hedge funds, speculators and oil companies, there are the sweet smells of cash
and power.
Tehran will be pleased because the USA has just definitively lost Iraq. Iraq has a Shia
majority and so naturally tends to ally with Iran. The only thing preventing that was the Arab
nationalism of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Socialist Party. Bush and Blair were certainly fully
informed that by destroying the BA'ath system they were creating an Iranian/Iraqi nexus, but
they decided that was containable. The "containment" consisted of a deliberate and profound
push across the Middle East to oppose Shia influence in proxy wars everywhere.
This is the root cause of the disastrous war in Yemen, where the Zaidi-Shia would have been
victorious long ago but for the sustained brutal aerial warfare on civilians carried out by the
Western powers through Saudi Arabia. This anti-Shia western policy included the unwavering
support for the Sunni Bahraini autocracy in the brutal suppression of its overwhelmingly Shia
population. And of course it included the sustained and disastrous attempt to overthrow the
Assad regime in Syria and replace it with pro-Saudi Sunni jihadists.
This switch in US foreign policy
was known in the White House of 2007 as "the redirection". It meant that Sunni jihadists like
Al-Qaida and later al-Nusra were able to switch back to being valued allies of the United
States. It redoubled the slavish tying of US foreign policy to Saudi interests. The axis was
completed once Mohammad Bin Salman took control of Saudi Arabia. His predecessors had been coy
about their de facto alliance with Israel. MBS felt no shyness about openly promoting Israeli
interests, under the cloak of mutual alliance against Iran, calculating quite correctly that
Arab street hatred of the Shia outweighed any solidarity with the Palestinians. Common enemies
were easy for the USA/Saudi/Israeli alliance to identify; Iran, the Houthi, Assad and of course
the Shia Hezbollah, the only military force to have given the Israelis a bloody nose. The
Palestinians themselves are predominantly Sunni and their own Hamas was left friendless and
isolated.
The principal difficulty of this policy for the USA of course is Iraq. Having imposed a
rough democracy on Iraq, the governments were always likely to be Shia dominated and highly
susceptible to Iranian influence. The USA had a continuing handle through dwindling occupying
forces and through control of the process which produced the government. They also provided
financial resources to partially restore the physical infrastructure the US and its allies had
themselves destroyed, and of course to fund a near infinite pool of corruption.
That US influence was balanced by strong Iranian aligned militia forces who were an
alternative source of strength to the government of Baghdad, and of course by the fact that the
center of Sunni tribal strength, the city of Falluja, had itself been obliterated by the United
States, three times, in an act of genocide of Iraqi Sunni population.
Through all this the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi had until now tiptoed with great
care. Pro-Iranian yet a long term American client, his government maintained a form of
impartiality based on an open hand to accept massive bribes from anybody. That is now over. He
is pro-Iranian now.
Such precarious balance as there ever was in Iraq was upset this last two months when the US
and Israelis transported more of their ISIL Sunni jihadists into Iraq, to escape the pincer of
the Turkish, Russian and Syrian government forces. The Iranians were naturally not going to
stand for this and Iranian militias were successfully destroying the ISIL remnants, which is
why General Qassem Suleimani was in Iraq, why a US mercenary assisting ISIL was killed in an
Iranian militia rocket attack, and why Syrian military representatives were being welcomed at
Baghdad airport.
It is five years since I was last in the Green Zone in Baghdad, but it is extraordinarily
heavily fortified with military barriers and checks every hundred yards, and there is no way
the crowd could have been allowed to attack the US Embassy without active Iraqi government
collusion. That profound political movement will have been set in stone by the US assassination
of Suleimani. Tehran will now have a grip on Iraq that could prove to be unshakable.
Nevertheless, Tel Aviv and Riyadh will also be celebrating today at the idea that their
dream of the USA destroying their regional rival Iran, as Iraq and Libya were destroyed, is
coming closer. The USA could do this. The impact of technology on modern warfare should not be
underestimated. There is a great deal of wishful thinking that fantasizes about US military
defeat, but it is simply unrealistic if the USA actually opted for full scale invasion.
Technology is a far greater factor in warfare than it was in the 1960s. The USA could destroy
Iran, but the cost and the ramifications would be enormous, and not only the entire Middle East
but much of South Asia would be destabilized, including of course Pakistan. My reading of Trump
remains that he is not a crazed Clinton-type war hawk and it will not happen. We all have to
pray it does not.
There will also today be rejoicing in Washington. There is nothing like an apparently
successful military attack in a US re-election campaign. The Benghazi Embassy disaster left a
deep scar upon the psyche of Trump's support base in particular, and the message that Trump
knows how to show the foreigners not to attack America is going down extremely well where it
counts, whatever wise people on CNN may say.
So what happens now? Consolidating power in Iraq and finishing the destruction of ISIL in
Iraq will be the wise advance that Iranian statesman can practically gain from these events.
But that is, of course, not enough to redeem national honor. Something quick and spectacular is
required for that. It is hard not to believe there must be a very real chance of action being
taken against shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran can do with little prior
preparation. Missile attacks on Saudi Arabia or Israel are also well within Iran's capability,
but it seems more probable that Iran will wish to strike a US target rather than a proxy. An
Ambassador may be assassinated. Further missile strikes against US outposts in Iraq are also
possible. All of these scenarios could very quickly lead to disastrous escalation.
In the short term, Trump in this situation needs either to pull out troops from Iraq or
massively to reinforce them. The UK does not have the latter option, having neither men nor
money, and should remove its 1400 troops now. Whether the "triumph" of killing Suleimani gives
Trump enough political cover for an early pullout – the wise move – I am unsure.
2020 is going to be a very dangerous year indeed.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster, human rights activist, and former diplomat. He
was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the
University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. The article is reprinted with permission from
his website .
"... As is evident from the yellow, green, red and black circles on the map below, which circles outline each missile's striking range, the overwhelming bulk of Iran's missile force has a range of 500 miles or less. These missiles are capable of hitting targets in the immediate vicinity of the Persian Gulf, or roughly the same area which encompasses the 35 military bases designated by American flags in the graphic above. ..."
"... Stated differently, Iran's extremely modest military capacities are not remotely about an offensive threat to the American homeland. They are overwhelmingly about defending itself in its own neighborhood, where Washington has been intervening and occupying with massive firepower and hostile intent for decades. ..."
"... So left to its own devices, Tehran would produce 5 million barrels per day from its abundant reserves. That's barely one-tenth of its present meager output, which is owing to Washington's vicious sanctions against any and all customers for its oil and potential investors in modernizing and expanding it production capacity. ..."
"... So if it's not ISIS or oil, exactly why does Washington maintain the circle of 35 bases displayed in the graphic above and keep thousands of US troops and other personnel in harms' way in the region? ..."
"... The answer, of course, is that the foreign policy apparatus of the US government is controlled by anti-Iran neocons and regime changers. We are still in Syria not to fight ISIS, which is gone, but to block Iran's land route to its allies in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah); and we remain in Iraq solely to use it as a base for clandestine US and Israeli attacks on these allies and proxy forces. ..."
"... Likewise, the US military-industrial complex's greed and appetite for power and pelf is so voracious that it will embrace any and all missions anywhere on the planet – no matter how stupid or futile or immoral, as per the case of 19-years in Afghanistan – that keep the budgetary loot flowing. ..."
"... For crying out loud, Washington has been demonizing, ostracizing and economically attacking Iran for decades, and is now literally attempting to destroy its economy and society through is oil sanctions and its "maximum pressure" campaign that aims to bring the fate of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi to its top leaders in Tehran. ..."
"... That's why Secretary of State Pompeo's statement justifying the Donald's act of naked aggression is so hideous. ..."
"... Washington is putting the entire nation of Iran at risk in the very place where God or evolution, as the case may be, formed the peninsula on which it resides; and it is doing so without any Iranian provocation against the security of the American homeland whatsoever. ..."
"... "I can't talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the President's decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives," Pompeo told CNN. ..."
By the twisted logic of Imperial Washington you could
say the Iranians were asking for it. After all, they had the nerve to locate their country
right in the middle of 35 U.S. military bases!
Then again, your saner angels may ask: What in the hell is Washington doing with a massive
military footprint in a region and in a string of backwater countries that have virtually no
bearing on homeland security, safety and liberty?
In fact, Washington destroyed the former for no good reason and based on egregious Big Lies
about Saddam's nonexistent WMDs and sheltering of al-Qaeda. That turned Iraq into a failed
state hellhole pulsating with sectarian frictions and anti-American grievances – even as
the rump state of Iraq centered in Baghdad fell under the control of Iran-friendly Shiite
politicians and militias.
At the same time, Iran itself is zero threat to the American homeland. It's tiny $350
billion GDP amounts to 6 days of US annual output and its $20 billion defense budget is
equivalent to what the Pentagon wastes every 8 days.
Militarily, it has no blue water navy, an air force that could double as a cold war museum
and a short and medium range missile force that is self-evidently dedicated to defense and
deterrence in the region, not an attack on the USA way over on the yonder side of the deep blue
seas.
Its 300 or so active aircraft, for example, include 175 US F-4, F-5, F-14 and sundry
transports, helicopters and trainers purchased by the Shah during the 1970s and
kept together since the revolution with bailing wire and bubble gum. It also fields 60 or so
Soviet vintage MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su attack aircraft – plus a few dozen European and
Chinese planes of mostly ancient design.
Likewise, even its most advanced medium range cruise missile (Soumar) can barely get to
Rome, Italy, to say nothing of Rome, Georgia.
As is evident from the yellow, green, red and black circles on the map below, which circles
outline each missile's striking range, the overwhelming bulk of Iran's missile force has a
range of 500 miles or less. These missiles are capable of hitting targets in the immediate
vicinity of the Persian Gulf, or roughly the same area which encompasses the 35 military bases
designated by American flags in the graphic above.
Stated differently, Iran's extremely modest military capacities are not remotely about an
offensive threat to the American homeland. They are overwhelmingly about defending itself in
its own neighborhood, where Washington has been intervening and occupying with massive
firepower and hostile intent for decades.
Therein, of course, lies a hint. More than 13 years after Saddam's last hurrah on a Baghdad
gallows, the US still has upwards of 30,000 troops and contractors in the immediate vicinity of
the Persian Gulf. But why?
It can't be owing to ISIS. The Islamic State was never much more than a no count salient of
dusty, woebegone towns and villages on the Upper Euphrates straddling Western Iraq and
northeastern Syria that was destined to collapse on its own barbaric madness anyway; and which
was essentially dispatched by the Russian air force, Assad's military and the Shiite militia
forces organized by the dead man himself, Major General Soleimani.
Likewise, it should be obvious by now that it's not the oil, either. At the moment the US is
producing nearly 13 million barrels per day and is the world's leading oil producer –
well ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia; and is now actually a net exporter of crude for the
first time in three-quarters of a century.
Besides, the Fifth Fleet has never been the solution to oil security. The cure for high
prices is high prices – as the great US shale oil and Canadian heavy oil booms so
cogently demonstrate, among others.
And the route to global oil industry stability is peaceful commerce because virtually every
regime – regardless of politics and ideology – needs all the oil revenue it can
muster to fund its own rule and keep its population reasonably pacified.
Surely, there is no better case for the latter than that of Iran itself – with an
economy burdened by decades of war, sanctions and mis-rule and an 80-million population that
aspires to a western standard of living.
So left to its own devices, Tehran would produce 5 million barrels per day from its abundant
reserves. That's barely one-tenth of its present meager output, which is owing to Washington's
vicious sanctions against any and all customers for its oil and potential investors in
modernizing and expanding it production capacity.
So if it's not ISIS or oil, exactly why does Washington maintain the circle of 35 bases
displayed in the graphic above and keep thousands of US troops and other personnel in harms'
way in the region?
Or more to the moment, why has the Donald been unable to bring the forces home as he has so
often proclaimed to be his policy?
The answer, of course, is that the foreign policy apparatus of the US government is
controlled by anti-Iran neocons and regime changers. We are still in Syria not to fight ISIS,
which is gone, but to block Iran's land route to its allies in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah);
and we remain in Iraq solely to use it as a base for clandestine US and Israeli attacks on
these allies and proxy forces.
These Washington instigated or conducted attacks on Iranian allies, in fact, are why there
was growing pressure in the Iraqi government to demand that the US finally leave. These
pressures will now become overwhelming in light of this week's US bombing of five PMF camps
(Popular Mobilization Forces) which are Shiite militias that have been integrated into the
Iraqi army and which are under the command of its prime minister, and last night's
assassination of their Deputy Commander along with Soleimani.
To be sure, Iran's choice of allies has nothing to do with America's homeland security: None
of the sovereign governments of Lebanon (where Hezbollah is the leading political party) or
Syria or even Iraq (which is an ostensible US ally) have protested these confession (i.e.
Shiite) based arrangements and the aid and benefits which flow from them.
That's because the so-called Shiite crescent is a bogeyman invented by Bibi Netanyahu and is
the excuse for his hysterical anti-Iranian foreign policy. The latter is not even designed to
enhance Israel's own security, but to vilify a "far enemy" that can keep his rightwing
coalition glued together and himself in power.
Likewise, the US military-industrial complex's greed and appetite for power and pelf is so
voracious that it will embrace any and all missions anywhere on the planet – no matter
how stupid or futile or immoral, as per the case of 19-years in Afghanistan – that keep
the budgetary loot flowing.
Accordingly, the Washington apparatus conspires to keep the 35 Mideast bases in place and to
trigger actions like last night's insane assassination of Iran's foremost military leader in
order to reify the threat and to periodically stoke tensions and counterattacks that keep
missions alive and the forces deployed.
Indeed, we are hard-pressed to imagine a more poignant case of the pot calling the kettle
black than Washington's claim that it had to retaliate owing to actual and expected Iranian
"aggression".
For crying out loud, Washington has been demonizing, ostracizing and economically attacking
Iran for decades, and is now literally attempting to destroy its economy and society through is
oil sanctions and its "maximum pressure" campaign that aims to bring the fate of Saddam Hussein
and Muammar Gaddafi to its top leaders in Tehran.
So do ya think a regime under a veritable existential threat might gravitate toward
retaliation as an alternative to extinction?
And we needs be clear about the matter of striking back in self defense. Washington's
current sanctions campaign against Iran is so aggressive and brutal that it constitutes war by
any other name.
When you surround a sovereign nation with an armada of land, sea and air-based high-tech
lethality and than declare outright economic war on it with a barely-disguised aim of regime
change, it must and will fight back however it can.
That's why Secretary of State Pompeo's statement justifying the Donald's act of naked
aggression is so hideous.
Washington is putting the entire nation of Iran at risk in the very place where God or
evolution, as the case may be, formed the peninsula on which it resides; and it is doing so
without any Iranian provocation against the security of the American homeland whatsoever.
But this neocon knucklehead has the gall to insist that when it comes to the actual
anti-Iranian belligerents (i.e. U.S. forces) Washington has bivouacked where they have no
business being at all, that not a hair on their head should come to harm.
That's Imperial arrogance of a kind rarely seen in a world history which is littered with
exactly that.
"I can't talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should
know that the President's decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American
lives," Pompeo told CNN.
The IRGC general had been "actively plotting" in the region to "take big action,
as he described it, that would have put hundreds of lives at risk," according to
Pompeo.
Undoubtedly, things will now spiral out of control because the Iranian regime must and will
retaliate for Soleimani's death. Indeed, by vaporizing the latter, the Donald has now also
vaporized any chance of actually implementing the "America First" policy upon which he ran, and
which was the principal basis for his freakish elevation to the Oval Office.
The fact is, the only decent thing Obama did on the foreign policy front was the Iran Nuke
Deal. Under the latter, Iran gave up a nuclear weapons capability it never had or wanted for
the return of billions of escrowed dollars (which belong to Tehran in the first place), while
putting itself in a straight-jacket of international inspections and controls that even Houdini
could not have broken free from.
But the Donald wantonly shit-canned this arrangement, not because Iran violated either the
letter or spirit of the deal, but because the neocons – led by his bubble-headed
son-in-law and Bibi Netanyahu errand boy, Jared Kushner – blatantly lied to him about its
alleged defects.
Indeed, the resulting Washington pivot to the current "maximum pressure" aggression against
Iran is fast becoming the Empire most demented and shameful hour – even as it crystalizes
like rarely before the difference between homeland defense and imperial aggression.
Under the former, not one American serviceman, contractor or civilian official would be in
harms' way because the ring of hostile bases surrounding Iran would not exist nor would
Washington be waging economic warfare on what would otherwise be a prosperous 5 million barrel
per day oil trade with the world.
Only empires put their citizens needlessly in harms' way and thereby trap their leader's
into a cycle of violence which feeds upon itself.
The Donald is now yet another American president ensnared in the kind of tit-for-tat trap
that is the modus operandi of Empire First.
"... Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle East, but he has now demonstrated very clearly that he is a liar. ..."
"... The shmuck was elected to stop the unnecessary, and criminal, external wars for the Jews and protect the US from the internal Jewish war – through unchecked immigration – on the US citizens. ..."
"... Iran's response will certainly include legal redress, and the honor component of the US wrongful act can be quite adequately handled in state responsibility of satisfaction for internationally wrongful acts. The last couple times CIA faced Iran in the Hague (Oil Platforms and Aerial Incident,) Iran wiped the floor with the third-rate DoS shysters. ..."
"... Since this is so self-evidently disastrous for the US, why would the US civil/military command structure present this as an option? CIA doesn't like Trump – he tweaked them with a feint at ARCA compliance, and mocked their contempt for the national interest in a speech at Langley. ..."
"... Trump's been more insubordinate than any presidential figurehead since Nixon. So why not let him hold the bag for a crime big as the one Nixon got stuck with? CIA made Nixon their helpless patsy for their bombing of neutral Cambodia at great risk of general nuclear war. ..."
"... They purged him with a bill of impeachment that briefly included that crime. CIA never tries anything new, so now they'll make Trump their helpless patsy for murder at great risk of general nuclear war. The absurd existing bill of impeachment can easily incorporate murder as an inchoate crime, Trump's common plan and conspiracy for war, Nuremberg count 1. What does CIA get out of that? By personalizing aggression, CIA gets off the hook. ..."
WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER THE US ASSASSINATION OF QASSEM SOLEIMANI? THE OPTIONS.
The US did not plan to kill the vice commander of the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi brigade Abu
Mahdi al-Muhandes when it assassinated Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani on Thursday
at 11:00 PM local time at Baghdad airport. Usually, when Soleimani was arriving in Baghdad,
security commander Abu Zeinab al-Lami, a deputy officer to al Muhandes, would have welcomed
him. This time, al-Lami was outside Iraq and al-Muhandes replaced him. The US plan was to
assassinate an Iranian General on Iraqi soil, not to kill a high-ranking Iraqi officer. By
killing al-Muhandes, the US violated its treaty obligation to respect the sovereignty of Iraq
and to limit its activity to training and offering intelligence to fight the "Islamic State",
ISIS. It has also violated its commitment to refrain from overflying Iraq without permission
of the Iraqi authorities.
Wow! Own goal! Are "evil" and "incompetent" synonymous?
Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle
East, but he has now demonstrated very clearly that he is a liar.
True, and this mistake puts him firmly in the wastebasket where all other liar-politicians
reside.
The shmuck was elected to stop the unnecessary, and criminal, external wars for the Jews
and protect the US from the internal Jewish war – through unchecked immigration –
on the US citizens.
It's possible to overdo the focus on the personal here. سپاه has a
very deep bench and it's not subject to decapitation. Soleimani's murder will have no more
effect on the command structure than Pompeo's murder would: removing the primus inter pares
of a corps of brilliant strategists smarts a bit; and if the US lost Pompeo, one of many
delusional religious fanatics with community-college level training from a laughingstock
military academy, So what?
This murder is first and foremost an insult, of course. The CIA regime is much more of an
honor culture than Iran because these days the DO is stuffed with lumpen redneck jarheads.
But organizational aspects worldwide will determine the outcome.
Iran's response will certainly include legal redress, and the honor component of the US
wrongful act can be quite adequately handled in state responsibility of satisfaction for
internationally wrongful acts. The last couple times CIA faced Iran in the Hague (Oil
Platforms and Aerial Incident,) Iran wiped the floor with the third-rate DoS shysters.
And
for the first time the US faces Iran without their British dancing boys on the bench –
Britain got kicked off the ICJ bench for arbitrary actions of its own. So that's gonna cost
ya, $$$! The ICC can weigh in propria motu, and should do. Absent efficacious criminal
sanctions, Iran ally China has shown that you can take international criminal law into your
hands quite effectively (ask William Bennett and his wifey!) Iran's status in the SCO is an
additional degree of freedom. If Russia chooses to get involved, it can use its superior
missile technology to control escalation at every level. This is the perfect opportunity for
its doctrine of coercion to peace.
Since this is so self-evidently disastrous for the US, why would the US civil/military
command structure present this as an option? CIA doesn't like Trump – he tweaked them
with a feint at ARCA compliance, and mocked their contempt for the national interest in a
speech at Langley.
Trump's been more insubordinate than any presidential figurehead since
Nixon. So why not let him hold the bag for a crime big as the one Nixon got stuck with? CIA
made Nixon their helpless patsy for their bombing of neutral Cambodia at great risk of
general nuclear war.
They purged him with a bill of impeachment that briefly included that
crime. CIA never tries anything new, so now they'll make Trump their helpless patsy for
murder at great risk of general nuclear war. The absurd existing bill of impeachment can
easily incorporate murder as an inchoate crime, Trump's common plan and conspiracy for war,
Nuremberg count 1. What does CIA get out of that? By personalizing aggression, CIA gets off
the hook.
With the family jewels and inside knowledge of the JFK coup, Nixon graymailed CIA for a
pardon. They won't let Trump get away like that. The current status of international criminal
law requires that heads must roll. Just like Charles Taylor got put away for Israeli state
crimes against peace, the equally disposable Donald Trump will hold the bag for grave CIA
crimes.
To those who assured us there would be no war with Iran:
For the First time in it's History #Iran has Raised
The Red flag, IRAN has issued a terrifying warning to the US as it raised a red flag over
the Holy Dome Jamkarān Mosque as a symbol of a severe battle to come. pic.twitter.com/mnWgmu2eS4
Thanks, C&D. I'm very familiar with the two Alexes of the Duran Report. While I
think they provide very objective reporting on world events, they are also very reluctant
to touch the third rail, the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
Yes, it is far too easy and fashionable to pin it all on the "deep state" without ever
naming the Jew.
Wow! The idiot-in-chief just threatened Iran with bombing their cultural targets.
"Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we
have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many
years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,
and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no
more threats!"
To those who assured us there would be no war with Iran:
I am one of those that did – and I stand by that assertion. Technically, we just
declared war on Iran, however, I expect there to be thousands of skirmishes, but nothing the
equivalent of the Iraq invasion.
If you listen to what Donald Trump said when he was campaigning, you will hear what the
majority of the American people want. Improved relations with Russia, exit from pointless
Middle East conflicts, greatly reduced immigration and a wall on the Southwest border, money
spent on the crumbling US infrastructure etc etc
Unfortunately, what the majority of the American people want matters very little if at
all. It's pretty much the same everywhere "democracy" and "democratic principles" reign.
It's a joke. A sick fucking game.
I don't believe Trump is a bad man. I believe he truly loves this country and it's people.
But he has surrounded himself with and trusted the wrong people from the beginning.
It pains me to say it, but NOTHING will change in this once great nation until there is
either collapse and/or revolution. The Deep State and it's (((Ruling Elite))) will then move
on to another host.
I find it hard to believe that with the history of so many recent false flag operations that
everyone is just assuming what is being presented is actually what happened. I personally
think it all is a little too convenient at this point in time. Israel has wanted a war with
Iran almost forever. While Netanyahu is having a bromance with Donald Trump and getting every
single thing he wants to the point of changing a make America great again to make Israel
great again, I find the whole thing extremely suspicious. It just seems like another War
being started for the benefit of Israel, business as usual.
Iranian Kataib Hezbollah is present in Iraq over the objections of many Arab citizens
(mostly Shia) who resent Persian interference.
So many lies in just one sentence. As always, you spread misinformation with lot of mumbo
jumbo. There is no such thing as Iranian Kataib Hezbollah. Kataib Hezbullah consist of Iraqi
volunteers. They may have been trained by Iran but they are still Iraqis.
You keep calling Khamenei a sociopath. The real sociopath is your hero Netanyahu.
You are one of the group of Zionist agents who are just waiting with canned comments for
the articles to appear. You are so predictable.
And please take that symbol off. By posting it does not make you a peace lover. You are
nothing but a war monger.
Developing- Operation Iran: The Pentagon is Deploying Troops to Saudi Arabia
(Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Rockwell Collins, L3
Engilitycorp mercenaries)
By C. Sorensen:
f'ing bastards .. who's commanding all these strikes?
Well, at least indirectly, according to Pepe Escobar, it is the usual suspects,
Israel/deep state, with a compliant US.
President Donald Trump may have issued the order. The U.S. Deep State may have ordered
him to issue the order. Or the usual suspects may have ordered them all.
According to my best Southwest Asia intel sources, " Israel gave the U.S. the
coordinates for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani as they wanted to avoid the
repercussions of taking the assassination upon themselves."
@A123
Obviously a (((Fellow American))). Remember the Liberty, Hymie. Still trying to destabilize
the ME with your golem. Maybe this time Bibi bit off more than he can chew. The cost of human
life and suffering is no doubt immaterial for a politician desperate to stay in power.. and
out of prison. Once again the Jewish lobby is causing an uproar. Only three things are
certain; death, taxes and Israel getting the US into Middle Eastern wars
How does the US justify carrying out assassinations within the territory of a friendly power
without even obtaining the consent of that power? Don't we at least pretend to respect Iraq's
sovereignty?
@ra And
backing Trump has what purpose? Would he pay your rent if you were laid off? Then he is just
a picture on your wall. Just like jock sniffers idolize apeletes, and masturbaters luvs their
porn performers, political groupies actually imagine that their favorite political crush
gives a shit about them. If one isn't a multimillionaire, then they matter not at all to the
political class. Have to bring something to the party other than bootlicking. There are
plenty of those in higher places than a broke ass
fan. Meanwhile grow the f ** k up. Trump isn't your friend. Unless you're name is Adelson or
Netanyahu anyway
Another striking aspect of all this is that while I suspect doubts about this are very
widespread among the actual people, the mainstream media seem to be all but unanimous in
their approval.
Trump is threatening to attack 52 Iranian cultural sites. He doesn't seem to care that many
of these are world heritage sites and it is a war crime to destroy them.
If @realDonaldTrump hits holy
sites in #Iran , no place
for any American in the world will be safe. It will be an all-ou-war.
In one day, thousands were killed in #Iraq after the
destruction of Zarqawi (like Trump today) destroyed Shia Holy Shrine in Samarra.
@Cloak And
Dagger Perhaps if Russia gave one of these missile to Iran peace would breakout ..lol.
Hypersonic Missiles Are a Game Changer
No existing defenses can stop such weapons -- which is why everyone wants them.
Last week, President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced the deployment of the Avangard,
among the first in a new class of missiles capable of reaching hypersonic velocity --
something no missile can currently achieve, aside from an ICBM during reentry
Such weapons have long been an object of desire by Russian, Chinese and American military
leaders, for obvious reasons: Launched from any of these countries, they could reach any
other within minutes. No existing defenses, in the United States or elsewhere, can intercept
a missile that can move so fast while maneuvering unpredictably.
Whether or not the Avangard can do what Mr. Putin says, the United States is rushing to match
it. We could soon find ourselves in a new arms race as deadly as the Cold War -- and at a
time when the world's arms control efforts look like relics of an inscrutable past and the
effort to renew the most important of them, a new START agreement, is foundering
Giraldi seldom comes up with any new facts to shed light on a situation. He just runs through
the same anti-neocon boilerplate. I agree with his boilerplate, but it's not enough to
justify reading his articles.
I'm not using the term neocons any longer, as the term is a lie, a mask. They are just a
large group of powerful dual citizen Jews many descended from Trotskyites that immigrated
from Russia in the 1930s.
@Bragadocious
Hey, Israeli hasbara, why didn't you read the above article carefully?
The blood of the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis who will die in the next few weeks is
clearly on Donald Trump's hands as this war was never inevitable and served no U.S.
national interest.
One more time for you: this war [with Iran] serves no U.S. national interests. The
only "benefiting" party is the Jewish State, the bloody theocracy of obnoxious supremacists
known for their cowardice and deception. The Epstein nation of Israel.
American veterans kill themselves every day, every hour. None of the dead veterans is
Jewish.
Here is how the usual schema works: First, the zionist scum finds kindred spirits among
the locals; see Cheney the Traitor, greedy Clintons, and the cowardly US brass thirsty for
money and comforts (exhibit one, Donny Rumsfeld). Second, the zionist scum arranges mass
media by putting the eager presstitutes on key positions in the previously honorable papers
and journals (exhibit one, The New Yorker). And voila, the war profiteers unite with Israel
firsters and get free hands to plunder whatever country they want to plunder. On the American
citizenry dime & limb.
It does not take much effort to recognize the extraordinary difference between the piggish
and thoroughly corrupt Bibi and the noble and valiant Soleimani.
@A123 Really?
How stupid can one get? Sir, it would behove all of us to read and understand history. Noone
likes the Ayatollahs but the only reason they are ruling Iran is because of the USA. And
everyone has the right to defend themselves – including the Iranians. Just look at our
behaviour and compare it to a bully. No difference at all!!
Unfortunately, it is very well established in the world that USA has degenerated from being a
good guy to a bully, assassin and a terrorist. We shall reap the whirlwind and the hurricane
. unfortunately it will be the common person who suffers always.
Rumour has it that 52 sites were chosen so that it corresponded to the number of major
Jewish-American organizations in America, lol!
I 'second' that LOL!!!
52 is for the fifty two embassy hostages from 1979. And he said he's going to hit cultural
sites in that 52 number. So you museum curators in Tehran 'watch out!'
On a serious note, I consider myself a patriotic American but I just can't root for my
country in this regard. Honestly it makes me feel bad but following the truth does not always
make you feel good. But it's the right thing to do.
Iran has been 'set up' since Donald got out of the nuclear deal. Tucker Carlson says Iran has
been the target for decades. I can just hope that the kinetic action is brief, loss of
American and Iranian life small and that, as Giraldi predicts, America will finally get out
of there, to the frustration of the Zionists.
But then we have the aforementioned Zionists and their Samson option it never ends.
Until Israel ends
Anti Iran war protest going on in cities , at WH, at Trump Hotels etc..
"The American people have had enough with U.S. wars and are rising up to demand peace with
Iran!" tweeted CodePink, an anti-war group that helped organize the nationwide
demonstrations.
I have found the guy to star in my assassination movie . an Iraq war vet you need to
hear:
From all indications, the Iranian general was a revered man inside and outside Iran.
The arrogant ignorance on this site tweeters between alarming and comedic.
The rank and file MUST gnash their teeth and wail over this terrorist's death. There are
more Secret Police in Iran than the Stasi had. If they don't show grief, their family members
or they will pay the price.
Do you know any Persians? They detest living under a brutal theocracy. They don't care
about Soleimani. They care about their children, jobs and being happy.
They act the fool in the street to mourn his death because it is expected, it's a way to
let off steam and it's social.
Now would be the perfect time for the Mossad to do its false flag shtick. They wouldn't
even have to try very hard to pin it on Iran. I'll bet that when the news came out that the
Iranian guy had been killed, every neocon on the planet popped a boner that will last for
days. Michael Ledeen is probably mazel tov-ing his ass off.
Michael "FASTER PLEASE!" Ledeen? Yes, I don't doubt. And as regards a Mossad false flag:
Giraldi writes that the Iraqi PM will inevitably "ask American forces to leave." THAT should
be the greenest of green lights for Trump to withdraw them from that bottomless hellhole
except who wants them there forevermore?
I don't care about the dead Muslim who got killed, since that's the only kind of "good
Muslim" you're ever going to find, but I would still prefer for the U.S. to get out of the
Middle East altogether. Let those two warring anti-Christ peoples kill each other to their
hearts' content.
Verily. Alas, look for Congress now to reauthorize those thoroughly corrupt FISA courts,
so that honorable American heroes and patriots such as Gums Page and Peter Strzok can thwart
evil Iran terrorists before they perpetrate their dastardly acts against innocent Americans.
Now, remind me of the nationalities of those who committed the 9/11/2001 atrocities
again?
All glory, praise, and honor to Our Lord Jesus Christ -- may He and St Michael ever watch
over those of us redeemed by Him.
@vespasian
Qaani is a Muslim name. Not likely Jewish.
Times of Israel says Qaani was Soleimani's deputy.
Khamenei appointed / anointed Qaani to step into Soleimani's place. Why would Khamenei do
this if he wanted to eradicate Soleimani's style?
Khamenei echoes Achmadinejad's call that "zionism will disappear from the pages of
history." Not a Jewish sentiment.
Pahlavi broke down the ghettoes and hired a lot of Jews, but there is no indication that
Pahlavi was Jewish. His physiognomy is so typically Persian he's practically a caricature of
the breed.
in other words, you're full of crap.
Leave propagandistic mimetics to the cretins who know how to do it.
There's a rumor that part of Israel's Samson option includes nuclear bombs hidden in 25
American cities. Veterans Today has mentioned it several times. Is it true? Maybe. Maybe
someone should find out.
It would end Democrat prattle about presidential elections by popular vote in lieu of
electoral college.
Giraldi is maybe little bit somber here, so I do have to say no.
Irani thinkers know that the affair is just a thick worm on the hook.
They will do what they did before consolidate She_ite power in the Levant to end any
cooperation of states with the great Satan there.
The quote is from a 24 Oct 2004 article "Jews, Israel and America" in the New York
Times by Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman proceeds to criticize the Bush admin for inept
communications in Iraq. One wonders which will be found first: the weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, or the real killers of Ron and Nicole by OJ Simpson.
Once the US began seriously enforcing sanctions on Iranian oil exports, the US effectively
declared war on Iran. Iran has done what it could, but its response has been limited.
After you have already attempted and partially succeeded in wrecking a country's economy,
what does a drone strike add to the situation?
The incident makes very little sense for the US, which is vulnerable in Iraq. Iran is
still under severe economic siege, so not much has really changed there either.
Everyone seems to want this to be a major inflection point, but why would Iran suddenly
become stupid? Maybe Trump has changed, but he has resisted number of attempts to get him to
sign on to military adventures.
News flash: Pence says Suleimani aided the 9/11 highjackers.
Let us see what else can we accuse him of masterminding.
1. Gulf of Tonkin incident
2. Bombing of Laos
3. Sabotaging the space shuttle
4. JFK Assassination
5. And yes, of course, starting the American Civil War.
This guy is nuts and this is what we will get as a result of Trump's impeachment.
2) The issue of #Jerusalem
seems to have been a critical point of Shamrani's anger. His second-most recent of his
tweets (just before his will) was an RT of Trump's December 2017 Jerusalem speech, made
sometime in the last 48 hours. pic.twitter.com/wjP7FMzZXW
A few days after John Bolton was sacked as Trump's national security adviser, Soleimani
humiliated the US by a blatantly Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities, which Pompeo
called an act of war.
Shill better. You people say this over and over, but don't give a logical reason we should
believe it, and why even give us Pompeo's opinion?
The murder of General Qasem Soleimani shows that, nothing on this scale of U.S. violence,
criminality and violation of international law has been seen before, not even in Nazi
Germany. The assassination of two well-known leaders is an act of Terrorism. It was a
cowardice act, because the two leaders were travelling in public. What the US regime gained
from this premeditated murder?
As I stated in several articles, we live under a brutal form of Fascism that has no
equivalent in human history. There are no longer the rules of law and civilised norms. It is
a barbaric, lawless, rogue, terrorising and distinctly global AngloZionist Fascism.
"
COME on, we are waiting for you. We are the real men on the scene, as far as you are
concerned. You know that a war would mean the loss of all your capabilities. You may start
the war, but we will be the ones to determine its end," Qassem Soleimani said in a fiery
July 2018 speech directed at Trump
Not exactly taking the heat out of the situation in which Iran is confronting the world's
most powerful country. A good state has to know its limitations, as Mearsheimer says.
He had flown into to town to attend the funerals of the 26 Iraqi militiamen that we
Americans had killed earlier in the week!
Most interesting. I wonder if those militiamen were maybe killed in the expectation that
he would fly in to attend the funeral.
Really? How stupid can one get? Sir, it would behove all of us to read and understand
history. Noone likes the Ayatollahs but the only reason they are ruling Iran is because of
the USA. And everyone has the right to defend themselves – including the Iranians.
Just look at our behaviour and compare it to a bully. No difference at all!!
Unfortunately, it is very well established in the world that USA has degenerated from being
a good guy to a bully, assassin and a terrorist. We shall reap the whirlwind and the
hurricane . unfortunately it will be the common person who suffers always.
True that the only reason the Ayatollahs are ruling Iran is because of the USA's hatred of
democracy. Though the bull in the china shop grunts about democracy all the time it really
hates democracy. Better to install a single dictator who will take orders, rather than having
to bribe every elected member of a parliament and gamble that that will work.
Degenerated okay. A frightful country of gangster rule, a murderous thug as President,
giant levels or homelessness, giant prices of medicines, giant levels of police killings etc.
etc. and the economic hit-men who caused it to fall apart, crumbled infrastructure because
privatized, want to obey Israhell and pocket the worthless dollar, nothing else.
As an American who lives abroad, this is just a repainting of the target I've had on my
back for decades, compliments of people who live behind big defence perimeters and are
surrounded by teams of bodyguards.
There used to be a simple escape-clause: pretend to be Canadian.
As they've happily jumped on the War Bandwagon as well, that clause is now void.
@Johnny F.
Ive Rita Katz !! The lady who used to upload the vile movies of beheading even before the
Jihadists had uploaded . How come !!!
Israel usually knows when war would start against Libya Syria Iraq and against Iran . How
come!! Israel would claim that war will be soon. What gives!
Rita 's circle was playing same roles the cabal plays in agitating for wars .
Contra Madame Condolezza's (aka. "Condi") affirmation in 2006 that we were witnessing
"the
birth pangs of a New Middle East" when Israel went all Warshaw Ghetto on various pieces
of Palestine, these could be the REAL birth pangs of a New Middle East.
The flag used in the ceremony is called the 'Ya la-Tharat al-Husayn', which dates back
to the late 7th century. It was first raised after the Battle of Karbala in a call to
avenge the death of Imam Husayn ibn Ali, which became one of the key events that led to the
split between Shia and Sunni Islam. It has been reported that the red flag has never been
unfurled atop the Jamkaran (a major holy site since the early Middle Ages) until now.
You know shit is going down when it's getting Game of Thrones out there.
@Meimou It's
also unimportant whether some bureaucrat of the US says that this and that happening far away
is an "act of war" while engaging in acts of war like sanctions, targeted assassination of
lower-rung people, support of "regime change" operations laying waste to whole regions,
bombing of civvies in Yemen, bombing of selected targets all over the Middle East and on and
on.
@Meimou The
Embassy thing might not have been ordered by Soleimani, but the coup of of hitting Saudi oil
facilities would surely have to be authorised by him in his capacity as commander of all
Iranian paramilitary actions abroad. Yet this humiliation of the US forces in and around
Saudi Arabia came days after Trump had sacked Iran's greatest foe in the Administration, John
Bolton.
I think that if the interests of Iran was the objective paramount in Soleimani's mind, the
timing of the attack on Saudi oil facilities was a truly catastrophic failure of
comprehension. Michael Ledeen (Iran's biggest enemy in the US) must have been weeping tears
of gratitude. And that was only one of Soleimanis great mistakes, if fame was not his real
goal.
PATRICK Cockburn noted pro Iranian militia leaders were pointing to 'the failure of Trump
to retaliate after the drone attack on Saudi oil facilities earlier in September that
Washington had blamed on Iran' and a sign that Trunp would avoid a war. Moreover:
[T]here was a small demonstration in central Baghdad demanding jobs, public services and
an end to corruption. The security forces and the pro-Iranian paramilitaries opened fire,
killing and wounding many peaceful demonstrators. Though Qais al-Khazali later claimed that
he and other Hashd leaders were trying to thwart a US-Israeli conspiracy, he had said
nothing to me about it. It seemed likely that General Soleimani, wrongly suspected that the
paltry demonstrations were a real threat and had ordered the pro-Iranian paramilitaries to
open fire and put a plan for suppressing the demonstrations into operation disastrous for
Iranian influence in Iraq. [ ]
General Soleimani died in the wake of his greatest failure and misjudgement
Not only did he strengthen the hand of anti Iran opinion in the White House by making
Trump look stupid, Soleimani's Baghdad massacre of protesting Shiite Arabs was a wedge
in the Iraqi– Iranian Shia alliance. Soleimani acted as if he was controlled by Ledeen,
and yet also worked on the higher plane of US divide and rule grand strategy for the Middle
East a la Kissinger.
I sense desperation from Washington.
What has been accomplished in the middle-east since the 'war on terror' began?
Pick any goal, real or not and evaluate the success from the beginning of the century:
Terrorism down?
Israel safer?
Better access to oil and gas for U.S. companies?
Democracy on the rise?
Stronger strategic position in the region?
Russia and China kept at bay?
Trade opportunities?
Status of the dollar?
Relations to allies in Europe and elsewhere?
All I see is negatives, perhaps someone can enlighten me?
Is it getting better or worse, is time on the U.S. side in this struggle? I can't see it.
If I was running this show I would be desperate too. And perhaps for the people actually
running the show, the biggest problem is how to exit the stage and guard Israel at the same
time.
@geokat62 If
Israel has over 500 nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them (this according to
former President Jimmy Carter), AND Israel has refused ALL inspections by the IAEA , then
this is a legitimate threat to Iran.
The world should see that Iran has a right to defend itself with nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon and White House have been insisting that Iran was behind an alleged Kata'ib
Hezbollah attack on a U.S. installation that then triggered a strike by Washington on
claimed militia targets in Syria and also inside Iraq.
But clearly this attack was much longer in the planning because of the prisoner exchange
between the US and Iran on December 12th ( https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-hopes-prisoner-exchange-will-lead-broader-discussion-iran
). Obviously, that exchange took place in order not to leave any potential hostages in Iran
when the escalation was triggered. All the excuses for the assassination were later tailored
to fit the story as it developed.
Also, there is the State Department and Pompeo's own quote which purports that the attacks
were not in retaliation for something but in order to forestall future attacks (as if this
could ever be justifiable).
What this indicates to me, is that, contrary to the peddled story, a major escalation was
planned, which started with a prisoner exchange, the next step was adopting the Israeli
strategy of using completely disproportionate responses in order to trigger some ever
increasing responses from the Iranians. Stage 1: One rocket attack (probably staged by
US-Israeli secret services); response: 23 soldiers killed by US. Stage 2: embassy protests,
no casualties; response: Soleimani and Iraqui official killed.
Pompeo's excuse that the assassination of Soleimani was not for previous action on the
general's part but in order to prevent some great escalation which he was planning, was more
likely one of the stories they sold each other, Trump, and the public, in order to create
some 'plausible' deniability for the plan. What friggin' criminals!
Not sure why so many commenters engage hasbara clowns like A123. Why engage people who
aren't debating in good faith?
True thoughts and wise words, my friend.
All those hasbara clowns are on my 'Commneters to Ignore' list. They can say
whateva they want [freedom of speech], but I don't have to waste my time reading or
commenting on it.
@TKK Why then
are there large protests from the Persian community in Los Angeles? They don't have to worry
about secret police. Personally I think he was a good man because he helped destroy ISIS.
@jack daniels
I would imagine that, given Giraldi's background and experience, he is more than qualified to
offer his analysis of the circumstances, situation and possible consequences on the topic
under discussion and many people value that.
You don't have to agree at all but making empty comments like that are just a waste of
your time.
Remember the Maine and 9/11 ! The yellow press and Alex Jones are already talking about
Iranian sleeper cells in the US , there will likely be a false flag attack on the "Homeland"
,with civilian casualties ,which will be blamed on Iran , as a result the public will be
propaganized into supporting "decisive" action against Iran .
@Bragadocious
As you well know, Supercilious, Hezbollah was the military force which handed the Israelis
their asses when they tried to invade Lebanon in 2006; Soleimani, being one of the organizers
of that resistance.
Subsequently, Israel used its complete control of its vassal, the US government, in order
to declare them a terrorist organization in 2009. The reason they did it then is the same
reason they want to destroy Iran, is in order to, among other things, have a free hand and
take southern Lebanon and be able to finally keep it.
Wow what an impressive bit of confusion. Giraldi says a big bunch of mistakes have been made
and the end result might be the US withdrawing its troops from over seas bases. In other
words a massive victory for the taxpayers and the rest of the world.
@TKK Crazy
TKK lay in hay & he done obey the Israeli way & thus ge doth say: "They (Persians)
act the fool in the street to mourn his death because it is expected, it's a way to let off
steam and it's social."
@John
Chuckman @123 is spot on. Soeimani and the aye are toller have had this coming for about
2 decades. Did they really think that a full scale attack on a US embassy would go unanswered
after the 2013 Benghazi atrocity?
The 2 main protagonists have been eliminated and so have various minor Iranian minions.
Many others have been arrested by US special forces and are being held.
The Iranians are paralysed because their strategic brain has gone and they have no good
retaliatory options.
If they missile a US warship Donald will destroy their nuclear program. That is his end game.
If they missile Tel Aviv the Israelis will strategically nuke them. The Iranians are shitting
bricks.
@Daniel Rich
Might we assume that the US has the coordinates of every Iranian facility cancerned with
their generational nuclear and missile program and the means to destroy them.
The US has all the good options. The very fact that Iran has done nothing a week after the
base attack and days after Soleimani's removal indicates they are paralysed with fear.
@Daniel Rich
Might we assume that the US has the coordinates of every Iranian facility cancerned with
their generational nuclear and missile program and the means to destroy them.
The US has all the good options. The very fact that Iran has done nothing a week after the
base attack and days after Soleimani's removal indicates they are paralysed with fear.
So who exactly are the blessed? The Christian/Hindoo/ whiteys/blackeys/brownies ? Those
who regularly contort their minds into pretzels trying to comprehend their pagan polytheist
mangods-worshipping faith?
You whitey idiots are such a confused lot that, at a spiritual level, you seem to be
splitting like the amoeba, all the time. It is hilarious, and it is pathetic.
Is that called a blessing in your pagan/godless kind's spiritual dictionary?
Lol!
The Almighty One has blessed us true monotheists with these 4 verses, and much much more.
If we get nothing else, these are enough;
Say, "He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is
born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent." : 112
@TKK Dummy
TKK doth obey the Israeli way, and naturally, he lay down in all wet hay, & he done say:
"They (Persians) act the fool in the street to mourn his (Soleimani's) death because it is
expected, it's a way to let off steam and it's social."
Hey TKK! (Zigh)
Re, above; As you're aware, you are a low rent U.R. hasbarist.
Haha. You stupidly figure guys like me have forgotten the mind-numbing & week long
mourning pageant, extensively covered by ZUS TalmudVision,* for the ultra-Shabbos goy
anti-hero, Senator John McCain, who famously cackled "Bomb, bomb Iran."
* Credit creative geokat for spoton "TalmudVision."
Your use of the word Jew as a pejorative is childish and simple minded. Max Blumenthal is
a Jew .he very much appears to agree with the crux of Giraldi's article. Unz is a Jew, who
allows Giraldi to post articles like the one you are responding to do you hold him in
disdain?
@anon The
most vicious attack against me and my country I've witnessed came at the hands of young
American Jews from NYC. I'd been back for a few years from a combat role in Vietnam and, at a
party in our building where my wife and I were the only non-Jews, a bunch of Jews who'd just
returned from fighting for Israel in some capacity during its '73 war went after me with a
hatred that I can still feel to this day. They were saying that American soldiers suck and
how much better Israelis were in the field. It ended when a woman no less yelled at me, "All
we want is your money." This from supposed Americans. As they like to say, "We
Jews shit on you Christians." If you haven't worked on Wall Street with them, this may seem
academic. The hate is palpable.
I cannot understand how our higher ups bow and scrape before them, except to note the
baked in contradiction of American military leadership -- that those officers who're early on
identified for transfer to some HQ company are so selected because they're generally
order-taking martinets and the antithesis of warrior leaders, becoming in time the perfumed
princes we see paraded like trained poodles before the kosher cameras on TV to sell out their
country for Israel. I offer as proof their willingness to send Americans to do the dying and
suffering so good Israeli boys need not. Can you imagine anything more disgusting than a
putative man complying with crimes against humanity because he's afraid of neocons like Max
Boot or Fiona Hill and then has the gall to call it his sworn, patriotic duty? I can't.
All it need is getting a researchers on Fox and get him or her publish about the trauma
experienced from a distance from the killing of an adversary despite the killing wanted by
the Jews . Wordsmithing can follow New jargon will appear . People with those ideas will be
showcased and promoted to Harvard or Yale or to the Anti semitism society of the US Cabinet (
It is not there but it exists ) . Money will be earmarked to get few extra senate vote or
something like that .
@Daniel Rich
I have to hold my tongue or fear putting myself at risk, but to give you an idea of what I'm
thinking, I wish Iran all the luck in the world.
When those transfer tubes come home, filled with our dead soldiers, killed fighting endless
wars for Wall Street and Israel, will the flag draping the tube be one Made in the USA?
And how much money did Jared K make by shorting certain stocks? He would of known of the
coming murder of the Iranian general, I seriously doubt he would of let a money-making
opportunity like that pass.
The report says Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani three years ago, near
Damascus, but the United States warned the Iranian leadership of the plan, revealing that
Israel was closely tracking the Iranian general.
It was Obama that warned Iran because the US Iran nuclear agreement was in effect and
Israel was trying everything possible to wreck it and just as they are doing now, to goad
Iran into war.
The way to stop Israel is to spill more Jewish blood than they can stand, and there may be
enough Muslims and Arabs willing to die themselves to do that.
Very upset at this news. It is an obvious escalation by the Israeli led USA and puppet Trump.
They have some excellent forms of blackmail going on Trump. He walked into this mess with his
big ego; and they saw him coming and are making the best use of this stupid man.
Our nation has already brought so much shame on itself for attacking the Middle East under
Bush and Obomber. I still have a photo of a little Iraqi boy who was laying in a hospital bed
with no legs or arms, just a head and torso left. He was a victim of USA Bombing (Shock &
Awe) in 2003 Baghdad. He looks at the camera with a look I have never seen before.
I wish all this will go away, but we all know it is about to get worse and all the
Israelis need to get the American population onboard for a new fight is a major False Flag.
So, be vigilant and careful. We have no idea where they will strike and then blame Iran.
To this day I remember Mr. Linh Dinh's saying on Unz Review, to paraphrase; Trump is a shill,
owned by the Jews/Israelis, on top of which they would never allow anyone who wouldn't grovel
before them to be president. He was obviously correct.
Be that as it may. I want war. Only a war in which the paper tiger that is the US gets
itself real bloody nose is there a possibility of ending Jew supremacist's control of my
county.
It is indeed a foolhardy move. I've taken a lot of grief for supporting Trump while always
pointing out his ways of frustrating and stringing the neo-cons along. My one desperate and
perhaps foolish hope is that being foiled in trying to extricate us from Syria, Afghanistan
and Iraq, he has agreed to this act(whether post or pre, and I suspect post) to allow
them(the neo-cons and MIC) enough rope to hang themselves. The Iraqi parliament will
certainly vote to have us leave. If my desperate hope is true, we will do so. If not, at
least it hastens the end of our imperial age, which I would greatly welcome, at best without
nuclear war.
Comments on ZH are mostly negative, so looks like Trump lost an additional part of
independents vote. He might also lost the election, because now impeachment is the most logical
way out of this situation, with Trump servings as a sacrificial lamp for the MIC and neocon (he
was neocon prostitute all his term (MIGA instead of MAGA), so nothing essentially changed)
At the same time, Iran itself is zero threat to the American homeland. It's tiny $350 billion
GDP amounts to 6 days of US annual output and its $20 billion defense budget is equivalent to
what the Pentagon wastes every 8 days.
The most dangerous reaction of Iran now is is that it it can hit any US target. That would be
profoundly stupid. The most dangerious reaction sis that it can quietly develop nuclear
weapons.
The principal difficulty of this policy for the USA of course is Iraq. Having imposed a
rough democracy on Iraq, the governments were always likely to be Shia dominated and highly
susceptible to Iranian influence. The USA had a continuing handle through dwindling occupying
forces and through control of the process which produced the government.
They also provided financial resources to partially restore the physical infrastructure the
US and its allies had themselves destroyed, and of course to fund a near infinite pool of
corruption.
* * *
Unlike his adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat,
the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, Craig's blog has
no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on
voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the
every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. Subscriptions
to keep Craig's blog going are gratefully received .
Trump claims to have evidence of an Iran attack threat, but he won't let Congress or the
American people see it. A president who has lied tens of thousands of times about things
both big and small while in office is now expecting the American people to take his word
for it on Iran.
Defense Officials Say Trump Is Lying About Iran Threat
Although Trump has said he has 52 more targets, its really doubtful he knows what to do
beyond that, if the Iranians retaliate. Then, there is the big problem of the Russian and the
Chinese navies in the region of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The U.S. is not in any winnable
situation, anyway you look at it. They will be forced to deploy more troops and materials to
the Middle East, and the money for all of that will come out of your Social Security checks,
and by reducing other entitlements, like Medicare, they will have to print more
money----meaning, the money you have in hand will be worth less. We had this very same
situation back in 1968-1969 with Vietnam, when the U.S. ran out of money to support the war
there, and we entered into an inflationary period in the early 1970's. We eventually lost
that war, if any one of you recall, and America was far better off then than what it is now.
Simply put, America is in no position to be going to war.
The orange genius is a clueless ignorant moron and like wax in the hand of his hawkish
advisors. With this imbecilic terrorist attack and loudmouth rhetoric afterwards he is now
basically forced to attack Iran whenever something looks like Iranian retaliation. Which is
basically an invitation to Tel Aviv to trigger the war at their discretion. Make Israel great
again!
Saddam Husein was a friend of the United States, fought against Iran, was part of the Bush
family. But when he decided to sell oil not only in dollars but also in euros, his country
was destroyed, and he himself was hanged for dubious reasons. It is dangerous to be an enemy
of the United States, but even more dangerous to be a friend of the United States. The USA is
a colony, since lobbying is not prohibited in the USA, and the fittest mass of lobbyists has
Israeli citizenship. They determine US foreign policy. So you are absolutely right, this is
not a country, it is a cancerous tumor. And she looks disgusting even in comparison with the
Saudis, they at least do not hypocritical in their atrocities.
Will a new bout of slaughter by the not so Great Satan and its vile little Satan be enough
to stop the inevitable civil war reloaded in Slumville when the Wall St Ponzi shitter finally
erupts and blows Trumptard's beautiful Washing town sewer with it?
Iran knows well, like China and Russia, that time is on their side. USSA is the most
bankrupt deadbeat in human history and its Saudi albatross and their collective fiat filth
IOU petroscrip toilet paper dollah can no longer be saved despite the wanton murder, genocide
and ravings of the Pentacon mobsters and their Agent Orange juice.
The so called Green Zone will be burned like Benghazi before it and it will happen when
USSA is least expecting it. Looking at Agent Orange's Soleimani gambit last week simply shows
how frightened the anglozionazi regime has in fact become in light of what these terrorists
call "the facts on the ground" i.e. the ongoing anglozionist war against the ruling Shia
majority inside Iraq. All the "boots on the ground" that USSA can now muster in the region
will only guarantee all the more bodybags that will be needed to ferry their remians back to
Slumville in the coming collap$e of all things USSAN.
In case any resident of Slumville still imagines that hired killer Agent Orange was not
ensnared in his best buddy Jeffrey Pedovore's Maralago Mossad kiddy **** show then why are
Pentacon hired killers from Slumville protecting Soleimani in this photo?
Russia, Russia, Russia, you know Putin's not a stupid. He's sounding very logical and
sane. Perhaps Iran could be the same. Sober sanity is a good thing for people and the
world.
We the people have no control over this. Cheering team A over team B is the preoccupation
of the peanut gallery. The deed has been done. What follows are the consequences. There are
muslim cultural centers all over the United States. We don't know if they are Shia or Sunni.
What we do know is that they have a mutual hatred of Christians. Expect the attacks on
Christians to escalate. Look to your people, their provisions and their security.
This is 40 years plus in the making. When the USA abandoned the Shah (not a nice guy)
during the Carter administration, two significant events occurred.
One, Iran went from a quasi-secular, pro-western nation, to one that in spite of, or
despite the wishes of its population, a vehemently anti-Western, and anti-USA nation, with
heavy religious leanings.
(And make no mistake, Iran has been interfering with, killing, and attacking the USA in
various ways for quite some time)
Two, because we (USA) needed a "player" in the middle east, we turned to the Saudis. Well
Saudi's (Arabs) are not Iranians (Persians), and we learned that, or should have, when a much
younger OBL issued his first "manifesto". (Which had nothing to do with Jews, but everything
to do with the stationing of US troops in the same country as Mecca and Medina)
Iran has a long history of being interfered by western powers (Most notably Britain. Ohhh
Britain). This leads to a duality: one, they can claim (at least until 1953 or so) that they
were being kept down financially by: {INSERT COUNTRY HERE}. There is some truth to that
(again - Britain). However, while claiming they are being kept weak, they can't get out of
their own way when it comes to running their own country. (Ostensibly, pre-1978 the
mercantile class, versus the people, versus the ruling class)
The United States has, in the past 40 years, handled Iran with kid gloves. You may not
like that statement, but when we are warning people to exit Oil platforms to minimize
casualties, I'm not lying. What happens next, militarily? I can't say. But unfortunately, it
will be the Iranian people who will suffer the most.
No matter who we get in the White House, they are always won over by the so-called
"Intelligence" services and the Pentagon. A little bit of kow-towing to them by staff and
others and they forget who they are and why they ran in the first place. In the case of
Trump, Netanyahu is an old friend. So did we ever expect any thing else? The Israelis think
they own us, and Netanyahu has aid so, so did Sharon. As for the end-of-timers, they think
they will be gathered in a cloud and watch while we all suffer nuclear war. With people like
this, who needs enemies?
Kiwikris , January 4, 2020 at 23:38
Pepe, while I respect your work hugely I must disagree with your assertion that Trump is
trapped by Impeachment. The "impeachment", until it's delivered to the Senate is a big fat
nothing. Even if it ever does make it to the Senate, I doubt VERY much if it will come to
anything & I believe Trump is not worried in the slightest. Donations to his re-election
campaign have skyrocketed, Zogbys latest poll (for what they are worth) shows his support up
across the board. And the Republicans control the Senate, not withstanding the potential
turncoat RINOs
Ron Johnson , January 4, 2020 at 18:26
Casey, swing voters will decide everything in 2020. Trump very well might keep his base,
but he could also lose the swing voters who believed him when he said he wanted peace. They
knew Hillary was a war monger, and they hoped for better with Trump. Now Trump has proven
himself to be just as blood thirsty, so that opens the door to anyone who can convincingly
argue that they are for peace, or at least for more restraint.
Robert Emmett , January 4, 2020 at 11:35
A little doggerel for some of those sharp toothed cats out there.
"Yeah, that was that cat alright."
ass faced men (pomp-a-don)
ass ass i' the-nation
passpass yer quid-
pro-quo-tay-shun
murderer had it comin'
screw turns harder
ain't no time
to bicker or to barter
just out of sight
in the dead of night
another screw turns loose
more money gets thrown
off the back of the caboose
run around town with open pockets
while men in hoods pull eyes out they sockets
best keep peepers & peeps at home
seal their names in a golden tome
help those in need act on yer own
ass-faced men are on the loose
Michael , January 4, 2020 at 20:58
"This the way the Roaring, Raging Twenties begin: not with a bang, but with the release of
whimpering dogs of war."
This is very poetic and deeply moving. I hope it will be remembered for the ages.
John Drake , January 4, 2020 at 11:05
Probably not a good time to be an American in the Mideast. I remember during Vietnam when
quite a few American tourists wore Canadian lapel pins abroad.
Trump is so stupid. With over 700 military bases abroad and dependency on Mideast oil he
doesn't understand how incredibly vulnerable US assets are.
This will probably further alienate US' so called allies (vassal states); as their leaders
will realize this is creating a lose-lose scenario. Except Britain which has almost equally,
mentally challenged leadership.
Looking on the bright side, another nail in the coffin of US hegemony is being forged.
And when is Israel going to haul Bibi away in cuffs?
paul , January 4, 2020 at 10:40
Let's see how fond of these murderous antics the Exceptional and Indispensable Folk feel
when the body bags start coming home and the $6 trillion already thrown down the rabbit hole
starts looking like chump change.
Moi , January 4, 2020 at 02:26
What makes the US the enemy of mankind is that, in their foreign policy, they are never
the architects of their own misfortune. Blowback on Americans is always someone else's fault
no matter how ham-fisted their machinations in the lead-up to an event.
Until the exceptionalists can say "mea culpa" of themselves the innocents of this world
will end up paying the price.
Ben Novick , January 4, 2020 at 00:29
Don't underestimate the US. We can annihilate half the world's population in the next
hour, if required.
Zhu , January 4, 2020 at 07:12
What good would that do?
Cornelius Pipe , January 4, 2020 at 07:32
Nope. All you can annihilate is yourselves. Should the US choose to use a nuclear bomb in
a world where nuclear weapons proliferate the US will find out why people in glass houses
should not throw stones. i.e. the US should think long and hard before it swaps Washington
for Tehran.
caseyf5 , January 4, 2020 at 07:36
Hello Ben Novick,
And will in the future!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anthony Shaker , January 4, 2020 at 09:51
I don't know what this inane comment is meant to convey, but perhaps you should ponder
what you just wrote. What is your religion, exactly? There is an intolerable element of evil
in your words. What you are saying also is that, in the end, the US, which is no longer an
island in today's world, is being led by a death wish. Is that the apocalypse that the
howling lunatics of the pseudo-religious Church of Wealth presently unfurling itself on the
Evangelical crowd in America (and now Latin America) are waiting for? Everything the US does
another can do and do with growing efficiency.
Truth first , January 4, 2020 at 11:55
Sheeee!!
Apparently Ben does not realize that the US CANNOT annihilate "half the world's
population" without annihilating half of the US population.
Like a US patriot he is perfectly prepared to kill billions "if required". Only a
psychopath would ever consider killing billions of innocents "if required"
E depois fariam o que ! virariam zumbis 'sobre os escombros .como filmes de mad max.
kgw , January 4, 2020 at 13:51
We? Define "We,", Mr. Novick. I am a native of the U.S., and the only "We" that would act
in such a way are not aware of being human.
Mrs. Debra L. Carr de Legorreta , January 4, 2020 at 14:07
Ben Novick we cannot eliminate half the world's population without eliminating all of
it.
That's the problem. We have no sense of proportionality.
They kill one "contractor" we kill 25 militia members.
They trash one embassy, hurting no one; we murder their top general, murder several other top
officials, and we drone the heck out of a new group of protesters getting on their way to the
same embassy. Totally disproportionate.
Like you, these neocons are overly impressed with their toys and their self-righteousness.
They couldn't stomach brown people desecrating their pretty billion-dollar embassy in
Baghdad.
YOUR way of thinking IS the problem.
Your comments remind me of Hillary Clinton cackling on getting the news that Gaddafi had been
sodomized and murdered.
You proud? Is that what being a "patriot" means to you, that you can murder anyone you
want?
LJ , January 4, 2020 at 17:33
Hey Ben, Learn something. Look up Bomb Carbon. It is going to disappear in a few years so
government funded Scientists are doing a lot of testing and engaging in various kinds of
research trying to make good use of it while the fun lasts. . Bomb Carbon is short for a
radioactive by product of the nuclear explosions that were ended by the early 60's after the
ban on Testing of Nuclear weapons above ground like at Bikini Atoll, Area 51, etc. Now I
guess you think there's a good reason to create a whole lot more bomb carbon. It will be
great . Good for research? We got to keep those guys gainfully employed? We've got to keep
ahead of them damn Ruskies and the Chinese too , the ones that aren't already employed at
MIT, Lawrence Livermore Lab and elsewhere here in the Brigand Nation that assassinates with
impunity without regard to International Law or Borders then lies about it on TV. Well, since
we can't do it to American Indians anymore we got to find new victims?
This was a historic mistake. 650 million Shiites will not ever forget This. This man was a
hero and definitely expected assasination and martyrdom. Read about Twelvers. The Shia Branch
of Islam. Their religion is based on and centers around revering the 11 already martyred
Imans that were assassinated/murdered by unjust powers. I don't make this stuff up. This
plays right into what they believe. No Shiite could side with the USA on this. Not possible .
There are hundreds of millions of them.
This was a stupid decision by stupid men and unless the Democrats are just as stupid they are
going to resist this, come out against a Trump War and Trump is going to lose the election in
a landslide. Americans want No More War despite what the News Media and the Pentagon and yes
the Deep State say.
Trump- LOSER.
geeyp , January 3, 2020 at 23:27
At least where Pepe reports from, he has access to great food for our Last Supper, as some
portray this stupid action from President Trump and the all too eager Pentagon, who is the
only group to generously gain from this. Netanyahu may now think he does and we wouldn't want
him or expect him to think any other way.
Mark Stanley , January 3, 2020 at 19:35
Excellent Pepe, but disturbing
The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Happy New Year? Will Americans really swallow
this treble hook whole again?
I keep wondering how much insider or opportunistic trading goes on. Any one who knew about
this 10 minutes beforehand could simply go long oil, or gold. Quite predictable. The markets
are so volatile nowadays, over reacting to news events. Much of this is due to AI trading
systems that are programmed to react to news, and they get the feeds before anyone else and
react instantly–buy/sell. Deep state creeps certainly made a killing in the markets
today. No brainer there. It would be interesting to check out the volume on various options
and commodities contracts prior to the assassination. The term "elephant tracks" has been
used to identify massive buy/sell orders by unidentified players.
As an old hippy guy, I really thought our world would be a better place by now. Au contrere.
No matter what political system, the sociopaths continue to rise to the top like toxic
scum.
Jeff Harrison , January 3, 2020 at 18:12
I imagine that the Iranians will be able to demonstrate that the the US isn't the only
nation that can assassinate at a distance and I also suspect that Israel will discover a few
dead bodies of their own. I expect that the Iraqis will kick the US out of their country.
They certainly don't want to be the battle field for an Iran/US war either. The real question
will be – what will Russia's and China's response to this be?
Clark M Shanahan , January 3, 2020 at 22:13
I wish that calm heads shall prevail.
BTW: the Saudi's can expect payback, too.
rosemerry , January 4, 2020 at 13:17
There is an agreement between the USA and Iraq about US troops inside Iraq,and this act
has clearly broken it, and if the Iraqis do not kick all the US troops out they will get no
support from anyone. There is NO excuse to treat the government of an "allied, sovereign"
country in such a way, involving Iraqi government forces and militias as well, of course, as
Gen. Suleimani.
karlof1 , January 3, 2020 at 17:54
Wonder what the odds are on Pompeo, Trump, or Esper dying non-violently at some point in
the near future? IMO, Trump also killed his reelection. My other initial and subsequent
comments were made at Moon of Alabama and don't need repeating here. I will post this there
along with a few quotes from Pepe, whose Facebook is also jammed.
caseyf5 , January 4, 2020 at 07:41
Hello karlof1,
I vehemently disagree in your belief that the tRump will lose the 2020 election. His cult
followers think that war with Iran is a great thing!
Tom Kath , January 3, 2020 at 17:53
There can be no clearer DECLARATION OF WAR. Choose your sides and prepare to die
regardless which side you choose.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, right
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons).
Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel's Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian
general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps.
"He knows very well that his assassination is not impossible," Cohen said in an
interview. Soleimani had boasted that the Israel's tried to assassinate him in 2006 and
failed.
"With all due respect to his bluster," Cohen said, "he hasn't necessarily committed the
mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad's assassination
targets."
Soleimani's convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad's airport
amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed
militia had agreed to withdraw
from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a
parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from the country.
The Pentagon confirmed the military operation, which came "at the direction of the
president" and was "aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans." The Pentagon claimed in a
statement that Gen. Soleimani was "actively developing plans to attack American diplomats
and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first
and only national leader to support Trump's action, while claiming that that Trump acted
entirely on his own.
"Just as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same
right," Netanyahu
told reporters in Greece. "Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American
citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general's death, tweeting that
"Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime."
Capable Foe
Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief
of the
Al-Quds force, Soleimani was a master of Iran's asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy
forces to bleed Iran's enemies, while preserving the government's ability to plausibly deny
involvement.
After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched
low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing upward of 600 U.S. servicemen and
generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.
In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to
drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to
Syria's Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran's role in both operations
but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.
Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS
campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and
training. After ISIS was defeated, these militia maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many
resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the
government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.
In the same period, Israel pursued its program of targeted assassination. In the past decade
Mossad
assassinated at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist
Ronen Bergman, in an effort to thwart Iran's nuclear program. Yossi Melman, another Israeli
journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated
60-70 enemies outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent
as Soleimani.
Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United
States did the same on December 29, killing
19 fighters and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian
demonstrations of a month ago.
Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will
deter Iranian attacks is foolish.
"This doesn't mean war," wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, "It
will not lead to war, and it doesn't risk war. None of that.
It
is
war. "
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported a year ago that Washington had given Israel the
green light to assassinate Soleimani . Al-Jarida, which in recent years has broken
exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that "there is an
American-Israeli agreement" that Soleimani is a "threat to the two countries' interests in the
region." It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli
platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.
Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end
America's " stupid endless wars," the
president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with
Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.
This article first appeared on Jefferson Morley's TheDeepStateBlog .
ast Friday, the Iranian-backed militia Kata'ib Hizbollah or KH launched yet another attack
against American forces in Iraq, resulting in the death of one American civilian, and injuries
to four American service members, as well as two of our partners in the Iraqi Security Forces.
This continues a string of attacks against bases with U.S. forces and Iraqi Security Forces. KH
has a strong linkage to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and has received lethal
aid, support, and direction from Iran.
Over the last couple of months Iranian-backed Shia militias have repeatedly attacked bases
hosting American forces in Iraq. These attacks have injured our partners in the Iraqi Security
Forces, but fortunately Americans were not casualties of these attacks until last week. On
November 9th, Iranian-backed Shia militias fired rockets at Q-West Air Base located in
North-West Iraq. On December 3rd, they conducted a rocket attack against Al Asad Air Base, and
on December 5th, they launched rockets against Balad Air Base. Finally, on December 9th, these
same militia groups fired rockets at the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center located on the
Baghdad International Airport. It is clear that these attacks are being directed by the Iranian
regime, specifically IRGC leadership.
In response, U.S. leaders have repeatedly warned the Iranians and their Shia militia proxies
against further provocative actions. At the same time, we have urged the Iraqi government to
take all necessary steps to protect American forces in their country. I personally have spoken
to Iraqi leadership multiple times over recent months, urging them to do more.
After the attack last Friday, at the direction of the President, U.S. forces launched
defensive strikes against KH forces in Iraq and Syria. These attacks were aimed at reducing
KH's ability to launch additional attacks against U.S. personnel and to make it clear to Iran
and Iranian-backed militias that the United States will not hesitate to defend our forces in
the region.
On Tuesday, December 31st, at the instigation of Shia militias, violent rallies of members
of these militias outside the American embassy in Baghdad resulted in damage to exterior entry
facilities and buildings at the embassy compound. We know it was Iranian-backed Shia militias
because key leaders were spotted in the crowd and some militia members showed up wearing their
uniforms and carried the flags of their militia, including KH. We continue to urge the Iraqi
government to prevent further escalation. Leaders of the Iraqi government have condemned the
attack on the U.S. embassy, including the Iraqi president, prime minister, foreign minister,
and speaker of the parliament. Additionally, regional and international partners have condemned
the attacks on U.S. facilities, including Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain in the region, and the
E.U., Germany, France, and others around the globe.
On Tuesday, to ensure the security of the Americans at the embassy in Baghdad, we
immediately deployed Marines from Kuwait who arrived at the embassy in a matter of hours. We
also deployed a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division to ensure that we can provide
additional defensive support to the embassy in Baghdad or elsewhere in the region as
needed.
Let me speak directly to Iran and to our partners and allies. To Iran and its proxy
militias: we will not accept continued attacks against our personnel and forces in the region.
Attacks against us will be met with responses in the time, manner, and place of our choosing.
We urge the Iranian regime to end their malign activities.
To our partners and allies: we must stand together against the malign and destabilizing
actions of Iran. The 81 nations and member organizations of the Defeat ISIS Coalition are in
Iraq and Syria, and cooperating around the globe to defeat ISIS. We have worked closely with
our partners in the Iraqi Security Forces and Syrian Democratic Forces to roll-back the
so-called ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria and liberated millions of Iraqis and Syrians. NATO
nations are also in Iraq to assist with building the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces.
Unlike the Iranians who continue to meddle in Iraq's internal affairs and seek to use
corruption to further Tehran's malign influence, the United States and our allies are committed
to an independent, stable, secure, and sovereign democratic Iraq that addresses the aspirations
and needs of the Iraqi people, who we see protesting for these very things and objecting to
Iran's malign influence. We call on our friends and allies to continue to work together to
reduce Iran's destabilizing influence so Iraq is governed by Iraqis without this interference
in its internal affairs. Mark T. Esper
After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the
death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood
down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow's White House, a dark era in human history came to
an end.
The world had descended into a 77-Year War, incepting with the mobilization of the armies of
old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the
depredations that germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the
march of history into World War II and the Cold War that followed inexorably thereupon.
Upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped out during that span. The toll encompassed the
madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi
totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and Versailles; and then the carnage
of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and
Vietnam.
At the end of the Cold War, therefore, the last embers of the fiery madness that had
incepted with the guns of August 1914 had finally burned out. Peace was at hand. Yet 28 years
later there is still no peace because Imperial Washington confounds it.
In fact, the War Party entrenched in the nation's capital is dedicated to economic interests
and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war. These forces ensure endless waste on
armaments; they cause the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st-century
high-tech warfare; and they inherently generate terrorist blowback from those upon whom the War
Party inflicts its violent hegemony.
Worse still, Washington's great war machine and teeming national security industry is its
own agent of self-perpetuation. When it is not invading, occupying and regime changing, its
vast apparatus of internal policy bureaus and outside contractors, lobbies, think tanks and
NGOs is busy generating reasons for new imperial ventures.
So there was a virulent threat to peace still lurking on the Potomac after the 77-Year War
ended. The great general and President, Dwight Eisenhower, had called it the
"military-industrial complex" in his farewell address. But that memorable phrase had been
abbreviated by his speechwriters, who deleted the word "congressional" in a gesture of comity
to the legislative branch.
So restore Ike's deleted reference to the pork barrels and Sunday-afternoon warriors of
Capitol Hill and toss in the legions of Beltway busybodies who constituted the civilian
branches of the Cold War armada (CIA, State, AID, NED and the rest) and the circle would have
been complete. It constituted the most awesome machine of warfare and imperial hegemony since
the Roman legions bestrode most of the civilized world.
In a word, the real threat to peace circa 1991 was that the American Imperium would not go
away quietly into the good night.
In fact, during the past 28 years Imperial Washington has lost all memory that peace was
ever possible at the end of the Cold War. Today it is as feckless, misguided and bloodthirsty
as were Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London in August 1914.
A few months after that horrendous slaughter had been unleashed 105 years ago, however,
soldiers along the western front broke into spontaneous truces of Christmas celebration,
song and even exchange of gifts . For a brief moment they wondered why they were
juxtaposed in lethal combat along the jaws of hell.
A sudden cold snap had left the battlefield frozen, which was actually a relief for
troops wallowing in sodden mire. Along the Front, troops extracted themselves from their
trenches and dugouts, approaching each other warily, and then eagerly, across No Man's Land.
Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, as were gifts scavenged from care packages sent from
home. German souvenirs that ordinarily would have been obtained only through bloodshed –
such as spiked pickelhaube helmets, or Gott mit uns belt buckles – were bartered for
similar British trinkets. Carols were sung in German, English, and French. A few photographs
were taken of British and German officers standing alongside each other, unarmed, in No Man's
Land.
Near the Ypres salient, Germans and Scotsmen chased after wild hares that, once caught,
served as an unexpected Christmas feast. Perhaps the sudden exertion of chasing wild hares
prompted some of the soldiers to think of having a football match. Then again, little prompting
would have been necessary to inspire young, competitive men – many of whom were English
youth recruited off soccer fields – to stage a match. In any case, numerous accounts in
letters and journals attest to the fact that on Christmas 1914, German and English soldiers
played soccer on the frozen turf of No Man's Land.
British Field Artillery Lieutenant John Wedderburn-Maxwell described the event as
"probably the most extraordinary event of the whole war – a soldier's truce without any
higher sanction by officers and generals ."
The truth is, there was no good reason for the Great War. The world had stumbled into war
based on false narratives and the institutional imperatives of military mobilization plans,
alliances and treaties arrayed into a doomsday machine and petty short-term diplomatic
maneuvers and political calculus. Yet it took more than three-quarters of a century for all the
consequential impacts and evils to be purged from the life of the planet.
The peace that was lost last time has not been regained this time, however, and for the same
reasons. Historians can readily name the culprits from 105 years ago.
These include the German general staff's plan for a lightning mobilization and strike on the
western front called the Schlieffen Plan; the incompetence and intrigue in the court at St.
Petersburg; French President Poincare's anti-German irredentism owing to the 1871 loss of his
home province, Alsace-Lorraine; and the bloodthirsty cabal around Winston Churchill who forced
England into an unnecessary war, among countless others.
Since these casus belli of 1914 were criminally trivial in light of all that metastasized
thereafter, it might do well to name the institutions and false narratives that block the
return of peace today. The fact is, these impediments are even more contemptible than the
forces that crushed the Christmas truces one century ago.
IMPERIAL WASHINGTON – THE NEW GLOBAL MENACE
There is no peace on earth today for reasons mainly rooted in Imperial Washington –
not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Mosul or the rubble of Raqqa. Imperial Washington has
become a global menace owing to what didn't happen in 1991.
At that crucial inflection point, Bush the Elder should have declared "mission accomplished"
and parachuted into the great Ramstein air base in Germany to begin the demobilization of the
America's war machine.
So doing, he could have slashed the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $250 billion (2015
$); demobilized the military-industrial complex by putting a moratorium on all new weapons
development, procurement and export sales; dissolved NATO and dismantled the far-flung network
of U.S. military bases; reduced the United States' standing armed forces from 1.5 million to a
few hundred thousand; and organized and led a world-disarmament and peace campaign, as did his
Republican predecessors during the 1920s.
Unfortunately, George H. W. Bush was not a man of peace, vision or even middling
intelligence.
He was the malleable tool of the War Party, and it was he who single-handedly blew the peace
when, in the very year the 77-Year War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, he plunged
America into a petty argument between the impetuous dictator of Iraq and the gluttonous emir of
Kuwait. But that argument was none of George Bush's or America's business.
By contrast, even though liberal historians have reviled Warren G. Harding as some kind of
dummkopf politician, he well understood that the Great War had been for naught, and that to
ensure it never happened again the nations of the world needed to rid themselves of their huge
navies and standing armies.
To that end, he achieved the largest global-disarmament agreement ever during the Washington
Naval Conference of 1921, which halted the construction of new battleships for more than a
decade. And even then, the moratorium ended only because the vengeful victors at Versailles
never ceased exacting their revenge on Germany.
And while he was at it, President Harding also pardoned Eugene Debs. In so doing, he gave
witness to the truth that the intrepid socialist candidate for president and vehement antiwar
protester, who Wilson had thrown in prison for exercising his First Amendment right to speak
against US entry into a pointless European war, had been right all along.
In short, Warren G. Harding knew the war was over and the folly of Wilson's 1917 plunge into
Europe's bloodbath should not be repeated, at all hazards.
But not George H. W. Bush. The man should never be forgiven for enabling the likes of Dick
Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Gates and their neocon pack of jackals to come to power –
even if he eventually denounced them in his doddering old age.
Alas, upon his death, Bush the Elder was deified, not vilified, by the mainstream press and
the bipartisan duopoly. And that tells you all you need to know about why Washington is
ensnared in its Forever Wars and is the very reason why there is still no peace on earth.
Even more to the point, by opting not for peace but for war and oil in the Persian Gulf in
1991 Washington opened the gates to an unnecessary confrontation with Islam and nurtured the
rise of jihadist terrorism that would not haunt the world today save for forces unleashed by
George H. W. Bush's petulant quarrel with Saddam Hussein.
We will momentarily get to the 45-year-old error that holds the Persian Gulf is an American
lake and that the answer to high oil prices and energy security is the Fifth Fleet.
Suffice it to say here that the answer to high oil prices everywhere and always is
high oil prices – a truth driven home in spades by the oil busts of 2009 and 2015 and the
fact the real price of oil today (2019 $) is lower than it was on the eve of the great oil
embargo of 1973.
But first it is well to remember that in 1991 there was no plausible threat anywhere on the
planet to the safety and security of the citizens of Springfield, MA, Lincoln, NE or Spokane,
WA when the Cold War ended.
The Warsaw Pact had dissolved into more than a dozen woebegone sovereign statelets; the
Soviet Union was now unscrambled into 15 independent and far-flung republics from Belarus to
Tajikistan; and the Russian motherland would soon plunge into an economic depression that would
leave it with a GDP about the size of the Philadelphia MSA.
Likewise, China's GDP was even smaller and more primitive than Russia's. Even as Mr. Deng
was discovering the People's Bank of China's printing press, which would enable it to become a
great mercantilist exporter, an incipient Chinese threat to national security was never in the
cards.
After all, it was the 4,000 Wal-Marts in America upon which the prosperity of the new Red
Capitalism inextricably depended and upon which the rule of the Communist oligarchs in Beijing
was ultimately anchored. Even the hardliners among them could see that in swapping militarism
for mercantilism and invading America with tennis shoes, neckties and home textiles –
that the door had been closed to any other kind of invasion thereafter.
NO ISLAMIC TERRORISTS OR JIHADI THREAT CIRCA 1991
Likewise, in 1991 there was no global Islamic threat or jihadi terrorist menace at all. What
existed under those headings were sundry fragments and deposits of Middle Eastern religious,
ethnic and tribal histories that were of moment in their immediate region, but no threat to
America's homeland security whatsoever.
The Shiite/Sunni divide had coexisted since A.D. 671, but its episodic eruptions into
battles and wars over the centuries had rarely extended beyond the region, and certainly had no
reason to fester into open conflict in 1991.
Inside the artificial state of Iraq, which had been drawn on a map by historically ignorant
European diplomats in 1916, for instance, the Shiite and Sunni got along tolerably. That's
because the nation was ruled by Saddam Hussein's Baathist brand of secular Arab nationalism,
flavored by a muscular propensity for violent repression of internal dissent.
Hussein championed law and order, state-driven economic development and politically
apportioned distributions from the spoils of the extensive government-controlled oil sector. To
be sure, Baathist socialism didn't bring much prosperity to the well-endowed lands of
Mesopotamia, but Hussein did have a Christian foreign minister and no sympathy for religious
extremism or violent pursuit of sectarian causes.
As it happened, the bloody Shiite/Sunni strife that plagues Iraq, Syria and the greater
middle east today and which functioned as a hatchery for angry young jihadi terrorists in their
thousands was initially unleashed only after Hussein had been driven from Kuwait in 1991 and
the CIA had instigated an armed uprising in the Shiite heartland around Basra..
That revolt was brutally suppressed by Hussein's republican guards, but it left an undertow
of resentment and revenge boiling below the surface. That was one of many of George H. W.
Bush's fetid legacies in the region.
Needless to say, when it came their turn, Bush the Younger and his cabal of neocon
warmongers could not leave well enough alone.
When they foolishly destroyed Saddam Hussein and his entire regime in the pursuit of
nonexistent WMDs and alleged ties with al-Qaeda, they literally opened the gates of hell,
leaving Iraq as a lawless failed state where both recent and ancient religious and tribal
animosities were given unlimited violent vent.
WHY THE WAR PARTY NEEDED TO DEMONIZE IRAN
Also circa 1990, the Shiite theocracy ensconced in Tehran was no threat to America's safety
and security – even if it was an unfortunate albatross on the Persian people.
The very idea that Tehran is an expansionist power bent on exporting terrorism to the
rest of the world is a giant fiction and tissue of lies invented by the Washington War Party
and its Bibi Netanyahu branch in order to win political support for their confrontationist
policies.
Indeed, the three-decade-long demonization of Iran has served one overarching purpose.
Namely, it has enabled both branches of the War Party to conjure up a fearsome enemy, thereby
justifying aggressive policies that call for a constant state of war and military
mobilization.
Indeed, Iran has not been demonized by happenstance. When the Cold War officially ended in
1991, the Cheney/neocon cabal feared the kind of drastic demobilization of the US
military-industrial complex that was warranted by the suddenly more pacific strategic
environment.
In response, they developed an anti-Iranian doctrine that was explicitly described as a way
of keeping defense spending at high Cold War levels. If the fearsome Soviet Union was gone, a
vastly inflated threat emanating from Iran's minuscule GDP of $350 billion and tiny defense
budget of $15 billion would needs be invented and hyperbolized.
And the narrative they developed to this end is one of the more egregious Big Lies ever to
come out of the Beltway. It puts you in mind of the young boy who killed his parents, and then
threw himself on the mercy of the courts on the grounds that he was an orphan!
To wit, during the 1980s the neocons in the Reagan Administration issued their own fatwa
against the Islamic Republic of Iran based on its rhetorical hostility to America. Yet that
enmity was grounded in Washington's 25-year support for the tyrannical and illegitimate regime
of the Shah, and constituted a founding narrative of the Islamic Republic that was not much
different than America's revolutionary castigation of King George.
That the Iranians had a case is beyond doubt. The open US archives now prove that the CIA
overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in 1953 and put the utterly unsuited and
megalomaniacal Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne to rule as a puppet on behalf
of US security and oil interests.
During the subsequent decades the Shah not only massively and baldly plundered the wealth of
the Persian nation; with the help of the CIA and US military, he also created a brutal secret
police force known as SAVAK. The latter made the East German Stasi look civilized by
comparison.
All elements of Iranian society including universities, labor unions, businesses, civic
organizations, peasant farmers and many more were subjected to intense surveillance by the
SAVAK agents and paid informants. As one critic described it:
Over the years, Savak became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest,
detain, brutally interrogate and torture suspected people indefinitely. Savak operated its own
prisons in Tehran, such as Qezel-Qalaeh and Evin facilities and many suspected places
throughout the country as well. Many of those activities were carried out without any
institutional checks.
Ironically, among his many grandiose follies, the Shah had embarked on a massive civilian
nuclear-power campaign in the 1970s, which envisioned literally paving the Iranian landscape
with dozens of nuclear power plants.
He would use Iran's surging oil revenues after 1973 to buy all the equipment required from
Western companies – and also fuel-cycle support services such as uranium enrichment
– in order to provide his kingdom with cheap power for centuries.
At the time of the revolution, the first of these plants at Bushehr was nearly complete, but
the whole grandiose project was put on hold amidst the turmoil of the new regime and the onset
of Saddam Hussein's war against Iran in September 1980. As a consequence, a $2 billion
deposit languished at the French nuclear agency that had originally obtained it from the
Shah to fund a ramp-up of its enrichment capacity to supply his planned battery of
reactors.
Indeed, in this very context the new Iranian regime proved quite dramatically that it was
not hell-bent on obtaining nuclear bombs or any other weapons of mass destruction. In the midst
of Iraq's unprovoked invasion of Iran in the early 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa
against biological and chemical weapons.
Yet at that very time, Saddam was dropping these horrific weapons on Iranian battle forces
– some of them barely armed teenage boys – with the spotting help of CIA tracking
satellites and the concurrence of Washington. So from the very beginning, the Iranian posture
was wholly contrary to the War Party's endless blizzard of false charges about its quest for
nukes.
However benighted and medieval its religious views, the theocracy that ruled Iran did not
consist of demented warmongers. In the heat of battle they were willing to sacrifice their own
forces rather than violate their religious scruples to counter Saddam's WMDs.
HOW WASHINGTON INSPIRED THE MYTH OF IRAN'S SECRET NUCLEAR-WEAPONS PROGRAM
Then in 1983 the new Iranian regime decided to complete the Bushehr power plant and some
additional elements of the Shah's grand plan. But when they attempted to reactivate the French
enrichment-services contract and buy necessary power plant equipment from the original German
suppliers they were stopped cold by Washington. And when they tried to get their $2 billion
deposit back, they were curtly denied that, too.
To make a long story short, the entire subsequent history of off-again, on-again efforts by
the Iranians to purchase dual-use equipment and components on the international
market, often from black market sources like Pakistan, was in response to Washington's
relentless efforts to block its legitimate rights as a signatory to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty to complete some parts of the Shah's civilian nuclear project.
Needless to say, it did not take much effort by the neocon "regime change" fanatics that
inhabited Washington's national-security machinery, especially after the 2000 election, to spin
every attempt by Iran to purchase even a lowly pump or pipe fitting as evidence of a secret
campaign to get "the bomb".
The exaggerations, lies, distortions and fear mongering that came out of this neocon
campaign are truly deplorable. Yet they incepted way back in the early 1990s when George H. W.
Bush actually did reach out to the newly elected government of Hashemi Rafsanjani to bury the
hatchet after it had cooperated in obtaining the release of American prisoners being held in
Lebanon in 1989.
Rafsanjani was self-evidently a pragmatist who did not want conflict with the United States
and the West; and after the devastation of the eight-year war with Iraq, he was wholly focused
on economic reconstruction and even free market reforms of Iran's faltering economy.
It is one of the great tragedies of history that the neocons managed to squelch even Bush
the Elder's better instincts with respect to rapprochement with Tehran.
So the prisoner-release opening was short-lived – especially after the top post at the
CIA was assumed in 1991 by the despicable Robert Gates.
He was one of the very worst of the unreconstructed Cold War apparatchiks who looked peace
in the eye, and elected, instead, to pervert John Quincy Adams' wise maxim. That is, Gates
spent the rest of his career searching the globe for monsters to fabricate.
In this case the motivation was especially loathsome. Gates had been Bill Casey's right-hand
man during the latter's rogue tenure at the CIA in the Reagan Administration. Among the many
untoward projects that Gates shepherded was the Iran-Contra affair that nearly destroyed his
career when it blew up, and for which he blamed the Iranians for its public disclosure.
From his post as deputy national-security director in 1989 (and then as CIA head shortly
thereafter), Gates pulled out all the stops to get even. Almost single-handedly he killed off
the White House goodwill from the prisoner release, and launched the blatant myth that Iran was
both sponsoring terrorism and seeking to obtain nuclear weapons.
Indeed, it was Gates who was the architect of the demonization of Iran that became a staple
of War Party propaganda after 1991. In time that morphed into the utterly false claim that Iran
is an aggressive would-be hegemon and a fount of terrorism dedicated to the destruction of the
state of Israel, among other treacherous purposes.
The latter giant lie was almost single-handedly fashioned by the neocons and Bibi
Netanyahu's coterie of power-hungry henchman after the mid-1990s. Indeed, the false claim that
Iran posed an "existential threat" to Israel is a product of the pure red meat domestic Israeli
politics that kept Bibi in power for much of the last two decades – a plague on mankind
that hopefully is finally ending.
But the truth is Iran has only a tiny fraction of Israel's conventional military capability.
And compared to the latter's 200-odd nukes, Iran never even had a nuclear weaponization program
after a small-scale research program was abandoned in 2003.
And that is not our opinion. It was the sober assessment of the nation's top 17 intelligence
agencies in the official National Intelligence Estimates for 2007 , and has been
confirmed ever since.
It's the reason that the neocon plan to bomb Iran at the end of George W. Bush's term didn't
happen. As Dubya confessed in his autobiography, even he couldn't figure out how he could
explain to the American public why he was bombing facilities that all his intelligence agencies
had said did not exist. That is, he would have been impaled on WMD 2.0 on his way out of the
White House.
Moreover, now via a further study arising from the 2015 international nuclear accord –
which would have straitjacketed even Iran's civilian program and eliminated most of its
enriched-uranium stockpiles and spinning capacity had not the Donald foolishly shit-canned it
– the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also confirmed that Iran had no
secret nuclear-weapons program after 2003.
The whole scary bedtime story was false War Party propaganda manufactured from whole
cloth.
MORE WAR PARTY LIES – DEMONIZATION OF THE SHIITE CRESCENT
In this context, the War Party's bloviating about Iran's leadership of the so-called Shiite
Crescent is another component of Imperial Washington's 28-year-long roadblock to peace. Iran
wasn't a threat to American security in 1991, and since then it has never organized a hostile
coalition of terrorists that requires Washington's intervention.
Start with Iran's long-standing support of Bashir Assad's government in Syria. That alliance
goes back to his father's era and is rooted in the historic confessional politics of the
Islamic world.
The Assad regime is Alawite, a branch of the Shiites, and despite the regime's brutality, it
has been a bulwark of protection for all of Syria's minority sects, including Christians,
against a majority-Sunni ethnic cleansing. The latter would surely occur if US and
Saudi-supported rebels, led by the Nusra Front and ISIS, had been permitted to take full
power.
Likewise, the fact that the Baghdad government of the broken state of Iraq – that is,
the artificial 1916 concoction of two striped-pants European diplomats (Messrs. Sykes and Picot
of the British and French foreign offices, respectively) – is now aligned with Iran is
also a result of confessional politics and geo-economic propinquity.
For all practical purposes, Iraq has been partitioned. The Kurds of the Northeast have
declared their independence and have been collecting their own oil revenue for the past few
years and operating their own security forces.
And the western Sunni lands of the upper Euphrates, of course, were first conquered by ISIS
with American weapons dropped in place by the hapless $25 billion Iraqi army minted by
Washington's departing proconsuls; and then obliterated during Obama's vicious bombing and
droning campaign designed to uproot the terrorist evil that Washington itself had spawned.
Accordingly, what is left of the rump state of Iraq is a population that is overwhelmingly
Shiite and nurses bitter resentments after two decades of violent conflict with the Sunni
forces. Why in the world, therefore, wouldn't they ally with their Shiite neighbor?
Likewise, the claim that Iran is now trying to annex Yemen, thereby justifying the sheer
genocide wreaked upon it by the Saudi air war, is pure claptrap. The ancient territory of Yemen
had been racked by civil war off and on since the early 1970s. And a major driving force of
that conflict has been confessional differences between the Sunni South and the Shiite
North.
In more recent times, Washington's blatant drone war inside Yemen against alleged terrorists
and its domination and financing of Yemen's government eventually produced the same old outcome
– that is, another failed state and an illegitimate government that fled at the 11th
hour, leaving another vast cache of American arms and equipment behind.
Accordingly, the Houthis forces now in control of substantial parts of the country are not
some kind of advanced guard sent in by Tehran. They are indigenous partisans who share a
confessional tie with Iran, but who have actually been armed, if inadvertently, by
Washington.
Finally, there is the fourth element of the purported Iranian axis – the
Hezbollah-controlled Shiite communities of southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley in the
northeast. Like everything else in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a product of historical
European imperialism, Islamic confessional politics and the frequently misguided and
counterproductive security policies of Israel.
In the first place, Lebanon was not any more a real country than Iraq was when Sykes and
Picot laid their straight-edged rulers on a map. The result was a stew of religious and ethnic
divisions – Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Copts, Druse, Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites,
Kurds, Armenians, Jews and countless more – that made the fashioning of a viable state
virtually impossible.
At length, an alliance of Christians and Sunnis gained control of the country, leaving the
40% Shiite population disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged, as well. But it was the
inflow of Palestinian refugees in the 1960s and 1970s that eventually upset the balance of
sectarian forces and triggered a civil war that essentially lasted from 1975 until the turn of
the century.
It also triggered a catastrophically wrong-headed Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in
1982, and a subsequent repressive occupation of mostly Shiite territories for the next 18
years. The alleged purpose of this invasion was to chase the PLO and Yasser Arafat out of the
enclave in southern Lebanon that they had established after being driven out of Jordan in
1970.
Eventually Israel succeeded in sending Arafat packing to North Africa, but in the process
created a militant, Shiite-based resistance movement that did not even exist in 1982 and that
in due course became the strongest single force in Lebanon's fractured domestic political
arrangements.
After Israel withdrew in 2000, the then-Christian president of the country made abundantly
clear that Hezbollah had become a legitimate and respected force within the Lebanese polity,
not merely some subversive agent of Tehran:
"For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national
resistance movement. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't have liberated our land. And because of
that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement."
So, yes, Hezbollah is an integral component of the so-called Shiite Crescent, and its
confessional and political alignment with Tehran is entirely plausible. But that arrangement
– however uncomfortable for Israel – does not represent unprovoked Iranian
aggression on Israel's northern border.
Instead, it's actually the blowback from the stubborn refusal of Israeli governments –
especially the right-wing Likud governments of modern times – to deal constructively with
the Palestinian question.
In lieu of a two-state solution in the territory of Palestine, therefore, Israeli policy has
produced a chronic state of confrontation and war with the huge share of the Lebanese
population represented by Hezbollah.
The latter is surely no agency of peaceful governance and has committed its share of
atrocities. But the point at hand is that given the last 35 years of history and Israeli
policy, Hezbollah would exist as a menacing force on its northern border even if the Iranian
theocracy didn't exist and the shah or his heir was still on the Peacock Throne.
In short, there is no alliance of terrorism in the Shiite Crescent that threatens American
security. That proposition is simply one of the big lies that was promulgated by the War Party
after 1991 and that has been happily embraced by Imperial Washington since then in order to
keep the military-industrial-security complex alive, and justify its self-appointed role as
policeman of the world.
WASHINGTON'S ERRONEOUS VIEW THAT THE PERSIAN GULF IS AN AMERICAN LAKE – THE ROOT OF
SUNNI JIHADISM
The actual terrorist threat has arisen from the Sunni, not the Shiite, side of the
Islamic divide. But that, in turn, is largely of Washington's own making; and it is
being nurtured by endless US meddling in the region's politics and by the bombing and droning
campaigns against Washington's self-created enemies.
At the root of Sunni-based terrorism is the long-standing Washington error that America's
security and economic well-being depend upon keeping an armada in the Persian Gulf in order to
protect the surrounding oil fields and the flow of tankers through the straits of Hormuz.
That doctrine has been wrong from the day it was officially enunciated by one of America's
great economic ignoramuses, Henry Kissinger, at the time of the original oil crisis in 1973.
The 46 years since then have proven in spades that it doesn't matter who controls the oil
fields, and that the only effective cure for high oil prices is the free market.
Every tin pot dictatorship from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to
Saddam Hussein, to the bloody-minded chieftains of Nigeria, to the purportedly medieval mullahs
and fanatical revolutionary guards of Iran has produced oil – and all they could because
they desperately needed the revenue.
For crying out loud, even while the barbaric thugs of ISIS were briefly in power in eastern
Syria, they milked every possible drop of petroleum from the tiny, wheezing oil fields
scattered around their backwater domain. So there is no economic case whatsoever for Imperial
Washington's massive military presence in the Middle East.
The truth is, there is no such thing as an OPEC cartel – virtually every member
produces all they can and cheats whenever possible. The only thing that resembles production
control in the global oil market is the fact that the Saudi princes treat their oil reserves
not much differently than Exxon.
That is, they attempt to maximize the present value of their 270 billion barrels of
reserves, but ultimately are no more clairvoyant at calibrating the best oil price to
accomplish that than are the economists at Exxon or the International Energy Agency.
During the last decade, for example, the Saudis have repeatedly underestimated how rapidly
and extensively the $100-per-barrel marker reached in early 2008 and again in 2014 would
trigger a flow of investment, technology and cheap debt into the US shale patch, the Canadian
tar sands, the tired petroleum provinces of Russia, the deep waters offshore Brazil and the
like. And that's to say nothing of solar, wind and all the other government-subsidized
alternative sources of BTUs.
Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our
cardigan sweaters, those of us in Congress on the free market side of the so-called
energy-shortage debate said that high oil prices would bring about their own cure. Now we
know.
So the Fifth Fleet and its overt and covert auxiliaries should never have been there –
going all the way back to the CIA's coup against Iranian democracy in 1953.
But having turned Iran into an enemy, Imperial Washington was just getting started when 1990
rolled around. Once again in the name of "oil security" it plunged the American war machine
into the politics and religious fissures of the Persian Gulf, and did so on account of the
above referenced small-potatoes conflict that had no bearing whatsoever on the safety and
security of American citizens.
As US Ambassador Glaspie rightly told Saddam Hussein on the eve of Hussein's Kuwait
invasion, America had no dog in that hunt.
Kuwait wasn't even a country; it was a bank account sitting on a swath of oil fields
surrounding an ancient trading city that had been abandoned by Ibn Saud in the early 20th
century. That's because Saud didn't know what oil was or that it was there; and in any event,
it had been made a separate protectorate by the British in 1913 for reasons that are lost in
the fog of diplomatic history.
Likewise, Iraq's contentious dispute with Kuwait had been over its claim that the emir of
Kuwait was "slant drilling" across his border into Iraq's Rumaila field. Yet it was a wholly
elastic boundary of no significance whatsoever.
In fact, the dispute over the Rumaila field started in 1960 when an Arab League declaration
arbitrarily marked the Iraq – Kuwait border two miles north of the southernmost tip of
the Rumaila field.
And that newly defined boundary, in turn, had come only 44 years after a pair of English and
French diplomats had carved up their winnings from the Ottoman Empire's demise by laying a
straight-edged ruler on the map. In so doing, they thereby confected the artificial country of
"Iraq" from the historically independent and hostile Mesopotamian provinces of the Shiites in
the South, the Sunnis in the West and the Kurds in the North.
In short, it did not matter who controlled the southern tip of the Rumaila field – the
brutal dictator of Baghdad or the opulent emir of Kuwait. Neither the price of oil, nor the
peace of America, nor the security of Europe nor the future of Asia depended upon it.
THE FIRST GULF WAR – A CATASTROPHIC ERROR
But once again Bush the Elder got persuaded to take the path of war. This time it was by
Henry Kissinger's economically illiterate protégés at the National Security
Council and Bush's Texas oilman secretary of state. They falsely claimed that the
will-o'-the-wisp of "oil security" was at stake, and that 500,000 American troops needed to be
planted in the sands of Arabia.
That was a catastrophic error, and not only because the presence of "crusader" boots on the
purportedly sacred soil of Arabia offended the CIA-trained mujahedeen of Afghanistan, who had
become unemployed when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The 1991 CNN-glorified war games in the Gulf also further empowered another group of
unemployed crusaders. Namely, the neocon national-security fanatics who had misled Ronald
Reagan into a massive military buildup to thwart what they claimed to be an ascendant Soviet
Union bent on nuclear-war-winning capabilities and global conquest.
All things being equal, the sight of Boris Yeltsin, vodka flask in hand, facing down the Red
Army a few months later should have sent the neocons into the permanent disrepute and obscurity
they so richly deserved. But Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz managed to extract from
Washington's Pyrrhic victory in Kuwait a whole new lease on life for Imperial Washington.
Right then and there came the second erroneous predicate – to wit, that "regime
change" among the assorted tyrannies of the Middle East was in America's national interest.
More fatally, the neocons now insisted that the first Gulf War proved it could be achieved
through a sweeping interventionist menu of coalition diplomacy, security assistance, arms
shipments, covert action and open military attack and occupation.
What the neocon doctrine of regime change actually did, of course, was to foster the
Frankenstein that ultimately became ISIS. In fact, the only real terrorists in the world
who threaten normal civilian life in the West are the rogue offspring of Imperial Washington's
post-1990 machinations in the Middle East.
The CIA-trained and CIA-armed mujahedeen mutated into al-Qaeda not because bin Laden
suddenly had a religious epiphany that his Washington benefactors were actually the Great Satan
owing to America's freedom and liberty.
His murderous crusade was inspired by the Wahhabi fundamentalism loose in Saudi Arabia. This
benighted religious fanaticism became agitated to a fever pitch by Imperial Washington's
violent plunge into Persian Gulf political and religious quarrels, the stationing of troops in
Saudi Arabia, and the decade-long barrage of sanctions, embargoes, no-fly zones, covert actions
and open hostility against the Sunni regime in Baghdad after 1991.
Yes, bin Laden would have amputated Saddam's secularist head if Washington hadn't done it
first, but that's just the point. The attempt at regime change in March 2003 was one of the
most foolish acts of state in American history.
Bush the Younger's neocon advisers had no clue about the sectarian animosities and
historical grievances that Hussein had bottled up by parsing the oil loot and wielding the
sword under the banner of Baathist nationalism. But shock and awe blew the lid and the
de-Baathification campaign unleashed the furies.
Indeed, no sooner had George Bush pranced around on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln
declaring "mission accomplished" than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a CIA recruit to the Afghan war a
decade earlier and smalltime specialist in hostage taking and poisons, fled his no-count
redoubt in Kurdistan to emerge as a flamboyant agitator in the now-dispossessed Sunni
heartland.
The founder of ISIS succeeded in Fallujah and Anbar province just like the long list of
other terrorist leaders Washington claims to have exterminated. That is, Zarqawi gained his
following and notoriety among the region's population of deprived, brutalized and humiliated
young men by dint of being more brutal than their occupiers.
Indeed, even as Washington was crowing about the demise of Zarqawi, the remnants of the
Baathist regime and the hundreds of thousands of demobilized republican guards were coalescing
into al-Qaeda in Iraq, and their future leaders were being incubated in a monstrous nearby
detention center called Camp Bucca that contained more than 26,000 prisoners.
As one former U.S. Army officer, Mitchell Gray, later described it,
"You never see hatred like you saw on the faces of these detainees," Gray remembers of
his 2008 tour. "When I say they hated us, I mean they looked like they would have killed us in
a heartbeat if given the chance. I turned to the warrant officer I was with and I said, 'If
they could, they would rip our heads off and drink our blood.
What Gray didn't know – but might have expected – was that he was not
merely looking at the United States' former enemies, but its future ones as well. According to
intelligence experts and Department of Defense records, the vast majority of the leadership of
what is today known as ISIS, including its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, did time at Camp
Bucca.
And not only did the US feed, clothe and house these jihadists, it also played a
vital, if unwitting, role in facilitating their transformation into the most formidable
terrorist force in modern history.
Early in Bucca's existence, the most extreme inmates were congregated in Compound 6.
There were not enough Americans guards to safely enter the compound – and, in any event,
the guards didn't speak Arabic. So the detainees were left alone to preach to one another and
share deadly vocational advice . . .
Bucca also housed Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein's air-defense force.
Bakr was no religious zealot. He was just a guy who lost his job when the Coalition Provisional
Authority disbanded the Iraqi military and instituted de-Baathification, a policy of banning
Saddam's past supporters from government work.
According to documents recently obtained by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Bakr was the
real mastermind behind ISIS's organizational structure and also mapped out the strategies that
fueled its early successes. Bakr, who died in fighting in 2014, was incarcerated at Bucca from
2006-' 08, along with a dozen or more of ISIS's top lieutenants."
The point is, regime change and nation building can never be accomplished by the lethal
violence of 21st-century armed forces; and they were an especially preposterous assignment in
the context of a land rent with 13-century-old religious fissures and animosities.
In fact, the wobbly, synthetic state of Iraq was doomed the minute Cheney and his bloody
gang decided to liberate it from the brutal but serviceable and secular tyranny of Saddam's
Baathist regime. That's because the process of elections and majority rule necessarily imposed
by Washington was guaranteed to elect a government beholden to the Shiite
majority .
After decades of mistreatment and Saddam's brutal suppression of their 1991 uprising, did
the latter have revenge on their minds and in their communal DNA? Did the Kurds have dreams of
an independent Kurdistan spilling into Turkey and Syria that had been denied their
30-million-strong tribe way back at Versailles and ever since?
Yes, they did. So the $25 billion spent on training and equipping the putative
armed forces of post-liberation Iraq was bound to end up in the hands of sectarian militias,
not a national army.
In fact, when the Shiite commanders fled Sunni-dominated Mosul in June 2014 they transformed
the ISIS uprising against the government in Baghdad into a vicious fledgling state in one fell
swoop. But it wasn't by beheadings and fiery jihadist sermons that it quickly enslaved dozens
of towns and several million people in western Iraq and the Euphrates Valley of Syria.
THE ISLAMIC STATE WAS WASHINGTON'S VERY OWN FRANKENSTEIN
To the contrary, its instruments of terror and occupation were the best weapons that the
American taxpayers could buy. That included 2,300 Humvees and tens of thousands of automatic
weapons, as well as vast stores of ammunition, trucks, rockets, artillery pieces and even tanks
and helicopters.
And that wasn't the half of it. The Islamic State also filled the power vacuum in Syria
created by its so-called civil war. But in truth that was another exercise in
Washington-inspired and Washington-financed regime change undertaken in connivance with Qatar
and Saudi Arabia.
The princes of the petro-states were surely not interested in expelling the tyranny next
door. Instead, the rebellion was about removing Iran's Alawite/Shiite ally from power in
Damascus and laying the gas pipelines to Europe – which Assad had vetoed – across
the upper Euphrates Valley.
In any event, due to Washington's regime change policy in Syria, ISIS soon had even more
troves of American weapons. Some of them were supplied to Sunni radicals by way of Qatar and
Saudi Arabia.
More came up the so-called ratline from Gaddafi's former arsenals in Benghazi through
Turkey. And still more came through Jordan from the "moderate" opposition trained there by the
CIA, which more often than not sold them or defected to the other side.
So, that the Islamic State was Washington's Frankenstein monster became evident from the
moment it rushed upon the scene in mid 2014. But even then the Washington War Party could not
resist adding fuel to the fire, whooping up another round of Islamophobia among the American
public and forcing the Obama White House into a futile bombing campaign for the third time in a
quarter century.
But the short-lived Islamic State was never a real threat to America's homeland
security.
The dusty, broken, impoverished towns and villages along the margins of the Euphrates River
and in the bombed-out precincts of Anbar province did not attract thousands of wannabe
jihadists from the failed states of the Middle East and the alienated Muslim townships of
Europe because the caliphate offered prosperity, salvation or any future at all.
What recruited them was outrage at the bombs and drones dropped on Sunni communities by the
US Air Force and by the cruise missiles launched from the bowels of the Mediterranean that
ripped apart homes, shops, offices and mosques which mostly contained as many innocent
civilians as ISIS terrorists.
The truth is, the Islamic State was destined for a short half-life anyway. It had been
contained by the Kurds in the North and East and by Turkey with NATO's second-largest army and
air force in the Northwest. And it was further surrounded by the Shiite Crescent in the
populated, economically viable regions of lower Syria and Iraq.
Absent Washington's misbegotten campaign to unseat Assad in Damascus and demonize his
confession-based Iranian ally, there would have been nowhere for the murderous fanatics who had
pitched a makeshift capital in Raqqa to go. They would have run out of money, recruits,
momentum and public acquiescence in their horrific rule in any event.
But with the US Air Force functioning as their recruiting arm and France's anti-Assad
foreign policy helping to foment a final spasm of anarchy in Syria, the gates of hell had been
opened wide, unnecessarily.
What has been puked out was not an organized war on Western civilization as former French
president Hollande so hysterically proclaimed in response to one of the predictable terrorist
episodes of mayhem in Paris.
It was just blowback carried out by that infinitesimally small contingent of mentally
deformed young men who can be persuaded to strap on a suicide belt.
In any event, bombing did not defeat ISIS; it just temporarily made more of them.
Ironically, what did extinguish the Islamic State was the Assad government, the Russian air
force invited into Syria by its official government and the ground forces of its Hezbollah and
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard allies. It was they who settled an ancient quarrel that had
never been any of America's business anyway.
But Imperial Washington was so caught up in its myths, lies and hegemonic stupidity that it
could not see the obvious. Accordingly, 28 years after the Cold War ended and several years
after Syria and friends extinguished the Islamic State, Washington has learned no lessons. The
American Imperium still stalks the planet for new monsters to destroy.
And that's why there is still no peace on earth 28 years after it should have broken out, as
did the Christmas Truce of 1914.
BTL the usual misdirection pointing just to Israel; never are the Sunni Arab oil sheiks in
the picture:
blinded by anti Zionism. The Gulf rulers love this aspect best.
Israel has little to offer to the US military-industrial complex except being an
unsinkable aircraft carrier.
The Sunni Arab oil sheiks on the other hand have massive amount of cash and oil reserves,
just what the US dollar needs to keep on floating against financial gravity.
With the Shia Iranian power exports as bogey these few individuals are also great clients
for the Anglo protection racket. Iran is more about mass movements, hard to be a wise guy
for.
Brianeg ,
I am as perplexed as anybody over the assassination of Soleimani, seeing no tactical
advantage and in fact serious disadvantages and dangers.
I can add little to the excellent article and excellent comments except to say that last
year, I saw a documentary about Soleimani and I felt at the time, he was perhaps the only
person that might bring peace to the whole of the Middle East and it may be for that reason
somebody thought he was dangerous and had to go.
At the very least, the Iraqi Government have now been given the chance to kick America and
NATO out of Iraq and maybe Syria as well. With that in mind, I am sure that MSM will then say
that this is all a Russian plot. I am sure that Pompeo's flight to Kazakstan is perhaps to
prepare an air base if a rapid Vietnam style evacuation needs to occur.
The options left open for America, NATO and Israel are fairly limited to remote offshore
missile attacks as any form of close engagement against battle hardened troops when your own
forces have only experience against unarmed civilians and forces only armed with small arms
would be fraught with danger. I am sure that Trump's advisers and their experience of playing
war games on their computers might think differently.
As for a major missile strike like that after Douma when only a handful of rockets hit
their targets especially as Syria did not have the latest anti missile systems, there is a
likelihood that not one might reach its target.
2020 is shaping up to become a very interesting year and by its end destined to become a
very changed world.
Trump's actions appear to be that of a very poor gambler trying to take desperate measures
to improve his luck. I believe Hitler had great faith in his astrologer, does Trump use
one?
richard le sarc ,
I rather see Israel, ie Bibi behind this. It is a diversion from his corruption crisis, it is
pure Talmudism, with its murder of Israel's 'enemies', and it brings forward the prospect of
'obliterating' 'Persia' in a New Purim that would cement Bibi's place as a 'King of Israel'
for all time ie a few more years. I really think that assuming that the architects of this
action are rational and sane, when they are mad, bad, dangerous to know and infinitely
blood-thirsty, is mistaken.
adlskfj ,
Ah, didn't take long to see Off Guardian's never ending commitment to the most vile President
in US history, and that's saying a lot. The Deep State made him do it!!!!!!!!!!!!
So did the Deep State direct this fascist, racist, misogynist, jerk of epic proportions
Trump to pimp for war against Iran during his campaign? Can't see from this jerk's body
language that he sees himself as a "tough guy". Did the Deep State force him to take on super
neocon ex CIA director Woolsey as a foreign policy advisor during his campaign, or force him
to suck up to the State of Israel in an AIPAC speech outdoing Clinton's, or suck up to the
House of Saud bragging about arms sales with an effing poster, or force him to move the US
Embassy to Jerusalem, or force him to increase military operations in the ME including new
rules of engagement making it easier for US troops to slaughter civilians, or force him to
attack the Syrian regime, or force him to commit to "take the oil", or force him to name
torture queen Haspel to direct the CIA, or force him to nominate an oil tycoon as Secretary
of State then replace him with torture advocate ex CIA director Pompeo, or force him to
re-initiate and increase military hardware from war zones going to police departments, and
the sorry list goes on that OG and other compromised "leftists" regard poor Trump being
forced to do by the Deep State.
But the Deep State made him do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OG just loves their Trump, but likely not as much as the Deep State.
paul ,
I think like many people you are partly blinded by an understandable hatred of Trump.
I hold no brief for him, except to say Clinton would have been even worse.
But people trying to make sense of the latest ill starred US foreign policy adventure only
need to understand two things.
1. The complete Zionist stranglehold over US politics and media.
2. The character of the political leadership in the US (and its satellites.)
1. From a Zionist point of view, Iraq, Libya and Syria (to a lesser extent) are all a rip
roaring success. The first two are failed states that have been bombed back to the Stone Age.
Syria is only slightly better off. Iran is unfinished business, the last major target on the
Zionist hit list. All of this achieved by the US and its satellites providing all the money
and the muscle.
2. US and western leadership in general is abysmal, the worst in its history. Arrogant,
venal, corrupt, irredeemably ignorant, delusional, and ideologically driven, buying in to its
own exceptionalist propaganda.
You cannot expect policies or programmes adopted to be in any way rational or coherent.
What passes for an administration in the Trump Circus consists largely of competing, mutually
antagonistic factions and fiefdoms, each pursuing their own objectives and generally fighting
like rats in a sack. Trump is far from a dictator. He is more like a bewildered bystander
presiding over what is at best a chaotic turf war.
This is not to absolve Trump of responsibility -- if he is incapable of asserting his
authority, he simply shouldn't be there. But people like Bolton and others were foisted upon
him at the behest of Adelson and Zionist interests. Bolton was openly trying to undermine him
in North Korea and elsewhere. There are many other similar examples. Seditious and mutinous
spooks and dirty cops were conspiring to unseat him even before he was elected.
In Syria, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department were all following their own
competing agendas, sponsoring different terrorist groups, following different objectives. Mid
level bureaucrats like Vindman and Ioanovitch in all three organisations felt perfectly
entitled to formulate and implement their own preferred policies, without any reference to
the White House.
I don't see much to admire in Trump. But apart from some coarse and bumptious behaviour,
how does he differ from Obomber or Dubya? It's a mistake to go down the MSM rabbit hole of
seeing everything in terms of personalities.
Martin Usher ,
Trump hasn't shown much interest in geography unless its somewhere he can put a casino so I
doubt if he really understood the implications of what he's been encouraged to do. This
action isn't Trump's, it most likely Pompero (who I find amusing in his 'who me' type
innocence when he complains that the world isn't lining up behind the US, its just the usual
roll of toadies).
The "Deep State" isn't really a thing, its all of us, its the way that we've been trained
from birth to think in terms of American exceptionalism and Cold War rivalry. Its thousands
of people doing their jobs to the best of their ability and as Hannah Arendt pointed out in
her essay on the Banality of Evil these people are able to be the very best or very worst
depending on how they're led and used. To that end the article in the Guardian proper is very
telling and points to something that needs significant investigation .
I would say that it's something much lower down the evolutionary chain than that: these
people are all criminal psychopaths -- or if you want a more polite term: batshit
crazies.
"... 1. Increasing tensions serves the interests of the military-industrial complex – US military spending has increased enormously, and without enough tensions, there may be a "danger" that military spending will be cut in the future. Of course, this increased military spending is only in the interest of a small minority – but it is a very influential minority that spends a lot of money on politicians. ..."
"... It sounds as if his enemies in the Pentagon and the Intelligence Agencies have tricked Trump perhaps by not telling him who the target was going to be? ..."
"... You are being sidetracked by personalities. "If only we had Obama/ Reagan/ Whoever back, everything would be fine." It wouldn't. Whoever is occupying the Oval Office, whether it's Trump/ Creepy Joe Biden/ Buttplug/ Pocahontas or some other cretin, it's just another monkey dancing to the tune of the same organ grinder. ..."
"... No capitalist regime, particularly the neo-liberal type, can ever even remotely resemble a 'democracy' of any type. ..."
Mourners surround a car carrying the coffins of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani
and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed in a US air strike. (Photo by SABAH
ARAR / AFP)
The dust is settling somewhat over the latest and strangest act of imperial hubris in the
Middle East, and a few things are becoming clearer – though no less strange.
Trump held a slightly bizarre
presser at his vacation resort in Florida, wherein he tried to assure the media he had no
wish to provoke either war with or regime change in Iran, saying
We took action last night to stop a war. We do not take action to start a war."
Even the slavering warhound, Pompeo was taking a more conciliatory tone, and the word
'de-escalation' began featuring prominently in his Twitter feed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and I discussed the decisive defensive action
@realDonaldTrump employed in
Baghdad to protect American lives. I emphasized that de-escalation is the United States'
principal goal.
In my conversation today with @masrour_barzani , we discussed
yesterday's defensive action and our commitment to de-escalation. I thanked him for his
steadfast partnership. We agreed on the need for continued, close cooperation.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab , is also
urging "all parties de-escalate" – for what that's worth.
At the same time early claims by the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) that the US had
launched another air strike against them north of Baghdad were later retracted. According to
RT:
The Iraqi Army, however, later denied that an airstrike took place there. In a statement
quoted by local media, the military urged everyone to be "careful" about spreading unverified
information and "rumors" in the future.
Some of this implies an attempt on both sides (Iraq and the US at least) to pull back. But
while this may be welcome it does nothing to explain why the US administration escalated in the
first place, in what still looks like a suicidally self-defeating move.
What is the empire up to at this point? Does it have a plan? is it coherent? is it even
sane?
The Saker took a look yesterday at The Soleimani murder –
what could happen next . He thinks, as he has said before, that Trump is regarded as a
disposable asset by his Deep State handlers and is being used as a front man for risky policy
actions that he can be scapegoated for if/when they go wrong:
I have always claimed that Donald Trump is a "disposable President" for the Neocons. What
do I mean by that? I mean that the Neocons have used Trump to do all sorts of truly
fantastically dumb things (pretty much ALL his policy decisions towards Israel and/or Syria)
for a very simple reason. If Trump does something extremely dumb and dangerous, he will
either get away with it, in which case the Neocons will be happy, or he will either fail or
the consequences of his decisions will be catastrophic, at which point the Neocons will
jettison him and replace him by an even more subservient individual (say Pence or Pelosi). In
other words, for the Neocons to have Trump do something both fantastically dangerous and
fantastically stupid is a win-win situation!
I tend to agree with this. When Clinton was dumped last minute as POTUS (too crazy, too
weird), and the Deep State pivoted to Trump, it was clear from very early on he – the
unwanted outsider – was going to be used just as Saker says, as a handy scapegoat; and
it's interesting to note in this regard that he is indeed being blamed in many places today
(Spiked ,
the Guardian etc), as the sole architect of the Soleimani murder.
That he is in any way solely, or even directly, responsible is of course vanishingly
improbable. US presidents don't, in real terms, have that kind of power now, if they ever did.
It's far more likely Trump just rubber stamped an action urged by Pompeo and his war-crazed
backers, or even that he only knew about it after it was done.
But that's just detail. The fact Trump is being scapegoated implies that – at least
for now – those really responsible are backtracking and thinking better of the
venture.
But what was the venture? What the desired outcome? No one seems to have a very
satisfactory answer to that right now.
As we said yesterday, war with Iran has been the auto-erotic fixation for the hardcore war
nuts in Washington for years, and imminent confrontation has been predicted regularly since at
least 2005.
But it's never become a reality because the non-crazies in Washington know the risks
outweigh the benefits for US interests.
Sure, we know in recent times the Trump administration has been ramping up the tensions
again. Tearing up the nuclear deal, re-imposing sanctions, sabre-rattling, making threats. But
this has all been within the familiar framework that always just stops short of actual
conflict.
The murder of Soleimani is orders of magnitude beyond anything they have ever risked before.
Good analysts like the Saker and Moon of Alabama have pointed out that the US has basically
defeated its own aims, all but destroyed itself in the region. In
MoA's words:
The U.S. has won nothing with its attack but will feel the consequences for decades to
come. From now on its position in the Middle East will be severely constrained. Others will
move in to take its place.
Even if this turns out too dire and sweeping a prediction, the truth still is clear that the
US have apparently gained nothing from this venture and lost a great deal.
Of course both the US and Israel now have carte blanche to stage as much false flag
'terrorism' as they want and blame it on Iranian 'revenge'. Whatever else happens, we can
almost certainly look forward to some of that.
And, there is the bonus of being able to drive the US homeland even further toward fascism
in the guise of 'preparing' for new waves of terror attacks. The Mayor of New York is already
doing his own narrative preparation for this, claiming, per the
Jerusalem Post that
We have to assume this action puts us in a de facto state of war
But all this seems small gains for massive losses. The question 'what were you thinking?'
hangs there, currently unanswered. If this was clever geopolitical chess it's currently so deep
as to defeat all analysis.
Claims that the US is just doing Israel's bidding don't even cut it. If the US loses its
hold on the ME as a result of an ill-judged war with Iran, how will this benefit Israel? Does
it believe it can inherit the imperial mantle? If so, it's deluded. Without US protection
Israel would not last long in its current form.
Some have suggested it's a 'clever' plot to hike up oil prices. But really? There are much
lower risk ways of doing that than launching a war and forcing Iran to close the Straits of
Hormuz.
The QAnon crowd have even suggested it's an ultra smart way of getting the US out of Iraq.
Well, we have to admit that could be the result. But does anyone really believe that was the
plan?
No one has yet, to my knowledge, put out the US simply goofed and are now desperately trying
to cover themselves – but that is at least as likely as some of the above.
The major question really though is – will this backtracking and odd claims of wanting
de-escalation actually do anything to de-escalate? Will it persuade Iran not to seek
retaliation, supposing this is now what Pompeo et al want?
Currently the answer to that looks like a 'no.' In fact Iran has just now issued a list of
potential
retaliation targets related to the US. Even if this is mostly posturing, it's hard to see
how Iran can avoid some form of response to this heinous act of frank terrorism. Even if the US
administration's 'de-escalation' stance is genuine, it may well be pointless.
And how long will the US remain in a 'de-escalation' mindset anyhow? It's become a
commonplace to describe US foreign policy as 'insane', and it's an apposite description. But
the murder of Soleimani takes the evident insanity to new and self-defeating levels.
Who can say what the empire's next moves will be in the coming days or weeks? More utterly
lunatic 'defensive' missile strikes are entirely possible.
It appears that 2020 has got off to a shit hot start with Golf Cart Goofy been slipped the
Turd Doctrine engineered by Bolt-on brain, the deranged psychopath of Washington. From sleepy
hollow the message went out to shoot first and let the policy slide along afterwards. How are
the people of the land of the free going to swallow this piece of fascist wrangling?
Meanwhile in old Blighty Johnson has not even had chance to sober up from the New Year
bash with his Russian friend and patron, Евгений
Лебедев – bringing a whole new meaning to the
phrase going down the swanee. Who said Russians don't interfere in elections? Well those with
British golden passports at any rate
Antonym ,
BTL the usual misdirection pointing just to Israel; never are the Sunni Arab oil sheiks in
the picture:
blinded by anti Zionism. The Gulf rulers love this aspect best.
Israel has little to offer to the US military-industrial complex except being an unsinkable
aircraft carrier. The Sunni Arab oil sheiks on the other hand have massive amount of cash and
oil reserves, just what the US dollar needs to keep on floating against financial gravity.
With the Shia Iranian power exports as bogey these few individuals are also great clients for
the Anglo protection racket. Iran is more about mass movements, hard to be a wise guy for.
Jo ,
Thanks for this. I've dodged all news since I first heard about the assassination but my
initial thoughts concerned the unspeakable Pompeo and Israel. Like the author I found it
absurd that Trump had personally engineered this.
On the idea that Pompeo now wants to row back, I'm not convinced. Sorry to provide a
Guardian link but I saw this earlier and it seems he's scolding mainland Europe and the UK
for not being more "supportive" of his insanity.
I am as perplexed as anybody over the assassination of Soleimani, seeing no tactical
advantage and in fact serious disadvantages and dangers.
I can add little to the excellent article and excellent comments except to say that last
year, I saw a documentary about Soleimani and I felt at the time, he was perhaps the only
person that might bring peace to the whole of the Middle East and it may be for that reason
somebody thought he was dangerous and had to go.
At the very least, the Iraqi Government have now been given the chance to kick America and
NATO out of Iraq and maybe Syria as well. With that in mind, I am sure that MSM will then say
that this is all a Russian plot. I am sure that Pompeo's flight to Kazakstan is perhaps to
prepare an air base if a rapid Vietnam style evacuation needs to occur.
The options left open for America, NATO and Israel are fairly limited to remote offshore
missile attacks as any form of close engagement against battle hardened troops when your own
forces have only experience against unarmed civilians and forces only armed with small arms
would be fraught with danger. I am sure that Trump's advisers and their experience of playing
war games on their computers might think differently.
As for a major missile strike like that after Douma when only a handful of rockets hit
their targets especially as Syria did not have the latest anti missile systems, there is a
likelihood that not one might reach its target.
2020 is shaping up to become a very interesting year and by its end destined to become a
very changed world.
Trump's actions appear to be that of a very poor gambler trying to take desperate measures
to improve his luck. I believe Hitler had great faith in his astrologer, does Trump use
one?
David Macilwain ,
I'm less optimistic Catte – the claims to want deescalation come from those who just
escalated, in a calculated and well planned act of war, in which I believe the UK and
Australia were already well briefed. I would also venture, as suggested in "Official Secrets
and Lies" – that Pompeo's demand that Corbyn would not be PM was making sure that there
would be no anti-war PM in the UK in the new year, when the launching of the next decade of
the war of terror would take place – so timely on 01.02.2020. Do we not remember that
the attack on Iraq was planned months in advance, and launched – allegedly – at
20.30 on 20.03.2003?
And surely also, the faked killing of Baghdadi was part of this planning, as he had to be out
of the way, specially nowhere near AL Qaim/Baghouz, for the killing of Soleimani to be
possible. Truly it is the evil empire, with all that this includes, and Trump like a pimple
waiting to burst sitting on top of the rotten pile.
According to our Emily WMDs and the blood bath that followed in Iraq was all just a
'mistake'.
Sickening pontificating from her in the Guardian about how it is bad to murder people
(without just cause) apparently oblivious to the fact her own party committed Britan to an
illegal war without a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein was a threat to our national
security.
I held my nose and read her article – not a single word about Tony Blair, or the
fact that the quagmire in the Middle East (as she describes it) was largely a result of
NuLabour's love in with US neonazis.
People like Thornberry seem to be utterly devoid of even the most primitive form of
decency.
O/T Ha ha – Integrity Initiative codswallop has landed with added rusty iron on
Cambridge Analytica election meddling ! Guess what it only seems to be about Trump 2016 and
Trump 2020!
Ah needed that laugh back to Armeggedon Now watch.
richard le sarc ,
I rather see Israel, ie Bibi behind this. It is a diversion from his corruption crisis, it is
pure Talmudism, with its murder of Israel's 'enemies', and it brings forward the prospect of
'obliterating' 'Persia' in a New Purim that would cement Bibi's place as a 'King of Israel'
for all time ie a few more years. I really think that assuming that the architects of this
action are rational and sane, when they are mad, bad, dangerous to know and infinitely
blood-thirsty, is mistaken.
If true, these reports are to be expected, because it wasn't just Qassem Suleimani who was
assassinated by the American psychopaths, but also the Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis.
If the reports are true, it's quite expected, yet it has nothing to do with Iranian
retaliation.
Iranian retaliation will be coming sometime in the future; and you might need to hold your
hats when that happens.
I haven't looked at the bookmakers with regard to all this. It will be interesting to see
what odds they are now giving on Trump being re-elected.
I've no idea of the veracity of this report. There was a similar report on Friday that
turned out to be untrue.
adlskfj ,
Ah, didn't take long to see Off Guardian's never ending commitment to the most vile President
in US history, and that's saying a lot. The Deep State made him do it!!!!!!!!!!!!
So did the Deep State direct this fascist, racist, misogynist, jerk of epic proportions
Trump to pimp for war against Iran during his campaign? Can't see from this jerk's body
language that he sees himself as a "tough guy". Did the Deep State force him to take on super
neocon ex CIA director Woolsey as a foreign policy advisor during his campaign, or force him
to suck up to the State of Israel in an AIPAC speech outdoing Clinton's, or suck up to the
House of Saud bragging about arms sales with an effing poster, or force him to move the US
Embassy to Jerusalem, or force him to increase military operations in the ME including new
rules of engagement making it easier for US troops to slaughter civilians, or force him to
attack the Syrian regime, or force him to commit to "take the oil", or force him to name
torture queen Haspel to direct the CIA, or force him to nominate an oil tycoon as Secretary
of State then replace him with torture advocate ex CIA director Pompeo, or force him to
re-initiate and increase military hardware from war zones going to police departments, and
the sorry list goes on that OG and other compromised "leftists" regard poor Trump being
forced to do by the Deep State.
But the Deep State made him do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OG just loves their Trump, but likely not as much as the Deep State.
paul ,
I think like many people you are partly blinded by an understandable hatred of Trump.
I hold no brief for him, except to say Clinton would have been even worse.
But people trying to make sense of the latest ill starred US foreign policy adventure only
need to understand two things.
1. The complete Zionist stranglehold over US politics and media.
2. The character of the political leadership in the US (and its satellites.)
1. From a Zionist point of view, Iraq, Libya and Syria (to a lesser extent) are all a rip
roaring success. The first two are failed states that have been bombed back to the Stone Age.
Syria is only slightly better off. Iran is unfinished business, the last major target on the
Zionist hit list. All of this achieved by the US and its satellites providing all the money
and the muscle.
2. US and western leadership in general is abysmal, the worst in its history. Arrogant,
venal, corrupt, irredeemably ignorant, delusional, and ideologically driven, buying in to its
own exceptionalist propaganda.
You cannot expect policies or programmes adopted to be in any way rational or coherent.
What passes for an administration in the Trump Circus consists largely of competing, mutually
antagonistic factions and fiefdoms, each pursuing their own objectives and generally fighting
like rats in a sack. Trump is far from a dictator. He is more like a bewildered bystander
presiding over what is at best a chaotic turf war.
This is not to absolve Trump of responsibility – if he is incapable of asserting his
authority, he simply shouldn't be there. But people like Bolton and others were foisted upon
him at the behest of Adelson and Zionist interests. Bolton was openly trying to undermine him
in North Korea and elsewhere. There are many other similar examples. Seditious and mutinous
spooks and dirty cops were conspiring to unseat him even before he was elected.
In Syria, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department were all following their own
competing agendas, sponsoring different terrorist groups, following different objectives. Mid
level bureaucrats like Vindman and Ioanovitch in all three organisations felt perfectly
entitled to formulate and implement their own preferred policies, without any reference to
the White House.
I don't see much to admire in Trump. But apart from some coarse and bumptious behaviour,
how does he differ from Obomber or Dubya? It's a mistake to go down the MSM rabbit hole of
seeing everything in terms of personalities.
Martin Usher ,
Trump hasn't shown much interest in geography unless its somewhere he can put a casino so I
doubt if he really understood the implications of what he's been encouraged to do. This
action isn't Trump's, it most likely Pompero (who I find amusing in his 'who me' type
innocence when he complains that the world isn't lining up behind the US, its just the usual
roll of toadies).
The "Deep State" isn't really a thing, its all of us, its the way that we've been trained
from birth to think in terms of American exceptionalism and Cold War rivalry. Its thousands
of people doing their jobs to the best of their ability and as Hannah Arendt pointed out in
her essay on the Banality of Evil these people are able to be the very best or very worst
depending on how they're led and used. To that end the article in the Guardian proper is very
telling and points to something that needs significant investigation .
I would say that it's something much lower down the evolutionary chain than that: these
people are all criminal psychopaths – or if you want a more polite term: batshit
crazies.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The Social Psychology determinant of Deindividuation allows people to immerse themselves
psychologically into the in-group in order to oppose out-groups whether
it be along lines of ethnicity against minority ethnic groups or otherwise some other
negatively viewed determinant like gender, or age.
Fascists typically join likeminded individuals to fulfill the process of deindividuation
into in-groups they perceive to be socially beneficial for reasons of political
opposition.
Deindividuation allows the elite to internalize their own social-psychological
perspectives to in-group bias of entitlement et cetera. Out-group members are viewed as
inferior, and dispossessed of perspective of what it is like to be rich & wealthy in
in-group perspective.
Bikers deindividuate into biker gangs of likeminded in-group collective thinking.
Out-group is anyone that is not aligned with the in-group binary of identity with the
group.
I suspect that human beings somehow imprint on group membership much like Conrad Lorenz found
with ducklings & geese whilst studying learning processes.
MOU
jay ,
'merica has been 'attacking' Iran for the last 10 years.
It is all smoke and mirrors.
Once upon a time there was a CIA fommented coup to overthrow a popular and decent government, placing the Shah
in power. Then we had the Islamic Revolution led by the Ayatolah The Ayatolah had been
sojourning in Paris presumably enjoying the folies bergere and some tasty charcuterie. Then
right on time, He was flown business class by Air France back to Iran.
The NWO and Radical Islam go together like ram-a-lam-ding-dong
The car Soleimani was killed in appears to have been 'exploded' into a block with very little
damage to the surrounding area or scorching. A car set on fire by neds in Glasgow makes more
mess.
However in a change from the ubiquitous 'mysteriously' appearing passport, we have a deluxe
ring that 'identified' Him.
The ring appears to change from one image to another
tonyopmoc ,
jay,
There is other evidence to support this view, admittedly from around 10+ years ago. The
Iranians in a Big Blow-Up boat (don't mock our Lifeboat service uses them too to save lives
in some of the most hazardous seas – and most of them are unpaid volunteers), stopped a
British metal warship, who they claimed had infiltrated Iranian Waters. The Iranians arrested
several members of The Royal Navy. The Iranians also arrested the BBC Cameraman, and his
Soundman, and took them into the blow-up boat too, and they carried on filming, whilst they
took them to jail in Iran.
I p1ssed myself laughing almost immediately, and I don't normally watch TV.
After a few days, The Iranians, let them all go. The Royal Navy said sorry, we won't do it
again.
That just had to be a pre-planned set-up between the British and the Iranians.
I suspect neither told the Americans, cos they would f'ck it all up and try to start a
war.
The premise of this article is somewhat dubious. The Deep State never "pivoted to Trump."
It wanted Clinton, regardless of how crazy and corrupt she was.
They have never accepted Trump's presidency.
The spooks and the dirty cops worked tirelessly to undermine his campaign to prevent him
being elected.
Having failed in this, it did everything possible to sabotage his administration
subsequently.
It has perpetrated various subversive and treasonous hoaxes, fantasies and conspiracy
theories, culminating in the current impeachment circus.
They never tried to make the best of a bad job, from their point of view, to "manage
Trump."
This has remained constant, no matter how much pandering he does to Zionist interests, or how
many trillions he gifts to the military industrial complex.
They don't accept him, and never will. They hate him, and they want him dead, or at least in
jail, stripped of his businesses and money, and his relatives as well.
Why is this? After all, he's gifted Nuttyyahoo Jerusalem, occupied Syria and the West
Bank. The current military budget (true figure) is $1,134 billion. You might think that would
cut him a bit of slack.
It's because he upset the apple cart for the Zionist interests who rule the roost in
Washington.
Clinton was supposed to take over and implement their programme.
Syria was supposed to have been destroyed now, and Assad dead.
The war with Iran was supposed to have been begun long ago.
But Trump failed to deliver.
The tentative peace feelers being put out to Russia (because he was more concerned about
China) enraged that same dual national constituency with their visceral hatred of Russia.
And this is so much more the case because those same interests realise they are working
under time pressure. This may be their last chance. America is declining rapidly. The Zionist
stranglehold that has taken a century to achieve is a declining asset. And the parasite may
find it difficult to find another host.
Is Russia going to give Israel billions of dollars and unlimited free weaponry every year?
Will Chinese troops be "happy to die for Israel" as US ones are (at least according to their
general?
Trump may have been dragged along on the coat tails of the dual nationals and their goy
stooges, rabid religious nut jobs like Pence and Pompeo. But if Trump is hoping to row things
back, he is likely to be disappointed. Iran has to respond decisively, or else give a green
light to endless similar (and worse) provocations by the Boltons and the Netanyahus, like
Israel in Syria. It cannot afford to show any weakness. And when the retaliation comes, Trump
will not get away with bombing some empty airfield.
The problem is not just the AIPAC and JINSA which long since should have been labeled Foreign
Agents under FARA but the Christian Zionist nutballs who are banking on Armageddon so that
they can be raptured off to heaven while all of us are turned into radioactive toast.
paul ,
Yes, that includes Pence, Pompeo, Hagee, and (according to some claims) 40 million of the
Exceptional and Indispensable Folk.
richard le sarc ,
The USA these days is like one of those zombie ants, infected with a toxic fungus, Ziophilia
prostatens, that takes over its brain, and makes it climb up a branch, so that, when the
fungus explodes from its dead body, its spores can drift further away. Or, even better, the
toxic protozoon, Toxoplasma gondii, that, when it infects rats, makes them suicidally
unafraid of cats, they get eaten, and the protozoon goes forth, distributed through the cat's
faeces. I suppose we could call the infection controlling the minds of the Washington
detritus and making them genocidal as well as suicidal a 'protozion', for easy
identification.
You nail it. Israel provided co ordinates for Soleimani's whereabouts, Trump, in his sheer
stupidity, did the deed.
And now payback is coming. And it's likely to escalate into a massive war.
Ridiculous ABC doing their little bit for Empire and the 'fight for freedom' .
More airstrikes on a PMU base on the Iraq-Syria border earlier today, another 5 killed.
One guess who was responsible. Fecken insanity.
Adrian E. ,
I think the following two explanations are most plausible:
1. Increasing tensions serves the interests of the military-industrial complex – US
military spending has increased enormously, and without enough tensions, there may be a
"danger" that military spending will be cut in the future. Of course, this increased military
spending is only in the interest of a small minority – but it is a very influential
minority that spends a lot of money on politicians.
2. The goal may be sowing chaos and violence because this increases the role of the
military in international relations, and in military matters, the US in its current state is
(or thinks it is – they probably want to avoid a war against a strong army that would
let them find out better) more competitive than in economic matters. As far as economic
matters are concerned, we can more or less predict that the "Western world" (US and EU/NATO)
will almost certainly be dwarfed by China (and to some degree other East Asian countries and
emerging economies). Of course, some time in the future, when urbanization will be completed
to a large degree, Chinese growth will slow, but it is unlikely that this won't still mean
that the US and EU economies will be tiny compared to it. If the US manages to decrease the
role of economics and increase the role of the military, it may be able to slow down the
decline in its significance somehow, and what it needs for that is violence, chaos, and
instability.
Of course, one may say that all these instances of sowing chaos are counterproductive for the
US empire. In many concrete instances, one can show that this is the case, e.g. Iran was
strengthened by the US aggression against Iraq. But on the whole, is the US empire really
weaker than it would have been without all these aggressions? The US economy probably is, but
if we specifically talk about US empire – the US has military bases around the world in
a way no empire has ever had, and without enough violence, chaos, and tensions in order to
justify them, it might be difficult to keep them long-term. It is also important to attempt
to analyze counterfactual scenarios. If the US has just been relieved after the end of the
Cold War, reaped a huge peace dividend and if it had not committed an aggression every few
years, it would probably be more prosperous, but it would hardly be an empire. Probably, NATO
would not exist any more (the aggression against Yugoslavia and later stoking up historical
hatred in Eastern EU member countries played an important role). The US would probably be
more respected than it is now, but its international significance would probably have
decreased more than it has in our current reality where the US has increased the role of the
military by sowing chaos.
The idea of Empire may not fit the modern world of broad spectrum globalism.
Expecting such a world to make sense may buy into being manipulated further by an ever
consolidating pattern of possession and control – that works a kind of narrative or
mind capture alongside globally set regulatory structures to protect the lie at any cost and
by any and all means.
Yarkob ,
that was supposed to be a link, admins i even used the code button
It sounds as if his enemies in the Pentagon and the Intelligence Agencies have tricked Trump
perhaps by not telling him who the target was going to be? Now he owns the policy and the
chances of getting rid of him rise especially if the retaliation is serious and he fails to
start throwing nukes around.
As with JFK over the Bay of Pigs it puts him in a very hard
place. Working with Pence would probably suit the Military Complex. Ideas of withdrawing from
conflict in the ME and Afghanistan are as crazy to them as Kennedy's plans to disarm.
alskdjf ,
Paul you just love your Trump. The epic corrupt capitalist globalist fascist epic jerk I'm
sure would regard you with much love if he knew you existed or cared.
paul ,
You are being sidetracked by personalities.
"If only we had Obama/ Reagan/ Whoever back, everything would be fine."
It wouldn't.
Whoever is occupying the Oval Office, whether it's Trump/ Creepy Joe Biden/ Buttplug/
Pocahontas or some other cretin, it's just another monkey dancing to the tune of the same
organ grinder.
TFS ,
Is it me, or does the definition of what constitutes a Democracy, seem out of date?
Surely, where country such as Blighty likes to refer to iself as a Democracy, then it
should hold true that its people are past masters of holding its rulers to account?
If we are a Democracy and we don't, as has been the case for the past 50yrs of my life,
aren't we guilty of some sort of crime?
Are we (adults) all non persons, a person called 'Collateral Damage' for when Karma comes
a calling?
Will we cry foul and bemoan the injustice of it not being our fault as our leaders rape
the planet?
I dunno, calling Blighty a Democracy seems to be quite Arrogant and Offensive.
richard le sarc ,
No capitalist regime, particularly the neo-liberal type, can ever even remotely resemble a
'democracy' of any type.
Robyn ,
An fundamental of democracy is a free press so that citizens can cast an informed vote. There
is no longer a free press (to the extent that there ever was) and, with increasing censorship
of ethical journalism, the ideal of democracy becomes more remote each day.
"... I have the feeling , just the suspicion , that they contributed to the Ukrainian disaster out of their genetic Drang nach Osten Nordic greed , is that right ? ..."
"... Anyway since the Ukrainian disaster the cohesion of the EU is going going down . Germany which was gifted with the German reunification , is less and less trusted specially in south Europe , and even less in the EU far west , in England which is going out of the EU . ..."
"... As a curiosity in 1945 the Zionists asked Stalin to give Crimea to the jews , Stalin refused . https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/164673/crimea-as-jewish-homeland ..."
"... is 2019 and life in Ukraine is barely better than it was 25-50 years ago, population has actually dropped from its peak in early 1990's. Millions of Ukrainians live abroad (I know some of them) and have – to be polite – at best an ambivalent attitude towards their homeland. Almost all of them prefer to be somewhere else, even to become someone else. ..."
"... I don't agree with the facile name-calling that sees Nazis everywhere and exaggerates throw-away symbolism. But Ukraine has not been functioning and it can't go like this much longer. Not because it will collapse, it won't, but because during an era of general prosperity Ukraine can't be a unstable exception (oh, I get it, they are better than Moldova, good for them.) ..."
"... Rebellions against geography are doomed. Projecting one's personal frustrations on external enemies (Kremlin!) has never worked. Ukraine needs rationality – accepting that they will not be in EU, that attempting to join Nato would destroy Ukraine, and that they can't beat Russia in a war. And following advise of half-mad and half-ignorant well-wishers from Washington or Brussels is a road to ruin. Nulands, Bidens and Tusks will never live in Ukraine, they really deeply don't care about it. They have no skin in that game, it is just entertainment for them. ..."
"... During WWII, Germany actually established settlements in Crimea. Think about it: there is a massive war, you have like 1-2 years, short on transport and resources, and you start sending settlers to Crimea – that's how much drang-nach-osten types wanted it. And the Turks, etc This must be driving them absolutely nuts. ..."
"... The mexicans say : when God created Mexico He gave Mexico everything ; land , mountains , plains , tropical forests , deserts , two oceans , agriculture , gold , silver , oil . then God saw how beautiful and perfect Mexico was and He though that He should also give something bad to the country to prevent the sin of pride , and then he populated Mexico with pure pendejos ,( idiots ) . ..."
"... If you want a decent analysis of current events in the Ukraine, which is what The Saker provides, I guess you'll just have to put up with his terminology. ..."
"... My experience is that Ukrainians individually are far from being pendejos . But they are unable to act as a group or as a nation. (Well, they 'act', but it mostly somehow fails.) ..."
"... Maybe it is the relative shallow and heterogenous history of Ukraine. Or – and this is what I have observed – a fundamental inner disloyalty to the Ukraine as a homeland. When one observes the assorted Porkys, Timoshenkas, Yanuks, the oligarchs, but also the crowds on Maidan, I get a sense that they are all about to leave Ukraine or are thinking about leaving. Societies can't be built with one foot always at the airport, or in an old car in a 5-km column waiting on the border of Poland. Or Russia. ..."
@Alfred I had the same thoughts. Zelenskii should show a similar coffin with the text
"This one is still empty" and then start rounding up the terrorists. He finally has a good
excuse.
Thank you Saker and Unz for the very interesting article .
I wonder what has been the role of Germany in the Ukrainian disaster . ...I have the
feeling , just the suspicion , that they contributed to the Ukrainian disaster out of their
genetic Drang nach Osten Nordic greed , is that right ?
Anyway since the Ukrainian disaster the cohesion of the EU is going going down . Germany
which was gifted with the German reunification , is less and less trusted specially in south
Europe , and even less in the EU far west , in England which is going out of the EU .
Most of the people in the EU would like to keep collaborating with the US , of course ,
but also with Russia and with the rest of the world . Most of the people in the UE are scared
of the dark forces operating in Ukraine trying to provoke a war with Russia .
The stupid name-calling like the term "ukronazi" makes this article look like a rant like
North Korean communiques or the ravings of some Arab despot's propagandist. It is not better
than calling "The Saker" a "Moskal", "Sovok" or "Putler's stooge" etc. He should keep this
lingo to directly "debating" "Ukronazis" on twitter or youtube commentst etc. not for an
article that is supposed to be a serious analysis.
I understand that it is hard for a Russian nationalist to accept that the majority of
Ukrainians don't want to belong to their dream Russkiy Mir, they were seduced by the West,
which is more attractive with all its failings, because mostly of simple materialistic
reasons.
Ukrainians happily go to EU countries that now allow them in as guest workers. The
fact, like it or not that majority of them chose the West over Russkiy Mir despite being very
close to Russians in culture, language, history etc. He is still in the first stage of grief
it seems.
All in all, Ukrainians are probably way above average in most human characteristics. The
area of Ukraine is by planetary standards one of the best available: arable land, great
rivers, Black see, pleasant and liveable.
But it is 2019 and life in Ukraine is barely better than it was 25-50 years ago,
population has actually dropped from its peak in early 1990's. Millions of Ukrainians live
abroad (I know some of them) and have – to be polite – at best an ambivalent
attitude towards their homeland. Almost all of them prefer to be somewhere else, even to
become someone else.
Now why is that? A normal society would have enough introspection to discuss this, to look
for answers. Throwing a temper-tantrum on a big square in Kiev every few years is not looking
for a solution. That is escapism, Orange-this, Maidan-that, 'Russians bad', 'we are going
West', 'golden toilets', and always 'Stalin did it'.
I don't agree with the facile name-calling that sees Nazis everywhere and exaggerates
throw-away symbolism. But Ukraine has not been functioning and it can't go like this much
longer. Not because it will collapse, it won't, but because during an era of general
prosperity Ukraine can't be a unstable exception (oh, I get it, they are better than Moldova,
good for them.)
Rebellions against geography are doomed. Projecting one's personal frustrations on
external enemies (Kremlin!) has never worked. Ukraine needs rationality – accepting
that they will not be in EU, that attempting to join Nato would destroy Ukraine, and that
they can't beat Russia in a war. And following advise of half-mad and half-ignorant
well-wishers from Washington or Brussels is a road to ruin. Nulands, Bidens and Tusks will
never live in Ukraine, they really deeply don't care about it. They have no skin in that
game, it is just entertainment for them.
Or alternatively you can pray that Russia collapses – good luck waiting for
that.
There is not much 'drang' left in Germany, so I think this is mostly fingers on the map
post dinner empty talk.
in 1945 the jewery asked Stalin to give Crimea to the jews , Stalin refused
Crimea is a jewel, but has one big problem: not enough water. But that's also true about
Israel, maybe there is a deep genetic memory of coming out of a desert environment.
During WWII, Germany actually established settlements in Crimea. Think about it: there is
a massive war, you have like 1-2 years, short on transport and resources, and you start
sending settlers to Crimea – that's how much drang-nach-osten types wanted it.
And the Turks, etc This must be driving them absolutely nuts.
The mexicans are able to make fun of themselves , that`s a good thing . They have a joke
which aplies also to Ukraina ( and other countries )
The mexicans say : when God created Mexico He gave Mexico everything ; land , mountains ,
plains , tropical forests , deserts , two oceans , agriculture , gold , silver , oil . then
God saw how beautiful and perfect Mexico was and He though that He should also give something
bad to the country to prevent the sin of pride , and then he populated Mexico with pure
pendejos ,( idiots ) .
@AWM "Is it not possible to have an article on Ukraine without all the N@ZI references?
If you want a decent analysis of current events in the Ukraine, which is what The Saker
provides, I guess you'll just have to put up with his terminology.
The world won't miss a thing if Curmudgeon or AWM goes off in a huff, to sit on his toilet
and read the "one joke per dump" volume lodged on the tank and stops reading The Saker's very
thorough analysis as a protest action!
@AnonMy experience is that Ukrainians individually are far from being pendejos .
But they are unable to act as a group or as a nation. (Well, they 'act', but it mostly
somehow fails.)
Maybe it is the relative shallow and heterogenous history of Ukraine. Or – and this
is what I have observed – a fundamental inner disloyalty to the Ukraine as a homeland.
When one observes the assorted Porkys, Timoshenkas, Yanuks, the oligarchs, but also the
crowds on Maidan, I get a sense that they are all about to leave Ukraine or are thinking
about leaving. Societies can't be built with one foot always at the airport, or in an old car
in a 5-km column waiting on the border of Poland. Or Russia.
Another good article – thanks – Yep, the US/EU NWO is not going to let their
"West Ukraine Isis" battalions and intel gang lose their funding , arms trafficking ops, or
terrorist reputation. This is a no win situation in Ukraine and the West knows it –
Even if NovoRossiya gets some independence, the Ukraine Isis will/can reek havoc and murder
for a long time along the border. The modern Cheka { Ukraine Isis } has been modified for the
security of the new Farmland owners – Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont and the rest of the
Globalist Corporations and their ports close to Odessa.
One point of contention since it wasn't made clear in this article – Novorussia
consists of Luhansk and Donetsk, but not Kharkov. While Kharkov has more Russians than most
other provinces of Ukraine do, it does not have a plurality like Donetsk and Luhansk.
All of Ukraine's doomsayers have been crying about Ukraine's demise for the lat 25
years, yet the fact is that it' s getting stronger and stronger every year,
USA diaspora keeps on delivering.
Shoutout to quarter/half Poles USA citizens LARPing as Ukrainian patriots in the
comments.
Ukraine is now a pawn in a big geopolitical game against Russia. Which somehow survived 90th when everybody including myself has
written it off.
That's why the USA, EU (Germany) and Russia pulling the country in different directions. But the victory of Ukrainian nationalists
is not surprising and is not solely based on the US interferences (although the USA did lot in this direction) pursuit its geopolitical
game against Russia. Distancing themselves from Russa is a universal trend in Post-Soviet space. And it often takes ugly forms.
So Ukraine in not an exception here. It is part of the "rule". Essentially the dissolution of the USSR revised the result on WWII.
And while the author correctly calls Ukrainian leader US stooges, they moved in this direction because they feel that it is necessary
for maintaining the independence. In other words anti-Russian stance is considered by the Ukrainian elite as a a pre-condition for mainlining
independence. Otherwise people like Parubiy would be in jail very soon. They are tolerated and even promoted because they are useful.
It repeats the story of Baltic Republics, albeit with a significant time delay. There should be some social group that secure independence
of the country and Ukrainian nationalists happen to be such a group. That's why Yanukovich supported them and Svoboda party (with predictable
results).
Notable quotes:
"... The ideological fissures that are growing in the United States are beginning to resemble the warring camps that characterize the Ukrainian political world. The divide in Ukraine pits groups who are described as "right wing" and many are ideological descendants of real Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against groups with a strong affinity to Russia. This kind of gap cannot be bridged through conventional negotiations. ..."
"... Jump ahead now to the April 2014 "uprising" of anti-Russian forces in the Ukraine (Maidan 2). The US was firmly on the side of the protesters, who ultimately succeeded in ousting the elected President. And who were helping lead this effort? ..."
"... The US support, both overt and covert, for Ukrainian politicians is grounded in an anti-Soviet (now anti-Russian) ideology. We have convinced ourselves that Russia is hell bent on world domination. Therefore we must do whatever is necessary to stop Russia, which includes uncritical, blind support for elements in Ukraine that also detest the Russians. But in doing so we have closed our eyes to the filthy underbelly of the virulent anti-Semitism that lurks in western Ukraine. ..."
"... US meddling in the Ukraine is astonishing in its breadth. It ranges from the fact that the wife of former President Viktor Yuschenko was an American citizen and former senior official in the US State Department. Do you think there would be no complaints if Melania Trump was born in Russia and had served in the Russian Foreign Ministry? Yet, most Americans are happily ignorant of such facts. ..."
"... US interference was not confined to serendipitous relationships, such as the Yushchenko marriage. It also included the open and active funding of certain political groups and media outlets. The US State Department sent money through a variety of outlets. One of these was the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening aka CEPPS. ..."
"... This is : ..."
"... Count me as one of the people who is outraged by the hypocrisy and stupidity now on display in the United States. I am not talking about Trump. I am referring to the Republicans and Democrats and pundits and media mouthpieces who are fuming about Russian citizens writing on Facebook as one of the worst catastrophes since Pearl Harbor or 9-11. ..."
"... There clearly is meddling going on in America's political landscape. But it isn't the Russian Government. No. There are foreign and domestic forces aligned who are keen on portraying Russia as a threat to world order that must be opposed by more defense spending and tougher sanctions. That is the propaganda that dominates the media in the United States these days. And that is truly dangerous to our nation's safety and freedom. ..."
"... A CIA guy recently said the US only interferes to 'promote democracy' - tell that to Australia, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Congo, Russia, Ukraine...it's a long long list. ..."
"... An independent Ukraine was also a project of German foreign policy after the Brest-Litowsk Treaty (the equivalent of the Versailles Treaty, only aimed at Russia) SO I have o wonder how much of the enthusiasm for Vicky Nuland's Israel friendly Nazi state-let (oh what irony!) is a product of Germany wanting to reassert itself in the east, using NATO solidarity as a fig leaf. Maybe they will make Ukraine import a lot o Africans "refugees" so that Soros' project of creating a brown Europe will be advanced in the Slavic sphere as well as the west. ..."
"... The liberal party - who provides the prime-minister - EU leader Hans van Baalen and Belgian ex-prime minister Guy Verhostad held a controversial speech on the Maidan square in support of the protesters that the EU will support them. ..."
"... I wouldn't put to much stress on Bandera having been a bad guy. His enemies were no better. They just won the war and the victors write history. The deeper problem of Ukraine is the fact that in the East of the country (and maybe even the majority of the country) Bandera is indeed regarded as a villain. But in the West he is a hero to this day. Even in Soviet times people from Western Ukraine were regarded as "fascists" by much of the rest of the country. No wonder as there were anti soviet partisans until late in the fifties. ..."
"... "Prorussian" Kutshma turned into a Ukrainian "patriot" (such is the logic of statehood) and the same thing happened with Yanukovich. People forget that he would have signed an association agreement with Europe had Europe not refused because he was insufficiently "democratic". ..."
"... But the West wanted it all. They wanted Ukraine firmly in the "Western" camp. Thereby they ripped the country apart. As a good friend of mine who has studied in Kiev in Soviet times remarked: to ask Ukraine to choose between East and West is like asking a child in divorce proceedings who it liked more: daddy or mummy? ..."
"... A very interesting conversation between Victoria Nulland and ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, caught at picking the future rulers of liberated Ukraine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bk This is not meddling. This is a defensive (preemptive?) action against Russian agression. ..."
"... I've never seen such an intense barrage of propaganda before in my life. America is fracturing apart like Ukraine. This is no coincidence. In both countries, oligarchs have seized power, the rule of law abandoned and there is a rush of corruption. ..."
"... What we did to Ukraine is shameful in every way. A remember a video of a pallet of money being unloaded from a USG place at Kiev during Maidan 2. That's in addition to Nuland's bag of cookies. I always thought that one of the objectives of our meddling in Ukraine was to make Sevastopol into a NATO naval base. ..."
"... Our leaders are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. The Ukraine was almost evenly divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian sides. Our government, rather than waiting for an election, assisted an armed rebellion against the elected pro-Russian government. Among the groups our government allied with in this endeavor were out and out Nazis. ..."
The ideological fissures that are growing in the United States are beginning to resemble the warring camps that characterize
the Ukrainian political world. The divide in Ukraine pits groups who are described as "right wing" and many are ideological descendants
of real Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against groups with a strong affinity to Russia. This kind of gap cannot be bridged through conventional
negotiations.
Who is the United States government and media supporting? The Nazis . You think I'm joking. Here are the facts, but we must go
back to World War II
:
When World War II began a large part of western Ukraine welcomed the German soldiers as liberators from the recently enforced
Soviet rule and openly collaborated with the Germans. The Soviet leader, Stalin, imposed policies that caused the deaths of almost
7 million Ukrainians in the 1930s--an era known as the Holomodor).
Ukrainian divisions, regiments and battalions were formed, such as SS Galizien, Nachtigal and Roland, and served under German
leadership. In the first few weeks of the war, more than 80 thousand people from the Galizien region volunteered for the SS Galizien,
which later known for its extreme cruelty towards Polish, Jewish and Russian people on the territory of Ukraine.
Members of these military groups came mostly from the organization of Ukrainian nationalists aka the OUN, which was founded in
1929. It's leader was Stepan Bandera, known then and today for his extreme anti-semitic and anti-communist views.
CIA documents just recently declassified show strong ties between US intelligence and Ukrainian nationalists since 1946.
Jump ahead now to the April 2014 "uprising" of anti-Russian forces in the Ukraine (Maidan 2). The US was firmly on the side
of the protesters, who ultimately succeeded in ousting the elected President.
And who were helping lead
this effort?
Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy was the founder of the Social National
Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler's Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.
The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader,
Oleh Tyahnybok was
one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests. . . .
Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is
Dmytro Yarosh , the leader of the Right
Sector a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who
previously boasted they were ready for
armed struggle to free Ukraine.
The US support, both overt and covert, for Ukrainian politicians is grounded in an anti-Soviet (now anti-Russian) ideology.
We have convinced ourselves that Russia is hell bent on world domination. Therefore we must do whatever is necessary to stop Russia,
which includes uncritical, blind support for elements in Ukraine that also detest the Russians. But in doing so we have closed our
eyes to the filthy underbelly of the virulent anti-Semitism that lurks in western Ukraine.
US meddling in the Ukraine is astonishing in its breadth. It ranges from the fact that the wife of former President Viktor
Yuschenko was an American citizen and former senior official in the US State Department. Do you think there would be no complaints
if Melania Trump was born in Russia and had served in the Russian Foreign Ministry? Yet, most Americans are happily ignorant of such
facts.
But Viktor Yushchenko is not an American who speaks a foreign language. He is very much a Ukrainian nationalist and steeped in
the anti-Semitism that dominates the ideology of western Ukraine. During the final months of his Presidency, Yushchenko made the
following declaration:
In conclusion I would like to say something that is long awaited by the Ukrainian patriots for many years I have signed a decree
for the unbroken spirit and standing for the idea of fighting for independent Ukraine. I declare Stepan Bandera a national hero of
Ukraine.
Without hesitation or shame, Yushchenko endorsed the legacy of Bandera, who had happily aligned with the Nazis in pursuit of his
own nationalist goals. Those goals, however, did not include Jews. And here is the ultimate irony--Bandera was born in Austria, not
the Ukraine. So much for ideological consistency.
US interference was not confined to serendipitous relationships, such as the Yushchenko marriage. It also included the open
and active funding of certain political groups and media outlets. The US State Department sent money through a variety of outlets.
One of these was the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening aka CEPPS.
This is :
a USAID program with other National Endowment for Democracy-affiliated groups: the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, the International Republican Institute and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. In 2010, the reported disbursement
for CEPPS in Ukraine was nearly $5 million.
The program's efforts are described on the USAID website as providing "training for political party activists and locally elected
officials to improve communication with civic groups and citizens, and the development of NGO-led advocacy campaigns on electoral
and political process issues."
Anyone prepared to argue that it would be okay for Russia, through its Foreign Ministry, to contribute several million dollars
for training party activists in the United States?
What we do not know is how much money was being spent on covert activities directed and managed by the CIA. During the political
upheaval in April 2014 (Maidan 2), there was this news item:
Over the weekend, CIA director John Brennan travelled to Kiev, nobody knows exactly why, but some speculate that he intends to
open US intelligence resources to Ukrainian leaders about real-time Russian military maneuvers. The US has, thus far, refrained from
sharing such knowledge because Moscow is believed to have penetrated much of Ukraine's communications systems and
Washington isn't about to hand over its surveillance secrets to the
Russians.
Do you think Americans would be outraged if the head of Russia's version of the CIA, the SVR or FSB, traveled quietly to the United
States to meet with Donald Trump prior to his election? I think that would qualify as meddling.
Count me as one of the people who is outraged by the hypocrisy and stupidity now on display in the United States. I am not
talking about Trump. I am referring to the Republicans and Democrats and pundits and media mouthpieces who are fuming about Russian
citizens writing on Facebook as one of the worst catastrophes since Pearl Harbor or 9-11.
There clearly is meddling going on in America's political landscape. But it isn't the Russian Government. No. There are foreign
and domestic forces aligned who are keen on portraying Russia as a threat to world order that must be opposed by more defense spending
and tougher sanctions. That is the propaganda that dominates the media in the United States these days. And that is truly dangerous
to our nation's safety and freedom.
Good post pt.. thanks... i never knew ''the wife of former President Viktor Yushchenko was an American citizen and former senior
official in the US State Department.'' That is informative.. i recall following this closely back in 2014.. the hypocrisy on display
in the usa at present is truly amazing and frightening at the same time.. it appears that the public can be cowed very easily..
On the twitters, you would be accused of "whatabouttism" - which is the crime of excusing Putin's diabolism by pointing out
American interference with the internal politics an elections of other nations. A CIA guy recently said the US only interferes
to 'promote democracy' - tell that to Australia, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Congo, Russia, Ukraine...it's a long long list.
An independent Ukraine was also a project of German foreign policy after the Brest-Litowsk Treaty (the equivalent of the
Versailles Treaty, only aimed at Russia) SO I have o wonder how much of the enthusiasm for Vicky Nuland's Israel friendly Nazi
state-let (oh what irony!) is a product of Germany wanting to reassert itself in the east, using NATO solidarity as a fig leaf.
Maybe they will make Ukraine import a lot o Africans "refugees" so that Soros' project of creating a brown Europe will be advanced
in the Slavic sphere as well as the west.
It's not only the US. The EU borg are also meddling. In my country we had a referendum about Ukraine. The population voted "Against"
on the question: "Are you for or against the Approval Act of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine?"
This was the only referendum that was done since it was implemented in 2015. A second one is being organized on the Intelligence
and Security Services which has controversial parts with regard to access to internet traffic.
This referendum will take place on March 21, 2018 and will probably be voted against because of the controversial elements
(in part because there is still living memory of our Eastern neighbors in the second world war)
These 2 will probably be the last. Our house of representatives have voted yesterday to end the referendum law (with a majority
vote of 76 out of 150 representatives!)
So much for democracy. The reason stated that the referendum was controversial (probably because they voted against the EU
borg). Interesting is that the proposal was done by the party that wanted the referendum as a principal point. This will almost
certainly ensure that the little respect left for traditional parties is gone and they will not be able to get a majority next
elections.
The liberal party - who provides the prime-minister - EU leader
Hans van Baalen and Belgian ex-prime minister Guy
Verhostad held a controversial speech on the Maidan square in support of the protesters that the EU will support them.
I wouldn't put to much stress on Bandera having been a bad guy. His enemies were no better. They just won the war and the
victors write history. The deeper problem of Ukraine is the fact that in the East of the country (and maybe even the majority
of the country) Bandera is indeed regarded as a villain. But in the West he is a hero to this day. Even in Soviet times people
from Western Ukraine were regarded as "fascists" by much of the rest of the country. No wonder as there were anti soviet partisans
until late in the fifties.
Even in the nineties anybody who travelled in Ukraine could feel the tension between East and West. The Russians were certainly
aware of it and mindful not to rip the country apart they cut the Ukrainians an enormous amount of slack. Of course they supported
"their" candidates and shoveled money into their insatiable throats. Only to be disappointed time and again. "Prorussian"
Kutshma turned into a Ukrainian "patriot" (such is the logic of statehood) and the same thing happened with Yanukovich. People
forget that he would have signed an association agreement with Europe had Europe not refused because he was insufficiently "democratic".
Really the West should have been content with things as they were.
But the West wanted it all. They wanted Ukraine firmly in the "Western" camp. Thereby they ripped the country apart. As
a good friend of mine who has studied in Kiev in Soviet times remarked: to ask Ukraine to choose between East and West is like
asking a child in divorce proceedings who it liked more: daddy or mummy?
Really the West (not only the US -the Eu is also guilty) is to blame. It is long past time to get down from the high horse
and stop spreading chaos and mayhem in the name of democracy,
An informative column. The coup & later developments soured me on the MSMedia. I'm an initiate into modern Russian
history: NATO in the Ukraine = WW3!
Some additional history:
A Ukrainian nation did not exist until after WW1; one piece was Russian, another Polish and another Austrian. The Holodomor
is exaggerated for political purposes; the actual number dead from famine appears to be 'only' 2M. It wasn't Soviet bloody mindedness,
it was Soviet agricultural mismanagement; collectivizing agriculture drops production.
They did this right before the great drought of the 1930s - remember the dustbowl. There was a famine in Kazakestan at the
same time; 1.5M died.
The Nazis raised 5 SS divisions out of the Ukraine. As the Germans were pushed back they ran night drops of ordnance into the
Ukraine as long as they could. The Soviets had to carry on divisional level counter insurgency until 1956. After the war, Gehlen,
Nazi intelligence czar, kept himself out of jail by turning over his files, routes & agents to the US. He also stoked anti Soviet
paranoia.
The Brits ended up with a whole Ukr SS division that they didn't want, so they gave it to Canada. Which is why Canada has such
cranky policy around the Ukraine!
A very interesting conversation between Victoria Nulland and ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, caught at picking the future rulers
of liberated Ukraine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bk
This is not meddling. This is a defensive (preemptive?) action against Russian agression.
I'm sure you'd like us to ignore Bandera. I bet he liked children and dogs. Just like Hitler. Bandera was a genuine bad
guy. There is no rehabilitating that scourge on society. Nice try though.
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that your final comment is sarcasm. When you have two senior US Government officials
who will and will not constitute a foreign government, you have gone beyond meddling. It is worse.
The media is hysterical. Today, Putin's Facebook Bot Collaborator contacted the Kremlin before his mercenaries attacked Americans
in Syria.
I've never seen such an intense barrage of propaganda before in my life. America is fracturing apart like Ukraine. This
is no coincidence. In both countries, oligarchs have seized power, the rule of law abandoned and there is a rush of corruption.
A World War is near. The realists are gone. The Moguls are pushing Donald Trump pull the trigger. Either in Syria with an assault
to destroy Hezbollah (Iran) for good or American trainers going over the top of trenches in Donbass in a centennial attack of
the dead.
Hallelujah and jubilation! We're in full agreement on this subject. What we did to Ukraine is shameful in every way. A
remember a video of a pallet of money being unloaded from a USG place at Kiev during Maidan 2. That's in addition to Nuland's
bag of cookies. I always thought that one of the objectives of our meddling in Ukraine was to make Sevastopol into a NATO naval
base.
I would definitely want to see a full account of what support we provided to the nazi thugs of Svoboda and Pravy Sektor. We
have a long history of meddling, at least twice as long as the Soviet Union/Russia. But that does not mean we should stop investigating
the Russian interference in our 2016 election. Just stop hyperventilating over it. It no more deserves risking a war than our
continuing mutual espionage.
Our leaders are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. The Ukraine was almost evenly divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian
sides. Our government, rather than waiting for an election, assisted an armed rebellion against the elected pro-Russian government.
Among the groups our government allied with in this endeavor were out and out Nazis.
As a result of this rebellion, the Russian majority in Crimea overwhelming voted to leave the Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which
they had been part of for over 150-years. While our government continues to provide military aid to Israel, which used force of
arms take over the West Bank, it imposed sanctions against Russia when the people of Crimea voted to join their former countrymen.
Mind boggling.
Now we understand that it was Adelson money talking for Trump, when he campaigned in 2016 on
the platform of hostility of Iran and abandonment of the nuclear deal.
While derail who and how ordered the assassination, one thing it clear: Trump no longer
deserve re-election. He is yet another Hillary now. Any of Dem opponents excluding Biden, who is
dead fish in any case, are better then Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump campaigned on belligerence toward Iran and trashing the Obama-led Iran nuclear deal, and he has followed through on those threats, filling his administration with the most vile, hawkish figures in the U.S. national security establishment. After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security adviser, Trump fired him last September. But despite reports that Trump had soured on Bolton because of his interventionist posture toward Iran, Bolton's firing merely opened the door for the equally belligerent Mike Pompeo to take over the administration's Iran policy at the State Department. ..."
"... Now Pompeo is the public face of the Suleimani assassination, while for his part, the fired Bolton didn't want to be left out of the gruesome victory lap: ..."
"... Trump, who had no idea who Qassim Suleimani was until it was explained to him live on the radio by conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt in 2015, didn't seem to need many details to know that he wanted to crush the Iranian state. ..."
"... Much as the neoconservatives came to power in 2001 after the election of George W. Bush with the goal of regime change in Iraq, Trump in his bumbling way assembled a team of extremists who viewed him as their best chance of wiping the Islamic Republic of Iran off the map. ..."
"... Assassination has been a central component of U.S. policy for many decades, though it has been whitewashed and normalized throughout history, most recently with Obama's favored term, "targeted killings." ..."
"... While many Democratic politicians are offering their concerns about the consequences of Suleimani's assassination, they are prefacing it with remarks about how atrocious Suleimani was. Framing his assassination that way ultimately benefits the extremist cabal of foreign policy hawks who agitated for this very moment to arrive. There's no justification for assassinating foreign officials, including Suleimani. This is an aggressive act of war, an offensive act committed by the U.S. on the sovereign territory of a third country, Iraq. This assassination and the potential for a war it raises are, unfortunately, consistent with more than half a century of U.S. aggression against Iran and Iraq. ..."
"... Five months ago, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited this very type of action, but it was removed from the final bill. "Any member who voted for the NDAA -- a blank check -- can't now express dismay that Trump may have launched another war in the Middle East," Khanna wrote on Twitter after Suleimani's assassination. "My Amendment, which was stripped, would have cut off $$ for any offensive attack against Iran including against officials like Soleimani." ..."
"... Trump is responsible for whatever comes next. But time and again, the worst foreign policy atrocities of his presidency have been enabled by the very politicians who claim to want him removed from office ..."
While the media focus for three years of the Trump presidency has centered around "Russia
collusion" and impeachment, the most dangerous collusion of all was happening right out in the
open -- the Trump/Saudi/Israel/UAE
drive to war with Iran .
On August 3, 2016 -- just three months before Donald Trump would win the Electoral College
vote and ascend to power -- Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower.
For decades, Prince had been agitating for a war with Iran and, as early as 2010, had developed
a fantastical proposal for using mercenaries to wage it.
At this meeting was George Nader, an American citizen who had a long history of being a
quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle East. Nader, who had also worked for
Blackwater and Prince, was a convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar
allegations in the United States. Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has
close ties to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince. Join Our NewsletterOriginal reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I'm in There was also an
Israeli at the Trump Tower meeting: Joel Zamel. He was there supposedly pitching a
multimillion-dollar social media manipulation campaign to the Trump team. Zamel's company,
Psy-Group, boasts of employing former Israeli intelligence operatives. Nader and Zamel were
joined by Donald Trump Jr. According to the New York Times, the purpose of the meeting
was "primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and
Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months, past the election and well into
President Trump's first year in office."
One major common goal ran through the agendas of all the participants in this Trump Tower
meeting: regime change in Iran. Trump campaigned on belligerence toward Iran and trashing
the Obama-led Iran nuclear deal, and he has followed through on those threats, filling his
administration with the most vile, hawkish figures in the U.S. national security establishment.
After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security adviser, Trump fired him
last September. But despite reports that Trump had soured on Bolton because of his
interventionist posture toward Iran, Bolton's firing merely opened the door for the equally
belligerent Mike Pompeo to take over the administration's Iran policy at the State
Department.
Now Pompeo is the public face of the Suleimani assassination, while for his part, the
fired Bolton didn't want to be left out of the gruesome victory lap:
Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qassem Soleimani. Long in the making, this
was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the
first step to regime change in Tehran.
Trump, who had
no idea who Qassim Suleimani was until it was explained to him live on the radio by
conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt in 2015, didn't seem to need many details to know that he
wanted to crush the Iranian state.
Much as the neoconservatives came to power in 2001 after the election of George W. Bush
with the goal of regime change in Iraq, Trump in his bumbling way assembled a team of
extremists who viewed him as their best chance of wiping the Islamic Republic of Iran off the
map.
While Barack Obama provided crucial military and intelligence support for Saudi Arabia's
scorched earth campaign in Yemen, which killed untold numbers of civilians, Trump escalated
that mass murder in a blatant effort to draw Iran militarily into a conflict. That was the
agenda of the gulf monarchies and Israel, and it coincided neatly with the neoconservative
dreams of overthrowing the Iranian government. As the U.S. and Saudi Arabia intensified their
military attacks in Yemen, Iran began to insert itself more and more forcefully into Yemeni
affairs, though Tehran was careful not to be tricked into offering this Trump/Saudi/UAE/Israel
coalition a justification for wider war.
Protesters shout slogans against the United States and Israel as they hold posters with the
image of top Iranian commander Qassim Suleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq,
and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a demonstration in the Kashmiri town of Magam on
Jan. 3, 2020.
Photo: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images The assassination of Suleimani -- a popular figure
in Iran who is viewed as one of the major drivers of ISIS's defeat in Iraq -- was one of only a
handful of actions that the U.S. could have taken that would almost certainly lead to a war
with Iran. This assassination, reportedly ordered directly by Trump, was advocated by the most
dangerous and extreme players in the U.S. foreign policy establishment with that exact
intent.
Assassination has been a central component of U.S. policy for many decades, though it
has been whitewashed and normalized throughout history, most recently with Obama's favored
term, "targeted killings." The U.S. Congress has intentionally never legislated the issue
of assassination. Lawmakers have avoided even defining the word "assassination." While every
president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S.
personnel, they have each carried out assassinations with little to no congressional outcry.
Read Our Complete
Coverage The Iran Cables In 1976, following Church Committee recommendations regarding
allegations of assassination plots carried out by U.S. intelligence agencies, Ford signed an
executive order banning "political assassination." Jimmy Carter subsequently issued a new order
strengthening the prohibition by dropping the word "political" and extending it to include
persons "employed by or acting on behalf of the United States." In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed
Executive Order 12333, which remains in effect today. The language seems clear enough: "No
person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or
conspire to engage in, assassination."
As I
wrote in August 2017, reflecting on our Drone Papers series from two years earlier, "The
Obama administration, by institutionalizing a policy of drone-based killings of individuals
judged to pose a threat to national security -- without indictment or trial, through secret
processes -- bequeathed to our political culture, and thus to Donald Trump, a policy of
assassination, in direct violation of Executive Order 12333 and, moreover, the Fifth Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution. To date, at least seven U.S. citizens are known to have been killed
under this policy, including a 16-year-old boy. Only one American, the radical preacher Anwar
al-Awlaki, was said to have been the 'intended target' of a strike."
There's no justification for assassinating foreign officials, including Suleimani.
While many Democratic politicians are offering their concerns about the
consequences of Suleimani's assassination, they are prefacing it with remarks about how
atrocious Suleimani was. Framing his assassination that way ultimately benefits the extremist
cabal of foreign policy hawks who agitated for this very moment to arrive. There's no
justification for assassinating foreign officials, including Suleimani. This is an aggressive
act of war, an offensive act committed by the U.S. on the sovereign territory of a third
country, Iraq. This assassination and the potential for a war it raises are, unfortunately,
consistent with more than half a century of U.S. aggression against Iran and Iraq.
For three years, many Democrats have told the country that Trump is the gravest threat to a
democratic system we have faced. And yet many leading Democrats have voted consistently to give
Trump unprecedented military budgets and surveillance powers.
Five months ago, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna offered an amendment to the
National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited this very type of action, but it
was removed from the final bill. "Any member who voted for the NDAA -- a blank check -- can't
now express dismay that Trump may have launched another war in the Middle East," Khanna
wrote
on Twitter after Suleimani's assassination. "My Amendment, which was stripped, would have cut
off $$ for any offensive attack against Iran including against officials like
Soleimani."
Trump is responsible for whatever comes next. But time and again, the worst foreign
policy atrocities of his presidency have been enabled by the very politicians who claim to want
him removed from office . Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely
is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The
Intercept hadn't done it? Consider what the world of media would look like without The
Intercept. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? How
many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if
our reporters weren't on the beat? The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but
it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. We
don't have ads, so we depend on our members -- 35,000 and counting -- to help us hold the
powerful to account. Joining is simple and doesn't need to cost a lot: You can become a
sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. That's all it takes to support the
journalism you rely on.
"... Somehow the Ziocons around Trump have forgotten that the present state of Iraq refused to yield to Obama's demands for a SOFA and in effect expelled the US from the country. ..."
"... The Iraqi parliament is going to vote in emergency session over the issue of the death of al-Muhandis. Will they vote to expel the US from their country? ..."
"... What a lot of commentators seem to overlook is that America has basically declared war on Iraq, while our soldiers are hosted on joint bases with Iraqi soldiers. ..."
"... "We need to get out of Iraq and Syria now. That is the only way that we're going to prevent ourselves from being dragged into this quagmire, deeper and deeper into a war with Iran." Tulsi Gabbard. ..."
"... Assassination of generals, one from an allied country, one from a country with which we have no declared war, and both assassinations performed on the territory of an allied, sovereign country without permission? This is piracy. Why should anyone trust the word of a country which does not honor the most basic of international law? ..."
"... Will we go if they vote that way? I'll go with no. The Neocons desperately want us in Iraq to protect Israel and stick it to Iran as much as possible. They have a laundry list of prepared arguments and we have the dumbest, most compliant, state media in recorded history. We also have a President who believes that intnl law is for weaklings and loves saying 'take the oil'. ..."
"... Take a look at this interview to David Petraeus by FP on yesterday´s summary executions...What you make of this? https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/03 He sounds as if he were the brain behind this operation on summary executions..along some other think tankers.. ..."
"... Whoever is President we will have war. The President is just a feckless puppet controlled by the Zionist. I'll never vote again. It's a waste of time and a farce. Hillary or Donald no different just a matter of timing. Obama destroyed Libya and Syria. Bush II the simpleton and his fairy tale WMD lie. I've lost all respect for whatever "the republic" is suppose to be. On top of that the masses are too stupid for democracy to work. ..."
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian soldier. He lived by the sword and died by the sword. He met
a soldier's destiny. It is being said that he was a BAD MAN. Absurd! To say that he was a BAD
MAN because he fought us as well as the Sunni jihadis is simply infantile. Were all those who
fought the US BAD MEN? How about Gentleman Johhny Burgoyne? Was he a BAD MAN? How about Sitting
Bull? Was he a BAD MAN? How about Aguinaldo? Another BAD MAN? Let us not be juvenile.
The Iraqi PMU commander who died with Soleimani was Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. He was a member
of a Shia militia that had been integrated into the Iraqi armed forces. IOW, we killed an Iraqi
general. We killed him without the authorization of the supposedly sovereign state of Iraq.
We created the present government of Iraq through the farcical "purple thumb" elections.
That government holds a seat in the UN General Assembly and is a sovereign entity in
international law in spite of Trump's tweet today that said among other things that we have
"paid" Iraq billions of US dollars. To the Arabs, this statement that brands them as hirelings
of the US is close to the ultimate in insult.
Somehow the Ziocons around Trump have forgotten that the present state of Iraq refused to
yield to Obama's demands for a SOFA and in effect expelled the US from the country.
The Iraqi parliament is going to vote in emergency session over the issue of the death of
al-Muhandis. Will they vote to expel the US from their country?
Will we go if they vote that way? We should. If we do not, then we will be exposed as
imperialist hypocrites.
Trump should welcome such a vote. He wants to get out of the ME? What greater opportunity
could we have to do so?
Let us leave if invited to go. Let the oh, so clever locals deal with their own hatreds and
rivalries. pl
What a lot of commentators seem to overlook is that America has basically declared war on
Iraq, while our soldiers are hosted on joint bases with Iraqi soldiers.
But...Elora guesses you are being rhetorical here...because... if he would have died by
the sword...would not have he had the opportunity to defend himself against his
enemy/opponent?
Instead...he was caught on surprise...unarmed...and hit by an overwhelming force...he was
going to some funerals...
"We need to get out of Iraq and Syria now. That is the only way that we're going to prevent
ourselves from being dragged into this quagmire, deeper and deeper into a war with Iran."
Tulsi Gabbard.
Some impressive images worth thousands words...just to remember everybody that this man was
an appreciated human being...doing his duty....for his motherland...and his God....
To better understand the pain of that elderly yazidi woman in the video, some testimony by
Rania Khalek on the role of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis ( the other militia commander killed who is
being as well slandered as terrorist along Soleimani ...) in stopping yazidi genocide in Iraq
when nobody else was giving a damn, less any help, for this people...
Assassination of generals, one from an allied country, one from a country with which we have
no declared war, and both assassinations performed on the territory of an allied, sovereign
country without permission? This is piracy. Why should anyone trust the word of a country
which does not honor the most basic of international law?
And am I alone to be disgusted to see the senior members of our government lie blatantly
and constantly, when they're not fellating the nearest likudnik....
We go where we are wanted and appreciated. We have no skin in Iraq. Build the Wall and
protect our own borders. Concentrate our resources on cyber-security.
Tulsi makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately that disqualifies her for the presidency, not
because she couldn't execute the functions of the presidency, but because neither the party
apparatchiks nor the voters would give her the chance. These days either nationalistic
claptrap or promises of more freebies are what carry the day. Quelle domage, eh?
As for the Iraqi parliament voting to expel U.S. forces? That's an interesting question. If
they did, they'd better vote to expel the "den of spies" at the embassy and insist on our
having a normal sized legation (as all countries would be well advised to do). But if they
do, would we leave? I personally doubt it even though it would be best if we did and let the
Iraqis do what they will, which would probably be reverting back to some sort of strongman
govt, of a type more suited to their cultural traditions and inclinations. It's high time we
afforded the rest of the world the type of cultural and political autonomy we claim to revere
so much.
So, we leave? A good thing for us and for them and the world at large.
Or, we don't? Then we expose the truth the rest of the world already knows, but we at least
expose the truth to our own people who have been fed a steady diet of mendacious BS about
what we've been doing over there all these years.
That attack on the "airport limo" vehicles leaving Baghdad airport sure took some nerve on
our part to think that we could sell something like that...
And, did Trump actually order it, or did someone else in the MIC order it first and Trump
laid claim to it afterwards? Uncle Joe, if he had ordered it, would have afterwards announced
the execution of a fall guy and denied any complicity! If Trump didn't order it, he should
throw whoever did under the bus instead of crowing and wrapping himself in the flag. I wonder
about what actually happened in planning this hit job on prominent military people on their
way to a funeral for 31 people who may or may not have had anything whatsoever to do with the
death of a single American mercenary in Iraq in an attack by persons unknown on a small
outpost.
It's times like this I wish I was a fly on the wall, listening to what the Russian General
Staff conversations regarding this assassination are at this moment.
Trump IMHO would do well to seek Putin's counsel on how to exit the corner that Trump has
backed US into. While this spells problems for our US, it also creates additional problems
for Russia in the ways that could cause them MAJOR problem as well as in a full blown Mideast
War with many players in the mix. Not a good mix either.
Israel can't handle a full blown Mideast War, no matter how much their narcissistic
national psyche thinks they can. Israel is a mere postage stamp in a sea of rage, which
tsunami waves could very easily consume them. Sheldon Adelson and his Likud/NEOCON blowhards
have no concept of what is on the short horizon, that can go one way or the other.
I'm glad I'm retired in this instance. My glass of bourbon is more palatable than the
grains of Mideast sand that fixing to get stirred up.
God help us all.
Pat, why does the US military always get left with the shit-storms to clean up after?
Why?
Will we go if they vote that way? I'll go with no. The Neocons desperately want us in Iraq to protect Israel and stick it to
Iran as much as possible. They have a laundry list of prepared arguments and we have the
dumbest, most compliant, state media in recorded history. We also have a President who
believes that intnl law is for weaklings and loves saying 'take the oil'.
I can hear the talking points already ...
1. 'Obama made the same mistake and it created ISIS.'
2. 'Iran has taken over Iraq, it's not a legitimate request' (look at how we selectively
recognize govts in South America and no one blinks).
3. 'Iran will use Iraq as a base to attack us' (yeah, its about 100 miles closer).
I can't stand what we have become, the jackals have taken over and the MSM attacks the
very few who are not jackals.
OK. Who do you think would have had the power to order the strike? Not the CIA, the
military would not accept such an order. Not the chairman of the JCS, he is not in the chain
of command. That leaves Esper, SECDEF. Really? He looks like a putschist to you? You are
ignorant of the American government.
Take a look at this interview to David Petraeus by FP on yesterday´s summary
executions...What you make of this?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/03 He sounds as if he were the brain behind this operation on summary executions..along some
other think tankers..
Whoever is President we will have war. The President is just a feckless puppet controlled by
the Zionist. I'll never vote again. It's a waste of time and a farce. Hillary or Donald no
different just a matter of timing. Obama destroyed Libya and Syria. Bush II the simpleton and
his fairy tale WMD lie. I've lost all respect for whatever "the republic" is suppose to be.
On top of that the masses are too stupid for democracy to work.
Iran should probably be very careful not to overplay his hand. The time in working it its favor.
Notable quotes:
"... Lavrov said in June 2019 "Those who rely on inciting tension between Arabs and Persians, Arabs and Kurds, and inside the Arab world – between the Sunnis and the Shiites, are not guided by the interests of the peoples of the region, but by their own narrow geopolitical motives." ..."
"... USA has not legally declared war on Iran. This is murder. Murder of an Iranian Government employee. He may also have been covered by a diplomatic passport. If he is (I don't know) this has major repercussions for Diplomatic immunity. ..."
"... The USA 'new' unilateral principle is that any official in any country may now be murdered by the USA government at the whim of the President of the day. ..."
"... The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic sanctions warfare. ..."
The subject is 'revenge' and what Iranian authorities may or may not do.
The 'big picture' is re-building the security (and well-being) of ordinary Iranian,
Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni people - and all other decent people of the Middle East and beyond.
Tribal reaction is deep and strong. We all know and experience that. But to achieve 'the big picture' the first instinctive hind-brain reaction must be set
aside - or at least, allowed to 'recede'. Of course there must be re-balancing, which carries with it a feeling of vindication, if
not revenge.
Lavrov said in June 2019 "Those who rely on inciting tension between Arabs and Persians,
Arabs and Kurds, and inside the Arab world – between the Sunnis and the Shiites, are
not guided by the interests of the peoples of the region, but by their own narrow
geopolitical motives."
Well the USA Government is guilty must apologise publicly and humbly. Compensation must be
paid.
Dialogue started.
USA has not legally declared war on Iran. This is murder. Murder of an Iranian Government
employee. He may also have been covered by a diplomatic passport. If he is (I don't know)
this has major repercussions for Diplomatic immunity.
The USA 'new' unilateral principle is that any official in any country may now be murdered
by the USA government at the whim of the President of the day.
Clearly, decent people in USA need to campaign to limit Presidential powers. Revenge creates a spiral of escalation which becomes a vortex of destruction, perhaps
global. How does that improve peoples daily lives?
The duty of government is ensuring the security of its people. Does 'revenge' achieve this
in the years ahead? It is the instinctive option, yes, but is it the BEST long term
option?
In the end, parties must meet, compensation paid, and the hard slow work of building
acceptable inter-state relations based on rule of law and the UN Charter re-commenced.
In my view, there is no other option that meets the long term need of ordinary people.
But building this requires special people. Not wreckers and haters.
Will the urgency of the situation see them emerge?
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 4 2020 22:18 utc | 84
Thank you. Someone making sense. Most are talking about this like it's halftime in a
sporting match - completely juvenile.
Iran needs to pull back and focus on making themselves stronger in economy and technology
and for strong ties with other responsible players. They have opportunities with many
countries which are increasingly disenchanted with the west. And the west is headed for an
economic beating - which explains the desperate behavior.
Even if Iran is very careful in their behavior Irael is going to continue to press for war
- the psychotic fears most those that he has attacked.
But maybe with careful behavior and planning and efforts to repair and maintain ties the
Iraninans could be ready for that eventuality.
Espen and Trump have made it clear that they will hold Iran responsible for whatever may
happen in the region and that they will strike in response or preemptively. Essentially, that
makes the real Iranian reaction largely irrelevant. And Israel could create a false flag
incident #a la USS Liberty. Or some rogue groups that Iran cannot control might attack US
troops or installations. Whether by design or accident, there will be a pretext to base
another military strike against Iran on. And then another, until a full blown US-Iran war
erupts which Bibi, Lieberman & co so desperately want.
Years of relentless demonization of Iran in the US and the UK have brainwashed large swaths
of the population. They will accept a war against Iran, albeit reluctantly, as long as not
too many Americans get killed in its wake.
I don't believe for a second that the US would "accept" a limited retaliation. They will
jump at any opportunity. Lindsey Graham stands between Trump and impeachment and that
warmonger is on record for seeking to bomb Iran's oil refineries. Incidentally, he was the
only senator who Trump consulted prior to the murder. Could well be that Graham is right now
the real P0TUS , at least until the senate has voted on impeachment. Conveniently, pelosi has
put the impeachment on hold, thereby prolonging that situation. Coincidence? I don't think
so.
Maybe the Israelis/neocons fear that Trump might lose in November and want to start the
war while Bibi's favorite lapdog is still P0TUS. Not, that the Democrats are peacelovers
(except for Sanders and Gabbard). But they might be more afraid of a negative reaction by the
electorate.
Murdering Suleimani NOW was not some hasty decision without a plan. I am afraid, it was done
to get THE ultimate war in the middle east going, no matter if and how much restraint Iran
will show.
I do think, btw that Trump blew his reelection by killing Suleimani. Another warmonger
will assuredly take his place.
After reading what Magnier has to say, a reasonable guess is that although emotions are
running high currently, Irans leadership will likely concentrate omn the work that must be
done during such a period, which is to (attempt to) influence the Iraqi parliamentry vote on
the continued presence of United States forces. As some have pointed out, this may lead to a
US retreat to the Kurdish areas, but even that can only be considered a victory, with
consequent practically free movement of Iranian military supplies to their allies in Syria
and Lebanon. With this development hopefully secured there is then plenty of time to
precisely calibrate any further responce to a level where dignity is preserved, without
necessarily bringing the wider ME area into further strife. Any waiting period is also useful
in further building up capability where needed, specifically in the case where US aggression
continues as it has done so far. US leaders seem not to appreciate that their showy
applications of force don't win them friends locally, and could eventually succeed in
unifying Iraq in a way Iran never could on its own.
This may have been referenced before, and b's previous post begins with a description of the
importance of Soleimani, but here is a further link for those who are still in doubt as to
his significance for everyone in the region:
I will also add from a post by Active Patriot at the Saker site: "...if Iran is a
friend and ally to Iraq and Syria they would not craft a response which drags either of those
2 countries deeper into more war and hardship."
Solameini's martyrdom is surely recognized as such by all in the ME who have suffered and
are suffering the century-long occupation/meddling/manipulating/lying that Western powers
have inflicted on the whole ME since before the Great War---now with the USA in the lead.
(One of Churchill's war aims in WW1 was to destroy the Ottoman Empire and grab as much of it
as Britain could grab. Then of course there was the Balfour Declaration crime.)
What is the "purpose" of martyrdom if it is not to galvanize action of some kind? To
galvanize a dramatic quantum leap in consciousness of the meaning of the martyr's
sacrifice---of his martyrdom. Surely Solameini will be seen to have died *for* something. For
what?
Perhaps to inspire a new setting aside of existing local conflicts to form an effective
front to *eject* the foreign virus from the body of the whole ME? To create a new coalition
among all citizens of all faiths in all of the besieged ME countries to oust the "crusaders"?
Didn't Nasser aspire to take charge of his region via the United *Arab* Republics? What about
United Sovereign Nations from the Levant to the Hindu Kush. And, make things uncomfortable
for Erdogan if he continues to host American Air Force?
Just wondering.
Also, what is Kurdish reaction to this murder? Kurds seem to be an element standing in the
way of unity of purpose in the ME.
1) Get a list of your favorite sites, then do a DNS lookup on their names, and put those
IP addresses in a HOSTS
file . If a site appears to go offline, try the IP address. If that doesn't work either,
well...
2) I have an old laptop that has wifi and an ethernet port, and it runs an older version
of Linux Mint. I wish I had an older version, and I may start looking. The more recent the
operating system (any!), the more likely it will have backdoors or some other 'critter'
running about and working against you.
3) If you have the hardware and some friends nearby, start an out-of-band neighborhood
network. This, as I envision it (with limited oracular ability, mind you), can be like the
Little Free
Library - just an accumulation of stuff each person has saved over the years, or whatever
can be obtained, and scanned if necessary. Wifi can work for this short-term, but plan to
bury multiple cables eventually. DO NOT EVER (knowingly) CONNECT THIS NETWORK TO THE
INTERNET!!!
4) Start planning for long-term storage of important books. Niven's novel Lucifer's Hammer describes
one character's efforts in this direction - he sunk a huge library of important 'civilization
cranking' books in a cesspool on a neighbor's property.
There's more, but we've a broad spectrum of things to consider at the moment, so I'll not
hog the thread.
As a matter of standing up and showing some jackasses in this thread that US citizens aren't
all Rambo...
I, Thomas James Kenney, hereby publicly state that it is my opinion the only way out of
this mess (and the only chance to save some semblance of a country) is to very publicly try
and imprison these vermin for high treason. They have committed an act that runs counter to
every attempted description of civilized behavior ever written.
It is also my considered opinion that it is not necessary for Iran to do anything at all.
Simply stay the course. We are almost bled out in this disintegrating 'republic', and people
around me are conversing about ways to disconnect from some of the toxic facets of this
society. There is not much support for a war, despite what the 'required 20%' continue to
scream.
The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based
on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq
and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic
sanctions warfare.
The death and maiming and poisoning of millions of Iraqis has been the
American contribution to Iraq, over the last several decades. What for? How has this helped
the United States? Or Europe? The main advocates for this supreme criminality has been the
Israel lobby, Israel, and the supporters of Israel.
The American Apache helicopters are still buzzing around over Baghdad, dealing out terror
and intimidation and death. The murder by the United States of yet more Iraqi soldiers and
officials recently has been largely absent from the propaganda narratives. But could those be
'the final straw'?
As far as Trump's 52 target threat, this comes after the apparent please don't escalate
and we'll make a deal - good cop-bad cop routine.
The 52 number was used to remind mind-controlled Americans that the evil Iranians
outrageously took 52 Americans hostage. American's don't just take people hostage; they give
them orange suits and torture them, unless they kill them. Apart from murdering and maiming
by the millions, they even stage fictional killings, like Osama bin laden, to entertain the
zombies, and stick out their chests, hand out medals and the like.
Just a reminder: Iran is not an Arabic country.
And many non-Arabs and non-Muslims live in ME countries (I am not counting Is as an ME
country in this context).
Which is why I express hope of perhaps a broader regional coalition.
The shooting down of flight 655 was a criminal act of manslaughter that should've brought
charges against the people responsible. But does b really consider destroying another plane
of civilians a justified retribution?
I wonder if Putin will force Trump to stop the escalation and show remorse to Iran before
any revenge happens.
This will end great, a fucked up circus called congress who hasn't had the balls to do their
job and legally declare war for nearly three decades, and a president who can't even defend
himself from a gang of thugs staging a direct coup against him in his own government. What
could possibly go wrong?
The second are the immortal words of Thucydides: "the strong do what they will, the weak
suffer what they must."
Yeah, I heard Thucydides had some issues with resolution of uncertainties for targeting,
especially for stand-off precision guided weapons. Plus there were some issues with long
range air-defense systems in Greece in times of Plato and Socrates. You know, GLONASS wasn't
fully operational, plus EW was a little bit scratchy.
So, surely, it all fully applies today, especially in choke points. Plus those Athenians
they were not exactly good with RPGs and anti-Armour operations. Other than that, Thucydides
nailed it.
Interesting to note that it was the party professing those words - Athens - who started
the Peloponnesian War, driven in large part by that haughty attitude. It was Athens that also ended that war, of course. They did so when they surrendered to the Spartans.
Sir Craig Reedie signify the growing politization of sport and the arrivals on the scene of
western intelligence agencies (McCabe, Steele, etc were involved in this dirty game) to the extent that was never possible before. It stated with FBI
operation against FIFA. WARA was the second round. See also
End of term message to stakeholders from WADA President, Sir Craig Reedie World Anti-Doping
Agency
This prostitute Sir Craig Reedie is is up to ears in dirst connected with doping by the
Americans and the Europeans? This stooge of MI6 and FBI was shyly silent when Americans were
found to use illegal drag to enhance the results. Look at sisters Williams.
I despise corrupt Russian bureaucrats, but no less I despite Western Pro-American lackeys
with faces spred with n shit to shuch an exptent that they neve can wash themselves
clean!
Good point Afghanistan. The newly appointed General Ghaani was active in Afghanistan. As he
is famimiar with the place, that may well be where he decides to retaliate.
The introduction of manpads would be no less significant an impact on the occupying force as
it was when the Soviet's were there when the SEE EYE AYE showered the Afghani's with
Stingers. It completely changed the modus of the Soviet army once they were introduced.
Helicopters became dangerous to be in and could no longer fly near the ground. Good
observations though, the assassination of Assad could prove to be magnitudes greater a spark
than any of us could imagine. I hope for the sake of, among the many, the Christians he's
been protecting from the foreign merc's. that he stays safe. He must keep a low profile and
let's hope the S400's will take care of any Predator drones that try to fly the Damascus
airspace.
It seems US (or perhaps Israel) didn't give you time enough to think about what could be the
next move (breaking news from Sputinik, 23:30 GMT): vehicle convoy carrying Iraqi PMF leaders
hit by airstrike, 6 dead at least.
Thanks for posting this. I wonder if Soleimani consciously ( on many human and beyond human
levels) wanted to offer the Yanks a "target" (a type of sacrifice, namely himself) that was
just too big to ignore, knowing that the stupid enemy would take the bait, and having a
secure knowledge that his death would set in motion a chain of events that will (underline
will) result in the final terrible fall of the US, and Israel. Stupid American "leaders",
right now, they are dancing in idiotic joy, saying foolish words for which we will pay, also
knowing what the future holds: the death of countless people, throughout not only the Middle
East, but here in the US as well. Yes, I do hate them for what they have unleashed.
Rest In Peace, Soleimani. You very well may achieve far more in death that you attained in
your eventful life.
Oh, it was certainly a grave miscalculation by the US. The NeoCons must have been pushing for
it for years, and it wasn't the first assassination attempt. But I don't think the reprisal
will be immediate. Retaliation needs to be carefully thought out, in order to avoid an
exchange mounting in tension leading to outright war (certainly part of the US plan).
Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end.
This sentiment is bottom to top in America. Measured response? No way can Iran 'measure' a
response.
More generally the sentiment is that a little war in Iran, a few nukes, is not even a big
thing. Football scores more important.
"Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end."
That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from
English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly brainwashed,
believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the "White hatted,
good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade".
it seems they will be supportive of an attack on Iran, and if their maniac "leaders", the
basement crazies who got out of the basement, realise this, it increases substantially the
chances of a "hot" war. In that case, should it escalate out of control, your Chicago coffee
deadheads will get the Glass parking lot they want. It just wont be in the ME. Or Russia.
They can have their very own, in their own back yard.
Yes I also noticed this, what I believe is most depressing is how dumb people are.
Trump/White house tell alot of lies which then become the truth for alot of his supporters
and he also manage to get MSM where he wants, because MSM do not seems to care either, they
are on-board when it comes to war.
And yes additional to that, a clear psychological operation going on to get the propaganda
out.
I try to counter it on social media, I hope everyone here also do the same.
Its about conditioning people that its the new normal. Anything goes, "do as thou wilt".
So long as it serves the interests of our masters. With no fear that MSM or alt media can or
will provide sustained or effective criticism, and the corruption of religious or secular
morals among the population thanks to hollywoods cultural marxism/propaganda and corruption
of christianity , they can get support among the people for just about anything. People can
be made to believe anything. The past 100 years has proven that beyond all doubt. With all
doubt now removed they can show their true colors and this will be accepted as the new
normal.
The problem with the US is most everyone in the US military, US citizenry, and US government
believe their own Exceptionalism propaganda and act accordingly. Attacking the PMU units of
the Iraqi army was certainly an unwise decision, but killing Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi
Al-Muhandis is an act of complete moronic insanity!
The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based
on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq
and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic
sanctions warfare. The death and maiming and poisoning of millions of Iraqis has been the
American contribution to Iraq, over the last several decades. What for? How has this helped
the United States? Or Europe? The main advocates for this supreme criminality has been the
Israel lobby, Israel, and the supporters of Israel.
The American Apache helicopters are still buzzing around over Baghdad, dealing out terror
and intimidation and death. The murder by the United States of yet more Iraqi soldiers and
officials recently has been largely absent from the propaganda narratives. But could those be
'the final straw'?
As far as Trump's 52 target threat, this comes after the apparent please don't escalate
and we'll make a deal - good cop-bad cop routine.
The 52 number was used to remind mind-controlled Americans that the evil Iranians
outrageously took 52 Americans hostage. American's don't just take people hostage; they give
them orange suits and torture them, unless they kill them. Apart from murdering and maiming
by the millions, they even stage fictional killings, like Osama bin laden, to entertain the
zombies, and stick out their chests, hand out medals and the like.
"... What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans. ..."
"... Mueller is another spook dredged up from the bowels of Hell, in order to fool the honest citizens and ensure Deep State and its useful idiots continue on their way to Oblivion. ..."
"... Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell. ..."
"... A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush. ..."
"... Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney? ..."
Robert Mueller Wednesday implied he would have indicted Donald Trump if he could have,
resurrecting his saint-like status among Democrats who will now likely go for impeachment. But
who is the real Bob Mueller? Ex-FBI official Coleen Rowley explained on June 6, 2017.
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert
Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they
included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as Bush nominated him to be FBI
Director. (White House photo)
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of
President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official
Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration
(Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over
post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications
used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo
" to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's
having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for
intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before,
Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all
ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what
the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, "that the system had been blinking red
." Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed
"
criminal negligence " in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to "roll out" their
misbegotten "war on terror," which only served to
exponentially increase worldwide terrorism .
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting
the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking
improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar
situation to what was behind the FBI's pre 9/11 failures.
Some of the original detainees jailed at the Guantanamo Bay prison, as put on display by the
U.S. military.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney's ginning up
intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took
Mueller up on his offer,
emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice
President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He
also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000
immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong
time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially
P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to
supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently,
some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that
none turned out to be terrorists .
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious
questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively
enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey
Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the
truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest
judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders
committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey
, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of
highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and
torture of captives . Comey also defended the Bush Administration's three-year-long
detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room, both Comey and
Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office
of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories
of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to
renew certification of a "state of emergency."
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's
men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a
short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft
new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.
Former FBI Director James Comey
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and
Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn't. Only the
legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own
agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such
torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all"
surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked
to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller -- who are reported to be "
joined at the hip " -- deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream
media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like "G-men" with reputations for principled integrity, the two
close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director
George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of
wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of
the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,"
Mueller was chosen as
Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want
him to do.
Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out
against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell
the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to
then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named one of
TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition
to launching the Iraq War is
archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled " Questions for
the FBI Nominee " was published on the day of James Comey's confirmation hearing. This
piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley's Huffington Post page.)
When these reports come out that share how so-and-so corrupt federal official *actually*
did this and this in his past, my fall back is to share (briefly) such news to my
well-informed European friends.
Unlike "America" that's never been invaded, never suffered through the Black Plague, never
went through an entire continent of revolutions, never met starvation and hundreds of
millions of deaths from WWI & II, – instead, well-informed Europeans look at all
this skullduggery with a shrug of their shoulders.
**If** the more informed Americans took the time to read about the World's History of
carnage and traveled around the world, they would return home far, FAR wiser, and more
informed citizens. What desperate shape America is in.
I am still waiting for someone – anyone – to take issue with Mueller report
itself. I don't believe or trust a word of it. anyone?
Tiu , May 31, 2019 at 22:45
Descriptions such as "failure" and "incompetence" are not how I'd describe the intentional
activities of Mueller, Comey and numerous other people purported working for democracy and
law in the US and elsewhere. They are working purposefully on the New World Order agenda,
which by definition will sooner or later render nation states and their governments obsolete.
They are using the Hegelian Dialectic, Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, or Problem, Reaction,
Solution to keep the little people running around lining up behind the numerous divisions
that have been created for us with the help of the media and education systems.
jaycee , May 30, 2019 at 21:10
The anthrax attacks of 2001 were the double-tap to follow the events of 9/11, and were
crucial to the successful passage of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act effectively cancelled
the privacy protections of the U.S. Constitution, and reversed the onus of a presumption of
innocence in U.S. legal practice. The failure of the FBI, under the leadership of Mueller, to
provide or uncover an adequate explanation for the anthrax attacks is a signature black mark
in the FBI's history, if not the history of the republic.
Hank , May 31, 2019 at 09:24
"Failure" is just the icing on the cake that covers up INTENT! "Failure" should really be
"criminal"!
alexandra Moffat , May 30, 2019 at 17:34
I knew that things could not possible be as angelic as portrayed regarding Mueller &
Comey. But I didn't know any details. Any way to get this out in to the MSM. Thank you,
Consortium and Ms Rowley.
BTW, Mueller was paid by us, the taxpayers. We deserve to see him questioned in person,
alive, by a Congressional Hearing.
LJ , May 30, 2019 at 15:05
Well, then logically, one would have to assume that those in Trump's inner circle, for
instance maybe Sessions and Rothstein , who advised and/or went along with the idea that
Mueller should be appointed to investigate his successor and friend Comey were acting in the
hope that Trump would eventually be forced from office. Clearly the information put forth in
this article must have been known to all. Why did Trump go along with Mueller's appointment
when obvious conflict of interest existed.? When an obvious fix was in? Had he no choice or
was he blind and/or being led by the blind? I have read that he is an "extremely stable
genius". At least so he says. How could he then be so stupid? Is he so arrogant that he is
blind or was he intentionally ill advised by his own appointees and possibly the White House
attorney ( I'm not talking Cohen here)? Good thing for him I guess that there was no tape to
erase and the investigation went through to it's bitter end without actual obstruction. At
least he's that smart. If the Democrats had won the Senate in the midterm he would be gone
for certain.
East Indian , June 1, 2019 at 01:46
Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, on his own counsel. I doubt if the President or
his office had any role in that.
LJ , June 1, 2019 at 14:40
Yeah since Sessions backed out of oversight , recused himself > The guy who volunteered
to wear a wire to record an irrational Trump outburst which might perhaps be used to force
Trump from office through application of the 25th Amendment was behind this appointment.
Trump , the elected President could not stop the appointment of Mueller but could end the
investigation which could automatically be considered as obstruction. Check/Checkmate.
Exactly my point.
Raymond Comeau , May 30, 2019 at 14:14
Mueller is another spook dredged up from the bowels of Hell, in order to fool the honest
citizens and ensure Deep State and its useful idiots continue on their way to Oblivion.
Bob In Portland , May 30, 2019 at 12:40
Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish
in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second
in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles
and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure
before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted
the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that
Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married
into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell.
A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to
include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to
handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as
Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush.
Another key player in our current political show is William Barr. While Barr was getting
his law degree he was employed by the CIA. Surprise surprise. One of the main figures in
Russiagate is Paul Manafort, whose career consists of him working with world leaders who were
either put into power by the CIA, kept in power by the CIA, removed from power by the CIA or
murdered by the CIA. It should not be surprising to anyone willing to look that the current
maneuvering appears to many to be an attempt to remove Trump from office.
Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a
Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western
intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of
Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually
received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the
information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney?
Robert Mueller is just doing what he's always done: cover up for the CIA.
Many Thanks Bob In Portland. I was an 18 year old soldier in the 101st. Airborne on alert
for the invasion of Cuba so I share you lifetime of frustration.
To the extent that there is "Continuity In Government", this is it. Great research and
information
Mueller's proven himself to be just another mouthpiece for power and the "respected"
establishment. He's been championing the very dangerous lie that the Kremlin interfered in
the '16 election, even though there has never been one piece of credible evidence proving
that Moscow did any such thing.
As this canard gets repeated over and over it's sinking in to the public consciousness
that the Putin administration is something to be feared.
exiled off mainstreet , May 30, 2019 at 00:00
This reveals the deplorable record of Mueller and Comey as lackeys for a corrupt
authoritarian regime.
Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness
termed "criminal negligence" in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Deliberate failures
Tom , May 29, 2019 at 21:20
Isn't this the same Robert Mueller who prosecuted Lyndon LaRouche in the late
eighties?
robert , June 19, 2017 at 20:43
Colleen's article or op ed here seems to be a straight forward, fact based account that
the mainstream media would do well to study and consider [of course they generally wouldnt].
I wonder what all the links she has posted in support show?
I am glad to say I voted for Jill Stein last Nov. She has proven to be too decent for
America, I suppose.
If Americans expected or wanted something better, why did 40% or so last Nov. sit back and
refuse to vote, and those that did vote vote for obvious bums like Trump and Hilary? ?
Rob Roy , May 30, 2019 at 14:41
Thanks, robert, your letter says exactly what I would write. It's not that good people
don't run for office, but the Powers That Be will not allow them to get air time and the MSM
goes along with the exclusion, in fact, strongly supports it. War is the business of the USA
and must not be stopped. Tulsi Gabbard is the one candidate that opposes war she will be
shoved aside, destroyed by lies and ignored by the MSM. I have come to realize Americans are
stupid politically and it's not going to stop. It's not just Americans people in Europe have
good candidates, but, like here, those good candidates will not be allowed to win important
positions. Corbyn comes to mind.
Well, Mr. Comey, should be felling rather safe about now. Why, [you ask] well he is in
GOOD hands, his old friend is going to be working the case. they both were Big Shots in the
FBI and in the Justice Department. And, just like in any other "secret" unit or outfit, those
who are or were in will ALL-WAYS be IN! Mr. Comey, came off as being VERY confident in his
questioning, what is it that he is so confident about?
In a few weeks their could be a very Special hearing, and Mr. Comey will be on the block, but
yet he is or was very comfortable during the questioning on the other day. I, do think, that
this is going to be another "white wash" of the facts, and the Left, then walks away saying
."See, we knew that the GOP was doing this and or that". Mr. Comey and his old time friend
need to be watched!
Hate to say such a thing ..Both of these men, as [honest as they have been portrayed to
be], getting them both together, one "against" the other, all that means is "look, were
BROTHERS together, were both Good Guys, were both former FBI, were of that brotherhood".
Folk's that's something, that is just about as thick as Blood, visa Water. If, someone is NOT
watching, President Trump, will be in some serious crap. Would you, want to talk to Comey
about ANYTHING, knowing that he is so political, and can "turn on a dime"?. Going back, to
the other guy, again would you trust him knowing that he is and has been so close to Comey as
it's being tolk and as it's coming out, be it EVER so slow, but as we go deeper into this
mess, ALL of these "OUTSTANDING Federal Law Officers", their histories WILL, or at the very
least START to show!"
rm , June 8, 2017 at 05:24
Mueller was 911 'speed of deceit' cover-up man.
All he had to do was follow the forensics.
A safe pair of hands,
Michael Morrissey , June 7, 2017 at 12:51
Mythical heroes and real criminals. I know that Coleen was much more the hero herself in
trying to do her job at the FBI (see her Wiki) and now -- much more so -- as an activist and
member (along with Ray McGovern et al.) of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,
but
Well, I respect her a lot, and I would not like to offend her, but I would love to see how
she would react in a detailed discussion of what is actually known about 9/11 (which for me
is collected in the work of David Ray Griffin). Ditto for Ray McGovern, though I believe he
is somewhat more receptive to what let's call for lack of a better term the "inside job"
theory. (I hope we are past the notion that the govt's laughable conspiracy theory is in any
respect less "speculative" than the solid presentation of facts and argumentation by David
Griffin -- whose work is of course based on that of many others.)
It won't happen, I know. We will all go to our graves, and maybe our children and
grandchildren will too, before the NYT or its equivalent says, "Yes, the US govt perpetrated
9/11 in order to scare the crap out of us and make us do everything we have done since."
Still, Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern and a few more are way, way ahead of the NYT, their
former employers, and I suppose the majority of the US population, and I am glad to be
counted as among their supporters and admirers.
Richard Adams , June 7, 2017 at 12:20
Now this is what journalist should do. Find the facts and give it to the puplic.
I think he will, I am not kidding . I really believe we are going to see some unbelievably nasty, nasty knives out full out
war ., go back to that speech he gave on the Inauguration Day and HOW VERY INAPPROPRIATE it was viewed by all the "in" crowd
sitting there, all the "in" group, all the Bohemian Grovers like Obama was (an attendee he was, already groomed to be
President years before, so says Zachary King the ex-high Satanist priest who was there yearly and ran into him and was told
his future .) and so many of the others CFR, Trilateral Commission etc. part of the Luciferian loony globalist creeps who
truly believe they run the show and watch out if you are not on their "team" and don't tell me when you watched that -- that
there was no doubt Trump knew he was throwing it right at them, he knows who and what they are–many on here do too from the
comments I have seen –I just don't think Trump got the fact then of how well they have the corporate media totally in the bag
and how even with a blatant lie like "Russia did it", that any idiot knows is bs, they will keep on going and going, I think
that threw him a good bit but if that Inauguration speech is not enough of a signal that he will go to war here shortly–How
about this? -- Secretary of State Tillerson in the last day or so saying he is going forward with making things better with
Russia? If Trump was on board now believing he could make peace with the Deep Staters –No way that statement is made by
Tillerson, that is a statement of "back at ya" No, Trump is a guy who "gets even" and he is not going to roll for them, he may
head fake that way, but he doesn't roll that way, he gets even .and why? Just because LOL, because literally his Father
growing up you to say "You're the King" and he is that guy lol this is going to go nuclear between him and the Obama/Bush/Deep
Staters .He is still getting a feel for what is up 6 months in, I think he now basically has the picture that regardless of
what he does they, the Deep State and the corporate media and the loony left that is clueless but buys into what they are fed,
plan to skin him alive, pour salt on him, and hang him out as a trophy -- warning any future non-insider to get their message
THIS IS WHAT WE DO TO OUTSIDERS! -- much like all future insiders got their message when JFK was shot down by them like a dog
in the street and a "lone nut" was the laughable patsy, no one believes that err except the NYTs lol .Trump now knows there is
NO MERCY coming his way, none nada, that this is bloodsport, why do you think he is yelling at Sessions? Sessions–what a
horrible choice that was and Trump knows it now decided to recuse himself out of the war lol the "ethics" don't you know and
brought in the guy as number 2 who put a hatchet in Trump's back bringing in the cleaner -- Mueller -- Mueller the
professional hatchet man who had no problem screwing the country as to 911, "joined at the hip" to Comey the Deep State
stooge, intends to seek out anything possible to gut and clean Trump for dinner (check out the "team" Mueller has in place–as
if going after Al Capone in a case where everyone knows there is nothing "there" as to Russian "collusion" by Trump -- they
are planning to roll Trump so incredibly badly–no way Trump doesn't know this now thus the screaming at Sessions who now,
having rolled over with his "recusal" LOL , offers to resign like that will reverse the damage he's done .) and destroy him
completely, taxes, investments, businesses–Trump's entire life will be microscoped for anything, ANYTHING, they can hang on
him and every lying disgruntled ex-employee and adversary will be heard from, amplified, and leaked to the globalist corporate
media that loathes him–all of which will have nothing to do with the "Russia" collusion lie that Podesta's 2015 emails show he
came up with to attack Trump bc he was sanely suggesting that not having a war with Russia was a good idea .If you look at
Trump's history, again, he IS NOT, definitely NOT, a nice guy and he has played in the nasty, nasty league of the big money
chase almost all his life and he is, do not forget, a billionaire several times over who has his own private security force
around him at all times and, despite what the media portrays, he has many, many allies .The country will never be the same
again by the time this is "over"–if it ever really ends fireworks are coming beyond our imagination Trump is not going to limp
off into the night and they are not going to let him even if he wanted to he is a cornered Wolverine get some popcorn this is
going to be a wild ride .
Dave P. , June 8, 2017 at 12:31
Tomk: Well done, your analysis is breathtaking. I had flashes in my mind of some of these
things coming. I hope this dirty business of Clinton/Bush/Obama also gets aired out in Public
View, and the Whole World to look at. It blows my mind watching how "The Deep State" is going
after Trump – for almost a year now – who was duly elected President by the U.S.
Citizens. Their only vendetta against him is that he wanted to get along with Russia. A child
can tell that this whole "Russia Gate" is utterly a Fabrication by the Ruling Establishment.
Going on for a year now, these Evil Forces have turned the Country into almost a Lunatic
Asylum.
Obama is all over hatching new plots. He was with Merkel, and a few days back seen with
Justin Trudeau. What a useful tool of the Ruling Establishment Obama is. I bet Trump is
watching all this. He is not that naive as some people think of him . It seems like, either
he is going to submit and leave the scene with guarantees of not bothering him afterwards. or
He is going to fight a fight not seen before in U.S. History. It is hard to tell how it will
end.
Sleepless In Mars , June 7, 2017 at 07:31
"Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a
phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency
to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just
beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is
functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it
from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it." Agent Breton
The White House wants to silence the media and press. They've lost their bearings. The OCB
case is expanding. McPike won't let go. We won't be fooled again.
Pft , June 7, 2017 at 01:03
Baghdad Bob was more credible and believable than anyone in the MSM today. Its loony
tunes. Maybe that Anthrax did the trick and scares them into submission.
Drew Hunkins , June 6, 2017 at 23:20
Beyond absurdity that an ostensible hustler who ran cover for years for Boston's
ultra-violent Winter Hill Gang now has the authority to overturn the election of the
president of the United States. (Albeit a president as flawed as he is, and NOT due to
anything involving "RUSSIA!")
Tomk , June 6, 2017 at 21:51
Mueller the hatchet man for the Deep State (911 was ok by him it seems, no need to
investigate .) has one purpose and that is to take out Trump as his favorable statements as
to ending the new Cold War with Russia made him an enemy of those who believe they run the
country and who look to profit incredibly by the money they can make from an "enemy" like
Russia–much better than the "terrorism" one they created for us .Appointing Sessions AG
was a really terrible mistake by Trump given his foreseeable recusal on the most important
issue facing Trump (the phony "Russia did it" Trojan Horse to get a Mueller to go fishing to
find, or create, ANYTHING to get rid of him .) Sessions is a loser all around igniting a new
war on drugs – an incredibly unpopular issue Trump did not even run on and although the
cries of "Racist" might be unfair Sessions said some stupid "jokes" that also should have
sidelined him given all the enemies Trump knew he had coming in and what he needed at
AG–an unimpeachable ally .Trump has to know what is up and it is not his nature to sit
back and be harpooned, which is what his enemies do plan ., so this will be a fascinating
year to see what he does to stop them from doing him Don't forget Trump is not a particularly
nice guy and given he is getting some feel for what he is dealing with, and the incredible
gravity of what he is up against, I guarantee we will see some moves coming in response to
his enemies that we have never seen, or had anyone even consider, before .
When gangsters are in control, endless wars slaughter millions of souls
And countries are destroyed by the hit men of the gangster ghouls
The unethical money changers finance their dirty depredations
And corporate cannibals profit from the bloody confrontations
Government by gangsters is now "the rule of law"
And "justice" is in the hands of criminals and outlaws
The language is twisted and debased
To suit these evil demons of the "human race"
Fancy titles and Houses of ill repute
Is where these villains consort and debut
Making "laws" to screw the masses
Yet, people continue to vote for these asses
If there really was "law and order"
These gangsters would be charged with genocide and murder
Instead these war criminals parade on the world stage
When they should be in a big enormous prison cage
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/01/when-gangsters-are-in-control.html
Thanks backwardsevolution, I appreciate your comments.
Cheers Stephen J.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 16:14
And President Woodrow Wilson being blackmailed to the tune of $40,000.00 over some love
letters he had sent to a colleague's wife. Mr. Samuel Untermeyer agreed to pay the blackmail
money in return for Wilson appointing Judge Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, which he
did.
"Justice Brandeis volunteered his opinion to President Wilson that the sinking of the S.S.
Sussex by a German submarine in the English Channel with the loss of lives of United States
citizens justified the declaration of war against Germany by the United States. Relying to a
great extent upon the legal opinion of Justice Brandeis, President Wilson addressed both
houses of Congress on April 2, 1917. He appealed to Congress to declare war against Germany
and they did on April 7, 1917."
Blackmail and threats still work. Comey always strikes me as being very matter-of-fact and
cavalier in his answers, as if nothing could ever touch him. I mean, even I would have known
not to let Clinton off. He acts as if a mafia-type organization has got his back and he
doesn't have to worry, which is probably the case.
mike k , June 6, 2017 at 17:50
Yes. The chance of the lying, corrupt cowards "representing" us really calling Comey out
on his record are nil. And Trump started a fight with the "intelligence" guys that he now
knows he can't finish, so his lawyers will treat Comey very carefully. (In my fantasy Trump's
lawyers tear Comey apart, and bring up all his rotten record, reducing him to a blubbering
mess ..) Yes I have a fantasy life, but I try not to get it mixed up too much with our
so-called reality.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 20:22
mike k – an interesting thing about that Woodrow Wilson blackmailing (in my above
post) is that these guys, with the blackmail knowledge in hand, bankrolled and helped Wilson
get into the White House, and then they blackmailed him AFTER he got there. Of course, this
way they ensured that they had their man all sewn up. They got him there, he owed them, and
they had the damning information. They and they alone end up owning you.
Trump was bankrolled by a few powerful people. I just wonder if the same thing isn't
happening with Trump, some old pictures. Whatever it is, I'm quite sure something
happened.
Joe Tedesky , June 6, 2017 at 22:57
In our family we have a lawyer (now retired) who once worked under Peter Rodino during the
Watergate Hearings. I'll never forget how when I asked my cousin if Nixon would serve time,
she said never, because all the politicians who stood in judgement of Nixon had their own
skeletons in the closet to hide. D.C. is a nest of degenerates, and charlatan fraudsters, but
history proves that this is nothing original. The best 'we the people' can hope for, is when
these masters and mistresses of ours decide it is time to feed us, because maybe they need
our votes. Who knows? Yes blackmail will insure a trustworthy employee every time. John
Lennon had it right, everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey.
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 16:13
sorry, May 2002 not 2001 (above)
Sleepless In Mars , June 6, 2017 at 16:13
This isn't Seattle, but you can see it from here.
OCB is working the case with Bob Miller and Agent Vince.
The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing
question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's
content. And if you should die, are you not certain of re-awaking among the dead? Let
yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The
ease of everything is priceless.
Take it easy. Company has the solution, which is inside the problem.
Democracy is The Tyranny of The Minority!
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 14:44
I am so grateful to Colleen Rowley who has been my heroine, too, since 2001 when she
publicly felt, thank goodness, that she must speak out. Rowley stood up with courage, spunk,
honor, strength of character, respect for the truth, fearless determination to stand alone,
if necessary, in defiance of corruption and lies. Her loyalty was to truth, the constitution
and the people of this country, most of whom toil under challenging circumstances, get sent
to trumped up wars, get ripped off by big banks and after a lifetime of work are still
struggling. Rowley gives us strength and hope that there's something better.
I suspect Colleen Rowley unlike some of the show boaters is herself a modest person and is
just doing what's "necessary" and it's part of who she is.
Thank you, Colleen. I hate being confused by these people who lie to us and serve their
own self interests instead of the public interest.
And how else would we know?
Some of them are pretty good at taking credit and are not as obviously horrific to us as,
say, a Dick Cheney or a Donald Rumsfeld who seem to be more cartoonish characters than
people.
Thank you.
Oz , June 6, 2017 at 14:39
It should also be noted that Mueller was a key figure during the 1980s in the government's
campaign to frame and silence Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, a campaign which former AG
Ramsey Clark described as the most appalling campaign of its sort that he had seen (and
combatting such campaigns is his specialty.)
F. G. Sanford , June 6, 2017 at 14:00
Jedgar, as comedienne Lily Tomlin called him, was a career blackmailer, eavesdropper,
extortionist and enabler of organized crime dynasties. It's not a coincidence that, in her
comedic vehicle as a telephone operator, her routine suggested "listening in" as an
extracurricular activity perhaps not disdained by Jedgar himself. Sure, a warrant was needed
to use evidence gained by wiretapping in a court of law. But if the motive was blackmail, who
needs a warrant? Apparently, this reality is lost on the American public. We should certainly
realize that every phone conversation is now retrievable by electronic means. All the FISA
Court mumbo jumbo and its purported "checks and balances" is a farce designed to create a
veneer of legitimacy. What does anybody think Jedgar bothered getting a warrant to bug Martin
Luther King – then subsequently revealed the playbacks and suggested that King commit
suicide? Anyone who has spent even a modicum of time looking onto the fraudulent Warren
Commission Report must realize that Jedgar was completely complicit. On the ballistics
evidence alone, he could have blown the case wide open. At best, he was a criminal
coconspirator in a massive coverup. At worst, he ranks among the most vile traitors in our
nation's history. This, then, is the legacy of the organization to which the two
coconspirators in the present article appertain. On November 22, 1963, our government was
hijacked by "deep state" militarists, and a system of permanent war economy was installed. We
have descended deeper into that abyss with each passing year. The elected government now
serves as a mere facade. I'd suggest that doubters read Vince Salandria's book, especially
the recently added chapter on Ruth and Michael Paine at the end. Check the contents –
you'll find it. It's free online, and can be accessed from several internet addresses. Unless
this sentinel crime is addressed, there is no hope for American democracy. We're done.
ratical . org/FalseMystery
ratical . org/falsemystery
ratical . org/FM
ratical . org/fm
Take out the spaces on either side of the dots to use the links. And, I'd advise, don't be
fooled by "leaks" which bolster the "deep state" agenda, even if they arrest the leaker.
The Postal service states it photographs every piece of mail.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:26
F.G. Sanford – thank you for the links. This is going to be excellent reading. That
Vince Salandria is quite the guy:
"Only by the war production of World War II were we brought out of the great depression.
It was not difficult to discern that we were artfully thrust into the war. I can recall that
at the time of Pearl Harbor I was in the 8th grade of Vare Junior High School in
Philadelphia. On December 8, 1941, in my math class, our teacher, Miss Wogan, suggested that
rather than do our math we should discuss current events.
I went to the front of the classroom and informed my classmates that I could not accept as
plausible President Roosevelt's assertion that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise,
sneak attack. I pointed out that all of us had known for months about the tension between the
U.S. and Japan. I asked how, in light of those months of crisis and tautly strained relations
between the two countries, could the battleships at Pearl Harbor have been lined up so
closely together, presenting perfect targets for the Japanese? How could the planes I saw in
the newspapers burning on our airfields have been positioned wing-tip to wing-tip?
I reminded the class that President Roosevelt had promised that he would not send our
troops into a foreign war. I then offered my conclusion that inviting the Pearl Harbor attack
was President Roosevelt's duplicitous device to eliminate the powerful neutralist sentiment
in our country while thrusting us into the war."
Very smart for Grade 8!
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:41
"On November 23, 1963 I discussed the assassination with my then brother-in-law, Harold
Feldman. I told him that we should keep our eyes focused on what if anything would happen to
the suspected assassin that weekend. I said that if the suspect was killed during the
weekend, then we would have to consider Oswald's role to be that of a possible intelligence
agent and patsy. I told him if such happened, the assassination would have to be considered
as the work of the very center of U.S. power. [ ]
When Oswald was served up on camera as disposable Dealey Plaza flotsam and jetsam and was
killed by Jack Ruby I saw a subtle signal of a high level conspiracy. There is every reason
to think that intelligence agencies, when they choose a killer to dispose of a patsy, make
that choice by exercising the same degree of care that they employ in selecting the patsy.
Their choice of Jack Ruby much later would – by providing a fall-back position for the
government – serve the interests of the assassins. As the Warren Report would unravel,
a deceased Ruby's past connections to the Mafia produced a false candidate for governmental
apologists to designate as the power behind the killing.
Immediately following the assassination I began to collect news items about Lee Harvey
Oswald. A pattern began to emerge. Oswald's alleged defection to the Soviets, his alleged
Castro leanings as the sole member of a Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, his posing
with a rifle and a Trotskyist newspaper, his writings to the Communist Party USA, his study
of the Russian language while in the Marine Corps, told me that he was not a genuine leftist,
but rather was a U.S. intelligence agent."
Oswald was set up from the get-go. Poor kid, he didn't realize he was playing with
fire.
The Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the other false flags, color revolutions, coups are all
the work of those who possess a psychopathic mind.
Virginia , June 6, 2017 at 15:43
Remarkable! Good for you.
David Smith , June 6, 2017 at 17:34
B.E. as The Empire of Japan's operations plan called for invasion of The Philippines and
Wake Island, both defended by United States forces, The United States would have been at war
with Japan without a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I know The White House was not privy to
Japan's operation plan, but it was a certainty that any Japanese move would involve taking
Malaya and the Dutch East Indies therefore it would be idiotic to assume they would leave The
Philippines alone. In short, the idea that Roosevelt knew and let Pearl Harbor happen to get
us into the war is a steaming pile of cowflap. If you are unconvinced by my argumentation and
wish to debate further it would be my pleasure. Good luck, you're gonna need it.
BannanaBoat , June 7, 2017 at 14:31
According to an old edition of US History magazine, shortly after P.H., pilots at the USA
airfeild near Manila spotted a squadron of Nippon fighterbombers circling their airfield, the
Japanese failed to spot the airfield and the USA pilots began to scramble. But the pilots
were ordered out of their planes, resulting in devastation during the Japanese
fighterbombers' next pass.
BannanaBoat , June 8, 2017 at 16:41
The high command allowed the USA Pacific airfleet to be destroyed.
David Smith , June 9, 2017 at 13:37
Fallacy of Begging The Question. You continue to fail to address my argumentation.
David Smith , June 8, 2017 at 15:24
B.B. it is unclear what point you are trying to make, but it is clear it does not address
my argumentation.
LJ , June 1, 2019 at 18:20
Classified Information and you don't have clearance and nobody else does either. What was
that old quote? "When you make assumptions ..," Any opinion on this is as valid as anyone
else's without any way to clarify the positions. Fact is we won the War and the Japanese
never had a chance. They were suckered into the conflict , Now if you look at History the USA
lied about every conflict we ever entered into from the Indian wars up to our 21 bases in
Syria now.. We never told the truth once. Not in over 100 interventions in South America, not
with 300,000 dead in the Philippines, Grenada, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Name one. Never . You
believe what you want but I can tell you this , the best indicator of future performance is
past performance. And, if you repeat the same experiment over and over and expect a different
outcome you are not in search of truth but instead looking for an excuse to advance an
alternate version of the truth. In other words rather than truth, one chooses to present a
version of the truth thereby demonstrating a preconceived bias against the truth. An aversion
to the truth. Peace baby.. Right On.
Brad Owen , June 7, 2017 at 11:58
I rather agree with EIR's description in:"Why FDR's explosive 1933-145 recovery worked".
The trick was Glass-Steagall and the re-structuring of RFC into a Hamiltonian credit bank all
to cut Wall Street outta the loop. To suggest that WWII ended the Depression is to put the
cart before the horse. It was the massive generation of credit for re-industrializing and
infrastructure, for use in CIVILIAN areas of life, then RE-TOOLED for war production, that
ended the war. Minus the New Deal, we would have gone into war grossly unable to equip
ourselves for the task. FDR also new the LONG-RANGE threat of the Fascist-NAZI movements as
being the outcome of longtime Synarchist plans that preceded and succeeds WWII, obtained from
O.S.S. and military and French intelligence (see Synarchy against America by Anton Chaitkin,
from EIR). Its' VITALLY important to realize that China's New Silk Road is exactly like FDR's
New Deal and can succeed in developing the World, without war or Western Bankers' speculation
. The WWII was partly meant to DERAIL FDR's New Deal demonstration of spectacular development
without the need for WAR or Wall Street SPECULATION. this is THE SAME fear the DEEP STATE of
the Trans-Atlantic Community has of Russia, China and their New Silk Road policy.
curious , June 3, 2019 at 04:17
B.E.
Yes, good instincts for an 8th grader. Just some oddities to add to your analysis, especially
the "sneak attack" version.
For those who have a critical thinking gene, I'll add this: Japan was, and still is an
island. Shipping and fuel was very well know even back then. It wasn't too difficult to have
intel regarding the amount of steel they were importing, nor fuel. They didn't grow these
large ships and multiple planes in the rice fields.
Many people in the US still don't realize Hawaii was not a US State. So was this an attack on
the US, or just some US assets? Given the fact that there were many spotters on most of the
islands because of Japanese activity across the South Pacific, we were never clueless on
their movements, nor surprised. Hiding aircraft carriers, even to a man with only a 4x
binoculars, is extremely difficult. I'll leave that bit of research as to the amount of
island spotters the US had for you to read at your leisure. I think it very odd that our
newest and bestest aircraft carriers and battleships were not ported in Pearl. This speaks
volumes as to our advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Aaaghh! Damn. Hello everybody! Guys I am trying hard. Almost finished synchronising the
subtitles for "Evening with Vladimir Soloviev" TV-show, one of the series. I could have
upload it with the subs only, but I do want to make DUB for You and everyone else. So, I need
a little more time. Unfortunately this series is outdated enough already. However I wouldn't
say that there is much changes happened during this period. And also I wanted to say About
Megyn Kelly's FAKE NBC NEWS interview. I guess all of You have seen it already and read
YouTube's comments that it was CUTTED hard! Huh. Another evidence of the Western fake news.
Just now I have watched 60Minutes TV-show and this was a theme of the relay. Anyway. I look
forward to upload the material ASAP. Although I am not sure You need this.
Jessejean , June 6, 2017 at 13:34
O god I love this woman. Smart brave educated articulate and patriotic–how could she
possibly be heard from in the Amerikan media? I watched Joy Reid disgrace herself last night
on MSNBC in place of Rachel disgracing herself. It just breaks my heart. But we still have
Consortium News, Robert Parry and Colleen " the hammer" ;-) Rowley. Now, could someone please
explain what's really going on with Ms Reality? She seems like a cat's paw, not a whistle
blower.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 14:18
Jessejean – I agree wholeheartedly. Coleen Rowley is a very brave lady. Thank you,
Ms. Rowley for a great article and for not being afraid to tell the truth.
mike k , June 6, 2017 at 13:16
Until one understands that the US government is a criminal enterprise, and that everyone
involved in it is a criminal, with extremely few exceptions – you will not understand
what goes on there. The same holds true for the main stream media, these are criminal, lying
propaganda outlets for the rich and powerful who own them. Also the US Military is a vicious
criminal enterprise pure and simple.
If you are inclined to cut any of these actors any slack whatever, and forget who they
really are, you will simply become a victim of their lies and criminal activities. Regardless
of the unceasing barrage of positive images and ideas we are soaked in from childhood, we
need to constantly remind ourselves of who these evil people really are, and the horrendous
crimes they are responsible for. The idea that James Comey, the head of the secret police is
some kind of role model is outrageous. This man deserves to be imprisoned for the rest of his
life.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 15:50
The irony of all this is that America could be a great positive force for good and
beneficial change on the planet. It's location, between two great Oceans, it's physical
beauty, and it's resources – America has it all. There is nothing like America on this
Planet. [It makes me feel sad about American Indians, who lost it all during the last three
or four centuries]. And now, for the last five decades or so, all the best and the brightest
from top schools in India, now China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (and Iran too !) come to
U.S. Universities, and work here. One of the major engines of our high tech sector boom
– and leadership in the World – has been due to this foreign born talent. And
this talent has contributed a lot in other sectors as well.
And from all what I have read, after the collapse of Communism, the World was and is
willing to accept American leadership. If you watch Putin's speeches at Valdai International
Discussion Club, he acknowledges America's leadership, but not complete subservience to
U.S.
Would big countries and ancient civilizations like China and India, or big countries like
Brazil, South Africa agree to be completely subservient to U.S.? Should these countries (and
the other countries of the World) become U.S.'s vassal states. It is preposterous to think of
it. What happened to this idea of Freedom, which is drilled into masses here 24/7 by the
Media and the Ruling Establishment. As we want to live free, don't these countries would like
to live free.
And we are waging wars on the Nations to bring freedom and democracy – and American
values. What a hypocrisy?
And we are discussing about Comey and Mueller here! It is hard to comprehend to what lower
depths the country has sunk to.
Trump was not wrong when he was saying during the campaign that the whole place ( Washington)
is a swamp. The country was ready for a Populist. Unfortunately, Trump was not the right
one.
I do not have much hope that the upper echelons in this country will learn some wisdom to
change their course.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 17:18
Dave P. – good points. I don't think Trump was the "perfect" one, but I think he
could have been the "right" one, had they laid off him, but he's had everything but the
kitchen sink thrown at him (the pussy hats, the Berkeley rioters, the media, the Democrats,
his own Republican Party). The Deep State has gone after him like crazy because they're
fighting for their very survival, and Trump was going to end it.
I think he WOULD have ended the wars, cut back on NATO, brought affordable healthcare,
enforced the border laws (without which you don't have a country, at least not for long),
brought jobs back from China/Asia, rebuilt infrastructure, and protected the citizens.
It appears people don't want that. Go figure.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 17:40
backwardsevolution, I agree with you. I think Trump meant to do all these things you
mentioned. What I meant to say was that, he did not have any clue of what was to come. Trump
does not have any communication skills like Obama, and Clinton, and is not well read or any
thing like that. And I think that they – the Deep State – have a very thick
dossier on his business deals, and all that. I sometimes feel sorry for him – the guy
is caught in the nest of scorpions. When I watch him on TV sometimes, he seems like he is
scared, and will do any thing they will ask him to do.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 19:41
Dave P. – re your "nest of scorpions" comment. Yes, I agree that Trump had no idea
what he'd be stepping into. We probably don't know the half of it. Could be death threats
against himself (or maybe his family) or blackmail. Something happened because all of a
sudden Trump and Tillerson both changed, seemingly overnight, and you're right, Trump has a
scared look in his eyes.
If a thick-skinned braggart like Trump can't go up against these guys, then who can?
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 16:19
backwardsevolution: Exactly, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here". You have
described Washington – Nation's Capitol – of Today – all the devils are
here.
Coleen Rowley , May 31, 2019 at 08:36
Yes, that's what I think too! I will share some of your comments about the devils and the
"nest of scorpions" on my FB page.
I believe the "system" is totally corrupted. We are prisoners in a so-called
"democracy."
The Prisoners of the System
By Stephen J. Gray
The prisoners of the system thought they were free
After all, they lived in a "democracy?"
Every few years they were allowed to vote
Then they got punished by the winning lot
Oh well, at least the masses are allowed to go on holiday
At the airports they are patted down and groped in the name of security
Still, their governments were keeping them all safe
As they spy on them and all the human race.
Big Brother and Big Sister are now in charge
And Orwell's "1984" is now here and at large
Computers are monitored and cell phones too
Fridges are bugged and smart meters knew
I will very likely go to my grave with the strong suspicion that the alleged Christmas
Bomber (2010) in Portland, Oregon was a case of entrapment. Assuming that kid really did have
intentions of setting off a bomb, the FBI agents should have educated him as to why setting
off a bomb as a Christmas tree lighting ceremony was a very bad thing to do instead of going
through some ritual of simulations. Of course, the FBI agents claim they gave him chances to
back out, but I suspect he was like most teenagers who didn't want to be considered as
"chicken." – http://theweek.com/articles/488966/portland-bomb-plot-entrapment
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 13:41
Bill – using entrapment in order to move public opinion in a certain direction,
steer the herd, influence their thinking, allowing them then to engage in what they want
carried out. Sickening. Heat coming down on Israel a little too much? Just create an
incident, elicit sympathy, and the whole thing blows over.
Thank you Coleen Rowley especially for clearing up for me The Comey/Mueller Myth. I've
bookmarked your article for its invaluable links and truth For many of us you will remain
forever a hero
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 13:34
Bob Van Noy – totally agree. Bookmark that Mike Whitney article as well that D5-5
posted above, especially when he says that Rod Rosenstein would not have acted alone on this
special prosecutor appointment, and also for what he perceives will be Trump's eventual
outcome. As in toast.
Bill Bodden , June 6, 2017 at 12:26
To paraphrase Shakespeare: Age has not withered Coleen Rowley nor custom faded her
infinite courage.
Cal , June 6, 2017 at 22:52
Ditto .
Joe Tedesky , June 6, 2017 at 12:26
Thank you Coleen Rowley for jogging my memory in regard to Mueller and Comey. I know you
have heard this before, but until the day comes when I will turn on the MSM news, and see you
Ms Rowley, and such people like Ray McGovern, Paul Craig Roberts, and of course Robert Parry,
then it's the same old song sung by the same old choir. Thank you for the reminder. Joe
Bill Bodden , June 6, 2017 at 12:22
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political
pressures.
Bending to political and other pressures is one of the rules for "success" in Washington
and Wall Street. There must be very few people who have made it to the upper echelons butting
heads with the oligarchs running the show. Lewis Lapham, a national treasure of an essayist
and author, frequently skewered the "rules of success" and those who played by them.
"... What Clapper chokes on -- and avoids saying -- is that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of WMD either. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put him in charge of the agency responsible for analyzing imagery of all kinds -- photographic, radar, infrared, and multispectral -- precisely so that the absence of evidence from our multi-billion-dollar intelligence collection satellites could be hidden, in order not to impede the planned attack on Iraq. That's why, as Clapper now admits, he had to find "what wasn't really there." ..."
Former DNI James Clapper had his own words read back to him by Ray McGovern, exposing his
role in justifying the Iraq invasion based on fraudulent intelligence.
... ... ...
Clapper was appointed Director of National Intelligence by President Barack Obama in June
2010, almost certainly at the prompting of Obama's intelligence confidant and Clapper friend
John Brennan, later director of the CIA. Despite Clapper's performance on Iraq, he was
confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Obama even allowed Clapper to keep his job for three and a
half more years after he admitted that he had lied under oath to that same Senate about the
extent of eavesdropping on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). He is now a
security analyst for CNN.
In his book, Clapper finally places the blame for the consequential fraud (he calls it "the
failure") to find the (non-existent) WMD "where it belongs -- squarely on the shoulders of the
administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on
the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't
really there." (emphasis added ) .
So at the event on Tuesday I stood up and asked him about that. It was easy, given the
background Clapper himself provides in his book, such as:
"The White House aimed to justify why an invasion of and regime change in Iraq were
necessary, with a public narrative that condemned its continued development of weapons of
mass destruction [and] its support to al-Qaida (for which the Intelligence Community had no
evidence)."
What Clapper chokes on -- and avoids saying -- is that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of
WMD either. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put him in charge of the agency
responsible for analyzing imagery of all kinds -- photographic, radar, infrared, and
multispectral -- precisely so that the absence of evidence from our multi-billion-dollar
intelligence collection satellites could be hidden, in order not to impede the planned attack
on Iraq. That's why, as Clapper now admits, he had to find "what wasn't really there."
Members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) who have employed Clapper
under contract, or otherwise known his work, caution that he is not the sharpest knife in the
drawer. So, to be fair, there is an outside chance that Rumsfeld persuaded him to be guided by
the (in)famous Rumsfeld dictum: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
But the consequences are the same: a war of aggression with millions dead and wounded;
continuing bedlam in the area; and no one -- high or low -- held accountable. Hold your breath
and add Joe Biden awarding the "Liberty Medal" to George W. Bush on Veteran's Day.
' Shocked'
Protection Racquet , November 17, 2018 at 02:46
When did this perjurer before Congress have any credibility? The guys a professional
liar.
Mild -ly Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 17:27
The guy is a professional liar,and
a member of The Establishment
"The Anglo-American Establishment"
Copyright 1981/ Books in Focus, Inc,
Vallejo D , November 19, 2018 at 21:15
No shit. I saw the video of Clapper perjuring himself to the US Congress on national
television, bald-face lying about the NSA clocking our emails.
I wouldn't believe Clapper if he the sky is blue and grass is green. EPIC liar.
PS: Erstwhile national security state "friend" actually had the nerve to claim that
"Clapper lied to protect you." As if. My bet is that ONLY people on the planet who didn't
know about the NSA's grotesque criminal were the American taxpayers.
Mild -ly Facetious , November 20, 2018 at 12:38
RECALL THIS EXTRAORDINARY STATEMENT -- from the GW Bush administration
There was, however, one valuable insight. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer,
Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the
president:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which
he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernable reality."
I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me
off.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now,
and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality –
judiciously, as you will – we'll act again creating other new realities, which you can
study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do."
Anonymot , November 16, 2018 at 20:56
Mild -ly - Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 19:33
Anonymot , Yes!
Here Is A Sequence of books for those who reside in chosen darkness:
"The Lessons of History" by Will & Edith Durant – c. 1968
"The Anglo-American Establishment" by Carroll Quigley – c. 1981
"Understanding Special Operations" by David T. Ratcliffe – c. 1989 / 99
" The Secret War Against The Jews" by John Loftus and Mark Aarons c. 1994
Douglas Baker , November 16, 2018 at 19:42
Thanks Ray. The clap merry-go-round in Washington, D.C., with V.D. assaulting brain
integrity has been long playing there with James Clapper another hand in, in favor of the
continuation of those that direct the United States' war on world from Afghanistan to Syria,
staying the course of firing up the world as though Northern California's Camp fire sooting up
much of the state with air borne particulate matter and leaving death and destruction in its
wake.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:29
All this is fine, except it dares not touch the still taboo subject among these
"professionals" of how all of this started getting justified in the first place when America
attacked itself on September 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington in the most sophisticated
and flawed false flag attack in history, murdering thousands of its own citizens Operation
Northwoods style, blaming it on 19 Saudi hijackers with box cutters, the most grandiose of all
conspiracy theory, the official 911 story.
The incriminating evidence of what happened that day in 2001 is now absolutely overwhelming,
but still too incredible and controversial for even these esteemed folks to come to grips with.
If we're going to take a shower and clean all this excrement off ourselves, let's do it
thoroughly.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:46
In fact, wait! Let's ask the really important question of Clapper.
What was he doing and where was he on 9/11, the "New Pearl Harbor," and what was his role in
the coverup and transformation of the CIA in the ensuing years?
Why doesn't Ray ask him about that?
GKJames , November 16, 2018 at 06:46
(1) One needn't be a Clapper fan to say that he was merely a cog in a body politic that (a)
lives and breathes using military force to "solve" geopolitical problems; and (b) has always
been driven by the national myth of American exceptionalism and the American love of war. The
only issue ever is the story Americans tell themselves as to why a particular assault on some
benighted country that can't meaningfully shoot back is justified. But for that, there are
countless clever people in the corridors of power and the Infotainment Complex always eager to
spread mendacity for fun and profit. Sure, hang Clapper, but if justice is what you're after,
you'd quickly run out of rope and wood.
(2) What doesn't compute: Clapper is quoted as saying that he and cohort "were so eager to
help that [they] found what wasn't really there". That's followed by: "Rumsfeld put him in
charge so that the absence of evidence could be hidden . Clapper now admits [that] he had to
find 'what wasn't really there'". While Rumsfeld's intent was exactly that, i.e., to prevent a
narrative that he and Cheney had contrived, that's not the same as Rumsfeld's explicitly
instructing Clapper et al to do that. Further, it mischaracterizes Clapper's admission. He
doesn't admit that "he had to find" what wasn't there (which would suggest prior intent). What
he does admit is that the eagerness to please the chain of command resulted in "finding" what
didn't exist. One is fraud, the other group-think; two very different propositions. The latter,
of course, has been the hallmark of US foreign policy for decades, though the polite (but
accurate) word for it is "consensus". Everybody's in on it: the public, Congress, the press,
and even the judiciary. By and large, it's who Americans are.
(3) Does this really equate the WMD fiasco with the alleged "desperate [attempt] to blame
Trump's victory on Russian interference"? Yes, Clapper was present in 2003 and 2016. But that's
a thin reed. First, no reasonable person says that Russian interference was the only reason
that Clinton lost. Second, to focus on what was said in January 2017 ignores the US
government's notifying various state officials DURING THE CAMPAIGN in 2016, of Russian hacking
attempts. If, as is commonly said, the Administration was convinced that Clinton would win, how
could hacking alerts to the states have been part of an effort to explain away an election
defeat that hadn't happened yet, and which wasn't ever expected to happen? And, third, as with
WMDs, Clapper wasn't out there on his own. While there were, unsurprisingly, different views
among intelligence officials as to the extent of the Russian role, there was broad agreement
that there had been one. Once again, fraud vs. group-think.
Skip Scott , November 16, 2018 at 13:46
I think there is a big difference between "group think" and inventing and cherry picking
intelligence to fit policy objectives. I believe there is ample evidence of fraud. The "dodgy
dossier" and the yellow cake uranium that led to Plame being exposed as a CIA operative are two
examples that come immediately to mind. "Sexed up" intelligence is beyond groupthink. It is the
promoting of lies and the deliberate elimination of any counter narrative in order to justify
an unjust war.
The same could be said of the "all 17 intelligence agencies" statement about RussiaGate that
was completely debunked but remained the propaganda line. It was way more than "groupthink". It
was a lie. It is part of "full spectrum dominance".
I do agree that "Clapper wasn't out there on his own". He is part of a team with an agenda,
and in a just world they'd all be in prison.
It wasn't "mistaken" intelligence, or "groupthink". You are trying to put lipstick on a
pig.
GKJames , November 17, 2018 at 07:21
Fraud is easy to allege, hard to prove. In the case of Iraq, it's important to accept that
virtually everyone -- the Administration, the press, the public, security agencies in multiple
countries, and even UN inspectors (before the inspections, obviously) -- ASSUMED that Saddam
had WMDs. That assumption wasn't irrational; it was based on Saddam's prior behavior. No
question, the Administration wanted to invade Iraq and the presumed-to-exist WMDs were the
rationale. It was only when evidence appeared that the case for it wasn't rock-solid that
Cheney et al went to work. (The open question is whether they began to have their own doubts or
whether it never occurred to them, given their obsession.) But there is zero evidence that
anyone was asked to conclude that Saddam had WMDs even though the Americans KNEW that there
weren't any. That's where the group-think and weak-kneed obeisance to political brawlers like
Cheney come in. All he had to do was bark, and everyone fell in line, not because they knew
there were no WMDs, but because they weren't sure but the boss certainly was.
In that environment, what we saw from Clapper and his analysts wasn't fraud but weakness of
character, not to mention poor-quality analysis. And maybe that gets to the bigger question to
which there appears to be an allergy: Shouting Fraud! effectively shuts down the conversation.
After all, once you've done that, there's not much else to say; these guys all lied and death
and destruction followed. But what if the answer is just as likely that the national security
state created by Truman has grown into something uncontrollable, beyond legitimate oversight by
the people it's supposed to serve? What if the people in that business aren't all that clever,
let alone principled? After all, the CIA is headed by a torture aficionada and we haven't heard
peep from the employee base, let alone the Congress that confirmed her. That entire ecosystem
has been permitted to flourish without adult supervision for decades. Whenever someone asks,
"that's classified". What do you do when Americans as a whole are perfectly fine with that?
Sam F , November 18, 2018 at 08:17
But fraud from the top was shown very well by Bamford in his book Pretext For War. Where
discredited evidence was retained by intel agencies, as in the Iraq War II case, traitors like
the zionist Wolfowitz simply installed known zionist warmongers Perl, Feith, and Wurmser into
"stovepipe" offices at CIA, DIA, NSA to send the known-bad "evidence" to Rumsfeld &
Cheney.
Skip Scott , November 18, 2018 at 09:27
They seem to conveniently classify anything that could prove illegality such as fraud, or in
the case of the JFK assassination, something much worse. They use tools such as redaction and
classification not only to protect "national security", but to cover up their crimes.
"But what if the answer is just as likely that the national security state created by Truman
has grown into something uncontrollable, beyond legitimate oversight by the people it's
supposed to serve?"
I believe this is very much the case, but that doesn't preclude fraud as part of their
toolkit. The people at the top of the illegalities are clever enough to use those less sharp
(like Clapper) for their evil purposes, and if necessary, to play the fall guy. And although
the Intelligence Agencies are supposed to serve "We the People", they are actually serving
unfettered Global Capitalism and the .1% that are trying to rule the world. This has been the
case from its onset.
Furthermore, I am an American, and I am definitely NOT FINE with the misuse of
classification and redaction to cover up crimes. The way to fix the "entire ecosystem" is to
start to demand it by prosecuting known liars like James Clapper, and to break up the MSM
monopoly so people get REAL news again, and wake people up until they refuse to support the two
party system.
GKJames , November 19, 2018 at 10:20
(1) Assuming you could find a DOJ willing to prosecute and a specific statute on which to
bring charges, the chance of conviction is zero because the required fraudulent intent can't be
proved beyond reasonable doubt. All the defendant would have to say is, We thought WMDs were
there but it turned out we were wrong. Besides, the lawyers said it's all legal. And if you
went after Clapper only, he'd argue (successfully) that it was a highly selective prosecution.
(2) If you're going to create a whole new category of criminal liability for incompetence
and/or toadyism and careerism, Langley corridors would quickly empty. It's certainly one way to
reduce the federal workforce. (3) The intelligence agencies ARE serving "We the People". There
isn't anything they do that doesn't have the blessing of duly elected representatives in
Congress. (4) That you, yourself, are "NOT FINE" overlooks the reality that your perspective
gets routinely outvoted, though not because of "evil" or "fraud". A Clapper behind bars would
do zero to change that. Why? Because most Americans ARE fine with the status quo. That's not a
function of news (fake or real); Americans are drowning in information. Like all good service
providers, the media are giving their customers exactly what they want to hear.
Skip Scott , November 19, 2018 at 11:25
GK-
(1) It is you who is "assuming" that fraud could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
What if evidence was presented that showed that they didn't really think there were WMD's, but
were consciously lying to justify an invasion. I agree that it would be nearly impossible to
find a DOJ willing to prosecute within our corrupted government, but if we could get a 3rd
party president to sign on to the ICC, we could ship a bunch of evil warmongers off to the
Hague. (2) As already discussed, I don't buy the representation of their actions as mere
"toadyism". (3) As shown by many studies, our duly elected representatives serve lobbyists and
the .1%, not "We the People". Here's one from Princeton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
(4) From your earlier post: "What do you do when Americans as a whole are perfectly fine with
that?" Since I am part of the "whole", your statement is obviously false. And Americans are
drowning in MISinformation from our MSM, and that is a big part of the problem. And please
provide evidence that most Americans are fine with the status quo. Stating that I get routinely
outvoted when many Americans see their choice as between a lesser of two evils, and our MSM
keeps exposure of third party viewpoints to a minimum, is an obvious obfuscation.
Sam F , November 16, 2018 at 21:01
I will second Skip on that.
The groupthink of careerists is not "who Americans are."
"Broad agreement" on an obvious fraud is a group lie.
What Clapper did was fraud. What went on in his head was group-think. The two are by no
means incompatible. The man admits to outright fabrication-
"my team also produced computer-generated images of trucks fitted out as 'mobile production
facilities used to make biological agents.' Those images, possibly more than any other
substantiation he presented, carried the day with the international community and Americans
alike."
He knew exactly what he was doing.
wootendw , November 15, 2018 at 22:41
"Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents
related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria "
Syria and Iraq became bitter enemies in 1982 when Syria backed Iran during the Iran-Iraq
War. Syria even sent troops to fight AGAINST Saddam during the first Iraq War. Syria and Iraq
did not restore diplomatic relations until after Saddam was captured. The idea that Saddam
would send WMDs (if he had them) to Syria is ludicrous.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:54
Cheney wanted to steal the oil. Bush wanted to fulfill prophecy & make Jesus Rapture him
away from his problems. Neither plan worked.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:50
Our big shots never suffer for their crimes against humanity. Occasionally a Lt. Calley will
get a year in jail for a massacre, but that's it.
bostonblackie , November 16, 2018 at 13:54
Calley was placed under house arrest at Fort Benning, where he served three and a half
years.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:16
That's like less than 2.5 days served per each defenseless My Lai villager slaughtered,
massacred, in cold blood.
What kind of justice is that? Who gets away with murder that way?
Helen Marshall , November 15, 2018 at 17:41
While serving in an embassy in 2003, the junior officer in my office was chatting with the
long-time local employee, after viewing the Powell Shuck and Jive. One said to the other, "the
US calls North Korea part of the 'Axis of Evil' but doesn't attack it because there is clear
evidence that it has WMD including nukes." And the other said "yes, and that's why the US is
going to invade Iraq because we know they don't." QED
John Flanagan , November 16, 2018 at 22:25
Love this comment!
Taras 77 , November 15, 2018 at 16:36
Thanks, Ray, for an excellent article!
You are one of few who are calling out these treasonous bastards. I am still .waiting for at
least some of them to do the perp walk, maybe in the presence of war widows, their children,
and maimed war veterans.
Clapper played the central role in deceiving America into abandoning the republic and
becoming the genocidal empire now terrorizing Planet Earth. If it is too late; if the criminals
have permanent control of our government, there won't be a cleansing Nuremberg Tribunal, and
our once-great USA will continue along its course of death and destruction until it destroys
itself.
Where are our patriots? If any exist, now is the time for a new Nuremberg.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:56
The genocidal empire goes back to 1950 the Korean War.
bostonblackie , November 16, 2018 at 13:58
How about 1945 and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:08
Keep going. Further back than that.
How about the Spanish American War, justified by the false flag blowing up of the Maine in
Havana Harbor, which led to the four-year genocidal war against Filipino rebels and the war
against the Cubans?
How about the 19th Century genocide of Native Americans? What was that justified by, except for
lust for conquest of territory and racism?
How about America's role with other western colonial powers in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in
China.
The list of American violations of international law is too long to restate here, in the
hundreds.
The only way out of this moral dilemma is to turn a new page in history in a new
administration, hold our war criminals in the dock, and make amends under international law,
and keep them, somehow without sacrificing national jurisdiction or security. America has to be
reformed as an honest broker of peace instead of the world's leading pariah terrorist
state.
bostonblackie , November 17, 2018 at 16:29
How about slavery? America was founded on genocide and slavery!
Skip Scott , November 15, 2018 at 09:44
I think Ray is being a little overly optimistic about Clapper being travel restricted.
Universal Jurisdiction is for the small fry. Even with Bush and Rumsfeld, their changing travel
plans was probably more about possible "bad press" than actual prosecution. Maybe down the
road, when the USA collapse is more obvious to our "vassals" and they start to go their own
way, such a thing could happen. Even then, we've got tons of armaments, and a notoriously itchy
trigger finger.
My hope is that the two party system collapses and a Green Party candidate gets elected
president. He or she could then sign us on to the ICC, and let the prosecutions begin. I know
it's delusional, but a guy's gotta dream.
Robert Emmett , November 15, 2018 at 08:52
It occurs to me that even given Cheney's infamous 1% doctrine, these no-goodniks couldn't
even scratch together enough of a true story to pass that low bar. So they invented, to put it
mildly, plausible scenarios, cranked-up the catapults of propaganda and flung them in our faces
via the self-absorbed, self-induced, money grubbing fake patriots of mass media.
But, geez, Ray, it's not as if we didn't already know about fixing facts around the policy,
resignations of career operatives because of politicizing intelligence, reports of Scott
Ritter, plus the smarmy lying faces & voices of all the main actors in the Cheney-Rumsfeld
generated mass hysteria. I doubt these types of reveals, though appreciatively confirming what
we already know, will change very many minds now. After all, the most effective war this cabal
has managed to wage has been against their own people.
Perhaps when these highfalutin traitors, treasonous to their oaths to protect the founding
principles they swore to preserve, at last shuffle off their mortal coils, future generations
will gain the necessary perspective to dismiss these infamous liars with the contempt they
deserve. But that's just wishful thinking because by then the incidents that cranked-up this
never-ending war likely will be the least of their worries.
In the meantime, the fact that this boiled egghead continues to spew his Claptrap on a major
media channel tells you all you need to know about how deeply the poison of the Bush-Cheney era
has seeped into the body politic and continues to eat away at what remains of the foundations
while the military-media-government-corporate complex metastasizes.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 21:03
Ray knows that the well-informed know much of the story, and likely writes to bring us the
Clapper memoir confession and summarize for the less informed.
I am always glad to see confirmation in such matters, however, for people who work to inform
themselves and think critically, there are no real surprises to be discovered about the
invasion of Iraq.
It could be clearly seen as a fraud at the time because there were a number of experts,
experts not working for the American government, who in effect told us then that it was a
fraud.
What the whole experience with Iraq reveals is a couple of profound truths about imperial
America, truths that are quite unpleasant and yet seem to remain lost to the general
public.
One, lying and manipulation are virtually work-a-day activities in Washington. They go on at
all levels of the government, from the President through all of the various experts and agency
heads who in theory hold their jobs to inform the President and others of the truth in making
decisions.
Indeed, these experts and agency heads actually work more like party members from George
Orwell's Oceania in 1984, party members whose job it is to constantly rewrite history, making
adjustments in the words and pictures of old periodicals and books to conform with the Big
Brother's latest pronouncements and turns in policy.
America has an entire industry devoted to manufacturing truth, something the rather feeble
term "fake news" weakly tries to capture.
The public's reaction to officials and agencies in Washington ought to be quite different
than it generally is. It should be a presumption that they are not telling the truth, that they
are tailoring a story to fit a policy. It sounds extreme to say so, but it truly is not in view
of recent history.
We are all watching actors in a costly play used to support already-determined destructive
policies.
Two, the press lies, and it lies almost constantly in support of government's decided
policies. You simply cannot trust the American press on such matters, and the biggest names in
the press – the New York Times or Washington Post or CBS or NBC – are the biggest
liars because they put the weight of their general prestige into the balance to tip it.
Their fortunes and interests are too closely bound to government to be in the least trusted
for objective journalism. Journalism just does not exist in America on the big stuff.
This support is not just done on special occasions like the run-up to the illegal invasion
of Iraq but consistently in the affairs of state. We see it today in everything from
"Russia-gate" to the Western-induced horrors of Syria. Russia-gate is almost laughable,
although few Americans laugh, but a matter like Syria, with more than half a million dead and
terrible privations, isn't laughable, yet no effort is made to explain the truth and bring this
monstrous project – the work equally of Republicans and Democrats – to an end.
Three, while virtually all informed people know that Israel's influence in Washington is
inordinate and inappropriate, many still do not realize that the entire horror of Iraq, just
like the horror today of Syria, reflects the interests and demands of Israel.
George Bush made a rarely-noticed, when Ariel Sharon was lobbying him to attack other Middle
Eastern countries following the Iraq invasion, along the lines of, "Geez, what does the guy
want? I invaded Iraq for him, didn't I?"
Well, today, pretty much all of the countries that Sharon thought should be attacked have
indeed been attacked by the United States and its associates in one fashion or another –
covertly, as in Syria, or overtly, as in Libya. And we are all witnessing the ground being
prepared for Iran.
It has been a genuinely terrifying period, the last decade and a half or so. War after war
with huge numbers of innocents killed, vast damages inflicted, and armies of unfortunate
refugees created. All of it completely unnecessary. All of it devoid of ethics or principles
beyond the principle of "might makes right."
It simply cannot be distinguished, except by order of magnitude, from the grisly work of
Europe's fascist governments of the 1930s and '40s.
All the discussions we read or see from America about truth in journalism, about truth in
government, and about founding principles are pretty much distraction and noise, meaningless
noise. The realities of what America is doing in the world make it so.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 20:56
Very true.
tpmco , November 16, 2018 at 02:48
Great comment.
john Wilson , November 15, 2018 at 04:47
It seems to me that showing up the blatant lies of the Iraq affair, while laudable, doesn't
really get us anywhere. The guilty are never and will never be brought to account for their
heinous crimes and some of the past villains are still lying, scheming, and brining about war,
terror and horror today.
If the white helmets in Syria, the lies about Libya, the West engineered coupé in The
Ukraine, Yemen, etc, aren't all tactics from the same play book used by the criminal cabals of
the Iraq time, then we are blind. These days, the liars in the deep state, an expression which
encapsulates everything from Intel to think tanks, don't even try to tell plausible lies, they
just say anything and MSM cheers them on. Anyone challenging the MSM/government/deep state etc
are just ridiculed and called conspiracy theorists, no matter how obvious and ludicrous the
lies are.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 06:26
In fact "showing up the blatant lies of the Iraq affair" informs others, to whom the MSM can
no longer cheer on liars, nor ridicule truth. Truth telling, like contemplation, is essential
before the point of action.
Randal , November 15, 2018 at 02:38
I remember a woman reporter saying the reason we invaded Iraq was because Sadam Husien had
put a bounty on the Bush family for running him out of qwait. This was a personal revenge to
take out Husien before he had a chance at the Bush's. Any way the reporter was silenced very
quickly. I personally believe the allegation.
You have my complete and total respect Mr. McGovern. That was beautiful! Thank you.
F. G. Sanford , November 15, 2018 at 01:33
"We drew on all of NIMA's skill sets and it was all wrong."
Every time I hear the term, "skill sets", I recall a military colleague who observed, "We
say skill sets so we don't have to say morons." They used to say, "The military doesn't pay you
to think." Now they say, "We have skill sets." It's a euphemism for robotized automatons who
perform specific standardized tasks based on idealized training requirements which evolve from
whatever the latest abstract military doctrine happens to be. And, they come up with new ones
all the time.
"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This is a phrase Rumsfeld borrowed
directly – and I'm not making this up – from the UFO community. It was apparently
first uttered by Carl Sagan, and then co-opted by people like Stanton Friedman. He's the guy
who claims we recovered alien bodies from flying saucers at Roswell, New Mexico. The scientific
antidote to the "absence of evidence" argument is, of course, "Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof." Simply put, absence of evidence really just means "no evidence". A
hypothesis based on "no evidence" constitutes magical thinking.
It's probably worth going to Youtube and looking up a clip called "Stephen Gets a Straight
Answer Out of Donald Rumsfeld". He admits to Colbert that, "If it was true, we wouldn't call it
intelligence." Frankly, Clapper's gravest sin is heading up a science-based agency like NIMA,
but failing to come to the same conclusion as General Albert Stubblebine. People who analyze
reconnaissance imagery are supposed to be able to distinguish explosive ordnance damage from
other factors. But, I guess Newtonian Physics is "old school" to this new generation of magical
thinkers and avant-garde intelligence analysts.
Sam F , November 16, 2018 at 10:44
Part of the problem of "intelligence" is its reliance upon images that show a lot of detail
but without any definite meaning, and upon guesses to keep managers and politicians happy. So
"expert assessments" that milk trucks in aerial photos might be WMD labs became agency
"confidence" and then politician certainties, never verified.
When suspect evidence was retained by intel agencies, as in the Iraq War II case, traitors
like the zionist Wolfowitz simply installed known zionist warmongers Perl, Feith, and Wurmser
into "stovepipe" offices at CIA, DIA, NSA to send the non-evidence to Rumsfeld. See Bamford's
Pretext For War.
Gen Dau , November 14, 2018 at 22:20
Thank you, Ray, for a very good article that treats Clapper objectively and not as a
demi-god, as most of the MSM and the Democratic establishment does. It is totally unacceptable
for a government official, current or former, to answer "I don't know." That is the hideout of
irresponsible scoundrels. Questioners should be allowed to ask follow-up questions such as, "If
you didn't know, did you try to think about why the President's opinion on this very important
question was different from yours? Is simply not knowing acceptable for an intel officer,
especially one in a leadership position?" I look forward to your further reports and
analyses.
Thanks also to the editors for returning at least the main text to a readable font. But why
not go whole hog and make reading everything a pleasure again? Putting the headlines in a
hard-to-read and distracting font is especially unfortunate, since some casual visitors to
Consortium News may be turned off by the headlines and skip reading the very important articles
attached to the headlines.
According to my calculations (admittedly simplistic), the world has past the point of peak
oil and in aggregate cannot produce enogh oil to meet present and future demand and that may
very well be why the US is doing its best to destroy or damage as many economies in the world
as it can even if it has to go to war to do it. Once it becomes well established that we are
past peak oil no telling what our financial markets will look like. Would appreciate hearing
from someone who has more expertise than I have. https://www.gpln.com
anon4d2s , November 14, 2018 at 22:23
Why are you trying to change the subject? Please desist.
I'm offering you the, or a, motive of why the deep state is pursuing the agendas we see
unfolding, which is to say, the crimes, the lies, the treason that the likes of Clapper, Bush,
Obama, Clinton and others are pursuing to cover up their reaction to their own fears. Of course
9/11, the false flag coup and smoking gun that proves my point is still the big elephant in the
room and will eventually bring us down if the truth is never released from its chains.
I didn't change the subject. I'm offering you an answer as to the motive of why so many
officials are willing to trash the Constitution in order to accomplish their insane agendas.
It's all about money and power and the terrified Deep State fear of facing the blowback from
the lies that have been propagated by the government and media regarding just about everything.
Here's another place you might want to look in addition to my website: https://youtu.be/CDpE-30ilBY It's not just about oil. But
this is where the rubber's going to meet the road. This is about what's going to hit the fan at
any moment and in the absence of the Truth, we are all going to face this unprepared. 9/11 is
still the smoking gun. It not just a few liars and cheats we're talking about.
I didn't change the subject. The purpose of the search for WMD was to misdirect the public's
attention away from the real purpose of the invasion which was to gain control of Iraq's oil
reserves primarily. Misdirection is primary skill used by those in power and very
effectively.
Thanks, as always, go out to Ray for his continued bravery in speaking truth to power. I
remember years ago when David McMichaels, Ex-CIA, gave a talk at Ft Lewis College in Durango,
CO, about Ronnie Reagan's corruption in what the US was doing to the elected government in
Nicaragua. Thanks to both of these men for trying to inform us all about the corruption so
rampant in our government. This is further proof that Trump is only a small pimple on top of
the infectous boil that is our government.
Sam F , November 14, 2018 at 21:52
Hurray for Ray McGovern! A beautiful and superbly-planned confrontation. We are lucky that
Clapper admitted these things in his memoir, but we needed you to bring that out in public with
full and well-selected information. You are truly a gem, whom I hope someday to meet.
Sam F , November 14, 2018 at 22:19
An astounding revelation of systematic delusion in secret agencies.
But until now my best source on the Iraq fake WMD has been Bamford's Pretext For War, in
which he establishes that zionist DefSec Wolfowitz appointed three known zionist operatives
Perl, Wurmser, and Feith to "stovepipe" known-bad info to Rumsfeld et al. Does the memoir shed
any light there, and does your information agree?
mike k , November 14, 2018 at 19:58
Spies lie constantly, they have no respect for the truth. To trust a spy is a sign of
dangerous gullibility. Spies are simply criminals for hire.
Gen Dau , November 14, 2018 at 22:30
Yes, I also hope our replies will be in a more civil and less reader-hostile font. The same
font as the article text would be fine.
dfnslblty , November 15, 2018 at 09:59
I would offer that spies do not lie ~ they gather information.
Spy masters do lie ~ they prevaricate to fit the needs of their masters.
Tomonthebeach , November 15, 2018 at 23:48
To paraphrase in a way that emphasizes the deja vu. Trump lies constantly, he has no respect
for the truth. To trust Trump is a sign of dangerous gullibility. Trump is simply a crook for
hire, and it would seem that Putin writes the checks.
anon4d2s , November 16, 2018 at 10:48
Gosh, you fooled everyone so easily with standard Dem zionist drivel!
Why not admit that every US politician is bought, including Dems?
Don't forget to supply your unique evidence of Russian tampering.
Mild-ly - Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 16:44
"Clapper's Credibility Collapses"
as does Colin Powell's U.N.BULL Spit Yellow Cake propaganda/
all that's required is a Sales Pitch to everyday striving citizens into
how a brutal strain of aristocrat have come to rule america
and how you must delve into the Back-Stories of, for example,
GHW Bush CIA connection and his presents in Dallas, 1963
credibility collapses abound under weight of 'what really happened'
after Chaney convened summit of oil executives just PRIOR to 9/11?
"... Add in the war-profiteers, wide open borders, collapsing infrastructure and history-making wealth inequality, and an entire generation of healthy young white men destroyed by drugs and suicides, a despair engineered by Jews, who unlike Iranians, mock us as they do it. Let's see tranquility on the home front survive skyrocketing food and gas prices. ..."
"... We must prepare our own populist anti-war protest movement to bring the war home. We must remain steadfast in the face of a coming era of political repression nobody has seen in generations. ..."
"... "The U.S. did not only murder Qassem Soleimani. On December 29 it also killed 31 Iraqi government forces. Five days later it killed Soleimani and the Deputy Commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU/Hashed al-Shabi) and leader of Kata'ib Hizbollah Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. There were also four IRGC and four Kata'ib Hizbollah men who were killed while accompanying their leaders. The PMU are under direct command of the Iraqi Prime Minister. They are official Iraqi defense forces who defeated ISIS after a bloody war. Their murder demands that their government acts against the perpetrators." ..."
"... "Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had it coming and Iran should be nuked. Glass parking lot is the desired end." ..."
"... That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly brainwashed, believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the "White hatted, good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade". ..."
"... US murder of another nation's leader has no frigging importance in moral or consequential terms. Such is the general IQ status of the west today. Really, it takes someone intelligent and inquisitive enough for years and years to really get aghast and appreciative enough to ponder what the murder of Soleimani in Trump's hand in the manner it was executed would mean to world peace. MSM counts on this stupidity and thrives in lies and false-flag propaganda. ..."
"... The idiots at the helm of the Evil Outlaw US Empire really have absolutely no clue as their short term thinking has destroyed what mental capacities they once had and has reduced them to imbeciles. ..."
The US shows every symptom of an empire on the brink of collapse: an irreconcilably divided
and decaying citizenry, racial and cultural incoherence, a totally detached oligarchy, no
overarching mission or narrative, and an over reliance on international mercenaries to fight
its wars. By 2009, soldiers of fortune outnumbered US military personnel 3-1 in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Add in the war-profiteers, wide open borders, collapsing infrastructure and history-making
wealth inequality, and an entire generation of healthy young white men destroyed by drugs and
suicides, a despair engineered by Jews, who unlike Iranians, mock us as they do it. Let's see
tranquility on the home front survive skyrocketing food and gas prices.
A war with Iran is our line in the sand as well. All white men must boycott the military,
which is run by people who despise us more than any supposed international enemy ever will.
The last 3 years of having our rights and civil liberties whittled away show that it is white
Americans who will always be the US plutocracy's first and last enemy. If you are currently
serving, you can get honorably discharged by declaring yourself a worshipper of Asatru and
anonymously emailing your superior officers pretending to be a deeply concerned member of
Antifa. Even if open war doesn't break out, the recent massive troop buildups in the Middle
East guarantee you will be a target. Let Zion send its anarchist neo-liberal foot soldiers in
your place!
We must prepare our own populist anti-war protest movement to bring the war home. We must
remain steadfast in the face of a coming era of political repression nobody has seen in
generations.
The people of Iran are not our enemy. They share the same abominable foe and deserve our
solidarity. They must know that the citizens of America are ignorant of who rules them, and
that decisions made using our flag are not made by us.
In the name of the existence of our people and the future of our children, and even
broader in the name of humanity, we must ensure that this will be Judah's last war.
thank you b... i see you articulated a paragraph that is out of grasp of the american msm
crowd, so i am going to repeat it.. it is worth repeating...see bottom of post... my main
thought is that no matter what happens everything will be blamed on iran - false flag, and
etc. etc. you name it... all bad is on iran and all good is on usa-israel.. that is the
constant meme that the msm provides 24-7 and that us politicians and the state dept run with
24-7 as well. it is so transparent it is beyond despicable..
@ 13 old hippie.. that about sums up my impression.. thanks
@ 22 BM.. thanks.. i share your perspective, but am not as articulate..
here is the quote from b..
"The U.S. did not only murder Qassem Soleimani. On December 29 it also killed 31 Iraqi
government forces. Five days later it killed Soleimani and the Deputy Commander of the
Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU/Hashed al-Shabi) and leader of Kata'ib Hizbollah Abu
Mahdi al-Muhandis. There were also four IRGC and four Kata'ib Hizbollah men who were killed
while accompanying their leaders. The PMU are under direct command of the Iraqi Prime
Minister. They are official Iraqi defense forces who defeated ISIS after a bloody war. Their
murder demands that their government acts against the perpetrators."
Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end.
This sentiment is bottom to top in America. Measured response? No way can Iran 'measure' a
response.
More generally the sentiment is that a little war in Iran, a few nukes, is not even a big
thing. Football scores more important.
"Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked. Glass parking lot is the desired end."
That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from
English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly brainwashed,
believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the "White hatted,
good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade".
it seems they will be supportive of an attack on Iran, and if their maniac "leaders", the
basement crazies who got out of the basement, realise this, it increases substantially the
chances of a "hot" war. In that case, should it escalate out of control, your Chicago coffee
deadheads will get the Glass parking lot they want. It just wont be in the ME. Or Russia.
They can have their very own, in their own back yard.
You guys are right on money! I'm a retiree in my seventy's. My social circles are old
school college graduates in late fifties to late seventies, supposedly the segment of
population wise enough to decipher world affairs.
But no, they care more about who's gonna
win today between Titans and patriots or whether Tiger Wood will win another major in 2020.
US murder of another nation's leader has no frigging importance in moral or consequential
terms. Such is the general IQ status of the west today. Really, it takes someone intelligent
and inquisitive enough for years and years to really get aghast and appreciative enough to
ponder what the murder of Soleimani in Trump's hand in the manner it was executed would mean
to world peace. MSM counts on this stupidity and thrives in lies and false-flag
propaganda.
"24 hrs ago, an arrogant clown -- masquerading as a diplomat -- claimed people were dancing in the cities of Iraq. Today, hundreds of thousands of our proud Iraqi brothers and sisters offered him their
response across their soil. End of US malign presence in West Asia has begun."
The idiots at the helm of the Evil Outlaw US Empire really have absolutely no clue as
their short term thinking has destroyed what mental capacities they once had and has reduced
them to imbeciles.
Soleimani is the equivalent of Iran killing a top American regional commander, veteran government figure, and war hero all rolled
into one. This is big.
It feels like an escalation far out of proportion to the events that preceded it. If Washington thinks it'll make Iran fold
or beg they're crazy. If they think it'll force Iran into events leading to war, they're evil and have learned nothing.
if you are making an argument for proportionate, then you ignore history...this is a confrontation that cannot be avoided and
hiding under our desks will not save us...we do not have to invade, only use the options we possess without restraint and fight
total war...we would have peace for a hundred years...
I'm surprised it took him this long to make a war. Next he'll call for everyone to rally behind him. Those who don't he'll call
traitors. It's the oldest trick of authoritarianism.
Please provide concrete and specific examples comparing Trump's alleged "respect for constitutional limits and the rule of law"
and how his predecessors violated the same limits and the rule of law.
He's been busy calling the political opposition "traitors" for his entire administration.
Of course, it's not the Democrats whose standard bearer is openly proclaimed to be a puppet of a rival power on that power's
state television, and has been bankrolled by that power's organized crime syndicates for a while.
I voted for the president, but I don't get this at all. For what? I hope he comes to his senses, but it's probably already too
late to prevent some bad consequences.
The man is a compulsive liar. A man who is unashamedly unfaithful to his wife is not going to be faithful about anything he has
ever said to you. Every MAGA hat wearing devotee knew this before the election. I still can't figure out what kind of self deception
led so many of them to believe that he would act differently once in office?
It is deeply upsetting to witness the hijacking of our government by foreign interests. We know from their many public statements
on the subject that Israel and Saudi Arabia have at least one shared, longstanding goal, which is to get the US to fight a war
against Iran. Trump has now bowed to their demands. It has made Americans less safe and will inevitably result in wasting even
more American money and blood on the Middle East.
I am baffled. I someone who supported Trump and voted for Trump can now only think of him as a complete moron and a dangerous
quisling for Israel. I can see the end of our nation now. It's in plain sight for anyone with eyes to see. Once it falls there
will be no putting humpty dumpty back together. I have nothing but loathing for the Woke Democrats and the Neocon Establishment
Republicans. Now Trump will top Dubya Bush as the Biggest Prostitute for Israel of the 21st Century. So much for America First.
So much for making America Great Again. Watch it all fall apart before our very eyes under the leadership of this silver spoon
raised reality tv star. America is finished. It's over. You can put a fork in it. It's done. The Deep State won. It doesn't matter
if Trump wins or loses in 2020. The Deep State will get what they want either way. Then it will all come tumbling down. Watch
the real players behind the scenes move quickly to consolidate wealth and power in the Former USA (as happened after the collapse
of the USSR) in the aftermath of our coming collapse. For American Nationalists lik me Trump is more than a disappointment after
this caper. He is an outright disaster. There is no hope for Washington. It is beyond repair. Our nation's Grave Stone may well
read, "The United States of America, 1776-2020".
My initial feeling was as yours. A few deep breaths and some sleep and I find it difficult not to agree still. There are of course,
always events left to play out and seldom do predictions happen in purely linear equation.
Iran is limited in how it may respond. This makes the situation more not less, dangerous. The JCS surely understand that a
ground war with Iran would require unacceptable numbers of forces and result in a postwar quagmire that would make Iraq look like
a cakewalk.
Trump, like Obama and Bush before him should be impeached for this action but we all should be aware by now that a cowardly
Congress has abdicated its war making responsibilities to the President and military.
The only possible reason for any optimism is that Trump, after events like this, tends to feel he can use it as a negotiating
tactic for future use. Unfortunately as Larison has pointed out elsewhere, events like this inspire little trust and engender
more blowback elsewhere. We have no solutions for the region and even the loudest neocon cheerleaders have no desire to send themselves
or their children to risk death there.
"I someone who supported Trump and voted for Trump can now only think of
him as a complete moron and a dangerous quisling for Israel."
Me too. I increasingly wonder whether the America in which I grew up even exists anymore. It seems to be dying, taken over
and strangled by foreign interests. It started under Clinton, accelerated under the younger Bush and Obama, and under Trump it
has become almost absurdly overt, with people like Sheldon Adelson openly giving elected officials millions of dollars to advance
specific Israeli foreign policy goals.
I don't mean to sound snarky, but there is nothing baffling about it. Trump is weak, stupid, reckless and easily manipulated.
This has been abundantly obvious for a long time now.
your response is silly son, as the iranian general was a world class terrorist...maybe just maybe this makes it clear to the iranian
mullahs that they will be held accountable...
Pretty much anyone who fights asymmetrical warfare is easily classified as a terrorist by his opponent. He no doubt has some immoral
things to his name but if it were Trump in the middle of 5th avenue it would be a virtue.
Did you honestly think before the election that the man had any character or was capable of anything besides delivering zingers?
I ask this honestly. From the very start the man came across as a BS artist. I have never been able to figure out what people
saw in him.
As i am writing this, the US has targeted and killed Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Iranian Quds Force SOC.
If there was ever a doubt by any American that US soldiers will leave Iraq and Syria and/or the ME in general, let that doubt
be cast aside now.
Rest assured, Iran will see to it to extract this price in American blood and treasure. In other words, because of the headline-seeker-in-chief,
he just signed the death warrants of Americans and signed a cheque for 1 Billion+ dollars.
For those not familiar with a billion, it is $1,000,000,000+
"Iran will see to it to extract this price in American blood and treasure."
And, if Iran won't be provoked into an attack, the warmongers will gladly make sure there is a big one that will be blamed
on Iran. They've been salivating for a war with Iran and want it sooner rather than later. They are doing what they can to get
Trump re-elected, but they want their war soon, just in case. They've been laying the groundwork for months ("Iran-backed" this
and "Iran-backed" that).
"Candidate Donald Trump understood that Iraq was a grievous -- "big, fat" -- mistake. "We've destabilized the Middle
East and it's a mess," he said in 2015. It "may have been the worst decision" in U.S. history. "It started ISIS, it started Libya,
it started Syria," Trump said as George W. Bush's brother looked on. "Everything that's happening started with us stupidly going
into the war in Iraq . and people talk about me with the button. I'm the one thatdoesn't want to do this, okay?""
TAC was expressly launched to oppose interventionism in the George W. Bush administration, so I'm not sure why you thought its
antiwar position was for the sake of opposing Obama.
Anti-war factions exist on both the right and left, unfortunately as small minorities in both camps. The recently signed defense
authorization bill originally contained provisions that blocked the use of any funds for military action against Iran without
explicit Congressional authorization, but that provision was taken out of the bill at the last minute by the Democratic leadership.
Max Boot and Rachel Maddow are now BFF. Neoconservative ideology dominates both parties and prevails widely among non-partisan
liberals and conservatives alike.
You might be interested in looking into the newly formed Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. It is dedicated to developing
a cadre of foreign policy positions (and expertise to staff foreign policy in some future administration) supporting the use of
diplomacy and reserving the use of force to only those situations where it is the only reasonable way to defend the actual United
States. It is anti-war and anti-empire. And it has received funding from both the Koch brothers and George Soros.
Sen. Bernie Sanders addressed the threat of war with Iran at a campaign rally in Anamosa,
Iowa on Friday. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP Sen. Bernie Sanders addressed the threat of war with
Iran at a campaign rally in Anamosa, Iowa on Friday. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP The legacy of
the Iraq war, and the prospect of a bloody sequel sparked by Donald Trump's assassination of a
senior Iranian official in Baghdad this week, has the potential to transform the Democratic
primary, offering voters radically different visions of how the next commander-in-chief
proposes to deal with the ongoing chaos caused by the 2003 invasion.
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren described the drone strike
ordered by Trump as a dangerous escalation and promised to end American wars in the Middle
East. Joe Biden, the former vice president, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend,
Indiana, offered more muted criticism, suggesting that the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim
Suleimani might have been justified if a more responsible commander-in-chief was in
charge.
"We must do more than just stop war with Iran," Sanders tweeted on Friday. "We must
firmly commit to ending U.S. military presence in the Middle East in an orderly manner. We must
end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. We must bring our troops home from
Afghanistan."
We must do more than just stop war with Iran.
We must firmly commit to ending U.S. military presence in the Middle East in an orderly
manner.
We must end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen.
It has been pointed out to me that until his retirement in October 2019, JCS Chairman Joe
Dunford was a factor in tempering neocon fervor for war. The same was true for his
predecessor Martin Dempsey. Now we have a self-described "West Point Mafia" class of 1986 and
a JCS Chairman far more politically motivated than Dunford and Dempsey. This looks to be to
be more dangerous than when Bolton the chicken hawk was running around the West Wing. This is
a recent Politico profile of the new Defense team, including Pompeo, Esper and other key
national security advisors to Trump.
Rand Paul opposing the nomination of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, March 2018: "I'm
perplexed by the nomination of people who love the Iraq War so much that they would advocate
for a war with Iran next. It goes against most of the things President Trump campaigned
on."
Thanks for the link. The Trump triumvirate of class of '86 advisors did the minimum time
on active duty and left service for greener pastures. The move to politics is reminiscent of
the neocons decameron mentioned on the prior thread. It looks like the move to war which only
the neocons want is coming on in full force.
After around 25 people were killed by a U.S. attack over the weekend, and subsequently the
damage was being done to the "embassy" in Iraq, it looked like a real problem was developing.
But it seemed as if Iraqi security people had let the demonstrators and attackers into the
area where the U.S. embassy is, and then the following day were not letting them in, and so
the embassy cleanup would begin. At that time I felt better about the situation. In other
words, the Iraqi government, such that it is, allowed the protest and damage at the embassy
to occur, and then was stopping it after making the point of a protest.
However, that defusing of the situation by the Iraqi government by shutting down the
embassy protest was for naught when the ignorant people in the U.S. government carried out
the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and several others inside Iraq
itself. Now there is a real problem.
Given the real masters of the universe are the very rich, would the Iranians see them as
logical targets?
Sheldon Adelson comes to mind, as he is a primary backer of both Trump and Netanyahu. As
well as likely not known, or appealing to Trump's base, so avenging his death wouldn't appeal
in the same way as soldiers or diplomats. Especially leading up to the election. Not only
that, but if the very rich were to sense their Gulfstreams are somewhat vulnerable to someone
with a Stinger at the end of the runway in quite a few tourist destinations, Davos, etc, the
pressure from the People Who Really Matter might be against further conflict.
The rule of law has its uses and destroying the structure on which their world rests does
have consequences.
b, the US controls "Israel". Thinking that "Israel" set up a think tank to trick or
manipulate Trump into declaring war on Iran confuses the situation. Iran has been a target
of Western interests stretching back to the 1920s -- way before Israel was even founded. It
was the US/British who toppled its gov in '53, and there are plenty of other examples of
egregious interference in other MENA countries before '67.
The US ruling class -- large banks, oil companies, mining companies, arms manufacturers
-- wants a war on Iran in a vain attempt to recover the general rate of profit
when its economy is about to default in the coming recession.
When on the previous thread I posted something about what Magnier had said regarding
Trump trying to get Iran to temper its response, you said of this information "its fake of
course".
Now, b above has reproduced the same extract from Magnier. Care to tell us how you know
that it's fake?
Here is Paveway IV's post for the prior thread to complement b on the red flag
symbolism:
"The Shia Red Flag was raised on the top of the Jamkaran Mosque in the Iranian city of
Qom, second largest in the Persian country, after General Qassem Soleimani, head of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC's) elite Quds Force, was assassinated in an
aerial attack when his vehicle was targeted in the Baghdad International airport. The Red
Flag is the flag of Imam Hussein and marks the colour of blood which, many say, symbolises
revenge and an impending severe battle."
Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they had
it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end.
This sentiment is bottom to top in America. Measured response? No way can Iran 'measure'
a response.
More generally the sentiment is that a little war in Iran, a few nukes, is not even a
big thing. Football scores more important.
Sasha , Jan 4 2020 18:21 utc |
15Isabella , Jan 4 2020
18:22 utc |
16
"Sitting in coffee shop in Chicago listening to Americans. The general sentiment is they
had it coming and Iran should be nuked.
Glass parking lot is the desired end."
That's pretty much the picture i get from reading responses in UK MSM, not only from
English, but many giving American addresses. They are all pretty much thoroughly
brainwashed, believing as gospel the lies they've told, and still think that they are the
"White hatted, good guys, who do good things for the places they bomb and invade".
it seems they will be supportive of an attack on Iran, and if their maniac "leaders",
the basement crazies who got out of the basement, realise this, it increases substantially
the chances of a "hot" war. In that case, should it escalate out of control, your Chicago
coffee deadheads will get the Glass parking lot they want. It just wont be in the ME. Or
Russia. They can have their very own, in their own back yard.
... So what happened to the naive people who were putting their peace hopes in Trump? He just
said he will strike important sites in Iran, including cultural sites.
"... It is time b and the others admit that they made a mistake. b has been supportive of keeping Trump in power and his reelection. This is a mistake. karlo1 also expressed some support for Trump, which is naive, and inexcusable, for such an intelligent person. ..."
"... Let's make a bet that all of those who somehow supported Trump here will eat their words this year. ..."
"... It is time for people to think very carefully and deeply about things. Do not be naive. Think very carefully. Get your brains working, please. ..."
So what happened to the naive people who were putting their peace hopes in Trump? He just
said he will strike important sites in Iran, including cultural sites.
It is time b and the others admit that they made a mistake. b has been supportive of
keeping Trump in power and his reelection. This is a mistake. karlo1 also expressed some
support for Trump, which is naive, and inexcusable, for such an intelligent person.
Let's make a bet that all of those who somehow supported Trump here will eat their words
this year.
It is time for people to think very carefully and deeply about things. Do not be naive.
Think very carefully. Get your brains working, please.
If I were China at this point, watching the schoolyard bully beating up on a fellow
citizen, I might just want to take the Bully's focus off the fellow citizen and, with
Russia's backing, tell the bully to pick on someone their own size.
Given the brazenness of the threats and provoking going on to start some military
conflict, maybe China needs to play the "I won't sign the trade deal and I want to cash in my
US Treasuries." cards to redirect the narrative and focus.
I like the silence of nations watching the bully trying to goad the world into military
war. It speaks volumes that Trump is being the biggest bully he can to incite military
warfare which they would lose if they don't go nuclear.
I find it saddening that so many commenters here don't seem to grasp that asymmetrical
warfare that is needed now is not the eye for eye type. Military warfare is the problem, not
the solution.
"Trump: "We targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran
many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,
and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no
more threats!"
Threats! I.e., Trump to Iran: If you don't let us off the hook for what we did to you, you
will be sorry!! Wouldn't this also be a war crime per . . . Geneva? Nuernberg? Destruction of
cultural sites?
The man is really a terrifying nutter who thinks nothing of destroying ancient cultures
while sitting in his gauge, glitzy digs in the Trump Tower or Mar-a Lago.
Thanks to Really @ 124 - Yes, I do know that Iran is not Arabic - the interview I was
remembering was in Qatar in October after a meeting that Zahir had addressed concerning his
HOPE initiative, and that interview had been posted on twitter - I could not find it in my
search just now, but my confusion was due to, I believe, his mentioning Arabic countries at
one point. Apologies for the misstatement. You are correct that the initiative is aimed more
widely than that.
Lozion@62 - Re: Your Magnier quote, "The US did not plan to kill the vice commander of the
Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi brigade Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes when it assassinated Iranian Brigadier
General Qassem Soleiman"
The light bulb above my chimpanzee brain just flickered (briefly). Somewhere on SST (maybe
Lang?): something to the effect of 'Never underestimate US gov/mil incompetence'. Maybe it
was the opposite of what Magnier thought really took place.
Treasonous, dual-citizen chickenhawks of the US possibly targeted Hashd al-Shaabi
vice-commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes . They were trying to kill him because they found
out from some snitch that he just showed up at the airport for some reason. The all-seeing US
didn't realize Soleimani was even there . I guess because the sneaky Soleimani flew
commercial into Baghdad and probably carried his bags to the waiting SUVs. Who would have
expected that ? How devious!
This seems entirely plausible to me. Soleimani was too expensive a target - end of the
State of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and all. But whacking a vice-commander of Hashd
al-Shaabi with a quarter-million dollar JAGM? Hell YEAH! We live for this kind
of preventative assassination heroism in the US. Especially if accompanied by colorful
graphics.
The awkward and delayed response of the usual US mil/gov mouthpieces makes this ridiculous
scenario even more believable. I have thoroughly convinced myself that this was a US screw-up
of EPIC proportions. In case the US government is reading MoA, this was all Lozion's doing.
I'm an innocent conspiracy primate.
I don't trust Magnier's reporting about an offer made by USA to Iran and his
speculation that Trump "offering the life of a 4-star general" is as nonsensical as it is
irresponsible.
In the past I've found Magnier to be unreliable - like when he has lauded Israel and
hinted that Iran was behind the tanker attacks. It sometimes seems to me that Magnier
relishes the possibility of a war with Iran.
Magnier's reporting is inconsistent with Trump Administration actions now and in the past.
Trump was "locked and loaded" for war with Iran in September! So why would Trump offer to
lift sanctions and strike a nuclear deal now EXCEPT AS A RUSE.
We should also be mindful that the Iranians have refused to negotiate while sanctions are
in place. This has been Iran's position for quite some time. Reporting about an rebuffed
offer without noting this is irresponsible and a disservice to readers.
PS Why does Magnier's site track users via graph.facebook?
<> <> <> <> <> <>
I find it highly doubtful that Iran brought down PanAm 103 .
Such speculation only plays into USA's depiction of Iran as a terrorist state.
I know we are not to feed the trolls, but this is a meme worth commenting on:
"...So what happened to the naive people who were putting their peace hopes in
Trump?..."
Many here are emphasizing this doubtful implication (even Circe, whom I praised for a
stellar observation on the subject of Iran - and it even crept into my own cut and paste of
Suilimani's attributes.
We do not know (and I'm grateful to Pepe for entering this into his recent article) how
much of this is being orchestrated by Trump of his own unadulterated initiative. We agree
it's a mafia operating. Is he the boss of it? That's speculation. What is important is that
those (and we've seen how they operate) in 'power' are calling the shots.
So I'm viewing with suspicion any post (including mine) that accidentally or not inserts
this meme.
Bin Laden, Al Baghdadi, etc were not beloved state officials or state actors of any kind.
Qaddafi, like Saddam, was toppled in actions that were designed to look like regime change
from below -- but I agree to some extent that his death comes close, but was Qaddafi singled
out by a precision hit in the precise fashion we are seeing here. But my point is that a
bridge has been crossed here in terms of scale, brazenness, and the extent to which no
attempt was made to conceal that it was a hit ordered directly by POTUS. It is an
unprecedented shift in international relations where a host of other covert tactics were
fully available and would have achieved the same outcome.
I guess I'm the only human round here who finds the child like refusal by so many to believe
that Iran played a payback card with Lockerbie, a very small stunt that didn't require much
at all in the way of participants, while they lap up lurid (& frequently white
supremacist at heart) nonsense conspiracies such as that 911 was a deliberate strategy (one
that would have required a cast of hundreds if not thousands, all staying schtum for
evermore) - f++king ludicrous.
The Iranians had to teach amerika that shooting down a passenger jet had major consequences.
They did that while benefiting from real world politics where amerika needed to have Iran
& Syria (who had assisted) onside for gulf war 1. Libya got stitched up because they were
convenient mugs who lacked friends in the ME because the colonel had no time for pretty much
every other ME leader - his interest had always been Africa.
This is pretty typical of people who have a need to see everything in black or white. Don't
say anything bad about Iran or Syria because they are enemies of fukasi eh. What use are
nations such as Iran or Syria if they are not prepared to get their hands dirty once in a
while? No use.
The fact that Iran got just the right payback in a just way then stopped is something people
should be proud of Iran for, rather than squealing "No No they wouldn't they couldn't do
that."
I can remember celebrating down the workers' club on the day news of the Lockerbie bombing
came out. What had occurred was obvious, sure a few innocents died, that happens in war, the
war amerika had kicked off and if that plane hadn't gone down most of the passengers would
have been sitting in a coffee shop today with half a chubbie in their pants at the thought
amerika had showed that 'Sullymanny' who was the boss.
b is correct to bring up that action because it encapsulates exactly how Iran is, truth
and justice are at the heart of everything Iran's leadership believes & does. It wasn't
Iran who fitted up Libya - amerika & england did that. Iran had merely insisted that the
entire plane saga be buried if amerika wanted any assistance with Saddam Hussein, who let's
face as far as Iran was concerned deserved everything he got. George H Bush showed himself to
be at least as silly as his son - neither had any comprehension of what would happen should
Ba'ath be removed from power in Iraq, that Iran would be the major beneficiary.
That I reckon is a major part of why amerikan leaders & their zionist proxies get so hot
on Iran. Iran played them like a bitch and now they know it.
If Lockerbie incident substantiated with Rober Fisk stories or world powers intelligence
evidences, Iran definitely would be sanctioned and would pay very high price, would be tried
in international criminal court.
Why they did not brought Gadhafy to the court? Because they did not have clear evidence.
Look other works of Robert Fisk, how is Independent now? What color is it now?
My view about Trump is based on my psychological portrait of Trump. He is a US
supremacist, plus a military (see their presence around him and the large increase in mil
budgets) and a zionist (see his family) puppet.
I see him as an aggressive animal. He will start a war if he can get away with it. He also
likes to grandstand, so he hates the US decline in the world. He wants to brag how great he
(and by proxy the US) is. It is also known that he does not like muslims. No way for him to
have good relations with Iran.
He is a gambler. He will push and push, as long as he could get away with it. In
international relations though, especially in the relations with some countries, who have
strong grievances against the US, this could lead to war.
Trump said that he could nuke Afghanistan is necessary. Sorry, but i do not see in this
talk his advisors behind him, but only his own animalistic nature.
Truth is, i was supportive of Trump in the past, but with time i changed my opinion. After
careful observation. And i'm glad i did. It shows that my mind is still flexible, and will
accept even the unpleasant truth, as long as it is the truth.
If i'm calling now a person that i was relatively supportive in the past "an animal" you
can imagine my disappointment.
Addendum to @143
Unless of course the lack of concealment was a deliberate provocation to incite a real war.
In which case Iran must choose asymmetry. Hit KSA and close the Gulf. The world will sideline
the US in a panicked scramble to quieten everything down. But I don't see evidence that the
markets believe this will happen. Oil not really moving up that much. A good analysis of the
financial markets' view on this would shed some light.
Also, does anybody have an accurate summary of the current structure of the Iraqi
parliament, someone who can crunch the numbers? The US would surely have been preparing well
in advance to prevent a spill to evict them, but is it in the bag or is it fluid? I wonder
what the bookies are offering...
Too much noise from the US, as usual, threats blah blah, there are simply not enough fire
power in the Gulf to go to war against Iran, just recall what took from many countries to
invade Iraq, so no WWIII, no major confrontation is expected. The Orange Man is clearly
agitated, his few TV appearances, are showing a very disturbed person, not the usual Trumpest
we know about.
The backstage is intense, Iran has to retaliate, the US gets that, but it is trying to reduce
the impact, this is definitively what is being dealt in the Swiss, Oman and Qatar meetings in
the past 24 hrs. There will be more contacts until this whole mess is done.
Iranians and Iraqis are not afraid, they want confrontation, it will be hard for their
leaders to hold them at bay, but I believe the payback is coming slowly, in pieces, not once,
but in several blows, a masterpiece could be against American allies in the region, since the
US will have hard time re retaliate, and the damage to the US will be done as it was with the
tankers, agains KSA etc... We should also expect IEDs to kill many soldiers and US
mercenaries, the later will be focused for sure, and that means in Iraq and Syria.
Would like to share with the SyrPers visiting MoA, that until the site is not back on
line, we are trying to gather at Platosgun.com, at Taxi's place, so far we managed to some
Syrpers there and get out comment section back to live in a different address, at least for
while. See you there SyrPers.
Have we missed an obvious explanation for shocking behavior?
That control of Iran is needed to enable the Crown to do Brexit and flourish? That
middle-east oil/gas and the politics of global availability are crucial to the Crown's
survival as elitist Royalty.
The US.gov has acted as the Crown's proxy for a very long time, knowingly or
unknowingly.
Look at a global map of Planet Earth. Look at England [if you can find it]. And don't
confuse it with Japan, which also knows something about needing/wanting proxies...knowingly
or not.
Now, go do Brexit without guaranteed [under control] sources of energy and other
plunder.
People have lost their fear of Nuclear weapons. If the U.S. use Nukes against Iran, the
radioactive cloud will be blown across the Atlantic Ocean and land where?
Quite apart from the fact that if the U.S. use Nukes without a serious retaliation, nowhere
is safe. Putin has been quoted that any form of nuclear weapon used on any of it's allies
will be considered as a nuclear attack on Russia itself and will be responded to by a full
scale retaliatory strike.
As the U.S. has no defense against the latest Russian weaponry, they will realize that
indeed, the living will envy the dead.
I have no idea as to what the attack strategy of Russia will be but I doubt it will be to
kill millions of people. Far more effective Is to wipe out major infrastructure, transport,
water and energy systems and then see what 340 million people do to survive.
Well put. We in Australia have a mini-Trump for PM (an embarrassing fawning dog licking
Trump's balls on his recent visit to the US) who is currently mismanaging our bushfire
catastrophe due to a total lack of empathy. A former marketing manager, Scott Morrison is a
sociopath who makes bullies look like Mother Teresa. The combination of self-righteous
evangelism with fanatical neoliberal ideology, when wedded to a lust for power at all costs
and the crushing of any dissent (usually through awful marketing-school cynicism), makes for
extreme social and political toxicity. He adores Trump and actually took notes at an Ohio
rally (I kid you not). As the east coast burns like never before (a region the size of Texas
gone, 1500 homes, 20+ lives lost) he went on holiday to Hawaii (staying in a Trump hotel).
When he returned he was greeted by visceral hostility (enormously satisfying to watch
here ). His instinct was to make an ad explaining how great his leadership is(n't). His
position is owed to his commitment to Australia's only three sources of wealth: selling coal
and iron ore to China, real estate (ponzi scheme), banking (even bigger ponzi scheme). I
would drone strike him and Trump in a New York minute
"A new California law fines you $1,000 if you shower and do 1 load of laundry in the
same day. And if the Gov declares a drought, the fine goes up to *$10,000*."
@139 PWIV. My take here from before Magnier's post:
Posted by: Lozion | Jan 4 2020 2:25 utc | 363
"Killing Mohandes was not part of the plan imo. Note how he is never mentioned in Western
press? The US will now have to contend with an extraordinary parliament session this Sunday
and likely a vote for US troop ousting will be made. Surely that's not what the US wanted
though it had to be anticipated if Mohandes got hit. Either they ignored he was present or
decided it was worth the risk. Now its blowback time. Lets see what Sadr's block will vote.
He will finally reveal is true colors by making or breaking the vote (53 MP's).."
You may be right though and it is the opposite but I think IL leaked the info on Soleimani
going to Baghdad for the funeral of the martyred PMU soldiers and the hit was
greenlighted..
And this way we already can test who inspired the US/Israel sponsored terrorists in Syria
and Iraq to destory all the cultural heritage there...sicne The Donals just confess this was
in their strategic manuals....The Syrian government should keep a capture of that Twitt for
further claims on compensations at ICC...
Obviously, nobody swallowed that was an ingenious occurence of those brutes to the
eyebrows of Captagon...Someon wanted those treasure destroyed and payed to smugle those able
to be so..
Iran has already been under attack: And much lied about:
From Oct. 2019 Iran claims two explosions on board the Iranian Sabiti oil tanker were
caused by a missile attack in the Red Sea
Sept 2018 At least 29 people, including children, have been killed in a terrorist attack
on a military parade in south-west Iran, responsibility claimed by Islamic State and a
separatist group.
Aug 2015 "Israel's defense minister hinted on Friday that the Jewish state's intelligence
services were behind the rash of killings of Iranian nuclear scientists."
And then there are the false accusations: June 2019 Hours after the U.S. released video
footage that 'showed' an Iranian boat removing an unexploded mine from the side of an oil
tanker, the Japanese owner of that vessel said that the ship was likely damaged by a "flying
object" and dismissed claims of a mine attack as "false."
The news was distorted and interpreted, hand-to-hand differently.
Swiss Ambassador in Tehran was summoned for Solaimani assassination, he went to Iran foreign
ministry, yesterday morning ( Swiss is represent and protect USA affairs in Iran). At the
same visit he delivered a letter from USA to Iran. What is the content of the letter is not
known to public. The Sepah commander in his speech hinted that American ( through a country)
has requested to set a limit ( or ceiling) for retaliation and Iran has reject the request. (
who was the third country? Nobody knows, many countries are trying to mediate every
hour).
In an interview Zarif explained that Swiss ambassador was summoned, he came in the morning,
in the same session he delivered an indecent letter from USA. He was summoned in the
afternoon, came and received our sturdy an tough written response.
A 4 star general or like that are logical interpenetration. Why you do not look Chris
Morphy's speeches?
He ( Morphy) said equivalent to Solaimani is American secretary of defense. Would you satisfy
with Morphy interpretation?
>>Also, does anybody have an accurate summary of the current structure of the Iraqi
parliament, someone who can crunch the numbers? The US would surely have been preparing well
in advance to prevent a spill to evict them, but is it in the bag or is it fluid? I wonder
what the bookies are offering...
In the iraqi parliament, sunnis and kurds are against expelling the US. They are a
minority though. There are also two small shia factions who are against that.
But the expellers will have the majority if Muqtada al Sadr supports them. So by the
coming vote, it will become clear who is a US agent in Iraq, and who is not.
My bet is a 70 % probability for a vote to expell the US from Iraq.
@Moon
Fitst, as others have pointed out, it is unclear who was responsible for the downing of
Pan AM 103 . Many took credit for it and ultimately it may have been the CIA itself.
Second, Iran has always been of strategic interest to great powers even before
Israel existed or oil was discovered there. To suggest that the US would have no strategic
interest in controlling Iran if it were not for Israel is ridiculous. The US deep state
has been trying to reclaim Iran since Carter lost it. Also, note that Israel supplied
weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran during the the Iran-Iraq war.
If want to look to past history of what Iran will do, you only need to look back to the
Iran-Iraq war. After the US wiped out all Iranian oil platforms and the Iranian navy in
operation Praying Mantis, a ceasefire and peace was negotiated soon afterwords. Trump and
Lindsey Graham have warned Iran that they will lose all their oil refineries if they attempt
retaliation. Iran no longer has any doubts that Trump will make good on that threat. To
suggest that Iran will act irrationally and retaliate regardless of US consequences is the
height of racism.
Also to think that China or Russia will somehow defend Iran against US attacks is wishful
thinking,
Trump is the perfect man, in the perfect position, at the perfect time, to finally get their
wish and attempt to smash up Iran. He is no more than a front man. Every president is backed
by some interests and competing interests back various candidates.
If he (they) think he (they) can play the "rocket man" game against the Persian he (they)
are sadly mistaken. Obviously Obama took a much different tack with Iran while smashing up
some of the old Arab secular countries at the same time. I would not know how to begin to
think through this madness of Empire regime planning.
Below is a Reuters article, so you know it is low balling the numbers but, admitting that not
ALL Americans are on board with the Iran/Iraq attack
"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Groups of protesters took to the streets in Washington and other U.S.
cities on Saturday to condemn the air strike in Iraq ordered by President Donald Trump that
killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and Trump's decision to send about 3,000
more troops to the Middle East.
"No justice, no peace. U.S. out of the Middle East," hundreds of demonstrators chanted
outside the White House before marching to the Trump International Hotel a few blocks
away.
Similar protests were held in New York, Chicago and other cities. Organizers at Code Pink,
a women-led anti-war group, said protests were scheduled on Saturday in numerous U.S. cities
and towns.
Protesters in Washington held signs that read "No war or sanctions on Iran!" and "U.S.
troops out of Iraq!"
Speakers at the Washington event included actress and activist Jane Fonda, who last year
was arrested at a climate change protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
"The younger people here should know that all of the wars fought since you were born have
been fought over oil," Fonda, 82, told the crowd, adding that "we can't anymore lose lives
and kill people and ruin an environment because of oil."
"Going to a march doesn't do a lot, but at least I can come out and say something: that
I'm opposed to this stuff," said protestor Steve Lane of Bethesda, Maryland. "And maybe if
enough people do the same thing, he (Trump) will listen."
Soleimani, regarded as the second most powerful figure in Iran, was killed in the U.S.
strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport on Friday in a dramatic escalation of hostilities in
the Middle East between Iran and the United States and its allies.
Public opinion polls show Americans in general have been opposed to U.S. military
interventions overseas. A survey last year by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found 27%
of Americans believe military interventions make the United States safer, and nearly half
said they make the country less safe.
"
One point: Since Iran now knows that it will be blamed for *anything* that happens in the
Middle East - witness the Houthis attack on the Saudi oil fields, it does not have much
incentive to keep its retaliation "plausibly deniable." So I suspect Iran will make it clear
that it is responsible for whatever retaliation it conducts. It will only keep such
retaliation at a level below a direct strike against senior US officials such as Pence,
Pompeo, or the Joint Chiefs.
My guess would be a strike against a division level or regional US military officer in the
region - possibly via car bomb in the UAE or even Europe. Or an equivalent strike against an
Israeli officer or diplomat via Hezbollah - although that might difficult due to limited
access. That will make it obvious that is was Iran, but Iran may still use a cut-out such as
Hezbollah or Shia elsewhere so no Quds Force operative can be identified as being
involved.
"Military security" is an oxymoron, as SEAL Richard Marcinko demonstrated with his Red
Cell team decades ago. Every US military member in the world is now at increased risk for
assassination and every US base in the world is at risk for a serious attack similar to the
Marine Barracks bombing.
I'd hate to be any US official flying into any airport in the Middle East - given that an
equivalent drone strike can be done by almost every militant group in the Middle East, now
that the Houthis have demonstrated how.
Below is another Reuters article, this one about the lying, boot licking and obfuscating UK
"
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain urged all parties to show restraint on Saturday after the United
States killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in an air strike, but said its
closest ally was entitled to defend itself against an imminent threat.
Defence minister Ben Wallace said in a statement that he had spoken to his U.S.
counterpart Mark Esper, adding: "We urge all parties to engage to de-escalate the
situation.
"Under international law the United States is entitled to defend itself against those
posing an imminent threat to their citizens," he added.
"
LYSSANDER the only suspect for the bombing of Capt William Roger's wife's van was a former
family friend involved in some sort of personal dispute over a divorce.
> Grudge, not terrorism, seen in Rogers bombing
> Joe Hughes
> Tribune Staff Writer
>
> 10/02/1989
> The San Diego Union-Tribune
>
> TRIBUNE; 1,2,3,4,5
> A-1:1,2,3,4; B-1:5
> (Copyright 1989)
>
>
>
> Federal investigators have turned away from
> terrorism as a motive for the
> pipe-bombing of a van driven by the wife of Navy
> Capt. Will C. Rogers III
> and are looking at an American believed to have a
> grudge against Rogers,
>
Thanks for the succinct summary. That seems to accord with the balance across the country.
It's hard to tell in Iraq whether religion (Sunni v Shi'a) means more than ethnicity (Arab v
Persian). Like all these artificial nations created after the collapse of the Ottoman empire
the ethno-tribal, religious and class breakdown is impenetrable and mercurial. It always
reminds me of Frank Herbert's masterpiece Dune. 70% eh? I like those odds.
In passing, it reached 49 degrees celsius where I live in western Sydney yesterday (a
Sydney record) and the smoke haze is now so bad from multiple fire fronts on the edges of the
city that driving is dangerous and motorways are closing. With heavy water restrictions in
place my garden is dead. All my capsicums burnt on the stem yesterday as the road bitumen
melted outside. This is the case from Queensland to South Australia, a coastline 2000km long.
Plus Australia currently has the worst air quality in the world. And this is only one month
into a 3 month fire season. Very depressing.
"The anti-Benghazi!" President Donald Trump replied after liberals referred to the
storming of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as his Benghazi, referencing the assault on the
American consulate in Libya under the previous administration. Trump, supporters maintained,
did not hesitate to repel the attack. In fact, in breaking news Wednesday night it was reported
that the U.S. military, at the direction of President Trump, killed the leader of the Iranian Quds
Force, General Qassem Soleimani, in an airstrike at Baghdad's international airport.
The United States has a right to defend its embassies and military bases overseas as well as
the duty to protect Americans and other personnel. But the partisan finger-pointers are
overlooking the real significance of Benghazi: it was the symbol of a failed military
intervention for which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton bore greater culpability than the
grisly murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues. The regime change war Washington
launched left Libya teeming with terrorists, full of territory that was chaotic, violent and
unsafe.
So too the war in Iraq, which initially created a power vacuum that empowered radicals who
resemble the militant forces that attacked America on 9/11. In recent years, our focus has been
on fighting ISIS rather than nation-building. But the longer-term result of the Iraq
misadventure was to overthrow the Sunni state that controlled Baghdad and replace it with a
Shiite government that would inevitably mean greater Iranian influence. The toppled Iraqi
government was Iran's main counterweight in the region.
Candidate Donald Trump understood that Iraq was a grievous -- "big, fat" -- mistake. "We've
destabilized the Middle East and it's a mess," he said in 2015. It "may have been the worst
decision" in U.S. history. "It started ISIS, it started Libya, it started Syria," Trump said as
George W. Bush's brother looked on. "Everything that's happening started with us stupidly going
into the war in Iraq . and people talk about me with the button. I'm the one that doesn't want
to do this, okay?"
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in his first year as president of
the United States, Trump laid into the Mesopotamian mishaps. "We've spent trillions of dollars
overseas, while allowing our own infrastructure to fall into total disrepair and decay. In the
Middle East, we've spent as of four weeks ago, $6 trillion. Think of it," he said. "And by the
way, the Middle East is in -- I mean, it's not even close, it's in much worse shape than it was
15 years ago. If our presidents would have gone to the beach for 15 years, we would be in much
better shape than we are right now, that I can tell you."
"Great nations do not fight endless wars," Trump
declared in his State of the Union address just last year. "Our brave troops have now been
fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years. In Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 7,000 American
heroes have given their lives. More than 52,000 Americans have been badly wounded. We have
spent more than $7 trillion in the Middle East."
Yet Iran has always been the unprincipled exception to Trump's
skepticism of regime change. In his zeal to reverse Obama's legacy, he risks repeating Obama's
folly. For the 44th president also owed his election to the fact that he recognized Iraq was a
"dumb war." He left office with the U.S. mired in more wars of choice than before, including
interventions in Libya, Yemen and Syria that have to varying degrees kept smoldering under
Trump.
Trump's foreign policy team is replete with advisers ready to turn proxy wars with Iran
inside Iraq into a wider conflict, people whose vision of "America First" is indistinguishable
from the vision that gave us endless wars in the first place. So far, the president has
held
them off . But his present course creates a high risk of war with Iran, and a resumption of
hostilities in Iraq not limited to the fight against ISIS, whether he knows it or not.
At the very least, Trump may cede the war issue to the Democrats. "We should end the forever
wars, not start new ones," tweeted Elizabeth Warren, the liberal presidential candidate who
trails Trump in
the battleground states and is even
losing to him in Virginia, according to the latest Mason-Dixon poll, which hasn't voted for
a Republican White House aspirant since 2004. Why throw her a lifeline by implementing the
foreign policy of candidates he defeated in 2016?
Trump was elected to guard American borders. Patrolling the Iran-Iraq border will not get
him reelected.
W. James Antle III is the editor of The American Conservative.
I t does not matter where the green light for the U . S . targeted assassination in Baghdad
of Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani and the Hashd al-Shaabi
second-in-command Abu Madhi al-Muhandis came from.
This is an act of war. Unilateral, unprovoked and illegal.
President Donald Trump may have issued the order. The U . S . Deep State may have ordered
him to issue the order. Or the usual suspects may have ordered them all.
According to my best Southwest Asia intel sources, "Israel gave the U . S . the coordinates
for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani as they wanted to avoid the repercussions of taking
the assassination upon themselves."
It does not matter that Trump and the Deep State are at war.
One of the very few geopolitical obsessions that unite them is non-stop confrontation with
Iran – qualified by the Pentagon as one of five top threats against the U . S . , almost
at the level of Russia and China.
And there cannot be a more startling provocation against Iran -- in a long list of sanctions
and provocations -- than what just happened in Baghdad. Iraq is now the preferred battleground
of a proxy war against Iran that may now metastasize into hot war, with devastating
consequences.
Please Make a 25th Anniversary Winter Fund DriveDonationToday.
We knew it was coming. There were plenty of rumbles in Israeli media by former military and
Mossad officials. There were explicit threats by the Pentagon. I discussed it in detail in
Umbria last week with sterling analyst Alastair Crooke – who was extremely worried. I
received worried messages from Iran.
The inevitable escalation by Washington was being discussed until late Thursday night here
in Palermo, actually a few hours before the strike. (Sicily, by the way, in the terminology of
U.S. generals, is AMGOT: American Government Occupied Territory.)
Once again, the Exceptionalist hands at work show how predictable they are. Trump is
cornered by impeachment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted. Nothing
like an external "threat" to rally the internal troops.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei knows about these complex variables as much as he knows of
his responsibility as the power who issued Iran's own red lines. Not surprisingly he already
announced, on the record, there will be blowback: "a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who
have his blood and the blood of other martyrs last night on their hands." Expect it to be very
painful.
Qasem Soleimani (left) with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right) at a 2017 ceremony commemorating
the father of Soleimani, in Mosalla, Tehran. (Fars News Agency, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia
Commons)
Blowback by a Thousand Cuts
I met al-Muhandis in Baghdad two years ago -- as well as many Hashd al-Shaabi members. Here
is my full report . The Deep
State is absolutely terrified that Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular
Mobilization Forces) , a grassroots organization, are on the way to becoming a new Hezbollah,
and as powerful as Hezbollah. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the supreme religious authority in Iraq,
universally respected, fully supports them.
So, the American strike also targets Sistani -- not to mention the fact that Hash al-Shaabi
operates under guidelines issued by the Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi. That's a major
strategic blunder that can only be pulled off by amateurs.
Major General Soleimani, of course, humiliated the whole of the Deep State over and over
again -- and could eat all of them for breakfast, lunch and dinner as a military strategist. It
was Soleimani who defeated ISIS/Daesh in Iraq -- not the Americans bombing Raqqa to rubble.
Soleimani is a super-hero of almost mythical status for legions of young Hezbollah supporters,
Houthis in Yemen, all strands of resistance fighters in both Iraq and Syria, Islamic Jihad in
Palestine, and all across Global South latitudes in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
There's absolutely no way the U.S. will be able to maintain troops in Iraq, unless the
nation is re-occupied en masse via a bloodbath. And forget about "security": no imperial
official or imperial military force is now safe anywhere, from the Levant to Mesopotamia and
the Persian Gulf.
The only redeeming quality out of this major strategic blunder cum declaration of war may be
the final nail in the coffin of the Southwest Asia chapter of the U.S. Empire of Bases. Iranian
Prime Minister Javad Zarif came out with an appropriate metaphor: the "tree of resistance" will
continue to grow. The empire might as well say goodbye to Southwest Asia.
In the short term, Tehran will be extremely careful in their response. A hint of --
harrowing -- things to come: it will be blowback by a thousand cuts. As in hitting the
Exceptionalist framework -- and mindset -- where it really hurts. This is the way the Roaring,
Raging Twenties begin: not with a bang, but with the release of whimpering dogs of war.
Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong
Kong-based Asia Times . His latest
book is "
2030 ." Follow him on Facebook .
T he drone assassination in Iraq of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani
evokes memory of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to
World War I. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quick to warn of "severe
revenge." That Iran will retaliate at a time and place of its choosing is a near certainty. And
escalation into World War III is no longer just a remote possibility, particularly given the
multitude of vulnerable targets offered by our large military footprint in the region and in
nearby waters.
What your advisers may have avoided telling you is that Iran has not been isolated.
Quite the contrary. One short week ago, for example, Iran launched its first joint naval
exercises with Russia and China in the Gulf of Oman, in an unprecedented challenge to the U.S.
in the region.
Cui Bono?
It is time to call a spade a spade. The country expecting to benefit most from hostilities
between Iran and the U.S. is Israel (with Saudi Arabia in second place). As you no doubt are
aware, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life. He continues to
await from you the kind of gift that keeps giving. Likewise, it appears that you, your
son-in-law, and other myopic pro-Israel advisers are as susceptible to the influence of Israeli
prime ministers as was former President George W. Bush. Some commentators are citing your
taking personal responsibility for providing Iran with a casus belli as unfathomable.
Looking back just a decade or so, we see a readily distinguishable pattern.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon payed a huge role in getting George W. Bush to
destroy Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Usually taciturn, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security
adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, warned in August 2002 that "U.S. action
against Iraq could turn the whole region into a cauldron." Bush paid no heed, prompting
Scowcroft to explain in Oct. 2004 to The Financial Times that former Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush "mesmerized"; that Sharon has him "wrapped around his
little finger." (Scowcroft was promptly relieved of his duties as chair of the prestigious
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.)
In Sept. 2002, well before the attack on Iraq, Philip Zelikow, who was Executive Secretary
of the 9/11 Commission, stated publicly in a moment of unusual candor, "The 'real threat' from
Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The unstated threat was the threat against Israel."
Zelikow did not explain how Iraq (or Iran), with zero nuclear weapons, would not be deterred
from attacking Israel, which had a couple of hundred such weapons.
Zombie Generals
When a docile, Peter-principle, "we-are-still-winning-in-Afghanistan" U.S. military
leadership sends more troops (mostly from a poverty draft) to be wounded and killed in
hostilities with Iran, Americans are likely, this time, to look beneath the equally docile
media for answers as to why. Was it for Netanyahu and the oppressive regime in Israel? Many
Americans will wake up, and serious backlash is likely.
Events might bring a rise in the kind of anti-Semitism already responsible for domestic
terrorist attacks. And when bodybags arrive from abroad, there may be for families and for
thinking Americans, a limit to how much longer the pro-Israel mainstream media will be able to
pull the wool over their eyes.
Those who may prefer to think that Gen. Scowcroft got up on the wrong side of the bed on
Oct. 13, 2004, the day he gave the interview to The Financial Times may profit from
words straight from Netanyahu's mouth. On Aug. 3, 2010, in a formal VIPS Memorandum for your
predecessor, we provided some "Netanyahu in his own words."
We include an excerpt here for historical context:
"Netanyahu's Calculations
Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he
enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. He reads your [Obama's] reluctance
even to mention controversial bilateral issues publicly during his recent visit as
affirmation that he is in the catbird seat in the relationship.
During election years in the U.S. (including mid-terms), Israeli leaders are particularly
confident of the power they and the Likud Lobby enjoy on the American political scene.
Netanyahu's attitude comes through in a video taped nine years ago and shown on Israeli
TV, in which he bragged about how he deceived President Clinton into believing he (Netanyahu)
was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them.
The tape displays a contemptuous attitude toward -- and wonderment at -- an America so
easily influenced by Israel. Netanyahu says:
" America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won't
get in our way Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It's absurd."
Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote that the video shows Netanyahu to be "a con artist who
thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes," adding
that such behavior "does not change over the years."
Recommendation
We ended VIPS' first Memorandum For the President (George W. Bush) with this critique of
Secretary of State Colin Powell's address at the UN earlier that day:
"No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is
"irrefutable or undeniable" [as Powell claimed his was]. But after watching Secretary Powell
today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond
the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and
from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
We are all in a limina l moment. We write with a sense of urgency suggesting you avoid
doubling down on catastrophe.
For the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military
Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer and Division Director, State
Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (ret.)
Graham Fuller, former Chairman, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence
Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC Iraq; Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate
VIPS)
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic
Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)
John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense
watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist and Technical Director (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA presidential
briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East &
CIA political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel
(ret.)
Sarah Wilton, Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve (ret.) and Defense Intelligence Agency
(ret.)
Robert Wing, former U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer (Associate
VIPS)
"... Trump's closeness to Benjamin Netanyahu also plays into this scenario. I won't fall-off my bar stool in shock and surprise should such a joint operation prove to be true. ..."
"... "America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won't get in our way Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It's absurd." Benjamin Netanyahu ..."
"... CNN is desperately pushing the trope that 'Trump and his military commanders hastily assembled a situation room at Mar-a-Lago.' No evidence, no eye witnesses, no communique with WADC, no confirmation from Trump himself. Check, and mate. ..."
"... The Neocons did it. They really did it! Any cogent political world analysis is drawn into a cauldron and destroyed. Everything devolves to 'Trump, Russia and Iran' now. Deep State wins! ..."
"... Maybe the Israelis/neocons fear that Trump might lose in November and want to start the war while Bibi's favorite lapdog is still P0TUS. Not, that the Democrats are peacelovers (except for Sanders and Gabbard). But they might be more afraid of a negative reaction by the electorate. Murdering Suleimani NOW was not some hasty decision without a plan. I am afraid, it was done to get THE ultimate war in the middle east going, no matter if and how much restraint Iran will show. ..."
When President Trump announced the assassination of General Qassim Soleimani, he said that
there was "unambiguous" information that Soleimani was planning attacks on US forces in Iraq
and Syria. My first thought was what were the sources of that "unambiguous" information?
I'll
bet dollars to donuts that it was Israel's Mossad. The sheer precision and timing of that
"hit" had all the smell and feel of a Mossad operation. While the US did the actual killing,
the Israelis did the 'fingering.'
Trump's closeness to Benjamin Netanyahu also plays into
this scenario. I won't fall-off my bar stool in shock and surprise should such a joint
operation prove to be true.
"America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. They won't get
in our way Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It's absurd." Benjamin Netanyahu
This bold statement of Israeli/Jewish hubris remains as true today as it was when he said
it, over 20 years ago. This fact is only understood by examining 'who' controls the
media.
Israel requested this hit. And the Americans were stupid enough to oblige.
Joerg , Jan 4 2020 18:49 utc |
31Paul Leibowitz , Jan 4 2020 18:51 utc |
32
CNN is desperately pushing the trope that 'Trump and his military commanders hastily
assembled a situation room at Mar-a-Lago.' No evidence, no eye witnesses, no communique with
WADC, no confirmation from Trump himself. Check, and mate.
Having 'beheaded' Trump and launched what will be enormous death and destruction, the PNAC
pesharim and their Neocon noodniks are desperate to deflect responsibility onto Trump,
essentially they are 'necklacing' Trump and the Republican administration using the compliant
poodled MSM.
This allows the DNC WarHogs to pretend to be the 'People's Populist Party of Peace' at
their Convention in July, and bring about the final Bolshevik takeover that Brexit and Hong
Kong and a 1,000,000 man Deplorable march on Milwaukee had threatened to defeat.
The high crimes of the Biden's, Kerry's and Pelosi's in Ukraine, and the genocidal crimes
against humanity of Maidan itself, are now ink-blotted out of history.
The Neocons did it. They really did it! Any cogent political world analysis is drawn into
a cauldron and destroyed. Everything devolves to 'Trump, Russia and Iran' now. Deep State
wins!
The Iranians know who the real enemy is. The US(Trump) is just the dumb executioner -
they'll get their response in due time. In the mean time, the 1st response will be felt in
Tel Aviv.
Since coming to office, pompous Pompeo's been tripping back-n-forth between Tel Aviv and
DC, taking his mad orders from Bibi.
One thing for sure, US presence in the ME is on borrowed time.
The Iranians know who the real enemy is. The US(Trump) is just the dumb executioner - they'll
get their response in due time. In the mean time, the 1st response will be felt in Tel Aviv.
Since coming to office, pompous Pompeo's been tripping back-n-forth between Tel Aviv and
DC, taking his mad orders from Bibi.
One thing for sure, US presence in the ME is on borrowed time.
Israel wanted USA to go to war with Iran even well before the Syria debacle. Consequential
considerations of such an event caused the US to hesitate, especially after UK parliament
voted against being a partner to such a shenanigan. Now a US-Iran War may well be at hand.
Whether this would conflagrate the whole ME, and later the whole world, remain to be seen.
US soldiers ready to die for Israeli interests under Israeli command:
"The United States and Israel enjoy a strong and enduring military-to-military partnership
built on a trust that has been developed over decades of cooperation," said USAF Third Air
Force commander Lt.-Gen. Richard Clark, who also serves as the commander for the deploying
Joint Task Force – Israel.
...
According to Clark, the US and Israeli troops will work side-by-side under each other's
relevant chain of command.
"As far as decision-making, it is a partnership," he continued, stressing nonetheless that
"at the end of the day it is about the protection of Israel – and if there is a
question in regards to how we will operate, the last vote will probably go to Zvika
[Haimovitch]."
Washington and Israel have signed an agreement which would see the US come to assist
Israel with missile defense in times of war and, according to Haimovitch, "I am sure once the
order comes we will find here US troops on the ground to be part of our deployment and team
to defend the State of Israel."
And those US troops who would be deployed to Israel, are prepared to die for the Jewish
state, Clark said.
"We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic
fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that – as
every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility," he said.
George V 24
Same here. A drone/missile strike to take out a leader, claim he's responsible for many
deaths ("millions" DJT), and then claim innocence at any response is a classic Israeli
tactic. They did this to test Iron Dome. There had been a ceasefire with Hamas, Israel killed
a Hamas leader they claimed responsible for an attack 6 months earlier, and then pointed out
Hamas when the usual rockets were launched.
arata , Jan 4 2020 20:42 utc |
71Circe , Jan 4 2020 20:46 utc |
72
First I want to express admiration of Iranian courage in resisting the corrupting influence
of Zionist expansionism and condolences for the immense loss of a brave hero and unparalleled
military leader, Soleimani, who was not a general's general, but a soldier's general admired
by many.
Iran is a bastion of resistance against Zionism and therefore the number one target and
enemy of Zionists. Despite, the invasion of Iraq, Israeli assault on Lebanon, proxy invasions
of Syria and Yemen, and the severest of sanctions, the Iran domino remains standing. For this
reason, Zionist Trump came into power guns blazing against Iran, intent on its destruction.
There was no doubt on that, and his assassination of Iran's most revered general removes all
doubt on his intent. The murder of Soleimani represents a cowardly act typical of a coward
like Trump not to have to face a foreign opponent and military leader like Soleimani leading
the Iranian offensive against Zionism and the looming war on Iran. But mark my words,
Soleimani's spirit will be there on the battlefield of any war initiated by Trump and
his cabal.
Trump, the jackass liar that he is, justifies his barbaric act as a response to an
imminent threat against U.S. forces and personnel. THIS IS A BALD-FACED LIE. If the
threat were imminent then the logical urgent step would have been to sabotage the ACTUAL
threat mounted as Soleimani did not arrive in Iraq to carry out any attack himself. This
proves Trump is lying when he bragged this lie to the crowd at yesterday's rally. The truth
is really that Trump wanted a shrewd Iranian general and formidable opponent out of the way
to facilitate the Zionist goal to take on Iran. Trump resorted, as usual, to his con way of
fooling everyone with this fabrication. Also, Soleimani had the stature to become the next
President of Iran, and this was a sobering thought feared by the Zionist Trump cabal. Imagine
a man of strength and intelligence, feared by many but loved by more, ruling Iran. Gutless,
crass Trump killed that potential. As I wrote previously, Trump killed the albatross and
misery will follow him for it. All said, Iran did have every right to avenge the killing of
numerous militia by the U.S.; the funeral of which Soleimani was to attend in Iraq, making
the act perpetrated on him from a drone all the more repulsive and dishonorable. It was as if
yellow-belly Trump shot Soleimani in the back robbing him of the dignity of death in battle
he deserved as a warrior of his calibre, albeit not of the glory that will never be
Trump's.
IMHO, Iran should first and most importantly, ferret out TRAITORS not loyal to the cause
of resistance who delivered Soleimani to the enemy. Iran needs to tighten its security and
scrutinize, clean up and enhance its intelligence network especially in view of escalating
momentum towards war. It must use this time of mourning to rally public sentiment both in
Iran and Iraq and strengthen its alliances great and small to the cause of resistance to
imperial domination and, regionally, OCCUPATION--Zionist U.S. OCCUPATION in the Middle East.
Unifying, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, even Palestine to the cause of ending ZIONIST U.S.
OCCUPATION and ousting America from the Middle East and derailing corrupt Zionist expansion
and influence should be PRIORITY NUMBER ONE. This means decrying high and low the monumental
destruction, corruption and evil that this occupation has wrought on the entire Middle East
and the hardship of massive displacement suffered and being suffered by millions.
That is the fundamental goal, however, ending the occupation in Iraq by U.S. forces
first is Iran's domino to victory . As far as retaliation, in my view, the multi-pronged
strategy (death by a thousand cuts) I hear and read Iran might be contemplating would be more
effective than one spectacular event, because it would make clear the ubiquitous nature of
Iran's reach, and make the Zionist American opponent think twice about attacking Iran with
deadly tentacles that will activate and mobilize anywhere to the detriment of its enemy.
My first thought with all of this has been, why now? After reading I have a possible
answer.
Background:1. The Russians have been building up in Syria for a major assault on remaining
ISIS on the Syrian/Iraq border, the Iraqi/Iran forces announced that the planned assault
would begin hours before the five Iraq/Iran military bases were hit. 2. Israel just suffered
a defeat when they launched six missiles at Syria and five were taken out by Syria using
Russian supplied weaponry. The sixth missile fell in the desert, was recovered by Syria and
given to Russia.
These two events are key; the US/Israeli ISIS teams in Syria and on the Iraqi border were
about to be wiped out and control of the border by Syria leaving the US northern Syria
installations without a supply line. The Israeli failed attacked showed that the Syrian
defense systems were now fulling integrated with Russia and that the upcoming attack on ISIS
would probably end them as well as Israel's ability to destroy Syrian/Iranian sites in
Syria.
I think the US military and Pompeo panicked, they came up with a quick casus belli by having
one of their proxies lob missiles at a US encampment with the intent of killing a US citizen.
They then hit the Iraqi/Iran teams that were part of the planned Russian assault shutting
down the planned Russian attack. Pompeo and the Generals immediately flew to Fla to tell
Trump what they had done. Silence from Trump,why? Because he knew that this decision was a
trap to damage his reelection, he saw the plot which is why he stayed in Florida.
Then things really went sideways IMO. Israel seeing it's chance in the confusion, used it's
pawn Pompeo to order a hit on the airport killing the General, you will note that Israel says
it was told before the hit, my guess is no, they told Pompeo to take the hit and he did.
Israel immediately said it had nothing to do with the decision, Pompeo immediately said Trump
ordered it. Trump was forced to say it was his decision and defend it IMO.
Yes it is possible that Trump was told of an opportunity to take out the General but the
MIC/Pompeo know Trump historically pulls back from attacks, remember the Bolton fiasco with
the tankers, with the drone, they couldn't get Trump to attack then, why would he now attack
a Iraqi airbase when the attack on the Iraq/Iran bases was such a disaster for US Iraqi
relations? Why would they bother to ask him now after having put him in a box with the first
strikes?
Now there is talk that Trump has sent a Qatar rep to Iran to cut a deal. THAT is his
initiative, none of the prior events are his initiatives. Could be wrong, and for all that is
not to like about Trump he is not stupid, his goal is to win a Pulitzer prize as the peace
president.
Yes he rants about Iran, the guys who finance his campaign demand that, but push come to
shove, who the hell wants to be remembered as the guy who started a nuclear war...and lost??
Told you all it's Nutandyahoo who is in charge of jUSA. The Tronald is only his stooge:
Patriot Ali
@LogicalAnalys1s
Viral video shows official from SaudiArabia congratulating Israel pm Netanyahu over the
death of #Qasem_Suleimani . Video is spreading like wildfire in pro #Iran accounts
😡
World OSINT
/>
1:04
8:44 AM - 4 Jan 2020 https://twitter.com/LogicalAnalys1s/status/1213501484790407171
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 4 2020 22:18 utc | 84
Thank you. Someone making sense.
Most are talking about this like it's halftime in a sporting match - completely juvenile.
Iran needs to pull back and focus on making themselves stronger in economy and technology and
for strong ties with other responsible players. They have opportunities with many countries
which are increasingly disenchanted with the west. And the west is headed for an economic
beating - which explains the desperate behavior.
Even if Iran is very careful in their behavior Irael is going to continue to press for war -
the psychotic fears most those that he has attacked.
But maybe with careful behavior and planning and efforts to repair and maintain ties the
Iraninans could be ready for that eventuality.
In all of this, and the many comments, I must praise Circe for this final one @ 72. It
strikes a definitive chord:
"...That is the fundamental goal, however, ending the occupation in Iraq by U.S. forces
first is Iran's domino to victory. As far as retaliation, in my view, the multi-pronged
strategy (death by a thousand cuts) I hear and read Iran might be contemplating would be more
effective than one spectacular event, because it would make clear the ubiquitous nature of
Iran's reach, and make the Zionist American opponent think twice about attacking Iran with
deadly tentacles that will activate and mobilize anywhere to the detriment of its enemy."
It is clear that Qasseem Soleimani was of a stature for Iran that his legacy will be part
of the determination for what follows in the eyes of his dedicated compatriots. I agree with
Circe here - what will immediately follow is important. It might even include the extraction
from Syria of American influence, which would require the cooperation of Assad. I am
remembering that Iraq's foreign minister recently gave a speech concerning the unification of
Arabic countries toward a peaceful end. That now must include the departure of US troops and
is the antithesis to war, something that would make a commendable legacy for both generals
who have now had their funeral at an important spiritual center.
War is not on. The fall of the black domino is. But this is not retribution; that will
come. Bravo Circe; good post.
" I cannot recall an act of this kind in the last 50 years especially in the extent to which
it seems to take for granted an underlying legitimacy and thus an naive openness, almost
childlike in its self-belief..."
patroklos @77
Doesn't Osama bin Laden count? Obama ordered and took open credit for the assassination of
dozens of individuals, many of them later shown to have been totally innocent of any
involvement in politics, many children etc.
And then, of course there was one Colonel Ghadaffi publicly assassinated, after his
surrender, with extreme brutality.
The only new thing about this is that the victim was a person of power and eminence.
Pepe Escobar: "According to my best Southwest Asia intel sources, "Israel gave the US the
coordinates for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani as they wanted to avoid the
repercussions of taking the assassination upon themselves." https://thesaker.is/us-starts-the-raging-twenties-declaring-war-on-iran/
Espen and Trump have made it clear that they will hold Iran responsible for whatever may
happen in the region and that they will strike in response or preemptively. Essentially, that
makes the real Iranian reaction largely irrelevant. And Israel could create a false flag
incident #a la USS Liberty. Or some rogue groups that Iran cannot control might attack US
troops or installations. Whether by design or accident, there will be a pretext to base
another military strike against Iran on. And then another, until a full blown US-Iran war
erupts which Bibi, Lieberman & co so desperately want.
Years of relentless demonization of Iran in the US and the UK have brainwashed large swaths
of the population. They will accept a war against Iran, albeit reluctantly, as long as not
too many Americans get killed in its wake.
I don't believe for a second that the US would "accept" a limited retaliation. They will
jump at any opportunity. Lindsey Graham stands between Trump and impeachment and that
warmonger is on record for seeking to bomb Iran's oil refineries. Incidentally, he was the
only senator who Trump consulted prior to the murder. Could well be that Graham is right now
the real P0TUS , at least until the senate has voted on impeachment. Conveniently, pelosi has
put the impeachment on hold, thereby prolonging that situation. Coincidence? I don't think
so.
Maybe the Israelis/neocons fear that Trump might lose in November and want to start
the war while Bibi's favorite lapdog is still P0TUS. Not, that the Democrats are peacelovers
(except for Sanders and Gabbard). But they might be more afraid of a negative reaction by the
electorate.
Murdering Suleimani NOW was not some hasty decision without a plan. I am afraid, it was done
to get THE ultimate war in the middle east going, no matter if and how much restraint Iran
will show.
I do think, btw that Trump blew his reelection by killing Suleimani. Another warmonger
will assuredly take his place.
"CNN is desperately pushing the trope that 'Trump and his military commanders hastily
assembled a situation room at Mar-a-Lago.' "
Leibowitz # 32
Why would they do this *after* the strike?
That sounds kind of silly. And "hastily" sounds as though they were taken unawares . . . They
were surprised to hear that Solameini had been taken out?????
Lozion@62 - Re: Your Magnier quote, "The US did not plan to kill the vice commander of the
Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi brigade Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes when it assassinated Iranian Brigadier
General Qassem Soleiman"
The light bulb above my chimpanzee brain just flickered (briefly). Somewhere on SST (maybe
Lang?): something to the effect of 'Never underestimate US gov/mil incompetence'. Maybe it
was the opposite of what Magnier thought really took place.
Treasonous, dual-citizen chickenhawks of the US possibly targeted Hashd al-Shaabi
vice-commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes . They were trying to kill him because they found
out from some snitch that he just showed up at the airport for some reason. The all-seeing US
didn't realize Soleimani was even there . I guess because the sneaky Soleimani flew
commercial into Baghdad and probably carried his bags to the waiting SUVs. Who would have
expected that ? How devious!
This seems entirely plausible to me. Soleimani was too expensive a target - end of the
State of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and all. But whacking a vice-commander of Hashd
al-Shaabi with a quarter-million dollar JAGM? Hell YEAH! We live for this kind
of preventative assassination heroism in the US. Especially if accompanied by colorful
graphics.
The awkward and delayed response of the usual US mil/gov mouthpieces makes this ridiculous
scenario even more believable. I have thoroughly convinced myself that this was a US screw-up
of EPIC proportions. In case the US government is reading MoA, this was all Lozion's doing.
I'm an innocent conspiracy primate.
Tulsi makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately that disqualifies her for the presidency, not
because she couldn't execute the functions of the presidency, but because neither the party
apparatchiks nor the voters would give her the chance. These days either nationalistic
claptrap or promises of more freebies are what carry the day. Quelle domage, eh?
As for the Iraqi parliament voting to expel U.S. forces? That's an interesting question.
If they did, they'd better vote to expel the "den of spies" at the embassy and insist on our
having a normal sized legation (as all countries would be well advised to do). But if they
do, would we leave? I personally doubt it even though it would be best if we did and let the
Iraqis do what they will, which would probably be reverting back to some sort of strongman
govt, of a type more suited to their cultural traditions and inclinations. It's high time we
afforded the rest of the world the type of cultural and political autonomy we claim to revere
so much.
So, we leave? A good thing for us and for them and the world at large.
Or, we don't? Then we expose the truth the rest of the world already knows, but we at
least expose the truth to our own people who have been fed a steady diet of mendacious BS
about what we've been doing over there all these years.
That attack on the "airport limo" vehicles leaving Baghdad airport sure took some nerve on
our part to think that we could sell something like that...
And, did Trump actually order it, or did someone else in the MIC order it first and Trump
laid claim to it afterwards? Uncle Joe, if he had ordered it, would have afterwards announced
the execution of a fall guy and denied any complicity! If Trump didn't order it, he should
throw whoever did under the bus instead of crowing and wrapping himself in the flag. I wonder
about what actually happened in planning this hit job on prominent military people on their
way to a funeral for 31 people who may or may not have had anything whatsoever to do with the
death of a single American mercenary in Iraq in an attack by persons unknown on a small
outpost.
"The U.S. has won nothing with its attack but will feel the consequences for decades to
come. Others will move in to take its place."
Wait for awhile on that one. Iraq will have to take some major hits if it tries moving
to the Russia China sphere. And it will have to deal with the fith column which are
strong. Iraq will have to go through the fire - like Donbass, Syria ect until it is
distilled to a solid core and then they will get support that will drive back the
yanks.
To summarize b: The US doesn't gain anything, and potentially loses everything they
sought out to do in Iraq (and by extension; Syria), from the killing of Soleimani.
So why do it? Was Soleimani really the target? Who benifits by drawing the US and Iran
closer war?
I wouldn't be surprised if an article about 'bad intel received from a 3rd party' pops
up in the NYT in a few months time.
The price of crude oil has jumped over $2 USD on the world markets since the news
I expect the US to fully resist being booted out of Iraq (which would also make
it's two major positions in Syria highly untenable). who could now believe that US
troops in Iraq and Syria won't come under sustained attack now, by the many allies
Iran has in the area?
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani considers "the #US attack against the
#BaghdadAirport is a clear violation of #Iraq sovereignty".
That is clear support for the US withdrawal from #Iraq.
AND
S Sistani condemns the "attack against Iraqi (not Iranian-militia) position on
the borders killing our Iraqi sons to the hateful attack on #BaghdadAirport is a
violation and internationally unlawful (US) act against anti-#ISIS hero(s) leading
to difficult times for #Iraq".
I've been following Elijah M. and several others on twitter, as well as more
mainstream sources for several hours after learning of these assassinations.
the absolute stupidity, maliciousness and wickedness of the US Political and Military
Elites is truly astonishing. They have misjudged every single thing in that part of the
world since 9/11 and the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and then Iraq - and
spent/wasted well over $5 trillion. not to mention the horrific loss of life everywhere
from Syria to Iraq and Yemen. And we are now looking at another even more catastrophic
war.
it is unbelievable
"This was not Trump`s decision. Trump had to take responsibilty to show he is in
command. He will soon realize that he was played by the CIA and the Israelis."
I'd expect the Iranians to be more subtle than that. I don't think there's any
advantage for the Iranians to directly attack the US position in the ME.
At this early stage, it is not clear how Iran's retaliation will be carried out. Due in
large part to Soleimani's own efforts over the past 20 years, Tehran
has many options and venues at its disposal for reprisals through its proxies in the Middle
East -- Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
While the United States claimed direct responsibility for the airstrike, Tehran or its
proxies may seek their vengeance by striking US allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Speaking to Iranian state media, IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif explicitly threatened the
State of Israel with retaliation.
"The fleeting happiness of the Americans and the Zionists will in no time turn into
mourning," Sharif said.
Though Iran has typically refrained from launching large-scale strikes directly from its
territory for fear of direct retaliations against the country itself, preferring instead to
conduct attacks from the countries in which its proxies operate -- such a strike is by no means
outside the realm of possibility.
In addition to any physical reprisals, Tehran could bring to bear its extensive offensive
cyber capabilities against the United States and its allies.
The fleeting happiness of the Americans and the Zionists will in no time turn into
mourning
Iran, which was already expected to announce a further violation of the JCPOA next week, may
also decide to further step up its uranium enrichment as a response to Soleimani's
assassination.
However, nothing is inevitable or certain. Though Soleimani was undoubtedly a key figure in
the region and the US killing him presents serious potential for a wider and deadlier conflict
between the American and Iranian alliances, recent Middle East history contains several cases
of hugely important officials being killed without earth-shattering retaliations.
Fri 3 Jan 2020 12.29 EST Last modified on Fri 3 Jan 2020 17.32 EST
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email The constant
sense of insecurity that Americans and allies will feel will be part of the revenge.
Photograph: Nazanin Tabatabaee/Wana/Reuters Iran has spent decades preparing for
a moment like this , developing methods and networks around the world that give Tehran the
widest possible choice when it comes to taking revenge.
In the weeks immediately after
the airstrike that killed Iran's most powerful general , the threat against Americans and
their allies will be greatest in the Middle East, but the risk will balloon out across the
globe over the months and years to come.
Any US outpost in Syria and Iraq, military or diplomatic, is vulnerable to attacks, likely
to come from
Iranian-backed militias linked to Kata'ib Hezbollah , which has served as Tehran's most
reliable fist in Iraq. In Iraq, there will be even less protection from the state, which is
furious about the attack outside Baghdad airport.
The second ring of possible reprisals could follow an already familiar path, targeting oil
shipments through the Persian Gulf. The leadership in Tehran will be conscious that one avenue
of revenge against Donald Trump would be strike at his
chances of re-election. An oil price spike, coupled with a backdrop of global instability and
US vulnerability, would certainly hurt his campaign.
In Afghanistan, Iran has longstanding ties
with Hazara militias and solid basis for operations in Herat.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has long been Iran's right arm, and can strike Israel and US regional
interests at any time. And Hezbollah has networks much further afield where there are pockets
of Lebanese Shia diaspora, for example in Latin America and West Africa.
Iranian intelligence has carried out assassinations in Europe, and there are a string of
other attacks globally in which Iran or Hezbollah is suspected but not proven to
be involved.
While Tehran has ample choices, it also has limitations. It will want to avoid triggering an
all-out war with the US and its allies. It may now decide to build up a covert nuclear arsenal,
no longer bound by the 2015 nuclear deal which Donald Trump walked out of. It would be harder
to go down that road in the middle of a firefight. And each act of retribution could use up the
political capital Iran has around the world, most importantly backing from Russia and
China.
ss="rich-link"> Iran vows revenge for US killing of top general Qassem Suleimani
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But while Iran is likely to choose its targets carefully, with an eye to deniability, there
is little doubt that reprisals will come at a time and place of Tehran's choosing. The constant
sense of insecurity that Americans and allies will feel will be part of the revenge.
"I frankly have never seen the Iranians not respond – tit for tat. It's just never
happened," said Robert Baer, a former CIA officer. "It's so in their DNA, [as is using] a
proxy, which makes it more difficult to respond to. And their options are unlimited."
Russia is unlikely to tolerate the destruction of Iraq yet again and it's descent into
Libya-like chaos - which is what could happen if the US refuses to leave. Russia is unwilling
to see a repeat of Libya. My speculation is that Russia might have issued very severe
warnings to the US with respect to this to deter such conduct, similar to what seems to have
happened when the US threatened Venezuela. One example of such a possible threat that I see
as plausible might be that if the US takes further action in Iraq likely to result in civil
war, Russia will totally destroy every US base in Syria (which on the invitation of the
Syrian President they are legally entitled to do at any time).
The alleged recent movement of Russian strategic command aircraft to Syria, capable of
controlling the launch of strategic ballistic missiles, might be directed either to assist
Russia in controlling any escallation connected with the destruction of US bases in Syria, or
it could be to control the threat of Israel launching a nuclear attack against Iran, in the
event of a war against Iran and Iran's inevitable reprisals against Israel.
Russia repeatedly emphasises that it is not the world policeman, which is why Russia is
normally very restrained in responses to US aggression, and responds only in relation to
threats to Russian national security; nevertheless the breakdown of Iraq due to the refusal
of the US to leave would certainly pose serious threats to Russian national security, and
President Putin has been signalling recently that Russia's tolerance for US lawlessness is
coming to an end.
In traditional Arab culture, a mediator - someone with the trust of both parties, objective,
and who has the stature and ability to force compliance should a possible agreement be
abrogated - brokers a 'pause', consults with both parties, to convey expectations.
If the mediator considers the parties 'reconcilable' he arranges a "sulha" - a meeting
where the leaders concerned meet face to face to to haggle out the details.
Only Putin or Xi has such stature, only Putin may be able to enforce agreement.
Reconciliation requires a level of respect for the other. The US respects no one, not even
Putin.
Iran has zero reason to trust any US agreement (JCPOA?)
The US brings $ to its negotiations(offer to lift sanctions) reflecting its values-$, Iran
looks for justice(punishment of those who did the deed), reflecting its value of life.
The red flag says there is no possibility of reconciliation.
The United States launched a war of aggression, the supreme crime, upon Iraq in 2003, based
on blatant lies, and are still there. Prior to that, they helped foment the war between Iraq
and Iran, then attacked Iraq in 1991, and on top of the overt warfare there was the economic
sanctions warfare. The death and maiming and poisoning of millions of Iraqis has been the
American contribution to Iraq, over the last several decades. What for? How has this helped
the United States? Or Europe? The main advocates for this supreme criminality has been the
Israel lobby, Israel, and the supporters of Israel.
The American Apache helicopters are still buzzing around over Baghdad, dealing out terror
and intimidation and death. The murder by the United States of yet more Iraqi soldiers and
officials recently has been largely absent from the propaganda narratives. But could those be
'the final straw'?
As far as Trump's 52 target threat, this comes after the apparent please don't escalate
and we'll make a deal - good cop-bad cop routine.
The 52 number was used to remind mind-controlled Americans that the evil Iranians
outrageously took 52 Americans hostage. American's don't just take people hostage; they give
them orange suits and torture them, unless they kill them. Apart from murdering and maiming
by the millions, they even stage fictional killings, like Osama bin laden, to entertain the
zombies, and stick out their chests, hand out medals and the like.
"... He fired missiles into Syria on the basis of false propaganda and while he's ostensibly ordered troops out of Syria, it's like the Pentagon is thumbing their nose at him, while he tweets ..."
"... In many ways Trump seems like Governor William J. Le Petomane, in Blazing Saddles. ..."
"... Bush & Cheney supported by both parties invaded Iraq and created the ascendancy of Iran. Then Obama comes along and aids & abets Al Qaeda to head-chop Christians in Syria, once again with support from both our political parties. ..."
"... Trump comes along as the "no more wasting money in the Middle East" guy. But surrounds himself with all neocons including his daughter & son-in-law. And he has shown to be generally clueless on anything beyond one slide on a Powerpoint. He thinks he's still on the set of The Apprentice. ..."
"... I'd like to say that the US is no longer a Constitutional Republic. We have law enforcement & intelligence who ran a coup attempt and half the country thinks that was a good thing. We have coteries that lie and propagandize us into war that has cost the American people several trillion that they've had to borrow from future generations. With the Patriot Act, FISA and all kinds of other "anti-terrorist laws", we essentially have a lawless national security surveillance state. ..."
"... the reason for Suleimani to be in Iraq early on Friday morning: to attend the funeral of the Iraqi soldiers who died during those strikes neal al-Qaim. ..."
Trump is weak, stupid, reckless and easily manipulated. This has long been obvious.
That is not an argument in favor of Team D, the Resistance, the Deep State, the Blob or
whatever (if anything it is an argument against their conspiracy theories), but Trump is what
he is.
I don't believe Trump ordered this attack. I believe that the neocons/neolibs are afraid they
would lose power when the coup plot is revealed. So, this is a pre-emptive action against
Trump winning re-election. It seems Nancy Pelosi was consulted by Secretary of Defense Esper
first, although she denies she was briefed about the asassination. Well, we all know where to
stick her denials, don't we?
https://www.enmnews.com/2020/01/03/pelosi-briefed-thursday-night-after-strike-killing-soleimani/
"Trump inherited the mess. Perhaps he is trying to salvage something out of it."
Admittedly he did inherit this mess. However, IMO, he's done nothing to salvage it. He
fired missiles into Syria on the basis of false propaganda and while he's ostensibly ordered
troops out of Syria, it's like the Pentagon is thumbing their nose at him, while he tweets.
And rather than putting in place a plan and executing on getting out of the wars that have
cost us trillions of dollars and destabilized the entire Middle East he's just aggravated it
further by blowing up people on the Iraqi/Syrian border. And now he's escalated it further.
The bodybags still keep coming home from Afghanistan, where we know with certainty that we'll
have to exit and that it will revert back to its natural state. I'm afraid he just went along
to get along with the neocon warmongers that he's ensconced in all the top places in his
administration.
In many ways Trump seems like Governor William J. Le Petomane, in Blazing Saddles.
Yours is precisely the point. Iraq was a secular country under the "tyrannical" Saddam's
Baathist regime. So is Syria a secular country under Assad. Saddam had nothing to do with
9/11. The Saudis did. He would have been a natural counter-weight to Iran. Of course he may
have kicked out the Al Sauds soon enough to hang out in London, New York and Paris after he
consolidated Kuwait. That may have been a good thing in hindsight.
Bush & Cheney supported by both parties invaded Iraq and created the ascendancy of
Iran. Then Obama comes along and aids & abets Al Qaeda to head-chop Christians in Syria,
once again with support from both our political parties.
Trump comes along as the "no more wasting money in the Middle East" guy. But surrounds
himself with all neocons including his daughter & son-in-law. And he has shown to be
generally clueless on anything beyond one slide on a Powerpoint. He thinks he's still on the
set of The Apprentice.
I'd like to say that the US is no longer a Constitutional Republic. We have law
enforcement & intelligence who ran a coup attempt and half the country thinks that was a
good thing. We have coteries that lie and propagandize us into war that has cost the American
people several trillion that they've had to borrow from future generations. With the Patriot
Act, FISA and all kinds of other "anti-terrorist laws", we essentially have a lawless
national security surveillance state.
We are fucked because so many of our fellow citizens fall for the black & white Rambo
movie plot, while their ass is being taken to the cleaners.
Amen! Most Americans are ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They don't know which way is UP! They haven't a
clue. They are easy prey to the progandists in the US government (dominated by
Zionists/Israel-Firsters) and in the US media (also dominated by the Zionist narrative).
In addition Eric forgot what happened on December 29th and the reason for Suleimani to be
in Iraq early on Friday morning: to attend the funeral of the Iraqi soldiers who died during
those strikes neal al-Qaim.
Do other countries have any right to self determination?
How would Americans react to foreign powers controlling our country and killing our
citizens at will?
When we instilled a democracy in Shiite majority Iraq who would get voted into power? What
was the result of disbanding the Arab baathist Iraqi army?
There is a reason civilized nations do not do assassinations, but then you may have forgotten
how WW1 started.
I shudder at the world you plan to leave our children, but empires do not last forever (or
much longer with an easily manipulated moron in charge) and you may live to see
assassinations of Americans on US soil as common "geopolitics."
No but he could well have gone to the top in their politics as his next career move. With a
satisfaction rating over 80% he was a probable future President.
Unintended consequences of a high level assassination.
No good pathway to de-escalate for any side once open hostilities start.
Block heads running things (President f---ing moron - quote Tillerson), born again
fundamentalists believing in the second coming calling the shots on one side and the Mahdi on
the other.
But if you want to focus on a title, I guess nothing to see.
EN: So you, like many here, are fine with people that organize attacks on our
embassies?
I fully agree, outrageous! Simply outragepus! Now of course I have to reflect in what ways
those men could have joined Americans in celebration of the dead of their comrades.
ISL: There is a reason civilized nations do not do assassinations
didn't Trump suggest somewhere that the Geneva Convention is obsolete anyway? Not that it
matters anyway anymore, other then to US soldiers maybe? Some of them? ... The US writes the
rules for to its own convience anyway?
Please don't laugh or pooh-pooh if I introduce Christian preacher - activist Rick Wiles'
assessment of the penetration and protests at the US embassy in Baghdad: Wiles, whose
colleague spent time in Iraq w/ US military, asked how it was that "Iraqi" protesters could
get inside the Green Zone, apparently protected by a 10 mile perimeter, and also inside the
building itself, to cause damage.
How is it Reuters was on the scene to photograph the protests and the damage?
How is it the protesters were so quickly called off by a word from the PM?
US military guards the embassy, right?
If one argued that Iraqi soldiers permitted Iraqi protesters to gain access, that could
make sense: didn't Russian soldiers refuse to fire upon citizens who stormed the Czar's
palace?
But that is apparently not what happened.
So Wiles conjectures that US military allowed the penetration and destruction of US
embassy, in order to blame it on _____ . Callers to C Span Washington Journal this morning
raised the issue of "Iranians took our embassy in 1979." Do tell.
Eric, you make many assertions, but provide no facts to support them. For example, you claim
Soleimani was planning attacks on both US troops and our embassy. You also claim Iran took
over our embassy. However, you provide no facts supporting those assertions and I am not
aware of any. So tell us, what evidence or facts do you have proving your claims?
Additionally, you seem to have skipped over the part where Bush agreed all US troops would
withdraw from Iraq and Obama was unwilling to agree to have US troops remain if they would be
subject to the Iraqi justice system. So all of them left, only for some to be allowed back
when ISIS threatened.
Obviously, when all US troops left Iran did not take over Iraq. When all US troops leave
again, which Trump just about insured will happen very soon, Iran will again not take over
Iraq. They will remain allies, but one will not rule the other.
"I'm a 100% isolationist personally, but if you're not, you have to do something to keep Iran
in its place. I recognize that there's a lot I don't understand about reasons to not be an
isolationist and maybe there are good reasons."
Tell me, if you are a "100% isolationist" why must Iran be kept "in its place"? Then, tell
me how many countries Iran has invaded in the last 100 years? (The answer is - ZERO!)
It's good that you recognize that there are things that you don't know or understand.
Blindly following Trump will not lead you to greater understanding. Nor will making excuses
for people when they betray you.
"Soleimani was in Iraq architecting attacks on the US embassy and on Americans."
Wrong, actually, but don't let facts get in the way.
Soleimani was in Iraq to attend the funeral of Iraqi soldiers killed by US airstrikes.
That is a fact.
So the US took the opportunity to kill him. Via airstrike. That is also a fact.
Perhaps you should take off those blinkers for once and consider this possibility: most of
what you think you understand about this has been brought to your attention by people who
have made a career out of lying to you.
When anti-Syria propaganda was running strongest, "Assad must go" I always asked "Then what?
What comes next?"
We have a big stick but we need more than running around clubbing others. We never should
have abandoned the international law we helped to create.
We can create fear, most people fear a powerful bully but they don't respect them and will
work to undermine them. It is a weak form of power and sooner or later you end up
isolated.
All stick and no carrot, hard power and no soft power just isn't a vision you can build
on. So, Now what? What comes next? What comes after a war with Iran?
O/T, perhaps: Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that the effective leader must be feared AND
loved: were he only feared, the people would turn against him as quickly as an opportunity
emerged.
I donated a significant sum (all things being relative) to my local library and requested
that it be used to teach the mostly-Black and impoverished young people who frequent that
library, about Machiavelli: I'd just read about a very wealthy community in my state where
high school students participated in an essay contest on Machiavelli. They will be the next
generation's leaders. I though the poor kids in my neighborhood should have the same
opportunity.
Library administrators all the way up and down the line resisted my proposal: "Our kids
are not capable of such a project."
Instead, the library system is proliferating Drag Queen Story Hours.
They want me to put my gift in the hands of the local librarians who introduced this
program to the library system.
"So, Now what? What comes next?"
Drag Queen Story Hours for your 1 yr to 5th grade children and grandchildren.
Your son - grandson dressed in high heels, chiffon, and a wig.
Your little girl telling you she needs drugs and surgery because she "feels like a boy."
When I had to move out of a large house into a small apartment recently, I donated over 900
books from my personal library to the local university library. My books reflected my major
and minor areas of study: Literature from all periods of English and American authors, many
books on the theories and research about linguistic theory and often brain research in regard
to linguistics. I also had many books from my minor in German.
I was an avid user of libraries from the time I was quite young. My mother dropped me and
my siblings off at the local library while she did the Saturday shopping and bill paying. The
librarians never directed us in regard to what we should study. They helped us to find
resources on each of our varied interests. My brother and two sisters had quite different
interests from mine. I was then studying all I could in Greek and Roman mythology and in the
Acient history of Greece and Rome.
It's the old, You can take the horse to the water, but...." Expose children to the rewards
they get from reading and studying, but let their own personal interests determine what they
read.
Our problem is not that our students now "should" be reading ......(fill in the space. Our
problem is currently that our children are now totally unacquainted with reading much in
depth. They want sound bites and quick Google searches.
As for the topic of Larry's post, I'm convinced that few Americans are even aware of the
event or have any idea of why it happened and no opinion about whether it should have
happened.
I hold my breath every day, hoping that we don't become involved in another big mess that
will cause the life and maiming of our young people in the military and of the people on the
ground in the places they are sent to.
But I have no opinion of why or whether Trump's decision was right or wrong. All I can do
is pray fervently that really God is ultimately in charge and God will control it for His
purposes. I never assume that God is always on "our side." I just put my faith that it is all
in God's hands, no matter what the personal price I or anyone else will have to pay for His
decisions.
I also pray that Trump will always make his deicisions based on good and sound advice and
on his own sense of right and wrong. It must be hard picking and choosing from the many
people who surround him and from their various ideas of what is right or what is wrong to
do.
I certainly did not want the previous Middle East War and do not want another.
If it makes you feel better, the only thing that Machiavelli will do for the more clued-in
sort of mostly Black poor people is put in words what they already know deep down.
The Prince caused such an outrage because Machiavelli merely described how rulers actually
behave.
prawnik, In my Machiavelli proposal to the library I urged that the works of Machiavelli
scholar Maurizio Viroli be offered to the young people. Viroli maintains that the key chapter
in The Prince is the final chapter -- classical rhetoricians know that the most powerful
theme must come last, as that is what the audience will remember. Chapter 26 is nearly a
prayer (Machiavelli was deeply Christian, tho he hated the Roman Catholic papacy), a prayer
for a courageous leader - redeemer, like Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, who would deliver Florence,
which he loved "greater than my soul," from "barbarous cruelties and oppressions" to a life
of republican self-government.
The critical concept is his deep love for Florence.
I hoped that the young people could be moved beyond the CliffNotes version of The Prince to
an understanding that would arouse passion, pride and patriotism.
We did not ask the Iraqi government for permission and we are obligated to do so, yes? Is it
possible the Iraqi government will tell us to pick up our personnel and all our stuff and
leave -- and never come back?
If the USA refuses to go then... what happens next?
I assume it is not under dispute that if those US forces refuse to go then the Iraqis have
a right under international law to attempt to eject them. After all, it is their
territory.
This isn't 2003 and the US forces inside Iraq do not number in the hundreds of thousands.
Something in the region of 5,000 is my understanding, with another 4,000 on standby. Is that
enough?
Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for your always pointed and concise analysis. If I understand
correctly, the US/Israel bloc believes it has Iran in checkmate. If Iran retaliates (or if
some provocation is arranged that can plausibly be blamed on Iran), then the Empire launches
a full-on attack. If Iran doesn't retaliate (or a provocation doesn't arise), Iran looks weak
and unable to defend itself and limps to the negotiating table, where its carcass will be
picked apart.
The only way this makes sense is if the Empire is convinced it can flatten Iran and pick
apart its carcass without taking significant losses. Is that delusional and, possibly,
"terminally stupid?"
I wouldn't use the term checkmate but I do agree that the situation is precarious for
Iran...this was a pointed provocation and they are forced to respond. But that response has
got to be well-calibrated to not bite off more than it can chew in terms of escalation. They
need a spectacle more than anything.
When James Woolsey was Trump's spokesthingie during the 2016 election, I placed multiple bets
that "Trump attacks Iran to be a 'war-time president' for 2020 election."
I've endured mocking phonecalls as Trump wildly vacillated but his NSC choices (all 4 or 5
of them...) were all NeoCons. And if you bed with the NeoCons, you catch their disease.
I haven't watched the news in the last 3 years but the phone-calls are starting again, but
the attitude is all different.
If thing keep going this way, I guess this hippie socialist is about his win bet with a
bunch of pollyanna veterans and bubble-headed conservatives who could not face reality.
I can't imagine a war scenario that is positive for the US, except for the neo-con fantasy
that the oppressed Iranian people will rise up and overthrow the wicked mullahs when things
get bad enough. I don't know anything about the internal politics of Iran, but I'm not so
sure how well America holds up after gas prices triple at the pump. Of course by that time
they'll be a draft and rationing. The only way to avoid that outcome would be to nuke 'em,
which is something I wouldn't put pass the Israelis or Trump.
I don't believe our leaders are thinking long-term, but acting out of a combination of
financial self interest for war spending in general and contracts within Iraq in particular;
and emotional self satisfaction: for powerful Boomers this kind of belligerance somehow makes
them feel like worthy sucessors to their dead "Greatest Generation" parents.
except for the neo-con fantasy that the oppressed Iranian people will rise up and overthrow
the wicked mullahs when things get bad enough
In the last around 20 years or so this was a foundation for operational planning in the
US. This is not to mention a key fact of neocons being utterly incompetent in warfare with
results of this lunacy being in the open for everyone to see.
Please add to your list the assassination of US high level personnel (diplomat or
military) in Europe by sleeper cells.
Interestingly (as in stupidly), the US also arrested the head of the Iraqiya MP who heads
the largest block in the Iraqi parliament - apparently he had the audacity to appear at a
protest of the US bombing without authorization Iraqi citizens. One suspects that Iran will
have full Iraq support in retaliation. The big question is whether Turkey makes a play and
bans flights from Incirlik. Note US carrier groups are not in the gulf or even nearby to fly
support missions...
If we are that vulnerable to iranian retaliation on so many levels as you just set out, best
we start dealing with this extortion threat right here now. Lance the festering boil and
build t a new line of defenses.
No matter what the triggering incident, we might as well accept we needed a reality check
regarding this level of global threat. Not pretty, but apparently necessary if the Iranians
are as capable of global disruption as you just present.
It did not take an assassination in Sarajevo to set of WWI, it was festering well before
and was an inevitable march off the cliff regardless. If we are that vulnerable to cyber
terrorism and infrastructure terrorism, does it matter what finally lights the match?
If the world powers are gunning for an all out war, it will happen regardless. Mind your
narratives. They are far scarier than the facts on the ground. Was this bad guy
"assassinated", or taken out by a good guy with a gun as he was poised to strike.
Why have Democrats spent the past three years saber-rattling over Russia, Russia, Russia,
as if any hint of favor or benign contact was high treason. C'mon people, what is really
going on in this world today. Who has really created this current scenario of being a nation
in imminent peril from nefarious foreign threachery by even the flimsiest of
implications.
Just a few days ago our entire national security was predicated on Trump delaying arms to
Ukraine by a few weeks. Ukraine, fer crisssakes which few can even find on a map. Isn't that
the jingoist frothing we were just asked to believe by our loyal opposition party to the
point of initiating impeachment proceedings due to Trump's alleged risking of our entire
nation's place of honor on this entire planet?
We suffer from internal hyperbole, as much as outside bad actors. A world who wants war,
will get it. A world who wants peace will get that too. Running off to the corner pouting and
hand-wringing brings neither.
I will take the other side of the Russians will help coin, if anything I would suggest the
Russians may have even provided intel to the Americans on Qasem Soleimani location and
movements, Putin was recently in the news thanking Trump for providing intel stopping a
Terrorist attack in St Petersburg recently, I still think the Russians provided intel on the
whereabouts of the head of the head of the Islamic state Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to the
Americans and Putin did nothing about the deaths of the 20 Russian airmen or the cruise
missile attacks on Syria, as bad a Ally as the USA is the Russian Federation is clearly
worse, the Russians clearly can't be trusted.
why do you think the US could not have this intel on its own? A high level visit to a
friendly nation by a top military and you have to posit Russians? You insult US Intel.
The Russians aren't going to do anything, Putin does whats best for Russia, he is clearly not
interested in confronting the Americans and if anything would probably like to see Iranian
influence in Syria diminished. 20 dead airmen, cruise missile attacks in Syria and he didn't
do anything. If anything my money is on the Russians providing intel to the US on Qasem
Soleiman's location and movements. I still think they provided intel on the location of the
Islamic state leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and last week Putin was thanking Trump for intel
that stopped an attack in St Petersburg, so perhaps rolling over on Soleiman was his way of
saying thanks to Trump. I don't think the Russians intentions are as pure as people think. As
untrustworthy as the USA is the Russians are worse.
I still think they provided intel on the location of the Islamic state leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, and last week Putin was thanking Trump for intel that stopped an attack in St
Petersburg,
What a fantastically convoluted scenario. Russia and the US are cooperating on terrorism
threats for years now, and the latest on St. Petersburg was not the first one issued by the
US. Russia wouldn't mind some limits to Iranian influence in Syria but not at the price of
surrendering a man who was to a large degree responsible for getting Russia into Syria and
cooperating with her there, which was a crucial factor in success of the campaign. I also do
not see problems with US "developing" own targeting on Baghdadi w/o any Russia's help.
Rand Paul opposing the nomination of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, March 2018: "I'm
perplexed by the nomination of people who love the Iraq War so much that they would advocate
for a war with Iran next. It goes against most of the things President Trump campaigned
on."
It has been pointed out to me that until his retirement in October 2019, JCS Chairman Joe
Dunford was a factor in tempering neocon fervor for war. The same was true for his
predecessor Martin Dempsey. Now we have a self-described "West Point Mafia" class of 1986 and
a JCS Chairman far more politically motivated than Dunford and Dempsey. This looks to be to
be more dangerous than when Bolton the chicken hawk was running around the West Wing. This is
a recent Politico profile of the new Defense team, including Pompeo, Esper and other key
national security advisors to Trump.
Thanks for the link. The Trump triumvirate of class of '86 advisors did the minimum time
on active duty and left service for greener pastures. The move to politics is reminiscent of
the neocons decameron mentioned on the prior thread. It looks like the move to war which only
the neocons want is coming on in full force.
It must be late in Spain. The trio left active duty in the early 90s; that's almost 3 decades
ago and plenty of time to "earn their own merits" but not necessarily enough to earn
wisdom.
After around 25 people were killed by a U.S. attack over the weekend, and subsequently the
damage was being done to the "embassy" in Iraq, it looked like a real problem was developing.
But it seemed as if Iraqi security people had let the demonstrators and attackers into the
area where the U.S. embassy is, and then the following day were not letting them in, and so
the embassy cleanup would begin. At that time I felt better about the situation. In other
words, the Iraqi government, such that it is, allowed the protest and damage at the embassy
to occur, and then was stopping it after making the point of a protest.
However, that defusing of the situation by the Iraqi government by shutting down the
embassy protest was for naught when the ignorant people in the U.S. government carried out
the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and several others inside Iraq
itself. Now there is a real problem.
I am curious LJ. Some lateral drift on my part.
Been reading that much of the funding for these proxies are from coming Iran. According to
the Treasury. So the following is BS from State?
(Nov 2019)
"The State Department's most recent Country Reports on Terrorism, released Friday, stated
that Iran is still the "world's worst state sponsor of terrorism," spending nearly $1 billion
per year to support terror groups including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad."
There is much nashing of proverbial teeth in our media. Peeps like Sen Graham saying "the
Iraqi's need to choose between us or Iran."
(That choice is a Sunni sandwich with Kurdish Bread and Shia Mayo)
There critical mass in 72 hours and the straight of Hormuz will be closing soon.
LJ are you stating that there was no Intel on emerging threats from Iran? Or the strike
Saudi oil plant was not via Iran?
Seems to me China and Russia have to much $$$ invested in Iran to see it go up in smoke.
Given the real masters of the universe are the very rich, would the Iranians see them as
logical targets?
Sheldon Adelson comes to mind, as he is a primary backer of both Trump and Netanyahu. As well
as likely not known, or appealing to Trump's base, so avenging his death wouldn't appeal in
the same way as soldiers or diplomats. Especially leading up to the election. Not only that,
but if the very rich were to sense their Gulfstreams are somewhat vulnerable to someone with
a Stinger at the end of the runway in quite a few tourist destinations, Davos, etc, the
pressure from the People Who Really Matter might be against further conflict.
The rule of law has its uses and destroying the structure on which their world rests does
have consequences.
The US airstrike that killed a senior Iranian commander near Baghdad will exacerbate
tensions throughout the Middle East, the Russian foreign ministry has warned. Qassem Soleimani,
the commander of Iran's Quds Force, was killed in a US operation at Baghdad International
Airport on Friday morning. Moscow considers the operation "an adventurous move that will
lead to an escalation of tension throughout the region," the ministry said.
"Soleimani served devotedly the cause of defending the national interests of Iran. We
express our sincere condolences to the Iranian people," the short statement
said.
The Russian Defense Ministry slammed the US airstrike that targeted the Iranian general as
"short-sighted," warning that it would lead to a "rapid escalation" of tensions
in the Middle East and would be detrimental to international security in general.
The ministry also praised Soleimani's efforts in fighting international terrorist groups in
Syria and Iraq by saying that his achievements in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS) in Syria are "undeniable."
The targeted assassination has sparked anger in Iran and Iraq. Officials in Tehran pledged
to avenge the death of the high-profile member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)
while Iran's caretaker prime minister called it an act of aggression against his country that
violates the terms under which American troops are hosted on Iraqi soil.
Washington considers the IRGC a terrorist organization and claims Soleimani was plotting
attacks on American citizens. The killing comes days after Iran-backed Iraqi militias staged a
riot at the US embassy in Baghdad, a response to US retaliatory airstrikes at militia
forces.
Military commanders are in dangerous occupation and the death is always lurking around. Loss
of one, even extremely talented, general does not mean much for Iran army. Acquiring a military new technology is of higher
priority then retaliation. Larger geopolitical realities should be given top considerations. Right now conflict with the USA
means compete destruction of the Iran. The decision to go ahead with the construction of nuclear bomb is
credible option as it will protect the country from the direct invasion and devastating air strikes.
And while the US action violated international norms, the decision to retaliate immediately at the US forces in Iraq and
elsewhere is
stupid and shortsighted.
Actually alliance of Iran with Syria and Iraq (82 million, 40 million, 17 million) would be very formidable military
alliance, which is capable to protect itself from anybody but the USA, Russia and China. If they add nuclear armed Pakistan, even
the USA would think twise attacking any of the country.
The US govt has confirmed it deliberately targeted leading Iranian general Qassem Soleimani
in its missile (some say drone) attack near Baghdad airport that killed 10 people, including
Soleimani and leaders of the Iraqi Shia militia.
The Pentagon has made a public statement justifying the action as a 'defensive' act aimed at
protecting US servicemen from future attacks, claiming the general was behind recent attacks on
the US embassy in Baghdad and adding:
General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service
members in Iraq and throughout the region
There's no way this can be verified of course, and even if true, does not excuse what
amounts to an extraordinary act of terrorism against a sovereign nation with whom no state of
war existed.
The apparent craziness here is off the charts.
Quick recap. The most insane & deluded of the war-profiteers/sadists/mad ideologues have
been begging for a move against Iran since around 2005. It's the seventh and final country in
Wes Clarke's famous ' seven countries in five years ' story. But so
far it has never been attacked directly by the US.
The reason for this is the realists in the Pentagon know they could easily lose that
war.
Iran isn't Iraq. Iran isn't Syria. Iran is a wealthy, organized state, with a well-trained
and fearsome military well capable of defending itself.
The non-crazies in the Pentagon know this and know a war with these people could end up
wiping the US out in the Middle East, to say nothing of escalating wildly, up to and including
direct confrontation with Russia, that has its own powerful reasons for not wanting to see Iran
become a chaotic US vassal.
This is why, after fifteen years of talking the talk, no US administration has ever dared to
actually walk the walk. The non-crazy generals have vetoed it, spelled out what a disaster it
could become, made it clear the risks are not worth the gains.
So it always has been for 15 years – until now.
At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action
to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
On the face of it the murder of Soleimani and the Pentagon statement of intent appears to be
some kind of coup for the lunatics. Do the war-profiteers/sadists and ideologues who seem to
have grabbed the initiative really understand what they have done?
Is Dominic Raab remotely cognizant of where his alleged rubber-stamping of Pompeo's lunacy
might lead? (Dom himself hasn't verified Pompeo's bombast yet, which may or may not be
signficiant).
Discussed with @DominicRaab the recent decision to
take defensive action to eliminate Qassem Soleimani. Thankful that our allies recognize the
continuing aggressive threats posed by the Iranian Quds Force. The U.S. remains committed to
de-escalation.
Let's hope they are all privy to some important info we don't have that means this is not
the apocalyptic suicide bid it looks like.
Time will tell.
Meanwhile "
WW3 " is a trending hashtag on Twitter, which is a little premature perhaps, but sells the
sense of horror and disbelief people are feeling. Here are some examples
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praises Donald Trump for killing top Iranian
general and says US has a 'right to defend itself' https://t.co/ZJasi2GFxX
For all intents & purposes, any talk inside #Iran of negotiation
with the US, or in choosing a more peaceful policy in the region is now over. Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khamenei, has vowed vengeance for this attack, and it will be very bitter.
https://t.co/lKIjvHKljC By @karimsh89
Possibly significant and interesting take by blue tick John Simpson
Killing #Soleimani isn't
like killing bin Laden, who had masterminded the worst terrorist attack against America.
Soleimani was a competitor, who was highly effective in fighting ISIS as well as American
interests. Assassinating him seems like a step back to a more savage past.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, talking a certain amount of sense:
The US assassination of Qasem Soleimani is an extremely serious and dangerous escalation
of conflict with global significance. The UK government should urge restraint on the part of
both Iran and the US, and stand up to the belligerent actions and rhetoric coming from the
US.
Keir Starmer, potential future leader of the Labour Party, is also not convinced:
The Government's response to Donald Trump's actions is not good enough.
The UK Government should hold him to account for his actions and stand up for
international law, not tacitly condone the attack. https://t.co/3OCyiuphRt
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Antonym ,
The Anglo's are favoring Sunni Muslims since long time:
Yes, planning for Operation Gulmarg started way back in 1943. The British were certain
Kashmir would go to Pakistan and pulled out all the stops in advance to ensure
this.
Whereas the Zionists prefer setting all sides at each others' throats, as they did in Lebanon
during the Civil War, or when they promoted Hamas to oppose the PLO, or the terrorist
death-squad South Lebanese Army to attack Hezbollah etc, or al-Nusra Front, in particular,
during the salafist attack on Syria. Not to forget the partition of Sudan, a long-term
Zionist project.
Antonym ,
The Australian-born Major-General Robert "Bill" Cawthome, once a British Army officer
who had later joined the Pakistan Army, remains the longest-serving Director General of the
Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) for over nine years from 1950 to 1959.
I don't buy it, without real proof. The bloody hand with a similar ring isn't enough.
Soleimani is a master strategist and tactician, his intelligence service is way better than
the Americans'. I don't see him, with another high ranking official, in the same vehicle,
exposed to attack. Too careless for a very careful man.
So, Iranian false flag trick? Leak a fake rendez-vous, hide their VIG Soleimani for the next
operation, divert Iranian public anger outward at the US, unite Iraqi and Iranian resistance
against the US? Sounds more believable. Let's see
tonyopmoc ,
It seems to me, that no-one I know, noticed any news whatsoever today, nor showed the
slightest interest, when I tried to mention it. So www 3 is extremely unlikely, cos no one
gives a sh1t. So I reckon its best to ignore it. They will go back into their holes.
propaganda too much – like when you couldn't stand mustang sally again 10 years ago,
and for a special occasion they do it again, and you still think its a crap song, but join in
cos its a party, and to be polite, but you can't stand it for a 3rd time, well past its 2nd
death.
Can our Leaders please start making sense. That is what we employ you for. To represent
our best interests – not yours. You volunteered for the job, so now you have got it, do
what we elected you and told you to do.
That is Your Job. You are a Member of Parliament now.
We elected you.
Please Get on with it.
Do your Job.
Thanks.
Tony
Estompista ,
Iran isn't going to do shit.
Antonym ,
Sorry, was Qassem Soleimani some kind of saint? Did he never organize any mass suicide
bombing/ assassination of an opponent in Irak, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon or elsewhere?
Going against Sunni Arab KSA was kind of natural for a Persian Shia, working against
Israel was good for brownie points among Muslims and Western Leftovers but ultimately
dumb.
richard le sarc ,
Compared to Netanyahu, Sharon, Shamir, Begin, Peres, Rabin etc, yes he was a veritable saint.
Trump has had years to drone Soulemani. QS' morale visits to the frontlines in Syria and Iraq
were extensively documented on social media by Iranian proxies and allies. No doubt Israel
noticed them as well but passed on striking at him.
My only conclusion is to Trump's rationale is to speculate that Trump calculates Iranian
backlash is limited and a double win for him; In rallying support around the flag for
electoral purposes (what impeachment?) and providing a causus belli for a range of punishing
strikes across a wide variety of targets across Iran. The economic toll on Iran would be
crushing on top of the sanctions. Trump's khaki election gambit ?
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
When a corporation such as the United States of America falls into debt to the tune of $23
trillion USD heading into certain long term recessionary headwinds they have no alternative
but to start bombing antiquated economically challenged countries that are struggling to
survive. This allows the American bullies to feel empowered & respected through fear of
their mass text book Psychopathology that they peddle to the populations for purposes of
creating unease & fear, or terror, whatever the case may be.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been doing this sort of regime change gig forever
where they first utilize Economic Hit Men to entice leadership to acquiesce to CIA demands.
If the Economic Hit Men fail the mission the jackals are sent in to assassinate. If
assassination fails & Economic Hit Men fail, it falls to the generals & war planners
in the bureaucracy.
The end game superordinate goal for all Americans in the mix of state is to murder the
competition even if it means destroying entire regions of the world to do it.
And never forget the Queen of Mean stating that 'only the little people pay taxes'.
Believe me when I state that Leona Helmsley would push you down a flight of stairs in a
wheelchair if you were an invalid much like Richard Widmark did in The Kiss of Death.
What the United States has done is completely insanity. And for Pompeo to be tweeting that
the United States 'is committed to de-escalation' is cloud cuckoo land stuff.
I've been following this on various other sites as well. Iran is officially in mourning, and
after that is completed, they will respond
We will soon find out what that response is.
We now face the very strong likelihood of a cataclysmic war in the Middle East.
This is an incredibly dangerous situation.
My gut feeling is this is also the beginning of the end for this truly evil, parasitical
Empire.
They cannot see the consequences of what they have done with this act of terrorism.
They are fully blinded by their sheer arrogance and hubris.
I can't back this up with any links, so all I can say is that I'm hearing murmurs that the
Iranians have now told the Americans to pull all of their warships out of Middle Eastern
waters by this time next week, otherwise American warships will be attacked and sunk.
The Iranians are quite capable of doing this in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and
the Oman Gulf (which 35% of the world's tanker oil moves through). Iranian missiles can also
quite easily hit Saudi oil fields. Who's going to buy shares in ARAMCO? The price of oil is
already going through the roof. How much do you want to pay to fill up your vehicle? or do
you believe all the MSM bullshit about twerrorists?
Anyhows, this is still all just rumour at the moment; but if it's true it's a very smart
move by the Iranians.
I was going to reply to your other comment, but breaking news that the United States has
launched more airstrikes in Iraq apparently killing 6 Shia militia leaders.
Pompeo is a raving liar and lunatic.
If this news is true, the bastards want war.
More insane provocations.
Just about to check some sources to verify this. Yes, I commented to you first before I
checked
Buckle up, things are getting very rocky.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Americans have wanted control over the entire Gulf of Oman since before I was born.
The Gulf of Oman oil fields are the best in the entire world for really top grade oils. It's
a massive oil field.
Americans are corporate pirates not unlike fiction. Brig Gen Smedley Butler bragged of
having more territory than Al Capone. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson owns Al Capones old gun
that he purchased at auction.
MOU
JudyJ ,
For information – RT News has just reported that they are receiving reports that the US
have attacked another vehicle convoy just north of Baghdad. They have no more details at
present.
richard le sarc ,
It's just Bibi and his pet goy appealing to their 'bases'. Killing is their religion, quite
literally.
JudyJ ,
Reports now say that convoy was attacked by an airstrike at 1 a.m. local time, 6 Iranian
backed Shia militia leaders killed and 5 others injured. As a US peace activist just said on
RT, 'this attack is on local Iraqis who have been fighting against ISIL and are on their home
territory; and such attacks are totally inexcusable'.
Thanks Judy. Just heard that news over at The Saker and was about to check, but you confirmed
this.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
And they're like a chimpanzee playing with a live grenade inside a small room.
And the Chimps between you and the door.
This is fecken madness.
nottheonly1 ,
How prophetic of myself to have foreseen the end of my online commenting for all the wrong
reasons. Can't take all the shit anymore. It is indeed like the 80's Fun Boy Three hit "The
lunatics have taken over the asylum" and the meds have run out a few weeks ago.
Nobody has even the slightest idea what is unfolding now. To that end, I will state it
once more:
How long is the window of opportunity open for those who attempt a global takeover? Will
they allow Russia and China to get even more advanced weaponry?
No. It is 'now or never again' and they are going for it. Either in utter derangement, or
infinite stupidity, the people behind this takeover do believe that they can win WW3 and
after some cleanup enjoy their United States of Earth.
On the other hand, what if some folks studied STUXNET and are now preparing a number of
NPP in the West to shut off their cooling pumps and generators. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
This time although, it will be Karma for all the shit the West has done to the people of the
Near/Middle/Far East.
richard le sarc ,
The USA created Daash, as they did al-Qaeda, along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
despotisms and Israel, so they are bound to act 'kinetically' to assure that it is
revitalised in Iraq, to attack Central Asia and the BRI.
I went to the tweets cited and noted that many blood thirsty war pigs were happily oinking
their approval for the Imperial Death Stars latest act of terrorism ludicrously called a
"defensive" action by the Terrorist and Thief who turns out to be just another lying sack of
shit.
Ian Beeby ,
So Donald Duck has confirmed to the whole world that he ordered this act of terrorism and
murder. Not only that but as it was a murder/terrorist act in another country that also makes
it a war crime. So when are we going to see him and cronies including those in the UK facing
the international criminal court for war crimes.
Jack_Garbo ,
Didn't they tell you? The US & UK do not recognize the ICC. Next
richard le sarc ,
They don't recognise it, but they control it, and their pet Aunty Tom, Bensouda.
richard le sarc ,
Well this is plainly Trump, the premier Sabbat Goy, doing his Master, Sheldon Adelson's,
bidding. Killing is central to Judaism and Zionism and American Exceptionalism. Just recently
Trump, as he obsequiously groveled to one of the alphabet soup of Zionist groups, the Israeli
American Council, that control US politics, congratulated Jews for being ' brutal killers-not
nice people at all'. The anti-Trump Zionists proclaimed that 'antisemitism', not realising it
was intended as a compliment.
Perhaps they were worried, as well, that it might be too revelatory of the lust for murder
that lies at the heart of Judaism. As the highly influential 'Yesha Council of Rabbis and
Torah Sages' declared in 2006, as Israel was bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age,
targeting, schools, mosques, power stations, hospitals and fleeing civilians, under Judaic
Law killing civilians is not just permissible, but is considered a mitzvah, or good deed.
International Humanitarian Law to the contrary was contemptuously dismissed as mere
'Christian morality'.
The Godfather of Likudnik Zionism, Jabotinsky, bluntly stated the ideological equivalent of
that doctrine-'We will kill anyone who gets in our way'. And Israeli PMs Begin, Shamir,
Sharon and Rabin all had plenty of the blood of innocents on their paws. Last year a book
appeared, 'Rise and Kill First' that listed the huge series of assassinations of resistance
leaders, often with their families ('Down to the fourth generation' as the Talmud demands)or
mere bystanders and neighbours, committed by Israel, and it was generally lauded and the
author treated with mandatory sycophancy.
The French Jewish intellectual, Bernard Lazare, noted, late in the 19th century, that Jews
had experienced conflict with the local communities almost everywhere they had settled,
despite the differences of social arrangements, religions, histories etc, and he, a firm
opponent of Judeophobia and supporter of Dreyfuss, simply observed that 'Israel' (ie Jews)
must bear at least some blame for those events. That, of course, is the very essence of
really existing 'antisemitism' today-to assert that any Jew, anywhere, has ever done a bad,
or wrong, or even mistaken thing. These are, after all, as Begin used to declare, 'Gods upon
the Earth'. However, this time, they surely have gone too far. Both the corrupt thug
Netanyahu, and the simple thug, Trump, need diversions, and they will soon get them, in
spades. Pity the poor innocents who will suffer for them indulging their blood-lusts.
Estompista ,
"Central to Judaism." And boom: there goes your mask.
richard le sarc ,
Central to Talmudic, Orthodox Judaism-unarguable. Bang goes your mask. Many Jews reject the
murderous xenophobia at the heart of Talmudic Judaism, hence the Reform and Liberal
tendencies, (and non-religious Jews), which are NOT recognised as true Judaism in Israel,
which is controlled by the Orthodox goy-haters. Learn something about your own religion
before you start pontificating and smearing.
Tallis Marsh ,
Hi OffG, I wondered if it would be possible to get an article on the Australian fires –
to get a plethora of views on the situation? Tens of thousands are being urged to evacuate
the South-East now, apparently.
Off the top of my head – a few questions to set the ball rolling if we do get an
article:
What is actually happening; how are the fires being started? Who is starting them? Why are
firefighters having trouble with all of it?
Years & years of deliberate mismanagement? Arson? Sabotage? D.E.Ws/Scalar/Smart
Meters?
Coup against current leader, Scott Morrison (maybe because he did not play ball withe the
climate change people)?
Agenda 21/2030 in motion? SDGs being rolled out etc – deliberate displacement of
people (ultimately off rural & suburban areas and into cities (I think the UN name it
something like City-densification)?
People don't need to agree – just get their views, observations and hopefully some
evidence. Anyway, just putting some thoughts out there
richard le sarc ,
It's anthropogenic climate destabilisation, as all the local fire chiefs and many of the
recently retired, have declared, for some time. Predicted twenty and thirty years ago by
science, and here, now, a few decades ahead of expectations.
Tallis Marsh ,
Interesting. I am not fully on board with the idea of human-induced climate change
(anthropogenic climate change). I need much more convincing than what is available out there
currently. Maybe humans cause an extremely teeny amount but not anyway near enough to change
our environment? Really, is anthropogenic climate change causing all the current things like
flooding, 'wildfires' landslides etc that are suddenly all happening in many different places
at the frequency & level over this last decade or so ,and suddenly being plastered all
over our MSM, press, tv etc ad nauseum without any differing views allowed to be aired
without ridicule or slap-downs or censorship?
Who are XR's funders, allies and founders? What are their deeper motives?
What about the fact that the Earth's climate naturally goes through cycles; some people
tend more towards the climate experts who believe we are now entering the cooling period, the
Maunder Minimum? People like Piers Corbyn have been correctly predicting long-range weather
and climate cycles for many years?
Also, CO2 is important for plant/tree growth? We cannot have life without carbon in its
many forms?
All these questions and more need to be explored and debated by many different experts who
have alternative views (not solely the same views espoused in the corporate media) before I
can come to any firm conclusions. For now, I feel like the establishment is hammering the
public with a cult-like religion of 'climate emergency' and suspect they want to use it for
ulterior motives rather than help the environment & humans – probably part of the
agenda to control the planet including humans?
Tallis Marsh ,
* Should say: " probably part of the agenda to take complete control of the planet including
humans?"
richard le sarc ,
The 'evidence out there' is enough to convince EVERY Academy of Science and scientific
society on Earth, all of whom concur with the theory. The natural weather and climate
disasters are, in the main, either being caused, or made worse, by the injection of added
energy into the Earth system that is caused by the increased level of heat trapping
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. XR's backers are irrelevant to the science. The world's
climate does exhibit many cycles, but they are being disturbed and exacerbated by the added
energy trapped in the Earth system. There is no 'Grand Minimum' just the end of cycle 24 of
sunspot activity. Piers Corbyn is NO climate expert-if you rely on him rather than the 99% of
real climate scientists who agree with the theory then you are very much mistaken, in my
opinion. CO2 is essential for plant growth, but it's levels need to be constant, or slowly
changing, for plants to adapt, not increasing by 50% in 200 years. Moreover climate
destabilisation brings high temperatures, floods, deluges and other manifestations that are
very deleterious to plant growth and well-being. These facts have been debated for 200 years,
and the science is 'settled'. Your proposition for further debate, as the climate rapidly
destabilises, is, in my opinion, akin to 'debating' the harms of sarin gas, as the victim
convulses before our eyes.
MLS ,
How exactly is AGW causing these fires? What is the mechanism?
Is the climate in NSW hotter, drier than before?
By how much if so?
How much worse is the burning?
Since the bush in that part of the world is 'designed' to burn periodically (many local
plants need fire in order to set seed), how do you separate the alleged AGW effect from other
natural causes and other non-AGW variables, such as reduction in pre-emptive burns over
recent years?
Tallis Marsh ,
Yes, all very good questions that need answering and debating by experts with differing
stances (not just cookie-cutter experts agreeing with each other with their official,
scripted stance of "it's part of the 'climate crisis!").
richard le sarc ,
They have ALL been debated for decades by real scientists, not fossil fuel denialist industry
paid disinformers. I can tell you that here in Australia, as the country burns, demanding
more phony 'debate' is NOT a popular opinion
Tallis Marsh ,
"I believe you, trillions wouldn't!"
This debate you speak of must have passed me by somehow! If it did happen it must have
happened before my time because all I've seen/heard in the press/tv/radio/school text books
was/is anthropogenic climate change-based.
Estompista ,
I swear, this guy: "The world is burning. Let's have another debate in case we accidentally
save the plamet!"
richard le sarc ,
You obviously don't live in Australia where denialism controls much of the MSM. Totally in
the Murdoch cancer. much of the time elsewhere, but it has no reputable scientific
supporters, just a cabal of aged renegades, fossil fuel stooges and share-holders in coal
mines. The 'debate' was OVER thirty years ago, and the rest has been fossil fuel propaganda
and the Dunning-Krugerites ventilating their lovely combination of idiocy, malice and
arrogant egotism.
richard le sarc ,
The drought in the east of Australia is unprecedented in the 200 years of White occupation.
It is almost certainly driven, to extremes of aridity, by increased average and maximum
temperatures, lack of rainfall and other depredations like widespread vegetation clearance by
Rightwing 'farmers' who hate Greenies. Every single fire fighting commissioner and other
leaders have openly stated that these fires are worsened by anthropogenic climate
destabilisation, and requested a meeting with the PM months ago, but were ignored by our PM,
a denialist religious fanatic.
MLS ,
Sorry but we need data not rhetoric.
What is the measured increase in temps in the fire-hit regions?
What is causing the drought?
What is the source for it being unprecedented? By how much?
Why would clearing vegetation increase fire risk?
I have also seen it said it's the absence of clearing – due to misguided or fake
'Green' policies – that has been exacerbating the current fires.
How can we tell which is true?
What of the claims of politically motivated arson?
Climate change & Australian bushfires are way off topic. No more of that here please. We
may well open a discussion of the latter soon.
richard le sarc ,
Rightio-forgive the last contribution, above.
richard le sarc ,
It is NOT 'rhetoric'. The facts are easily discoverable, at the BOM, CSIRO and the Climate
Council, for starters. Kindly look them up yourself.
Jen ,
My observation among others is that most bushfires are occurring in areas that never had any
before, or in recent memory anyway.
The state of Victoria always seems to have more severe annual bushfire events than other
states, even though other states are much drier and have more extreme weather. This might
suggest Victorian state govt bushfire emergency response policies might be wanting, to say
the least.
I don't live in Victoria but I'd be curious to know what the state of electricity power
lines in rural areas and through forests down there are like. The East Gippsland region in
Victoria (which has the worst bushfire crisis at present) is, erm, very forested. Or it
was.
Our firefighters can't cope because they're underfunded, they don't have modern
firefighting equipment and – this will shock overseas readers – they are not
full-time paid professional firefighters, in a country that experiences major bushfire events
every year.
Tallis Marsh ,
"they are not full-time paid professional firefighters, in a country that experiences major
bushfire events every year."
My! Yes, that is strange & shocking for somewhere like Australia! Who decided that was
a good idea; along with the idea of not managing the bush like they used to do for hundreds
of years. I read somewhere that the Aborigines used/use managed fires as part of their
culture too to maintain and protect the Bush.
richard le sarc ,
The volunteers usually have to work for weeks a year on real, and controllable, local fires.
This year threy have faced months, so far, of megafires. As for that favourite denialist
canard, that the bush is not being properly 'managed', ALL the fire authorities have
REPEATEDLY refuted that, pointing out that hazard reduction burning has increased for years,
but the window for safe burning has grown smaller and smaller as the climate has rapidly
destabilised, and fires break out even in winter. I hope that has cleared up that
misconception for you.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
CANADA is sending over a hundred skilled firefighters yesterday on top of the fifty we sent
first off. CANUCKS will put it out, don't fret. Our outback is much more Boreal forest so we
get really bad bush fires as everyone is well aware. We have tons of water bombers too and we
are in the off-season for our own bush fires so our gals n' guys will be more than happy to
go to Oz for the adventure.
MOU
richard le sarc ,
Most of the fires are burning in areas that have burned regularly, and recently. There have,
however, been places burned in recent years, like alpine heath-lands in Tasmania and
sub-tropical and temperate rainforests, that have not burned for centuries. The difference
this time is that anthropogenic climate change, principally through savage drought, has
worsened conditions markedly.
Doctortrinate ,
Taken from – the weekend Australian.
The Black Thursday conflagration of 1851 burned five million hectares and was so
intense that ships 30km off the coast of Victoria reported coming under ember attack
Those fires covered one-quarter of what is now the state of Victoria.
In the summer of 1974-75, the worst bushfire system the nation had faced in 30 years the
Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience estimates about 15 per cent of Australia's
physical landmass, about 117 million hectares, had extensive fire damage.
In a review of Queensland's recent bushfire experience, the Inspector-General of
Emergency Management, Iain Mackenzie, had this to say: "The office heard from associations
representing bushfire managers who conveyed 'indisputable facts' about vegetated areas and
their management.
"Their points were that fires will always start, and that fire management relies on, and must
be led by, managing and reducing fuel. Climate change, they said, had not influenced the past
build-up of fuel; some fires are best left to burn, and response will only be effective if
preparation and mitigation have been effective beforehand.''
"People change farming practices, they change crops they plant. In urban areas people like
vegetation between houses, they have bigger houses, bigger roofs.
"These all reflect heat into vegetation that dries out and you have fuel."
The biggest fires in terms of area burned are actually in low-population areas of the
Northern Territory, Western Australia and north Queensland.
It is when fires occur in populated areas that the explosive combination of high fuel load
and proximity of homes becomes most apparent.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
then there's the money/support – Primonster Morrison et al, wouldn't want to see
their budget surplus going up in ashes – no, it wants profit and more, so are limiting
Government spending on many essential needs – replaced from the Peoples pocket, by
charitable donations and rainy day savings etc .same old story, happy taking short on giving
– and as Rural areas are already hit hardest – add just a little more heat, and
with volunteer fire service numbers on the decline for many, it'll be back to the concrete
jungle.
noseBag ,
You: What is actually happening; how are the fires being started?
Me: Hmmmmm .dryness .heat?
You: Who is starting them?
Me: Hmmmm .the godamnded sun?
You: Why are firefighters having trouble with all of it?
Me: Hmmmm there's a fuck-ton of it?
You: Years & years of deliberate mismanagement?
Me: Yes, spot on, and ..and then
You: Arson? Sabotage? D.E.Ws/Scalar/Smart Meters? .
Me: Can we accuse the sun of arson?
Hmmmm .I'm really not sure, maybe your wisdom could guide me?
there's billions of us, all we need, is a little food and warmth – all we want, is to
get on with our lives, in Freedom and in Peace. It unfortunate then, that there exists a
small Cabal of International Interconnected players who employ Governments of the World/
Leaders of Men, instrumentally, to the construction of divisive entanglements . Sadly it
seems, the People, generation through generation, have become so accustomed to groupthink
falsity, they see themselves collectively responsibile for the ruinous designs of dictatorial
maniacs as if the experience of repeatedly being delivered into a madhouse was a natural
element of existence.
I accidentally posted this comment under the "Douma narrative crumbles" thread, admin can
delete it there , if they like.
The news alert message was supposed to be between the brackets but somehow it disappeared.
The alert msg was supposed to say
Chief BIG Trump little penis declares bombing assassination NOT DECLARATION OF WAR.
MOU
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
And I did not upvote myself above.
MOU
Brian Harry ,
I wonder if the Loonies in the CIA/MIC are currently planning to get rid of "a very important
American", and then blame it on Iran, as justification for attacking Iran. I agree that a war
against Iran would be a dreadful mistake by the USA, but, with Loonies like Pompeo, Mark
Esper, and the likes of Bolton, still lurking in the background, they'll ALL be salivating at
the thought of another War with a staggering death count(on both sides) and so will Mr
Netanyahu, sitting in Israel, pulling the strings and directing the traffic.
It's what they live and breathe for .deranged psychopaths just cannot get enough War
."Draining the Swamp" was NEVER going to happen ..
richard le sarc ,
Excellent speculation. To get rid of Trump, the obvious 'burnt offering', and get a casus
belli for Clinton's much desired 'obliteration' of Iran, Bibi's 'New Purim'-what could be
better?
Estompista ,
Pretty desperate stretch.
richard le sarc ,
Then leave yourself alone!
Brianeg ,
"Revenge is a dish best served cold!.
I am sure that America is expecting a quick retaliation and which can be quickly
countered. I am sure the Iranians are aware of that and will either carry out something that
is deniable or just put pressure on Iraq to kick all the Americans out of their country. What
can America do, bomb the whole country into the stone age?
2020 is destined to be a very bloody and long drawn out war of attrition. Whilst the
Democrats would appear to be handing Trump his second term on a plate, by his rash and badly
planned move, this might be denied him.
I do wonder if nature might intervene. You read about the build up of seismic activity in
California and wonder if this might be the year of the "Big One"? If that was to happen then
all bets are off and all military activity will subside.
I am reminded of the "Tom and Jerry" cartoon when Buster taking the part of America comes
to Jerry's defence when he whistles until that time Buster is carted off to the dog
pound.
As Putin's actions always catch me by surprise, can anybody guess what he might do if
Iran, Iraq or Syria comes under heavy attack? I am sure in the circumstances that it would
always be the right move.
"What can America do, bomb the whole country into the stone age?"
They've already done that in Korea and Vietnam, and to a lesser extent just recently in
Syria (which is why Europe has experienced a tidal wave of refugees).
2020 doesn't have to be bloody, as long as most people can get out of the tidal wave of
MSM war propaganda.
With regard to Putin, we're fast approaching the stage where Russia and China are going to
either have to stand up to America (which means war), or else they'll have to bow down and
become part of a rapidly decaying empire (an empire than can't even look after its own
people).
With the assassination of Soleimani, I think we're now at this tipping point. I don't
believe that Russia and China will bow down to the biggest bunch of criminals/psychopaths
that this world has ever known.
richard le sarc ,
They don't need to bomb every village in Iran. Just take out the power stations,
communications, hospitals (oops, we are SO sorry)warehouses, roads, water infrastructure (as
they did in Iraq)etc and a few Holy spots to indicate the religious/fascist aspect of the
assault, and sundry others (they bombed dairy farms in Iraq). Raytheon and Lockheed must be
slobbering at the profit expectations, and 'religious' fascist psychopaths, like our own
Pentecostal thug PM, 'Smoko' Morrison, drooling as their beloved End Times draw that much
closer.
Gaudy ,
As the article says, Iran isn't Iraq or Syria. The Pentagon knows that better than the man in
the street, why else has it not been invaded yet? If they start this war they could well fail
to win it. Totally different ballgame from anything seen before in the 'war on terror'.
richard le sarc ,
They won't invade-just sit back and bomb.
Loverat ,
The other thing to mention is John Simpson while an establishment buffoon has been to Iran
and wrote a book in around 1980. A not completely bad book.
Jen ,
FreeIran2020 seems to be attracting the Mojaheddin e Khalq cult crazies and deluded Pahlavi
monarchy restorationists. That tells me the movement must be relying on the same US State
Department and National Endowment for Democracy regime-change idiots, and various Washington
NGOs, who support the Banderite turds in Ukraine and the Blackshirt thugs in Hong Kong, for
money and marketing campaign ads and slogans.
The interim prime minister of Iraq has condemned the US assassination of a senior Iranian
commander, calling it an act of aggression against his country. Qassem Soleimani was killed at
Baghdad airport.
Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force, was killed after his convoy was hit by US
missiles. A deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the Iraqi militia
collective backed by Iran, was killed in the same airstrike.
In a statement on Friday, the caretaker leader of Iraq's protest-challenged government, Adil
Abdul Mahdi, said the US assassination operation was a "flagrant violation of Iraqi
sovereignty" and an insult to the dignity of his country.
Also on rt.com Iran Quds Force commander killed in US strike on convoy at Baghdad
airport
He stressed that the US had violated the terms under which American troops are allowed to
stay in Iraq with the purpose of training Iraqi troops and fighting the jihadist organization
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). He added that the killing may trigger a major escalation of
violence and result in "a devastating war in Iraq" that will spill out into the region.
The Iraqi government has called on the parliament to hold an emergency session to discuss an
appropriate response, Mahdi said.
Also on rt.com Killing of Quds commander is another sign of US frustration and weakness in
the region – Iran's Rouhani
The killing of Soleimani marks a significant escalation in US confrontation with Iran.
Washington considers the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to which Quds belongs, a
terrorist organization and claimed the slain commander was plotting attacks on American
citizens.
Tehran said the Quds commander was targeted for his personal contribution to defeating IS in
Iraq and Syria. Soleimani drove Iran's support for militias in both countries that fought
against the terrorist force.
The United States of America has fallen into the trap of its own disinformation policy, as exemplified by the
work of one of its leading strategic study centres, a neocon think tank promoting war on Iran.
During the first weeks of protests in Iraq, a dozen Iraqis burned down the Iranian consulates in Najaf,
Karbalaa and Baghdad. Western analysts based their analysis on social media images and YouTube videos,
particularly those clips which showed protestors chanting "Iran Barra..Barra. Baghdad Tibqa Hurrah" (Iran out,
Baghdad remains free). Analysts and mainstream media -- primarily people sitting thousands of kilometres away from
Iraq who have never visited the country, and never mixed with the population long enough to understand the
dynamics of the country and how Iraqis
really
think reflected and amplified the opinion that Iraq has
become hostile to Iran.
However, though every wish can come true, yet prevailing winds can defy our hopes and expectations. Analysts'
wishful thinking overwhelmed their sense of reality, notably the possibility of realities invisible to them. They
fell into the same trap of misinformation and ignorance that has shaped western opinion since the occupation of
Iraq in 2003. The invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which never
existed. An information war was waged against Syria with the goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. The
US supported terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda for this purpose. Mainstream media coverage of the war in
Syria- mainly through WhatsApp, social media, Skype, activists and jihadists- unfolded at the expense of
destroying its own credibility, and that of western journalism in general.
The shameful irresponsibility of these reporters and analysts became obvious to a large part of the public.
There was no accountability for mass media deceptions: virtually all western media were in the same boat, totally
lacking the necessary professionalism. Western media became a mockery of the noble and demanding profession of
journalism and its mandate to report and share information without manipulation. Journalists were forced to follow
newspaper editorial policies and the political views of their owner- he who pays the piper calls the tune!
Fortunately, the internet made it possible for people to hunt for alternative sources and analyses. For instance,
to a great extent journalistic standards were upheld in Israel, the only place in the Middle East where analysts
and reporters have the freedom to tell the truth about their enemies (regardless the military censure), and about
the limitations on Israeli power. The Israeli media reported on the weakness of the domestic front in case of war
and the huge damage their enemies could inflict on the country through the deterrence policy that Israel has faced
in this century.
The Israeli government has a "Council of Risk Evaluation", which predicts the reaction of the enemy in case of
a "battle between wars", and estimates the results of Israel hitting a target or even hundreds of targets in Gaza,
Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. That assessment is always very close to reality, unlike that of the US.
Prestigious Western think-tanks like Brookings, Carnegie, Hudson, the Washington Institute, the "Middle East
Institute" and others promoted a belief in the protestors' anti-Iran objectives in Iraq and Lebanon. They have
advocated a 'weakness of Iran in Iraq', a phenomenon based on a few street comments and a few arson-inspired
fires. Most probably these institutions did not mean to distort reality as they revealed their limited
understanding of the Middle East. Even after the US bombing of the Iraqi Security Forces on the Iraqi-Syrian
borders, some of these analysts hinted Iran would not recover and would not be able to respond, and that "Kataeb
Hezbollah" were weaker than ever. Yet the following day their sympathizers broke into the US embassy in Baghdad
and mobilised thousands of people, creating panic and fear not only at the embassy but also at the Pentagon and
the White House.
There is no doubt President Donald Trump has little foreign policy knowledge and experience. He has never
claimed the opposite. But his Foreign and Defence ministries seem hardly more enlightened.
On 27
th
December 2019, several rockets were fired from unidentified attackers against the K1 Iraqi
military base in Kirkuk, north of Iraq. In this base, as in many others, Iraqi and US military are present on the
same ground and within the same walls, even if they have different command and control HQs. Two Iraqi policemen
and one American contractor were killed and 2 Iraqi Army officers and four US contractors were wounded.
The following day, Defence Secretary Mark Esper called the Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister to inform him of "his
decision to bomb Kataeb Hezbollah bases in Iraq". Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper to meet face-to-face, and told his
interlocutor that this would be dangerous for Iraq: he rejected the US decision. Esper responded that he was "not
calling to negotiate but to inform about a decision that has already been taken". Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper if
the US has "proof against Kataeb Hezbollah to share so Iraq can arrest those responsible for the attack on K1". No
response: Esper told Abdel Mahdi that the US was "well-informed" and that the attack would take place "
in
a few hours
".
In less than half an hour, US jets bombed five Iraqi security forces' positions deployed along the Iraqi-Syrian
borders, in the zone of Akashat, 538 kilometres from the K1 military base (that had been bombed by perpetrators
still unknown!). The US announced the attack but omitted the fact that in these positions there were not only
Kataeb Hezbollah but also Iraqi Army and Federal Police officers. Most victims of the US attack were Iraqi army
and police officers. Only 9 officers of Kataeb Hezbollah who joined the Iraqi Security Forces in 2017 were
killed. These five positions had the task of intercepting and hunting down ISIS and preventing the group's
militants from crossing the borders from the Anbar desert. The closest city to these bombed positions is al-Qaem,
150 km away.
What is the outcome of the US bombing of the Iraqi security forces?
Iran had been struggling to achieve consensus among various Iraqi political parties. In Baghdad, it had been
impossible to unite them to select a new Prime Minister following the resignation of Adel Abdel Mahdi. Political
parties, above all groups representing the Shia majority, were divided amongst themselves and incapable of
selecting a suitable candidate. Protestors were occupying the streets and the Hashd al-Shaabi flag was not
tolerated in Baghdad square.
The US bombing of the Iraqi security forces' positions fell as manna to Iran. Secretaries Pompeo and Esper's
actions were in perfect harmony with the goals of the IRGC-Quds brigade commander Qassem Soleimani. The two US
officials broke the Iraqi political stalemate and diverted the country's attention towards the US embassy and
the break-in of protestors to contest the US bombing of Iraqi security forces.
Members of Hashd al-Shaabi and other Iraqi forces units, along with families and friends of the 79 (killed and
wounded) victims demonstrated outside the US embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Flags of Hashd al-Shaabi were
flying over the entrance of the US embassy. The withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq became the priority of the
Iraqi parliament, and even of Moqtada al-Sadr.
The US paid the price of thousands of killed and wounded and trillions of dollars to maintain a zone of
influence, military bases and a friendly government in Iraq, but they have failed to achieve these objectives.
Irresponsible and erroneous analysis of the situation in Iraq and its dynamics has proved that its authors are
detached and isolated from that reality.
The US may end up being pushed out of Iraq and Syria. It may move to Kurdistan. But if the parliament fails to
reach an agreement over its presence in Iraq, US forces will no longer be in a friendly environment and may be
targeted by various Iraqi groups, bringing back memories of 2005.
One single rushed decision emanating from inexperienced US policymakers, evidently following the advice of
think tanks, has dealt the US a setback in the region. Was the advice of neocon think-tank analysts shaped by
incompetence, or simply by their agenda? They are indeed separated by a great distance from realities on the
ground in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, and US policymakers are clearly not getting sound advice on the
region.
All this plays into the hands of Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, whose only need is to capitalize on
American mistakes in the Middle East. The US is making Iran stronger, demonstrating the truth of Sayyed Ali
Khamenei's comment: "
Thank God our enemies are imbeciles
".
This will end great, a fucked up circus called congress who hasn't had the balls to do their
job and legally declare war for nearly three decades, and a president who can't even defend
himself from a gang of thugs staging a direct coup against him in his own government. What
could possibly go wrong?
The second are the immortal words of Thucydides: "the strong do what they will, the weak
suffer what they must."
Yeah, I heard Thucydides had some issues with resolution of uncertainties for targeting,
especially for stand-off precision guided weapons. Plus there were some issues with long
range air-defense systems in Greece in times of Plato and Socrates. You know, GLONASS wasn't
fully operational, plus EW was a little bit scratchy.
So, surely, it all fully applies today, especially in choke points. Plus those Athenians
they were not exactly good with RPGs and anti-Armour operations. Other than that, Thucydides
nailed it.
Interesting to note that it was the party professing those words - Athens - who started
the Peloponnesian War, driven in large part by that haughty attitude. It was Athens that also ended that war, of course. They did so when they surrendered to the Spartans.
America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a post-Western
world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept global
pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence.
Special to Consortium News
The Trump administration has brought U.S. foreign policy to the brink of crisis, if it has
not already tipped into one. There is little room to argue otherwise. In Asia, Europe, and the
Middle East, and in Washington's ever-fraught relations with Russia, U.S. strategy, as reviewed
in my
previous column , amounts to little more than spoiling the efforts of others to negotiate
peaceful solutions to war and dangerous standoffs in the interests of an orderly world.
The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than
blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of
U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington's refusal to accept the
passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.
There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington's
regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump,
deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil
liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that
it was all George W. Bush's fault. It was not so simple then and is not now. The crisis of U.S.
foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with
personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at
the margins.
Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this
undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?
It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end.
What ensued had various names.
There was the "end of history" thesis. American liberalism was humanity's highest
achievement, and nothing would supersede it.
There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market
capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. The
consensus never extended far beyond the Potomac, but this sort of detail mattered little at the
time.
The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual
ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world.
Happier days with Russia. (Eric Draper)
Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted
in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008
financial crash followed.
I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An
economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in
Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one.
The orthodoxy today remains what it was when it formed in the 1990s: The neoliberal crusade
must proceed. Our market-driven, "rules-based" order is still advanced as the only way out of
our planet's impasses.
A Strategic and Military Turn
Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with
the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions. The
NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change
operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be
a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed
Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live
with daily. The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in
policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at
the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a
campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime.
Spoilage as a poor excuse for a foreign policy had made its first appearances.
I count 2013 to 2015 as key years. At the start of this period, China began developing what
it now calls its Belt and Road
Initiative -- its hugely ambitious plan to stitch together the Eurasian landmass, Shanghai
to Lisbon. Moscow favored this undertaking, not least because of the key role Russia had to
play and because it fit well with President Vladimir Putin's Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU), launched in 2014.
Belt and Road Initiative. (Lommes / CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and
diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism
and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as
Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it
apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that
established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime
change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on
which the government now in power still depends.
That is how we got the U.S.-as-spoiler foreign policy we now have.
If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument
-- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around
him, as he acknowledged in his interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic toward the end of his second term. From
that
"Anonymous" opinion piece published in The New York Times on Sept. 5, we know Trump
is too, to a greater extent than Obama may have feared in his worst moments.
The crucial question is why. Why do U.S. policy cliques find themselves bereft of
imaginative thinking in the face of an evolving world order? Why has there been not a single
original policy initiative since the years I single out, with the exception of the
now-abandoned 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs? "Right now, our job is to create
quagmires until we get what we want," an administration official
told The Washington Post 's David Ignatius in August.
Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't.
Global 'Equals' Like Us?
There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost all
facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my view,
but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques.
As I have argued numerous times elsewhere, parity between East and West is a 21st century
imperative. From Woodrow Wilson to the post-World War II settlement, an equality among all
nations was in theory what the U.S. considered essential to global order.
Now that this is upon us, however, Washington cannot accept it. It did not count on
non-Western nations achieving a measure of prosperity and influence until they were "just like
us," as the once famous phrase had it. And it has not turned out that way.
Can't we all just get along? (Carlos3653 / Wikimedia)
Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal
adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a
key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each
stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led
order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they
are determined to preserve them.
They signify the shape of the world to come -- a post-Western world in which the Atlantic
alliance must coexist with rising powers outside its orbit. Together, then, they signify
precisely what the U.S. cannot countenance. And if there is one attribute of neoliberal and
neoconservative ideology that stands out among all others, it is its complete inability to
accept difference or deviation if it threatens its interests.
This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is Time
No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web
site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
adversary: – one's opponent in a contest, conflict or dispute.
& I ask this
"Is it really thus"
"Why must it be thus"
How can China be an adversary of the USA when all their manufactured goods come from
China.
example:- a water distiller – manufactured in & purchased from China retails for
AU$70 odd.
The very same item manufactured in China – but purchased from the USA retails for
US$260 plus.
China should be a most welcome guest at the dinner table of the USA.
R Davis , September 20, 2018 at 04:28
While i'm here – where did China get all their surveillance equipment from –
the place is locked down tighter than a chicken coop plagued by foxes.
relevant article – CRAZZ FILES – Bone Chilling Footage Shows the Horrific
Tyranny Google is Now Secretly Fostering in China.
In my opinion Google is not trying to keep information out of China – BUT –
preventing information from get out of China – to the world at large.
A lockdown as severe as this – tells us that there is something seriously bad happening
inside China.
Maybe even a mass genocide
This analysis is correct as far as it goes. However, what is lacking is an analysis of the
lunatic monetary ideology that has looted the physical economy of the U.S. by putting
enormous fake profits of speculative instruments in the hands of our "elites." It is the post
industrial, information age economy which must be transformed by very painful loss of control
by these putative elites if the world is to survive their insane geopolitics. What the
Chinese are doing by rapid build up of worldwide infrastructure needs to be replicated here.
The only way of doing so is first by ending the Wall St./City of London derivatives nightmare
and then by issuing trillions of credits needed for that very purpose.
Agreed, you speak wisely of the root of the problem. Those who create and distribute money
make ALL the rules and dominate the political and media landscape.
This really is an excellent analysis. I would highlight the following point:
"There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost
all facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my
view, but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques
"
Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 18:03
You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American
Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world
which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies,
a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to
war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions
of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved.
This focus on war has its roots in the Christian bible and in a sense of manifest destiny
that has occupied Americans since before they were Americans, and the real Americans had to
be exterminated. It certainly (as stated) can't be blamed on certain individuals, it's
predominate and nearly universal. How many Americans were against the assault by the
Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few.
Homer Jay , September 14, 2018 at 22:09
"How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq?
Very few."
Are you kidding me? Here is a list of polls of the American public regarding the Iraq War
2003-2007;
Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of
State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40
percent of the public who opposed the war. You clearly are not American or you would remember
the vocal minority which filled the streets of big cities across this country. And again the
consent was as Chomsky says "manufactured." And it took only 1 year of the war for the
majority of the public to be against it. By 2007 60-70% of the public opposed the war.
Judging from your name you come from a country whose government was part of that coalition
of the willing. So should we assume that "very few" of your fellow country men and women were
against that absolute horror show that is the Iraq war?
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 23:05
You failed to address my major point, and instead picked on something you're wrong on.
PS: bevin made approximately the same point later (w/o the financial factor).
"Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington."
Homer Jay , September 17, 2018 at 14:47
Respectfully, Your data backs up my comment/data. And to your larger point, again we must
be careful when describing such attitudes as "American", a country with a wide range of
attitudes/ beliefs. To suggest we are all just a war mongering mob is bigoted. You probably
will say that's defensive but it's also right. And making the recklessly inaccurate claim
that "very few" Americans opposed the war in Iraq, without taking into account the
disinformation campaign that played into the initial consent, needs to corrected more than
once.
Sari , September 14, 2018 at 15:15
I just encountered (via Voltairenet) "The Pentagon's New Map," a book written by Thomas
Barnett, an assistant once to Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (now deceased). Barnett wrote an
earlier article for the March 2003 Esquire entitled "Why the Pentagon Changes Its Map: And
Why We'll Keep Going to War" ( https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1546/thomas-barnett-iraq-war-primer/
) describing their ideas which are introduced thusly:
"Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an
operating theory of the world -- and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there's a
leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively
shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis at the
U.S. Naval War College, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving
this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now, he gives it
to you."
His basic premise: "Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity,
financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you
regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide
than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where
globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by
politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and --
most important -- the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global
terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap."
One more quote gives you the "Monarch Notes" edition: "Think about it: Bin Laden and Al
Qaeda are pure products of the Gap -- in effect, its most violent feedback to the Core. They
tell us how we are doing in exporting security to these lawless areas (not very well) and
which states they would like to take "offline" from globalization and return to some
seventh-century definition of the good life (any Gap state with a sizable Muslim population,
especially Saudi Arabia).
If you take this message from Osama and combine it with our military-intervention record
of the last decade, a simple security rule set emerges: A country's potential to warrant a
U.S. military response is inversely related to its globalization connectivity."
Of course, we all recognize how much prevarication currently exists in "implementing" this
strategy, but I would suggest that, very likely, the Pentagon is, indeed, following this "New
Map." And, yes, this "map" shows us why the U.S. has been continually at war since 9/11 and
subbornly refuses to leave Syria, Iraq, and the Middle East with their apparent justification
being "Might Makes Right." Thierry Mayssen (Voltairenet) aptly describes the Gap states as
"reservoirs of resources" driven into perpetual war, destabilization, and chaos by a
preeminently overwhelming hegemonic U.S. military.
I had to laugh. One of Barnett's reasons in promulgating this new "map" involves the
continued stability of the Core; however, what do we see today? Huge waves of immigration
greatly destabilizing every aspect of Europe and chaos and destabilization flooding the U.S.
via false/contrived polarization in every sphere of life. BUT! The military has "a Map!"
Psssstt!! Who's "creating" the Gap? Who has funded and armed Al Qaeda/DAESH/ISIS in the
Middle East? We'll need GPS to keep up with the Pentagon's "new map!"
Archie1954 , September 14, 2018 at 14:39
I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals.
Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political
systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for
themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make
those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people
either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations
of the World!
Bob Van Noy , September 14, 2018 at 21:54
Archie 1954, because 911 was never adequately investigated, our government was
inappropriately allowed to act in the so-called public interest in completely inappropriate
ways; so that in order for the Country to set things right, those decisions which were made
quietly, with little public discussion, would have to be exposed and the illegalities
addressed. But, as I'm sure you know, there are myriad other big government failures also
left unexamined, so where to begin?
That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly
independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this
forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time
to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's
figure out how to begin.
So,"Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else?", certainly not
The People
Jill Stein said if elected she would boycott all countries guilty of human rights abuses
and she included Saudi Arabia and Israel. She also said she would form a 9/11 commission
comprised of those independent people and groups currently reporting on this travesty.
Meanwhile we have the self-proclaimed "progressive" talk show hosts such as Thom Hartmann,
defending the PNAC NEOCONS while making Stein persona non grata and throwing real progressive
candidates under the bus.
The PNAC NEOCONS understood the importance of creating a galvanizing, catastrophic and
catalyzing event but the alternative media is afraid to call a spade a spade, something about
the truth being too risky to ones career, I assume.
See much more at youtopia.guru
Bob Van Noy , September 17, 2018 at 09:19
Lee Anderson thank you for your response, I agree and I appreciate the link suggestion,
I'm impressed and will read more
didi , September 14, 2018 at 13:49
It is always the unintended consequences. Hence I disagree with some of your views. A
president who takes actions which trigger unintended/unexpected consequences can be held
accountable for such consequences even if he/she could not avert the consequences. It is also
often true that corrections are possible when such consequences begin to appear. Given our
system which makes only presidents powerful to act on war, peace, and foreign relationships
there is no escaping that they must be blamed only.
A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is
in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the
hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted
ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the
neofeudal/futile system. When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful
expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? The Pentagon
consistently calls the shots, yet we consistently hear about unaccounted expenditures by the
Pentagon, losing amounts in the trillions, and never do they get audited.
nondimenticare , September 14, 2018 at 12:18
I certainly agree that the policy is bereft, but not for all of the same reasons. There is
the positing of a turnaround as a basis for the current spoiler role: "What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly
with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military
dimensions."
To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the
goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination:
"Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the
countries it invaded to be "Just like us."
Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR,
I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed,
it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual
"progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the
history of the country squarely.
That is the blindness of intent that has led to the spoiler role.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 11:15
Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years
of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational
governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski:
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"Make no mistake, what we are seeing in geopolitics today is indeed a magic show. The
false East/West paradigm is as powerful if not more powerful than the false Left/Right
paradigm. For some reason, the human mind is more comfortable believing in the ideas of
division and chaos, and it often turns its nose up indignantly at the notion of "conspiracy."
But conspiracies and conspirators can be demonstrated as a fact of history. Organization
among elitists is predictable.
Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they
have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion,
they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any
mainstream cause or social movement.
What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level
narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These
people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as
naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual
benefit."
Your comment is astute and valuable, and consequently deserves to be signed with your real
name, so that you can be identified as someone worth listening to.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 17:44
Screen names don't matter, content does.
OlyaPola , September 15, 2018 at 11:34
"Screen names don't matter, content does."
Apparently not for some where attribution is sought and the illusion of trust the source
trust the content is held, leading to curveballs mirroring expectations whilst serving the
purposes of others.
""The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970"
The date of publication is of significance as was Mr. Paul Craig Roberts' Alienation in
the Soviet economy of 1971, as was Mr. Andrei Amalrik's "Can the Soviet Union last until 1984
published in 1969.
The period 1968 – 1973 was one significant trajectory in the half-life of "we the
people hold these truths to be self-evident" which underpinned and maintained the "nation
state" misrepresented/branded as the "United States of America" through a change in the
assays of the amalga mutual benefit/hold these truths to be self-evident.
The last hurrah of the "red experts" – Mr. Brezhnev and associates – despite
analyses/forecasts from various agencies agreed, detente based on spheres of influence
facilitating through interaction/complicity various fiats including but not restricted to
fiat currency, fiat economy, fiat politics all dependent on mutations of "we the people hold
these truths to be self-evident".
This interaction also facilitated processes which accelerated the demise of the "Soviet
Union" and its continuing transcendence by the Russian Federation – the choice of title
being a notice of intent that some interpreted as the "End of History" whilst others
interpreted as lateral opportunity facilitated by the hubris of the "End of History".
The "red experts" were not unique in their illusions; another pertinent example is the
strategy of the PLO in maintaining the illusion of the two state solution/"Oslo accords"
facilitating the continuing colonial project branded as "Israel".
Mr. Brzezinski was one of the others who interpreted the "End of History" as linear
opportunity where the assay of amalga of form could be changed to maintain content/function
which was/is to "still" control all the players.
However in any interactive system neither omniscience nor sole agency/control is possible,
whilst by virtue of interaction the complicity of all can be encouraged in various ways to
facilitate useful outcomes in furtherance of purpose, whilst illusions of the "End of
History" and the search for the holy grail of "Full Spectrum Dominance" acted as both
accelerators and multipliers in the process of encouragement, whilst obscuring this process
in open sight through the opponents' amalga of reliance on "plausible belief based in part on
projection", "exceptionalism" and associated hubris.
The "nation state" subsuming illusions of mutual benefit and mutual purpose has always
been a function of the half-lives of components of its ideological facades and practices
– sexual intercourse wasn't invented in 1963 and "The "nation-state" as a fundamental
unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force" wasn't initiated
in 1970.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 13:43
"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the
private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is
produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the
resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the
political system can make some difference -- I don't want to say it's zero -- but the
differences are going to be very slight." ~ Noam Chomsky
Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in
the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a
"peace dividend" following the end of WWII. To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only
acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of
discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/
. We live in a country of military socialism, in which military citizens have all types of
benefits, on condition they join the military-industrial-complex. This being so, there is no
need for real "intelligence", there is no need to "understand" what goes on is foreign
countries, there no need to be right about what might happen or worry about consequences.
What is important is stimulate the economy by spending on arms. From Korean war, when the US
dropped more bombs than it had on Nazi Germany, through Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
etc etc the US policy was a winning one not for those who got bombed (and could not fight
back) but for the weapons industry and military contractors. Is the NYTimes ever going to
discuss this aspect? Or any one in the MSM?
All that and we constantly have to endure the bankster/MIC-controlled media proclaiming
everyone who joins the military as "heroes" defending our precious"freedoms." The media mafia
is evil.
Walter , September 14, 2018 at 09:26
The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the
"Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21
this year. The transcript is at :
"It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American
power. "
Tellingly the "official" State Department copy is changed and omits the true spoken
words
I would propose that the zionish aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade The ISIS?Saudi?Zionist games divides the New
Silk Road and the Eurasian land mass and exists to throttle said pathways.
Interestingly the latter essay is attributed to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimer Papava
Brother Comrade Putin knows the game. The US has to maintain the fiction for the public
that it does not know the game, and is consequently obliged to maintain a vast public
delusion, hence "fake news" and all the rest.
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 13:49
"I would propose that the zionish aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade"
Some have an attraction to book-ends.
Once upon a time the Eurasian book-ends were Germany and Japan, and the Western Asian
book-ends Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This "strategy" is based upon the notion that bookend-ness is a state of inertia which in
any interactive system is impossible except apparently to those embedded in "we the people
hold these truths to be self-evident".
Consequently some have an attraction to book-ends.
Walter , September 15, 2018 at 12:31
If I understand you correctly, then yes, some imagine that a static situation can exist.
This a natural but delusional way of seeing the world, of course – especially because
Chin and Rus are able to liquidate any counter-forces that attempt to create or maintain
"book-ends.
The actual spoken words to the Senate of Mr. Michell are very significant, as the removal
of them from the ostensibly real, but actually false, State Department "Transcript" implies.
Foolish Mr. Michell! He accidentally spoke the true objective of US foreign policy and also
the domestic objective – total bamboozlement of the US population "prepare the country
for " (Obvious, world war against the Heartland states that fail to "cooperate"
(surrender).
People ought to read the pdf what Michell actually spoke all of it and consider the
logical implications. Michell has a big mouth Good. He confirms the dark truths
The guilty according to circumstantial evidence has confessed his guilt so to say;
confirming the crime
An Israeli-Saudi "Greater Israel" dividing Syria between Saud and zion is of course a goal
that in effect would be a "book-end".
Too late now as it is clear that Syrian skies are probably going to soon be "no-fly-zone"
for foreign invaders
Then will come the "pitch-forks", as Napoleon's retreat from Moscow illustrated
OlyaPola , September 16, 2018 at 04:25
"If I understand you correctly, then yes, some imagine that a static situation can exist.
This a natural but delusional way of seeing the world"
Absolutes including stasis don't exist but the belief of others in book-ends including
extensive foreign bases are lands of opportunities for others facilitating pitch forking
without extensive travel.
Consequently some perceive that the opponents have hopes and wishes which they seek to
represent as "strategies" and "tactics" and some opportunities of lateral challenge derived
there-from.
Some would hold that the opponents' have a greater assay of the rubbing sticks school of
thermo-dynamics in "their" amalga of perception, in some regards even less perceptive than
Heraclitus although Heraclitus lived in his time/interactions as the interaction below
suggests.
One of the consequences is the opponents tendency to bridge doubt by belief to attain
comfort through iteration and subsequent projection, facilitating lateral opportunities for
others with greater perception of fission/metamorphosis/transcendence including the
"unintended consequences" -at least in the opponents' perception – without resort to
Mr. Heisenberg's deliberations, leading to some of the opponents resorting to snake-oil sales
techniques suggesting that their intent/purpose was always what they perceived to be the
concept/construct "chaos".
A further illustration of this and how it was/is not limited to present opponents citing
trajectories during the period 1968 – 1973 and some subsequent consequences was
broadcast through this portal on the 14th of September 2018 but not "published" possibly in
ignorance of Mr. Bulgakov's contention that manuscripts don't burn.
The examples used were detente on the bases of spheres of influence agreed by the
Politburo despite contrary advice from many agencies, the strategy of the PLO and half-life
of these beliefs in the strategies of Hamas.
Detente on the basis of sphere of influence facilitated fiat currency, fiat politics, and
fiat re-branding – "neo-liberalism" -, colonial projects in Western Asia, and how
opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process (Stop the Empires War on Russia slogan being a useful example) and those
not so immersed helped facilitate the ongoing transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the
Russian Federation – the title being a notice of intent that opponents perceived as the
"End of History" as functions of their framing and projection.
OlyaPola , September 16, 2018 at 07:51
Some hold that New York, New York was so good they named it twice, whilst some others
wonder whether they named it twice to make it easier for the inhabitants to locate.
Following the precautionary principle I attach below a further illustration of :
" . the opponents have hopes and wishes which they seek to represent as "strategies" and
"tactics" and some opportunities of lateral challenge derived there-from ..
"One of the consequences is the opponents tendency to bridge doubt by belief to attain
comfort through iteration and subsequent projection, facilitating lateral opportunities for
others with greater perception of fission/metamorphosis/transcendence including the
"unintended consequences" -at least in the opponents' perception – without resort to
Mr. Heisenberg's deliberations, leading to some of the opponents resorting to snake-oil sales
techniques suggesting that their intent/purpose was always what they perceived to be the
concept/construct "chaos".
which was alluded to in the "unpublished" broadcast which referenced
1. "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970.
2. Mr. P.C. Roberts' Alienation in the USSR (1971)
3. Mr Andrei Amalrik's Can the Soviet Union last until 1984 (1969).
in illustration of interactive amalga which some call Russiagate, presumably because the
water had flowed but apparently not under the bridge.
The recent US presidential election process including the "outcomes" were relatively easy
to predict
and required no encouragement from outside – doing "nothing" being a trajectory of
doing for those not trapped in the can do/must do conflation.
Some don't understand Russian very well and so instead of understanding Mr. Putin's remark
that Mr. Trump was "colourful" which has connotations to some with facility in the Russian
culture/language, some sought to bridge doubt by belief to attain expectation on the basis of
"plausible belief".
An increasing sum of some are no longer so immersed as illustrated in
whilst perceptual frames often have significant half-lives.
exiled off mainstreet , September 14, 2018 at 00:42
This is a great series of articles and the comments, including those having reservations,
are intelligent. Since those comments appearing not to appear later seem to have appeared,
mechanical difficulties of some sort seem to have been what occurred. I hope Mr. Tedesky, one
of the most valued commentators writing in the comments, continues his work.
Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy
since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0.
In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum
between 1990 and 2010. Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between
"Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China
however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the
geopolitical war between the two. Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of
the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to
control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US
must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus,
what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948.
Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing.
Rob Roy , September 15, 2018 at 00:16
Mr. Etler,
I think you are mostly right except in the first Cold War, the Soviets and US Americans were
both involved in this "war." What you call Cold War 2.0 is in the minds and policies of only
the US. Russian is not in any way currently like the Soviet Union, yet the US acts in all
aspects of foreign attitude and policy as though that (very unpleasant period in today's
Russians' minds) still exists. It does not. You says there was "merely a 20 year interregnum"
and things have picked up and continued as a Cold War. Only in the idiocy of the USA,
certainly not in the minds of Russian leadership, particularly Putin's who now can be
distinguished as the most logical, realistic and competent leader in the world.
Thanks to H. Clinton being unable to become president, we have a full blown Russiagate which
the MSM propaganda continues to spread. There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a
false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure
if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from
doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 13:41
"This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability."
Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign
policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the
contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those
regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's
wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off.
Conjuring up Heraclitus..Time is a River, constantly changing. And we face downstream,
unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past.
The attempt has an effect, many effects, but it cannot stop Time.
The Russian and the Chinese have clinched the unification of the Earth Island, "Heartland"
This ended the ability to control global commerce by means of navies – the methods of
the Sea Peoples over the last 500 years are now failed. The US has no way of even seeing this
fact other than force and violence to restore the status quo ante .
Thus World War, as we see
Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 09:38
"Conjuring up Heraclitus "
"And we face downstream, unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past."
Time is a synonym of interaction the perception of which and opportunities derived
therefrom being functions of analysing interactions which require notions and analyses of
upstream-perceived transition point (similar to the concept/construct zero)-downstream
lateral processes, which Heraclitus perceived and practiced.
Heraclitus lived in a previous time/interaction and the perception and uses of
thermodynamics have laterally changed since Heraclitus' time.
Omniscience can never exist in any lateral system, but time/interaction has facilitated
the increase of perceptions and lateral opportunities to facilitate various futures and their
encouragement through processes of fission – the process of strategy formulation,
strategy implementation, strategy evaluation, and strategy modulation refers.
Framing including attempts to deny agency to others and hence interaction thereby denying
time, leads to strategic myopia, and when outcomes vary from expectations/hopes/wishes lead
the myopic to attempt to bridge doubt by belief to attain comfort.
Categorical imperatives are kant facilitating can't, best left to Kant, although
apparently some are loathe to agree.
"The US has no way of even seeing this fact other than force and violence to restore the
status quo ante ."
The temporary socio-economic arrangement misrepresented/branded as "The United States of
America" has a vested interest in seeking to deny time/interaction including through
"exceptionalism" and a history of flailings and consequences derived therefrom.
"Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China
and Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US "
As above, Heraclitus lived in a previous time and the perception and uses of
thermodynamics have laterally changed since Heraclitus' time although apparently not
informing the perceptions and practices of some.
Understandably Heraclitus sometimes relied within his framing on notions of moments of
stasis/absolutes (steady states) such as opposites, where as like in all areas of
thermo-dynamics a more modern framework would include the notions of amalga with varying
interactive half-lives.
It would appear that your contribution is also subject to such "paradox" as in "China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US "
Perhaps a more illuminating but more complex formulation would be found in :
"In other parts of planet earth the assay of amalga and their varying interactive
half-lives differ from those asserted to exist within the temporary socio-economic
arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America" thereby facilitating
opportunities to transcend coercive relationships such as those practiced by the temporary
socio-economic arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America", by
co-operative socio-economic relations conditioned by the half-lives of perceptions and
practices derived therefrom.
In part that contributed and continues to contribute to the lateral process of
transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the Russian Federation previously leading to a limited
debate whether to nominate Mr. Brezhinsky, Mr.Clinton, Mr. Fukuyama or Mr. Wolfowitz for the
Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts facilitating the transcendence of the temporary
socio-economic arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America".
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2018 at 13:29
I guess I missed this one, Patrick. Great overview but let me put it in a slightly
different context. You start with the end of the cold war but I don't. I could go all the way
back to the early days of the country and our proclamation of manifest destiny. The US has
long thought that it was the one ring to rule them all. But for most of that time the
strength of individual members of the rest of the world constrained the US from running amok.
That constraint began to be lifted after the ruling clique in Europe committed seppuku in
WWI. It was completely lifted after WWII. But that was 75 years ago. This is now and most of
the world has recovered from the world wide destruction of human and physical capital known
as WWII. The US is going to have to learn how to live with constraints again but it will take
a shock. The US is going to have to lose at something big time. Europe cancelling the
sanctions? The sanctions on Russia don't mean squat to the US but it's costing Europe
billions. This highlights the reality that the "Western Alliance" (read NATO) is not really
an alliance of shared goals and objectives. It's an alliance of those terrified by fascism
and what it can do. They all decided that they needed a "great father" to prevent their
excesses again. One wonders if either the world or Europe would really like the US to come
riding in like the cavalry to places like Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Blindly following
Washington's directions can be remarkably expensive for Europe and they get nothing but
refugees they can't afford. Something will ultimately have to give.
The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was the US's financial weakness. It's
been a long time since the US was a creditor nation. We've been a debtor nation since at
least the 80s. The world doesn't need debtor nations and the only reason they need us is the
primacy of the US dollar. And there are numerous people hammering away at that.
Gerald Wadsworth , September 13, 2018 at 12:59
Why are we trying to hem in China, Russia and Iran? Petro-dollar hegemony, pure and
simple. From our initial deal with Saudi Arabia to buy and sell oil in dollars only, to the
chaos we have inflicted globally to retain the dollar's rule and role in energy trading, we
are finding ourselves threatened – actually the position of the dollar as the sole
trading medium is what is threatened – and we are determined to retain that global
power over oil at all costs. With China and Russia making deals to buy and sell oil in their
own currencies, we have turned both those counties into our enemies du jour, inventing every
excuse to blame them for every "bad thing" that has and will happen, globally. Throw in
Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a host of other countries who want to get out from under our
thumb, to those who tried and paid the price. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
more. Our failed foreign policy is dictated by controlling, as Donald Rumsfeld once opined,
"our oil under their sand." Oil. Pure and simple.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 14:18
I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of
our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank,
and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya
know.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 15:33
I agree, Gerald. Along with ensuring access to "our" off-shore oil fields, enforcing the
petro-dollar system is equally significant, and seems to be the mainspring for much of our
recent foreign policy militarism. If this system were to unravel, the dollar's value would
tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases which make the world
safe for democracy? Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know.
Anonymous Coward , September 13, 2018 at 22:40
+1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and
Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. Also note that
anyone trying to retain control of their currency and not letting "The Market" (private
banks) totally control them is a Great Devil we need to fight, e.g. Libya and China. And note
(2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the
entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks
MichaelWme , September 13, 2018 at 12:18
It's called the Thucydides trap. NATO (US/UK/France/Turkey) have said they will force
regime change in Syria. Russia says it will not allow regime change in Syria. Fortunately, as
a Frenchman and an Austrian explained many years ago, and NATO experts say is true today,
regime change in Russia is a simple matter, about the same as Libya or Panamá. I
forget the details, but I assume things worked out well for the Frenchman and the Austrian,
and will work out about the same for NATO.
Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't
matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere
he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy.
Truer words were never spoken, and it is the reason why I know, at least, that Russia did
not interfere in the US elections. What would be the point, from his viewpoint, and it is not
only just his opinion. You cannot help but see at this point that that he said is obviously
true.
TJ , September 13, 2018 at 13:47
What an excellent point. Why bother influencing the elections when it doesn't matter who
is elected -- the same policies will continue.
Bart Hansen , September 13, 2018 at 15:43
Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro:
"I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the
same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is
elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing
dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones.
These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is
what happens with every administration."
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 08:02
Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to
Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose,
he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between
Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful
expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate.
Great to see Patrick Lawrence writing for Consortium News.
He ends his article with: "This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign
policy. Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
"
Speaking of consequences, how about the human toll this foreign policy has taken on so
many people in this world. To me, the gravest sin of all.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 08:46
I agree with Patric Lawrence when he states "Personalizing Washington's regression into
the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of
deeper understanding." and I also agree that 'Seven decades of global hegemony have left the
State Department, Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think
about other than the simplicities of East-West tension.' But I seriously disagree when he
declares that: "The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are
systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the
next with little variance other than at the margins.'' Certainly the missteps are true, but I
would argue that the "personalities" are crucial to America's crisis of Foreign Policy. After
all it was likely that JFK's American University address was the public declaration of his
intention to lead America in the direction of better understanding of Sovereign Rights that
likely got him killed. It is precisely those "personalities" that we must understand and
identify before we can move on
Skip Scott , September 13, 2018 at 09:35
Bob-
I see what you're saying, but I believe Patrick is also right. Many of the people involved
in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather
than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are
not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance. Remember when
"Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that
became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy
seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are
embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking
system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the
world than have to share.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 14:42
You're completely right Skip, that's what we all must recognize and ultimately react to,
and against.
Thank you.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:46
I would add that human beings are the key components in this system. The system is built
and shaped by them. Some are greedy, lying predators and some are honest and egalitarian. Bob
Parry was one of the latter, thankfully.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:30
Skip, very good points. For those interested further, here's an excellent talk on the
bankers behind the manufacutured wars, including the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
as a front organization and control mechanism. "The Shadows of Power; the CFR and decline of America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6124&v=wHa1r4nIaug
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 09:42
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 14:51
Many thanks Joe, I admire your persistence. Clearly Bob Woodward has been part of the
problem rather than the solution. The swamp is deep and murky
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:36
Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his
consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal.
Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/
will , September 15, 2018 at 22:30
people have been pointing out that Woodward is the exact kind of guy the CIA would recruit
since shortly after Watergate.
The document Gary Cohen removed off Trump's desk –
which you can read here – states an intent to end a free trade agreement with South
Korea.
"White House aides feared if Trump sent the letter, it could jeopardize a top-secret US
program that can detect North Korean missile launches within seven seconds."
Sounds like Trump wanted to play the "I am such a great deal maker, the GREATEST deal
maker of all times!" game with the South Koreans. Letter doesn't say anything about
withdrawing troops or missiles.
Funny how ***TOP-SECRET US PROGRAMS*** find their way into books and newspapers these
days, plentiful as acorns falling out of trees.
You're welcome, Joe. These things get confusing. Who knows anymore what is real and what
isn't?
Trump did indeed say something about ending military exercises and pulling troops out of
South Korea. His staff did indeed contradict him on this. It just wasn't in relation to the
letter Cohn "misplaced," AFAIK.
Nobody asked me, but if they did, I'd say the US interfered enough in Korean affairs by
killing a whole bunch of 'em in the Korean War. Leave'em alone. Let North and South try to
work it out. Tired of hearing about "regime change.'
Bob once again my comment disappeared I hope someone retrieves it. Joe
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:24
Here's what I wrote:
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:24
Again
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 14:03
Thanks for retrieving my comments sorry for the triplicating of them. Joe
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:25
3 of my comments disappeared boy does this comment board have issues. I'm beginning to
think I'm being targeted.
Deniz , September 13, 2018 at 17:58
Dont take it personally, I see it more of a lawnmower than a scalpel.
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 08:36
My comment has disappeared too-it was a reply to anastasia.
Kiwiantz , September 13, 2018 at 08:20
Spoiler Nation of America! You got that dead right! China builds infrastructure in other
Countries & doesn't interfere with the citizens & their Sovereignty. Contrast that
with the United Spoiler States of America, they run roughshod over overs & just bomb the
hell out of Countries & leaves devastation & death wherever they go! And there is
something seriously wrong & demented with the US mindset concerning, the attacks on 9/11?
In Syria the US has ended up arming & supporting the very same organisation of Al
QaedaTerrorists, morphed into ISIS, that hijacked planes & flew them into American
targets! During 2017 & now in 2018, it defies belief how warped this US mentality is when
ISIS can so easily & on demand, fake a chemical attack to suck in the stupid American
Military & it's Airforce & get them to attack Syria, like lackeys taking orders from
Terrorist's! The US Airforce is the airforce of Al Qaeda & ISIS! Why? Because the US
can't stomach Russia, Syria & Iran winning & defeating Terrorism thus ending this
Proxy War they started! Russia can't be allowed to win at any cost because the humiliation
& loss of prestige that the US would suffer as a Unipolar Empire would signal the decline
& end of this Hegemonic Empire so they must continue to act as a spoiler to put off that
inevitable decline! America can't face reality that it's time in the sun as the last Empire,
is over!
Sally Snyder , September 13, 2018 at 07:57
Here is what Americans really think about the rabid anti-Russia hysteria coming from
Washington:
Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
Waynes World , September 13, 2018 at 07:37
Finally some words of truth about how we want our way not really democracy. A proper way
to look at the world is what you said toward the end a desire to make people's lives
better.
mike k , September 13, 2018 at 07:14
Simply put – the US is the world's biggest bully. This needs to stop. Fortunately
the bully's intended victims are joining together to defeat it's crazy full spectrum
dominance fantasies. Led by Russia and China, we can only hope for the success of the
resistance to US aggression.
This political, economic, military struggle is not the only problem the world is facing
now, but is has some priority due to the danger of nuclear war. Global pollution, climate
disaster, ecological collapse and species extinction must also be urgently dealt with if we
are to have a sustainable existence on Earth.
OlyaPola , September 13, 2018 at 04:39
Alpha : "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a
post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept
global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence."
Omega: "Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global
stability."
Framing is always a limiter of perception.
Among the consequences of the lateral trajectories from Alpha to Omega referenced above,
is the "unintended consequence" of the increase of the principal opponents, their resolve and
opportunities to facilitate the transcendence of arrangements based on coercion by
arrangements based on co-operation.
Opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process.
John Chuckman,
Wow. Thanks! I have just begun reading your commentaries this week and I am impressed with
how clearly you analyze and summarize key points about many topics.
Thank you so much for writing what are often the equivalent of books, but condensed into
easy to read and digest summaries.
I have ordered your book and look forward to reading that.
Regarding the talk of a hypothetical "Iran War", I do not think Washington will actually try
invading Iran, for a couple of reasons.
1. The US does not currently have enough troops to occupy Iran. It would require a
military draft. This would cause massive opposition inside the USA (easily the biggest
internal US political turmoil since the Vietnam War). And the youngest American adults that
would get drafted are the least religious US generation ever (i.e. they are not Evangelical
fundamentalists who want to throw their lives away for "Israel" and the "End Times").
2. Where would Washington launch the invasion from? Iraq? The US will soon be asked to
leave Iraq, and if Washington does not comply it will very quickly turn into another quagmire
for the US just like it was in the 2000s. And if they tried invading from Afghanistan, Iran
could always arm the Taliban. And besides, would Pakistan really allow the US military to
pass through its territory to Afghanistan to invade Iran? I think not.
3. Russia would obviously provide Iran with military supplies, intelligence, and
diplomatic support, making any invasion attempt very costly for the US.
Therefore, Washington's options are rather limited to missile strikes, CIA funded
terrorist attacks, and other lesser forms of meddling.
The price of crude oil has jumped over $2 USD on the world markets since the news
I expect the US to fully resist being booted out of Iraq (which would also make it's two
major positions in Syria highly untenable). who could now believe that US troops in Iraq and
Syria won't come under sustained attack now, by the many allies Iran has in the area?
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani considers "the #US attack against the #BaghdadAirport
is a clear violation of #Iraq sovereignty".
That is clear support for the US withdrawal from #Iraq.
AND
S Sistani condemns the "attack against Iraqi (not Iranian-militia) position on the borders
killing our Iraqi sons to the hateful attack on #BaghdadAirport is a violation and
internationally unlawful (US) act against anti-#ISIS hero(s) leading to difficult times for
#Iraq".
Really, the ball is in Iraq's court. This is an attack on Iraqi sovereignty as much as an act
of war on Iran. We will now see what the Iraqi are made of.
Trump was personally responsible for having the organisation Soleimani led declared a
terrorist organisation. Time to quit the "Trump is a dumbfuck led by others" Trump is around
70 and has been his own boss all his life. He is now commander in chief of the US military.
He gives the orders, nobody else. He doesn't give a shit about the cold war and Europe, hence
people thinking he is a peacenik. What he does care about is enemies of Israel and control of
energy.
The best revenge the Iraninans could have would be the expulsion of US troops from Iraq and
Syria, which by the way was also the overarching goal of Soleimani...
Trump doesn't give a shit about soft power. He believes in hard power. Iraq has no defence
against the US, and Trump intends to attack Iran. He needs a 9 11 to take the American
population with him.
Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures,
in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, as
well as international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under
the control of ISIL also known as Da'esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate
their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL also
known as Da'esh as well as ANF, and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and
entities associated with Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the United
Nations Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the International Syria Support
Group (ISSG) and endorsed by the UN Security Council, pursuant to the Statement of the
International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November, and to eradicate the safe haven
they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria;
USA have made it very clear that they are not leaving Syria and the same thinking/excuses
likely applies to Iraq.
Some will argue that using UN2249 as justification for over-staying and virtual
occupation is wrong-headed. Nevertheless, USA claims to remain to ensure against a resurgence
of ISIS. Clearly they intend to stay until their goals are met or they are forced out
militarily.
I suspect I'm not the only MoA barfly who thinks the assassination of Hossein Soleymani could
have been planned with Mossad or other organisations and individuals in Israeli society.
The Iraqis are certainly capable of making life for the US very uncomfortable in Iraq and
Syria, even if not force withdrawal. The present US structure and numbers depend on Iraqi
acquiescence, and that's about shot, even before the assassination. If the position is to be
maintained without Iraqi acquiescence, then thousands more troops would be required, and that
wouldn't go down well back home in the States. That's one of the reasons why the act was a
grave miscalculation.
This was not Trump`s decision. Trump had to take responsibilty to show he is in command. He
will soon realize that he was played by the CIA and the Israelis. By then it is too late.
The US and its vassals are speeding up confrontation with the Axis because they know that the
showdown is inevitable. However, It will not happen according to the US timetable.
Keep a good supply of popcorn on hand. The pandora box has plenty of surprises. The question
remains,
I figure Iran will have to retaliate and thus this will likely escalate. The Saker initially
thinks war is 80% certain, I think it's probably a bit higher than that.
Posted by: TEP | Jan 3 2020 10:49 utc | 36
The Iranians would be foolish to allow themselves to be goaded like that.
For weeks, it was Iranian consulates and facilities that bore the brunt of Iraqi
popular unrest. Iran reacted with restraint. With our lethal attacks on the Kata'ib
Hezbollah, we changed that. Pompeo, Esper and Trump are keeping up the trash talking.
Threatening Iran by killing Iraqis whose ass was that brilliant diplomatic strategy pulled
from?
####
January
2, 2020 at 6:56 am GMT 200 Words Intelligence agencies recruit pornographers to lead their
disinformation operations, apparently because porn purveyors are so lacking in ethics they will
tell public lies about anything
The alleged 'founder' of Wikipedia is the arch-Zionist Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales, who attends
intimate birthday parties of Presidents of Israel
Wales was 'selected' for this role after being in the pornography-selling business
Bombing a civilian airport in another country in order to assassinate Iranian and Iraq
leaders is a very bad diplomacy ;-)
It might well be that today this idiot blow up his chances fro reelection because revenge is
dish that should be served cold and Iran can postpone it for 11 months or so.
What is interesting is that neoliberal MSM are glad and still talking about Zelensky and
impeachment. What a country ! It looks like the decade of the twenties can be the decade of
another World War. "In every war the first casualty is truth."
Bombing a civilian airport in another country in order to assassinate Iranian and Iraq
leaders is a very bad diplomacy ;-)
It might well be that today this idiot blow up his chances fro reelection because revenge is
dish that should be served cold and Iran can postpone it for 11 months or so.
What is interesting is that neoliberal MSM are glad and still talking about Zelensky and
impeachment. What a country ! It looks like the decade of the twenties can be the decade of
another World War. "In every war the first casualty is truth."
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the
New York Times
and
Politico
published
major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments
will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of
anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had
little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying
attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other
indicators
on
the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and
draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the
decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of
disparaging
and
minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore
attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few
establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media
coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street
Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being
ignored
by
corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For
the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that
a
Sanders presidency is a real possibility
. The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets
that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist
strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump
Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments
with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply
to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the
campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and
lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder
how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays
demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does
not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to
preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even
intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta
& historical
].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard
following by trolling lib-prog sites.
Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't
exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is
shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable
social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own
reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born
(1949, 1965)
Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
, who points out that all knowledge, including
natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally
everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small."
(Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is
being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the
political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has
energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics
to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more
important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's
the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am
repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are
proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them
Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me
or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to
be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context
of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid
and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in
this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why
such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political
system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a
significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may
be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's
approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a
small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach
it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if
you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can
understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised."
Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for
the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our
citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to
activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said
this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party
candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even
if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be
destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
My guess/bet is that
V4V
believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.
I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still
vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just
admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of
us with some (albeit small) hope?
simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post
some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal
warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am
usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my
liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible?
Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a
vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the
CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to
arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time
I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third
candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he
somehow gets more electoral votes that
both
the major parties combined. If not, it goes to
the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House
majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.
You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic
Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and
can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement
outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is
doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can
down the road to the time you Democrats
finally
realize it isn't going to work. You
obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and
begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya
so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about
them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our
baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's
where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see
this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for
their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the
same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch
doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his
lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three
require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS
will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same
ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII.
But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after
the bombs drop.
"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the
opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
"... That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the rug. ..."
"... The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility ..."
"... What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well, for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors! ..."
B, under the "major stories covered" title you should include Skripal, about which you wrote
many important articles; I believe ultimately - like OPCW and Russiagate - it will prove to
be history-making event in terms of impact on public perceptions of media and the ability of
the media to control public opinion. Probably eventually whistleblowers will come forward
like the OPCW, and only thin will it have it's maximum impact.
(Well, the original event was 2018 not 2019, but some of the reports were in 2019
anyway)
My predictions on these issue for next year are:
...
Mainstream media have suppressed all news about the OPCW scandal. This will only change if
major new evidence comes to light.
That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a
permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to
pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main
agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the
rug.
The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on
behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility.
There are a few factors that could influence this independently of major new evidence, such
as the behaviour of a few outlier MSM's that decide to release information (and whether or
not that information then takes off in the public consciousness); pressure that could build
up in social media calling for the MSM to respond and attacking MSM credibility; or other
forms of pressure from the public calling on the MSM to respond. It is therefore a dynamic
that is not entirely predictable.
Both of the above are distinct from the emergence of new major evidence, although both
cases would seem likely to provoke new revelations in turn.
What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well,
for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors!
We need to begin by quickly summarizing what just happened:
General Soleimani was in
Baghdad on an official visit to attend the funeral of the Iraqis murdered by the USA on the
29th The US has now officially claimed responsibility for this murder The Iranian Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
has officially declared that " However, a severe retaliation awaits the criminals who
painted their corrupt hands with his and his martyred companions ' blood last night "
The US paints itself – and Iran – into a corner
The Iranians simply had no other choice than to declare that there will be a retaliation.
There are a few core problems with what happens next. Let's look at them one by one:
First,
it is quite obvious from the flagwaving claptrap in the USA that Uncle Shmuel is "locked and
loaded" for even more macho actions and reaction. In fact, Secretary Esper has basically
painted the US into what I would call an "over-reaction corner" by declaring
that " the game has changed " and that the US will take " preemptive action "
whenever it feels threatened . Thus, the Iranians have to assume that the US will over-react to
anything even remotely looking like an Iranian retaliation. No less alarming is that this
creates the absolutely perfect conditions for a false flag à la " USS Liberty " . Right now, the
Israelis have become at least as big a danger for US servicemen and facilities in the entire
Middle-East as are the Iranians themselves. How? Simple! Fire a missile/torpedo/mine at any USN
ship and blame Iran. We all know that if that happens the US political elites will do what they
did the last time around: let US servicemen die and protect Israel at all costs (read up on the
USS Liberty if you don't know about it) There is also a very real risk of "spontaneous
retaliations" by other parties (not Iran or Iranian allies) . In fact, in his message,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has specifically declared that " Martyr Suleimani is an international
face to the Resistance and all lovers of the Resistance share a demand in retaliation for his
blood . All friends – as well as all enemies – must know the path of Fighting and
Resistance will continue with double the will and the final victory is decidedly waiting for
those who fight in this path. " He is right, Soleimani was loved and revered by many people
all over the globe, some of whom might decided to avenge his death. This means that we might
well see some kind of retaliation which, of course, will be blamed on Iran but which might not
be the result of any Iranian actions at all. Finally, should the Iranians decide not to
retaliate, then we can be absolutely sure that Uncle Shmuel will see that as a proof of his
putative "invincibility" and take that as a license to engage in even more provocative actions.
A spiritual father kisses his beloved son
If we look at these four factors together we would have to come to the conclusion that Iran
HAS to retaliate and HAS to do so publicly .
Why?
Because whether the Iranian do retaliate or not, they are almost guaranteed another US
attack in retaliation for anything looking like a retaliation, whether Iran is involved or not
.
The dynamics of internal US politics
Next, let's look at the internal political dynamics in the USA:
I have always claimed that Donald Trump is a "disposable President" for the Neocons . What
do I mean by that? I mean that the Neocons have used Trump to do all sorts of truly
fantastically dumb things (pretty much ALL his policy decisions towards Israel and/or Syria)
for a very simple reason. If Trump does something extremely dumb and dangerous, he will either
get away with it, in which case the Neocons will be happy, or he will either fail or the
consequences of his decisions will be catastrophic, at which point the Neocons will jettison
him and replace him by an even more subservient individual (say Pence or Pelosi). In other
words, for the Neocons to have Trump do something both fantastically dangerous and
fantastically stupid is a win-win situation !
Right now, the Dems (still the party favored by the Neocons) seem to be dead-set into
committing political suicide with that ridiculous (and treacherous!) impeachment nonsense. Now
think about this from the Neocon point of view. They might be able to get the US goyim to
strike Iran AND get rid of Trump. I suppose that their thinking will go something like
this:
Trump looks set to win 2020. We don't want that. However, we have been doing everything in
our power to trigger a US attack on Iran since pretty much 1979. Let's have Trump do that. If
he "wins" (by whatever definition – more about that further below), we win. If he
loses, the Iranians will still be in a world of pain and we can always jettison him like a
used condom (used to supposedly safely screw somebody with no risks to yourself).
Furthermore, if the region explodes, this will help our beloved Bibi and unite US Jewry
behind Israel. Finally, if Israel gets attacked, we will immediately demand (and, of course,
obtain) a massive US attack on Iran, supported by the entire US political establishment and
media. And, lastly, should Israel be hit hard, then we can always use our nukes and tell the
goyim that "Iran wants to gas 6 million Jews and wipe the only democracy in the
Middle-East off the face of the earth" or something equally insipid.
Ever since Trump made it into the White House, we saw him brown-nose the Israel Lobby with a
delectation which is extreme even by US standards. I suppose that this calculation goes
something along the lines of "with the Israel Lobby behind me, I am safe in the White House".
He is obviously too stupidly narcissistic to realize that he has been used all along. To his
(or one of his key advisor's) credit, he did NOT allow the Neocons to start a major war against
Russia, China, the DPRK, Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, etc. However, Iran is a totally different
case as it is the "number one" target the Neocons and Israel wanted strike and destroy. The
Neocons even had this
motto " boys go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran ". Now that Uncle Shmuel has lost
all this wars of choice, now that the US armed forces have no credibility left, now is the time
to restore the "macho" self-image of Uncle Shmuel and, indeed, "go to Tehran" so to speak.
Biden immediately capitalizes on these events
The
Dems (Biden) are already saying that Trump just " tossed a stick of dynamite into a
tinderbox ", as if they cared about anything except their own, petty, political goals and
power. Still, I have to admit that Biden's metaphor is correct – that is exactly what
Trump (and his real bosses) have done.
If we assume that I am correct in my evaluation that Trump is the Neocon's/Israeli's
"disposable President", then we also have to accept the fact that the US armed forces the
Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable armed forces" and that the US as a nation is also the
Neocon's/Israeli's "disposable nation". This is very bad news indeed, as this means that from
the Neocon/Israeli point of view, there are no real risks into throwing the US into a war with
Iran .
In truth, the position of the Dems is a masterpiece of hypocrisy which can be summed up as
follows: the assassination of Soleimani is a wonderful event, but Trump is a monster for
making it happen .
A winner, no?
What would the likely outcome of a US war on Iran be?
I have written so often about this topic that I won't go into all the possible scenarios
here. All I will say is the following:
For the USA, "winning" means achieving regime change
or, failing that, destroying the Iranian economy. For Iran, "winning" simply means to survive
the US onslaught.
This is a HUGE asymmetry which basically means that the US cannot win and Iran can only
win.
And, not, the Iranians don't have to defeat CENTCOM/NATO! They don't need to engage in large
scale military operations. All they need to do is: remain "standing" once the dust settles
down.
Ho Chi Minh once told the French " You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of
yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win ". This is exactly why Iran
will eventually prevail, maybe at a huge cost (Amalek must be destroyed, right?), but that will
still be a victory.
Now let's look at the two most basic types of war scenarios: outside
Iran and inside Iran.
The Iranians, including General Soleimani himself, have publicly declared many times that by
trying to surround Iran and the Middle-East with numerous forces and facilities the USA have
given Iran a long list of lucrative targets. The most obvious battlefield for a proxy war is
clearly Iraq where there are plenty of pro and anti Iranian forces to provide the conditions
for a long, bloody and protracted conflict (Moqtada al-Sadr has just declared that the Mahdi
Army will be remobilized). But Iraq is far from being the only place where an explosion of
violence can take place: the ENTIRE MIDDLE-EAST is well within Iranian "reach", be it by direct
attack or by attack by sympathetic/allied forces. Next to Iraq, there is also Afghanistan and,
potentially, Pakistan. In terms of a choice of instruments, the Iranian options range from
missile attacks, to special forces direct action strikes, to sabotage and many, many more
options. The only limitation here is the imagination of the Iranians and, believe me, they have
plenty of that!
If such a retaliation happens, the US will have two basic options: strike at Iranian friends
and allies outside Iran or, as Esper has now suggested, strike inside Iran. In the latter case,
we can safely assume that any such attack will result in a massive Iranian retaliation on US
forces and facilities all over the region and a closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Keep in mind that the Neocon motto " boys go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran "
implicitly recognizes the fact that a war against Iran would be qualitatively (and even
quantitatively) different war than a war against Iraq. And, this is true, if the US seriously
plans to strike inside Iran they would be faced with an explosion which would make all the wars
since WWII look minor in comparison. But the temptation to prove to the world that Trump and
his minions are "real men" as opposed to "boys" might be too strong, especially for a president
who does not understand that he is a disposable tool in the hands of the Neocons.
Now,
let's quickly look at what will NOT happen
Russia and/or China will not get militarily involved in this one. Neither will the USA use
this crisis as a pretext to attack Russia and/or China. The Pentagon clearly has no stomach for
a war (conventional or nuclear) against Russia and neither does Russia have any desire for a
war against the USA. The same goes for China. However, it is important to remember that Russia
and China have other options, political and covert ones, to really hurt the US and help Iran.
There is the UNSC where Russia and China will block any US resolution condemning Iran. Yes, I
know, Uncle Shmuel does not give a damn about the UN or international law, but most of the rest
of the world very much does. This asymmetry is further exacerbated by Uncle Shmuel's attention
span (weeks at most) with the one of Russia and China (decades). Does that matter?
Absolutely!
If the Iraqis officially declare that the US is an occupation force (which it is), an
occupation force which engages in acts of war against Iraq (which it does) and that the Iraqi
people want Uncle Shmuel and his hypocritical talking points about "democracy" to pack and
leave, what can our Uncle Shmuel do? He will try to resist it, of course, but once the tiny
figleaf of "nation building" is gone, replaced by yet another ugly and brutal US occupation,
the political pressure on the US to get the hell out will become extremely hard to manage, both
outside and even inside the USA.
In fact,
Iranian state television called Trump's order to kill Soleimani " the biggest
miscalculation by the U.S." since World War II. "The people of the region will no longer allow
Americans to stay," it said.
Next, both Russia and China can help Iran militarily with intelligence, weapons systems,
advisors and economically, in overt and covert ways.
Finally, both Russia and China have the means to, shall we say, "strongly suggest" to other
targets on the US "country hit list" that now is the perfect time to strike at US interests
(say, in Far East Asia).
So Russia and China can and will help, but they will do so with what the CIA likes to call
"plausible deniability".
Back The Big Question: what can/will Iran do next?
The Iranians are far most sophisticated players than the mostly clueless US Americans. So
the first thing I would suggest is that the Iranians are unlikely to do something the US is
expecting them to do. Either they will do something totally different, or they will act much
later, once the US lowers its guard (as it always does after declaring "victory").
I asked a well-informed Iranian friend whether it was still possible to avoid war. Here is
what he replied:
Yes I do believe fullscale war can be avoided. I believe that Iran can try to use its
political influence to unite Iraqi political forces to officially ask for the removal of US
troops in Iraq. Kicking the US out of Iraq will mean that they can no longer occupy eastern
Syria either as their troops will be in danger between two hostile states. If the Americans
leave Syria and Iraq, that will be the ultimate revenge for Iran without having fired a
single shot.
I have to say that I concur with this idea: one of the most painful things Iran could do
next would be to use this truly fantastically reckless event to kick the US out of Iraq first,
and Syria next. That option, if it can be exercised, might also protect Iranian lives and the
Iranian society from a direct US attack. Finally, such an outcome would give the murder of
General Soleimani a very different and beautiful meaning: this martyr's blood liberated the
Middle-East!
Finally, if that is indeed the strategy chosen by Iran, this does not at all mean that on a
tactical level the Iranians will not extract a price from US forces in the region or even
elsewhere on the planet. For example, there are some rather credible rumors that the
destruction of PanAm 103 over Scotland was not a Libyan action, but an Iranian one in direct
retaliation for the deliberate shooting down by the USN of IranAir 655 Airbus over the Persian
Gulf. I am not saying that I know for a fact that this is what really happened, only
that Iran does have retaliatory options not limited to the Middle-East.
Conclusion: we
wait for Iran's next move
The Iraqi Parliament is scheduled to debate a resolution demanding the withdrawal of US
forces from Iraq. I will just say that while I do not believe that the US will gentlemanly
agree to any such demands, it will place the conflict in the political realm. That is –
by definition – much more desirable than any form of violence, however justified it might
seem. So I strongly suggest to those who want peace that they pray that the Iraqi MPs show some
honor and spine and tell Uncle Shmuel what every country out there always wanted from the US:
Yankees, go home!
If that happens this will be a total victory for Iran and yet another abject defeat
(self-defeat, really) by Uncle Shmuel. This is the best of all possible scenarios.
But if that does not happen, then all bets are off and the momentum triggered by this latest
act of US terrorism will result in many more deaths.
As of right now (19:24 UTC) I still think that there is a roughly 80% chance of full scale
war in the Middle-East and, again, will leave 20% of "unexpected events" (hopefully good
ones).
The Saker
PS: this is a text I wrote under great time pressure and it has not be edited for typos or
other mistakes. I ask the self-appointed Grammar Gestapo to take a break and not protest again.
Thank you
Saker, je partage votre point de vue, la pire sanction qui pourrait être
infligée aux USA, serait de leur faire quitter l'Irak (et la Syrie par ricochet)
Espérons que le parlement Irakien aura le courage de prendre cette décision
historique, toutes les factions irakiennes sont révoltées par les actions
américaines, le temps est venu pour eux d'en finir avec cette occupation
mortifère.
yandex translate mod
Saker, I share your point of view, the worst sanction that could be imposed on the USA would
be to make them leave Iraq (and Syria by ricochet) let's hope that the Iraqi parliament will
have the courage to take this historic decision, all the Iraqi factions are outraged by the
American actions, the time has come for them to put an end to this deadly occupation.
Seriously how can this happen? The USA leave? The ANZ mercenary army walk away from its
spoils?
USA formally just took control of the Oil Fields in Syria.
USA just asked all non-military to leave Iraq, USA just sent in 3500 new soldiers to
'secure' all Oil Fields in Iraq.
Seriously, there is only "One Outcome" and that is "Greater Israel", and its on track.
We know that in the past almost all the stolen oil from Iraq-Syria was shipped to Israel
via Turkey, where it was re-sold and Israel made an enormous profit.
The neocons can never lose, they're siamese twins with the neo-libs, and all NEO is ANZ;
All MSM, all country's on earth are administered by ANZ agents. Much of the 'war' between
Soros&Adelson left-vs-right NEO is just fighting over scraps that haven't yet been stolen
from the goy. NEOCON & NEOLIB are siamese twins that share a common asshole, they own the
world as the ANZ, the siamese twin is the International-Kleptocrat Elite. They have their
fingers in every nation on earth, including Iran & North-Korea. They have been
controlling China-Russia for 100+ years, all has been planned for year the 'controlled
demolition' of the USA. Most like a an engineered civil-war, followed by an ANZ re-population
of a de-populated USA with a 'beautiful wall' to protects Trumps chosen people.
The soldiers like Gabbi sent to Iraq are just mercenarys. Like Saker say's "Israel owns
the USA", Israel also owns the USA-MIL, the US-GOV, and that includes Gabbi & Trump. The
soliders in Syria&Iraq could very well die there, as the USA that they knew may not be
around in the future, but who cares? Israel controls the oil, and most likely an AIIB-SCO
deal with CHINA-ISRAEL has already been signed, with Israel as the 'Seller of Choice', China
doesn't care, and it respects Israel for its ability to lead the Goy by the nose.
The General is just one man, human life in the eye of the ANZ is worthless, the leaders of
Iran all called themselves "Living Martyrs", now their real power has begun, just like in
Lord of the Rings, when Gandolf was killed, he came back stronger.
IMHO this is all much like a 'magic show', where people talk about what Gabbi says, or
insinuate that USA will leave the mideast, all the while the USA-Israel secures the
middle-east oil fields with USA soldiers.
We know the USD is kaput, we know that Saudi oil is kaput, and the USA knows that in the
future being the worlds largest user of 'portable energy' (oil) that they need infinite free
oil.
Killing the "General", just provides the context to re-occupy Iraq, which now means just
occupying the oil-fields.
"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the
opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
The brain dead 'thankyou for your service' spouting American morons and deluded American
'Christian Zionists' who put another religion before their own (whilst also forgetting about
King Solomans breaking of the Covenenent made with King David they wave in everyones faces)
will be expecting action by Iran before the weekend.
If it does not come they will ignorantly and arrogantly assume 'Victory' and make threats
of further death and murder (and gross hypocracy).
The Iranians (and Russians and Chinese) do not need to act impulsively or recklessly.
Thier time (and ample opportunities to humiliate the arrogant) will come in the months and
years ahead.
Once the world fully wakes up to the fact that the Dollar is the source of all US power
and influence globally, and then turns against it – rejecting it as the evil toilet
paper (and imaginary digits on a screen) that it is, the Satanic empire of the US will
collapse under its own weight and will not be able to support (pay for and bribe) a global
empire. No massive war, no nukes exploding, just the repudiation of worthless pieces of paper
and digits on a screen called the US Dollar.
Thank you, Saker; another brilliant analysis. There are no winners here; but this event was
not unexpected, i.e. U.S. aggression but I am surprised Soleimani was in Iraq and unaware
that something like this wouldn't happen.
Saker, a wise article on the consequences of Soleimani's murder. However, I believe you may
have the wrong 'take' on Trump only being a "disposable President." Miles Mathis wrote an
article on Trump, pre-election, that is pertinent. (Since then, Mathis has been silent on
this matter; he may have been 'warned off'.)
" both Trump's parents died at Long Island Jewish Medical Center."
"So let's return to Friedrich Drumpf, Donald's great-grandfather. Two of his sisters are
listed as Elisabetha Freund and Syblia Schuster. Those are both Jewish surnames So at least
two of Trump's great-aunts married Jewish men. This reminds us that his daughter Ivanka
married a Jewish man, Jared Kushner. We are told this is an anomaly, but it isn't."
"Trump was brought up in Jamaica Estates, Queens, which has a large Jewish population. He
went to Kew-Forest School, ditto. Trump's father was on the Board of Trustees at
Kew-Forest."
"Trump allegedly went to the Wharton School of Business, a famous spook academy."
"Ivana [Trump's former wife] is also Jewish. An early boyfriend was George Syrovatka. That
is a Jewish name. Her first husband was Alfred Winklemeier. Winklemeier is a Jewish name.
Ivana went to McGill University in Montreal, a spook academy we have run across many times.
Geni.com lists her father's name as both Knavs and Zelnícek. I'll give you a hint:
drop the second 'e'. You get Zelnick. It is Yiddish for haberdasher. Clothier. It's Jewish,
too."
"Both Trump and his father ran with top Jews in New York, including Samuel Lindenbaum and
his father Abraham (Bunny), and Roy Cohn. These guys weren't just their attorneys; they were
their enablers."
If we throw-in his moving of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, his recognizing of Israel's
annexation of the Golan Heights, his non-censure of Israeli settlement in occupied Palestine,
and his appointment of pro-Israel & anti-Iran 'advisors', a 'pattern' emerges which is
consistent with Trump being both a crypto-Jew and a Zionist. This state-of-affairs
dramatically changes the odds of escalation to a "US" strike on Iran. If Mathis' assertion is
indeed the case, Soleimani's murder is the deliberate 'kickoff' of a series of events
pre-planned to satisfy Israeli goals
A fine analysis.Trump and Co. are so busy brown nosing the Israelis they don't seem to care
what anyone else thinks. I think every Iraqi not on US payroll will demand Yankee go home,.
The us and its corporate media and the "interagency consensus" makes it unlikely ant rational
decision making will come out of babylon on the Potomac.
This 'could' be contained and may yet well be. Or it could not.
Both Iran and Iraq have been attacked. This was NOT a defensive move. Soleimani had been
declared a terrorist by the US and also declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism.
That is the figleaf of justification the US is providing. What must be considered is that
there is a bill in the US Senate that had passed committee declaring Russia to be a state
sponsor of terrorism. If that comes to pass, could Russia be given the same treatment as just
witnessed. Not to mention that China could also fall into that category at some point soon
using the same .. errr logic.
The point here is that should this be seen as an incident that doesn't directly affect
those countries within the Resistance that weren't directly attacked, or should this be seen
as the beginning of the US campaign to establish a Global Reich while there is still
time?
If the latter is true, then it would be foolish to let this play out as purely a regional
event.
Remember Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
The Anglo Saxons really believe there short presence will prevail against the ancient
dominance the Aryans(the real ones that is the Indo-Iranians) have exercised, physically and
mentally, in the region. They have no idea what they are going up against, technical
knowledge will not win a war.
Dear Saker,
I agree with you that hot war is very likely now and also on the possible USAn goals in such
a war. They had to learn at least a decade ago that a full-scale invasion of Iran would be so
impractical that it is essentially impossible for the Empire to do.
But they do not need that. I said I agreed with you that the USA need not invade: for them
(and the true instigator of this incoming conflict: Israel) it is more than enough if Iran is
devastated by naval and airstrikes.
So, in fact this war can and will be won by both sides: Iran may survive a full-scale war but
with her economy and infrastructure destroyed. That is what you called a win-win.
However, you also say that "Russia and/or China will not get militarily involved in this
one". And therein lies my problem.
Now please enlighten me why on Earth would the USA not deploy a couple of dozens of tactical
nukes in a disarming, debilitating first strike, thus decapitating both the political and the
military leadership of Iran, destroying all nuclear sites and also the bulk of the Iranian
infrastructure and economy (the latter one with mainly sustained conventional strikes for a
couple of weeks).
Why would they hesitate? Knowing that they need not afraid of another nuclear-armed country's
interference it would be quite rational to do so. If this happens, Iran will be in no
position for the coming decades to assist anyone else: no more aid for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq,
Palestine and Yemen. In this case it really does not matter anymore if the current theocratic
democracy of Iran survives or goes away, at least from the Empire's point of view. As a
matter of fact, the USA may even claim "humanitarian reasons" to employ nuclear weapons: it
would be claimed as a painful but necessary surgical operation, far better than a
long-standing conventional war with years of bombing campaigns, siege of large cities and
full-scale assault on the ground. 'Sparing both American and Iranian lives.'
All in all: Iran may protect herself and exact a very high price for a conventional attack
but is defenseless against a nuclear one. So without Russian / Chinese guarantees against an
American nuclear strike I think Iranian resistance would prove futile. In case they lack such
guarantees they would rather capitulate than suffer complete destruction. Iran may only
manage this situation when shielded against USAn / Israeli nuclear strikes – otherwise
they better give up before it begins.
The Samson Option say's Israel will not be attacked.
Given that Israel owns the world, why would they allow themselves to be attacked, they
(NSA) didn't just create TIA for nothing ( poindexer-raygun Total Information Awareness )
They know all, they control all. They own all.
Back to Real Politics, Israel owns the USA, and the USA is going down. Israel needs a new
cow to bleed, and that be China. China needs oil, so "Greater Israel", via US-MIL seizes all
middle-east oil fields, and then Israel becomes custodian, of course this will be sold as a
'peace plan'.
Doesn't really matter, as USA is kaput. Broke. USA soliders will do best to remain at
oil-fields and sell black-market oil for Israel, to make money to send home.
Russia will stand down, as in Reality Israel is doing the business of Russia. China needs
oil, Israel needs hard-cash to control the Goy, so they can control their world-wide cattle
ranch ( chattel – prostitution )
Lives whether they be Iranian, or American, or Palestinian have no value, the only life on
earth that has value is the Jewish life.
A large percentage of China are Jewish, like Xian, at least +10M Jews exist in China, and
they're in total support of the castration of the West.
The best selling book in China is called "How Israel Controls the USA", a true story of
how AIPAC took control of USA gov, and killed JFK. The Chinese don't see this book a 'shock
book' they see it as a cook-book, of how to control, farm, and tax the western goy.
I would be interested in hearing an answer to this. It seems logical to me. I don't see any
US wars as being a defeat, since they succeeding in destroying countries. Israel's border's
have not grown yet, but I am sure that is still the goal.
In my view, Russia got involved in Syria because they knew if Syria fell to the US, Iran
would be next, followed by Russia. Russia forced a momentary setback by stopping the fall of
Syria, but Usrael is proceeding on with Iran anyway. Russia, of course, then follows. Why
would Russia get involved in Syria and let Iran fall, possibly by a preemptive "humanitarian"
nuclear strike like you mention? All of Russia's work over the past decades will be destroyed
if they watch Iran get destroyed.
Bc if the terror regime in washington uses nuclear weapons that is a known redline for Russia
and Putin have made this VERY clear. I suggest you use duckduckgo and start typing in
relevant search frases, it might enlighten you.
I am sorry I am so stupid, but I still don't understand. Please explain it to me. Russia has
made it clear that if nukes are used against them, they will respond with nukes. I have not
seen the same message sent regarding third parties. And I tried Googling it.
The zionazis had to act before the US empire crumbles with the overstreched dollar, dollar
that no globalist Rothschild in the world will be able to save for much more time.
The globalists in the City want to get rid of the dollar, but they also want to hurt Iran in
order to weaken Russia (and China), and they need a still powerful USA to perform that.
The war might therefore be a powerful transition (as were the previous ones) toward a new
economical global order, while also weakening the axis of resistance .
As for Trump, one has to wonder if he is really the one who ordered those strikes, and if he
really still has any power over the Pentagon.
It's not just the US and Iran painted into a corner, Iraq, but humanity even.
This United States claimed terrorist act of this import must only mean one thing: their
own recognition the time is up, namely, dollar-as-a-reserve-currency is done for.
Every party, not just Iran, will have to figure a way forward from this shortened horizon
(a single quarter? less?) imposed by the USofA. Of course Europe doubts itself and there's no
worse time for that. I do trust the Iranians, their artfulness and rationality, I am sure
though, by themselves the effort won't suffice. They won't be alone.
The answer is surely asymmetrical, but any "symmetrical" false flag must be
prevented/minimized likewise.
The content of Iran's painful message to America
✴️محتوای پیام
دردناک ایران به
آمریکا
🔸محتوای پیام
ایران به طرف
آمریکایی داده
به گونهای بوده
که مقامات
آمریکایی را
دچار وحشت شدیدی
کرده است. هر چند
هنوز از ابعاد
این پیام اطلاعی
ندارم اما به
نظر میرسد
آمریکاییها به
شکل کامل اعتماد
بنفس خود را از
دست دادهاند،
خبرهایی که به
وسیله واسطهها
به سمت تهران در
طول ساعتهای
گذشته به گوش
رسیده بیانگر آن
است که مقامات
کاخ سفید پس از
این اشتباه
راهبردی، هر کسی
که فکر میکنند
با ایران
کوچکترین
ارتباطی داشته و
دارد و می تواند
به مقامات
ایرانی دسترسی
داشته باشد
متوسل شدند تا
پاسخی که قرار
است دریافت کنند
در همان ابعاد و
نه بیشتر باشد!!
🔸اما اگر قرار
است ابعاد این
پاسخ مشخص گردد
باید رئیس ستاد
مشترک، فرمانده
نیروی دریایی و
هوایی و بالاتر
از آن شخص ترامپ
که دستور این
ترور را صادر
کرده است کشته
شوند تا با هم
برابر شویم
(البته که باز هم
نخواهیم شد) و
این چیزی است که
آمریکاییها
خودشان بهتر می
دانند. وزیر
امور خارجه
آمریکا در طول
ساعتهای گذشته
به همراه سایر
مقامات این کشور
یک نبرد
رسانهای را
شروع کردند تا
به زعم خود
تصمیم مقامات
ایران را تحت
تاثیر قرار
دهند!! ولی آنچه
به عنوان پیام
سفارت سوئیس از
طرف ایرانیها
برای آنها
فرستاد تمام
برآوردهای آنها
را نقش بر آب کرد.
🔸دونالد ترامپ
که در سیاست
خارجی خودش به
بنبست خورده
بود و کنگره او
را به جرم خیانت
فراخوانده بود
تا محاکمه اش
کند، از سوی
دیگر در آستانه
انتخابات نمی
دانست باید
چگونه صحنه بازی
را عوض کند دست
یک قمار خطرناک
زد، این قمار آن
اندازه خطرناک
بوده که در
آمریکا هیچکس
حاضر به پذیرش
مسئولیت آن نیست
و ترامپ تحت
فشار سیاسیون
مخالف خود ناچار
شده شخصاً
مسئولیت این
اقدام جنون آمیز
را برعهده
بگیرد. ترامپ یک
قمار را شروع
کرده که سعی می
کند با تهدید و
فشار و همچنین
التماس و رایزنی
و حتا با دادن
امتیازهای
مختلف از آن
فرار کند. خودش
بهتر میداند که
آنچه درباره
مذاکره و
گفتوگو با
ایران میگوید
جز تحقیر بیش از
پیش خودش نیست.
🔸هنوز از متن
مذاکرات وزیر
خارجه آمریکا با
همتای روسی خبری
منتشر نشده اما
او در گفتگویی
با رئیس جمهور
مفلوک عراق گفته
که خواستار
افزایش تنش
نیست! و عراق
نباید محلی برای
تنش آفرینی
باشد!! این
اقدامات مقامات
مختلف آمریکایی
که شامل پمپئو،
برایان هوک مارک
اسپ و حتی
سناتورهای
نفتخواری مانند
لیندزی گراهام
می شود، در واقع
تهدید ناشی از
ترس را نشان می
دهد. لیندزی
گراهام وقتی
سهمیه اش از نفت
سوریه را گرفت،
اینگونه طرفدار
ترامپ شده است.
منافعی او در
چاههای نفت
سوریه و عراق
دارد که بعدها
مشخص خواهد شد
که چه
پیمانکارانی
وابسته به این
جانور بی شاخ و
دم هستند.
🔸در کاخ سفید
همه از وحشت
احتمالی هدف
قرار گرفتن یکی
از پایگاه های
این کشور در
عراق که صدها
نظامی در آن به
سر میبرند توسط
موشکهای زمین
به زمین ایران
خواب راحت
ندارند. آنها به
خوبی می دانند
که اگر همزمان
یکصد فروند موشک
به این
پایگاهها
اصابت کند هیچ
چیزی از آن باقی
نخواهد ماند و
تلفاتی که به
نظامیان
آمریکایی وارد
خواهد شد همه به
پای حماقت ترامپ
نوشته می شود.
بنابراین بادام
با گفتن این
واژه که دنبال
جنگ نیست و می
خواسته با این
اقدام جلوی جنگ
را بگیرد در
حقیقت دارد کلاه
سر خودش می
گذارد.
The content of Iran's message to the US has been so intense that it has frightened
American officials. Although I am not aware of the magnitude of the message yet, Americans
seem to have completely lost their confidence in themselves, the news that has been heard by
the intermediaries in Tehran over the past few hours indicates that White House officials
have since this strategically mistake, asking anyone who has the slightest connection to Iran
and can reach out to Iranian officials to ask Iran to respond their aggression in the same
dimension and no more !!
But if the magnitude of this response is to be determined, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
Navy and Air Commander and even Trump who ordered the assassination must be killed in order
to equalize the crime(of course it won't) and This is what Americans know better. During the
past few hours, the US Secretary of State, along with other officials in the country, has
launched an infowar to influence the decision of the Iranian authorities! But the message
that Iran sent back via the Swiss embassy to the American government undermined all Trump
gang's plot.
Donald Trump, who had been stalled in his foreign policy and had been convicted of treason
by Congress, that the Congress is trying to prosecute him, did not know how to change the
game on the eve of the election and risked playing a dangerous gamble. It is so dangerous
that no one in America is willing to accept responsibility, and Trump, under the pressure of
his opposition, has been forced to personally take responsibility for this heinous act. Trump
has started a gamble that tries to escape with threats and pressure, as well as begging and
consulting, even by offering concessions. He knows that what he says about negotiating with
Iran is nothing more than humiliating himself.
The US Secretary of State's talks with his Russian counterpart have not yet been released,
but he has said in an interview with the beleaguered Iraqi president that he does not want
tensions to rise! And Iraq should not be a place for tension! The actions of various US
officials, including Pompeo, Brian Hook Mark Spar, and even oil senators such as Lindsay
Graham, actually show the extent of fear. Lindsey Graham has become a pro-Trump when he took
his quota of Syrian oil. His interests in the oil fields of Syria and Iraq will later
determine which contractors are connected to this hornless and tailless beast(Graham).
In the White House, everyone is scared of the potential target bases in Iraq, where
hundreds of troops are stationed. They know very well that if one hundred missiles hit these
bases at the same time, nothing will be left behind, and the casualties that will be
inflicted on American troops will all be attributed to Trump's stupidity. So, by saying the
word that he was not seeking war and wanted to stop the war by doing so, he was actually
fooling himself
پیام
قدرتمندانه
ایران اینگونه
صدای
رئیسجمهور
آمریکا را لرزش
واداشت ترامپ
چهار دقیقه و ۱۱
ثانیه در مورد
دستور ترور
سپهبد سلیمانی و
سایر همراهانش
صحبت کرد و در
تمام طول این ۴
دقیقه نتوانست
بر اعصابش مسلط
باشد و صدایش
نلرزد. خوب گوش
کنید که چگونه
پیام ایران
زنگها را در کاخ
سفید به صدا
درآورده است. به
زودی برای شما
خواهم نوشت
ایران چه پیامی
به آمریکاییها
داده که اینگونه
به هم ریخته اند.
نه خبری از سر
تکان دادن ترامپ
است و نه خبری از
شانه تکان دادن
و نه خبری از
بستن چشمان و سر
بالا گرفتن
هنگام سخنرانی.
ترامپ تازه
فهمیده بلانسبت
چه . خورده است.
@syriankhabar@syriankhabar
A machine translation:
Fear and fury in Trump's speech
Iran's powerful message shook the voice of the American president in such a way Trump
spoke for four minutes and 2 seconds about the assassination of Lieutenant General Soleimani
and his companions, and he could not control his nerves all this time. Listen well to how
Iran's message has sounded the bells at the White House. Soon, I will write to you what kind
of message Iran has given to the Americans who have messed up like this.
There is no shaking of Trump's head, no shaking of his shoulder, no closing eyes and a
high-pitched speech. Trump has just figured out what he ate.
'Secretary Esper has basically painted the US into what I would call an "over-reaction
corner" by declaring that "the game has changed" and that the US will take "preemptive
action" whenever it feels threatened'.
As I mentioned in another article, the Strait of Hormuz comes to mind. What would be the
consequences of it being blocked by the Iranians is something that no one seems to consider.
Any thoughts on this?
I tend to think that odd are opposite to what you've said about hot war. With regard to
leaving ME it was presidential candidate Trump's promise. As well as declared desire of Tulsi
Gabbard. So he can easily spin it as doing it on his own volition. And than (my speculation)
redirect freed money into infrastructure repair and preparation for real economic competition
with China and Russia. Particularly in space where (for now) we have advantage due to private
enterprise..
1. To put this into an historical context. After the failure of the Douma attacks in
April, 2018, the Neocons (Globalists) were basically out of options to win the war in Syria.
But this did not mean that they would give up on their quest to control the entire
Middle-East, of which Syria was the stepping stone to Iran. They just needed a new plan (Plan
D?, E?, F??). We now see that the new plan, painstakingly put in place since April, 2018, is
to attack Iran directly.
2. The attack on Soleimani suggests to me that the U.S. strategy is to decapitate the
Iranian leadership, and then to take advantage of the anarchy that follows to install a
pro-Western puppet in Tehran.
3. I think that the Neocons (Globalists) are extremely impatient to get this done. They
need to control the M-E in order to block Eurasian integration into the Russia/China sphere,
via the Belt and Road initiative. And the window to launch a war, before the U.S. elections,
is very narrow.
4. Based on the above, I expect the U.S., or her 'allies' to rachet up the provocations,
over the next 3 or 4 months, until they get a plausible excuse to launch a full fledged
attack on Iran. I expect that such an attack would be a short, but massive, aerial campaign
with the objective of taking out the Iranian government and its institutions, with the hope
that in the anarchy that follows, a pro-Western puppet, that is already prepared and sitting
in the wings, will be able to claim power.
Trump is not a Neocon, but, about Iran, he shares a common interest with them. And he is
likely foolish enough to go along with such a scenario. As other commenters have pointed out,
the Neocons think that this is basically a win-win for the Neocons. If all goes well, they
get Iran, if not, they get rid of Trump.
Yes, a coordinated and united front in the ME against the Zionazis would be an appropriate
and proportional response a palace coup, the demise of MBS/MBZ, geopolitical realingment,
grassroots protests, rapproachment those sorts of things might shake things up enough to see
the warmongering US finally get kicked out of the ME.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the United States and the European
Union should either comply with the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran, or
recognize it as nonexistent.
Lavrov made the comments on December 30 after meeting in Moscow with Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said that the European signatories to the deal were "not
taking any practical steps" to support it.
The military budget of USA speaks loud. This means they are planning.
Iran will not do any foolish movements and calculate any tactic extremely careful.
China and Russia cannot allow that USA will "swallow" Iran. That's the point.
If USA is doing something foolish in order to "secure" its hegemonic aspirations the
outcome could be completely detrimental to what they had wished for.
I also can't help but notice the amount of meetings between US officials and Israeli
officials, particularly where Iran appears to be the major theme. At the time of Netanyahu's
most recent warning, US General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had
visited Israel to meet his Israeli counterpart, Aviv Kohavi, to discuss "operational
questions and regional developments." A week prior, the US Air Force chief of staff also
visited Israel to participate in the Blue Flag joint military exercise. Not long before that,
the commander of the American military forces in the Middle East arrived in Israel for
meetings with top IDF officials.
US government is throwing everything into the propaganda fire to justify its murder of Qassem
Solemani. In his desperation to connect Iran to 9/11 attacks, Mike Pence says there were 12
hijackers (forgetting they were 19 hijackers of which 15 were Saudis)
Over 16 years ago, the Bush Regime was trying to pin some of the blame for 9-11 on Iraq to
justify America's war of aggression on that nation.
Now, years later, the Trump Regime is trying to pin the blame on Iran to justify the
escalation of yet another American war.
And Pence can't even get the number of 9-11 hijackers correct, or that the majority of
these hijackers were from America's head-chopping ally of Saudi Arabia!
Very good recap. The table is set for a lot more death. Iran is damned if they do and damned
if they don't and someone else does because they will simply be blamed. It fits the agenda of
the beast.
All the flag-wavers will be out shouting U.S.A., U.S.A. because this murder has left them
more secure and safe. I don't know whether to vomit or weep.
I don't believe war can be avoided because the agenda is to topple Iran as part of their new
world order. If they won't surrender, war it will be.
This has nothing to do with anything other than the price of oil. The U$ absolutely must
force the price of oil over 100 U$D per bbl. in order to profit from U$ oil reserves, and
save the petro-dollar. If Iran does nothing overt, and Russia continues to pump oil, thus
keeping the price of crude around $60, the U$ economy will wither. I think Iran will peck at
the U$, and Iraq will most likely finally order American forces to leave, but I think
Iran/Russia/China are just going to wait on the U$ economy to collapse, and then allow the
global predator to eat itself. Of course the wild card is the U$ lashing out in its death
throes, and just flat starting a major regional conflict or worse.
Saker,
Many thanks for the clear and succinct analysis.
I for one wonder if Iran decides to go asymmetrically rather than a direct confrontation as
the Iran people have shown to be strategic in their approach. In my humble opinion, I
consider Iran has much (more) to lose if the confrontation path is chosen.
Iran and its allies have reserves of oil and are located in a strategic position vis a vis
shipping routes. Additionally, a part of the conversation that has cropped up is the falling
value (and use of) the U$D. I think that is the weakest part of the US armour.
I hope Iran resists direct retaliation and works along the lines of accelerated debasement
and usage of the U$D.
That is a longer term goal but may be shorter than others. By the way, any resulting damage
may well be permanent.
Regarding the talk of a hypothetical "Iran War", I do not think Washington will actually try
invading Iran, for a couple of reasons.
1. The US does not currently have enough troops to occupy Iran. It would require a
military draft. This would cause massive opposition inside the USA (easily the biggest
internal US political turmoil since the Vietnam War). And the youngest American adults that
would get drafted are the least religious US generation ever (i.e. they are not Evangelical
fundamentalists who want to throw their lives away for "Israel" and the "End Times").
2. Where would Washington launch the invasion from? Iraq? The US will soon be asked to
leave Iraq, and if Washington does not comply it will very quickly turn into another quagmire
for the US just like it was in the 2000s. And if they tried invading from Afghanistan, Iran
could always arm the Taliban. And besides, would Pakistan really allow the US military to
pass through its territory to Afghanistan to invade Iran? I think not.
3. Russia would obviously provide Iran with military supplies, intelligence, and
diplomatic support, making any invasion attempt very costly for the US.
Therefore, Washington's options are rather limited to missile strikes, CIA funded
terrorist attacks, and other lesser forms of meddling.
"... The Pentagon stated that Trump's move was aimed at "deterring" Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham knows better. It's time, he announced on Twitter, to prepare for a "big counterpunch," including targeting Iran's oil refineries. ..."
Middle East. But why use a blowtorch to eradicate those malignant cells?
Containment would have done the trick -- and Iran was, as it happens, contained when Trump
became president in 2016. North Korea, Barack Obama warned him, would pose his most pressing
threat. It still does. Yet Trump, intent in ripping up the Iran nuclear deal, ended up
confecting a fresh crisis, a new road to war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un can
resume testing and expanding his nuclear arsenal. Nor is this all. China and Russia can only
marvel at Washington's continued capacity for self-destruction as it indulges in a fresh
demonstration of the arrogance of power.
Former national security adviser John Bolton, who was ousted over his hawkishness toward
Iran and North Korea, must be rubbing his eyes in disbelief. Trump has performed a volte-face
though he may not be capable of realizing it. It was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who
engineered what could be a new Sarajevo moment, cancelling his impending trip to Ukraine and
helping to ensure the retaliatory strike in Iraq against Iran.
The problem, of course, is that this sets up a fresh round of hostilities that America is
ill-equipped to manage. Like Kaiser Wilhelm in World War I, Trump is likely to find that by
acceding to a conflict that he is unable to conduct, he will have ceded control to a hawkish
camarilla that sets his presidency on the path toward an unmitigated disaster. Make no mistake:
a war with Iran can be won. But the price would make Iraq look like a cakewalk.
On This Day
0 seconds Do You Know What Happened Today In History? Jan 3 2000
The last original weekday Peanuts comic strip is published.
The Pentagon stated that Trump's move was aimed at "deterring" Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham
knows better. It's time, he announced on Twitter, to prepare for a "big counterpunch,"
including targeting Iran's oil refineries.
Like not a few presidents, Trump will almost certainly revel in being a wartime president,
at least initially. But there is no constituency for more war in America. Rather the reverse.
Trump has given the Democrats a lift, perhaps most of all Senator Bernie Sanders, who has
opposed America's serial confkucts abroad, though former vice president Joe Biden has also now
attacked Trump for tossing "a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox." Essentially Trump has wiped
the slate clean for Democrats like Biden who supported the 2003 Iraq War.
Goodbye, Donald Trump restrainer. Hello Donald Trump, neocon.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest .
"... Soleimani is a senior Iranian military commander, and he also happens to be one of the more popular public figures inside Iran. Killing him isn't just a major escalation that guarantees reprisals and further destabilizes the region, but it also strengthens hard-liners in Iran enormously. Trump claimed not to want war with Iran, but his actions have proven that he does. No one who wants to avoid war with Iran would order the assassination of a high-ranking Iranian officer. Trump has signaled his willingness to plunge the U.S. into a new war that will be disastrous for our country, Iran, and the entire region. American soldiers, diplomats, and citizens throughout the region are all in much greater danger tonight than they were this morning, and the president is responsible for that. ..."
ran hawks have been agitating for open conflict with Iran for years. Tonight, the Trump
administration obliged them by assassinating the top IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani
and the head of Kata'ib Hezbollah in a drone strike in Baghdad:
Hard to understate how big this is
• Qassem Suleimani is Iran's most powerful mil figure in Region
• He runs Iran's proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq
• Both men designated by US as Terrorist
• Muhandis was at US embassy attack protest, calls himself "Suleimani soldier"
Reuters reports
that a spokesman for the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq also confirmed the deaths:
Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia
commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed late on Thursday in an air strike on their convoy
in Baghdad airport, an Iraqi militia spokesman told Reuters.
Soleimani is a senior Iranian military commander, and he also happens to be one of the
more popular public figures inside Iran. Killing him isn't just a major escalation that
guarantees reprisals and further destabilizes the region, but it also strengthens hard-liners
in Iran enormously. Trump claimed not to want war with Iran, but his actions have proven that
he does. No one who wants to avoid war with Iran would order the assassination of a
high-ranking Iranian officer. Trump has signaled his willingness to plunge the U.S. into a new
war that will be disastrous for our country, Iran, and the entire region. American soldiers,
diplomats, and citizens throughout the region are all in much greater danger tonight than they
were this morning, and the president is responsible for that.
It is hard to convey how irrational and destructive this latest action is. The U.S. and Iran
have been dangerously close to war for months, but the Trump administration has made no effort
to deescalate tensions. All that it would take to push the two governments over the brink into
open conflict is a reckless attack that the other side cannot ignore. Now the U.S. has launched
just such an attack and dared Iran to respond. The response may not come immediately, but we
have to assume that it is coming. Killing Soleimani means that the IRGC will presumably
consider it open season on U.S. forces all across the region. The Iran obsession has led the
U.S. into a senseless new war that it could have easily avoided, and Trump and the Iran hawks
own the results.
Trump supporters have often tried to defend the president's poor foreign policy record by
saying that he hadn't started any new wars. Well, now he has, and he will be responsible for
the consequences to follow.
When US politicians comment about the country's adversaries, a an official narrative
harangue of disinformation and Big Lies follows so often these figures likely no longer can
distinguish between truth and fiction.
Washington's hostility toward Iran has gone on with nary a letup since its 1979 revolution
ended a generation of US-installed tyranny, the country regaining its sovereignty, free from
vassal state status.
On Monday, White House envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook stuck to the fabricated
official narrative in discussing Iran at the State Department.
He falsely called Sunday's Pentagon terror-bombing strikes on Iraqi and Syrian sites
"defensive."
They had nothing to do with "protect(ing) American forces and American citizens in Iraq" or
Syria, nothing to do with "deterr(ing) Iranian aggression" that doesn't exist and never did
throughout Islamic State history -- how the US and its imperial allies operate, not Iran, the
region's leading proponent of peace and stability.
Hook lied saying Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah paramilitaries (connected to the country's Popular
Mobilization Forces) don't serve "the interests of the Iraqi people."
That's precisely what they do, including their earlier involvement in combatting
US-supported ISIS.
Hook turned truth on its head, accusing Iran of "run(ning) an expansionist foreign policy"
-- what US aggression is all about, not how Tehran operates.
Like other Trump regime officials, he threatened Iran, a nation able to hit back hard
against the US and its regional imperial partners if attacked -- why cool-headed Pentagon
commanders want no part of war with the country.
Kata'ib Hezbollah, other Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, and the vast majority of Iraqi
civilians want US occupation of their country ended.
For decades, US direct and proxy aggression, including sanctions war, ravaged the country,
killing millions of its people, causing appalling human suffering.
Hook: "(T)he last thing the (US) is looking for is (war) in the Middle East "
Fact: It's raging in multiple theaters, notably Syria and Yemen, once again in Iraq after
last Sunday's US aggression, more of the same virtually certain ahead.
State Department official David Schenker participated in Monday's anti-Iran propaganda
exercise with Hook.
Claiming the US wants regional de-escalation, not escalation, is polar opposite reality on
the ground in all its war theaters and in other countries where it conducts subversion against
their governments and people.
The best way the US could protect its citizens worldwide is by ending aggressive wars,
bringing home its troops, closing its empire of bases used as platforms for hostilities against
other nations, and declaring a new era of peace and cooperative relations with other
countries.
Based on its belligerent history throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to the present day,
this change of policy, if adopted, would be un-American.
Hook: "Iran has been threatening the region for the last 40 years" -- what's true about US
aggression, not how Tehran operates anywhere.
Hook: Iran "is facing its worst financial crisis and its worst political crisis in its
40-year history."
Fact: US war on the country by other means, economic terrorism, bears full responsibility
for its economic hardships, intended to harm its people, including Trump regime efforts to
block exports of food, drugs and medical equipment to Iran.
Fact: Hostile US actions toward Iran and countless other nations are flagrant international
law breaches -- the world community doing nothing to counter its hot wars and by other
means.
Fact: The Iranian "model" prioritizes peace and stability. Endless war on humanity is how
the US operates globally -- at home and abroad.
Fact: Iran isn't an "outlaw regime," the description applying to the US, its key NATO
allies, Israel, the Saudis, and their rogue partners in high crimes.
Hostile US actions are all about offense, unrelated to defense at a time when Washington's
only enemies are invented as a pretext for endless wars of aggression.
The US under both right wings of its war party poses an unparalleled threat to everyone
everywhere.
As long as its aggression goes unchallenged, the threat of humanity-destroying nuclear war
exists.
It could start anywhere -- in the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, or against Russia by
accident or design.
On New Year's day 2020, I'd love to be optimistic about what lies ahead.
As long as Republican and Dem hardliners pursue dominance over other nations by brute force
and other hostile means, hugely dangerous tinderbox conditions could ignite an uncontrollable
firestorm anywhere.
Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard
University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research
analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until
retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005.
In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on
the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen
live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project
Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.
Bombing a civilian airport in another country in order to assassinate Iranian and Iraq
leaders is a very bad diplomacy ;-)
It might well be that today this idiot blow up his chances fro reelection because revenge is
dish that should be served cold and Iran can postpone it for 11 months or so.
What is interesting is that neoliberal MSM are glad and still talking about Zelensky and
impeachment. What a country ! It looks like the decade of the twenties can be the decade of
another World War. "In every war the first casualty is truth."
Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the killing of General Suleimani an act of
"international terrorism" and warned it was "extremely dangerous & a foolish
escalation."
"The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism," Mr. Zarif
tweeted.
... ... ...
"From Iran's perspective, it is hard to imagine a more deliberately provocative act," said
Robert Malley, the president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group. "And it is
hard to imagine that Iran will not retaliate in a highly aggressive manner."
"Whether President Trump intended it or not, it is, for all practical purposes, a
declaration of war," added Mr. Malley, who served as White House coordinator for the Middle
East, North Africa and the gulf region in the Obama administration.
Some United States officials and Trump administration advisers offered a less dire scenario,
arguing that the show of force might convince Iran that its acts of aggression against American
interests and allies have grown too dangerous, and that a president the Iranians may have come
to see as risk-averse is in fact willing to escalate.
One senior administration official said the president's senior advisers had come to worry
that Mr. Trump had sent too many signals -- including when he called off a planned
missile strike in late June -- that he did not want a war with Iran.
Tracking Mr. Suleimani's location at any given time had long been a priority for the
American and Israeli spy services and militaries. Current and former American commanders and
intelligence officials said that Thursday night's attack, specifically, drew upon a combination
of highly classified information from informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance
aircraft and other surveillance.
The strike killed five people, including the pro-Iranian chief of an umbrella group for
Iraqi militias, Iraqi television reported and militia officials confirmed. The militia chief,
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was a strongly pro-Iranian figure.
The public relations chief for the umbrella group, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq,
Mohammed Ridha Jabri, was also killed.
American officials said that multiple missiles hit the convoy in a strike carried out by the
Joint Special Operations Command.
American military officials said they were aware of a potentially violent response from Iran
and its proxies, and were taking steps they declined to specify to protect American personnel
in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.
Two other people were killed in the strike, according to a general at the Baghdad joint
command, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the
news media.
... ... ...
The United States and Iran have long been involved in a shadow war in battlegrounds across
the Middle East -- including in Iraq, Yemen and Syria. The tactics have generally involved
using proxies to carry out the fighting, providing a buffer from a direct confrontation between
Washington and Tehran that could draw America into yet other ground conflict with no
discernible endgame.
The potential for a regional conflagration was a basis of the Obama administration's push
for a 2015 agreement that froze Iran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, saying that Mr. Obama's agreement had emboldened
Iran, giving it economic breathing room to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign
of violence around the region. Mr. Trump responded with a campaign of "maximum pressure" that
began with punishing new economic sanctions, which began a new era of brinkmanship and
uncertainly, with neither side knowing just how far the other was willing to escalate violence
and risk a wider war. In recent days, it has spilled into the military arena.
General Suleimani once described himself to a senior Iraqi intelligence official as the
"sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq," the official later told American officials in
Baghdad.
In a speech denouncing Mr. Trump, General Suleimani was even less discreet -- and openly
mocking.
"We are near you, where you can't even imagine," he said. "We are ready. We are the man of
this arena."
In the very early spring of this year, I gave a lecture to European military personnel interested in the Middle East. It was scarcely
a year since Bashar al-Assad's alleged use of chlorine
gas against the civilian inhabitants of the
Damascus suburb of Douma on 7 April 2018, in which 43 people were said to have been killed.
Few present had much doubt that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which represents 193 member states
around the world, would soon confirm in a final report that Assad was guilty of a war crime which had been condemned by Donald Trump,
Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May.
But at the end of my talk, a young Nato officer
who specialises in chemical weapons he was not British sought me out for a private conversation.
"The OPCW are not going to admit all they know," he said. "They've already censored their own documents."
I could not extract any more from him. He smiled and walked away, leaving me to guess what he was talking about. If Nato had doubts
about the OPCW, this was a very serious matter.
When it published its final report in March this year, the OPCW said that testimony, environmental and biomedical samples and
toxicological and ballistic analyses provided "reasonable grounds" that "the use of a toxic chemical had taken place" in Douma which
contained "reactive chlorine".
The US, Britain and France, which launched missile attacks on Syrian military sites in retaliation for Douma before any investigation
had taken place thought themselves justified. The OPCW's report was splashed across headlines around the world to the indignation
of Russia, Assad's principal military ally, which denied the validity of the publication.
Then, in mid-May 2019, came news of a confidential report by OPCW South African ballistics inspector Ian Henderson a document
which the organisation excluded from its final report which took issue with the organisation's conclusions. Canisters supposedly
containing chlorine gas may not have been dropped by Syrian helicopters, it suggested, and could have been placed at the site of
the attack by unknown hands.
Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday reported in detail on the Henderson document. No other mainstream media followed up this
story . The BBC, for example, had reported in full on the OPCW's final report on the use of chlorine gas, but never mentioned the
subsequent Henderson story.
And here I might myself have abandoned the trail had I not received a call on my Beirut phone shortly after the Henderson paper,
from the Nato officer who had tipped me off about the OPCW's apparent censorship of its own documents. "I wasn't talking about the
Henderson report," he said abruptly. And immediately terminated our conversation. But now I understand what he must have been talking
about.
For in the past few weeks, there has emerged deeply disturbing new evidence that the OPCW went far further than merely excluding
one dissenting voice from its conclusions on the 2018 Douma attack.
The most recent information published on WikiLeaks, in a report from Hitchens again and from Jonathan Steele, a former senior
foreign correspondent for The Guardian suggests that
the OPCW suppressed or failed to publish, or simply preferred to ignore, the conclusions of up to 20 other members of its staff who
became so upset at what they regarded as the misleading conclusions of the final report that they officially sought to have it changed
in order to represent the truth . (The OPCW has said in a number of statements that it stands by its final report.)
At first, senior OPCW officials contented themselves by merely acknowledging the Henderson report's existence a few days after
it appeared without making any comment on its contents. When the far more damaging later reports emerged in early November, Fernando
Arias, the OPCW's director general, said that it was in "the nature of any thorough enquiry for individuals in a team to express
subjective views. While some of the views continue to circulate in some public discussion forums, I would like to reiterate that
I stand by the independent, professional conclusion [of the investigation]." The OPCW declined to respond to questions from Hitchens
or Steele.
But the new details suggest that other evidence could have been left unpublished by the OPCW. These were not just from leaked
emails, but given by an OPCW inspector a colleague of Henderson who was one of a team of eight to visit Douma and who appeared
at a briefing in Brussels last month to explain his original findings to a group of disarmament, legal, medical and intelligence
personnel.
As Steele reported afterwards, in a piece published by Counterpunch in mid-November 2019, the inspector who gave his name to
his audience, but asked to be called "Alex" said he did not want to undermine the OPCW but stated that "most of the Douma team"
felt the two reports on the incident (the OPCW had also published an interim report in 2018) were "scientifically impoverished, procedurally
irregular and possibly fraudulent". Alex said he sought, in vain, to have a subsequent OPCW conference to address these concerns
and "demonstrate transparency, impartiality and independence".
For example, Alex cited the OPCW report's claim that "various chlorinated organic chemicals (COCs) were found" in Douma, but said
that there were "huge internal arguments" in the OPCW even before its 2018 interim report was published . Findings comparing chlorine
gas normally present in the atmosphere with evidence from the Douma site were, according to Alex, kept by the head of the Douma mission
and not passed to the inspector who was drafting the interim report. Alex said that he subsequently discovered that the COCs in Douma
were "no higher than you would expect in any household environment", a point which he says was omitted from both OPCW reports. Alex
told his Brussels audience that these omissions were "deliberate and irregular".
Alex also said that a British diplomat who was OPCW's chef de cabinet invited several members of the drafting team to his office,
where they found three US officials who told them that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack and that two cylinders found
in one building contained 170 kilograms of chlorine. The inspectors, Alex remarked, regarded this as unacceptable pressure and a
violation of the OPCW's principles of "independence and impartiality".
Regarding the comments from Alex, the OPCW has pointed to the statement by Arias that the organisation stands by its final report.
Further emails continue to emerge from these discussions. This weekend, for example, WikiLeaks sent to The Independent an apparent
account of a meeting held by OPCW toxicologists and pharmacists "all specialists in CW (Chemical Warfare)", according to the document.
The meeting is dated 6 June 2018 and says that "the experts were conclusive in their statements that there is no correlation between
symptoms [of the victims] and chlorine exposure."
In particular, they stated that "the onset of excessive frothing, as a result of pulmonary edema observed in photos and reported
by witnesses would not occur in the short time period between the reported occurrence of the alleged incident and the time the videos
were recorded". When I asked for a response to this document, a spokesman for the OPCW headquarters in Holland said that my request
would be "considered". That was on Monday 23 December.
Any international organisation, of course, has a right to select the most quotable parts of its documentation on any investigation,
or to set aside an individual's dissenting report although, in ordinary legal enquiries, dissenting voices are quite often acknowledged.
Chemical warfare is not an exact science chlorine gas does not carry a maker's name or computer number in the same way that fragments
of tank shells or bombs often do.
But the degree of unease within the OPCW's staff surely cannot be concealed much longer. To the delight of the Russians and the
despair of its supporters, an organisation whose prestige alone should frighten any potential war criminals is scarcely bothering
to confront its own detractors. Military commanders may conceal their tactics from an enemy in time of war, but this provides no
excuse for an important international organisation dedicated to the prohibition of chemical weapons to allow its antagonists to claim
that it has "cooked the books" by permitting political pressure to take precedence over the facts. And that is what is happening
today.
The deep concerns among some of the OPCW staff and the deletion of their evidence does not mean that gas has not been used in
Syria by the government or even by the Russians or by Isis and its fellow Islamists. All stand guilty of war crimes in the Syrian
conflict. The OPCW's response to the evidence should not let war criminals off the hook. But it certainly helps them.
And what could be portrayed as acts of deceit by a supposedly authoritative body of international scientists can lead some to
only one conclusion: that they must resort to those whom the west regards as "traitors" to security WikiLeaks and others if they
wish to find out the story behind official reports . So far, the Russians and the Syrian regime have been the winners in the propaganda
war. Such organisations as the OPCW need to work to make sure the truth can be revealed to everyone. Tags
Politics
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email
Bombing a civilian airport in another country in order to assassinate Iranian and Iraq
leaders is a very bad diplomacy ;-)
It might well be that today this idiot blow up his chances fro reelection because revenge is
dish that should be served cold and Iran can postpone it for 11 months or so.
What is interesting is that neoliberal MSM are glad and still talking about Zelensky and
impeachment. What a country ! It looks like the decade of the twenties can be the decade of
another World War. "In every war the first casualty is truth."
former chairman of the Jewish Agency and interim Israeli president lauds George Soros as the
quintessential 'Jew-niversalist' icon.
In his recent
Haaretz Op-ed titled "Get Ready for the 'Jew-niversal' Decade of George Soros and Open
Society," the Israeli politician opines that just "a few people have the courage to stand up to
the decade's new tyrants at the head of illiberal democracies." Apparently "one of these people
with courage is Soros." According to Burg, Soros "represents a 'Jew-niversal' standpoint, a
Jewish alternative symbol to the simplistic Jewish one embraced by Netanyahu, Trump and their
supporters."
Within the context of the notion of this so called 'Jew-niversal,' the 52% of the Brits who
want to split from the EU are considered a 'noisy suicidal minority.' It seems that the
so-called 'Jew-niversal' is not very tolerant towards people who vote Tory, Trump or Netanyahu.
This 'Jew-niversal' seems pretty hostile towards those who happen to have some conservative
values or who are unlucky enough to be wrapped in white skin. And, as we have discovered, the
'Jew-niversal' is not very tolerant of literature and freedom of speech. We have watched Soros
funded bodies work tirelessly to burn books, eliminate texts and even remove historical
artefacts that are meaningful to people with whom they don't agree.
Burg's notion of the Jew-niversal' bears no relationship to the Greek notions of the
'universal' or 'universalism.'
While Burg doesn't approve of the Barbarian face of Israel and Zionism, he somehow sees
Soros as the embodiment of the Jewish commitment to Tikun Olam i.e., fixing the world. "While
so many Jews are doing their utmost to become ultra-nationalist and violent thugs, tough and
callous, Soros represents – perhaps not consciously – the other face of Jewish
civilization, the hidden and enchanted one where the main obligation is the commitment to fix
the world's wrongs not only for Jews but for everyone." I tend to think that the world would be
a much nicer and safer place if Jews decided to be slightly less passionate about saving other
people and concentrated on fixing their Jewish State.
ORDER IT NOW
In his Haaretz commentary Burg references Soros' mentor, Karl Popper, author of The Open
Society and its Enemies . According to Popper no person or organization has a monopoly on
the truth, so the greater the number of diverse opinions there are among people who live in
peace and tolerance with one another, the more benefits there are that accrue to all.
Unfortunately, Soros and his Open Society do not follow Popper's philosophical mantra. Soros'
'Jew-niversalism' is a divisive construct. It breaks society into a manifold of identitarian
segments that are defined by biology (race, gender, sexual preference). In the realm of the
'Jew-niversal,' people do not identify as mere humans who seek their common human experience.
Instead each identity learns to speak in the dialect of the 'as a' ('as a woman ,' 'as a Jew ,'
'as a black..,' 'as a gay,' etc. ). In the 'Jew-niversal' sphere people adopt identifications
that differentiate themselves from the rest of humanity. Exclusivity and difference are
celebrated, it contradicts the search for ultimate value of human brotherhood. The
'Jew-niversal' 'jurisdiction' reduces the universe into a mere expanded version of the 'tribes
of Israel': tribes of Identitarians who engage in sectarian, racial and gender wars.
The fake 'diversity' and sham 'tolerance' offered by the 'Jew-niversal' is, in fact,
authoritarian and intolerant to the masses. The so-called 'Jew-niversal' is an exceptionalist
concept designed to 'otherise' those with whom they don't agree.
Inadvertently Burg has revealed to us that the "war between the open and the closed, between
isolationists and the embracers of inclusion," is actually an internal Jewish battle between
the Netanyahus of the world (Trump, Giuliani, Orban etc.) and the Jew-niversalists whom he
calls 'Soros Jews': those who Burg says "fearlessly fight so that the new decade is ours."
"Ours"?
I guess that a gentile might well ask, who is 'ours' and am I included? Are those who voted
Trump, Johnson, Brexit, Orban or Bibi included in the 'Jew-niversal utopia'? Certainly not!
They are the basket of deplorables as the 'Jew-niversalist' Clinton referred to them just
before her presidential dreams evaporated into thin air. Those who buy into Soros and the
notion of the 'Jew-niversal' shouldn't be surprised by the tsunami of successful Right wing
politics. Within the 'Jew-niversal' dream the world is broken into an amalgam of cosmopolitan
identities set to fight each other instead of fighting Wall Street and the City. In the
'Jew-niversal' reality, the Left is maintained by an arch capitalist 'philanthropist.'
If the Left intends to sustain any relevance amongst the working people and the working
classes, it may want to consider supporting the values and needs of working people rather than
accepting the dirty money of a capitalist tycoon. If the Left wants to be relevant it better
figure out how to reinstate the universal and universalism. I close this commentary by noting
that there is no indication that the Left wants to reinstate its political or social role.
Being paid by the Jew-niversal society institute seems to be its preferred mode.
' "While so many Jews are doing their utmost to become ultra-nationalist and violent
thugs, tough and callous, Soros represents – perhaps not consciously – the other
face of Jewish civilization, the hidden and enchanted one where the main obligation is the
commitment to fix the world's wrongs not only for Jews but for everyone." '
I've heard that one before. What I never hear are any specific examples of this wonderful
trait. It can certainly be descried among assimilated Jews -- but where is it present in
peculiarly Jewish culture?
Its absence may not be a unique flaw -- perhaps no one ever caught the leading lights of
Armenian culture campaigning for the welfare of mankind in general either -- but given all
the trumpeting of the presence of this virtue among Jews, could we have some examples?
@JimDandy
They are almost identical to the Soros Jews except without the flimsy anti-war facade. Look
at Paul Singer, who puts the money he's not funneling into Israeli and Jewish causes into
groups promoting LGBT and mass immigration.
There's nothing redeeming about the "left." Gilad's writings exposes those frauds extremely
well. Even with all the supremacy instilled in the mindsets of all the various peoples on the
"religious right," there still remains the slightest slivers of humility. On the left, there
is zero humility and only narcissism.
However, there is a problem with Soros' identity. He admits that he had "no problem at
all" with collecting Jewish properties during Nazi occupation. (See 9 min mark in video
below) Can Soros decide whether he is either a Nazi or a CFR Globzi? Maybe old George is
both. This is very acceptable in the Jewish mindset. One can be both a Fascist in Israel and
a CFR Globalist spreading the virtues of unlimited debt and lifeless sodomy. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3220/jewish/The-Jews-Double-Standard.htm
There is no right and left. There are only assigned and controlled identities by
oligarchs. It is not hyperbole to state that we are literally in a war against those with
massive resources who want billions of us killed. It doesn't matter if the mandate comes from
either a Jewish Rabbi in the Sanhedrin or a Climate-Change advocate. The real battle is
between the wealthy tyrants aided by their minions that plan future wars for political
control and the rest of us who want to simply live today in peace and let tomorrow take care
of itself.
I was disconcerted to read your article. I like Soros, to a certain extent, and there are
quite a few people whom I respect a lot who dispute this demonization of him. Take your
Editor-in-Chief, Ron Unz, for example:
Frankly, I've never really understood why right-wingers regard Soros as the Devil
Incarnate or something, much like left-wingers view the Koch brothers. He seems a lot like
other left-liberal financiers, though more politically active.
I remember back in 2004 Soros put tens of millions of his money into the campaign to
defeat "W" for reelection, and that counts for a lot with me. I'll bet that 90% of the
right-wingers were enthusiastic "W" supporters back then.
And, as we have discovered, the 'Jew-niversal' is not very tolerant of literature and
freedom of speech. We have watched Soros funded bodies work tirelessly to burn books,
eliminate texts and even remove historical artefacts that are meaningful to people with
whom they don't agree.
I am not aware of those incidents, but then again I don't claim to know every single act
of Soros to this very day. It would be nice if you gave some example of those book-burnings
and artefact-removings, but, anyway, Soros is a very rich man and the notion that he controls
the actions of every entity to which he gives money is utterly ridiculous. By the same token,
Ron Unz should be excoriated for publishing some of the authors he does, even though he has
himself admitted to not subscribing to some, or maybe even all, of their opinions.
The funny thing is that, until reading this piece, I had an idea of your views as very
similar to those of Soros. Take Soros's opinion on Israel, taken from his Wikipedia page:
When asked about what he thought about Israel, in The New Yorker, Soros replied: "I
don't deny the Jews to a right to a national existence – but I don't want anything to
do with it."[207] According to hacked emails released in 2016, Soros's Open Society
Foundation has a self-described objective of "challenging Israel's racist and
anti-democratic policies" in international forums, in part by questioning Israel's
reputation as a democracy.[208] He has funded NGOs which have been actively critical of
Israeli policies[209][210][211] including groups that campaign for the Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions movement against Israel.[209]
This Burg guy in turn seems to be a very reasonable one, and your arguing throughout the
article is very incomprehensible to me.
Anyway, this website's emphasis on 'controversial' people seems to include some who engage
in controversy with themselves.
Funny, because if I use the term 'jew-niversal', (lower case 'j' please), I'll be accused of
being (gasp!) an anti-shemite. So much for Soros and "the rest of us who want to simply live
today in peace and let tomorrow take care of itself."
Mr. Burg accuses some world leaders as "having abandoned the lessons of the past", but,
surely, they were elected and are acting (to a certain degree) because the electorate and the
leader(s) DO remember the lessons of the past.
I laughed when I saw that Burg praised the "tolerant and inclusive dogma embraced by the
current pope". Of course the chew loves Jorge; watering down dogma and/or spreading apostasy
is Bergoglio's oeuvre.
Oh gawd Jorge the Bouncer from L'Argentina pretending to be a Pope.
@Brás
Cubas I'm guessing you don't live in an area where Soros has purchased prosecutors and
elected officials, I do. I don't care what he thinks about Israel but since you bring it up,
I have seen little evidence to suggest that Soros is interested in changing that nation's
demographics in the same way he wants to change the demographics of the US and Europe.
@Brás
Cubas Soros thru his money and NGOs is flooding Western Civilizaton with illegal 3rd
World Migrants and Muslims– this is beyond dispute and he is on record as to it being a
great thing. You think this is a positive? I don't. He is basically attempting to destroy
Western Civilization and Christianity– you also may think that is a great thing–
I don't and I don't think most here do.
Your "defense" of him is much thinner than those pointing out the evil he does (he
basically has a hand in overthrowing governments thru his NGOs etc.–who elected him to
do this?). He's some kind of Tyrant Oligarch model with a definite anti-Western Civilization
agenda -- his interview on 60 Minutes speaks for itself as to who he is in his own
words– thinks he's "a God" is another one of his best I read from him.
Currently he is destroying local law enforcement in the USA by targeting local races for
District Attorney (and other offices) that used to be basically apolitical in nature and
putting in political hacks who have an agenda not to fight crime but to enact Leftist Lunatic
policies of not prosecuting criminals (you like what is going on in San Francisco–the
crime, homeless and literally crap on the streets?– Soros brings us the politicians who
give us these type Cities–but you may "like" that too). The USA Attorney General had to
finally call him out as putting us all in danger with what he is doing at the local District
Attorney level (I used to be both a Prosecutor and Public Defender and I will tell you it
doesn't "work" this way and can't– major train wreck ahead for those
communities–but that seems to be what he is trying to "accomplish") -- you "like"
this?
Soros is a front man for the Rothschilds and he is carrying out their Kalergi Plan. Again,
this is not something I can "like" him for as you do. I don't think anyone sane could "like"
him for this who is not deep into the NWO agenda which can best be described as Satanic. (He
was so against Bush? Who was he trying to get in -- would the outcome be the same?–
Bush was a Globalist NWO hack and so was Gore exactly what Soros is all about). Who knows
what his true "feelings" as to Israel are regardless of Wikpedia–lying and sewing
disinformation? Much game playing to atttain goals that are not helpful to the mass of
humanity. No, I don't "like" Soros. --
"However, there is a problem with Soros' identity. He admits that he had "no problem at
all" with collecting Jewish properties during Nazi occupation. (See 9 min mark in video
below) Can Soros decide whether he is either a Nazi or a CFR Globzi?"
I agree with your larger point about the discrepancy between Jewish support for a
Judeosupremacist state while simultaneously bleating about racism, tikkun slam, etc.
In the video you cite, I think that all Soros was really saying was that his survival
instinct was sufficient protection against any debilitating guilt feelings about being
randomly saved by a non-Jew who protected him while other Jews were shipped off. I don't
think that quotation in the video indicates anything more than that.
Like Ron Unz I was inclined to see Soros simply as one of many rather stupid liberal
billionaires who spend a lot of money in order to realize their stupid ideas (and, at the
same time, enjoy to rub shoulders with a lot of prominent power-breakers, being their sugar
daddy). Just like Singer. Bad, but in a well-known kind of way.
But there's something deeply sinister in the way people like Burg treat Soros as a worldly
saint or quasi-messiah which redeems the world by his "good" power. This abodes to a
depiction of Soros as a kind of "Anti-Christ". Sorosism/Opensocietism becomes a political
religion, something which Popper definitely not foresaw nor intended. Popper saw universalism
as a discourse between equals (slaves included), not as a movement of the Anointed against
the Unwashed Masses. Talmon (which heavily relied on Popper) would have seen the parallels to
Puritanism and Jacobinism which Burg doesn't see – but as Talmon, like Burg, was a
Jewish Liberal, this basically shows that Jewish Liberalism has to split.
@Mishima
ZaibatsuI mean, Soros put a lot of money into an antiwar think tank, in cooperation
with the Kochs, which would seem to exist primarily to fight the Neocons?
Within the context of the notion of this so called 'Jew-niversal,' the 52% of the Brits
who want to split from the EU are considered a 'noisy suicidal minority.'
Well, to a degree they are. But probably not for the reasons Avraham Burg most likely
assumes. As usual the word war about Brexit is mostly a war of pure projections. But what's
the reality, actually?
– Netanyahu hates the EU. Fact.
– Brexit was and is backed by Neocons and is in favor of the US-Israeli Empire.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/12/liberal-world-order-helped-israel-flourish-now-state-is-pushing-back/?arc404=true
– Nevermind Breitbart, founded in Jerusalem, Druge Report, The Rebel Media, EDL/Adelson
Tommy Robinson and so forth.
– EU immigration to Britain was almost exclusively white ; post-Brexit
immigration will be almost exclusively "diverse"
– British society at large is to the liberal left of the EU average.
– On the other hand the EU is the only western institution with some influence to still
and genuinely support Palestinian human rights. Just a few months ago school buildings gifted
by the EU were bulldozed by the Israeli military in the West Bank. It has also a much better
track record than the British government, especially when it comes to support for wars driven
by the Israel lobby.
– Contrary to Alt-Right believes Brexit was tipped over by the boomer vote and not the
angry, young white men. Most young people were and are in favor of remaining in the EU.
– Netanyahu may or may not support Viktor Orbán, Hungarian politics are designed
and created by Hungarians for Hungarian needs and interests, not by Likud. Sooner or later
even Israel will have to get used to being just another country in the Western family.
I knew since 2014 that the UK was likely going to leave. That was in the making a long
time – no matter if a left or right government was currently in charge. Brexit as a
symbol of a right-wing revolt, or even neo-fascist trend is just ludicrous. Farrage was proud
that he had eliminated the BNP with UKIP. And as a symbol of white protest, as with Trump,
it's mostly a desire for show of force. But this can be effectively harvested and
neutered by the conservative plantation. As Boris Johnson did. And Obama deported way more
people than Trump ever will.
Chasing chimeras of the past and present. The real revolution for the left may come from
the silent 1,000 pound dragon in the room: communist China
@Brás
CubasRon Unz: "I remember back in 2004 Soros put tens of millions of his money into
the campaign to defeat "W" for reelection, and that counts for a lot with me. "
That was then; this is now.
1. If that was so, how come W won?
BTW, why didn't Soros put his money into exposing the Dallas and 911 plots? That would have
been the quickest way to defeat W and bring real fresh air into our political atmosphere.
2. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Many out there have experienced
various sorts of transformations of their understanding of "left" and"right." As I am sure
most Unz commenters understand very well. More people do now understand that the basic
standoff is between globalization and nationalism/local control.
Soros is actually way behind the curve in this development. He is an aging prestidigitator
still trying to use the old tricks, but too many see how the rabbit gets pulled out of the
hat. For example, how those "spontaneous" color revolutions are stage-managed. Anyone who can
still view Soros as a benign philanthropist is a fool.
@Vaterland
"On the other hand the EU is the only western institution with some influence to still and
genuinely support Palestinian human rights. Just a few months ago school buildings gifted by
the EU were bulldozed by the Israeli military in the West Bank. "
Wait a minute!
Let's read that again.
These schools were bulldozed (I remember this well) and the EU could do nothing about it but
raise a sickly weak protest.
The EU did not cut off funds to Israel.
It did not impose sanctions on Israel.
The EU did not exclude Israel from cultural events such as the Eurovision Song Contest.
The EU did not call for a boycott of products of West Bank settlements or for a stop to
building more of them or call for support of BDS.
In fact, I believe the EU passed yet *another* resolution condemning BDS and supporting the
criminal Israelis.
The EU did nothing to support the Pals and instead supported the Zionist scofflaw
criminals.
The EU's members are fearful of being labeled antisemitic if they so much as utter a
critical peep. They are abject craven cowards.
For what it is worth, for those who do not know it yet, here is this story published a year
ago, entitled 'The Unbelievable Story Of The Plot Against George Soros':
I mean, Soros put a lot of money into an antiwar think tank, in cooperation with the
Kochs, which would seem to exist primarily to fight the Neocons?
That's a very interesting point I'd never previously considered
For the last couple of decades, the "mainstream Left" has endlessly demonized the Koch
brothers while the "mainstream Right" has endlessly demonized George Soros.
Perhaps it's more than purely coincidental that Soros has been the leading wealthy leftist
funding opposition to our totally crazy foreign policy while the Koch brothers have been the
leading wealthy conservatives funding exactly the same sort of cause
@Oscar
Peterson Let's hold George at his word. It also appears that Soros didn't like the end
result of this Steve Kroft interview. "The 60 Minutes Interview George Soros Tried To Bury
Still think George is funding Avaaz and all those other NGOs because he just cares so much
about humanity to the depths of his big soft heart?" https://off-guardian.org/2016/11/20/soros-60minute-video/
Soros personifies what it means to be a fascist. He funds eugenics and street bullies.
Fascism is, "Corporative..in..unity of the State," as defined by Mussolini.
"Avraham Burg, prominent Israeli politician, former chairman of the Jewish Agency and
interim Israeli president lauds George Soros as the quintessential 'Jew-niversalist'
icon."
@Colin
Wright "I've heard that one before. What I never hear are any specific examples of this
wonderful trait. "
The whole 'Tikkun Olam' thing is a scam.
If Jews were adept at healing the world, building stable societies, reducing inequality
(etc), then we would expect to see a correlation between Jewish power and positive social
attributes (eg, equality).
We don't.
Societies ruled by Jews tend to be disastrous for gentiles, if not lethal. The Soviet
Union is an obvious exemplar, but we can consider a much better example: Honduras.
Honduras is utterly dominated by Jewish power. Five families control 80% of the economy,
from banks to retail to airports. Called the 'Turks', they are Sephardic Jews from the Middle
East. Eager to support Israel, members of the Honduran government have Israeli flags on their
desks.
So if Tikkun Olam had any merit, Honduras should be a paradise of equality. It most
certainly shouldn't be a country that people are fleeing en masse.
The fact is that Jews as a group are parasitical. They have created no lasting
civilizations, but instead they serve as a mercantile and rent-seeking elite in the
civilizations of others. Taking advice from Jewish people on nation building is like taking
advice from your local drug dealer on how to live a virtuous life.
In a way, today's Christians are like Muslims for Jews. 'Islam' means submission, and the new
christianity is mainly about submission to Jews, homos, and Negroes as the new gods.
@Fran
Taubman'Well looks like Iran is walking right into it. Bad news tonight. There is
bound to be a major war with untold casualties.'
On the bright side, if you're right, that'll be the beginning of the end for Israel.
We'll survive -- we'll be chastened by the experience, but we'll survive. Iran will always
be there; they weathered the Mongols, and they'll weather whatever horrors we perpetrate,
Israel, though adios. The world will be improved in at least that respect.
Iran has been killing Iraqis and their own long before Israel was printing shekels.
Gassing, torture, horrific prisons, the morality police, the lipstick squad. The common
Persian lives in a hellish Kafka-esque theocracy.
When someone threatens to kill you, what's your response? Pay them a King's ransom as
Obama where they took the money and then moved the line in the sand for 4 years with taunts
and more threats?
Or push back. You believe they should be allowed to storm an embassy with impunity?
@Priss
Factor You are obviously referring to the misnamed "Christians" in north America, the
prayer shawl brigade led by Israelis. You've probably never met real Christians since these
live in the eastern fringes of Europe into Asia.
What is your opinion on the assassination of Qasem Soleimani? What's going to happen
next?
Well, it's extremely worrisome. Going around assassinating the top generals of other major
countries around the world seems a pretty dangerous thing to do, which is why it doesn't
happen very often. It brings to mind an analogy I've made on several occasions, most recently
about a year ago when we kidnapped the CFO of Huawei, the world's largest telecom
manufacturer and China's most important international corporation:
Or to apply a far harsher biological metaphor, consider a poor canine infected with the
rabies virus. The virus may have no brain and its body-weight is probably less than
one-millionth that of the host, but once it has seized control of the central nervous
system, the animal, big brain and all, becomes a helpless puppet.
Once friendly Fido runs around foaming at the mouth, barking at the sky, and trying to
bite all the other animals it can reach. Its friends and relatives are saddened by its
plight but stay well clear, hoping to avoid infection before the inevitable happens, and
poor Fido finally collapses dead in a heap.
Basically, all of us have the role of poor, hard-working muscle cells, trapped in an
animal whose nervous system has been seized by rabies. The body that contains us is jumping
up and down and frothing at the mouth, and we nervously fear that things probably won't end
well
Intelligence agencies recruit pornographers to lead their disinformation operations,
apparently because porn purveyors are so lacking in ethics they will tell public lies about
anything
The alleged 'founder' of Wikipedia ... Wales was 'selected' for this role after being in
the pornography-selling business
EU police agencies and the European Commission, have a detailed report on how Wikipedia is
a criminally-involved tool for intelligence agencies, using 'Twenty major techniques of CIA
– Wikipedia deception'
Another famous ex-pornographer recruited as a CIA propagandist is Glenn Greenwald. When
the intel agencies began running the hoax of 'Edward Snowden', he first 'leaked' to the
biographer of Bush Vice President Dick Cheney at the CIA's Washington Post
After realising this was too stupid to hold up, the intel agencies switched the front-man
role to Rothschild employee & gay ex-pornography-seller Glenn Greenwald of 'hairystuds',
Greenwald now funded by CIA billionaire Pierre Omidyar
For those who don't know, even Putin in Russia has hinted out loud he knows Snowden is
fake, Putin just playing along in the long string of mutual Russia-USA back-door favours to
each other
January
2, 2020 at 6:56 am GMT 200 Words Intelligence agencies recruit pornographers to lead their
disinformation operations, apparently because porn purveyors are so lacking in ethics they will
tell public lies about anything
The alleged 'founder' of Wikipedia is the arch-Zionist Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales, who attends
intimate birthday parties of Presidents of Israel
Wales was 'selected' for this role after being in the pornography-selling business
For weeks, it was Iranian consulates and facilities that bore the brunt of Iraqi
popular unrest. Iran reacted with restraint. With our lethal attacks on the Kata'ib
Hezbollah, we changed that. Pompeo, Esper and Trump are keeping up the trash talking.
Threatening Iran by killing Iraqis whose ass was that brilliant diplomatic strategy pulled
from?
####
US Ambassador to Poland gets her 2 cents in as regards the comments of Vladimir Putin and
others in the Empire of Evil concerning the Molotov – Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact
and Polish pre-WWII connivings with Nazi Germany.
Russian politicians had earlier strongly condemned the position of Warsaw, which does not
consider itself responsible for any of the events leading up to the outbreak of WWII in
Europe. Thus, the speaker of the state Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, urged Polish "colleagues" to
apologize for the anti-Semitic remarks of Jozef Lipsky, former Polish Ambassador to Nazi
Germany, who supported some ideas of Adolf Hitler and even suggested putting up a monument to
him in honour of his plans to deport European Jews to Madagascar. Russian Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also criticized the attempt of Poland to rewrite history in
favour of its political interests.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, criticized the signing of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and actually laid the blame on the USSR for starting WWII along with
Nazi Germany.
Head of the scientific Department of the Russian Military Historical Society, Yuri
Nikiforov, noted that the Warsaw version of events leading to WWII was a "totally ideologized
interpretation of history by orderr" and had nothing to do with the historical truth, and was
promoting its version of history in order to weaken Russian influence on the world stage.
Drogi Prezydencie Putin, to Hitler i Stalin zmówili się, aby
rozpocząć II wojnę światową. To jest fakt. Polska była
ofiarą tego okropnego konfliktu.
Dear President Putin, it was Hitler and Stalin who agreed to start World War II.
This is a fact. Poland was a victim of this terrible conflict.
Dear American business executive, entrepreneur and untrained diplomat now acting as US
Ambassador to Poland, try studying some history.
By the way, before your plum appointment as ambassador to Poland, wasn't it you who
suggested that Poland was responsible for the re-emergence of anti-Semitism across the
continent of Europe because of a law which criminalizes blaming Poland for the actions of
Nazi Germany on its soil during the Holocaust?
And wasn't it headbanger of a Polish President Andrzej Duda who stated that if you were to
be appointed as the new U.S. ambassador to Poland, then you would be accepted, despite having
made "unnecessary and mistaken" comments about his country?
Can't you see that the truth as regards WWII matters is only that which is approved by the
Poles?
The Poles are putting Germany in an awkward position.
The official position of the modern German government (based on Nurnberg, etc.) is that
Germany, and Germany alone, is responsible for the outbreak of WWII. Not the Soviet Union.
Just Germany, ma'am, just Germany.
So, in the face of this Polish revisionism, as Russian analysts are pointing out, Germany
will either have to (a) bitch-slap Poland, or (b) renounce their entire official state policy
and historical ideology since their defeat in WWII and start singing Horst Wessel Lied
again.
What Armstrong fails to connect is the need for the first to be accomplished so that the
second has a chance of complete success: Russia's political-economy needed resuscitating and
strong-arming in the case of the kleptocrats for Russia's condition to be as bright as it is
on the dawn of a new decade 1/5 of the way into the 21st Century.
Armstrong also tarries at length with Putin's 2007 Munich speech wherein Putin made one
very prescient observation: "It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And
at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also
for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Armstrong uses Putin's observation made after the Outlaw US Empire's failed attempt to
prolong its Unipolar Moment in Iraq after it attacked itself to cause that conlict to show
the self-inflicted damage has yet to stop:
"Do we not see this today? The USA is tearing itself apart over imagined Russian
collusion, imagined Russian electoral interference and real Ukrainian corruption. And,
meanwhile, the forever wars go on and on."
In 2016, I thought there was an excellent chance the D-Party would splinter in a manner
similar to 1860 that was generated by both bottom->up and top->down forces. And in
light of the court decision allowing the DNC to name whomever it wants as its POTUS and VEEP
candidates regardless of both primary and convention balloting, IMO that possibility is even
greater as like 2016 the DNC will not--cannot--anoint Sanders as its POTUS candidate. But all
that's the subject for another comment.
The dynamics of geopolitics has allowed the China/Russia team and its allies to usher the
EU into Eurasian integration over the next decade while exposing the Outlaw US Empire as
nothing but a Ponzi Scheme that will collapse upon itself at some point in time.
"2020 will be a year of milestone significance. We will finish building a moderately
prosperous society in all respects and realize the first centenary goal. 2020 will also be a
year of decisive victory for the elimination of poverty....
"Human history, like a river, runs forever, witnessing both peaceful moments and great
disturbances. We are not afraid of storms and dangers and barriers. China is determined to
walk along the road of peaceful development and will resolutely safeguard world peace and
promote common development. We are willing to join hands with people of all countries in
the world to build together the Belt and Road Initiative, and push forward the building of a
community with a shared future for mankind, and make unremitting efforts for the creation of
a beautiful future for mankind ." [My Emphasis]
Clearly, China has grasped the leadership role abandoned by the Outlaw US Empire for
promoting humanity, Trump and Pompeo's daily actions giving China's position a continual
boost.
Putin's New
Year speech is short but emphasizes his key points. Do note that for Russians the New
Year celebration is akin to the West's Christmas (or perhaps was is the better verb):
"Friends, we always prepare for the New Year in advance and, despite being busy, we
believe that the warmth of human relations and companionship are the most important thing. We
strive to do something important and useful for other people and to help those who require
our support, to make them happy by giving them presents and our attention.
"Such sincere impulses, pure thoughts and selfless generosity are the true magic of the
New Year holiday. It brings out the best in people and transforms the world filling it with
joy and smiles.
"Uplifting New Year's feelings and wonderful impressions have been living in us since
childhood and come back every New Year, when we hug our loved ones, our parents, prepare
surprises for our children and grandchildren, decorate the New Year tree with them and unpack
once again paper cut-outs, baubles and glass garlands. These, sometimes ancient, but beloved
family trinkets give their warmth to the younger generations."
His preamble is nationalist; his message paternalistic and humanist.
IMO, the Scrooges of the Outlaw US Empire's Current Oligarchy haven't a chance versus the
likes of Putin, Xi and their likeminded allies.
I'll leave my fellow barflies with this 32 year-old music video that IMO well
expresses the heart sets of Putin, Xi, and those of us who want to share the world they're
trying to build instead of what the Outlaw US Empire's trying to pull down and destroy.
"If this succeeds, we'll be well on the path to dictatorship." This seems predicated on
the idea that 'whites' will only be able to hold onto power by Dictatorship. Population
trends suggest whites will still be the largest group [just under half] in 2055. A
considerable group given their, to borrow the phrase, 'privilege'. Add conservative Asian and
even Catholic Latino voters, is it that difficult to envisage a scenario where Republicans
sometimes achieve power without Dictatorship? They are already benefiting from the radical
left helping drive traditional working class white voters to the right [helped by
Republican/Fox etc hyperbole].
Radical left is either idiots of stooges of intelligence agencies and always has been.
IMHO the idea that " whites" are or will be the force behind the move to the dictatorship is
completely naïve. Dictatorship is needed for financial oligarchy and it is the most
plausible path of development due to another factor -- the collapse of neoliberal ideology and
complete discrediting of neoliberal elite. At least in the USA. Russiagate should be viewed as
an attempt to stage a color revolution and remove the President by the USA intelligence
agencies (in close cooperation with the "Five eyes") .
I would view Russiagate is a kind of Beer Hall Putsch with intelligence agencies instead of
national-socialist party. A couple conspirators might be jailed after Durham investigation is
finished (Hilter was jailed after the putsch), but the danger that CIA will seize the political
power remains. After all KGB was in this role in the USSR for along time. Is the USA that
different? I don't think so. There is no countervailing force: the number of people with
security clearance in the USA exceed five million. This five million and not "whites" like some
completely naïve people propose is the critical mass for the dictatorship. https://news.yahoo.com/durham-surprises-even-allies-statement-202907008.html
The potential explosiveness of Durham's mission was further underscored by the disclosure
that he was examining the role of John O. Brennan, the former CIA director, in how the
intelligence community assessed Russia's 2016 election interference.
BTW "whites" are not a homogeneous group. There is especially abhorrent and dangerous
neoliberal strata of "whites" including members of financial oligarchy, the "professional
class" and "academia" (economics department are completely infected.) as well as MIC
prostitutes in MSM.
@silviosilver
ecade, including tracking the course of a Argentine navy ship, Libertad. When it arrived in
Ghana, he persuaded one of the country's judges to detain the vessel in port until he was
paid the millions owed to him. Argentina won that round, successfully arguing in the
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea that the ship should be released. But he won a
later court battle resulting in the South American country defaulting on its debts.
The former president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, memorably
described Singer as "the Vulture Lord", a "bloodsucker" and a "financial terrorist".
vk@22 your citing of the link on Brazil got my attention, I think you're on to something. My
daughter was in Bolivia fall, 2018, and is returning Feb, 2020 and she came back saying that
her Bolivian friends, all middle class teacher types, were "tired of Morales" and were
basically saying that he stayed in power too long and became corrupt. They had some facts
(girlfriend scandal, big house, etc) to back up their general claim. I think they were the
block of people-- not real large, but significant and professionals or semi/emerging
professionals-- who withdrew their support from Morales. I'm not in Bolivia but my guess is
that this group were beneficiaries of but not members of the MAS movement. The MAS movement
is very large and I believe will emerge more in the coming months to show itself a formidable
power block. The fascists will continue to go after them including torture, murder and are
now receiving guidance from Israel on how to create an apartheid structure.
Below are two links. The first is an interview with Andronico Rodriguez, a possible
presidential candidate. It is subtitled in English. The interview was conducted by a
journalist working with Max Blumenthal's the Grayzone; Blumenthal was criticized last week by
B and many for his flip on Syria and there was lots of speculation that he is connected to
bad people through his father and others. I would ask you to suspend judgement on the
Grayzone and keep an open mind on the content of this interview. I also have questions about
people like Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, and others so I
don't go to their websites much anymore but regarding Bolivia I think the reporting I've seen
from the Grayzone (not much until this) is worth looking at.
MAS members are meeting with Morales probably now at the border on the Argentina side and I'm
looking for info to come out maybe in telesur or some Argentine press reports.
Here's another long interview of Adriana Salvatierra, president of the Senate, third in
power behind president and vice president. It's only in Spanish but she's impressive as well.
Both she and Andronico Rodriguez are 30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxM92OabcBk
My speculation is that the MAS movement in Bolivia is very deep, well organized, committed
and courageous. They do not have lots of media support. The fascists have a significant
network of very rich, arrogant, fanatics. They share the same privileged mindset as right
wing Cubans in Florida, Venezuelan, Colombian, Brazilian upper class: if you've ever met one
you won't like them: they are dripping with contempt for dark skin natives with an almost
cartoon-like world view which can be seen in many latin american media stars who tend to be
blond and more northern European in appearance. The fascists in Bolivia also appear to be
disorganized, greedy and not very skilled. They are making mistakes which are undermining
their precarious power base and causing conflicts with diplomats (Mexico and Spain) along
with lots of infighting and nepotism that weakens them. However, they are very mean and want
to reimpose the horrible caste system the Spanish empire brought in 1500 which gave the
people 500 years of pain.
I look for some kind of false flag and military takeover backed and controlled by the CIA,
as the coup leaders will not be able to establish enough internal support among the people
and will not allow elections to push them out.
"... I don't even know what capitalism means anymore. It doesn't seem like it's an actual free market system. Seems like it is slavery for the little guy, and parasitism for the rich. Maybe we should ditch the word capitalism for usuryism. ..."
"... That scary thought has crossed my mind, too, Art. I've even started wondering if this whole impeachment circus is really part of an elaborate plot to guarantee Trump's re-election. I mean, would Pelosi's insane actions make the slightest sense otherwise? And everyone has noted how this is such a 'Jew coup,' haven't they? It all looks so suspicious ..."
"... It looks like it was Browder who killed Magnitsky, so that he can't spill the beans. And then in an act of ultimate chutzpah played the victim and promoted Magnitsky act. ..."
You and other whites here are like the bad guys in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten,
or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime
keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead
this time. Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends. Our ankles survive.
YOU DO NOT.
Talk about deflection. Any nation, empire, culture or civilization wherein the Jewish collective gains critical mass and ultimately
absolute power turns into a real horror, not a movie. The Jews may be said to be the true prototype of the "bad guys in
every horror movie", since they can only be gotten rid of by very rigorous means taken in the healthiest and most vigorous cultures
and societies. Indeed, antisemitism itself is the healthy immunological reaction of a flourishing culture, and its lack thereof
the pathology of a moribund one.
Woke Christians of European provenance have nothing to envy the Jew (the archetypal Jew) over. We realize that the true measure
of success is not primarily monetary or the fulfillment of cheap ambitions, but a spiritual and cultural one. On the contrary,
the Jewish hatred against Christian Europe and the civilization that it constructed is engendered out of sheer envy and malice,
because Jewry understands that is would never be capable of constructing anything similar, and never has. In all of the arts,
Jewry has produced nothing of note.
This is not to say that individual Jews have not made contributions to the arts and sciences, but they have done so only by
participation in gentile culture, not qua Jews. Jewry only tears down and deconstructs; it is not creative in the sense of high
art, and can thrive only in the swamp of gentile decadence and moral putrefaction. Whatever Jewry touches, it turns to merde.
@Anon specifically
push them away from materialism and desire for money and power, even at the expense of others. That is the exact point
of religion (self-improvement) btw, so the next question is is the Jewish religion effective?
At which point, the Jewish ideology becomes the wolf in the hen house because it fails to tame the human away from such materialistic
desire (as it btw claims it does best).
Should the hens be allowed to point out what they see as a wolf? Yes.
That the supposed wolf then obfuscates and justifies their actions by pointing to others, mostly, betrays that it is, in fact,
a wolf.
I have become totally disenchanted with the SEC. Stupid, Evil, Crazy! It would not surprise me if they are the ones that have
been terrorizing me, with stupid, evil, crazy chants through appliances after illegallly implaced RFIDs, microchips, or sensors
illegally implanted in my ears and nose that started after my first phone was hacked in 2017! Can't expect stupid people not to
be stupid, evil people not to be evil, and crazy people not to be crazy! They were just born that way!
"The US will become minority white in 2045 Census projects " :
"During that year [2045] whites will comprise 49.7 per cent of the population in contrast to 24.6 per cent for Hispanics ,
13.1 per cent for Blacks , 7.9 per cent for Asians and 3.8 per cent for multi-racial populations " Are these projections good
or bad for the "Jewish people " ?
Nov 22, 2013 Thomas DiLorenzo The Revolution Of 1913
From the Tom Woods show Loyola economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo discusses three events from 1913 that greatly escalated
the transmogrification of America from the founder's vision (limited government) to its current state (unlimited government).
@Lot sons of
Abraham name their businesses after themselves (I'm sure this will insincerely be attributed to some fear of native kulaks' repressed
urge-to-pogrom, even in Finland or Japan.) The other is an observation made by an associate of a famous Austrian landscapist:
even merely remarking on their origins causes these guys mental distress.
Here in the melting pot, the difference couldn't be any starker. You can make small talk with any flavor of goy based on it:
that's a Polish name, isn't it? Yeah, how did you know! Try this one with Levy or Nussbaum down at The Smith Group or The
Jones Foundation and watch them plotz.
Jews have always weaponized usury. Long before Christianity, Jews operated the East/West mechanism on donkey caravan trade
routes. Silver would drain from the West, and Gold would drain from the east, while Jewish caravaneers would take usury on exchange
rate differences. This operated for thousands of years.
Haibaru donkey bones have been discovered outside of Sumer. The Aiparu/Haibaru (Hebrew) tribes were formed as merchants operating
between city states. In those days, psychopaths and criminals would be excommunicated from civilized city states, and would take
up with the wandering merchant tribe.
Why do you think the Jew is always interested in owing the money power? Why do you think the Jew perpetually stands outside
the walls of the city state, plotting its destruction?
History tells us things, and we had better listen. That is real history, not what you learned in (((public skool))). There
are two ways to deal with the Jew: 1) Remove him from your country. 2) Limit him.
Limiting was done by Byzantium under Justinian. The Jew was limited FROM money counting/banking; limited from participation
in government; limited from access to pervert young minds especially as school teachers and professors.
It takes a King or Tsar who cares about his population, and is willing to eject or filter out toxins from the body politic.
(((Democracy))) is a failed form of government, whereby monied Oligarchs control the polity by compromat and pulling strings.
You are not going to be able to vote your way out of the Jew problem.
@Ilya G Poimandres
edina. Ergo, Wahabbi Islam and the Takfiri's are doctrinaly correct, while Judaizer Christians (those that worship the old
testament) are out of alignment and heretics.
Judaism is actually a new religion that came into being after 73 AD, when the verbal tradition (Caballa) became written down
into Talmud.
Our Jewish friends have always been practicing usury, going back to since forever.
Our Jewish friends, I count as worse that Islamics. However two wrongs don't make a right. Islam badly needs reform or to be
expunged. Talmudic Judaism is by far the worst religion on the planet, and its adherents must malfunction by definition.
@Onebornfree
You are missing something because you are unwilling to adapt and learn with new information. This makes you an ideologue.
Libertarianism IS A JEWISH CONSTRUCT.
There are no such things as free markets. Money's true nature is law, not gold. Money didn't come into being with barter and
other nonsense lolbertarians believe.
Most of the luminaries that came up with "libertarian" economics are Jews, and it is a doctrine of deception. The idea is to
confuse the goyim with thoughts and ideas that make them easy pickings.
A determined in-group of predators operating in unison, will take down an "individual" every-time.
Don't expect anything to improve with Jay Clayton as SEC Chair, and his wife and her father Gretchen Butler Clayton who was
CEO of CSC and mysterious WMB Holdings which share the same address in addition to many Goldman Sachs divisions. Gretchen was
employed by Goldman Sachs as an attorney from 1999-2017. Many companies affiliated with the Panama Papers share the same address
as well.
Jewish people have treated me better than my own White Euro family.
Jews are tribal, gee what a surprise after 1000's of years of people trying to wipe them out . and so their charity is within
the tribe, but there is no charity within the tribe among Whites.
Jews, along with Asians and at least some Africans, believe in not just climbing the ladder, but in actually helping others
at least family up it also. Whites believe in climbing the ladder and then pulling it up after them.
I was explaining to a friend recently: My (relative) has proven that if I showed up at their door, starving, they'd not give
me a cheese sandwich, while in my experience, strangers have been overall a fairly kind lot and a stranger, 50/50, might. Therefore,
while I find the idea of robbing or burning down the house of a stranger abhorrent, I don't mind the idea so much when it involves
a person who's proven to be cold and evil.
For more on this, see the book Angela's Ashes. The Irish family could have stayed in New York where they were being befriended
by a Jewish family. There was a ray of hope. The Irish kids, at least, would have been fed, steered into decent schooling, etc.
But foolishly they went back to Ireland, to be treated like utter dogshit by their fellow White family and "people".
Most of the predation going on in the US and worldwide is being done by WASPS who are using Jews as a convenient scapegoat.
Finally! An intelligent criticism of Trump for a change. So tired of the brainless Democrat/MSM impeachment circus.
They make me feel like a reflexive MAGAtard just for defending the constitution, logic, etc., from their never-ending stream of
inanities. Meanwhile, the real problem with Trump is not that he's Hitler; it's that he's not Hitler enough!
I am also so tired of Zionist-loving cucks bleeting on about the evils of the CRA without ever considering the role played
by the (((profiteers))) who lobbied such policies into law in the first place. Realize that what Paul Singer does for a living
used to be illegal in this country up until recently. That's right: US bankruptcy law used to forbid investors from buying up
debt second-hand at a discount and then trying to reclaim the entire face value from the debtor. But I see all kinds of
people even on this thread blaming the victim instead -- 'Damn goyishe deadbeats!' Whatever
What Singer and the other Jewish vultures engage in is not productive, and isn't even any recognisable form of work or business.
It is greed-motivated parasitism carried out on a perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale. In truth, it is Singer
and his co-ethnics who believe that money can be printed on the backs of productive workers, and who ultimately believe they
have a right to be "showered by free stuff promised by politicians."
@anon maintain
your honor, and manners and still succeed. Jews take the easy low road of deception and cheating. WASP take the higher road of
harder work and ethical business practice.
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I" care not who makes its laws"
That is what Mayer Amschel Rothchild said in the 1750s. Now, is it a stretch of my imagination to believe the Central Banks
of the West, all Jewish controlled, would unfairly favor their 'own' when issuing or disbursing the money they are permitted to
create.
We are not allowed to audit the Federal Reserve, so we know not what they do with it beyond what they tell us. In 2016 it was
discovered that between the year 1999 and 2016 well over $23 trillions had been stolen from just 2 departments of our government,
the DoD and HUD. (Someone should look at NASA). Is it possible the seed money, for not only Venture capitalists schemes but also
buying governments and law makers, has been diverted, shoveled out of the back door of these corrupt central banks and into the
hands of their fellow jews?
Anyway, the more exposure articles like this get the closer we get to ending their reign.
@Mefobills
he pressure will only be towards violence for any nation or faith!
Judaism has monopolized for millennia though, and still acts as a victim. Different kettle of fish.
Also, you can debate the positives and negatives of Islam with a Muslim (not as a rabid ignoramus of course you must be polite,
and have learnt something, as well as be open to learning more). Almost every debate with a Jew about Judaism has started with,
continued with, and ended with name calling for me however.
Judaism fails as a religion because it does not encourage the practitioner to look at themselves when confronted with error,
Islam still does imo.
Your statement: "Jews actually collaborated extensively in the imposition of tyranny on the working class in Eastern Europe
from 1917 to 1991" not only applies to Europe, but the united States of America as well.
1. Re Sidney, Nebraska: Maybe I'm missing something but wasn't it Cabela's owners, for example co-founder and chairman Jim
Cabela, who sold Cabela, not Elliot Management (Singer et al)? I gather Elliot Management owned only 11% of the company. Was that
enough to force them to sell?
2. The article confuses honest straightforward loans with tax farming and government corruption. Loans can be very useful,
e.g. for a car to get to a job, or for a house so you build up equity instead of paying rent.
According to the Talmud, we goyim are not the descendants of Adam and Eve, like the Jews. No, we are the bastard progeny
of Adam's first wife, Lilleth, who eloped with the demon Samael. So we goyim are really all half-demons and therefore we are an
abomination in the sight of Jew-hova, and we get what we deserve at the hands of his 'chosen people'.
@Colin Wright
to get carried away with this. Figures such as Andrew Carnegie, while impeccably gentile, were hardly paragons of scrupulous
ethics and disinterested virtue.
Andrew Carnegie built something that made life better for people. Making steel is a beneficial thing.
These evil vulture Jews build nothing they make people poorer. They suck the wealth out of people who have little. They know
100% what they are doing.
Jesus expressed anger against the money changers on the temple steps.
It is OK for you to have natural human feelings and be angry at these Jew bastards.
@anon ith him
on this trip. It was an awful experience consistent with all the books I read on psychopaths and also that book Jewish History,
Jewish Religion, the weight of 3000 years
Another very wealthy American mother of a friend asked her South African friends (also jews) to help her book trips in South
Africa (and they of course recommended only their Jewish friends) it's their son who told me this.
So a lot of backstabbing, cultural nepotism and actively (but in a hidden way as most psychopaths like to do) they do at wakening
and isolating their host. That's their only advantage not intelligence (at least in my experience )
I don't even know what capitalism means anymore. It doesn't seem like it's an actual free market system. Seems like it
is slavery for the little guy, and parasitism for the rich. Maybe we should ditch the word capitalism for usuryism.
@Ilya G Poimandres
o including offensive war. I used the term political authority on purpose, because Islam is more than just a religion, it
is a political-theocratic construct that is all-encompassing.
There may not be a specific verse allowing aggressive violence, but there is something going on based on the data. (I admit
to being a lay-man and not an expert on minutia of Islam. I don't want to go there based on what I already know to be true.)
In Christianity, if there are calls for aggressive violence it is OUT OF ALIGNMENT because of super-session. Christian adherents
who do this are Judaizers, and have to use the old testament for justification.
'Everywhere they go, they leave behind nations in ruins. "
-- They always find the willing local collaborators ready to make a big profit. Who can forget Dick Cheney, the Enemy of Humanity?
The same kind of unrestricted criminality and amorality lives on in Tony Blair the Pious.
The fact that this Catholic weasel and major criminal Tony Blair is still not excommunicated tells all we need to know about
the Vatican.
Assange is rotting in a prison, while Tony Blair and Ghislaine Maxwell are roaming free. The Jewish connections pay off.
@J Adelman
s as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic senators declared, "We have supported
[the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles
to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with
this important investigation
And yet Trump pulls the Jews ever closer. A ruling race of ubermenschen now.
'No reason'.
Can you imagine what American Blacks and savage Hispanics let alone whites are going to do if the US economy craters like the
Russian economy, and everything is transferred to the banks?
Yeah . fine idea. I've always maintained there are two uses of the word "capitalism" industrial capitalism or competition of
ideas vs. financial capitalism, the Darwinian struggle for the most ruthless bankster to rig the "markets" most efficiently.
Whether we give it new terminology I don't care much . but I sure wish people would understand the difference, one way of another
!
@alex in San Jose
AKA digital Detroit as extended, and had aunts and uncles and cousins, who lived in the general area for centuries, then there
would be a network to fall back on.
See slaughter of the cities by Jones:
And yes, the FIRE sector and impetus behind the destruction of your extended family was JEWISH. The breakdown of neighborhoods
and ethnics was on purpose.
The Jew is anti-logos, and whatever he touches he destroys. (There are exceptions of course but these people no longer possess
a negative Jewish spirit.)
Sorry your family was destroyed. When whites become un-moored they don't know how to act.
Quite bizarre post. First,he makes a half ass defense of Jew character.(Weinstein, Epstein don't represent jews! Well, they
kind of do. Any jew who is called to accounts for his crimes automatically does not represent jews! )
if you think it's wrong to buy or try to collect on defaulted debt, what is the alternative set of laws and behavior you
are recommending? If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function.
Capitalism includes money. You can't separate the risks in lending from other risks. Bad investors should be punished and good
investors rewarded. Resources should be well allocated. Otherwise it's not capitalism.
These insane Boomers seem to think that there is a Jewish coup underway to remove Trump because of all the things that Jews
are saying in Jewish publications and every single person involved being Jewish and stuff.
@Germanicus
About the Carnegie donated "Peace Palace" in The Hague, presently the seat of the In ternational Court of Justice:
Germanicus claims:
They are a function of Empire in Hague, who protect empire criminals, and assume a non existent legitimacy and jurisdiction
as a private entity to take down empire opponents.
Such as this ruling for instance:
Guardian 3 Oct.2018:
International court of justice orders US to lift new Iran sanctions
Mike Pompeo indicates US will ignore ruling, after judges in The Hague find unanimously in favor of Iran
"What Joyce regards as a defect of "vulture" funds, others might regard as an benefit. "
-- Of course. I hope you did not miss the fact that the Jewish vulture funds -- ruthless, unethical, and leaching on goyim
-- contribute to the Jewish Holocaust Museum.
Is not it touching that the same bloody destroyers of nations demand from the same nations a very special reverence -- out
of ethical considerations, of course -- towards the Jewish victims of WWII? But only Jewish victims.
All others were not victims but casualties. See Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine. See the unlimited hatred of ziocons towards
Russia.
" but maybe a few leftist thinkers would receive a much needed electric shock if they were to see the JQ framed in marxist
terms " I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in
the Cheka, NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.
Browder's case is really interesting. http://www.ihr.org /jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html
"According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary
Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans'
income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown
fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era."
"Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political
power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the
economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June
1997 Journal, pp. 21-27.)"
It's interesting how the appeal of Eduard Topol to Jews in Russia is now starting to echo Jewish calls in the United States
for Jews to stop the path they are currently on.
Here is the complete text of Topol's extraordinary "Open Letter to Berezovksy, Gusinsky, Smolensky, Khodorkovsky and other
Oligarchs," translated for the Journal by Daniel Michaels from the text published in the respected Moscow paper Argumenty i Fakty
("Arguments and Facts"), No. 38, September 1998:
Magnitsky and Bill Browder is also really interesting.
It turns out that a large measure of the Russiagate story arose because Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who traveled
to America to challenge Browder's account, arranged a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign advisers in June
2016 to present this other side of the story.
Then we had Democrats actually literally word for word doing what they accuse Trump of doing in Ukraine.
"It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)
and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing
of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance
to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as "strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine," the Democratic
senators declared, "We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast
aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump," before demanding Lutsenko "reverse course and halt any
efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation."
What's the first rule of Communist and Satanist Saul Alinsky? Always accuse your opponents of what you are doing.
Imagine having a Grandfather as the literal Chairman of the American Communist Party, and all the amazing lessons you would
learn about political maneuvering and ideology.
And it's amazing.
Browder's story is that Russian officials stole his companies seals and then fraudulently formulated a tax avoidance scheme
with a complete paper trail that they fabricated against him in totem. Precisely matching the amount of money he was trying to
remove from their country, like those other Jewish Oligarchs who imposed conditions that were multiples worse then even the American
depression.
When under oath it turns out that Magnitsky wasn't even a lawyer at all, and didn't go to law school. Why did the media owned
by Mormons of course keep saying that Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer?
Why did the Russians fraudulently fabricate a paper-trail for another Jewish Oligarch to steal money out of Russia? Just like
they colluded with Trump when a Russian lawyer sought to explain what happened. Because that totally happened.
Maybe the problem isn't Capitalism. Maybe, when even the ur-Shabbos goys at National Review are shaking their head and washing
their hands like Pilate, maybe it's a different problem.
Yet Trump holds these people ever close to his beating heart.
And then there are all these connections to Jeffrey Epstein that are like an explosion linking all these people.
Poor old Russia. Even Putin isn't worse then what came before.
t class is not tied to any territory has been observable since 1960.
I don't have time now to look up how many of 199 directors are Jews . but I know enough of the economic history of various
countries to know that Jews were the first business and finance globe trotters,,,,.from Spain to Amsterdam, France to Africa ,
etc.etc. Jew were first hired as reps and facilitators by the gentile business owners especially because of their breather tribal
contacts in many countries ..that was their stepping stone to becoming transnational capitalist themselves.
Understanding our global capitalist ruling elite and who they are is not rocket science
Yet more evidence is piling up that Donald J Trump is the Great Betrayer. A man who had the biggest mandate in post war history
to clean up the Swamp that is D.C., reform Immigration to save America and reform the economy for American workers. He has squandered
all of it while pandering to Jews.
When the Donald is revealed as the Great Betrayer where will Jews run? Yes, they have several back up plans. Patagonia, Ukraine
and Israel.
Imagine that. They have their own country and 2 back up plans. It is really tough being a hated, oppressed minority.
being much more cautious in their borrowing since the borrowing cost is so high.
Instead, this current arrangement basically uses bond funds to put up a false front, telling a debtor they can borrow at 2%
when the real rate should be at 20% given the known risks, then the debtor goes crazy borrowing because it's so cheap to borrow,
and when they can't pay back, the bond gets sold to the vultures who come collecting at 20% or they seize assets.
This is no different than the subprime mortgage crap, except now that is regulated so they go after sovereign debt and corporate
debt instead. These vultures need to go die period.
This is a great, concise overview of Canadian media influence by the "silent" Jewish overlords via Golden Tree.
I tried copy/paste of your comment on CBC, but it did NOT last 2minutes before being suspended!!
I am sorry to have used your comment without your permission, but I am going to "misspell" some words to defeat the algorithm
to get your message across.
@Lot e, and
these golfy-sounding names (Elliot, Monarch, GoldTree, OakTree, Canyon, Tilden Park) fit the perception. We whites receive the
society's hate for the wealth disparities created by high finance.
4. No, it is not difficult to do finance differently. Every other investor has higher patience for poor countries in Central
America and Africa, and they all look at Elliot with confused scorn.
And, things would probably run fine without hyper-aggressive multi-billionaires in pushing the courts to f- over those who
default on debts they owe to the maximum degree. Japan and Norway do quite fine with businesses that are run by gentle and humble
goys who feel ashamed at the thought of getting "too rich."
You will be thrown out.
You will have to choose between Israel, Ukraine and Patagonia. No one else will take you.
You have destroyed our politics, media and economy.
You are not respected.
You buy compliance with money.
You have bankrupted the U.S. dollar with debt pursuing Israel's enemies.
Ben Franklin and the American revolution was almost put in a similar pinch by the Amsterdam banker Jean DeNeufville. In a letter
to John Adams, 14 December 1781*, Franklin explained that DeNeufville wanted as security for a loan "all the lands, cities, territories,
and possessions of the said Thirteen States, which they may have or possess at present, and which they may have or possess in
the future, with all their income, revenue, and produce, until the entire payment of this loan and the interests due thereon."
Franklin considered that "extravagant" but Newhouse rejoined, "this was usual in all loans and that the money could not otherwise
be obtained". Franklin retold in this lengthy letter, "Besides this, I was led to understand that it would be very agreeable to
these gentlemen if, in acknowledgment of their zeal for our cause and great services in procuring this loan, they would be made
by some law of Congress the general consignee of America, to receive and sell upon commission, by themselves and correspondents
in the different ports and nations, all the produce of America that should be sent by our merchants to Europe."
Talk about shooting the moon
While Wikipedia says DeNeufville was Mennonite, Franklin concluded with this colorful -- and bitter -- remark , "By this time,
I fancy, your Excellency is satisfied that I was wrong in supposing John de Neufville as much a Jew as any in Jerusalem, since
Jacob was not content with any per cents, but took the whole of his brother Esau's birthright, and his posterity did the same
by the Canaanites, and cut their throats into the bargain; which, in my conscience, I do not think Mr. John de Neufville has the
least inclination to do by us while he can get any thing by our being alive. I am, with the greatest esteem, etc., ✪ B. Franklin."
Perhaps it was just an expression based on an earlier stereotype?
*Bigelow, 1904. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 9 Letters and Misc. Writings
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen
o to Uganda and Ugandans were willing, but NO Zion had to have Palestine, and they got it through war, deception, and murder.
It was funded by usury, as stolen purchasing power from the Goyim.
The fake country of Israel, is not the biblical Israel, and it came into being by maneuverings of satanic men determined to
get their way no matter what, and is supported by continuous deception. Even today's Hebrew is resurrected from a dead language,
and is fake. Many fake Jews (who have no blood lineage to Abraham), a fake country, and fake language. These fakers, usurers,
and thieves do indeed have their eyes set on Patagonia, what they call the practical country.
I've been to TOO. However I can't bring myself to start commenting on a white nationalist website. I will admit I am unable
to articulate this discomfort presently.
As to your point about Marx I actually forgot about his work on the JQ. The Saker, who is a columnist on this site, referenced
Marx's essay on the JQ some time ago. I must have not read the whole thing or I'd have remembered it. I didn't know that Marxism
originated with anti-Semitism, but that is fascinating. I have encountered some Marxists in my time and they focus exclusively
(predictably) on the cis-white-male patriarchy, or whatever occupies their brainwashed minds after an Introduction to Gender Studies
class.
@Anon repudiated
at will, capitalism cannot function."
Is this children's capitalist theory class time? throwing around some simple slogans for a susceptible congregation of future
believers?
Should be quite obvious that people, groups of people, if not whole nations , can be forced and or seduced into depths by means
of certain practices. There are a thousand ways of such trickery and thievery, these are not in the theory books though. In these
books things all match and work out wonderfully rationally
Then capitalism cannot function? Unfortunately it has become already dysfunctional, if not a big rotten cancer.
@J Adleman
Ezekiel 21:25 25 'Now to you, O profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day has come, whose iniquity shall end
Jeremiah 5:9 Shall I not punish them for these things?" says the LORD. "And shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?
As Jesus said which of the prophets have you not killed or persecuted? The truth hurts. As for me I do not hate Jews ..I feel
terribly sad for a people that are capable of greatness and squandered the gifts given to them by God. Are you a holy nation?
Don't make me laugh. Repent. Your time is coming. No more running and hiding. Deception will no longer save you only acceptance
of the Messiah.
he can't be bargained with,he can't reasoned with,he doesn't feel pity,remorse,or fear " In other words a 'culture' as a
PSYCHOPATH it's a well-oiled psychopath support group
Hey! Don't mention anything a Jew ever did, especially usury, or else the entire cult will go up in a holocaustal mushroom
cloud of emo nasal whining. In Judaism you've got a fanatical sect that systematically selects and brainwashes its members to
inculcate extreme values of two Big Five personality axes: high neuroticism and low intellect (where intellect means open-mindedness.)
Note the existential crisis triggered by a straightforward lecture from The Society for the Study of Unbelievably Obvious Shit.
Of course Israel is holocausting the Palestinians. This is what happens when the founding myth of a nation is, We wiped em
all out and then they wiped us almost all out so now we gotta wipe em all out etc., etc., etc.
@J.W. en a
narcissist and a psychopath is that the former need people to like them whereas psychopaths genuinely could not care less (although
they learn early that acting as if they do can be very helpful , as can always trying to elicit sympathy etc).
As I noticed while reading a few books on psychopathy (I was inspired to after reading Steve Job's biography) their whole 'culture'
is structured as a (collective ) PSYCHOPATH.
It seems that (collectively) they cannot care about others even if they wanted to. Due to their sickness
I am not saying they are all that way but overall their 'culture' seems to be that way
The Sacklers occupy a hoity-toity rung in the philanthropy universe, as they have given enough $$$ to Harvard for H to paste
their name on its museum housing I believe its whole Asian art collection.
Students have now protested Harvard's high-profile gift of probity and cultural status to the Sacklers via, literally, an "Aushangerschild"
on a major university museum. Harvard protests back: Jeez, if we don't take the Sacklers' dough we might be obliged to stop taking
the dough from Exxon, etc.
@Anon ou are
right that loans should be repaid it is immoral to allow a well connected mafia to change all the laws and remove protections
while pushing up prices of everything because it suits the lender (who has a licence to print).
They basically lend money that does not exist and get interest for that. So the more sheeple are tricked into borrowing the better
for them, but the worse for everyone else
They should not be allowed to bribe politicians to remove all the protection that was there since 1920s I think.
It's a marriage from hell: easy to bribe Anglosheep meets the masters of predatory bribing who own the printing press
That stupid cuck Trump just got impeached by the House. Thats a good lesson to everybody how much good Jew-ass kissing does
for you .you get stabbed in the back anyway lol
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving and treacherous scumbag!
But he should have been impeached for his treachery to the constitution and to the American people for his slavish devotion
to all things Jewish!
True, but irrelevant. The Jews that matter don't read the Talmud or believe in "Adam and Eve."
It's 2020. The Jewish religion is "The Holocaust" and we're all "Nazis."
Frankly, it's these traditional religious notions of "anti-semitism" that get in the way of understanding what is, at the core,
an ethnic issue. It's Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist entity in Palestine, and the ADL that are the problem, not some looney-tunes
rabbi living in Brooklyn.
The other side of the explanation is the lacking of reaction of the victim, the american people. The least that the people
that loot the world trough and with the USA power should do, is ,at least ,let us,the american people, a free ride.
Not illegal in the Talmud either but most certainly illegal in all of the countries that DynCorp was caught profiting from
this type of business. For some reason they never seem to suffer for their exposure suggesting that they may be wielding the same
influence that Epstein had over our elected officials.
We dont have to get back to the Singer of this world but to our own politicians ,that allowed them to do this to us,and to
the world.In this kind of abusive realtionship the 2 sides are to blame.
@Just passing through
h and then moved over to the West with their newfound gains, buying up properties, forcing prices up for the natives. The
western corporations not only wanted cheap products to export back to the U.S., but they were also developing a whole new market
Chinese consumers who would buy their products as well. Double plus good!
And once in the West, the Chinese and the Indians stick to their groups. They hire their own, promote their own, do business
together. A lot of corruption, money laundering, cheating, taking advantage of and bending laws. Rule of law? Code of ethics?
Morals? Do unto others? They never learned it. Opportunistic dual citizens.
I would not count on the effect of the electric shock on the leftist thinkers. The role of Jewish Bolsheviks in the Cheka,
NKVD, GULAGs, genocides by famine has been known from the very beginning and yet it left no impact on the leftist thinkers.
It unfortunately has not had much of an effect on a lot of people in the West, who remain ignorant or in denial of the role
played by Jewish Bolsheviks in historic mass murders and totalitarian repression.
Waiting for the Hollywood movie to tell the story.
This is why you need to start with Zarlinga, as there is no BS to lead you astray. Hudson tends to drill the bulls-eye too.
There is so much deception in the field of money and economy, that it is easy to get caught up in false narratives, like one-born
free libertarianism. Usury flows fund the deception, even to the point of leaving out critical passages in translations, such
as in Aristotle's works. Or, important works are bought up and burned.
Michael Hudson is the leading economist resurrecting Classical Economics. Reading all of Hudson and Zarlinga will take some
time and effort, but it is good to take a first step.
@Anon According
to Wikipedia : " The armed rebellion of the Mau Mau was the culminating response to Colonial rule . Although there had been previous
instances of violent resistance to colonialism , the Mau Mau revolt was the most prolonged and violent anti-colonial warfare in
the British Colonial colony. From the start the land was the primary British interest in Kenya ."
Just as the Kenyans suffered the consequences of British colonialism , the "Palestinians will suffer
the consequences of Zionist colonialism until Israel's original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied "
foreignpolicyjournal.com
distinction of Jewish investors versus gentile investors on average, of course is their use of bribery to get the force
of government behind them. Rather than taking a bet about some group being able to pay back some bonds and letting the chips
fall where they may, Jews start bribing or influencing politicians to force that group to pay back the bonds.
Buy some bonds, charge outrageous fees, bribe officials in some form or other, get govt to force the payment of bonds and outrageous
fees. Rinse and repeat. Jews have been doing this in some form aor another for 1500 years. It's why the peasants get a tad angry
at both the Jews and their bribed politicians/nobility.
Trump is in league with the Jews? Yeah, who isn't? Obama's lips are still sore from kissing Jewish Wall Street bankers' asses
(notice that none of them went to jail). Same with the Clinton's.
You can get politicians to pass all sorts of laws in your favor if you've got enough dirt on them. After all, your side owns
the media, Hollywood, academia, the courts, the banks.
If dirt doesn't work, you can always threaten to impeach them in order to get what you want.
But Trump is also revealing every last dirty one of them (accidentally or on purpose). People see them now.
J Adelman comes out swinging. He's such a tough guy. But does he make sense? Does he care if he makes sense? The writer is
talking about those Jews who are vulture capitalists. He's not talking about every Jew. Isn't it a little odd that nearly all
of these funds are run by Jews? Can your corrupt mind accept that fact and address the question? Or are you going to bore us with
your religion and by that I mean your obsession with anti-semitism, which is your religion.
'Hmm -- The day after Trump in inaugurated for his second term -- will Iran be in his crosshairs? We need to think very
seriously about that!
My guess is Iran is in the crosshairs. Trump probably promised he'd start the war as soon as he was elected the first time
-- but he putzed around, and now it's almost 2020. Adelson et al are pissed -- but Trump's got a point. If he starts the war
now the unknown Democrat will win -- and do you trust their word instead? They just gotta trust Trump. Let him get reelected
-- then he'll come through.
This is one of those cases where I'll be happy to be proved wrong -- but such is my suspicion.
Stop splitting hairs. Is this the best you can do? Are you one of Lot's cronies? I don't normally address petty matters of
this kind but Joyce is describing a multitude of sins and misconduct orchestrated by various Jewish financiers around the globe.
It is not merely one phenomenon; thus, 'phenomena' fits. Go troll someone else.
Typical Jew baiting article. Mitt Romney isn't a "Jew" Ashish Masih isn't. Many more examples of gentiles taking advantage
of their brothers. May as well consider the Walton family of Wal-Mart to be vultures as well since they benefit the most from
this system, they're so called Christians, not Jews.
The problem is capitalism. Author seems to suggest that a moral economic system has been corrupted. The system was designed
in an era of widespread slavery folks. Its an immoral system that requires theft, slavery, war, immigration, all the things you
hate, to survive. The system is working exactly as it is designed to work. Exploit workers, the environment and resources, shift
all the profits from workers to the owners of capital, period. Welcome to the late stage, it eats and destroys itself
From the days of the colonists slaughtering the Injuns and stealing their land. The days of importing African slaves, and indentured
servants. The days of child labor and factory owners hiring Pinkertons to gun down workers who protested shitty wages and working
conditions. The good ol days of the gilded age. Now the age of offshoring to China or some other lower wage nation. Overthrowing
leaders not willing to let their resources and people be plundered and enslaved, driving refugees to our borders fleeing violence
and poverty. Importing H1B workers to drive down wages. It was always a corrupt system of exploitation/theft/slavery. This is
nothing new and doesn't require "Jews" to be immoral.
And all these so called "Christians" like Pastor Pence approve. Usury and capitalism run amok. I'm sure Jesus is smiling down
on all these Bible toting demons who allow their fellow man to be exploited by the parasites. Sad!
Good for Tucker. He has his moments I'd watch his show if he wasn't a partisan hack. But that will never happen working for
Fox or any other corporate media.
Trump loves his daughter and she is married to a Jew. If they're not getting their way, I could see them telling Trump: "Sad
what happened at the Pittsburgh synagogue, isn't it? Sure hope nothing like that happens to your daughter."
I don't envy Trump. He not only is up against the Democrats, but he is also fighting the globalist neocons in his own party.
Both parties want open borders and more war, something Trump does not believe in. As far as I can see, he's throwing them bones
in order to shut them up. If he gets elected again, which I think he will, we might see a different Trump. Who knows.
Rather amusing to read our resident Jewish apologists carrying on about the absolute sanctity of the necessity of collecting
debts to the functioning of the capitalistic system. These nations and corporate entities that are now in thrall of the Wall Street
Jews , were herded into debt by that other faction of the capitalist system, the dealers in easy money. Snookering the rubes into
lifelong debt, telling them that money is on the tap, promoting unsustainable spending habits and then let the guillotine come
down, for the vultures to feed on. They are two sides of the same coin.
Its damned funny that the rich Jews nowadays are absolutely addicted to usury, rentier activities, and debt collection, when
the Bible itself condemns such activities. But they are our elder brothers in faith according to some.
Carnegie was a Protestant. The Protestant cancer serves it's Jewish masters. Read 'The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit' by E. Michael
Jones. There is definitely a revolutionary nature to the international Jew just as there is to their Protestant dupes. Jewish
nature is to subvert the natural order and the west was built by the guidance of LOGOS. The Catholic Faith created by God guided
the creation of the west. These Jewish exploits are a result of the Wests rejection of its nature and its enslavement
1. rich or poor, creditor or debtor, in the final analysis, ultimately, all will become equal in the grave. the filthy rich
might decide to lay their corpses in coffins made of gold, but it will be in vain. the sorrows and the joys of this fleeting world
shall quickly pass like the shadow.
2. talmudics feel the need to accumulate money in order to have sense of security since they were stateless for two millennia.
paradoxically, amount of wealth is indirectly proportional to a sense of security, provoking backlash from aggrieved host people.
3. establishment of State of Israel did not reduce the need for the accumulation but has only heightened it since now talmudics
feel the need to support it so that she could maintain military superiority over neighbouring threats.
4. as long as Palestinians are not free and Israel does not make peace, talmudics will continue to meddle in American politics.
if you don't want to save the Palestinians for the sake of humanity and truth or justice, at least you should do it for your own
sake.
5. loan sharking, vulture whatever, etc., is the ugliness of big capitalism with capital C, what is beyond sickening is the promotion
of sodomy. if one becomes poor or homeless, it's a pity. to go against nature is an abomination.
6. by using such words as "homosexual" you have accepted the paradigm of the social engineers and corruptors, and are therefore
collaborating with them. words have consequences since that is how we convey ideas unless you own Hollywood and can produce your
own moving pictures too.
7. talmudics is a better word than as a great American scholar says, since people who promote sodomy are absolutely opposed to
the Torah (O.T.). those who still struggle to follow it couldn't care less what happens to benighted goyim, only becoming reinforced
in pride of their own purity as opposed to disgraced nations. thus, practically, they too are talmudics, alien to the spirit of
the ancient holy fathers and prophets of Israel. the word "Orthodox" has been stolen and now has lost all meaning or it means
the exact opposite of what it originally meant.
8. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
Well there's nothing wrong in principle about specialists in valuing distressed debt and managing it nuying such debt and using
the previously established mechanisms for getting value out of their investment. So the problem is how they go about enforcing
their rights and the lack of regulation to mitigate hardship in hard cases.
Still it is notable that it should, overwhelmingly be a Jewish business and such a powerful medium for enriching Jewish causes
and communities at the expense of poor Americans.
George Bush needed Tony Blair's support to attack Iraq , Donald Trump now has the support of Boris Johnson to attack Iran :
"Boris Johnson refuses to rule out military intervention on Iran ." metro.co.uk
It is said that the "deep state " removed Theresa May from office as she was "too soft" on Iran . As you suggest the attack
will not happen until Trump's second term unless, in the meantime , there is a false flag attack like 9/11 which can be blamed
on the Iranians .
While Whites theoretically still have the numbers to affect/determine the outcome of elections, a majority of Whites usually
stay home because they are tired of the 'evil of two lessers' choice they are offered -- even voting for Trump got them little/nothing.
I said nothing of an electoral solution to America's problems the problems will not be solved that way.
That scary thought has crossed my mind, too, Art. I've even started wondering if this whole impeachment circus is really
part of an elaborate plot to guarantee Trump's re-election. I mean, would Pelosi's insane actions make the slightest sense otherwise?
And everyone has noted how this is such a 'Jew coup,' haven't they? It all looks so suspicious
What our Jewish friends have done to Argentina, through maneuvering the elections, killing dissidents, and marking territory,
is a cautionary tale to anybody woke enough to see with their own eyes.
@Mefobills
mo.. maybe other than when 100% of the Ummah agree on something, I read that could remove a surah of the Quran, like a voice of
God. That rhymes nicely imo.
Of course how to judge which ruling to use? I agree, it brings in a casuistry into the faith that generally helps to confuse..
I don't know much about it though yet.
I think Islam preaches a decent message, but the average practitioner is open to misinterpret it quite a bit. This is a failing
of the teaching.. but I think Mohammed's message was corrupted like Christ's message pretty much straight after his death. Gospel
of Thomas and Tolstoy's rewrites all the way for something closer imo.
@sally n in
iniquity, and that is where your eye should gaze, not necessarily at the FED or any central bank.
The debt money system and finance capitalism is state sponsored usury, and is a Jewish construct.
Vulture capitalism is simply vultures buying up or creating distressed assets and then changing the law, or using force to
then collect face value of the debt instrument or other so called asset. Vultures will use hook or crook to force down what they
are buying, and hook or crook to force up what they are selling. God's special people can do this because when they look in the
mirror, they are god, and are sanctioned to do so.
Maybe the vulture should replace the bald eagle as America's favorite bird since our dear shabbos goy President Trump and cohorts
are undermining the First Amendment and trying to make it a crime to criticize Jews and/or Israel. Oh and don't think I am promoting
the other Zionist and their shabbos goy on the demshevik side. The Jew CONTROLS both sides and "our" two party system has become
Jew vs. Jew, not republican vs. democrat. Lenin said that the best way to control the opposition was to lead it and (((they)))
are at it AGAIN.
@Ilya G Poimandres
zies, who twist scripture. Judaism, especially Talmudic Judaism is Kabala and utterances of the sages, and it morphs and changes
over time. For example, after Sabatai Sevi, the Kol-Neidre was weaponized, and this construct is used by today's Zionists to wreak
havoc. Before Sabatai, there was Hillel, who weaponized usury.
Yes, I agree about Christianity changing quite a bit. In the first 300 years it was much different than today, especially after
the Arien controversy was settled by Constantine's maneuvering of Bishops at council of Nicea. For example, before; reincarnation
was part of Christian doctrine, and after; reincarnation was excluded.
I have long maintained that libertarianism/capitalism is really like a kind of Calvinism for atheists. Calvinists used to assume
that, since whatever happened was God's will and God's will was invariable good, then whatever happened was good. Likewise, many
modern cucks seem to have just substituted The Market for God. Morally speaking, it all lets man off the hook for anything that
resultsespecially when those men happen to be Jewish financiers!
No, boys and girls, The Market is not inherently good. It requires that a moral system be superimposed on top of it in order
to make it moral.
@Anon k of
this MI6 asset (and potential killer) who tried to fleece Russia, you probably can benefit from watching a movie by Nekrasov about
him. See references in:
It looks like it was Browder who killed Magnitsky, so that he can't spill the beans. And then in an act of ultimate chutzpah
played the victim and promoted Magnitsky act.
There is no defending these jewish malefactors. It has been pointed out that immorality is a disposition to be found in every
ethnicity. The problem is that the jews with that disposition are more clever than folks from other ethnicities with the same
dispostion. Being more clever, they are outstandinly better at depradation. I don't see how and why the recognition of the existence
of evil jews justifies the author's hatred of jews as a whole.
Colin, I'm going to assume this is a rhetorical question, as there is not one example that would cause you to suspect there
is really any doubt about the types of organizations that the Sacklers are donating their ill-gotten wealth to.
@Digital Samizdat
ocities, including the murder of civilians, predominantly Jews and Poles under the Nazi German administration. The term
Banderites was also used by the Bandera followers themselves, and by others during the Holocaust, and the massacres of Poles
and Jews in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by OUN-UPA in 19431944.
@Digital Samizdat
and infest England, is not well understood by the average Goy.
Our modern world is a direct line back to this big-bang event. Christian Zionism goes back much further in time than to just
Cyrus Scofield and Darby. Our Jewish friends in Amsterdam were even publishing bibles at great expense, to then push the narrative
that the "people of god and old testament" deserve to return to England.
(The usurers had been previously kicked out of England by King Edward in 1290. The usurers had been plying their game, and
"putting house to house" to where English citizens were being dispossessed from their own lands.)
@Anonymouse
y Jewish as were the Bolsheviks of a hundred years ago, and they have greatly benefited from the political immunity provided by
this totally bizarre inversion of historical reality. Partly as a consequence of their media-fabricated victimhood status, they
have managed to seize control over much of our political system, especially our foreign policy, and have spent the last few years
doing their utmost to foment an absolutely insane war with nuclear-armed Russia. If they do manage to achieve that unfortunate
goal, they will surely outdo the very impressive human body-count racked up by their ethnic ancestors, perhaps even by an order-of-magnitude
or more.
@Mefobills
ted into being seen as the greatest victims, a transformation so seemingly implausible that future generations will surely
be left gasping in awe.
Aided by no small part by chutzpah. The uncanny ability to ability to call black white and to call good evil. With no cultural
love of truth to anchor them in reality. Thus detached, they are free to invent an alternate reality. I wonder if they do not
suffer from cognitive dissonance. They seem genetically protected from it.
They are actually self-deluded and want to infect the rest of us with their visions of victimhood.
@Realist ;
votes these greedy corrupt politicians into office? Hint: It is Whites who are the majority.
My first comment to you was #256 -- again "for the record": I did not give enough of a damn about you or your idiotic
statement ("Stupid Whites are responsible for allowing this to happen") to comment/reply to you before you mentioned voting
.
"LOL"
And I don't appreciate it when people attribute specific words, views, or thoughts to me that I did not express
-- make a note of it, asshole.
Descendants of this immigration wave are the liberal jews pushing the jew coup against Trump. This is why they are from Ukraine
(former pale of settlement area) or Russian haters.
To my mind, Trump is a Christian Zionist and has naturally allied with Bibi and the Zionist religious factions, such as Chabbad/Likkud.
Since U.S. has been fully infiltrated, then having Mossad and its agents on your side, is a strategy to keep from being suicided
by the deep state, like JFK.
I'm willing to give Trump some lee-way, given the circumstances of our current reality.
Only when operating within the confines of Western Christian culture, or forced into western education by the Tsars, did Jews
break free to be productive. And even then that production came at high cost to the host societies.
In other words, a good argument can be made, that if Jews had never infiltrated into Western Civilization, then said Westerners
would have been much better off.
Sorry if real history is butt-hurting.
Today's Iran is another model on how to deal with the Jew problem. Jews are limited there in the same way as was done in Byzantium.
@Colin Wright
ow" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/18/impeachment-what-lies-beneath/">over at CounterPunch
So here's my entirely speculative tea-leaf reading: If there's a hidden agenda behind the urgency to remove Trump, one that
might actually garner the votes of Republican Senators, it is to replace him with a president who will be a more reliable and
effective leader for a military attack on Iran that Israel wants to initiate before next November. Spring is the cruelest season
for launching wars.
His story is that the Israelis consider Pence to be more reliable. Who knows
No wonder that the majority of Jews do not want to live in the Jewish State. too many Jews there.
They are quetching about antisemitism while attacking the western civilization -- from the assault on the First Amendment to the
cheerleading for more wars for Israel in the Middle East.
No one keeps the Jews from joining their brethren in Israel. There is no need to sing "Next year in Jerusalem." Enough already.
Just go there -- and stay there.
@Mefobills
ons that distract us from seeing the top of the pyramid. However, it would appear that Marx finally gets to finance in Volume
Three of Capital. I could read the whole thing myself, but I would rather simply ask you what you think. How do you reconcile
Marx the Illuminati Jewish agent with Marx the perspicacious critic of capitalism? Where were his real loyalties? Did he stick
the dynamite at the end of his magnum opus instead of at the beginning in order to hide it from his finance masters, whom he knew
would never actually read that far? Was he attempting to assuage a guilty conscience by sneaking the truth into a footnote?
@annamaria
are quetching about antisemitism while attacking the western civilization -- from the assault on the First Amendment to
the cheerleading for more wars for Israel in the Middle East.
The complete lack of shame it takes to act like this is amazing to me. Also the hubris it would take. Though if you see yourself
as a chosenite, those behaviors fit.
Apparently if you hang around then long enough, the behavior is contagious. Biden's shady Ukrainian dealings, which are 100%
real are being denied and instead projected onto Trump. It's infecting our politics. The shabbos goy are emulating their masters.
@redmudhooch
ts since the cave but that is not capitalism. Capitalism is Usury profit for the sake of profit independent of usefulness,
welfare, community, lifestyle.
.
And as was argued by the great German economist/sociologist Werner Sombart, Capitalism was really invented by Jews However as
E Michael Jones has argued, Protestantism particularly Anglo Calvinism- was a backsliding of Christianity into Jewish materialism
the spiritual basis for capitalism. So everything seemingly goes around and around. Capitalism cannot be blamed solely on the
Jews but Jews can never be abstracted from the evils of capitalism. We have to keep both balls in the air
Grab a small piece of paper. Add some fancy, symbolic stuff to it, like a fire-breathing dragon, with big, burning eyes, named
' Nimajneb , the faerie overlord, that hovers over an upside-down pyramid. Oh, and you'll need a number, let's say, '100.'
Done. Print it out. Walk to the nearest person, say, "I've got here a $100 bill," and see what happens
Yet, the FED can take the same little piece of paper, sprinkle some magic dust on it, et voil, you've got your $100 greenback
[aka IOU $100 banknote].
Money makes the world go round?
Spin out of control into a state of utter madness, I'd say.
@Buddy can
read through economic history or texts and spot the lies and fakery. So where does that leave the average layman to turn and not
be hoaxed?
Sorry it is so hard out there to navigate. I commend you for trying. I'm feeling pressure to write a book, because even Hudson
does not initiate people from level zero up to someone advanced enough to resist the hoaxers.
Richard Werner is pretty good, but you have to navigate around his favoritism of private banking. Money is law.. and he doesn't
want to acknowledge that. This is what you run into, and the only way is for you to navigate as best you can and see if things
ring true.
Real science has been suppressed and removed from the public sphere. Or it's been perverted for mass surveillance and social
command and control and dual systems.
I fully believe that execrable demons like Soros never die because they're getting baby blood from orphans passed through some
heinous engine into their vile bodies.
Meanwhile, we're forced to deal with nonsense like anthropogenic climate change, string theory, dark matter and other Jewry
the sole purpose of which is to centralise power over mind and body in the hand of Jews and Masons.
The Zionist racial bigotry behind S447 was foreshadowed by Israel Singer of the World Jewish Congress in 1996:
"More than 3 million Jews died in Poland and Poles will not be the heirs of Polish Jews. We will never allow it. We will
harass them until Poland is ice covered again. If Poland fails to satisfy Jewish demands, it will be publicly humiliated and
attacked internationally . secretary general of the World Jewish Congress"
Notice the guy's last name Singer. This is another form of Jewish mafia vulture capitalism, using any means to hurt the masses.
What is S447?
Section 3 of Act 447, the provision for heirless property, is the part that reveals the law's intent. Under existing laws,
heirless property becomes the property of the state. After WW2 there was a lot of property without owners (whether owned by
Poles or Jews), and it has been sold ever since. This law has the potential to cause national havoc, as the vast majority of
Poles own their own homes. Even in the relatively cosmopolitan capital of Warsaw, 79% of city-dwellers own their homes and
apartments.
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora. If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay "rent" to random Jews
claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.
How would this "law" work in Poland?
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora. If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay "rent" to random Jews
claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.
Trump was "impeached" for not giving arms freely to ZUS controlled Ukraine. The arms have been used to shell and kill civilians
in East Ukraine. Yet, Trump should be impeached for pushing this Jewish Mafia vulture like capitalism on Poland.
Pressure from the US government is only reason this law is even being considered. While Donald Trump appeals to the West
and Polish patriotism in his speeches, his government's actions say something radically different. Last February, US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo demanded the Polish state pass this law. Last August, the American congress urged more pressure on the
Polish state to get S447 through.
"Tucker Carlson's recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer's vulture fund"
Yup, the bricks and mortar outdoor gear shops, Cabela's + Bass Pro need 2 HQs. Nebraska could have stopped it but instead chose
farm subsidies, forever war, and pensions for government workers. To have that much spending excess in the government spending
you need high efficiency from the civilian sector.
The reaction in Nebraska seems to be a big yawn. My guess is Cabela was constantly trying to reduce their state and local taxes,
at some point keeping the low wage retail jobs while dumping the high wage HQ jobs made sense, short term, so they sold Sidney
NB down the river.
Candidate targets Sasse on Sidney response, other issues
"Nobody tried anything," was the compaint(sic) Innis heard on his visits to the struggling community.
Well mefo let me tell you a funny story.This guy i know made some nasty comments about jews and not long after he got cancer.His
doctor,a jewish cancer specialist put him back on his feet.
Know what the funny part is.He still makes the same comments.
Few escaped the pervasive prejudice, however. In the early 1900s, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a German Jew who discovered a treatment
for syphilis and is considered the father of chemotherapy, popularized the term "magic bullet" to describe a medical compound
that would "aim exclusively at the dangerous intruding parasites" yet not "touch the organism itself."
But though Dr. Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, he was not made a full professor at a university until 1914, a
year before he died. (That posting was at the University of Frankfurt, in the year of its founding.) In the 1930s, as the Nazis
came to power, his name was removed from textbooks and taken off Frankfurt's street signs. Paul-Ehrlich-Strasse regained its name
only after World War II.
@ANZ of bankers
and religious fanatics or a land-based theocratic toy-state of Israel.
It is the spirit of parasitism that is "infectious" and works against patriotism. Hense the local profiteers, from Rumsfeld
to McCain, Biden, Brennan, Pelosi, Rubio and the likes who have been hastening the demise of the US for the immediate monetary
compensation tied to the allegiance to the Jewish cause. The zionized NYT and the presstituting stink tanks the Atlantic Council
(affiliated with the openly subversive Integrity Initiative), American Enterprise Institute and such have been working openly
against the US interests and for ziocon interests.
"Herzyl admired the Germans of the day, and wanted Jews to be like the German's he so admired. Herzyl thought that if Jews
had their own country of Zion, they would settle down and become normal people."
-- The dream was an illusion. When the meme "is it good for the Jew?" beats all and any moral principles, then the world gets
a nation of thieves and murderers quetching non-stop about their eternal victimhood. Pathetic.
From the position of the USA Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright pushed for the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
in 1999, when NATO planes bombed without a UN mandate. She also supported the jihad in Bosnia during 1992-1995, and the manipulation
of the facts about Srebrenica, but also personally earned from the privatization of Kosovo Telecommunications. She should,
therefore, bear the consequences of her political decisions and acknowledge responsibility for the bloodshed, in which thousands
of civilians were killed.
But in fairness, the Koch brothers are no damn good for the nation either.
No, they are (were) not. However, they also got a lot of negative media attention while these Jewish vulture capitalists
have mostly been given a pass. Also, whites are about 55% of the population while Jews are about 2%.
@silviosilver
er because the debt was already in default or was at imminent risk of defaulting, which is why the debt sells at a heavy
discount, since existing debt holders are often happy to sell cheap and get something rather than hold on and risk getting
nothing.
If A enters into a contract with B to borrow money, and then fails to be pay it back to B, why should C be able to come in
and buy the debt from B and expect to be paid back? A entered into a contract with B, not C. And why should C expect to be able
to employ the machinery of state coercion to force A to honor a contract that A didn't even make with C in the first place? Mr. Anon , says:
December 21, 2019
at 7:37 pm GMT
@Thales the Milesian
ters sent representatives to a small central government. This form of government was usurped in 1913, by the "money powers,"
and these money powers use elections as a veneer to sanction their behind the scenes rule.
Here is another quote from the Ivan the Terrible article, which sums things up:
n 1601, just a few years after Ivan's death, Russia was starving, leaderless and under attack. Again, under elite rule,
with no ruling monarch, Russia was plunged into years of war and violence. Fighting oligarchy has been the traditional job
of any monarch and is the ultimate purpose of government.
@Robjil olves
to the "were so smart" and look at the medical advances, nobel prizes, etc. we've contributed.
Conveniently left out of account, is that these advances would have been done anyway in their absence. The goyim do possess
the intelligence and fortitude to solider on without jews in our midst, and in-fact, when jews are absent from our civilizations,
advancement accelerates.
The best thing for a jew to do is turn his back on the tribe, and re-join humanity.
To any Jew reading this . walk away from the tribe. Man-up and get some intestinal fortitude, leave the parasite method behind
you, and join humanity.
I'm feeling pressure to write a book, because even Hudson does not initiate people from level zero up to someone advanced
enough to resist the hoaxers.
Have you considered writing articles? Series of articles could later on become raw material for a book. Perhaps easier path
to take and could perhaps provide useful feedback along the way.
It sure looks like you could write far more informative and interesting articles than many writers here on Unz because of your
broad perspective. The big picture is always more interesting and I agree with you about the importance of the subject.
@Mr. Anon d
by these degenerate types of people in order to take illicit gains.
In the U.S., (I'm an American), these usury flows funnel into the press to where the press becomes owned, so that these Oligarchic
interests can continue to take rents and unearned income through their various schemes.
I might add, our intelligent UNZ readers, have noticed that the U.S. mainstream press is predominantly Jewish owned. Intelligent
people notice patterns are some of us are unwilling to look away. No amount of deception through the mainstream press can reduce
the revulsion moral people instinctively feel when watching vultures operate.
@Bookish1 ing
whiteness has never been more urgent.' By Mark Levine"
When challenged for apparently encouraging genocide, Levine and his cronies answer that "whiteness", as they are employing
the term, is merely an accidental property as opposed to an essential quality. So stripping an organism of its whiteness will
not diminish it to any significant degree, does not threaten its very existence, merely prunes it into a more acceptable shape.
And yet when some poor misguided soul has the temerity to put up a sign saying "It's Okay To Be White", the Mark Levines of
the world have a cow. Suddenly, "white" is not a mere accidental quality at all.
The Koch Brothers (what's left of them; one died recently) are industrialists. They build things people want. They are innovators.
Yes, the Koch Brothers are filthy rich but they employ tens of thousands of people in the US alone.
Most importantly, the Koch Bros. are not parasitic, money-skimming extractors or wealth like the vulture capitalists described
by Joyce.
@Mefobills
s and schemes. The advantage of their technique is that it does not leave a positive trace but a negative trace. It is much more
difficult to notice absence than presence. You can't see all the money that is constantly being vacuumed out of the economy. It
doesn't leave a visible hole. And since none of us has ever witnessed firsthand what a rent-free economy might actually look like
(since they are not allowed to exist), we internalize the belief that such an economy goes against natural law, when in fact the
contrary is true.
Is there any way for you to link to more of your writing without giving away your identity?
Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932) is an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population
growth and limited resources.[2][3] He is the Bing Professor of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University
and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold
after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish
diaspora.
Let's make a variant of the Polish S447 applicable to Palestinians and find out how much the illegal occupiers of Palestine
like to see 'justice.'
@mcohen eir
factories full of low IQ but compliant workers. 3) The finance banking class who want new debts to pay off old debts. New Debtors
help fund a new debt cycle. 4) New people through population replacement, destroy the history and cohesion of the host country.
By de-racinating and destroying the host people, then Plutocrats can continue with their thefts unchallenged.
The debt money cycle is something like a pyramid, where it sucks upward toward plutocracy. Plutocrats and Oligarchs then emit
hypnosis and propaganda through the owned press to maintain their status. The funnel, or bottom of the pyramid wants new debts
and new debtors.
how do entities like Puerto Rico get so far in debt in the first place? so many problems because of what appeared to be
incompetent and comatose government.
Yes, ultimately the blame must lie with the voters: they picked douche, when they should have picked turd.
@Daniel Rich
l, Germany and Russia were both strangled. The US's turn is now. The US wants to strangle Poland too with this s447 law. Trump
should have been impeached for pushing this law on Poland.
Pressure from the US government is only reason this law is even being considered. While Donald Trump appeals to the West
and Polish patriotism in his speeches, his government's actions say something radically different. Last February, US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo demanded the Polish state pass this law. Last August, the American congress urged more pressure on the
Polish state to get S447 through.
The real eureka moment for me came when I finally understood that money and debt were created at the same time on opposite
sides of the ledger. Only the two columns are not equal. One column grows through magic while the other does not. Once the
sorcery has been wrought, the creditors can simply sit back and wait as the mechanism eventually transfers all the wealth in
the world to them.
That is pretty good. Economics and most equations do not codify time. The equal sign cannot comprehend time, so most of the
math used in economics textbooks is telling lies.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, the bad guys put their thumb on the scale and call things equal. They do this with swaps of unlike
kinds. For example, you can build up housing prices with bubble economics, then collapse the economy by preventing new loans,
or doing call-in loans. That then forces prices downward. The bankster/vulture class then forces a swap of the asset to collapse
(cancel) the debt instrument. In this case, the house is transferred to creditor to erase debts. The house transfers to collapse
a money contract, which is a swap of unlike kinds. Vultures do the same thing, they don't necessarily want money in exchange for
the debt instrument they have bought.
With regards to double entry hypothecation at the first instance of time, when debt instrument is signed ONLY THEN IS IT
A MIRROR. The credit created and the debt claims are 1:1 only at the instant (minus fees). Later in time, the debt claims grow
while the credit created does not. This is why debt claims destroy the natural world, as people rape the world converting forests
to board feet of lumber, to then make a price, to then fetch money.
In the first cycles of a loan it is ALL USURY. Worse it is seignorage. Seignorage is greater purchasing power now, whereas
the money is worth less later.
In the first cycles of the loan, the bank credit that you pay back, virtually none of it goes to paying off principle. The
credit decrements the asset side of your ledger (your savings go down) and then point at the banker, to increase the asset side
of his ledger. In the first cycles of the loan, your liability column (principle on the loan) goes down only slightly or not at
all.
This is pure usury, plain and simple. There is little to risk the loan emitter either, as a house is fungible and can be grabbed
by law. If a real asset is attached to the double entry ledger, it is to lower risk to the creditor (banker), not the debtor.
A double entry ledger can lie, or tell the truth. It would tell the truth if we used fees in this case and didn't hypothecate
new credit. But, then again, as you mention most people are locked into a hypnotic trance.
The proper way to do things is with sovereign money, not private corporate bank money at usury.
Whenever a nations people demand their sovereignty, they are attacked by the usual suspects. A lot of people don't want to
admit that both world wars were started by the finance class, with Jews as leading agents, to then demonize Germany.
Germany had the temerity under the Kaiser to run an Industrial Capitalist Mixed Economy using its own sovereign credit, and
then Hitler resurrected this system in 1933.
renegadetribune.com ; "US Court sentences Israeli CEO to 22 years
for scamming Americans , media ignore it ":
"The company specifically targeted the elderly and the vulnerable , one of over 100 companies perpetrating a scam called binary
options Israel permitted the scam to go on for a decade "
Will Trump pardon him before he leaves office ? The Jerusalem Post : " Trump pardons Israeli drug smuggler" after serving just
4 years of a 20 year sentence .
Contracts often have provisions for successors and assignees. The real question is whether the weaker party was sufficiently
strong to know what they were signing and have a good chance of being able to carry out their side of the bargain. Many sovereign
buyers are about as good risk as an unemployed man who wants to buy a car on credit.
@Just passing through
countries have been looted, the Jews have turned on the Whites and the latter are now crying that their criminal comrades
have now betrayed them."
It's called comeuppance.
But IQ doesn't explain fully but the readiness to believe the west . Congo is particularly a sad case. It has been fighting
a war for last 60 years .
As far as Belgium is concerned, that nations should be swamped to the brim with Congolese making it burst at the seams .
Who cares if some moronic Trump supporters get all shook up in Battle Creek . Who gives a toss ?
Trump is a fraud , a huckster a corrupt filthy white thrash
@geokat62 iven
the environmental damage said industries have caused. The vulture capitalists recover debt from failed states. A worthy cause
indeed, especially for investors.
mark green says:
December 21, 2019 at 9:53 pm GMT 100 Words
@FvS
The Koch Brothers (what's left of them; one died recently) are industrialists. They build things people want. They are innovators.
Yes, the Koch Brothers are filthy rich but they employ tens of thousands of people in the US alone.
Most importantly, the Koch Bros. are not parasitic, money-skimming extractors or wealth like the vulture capitalists described
by Joyce.
@mcohen ly
able to secure large amounts of debt at very favourable interest rates. But this very soon changed. The vultures at GS, after
peering into the Greece's true financial records, knew how vulnerable Greek finances were and were betting heavily against Greek
sovereign debt by shorting it. This soon drove borrowing rates sky high which made it nearly impossible for the Greek govt to
roll over their short term debt obligations.
So, thanks to the vulture capitalists at GS, a large percentage of the Greek population has been suffering and will continue
to suffer under the austerity policies that were introduced in the wake of the financial crises.
@annamaria
d us out from the classic American tradition into the modern Zionist vision. These turncoats are a uniquely despicable lot since
they come with smiles and handshakes to kill the soul of our nation.
If history serves as a guide, it will take a government led by s strongman to right this ship. Democracy has proven too easily
corruptible by a private banking cartel that can print its way to dominance. This cartel will select, groom, install and maintain
their double agents into our political, economic and cultural spheres.
Here is the most plain lesson I can take from this: don't allow privatized money as the national currency.
@mcohen
oycott abroad. It did this by using a barter system: equipment and commodities were exchanged directly with other countries,
circumventing the international banks. This system of direct exchange occurred without debt and without trade deficits. Germany's
economic experiment, like Lincoln's, was short-lived; but it left some lasting monuments to its success, including the famous
Autobahn, the world's first extensive superhighway.1
Greece or any nation need not be in "debt". It is a game, a game of money printed out of thin air. All Greece has to do, is
give up the debt game. Barter game is a better game.
Roger Elletson, in his excellent book "Money: A Medium of Power"(Amazon), defines the purpose of usury: "Under the current
monetary regime, the effect, and indeed the purpose, of usury is to create compounding (think 'little by little') monetary claims
from usurers against the productive output and underlying assets of nations."
In his unpublished manuscript, "The Triumph of Western Civilization," Elletson says: "What Parapometrics now reveals, however,
is that usury is the ultimate expression of parasitic (or mammonic) monetary law; it is the life principle of satanic power and
human parasitism."
@Robjil n proportion
to the economies needs, as is what happened in Germany. Hitler laughed at the gold-men, and considered gold money as a tool used
by the Jews in their "international capital game."
Purchasing power was put into the German economy using Oeffa and Mefo bills. When the bills were discounted (redeemed) at a
bank, said bank turned around and presented the bills to the Central Bank (Reichsbank). Reichsbank then created new Reichsmarks
to pay off the Bills. In this way millions of marks of new credit flooded into the German economy. By 1938 the tax roles in Germany
had almost tripled, and it was not due to Gold or "international credit."
All that you and I really know about Mefobills is that information about the nature of money and economics is being freely
given and appears to be much appreciated according to other commenters. We don't know anything about what other activities Mefobills
is engaged in so your comment is nonsense thinly disguised as petty insults.
In Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People (1984), Sheldon Emry commented:
Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to
a world power in 5 years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without
debt, and it took the whole Capitalist and Communist world to destroy the German power over Europe and bring Europe back under
the heel of the Bankers. Such history of money does not even appear in the textbooks of public (government) schools today.
The underdog in Israel are Palestinians. The Chosen, in Israel and elsewhere, treat them like vermin. The Israeli chosen are
the most color-conscious and racist people in the Western world.
I would say WASP's and Jews savaged Germany in WW2. Perhaps then the Jews turned on the WASPS. But WASP's are a curious bunch.
They seem to have absolutely no loyalty to their own people. Look at what they have done to the English white working class. WASP's
also are very enamored of Jews. If anything their loyalty sees to be to the Jews and not their own
That may be the case in the Exodus dramas but the idea of 'who is thy brother' was already made clear earlier in Genesis
the story of Abel and Cain. The later Jews and the Christians merely rediscovered what was the original plan : that is, that all
mankind share one brotherhood under one God.
So the Greek debt was caused by the purchase of too many weapons to defend against other countries like Turkey in NATO, an
American-led organization that promises to provide security to all its member states? So the populace of a treaty-bound ally should
suffer US-enforced austerity to have weapons so that vulture capitalists can enjoy large profits which they largely funnel to
Jewish causes while the Jewish state never is expected to suffer austerity for weapons?
@MrFoSquare
. The texts are diabolically equivocal and ingeniously interlocking. The exoteric interpretation is innocent (Torah) and full
of plausible deniability, the esoteric interpretation is malevolent (Talmud), and the ultra-esoteric interpretation (Kabbalah)
is Satanic. At the very bottom you have the ultimate esoteric language of gematria. The good news is that it is easy to see through
the necromancy once you understand how money magic functions. But this is only possible if we refuse the temptation of greed.
We have not done a very good job of resisting greed, and those of us who succumb to this temptation deserve to be swindled.
@Achilles Wannabe
re to be Jewish, people like Joyce would be on the case saying it was all da jooz, but he isn't very keen to blame WASPs for
the black-on-white violence in American public schools, makes ya wonder.
WASP's also are very enamored of Jews. If anything their loyalty sees to be to the Jews and not their own
Jews have always been present in the elite, WASPs identify with Jews because they identfy with the elite. I am quite sure even
to this day, WASPs and Jews are working together, it is just that the lower rungs of White society are being overwhelmed first
and it seems unlikely that these North-Eastern WASPs will feel the pain any time soon.
New England Neo-Calvinists never saw Southern and Border Anglo-Celts as brothers. Not at all. Thus the Civil War. As for their
closer kin, poorer Mayflower, etc., descendants, they mixed in with Germans, Scandinavians, and, horror of horrors, the Irish,
as they moved West. Bing Crosby was a Mayflower descendant.
Joyce's conclusions -- that any of this behavior is uniquely "Jewish" -- are absurd. The facts he cites refer to no more than
simply the standard operations of the market economy.
Some people just loath the very concept of credit and finance, so they reflexively praise any "analysis" which they believe
justifies their anger.
Others are casting about for somebody or something to blame for their own incompetence -- the poor, downtrodden debtor "victims"
-- and they too are happy to have their failings explained away.
On the substantive issues, this essay is just hot air.
@jack daniels
e financial system by allowing widespread bank failures. But the banking executives whose criminal incompetence and, in some
cases, corruption led to the crisis should definitely have been jailed, or at least permanently barred from ever working in the
industry again. (Liberal egalitarianism shouldn't so lightly get off the hook either. After all, it is lunatic egalitarians who
insisted that blacks and hispanics are just as good credit risks as whites, and who demanded that banks extend loans even to obvious
deadbeats.)
This is an infinitely more important issue than bellyaching about "vulture" funds and trying to portray them as uniquely Jewish.
@Wyatt what
they owe in other words, to just give their money away?
And if there's a predilection among jewish men to engage in predatory lending and collecting tactics that is disproportionate
to their of the population, there's something about their genes or their culture that shapes them to be this way.
Okay, but so what? Given that there's nothing immoral and much that is beneficial about lending and borrowing, why should
this be any more of an issue than that west Africans genes help them excel at sportsball or east Asians genes at math and engineering?
Jewish elites are infinitely more tribal and ethnocentric than WASP elites, which is demonstrated by their charitable giving,
which is far more narrowly focused on specifically Jewish causes than that of WASP elites is focused on specifically WASP causes.
Given their small numbers, Jewish elites usually must make tactical alliances with Gentile elites; but when their ethnic interests
conflict with general elite interests (e.g., Marxist class conflicts), the former will almost always prevail. Hence, any WASP
"loyalty" to Jews as a group is foolish.
@Mefobills
this month's Executive Order Jews extracted from Trump declaring Jews to be a distinct race/nationality.
Usury is a power relation, where you steal from others because you can. Laws are changed to enable the thefts.
The people of Euro lineage, i.e., the descendants of Christendom, usually don't steal even when they easily could because they
are naturally indifferent as to materialism, their complimentary instinctive drives being 1) for adventure in overcoming challenges
while staying within the bounds of ethical self-restraint; and 2) intellectual curiosity to learn what's out there and how to
harmoniously survive and coexist with realities discovered.
"The Jewish crime rate tends to be higher than that of non-Jews and other religious groups for white-collar offenses, that
is, commercial or commercial finance.
*Also where special laws have been enacted for religious groups the crime rate among Jews tended to be even higher.
*Jews are found to be significantly over-represented in both fraudulent and genuine bankruptcies (almost ten times the rate of
non-Jews)."
@annamaria
t's not news to me that hyperethnocentric Jewish financiers help fund hyperethnocentric Jewish organizations.
Ultimately, though, that funding is a consequence of Jewish participation in the economy. So if that in itself is wrong, then
this essay is not so much a criticism of Jewish behavior, but crosses over into a criticism of Jewish existence how are
you supposed to live if you're barred from economic participation? which to me is a different kettle of fish altogether. As
much as I hate the term, that's something even I would call anti-semitic (note the absence of sneer quotes, which for me are practically
mandatory).
@Mr. Anon er
appetite for risk. See, sometimes I don't know that I'm not going to be repaid; it's just that I now assess the prospects
of being repaid as failing to meet some risk criterion I have. Other people's risk assessments differ from mine, which creates
a market for existing debt.
Sometimes the market highly irrationally prices financial assets most evident (in hindsight) at market peaks and troughs
so there are certainly some good opportunities in distressed debt. I just don't see that "vulture" funds which scan the market
looking for distressed debt are doing anything fundamentally different to any other buyers of debt.
@Hibernian
ch and Germans from NY and the middle colonies like the Rockefellers Roosevelt's. Basically they are individualized deracinated
people who are not even brothers to each other. They worship mammon money and power. Jews are of course anything but deracinated.
They are however the world's leading usurers so the WASP with his Protestant Ethic usury sanctified is bawled over by them
not just financially but psychologically. They have handed the Jews their universities, their cultural institutions. They are
a people who gave themselves up to a people for whom there is no one but themselves. The rest of us are just along for the ride
treacherous as it is
I'd be very surprised if the last sentence of the above excerpt was true. Also it's a no brainer that US courts are more favorable
to foreigners than third world courts are.
No, but they shouldn't necessarily expect to get it. They took the risk in lending to a bad credit-risk. At least they provided
something of value the money. Singer's fund provides nothing of value. They're just parasites.
Should they simply be forced to "lend" to people who are completely unwilling to pay what they owe in other words, to
just give their money away?
Nobody forced them to lend anything. They did it of their own accord. They didn't have to make the loans. They could have done
something else with the money.
Elsztain and Mindlin, both Top Jews, now control Argentina.
Elsztain and Mindlin's close connections to a merging network of some of the most powerful globalists in the world today
suggest their role to be one of sniffing out the opportunities and laying the groundwork for hostile take-over of resources
and infrastructure by these elite scavengers who prey upon target nations, protected from view by the likes of Elsztain and
Mindlin, who are little more than mafia outreach agents."
@silviosilver
nterest in relations with Israel comes as a number of Central and South American countries, notably Brazil, have adopted increasingly
pro-Israel positions in line with policies of US President Donald Trump.
Guatemala opened a new embassy in Jerusalem al-Quds in occupied Palestine shortly after the US formally transferred its embassy
from Tel Aviv to the city in May 2018, which prompted worldwide condemnation and anger among Palestinians.
In August, Honduras also recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the the so-called capital of Israel and announced that it sought to
open a diplomatic office there.
@mcohen callously
don't care about the suffering they cause, or sadistically delight in it. The more distressed mortgages they can find at a discount,
the more homes they can seize, the more non-co-ethnics they can render homeless, the happier they are. Like Gordon Gekko, and
unlike bankers who lend money for production of goods, they don't produce anything -- -they simply parasitize the lending and
borrowing of the productive economy.
If they are an asset to society, if their activities are a boon to society, let them practice those activities exclusively in
Israel and among their own coethnics elsewhere, and contravene Talmudic injunctions.
Okay, but so what? Given that there's nothing immoral and much that is beneficial about lending and borrowing, why should
this be any more of an issue than that west Africans genes
You don't get the difference between the Jewish white collar crime and Africans being good at sports ball?
That comparison doesnt make sense.
@silviosilver
history of Jews in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution? The kettle and fish fit right: Mr. Snger has been financing the
Holo-museums while destroying the lives of the millions in South America. Pushing the ball-point (!) written story of Anne Frank
upon American kids while immiserating hundreds of thousands of Argentian kids is morally ugly. Ugly.
As for antisemitism, the involvement of US leading zionists, and the Jewish State itself, in supporting Ukrainian banderites
(self-proclaimed neo-nazi) has buried the canard of antisemitism forever. There is no hope for the moral recovery of your Holobiz
Museums and "eternal victimhood" memes.
Actually we get the Jewish version of the history of Jews in Germany as we get the Jewish version of our own history founding
to Trump. It is breathtaking how Jews, Semophiles and people who are intimidated by Jews and Semophiles have created how we understand
ourselves. This has been going on since Dec 7, 1941. There is almost no one left who remembers when stand up Euro Gentiles wrote
history
@annamaria
in a speech he gave at Brown in 1966, George Lincoln Rockwell addressed the role of Jews in the Russian Revolution -- you can
listen to the speech here >
Brown link -- he covers
similar material in a 1967 speech at UCLA >
UCLA link
.
One must take lessons from the great ruler Frederick the Great of Prussia about how to deal with Jewish scams. You see, Jewish
scams have a long history. And most of these Jewish scamsters donate a lot of money to Jewish organisations.
Well Frederick the Great came up with a novel and effective solution to all this. He just charged the official Jewish organisations
the amount in money in loss to Prussian society due to such scams. Guess What? The Jewish scams stopped. Totally stopped.
"Oy Vey" screamed the Jews, "All the money ended up in the hands of the cursed goyim and all our efforts and hard work in scamming
went to waste. "
Makes me wonder if Democracy is really a better form of government than Monarchy.
Joyce's article contends that the victims of these Jewish vulture capitalists are overwhelmingly goyim, while the ultimate
benefactors (through their charitable donations) are Jews. You never dispute, let alone refute, this contention. However, you
do contend that these vulture capitalists somehow benefit society as a whole (through some sort of economic "discipline" or whatever),
but resent the suggestion that they confine this beneficial discipline (like they confine their charitable donations) to Jews,
a suggestion you call "antisemitic".
Yeah, that is it. In college I knew a Brahmin intimately. I was struck by the contrast between her quiet classic WASP disdain
towards ordinary white conventionality and her near awe of what I thought of as Jewish vulgarity -chutzpah.
There was something ersatz Semitic in the original New England Puritanism = a sort of Jewish 1.0. Now the WASP's think the
Jews are better at their game than they are. They are right of course. The question is should anyone be playing that game.
Singer's fund provides nothing of value. They're just parasites.
We were talking about the nature of bonds. The fact bond/debt can be bought and sold does provide value it makes it
more likely that the credit which business need to expand and to hire workers will be provided, and provided at a lower interest
rate. So the existence of the Singers of the world, troubling as it might be to you or me (in my case, given what he does with
his money), is best regarded as providing indirect value in the sense that they make our credit system possible.
@silviosilver
thin air, then loaned out at interest and/or against real assets as collateral, and/or perhaps traded by 'vultures' -- or
the part of the "credit system" that burdens millions of young adults with debt in the form of student loans, which ultimately
is also money created out of nothing and loaned to them.
Within a few years, interest on the national debt will be the second largest federal expenditure, i.e. even greater than defense
spending -- always left unexplained is why the US, a sovereign entity with the authority to issue currency, has to borrow money
to run a deficit.
Fractional reserve banking (unstable and exploitative) and assignment of debt to assignees/purchasers (provided the borrower
has agreed to a covenant allowing this) are two separate issues. It is possible to have either one without the other. The idea
that you're released from your debt if your lender dies or moves to a far off city or gets worn out trying to collect or whatever
is a notion worthy of a junior high school juvenile delinquent. Also if national sovereignty means the right to welsh on debts,
then no one in his right mind will lend to a sovereign nation and then they cannot get credit.
(of course this will have consequences too; living beyond one's means indefinitely always does eventually).
Student loan debt is massively detrimental to affordable family formation -- I also see it as immoral to burden
young people in this way.
Multi-generational national indebtedness is profoundly immoral -- it's a disgrace that there is little to no recognition
of this, or outrage about what is going on.
@eah edit
system" that burdens millions of young adults with debt in the form of student loans, which ultimately is also money created
out of nothing and loaned to them.
That's much more a consequence of the prevailing American attitude towards higher education that individuals should pay for
it rather than the state than it is the monetary system.
If fractional reserve banking is nothing more than "creating money out of nothing," then don't you ever ask yourself how it
is that a bank could find itself in financial trouble? Why doesn't it just create some more money out of thin air and put itself
back in the black?
@eah ts, although
for individuals some are protected, or a repayment plan (for individuals) or a reorganization plan (for corporations.) It requires
the payment of often large legal fees. It's not equivalent to walking away (although sometimes it looks like close to the same
thing) or having the debt forgiven based on political pressure, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether any of the creditors
are assignees who bought the paper, or not.
Printing press finance just means that government, instead of private interests, defrauds the people. Edison was a great inventor
but hardly a sophisticated economic and /or political thinker.
@eah out better
than others. If paying $0.10 on the dollar automatically made you rich, the world would have a lot more billionaires than it does
now. The rate would quickly be bid up to $0.95 on the dollar in no time flat. Also, legal fees and other collection costs (towing
away or storing ships, etc.) need to be taken into account.
I suspect that Mr. Singer may use his political influence to get the US, and likely some other governments, to aid in the collections.
That is an issue in itself. That is where the ethical issue lies. As another poster mentioned, the way he uses his money (his
idea of the good of society) is also an issue.
The answer to your last sentence is that the government places limits through reserve requirements. If this were not so a run
on the bank could end the charade. Sometimes these runs still happen and the FDIC steps in. Unlike the government, the bank has
to redeem its paper (checks and passbooks) on demand. The government has not done this for private parties since 1933, or for
foreign governments since 1971. It can and does tell you to just continue circulating the paper, which creditors are required
to accept, no matter how watered down it is.
@Hibernian
it has full authority to do, instead of selling debt , taxpayers, including future generations of taxpayers, are nor
burdened with interest payments, nor with repayment of principal .
Edison was a great inventor but hardly a sophisticated economic and /or political thinker.
Sure bud, whatever you say -- the essential question here is, was he correct in his statement re debt issuance and who benefits
from it, also its disadvantages, vs dollar issuance? -- the answer is yes, he clearly was: it makes no sense for a government
to sell debt when it can just spend money .
@silviosilver
uch more a consequence of the prevailing American attitude towards higher education that individuals should pay for it rather
than the state than it is the monetary system.
Sure, right -- BOOM!, suddenly the "the prevailing American attitude towards higher education", also young people, just
changed, and within a generation or so, it was decided to exploit the hell out of them and burden them with huge amounts of
debt .
"LOL" -- you are naive.
Regardless of the etiology, student debt is immoral and something must be done about it.
Bankruptcy law, like other laws, limits the discretion of judges. Sure, in practice, this is aspirational. As is the notion
that some judges deviations from the law are motivated by fairness.
"LOL" -- yeah, "what's the difference?" -- at least in the case of a government spending money into existence, which it
has full authority to do, instead of selling debt, taxpayers, including future generations of taxpayers, are nor burdened with
interest payments, nor with repayment of principal.
A super iconoclast vis a vis businessmen, especially if they're Jewish, but a true believer that Government is the same
thing as The People, or at least represents them perfectly or almost perfectly.
it makes no sense for a government to sell debt when it can just spend money.
And it makes no sense to work, save, be frugal, borrow only as necessary, and pay back what you borrow, when you can write
bad checks oh wait Government is Divinely Anointed! It is of the People, by the People, and for the People!
Which one of us is being obtuse? I'll leave it as an exercise for the student.
So, can anyone tell my why Jewish people would want to fund homosexual causes? What benefit does it give them? I'm just beginning
to understand the mass migration thing, but still neither of these seem explicitly Jewish. Doesn't the Torah ban homosexuality?
Just wondering
Carnegie was born in 1836 in Dunfermline, Fife. His father was a handloom weaver and an active Chartist who marched for the
rights of the working man. So when Andrew went to sleep every night knowing he had starved, beaten and killed his factory workers,
he spent his $$$$ trying to assuage his conscience.
Andrew is not a hero, hero's don't kill their employees by starvation and shooting!
Despicable man, trying to pave his way to Heaven.
Similar to Mr. Bloomberg who states that his path to heaven is assured by his good works.
Carnegie was born in 1836 in Dunfermline, Fife. His father was a handloom weaver and an active Chartist who marched for the
rights of the working man. So when Andrew went to sleep every night knowing he had starved, beaten and killed his factory workers,
he spent his $$$$ trying to assuage his conscience.
Andrew is not a hero, hero's don't kill their employees by starvation and shooting!
Despicable man, trying to pave his way to Heaven.
Similar to Mr. Bloomberg who states that his path to heaven is assured by his good works.
This was the Frankfurt School's great insight. The best way to undermine a sense of nationalism is to divide the people through
the promotion of identity politics, including LGBTQ.
Some of what Paul Singer does with his money: create front organizations to recruit Christians in the effort to make the Middle
East safe for Israel, and the world safe for Jews:
This guy is competing for world's top butt goy. Unfortunately there is a lot of competition. The author, Robert Nicholson,
is President of Philos Project, a pro-Zionist "Christian" organization that is funded by Paul Singer.
The above tweet refers to this piece in the NY Post by Robert Nicholson, director of the 'Philos Project':
An interesting blog post from a few years ago (2015) re the sudden appearance of the 'Philos Project' -- even today it is difficult
to find info (eg financial) on this organization:
the point, he gave speech in front of AIPAC. His AIPAC speech reinforced my belief that
trump is nothing but a wolf in a sheep's clothing. It was at that moment trump showed who
is in charge and who owns him.
Trump doesn't believe in endless war? Why did he give jared to chalk up middle east peace
plan? Why are trumps children either married to or engaged to jews? Every one of them! His
pride daughter ivanka converted to judaism and he kept saying during in AIPAC speech "My
daughter ivanka has three little wonderful jewish babies".
Has any point in time a US president ever said "My daughter has wonderful Christian
babies" ??
"If this succeeds, we'll be well on the path to dictatorship." This seems predicated on
the idea that 'whites' will only be able to hold onto power by Dictatorship. Population
trends suggest whites will still be the largest group [just under half] in 2055. A
considerable group given their, to borrow the phrase, 'privilege'. Add conservative Asian and
even Catholic Latino voters, is it that difficult to envisage a scenario where Republicans
sometimes achieve power without Dictatorship? They are already benefiting from the radical
left helping drive traditional working class white voters to the right [helped by
Republican/Fox etc hyperbole].
Radical left is either idiots, or stooges of intelligence agencies and always has been.
IMHO the idea that " whites" are or will be the force behind the move to the dictatorship is
completely naïve. Dictatorship is needed for financial oligarchy and it is the most
plausible path of development due to another factor -- the collapse of neoliberal ideology and
complete discrediting of neoliberal elite. At least in the USA.
Russiagate should be viewed as an attempt to stage a color revolution and remove the
President by the USA intelligence agencies (in close cooperation with the "Five eyes") -- a
prolog to the establishing of the dictatorship by financial oligarchy
I would view Russiagate is a kind of Beer Hall Putsch with intelligence agencies instead of
national-socialist party. A couple of conspirators might be jailed after Durham investigation
is finished (Hitler was jailed after the putsch), but the danger that CIA will seize the
political power remains. After all KGB was in this role in the USSR for along time. Is the USA
that different? I don't think so. There is no countervailing force: the number of people with
security clearance in the USA exceed five million. Those five million and not "whites" like
some completely naïve people propose is the critical mass needed for the dictatorship. https://news.yahoo.com/durham-surprises-even-allies-statement-202907008.html
The potential explosiveness of Durham's mission was further underscored by the disclosure
that he was examining the role of John O. Brennan, the former CIA director, in how the
intelligence community assessed Russia's 2016 election interference.
BTW "whites" are not a homogeneous group. There is especially abhorrent and dangerous
neoliberal strata of "whites" including members of financial oligarchy, the "professional
class" and "academia" (economics department are completely infected.) as well as MIC
prostitutes in MSM.
fersur 26 minutes ago remove Share link Copy Article is at best close, Clapper was in the triad as a go-a-long,
Not as smart but just as Treasonus, their ( all Three ) play was the same play as my post
below, just maybe differenty colluded !
BOOM !
Militia Leader Who Led Raid on U.S. Embassy was at White House 2011.
Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the
U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the
presidency of Barack Obama.
On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad
attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend's
U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible
for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that
make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi
military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group.
President Donald Trump has since accused Iran of having "orchestrated" the embassy attack
and stated that the government would be "held fully responsible."
Breitbart News reporter John Hayward described the attack on the embassy, writing:
The mob grew into thousands of people, led by openly identified KH supporters, some of
them wearing uniforms and waving militia flags. The attack
began after a funeral service for the 25 KH fighters killed by the U.S. airstrikes.
Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad carrying photos of the slain KH members
and Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who condemned the American
airstrikes.
KH vowed to
seek revenge for the airstrikes on Monday. Both KH and the Iranian military unit that
supports it, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have been designated as terrorist
organizations by the U.S. government. The government of Saudi Arabia also described KH as one
of several "terrorist militias supported by the Iranian establishment" in
remarks on Tuesday condemning the assault on the U.S. embassy.
The attackers were able to smash open a gate and push into the embassy compound, lighting
fires, smashing cameras, and painting messages such as "Closed in the name of resistance" on
the walls. Gunshots were reportedly heard near the embassy, while tear gas and stun grenades
were deployed by its defenders.
A uniformed militia fighter on the scene in Baghdad told Kurdish news service Rudaw
that attacks were also planned against the U.S. consulates in Erbil and Basra, with the goal
of destroying the consulates and killing everyone inside.
The Washington Post
reported Tuesday that among those agitating protesters in Baghdad on Tuesday was Hadi
al-Amiri, a former transportation minister with close ties to Iran who leads the Badr Corps,
another PMF militia.
In 2011, both
Fox News and the Washington Times noted that then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki brought his
transportation minister, al-Amiri, to a meeting at the White House. The Times noted that
the White House did not confirm his attendance, but the official was on Iraq's listed members
of its delegation.
The al-Amiri accompanying al-Maliki, besides also being transportation minister, was
identified at the time as a commander of the Badr organization, further indicating it was the
same person. At the time, the outlets expressed concern that al-Amiri had ties to the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the FBI has stated played a role in a 1996 terrorist
attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. President Donald Trump designated the IRGC a foreign
terrorist organization, the first time an official arm of a foreign state received the
designation.
Fox News' Ed Henry questioned White House Press Secretary Jay Carney following the visit
about the attendance of al-Amiri at the White House. Carney refused to answer and stating that
he would need to investigate the issue. The
full transcript from RealClearPolitics reads:
Ed Henry, FOX News: When Prime Minister Maliki was here this week there have been reports
that a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which U.S. officials say played a
role in a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
He was here at the White House with Prime Minister Maliki because he's a transportation
minister, yeah, transportation minister --
Jay Carney, WH: Who's [sic] report is that?
Henry: I believe the Washington Times has reported it. I think others have as well, but I
think this is a Washington Times --
Carney: I have to take that question then, I'm not aware of it.
Henry: Can you just answer it later though, whether he was here and whether a background
check had been done?
Carney: I'll check on it for you.
Henry: Okay, thanks.
In 2016, Obama secured a deal with Iran which included a payment of $1.7 billion in cash.
Breitbart News reporter John Hayward
reported in September of 2016:
On Tuesday, the Obama administration finally admitted something its critics had long
suspected: The entire $1.7 billion tribute paid to Iran was tendered in cash -- not just the
initial $400 million infamously shipped to the Iranians in a cargo plane -- at the same
moment four American hostages were released.
"Treasury Department spokeswoman Dawn Selak said in a statement the cash payments were
necessary because of the 'effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions,' which isolated
Iran from the international finance system,"
said ABC News, relating what might be one of history's strangest humblebrags. The
sanctions Obama threw away were working so well that he had to satisfy Iran's demands with
cold, hard cash!
By the way, those sanctions were not entirely related to Iran's pursuit of nuclear
weapons. As former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy
pointed out at National Review last month, they date back to Iran's seizure of
hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, its support for "Hezbollah's killing sprees," and,
most pertinently, Bill Clinton's 1995 invocation of "federal laws that deal with national
emergencies caused by foreign aggression," by which he meant Iran's support for international
terrorism.
Former white house staffer during the Obama administration, Ben Rhodes, blamed President
Trump's policies for the Tuesday attack on the U.S. embassy.
Many have hit back at Rhodes for the accusations, including former CIA ops officer Bryan
Dean Wright.
No further information has been given about al-Amiri's presence at the U.S. embassy raid on
Tuesday. Read more about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad at Breitbart News
here .
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online
censorship.
Yet, far from being purely an effort of powerful Argentine billionaires like Elsztain
and Mindlin, control over Argentina's economy, government, industry and land has long been
a goal of powerful oligarchs dating back at least 70 years. Those very figures successfully
engineered Argentina's economic collapse in the early 2000s and then -- through
intermediaries close to Henry Kissinger, the IMF and the world's largest banks -- greatly
pressured its government to relinquish Patagonia in exchange for "debt relief" from the
economic chaos they had created.
Holdout parties win the right to be repaid in full
Although around 93% of bondholders accepted reduced repayments (typically being
repaid only 30% of the face value of bonds) , a minority owning around 7% of the debt
(US$4 billion), mostly hedge funds and vulture funds , continued to argue in court
that they were due repayment in full, and held out for full repayment, eventually winning
their case.
Nonsense. In the Argentinian case it just provides a safety valve against the inevitable
day of reckoning. And who knows, some wherewithal for the elite in Argentina to siphon off
even more money to their banks overseas, while immersing their slower witted fellow citizens
into greater penury. When you buy a dollar of debt at 10 cents what is the downside for you?
When you know that the IMF puritans stand ever at the ready to condemn and punish debt
repudiation. Singer is just a thug who ought to be swinging from the end of a rope.
This Jewish Vulture Capitalism is the way our Jewish Oligarchs act all over the world.
Russia was pillaged by them in the 1990s. Putin ended their reign of terror. This is the main
reason Putin is so demonized in the Zion Vulture ruled West.
A few enlightened industrialists, such as Henry Ford, even went so far as to make the
improvement of the lives of workers a priority, and to warn the people against the growing
financial power of the international Jew.
Ford's warnings were prophetic. We are living in the second great Gilded Age in America,
but the new Jewish oligarchs of the 21st century differ from their predecessors in several
important ways. For one, they mostly built their fortunes through parasitic–rather
than productive–sources of wealth, such as usury or real estate speculation.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777 DiGenova: Comey And Brennan Were 'Coup
Leaders' by Tyler
Durden Wed, 01/01/2020 - 19:30 0 SHARES
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova told OANN 's John Hines that former FBI Director
James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan were "coup leaders" in an attempt to reverse
the outcome of the 2016 US election.
DiGenova says the Obama Justice Department was corrupted under Attorneys General Eric Holder
and Loretta Lynch, "with the authority and knowledge of then-president" Obama, and that a
'stupid and arrogant' Susan Rice was dumb enough to document his knowledge in a January 20th,
2017 email.
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book.
I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on
January 20th because that's exhibit A for Barack Obama - who knew all about this from start
to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of a massive number of Americans
violated so he could get Donald Trump." -Joe diGenova
Moreover, diGenova says that after "all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos
and Michael Flynn," anyone who couldn't see that the "corrupt investigative process of the FBI
and DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état" is an idiot.
"This was not hard. If you're a good prosecutor you look at the facts in the Trump case,
and the Page case, the Flynn case. There's only one conclusion you can come to; none of this
makes any sense. None of these people were evil. None of them. They were framed , and the
whole process was playing out, and you knew it on July 5th 2016, when James Comey announced -
usurping the functions of the Attorney General, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a
case against Hillary Clinton. That was ludicrous! She destroyed 30,000 emails that were under
subpoena. If you or I did that, we would be in prison today . She got a break because she was
Hillary Clinton, and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something
from her when she became president of the United States.
All of these people who watched that news conference and didn't think that it was a
disgrace for the FBI. And then subsequently, watched all this stuff involving Trump and Page
and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn - and couldn't see that the corrupt investigative process
of the FBI and the DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état . I mean you
have to be an idiot. Any first year assistant US attorney would look at all these facts and
say 'there's a coup underway. There's a conspiracy.'
But for those of us thought that, the Washington Post, the New York Times. We were
'conspiracy theorists.' You know what? Pretty damn good theory, it appears today.
" To what extent is the CIA involved in this? " asked Hines.
" Well there's no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire
counterintelligence investigation, " replied diGenova. "It was John Brennan who went to James
Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against
Trump. Brennan's at the heart of this. He went around the world. He enlisted the help of
foreign intelligence services. He's responsible for Joseph Mifsud and other people."
" People do not have even the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan
played in this . He is a monstrously important person, and I underscore monstrously important
person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency - it's equal to what James
Comey has done to the FBI. It's pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the
single worst FBI director in history, regardless of how Mr. Durham treats him."
Brennan was just the puppet. The real question is who the power brokers were behind the
scenes pulling strings and giving all the government officials cover. That's probably what
Durham is/needs to get to the bottom of. Hillary is untouchable until those guys get the book
thrown at them. My guess is the Queen is involved, probably the Vatican and Mossad as
well.
Full agreement with Joe DiGenova. In addition, I believe President Obama was an instigator
of this coup d'état. It could only happen in the intelligence field with his consent.
His whole persona is based on his willingness to calculate political gain and he had no
qualms or ethics. He was hailed as the first "black" President. His role in this coup was
made possible by all the people who thought black people were inferior and needed an
opportunity to get ahead. Depending upon how you look at that, that picture is in tatters.
Black folks are incredibly fortunate to have President Trump who will not blame black folks
for the travesties and destruction wrought by another black man. Would a died in the wool
radical like Hillary Clinton think that way?
The good men of the agencies should punish Comey and Brennan. They have "six ways 'til
Tuesday to get even." Why not teach them a lesson from the inside? Many MANY people in the
agency have been insulted by this and they deserve justice against Comey and Brennan.
Gotta give it to the OAN network. They're not dumb. If this actually DID pan out
(indictments and such, as a result of this investigative stuff, with no help whatsoever from
Barr, etc.), then OAN will be the lead network covering this.
Needless to say, it speaks VOLUMES upon VOLUMES, that Fox News isn't covering this (other
than Hannity).
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book."
Now... let's, for a moment, imagine this scene.
We've already had a Watergate in our history, involving the spying of one party on
another during a presidential campaign season.
These people know how that turned out.
Most of them are lawyers, and at least one is a supposed Constitutional
scholar and professor of Constitutional law.
That's Blo.
Does Rice really expect us to believe they didn't know Crossfire Hurricane was based on
Clinton Campaign-paid for ********?
Wouldn't a law professor president wanna know the basis, and the veracity of the
details, of such a risky operation before authorizing it?
Or are we to believe he merely accepted the assembled "assurances" in this meeting?
Were there presidential meetings about spying on Trump that occurred well before this
one?
"... For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks. ..."
"... When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet. ..."
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the
New York Times
and
Politico
published
major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments
will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of
anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had
little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying
attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other
indicators
on
the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and
draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the
decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of
disparaging
and
minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore
attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few
establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media
coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street
Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being
ignored
by
corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For
the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that
a
Sanders presidency is a real possibility
. The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets
that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist
strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump
Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments
with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply
to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the
campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and
lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder
how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays
demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does
not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to
preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even
intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta
& historical
].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard
following by trolling lib-prog sites.
Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't
exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is
shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable
social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own
reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born
(1949, 1965)
Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
, who points out that all knowledge, including
natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally
everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small."
(Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is
being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the
political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has
energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics
to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more
important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's
the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am
repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are
proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them
Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me
or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to
be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context
of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid
and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in
this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why
such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political
system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a
significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may
be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's
approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a
small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach
it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if
you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can
understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised."
Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for
the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our
citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to
activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said
this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party
candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even
if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be
destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
My guess/bet is that
V4V
believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.
I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still
vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just
admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of
us with some (albeit small) hope?
simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post
some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal
warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am
usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my
liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible?
Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a
vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the
CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to
arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time
I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third
candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he
somehow gets more electoral votes that
both
the major parties combined. If not, it goes to
the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House
majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.
You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic
Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and
can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement
outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is
doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can
down the road to the time you Democrats
finally
realize it isn't going to work. You
obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and
begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya
so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about
them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our
baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's
where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see
this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for
their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the
same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch
doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his
lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three
require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS
will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same
ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII.
But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after
the bombs drop.
As usual, I find your analysis and commentary honest and accurate. However, I do take exception to your pulling out
these canards:
"Trump's contempt of Congress and attempt to get Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to open an
investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for almost $400 million in U.S. military aid and allowing
Zelensky to visit the White House are impeachable offenses"
Trump has certain executive privileges and him being
guilty of contempt of Congress should be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Jonathan Turley in his testimony made
that quite clear. Military aid was never mentioned in the phone call. Zelensky was unaware aid would be withheld. So
if Trump were using the money as a means to induce Zelensky to do those favors, it was a totally botched one. To
quote Dr. Strangelove, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret!"
New avenues for accountability and oversight became possible in Washington, D.C., in 2019, following the
election of a new Democratic Party majority in the House (and the most diverse Congress ever) in the 2018
midterms. As a result, Democrats took hold of the subpoena power that rests in the House of Representatives,
along with the power to set the agenda across congressional committees. As a result, 2019 has been full of
important moments for congressional oversight of both the Trump administration and private business. Here
are five of the most important moments in congressional oversight in 2019.
1. Betsy DeVos, Are You "Too Corrupt" or "Too Incompetent"? ...
2. Big Bank CEOs Are Stumped by Simple Budgets ...
3. Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Divest From Private Prisons in Congressional Testimony ...
4. Rep. Ilhan Omar vs. Elliott Abrams ...
5. Voting to Impeach the President ...
The only people who lie and obfuscate facts as much as Trump and his GOP cult are neo progressive demagogues
and propaganda buffs like Chris 'regime-change-in-America' Hedges.
Absolutely bush should have been impeached, convicted, removed and executed for war crimes and mass murder.
But because he wasn't doesn't mean that our orange Fuhrer shouldn't be.
He is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler.
NObama was a horrible POTUS for the 99% and is THE reason why we have trump, but he didn't poison every aspect
of the government and everything else like your orange Fuhrer is doing, which is the exact same tactic that
Hitler used to create Nazi Germany.
The generic Left is ignoring this aspect of the Trump impeachment circus . The whole farce IS political. Now
Senator Lisa Murkowski wants her Republican Party to rise above politics ( and do the wrong thing ? ). In the
past three years when did the Democrat Party ever rise above politics ? Politics USA is always CLASS politics,
always IMPERIALIST , MILITARIST politics . All the " liberal " Democrats have been slobbering over the
UN-ELECTED shadow government of the United States , the National Security Police State , slobbering over FBI,
CIA bureaucrats , uniformed officials of the Pentagon War Crimes Machine . Join them ?
This Senator Lisa
Murkowski -no surprise - is in good standing with the Israel Lobby collectively determined to nullify the 2016
presidential election . NEWS clip :
[ "There are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in
terms of influence its quite big," Farage said. Farage seemed to question why Israel was not facing
election-meddling accusations, saying Israeli groups "have a voice within American politics" but "I don't think
anybody is suggesting that the Israeli government tried to affect the result of the American elections."]
Did not the Kafkaesque Trump impeachment hearings look and sound like Old Yiddish Theater soap opera ? How
many working class Christian Americans have heartfelt moral and cultural ties to the Ukraine of all places, now
celebrating its first Jewish friend of Zionist Apartheid Israel president ? Who in the USA authorized this
character to wage a proxy war against post-communist Russia ? WE THE PEOPLE ?
Guess WHO is promoting the HATE RUSSIA, New McCarthyism ?
$748 billion in 2020 for the military death machine equals $23 MILLION A SECOND.
How many schools or
hospitals could have been built, how many roads or bridges repaired, how many students educated with the money
the MIC has squandered in the few seconds it has taken me to write this?
We are destroying our people from the inside out. This is treason.
A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the
New York Times
and
Politico
published
major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments
will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of
anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.
Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had
little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying
attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other
indicators
on
the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.
Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and
draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the
decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.
For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of
disparaging
and
minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore
attacks.
Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few
establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media
coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street
Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.
When the Bernie campaign wasn't being
ignored
by
corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.
With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For
the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.
While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that
a
Sanders presidency is a real possibility
. The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets
that distort options and encourage passivity.
Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."
From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.
Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist
strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.
Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump
Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments
with only about a third of them having a much relevance.
You might consider re-posting in reply
to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the
campaign hallucinations.
I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and
lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder
how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays
demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does
not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.
Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to
preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even
intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta
& historical
].
I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard
following by trolling lib-prog sites.
Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't
exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is
shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable
social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own
reality.
This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born
(1949, 1965)
Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
, who points out that all knowledge, including
natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally
everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small."
(Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).
Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is
being realistic.
But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the
political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has
energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics
to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more
important than the presidency in the long run.
Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!
Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's
the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am
repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are
proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.
Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them
Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me
or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to
be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context
of voting.
Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid
and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in
this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why
such support would be effective?
I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political
system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a
significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may
be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's
approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a
small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach
it. And it only takes a small amount of time.
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if
you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can
understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.
Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised."
Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for
the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our
citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to
activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.
But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect
-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks
"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats
I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.
Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said
this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party
candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even
if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.
Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be
destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.
My guess/bet is that
V4V
believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.
I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still
vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just
admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of
us with some (albeit small) hope?
simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?
-straw man
That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post
some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal
warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am
usually on the receiving end.
I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my
liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible?
Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a
vehicle and that's where we differ.
And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the
CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to
arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time
I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."
The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third
candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he
somehow gets more electoral votes that
both
the major parties combined. If not, it goes to
the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House
majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.
You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic
Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and
can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.
What I propose is a movement
outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is
doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can
down the road to the time you Democrats
finally
realize it isn't going to work. You
obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and
begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya
so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.
People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about
them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our
baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's
where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see
this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for
their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the
same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch
doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his
lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three
require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS
will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same
ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII.
But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after
the bombs drop.
As usual, I find your analysis and commentary honest and accurate. However, I do take exception to your pulling out
these canards:
"Trump's contempt of Congress and attempt to get Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to open an
investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for almost $400 million in U.S. military aid and allowing
Zelensky to visit the White House are impeachable offenses"
Trump has certain executive privileges and him being
guilty of contempt of Congress should be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Jonathan Turley in his testimony made
that quite clear. Military aid was never mentioned in the phone call. Zelensky was unaware aid would be withheld. So
if Trump were using the money as a means to induce Zelensky to do those favors, it was a totally botched one. To
quote Dr. Strangelove, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret!"
New avenues for accountability and oversight became possible in Washington, D.C., in 2019, following the
election of a new Democratic Party majority in the House (and the most diverse Congress ever) in the 2018
midterms. As a result, Democrats took hold of the subpoena power that rests in the House of Representatives,
along with the power to set the agenda across congressional committees. As a result, 2019 has been full of
important moments for congressional oversight of both the Trump administration and private business. Here
are five of the most important moments in congressional oversight in 2019.
1. Betsy DeVos, Are You "Too Corrupt" or "Too Incompetent"? ...
2. Big Bank CEOs Are Stumped by Simple Budgets ...
3. Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Divest From Private Prisons in Congressional Testimony ...
4. Rep. Ilhan Omar vs. Elliott Abrams ...
5. Voting to Impeach the President ...
The only people who lie and obfuscate facts as much as Trump and his GOP cult are neo progressive demagogues
and propaganda buffs like Chris 'regime-change-in-America' Hedges.
Absolutely bush should have been impeached, convicted, removed and executed for war crimes and mass murder.
But because he wasn't doesn't mean that our orange Fuhrer shouldn't be.
He is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler.
NObama was a horrible POTUS for the 99% and is THE reason why we have trump, but he didn't poison every aspect
of the government and everything else like your orange Fuhrer is doing, which is the exact same tactic that
Hitler used to create Nazi Germany.
The generic Left is ignoring this aspect of the Trump impeachment circus . The whole farce IS political. Now
Senator Lisa Murkowski wants her Republican Party to rise above politics ( and do the wrong thing ? ). In the
past three years when did the Democrat Party ever rise above politics ? Politics USA is always CLASS politics,
always IMPERIALIST , MILITARIST politics . All the " liberal " Democrats have been slobbering over the
UN-ELECTED shadow government of the United States , the National Security Police State , slobbering over FBI,
CIA bureaucrats , uniformed officials of the Pentagon War Crimes Machine . Join them ?
This Senator Lisa
Murkowski -no surprise - is in good standing with the Israel Lobby collectively determined to nullify the 2016
presidential election . NEWS clip :
[ "There are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in
terms of influence its quite big," Farage said. Farage seemed to question why Israel was not facing
election-meddling accusations, saying Israeli groups "have a voice within American politics" but "I don't think
anybody is suggesting that the Israeli government tried to affect the result of the American elections."]
Did not the Kafkaesque Trump impeachment hearings look and sound like Old Yiddish Theater soap opera ? How
many working class Christian Americans have heartfelt moral and cultural ties to the Ukraine of all places, now
celebrating its first Jewish friend of Zionist Apartheid Israel president ? Who in the USA authorized this
character to wage a proxy war against post-communist Russia ? WE THE PEOPLE ?
Guess WHO is promoting the HATE RUSSIA, New McCarthyism ?
$748 billion in 2020 for the military death machine equals $23 MILLION A SECOND.
How many schools or
hospitals could have been built, how many roads or bridges repaired, how many students educated with the money
the MIC has squandered in the few seconds it has taken me to write this?
We are destroying our people from the inside out. This is treason.
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world
Patrick Cockburn | @indyworld |
Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the
British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the
general election this month.
National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing
more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British
archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of
its constituent nations. Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the
Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three
general elections since the independence referendum in 2014.
Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national
independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a
continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin's greater leverage when backed by the
other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in
the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal.
Northern Ireland saw more nationalist than unionist MPs elected in the general election for
the first time since 1921. This is important because it is a further sign of the political
impact of demographic change whereby Catholics/nationalists become the new majority and the
Protestants/unionists the minority. The contemptuous ease with which Boris Johnson abandoned
his ultra-unionist pledges to the DUP and accepted a customs border in the Irish Sea separating
Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain shows how little loyalty the Conservatives feel
towards the northern unionists and their distinct and abrasive brand of British
nationalism.
These developments affecting four of the main national communities inhabiting the British
Isles – Irish, nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, Scots – are easy to
track. Welsh nationalism is a lesser force. Much more difficult to trace and explain is the
rise of English nationalism because it is much more inchoate than these other types of
nationalism, has no programme, and is directly represented by no political party – though
the Conservative Party has moved in that direction.
The driving force behind Brexit was always a certain type of English nationalism which did
not lose its power to persuade despite being incoherent and little understood by its critics
and supporters alike. In some respects, it deployed the rhetoric of any national community
seeking self-determination. The famous Brexiteer slogan "take back control" is not that
different in its implications from Sinn Fein – "Ourselves Alone" – though neither
movement would relish the analogy.
The great power of the pro-Brexit movement, never really taken on board by its opponents,
was to blame the very real sense of disempowerment and social grievances felt by a large part
of the English population on Brussels and the EU. This may have been scapegoating on a
grandiose scale, but nationalist movements the world over have targeted some foreign body
abroad or national minority at home as the source of their ills. I asked one former Leave
councillor – one of the few people I met who changed their mind on the issue after the
referendum in 2016 – why people living in her deprived ward held the EU responsible for
their poverty. Her reply cut through many more sophisticated explanations: "I suppose that it
is always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner."
Applying life lessons to the pursuit of national happiness The Tories won't get far once
progressives join forces 22,000 EU nationals have left NHS since Brexit vote, figures show This
crude summary of the motives of many Leave voters has truth in it, but it is a mistake to
caricature English nationalism as simply a toxic blend of xenophobia, racism, imperial
nostalgia and overheated war memories. In the three years since the referendum the very act of
voting for Brexit became part of many people's national identity, a desire to break free,
kicking back against an overmighty bureaucracy and repelling attempts by the beneficiaries of
globalisation to reverse a democratic vote.
The political left in most countries is bad at dealing with nationalism and the pursuit of
self-determination. It sees these as a diversion from identifying and attacking the real
perpetrators of social and economic injustice. It views nationalists as mistakenly or malignly
aiming at the wrong target – usually foreigners – and letting the domestic ones off
the hook.
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world. It can only be ignored at great political cost, as the Labour Party has just found out
to its cost for the fifth time (two referendums and three elections). What Labour should have
done was early on take over the slogan "take back control" and seek to show that they were
better able to deliver this than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. There is no compelling
reason why achieving such national demands should be a monopoly of the right. But in 2016, 2017
and 2019 Labour made the same mistake of trying to wriggle around Brexit as the prime issue
facing the English nation without taking a firm position, an evasion that discredited it with
both Remainers and Leavers.
Curiously, the political establishment made much the same mistake as Labour in
underestimating and misunderstanding the nature of English nationalism. Up to the financial
crisis of 2008 globalisation had been sold as a beneficial and inevitable historic process.
Nationalism was old hat and national loyalties were supposedly on the wane. To the British
political class, the EU obviously enhanced the political and economic strength of its national
members. As beneficiaries of the status quo, they were blind to the fact that much of the
country had failed to gain from these good things and felt marginalised and forgotten.
The advocates of supra-national organisations since the mediaeval papacy have been making
such arguments and have usually been perplexed why they fail to stick. They fail to understand
the strength of nationalism or religion in providing a sense of communal solidarity, even if it
is based on dreams and illusions, that provides a vehicle for deeply felt needs and grievances.
Arguments based on simple profit and loss usually lose out against such rivals.
Minervo , 1 day ago
Bigger by far are two forces which really do have control over our country -- the
international NATO warmongers but even more so, the international banksters of the finance
industry.
Why no 'leftist' campaign to Take Back Control of our money? Gordon Brown baled out the
banks when they should have gone bankrupt and been nationalised.
Blair is forever tainted with his ill-fated Attack on Iraq. Surely New Liberals or
Democrats or Socialists would want to lock down on that fiasco?
The Nationalism of taking back control could be a leftist project too.
"The life of the individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one,
against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers
adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand."
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
Although Nietzsche seems to be the philosopher of choice for many on the Dissident Right,
I've always had a soft spot for Arthur Schopenhauer. His cantankerous philosophical pessimism
has always struck a chord with my own temperament, and for many years I've found his
quasi-Buddhist and highly compassionate conceptualisation of suffering to be strangely
comforting. That life is a struggle involving endless adversaries and competitors also forms an
aspect of Schopenhauer's philosophy, and this continues to be significant in shaping my
political and philosophical outlook. Certainly, it goes without saying that adversaries have
never been in short supply for members of the Dissident Right. They are arrayed before us now,
emerging from all points of the political spectrum, and often even from within our own ranks.
Dissident right political philosophies, more than any other, appear destined to be mired in
continual conflict, and I often find it difficult to shake the dark impression that one day I
will die, metaphorical sword in hand, with every battle raging but far from won. For this
reason, I sometimes permit myself the relief of optimism (a form of cowardice to both
Schopenhauer and Spengler), and part of this is the attempt to find allies where formerly one
may have seen only foes. This brings me to the subject matter of this essay -- recent
developments on the Left which appear to suggest the emergence of an anti-globalist,
anti-immigration, and anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic politics.
Swedish Communists Wake Up
Just days ago, Sputnik
reported on the fact that almost half of the members of the Communist Party in Malmö,
Sweden, are resigning. They plan to establish a new workers' party that no longer features
multiculturalism, LGBT interests, and climate change as key policy goals. Nils Littorin, one of
the defectors,
told a local newspaper that today's Left has become part of the elite and has come to
"dismiss the views of the working class as alien and problematic." Littorin suggested that the
Left "is going through a prolonged identity crisis" and that his group, instead, intends to
stick to the original values, such as class politics. Littorin adds "[The Left] don't
understand why so many workers don't think that multiculturalism, the LGBT movement and Greta
Thunberg are something fantastic, but instead believe we are in the 1930s' Germany and that
workers who vote [right-wing] Sweden Democrats have been infected by some Nazi sickness." In a
piece of simple insight previously rare on the Left, he argues that the rise in right-wing
votes for people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are in fact due to "widespread
dissatisfaction with liberal economic migration that leads to low-wage competition and the
ghettoisation of communities, a development that only benefits major companies." Rather than
being beneficial to working class Whites, Littorin condemns a "chaotic" immigration policy that
has led to "cultural clashes, segregation and exclusion due to an uncontrolled influx from
parts of the world characterised by honour culture and clan mentalities."
Littorin continues to talk sense when it comes to the LGBT agenda. He explains that LGBT
issues and the climate movement are merely "state ideologies" that are "rammed down people's
throats". Littorin adds that phenomena like these happen at the expense of real issues, such as
poverty, homelessness, and income equality: "Pride, for instance, has been reduced to dealing
with sexual orientation. We believe that human dignity is primarily about having a job and
having pension insurance that means that you are not forced to live on crumbs when you are
old."
As well as prioritising jobs and pensions over the flamboyant celebration of buggery,
Littorin and his colleagues have pledged to abandon the name and ethos of Communism, describing
it as a
word drawn to the dirt, a nasty word today, and not entirely undeservedly. In communist
parties, there is this risk of elitism, self-indulgence, and a belief that a certain
avant-garde should lead a working class that does not know its own best interests, instead of
asking people what they want. 20th-century Communism died with the Soviet Union, it has never
been successfully updated for the 21st century but has been stuck in 100-year-old books.
Curiously, events in Malmö have been mirrored somewhat in broader Swedish Left
politics, with Markus Allard, the leader of the left-wing Örebro Party, expressing
similar
thoughts in an op-ed titled "Socialists don't belong to the left," accusing the mainstream
left of completely abandoning
its base , switching from the working class to "parasitic grant-grabbing layers within the
middle class."
British Socialists Reinvent Themselves
Almost simultaneously, an identical process is occurring in Britain with George Galloway 's announcement of a
new Workers
Party of Britain . At the time of its launch Galloway described the party as "hard Brexit
and hard labour," and added: "If you're a liberal who thinks it's Left if you're still pining
for the EU, if you think shouting "racist," "homophobic," "transphobic" at everybody who
doesn't agree with you is the way forward, we're probably not for you." Galloway's pro-Brexit
stance is rooted in his
belief that the modern British Left "have no vision for an alternative to rampant
neoliberalism and a deindustrialised, finance-led, low wage economy, they calculate the best
way to make this work is within the EU." He argues that the cosmopolitan leadership of the
Labour Party in particular "think we are some kind of uncivilised tribe, painting our faces
blue, and only able to vote in a right-wing government," a view he finds "not only deeply
insulting, but also self-defeating and overly optimistic about the EU." On immigration,
Galloway argues that there is "nothing left-wing about unlimited mass immigration. It
decapitates the countries from which the immigrants leave, and drives down wages in those where
they arrive. The wealthy benefit from it, as they can afford cheap labor for their companies,
or cheap au-pairs, cheap baristas, cheap plumbers. But the working class suffers."
Galloway has also stressed that his new party will strongly pursue anti-Israel politics, and
is fully committed to opposing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Galloway and the Workers Party of Britain have also taken a stand against the more extreme
forms of LGBT indoctrination, particularly the mass promotion of transgenderism. Galloway, who
has previously been attacked by a
self-styled "trans anarchist" while giving a speech, is here following the lead of the
pro-Brexit Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) which recently published
Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend: Where is LGBT ideology taking us and Why does
it matter? In this text, and other articles on the party's website, including this
very interesting speech denouncing transgender ideology as anti-materialist and
anti-scientific, the argument is made that
Biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing . It doesn't
just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world. Sexual
reproduction is a natural biological process that has persisted in nature due to the
diversity it engenders; it is a phenomenon encountered in the natural world. And let's not
forget how this debate impinged upon us. We've been following this ideological trend, and
encountering identity politics (idpol) among supporters and candidates for membership of our
party, and amongst people we've been working with for at least four or five years. Because
idpol has become a fashion in that period. And it is a fashion; it is a trend. And it
suddenly -- from being very marginal to certain academic institutions in the 1970s -- became
mainstream globally worldwide; it was actively promoted. Not promoted by communists, not by
socialists, but picked up on and accepted by many of them, because they are led by, and they
blindly followed, bourgeoise society down this dead-end. There is a group of self-proclaimed
'socialists' who are not actually any longer fighting against our oppression, they're
fighting against reality!
The Left in Crisis?
None of these developments are entirely surprising and, in fact, the argument could be made
that they are the inevitable side effect of what Nils Littorin termed the Left's prolonged
"identity crisis." The endorsement and promotion of multiculturalism and its sex-politics
corollaries never did make much sense within the framework of rational critiques of capitalism,
and the tension between the nominal desire for working class solidarity and divisive
pseudo-Marxian doctrines (e.g. Whiteness Studies) designed to mobilise imported ethnic factions
against the largest section of the working class (blue-collar Whites) was always destined to
bring about significant stress fractures when Leftist fortunes began to decline.
And decline they have. Of course, we have to set aside rampant ideological and cultural
success. Figures and cliques operating under the banner of social equality and eternal progress
continue to hold the reins of power in government, academia, and the mass media. But the Left
is without question currently subject to a period of political decline. It's losing votes, and
more important, it's fast losing hearts and minds. I should also add that they aren't losing
them to right-wing ideas, but to the hollow shells of right-wing ideas (Free Enterprise! Build
the Wall!) and to the charismatic globalist play-actors who promote-these ideas like salesmen
selling used cars or aftershave. White working-class people are voting for free enterprise
without hesitation while Jewish
vulture capitalism operates with impunity under that very banner, destroying their towns,
exporting their jobs, and repossessing their homes. The same people vote for a wall they'll
never get -- and would never really solve the problems resulting from capitalism or ensure a
majority White future. And they do it not because of concern about identity or racial destiny,
but in the same way one might decide to install CCTV in a grocery store -- the ever-elusive
Wall will never be built so long as it represents nothing more than the aspiration to protect
mere inventory. The hollow men of the pseudo-Right-wing offer flimsy placebos, and yet the
political Left, supposedly the historical repository of hard materialism, can't seem to
compete.
There's been a scramble to blame the situation on
a lack of charismatic leaders , disunity, a lack of attractive policies, and even the idea
that the European Left made the
fatal mistake of trying to meet the Right on its own turf by "flirting with closed-border
nationalism or neoliberalism." But the real reason is surely the fact the Left has consistently
alienated and browbeat working class Whites, while slowly revealing itself to be an elite-run
clique of cosmopolitans, who are living the high life while waxing lyrical about oppressions
that are rarely real and often imaginary, and in any case never affect them personally. Added
to this is the fact Leftist ideology has become so convoluted and contorted, with the
square-peg doctrine of Marx endlessly forced into new and increasingly abstract circular and
triangular holes, resulting in Marxist interpretations of such ephemera as graffiti, pop music,
and drag queens, all of which strike the average blue-collar worker as a steaming pile of
effeminate middle-class navel-gazing. All this plays out as young yet dithering social justice
warriors, jobless and senseless, search for oppression like an old lady with dementia searches
for a purse she hasn't owned in 20 years. As the pundits split hairs, I look on, and it occurs
to me rather simply that right now the pseudo-Left-wing liars aren't quite as good as the
pseudo-Right-wing liars.
Are These Rebels Potential Allies?
When I was around 11 years old, my mother made a new friend, a Scottish woman in her 30s,
who always struck me as very strange. It was her eyes. I didn't know at first what
schizophrenia was, though I would soon find out. One day she arrived at our house and,
recognising her, I opened the door and welcomed her in. I called to my mother, who was
upstairs, and made small talk with the Scottish woman, who, standing still and staring right at
me, seemed perfectly cheerful and articulate. She asked about how I was doing at school, and we
talked a little bit about science, which she seemed to know a lot about. It was only after a
few minutes that I noticed the smell and deduced that the woman had fouled herself. By the time
my mother arrived, the Scottish woman had descended into a stream-of-consciousness gibberish
that culminated in her attempting unsuccessfully to retrieve a knife from the kitchen before
running from the property. She'd simply stopped taking her medication. We later discovered she
was found by police that night, dancing and weeping with bare, bloody feet in a nearby
graveyard, wearing nothing but a nightgown and proclaiming to the dead that she was God,
distraught at the death of the crucified son.
The episode has remained with me now for over two decades, shaping my perceptions of
reality, relationships, and trust. Here it suffices only to remark that the insane talk sense
at times, even as their psyche shatters. And if we dig deeply enough into the statements of
these moderately "awakened" Leftists, do we yet see signs of madness? A look again at the
statement from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), along with some reading
between the lines, suggests something decidedly off . Yes, "biological differentiation
between male and female is a real thing." Of course it is. But so is biological differentiation
between races, and yet here our erstwhile British hardcore materialists, currently led by a
full-blooded ethnic Indian named Harpal Brar , decide to fight against reality.
On that note, we should add that Brar's daughter, Joti Brar, has been announced as George
Galloway's deputy leader at the "hard Brexit and hard labour" Worker's Party of Britain.
Galloway, it's worth adding, has been married four times, with three marriages to non-Whites
(Palestinian Amineh Abu-Zayyad in 1994, Lebanese Rima Husseini in 2007, and ethnic Indonesian
Putri Gayatri Pertiwi in 2012). So for all his protestations of being against mass migration,
one gets the distinct impression that Galloway is a committed multiculturalist and that his
party will be internationalist in every meaningful sense of the term.
If there is any hope for some sanity in this camp of frustrated Leftists it is for the
simple reason that these small new pockets of reason are for the most part free of Jewish
influence and all the intellectual distortions such influence entails. In a 2018 essay titled "
On
"Leftist Anti-Semitism": Past and Present ," I considered the gradual shift of Jews away
from the hard Left due to growing anti-Zionism, and their growing confinement in centrist
neoliberalism:
Jewish blindness to their privileges, genuine or feigned, is of course one major cause for
the undeniable friction between Jews and the modern Left. It was perhaps inevitable that
foolish but earnest egalitarians on the Left would come to the slow realization that their
'comrades of the Jewish faith' were in fact not only elitists, but an elite of a very special
sort. The simultaneous preaching of open borders/common property and 'the land of the Jewish
people' was always going to strike a discordant note among the wearers of sweaty Che Guevara
t-shirts, especially when accompanied so very often by the cacophony of Israeli gunfire and
the screams of bloodied Palestinian children. Mass migration, that well-crafted toxin
coursing through the highways and rail lines of Europe, has proven just as difficult to
manage. Great waves of human detritus wash upon Western shores, bringing raw and passionate
grievances even from the frontiers of Israel. These are people whose eyes have seen behind
the veil, and who sit only with great discomfort alongside the kin of the IDF in league with
the Western political Left -- the only common ground being a shared desire to dispossess the
hated White man. For these reasons, the Left could well become a cold house for Jews without
becoming authentically, systematically, or traditionally anti-Semitic. One might therefore
expect Jews to regroup away from the radical left, occupying a political space best described
as staunchly centrist -- a centrism that leans left only to pursue multiculturalism and other
destructive 'egalitarian' social policies, and leans right only in order to obtain elite
protections and privileges [domestically for the Jewish community, internationally for
Israel]. A centrism based, in that old familiar formula, on 'what is best for Jews.'
As seen in the recent clash between Jews and the UK's Labour Party, the political relocation
of Jews to a kind of amorphous and opportunistic centrism will bring them into direct conflict
with those on the hard Left who not only pursue anti-Zionist politics but also object to
manifestations of raw Jewish power like the mass adoption of the IHRA definition of
anti-Semitism and the economic abuses of politically ambiguous (neither Left nor Right, but
Jewish) oligarchs like Paul Singer. As such, and together with their natural aversion to being
part of the Right, Jews will increasingly find it difficult to define themselves politically as
anything other than Jews, leading to the increased visibility of their activities and interests
-- something witnessed in the unprecedented step of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis openly calling
for British Jews to move against Jeremy Corbyn. This increased visibility can only be a good
thing for those concerned with Jewish influence, and who have been frustrated in previous
periods by Jewish influence masquerading in various political guises.
A potential opportunity, imperfect but perhaps feasible, may therefore be arising whereby
White interests could be subliminally or even publicly defended through savvy, nominally
hard-Left activism against mass migration (on economic rather than racial grounds), against
Israel and international Zionist influence, against some aspects of PC culture, and against the
capitalist excesses of the Jewish vulture funds. It goes without saying that Leftist activists
don't receive anywhere near the same level of social, professional, or legal punishment for
their activism as those on the Right, especially the dissident Right. I don't think I'm too
wide of the mark in suggesting that an anti-immigration agitator with "Workers Party of
Britain" plastered over his social media is less likely to lose his job than someone with
public National Front affiliations. It may therefore be worth serious consideration by young
activists as to whether they might want to cultivate a kind of "Leftist" mask to defend White
interests in much the same way as Jews in the past have adopted various convenient political
masks while concealing deeper ethnic interests. I am suggesting a combination of infiltration
and masquerade. What matters most is the private motivation and the potential benefits of the
ultimate goal -- White interests and objectives serving them.
There are, of course, also dangers in supporting such movements. I am not suggesting the
investment of serious time and money in these groups, since the risk is great that the majority
of their members are committed to a politics that is ultimately antagonistic and destructive to
our own ultimate goals. There is also huge potential for betrayal on many of the issues where
we might have common ground -- immigration, LGBT madness, PC culture -- and I find it difficult
to shake off the impression that these developments bear the mark of a temporary despair and
are designed to dupe blue-collar Whites into voting Left once more.
Still, 2020 may open up a new front in the war, and as the New Year approaches, I'll silence
my inner Schopenhauer and toast to that.
Boris Johnson seems to be a step in this direction, many of the policies he has openly stated
would have been almost unthinkable for a Conservative PM previously, things like amnesty for
illegal immigrants, vast amounts of public spending, he has even stated an intention to
nationalise things like train operators.
Boris is seen as very much right wing by most people in the UK, but if you look at his
policies he could easily be described as a sort of left wing nationalist, especially in terms
of his social policies. In terms of actual policy there is increasingly little difference
between the Conservatives and Labour, the differentiation has become about abstract things
like self-proclaimed patriotism and the level of pandering to Zionism.
WN-types such as the author of this article tend to focus so heavily on immigration as an
issue. So here's a link to a long piece I published a couple of years ago proposing a
solution to the American version of the problem, though I'm not sure how applicable it would
be to Britain:
@Ron Unz I think, Mr. Unz, you highlight peaceful coexistence, at the same time many
still pine for a separate nation of exclusively white Christians. While it's a lost cause at
this point, it doesn't stop the WN types – a set that is difficult to exclude myself
from – from imagining a different reality and the National policies that would
accompany that. Is a grand bargain possible? It gives me pause.
It's extremely surprising to me that Andrew Joyce, in his analysis of left/right potential
cooperation for the benefit of the nation and its legacy population, would fail to mention or
bring up the French Equality and Reconciliation movement of Alain Soral. Here is a movement
with meaty ideas, and more importantly, results. For what ideas drive the Yellow Vest
protests if not the very concepts that Joyce points out in this article, expressed so well by
Soral and so many of the white French protesters? Soral, originally a Marxist who
subsequently joined the National Front (now the National Rally), has a number of useful and
accurate slogans. He is a brilliant analyst and an articulate commentator; unfortunately, his
videos and activism is limited to the French language. "The Left for the worker, The Right
for morality." Isn't this similar to Joyce's argument that the Left is losing members who are
rejecting the identity politics, gender bender, climate change distraction issue driven
narrative that is driving the Left today? Of course in France Soral is labeled a Rightist
Antisemite, as he is not shy about calling out the stranglehold that CRIF holds over French
politics and how this has warped foreign policy in the interests of apartheid Israel. When I
watch some of his videos and commentary, I wonder why we don't have a similar figure and
movement in the US.
At four-thirty in the afternoon of Saturday, 4 April 2009, Barack Obama stood before a
throng of correspondents in the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès, a high-Modernist
convention center on the place de Bordeaux in Strasbourg. It was his seventy-fourth day as
president. He had earlier attended his first Group of 20 meeting, in London, and had just
emerged from his first NATO summit, a two-day affair that featured sessions on both sides of
the Franco–German border. The world was still intently curious as to who America's first
black president was and what, exactly, he stood for.
Confident, easeful, entirely in command, Obama spoke extemporaneously for several minutes.
He spoke of "careful cooperation and collective action" within the Atlantic alliance. He noted
"a sense of common purpose" among its leaders. He was there "to listen, to learn, and to lead,"
Obama said, "because all of us have a responsibility to do our parts."
Then came the questions.
There was one about the global financial crisis Obama had walked into as soon as he walked
into the White House. ("All of us have to take important steps to deal with economic growth.")
There was one about NATO troops in Afghanistan, and another about whether any would be deployed
in Pakistan. There was an awkward question about a new law passed in Kabul that restricted
women's rights in public places and effectively condoned child marriages. "What, about the
character of this law," an American television correspondent wanted to know, "ought to motivate
US forces to fight and possibly die in Afghanistan?" Obama parried the question with
impressively presidential aplomb: the law is abhorrent, he said, but American troops are highly
motivated to protect the United States.
Another question came from the Washington correspondent of the Financial Times. It was a
little long-winded and is reproduced in the transcript thus: "In the context of all the
multilateral activity this week -- the G-20, here at NATO -- and your evident enthusiasm for
multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors
have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead
the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to
elaborate on it?"
This is known in the trade as a softball, the kind of gently lobbed query that sets up a
public figure to dilate safely and at length on a favored theme. And so did Obama field it.
From the transcript, one half wonders whether the president and the correspondent had rehearsed
the moment beforehand -- as if Obama were keen to take on the matter in a cosmopolitan
setting.
"I believe in American exceptionalism," the new president said spryly, "just as I suspect
the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
Obama waxed on in this vein for a moment or two before praising, yet again, alliances and
many-sided modes of cooperation. "We create partnerships," he concluded, "because we can't
solve these problems alone."
Like an incoming tide flowing over rocks, the questions from the press returned to troop
counts, NATO contributions, and Albania's accession as the alliance's newest member. No one
seemed to take much note of either the FT man's inquiry or Obama's reply to it. And no one, not
even America's new president, seemed to grasp what had just happened to exceptionalism, that
peculiarly awkward term with its peculiarly ideological load. Something broke at that moment.
It was as if Obama had dropped a precious relic, some centuries-old crystal chalice, and no one
present heard the noise when it shattered.
The noise came soon enough and echoed for the remainder of Obama's eight years in office.
The stars of right-wing media were among the first to start in. Sean Hannity pounced within a
couple of days of the Strasbourg remark. Obama, the Fox News presenter declared, "marginalized
his own country by saying our sense of exceptionalism is no different than that of the British
and the Greeks." An upstart assistant editor at the New Republic took a swing a few days later.
"If all countries are 'exceptional,' then none are," James Kirchick wrote, "and to claim
otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning."
It went on from there, an ever-available suggestion that Obama's patriotism must be held in
doubt, that he was not truly "one of us." It was not difficult to hear the worst of these
recurring remarks as racism at a single remove.
"Our president," Mitt Romney asserted as he sought the Republican presidential nomination in
2012, "doesn't have the same feeling about American exceptionalism that we do." Three years
later, another conservative presidential aspirant, the mercifully forgettable Bobby Jindal,
swung his mallet to make the bell ring: "This is a president who won't proudly proclaim
American exceptionalism," the Louisiana governor charged, "maybe the first president ever who
truly doesn't believe in that."
Obama seemed haunted after that afternoon in Strasbourg. It was as if he had strayed beyond
the fence posts defining what an American leader can and cannot say -- and then hastened to
return to the fold. Thenceforth, he missed few chances to counter his critics. "My entire
career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism," he said in direct reply to Romney. On
another occasion: "I'm a firm believer in American exceptionalism." And another -- this time in
a commencement address at West Point: "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of
my being." He pursued the theme until the very end of his presidency, a point to which I will
return.
None of this -- the president's critics, the president's ripostes -- did much good, if any,
for the abiding notion of American exceptionalism, whichever of its numerous meanings one may
subscribe to. These past years have been peculiar in this way. Others may read the matter
differently, but to me that afternoon in Strasbourg was a point of departure long in coming.
Since then it has made no difference, none at all, whether one faults Obama or anyone else for
failing to believe in our exceptional standing or whether one professes belief to the bottom of
one's soul.
All that is said now comes to the same thing, making for a devastating dialectic. However
the question is addressed, it reiterates the same lapse, the same telling self-consciousness,
the same self-doubt, the same collective anxiety long evident to anyone able to discern with
detachment the sentiments common to many Americans. Obama had it right, of course, that day in
Strasbourg. Having lived among the Chinese, the Japanese, and others given to pronounced
variants of chosen-people consciousness, I conclude he had settled on the only logical way at
the matter. All nations are exceptional, but none, not even America, is exceptionally
exceptional. The irate young editor at the New Republic had it right, too, though he seemed not
to have known it: whatever Obama's intent (a question I will also take up later), he had indeed
stripped bare America's customary claim to exceptionalist standing, exposing it at last as
empty of all but the most mythical meanings.
This was an immensely constructive thing to do. Is it too much to suggest that shattering
the glass chalice might in the long run rank among our forty-fourth president's most
consequential accomplishments? I do not think so. History, the kind Obama made in Strasbourg,
sometimes resembles what Auden wrote of suffering in "Musée des Beaux Arts": it occurs
in the most ordinary circumstances such that very few of us even take note.
To risk a generality, Americans had been an uncertain people -- nervous, defensive, given to
overcompensation for never-to-bementioned failures and weaknesses -- for a long time before
Obama spoke in Alsace in the spring of 2009. I trace this shared-by-many attribute to another
April, this one thirty-four years earlier, that wrenchingly poignant season when Americans sat
in frozen silence as news footage showed them helicopters hovering above the embassy in Saigon
-- the frenzy of a final retreat. For now, it is enough to note that Obama's observation -- a
touch offhand and as simple as it was obvious -- marked the moment Americans would have to
begin rotating their gaze, in a gesture not short of historic for its import, if they were to
do at all well in the new century. They would have to turn from a past decorated with many
enchanting ornaments toward a future that has no ribbons or laurels for those who claim them by
virtue of some providentially conferred right.
Obama left Americans with questions on the day I describe. They require us -- and I think by
design -- to begin talking of what I will call postexceptionalism. A set of questions we must
pose to ourselves for the first time: this was Obama's true legacy, in my view. In the best of
outcomes, we will learn to answer them in a new language, as the best answers will require.
What will be the nature of a postexceptionalist America? Who will these postexceptionalist
Americans be? How will they understand themselves and themselves among others? It may be that
the questions Obama so fleetingly raised will turn out to run deeper still. What will remain of
Americans once the belief that they are chosen is subtracted -- as inevitably it will be. What
will be left with which they can describe themselves to themselves? Can a postexceptionalist
America come to be? Given the chasm in their consciousness that must be crossed, is such a
thing even conceivable? Will Americans accept another idea of themselves and of others? Or will
they continue to pretend against all evidence that the chalice remains intact, unshattered,
still to be held high above the heads of others atop our city on a hill, even as the rest of
the world has somewhere to get to and proceeds on, calmly or otherwise, as best it can?
It is common enough to locate the origins of America's self-image in the thoughts of the
earliest settlers coming across the Atlantic from England. It was John Winthrop, in his famous
1630 sermon, who gave us our hilltop city, he who proclaimed "the eies of all people are uppon
us." Even in this seminal occasion we detect a claim -- maybe the earliest -- to exceptional
status. But it is to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as America made itself a nation,
that we have to look for the grist of the exceptionalist notion. And instantly we find a
confusion of meanings. To some it referred to the new nation's revolutionary history, its
institutions, and its democratic ideals: it had ideational connotations.
This line of thinking has since been stenciled onto history such that other readings can be
somewhat obscured. In his Letters from an American Farmer, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
cast the American as a "new man," exceptional for his stoic self-reliance and autonomy. In its
early years, the nation was also counted exceptional for its abundant land and resources. And
we should not forget the influence on the founding generation of the French physiocrats, who
considered farming the fundament of all wealth, as we consider the case for this
interpretation. New and evolving meanings attaching to the term have tumbled down the decades
and centuries ever since, often with claims to providential dispensation, often (as the FT
correspondent suggested) asserting a divinely assigned mission to lead all others.
Alexis de Tocqueville is commonly credited as the first to describe Americans as
exceptional. This is fine, but let us not miss what he meant:
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no
democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin,
their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their
minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which
allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special
causes. . .have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the Americans upon purely practical
objects.
It is a rather less elevated description of our exceptionalism than is customarily assumed.
Long has been the journey, then, from Tocqueville's time to ours, exceptionalism having gone
from observation to thought to article of faith, ideological imperative, a presumption of
eternal success, and a claim to stand above the law that governs all other nations. Historians
note the odd irony that it was Stalin who brought the term "American exceptionalism" into
common use. This was in the late 1920s, when a faction of American Communists advised Moscow
that the nation's abundance and the absence of clearly drawn class distinctions rendered it
immune to the contradictions Marx saw in capitalism.
Stalin was incensed: how dare those Americans stray from orthodoxy by declaring their nation
an exception to it? While the Soviet leader flung the term back indignantly, many American
intellectuals considered it "an inspired encapsulation of 160 years of impeccable national
history." This phrase belongs to David Levering Lewis, the biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois, who
was among the first prominent critics of the notion that America and its people were in any way
singular or in any way not subject to the turning of history's wheel. Du Bois found the source
of our modern idea of exceptionalism in the postbellum decades leading up to the
Spanish-American War.
Two visions of the American future emerged after the Civil War, he observed in Black
Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, his 1935 history of African American contributions
to the postwar period -- and a purposeful challenge to white-supremacist orthodoxies. In one of
these renderings, America would at last achieve the democracy expressed in its founding ideals.
The other pictured an advanced industrial nation whose distinctions were its wealth and
potency. Democracy at home, empire abroad: when combined, these two versions of America's
destiny were to be something new under the sun, and this amalgam would make America history's
truly great exception.
This was never more than an impossible dream. Du Bois considered it "the cant of
exceptionalism," in his biographer's phrase, intended primarily to deflect the realities of the
Great Depression.
It was a mere six years after Du Bois brought out his book when Henry Luce declared the
twentieth "the American century" in a noted Life magazine editorial. America was "the most
powerful and vital nation in the world," the celebrated publisher announced. It is "our duty
and our opportunity to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes
as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Maybe only the offspring of missionaries could
write with such righteous confidence of dominance and purity of intent in combination. But
Luce, without using the phrase, had neatly defined American exceptionalism in its
twentieth-century rendering. And from his day to ours, that aspect of it we can consider
religious has grown only more evident among its apostles.
Jimmy Carter caught the post-Vietnam mood perfectly (perfectly to a fault, as it turned out)
when he delivered his noted "malaise" speech in mid-July 1979. Carter never used the wounding
word. His actual title was "A Crisis of Confidence," and he made his point in vivid terms. "It
is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," Carter
explained on America's television screens. He spoke of "the growing doubt about the meaning of
our lives." He spoke of "years filled with shock and tragedy," and of "paralysis, stagnation,
and drift."
This was a presentation of remarkable candor by any measure. Carter told Americans, in so
many words, that they could not count on any preordained destiny or that they were always
assured of success simply because of who they were. "First of all, we must face the truth,"
Carter said, "and then we can change our course." To change our course: this phrase alone
warrants considerable thought. Among the fundamental conceits of the exceptionalist creed is
that America has always had it right and has no need to change anything. The national task is
simply to carry on as it has from its beginning. Carter's challenge to such assumptions could
hardly have been bolder, although he seems to have been careful to avoid explicit reference to
exceptionalism. This would have to wait for Obama.
If the courage of Carter's honesty lies beyond question, so does the mistake he made when we
judge the malaise speech in purely political terms. The public initially received it
positively. But four years after America's humiliating defeat in Vietnam, Americans could not
but suspect that there was nothing exceptional about them or their nation. It was as if the
floorboards were trembling beneath their feet. And as it turned out, Americans did not much
want to hear their president confirm these suspicions and sensations so plainly.
Ronald Reagan understood this. If the project was the rehabilitation of America's
exceptionalist status, his first task after taking office in 1981 was to transform the Vietnam
War into "an American tragedy." So did Reagan proceed. In a matter of a few years, he recast
Americans as Vietnam's victims, its aggressors no longer. His "Vietnam," quotation marks
required, was a place where valorous Americans fought and sacrificed on freedom's front lines.
This inversion must be counted an extraordinary feat, one requiring a manipulation of past
events not short of astonishing for its wholesale distortions. Christian Appy, the historian of
Vietnam as it evolved in the American consciousness, put it this way in a note sent some years
ago: "Reagan gave Americans psychological permission to forget or mangle history to feel better
about the country."
If American exceptionalism had not previously been a faith, Reagan set about making it one.
As president he breathed extraordinary new life into the old credenda -- notably in his famous
references to Winthrop's "city on a hill," each one a misuse of the phrase. He quoted it coming
and going -- on the eve of his 1980 victory over Carter, in his farewell address nine years
later, and on near-countless occasions in between.
I recall those years vividly, oddly enough because I was abroad during almost all of them.
On each visit back there seemed to be more American flags in evidence -- above front doors, on
people's lapels, in the rear windows of cars, in television advertisements. By the mid- 1980s
the nation seemed enraptured in a spell of hyperpatriotism Reagan had conjured with the skill
of the performer he never ceased to be. The stunningly rude conduct of American spectators at
the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles made plain to me that Reagan had set the nation on a path that
was bound to deliver it into isolation and decline. "Patriotism" has ever since been a polite
synonym for nationalism of a pernicious kind.
To me this turn in national sentiment reiterated precisely what it was intended to refute:
America was still the nervous nation Carter had described. It is difficult nonetheless to
overstate the import of what Reagan did by way of all his images and poses. He did not restore
America's confidence in itself after Vietnam; in my estimation no American leader from Reagan's
day to ours has accomplished this. Reagan's feat was to persuade an entire nation, or at least
most of the electorate, that it was all right to pretend: all was affect and imagery.
As if to counter Carter's very words, he licensed Americans to avoid facing the truth of
defeat and failure and professed principle betrayed. He demonstrated in his words and demeanor
that greatness could be acted out even after it was lost as spectacularly as it had been in
Indochina. Beyond his face-off with "the evil empire," "Star Wars," "the magic of the
marketplace," and so on, Reagan's importance as our fortieth president lay in his intuitive
grasp of social psychology. He understood: many Americans, enough to elect a president, prefer
to feel and believe more than they like to think. It was "morning in America," and all one had
to do was have faith in the man who said so. "One of the most important casualties of the
Vietnam tragedy," Henry Kissinger reflected on the twenty-fifth anniversary of our defeat, "was
the tradition of American exceptionalism." Kissinger erred in his estimation: the tradition had
many years of life left after 1975, as should now be plain. He did not understand either what
exceptionalism is or its purpose. Du Bois did, by contrast: he saw in the 1930s that American
exceptionalism was sheer artifice, invoked most vigorously when contradicting realities
threatened to intrude upon the national mythology. Reagan made use of it in precisely this
fashion.
We still live, roughly speaking, with the version of exceptionalism Reagan crafted to evade
the verities of our Vietnam debacle. This is an immense pity, the consequences of which are
hardly calculable. Defeat is the mulch of renewal -- provided one has the strength of character
to acknowledge it. Was this not Carter's implicit point? Defeat gives the vanquished an
occasion to reflect, to draw lessons, to reimagine themselves, to pursue a new way forward.
There are numerous examples of this in history. The twentieth-century fates of Germany and
Japan are of an order all their own, but they serve well enough to illustrate the point: after
downfall comes regeneration. Fail to "face the truth" -- Carter's well-chosen phrase -- and one
must count defeat evaded a lost opportunity of fateful magnitude.
In the American case one must look backward and forward from the defeat in Vietnam to grasp
the full measure of Reagan's destructive happy talk. April 1975 was a moment Americans could
have begun to look squarely at their many betrayals in history -- of others and of themselves
-- in the name of exceptionalism. Illusions nursed for three centuries could have been
abandoned in favor of a new past more fully and honestly understood. Looking forward, there
would have been no more coups and interventions -- no Angola, no Nicaragua, no Iraq, no Libya,
no Syria, no Ukraine, no Venezuela -- the list is as long as it is shameful. Americans could
have "changed course." The defeat in Vietnam, to make this point another way, could have
launched us into our postexceptionalist era -- which, I am convinced, was Carter's intent in
1979 as much as it was Obama's thirty years later.
Jimmy Carter, fair to say, was voted out of office in part for his never-quite-stated
suggestion that Americans reconsider their claim to exceptional status among nations. He left
the White House with a reputation as a muddle-headed weakling (and now awaits his revisionist
historian, in my view). Obama had better luck managing his predicament after his remark in
Strasbourg. He simply retreated into incessant professions of belief. This, too, marks an
opportunity foregone. When he endorsed Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention in 2016,
Obama went straight back to Reagan, believe it or not, invoking Winthrop by way of the Great
Communicator's "shining city on a hill."
Plus ça change, one might conclude. But this would not be quite right. If Carter and
Obama discovered the hard way that exceptionalism remains a precious relic in American
politics, they also left a mark on it. We can now speak of hard exceptionalism and a soft
alternative. Carter did the spadework, but prior to Obama's presidency, any such distinction
was incipient at best. After Strasbourg, Obama proceeded as if Humpty Dumpty could be put back
together again. We all know how the old nursery rhyme turns out.
The hard variety derives from Reagan, who drew on Henry Luce's do-what-we-want,
where-we-want, how-we-want notion of American preeminence and power. It is subject neither to
international law nor, when all the varnish is scraped away, ordinary standards of morality.
This is the version of the creed advanced in Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful
America, the 2015 book by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, the former vice-president's daughter. The
historical record is unblemished, in their telling. Vietnam was wise, Iraq in 2003 was wise,
the use of torture after 2001 was just.
Against this we find counterposed the more humane (if finally more cynical) version of
exceptionalism put forward by Obama and many others on what passes, remarkably enough, for "the
Left" in American politics. Gone is the Reaganesque jingoism and the whiff of Old Testament
righteousness characteristic of conservative renderings. In their place we find "plain and
humble people. . .coming together to shape their country's course," as Obama put it at the
Philadelphia convention. On the foreign policy side, this is a nation that admits its mistakes
while leading the world in pursuit of "shared interests and values" -- a key phrase in the
lexicon -- by way of those partnerships Obama mentioned in Strasbourg. America's conduct abroad
must be rooted in the same humility characteristic of its people -- the people ever busy
shaping the nation's course.
Taken together, these two versions of America as it looks in the mirror are nothing if not
reiterations of the post–Civil War binary Du Bois astutely identified -- empire and
democracy. In the middle of them sits Donald Trump. Having no use at all for exceptionalism, he
is the first president in our modern history simply to shrug it off and survive the judgment.
"I don't like the term," Trump said at a fundraising event in 2015. "I don't think it's a very
nice term. 'We're exceptional, you're not.'" Whatever else one may think of him, Trump is to be
credited on this point. Implicit in his position is the reality that Americans are as subject
to history as any other people.
Jake Sullivan, a prominent adviser in the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton's deputy
chief of staff at State, voiced a view on the soft side in the January 2019 edition of the
Atlantic. "This calls for rescuing the idea of American exceptionalism," Sullivan wrote two
years into the Trump presidency, "from both its chest-thumping proponents and its cynical
critics, and renewing it for the present time." He then unfurled "a case for a new American
exceptionalism as the answer to Donald Trump's 'America First' -- and as the basis for American
leadership in the twenty-first century."
Like Kissinger, Sullivan does not seem to understand. Exceptionalism as it has evolved is no
longer an idea: it is a belief, and as such it cannot be resuscitated by way of rational
thought, no matter how deep its roots in history and how acute the rational thinking. I
question, indeed, the efficacy of any foundational creed in need of a salvage job of the sort
Sullivan proposes. This is not how religions -- civil, in this case -- work. Nonetheless, soft
exceptionalism is now the frontline defense of the notion among Washington's thinking elites.
And we can count Sullivan's carefully reasoned essay its most thorough treatise to date.
Sullivan's case is multiply flawed. Soft exceptionalism is finally little different from the
hard kind, given the two meet at the horizon. They both rest on the old belief that, uniquely
in human history, America manages to combine virtue and power without the former's corruption
by the latter. Hegemon or "benevolent hegemon" -- a phrase from the triumphalist 1990s I have
always found risibly preposterous -- both versions place America at the pinnacle of the global
order, sequestered from others by dint of its "goodness" and "greatness." (Even the Cheneys,
père et fille, had the nerve to use these terms.) Hard or soft, they both treat scores
of coups, interventions, subterfuge operations, and countless other breaches of international
law as deviations from the golden mean, the norm -- even as more than a century's evidence
indicates these supposed irregularities have been the norm.
There is a point to be made here that I count more significant than any just listed.
Whatever variety of exceptionalism someone may endorse, it will not open us to the rich
benefits to be derived from defeat or retreat; as we all know, exceptional America never lost
anything and never will. This is one of the creed's two essential purposes. On one hand it is a
declaration of permanent victory. On the other it is an amulet marshaled to ward away the doubt
and uncertainty that lie at the core of the American character. The contradiction one might
find here is merely apparent. Exceptionalism in any form, then, comes to a confinement. It
encloses those who profess it within the fantasy of eternal triumph, the hubris attaching to
the presumption of never-ending invincibility.
Most of all, exceptionalism traps us in the logic of victors: it renders us certain that we
need only to continue as we have, altering nothing. It thus prevents the emancipation of our
minds such that we know at last our past as it truly was and can think altogether anew of
another kind of future.
In The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, Wolfgang Schivelbusch
is eloquent in describing the fertility of loss against the barrenness of victory. It is an
exceptional (truly so) work. In it he quotes Reinhart Koselleck, the late German historian, to
this effect: There is something to the hypothesis that being forced to draw new and difficult
lessons from history yields insights of longer validity and thus greater explanatory power.
History may in the short term be written by the victors, but historical wisdom is in the long
run enriched more by the vanquished.
America's leaders are rarely long on historical wisdom. Among Dick Cheney and Barack Obama
and Jake Sullivan and many other noted names, at issue today is one or another form of
restoration, nothing more. This arises from the doctrine of exceptionalism itself. It amounts
to a cage within which we choose to confine ourselves and wherein we learn nothing -- the
conceit being we have nothing to learn. We are the jailer and the jailed, then. And if the
twenty-first century has one thing to tell us above any other, it is that we must turn the key,
escape our narrow cell, and begin to think and live in ways our claim to exceptionalism has too
long rendered inaccessible to us.
In the spring of 1932, Henri Bergson published his final book. He called it The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion, "morality" to be taken here to mean (approximately) a society's
ethos, how it lives. A quarter century had passed since the French thinker brought out his
celebrated Creative Evolution. This last work amounts to an elaboration on the earlier volume's
themes.
Once again, Bergson takes up the binaries running through much of his work: "repose" and
movement, the closed society and the open, the stable and the dynamic -- the latter in each
case driven by his famous élan vital, the natural impulse within us to create and
evolve. As in the earlier work, Bergson posits the what could or will be against the
what-is.
The distinguishing mark of The Two Sources is its exploration of the "how" of change -- how
a society advances from an established state to one newly realized. His answer is surprising,
at least to me. Progress is achieved not systematically but creatively. It does not occur as a
result of careful bureaucratic planning, one measured step succeeding another. It entails,
rather, "a forward thrust, a demand for movement." This requires "at a certain epoch a sudden
leap," and there is nothing gingerly about it. Bergson calls this a saltus, an abrupt breach
resulting in transformation.
Here is an essential passage in the argument Bergson constructs in The Two Sources:
It is a leap forward, which can take place only if a society has decided to try the
experiment; and the experiment will not be tried unless a society has allowed itself to be won
over, or at least stirred. . . .It is no use maintaining that this leap forward does not imply
a creative effort behind it, and that we do not have to do here with an invention comparable
with that of the artist. That would be to forget that most great reforms appeared at first
sight impracticable, as in fact they were.
There are a couple of things to note in these lines as we consider the prospect of a
postexceptionalist America. One, ordinary Americans -- a critical mass, let us say -- must be
open to making the required leap and to the measure of flux -- an interim of instability, even
-- this implies. So must our political thinkers, scholars, and policy planners -- altogether
our intellectual class. Two, creative advances require creative individuals -- in a phrase,
imaginative leaders who can see beyond the closed circle of assumptions that any given society
forms. So it is with dynamic leadership. What at first throws us because it appears to be
wholly impractical is later on accepted as a new norm. The Declaration's drafters in the summer
of 1776 -- Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and others -- serve perfectly well as a case in point.
American history gives us numerous other examples. Bergson's thinking is of great use, it seems
to me, in any effort to change course -- to redirect American power, in simple terms. But he
immediately faces us with questions, two more atop those posed at the start of this essay.
How given are Americans to the "forward movement" Bergson writes of? A good many appear
eager, if not desperate, for holistic change, a saltus of our own. For these many, it is a
question not of repudiating national aspirations but of abandoning the mistaken course poor
interpretations have set us upon. To return to Du Bois's thesis, this constituency now comes to
understand that the exceptionalist notion of a virtuous empire and a thriving polity has proven
disastrous. Dominance abroad, in other words, must give way to democracy at home (and all the
work this implies, some of it restorative, some taken up for the first time). Such a
transformation would constitute a truly forward movement.
But America is now a house divided, to note the self-evident. Many of us appear to have lost
touch with all that might pass for creative drives. There is much to suggest that seven decades
of preeminence have left too many of our leaders incapable of cultivating a reconstituted
vision of the nation's future. They persist, instead, in the long-bankrupted pursuit of
democracy and empire -- the old, impossible dream. They tend to cling to illusions of moral
clarity consolidated during the Reagan years and now proffered by such figures as Dick Cheney
and, closer to our moment, John Bolton, until mid-September Trump's astonishingly dangerous
national security adviser. Their prominence is not to be overlooked. Their influence continues
to keep us from changing anything about our ways of seeing and thinking -- our "morality," the
ethos by which we live. Ours seems a closed society, in Bergson's terminology. It is costly
indeed to stray beyond the fence posts.
Whether America is any longer capable of authentic change depends in large measure on how we
answer the other question a reading of Bergson imposes upon us. Do we Americans have the
leaders to inspire us forward, to cut our moorings, to "win us over" to the condition of
postexceptionalism? Bergson's thought as to the necessity of gifted leadership (a term he does
not actually use) is especially pertinent in the American case, it seems to me. It is perfectly
sensible to suggest, as many do, that a fundamental transformation in Americans' understanding
of themselves is beyond reach, or that a tremendous shock -- a catastrophic defeat, a deep and
sustained depression -- will be required to bring it about. But these are the replies one will
always hear within the confines of a static political culture. They admit of no prospect of
transcending the what-is. They leave no ground for imagining what a committed leader might
accomplish by way of showing America new paths forward. Anyone who doubts this potential should
consider the tragic turn the nation took after the three assassinations of the 1960s -- the two
Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. They were leaders of the kind Bergson compares with
artists. It would be difficult to overstate the impact their deaths have had on the nation's
direction.
For the moment we do not seem to have such leaders. But it is worthwhile considering figures
such as Obama (or Carter, for that matter) with this question at one's elbow. I do not wish to
overfreight Obama's appearance in Strasbourg very early in his first term, but in that fateful
sentence concerning Americans, "Brits," and Greeks lies a hint, surely, of a leader's
alternative vision of America's way into the twenty-first century. An attempt was made,
suggesting imminence. We are now face-to-face with the pity of Obama's retreat. With it he
deprived himself of all chance of greatness -- and Americans of a chance to move beyond their
state of "repose." But we also find among us an incipient generation of leaders who stand
squarely against our condition of inertia. Tulsi Gabbard, the vigorously anti-imperialist
congresswoman from Hawaii, is but one example of this emergent cohort.
The common theme is plain: to remake American democracy and to abandon imperial aspirations
are two halves of the same project. This is where we are now with regard to our exceptionalism,
in my reading of our time. We arrive at a crucial moment, and there is no place in it for
pieties as to the "can do" of the American character. It is difficult to argue that we as a
society are prepared for this. But it is nonetheless time -- if, indeed, we are not already
late -- to make our leap into a postexceptionalist awareness of ourselves and ourselves among
others. It is time to leave something large and defining behind, to put the point another way.
We can think of this as shattering the crystal chalice or as simply finding a place for it in
museums and in our history texts. It does not matter so long as we determine, by way of a
leadership class awakened from its slumber, to live without it. The only plausible alternative
is failure -- once again, among ourselves as well as among others.
There are sound reasons to assign our time this magnitude of importance. Abroad, the world
tells us nearly in unison that the place the old American faith found in the twentieth century
is not open to it in the twenty-first. The near chaos we are responsible for since the events
of 11 September 2001 -- notably, but not only, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria -- is of
an order the community of nations has come to find unacceptable. While this is increasingly
evident -- as is a rising contempt for our gaudy displays of righteousness -- let us avoid a
certain mistake here: the message is not "Go home," but its opposite, "Join us -- be among us
truly, authentically, entirely." In my experience abroad, most others still detect the good
that resides in Americans despite all that is at this point plainly otherwise when judged by
the nation's conduct toward others.
At home the intellectual confinements exceptionalist beliefs impose have debilitated us for
decades. We are now greatly in need of genuinely new thinking in any number of political and
social spheres, even as we deny ourselves permission to do any. Clever restorations, as already
noted, will not do. To honor tradition one must add to it. This is done by breaking with it,
just as Bergson implied with his artist. Merely to carry tradition forward in imitation is to
entomb it, while trivializing ourselves and our agency.
What does "postexceptionalism" mean? How would it manifest? Who would postexceptionalist
Americans be? How would Americans understand themselves and account for themselves among
others? Would anything be left of us were the mythologies to be scraped away? I began with
these questions. They are no simpler than the two just considered. If one has breathed fetid
air the whole of one's life, it is not so easy to describe a spring breeze. But there is a long
tradition of dissent and dissenters in America -- "exceptionalism's exceptions," as Levering
Lewis once termed them. Much of what is pushed to the margins in American history is by no
means marginal -- a point our best historians have made many times. In the supposedly far
corners of our past we find paths to a future beyond exceptionalism. The lively
anti-imperialist movement that arose in the nineteenth century's last years is a relevant case
in point. There is also the experience of other nations that have passed through that cycle of
trauma and recovery Wolfgang Schivelbusch explored so insightfully. These things are available
to us. Fresh air is not so inaccessible as we may be inclined to assume. One draws
encouragement, indeed, from the discourses of the Cheneys and, on the other side of the ledger,
the Obamas and Sullivans: any question so self-consciously considered is by definition in
play.
Among my starting points when considering the idea of postexceptionalism is an imperative
that came to me after living and working many years abroad, primarily in Asia. It is simply
stated: parity between the West and non-West will be an inevitable feature of our new century.
This is already evident providing one knows where to look. To take but one example, one reads
little in the American press about the network of alliances now forming among non-Western
nations in the middle-income category: between Russia and China, Russia and Iran, China and
Iran, India and all of these. Beijing's audaciously ambitious Belt and Road Initiative will
multiply such relations many times; they are already a considerable source of influence.
American exceptionalism, let us not forget, was born and raised during half a millennium of
Western preeminence (taking my date from da Gama's arrival at Calicut in 1498). This era now
draws to a close before our eyes. No one's antiquated claim to exceptionalism can survive its
passing.
As a corollary, the same point holds within the Atlantic world itself. Europe now struggles
for a healthy distance from America after the suffocating embrace of the Cold War decades. If
success has so far proven limited, the direction is clear. One of the truths I learned when
reporting in Indonesia during the first post-Suharto years, a time when various provinces were
demanding autonomy, was that to stay together the Indonesian republic would have to come
partially apart. The same will prove so of the West and all who identify as belonging to it. As
in Indonesia, there is difference amid similarity, and both must be served.
It will be a postexceptionalist American leadership that accepts these immense dramas with
the thought and imagination needed to find opportunities -- as against an almost fantastic
variety of "threats" -- in the soil of new landscapes. In the best of outcomes, nostalgia for
lost preeminence, our postwar pursuit of totalized security -- these will no longer interest
postexceptionalist American leaders. Theirs will be a nation braced to advance into a new time
because it is confident of its competence to do so. It will be cognizant of the perspectives of
others, a capacity Americans have heretofore found of little use. It will be game, in a word --
aware of its past but never its prisoner. The language of dominance will give way to the
necessary language of parity. International law will be our law as it is everyone else's.
And here we come to the essential motivation for us to make our leap -- the sine qua non of
it: it must first dawn on us that it is greatly, immeasurably to our advantage to attempt it.
This truth has not yet come to us; no leader has led us to it. How little do most of us
understand, in consequence, that to abandon our claims to exceptional status will first of all
come as an immense unburdening and a relief from our long aloneness in the world?
"The American of the future will bear but little resemblance to the American of the past." I
have long admired this observation, even as I wonder whether it is anything more than a wishful
thought. It dates to 1902 and belongs to Edwin Seligman, a prominent Progressive Era thinker.
Seligman's time was very different from ours, of course, but we can draw connections. He wrote
at the first flowering of America's imperial ambition; today we watch as the sun sets. His
concern was an evolution in consciousness among Americans. So should we concern ourselves as
the future rushes toward us. This is where the path to postexceptionalism must begin -- in our
minds.
All of what I have just noted in pencil sketch lies within our reach. None of it is a matter
of law or mere policy. It comes to a question of will and of vision, of who we wish to be, of
our capacity to reimagine ourselves. But let us not make one of the very errors we would do
best to leave behind: what Americans can do and what they will do are two different things.
There is no certainty Americans will reach for any of what is available to them. To abandon our
claims to exceptionalism is to give up our customary assumption of assured American success. It
requires us to accept the difference between destiny and possibility. One does not find
abundant signs Americans are yet ready to do this -- not among our leaders, in any case. There
seems to be little awareness that the only alternative to the change of course Jimmy Carter
favored forty years ago this past summer is decline -- decline not as a fate but as a choice,
one made even as we do not know we are making it. "Can America save itself?" Bernd Ulrich, a
noted German commentator, wondered in Die Zeit not long ago. It is precisely our question as we
look toward a postexceptionalist idea of ourselves. This idea, indeed, was Ulrich's unstated
topic. "In principal, absolutely," he replied to his own question. "But certainly not with
gradual changes. In terms of global politics and history, it must get off the high horse it has
so long ridden. It needs a moderate self-esteem, beyond superlatives and supremacy."
Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"
The underlying critical
point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since
linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the
epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to
regain their credibility.
The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking
credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.
Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much
better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's
genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is
credibility.
John Glaser and Christopher Preble have written a valuable
study of the history and causes of threat inflation. Here is their conclusion:
If war is the health of the state, so is its close cousin, fear. America's foreign policy
in the 21st century serves as compelling evidence of that. Arguably the most important task,
for those who oppose America's apparently constant state of war, is to correct the threat
inflation that pervades national security discourse. When Americans and their policymakers
understand that the United States is fundamentally secure, U.S. military activism can be
reined in, and U.S. foreign policy can be reset accordingly.
Threat inflation is how American politicians and policymakers manipulate public opinion and
stifle foreign policy dissent. When hawks engage in threat inflation, they never pay a
political price for sounding false alarms, no matter how ridiculous or over-the-top their
warnings may be. They have created their own ecosystem of think tanks and magazines over the
decades to ensure that there are ready-made platforms and audiences for promoting their
fictions. This necessarily warps every policy debate as one side is permitted to indulge in the
most baseless speculation and fear-mongering, and in order to be taken "seriously" the skeptics
often feel compelled to pay lip service to the "threat" that has been wildly blown out of
proportion. In many cases, the threat is not just inflated but invented out of nothing. For
example, Iran does not pose a threat to the United States, but it is routinely cited as one of
the most significant threats that the U.S. faces. That has nothing to do with an objective
assessment of Iranian capabilities or intentions, and it is driven pretty much entirely by a
propaganda script that most politicians and policymakers recite on a regular basis. Take Iran's
missile program, for example. As John Allen Gay explains in a recent
article , Iran's missile program is primarily defensive in nature:
The reality is they're not very useful for going on offense. Quite the opposite: they're a
primarily defensive tool -- and an important one that Iran fears giving up. As the new
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Iran Military Power" points out, "Iran's
ballistic missiles constitute a primary component of its strategic deterrent. Lacking a
modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to
dissuade its adversaries in the region -- particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi
Arabia -- from attacking Iran."
Iran's missile force is in fact a product of Iranian weakness, not Iranian strength.
Iran hawks need to portray Iran's missile program inaccurately as part of their larger
campaign to exaggerate Iranian power and justify their own aggressive policies. If Iran hawks
acknowledged that Iran's missiles are their deterrent against attacks from other states,
including our government, it would undercut the rest of their fear-mongering.
Glaser and Preble identify five main sources of threat inflation in the U.S.: 1) expansive
overseas U.S. commitments require an exaggerated justification to make those commitments seem
necessary for our security; 2) decades of pursuing expansive foreign policy goals have created
a class dedicated to providing those justifications and creating the myths that sustain support
for the current strategy; 3) there are vested interests that benefit from expansive foreign
policy and seek to perpetuate it; 4) a bias in our political system in favor of hawks gives
another advantage to fear-mongers; 5) media sensationalism exaggerates dangers from foreign
threats and stokes public fear. To those I would add at least one more: threat inflation
thrives on the public's ignorance of other countries. When Americans know little or nothing
about another country beyond what they hear from the fear-mongers, it is much easier to
convince them that a foreign government is irrational and undeterrable or that weak
authoritarian regimes on the far side of the world are an intolerable danger.
Threat inflation advances with the inflation of U.S. interests. The two feed off of each
other. When far-flung crises and conflicts are treated as if they are of vital importance to
U.S. security, every minor threat to some other country is transformed into an intolerable
menace to America. The U.S. is extremely secure from foreign threats, but we are told that the
U.S. faces myriad threats because our leaders try to make other countries' internal problems
seem essential to our national security. Ukraine is at most a peripheral interest of the U.S.,
but to justify the policy of arming Ukraine we are told by the more
unhinged supporters that this is necessary to make sure that we don't have to fight Russia
"over here." Because the U.S. has so few real interests in most of the world's conflicts,
interventionists have to exaggerate what the U.S. has at stake in order to sell otherwise very
questionable and reckless policies. That is usually when we get appeals to showing "leadership"
and preserving "credibility," because even the interventionists struggle to identify why the
U.S. needs to be involved in some of these conflicts. The continued pursuit of global
"leadership" is itself an invitation to endless threat inflation, because almost anything
anywhere in the world can be construed as a threat to that "leadership" if one is so inclined.
To understand just how secure the U.S. really is, we need to give up on the costly ambition of
"leading" the world.
Threat inflation is one of the biggest and most enduring threats to U.S. security, because
it repeatedly drives the U.S. to take costly and dangerous actions and to spend exorbitant
amounts on unnecessary wars and weapons. We imagine bogeymen that we need to fight, and we
waste decades and trillions of dollars in futile and avoidable conflicts, and in the end we are
left poorer, weaker, and less secure than we were before.
Daniel
Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New
York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review ,
Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and
Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there
been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a
handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they
will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will
not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. -- John
Turner, 1922
"... Wellsir, I'm old enough to remember 2002, when the Bush administration and its allies built a case for the Iraq War, using the often-heard line, "We fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here." Seriously, young folks, look it up online. ..."
"... And now comes Prof. Karlan, using the same rhetoric to characterize the conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine. She was there to talk about the legal aspects of impeachment, but she bizarrely tipped her hand by trashing Trump because he failed to play his part as a warmonger ..."
"... The American elites didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq ..."
"... On the contrary. They learned that, via deceptive rhetoric and on false pretenses, they could easily manoeuver the U.S. into fighting a war on behalf of another nation's interests rather than its own, and face no repercussions for committing such treason, no matter how many lives it costs and how much it impoverishes the U.S. (to say nothing of what bloodshed and chaos it will cause in the targeted nation -- because after all, destabilization is the point). ..."
"... Trump will never beat an actually decent candidate, he occupies the White House because Clinton was the worst candidate in American history. He's (probably) going to win again because his opponents are even more unpopular and incompetent than he is. ..."
"... No, they are only using the mendacious phrase "spreading democracy" as a cover for what they really want to spread: globalist neoliberalism. ..."
"... The left is shameless, duplicitous and disingenous in the extreme when it comes to Russia (and frankly anything else). To be honest it was my collegiate experiences in the 1980s, comparing the handwaving garbage with what my own eyes saw in the East Bloc, that made me a lifetime, permanent rightist. The left is bankrupt, full of liars and dissemblers and needs to be stopped at any cost. ..."
"... I'd highly recommend the films "Ukraine on Fire" and "Revealing Ukraine" (available on Amazon Prime w/o extra rental $) for a good basic primer on the Ukraine over the last 15 years, particularly of US interference and malfeasance in promoting the coup in 2014. And if anyone "interfered" in the 2016 election it wasn't Russia, but the Ukraine, particularly its very pro-Hilary President Poroshenko (illegitimate though he was and remains after the unconstitutional US-backed coup in against Yanukovich in 2014). ..."
"... NATO should have been moth-balled c. 1992. Instead it is hell-bent on aggressive expansion and antagonizing Russia, for no reason (other than to line the pockets of corrupt US and other officials, "business-men" i.e. oligarchs, etc.). ..."
"... The whole conflict was completely avoidable and is 100% due to America's and Western Europe's dumb actions since the fall of the USSR. ..."
In the Year of Our Lord 2019, sixteen years after this nation launched the catastrophic Iraq War, the following words were spoken
on Capitol Hill this week:
We have become the shining city on a hill. We have become the nation that leads the world in understanding what democracy is.
And one of the things we understand most profoundly is it's not a real democracy, it's not a mature democracy, if the party in
power uses the criminal process to go after its enemies. And I think you heard testimony - the Intelligence Committee heard testimony
about how it isn't just our national interest in protecting our own elections. It's not just our national interest in making sure
that the Ukraine remains strong and on the front line so they fight the Russians there and we don't have to fight them here, but
it's also our national interest in promoting democracy worldwide.
This was not the second coming of the Wolfowitz-Cheney-Bolton brigade. This was Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor and Democrat
called by her party to testify in this week's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.
Wellsir, I'm old enough to remember 2002, when the Bush administration and its allies built a case for the Iraq War, using the
often-heard line, "We fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here." Seriously, young folks, look it up online.
And I'm old enough to remember these lines from President Bush's second inaugural address, in 2005:
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants,
and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the
success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every
man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and
earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and
no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement
of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation
and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
That didn't work out too well for us, for Iraq, or for the Middle East.
And now comes Prof. Karlan, using the same rhetoric to characterize the conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine. She was
there to talk about the legal aspects of impeachment, but she bizarrely tipped her hand by trashing Trump because he failed to play
his part as a warmonger.
The American elites didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq
On the contrary. They learned that, via deceptive rhetoric and on false pretenses, they could easily manoeuver the U.S.
into fighting a war on behalf of another nation's interests rather than its own, and face no repercussions for committing such
treason, no matter how many lives it costs and how much it impoverishes the U.S. (to say nothing of what bloodshed and chaos it
will cause in the targeted nation -- because after all, destabilization is the point).
There are, as Victoria Nuland put it, 5 billion reasons for backing the CIA-led coup that overthrew an elected government and
replaced it with leaders that the she and the rest of the Obama/Clinton State Department chose. It was the Democrats, since the
nineties under another Clinton, that decided to move the American military right up to Russia's borders, interfere in the 1996
election to keep the puppet Yeltsin in power, and with Wall Street leaders to pillage the Russian economy with the stated end
to break up Russia into smaller satrapies with governments appointed by the IMF.
Did Joe Biden brag about a quid proof not releasing funds to the Ukraine until it ended the probe into Burisma, which was paying
son Hunter millions, and dismiss the investigators altogether? Does it turn out Ukrainian power brokers favored under Obama then
sought to influence the American elections against Trump, viewed as wanting to make peace with Russia? Yes, and yes.
The US are not a democracy, since the people do not rule. Rather, it's an oligarchy, since a few influential groups do get
their way all the time. Pamela is just shilling for one of these groups, the war party.
It does not matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.
Agreed, I hope the Republicans agree to impeach him immediately after Election Day if he does win (which I think he will due
to the opposition candidates). I'd much prefer Mike Pence to represent us than freaking Trump. I voted third party last time,
but even as bad as Trump is, he's not nearly as bad as every democratic front runner.
Why the Democratic Party doesn't back Tulsi Gabard is insane, she's the only candidate who everyone could be somewhat happy
with.
Taking a "Unity-Party" angle this election and nominating an anti-war military Veteran who's also a super patriotic minority
women would absolutely destroy Trump. She's also a religious conservative while simultaneously being a sane social liberal, she
satisfies some of the concerns of literally every part of the electorate. A Tulsi Gabard/ Joe Manchin ticket would be an 84 level
blowout. A Joe Biden/ Kamala Harris ticket is literally the best thing that has ever happened to Trump. Trump will never beat
an actually decent candidate, he occupies the White House because Clinton was the worst candidate in American history. He's (probably)
going to win again because his opponents are even more unpopular and incompetent than he is.
An article from someone I trust on that evidence which is not hearsay would be useful, any chance you would write one? I ask
because impeachment is either political or legal. If it's political then it's just the normal noise from D.C., if it's legal then
I want legal standards of evidence. The times I've paid attention the "evidence" has been at the level of someone told me they
overhead a phone conversation or we all believed this, but Trump directly told me the opposite of what we all believed.
I'm looking for something like saying "I did not have sex with that woman" under oath as evidence of committing perjury.
...OTOH, Trump's move against Hunter Biden could possibly be a "high crime and misdemeanor" worthy of impeachment, but given
the existence of Acts of Congress against foreign corrupt practices and the New York Times investigation of Hunter Biden, it becomes
hard to untangle Trump's motives. It would seem to be difficult to prove that an impeachable "high crime and misdemeanor" occurred
if probable cause for a Hunter Biden investigation existed. If we prove (NOT assume, as the Dems currently are doing) that probable
cause did not exist then impeachment would be a slam dunk. If we don't prove that then Trump's impeachment will not be seen as
legitimate by large segments of the public. We really are teetering on the edge of something deep here.
You think that finding out what the son of a sitting vice President, a VP who was also 'point man' for Ukraine, was doing getting
millions from a corrupt Ukrainian entity is strictly 'personal gain'? You think that looking into Ukrainian influence into our
election is 'personal gain'?
Oh the spreading of democracy worldwide nonsense again! Democracies are earned not given, that lesson cost us trillions and
in blood! This sycophant also brought up Pres. Trumps son Baron into the proceedings for no good reason but to score points at
tea time back at Stanford. What a demagogue.
It's always such a lie too, because it's never really about spreading "democracy" -- that is, they don't at all like
the spread of true democracy when the people genuinely prefer and vote for Putin, Assad, Orban, etc., to say nothing of when democracy
demonstrates the true will of the people in cases such as Brexit.
No, they are only using the mendacious phrase "spreading democracy" as a cover for what they really want to spread: globalist
neoliberalism.
Democracies are earned not given, that lesson cost us trillions and in blood!
Yes please give us more democracy, so the uniparty can sell our jobs to global capital and our children's future to foreigners.
Nations have survived tyranny, despots, and brutal civil wars. It is not at all clear whether the nations of the West will survive
your beloved democracy.
...Of course, anyone with a brain knows it's not about Ukraine, a country having no bearing at all on the vital interests of
the United States. Rather, Ukraine is a handy pretext serving the interests of America's military-industrial complex and the enrichment
of our Ruling Class.
If Trump wanted to prove a really great president, he could forge a peace with Russia (which would entail getting a settlement
with Ukraine). It is insane, and only to the benefit of woke liberal capitalists to frame Russia as a permanent enemy. Carving
developed nations into 'us vs them', so the liberal elite can divide and rule us. They use this strategy on multiple fronts, to
ensure success:
US vs Russia
US/UK vs EU
'pseudo-Christian' west vs islam
1st world vs multicutural diversity migration
Pragmatically, we will need an alliance with Russia (and possibly with a post-communist China) to stave off the invading colonisers
looking to grift a free lunch in the 'rich' west (its only the 1% wealthy in the west who are really rich, not the >90% peasant
class), not to mention the ideologically/religiously motivated muslims planning to implement the global sharia subjugation of
the pseudo-Christian west demanded in the Koran.
Sadly, Trump does seem to be proving he lacks the organisational skills to drain the swamp - a virtually impossible task for
any one person. A 'friendship pact' with Russia (perhaps swapping trade access to US for human rights, democratic and media freedoms
in Russia) would be a big step forward to building a united free west. Perhaps bring Poland and Hungary in to to reassure Russia,
and strengthen the protections for Christians and traditional family life. But for this to happen Trump needs to have a Secretary
of State he trusts heavily.
... Signify... whatever, anything, but please not too much thinking. Same with Washington's foreign policy blob. What matters
is that the world's is forced to take America's opinions into account, no matter how bone-headed they are. If they put the world
on fire that's called collateral damage (Ledeen Doctrine).
What I find funniest about this whole "impeachment" shenanigan is how the Democrats honestly think anyone doesn't believe they're
guilty of exactly what they're accusing Trump of. All Trump has to do is reveal seven such cases to the American people after
this whole shenanigan is over and turn their own words against them and they are THROUGH! This might honestly be the biggest political
mistake in the history of our Republic.
The whole thing is nonsense. Democracy is particular to the West, and is frankly innately fragile and dying a proper death
-- slowly, mind you, but dying it is, and thankfully so.
The whole Russia situation is hilarious and a thousand percent ideological. I sat next to these same assholes in college in
the 1980s as they blithely handwaved "no true Scotsman" type arguments about the Soviet Union, and moral equivalency and so on,
and then of course without their precious hearts skipping one single beat, they switched immediately to "Russia is evil and must
be stopped at all costs" when Russia emerged with a nationalist/rightist government.
The left is shameless, duplicitous and disingenous in the extreme when it comes to Russia (and frankly anything else).
To be honest it was my collegiate experiences in the 1980s, comparing the handwaving garbage with what my own eyes saw in the
East Bloc, that made me a lifetime, permanent rightist. The left is bankrupt, full of liars and dissemblers and needs to be stopped
at any cost.
My guess is that Russia has enough nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them at every major city in the US. Vladimir
is no drunkard like Boris Yeltsin was. We should not provoke the Russian bear into lashing out at the US. The old Soviet Union
lost some 20 million of its citizens in WWII and did the heavy lifting in defeating the Nazis. Hands up if you want to send your
19 year old son to fight the Russians in Sevastopol. Does the average American even know where Sevastopol is? More than likely,
a war with Russia would result in the nuclear bombing of New York, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston for
starters.
I'd highly recommend the films "Ukraine on Fire" and "Revealing Ukraine" (available on Amazon Prime w/o extra rental $)
for a good basic primer on the Ukraine over the last 15 years, particularly of US interference and malfeasance in promoting the
coup in 2014. And if anyone "interfered" in the 2016 election it wasn't Russia, but the Ukraine, particularly its very pro-Hilary
President Poroshenko (illegitimate though he was and remains after the unconstitutional US-backed coup in against Yanukovich in
2014).
NATO should have been moth-balled c. 1992. Instead it is hell-bent on aggressive expansion and antagonizing Russia, for
no reason (other than to line the pockets of corrupt US and other officials, "business-men" i.e. oligarchs, etc.).
I'm halfway cheering for Russia in their conflict with Ukraine. That's Russia's sphere of influence, Ukraine has no business
in the EU or in NATO. Any sane American government would be courting Russia in the new Cold War that's obviously coming with The
Chinese Communist Party. Instead we pulled all of the former European countries in the USSR into our sphere of influence.
The whole conflict was completely avoidable and is 100% due to America's and Western Europe's dumb actions since the fall of the
USSR.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Bullet2354 Avery
Bierce •
20 hours ago
Wayne Dupree: Why I, as a black man, am voting for Trump, along with a large number of people
who consider themselves Democrats
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent
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When
the United States, the United Kingdom, and the "coalition of the willing" attacked Iraq in
March 2003, millions protested around the world. But the war of "shock and awe" was just the
beginning. The subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority
bankrupted the country and left its infrastructure in shambles.
![Iraqi security forces are seen at Ain al-Asad airbase in Anbar province [File: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/1/8/691173f4ac6b42f6b95df126ad4421bd_18.jpg "Iraq army says no Iraqi casualties as 22 missiles strike bases")
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